Suicide Switch: An In-Depth Study Of Brian De Palma's 'Phantom of the Paradise'

by Mark LeClair (the Wrong Way Wizard) - a Sync Rewind

Alex Fulton

Sep 25, 2025

Today a video connecting the 1998 film Snake Eyes to the Kirk assassination went viral. Immediately on seeing it my mind went to this essay, because Snake Eyes was also directed by Brian De Palma. According to Mark, there are artists and then there are Artists—or maybe there are Artists and then there are Programmers—and De Palma falls into the latter camp. This might go some of the ways towards explaining why aspects of his film from 30 years ago are showing up in the details of a present-day psychological operation. This stuff (predictive programming) is just what happens when the whole of creation is repeatedly, expertly condensed into a simulacrum of itself, a faint but still highly-potent echo or repetition of the original creative (ie, destructive) act.

Brian De Palma was born on September 11, 1940. Charlie Kirk was killed on September 10, 2025. A few days ago I tweeted that one of Kirk’s political nemeses Nick Fuentes was exactly 237,237 hours old on the day of Kirk’s murder, having been born on August 18, 1998, the day Roman Polanski turned 65, or 23742 days old. This turns out to have been only and exactly 19 days after the premiere of Snake Eyes on July 30, 1998, and 11 days after its country-wide release. This adds up to the fact that Kirk’s murder and the following 9/11 ended 237,732 hours after the premiere of Snake Eyes, a film shown to contain programming predictive (or synchronistically foretelling) of the Kirk assassination. On September 11, 2001, Brian De Palma turned 61, or exactly 732 months old (and 61 is 19 flipped around).

Though this essay concerns an entirely different film, I invite you to consider the parallels between Mark’s analysis of it and the death-ritual of Charlie Kirk, particularly the attention paid to violence to the neck as a trope (or piece of code). In this respect I also invite you to consider the fact that Mark originally posted this essay on October 14, 2012, which was, amazingly enough, **Charlie Kirk’s 19th birthday. * Remember that 19 years constitutes a Metonic cycle, or the amount of time it takes for the Sun and Moon together to make a complete cycle through the sky—if that’s what they are doing at all!!

Also, you might want to watch the movie before you read—this is a shot-for-shot breakdown, he spoils everything that happens—but it’s not entirely necessary, as he also provided screenshots of everything he analyzes, which were miraculously all saved by the wayback machine. There are a LOT of pictures.

Now here we go.

Originally posted Sunday, October 14, 2012

Suicide Switch

There is a lot of debate over the question: what is Art? I have an absolute answer to that question. A work of Art must cause at least one suicide, or a serious suicide attempt, and if it fails to do so it is not Art. The type of suicide I am talking about is not metaphorical, but literal. Furthermore, it is not an anecdotal suicide, the type carried out for a personal reason—like suffering or the notion of romantic transfiguration. I refer to a sudden programmed act of suicide—one might say a Manchurian Suicide.

This article is the study of a work of Art, Brian De Palma’s 1974 masterwork called Phantom of the Paradise, with music and lyrics by Paul Williams—one of many works of drama that is a suicide switch. To be clear, I have no doubt that this work and many others have caused as an act of will by their creator the suicide of unsuspecting consumers. I will make this difficult case as carefully as I can. To begin, a small bit of explanation why a proper work of Art will inevitably trigger the suicide of a selected sub-set of its audience.

First we must define carefully the term of Art—Art as an act of design, by a human being—an act that successfully simulates or models the mystery of All Creation. Philosopher Jean Baudrillard declares reality to be a simulation of a simulation. He is almost right. Reality is the simultaneous existence of a variety of successful simulations of original creation. Furthermore these simulations are not, as described by Baudrillard, weaker, less potent versions of an original artifact. They are in fact distillations, greatly more potent than the original occurrence of creation.

To follow this reasoning, we need a quick outline of the Gnostic Creation Myth, which begins as Pure Undivided Consciousness. As an image, this consciousness can be perceived as Pure White Light flooding the eye and White Noise flooding the ear canal, which produces the simultaneous effect of blindness and vision, and the simultaneous effect of deafness and hearing. When the light waves of all colors are mixed, Pure White Light is produced, just as the mixture of all sound is White Noise. As such, this Undivided Consciousness is called The Perfect One. In the Gnostic Myth, this image is the combination of invisible forces called The Cosmic Christ and the Elder Sophia. The first of act of Material Creation is the moment when this Perfect One, as an act of inner will, divides itself first into Two—the Young Sophia and the Crucified Christ—and then further divides into the rainbow of colors and seven toned music that is the foundation of Material Reality. In a recent article called Moon in the Middle, I have outlined the nature of this mechanism in pretty fantastic detail.

Moon in the Middle appears in The Sync Book II (available now). I don’t make a penny off of this publication, and its noble publisher, Alan Green, along with his many helpers, don’t get much cash return on their investment. Check out The Sync Book and The Sync Book II. Read Sync in Print.

What must be understood is that this First Act of Will which separates The Perfect One into the Lovers called Sophia and Crucified Christ, has three distinct qualities. They are, Love, Murder and Suicide. The Act of Love is realized when the dual aspects of the Perfect One separate, to allow for each of these faces to gaze upon the other. The thing that is One can not see Itself, so it divides into Two. It is also a murder-suicide pact, as each aspect of the unseen duality realizes it will kill both the Other and Itself through the Act of Primordial Division. This act creates a wound which in turn produces the division of the sexes, the human sex organs, the tide of menstruation, and the death of the previously immortal Adam and Eve and the race to which they give birth—a bunch of soon to be dead people.

The recreation of this act by a human being is called Art or Artifice. It is the Great Work of the Satanic Alchemist who proposes by his work a mirror of creation—to regain his immortality, which has been broken into pieces by the Creation of Nature—Nature which brings Death. In this way it reverses the three qualities of the First Act of Will. Human Art is an act of hatred, suicide and murder. It gazes at creation in anger. It reverses the Murder-Suicide pact into a suicide-murder, a murder carried out by hypnotizing the victim, a certain class of hapless consumer of the Art, into a programmed act self-destruction against their will. This is an exact mirror of the act of Breathing Life into Dust, as it instead coaxes life out of that which appears to have free will or a mind of its own.

This mirror, this simulation, does not weaken the substance of reality, make things less real, as imagined by Baudrillard. Art is an imitation of Reality the way that whiskey is a simulation of wheat—it distills reality by increasing it into spirit. The potency of the First Act of Will, which separates the Perfect One into the Material Construct is weak because it is foretold—agreed upon by its dual constituents. It does not come as a surprise. It is not potent. The Black Act of Human Art does the opposite—by the force of will against nature. Art is strong. It surprises its victim with the threat of a sudden reunion to the spiritual. It is the attempt by human beings to scorn the original Act of Love, because as the broken pieces of that Love we are the victims of its pains, but not the recipients of its joys. Every man fails to live up to the Love of Christ on the Cross and every woman fails to live up to the Love of Magdalene for Her Christ and of Mary for Her Child. Our failure is raised as the Awful Cry of Art and Human Design and it is most potent in the form of Drama. Drama, for which great buildings are erected, great painting and image is produced, great music is composed and great performance is rehearsed. In its more modest aspect as a song, a dance or a picture; or as a Great Work of Drama with many elements combined on stage or on the screen, the completed Work of Art has such spiritual potency that it can drive a person into a suicidal attempt to rejoin the cosmos. This happens all the time—read some Goethe for starters, he lays it all out quite nicely. But this expresses only the sentimental respect of small “a” art. For the big “A” Artist, this reaction is a programmatic response. The real Artist is not so unless he also kills.

I think De Palma is just such an Artist—and I will try to prove it here. I hope you enjoy the discovery, but remember, this investigation isn’t Art—so don’t do anything drastic.

Suicide Switch: An In Depth Study Of Brian De Palma’s Phantom of the Paradise.

Intro: Narration

In the set of images which open the film, we see a dead bird (dead girl). It is the logo of Death Records, owned by an impresario, music producer and composer called Swan, one of the two heroes of Phantom of the Paradise (POTP). The term death records is a verb. Death records a life. When one dies, one’s life is a recorded event, that can be played back.

The colors of the rainbow appear in the order ROY-G-BIV. G for Green is separated to emphasize its position as the central principle of Creation. Keep this in mind as we continue. In the Gnostic creation allegory, the first principle, the principle that separates the Perfect One from Pure White Light into lesser colors is symbolized by the color red, the firsr color expression of the rainbow. Red is the first color and therefore the first principle, as it symbolizes Love and the Bloody Wound that the separation of the Lovers creates. In natural creation, further principles emerge in the same order as these seven colors, and create in combination Pure White Light. This idea will be expanded as we continue.

The bird logo of Death Records begins as red, then becomes purple, blue and green, before it becomes pure white. Thus it is a reversal of the first principle and the original manifestation order of the rainbow colors. This human act of Artifice which seeks to imitate All Creation must begin at the beginning, where all material things begin, with the color red, but immediately reverses itself by tracing backwards through the circular link of rainbow colors from red to purple, the blues and finally green. At this point, the bird goes white, because green is as far on the rainbow as the Satanic Art can go. This is symbolized by man’s effort to stand upon The Moon, which is made of symbolic Green Cheese. The Moon, in occult studies, has already been identified as the limit of human striving and even as a lock to keep human kind on the limits of Earth. This modulation from red, backward through the blues and into green is the exact symbol of man’s reach for The Moon, and because of the absence of the remaining colors that are necessary to create white light, it is also a clue that man has never stood upon the exterior surface of The Moon. Again, all of this philosophy will be clarified in detail by the text and image of POTP.

Added to this color analysis is the fact that the image of the logo rotates. It appears to be falling as it does so.

The narration for this scene, delivered by Rod Serling, contains a neat trick. It implies that Swan, who owns Death Records, will be the victim of a thief. This idea passes quite subtlety, as the actual identity of the thief is not given. It could be Swan who is the thief. We will learn right away that Swan is a thief, but, by way of his condition as a human under the yoke of death, he is also the victim of a theft. This duality is also discovered as the unfair weight of suffering of creation carried by the life of the human being. When the Perfect One separates to “love itself,” the side effects are nasty for the resulting creation. Swan’s theft, from a man who turns out to be a shambling Christ in disguise, is attempt to steal back from creation what it stole from him, his naturally immortal life.

The image (above) that follows the white Death Records logo is the first moment of action in the film. It introduces Swan’s current front-line act, The Juicy Fruits as they appear live on-stage at a club owned by Swan. Note the colors behind the lead singer, in stripes on the downstage wall. They are red, purple/blue, and green, the same colors of the Death Records dead-bird logo on its half-way backward journey through the colors of the rainbow. Swan has directed the design of the set upon which his players play--he is The Artist inside POTP. The human being attempting to build a paradise of his own design, even if he has to be a mean cheating bastard to do it. Yet, in spite of his fearsome talent, Swan is just a man, a short-timer. In the effort to build his paradise, he will lock horns with a shambling and dissipated God, and find out that the weakest of Gods remains a dangerous opponent.

The Songs I: Goodbye Eddie, Goodbye

Hear “Goodbye, Eddie Goodbye”

POTP is a musical. The lyrics of each song tell a good deal of the story. Here are the lyrics of Goodbye Eddie, Goodbye. Quoted in full, in bold italics for specific reference.

We’ll remember you forever Eddie
Through the sacrifice you made we can’t believe the price you paid
For love
Little Eddie Mitty born in Jersey City
Started singin’ when he was five
Never knew his father mother didn’t bother
To catch his last name fast as he came
He was off and flying
Times were really trying
Eddie and his mother alone
Soon another mister soon a baby sister
Mama kept swingin’ and Eddie kept singin’
Ah ya ya ya ya ya
Ya ya ya ya ya ya ya ya
Ya ya ya ya ya ya ya ya ya
Ya ya ya ya for love for love
And now the tragic story
Eddie’s sister, Mary Louise, needed an operation
To get the money he would have to become an overnight sensation
Eddie believed the American people
Had wonderful, lovegiving hearts
His well publicized end he considered would send
His memorial album to the top of the charts...and it did
Ah ya ya ya ya ya
Ya ya ya ya ya ya ya ya
Ya ya ya ya ya ya ya ya ya
Ya ya ya ya for love for love
When a young singer dies to our shock and surprise
In a plane crash or flashy sports car
He becomes quite well known
And the kindness he’s shown has made more than one post mortem star
Well you did it Eddie and though it’s hard to applaud suicide
You gave all you could give so your sister could live
All America’s choked up inside
We’ll remember you forever Eddie
Thru’ the sacrifice you made we can’t believe the price you paid
For love

Goodbye Eddie, Goodbye sounds like a song about a young pop-singer who commits suicide to achieve fame and make the money necessary to save his ailing sister. It is in fact a strong description, an artistic rendering of the first act of Primordial Creation, when the Perfect One divides into its masculine and feminine halves, as an act of love, or as the song repeats in its chorus “for love“—and in so doing creates the lower material world. Swan, as the producer of this song, identifies himself as a creator too. He tells carefully the story of creation to imitate the act itself--to establish himself as an indivisible and immortal One, because he can not live up to the measure of true creation, which is fearless sacrifice in the face of love. The fame that Swan most certainly achieves is no different than that of the great human artist of history, say Beethoven, Da Vinci, or Shakespeare—or even Paul McCartney. The Art created insures the immortality of its creator as an imitation of a divine love he can not enjoy.

It is also a model of The Lunar Matrix. The exterior of The Moon is the mirror in which the Sophia, the Supreme Lady, can see her image for the first time. The inside of The Moon is the Crucified Christ, who out of love is the nail upon which hangs the mirror and all subsequent manifestations of rainbow creation. That’s right, all of visible, audible and feel-able reality, the seven-colored seven-toned world in which we dwell, exist inside The Moon. The exterior universe is real, but also imaginary. Real because it exists, imaginary because it is perceived to be an exterior and unbound phenomena, when in fact it is merely the false projection of an unbound phenomena that is in fact bound in a chamber. This notion of The Moon as a Central Unifying Matrix, detailed extensively in my upcoming Sync Book II article Moon in the Middle, is not unique to my research--and it will turn out to be well known to De Palma.

The image of The Moon as a Rainbow Trap is seen in the stage-floor design of Swan’s nightclub (seen partially in the image below), which is a series of circles that imitates nicely the Moon Phases, and also imitates the image of the Supreme Triple Moon Goddess elucidated by Robert Graves in his academic work The White Goddess, and by Frazer in The Golden Bough. In Swan’s club, it is imagined as two small circles (the third smaller circle is completely covered by the back-up band) and a larger circle as the center stage--lines of rainbow flashes extend from the center of each circle.

The name of the hero of the song is called Eddie Mitty. This produces the pun admit e, or admit the fifth element. Eddie (Ed-E) is Adam, Da Vinci’s five-pointed Vitruvian Man, the first human man, which explains why he “never knew his father“, because he is separated from the Perfect One, in which He is His Own Father, the Creator of All Things. This character, as he descends, becomes the Crucified Christ. It is generally perceived that the Christian Cross has four points, like a compass, but it actually has five. The center point of the cross is the fifth wound of Christ, which pierces His Heart. We also discover that Eddie is from Jersey City, which provides his divine initials of J.C., and also his identity as a sacrifice, a Jersey Cow, a Side of Beef. More on this later.

When the lead singer for The Juicy Fruits flashes the number five as a rebus of his lyric, we can see a blue-green piece of gum in his mouth (click on image to enlarge). This gum appears only once, at the exact moment the five-finger symbol is flashed. Blue is the fifth color on the rainbow, and is a symbol of the first fully material consciousness in the form of a human being. In the Book of Revelation we are told that God forms the body of the fallen man by chewing him up and spitting him out in a single piece, as one spits out a piece of gum. The blood that nourishes the body of a fallen man of flesh is blue in the vein, and is also the Blood of Christ as it gushes from His Heart. Blue Blood is the Blood of the King. His baby sister is the Magdalene, the sacred whore. We also identify her as Isis after the death of her brother husband Osiris, as she searches for and eventually fashions for herself the severed penis of her murdered brother (q.v.).

We learn that Eddie’s sister is called Mary Louise, another Magdalene clue. The singer explains that she “...needed an operation.” The term operation, in the greater sense, is the first principle of creation, the operation that severs the Perfect One. This operation is also the recovery of the phallus of Osiris by Isis, and is also expressed in the Freudian theory called penis-envy, which is the desire of the woman to have a naturally and permanently affixed member of power of her own. The theory of penis envy was effectively squashed by the popular feminist and behaviorist movements, but that doesn’t make it wrong. Freud is completely correct and his theory is borne out by the ancient myths of creation that he studied and new so well. De Palma knows it too, and at the precise moment the lead singer of The Juicy Fruits says the lyric “...Mary Louise needed an operation,“ he grabs reflexively at his crotch.

The next lyric proclaims “...to get the money (for the operation) he (Eddie) would have to become an *overnight sensation*.” The *overnight sensation* is The Moon and its influence on the waters. These waters are first la mer (Eng: The Sea) and also Mars, the Marine, the Seaman, who is the fifth planet and therefore the color blue being chewed by The Juicy Fruit front-man. Mars is mythologized as red, but as the fifth principle it is linked directly to the fifth color of the rainbow: blue. Blue is also the traditional color of the human man in clothing and the favorite color of most men of youth. Men are from Mars. Eddie’s music, his work, is his blue collar tradition. The subsequent lyric “...to the top of the charts,” is also a symbol of The Moon as the top, the upper limit of human striving. The combination in POTP of music, work and the principle of Mars, the War God, will be discussed in just a bit.

Here we see the first of image of the suicide switch as the singer, acting as Eddie, simulates his suicide with a switch blade.

In the image that follows, we see the most common type of this suicide trigger as it appears in popular media. It is a choking symbol. The singer intones the word “shock“ as a thickly enunciated “chock“, which sounds like choke. At this moment, another member of the band chokes an audience member, seen in the lower left of the screen image. This motif is recapitulated in the lyric “all America’s *choked-up inside*.” In this case “choked-up“ means hanged, and “inside“ means inside The Moon, and is a symbol of Christ Crucified, hung-up, at the center of the The Moon’s inner limit. The term America is used as a rough anagram of in camera, which describes The Moon as both the negative chamber and projector of the images which create the illusory rainbow Matrix. The Juicy Fruits perform here at a cabaret. Cabaret is a term that means a chamber. The movie and play called Cabaret is based upon a memoir called I Am A Camera.

Why a hanging code? Well, hanging is one of the most readily available and effective methods of killing one’s self. Anyone who wants to can probably find a way to pull it off within a minute or two and it is much less daunting than a visceral cutting or handgun suicide—leaves less of a fuss afterward, too. The depth of this code is one of the main motifs of this article, there will be many other examples given in the fullness of our investigation, and some deeper hints to the philosophy of the code.

This choking of an audience member is the first clue that the film, Phantom of the Paradise, is itself reaching out to attack its audience—in particular young male viewers. This vicious trigger is used in a variety of films by Stanley Kubrick. In Eyes Wide Shut, Dr. Bill chokes a boy and asks “does this hurt?” In Full Metal Jacket, Sgt. Hartman demands that Pyle choke himself. Frank Poole is suffocated by HAL. Danny is choked in The Shining, maybe, as his father Jack suggests, by himself. Dr. Strangelove strangles himself. The list goes on. This same strangulation code is also discovered in a massive number of films, images, comic books and songs from across the international and historical spectrum. A good example from the popular record is the song The Green, Green Grass of Home. In a few moments, when discussing how to deal with the problem of Winslow, Philbin chokes himself. More on Philbin coming up.

The song ends with The Juicy Fruits, their back-up band and a downstage sound tech forming into three successively larger pyramids. The connection of a triple-pyramid to the Act of Creation is too well documented for further description at this time.

While The Juicy Fruits sing, we cut briefly to the exterior of Swan’s club. Winslow Leach, the other hero of POTP, is plastering his own name over top the playbill for The Juicy Fruits. The name Winslow Leach is a pun upon the leech who wins slowly. It is no accident that De Palma identifies Winslow as a leech, because Winslow turns out to be a God, albeit in a very rough disguise. This slow winner is also verified as the tortoise of the fable The Tortoise and the Hare, who simply plods along to victory behind the more innovative and gifted hare. The symbol of a tortoise is the hexagon of his shell. The term shell derives from the same root as shield. The Star of David, which is correctly called The Shield of David, also produces a hexagon at its center, and gives us our first clue to one of the main identities of Winslow Leach. He is King David, the Musician and Warrior. In POPT, Winslow, like King David, fulfills both of these roles, God of Music and God of War. Winslow’s hair is yellow, the symbolic color of The Sun, who is Apollo, The God of Music. His t-shirt is the blue color of the Shield of David, who is the warrior Mars. His eyes are Mooney green, the combination of yellow and blue. It is interesting to note that the special blue color of The Shield of David, called tekhelet and sacred to the Jews, is made from a dye that can be fabricated only by exposure to The Sun.

Winslow’s homemade playbill is striped like the colors of The Israeli Flag and also like a scarf-like vestment worn by orthodox male Jews. We get another clue, that Winslow is also the Eddie of which The Juicy Fruits sing, whom we have identified as The Crucified Christ. It is no secret that the mythical Christ of the New Testament is called the Seed of David, King of the Jews.

The tefillin wrap and the blue and white striped Hebrew vestment

The lead singer, still in his role as Eddie, imitates the Hebraic tradition of the yod tefillin, using his microphone cord. The image of this act of wrapping the arm as the act of a heroin user will also be clarified.

In the next section of our investigation, we learn more about Winslow’s identity, but for now, we meet Philbin, Swan’s concert promoter, and get our first glance at Swan himself.

Here, we see The Juicy Fruits and a few lucky fans as they gaze for approval toward an upper-deck at Swan’s club. Their gaze is reflected by a mirror that hides Swan from view. Please note the reflected array of the back-stage lighting scheme already identified as Swan’s colors of false creation, and the mirror ball and two other spheroids, one of them red, which symbolize the Triple Moon as the first principle of Primordial Creation that Swan wishes to stand above.

The hands of Swan also illustrate the yod of yod tefillin. Yod is the Hebrew word for hand as a symbol of The Hand of God who fashions creation. De Palma edifies that this legendary Hand of God is in fact the hand of a man. In the Gnostic myth the first principle is the feminine red, the cosmic menstrual blood from which the material realm is formed. The paternal concept of godhead is misappropriated from this source, as an act of Satanic defiance. As he applauds, Swan holds his hands to block out the subject of his creation, The Juicy Fruits, indicating his complete lordship over their performance. This is the hand of the paternal godhead, which is a man-made creation, to administer the construction of a man-made paradise. Swan obscures his viewpoint of creation because it does not satisfy him, another attitude he shares with the unsatisfied god of traditional Genesis.

To Swan’s left is Philbin, who is complaining about an act that he manages, a young singer, a girl named Annette, who has taken to the straight and narrow and abandoned the seedy world of Rock and Roll. The description Philbin gives, that she was “...more than just a piece to me, she was the light of my life...” is remarkably similar to that given by movie producer Jack Woltz in The Godfather, just before he wakes-up next to the severed head of his prize stallion. This proves an interesting connection as we continue and identify Philbin as Goliath, the planet Jupiter, whom King David will slay with a stone to the forehead.

The Songs II: Faust (Winslow)

Hear Faust (Winslow)

I was not myself last night couldn’t set things right with apologies or flowers
Out of place as a cryin’ clown who could only frown and the play went on for hours
And as I lived my role I swore I’d sell my soul for one love
Who would stand by me and give me back the gift of laughter
One love who would stand by me and after making love we’d...
Dream a bit of style
We’d dream a bunch of friends
Dream each others smile
And dream it never ends

I was not myself last night in the morning light I could see the change was showing
Like a child who was always poor reaching out for more I could feel the hunger growing
And as I lost control I swore I’d sell my soul for one love
Who would sing my song and fill this emptiness inside me
One love who would sing my song and lay beside me while we’d
Dream a bit of style
We’d dream a bunch of friends
Dream each others smile
And dream it never ends

All my dreams are lost and I can’t sleep
And sleep alone could ease my mind
All my tears have dried and I can’t weep
Old emotions may they rest in peace and dream, dream a bunch of friends
Rest in peace, and dream, dream it never ends

The song Faust is performed three times in POTP, first by its composer Winslow Leach and then by Swan’s band The Juicy Fruits and finally by Swan himself.

The highlighted text of the lyrics are a model of The Moon as the central unifying feature of the Matrix. Winslow, singing as Faust, declares that he “...was not (himself) last night.…” This indicates the memory of the first principle, the Perfect One, as it is recalled by its male sub-self as He looks back at his previously Perfect Union with his female counterpart. It is this separation that creates the human longing for romantic love, and all of the love songs that come with it.

Faust explains first that he can not “...set things right...” which laments his inability to restore the Perfect One. Next, he states that”...in the morning light, (he can) see the change was showing...” This sentiment does not celebrate the appearance of the Sun as a positive change, but instead isolates the conundrum of Faust as the fallen man, descended from the cool heavenly realm and into the heated world of solar consciousness. It signifies the moment when a child becomes a man, and begins his work. The “...emptiness inside me...” also illustrates the suffering created by the first principle of material creation, when the Perfect One separates.

On stage Winslow is immediately identified with the completed central principle of green and the first principle of red. During his performance, his stage flashes at once first solid green and then solid red. Later a red and a green orb appear over his head. The stage also flashes a solid tekhelet blue, at the moment the soundtrack balances switches to Winslow’s song. This is another clue that Winslow is King David, master musician.

The image on Winslow’s t-shirt identifies him as both the central Lunar principle and also the principle of Music that Swan wishes to pirate. A similar image, a line drawing of a face, is seen on both the bass drum (Moon) and piano (Music) played by The Juicy Fruits during their set (click image to enlarge).

Phibin’s t-shirt also sports a face, this time of a woman. Her name, Annette, can be seen at the bottom of her image on the shirt. This image appears to be leaping forth from Philbin’s chest, but this is a compromise, because she ought to be emerging from his head. Philbin is Jupiter or Jove, from whose head leaps the Moon Goddess Athena (Annette can pronounced by reading Athena backwards). It is important to remember that this principle of the Moon Goddess, which is the exterior image of the Moon, may emerge from the brow of Jove, but remains a causal reaction to the first principle of the separation of the Perfect One. Jove, like Philbin, considers himself to be the origin of certain principles, but he is just another cog in the wheel—the largest cog, as we will see.

The Roman Emperor Caligula, who was infamous for staging forced public orgies, believed himself to be Jove. Actor John Hurt, like Philbin, is also known for a female demon leaping from his chest and he is also the most enduring performer of Caligula, in Robert Graves’s I, Claudius.

Jupiter, who is Jove, is also the jovial Great Party Man of Kubrick’s The Shining. Great Party Man, his head split to release the Moon Goddess Athena, his head part-ing, his head party-ing, toasts Wendy and declares “great party!” and thereby expresses the identical sentiment of Philbin’s green button which reads “Orgy Organizer.” Of course, like the goliath shape of Jupiter, Philbin and Great Party Man merely carry forward an already ancient and distant first principle. The first principle belongs to Uranus, not to Jupiter. Jupiter is a long way from Uranus. The final image in this sequence is Philbin, as a thread of blood gushes from a head wound directed by Winslow. Winslow—as David—has hit him in the forehead with a stone. Jupiter is Goliath, the largest planet in the Solar System.

Winslow’s lowly digs, his modest accommodations, are a clue to his ultimate identity as the male principle of the Perfect One. Uranus is the Greek word meaning sky. The supreme and undivided One is the unseen, unmanifest balance between the Male Sky and the Female Earth that exist prior to the formation of the material realm. Winslow’s apartment is interesting. All the natural light is blocked-out. He has a ceramic horse’s-head on his wall. The red and blue color of Winslow’s horse’s head are a complex clue. The horse is in fact Philbin (more q.v.). Jupiter is the phallus of Uranus, prior to when it is cut-off by Saturn (Satan, Swan). Inside POTP, Winslow’s original possession is now just a copy.

In Jodorowsky’s The Holy Mountain, we meet Berg, whom Jodorowsky openly identifies as the human embodiment of the principle of Uranus. Like Winslow, Berg lives with a horse, and has all of his windows blocked, indicating that his essence is invisible, that he can not be seen. Berg lives with a woman who is both his mother and his wife, which is the description of the undivided Perfect One as Cosmic Christ and Elder Sophia, His Mother Bride. In the first image we see Berg on a bed of green, a bed of green upon which we will later see Winslow in POTP. In the second image Berg covers an open window that has allowed in some exterior light. His Mother Bride on the toilet is not merely a profanity. As the Earth, she is directly connected to soil, dust, ash, and excrement—the foundation of all that grows, and in the larger cosmic model, all that appears, is heard or sensed. Also note the blue and yellow checkerboard tiles on the bathroom floor. We have linked Winslow to this same color scheme.

Winslow roughs up Philbin, revealing great physical strength and a very quick temper.

We again see the green and red color combination, which encode Winslow’s ultimate identity as the male half of the first principle. The green color of the button reveals that it is Winslow, who is seen on the green Moon stage who is the organizer, the green principle at the center of the rainbow, at the center of white light, and therefore at the center of The Moon. Winslow appears to be gripping the button in his hand.

This first scene between Philbin and Winslow is also the first big clue to a series of reversals, of mirror images that the movie represents. In the opening narration, we learn that Swan will be the victim of a theft. In this scene between Philbin and Winslow, we learn that it is Swan who is the thief, the theif of Winslow’s original musical creation--or is he? In the background noise at Winslow’s home, playing on his radio as he writes his cantata, is the music of The Juicy Fruits, music that Winslow acts as if he hates. So why is it on his radio? Just who is the thief here--Winslow or Swan? Could it be that the Gods feed upon humanity just as we feed upon the Gods? One of the most important themes of POTP is this symbiotic relationship between the Supreme Gods who are the Cosmic Christ and the Elder Sophia, and the lesser gods, who are ordinary men and women, subject to mortality.

Here we see the placard reading One Month Later, in red and yellow. This color combination signifies danger.

In many, many films and works of literary and dramatic art, the combination of red and yellow is used to indicate an upcoming disaster. As this placard appears within the story of POTP, Winslow is about to approach his terrible fate. The red is the red of menstrual blood and the yellow is the yellow of urine. This combination is a signal that something is about to be flushed out, to be destroyed. In terms of sexual activity, the color red is paired in three ways: with yellow, indicating that it flushes away waste; with white, which is the union of the virgin bride and her first lover; and with black, which reveals the Elder Mother in one aspect and the Elder Magician, the Cosmic Christ, in the dual aspect.

When Winslow tries to reach Swan, who has not returned any calls since the initial contact with Philbin, he is rebuffed. This scene also introduces the first color-scheme after the One Month Later placard, and it illustrates the two aspects of sexual union described above. Red and White and Red and Black. On the secretary’s rolodex, Winslow’s name is sandwiched between the names Jerry Moss (Green Seed, where jerry is a pun upon German and therefore germinate) and Peter Fonda (which provides a pun for fondling the penis). Thus De Palma has placed Winslow at the center of the Green principle. In Lolita, Nabokov uses the same trick, by putting the name of his heroine, who is an allegory of the Magdalene, in between two girls named Rose on a list of students. Nabokov claimed that this was his favorite part of the novel. The third of these images reads “NEVER TO BE SEEN”. Yet another clue that Winslow is a part of the first principle of creation, the ineffable and invisible Uranus, one half of the Perfect One before it divides itself into material creation.

Added here is another image from Jodorowsky’s The Holy Mountain--to reinforce the occult symbol of the green penis.

Winslow makes his way to Swan’s estate, to ask why Swan isn’t returning his calls. He hails a taxi while standing in the center of two concentric circles. As stated, in his ultimate guise, Winslow is the Crucified Christ who is fixed at the center of the Sphere of White Light, The Moon. As he hails, he points upward with his right hand as one would point at an object up in the sky, in the same gesture used by the lead singer of Goodbye Eddie Goodbye as he points upward to sing the lyric “...overnight sensation...” which we have already identified as a Moon clue. Remember that the fictional Eddie of the song is a simulation of Winslow himself.

As Winslow gets into his cab, we see the advertisement for Sun Dew, which indicates Winslow’s dignity as the God of Music, Apollo, and of David, who is a master musician.

Finally, as Winslow’s taxi arrives outside Swanage, Swan’s love palace, we are again treated to a harbinger of the danger that Winslow faces, in the red-yellow combination of the taxi and the fire hydrant. The hydrant, and its sharp shadow on the side of the taxi, foreshadow Winslow’s doom, a sort of death by fire, and also clue the counterpart of his identity associated with The Sun, which is a Ball of Fire.

The Songs III: Never Thought I’d Get To Meet The Devil

Hear Never Thought I’d Get To Meet The Devil

Never thought I’d get to meet the Devil
Never thought I’d meet him face to face
Heard he always worked alone
That he seldom wrote or used the phone
So I walked right up to meet him at his place

The highlighted lyric “...that he seldom wrote or used the phone...” is another key to Swan’s identity as a false creator, a Satan. He does not write means he does not inscribe The Word (Swan doesn’t sign his name. He uses a rubber stamp instead). He does not use the phone means he does not Speak the Word.

On the gateway of Swan’s personal pleasure palace there are many prominent orbs, which again indicate Swan’s desire to capture the principle of The Moon and The Supreme Sphere for his own use. These are spheres of stone and give off no light, indicating that they are a false creation: Art.

Here seems like a good place to compare Winslow Leach with both Dr. Bill Harford and piano-man Nick Nightingale of Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut. Apollo, with whom we have connected Winslow, is God of Music and Medicine.

In his September 11th, 1991 speech, George Bush declares the institution of a kinder, gentler nation. Bush is being quite wicked here, because he by no means intends to give up one inch of power to the multitude of the ignorant and disinherited masses. He means that the methods of social coercion will be improved, less violent at first blush, and therefore more difficult to challenge—all which serve to cement the process of Law that so clearly separates an elite class of oligarchs from the rest of us little people. In the course of POTP Winslow will traverse much of the same terrain as both Bill and Nick of EWS. Like these two luckier men, Winslow will be thrown out on his ear as he tries to approach the gates of Satanic Majesty at Swan’s masonic pleasure dome. Unlike Nick and Bill, Winslow’s fate is much more immediate, visceral and painful. As an improvement upon POTP, EWS is a kinder, gentler form of suicide trigger than its earlier counterpart—kinder and gentler, but by no means less sophisticated.

Swan’s Mansion and Somerton Estates of EWS are the same place. Gateway Orbs.

Red Curtains and Checked Floors.

Birds of Prey.

Lots of girls, only One Mysterious Woman.

In EWS, The Mysterious Woman wears a mask with a headdress of plumage. The mysterious woman in POTP is called Phoenix, and just as Bill chases his bird into darkness, so will Winslow chase after the love of Phoenix. De Palma reveals more about this woman than Kubrick seems to do. When we meet Phoenix, the heroine of POTP, De Palma gives a fantastic clue. The girl behind Phoenix, dressed in all red and white, is brushing her upper lip while she looks into a circular hand mirror. Now, take a look at Phoenix’s upper lip, upon which is visible an obvious girl mustache (click on image to enlarge). This identifies Phoenix as the other half of the undivided Perfect One. The thing that is One can not see itself without a mirror. A make up artist could have easily covered the mustache sported by actress Jessica Harper, the choice not to do so is deliberate. And as for as the fictional girl Phoenix: a modern girl with a mirror would probably take care of that mustache—especially if she was into show-biz. But Phoenix isn’t just any girl, she is, in a sense, a hermaphrodite, a dual sexuality—until she meets the love of her life, Winslow Leach, who is the mirror in which she can see her reflection for the first time—although the competed gaze is not expressed in this first meeting, but by the complete arc of their story. It is worth noting that Winslow is also a hermaphrodite of sorts. When he is kicked out of Swan’s estate, he tries to sneak back in disguised as a woman. His dress is red, green and white, connecting to the first rainbow principle of red, the central rainbow principle of green, and the unified White Moon as the framework of the Matrix that is the essence of the material illusion.

The image of the dual hermaphroditic nature of both Phoenix and Winslow is confirmed with great emphasis when Winslow, still in drag, is discovered and kicked out for the second time. Winslow turns out to be carrying a red and white purse that could very well be part of the ensemble of the lady in all red and white from the stairwell behind Phoenix. From within Winslow’s purse, the policeman draws a bag of heroin. Heroin is heroine. In Cosmic Trigger, Robert Anton Wilson outlines The Eight Circuits of Consciousness and compares the first circuit to the feeling produced by opium or heroin. R.A. Wilson’s first circuit is thus the first principle of the Gnostic Mother Bride and Cosmic Christ—the Womb of Creation. Heroin is also know as horse, which connects back to Winslow’s identity as Uranus the Sky God.

Now Winslow’s real fall begins, and he is processed into a Golem. The hammer comes down on his head. He declares “Swan framed me!” This is true, but it is also true that he has framed himself. The frame in this sense is the frame that closes the image. Winslow got nailed. He is the nail that hangs the image of creation, the exterior splendor of The Moon. As one half of this undivided Perfect One, he is personally responsible for his predicament, a predicament that demands his inevitable crucifixion.

Winslow ends up in Sing-Sing, where he learns a couple of important facts right away. In prison, everyone is innocent. This isn’t just a normal use of this old saw about prisoners because it marks for Winslow the terrible moment he becomes aware of the condition of original sin. It is a side-effect of Creation that no one is innocent—an awful truth, but true nevertheless. Winslow is told that all of his teeth will be pulled in an experiment run by The Swan Foundation. In the Freudian interpretation of dreams, to lose one’s teeth is to become mature. Winslow is an adult at last, not merely in the flesh, but an adult who knows the hard truth that most people manage to deny for their whole life long—that we live in a very ugly world and how that ugliness touches all of us.

Winslow’s First Escape

Winslow in his first stage as a Golem. His teeth have been pulled and his golden hair, like that of King David, has been shorn. The stylistic font of The Swan Foundation written on his cap is similar to others that use English letters to approximate Hebrew letter forms. A golem is initiated by writing a Hebrew spell upon his forehead, and once it is initiated, the golem can not be stopped, except by a revision of the spell. In the story line of POTP (ignoring certain supernatural elements), there are two scenes that appear to require a great suspension of disbelief. Both of these scenes involve a seemingly impossible act of strength by Winslow. The human Winslow was strong, but the fallen Winslow is Superman—a Golem. When he decides to do something, he simply does it. The first of these two improbable acts is Winslow’s escape from Sing-Sing.

After Winslow escapes, he makes way to Swan’s record factory, to make some mayhem. He slips and falls face first into a hot-wax record press. Here he receives his final instruction as a Golem, the stamp of Death Records emblazoned on one side of his face. He also becomes a split-person and begins to fulfill his natural destiny as one half of the first principle. He has some way to go yet.

In the creation of this Golem, Swan has at last proven himself the equal of the Great First Principle, The Ineffable and Undivided Uranus and Earth. He has made himself a god, and thus, the gates of paradise are opened.

As Winslow’s suffering continues, we are again to treated to the red-yellow danger combination. Winslow is about to be flushed out. He stumbles to be baptized in the East River. Christ is resurrected on Easter, which is a contraction of East Star. This is confirmed in The Book of Revelation, when Christ declares himself Star of Morning, the rising Eastern Sun (not to be confused with the morning star Venus, which is used in symbol as an inverted imitation of the Eastern Sun). Winslow’s terrible fate doesn’t rate a headline, but a short column explains that is he and not Swan who is at the gates of paradise.

Emerging from his baptism, Winslow makes tracks for The Paradise Theater Complex, where The Juicy Fruits are rehearsing their doomed performance of Winslow’s Faust. On the way, his fearsome visage proves too much, even for some pretty tough looking people. He will need a disguise. In the wardrobe store room, he finds a black suit, black cape and a mask—the same clothing procured by Dr. Bill in Eyes Wide Shut. Unlike Dr. Bill, Winslow won’t be shooed away—he has vengeance in mind.

Also noted: in the right frame of the image of Winslow’s Mask, we see a green wig, hanging on some type of a hook and balled into a spherical shape, and below it a spherical white light. The light is the image of the exterior Moon and the green wig represents the unifying principle, the central green principle of the Lunar Matrix, which like the Earth illusion, appears to be bigger than The Moon when it is in fact inside The Moon. This image will be reinforced repeatedly by De Palma.

The Songs IV: Faust (The Juicy Fruits)

Hear Upholstery

Faust, as performed by The Juicy Fruits in their new guise as The Beach Bums, is called Upholstery and has some major lyrical innovations to the same melody by Winslow.

Carburetors man, that’s what life is all about.

I was not myself last night
Lost a fight, my woody barely running
By a dude I should have beat
And on the street a blow like that is stunning
I finally lost control
And tore my tuck-n-roll
Upholstery - Where my baby sits up close to me
That’s supposed to be what our life is all about
Upholstery where my baby sits up close to me
That’s supposed to be what our life is all about

Of all life’s mysteries the greatest one I’ve seen
My short runs better when it’s clean

I was not myself last night
Ran a light without my registration
Where the cops were bound to see
And you know me already on probation
I wound up on parole
I tore my tuck-n-roll
Upholstery - Where my baby sits up close to me
That’s supposed to be what our life is all about
Upholstery where my baby sits up close to me
That’s supposed to be what our life is all about

The newly imagined lyrics of Winslow’s Faust celebrate the male teenage conundrum of sexual frustration. The highlighted lyrics provide the good fun, as they both describe a function of a young man’s penis, and/or how a young man should care for his equipment. However, our main interest is in the theme of tuck-and-roll Upholstery as it relates to the principle of sewing as a function of Time. Quality tuck-and-roll jobs require hand stitching. In Norse myth The Norns are three sisters (a manifestation of the Triple Moon Principle). The Norns unravel, measure and cut the thread of a human life, to mark its time on Earth. We will meet the Norns a little later in POTP, adding support to this initial reference to time and sewing. As The Beach Bums rehearse this number about sewing, we are given the first look at a clock in the movie. The clock on Winslow’s homemade time-bomb. Film buffs will recognize this scene as the same continuous shot seen at the beginning of Orson Welles legendary Touch of Evil. De Palma’s homage to Welles includes the use of a favorite De Palma technique--the split screen image. The cinematic orchestration of this scene is damned impressive. Watch it again and consider that it is two continuous shots, no cuts, filmed simultaneously and spliced together into a single image. De Palma’s use of the swish-pan in this scene is just one indicator of the level of virtuosity required to pull off this extraordinary vision.

We are again treated to the red-yellow danger combination, seen here as the surfboard at center stage. The dominant color is yellow this time, because this particular combination indicates the reversal of the flushing of menstrual blood, namely, male masturbation. The surf board (which the singer calls “my short“) is an erect phallus at the point of ejaculation. De Palma is warning, or programming, that masturbation is dangerous and wasteful, which should be no surprise as he is one of a tight group of prominent and powerful American director/producers of the 1970’s, all of whom were openly Roman Catholic.

Harold, one of The Juicy Fruits, is seen looking a lot like young Winslow, with a yellow wig and a pale blue t-shirt, while Philbin chokes him.

Again, we see Swan as he attempts to usurp the Supreme Power of Creation through Black Magic. Swan has a hideaway, a secret world. To access this chamber, he manipulates a double phallus—a two pronged candelabra. The double phallus is a standard symbol of ceremonial magick—indicated by the number 11 and Crowley’s 11-lettered Abrahadabra—where the first 1 in 11 symbolizes the upright human and the second 1 symbolizes the wand/phallus. The same image can be seen as The World of Tarot, in which Isis, the Sophia of Gnostic allegory, holds the dual wand of power that only a woman can hold, creating The World, or the feminine half of the unseen principle of Uranus called The Earth.

Winslow is The Phantom in his black suit, black cloak and a mask.

Swan wears the garb of the dark magician, illuminated by a false moon of his own design. His hands are in the as above so below position of the Tarot Magician and he has a little wand in his right hand.

Swan meets with Winslow and charms him. He invites Winslow to the auditions to star in Winslow’s own vision of Faust. Of course, Winslow wants Phoenix to star. Here, we see a reversal of the earlier image of Phiblin and Swan as they hear Winslow for the first time. This time, it is Winslow who appears to be in control, but Swan has fooled him. He has reversed the position of the David and Goliath myth. Next to the Phantom, Swan is the diminutive David. Swan continues to cling to the creative power of King David that he wishes his own.

The Songs V: Special To Me

Hear Special To Me

Caught up in your wheelin’ dealin’
You’ve got no time left for simple feelin’
I thought I knew you but I didn’t know you at all
Trapped inside your world of worry
You miss so much when you always hurry
Well slow down baby
You’ll only get hurt if you fall

Well you told me one time that you’d be somebody
That you weren’t workin’ just to survive
But you’re workin’ so hard
That you don’t even know you’re alive
Workin’ so hard to be somebody special
Not working just to survive
Well you’re special to me babe
But what I don’t see babe
Is where you go once you arrive?
Where we go once we arrive

Damn all evil that takes possession
Until your pipe dreams become obsessions
They scare me baby
And we should have nothing to fear
I’m no child
But I can’t help wonder
It seems like some kind of spell you’re under
You’re listenin’ baby
But somehow you don’t really hear

Well you told me one time that you’d be somebody
That you weren’t workin’ just to survive
But you’re workin’ so hard
That you don’t even know you’re alive
Workin’ so hard to be somebody special
Not working just to survive
Well you’re special to me babe
But what I don’t see babe is
Where you go once you arrive
Where we go once we arrive

Phoenix is a virgin. In this song she sings about an ethic she shares with Winslow, which expresses how the fear of the sexual act is often channeled into working or Artistic energies. How many homely young men, for example, have become rock-stars so that they could get laid? For the socially awkward, the desire and opportunity for sex are not enough. Such individuals seek an office, a position of power or status great enough for them to believe that their sexual longings are safe enough to practice. When Winslow meets Phoenix for the first time, he says “I would never let my personal desires influence my aesthetic judgment”—to a pretty girl who obviously likes him! Both Winslow and Phoenix are virgins, and their desire to succeed without admitting the presence of social pressure or even desire indicates their over-arching fear of social contact and fear of sex. In the deepest way, POTP and other works that use similar coding are in fact programming tools, designed to literally frighten this class of awkward people into socially productive lives. The consequences for Winslow and Phoenix aren’t nice, and social programmers want the wayward slackers and dreamers of the world to see this fact and shape up their act and become proper consumers and workers. The suicide code is the fail-safe, for those to whom these lesser threats of program are not sufficient. If certain people can not be made to follow rules then they are murdered. The great goal of Great Art is to cast this murderous and nearly invisible net upon the unsuspecting targets at large—all of us.

At the audition, other girls show skin and wear form fitting clothes while Phoenix dresses a bit like a hippy grandma. Here, before she sings, Swan asks if she would “give... (her) voice” in exchange for the chance to sing and find fame. As Swan makes this statement, Philbin, sitting at the table on stage, blows a puff of cigarette smoke directly into her face. This is another albeit subtle example of the choke code.

As she sings of spells and possession, the horns of her would be master hover over her head. The dusty pink molding beneath the horns and paler pink of the surrounding walls is the same color-combo as Swan’s suit and shirt while he watches this audition.

The stagehand is one of Philbin’s roadies. He has had his way with hundreds if not thousands of willing sluts, and he shows no interest in any of the girls on stage—except Phoenix. He can smell her virginity and wants to plunder her. As she dances off stage, he scratches reflexively at his crotch.

The Songs VI: Faust (Swan)

Hear “Faust (Swan)”

This is Winslow’s original composition and lyric heard in act one, with Winslow’s damaged voice processed through filters to sound like the voice of Swan. The theft of the first principle continues.

We have already seen Winslow on a bed of grass, after he is beat up and thrown out of Swan’s mansion for good. We have also seen his counterpart Uranus in the same repose, on a bed of green.

Here we see Winslow The Phantom in his ultimate image at the center of the green principle, the center of the rainbow, the interior of The Moon. The curvature of the music studio is that of an inner sphere. In my Sync Book II article Moon in the Middle, I detail the mechanism of sound as the basis for feel-able sensation. Atomic and Molecular vibration, which are the building blocks of the feel-able material world, is a frequency. A vibration is always a frequency and a frequency always creates a sound. Thus, sound proves to be the basis of all that is felt, and even tasted and smelled. Like the seven colored rainbow, which represents a near infinity of tones and hues, the seven toned musical-scale blends to create the physical construct. Here, at the Middle of the Matrix Moon, Winslow conducts the Music of the Spheres, the sound matrix of the physical reality.

Swan’s studio, on the other hand, reveals him as the Satanic Mason—a businessman, not a creator. The studio is all square and straight edges.

Here is a better view of Winslow’s Moon Studio, with its shaggy green-grass carpet.

Earlier, back at Swan’s mansion, we get a look at Philbin in his underwear. Red and blue in combination are the colors of a Masonic Novice. Philbin is such a Mason. He appears to be big and powerful but lurking behind him is the Satanic Swan who is the planet Saturn. A stated, Philbin is Jupiter. The Roman Jupiter is the Greek Zeus which is pronounced by the Greek as Zay-oos. When one chants USA, USA, USA... one also repeats, by the offset of the sibilant, the chant of Zay-oos, Zay-oos, Zay-oos... The red, white and blue of the Stars and Stripes are the red and blue of Philbin’s underwear and his lily white flesh. Back in the studio, Swan, in his attempts to make Winslow’s damaged voice sound like his own, presses a button on his console and intones the term “filters” with a strong emphasis on the ph of filters. As he does so, the image cuts to a graphic audio equalizer in the strong red and blue of Philbin’s undies. Philbin is the Philter. The porch mason, the street mason, whose massive corpus stands between the profane the Satanic Set of Inner Masonry—filtering the secrets of the oligarchs into something more suited to the bourgeois palate. Also noted, the square framing of both red-blue combinations.

The Songs VII: Phantom’s Theme

Hear “Phantom`s Theme”

Half asleep I hear a voice
Is it only in my mind?
Or is it someone calling me
Someone I failed and left behind?

To work it out I let them in
All the good guys and the bad guys that I’ve been
All the devils that disturbed me
And the angels that defeated them somehow
Come together in me now

Face to face I greet the cast
Set in silence we begin
Companions in an empty room
I taste their victory and sin

To work it out I let them in
All the good guys and the bad guys that I’ve been
All the devils that disturbed me
And the angels that defeated them somehow
Come together in me now

A tale of beauty and the beast
I defend my soul from those who would accuse me
I share the famine and the feast
I have been the world and felt it turning
Seen the jester yearning to amuse me

Like a circus on parade
Seldom close enough to see
I wander through an angry crowd
And wonder what became of me

To work it out I let them in
All the good guys and the bad guys that I’ve been
All the devils that disturbed me
And the angels that defeated them somehow
Come together in me now

Phantom’s Theme is a montage sequence right at the middle of the film. Here, in a split screen, we see Phoenix as Winslow imagines her and in the same plumage as the mysterious woman of Kubrick’s EWS.

Swan has lied to Winslow yet again. He will not feature Phoenix as the star of his vision of Faust as promised. He tells Philbin “...she is too good, and you know how I abhor perfection in anyone but myself.” Here, Swan and Philbin audition some prospects to star in the cantata. Swan, inside the circle of power, keeps his hand on the switch.

Of the acts he will reject, Swan doesn’t like any of them—except one, a country singer with thick curly locks of dark brown hair, similar to Phoenix. Of him Swan says “pretty”—and he is correct, of the performances he sees at this audition, the performance of the pretty cowboy is the best, the most compelling of the auditioneers. The pretty cowboy is the hermaphroditic Phoenix.

When Swan gets the final pages of the cantata from the imprisoned Winslow, he declares them “tasty... very tasty.” This foreshadows his selection of performer to premier Faust. Beef is tasty. When Swan hears Beef, he lifts his hand from the switch for the first time.

Beef is brought before the press—introduced by The Juicy Fruits in their final incarnation as The Undead. The three are all sporting bandages over the injuries they received from Winslow’s time bomb during their rehearsal of Faust as The Beach Bums. Harold, who we have paired as a mirror of Winslow, is seen again with a choker on his neck. The three injured Juicy Fruits are De Palma’s masonic semaphore for Jubelo, Jubela and Jubelum, the three heroes of masonic allegory who were executed for the assassination of master architect Hiram Abiff.

Beef Cheeks

As the story of Beef progresses, he sports a series of small pictures drawn on his right cheek (click on any image to enlarge). They tell a story. His first cheek is seen during his audition with Swan. It is hard to see what it depicts, but it is blood red and almost certainly a Valentine Heart. This signifies Beef as the Living Cow, before he is sacrificed.

Next, at a private press conference staged by Swan, Beef emerges from the cold casket. His cheek is stamped with a skull and cross bones. This is the slaughtered and refrigerated Beef, being brought before the wholesale vendor, before he is processed and cut into choice selections.

Here, Beef is tattooed with a dark blue star, indicating the choice Grade A cut of meat at the commercial market.

Before his live performance, Beef wears the astrological symbol for Saturn on his cheek. In the moment of his preparation, he remains the property of Satanic Swan.

Winslow warns Beef not to sing his music. He kisses Beef’s cheek with a plunger—providing a pun upon Winslow as Ur-anus. Beef makes a retreat, and we see that his choice is a wise choice, for he is kissed by a green four-leafed clover, a fitting symbol of Winslow’s mercy. Sadly for Beef, Philbin intervenes.

Beef’s last cheek is the combined astrological symbols of Mars and Venus, man and woman. The cross of Venus and the arrow of Mars are not overlapped, as they would be to indicate a sexual union between male and female. Instead the circles are overlapped—yet another clue to the hermaphroditic, non-sexual union that is the Supreme One. Winslow will not tolerate Beef’s use of such a symbol. Beef should have gone home to his mother’s place.

Winslow’s Second Escape

When Winslow has completed his musical score, Swan entombs him in the Moon Studio. In the second of the suspension of disbelief scenes, Winslow’s unlimited Golem strength is exhibited. He escapes with no trouble at all. Swan has underestimated a God whom he believed to be a man.

The Songs VIII: Somebody Super Like You

Hear “Somebody Super Like You”

We need a man that is simple perfection
There’s nothing that’s harder to find
Someone to lead us protect us and feed us
And help us to make up our minds
We need a man that’s sophisticated
Quiet and strong and well educated
Where to go what to do
Could it be somebody super like you?

We need a man that can stand as a symbol
And symbols have got to be tall
Someone with taste and the tiniest waist
With his help would not life be a ball
If we had fun he would not restrain us
If we got caught he would just explain us
Where to go what to do
Could it be somebody super like you?

We pledge allegiance to his gracefulness
And charming manners
With a voice that’s both sides choice
He’ll bring us to our knees in admiration
He is king of all who see and hear
His perfect pitch and more surprises
When his time is come a stallion rises

We need a man with a head on his shoulders
A nose that is simply divine
Hollywood smile and a perfect profile
And with eyes that would sparkle and shine
Long flowing hair for a crowning glory
There’d be a man who could tell our story
Where to go what to do
Could it be somebody super like you?

We pledge allegiance to his gracefulness
And charming manners
With a voice that’s both sides choice
He’ll bring us to our knees in admiration
He is king of all who see and hear
His perfect pitch and more surprises
When his time is come a stallion rises
Rises...rises...rises

Somebody Super Like You describes quite nicely the attribute of a Divine Savior—but it is used to introduce the monstrous Beef, a creature cobbled together from corpses and raised from the dead as if by Dr. Frankenstein. This dual image of Christ as a savior and as an insane and vengeful Golem is equally present in more traditional interpretations of the Biblical Christ, who promises both the salvation of the innocent and the punishment of the wicked. By the subtlety of De Palma’s hand, Beef becomes both of these characters just as his audience at the premier of Faust fill simultaneously the roles of innocent, ignorant victims and slavering demons on the edge of damnation.

Here is our first look at Swan’s Faust, his supreme recreation of All Creation. The Great Work in its most potent form as Dramatic Art. De Palma, of course, is the real Artist behind this Satanic imitation, and it is a pretty fucking spectacular vision.

Naturally, the stage in The Paradise has been fashioned into a crucifix. Every good Western post-modern sacrificial simulation needs a crucifix.

Here, in their final work under the employ of Swan, The Juicy Fruits are The Undead. The original Zombie was not a flesh eating corpse, but a person under the total control of a Master Magician. Please note that under this control, all of The Undead are wearing chokers.

We return to the motif of sewing as a function of time. The last time Winslow intervened on stage, it was during the rehearsal of “Upholstery,” an image we have already connected to the motif of sewing as a function of time. Here, at the next point of Winslow’s intervention, and again while The Juicy Fruits/Beach Bums/Undead are on stage, we are again treated to the motif of sewing. Here three zombie nurses stand in as the mythical Three Norns, who unspool, measure and cut the thread that marks the time of a human life. As Beef’s creator, Swan wants us to believe that this same power is in his own control.

On a small side track, the motif of Time as it relates to The Moon Matrix is fundamental to Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. So we ought to also find a connection in Kubrick to The Moon and to Sewing. Given the already stated connection between POTP and Eyes Wide Shut, we look into Dr. Bill’s weird and loopy like a needle pulling thread travels through the streets of Manhattan and find our proof. In the early morning Bill passes beneath a large dark blue and white painted advertisement reads “thread mills” and “sewing thread”. Later that same morning Bill passes another painted advertisement. The content of this second clue, in dark blue and white at the far right edge of the image, needs no description (click to enlarge). Also noted, the same color-combo seen on yet another painter advert nearer the center of the image. The white-diamond logo almost certainly indicates the seven diamonds seen during the stargate sequence of 2001:ASO.

In the next image we focus on Beef at screen right, hovering over the trio on stage below, in his surgical table. A tiny noose appears to screen left. The lighting effect that produces this noose is both subtle and technically demanding—there is no way it is an accident.

As the lighting effect changes we see that this noose is a stage support rope. As The Undead chant the lyric “...rises, rises, rises...,” Beef, the character about whom they sing, in fact descends, while The Phantom, using a stage counter-weight, rises suddenly and dramatically. Beef will serve as a temporary sacrifice, but Winslow is the real Beef.

The Songs IX: Life At Last

Hear “Life At Last”

Life at last!
Salutations from the other side
I can see that you’re the devil’s pride
Do you realize that all of you donated
Something horrible you hated that is part of you
I’m your nightmare comin’ true
I am your crime!

Life at last!
Sit and listen while the fun begins
Hearts are broken and the bad guys win
Sit and listen all the cutting up is easy
And this isn’t for the queasy or the weak of heart
You had better start for home
While there’s still time!

I’m the evil that you created
Gettin’ horny and damned frustrated
Bored stiff and I want me a woman now

I’m the evil that you created
Gettin’ horny and damned frustrated
Each of you must stop and try me
All of you might satisfy me

“Life at Last” is Beef’s rearrangement of Winslow’s song called “Old Souls.” Swan encourages Beef to make “Old Souls” his own—and given the startling “Life At Last,” and the live sacrifice that its one time performance produces, Beef is on the money. He truly has made the predicament of The Original Creative Act into his own, and we may infer from his lyrics that he knows he is in great danger from doing so.

The first verse of the song describes the Crucifixion of Christ, which is the concentration of all human acts of crime into a single act of murder. The second verse suggests that the listener may be in for more than they bargained for, and ought to “start for home while there’s still time“. When Beef is kissed by The Phantom and given a chance to get out of his predicament, he considers going home to his mother in Cincinnati.

The difficulty of “cutting-up“ is also expressed. Believe it or not, this term of cutting-up refers to the act of creating Art. In the Beat Generation, novelist William Burroughs and his painter friend Brion Gysin popularized cut-up, the re-organization of previous material into new works of Art. Swan and De Palma are doing the same thing. As stated, Art must be a simulation of Original Creation and as such, all of its elements are cut-up and reordered according to the vision of a particular human Artist. In his musical Sunday in the Park with George, Stephen Sondheim has his hero, George Seurat, express the identical sentiment in boiled down to its skeleton: “Art is difficult”. Sondheim is polite and even coy. De Palma hangs it out on the edge. Art is dangerous, to its creators and even more so to its unsuspecting and unsophisticated audience.

The resurrected Beef has a scars where he has been sewn together from multiple corpses. Although it is true that these scars are as represented in the surface narrative as surgical scars, the scar around Beef’s neck looks exactly like that of a hanging victim. Hanging wounds bleed.

The bow around Beef’s waist appears to be black but is actually a very dark green. In his choice of costume design, red and green, Swan dresses Beef in the same colors that flashed upon Winslow’s stage in the first act of the film. Beef also passes in front of the backstage set features under a spotlight. Under the full lighting effect, these walls appear grey in tone. Under Beef’s spot they are green. As already explained, in the model of the Lunar Matrix, Christ is crucified at Rainbow Central Green. Here, in the light of a Green Moon, Beef is crucified to fulfill the destiny of both Swan and Winslow.

Keeping his promise, The Phantom kills Beef for singing the music he wrote for Phoenix. Beef is first electrocuted and then burned. The second image is one of the most astonishing in the movie (click to enlarge). De Palma does not squander a single opportunity to encode the larger myth of Horrible Original Creation. A sliver of green cord with just a touch of red is delicately lighted above the raving Phantom (upper right of image).

The Songs X: Old Souls

Hear “Old Souls”

Our love is an old love baby
It’s older than all our years
I have seen in strange young eyes
Familiar tears
We’re old souls in a new life baby
They gave us a new life to live and learn
Some time to touch old friends
And still return
Our paths have crossed and parted
This love affair was started long long ago
This love survives the ages
In its story lives are pages
Fill them up
May ours turn slow
Our love is a strong love baby
We give it all and still receive
And so with empty arms we must still believe
All souls last forever
So we need never fear goodbye
A kiss when I must go...
No tears...
In time...
We kiss hello

Immediately after Beef’s gruesome demise, Philbin orders that Phoenix take to the stage. He tells her she must do so because “someone” killed Beef so that Phoenix could sing. Philbin knows that Winslow has killed Beef, but Phoenix doesn’t know it, because she believes Winslow to be dead. This detail is important.

The scene begins with an act that seems wildly out of character for Winslow, the murder of an innocent lighting technician. Up until now, Winslow has directed his anger only at those who stand between him and the realization of his vision. The murder of the tech is gratuitous. It is true that this murder elongates the dramatic tension of the scene, but given the previously revealed fearsomeness of Winslow’s Golem face, he could just as easily have frightened the lighting guy off to provide a reasonable dramatic entrance to his position at the light. But Winslow must murder the lighting guy because, by a form of infinite regression, Winslow is the lighting guy. We have just seen him kill Beef with a bolt of light-ing, sorry, lightning. When Winslow strangles the tech and takes his place, he is strangling himself, hanging himself like a light in the night to shine upon his beautiful Phoenix. It is also worth noting that in this single image of Winslow we get the first and only decent look at the green color of his eyes, or eye. Except for the red of his cloak, the other colors in this image are neutral. Red and green shine forth. Of course, the spotlight is The Moon, and its light is there for Phoenix alone—she who is the separated female half of the Perfect One. In her first moment in the light, we see the symbol of her fate in a shadow on the floor—a double crucifix, one for her and the other her unseen lover. At the end of the sequence The Moon motif is reinforced as De Palma does an iris-in on Phoenix, isolating her image. She is happy for the first time in her life, because Winslow and the audience have validated the potential of her beauty. This is the office that she has sought, which will allow her to enter into the social contract. In the very next scene she gives up her virginity—but not to Winslow. Whoops!

Atop The Paradise, Winslow and Phoenix look down as the charred corpse of Beef is trucked away. The image is another carefully composed example of the red-yellow flush out code. The bright colors of red and yellow jump out of the image. Two other colors, much more muted, are also visible, midnight blue and green (the green car in the lower right of the image). The addition to the palate of these colors should be fairly clear as the night-blue sky and the green interior Moon as an underlying principle.

Winslow reveals his identity to Phoenix. Looking at both sides of his disfigured face, she does not recognize him and refuses to believe he is who he says he is. He warns her that Swan is evil and that he will destroy her. To fully appreciate this critical scene, we need a bit more background on the Gnostic allegory of Creation. When the Sophia separates from the Cosmic Christ and plunges into Primordial chaos, she becomes impregnated with Samael, who is the Gnostic model of the Biblical Satan. In this scene, The Phantom wears a red cape—red on the outside. He wears this cape in this scene alone. The strong combination of red and black is one of the three red pairings discussed earlier (red/yellow, red/white and red/black). The red and black pairing indicates the non-sexual union of the inner aspects of the Perfect One, before they separate into the material realm. Here, Winslow represents the masculine half of this complete equation, just after the Sophia separates, which is depicted in the movie as the sexual awakening of Phoenix at the end of her live performance of “Old Souls.” Like the Gnostic Cosmic Christ realizes at the moment the Perfect One separates to see itself—to achieve fame—Winslow recognizes that this act will mean a painful disaster for Phoenix, who is seen here in her first plumage.

Swan seduces Phoenix and takes her to his pleasure dome to plunder. The two lay on a black moon. This is very important in terms of Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby. In Rosemary’s Baby, actor John Cassavetes (JC) plays an actor whose sudden success is granted by the Devil. This boss then appropriates the actor’s wife, to seed her sacred womb with the Anti-Christ. The next image from POTP gives the same cypher. Winslow is a performer who works for Swan. Winslow loves Phoenix, but he has made a deal with Swan to make music. Laying on an evil Moon, Swan calls forth the forces of Black Magic to impregnate Phoenix with a Moon Child. Also in this image: Winslow flashes the number-five hand. The strong color in this image is blue, like the nearly subliminal gum seen in the mouth of The Juicy Fruits lead singer as he flashes the five-hand. The normal silver of The Phantom’s mask is also rendered this same shade of blue by lighting design. As stated, this blue represents the human body in the material realm—the five-pointed Vitruvian Man. When she engages in a sexual act with the lower cosmos (symbolized by the mythical Swan, who is Samael the Satan), Phoenix draws down into the material realm the formerly spiritual bodies of herself as Sophia and Winslow as Cosmic Christ Uranus. In this image, both of them are awash in blue lightning.

Here Winslow appears to be gripping a crucifix, in the form of window struts. Is he trying to repel the evil that he witnesses? Hell yeah! The same split image decapitates Swan and makes his head one half of a tape reel. The magnetic reader of an analog tape player is called a head. This image also contains a deeper layer of meaning to the verb death records.

Looking up at Winslow, Swan has crucified him in the manner of Vlad the Impaler: through the sphincter on a single stake. Winslow’s has his five-hand at the crux, the center point of this impaled man.

When Winslow kills Beef, he sends lightning down from the upper right corner of the image. Now, Winslow is under that lightning. As it flashes, Swan’s surveillance camera is illuminated. The motif of capturing death as an eternal photographic image is all over POTP, the works of Kubrick, and is also the crux of my “Moon in the Middle” model. Panning down from the CCTV camera, we see another bird of prey, behind Winslow, watching over Swan’s estate. Thus CCTV is paired as the Eagle Eye of the Law. Under the camera’s gaze, Winslow stabs himself in the side. Thus his suicide is an uncanny doubling of his own murder of Beef. Those with a bit of Kabbalah background can understand the completed image as From Keter to Malkut, which means from crown to foundation. The Phantom (the never to be seen Uranus) draws down from Heaven the lightning. His under-self Winslow is then struck by the same blow, which crucifies him. This act of nailing, of pinning, stabilizes the material realm—keeps it from spinning away like an unbound flash of light.

Winslow doesn’t die from his wound. In fact he is not hurt at all. Swan explains that Winslow terminates with Swan and that Swan does not terminate until his contract terminates. Winslow goes looking for this contract and finds it on an archive of tapes in Swan’s hideaway at the Paradise. The room in which Swan keeps his records is the same room as on Kurbick’s Discovery, where HAL’s memory center is stored.

Both Winslow and David Bowman learn a secret in the records room. We’ll get to Winslow in a minute. First look at the Mooney white circle behind the head of Heywood Floyd, Bowman’s boss, as his secret message is played. Then look at the two images from POTP that take place just as Winslow unravels Swan’s record to learn his secret. An older woman reveals that Swan has not aged in twenty years. It is not enough that she is in a green dress of the same tone as Bowman’s helmet from the memory center scene. On the wall of the room in the downstage image, there is a massive and detailed mural of The Moon that is on screen for just a few moments. A costly effect, barely liminal.

Swan’s secret is that he has sold his soul to the Devil. The Devil appears as Swan’s mirror image in a video from Swan’s archive. This video serves as the contract and when Winslow destroys it, both he and Swan will be destroyed with it. Swan’s Devil Twin appears just as he is about to kill himself. The hookah is actually the Genie’s Bottle from which Swan releases his own spirit. Swan has in fact already done himself in, killed himself, released his essence from the bottle that is the Earthly body. His twin appears after this act, to resurrect him—for a price. It is possible to see the entirety of POTP as Swan’s dream after death, in which he meets his Saviors (Winslow and Phoenix who combined are the supreme creative principle in all human beings) whom he rejects in favor of his own paths of glory.

Winslow sees that Phoenix is now also under contract. When Phoenix signs in blood, she speak-spells the first three letters of her name—P-H-O—right before De Palma cuts the scene.

Winslow discovers that Swan plans to assassinate Phoenix to continue the blood frenzy of Beef’s death so popular with his audience. Swan will “marry” Phoenix on stage, with Philbin officiating. When Philbin says the last “’til death”, Swan’s main henchman, a silent black panther, will shoot her in the head. On Swan’s surveillance, Winslow sees the sniper preparing his nest. Can he intervene and save Phoenix? Before he rushes out to do so, Winslow sets fire to Swan’s record storage.

With Phoenix in the cross hairs, Winslow redirects the bullet into Philbin’s head. David, the musician has slain Goliath.

What follows is the Orgy Philbin wishes he could have lived to see. The crowd, thinking it is all part of the show, goes ape-shit. Swan is burning to death in front of them, burning with the record of his life and his deal with the Devil.

At last the image of Winslow is restored to Phoenix and in a moment the Perfect One will be reunited. Please note that Winslow is green here. As he lay dying, the orgy that neither Philbin nor Swan could have dreamed rages around him.

And here the film ends, but not the story. Winslow has not saved Phoenix, he has killed her. She too is under contract with Swan. Furthermore he has also killed the remainder of humanity as symbolized by the lustful and oblivious audience of the Paradise. It all burns down. In this way, De Palma hones in on the human condition exactly as it is, and foreshadows the inevitable doom of consumer civilization in the flames of its fleshy passions. This terrible and unseen fate is telegraphed by De Palma in this image.

It could be that this clue of a coming apocalypse is commentary. But is serves just as well as a threat that to mess with the forces of the Earthly power structure and the Social Contract of Law is to bring destruction on everyone and everything. For me, it is the Artful and impossibly subtle methodology of this message that marks it not as commentary, but as a threat--a propaganda of social order.

The Songs XI: The Hell Of It

Hear “The Hell Of It”

Roll on thunder, shine on lightning
The days are long and the nights are frightenin’
Nothing matters anyway,
And that’s the hell of it.
Winter comes and the winds blew colder
While some grew wiser, you just grew older
And you never listened anyway,
And that’s the hell of it.
Good for nothing, bad in bed
Nobody likes you and you’re better off dead
Goodbye, we’ve all come to say goodbye (goodbye)
Goodbye (goodbye)
Born defeated, died in vain
Super-destructive, you were hooked on pain
Though your music lingers on
All of us are glad you’re gone
If I could live my life half as worthlessly as you
I’m convinced that I’d wind up burning too.
Love yourself as you loved no other
Be no man’s fool and be no man’s brother
We’re all born to die alone, you know, that’s the hell of it.
Life’s a game where they’re bound to beat you
And time’s a trick it can turn to cheat you
And we only waste it anyway,
And that’s the hell of it.
Good for nothing, bad in bed
Nobody liked you and you’re better off dead
Goodbye, we’ve all come to say goodbye (goodbye)
Goodbye (goodbye)
Born defeated, died in vain
Super-destructive, you were hooked on pain
And though your music lingers on
All of us are glad you’re gone

Phantom of the Paradise is a scintillating and sophisticated work of Art. Every time I see it, I am electrified. And yet, like nature itself, it is cruel. It is darkly mysterious and way outside the immediate apprehension of its widest audience. But just because these messages are well hidden does not mean that they are not perceived. The lessons of this work of Art, and many others like it, aren’t that hard to understand when they are presented without backhanded guile. Why then are they concealed in such a deliberate and sinister technique? I was just 11 when I saw this movie for the first time. To say that it fucked with my life is an understatement.

By golly it is a beautiful thing, Phantom of the Paradise, and it is fair to say that without this kind of instruction, I would have no idea the shape of our reality and the amazing hidden truths of history that it reveals so carefully. For this I am grateful. But the Buddhist in me can not merely shrug away the horrors of the process. Is any beauty worth so much pain?

The lyrics of the final song are yet another use of uncanny doubling. About whom does the song sing? Is it Winslow? Is it Swan? Maybe it is about both of them. Maybe it is about all of us. But for me, when I hear this song, and feel the intensity of this movie and its message coming at me so fiercely ... I can’t help but wonder... is it only me?

***

You may not feel I have made my case as promised, but this investigation is not over. I will continue to look at films or other media devices in the same way as I have with this article—as both a revelation of Supreme Nature and the Manchurian Suicide Code. I am thinking of Barry Lyndon for my next effort, a big change of pace. However, if readers are interested in an investigation of their favorite media, I am up to the challenge.

Peace

Da WWWiz

CRYPTOKUBROLOGY

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