DVD Review – The Murder of Mary Magdalene: Genocide of the Holy Bloodline

Reality Films

Title: The Murder of Mary Magdalene: Genocide of the Holy Bloodline (DVD)
Genre: Religion, Conspiracy, History, Occult
Production Company: Reality Films

Synchronicity is a hard thing to prove. It’s even harder to prove a given theory by citing a series of perceived synchronicities. And this is exactly what Dan Green sets out to do in The Murder of Mary Magdalene: Genocide of the Holy Bloodline.

Offering an alternative history to the story of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, Green weaves an intricate tapestry of symbols, codes and clues to support his belief that Mary Magdalene was murdered to prevent word from getting out that she and Jesus Christ were much closer than commonly believed.

This is the kind of film that gets traditional religious persons up in arms. Similar claims made in The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (1982) led to that book being banned in strongly Catholic countries such as the Philippines.

Likewise, Dan Brown’s fictional The Da Vinci Code (2003) sparked off a lot of heated debate and its overall content was deemed “offensive” by many Catholics.

Sociologists and Religious Studies professors like John Gager say that whenever the beliefs and practices of an out-group get a bit too close for comfort to those of an established in-group, members of the in-group get upset. The in-group then wants to better define its boundaries, which may lead to exclusion, condemnation or, as we’ve seen in the often grisly march of human history, persecution.

According to this theory, it’s the similarity of the two groups that riles the established in-group. Radically different out-groups lacking some kind of thematic overlap with an entrenched in-group are usually ignored. But when an out-group hits a nerve by getting too ideologically close to the in-group—that’s when sparks fly.

This dynamic apparently took place between the early Christians and the Gnostics. And a similar kind of dynamic continues to this day.

As for The Murder of Mary Magdalene‘s challenge to the traditional Christian story, I found this DVD far more a Jungian-style treatise than a flaky religious rant. If anything, it’s a testament to the power of synchronicity. From watching this film, it seems that Dan Green perceived an ongoing set of synchronicities all through the research and production phases of The Murder of Mary Magdalene.

In case you’re wondering, synchronicity is a word coined by the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung to point to the idea of meaningful coincidence. From the perspective of synchronicity, nothing happens by chance. And the idea of chance, itself, is taken as nothing more than a human concept.

The DVD’s special features include an author interview by director Philip Gardiner. This summarizes the film’s main points while giving a biographical sketch of Green. Here, Green’s eyes sparkle whenever he talks about the synchronicities he encountered during the film’s production. And that’s something pretty hard to fake.

What did go through my mind, however, was a question. Not the central question posed by this film – was Mary Magdalene murdered? – but another one regarding the interpretation of synchronistic events.

No doubt, Green believes he encountered genuine synchronicities. But we’re compelled to ask if Green’s interpretation of those inner-outer experiences is more about his own personal journey instead of a universal truth about the supposed unwritten history of Jesus and Mary Magdalene.

We can’t know for sure, of course. But the question does arise.

On the cinematography side, viewers will enjoy the UK’s archaic Lincoln Cathedral, along with many other sacred treasures so very well presented in this film.

The Murder of Mary Magdalene: Genocide of the Holy Bloodline was the perfect antidote to the mid-February grind of Canadian winter. Whether or not you agree with its conclusions, this is the kind of film where you can just sit back and let it take you away.

Chances are the only folks who’ll find it upsetting are those who aren’t really comfortable with their beliefs anyhow. It’s a button pusher. But only if  buttons are there to be pushed.

—MC
Revised from original review published March 22, 2010.

Related articles

• I Always Knew Mary Magdalene Was A Chola (dlisted.com)
• Couple Claim They Are Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene (odditycentral.com)
• “Lady Gaga dresses as Mary Magdalene and takes a bike ride with Jesus Christ in ‘blasphemous’ new video for Judas single” and related posts (lindaikeji.blogspot.com)
• Lady Gaga to play Mary Magdalene in “Judas” video! (loft965.com)
• Is holy blood holy grail real (wiki.answers.com)
• Is holly blood holly grail real (wiki.answers.com)
• Dilettantism (and Insanity) of Biblical Proportions (zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com)
• Who was the first to see the resurrected Jesus (wiki.answers.com)
• Vice vs. Virtue: Judas – Lady GaGa (lookingatlyrics.wordpress.com)

Review – The Truth Injection: More New World Order Exposed (DVD)

Reality Films

Did you get your flu shot this year?

Every fall, scores of people rush off to the doctor for a vaccine that scientists admit is based on inexact science.

The reality of several different hardy and adaptable flu viruses makes it difficult to predict which will be dominant for a given year.

However, most doctors say the flu shot activates the immune system in general. So it’s still a good idea to get the flu shot, especially as we grow older and become less resistant to viral attacks.

That’s the official story.

The Truth Injection tells quite another story, one full of politics, intrigue and allegations of brash moneymaking.

The film kicks off with a controversial music video by Trillion and a vintage CBC news broadcast about the failure of the Swine Flu to materialize in 1976. It then moves into the main feature, which is a detailed presentation given by Ian R. Crane at Glastonbury in 2009.

For those under the impression that things aren’t always what they seem, Crane’s talk provides more than enough food for thought. In fact, at times the film comes off as a media blitz. However, Crane encourages his live audience to check instead of uncritically accepting his claims.

Not unlike a Michael Moore film, Crane weaves an intricate conspiratorial web where major political players keep cropping up over the decades, apparently with one thing in mind: making money. Well, that and keeping the masses deceived, disempowered and in a ‘state of fear,’ as it were, through propaganda.

Crane says most of us are too apathetic and willfully ignorant because it’s easier to play the proverbial game than risk the repercussions of stepping out of line.

And he believes it doesn’t stop there. The common person isn’t just bullied, pushed around and cheated by politico-corporate heavyweights. Our very lives could be endangered by, ironically, the same thing that law enforcement officers work tirelessly to eradicate–namely, drugs.

But these potentially debilitating and, perhaps, lethal drugs aren’t smuggled inside stereo speakers, spare tires or through some other wily means of getting past legal check points. Nope. According to Crane they’re passed through a long and costly process of certification that only the biggest players can afford.

While allegations of collusion between so-called Big Pharma and some psychiatrists certainly have surfaced, it seems that Crane’s argument goes well beyond a few isolated cases of rule breaking.

For Crane, there’s an all-out conspiracy infiltrating the system and the handful of individuals driving this disturbing global agenda are tagged as “sociopaths” and “psychopaths.”

Pretty strong stuff.

This outlook arguably could give the benefit of the doubt a bit more. True, only a naïve person would see politics as pristine. But to assume that the major players are chiefly concerned with power and greenbacks might reduce a complicated dynamic to an unduly simplistic one.

Thankfully, Crane’s solution to the present world disorder doesn’t call for more environmentally polluting drugs. Instead, and with the Mayan prophecies of a new world cycle for 2012 just around the corner, the film advocates a combination of self-knowledge and responsible action.

By holistically “being and doing,” Crane says we can surmount all the rot that threatens both personal happiness and collective survival.

If politics is a game of socially constructed truth and power, The Truth Injection says it’s time for the ordinary person to rise up and participate rather than simply cheer or boo from the sidelines.

A nice idea, to be sure. Whether or not it will ever happen is another issue, altogether.

–MC (updated on 2011/03/22 from the original of 2010/04/30)

Review – The Philadelphia Experiment: Invisibility, Time Travel and Mind Control (DVD)

Reality Films

Is time travel possible?

Saints, seers and mystics often talk about transversing the corridors of time. Sometimes they claim to enter into eternity and other times they speak of encountering far away places, past and future.

Some authors, musicians and artists also hint at the idea of the psyche transcending our everyday sense of reality. One only has to think of H. G. Wells, Ravi Shankar and Salvador Dali for three good examples.

But rarely do we hear serious talk about embodied time travel. Mystics and insightful artists normally talk about psychological or spiritual travel. They don’t usually claim to disappear and reappear in the flesh. Not very often, anyhow.

The Philadelphia Experiment: Invisibility, Time Travel and Mind Control – The Shocking Truth goes one step further. Here we find something that, for all intents and purposes, sounds like intelligent sci-fi purporting to be cold fact.

For an outside observer it’s hard to know what’s what, but this doesn’t take anything away from some of the stimulating ideas forwarded in this video.

The video kicks off with some still photos and voice-over as a sort of build up and explanation to the lengthy interview that follows. The interview itself is avowedly homemade. But whatever this film lacks in production values is more than compensated by its originality.

One doesn’t have to be a genius to follow the discussion, but at times it can be challenging. This is mostly because the nature of the discussion goes way beyond our everyday notions of time, causality and being.

It’s sort of like a Jane Roberts “Seth Book” in living color, but with real people (instead of a channeled entity) actually claiming to have time traveled.

Not only that. They also claim to have been victims of a severe kind of mind control and memory erasure that defies anything we’ve ever heard of. And perhaps the scariest thing of all—the perpetrators were not extraterrestrials but human beings, just like us.

Other fascinating aspects of the interviewees’ claims include the notion that it’s dangerous for someone to get too close to him or herself. That is, if you were to travel 10 minutes into the past and meet up with yourself, there’s a high probably you’d be destroyed.

And as the title suggests, the film claims that actual invisibility has been achieved with an entire US Navy vessel, the USS Eldridge.

Both of these ideas are sheer Star Trek (and the countless sci-fi TV shows and movies that followed) and, again, it’s hard to know what’s what in this film.

Skeptics will likely think they’re watching a sincere group delusion or, perhaps, crafty con job. Enthusiasts will probably find the conspiracy theories, metaphysics and allusions to 2012 enthralling.

Regardless of what one makes of this film, one thing’s for certain–The Philadelphia Experiment is not your run of the mill New Age fluff. These guys are smart. Whether they’re spinning tall tales or relating hard fact is something each viewer can decide for him or herself.

–MC

Trailer:

UFO sightings, reports: Friday, Jan. 22 – “The Joiner Report” online radio show

UFO? - Harry Willis / Dave Ellis

Special to Earthpages.org

Former head of the U.S. Air Force’s Project Blue Book, Col. Robert Friend, will be the guest, Friday, Jan. 22, on “The Joiner Report” online radio show.

http://www.angeliajoiner.com/

Host Angelia Joiner is the newspaper reporter from Stephenville, Texas, who broke the story to the national and international press about the multiple UFO sightings in 2008 in that area.

Joiner’s reporting led to widespread national and international news coverage and a MUFON investigation which concluded that radar reports indicated unusual unidentified aircraft activity in that region, including near the George W. Bush ranch.

Local law enforcement officers in the Stephenville and Erath County area, as well as reliable local citizens were involved in several sightings of solid anomalous craft as well as strange light formations in the skies above their communities.

Please join Angelia and Col. Friend as they discuss important aspects of these unusual and important topics.

Review – Angels, Demons and Freemasons (DVD)

Reality Films

Are we being ruled by a secret society of powerful mystics? Do the Freemasons represent more than just a charitably-inclined organization?

Producer Philip Gardiner’s new DVD, Angels, Demons and Freemasons explores these other intriguing issues, leaving us with just as many questions as answers.

At the heart of Gardiner’s argument is the idea that Freemasonry, along with its hidden rituals and archaic symbolism, embodies centuries of esoteric knowledge once shared among priests, scribes, military elites and royalty.

Gardiner’s analysis probes deep into the gnostic world of the Egyptian pharaohs, Kabbalistic Judaism, Islamic Sufism and different types of ancient and medieval alchemy.

Apparently all these mystery cults and Freemasonry share one key element–the transmission of an underground stream of covert, illuminated knowledge. And since knowledge is power, those in possession of that knowledge are best positioned to shape the course of history, peacefully or through violence.

History demonstrates that individuals have always formed relatively small, hierarchically arranged groups to maximize their power over the apparently unenlightened masses.

This has been the social dynamic for centuries within Churches and other governing bodies enjoying both knowledge and power. And so it is today, Gardiner believes, with Freemasonry and some of its allegedly related offshoots.

The contemporary power brokers differ, however, in that neither religion nor nationality play a part in their domination. According to Gardiner, the real kingpins in the so-called New World Order are mostly hidden from view and, perhaps equally important, international and interdenominational.

One unanswered question runs throughout this video, and this is whether the many social symbols found in 21st century society, while clearly similar to their ancient roots, are consciously or unconsciously embraced by mankind.

Angels, Demons and Freemasons seems to suggest that the mere presence of these symbols in contemporary artifacts is evidence of secret societies flourishing in the 21st century, replete with esoteric knowledge and power.

But a postmodern semiotic analysis could interpret things another way.

Jean Baudrillard, for instance, argued that the meaning of signs becomes imploded over time. Although ancient symbols carry on, they take on entirely new meanings (or lack of) in contemporary culture.

For Baudrillard we live in the hyperreal consisting of so many distorted or entirely reinvented simulacra–i.e. signs once having clear meaning, meaning that has all but vanished in the 21st century.

Not to say that Baudrillard is necessarily correct. One could argue that reinvented signs continue to carry some kind of numinous allure and deeply entrenched significance.

For instance, the U.S. dollar bill contains the image of a pyramid with an eye in its capstone. And this might make the US bill more appealing on some unconscious level.

But is this clear-cut evidence for a secret society operating deep within the US government?

Some have argued that if these societies are so secret, why would they proliferate such a blatantly esoteric symbol?¹

Now, to switch gears a little, another point to consider is the New Testament portrayal of Jesus Christ as the King of Heaven, while Satan is deemed the Ruler of This World.

Here Gardiner makes the astute observation that practical leaders (and we do need them) ideally possess a healthy balance between mankind’s dual nature of vice and virtue, greed and goodwill.

Organizational leaders are often called upon to make personal sacrifices and difficult compromises in order to render legal decisions among competing interest groups.

For Gardiner, this shouldn’t be a free-for-all or raw and brutish survival of the fittest scenario. The wise leader, he says, ideally leans toward the compassionate rather than Machiavellian end of the spectrum.

Meanwhile, theologians might not agree with Gardiner’s view that individual choice is merely the outcome of all preceding influences, a view which seems to omit the possibility of grace and divine intervention at the moment of decision making.

But these apparent theological differences may be more a matter of semantics than actual difference. For the film closes with an undeniable ray of hope.

Angels, Demons and Freemasons is a thought-provoking piece that poses seminal questions about the complexities of power in contemporary society.

It should appeal to specialists and intelligent laypersons and serve as a consciousness-raiser for those who perhaps put a bit too much stock in what the evening news says.

–MC

¹ See: Is the dollar bill’s eye-on-a-pyramid the symbol of a secret society? http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1064/is-the-dollar-bills-eye-on-a-pyramid-the-symbol-of-a-secret-society

Journalist teaches college class on covering fringe topics, cover-ups, UFOs

The Cover Up Cafe: Max Wolfe / Lee Adlaf

By Steve Hammons

How should journalists, the news media and informed citizens handle certain unusual and unconventional topics?

To try to find the answers, internationally-known and award-winning investigative journalist George Knapp will be teaching a journalism course at the College of Southern Nevada beginning in January.

The course, “Reporting from the Twilight Zone,” will explore many elements involved in subjects that may be sensitive or secret, complex, strange, and at times, frightening.

Journalism students and professionals as well as the general public are welcome to take the course.

Knapp plans to include examinations of the roles of reporters, editors, news organizations, other media professionals as well as media consumers when it comes to topics such as alleged conspiracies, cover-ups and other unusual areas such as UFOs.

Is there peer pressure in the newsroom? Do elements of government shape coverage of certain topics, conspiracies and cover-ups? Do media owners and advertisers affect reporting on sensitive, unconventional or special topics? Are these kinds of subjects also exploited at times by and in the media? What are the current trends on this kind of journalism?

The class will tackle these and other important questions.

MODERN INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM

According to the course description, Knapp, students and guests “will examine the techniques and standards of modern investigative journalism as applied to ‘fringe’ topics and will identify key approaches taken by various media to the exploration and/or exploitation of controversial subjects.”

The course description also notes, “Another objective will be to question whether journalism standards for covering ‘fringe’ subjects are (or should be) different from other types of reporting. The course will explore these issues from many different perspectives, and will receive input from professional journalists, academic researchers, scientists, and skeptics.”

“The course will encourage critical thinking skills for both journalists and news consumers in evaluating the quality and accuracy of the news and information we see, and don’t see.”

We might also ask: How do journalists cover topics on which there may be a lack of solid facts, yet persuasive sources, indicators or circumstantial evidence? How do citizens draw reasonable conclusions and understanding from a wide range of journalistic reports and other sources and media platforms?

In a Dec. 3 column he wrote for “Las Vegas City Life,” Knapp also noted that the course is being sponsored by Bigelow Aerospace, based in Las Vegas. Knapp pointed out that the company’s founder, Robert “Bob” Bigelow, has “a lifelong interest” in subjects related to unconventional topics such as UFOs. In addition, Bigelow will provide funding for guest speakers and lecturers to contribute to the course, Knapp wrote.

Are these kinds of topics worthy of news coverage or even a college class? Knapp raises this issue in his “Las Vegas City Life” column. Some people may not think so. Knapp says students, media professionals and the public should make up their own minds and maintain a critical and careful perspective.

FRINGE OR FUNDAMENTAL

But are courses and media coverage of certain topics really so unconventional?

Most so-called “fringe” topics actually deal with sociology, psychology, American and world history, anthropology, government, national defense and intelligence matters, various scientific disciplines and even spiritual beliefs.

And what kinds of subjects are we really talking about? Some have been part of the record of human experience throughout history. These might include social or economic manipulations, political assassinations, deceptive “false flag” attacks and secret activities of various kinds.

Other topics delve into the metaphysical such as life after death and afterlife concepts, extrasensory perception (ESP), higher human consciousness, ideas about multiple dimensions, intelligent life elsewhere, UFOs, synchronicity (meaningful “coincidences”) and the nature of a higher intelligence. Are these kinds of subjects “paranormal” or simply normal?

Are some of these topics really “fringe?” Or, are they fundamental and tremendously important for human education, development and even survival? Are they actually very important for American society and the human race as a whole?

For example, are ESP and “remote viewing” really “anomalous cognition” (unusual perception)? Maybe they are really just additional and natural kinds of human perception.

Are all conspiracy theories simply irrational rumors?

Can increased understanding about human history, human behavior, human nature, human potential and the how the Universe (or “multiverse”) works move us forward toward a brighter future?

If these questions are legitimate, then Knapp’s course certainly seems like a very worthwhile endeavor. Knapp, students and participants in the class might even come up with some interesting answers.

Steve Hammons writes on many topics. For more information, visit these websites: Joint Recon Study Group, Transcendent TV & Media and American Chronicle.