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.  

Da'at Night

The focus of this blog is not only the symbolic analysis of the many "occult" events occurring presently, but to also examine the historically unprecedented phenomenon of a multitude of web researchers all presenting their own unique interpretations of these events, sharing ideas, locked in debate, their ideas feedbacking into the events themselves.

I write this just hours before the Opening Ceremony for London 2012, come what may, but the event I'd like to focus on happened a week prior -- the start of the last week of the 70-day underworld journey. I'm referring, of course, to the mass shooting, resulting in 12 dead and 58 wounded, during the premier The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, Colorado. Certainly an occult event.

As is now almost commonplace, there is commentary from the usual sources linking the shooting to mind control programs, reports of other people involved, speculations about it being a "false flag" event, examples of "predictive programming", etc. The fact that this type of conspiratorial analysis happens so close on the heels of such an event, and that skepticism towards the "official story" is so widespread and direct, is itself a fascinating phenomenon. It is hard to imagine such a reaction even ten years ago. There has been a change in public consciousness.

In addition to this, though, is even a deeper layer of analysis. This second, perhaps we can call it synchronistic or even "synchromystic," layer is now growing at a faster rate than traditional conspiratorial theorizing and, while complementary to some degree, it really threatens to supplant the first entirely.

When an event like this occurs, individuals across the globe and throughout the web automatically scour the available facts on the lookout for "coincidences", better termed as synchronicities. As strange as it might seem, it is natural for these researchers to look for, and inevitably find, syncs linking the Aurora shooting with the London Olympics. It is interesting to look both at these syncs and also the whole phenomenon that determines them.

I'll summarize some of these syncs here and then I'll examine others more connected to the discussions of this blog. Finally, I'll move into the real subject of this post -- where is this all headed? What is this underworld or Abyss that we are collectively passing through? Where does it lead? This will be the first of likely several posts on the hidden sephirah of Da'at. But first the Dark Knight.

A synchronicity on the first level of analysis is the uncanny fact that a high level medical school, in a nearby suburb of Denver, was giving drills to medical students on how to deal with just this type of mass shooting at a theatre. The drill, the only of its kind in the country, occurred on the same day as the shooting.

 "The irony is amazing, just amazing," said Rocky Vista Dean Dr. Bruce Dubin.

This type of coincidence can easily be assimilated into the conspiratorial model. It matches the well-known pattern of similar drills happening at the same time, and concerning the same type of attacks, as 9/11, 7/7, etc. The drills themselves, and the analysis explaining the "MO" of the drills, have become predictable.

The other synchronicities, especially those which link the shooting to London 2012, are not so easily explained. A weird one is that witnesses were brought a few blocks away by police to Aurora's Gateway High School which proudly boasts to be "the home of the Olympians". Did the Illuminati plan this as well?

Web researchers also noted that in the trailer of the new James Bond movie, Skyfall, which is being shown in theatres immediately before Dark Knight Rises, there is a prominent centre skyline shot of the Aurora building in Shanghai. Immediate predictive programming?

Other researchers discovered that both the words "Aurora" and "London" equal 444 in English gematria. That's a weird enough connection, but a closer look shows that "Christ", "Lucifer", and "Messiah" also equal 444. This is resonant with the last post in which the ambiguity of Christ and Lucifer was shown in their relation to Venus, the morning star.

One researcher pointed out that Dark Knight Rises allegedly includes a bomb plot where a nuclear device is set to go off 23 days after it is activated. Having not seen the movie yet, I can't confirm this, but if this true, as he or she warns, 23 days after the explosive premier on 7/20 would be 8/12 -- the day of the closing ceremony for London 2012. It's interesting, as pointed out here, that 8/12 is also the date of the heliacal rising of Sirius over London. 

Does Aurora, which means "dawn," symbolically refer to the dawn of Sirius?

 

Among all the syncs uncannily connecting the Dark Knight shooting with the London Olympics, the one that really stands out, and it is one that seems to have escaped notice up to this point, is the fact that the alleged perpetrator shot 70 people (12 killed and 58 wounded) -- exactly the number of days in the Olympic Torch Relay, and exactly the number of days Sirius was traditionally said to journey in the underworld. One victim for every day in the Duat?

What is going on here? Why should any of these syncs appear? And why should they be discovered in the way they were? Is this just a matter of apophenia -- arbitrarily finding meaningful patterns in places where no such meaning exists? Clearly, though, if these things are not mere coincidences, then they point to something far more bizarre than even the spells of the most adept of masonic sorcerers. In short, if taken as being significant, they point to the limitations of conspiratorial analysis.

The excellent and fearless researcher, Goro Adachi, makes exactly this point in a recent article on the Aurora shooting:

The Olympic ceremonies are a "mega-ritual," no doubt about that. So many people out there are shouting: "Oh my god, alien invasion! Project Blue Beam! False flag attack!" It's understandable but most are just new at this. I've been at this for more than a decade. I was heavily into this before 9/11. I can point to the fact that I wrote an article on the 9/11 attacks in October 2001 from a multicontextual perspective that's not so different from what I talk about today... including Mars.

From experience I can say that foresight is not something easily attained. Our reality is not static, it's dynamic. The future is fluid and influenced by what we do, see, and are aware of in the present. The future reacts to our actions and perception so as not to "reward" the unworthy with the gift of foresight. The more purely you align with truth, the more you are "worthy", that is to say, the more you resonate with the future (unrealized possibilities).

Most "conspiracy theorists" don't have this quality in them which requires a great sense of balance, lots of self-examination and ego-control. That's why 99.999% of the time they can't foresee anything correctly. Their uncontrolled ego magnet screws up the truth compass. If you can't start from a place of no assumptions and no preconceived worldview, you won't get far. If you go "I'm a Christian" or "I'm an atheist", or "I'm looking for conspiracies by the NWO, the stinking Illuminati!" for instance, you're immediately done right there before you even start, a dead-ender. Talk about self-sabotage. It's so easy to contaminate our reality/future vision with our conscious and subconscious preconceptions.

So, while listening to folks like Alex Jones might initially help you deprogram yourself from the mainstream unquestioning mindset, constantly listening to the endless stream of their version of "I hate my parents, they ruined my life, bahhhh!" day in and day out, well, now that's just another worldview programming, another religion, yes, "mind control." It's very unhealthy. You need to stay balanced so as not to get stuck in a fixed line of thinking. That just makes you a robot.

In other words, reality is far stranger than even the conspiracy theorists will allow for and, in a way that is threatening for dogmatic theorists of any stripe, the observer in his very act of observation alters what he is observing. The theorist's own self will, unwittingly or not, enter into the body of his theory. The deeper down the rabbit hole we go the further we sink into the depths of our own shadows. The process of gathering Knowledge, especially of this esoteric caliber, is itself a journey through the Abyss.

This is what needs to be explored more thoroughly before any of these "occult" events can be understood.

Finding Nemo

The story could start anywhere, but for fun I'll start it a long way in both space and time from London 2012. Let's begin with ex-Harvard psychologist and LSD advocate, Timothy Leary, in the desert of Algeria. Leary had been busted out of prison in 1970 by the Weather Underground and had been smuggled away to Algeria under the "protection" of the Black Panther Party.

According to Leary's friend, the writer Brian Barritt, the story goes that after in turn escaping from the Black Panthers, Leary and Barritt eventually ventured out into the desert at Bou Sadaa in 1971. Here, in the desert, the two had a life-altering acid trip together.

 
They later found out that they had tripped in almost exactly the same location where the magician Aleister Crowley and his poet friend, Victor Neuberg, had tripped on mescaline and performed the important crossing the Abyss ritual in 1909. Crowley himself considered that he and his partner were just continuing in the spirit of the English Renaissance magus, John Dee, and his partner Edward Kelly by employing the Enochian magic that these men had developed. Barritt writes:

Tim and myself tripped for the first time together in the same area in which Crowley and Neuburg dropped mescaline and performed a magical ceremony using Dr. Dee's script!

The new information shakes and impresses us both. It's not reincarnation we are thinking of so much as recurring cycles with different representatives each time around. We feel we are riding the same current that powered Dr Dee and Edward Kelly in the 16th century and Crowley and Neuburg at the beginning of this one. I see a similarity between Kelly, Neuburg and Barritt paralleling the one between Dr Dee, Aleister Crowley and Dr Leary.

The synchronicity involved in this understandably blew their minds, to the point where Tim began to identify himself with Crowley.

There are synchronicities and synchronicities, this is no Jungian beetle crawling over a window sill, this is international! The mysterious force that brought Tim to Bou Saada had to get him out of prison in the States first, fly him across the Atlantic and drive him out of Algiers itself by using Eldridge Cleaver. Was it the same unconscious directive that scooped up Aliester and Victor sixty years ago and deposited them amongst the cones of sand? They seem to have had no more idea of their mission than we had.

 

Crowley himself writes about his experiences in Algeria in his book, The Vision and the Voice in which he talks about the crossing of the Abyss working he conducted with Neuberg. This ritual working would become a major initiatic milestone in Crowley's magical system. He later wrote: 

This doctrine is extremely difficult to explain; but it corresponds more or less to the gap in thought between the Real, which is ideal, and the Unreal, which is actual. In the Abyss all things exist, indeed, at least in posse, but are without any possible meaning; for they lack the substratum of spiritual Reality. They are appearances without Law. They are thus Insane Delusions... Now the Abyss being thus the great storehouse of Phenomena, it is the source of all impressions.

 

The Abyss is the gap between the real and unreal, the noumenal and the phenomenal, and to successfully pass through this gap the initiate was required to destroy his ego. If this did not happen the life, or at least the mind, of the initiate would be destroyed. Crowley first performed this ritual in the desert at Bou Sadaa, and there are some who argue that even he did not successfully cross and that this is why things went badly for him at the end of his life.

To pass through the Abyss Crowley always cautioned that the magician must fully shed his ego to attain his Higher Self. He must become Nemo (Greek for "no man"). To ensure that the magician has done this, or to prevent the success of those who do not become an egoless Nemo, the initiate must must also deal with Choronzon, the Guardian of the Threshold. 

This demonic being is really the last, most shadowy, vestiges of our ego made solid and monstrous by its will to perpetuate itself. It was Choronzon that Dee and Kelly also encountered in their experiments with Enochian magic.

 

 

Guardians of the Gate

Choronzon is really the archetype of various Guardians of the Threshold which can be found in the mythology and temple architecture of cultures across the planet. In every case, these beings protect sacred areas or zones of being from the defilement of the base Self or ego. This they do through fear, repulsion and the threat of violence to the body and the soul.

One of Crowley's successors, Kenneth Grant, claimed that we can find a similar Guardian of the Threshold entity in the fiction of horror writer, H.P. Lovecraft. The Lovecraftian Old One that Grant most associates with Choronzon is Yog-Sothoth. Here Lovecraft describes Yog-Sothoth:

Nor is it to be thought ... that man is either the oldest or the last of earth's masters, or than the common bulk of life and substance walks alone. The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be. Not in the spaces we know, but between them, they walk serene and primal, undimensioned and to us unseen. Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and when they shall break through again...

 

We should keep in mind that Lovecraft calls Yog-Sothoth, the gate (Gateway High School?) The gate, or the door, has turned up in this blog previously as related to the Oak, or Duir -- the Celtic letter which corresponds to the Greek Delta or the Hebrew Daleth. Daleth is the initial letter of Da'at, which we will soon discover is the true Door to the Abyss.

It is also very fascinating that Grant works out a whole, very complex mythology whereby Yog-Sothoth/Choronzon is equated with the star, Sirius. This blog will slowly make its way into these murky waters. It is helpful first, though, to examine some other Guardians of the Threshold.

The term Nemo, or "no man," that Crowley is using to title the egoless adept who crosses the Abyss comes from Homer's Odyssey. In the famous story Odysseus uses his wits to escape the cave of the Cyclops, Polyphemus. He tells the monster that his name is No Man, and then later gets Polyphemus drunk and blinds him. When the Cyclops cries to his neighbours for help they ignore him as being mad when he complains that "no man" is attacking him.

 

Odysseus uses his wits to escape the Guardian, but he can only do so by giving up his identity and his ego. He does not pass through the Abyss successfully, however. After leaving the cave he reasserts his sense of self by boasting of his name and heritage to the blinded Cyclops, who in turn curses him. The full extent of the selfish folly of Odysseus, or Ulysses, is not revealed until Dante sings of the hero's last and tragic voyage. I'll return to this in another post.

Gates of Eden

Another key example of this type of Guardian, and this time from the Bible, is the Covering Cherub who with a flaming sword prevents humanity's premature re-entry into the Earthy paradise of Eden.




The Covering Cherub plays a large role in the poetic cosmology of William Blake. Blake combines the symbolism of the jeweled New Jerusalem, or Zion, which returns in the sky in Revelation, with the description of the terrifying but glittering Cherub of Ezekiel 28. Here Lucifer is identified with the Covering Cherub with the fiery sword.

¹³ You were in Eden,

   the garden of God;

 every precious stone adorned you:

   carnelian, chrysolite and emerald,

   topaz, onyx and jasper,

   lapis lazuli, turquoise and beryl.

Your settings and mountings were made of gold;

   on the day you were created they were prepared.

¹⁴ You were anointed as a guardian cherub,

   for so I ordained you.

You were on the holy mount of God;

   you walked among the fiery stones.

In Blake's theosophy it is necessary to overcome the Cherub, which ultimately he identifies with the Self or Ego, in order to regain entry into Paradise. This entirely matches with Crowley's teaching and, as we'll see, with the Kabbalah. Blake also notes that this Cherub also appears, with its double, on the Ark of the Covenant. Generally these Cherubim are viewed as being Michael and Gabriel, but Blake makes a good case that in the original mythology these two are Michael and Lucifer -- two opposing aspects of the same being.

This agrees with the Hero Twin stories we've been looking at. The Covering Cherub blocking entrance to the gates of Eden, the Guardian of the Threshold, is both Christ and Antichrist. The symbols are all ambiguous. Blake viewed the Bible as being circular and not linear. It begins in the Garden and ends with the appearance of the City of Zion, the final revelation. But in a way the cycle repeats with a Fall from the City into the Garden and from there into this fallen Mundane Shell.

 

The fierce, iridescent Guardian is also, from another perspective or state of consciousness absent of ego, the vision of the New Jerusalem -- the true Zion which awaits us all. Christ and Antichrist return together.

Before returning to the Garden, and from there to the City, we must overcome the Cherub who is assigned, we should remember, to prevent humanity from eating of the Tree of Eternal Life having already sinfully partaken of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. It is in these two trees, and the Fall associated with them, that the solution to the greatest mysteries are found.
 
 

It was knowledge that really condemned Adam and his offspring. Eve and Adam, like most of us, attempted to know something that they weren't really ready for. In short, they attempted to cross the Abyss without first ridding themselves of ego, without first gaining the eternal life of selflessness. This is quite explicit in the mythology. Knowledge in Hebrew is Da'at and this is what the tree is named.

Know in the Biblical Sense

Da'at means knowledge. It can be found in Proverbs 24:4:

 Da'at fills the rooms with precious things.

Apparently the rooms here refer to the 6 chambers of the heart. In the Kabbalah, Da'at is the union of the Wisdom of Chokmah and the Understanding of Binah. This in turn has been viewed since the time of the Zohar as being the sexual union of Father and Mother. This is knowledge in the biblical sense of "And Adam knew his wife Eve." Here is the place of hierogamy, divine marriage, where in union separate egos are melded and dissolved in love.

In the Kabbalah the two trees of Eden are united as one, the Tree of Life, which consists of three pillars and ten centres of emanation, or sephiroth. The middle pillar of the Tree of Life also contains the hidden 11th sephirah, Da'at. In Crowley's system this sephirah is also the location of the Abyss, which the adept has to cross to reach the higher centres. 

On the Tree of Life, each one of the sephiroth became identified with one of seven planets, the elements or the zodiac. The hidden sephirah of Da'at, really the union of all of the other centres, much later became identified with Sirius. 

We should keep in mind the full symbolic equation (although this is all approximate): Da'at=the Abyss=the Guardian of the Threshold=Choronzon=the Covering Cherub=Yog-Sothoth=Sirius. 

The Twin Pillars

The two pillars of the Tree of Life are symbolically also the two pillars, Jachin and Boaz, of the Temple of Solomon. These pillars later go on to become major symbols in Freemasonry. Solomon's Temple, though, is most well known as being the house of the Ark of the Covenant. It houses the great mystery of God.


The second Temple, based on Solomon's construction, enters largely into the story of Christ. Gentle Jesus famously kicked out the money lenders, but in a more esoteric sense, and this is also Blake's sense, Christ embodied the Temple. The two thieves he was crucified with also represent the two pillars (and the three make XXX).



One thief asks for Mercy, and is forgiven and granted Heaven, and the other scornful thief faces his Justice in Hell. Mercy and Justice are exactly the equivalents of Jachin and Boaz. The parallels become undeniable at the time of Christ's death. The Temple veil is rent in two from top to bottom. The mystery is finally revealed for all to see.



The story of Christ, then, is another example of the crossing of the Abyss. His Cross is another representation of the Tree of Life.

On this Tree there are the ten sephiroth but there are also 22 paths connecting these ten. Each of these 22 paths are assigned one of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. It may be necessary to get deeper into this at a later stage, but for now it is important to note the thirteenth path, the path of the letter Gimel.

The 13th path runs from the heart sephirah of Tiphareth to the crown of Kether. It is one of the most, if not the most, important paths of the Tree of Life because it passes directly across the Abyss separating the Microprosopus of the lower seven sephiroth, to the Macroprosopus of the upper supernal triangle. The 13th path of Gimel, then, passes across the Abyss and through the 11th (non)sephirah of Da'at. Da'at, as was mentioned, is identified by modern astrologers like Gareth Knight as Sirius.

Here is an image of the Masonic tracing board, based on the Jachin and Boaz pillars of Solomon's Temple seen also in the Tree of Life of the Kabbalah. The middle pillar, and its ladder on the tracing board, leads up to a blazing star between the Sun and the Moon. From the writings of Albert Pike, and others before him, we know that this star is also Sirius. The symbolism is becoming clearer.

The 22 major arcana of the tarot are also corresponded to Hebrew letters in the occult tradition. The card associated with Gimel and the 13th path is the High Priestess. She will become very important later when discussing specific crossing the Abyss rituals. Here she is now enthroned between the two pillars.


 

And here is a more modern version of the same set of symbolism:

Over the Rainbow

One more symbol to introduce briefly before wrapping this up is the Rainbow Bridge. The Rainbow Bridge is situated in exactly the same place on the Tree of Life as the Abyss. It spans Da'at and in all cultures, as in the Bifrost of Norse mythology, it is viewed as being a bridge between men and the gods. The meaning is essentially the same.

Once we pass over the Rainbow Bridge, across the Abyss, and become No Man (as Odysseus did for a time) by transcending the ego, we reach the Star. It is between and beyond all of the opposites. Sun and moon, dark and light, good and evil, male and female, spirit and matter. It is also the state of lucid dreaming, between consensus waking and dreaming sleep. In this lucid state we create our own systems, as Blake taught us.

 

The examples of Crossing the Abyss provided here have tended to be individual journeys. It is important to realize, though, that this passage also happens collectively at certain times. Carl Jung in his later book, Flying Saucers, discusses just this sort of passage in relation to the passage from the Age of Pisces (an age of dualism -- symbolized by Christ and Antichrist) to the Age of Aquarius (an age of a more unified vision).  

As we know from ancient Egyptian history, there are symptoms of psychic changes that always appear at the end of one Platonic month and at the beginning of another. They are, it seems, changes in the constellation of the psychic dominants, of the archetypes or "Gods" as they used to be called, which bring about, or accompany, long-lasting transformations of the collective psyche. This transformation started within the historical tradition and left traces behind within it, first in the transition of the Age of Taurus to that of Aries, and then from Aries to Pisces, whose beginning coincides with the rise of Christianity. We are now nearing that great change which may be expected when the spring-point enters Aquarius.

I agree with Jung that humanity collectively is right now in one of these rapid transformations of the collective psyche -- a shift of the Ages. Whether or not this is occurring exactly in 2012, or whether the shift will be subtle or dramatic are not very important questions. I personally think that it is this year that marks the shift, but in any case the change will come soon.

 

Given this, humanity is once again at a point where collectively we enter into an imaginative space between the Ages. We are all crossing the Abyss together. This is sort of a twilight zone where nothing is fully formed yet everything exists in potential. 

In the Kabbalah this exactly corresponds with the hidden sephirah of Da'at, which can be represented by Sirius on a macrocosmic scale. To be conscious of this shift is to gain access to great power. Awareness allows one to form the emerging Age. This is why those who would keep us transfixed by their Spell want to prevent us from being aware.

By studying the myths of all cultures regarding the shifting of previous Ages, and prophecies for the present shift, we can find valuable symbols and concepts. The appearance of the Hero Twins, the descent into and surfacing of the underworld, the revelation of the New Jerusalem, the crossing of the Abyss, the Rainbow Bridge, the final battle, etc. all return at these points of climax within the cycle. To grasp all of this simultaneously, as one complete vision, is to crack the Spell. 

Prophets not Profit

In all of the occult "mega-rituals" that we witness, one of the biggest about to happen in a few hours, we have the ability to use the Spell against the spell-casters. All of these symbols are ambiguous. The reality engineers have the exact same archetypes to work with as we do. No more and no less. Use their own spectacle to elevate. As the Blake scholar, Northrop Frye, wrote in 1947 almost as if he knew about London 2012:

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.

In a few short hours, the Flame will light the Cauldron and the underworld journey will come to an end. Sirius, symbolically, will rise from the Duat, just as she will physically at the end of the Games. We do not know what will happen -- whether the prophet or the profiteer will come out on top. We do know the passage through the Abyss is at full pace now. Synchronicities are multiplying, just as Jung said they would be at these times. Things are about to get even weirder.

And speaking of profiteers, London's mayor gave a rousing, V for Vendetta-like, big screen, Buckingham Palace, Torch rally-spectacle speech yesterday in which he said:

The excitement is growing so much I think the Geiger counter of Olympo-mania is going to go zoink on the scale! People are coming from around the world and they're seeing the greatest city on earth.

Zoink! Geiger counter?? Is he just playing with us, or is he really that out of touch?
Is phoney Olympo-mania about to bite the dust? Can Batman save us?