When in Rome

 

 

I started making this sync video back in January 2013 and finally got round to completing it last week.

I hit a couple of snags along the way which slowed things down, but in hindsight these snags appear to have been put there for good reason.  Sync reminds me that NOW is the perfect time to share this with friends.

Confirmation came via @Seallion thanks to his new Charlize Theron videos and Rose-tinted tweets.

I like how Jake started with the THORN (Charlize THeRON) and then moved on to the ROSE.

Thorn to Rose feels like a natural transition.

I came up with the name "When in Rome" back in January and only recently discovered that there's a movie which shares the same title.

Kristen Bell, seen above with Roses growing out of her name
will be playing a lead role in new Disney movie Frozen.

monster mouth anyone?!

She voices the main character Anna...or Rose-Anna.

Kristen also starred in this movie which combines the Rome/Frozen/Rose elements quite nicely.

In Roman Kristen plays a character named ISIS...or ICE-is.

Which brings us to the Ice-Man.....

 

.....who was kissed by a Rose.

In Spartan actor Val Kilmer is on the hunt for the president's kidnapped daughter who happens to be played by actress Kristen Bell.

Ice-Man inside the eye of Ice-is

Ice Man = Eyes Man

 ICE causes things to SINK/SYNC.

Jack and Rose covered in Frost.

 Jack and Rose.

If we follow this thread to the night sky then we find that Betelgeuse is a red supergiant located in Orion.

On a clear night Orion the Hunter can be seen wielding his celestial Bow so it makes sense that the supergiant Betelgeuse should also entrain with this particular weapon.

Some interpretations show Orion holding a Lion in place of a Bow, so from a sync perspective the Lion and Bow now merge into one.

Pray for the Hunter (Orion)

Let's go off on a different tangent by considering that:

A Rose = Arrows

The 'Bow' of a ship is the forward part of the hull, or the tip.

It's interesting then to find Michael Keaton (Beetlejuice/Betelgeuse) mirroring the scene from Titanic where Leo (resonating Lion) stands at the Bow holding a Rose.

...stands at the Bow holding Arrows.

So what is the Hunter aiming at?

The dog-star...or god-star...which is attributed to the Egyptian Isis...or Ice-is.

Now I started making my new When in Rome video at the beginning of 2013 so I had no idea that it's release would coincide with everything happening over in Syria.

The words Syria and Sirius sound similar to one another but the connection goes a little deeper than that.  Notice that Syria has a pair of pentagrams on its flag, the very same symbol which instigated this blog back in 2009.

For more on the Sirius/Twin Star connection check out Paw Prints & Pentagrams Part 1 and Part 2 

and maybe throw in some Lost Star of Myth and Time for good measure.

So what does Sirius have to tell us about the crIsis in Syria?

Well this post started off with Icy/Frozen overtones so temperature seems to be the key here.  If you've been watching the news then you'll have noticed that things were heating up with talk of air strikes.

Global Warming = Global Worming

And then all of a sudden, just as things were about to reach boiling point, it all seems have cooled off slightly, even though the battle against the rebels continues to rage on.

With Ice-is at the heart of the situation things will probably continue to cool until we reach breaking point in November (coinciding with the Disney's release of Frozen).

The cracks have already appeared on the surface...

 

...and it won't be long before everything Sinks/Syncs to a whole new level.

At the start of my new video Grant Morrison gives us a glimpse of the world through new eyes. When I first watched the interview a few years ago it really struck a chord in me.  Grants words rang with truth and his description of the Hyper-Entity, the 'Big Me' who creates all life and who we return to in death, reminded me that everything that happens, regardless of how good or bad it might appear on the surface, is all part of the master plan.

The 'Big Me' is the Sole/Soul of our planet and each step we take is perfectly aligned with earth/heart.

Like a hunter, the 'Big Me' lurks in the shadows of the subconscious
priming his Rain Bow...waiting for the opportunity to unleash a rose (arrows)

 Despite being everyone and everything the 'Big Me' is invisible to the naked I.
 Once we realize that everything is a reflection, we can reach through and find Peace. 

Shortly after completing 'When in Rome' it dawned on me that Jack Frost is one of the main characters in Grant Morrison's amazing comic series The Invisibles.

I crossed paths with The Invisibles a good few years ago and immediately fell in love with Grants unique style of story telling.  Reading a Grant Morrison comic is a bit like being on psychedelics without actually taking any drugs.

Although the conscious mind can struggle with his interwoven and convoluted plot points (mine certainly did) I think the resulting confusion helps him communicate directly with the core of the reader.  Confusion creates a gap in the subconscious and he uses this fertile space to plant his seeds.  Or magic beans.

It's kind of like he's working on a different frequency...or time zone.

The comic series follows a delinquent named Dane McGowan who gets recruited by a group of psychic misfits called The Invisibles.  He hooks up with a hobo named Tom O'Bedlam, smokes some blue mold found growing on a subway wall, and his Jack Frost initiation begins.

I like how Dane's first contact with Jack Frost, his spiritual totem or Daemon, has him highlighted by the number 17. 

This particular number pops up a couple of times in Grants series.

 

If you flip the number 17 you get the letters LI or Li.

Li refers to the underlying reason and order of nature.

Wiki:  The tao is a certain kind of order, and this kind of order is not quite what we call order when we arrange everything geometrically in boxes, or in rows. That is a very crude kind of order, but when you look at a plant it is perfectly obvious that the plant has order. We recognize at once that it is not a mess, but it is not symmetrical and it is not geometrical looking. The plant looks like a Chinese drawing, because they appreciated this kind of non-symmetrical order so much that it became an integral aspect of their painting. In the Chinese language this is called li, and the character for li means the markings in jade. It also means the grain in wood and the fiber in muscle. We could say, too, that clouds have li, marble has li, the human body has li.

We all recognize it, and the artist copies it whether he is a landscape painter, a portrait painter, an abstract painter, or a non-objective painter. They all are trying to express the essence of li. The interesting thing is, that although we all know what it is, there is no way of defining it. Because tao is the course, we can also call li the watercourse, and the patterns of li are also the patterns of flowing water.

We see those patterns of flow memorialized, as it were, as sculpture in the grain in wood, which is the flow of sap, in marble, in bones, in muscles. All these things are patterned according to the basic principles of flow. In the patterns of flowing water you will find all kind of motifs from Chinese art, immediately recognizable, including the S-curve in the circle of yang-yin. So li means then the order of flow, the wonderful dancing pattern of liquid, because Lao-tzu likens tao to water: The great tao flows everywhere, to the left and to the right, It loves and nourishes all things, but does not lord it over them.

Li is the watercourse, the order of flow.

Li is therefore an integral part of Li-fe.

Follow Li-fe back to the source and you arrive at the Big Bang.

Elsewhere in the series Grant depicts the Big Bang in terms of a swirling Cy-clone.

Cyclones and Clones and Clones and Clowns

Which brings us to another of Grant Morrisons creations - Aztek: The Ultimate Man.

Morrison was writing The Invisibles at the same time Aztek was released in 1996, so we would expect to see some kind of bleed through between the two.

AZTEK = KETZA

or QUETZA-coatl

Mayan God of Li-ght

Aztek's back story hints that his Mask (the source of his godly power) was once preserved in Ice.

In one of the issues he encounters a Roman centurion who calls himself The Lizard King.

In The Sync Book 2 I wrote about a vision I had while lying in bed one evening.  I saw myself being swallowed by a serpent and later discovered that this same imagery could be found on ancient Mayan pyramids and statues.  After a series of 'coincidences' I learned that the serpent from my vision had a name, Quetzalcoatl, and last year I decided to make a video about it - The Sync Serpent. 

I also did a few sketches to remind myself what it's like to be 'swallowed'.

The reason I mention this is because the image above is simply another way of re-imagining Grant Morrisons 'long trailing worm' thingy.

In the video interview Grant says to imagine yourself as the leading point of you (the head peering out of the snakes mouth) with a million different versions of you (clones) moving backwards through time (the serpents body).

The Serpent keeps us rooted in the Tree of Life and if you freeze frame it'd look something like this.

You could also imagine it in terms of a train snaking it's way through the NOW.

Or another way of visualizing it would be to think of yourself as a Ship.  You're standing at the very front of the vessel, at the bow, and all the stuff down in the cargo hold and all the stuff up on deck is everything you've accumulated during this life-time; your memories, your dreams, all the thoughts you've ever had and all the things you've ever said and done.  You're the captain of your own Ship - I'm King of the World - flowing from one moment to the next.

This concept can also take the shape of an Arrow. 

Everything started with the Big Bang (or Big Twang) and since that moment of conception we've all been traveling through space and time at the speed of flight.

 We represent the Arrow-head.
The wooden shaft connects us to the fletching (or feathered wings)
which helps determine the angle/angel of (f)light.

Robin's Hood is that of a Snakes.
It keeps our Bodhi/Body grounded in the Serpent/preSent moment while all this is going on.

Despite being frozen in time we continue to evolve and become WORM.

Better living through Clown-ing

See what you can dig up.

Worms? 

Grant Morrison's Aztek and The Invisibles proved to be a successful and opened a doorway for the likes of Batman R.I.P.

 Michael Keaton (Jack Frost) and Val Kilmer (Ice-Man) have both been The Dark Knight.

And whenever Batman appears on my sync-radar (which happened while making my new video) I tend to get sweaty palms and palpitations.

The reason being is that he represents the Dark Knight of the Soul...and the last time I went through one of those (back in 2010 I think) my whole world seemed to fall apart.  My thirteen year relationship came to an abrupt end and I found myself living back at my parents with no home, with limited access to my kids, while caught up in a whirlwind of depression/anger/frustration.

In hindsight, however, this proved to be the best thing that could have happened.  From Ground Zero the only way is up and sometimes a complete reboot is necessary when Ctrl-Alt-Delete just doesn't cut it anymore.

Just before my circumstances took a nose dive I came up with this video.  I like to think that my subconscious was preparing me for the Dark Knight which was looming on the horizon.

 The Dark Knight is about facing your inner-most fears and then moving beyond them.

Once you've recognized your fear you can make the ascent.



And then let it go.

To bring this back to recent worldly events we could say that Syria is currently going through a Dark Knight of the Sol.  You'd probably agree that there's some serious shit going on over there right now.

At the moment the Dark Knight (George Clone-y) only has eyes for Syria.

The big nations are threatening to crash down upon the underdog Syria if they don't comply with demands.  Syria has run out of options and now faces a brick wall with little chance of climbing over it.  When you hit a dead end like this the only way through is to Sink/Sync and hope for the best.

The previous 'Dark Knight of the Soul' began twelve years ago on September 11th 2001.

A global reboot was in order:

And we see here that the Dark Knight (playing a character named Harry Berg...as in Ice-Berg) was instigated by the 'Big Me'.

The nations are applying pressure to Syria and the whole thing has a strong whiff of 9/11 about it.  Syria could turn into another Iraq or Afghanistan but I think this time round we've learned a thing or two.

If everyone keeps their cool then we can pass through the crisis virtually unscathed.

I'm not saying it's all going to be rosie
but there's an opportunity here to learn from the past.
And wouldn't that be nice?

Hope you enjoyed the video and got something out of my mad ramblings.

                                                 What's in a name? that which we call a rose
                                                       By any other name would smell as sweet;
                                                       So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd,
                                                       Retain that dear perfection which he owes
                                                       Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
                                                       And for that name which is no part of thee
                                                       Take all myself.
                                                                                          ~William Shakespeare 

Much love

R