Talking the Sun & Illuminated Eye with Gordon Gano

Violent Femmes bassist Brian Ritchie sporting an Illuminated Eye at a London concert in 1984

A lot of people have worked themselves into a tizzy and have devoted endless hours to spotting eyes in pyramids in music videos and the like. If one were to type "Illuminati Music" as a search into YouTube, they'd have enough exposés and quote-unquote documentaries to last a lifetime. Most of this can be attributed to uneducated or narrow-minded freaking out on behalf of people who have been conditioned to live in a state of fear. This fear can be sold to them by snake-oil salesmen like Alex Jones or by the very same music industry insiders that are part of the "conspiracy" as a form of contrived controversy to sell records. (I highly recommend you read a Chris Knowles post called "Which Means it's a Trap")

Fear mongers are a dime a dozen and come in all shapes and sizes - and with good reason: Fear sells.

Checkerboards. Symbol of.....Masonry? Duality? Who says there's one meaning?

That's not to say there aren't real conspiracies or that there may not be people who believe incorporating certain symbols or performing certain rituals will somehow benefit them.

I met someone about a year ago who was shopping for fluoride-free toothpaste. We stood in the aisle of a store and talked for a while about eliminating fluoride from our bodies. That of course turned to conspiracy talk. They were hip to many of the conspiracies I was and we continued to chat for a while. Then they asked me if I wanted to go to their music show that night (I'm being intentionally vague so as to not screw with anyone's career without their permission to post specifics). Turns out they play a particular instrument and perform with Jay-Z and Rhianna. I toss out, "Hey, what do you think of Jay-Z using these quote-unquote masonic hand-signs and symbols?" They reply, "Well, I don't like going to the rituals, but that's the price of being in the industry. You don't get out there unless you play along. And it's not just music, it's everywhere. It's all part of the New World Order. But, I believe we can overcome that by spreading a message of love."

Now, that's what I'm talking about! Real conspiracy or not, fear is what will get us in the end. Love is what allows us to escape the fear and empower ourselves. Again, I must acknowledge that there are a million cons going on all about us: con jobs, conspiracies, perhaps even conjurers. But, once we are self-empowered, even the real conspiracies cannot harm us.

I'd even go a step further and add that, if we are manifesting reality - the conspiracies may even be of our own making. But, that's a conversation for another time.

So, what are we to think of rituals and symbols? Well, for one, everything is a ritual. Brushing your teeth, with fluoride or not, is a ritual. Thanking Jesus after a field goal or praying to "Lucifer" before taking the stage at a concert is a ritual (and essentially the same thing). As for the symbols, I've come to consider that they may have their own story to tell - and perhaps are very often using artists as the medium for their message. The more I notice it in my own artwork, the more I understand the unconscious nature of these archetypes and that there are multiple interpretations of every symbol, along with multiple layers of meaning.

But, just to put things down on the record, I thought I should ask Gordon Gano, former front-man of the Violent Femmes and current front of Gordon Gano & The Ryans, why the Sun kept popping up in his music. The first song of the Violet Femmes' first album, and perhaps their biggest commercial hit, is Blister in The Sun. Now scope the latest album art:

If you want to hear what Gordon had to say, just click to listen to our 9th podcast - a short one that came out to exactly 9 minutes and 11 seconds. And yes, again for the record, that was unplanned.

While I was watching Gano & The Ryans play, a man comes and asks if the chair next to me is free. I say yes and he starts talking about synchronicity. What are the odds? So, we get to talking during the pauses between songs. For some reason I start to tell him about a time that I got in trouble for playing a Violent Femmes song when I did college radio. I ask him if he knows the obscure tune that I'm talking about. It's called "Country Death Song." Just then, the band begins to play....what else?

These are the things that, to me, are a sign that I'm living very much in the flow of the universe.

If you're a long time reader of this blog, you know that we watch symbols. Gordon Gano may not put much weight on them, but I do. I don't judge them as being "good or evil"- I try not to judge them at all. But, I do make the connections, because doing so has led me in wonderful directions. So, for those of you who make up the choir I'm preaching to, allow me to present some dot connecting, as a sync log if nothing else.

The cover to New Times, features two hexagons, resonating two of our favorite patterns, Bees and Saturn. This is of course, an acorn-shaped nut and bolt, giving us the Egyptian sky goddess Nut and a bolt, like a bolt of Jupiter lighting. Nut was the mother of Osiris, who is the equivalent of Saturn, or Father Time. See how much "time" is integrated into this cover - and should be, since both words of the title convey an essence of time - but we have to ask, how much of this was the concept the artist was going for? The gear-like progression in the middle is clock-like, but even those SAW blades, become WAS.

Gordon Gano is a double-G. We recently found this combination of double-G and Jupiter along with an Osiris-resonant death spiral (which itself looks a LOT like the Norway Spiral).

And what would be a better title to tie it all together than "Add It Up?" Here we have the Ouroboros snake, in a death/rebirth cycle - or spiral. He's surrounded by 3 heads and 3 phalluses, themselves surrounded by interwoven pyramids (some with "eyes") and in the corners we get the 3 pillars of the Masonic first-degree tracing board - which itself was connected to the Norway Spiral in our Birds and Bees Pt 4.

Still doubt what I'm saying? Since we're talking about time loops and Father Time - I'd be remiss if I didn't bring up Time Travel.

Gordon Gano has two links under his Wikipedia heading "In Popular Culture"

Gano is mentioned in the novel The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger.^[9]

Gano appears as a fictional version of himself, under a love spell, in the 1997 Sabrina, the Teenage Witch episode Hilda and Zelda: the Teenage Years

Time Traveler's Wife is pretty obvious. But that Sabrina, the Teenage Witch episode? It features her mother figures reversing their ages to become teenagers so they can go see Gano and the Violent Femmes.