Guest Post: Lost Fathers and the Issac Complex
by Edward Wilson

Lost is exploring, or perhaps creating, a non-freudian father issue which I’m going to call the Issac complex. Rather than a sexual trine involving the mother, this father issue centers around the father’s betrayal and abandoning of the child. Psychologically this is very similar territory to that explored by Fight Club. The biblical story of Issac and Abraham is that god asks Abraham to sacrifice or murder his son Issac as an act of faith and that just as he is about to kill his son, God relents in this demand. This story is recounted in Lost.

Character names are very significant in Lost and the ultimate authority on the island is named Jacob, who biblically the son of Issac. Interestingly Jacob seems to have a tendency to turn on and banish his representative leaders. Additionally, Jack’s father, Christian Sheppard is taking over as his spokesperson.

Whereas Fight Club locates the solution to this issue in the creation and assumption of a new image of masculinity, the aggressive trickster figure of Tyler Durden, Lost has thus far shown us two solutions. We
are shown forgiveness and acceptance of the bad dad in Hurley’s story and violent rejection of the betraying father in John Locke and Sawyer’s murder of John’s father.

Given the Gnostic themes of the show it behooves me to point out that the ultimate example of the bad dad theme would be the Gnostic Demiurge or the bad creator god. In Demiurgic Gnosticism the creator god is an evil entity that has trapped us in this creation. The Gnostic Christ, or son, would be expressed in those same two modes, rejection of the Father’s world or forgiveness and redemption of it.

(Bigger illustration at site)

I came across this for the first time a while back, but was reminded of it during the Barcamp PDX LOST session. It’s sounding more and more likely.

LOST has presented us with various themes of fate vs. destiny; however, by the end of the series, we will all be back at the same universal question: Are we completely controlled by fate, or do we have the ability to change what’s already happened in the future?

The LOST series revolves around the use of a quasi-conventional time machine. All of the “mysteries” that the show presents can be explained through an understanding of how this time machine is used. While many think that a time machine is a “cheap” answer to the show, I can assure you that once LOST makes the “big reveal,” there will be much to think about and reflect upon.

I’d like the reader to note that this is an extensive theory that “stretches” many events to the point that the entire theory may not seem believable. The purpose of the theory is to take a concept of time travel and apply it to all elements of the show – in an attempt to answer almost every question that is presented by LOST. Will all the answers make complete sense? No. Is there any theory out there that is proven to be 100% true? No. With that said, it should also be noted that most of this theory is complete conjecture and I make no claim that this theory is the definitive “answer” to the show it should be read for entertainment purposes only.

In this theory, I will walk you through the linear progression of events in LOST; however, this progression is very different than the ordering of the episodes of LOST – so I will simply provide estimated timestamps for each event. This is a very long theory, and may be confusing to readers who are not well-versed in the world of LOST. Make sure you have time to at least read through the “timeline” section of this theory that is where I lay out all of the events of the show. Thanks, and enjoy reading the theory!

Time Loop Theory.

Getting back to the more occult roots of this blog:

Popular Mechanics has an Egyptologist weigh in on the hieroglyphics from “Dead is Dead”

Allen agrees that the animal-headed human in the hieroglyphic Ben is fixated on is probably based on Anubis, though he says in actuality, no Egyptian scene looks like what’s shown on Lost. “I suspect that the colossus is also meant to be Anubis, too,” he says. But he points out, it’s actually more of a hybrid of Anubis and Taweret, the demon-wife of the Apep, the Egyptian’s original god of evil. (It’s said that Apep was only present at night, and therefore any evil happenings during the daytime were attributed to Taweret). “The thing on the head definitely looks like Taweret’s, but she never wears a kilt, which is clearly there in the back shot of the colossus. The colossus is probably holding two ankh-signs, like the one Anubis holds in this image, but he’s holding them like Taweret holds the two signs she holds, which are ‘protection’ signs, not ankhs.” Allen also notes that “the four toes on the statue fragment are more Taweret than Anubis, who has a human body and therefore five toes.”

Popular Mechanics: Lost Channels Ancient Egyptian Legend to Explain Smoke Monster (via Electric Children)

Pretty interesting, no? Danny Chaoflux was actually the first person who suggested to me that the Monster might be Apep:

So perhaps the Others are a Taweret & Apep

(Image from Lostpedia)

From the Monster theories page of Lostpedia comes an alternate theory:

In Egyptian mythology, Ammit was the personification of divine retribution for all the wrongs one had committed in life. She dwelt in the Hall of Ma’at, who was the personification of the concept of truth, balance, and order.The hearts of the dead were weighed by Anubis against a feather from Ma’at’s headdress. The hearts of those who were heavy with wrongdoing failed the test were given to Ammit for her to devour. Those whose souls were devoured were not permitted to enter Aaru, having to be restless forever—effectively dying a second time. If the heart was lighter than a feather then the soul was judged by the god of the underworld, Osiris. With the strong Egyptian undertones, especially this season, the monster could be a personification of Ammit. When the monster poses as Yemi, it asks Eko if he is sorry for the wrongdoings in his life. When Eko says no, the monster kills him. We saw in “This Place is Death” that the monster lives in the Temple with the hieroglyphics on it. This temple, which goes underground, could represent the Hall of Ma’at where souls are judged.

I have another idea: the creators of LOST might be creating its own set of Egyptian deities.

Until “Dead is Dead” I was thinking that the Dharma Initiative might have been using Egyptian hieroglyphs as a code (the way the Others use Latin). But the hieroglyphs in the temple in “Dead is Dead” seem to rule that out.

It might also be worth noting that in “Some Like it Hoth,” the lesson Jack erases from the chalk board is on Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Here’s an, *ahem*, odd possible influence on Lost: Odd John by Olaf Stapledon, first published in 1935. I came across it while researching this timeline. I haven’t read the novel yet.

It’s the story of John Wainwright, a child prodigy of extreme intelligence who eventually develops telepathy. John eventually discovers some other mutant superhumans like himself, and founds a colony on an island. Here’s a summary of this last segment of the book from Wikipedia (includes book spoilers):
Read the rest of this entry »

Wired: The League is interesting because of its dependence on that vast canon. Everything from pulp up through every novel that’s been written gets hologrammed.Moore: In the first two volumes we were dealing mainly with characters from literature, because characters from literature were all that were around up until roughly the end of the 19th century. With this one, the first one set in 1910, we’re using characters from the stage as well as literature. We’re using the whole Threepenny Opera storyline. With the second one, set in 1969, we’ve got access to all of the films and television that were around then. The third part, set in the present day—2008, 2009—we have characters from all of the new media that have evolved over the past 30 years.

It is interesting—it is an expanding cast of characters, and I suppose we’re attempting to come up with a kind of unified field theory of culture that actually links up all of these various works, whether they’re high culture or low culture or no culture.

From: Wired interview with Alan Moore.

Interesting to me because of my theory that LOST is “every story.”

Also remember that Watchmen, written by Moore, was a huge influence on LOST.

It wasn’t until last week’s episode that I figured out what’s been bugging me about this season thus far: it’s too linear.

Sure, there’s the time flashes that have helped us explore the island a little bit. But for the most part, the plot has been moving in a single forward motion. Contrast this with last season: we knew the “Oceanic 6″ got off the island – but we didn’t know at first who the Oceanic 6 were. And until the very last episode, we didn’t know how they got off. We also didn’t know what happened to everyone else on the island. There created two narratives: the events on the Island, and the non-linear “flash forwards” about the Oceanic 6.

Having part of the story already laid out and filling in the puzzle pieces non-linearly is one of LOST’s most compelling storytelling devices. We wanted to know what Kate did. How Locke ended up in a wheelchair. Why each character was in Sydney. (I still want to know if there’s more to Sawyer’s background than we know about.)

Weirdly enough, this season we were for the first time being given more answers than questions. And it wasn’t nearly as exciting. Now we have some more puzzle pieces to fill in: How did Ben get beat up? Is Penny ok? Why was Sayid in custody? Why did Hurley decide to come along? Hopefully we’ll also start to see some of Daniel, Ben, Widmore, Richard, and Miles’s stories explored to create more tension.

In the church, Ben talks about the Biblical disciple Thomas. What he doesn’t mention is that a principal gospel of Gnostic Christianity is the Gospel of Thomas.

The “Locke as Jesus” theme is obvious, and the reference to Jack as Thomas shouldn’t be taken lightly.

Most extensive article on LOST and Gnosticism that I know of.

Theory: the Others are Cathars (Wikipedia entry on Catharism)

Previous coverage of LOST and Gnosticism on Hatch 23

Cryptogon puts some rather strange pieces together regarding the birth of octuplets last month. Definitely take this with a grain of salt, and keep the concept of apophenia in mind. But if this is true, it’s something up there with the Dharma Initiative and Mittelos Bioscience.

Full Story: Cryptogon

Here is a summary via Above Top Secret:

-Suicide note ended with a Masonic code-phrase signifying “distress”
-The man worked for a company called Kaiser Permanente
, which includes masonic symbolism in its logo
-Kaiser Permanente Bellflower Medical Center was involved in a controversial recent multiple birth of eight kids (octuplets) to a single mother.
-Lupoe also had twins…nothing conclusive to say about this, really, but as the author at the link notes, “What are the odds that one company (Kaiser Permanente) would be involved with two profoundly freakish stories involving twins at the same time?”

Above: Casimer effect illustration from Wikipedia.

Physicist and time-travel guru Michio Kaku told Popular Mechanics last year that some scientists believe time travel through holes in space and time, known as wormholes, might be possible, but there are problems that need to be conquered. First, there’s the matter of energy—massive amounts would be needed to create a black hole, which could function as a portal to another point in space and time. But it would be a one-way trip; black holes aren’t stable enough to stay open on their own. Creating a wormhole, a stable portal through space and time that would allow return trips, would require inconceivable amounts of energy—inconceivable, that is, unless you’re on an island that can make paraplegics walk, harbors a monster of smoke and can disappear off the face of the Earth. Physicists have created tiny amounts of energy in the laboratory using the Casimir Effect—quantum fluctuations that can create energy in a vacuum—but what has been generated in the lab isn’t enough to keep a wormhole open, Kaku says. (We first learned about the Casimir Effect in the Orchid Station orientation video in Season Four’s “No Place Like Home.”)Chang warns a Dharma worker who is drilling into the earth in an attempt to access a buried wheel (the same wheel that Ben uses to move the island some 30-odd years later) that under no circumstances should workers building the Orchid Station set off charges near the pocket of exotic matter during the construction process. When asked what would happen, Chang says only, “God help us all.”

Exotic matter is hypothetical, and physicists such as Kaku know “almost nothing” about what its properties could be. Such matter would have “formed when the Earth was young, and then floated into outer space,” Kaku says, “and therefore there’s none left on Earth.” However, it may have been possible for a pocket of the matter to become accidentally trapped underground. Physicists theorize that exotic matter could have antigravitational properties (so it would fall up) or it would have negative energy (absorbing energy around it, possibly making it implosive). And if it were to have antigravitational properties, it wouldn’t want to stay on Earth either; instead, it would rocket into space—violently. “It would be quite dangerous to people who encounter it,” says Kaku.

Full Story: Popular Mechanics

See also: Popular Mechanics on the science of LOST

What sort of “exotic material” would it take to punch through our reality into the television universe?