Blade Runner: Indepth Esoteric Analysis

May 15, 2012 3 Comments

German Film Poster

Highest Levels of Illuminism Revealed

By: Jay

In Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, we are presented with a prescient, dystopian future based on Phillip K. Dick’s novella, “Do Android’s Dream of Electric Sheep?” We will see that this film is full of not only accurate predictions of the future’s general landscape, but is also suffused with occult imagery and deep symbolic themes, as well as raising crucial moral and social issues.  As I will argue, the film operates on several levels: as the immediate story itself, the predictive future level with social critiques, the level of covert operations and mind control, and the deepest level, that of myths, archetypes, and alchemical occult initiatory transformation.  All these levels must be integrated to grasp the full import of the film as Ridley Scott conveys it.  The deepest level is what holds the other levels together in coherence and meaning.

As the film begins, the viewer is shown the 2020 landscape of Los Angeles, and then an eye viewing the landscape.  The eye represents the viewer, and just as I explained in my analysis of Eyes Wide Shut, the viewing of the film itself will constitute an initiatory experience.  The viewer is going to be shown the elite plan, yet the eyes of most will remain shut.  For the masses, there is no ability to make deeper level connections and associations between ideas, symbols and archetypes.  For the viewer who has eyes to see, they are seeing the future itself, as well as the worldview of the ruling class.  In fact, Blade Runner ranks with Eyes Wide Shut as one of the most explicit revelations of the method of the ruling oligarchs.  My interpretation of this is confirmed by the fact that the film doesn’t show us whose eye we see.  In fact, the reflection in the eye shows the scene the viewer just saw of the L.A. cityscape.

It is significant that we are presented with two shots of the eye and then the cut to the Tyrell corporation’s ziggurat/pyramid shape. Immediately we are presented with Egyptian symbology, as well as the notions of the so-called “Illuminati.” The all-seeing eye is flashed in between images of the exalted pyramid in order to initiate the viewer into who is running things.  This is the connection of imagery and meaning that most are not able to make. 

We are given hints as well that perhaps this is an ancient technology of dominance – the “technology of the gods.” In reality, the technology of the gods meme refers to the elite perspective of themselves and their “magickal” worldview: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, as Arthur C. Clarke’s third law says.  The “god” is the one who controls the genetic engineering and artificial intelligence.  The cap of the pyramid is empty because the head of the system is secret.  It’s a shadow corporate government, where the eye floats above the pyramid itself.  The eye is thus above and transcends the externalization of the hierarchy on earth. 

Original DARPA “TIA” logo, echoing the Tyrell Corporation.

When the viewer approaches the pyramid in the open scene, it is engulfed in golden sunlight, conjuring up notions of Ra and Egypt.  The mysteries of Egypt center around the godlike philosopher king (Pharoah), as the material manifestation of Atum Ra, mirroring the spiritual hierarchy on the spiritual plane.  In this dystopian future, the Egyptian scheme is replaced by a corporate system.  The light is enlightening the viewer, taking him along for the ride in the flying car to the top of the pyramid.  In other words, for those that can see, you are about to see what they see. Read more of this post

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Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Dostoyevsky Versus the Enlightenment Mythos

March 13, 2012 2 Comments

"Ve proclaim ze death of ze Enlightenment!"

By: Jay

      In the course of what is now titled “Continental Philosophy,” three figures stand out as preeminent thinkers able to probe the innermost depths of the human psyche in a way previously unknown since perhaps Shakespeare: Soren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche and Fyodor Dostoyevsky.   These three were more or less contemporaries, and all shared a similar fascinating interest—that of tearing down the ideological idols of their day, and in particular, the facade the individual post-Enlightenment “modern man” conceived himself to be.  While these men certainly had differing worldviews and would likely have debated such grand topics as the precise meaning of God and man’s relation to Him in the universe, they shared a similar distaste for hypocrisy, lies and falsehood, and made it partly their authorial iconoclastic goal to unmask such veils.

     Francis Bacon had made it his goal as an early Enlightenment luminary to tear down what he perceived to be idols in his Novum Organon—idols of the tribe, cave, marketplace and theater.  Idols of the tribe meant the destruction of abstracted social ideals foisted upon reality; idols of the cave referred to  myopic interpretations of reality according to a particular fancy of some individual academic; idols of the marketplace refers to the misappropriation of word and thing, assigning an undue identification between the two, assuming that out talking an opponent has then caused the reality of the topic under discussion to actually exist as such; and idols of the theater, where ideas are erected on a false presupposition of theology or metaphysical speculation, becoming ensconced in the public discourse.1 This tractate encompasses the impetus of the Enlightenment and its obsession with what Rene Guenon called the “reign of quantity.” Everything is measured and classified according to some quantitative stricture of man’s reason.  Scientific knowledge, or more specifically, scientism, becomes the dominant paradigm by which all things are measured, be it religion, politics, economics and the marketplace, all things are in potentia capable of rational formalization and, like a big algorithm, all of humanity’s ills simply await the solution of the academy and its laboratory calculators.  Read more of this post

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Kierkegaard’s Existential Despair and Western Dialectics

January 24, 2012 2 Comments

A religion identified as a sickness, where despair is blessedness? I'll pass.

By: Jay

In The Sickness Unto Death, Soren Kierkegaard works within the scope of an Augustinian tripartite view of man, arguing that man’s existential dilemma is one of despair. Augustine is relevant, since he also underwent his own existential crisis in the famed “tolle lege” incident, in which his world of licentious pleasures came tumbling down as he realized the finitude and emptiness of his own being. Ever since, the West has been in a dialectical battle with itself, as philosophy works out this same tension present within each man

A man confronts himself, as Kierkegaard says, the essential self is the transcendence of the self as related to itself. This self is spirit, and it’s important to notice the correction Kierkegaard thinks he is rendering to Hegel. For Hegel., the universal is the real, and the ideal alone is real. Where Kant erected a boundary between the individual mind and the noumenal realm, Hegel sought to tear down that divide by making the ideal and the ideal alone, real. This rationalist project is rejected by Kierkegaard, and turned on its head.

The actual universal confronted by man is death, and man’s confrontation with death demonstrates to the individual his own finitude. Finitude and the infinite eternality of death or the next life, is thus a dialectical struggle for man. In The Sickness, the self is spirit, and appears to be modelled after the Augustinian conception of the trinitarian analogue of man’s being, which is based on the relational definition of the divine persons. In that Augustinian and Thomistic scheme, Person is relation, but for Kierkegaard, the true self is that which transcends the dialectic of self in relation to itself, which is held captive by the determination of despair, occasioned by an outside force being allowed to determine the self.

This will clearly lay the ground for Sartre’s distinction between being in itself and being for itself, where the individual is condemned to be free, and must not hide behind various collectivist masks and facade identities, exteriorly determined. Despair is the means by which one reaches this conversion, if you will. Part of the difficulty here is the desire for man to escape from a philosophy in which he is determined, and his own being is conceived of as inherently evil. This notion derives from Manichaeanism, and characterizes the belief system of the younger Augustine, prior to his conversion to Catholicism. Read more of this post

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Blood Meridian as Gnostic Tirade: A Response to Harold Bloom and Leo Daugherty

December 9, 2011 2 Comments

Cormac McCarthy's "Blood Meridian"

  

By: Jay

     Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian is considered by many critics to be one of the best novels of the last century, ranked by many with Moby Dick and Absalom! Absalom!, while some have called McCarthy the heir apparent to William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor.  Blood Meridian is certainly not your average book, and as such, many find it difficult and inaccessible.  As Harold Bloom notes, it is a modern great, and in may respects resembles Homer or Dante.   However, Blood Meridian is also more than a novel: it is a statement about many things, the most crucial of which is McCarthy’s gnostic tirade against life as it is.

     Critic Leo Daugherty’s thesis is thus only partially correct: that the novel is a “gnostic tragedy,” and this is precisely what endows the novel with its elevated style and inaccessibility.  Daugherty’s thesis is too weak: to those steeped in the theological discourse of the early patristic period, including the polemical tracts of the early fathers such as Irenaeus of Lyon, it is quite clear that Blood Meridian is brimming with gnostic themes and ideas on virtually every page, and is fact is a gnostic polemical tirade.  Daugherty is correct about it being gnostic. However, there are many elements he misses and misinterprets.  My purpose is to respond to his statements, as well to Bloom’s claim that it is incorrect to see the Judge as a gnostic figure or archon, but rather that he should be cast as more of an enigma. Bloom claims:

     The citations and references to the work of Jacob Böhme, who is, after all, a very specific type of Kabbalistic Gnostic… I think you would have to say that they’re something of an evasion of the themes in Blood Meridian. McCarthy knows exactly what Gnosticism is, and he could have made Judge Holden into an explicitly Gnostic figure if he’d wanted to. He wants to keep Judge Holden completely inexplicable. Saying that he is a sort of Gnostic demiurge is too facile for McCarthy’s portrayal of him.[1] Read more of this post

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Plato, Aristotle, Egypt and the Structure of Reality

December 3, 2011 6 Comments

Plato Vs. Aristotle

Aristotle, Plato, Egypt and the Structure of Reality

Immanuel Kant wrote at the close of his Critique of Pure Reason as follows:

In respect of the origin of the modes of ‘knowledge through pure reason’, the question is as to whether they are derived from experience, or whether in independence of ex-experience they have their origin in reason. Aristotle may be regarded as the chief of the empiricists, and Plato as the chief of the noologists. Locke, who in modern times followed Aristotle, and Leibniz, who followed Plato (although in con-considerable disagreement with his mystical system), have not been able to bring this conflict to any definitive conclusion. However we may regard Epicurus, he was at least much more consistent in this sensual system than Aristotle and Locke, inasmuch as he never sought to pass by inference beyond the limits of experience.1

In that paragraph Kant summed up the history of the division of philosophy into two camps with rival focii: the empirical tradition, descending loosely from Aristotle, emphasizing the immediate present, and the Platonic “noology,” stressing the permanence and eternality of the transcendent beyond, mirrored in the mind itself, which reflects the world’s own inherent, ideal structure.

However, which of these two thinkers, if either, is more correct? Is it possible to posit an external, essential structure to the world that supersedes the immediate, empirical experience?  How would such a realm be demonstrated?  The nature of these questions certainly extends beyond the scope of this paper, yet what I will claim is that Plato was more correct that Aristotle.  In fact, though Aristotle’s pioneering work in ethics, logic, politics and aesthetics cannot be overlooked, some of Aristotle’s own insights actually work to make the case for the claims of Plato, as I will argue.  This becomes particularly apparent when one considers the question of the infinity of God and numbers, which Plato and the Pythagoreans appear to have inherited from Egyptian Memphite and Hermetic traditions.  Interestingly, modern mathematical theorists and quantum physicists are coming to the very same conclusions the ancient Egyptians posited: that reality is, at base, much more than is visibly present, including higher and lower dimensions, as well as possibly a base, inherent mathematical essentialism behind the world we experience.  In effect, this means Aristotle’s empirical left turn from the Platonic Academy was in error.

Aristotle’s empiricism becomes most problematic when dealing with mathematical entities.  Aristotle argues against mathematical objects having a separate existence as Plato claimed, as follows: Read more of this post

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Weird Psyience – Conspiracy, Totalitarianism and Propaganda

November 6, 2011 3 Comments

"The Origins of Totalitarianism" by: Hannah Arendt

By: Jay

Most people do not think of “science” as something coming under the auspices of propaganda and manipulation.  However, as Hannah Arendt shows in her masterful work, The Origins of Totalitarianism, the philosopher highlights several examples from Soviet and Nazi propaganda use of “science.”  This is not to say there is no science, but rather that the given corridors of power are only going to support the “science” that supports the present regime itself.  Thus, race was outlawed in the Soviet Union, and any facts that contradicted the Nazi ideology, such as the downfall of the Reich, were illegal in Nazism.  Psychology and advertising become tools of the totalitarian scheme to further the Gospel of the regime – the deification of the race, or the classless utopia the dialectical material processes of historical forces have been working towards.  Both ideologies include an eschatology and a promise of salvation, and as such function like Roman Catholicism, with an infallible leader.

Conspiracy, in these systems, becomes the ideology of the enemy.  Arendt mentions the Nazis using the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, as well as the Bolsheviks using the conspiracy of the 300 ruling families, the conspiracy of the MI5/6/CIA controlling all world events, etc.  The adopting of the conspiracies need not be perfectly consistent, either, so long as they have an explanatory power that is useful for the immediate time, since the masses have little memory of the past, and it need not matter if the prevailing conspiracy of a decade earlier is not consistent with the present conspiracy.  For example, consider the threat of the Soviets of the Cold War, which magically disappeared and morphed into the threat of international terrorism.  Where were the Jihadis before they were radicalized under Carter’s administration?  I thought the Jihad went back to Mohammed himself.  Similarly, where did all the Soviets go?  Did they magically all adopt global capitalism after the “wall fell”?

In reality, as Arendt’s chapter on propaganda shows, all of these threats are manufactured, controlled, created, guided, or allowed to have some autonomy, within a certain predetermined sphere.   This is the game of global power blocs, and mass psychological warfare and the control of “conspiracy theories” is crucial.  The government and any given regime is not opposed to conspiracy theories – in fact, governments thrive from paranoia.   What is key is causing the masses to accept a certain propagandized conspiracy theory.   At present, global terrorism is the poster child.  And the masses still largely buy into this narrative.  History, then, must be controlled by the regime, and no errors or mistakes can be admitted, beyond a feigned incompetence of some patsy.  In fact, the historians, academics, and “scientists” all magically seem to tote the line, generally, of the regime in power.   When global finance capital becomes the enshrined global power, the academic sectors magically support the Gospel of the system’s salvation and prosperity, unless they are part of the controlled opposition, which is crucial in any empire.  Read more of this post

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Some Problems for the Ontological Argument: Metaphysical, Epistemic and Theological

May 7, 2011 5 Comments

 

The great chain of being.

By: Jay

(c) copyright 

The ontological argument of Anselm of Canterbury has long since captivated the minds of many philosophers and apologists. Not long after Anselm published his Proslogion, his devotional apologetic was criticized by Gaunilo, yet Anselm’s argument was taken up by many of the West’s most prominent thinkers, such as Descartes and Leibniz, both giving their own versions. One of the strongest arguments against Anselm would be Immanuel Kant’s, who centered his objection around the notion that “being” is not a predicate.1 The purpose of this paper will be to analyze other problems, particularly theological, metaphysical and epistemological problems in the classical Anselmian formulation.

Anselm’s argument simply stated is as follows:

And certainly this being so truly exists that it cannot even be thought not to exist. For something can be thought to exist that cannot be thought not to exist, and this is greater than that which cannot be thought not to exist. Hence, if that-than-which-nothing-greater-can-be-thought can be thought not to exist, then that-than-which-nothing-greater-can-be-thought is not the same as that-than-which-nothing-greater-can-be-thought, which is absurd. Something-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought exists so truly then, that it cannot be even thought not to exist. And you, Lord our God, are this being.2

 

Plantinga gives the form of the argument as follows, arguing it is best formulated as a reductio ad absurdum argument:

 

  1. God exists in the understanding, but not in reality. (assumption for reductio)

  2. Existence in reality is greater than existence in the understanding alone. (premise)

  3. A being having all of God’s properties plus existence in reality can be conceived. (premise)

  4. A being having all of God’s properties plus existence in reality is greater than God. (from 1 and 2)

  5. A being greater than God cannot be conceived. (3,4)

  6. It is false that a being greater than God can be conceived. (by definition of ‘God.’)

  7. Hence it is false that God exists in the understanding but not in reality. (1-6 reductio ad absurdum).3 Read more of this post

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Tron Legacy: Esoteric Analysis

January 9, 2011 9 Comments

Notice the pyramidal structure of the black on bottom and top, from which light emanates. This symbolizes the gnostic version of as above, so below - dualism. Its "Just a Game" because its an illusory world.

By: Jay

I hate to always harp on gnosticism, but it’s undeniably the recurrent theme of most sci fi and fantasy/cult films. Gnosticism is the ancient perennial tradition that descends from Egypt and (possibly) older civilizations. In its modern form, it comes to us from the Nag Hammadi documents recently discovered, whose tradition was passed down in the secret societies and occult orders, of which Freemasonry is a good example. I am not saying that Freemasonry is actually a lineage from Egypt, but that there is a similarity of doctrine that has come down through the ages. 

By the first century, the gnostic traditions flourished, rivalling and challenging other sects, becoming a force of its own. To put it simply, gnosticism posits that the present creation is a subordinate, evil one, wherein evil is given a substantial existence as the created order itself. Religions such as Manichaeanism are perfect examples of this trend, where a dualism is sometimes posited between a “good” God who is far away and unknown, identified with thought or light, and an evil deity or demiurge, identified as the Creator of this world. In the time of the rise of Christianity in the first three centuries of the Church, the gnostics were the chief opponents of the God presented in the Law and prophets of the Israelites, and charged God with Himself being evil.  Texts such as the Hypostasis of the Archons and The Gospel of Thomas are prime examples.

The gnostics instead proffered that “Jesus” was thus a revolutionary reformer who tossed away all traditional concepts of Jewish theology, and brought in the new gnosis, or knowledge – the Gospel of salvation through enlightenment. It is to such patristic commentators like Irenaeus of Lyon and Tertullian of Carthage that we get an indepth glimpse into 2nd century gnosticism, from figures like Marcion.  But gnosticism is not just a reaction against the God of the Bible, it also shares many commonalities with ancient eastern religions like Hinduism and Buddhism, and thus exemplifies syncretism.  Themes such as pantheism and/or dualism, many gradations of archons, or gods or avatars that rule this kosmos, etc., all recur in gnosticism. In this regard, gnosticism is in many ways the inheritor of the ancient pagan religions, and particularly Egypt.  So with that said, we can now analyze the kind of symbolic scheme that is put forth as an image of our world as presented in Tron Legacy.  

Daft Punk, who did the soundtrack and appears in the film, performs here atop the pyramid.

Central to gnosticism is the theme of redemption or salvation from this world through special knowledge, which constitutes the “gnosis.” Generally, this is knowledge that has been lost, and must be recovered, often symbolized in literature or film by some magical object or memory, etc. In Tron, Flynn’s (Jeff Bridges) son, Sam, must “save” his father from the “grid,” or matrix, where he has become enslaved, having more or less forgotten his family in the real world. Sam, of course brings to mind “Sammael,” another name for Satan in the biblical tradition, and this makes sense, given that Tron presents Sam Flynn as the savior of the feminine archetype, “Quorra.”  This also mirrors gnostic themes, where the feminine principle, the Pistis Sophia is one of the archons of gnostic salvation.  Wikimedia notes of Quorra:

Quorra, the Pistis Sophia, revealer of mysteries and the psyche of the (cpu) world

“Prior to the conflict between the Basics and ISOs, Quorra was friends with Radia. She witnessed Clu’s betrayal when he attempted to kill Tron and Flynn, and when Clu declared war, she – with the help of a prototype security program named System Monitor – attempted to warn Radia and the ISO’s about him as well as combat the viral program Abraxas.” Read more of this post

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Transcendental Worldview/System Analysis: A Materialist Test Case

December 9, 2010 5 Comments

Presuppositional Pillars

An Example from Linguistics

By: Jay

Several recent discussions I’ve had demonstrate the importance of thinking in terms of a worldview, which amounts to ultimately adopting transcendental argumentation. This is relevant, not only for apologetics and arguing for God’s existence, but for analysis in general, especially as it applies to analyzing systems of thought, be it some given community’s modus operandi or a religious system, etc. This is precisely the revolution transcendental argumentation brought, but which has largely gone unnoticed. There are many reasons for this. In the numerous debates I’ve had with thinkers, one can often detect this process, even when the opponent cannot. Once one is aware of worldview thinking and transcendental argumentation, it is truly a paradigm shift in the approach to rational discourse, be it some issue of metaphysics or morals.

What we can trace out from this is that persons operate on the basis of their presuppositions. More often than not, individuals are inconsistent with their operating principles, and hold to conflicting positions. When dealing with more intelligent individuals, this tendency is certainly decreased, yet more often than not it is still a prevalent tendency.  For example, we may look at a person who claims to be a hardcore, reductionist materialist. Irrespective of the goal of argumentation involved in engaging or analyzing this person, one can trace out the kind of conclusions they ought to come to, given their pre-commitments. Thus, for an illustrative example, a reductionist materialist will often make the universal claim that “all that exists is matter.”  This is problematic on numerous levels, not merely that it attempts to show what it cannot do in its own system. But thinking of this view as a totality system is what is key.  In other words, we trace out all the multitude implications of what would follow from adopting the foundational precondition that this person believes to be “rational.”

First of all, we consider the claim itself – that all that exists is purely material. On the first level of analysis, we can consider whether this question is possible to demonstrate, since generally those who advocate such a notion will also claim they adhere to the “scientific method.”  The scientific method, however, gives no possibility of ever demonstrating such a universal claim. One would have to demonstrate perceptual knowledge of every possible location in the universe, and further show that each locale is purely material. This is of course, impossible, but even if it were, it would not follow from some mind doing this that some locale not presently under examination does not contain something immaterial. It is impossible to demonstrate a universal negative. But rarely would any materialist go to such extremes, though I have seen some otherwise highly intelligent people jump to absurd and irrational conclusions in such worldview analyses. What usually occurs at this point is that the person concedes that his view is a hypothesis, and it is the most rational. It becomes an agnostic view.  A view, however, which admits that it’s most foundational premise is itself doubtful begins to give rise to bigger and bigger problems. Read more of this post

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Symbolic and Platonic Usage of the Mirror in Ben Johnson and George Herbert

December 8, 2010 2 Comments

Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who's the mostest Platonist of them all?

 By: Jay (c) copyright, all rights reserved.

     The significance of the mirror as an actual object and its usage a symbolic metaphor in literature is found in several English Renaissance era poems. The view of the mirror following upon the Renaissance and its philosophical progenitors, however, continued to have its somewhat mystical connotations in writers.  Viewed in the ancient world as a kind of quasi-magical object, a portal to another world, and a kind of picture the mind itself, in the Renaissance it retained this association through its conceptual usage in the Platonic tradition. This paper will focus on analyzing the different usages of the mirror in poems by Ben Johnson and George Herbert.

     Poet and playwright Ben Johnson (1572-1637) utilizes a fascinating portrayal of the mirror in his poem “XIII Epistle to Lady Katherine Aubigny” from the collection The Forest, published around 1616. Johnson lived in the house of Lady Aubigny, her husband Lord Aubigny being a patron of Johnson’s. In the “XIII Epistle,” Johnson turns the mirror into an image of the poem itself. The poem is lengthy, so the following will be the relevant sections. He writes in praise of Lady Katherine:

Yourself but told unto yourself, and see
In my character what your features be,
You will not from the paper slightly pass:
No lady, but at some time loves her glass.
And this shall be no false one, but as much
Remov’d, as you from need to have it such.
Look then, and see your self — I will not say		  
Your beauty, for you see that every day;
And so do many more:  all which can call
It perfect, proper, pure, and natural,
Not taken up o’ the doctors, but as well
As I, can say and see it doth excel;
That asks but to be censured by the eyes:
And in those outward forms, all fools are wise.[1]		  

 

     Johnson describes the “self” as the subject of the poem, and that just as a mirror presents the self to a person, so his poem itself will become a mirror. However, for Johnson, as a mirror is useful for presenting the outward form of the body, his poem will be a mirror for the real form of Lady Katherine, which is her virtue. Already we have somewhat Platonic notions, which will become clearer as we move on, and which were in vogue in the Renaissance writers’ rediscovery of the classical Greek tradition, especially the Platonic and Neo-platonic corpus.[2] Read more of this post

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