I posted this clip to X and it was post “333”—which is my number, the end of my phone number, the crown chakra.
I said a while ago that Apocalypse Now (1979) is a Grail quest—it even has Weston’s From Ritual to Romance, which is specifically about the Grail, in it (as well as The Golden Bough—which is related to it, to the king who must be killed to restore the land).
There are many such references in it—the whole journey down the river, Kurtz as the wounded king.
Kurtz also has the terminator line down the middle of his face—because he is also “the Horned God”, the god of total dark and total light, just as I am.
And he reads poetry aloud, as I do—and he is bald like me.
He is described by the American photojournalist played by Dennis Hopper as being like a “diamond head”—the diamond sutra of Enlightenment.
And the photojournalist explains it’s all about dialectics, about the numbers 0-9, about numerology, in other words (about love and hate, about the terminator line)—and about the planet Venus, the planet of love (you can’t land a space rocket on a fraction, observes Hopper’s character).
This is all about the Grail.
So Kurtz both “expands your mind”, through puns, through Grail puns, these being essential to the Grail—or he horrifies you, because his methods are “insane” (or is insanity the true reality—it’s that darkness and light are intermixed and can’t be separated, not totally?).
Kurtz is the king who must be killed to renew the land, he is the anima mundi itself—the “warrior poet”, the fool.
He is the spirit of the land itself—in all its bloodiness and cruelty, and also its light and fecundity.
At the end, at the end of The Heart of Darkness, he sees the situation clearly: “Exterminate all the brutes!”.
This is appropriate, for it is apocalypse Now—which means “revelation”, the apocalypse is the revelation, the unveiling of truth, of aletheia.
It is also the end—when all is drawn back, when the Grail king dies to renew the land.
Hence I say, like Kurtz, “Exterminate all the brutes!”
