CULT OF THE GODS

One of the main background themes to LOST was the temple and the clear Egyptian artwork that told the stories of Death and the Afterlife.

In ancient Egypt, it was believed that a person's soul would travel a dangerous journey through the underworld. It would be tested and a final judgment would be made if it would reunite with a body in heaven. It was said that the soul would be weighed against a feather by the god of the underworld. If the soul was heavy with sin, then the soul would be condemned to hell.

So Egyptian kings and queens and royals were buried in elaborate tombs and temples to "help" them on their afterlife journey. They were buried with gold and jewels to bribe ferrymen across the River Styx. They were buried with food and wine to sustain their souls on the journey. They were at time buried with their servants who would serve and protect them.

Egyptian rulers believed that they were gods from the stars. That there final place was to return to the heavens.

There are some who believe that there may be more truth in that myth.

The ancient Egyptians built thousands of years ago the largest free standing masonry structures in the history of the planet. Massive stone blocks were moved, placed and perfectly aligned to the stars. In modern times, the largest stone supported skyscraper was 10 stories. In ancient Egypt, it was 23 stories. Modern engineers still do not know how ancient people with stone and bronze chisels could move and lift 10 ton blocks to create the massive pyramids. Even with today's heavy industrial equipment and cranes, it is doubtful that we could achieve such structures.

So the mystery of how the pyramids were constructed is joined in the religious attributes of its creators. If the ancient kings were in fact aliens from another planet with advanced technology to move large stones with ease (which would show their great power and "magic" over the human race), then our own perception of history would be false.

Beyond Egypt, there were other ancient cultures who built massive pyramid structures in harsh climates and locations. Those ancient engineers also had a detailed and accurate grasp on astrophysics and hydrodynamics to built temples and water systems which could sustain a population of more than 50,000 (which is a huge amount in ancient times).

One explanation is that our ancient forefathers were a lot smarter than we think they were. We, today, think we have the most knowledge and savvy because of our own education, experience and accomplishments. But our ancient relatives were more tuned to nature and its properties since they were more dependent on direct interaction with nature than we are today in a our processed economies. After more than tens of thousands of years of trial and error, our forefathers could have developed technology to move large stones with ease - - - something completely lost on us today.

This is not as far fetched as you might believe. In the dark middle ages, much of human knowledge was lost (it was kept alive by monks writing manuscripts). Much of the great ancient inventions were lost in the great fire of the Library of Alexandria.  Those inventions may have included the first computer, navigation devices, the first automatic door and water fountains. Recall, inventors around the time of the Roman empire were magicians who entered the royal courts with fancy machines and usual feats of mechanical engineering. Leonardo had concepts of flying machines and modern tanks.

So ancient temple priests may have been the magicians of their time because they had superior knowledge. Knowledge equated to power. While much of human thought was harnessed in order to create the next superior weapon for conquest and defense (which is even true today), such knowledge could have been applied to solve the mysteries of life after death.

The pyramids could have been the launch pads for the exploration into outer space. Observation decks to the heavens or portals (physically or metaphysically or interpretive) would have been the quest of the powerful rulers who wanted "immortality" as their legacy.  All major religions believe in some form of afterlife. The ancient Egyptians may have tried to find the pathway to the afterlife and bring it into their present.

Likewise, LOST's island could have been a metaphor of the quest for the pathway to immortality. A weigh station along the underworld journey of lost souls trying to reach a final judgment; to release the burdens, sins and regrets attached to their human souls. The guardians of the island were like the cults of kings who oversaw the graves and temples of ancient Egyptian rulers. They stood guard over the buried souls so the living could not disturb the dead's journey. In the LOST story line, "outsiders" like Widmore wanted to come to the island to disrupt the guardians and to take the island's power to their present. It is that grave robber dynamic that pushed the guardians, including Jacob, to recruit his own army of "followers" (including the 815 castaways) to defend the island against the likes of Widmore and his kind.

GODS OF DEATH

LOST contained many rites and passage of death themes.

In Japanese religion and culture, Shinigami ("death god" or "death spirit") are gods or supernatural spirits that invite humans toward death, and can be seen to be present in certain aspects of Japanese religion and culture. In popular culture, Shinigami have been focal points in shows like Death Note or Bleach. 

But a case could be made that LOST was a show about Shinigami or gods of death.

If you agree with the premise that there is a supernatural barrier between life and death, earth and heaven, mortality and immortality, then there would probably be gatekeepers who would be present to either a) effectuate death ("the grim reaper"), b) help souls make the crossing ("the ferrymen across the River Styx") or c) mess with human beings (like the Greeks gods did in their mythology).

The island was an unusual place. It contained an immortal guardian, Jacob, and a smoke monster, his dead brother's apparent spirit. Everyone is "brought" to the island by its guardian. Humans notice that the island is unearthly - - - you cannot escape it, and time is different. Hence, the island is in the realm of the supernatural.

The inhabitants of a supernatural place would include gods of death. And the situation that called them into action would have been the Flight 815 plane crash. Hundreds of humans would lose their lives when the plane broke up at altitude. But what if a Shinigami, bored with his existence, decided to have fun playing with human lives. He would call these people "candidates" and put them through a series of games and challenges with his spiritual rival, MIB.

If you can imagine that Jacob "spared" the survivors of the plane crash to be his pawns, then the main characters were in a state of limbo: they were technically still "alive," but caught in a supernatural world of illusion, misdirection and danger.

Jacob played with his candidates much like Daniel did with his lab rat, Eloise. The island was a maze of psychological tests and video game style quests that would probably amuse a superior being like Jacob or MIB. The game could be as simple as whether any of the humans were intelligent enough to know where they were or what happened to them. When sideways church Christian told dead Jack that everything was real but there was no past or future but just now, this would confirm the state of death-limbo that Jacob snatched from each of them when the plane crashed. 

It is a cruel premise that a death god would play with human souls like they were robotic toys. But in a hierarchy of power, a supernatural being would view humans as humans would view wild animals. 

The island gave the survivors "suspended animation" from their deaths so that Jacob and MIB could experiment and play with them - - - to feed off their fears, emotions, laughter and tears. 

It would help explain the ending where the immortal Jacob just "gives up." It is like a little child who outgrown his infant toys. He just walks away from them; they are put in the box in attic to be lost from memory. He releases the final governors of life to allow the main characters the false chance to save themselves from the inevitable: death. But even that was a cruel hoax.

Yes, gods of death do not portray themselves as nice guys. The culture puts the stamp of evil on them because death is something no one wants because it is the possible premature end of the line.

LOST as the playground of gods of death is a plausible premise for the series.

KEY SYMBOL

This is an ancient Egyptian symbol that was found throughout the LOST series, including in the Temple where the original smoke monster hid and where the Others hid from it. The symbol, an ankh,  is called the Key of Life.

Originally, the Ankh was viewed as just meaning "life," but others believe it meant the creation of Life itself. In the context of LOST, the island was once called the place for life, death and rebirth which the latter two elements infer an afterlife then a new external life after death.

Many scholars believed that the Egyptians believed in a set of gods symbolized by various hybrid man-animal forms. But a newer approach believes that during the course of many different dynasties, modern interpretation clouded the real story of the ancient religions.

Inscriptions in the Hibis Temple shows that the Egyptians knew of one creator but acknowledge they had used several names and several stories but the one arose out of the primordial ocean.
Amun,  Atum,  Khepri, or Re were actually different names for a single god. This changes the view of the Egyptian culture and aligns it clearly with most modern religions.

Further, new theorists believe that the different names are merely elements of the god. The Ankh not only is a symbol of Life but the elements that create life. Wherever the Ankh is translated in Ancient Egypt Literature  it can be re-translated with the following insight:  The Ankh is the Life Code; The Egyptian’s so-called “Infinities or Chaos” Gods: Amen/Amenet, Nun/Nunet,Kuk,Kukhet, Heh/Hehet – the Ogdoad; The Meaning of Life is no longer just a flat definition but a multi-dimensional definition of the scientific and possibly spiritual definition of how life was created itself.

This is not that far off from some of LOST's formula themes, including the Valenzetti Equation which proposed the doom and destruction of mankind and the Numbers being symbolic of keeping the the island's electromagnetic properties in check in order to save mankind from destruction.

The new interpretation of the Ankh symbol representing 8 scientific and spiritual elements as the foundation of Life itself has merit to the understanding of the island symbolism. The island was not a normal island. It moved. It had supernatural and spiritual elements. It had unique properties. It had immortal beings and unusual smoke creators who could shape shift. It could recreate memories of people.

The Ankh takes the shape of a cross with a loop on top, resembling a key. In the ancient language of Egyptians, the ‘ankh’ meant ‘life.’ It is considered one of the earliest and most popular hieroglyphic symbols from ancient Egypt. It is said that the loop on the ankh symbolized the feminine or the womb, while the cross symbolized the masculine or the penis. When the two are put together, life is formed. Many believe that the Ankh is also a symbol for water and air, which are life-giving elements. Because of this, many water vessels were formed in the shape of an Ankh.

Used as an amulet, the Ankh was believed to be able to grant the wearer long life and health. Ancient Egyptians even put ankhs in tombs to give energy to the resurrected spirit. It is said that the symbol can even carry on its power to anyone within a certain proximity to it. As such, it is believed to be a conduit for life or power that stems from the universe. The Ankh can also be used as a strong protection against evil, decay and degeneration.

We can see various elements depicted: man + woman = life; water, air (life giving elements); health (immunities and spiritual energy); and power from the universe (nature).

But one modern theorist has a different formula which adds elements to science expressions:

 

This formula touches upon numerous LOST themes and elements. Some felt that the island was itself a wave, since it could travel through time and space (along with wormhole and event horizon applications). The dark and light theme was in the forefront of the Jacob-MIB plot. The separation of the light and dark creates an evolutionary train of events which some could consider the spiritual awakening of the soul to transform into an afterlife being.

Evolution was never a major theme in the series, but if truly the Big Question unanswered was "What if Life?" then one can think that since life itself is an evolutionary path (genetics, fertility, physical and mental traits) was LOST more a commentary on the current evolution of mankind? The main characters did have focal points on the sins of a modern industrial world. What was lacking in most of the series was a moral and spiritual link to a better life. It is a far stretch to try to get that lesson out of the conclusion of the show, but it is at least something new to think about.

LOVECRAFTIAN

According to author H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, somewhere sunken in the South Pacific there is a “nightmare corpse-city” called R’lyeh, “built in measureless eons behind history by the vast, loathsome shapes that seeped down from the dark stars.” 

In his house in this city, the great old god Cthulhu waits, dead and dreaming, for his return to power. In a story, a crew of sailors accidentally discover a risen part of the city, an island with a “coast-line of mingled mud, ooze, and weedy Cyclopean masonry,” accidentally wake Cthulhu from his sleep, and are either killed or driven mad.

 Exploring the island, the sailors soon discover that “all the rules of matter and perspective seemed upset,” and they struggle to comprehend and describe their surroundings. “One could not be sure that the sea and the ground were horizontal, hence the relative position of everything else seemed phantasmally variable,” one of the sailors, Gustaf Johansen, wrote in his log. Even when they discover a simple door, the sailors couldn’t tell if it “lay flat like a trap-door or slantwise like an outside cellar-door” because the “geometry of the place was all wrong.”

Of course, none of it—the sailors, the city, the island, the dead-dreaming god—are real. If it was, though, would science be able to explain the weird geometry of the city? Benjamin Tippett, a theoretical physicist and mathematician at the University of New Brunswick, tries to bring fiction into science with a “unified theory of Cthulhu.”

After poring over the clues and descriptions left by Lovecraft’s characters and employing his “mad general relativity skills,” Tippett thinks that the geometry of R’lyeh was all wrong—not because the architecture curves and angles in strange ways, but because of the space the city occupies. R’lyeh, he says, lies in a “region of anomalously curved spacetime,” and the bizarre geometry of the buildings and changing alignment of the horizon are the consequences of the “gravitational lensing of images therein.” 

In a region of curved spacetime, Tippett explains, light doesn’t travel in reliably straight trajectories, so objects beyond the curved region appear warped and skewed, and the relative positions of two objects, or the flatness of a large object, in the region are difficult to discern. A visitor to R’lyeh, he says, would “see the outside world (and other distant objects upon the island) as if through a large fishbowl. Thus, the horizon would no longer be reliably straight, and the sun and moon would swing wildly through the sky depending on one’s position.”

Tippett thinks his “spacetime bubble hypothesis” can also explain the oddities of how time is perceived in R’lyeh, and maybe even address the “central myth of the Cthulhu cult.” Time, he says, passes slower inside an area of curved spacetime than it does outside of it. This time dilation is probably what allowed the sailor Johansen to “survive adrift at sea for nearly two weeks … in a state of helpless dementia.” It could also mean that Cthulhu, whose cultists describe him as dead and dreaming, neither alive nor truly dead, is simply “in a position where it does not feel the passage of time.” At the center of the spacetime bubble, the god could wait, unchanging, for aeons.

As to what caused or created the curved spacetime bubble surrounding R’lyeh, Tippett can only guess. “An exotic type of matter with which human science is entirely unfamiliar is required for such a geometry to exist,” he says. “Indeed, this is the very species of energy which is theoretically required to build a warp drive or a cloaking device. Only a people capable of crossing vast cosmic distances could have constructed Johansen’s bubble.”

Bubble. Spacetime. Time dilation from inside and outside the island. Exotic type of matter.

These are all elements in LOST.

Was the hidden foundation of the LOST mythology from Lovecraft?

As said in Hollywood, nothing is really new.

Is the smoke monster a version of Cthulhu, a dead and dreaming god?

It is a possible explanation. It has tangential elements of exotic powers, unexplained monster, and a time drift that defies conventional science.

The smoke monster is nothing we had ever seen. It takes the form of smoke, then transforms matter into various forms, including humans. It has the ability to read minds, reshape memories, and absorb personalities. It some ways it is parasitic. In other ways, it is intellectually aware.

Or the smoke monster could be the island god's leaking subconscious, a semi-dream state creating or interacting with castaways which shipwreck on its shores, and in turn, disturbs its eternal slumber.

If one part of the island is in actual dream state, the human beings on its surface are the new threads in the island's fantasy world. The castaways don't know that they are real elements in a non-human's dream. And with dreams, they can turn into nightmares. Also, dreams can often overcome the dreamer's normal moral compass and governors, and turn quite dark. 

But this premise does not explain the ending to the series. If the smoke monster was part of the island god's dream state, how could it be "killed?"  Why would even want to be killed?  The only way to stop a dream is to wake up (another strong theme in the sideways world).  So it is possible, that shipwrecked islanders came under a dream like spell while on the island, interacting with the unseen consciousness of the Lovecraftian god. 

Two possible outcomes of killing or waking up a slumbering god: first, it is angry and kills everyone who is on the island, or second, it is benevolent and gives each person their own "dreams" in the alternative afterlife world. Except, not everyone was happy and content in the sideways world. And why keep the island events hidden, repressed and unknown in the sideways world? Was it a final test?

Or was it just another level of the dream?