Sometimes there are stories that you can't help but wonder are planted in the media for some strange ritual purpose we're not meant to understand. This is one of them.

... the new X-Files movie is great. This is not an effects bonanza- it's a very dark, disturbing and intimate thriller. It's getting a lot of negative reviews, so I was prepared to be disappointed. I drove home not only not feeling disappointed, but feeling extremely angry - yet again- at the reviewers, who seem more and more like lemmings every year. 

OK, last month we were looking at Star Trek in the context of high initiate symbolism and its role in the transformation of our culture. We also puzzled over the phenomenon of a group of strange, disincarnate entities who have supposedly meddled with our dimensional reality. In between all of that, we were looking at the possibility that the sun the Egyptian god Ra represents is not our own.

Obama Camp Chooses Site for Berlin Speech

Sen. Barack Obama's campaign said today that his speech in Berlin on the future of trans-Atlantic relations will be delivered in front of a Prussian war monument, rather than the Brandenburg Gate.

Pope Calls for a ‘New Age’ in Final Australia Mass

SYDNEY, Australia — In his final address to hundreds of thousands of young Catholics gathered in Australia on Sunday, Pope Benedict XVI attacked the violence and materialism of the modern age, and called on his audience to build a “new age.”

"In so many of our societies, side by side with material prosperity, a spiritual desert is spreading: an interior emptiness, an unnamed fear, a quiet sense of despair," the pontiff said.

The 81-year-old pope said it was up to a new generation of Christians to build a world in "which God's gift of life is welcomed, respected and cherished — not rejected, feared as a threat and destroyed."

The aim was "a new age in which hope liberates us from the shallowness, apathy and self-absorption which deadens our souls and poisons our relationships," he said. - IHT

Absolutely fascinating. Again, remember who this man is. When he uses that term he knows exactly what connotations it has.

The Pope- who wrote the Vatican's policy of coverup and denial of child sexual abuse - apologized again for the scandal Friday in a special mass in Sydney. That's an issue for another day- and maybe for another blog. What interests me here is that this very meticulous Pope, this man who is highly cognizant of symbolism and ceremony, is wearing the Knights Templar cross on his yoke. Not just the Maltese cross, mind you. He's wearing the red-on-white cross- the brand logo - of the recently-absolved ancient order during a very high-profile mass.

This is not insignificant by any stretch of the imagination.

A lot of bloggers are looking askance at a new think tank for young people called the Zenith Global Citizenship Conference, which has been created to promote "(t)he concept of a ‘cosmopolitan citizenship’ (often interchangeable with global citizenship) suggests an allegiance to a new form of global civil society and a new global consciousness that conceptualizes a ‘cosmopolitan order transcending state boundaries and focusing on the rights of individuals.’" 

Hayden Panettierre did a little impromptu striptease on the set of Heroes (you can see the whole thing here). As eye-catching as that is, there was something else I found a bit more interesting- where she was doing it.

Our recent look at the EU meeting in Siberia got me thinking about Masonic architecture. You know, obelisks, pyramids and benben stones showing up in unexpected places, particularly modern cities. But I wasn't just looking for any old pyramid or obelisk, I was looking specifically for illuminated pyramids. This is just the result of a brief search. Double-click images to enlarge for detail.

Atlantis, Georgia has an interesting kind of step pyramid benben (far left) a more standard benben to the right of it and yet another eight-sided -or octagonal benben to the right. Don't know if the Atlantis Hawks basketball team or the Atlantis Falcons football team tie into any of this symbolism.

Boston, home of America's first Masonic lodge, has an interesting truncated pyramid roof and a glowing light above it. If you're thinking "all seeing eye," I got your back. The Monolith next to it is the Hancock Tower. Note: The Atlantis Braves were originally the Boston Braves.

Chicago has an illuminated benben obelisk.

As does Cleveland, largest city in the 17th state of the US.

Des Moines is no slouch in the illuminated benben department.

Here's a surprise- Dubai has an illuminated-benben obelisk. Or maybe that isn't a surprise.

Neither is Frankfurt, the financial capital of Germany.

By that token, neither should Kowloon's Asian twist on the step pyramid and heavenly beam.

Reader Mark alerted me to this illuminated pyramid at London's Canary Wharf.

Minneapolis has a green illuminated capstone.

What's more, the ever-reliable Yahoo! News put up a beauty shot of it on its front page while I was preparing this article. How about that for Synchronicity?

Montreal has a obelisk without an illuminated capstone. What's that about?

Of course, we all know about the illuminated pyramid at the Louvre in Paris from The Da Vinci Code.

New York's got all sorts of interesting architecture, including the illuminated-benben obelisk on the left there.
As does Philly, the new City of the Sun.

Heading for the West Coast we see another truncated pyramid (this one eight-sided) and floating all seeing eye, similar to Boston's.

San Francisco is famous for its pyramid, which is actually more of an obelisk. Appropriately ambiguous for a city with so many gender-bending citizens.


Seattle has its own space age conflation of the obelisk/dome motif. Kind of like the Masonic lodge that George Jetson would belong to. There's an interesting green benben stone behind it, but the Space Needle is interesting for another reason...

...the Heavenly Beam it shoots out from time to time.

Shanghai goes for the obelisk/dome motif with an unbelievably phallic looking building in the center there.

Toronto also does the whole illuminated obelisk/dome thing, both of which reflect on Lake Ontario. Quite an interesting array of examples of this type of symbolism. What could it possibly all mean? Are they trying to tell us something?

Maybe the people who create these buildings aren't trying to tell us anything. Maybe they're only talking to each other. Maybe they don't care what you think about it at all.

There's a thought, huh?

The Helsinki agreement, which was hammered out over meetings in September and April, was signed by 33 politicians from Sunni, Shiite, Kurdish, Turkmen, Communist and other parties.

The document consists of 17 principles, as well as strategies to ensure compliance with those goals. The principles included a commitment to eventually limit arms possession to the government, respect for minority rights and opposition to international and regional influence in Iraq’s internal affairs.

The agreement also included a pledge to integrate the so-called Awakening Councils, and others who have fought against extremists, into state institutions. - NY Times

If here is any confusion as to the Templar/Masonic origin of the United States of America, the dating of Independence Day may help put the issue to rest.