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.

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?