9/11, History and Culture

Introduction

This page shows the many links mysteriously forged between 9/11, the history of western civilisation and artifacts of western culture.

 

9/11 and the History of the West

This list shows how the events of 11 September 2001 resonated through history, influencing events that occurred even many hundreds of years ago. The shockwaves apparently went forwards in time as well as backwards, because events after 9/11 show the same kinds of influence. Thus 9/11 sits at the epicentre of a psychic upheaval that has been completely rearranging the human landscape. The number eleven and its multiples are the primary means by which these historical events have been linked to 9/11, but other numbers, including nine have also been used, as well as visual imagery, meaning and metaphor.

1. The Ninth of Av is a Jewish day of mourning, commemorating the many tragedies that have befallen them on this date. Av is the eleventh month in the Jewish calander, so this date is a '9/11'. In 2001 the Ninth of Av was on 29 July, which was 44 (4 x 11) days before 9/11.

2. In 1190 there was an infamous massacre of Jews in Clifford's Tower in York, the city after which New York is named. [1]

3. 1605 was the year of the failed attempt to blow up the House of Lords, associated with Guy Fawkes. 1605 is 396 (11 x 36) years before 2001. The day Guy Fawkes was captured, as he guarded the gunpowder in a room underneath the House of Lords, was 5 November, this being the 11th month.

4. New York was the 11th state to join the Union, on 26 July, 1788 (Arlington, where the Pentagon is situated, was the 10th).

5. Armistice Day, celebrating the ending of WW1, happens on 11/11 every year in the UK, with two minutes' silence at 1100HRS. [2]

6. Work began on the construction of the Pentagon on 11 September 1941.

7. President John F. Kennedy was assasinated on 22 November, 1963, the date containing an eleven and a multiple of eleven.

8. On 9 November 1965 there was a huge power blackout in an area covering parts of northeast USA and southeast Canada, which included New York City. The number of days from then until 9/11 was 13090 (11 x 1190).

9. On February 13, 1975, there was a fire on the 11th floor of the North Tower (the first tower to be struck). 13 February was the 44th (11 x 4) day of 1975.

10. Pope John Paul II, head of the Roman Catholic church from 1978 to 2005, was the 264th pope (11 x 24) and the 110th pope from Celestine II to the end of the world, according to the prophesies of St. Malachy.

11. The long-anticipated solar eclipse of 11 August 1999 hit the shores of the UK at 1111HRS.

12. The Madrid train bombings took place on 11 March 2003, 1166 (11 x 106) days into the new Millenium.

13. The 9/11 Commission Hearings closed on 17 June 2004, 1010 days after 9/11. The 9/11 Commission Report was released on 22 July 2004, 1045 (11 x 95) days after the event. These could have conceivably have been deliberate choices on someone's part, but they also fit the pattern of elevens synchronistically clustered around the events of 11 September, 2001.

 

9/11 and Western Culture

These links include films (usually blockbusters), popular TV shows and books. They usually have as their theme a titanic struggle of some kind, between clearly defined good and evil forces, or a major operation. This long list of surely unconscious references to 9/11 may be due to the fact that artists and writers are more in touch with their unconscious minds than most people. If the encoding of 9/11 and the NIV Bible was achieved via the unconscious mind, then it would be expected that anyone particularly sensitive to signals from the unconscious would pick up the 'broadcast'.

1. In the film Oceans Eleven (2001), a criminal and eleven accomplices rob three casinos - modern day temples of Mammon, like the World Trade Centre. It was released in 2001 and the number 11 is in the title and illustrated using giant red digits on the advertising poster.

2. In the film Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001), the eponymous hero is taken to Hogwart's School of Wizardry on his eleventh birthday.

3. The film The Two Towers (2002), the second of The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, features two huge dark towers in the lands of Isingard and Mordor.

4. The first book in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring, begins with Bilbo Baggins' 111st birthday, which is on 22 September. This is the same day that his cousin Frodo Baggins comes of age at 33.

5. In The Matrix (1999), Neo is first seen at his appartment, numbered 101. Trinity is first seen in a room numbered 303. Neo  (his name means 'new') is a Christ-like figure, who is destined to free mankind from their entrapment in the dream world. This fits well with the theme of the New Bible Code. Both 101 and 303 are important gematria numbers. [3]

6. The book Titus: Groan, by Mervyn Peake, begins with the birth of Titus, the 77th Earl of Groan, on the 8th of August (8/8). [4] The book was published in 1946, 55 years before 9/11. The action centres around an ancient crumbling castle (Gormenghast), which is filled with endless, stultifying ritual. Titus' birth sees the beginning of unprecedented destruction and change, at the hands of an ambitious kitchen boy. The theme of destruction of the old order and subsequent change again fits well with 9/11.

7. The film The Exorcist (1973) concerns the exorcism of a girl who was eleven years old when the evil spirit entered her. The film is set in Georgetown, Washington DC, just across the Potomac river from the Pentagon. In a sense, 9/11 was an exorcism, so the theme and the setting are perfectly appropriate.

8. In Orwell's prescient, dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1948), London is dominated by four sinister, monolithic towers, one of which contains the now iconic Room 101.

9. The film The Omen (1976) centres on the rise of the antichrist, called Damien Thorn. Amazingly, the name 'Damien Thorn' and title 'antichrist' both have an ordinal value of 121 (11 x 11).

10. The Hichcock's classic suspense film The Birds (1963), birds begin attacking en masse in Bodega Bay on the eleventh birthday of Mitch Bremner's sister.

11. Quatermass and the Pit (1967), which was called Five Million Years To Earth in the USA, is a sci-fi movie about a spaceship found underground in an area of central London long associated with the devil. The craft contains the bodies of Martians, who have two horns on their heads. It turns out the Martians had been genetically experimenting with early man, creating a killer instinct in them that worked to periodically cull the population. This instinct was somehow activated by a strange energy coming from the the unearthed spacecraft, driving the residents of London to go on a killing rampage. This energy manifests as a giant two-horned head, towering over London - just as the 'horns' of the twin towers towered over New York - until Quatermass dissipates it.

12. In a crucial scene from The Naked Gun (1988), a remote-controlled player from the LA Angels with jersey number 44 tries to assassinate the Queen. 44 is of course 11 x 4 and was the age of Osama bin Laden on 9/11.

13. The number 44 also features in the climactic ending of Dirty Harry (1971), when Harry Callaghan speaks the famous line about his Magnum 44 being 'the most powerful handgun in the world'. After the shootout with the serial killer, Callaghan throws away his police badge, which has the ID number 2211 (201 x 11).

14. Another classic sci-fi film, The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), resonates with 9/11 on several levels. An alien called Klaatu (ordinal value = 66, K = 11 and two a's, giving 11) lands his spaceship in Washington DC to warn Earth that man's warlike nature and development of atomic rockets are a threat to other planets and that Earth may have to be destroyed. Klaatu decides to give mankind a warning and briefly considers levelling New York or sinking the Rock of Gibraltar. Klaatu calls himself Mr. Carpenter and after being shot is 'resurrected' in his spaceship. He therefore represents Jesus Christ.

15. The climax of Trading Places, (1983) a comedy film about a trader and con artist who are exchanged in an experiment by the rich brothers who own a brokerage, takes place in the World Trade Centre, where the two unscrupulous brothers are ruined. Eddie Murphy and Dan Ackroyd get out of a taxi outside the WTC to do battle with the brothers (good triumphing over evil). The taxi is numbered 110. There are two of them on each side as well.

16. In Independence Day (1996), there are several scenes that appear to foreshadow 9/11. Not far from the beginning, after David Levinson (Jeff Goldblum) boards the president's helicopter in an evacualtion of the White House, he opens his laptop to see how much time is left as measured by the signal that coordinates the alien craft. It is 9 minutes and 11 seconds. The scenes of destruction in New York afterwards are reminiscent of 9/11. Near the end of the film, just before the pilot mounts a succesful suicide attack against one of the craft he speaks the immortal words "Hello boys, I'm back!" Behind him in the cockpit, appearing beside his head, is the number 440, multiple of 11 and ordinal value of "September the Eleventh, Two Thousand and One".

17. Back to the Future (1985), the movie about a teenager sent back 30 years into the future, is filled with intimations of 9/11. The car needs 1.21 GW of electrical power to time travel. 121 is 11 x 11 and the ordinal value of 'Second Coming'. 1.21am is also the time when the dog is sent back one minute into the future. The car needs to reach a speed of 88mph. 88 is a multiple of 11 and ordinal value of 'Immanuel'. Here's a video about more of them. I don't agree with all of it or the general premise about predictive prohramming, but the maker has noticed many odd coincidences relating this popular movie to 9/11. [5]

18. In The Dirty Dozen (1967), the eleventh of the twelve prisoners, Victor Franco, is the troublemaker and natural leader. The unit is assigned the task of sneaking into a chateau in enemy territory and destroying as many German officers as possible, a simple, destructive mission simiar to the terrorist attacks on 9/11. After the unit breaks into the chateau two of them, disguised as German officers, are given room 11 for their stay. These elevens aren't cherry picked from a huge list of possibilities. There are few numbers in the movie.

19. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), the iconic sci fi adventure, begins with the discovery of a mysterious monolith by our ape-like ancestors, then the modern discovery of a aecond monolith on the Moon. Both monoliths engender a new stage in human development. The year 2001 and the two monoliths suggest 9/11.

20. In Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), the alien visitors reveal themselves at Devil's Tower in Wyoming. The main character, played by Richard Dreyfuss, has psychic visions of the tower, becomes obsessed with it and sculps it in his kitchen, before recognising he object of his visions on a TV news story. He eventually makes his way there to meet the aliens. Again there is the concept of a huge, monolithic object. The link with the devil (whose horns the twin towers were) also links the movie to 9/11.

21. Highlander (1985), antique dealer Russell Nash is one of a group called the Immortals, who after a quest lasting many hundreds of years finally gather in New York to compete for the Prize, which is essentially the ability to read the thoughts of others. The only way to defeat an opponent is to cut off his head with a sword, which is close to what occurred on 9/11, as both towers were struck on their upper storeys. Evil this time takes the shape of the warrior Kurgan.

22. The most famous person to be killed on 9/11 was David Angell, one of the creators of the excellent TV comedy Frasier (1993 - 2004). Note the doubled l in the surname Angell, suggesting 11. Frasier lived in appartment 1901, and 2001 saw the beginning of the ninth series, another '9/11'.[5]

 

Notes 

 

1. This was pointed out to me by Bill Donachie of Hidden Meanings.

 

2. November is derived from the Latin word novem, meaning 'nine'. So 11/11 is also a 9/11.

 

3. The morning after I watched The Matrix for the second time, I passed Keanu Reeves in an Edinburgh street. We were the only two people around and it's the closest I've ever been to someone that famous. It was August, when the Edinburgh Festival is on, which explained his presence in the city where I work. But that doesn't explain the synchronicity.

4. This is my own birthday and it is the 220th day of the year.

5. As I write this entry (5/11/15) it is a couple of weeks after Back to the Future day, the date when Marty McFly appeared 30 years in the future.

6. There were other apparent signs in Frasier. For instance, near the end of the last series, Frasier meets his matchmaker in room 1510. Jesus Christ (o) = 151. A 151 also appears in the first series. Another doubled letter suggesting 11 was in the name of the reporter on the TV channel I watched that day, Mark Cviic.