As story would go, Grant Morrison, rich beyond on all materialistic belief thanks to the success of his 1989 Batman : Arkham Asylum , travels to India to find enlightenment. He ascends a mountain, summits to a temple, takes a pull of air, and is promised enlightenment. Encountering nothing atop the mountain, Morrison returns to his hotel in Kathmandu and takes hash. He then begins to see the temple across the street from his hotel metamorphose into blobs of holographic-meta, rippling, dribbling material. These, he states, are mercurial sprites, and he watches them float into his hotel room. They speak to him, and ask him where he would like to go.. Alpha Centauri, Morrison responds…and off they move to Alpha Centauri.
These sprites then decide to show him the secrets of the universe; they take Morrison outside of the universe, outside of our “space time.” Morrison, from this unknown, rotated perspective, sees pink grid traceries, and asks the sprites “what are these lines?’ The sprites reply: that is the universe. The sprites continue their dialogue with Morrison; “Universes are just where gods grow; universes need time to grow. What you as a human being experience in life, your emotions, thoughts, feelings, experiences, all of the very human familiarities are simply the engine of time working to develop a god.” All life on our floating planet, per these mercurial sprites, is attached to a single-celled immortal root in the Precambrian deluges and its billions of corporeal branches, “from ferns to people.” Earth is the placental support system to this “infant god.”
Grant Morrison eventually experiences an epiphany; these archons, or these armies of light, armies of dark, are simply expressions of the same thing. These antagonistic and protagonist forces we all experience are simply forces required to grow a god. As the Gnostic says in Morrison’s Invisibles (paraphrased), "it appears to be white vs black, but really it’s all just the same game. This game, on Earth, is required to grow the infant god.”
Whew. That’s a lot to take in.
Like fellow apologetic Gnostic, Philip K. Dick, in his work “How to Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later,” Morrison states that the barrier between fiction and reality is blurred. PKD stated that “in pursuit of a good yarn, a good author may stumble upon the truth and realize it.” The basic tool for the manipulation of actuality is the influence of words and pictures. Words and pictures are synchronized, and the author who discovers this connection may very well determine the secret of the Universe. Whether that ultimately means this connection nurtures a new born deity, or is the requirement of some unknown engineering scheme to build a new universe, is both of these, or is something entirely different, who can ultimately know? Yet there is a connection between the “gnostic program” and our interpreted reality; PKD encountered many events and people he wrote about in his books at a later point in time. Morrison, likewise, encountered similar health issues and problems that he wrote symbols and words on to his comic book avatar after the fact. At least that is what the current Morrison/PKD mythos would have us believe.
If one uses the Sarah Richards' DC Tarot Deck as a starting point, we see Hal Jordan’s GL is depicted as the Chariot Tarot. The Chariot is an interesting symbol to be used for the Green Lantern of Hal Jordan. From an “occult” perspective, the Chariot is attributed as carrying the following qualities.
The one of hand the Chariot exists in the “Heavenly Waters of Creation,” the other straddles across the abyss and into the realm of the material. It is mentioned that:
In the Tarot image above of Hal Jordan, we see the color green extending itself into the form of an animal. This is important, symbolically, as green is matter that is yet sharp and unripe; it is matter not yet fixed or perfected by nature. Green implies a state of matter that is volatile and spiritual in nature. It is reflective of the feminine or passive principle.
The Red animal, with which we see the green Lantern colliding with, is representative of the masculine or active principle. It is the fire that solidifies the Green, indefinite mass. It’s the construct of the Green Lantern; the process of taking the immaterial realm and manifesting it into some type of reality. The Green Lanterns can make hammers, weapons, tools, and even a pacemaker for a New God. Similarly, the Gnostic demiurge can merge the two principles, Green and Red, the passive and active, and create the Universe of which we belong to. It too has one hand in the Waters of Creation, and one hand in the material realm of which we live in; it’s a reality where we as humans feel happiness, sadness, fear, joy, etc, that possibly is feeding some unknown agent or creating time.
Did I mention that Morrison had some Gnostic tendencies?
I’m very excited to read this series. As a matter of fact, I just went out and ordered the variant for issue #1, seen here:
I’m curious if this “link” between writer and symbol/word is still active with Morrison. What we read, each month, will undoubtedly be swept up into the human collective unconscious. The words and images set to print or digital images by Morrison will no doubt be cast with intent. What will be the consequences of this intent willed by this chaos magician on to the character of Hal Jordan- Jordan, the mightiest of all Green Lanterns? He is the archetype of the Chariot, and possibly the avatar of the Demiurge itself. It’s a very exciting proposition.
What do you think of the Morrison’s upcoming run with the Green Lantern mythos? What do you think of Morrison? More importantly, what do you think about the link between symbol and reality? I'd dare say it's very strong, if the magician knows what she/he is doing. I'd go so far to say I know what I'm talking about; yet let me remind you, I own 21 Litecoins.
