Incarnation
I recommend reading the first part of this series before this post.
Last week we examined Katabasis, going down or descending, as an underworld journey. The path traveled by a soul after death to its final resting place, the travels of a Hero into and out of the realm of the dead, and as a path to enlightenment.
This week, we will look at another film as an example of a different kind of Katabasis: Incarnation. This is the descent of a God into Creation to live a life as a human. Though it seems like an inversion (God to Man, rather than Man to God), it is in fact the same journey with the same stages, even though it happens in an apparently opposite direction. It is still a spiral downward through the Abyss to its very bottom, before returning.
Keep in mind the cosmologies we discussed in the last post (The Hero’s Journey, Magia, Thelema, The Underworld geography, etc.) when reading this analysis. Also, it is important to remember that these are not the only interpretation of these films. They can be viewed in many ways, we are just using this particular lens to magnify the features of the Katabasis.
Gravity
Disclaimer: The physics as presented in this movie are quite frankly terrible and ridiculous. However, we will do our best to ignore that as part of this discussion.
Eternity
The movie opens with astronauts performing a spacewalk in orbit around the earth. They are outside of the Explorer Space Shuttle, which is attached to the Hubble Space Telescope.
We meet Dr. Ryan Stone, our main character. She is working on repairing a faulty transmission card on the Hubble for a new system she developed for it. With her is veteran astronaut Matt Kowalski. He tells humorous stories about his “bad feelings” about this mission, and about how this will be his final spacewalk. They are playfully talking to Houston, where mission control explains that they have heard his stories before. A few other astronauts work and play in and around the Shuttle.
Here, we are in Eternity. Everyone present is a different aspect of Divinity. Stone is the piece which descends to Earth to live life as a person, the Human Soul. Kowalski is her Holy Guardian Angel (HGA). He is her guide and protector for the journey she is about to undertake. Houston is the unknowable, unseen God at the Source (Mission Control). The Sun shines over them.
Together they discuss the space mission they are on, but what they are discussing is the new plan they have for Stone’s next incarnation. A new idea, a new way to live, a new way to explore. She has developed a way to use the Hubble to scan the farthest reaches of the universe: “a new set of eyes”, or in other words a new perspective from a new Human life. In Thelema, the Goddess Nuit is represented as the night sky, the blackness between the Stars, with the Gods (the Stars) shining through Her. They are preparing to dive deep within Her.
Houston sets up the plan for Stone’s katabasis as they seemingly discuss her repairs. Kowalski knows that this will be the final descent before Stone’s enlightenment, his retirement approaching. Music is playing from his space suit: Hank Williams Jr singing Angels Are Hard to Find. Houston checks in with how Stone is feeling, giving her the option to turn back now before the journey begins by returning to Explorer, which she declines despite being nervous.
With everyone in agreement, Houston temporarily signs off to allow the astronauts to work, and the Katabasis begins. “Enjoy your last walk.”
The First Spiral
The descent begun, actions which will repeat over each spiral downward start to unfold.
Stone has trouble unscrewing a panel on the Hubble and Kowalski moves to help her. She drops a bolt and it floats away out of her reach, Kowalski retrieving it for her. He flirts with her and tells a story in which someone appearing human is evidently a dog. His stories are those of past lives. He complements her training, and says she has beautiful blue eyes, which she responds that her eyes are brown. This is Stone’s conversation with her Holy Guardian Angel.
Houston interrupts with an urgent message: A Russian satellite has been struck by a missile, creating a chain reaction of other satellites being destroyed and a debris field hurtling toward them. They call for a mission abort, and for the astronauts to return to the Explorer. This is not the abandonment of the katabasis, but simply the previously agreed upon events being played out.
Houston alerts the astronauts that they will soon lose contact with Mission Control as the decent takes its first steps. Stone hesitates at detaching from the Hubble and returning to Explorer, with Kowalski attempting to hurry her along. Debris from the broken satellites tears through the Hubble and Shuttle, ripping them to pieces. Stone, now at the edge of the Abyss, is attached to the the Shuttle’s extendable arm. With encouragement from Kowalski she detaches her tether and is flung out into the void of space.
Kowalski (her HGA) asks for Stone’s position, as he can no longer see her. She is, quite literally, spiraling out of control away from him. Remember that the HGA abandons the traveler as they cross the Abyss.
We see her spinning helplessly, alternately facing the Sun and stars, and the Earth.
The Explorer now just a point in the distance, she has lost communication with the Shuttle, with Houston’s Mission Control, and with Kowalski. Her view becomes our own, as the camera enters her helmet. She has no control over her movements or position, her space suit’s systems are dangerously damaged, and she begins to panic in the confusion. Choronzon has arrived.
Stone calms herself after realizing she is not yet dead, and in doing so communication with Kowalski is restored. At his request, she blinks her light to signal to him where she is, and uses the distant Shuttle and International Space Station (I.S.S) as landmarks to report her position. Kowalski approaches out of the darkness, and the two are reunited.
He attaches a tether to her, looking suspiciously like an umbilical cord, and together they descend toward Earth. The Moon (another symbol for the Goddess) watches from the horizon.
Kowalski does his best to calm Stone, commenting on how scary it is being untethered up in space. He wears a propulsion pack which allows him to maneuver around in ways that Stone can’t. He broadcasts out their status to Houston, but gets no response. Stone says that Mission Control can’t hear them, but he responds that she doesn’t know that, and that’s why they keep talking. If someone is listening they might save her life, referring to the apparent silence of Divinity in Human existence. The first Major Arcana Tarot card, the Fool, represents taking this leap of faith as he confidently strides off a cliff, his dog beside him.
They set timers on their watches for 90 minutes, the length of the spiral and the time when the debris field’s orbit will return it to their position.
They drift down towards the Explorer Space Shuttle, which is now a graveyard. Stone, having survived her first encounter with death, now experiences the other astronauts as the dead. One, drifting freely, has his helmet smashed open, a photo of his family on Earth still attached to him. In the wreckage of the Shuttle another floats upside down without a space suit.
The Explorer destroyed, the pair plan to attempt to reach the ISS and use one of its Soyuz capsules for re-entry to Earth. This completes the first spiral.
The Second Spiral
The second spiral begins with the tethered-together astronauts emerging from the Sunrise over the Earth. We see Egypt below them.
Stone’s oxygen is running low, and Kowalski tries to calm her by asking about life on Earth. She explains where she is from, features of her life, and the loss of her four year old daughter Sarah. Is she explaining a past life, or the one she is about to incarnate into? The “new mission” she is currently on?
He asks her why she has a boy’s name, “Ryan”. Stone responds that it is because her father wanted a boy. The Soul is traditionally thought of as female, and the Human as male.
As they approach the ISS, Kowalski points out that he knows where the Russians hide their vodka. Angels Are Hard to Find is again playing through their radio connection. Stone’s spacesuit tanks completely run out of oxygen, though she still has a few minutes left within her suit. They continue reporting their position and actions to Houston, as if they can be heard.
The ISS in view, they see one of the Soyuz capsules is missing, and the second is unusable as a re-entry vehicle because its surface has been damaged and its parachute has been deployed. The parachute is wrapped around the ISS. The dead here is the station itself. Complete with a death shroud covering it.
With a final blast depleting the last reserves of his propulsion pack, Kowalski thrusts them toward the space station. They impact against it hard, fighting for any sort of hand hold to keep them from drifting away into space again. Stone’s feet become tangled in the Golden Threads that are the rigging of the Soyuz parachute, while Kowalski is flung hard away.
They are still tethered together, and Kowalski’s momentum threatens to pull Stone away.
The moment of apparent abandonment by the Holy Guardian Angel arrives again, as Kowalski detaches his tether to allow Stone to remain with the ISS.
As he drifts away, Kowalski continues to give Stone instructions. She is to board the ISS and use the Soyuz capsule to travel to another space station, the Chinese Tiangong-1, which has a re-entry capsule called the Shenzhou. Stone wants to use the Soyuz to retrieve Kowalski, but he tells her not to, forcing her to say that she is going to make it to Earth. In an inversion of their previous conversation, he asks her if she is attracted to him and his “beautiful blue eyes”. She responds that he does have beautiful blue eyes, to which he quips that his eyes are brown.
Stone’s vision blurring from lack of oxygen, Kowalski is now only a distant Star in the night sky.
She spins wildly as she leaps across the ISS, trying to reach the airlock. Climbing inside, now alone, she closes the door and equalizes the air pressure in it with the rest of the station. Now momentarily safe, the audio here is muffled, as if underwater. We hear electronic beeping similar to those heard in a hospital room.
Stone removes her space suit and assumes a pose resembling a child in the womb, again complete with umbilical cord.
She moves through the ISS donning a headset. Again in an inversion of the previous spiral, she tries to make contact with Kowalski and get him to relay his position. Looking out the window, she sees a hurricane on the Earth below, but receives no response. She calls out to Houston, reporting that she has lost communication with Kowalski, but again gets no response.
Moments later, a fire breaks out on the station. She grabs a fire extinguisher, but its first blast sends her spinning and colliding with a wall. She impacts the back of her head, and small drops of blood fall out of her nose. The fire spreading, she escapes into the damaged Soyuz capsule, bringing the extinguisher with her.
Strapping herself into its seats, she pulls out the flight and begins procedures to undock the Soyuz from the ISS. It silently pulls away, however it is still tethered to the station by its parachute rigging. Only a few minutes remain before the satellite debris field arrives again.
She fights for control of the Soyuz, eventually stabilizing it. Wearing a Russian spacesuit, she exits the capsule and begins detaching the parachute. Again, in a repeat and inversion of the first spiral, the screws float away into space, as does the screwdriver. Without her HGA, Kowalski, to help her this time she has to leap away from the capsule to retrieve it herself.
Choronzon arrives once more as the debris field destroys the ISS. She rides the exterior of the Soyuz capsule as it is flung around and one of its solar panels is ripped off. The space station now added to the debris, she climbs back inside the capsule and deactivates the alarms, resetting her 90 minute timer.
She tries to maneuver the Soyuz toward Tiangong-1, however the damage it sustained has rendered its thrusters inoperable as it is now out of fuel. In her frustration, she radios again to Houston, explaining her situation. Our view changes to outside the capsule, and we see her as a small person bathed in light inside its heart, as it’s backlit against the Sun setting behind the Earth, looking conspicuously like a fetus.
She continues to try to contact Houston, and we are shown the Soyuz control panel upon which is an icon of Saint Christopher, Patron Saint of Travelers, who carried the child Christ across a river. However, there is still no response from Mission Control.
Alone in the darkness, Stone has now reached the absolute bottom of the Abyss, and has her encounter with the Goddess.
This comes in the form of radio contact with Earth. However, this is not Mission Control. It is instead, as revealed in a companion short film, Aningaaq, a Greenlandic fisherman. They do not share a language, but seem to be able to communicate nonetheless. “Aningaaq” in Inuit mythology, is the spirit of Tarquip Inua, the Master of the Moon and God of fertility.
Aningaaq speaks of his dog Naanak, who is sick and in pain. He laments that the only thing he can do is “sacrifice” her. This is normal, as she is a very old dog, but he does not want to give up on her, as he loves her. “Naanak” or “Nanak” is the name of the Guru who founded the Sikh religion.
Feeling a connection with Humanity, Stone asks that Aningaaq makes the dogs bark again. Together she and he and the dogs howl.
Stone laments that she is going to die. She is now confronting the fact that being born into the world is a terrifying thing, as it means eventually dying. As she speaks of her fear, and that she worries no one will mourn her death, Aningaaq’s partner brings him their crying child. He sings it a lullaby as Stone asks him to say a prayer for her. The child calmed, Aningaaq faces the fact he has to put down his dog.
Now accepting that death is an inevitable part of life, Stone cuts off the oxygen inside the Soyuz capsule.
This ends the second spiral.
The Third Spiral
As Stone begins to drift away, there is a knock at the capsule door, and we see that Kowalski (her HGA) has returned.
She momentarily protests, but he releases the door latch as all the air is pulled from inside. Climbing in, in complete silence, he closes it and restores the oxygen to the interior of the Soyuz. Angels Are Hard to Find is quietly playing on his radio. He says he’s glad to see her, and that he didn’t think she was going to make it.
He then asks if she found the vodka, which he magically produces from under the seat.
Stone explains that they are out of fuel, and there is no way to reach the Chinese station. Kowalski says that there is always something they can do. He suggests using the soft landing jets, small retrograde rockets used to smooth the descent of the Soyuz capsule before it reaches the ground. Stone resists, saying that those are for landing, not for spaceflight.
Kowalski now points out that launching and landing are the same thing. In other words, both the upward path and the downward path are the same.
He now offers her one more chance to turn back. To stay up in the Silence and Darkness, away from the rough life on Earth, in safety where she can’t be hurt. Stone declines, asking how he got here. He say’s its a hell of a story. And that it’s “time to go home”.
The camera pulls back to reveal that Stone is alone in the Soyuz capsule.
Now knowing that her HGA is internal to herself, Stone renews her Will and begins the procedure to use the landing jets to send herself toward the Tiangong-1. As she does so, she prays to Kowalski to find her lost daughter and to tell her that she loves her and that she is not quitting. Without waiting for a response she rockets towards the next space station.
As she approaches, she exits the Soyuz and, mirroring Kowalski’s propulsion pack, uses the fire extinguisher to propel herself toward the Tiangong-1. Due to the way she is holding it, this resolves visually as blasts of light from her heart as the Sun rises again over the Earth.
Tiangong-1 has been heavily damaged by the debris fields, and its orbit has decayed to the point that it is falling into the atmosphere. Stone quickly and skillfully climbs aboard, no longer spiraling, but instead in control of her movements.
The debris field approaches once again, and she enters the station, crawling through its damaged interior to the Shenzhou re-entry capsule. Making a few guesses based on her knowledge of the Soyuz, she initiates the undocking and reentry procedure. Mimicking Kowalski’s earlier comments, she broadcasts again to Houston her actions and laughing that she has a “bad feeling” about this mission.
The Tiangong-1 begins to break up in the atmosphere, and inside the Shenzhou we see a Budai figure on the control console.
The temperature in the capsule rapidly rises as it slams into the atmosphere. Stone comments that she is accepting what it means to live, and that she is ready. Tumbling, spiraling, the capsule detaches from the remains of the space station and streaks to Earth like a falling Star.
The parachutes deploy, and the capsule floats down through the sky. Inside, a fire breaks out on the control panel, and we again hear the voice of Houston. They confirm they have radar contact with her capsule and they are dispatching a rescue mission to retrieve her. Their voice is spoken over by many other voices, including a weather report showing the skies over the American Midwest to be completely clear.
The Shenzhou splashes down safely into Lake Powell, Arizona. The voice of Mission Control continues to speak over the radio as Stone blows the explosive bolts on the escape hatch, and the capsule begins to fill with water. It sinks to the bottom of the lake as she struggles to exit it.
Swimming out, her spacesuit is weighing her down and she removes it.
She surfaces in the water, laying peacefully on her back for a moment before swimming to shore. The remains of the Tiangong-1 streak across the sky overhead. Like a primordial fish leaving the ocean for the first time, she crawls out of the water and lays on the sand at its shore. She laughs as she stands, taking a few tentative steps like a toddler learning to walk and looks up at the sun.
Now fully incarnate on Earth her third spiral, and katabasis, has ended.
Compare Stone’s journey to Incarnation with Schofield’s trip through the Underworld from the previous post. What do you see?
A third and fourth “main” part of this series is coming soon, and then further parts as many other pieces of media have been requested to be looked at on our Discord server.
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