Cinema Symbolism

A Guide to Esoteric Imagery in Popular Movies, Second Edition

Robert W. Sullivan IV

• Editorial: Deadwood Publishing, LLC
• Año: 2017
• ISBN:
  9780692863381
• Categoría: Media & Performing Arts
• Categoría: Film & Video

Have you ever wondered why 007 is James Bond's numerical designation? Or where the name Luke Skywalker comes from? How about all those giant faces that pass judgment on General Zod and his lieutenants at the beginning of 1978's Superman? What's behind the symbolism of all those mirrors in Black Swan? Cinema Symbolism: A Guide to Esoteric Imagery in Popular Movies answers these questions; it is about occult, numerological, astrological, mythological, alchemical, Tarot, and kabbalistic iconography and symbolism contained within popular movies. Films analyzed include The Exorcist, Back to the Future, Star Wars (Episodes I-VI), The Lord of the Rings, The Wizard of Oz, Black Swan, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the James Bond movies, and The Matrix among many others.

CHAPTER I

WHAT AN EXCELLENT DAY
FOR AN EXORCISM

“There were several ways of determining that a person

was a demoniac . . . including facial swelling, grimaces,

insensitivity and leprosy, immobility, twitching of

the stomach, staring, French answers to Latin questions, and

the absence of bleeding from cuts.” - Collin de Plancy,

Dictionnaire infernale, 1818.

“Especially important is the warning to avoid conversations

with the demon. We may ask what is relevant but anything

beyond that is dangerous. He is a liar. The demon is a liar.

He will lie to confuse us. But he will also mix lies with

the truth to attack us. The attack is psychological,

Damien, and powerful, so don’t listen.

Remember that, do not listen.”

- Father Lankester Merrin, The Exorcist, 1973.

“Since the day I joined the Jesuits, I’ve never met

one priest who has performed an exorcism. Not one.”

- Father Damien Karras, The Exorcist, 1973.

“Oh no, that was no spasm. I got on the bed.

The whole bed was thumping and rising off the

floor and shaking. The whole thing, with me on it!”

- Chris MacNeil, The Exorcist, 1973.

“If certain British doctors never asked ‘What is this fungus?’

we wouldn’t today have penicillin, correct?” - Lt. William Kinderman,

The Exorcist, 1973.

“There are no experts. You probably know as much about

possession than most priests. Look, your daughter doesn’t

say she’s a demon. She says she’s the Devil himself.

And if you’ve seen as many psychotics as I have, you’d

know it’s like saying you’re Napoleon Bonaparte.”

- Father Damien Karras, The Exorcist, 1973.

If one is looking to see the allegory of solar-divine light combating the forces of evil or darkness, one need not look any further than The Exorcist directed by William Friedkin. The film is based upon the novel of the same name written by William Peter Blatty. Often referred to as the scariest movie of all time, its theatrical release was paradoxically contrasted with the birthday of the newly born annual sun on 2 5 December. The Exorcist debuted on December 26, 1973 more commonly known as Boxing Day. The movie depicts an innocent youth, Regan Teresa MacNeil, becoming possessed by a Middle Eastern demon named Pazuzu qua the Devil or Satan; Satan in Hebrew means “opposer.” Unable to find a scientific-medical cure for her daughter, Chris MacNeil enlists two Jesuit priests, Father Damian Karras and Father Lankester Merrin (Max von Sydow), who at the cost of their own lives are able to expel the demon from Regan by performing the Catholic Rite of Exorcism.

The Jesuit mystic Athanasius Kircher (1601/02-1680), who was honored with the title “Master of a Hundred Arts,” published numerous works on oriental studies, geology, and medicine. Kircher, a hermetist-cabalist, continued the Renaissance tradition of interpreting Egyptian hieroglyphs as symbols containing divine truths. Although one finds frequent reference to both Hebrew Kabbalah, it’s Sephirot, and Christian Cabala in his works, Kircher condemned the practice of cabalistic magic. See Robert W. Sullivan IV’s The Royal Arch of Enoch.

At the start of The Exorcist, Jesuit Lankester Merrin is excavating a pagan temple which is part of an archeological dig in northern Iraq; this mirrors Jesuit Athanasius Kircher’s investigating Christianity’s Egyptian-pagan origins in the seventeenth century. Merrin, like Kircher before him, is an archeologist interested in unearthing pagan sites and ruins, to uncover higher, spiritual Christian truths. To Kircher, the sun was a holy father at dawn being resurrected thus defeating the darkness of the night (Typhon-Set). The sun is at full strength at high-noon when the sun is youthfully energized, and at evening the sun descends into the ghostly underworld beneath the western horizon becoming a holy ghost or spirit. The sun thus has three phases: growth, maturity-strength, and decay. To the Egyptians, the sun was a symbol of immorality, dying each night only to be born again in the morning and at the day’s apex the sun is at full strength. It is from the sun’s movement that the divine concept of the holy trinity of “the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost” derives from within Christianity – lifted from the Egyptian – being accepted and understood by Kircher. Aspects of Father Merrin were also based on the British archaeologist Gerald Lankester Harding, who had excavated the caves where the Dead Sea Scrolls had been found and whom Blatty had met in Beirut; both share the same name, “Lankester.” Merrin discovers a small bronze amulet depicting the head of the demon Pazuzu, an entity that Merrin is not only familiar with but has encountered before. Pazuzu is the personification of the scorching desert wind that brings storm, injury, and fever. Merrin, echoing the mysticism of Kircher, is well suited for the Society of Jesus. The Jesuit Order,

“...was founded in 1534 by Ignatius Loyola, a Spaniard

of ardent imagination and earnest spirit, and was confirmed

by Pius III in 1540. There can be little doubt that he intended

it to be a mystical and contemplative association, resembling, in

many things, the colleges of Egyptian priests; . . .The Jesuits

appear to have taken the Egyptian priests for their

model. Like them, they were the conservators and interpreters

of religion. The vows, they pronounced, bound them to their

company, as indissolubly as the interest and politics of the

Egyptian priests fixed them in the sacred college of

Memphis. ...After the Order of Jesus had fallen from it high

estate, and became merely a secret society of political agitators

and intriguers, some ardent enthusiastic men conceived the idea

of superseding it by a new Order that should

retain all the good of the old, and be

better adapted to the circumstances of modern times,

and the wants of modern society. The Society of the Illuminati and that

of the Rosicrucians were formed with this aim and purpose. The adepts

of the Illuminati were governed by rules nearly identical with

those of the Jesuits, and the whole machinery of the two orders

was constructed after the same idea.”²²

Immediately realizing that the demon-head talisman is an ill omen, Merrin takes a pill ameliorating his heart condition. Merrin knows that the relic foreshadows a confrontation with the demon. Merrin is beset by premonitions of despair and malevolency seeing what appears to be the blind leading the blind. He next encounters a one-eyed man who stares at him emblematic of the evil eye which is an unintentional lingering look by a stranger causing illness, death, and general misfortune. There are two types of evil eyes: involuntary and voluntary the latter being a part of witchcraft.²³ The evil eye exists in virtually every culture around the world and dates back to ancient times. Merrin is next seen examining other items from the dig in an Islamic museum; the clock on the wall mysteriously stops ticking mid-stroke signifying that his “time is up.” Merrin leaves the museum informing the curator he must depart Iraq because, “There is something I must do,” heralding his final battle with the demon. Shortly thereafter Merrin is almost run over by a carriage transporting a grieving widow dressed in black mourning clothes. This symbolism seems to hint that Merrin’s next exorcism will be his last one. Finally, Merrin confronts a full size sandstone statue of the demon Pazuzu. With the sun setting in the background, two dogs fight in the distance representing the coming struggle between the forces of light and darkness. The setting sun represents the temporary triumph of evil or darkness over solar divine light.

The film shifts to the affluent neighborhood of Georgetown, Washington, D.C. The viewing audience is introduced to movie actress Chris MacNeil, her twelve year old daughter Regan, Chris’ valet Sharon Spencer (Kitty Winn), and MacNeil’s maid, Willi (Gina Petrushka, 1909-1981), and Karl the butler (Rudolf Schündler, 1906-1988). Chris MacNeil is starring in a film being produced at the Jesuit University of Georgetown titled “Crash Course.” Its British director is the insufferable and doomed alcoholic Burke Dennings portrayed by Jack McGowan (1918-1973). The Exorcist was MacGowran’s last film dying shortly thereafter from an influenza outbreak in London. Chris leaves the movie set telling her limousine driver that she is going to walk home that evening. Her temporary residence is located at the intersection of Prospect and 36^th streets. Walking through bourgeois Georgetown neighborhood, Chris encounters a group of young trick-or-treaters identifying the date as October 31 or Halloween. Halloween is a yearly holiday occurring the night before All Saints’ Day. Halloween incorporates traditions from ancient pagan harvest festivals and celebrations honoring the dead particularly the Celtic Samhain. The medieval Goidelic festival of Samhain marked the end of the harvest, the end of the lighter half of the year (spring/summer), and the beginning of the darker half (autumn/ winter). Most commonly it is held on 31 October-1 November delineating the halfway mark between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice. The souls of the dead were said to revisit their homes on Samhain. Halloween occurs after the autumnal equinox when the sun is heading toward death, the winter solstice, when the days become noticeably shorter and darkness or night is prolonged symbolically exalting evil. Therefore, one can conclude that the identification of Halloween and the dying or waning sun, signifies the coming of evil and darkness into the MacNeil household and to Georgetown in general. Not only does the demon attack Regan, it also defaces a statue of the Virgin Mary in Georgetown University’s Dahlgren Chapel.

The demon Pazuzu enters Regan through her solo use of an Ouija board, William Flud edition. At first, Pazuzu benevolently identifies itself under the alias, “Captain Howdy.” The William Flud Talking Board, that becomes the famous Ouija, was first marketed in Baltimore, Maryland in the early 1890s by Charles W. Kennard of Kennard Novelty Company. Kennard gave the board the name Ouija which he believed to be the Egyptian word for luck. It is not; the word ouija is a combination of the French and German words for yes: oui and ja. The Ouija board, as a tool to speak to angels and demons or foresee the future, originates from scrying devices such as black mirrors that were used by Renaissance cabalists, occultists, sorcerers and magicians such as Edward Kelley and Dr. John Dee the latter who served as Queen Elizabeth I’s court astrologer and soothsayer. Regan’s condition deteriorates and the demon begins to manifest itself, she is diagnosed by Drs. Klein (Barton Heyman) and Taney (Robert Symonds). Their conclusion is that Regan needs to undergo a series of spinal taps to locate brain defects, or scarring, which may be causing her bizarre and increasingly destructive behavior. The results of the spinals prove to be negative, and a psychological explanation is now sought to uncover what is wrong with Regan.

Regan MacNeil, now becoming fully possessed by the demon, is taken to the Barringer Clinic and Foundation for observation and diagnosis. Chris is informed in a meeting that Regan suffers from somnambular-form possession. Somnambular-form possession is a rare form of anxiety where the victim comes to believe that their body has become inhabited by an evil spirit. Dr. Barringer, the head of the clinic, reports that there’s nothing they can do. At this meeting Chris (qua Christ, their names are one letter apart) sits at the head of the table surrounded by twelve doctors mirroring the Four Gospels and their account of the Last Supper at which Jesus Christ sat at the head of the table enveloped by the Twelve Apostles. Visually this reflects Leonardo Da Vinci’s (1452-1519) painting of the Last Supper with Christ sits at the middle of the table surrounded by his twelve followers on either side. This iconography suggests that Regan needs a spiritual, not a medical, remedy. Jesus Christ is esoterically referenced again by Chris when she hears Dr. Barringer tell her that he and his fellow doctors are powerless to treat her daughter. A frustrated and distressed Chris yells at them, “You’re sorry! Jesus Christ, 88 doctors and all you can tell me with all of your bullshit.” The number “88” forms an arcane nexus to Greek Gematria, a division of practical Kabbalah assigning numerical values of letters and analogies between words and phrases, within which the number 888 is numerically equivalent to the name, Jesus. Jesus, Iesous or Iēsous, has a letter of: (I)10 + (e)8 + (s)200 + (o)70 + (u)400 + (s)200 equaling 888, foreshadowing that a spiritual and numinous cure is needed for Regan. Thus the number 88, spoken by Chris, signifies that Jesus Christ, or divine solar light, is necessary to drive the darkness or evil from young Reagan. The number 88 appears in Back to the Future (Chapter IV), although the number denotes the sun in a different numerological context. Dr. Barringer recommends that Regan may need an exorcism...