Many of you have read and rated my other theory, “The Great Gedanken Experiment, A Tale of Time Travel and Schrodinger’s Cat.” Some have offered praise and insightful questions, and others blasted it out of the water… and I appreciate it all! I have been asked if I have other theories, and so I offer for your consideration the following theory. You will find this to be a completely different approach than my first, and while it addresses many questions the Gedanken Experiment theory missed, I will tell you up front that it avoids many others. Perhaps there is a way to join the two; I’d love to hear your thoughts. If you have not already, I highly recommend studying the blast door map on Lostpedia before continuing.
There are several key mysteries from Lost that this theory attempts to reconcile. Consider:
□ the Egyptian hieroglyphs on the 108 minute clock
□ the Latin phrases on the blast door map
□ “The Swan”, “The Flame”, “The Arrow”, “The Pearl,” and “The Staff”
□ the numbers of the Valenzetti Equation (4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42)
Everybody has heard of the Lost Civilization of Atlantis, but there is much that you likely don’t know. Let’s start with ancient Greece, in the time of Plato and Socrates. As you know, ancient Greek religion was governed by the cults of various deities, whose stories were told in the many myths that survive to this day. The story of Atlantis, however, was not a typical myth. It was not a part of Greek culture and religion at all, until Plato told of it. According to Plato, a relative of his, Solon, visited a port on the Nile delta in Egypt, and discussed ancient mysteries with them. The story of Atlantis came not from the Greeks at all, but from Egypt, at least according to Plato. This will be very relevant to the hieroglyphs on the clock.
Plato described Atlantis and its people in detail in two dialogues, Timaeus and Critius. He said that Atlantis was an ancient and highly advanced civilization that lived on a continent in the Atlantic Ocean (this is where the Atlantic gets its name, derived from the king Atlas, son of Poseidon). According to Plato, ancient Egyptian inscriptions and papyri supported the history as fact. While it is often referred to as a continent, the description is actually of a series of islands, with the central island being the most important and reserved for the king’s son. The islands were “enriched with extraordinary fruits and blessed by the Sun, with rivers and inexhaustible mines of precious metals.” Thus they were extremely wealthy. The inner island was protected by concentric rings of defenses, the innermost being a mysterious wall made of “orichalcum,” an unknown metal “which sparkled like fire.”
Socrates was Plato’s teacher and mentor, and he doubted Plato’s tales of Atlantis. They were much forgotten for centuries. As the stories were revived, the conclusion made by many was that the Atlanteans had actually destroyed themselves by experimenting with “cosmic” energies or in a nuclear holocaust. More importantly, it was believed that the Atlanteans had discovered “secret and sacred wisdom.” This knowledge meant great power; and as we know, great power means eventual corruption. According to Plato, the Atlanteans were “filled with boundless greed and drunk with power.” And for this, they were destroyed.
The story of the destruction is important, and here we must return to the Egyptians, for they told Solon something else. In Timaeus a priest tells Solon, “Sometimes those bodies revolving in space around the earth, divert from their usual course. Thus, at wide intervals in time, everything on earth is destroyed by fire… At other times, the gods purify the earth by means of water, by flooding it.” Since the last great “purification” of the earth was by flood, the next apocalypse would be by fire. In fact, these intervals were believed to be fixed, thus the coming apocalypse inevitable. But when? Here enters the fictional Valenzetti Equation, and the numbers that represent the mysterious equation that feature so prominently on the show. We know that the Valenzetti Equation is supposed to predict the exact number of years remaining until humanity is destroyed. Perhaps Valenzetti was able to solve the Egyptian mystery, and determined exactly the dates of the apocalyptic cycle.
This cycle of apocalypse is known as the Osirian Cycle, and is perhaps better described as a cycle of “betrayal and revenge, death and rebirth.” It derives from the mythology of the Egyptian gods Isis and Osiris. Osiris embodied “secret and sacred wisdom” of the whole sphere of knowledge. Isis was both his sister and wife; she represented “Mother of all good, the protectress of right….” Now I should tell you first about their mother, Nut. The great god Ra believed that if Nut bore children, one of them would destroy his reign among men. So Ra laid a curse upon Nut, that she would not be able to bear any child upon any day of the year (any relationship to the problem of conception on the island?) Nut’s brother, Thoth, saved the day by gambling with another god that resulted in adding 5 days to the calendar year (it was previously 360 days). Thus, on those new days, Nut could give birth, getting around Ra’s curse.
Osiris was tricked by their brother Set (also known as Typhon, from which we get the term typhoon) and killed, his body parts scattered around the world to prevent anybody from putting them back together; symbolically destroying the secret knowledge of the ancients. Now check this out: “Isis knew as soon as her husband was dead, though no one told her, and fled into the marshes of the delta carrying the baby Horus with her. She found shelter on a little island where the goddess Buto lived, and entrusted the divine child to her. And as a further safeguard against Set, Isis loosed the island from its foundations, and let it float so that no one could tell where to find it.” After that, Isis made it her goal to find the scattered parts of Osiris and reunite them, to restore Osiris and the knowledge he embodied. “In all parts of the world the virtuous in grief and distress raised their hands to the heavens, pleading for the restoration of the reign of Truth.” (Note that on the blast door map in Latin is the phrase “Sursum corda”—Lift up your hearts to God—is repeated three times.) She found all but one part, and “then she caused the body to be embalmed and hidden away in a place of which she alone knew. And after this the spirit of Osiris passed into Amenti to rule over the dead until that last great battle, when Horus should slay Set and Osiris would return to the earth once more.”
Let’s return to the hieroglyphs. According to Lostpedia, one translation in Middle Egyptian is “She/Rises to the sky/in Flames//He/Dies.” The female part appears with a black background on the timer, while the male has a red background. This would be consistent with the tale of Isis and Osiris, which is thought by many to represent the death of humanity altogether, as in the Osirian Cycle. Osiris dies, humanity dies. If fate can be changed, and Set is destroyed and Osiris restored, humanity survives. Or, this is all symbolic of impending cosmic doom as told to Solon by the Egyptian priest. Either way, there is an Egyptian clock, based on the Osirian Cycle, that predicts the impending doom of mankind by fire.
Getting your attention now? Oh, and by the way, according to the Egyptian historical tradition as described by the Freemasons, Osiris came “into Egypt through the Atlantean Mystery School, of which Isis is the symbol.”
Let’s assume for a moment that Atlantis was real, and its inhabitants were destroyed by advanced technology… VERY advanced. Let’s imagine for a moment that a text was passed from the Greeks to the Romans (Plato lived at a time concurrent with ancient Rome, and did visit there) and survived to this day… in Latin. Let’s imagine that this text contained a diagram of the actual technology that the Atlanteans developed, and that men of great power sought to reconstruct this technology. Now let’s imagine that this island was chosen because of its unique magnetic field and “mineralogical riches.” They are essentially rebuilding Atlantis, or at least its core technology. Let’s imagine that the text was brought to the island as a guide, and when an “incident” occurred, and somebody was trapped inside The Swan as Locke was, he had that text with him and used his time to draw out the map on the blast door, along with notes taken from the text.
What was the “sphere of knowledge” that was so important and so powerful? Perhaps it included a number of different areas of wisdom and power, as represented by “The Swan,” “The Flame,” “The Staff,” “The Pearl,” and “The Arrow.” There is a chamber for each.
“The Staff” may represent medical knowledge, as the note on the blast door says “confirmed site of caduceus medical station (The Staff).” Now this gets really interesting. Picture the American symbol for medicine, a winged staff with two intertwining serpents; that is known as a caduceus (it is misspelled on the map). However, the origin of the caduceus symbol is the Staff of Aesculapius, a more primitive rod with one serpent. Google this staff and you will see that it looks EXACTLY like the last hieroglyph on the Osirian clock… coincidence? And why is it that medicine is represented by a serpent? This is because the snake symbolizes youth and rejuvenation, because of how it periodically sheds its skin. In fact, many believed that snakes live forever. Thus, “The Staff” may instead represent knowledge of rejuvenation and extension of life, not simply medicine. I’d bet that Richard Alpert has visited this chamber, and made use of it.
Let’s consider “The Swan.” This was one of the greatest mysteries to me, seeming totally out of place. The swan is not a hieroglyph, nor easily identified as representing an area of knowledge. That is, until I learned about Socrates’ dream. Remember, Socrates was Plato’s teacher. Socrates told of a very profound dream, in which a fledgling swan grew out of his chest (his heart), grew before his eyes while sitting on his lap, and flew away. The next day, Socrates met Plato. He identified the swan as Plato, his young pupil, who would grow in knowledge and then find his own way, eventually becoming the biographer of Socrates. Thus, the dream was believed to be prophetic, and for many came to symbolize the ability to see into the future. “The Swan” is the ability to see into the future.
As for “The Pearl,” “The Arrow,” and “The Flame,” I don’t know.
Jacob is an oracle. All oracles have a “priest,” an empowered individual who claims the sole ability to hear the voice of the oracle and translate the oracle’s words to believers. If Ben has claimed this power to himself, you can imagine his fury when the oracle speaks to Locke, not him. Also, oracles could speak literally, or “as voices of the rustling of leaves.” All of the inhabitants of the island could hear the voices in the jungle, but Ben claimed his right to lead them by being the ONE who could specifically hear and understand the voice of Jacob… until Locke arrived.
One last idea, which I mentioned in a posting to my Gedanken Experiment theory, is that the Latin phrases on the blast door map look intriguingly like a dialogue, a conversation. Note the phrase “Credo nos in fluctu eodem esse,” which translates as “I think we’re on the same wavelength.” That would be an unusual note on a text. It sounds more like somebody was drawing the map on the door, and consulting somebody/something who was responding in Latin. The phrase also has dual meaning, as “we’re thinking the same thing” AND “we’re using the same frequency.” Also note that “known final resting place of Magnus Hanso” may literally indicate RESTING place, as in an object at rest, not death. In fact, since it identifies this place as “Blackrock,” it is likely that this is a place of entrapment… as in Set capturing Osiris… as in a captive Oracle… as in Jacob, who once believed that HIS twin brother wanted to kill HIM.
There are so many questions that remain. But until now, until this theory, I have heard nothing else that made sense of the hieroglyphs, the chambers, the Valenzetti Equation, and the blast door map.
Steve
Theory by SD Wynn
There are several key mysteries from Lost that this theory attempts to reconcile. Consider:
□ the Egyptian hieroglyphs on the 108 minute clock
□ the Latin phrases on the blast door map
□ “The Swan”, “The Flame”, “The Arrow”, “The Pearl,” and “The Staff”
□ the numbers of the Valenzetti Equation (4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42)
Everybody has heard of the Lost Civilization of Atlantis, but there is much that you likely don’t know. Let’s start with ancient Greece, in the time of Plato and Socrates. As you know, ancient Greek religion was governed by the cults of various deities, whose stories were told in the many myths that survive to this day. The story of Atlantis, however, was not a typical myth. It was not a part of Greek culture and religion at all, until Plato told of it. According to Plato, a relative of his, Solon, visited a port on the Nile delta in Egypt, and discussed ancient mysteries with them. The story of Atlantis came not from the Greeks at all, but from Egypt, at least according to Plato. This will be very relevant to the hieroglyphs on the clock.
Plato described Atlantis and its people in detail in two dialogues, Timaeus and Critius. He said that Atlantis was an ancient and highly advanced civilization that lived on a continent in the Atlantic Ocean (this is where the Atlantic gets its name, derived from the king Atlas, son of Poseidon). According to Plato, ancient Egyptian inscriptions and papyri supported the history as fact. While it is often referred to as a continent, the description is actually of a series of islands, with the central island being the most important and reserved for the king’s son. The islands were “enriched with extraordinary fruits and blessed by the Sun, with rivers and inexhaustible mines of precious metals.” Thus they were extremely wealthy. The inner island was protected by concentric rings of defenses, the innermost being a mysterious wall made of “orichalcum,” an unknown metal “which sparkled like fire.”
Socrates was Plato’s teacher and mentor, and he doubted Plato’s tales of Atlantis. They were much forgotten for centuries. As the stories were revived, the conclusion made by many was that the Atlanteans had actually destroyed themselves by experimenting with “cosmic” energies or in a nuclear holocaust. More importantly, it was believed that the Atlanteans had discovered “secret and sacred wisdom.” This knowledge meant great power; and as we know, great power means eventual corruption. According to Plato, the Atlanteans were “filled with boundless greed and drunk with power.” And for this, they were destroyed.
The story of the destruction is important, and here we must return to the Egyptians, for they told Solon something else. In Timaeus a priest tells Solon, “Sometimes those bodies revolving in space around the earth, divert from their usual course. Thus, at wide intervals in time, everything on earth is destroyed by fire… At other times, the gods purify the earth by means of water, by flooding it.” Since the last great “purification” of the earth was by flood, the next apocalypse would be by fire. In fact, these intervals were believed to be fixed, thus the coming apocalypse inevitable. But when? Here enters the fictional Valenzetti Equation, and the numbers that represent the mysterious equation that feature so prominently on the show. We know that the Valenzetti Equation is supposed to predict the exact number of years remaining until humanity is destroyed. Perhaps Valenzetti was able to solve the Egyptian mystery, and determined exactly the dates of the apocalyptic cycle.
This cycle of apocalypse is known as the Osirian Cycle, and is perhaps better described as a cycle of “betrayal and revenge, death and rebirth.” It derives from the mythology of the Egyptian gods Isis and Osiris. Osiris embodied “secret and sacred wisdom” of the whole sphere of knowledge. Isis was both his sister and wife; she represented “Mother of all good, the protectress of right….” Now I should tell you first about their mother, Nut. The great god Ra believed that if Nut bore children, one of them would destroy his reign among men. So Ra laid a curse upon Nut, that she would not be able to bear any child upon any day of the year (any relationship to the problem of conception on the island?) Nut’s brother, Thoth, saved the day by gambling with another god that resulted in adding 5 days to the calendar year (it was previously 360 days). Thus, on those new days, Nut could give birth, getting around Ra’s curse.
Osiris was tricked by their brother Set (also known as Typhon, from which we get the term typhoon) and killed, his body parts scattered around the world to prevent anybody from putting them back together; symbolically destroying the secret knowledge of the ancients. Now check this out: “Isis knew as soon as her husband was dead, though no one told her, and fled into the marshes of the delta carrying the baby Horus with her. She found shelter on a little island where the goddess Buto lived, and entrusted the divine child to her. And as a further safeguard against Set, Isis loosed the island from its foundations, and let it float so that no one could tell where to find it.” After that, Isis made it her goal to find the scattered parts of Osiris and reunite them, to restore Osiris and the knowledge he embodied. “In all parts of the world the virtuous in grief and distress raised their hands to the heavens, pleading for the restoration of the reign of Truth.” (Note that on the blast door map in Latin is the phrase “Sursum corda”—Lift up your hearts to God—is repeated three times.) She found all but one part, and “then she caused the body to be embalmed and hidden away in a place of which she alone knew. And after this the spirit of Osiris passed into Amenti to rule over the dead until that last great battle, when Horus should slay Set and Osiris would return to the earth once more.”
Let’s return to the hieroglyphs. According to Lostpedia, one translation in Middle Egyptian is “She/Rises to the sky/in Flames//He/Dies.” The female part appears with a black background on the timer, while the male has a red background. This would be consistent with the tale of Isis and Osiris, which is thought by many to represent the death of humanity altogether, as in the Osirian Cycle. Osiris dies, humanity dies. If fate can be changed, and Set is destroyed and Osiris restored, humanity survives. Or, this is all symbolic of impending cosmic doom as told to Solon by the Egyptian priest. Either way, there is an Egyptian clock, based on the Osirian Cycle, that predicts the impending doom of mankind by fire.
Getting your attention now? Oh, and by the way, according to the Egyptian historical tradition as described by the Freemasons, Osiris came “into Egypt through the Atlantean Mystery School, of which Isis is the symbol.”
Let’s assume for a moment that Atlantis was real, and its inhabitants were destroyed by advanced technology… VERY advanced. Let’s imagine for a moment that a text was passed from the Greeks to the Romans (Plato lived at a time concurrent with ancient Rome, and did visit there) and survived to this day… in Latin. Let’s imagine that this text contained a diagram of the actual technology that the Atlanteans developed, and that men of great power sought to reconstruct this technology. Now let’s imagine that this island was chosen because of its unique magnetic field and “mineralogical riches.” They are essentially rebuilding Atlantis, or at least its core technology. Let’s imagine that the text was brought to the island as a guide, and when an “incident” occurred, and somebody was trapped inside The Swan as Locke was, he had that text with him and used his time to draw out the map on the blast door, along with notes taken from the text.
What was the “sphere of knowledge” that was so important and so powerful? Perhaps it included a number of different areas of wisdom and power, as represented by “The Swan,” “The Flame,” “The Staff,” “The Pearl,” and “The Arrow.” There is a chamber for each.
“The Staff” may represent medical knowledge, as the note on the blast door says “confirmed site of caduceus medical station (The Staff).” Now this gets really interesting. Picture the American symbol for medicine, a winged staff with two intertwining serpents; that is known as a caduceus (it is misspelled on the map). However, the origin of the caduceus symbol is the Staff of Aesculapius, a more primitive rod with one serpent. Google this staff and you will see that it looks EXACTLY like the last hieroglyph on the Osirian clock… coincidence? And why is it that medicine is represented by a serpent? This is because the snake symbolizes youth and rejuvenation, because of how it periodically sheds its skin. In fact, many believed that snakes live forever. Thus, “The Staff” may instead represent knowledge of rejuvenation and extension of life, not simply medicine. I’d bet that Richard Alpert has visited this chamber, and made use of it.
Let’s consider “The Swan.” This was one of the greatest mysteries to me, seeming totally out of place. The swan is not a hieroglyph, nor easily identified as representing an area of knowledge. That is, until I learned about Socrates’ dream. Remember, Socrates was Plato’s teacher. Socrates told of a very profound dream, in which a fledgling swan grew out of his chest (his heart), grew before his eyes while sitting on his lap, and flew away. The next day, Socrates met Plato. He identified the swan as Plato, his young pupil, who would grow in knowledge and then find his own way, eventually becoming the biographer of Socrates. Thus, the dream was believed to be prophetic, and for many came to symbolize the ability to see into the future. “The Swan” is the ability to see into the future.
As for “The Pearl,” “The Arrow,” and “The Flame,” I don’t know.
Jacob is an oracle. All oracles have a “priest,” an empowered individual who claims the sole ability to hear the voice of the oracle and translate the oracle’s words to believers. If Ben has claimed this power to himself, you can imagine his fury when the oracle speaks to Locke, not him. Also, oracles could speak literally, or “as voices of the rustling of leaves.” All of the inhabitants of the island could hear the voices in the jungle, but Ben claimed his right to lead them by being the ONE who could specifically hear and understand the voice of Jacob… until Locke arrived.
One last idea, which I mentioned in a posting to my Gedanken Experiment theory, is that the Latin phrases on the blast door map look intriguingly like a dialogue, a conversation. Note the phrase “Credo nos in fluctu eodem esse,” which translates as “I think we’re on the same wavelength.” That would be an unusual note on a text. It sounds more like somebody was drawing the map on the door, and consulting somebody/something who was responding in Latin. The phrase also has dual meaning, as “we’re thinking the same thing” AND “we’re using the same frequency.” Also note that “known final resting place of Magnus Hanso” may literally indicate RESTING place, as in an object at rest, not death. In fact, since it identifies this place as “Blackrock,” it is likely that this is a place of entrapment… as in Set capturing Osiris… as in a captive Oracle… as in Jacob, who once believed that HIS twin brother wanted to kill HIM.
There are so many questions that remain. But until now, until this theory, I have heard nothing else that made sense of the hieroglyphs, the chambers, the Valenzetti Equation, and the blast door map.
Steve
Theory by SD Wynn
