Tapping into the Wellspring

The SyFy dramatization of Childhood's End provides an operatic visualization of the collective unconscious and the voodoo transformation of the world order that comes from the precession of the equinoxes, that is, the flipping of the page of the great calendar in the sky.

How would that actually work. That is, where do the gears of the celestial clockwork mesh with the human world?

My suspicion is that this idea is at the core of a religion, maybe the religion of some secret societies. Perhaps "they" (the proverbial they) believe they actively participate in this event and shepherd mankind into the new age.

I'm wondering if this is what's behind things like the constant barrage of "transgender" stories that ooze out of sites like Huffington Post. This Christmas (2015), a number of people and news organizations twitched across the social media news cycle with outrageous comments about Jesus's sexuality, an entity they certainly regard as fictional. Here's one example.

I believe "they" imagine they're speaking for or interpreting the collective unconscious and divining some expression of the constellation calendar. The transgender/homosexual fixation is perhaps related to Aquarius as Ganymede and is somehow related to the dawning of the Aquarian age.

If that's a fair representation of what drives the ostensibly western media, there's no reason at all to focus on it or analyze it. That would serve to enhance the effect and is merely reactive. A better thing to do is tap directly into the wellspring of imagination and creation.

The Most Important Thing!

German pastors incorporated Star Wars into a nominally Christian church service. As I pointed out in an earlier post, Star Wars succeeds because it adroitly incorporates symbols from nature and mythology which attract people's attention like a magnet. When you understand the visual vocabulary the imagery is obvious, but when you aren't clued in, perhaps it's just intriguing.

In fact, Star Wars provides a template for religion creation. It's sort of an "official" mythology, now, that incorporates ancient folk tales and symbols into the saga. Like almost all other religions, it moves onto the political stage to use and be used by politicians.

Hollywood Product Placement

It is really worthwhile pondering Star Wars to try to understand how it all works. Why does a ham fisted re-telling of old campfire stories that includes lots of astronomy poetry matter to anyone? Star Wars is like the exoteric form of older religions. Perhaps it's dazzling like a cathedral used to be to peasants.

In a recent post I wondered if Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End was a summary of the Hermetic religion of the so-called "elites". They see themselves as the most evolved, as intermediaries between the collective unconscious (i.e. God) and the unwashed masses.

Maybe the shared hallucination between both the elites and the people--really two peas in a pod--is about the most important thing. That is, the idea that they know, really know what that is. Since it is the most important thing, they're willing to commit the most heinous acts to defend it or promote it. Maybe it provides a common motive that transcends the grosser motives of money, power, or sex.

Nice Writeup (PDF) on Astro-Mythology

Here's a really good summary of astronomy myths. Link.

Great Ages

"Childhood's End" and the NWO

Karellen from Childhood's End miniseries

I read Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke when I was a wee lad. I was probably only in middle school, maybe 7th grade, so after a few decades, all I remembered about the story was the creepy transformation of the children and their ascent into space, so I am not sure how faithfully the SyFy miniseries tracks the themes of the book.

Childhood's End relies on the themes in the book Hamlet's Mill: the end of an age and the metaphorical destruction of the prior era. The series Under the Dome and the SyFy series Battlestar Galactica, which is referenced in the opening sequence of Childhood's End,  follow the same theme. Some of the actors in Childhood's End play a parallel character in other series. Karellen is played by Charles Dance, who played Tywin Lannister in The Game of Thrones. Mike Vogel plays Barbie in Under the Dome and Ricky Stormgren in Childhood's End.

Childhood's End might provide some insight into the myths and religious ideas underlying the "New World Order" and provides some insight into how world "leaders" imagine themselves, that is as agents of evolution of human consciousness, rather than destructive parasites. As agents of this evolution, they possibly believe they have license to destroy the prior order.

I think it's really a feasible theory that Communism is a religion with roots in equinox precession mythology. The slaughter of Russians by the Bolsheviks and the atrocities of the Cheka were not just the action of a vicious pack of atheistic killers, but actually had a religious motive. Their religion, though wasn't Christian, or Jewish. It was, perhaps, an extremist, literal interpretation of the mystery religion component of Masonry. (See: In the Shadow of Hermes for this interpretation of Masonry) Perhaps the commies are actually millenarians or maybe Great Age-arians. Marx wrote: "It must not only conquer a new world, it must also perish in order to make a room for the people who are fit for a new world"

In Childhood's End the movie's equivalent of the NWO is depicted as unwitting agents of this cosmic transformation. They are the idle, effete wealthy, lizard-like wine tasting aristocrats. With the help of the demon goat Karellen, maybe a Capricorn/Saturn/Devil fusion, they usher in a Golden Age, that is, the age of Saturn, which the real-world NWO seems to interpret politically as a communist utopia. In the utopia, people are strictly supervised and live like children in a garden of plenty. The opposite world is depicted in "New Athens" where people live as adults and art and culture still thrive, but society still has problems, politics, and crime.

In Childhood's End, the prior age ends with the pre-scheduled destruction of the Earth and the extinction of the human race. In Under the Dome the destruction of the Earth is a fraud and the agents of change are actually insect-like beings that attempt to usher in an insect-like hive colony world. (cf the Borg from Star Trek)

The equinox precession mythology might be the basis of the real religion of the people in the western world who attempt to shape political and economic events. They, perhaps, believe the apparent rotation of the constellations relative to the March Equinox is very significant and that new modes and orders are required when the Great-Age calendar page flips. They try to divine this order by listening to the stars.

The Winter Sun

The Sun at 12:00PM From Chardon, Ohio Every Week

The GIF above was created using Stellarium by saving one image every week through a year. The apparent figure 8 path of the sun is described by a figure called the Analemma.

Analemma Graphs

I'm currently meditating on the idea of two sun gods--the winter sun (the sun at the Winter Solstice) and the summer sun. A simplistic reading of Christianity is it's the triumph of the Winter Sun God cult. Where'd the summer sun gods go? Where's Ra? Some scholars argue that Yahweh's the equivalent of a summer sun deity. See " The Departure of the Glory of Yahweh" (link).

As Christianity rose, it wiped out the cult of Ra in Egypt. Or maybe the sky gods become the despotic secular powers in the A.D. world? Anyway, new topic, just scratching the surface here.

Star Wars Wheel of the Year

Wheel of the Year Using Star Wars Characters

Star Wars is a really good example of a series of movies that incorporates imagery and characters that are drawn from mythology, and hence nature. The "Wheel of the Year" above is a stab at showing some of the visual vocabulary in the series and how it (probably?) relates to the solar cycle.

Episode IV: A New Hope (the first Star Wars movie) kicks off with Luke leaving home and ends with the destruction of the first Death Star in a scene that's reminiscent of the illumination of the inner chamber of New Grange on the Winter Solstice. Luke (the sun) blows up the Death Star by shooting a load down its shaft, so to speak. The destruction of the first Death Star, I think, corresponds to the Winter Solstice. It's only a small triumph of light over dark because Darth Vader escapes.

Many people's favorite Star Wars movie is The Empire Strikes Back. In that film, Luke and Han are betrayed by Lando Calrissian. Where the anti-Luke (the Winter Sun) is Darth Vader, the anti-Han is Lando (the winter moon?).

The Anti-Han

Lando's betrayal leads to a duel between Darth Vader and an untrained, inexperienced Luke. Darth kicks his ass. He asks Luke to "Join the Dark Side", i.e. the winter, and lets him know he's his father. (The Osiris to his Horus.) Luke of course will never join the dark side. Consequenly, he plunges from the "cloud city", just like the Sun falls from the sky through the autumn. He ends up looking all dingy and beat-up, and hangs from a cross to be rescued by Leia and Lando. This, I think corresponds to the autumn equinox.

Finally Luke goes to Dagoba: a water/earth vegetation planet where his X-Wing fighter crashes in the swamp. Luke emerges from the water and begins his ascent in skill and power. By the finale of the movie, he duels Darth Vader on more equal terms. He is garbed in black as he emerges from the winter side of his cycle, and his light saber is vegetation-Osiris-green. Luke shoots up from the bottom of a pit in this duel, while in the Empire Strikes back duel, he plunges into one.

Luke and Darth fight to a draw, but the Emperor (Seth) starts zapping Luke until Darth Vader chucks the Emperor down another chute into the core of the Death Star just before it is destroyed. In the struggle Vader is mortally wounded. Finally, Anakin emerges from his sarcophagus suit to look upon his son with his own eyes, then dies. This corresponds to the spring equinox.

Finally, the second death star is destroyed and the rebels win and everyone in the empire is free. This probably corresponds to the summer solstice, or maybe to the ascent of the sun into the sky in the spring (on his way to the solstice).

The Magic Mirror

Japanese craftsmen have been hand building magic mirrors for centuries.

Polishing a Magic Mirror by Hand

The magic mirror is fabricated to cast a ghost image when it's illuminated by bright light, but to otherwise function as a normal mirror.

I think that's a good analogy for mythology. It's a poetic explanation for how the world works. That is, it is an explanation built from analogies, metaphors and similes and other poetic devices. It expands dimensions of the world which are hidden from the common senses.

As a system of metaphor built from natural, living language and imagery, it's also a living thing that changes and evolves as people engage it.

The Dying Suns

The Violence of the Equinoxes

In a previous post, I wondered about the violent metaphors related to the equinoxes. The equinoxes are the metaphorical crossing of the sun from the above the "water" to below the water in the fall, and back up again in the spring.

The Osiris Cycle is one of the early versions of the story that we have a record of. Osiris is tricked into a coffin by his brother Seth, who then destroys (or hides) the coffin until it's finally raised up by a tree, where he's found then reassembled by Isis, who gets pregnant by him and gives birth to Horus.

The most familiar story of violence at the equinox is the story of Jesus. He's mocked, scourged, and finally put on the cross at the spring equinox,  and then is resurrected and ascends into the sky. As stated before, the Skull and Bones "322" (March 22) logo is a possible allusion to this story and the Equinox Crossing. (Vernal Equinox is almost always March 20-21, though)

Osiris, like Darth Vader, Jon Snow, and Jesus is the Lord of the Dead, that is winter, or the underworld (or the galactic Empire, or north of the Wall). In Star Wars, Darth Vader helps build a Death Star. Obviously the inverse of the Sun, that is the Winter Sun, possibly the Winter Sun of the Winter Solstice.

That's No Moon

That is, Jesus, like Darth Vader or Osiris (obvious parallels with Prometheus, too) is the character that represents the Winter Sun, which somehow seems to be related to the planet Saturn. (I am still a bit fuzzy on that association--Saturn's the slowest planet? Kind of weak, yellow, feeble light like the winter sun?) So if Jesus is the Winter sun, then he dies on the cross, that is, the equinox as winter turns to spring.

This interpretation makes some sense. The Jesus character is sort of a mini-me version of the summer sun; he is humble and does not put on airs. He is a carpenter, not a warrior, rides a donkey, not a chariot drawn by magnificent horses, and gets a crown of thorns, not gold, and is crowned king of the Jews, which would have been an insult in Roman times. He's the winter sun. He's the wine (crushed, then fermented summer grapes) and the bread (battered, crushed, and baked summer wheat). He's also the friend of man. (like Prometheus)

A good question--one I can't really even guess at right now--is where's Han Solo and Luke in the Bible? Where's Sekhmet? Where's the kick ass summer sun? Definitely not in the New Testament, as far as I know.

Veneration of Sports Venues

It seems like the ancients had stories, poems, an actual affection and personal connection to the natural world that we can barely imagine. We don't think of the Sun as a conscious entity. When it's blazing hot out in August, we don't curse or plead with him, and we don't worry about his health in the dwindling light of late fall.

However, there are entities that we do anthropomorphise and venerate in daily life. Some sports venues have a personality that's been imbued in them through years of fans and sports writers talking and thinking about them.

l'Alpe d'Huez

Two larger-than-life venues that spring to mind come from pro cycling. The l'Alpe d'Huez stage of the tour is one of the most spectacular sports venues on the planet. It's served as the site of many battles over the decades. Every turn on the climb is named, and tribes of fans camp out in traditional zones along the road. The televised coverage of the race lavishes high definition scenery of the climb on the millions who watch.

Another legendary cycling venue that draws reverence from cycling fans is the Roubaix Velodrome which serves as the finish line for the Paris-Roubaix spring classic. The velodrome serves to coronate a solo winner, and in rare cases to determine the winner in a final sprint that renders the prior several hours of brutal racing a futile exercise for the runners up.

These venues are imbued with personality and they exist as entities in the imagination of fans that perhaps parallels what people thought of as gods in older eras.

Celestrial Geography

I'm just now getting my mind wrapped around the rather slippery concepts of astro-mythology. The book Hamlet's Mill has been a valuable resource to explore this topic. David Mathisen's blog and his books are another valuable resource.

The basic kernel of astro-mythology is that celestial events have corresponding representations as characters and (fictional) geographical places. More importantly, there's a systematic logic to the poetical language that's used in their description. In theory, the poetic language could be translated to dreary scientific language, or even numbers--like dates and times and star positions.

Hamlet's Mill points out that the poetic language of the classical mythology renders dates, that is time, as geography, that is, space. This is one of the more confusing aspects of the subject. However, the following picture, I think (from this excellent website) helps to clarify.

The apparent journey of the sun and the apparent journey of the constellations through the sky over the years can be described with a handful of concepts: The ecliptic, the celestial equator, the solstices and the equinoxes, and precession of the equinoxes.

The symbolic furnishings of a Masonic lodge seem to allude to these points. The pillars are, perhaps the winter and summer solstices. The floor is often black and white checkerboard pattern, and could symbolize the equinoxes (equal parts night and day). Alternative, the pillars and floor can be thought of as a measuring device.

Another major symbol all over the world is the cross. The cross in the context of celestial geography is the crossing of the Sun above or below the celestial equator. I believe this is symbolized in Under the Dome by the chasm into the underworld of the confusingly named town of Zenith--perhaps similar to the Egyptian underworld duat.

Barbie prepares to Descend

It's also symbolized by the return to Chester's Mill through a Red Door... I think. Perhaps the fall and spring equinoxes? Giant shrug. 

The Red Door --- Open It

When the characters return to Chester's Mill, the end up in the water. (Think of the opening scene of The Bourne Identity) Interestingly, the subject of "Under the Dome" seems to be the precession of the equinoxes, which is the subject of Hamlet's Mill. 

I'm currently trying to decide the direction of the symbolism. Being "under the water", I think means being beneath the celestial equator, that is, fall through spring, the winter. (Think of Jon Snow) The converse, being in the air (or being on fire) would seem to be the spring equinox through the summer and fall.

I'm also puzzled at the violent symbolism of the spring crossing. The crucifixion of the Jesus character in the Bible is violent to say the least.

One of the more famous esoteric symbols in the conspiracy theory world has an easy explanation when decoded with the celestial metaphors.

The cross, is the crossing of the sun (I guess the skull) on the March (3rd Month) equinox, i.e. 3/22. Although, actually the official date of the equinox is 3/20 or 21 most years... so maybe the mystery is not solved.

The Sky Gods, Formality, and Medievalism

Undisputed Cosplay Champions

Courtly manners and regalia are artifacts of a bygone era that barely survive in modern times. From a modern's point-of-view, courtly formalism and dress are ridiculous. Fancy dress and ritualistic manners were designed to elicit awe and admiration, and they do still get that from some people, however popes and queens prancing around in their costumes seem more like tax-funded cosplay enthusiasts than figures worthy of admiration.

Only a small group of contemporary political figures claims blood descent from the sky gods. A handful of political figures retain protection from ridicule and force genuflection with lese majeste laws. Other political figures like the popes, make more or less vigorous claims about representing the sky gods on earth. In most of the world, though, such claims of divinity or divine agency are mocked.

By aping the formalism and fancy dress of the political courts of old and the religious garb of popes or kings and queens, and by being like the sky gods, rather than forcing belief through laws or customs, celebrities show how it works for the political figures and religious figures. The celebrities glitter and shine. They are raised on high. Crowds of admirers look up at them in awe. They stroll along an ecliptic like red carpet and look out at the wilderness where the lowly normals live in the dark.

Celebrity in Fancy Dress and a Crown

Their images stare out at us while we wait in line at the grocery store checkout. These figures act as a conduit between the world of archetypes and this material plane. Insofar as they are capable of channeling archetypes the celebrities hold peoples attention. They serve as a placeholder for ideas that are programmed into us. And once they can't hold people's attention, an interchangeable replacement is found.

Modern western political figures and their enablers in the media use more subtle cues to excite people's adoration and veneration. In the image below, for example, John Kerry is shown standing in front of a chandelier wearing a blue tie and white shirt. This particular composition is common for political figures in the western world--it's especially common in Reuters and AP photos. This imagery evokes the sky and associates glad handing political parasites with the sky gods.

John Kerry and Lights

The persistence and effectiveness of these methods of aggrandizement shows that the dark ages are always with us. It would not be very difficult for charlatans and tyrants to rise up on the shoulders of worshipful crowd and snuff out freedom in the western world.

The Stars Taught Men Math

In the winter months, I wake up most mornings when it is still dark out and go walk my dogs. Many days I have a clear view of the eastern sky. Since I'm waking up at about the same time every day, it's like I am looking at a frame of a film that's running at 1 frame per 24 hours.

Since many of the changes that take place are so gradual that they're unnoticed day-to-day, they suggest that unaided human senses and memory are insufficient for perceiving the apparent motion of the heavens. They suggest better tools and record keeping would improve the observations significantly.

It's not difficult to imagine simple, but effective tools and techniques for making more accurate observations. A long record of those observations would begin to show patterns.

Given enough time, the mathematical knowledge will emerge from those patterns. As Plato pointed out mathematics is already in us as it's already in the night sky.

Age of Aries, Pisces, Aquarius in a GIF!

The GIF above shows the constellations on the eastern horizon of Chardon, Ohio on the day of the vernal equinox (March 20) from about 3,000 BC to 3,200 AD. This shows the sun move through Aries, Pisces, and Aquarius. The astrological ages (Great Months) are defined as:

Constellation	Year entering	Year exiting
Taurus	4500 BC	2000 BC
Aries	2000 BC	100 BC
Pisces	100 BC	AD 2700

The shifting backdrop of the constellations is due to the precession of the Earth's axis. The cycle of the precession takes about 25,700 years, hence an astrological age takes about 2,141 years.

What's the Significance of the Triad Claw?

If you look at enough historical paintings or portraits, eventually you'll notice that many of the subjects are flashing a gang-sign: the triad claw, which is either an "M" shape or a "VVV", depending on how you look at it.

Alfonso V of Aragon (1557) by Vicente Juan Masip

You'll find this hand signal in portraits of political figures, artists, religious figures, entertainers over a span of centuries, including today.

Cardinal Ratzinger

So what is it?

Some speculate it's a Masonic hand gesture, which seems to be correct, but the portraits from the 16th century predate masonry. Some speculate it's a signal of "crypto-jews", i.e. people of jewish ancestry who converted to catholicism, but retained their ethnic and religious identity in secret. Another possibility, especially in the older portraits is that it's a symbol of initiation in Rosicrucianism. All of these explanations are essentially the same. That is, this hand sign is a sign of initiation in an underground religious or spiritual society.

The alternative media and conspiracy media seems to be imbued with a strain of medieval thinking, or latent christianity. There's a tendency to regard any other spiritual or religious viewpoint as "satanic" or evil, certainly opposed to the well being of ordinary people. Most of the web sites that delve into this topic follow that line of reasoning.

The esoteric tradition, the perennial religion, is ancient, probably as old as humanity itself. However, forced conversion of people to  Christianity or Islam and attempting to stomp out all competing forms of knowledge and belief is a relatively new thing, hopefully an aberration in human history. From my perspective, the western world's still recovering from the attempt to steamroll any competing religious and spiritual point-of-view.

Anyway, I'll continue searching for the oldest recorded use of this hand sign and see if that sheds any light on its significance. (See more recents posts on this including 13th century paintings, Renaissance Paintings, and Glorious Revolution Paintings.)

The Nika Riots: Vertical Integration of Society

The Nika Riots serve as a microcosm of every society. In Constantinople at the time (532 AD), people were organized into demes which were divisions of society that were organized around chariot racing teams. The teams had colors: Reds, Greens, Blues, and Whites which the supporters would wear to demonstrate their loyalty and membership. The demes were also supported by aristocratic patrons, which seems to be a common mode of organization (cf Roman Patronage)in the ancient world (and even today).

It's not very hard to imagine that the ancient priesthoods could be integrated into this type of societal structure, where one or more of the pantheon of gods would be the chief deity of the deme. In the Christian era of Byzantium, some subset of the Christian branded pantheon of gods could serve the same purpose.

The beliefs, and the mythological stories that seem to express those beliefs serve as a sort of glue to bind these factions together.

Myths and Politics

In recent years, a medieval theme has re-emerged as a trope for daily discussion, or at least tweeting and facebook posts: "the clash of civilizations". In this case the clash is between the West, which many people conflate with Christianity, and Islam.

These memes tend to only make sense when viewed through a very, very soft focus lens. Boiling down centuries of history, the actions of billions of people and countless religious sects to a single slogan, sentence or a paragraph, of course, would.

The clash of civilizations trope shows one way mythology works, or shows its function in political life. The people who believe a thing called "christendom" exists seem to mean they want to belong to the christendom team. As discussed in earlier posts, people in the western world have lived in a succession of empires, and are essentially de-tribed, but we retain an instinct to belong to a tribe, which we've generalized to the concept of a team.

Ironically, people believe "christendom" is under attack because of the fervent beliefs of the "islamic" terrorists. The language of the terrorists, e.g. infidels, serves to define sides of a conflict.

Symbols and stories can help to define political boundaries. Symbols and vague beliefs are almost always more real than reality. While "christendom", which bristles with the most advanced weaponry in human history, is under threat by impoverished young dudes with AK-47's who are financed by the supposed allies of the West, or by the West itself, political boundaries can be defined by very vague beliefs and symbols.

Retelling of legendary historical stories, e.g. The Song of Roland, in this context can suddenly make them seem extremely significant. Maybe this is one of the ways that religions make use of mythology. Popular stories or fables, or even the oddball stories of astro-mythology, make the transition from entertainment to hallowed artifacts. They become a thing, an institutional property.

Flow of Information

An earlier post cites a scholarly article by A.L. Frothingham on the history of the caduceus. Frothingham speculates that Hermes possibly originated as a god of fertilization. He's the spirit of the union between the earth and the sun which makes the germination of crops possible. From this kernel, the god's role expands to include every aspect of intercession: boundaries, commerce, pleading on behalf of men to the gods, delivering messages to men from the gods, and so on.

GNU Radio QPSK Constellation Plot

Hermes is an instance of what I sometimes think of as "the third thing", that which arises from two or more things. Information is maybe the best example of a third thing. In RF telecommunications, for example, information is conveyed by symbols that are encoded, transmitted and decoded by modems.

Information is present in natural situations, too. A shadow cast by a tree creates a region of light and dark. The rotation of the earth creates night and day. The orbit of the moon causes it to appear to go through phases of illumination. A drop of honey in a glass of water causes a gradient of sugar concentration, and so on.

If men can build a modem that sends and receives binary information in constrained, contrived conditions, maybe it's possible to build a device that taps into the flow of information of nature.

The Betrayals of Jon Snow, Jesus, and Osiris

If you go out on a clear night around this time of the year (December) and look up, you'll see Orion dominating the night sky. The constellation seems to be the main character in many myths and legends. In my previous post, I discussed how the dismemberment and roasting of Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars is probably an artistic depiction of the helical rising of Orion.

Star Wars seems to be based primarily on the stories of Osiris, Seth, Isis, and Horus. The scenes, characters, and even terminology of the saga can be mapped to a counterpart in stories drawn from Egyptian mythology. The Game of Thrones seems to be based on a fusion of Egyptian, Christian, and Greek mythology, rather than a single source.

In GoT, the Orion character is Jon Snow. Orion or Osiris is the lord of the winter sky and the king of the dead. Through the 5th season, Jon Snow's wardrobe becomes a visual allusion to the constellation. He wears all black, has a fur cape, carries a long sword and has a studded belt.

If Jon Snow is Orion in GoT, and Anakin Skywalker was Orion in Star Wars, then Jon's father, Eddard Stark serves as the Aquarius/Jon the Baptist/Obi Wan character who loses his head as the wheel of the story spins.

Onorio Marinari, Salome with the Head of Saint John the Baptist, c. 1680

Sansa Forced to Look at Ned's Head

In GoT season 5, Jon Snow follows a Jesus-y trajectory. He is elected "Lord Commander" of the Night's Watch in a way that parallels Jesus's triumphant procession into Jerusalem to be King of the Jews. Jesus, the carpenter, is carried by a donkey, just as Hephaestus (the god of blacksmiths and craftsmen) is carried back to Olympus on the back of a donkey. Jon Snow is carried into office on the figurative back of his comic-relief Sam (cf  Samwise Gamgee).

Lord Commander Jon Snow (Orion)

As with Jesus, Osiris, Orion, or even Baldr (of Norse Mythology) the triumph is short lived. There's a horrible betrayal, and the mighty one is destroyed. In the case of Jon Snow, his confidant and aide Olly plays the role of Judas and tricks Jon into becoming the target of a gang of murderers who stab him over and over in the stomach.

Jon Snow betrayed and Stabbed Repeatedly

Cross shown Briefly on Camera to Underline
Jesus-y Scenario

When the constellation Orion character is betrayed or tricked into his fatal situation, or someone else is tricked into "killing him" as happens over and over again in myths, his studded belt becomes a wound. The murder weapon can be an arrow, a spear, a dagger, a sword, a scorpion sting, or even a sprig of mistletoe (for Baldr).

The next phase of the myth is for Jon Snow to begin his journey into the underworld as King of the Dead. So where Mustafara serves as the visual metaphor for the entrance of the Duat in Star Wars, The Wall in the Game of Thrones serves as the entrance, that is, the horizon.

The Roasting of Anakin Skywalker

WARNING: I think I'm on the right track with this post and the astro-mythology, but the details are time consuming to pin down and some of the finer points might be mangled.

In ancient Egypt, the Helical Rising of Sirius marked the start of their year. It heralded the flooding of the Nile and a new agricultural cycle. Sirius was the star of Isis, and heralded the return of the constellation Orion (Osiris) to the sky. In the Star Wars saga, Anakin Skywalker's "death" and resurrection as Darth Vader and subsequent re-birth as Luke's father parallels the Osiris cycle.

Anakin's defeat by Obi Wan is the dramatization of the roasting of Orion by the Sun in the summer. The following GIF was created using Stellarium. It shows Aquarius in the night sky (Obi Wan) preceding the rising of Orion, then "roasting" by the dawn light.

In Star Wars the young Obi Wan (who probably maps to John the Baptist/Aquarius) fights Anakin in a hellish landscape. The hellish landscape represents the entrance to the mythological Egyptian underworld called the duat. It was the world at or over the horizon, hence in Star Wars it is depicted as a fiery place. (cf the Lion King) Interestingly, the battle between Obi Wan and Anakin takes place in Mustafar and the Lion King's name is Mufasa which are apparently bastardizations of the name Mustafa which mean "the chosen one" in Arabic. (cf Neo in The Matrix)

Aquarius/Obi Wan beseeches Anakin to give up because he has the "higher ground". (See the GIF above which shows Aquarius in the higher position overnight.)

Aquarius/Obi Wan defeats Anakin by cutting his legs off and leaving him to cook. The cooking and fire represent the sun. Anakin is torn to pieces the same way the stars of Orion fade bit by bit in the morning light.

Once he's recovered by the Emperor, Anakin subsequently becomes entombed in a perfectly fitting sarcophagus and rules as Lord of the Dead. The Empire in the movies is possibly the duat. It's an entirely material fake place, even the people are manufactured. (cf The Lord of the Rings, or Bladerunner)

Meanwhile, Obi Wan Kenobi goes on to help the Rebel Alliance before he re-encounters Darth Vader who chops his head off. There are parallels with the Game of Thrones between Obi Wan/Vader and Eddard Stark/Jon Snow. I'll get into those in a future post.

Hollywood Dramatization of Supernatural Phenomenon

Over the past few years, I've come to believe what we think of as supernatural is actually commonplace and we tap into it all the time. The processes of art, of creation, of problem solving involve a plunge into the well of imagination and allow us to see beyond the confines of the senses and contemplate what's not there. For me, that is also how we get in touch with the gods.

The show-biz depiction of the supernatural is extremely visual, by necessity. Gods take human forms and wear the tunics or robes of classical antiquity. In their comic-book forms they fly, shoot laser beams out of their eyes, or tear objects apart with their bare hands.

The show-biz depiction is an updated form of the statues and sculptures of classical antiquity. Those were larger-than-life perfect human forms in bronze or marble, sometimes decorated with gold, jewels and multi-colored paints. They were sometimes enhanced with primitive special effects trickery, which enabled them to speak or move like theme-park robots.

The bombastic representation of the gods crowds out the more subtle, omnipresent experience we have. If our imagination is a wilderness, then the commercial or official representation is like paved roads or litter in the primordial paradise we carry around with us.