The satanic universe
Bogie and Rushdie shape my destiny
Welcome to The Satanic Universe. I am your prophet and spiritual detective, Robert Urbanek. Through dreams, symbols, and synchronicity, I reveal the secrets of the cosmos and crack open the mind of the Creator.
I don't carry a Holy Book in my trench coat. I'm packing heat and brass knuckles. The God I'm looking for runs a crooked casino, Earth, in a bad part of town, the Milky Way. The wheels are rigged, and the decks are cold. Einstein said God does not play dice with the universe. Yes, he does, and the dice are loaded. God leaves little to chance. You may call it intelligent design. I call it cheating.
I didn't have faith; I had reasonable suspicion. I picked up that attitude from my mentor, a certain hardboiled gumshoe and soldier of fortune. He keeps showing up in unexpected places.
About 1987 I was visiting my mother's house in Buena Park, California. As we sat at the dining room table, she began dismantling a still life picture. She wanted to dump the art but keep the frame. As she removed the cardboard backing and turned it over, we discovered a 14 by 17- inch poster for a 1951 Humphrey Bogart movie, Sirocco.
Welcome to The Satanic Universe. I am your prophet and spiritual detective, Robert Urbanek. Through dreams, symbols, and synchronicity, I reveal the secrets of the cosmos and crack open the mind of the Creator.
I don't carry a Holy Book in my trench coat. I'm packing heat and brass knuckles. The God I'm looking for runs a crooked casino, Earth, in a bad part of town, the Milky Way. The wheels are rigged, and the decks are cold. Einstein said God does not play dice with the universe. Yes, he does, and the dice are loaded. God leaves little to chance. You may call it intelligent design. I call it cheating.
I didn't have faith; I had reasonable suspicion. I picked up that attitude from my mentor, a certain hardboiled gumshoe and soldier of fortune. He keeps showing up in unexpected places.
About 1987 I was visiting my mother's house in Buena Park, California. As we sat at the dining room table, she began dismantling a still life picture. She wanted to dump the art but keep the frame. As she removed the cardboard backing and turned it over, we discovered a 14 by 17- inch poster for a 1951 Humphrey Bogart movie, Sirocco.
The poster proclaims, "Bogart's Socko in Sirocco" and shows Bogart in a trench coat, Lee J. Cobb in a tussle with Marta Toren, and a belly dancer with two fez-wearing musicians. In the film, Bogie, as Harry Smith, is selling weapons to terrorists who are fighting the French occupiers in Syria. Yes, kind of like helping al-Qaeda or ISIS.
I got the poster reframed and it now hangs in my home.
Spiritual father Back in the 1940s, my mother was a real “looker.” She worked at Ontra Cafeteria in Hollywood. People suggested she become a model. She once had a date with actor Howard Duff. About three months before she died, she told me her friends had offered to set her up on a date with Bogart, but she turned them down because "he had too many girlfriends." My jaw dropped. If things had worked out, my dad could have been Bogie, not the man she married. Of course, that would have been a different me.
One Bogart movie, The Maltese Falcon, led me to an alternative reality. I have also followed in Harry Smith's footsteps by writing materials on this site, such as my essay on Nine Eleven, which could give theological ammunition to jihadists. Why would I do something like that? God told me to. Or the devil made me do it. Or it may be entirely my idea, though I have serious doubts about the concept of free will. My future may not be written on the wall, but it seems to be hanging on the wall, in the pictures in my house.
A cheeky bastard, aren’t I? Do I think I can play God with people’s lives? Absolutely. I am a four-faced deity: Falcon, Weasel, Antichrist, Alien — one better than the Trinity. At the least, I am a god-in-training. If this Earth gig works out, I may get my own planet, my own galaxy or even my own universe. According to some multiverse theories, there may be an infinite number of universes — plenty of job opportunities for an up-and-coming Supreme Being.
Can there be only one Supreme Being? I can live with different levels of supremeness. Diana Ross, for example, was more supreme than the other Supremes.
I expect you’ll be wanting evidence of my divinity. Fair enough.
But first a few words about the title of this site. A satanic thread runs through much though not all this narrative. Still, there is more Satan in The Satanic Universe than in The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie. Universe, Verses. The similarity is intentional. In a C-SPAN interview in December 2010, Rushdie revealed he had planned to become a physicist but “jumped ship” to become a writer. I took a similar path in college, switching from a physics major to a journalism major. I viewed this coincidence as an opportunity to follow in Rushdie’s satanic footsteps. It is part of the wealth of synchronicity that has shaped my life. I now have faith that a story is being told.
Words I ignore: Don’t go there. Words I embrace: Untroubled, scornful, outrageous -- That is how wisdom wants us to be. She is a woman and never loves anyone but a warrior — Friedrich Nietzsche
I’ve mastered scornful and outrageous. I’m still working on untroubled.
I temper my provocative writing with a cool and calm disposition. Be regular and orderly in your life . . . that you may be violent and original in your work. — Gustave Flaubert, French novelist. At the keyboard, I change from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde. Well, more like Bob Newhart becoming Vincent Price.
Robert S Urbanek
Images Detail from Satan in Dante's Nine Circle of Hell, Gustave Dore, public domain; Sirocco © 1951 Columbia Pictures Corp., fair use; Robert S Urbanek, personal collection