Hallowe'en Countdown 2018: They Live ... Don't They?

Still from They Live (1988). Note the book behind the hero: On ESP by Edgar Cayce, which you can read for free online here. All stills and film © Universal Pictures. Reproduced under Fair Use. Image Source: IMDB.

On this blog, I have written about poverty and homelessness, the destruction of the middle classes, and how conspiracy theories provide dramatic and supernatural explanations for growing social inequality.

In 1988, horror film director John Carpenter made a film which tackled all these ideas. It was entitled They Live. Carpenter intended his film to be an attack on the Reagan era and 1980s' conspicuous consumption. The film suggests something prevalent in Millennial conspiracists' circles, namely, that the establishment élites are pawns of alien overlords who conceal their true appearance and feed off the energy of the impoverished common people. This is a metaphor for social alienation, racism, and socio-economic distress. But the film raises an additional question as to why They Live presented a story which many netizens now believe to be literally true.

Hallowe'en Countdown 2018: The Illuminati and the New Vampire Ouroboros

The Papal Audience Hall, Rome, Italy. Partly situated in Vatican City, the Paul VI Hall was designed by architect Pier Luigi Nervi and completed in 1971. The mouth of the serpent features an alien-looking sculpture of Jesus resurrecting from nuclear-bomb-created slag. Conspiracy theorists believe that the hall proves that the Vatican is secretly presiding over a neo-Babylonian Satanic sect of serpent-worshipers. Image Source: wykop.

Today's Hallowe'en countdown continues Monday's post on the ouroboros, the symbol of immortality behind the vampire story. The ouroboros myth reveals why populists and New Agers pair the reptile with the vampire in conspiracy theories about lizard aliens and blood-drinking élites.

David Icke is the main popularizer of the lizard alien hypothesis. David Icke: Conspiracy of the Lizard Illuminati (Part 2/2) (24 August 2012). Video Source: Youtube.

British ex-footballer David Icke is at the forefront of describing this new version of the ouroboros vampire, starting in his 1999 book, The Biggest Secret. Despite denials, he has laced his account of reptilian humanoid élites with anti-Semitism. He repackages anti-Semitism as anti-evil-space-alien, anti-Kabbalist, anti-Zionist, anti-Khazarian, anti-Babylonian Brotherhood, anti-moon-Death-Star, and anti-Saturn-worship. He claims that he opposes 'false Jews,' Freemasons, and Illuminists.

Icke was ridiculed throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. He only gained a following after the rise of social media and the concurrent 2008 recession, which was blamed on banking institutions and saw a corresponding explosion of anti-Semitism.

At the same time, graphics editing software became broadly available which was capable of subtly altering images and videos to create 'evidence' of lizard people. As a result, Icke now travels the world, talking for up to eleven hours at a stretch to packed audience halls. It is a new form of entertainment, and thousands of vloggers, bloggers, New Agers, and conspiracists have followed suit. They have expanded Icke's hypothesis to produce an enormous Millennial cosmology. Vox called it "the greatest political conspiracy [theory] ever created."

But the point is that it is not original. I think Icke derived his lizard people hypothesis from the ancient Egyptian mystery of the ouroboros, in which serpents were believed to be bound to the souls of kings and queens.

Hallowe'en Countdown 2018: The Order of the Dragon and the Vampire Ouroboros

Vampires are connected to the ouroboros, an ancient Egyptian symbol linking life and death. This is "an engraving of a woman holding an ouroboros in Michael Ranft's 1734 treatise on vampirrs." Notice the hourglass balanced on its edge in the bottom left corner, and the satyr playing the triangle above the woman. Click to enlarge. Image Source: Wiki.

Welcome to the month of October! Every year, this blog joins dozens of other blogs to count down to Hallowe'en (check out other participants here). I reserve this countdown for topics which are too weird, frightening and creepy to cover during the rest of the year. This month, I will be publishing new Hallowe'en posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

Vampires open the countdown this year. Vampire and other horror stories tie in strongly to modern conspiracy theories. During this countdown, I cover strange and sometimes offensive material. That doesn't mean I personally believe in, or endorse, those ideas.

The Old Vampire Ouroboros: The Order of the Dragon

The German poet and diplomat, Oswald von Wolkenstein (1376-1445), wearing an Order of the Dragon brooch with the serpent eating its tail. Portrait from the Innsbrucker Handschrift (1432). Notice the closed right eye, now a common gesture in photographs of celebrities. Image Source: Portrait in the Innsbruck manuscript of 1432 (Liederhandschrift B)/Wiki.

Serbian performance artist Marina Abramović using two snakes to cover her right eye and neck. Image Source: e-flux conversations.

The word 'Dracula' comes from the title granted the Wallachian rulers of Transylvania who were members of the chivalric Order of the Dragon, a group founded in 1408 to keep the Turks out of Europe.

The order started in Germany and Italy, but spread to the princely houses of Central Eastern Europe. Members of the order carried the signum draconis, the sign of the dragon, later displayed on the coats of arms of certain Hungarian noble families: Báthory, Bocskai, Bethlen, Szathmáry, Benyovszky, Kende and Rákóczi.

Engraving of an ouroboros by Lucas Jennis, in the 1625 alchemical tract, De Lapide Philosophico. Image Source: Wiki.