I saw the tiger in the ruin'd fane
Spring from his fallen God, but trace of thee
I saw not; and far on, and, following out
A league of labyrinthine darkness, came
On three gray heads beneath a gleaming rift.
-- 'Demeter
and Persephone', Alfred Tennyson
Things
fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned
--'The
Second Coming', William Butler Yeats
Averting
royal embarrassment is but the fraction of my work that’s visible above the
waterline. The greater part’s an iceberg
of significance that lurks below. Great
works have many purposes. To aid her
majesty’s but one. The rest are mine
alone.
--Sir
William Gull, to his Coachman, in From Hell by Alan Moore.
This
post is intended as a continuation of the themes explored in my
2013 post entitled Black Magic, Art and Symbolism: Icons of the Predator-Class. That essay discussed the
nature of predatory psychology, Art as a form of Social Magic, and went into
considerable detail exploring the mythic significance of the infamous Victorian
serial killer Jack the Ripper -- as a kind of icon and shorthand for a
dominating, controlling elite that is almost vampiric in nature. The second
half of that essay also featured an analysis of the unexpected Ripper symbolism
encoded into the 1997 blockbuster film Titanic, written and directed by James
Cameron. I will do my best to make this
essay self-contained and comprehensible, but an initial reading of my earlier
essay will make for a fuller context and appreciation of what I will be
discussing here, as I will be referencing details, ideas and insights covered
in that first post, as well as revisiting the Ripper symbolism found within
Titanic.
LUMEN DE ANTICHRISTO
In
my first 'Black Magic, Art and Symbolism' post entitled 'Icons of the Predator-Class' I discuss the actual historical context of the elusive serial killer who
would pass into infamy, known to the world as Jack the Ripper. I also go into detail regarding the genesis
of Jack as a pop-culture icon:
Most mainstream scholars assume that the popular
image of the Ripper – a well-dressed Gentleman in a black opera cape, top-hat
and white gloves, carrying a Gladstone bag, owes its longevity to the 1959 film
directed by Monty Berman and Robert S. Baker, in which the Ripper is depicted
as an avenging surgeon. It is noted by film historians that Berman
and Baker borrowed much of the Ripper’s look from the 1931 version of Dracula, staring Bela Lugosi. The infamous Count is depicted in a top-hat, opera cape and white gloves, passing himself off as a fashionable London gentleman of the late nineteenth century.
This
is where I want the current post to have a much sharper metaphysical focus,
expanding on themes only touched upon or implied in the first essay. For most of us regular working-class folk,
especially here in Britain, the Ripper legend serves as a kind of historical,
political and economic shorthand; a salient reminder and cautionary tale
concerning the nature of what might be termed the Predatory Aristocrat. It is a pop-culture vessel that reminds us to
never forget the vast inequalities in wealth and class and opportunities that
existed between society’s rich and poor, and still continue to exist
today. It is a reminder that those in
the ivory towers have always seen those beneath them as disposable resources. Again, as I argue in Icons of the Predator-Class:
Regardless of the truth behind the actual Ripper
killings, the icon of Jack himself – a faceless but well-dressed Victorian
Gentleman, bloody knife in hand as he moves through the darkness and preys on
the poorest and most vulnerable – this image is so powerful because it is
true. It is a pop-culture vessel encapsulating a symbolic truth about a
very important period of history.
But there is more to the icon of the Ripper
than what I have outlined here. To these
predatory elites that control corporations, financial institutions and global
politics the Ripper is a hero. But more
than this, he is a midwife and a messiah.
It is this aspect of the Ripper legend that I wish to explore with you
now, dear reader. It is something that
the writer and ritual-magician Alan Moore understood so deeply and explored
with great nuance and subtlety in his epic graphic novel, From Hell, which
tackles the Ripper legend as a kind of apocalyptic fin-de-siecle of the
Victorian Age. But Alan Moore did not
invent this idea of the Ripper as a harbinger of Apocalypse. This idea is implicit in every cinematic or literary
exploration of the Whitechapel Murders of 1888 going back to the actual
crimes. Back then, on the cusp of the twentieth century, there was dissent and anger and the threat of socialist revolution in
the air. Especially in London. Christian
ideology had fermented with popular Theosophist literature of the time, in turn
fuelled – I would argue – by an irrepressible and ever-present pagan impulse to
create resonant symbols, to engineer gods and demigods from the materials of culture
both high and low. This cauldron of mixed
belief and perceptions lent a certain apocalypticism to the end of the nineteenth century; the sense that now anything could happen, that some great change might
be coming.
It is this creation of useful demigods that today’s modern predator-class takes
so seriously. As the old adage goes, 'Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.' In this sense, the
Ripper is an icon of absolute corruption, but corruption possessed of purpose. As I argued in my first 'Black Magic, Art and
Symbolism' post:
In essence, those predators who are genuinely
cognizant of magick have found a way to stage-manage, shape and mobilize their
own devastating mental illness – directing and manifesting it into the material
realm in various ways. This is the largest part of what true black magic
is.
And
I later go on to suggest:
The predators of our world are interested in art
and symbolism for one simple reason – because they have grasped that Art is the
Oldest Magick. Considered, creative perception IS the act of transforming
material reality, often in ways that are not immediately obvious.
To
these predatory inner-circle elites the icon of the Ripper is ultimately symbolic
of a vampiric Antichrist; a tremendously powerful black magician who absorbs
the powers of the Divine Feminine by ritually murdering her, in a variety of
subtle and not-so-subtle ways. This
vampiric aspect of the Ripper cuts right to the heart of what these people are
all about – they are obsessed with desecration, domination, theft of power and
the manipulation of consciousness. For them the
Ripper is symbolic of a Cannibal God who feasts on the flesh and energy of the
Goddess in order to increase his own sovereignty.
MESSIAHS BY MOONLIGHT
If
we were to give this act of social magic a name, this murdering of the feminine
to ensure the ascendancy of the masculine, we might call it ‘Bleeding the Moon’. It is, among other things, the figurative
slaying of the Roman goddesses Luna and Venus.
Luna is a Latin epithet for the divine feminine principle that embodies
the moon, along with the goddesses Diana and Juno. And Venus is, in part, the Roman version
of the Greek Goddess Aphrodite – a deity of love and sex, beauty and fertility. Venus was often referred to in the ancient
world as the Morning Star. This is
deeply significant and bears further scrutiny.
From a mythic perspective, Venus was once considered so powerful and
fascinating that she was given the honorary title of a star. In most western pantheons the star is
considered the harsh brilliance of the masculine principle, whereas the moon is
considered the softer feminine reflector of that solar light. So for Venus to be referred to as a distant
sun, therefore symbolically equal to Sol himself – we can easily imagine that this
might have angered the more misogynist scholars and thinkers of the Roman
Empire. And today, I would argue, the
icon of the Ripper is considered a hero; a midwife of the perpetuation of
elitist ideology and the continuation of their power structure. The Ripper symbolically consumes the Moon,
and Beauty, and Love, thereby slaying the Divine Feminine in an act of ritual-murder.
Hence, the Morning Star of femininity is
slaughtered and her powers absorbed by a vampiric messiah. In essence Venus the Morning Star is murdered
and consumed, reborn as Lucifer the Morning Star – or, more pointedly, the
Mourning Star; Luctus Stellam. The Star
of Lamentation.
There
is more resonance and meaning here than might appear at first glance. Venus is
eaten by Lucifer, Luna is enchained within Sol…the loving Moon is swallowed by
a hateful Sun. As
Sir William Gull tells his Coachman in Alan Moore’s From Hell:
"Why
consciousness itself is naught but symbols, metaphors, which build upon themselves and thus extend their
metaphysical domain. With symbols did
male warlocks conquer women, first destroying or discrediting the goddesses
that stood for women’s power. The Mother Goddess Tiamat, demoted, was made
devil first, then lowly Chimera."
And
then, speaking of the Dionysiac Architects, Gull references the seven liberal
arts; often divided into two parts – the Trivium and the Quadrivium:
"Yet
they knew the unconscious was the inspiration whence their towers of reason
sprang. Thus, HARNESSING its power
symbolically was their sublime accomplishment.
Their symbol was the dreaming moon enclosed by seven stars that
represent Arithmetic, Music, Astronomy, Rhetoric, Grammar, Logic and Geometry,
the pillars of Masonic thought. That
symbol also signifies the female power within humanity, enfettered by its ring
of stars that are but distant suns and therefore masculine."
It
is my belief that in the ancient world the two most powerful colours, and thus
metaphysical forces, were the colours Red and Black. Among other things Red symbolized menstruation;
the principle and continuation of human life. Black symbolized the totality and fecundity
of the womb; where human life itself is generated. But the icon of the Ripper -- the role of the
vampiric Antichrist -- is to wield those powers in a way that somehow transforms
them into their opposites. In this way the Holy Red of menstruation and the Holy
Black of the womb becomes the Unholy Red of spilled blood, of ritualized slaughter, and the Unholy Black of
psychological perdition; a conscienceless state devoid of all warmth and
empathy, that the predatory elites controlling our world equate with spiritual
freedom. For a human predator in the
vein I have described, psychological perdition is interchangeable with the
highest metaphysical truth.
***
Before
the figurative ritual-murder of the Divine Feminine the Red is the sacred free-flowing
blood of the female menstrual cycle (the Rose), and the Black is the sanctity
and growth-chamber of her womb. But the symbol
that is being continually immortalized in the Ripper legend, especially among
the elites who know of its deeper significance, is one concerned with stealing
and desecrating the magic that it takes to create life. To create something
from nothing is an act of literal magic; it is a generative principle. But the black magician seeks to create a
corrupted womb and to ‘generate’ a form of life – or fire -- that is non-fecund
and essentially a form of living death; a vampiric form of un-life.
So,
the Red and the Black of the goddess is twisted into the red and the black of
the vampire, the anti-god or antichrist.
You can see evidence of this in virtually every film that features satanic
or vampiric imagery; the colours red and black will always feature
prominently. They are the pre-ancient colours
of union and co-operation transformed into colours of war and violence. This is partially why the Nazis featured red
and black so prominently in their regalia and the banners for their swastikas,
to influence the fire of human consciousness through the power of such
associations and energies. Indeed, the
Nazi swastika is simply a perverted Hindu solar symbol that is thousands of
years old. The icon of Jack the Ripper
as an emblem of this elite vampiric consciousness that seeks to generate a cold
fire, a form of un-life, is partially resonant with the Rakshasa and Asura of
Hindu legends, and also the Hungry Ghosts of Chinese legends and the Nephilim of biblical lore.
We have been wading in extremely dark waters here, dear readers, and I thank
you if you have stuck with me thus far. So, the
Ripper is emblematic of a powerful elitist that is essentially practising a form of
predatory pseudo-theistic nihilism, or more accurately what they perceive as a
kind of Aesthetic of Negation and Desecration.
It is a kind of ‘artistic’ philosophy that sees perversion, ruination
and defilement of all kinds as 'holy' or 'beautiful'. It is, for want of a better term, Pathology
as Art. It is a belief system and concordant
power-structure that perceives Sociopaths and Psychopaths as an enlightened form
of human being. Intuitively
speaking, I believe there is a long-standing tension among the elites and
oligarchs that control our world, above and beyond the regular war-mongering
and infighting you might expect – and that is an old debate concerning whether full-blown
psychopathology is literally the next step in human evolution, or simply the
domain of an enlightened clique and should be protected as such. It is my belief that there are groups among
the elites who genuinely believe that pathology is the highest art, and that
deepening their perversity whilst maintaining basic cognitive function is the
razor-edged thrill of the truly powerful.
And there are others who see widespread psychopathology as the next inevitable,
apocalyptic step for the human race, in part ushered by natural forces and partially
encouraged by their own machinations and forms of oppression. Indeed, this is how insular, indulgent and
staggeringly inhuman these people have allowed themselves to become.
So
while the Illuminati-style occult conspiracies we hear about are largely
erroneous fallacies – a kind of alt-media mythology – there is truth in the
notion that these deviant power-brokers are driven by a kind of more sublimated
or diffuse pagan/atavistic impulse – to enchant their own worldview even as
they reject the ‘occultism’ that fascinates lesser men and women. To the most experienced predators standard
occultism is akin to an exoteric bread-and-circuses lie for the masses to
swallow. And the real esoteric truth is
this idea that I have been trying to outline, that psyche is all, or Art is all –
regardless of how deviant and pathological that psyche or its forms of art have
become. In this way they wield real
magick to absolutely devastating effect.
And yet they are also not half as powerful or cunning as they think they
are, because they have to create icons like the Vampiric Antichrist for their own
personal and cultural-clique edification.
In this sense they are just as banal and pathetic as any predatory
criminal. They have dark, cathedral-like
minds perhaps, but no salient connection to the heart-source of Creation -- that
ultimately compassionate, lucid force within most of us that makes life worth living.
HADES AND PERSEPHONE
In my original post, 'Icons of the Predator-Class', I present a detailed analysis of the 1997 film Titanic written and directed by James Cameron, and its connections to the Ripper legend. From that post:
I think it will be useful to explore the idea
that the film Titanic is in fact an encoded retelling of
aspects of the Jack the Ripper mythology. This might seem bizarre or
unlikely at first glance, but I will endeavor to present enough evidence to
suggest that James Cameron was knowingly exploring elements of the Ripper
mythology within the subtext of his screenplay. To the discerning viewer
Cameron presents the film as a symbolic meditation on the slaughter of an
enchained goddess – a kind of pagan ritual-sacrifice, with the famous ill-fated
ship and the lead female character having blurred, interlinked identities.
Later I go on to suggest an intentional Christlike resonance to the lead male protagonist:
Jack Dawson, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, is a
homeless but talented artist travelling wherever inspiration and adventure
takes him, who along with his best friend manages to win a ticket on Titanic’s
maiden voyage. The character’s surname is Dawson, meaning Son of David.
In biblical tradition David was a young shepherd who became the King of Israel,
and a direct descendant of the Davidic line is said to become the future
messiah. This is interesting in that one of the film’s most famous lines
of dialogue is Jack on the prow of the ship, in a vaguely Christlike pose,
declaring himself “the King of the World.”
There are further connected insights regarding this film that I wish to explore. As I have outlined earlier in this post, the Ripper icon is emblematic of a kind of elite vampiric antichrist; a predator demigod. In
Titanic the lead characters Jack and Rose are figured as a union of God and Goddess, or a Christ and his Magdalene. So although the other characters in the film are simply aspects and fragments of the identities of the lead couple, as I argued in the original essay, the symbolism goes far deeper than it might appear on the surface. James Cameron figures his male hero as a character that is loaded with all kinds of complex symbolism. In Titanic Jack Dawson is the Divine Masculine, both Dark and Light. He is an embodiment of the legend of the Ripper; an Antichrist. But he is also equally a Christ figure. On top of this he is also Hades of ancient Greek mythology. By the same token Kate Winslet's character Rose DeWitt Bukater is the Divine Feminine. She is the totality of the Ripper's five canonical victims -- Heiros Gamos -- a flame-haired joy maiden intended for her elitist fiance, but who later gives her maidenhead to Jack instead. In this sense we can see why she seems to identify with the five prostitutes in Pablo Picasso's painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, a copy of which she has taken aboard the ship.
What we witness in the film is the war between the Light and Dark aspects of the Divine Masculine; the war between Christ and Antichrist, between defiler and liberator of the Divine Feminine. We can argue that the Christ aspect of Jack manages to save Rose’s soul from
the ritual-slaughter enacted upon her body by his own Antichrist aspect
(symbolized by Spicer Lovejoy, Rose's fiance Cal Hockley and the general hubris and cruelty of the first-class
passengers). As I stated earlier in this post, the Ripper icon symbolizes the ritual-murder and consuming of a goddess, thereby acquiring the totality of her powers. The goddess in question is the ship itself, but it is also equally Rose herself -- seeing as how Cameron has ensured that Rose and Titanic have interlinked identities and are often talked about in an identical manner by the other characters in the film. But this deity set for ritual-slaughter is a triple-goddess, a true goddess of the Underworld. As such she is composed of three interconnected aspects: Maiden, Mother and Crone.
The Maiden is young Rose, the Mother is Molly Brown, played by Kathy Bates, and the Crone is old Rose, played by Gloria Stuart. This is why when Rose attempts suicide at the rear of the ship there is a red notice beside her that states 'THIS VESSEL HAS TRIPLE SCREWS. KEEP CLEAR OF BLADES'. This is a clever inclusion of a sex/death innuendo by Cameron regarding the intended murdering of the
triple-goddess.
All three aspects of the
goddess must survive in some way to counteract the elite ritual. Jack sacrifices himself to save Rose,
becoming a kind of analogue of Virgil's hero Aeneas from The Aenid; a more pagan or Orphic worldview than the later version of Virgil from Dante’s Divine Comedy, where Virgil himself becomes Dante’s guide through the Christian Hell. And
yet the destruction of Titanic was intended to be a virgin sacrifice – akin to
the Rape of Persephone by Hades in ancient Greek mythology. This was later turned into the tale of Proserpina and Pluto, or Dis Pater, by the Romans. The intended culling of Rose’s innocence, highlighted by her cruel fiance's desire to deflower her, was
an integral part of the act of social magic that her ritual
murder/rape was intended to bring about, within the mythical subtext of the film's narrative. In
this sense Rose must be viewed as a child, an innocent, trembling at that
potent cusp between girlhood and womanhood.
So although Jack Dawson represents the similar inner child of the
Ripper, or Hades to Rose’s Persephone – it is Rose who pre-consciously senses
that an act of love between them might be enough to destabilize the intended
power of the ritual. By mating with the
innocent part of the Ripper, with the inner child/youth of an Antichrist and Underworld God, she healthily transmutes
the energy of pure innocence into something more worldly – putting that
energy/desecration forever beyond the reach of the darkest, most unholy aspect of the Divine Masculine. She turns her own innocence into creativity and strength.
Symbolically,
the character in Titanic who most consciously embodies the Ripper legend is Spicer Lovejoy, Cal's manservant played by David Warner. He is an actor who happens to be famous for playing Jack the Ripper in the cult sci-fi film Time After Time. All this is completely intentional from a screenwriting standpoint. James Cameron knew exactly what he was doing in creating this story and casting its actors. At a textual level Spicer Lovejoy is just doing Cal's bidding in an attempt to humiliate Jack Dawson and to retrieve the Heart of the Ocean that Rose is unwittingly carrying. But at the subtextual, mythic level of the film Lovejoy is the Ripper and knows that Jack and Rose have the
potential to destroy his plans for the ritual-murder of the goddess if they are allowed to fall in
love and to consummate that love. This is
why he gives chase and attempts to hunt them down immediately before they finally make love in the cargo hold. Shortly after their union Titanic hits
the fateful iceberg. Symbolically they have angered the Antichrist, the Ripper, the darkest part of Hades – and he angrily plunges his
ritual dagger, the iceberg, into Titanic’s side, slicing her open. This
is why Jack and Rose are on deck the moment the ship hits the iceberg. It’s as though Hades wanted them both to see
the moment the dagger fell. He wants to finally claim Persephone as his own. To restate the From Hell quote at the beginning of this post, Sir William Gull, also known as Jack the Ripper, says these following words to his Coachman: “Averting
royal embarrassment is but the fraction of my work that’s visible above the
waterline. The greater part’s an iceberg of significance that lurks
below. Great works have MANY purposes. To aid her majesty’s
but ONE. The rest are mine alone.”
Interestingly,
in a deleted scene from Titanic Jack Dawson is attacked by Spicer
Lovejoy and is forced to engage in a brutal fistfight, in which Jack's youth
and speed has Lovejoy coming out worse for wear. It's interesting because
this scene is symbolic of a direct confrontation between the Christ and
Antichrist aspects of an Underworld God. It is Redeemer versus Ripper,
and the Redeemer finally wins. This is why Spicer Lovejoy's face is badly
cut when we see him on the deck of the ship, as she rises up out of the sea like
a leviathan just moments before splitting in two and crashing back down.
Lovejoy falls into the gaping wound left in the ship's hull at that very moment. In essence he is symbolically cast into the Abyss and locked away
there, as is befitting of such a deeply satanic figure. Titanic then
proceeds to wrench herself completely apart and eventually sinks, almost taking
Jack and Rose with her into the Underworld through the sheer physical force of
the dying ship.
In the end Jack Dawson gives his own life to ensure that his beloved Rose survives. The ship itself is destroyed, ritually-murdered...the body of the goddess is slain, but through an act of love her soul lives on in the form of Rose. As the character of Thomas Andrews, Titanic's designer and engineer, lament's powerlessly, "I'm sorry that I didn't build you a stronger ship, young Rose." Rose’s
survival and new identity is intended by James Cameron to be analogous to Alan
Moore’s ending of From Hell. When Sir
William Gull as Jack the Ripper finally ascends and realizes that his ritual-murder of the prostitutes has indeed been an act of social magic that
shapes an entire century, he also discovers that his ritual was still not
entirely successful. Mary Kelly didn’t
die. He accidentally murdered some other poor unfortunate in her place, but Mary herself lives on -- giving birth to four girls who act as
analogues or perhaps reincarnations of her murdered friends, and who share their names. It is here that Gull has the intimation that
there is something higher than his dark magick, some loving force that denied
him the full completion of his awful task. His
goal to completely enslave female divinity beneath the yoke of patriarchy is
ultimately a failure. Not only this, but
Mary Kelly is aware of his disembodied presence, given a kind of psychic sight
because of her experiences, and basically tells him unceremoniously to fuck off. This is part of the reason why in Titanic the character of Rose is a redhead like Mary Kelly in From Hell. It is also why Old Rose has a
granddaughter named Lizzy, for Long Liz, Elizabeth Stride; the third canonical
victim of the Ripper. We can be sure
that if Cameron had put in a reference to Rose’s hypothetical daughter in the screenplay -- an unbroken lineage of female empowerment -- she
would have been called Annie, Polly or Kate, in honor of the other three
victims of the Ripper.
So, in conclusion I want to suggest to you that James Cameron's 1997 film Titanic is a multi-layered work of art, and is not merely an exploitative take on the story of Jack the Ripper for some quirk of personal interest. Cameron seems to have immersed himself in the most arcane and esoteric aspects of the Ripper legend and its wider connections to mythology, philosophy and metaphysics. His subtextual symbolism is fairly complex and his characters are multidimensional. His cinematic vision of love and death and blood and sex is surprisingly mature and sophisticated, hidden behind a typical love-story and blockbuster action movie -- and his insights are ultimately hopeful, I would argue. Luna is a source of her own Light. Venus is a Morning Star unto herself, full of beauty and wisdom. Rose-Persephone is not ultimately defiled and consumed by a vampiric antichrist, by the worst possible face of masculinity, as the elites of our world so often desire and intend. Instead she achieves a strange form of ascension, of transcendence, and is ultimately reunited with the most compassionate and loving aspect of the Divine Masculine. Instead of being raped by a monster Rose-Persephone finds love with a hero, instead of fear she finds courage and ingenuity, and in the end she takes her place in a balanced cosmic marriage that honors the inter-necessity of a healthy male and female polarity -- that which is needed for true divinity, liberation and Gnosis.
But obviously in other contexts the
truth has afforded me freedom, strength, wisdom and opportunities – and
sometimes joy beyond measure, for which I am extremely grateful. I only mention all this to highlight the
fact that like most incredibly powerful things truth is a double-edged sword. Truth can be a deadly weapon. It is incredibly destructive as well as
creative, depending on the level or lack of dexterity with which it is handled. For me the people who try to speak the
truth, or earnestly search for its many nuances to the betterment and
emancipation of the human race – these people are unalloyed heroes plain and
simple. They are the ones standing at
the Edge of the World, often putting themselves in harm’s way in an attempt to
stop too many others from plummeting off the edge and tumbling into the
void. This is why in art I am always
drawn to truth-tellers and subversives, be they the artists themselves or their
characters and their works. 
