Did A Pulp Science Fiction Writer Channel The Annunaki?

In 1947, a strange tale by one "Alexander Blade" was printed in the pulp "Fantastic Stories." Called "The Son of the Sun," it featured a monologue by an Annunaki-type being, who speaks of secret societies, flying saucers, Egyptian "gods," and the destiny of mankind. It begins,

"We are already here, among you. Some of us have always been here, with you, yet apart from, watching, and occasionally guiding you whenever the opportunity arose. Now, however, our numbers have been increased in preparation for a further step in the development of your planet: a step of which you are not yet aware…We have been confused with the gods of many world-religions, although we are not gods, but your fellow creatures, as you will learn directly before many more years have passed. You will find records of our presence in the mysterious symbols of ancient Egypt, where we made ourselves known in order to accomplish certain ends. Our principal symbol appears in the religious art of your present civilisation and occupies a position of importance upon the great seal of your country. (The United States of America) It has been preserved in certain secret societies founded originally to keep alive the knowledge of our existence and our intentions toward mankind."

Special mention is made of the then-recent UFO sightings:

"Some of you have seen our ‘advanced guard’ already. You have met us often in the streets of your cities, and you have not noticed us. But when we flash through your skies in the ANCIENT TRADITIONAL VEHICLES you are amazed, and those of you who open your mouths and tell of what you have seen are accounted dupes and fools. Actually you are prophets, seers in the true sense of the word. You in Kansas and Oklahoma, you in Oregon and in California, and Idaho, you know what you have seen: do not be dismayed by meteorologists. Their business is the weather. One of you says, ‘I saw a torpedo-shaped object’. Others report, ‘disc-like objects’, some of you say ‘spherical objects’, or ‘platter-like objects’. You are all reporting correctly and accurately what you saw, and in most cases you are describing the same sort of vehicle."

Finally, an "Eye of Horus" is mentioned, connected to the flying ships:

"Succeeding generations, who never knew our actual presence, translated the teachings of their elders in the terms of their own experience. For instance, a cross-sectional drawing, much simplified and stylised by many copyings, of one of our traveling machines became the ‘Eye of Horus”, and then other eyes of other gods. Finally, the ancient symbol that was once an accurate representation of an important mechanical device has been given surprising connotations by the modern priesthood of psychology."

Though this is all assumed to be science-fiction, "Son of the Sun" incorporates a lot of the Ancient Astronaut lore that Zecharia Sitchin would write about decades later. Where did Alexander Blade get these insights? Who was Alexander Blade?

Alexander Blade was, apparently, a woman: Wilma Dorothy Vermilyea. She used a number of aliases for her sci-fi work for books like Amazing Stories, Fantastic Adventures, and Other Worlds Science Stories, including Millen Cooke, Millen Belknap, Millen Trench...and Alexander Blade.

Vermilyea and her husband, occultist John Starr Cooke

It will perhaps not surprise you that she was into the occult, theosophy, Aleister Crowley, and even Scientology; her husbands equally immersed in various esoteric subjects.

And so the question is: was "Son of the Sun" a work of fiction -- or channeled information?

And what is the ultimate message of "Son of the Sun?" Are these ancient, otherworldly beings -- mistaken for "gods" in human cultures -- indeed walking the Earth? Are the UFO spied by hundreds in the sky really their vehicles? And what about the claim that humanity was on the verge of "ripening?"

When Crowley spoke of "The Age Of Horus," was he really referring to the age of the Annunaki and their flying machines, their "Eyes of Horus?"

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The "G.I. Joe" Conspiracy Meta-Theory

Editor's Note: This was originally written in 2009.

Yes, even a big-budgeted movie adaptation of a popular toy line can contain timeless symbolism that gives the film more depth than perhaps it either deserves or what was intended. It is the fact of the oft-subconscious layers to these and other pop-cultural phenomena that allow me to actually consume them and find something of value other than textured black body armor.

Take, for example, the movie G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. Much has been made in early discussions of the film regarding its perceived lack of American iconography. But when we take into account the movie's overt, covert, and subconscious resonances with contemporary conspiracy meta-theory, things start to make a lot more sense. As we will see, this is not so much a story about America as it is about...the entire world.



But our tale begins with Cobra proper. Cobra is a shadowy international cabal of various megalomaniacs who are conspiring to take over the world and bring it under one government – to wit, to bring about a New World Order. How will they accomplish this feat? Several methods:

• Sell arms to both sides of a conflict, seeding chaos.
• Blow up various landmarks around the world in order to cause mass fear and global insecurity – forcing the public to turn to one world leader who can offer order.
• Various forms of mind control.
• Infiltrate world government with puppet leaders.

James McCullen/Destro says:

"I appreciate your thirst for knowledge, Doctor, but this world is messy enough. No. What it needs is unification, leadership. It has to be taken out of chaos by someone with complete control. Beijing, Moscow, Washington... When these missiles detonate, the world will turn to the most powerful man on the planet. When I'm finished, the money will take care of itself. You'll be able to do all the research you want."

These are all main talking points of proponents of conspiracy meta-theory regarding a "New World Order".

As if to drive the point home, many "triggering" images that these theorists respond to as proof of the conspiracy are used throughout the film:

The main Cobra ship features an "all seeing eye" image in its window (featured in several posters & publicity shots for the film) – this image is believed to refer to "Big Brother" type survallience and the ancient symbol of the Masons (itself taken from the Eye of Ra):


The nanotechnological attack on the Eiffel Tower is a shameless restaging of/reference to the 9/11 disaster, with very similar imagery:


And, of course, there is the Scotland connection:
Why does the film open not on the present day, but hundreds of years ago in Scotland as James McCullen/Destro's ancestor is being tried for shady arms dealing? If I had to analyze the film with the eye of a conspiracy theorist (which, of course, I am not – I'm simply playing devil's advocate here), I would say the connection has to do with Freemasonry.


Scotland has played a very important role in the link between ancient and modern Freemasonry. Many conspiracy theorists believe that Freemasons are responsible for a whole host of world events, including the "New World Order" theory. There are some theorists who link the Cobra-like mythos of the Illuminati (international cabal bent to take over the world) with the Freemasons. One of the alleged crimes of the Illuminati is funding both sides of a conflict – which is what both James McCullen's ancestor and James himself has done as a matter of policy:

James McCullen/Destro:

"Never get caught selling to both sides."

So, within the symbolism presented in the movie, Cobra seems to be a pastiche of these many tropes: Freemasons, New World Order, Illuminati, even 9/11 theories. But there is one more outré – and obvious – trope to touch upon:


Conspiracy theorist David Icke, among others, have managed to wrap up all the aforementioned themes into a mega-meta-theory that has in its heart the following premise: the real culprits of the New World Order, the real villains, are "Reptilian" aliens who have been work through Masonry, Illuminati, et al in order to take over the world.

And so we are led back to...Cobra.


Now, if we wish to take other aspects of the G.I. Joe mythos into consideration, the 1987 cartoon G.I. Joe: The Movie specifically refers to an ancient reptilian race as being the ancestors of modern Cobra– complete with Cobra Commander being originally some sort of reptile-like humanoid himself. This mythology almost exactly falls in line with the various "reptilian" theories out there in conspiracy-land.


But it gets better.

Let's drop Cobra for a bit and focus on G.I. Joe. If there was one thing G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra lacked it was a full defining of this organization – I found the team to be a little on the hollow side in comparison with the dastardly ham of the Cobra Crew. But the one thing we do know is that it is international and not beholden to any one country. And it's led by the charismatic (well, as charismatic as some of the wooden actors in this movie get) General Hawk. The G.I. Joe insignia also is of a Hawk with a star.

The hawk is the mythological symbol of the Egyptian God Horus (a falcon is another symbol of Horus – I refer you to Horus stand-in Lt. Falcon from G.I. Joe: The Movie).




Horus is a Sky God that represents the New Age, and is usually interpreted as a good guy (unless you are some fundamentalist Christian or something). How convenient, then, that G.I. Joe/General Hawk's secret headquarters is in Egypt, under the pyramids.

Further, do you know who Horus's main enemy is?

Apep/Set

Set. The Egyptian snake god. (Though this connection of Set with snakes is a later development that took place when he began to be associated with the giant serpent god Apep. Set originally looked like a sort of anteater).

Oh, the enmity between Horus and his uncle Set goes way back, ever since Set killed his dad. Once Horus got so mad at Set that he ripped off one of his testicles. That's pretty mad (to be fair, Set was trying to bone his own nephew at the time). So we are talking an ancient, iconic struggle here – just like that near-ancient, iconic struggle between G.I. Joe/General Hawk and Cobra. Why is the G.I. Joe franchise so insanely popular? Maybe part of the reason is that it taps into deep symbolism ingrained in the mass consciousness.


Worship of Set/Apep, and snake gods of many different types, is related to both Illuminati-type conspiracy theories as well as those of the "reptilians." There is also a correlation between the ancient snake/amphibian gods and the Cthulhu mythos. The Lovecraftian gods dwell deep with the earth and water, where Cobra's secret base is. Further, the exact location of the Cobra HQ – the Arctic – further relates to the conspiracy meta-theory.

The underwater lair of the Cthulhu gods of yore...

...and the home base for Cobra

As uber-Occultist Helena Blavatsky has written:

"Even in our day, science suspects beyond the Polar seas, at the very circle of the Arctic Pole, the existence of a sea which never freezes and a continent which is ever green."

This secret "evergreen" continent in the Arctic, the story goes, may even be host to a race of lost super-men. A lot of this related mythos has, unfortunately, been twisted to fit Nazi mythologies, and certainly Cobra has shades of that fascist group as well.

A last point of interest to be discussed here is the Mars/Egypt connection. The name of McCullen/Destro's arms company is M.A.R.S. There are conspiracy theories linking Mars to Egypt, referring to so-called "pyramids" found on Mars. Also, there is the "Face" on Mars that some believe represents a creature similar to Egypt's Sphinx. The Sphinx is related to Horus – again we go back to the General Hawk/Horus/Egypt connection.


This brings up the question as to where both Cobra and G.I. Joe gets their superior weaponry and technology from. My guess? Extraterrestrial origins. That's right my friends: we are led perfectly into a Transformers/G.I. Joe movie! (I took special note of almost exactly the same shot of the pyramids as in Rise Of Cobra in the trailer for Transformers 2 on my G.I. Joe DVD).

Where does G.I. Joe & Cobra get their highly-advanced tech (like accelerator suits) from?

Maybe it's from these guys

Perhaps the weaponry was handed down, via "Ancient Astronauts"/Annunaki (which figures like Horus & Set are believed to be by some esoteric researchers), to arefully maintained bloodlines like the McCullens. Who on the "good guy" side might have received these weapons? Remember: G.I. Joe's Lady Jaye is related to McCullen/Destro.

At any rate, the avatars of these ancient gods Horus and Set now continue the struggle of good and evil, the fight for the prize (extraterrestial technology) that is likened to the forbidden apple of knowledge...falling in line once again exactly into the meta-theory promulgated via so many individuals and websites.








There is so much more I could discuss, but it would take several posts. For example, the origin of Cobra Commander (Frankenstein/Darth Vader mythos that has also been recently explored in the character of Deadpool from X-Men Origins: Wolverine). I did some research into the connection of Destro and the historical The Man in the Iron Mask. There is also apparently an episode of the original G.I. Joe cartoon that goes into the Egyptian mythology in some detail (the cartoon series itself is a goldmine of great stories and rich symbolism).

Lastly, this post is not a justification/endorsement of any one conspiracy theory, but rather an illustration of how a piece of popular culture may encompass a great deal of ancient & modern mythology and symbols. I think the bottom line regarding such matters is that it's just better to know rather than passively take in...

...because knowing is half the battle.

(note pyramid-shape behind Joes)

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Star Trek's "The Cage" And "The Gods Of Eden"

Well, Netflix Instant is streaming the original Star Trek TV series -- and may I first say how impressed I am with how well these episodes hold up over time! I've watched them all several times over during the course of my life since early childhood, and they only get better for me.

In this post I'll be focusing on the Star Trek pilot "The Cage" -- which the network tossed back to creator Gene Roddenberry as being "too cerebral." (It's a miracle the original series was able to stay as long on the air as it did).

Heading the Enterprise in this episode is not Captain James T. Kirk but Captain Christopher Pike. Pike is played with equal-parts pathos and leading-man good looks by Jeffrey Hunter, an actor best known for portraying Jesus Christ in the movie "King of Kings." Joining Hunter is Majel Barett as the ultra-serious Number One, and Leonard Nimoy as a somewhat shaggier and rough-around-the-edges Mr. Spock. Certainly not the crew we're used to -- with not nearly the same chemistry -- but generally decent enough to help make this an enjoyable episode despite some of the more "primative" aspects of the pilot. (Think a really great episode of The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits.)

Jesus Christ and Christopher Pike

"The Cage" focuses on a theme that the series will return to over and over again -- that of a superior alien race (or gods, or robots, or what have you) capturing human specimens to observe/enslave. The episode's antagonists, the large-headed Talosians, see humans as just another animal to keep and study in their menagerie of creatures. What they seek to do in this episode is breed Pike with their captive/"guest" Vina and basically create a slave race of humans to populate their planet -- a basic theme that runs through much of the "Ancient Astronaut" and Custodian theories regarding the origins of human life and culture on planet Earth.

"The Earth is a farm. We are someone else's property," succinctly wrote researcher Charles Fort early last century. The late Zecharia Sitchin claimed to have translated ancient Mesopotamian tablets that told a tale of a superior aliens, the Anunnaki, who cultivated humanity through genetic manipulation as a hybrid slave race to serve them. What is interesting is that Sitchin's theories dovetail right into the events in the Book of Genesis in the Bible -- specifically, the stories of Adam and Eve and Noah's Ark, both specificaly referenced in "The Cage." The so-called God/gods are, according to the theory, really these Annunaki extraterrestrials.

Building on the Ancient Astronaut research of Sitchin and "Chariots of the Gods" author Erich von Däniken, author William Bramley in his book "The Gods of Eden" posited that humanity are the "property" of extraterrestrials/gods he refers to as the "Custodial Society." As Fort also wrote, these superior beings see the Earth as just a farm, and humans no better than animals.

Seen in light of the Ancient Astronaut/Custodian hypothesis and its relation to myth/religion, the planet Pike lands on, Talos IV, is an Eden of sorts, run by the alien/gods known as the Talosians. The Talosians placate what are essentially their captives/zoo creatures through the use of highly believable telepathic illusions -- basically, virtual reality. As long as Pike and Vina choose to not look behind the curtain and accept these illusions, paradise is maintained. Attempts to pierce the veil, however -- to metaphorically eat from the Tree of Knowledge -- results in terrible mental pain. Just in case viewers miss the allusion to the Biblical tale, Vina repeatedly refers to her and Pike as being an "Adam and Eve" on Talos IV.

(It is interesting to note that von Däniken and other Ancient Astronaut theorists identify the Greek mythological figure Talos as being in reality some sort of extraterrestrial flying craft or weapon)

With their cold, emotionless, behavior, insatiable drive for observation and experiments, and telepathic abilities, the Talosians also bring to mind reported sightings/encounters with aliens. Indeed, the Talosians have the "typical alien look" down pat, with their large craniums and greyish-blue skin. They also bear an uncanny resemblance to the Guardians of the Universe from the Green Lantern comic books (which first appeared in 1960), a (mostly benevolent) alien race who also assumed a role of superiority over not just humans but the galaxy as a whole:

Interesting to note that Roddenberry, like Green Lantern Hal Jordan in the comic books, was an Air Force pilot.

The Talosians -- and many described/depicted aliens in general -- also look very similar to an extraterrestrial/extradimensional entity occultist Aleister Crowley reportedly channeled in 1918, around roughly the same period in which Fort was writing about human zoos, "Lam."

Crowley's channeled entity Lam, and a screenshot from "The Cage" of a sketch of a Talosian

Curiously, Roddenberry was apparently no stranger to channeled entities himself, having worked with an organization in 1975 called "Lab-9" who claimed to be in contact with a group of extraterrestrials called The Council Of Nine (who identified themselves as the figures upon which the ancient Egyptians based their gods). The story goes that Lab-9 hired Roddenberry to write a television script based on the "return" of The Nine, and the man based the main character on himself. When the task of revising the script went to his assistant, an additional in intriguing element was added to the story -- that Roddenberry's fictional alter-ego channeled his successful 1960s television show from The Nine!

One has to wonder if Roddenberry really did receive any sort of otherwordly inspiration for the TV show Star Trek, or at least tapped into some collective well of primal, mythological themes. At any rate, while the man was a self-described agnostic and humanist, and allegedly instructed the writers on the show not to refer to religious themes, "The Cage" is explicitly presented as a twisted Adam and Eve tale told with a heavy dose of alien interference. Its message? That humans prefer freedom above all other things, including life (you know, unless you are horribly disfigured in an accident because your silly alien rescuers/surgeons never saw a human before).

Actor Jeffrey Hunter chose not to return to Star Trek after the pilot, and his role was recast in a later pair of episodes based on that first show, entitled "The Menagerie." In "Menagerie" Christopher Pike is now horribly burned and paralyzed as a result of an accident on his ship, and Spock kidnaps him back to the planet of the Talosians in order that he might benefit from their illusion-creating abilities and live with Vina in a happy telepathically-induced Eden. Like the Biblical Eden, the two can live out their years in a perfect paradise, having no desire, given their true forms, to partake of anything from the Tree of Knowledge and thus break the spell.

Hunter died in 1969, after a series of strokes leading to a fall down a flight of stairs and subsequent brain hemorrhage.

Note: There are many other aspects to this episode that I could have covered here. The Talosians were also apparently very interested in breeding, and when Pike initially spurns Vina, the aliens beam in other female Enterprise crew members as substitutes. The question then becomes: what type of woman does ruggedly handsome protagonist Pike really want? The intelligent and serious Number One, the very young and nubile Yeoman Colt, or the sexual "animal" green-skinned Orion dancer? (a whole post could just be written on the symbology of green-skinned females in pop-culture and mythology)

Further, I've always been interested in the character of Christopher Pike -- while completely different from Kirk (who has more of a roguish charm and sense of humor), I can't help wondering "what might have been."

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