Lost: The Final Boner

[Dr. Nguyen Van Falk]

The speculation about comparing Jacob to "something like the Judeo-Christian God" made me think about Pen's question up-thread:

I don't know my make believe religious tales that well, but isn't Satan's nemesis God?... Does Satan have any other dudes who battle him?

Satan doesn't really fight God himself so much as he fights God through fighting God's angels...

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation+12&version=NIV

⁷And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. ⁸But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. ⁹The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.

Angels are God's agents. They fight his fights as his servants. (In some Islamic interpretations, they apparently even lack free will altogether, never wearying of his service.)

When EvilLocke says, "Hello, Richard. It's good to see you out of those chains," this seems to suggest liberation from servitude. Service to Jacob, no doubt.

(Possibly spoilerish: Taking a more literal interpretation, I've been running into speculation on the internet (inadvertently, I might add) suggesting that Alpert arrived on the Black Rock as a prisoner en route to the Australian penal colony, which makes sense enough and seems rather Lost-like.)

Interestingly enough, Alpert is likely named after this guy (whom Wheezer may be familiar with). Born Richard Alpert, Ram Dass' assumed name means "servant of Rama" or "servant of God" in Hindi.

Richard Alpert = Servant of God.

If we followed this train of thought, would that necessarily entail Jacob = God? Maybe, maybe not.

Back to Biblical angels...

The archangel Michael is the leader of God's army—trampler of Satan—in heaven. On Earth, though, he was the guardian angel of Israel the nation...

¹ "At that time Michael, the great prince who protects your people, will arise. There will be a time of distress such as has not happened from the beginning of nations until then. But at that time your people—everyone whose name is found written in the book—will be delivered. ² Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt.

...and, in tradition, the guardian angel of (presumably by extension) Israel the man (aka, Jacob).

(Some traditions name Michael as the angel who wrestled Jacob. As I found before, there are other traditions that have this angel as a malevolent adversary—in particular, the guardian angel of Esau, possibly Satan.)

In any event, before this, Jacob encountered some of God's angels on the road to Canaan (and, before that, dreamt of them ascending to and descending from heaven). These angels were his bodyguards as he traveled. (The all-night man-on-angel wrestling party came when he found himself alone after sending his "servants" ahead.)

So, these "ministering angels" serve God by acting as servants of man.

[Dr. Nguyen Van Falk]

So, on the topic of angels serving man... Turns out Satan's not so hot on the idea.

In many traditions, Satan/Lucifer was cast down from heaven for refusing to bow before Adam, considering man an inferior creature.

This idea is found in apocryphal Judeo–Christian books, as well as in the Qur'an...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucifer#Islamic_point_of_view
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil_%28Islam%29
http://quran.com/7

And We have certainly created you, [O Mankind], and given you [human] form. Then We said to the angels, "Prostrate to Adam"; so they prostrated, except for Iblees. He was not of those who prostrated.

[ Allah ] said, "What prevented you from prostrating when I commanded you?" [Satan] said, "I am better than him. You created me from fire and created him from clay."

[ Allah ] said, "Descend from Paradise, for it is not for you to be arrogant therein. So get out; indeed, you are of the debased.

(Where angels are seen as incapable of free will, the Devil Iblis is considered not an angel, but a jinn.)

Jewish Midrash puts these words from Pslam 8 into the mouths of the angels upon the creation of Adam:

4 what is man that you are mindful of him,
       the son of man that you care for him?

5 You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
       and crowned him with glory and honor.

"This trouble, for what has it been created?"

(Man being "trouble," I have to imagine, thanks to his free will to disobey God.)

Old school American fire and brimstone guy, Jonathan Edwards, preached a Christian version:

And as all the angels are called the sons of God, Lucifer was his first-born, and was the first-born of every creature. But when it was revealed to him, high and glorious as he was, that he must be a ministering spirit to the race of mankind which he had seen newly created, which appeared so feeble, mean, and despicable, so vastly inferior, not only to him, the prince of the angels, and head of the created universe, but also to the inferior angels, and that he must be subject to one of that race that should hereafter be born, he could not bear it.

Does this contempt translate into Lost terms at all?

While trying to "recruit" him (recruiting for what, an army?), EvilLocke needles Alpert for being blindly and unquestioningly obedient to Jacob for all these years:

LOCKE: Oh, Richard... I'm sorry. You mean, you've been doing everything he told you all this time and he never said why? [music to Chuck's ears] I would never have done that to you. I would never have kept you in the dark.

RICHARD: And what would you have done?

LOCKE: I would have treated you with respect. Come with me... and I promise I will tell you everything.

These words have a strong scent of sulfur to them. They certainly sound a bit like Satan mocking a 'servant of God' for their blind obedience.

At the same time, I don't think it would be a tremendous stretch to also compare this to Satan mocking an angel of God for unquestioningly prostrating himself before man that he (among others) was serving and protecting.

Okay... maybe it is a bit of a stretch. What do you want from me?

[Dr. Nguyen Van Falk]

Non-Abrahamic religions had evil guys, too.

Egyptian...

With all the talk of Egyptian mythology, has anyone ever brought up Set?

A desert god, god of chaos and storms, Set was the murderer of his younger brother Osiris and long-time nemesis of Osiris' son Horus. He used trickery to kill Osiris, but not to the extent of avoiding the dirty work. (In one version of the myth, he totally dismembered Osiris' body afterwards. His penis was swallowed by a fish and never recovered.)

FWIW, he was not always a bad guy. Before his demonization, he had been worshiped as a major God in parts of ancient Egypt and had even been the defender of the sun god Ra (later apparently merged with Horus, or at least considered an aspect of Horus) against the other great demon of Egyptian cosmology, the serpent Apep.

Apep was more purely evil. As demon of the night, Apep was the underworld nemesis of Ra. As demon of chaos, he was the primary opponent of Maat, the Egyptian principle of order.

Dubious Lost connection(s):

1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Was

Was ("power") scepters represent the typhonic or Set-animal (the mascot of the Egyptian god Set). Was scepters were depicted as being carried by gods, pharaohs, and priests, as a symbol of power, and in later use, as a symbol of control over the force of chaos that Set represented.

The goddess Maat, who (along with her male counterpart Thoth) upheld balance and order, and whose feather was weighed against the souls of the dead on Anubis' scales, can be seen here holding a was scepter in one hand and an ankh in the other.

Before being killed by Smokey/EvilLocke (which he proved unable to control), Lostie priest Mr. Eko carried his Jesus stick for to beat the shit out of chaos (and some people).

2) The Eye of Horus: Horus' eyes represented the sun and the moon. The moon was dimmer only because Set plucked it out at one point. John Locke has always had a notable scar over his eye (from the crash) which bears at least something of a resemblance to the teardrop shape sometimes found on the Eye of Horus. The scar is on Locke's right eye, though, while it was Horus' left eye that was associated with the moon.

Non-Lost-related tidbit: Set was said to have read hair. Another bad guy with red hair (this time all over his body): Esau. Because no one likes a ginger.

Norse (hey, Slak)...

Loki: shape-shifting trickster god and/or giant. Father of Hel, queen of the underworld (which itself is also called Hel). Loki is slated to be the enemy of the gods at Ragnarök, the final, Apocalyptic battle of Norse eschatology. Until that time comes, though, he's bound to a rock by his son's entrails.

Loki was responsible for the death of Baldr: god of light, son of Odin, considered the most beautiful, most awesome and most white of all the gods. Baldr's mom made everything on the earth promise to never harm him, except, for some reason, mistletoe. Oops.

Because they thought Baldr couldn't be be hurt, a favorite hobby of the gods was apparently to throw shit at him and watch him not die. Loki figured out the loophole, though, and made an arrow or dart out of mistletoe and tricked Baldr's blind brother Höðr into shooting/throwing it at him. Baldr died, but he'll be reborn after Ragnarök destroys the Gods.

(Loki, too, was not always evil. Often enough, he used his cunning on behalf of the Gods. But the killing of Baldr left him persona non grata in Asgard and set off the chain of events leading to Ragnarök.)

Dubious Lost connection:

Höðr is rendered in non-insane alphabets as Hoth, Hothr, Hod or Hoder. Last season's 13th episode (the one with Miles flashbacks and Hurley-led Ewok-bashing) was titled "Some Like It Hoth."

[Dr. Nguyen Van Falk]

Finally, a somewhat unorthodox Persian version of the Abrahamic Satan, courtesy of Joseph Campbell...

http://www.jungland.ru/Library/CampMoye.htm

MOYERS: And yet one of my favorite myths is the story from Persia that Satan was condemned to hell because he loved God so much.

CAMPBELL: Yes, that's a basic Muslim idea about Satan being God's greatest lover. There are a number of ways of thinking about Satan, but this is based on the question, Why was Satan thrown into hell? The standard story is that, when God created the angels, he told them to bow to none but himself. Then he created man, whom he regarded as a higher form than the angels, and he asked the angels to serve man. And Satan would not bow to man.

Now, this is interpreted in the Christian tradition, as I recall from my boyhood instruction, as being the egotism of Satan. He would not bow to man. But in the Persian story, he could not bow to man because of his love for God -- he could bow only to God. God had changed his signals, do you see? But Satan had so committed himself to the first set of signals that he could not violate those, and in his -- I don't know if Satan has a heart or not -- but in his mind, he could not bow to anyone but God, whom he loved. And then God says, "Get out of my sight."

Now, the worst of the pains of hell, insofar as hell has been described, is the absence of the Beloved, which is God. So how does Satan sustain the situation in hell? By the memory of the echo of God's voice, when God said, "Go to hell." That is a great sign of love.

MOYERS: Well, it's certainly true in life that the greatest hell one can know is to be separated from the one you love. That's why I've liked the Persian myth. Satan is God's lover --

CAMPBELL: -- and he is separated from God, and that's the real pain of Satan.

Dubiouser and dubiouser...

http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/The_Substitute_transcript

LOCKE: What I am is trapped. And I've been trapped for so long that I don't even remember what it feels like to be free. Maybe you can understand that. But before I was trapped, I was a man, James. Just like you.

SAWYER: I'm havin' a hard time believin' that...

LOCKE: You can believe whatever you want, that's the truth. I know what it's like to feel joy... to feel pain, anger, fear... to experience betrayal. I know what it's like to lose someone you love.

Did EvilLocke love and lose? Does this have anything to do with his desire to "go home"? Or is he just verbally punching Sawyer in the nuts again?

[Richard Chuggar]

Finally, a somewhat unorthodox Persian version of the Abrahamic Satan, courtesy of Joseph Campbell...

http://www.jungland.ru/Library/CampMoye.htm

MOYERS: And yet one of my favorite myths is the story from Persia that Satan was condemned to hell because he loved God so much.

CAMPBELL: Yes, that's a basic Muslim idea about Satan being God's greatest lover. There are a number of ways of thinking about Satan, but this is based on the question, Why was Satan thrown into hell? The standard story is that, when God created the angels, he told them to bow to none but himself. Then he created man, whom he regarded as a higher form than the angels, and he asked the angels to serve man. And Satan would not bow to man.

Now, this is interpreted in the Christian tradition, as I recall from my boyhood instruction, as being the egotism of Satan. He would not bow to man. But in the Persian story, he could not bow to man because of his love for God -- he could bow only to God. God had changed his signals, do you see? But Satan had so committed himself to the first set of signals that he could not violate those, and in his -- I don't know if Satan has a heart or not -- but in his mind, he could not bow to anyone but God, whom he loved. And then God says, "Get out of my sight."

Now, the worst of the pains of hell, insofar as hell has been described, is the absence of the Beloved, which is God. So how does Satan sustain the situation in hell? By the memory of the echo of God's voice, when God said, "Go to hell." That is a great sign of love.

MOYERS: Well, it's certainly true in life that the greatest hell one can know is to be separated from the one you love. That's why I've liked the Persian myth. Satan is God's lover --

CAMPBELL: -- and he is separated from God, and that's the real pain of Satan.

Dubiouser and dubiouser...

http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/The_Substitute_transcript

LOCKE: What I am is trapped. And I've been trapped for so long that I don't even remember what it feels like to be free. Maybe you can understand that. But before I was trapped, I was a man, James. Just like you.

SAWYER: I'm havin' a hard time believin' that...

LOCKE: You can believe whatever you want, that's the truth. I know what it's like to feel joy... to feel pain, anger, fear... to experience betrayal. I know what it's like to lose someone you love.

Did EvilLocke love and lose? Does this have anything to do with his desire to "go home"? Or is he just verbally punching Sawyer in the nuts again?

I hope it turns out to be just a dude and some smoke, living on a crazy island.

[Slaky]

Non-Abrahamic religions had evil guys, too.

Egyptian...

With all the talk of Egyptian mythology, has anyone ever brought up Set?

I think so...

[Dr. Nguyen Van Falk]

Non-Abrahamic religions had evil guys, too.

Egyptian...

With all the talk of Egyptian mythology, has anyone ever brought up Set?

I think so...

When are we gonna have that linguine?

[Yeti]

I hope it turns out to be just a dude and some smoke, living on a crazy island.

THI

[Slaky]

Non-Abrahamic religions had evil guys, too.

Egyptian...

With all the talk of Egyptian mythology, has anyone ever brought up Set?

I think so...

When are we gonna have that linguine?

Little did we know, way back then, we'd be eating linguine in an alternate timeline.

[Wheezer]

Interestingly enough, Alpert is likely named after this guy (whom Wheezer may be familiar with). Born Richard Alpert, Ram Dass' assumed name means "servant of Rama" or "servant of God" in Hindi.

I've got this on vinyl. Remember, what G-d wants first and foremost is for you to dress up in bedsheets.

[Dr. Nguyen Van Falk]

Finally, of course... Who's the new Jacob?

Locke? His name got crossed off, but I kind of hope that was somehow premature. I'd love it if it turned out that he wasn't a total fucking dupe all the way to the end.

Jack? This strikes me as the most obvious, particularly given his latter-day conversion to Locke-like faith in the island, but I really, really fucking hope it's not the case. God, I hate that guy.

Sawyer? That would be kind of bad ass, and would probably require a dramatic come-to-Jesus moment of sorts.

Sayid? He's already come back from the dead, but the Temple folk don't seem too keen on him.

Sun/Jin? Boring.

Hurley? The darkhorse, dude.

I'm sure everyone else has thought of this already, but it occurs to me suddenly that I could add Christian to this list, as well. I mean, it would be lame and all, but it would fit...

4   - Locke
8   - Reyes
15 - Ford
16 - Jarrah
23 - Shephard
42 - Kwon

Maybe even Claire, too, which could throw us for a loop on the whole "infection" tip.

[Dr. Nguyen Van Falk]

I feel like shit's gonna get real next week.

[Weebs]

Finally, of course... Who's the new Jacob?

Locke? His name got crossed off, but I kind of hope that was somehow premature. I'd love it if it turned out that he wasn't a total fucking dupe all the way to the end.

Jack? This strikes me as the most obvious, particularly given his latter-day conversion to Locke-like faith in the island, but I really, really fucking hope it's not the case. God, I hate that guy.

Sawyer? That would be kind of bad ass, and would probably require a dramatic come-to-Jesus moment of sorts.

Sayid? He's already come back from the dead, but the Temple folk don't seem too keen on him.

Sun/Jin? Boring.

Hurley? The darkhorse, dude.

I'm sure everyone else has thought of this already, but it occurs to me suddenly that I could add Christian to this list, as well. I mean, it would be lame and all, but it would fit...

4   - Locke
8   - Reyes
15 - Ford
16 - Jarrah
23 - Shephard
42 - Kwon

Maybe even Claire, too, which could throw us for a loop on the whole "infection" tip.

Well it looks like you can write that one off.  She is very much EVIL.  I can't remember if he used it before the island, but I found it interesting that Alter-Jack was driving the same truck that Real Jack drove when he got off the island.  I assume we'll find out soon enough that Alter-Jack has a different wife.  Also, seeing Dogen in the alternate timeline would seem to imply that he was brought to the island no later than the Dharma years, rather than being a Richard-type character that has been there forever.  Hurley's theory about the bones in the caves was pretty awesome.  I feel like they can introduce an infinite number of new locations on the island by simply using the "I guess we weren't looking for it" line.

And I know this is completely unrelated, but I was just thinking about how when they first showed Dharmaville on the show, it was way inside the island, basically in it's own area in the middle of the jungle.  But weren't the docks/submarine located right next to the houses?

[R-V]

So is anyone else squarely on the side of the Man in Black in this upcoming rumble? The recurring theme throughout all these flashsideways is that all these people would be just fine if not for Jacob and his sneaky meddling.

Aside from all the mythology stuff, I'm really impressed with what the writers have done with Jack this season. I actually like the guy now - he realized what an asshat he was and he's sick of tolerating Jacob's bullshit. I like it - I'd be getting tired of the mysterious mumbo jumbo too. Mayhaps he'll join up with Smokey/Sawyer/Claire?

I also liked Kate getting completly dismissed by Hurley. Irrelevant indeed. And the nod to Adam & Eve was nice - this was a Lindelof/Cuse written episode so they were definitely letting us know they haven't forgotten about it.

And yeah, Thrill. Shit's gonna get real as all get out.

[Dr. Nguyen Van Falk]

So is anyone else squarely on the side of the Man in Black in this upcoming rumble? The recurring theme throughout all these flashsideways is that all these people would be just fine if not for Jacob and his sneaky meddling.

I'm not so sure.

On the one hand, I've been prepared for a "the evil guy is good" twist for a while now.

Even if EvilLocke is a Satan type, there's plenty of room to look at him the other way around as a hero to man. Like Prometheus, who stole the fire from the Gods for man, Satan in the Garden of Eden can be viewed as a liberating figure, opening men's eyes to their free will through the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

On the other hand, I suspect the shiny-happy alternate timeline stuff is all a big feint.

Yeah, life seems better in the alt timeline, but it seems way too easy to last. Either all the shiny-happy stuff will at some point all go to shit or—and this is sort of my current hunch (based on nothing at all)—something will happen, or something will come to light, that will compel the Losties to somehow "sacrifice" that comfort in order to rectify the timeline split. For the good of the island/world/universe/whatever.

Don't ask me how I think this would go down, or who would be doing the "sacrificing," or even which timeline it would all go down in: I have no idea. Again: it's little more than a hunch.

Two comparisons do come to mind, though.

The first is Donnie Darko. Ignoring as much as possible Richard Kelly's ridiculous mumbo jumbo about "Living Receivers" and the "Manipulated Dead and Undead" and whatnot (and forgoing countless impossible "why?" questions), the "official" interpretation of the plot is fairly simple:

An alternate universe (with an alternate timeline) is created in which all sorts of bad shit happens and whose collapse threatens to destroy the normal universe. Somehow Donnie is assigned the duty of fixing it. And, while no one else is aware of what he's accomplished (to them, the alt timeline never happened), somehow he is able to set everything right and save the universe by sacrificing himself to a jet engine falling out of the sky.

Don't ask how. Just que "Mad World."

The second is The Last Temptation of Christ, which throws this wrinkle into the story of Christ's crucifixion:

While on the cross, Jesus sees and talks to a young girl who appears to be an angel. She tells him that he is not the son of God, not the Messiah, but that God loves him, is pleased with him, and wants him to be happy. She brings him down off the cross and leads him away.

She takes him to be with Mary Magdalane, and the newly married couple make love. The couple has a child and lives an idyllic life. Mary unexpectedly dies, and the sobbing Jesus is told by his angel that all women are "Mary", and thus he is betrothed to Mary and Martha, sisters of Lazarus. He starts a family with them and lives his life in peace. When he encounters the apostle Paul preaching about the Messiah—that is, about Jesus—he tries to tell Paul that he is the man that Paul has been preaching about. Paul (who in this film has slain the resurrected Lazarus in his earlier life as Saul) rejects him, saying that even if Jesus hadn't died in the cross, his message was the truth, and nothing would stop him from proclaiming that.

Near the end of his life, Jesus' former disciples visit him on his deathbed with Jerusalem (representing the world) in ruins in the background. Judas comes last and calls Jesus a traitor. It is revealed that the angel who released him from the crucifixion is in fact Satan, who has been tempting him into this life of comfort as a mortal man. Jesus realizes that he must die to bring salvation to mankind. Crawling back through the burning city of Jerusalem during the Jewish Rebellion, he reaches the site of his crucifixion and begs God to let him fulfill his purpose and to "let [him] be [God's] son."

Jesus is instantly back on the cross—the "fantasy" of escaping death on the cross, of being married, of having a family, and of the disaster that would have encompassed mankind was not real. It is the dream of what would have happened had Jesus truly left the cross behind.

Jesus cries out as he dies, "It is accomplished! It is accomplished."

This is not to say that the alternate Lost timeline is just a "dream." It's about the choice between alternate possibilities and Scorsese's Christ sacrificing an "idyllic life" to fulfill his destiny/God's will.