[UA] Pop Culture Update

[Tim Toner]

Saw Thir13en Ghosts last night.  Like The House on Haunted Hill, I was
thoroughly amazed by how much it didn't suck ass!  Not a great film, but
some groovy ideas, nevertheless.  The most interesting of this is the
central premise:  an occult guru wants to build a device that will allow
access to the Oraculum Infernum, which will allow pre- and postcognition.
It is a machine "built by the devil, and powered by the dead."  The power
source in question are 12 ghosts, selected because they fulfill certain
roles in the Black Zodiac.  I did a search on the term, and came up with so
many hits relevant to Charles Wright's Pulitzer prize winner, I admit that I
gave up, and will assume it's original to the film.

The Black Zodiac has twelve (wait for it) ARCHETYPES!  They are:

The First Born Son
The Dire Mother
The Great Child
The Torn Prince
The Bound Woman
The Torso
The Angry Princess
The Juggernaut
The Hammer
The Jackal
The Withered Lover
The Pilgrimess

Of course, everyone died a horrible death, and are thoroughly pissed (for
the most part).

The art direction of the film is absolutely brilliant (and really, the only
reason to see it).  Each of the 12 ghosts are something else and a half.
Seeing it gave me ideas for a UA scenario revolving around a similar device
powered by 12 Godwalkers, of at least 50% rating.  Their time of
imprisonment has thoroughly twisted them, and they're ready to kill anything
in sight.

Also, Promethea continues to floor me with the flood of ideas that Alan
Moore throws at you on a monthly basis.  Two characters are travellling the
Tree of Life, on a visionquest to understand the nature of the power they
wield.  At the edge of the fourth Sepiroth, Chesed, the two travellers find
a vast abyss that marks the only route to Binah.  Because Chesed is
Obedience, they take the plunge.

And fall.

And fall.

And fall.

And land, walk around for a while in a featureless plain, and realize that
they're actually asleep, and only dreaming that they're walking around.
They awake...and are still falling.

They come across a realm in ruins.  The road markers are corroded and
featureless.  The city they come to is little more than one rock stacked
upon another.  It is the eleventh sepiroth, the 'invisible sepiroth,' and it
exists somewhere between the Fourth and the Third.  One character sees a
symbol carved into an archway--it seems to be 11, for the 11th sepiroth, but
there's some sort of horizontal line that connects the top of the two
verticals.  Pi, a number that isn't really a number, not like the other 10,
a number that goes on and on, without end.  They encounter two statues, one
before the city, the beggar, and one after, the fountain.  And they may or
may not have encountered a vision of Alestair Crowley.

So why am I telling you all this?  Because the whole book screams
"Statosphere,' or, specifically, what a walk through the statospheres'
realms would seem like (if, you know, the statosphere HAD realms).  The
current issue shows the invisible world within the invisible world, the
place of loss and potential birth.  It is so damn cool.



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