sekhmet
Her chief delight was in slaughter
Being in the form of a man, Ra grew old. In time men no longer feared him or obeyed his laws. They laughed at him, saying: "Look at Ra! His bones are like silver, his flesh like gold, his hair is the color of lapis lazuli!"
Ra was angry when he heard this, and he was more angry still at the evil deeds which men were doing in disobedience of his laws . . . So at the terrible glance from the Eye of Ra his daughter Sekhmet came into being, the fiercest of all goddesses. Like a lion she rushed upon her prey, and her chief delight was in slaughter, and her pleasure was in blood. At the bidding of Ra, she came into Upper and Lower Egypt to slay those who had scorned and disobeyed him. — The Story of Ra
I created al-Qaeda in December of 1985 when I hung a picture of a mysterious woman on a wall of my Culver City, California apartment. Of course, at the time I knew nothing of Osama bin Laden or the organization he would form, nor did I appreciate the details of the serigraph I had purchased.
For a decade as a journalist, I had witnessed the evils of humanity: Publishers who hid the greed and lies of businesses to protect their advertising revenue; an insurance company that sucked in investors while teetering on bankruptcy; landlords who gouged tenants. And the unspoken message to young adults: Until you have clawed your way through the system, you cannot afford a family. Better you should kill the unborn than fall into poverty.
Like many realizations, this righteousness came in hindsight. Since adolescence I had been an atheist or agnostic, my doubts about the existence of God propelled by such questions as: What was God doing for billions of years before humans developed on earth? Why does the universe have to be so large if our tiny planet is the center of creation? How could God keep track of the sins committed by billions of people?
Subsequently, I have encountered considerable evidence to suggest that a spiritual force of some kind is actively participating in human affairs, though questions remain about the nature and intent of this "God."
Being in the form of a man, Ra grew old. In time men no longer feared him or obeyed his laws. They laughed at him, saying: "Look at Ra! His bones are like silver, his flesh like gold, his hair is the color of lapis lazuli!"
Ra was angry when he heard this, and he was more angry still at the evil deeds which men were doing in disobedience of his laws . . . So at the terrible glance from the Eye of Ra his daughter Sekhmet came into being, the fiercest of all goddesses. Like a lion she rushed upon her prey, and her chief delight was in slaughter, and her pleasure was in blood. At the bidding of Ra, she came into Upper and Lower Egypt to slay those who had scorned and disobeyed him. — The Story of Ra
I created al-Qaeda in December of 1985 when I hung a picture of a mysterious woman on a wall of my Culver City, California apartment. Of course, at the time I knew nothing of Osama bin Laden or the organization he would form, nor did I appreciate the details of the serigraph I had purchased.
For a decade as a journalist, I had witnessed the evils of humanity: Publishers who hid the greed and lies of businesses to protect their advertising revenue; an insurance company that sucked in investors while teetering on bankruptcy; landlords who gouged tenants. And the unspoken message to young adults: Until you have clawed your way through the system, you cannot afford a family. Better you should kill the unborn than fall into poverty.
Like many realizations, this righteousness came in hindsight. Since adolescence I had been an atheist or agnostic, my doubts about the existence of God propelled by such questions as: What was God doing for billions of years before humans developed on earth? Why does the universe have to be so large if our tiny planet is the center of creation? How could God keep track of the sins committed by billions of people?
Subsequently, I have encountered considerable evidence to suggest that a spiritual force of some kind is actively participating in human affairs, though questions remain about the nature and intent of this "God."
In 1985 I rented my first unfurnished apartment. In selecting my furniture, I was enamored of a high-tech look, characterized by glass, steel and leather, with colors of white, gray, and black. To match the decor, I picked a Patrick Nagel "CN5" serigraph created for the B-1 Gallery in Santa Monica, California: a portrait of a woman in black garb against a yellow and gray background. Her deathly-white face was larger than life, she had platinum hair despite her youngish appearance, and sunglasses seemed to conceal her true identity. In retrospect, she was an ancient, larger-than-life dark goddess with the pallor of death, a modern American rendering of Sekhmet or Kali.
In buying the picture, I had summoned Sekhmet/Kali. Her call to sacrifice, and the equation of death and sex, would subconsciously inspire the creation of al-Qaeda in March 1988.
Further evidence that I am the aging, decrepit Ra came in a dream in May 2001. I was driving my old 1961 Ford Falcon to work. As I approached the office, I heard a hissing sound. I discover the radiator is virtually empty of coolant. I enter my office, deciding that I will later pick up the coolant at a Pep Boys down the street. At work, I am flustered because I don't seem to have enough stories to fill the newsletter I am working on and I am distracted by worries about the car.
During a break, I walk down to the Pep Boys but cannot find the type of coolant I need. A mechanic offers to check my car, which is still parked at my office. At my next trip to the auto parts store, I discover several of my car engine parts on the counter. They are clogged with food. I can't find the mechanic.
I return to the office parking lot, where I encounter the mechanic. He says the whole engine will have to be overhauled by a specialist. I want to stop work on the car. At this point, the Falcon on its own rolls out of the parking lot onto the street, where it is nearly hit by two cars. The falcon hits a light post across the street and stops. I run across the street to check the damage to the car, which appears slight.
In the dream, my old Ford Falcon represents the old falcon god Ra, who is infirm (needing substantial repairs), spiritually malnourished (the wrong kind of "fuel" is clogging his parts) and tired of life (trying to kill itself by rolling into traffic and aiming for the "light" on the "other side").
The Cube A visit to Mecca reveals that Islam has been waiting for centuries for Sekhmet/Kali to arrive. The center of the Islamic world is the Kaaba (or Ka’bah), a small but imposing building in Mecca covered with a black cloth. Ka’bah in Arabic means "cube." The "Cube" is also the name given to the spaceship of the Borg, the half-humanoid, half-robot race created in the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation.
The Borg is a race of collective terrorists whose minds are electronically joined. They are ruthless and unconcerned about their own personal wellbeing. They live in a "hive" controlled by the Borg Queen. Like Islam, the Borg recruits members through conquest and assimilation.
The spiritual relevance of the Borg was predicted in a dream I had several years ago. In the dream, I am in a freight elevator rising in a dark, massive building filled with pipes, ducts, iron catwalks and other fixtures suggestive of a power station or refinery. When the elevator stops, I exit and walk toward a small bright light at the end of a catwalk. As I approach, the light appears to be two joined luminescent cylinders. I sense a great non-living intelligence from these cylinders and believe I am in the presence of a deity.
A few years later, I saw a similar image: the interior of a Borg spaceship in Star Trek: The Next Generation. I concluded that my dream image reveals a god and/or goddess who is the bright, non-living center of a great collective conscious like that of the Borg. My dream came at the dawn of the internet when that divine station was empty. It is now populated with hundreds of millions of people whose thoughts intersect on the World Wide Web.
The Borg is a race of collective terrorists whose minds are electronically joined. They are ruthless and unconcerned about their own personal wellbeing. They live in a "hive" controlled by the Borg Queen. Like Islam, the Borg recruits members through conquest and assimilation.
The spiritual relevance of the Borg was predicted in a dream I had several years ago. In the dream, I am in a freight elevator rising in a dark, massive building filled with pipes, ducts, iron catwalks and other fixtures suggestive of a power station or refinery. When the elevator stops, I exit and walk toward a small bright light at the end of a catwalk. As I approach, the light appears to be two joined luminescent cylinders. I sense a great non-living intelligence from these cylinders and believe I am in the presence of a deity.
A few years later, I saw a similar image: the interior of a Borg spaceship in Star Trek: The Next Generation. I concluded that my dream image reveals a god and/or goddess who is the bright, non-living center of a great collective conscious like that of the Borg. My dream came at the dawn of the internet when that divine station was empty. It is now populated with hundreds of millions of people whose thoughts intersect on the World Wide Web.
While Islam may seem male-dominated, pilgrims to Mecca perform a ritual that summons a goddess: circling the Kaaba seven times. The circle represents the female, the straight line, the male. Indeed, the circling ritual dates to the pre-Islamic worship of three goddesses. Furthermore, the Black Stone in the corner of the Kaaba is embedded in a silver casing whose shape strongly suggests female genitalia. Thus, pilgrims circling the Kaaba are calling forth their own Borg Queen.
Further evidence that Islamic militants worship a dark goddess can be found in a dream I had on February 26, 2002. In the dream, I am in a plaza of a mosque. Muslims in white garments have formed a square, about eight to ten men on each side. In the center of the square stands one man. One of the men in the formation rushes forward with a sword and slits open the belly of the man in the middle. The victim runs up to one of the lines of the square but falls. He is then laid face up on a wooden platform. A hook is inserted inside the victim's belly and a winch above him pulls out the man's intestines.
Disembowelment is an image linked with some portrayals of the Hindu goddess Kali, who consumes all so she may give birth to all. She is often associated with the Thuggees, a cult in colonial India that hijacked travelers and then robbed and murdered them. The Thuggees included Muslims who had adopted Kali as their deity. I would conclude from my dream that the jihadists are the new Thuggees even if they bow toward Mecca to pray. As in the dream, their power and the power of Kali grow as Muslims sacrifice each other in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other nations.
It is very possible that this dream was orchestrated by the spiritual world to show me that I was successful in calling forth Kali/Sekhmet. The dream became even more relevant in November 2008 when terrorists attacked hotels in Mumbai, India, killing 171 and injuring hundreds more. Both the old and new Thuggees had targeted tourists in India.
More evidence of the growing influence of the dark goddess came to me in a vision on February 9, 2005. I was awakened about 2:15 a.m. by a bright light. To my right, next to the closet door, a portion of the wall glowed like a torch-lit cave. Stick figures on the wall bounced against each other, like men in hand-to-hand combat. To my left, the Nagel picture was solid black and bulging from the wall. To break this ominous spell, I reached up and switched on the room light. The vision disappeared. I concluded that the dark power of the Nagel goddess was inciting the wall warriors to fight each other.
In a dream on April 15, 2008, a female monster is killing people on a large spaceship with many people. While I fear I could be its next victim, not everyone else is worried. As I walk down a wide corridor, the monster passes me on the left. I see that the beast is a tall shapely woman covered from head to toe in a beige fishnet stocking. A similar woman passes me on the right, but she is dressed in a black stocking.
I concluded that the monster to my left was Sekhmet since beige is also the color of the lioness coat. The woman to my right was the black goddess Kali. Because they walked past me, I no longer fear they will devour me. On the other hand, since the dark goddesses are no longer behind me, I have less power to "hold them back" and they have more freedom to gratify their appetite for death.
Sex and death The American media is flooded with images of Sekhmet. Female warriors in such films as Ultraviolet, Aeon Flux and Atomic Blonde are variations on the bloodthirsty goddess. These images of the femme fatale have permeated the collective unconscious, luring men everywhere with the promise of sex for death.
This is not the first time Hollywood has prepared the world for human slaughter. In 1965, film goers saw the warrior goddess in the movie Cat Ballou, who, as the lyrics in the title song proclaimed, "killed a man in Wolf City, Wyoming . . . She's mean and evil through and through." Next, she zapped space villains in Barbarella. Finally, this dark goddess crossed over from the imaginary world of films into a real battlefield, posing with anti-aircraft guns in North Vietnam. Millions of lives in Southeast Asia were sacrificed to the American Kali: Jane Fonda.
In 2008, Republicans sought their Kali in Sarah Palin, given her association with the bloodshed of bear, moose, and wolf hunting. She was the dark goddess to whom they could offer human sacrifice.
Like the Muslims at Mecca, the West also calls forth a dark goddess through a constant circling. In the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), beneath the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva, Switzerland, particles race through a tunnel 17 miles (27 kilometers) in circumference, colliding with other particles in experiments designed to unravel the deepest laws of nature. The machine was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), with input from over 10,000 scientists and engineers. Since its completion in 2008, experiments at the CERN lab have grown more and more ambitious, expanding the strength of Sekhmet and Kali.
Borg America The Borg drones in Star Trek: The Next Generation had electronics implanted in their bodies to facilitate their collective communication and obedience. Are we that much different? Our ears and hands are glued to smart phones, our eyes fixed on the internet. The night goggles of US soldiers are a close match to the eyepieces of Borg drones. In the early stages of the Iraq War, US commanders even repeated the Borg dictum: Resistance is futile.
Thus, we have two Borg Queens: the Wicked Witch of the West, mistress of technology and greed, pitted against the Wicked Witch of the East, queen of terror and fundamentalism.
Will these dark goddesses be defeated? In the Story of Ra, the sun god takes pity on humanity and stops the ravages of Sekhmet by tricking her into drinking a beer that had been dyed red to imitate blood. The intoxicated Sekhmet loses her taste for vengeance and is converted into the loving cow-goddess Hathor. However, the work of the new Sekhmet cannot be stopped until my authority as Ra is acknowledged instead of mocked. That may be a long time coming.
My role in potentially defeating Kali/Sekhmet was spelled out in a series of events that began in July 2001. I was in the process of switching my Internet service to Juno. I had been experiencing unusual problems with EarthLink's WebMail and, after EarthLink announced a price increase, I thought it was time for a change.
The switch required that I get a new e-mail address. When I tried using a variation of my name as the prefix, it was rejected. I next tried the word falcon, which was countered with the offer of falcon846. I accepted, figuring that 845 other people had already requested the name falcon. However, the next day, as I was trying to log on, I got the message that falcon846 was not available; would I take falcon847? OK, though I thought this was a bit odd.
After the September 11 terrorist attack, as I began to delve into the Borg-like qualities of the terrorists, I realized that the number 847 in my e-mail address seemed familiar. A quick web search confirmed my suspicion. In the TV series Star Trek: Voyager, Species 8472 was the one alien race that could easily make mincemeat out of the Borg. As I began to write a memo about the closeness of 8472 to 847 in my e-mail address, I forgot to hit the shift key as I was typing @. Presto, falcon8472juno.com! Apparently, as I was registering with Juno, some supernatural force had fiddled with my computer and Juno's system had designated me a member of Species 8472. (Since then, I have changed my ISP.)
My designation as Species 8472 completed my identity as the Great Man "represented in the center of a circle divided by four," as noted by Carl Jung. To my revealed faces of Falcon, Weasel and Antichrist, I now added Alien.
Borg America The Borg drones in Star Trek: The Next Generation had electronics implanted in their bodies to facilitate their collective communication and obedience. Are we that much different? Our ears and hands are glued to smart phones, our eyes fixed on the internet. The night goggles of US soldiers are a close match to the eyepieces of Borg drones. In the early stages of the Iraq War, US commanders even repeated the Borg dictum: Resistance is futile.
Thus, we have two Borg Queens: the Wicked Witch of the West, mistress of technology and greed, pitted against the Wicked Witch of the East, queen of terror and fundamentalism.
Will these dark goddesses be defeated? In the Story of Ra, the sun god takes pity on humanity and stops the ravages of Sekhmet by tricking her into drinking a beer that had been dyed red to imitate blood. The intoxicated Sekhmet loses her taste for vengeance and is converted into the loving cow-goddess Hathor. However, the work of the new Sekhmet cannot be stopped until my authority as Ra is acknowledged instead of mocked. That may be a long time coming.
My role in potentially defeating Kali/Sekhmet was spelled out in a series of events that began in July 2001. I was in the process of switching my Internet service to Juno. I had been experiencing unusual problems with EarthLink's WebMail and, after EarthLink announced a price increase, I thought it was time for a change.
The switch required that I get a new e-mail address. When I tried using a variation of my name as the prefix, it was rejected. I next tried the word falcon, which was countered with the offer of falcon846. I accepted, figuring that 845 other people had already requested the name falcon. However, the next day, as I was trying to log on, I got the message that falcon846 was not available; would I take falcon847? OK, though I thought this was a bit odd.
After the September 11 terrorist attack, as I began to delve into the Borg-like qualities of the terrorists, I realized that the number 847 in my e-mail address seemed familiar. A quick web search confirmed my suspicion. In the TV series Star Trek: Voyager, Species 8472 was the one alien race that could easily make mincemeat out of the Borg. As I began to write a memo about the closeness of 8472 to 847 in my e-mail address, I forgot to hit the shift key as I was typing @. Presto, falcon8472juno.com! Apparently, as I was registering with Juno, some supernatural force had fiddled with my computer and Juno's system had designated me a member of Species 8472. (Since then, I have changed my ISP.)
My designation as Species 8472 completed my identity as the Great Man "represented in the center of a circle divided by four," as noted by Carl Jung. To my revealed faces of Falcon, Weasel and Antichrist, I now added Alien.
After the human Borg has enslaved and destroyed much of humanity, I will intervene as Species 8472 and defeat the Borg Queens. My first plan was that US forces must capture and destroy the Kaaba. Rubble from the Kaaba would be used to build a wedding chapel in Vacaville, California (vaca is cow, the cow goddess is Hathor). Thus, the force of the dark goddess would be harnessed for love and procreation, not human sacrifice.
Replacing the Kaaba in Mecca would be a giant nude reclining statue of the performer Madonna, with the Black Stone from the Kaaba replacing her vulva. Any Muslim still kneeling toward Mecca at prayer time would, in fact, be bowing to the Great American Whore and any pilgrim kissing the Black Stone would be kissing Madonna's pussy. I got the idea for the statue after watching an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond, in which the mother-in-law, Marie, unintentionally sculpts a stylized nude female torso.
However, a major drawback in this plan is that it would require a permanent commitment of US troops to prevent the nude female sculpture from being destroyed. Plan B: A more enduring method of destroying Muslim rituals would be to permanently contaminate the Mecca area with radioactive wastes and other hazardous materials so that anyone still foolish enough to make a pilgrimage there would drop dead in a few days or weeks. Plan C: Repeat the explosion of the H-bomb “Kaaba” at Enewetak in 1952
.
However, upon further reflection, I conceived Plan D as the best method for neutralizing the Islamic Borg: Merge CERN and Mecca. I am still considering other options.
I realize these scenarios seem farfetched. You may also think, "Well, this is all very interesting, but you can't seriously believe that the fate of America is tied to Star Trek and outer space." Oh, really. Look at the American flag, a symbol of our destiny. Do you not see stars in space?
Replacing the Kaaba in Mecca would be a giant nude reclining statue of the performer Madonna, with the Black Stone from the Kaaba replacing her vulva. Any Muslim still kneeling toward Mecca at prayer time would, in fact, be bowing to the Great American Whore and any pilgrim kissing the Black Stone would be kissing Madonna's pussy. I got the idea for the statue after watching an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond, in which the mother-in-law, Marie, unintentionally sculpts a stylized nude female torso.
However, a major drawback in this plan is that it would require a permanent commitment of US troops to prevent the nude female sculpture from being destroyed. Plan B: A more enduring method of destroying Muslim rituals would be to permanently contaminate the Mecca area with radioactive wastes and other hazardous materials so that anyone still foolish enough to make a pilgrimage there would drop dead in a few days or weeks. Plan C: Repeat the explosion of the H-bomb “Kaaba” at Enewetak in 1952
.
However, upon further reflection, I conceived Plan D as the best method for neutralizing the Islamic Borg: Merge CERN and Mecca. I am still considering other options.
I realize these scenarios seem farfetched. You may also think, "Well, this is all very interesting, but you can't seriously believe that the fate of America is tied to Star Trek and outer space." Oh, really. Look at the American flag, a symbol of our destiny. Do you not see stars in space?
Terror and torture While some readers may appreciate my willingness to make radical observations on controversial topics, I occasionally lapse into insecurity and paranoia, and submit to my inner weasel, much in the mode of the Seinfeld character George Costanza.
My usual fearlessness was overpowered by dread in an incident that began on December 2, 2008 when I read a commentary in my local newspaper, The Reporter, effusively praising local members of Chabad Lubavitch, a Jewish sect that was one of the targets of the terrorist attack in Mumbai, India. The gist of the article was that Chabad Lubavitch is composed of guileless, amiable devotees who are pure as the driven snow.
I recognized the name "Chabad Lubavitch" as having something to do with settlers in conflict with Palestinians. After some research on the internet, I composed a letter to the editor stating that "members of Chabad Lubavitch are among the most militant settlers on the West Bank and some hold a messianic belief that all the land currently held by the Palestinians must become part of Israel. That may account for some of the hostility directed toward the group." For the editor's benefit, I noted the Israeli web source.
However, on December 2, I also experienced an unsettling experience. I returned home from some routine errands to discover a new 96-gallon trash receptacle in my driveway. I contacted the sanitary service company and was told the can had been ordered by the new owner of the property. I vigorously assured them that there was no new owner of the property and they promised to pick up the receptacle the next day, which they did.
Trashing my ideas? While I later discovered this incident was an innocent mistake (The receptacle had been ordered by someone with the same address number on a street that, if mumbled, might sound the same as mine.), at the time my mind concocted a couple of conspiracies regarding people who wanted to silence me: 1) The false order for a trash receptacle was a "hint" that someone wanted me to get rid of the "garbage" on my website or 2) Someone was conspiring to change the deed on my property and steal my home.
Also contributing to my dread was the fact that I had an appointment on December 12 to see my urologist, a Jew, who was going to conduct a cystoscopy. If he read something in the newspaper that angered him, the procedure could become unnecessarily uncomfortable (although my rational side insisted that no physician would do anything so unprofessional).
Meanwhile, the editor had written back asking me to explain how the source substantiated my letter. I initially wrote back that the source material was self-explanatory, but in a follow-up e-mail, I panicked and told her to forget about my letter to the editor. She wrote back to accept my decision but stated that she only wanted to be able to defend publishing the letter.
On December 12, I underwent the cystoscopy, in which the physician guides a flexible scope into the urethra. I screamed through most of the procedure which, if not done in a clinical context, might be considered torture. After leaving the doctor's office, I examined literature on the cystoscopy, which stated, "You will be given medication to prevent pain and help you relax." I wasn't. Probably, because I came alone to the doctor’s office, the urologist felt any medication would make me too drowsy to drive home. My paranoid precautions were to no avail.
Some people familiar with the content of this book might argue that I deserve to be tortured. One consolation is that the procedure produced a small amount of blood in a couple of subsequent urinations, which seemed to reinforce my identity as Ra, the Egyptian sun god who conveys knowledge and authority through bloody urine. Furthermore, I could interpret the cystoscopy as a kind of religious ceremony in which my divinity was affirmed by a Jew.
My usual fearlessness was overpowered by dread in an incident that began on December 2, 2008 when I read a commentary in my local newspaper, The Reporter, effusively praising local members of Chabad Lubavitch, a Jewish sect that was one of the targets of the terrorist attack in Mumbai, India. The gist of the article was that Chabad Lubavitch is composed of guileless, amiable devotees who are pure as the driven snow.
I recognized the name "Chabad Lubavitch" as having something to do with settlers in conflict with Palestinians. After some research on the internet, I composed a letter to the editor stating that "members of Chabad Lubavitch are among the most militant settlers on the West Bank and some hold a messianic belief that all the land currently held by the Palestinians must become part of Israel. That may account for some of the hostility directed toward the group." For the editor's benefit, I noted the Israeli web source.
However, on December 2, I also experienced an unsettling experience. I returned home from some routine errands to discover a new 96-gallon trash receptacle in my driveway. I contacted the sanitary service company and was told the can had been ordered by the new owner of the property. I vigorously assured them that there was no new owner of the property and they promised to pick up the receptacle the next day, which they did.
Trashing my ideas? While I later discovered this incident was an innocent mistake (The receptacle had been ordered by someone with the same address number on a street that, if mumbled, might sound the same as mine.), at the time my mind concocted a couple of conspiracies regarding people who wanted to silence me: 1) The false order for a trash receptacle was a "hint" that someone wanted me to get rid of the "garbage" on my website or 2) Someone was conspiring to change the deed on my property and steal my home.
Also contributing to my dread was the fact that I had an appointment on December 12 to see my urologist, a Jew, who was going to conduct a cystoscopy. If he read something in the newspaper that angered him, the procedure could become unnecessarily uncomfortable (although my rational side insisted that no physician would do anything so unprofessional).
Meanwhile, the editor had written back asking me to explain how the source substantiated my letter. I initially wrote back that the source material was self-explanatory, but in a follow-up e-mail, I panicked and told her to forget about my letter to the editor. She wrote back to accept my decision but stated that she only wanted to be able to defend publishing the letter.
On December 12, I underwent the cystoscopy, in which the physician guides a flexible scope into the urethra. I screamed through most of the procedure which, if not done in a clinical context, might be considered torture. After leaving the doctor's office, I examined literature on the cystoscopy, which stated, "You will be given medication to prevent pain and help you relax." I wasn't. Probably, because I came alone to the doctor’s office, the urologist felt any medication would make me too drowsy to drive home. My paranoid precautions were to no avail.
Some people familiar with the content of this book might argue that I deserve to be tortured. One consolation is that the procedure produced a small amount of blood in a couple of subsequent urinations, which seemed to reinforce my identity as Ra, the Egyptian sun god who conveys knowledge and authority through bloody urine. Furthermore, I could interpret the cystoscopy as a kind of religious ceremony in which my divinity was affirmed by a Jew.
Nagel legacy The influence of Patrick Nagel’s B-1 Gallery serigraph on my personal mythology prompted me to review Nagel sites on the Internet. Several portraits on the web, although reproduced as very small or “thumbnail” images, still retained virtually all their detail due to Nagel’s simple, bold style. It then hit me: These small images were about the size of postage stamps.
On August 11, 2009 I sent a letter to the Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee nominating the art of Patrick Nagel to be commemorated on a set of stamps, which included these comments:
“Patrick Nagel, 1945-1984, was an American artist whose simple, bold renderings of the female form were reminiscent of both Art Deco style and Japanese woodblock prints. He is well known for his contributions to Playboy magazine and the cover design of the Duran Duran Rio album . . . Nagel posters have been collected by the Library of Congress, the Oakland Museum, and the Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts at U.C.L.A. Permanent collections of his work are also housed at the Bibliotheque des Arts Decoratifs, Paris, and the Smithsonian Institution.”
A couple of weeks later I received a letter, dated August 20, from Terrence W. McCaffrey, Manager, Stamp Development, which informed me that my “proposal will be submitted for review and consideration before the Committee.” The committee receives about 50,000 letters a year. I had beaten the odds and jumped the first hurdle in the stamp approval process. Alas, nothing more came of my proposal.
At the time, there also was some clamor for a stamp to honor the recently deceased performer Michael Jackson. Both Jackson and Nagel reached their creative peaks in the 1980s.
Undoubtedly, Jackson saw some of Nagel’s work. Nagel’s signature style — pure white skin and a barely defined nose — suddenly had a new significance. Michael Jackson may have reshaped his face and changed its color in a desire to resemble a Patrick Nagel poster girl. My suspicions were confirmed more than a decade later when I ran across a February 15, 2019 article in The Hollywood Reporter that stated, "His [Nagel’s] dealer remembered one of Michael Jackson’s plastic surgeons quizzing the artist — who was informed by Deco as well as Japanese woodblock prints — about how he achieved his idealized physical forms."
On August 11, 2009 I sent a letter to the Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee nominating the art of Patrick Nagel to be commemorated on a set of stamps, which included these comments:
“Patrick Nagel, 1945-1984, was an American artist whose simple, bold renderings of the female form were reminiscent of both Art Deco style and Japanese woodblock prints. He is well known for his contributions to Playboy magazine and the cover design of the Duran Duran Rio album . . . Nagel posters have been collected by the Library of Congress, the Oakland Museum, and the Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts at U.C.L.A. Permanent collections of his work are also housed at the Bibliotheque des Arts Decoratifs, Paris, and the Smithsonian Institution.”
A couple of weeks later I received a letter, dated August 20, from Terrence W. McCaffrey, Manager, Stamp Development, which informed me that my “proposal will be submitted for review and consideration before the Committee.” The committee receives about 50,000 letters a year. I had beaten the odds and jumped the first hurdle in the stamp approval process. Alas, nothing more came of my proposal.
At the time, there also was some clamor for a stamp to honor the recently deceased performer Michael Jackson. Both Jackson and Nagel reached their creative peaks in the 1980s.
Undoubtedly, Jackson saw some of Nagel’s work. Nagel’s signature style — pure white skin and a barely defined nose — suddenly had a new significance. Michael Jackson may have reshaped his face and changed its color in a desire to resemble a Patrick Nagel poster girl. My suspicions were confirmed more than a decade later when I ran across a February 15, 2019 article in The Hollywood Reporter that stated, "His [Nagel’s] dealer remembered one of Michael Jackson’s plastic surgeons quizzing the artist — who was informed by Deco as well as Japanese woodblock prints — about how he achieved his idealized physical forms."
Story of Ra reinvented The movies Kill Bill Vol. 1 and 2 can be reimagined as a perverse variation on the Story of Ra. At the wedding rehearsal, Bill agreed to pose as Beatrix Kiddo’s dad, but I suspect Quentin Tarantino may have hidden the truth in this supposed charade: Bill was The Bride’s father.
In this incestuous Story of Ra, Bill is the sun-god Ra who creates a family of assassins, of which Beatrix (Sekhmet) is his favorite. But unlike the ancient Ra, Bill does not grow weary of the bloodshed. To ensure his fury continues forever, he impregnates his daughter to create a future assassin. However, when Beatrix learns she is pregnant, she yearns to become Hathor and runs away. The furious god and his other children plan to hunt her down and kill her and retrieve Ra’s offspring.
However, Beatrix (Sekhmet) survives the attack. No longer pregnant, she regresses to her assassin role and hunts down her siblings and Bill. She frees her four-year-old daughter, B.B., and embraces her role as the loving Hathor. However, Bill may have the last laugh. The new daughter is still a natural born killer. As Hathor grows older, humanity will again grow rebellious and sinful, and she will summon B.B. to slaughter her disobedient subjects.
The Bride's status as a dark goddess was further validated by the casting of Uma Thurman in the lead. "Uma" is another name for Kali. The second movie concluded with the comment "The lioness has rejoined her cub." The Bride is Kali is Sekhmet.
The story does hold some consolation for feminists. Beatrix has dethroned Bill. She, not Ra, is the new supreme deity.
Fallout The hidden incest in Kill Bill between the Ra-ish Bill and the “lioness” Beatrice would help explain the resulting chaos and slaughter.
If I as Ra incarnate were to have sex with my “daughter,” a contemporary Sekhmet, the result could be a catastrophic act of terrorism. It seems unlikely that I would have the opportunity of intimacy with any of the screen dark goddesses.
I recall that in the 1980s, I had read an article in OMNI magazine about how some women who had suffered incestuous relationships with their fathers had experienced a dream in which a nuclear reactor melted down, spreading radioactive poison. This dream represented the “poisonous” relationship and the mental “meltdown” of the victim.
These dreams seemed to be part of a four-stage series of events. An epidemic of incest in the 1980s was followed by dreams of “nuclear” incest, leading up to an actual meltdown at Chernobyl in Ukraine in April 1986. Subsequently, many women had “recovered memories” of incest. Several of these accounts were later discredited as being solicited from impressionable women by overzealous counselors.
One could see a chain of causality linking real and imagined sexual and nuclear meltdowns. Real cases of incest created dreams of an imaginary nuclear meltdown. However, both the real incest and nuclear dreams foretold the real nuclear disaster at Chernobyl. In turn, the real reactor meltdown created in women dreams or subconscious “memories” of incest which resulted in false accusations.
In this incestuous Story of Ra, Bill is the sun-god Ra who creates a family of assassins, of which Beatrix (Sekhmet) is his favorite. But unlike the ancient Ra, Bill does not grow weary of the bloodshed. To ensure his fury continues forever, he impregnates his daughter to create a future assassin. However, when Beatrix learns she is pregnant, she yearns to become Hathor and runs away. The furious god and his other children plan to hunt her down and kill her and retrieve Ra’s offspring.
However, Beatrix (Sekhmet) survives the attack. No longer pregnant, she regresses to her assassin role and hunts down her siblings and Bill. She frees her four-year-old daughter, B.B., and embraces her role as the loving Hathor. However, Bill may have the last laugh. The new daughter is still a natural born killer. As Hathor grows older, humanity will again grow rebellious and sinful, and she will summon B.B. to slaughter her disobedient subjects.
The Bride's status as a dark goddess was further validated by the casting of Uma Thurman in the lead. "Uma" is another name for Kali. The second movie concluded with the comment "The lioness has rejoined her cub." The Bride is Kali is Sekhmet.
The story does hold some consolation for feminists. Beatrix has dethroned Bill. She, not Ra, is the new supreme deity.
Fallout The hidden incest in Kill Bill between the Ra-ish Bill and the “lioness” Beatrice would help explain the resulting chaos and slaughter.
If I as Ra incarnate were to have sex with my “daughter,” a contemporary Sekhmet, the result could be a catastrophic act of terrorism. It seems unlikely that I would have the opportunity of intimacy with any of the screen dark goddesses.
I recall that in the 1980s, I had read an article in OMNI magazine about how some women who had suffered incestuous relationships with their fathers had experienced a dream in which a nuclear reactor melted down, spreading radioactive poison. This dream represented the “poisonous” relationship and the mental “meltdown” of the victim.
These dreams seemed to be part of a four-stage series of events. An epidemic of incest in the 1980s was followed by dreams of “nuclear” incest, leading up to an actual meltdown at Chernobyl in Ukraine in April 1986. Subsequently, many women had “recovered memories” of incest. Several of these accounts were later discredited as being solicited from impressionable women by overzealous counselors.
One could see a chain of causality linking real and imagined sexual and nuclear meltdowns. Real cases of incest created dreams of an imaginary nuclear meltdown. However, both the real incest and nuclear dreams foretold the real nuclear disaster at Chernobyl. In turn, the real reactor meltdown created in women dreams or subconscious “memories” of incest which resulted in false accusations.
NS Savannah Events dating back to my childhood suggest a path to terror and how “my ship will come in.” When I was about ten years old, I assembled a plastic model of the world’s first nuclear-powered cargo ship, the NS Savannah. In retrospect, this was my “Boat of Ra.”
Many years later, I would conceive of a plot for my self-published novel, The Black Stone, in which a cargo ship carrying a primitive reactor shaped like the Kaaba in Mecca would approach a Southern California beach. A crew member, a character modeled after me and influenced by a goddess, would remove the control rods from the reactor. As the reactor melted and the ship ran aground, a cloud of radioactivity would poison the area. However, my character has a change of heart and prevents the meltdown.
Many years later, I would conceive of a plot for my self-published novel, The Black Stone, in which a cargo ship carrying a primitive reactor shaped like the Kaaba in Mecca would approach a Southern California beach. A crew member, a character modeled after me and influenced by a goddess, would remove the control rods from the reactor. As the reactor melted and the ship ran aground, a cloud of radioactivity would poison the area. However, my character has a change of heart and prevents the meltdown.
NS Savannah model kit
Only after writing this scenario did I remember my NS Savannah model kit. Several months would pass before I came to my awareness as the incarnate of Ra. More details of the Ra mythology fell into place as I reexamined the novel. I had envisioned graphite particles from the fallout blackening the top of the Matterhorn in Disneyland. It all makes sense now: A stain of evil would tarnish Disney’s pyramid of Ra. I looked at a map of the Los Angeles area. My fictional ship would likely reach the shore at Sunset Beach in Orange County. The life and journey of the falcon-god would come to an end when his ship “touched” the earth at sunset.
Another piece of the puzzle fell into place with my viewing of the film U.S. Marshals, which featured a tombstone marked “URBANEK” in a cemetery scene. At the climax of the movie, a fight occurs in a pile of grain in the hold of a cargo ship. This was exactly the type of ship that could accommodate a simple nuclear reactor in its hold.
While this reactor weapon may seem large and clumsy, a previous sun-god incarnate, Einstein, envisioned a similar delivery system in his August 2, 1939 letter to President Franklin Roosevelt. Commenting on the weapons potential of nuclear energy, he wrote, “A single bomb of this type, carried by boat and exploded in a port, might very well destroy the whole port together with some of the surrounding territory.”
Have I already made decisions that will take my boat into dangerous waters?
Although my original NS Savannah model is long gone, I discovered kits for the ship were still available on the internet. I ordered one on November 25, 2009 and it was delivered on January 6, 2010. On the day "my ship came in" I and my Korean lady friend watched a DVD of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
In the 2008 adventure film, Soviet agent Irina Spalko envisioned the psychic power of the crystal skull: "Imagine. To peer across the world and know the enemy's secrets. To place our thoughts into the minds of your leaders. Make the teachers teach the true version of history, your soldiers attack on our command. We'll be everywhere at once, more powerful than a whisper, invading your dreams, thinking your thoughts for you while you sleep. We will change you, Dr. Jones, all of you, from the inside. We will turn you into us. And the best part? You won't even know it's happening."
It's happening now. The consciousness of Ra and Sekhmet are taking over the thoughts of millions across the planet. The gods and their agents are, as Spalko said of the aliens, "one being, physically separate but with a collective consciousness, more powerful together than they could ever be apart."
Abracadabra In February 2010 I found more inspiration in a DVD of A Shock to the System (1990), a noir comedy by Jan Egleson. The film starred Michael Caine as Graham Marshall, a marketing executive who is passed over for an expected promotion by an underling, Bob Benham (Peter Riegert).
On his way home, the distressed and distracted Marshall accidentally kills a homeless man and gets away with it. Feeling giddy and invincible, Marshall is transformed from an office drone into a devilish avenger as he plots the deaths of his shrewish wife and reptilian boss. His mad confidence works. Marshall muses on his divine and magical powers after the romantic conquest of a beautiful colleague. He felt like one of those gods who appeared to maidens in human form. He knew he'd been great.
Egleson originally filmed a conventional ending, with Marshall being led away in handcuffs. The test audience wouldn’t buy it. The director went with his gut instincts: Marshall escapes arrest and, as the story ends, a company plane disappears into the clouds, the sputtering engine revealing the impending demise of Marshall’s next target, the firm’s CEO.
America is getting a shock to the system. God is the director and screenwriter. He promises a finale that will please an audience hungry for murderous magic. Abracadabra. Shalakazam. Bye-bye, baby. Boom.
And more . . . The assassins' loom weaves the strands of history, breaks in the pattern drawing blood Wanted by the dark goddess and her mentor. Many are driven to perform their small roles, unaware of the script of destruction. Eagle Eye is the Eye of Ra. On the Battlestar in the heavens, the goddess whispers instructions in my ear. That can't be right. "Don't worry," she assures me. "It's all part of God's plan."
Images Statues of Sekhmet in Berlin museum, Magnus Manske, CC BY-SA 3.0; B-1 Gallery Nagel, fair use; Borg Cube, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Paramount Television, fair use; NS Savannah model, Life-Like Products, Inc., fair use.