The Illusion is Temporary

 

In 2006, the Aurora Dark Knight shooting suspect, James E. Holmes, made a short science presentation outlining his research in "temporal illusions" and the perception of time.

As Holmes, at that time a recent high school graduate, explains, "temporal illusions" are caused by the subjective interpretation of the passage of time. In his experiment participants hit a key and an image appears. Holmes progressively lengthened the interval by microseconds between event A, hitting the key, and event B, the appearance of the image.

This lengthening was brief enough to be consciously indiscernible to the participant. After a few repetitions the delay was suddenly eliminated and participants had the illusion of the image appearing even before they pressed the key. The effect appeared to precede the cause -- B came before A. This is a "temporal illusion."

In this short clip, the study of the subjective experience of time is explained in greater depth by Holmes' "mentor", John Jacobson (Jacobson vehemently denied that he ever acted as mentor to Holmes after the shooting).

The scientific relevance of this research is beyond the scope of this post. Instead, the present article will explore temporal illusion as metaphor.

Rabbits and Heavenly Hosts

In a way, the phenomenon is very similar to common optical illusions. In optical illusions pictures appear to be moving when they are not, shapes appear larger when they are actually smaller than adjacent shapes, and a single image will alternate between two contradictory objects depending on perception.


In a classic optical illusion the viewer sees either a duck or a rabbit. It is very difficult to see both at once. This kind of optical illusion recalls William Blake's famous lines about the rising sun:

"When the sun rises, do you not see a round disc of fire somewhat like a guinea?" O no, no, I see an innumerable company of the heavenly host crying "Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty."

Blake does not mean to say he only sees a host of angels when he looks at the sun. This is viewed as a form of craziness even for Blake. He is able to see both a golden disk and the heavenly host. To only see the prosaic golden disk, though, is another form of craziness -- and perhaps a form that is even more dangerous.

Blake calls this "single vision and Newton's sleep" -- the mechanistic, materialistic, literal-minded, narrow view of the world and life that is even more prevalent in our own time than in Blake's day.

Blake advocates "double vision" -- the ability to view things equally with reason and the imagination at all times. This is an active and creative participation in life as opposed to the reactive and passive perspective that only accepts that which is explained by science.

Double vision is to see the rabbit and the duck at once. It is to accept that A comes before B at the same time as A comes after B. This post is an attempt at double vision.

Seven Layers of Dream

The alleged Dark Knight shooter's theory of temporal illusion has been compared by several people to another of Christopher Nolan's movies -- Inception. Inception, like The Matrix, explores the idea that this world may all just be a dream. Unlike The Matrix, though, which is basically dualistic in structure -- there is the matrix and there is the real world, Inception presents multiple dream layers and casts doubt on there being a "real" world at all.

We all know that in dreams our perception of time is incredibly altered. We might have an entire adventure in the 5-minute interval between the buzz tones of our alarm clock. Inception plays with this idea and it shows that within seconds of one dream layer, hours of action are occurring in another.

One fan has found seven such layers in the film. Others have only been able to identify five layers or less, but I think seven layers is right. Seven is a number that will constantly recur in this analysis. There are seven chakras in the Indian system, seven planets used in medieval alchemy. All of these systems of sevens can be linked, as we'll see.

In order to give themselves enough time to perform inception, the planting of new thoughts into a dreaming mind, it is decided that the 12 hour flight from Sydney to Los Angeles would provide the perfect opportunity to delve into multiple dream layers.

Lost Between Hell and Heaven

A flight from Sydney to Los Angeles? Where have we heard this before? In the extremely popular television series, Lost, the survivors of a passenger jet crash, on a flight from Sydney to Los Angeles, are forced to live on a mysterious and supernatural island in the South Pacific.



A persistent fan theory about Lost is that the island is a kind of Purgatory, an in-between state where the borders between the regular categories of Being are blurred, and individuals are destined to wait and purge themselves of past sins. This theory has been so widespread that it has provoked an official denial by the makers of the series.

However, the theory seems to be supported by Dante's own description of Purgatory as a mysterious island in the middle of a hemisphere of water (like the Pacific), which is at the exact antipodes of Jerusalem. If we check an antipodes map, we find that the antipodes of Jerusalem, or Zion, is in the South Pacific in a place where conceivably a jet flying from Sydney to Los Angeles could have been blown off course. It is almost as if Dante had visited the Lost island in his visions.

If the Lost island represents Purgatory, then Sydney also would represent Hell and L.A. is surprisingly, Heaven.  It interesting that in Finnegans Wake, the two "hero twin" brothers of the book, Shem and Shawn, are also associated with Australia (Sydney) and America (L.A.). Joyce explicitly corresponds these two to Hell and Heaven respectively, and the two brothers with Lucifer and Michael. 



For the Irish of Joyce's time, Australia was seen as a place were Irish convicts were exiled, and America was a place were people could become rich. Ireland, in this way, is Purgatory -- an in-between realm of dreams and nightmares. This is also the realm of the Wake itself.

Among the many contrary attributes that Joyce corresponds with the twin brothers is with Mercius (Shem) and Justius (Shawn). These are the two pillars of Solomon's Temple, Jachin (Mercy) and Boaz (Justice) that were discussed in a previous post.


Many symbols come together here. Australia represents a prison land, Hell, whereas America represents freedom. The Lost island is Purgatory where the path to the middle pillar, through the portal of Da'at, is also located. In the analysis of this blog the Olympic Games now occurring in London, following the 70-day journey through the underworld, also represent the ascent of Mount Purgatory. In addition, the journey through the 7 layers of dreaming in Inception, also occurring on a flight from Sydney to L.A. (the City of Angels), depicts the movement through Purgatory.

Into the Labyrinth

 

Inception has also been compared with the classical myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. The movie's character, Ariadne, provides a direct link between the two. In Inception, Ariadne is the designer of the constructed dream landscapes, while in the myth she provides Theseus with the thread needed to escape the Labyrinth. Dom, the Leo DiCaprio character in the film, acts as Theseus and the Minotaur/monster he must face is his psychotic/suicidal wife, Mal -- the Guardian of the Threshold.

The seven layers of dream are themselves the Labyrinth. It is a direct synchronistic hit here that classic Cretan labyrinths, and Theseus' labyrinth is one of these, had exactly seven courses.


Seven, we should recall, is the number of terraces on the Mountain of Purgatory, corresponding with the seven deadly sins which must be transformed into the seven holy virtues. There are also seven similar spiralling terraces on the Glastonbury Tor. In Brueghel's famous representation of Nimrod's false Mountain of Purgatory, the Tower of Babel, seven layers of the incomplete tower are also shown.

The dream journey depicted in Inception, as well as the teaching of the seven chakras and the seven internal planets of alchemy, reveal that this is as much an inner journey as it is an outer journey up the World Mountain or an adventure on the World Island. The metaphors, whether internal or external, are the same. The point is that only those who are able to fully purge their selfish desires before the portal of Da'at are able to continue on to Paradise.

The Circle of Disclosure

A fascinating comparison was made between Brueghel's painting of Babel with a similar seven-layered crop circle that appeared in England this June.

There have been several interpretations of this formation, but the most striking is its connection with a polar clock reading for 19:43:53 on Saturday, 4th August 2012. It does not matter for the purposes of this blog if this is the correct reading of this crop circle. Nor is the identity of the circle-makers important here. It is the story that is fascinating, and in this story we can learn a lot.

August 4th, because of this and other crop circles, plus several other messages, was a date that spread like wildfire throughout the web. It was to be the day when the Galactic Federation of Light, no longer able to idly witness humanity's willful destruction of the biosphere, decided to reveal itself openly to the world at the London Olympics. Several transmissions channeled by various mediums and other "lightworkers" spread this message. Here is a sample:

SaLuSa  30-July-2012

Dear Ones as you are learning from a number of sources, the point has been reached when Divine instructions have been given that action shall be taken without delay to announce our presence. We have shown extreme patience and given your leaders plenty of opportunity to take the steps called for to release you from the control of the Illuminati. We know that they too are also  like many people in fear of them, but that has to be put aside to allow the truth to come out. The Olympics is the window that is being given world attention, and we cannot think of a better way to make it known. Time is fast running away and we must be given the opportunity to make ourselves known to you.

Some will still choose to disbelieve our messages, but that is their free choice which we honor. However, there is the important matter of Ascension and much to do in these final days, and we cannot wait any longer. Our allies have gone as far as can be reasonably expected, and they need complete freedom to go surging ahead with their final responsibilities. So very shortly the clearing up process will be able to proceed without further hindrance from the dark Ones. Your lives are to some extent to be turned upside down, although many people are already prepared for it. We hope that some leaders will heed our request and not wait until we are forced to intervene, but if we have to we are fully ready....

I am SaLuSa from Sirius, and many of you will know already that this coming week is one that is a last chance for your leaders to respond to our demands. If we are ignored yet again, we shall go forward ourselves, and make ourselves known in such a way that our presence can no longer be ignored or hidden. Yes, we have the deadline Saturday the 4th. of August in mind and no longer, before we take matters into our own hands.

So what happened? Apparently nothing. Apparently the Galactic Federation of alien civilizations decided that humanity was not yet ready for first contact or full disclosure. We are still too dominated by "the dark ones" and they would make far too much trouble if such an event took place. Perhaps, as we'll see, they were totally right.

The language of this kind of transmission is fascinating in itself. Why do these messages read like a official declaration from a district school board that they are about to amalgamate a wayward local school board? The very phrase "Galactic Federation of Light" creeps many people out. The Federation sounds like the NWO on a cosmic scale. Maybe this is only how our limited three-dimensional (or "density") consciousness perceives it. I am open to this possibility.

The hopes for an August 4th disclosure date were fueled by widespread reports of UFO sightings during the climax of the Opening Ceremony. These "sightings" in themselves, however, were deeply contentious. While people were very adamant that they were in fact UFOs, many others dismissed them entirely as being sightings of the Goodyear Blimp.

The Non-Consensus Event (NCE)

This may be a good opportunity to briefly introduce a new concept, the Non-Consensus Event (NCE). In recent years at every UFO "sighting," at every "paranormal" occurrence, at every claim of "conspiracy," at every account of mass "synchronicity," giant and bitter flames wars have broken out both in and outside of the web between the hordes of "true believers" and equal masses of self-styled "skeptics" and "debunkers."

In almost none of these instances is a consensus ever reached. People become more and more polarized and hardened in their stances. This lack of consensus makes it almost impossible to discuss these events without falling into one camp or another. You are required to decide if you are a "believer" or a "debunker."

The concept of the NCE allows the intellectual liberty to suspend judgement. In Blake's terms, it allows for "double vision." We are enabled to see the rabbit and the duck, the UFO and  the Blimp, the alien disclosure and just another day. The concept of the NCE (nice!) will be developed as this blog progresses. The in-between, twilight realm of Purgatory is dominated by the NCE. All consensus is breaking down and dreams are becoming indistinguishable from "reality."

Back to the Garden

As Dante makes his arduous trek up the Mountain of Purgatory towards the Earthly Paradise of Eden, he is beset by a number of sometimes disturbing dreams and visions. At times he is confused if he is in Purgatory, back in Hell, or perhaps even on Earth again. This confusion of categories is a key characteristic of Purgatory.

When he finally reaches the summit of the Mountain, and reluctantly passes through the burning fires of Lust -- the fiery sword of the Covering Cherub in Blake's poetry, he enters the Garden of Eden. It is here that he has his most spectacular vision. The chariot of his beloved, Beatrice, appears in his sky in a vast rainbow-lit pageant accompanied by a host of angels and other divine beings.


Dante explicitly compares this vision with Ezekiel's vision of the chariot, and St. John's revelations on Patmos. It has been pointed out several times that if these phenomena were witnessed in modern times they would certainly be interpreted as UFOs. This begs certain questions. Were they UFOs? Or, alternatively, are modern "alien" encounters actually visitations of angelic beings? There is no consensus. Once again, the NCE rears its ugly head.

 

As Dante, ascending up from both Hell and Purgatory, represents the figure of Christ, Beatrice is the Church, the New Jerusalem. Her vast pageantry is the descent of the Holy City at the end of the Age. Eventually Dante is reunited with Beatrice at the foot of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. This is exactly the site of Da'at and the coming together of the couple in Holy Marriage, the fire of Union beyond the fire of Lust, reverses the Fall. Knowledge is regained.

Dante and Beatrice are surrounded by seven nymphs who are bearing the seven rainbow-hued torches of the original chariot pageant.
 
The seven flames could be said to combine in the lighting of the Cauldron of the hieros gamos, the sacred marriage of the Lamb and his Bride. This Fire is the fire of consummation in several senses according to Blake. It is sexual union, the fusion of all opposites, but it is also the fire of Revelation, the unveiling of all Mystery, as well as the fire of Revolution -- the total burning away of the Old World to activate the seeds of the New. All has been cleansed, purged and forgiven.

This ritual of the seven torches has recently been revealed to us all.



Will the hieros gamos take place at the culmination of London 2012? Will Zion finally descend? Will the motherships arrive? Will it represent a Redemption or a further Fall? All we can be sure of is that, like the Opening Ceremony, there will be no consensus as to what it all means. We all will witness another NCE. 

Visions of La Purga

The otherworldly visions of Dante, Ezekiel and St. John have also been compared to the multi-layered psychedelic voyages of shamans and others while experiencing the effects of ayahuasca and other strong plant compounds. Ayahuasca itself is called La Purga, the purge, in South America as it is physically, mentally and spiritually eliminates impurities. It provides a strong glimpse of Purgatory.

 

The visions of ayahuasca, as in Inception and in the visions of Dante, etc., also reveal multiple layers of reality at once. They more than double Blake's "double vision." Anthropologist
Michael Harner has a given a now classic account of this type of multi-dimensional trip -- his first experience with La Purga:

I began to see two strange boats wafting back and forth, floating in the air towards me, coming closer and closer. They slowly combined to form a single vessel with a huge dragon headed prow, not unlike that of a Viking ship. Set amidships was a square sail. Gradually, as the boat gently floated back and forth above me, I heard a rhythmic swishing sound and saw that it was a giant galley with several hundred oars moving back and forth in cadence with sound.
 
I became conscious, too, of the most beautiful singing I have ever heard in my life, high-pitched and ethereal, emanating from a myriad of voices on board the galley. As I looked more closely at the deck, I could make out large numbers of people with heads of blue jays and the bodies of humans, not unlike the bird-headed god of ancient Egyptian tomb paintings. At the same time, some energy-essence began to float from my chest up into the boat. Although I believed myself to be an atheist, I was completely certain that I was dying and that the bird-headed people had come to take my soul away on the boat. While the soul-flow continued from my chest, I was aware that the extremities of my body were growing numb....

I became aware of my brain. I felt-physically-that it had become compartmentalized into four separate and distinct levels. At the uppermost surface was the observer and commander, which was conscious of the condition of my body, and was responsible for the attempt to keep my heart going.. It perceived, but purely as a spectator, the visions emanating from what seemed to be the nether portions of my brains. Immediately below the topmost layer, I felt a numbed layer, which seemed to be put out of commission by the drug- it just wasn’t there. The next level down was the source of my visions, including the soul boat.

Many individuals tripping on ayahuasca have had visions of a city descending from the sky, much like St. John's dream of the New Jerusalem. Is reality in general becoming more like a psychedelic trip? Are we all experiencing, or just about to experience, La Purga?

A Tempest is Coming

All of this matches very well with "the Isles of Wonder" theme of the Opening Ceremony. Danny Boyle's major source for the ceremony was Shakespeare's Tempest. This play is a tale of an enchanted island which itself can be viewed as being a representation of Purgatory.

Prospero's enemies are confronted by their past sins and are forgiven, the spirits enslaved by Prospero are liberated, and the Magus himself renounces his magic powers and eventually he and his daughter are freed from the island. Everyone has been "purged."

In a sense this all comes full circle in Nolan's Dark Knight Rises. The film can be viewed as an inversion of the play, just as the Inferno is an inversion of Purgatory.

 

The characters of Dark Knight Rises find direct but inverted counterparts in the Tempest. Prospero's daughter is named Miranda, and the pseudonym of Talia Ghul is also Miranda Tate. With this everything else falls into place. Ra's al Ghul, a powerful magician and leader of the League of Shadows, is a direct parallel to the wizard, Prospero. Both use their powers to seek justice, although Prospero is able to forgive in the end.

Caliban, who we witnessed as the real star of the Opening Ceremony, is Bane. Like Prospero's opinion of Caliban, al Ghul also calls Bane "just a devil"in the movie. This is despite Bane's favourable relationship with his daughter, Miranda/Talia. Caliban also has a complicated relationship with Miranda which Shakespeare, to an extent, leaves open to interpretation. Calibane?
 



If the Tempest , like Lost, portrays Purgatory, then Dark Knight Rises represents its inversion, the Inferno. Hell is shown directly in the film as a Dantesque Pit where only those fully in touch with their fear are able to escape. 

Only four people are ever able to exit from the Pit. Talia and Batman find the physical and spiritual strength to scale its walls, Ra's al Ghul unknowingly trades his own freedom for that of his lover, and Bane is rescued by the League.

But who is Batman in this scheme of things? Does he represent Miranda's new lover Ferdinand in the Tempest, or is he, as an initiate of the League of Shadows like Bane, the non-shadow side of Caliban -- the enchanted and eloquent Caliban of the "Isles of Wonder" speech?

When finally surfacing from the Pit, the first thing the prisoners see is the Mehranghar Fort of Jodhpur, India. This is a major clue for the whole mystery, as we'll see. The Fort itself has seven gates -- yet another symbol of Purgatory.

 

Prospero and his daughter are restored their rightful Dukedom -- Jerusalem is reestablished. Ra's Ghul and his daughter seek justice in another way -- the total destruction of Gotham, the fallen and corrupted Jerusalem AKA Babylon. They invoke the cleansing fires of apocalypse, revolution and revenge as opposed to forgiveness.

The Tempest ends with the promise of a just city, Zion. Dark Knight Rises ends with the near destruction of a city of corruption, Babylon or the fallen Jerusalem. Are they the same? Which is closer to Blake? Blake also called London the fallen Jerusalem, but did he advocate its entire destruction? We can safely say that he did not. While the poet did advocate even apocalyptic revolution, he hated war and was keenly aware of the greater power of forgiveness and love.

In Dark Knight Rises, as was mentioned in an earlier post, an important part of the plot concerns a nuclear reactor that will detonate in 23 days. 23 days after the Dark Knight Rises premier shooting in Aurora is Aug. 12th, the day of the Closing Ceremony for London 2012. Will something that became activated at Aurora finally "detonate" on the 12th?

Of course this is yet another date, yet another prediction of doom or bliss like 5/20, 7/27 and 8/4. And what happened on these dates? Nothing that anyone expected. The really interesting thing about this is that people, and apparently many people, continue to be sucked into these dates, believing that something big will happen. Why? Do we all not have the feeling, consciously or unconsciously, that the end is near?

A Sirius Epilogue

While Disclosure did not happen on Aug. 4th, something potentially big involving disclosure did happen the very next day. I'm referring to the tragic shooting at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin. Almost immediately researchers noted several synchronicities connecting this shooting and the Dark Knight shooting in Aurora on 7/20. 
 
The Chicago Tribune and other news agencies reported on Aug. 6th that,

Police had cordoned off a long stretch of East Holmes Avenue and Cudahy police Patrol Officer Aaron Agenten confirmed that the FBI agents were on the street, leading the investigation.

It is certainly a striking coincidence that the Wisconsin shooter, apparently a racist skinhead with former ties to an elite military psyops unit, lived on a street, E. Holmes Avenue, which has the same name as the alleged Aurora shooter, James E. Holmes.

Other syncs include the fact that the two shootings occurred 16 days apart from each other, and the Aurora attack took place at the Century 16 multiplex theatre. The Aurora shooting happened seven days before the Opening Ceremony of London 2012. The Oak Creek shooting happened seven days before the Closing Ceremony will take place on Aug. 12th.

By far the weirdest synchronicity from the perspective of this blog is that the president of the Temple, Satwant Singh Kaleka -- who died a hero by valiantly trying to defend his people, was the father of filmmaker Armardeep Kaleka. Kaleka is currently involved in directing a major documentary project with the controversial advocate for disclosure, Steven Greer. Almost inconceivably in the light of what this blog has been discussing, this documentary is called Sirius.

Greer has described this documentary as being the next step in disclosure, and has repeatedly claimed that releasing this information could be dangerous. It did not take long for many on the web to conclude that the shooting was a professional hit intended to send a message to Kaleka to axe the project. Scary stuff.

A Sikh temple is called a gurdwara, which means "gateway to the Guru." This recalls the Gateway High School, Home of the Olympians, in Aurora where witnesses were questioned by the police after the attack. Aurora, or dawn, is traditionally viewed as a type of gateway, but as this blog has pointed out the oak of Oak Creek is also a gateway.

Capping this all off, as the excellent Twilight Language blog has noted, is the fact that the  Mehranghar Fort, the site of the Inferno-like Pit of Dark Knight, was originally constructed by Sikh kings.

In summary, then, we have Holmes, Sirius, disclosure, the gateway, the oak, and the fort shown in Dark Knight, as well as important date links, connecting both of these events together and pointing them both towards London 2012.

Once again, what is going on? It is entirely possible that we are finding patterns that are not really there. We can never rule this out. Synchronicity itself is a type of "temporal illusion." A synchronicity is by definition subjective, the experiencer imbues the experience with meaning, therefore there is only the subjective "illusion" of a temporal connection between events. This connection may not objectively exist. All synchronicities are Non-Consensus Events.



The fact that we assign meaning to events, though, does not make them any less important. For Blake it is only the Imagination of the individual that is important. As we make the passage through the Abyss, up Mount Purgatory to the gateway in the World Tree, between two Ages, we must remember that our imaginations help to shape events. If we dwell on darkness we will find darkness.

All Shall Dissolve

This blog has covered many dark topics, but the intention has always been to show that light and darkness exist together. There is no Summer without Winter, and no Fall without a Redemption.

Like the Wake, we aim to demonstrate that the whole cycle is happening always at every point. Only by realizing this can we liberate our own imaginations from what Blake calls "the same dull round." To do this is to realize not only that we create "temporal illusions," our subjective experience of time, but also that illusion itself is temporary. And there soon comes a time when all mysteries will be revealed.

Or as the other famous speech of the Tempest unveils to us:

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd tow'rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.  

Opening of the Abyss Ceremony

There should be no surprise that there was no false flag doom at the Opening Ceremony on 7/27. The scripts of conspiracy theorists are not usually followed by the conspirators. In any case, all of these predictions of doom and bliss do feedback into the mix. Perhaps an attack was thwarted because so many people were expecting it. Or perhaps the real conspiracy was to promote the idea that the Opening Ceremony was vulnerable to an attack in order to attract a particular type of  attention. We'll never know.



The last post ended by quoting Northrop Frye, the renowned literary critic, from his 1947 book on William Blake, Fearful Symmetry. Frye explains the choice that is even now before England, a choice that seems to have been a major theme of the Opening Ceremony of London 2012. It is worth quoting again this prescient passage:

England has to choose whether to turn its green and pleasant land into Jerusalem or a howling waste of Satanic mills, and Blake is practically the only Englishman who can express the fact that that choice is now before England, and is still a choice. Jerusalem is Blake's contribution to the struggle between the prophet and the profiteer for the soul of England which is England's Armageddon: it is a burning-glass focusing the rays of a fiery city on London in the hope of kindling an answering flame.

The answering Flame arrived last Friday night, but it is still not clear what choice was made. The ceremony itself was about making the choice. Armageddon is very nearly here, but it may be that a clear cut resolution is impossible.

Lots of Fun at Danny Boy's Wake

Danny Boyle has created the Finnegans Wake of Olympic opening ceremonies. Like the Wake, the Opening Ceremony has been criticized for being boring, too long, confusing, dark, full of inside jokes and obscure literary references, disjointed, etc. But also like the Wake, it contained profound depth, lyric beauty, staggering interconnections and coincidences, and the vast scope of epic poetry.

Boyle, using Britain as the microcosm of the world just as Ireland is used in the Wake, tried to encapsulate all of Britain's history, culture, development and spirit in a ceremony of a few short hours. All Olympic open ceremonies do this to a limited extent, but it was the scale, the depth, and the intertwining of all the elements, as well as the overarching narrative conforming to the timeless myths of the Fall and Redemption, that cranks this ceremony up to Wakean proportions.

Just as there is no one interpretation of Joyce's last book, it being too complex and dynamic to allow for any exclusive reading, there can be no single interpretation of Boyle's ceremony -- there are too many elements to include everything. The reading I'll present is likely a misreading. Hopefully it is a creative one.

The ceremony began, also like Finnegans Wake  (and this blog will explore this incomparable book in depth in the future), with the story of a river. The Thames is filmed from its source and running all of the way to East London. The river journey will take on immense importance as this analysis builds up.

Tower to the Gods

Before the actual ceremony began at 9pm, there was the prologue which featured an orchestral performance of Elgar's "Nimrod." This is the first clue.

Who is Nimrod? He was a famous hunter whose myth grew well beyond the Bible. He is most well known as being the rebellious, and often imagined as gigantic, ancient king who presided over the construction of the Tower of Babel in a failed attempt to reach Heaven.



This is where we begin the Opening Ceremony. Aside from the persistent rumour that Brueghel's depiction of the Tower is the model for the EU Parliament, is the idea that comes through most strongly in Dante that the Tower of Babel was the blasphemous attempt to construct an artificial Mountain of Purgatory. For Dante, the Tower and Nimrod himself represent the gravest of sins, Pride -- the sin of believing that through cleverness or artificial means alone we can become divine.



I've been writing on this blog that the 70-day, 8000 mile, London 2012 Torch Relay actually represents a journey through the underworld, and most notably the course of Sirius through the Duat in Egyptian myth. As 8000 miles is the rough diameter of the Earth, the journey of Dante and Virgil through the Earth's underworld in the Inferno also symbolically matches the Torch Relay. Dante and Virgil finally surface at the antipodes of Jerusalem, at the base of the Mountain of Purgatory. This is also where the Opening Ceremony commences.

 

The Purge

The Glastonbury Tor, as the monks of Glastonbury Abbey believed, is also the Mountain of Purgatory. Boyle's depiction of the Tor also represents this. During the ceremony, the flags of all participating nations were planted in the Tor signifying that now the entire world is making the same perilous, spiralling course up the Mountain.

Like the Glastonbury Tor, like traditional depictions of the Tower of Babel, the Mountain of Purgatory also has seven terraces. On its summit is Eden, the Earthly Paradise, and at the heart of Eden is the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil -- the gateway of Da'at. It was here that Humanity Fell and it is here where we will achieve Redemption. The Olympic Games, named after Olympus another World Mountain, is the journey back to the Garden.

 
Another attempt, like Nimrod's, to use force to climb the Mountain to the stars was made by Ulysess. This story is also relayed by Dante in the Inferno. Dante and Virgil meet Ulysses deep in the eighth circle of hell, and he tells them of his last voyage far across the sea where he discovers an island with the towering Mountain. He tries to land but a great storm prevents him and destroys his ships and his life. Ultimately, his cleverness and his pride had got the best of him. He would have been better to remain Nemo, "No man," and enter Paradise as a selfless individual.



The question is whether after the underworld journey we, at the Opening Ceremony, have reached the base of the true Mountain, or whether it is an artificial counterfeit like that constructed by Nimrod. Or maybe, like Ulysses, we have somehow reached the Mountain but we are not granted the grace to climb it.

The next clue of the Opening Ceremony comes with the children's choir singing the hymn, Jerusalem. This is the hymn of England. Three other children's choirs sing traditional songs of Ireland, Scotland and Wales (also represented by the four patron saints). The lyrics of Jerusalem, written by Blake as a prelude for his epic, Milton, deserve to be displayed again here:

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!

I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land

As is well-known, the subject of this poem is the myth that Joseph of Arimathea and his young nephew, Jesus, once visited England, and possibly the Glastonbury Tor. Blake is vowing to not cease his "mental fight" against the "Satanic Mills" of Church, State and Industry in order to transform his country into the New Jerusalem, or Zion, and thereby make it ready for the Saviour's return.

The Opening Ceremony begins with this green and pleasant land. This may be the Garden, but this is not yet the Holy City. London 2012 is not yet Zion. Quickly the Satanic Mills come to blacken the land and the Fall commences.

 

This is the section of the ceremony which Boyle calls, "Pandaemonium," and mainstream commentators assured us that it depicted England's Industrial Revolution. This is true, but it is much more than this.

On the stage, coaches of the London General Omnibus Company arrive with a group of industrialist/banker types in dark suits and top hats, led by the famous civic engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Brunel, renowned for his construction of several bridges, railways, dockyards, ships, etc., was most certainly a freemason. A Masonic lodge in Watford, just outside of London, is named in his honour.

 

In the analysis of this blog, unlike many others, being a freemason is not automatically condemnable. Reality is complex and there is good and bad in everything. It does mean, though, that as a symbol Brunel is very like Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, the "hero" of Finnegans Wake. Earwicker, mostly referred to by combinations of the initials HCE in the Wake -- as in Here Comes Everywhere -- is also described as being a master builder and a freemason.

 

HCE is also a symbol for the Fall. Additionally he is the hod carrier, Tim Finnegan, who falls off a ladder, dies, and is "resurrected" by a splash of whiskey at his own wake, in the Irish folksong which gives Finnegans Wake its name.

In Boyle's ceremony, then, Brunel also signifies the Fall -- he oversees the transformation of England's green and pleasant land into the Satanic mills.

Brunel walks up the base of the Glastonbury Tor, the World Mountain -- another symbol of HCE, and delivers a speech from one of Shakespeare's final plays, The Tempest:

Be not afeard, the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices,
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that, when I waked,
I cried to dream again.
(Shakespeare's The Tempest, III, ii)

This is the major speech of the whole Opening Ceremony, and indeed this is the passage that provided Boyle with the title of the entire event, "Isles of Wonder." The Isles here of course refer to the British Isles, but they are also Prospero's island in the Tempest, the river-bound island that the Olympic Park is situated in, the Isle of Avalon of the Glastonbury Tor, very possibly the similarly river-bound island of Hades in the underworld, and the island of Mount Purgatory.

All of these islands are, in a symbolic sense, one.

This is an enchanted island. It is an island of magical noises where the realms of dream and waking life are blended and melded. On the Mountain of Purgatory, Dante also had several dreams, often of a subtly erotic content, that began to blur the bounds between sleeping and waking.



According to Carl Jung, and later theorists like Terence McKenna, this boundary dissolution between the realms of waking "reality" and dream, along with the accelerating upswelling of synchronicity, is a key feature of the collective psychic shift from one Age to the next that is occurring right now.

Purgatory is an intermediate realm where all boundaries dissolve. It represents the rapid transition from the human to the divine, the rush up Mount Olympus. Throughout the Opening Ceremony we witnessed this blurring of dreaming and waking, fantasy and "reality."

Brunel, on the World Mountain, inaugurates the Industrial Revolution in England -- during his time the centre of the most powerful world empire, by using his imagination to envision a transformation of the world. It will become a very dark transformation.

On the Tor, Brunel gives the beautiful speech of Caliban, the slave of the magician Prospero, and the son of the sorceress Sycorax and a devil. This passage, among the most lyric in Shakespeare, is full of ambiguity. Caliban, a man-devil, and at the time drunken and murderous, speaks words that show that he understands the mystical nature of the island even better than his master, Prospero. In a way, Caliban here becomes Prospero, or the two are shown to be the same.

 

Council of Devils

This section of the ceremony is called "Pandaemonium" and, while the name is taken from a book on the Industrial Revolution, as Boyle readily admits the original name is taken from the capital city of hell in John Milton's Paradise Lost.




Pandaemonium, (the city of all devils), is the setting of Book 2 in Milton's epic poem. All of the main demons are gathered in a council and are discussing the best way to make their revenge, and to conquer Heaven. Open warfare is ruled out as too risky, so they settle upon conspiracy and deception.

They decide that the easiest way to disrupt the plan of God is to subvert and then enslave the newly created Garden of Eden. This would be accomplished best by trickery. Satan decides to take on this task himself and, to the astonishment of the other demons, volunteers to venture through the chaotic Abyss, the realm of emptiness between Heaven, Hell, and Earth. Here is how Milton himself introduces this book:

The Consultation begun, Satan debates whether another Battel be to be hazarded for the recovery of Heaven: some advise it, others dissuade: A third proposal is prefer'd, mention'd before by Satan, to search the truth of that Prophesie or Tradition in Heaven concerning another world, and another kind of creature equal or not much inferiour to themselves, about this time to be created: Thir doubt who shall be sent on this difficult search: Satan thir chief undertakes alone the voyage, is honourd and applauded. The Councel thus ended, the rest betake them several wayes and to several imployments, as thir inclinations lead them, to entertain the time till Satan return. He passes on his journey to Hell Gates, finds them shut, and who sat there to guard them, by whom at length they are op'nd, and discover to him the great Gulf between Hell and Heaven; with what difficulty he passes through, directed by Chaos, the Power of that place, to the sight of this new World which he sought.

 

Funeral Games

As Satan enters the Abyss, on route to the Earthly Paradise just as Dante reaches Eden by climbing Mount Purgatory, his fellow demons of Hell, the denizens of Pandaemonium, hold funeral games for him. And what are the funeral games? They are precisely the Olympics.

Thence more at ease thir minds and somwhat rais'd
By false presumptuous hope, the ranged powers
Disband, and wandring, each his several way
Pursues, as inclination or sad choice
Leads him perplext, where he may likeliest find

Truce to his restless thoughts, and entertain
The irksom hours, till his great Chief return.
Part on the Plain, or in the Air sublime
Upon the wing, or in swift Race contend,
As at th' Olympian Games or Pythian fields;
Part curb thir fierie Steeds, or shun the Goal
With rapid wheels, or fronted Brigads form.

The "Olympian Games" are held for Satan in honour of his voyage through the Abyss, just as similar games were held for Achilles' best friend, Patroclus, in the Iliad, and for Aeneas' father, Anchises, in Virgil's Aeneid. Historically, the Olympics directly stemmed from these funeral games.



It is amazing, given the working narrative of this blog, that the "Pandaemonium" section of the Opening Ceremony, referring both to Blake's Satanic Mills and the Industrial Revolution, also refers to a book in Paradise Lost  in which the Olympian Games are held for Satan as he journeys through the Abyss. How is that for a strange coincidence?

Oak Door of Eden

In addition to corresponding to Joyce's HCE, and Shakespeare's Caliban/Prospero, Brunel can also be identified with Milton's Satan. What is represented in "Pandaemonium"is the Fall, is Satan's subversion and overthrow of the primal Garden. We see this in the transformation of the utopian green lands surrounding the Tor into industrial Hell.

Satan's minions, depicted as industrial workers but more akin to Tolkien's orcs, descend from a passage underneath the Oak atop of the Glastonbury Tor. As we've discussed before, the Oak is the door, it is Da'at, and it is a door that opens in two ways.

It can be opened from the path of Gimel up through the hidden sephiroth, Da'at (G to D, or  God), or it can be opened from the opposite direction through Da'at and down into the thirteenth path of Gimel (D to G, or Dog representing the Dog-star, Sirius).

Robert Anton Wilson, in his seminal text, Cosmic Trigger, explains the cosmic ambiguity of this gate, and how this is alluded to in the work of James Joyce and Aleister Crowley.

And, on rereading Joyce’s Ulysses for the first time in several years, the Metaprogrammer was struck by the Black Mass in which the souls of all the saved chant "Gooooooooooooood" while all the souls of the damned chant "Doooooooooooooog."

This palindrome (God-Dog) also appears in The Book of the Law, remember, in the question, "Is a god to live in a dog?" My fantasy leaped and I asked myself why Joyce set Ulysses in spring 1904, the same time that Crowley was receiving The Book of the Law.

His crucial question about 1904 will be explored in a future post,  but the main point to note is that the door opens both ways -- the Abyss that Satan traverses to reach, and so subvert, the Earthly Paradise is symbolically the same as the Mountain of Purgatory. The portal of Da'at, situated as the Tree on top of the Mountain, allows for both ascent and descent. In this time of transition both passages are occurring at once.

As the industrial orcs of Satan/Brunel pour down from the Oak portal of the Tor, they rip up the green land, build vast machines and smokestacks, and thoroughly defile the countryside. Eden is shut off from humanity. The Fall has taken place.

To Rule Them All

A dark alchemy infests the land and the people, industrial slaves, spend all of their time and effort to forge the One Ring. This is elevated to the sky to unite with the four other rings of the Olympic insignia.

 

The Olympic Games, the false union of humanity, is used as the justification for the subjugation of nature and the industrial enslavement of humanity. The dream turns to nightmare. In Blake's terms, the Olympics represents the triumph of the Satanic Mills. Brunel/Caliban/Satan/Sauron nods his head in great satisfaction.

When the Cauldron is finally lit at the end of the ceremony, it resembles nothing more than the Eye of Sauron -- but we are getting ahead of the story. Boyle's hat tip to Tolkien's masterpiece is really not surprising given the wealth of other literary references he includes. As Jay Weidner writes in a fascinating essay, The Lord of The Rings is really a modern story of the shift of the Ages. Boyle's ceremony is also this and symbolically it makes sense that the Cauldron is the Eye. The New Jerusalem is created but is it a counterfeit?

 

But there is no time to think about any of this. The next sequence is too funny -- the Queen as skydiver. What could be occult and nefarious about something so lighthearted and playful? All should be forgiven in comedy, right? Perhaps so, but this should not keep us from looking deeper.

The Royal Astrologer

There is good reason to conclude that Prospero, the principle but morally ambiguous protagonist of the Tempest, was modeled after the English Renaissance magician, John Dee. By all accounts, Dee was the occult teacher and astrologer of Queen Elizabeth the First. 



This blog has already discussed the involvement of Dee and his partner Edward Kelly with Enochian magic and the summoning of spirit entities like Choronzon. Is this why the isle is full of noises? There also good reason to conclude, however, that Dee was a prime intelligence agent for Queen Elizabeth. There is a persistent rumour that one of Dee's personal sigils very much resembled a 007. Whether or not this is historically accurate, Dee is certainly entrenched in myth as being Queen Elizabeth's 007.

 

In a playful, most certainly harmless, clip in the Opening Ceremony we find Queen Elizabeth (the Second in this case) escorted by her own 007, James Bond, to the Olympic Stadium by helicopter where she apparently parachutes down to adoration of thousands of her subjects. There is no coincidence that the Queen, as Zeus, descends from from her heavenly mountain in the sky to open and preside over the Games. She, nearly alone, does not make an ascent from the underworld.



 

A Spoonful of Sugar

The next sequence of the Opening Ceremony has proved to be one of the most baffling for international viewers. Why was a tribute given to the British National Health Service? With a bit of research we can see Boyle's connection. According to certain sources, Brunel's inclusion of health and recreation centres for his workers provided the basis for the future NHS.

Boyle sneaks in many such connections into the ceremony. Another was that J.K. Rowlings reads from Peter Pan, a book from which the Great Ormond Street Hospital featured in the sequence receives royalties. The fact that these syncs exist indicate that there are many others to be discovered. Like Finnegans Wake, the whole ceremony is a holographic tissue of interconnection and synchronicity.

The sick kids sequence is really a horror story of disease and nightmare. It is meant to reveal the dark side of the imagination. The whole sequence is accompanied by Mike Oldfield's "Tubular Bells," appropriately the theme music of The Exorcist. The children are faced with all the villains and monsters of British children's literature. All of the beings of nightmare seem to combine in the giant form of Voldemort -- the Fall is complete and Satan has triumphed over even the imagination of children.

 

But this triumph does not apparently last. The nightmares are dispelled by dozens of Mary Poppinses, descending from the sky with their umbrellas as parachutes. This is an obvious allusion to the Queen's prior descent. Mary Poppins is the only other character, aside from the Queen, who makes this kind of descent.

The central inclusion of Mary Poppins is not a quirky afterthought either. P.L. Travers, the author of Mary Poppins who hated the later depiction of her character by Walt Disney, was a friend of W.B. Yeats and, like Yeats, likely had connections with the Order of the Golden Dawn. Poppins is a mystical dimensional traveller, someone who has the ability to trip between worlds and even into the Abyss.

 

Yeats, the Irish poet, plays a key part in this whole narrative. He wrote a important book on Blake and he was a major influence on Joyce. He is a crucial link in the development of the universal epic that this blog is tracing. None of this is necessarily evil, it should be noted, but it is very important to understand how deep these symbols go.

Mental Fight

The next sequence was the very popular Mr. Bean/Chariots of Fire performance. Again, conforming to the blurring of dream and reality in Purgatory, this features Mr. Bean's dream. Chariots of Fire itself is another important interconnection. We should remember that in Blake's poem, now the hymn Jerusalem, he asks for his "chariot of fire" as one weapon in his "mental fight" against the "Satanic Mills." The original chariot of fire, as it is widely known, was what allowed the prophet Elijah ascent into Heaven. Even in this seemingly innocent Mr. Bean spoof the deeper message of the Fall and Redemption is contained. What is going on?

 

The following piece takes us from the industrial age to the electronic age of the late 20th and early 21st century. In rapid succession we move through the decades in a blur of movies, TV shows and popular music. This sequence demonstrates that everything can and will be incorporated into the Spectacle. Even grime music, the subversive backdrop to London's insurrectionary riots of just last year, is a big part of the soundtrack. The System will absorb all resistance and then sell it back to you.

This section has the feeling of acceleration and vertigo. The Singularity is coming. This is not the coming of the New Jerusalem, not a return to the green and pleasant land, but it is the counterfeit rapture we've all grown to expect. CERN scientist, Tim Berners-Lee, is then honoured as the creator and prophet of the World Wide Web. Even this blog right now and you reading it are a part of this unfolding. There is no escaping from this and it is too simplistic to say that it is wholly evil.

 

Following this is a sequence in direct tribute to the victims of the 7/7 bombing in London seven years ago. This proved to be too hot for certain US audiences, and it was cut from the NBC broadcast. Why? Perhaps because it made a direct connection between the attacks and London 2012, and NBC did not want to remind people of this. The commentator on BBC, though, spelled this out explicitly:

The excitement of that moment in Singapore seven years ago when London won the games was tempered with great sorrow the very next day.

This is much clearer than the handover ceremony at Beijing in 2008 where depictions of the attacks were thinly veiled. Was the elaborate tribute during the Opening Ceremony finally an acknowledgement that a sacrifice was made?

The Star Is Reborn

Next began the long and tedious Parade of Nations, during which each national team struck its flag in the grass of the Glastonbury Tor. Once again, this represents that all nations are collectively ascending the Mountain of Purgatory. We are all making the transition, for better or worse, together. After this was a procession of winged angel-like cyclists that ascended from below. A single cyclist takes flight and rises into the air above the stadium. Satan's journey into the Abyss yet again?

 

At last the Torch arrives, the culmination of its 70-day journey into the underworld. And appropriately it arrives by boat, just as Sirius, and the Sun etc., ride a boat of the dead in Egyptian myth during its voyage through the Duat. It is very easy to see the parallels. Here Beckham is an obvious Osiris figure. And he is also Brunel. And he is also HCE. And he is also Dante and Satan. People are symbols in this ceremony and symbols have multiple, and even contradictory, designations.

 

An interesting error is made when the Torch reaches the Stadium. The French announcer correctly states that it has travelled 12,800 kilometres, but the female English announcer explains that it has travelled 12,800 miles. Why would she have made this mistake? Obviously she is reading, so is this error in the script? And it was never caught during rehearsal? It's also fascinating that many smaller news agencies spread this mistake unknowingly -- some even converted the 12,800 miles to over 20,000 kilometers.

Was this an intentional mistake? Was it coincidental? It brings attention to the number 12,800 which reduces to 128, or perhaps 12/8, the 12th of August, which happens to be the date of the Closing Ceremony. Is this significant?

The Cauldron was finally lit by seven torchbearers, not one. This again refers to a collective transformation. The number seven has continually turned up as the number of Purgatory.



Much can be said about the music that was played during and after the lighting of the Cauldron, but I'll keep this short. Why Pink Floyd's "Eclipse"at a time when light is revealed and not obscured as it is during an eclipse? An eclipse itself, as this blog has pointed out, is also an underworld journey. Is the Torch still in the Duat?

The climax is reached with Paul McCartney and "Hey Jude." Why "Hey Jude?" Presumably because it is very well known and easy to sing along to. But what is its meaning? Why sing it at the closing of the ceremony? The story goes that it was a song written by Paul for four-year-old Julian Lennon during the divorce of his parents.

The unofficial story, though, is that it is a song in praise of heroin -- a slang for the drug is Judas, the friend that betrays you. It is really inconceivable that Paul or Danny Boyle had in mind a paean for heroin to close the ceremony. So why this song? Symbolically, at least, it could be a song for Judas -- the ultimate tool of Satan's plan to subvert the divine plan for this world. In Dante's Inferno, only Satan himself is placed lower in Hell than Judas.

The Two Way Door

So what does all this mean? Danny Boyle has created a masterpiece of ambiguity. Like Finnegans Wake it contains all times and places within British history at once. The whole ceremony can be seen as a microcosm of what we are all moving through at this time. But what happened during the ceremony? Does this represent a movement up the Mountain of Purgatory to the Earthly Paradise, or is it Satan's plunge through the Abyss? Either way the endpoint is Eden.

We are rapidly moving towards the site of the Fall. In the Garden the Tree still waits for us. It is still the Door, Da'at or Knowledge, and we still have the choice of which way we enter through the portal. An ascent or a descent is possible. The shift is collective but it is also individual. Each of us has the ability to use the symbols and rituals to allow for elevation rather than further downfall.

In this way Northrop Frye is not answered. Will the green and pleasant land return? Will the Satanic Mills triumph? The last page is not written but we are rapidly reaching it. Which way does the oak door open? Will we be met there by Christ or Antichrist? Will the city that rises be Zion or Babylon? If we use the Wake as a guide we will see it is all of these possibilities and more at once.