A Door, or to be more precise, the door of a wardrobe or cupboard. With a fantastic story or magical adventure, if you go through and follow the lure that led you there. However, there was usually a price or penalty for straying into lands unknown, often with a dark undertone.
Narnia – a serious adventure ensues from this tale, and is one of the first ones I think of when it comes to crazy wardrobe lands.
Time Bandits – this is the second one I think of, again a thrill ride of events, with a demon like supreme being overshadowing the fun.
Poltergeist – not such a fun adventure on the other side of that door, and gives reason to wonder what might just be on the ‘other side’.
Monsters Inc – Doors to children’s bedrooms through their wardrobes, creepy as hell as a storyline. But because it’s animated and colourful, the weird under and overtones don’t seem to get discussed much.
Coraline – not quite a wardrobe or cupboard, but A Portal through a tiny bricked up door, not a wardrobe, but still the face of the portal to an alternate ‘reality’.
Alice in Wonderland – no door, but she fell through a rather long and strange tunnel. As with a few other tales of tunnels, the Woolpit Green Children and the origin of the cabbage patch kids. Although they are often said to be caves and tunnels, so the story widens once you start factoring in caves.
Winchester House (California) – a very strange house and one I was fortunate enough to visit many years ago. It has lots of features that don’t make sense, but one of them are doorways that open to solid brick walls – like the above in Coraline. And wardrobes that are doors to the next room. Weird on the face of it, but maybe not if it was perhaps for others to use, if you catch my drift.
But it seems there is definitely a theme of something lurking and using doorways as a gateway from somewhere else. And as I always say, it could just be imagination and good storytelling. Or it could be, something does have access through those portals, and is indeed, lurking…
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…
I thought it might be handy to put all my recipe links in one post, for me as well as anyone else who might like to use them. I’ll add to it as I get round to writing more down and trying new ones, but it’s a start – and here are my MKW Homemade Cosmetics – recipes, if you like the idea of making more at home.
The spiral appears many times throughout history. Artifacts, carvings and representations of it across various cultures and times.
And it’s a certain film that features it briefly that ties into this thought and is a good place to start. Dark City. Where the inhabitants are contained within a kind of illusion, where they are used as an experiment and kept from knowing what reality is, who they are and where they are from. One of the characters who has a ‘psychotic break’ is seen repeatedly drawing a spiral, to signify the endless entrapment, with no way out.
But it was seeing a few images that got me thinking, and linking things together as I do, having wondered on a few of them already. And it could well be that it’s just seeing patterns where we want to, as they say humans are prone to, but it could also be there actually is a pattern, and one to take notice of.
Pictures: Top left – time lapse of stars, Top right – the labyrinth on the floor of a cathedral, Middle left – The Aztec Calendar, Middle right – Diagram of the 9 circles of hell from Dante’s Inferno, Bottom left – the heliocentric model, Bottom right – An AI generated escape from the Matrix.
Like a repeating cycle you can’t escape, or aren’t meant to even be aware of maybe. But we appear to be, as theorised in my article Simulated, Again and Again. So, what is it? Are they pieces of a puzzle to how we are contained or a possible way out? With markers, ideas and clues being left and inscribed by previous generations for us to work out or add to? I wonder…
We entertain the fact we are being entertained. But it is no longer a relaxing jaunt, it’s become a full-on roller coaster of drama, horror and shock. Demonic, inhumane and relentless.
So how much is too much? Some of my other articles have touched on their methods and understanding of saturating our senses. Overloading us and trying to dismantle what is, and replace it with whatever that have deemed ‘better’. And using screens and technology has only made the reach bigger, but it seems that it almost can’t keep up with itself now. As if the script isn’t authorised entirely, not all the actors are holding the attention anymore, or aren’t good enough to carry on convincing people as they once did.
We are capable of filtering the mindless and endless stream of doom, if we choose. But many are so used to something else thinking for them, maybe they have forgotten how to? Or are lazy and don’t want to. And deciding what you take in takes effort and means being aware of what you are exposing yourself to. Not everyone appears to want or like that level of active participation in your own life and decisions. Instead preferring the idea that someone else has a manual for your feeling and experiences, and you should go to them for help, guidance and assistance in all life related matters. Just so you know, they don’t have that manual, because there isn’t one. But it makes for a ‘safe feeling’ to think there is one. Because it can honestly be quite scary for a moment, when you realise everyone else is making it up, or bumbling through as best they can.
So, all these tricks and traps of society, and having to navigate and factor in procedures, systems and other people fantasies, feelings and wants for the future gets a bit much. Seemingly just here to fulfil rich people’s ideas and ideals, pawns and cannon fodder for a rather elaborate cyclical game. Rinse and repeat, depress and dictate. It’s a strange bind we are in now though, where you want to ignore them and their grandiose plans, but as you are being factored into those plans, notice must be taken. But is it your attention that is required first, followed by thoughts, then feelings ending up nicely with a reaction. Which is what they want. Looking for somewhere to direct the frustration, or fear, or anger, they know it won’t get to go where it is needed. So it stays, unresolved and misdirected in the daily routine of just trying to live and get by. And perhaps they have come to rely on our instinctual responses, while simultaneously trying to quash and remould them, while we also upgrade or revisit them as needed. Working on old, outdated models of our behaviour too, trying to keep up with analysing what they are trying to influence, but it does feel as though it has taken a different turn, and one perhaps that was not foreseen or predicted. We shall see…
Go back, from where we are now, tracing a path from there to here. With gaps and unknowns of course, but I can’t help thinking they are more linked than I at first believed.
Mentioned in my article A Working Strategy, but only briefly as a side point, now I look at it in more detail. The Foundling Hospitals. At first I had just thought they had one in London, but it seems there were others. And I revisit this subject, as it would seem in these modern times too, children have and are being used as objects of experiment.
That comment coming to mind from Willard Graylin, a noted head of bioethics, who proposed the Warehouses of the Living Dead, to house bioemporuims of living cadavers. Where people could be spare body parts, being kept ‘alive’ by way of machines and respirators. Saying that by introducing those warehouses, they would no longer need to use prisoners, volunteers or mentally retarded children. Yes, implying that they already had a system of harvesting body parts from them. Horrifying and is covered a bit more in my article Perhaps.
But back to the Foundling hospital, the first one actually being in Dublin, Ireland in 1704. Strangely the two purposes of this being established was ‘to avoid deaths and murders of illegitimate children and to teach the Protestant faith’. Sounds quite weird and the opposite when you read how it went in the long term.
“Child deaths during transport to the hospital or whilst staying in the hospital were not infrequent”
And for some rather alarming stats on that, the words ‘not infrequent’ being an understatement. Constant would be more truthful.
“Between 1790 and 1796, some 5,216 infants were sent there, of whom 5,215 died. Between 1796 and 1826, 51,150 infants were admitted to the hospital, of whom 41,524 died”.
Now, it is said that following excavations, no remains or bodies have been found at the sites, yet the volume of deaths doesn’t appear to be disputed. Could this have been an early start to the rather sinister industries we have today, of child trafficking and using of body parts linked to the abortion industry specifically, and by extension the medical establishment.
That was just one of two sites in Ireland, the other being in Cork, and having very little detail about it. Shortly after, the London one opened, and as soon as you see it was petitioned by a ‘philanthropist’, and got many aristocrats and notable people on board, it doesn’t quite look right. Seems it was streamlined into a baby farming enterprise. Taking babies under 12 months, shipping them to the country for education until 4 or 5, then trained to be servants or apprentices and sent to work for your master on contract. Let me guess if any of the recipients of those ‘staff’ were the very same Lords and ladies who endorsed the project. Again making it rather lucrative to force people into giving up their children, or just taking them. And maybe that’s how they managed to control the workforce after a time, because over half of them had been trained and conditioned pretty much from birth. Making them more compliant servants with lower expectations and understanding, as they were meant to have. Keeping them down from day one.
It seems though that any institution that has ever appeared to be there to assist or help, has actually been a cover for a different purpose. And now making it so everyone goes through the same system and conditioning, churning out the next generation of workers and body parts. As it does seem that is all we are viewed as, even if the methods and mechanics of it have changed with the times. And maybe that worked for a couple of hundred years, so the workhouse and schools took over. Children allowed to grow up with their parents again, getting daily conditioning from them as they were trained, and then at school with the societal conditioning of the day. Seems like the wheels have come off that one a bit recently, so who knows what kind of institutions we will have in the future. But if we judge on them on past and present ones, we would do best to avoid them as if our lives depended on it…
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