Imagine that the planet Earth is taken hostage by a group of cosmic capitalists/planet traffickers. The goal? To sell the planet Earth to the highest cosmic bidder. What will the eventual outcome of the planet Earth be? That is not for you or me to decide, but rather the highest bidder on the planet Earth. And Earth isn’t the only world at stake. Multiple terrestrial bodies of sentient life are illegally on the auction block.
The bidding of Earth begins at five hundred jilli-stellars , then six hundred jilli-stellars, then finally one thousand jilli-stellars. The bidding appears to be led by a group of Dominators and a representative of Apokolips’s Darkseid. The bidding continues, threats are issued, until finally the omnipotent being known as his Immortal Eminence, the Shepherd, places a ten thousand jilli-stellars bid and wins the planet Earth. Why has this being purchased the planet Earth? To bring an end to famine, pollution, and climate change. A true Shepherd to herd humanity to a better future. That sounds ok, yes? Well, it’s a good thing we have the Green Lantern Hal Lantern on the case to question the situation.
Morrsion’s inclusion of entity known as the Shepherd at face value seems appropriate. “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want…” first comes to mind, as does the equivalent symbolism for the idea of a Jesus Christ archetype. The religious connotations are clearly attached to the word, as is the imagery above. Yet where did the word come from? And what meaning does it ultimately derive from?
Saxon in origin, the word shepherd originated from the old English word “ſceap,” or sheep, and keeper. It is equivalent to “one who tends to sheep in the pasture”; or a “lover of the country.” Better yet, “one who tends to the congregation, or a pastor; one who feeds sound doctrine to a flock of souls.”
Sheep, per my new favorite finds on the World Wide Web, is a word that defines an “animal that bears wool…remarkable for its usefulness and innocence. It’s a “foolish silly fellow, or “a beast who is simple”; it represents a fool or a silly person.
Also for fun, the word “shepherd”, in the Greek New Testament in Matthew 25:32, is ποιμήν. ποιμὴν has a Greek Isopsephy value of 258. Another word that carries that Isopsephy value is the word Key, or κλης. This word also pops up in the Greek New Testament, and with it, a varying amount of uses. What might the etymology of the word key be? Good question, let’s find out.
When I think of the word “key”, I think of my house key. Or my car key. Or even a key comic book. Yet the old books on Google would find it’s meaning to be something quite different.
Per Samuel Johnson’s 1768 online classic, Dictionary of the English Language, key originates from the Saxon word cæg. Definitions are fairly standard here; key could include:
Nathan Baley reciprocates on the tonal nature of the word, and then reminds us a key is a possible alphabet to a secret cypher or to the secret nature of people, places, and times.
Then comes along our favorite Freemason Charles Mackay and his Gaelic Etymology work from 1877. Mackay reiterates the word’s Saxon origin, but derives its value to be synonymous with “an enclosure” or “to shut out”. He then goes on to mention that it is possible that the word key equates to a male. The key is the male, the cavity is the lock, or the female. This derivation belongs to the possible Gaelic word “Cia”, or key. Always to the phallic symbolism with those old fashioned masons…
A Hensleigh Wedgwood goes on to mention that the word key, per the world cae, also implies something being shut. This could be enclosure, hedge, garland, or even a dyke.
So is the Shepherd, the one who tends to silly or foolish persons, the equivalent to the key, or the thing that is shut off or needs to be inserted into a cavity to activate some unknown knowledge? I don’t know, but there could be something there that appeared long ago and lingers in our collective unconsciousness. It does give pause and new meaning to something like Whitley Streiber’s book “The Key”, to me at the very least.
All that said, how does Grant Morrison define “the Shepherd”? I’m so glad you asked…
So what does Hal Jordan do when he confronts the cosmic being the Shepherd? First and foremost, he recognizes that this figure is not a benevolent cosmic being, but rather a TERRISTERAL CARNIVORE from URMA-ANNEXATE. This figure has not purchased Earth to bring an end to human misery, terrestrial strife, or even climate change. This carnivore has purchased the Earth to more or less dumb down the masses, fatten the population, and create a sense of unquestioned God-like doctrine over the Earth’s members by blessing the world’s human beings superpowers. Keeping the Justice League at bay and frozen in time (I think that is depicted), this Shepherd has given the masses its opiate in the form of superpowers. With a newfound paradise at hand, there is no need to question the possible ulterior motive of the Shepherd. Why the need for all of the miracles and bliss? These things are required as to distract its food source; the carnivore wishes to consume the Earth and its inhabitants at some point in the near future. What better way to keep the masses distracted then letting everyone be Superman?
This being that Morrison has written into the Lantern mythos hails from a place called Urma-Annexate. This creature is both an indiscriminate omnivore and eternal in nature. All is fair game to become its diet, life and dirt from the Earth. It is ultimately a nasty parasite that has drugged an existing life force in order to consume it at some future point in time.
Archons, anyone?
For fun, I ran the phrase “Urma-Annexate” through various English gematria keys to see what might be encoded in such a word. The results? Curious, as always…
Let’s start with the mystical number 137. There is a lot of fascinating number theory/physics theory related to the number, but it’s beyond me and beyond the scope of the post. At high level, however, we read that :
*The number 137 is the 33rd prime number (that good ol’ number 33…Mackay would be ecstatic)
Now most of my dreams after a dinner with a lot of garlic seem to involve lots of crazy thing: I’ve seen snake headed people attack and attempt to strangle me in bed, unknown entities pick me up and throw me to the ground, and the occasional vision wherein I think I’m seeing my multiverse self-doing something different than what I’d do. After a few gin and club sodas? Those I don’t’ remember, and probably for a very good reason. Yet I can’t ever say I’ve had the good fortune of dreaming about the “fine structure constant”, or about the “grand cosmic order” to things. If one thinks about the idea of the number 137 implying some type of threshold between the material realm and the dimensionless spiritual province, it might make sense that it is indeed the number that “God”, whatever that might be, wrote. Of course no one knows how it was written, or how it manifested, but I’d argue if I drank more gin I might have a glimpse to it (yet sadly, I wouldn’t remember in the morning).
If the number 137 isn’t enough, let’s review a quick summary of the number 47. First and foremost, there is the possible ode to Mr. Crowley with 4+7 = 11. Then we have the Freemasonic equation wherein the compass, at 47 degrees, added to the square, at 90 degrees, equates to 137. The number 47 is also the summation of the Pi cipher, English words Heaven and Earth; again, the compass on the Freemason Bible is 47 degrees…imparting once more a threshold between the material and the spiritual.
And if 137 and 47 aren’t enough, the last one to quickly glance at would be 37. The number 37 too is loaded with Christ, God, and other Biblical inferences, but I won’t continue to bore you, so I’ll let the reader take a look with the assistance of the Google Machine if so inclined.
Or maybe the Shepherd is simply a petty archon? What I loved about Morrison’s chapter in Jordan’s Green Lantern macroverse is the idea that the benevolent Shepherd is actually a parasitic, degenerate entity that has come in the form of a savior, only to be shown that it is actually quite the opposite. And despite Jordan’s ability to show the world what the true nature of the Shepherd is, the masses do not care.
The Shepherd’s etymology and gematria implies the need for something to assist us “foolish and silly types” with the possible help of some type of key. This key, this Shepherd, lies on the threshold of the material and the mystical; a type of key that possibly prevents Creation from finding at type of Gnosis. It is a type of Trickster agent, however, that sits on the crevice of the Abyss. An agent that has no real desire to see you or me find Gnosis, but rather become it’s meal at some point in time in the future.
Yet even more fascinating about this chapter of the Green Lantern is the fact that Morrison (written about previously on this site) alleges to have sat in a drug infused fervor the edge of the abyss, and was given the opportunity to learn about the true secret of the Universe. Like fellow Gnostics PKD and Carl Jung (and I’d dare say Crowley too, but I won’t mention that here), Morrison is hinting that something is not as it seems. Though you and I might not be able to confront our own personal Shepherd, we at least see Hal Jordan and his Green Lanterns attempting to thwart a grand cosmic scheme in this world on the written page. What is more exciting than that? And what does it all mean? I can’t say, but I look forward to the next issue.
Until next time Green Lantern fans…
