FAUSTUS CROW - OCCULT STAR TREK: VULCAN

OCCULT STAR TREK

VULCAN

Copyright 2014 by Faustus Crow

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

without the express written permission of the author

except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Star Trek is owned by CBS and Paramount, all images utilised are copyrighted to their respective owners and creators.

This book is dedicated to my mother, who is a true heroine in every sense of the word.

INTRODUCTION

This book investigates the source of the famous split-fingered Vulcan salute in relation to ancient shamanistic practices of 'inner space' exploration. The original Star Trek episode 'Amok Time' introduced its audience to the Vulcan home world, and the first time viewers would see Vulcan's interacting with one another. During the shooting of the episode, Nimoy felt that something was missing, that Vulcan's should be seen as having a deep and complex culture. So, rather than shaking hands like Westerners, or bowing like Asians, Nimoy suggested to the director Joseph Pevney that Vulcan's should have their own distinctive greeting. "What do you have in mind?" asked Pevney. After some thought, Nimoy held up his hand in an unusual but now familiar gesture. Pevney liked the idea, and the rest is history.

Nimoy's creative input has become legendary within the Trek community, but, there is far more to the Vulcan salute, which communicates an inner experience of a fiery light, ancient shamans have known about across the globe from differing cultures; wherefore uniting them in a common understanding of something quite profound. Many years later after Nimoy introduced his iconic Vulcan hand sign, at the age of 62, Nimoy shared his story with a Rabbi friend, who in turn revealed to him what he knew. According to the Cabbala (Jewish mysticism), during the blessing, which Nimoy had attended as a child, where he first saw the hand sign being used, the feminine essence of deity manifests whom is known as the (Shekhina) Shekhinah. Intrigued by what his Rabbi friend had communicated, and somewhat disappointed that his own Judaism had 'gone flat', Nimoy set out upon an eight-year artistic project to create a 'photographic essay' exploring the Shekhinah.

Jewish mystics have created a rich and vibrant series of beliefs concerning the Shekhinah, so Nimoy had plenty of material to work with and it certainly didn't hurt that his artistic endeavour involved taking photos of young, nude women! Don't be so shocked, although Palaeolithic shamans did not have cameras, they most certainly utilised their third eye of an inner lens amidst their Triangle-Of-Art imaginations, whom made numerous Venus figurines, while exploring the dark and the light aspects of the divine feminine, at a time when art was born from out of a womb cave, so, Nimoy is in very good company.

How did Nimoy's fellows respond to his artistic exploration of the Shekhinah? Reactions have been colourfully varied from enthusiastic support to that of open condemnation. Nimoy had to hide from a stoning due to vehement protests by Orthodox factions; a handful of his appearances had to be relocated to facilities run by Reform congregations, whence Nimoy to have joked that he feels like the proverbial "wandering Jew". The protests primarily centre around the depicted nudity of his photographs, often combined with Cabbalistic imagery and associated symbolism, which some see as being heretical. The cover of Nimoy's Shekhina book depicts a semi-nude model whose arm is wrapped with a ritual binding, which is traditionally reserved for male worshippers, along with photos depicting the Hebrew letter 'Shin,' which inspired the Vulcan salute being juxtaposed with various nude and semi-nude women.

The Shekhinah of a word describes an 'experience,' which does not solely belong to Judaism, it is known of by other cultures, which do not have any hang ups about human sexuality, nor do they have a fixation upon the male principle at the expense of the female. Hence it cannot be branded of ownership by any cultural creation of a religious construct; the experience its self goes far beyond a word or a symbol of a brand, which of a commonality of an experience is that of an inner fire, whose source is experienced to be feminine; whereby you have Palaeolithic shamans creating a preponderance of Venus figurines; this book explores what this inner fire is within a shamanistic cross-cultural context in association with the Vulcan hand sign, which leads to other intriguing symbolic associations.

(Please note that the experience of an inner fire is mentioned by numerous cultures, which ties in with the bright white light phenomenon of the Near Death Experience, such as in the Tibetan book of the dead where it is described as the first Bardo of the Primary White Light. The cultural descriptions of this inner fire, covered in this book, is only the tip of an iceberg floating amidst the deep ocean of the collective unconscious.)

THE FIERY WAY OF THE VULCAN SHAMAN

Leonard Nimoy, is an inspired American actor, film director, poet, singer and photographer who has never shied away from his Orthodox Jewish upbringing, which came very much to fore in Star Trek. Nimoy is most famous for his role as the inscrutable and ever-logical Vulcan alien called Spock in the original Star Trek series, which has since evolved into multiple film, television, and video game sequels; whereupon the character of Spock has become a cultural icon, which is nigh indivisible from Nimoy, who are almost one and the same. Nimoy's fame as Spock is such that both of his autobiographies, I Am Not Spock (1975) and I Am Spock (1995), were written from the viewpoint of sharing his experiences acting the character of an alternate shamanic guise, which as a Vulcan has an archetypal origin.

THE FIRE GOD OF ANCIENT ROME

The word Vulcan is originally derived from ancient Roman religion and myth, Vulcan (Latin: Vulcanus) is the God of both beneficial and hindering 'fire,' who has a mastery over its element, including the 'fire' of volcanoes. But Vulcan is only the smithy master of fire, not its true source, which is the province of the Goddess Minerva, the ancient Greek's called Hera, who is the Goddess of the hearth, hence the source of fire. However, as for the physical depictions of the God Vulcan in ancient iconography, they do not bear any resemblance to Spock at all. Vulcan is often depicted with a blacksmith's hammer and he certainly did not have pointed ears. Vulcan's annual Roman festival called the Vulcanalia was held on August 23rd in his honour during pre-Christian times.

THE HORNED GOAT GOD CALLED PAN

The look of Spock is in fact indirectly derived from another deity who was sacred to both the Roman's and ancient Greek's called Pan. The God Pan is usually depicted as being half human and half Goat who has 'pointed ears' like that of a Goat. The Goat-man called Pan was a God of untamed nature at its wildest, whom roamed the wilds of the high mountains. Pan's Goat nature basically referred to a mountain Goat, and said mountain Goat was able to ascend the shamans cosmic mountain, which the ancient Greek's perceived as being Mt Olympus. The God Pan and the mountain Goat is a symbolic reference to a shaman, whose shamanic office was symbolised as having horns emanating from his brow, which can be found of a cross-cultural motif of similarity across the globe.