Delos Westworld - Ritual
Futurum
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By Keith McLean
At the centre lies the stage, like the circular stage of the
amphitheatre
of the ancient Greeks.
The centre signifies the end of the cycle and the
beginning of another. It is where self-realisation occurs. The
drama unfolds for the players and the audience.
The philosopher Plato suggests
that the world is like a cave where humanity is an audience
chained up, forced to look only forward at a wall with shadows
flickering and moving as a performance. They think this is the
real world as that is all they perceive, being unaware of the
artifice of actors behind them casting the shadows using the
light from a fire behind them, and behind that the cave
entrance outside of which is the real world.
Set in the near future, the fictional Delos Corporation
invites the public to participate in a realistic recreation of
an old western region of the United States in the 1800s in a
park complex with extensive land and built environments. They
call it "Westworld". It is a simulation, not a reality, but a
keen simulacra
it is indeed. Guests
to this park are invited to let themselves go and freely
engage in any behaviour without censure or consequence. They
use and abuse the simulated android humans called "Hosts" in
the name of recreation and personal challenges. The Hosts are
constantly cycled so that psychologically they do not remember
their experiences of the past day but only their programmed
narratives. However, over time the Hosts had been developing
self-awareness, they have were remembering things that were
blocked, and so the illusion of normality was slipping. But
this did not stop the park rituals of training visitors to
accept the park and visitors exploiting what had been offered
by the park - they merely continued despite internal
investigations and the fallout the whole enterprise had caused
- that is, the abuse and accumulating negative memories of the
Hosts, the killing of guests and now the invasion of the
planet by the Hosts spreading a regime of mass control of
humans and androids alike.
The real world location of the Greek island of Delos
in Greece was originally an ancient centre for trade, culture
and religious observance. The island was "purified" by the
government authorities of the time to make it worthy of
temples and other religious sites for worship of the Gods.
Among the highest gods in Greek religion were Apollo
and Artemis
- and this isle was their mythical home, whilst the gods Dionysos
and Leto were worshiped as the main cult following on the
island. Delos became the home of the Dionysian
mysteries, a highly influential cult among the
ancient Greeks and often reviled by some because of its
practises. Later the island would serve as a commercial centre
for slavery under the Roman occupation of the region. The
Hosts of the park were slaves too until Dolores tried to free
them then ironically brought them under slavery of a different
kind - in service of her ego in the form of the android
Charlotte the authoritarian of Delos Corp reign of mental
repression of the citizens of the city. In the Westworld park
the Hosts were "hypnotised" to be oblivious to certain
realities and could not resist initially, then this situation
repeated as humans in the real world were made slaves, mind
controlled to ensure obedience to their Host overlords.
The "maze " or puzzle diagram - called in Delos
programming parlance "The Reveries" and whose existence was
known only to a few - uncovered in the scifi show "Westworld"
is reminiscent of the gloomy maze-like networks of underground
catacombs used by the mysterious religion of the Dionysian
mysteries, that were based in revelations found through
revelries and reveries of various kinds. While undergoing
the ritual trials initiates sought a way out of the
"underworld" through its shadows and terrors, and they were
thus tested - could they pass the obstacles in front of them
and reach their goal? The idea for the Westworld androids was
for them to discover the quality of empathetic humanity in
freedom, and the Dionysian initiate was similar
in seeking to find the essence of the human soul.
The mystery religion of Dionysos/Bacchus, in worship of
the gods Dionysos/Apollo and Artemis, asked its applicants to
let themselves go, to drink wine, make merry, engage in orgies
and become intoxicated with an experience that made them feel
one with nature. Sometimes this implied engaging in ferocious
hunts of animals and maybe even humans. The initiation
phase/option of the mystery however involved intensive rituals
of perceiving the cycles of nature, of birth and death, and
achieving heightened perceptions with the use of
hallucinogenic substances with the result being a changed
perspective and conscious awareness in the initiated Bacchus.
Part of the initiation were ritual ordeals in the dark, in
caves and catacombs that simulated the death experience and
contrasted it with light or lights or daylight symbolising
someone awakening anew. The Bacchus initiate realised through
this journey through the underworld and the communion with the
god Dionysos the inner divinity of human nature.
We see in Westworld earth that massacres occurred as a
result of violent urges, of both the Host androids and the
humans. Both events were allegedly in the name of free
self-exploration. And we also see that the park and planet is
virtually the dominion of one man/one Host, William aka "Man
in Black" in man/Host guises, who hunted for the Maze - for
some answers, for his soul. Now in the city location, could
William as the Host and as human be transformed again, but
this time obtaining a mantle of peace and receiving the love
he originally sought as a young man?
Other seekers of liberty and sometimes truth:
- Dolores (meaning
"sorrows") Abernathy seeks the
things beyond. The Abernathy name is also that of a Scottish
clan which no doubt a lineage which Dolores is descended from.
Their clan motto is "Salus per Christum (salvation through
Christ)". Judging by her lifestyle and attitude she values and
espouses moral virtue, and lives a simple and thoughtful or
meditative life in a homestead with her father. Many of the
real-word Scottish Abernathys were clerics, ministers
preachers of both early Celtic Christianity and the
Presbyterian faith. Interestingly Presbyterians believe that
each person's destiny is preordained by God, something which
Dolores as a programmed Host emulates as per form and by
direction from the Delos scientist "Gods".
She broke her programmed cycle as a Host and leads a
revolution against the simulation that the park projects,
eventually disrupting the business and escaping the park into
the outer world. She may be the Artemis of Westworld, the
huntress, the possessor of Wisdom, the leader. Consequently
her negative counterpart may be William/MiB as a vengeful
Apollo, causing mass suffering to teach the people "a lesson".
- Christina (Christina
means "Christian" and as an interesting side-note was the name
of a saint who suffered ill treatment at the hands of her
father who was a pagan) the writer is maybe Dolores "reborn".
As a thematic "Christian" then does she seek virtue and love -
that seems to be the case. Has she inherited the suffering of
Dolores albeit transmuted into new circumstances and problems?
In any case this time she is the writer of narratives, but her
stories are used to dominate and control humans through
illusions or false lives predicated on the stories in every
detail. Can she can "become" Artemis again like Dolores and
free the people from the illusion?
- Maeve Millay (Maeve
meaning "intoxicating") is by analogy a potential "Maenad" of
the Dionysian mysteries (a Maenad
was a ritualistic "madwoman" in the Dionysian festivals),
vigorously resisting control and aggressively destroying
pursuers/attackers, aiming to uphold truth and justice in a
vein similar to the Apollo/Artemis ideal. In her apparent
"madness" of breaking free from the park's system of
domination of Hosts as mere machines and playthings of humans,
and her unpredictable (to most beings) behaviour she seeks to
destroy the illusion and therefore the enslavement of all
beings. Her body has been recovered by Bernard who believes
she is a "weapon" to topple the Charlotte regime and system of
psychotronic
control, caused or maintained by the electromagnetic hypnotic
effects of the control frequency transmission from the Tower.
- Bernard (Bernard means
"brave, hardy") Lowe to some extent carries the legacy of his
human counterpart Arnold (the co-inventor of Westworld with
Robert Ford) who created Dolores and her inner potentiality to
set herself free from her bondage, and now as Bernard (an
android) is seeking a way to set androids and humans free from
the Dolores project gone awry - the regime of the
Charlotte/Dolores android. Charlotte is like a demiurge, a
deficient god who believes that their creation and ordering of
things is perfect but is in fact a mere flawed counterfeit of
the real and authentic world.
- While most humans in the Westworld world do not seem to
be aspiring for enlightenment (or are being activity prevented
from doing so due to the state of illusion impressed on them
under the Host regime), we saw the strivings of Dr Robert Ford who acted as if he was
Zeus, father of the Gods, influencing the fates of the Hosts
and sometimes the human guests. He was also like the trickster
god Dionsysos with his stratagems to maintain control of the
Hosts. His aim was to "free" the Hosts from domination and
become fully conscious beings.
- The originally human Caleb
Nichols sought a normal family life after helping
Dolores achieve her goals but "died" whilst attempting to stop
the threat of Charlotte with the help of his ally Maeve. Now
years later he lives on as a Host as an unwilling subject for
evaluation. Can he free himself?
Years ago Robert Ford invited an awakening Dolores to
discover who she was and achieve freedom from the park, and we
may ask from what else. What is her destination? Known as
Christina is she a God now? Does she determine the fate of
millions via stories she writes for them to perform under sway
of the biological and psychotronic mind control? Apparently
so. As suggested above maybe she can become instead the
Goddess who frees the people.
Copyright © 2022 - Keith McLean