A Very Weak Attempt to Link Sandy Hook to Satanism

As discussed in my last post, many conspiracy theorists are trying to link the Aurora and Newtown massacres to Satanism. The video below is one of the silliest examples of this effort. It attempts to connect the dots among a perfume commercial starring Lady Gaga (a favourite target of Vigilant Citizen, and others who search for Illuminati/occult symbolism in movies, music videos, and TV commercials), the latest Batman movie, Aurora, and Newtown.
The major flaw with this approach is that any number of interpretations can be made of Lady Gaga's videos. They are artistic, dark, and more than a little twisted. Beneath the video, I've added my own interpretations of some of the imagery in the perfume commercial to show you just how easy it is to bring your own experiences and perceptions to the table.


The "Matrix-style surgical probe": This is actually just a light mounted on a flexible, snake-like tube. It does not enter the statue.
The black bodysuit: I doubt this is a nod to Catwoman. Gaga likes bodysuits, as evidenced by the white Where the Wild Things Are-inspired latex bodysuit she wore at the beginning of the "Bad Romance" video.
The "trooper hat": An old-fashioned ladies' picture hat, updated

The mirror: Clearly a reference to Cocteau's Orphée, in which Orpheus is transported to the underworld by stepping into a mirror with a liquid surface. We know that Gaga admires French culture; she speaks French at the beginning of the video for "Papparazzi". We know she likes classic film, because she references Hitchcock four times in a single verse of "Bad Romance". And I'm not the only one who sees a correspondence between Cocteau and Gaga - check out this fan video of her song "Bad Romance", set to scenes from Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast. We are not dealing with Satanism here. The black mirror is a straight-up homage to French arthouse cinema.
[I wrote the passage above before re-watching the mirror scene in Orphée. When I reviewed it, I realized Gaga was definitely, absolutely, beyond any question in the world, re-enacting it. Watch it yourself, and note how Orpheus and Gaga extend their arms and place their hands in the same position as they cautiously approach the mirror. Note, also, that Gaga hesitates before the black mirror, while Orpheus allows himself to be coaxed into his mirror by an underworld minion. Give her credit for that, at least!
Fun fact: While Gaga's mirror is CGI, Cocteau filmed someone submerging their gloved hands into a pool of mercury to create the shimmery ripple effect.]
"Portrait: Death of Children (ovum and sperm)": I don't see ovum or sperm in this image, so abortion doesn't come to mind at all. The gold jewelry Gaga wears reminds me of slime mold.
"Look how they prequel shooting children!": But there are no children in this scene. There is a CGI rendering of a metallic Gaga aiming a gun at a flesh-and-blood Gaga. I don't think the metallic Gaga represents a child.
The backmasking of Lt. Paul Vance: I closed my eyes for this portion of the video, and typed my own interpretation of the backwards words. Someone says, "Let us now...worst-dressed. Now. Worst." Then Vance says, "Excellent. Herb get it done initiate get some I said go. Said the wood A sauce throat dead Sarah the one with oss nitiate.get some mean you left paw. Nnnnasty deep blue knew it he blew it no [or know] me luck. Still when this window go in and out ffth with a maze Gazoo [or kazoo] with your breath. With your breath a syndrome go pull out the waw never been there rash knees bucksters soreth give [gibberish that sounds like "Mickulick"]. Judith or a nay she not pay up.
So from this we can determine that Paul Vance is owed money by a woman named Judith, has an accomplice named Herb, and may or may not like The Flintstones.

As for production designer Nathan Crowley being related to the infamous occultist, Aleister Crowley was, as Nathan told the Art Newspaper in 2008, his grandfather’s cousin, but Nathan was "never allowed to even mention his name because we were a very Quaker family.”

Find the Hidden Picture

One of the artists accused of hiding "occult horror pornography" in his work (see my post, "Da Vinci's Other Code") is Steve Erspamer, a Catholic artist who mostly designs filler for religious publications. I've posted about Erspamer at my regular blog, blueapples.

Da Vinci's Other Code

Priests Become Perverts Because of...Art?

A new documentary, Rape of the Soul, posits an odd theory that occult/sexual imagery in centuries-old religious art has helped create an atmosphere of evil within the Catholic Church, leading to the sexual molestation of youngsters by priests. According to the director, subversive imagery is still used in the Church - even in children's books. The film is directed by Michael Calace, a devout Catholic who wants to expose the shameful legacy of "embed art" within the Church. From the Silver Sword International website: "SSI has announced that its story rights to the recently uncovered religious artwork scandals have now been completed into a feature film documentary for release.The highly inappropriate imagery that is being distributed by trusted organizations has caused the demand for expert analysis and education on the subject, which has affected a vast multitude of churches and millions of people internationally.The stunning images and deceptive techniques, which were primarily aimed at children, is clearly identified, and includes the investigations utilized to uncover the scandals, resulting in a crucially engaging motion picture." Hmm.

I've no doubt that subtle imagery can influence us on a subconscious level, especially if we're bombarded with it on a regular basis. And Calace is hardly the first person to point out the strange use of erotic imagery in religous art. In his book The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and In Modern Oblivion, Leo Steinberg noted Renaissance artists' preoccupation with Christ's genitalia. The late University of Chicago professor Ioan Couliano explored such ideas in depth in his book Eros and Magic in the Renaissance. From the book description at Amazon.com: "Renaissance magic, according to Ioan Couliano, was a scientifically plausible attempt to manipulate individuals and groups based on a knowledge of motivations, particularly erotic motivations. Its key principle was that everyone (and in a sense everything) could be influenced by appeal to sexual desire. In addition, the magician relied on a profound knowledge of the art of memory to manipulate the imaginations of his subjects. In these respects, Couliano suggests, magic is the precursor of the modern psychological and sociological sciences, and the magician is the distant ancestor of the psychoanalyst and the advertising and publicity agent". Basically, Couliano contended that the Italian upper classes manipulated the masses through liberal use of sexual imagery in art, fashion, and public displays.

But do really old paintings hanging in churches and the Vatican spur priests to become pedophiles? Highly unlikely. I think this director should have stuck to exposing the hidden messages in these artworks, rather than using them to explain decades of sexual deviance. The Rape of the Soul website is rather strange, too. It's advertising a supposedly serious film that excoriates long-dead artists for sneaking naughty stuff into their work...but the website itself has a ghoulish cartoon full of popes' skeletons and dead trees (with a clap of thunder for effect) on its homepage; looks like an ad for an anime horror movie.

I'll post more on Rape of the Soul when I know more about it. I'm curious to know which artworks contain all this interesting stuff.

E. Michael Jones, conservative Catholic founder of Culture Wars magazine, has different thoughts about horror movies, fiction, and art. In his book Monsters from the Id: The Rise of Horror in Fiction and Film (Spence Publishing Company, 2000), Jones argues that horror "is an unconscious backlash against the Enlightenment and the evils of secular humanism...the moral order, when suppressed, reasserts itself as an avenging monster." He draws connections between Enlightenment ideals and the disastrous love affair of Mary Godwin and Percy Shelley, Dracula and the 19th-century fear of syphillis, contraception and drive-by shootings. Sex is to blame for pretty much every social ill, in Jones's view: The exploitative and exploited Marian visions of Medjugorje, Bosnia, are somehow the result of the sexual revolution, the homosexual is the "culture of death's ideal citizen", and Bahaus architecture is a symptom of sexual immorality. Somewhat like Couliano and Calace, Jones believes that today's leaders of media, insdustry, and politics manipulate the masses with sexual imagery.
When not battling the evils of architecture and birth control, Jones writes songs a la Bob Roberts, such as "I'm Voting for Skull and Bones."

Humorous aside: Check out these before and after pics of the cover for a Christian self-help book called After You've Blown It. "Embed imagery", indeed!