The missus and I made the pilgrimage to Dragon*Con for our 20th anniversary and had the frickin' time of our lives. I've been sifting through YouTube vids, but can't seem to be anything that conveys the madness and the scale of the thing. You need an IMAX camera to capture it. As always, Joe was one of the belles of the ball, and the Dawn Look-a-Like Contest was packed to the rafters. Personally, I thought it should have been a cakewalk for the twins, but hey, no one asked me.

The highlight of the show for me? The first night in the Hyatt lobby. It was like a scene from a Star Wars movie come to life. The amazing architecture of that building just added to the otherworldliness of the evening.

The lowlight? The Cruxshadows concert. I kept waiting for Jaz Coleman to leap from the wings with a chainsaw and wreak revenge for his musical concepts being so debased. But this was Dragon*Con, so a lowlight there would be a highlight in day-to-day life. And there are a lot worse things to look at in this world than the Cruxshadows' dancers...

In a provocation seemingly designed to drive symbology buffs and conspiracy theorists to distraction, a giant statue of the death god Anubis sauntered down the Thames on a barge to promote the King Tut exhibit. Note the twin towers in the background that the photos of the stunt seem to showcase.

All the more reason to go to the exhibit...

On my birthday the missus and I saw the King Tut exhibit in Philadelphia. It was astonishing. 

I became a believer in physical reincarnation this year when our beloved Mary returned to us in a new body. She didn't quite get the markings right but they're morphing every day, especially around the eyes. Mary lived to the ripe old age of 19 and a half, but decided she wanted more. Every day with her (we renamed her "Fruit Wrinkles") is a joy.

In the Journal of Evolutionary Psychology, DJ Moores wrote of Jung's theories that scapegoating and ritual sacrifice spring from the ego's inability to deal with its Shadow, the accumulation of negative emotions that all of us struggle with, but that the pious and the devout in particular are unable to accept in themselves:

There are times when art becomes reality. The pilot for X-Files spinoff The Lone Gunmen, which eerily predicted a 9/11 scenario, is perhaps one of the most notorious examples of this.

In Egyptian mythology, Osiris was killed on the 17th day of Athyr, the third month of the ancient calendar. Though not acknowledged, 17 seems to be a very meaningful number in the Mystery traditions, sort of equivalent to the Cross in Christianity. It symbolizes an unjust death and the promise of rebirth. 

October saw the 700th anniversary of the public suppression of the Knights Templar. Happily, the Vatican miraculously discovered papers clearing the Templars of the charges against them. 

I'm sure most of you out there remember the Crash of '94 and its aftermath. The year began with the passing of Jack Kirby, one of those events that the ancient Romans would have seen as the grimmest of grim portents.

The altar at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. As Above, So Below.

Synchronicity is a term that is on everyone's mind lately. It's also a term that I'm not sure is always completely understood. The symbolic link between The X-Files and Rockefeller Center that we looked at yesterday is not synchronistic per se. 

Knowles' Xth Law: When in doubt about a particular esoteric symbol, consult The X-Files. As I wrote about in my X-Files X-Egesis, Chris Carter posited that aliens were the creators not only of humankind, but of our religions as well. 

The Fire/Sun god overlooking the skating rink reminds me of the symbolism Lewis used in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. Above Prometheus/Mithras/Horus' head is TGAOTU. I do believe the whole tableau is meant to be seen from that worm eye's view. 

The closer we get to Christmas, the more I'm thinking about Rockefeller Center. I guess it's a regional thing, but again- anyone even remotely interested in symbolism should at least take a virtual tour of the premises. In many ways, it's the crown jewel of Mithraic Manhattan.

From a Thelemic website:

Alchemy had three main objects: 1. The transmutation of the base metals into gold, or more generally the conversion of abundant relatively useless material into rare useful substances.

My friend David Dodd is currently pursuing his degree in Intellectual Property law, but was previously a Latin teacher at prestigious Newark Academy. Dave is also a serious student of the Classical world and as such is my go-to guy for deep history from that period. 

I wrote about the panoply of symbolism you see in Manhattan in "Pantheopolis," but the holiday season got me thinking about Mithras, the original reason for the season. I was considering Mithras today since WorldNetDaily linked to a story on the movement among Fundamentalists against Christmas. 

More rainy Sunday melancholy: Steven Soderbergh's remake of Solaris is so jam-packed with face-punching symbolism it takes my breath away. 

On the heels of the Viacom debacle, comes news that Geffen and Interscope Records are merging and laying off 60 employees, just in time for Christmas. Them we have the writers strike and falling DVD sales. Media across the board is getting hammered. Hell, the American Dream is being hammered.

Fascinating quotes on the Mithraic mysteries, the direct ancestor of the Masonic traditions. Somehow, Led Zeppelin got me thinking about that again. Read up, I've got something coming linking it all up that will blow your mind. 

Looking back on my childhood, it actually was not superheroes that I loved most about comics, it was loner antiheroes like Conan and Kamandi.

It's well known that Gene Roddenberry had extensive contacts with the Nine as did Jon Povill, who worked on the show Sliders as well as Synchromystic cult fave Total Recall. 

Simon Reynolds, author of Rip It Up and Start Again reviews the new Britpop collection The Brit Box: U.K. Indie, Shoegaze, and Brit-Pop Gems of the Last Millennium (Rhino) on Salon.com. 

Billy Connolly cast in X Files 2....

A recent DNA test put some longstanding myths in my family to rest, right in time for the holidays. But it led me to wonder what myths we will organize ourselves along in the future... 

  It's easy to rail against divisions, but the fact is that people have always needed to feel they are part of an in-group. But I've always been more interested in what people have in common than in their differences. The reason I believe we need new mythologies is because this chaotic world of constant creative destruction is going to require new alliances untied to our old ones. 

The center of economic power is shifting to China and India, and they don't care about our ethnic or religious differences, they're much more concerned with their own. The wish-dream that the world will all join hands and live as one is nothing but wanting- to-buy-the-world-a-Coke corporate propaganda...

Sometimes when you study more esoteric topics, you come across thinkers who are as enigmatic as the topics they write about. One of those is Manly Palmer Hall. I've read some of his work and I've read biographical information on the man, but there is something completely elusive about him. 

Marvel's new online initiative in many ways draws from lessons learned from the ill-fated comics start-up, CrossGen. 

Here's my first major published magazine piece, "The Kirby Files," written back in 1996 for The Jack Kirby Collector.

My Christmas present comes a week from tomorrow when Chris Carter, David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson begin filming the new X-Files movie in Vancouver.

There is no greater example of the Modern Myth than The X-Files. There are so many layers upon layers of symbolism, hidden meaning, allegory and in-jokes that an academic could spend his life studying it all. I'll be reposting my X-Egesis on the Mulder-as-Osiris storyline soon, but will also be writing a new one, detailing how the Eleusinian Mysteries are central to the Samantha abduction storyline. Hecate herself even shows up for a cameo!

"The necessity of the story, the myth or the legend in a culture is almost universal. We think of myths as things that entertain or instruct, but their deeper purpose is often to explain, or make fanciful, wishes, desires or behavior that society would otherwise deem unacceptable. Myths often disguise thoughts that are simply too terrible to think about, but because they are conveyed in a wrapping of untruth - the story - these thoughts become harmless fiction. -- Chris Carter

Absolute god-damned genius.

It's Friday night. If you're home, go treat yourself to the mind-blowing visions of Dana Augustine.

Remember the first time you saw Star Wars? Or that first issue of The Eternals? Or your first episode of The X-Files? His stuff is kind of like that. A rare quality these days.

Part one of the Superman/Hercules presentation is up on Comic Book Resources. I was hoping to hand this off and move on but that's the way it always goes. It's been fascinating watching some of the reaction on the message boards. 

The quasi-Masonic Orange Order is getting in the superhero business...

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No it's... well he doesn't have a name yet, but the Orange Order hopes to win a new generation of fans with their own superhero. The origins of the Orange Order may date from the 17th century battle for supremacy between Protestantism and Catholicism, but they have high hopes for this 21st century makeover.

From the still-raging CBR debate:

The occult itself is a misnomer- this kind of material is mainstream and has been since the days of the pulps. You can get material on the "occult" in every bookstore or library in the country, or on half the shows on the Disney Channel. What were once occult themes are in almost every comic book story out there, which I write about in the book.

From The CBR Debate:

"Swipe" is a ambiguous word. There's some of the egregious swipes we saw in 90's on one hand and exactly what describe what you describe on the other.

To tell you the truth, I think of it as an homage in the deepest and most honest sense of the word. I think this was Siegel's way of paying tribute to the figure that inspired him most by paying tribute to what may have been the most inspiring image of that figure to him. I've showed the other images that tie into the Hercules legend on my blog and that was just a cursory overview of some of the themes he traded in.

Some of you guys may think I'm being this little snitch, trying to spoil everyone's appreciation of this icon like some revisionist biographer. Not at all- as with Spandex, I'm trying to deepen and broaden people's appreciation and understanding by showing the roots of this genre and how powerful and compelling these icons are to fans and creators.

...shall be revealed.

“Never draw what you can copy; never copy what you can trace; and never trace what you can cut out and paste up.” -Wally Wood

First of all, let's establish the meaning of the term "swipe." I'm looking at this from the point of view of a graphic artist. "Reference" or "inspiration" often means "knocking off" in the trade. You take an image and futz around with it - change things, move things around- until you come up with something new. The action lines and placement details in this piece seem out of the realm of coincidence.

It is the single most iconic image in the history of comic books. But was it swiped?It is the single most iconic image in the history of comic books. 

But was it swiped? 

I know what some of you are thinking: "The occult? Gods and superheroes? Is this guy off of his rocker?" Well, maybe, but there is an established methodology I'm trying to follow in looking at these issues.