The Hook -Updated 12/16/12

Every time I start feeling like I'm becoming desensitized to the spiralling violence of the modern world something truly grotesque comes along to snap me out of it. The shooting rampage that occurred today in Newtown, Connecticut, mostly at the Sandy Hook Elementary School, is such an occasion.

In brief: Some 28 people died today at the hands of an alleged human being known as Adam Lanza, 20, including Lanza himself. Lanza also killed his mother in addition to 26 people at the Sandy Hook Elementary School where his mother worked as a kindergarten teacher, 20 of them children between the ages of five and ten. Lanza apparently killed his mother, Nancy, at the home they shared in Newtown before heading to the school.

Lanza as a child

I'm a bit pressed for time now, so I'm going to do a quick rundown of the instances of twilight language that have occurred to me in this tragedy:

First, the shooter's name: Adam Lanza. The name Adam can mean either 'red earth' or 'red man,' from the Biblical narrative in which Adam is created from red earth. Colorado, the state in which the Aurora shooting occurred, means red. Aurora means dawn, thus we have 'red dawn.' Red Dawn is of course a famous 1980s action flick in which high school kids fight a guerrilla war against Soviet invaders. The film was recently remade and released this past month. A red dawn is also associated the helical rising of Sirius, of which I've written more on here. Curiously, Newtown's seal is a rooster weathervane. Roosters have long been associated with the dawn, as Loren Coleman has noted here.

As for the last name, Lanza, I've found several different meanings. In Spanish it is said to mean 'lance' while in Italian (apparently where the name originated from) it means noble or eager. In this case the Spanish meaning of lance (which is interchangeable with a spear) is far more appropriate. According to Jean Chevalier and Alain Gheerbrant's Dictionary of Symbols "The spear is universally regarded as an axial, phallic, fiery or solar (yang) symbol" (pg. 900). This would certainly be consistent with the 'red man' association of the name Adam. According to Manly P. Hall, Adam is himself a phallic symbol.

"That phallic symbolism occupies an important place in early Jewish mysticism is indisputable. Hargrave Jennings sees in the figure of Adam a type of the lingam of Shiva, which was a stone representative of the creative power of the World Generator: 'In Gregoire's works...,' writers Jennings, 'is a passage to the effect that 'Noah daily prayed in the Ark before the Body of Adam,' i.e., before the Phallus --Adam being the primitive Phallus, great procreator of the human race."
(The Secret Teachings of All Ages, pg. 403)

Excluding Lanza, 26 people were killed at the Sandy Hook Elementary School. According to Aleister Crowley, 26 is one of the numbers of the Tetragrammaton. Specifically, Crowley writes: "Jehovah, as the Dyad expanded, the jealous and terrible God, the lesser Countenance. The God of Nature, fecund, cruel, beautiful, relentless" (Gematria, pg. 30). Crowley is working from the concept of Jehovah as the Demiurge. The legendary figure of Adam had a curious association with the Demiurge in esoteric accounts.

"...As the Macrocosm, Adam is the gigantic Androgyne, even the Demiurgus; as the Microcosm, he is the chief production of the Demiurgus and within the nature of the Microcosm the Demiurgus established all the qualities and powers which He Himself possessed."
(The Secret Teachings of All Ages, Manly P. Hall, pg. 402)

the Demiurge

28 is the total number of victims involved in the Newtown rampage, including the shooter and his mother. 28 also has some interesting esoteric associations. According to Crowley, it is the mystic number of Netzach, the seventh of ten Sephirot in the Kabbalah. It is also associated with both power and clay. In some creation accounts, Adam was made from red clay.

That date the tragedy unfolded upon is December 14, 2012. This exactly a week before December 21, 2012, the winter solstice and the end of the Mayan calendar, an event that has obsessed the New Age community for years. After December 14, there are only 17 days left in the year. 17 is a number highly significant in the occult, as I've noted before here. Adam Lanza was apparently 17 years old when his parents divorced.

Incidentally, Adam's father happens to be a vice-president of taxes for GE Financial Services. Adam's brother Ryan, 24, has noted that his younger sibling had some type of "personality disorder." Lanza has been described as a "goth" and was said to be dressed in black when he arrived at the school for the shooting spree. This is similar to Columbine where the two shooters were characterized as goths and metalheads and wore black of the day of the shooting. For a time after the Columbine shooting there was even talk of a "Trench Coat Mafia" comprised of such types. It'll be interesting to see where the media goes with this. Naturally, there were early reports of another shooter.

Finally, there's the name of the school: Sandy Hook Elementary School. When I think of the word 'hook' in association with kids I come up with Captain Hook, the antagonist in Peter Pan. Over the years many dark allegation have been made about Peter Pan and its author, J.M. Berrie. There are of course rumors that Berrie was a pedophile and that he engaged in such acts in at least one occasion while dressed as a pirate character who was a prototype for Captain Hook. The character of Hook sought to do harm to children, specifically the Lost Boys. More recently Loren Coleman has speculated, here and here, that some kind of nation wide pedophile ring may exist that uses references to Peter Pan, especially Captain Hook, in their deeds. Most disturbing are his reports of young boys found dead hanging from a hook.

 

UPDATE 12/15/12:

 

This saga just keeps weirder and weirder as is typically the case with these types of things. After widespread reports yesterday that Nancy Lanza, the shooter's mother, worked at Sandy Hook School the media is now singing a different tune. At least one school board member has stated that Mrs. Lanza never worked at Sandy Hook while her name has not be found on any staff lists. One parent, however, has claimed that she was a substitute teacher, though this has yet to be confirmed. Thus, the motive for Mr. Lanza's rampage remains as enigmatic as ever.

 

Early reports indicate that Mr. Lanza suffered from Asperger's syndrome, an extreme form of autism that can cause a lack of empathy for peers, among other things. Autism is commonly treated with selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (commonly known as SSRIs). SSRIs have been linked to sucidal and violent behavior in some circles. Psychiatrist Peter Breggin states:

"Evidence from many sources confirms that selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) commonly cause or exacerbate a wide range of abnormal mental and behavioral conditions. These adverse drug reactions include the following overlapping clinical phenomena: a stimulant profile that ranges from mild agitation to manic psychoses, agitated depression, obsessive preoccupations that are alien or uncharacteristic of the individual, and akathisia. Each of these reactions can worsen the individual’s mental condition and can result in suicidality, violence, and other forms of extreme abnormal behavior. Evidence for these reactions is found in clinical reports, controlled clinical trials, and epidemiological studies in children and adults." 

So far I've found absolutely nothing to indicate that Mr. Lanza was using SSRIs though he almost certainly was taking some kind of medication for his autism. It will be most interest to learn what exactly that is.

 

 

UPDATE 12/16/12:

 

The UK-based Daily Mail has a fascinating rundown of Adam Lanza's background with at least one startling revelation: Nancy Lanza, Adam's mother, was apparently a 'Doomsday Prepper,' also known as survivalists, a movement closely associated with the Patriot movement, which also includes tax protesters, 'Sovereign citizens,' and militias, among other grassroots right-leaning groups. The article notes:

"Dan Holmes, owner of a landscaping firm who worked on the family’s home, said she was an avid gun collector: ‘She told me she would go target shooting with her kids.’

"Sources close to the investigation also revealed last night that Nancy had recently stopped hosting monthly get-togethers for neighbors in order to look after her increasingly troubled son...

"Last night it also emerged Nancy was a member of the Doomsday Preppers movement, which believes people should prepare for end of the world.
"Her former sister-in-law Marsha said she had turned her home ‘into a fortress’. She added: ‘Nancy had a survivalist philosophy which is why she was stockpiling guns. She had them for defense.'"
"‘She was stockpiling food. She grew up on a farm in New Hampshire. She was skilled with guns. We talked about preppers and preparing for the economy collapsing.’"

As regular readers of this blog know, I am not a big fan of the Patriot movement. While I do believe some of the concerns of said movement are legitimate and that the bulk of people involved in are decent, well-intentioned individuals, I am increasingly concerned about the rampant paranoia it has become infested with. What's more, there is seemingly a tendency among various groups within the movement to dehumanize the masses of Americans that are not 'enlightened.' How often do we see normal people reduced to the status of 'sheeple' or uses-eaters in the right-leaning alternative media? At times one almost feels like factions within the Patriot movement would welcome Armageddon simply to be rid of their countrymen that do not meet their standards. Increasingly, this is creating a kind of 'Soldier of the Apocalypse' mentality in individuals involved in such movements, a topic I've written on before here.

Was Adam Lanza caught up in this mind set? Its impossible to know at this point but it seems highly probable that his mother's ideology had some kind of effect on him. Certainly turning her suburban home into a fortress stockpiled with weapons is not the best environment for a highly socially awkward kid already facing an uphill struggle to form attachments with other human beings. If those human beings are nothing but sheeple, then perhaps their lives loose all value all together.