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.