In my last post, I used connections involving the Trinity and the looking glass to shed some light on the pattern of the Dreamworld seen in The Matrix, The Wizard of Oz, Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland. The overt reference to this concept in Beyonce's video for the song "Sweet Dreams" helped solidify the dream realm-looking glass connection, but it also posed more questions. Once Wonderland Part 1 was finished, my co-contributor immediately pointed out the abrupt ending and the philosophical loose ends. For one, he noticed that the deeper questions of Cipher's analysis of reality vs. dream and the relativity of truth and freedom were surfaces left barely scratched. If we are all part of a lucid group dream, do we accept our place in the collective, or reject it for the sake of our individuality, our freedom? If the wonderland matrix machine is telling us that up is down, can we find meaning in the nonsense? Should we? And how does Beyonce's allegory and the triple-goddess trinity relate to the allegory/philosophy of the Matrix? Surely there's more to all this than simply waking up...
Sleeping Beauty
Dorothy, Wendy and Alice all awaken from their dreams, the true message being found in their realities, now re-defined by dream experiences. In The Matrix:Revolutions, Zion's scripted reality is shaken by a strange new man-machine union resulting from events within the matrix; the real world, in this case, also redefined by the dream. This redefinition is also seen when the line between the real world and the dreamworld/matrix is blurred after Neo learns that the code behind the matrix and the code behind the real world are both subject to his will. This point offers another connection to Ms. Beyonce's video story; she is not shown waking up, but transitioning into what's known as a lucid dream, symbolized by her gaining control of her two robot back-up dancers and directing the flow of chaotic broken mirror glass. She's at peace with her new metallic wardrobe and the fresh start denoted by the Matrix Construct-like empty white background. Awake while dreaming, dreaming while awake.
This concept of awakening while dreaming can be seen quite clearly in the growing spots of light around the internet community. Within the matrix, thinkers and questioners are spreading cosmic illumination at an exponential rate. As I mentioned before the video shout-outs at the end of the(Bee)yoncé(Know)les, the rising awareness of the patterns and symbols seen in pop music documented by YouTube's amateur researchers has been one of the driving forces behind my work. This is reflected on a much more specific level by the work of fellow patternist Lenon Honor. I referenced Lenon Honor's "Trinity Whore Archetype" study in Rhythm Heaven, Red Robots, Angels and Aliens, more than a month before I rediscovered the whore archetype in Sacred Sex. Now, as I begin to finally understand the robot metaphor associated with the sacred feminine via Beyonce and Wonderland, Lenon Honor is releasing his 9-hour epic entitled The Borg Agenda.
The robot-goddess awakens the Tin Man
http://www.lenonhonorfilms.com/
Dream World God Mother
Lenon's choice to spotlight the Borg Queen and the android Seven of Nine in his ad graphic for the documentary (above) is appropriate given his work on the sacred feminine. Synchronistically, those two faces of the feminine also reflect two core archetypes analyzed here at The Patternist; the Queen Bee and the Little Girl Lost.
Lenon's choice to spotlight the Borg Queen and the android Seven of Nine in his ad graphic for the documentary (above) is appropriate given his work on the sacred feminine. Synchronistically, those two faces of the feminine also reflect two core archetypes analyzed here at The Patternist; the Queen Bee and the Little Girl Lost.
Queen [Latifah] of the Bees and Lost Girl Dakota Fanning
The queen bee is represented most obviously in these studies as Beeyonce (who actually calls herself "the queen 'B'' and takes to dressing like a bee for live shows), but this archetype is probably most well known as the fairy godmother [the fairy-mother god, mother-god fairy], the surrogate mother-figure who serves to guide the Lost Girl (exemplified by Latifah's role in The Secret Life of Bees pictured above). Even though fairies have shown up in previous patterns, the depth of sacred feminine divinity being represented didn't hit me until I realized that The Good Witch from The Wizard of Oz wore subtle fairy wings, connecting the meme of the fairy to that of the witch.
[ for more fairy craziness, check out Tinker over at The Sync Whole and Sacred Sex and Wonderland (part 1) here at The Patternist ]
Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mVEGfH4s5g
The Eternal Gucci Ring. Diamonds are forever.
Popstar Lady Gaga from her video "Poker Face"
left eye, left eye, again and again
"Many of the people in my country who are called 'Tinks' are descended from Gypsies, a people who are known for their deep connection to nature and magic/fortune telling..."
-Richard Arrowsmith, TINKER (mashed +Tinplated)
Disney has been particularly fond of this theme -Tinkerbell has been Disney's unofficial mascot since the fifties, and an entire universe was built around her for her 3D film debut- but it has roots much deeper than 20th-century animation. Disney popularized the term "fairy godmother" with Cinderella, a film based on a tale whose origins reach back to 1st-century Egypt. The godmother character in her present form was added by Charles Perrault around 1700, and the Brothers Grimm's version replaces the fairy godmother with Cindy's birthmother's spirit in the form of two birds from a tree over the mother's grave. In a more clear historical reference, the triple fairy godmothers of Sleeping Beauty reflect the Fates and the Oracle by acting as in-house fortune-tellers for the royal family.
Red, Blue, Green / Blond, Brunette, Redhead
Also, the fairy and the bee have some important thematic connections. Fairies in myth represent the Spirit as otherworldly, ethereal creatures, and ancient Egyptian, Mayan and Greek mythologies thought the same thing about bees.
But again, I digress...
The writers and creators of Star Trek made no secret of the connections between the Borg and bees; Borg soldiers are called drones and their leader -always female- serves to "bring order to the chaos" of the hive mind. In the clip Lenon chose for his trailer, the Borg Queen -played by Alice Krige in First Contact- declares "I AM the Borg", while attempting to explain how she can be an active filter for the voices of the collective and the medium through which those voices speak. Her quote about order and chaos also brings to mind the Oracle of The Matrix, who brings imbalance to balance. The contradiction of an individual who speaks for/leads a hive mind -personified by the Borg Queen- reflects the contradiction of the nature and role of the Oracle (and, in an allegorical sense, the contradiction of our unique role as representatives of the collective unconscious). The purpose of the Oracle was to apply an in-depth understanding of the human psyche to the machinations of the matrix. In this role, she exhibits an extremely intuitive nature, which turns the current consensus about artificial intelligence on its head. What's more, she spends the entire trilogy pulling strings and pushing buttons, orchestrating the actions of all of the game's players, including other sentient programs (including The Architect), occupants of the same matrix/hive mind/dreamworld of which she is still a part.
Though the Oracle -played by Mary Alice Smith in Revolutions- appears to speak for herself, historical and mythological oracles would relay messages from otherworldly sources or metaphysical signs, usually through channeling or trance. The film said nothing of altered states, but I think there might have been something trippy in all those Cookies and Candy she was tryin to give people.
Though the Oracle -played by Mary Alice Smith in Revolutions- appears to speak for herself, historical and mythological oracles would relay messages from otherworldly sources or metaphysical signs, usually through channeling or trance. The film said nothing of altered states, but I think there might have been something trippy in all those Cookies and Candy she was tryin to give people.
"A magic cookie, or just cookie for short, is a packet of data passed between communicating programs. The contents are not usually interpreted until the recipient passes the cookie data back to the sender or perhaps another program at a later time... The name 'cookie' comes from a comparison to an unopened fortune cookie, because of the hidden information inside"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_cookie
Fortune cookie . . . fate cookie . . . kooky . . .
In the entire Matrix Trilogy, the Oracle is seen baking cookies with only one person, a young East Indian girl named Sati. The Hindu goddess Sati was a fertility goddess, an aspect of the triple goddess Devi, and the first consort of Shiva, the destructive aspect of the Hindu trinity of supreme gods. In Matrix:Revolutions, we learn that Sati's parents smuggled her into matrix to live with the Oracle as one of her surrogate children (the last) to save her from deletion. She was scheduled for deletion because she was a program without a purpose, i.e. lost.
The film's finale [spoiler alert] reveals that Sati has the ability to access and control the matrix in ways that Neo could not; she creates a sunrise for him after his death, or better yet, his [re]assimilation into the collective hive. He fights a dramatic martial-arts battle in the rain, but by the end he submits. Resistance is necessary and futile? You have a choice, but you don't?
The film's finale [spoiler alert] reveals that Sati has the ability to access and control the matrix in ways that Neo could not; she creates a sunrise for him after his death, or better yet, his [re]assimilation into the collective hive. He fights a dramatic martial-arts battle in the rain, but by the end he submits. Resistance is necessary and futile? You have a choice, but you don't?
kakes and kookies and kandy and kode... c?
C is for Coraline; Dakota Fanning heads to Wonderland
On Rules & Nonsense
The pattern of the young girl getting lost in a fantasy realm seems to have struck a major chord with many of our modern storytellers. From Alice in Wonderland to Pan's Labyrinth to Beyonce's "Sweet Dreams", over and over again we see the female explorer finding bizarre wonders in the next dimension and being forced to play along with rules of Bizarro World in order to find her way back home to her newly appreciated reality. Dorothy couldn't just click her heels and bounce back to Kansas after she killed the Wicked Witch of the East; she had to walk the Yellow Brick Road first. Alice got home after agreeing to a fixed game of cricket, and young Coraline cheated her mechanical Queen Bee out of a sinister game of hide-and-seek. In Pretty Woman, becoming "like a robot" is simply playing the game of the Sacred Sex object according to the rules of Wonderland. Beyonce's first video from I Am... Sasha Fierce was "If I Were A Boy", in which she plays at being a man before waking into the "real world" (more on that soon)...
The pattern of the young girl getting lost in a fantasy realm seems to have struck a major chord with many of our modern storytellers. From Alice in Wonderland to Pan's Labyrinth to Beyonce's "Sweet Dreams", over and over again we see the female explorer finding bizarre wonders in the next dimension and being forced to play along with rules of Bizarro World in order to find her way back home to her newly appreciated reality. Dorothy couldn't just click her heels and bounce back to Kansas after she killed the Wicked Witch of the East; she had to walk the Yellow Brick Road first. Alice got home after agreeing to a fixed game of cricket, and young Coraline cheated her mechanical Queen Bee out of a sinister game of hide-and-seek. In Pretty Woman, becoming "like a robot" is simply playing the game of the Sacred Sex object according to the rules of Wonderland. Beyonce's first video from I Am... Sasha Fierce was "If I Were A Boy", in which she plays at being a man before waking into the "real world" (more on that soon)...
just shoes... just a coincidence
In Lenon Honor's analysis, he uses Voyager's Seven of Nine to expose the sexualization of the cyborg. This sexualization, while most plausibly purposefully placed to associate the robot goddess with Sacred Sex, is also a telling factor in the character's revelation as a Little Girl Lost. After being assimilated at the age of six, Annika Hansen spent most of her young life as the cyborg Seven of Nine before she was rescued, awakened into the world of humanity (under another Queen Bee character, Captain Kathryn Janeway). She reflects the unique medium of the collective before her awakening as she is designated the sole representative of the Borg in a temporary Borg-Federation truce (as seen in "Scorpion, Part 2", her first appearance in the Voyager series), and after, as she remains haunted by the voices of the beings she assimilated into the Borg hive mind. As she begins to accept the rules of her new Bizarro World -full of contradictions and faulty logic- she begins to express her [re]learned human femininity through it's most carnal medium; sexuality. Simply playing by the rules.
Seven of Nine bound and gagged as a temple sacrifice in Voyager
Wonder Woman and Amber Rose sporting matching neckchains
"...got the hottest chick in the game, wearin my chain..."
-Jay-z, "Public Service Announcement (Interlude)"
Why is Alice chained?
Disturbia Wonderland, Alice in Chains
The trends [rules] of any generation most likely seem like some form of Bizarro insanity to the previous generation, and as I come of age in this one, I'm starting to feel those effects. The world I knew is being replaced by something much crazier, and while I tend to think I have a high threshold for crazy, certain recent patterns have given me great pause, to put it mildly. The depth of these patterns has pushed this piece past in more directions than I can keep track of, but the revelations of the crazy rules of truth and lies in Wonderland has given context to much of the insanity. Things are Coming Together, in more ways than one.
Coming in Part 3; Beyonce Goodbyes, What The Hell is Up With Lady Gaga, and Synchromysticism & The Color Purple
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