A kind of Totenkopf, or “death’s head.”
Panspermiatic Cinematic
By: Jay
Prometheus was the 2012 presumed blockbuster prequel to Ridley Scott’s famous
Alien
series. While reviews were slightly on the positive side, many found
the film to be a rehash of everything seen in the original
Alien film, now with overdone CGI.
Prometheus
was a successful money-maker globally, while falling stagnant in
domestic sales, yet it simultaneously left many film goers clueless as
to the meaning of the flick they spent $12 watching. Enter
JaysAnalysis: Underneath all these exoteric facts of aliens and cliche
horror gags, a darker esoteric plot can be seen, similar to
the message of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. We will discover that
Prometheus
offers us yet another example of the new mythology the Hollywood
industrial espionage complex intends to propagate to replace the Western
religious tradition(s).
So what is
Prometheus about? Daddy Issues – but not just familial and psychological daddy issues,
esoteric
daddy issues! Let’s break it down. In the opening sequence we see earth
in development in an ancient, closer to a Paradisical stage, with no
humans yet on the scene. Rather than a biblical narrative of Eden or
the fall of Adam, an alien being known as an “engineer” is seen drinking
what we later learn is an advanced bio-weapon. As the nordic-featured
alien disintegrates, his carcass tumbles off a cliff into a waterfall,
where his DNA mysteriously reassembles into a new living form (which
will be man). As Darwinian natural selection emerges later in the film,
one may safely surmise the sequence is intended to be an alternative
explanation to human origins, much like the so-called “scientific” (read
mythological) theory of
panspermia of Kelvin, Hoyle, Hawking and Crick.
35,000 years later, a team of scientists discovers a series of cave
paintings on the Isle of Skye, Scotland, that portray a “giant” pointing
to a star system which happens to predate the same image found on
numerous other
steles from Babylonian, Egyptian and Mesopotamian antiquity. Perceptive readers will immediately recall the purported
Stele of Revealing through which Aleister Crowley claimed to have received revelation of his Thelemic religion of our era, the new
aeon of Horus. In this view of history, there are roughly delineated ages (or
aeons)
that correspond to human development, the first era corresponding to
Isis and goddess worship in antiquity, the second to Osiris, for the
patriarchal worship of a self-sacrificial masculine Deity of the Middle
Ages, and Horus, the crowned and conquering child of our age, where
supposedly individual man comes to self-realization and
self-actualization. This fact is particularly relevant to the film
because Prometheus is also the ancient myth of the Titan who challenged
father Zeus and stole the fire of the gods, bringing it down to mankind.
In the film, the “Prometheus” is the name of the ship that takes the
Weyland Corporation’s exploration team to the distant planet the alien
engineers appear to have arrived from. Among the crew, however, only
Dr. Shaw (Noomi Rapace), Dr. Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) and the
hidden Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce) are actual believers in the theory of
the ancient alien engineers, and only Dr. Shaw is a Christian.
The Stele of Ankh-ef-en-Khonsu
As is the norm with the Weyland Corporation, an AI humanoid is also
aboard to safeguard company interests – the Mao-garbed, T.E.
Lawrence/Peter O’Toole obsessed “David” (Michael Fassbender). It is
interesting that David is obsessed, or programmed to be obsessed, with
T.E. Lawrence and/or the film
Lawrence of Arabia, who was a
British secret agent responsible for securing Imperial interests in the
Middle East, particularly with the Saudis. Already, we have four
curious references to Nordic/Aryan elements, with
“Weyland” being an old Nordic poem about a prince of the elves, David as a nordic-featured robot, and the engineers as something akin to a
“Great White Brotherhood” of “secret chiefs” and alien visitors,
reminiscent of the the theosophic fables of Madame Blavatsky, and the
origin of man, or the “root race,” from the Isle of Skye, Scotland.
Ridley Scott’s
Blade Runner universe
also features this same “Aryan” theme with Roy Batty, as well as corporate socialism destined to steer our future. This suggests an influence of theosophic sources for the mythology of the
Alien
series, as well as many more occult ideas, as we shall see. Consider
the image of David with the two skulls, or “death’s heads,” as heads
appear constantly in the film, both as plot devices and symbolic
signposts. Amongst the Nazi S.S, the
Totenkopf held a special significance as a the bringer of death.
Personified death is even mentioned several times in the film, as we
discover the planet is not actually the alien home world, but a
terraformed weapons laboratory where the alien DNA bio-weapon is housed.
The Mao Zedong meets Peter O’Toole “David,” between two death’s heads.
It is also significant that the journey takes place on Christmas of
2093 as we discover Dr. Shaw is barren, yet due to the dastardly
machinations of David and the Weyland Corporation she was chosen as a
test subject for alien fertilization, with the intent of Shaw giving
birth to a new alien god, mimicking the virgin birth of Christ. As we
might expect, the Weyland Corporation happens to be much more interested
in genetic cross-species hybridization and advanced bio-warfare
technology than honest scientific inquiry into human origins. We can
see an analogue to reality here, as the military industrial complex’s
amazing technological advances are primarily fueled by warfare weapons
research, while fronts like NASA give the appearance of the advancement
of human knowledge. In fact, the recent threats of NASA losing its
funding resulting in the shutting down of the space program are a
complete farce, as
the real space program, part of the black budget of over 50 billion dollars, has not ceased.
As with Weyland Corporation, the real shadow technology complex is
private, not some public, government institution. Like the
well-meaning, compartmentalized scientist Dr. Shaw,
our scientists and tech wizards rarely discover they are serving a much deeper, darker agenda of the shadow government.
Dr. Shaw even discovers that she was chosen for the Prometheus mission
resulting in her becoming a test subject like Ripley in the original
Alien series.
Our alien “creators.” Do you even lift, bro?
As it turns out, Dr. Shaw is correct, and the alien engineers are our
creators. The creation of man by “engineers” is curiously similar to
both the gnostic mythology of creation, as well as the masonic view of
God as the “Great Architect,” since engineers and architects work with
preexisting matter, and do not create
ex nihilo. Like the deity of so many Hollywood storylines, the “god” is merely an immanentist
deus ex machina
that arose from some primordial chaotic happenstance. In this regard,
the panspermia myth is made to blend with the “science” of Darwinian
aeons,
where any kind of higher beings must have also been the result of
chaotic material interaction and process. If there is any kind of
single Supreme God, he is the hidden, unknown God (Acts 17). It should
also be mentioned that the idea of giants in ancient civilizations that
were the result of some kind of unnatural genetic manipulation is also
mentioned in Genesis 6, where the sons of Seth are conjoined with angels
to produce strange offspring, detailed at length in the Book of Enoch.
The gnostic apect of the film’s theology thus fits well with the occult
aspects posited earlier, as the theme of the death of the father is
repeated several times.
A skull carved into a mountain on the engineer’s planet.
Captain Vickers (Charlize Theron) desires the death of her pedophile
father, Peter Weyland, the presumed dead old fart who eventually arises
from a hold within the Prometheus seeking immortality from the
engineers, David desires the death of humans as an AI bot without
emotions, and Dr. Shaw, who ultimately wills the death of the
(masculine) alien god creators for their discovered plans to annihilate
humanity with the alien bio-weapon. Keep in mind Dr. Shaw is also
motivated by the death of her father, from whom she obtained her faith.
In other words, the Promethean myth is explained by a life of pure
Darwinian survival of the fittest, as the quest ultimately becomes an
Oedipal
struggle for overthrowing the vestiges of the existing patriarchial
order through the weaponry of death, as well as the death of God the
Father,
with the victor obtaining transhumanist immortality. As Captain
Vickers explains with hatred to her father, “A king has is reign and
then dies. That is the natural order of things,” and as David says to
Dr. Shaw, “Doesn’t everyone want their parents dead?” In this aspect,
Prometheus is about the new
aeon
of supposed self-realization of individual self-will, as opposed to
obeisance to hierarchical, archetypal power figures like “mother” and
“father” (think also of Ripley battling with the on-board computer
system “Mother” in
Alien).
Daddy issues.
Exploring more religious themes, the alien planet’s
“pyramid” (as
it’s called in the film) is revealed to be an entire spacecraft, where
within its chambers there is a massive, Easter Island-style head, which
appears to have a religious significance for the engineers, as well as
murals and paraphernalia related to the worship of the actual alien
aliens (the Xenomorph). It would appear the engineers worship death in
the form of the Xenomporh, as the only seeming
raison d’etre for the Xenomorphs is killing. The universe of
Alien/Prometheus
is a radically nihilistic one, where instead of a benevolent Creator
God of providential guidance, mankind is the accidental DNA experiment
descendant of a black death bio-warfare science-worshipping alien cult.
The alien on the mural in the engineers’ head chamber appears to be
crucified, signifying either worship of, or the conquest of, the
Xenomorph hybrid. This would explain why the engineers are intent on
returning to earth to wipe out the human race since, as I’ve elucidated
many times, in films the “aliens” often represent the eugenics-minded
elite intent on depopulating the earth as a ritual sacrifice the angel
of death. This could also explain the Nordic/Aryan elements in the
film, since strictly regimented breeding and procreation was a key facet
of the Nazi version of eugenics.
A crucified Xenomorph.
As mentioned, heads are present everywhere in the film. The head of
the first engineer is discovered to be decapitated in the ritual (?)
room where the head statue is. David is seen with skulls, there is the
skull on the mountain, and near the end, David has his head torn off by
the last engineer. My speculation is the head is the source and symbol
of reason, but also the highest level of evolutionary development (in
that worldview) as the house of the brain. The engineers appear to
worship the head, as well as mankind having reached almost the same
level of technology as the engineers, with the ability to terraform,
cross-species engineer and create AI. David’s head is the highest form
of human achievement and fathers are also “heads” of patriarchal
societies. Thus, the possession of
headship is symbolized by
all these noggins everywhere. The battle for the future is presumably
granted to whoever has the most advanced reason, yet in a strange twist,
the only survivors at the end are Dr. Shaw, who remains in her faith,
David’s head, an engineer and a Xenomorph (who has the biggest head!).
Reason alone is not sufficient in this nihilistic
Alien universe: Pure willpower must be combined. As with Ripley in
Alien
and the sequels, we find the feminist mythology present throughout that
woman is somehow the new “man” that will overcome, without the need of
any male. Instead of the
ubermensch, it’s the
uber-chick, as we see with
Hanna,
Gravity,
Hunger Games,
Divergent, and a host of other girlpower pop cinema displays.
While
Prometheus is visually captivating, I think it falls short of the innovative creativity Scott demonstrated with
Alien. What we do have with
Prometheus is a revelation of the religious narrative behind the universe of
Alien,
where man is a genetic accidental offspring of purely finite creators.
A rehash of gnostic and occult fables, the new mythology of science is
socially engineered by our own very human overlord engineers to
seamlessly meld with Darwinism. In modern man’s meaningless universe,
it bears repeating – why not worship the black emptiness of nihilism and
chaos? That the film has this ultimate point is shown when a dying
Peter Weyland exhales to David, “There is nothing.” Like H.R. Giger’s
art that formed the basis for the films, the message is there is only
the cold, harsh reality of machine-like matter in an impersonal cycle of
flux. In such a realm where there are no objective principles,
metaphysics, gods or higher goods, there is only war, and the god
head of war is death, the
Totenkopf. In such a world there is no more
reason for the rise of feminine heroics and strength than there is
reason
at all. Heads are decapitated, bringing to mind the French Revolution
guillotines, where heads were lopped off for anti-hierarchical
revolution. In
Prometheus‘ revolution, just as in 18th century France, there is no
reason
for revolution, even when you worship reason, and so the anti-logic
logic ends in this: The god of the universe is simply death.
Whither reason, science?
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