Paddy Chayefsky and the Wonders of the Invisible World Part II

 

Welcome to the second installment in my series examining the films Network and Altered States, both of would sprang from the pen of screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky. Despite this connection these films are rarely linked together, and not without reason: Chayefsky famously disowned the adaptation of Altered States, even going so far as to have his name removed from the film and replacing it with the pseudonym Sidney Aaron (his real first and middle names respectively). Beyond that, the plot lines of either film are seemingly worlds apart: Network is a brutal depiction of the news media and television in general while Altered States revolves roughly around experiments with, and the spiritual implications of, entheogens.

 

And yet both films ultimately involve altered states of consciousness. I already began to examine how this relates to the film Network in the first installment of this series by breaking down the symbolic and archetypical nature of several of the major characters, but for our purposes here I want to focus in on one of Network's key plot points (those of you unfamiliar with the storyline are advised to read part one where I gave a brief synopsis or check out the Wikipedia entry on it as I'll be working from the assumption at this point forward that readers are aware of it) and its implications of altered states of consciousness: the disembodied voice that instructs Howard Beale (Peter Finch) to become a prophet on television.

This encounter comes at a time when Beale's fortunes are fading after the media sensation that was caused initially by his threat to commit suicide live on air and his later rant about everything being "bullshit" are wearing off. UBS opted to keep Beale on the air for his "mad prophet of the airwaves" routine but he does not seem up to the task of performing it day in and day out after those inspired initial outburst. Then one night, just as Beale's then-boss Max Schumacher (William Holden) is about to go back to "straight" news, Beale wakes from his sleep and seemingly stares wide-eyed into the emptiness of his bedroom. He then asked something to speak up and a moment later says "okay."

Beale being awakened from his sleep by the voice

The next day he goes on air and explains this episode to his viewers thusly:

"Last night, I was awakened from a fitful sleep, shortly after 2 o'clock in the morning by a shrill, sibilant, faceless voice. I couldn't make it out at first in the dark bedroom. And I said, 'I'm sorry, you will have to talk a little louder.'...And the Voice said to me: 'I want you to tell the people the truth, not an easy thing to do because the people don't want to know the truth.' And I said, 'You're kidding. What the hell should I know about the truth?' But the Voice said to me: 'Don't worry about the truth. I will put the words in your mouth.' And I said, 'What is this, the burning bush? For God's sake, I'm not Moses.' And the Voice said to me: 'And I'm not God. What has that got to do with it?'  

"And the Voice said to me: 'We're not talking about eternal truth or absolute truth or ultimate truth. We're talking about impermanent, transient, human truth. I don't expect you people to be capable of truth, but god-dammit, at least you're capable of self-preservation!' And I said, 'Why me?' And the Voice said: 'Because you're on television, dummy! You have 40 million Americans listening to you and after the show you could have 50 million. For Pete's sake, I'm not asking you to walk the land in sackcloth and ashes preaching the Armageddon. You're on TV, man.' So I thought about it for a moment, and then I said, 'Ok.'"

This is one of the major turning points in the movie for from here on out Howard Beale becomes a bona fide phenomenon after initially appearing simply as an aging and unstable man who caught lightning in a bottle with his suicide pledge and "bullshit" rant afterwards. Beale is suddenly capable of keen and perceptive insights and at one point even seems poised to spur an actual populist revolt.

Thus, a pertinent question emerges: Is Beale simply insane and having a breakdown or did he have an actual encounter with some type of entity? The film itself is coy on this matter --director Sidney Lumet shoots the encounter as though Beale is merely talking to himself while none of the characters (except for possibly Arthur Jensen [Ned Beatty], but more on that later ) seem to seriously believe that Beale heard anything. And yet the perception and magnetism that Beale suddenly possesses is undeniable even as his actions become more and more unstable.

Beale "listening" to voice

Could it then be possible that Beale is both going insane and actually communing with an entity? Certainly more than a few schools of thought over the years (some of them very ancient) have believed that madness is a doorway into altered states of consciousness and that the insane are simply more in tune to those things beyond our everyday perception of reality. Indeed, in many traditional societies a period of madness is necessary for anyone wishing to walk the path of the shaman.

"For modern psychiatry, every mental breakdown -- every mental illness, every mental disorder -- has its origins somewhere in the patient's life. A person does not go insane for reasons that are not part of his personal history... How could a person go insane -- how could his personality disintegrate to that extent --due to an external influence? There is either an organic reason (such as a hormonal imbalance or some other chemical reason, or physical trauma of some sort, such as a blow to the head), or there is a precipitating cause in the patient's immediate environment. Yet, in the context of shamanism, the precipitating cause is the summons of a spirit. Even more threatening, the shaman is a person who has gone 'through' madness and has become 'cured' without the benefit of modern psychiatric techniques. Even more astonishing, this person who had once been mad is now a valued and even a revered member of his society, and all due to the fact of his madness and subsequent cure.

"The controversial Scottish psychiatrist... R. D, Laing wrote in 1967, and The Politics of Experience,

When a person goes mad, a profound transposition of his place in relation to all domains of being occurs.... Nevertheless, he can often be to us, even though his profound wretchedness and disintegration, the hierophant of the sacred. An exile from the scene of being as we know it, he is an alien, a stranger signaling to us from the void in which he is foundering, a void which may be peopled by presences that we do not even dream of. They used to be called demons and spirits.... Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be breakthrough.

"Madness and psychic disintegration (dissociation?) leading to... spiritual breakthrough, psychic powers, attainment, illumination: the shaman, the medicine man, the magician."

(Sinister Forces Book III, Peter Levenda, pg. 55)

the highly controversial psychiatrist R.D. Laing

Howard Beale does in fact become a valued and even revered member of his society, much to the shock and horror of individuals such as his old friend Max Schumacher. And yet this was historically how the mad who had displayed perception, insight, and even visions had been treated, a prospect that seems the definition of madness in our modern world. Certainly it adds to the incredible air of surrealism running throughout Network's second half.

Incidentally the Surrealists were one of the chief modern movements to value madness, especially schizophrenia, as offering some type of profound insight into the world. Edward Jessup, the lead character of Altered States, becomes interested in entheogens after becoming convinced that some schizophrenics are experiencing states of consciousness that are as real as "our waking states," but more on that in the next installment.

Beyond the fact that Paddy Chayeksky would incorporate such concepts into the project that followed Network there are other indications that he means for us to take Beale's experience with the disembodied voice seriously. Consider the description Beale gives of his state of mind to Schumacher after making the faithful broadcast in which he reveals his encounter:

"This is not a psychotic episode. This is a cleansing moment of clarity. I'm imbued, Max. I'm imbued with some special spirit. It's not a religious feeling at all. It's a shocking eruption of great electrical energy. I feel vivid and flashing, as if suddenly I'd been plugged into some great electromagnetic field. I feel connected to all living things. To flowers, birds, all the animals of the world. And even to some great, unseen, living force. What I think the Hindus call prana. But it's not a breakdown. I've never felt more orderly in my life. It is a shattering and beautiful sensation. It is the exalted flow of the space-time continuum, save that it is spaceless and timeless and... of such loveliness. I feel on the verge of some great, ultimate truth."

This is consistent with the descriptions individuals have given of the sense of illumination that overtakes them after completing some type of occult initiation or surviving an experience seeping with High Strangeness.

"Illumination is basically a sudden, overwhelming insight into the whole structure of the cosmos and man's relationship to it. Suddenly, for a few brief seconds, the percipient understands everything with incredible clarity. In some cases the process occurs over a long period in the form of short flashes of insight that gradually add up. In others it takes place instantaneously with the percipient seemingly bathed in a reddish glow or caught in a beam brilliant white light cast down from the skies (thus we have the ancient phrase, 'He has seen the light').

"No one is ever exactly the same after an illuminating experience. Mediocre men become great leaders, preachers, statesman, scientists, poets, and writers overnight! Others divorce their spouses, quit their jobs, and embark on new careers that catapult them into unexpected prominence. Some fear for their sanity at first because the experience is so overwhelming. Some are unable to cope with that and disintegrate into various kinds of fanatics."

(Our Haunted Planet, John A. Keel, pg. 201)

Sudden, unexpected illumination, the type of which that frequently follows some type of supernatural experience or even UFO encounters, can be especially destructive as the recipient is unprepared for it. Christopher Knowles recently speculated that encounters with the legendary Men in Black may not in fact be sinister in nature but are in effect a type of warning for individuals who are too unstable to survive in the Fortean realms without succumbing to madness or worse. Amusingly, Howard Beale even begins to dress like a Man in Black once his nightly news programs transforms into The Howard Beale Show.

But back to the matter at hand: If Beale did in fact have a genuine encounter, then with what pray tell? According to Beale, the entity itself said to him: "And I'm not God. What has that got to do with it?" Nor does the entity claim to be an angel or anything commonly associated with the Christian realm. Indeed, Beale's encounter more closely resembles descriptions of entities known as daimons in the ancient world. Daimons are Trickster-like beings which, from early times, were understood as manifesting bother externally (i.e. the physical world) as well as internally (psychologically). Unsurprisingly, these creatures were eventually incorporated by Jung into his concept of Archetypes.

"The great authorities on the intermediate world of psychic reality were the Neoplatonists who flourished from about the middle of the third century A.D. to the middle of the sixth. Following Plato's most mystical dialogue, the Timaeus, they called the intermediate region the Soul of the World, widely known in Latin as Anima Mundi. Just as the human soul mediated between spirit and body, so the world-soul mediated between the One (which, like God, was the transcendent source of all things) and the material, sensory world. The agents of this mediation were called daimons... who, as it were, populated the Soul of the World and provided the connection between gods and men.

"Christianity later, and unjustly, pronounced the daimons demons. But originally they were simply the beings who thronged myth and folklore, from the Greek nymphs, satyrs, fauns, dryads, etc. to elves, gnomes, trolls, jinn, and so on...

"Daimons were essential to the Gnostic-Hermetic-Neoplatonic tradition of philosophy --which was more like psychology (in the Jungian sense) or a mystical discipline than the logical exercises philosophy became. But the daimons of myth evolved into a sort more suited to these philosophies, whether angels, souls, archons, thrones, or powers -- many of which later infiltrated Christianity. Ever-flexible, the daimons changed their shape to suit the times, even becoming abstractions when necessary (the Neoplatonic henads, for example) but preferring if possible to remain personified. Jung's cast of archetypal personages --Shadow, anima/animus, Great Mother, Wise Old Man -- placed him firmly in this tradition.

"Never quite divine nor quite human, the daimons erupted out of the Soul of the World. They were neither spiritual nor physical, but both. Neither were they, as Jung discovered, wholly inner nor wholly outer, but both. They were paradoxical beings, both good and bad, benign and frightening, guiding and warning, protecting and maddening. Plato has Diotima described them in the Symposium, a dialogue devoted to the most neglected of topics and modern philosophy --love...

"Jung was clearly just a man. In his terms, the daimons are archetypal images which, in the process of individuation, conduct us towards the archetypes (gods) themselves. They did not have to convey messages; they were themselves the message. The Greeks understood from early times that daimons could be psychological, in Jung's sense. They attributed to daimons 'those irrational impulses which arise in a man against his will to tempt him --hope, for instance, or fear.' Daimons of passion or jealousy and hatred still possess us, as they always have, causing us to cry forlornly: 'I don't know what got into me. I was beside myself.' But while daimonic activity is most noticeable in irrational, obsessive behavior, it is always quietly at work behind the scenes."

(Daimonic Reality, Patrick Harpur, pgs. 35-36)  

an early depiction of a daimon

Daimons have also long been associated with nature-spirits commonly referred to as Elementals.

"Just as visible Nature is populated by an infinite number of living creatures, so, according to Paracelsus, the invisible, spiritual counterpart of visible Nature (composed of the tenuous principles of the visible elements) is inhabited by a host of peculiar beings, to whom he has given the name elementals, and which have later been termed the Nature spirits. Paracelsus divided these people of the elements into four distinct groups, which he called gnomes, undines, sylphs, and salamanders. He taught that they were really living entities, many resembling human beings in shape, and inhabiting worlds of their own, unknown to man because his undeveloped senses were incapable of functioning beyond the limitations of the grosser elements...

"The Greeks gave the name daemon to some of these elementals, especially those of the higher orders, and worshiped them. Probably the most famous of these daemons is the mysterious spirit which instructed Socrates, and of whom that great philosopher spoke in the highest terms.

(The Secret Teachings of All Ages, Manly P. Hall, pgs. 329-330)

the elementals

This is of course just scratching the surface --Much more information on daimons can be found here. But back to the matter at hand: While daimonic beings were hardly the stereotypical demons of Christianity many students of the arcane have advised against communing with such entities and not without reason.

"Those who sought to control elemental spirits through ceremonial magic did so largely with the hope of securing from the invisible worlds either rare knowledge or supernatural power. The little red demon of Napoleon Bonaparte and the infamous oracular heads of de Medici are examples of the disastrous results of permitting elemental beings to dictate the course of human procedure. While the learned and godlike daemon of Socrates seems to have been an exception, this really proves that the intellectual and moral status of the magician has much to do with the type of elemental he is capable of invoking. But even the daemon of Socrates deserted the philosopher when the sentence of death was passed.

"Transcendentalism and all forms of phenomenalistic magic are but blind alleys --outgrowths of Atlantean sorcery; and those who forsake the straight path of philosophy to wonder there and almost invariably fall victim to their imprudence. Man, incapable of controlling his own appetites, is not equal to the task of governing the fiery and tempestuous elemental spirits."

(ibid, pg. 317)

Socrates and his daimon

While Hall is perhaps to sever in his judgment most accounts I've read on such beings suggest that their motives are frequently to unfathomable for the human mind to comprehend. Thus, those who form a bond with such beings are frequently led to ruin and this is exactly what happens in the case of Howard Beale. While Beale seems to acquire incredible understanding and wisdom he also begins to have a full-blown mental breakdown (if one was not already occurring), leading to increasingly erratic behavior.

Not that this adversely affects Beale's ratings --in point of fact, it's totally in keeping with the revamped Howard Beale Show where the mad prophet is joined by such nightly regulars as Miss Mata Hari and her skeletons in the closet, Jim Webbing and his "It's-the-Emmes-Truth-department" and of course Sybil the Soothsayer (who prophesied to Diana [Faye Dunaway] of her coming relationship with Max). Beale begins each show behind the backdrop of a strange symbol: four circles forming a cross with four more circles in a similar cross-like pattern within each of the initial circles. At the center of the larger four circles is another circle featuring what appears to be in eight-pointed flower within it.

It's tempting to link this symbol to the Rosy Cross of the Rosicrucians (and many other orders, both real and imagined) but there is little resemblance between either. In point of fact, the "Beale cross" does not seem to overtly echo any occult symbol that I have been able to uncover. Probably the most curious aspect of it is the eight pointed flower at the center. Eight arrows arranged in a radial pattern has been adopted as the Symbol of Chaos in recent times, certainly fitting for the character of Howard Beale. The number eight is also highly significant in Crowley's Thelematic tradition where it is linked to the Trickster figures of Hermes, Thoth and Mercury (all of them "messenger" gods of antiquity).

"Cheth is the number Eight, which is the Seal of Hermes-Thoth-Mercury, the God of Magick. The figure 8 is, by shape, the Caduceus of Mercury and the emblem of Infinity. In The Book of the Law, Hadit (or Set) declares 'I am eight, and one in eight'. The identification is with Sothis the manifestator of the Seven Stars of Polaris (the Great Bear constellation which symbolizes the Dragon-Nuit). She is the Mother of the Primal Gods, and her formula of Change, or Magick, is manifested in One, her Son, i.e. Sothis or Sirius, who, in his occult character symbolizes the Son behind the Sun.

"Magick is spelled with a 'k' because Cheth, its Hebrew equivalent, is the number of the Great Work, and the letter of Hermes, or Hermetic Science.

"Cheth (8, 418), 'k', being the number of the Great Work, is a formula used by occultists, as well as alchemist, to denote the consummation of the marriage of individual and cosmic consciousness..."

(The Magical Revival, Kenneth Grant, pgs. 22-23) 

Hermes and his Caduceus

A "marriage of individual and cosmic consciousness" is certainly a fitting description of Howard Beale at this point in the movie, for clearly his consciousness has been altered by his encounter/bonding with the daimonic being that came to him that faithful night. His road to ruin is also assured at this point but if it is folly to follow daimonic beings then it is complete and utter madness to turn the ideology of corporate titans into a philosophy, as Beale attempts to do after his encounter with UBS/CCA head Arthur Jensen.

Strangely, Jensen is the only character in the film who seems to have any appreciation for the transformation that Beale has undergone. Beale's longtime friend Max Schumacher simply sees his transformation as a mental breakdown when it is clearly not that simple while Diana Christensen and her boss, Frank Hackett (Robert Duvall), only pay lip service to the metaphysical implications of Beale so long as it is necessary to keep him on the air and out of the nuthouse. But Jensen, almost immediately upon meeting Beale in person, seems to have accurately sized up his magnetism as well as how to manipulate him.

Jensen

Indeed, throughout the legendary encounter between the CEO and the mad prophet of the airwaves  Jensen comes off as being nearly as "eccentric" as Beale himself. Many have long wondered if Jensen is simply "acting" during his encounter with Beale (Jensen begins by saying: "I started as a salesman. I sold sowing machines and automobile parts, hair brushes and electronic equipment. They say I can sell anything. I'd like to sell something to you.") in order to get through to the unhinged news anchor or if the CEO is something of a freak of nature as well.

Upon escorting Beale into his boardroom, which Jensen refers to as "Valhalla," the CCA head dims the light so that he appears to be engulfed in a spotlight (as well as giving the effect of being in a cave, the site of countless types of occult initiations the world over) and informs Beale that he has tampered with the "primal forces of nature" and that he must "atone" (this meeting occurs after Beale stopped CCA's deal with an Arab conglomerate after he urged his viewers to flood the White House in telegrams demanding that the deal be stopped). Jensen then goes on to outline the corporate globalism that will bring utopia on earth:

"You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state, Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that... perfect world... in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused."

While we, the little people, can reasonably dismiss Jensen's musings as a complete crock of shit in the twenty-first century there are undoubtedly any number of globetrotting CEOs (and other members of the so-called global 'Super Class') still drinking this particular brand of Kool-Aid as well as their mouthpieces on network and cable news. It is to the latter group that Beale becomes a fully converted member of after his encounter with Jensen, which ultimately proves to be even more mind blowing (and destructive) then his daimonic experience.

Jensen shows not the slightest trace of humility when he says "You just might be right, Mr. Beale" after Howard proclaims he has seen the "face of God" while gazing at Jensen. But then again, their encounter ultimately takes on the trappings of the most solemn of rituals: Death and rebirth. Of course the experiences of death and rebirth are the cornerstone of countless occult initiations.

"... I have undergone a number of occult initiations and have become aware of the basic similarity of such rituals in all traditions. This is the pattern of death-rebirth which even today appears symbolically in the Roman Catholic mass and the Masonic 'raising' ceremony. The Investigators is betraying no secret when we say that, in serious occult orders, such performances are not mere rituals but real ordeals. Insofar as possible within the law, the candidate is often brought to a state of terror similar to the emergency condition of the nervous system in near-death crises. What occurs then, and is experienced as rebirth, is a quantum jump in neurological awareness.

"Obviously, the first shamans had no teacher; they simply went through the illness-rebirth transition accidentally, as it were. Later, schools of shamans developed techniques (psychedelics, rituals of terror, yogurt, etc.) to catapult the student into such experience. In most of these schools there is great reliance upon an entity or entities of superhuman nature who aid in the initiatory process, sometimes for years. ('A real initiation never ends,' Crowley said once.)"

(Cosmic Trigger Volume I, Robert Anton Wilson, pg. 139) 

Clearly Beale went through this "traditional" type of initiation inadvertently during his encounter with the daimon but then appears to go through a similar process again with Jensen. Beale is "reborn" from his encounter with Jensen not unlike he was reborn after his encounter with the daimon. So to is Paul Hackett, the UBS head who compared himself to a sun god when he thought the axe was about to come down over the Arab flap. Beale is reborn to become Jensen's mouth piece while Hackett is reborn to more precisely impose Mr. Jensen's will (after the Jensen encounter Hackett seemingly has no moral qualms about plotting Beale's murder other than preventing the network from being implicated). Of course, the results of such "resurrections" can only be an abomination for Jensen has no interest in initiation or illumination beyond how such things can enhance his bottom line.

Jensen seemingly puts Beale in the same type of trance-like state the daimon put him in

Beale's ratings begin to plummet immediately upon his taking up the mantle of Jensen's corporate cosmology. Not long after Diana Christensen, Hackett, and the Ecumenical Liberation Army (who have Beale as a lead into the Mao Tse-Tung Hour, the equivalent of ratings suicide) conspire to assassinate Beale live on air after Jensen refuses to allow him to be taken off. The plan goes through and brings things full circle by enabling Beale to die on air, the prospect of which being the catalyst to all of the high weirdness that he eventually experienced. It is also as fitting a depiction of how those of incredible wealth and power use and ultimately destroy the sincere and gifted in a perpetual pursuit of greater profits as ever there was.

And it is here that I shall wrap things up for now. In the next installment I shall begin my examination of Altered States. Stay tuned.

Intelligence Dreaming of Magick -Part III

The thin line Millennium would begin to walk in the opening two episodes of season three (detailed in part two of this series), and throughout the rest of season was, IMO, perfect. The Millennium Group was brought down to earth and shown to have much more modern, and arguably sinister, origins. Superficially much of the mysticism of season two was dropped, yet occult symbolism, the vast majority of it never explained, would became more prominent than ever. Supernatural elements were still present as well, but they were typically filtered through the after mentioned prism of occult symbolism.

A fine example of this would be the Chris Carter co-written "Antipas". In this one the demonic Lucy Butler makes yet another appearance, this time serving as a nanny for the a wealthy couple, the husband having aspirations in politics. In one of the most striking sequences in the entire series, their young daughter wonders off and becomes lost in a giant maze they have on their property. As the couple search for their daughter, the girl enters the center of the maze where she is confronted with a giant python that seemingly eats her whole. When the couple make it to the center of the maze, there is no snake, but their is Lucy Butler with her hands upon the daughter's shoulders.

The symbolism of just this sequence is profound. Serpents are of course loaded with symbolic meaning, but I think the choice of a python in this episode is especially significant. In Greek myth Python was a great monster slain by the god Apollo.

"Apollo, according to the 'Homeric' hymn to Pythian Apollo..., 'with his strong bow the lord, the son of Zeus, killed the bloated, great she-dragon, a fierce monster wont to do great mischief to men upon the earth, to men themselves and to their thin-shanked sheep; for she was a very bloody plague.' This Underworld deity and serpent was to be given the name of Pytho on the very spot at Delphi where the cult of Pythian Apollo was celebrated... As a pre-eminent representation of the chtonian, Pytho was equipped with the initiatory mouth which gapes to swallow the setting Sun and spit it out again at day-break. Apollo's victory over the serpent is that of reason over instinct, of consciousness over the unconsciousness."
(Dictionary of Symbols, Chevalier & Ggeerbrant, pgs. 778-779)

Apollo vs Pytho

In a way being consumed by the python is a symbol of initiation. The serpent is closely associated with the Earth, or the material plane. The Sun that Pytho spat out at day-break is the light of illumination. This interpretation is further strengthened by the presence of the massive maze that becomes central to the action of "Antipas."

"This artificial network exists in a natural state in the passageways leading to a number of pre-historic cave-sites; Virgil assures us that it was drawn upon the door to the Sibyl's cavern at Cumae; it was carved upon the stone floors of cathedrals; it was danced in many lands from Greece to China, and it was known to the Ancient Egyptians. The fact is -and its association with caverns bears this out -that mazes should both allow access to their centres by a sort of initiatory journey and bar it to those who are not qualified to enter. In this sense the maze is akin to the mandala, which in any case sometimes bears a labyrinthine appearance. Thus we are concerned with the representation of initiatory tests by choosing, as preliminaries to a journey to the hidden centre...

"The transformation of the self which occurs in the middle of the maze and which will be manifested in broad daylight at the end of the return journey, through darkness to light, will mark 'the victory of the spiritual over the materialistic and, at the same time, that of the eternal over the ephemeral, of reason over instinct and of knowledge over blind violence.'
(ibid, pgs. 643-644)

the Labyrinth

Naturally Frank and Hollis must pass through the maze eventually, where Hollis is confronted by the python as well as Dobermans (dogs and dog-headed deities are often depicted as guardians of holy places or knowledge in mythology) before being rescued by Frank. Interestingly this is not the first time the series associated Hollis with mazes. In the mostly lame Halloween-centric episode "...Thirteen Years Later" Hollis is shown reading a copy of Jorge Luis Borges' Labyrinths, a collection of short stories. This may also be another possible swipe at The X-Files as this book includes the story "Tlon Uqbar Orbis Tertius" which Jacques Vallee speculated may have inspired the UMMO hoax.

Regardless, the theme of initiation is prevalent throughout season three, especially in regards to Hollis. This is made blatantly obvious the Millennium Group-centric "Skull and Bones". Superficially this episode chronicles an investigation into a mass grave the FBI uncovers in Maine, and which Frank and Hollis eventually connect to the Millennium Group. The real story, however, is the recruitment of Hollis by Peter Watts that begins in this episode. This is symbolized by the image of the skull, which appears throughout the episode, especially in one striking sequence that occurs at an abandoned farm house.

"In Freemasonry, the skull symbolizes the cycle of initiation through the death of the body as the prelude to rebirth at a higher level of life and in a state in which the spirit rules. As a symbol of physical death, the skull is similar to the alchemical process of putrefaction, as the grave is to the athanor -the new man rises from the crucible in which the old man was annihilated, in order to become transformed."
(ibid, pg. 889)

Frank again encounters the All Seeing Eye in this episode as well, this one located in a parking lot where a murder was committed by the Millennium Group over a decade earlier. Again, the eye seems to by symbol of constant surveillance, as it was in "Exegesis."

The character of Mabius, first introduced in "Exegesis" as an assassin for the Group, is also given a supernatural dimension in this episode. Here he is presented as being similar to Lucy Butler, likely demonic, and unkillable.

Mabius

How Mabius' hand appears to another 'seer'

As noted earlier, while the Millennium Group is brought down to earth in this season, the mystical and supernatural aspects surrounding the Group are ever present. But in this season they take a cold, scientific approach to the spiritual as though it was simply another weapon in their arsenal. This is especially evident in "Matryoshka", where the true origins of the Group are finally revealed. Essentially they are presented as the product of J. Edgar Hoover, who created the Group to handle projects outside the mandate of the FBI. The best and the brightest in the Bureau (and presumably other government agencies) were recruited into the Group so as to guide the course of the United States, and thus world, in the shadows.

Understandably many long time fans were greatly disappointed with this development -to the lay man, transforming an ancient cult into a covert organization of former FBI agents, military and intelligence officers, is perplexing to say the least. Add in the fact that the organization is still up to its knees in the occult and the supernatural, and you have sure fire ratings disaster. But these developments aren't without president. The CIA, for instance, became deeply involved both the occult and the supernatural during the Cold War. As historian Peter Levenda notes:

"All of these techniques -hallucinogenic drugs, hypnosis, acts of terrorism, disinformation -share an ontological purpose: to manipulate perceptions, to recreate reality. As we noted above, the German word for psychological warfare translates as 'worldview warfare': a battle of perceptions, of consensus realities... As the men of the OSS, CIA, and military intelligence developed from the armchair scholars and academics that most of them were before the war years into soldiers fighting the Cold War on fronts all over the world, they became -in a very real sense -magicians. As we will see, the CIA mind control projects themselves represented an assault on consciousness and reality that has not been seen in history since the age of the philosopher-kings and their court alchemists."
(Sinister Forces -Book One: The Nine, pg. 144)

And so to are the men and women of the Millennium Group -Magicians that is. For more information on magic and its curious links to intelligence, check out this prior blog.

As noted above, the Group's reach within the halls of government goes far beyond the FBI. The military is seemingly at the Group's beckon command, as the episode "Collateral Damage" makes clear. In this outing Peter Watts' own daughter is kidnapped by a disgruntled former soldier who was forced to fire a biological weapon at his fellow soldiers during the first Gulf War. His hostage demands are simple: He wants Watts to admit that the Millennium Group was the actual organization who ordered the attack. The show ends with his demands being met, but shortly thereafter the ex-soldier has his neck broken by Watts' own daughter. In a truly hysterical moment, the great disinformation agent Art Bell appears sporting the Jolly Rogers, a symbol used by both the Knights Templar and Yale's Skull and Bones fraternity.

This is only one instance of military, or former military, members causing mayhem in the show's third season. In one of the earliest episodes, "Closure", Frank and Hollis become involved in the investigation of several spree killings committed by a heavily armed ex-military man and several friends. The episode concludes with a massive shootout between the police and the killers modeled after the North Hollywood Shootout of 1997. In this episode Hollis becomes obsessed with finding a reason behind the violence, which Frank greatly discourages: To his mind their is no reason for such acts, and trying to find one can only lead to madness.

This theme is revisited in another episode, "Darwin's Eye", one of the most heavily symbolic episodes of the entire season and series. Basically the plot revolves around a young woman, Cass, who murdered her father as a minor and has been institutionalized ever since. Then one night she escapes from the asylum after killing an orderly and takes a deputy hostage, bringing Frank and Hollis in to assist in the manhunt. Yet the episode has so many curiosities, as Hollis notes throughout -the FBI's involvement in such a case in the first place, for instance. Later, she discovers that the father of Cass was some kind of intelligence officer, likely DIA. This man raped his daughter as a minor, which led her to killing him. Through out the episode, Cass claims that some shadowy organization is after her, and is eventually able to convince the deputy she kidnaps of her claims. Later, after she murderers the man, she seems totally oblivious to the fact the she committed the crime. Finally, there's Cass' curious way of dispatching her victims: she decapitates them.

Decapitation is of course highly symbolic.

"In various primitive religions, decapitation derived from ritual and belief. Since the head was the home of the spirit, it needed to be preserved or destroyed, according to whether it belonged to a friend or to an enemy."
(Dictionary of Symbols, Chevalier & Gheerbrant, pg. 281)

It appears in "Darwin's Eye" not just in connection with Cass, but also in a subplot involving Hollis' father, who has seemingly contracted Alzheimer's. In his wavering mental state Emma's father sends her a bizarre package mostly comprised of paper flowers that, when unfolded, form an image of Emma's long dead sister. In the package is also a headless chess piece, a king specifically.

This is seemingly an image taken from The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz, a legendary Rosicrucian text. One of the key sections involves the decapitation of six royal persons:

"In came our president again, who had before gone out, and she brought with her six black taffeta scarves, with which she bound the six Royal Persons' eyes. Now when they could no longer see, six covered coffins were immediately brought in by the servants, and set down in the hall; also a low black seat was placed in the middle. Finally, there came in a very coal-black, tall man, who bore in his hand a sharp axe. Now after the old King had first been brought to the seat, his head was instantly whipped off, and wrapped in a black cloth; but the blood was received into a great golden goblet, and placed with him in this coffin that stood by; which, being covered, was set aside. Thus it went with the rest also, so that I thought it would at length have come to me too, but it did not. For as soon as the six Royal Persons were beheaded, the black man went out again; another followed after him, and beheaded him too just before the door, and brought back his head together with the axe, which were laid in a little chest."

Thirty-third degree Freemason Manly P. Hall explains this symbolism thus:

"The three kings are the threefold spirit of man and their consorts the corresponding vehicles of their expressions in the lower world. The executioner is the mind, the highest part of which -symbolized by the head -is necessary to the achievement of the philosophical labor."
(The Secret Teachings of All Ages, pg. 537)

My best guess is the headless king is yet another symbol of Hollis' initiation -Here it symbolizes the freeing of the spirit (the head) from the material realm (the body) so that she can fulfill her philosophical quest. Here it again appears in the question of why. Hollis can see the various signs that there is more to Cass -the FBI interest in her, the deep background of her father, the ritualistic nature of her killings (and its strange link to her father who just happened to get sick at the same time this case appears) -than that of the common murderer. Curiously, Frank does not share her view, again warning her against applying reason to madness. Still, Hollis can sense that things are not what they seem. 

Frank is finally brought around in the truly chilling series finale, the two-parter comprised of "Via Dolorosa" and "Goodbye to All That", which reveals the heart of darkness at the center of the Millennium Group. Through out Millennium's run implications have emerged that there was something else behind the serial killers, spree killers, cults, and so forth, other than a society on the brink. Part of it was spiritual, as the episodes centered around Lucy Butler revealed. But another part of it was man made, as the season one finale "Paper Dove" hinted at. While tantalizing bread crumbs were dropped throughout season three, all was finally revealed in the finale. I already briefly discussed this black heart in part two of this series, but now I can get down to the real nitty-gritty.

The plot line of "Via Dolorosa" starts conventionally enough (by Millennium's standards) as another serial-killer-of-the-week episode with Frank being called into investigate the murder of a young, upper class couple. But almost immediately he comes to believe that the killings were committed by serial killer Ed Cuffle, who is hugely important in Millennium's mythology. Cuffle was the man who originally sent Frank photographs over a decade before the events of season one occurred. Frank eventually had a breakdown over it, but not before he caught and imprisoned Cuffle. As the episode opens Frank witnesses Cuffle execution in the electric chair in Florida, which makes the crime scene in Virginia that perfectly matches Cuffle's M.O. (including details that were never released to the public) quite problematic.

Ed Cuffle

Early Frank becomes convinced that this new killer isn't simply a copycat -the details are to precise. Rather, the new killer is seemingly possessed by Ed Cuffle, but also fully aware that his acts are being manipulated to follow those of Cuffle. As the episode progresses, we learn that the new killer, one Lucas Wayne Barr, had virtually the same background as Cuffle -Several years of military service, an honorable discharge for psychological reasons, and no prior criminal history. This is also strikingly similar to the background of the Polaroid stalker who tormented Frank throughout season one.

Lucas Wayne Barr

Essentially Frank has been stalked by three separate individuals of similar appearance and background, all of them obsessed with taking pictures (or in the case of Barr, video) of Frank's loved ones. "The Beginning and the End", the season two premier in which Frank finally confronted and killed the Polaroid stalker, revealed that the Polaroid stalker was involved with the Millennium Group. In the second half to "Via Dolorosa", "Goodbye to All of That" Watts essentially reveals to Frank that a certain medical procedure the Group has developed (involving surgery on the brain) is responsible for 'transfering' Cuffle into Barr. Yet both Cuffle and Barr dispatch their victims by drilling holes in the side of their heads, a wound meant to mimic the Millennium Group's procedure. This implies that Cuffle himself had been programmed, something Barr seems to confirm in one final exchange with Frank:

"Barr: Why did they choice me?
Frank: I don't know
Barr: No! Don't lie to me! Yes you do. I always had it in me, didn't I?
Frank: We all do...
Barr: I know everything now. To much. Why Ed Cuffle did what he did. Why he drilled holes in people's heads."
(Millennium, Season Three, "Goodbye to All of That)

This particular brand of serial killer, let us refer to it as the 'Drill Killer', was seemingly implanted upon both Cuffle and Barr, and possibly the Polaroid stalker as well. And what's more, the 'Drill Killer' may not be the only model the Millennium Group uses. In "Paper Dove" the Polaroid stalker is shown to be working with another serial killer, Henry Dion. As I noted in the second part of this series, the Polaroid stalker comes off almost as a handler, guiding the victim selections of this particular killer (which almost includes Catherine, Frank's wife).

the Polaroid Stalker & Dion

Then there are the other killers such as Cass of "Darwin's Eye" and the spree killer in "Closure" who came from the same type of military backgrounds as Cuffle and Barr. As outlandish as it may seem to the layman that military men would be 'programmed' to take on the personality of serial killers and other psychotics, such experiments have been acknowledged from time to time. Consider this piece, originally published in the Napa Sentinel in 1991:

"A U.S. Navy psychologist, who claims that the Office of Naval Intelligence had taken convicted murderers from military prisons, used behavior modification techniques on them, and then relocated them in American embassies throughout the world. Just prior to that time, the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee had censured the CIA for its global political assassination plots, including plots against Fidel Castro. The Navy psychologist was Lt. Commander Thomas Narut of the U.S. Regional Medical Center in Naples, Italy. The information was divulged at an Oslo NATO conference of 120 psychologists from the eleven nation alliance. According to Dr. Narut, the U.S. Navy was an excellent place for a researcher to find "captive personnel" whom they could could use as guinea pigs in experiments. The Navy provided all the funding necessary, according to Narut.  

"Dr. Narut, in a question and answer session with reporters from many nations, revealed how the Navy was secretly programming large numbers of assassins. He said that the men he had worked with for the Navy were being prepared for commando-type operations, as well as covert operations in U.S. embassies worldwide. He described the men who went through his program as "hit men and assassins" who could kill on command. 

"Careful screening of the subjects was accomplished by Navy psychologists through the military records, and those who actually received assignments where their training could be utilized, were drawn mainly from submarine crews, the paratroops, and many were convicted murderers serving military prison sentences. Several men who had been awarded medals for bravery were drafted into the program."

Is it such a stretch that these individuals would also be used domestically? Certainly some of the more notorious serial killers of the past few decades have had military backgrounds, including Jeffrey Dahmer, Leonard Lake, Gary Heidnik, Albert 'the Boston Strangler' DeSalvo (who was probably a patsy, which I've discussed here), and the Son of Sam himself, David Berkowitz. Other killers were spawned from fathers with a background in the armed forces, such as Edmund Kemper, Herbert Mullins, and Robert Berdella. The 'Night Stalker', Richard Ramirez, was reportedly greatly influenced by his Vietnam veteran cousin Mike, who murdered his own wife in front of Richard (Mike also used to show Richard Polaroid pictures of the people he killed in Vietnam). 

David Berkowitz, one of many serial killers with a military background

As far fetched the notion of programmed serial killers sounds, just consider some of the striking similarities between Dahmer and Heidnik:

"In November 1961, Gary Heidnik joined the U.S. Army and requested that he be trained as a military policeman. The Army though opted to send him to Ft. Sam Houston near San Antonio, Texas for training as a medic. When that training was completed, he was sent to an Army hospital in West Germany to work as an orderly. That did not work out too well, however, especially after the Army began experimenting on him with powerful hallucinogenic drugs, as his records would later reveal. He was sent back to a military hospital here in the States and then released early with an honorable discharge. He later became a collector.

"In January 1979, Jeffrey Dahmer joined the U.S. Army and requested that he be trained as a military policeman. The Army though opted to send him to Ft. Sam Houston near San Antonio, Texas for training as a medic. When that training was completed, he was sent to an Army hospital in West Germany to work as an orderly. That did not work out to well, however, and Jeffrey was released early with an honorable discharge. He later became a collector."
(Programmed to Kill, David McGowan, pgs. 239-240)

Heidnik

Dahmer

The prototype of these type of serial killers to McGowan is 'the collector.' A bit further down, McGowan spells out his definition of a 'collector' as such:

"Collectors generally have much in common. Their primary concern is with control, which they attempt to gain by torturing their victims into submission. Along the way, they tend to take numerous photos and shoot a number of home videos. Some of these they keep for themselves, and some they sell to others. Collectors also like to keep various body parts lying around the house and they generally keep their freezers well stocked with unmarked meat."
(ibid, pg. 240) 

The phenomenon of 'the collector' was seemingly spawned by the 1963 novel by John Fowles called The Collector. The plot of the novel revolves around a young man who starts off collecting butterflies and later upgrades to women, who he attempts to collect and control. Again we see the butterfly motif ever present. This may have been another reason that it was worked into season three, as I already addressed in part two of this series.

A rather striking number of serial killers with military backgrounds followed the prototype of this novel. In addition to Dahmer and Heidnik, there was also Robert Berdella and the duo of former ex-Marines, Leonard Lake and Charles Ng. Unsurprisingly, all of the serial killers that fell into Millennium's 'drill killer' circle were also collectors, be it Henry Dion, the Polaroid stalker, Ed Cuffle (all took Polaroids) or Lucas Wayne Barr (who took videotape).

In addition to the 'collector' aspect, it seems likely the prevalent military backgrounds of so many characters in Millennium season three was intentional. Emma Hollis herself is also seemingly a part of this world. In "Darwin's Eye" she stated that her father, James Hollis, was a scientist who did research for the military. In that episode James seemingly contracted Alzheimer's out of the blue, but "Via Dolorosa" and "Goodbye to All That" reveal that the Millennium Group were actually the ones that made him sick, and are dangling a cure under Hollis' nose in exchange for her becoming a Group member.

What's more, James Hollis seems to be aware of the Millennium Group and what they're doing to him and his daughter at some level. Hollis had another daughter, Melisa, who was murdered at a young age. At one point James even accuses Emma of killing Melisa, though one suspects he actually meant the Millennium Group. The Millennium Group's interest in cutting edge science, be it nuclear, biological, or genetic, was well established throughout seasons two and three. Its quite possible that they had been following Emma for years and even grooming her for her eventual role in the FBI.

James Hollis

Finally, there's the strange symbolism of palms associated with James Hollis. This was also first introduced in "Darwin's Eye" and was also a symbol that James Hollis shared with that episode's killer, Cass, in addition to decapitation. In both that episode and "Goodbye to All That" James is shown watching video tape of palm trees being engulfed by fire, seemingly in the wake of a bomb being set off. The symbolism behind palms is interesting.

"Palms and branches of foliage are regarded universally as symbols of victory, ascension, regeneration and immortality. This is true of the Golden Bough in the Aeneid and that used in the Eleusinian Mysteries; of the druidical mistletoe; of the willow branches in The Shepard of Hermas and of the box-springs which the French place on graves on Palm Sunday."

The palms seem to represent the regeneration of society the Millennium Group hopes to achieve. Watts spells this out for Frank in "Goodbye to All That":

"Watts: We are rushing towards an apocalypse of our own creation.
Frank: This is cult propaganda
Watts: No, fact, Frank. Maybe not the end of the physical world, but the end of a world that is worthy of human life. And that's not something that the Group invented, that's what the Group is trying to prevent."
Frank: You mean control.
Watts: No, no. I mean, attempting to preserve values that are worth preserving. We're sheppards, Frank, all of us."
(Millennium, Season Three)

Watts never actually explains what this apocalypse he speaks of entails, but later on he describes the surgical procedure used on Cuffle and Barr (and Emma's father) as something that helps the human mind to continue learning and expanding at the rate it does in infancy, essentially 'turning back on' evolution. Given this, combined with the Groups interest in genetics, one can't help but feel the apocalypse they fear is one that centers around eugenics and the 'supermen' Millennium is striving to create. We even see a blond-haired, blue eyed paramedic who murders an FBI agent early in this episode who bears a striking resemblance to the bus driver at the end of "Force Majeure", an episode concerning a batch of 'super' kids created to rebuild society after the apocalypse.

"Force Majeure" kid

Goodbye to All That paramedic

And thus Millennium came to an end in one of the greatest instances of 'Revelation of Method' in recent memory. The America-on-the-brink presented in the show was not merely random chance, but the work of sinister forces, both supernatural and human. In the case of the Millennium Group, they seemed to be working together. While the 'transference' of Ed Cuffle to Lucas Barr is seemingly scientific, the opening sequence of "Via Dolorose" in which Cuffle mouths "Yes' to Barr moments before his execution seems to imply some kind of supernatural force at work as well. Further, there's the presence of the mysterious Mabius, the Millennium assassin that seems to be a being similar to Lucy Butler.

Rogue quasi-government organizations, biological weapons, genetic manipulation, terrorism, mind control, magickal workings -This is, based upon my research, is about the closest representation of the Cryptocracy that I have yet found in fiction.

Rock from the Crossroads -New World IV

Robert Johnson is classic Americana in addition to being the first rock star -a seemingly modern legend nevertheless steeped in ancient tradition. Johnson died at the age of 27 virtually unknown but would become a legend several decades later during the rise of rock 'n roll. The noted rock historian Grail Marcus writes:

"Robert Johnson was a Mississippi country blues singer and guitarist, born in 1911; he was murdered, by a jealous husband, in 1938. He died in a haze: if some remember that he was stabbed, others say he was poisoned; that he died on his hands and knees, barking like a dog; that his death 'had something to do with the black arts.'"
(Mystery Train, pg. 20)

Johnson's legendary guitar skills are what inspired speculation of 'the black arts.'

"When he first appeared Robert couldn't play guitar to save his life, Son House told Pete Welding; Johnson hung out with the older bluesmen, pester them for a chance to try his hand, and after a time he went away. It was months later, on a Saturday night, when they saw him again, still looking to be heard. They tried to put him off, but he persisted finally, they let him play for a lull and left him alone with the tables and chairs.

"Outside, taking the air, House and the others heard a loud, devastating music of a brilliance and purity beyond anything in the memory of the Mississippi Delta. Johnson had nothing more to learn from them.

"'He sold his soul to the devil to get to play like that,' House told Welding."
(ibid, pg. 28)

In a typical account, this Faustian pact is usually struck at a crossroads. Johnson arrives a little before midnight, and begins to play his guitar when the clock strikes twelve. A large black man arrives, takes the guitar from Johnson and plays a few licks, then hands it back and the deal is sealed. The crossroads where Johnson made his deal are usually located just outside of Clarksville, Mississippi, or Memphis, Tennessee. However, this legend was originally attributed to another bluesman, Tommy Johnson (no relation), and not Robert. From Wikipedia:

"Most significantly, the detail was added that Johnson received his gift from a large black man at a crossroads. There is dispute as to how and when the crossroads detail was attached to the Robert Johnson story. All the published evidence, including a full chapter on the subject in the biography Crossroads by Tom Graves, suggests an origin in the story of Blues musician Tommy Johnson. This story was collected from his musical associate Ishman Bracey and his elder brother Ledell in the 1960s.^[47] One version of Ledell Johnson's account was published in 1971 David Evans's biography of Tommy,^[48] and was repeated in print in 1982 alongside Son House's story in the widely read Searching for Robert Johnson.^[49]"

If Johnson actually made a Faustian pact, it occurred in a graveyard, and not at a crossroads.

"Almost every great early bluesman was said to have a shadowy teacher who provided instructions in both musical technique and the black arts, and Johnson, it seems, was no different: after being chased off as an incompetent by the ruling Delta players, Johnson returned to Hazelhurst, where he spent his early childhood, and (to quote Robert Palmer) came under the 'tutelage of a musician named Ike Zinnerman, who was from Alabama and claimed to have learned to play while visiting graveyards at midnight.' Zinnerman never recorded, so one can only guess at the sounds he made -but Johnson came back from Hazelhurst a titan. He attracted international attention in his lifetime: an item from a 1937 issue of Melody Maker , the British music weekly, referred to him as 'the star' of Hot Springs... Shortly before his death, Johnson reportedly formed a band, drums included; there are even claims he was using an electric pickup on his guitar. These developments by themselves would not have been unknown... But the rhythmic structures of Johnson's songs suggest that any band of his would have been making music recognizable as rock 'n' roll -full blown, not protean rock 'n' roll -at least by 1938, the year he was murdered."
(Mystery Train, Greil Marcus, pg. 187-188)

Johnson would not just craft a kind of proto-rock 'n roll musically, but he would also define the lifestyle with his womanizing, boozing, and sudden death. The endless travel and one night stands would be instrumental in the 'rambling man' mythos of rock 'n roll.

"When Robert Johnson traveled through the Deep South, over to Texas and back to Memphis, into the Midwest and up to Chicago, across the border to Canada and back to Detroit to sing spirituals on the radio, to New York City (the sight of this primitive blues singer gazing up at the lights of Times Square is not only banal, it is bizarre), to the South again, he was tracing not only the miles on the road but the strength of its image. It was the ultimate American image of flight from homelessness, and he always  looked back: the women he left, or who left him, chased through the gloomy reveries of his songs, just as one of them eventually caught up. Like a good American, Johnson lived for the moment and died for the past."
(ibid, pgs. 24-25)

He was both a martyr to music as well as the first musician to 'sell their soul for rock 'n' roll,' to paraphrase the Black Sabbath greatest hits album.

"... the combination of voice, guitar, words, and the mythical authority that comes when an artist confirms his work with his life -that made Eric Clapton see Johnson's ghost, and his own, in Jimi Hendrix's death. 'Eric wanted to do a Robert Johnson,' one of Clapton's friends said when Hendrix died. 'A few good years, and go.'"
(ibid, pg. 27)

Hendrix, in addition to Elvis, Jim Morrison, and even John Lennon (and many more), would follow some variation of the path Johnson blazed in their ritual-like deaths. Thus one of the most enduring modern myths was born.

What I find most striking, however, about the modern legend of Robert Johnson is how rooted in ancient tradition it actually is.

Music in and of itself is closely linked to the ancient Mystery schools in the occult.

"It is highly probable that the Greek initiates gained their knowledge of the philosophic and therapeutic aspects of music from the Egyptians, who, in turn, considered Hermes the founder of the art. According to one legend, this god constructed the first lyre by stretching strings across the concavity of a turtle shell. Both Isis and Osiris were patrons of music and poetry. Plato, in describing the antiquity of these arts among the Egyptians, declared that songs and poetry had existed in Egypt for at least ten thousand years, and that these were of such exalted and inspiring nature that only gods or godlike men could have composed them. In the Mysteries the lyre was regarded as the secret symbol of the human constitution, the body of the instrument representing the physical form, the strings the nerves, and the musician the spirit. Playing upon the nerves, the spirit thus created the harmonies of normal functioning, which, however, became discords if the nature of man were defiled."
(The Secret Teachings of All Ages, Manly P Hall, pg. 249-250) 

Note that we find our first link to ancient Egypt when considering the Johnson myth. We also find our old friend Hermes lurking about. I have written more on Hermes and his numerous guises, be it Thoth, Mercury, Enoch, or Metatron, here. In brief, I have stated Hermes is a Trickster god, and the patron of the Otherside.

"Like Coyote, Raven, and Hare -those North American Indian clowns-cum-culture-heroes -Hermes is a Trickster. It is as difficult for us to countenance Tricksters as it is daimons: our monotheism, whether Christianity or Science, has excluded them. So Hermes is forced to operate from the Underworld, to shadow Christianity in esoteric, 'occult' Gnostic and Hermetic philosophies. As his Latin counterpart, Mercurius, he is the soul of alchemy. He returns to torment scientism with paranormal phenomena and maddening anomalies -all daimons are tricksters, as the fairies are; all are in the pay of Hermes-Mercurius."
(Daimonic Reality, Patrick Harpur, pgs. 166-167)

Keep Hermes in mind as we shall be running into him again a little further down. But for now, I want to write about wandering musicians. In the UK, from antiquity on into the Middle Ages, they were generally referred to as bards, and were believed to possess hidden knowledge that was incorporated into their songs.

"These poets were held in high honor by the Britons, for among a barbarous people musicians are angels who bring to them a language from the other world, and who alone can soften their iron hearts and fill their bold blue eyes with gentle tears...

"The Bards from what we can learn of them, neither debased their art to calumny nor to adulation, but were in every way as worthy of our admiration as those profound philosophers to whom alone they were inferior."
(The Veil of Isis, William Winwood Reade, pgs. 48-50)

In central Europe these wandering pickers were called troubadours and also carried on a hidden tradition.

"During the Middle Ages the troubadours of Central Europe preserved in song the legends of this Egyptian goddess. They composed sonnets to the most beautiful woman in the world. Though few ever discovered her identity, she was Sophia, the Virgin of Wisdom, whom all the philosophers of the world have wooed."
(The Secret Teachings of All Ages, Manly P Hall, pg. 132)

Again with Egypt. Its very fitting indeed that Robert Johnson is considered a Delta blues artists. From Wikipedia:

"The Delta blues is one of the earliest styles of blues music. It originated in the Mississippi Delta, a region of the United States that stretches from Memphis, Tennessee in the north to Vicksburg, Mississippi in the south, the Mississippi River on the west to the Yazoo River on the east. The Mississippi Delta area is famous both for its fertile soil and its poverty. Guitar, harmonica and cigar box guitar are the dominant instruments used, with slide guitar (usually on the steel guitar) being a hallmark of the style. The vocal styles range from introspective and soulful to passionate and fiery."

The word delta originates from Egypt, and refers to the fertile area around the Nile. Nile delta imagery was heavily adopted into the occult. The word alchemy comes from the Arab phrase 'al-kimia.' The root of kimia is the Coptic word khem, which, exoterically, is the black soil of the Nile delta. Esoterically it refers to the mysterious First Matter, known as the Khem. It's color, black, is also the first stage of an alchemical working.

The Nile delta area is also closely linked with the dog star Sirius, the rising of which was often followed by flooding.

"We have already looked at the significance of Sirius in the astrological tradition, and observed that it still carries some of its early Egyptian associations. These associations are even more deeply expressed in the Masonic view of the star. In his exposition of the ancient Mysteries, of 1835, Fellows not only linked the blazing star of the Craft with the 'Egyptian star,' Sirius, but further explained the veneration in which this is held in Masonic circles by reference to the fact that the rising of the dog star forewarned of the flooding of the Nile... Fellows was writing symbolically, of a nonliquid 'Flood' of anarchy threatening his own world."
(The Secret Architecture of Our Nation's Capital, David Ovason, pg. 245)

A good portion of Johnson's life unfolded in a region of the United States known as 'Little Egypt.' It stretches roughly from Cairo, Illinois a hundred miles south to Memphis, Tennessee. All along this region are towns bearing Egyptian themed names. Researchers such as Michael A Hoffman have suggested that there was a Masonic purpose behind the naming.

"The Temple is the alchemical project in microcosm, the yin and yang of Egypt's Hermetic Shepherd of Hermas in whose memory palace the Black and White kings have played fatal chess for centuries, from the Lincoln-Douglas debates in the 'Little Egypt' section of Illinois upon which the fate of three wars and countless lives depended, to the ritual assassination of the 'Black King,' Michael/Nitram Luther King Jr. in 'Memphis' (Mizraim)."
(Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare, Michael A Hoffman II, pg. 117)

Another dead king, Elvis, also died in Memphis, Tennessee. Tommy Johnson, whose legend of selling his soul at the crossroads is often attributed to Robert, was recorded in Memphis. Perhaps for this reason Memphis is one of the two cities, along with Clarksville, where the infamous crossroads are said to reside. But the sinister reputation of crossroads has existed since the earliest religions.

African folk traditions are ripe with trickster gods that inhabit the crossroads. Consider this essay passage from this marvelous site:

"The crossroads is the most popular place to perform a specific hoodoo crossroads ritual to learn a skill -- to play a musical instrument, for instance, or to become proficient at throwing dice, dancing, public speaking, or whatever one chooses. As this ritual is usually described, you bring the item you wish to master -- your banjo, guitar, fiddle, deck of cards, or dice -- and wait at the crossroads on three or nine specified nights or mornings. On your successive visits you may witness the mysterious appearances of a series of animals. On your last visit, a " big black man" will arrive. If you are not afraid and do not run away, he will ask to borrow the item you wish to learn. He will show you the proper way to use the item by using it himself. When he returns it to you, you will suddenly have the gift of greatness.
 
"The man who meets people at the crossroads and teaches them skills is sometimes called "the devil" He is also called "the rider," the "li'l ole funny boy" or "the big black man," black in this case meaning the actual colour, not a brown-skinned ("coloured" or Negro) person. Because he shares qualities with and derives from a number of African crossroads spirits (of whom Legba, Ellegua, Elegbara, Eshu, Nbumba Nzila, and Pomba Gira are some African and African-diaspora names), it is a common scholarly conceit to equate the crossroads "devil" with Legba, but that is utterly unheard of in the oral folk tradition.

"This African-derived crossroads ritual is one of the most widely distributed beliefs in African-American folklore and is practiced throughout the South. It is the subject of the rest of this essay."

I would suggest my readers take in the entire essay as well as noting the bolded passage above as I shall be addressing it in a moment. But first, a little more on crossroads, in the European tradition. The Greeks had both a male and female deity assigned to the crossroads. The goddess, Hecate, was quite a piece of work.

"Hecate was the Goddess of the Dark of the Moon, the black nights when the moon is hidden. She was associated with deeds of darkness, the Goddess of the Crossways, which were held to be ghostly places of evil magic. An awful divinity,

"Hecate of hell,

"Mighty to shatter every stubborn thing.

"Hark! Hark! her hounds are baying through the town

"Where three roads meet, there she is standing."

(Mythology, Edith Hamilton, pg. 32)

Naturally the male god of crossroads in ancient Greece would be Hermes, the great Trickster.

The significance of crossroads likely ties in with the concept of 'ley lines' or earth currents, paths of magnetic energy that cover the Earth. Some researchers believe that the temples of the ancient world were situated upon these paths. The tradition continued into Christan times.

"The practice of locating sacred centres in accordance with the flow of terrestrial magnetic current was not confined to prehistoric times, for it appears that every Christian church was similarly sited. The orientation of a church, even its dimensions and architectural plan, was determined by the lines of current, of which the strongest spring is frequently located directly beneath the tower. At this spot the celestial influences, attracted by the spire, combine with the terrestrial force to produce the fusion.

"It becomes apparent that the prehistoric leys and dragon paths of Britain are indeed lines of the earth current. And the most remarkable feature of the whole system is that the paths of underground streams or of magnetic flow are not naturally straight; they spiral and undulate like surface rivers of currents of air; yet the currents that follow prehistoric alignments are as direct and regular below ground as are they leys on the surface. The magnetic centres lie in straight rows across the country with a precision that characterizes human construction rather than the work of nature. In other words, the present pattern of the earth currents in Britain must be of artificial origin."
(The New View Over Atlantis, John Michell, pg. 93)

Presumably areas where leys crossed would be regions of especial power. More information on leys can be found here.

And finally, we come to the 'black man' that approached Robert and/or Tommy Johnson. As noted above, 'black' in this case was not necessarily in reference to the man's skin color. Further, America has a long history of 'dark men' overseeing occult rituals. One of the earliest reported accounts dates back to the Salem witch trials. Initially a South American slave named Tituba was fingered as the ringleader that led the Puritan youth astray, but she claimed there was a greater power at work.

"This is always a stranger, someone from outside the village, and Tituba in her testimony before the magistrates began to point a finger at evil outside influences behind the witchcraft covens in Salem. She claimed that the ringleader of the witches was a 'man in black' who lived in Boston in spirit form, and that they received their instructions to return to Salem and hurt the children living there."
(Sinister Forces Book One, Peter Levenda, pg. 19)

The 'dark man', 'black man', or 'man in black' has been with us for a very long time in America and beyond. He lurks at the cusp of our villages and along our crossroads shortly after midnight. And no matter how much we reassure ourselves that America is the 'new world' we still find it impossible to escape the old, as the legend of Robert Johnson shows. The rock 'n' roll mythology that Johnson helped define is assumed to be a rebellion against the old by most Americans. Rock music -along with blues, jazz, and the like, are seen as a new form for a new world. And yet all we find is a recreation of the ancient troubadour tradition and the ritual workings. Even in modern America, even with the record set straight on the fact's of Johnson's life, the ghosts of ancient Egypt, of Hermes and the men in black cannot be escaped.

Other installments in the 'New World' series can be found here, here, and here.