1. (FST) Locke and Jack talking, with Locke in bed, post-surgery.... Locke's a candidate for a new procedure. Will he give Jack/Christ a shot... he can fix you, and Locke refuses! Locke has lost his faith, his spine, in the FST... Another mirror twin inversion opener, for sure.... Locke has lost his figurative and literal spine in the FST. Will he get back his life and his faith, his backbone and his knives, in the OT as we hurtle toward the season finale? I know I'm not alone in hoping we see Locke back as 'himself' in the merged OT/FST, and as I've surmised previously, it would indeed be delicious to see a Locke/Flocke hand-to-hand, knife-to-knife beach battle, bingo....
2. (OT) Jack's on Hydra island, and Widmore's crew is putting Sawyer et al. into the cage again.... Widmore has the list, too... and he knows that Flocke is coming.... Too bad Widmore doesn't have the lightside grey ash-spewing guns I described in a prior posting... or rifle and pistol-sized SONIC DISRUPTORS to battle with Smokey....
3. (FST) Bernard the oral surgeon, with Locke's records.... Jungian synchronicities again.... Bernard's remarkable memory from three years ago... also connecting to the creeping anamnesis....
4. (OT) Flocke's onto Sayid's deception of the deceiver.... They're not my people (Jack to Flocke).... Flocke plays the death card, forcing Jack to help him, but of course our money's on Jack devising some plan to keep Flocke on the island.... If only there were some way for Jack to bring Locke back to life... would that 'kill' Smokey's Flocke incarnation? What would happen if Smokey were in Flocke form and the loophole person were revived? Hmmmm......
5. (OT) Sawyer tells Kate that Flocke doesn't need her.... And Jin finds out from Sun that Ji Yeon is with Sun's mother... Sun gives Jin back his ring... Ji Yeon may well yet figure in the season finale, especially if as some have predicted, Darlton and company decide to flashforward 20-30 years into the future, with grown-up Aaron, Charlie Hume, and Ji Yeon involved in.... (More on this, below....)
6. (OT) Now the power's off, and there is no sonic fence to keep Smokey out... Here's the Godzilla/dinosaur sound, then the clunking noise, as Smokey does his grab-and-smash-thang to Widmore's cronies.... Kate's reaching for the keys, then Jack grabs the keys and frees Sawyer et al. from the cage....
7. (OT) Jack's with Flocke's flock, but won't be getting on the plane, as his destiny is to remain on the island... as...... the Candidate....
8. (FST) Jack's there at 'the home' to talk with Anthony Cooper.... Helen tells Jack that Locke still does not want the surgery..... Yes, Anthony's in a wheelchair, too. Was Locke responsible for Cooper's state, in another FST mirror-inversion twist?
9. (OT) Flocke walks through small arms fire from Widmore's cronies, unscathed, of course... As Darth Vader himself would say....IMPRESSIVE...! Flocke grabs the bomb (4 X 4) Four bricks of C4.... Flocke is indeed a clever one... All along, was the plan to get them on.... the submarine....? Yes, what's the next right move on the Alice in Wonderland chessboard? Too bad Hurley's not spouting his deep-fried, home-cooked wisdom. Sawyer's still on the ball, however.
10. (FST) Jack back at Locke's bedside. "Push the button... I wish you'd believed me..." (Locke to Jack). Yes, the anamnesis is progressing, AND Locke's cross-verse consciousness confirms my prior posting regarding sufficient conditions for such communication/information transfer, including EM, water, drugs, etc. Altered states of consciousness are pathways to cross-verse consciousness, as per Carlos Castaneda... wherein Separate Realities can indeed become merged....
11. (OT) Get our backs.... Sawyer's leading a party storming the sub.... Sawyer, Lapidus on the sub... I hope Sawyer's foreshadowing does not come true.... KABOOM! Will Jack plant the explosive on the sub to try to keep Flocke from leaving the island.... Jack pushes Flocke into the water, while Kate's hit by gunfire... Now Flocke climbs out of the water.... GOOD Shootin', Flocke (shades of GHOSTBUSTERS, eh?) Looks like short immersions in the broad expansive ocean water had little or no effect on Flocke.... Perhaps it takes dedicated, consecrated Holy Water infused with lightside force, to affect Flocke.... I'm still wondering why Widmore-- with his access to vast resources-- did not develop and deploy personal 'rifle' versions of sonic fence technology, a.k.a. SONIC DISRUPTORS....
12. (OT) Good boy, Sawyer, closing the hatch blocking Flocke's exit, or is it to seal them to an explosive fate, thusly removing the final impediments blocking Flocke's island exit? Heh-heh-heh.... I THOUGHT it would turn out that way! Flocke's such a sly ol' devil... He's playing them like they are simply pieces on the chess or backgammon board. Now there's less than 4 minutes left on the C4 bomb timer....!
13. (OT) They're diving in the sub and can't get back to the surface for 5 minutes... Sayid can't disarm it.... Jack says that FLOCKE can't kill them... He needs them ALL dead... He's not allowed to kill them... Yes, as per Ben killing Jacob, is it true that Flocke cannot kill.... the CANDIDATES? But, what about the NON-CANDIDATES aboard the sub? Or, are they all expendable except for THE ONE... Jack?
14. (OT) Sayid runs with the bomb and redeems himself at the last minute, exploding the bomb and dying in the process. There is hope for us all, after all.... Now Lapidus is struck by a sub hatch door.... Sun's pinned against the wall of the sub.... Sawyer's knocked unconscious and held by Jack.... Hmmm.... Sun and Jin dying in the sub... and yet as per STAR WARS.... There is another.... Another KWON remaining on the lightside of the force.... JI YEON.... (More on this, below....)
15. (OT) Jin won't leave her.... A man of his word, indeed.... He'll die with her... And like Alpert who will ultimately be rejoined with Isabella, he will be with her... in the next life to come.... R.I.P. Sun, Jin, Sayid and Lapidus... See you in another life, cherished sister and brothers.... Who will be next...?
16. ( FST) Locke back in a wheelchair, saying goodbye to Jack.... Locke was in a plane crash... he was a pilot.... Shattered promises of trust... profound loss of faith, all from the man of profound faith on the OT island.... Yes, what happened happened.... I really miss John Locke in the OT, and I hope he's back soon, to help Jack fulfill his purpose as the Candidate, the Island Protector-to-be....
17. (OT) Now Jack's washed ashore with Sawyer, and Hurley's behind them, with Kate.... As some have predicted, including myself... will we see more of them leave this corporeal plane of existence... on the Island.... as the final showdown looms larger on the horizon....
18. (OT) Flocke to Claire... He's going to finish what he started.... Looks like Jack may indeed be correct that Smokey/Flocke needs to eliminate the remaining recruits/candidates, to secure his freedom from the islandprison.... Heaven help us if he does, indeed....!
19. Not surprisingly, the trailer for next week's episode confirms that, among other things yet to be disclosed, it will touch on core themes of the ongoing game playing out on the island of good and evil, a multileveled, veritable Jacob's Ladder of Enlightenment game, with a very real and literal portal to Hell located on the bottom of the islandcork, and access to higher planes of existence as one moves up the rungs on the ladder, heading toward a final Flannery O'Connoresque 'convergence' with The One... (More on this, below....)
Oh, The (Dunwich) Horror Of It All: A Mordiggian 'Great Old One' Finally Unleashed, In THE END?
Taken together, the 'Hot Pockets' and 'Mystery Cult' angles I've been exploring in my recent postings shed light on two important aspects of the mechanisms underlying Smokey's imprisonment on the island, his role as Cerberus guarding the gate/portal to the evil bottleverse underworld, and the darkly ominous potential for the Evil One's final 'unchained' release from the islandprison, a smoldering series finale reveal, showing us Smokey's true and truly horrifying visage, aided and abetted by ancient incantations uttered in zombified droning tones, by his ALEful Army of Darkness Recruits, Smokey's modern-age mystery cult Brotherhood of the Snake....
Yes, the trailer shown at the end of episode 6.13, The Last Recruit, not only focused on the remaining four episodes of the series, it prominently thrust a new theme into the darklight, figuring largely into the looming denouement and finale to come.... HORROR.... And the horror of it all flashed a connection lurking in the shadows for quite some time now... H.P. Lovecraft's cosmicistic dreamlands horror world aboard the deeper, darker plane of the Cthulhu Mythos.... Given the thematic and structural narrative developments unpacked in the current season thus far-- a 'corked' portal to evil bottleverse, an Evil One looking to finally become unleashed from imprisonment, a zombified cult of followers doing his bidding for selfish motives, and more-- when the Lost creative combine finally played the 'horror' card in the latest trailer, the natural next logical step in connecting the dots was to flash on that good 'ol bad 'ol classic tale of Lovecraftian gloom and doom.... The Dunwich Horror....
"Wilbur Whateley is the son of a deformed albino mother and an unknown father (alluded to in passing by the mad Old Whateley as "Yog-Sothoth"), and the strange events surrounding his birth and precocious development. Wilbur matures at an abnormal rate, reaching manhood within a decade. All the while, his sorcerer grandfather indoctrinates him into certain dark rituals and the study of witchcraft. The plot revolves around the desire of Wilbur to acquire an unabridged Latin version of the Necronomicon — his imperfect English copy ill-suited for his dark purpose — so that he may open the way for the return of the mysterious (eldritch) "
Old Ones", whose forerunner is the
Outer God Yog-Sothoth. Thus, Wilbur and his grandfather have sequestered an unseen presence at their farmhouse; this being is connected somehow to Yog-Sothoth. Year by year, this unseen entity grows to monstrous proportions, requiring Wilbur and his patriarch to make frequent modifications to their residence. People begin to notice a trend of cattle mysteriously disappearing. Eventually, Wilbur's mother also disappears. By the time Wilbur's grandfather dies, the colossal entity occupies the whole interior of the farmhouse.
The story culminates with the actual Dunwich horror: With Wilbur Whateley now dead, no one can attend to the mysterious presence growing in the Whateley farmhouse. Early one morning, the Whateley farmhouse explodes as the thing, an invisible monster, rampages across Dunwich, cutting a path through fields, trees, and ravines, leaving huge "prints" the size of tree trunks. The monster eventually makes forays into inhabited areas and part of the cattle of at least two farms, and two entire families (the Fryes and the Bishops), are attacked and devoured. The frightened town is terrorized by the invisible creature for several days, until Dr. Armitage, Professor Warren Rice, and Dr. Francis Morgan, all of Miskatonic University, arrive with the knowledge and weapons needed to kill it. In the end, its nature is revealed: it is the twin brother of Wilbur Whateley, though it "looked more like the father than Wilbur did."
Yes, the 'invisible monster' rampaging across the terrain, leaving prints 'the size of tree trunks' strikes some eerie chords with the Smoke Monster on Lost, including not only the attacking and Cerberus-like devouring of fresh meat/people, but also the tree-popping aspect figuring so prominently in some of Smokey's prior island rampages. Whether or not Darlton and company reveal MIB's mother as deformed or stunningly beautiful in episode 6.15 is less important than Who the father is.... While the plot could swing both ways, given a blond Jacob and dark-haired MIB, I suspect we may see a riff on that classic 1978 Dan Fogelberg/Tim Weisberg album Twin Sons Of Different Mothers, and pondering the identity of their father is one of the more intriguing aspects of 6.15. If this identity is not divulged, then the door to Jacob's and MIB's lineage as hybrid human/alien/extradimensional beings is left open, with distinct Lovecraftian undertones....
Even if this door is closed and their father is revealed as a mere mortal, the deeper more horrifying Lovecraftian subtext of using 'dark rituals' and incantations to 'open the way' for an evil, extradimensional entity to enter our world is a chilling and dire prospect, indeed.... This is, most definitely, a potential plotpath that the Lost creative combine may have woven into the narrative tapestry of the final episodes, culminating in a Dunwich Horror-fying finale, as Smokey's true terrifying form is revealed, once he is unchained and thusly unleashed from the islandprison. Will we also witness a gruesomely repulsive Army of Darkness crawling through an uncorked evil bottleverse portal to Hell in THE END....?
Yes, Jacob's death eerily mirrors the demise of Wilbur Whateley in the effective removal of the one who was 'attending to the mysterious presence' growing on the island instead of Whateley's farmhouse. And MIB's/Smokey's parallels to Whateley's twin extradimensional invisible monster brother-- the Dunwich Horror-- shed crucial light on the remainder of the final season, as we witness Flocke manipulating the pieces on the chessboard to his advantage, looking to secure a final release into our plane of reality and to 'uncork' the dark portal holding his evil minions at bay.....
The central task for Jack, Hurley, and the others is, of course, to see through the Evil One's ruseful machinations, remaining on the island and discovering the way to ensure the installment of a new island protector and to perform the necessary ritual to put Smokey back in the evil bottleverse prison for good, perhaps using arcane knowledge and ancient incantations, coded in stone, into the temple and other centuries-old lithic formats.... Will one of the key functions of THE NUMBERS be revealed in The End as the key to unlocking the code of the glyphic symbols that must be spoken in the proper order, in order to seal the deal for good, locking Smokey and his evil minions forever in their dark bottleverse?
Closer inspection of the Lovecraft links to Lost reveal additional chilling connections leading up to a horror-ful series finale.... Yes, the Smoke Monster bears an eerily close resemblance to one of the dark entities comprising the Lovecraftverse, a being created by one of Lovecraft's key collaborators, one Clark Ashton Smith, a being known as.... MORDIGGIAN:
"
Mordiggian is a
fictional character in the
Cthulhu Mythos. "He" is the creation of
Clark Ashton Smith and appears in his
short story "The Charnel God" (
1934)... '
[A] colossal shadow [appeared] that was not wrought by anything in the room. It filled the portals from side to side, it towered above the lintel – and then, swiftly, it became more than a shadow: it was a bulk of darkness, black and opaque, that somehow blinded the eyes with a strange dazzlement. It seemed to suck the flame from the red urns and fill the chamber with a chill of utter death and voidness. Its form was that of a worm-shapen column, huge as a dragon, its further coils still issuing from the gloom of the corridor; but it changed from moment to moment, swirling and spinning as if alive with the vortical energies of dark aeons.' —Clark Ashton Smith, "The Charnel God"
[Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mordiggian]
Boy-oh-boy-oh-boy...! Let's count the Lost connections.... Like Mordiggian, SMOKEY is a 'colossal shadow' that appears from who knows where, seemingly "not wrought by anything" in the vicinity of the island encounters. And yes, Smokey is Shadowlands based but becomes "more than a shadow"... and like Mordiggian, Smokey is a "bulk of darkness, black and opaque", filling the temple yard in Sundown with "utter death and voidness." But here's the best part... mirroring Mordiggian in a distinct and eerie manner, Smokey's form is "that of a worm-shaped column, huge as a dragon, its further coils still issuing from the gloom," changing "from moment to moment, swirling and spinning as if alive with the vortical energies of dark aeons." If this isn't enough to seal the deal of a fundamentally Mordiggian-based Smoke Monster in Lost, then consider the following:
"Mordiggian is a Great Old One and is worshipped by ghouls. When he appears, all fire and heat is sucked into his swirling, void-like body, instantly lowering the temperature by many degrees, and filling the area with a deathly cold and still air. All within the presence of the Great Ghoul are blinded by the weird changing and dazzling form of the necromantic god. However, Mordiggian does not appear to be especially malevolent ("Mordiggian...was a benign deity in the eyes of the inhabitants of Zul-Bha-Sair"), and has been known to spare those who have not personally offended him or his followers (the ghouls). Mordiggian's cult consists exclusively of ghouls, though other races may offer up their dead to the Charnel God, but only as appeasement and not as actual worship.... Although Mordiggian dwells within the Dreamlands, it is assumed that he may also enter the waking world, using the same grave-tunnels and tombs as his ghoul followers."
[Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mordiggian]
Heh-heh-heh.... Yes indeed, like Mordiggian, Smokey's followers are zombified, ALEfully-infected ghouls serving as undead recruits in an Army of Darkness. And like Mordiggian, we've periodically witnessed a non-malevolent side of Smokey/Flocke, when dealing with those who do not offend him and his followers and who are judged to have passed the AMMIT's featherweight test of the heart of darkness. Interestingly enough, we have also seen evidence that some of Smokey's travels may be correlated with the underground catacombs interlaced throughout the island, mirroring Mordiggian's use of "grave-tunnels" to access the waking world....1
Oldies But Goodies, Or Baddies? The Horrifying Prospect Of Uncorking Cthulhu, Azathoth, And A Host Of 'Great Old Ones' Imprisoned On The Sunken Island Corpse-City Of R'lyeh-
What additional implications do the chilling Lovecraft/Cthulhu/Mordiggian connections have for understanding what lies beneath the shadow of future plotlines to come, as the series heads toward The End....? Interestingly enough, yet another key Lost link surfaces in the form of R'lyeh, a sunken island winked at by the sunken island shown to us in the Lost Season 6 premier:
"R'lyeh or Relex (IPA: [ˈrəʔˌlʲɛx]; commonly pronounced /ˈruːli.ə/ or /rɨˈlaɪ.ə/) is a fictional city that first appeared in the story "The Call of Cthulhu," by H. P. Lovecraft. R'lyeh is a sunken city located deep under the Pacific Ocean and is where the godlike being Cthulhu is buried. 'The nightmare corpse-city of R'lyeh…was built in measureless eons behind history by the vast, loathsome shapes that seeped down from the dark stars. There lay great Cthulhu and his hordes, hidden in green slimy vaults.' — H. P. Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu".... When R'lyeh rises in Lovecraft's short story "The Call of Cthulhu" (1928), the only portion of the city that emerges is a single "hideous monolith-crowned citadel" in which Cthulhu is entombed. The human onlookers are awed by the sheer immensity of the city and by the frightening suggestiveness of the gargantuan statues and bas-reliefs. The city is a panorama of "vast angles and stone surfaces ... too great to belong to anything right and proper for this earth, and impious with horrible images and disturbing hieroglyphs.... Lovecraft said that R'lyeh is located at 47°9′S 126°43′W / 47.15°S 126.717°W / -47.15; -126.717 (R'lyeh fictional location (Lovecraft)) in the southern Pacific Ocean. August Derleth later placed R'lyeh at 49°51′S 128°34′W / 49.85°S 128.567°W / -49.85; -128.567 (R'lyeh fictional location (Derleth)) in his own writings. Both locations are close to the Pacific pole of inaccessibility (48°52.6′S 123°23.6′W / 48.8767°S 123.3933°W / -48.8767; -123.3933 (Oceanic Pole of Inaccessibility)), the point in the ocean farthest from any land. Derleth's coordinates place the city approximately 5100 nautical miles (5900 statute miles or 9500 kilometers), or about ten days journey for a fast ship, from the real island of Pohnpei (Ponape)." [Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R'lyeh]
Like the island in Lost, R'lyeh is located in the Pacific Ocean and curiously enough it also, at one point, existed in the state of a sunken island. As per my prior Season 6 postings, I would not be surprised to witness the sunken Lost island rising to the surface in dramatic fashion in The End (episodes 6.17 & 6.18), potentially part of the dynamic associated with the looming merger of the OT and the FST.... Will this awe-inspiring event be followed by the horrifying final release of MORDIGGIAN-cum-SMOKEY from his chained Cerberus role and a subsequent uncorking of the remaining Evil minions out of the bottleverse through the islandportal, with CTHULHU, AZATHOTH, and other repulsive 'Great Old Ones' now free to roam the Earth on a gruesome and repulsive rampage of dark, devouring horror....? Or will we witness Jack and others (Hurley? Desmond?) succeeding in securing Jack's ascendency from Candidate to Island Protector, thusly keeping Cerberus chained and the gate/portal to Hell corked?
Cthulhu, Azathoth, Mordiggian, and other evil entities in the Lovecraftverse are Great Old Ones whose nature, identity, and motives shed additional intriguing light on Lost plotlines to come:
"A Great Old One is a type of fictional being in the Cthulhu Mythos based in the stories of H. P. Lovecraft. Though Lovecraft created the most famous of these deities, the vast majority of them were created by other writers, many after Lovecraft's death... The Great Old Ones are ancient extraterrestrial beings of immense power, and most are also colossal in size. These entities seem to have a physical shape, but being cosmic lifeforms from beyond our space-time continuum means they are not based on matter in our definition of the concept, yet their forms are built on principles similar enough to those of true matter that they appear to be material in their nature. They are worshipped by deranged human cults, as well as by most of the non-human races of the mythos. The Great Old Ones are currently imprisoned—a few beneath the sea, some inside the Earth, and still others in distant planetary systems and beyond. The reason for their captivity is not known, though there are two prevailing theories: 1. They were sequestered by the Elder Gods for using black magic transgressions, or 2. They are sealed off somehow from the rest of the Universe of their own volition. August Derleth maintained that the Great Old Ones were once related to the Elder Gods. When they committed some unknown blasphemy, they were cast out and imprisoned in various places in the Universe. The Great Old Ones impatiently await the time of their release, eager to seek retribution against their jailors. The second theory holds that the Great Old Ones are intentionally dormant. To account for this, it is possible that the Universe experiences cosmic cycles, similar to the natural seasons which occur on Earth. Just as some animals hibernate during the winter, so too must the Great Old Ones rest in a death-like sleep during the present cosmic cycle. If this is so, the Great Old Ones are currently trapped by powerful cosmic forces and must remain so until such time as the planets are in a certain alignment... or "the stars are right"—the event upon which they may be released and can revel once more across the cosmos."
[Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Old_One]
Heh-heh-heh...! Consistent with my Season 6 postings-- especially my 4/20/10 prison-themed The Last Recruit piece-- the island may well turn out to be a prison housing dark, fallen evil akin to the Great Old Ones, cast out and imprisoned by lightside forces ala the Elder Gods. Will Darlton and company play not only the HORROR card in the 6.17/6.18 series finale, but also the EXTRATERRESTRIAL/ ALIEN card in a 7 DAYS/DARK CITY manner, as outlined in my 4/20/10 posting? Is the island really a spaceship camouflaged as a lush tropical paradise, through millennia of accumulated organic and inorganic dross, now overgrown with flora? Will Smokey/Mordiggian succeed in seducing Jack and crew into unwittingly performing a series of actions leading to the unchaining of Cerberus and an uncorking of the evil bottleverse HELL of fallen Nephilimic Great Old Ones, thusly enabling them to "seek retribution against their jailors"?
Equally intriguing as a source of richly relevant narrative raw materials for the Lost series finale is the second prevailing theory regarding the nature of the captivity of the Great Old Ones: They are sealed off "from the rest of the Universe of their own volition," and they are "intentionally dormant," "in a death-like sleep during the present cosmic cycle," "trapped by powerful cosmic forces... until such time as the planets are in a certain alignment... the event upon which they may be released and can revel once more across the cosmos." Heaven help us, if this is indeed the case! What if.... what if.... We learn that Smokey/Mordiggian was inadvertently awakened from a volitional, cyclical cosmic slumber, enchanted out of this slumber by magical incantations uttered during dark rituals performed by an ancient island mystery cult worshiping the HEMAtic phenomena-- compass needles spinning, objects disappearing and rematerializing out of nowhere, etc.-they observed operating on the surface of the island? Yes, this may well turn out to be the 'Don't play with the OUIJA board, kiddees' equivalent engendering a most unanticipated consequence for mystery cult devotees.... While they may not have known they were playing with fire, they sure were 'burned' when they unwittingly wakened SMOKEY/MORDIGGIAN from his slumbers, still chained to the island, moving about and accompanied by his signature/telltale sign of a clunking metallic chain-pulling sound....
Maybe now the time is indeed right for the darkside Great Old Ones to awaken from their eons-long slumbers.... as the planets in the solar system become aligned, and the Milky Way galactic alignment falls into place as well, all presaged by the Mayans in their 12/21/2012 END of the Earth prediction, moving to a new Age on Earth....2 If the latter approach is taken by the Lost creative combine, look for the series finale to include not only the gruesome horror of Mordiggian and other Great Old Ones revealed in their true grotesque forms and finally unleashed on the world, but also look for the venue to shift to a future setting (2012?) in which we see fully-grown versions of AARON, JI YEON, and CHARLIE HUME fighting the good fight, with all of their Ontogenetically-endowed hybrid island/mainland spacetime powers intact and fully operational, taking on Mordiggian, Cthulhu, Azathoth, and other gruesome Great Old Ones, fighting for the future of the planet, the galaxy, the universe, and all altverse possibilities to come....
Lovecraftian Cosmicism: Lost In The Mirror Twin Anti-Enlightenment Cosmic Horror Of The Cthulhu Mythos-
Lovecraft's chilling body of work, and the underlying philosophy of COSMICISM expressed therein, provides a horrifying and nihilistic MIRROR TWIN perspective on the nature of existence and our place in the universe, a truly ALEful melange of Anti-Enlightenment, Anti-Omega Point, Anti-Flannery-O'Connor (Everything-That-Falls-Must-Diverge,) Chaos-out-of-Order viewpoint of which Father Set 3 (Egyptian God of Chaos) would most definitely be proud:
"Lovecraft's guiding literary principle was what he termed "cosmicism" or "cosmic horror", the idea that life is incomprehensible to human minds and that the universe is fundamentally alien. Those who genuinely reason, like his protagonists, gamble with sanity. As early as the 1940s, Lovecraft had developed a cult following for his Cthulhu Mythos, a series of loosely interconnected fiction featuring a pantheon of human-nullifying entities, as well as the Necronomicon, a fictional grimoire of magical rites and forbidden lore. His works were deeply pessimistic and cynical, challenging the values of the Enlightenment, Romanticism, and Christian humanism. Lovecraft's protagonists usually achieve the mirror-opposite of traditional gnosis and mysticism by momentarily glimpsing the horror of ultimate reality and the abyss."
[Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lovecraft]
What a gloomy, chilling, ALEful prospect indeed, symbolically instantiated in the form of the walking undead in Flocke's Quantumly-Entangled Army of Darkness, with SAYID and CLAIRE figuring prominently on the darkside's "I Want You" recruiting poster. Careful, don't touch that poster.... Heh-heh-heh....! They say the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior and, if this turns out to be true, look for Darlton and company to continue riffing on the mirror twin inversions figuring so largely in the background and foreground of the series to date, with increasing prominence as the show hurtles 'full-steam-ahead' to the conclusion.
Hmmm... in THE END will we see Jack the Candidate-cum-Protector running the gauntlet of a Lovecraftian Protagonist, achieving-- as per the last sentence in the above quote-- the "mirror-opposite of traditional gnosis and mysticism by momentarily glimpsing the horror of ultimate reality and the abyss?" And will Jack survive this Hellish test-of-fire and thusly ascend to the office of Island Protector? Yes, given the rather overt nod in the 4/20/10 trailer to HORROR as a theme looming largely on the horizon of the remaining episodes, I would not at all be surprised to see the lightside Jacob's Ladder of Enlightenment opportunities balanced with a mirror twin darkside focus on nihilistic, cosmicistic, Lovecraftian possibilities....
"The philosophy of cosmicism states that there is no recognizable divine presence, such as God, in the universe, and that humans are particularly insignificant in the larger scheme of intergalactic existence, and perhaps are just a small species projecting their own mental idolatries onto the vast cosmos, ever susceptible to being wiped from existence at any moment. This also suggested that the majority of undiscerning humanity are creatures with the same significance as insects in a much greater struggle between greater forces which, due to humanity's small, visionless and unimportant nature, it does not recognize. Perhaps the most prominent theme in cosmicism is the utter insignificance of humanity..... Cosmicism shares many characteristics with nihilism, though one important difference is that cosmicism tends to emphasize the inconsequentiality of humanity and its doings, rather than summarily rejecting the possible existence of some higher purpose (or purposes). For example, in Lovecraft's Cthulhu stories, it is not so much the absence of meaning that causes terror for the protagonists as it is their discovery that they have absolutely no power to effect any change in the vast, indifferent, and ultimately incomprehensible universe that surrounds them. Whatever meaning or purpose may or may not be invested in the actions of the cosmic beings in Lovecraft's stories is completely inaccessible to the human characters, in the way an amoeba (for example) is completely unequipped to grasp the concepts that drive human behavior. Lovecraft's cosmicism was a result of his complete disdain for all things religious, his feeling of humanity's existential helplessness in the face of what he called the "infinite spaces" opened up by scientific thought, and his belief that humanity was fundamentally at the mercy of the vastness and emptiness of the cosmos...Common themes related to cosmicism in Lovecraft's fiction are the insignificance of humanity in the universe and the search for knowledge ending in disaster."
[Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmicism]
What an ALEful perspective and prospect for the species, indeed! Certainly this view fits the bill well as an 'antimatter' mirror twin counterpart to lightside perspectives focused on Enlightenment, PROGRESS for the species, O'Connor's Convergence, Omega Point Theory, and the like. Anti-human, anti-God, anti-free will, pro-cynicism, and thoroughly pessimistic in its prospects for the species, cosmicism even provides a hopeless view of science, which merely serves to underscore our fundamental helplessness and infinitely insignificant place in the universe. No, a Lovecraft collection would not be the best gift for someone who is prone to depression.....
"In Lovecraft's fictional works, human beings are often subject to powerful beings and other cosmic forces, but these forces are not so much malevolent as they are indifferent toward humanity... Lovecraft thus embraced a philosophy of cosmic indifferentism. He believed in a meaningless, mechanical, and uncaring universe that human beings, with their naturally limited faculties, could never fully understand. His viewpoint made no allowance for religious beliefs which could not be supported scientifically. The incomprehensible, cosmic forces of his tales have as little regard for humanity as humans have for insects. Though hostile to religion, Lovecraft used various "gods" in his stories, particularly the Cthulhu related tales, to expound cosmicism. However, Lovecraft never conceived of them as supernatural; they are merely extraterrestrials who understand and obey a set of natural laws, which to the limited human understanding seem magical. These beings (the Great Old Ones, Outer Gods and others)—though dangerous to humankind—are neither good nor evil, and human notions of morality have no meaning for these beings. Indeed, they exist in cosmic realms beyond human understanding. As a symbol, they represent the kind of universe that Lovecraft believed in, a universe in which humanity is an insignificant blot, fated to come and go, its appearance unnoticed and its passing unmourned." [Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmicism]
Hmmm.... The show is called LOST, after all, and one of the more telling and critical battles undergirding the entire series is the inherent struggle to be FOUND, to FIND oneself through rising above the dark, nihilistic, cosmicistic realm of meaningless, fated insignificance, rising up the JLE to converge on a progressive path to meaningful relationships, achieving higher levels of enlightenment through knowledge and discovery, ultimately climbing to the top of the JLE, transcending our matter-fettered-minds to achieve total, final cosmic consciousness, arriving at the Omega Point Reality. Is this the fate of Humanity which we will witness playing out in the final episodes of Lost? Will we find comfort in knowing that after all is said and done, we will ultimately be Found, not Lost?
Here August Derleth's expansion of the CTHULHU MYTHOS-- beyond mere Lovecraftian nihilism, including the inherent moral struggle between good and evil-- sheds further light on potential plotpaths and narrative resolutions looming on the horizon of The End in episodes 6.17 and 6.18:
"Derleth's take on the mythos drop the themes of human meaninglessness and moved the story more towards his views on Roman Catholic cosmology and moral principles. Instead of a universe of meaninglessness and chaos, Derleth's mythos is a struggle of good versus evil. Derleth once wrote: 'As Lovecraft conceived the deities or forces of his mythos, there were, initially, the Elder Gods... [T]hese Elder Gods were benign deities, representing the forces of good, and existed peacefully at or near Betelgeuze in the constellation Orion, very rarely stirring forth to intervene in the unceasing struggle between the powers of evil and the races of Earth. These powers of evil were variously known as the Great Old Ones or the Ancient Ones.' —August Derleth, "The Cthulhu Mythos" [Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cthulhu_Mythos]
Viewed from the perspective of Derleth's expanded Cthulhu Mythos, Jacob and the lightside Protectorate correspond to the Elder Gods who rarely "intervene in the unceasing struggle between the powers of evil and the races of Earth." This depiction certainly fits the bill with regard to Jacob's reluctance to intervene, preferring instead to patiently observe, wait, and hope for sufficient progress in the species that an end to the ongoing game of Humanity's temptation at the hands of the Evil Ones incarnate, a.k.a. Mordiggian-cum-Smokey and the other ancient Great Old Ones who fell from the good graces of the Elder Gods, not at all unlike the fate which befell Lucifer and his darkside Nephilimic minions. Recall, as per above, the following key attributes of these ancient evil entities:
"The Great Old Ones are currently imprisoned—a few beneath the sea, some inside the Earth, and still others in distant planetary systems and beyond. The reason for their captivity is not known, though there are two prevailing theories: 1. They were sequestered by the Elder Gods for using black magic transgressions, or 2. They are sealed off somehow from the rest of the Universe of their own volition. August Derleth maintained that the Great Old Ones were once related to the Elder Gods. When they committed some unknown blasphemy, they were cast out and imprisoned in various places in the Universe. The Great Old Ones impatiently await the time of their release, eager to seek retribution against their jailors." [Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Old_One]
So yes, a Derlethian interpretation would indeed cast the darkside Great Old Ones in the role of the evil bottleverse inhabitants to which Jacob referred in his 'corkingly' apt metaphor for the island's function in keeping the evil imprisoned. Not surprisingly, Smokey/Flocke/Mordiggian wants to find that final loophole which will eventually free him from this lightside Elder Gods prison and his role as Cerberus in guarding the island gate/portal to HELL, as initially outlined in my 4/13/10 "Everybody Loves Hugo" posting.
And if, as Damon Lindelof has promised, we ultimately learn that WATER does play a central role in the series finale, then in accordance with my Season 6 postings to date, I would not be surprised to see Jack the Candidate finally and fully BAPTIZED into his fated role as Island Protector, bathed in the clear ALE-free water flowing from a lightside 'Elder Gods-like' source. Where will this all take place? One distinct possibility is the Temple spring-fed healing pool or some other temple-equivalent or well site on the island (Jacob's Well?) Another less obvious candidate is the outdoor waterfall and pool where Sawyer and Kate found the submerged briefcase with the handguns. Will we see Jack clothed in white Christ-like robed raiments, standing in the waterfall, receiving his charge of the lightside protectorate? And just as the ALEful brown water has power to turn one to the darkside, will we learn that clear lightside WATER plays an important role in keeping the evil bottleverse 'corked'? Is the very gate/portal to HELL capped and sealed in no small part through a barrier involving 'HOLY WATER'? 4
And last but not least, given Darlton and company's predilection for mirror-twin, O. Henryesque plot twists, would we be surprised to learn that all along.... it is JACOB not MIB who has been playing the role of CERBERUS, island protector and guardian to the gates of HELL.... And as Jack proceeds to assume his fated role as Island Protector... he comes to a full and mirror-inflectional realization that to save the world from evil... he has sold his very soul to the Devil and now is the new CERBERUS, guarding the gates of HELL, keeping the portal to the evil bottleverse corked.... And in the final moments of this dire and daunting realization he sees a vision of Jacob handing a black stone to MIB, signaling a win for the darkside, and Jacob turns to Jack and flashes a devilish grin as his visage transmutes into a smoky, smoldering, sulphur-scented visage.... Heh-heh-heh.... Is this game of life and death in the garden of good and evil over? Or is it just starting over?
Lovecraftian Agnosticism Or Gnostic Aeons In Flux: Will We Witness The Return Of The Archons And Mother Sophia, In The End?
Beyond the surface veneer of horrifyingly monstrous Cthulhu creatures, deeply unsettling in their appearances and abilities, the far more chilling prospect raised by Lovecraft's universe is a strongly AGNOSTIC/NIHILISTIC view of the fundamental nature of meaning, reality, and existence:
"Strong agnosticism (also called "hard," "closed," "strict," or "permanent agnosticism")
[is] the view that the question of the existence or nonexistence of a deity or deities and the nature of ultimate reality is unknowable by reason of our natural inability to verify any experience with anything but another subjective experience. A strong agnostic would say, "I cannot know whether a deity exists or not, and neither can you."
[Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnosticism]
"Nihilism (from the Latin nihil, nothing) is the philosophical doctrine suggesting the negation of one or more meaningful aspects of life. Most commonly, nihilism is presented in the form of existential nihilism which argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value. Moral nihilists assert that morality does not inherently exist, and that any established moral values are abstractly contrived. Nihilism can also take epistemological, metaphysical, or ontological forms, meaning respectively that in some aspect knowledge is not possible or that contrary to our belief, some aspect of reality does not exist as such." [Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihilism]
Will the Lost creative combine reveal to us in The End that the truly horrifying deeper meaning of the show's title is the agnostic/nihilistic view that the prospects of our species FINDING truth, meaning, enlightenment, redemption, and transcendent convergence through making progress up the Jacob's Ladder of Enlightenment (JLE) are zero, and that the entire Game of Lost on the island is a lost cause for human participants brought to the island, as they are simply functioning as pieces on some cosmic backgammon board, providing temporary diversional entertainments for higher-order darkside and lightside players? Now that would certainly paint a dark picture indeed, revealing a truly LOST cause and prospect for the species, providing an admittedly O. Henryesque twist to the entire series but at the cost of leaving a bad taste in the mouth of Lost aficionados around the world....
Thankfully, Lovecraft's ALEful AGNOSTIC NIHILISM is not the only interpretive schema lying beneath the shadow of future plotline possibilities. Interestingly enough, the mirror twin GNOSTIC ENLIGHTENMENT variants explored by myriad pundits during the past seasons-- from HEMA Theory to Doc Jensen, and beyond-- provide viable lightside alternatives shedding light not only on the larger game in play on the island, but also the place and dark role in this game of the Evil One, Smokey-cum-Flocke....
Here we find that it all may come down to a return to The CAVE, in particular to Plato's Allegory of the Cave, a recurring heuristic motif referenced in a rich range of ways throughout the series to date, from the rather overt nod in the Adam and Eve cave to the more subtle yet effective transmutation of the cave allegory into the ongoing dialectical comparison/contrast involving the Original Timeline (OT) and the Flash Sideways Timeline (FST). As I noted in my 4/20/10 posting-- see esp. Endnote 1.-- the OT/FST contrasts are riffing on core PLATONIC themes of the nature of reality, with the mirror-gazing FST'ers showing us an alternate timeline akin not only to Faraday's 'Imaginary Time vs. Real Time' journal notations, but also to Plato's exploration of shadowy/mirrored appearances vs. essential, original, forms underlying our space and time-bound perceptions of what is real.
And how interesting that modern scientific notions of multiversic, combinatorial, superpositional 'realities' dovetail so nicely with themes raised by Plato's cave allegory, begging important questions regarding the fundamental nature of 'reality'.... Is there a deeper true form or essence that lies beneath the shadow of our everyday OT and FST perceptions? Or is this deeper reality forever 'Lost' to our space and time-bound perceptual and conceptual faculties, sentencing us to replay the same game over and over again, with each game play corresponding to a different altverse of quantumly combinatorial reality possibilities, as shown to us in the simple case of the OT vs. FST?
Building on core heuristic contrasts embodied in Plato's philosophy, the GNOSTICS developed an extensive worldview incorporating aspects of Christianity as well:
"Gnosticism holds that the world is controlled by archons, among whom some versions of Gnosticism claim is the deity of the Old Testament, who held aspects of the human captive, either knowingly or accidentally. The heavenly pleroma is the totality of all that is regarded in our understanding of "divine". The pleroma is often referred to as the light existing "above" our world, occupied by spiritual beings who self-emanated from the pleroma. These beings are described as aeons (eternal beings) and sometimes as archons. Jesus is interpreted as an intermediary aeon who was sent, along with his counterpart Sophia, from the pleroma, with whose aid humanity can recover the lost knowledge of the divine origins of humanity and in so doing be brought back into unity with the Pleroma. The term is thus a central element of Gnostic religious cosmology.
Gnostic texts envision the pleroma as aspects of God, the eternal Divine Principle, who can only be partially understood through the pleroma. Each "aeon" (i.e. aspect of God) is given a name (sometimes several) and a female counterpart (Gnostic viewed divinity and completeness in terms of male/female unification). The Gnostic myth goes on to tell how the aeon wisdom's female counterpart Sophia separated from the Pleroma to form the demiurge, thus giving birth to the material world."
[Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleroma]
Gnosticism provides us with a welcome alternative to the cosmic horror of LOST meaning, purpose, and ineffability infused in Lovecraft's agnostic nihilism through painting a lightside picture providing a way for us as a species to be FOUND... Although as material/corporeal beings we are separated from the higher-order totality of the divine, existing above our 'plane' of experience, there is a path to enlightenment through GNOSIS-- transcendental, noetic direct spiritual knowledge-- a way to 'make progress' up the JLE, reaching the highest rung, "brought back into unity with the Pleroma," and thusly merging with a functional equivalent to Teilhard de Chardin's OMEGA POINT REALITY....
From this mirror twin counterpoint to Lovecraft's agnostic nihilism, the game in play on the island is not some Lost-from-the-start rebooting rounds of diversionary cosmic backgammon played by higher order beings, using humans as mere pieces on the board; instead, the gnostic view allows for the species to achieve real progress in the game of life, climbing up the JLE toward the bright light of pleromic oneness with the divinity through leveraging new opportunities to be reborn in the redemptive awakening of one's spirit through gnosis:
"gnosis was first and foremost a matter of self-knowledge which was considered the path leading to the goal of enlightenment. Through such self-knowledge and personal purification (virtuous living) the adept is led to direct knowledge of God via themselves as inner reflection or will. Later, Valentinius (Valentinus), taught that gnosis was the privileged Gnosis kardias "knowledge of the heart" or "insight" about the spiritual nature of the cosmos, that brought about salvation to the pneumatics— the name given to those believed to have reached the final goal of sanctity."
[Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosis]
Hmmm.... Maybe Jack was right, after all, when he observed that despite the baggage they each brought to the island vis-a-vis their colorful, flawed pasts, being brought to the island gives them a rebooted chance at playing the game anew, a clean-slate fresh start at making progress up the JLE, toward gnostic enlightenment, all while navigating the tricky terrain of TEMPTATIONS thrown in their path by the silver-tongued Island Tempter Smokey.... In short, the name of the game from a Gnostic/Enlightenment view is that this is simultaneously a TEMPTATION and a REDEMPTION ISLAND.... And making progress means resisting Smokey's temptations while striving to purify oneself through virtuous living, self-knowledge, leading to redemption through transcendent, noetic spiritual enlightenment, finally departing the material PLANE for the convergent oneness of totality with the Pleromic divine, the Omega Point Reality, and enfoldment back from Bohmian explicate order to the wholeness of the implicate order....
"The transition from the immaterial to the material, from the noumenal to the sensible, is brought about by a flaw, or a passion, or a sin, in one of the Aeons. According to Basilides, it is a flaw in the last sonship; according to others the sin of the Great Archon, or Aeon-Creator, of the Universe; according to others it is the passion of the female Aeon Sophia, who emanates without her partner Aeon, resulting in the Demiurge (Greek Δημιουργός), a creature that should never have come into existence. This creature does not belong to the Pleroma, and the One emanates two savior Aeons, Christ and the Holy Spirit, to save humanity from the Demiurge. Christ then took the form of the human Jesus, in order to be able to teach humanity how to achieve Gnosis. The ultimate end of all Gnosis is μετάνοια metanoia, or repentance, the undoing of the sin of material existence and the return to the Pleroma. Aeons bear a number of similarities to Judaeo-Christian angels, including their roles as servants and emanations of God, and their existence as beings of light. In fact, certain Gnostic Angels, such as Armozel, also happen to be Aeons." [Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeon]
Here we can see the place and role of Smokey, the Evil One, coming into further relief in the case of the DEMIURGE.... Smokey and all of his incarnations, from MIB to Flocke and untold others, ultimately was born from SOPHIA (nod to Philip K. Dick!) as a result of sin, born out of the divine immaterial Pleroma, generating the material world as we know it, including... the Island.... Note that Christ and the Holy Spirit are emanated from the Pleroma to our material world "to save humanity from the Demiurge" (think Smokey!) and "to teach humanity how to achieve Gnosis", thereby making redemptive progress toward repentance, climbing up the JLE to merge back into the convergent oneness of the Pleroma.
"The Gnostic mythos describes the declination of aspects of the divine into human form. Sophia (Greek, literally meaning “wisdom”), the Demiurge’s mother and a partial aspect of the divine Pleroma or “Fullness,” desired to create something apart from the divine totality, and without the receipt of divine assent. In this abortive act of separate creation, she gave birth to the monstrous Demiurge and, being ashamed of her deed, wrapped him in a cloud and created a throne for him within it. The Demiurge, isolated, did not behold his mother, nor anyone else, and thus concluded that only he himself existed, being ignorant of the superior levels of reality that were his birth-place. The Demiurge, having stolen a portion of power from his mother, sets about a work of creation in unconscious imitation of the superior Pleromatic realm: He frames the seven heavens, as well as all material and animal things, according to forms furnished by his mother; working however blindly, and ignorant even of the existence of the mother who is the source of all his energy. He is blind to all that is spiritual, but he is king over the other two provinces. The word dēmiourgos properly describes his relation to the material; he is the father of that which is animal like himself. Thus Sophia’s power becomes enclosed within the material forms of humanity, themselves entrapped within the material universe: the goal of Gnostic movements was typically the awakening of this spark, which permitted a return by the subject to the superior, non-material realities which were its primal source."
[Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demiurge]
Thus we can see that Locke the hunter-- once lost but having been found on the island through achieving an intimate closeness with animalistic nature and the material realm-- foreshadows the coming revelation of the Demiurge to the castaways in the form of Flocke, a shadowy reflection of dark Platonic essence, flashing sideways through to their increasingly anamnetic consciousnesses, as they gain increasingly deeper appreciations for who it is they are really dealing with, with each new episode....
Here I would propose that the anamnesis we are witnessing in the OT/FST plotline (nod to Doc Jensen) may just well be playing out on a deeper and more ominous level in the entity that is the Demiurge/Smokey, and the sleeper may be awakening through achieving his own Gnosis.... What if... What if.... the Demiurge/Smokey is gaining a gnostic awareness of the fundamentally shadowy/derivative/flawed nature of the material world he has created, and through this growing realization he has become aware of who his mother is (Sophia) and where is home is located (in the divine oneness of the immaterial Pleroma).
Now we can more fully understand what Smokey/Flocke means when he says he wants to go home, as he is now trapped on a multileveled islandcork, spanning a range of planes of existence, all the way from Hell up to the divine heavenly Pleroma. 5 Not only is he trapped on this 'cork, he is also trapped in an ages-old TEMPTATION/REDEMPTION ISLAND game, playing key roles as (1)Cerberus, guardian of the gate to Hell/Hades/Underworld and (2) Tempter, the sly old silvery-tongued devilish "I'll give you what you want" progress-impeder....
One interpretation is that the DEMIURGE Smokey/Flocke wants to go home from the islandcorkgame, returning back to the mainland of material existence and dominance, quite naturally as he is the source of the material realm in the first place, according to the gnostic viewpoint. A second more chilling prospect is that the Demiurge wants to 'go home' in the progressive sense of wanting to merge back with the oneness of the divine Pleroma, and since he is the source of the material realm this might entail the end of the material world as we know it, enacting the dire consequences to which WIDMORE may have been referring earlier in the season.... What if our whole existence in the material realm is premised upon the Demiurge/Smokey remaining chained to this plane of existence, against his own will, on the islandcorkprison? What if an evil, sinful, flawed "creature that should never have come into existence" were to gain freedom from his prison, and access to the divine oneness of the Pleroma? Would the Demiurge/Smokey then be able to infect the One/Source with his brown ALEful darkside 'virus', wittingly or perhaps even unwittingly....?
When all is said and done, in the final episode of Lost, will we witness what may be the ultimate redemption in all of the cosmos, a final return of the first and foremost Prodigal Son, as the DEMIURGE/SMOKEY/LUCIFER repents of his sinful materialistic ways, gaining forgiveness of the Father and gnostic awareness of the One, welcomed back into the arms of his loving Mother Sophia...? 6 I must admit that seeing a tearful and truly repentant FLOCKE, breaking down in front of the castaways, appealing to his divine father and mother for forgiveness and redemption, begging to be released from the material world and the islandprison, to finally be allowed to go home, would definitely bring a tear to my eye... For if there is hope for the worst among us, there is hope for us all.... as in our heart of hearts we know this to be true.... That each and every day we go to the Island, facing a myriad of Temptations and opportunities to make Progress in our everyday lives. How we respond to temptation, and how much progress we make in purifying ourselves through resisting temptation and striving to live a virtuous life, is up to us.... And with the dawning of each new day, we rise and give thanks, grateful in the knowledge that we have been given another chance to remake our life anew, another shot in the redemptive game of life....
On May 23rd, 2010, in The End, will we witness Smokey's redemption in Prodigal Son/Darth Vaderesque fashion, as Flocke breaks down in tears and is welcomed into the arms of his Aeonic Mother of Light and Wisdom, Sophia?
Dr. Todd J. Hostager
________________________________________________________________________
ENDNOTES:
1. Another dark denizen of the hellish and horrific Lovecraft universe with distinct Smokey/Flockey overtones (or is that..Under-tones?) is NYARLATHOTEP:
"Nyarlathotep differs from the other beings in a number of ways. Most of them are exiled to stars, like Yog-Sothoth and Hastur, or sleeping and dreaming like Cthulhu; Nyarlathotep, however, is active and frequently walks the Earth in the guise of a human being, usually a tall, slim, joyous man. He has "a thousand" other forms, most of these reputed to be maddeningly horrific. Most of the Outer Gods have their own cults serving them; Nyarlathotep seems to serve these cults and take care of their affairs in their absence. Most of them use strange alien languages, while Nyarlathotep uses human languages and can be mistaken for a human being. Most importantly, while the other Outer Gods and Great Old Ones are often described as mindless or unfathomable, rather than truly malevolent, Nyarlathotep delights in cruelty, is deceptive and manipulative, and even cultivates followers and uses propaganda to achieve his goals. In this regard, he is probably the most human-like among them. Nyarlathotep enacts the will of the Outer Gods, and is their messenger, heart and soul; he is also a servant of Azathoth, whose wishes he immediately fulfills. Unlike the other Outer Gods, causing madness is more important and enjoyable than death and destruction to Nyarlathotep. It is suggested by some that he will destroy the human race and possibly the earth as well."
[Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyarlathotep]
Yes, like Nyarlathotep, Smokey/MIB/Flocke thrives on deceit, manipulation, and cruelty, cultivating zombified followers using tantalizing propaganda to win your heart, mind, and soul over to the darkside of his ALEful Army.... Hmmm.... Will we learn in the remaining episodes that WIDMORE right in presaging a 'Nyarlathotepian' end of their existence if Smokey/Flocke were to escape the island....?
2. Please see my 2/22/08 "Eggtown" and 2/19/09 "Locke 3:16" postings regarding some implications of the 12/21/2012 Mayan end-of-the-world prediction and the looming Milky Way galactic alignment for Lost.
http://losthematheory.com/eggtownpics.aspx
http://losthematheory.com/locke316px.aspx
3. The Egyptian god of chaos-- SET-- has figured into several of my Season 6 postings, as part of various incarnations of HOLY TRINITY/UNHOLY TRINITY character pairings, as well as linking to Chaotic Inflation Theory as a basis for multiverse and bubbleverse theories (see my 2/3/10 "LAX" posting in this regard.) Interestingly enough, Set is linked to the Cthulhu Mythos realm by way of Robert E. Howard of Conan fame:
"The works of Robert E. Howard, a friend of Lovecraft, feature a malign serpent god named Father Set who is worshipped by the villainous Thoth-Amon. Named after a character from Egyptian mythology and based on the Egyptian demon, Apophis, Set is implied to be one of the Great Old Ones from Lovecraft's mythos which sometimes overlaps with Howard's." [Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Old_One]
Sounds like the Brotherhood of the Serpent that figured so prominently in my Season 5 postings.... Heh-heh-heh....
4. Please see my 3/16/10 "Recon" posting for more intriguing possibilities regarding Lindelof's clue that WATER will play a key role in the series finale. In prior Season 6 postings, I proposed that the islandcork is a multilayered Jacob's Ladder of Enlightenment game, with a range of different dimensional planes accessible on the 'cork', ranging from a very real and literal portal to HELL at the bottom of the cork, through Dante-like purgatorial intermediary levels, reaching all the way to the Hand of God and Heaven, as one makes progress upward in the JLE gameplay....
At some point prior to the closing of the curtain in the final moments of the show, I would not be surprised to see Jack the Candidate-cum-Protector and others at the bottom of the islandcork struggling to keep the evil in the hellish 'bottleverse' contained for good, not unlike aspects of what Lovecraft's geologist/protagonist DYER and his graduate student Danforth encounter in that classic entry in the Cthulhu Mythos.... At The Mountains Of Madness:
"The story is written in first-person perspective by the geologist William Dyer, a professor from Miskatonic University. He writes to disclose hitherto unknown and closely kept secrets in the hope that he can deter a planned and much publicized scientific expedition to Antarctica. On a previous expedition there, a party of scholars from Miskatonic University, led by Dyer, discovered fantastic and horrific ruins and a dangerous secret beyond a range of mountains taller than the Himalayas. The group that discovered and crossed the mountains found the remains of fourteen ancient life forms, completely unknown to science and unidentifiable as either plants or animals, after discovering an underground cave while boring for ice cores... As the two progress further into the city, they are ultimately drawn to a massive, ominous entrance which is the opening of a tunnel which they believe leads into the subterranean region described in the murals. Compulsively they are drawn in, finding further horrors: evidence of dead Elder Things caught in a brutal struggle and blind six-foot-tall penguins wandering around placidly. They are confronted with an immense, ululating horror in the form of a black, bubbling mass, which they identify as a Shoggoth. They escape with their lives using luck and diversion. On the plane high above the plateau, Danforth looks back and sees something that causes him to lose his sanity. He refuses to tell anyone (even Dyer) what he saw, though it is implied that it has something to do with what lies beyond the larger mountain range that even the Elder Things feared.. [Dyer] begs the planners of the next proposed Antarctic expedition to stay away from things that should not be loosed on this Earth."
[Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_the_Mountains_of_Madness]
Who knows what horrifying secrets lie beneath the surface of the ancient glyph-laden ruins on the island.... As part of his ascension into the role of Island Protector, will the truly hellish and horrifying secrets beneath the bottom of the islandcork be revealed to Jack? Would these horrors test and tax the sanity of even the most level-headed among us all?
5. The Demiurge created the Seven Heavens, and it is the THIRD HEAVEN that strikes very eerie and relevant chords with the nature and characteristics of the Island in Lost:
"An Epistle of the Apostle Paul, included in the New Testament, contains an explicit reference to the Third Heaven. In a letter to the Corinthian church he writes, "I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know—God knows. And I know that this man—whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows— was caught up to paradise. He heard inexpressible things, things that man is not permitted to tell." (2 Corinthians 12:2-4) The Greek says "caught away", not "caught up" possibly reflecting Jewish beliefs that Paradise was somewhere other than the uppermost heaven.
The apparent parallelism of the passage equates the Third Heaven with "Paradise" the traditional destination of redeemed humans and the general connotation of the term "Heaven" in mainstream Christianity." [Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Heaven]
Yes, this is in sync with my interpretation of the island as a paradisical multi-leveled (multiplaned) 'cork', ranging all the way from Hell through various Dante-esque purgatorial levels, up to the final rung on the Jacob's Ladder of Enlightenment (JLE), namely the uppermost Heaven (a.k.a. the Pleroma, the One, the Source, the Omega Point Reality, Wholeness/Implicate Order.) The name of the game on Temptation/Redemption Island is to make progress up the JLE, toward the uppermost Heaven. Downward movement on the JLE is possible too, regressing toward Hell.
"In the Greek Pseudepigrapha Apocalypse of Moses the Third Heaven is the paradise where Michael buries Adam to await resurrection. In the earlier section of the myth where Satan transforms himself to an angel of light, and works with the serpent to trick Eve, there is no identification of the Eden paradise as "Third Heaven", which may indicate that Adam and Eve's expulsion from paradise led to paradise being relocated in an area beyond human access. In the later Pseudepigrapha Book of the Secrets of Enoch, the Third Heaven is described as a location "between corruptibility and incorruptibility" (2 Enoch 8:5) containing the Tree of Life, "whereon the Lord rests, when he goes up into paradise." (verse 3) Two springs in the Third Heaven, one of milk and the other of honey, along with two others of wine and oil, flow down into the Garden of Eden, which is also located there. (verse 6) In contrast with the common concept of Paradise, 2 Enoch also describes a place of torment existing in the Third Heaven, "a very terrible place" with "all manner of tortures" in which merciless angels torment "those who dishonour God, who on earth practice sin against nature," including sodomites, sorcerers, enchanters, witches, the proud, thieves, liars and those guilty of various other transgressions. (2 Enoch 10:1-3).... According to Islamic legend, Muhammad's journey into Paradise included an admission to the Third Heaven by the angel Gabriel, in which he met Joseph, who received him warmly. Islamic tradition also places Azrael, the angel of death, in the Third Heaven." [Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Heaven]
In accordance with my Season 5 and 6 postings to date, we may ultimately learn that it is Adam and Eve who are the skeletons that are lying on the floor of the cave, and that the island quite literally was the Garden of Eden referenced in the Bible. And how interesting to see the darkside light shed by Enoch on the Third Heaven, a place of torment for those who sin.... As per the above discussion, will we eventually see a literal portal to Hell on the island, an entrance to unimaginable horrors and torments, with Jack the Candidate-cum-Protector ascending to this role via reenacting Christ's own final passage, here on Earth?
.... He descended into Hell... On the third day, he rose again....
Must Jack first descend through the islandcorkportal, into a quite literal Hell, as part of his passage of ascension into the role of Island Protector, mirroring aspects of the Apostle's Creed in the process....?
6. Sophia is known as the 'Mother of Light' and is associated with wisdom. Additional characteristics of Sophia include:
"In Gnostic tradition, Sophia is a feminine figure, analogous to the human soul but also simultaneously one of the feminine aspects of God. Gnostics held that she was the syzygy of Jesus Christ (i.e. the Bride of Christ), and Holy Spirit of the Trinity.... In the Pistis Sophia, Christ is sent from the Godhead in order to bring Sophia back into the fullness (Pleroma). Christ enables her to again see the light, bringing her knowledge of the spirit (Greek: pneuma, πνευμα)." Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophia_(wisdom)
One interesting series resolution in The End would show us a literal instantiation of Sophia's redemption back to the Godhead, with Sophia and a Christ figure joined in a tearful reunifying embrace, heading upward in a flashing, blinding light, merging back into the divine oneness of the Pleroma.... Who will play these roles? If, as some have predicted, the final scene is shot some 20 or 30 years beyond 2007, then we might well see Aaron or Charlie Hume in the Christ role, with Ji Yeon in the Sophia role (building on a prior posting of Eye M. Sick). After all, SUN (Kwon) may turn out to be a rather overt nod to the Mother of Light reference, and "Ji Yeon" has been translated by some as "Flower of Wisdom".... Given these connections, Ji Yeon could most certainly fit the bill as Sophia incarnate on this island Earth....