We’re back in the present, dear reader. That is to say, April 2024. The revisions of Purple Reined are finished and the whole series published, so we can all stop pretending we haven’t seen Wonka 42 times now (ahem… oh, just me?). I thought it only appropriate to do a post-script on all that came before, adding some things that came to my attention only after publishing the series and seeing the film. And while it won’t be a monstrous deep-dive (or will it?), I will dust off a few key details that emerged from my viewings of Wonka that prove the filmmakers are indeed in on the circus—and if they aren’t, they should probably know about this stuff, and wonder why it’s in their movie.
The most central fact that absolutely melted my brain came from Tim Ozman’s comment on part 1, alerting me to a Hollywood Reporter article revealing (to me anyway) that Elon Musk actually owned and lived in and across from the house of Gene Wilder for a while. This is what I get for never listening to any of those JR podcasts. I suppose I might have seen this headline when it was published in 2020, but if so I ignored it or suppressed the memory. I had no idea of this connection when coming up with Purple Reined. In none of the stories about this does Elon acknowledge the fact that he was born on the day Gene Wilder’s turn as Willy Wonka premiered. If he has spoken about this somewhere, please send it my way.
Here’s what happened: on the morning of May 1, 2020, Elon nonchalantly announced on Twitter “I am selling almost all physical possessions. Will own no house.” He then followed this with, “Just one stipulation on sale: I own Gene Wilder’s old house. It cannot be torn down or lose any its [sic] soul.” In a later interview, Musk elaborated that it’s a special, quirky house full of handmade adornments: “There’s doors to nowhere, and strange corridors and tunnels, and odd paintings on the wall.” He then explained his thought process further: with the house set to be demolished to make way for something more modern, “I was, like, I think I’ll buy it and preserve the spirit of Gene Wilder.” Cynical reporters might say he wanted to preserve his view from his own porch, but how could this not be read as entirely in line with everything demonstrated in Purple Reined? Crypto-K calls the cynic’s bluff on this one and confirms that Elon probably meant exactly that when he said he wanted to preserve the spirit of Gene Wilder. He just didn’t really say why or how. Musk’s description of the house recalls Being John Malkovich and the 7 1/2 floor which houses a tunnel into the mind of you-know-who. You know where we’re going with this. We know there are tunnels all over Los Angeles (and even under Ocean Blvd)—the film Under the Silver Lake hints at an entire underground economy existing in the bowels of Los Angeles County. So does Damien Chazelle’s Babylon. We know Elon has an interest in tunneling already (The Boring Company). Could Gene Wilder’s house contain some Malkovichian entrance we’re not being made privy to?
Well, it would be a good idea for a script anyway. And the real-life connection between Musk and Wilder here is an unbelievable example of Crypto-K substance presenting itself long after we established the dimension and structure of the synchronicity. And now we have a new data-point to add to our matrix. So let’s focus for a moment on the when instead of the why and see where it takes us.
Elon made this announcement on 5/1/2020. When you cross-reference this date with those that came before, another arrangement of facts does appear. Since it’s Musk, first we try his birthday (the Willy Wonka premiere), and when that doesn’t work, we try his 19th birthday—and that works:
Elon’s announcement of the liquidation of his Possessions (except Gene Wilder’s house) came 10900 days after the day he turned 19 (and Robbie Middleton was born, and Rob Graves died), and it also came 19 weeks before 9/11/2020, which was the 19th anniversary of 9/11. Fancy that.
The question of ‘what the fudge is happening here’ remains a valid one.
Note the first and last dates encode a 19th anniversary—except the middle one doesn’t yet. So what was 5/1/2020 the 19th anniversary of? Well it happens that 5/1/2020 was 19 years to the day after anyone ever saw Chandra Levy alive. Levy was a Federal prison intern whose Washington DC-area murder on or after 5/1/2001 remains unsolved—and as the algebra of these dates implies, her disappearance and murder occurred exactly 19 weeks before 9/11/2001.
That’s not all though. We have a birthday for Chandra Levy—4/14/1977. We know and respect 4/14 for the reason that it was on 4/14/1958 that Stanley Kubrick married his lifelong bride, the German actress Christiane Harlan. If you do the math, you’ll find the strange fact: yes, Chandra Levy, who died 19 weeks before 9/11/2001, was born on Kubrick’s 19th wedding anniversary.
That means Chandra Levy turned 19 the day the Kubrick marriage turned 19 again, which was 4/14/1996. Remarkably for the 1977-born Chandra, there were 1977 days from her 19th birthday to 9/11/2001, which she missed by 19 weeks.
The mid-point of that—half a day off 23700 hours either way—saw another murder of another woman, this time death-by-cops—Tyisha Miller on 12/28/1998. In the early morning of 12/28 (the mid-point of Levy’s 19th birthday and 9/11/2001), Miller was found passed out in her car with a gun in her hand. Emergency services were called, but some cops showed up beforehand, and hearing there was a gun in the car, the four of them approaching the car drew their weapons. Of course, as soon as the OD’d Tyisha Miller twitched, the cops starting pulling their triggers and only missed a few times.
Do you want to take a guess at exactly how old Tyisha Miller was when four Riverside policemen unloaded 23 shots in the direction of her mostly comatose body? Go on, take a guess. As the Wikipedia entry notes, she was born on 3/9/1979 and her death occurred in the early hours of 12/28/1998. Yes, she was 19 years old—but specifically how old was she?
The baseline measurement of Miller’s lifespan comes back as 19 years, 9 months, 19 days. That’s very Nineteen-presenting, but actually, we know from experience that 19 years, 9 months happens to be 237 months exactly. So… Tyisha Miller was killed 19 days after she completed 237 months of life. Yes, she was 237 months and 19 days old when she died on the mid-point between Chandra Levy’s 19th birthday and 9/11/2001!
Another way of reading it is that Miller was killed 42 weeks after turning 19. The fact that “19 years, 42 weeks” = “237 months, 19 days” is an actually remarkable little bit of calendar mathemagic revealed only with an awareness of the elements of Crypto-K—because 2 x 3 x 7 = 42 (an arithmetic relationship spotlighted by Kubrick in The Shining), the “42 weeks” and “237 months” are quasi-interchangeable—proved by how conversion from one to the other spits out a different perfect interval of 19 alongside them (19 years become 19 days).
Tyisha Miller was shot at 23 times by 4 cops (right) exactly 153 + 153 days after The Big Lebowski (left) premiered. When you consider that a Gun looks a lot like a 7 (and anyway, G = 7), you can see the the crypto-237 on display by the clever Coen Bros, as well as the significance of Miller having been shot 23 times—by four Guns—at age 237 months, 19 days (OR 19 years, 42 weeks)! In that frame of Lebowski the Gun is held by Walter Sobchak—another W or 23—and pointed at Smokey, whose name implies the Bear—though his hair reminds us of BOB from Twin Peaks, whose obsession with fire would produce the necessary smoke.
The last name Miller recalls Mac Miller, covered in part 3. Aside from the name and young death there is no connection, but even more remarkable then that Mac Miller actually died in the 237th month after Tyisha Miller was killed—specifically he died on the 11th day of the 237th month after Tyisha. She overshot 237 months by 19 days, but Mac Miller undershot dying 237 months after she was killed by 21 days. This minutia ultimately works out to meaning this: Mac Miller died 24 hours shy of exactly 237 + 237 months after Tyisha Miller was born. Mac Miller was born fully 42 days after Tyisha Miller finished out 153 months, and he later died just 24 hours shy of the day Tyisha would have been 237 + 237 months old. What are the chances?
It’s a common refrain around these parts, but what are we to make of this? It can’t just be me. It would seem that this raises the slight possibility that the forces at work behind the death of Mac Miller in 2018 are the same forces at work behind the death of Tyisha Miller in 1998. Note that we are not necessarily suggesting a causal relationship between these two incidents. We are positing an acausal relationship. Synchronistic substance builds—it accretes like static electricity and then discharges at relatively regular intervals in the form of incidents of death, aka sacrifice—the ultimate synchronicity (next to birth). Or perhaps it’s something along the lines of: this is a mechanism of how BOB operates—”the evil that men do.” At the precise mid-point between the birth of Tyisha Miller and the death of Mac Miller—12/7/1998—a serial killer (like BOB) named Daniel Lee Corwin was executed in Texas via lethal injection. It sounds like he deserved it, too. Redrum, redrum! Let’s hope that reality isn’t secretly like Twin Peaks, or the 1998 Denzel Washington movie Fallen—which would mean whatever nasty spirit piloting Daniel Lee Corwin for his run of murders didn’t die when Corwin did, but simply left on schedule, hitching a ride on the next available vessel. “Time- is on my side. Yes it is.”
How did we get here? We got here by noting how the day Elon Musk decided he would sell everything he owned (except for Gene Wilder’s house) was 19 years after Chandra Levy disappeared—Levy having been born on the Kubricks’ 19th wedding anniversary and having died 19 weeks before 9/11/2001. Musk’s announcement also came 10900 days after his own 19th birthday—this all means that Musk (and Willy Wonka) were 10900 days old the day Chandra Levy disappeared, 19 weeks before 9/11/2001. From Musk/Wonka’s 19th birthday to the day Chandra Levy disappeared comes to 3960 days, which don’t-you-know-it, happens to be exactly 660 x 6 days. What in the sam hell, you know?
Recall the discussion in part 3 about 19 and how it surfaces in movies like Eyes Wide Shut and Doctor Sleep. Victims of sacrifice, though nothing about it in the papers make that clear. We are free to make the connections between those fictional deaths and these real-life deaths. Look, I didn’t sit down here and decide to write about Chandra Levy and Tyisha Miller, ok? This is just what happens when you pull certain strings. Sometimes I wonder whether these strings ought to even be pulled at all. But what else am I going to do?
There’s another piece of magic that can be performed with Elon Musk’s 19th birthday. Oh boy, aren’t you excited?
If you recall part 3, we discussed how Robbie Middleton was born on Musk/Wonka’s 19th birthday, was burned on his 8th and M/W’s 27th birthday, and then died on 4/29/2011, the day of the Royal Wedding of Kate Middleton to Prince William. Specifically we noted that Robbie Middleton died 19 days before he would have turned 1090 weeks old—this means that 19 days after the Royal Wedding—5/18/2011—was 1090 weeks after M/W turned 19.
Now, we already know that every year, Elon’s birthday arrives 19 days after Johnny Depp’s birthday, so from that we can infer that the Royal Wedding (and death of Robbie Middleton) arrived 1090 weeks after 6/9/1990, Johnny Depp’s 27th birthday. Robbie Middleton was burned on Willy Wonka and Elon Musk’s 27th birthday—now we learn that Johnny Depp’s 27th birthday arrived 1090 weeks before Robbie Middleton died (and 19 days before he was born).
Is there any good reason you can think of for why any of this should be so?
But we’re all about the parent-thesis here. There are 1090 weeks from Depp’s 27th to the Royal Wedding, so what came 1090 weeks before Depp’s 27th? Likewise what came 1090 weeks before Elon turned 19 and Robbie Middleton was born? It would have to be two days which are 19 days apart, 1090 weeks before June 9-28, 1990.
If you rewind 1090 weeks, inclusive of end date, from Elon’s 19th birthday you find yourself on 8/8/1969. History buffs will tell you that it was that night that Tex Watson and the girls pulled up Cielo Drive with the intent to kill (the killing was done after Midnight, on 8/9—not unlike how Tyisha Miller was killed just after Midnight). But earlier in the day and across the Atlantic, The Beatles’ famous photoshoot for Abbey Road took place. Now, do you know what happened 19 days before all that?
If you rewind 19 days from there, or 1090 weeks, inclusive of end date, from Johnny Depp’s 27th birthday you find yourself on 7/20/1969. History buffs will tell you of course that this was the day that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the Moon (supposedly). So The Beatles crossed Abbey Road and Watson and the girls pulled up to the Polanski-Tate residence 19 days after the Moon Landing—both historically-notable days on a 1090 week harmonic with Musk’s 19th birthday and the Middleton Wedding. Here’s what it looks like all drawn out:
It seems like something, doesn’t it?
The day in the upper-right corner will be our final destination when it comes to Elon’s 19th birthday. Two items worth noting there on the 19th day after the Royal Marriage, both are media-adjacent. An episode of South Park (s15e4) aired called “TMI,” wherein the town children become obsessed with the size of their penises. ‘TMI’ = 42, standard. This was one episode/week after “Royal Pudding,” the episode spoofing on the Royal Wedding that had just occurred. Perhaps it’s a coincidence that the Royal Wedding episode was season 15, episode 3 (for the alchemical 153). But stranger still might be Parker & Stone’s choice in that episode to have their version of the Princess (who is Canadian) abruptly abducted by a magical cube that turns out to be controlled by… tooth decay? Well we all know how sus dentistry can be—there’s a message there. Watching it back now makes for a hell of a synchronicity considering what’s going on with Kate Middleton today (she exists now only on paper, like Jack at the end of The Shining—all trapped in boxes). But that was the week before—this week “TMI” seems to be the duo wondering how far they can go—can they show a bunch of naked children’s penises on South Park? Yes, they can, apparently. Was there some message in producing this episode right after “Royal Pudding?” Possibly.
The other item on this day was the Cannes Film Festival premiere of Lars von Trier’s Melancholia. Technically speaking, this feels entirely appropriate—the M continues to repeat—and the standard gematria value for the richly-historied word melancholia happens to be 93, the same as Saturn and Euphoria (see part 3). Funny: Melancholia and Euphoria, almost opposite concepts, both equal to Saturn. For his part, Lars von Trier = 153 (reverse)—just like Angus Cloud! So Melancholia premiered to cinematic royalty 19 days after the Royal Wedding: now look at the poster for the film. It’s about a Wedding! But no more on that score, maybe you ought to watch it and see for yourself how it’s related? (He says to himself.)
So ends the calendar-based portion of our post here—the addendums to Purple Reined and the 19th-birthday shenanigans. Your reward for getting through it all? We get to watch a movie. A deep-dive into Wonka in other words. Aren’t you delighted?
At some point in this series I wondered if Wonka would turn out to be the “candy-is-dandy, sackless daydream” it seemed to be from the trailers. As it turns out, that was an almost perfect description, but I admit that it worked its syrupy magic on me nonetheless. I was actually anxious in my seat, worried the movie would be a total turkey, bereft of any occult significance whatsoever—my whole enterprise thus dashed—but as the lights went down and the movie began with Willy gliding into frame hanging off an illuminated Cross and an airy, major key melody—I felt a warm presence come over me (and not just the THC)—somehow I knew I was in for a good time: “After Seven years of life upon the ocean / It is time to bid the Seven seas farewell / And the city I've pinned Seven years of hopes on / Lies just over the horizon, I can hear the harbor bell…” This invocation of 777 in the opening lines is the first clue to a secret subtext wound throughout the film.
One fact I managed to avoid hearing until seeing the movie was who actually made it. I had heard great things about Paddington 2 (yes, about the bear) and its director Paul King, but never did I realize he started as the director of the 2000s UK comedy series The Mighty Boosh—which was basically my generation’s Monty Python. Each episode of The Mighty Boosh was centered around various musical performances, which ran the gamut of genres from “bard rock” to electro-funk. The songs in Boosh are infectious and fun and funny as hell. So the prospect of a Wonka musical by these guys immediately seemed promising. The songs in Wonka are fun and occasionally infectious, but the production (and character) lacks even a bit of edge. Chalamet can’t quite live up to all he’s asked to do here, but what’s he’s asked to do is actually nuts for a modern movie star if you stop and think about it. Still he’s no Fred Astaire. Nevertheless there’s a homegrown, earthy quality to the production and the musical numbers oweing to their Booshian origins. Like Paddington, the whole thing is actually quite charming, if in 2024 you are still able to be charmed. Yes, it would be a good one to watch with (young) kids—but maybe not, after you read my breakdown here…
Anyway, I was correct when I wrote that Wonka would be a pre-ordained success, but that turned out to be an underestimate. With the one-two punch of Wonka followed by Dune, Chalamet broke a long-standing Hollywood box office record set by John Travolta in the 1970s and thus has been elevated into the pantheon of Movie Stars. I wrote in part 4 that with this film we were looking at some kind of ritual coronation of Chalamet—the box office receipts can now serve as the excuse for the media enshrinement of him, as they are meant to, reflecting his new role in the Hollywood hierarchy.
That’s what it seems like, anyway. I also wrote that without thinking about Dune and how it would overtly cast Chalamet as the new Emperor-King—Dune released everywhere on 3/1/2024, exactly 77 days after Wonka. They really weren’t hiding it, were they?
Crypto-K takes the same approach to cinema as it does towards history, that is, with an eye toward the timeline—the idea that when something happens is just as important as what happens. We can approach the film’s timeline with the same array of magical integers as we do the history books and find that the same tropes that appear across the span of histories also appear in microform across the span of a motion picture.
So, when does Wonka start? After 4 separate production company logos, Wonka properly begins with shot 1 at exactly 51 seconds into the film’s runtime. It’s a significant timestamp and begins a theme we will see continuously in this breakdown: 51 is one-third of 153. So given 24 fps, this means Wonka begins at 1224 or 153 x 8 frames into the reel. It’s the first of many appearances of 153 in Wonka’s timecode.
At 77 seconds, Timothée Chalamet’s credit appears, and 7 seconds later he begins singing the first lines: “After 7 years of life upon the ocean…” After the wistful first verse, shot 1 ends with the title card, and it’s off to the races. In shot 3, Wonka slides down a rope frozen over with ice—his very movements breaking through the “aetheric ice” built up in the world, a world he can’t help but fundamentally alter with his presence. Another 153 lands when there’s a cut to shot 4 at exactly 1:50:03 (1 minute, 50 seconds, 3 frames) of Wonka’s foot hitting a checkerboard floor. Ie, the first thing his “leaky boots” touch after he comes down from his perch on the Cross is a checkerboard floor pattern (even though he’s on an old rusty boat).
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The number moves on as Willy makes his disgustingly merry way off the boat, hitching a ride to the city as the first chorus lands: “I’ve got 12 silver sovereigns in my pocket / and a hatful of dreams.” Take your pick for the significance of Wonka’s arriving with 12 silver sovereigns (which he spends or loses immediately). But consider that there are 12 months in a calendar year—and the “silver sovereign” resonates with the Moon. Wonka has arrived with the 12 months of the Roman calendar—and don’t forget that 12 = 2 + 3 + 7. Speaking of which, shot 21 (halfway-to-42) has Willy arriving in the city on top of a truck: at precisely 2:37:00 he jumps off the truck and floaty-spins around the post like Gene Kelly (more Mary Poppins). He acquires a Map of the City and we are treated to the next little bit of editorial flourish when shot 27 lands at 3:02:07 (mixed-up 237)—8 frames after a close up of Willy’s smashed pumpkin in shot 26. In shot 27 the shopkeeper says “that’s 3 sovereigns”—then shot 28 hits at 3:03:03 on the timecode.
After settling his tab, shaking off the shoeshine boy who looks weirdly like Roman Polanski, having lost 6 sovereigns with 6 more in his pocket, Willy arrives along with the song’s bridge at the Galeries Gourmet—GG, another 77. The chords change at the same moment Willy steps into the Galeries: at 3:27:00 (mixed-up 237)—this is also the moment that the EDITED BY credit appears for Mark Everson, which must surely have been an intentional choice on his part—hopefully he sees this searching his name one day to tell me how insanely wrong I am.
“At last the Galeries Gourmet / I knew that we’d see it one day / It’s everything you said Mama / And oh so much more! / Each way that you look another famous chocolate store"
Willy walks around admiring the place he’d always dreamed of seeing with his Mother. In shot 41, a bold tilt up at the grand glass ceiling, and while he sings the bolded line above, and another credit appears: PRODUCTION DESIGNER Nathan Crowley. Here we have not just a guy but an actual living descendant of Aleister Crowley (born in ‘66, naturally) working on this film in a crucial capacity. If you have seen any big name arty blockbusters in the last 20 years—The Prestige, Interstellar, Westworld—you’ve probably been exposed to this man’s work without even realizing it. Nathan Crowley served as PD on Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises—a film which for some reason put a spotlight on Sandy Hook, CT a couple of years in advance of the shooting there. So to find Crowley’s hands on Wonka (a dainty, if British, musical) was a little surprising, but not really, of course, knowing what we know about the power of this particular archetype. Significantly, Crowley’s credit appears in shot 41, which points upwards at the ceiling—shot 42 then appears from the opposite vantage, looking down on Willy and the floor, on which there is a prominent Compass.
Shot 41 (left) begins at 3:37:20. Crowley’s credit appears as Chalamet sings “and oh so much more”—as it happens, the phrase “Oh So Much More” = 153, standard. ‘And’ = 19, so the entire phrase would be equal to 153 + 19. These two shots are clearly paired together for good reason: as an embodiment of the principle As Above, So Below, they are crying out to be superimposed.
I can’t help but look at this as a spiderweb now—Wonka and the people around him are caught in it. One follower (not descendant) of Aleister Crowley, Kenneth Grant, wrote a series of Nine books about the magical record of his Lodge. The Ninth and final book was called The Ninth Arch, and it consists mainly of commentary on what’s called Book 29, or The Book of the Spider. On page 6 Grant writes on the symbolism of the “spider’s web”—"it typifies the network of tunnels which provide access to other, ‘outer’ dimensions. What appear to be mere interstices between the meshes of the Web are known to be fathomless dream-spanning gulfs of cosmic immensity. A crazy geometry produced by the crisscross filaments of the Web characterizes these conduits as they plummet to dizzying deeps.” Who is the Spider? Who is the Wizard? Who is the Weaver who Weaves? Nathan Crowley’s next project after Wonka is the upcoming 2-part film adaptation of Wicked—originally a Broadway play based on The Wizard of Oz. The perfect assignment it would seem.
The musical number climaxes here in front of the site of his future chocolate shop, as this interplay of as above/so below continues. “Here’s my destiny I just need to unlock it / Will I crash and burn or go up like a rocket? / I’ve got nothing to offer but my chocolate.” On the word “crash” we get another shot from overhead of Willy launching chocolate candies out of his hat with the alchemical Compass for a launchpad. Notably the perspective has flipped 180° from how we first saw the compass in shot 42—possibly a reference to the way Wonka “flips the script” and sets about remaking the city.
The ‘launch’ occurs at 3:51:00 (reverse-153). This chocolate launch and reference to rocketry lightly evoke Jack Parsons (from part 1), who “went up like a rocket” on the mid-point between the birth of Gene Wilder and the premiere of Willy Wonka on the day Elon Musk was born. The next time we get this perspective is at 4:02:00 where the compass is overwhelmed by the W but seen from the original orientation.
An interlude of the real world interrupts Wonka’s fantasy until shot 55 at exactly 4:10:10 when we return to the fantasy, and the doors of his chocolate shop open to an interior of “pure imagination”—an image which strongly recalls the end of Polanski’s The Ninth Gate (which supposedly has nought to do with Grant’s The Ninth Arch):
Willy’s grand daydream is finally ended by 3 taps on his shoulder from one of the City Policemen, who points out to him the sign that says “No Daydreaming,” which carries a fine of 3 sovereigns. All traces of the upbeat song from before are ended at exactly 4:20:00 along with Willy’s daydream, which now turns to night. Down to his last two sovereigns, he gives one away to a mother-in-need, and the other he loses when it falls through a hole in his pocket in shot 63, exactly 153 + 153 seconds into the film’s runtime (153 seconds earlier: Hugh Grant’s credit). The opening credits wind down with Willy settling onto a bench for the night and the Directed by Paul King credit in shot 66. One wonders if Mr. Everson did that on purpose? We must point out how perfect it is that Wonka was directed by a King.
On closer examination, to say that all of this feels occult would be a dramatic understatement. My mind shifts back to Nathan Crowley, who as production designer was in charge of the art department, and thus responsible for the more detailed work on these sets—this as above/so below set design of the Galeries Gourmet would be his doing (his name appears alongside it, for cripes sake). Now let’s just say that a line like “I’ve got nothing to offer but my chocolate” might read a little bit differently when armed with a knowledge of the ‘magical record’ of Nathan’s relative Aleister Crowley, a record which includes among other things rampant sodomy and coprophilia in a ritual context. Of course, Aleister ain’t the only one with such a record—it’s just the kind of thing these weird rich-people cults do in their spare time nowadays. Now that we’ve opened that can of worms, though, let’s take another look at that chocolate-launch at 3:51:00.
Here is Willy shooting chocolate into the air at 3:51:00 while standing atop an 8 pointed star. You are aware of the meaning of Chocolate Star, yes? I don’t have to spell it out for you? OK, good. “Will I crash and burn or Go Up like a Rocket?” You’ve seen Death to Smoochy, haven’t you? Sometimes Wonka feels like watching Smoochy’s actual show, without the ironic distance of the framing narrative. Just pure, uncut Smoochy, or maybe even Rainbow Randolph—the Robin Williams character who now seems like a direct parody of Willy Wonka. Anyway, the North-pointing arrow there looks awfully “like a rocket-ship” if you know what I mean. Yes, in fact, thanks to Nathan Crowley (we presume) during this opening musical number “A Hatful of Dreams” we see Timothée Chalamet dancing atop a symbolic male asshole while singing “I’ve got nothing to offer but my chocolate”—the unspoken refrain of many a young talentless twink in Hollywood. Look at this superimposition of shots one more time.
The offer of his Rising Rocket and Chocolate Star then leads directly to the illuminated Door of Pure Imagination! Sounds like Thelema alright! We may also want to re-interpret that “devil’s tail” from shot 3 as well…
Anyway, you get the idea. Is it all simply about what Quentin Tarantino eloquently and sensitively referred to in the 1990s as “going the gay way?” On one level, yeah, pretty obviously—welcome to Hollywood. But there’s always more than one way to interpret a story...
During the 27 seconds from 15:03 to 15:30 there’s another rising agent when the 3 heads of the Chocolate Cartel begin to fly due to Willy’s hover-chocs. This must be why all the 3 action in the beginning: the wheels of inflationary capitalism that whittle Willy’s 12 sovereigns down to 0 are expressions of the principle of 3 embodied by the Cartel—two caucasians (one Hitlercoded) led by the effete black british Slugworth. As the song goes, “you’ve never had chocolate like this”—”Wonka’s chocolate” offers a Fourth Way to the entrenched Triad, who control the economy via a massive reservoir of stolen chocolate contained beneath St Benedict’s Cathedral (a nifty play on Vatican City-style bearer-bonds conspiracies). In this interpretation, “Wonka’s chocolate” could stand for something else entirely—something monetary, something technological, something akin to gold—a life-giving commodity of sorts. Willy Wonka is Elon Musk after all, so, maybe it’s Dogecoin?
Then there’s the matter of the Orange Man with Green Hair, aka, Lofty the Oompa-Loompa, played by Hugh Grant. Here we can go ahead and spoil the rest of the movie—it’s fairly predictable anyway. Wonka and his orphan buddy Noodle are captured by the Chocolate Cartel and left to drown in the chocolate lake, but at the last minute, the Oompa-Loompa returns to save the day by draining the chocolate reservoir. Do we have to point out to these UK filmmakers how much this “Orange Man draining the reservoir” appears to track with Donald Trump’s long-held promise to “drain the swamp” of Washington DC? Given how we know that Trump himself aligns with the 777 ‘current’ (his age on Inauguration Day for example), the choice to begin the film with Wonka invoking 777… and end with the Orange Man draining the reservoir (to save Wonka and defeat the cartel)… well, did they know what they were doing, or not?
There’s one more detail worth exploring before we go straight to the ending. After successfully selling his chocolates Willy raises enough money to open his store, and has a wildly successful opening day, which comprises the performance of the song “A World of Your Own.” The song and the store centers around a massive candy tree in the center of the store—a Candy Tree of Life from which Wonka plucks Candy Fruit to distribute among his customers while singing: “wherever you go, wherever life takes you / this is your home / a world of your own.” In this song Wonka fully embodies his role as a Luciferian light-bringing new-ager. Wonka’s jam seems to be all about making this life better instead of how the Triad has us focused on a theoretical afterlife taken from Some Book written Long Ago. In fact an entire plot point centers on how Willy Wonka can’t read, but is taught to by the end. It might be the film’s covert argument that Wonka’s acquiring literacy was the beginning of his downfall from man of the people to the feared hermit we meet in 1971: a harbinger of his descendant Wilford.
“A World of Your Own” concludes with a long tracking shot up the Candy Tree of Life, and a salient detail appears at 1:11:23:07:
Inside the Candy Tree of Life seems to be living a little Candy Owl, which turns its head and all but winks at us just as this most luciferian song fades away. “All the colors of the rainbow / And some others, too.” It feels like another Crowley touch, reminiscent of how there’s a little owl hidden on the US dollar bill. The owl is a classic mystery symbol and can be a harbinger of synchronicity and more (as Mike Clelland wrote about). We also know about the Owl worship that goes on at Bohemian Grove. These touches may be evidence of the filmmakers just throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks, or it could be something deeper than that. Who knows?
Speaking of the Grove, they might know something about owls but they also know about chocolate stars (just ask Nixon). And that’s what we get again with Willy at the end of Wonka, who upon exiting the chocolate reservoir recalls Andy Dufresne at the end of The Shawshank Redemption who “crawled through a river of [chocolate] and came out clean on the other side.” If you think that we’re the only weirdos thinking along these lines, think again, as proved by this Sopranos meme regarding Dune (see left). It would appear that both of Chalamet’s huge successes launching him into chocolate stardom seem to be plagued by a certain symbolism…
Anyway, after the Orange Man helps Willy and Noodle escape, they turn the legal tide on the Cartel by exposing their stolen horde of chocolate and redistributing it. Willy has executed a flawless coup d’etat, and reunited Noodle with her long lost mother. The final sequence has Willy taking over and renovating (with his mind) a “ruined castle” (come on) into his fateful 1970s chocolate-factory while singing “Pure Imagination.” The camera then flies outside for a wide angle of Willy’s new 4-smoke-stacked Chocolate Factory, and the ending title.
I can’t help but connect these 4 candy-smoke stacks with the 4 corners of the Wonka-Matrix explored in parts 2 and 3 of this series—but probably the FOUR candy-smoke stacks are also meant to prove that Wonka (as prophet of techno-utopian new age luciferian transhumanism) has risen above the THREE members of the earlier chocolate cartel (judeo-christian rationalist bureaucratic quagmire)—unless I’m fudging wrong.
Fade to black.
We are treated to one final “whistle” of Lofty’s flute, and then the credits hit… at exactly 1:50:30 on the timecode, one final brushstroke from Mr. Everson. This means shot-for-shot the film begins at 153 x 8 frames and ends at 153 x 1040 frames. It’s never really expected that these films will line up so perfectly with the guidelines laid out years ago by Crypto-K, and yet repeatedly they prove those non-expectations wrong. Perhaps this really is buried knowledge of some theoretical Secret Society of Film Editors—like something out of a Coen Brothers joint—but that’s only one of a number of possible explanations to the mystery of synchronicity that surrounds us (and our media).
OK, folks. Have we left anything out? There are always more details to sus out and syncs to report, but this has gone on long enough. Thanks for sticking with this until the end.
See you on the next one, which will be about something other than Willy Wonka.
It's interesting that you link Chalamet to the 777 and mention his extremely high profile. Right now Twitter is awash with photos of him playing Bob Dylan. Chapter 41 of Dylan's 'The Philosophy of Modern Song' is about the Song Key To The Highway by Little Walter. It begins
"IT’S IRONIC, A LOT OF DIGNITARIES GIVE YOU the key to the
city. That indicates that everything in the city is open to you for inspection at any time. I have
gotten lots of keys to different cities but I’ve never really tried to inspect anything yet. Seven
keys from seven houses in seven towns are supposed to cure impotence."
This is a clue that there is a Kabbalistic pattern to the book based on Crowley's Liber 777. Crowley links impotence to the 9th Sephirot Yesod. Dylan's book has 66 chapters and we are given the Key on 32+9. Chapter 9 is My Generation about being old and decrepit. It's easy to pick up the Kabbalah references with a little knowledge eg Ch.11 is Poor Little Fool relating to number 11 on the Tree Of Life Aleph/The Fool. " He also uses Tarot card numbering: the Hanged Man is 12 in Tarot and 23 in Kabbalah and both of those chapters feature songs with with characters who commit suicide.
Chapter 32 on Volare is my favourite. In Kabbalah it relates to the Universe and the idea of a Cosmic Consciousness. Dylan writes:
"You’re on the rim of the universe in the bright lights of the great millennium, nowhere to go but up.
You’re fairly certain you have become some kind of biological mutation, you are no longer a
mere mortal. You could tear your own body to pieces and throw the bits everywhere. Bending
the throttle, climbing high and out of control where everything becomes a nebulous blur,
nothing up here but your imagination. You’re fluttering and floating, nothing you can’t
discover, even the hidden things, the deeper you go, the more you can grasp. You try to talk to
yourself, but after the first few words the conversation is over. You’re blazing like a comet,
hightailing it to the stars. Maybe you’re crazy but you’re no imbecile."
The second half of the book has two decoy chapters which I haven't identified yet which slightly throw off the numbering system but it's still easy to see how the sequences relate eg Ch. 27 is CIA Man and relates to The Tower in Kabbalah which ties in with Pynchon's The Crying Of Lot 49 and the chapter mentions Esperanto. The second appearance of The Tower is ch.61 (rather than 59) Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood which also mentions Esperanto and the Tower Of Babel. Both chapters are 5 steps before the end of the 32 step sequence.
I have no idea if you like Bob Dylan but the album Rough And Rowdy Ways and the book The Philosophy of Modern Song are both rammed full of esoteric references so it'll be interesting to see what happens when he links up with young Timothy.
Brilliant! I need to go over this with a fine-tooth comb, lots to absorb!