There’s a curious knot that binds novelists and terrorists. . . . Years ago I used to think it was possible for a novelist to alter the inner life of the culture. Now bomb-makers and gunmen have taken that territory. They make raids on human consciousness. What writers used to do before we were all incorporated. (Don DeLillo, Mao II, Viking Edition, page 41)
Commedia dell'Arte (Italian pronunciation: [komˈmɛːdja delˈlarte]) is a form of theater characterized by masked "types" which began in Italy in the 16th century and was responsible for the advent of the actress and improvised performances based on sketches or scenarios.
Pierrot (French pronunciation: [pjεʁo]) is a stock character of pantomime and Commedia dell'Arte whose origins are in the late 17th-century Italian troupe of players performing in Paris and known as the Comédie-Italienne; the name is a hypocorism of Pierre (Peter), via the suffix -ot. His character in postmodern popular culture—in poetry, fiction, the visual arts, as well as works for the stage, screen, and concert hall—is that of the sad clown, pining for love of Columbine, who usually breaks his heart and leaves him for Harlequin.
Kubrick made sure the masks in Eyes Wide Shut were Venetian, which is also the new line of eyewear from Spectacular Optical in Videodrome. "All the world's a stage" was said in 1599, and now the tape loops back around. A Killing Joke in the movie theater.
Warner Bros. has also pulled a trailer for its upcoming film Gangster Squad, a 1940s-set thriller . . . the trailer, which was being shown during the previews of The Dark Knight Rises, featured a scene of gunmen going into a cinema and shooting patrons as they watch a film. (BBC)
Gangster Squad is another late-1940s L.A. Noir film with Nick Nolte of Mulholland Falls. The gangsters shooting the movie theater audience through the screen is the most overt depiction of the Art as Murder theme.
Incidentally, the 1989 Batman (Jack Nicholson Joker) is set in, yes, bizarro 1947, the year of the Black Dahlia murder.
"Edward Nygma creates the game, “The Riddle of the Minotaur” . . . he takes up the mantle of the Riddler and traps Mockridge inside a life-sized version of the Minotaur maze."
Batman's parents are killed by the Joker outside of the Monarch movie theater (see: The ShiningMonarch poster)--the handiwork of the Minotaur, who divides the One to create the multiplicity of existence.
Through July, every morning Barbara and Lo would be helped to carry the canoe to Onyx or Eryx by Charlie Holmes, the camp mistress' son, aged thirteen; and at one point, among the luxuriant undergrowth, Lo would be left as sentinel while Barbara and the boy copulated behind a bush. At first, Lo had refused to 'try what it was like,' but curiosity and cameraderie prevailed, and soon she and Barbara were doing it by turns with the silent, coarse and surly but indefatigable Charlie. (Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita)
The Dahlia, you will recall, dies on the set of the movie The Man Who Laughs (the original Joker). I'm certainly the only one who would get that "Charlie Holmes" is the name of Lolita's Joker-consort in the book.
Sherlock Holmes is the Master of solving Mysteries, which makes him an archetypal Hierophant, even if the Mystery he demonstrates is paradoxically that of overthrowing the Hierophant himself.
The Hanged Antichrist
Thus in the first Sherlock Holmes, the sinister Lord Blackwood is a glyph of the Beast as Minotaur, who ritually mutilates girls as part of his Great Sorcery--a magician who presents himself as a resurrected Christ figure. Sherlock Holmes exposes him as being little more than a charlatan (another Flim-Flam Man), who possesses no real magic of his own.
Having proceeded beyond the confines of the Outer Church, which maintains its grip over the populace with flashy illusions, Holmes proceeds to the Inner Church, where he must confront his own doppelgaenger in a Game of Shadows. Holmes perceives that all these disparate threads are synchronously connected to a Great Evil that only he is capable of fighting--even if it necessitates his own sacrifice.
And clearly Irene Adler is Selina Kyle--the only one who can outwit the World's Greatest Detective. But even she senselessly dies at the hands of Moriarty, much like Rachel Dawes at the hands of the Joker. The Fool does battle against the Great Fool.
And before Robert Downey Jr. was Sherlock Holmes, the World's Greatest Detective, he was Charlie Chaplin, the World's Greatest Fool. His life follows a familiar story: Charlie's first love is the red-haired girl, but she dies. He goes through a series of dead-end romances until he finds her exact double. Both girls are played by Moira Kelly, who is also the Anne Frank doppelgaenger in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. The important point is that Charlie is the world's biggest movie star--he's the Fool so all of the movies are symbolically about him and his Fool's Journey.
They mixed truth and lies so carefully that during almost seventeen hundred years every Christian who sought the Word in himself - the only place where it can be found, met on the threshold of his own soul, with this insidious phantom, this blasphemous chimaera, this theological nightmare: "Worship me!" cries the Egregora. "I am the Son of God; you are nothing but a worthless and sinful creature, damned from birth and destined to hell were it not for my sacrifice; and without me you will never reach heaven!"
Maybe you begin to understand, the abysmal nature of that which we call the Great Sorcery? After sixteen hundred years of vitalization by multitudes of worshippers, and the absorption of the empty shells of priests, nuns, friars and fanatics who allowed themselves to be vampirized by it, the Egregora does exist in the so-called "astral plane"; and it is a demon that is to say, an illusory entity, It is not a true Microcosm, but a gestalt of vitalized shells, a focus for everything that is negative, defeatist, maudlin, bigoted, introverted in human nature - a morass completely hostile to progress and to the spiritual evolution of mankind. (Frater Zephyros)
(Rabbi David Aaron, The Secret Life of God)
The message of the Hierophant--once ascertained--is paradoxically to overthrow him.
On the old television show, Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson would be kicking it in stately Wayne Manor, as billionaire playboys are wont to do, when the unmarked, red Bat-Phone would blow up with Commish Gordon on the other end desperately looking for Batman’s help. Okay, okay, Robin can play too. Bruce would tilt the head back on this sweet William Shakespeare bust to reveal the hidden remote to open the bookshelves that lead to the batpole which, of course, leads to the Batcave. The motherfreaking Batcave. Yes. (The Seafaring Gypsy)
The lines "'Cause when love is gone, there's always justice / And when justice is gone, there's always force / And when force is gone, there's always Mom" derive from the fourth sentence of Chapter 38 of the Tao Te Ching: "When Tao is lost, there is goodness. When goodness is lost, there is kindness. When kindness is lost, there is justice. When justice is lost, there is ritual. Now ritual is the husk of faith and loyalty, the beginning of confusion." ("O Superman")
You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling
The Dark Knight Rises follows the familiar thread of the hero path. Batman is symbolically and literally "crippled" (the Wounded King) after Joker kills Rachel Dawes. The dynamic between Bane and Catwoman (the two Masks of God) is Heathers all over again; they both want anarchy but for different reasons. Catwoman (who still retains the seed of good) knows the Old Order has to fall, but Bane just wants to see everything burn. Project Mayhem--the Fight Club parallels that seemed to underlie The Dark Knight come into greater focus, with Bane taking over Joker's role as Batman's Tyler Durden doppengaenger. Bane, like Apollyon, is a creature from the Pit of the Abyss (Brad "Pitt"?)--and so is Talia (strangely echoing "Dahlia"), with Marion Cotillard reprising her role from Inception as the "Shade."
Ushered as it were into a Judgment Hall in which the law expounded to him is not only entirely unknown but is written in a language which he cannot even read, he is cross-questioned in a foreign tongue and judged in words which at present convey not a symptom of sense to him. As the Rituals proceed it might be expected that these difficulties would gradually lessen, but this is far from being the case; for, as we have seen, the complexities already involved by the introduction of Ancient Egyptian deities, concerning whom it is probable the candidate has but little knowledge, are further heightened by a general intrusion on the part of Hebrew, Christian, Macedonian and Phrygian gods, angels and demons, and a profuse scattering of symbols; which, unitedly, are apt either so to bewilder the candidate that he leaves the temple with an impression that the whole ritual is a huge joke, a kind of buffoonish carnival of Gods which in the sane can only provoke laughter; or, on account of it being so utterly incomprehensible to him, his ignorance makes him feel that it is so vastly beyond him and above his own simple standard of knowledge, that all that he can do is to bow down before those who possess such an exalted language, concerning even the words and alphabet of which he can get no grasp or measure. . . .
The affectation of knowledge and the piling on of symbols is only legitimate to the ignorant when the purpose is to bewilder by a flashing image and not to instruct. In the present case the seeker after Truth is called the Child of Earth and Darkness, and instead of being shown the beautiful garment of light he will one day be called upon to wear, is at once rolled in a heap of tinselled draperies, in mummy wrappings, outgrown togas and the discarded underwear of Olympus and Sinai, the result being that unless his understanding is as clear as these rituals are obscure, all he obtains is a theatrical impression of "make-up" and "make-believe," and a general detachment from the realities of Consciousness. (Aleister Crowley)
The symbology of the Western Mystery Tradition concerns itself with the Great Magical Work within the self, and thus ceremony and pageantry serves not to reveal but to re-veil the fundamental simplicity of the praxis. Ritual is the husk of truth, and if no-one is paying attention, it descends to the level of a meaningless Mystery Babel. In our world, the movie theater and the temple become equally lethal.
(The Mindscape of Dr. Parnassus)
The following is an uncommonly lucid assessment of The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus from Vigilant Citizen:
Looking deeper into the symbolism of the story, Dr. Parnassus and his traveling show are a metaphor for the esoteric teachings transmitted through the ages via Mystery schools. He is a human manifestation of the “path to enlightenment” of the Buddhists or the “inner-Christ” of the Gnostics. By inviting people into the magic mirror, he transports them onto the spiritual plane where they can choose between spiritual fulfillment and enlightenment (represented by a pyramid or a ladder, depending on the person) or ignorance and materialism (represented by a pub or a sleazy motel). Dr. Parnassus says “he transmits the story that sustains the universe,” which is a poetic way of saying that he is the vehicle for the secret teachings leading to illumination. He provides the path that allows the communion between humanity and divinity. The entire symbolism surrounding Paranassus’ theater is inspired by the esoteric teachings of the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Buddhists and other esoteric schools. . . .
The Devil knew that, in due time, “nobody would want to hear Parnassus’ stories”. In other words, the Devil knew the world would spiral back into ignorance, ultimately finding itself in the spiritual state we are in today. Parnassus’ show (a metaphor for the path to Illumination) is now a strange novelty, a road-side curiosity that is ignored by most everyday people who are too busy to ponder on its teachings. . . .
The Hanged Man indeed refers to the myth of the dying god who is committing the ultimate sacrifice in order to attain immortality.
“There is present in the rituals similarities of concepts or beliefs. In the ancient tradition it was believed that through the connection of the body and blood of the Slain God that the people became one with the deity. In the “Last Supper” Jesus declare that the bread and wine were his body and blood, which he gave up for the salvation of the people. Blood was believed to contain the life force. The death of the king freed the inner spirit. Through the distribution of his body and blood, heaven and earth were united and his vital energy renewed the kingdom.
The appearances of the Slain God have taken on various aspects throughout the ages. His images can be seen in the Jack-in-the-Green, the Hooded Man, the Hanged Man of the Tarot, the Lord of Vegetation, the Harvest, and the free untamed aspect of the forest.”
. . . The esoteric meaning of the scene alludes to the dying of the old self in order to give birth to the new, spiritual self. Spiritually, however, this metamorphosis is however obtained through self-sacrifice and personal work, not by dying young. (Vigilant Citizen)
Heath Ledger in Parnassus runs the same sort of feel-good charity racket that Bruce Wayne runs. Ledger is the Hanged Man and thus embodies the Christ archetype--or, rather, its negative aspects: the exoteric Dead Man on the Tree as the Big Lie. (Tony is, after all, a "Liar.") The Joker gives the act a makeover, but he has to die on the Tree to save the King's Daughter. Like Ziggy Stardust, he himself must be sacrificed to appease the madding crowd.
"When the kids had killed the man . . ."
". . . I had to break up the band"
Fear death by water
Two sides of the same coin
What happened to Valentina's mother?
Mr. Nick of course is the Devil, Dr. Parnassus-God/Yahweh/Saturn/EL and Tony being Jesus Christ/Lucifer . . . what makes Lucifer's alter ego Jesus so evil is that he believes he is righteous and chairatable when he is not! Look at the world around us and how many people are waiting on his grand arrival. He's not coming because he LIED! Look at the scene where he is sitting in front of the Parnassus with Valentina and he's BSing about talking to her while he's wiggling his foot. Feet are synonmous with Christ and also maybe a clear indication that Tony was in fact a liar. Anton saying when they first encounter Tony (Shepard), "look theres someone walking on water." Valentina was the only one who could tell he was actually hanging from the bridge. His faux sacrafice and his fraudulent chairty that exploits kids for his on self centered interest. Sound familiar? Or maybe if you flip that Jesus coin you'll see the real diabolical side that anyone asleep will fail to see. Tony seduces people, and he's a real charmer with the women. Ring a bell? Look where Valentina ended up in his imagination, she became his arm candy his trophy and nothing more. . . . The only saving grace in this movie was Valentina and look what happened to her. She never got a real choice because she never had a chance, with her father lying to her, Tony lying to her and everyone else in her life lying to her. Everyone wanted control and sovereignty over her. When she finally got to choose she never made a concious choice she fell in to her choice after her dance with the devil. . . . And it's not an accident that Sophia's mother was dead through out the movie. Which bring me to.....
Where does Valentina really come in? Well I remember there was a time I was really Christian and I wanted to research Christianity to the fullest until I came to the conclusion that Christianity was......bull sh*t. No offense to anyone who is Christian but this is what I found. I read the gnostic gospels and some of the gnostic views. It mentioned that Jesus's real purpose was to come here and not only save us but his main mission was to save Sophia/sacred feminine from this realm(Valentina)! But because Jesus is a liar and a fraud he never accomplished his mission to begin with! His real mission! Sophia in the Gnostic view was the embodiment of wisdom. Did anyone notice the fact that Valentina's mother was dead through out the movie? . . . Valentina is the Sacred Feminine she is love. That lost Goddess of Wisdom that the Patriarchs so conviently knocked out of the Christian theology. It's not an accident that Tony's last name is Shepard and that Valentina's name is Valentina. She is the savior and the only one who can save her is herself because she has that power. Power far greater than her father's or the devils. (Tiffybearnecessity)
As the Hierophant he demonstrates the Mystery on the stage of the Imaginarium. In order for a soul to be saved (according to the parameters of Terry Gilliam's story), it must go from a passive observer to an active participant in the Mystery--this is the crucial point. All that is necessary to break the Fourth Wall and destroy the artificial divide between Subject and Object is to ask the Question.
During feast, Perceval witnesses a strange procession walk through the hall, young virgins holding such implements as candelabras, a platter, a spear the bled of its own accord, and a cup that glowed with light.
Now, the situation was that the Grail King would be healed if Perceval asked a certain question. Trying not to be rude, Perceval held back his natural curiosity, and said nothing.
Some time later, he learned what had been expected of his, and realized that he had failed the Grail King, whose serious wound might have been healed. Feeling terrible, he dedicated himself to finding the Grail Castle again and asking the right question. After a number of adventures, he does just that and the Grail King is healed.
There are a number of lessons to be learned from this story that I will not get into here. One of the most interesting, however, is that the hero (Perceval) achieves his final quest not by answering a riddle or performing some great deed, but by asking a question.
The questions are either a simple "What ails thee, Uncle?" or "What is the secret of the grail? Whom does it serve?" (Chivalry-Now)
The Question
The figures on the wheel are darker than the wheel itself; in fact, they are stains upon the purity of the wheel, and for that reason, and because of the whirling of the wheel, I cannot see them. But at the top seems to be the Lamb and Flag, such as one sees on some Christian medals . . . It speaks: I am the greatest of the deceivers, for my purity and innocence shall seduce the pure and innocent, who but for me should come to the centre of the wheel. . . . I am he of whom it is written: He shall deceive the very elect. (Crowley)
While the "Aurora shooting" may have been caused by Sleeping Beauty, the "Zombie Apocalypse" was allegedly caused by "Bath Salts," or Sophia (referred to as "salt" by the Gnostics) in the bathtub. Sophia suffers from a "deficiency," or comes up (Elizabeth) "Short" ("a girl's gotta eat").
Don't hate the Playa, hate the Game: In "My Homies Still," Lil Wayne creates a facade of Low Art (the Elephant Hierophant), but the High Art of esoteric symbolism is encoded within the visual narrative. (Millionaire playboy Bruce Wayne is but the "mask" of Batman.) Modern post-WWII suburbia was built on sacrifice--dismembered mannequins dot the landscape.
The Mystery is enacted in the Church of the Holy Graal: Lil Wayne's head is offered at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb (the horned girl is the Anima Bruta).
The Eternal Wheel of Suffering
Count the skeletons
The audience in the Plato's Cave movie theater, like Parzival, does not understand what it sees and are little more than a bunch of zombies, unaware that the Apocalypse happened long ago and they live as the Dead.
The idea of Stanley Kubrick (another Joker) faking the moon landing with a "false projection" points to a larger theme of reality as a Hierophantic construct; we perceived the action of "landing on the moon" and unveiling Diana, but it was only a shadowy and delusive reality projected on the wall of Plato's Cave. Like the light at the end of Daisy's dock in The Great Gatsby, the Dream only recedes further into the past as we build up a ritualized simulacrum of the truth.
Max communicates with Nicki through the TV set, even though it was Videodrome that was the instrument of her original murder. This is the paradox of things. The Mask of God is a munitions testing ground in which the Shadows on the Wall of Plato's Cave are reverse-engineered. But the Hierophant always stands as a obstacle before the vision of the High Priestess that he conceals.
The audience worships the symbol, rather than comprehending the message that he speaks (this, again, is why Art is Murder). We see John Blake become the "new" Batman at the end of the film, which points to the persistence of the Hero archetype through time.
Christopher Nolan's Inception presents a Revelation of the Method, wherein Cillian Murphy, as the "Mark," is "incepted" by Leonardo DiCaprio to overthrow his Father's empire. As the Hierophants of a Play put on for the benefit of a single individual, they must approach their task in such a way that the Mark will believe that he conceived of the idea himself. This is a metaphor for filmmaking, in which Murphy's character represents the audience. The implication, if we follow through with Nolan's reasoning, is that every member of the audience is a potential Christ.
In fact, the externalization of these themes becomes Satanic counterfeit, a sort of cruel "joke" perpetrated by the Outer Church against everything that is good and pure.
The Middle Pillar
The Riddler's insanity is such that he claims to be Batman. This is the great paradox of the Hero-phant; the externalized image of the Christ as Antichrist.
(Aaron)
The Kabbalistic understanding is that the transcendent God (the Father) is masculine while the immanent God (the Shekinah) is revealed feminine, meaning, paradoxically, that an absent God is not truly God at all. By perceiving only the Shadow on the wall of the movie theater, the Illusion of Separation is maintained and the Immanent God, represented by Jessica Redfield, is brutally slain by the Hierophant.
One of the few people to die onscreen in the Batman animated series is Batgirl--this, however, was only epistemological, another of the Scarecrow's nightmares as he writhes in agony on the cross.
Children Are Innocent: With Harley as a (wo)manchild rather than a regular one. She is, however, widely regarded by others as being extremely innocent, of the "not aware of doing evil" variety, just, in her mind, having fun - this does, however, involve a laundry list of psychologically stunted systems of denial. She sees the world like a game of make-believe, and is oblivious to the fact that she is hurting people and doesn't truly acknowledge the danger of what she does or other people's danger to her . . . ("Harley Quinn")
Harley Quinn (another "Columbine") is a totally innocent supervillainess (Lolita syndrome) . . . the illusory play of existence (Lil's dance) is just another game to her, and she stands blissfully unaware of how much psychological damage her Killing Joke causes. Harley and Ivy (the "Lilith" Handmaidens) play while Batgirl and Supergirl (glyphs of the Shekinah) get eaten.
And it is strange to say that Harley and Batman are really meant to be together; this is a covert theme in every episode. Like Lolita she plays both sides. Joker as Pierrot, Batman as Harlequin, locked in eternal battle over the soul of Harley-Columbine.
In the endings of L.A. Confidential, A Clockwork Orange, and The Hunger Games, the "Hero" is lauded by the Empire for his or her sacrifices (becoming, in effect, part of the Propaganda wing)--one begins to understand some of the dynamics at work. Essentially, by embodying the Hero archetype in a Campbellian Monomyth, our protagonist unwittingly serves to proliferate the Empire, which exhorts its audience to worship the Hero as God rather than discovering its inner meaning.
Most of the religions of the world are like processions: one leads, and the many follow. In the footsteps of the demigods, man follows in his search for truth and illumination. The Christian follows the gentle Nazarene up the winding slopes of Calvary. The Buddhist follows his great emancipator through his wanderings in the wilderness. The Mohammedan makes his pilgrimage across the desert sands to the black tent at Mecca. Truth leads, and ignorance follows in his train. Spirit blazes the trail, and matter follows behind. In the world today ideals live but a moment in their purity, before the gathering hosts of darkness snuff out the gleaming spark. The Mystery School, however, remains unmoved. It does not bring its light to man; man must bring his light to it. Ideals, coming into the world, become idols within a few short hours, but man, entering the gates of the sanctuary, changes the idol back to an ideal. (Manly P. Hall)
The Initiate will turn the dead Idol back into a living reality, but the profane see only the symbol. This operates under the strange notion that the Devil can only veil the Truth. The Hierophant, as the embodiment of the eternal Empire of Rome (the Catholic, or "Universal," Church, present everywhere), displays the Mystery. The zombie flesh-eating stories of previous months acted as crude parodies of the Eucharist, which follows the general doctrine that the external shadow is a Satanic counterfeit of the internal living Ideal.
"'Attis' was originally a name or title of Cybele's ancient Phrygian priests, or priest-kings; Cybele's head priest at Pessinos was 'The Attis'."
In ancient Rome, the Hierophant of the Magna Mater was the god Attis, who sacrificed his blood to the goddess ("a die for a die"). Note this well--the "dying and rising god" worshiped by the multitude is actually he who enacts the Mystery--every priest was referred to as an Attis, who slays and renews himself to feed the multitude.
The Galli castrated themselves during an ecstatic celebration called the Dies sanguinis, or "Day of Blood", which took place on March 24. At the same time they put on women's costume, mostly yellow in colour, and a sort of turban, together with pendants and ear-rings. They also wore their hair long, and bleached, and wore heavy make-up.... The role of prototype of the mythical castration of Attis for the institution of the "priesthood" of the Galli has almost always been emphasised, even if to different degrees. Scholars have attempted to draw a connection between the episode of the castration of Attis and the ritual mutilation of the Galli as a reflection in myth of a secondary ritual action or conversely, as the mythical foundation of a ritual action. ("Galli")
The castration of the Galli was a ritual action meant to symbolize something else entirely, much like circumcision (as Saint Paul says)--when taken literally it falls into delusion and falsehood. The Hero, by enacting the Mystery, turns the Lie back into Truth.
(Velvet Goldmine: Batman vs. Ziggy Stardust?)
The Empire of the Sun King
And there was a certain element of high priest about it. I was very aware of the idea of androgyny or an unknown gender being attached to most priesthoods in the East, for instance. The variety of androgynous or even neo-drag priests that you can find in many smaller religions throughout the world is phenomenal. Those original shamans have mutated into the entertainer . . . (David Bowie)
Fans remake themselves in their idol's image by metaphorically tearing him to pieces, like Ziggy in "Rock 'n' Roll Suicide"—obsessively collecting and fetishizing photos, videos, concert memories, celebrity sightings, memorabilia, and other hallowed fragments of the divinity, from which they assemble new, recombinant selves. (Mark Dery, "Leper Messiah: A Jesus Freak's Search for the Meaning of Bowie")
The Artist-Minotaur
The "Hearts Filthy Lesson" video features a band of "punks" who ritually dismember a mannequin—obviously meant to represent Osiris-Dionysus, the "Hanged Man". In alchemy, too, there are frequently acts of dismemberment and disintegration prior to reintegration.
The Minotaur was the Cretan sun god, and found at the center of the Labyrinth—the mystical heart of the earth. Bowie, of course, was also the Hierophant of a certain other Labyrinth, in which he played the role of Hades opposite Jennifer Connelly's Persephone in a retelling of the Eleusinian Mystery-drama. And most significantly, in the "Hearts Filthy Lesson" video, Bowie has used the astrological symbol for the sun, a circled dot: ☉.
There is a distinctly sadistic aspect to this card; not unnaturally, since it derives from the Legend of Pasiphae, the prototype of all the legends of Bull-Gods. (Crowley, The Book of Thoth)
There was a sacred bull in this labyrinth, quite white. At the spring festival they sacrificed twelve virgins to him.... They wanted to get a Minotaur, an incarnation of the sun, a Messiah. They said they had one, but they hadn't. (Crowley, The Paris Working)
For I, being a woman, lust ever to mate myself with some beast. And this is the salvation of the world, that always I am deceived by some god, and that my child is the guardian of the labyrinth... (16th Aethyr, The Vision and the Voice)
The European Cannon is here (it's too late . . .)
My input revolved around the idea of ritual art—what options were there open to that kind of quasi-sacrificial blood-obsessed sort of art form? . . . I think people have a real need for some spiritual life and I think there's great spiritual starving going on. There's a hole that's been vacated by an authoritative religious body—the judaeo-Christian ethic doesn't seem to embrace all the things that people actually need to have dealt with in that way—and it's sort of been left to popular culture to soak up the leftover bits like violence and sex. (David Bowie in Ian Penman, "The Resurrection of Saint Dave," Esquire, October 1995)
Bowie continues to acknowledge his role of Hierophant by saying that the supreme act of an artist is to crucify himself on stage, thereby becoming another idol. It was Plato who also wrote in his Republic that the multitude, which seldom chooses well, will inevitably fall under the sway of a tyrannical despot. Or does Bowie regard himself as a Philosopher King who must take on the guise of a tyrant in order to deliver his salvific Gnosis? It is, after all, "just Pierrot." People want to be entertained.
Red-haired Joker as Ronald McDonald. Cinema is presented as disposable "fast food" for its comatose audience.
The idea that "Hitler was the first rock star" still haunts us. The Saviour Machine is "Telling Lies," all while pleading, "please don't believe in me."
(EARTH 1 & EARTH 2)
The Lovely Bones and The Hunger Games depict two mutually exclusive cosmologies, which nevertheless seem to exist simultaneously. In the former, the course of events is guided towards the rectification of all things by a benevolent power. The latter depicts all mystic experience as "firmly affixed to the principle of Saturnine power," in which the Game is played within the televised kaleidoscope of the Eternal Empire. (These are Philip K. Dick's Hyperuniverses I and II, known colloquially as Betty and Veronica.) This reflects the streak of the irrational that infects not only the World Soul but all of existence. Those who are fascinated solely by appearances are not getting the message--ignoring it, like a gangrenous leg, will not make it go away. There is no freedom unless everyone is free.
