The Labyrinth of Warren Jeffs: Another Tour

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

The other day I posted a video tour of Warren Jeffs's estate conducted by Willie Jessop who recently claimed it at auction. The new video above was shot by Jim Dalrymple of Salt Lake Tribune's Polygamy Blog.

What strikes me in both these videos is the incredible devotion to secrecy and this video makes it in even more apparent. These are heavy walls within heavy walls. The doors are so thick and solid they need four hinges. Everything is practically soundproof.

As Dalrymple takes the viewer past the outer walls of the compound and through succeeding sets of walls, leading finally into the house, I have the sense of being drawn into the center of a maze -- one that leads to a central but externally obscured "rape room." This is the labyrinth of the Minotaur.

The Minotaur was a monstrous half bull, half man creature of Greek myth.

After he ascended the throne of Crete, Minos competed with his brothers to rule. Minos prayed to Poseidon to send him a snow-white bull, as a sign of support (the Cretan Bull). He was to kill the bull to show honor to Poseidon, but decided to keep it instead because of its beauty. He thought Poseidon would not care if he kept the white bull and sacrificed one of his own. To punish Minos, Aphrodite made Pasiphaë, Minos' wife, fall deeply in love with the bull. Pasiphaë had the archetypal craftsman Daedalus make a hollow wooden cow, and climbed inside it in order to mate with the white bull. The offspring was the monstrous Minotaur. Pasiphaë nursed him in his infancy, but he grew and became ferocious, being the unnatural offspring of man and beast, he had no natural source of nourishment and thus devoured man for sustenance. Minos, after getting advice from the oracle at Delphi, had Daedalus construct a gigantic labyrinth to hold the Minotaur. Its location was near Minos' palace in Knossos.

. . .



Androgeus, son of Minos, had been killed by the Athenians, who were jealous of the victories he had won at the Panathenaic festival. Others say he was killed at Marathon by the Cretan bull, his mother's former taurine lover, which Aegeus, king of Athens, had commanded him to slay. The common tradition is that Minos waged war to avenge the death of his son and won. Catullus, in his account of the Minotaur's birth,^[10] refers to another version in which Athens was "compelled by the cruel plague to pay penalties for the killing of Androgeos." Aegeus must avert the plague caused by his crime by sending "young men at the same time as the best of unwed girls as a feast" to the Minotaur. Minos required that seven Athenian youths and seven maidens, drawn by lots, be sent every seventh or ninth year (some accounts say every year^[11]) to be devoured by the Minotaur.

Some of the parallels are obvious. Jeffs's use and abuse of children -- girls and boys -- throughout his life is well-documented. And he apparently needed a regular supply of underage brides to sacrifice in sometimes highly ritualized sexual abuse. He was also noticeably bizarre and inappropriate from an early age, which along with frequent illness often resulted in isolation. And he was the son of the leader of FLDS.

There are other subtleties that point toward that archetype. The bull that sired the Minotaur was pure white. Jeffs required that many of the details of the compound were white. The cement used for much of the external construction is brilliant white. Even little touches like pipes and garage door opener hardware had to be hand-painted white. It's bizarre little touches like these that suggest to me a longing for purity and perfection even as he was evermore consumed by his own demons.

In the end, the Minotaur was conquered by Theseus. He was aided by Ariadne's thread which helped him find his way out after he'd slain the monster. Jeffs is dying the death of a thousand cuts as followers find their way out of his maze and tell their stories to police and in courtrooms.

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Perspectives on Evil from Hancock and Levy

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Graham Hancock on Good and Evil

It's hard not to be at least a little preoccupied with evil right now. There's no escape from images played over and over of the carnage in Boston. The explosions there were quickly followed by one in West Texas -- a horrible accident that was, all the same, replete with strange echoes of past violence. It was close to Waco and handled by Waco authorities... and the ATF. It was effectively a massive fertilizer bomb. (The second largest terrorist attack in US history, the Oklahoma City bombing, utilized a fertilizer bomb. It took place on the second anniversary of the Waco Siege by the ATF which also ended tragically and which, along with Ruby Ridge, was Timothy McVeigh's stated justification.)

The horror was magnified by the bungling of media organs that seem to have devolved into self-parody. In their mad quest for the big scoop, they rushed to judgment against any "dark skinned" or swarthy male who had the misfortune of being caught on camera. And somehow, they also managed to implicate Zooey Deschanel. It's a bad time to have an unusual name, apparently. For good measure, Reuters also reported the death of one George Soros in very exaggerated fashion -- nothing to do with the Boston bombing, but seriously, what is going on with the press?!

What we're witnessing is a massive freak-out and I don't really feel like participating. I've been largely avoiding media assaults on my senses. I've barely been online and when I've watched television, I've pointedly avoided most news. But in an action that I'm determined to take as a personal slight, NBC preempted "Grimm" on Friday with more of their endless, masturbatory coverage. There's simply no escape. And maybe there's an even more important message in that.

Perhaps what we should all be asking ourselves right now is what this massive eruption of the shadow is telling us about ourselves. Like many sensitives, I suspect, I felt this coming for weeks -- that "disturbance in the force" that left me cranky, tired, depleted, and somehow "out of phase" with myself and my environment. There are still aches and pains and a sensation in the center of my chest that would be hard to describe.

A while ago I posted an interview with Paul Levy on Wetiko, one of a number of Native American terms for the expression of the collective shadow. His second book on the topic, Dispelling Wetiko: Breaking the Curse of Evil, pubbed in January. I highly recommend listening to his recent interview with Christina Pratt. Links to various listening options can be found here.

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Galaxy Quest Through the Wormhole

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

In keeping with my new hobby -- identifying obscure archetypes and esoterica in pop culture -- I noticed a sequence in Galaxy Quest the other day depicting wormhole travel. It's really intriguing. Galaxy Quest is a riot, and an old favorite, but I've never really thought of it as a metaphysical film. The relevance of the scene clicked for me, though, when I was listening to William Henry's most recent edition of Revelations.

At about the 19 minute mark Robert Perala relays a life altering experience he'd had that involved contact with some sort of alien or other-dimensional beings. He describes being pulled through a wormhole and finding himself covered with some sort of sticky, oily substance. He was left shaken and nauseated by the experience.

Henry has been talking and writing about this "oil" for some time and theorizes that it's a kind "cosmic condom" that protects the body during stargate travel. He provides references to Enoch being taken up by the Archangel Michael and Jesus who had his feet anointed by Mary previous to his resurrection.

It occurs to me that this is pretty much exactly what happens in Galaxy Quest when Tim Allen, and later the rest of the cast, are transported by aliens to and from their space dock. It's shown in painful detail when a very hungover Jason Nesmith (Allen) -- a William Shatneresque star of an historic sci-fi series and frequent convention guest -- tries to return home from what he thinks is a guest appearance with hard-core fans. Having slept through his limousine-like spaceship ride, and having no idea he's  in outer space, he's shown to a platform to wait for his limo. Instead, he is covered in an unctuous substance -- which first anoints his feet. A portal opens onto the vastness of space and he is shot through a wormhole, and deposited next to his swimming pool. He stands for several moments trembling with shock.

It's a very funny scene in a very funny, quirky, little movie, but there are nods to something much deeper. It's well-shot and it's the little details that cinch it. Below are some stills, showing the sequence of events.

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William Henry on the Judgement Day Device

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

I noticed this article about the Muslim view of the apocalypse The Huffington Post and it reminded me that I've been meaning to listen to two recent interviews with William Henry. From the article:

Muslim and Christian views of the Apocalypse are remarkably similar, albeit with a different ending.

. . .

Contemporary Muslim apocalyptists have even borrowed from their Christian counterparts, such as Hal Lindsay, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, to discern the dates of the Antichrist's arrival, said David Cook, an expert on Islamic eschatology and associate professor at Rice University.

. . .

Some Muslims don't like the idea of Jesus playing the messianic hero, and have thus assigned a larger role to the Mahdi, said Cook. That belief is strong among Shiites, particularly the "Twelvers" in Iran, where President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has often spoke of the Mahdi's return.

William Henry's research adds an important piece to the puzzle of apocalyptic prophecies: the Ark of the Covenant. Henry believes that all the players are seeking the ark, in hopes of harnessing its mythical power. Above is posted his recent interview on Red Ice Radio and his interview on Awake in the Dream can found here.

The whole thing is a study in the dangers of literalism. Supplemental reading and listening can be found here and here.

"And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you." ~ Luke 17:20-21

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The Increasingly Blatant Symbolism of Doctor Who

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

"There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes." ~ Doctor Who

A while ago Stephen Fry made waves when he bemoaned the infantalizing nature of BBC programming and characterized Doctor Who as "not for adults." Perhaps Fry, for all his many talents and artistic sensibility, is one of those hardcore atheists who has no appreciation for the power of myth. Admittedly, I haven't spent a lot of time on the mythical underpinnings of the show, although I did explore one episode's point towards indigenous creation mythology here. 

I will also give Fry benefit of the doubt and assume his comments in 2010 pertained entirely to the pre-Matt Smith years. There is no question that with the massive production changes after David Tennant's departure, came a more interesting, and I dare say, more adult show. Smith, as an actor, has more depth and gravitas than Tennant. (Christopher Eccleston was also brilliant and I took his departure hard. I know. I know. David Tennant was the most beloved Doctor ever. Blah, blah, blah... whatever.)

Not only is the writing under Steven Moffat darker and edgier, there has been a peeling away of the veils that obscured the core mythos. It seems rather obvious in discussing a show that opens with a trip through a wormhole, that we're talking about alchemy/kundalini/stargate mythology. But with the recent Christmas episode, "The Snowmen," key archetypes were even more blatant than they were in the London Olympics. Even the advertising was provocative.

Note the Blue Pearl opening above the Doctor's head. William Henry explains a bit about the mystical experience of the Blue Pearl in Secret of Sion.

As I discussed in Starwalkers and the Dimension of the Blessed, traditional shamanic peoples around the world describe a Blue Pearl, an exquisite, enchanting blue light that is a mode of transport. It appears in a flash, without any provocation or thought, and opens like a lotus or a wormhole.

. . .

In fact, says Muktananda, it contains the whole universe It is the seed of the heart, the Supreme within us. It has been described as vibrant, electric blue, brilliant indigo, azure, cobalt, and cerulean.

. . .

Also known as the Pearl of Infinite Power, the Blue Pearl, Stone or Apple is actually how our soul travels to the inner realm and it is inside of a quantum egg or in an "interphasic state of existence" (it enables us to jump through time and cross great distances or even to use this skill locally.)

Hmmm... What does that sound like?

In "The Snowmen," the Doctor meets Clara, who susses out his hiding place... in the clouds. This she does by locating something akin to Jacob's ladder.

She ascends a spiral staircase.

And at the top she finds the TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimension In Space). So, she ascends a stairway to heaven where she encounters multidimensional awareness.

Jacob's Ladder ~ William Blake
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Later in the episode Clara is invited into the TARDIS and given the key -- the ritual by which the Doctor initiates his companions into the mysteries of time-space travel.

The TARDIS has been given a bit of a redesign for the new season. And I can't help noticing that the circumpunct imagery has also become more blatant.

So the connection between wormhole physics that was always implied in the show was underscored with alchemical imagery in "The Snowmen." Other mystical and kundalini themes are hinted at but they are subtler and require, to some extent, stripping the context from the archetype. For instance, we are introduced to the concept of a "memory worm" which wipes memory from all who touch it.

The plot also centers around the mystical idea of reflective reality. "The snow reflects." A strange, new, memory snow patterns itself on the people, personalities, thoughts, emotions, and objectives, its exposed to, and takes on form.

I can't help wondering if the plot line was influenced by the, albeit deeply flawed, water experiment made famous in What the Bleep Do We Know? I say flawed because the results have not proved to be replicable and Masaru Emoto has been less than transparent about his research methods. All of which leads us back to that fundamental question? Does the world reflect our thoughts or our consciousness? Because they are not the same thing. But I've discussed this little problem of new age reductionism at far too great a length already.

"The Snowman" explored the metaphysics of the TARDIS but the physics has long been a subject of discussion.

Something clicked for me a while ago when I was watching The Science of Doctor Who, which explored some of the theoretical physics of the show with prominent physicists. Michio Kaku's offered his explanation for why the TARDIS is bigger on the inside.

People forget that the phone booth is not the TARDIS at all. It's the door.

The humor of the cloaking mechanism that got stuck in police box mode back in the '60s, when they were ubiquitous in London, has provided writers with many challenges and opportunities through the years. But whether it was conscious or unconscious on the part of the show's creators, I've long thought the cubic form of this "door" implied a tesseract, or hypercube. It appears that I may be onto something.

The explanation is that a TARDIS is "dimensionally transcendental", meaning that its exterior and interior exist in separate dimensions. In "The Robots of Death" (1977), the Fourth Doctor tried to explain this to his companion Leela, using the analogy of how a larger cube can appear to be able to fit inside a smaller one if the larger cube is farther away, yet immediately accessible at the same time (see Tesseract).

There have been many indications since Steven Moffat took the helm that Doctor Who is taking us into the heart of the mysteries. I thought at the time that "The Impossible Astronaut" was playing with Gnostic themes. Specifically the Silence suggested, to me, the Archons.

Let's see... They're an ancient alien order who've been controlling human history from time immemorial but no one can remember seeing them. And like the Archons, there are allusions to both the greys (look at them) and the "men in black" (they erase your memory). Men in black were most notably associated with the Archons -- as Smith, et al. -- in The Matrix trilogy, where they also notably distorted memory and cognition. For a little more background on the elusive Archons of Gnostic lore, see here.

I have tried a few times to write something more in depth regarding the archontic symbolism of the Silence but my head goes all mushy. Not surprising, I guess, given the subject matter. Bloody Archons. Perhaps I should take to crosshatching my forearms every time I contemplate the deeper allusions of the Silence and get derailed.

It began to dawn on me over the past few seasons of Doctor Who that the Doctor should not simply be viewed as a frequent savior and protector of humanity. Rather, he can be seen as a symbol of our human potential.

Amy: But you look human. The Doctor: No, you look Time Lord. We came first. ~ Doctor Who, "The Beast Below"

As we learned in "Human Nature," Time Lords have an ability to hide their expanded, Time Lord consciousness inside a fob watch and become human.  In so doing, they forget the bulk of their awareness. In that sense, we're all Time Lords.

Bear in mind that River Song, as we learned recently, is the child of two human parents but because she was conceived in the TARDIS she has many of the abilities of a Time Lord, including regeneration.

If we begin to look at the TARDIS, not as an alien space ship, but as a symbol for multidimensional awareness, we arrive at the essence of mystical thought. Each of us contains the universe. The microcosm contains the macrocosm. The inside is bigger than the outside.

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The Wizard of Wormholes

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

I've had The Wizard of Oz on my mind a lot lately, for some reason. When my daughter was little, she watched my video of the movie until I really got sick of it -- something I'd never thought possible. But lately I've been yearning to watch it. I'll need to get it on DVD... Anyway. I've been contemplating some of the metaphysical imagery that hadn't occurred to me previously. I should caveat that I've long been taken with some of the mythical themes.

That Dorothy is taking a shamanic journey into non-ordinary reality where she interacts with strange creatures and is assisted by guides seems obvious on its face. But there are some elements to that journey that deserve some analysis. This won't be a deep study. I may do that at some point. It's just some things that have been popping into my head of late.

Years ago, when I first read Clarissa Pinkola Estes's Women Who Run With the Wolves, it occurred to me that, in the movie, Dorothy also wore red shoes. In Estes's analysis of "The Red Shoes," our heroine who dances to her death under the spell of her magic shoes, is an orphan, like our Dorothy Gale. And the girl is raised by a somewhat overbearing and opinionated matriarch, who makes all the decisions for her orphan charge. While she acts out of love and compassion, she crushes the girl's soul, symbolized by the burning of the girl's own handmade, red shoes. The red, magical shoes she obtains later are a poor substitute for her now languishing, authentic wildness. Auntie Em is also loving, but overbearing. She is not terribly patient with Dorothy's emotional needs and drives. And she turns her beloved pet over to the local harridan. Dorothy's authentic self is being crushed, so like Estes's red shod heroine, she becomes reckless and impetuous, risking her own safety. These are interesting parallels that I've pondered when it comes to the underlying mythos of the film version of the story.

There are other mythical themes that have really just occurred to me over the past few days as this movie started ping-ponging around my head, despite the fact that I haven't watched or thought about it in some time.

Earlier today, a Facebook friend posted the above image. My first thought was that I can't seem to get away from this movie. My second thought was, is that a butterfly? I'd simply never noticed before that Glinda is wearing that classic symbol of transformation as a pendent.



I also hadn't noticed that the film contains some greater transformational themes. As discussed with regards to this year's Olympics, the rainbow is a symbol of alchemical transformation. And like the leprechaun whose mysterious gold waits at the end of rainbow, Dorothy finds a yellow brick road.

But the realization that has really captured my imagination of late, is that the Wizard of Oz is full of stargate imagery. Dorothy wishes upon a star and is transported by a vortex (wormhole) to a magical land over the rainbow.

There she traverses another great, spiraling vortex.

And having recovered her sense of personal power, she opens the stargate herself.

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Gabriele Convicted for Blowing the Whistle

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

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Am I alone in seeing something almost poetic in the fact that the first whistleblower convicted in the Vatileaks scandal, Paolo Gabriele, bears the name of the Archangel Gabriel? Gabriel, the messenger of God who announced the pending births of Jesus and John the Baptist? Gabriel, depicted in art and literature as the angel who will blow his horn come judgment day? If I were Pope Benedict, I'd be more concerned than ever about that Fatima prophecy.

Be that as it may, the verdict is in and the Vatican court is satisfied that the butler did it. Gabriele, manservant to the pontiff, was sentenced to eighteen months for hanging the Church's dirty laundry out to dry. It seems he believed sunlight to be the best disinfectant.

Gabriele slipped internal documents, including some of Pope Benedict's private papers, to journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi.

Nuzzi's book, "His Holiness: Pope Benedict XVI's Secret Papers" convulsed the Vatican for months and prompted an unprecedented response, with the pope naming a commission of cardinals to investigate the origin of the leaks alongside Vatican magistrates.

Gabriele insists he was only trying to save the Church from itself.

Gabriele has said he leaked the documents because he felt the pope wasn't being informed of the "evil and corruption" in the Vatican, and that exposing the problems publicly would put the church back on the right track.

. . .

"The thing I feel strongly in me is the conviction that I acted out of exclusive love, I would say visceral love, for the church of Christ and its visible head," Gabriele told the court in a steady voice. "I do not feel like a thief."

During the trial Gabriele claimed to have acted alone. But on other occasions he claimed that he was anything but. He alleged that there were at least twenty whistleblowers who, like himself, "want to help bring some transparency."

There's a fierce irony in the Vatican's aggressive investigation into Vatileakers like Gabriele. After decades of equivocating over whether or not child molesting priests should be turned over to the authorities, they brought the hammer down over some letters. The Church takes its secrecy very seriously.

Gabriele will serve out his sentence in his apartment, under house arrest. That is, unless the Pope decides to pardon him. Sources say this is likely and it might make His Holiness look like something other than a complete hypocrite. A wise leader, might also want to heed the message, rather than kill the messenger.

Well, it's Gabriel, Gabriel playin'! Gabriel, Gabriel sayin' "Will you be ready to go When I blow my horn?" Oh, blow, Gabriel, blow, Go on and blow, Gabriel, blow! I've been a sinner, I've been a scamp, But now I'm willin' to trim my lamp, So blow, Gabriel, blow! Oh, I was low, Gabriel, low, Mighty low, Gabriel, low. But now since I have seen the light, I'm good by day and I'm good by night, So blow, Gabriel, blow! ~ From "Blow, Gabriel Blow" in Anything Goes

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The Alchemy of Puss in Boots

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

I only just got around to seeing Puss in Boots with the family. It's a cute little film that could fairly be described as Shrek meets Zorro meets Desperado. And I have little doubt the boardroom discussion went about like that.

I was not, however, prepared for all the esoteric subtext in the movie. I do remember William Henry pointing out the stargate imagery in the Friskies commercial tie-in. Not that there's anything terribly new about fantastical imagery in children's stories -- including portals into magical lands. But it is kind of interesting that it's through a circular Stargate like opening. Having now seen the movie, I think it's at least arguable that the commercial is a thematic extension of the movie.

It had never occurred to me before that Jack and the Beanstalk is a kundalini metaphor. Now it all seems kind of obvious -- a magical vine that connects earth to heaven and leads to a winged creature that manufactures gold. No duh, huh?

But Puss in Boots ups the ante on that metaphor. Not only is the gold they discover in the shape of an egg, which connects it to core creation mythos. Puss's partner in crime is an egg, specifically Humpty Dumpty.

Humpty's lifelong ambition is to find and plant the magic beans of legend. So an egg is seeking golden eggs. And ultimately the base, mortal, and terribly fragile Humpty is transformed into the gold he is seeking.

And it really gets interesting when they plant the three beans and a tornado (vortex) rapidly forms overhead and connects to the freshly planted soil. Think of it as Shaktipat for beans.

Well, now, I guess we know how Jack's magic beanstalk was completed in a single night. I always found that part deeply mysterious -- kind of like Melusine's tower.

The rapidly surging beanstalk hoists the three conspirators toward the clouds. It brutally overtakes them, dragging them almost against their will, and knocking Puss's hat off his head. That relentless, overwhelming, uncontrollable force should be familiar to anyone who has experienced a kundalini awakening.

The beanstalk unfurls into a giant spiral, like a classic spiral staircase... or DNA... or the serpents on the Staffs of Asclepius or Hermes. Mostly, it put me in mind of William Blake's stunning depiction of Jacob's Ladder.

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Red Ice Radio: Olympic-Size Strange Special

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

A while ago I posted a William Henry interview on the strange happenings and symbolism associated with the Summer Olympics in London. Red Ice Radio interviewed both Henry and his guest from that show Chad Stuemke, in a special broadcast on the topic. They also brought together a sampling of other perspectives on just what is going on with the Olympics Planning Committee.

It's quite a compendium. In addition to Henry and Stuemke, there are interviews and excerpts of interviews with David Icke, Stewart Swerdlow, Bob Schlenker, Ian Crane, and the late Rik Clay. The commentary ranges from the insightful to the paranoid to the deeply paranoid to the unintentionally hilarious.

Of course much of it revolves around the conspiracy theory du jour, which is to say that the Illuminati is preparing us for a false flag event and/or alien invasion so that our reptilian overlords will be better able to enslave us or kill and eat us... or... it's not entirely clear. Where that argument is the strongest lies in the draconian security measures. London is being fully militarized for this event. But then, Great Britain has been morphing into a police state for a while now -- more than the US, even.

William Henry sees a kinder, gentler mega-ritual. He slices right through those convolutions to the underlying symbolism and associates it more with expanding human consciousness than a diabolical scheme to keep us as a slave race. The cardinal symbols he references: the tree, the serpent, the rainbow, and the wormhole. Well, the tree and the serpent are two of my favorites but that's hardly news. But in a striking synchronicity -- one that I'm not at liberty to discuss -- Henry also mentions Glastonbury Tor which they are also apparently working into this year's Olympic motif. This got me to thinking. Something I have never really contemplated is the possible connection between Glastonbury Tor -- and tors more generally -- with the mythical "primordial mound." So I did a bit of googling and found that, yes, this is so. I found the following in a book called The Shining Ones. 

The name 'Glastonbury' translates as 'glass borough'. It was known as 'the Isle of Glass' due to the calm, still, glass-like appearance of the waters or lake which once surrounded the town and its central mound, the Tor. The deeper significance of Glastonbury and its Tor also stems from two unusual springs, which are said to have emerged from a cave entrance under the Tor. One of these springs is known as the White Spring, as it contains mineral deposits which give it a milky-white appearance, and the other is known as the Red Spring is said to have a regenerative properties. Here we have yet another reference to the familiar theme of the red and white, but this time we see it in the real phenomena surrounding Glastonbury Tor -- which is said to have been a place of initiation for the pagans and Druids of the region in Celtic times.

In Glastonbury Tor, we have a 'primordial mound' surrounded by seven concentric rings or levels, which was once surrounded by water, and and upwelling vortex, along with two energy springs like the pingala and ida 'serpents' or nerve channels.

So, asked and answered. Here I'm talking about those basic geographical features more than Philip Gardiner's scholarship which I can't speak to. The form speaks for itself. And it's really interesting because it reflects so clearly this image I had in my head earlier of the primordial mound surrounded by concentric rings and a serpent. Again, the reason isn't important. But this, for the umpteenth time, is why I love William Henry. He keeps pointing to the things I see in my head and helping me contextualize them. His work is just very synchronous for me.

Another thing Henry mentions in this interview is the tower that Anish Kapoor designed for the games and its serpentine appearance. From Henry we learn that Kapoor compared it to, of all things, the Tower of Babel. Very exciting.

But when I googled up an image of this thing, it put me in mind of something else.

Yes, I recently saw The Avengers and Anish Kapoor's tower has that same platform thing jutting out of the front as Stark Tower. The angle is also similar. And seriously, can we talk about The Avengers?! That platform on the front of Stark Tower plays host to a tesseract which opens an interdimensional wormhole. Subtle. Seriously. You could have knocked me over with a feather.

William Henry and Chad Stuemke also present a lot of information on the symbolism. Both consider the possibility that there is malicious intent behind the use of these powerful archetypes to manipulate us all. But they are more inclined to the idea that the planners, artists, and architects are both consciously and unconsciously assembling the keys to ascension and presenting them to the public. And that's pretty much how I see it.

On the other hand, there's the perspective of Stewart Swerdlow and others that it's all part of a master plan make us bow to a false, probably reptilian, god. And I'm not saying that there isn't a cogent narrative to be assembled from the available facts that supports that, but as with so many conspiracy theories, it ascribes a level of coordinated genius that I have trouble imagining. Worse, it completely inverts the meaning of a lot of very powerful and beautiful symbolism. But mostly, it infers conscious, malicious intent from some very innocuous material. For instance, this is Swerdlow on astronomy:

In the last several months, almost every other day, there's been some kind of story on the news about outer space. For example they said that in our galaxy alone, there were three hundred to four hundred million earth-like planets. And they even said by 2014 we will discover a planet with life on it. So how would they present those figures unless they knew for sure?

Ummm… Because they estimate from the data they have? Something scientists do all the time? There's also a lot of wiggle room between three and four hundred million. Those are hardly precise figures. And Mr. Swerdlow clearly never got the memo on how press releases from the science industries work. All these agencies need to fight for funding, now more than ever, and making grandiose promises in sound-bite form is a big part of that process. And then the figures get revised as new data comes in and it either disappoints or exceeds expectations. That's how it works. What almost never happens is that a research body presents an estimate of time or quantity and hits it squarely on the head. "Sure" really doesn't enter into it. I can understand why Mr. Swerdlow would have the notion that scientific bodies speak in exact and irrefutable terms. We have a lot invested in thinking everything that comes out of the sciences is holy writ but it's a comfortable lie.

Swerdlow also ascribes a lot of significance to scientific speculation that life forms on other planets would likely be reptilian. What he doesn't seem to want to consider is that we're reptilian. We evolved from early reptiles and our first brain is the reptilian brain. Then comes the limbic or mamalian brain. And then comes the neo-cortex. Whether we call this the triune brain or ascribe to it some other, more fine-tuned theoretical construct, those three, fundamental components are most definitely in our skulls. These are the simple facts that even David Icke acknowledges. Icke also never said that all reptilians are evil -- only that there is a particular reptilian race that is responsible for interfering with human consciousness. So if you're going to be paranoid about reptilians, at least narrow it down to the right ones.

And then there's this nonsensical bit of dialog between Red Ice host Henrik Palmgren and Swerdlow regarding an "insider" Palmgren had hoped to get on the show.

Palmgren: He definitely mentioned again that the G4S, or the G-Force as I call them, who are behind the security of the Olympics are purposely looking for incompetent people and also the fact that he was told in some way that you as a worker in here or a security agent are going to be responsible for the evacuation of London or the biggest historical event in the history of London which is just an interesting little tidbit that I haven't heard him really expand more on that yet. But do you think they would tell actually the people involved in this in a subtle way like this if it really was true that they were planning something?

Swerdlow: Yeah, they have to because they have to -- the staff must be aware or expect something without maybe knowing exactly what it is. Because they need certain programmed responses from that staff that will enhance the entire event and make it look as if it's a natural event or something that happens suddenly and they didn't expect. Yes, the staff would have to be advised that some thing will happen.

So they have to be prepared to look surprised? Oh, but they can't really know that they've been prepared to look surprised. That'll really make'em look suprised! Ummm...

Everything Palmgren is describing is standard operational planning. You always have to plan as if the worst catastrophe possible will occur so that you're prepared to deal with it if the worst happens. Why would an employee be told he'd be responsible for the largest evacuation in London's history? Um, because people from all over the world will be crammed into a not very large city in an age when we're all deeply paranoid about terrorism? This is the same kind of logic that says, if they're not planning war with such and such country, why are there battle plans made up? Because there are battle plans made up and ready for every conceivable contingency! It's called military preparedness. There are battle plans being made up and revised constantly for countries most of us have never even heard and will probably never in a million years go to war with. To paraphrase Stephen Colbert, battle plans cause wars the same way fire extinguishers cause fires. And the same goes for evacuation plans. What really would be concerning is if they didn't have security preparing fully for a massive evacuation and "acting as if." The alternative is too horrible to contemplate.

So there are real leaps in logic and things that border on paranoid delusion in this show. There are also some genuinely concerning things -- the kind that make you go, whaaa? But mostly there's William Henry and Chad Stuemke separating the wheat from the chaff and explaining some very exciting, symbolic imagery.

I guess it's all in how you look at it. For instance, when I read the William Blake poem alluded to in the opening ceremony, I see a brilliant piece of esoteric literature hinting at ascension. And consciously or unconsciously those very alchemical themes are woven seamlessly into the thematic language of the event. For example, here's an analysis of one part of the poem:

The poem Jerusalem (1804), by William Blake, is actually an excerpt from the preface to one of his “prophetic books", Milton.

Jerusalem is here the symbolic residence of a humanity freed of the inter-related chains of commerce, British imperialism, and war. Blake's "mental fight" is directed against these chains. In his Blake: Prophet Against Empire, David Erdman tells us that Blake’s "dark, Satanic Mills" are "mills that produce dark metal, iron and steel, for diabolic purposes . . . . London . . . was a war arsenal and the hub of the machinery of war, and Blake uses the symbol in that sense.”

As I pointed out here, there is a sequence in one of the promos of golden, molten metal being poured to make drab steel which is then transformed by the rainbow into living, golden beings. Pure alchemy.

Others see reference to that poem as a clue to an evil "zionist" conspiracy to take over the world. Eh. You say tomato...
 

And did those feet in ancient time Walk upon England's mountains green? And was the holy Lamb of God On England's pleasant pastures seen? And did the Countenance Divine Shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded here Among these dark Satanic Mills? Bring me my bow of burning gold! Bring me my arrows of desire! Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold! Bring me my charriot of fire! I will not cease from mental fight, Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand Till we have built Jerusalem In England's green and pleasant land.

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Zombie Apocalpyse: An Archetypal Journey

Article first published as Zombie Apocalpyse: An Archetypal Journey on Blogcritics.

A spate of cannibalistic attacks has raised public fears to such an extent that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had to address concerns with assurances that the "CDC does not know of a virus or condition that would reanimate the dead (or one that would present zombie-like symptoms)." It doesn't help that almost exactly one year ago they put out Zombie Apocalypse guidelines, in a strange and darkly prescient attempt to engage the public through humor.

Zombie Apocalypse: It's a funny phrase, evoking the more colloquial meaning of the word apocalypse - which is to say, a gruesome battle, ending the world as we know it. But that is not what the word actually means. Apocalypse comes from the Greek apokálypsis and means something more along the lines of "the big reveal" or "lifting of the veil." In that sense, a Zombie Apocalypse is an oxymoron. Zombies are all about ignorance.

Zombies tend to spike in the public imagination when we are struggling against some fear of authoritarian control. They reflect a collective anxiety about being reduced to mindless automatons, animated only by base impulses to eat... and shop. In the Dawn of the Dead movies they spend a lot of time at the mall, glazed over with their need to consume, the same in undeath as in life.



The zombie is one of our most ancient archetypes, at least as old as literature itself, making its first appearance in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Most famously, the fickle goddess Ishtar, spurned by Gilgamesh, threatens to raise the dead. This is the first known description of a Zombie Apocalypse and it goes back to the dawn of civilization.

Father give me the Bull of Heaven,
So he can kill Gilgamesh in his dwelling.
If you do not give me the Bull of Heaven,
I will knock down the Gates of the Netherworld,
I will smash the door posts, and leave the doors flat down,
and will let the dead go up to eat the living!
And the dead will outnumber the living!

But more to the point, the central struggle of Gilgamesh is his quest for immortality. Gilgamesh seems baffled that people die and that he will also. He is part god but he cannot enter the abode of the gods, the "land of the living." And when he loses his beloved friend Enkidu, in some recovered versions of the story, a ghoulish scene unfolds. Gilgamesh, tormented by grief, stays with the dead body for a week, until it is so corrupted and crawling with worms he has no choice but to return it to the earth and commission a statue instead.

The upshot of this ancient horror story is Gilgamesh's eventual discovery of the truth of life and death. His ancestor, Utnapishtim, the Sumerian precursor to Noah, was granted passage to the realm of the gods, but to mankind they dealt death and kept eternal life only for themselves. So death as we know it was created by capricious gods for the human survivors of the deluge.

The zombie archetype would seem to be a natural expression of a human race grappling with its own mortality. Like Gilgamesh we long for the immortality of the gods but fear that for us it would mean a gruesome undeath.

I would posit, though, that the symbolism is far broader than our fear of ourselves and our loved ones being consigned to living death, reduced to our motor impulses. It's a reminder that we already are in a kind of living death, consuming endlessly, numbly wandering shopping malls, dying from the moment of birth. Gilgamesh, for instance, begins as a bored monarch, engaged in mindless, purposeless violence. So the gods give him a companion and together they begin their quest to find meaning in a nonsensical existence. Taken in that light, the zombie archetype is a wake-up call, challenging us to undertake the hero's journey and courageously look death in the eye.

Or perhaps some revelation is at hand challenging us to open the eye - calling upon us to remember a time before the flood. As the worst specters of our imagining burst from our nightmares onto the streets of Louisiana, Connecticut, Florida... I mean, dear God. The precipitating incident involved a naked man carrying a Bible. If that isn't a case of life imitating art, I don't know what is. When we manifest archetypes on that scale in the reflective world, it's always about something. The question - and the quest - is how we make meaning of it.

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Vampire Graveyard

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Iron rods? I thought they had to be wooden stakes. Clearly I've seen too many movies. 

Archaeologists in Bulgaria have found two medieval skeletons pierced through the chest with iron rods to supposedly stop them from turning into vampires.

The discovery illustrates a pagan practice common in some villages up until a century ago, say historians.

People deemed bad had their hearts stabbed after death, for fear they would return to feast on humans' blood.

Similar archaeological sites have also been unearthed in other Balkan countries.

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Easter Egg Jesus

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Some years ago I posted a blurb on the controversy surrounding a life-sized chocolate Jesus exhibit. The sculpture, among other things, blurred the lines between Easter baskets filled with chocolate bunnies and jelly beans and the crucifixion and resurrection we are ostensibly honoring every spring. But then, it was the early church that originally confused things by grafting the Christ myth onto ancient, Pagan fertility rituals. It's a particularly odd pairing. Even the name, Easter, owes far more to pre-Christian mythos than anything to do with Jesus. It comes from the same word root as estrus and the goddess Eostara. It's all about estrogen and ovulation.

Chocolate Jesus also pushed the limits because he was depicted in the nude, naughty bits and all. I think I've said about enough on the sexy Jesus issue, but, let's face it, struggle continues with the sensuality of even some of the most ancient images of Christ.

That controversial, crucified confection was the first thing that came to mind when my husband gave me this Jesus themed Easter egg. (I'm a sucker for the kitsch.) And Easter Egg Jesus is stuffed to the brim with tasty, little candy crosses. Mmmm... Sacrilicious!



Today I'm giving the whole thing a rethink and considering the possibility that the egg imagery which so dominates Christian Easter is a subtle nod to creation myths more generally. Perhaps it's really, consciously or not, a remembrance of the cosmic egg from which the world was born. And the egg from which gods have been born only to be killed and resurrected in various forms.

Orphic mythology employs themes of death and rebirth found in Shamanic cultures, specifically in the form of Dionysos. The Orphic cosmogony begins with Phanes -- "light" -- bursting out of the cosmic egg. The light of Phanes ultimately is passed on through Zeus to the child Dionysos, who is killed by the Titans in a scene that replicates a common shamanic journey in which the shaman is dismembered and eaten. The mysteries of Isis celebrate another god, Osiris, who is killed and dismembered. Dionysos, like Osiris, is reborn. Initiation, in many cases, involves the initiated repeating "the death of the Supernatural Being, the founder of the mystery."

Scratch the surface of any pervasive mythology and what you find over and over again is that there is nothing new under the sun.

Hallelujah!!!

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Karen Armstrong on Religion as Unknowing

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.




In this wonderful lecture, Karen Armstrong tackles the big questions and determines that there are no answers -- not if you're doing it right. As I wrote yesterday, embracing unknowing is a key to dismantling oppressive hierarchy and abuses of power. And willingness to embrace mystery is the pathway to God.

What is God? The former nun recalls the answer she learnt in catechism: "God is the supreme spirit who alone exists of himself and is infinite in all perfections." That answer, while far too heady for an eight year old, is still too limiting to be meaningful. Instead Armstrong turns to the teachings of Maimonides, Avicenna, and Thomas Aquinas whose thoughts on the matter she paraphrases.

God is not the supreme spirit. God is not the supreme being. God is not a being at all. God is being itself.

What is religion? Again, there is no simple answer according to Armstrong. Religious experience shouldn't be definable. It should defy explanation.

In the pre-modern world, good theology was meant to tip you into a moment of transcendence and silence where you realized that you'd gone beyond the reach of words and concepts. Because our minds are tuned to transcendence.

In the modern world, she argues, we've turned religion into a "head trip" rather than the experience of living myth and mystery. Scripture can't be read as literal truth. But myth does not mean falsehood. It is, she says, "more than history." When we enact myth in ritual and ceremony we internalize the power of those myths and are fundamentally changed by them.

Armstrong's lecture was part of a program on the compassion initiative she spearheaded in 2009. I'll be the first to admit that I when I first learned of the Charter for Compassion I thought the idea might be too abstract to have any practical impact. But according to Armstrong the project has exceeded expectations in numerous arenas around the globe.

One of my personal favorites is the prison reform project that trains prison officers to treat inmates with more respect and care. When it was put into practice in a jail in Washington State, the goal was to decrease violence by 2.5 percent; in fact the project was so successful that violence was decreased by 100 percent. Now the creators are evaluating just what the federal government could save by implementing this program across the United States. Additionally, Louisville Kentucky and Berkeley California are just two of the cities exploring restorative justice programs as part of their cities' compassionate programs.

Among our partners are both scientific and medical researchers. Stanford University's Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education is conducting research into mapping compassion in the brain and developing compassion training programs; for adults. In Holland, an impassioned group of medical students have written a charter focused on medical ethics and compassion in healthcare. They are working to make compassion training a required part of the medical school curriculum.

We are connected by the Internet in a fashion as never before. To take advantage of that opportunity we have launched a new website. It will provide practical tools and a meeting place for people from all over the world who are interested in creating and sustaining a more compassionate world. If we all became active upholders of the Golden Rule in our daily lives, in our political lives, in our cities, we could combat the voices the extremisms and hatred that are tearing us apart and endangering us all. We could create a better, more just, more respectful society and world. We can do it and we must do it.

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Paul Levy on the Collective Shadow

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

I've referenced Tibetan Buddhist and healer Paul Levy before -- notably in my review of The Secret. Levy's essays are available on his site Awaken in the Dream and in his book The Madness of George W. Bush: A Reflection of our Collective Psychosis. In his newest book Wetiko, Levy continues to explore the projected shadow as a collective phenomenon and the Native American mythical embodiment of it known as wetiko to the Cree. Years ago, I watched a movie called Wendigo, another Algonquian name for the same phenomenon. It's a haunting film that brilliantly captures the sense of doom we experience at those times when life is turned upside down leaving us at the mercy of an unfolding fate that seems to have its own agenda. As Levy explains, we actually animate this darkness run amok from our suppressed shadow. The more in denial of our shadow we are, the more inevitably we will confront it as a seemingly alien entity in our reflective world.

One of the things that struck me in this Red Ice Radio interview is Levy's anecdote about a New Age bookstore that wanted him to appear but not talk about all that shadow stuff. They wanted it to be "positive." It put me in mind of another author who dared to write about the painful side of spiritual growth; Rabbi Yonassan Gershom who wrote about Holocaust reincarnates.  Said Gershom:

Then in 1984 I was invited to speak on Jewish mysticism at the annual Spiritual Frontiers Fellowship (SFF) retreat at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. SFF is an eclectic group of spiritually oriented people who are interested in psychic phenomena, and most believe in reincarnation. Here, I thought, would be a receptive audience for these case histories that I had been gathering. So I suggested "Cases of Holocaust Reincarnation" as my topic.

I was turned down flat. The SFF representative explained that the theme of the retreat would be "I Am the Light," and they wanted to focus on uplifting, positive material because that's what people expected. The Holocaust was just too heavy and depressing, and might upset people, even if I were talking about reincarnation. Couldn't I do something more inspiring, like a Sabbath liturgy?

This relentless focus on the upbeat and cheerful is not just naive. It's dangerous -- something I've written about ad nauseam, ad infinitum. And as Levy has been explaining brilliantly for years, it can unleash terrors beyond our conscious imagining.

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William Henry Talks Sun Worship, 2012, and More

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

I have not been and will not be doing much blogging until I get some computer problems resolved. Don't ask. It's been a rough few months on many levels. But, in the meantime, I've managed to catch some good new YouTube vids and this Coast to Coast interview from November is an excellent reminder of how much more advanced the ancients were than our current tech dependent civilization. George Noory's interview with William Henry begins a little before the 40 minute mark.

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The Giving Tree is a Sap

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Better Book Titles: Children's Book Edition

As a child, I loved The Giving Tree. I read it over and over. As an adult, a feminist, and a gratefully recovering codependent, I've long since given the book a rethink. So much so that I won't expose my daughter to it. It's not allowed in the house. What I once thought of as a sweet and moving story with a  moral about the beauty of altruism, I realized one day is an appallingly sexist book filled with poisonous ideas about the role of women and of earth itself.

I don't know why the book struck such a cord for me. Perhaps it had something to do with my profound fascination with trees. Perhaps it was something more prosaic like my nascent codependency. The book presents a dangerous message, overall: Imbalanced relationships in which one person sacrifices endlessly for the happiness of another are an ideal state. In fact, happiness can be derived entirely from pleasing someone else. This is the very definition of codependency.

Codependency is not necessarily a gendered phenomenon. There are plenty of male codependents. But girls are actually acculturated to be codependent, even in families where alcoholism and other major dysfunction aren't the issue. If we don't get it from our families -- and my family was probably more progressive than most -- we get it from our communities, from our schools, from movies, from books... books like The Giving Tree.



The gender dynamics in the story are fairly obvious. The tree is female. The child is male.The tree plays a very maternal and nurturing role with the boy. And she's the kind of mother who would definitely eat the Burnt Toast.

Up 'til now, I ate the burnt toast. I learned that from my mother -- metaphorically if not literally. I can't actually remember if she even likes toast or how she eats it. But what I know for sure is that although she was a loving and devoted wife and mother, she always took care of everyone and everything else before herself. This habitual self-sacrifice was well intended, but ultimately it's a mixed message for a child. It taught me that in order for me to succeed, someone else had to suffer. I learned to accept whatever was in front of me without complaint because I didn't think I deserved good things.

Like so many girls, Teri Hatcher learned the message from her mother that a woman's role in life is to sacrifice for others. Like so many boys growing up, the boy in The Giving Tree learned to profit from the sacrifice of those who love him.

The relationship between the tree and the boy is one based on give and take. She gives. He takes. He takes without gratitude. He takes without ever giving anything back except the occasional visit. And he only visits when he wants something. But the tree just gives, and gives, and gives, until she has nothing left to give... and then she gives some more. 

Even as a child reading that book, I was startled by the boy's effrontery: Give me some money. I want a house. I want a boat. What else can you possibly give me? But -- and this is the truly alarming part -- because the tree took it all with such aplomb and seemed so happy to keep giving, I accepted his behavior as normal. I could only really enjoy the story if I allowed myself to think that it was perfectly appropriate for someone to take endlessly and give nothing in return. The boy never even says thank-you. He just takes.

The implicit message to girls reading that book is that we are only really happy when we are giving something or doing something for someone else. This is how women are supposed to find fulfillment; not by expecting anything for ourselves. The boy's happiness is the tree's happiness. And no matter how many times he takes what he wants and abandons the tree, the tree is always happy when he returns so that she can give him more of her stuff.

That message is certainly not original to Shel Silverstein. It's one women have been wrestling with from time immemorial. For Virginia Woolf, that message was epitomized by the The Angel in the House; a narrative poem by Coventry Patmore that was all the rage in Victorian England. "The Wife's Tragedy" is one of the preludes in that poem.

Man must be pleased; but him to please
     Is woman's pleasure; down the gulf
Of his condoled necessities
     She casts her best, she flings herself.
How often flings for nought, and yokes
     Her heart to an icicle or whim,
Whose each impatient word provokes
     Another, not from her, but him;
While she, too gentle even to force
     His penitence by kind replies,
Waits by, expecting his remorse,
     With pardon in her pitying eyes;
And if he once, by shame oppress'd,
     A comfortable word confers,
She leans and weeps against his breast,
     And seems to think the sin was hers;
And whilst his love has any life,
     Or any eye to see her charms,
At any time, she's still his wife,
     Dearly devoted to his arms;
She loves with love that cannot tire;
     And when, ah woe, she loves alone,
Through passionate duty love springs higher,
     As grass grows taller round a stone.

Woolf found that her very survival depended on facing down this soul killing ideal of Victorian womanhood. The "angel" had to go.

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“It wasn’t housework that distressed Virginia Woolf. It was the battle with an ideal that she called The Angel in the House. Such a woman ‘excelled in the difficult arts of family life. She sacrificed herself daily. If there was a chicken, she took the leg; if there was a draught she sat in it — in short she was so constituted that she never had a mind or a wish of her own, but preferred to sympathize always with the minds and wishes of others.’ In order to become a writer, Woolf had to kill the Angel. ‘My excuse , if I were to be had up in a court of law, would be that I acted in self-defence. Had I not killed her she would have killed me.”

Even as social changes have allowed for more opportunities for women in every sphere of life, we tend to find ourselves in supporting roles in all of them. As we moved into the workforce, we found that instead of changing tasks, we just added more. We developed the Superwoman Syndrome, believing we had to be all things to all people both at work and at home. Structural changes to support the new opportunities for women have lagged behind those opportunities; the availability of good childcare, for instance. And we still constantly receive messages, both explicit and implicit, that it's all on us. If we want to work -- and for many women it's not a so much "a choice" -- it's up to us to find ways to manage both family life and work life.

One incident sticks out in my memory as emblematic of the kinds of hurdles working women have faced. The department head from an office adjacent to mine was waiting for the elevator at the end of the day. She was one of the hardest-working, most efficient and effective executives in the company. The marketing director stopped her in the hall and sneered, "Going home at 5:00 I see. That's what motherhood will do for you." He also had children but it never seemed to occur to him that this should create any conflict with his professional life.

The tragedy of incidents like that is that they will make most women feel guilty more than angry. They can trigger shame spirals in which we tear ourselves apart about whether we're doing enough for our children, our husbands, our jobs, and the world at large. We just know that it's all our responsibility because that's what we've been told since we were children; that if we wanted to pursue our own dreams someone else would suffer for it. So we keep eating the burnt toast and giving the perfect, lightly browned and lavishly buttered pieces away.

Ironically, feminism has provided whole new areas and opportunities for us to give over valuable parts of ourselves to other people. We have new vistas of codependency to explore. One of the most spiritually toxic arenas has been our sex lives. The sexual revolution has liberated us in some ways only to bind us to new-found levels of expectation.

Hugo Schwyzer addressed, in a recent post, how female identity as people-pleaser has informed our new sexual "freedom."

Ariel Levy, in her powerful and controversial Female Chauvinist Pigs, quoted Paris Hilton’s remarkably perceptive remark about herself that she was “sexy, but not sexual.” Hilton isn’t alone. My students today, who are mostly in their late teens (though

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I have many older ones as well) were deeply influenced by Hilton, who was at the peak of her notoriety four or five years ago, when these now-college freshman were just entering high school. And sadly, not unlike many of their older sisters, they find themselves stuck in what we might call the “Paris Paradox”.

Young women with the Paris Paradox were raised in a culture that promised sexual freedom, but what they ended up with looked a lot more like obligation than opportunity. It’s not hard to understand why the pressure to be sexy so often trumps the freedom to discover one’s authentic sexuality. As Levy and Martin and others have been pointing out for the past decade, we’ve begun to sexualize girls at ever earlier ages, as anyone who noticed the Halloween costumes marketed to tween girls will be aware. The explicitness — the raunchiness, to use Levy’s word — of this sexualization is relatively new. But when that sexualization (or pornification, to use another popular term) meets the far-older pressure on young women to be people-pleasers, we have a recipe for misery.

I read years ago that Marilyn Monroe was described similarly as one who did not seem to enjoy sex. For all her iconic sensuality, she was said to be very passive and not terribly enthusiastic. In a sense, this is probably a component of her sex appeal and of female sex objects more generally. Because that's what they are: objects. Objects don't have needs. They meet them.

This excerpt from Female Chauvinist Pigs describes the sexless sex appeal of the heiress who famously designed the "I'm Hot Your Not" [sic] t-shirt.

There is a disconnect between sexiness or hotness and sex itself. As Paris Hilton, the breathing embodiment of our current, prurient, collective fixations -- blondness, hotness, richness, anti-intellectualism -- told Rolling Stone reporter Vanessa Grigoriadis, "my boyfriends always tell me I'm not sexual. Sexy, but not sexual." Any fourteen-year-old who has downloaded her sex tapes can tell you that Hilton looks excited when she is posing for the camera, bored when she is engaged in actual sex. (In one tape, Hilton took a cell phone call during intercourse.) She is the perfect sexual celebrity for this moment, because our interest is in the appearance of sexiness, not the existence of sexual pleasure.

There is a very big difference between the preening, pouting sexuality portrayed for male entertainment and authentic female sexuality. A genuinely sexual woman can be a bit demanding. But in matters of sex, as in every other aspect of women's lives, the expectation is one of self-sacrifice. Schwyzer explains:

While both boys and girls may grow up hearing the old adage that it is “better to give than to receive”, girls are much more likely to be given regular instruction in how to give — and much more likely to be rebuked for “selfishness” if they show too much desire to receive. (Ask around. “Selfish” ranks right up there with “slut” and “fat” as an epithet with tremendous power to wound women. It only rarely does the same damage when applied to men.)

Dan Savage created an uproar, recently, when he opined in an interview with Mark Oppenheimer that monogamy may not be the best measure of the institution marriage and that in gay marriages, men will be far more tolerant of straying spouses. The last thing a lot of people want to hear, as gay marriage rights gain ground, is the suggestion from a gay activist that it will redefine marriage. Savage has a point in that infidelity has long been a part of traditional marriage.

“The mistake that straight people made,” Savage told me, “was imposing the monogamous expectation on men. Men were never expected to be monogamous. Men had concubines, mistresses and access to prostitutes, until everybody decided marriage had to be egalitar­ian and fairsey.” In the feminist revolution, rather than extending to women “the same latitude and license and pressure-release valve that men had always enjoyed,” we extended to men the confines women had always endured. “And it’s been a disaster for marriage.”

Yes. So many of our social institutions work more smoothly when women are willing to sacrifice their happiness so that men can do whatever they want. This is something women are very used to hearing; that the rules are different for men and that we only make ourselves more miserable when we are unwilling to accept that.

Historically, of course, while men had more license to enjoy their concubines, mistresses, and prostitutes, women faced such social penalties as battery, scarlet letters, and even death, for infidelity -- something we still see in the Arab world. And even in the modern world, some of the most unfaithful men still fully expect fidelity from their wives and girlfriends; even when they have both. That women embracing the infidelity path for themselves thing that Savage suggests tends not to go over so well with men. Men also crave fidelity from their partners. (I would specify heterosexual men here but I know too many gay men who have been emotionally destroyed by cheating partners.) At least a part of what underlies that male jealousy is that monogamy isn't so much in conflict with our basic impulses. Rather, our basic impulses around sexuality are in conflict. None of us can stop being attracted to other people but we also can't turn off the desire for genuine intimacy that can only happen when we feel emotionally safe in our relationships. There is an emotional component to our sexuality that we can't entirely shut off, as one of Savage's readers discovered when he and his wife opened up their marriage. He described his reaction to her having vaginal intercourse with another man: “It was as if all the air in the room was sucked out through my soul.”

Shutting off such feelings has always been harder for women than for men. In the same New York Times Magazine article, Judith Stacey explains:

“They are men,” she said, and she believes it is easier for them — right down to the physiology of orgasm — to separate physical and emotional intimacy. Lesbians and straight women tend to be far less comfortable with nonmonogamy than gay men.

Stacey, like Savage, concludes that there is no one size fits all solution on the monogamy issue and that different couples, gay and straight, need to define the parameters of their relationships for themselves. Throughout history and right up to the present day, however, these decisions have been made for women, not by them. The result has been second-class citizenry in sex and relationships. I find it telling that Savage pokes at feminism for failing to bring about egalitarianism in the world of cheating. I would posit, however, that the increasingly "fairsey" nature of marriage is a somewhat indirect result of the feminist revolution. Relationships are being redefined, not on men's terms, but on women's. Along with a plethora of other rights, women have been demanding the monogamy that is innately more comfortable for them.

I have long said that Bill Clinton's biggest mistake was his failure to notice what was happening across the pond with Prince Charles and Lady Diana. Diana did something that would have been unthinkable a hundred years earlier. She refused to tolerate her husband's infidelity. Women of her social position had always been willing to put up with mistresses and quietly accept that powerful men have powerful appetites. Diana simply refused to endure a miserable situation and take solace in the other contentments of her social position. In that respect, Lady Diana was something of a bellwether of a greater social transformation.

Fidelity, sexual or otherwise, involves consideration of another person's feelings, needs, and desires; something that has always been expected more from women than from men.

The giving tree is nothing if not faithful. She waits and longs like Calypso for the boy's occasional booty call.

The boy in The Giving Tree doesn't just exploit the emotions of the anthropomorphized tree. He selfishly strips the natural resources she embodies. Silverstein's messaging on ecology is horrible. Nature's gifts are man's for the taking, without consideration to reforestation, or even any real appreciation. What does the boy care? He's the self-described "king of the forest."

The analogy between woman and earth is extremely ancient going back at least as far the myths of the great mother goddess. In many of those myths, she is the earth itself. She is Gaia, Sophia, Tiamat. At her most reduced, she is "Mother Nature." In many iterations she is the original fire serpent climbing the tree of life to reconnect heaven and earth.

This, for me, is the greatest tragedy of the perennially adored children's story. The tree that gives so endlessly and to her own detriment is more than a mother figure taken completely for granted by an arrogant child. She's a trampled and disregarded vestige of the divine feminine. And like the vastly diminished serpent goddess Eve in popular myth (if not in the Bible) she hands the boy an apple.

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