THE WARNING MESSAGE

As I have stated before, I translated Hatch's countdown timer warning message to mean HE ESCAPES PLACE OF DEATH. The TPTB vaguely confirmed that the message was "the underworld." But if a show touts its crisp writing and layered mysteries, it should mean more than just a general description of a place.

The following tries to fit together a few of puzzle piece mysteries into a coherent theory. With the dusty memories of dissection of sentences in grammar and frogs in science, what does the warning really say?

HE ESCAPES PLACE OF DEATH.

What are place(s) of Death? In the modern context of various religions, after life is either a singularity of heaven or hell, or a complex system of stages, forehells, limbo, steps, reincarnation and/or multiple lives. In the context of a warning, a place of Death should connote a bad place like Hell.

What does escape mean? The first definition of escape is to break free of confinement or control. Prisoners escape from their prison cells. So, is there a prison in Hell? In literature, Hell itself is a form of punishment for evil souls. Hell has seven Lodges, matching the seven Levels of Heaven. Medieval scholars worked out the different kinds sinners allocated to each Lodge, and each sub-section of each Lodge. Satan, naturally, is at the very bottom.

So is the warning about someone escaping the bonds of Hell, like Satan?

Although many parts of Hell are ablaze with fire, Satan himself dwells in a frozen lake of ice -- at least, according to the poet Dante. One of the strange, contradictory aspects of the LOST mythology that deep underground is the location of the Frozen Donkey Wheel. Instead of the normal Earth geophysics of the temperature getting hotter the farther one digs towards the Earth's molten core, the FDW is located in a freezing cold chamber of Ice. Is the aspect of a frozen chamber deep within the Earth's core a reference to Hell's frozen lake or to cold of deep space or both?

There have been biblical references to character names throughout the story line. One which perked up viewers was the mysterious Abaddon. From modern understanding, Abaddon was a person from Hell, and therefore assumed to have evil intentions, part of the Bad Team. The perception of modern Hell is that it is an asylum run by evil demons, cut off from bounty of paradise, because of their transgressions against God. However, in further researching the subject matter, I have found that older spiritual texts stated the following:

Holy angels may also be found in Hell, dealing out punishments, controlling operations and keeping Satan and his minions in check. One such angel is Abaddon, known as the Angel of the Abyss, who keeps the keys of Hell.

This interpretation puts an 180 degree spin on the character of Abaddon. He may have been from the underworld, but he could have been the Warden keeping evil at bay.

We can go off on a few tangents here with this relevation: if Abaddon kept the KEYS to Hell, then he would have controlled its locks. John Locke, for example. If people or their souls are the manifestation of "keys" used to control the underworld, we have seen Abaddon having a keen interest and guidance with Locke. And what if this "key" allows one to open the Island's so-called "Magic Box?"

The Warning Message HE ESCAPES PLACE OF DEATH only occurred when the Numbers were not typed into the computer every 108 minutes. We have been told that the Numbers were used as a code to vent a build up of electromagnetic pressure. (Why this task had to have a human input rather than computer automatic control is a later discussion point.) If true, we get an analogy that the Hatch was like a cover on a pressure cooker. The collective evil spiritual force pressure continually attacks or presses against the control gate keeping demons at bay. If the pressure is not released in a controlled fashion, the gate would be breached and Satan (or his minions) would escape Hell. Desmond's fail safe key would have been the last resort to implode the Hatch to seal this gate permanently.

The HE is the message is not Smokey. Smokey was described by Rousseau as a "security system." Ben summoned it as an indiscriminate island protector against Widmore's armed men. Smokey had been running around the island before the Hatch warning. In the context of the Hatch security and warning message, Smokey could really be an entity solely designed to seek out escaped demons from Hell, devour or punish them. When Smokey scanned Juliet in the jungle, it could be that it was determining whether Juliet (or her soul) was good or evil. If good, Smokey left her alone. In the case of Eko, Smokey confronted him and Eko showed no remorse for his evil past and therefore was punished. (I once remarked after the Jughead episode that Smokey may be a kin to Godzilla, a radioactive being protecting the island in a good and evil sense.)