Titan of The Rock
BY DR. JASON REZA JORJANI
“The Rock.” Alcatraz Island earned this epithet due to its geographical character as a rocky outcrop in San Francisco Bay and on account of the sheer impenetrability of the prison that was built upon it. The terrain of this isolated island is harsh and rugged, a barren landscape with very sparse vegetation. Escape from the federal penitentiary, which was America’s worst while it functioned from 1934–1963, was considered virtually impossible. The heart-stopping cold of the strong currents in the surrounding bay waters and the distance to the mainland made it prohibitive to all but Olympic class swimmers. This epithet of “the Rock,” which captures the island’s physical and symbolic hardness and inescapability, has been branded into American popular culture through the films Escape from Alcatraz (1979) and The Rock (1996).
THIS EPITHET OF “THE ROCK,” WHICH CAPTURES THE ISLAND’S PHYSICAL AND SYMBOLIC HARDNESS AND INESCAPABILITY…
The first of these two films, Escape from Alcatraz, directed by Don Siegel and starring Clint Eastwood, is based on the true story of the escape attempt by Frank Morris and the Anglin brothers. It took place on June 11, 1962, and captivated the public imagination due to the inmates’ elaborate planning, the uncertain fate of the escapees, and various reports and pieces of evidence that have surfaced over the years suggesting that one or more of the men might have survived.
The three men chiseled away at the deteriorating concrete around an air vent in their cells, using tools fashioned from discarded materials and utensils stolen from the mess hall. They created a hole large enough to climb through and reached a utility corridor that ran behind their cell tier. Over months, they constructed a raft and life vests from stolen raincoats. They also crafted dummy heads from a mixture of soap, toilet paper, and real hair, which they placed in their beds to fool the guards during nighttime headcounts. On the night of their escape, they climbed through the holes in their cell walls, made their way to the roof via the utility corridor, descended the prison’s exterior wall, and launched their raft from the northeast shoreline of the island. The sheer ingenuity of these machinations is rather Promethean.
The fact that the bodies of the escapees were never recovered fueled speculation that they might have survived. The strong currents in San Francisco Bay typically bring bodies to shore if someone drowns, yet in this case, no conclusive evidence of their demise was found. Some belongings believed to be from the escapees were recovered floating in the bay or washed up on shores nearby, but these findings were inconclusive and did not provide definitive proof of the men’s survival or demise. Relatives of the Anglin brothers have occasionally come forward with claims or evidence suggesting that the brothers survived. For example, Christmas cards received by the family that were allegedly sent by the brothers after the escape, and anecdotal sightings of the men in Brazil in the 1970s. Some analyses of the tides and currents on the night of the escape suggest that the men could have reached nearby Angel Island, and from there, made their way to the mainland. A 2015 documentary aired by the History Channel presented a photograph of the Anglin brothers in Brazil in the 1970s, which appears to have been validated in an analysis by forensic experts. The documentary also featured a deathbed confession from a family member who claimed that the brothers had survived their escape from The Rock.
Alcatraz calls Tartarus to mind because it is a place that imprisons the damned souls of transgressors. American folklore is now filled with legends of how The Rock is haunted. Potentially failed escape attempts, bloody riots, and murders have all lent themselves to tales of spectral occurrences on the island. Cell Block D, also known as “solitary confinement” or “the hole,” is the setting of numerous ghost stories. Inmates confined in these cells reported chilling experiences, including sudden drops in temperature and the sensation of being strangled by unseen hands. One legend tells of an inmate who screamed throughout the night, claiming a creature with glowing eyes was trying to kill him. He was found dead the next morning, with no visible marks on his body. Then there is the ghost of Al Capone, one of Alcatraz’s most infamous inmates, who is said to haunt the prison, particularly the shower room and the area around his cell. Despite his tough exterior, Capone feared for his life in Alcatraz and took up playing the banjo in the prison band. Some visitors and park rangers have reported hearing the faint strumming of a banjo in these areas, suggesting Capone’s spirit lingers. Also known as “Butcher,” Abie Maldowitz was a notorious hitman who met his end in Alcatraz. It is rumored that his ghost haunts the area where he was killed, with some claiming to hear disembodied screams and see spectral figures in the vicinity. The violent outbreak, known as the Battle of Alcatraz or the Alcatraz Blastout, resulted in the deaths of several inmates and guards. Some visitors and staff have reported eerie noises, such as gunfire, shouts, and clanging bars, emanating from the main cellblock, suggesting the traumatic events of the riot left an indelible imprint on the location.
Before the current Alcatraz lighthouse was built, the original one on The Rock was the first to be erected on the West Coast of the United States. Some report seeing a phantom lighthouse beam on foggy nights, even though the actual light is no longer operational in that manner, suggesting that the island’s earliest structure still spectrally marks its presence. Even prior to Alcatraz becoming the site of a penitentiary, it was used by Native American peoples, and some believe that the island was a place of banishment for rule-breakers. Who knows how many rogue Indians died there before the first European settlers even arrived? During the 1969–1971 occupation of Alcatraz by Native American activists, some claimed to experience powerful spiritual presences, suggesting the island is watched over by ancestral spirits. From its earliest years, Alcatraz may have already been shining as the Overlook Hotel of prisons.
SOME REPORT SEEING A PHANTOM LIGHTHOUSE BEAM ON FOGGY NIGHTS…
The Colossal Monument to Prometheus declares that governments unchain all economic dynamism to empower the industrious individual and to protect people from a dehumanization and degradation of their existence. The torch which Prometheus holds aloft burns for the freedom from collective coercion and freedom for the personal pursuit of meaning, purpose, wonder, and creative power. It demonstrates disdain for those states built to undermine the beauty of our nature, both at home and across the seas.
The other rock from Greek mythology that Alcatraz evokes is the rock to which the titan Prometheus was chained in the Caucasus. In a sense, it is the specter of Prometheus that has always haunted Alcatraz more profoundly than any of the aforementioned ghosts. The cliffs of Alcatraz call to mind the stark, imposing rock faces of the Caucasus mountains where the Titan of Wisdom was bound for bestowing the fire of the forge and the light of science upon mankind. The piercing cries of seabirds in the sky over this fortress of solitude call to mind the eagle sent by Zeus to daily devour the liver of Prometheus (a symbol of his forethought), and yet The Rock also stands as a monument to the defiant flame of human fortitude in the face of condemnation and desolation.
THE ROCK ALSO STANDS AS A MONUMENT TO THE DEFIANT FLAME OF HUMAN FORTITUDE IN THE FACE OF CONDEMNATION AND DESOLATION….
There are many parallels between Prometheus and the titan Mithra, who was believed to have been born from out of a rock. In fact, esoteric initiates have long believed that Prometheus and Mithra are two forms of the same archetypal figure. Both of them are Titans, who stand opposed to the Gods – whether these are referred to as the Olympians (in Greek) or as the Daevas (in Sanskrit and Persian). They are, more specifically, Titans associated with Wisdom. Mithra steals fire from the heavens and brings it down to the realm of mortals, establishing the order of the Magi to be the guardians of the ever-burning celestial flame on Earth. Just as Prometheus had opposed Chronos or Saturn, the Lord of Time, during the Titanomachia, Mithra overpowers the Indo-Iranian equivalent of Chronos, namely Zurvan, as a symbol of free will triumphing over astral fatalism. This is why in the statue of Prometheus at Rockefeller Center, sculpted by Paul Manship (1934), the titan is soaring up through a ring marked by the symbols of the zodiacal constellations. He is emerging from a rock, like Mithra, and the flame that this Prometheus holds in his hand is not just the fire that is stolen from the forge of Hephaestus on Olympus. Rather, the way that holds the flame as he looks down upon the Earth from above the sphere of celestial fate, the sphere of Chronos or Zurvan, calls to mind the symbol of Heliodromos or the celestial charioteer from Mithraism. According to this ancient Iranian myth, which was adopted by many Romans who became Mithraists, at the apocalyptic end of the world, Mithra in his guise as the solar charioteer, would cast fire down upon the Earth in order to purify and renovate the world.
…THE WAY THAT HOLDS THE FLAME AS HE LOOKS DOWN UPON THE EARTH FROM ABOVE THE SPHERE OF CELESTIAL FATE…
This is also a hidden meaning of the torch held aloft by the statue of Liberty in New York harbor, which is actually an avatar of Mithra. She is Mithra in the symbolism of the second grade of initiation in Mithraism, namely Nymphus, wherein the initiate had to dress as a woman, combined with the symbolism of the solar charioteer, the sixth grade of initiation, namely the solar crown and the torch. Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi, the French sculptor of Liberty Enlightening the World, was a Freemason familiar with esoteric Mithriac symbolism, and it was Masons who facilitated the installation of the colossus in New York Harbor. But this statue, which was once a symbol of enlightened liberty in the Mithraic or Promethean sense has since been misappropriated into an icon of open borders and of an illegal mass migration that is ruinous to the ethos embedded in America’s social fabric.
America needs a new Statue of Liberty. An American Colossus in the other grand old harbor of this country, San Francisco Bay. What better place to raise up a titanic statue of Prometheus than on the desolate and decaying ruins of Alcatraz prison. It is time to turn a second-rate tourist trap into the base of a symbol of revitalization, for the Golden Gate into Silicon Valley. Greater San Francisco – including Silicon Valley – has long been associated with the techno-scientific edge of America. What better symbol could there be to signal our will to reclaim global American leadership in techno-science than the titan of science and technology with his torch blazing through the fog of the bay, as seen from every hilltop and Highrise in San Francisco? Such a project will certainly be provocative, and a small navy may be needed to defend it from the mobs who burned down parts of Minneapolis and occupied the Capitol Hill of Seattle. Nonetheless, The Rock is still the best place to make our last stand and, should we prevail, it will become the bastion of an American Renaissance.