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| Prometheus, Jean Deville |
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| Venus morningstar with her various symbols |
****** There be SPOILERS ahead******
Although I had never seen any of the previous Alien movies, the intense trailers for Prometheus
intrigued me on a very primal level. So even though I rarely go to the
movies, my partner and I each coughed up $20 to see the IMAX 3D version
of the film, which was not as spectacular as my first 3-D experience of
Avatar, but equally fascinating from an archetypal point of view. Both Avatar and Prometheus are distributed by the wily 20th Century Fox (6-6-6)
-- one of the six major US Film studios that is most associated with
imprinting the possibility of alien invasion, asteroid impact and global
climate change through movies like Star Wars, Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, Aliens, and Avatar and popular television series like the X-Files and Fringe. And both directors are long-time friends and connected by the Alien franchise as James Cameron directed the sequel Aliens. In fact, Ridley Scott has commented that after visiting the Avatar set he was inspired to create Prometheus, a prequel to Aliens.
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| From Christopher Knowles blog, The Secret Sun |
Likewise, Ridley Scott's Prometheus premiered in London under some very telling cultural and astrological aspects including the same Moon-Saturn conjunction in Virgo. It was released on May 31, 2012 as the "Promethean" Olympic Torch was making its relay its way across the British Isles often re-enacting the famous scene from the movie Chariots of Fire, which is another name for UFOs. Ever since the 1984 Olympics, there has been a strange tradition of peppering the marketing and opening ceremony with extraterrestrial themes, and this year is no exception. Check out the 2008 marketing video which is full of flying serpents, UFOs, magically assembling buildings, and even a colorful mothership.
But even more intriguing is this year's Opening Ceremony's bizarre pastoral setting that Danny Boyle calls a green and pleasant land. It features green pastures, live farm animals and reproductions of British landmarks like Glastonbury Tor, the legendary resting place of the Holy Grail.
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| The mock up of Olympic Stadium and the Opening Ceremony stage |
Many in the conspiracy community, such as Rik Clay and Tracy Twyman, believe this bucolic vision of the Opening Ceremony is meant to be an homage to the famous short poem And did those feet in ancient times by visionary artist William Blake who describes England as the site for the New Jerusalem at the time of the Second Coming. The poem was actually written as a preface to Blake's epic poem Milton, a Poem, and in 1916 was arranged to music by Hubert Perry in the hymn Jerusalem, which is an unofficial anthem for England. Conspiracy theorists like Clay have pointed out that the 2012 logo resembles the word ZION. Zion is often
used as a synonym for Jerusalem or the World to Come in which the
Messiah, or the 'Once and Future King' of Arthurian legend, returns to
rule over a new Golden Age. (So is it any surprise that Prince William
Arthur has Saturn in Virgo and Venus in Taurus in his natal chart.) |
| William Blake, 1820 from his prophetic book Jerusalem - The Emanation of the Giant Albion [England] |
Furthermore, a day after the premier of Prometheus, the Queen's Diamond Jubilee celebrations were kicked off under the most anticipated astronomical event of the century: the Venus transit in Taurus. Diamonds are the gemstone of Venus, and the Queen took advantage of this mythological moment to attract global attention to England. She is Britainia's official light bearer.
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| The Queen lights the final Jubilee Torch |
So as you can see, both Avatar and Prometheus were presented to the world under the same Moon-Saturn conjunction in Virgo while strange astronomical and cultural events that mirrored the major themes of both movies took place. The cosmic synchronicity of two extraordinary phenomenon and two socio-political occasions with the release of two of the most highly anticipated sci-fi films of the century is further amplified by another remarkable synchronicity, a shared planetary alignment. The world premier of both Avatar and Prometheus occurred under Saturn in Virgo -- as does the upcoming Opening Ceremony of the 2012 Olympics!
Saturn in Virgo and the Return of the Golden Age
Saturn is the lord of Karma and Time and its conjunction with the Moon, the lord of individual and public minds, signals a moment in which these Saturnine themes may be presented to the collective consciousness through various outlets of the mass media (film, television, internet, global ceremonies like the Nobel Peace prize). As lord of Time and the end of Time, Saturn is also the lord of death and fear (False, Evidence, Appearing, Real) and these movies are all about our deepest fears -- that the universe is a deadly and hostile place. As Vedic astrologer David Frawley indicates: Saturn is death that takes us beyond the limitations of mortal life, which is the gateway to the eternal. And in the Western Alchemical tradition Saturn is said to rule over the Golden Age, and ancient time of peace and harmony when gods walked upon the earth and intermingled with humans.
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| UFO/Chariot of the Gods? Saturn in his chariot pulled by winged serpents (as in the Olympic video). |
If you accept the concept of predictive programming, it becomes clear that the release of these films have been timed with these cosmic events in an almost ritualistic manner in order to prepare the collective consciousness for a shift in awareness about extraterrestrial life and possibly the return of the Golden Age led by these god-like extraterrestrial beings. Avatar itself was atavistic vehicle for the viewer to enter another reality that portrayed an idealized alien species being introduced to predatory humans. Many viewers recounted leaving the theater feeling overwhelmed and aching to live in a paradisal world like Pandora, a fictitious lunar satellite of a gas giant Polyphemus (named after one of the giant, one-eyed cyclops) in the Alpha Centauri star system.
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| The view on Pandora in Avatar |
On the other hand, no one would want to live on LV223, the destination of the Prometheus crew, a moon circling a ringed gas giant resembling Saturn, because it is filled with biological weapons and creepy water serpents resembling those pulling Saturn's chariot.
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| From Prometheus, LV223 |
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| From Prometheus, Parasitic Hugger, winged serpent |
In Ridley Scott's reinterpretation of the Prometheus myth, the gods are depicted as alien progenitors who seed the earth with their own DNA, apparently returning to visit their offspring as depicted in Neolithic cave drawings that portray the giants literally pointing to a group of stars resembling the Pleiades.
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| From Prometheus, the First Engineer seeing the earth (L) and a cave painting found on the Isle of SKYE (R) |
Both films present Saturnine themes of a long lost Golden Age: one an idealized fantasy, the other a terrifying possibility, or aspect of reality.
The shadow aspect of the Golden Age is eloquently described by Tracy R. Twyman in her two-part article Regnum in Potentia: Saturn’s Kingdom Transformed Into the Golden Age. Saturn's unrule over the Golden Age was maintained by a dark secret: the sacrifice of his children.
"Saturn was thought of as the Lord of Unrule, and during this epoch, his subjects wanted for nothing. There was no money, nobody had to work for a living, and all things were held in common. It was a paradise in which everyone was free to do as they wished because there no lack, and therefore no need for involuntary compulsion through violent force. Or so it is implied. . . As I stated in Money Grows on the Tree of Knowledge, there is a moral dilemma implied in the story of Chronos/Saturn. Saturn is associated with liberty, and a Golden Age of peaceful anarchy. Yet we know that in order to maintain this form of rule, he killed his own children to prevent them from growing up to overtake him. The only reason the Golden Age was so golden was because Saturn’s children were paying the price of the sacrifice. . . . What these myths of the Golden Age, Garden of Eden, and other primordial paradises really point to is the concept of a cosmic center: a kingdom that doesn’t really exist, except in the Otherworld, in potentia. But it is said to be at the heart of our own existence, and its essence can be felt everywhere. It is a place where there is no time as we know it. Rather, all points of time exist simultaneously, and all space as well. This is why the people who live there are said to never grow old".
Avatar takes place in an otherworld that is poisonous to humans, and the only way to be part of the primordial paradise is to sacrifice one's human body for an 'atavar.' In this case human beings are the aliens playing god ironically bringing an end to the Golden Age of the giant, blue Na'vi as they destroy the planet by mining a black ore called unobtainium -- the magic mineral in potentia. Their imperialistic colonization plans are thwarted when a rebellious human, Jake, takes an interest in the natives while in his biotech avatar body. He undergoes several initiations and is finally accepted as a member of the Na'vi. After realizing that the colonists want to cut down Pandora's magical world tree, Jake rebels and joins the Na'vi in a battle against the militant humans. Although his human body is slain, his initiation has transformed him into a hybrid Na'vi -- a sort of Pandoran Prometheus. Avatar is famous for is use of the color blue, which, along with black, is associated with with Saturn. In particular, black represents lead, which through an alchemical process can be turned into gold, just as the Iron Age yields to the Gold Age.
Prometheus also takes place on an otherworld that is filled with poisonous pods of black goo and parasitic life; and its spaceship called Prometheus is literally sacrificed and stranded on the plagued Moon because of a deceitful android and its corporate maker. The black liquid is a biological weapon stored in what looks like funerary urns -- or Pandora's jar of plagues. Saturn is also the lord of death. As astrologer David Frawley indicates: Saturn is death that takes us beyond the limitations of mortal life, which is the gateway to the eternal.
When the black liquid comes in contact with humans, an alchemical process begins which ultimately generates many horrifying metamorphoses, including a chemical wedding (sexual union) that produces a homunculus, or hybrid child, who, through the sacrifice of a descendant of the progenitor alien Engineer, becomes the frightening nemesis of future Alien movies. Neither world is a habitable paradise that humans envision.
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| Constellation of Virgo, the Maiden |
Saturn's conjunction with the Moon in Virgo during both world movie premiers energetically imprints this longing for a lost Golden Age in the public mind. In a previous post, I described how Saturn's transit through the sign of the Virgin may herald the cyclic return of the Golden Age during the shift of the ages. In Brady's Book of Fixed Stars, Bernadette Brady suggests that the Virgin constellation refers to an ancient sky goddess who may have been part of the original six zodiac constellation when Virgo was the sign presiding over the spring equinox 13,000 years ago. The Golden Age was said to have ended when this goddess no longer governed the spring. This shift of pole star gave rise to the belief that the goddess left the earth in distress after the war of the gods (Titanomachy), which also lead to the decline of the behavior of man in the darkening ages; but as the goddess also ruled cycles of all kinds, there is still a promise of her return to rule again during the next Golden Age. Thus Virgo represents the Mother Goddess worshiped under various names by different cultures: Eve, Ishtar, Demeter, Hecate, Astraea, Diana, Cybele, Isis, and the Virgin Mary. All are representations of the Great Mother in some form. As we conclude the Age of Pisces, which is opposite sign of Virgo, and enter the Age of Aquarius (some say in 400+ years), the water/light bearer, we are literally heading back towards the Goddess. Aquarius is ruled by Saturn and its water bearer is often compared to Prometheus.
In the Modern Age the Goddess reveals herself in secular art and architecture often designed by Freemasons. In fact the constellation of Virgo figures prominently in countless artistic references throughout the architecture, paintings, statuary, and facades of Washington, D.C. (for more see David Ovason's The Secret Architecture of Our Nation’s Capital (1999)).
Perhaps the most famous Virgo symbol in America is the light-bearing statue of Liberty, or Libertas, the goddess of freedom from slavery, oppression, and tyranny in ancient Rome, which also sounds like a female aspect of Saturn. Like the flame of Prometheus, Liberty's torch symbolizes enlightenment.
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| Mother Goddess, Virgo, Libertas, Columba and Isis standing on a pentagram |
The eternal flame is also used to commemorate a person (such as Princess Diana or JFK), an event of national significance, a memorial to unknown soldiers, or to serve as a reminder of commitment to a common goal such as international peace.
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| The torch marks Diana's (the Moon Mother Goddess) Memorial in Paris above the site of fatal accident. It is mounted on Venus' pentagram, notice the Osirian Eiffel Tower in the background |
Perhaps the most readily recognized eternal flame is the Olympic Torch which is ignited several months before the Olympic Games in Greece. Eleven women representing the Vestal Virgins perform a ceremony in which the torch is kindled by the light of the Sun.
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| The Lighting of the 2012 Olympic torch by virgin devotees of the Mother Goddess |
A worldwide Torch Relay ends on the day of the opening ceremony in the stadium of the Games when the Olympic flame is lit. This flame continues to burn throughout the Olympics and is extinguished on the day of the closing ceremony. Although it is generally believed that this ritual stemmed from ancient Olympic ceremonies, it is actually a modern invention. The first relaying of the Olympic torch was held at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, during the Nazi Regime. It is an homage to Prometheus who stole fire from the gods and gave it to humanity. The act of carrying the Promethean torch is symbolic of man’s awareness of his own divine spark and represents his aspiration to become one of the gods. During the Olympics, winning athletes are not only given medals but also wreaths/crowns of olive leaves -- although some accounts say laurel which was only used for the gods. The global attention to the modern Olympic games focuses the energy of billions of people on these rituals that raise humans to the status of gods.
This year the torch ceremony was initiated on May 10, 2012 as Venus was beginning to station at the 29th, or anarectic, degree of Taurus. The anaretic degree is the last degree of a zodiacal sign. It is associated with completion and initiations, as well as an urgent need to correctly utilize the energy of what ever planet is at that degree. Eight days later the torch arrived in Cornwall, England for the relay across the British Isles, commencing just two days after Saturn retrograded back into Virgo, also at the anarectic 29th degree of Virgo.
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| Princess Anne, the daughter of the Queen, carries the Olympic Torch and is the President of British Olympic Association |
Moreover the Torch Relay will visit Buckingham palace the day before the opening ceremonies on July 26, 2012. Britain's newly 'jubileed' Queen Elizabeth will open the 2012 Olympics on July 27, 2012 by lighting a ceremonial cauldron under a Moon-Saturn conjunction in Virgo. Quite a week of ceremonies.
Saturn and Venus will continue to trine in late degrees through July 31, 2012 when Venus enters Gemini followed by Saturn's entrance into Libra on August 4, 2012 just days after the opening ceremonies of the XXX Olymic Games. This is a period when some conspiracy theorists suggest a false flag event may occur setting the stage for a new messianic figure to come save the day -- that is if aliens don't land during the Opening Ceremony.
Prometheus: Protagonist/Antagonist
So the release of Prometheus during the same time period as the Olympic Torch Relay and Queen's (of Heaven) Jubilee suggests that our collective minds are being activated by these light bearing global ceremonies. By looking more closely at two of the film's main characters, Elizabeth (the same name as the Queen) Shaw and David, we may get a glimpse of how the path to the Golden Age may unfold -- at least the shadow side.
Elizabeth Shaw, played by Noomi Rapace (who coincidently also played "Lisbeth" in the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy) is a young archaeologist who discovers a cave painting on the Scottish Isle of Skye that she believes is an "invitation" to find our extraterrestrial ancestors. Notice her eye -- her left eye -- which is so often used to signify an initiation into the mysteries (click here for more). Symbolically derived from the Egyptian Eye of Horus, images of the left eye corresponds to the moon or divine feminine, while images of right eye corresponds to the sun or divine male. Shaw is an idealistic "believer" who wears a cross bearing a remarkable resemblance to an Egyptian ankh, or Venus, and signaling that she is a light bearer -- a Venus/Isis archetype. Even the name Elizabeth derives from Hebrew meaning "I am God's daughter" or "God's promise."
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| Elizabeth Shaw, a modern Isis shining the light of discovery in the dark caves of the Isle of Skye |
She and her husband Charlie (as in Prince Charles?) Holloway convince the mysterious CEO of the Weyland Corporation, Peter Weyland, to fund the creation of the spaceship Prometheus and its excursion that will follow this ancient sky map to the distant moon LV-223. During the two-year, 35-light year journey to LV223, which is strangely described as half a billion miles from Earth by Captain Vickers (a huge mathematical error making it land more in the vicinity of Saturn), the 17 (star card) member crew is preserved in stasis and watched over by Weyland's android, David. He is particularly interested in Elizabeth.
While the crew is in stasis, David taps into Elizabeth's life support system to watch over her childhood dreams of her father which reveals the source of her underlying faith: the death of her mother and her belief in a spiritual afterlife symbolized by the ankh-like cross necklace that she wears.
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| Elizabeth and Charlie observing Elizabeth's dreams |
Although David associates his creator, Peter Weyland, as his father, he has no mother figure and perhaps relates to Elizabeth in this way. And there has been much speculation that David develops feelings for Elizabeth as writer Damon Lindelof hints: He's a strange robot that has a curious crush on a human being, and when Weyland is eliminated, I think he is genuinely interested in what she's interested in.
David is also obsessed with the movie Lawrence of Arabia, even repeatedly quoting Lawrence's famous line of advice: the trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts in reference to putting out the flame with his bare finger. In what might be described as an anti-Promethean gesture, David attempts to put out the light of the crew with his finger when he infects Shaw's husband Charlie with the black goo.
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| David's finger with black goo and Weyland logo, a winged W |
David even resembles Peter O'Toole's Lawrence and appropriates his look and mannerisms. And, like Lawrence, he is a man/android entering a world that he doesn't understand, learning to become like his creators, but suffering the indignities of caring for his flawed makers and realizing that he is superior to them.
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| Notice the winged Weyland logo above David's name tag that looks more like the word Druid |
The name David comes from Mesopotamia and is used in Hebrew to mean "beloved." It is also the name of the first King of Israel, who was chosen by God. Biblical tradition declares that only a direct descendant of David will be the Messiah and thus connects the Messiah with royal bloodlines of the House of David. David is remembered as being a great king, and one of his most remarkable feats was beheading Goliath as a child.
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| Caravaggio, David and Goliath |
Unfortunately for the android David, a giant Engineer turns the table and rips his head off -- perhaps because David lacked the faith and blessing of his namesake. Like the Hindu demon Swarbhanu, David is separated into immortal head (Rahu) and body (Ketu). We see the severed head and torn wiring of the android lying on the ground, still talking and thinking.
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| David's severed head |
Although I have not seen the original Alien, I have read that this decapitation is a nod to it foreshadowing of the fates of Ash and Bishop.
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Like David, Ash is an android plant who is acting on secret orders of the Weyland Corporation to Bring back alien life form. Crew expendable. And just as Alien's Nostromo crew reactivates Ash's decapitated head to learn the truth about the creature, the Prometheus crew gruesomely activates the decapitated head of a long-dead Engineer which sputters and groans like a hideous monster. Elizabeth must destroy it in a decontamination container.
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It seems that Elizabeth must have a thing for severed heads, perhaps because her namesake is the mother of John the Baptist, who was also famously beheaded. There were even Gnostic sects that were said to worship the head of John the Baptist. In fact the Knights Templar were falsely accused and charged of heresy by the Catholic Church of worshiping a severed talking head of John the Baptist/Baphomet. Helmets, decapitation and severed heads are part of a long tradition in sci-fi giving a nod to the Templar/Masonic traditions of NASA whose secret knowledge seems to include the understanding that our ancestors came from the stars (for more see John the Baptist in Space) as evidenced in many of the names of its space programs: ISiS, Mercury, Apollo, Gemini etc.
Both the Promethean and Biblical Elizabeths share another interesting trait: they were barren and miraculously became impregnated by their husbands -- one by the blessings of God and the other by black goo. Elizabeth Shaw became pregnant by her husband Charlie who was infected by the black goo that David had laced into his champagne. The alien mutation gestated at a such a rapid rate that Elizabeth had to perform her own abortion, a Caesarian section in an automated medical pod. She is horrified to see that her offspring is a squirming alien squid which she decontaminates and appears to destroy. But those alien genes are tough, and it grows to massive proportions attacking the last Engineer, who is then transformed into the all too familiar alien of the original movie. Elizabeth's chemical wedding with Charlie produces a mutant offspring that kill her Titan forefather and becomes a new alien Queen.
Even after David betrays her and the rest of the crew, Elizabeth recovers his animated remains and believes him when he says that he can activate another Engineer ship so they can return home. But Elizabeth has other things in mind: she plans travel to the Titan's home planet to find out why they wanted to destroy mankind. Ah, I can't wait for the sequel!! Will Elizabeth challenge the progenitor gods? Her disillusionment certainly reflects the disappointment that the Mother Goddess must have felt with the decline of the Golden Age. Could Elizabeth represent the return of the Mother Goddess battling against the male-dominated, Promethean progenitor gods?
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| Prometheus, Elizabeth Shaw |
And how does this relate to all the synchronous events? Let's take one last look at visionary art and poet William Blake's illustration from Jerusalem: the Great Emanation of Albion. Perhaps a few heads will roll at the dawn of the Golden Age.
JAI MA!!!
Namaste!
Namaste!
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