Author: MKW Publishing

That’s The Ticket

~ MKW Publishing ~ 7 Comments

A ticket to something strange, adventurous and magical. There are a few films that I notice have that as a theme, where there is an offer of something mystical and unknown, and a sort of verbal contract is entered before being represented with a physical item in the form of a ticket. Maybe a new twist on the signing away your soul idea, because there is no firm awareness, or signature it seems as though it is more benign. But what is being offered is often an exchange, as there is a need from the ticket bearer, although it might not at first be obvious what that is. I’ll put the most obvious one first, as this should be familiar to most people.

Charlie and the chocolate factory – the golden ticket being the hook for this tale, with a very odd journey thereafter to reveal what the ticket may lead to. Exposing some of the weaker traits in people where greed and selfishness are the main features of their personality. Showing how sometimes with very little incentive, people will happily throw their own to the wolves, or instantly separate themselves from others if they think they might ‘win’.

Big – although the film was centred around an arcade game, it was once the ticket had been issued, informing the bearer ‘Your wish has been granted’, that the magic was activated. The contract being sealed with you accepting the ticket. In that instance, making a child be an adult and go through adult experiences for months, before it manages to be reversed.

Last Action Hero – a magic movie ticket, when used, creates a portal between the movie screen and the ‘real world’, transporting the lead character into the story, who then becomes part of it. And then a little like we see around us today, where it seems the reverse has happened like at the end of the film, where the movie characters start coming out into our world instead, and the crazy storylines and scripts infiltrate reality.

Polar express – on the face of it, a nice film for children, set at Christmas and is about journeying to the North Pole to visit Lapland I think. But from what I remember, there are no parents, the kids are all picked up in their jammies in the middle of the night, and there is an odd conductor who oversees all of this. The ticket being hugely important, and gold again I believe, with the moment of panic when the main character can’t find his ticket and thinks he will be excluded.

It all seems to be about enticement, secrecy, and agreeing to be part of the situation voluntarily. See my article They Are Vampires, But Not As You Know It, for more on that. And in these films, and others I’m sure, it’s usually put forward as magical, outrageous and thrilling in a good way mostly. Almost as if it’s priming young minds, to believe that when and if they find themselves being offered a golden ticket, it will be exciting and great things will follow. But as with many other illusions of this world, I fear that’s just how it seems…

(c) K Wicks

Green

~ MKW Publishing ~ 2 Comments

A colour most are familiar with, and one we are surrounded by in the natural world. In the man-made one, however, it has a different purpose.

Soylent Green – a fictional ‘product’ in the film of that name, where it was the food available after society has shafted itself. The twist being that soylent green was humans being fed back to humans unknowingly. Since we’ve had reports of human remains being found in macdonalds, is it so far-fetched to think they do? Maybe that’s what it stood for with the yellow and red colour scheme, a different coding system using colours. See my article Seeing Red.

The Green agenda, people are now all too familiar with this term. Net zero, taxes, restrictions, and all the other hoo-ha that is being thrown in. Again, the word green being used to denote ‘nature’ but in fact the opposite is what gets proposed. A bait and switch, expecting grass, but you end up with AstroTurf.

Green screens in moviemaking to deceive the eyes and mind, a magical illusion you knowingly take part in. But can we tell when it is not so knowingly?

Green matrix background – when they show you ‘the code’. A glimpse into how the simulated construct appears behind the scenes, as never-ending streams and lines of green symbols. An intricate web of tiny green screens, creating an overall illusion, that the electric signals in your brain then pick up and projects – creating what we then know as a three dimensional ‘reality’. Or something like that.

Green of Oz – the emerald city and the green curtain that hid the truth. But it is said in the original stories, that the city wasn’t emerald at all, but the visitors were made to wear green glasses when they arrived, so that it only appeared as green and sparkly. A more manual version of that matrix code perhaps.

Green pops up in mythology here and there too, for the colour of skin. Reminding me of the strange children to appear from a cave in Cornwall that had green skin, mentioned in Appearing From Nowhere. In Hinduism, the Goddess Matangi is represented as emerald green in colour, the Egyptian God Osiris is known to be green in many depictions too, to signify rebirth and growth they say. The Green Man myth from the British Isles along the similar vein. And for a more modern idea, we have The Incredible Hulk, not quite the same, and with quite a different backstory, but kind of fits when you realise how fantastical the ancient stories were, he might just fit quite well.

They say you get green with envy too (as well as anger as above with the Hulk) – that having its roots in Greek mythology and finding new footing with Shakespear’s Othello. And with symbolism and numerology being quite significant these days, maybe chromatics are important too. How they affect us, our mood, thoughts, feelings and ideas. So, there may just be more to green and other colours, than meets the eye…

(c) K Wicks

Are You Dreaming?

~ MKW Publishing ~ 3 Comments

Dreaming and the subconscious world we inhabit each night is an interesting subject. And one I have already speculated upon in my articles Dreams and A Quantum Leap, In Dreams and will probably reference this article in one being worked on currently called Sleep Stalking. But this one is for the meanings and beliefs around them from other cultures and times and how they were viewed, and to a point, probably still are today. It’s a strange thing that no-one can really define, test or prove with any certainty, yet many people experience them in some form. It’s interesting once you start to read about how they are viewed or understood by different parts of the world.

Baku Yokai – Japanese dream devourer “The Baku Yokai is revered as a powerful force of good and a sacred protector of humanity. It has been considered a symbol of good luck, health, and protection against nightmares and evil spirits. The image of the Baku has been used as a talisman and amulet to ward off bad dreams and illness.”

Aboriginal – Dreamtime “The Dreaming is used to represent Aboriginal concepts of Everywhen, during which the land was inhabited by ancestral figures, often of heroic proportions or with supernatural abilities. These figures were often distinct from gods, as they did not control the material world and were not worshipped but only revered“. I personally prefer the their term for it Everywhen, rather than the anthropologists naming it dreamtime.

Egyptians believed dreams were messages from the Gods. Although they had Bes the God of dreams, and Tutu, to protect from bad dreams, so gods protecting you from gods?

Chinese theory is yin and yang are out of balance and dreams come into being. Which ties into lots of the dreamology discussions in modern times, tying it into psychology and waking mental disturbances causing subconscious nocturnal struggles. But could it be that we are given a chance in our dreams to rebalance our waking lives, letting us run through some things that wouldn’t be possible in real life, or would take too long? Maybe that only counts if you remember the dream, I’m not sure, I still haven’t decided my position on that idea.

Greek mythology had a land of dreams. Morpheus being their God of dreams and nightmares and the subconscious sleep realm. Fitting then perhaps that they chose that name for the character in The Matrix.

Mayan – “the Tzotzil Maya see dreams as a way to “live a full life” and “stay alive.” They believe that dreams are a means of “seeing with the soul” what we can’t fully comprehend with our body and mind.”

The main religions also believe dreams often carry a message or prophecy from the divine.

Night Hag – closely related to the below definition of nightmare, this is now mostly known as sleep paralysis these days, not an incubus sitting on your chest giving you nightmares. But it is said that was the belief for quite some time and still is in certain places, folklore of it is found in Scandinavia, Europe, Africa, Canada, US. They have similar tales in China, South Asia and South East, The Middle East and so on. All having a myth about ghosts or demons affecting you while you sleep and paralysing your earthly body while you are forced to endure the experience.

Nightmare – original meaning – a mythological demon or goblin who torments others with frightening dreams. 

Day Dreaming – “Daydreaming is the stream of consciousness that detaches from current, external tasks when attention drifts to a more personal and internal direction. There are various names of this phenomenon including mind-wandering, fantasy, spontaneous thoughts, etc.”

An odd thing really, when you think so many clearly experience it and it would appear to be a common occurrence, why it should be given a demonic overtone. Why is that the go-to for explanation, when we clearly have logical minds among us and always have. Why does the fantastical or the hysterical win out when to comes to coming to a conclusion? Or maybe the question should be, why do we suffer from such horrible visions in the form of nightmares, when we are supposed to be in the resting cycle? It’s not very restful or relaxing to be anxious about going to sleep, worried about what you will have to go through in a place you don’t recognise, where time doesn’t exist and you are at the mercy of the experience. But dreams entice you and can make the sleep world seem so much safer than the real world, until you start to see like Alice did when she fell sleep, and then fell down the rabbit hole. Whether you are asleep or awake, not all is as it seems…

Max Ernst

(c) K Wicks

Depends How You Spin It

~ MKW Publishing ~ 1 Comment

SPN numbers, which became known spin codes. A secret coding system to apply to discharge forms of military personnel, to initiate a programme of exclusions from society from within corporations.

The following article I found covers the basics – Denied a job or VA benefits?

“Those SPN numbers were created to hide secret comments by the military, many of them negative and harmful.  The major corporations all across America were provided with a conversion chart for those numbers.

By 1960 those secret codes were being rampantly abused causing many vets to be denied jobs, loans, home mortgages, veterans benefits, and life insurance, among others.”

The article then goes on to list the codes and their hidden meaning. It certainly does go some way to explain the how when it comes to understanding the situation many found themselves in. Simply put down as mental illness and addiction issues after such an experience, but perhaps it could be how they were treated upon return from such conflicts that contributed to such instances. Not always applauded as hero’s if the propaganda machine had turned the people back home against war, they get used as experiments and front-line fodder for political gain, and weirdly excluded when you get back.

I then think to the why for all of that. Why would you want people you have spent years training for purpose, not able to fit in, get on and convert back to be a normal member of society. Perhaps it is because they pose a threat thereafter in the darkened minds of the war mongers, and because they are trained and supposedly the most patriotic of the people, they would be the most likely to mobilise should there be a more local threat than they had previously been used to.

And that’s what I ended up realising, when thinking about war being for the benefit of those who organise them. They also like to cover a few bases, so psychologically it makes sense to encourage the brave and patriotic to sign up with propaganda first, and a backup plan of forced conscription to catch more. As they know the projected losses already, they remove a certain amount of genes from the overall pool. Eliminating entire male lines in some cases. Then you use them to test weapons, drugs, strategies, etc, to perfect the methods of war, also creating sub industries upon return. Trauma and violence creating a different society in certain minds, changing people beyond repair in mind, as well as physically. Or changing a family when they come back as someone else, or not at all. The cruelty starts from the moment they convince people that war is necessary, and everything that follows thereafter just gives it a different layer…

(c) K Wicks