Dissecting the Body Snatchers

Dissecting the Body Snatchers

image: Wikimedia commons (link).

The 1955 film Invasion of the Body Snatchers (which hit theaters in 1956 but which gives its date of production as MCMLV in the actual title and credits of the film) depicts a California town overrun by space-borne spores that grow into plant-like seed-pods capable of replicating individual men and women and children, absorbing their memories and individual characteristics, and then eliminating the original person, leaving only the alien replica.

The original written-text version of the story on which the film was based ran as a three-part serial in Collier’s weekly in 1954 and is in many ways better and more chilling than the 1955 film. Those three segments can be found in the archives of the Unz Review here: Part One (26 November, 1954) along with continuations here (starting on page 90) and here in that same issue, Part Two (10 December, 1954), Part Three (24 December, 1954), and the final section of Part Three which is not included in the previous link, available here. The text-version clears up many of the loose ends that were inexplicably missing from the film itself — details which make the metaphor shockingly urgent for the situation threatening the world today.

Because you and I are living in a very real and deadly version of the Body Snatchersright this moment, and unless we realize the situation we are in and take action, the conclusion of the story will be far less happy and far more bleak than anything described in the text or the movie

In the 1954 version of The Body Snatchers published in Collier’s, author Jack Finney (1911 - 1995) describes the spores that descend to Earth from outer space as growing into seed pods resembling fungal puff-balls, light in weight, enmeshed with a fibrous network of yellowish veins. Inside the pod is a “tangled fluffy substance,” grayish in color, thick and fluffy at first but capable of compressing itself into more solid form as it absorbs moisture and energy from living beings in its proximity.

When living matter comes near, or when the seed pods are placed near living matter, these invaders from space begin to form into a perfect replica of that living matter — slowly robbing the host of its vitality until, at the end of the process, the original organism collapses into dry, dust-like fluff, and the interstellar parasite assumes the form of its victim.

In a gripping scene found in the Collier’s version but inexplicably left out of the 1955 film, Jack Finney has the character of a college biologist and botany professor — who has actually already been replicated and replaced by one of the body snatchers — describe the details of the process to the first-person protagonist, the medical doctor Miles Bennell:

“The pods must fulfill their function [. . .] The function of all life everywhere — survival. Life exists throughout the universe, of course, but under conditions inconceivably different from ours. So of course the forms it takes are inconceivably different too. Some of that life exists on planets immeasurably older than ours. What happens, Doctor, when an ancient planet slowly dies? Well, the life form on it must prepare. For what? For survival, for leaving that planet. To arrive where? And when? There can be only one answer: universal adaptability, to any and all other life forms, to any and all other conditions it might possibly encounter. These pods have achieved it. They are completely evolved life, its ultimate form. For they have the evolved ability to re-form and reconstitute themselves into perfect duplication, cell for cell, of any life form they may encounter, in whatever conditions that life has suited itself for.”During this frightening discussion, the botany and biology professor, who has been replicated by this “ultimate form” of evolved life, reveals that he still retains the knowledge acquired by the professor before being assimilated (and evident in the above quotation by the use of the word “ours” when describing life on Earth), but that he now has the knowledge of the alien life-form that replicated the professor’s former body and turned the original to dust.

As the conversation goes on, the replicated professor increasingly uses “you” and “yours” to describe humanity, speaking from the perspective of the cold and uncaring “completely evolved” life-form that has come to this planet in order to devour it before moving elsewhere:

“Three hundred years ago, you doctors didn’t even know blood circulated. You thought it was a motionless fluid like water in a sack. And brain waves are only a recent discovery. Brain waves, Doctor! Actual electrical emanations from the brain in specific identifiable patterns, penetrating the skull to the outside, to be picked up, amplified and charted! You can sit and watch your own pattern on a screen. And not only the brain, but the entire body, every cell of it, emanates waves as individual as fingerprints, but you don’t believe that, do you? [. . .] Do you believe, though, that equally invisible waves can emanate from a room, travel silently through space, be picked up, and then echo every word, sound and tone to be heard in that original room? Your grandfather wouldn’t have, Dr. Bennell. But you do. You believe in radio. You even believe in television. [. . .] Yes, Dr. Bennell, your body contains its own pattern. All living matter does; it is the very foundation of cellular life. For it is composed of the tiny electrical force lines that hold together the atoms that constitute your being. And therefore it is a pattern, infinitely detailed, of the precise constitution of your body at any moment, altering with every breath you take, and with every second of time in which your body infinitesimally changes. And the pattern can be taken from you. During sleep, the body is at a low ebb, and then the pattern can be slowly transferred, absorbed like static electricity from one body to another. [. . .] And what happens to the original? The atoms that formerly composed you — once the electrical force lines are gone — are static, nothing, a pile of formless gray fluff. It can happen, does happen and rather easily. And you know that it has happened, and will happen to you.”

This disturbing explanation is completely absent from the 1956 film, as is the replicated professor’s concluding statement describing other planets that had been devoured and turned to dust by the space-borne invaders, and his declaration that: 

“But just now, it’s the earth’s turn, the pods live again briefly; and when the life on earth is used up, the spores will move out into space once again, to drift for — it doesn’t matter how long, or to where. Eventually, they’ll arrive somewhere. They are the parasites of the universe, and they’ll be the final survivors in it.”

While many theories have been put forward over the intervening seven decades regarding what kind of metaphor might have been intended by these terrifying body-snatchers, Jack Finney himself apparently claimed to have no intentions to make his story a metaphor for anything in particular. In his Introduction to a “revised and updated” version of the original Collier’s story printed in a 2005 edition as part of the Stephen King Horror Library, Stephen King quotes Jack Finney as saying: 

“I’ve always been amused by the contentions of people connected with the picture that they had a message of some sort in mind. If so, it’s a lot more than I ever did, and since they followed my story very closely, it’s hard to see how this message crept in. And when the message has been defined, it’s always sounded a little more simpleminded to me. The idea of writing a whole book in order to say that it’s not really a good thing for us all to be alike, and that individuality is a good thing, makes me laugh.”

Was Jack Finney being disingenuous when he proclaimed that anyone who had “a message of some sort in mind” regarding the significance of the body snatchers were doing “a lot more than I ever did”? Does his statement as quoted above really mean that drawing parallels about the story was more than Jack Finney ever thought to do? 

Strictly speaking, that statement as quoted could actually be interpreted as meaning two very different things. It could mean what Stephen King implies that it means — that we should be cautious and beware of the tendency “to read deep meanings into simple doings.”

Or, it could alternately be taken to mean that Jack Finney is actually saying that making statements about what the message of the story might be is “a lot more than I ever did.” In other words, those who have given their interpretations have said more than Jack Finney has said. Or, to put it another way, he isn’t saying that he doesn’t have “a message of some sort in mind” — he’s saying that making that message public is “a lot more than I ever did,” because he didn’t want to say, for whatever reason. 

He seems to say pretty bluntly that the interpretation that the whole story might be about the idea that “individuality is a good thing” is simply laughable (and wrong). That implies, not that the story doesn’t have a deeper message, but that in fact in probably does!

But what could that message have been?

See the full essay on my recently opened Substack page at undyingstars.substack.com

A Cordyceps of Biblical Origin: the Bible as the "Fruiting Body" of a Humanity-Destroying Parasite

A Cordyceps of Biblical Origin: the Bible as the "Fruiting Body" of a Humanity-Destroying Parasite

image: Wikimedia commons (link).

If you think that your everyday problems are not related to the Bible, think again.

You may ask yourself: How can anyone make such a sweeping claim in this modern day and age? Most people today don’t even “believe” the Bible (in terms of accepting the characters and stories described in Bible stories as being literal and historical and “true”), and don’t think that the dogmas derived from its ancient texts have any relevance in the public sphere or in their daily lives and struggles.

“Perhaps in previous centuries,” I hear these people saying, “the Bible and its dogmas might have had some impact on the lives of the average man and woman, but today those teachings are hardly a factor. We have much more pressing problems to worry about!”

But such arguments are akin to an ant or a wasp saying that it doesn’t believe in the power of the spores of the cordyceps fungus to infect ants and wasps, and that by ignoring the existence of such spores, it can safely ignore the horrific danger of those spores entering into ants and wasps and then growing aggressive mycelium tendrils inside the body of their host, turning the unfortunate victims into zombies while devouring their internal tissues and causing them to act in self-destructive and ultimately suicidal ways.1

Whether an ant knows about the existence of the parasitic cordyceps fungus, or knows that the spores come from a club-shaped fungal fruiting body that sprouts out of the head of its latest victim, or even acknowledges that those spores have any relevance in modern-day ant life — the cordyceps fungus does not care. 

The fungus continues to reproduce and propagate its spores, whether or not its danger is recognized, and continues taking over its unfortunate victims and hollowing out their flesh while controlling them like puppets, making the hosts serve the invading fungus instead of pursuing their own organic needs.

The cordyceps is pitiless. In fact, it has no detectable mind or consciousness at all. It has but one purpose: its own survival and reproduction, and it uncaringly devours and discards the empty shells of its victims, without a thought and without mercy.

This description can be applied with chilling accuracy to the dogma contained in the “fruiting body” of texts gathered into the canonical books of the Bible. The historical record shows beyond doubt that the Bible can generate an absolutely destructive social construct that causes men and women to unconsciously act together in a way that gives this social construct a kind of life, and to act almost like an independent entity of parasitic and anti-human destructiveness — without even requiring any malicious intent on the part of the individual men and women who are giving this social construct its “life.”

That assertion may sound bizarre, but in most of our own personal experience, we have probably witnessed examples in which individual men and women have, simply by “buying into” a larger organization, given that larger “entity” a kind of life of its own, to the point that it seems to act with direction and a sort of “spirit” of its own, independent of the will of the individuals whose very assent and participation somehow imbue it with life. 

I think, for example, of my own participation in the institution of the US Military Academy at West Point, where I served both as a cadet for four years before being commissioned as a lieutenant in the US Army Infantry in 1991, and later as an instructor in the Department of English and Philosophy from 2001 to 2003. West Point as an institution certainly has leaders of various rank directing it at the upper echelons, but even so the institution itself seems to have its own mysterious “spirit” and “will” which propels it, and which is somehow larger than the individuals from which it arises or even the buildings and physical terrain on which West Point is located.

If we were to analyze this idea more closely, we might conclude that the “spirit” of the place (or of the “institution” or even of the “entity” which is called “West Point”) arises from its founding documents, and its mission, and its ideals, and further from a kind of narrative (or even, to be more accurate, an entire “tangle” of narratives, interweaving, sometimes containing “narratives within narratives” of their own). 

These all give rise to an almost supernatural spirit, in some cases — and I would point out that in the case of West Point, the narrative is built upon ideals of duty, honor and country but also that it involves the goddess Athena, whose helmet is on the West Point crest and on every West Point uniform, and on many of the buildings, and even on the top of every single dinner plate in the mess hall, where cadets eat their daily meals. The goddess Athena is the goddess of wisdom, and of war — but differing from Ares, who is also a war-god of ancient Greece in that Athena is the goddess of war for right and just causes, as opposed to war for the sake of killing, chaos and destruction.

Perhaps you have felt something like a “spirit” or a “personality” at a place of work or business, whether positive or negative, that certainly must arise in some way from the individuals within that organization, but which at the same time feels as though it has a life of its own and which grow out of its own “founding concept” and ideals and narratives — again, these can be either positive and uplifting, or the opposite. 

When I say that the Bible generates a parasitic, nation-devouring “entity,” this concept is what I have in mind. I believe that the reason it generates a parasitic spirit is because the texts of the Bible have themselves been tampered with or altered, as if a parasite has jumped onto them in the same way that a cordyceps takes over its ant or wasp victim. There is evidence to support this conclusion, as we will see. And that tampering has resulted in the Bible being animated by the spirit of a god — who gives his name as YHWH or Yahweh — unlike any other god found in the myths and sacred traditions of humanity, and one giving rise to a destructive and parasitic spirit found nowhere else. 

When I examine the contours of the corpus of texts which we refer to as “the Bible,” I see something very much akin to the outlines of the body of an unfortunate ant or wasp that was invaded and taken over by a cordyceps fungus long ago, its tissues devoured and replaced by the parasite, which after turning the insect into a hollowed-out zombie has pushed up a club-shaped fruiting body that ever since has been producing toxic spores and sending them out into the world. 

These spores create what we might label a “cordyceps-of-Biblical-origin,” zombie-like and with only one purpose: to devour societies, continue to reproduce by spreading its spores, and ensure its ongoing survival. To best understand the very real danger that I am trying to describe using this cordyceps metaphor, it is useful to think of the cordyceps-of-Biblical-origin as the mystical entity generated from the participation of the individual men and women, and the narratives that they have “bought into,” rather than one residing within the individual participants themselves. In other words, the institutions that their participation creates — just as West Point as an entity or “spirit” is larger than the involvement of the cadets and officers and graduates who are associated with it. 

To put it more bluntly, what I am saying is that the Bible texts (and the narratives they contain, and the deity they describe and hold up as holy) generate an entity called Judaism and Christianity — the differences between them being less important than their similarities, as I will argue below, which is why I will treat them as one general Bible-originated entity (the phrase “reality distortion field” could also be used for the effect that I am trying to describe). This entity-of-Biblical-origin acts like malevolent, parasitical, devouring cordyceps — even if the individual men and women whose participation in literalist Judaism or literalist Christianity do not themselves behave in a malevolent or parasitical way at all, in their individual lives. Their participation gives life to something larger than themselves, something which takes on a spirit and a will of its own — and that will and spirit are not positive or beneficial to human society, even if the individuals themselves are lovely, well-adjusted, kind-hearted, caring, and well-intentioned.

When I say a cordyceps-of-Biblical-origin, I mean that the larger entity acts like a cordyceps, rather than saying that the individual men and women who buy into this narrative necessarily act that way.

What we have come to call “the Bible” is best understood as a mutant, twisted, “genetically-engineered” set of myths, in which the original ancient stories have been hijacked in exactly the same way as the body of an insect that has been infected with the parasitic cordyceps fungus has been. We can still see the contours of the original host, just as we can still see the outline of the original victim even after the devouring fungus has done its work.

The body parts that once served the organic needs of the wasp or the ant are still perceptible or detectible or traceable in the victim, but those body parts have been rendered useless as the invading fibers of mycelium took over control and over-grew the host.

image: Wikimedia commons (link).

For the past sixteen years, I have been examining the world’s ancient myths and finding overwhelming evidence showing that they all bear a common, world-wide pattern. The evidence for some kind of commonality between the world’s myths has been perceived before, argued by various authors and scholars in fields of psychology and anthropology and comparative mythology — but what distinguishes the approach that I have been led to pursue (following the work of other thinkers in the past who have followed this same line of investigation) is the evidence that the world’s ancient myths are connected by a shared foundation of celestial metaphor, in which specific figures and characters in the stories — and the events described in those stories — can be connected to specific constellations in the night sky, including not only the important zodiac constellations but also constellations ranged along the great ring of the Milky Way itself, which crosses the zodiac almost perpendicularly: constellations such as Ophiuchus and Hercules and Pegasus, Perseus and Andromeda (among others).

This connection to the stars adds a very strong element of objective verifiability to the connection between the world’s ancient myths and the assertion that they are all built upon the same common foundation. 

A few examples of these connections across cultures and across continents will be given below, showing beyond reasonable doubt that the world’s ancient myths share a common celestial foundation. These are only the tip of the iceberg of the evidence that can be provided to establish the common pattern: I have so far written books which taken together total over 5,000 pages (including several hundred illustrations and star charts), as well as publishing hundreds of videos and numerous online courses showing these undeniable connections between our world myths and the constellations.

These findings should be revolutionary to our understanding of the ancient myths — and to our understanding of humanity’s ancient history — but they should also be absolutely devastating to the functioning of the mental cordyceps fungus coming out of the books of the Bible and their narratives, as well as to the claims of exclusivity put forth by the god described in those texts.

The stories collected into what we call the Bible, whether from the so-called “Old Testament” or “New Testament,” stretching from the book of Genesis all the way to the Revelation (or Apocalypse) of John, can be positively shown to be based on the exact same foundation of celestial metaphor which forms the basis for ancient myths from other cultures around the world.

This demonstrable fact of a shared celestial foundation for all the ancient stories should unite humanity, and prevent the superhuman entities arising out of the Biblical scriptures from claiming the superiority and uniqueness of their myths. It should similarly prevent those arising “entities” emanating from the Bible (literalist Judaism and Christianity) from attacking and denigrating the gods and traditional teachings of other cultures. 

None of the other ancient traditions of mankind seem to have generated cultural institutions or “entities” (entities like literalist Christianity or literalist Judaism) which proclaim the gods of other nations to be false (or even worse, evil demons and not gods at all). 

To the contrary, we have several surviving texts from ancient authors which testify to the fact that the ancients from one culture generally recognized the gods and goddesses of other peoples to be the same gods and goddesses that they themselves worshipped, with similar attributes and aspects, just with different names. Our own names for the days of the week demonstrate the same principle, with days named Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday in English being named for the gods Tiu (or Tyr), Wotan (or Odin), and Thor — while in Spanish and French those same days receive the names of their corresponding ancient Roman gods: Mars, Mercury, and Jove (indicating an understanding that the thunder-gods Thor and Jove are different names for the same deity, and the same with Tyr and Mars, or Odin and Mercury).

But the Bible is different, and when it gets into a culture and when its mycelium tendrils start to take over a host, it causes the host to behave in a most erratic manner, akin to the erratic behavior of an ant or wasp infected with the spores of a cordyceps.

That’s because the Bible texts themselves show evidence of being hijacked and their message changed and altered, into a complete inversion of what the rest of the world’s myths promote.

Let’s see the evidence to support these assertions, showing first that the myths of the nations are based on a shared system of celestial metaphor, and second that the stories of the Bible are based on that same system. Then we will see how this understanding helps us respond to the grave situation we are facing, as individuals and as nations, at this present moment.

For the full article, please check out my new substack page, where I have posted the entire thing: it's a long one, but I feel it is very important. Also, the substack article has full footnotes with links to sources cited.  


Jesus, Usury, and MMT

Jesus, Usury, and MMT

Here is a recent video I've published entitled "Jesus, Usury, and MMT."

It dives into the question: What was the Number One vice, according to the prophets of the Bible stories?

The answer: Money Lending and charging Interest!!!

You won't hear self-styled "Bible Authorities" talking about THAT today, but the Bible saw Usury as being a violation of the Ten Commandments, akin to THEFT.

And if you think this is an issue that doesn't impact every single one of us, it most certainly does!

Everything from the skyrocketing cost of housing, to the student debt crisis, to retirement insecurity, to the influence of Wall Street and private equity over the political process is related to THIS SUBJECT!!!

Find out why MMT ("modern money theory" or "modern monetary theory," which is also ANCIENT money theory) drives the moneylenders crazy, and why they don't want you to understand MMT and the solution it offers to those problems.

Find out why Abraham Lincoln wanted a National Bank, and why he was seen as being such a threat. And, see how the story of Jesus "Cleansing the Temple" is based on the stars, and holds a timeless message for our lives, right in this very present moment!


They are Lying to Us!

They are Lying to Us!

Above is a video I published entitled "They are Lying to Us!"

When you really absorb the fact that those who are supposed to be creating positive conditions for the people of your nation are actually LYING to the people and laughing about it, and understand the implications of the Hijacking of the World's Ancient Wisdom You will ask "What should I do?" "What CAN I do?" This video features discussions about:

  • Neil DeGrasse Tyson and President Bill Clinton laughing about a Moon Rock,which (they claim) was CARBON DATED as being over 3 billion years old!

  • The ongoing BS story of the Moon Landings.(see my video "No Stars in Photos! No Memory of Stars in Astronauts! Did we really go to the Moon?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXdqCn22Z2A&t=4s and

  • see also the excellent examination by Massimo Mazzucco entitled "American Moon" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpuKu3F0BvY )

  • The ongoing obfuscation about the assassination of President John F Kennedy.

  • The ongoing violation of the Treaties of Fort Laramie.

  • The ongoing Scriptural Supremecism being taught and practiced by Biblical Literalists.

It's all connected.