Christopher Knowles finds occult symbolism in pop culture and science impossible to ignore.

photo by: Skeptiko

(News announcer) When you celebrate science, perhaps it’s best to not get carried away. The inauguration ceremony included some, how shall we put it, original choreography.

It was quite bizarre… do you associate this kind of dancing with the inauguration of a tunnel?

The science journalists you’re listening to are commenting on the opening ceremony of the $7 billion technological marvel that is the Gotthard Tunnel in Switzerland. Here’s another report on this ceremony that the Daily Mail called, “One of the most bizarre opening ceremonies in history.”

Dancing construction workers, angels with giant heads and whatever these things are. It’s a surreal ceremony…

If you’ve read anything about this ceremony or saw video from the event, you know the uproar was about the overt, and I mean overt, occult symbology on display for some of Europe’s leading political figures.

Now look, I know sometimes a goat-headed devil looking figure being worshipped by a flying baby with wings is just good clean fun for a lot of folks, but the recurring use of these unmistakable, and again, let me stress that in the case of the Gotthard Tunnel, the symbology was not hidden — it was really, really in your face — well the use of these occult images and themes, particularly in science and in sciency pop culture, is something that’s hard to just brush aside. At least that’s the opinion of today’s guest, author and creator of The Secret Sun website, Christopher Knowles (author of, Our Gods Wear Spandex):

Christopher Knowles: We saw that Gotthard, Switzerland Tunnel, that weird hour-long ritual that so many people have commented on…

Wait a second, before I play the rest of this clip, let me point out that what’s really great about Chris’ work, is that when he tackles this stuff, he dives deep:

Christopher Knowles: The thing is, is that people just look at that and just say, “Oh that’s Satan, that’s Lucifer and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,” and it’s like, no, you don’t understand what these people are really about, you don’t understand what is really being put across here, you don’t understand the god that this goat figure really represents. It’s not Satan, it’s not Baphomet, it’s not Lucifer, it’s a much more, almost a more troubling figure in history.

Now, if you’re not yet convinced that the gods of  Mesopotamia, Egypt and Greece are really relevant to your life, you might want to take a step back and ask yourself, who does care about such things?

Christopher Knowles: In that same ceremony we see this woman with this giant baby head and these wings, sort of flown in to this tunnel, it’s just the weirdest thing. I mean, you just can’t believe you’re seeing it, it’s mind boggling. But that’s actually Eros, that’s not Lucifer. These things have specific meanings, they have specific historical context that people overlooked because they don’t understand, they don’t know the history and if you don’t know the history, you don’t know what is really being said here and you don’t know what is really being believed here. You know, you don’t understand what these people really thing.

Okay, but maybe you’re still not yet convinced that you should care. Well, let me get all Skeptiko on you, because as you know the primary focus of this show has been consciousness science and an attempt to answer the, “is there more” question. That is, are we more than biological robots in a meaningless universe...