Bad Moon Rising
It was 40 years ago … a littler Cinema Symbolism 4 preview (making final edits now).
Bad moon rising 2.0: “You felt like you were melting into yourself, like the Wicked Witch of the West.” – Christa McAuliffe (1948-1986), describing the sensation of weightlessness experienced in a training plane while preparing for the Challenger mission. On January 28, 2024, Turner Classic Movies via Fathom Events rereleased The Wizard of Oz in theaters for three days and nights to celebrate the film’s 85th anniversary. Hence, Baphomet was present on January 28, 1986, 38 years earlier, for STS-51-L, which was the twenty-fifth (2 + 5 = 7) mission of NASA’s Space Shuttle program, the final flight of Challenger, witnessed by 11 million people, and 38 x 11 = 418, i.e., ABRAHADABRA! The ill-fated spacecraft’s dry mass weighed 177,700 lbs. and Challenger has a Pythagorean reduced value of 49 (72);[1] it departed from the Kennedy Space Center’s Launchpad 39B, which has a reverse ordinal value of 64, Crowley’s digit for twins (forthcoming), thereby cementing a nexus between the tragedy and the World Trade Center while anticipating Cape Canaveral’s Wizard of Oz Museum, which opened on February 11, 2022. STS-51-L has a reverse Pythagorean reduced sum of 80, the Tarot’s destructive lightning-struck Tower (vide supra), executing its roll maneuver at 7.7 seconds after clearing the tower, and the vehicle exploded at 11:39:13 EST, and 1 x 1 x 3 x 9 x 1 x 3 = 81, the moon’s mysterious number (also forthcoming); hence, the glorias lunar goddess-as-Hecate tinkered with its O-ring seal (specified manufacturing tolerances on its tang allow 777-inch thickness at the sealing surface) on that frigid morning, because the vehicle exploded 73 seconds after liftoff, killing all seven astronauts, including the first teacher in space, Christa McAuliffe, linking her to the lunarlike sacred feminine (vide supra), its darkest side, because her full name, Sharon Christa McAuliffe, has reverse Pythagorean reduced sum of 131, Master’s Therion’s number for Satan/Samael the Accuser. She was born on September 2, 1948, which portended the new moon on the following evening, the full moon 48 hours before Challenger’s destruction, and her birthdate also has a reduced Pythagorean value of 64, furthering the nexus between the would-be astronaut’s brutal death and the Twin Towers. On her day of birth a few years earlier, the first political cartoon featuring The Wizard of Oz’s characters, depicting Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) as the Wicked Witch, was published on September 2, 1939; on her birthday 77 years later, The Wizard of Oz immersive experience was in full swing at the Sphere in Las Vegas, having premiered a few days earlier in late August 2025. Part of Challenger’s mission was the deployment of the SPARTAN-Halley satellite to observe the comet, which has been sighted approximately every 77 years (starting in 240 BCE); interestingly, since its first observation, its closest approach to Earth has been 0.42 astronomical units (au). Choronzon and the Dark Mother played their part in the catastrophe, naturally: the crew cabin hit the ocean surface going 333 km/h, and after Rockwell completed the Challenger’s airframe, it was delivered to U.S. Airforce’s Plant 42 for structural testing on February 4, 1978, a date with a sum of 77 employing reverse Pythagorean reduction.[2] Easter egg: a beloved character from Sesame Street may seem like an unlikely passenger on the doomed space-bound mission, but the puppeteer inside the yellow feathered suit, Caroll Spinney (1933-2019), had actually been invited to join the Challenger crew as Big Bird, his yellow costume summoning the Yellow Brick Road. Another Easter egg: Something wicked this way comes: Plant 42 is home to Lockheed Martin’s infamous “Skunk Works,” a corporate division tasked with the clandestine development of black projects. Yet another Easter egg: The Challenger’s solid rocket boosters’ O-ring sealants functioned at 39° Fahrenheit and higher pre- and post-ignition, hexing it with the unlucky Curse of 39, just like its launchpad. At 7:00 a.m. on the morning of January 28 (the 28th day of the year, i.e., Crowleyan paramountcy), a temperature of 24 degrees–the number of chapters in Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz novel, which is 42 backward because demons and dark forces often operate and communicate in reverse–was reported at the shuttle’s launch pad, causing its gasket to fail.[3] Satanically, when divers found the section of the right solid rocket booster’s joint containing a portion of the burnt-through section on the ocean floor, it was designated Contact #131, syncing with the diabolical reverse Pythagorean reduced value of Christa’s full name.
[1] C/3 + h/8 + a/1 + l/3 + l/3 + e/5 + n/5 + g/7 + e/5 + r/9 = 49.
[2] 39 = 39, B = 25, 39 + 25 = 64. S/8 + T/7 + S/8 = 23, 51 = 51, L = 6; 23 + 51 + 6 = 80. S/8 + h/1 + a/8 + r/9 + o/ 3 + n/4 = 33, C/6 + h/1 + r/9 + i/9 + s/8 + t/7 + a/8 = 48, M/5 + c/6 + A/8 + u/6 + l/6 + i/9 + f/3 + f/3 + e/4 = 50; 33 + 48 + 50 = 131. Crowley, 777, 32. S/1 + e/5 + p/7 + t/2 + e/5 + m/4 + b/2 + e/5 + r/9 = 40, 2 = 2, 1 + 9 + 4 + 8 = 22; 40 + 2 + 22 = 64. F/3 + e/4 + b/7 + r/9 + u/6 + a/8 + r/9 + y/2 = 48, 4 = 4, 1 + 9 + 7 + 8 = 25; 48 + 4 + 25 = 77. Mark Wade, “Challenger: Part of Shuttle,” Astronautix.com, 1997-2019, http://www.astronautix.com/c/challenger.html (accessed August 29, 2023).
[3] Gary Stephenson, “How Weather Caused the Loss of the Space Shuttle Challenger,” Spectrum News 1, January 28, 2021, https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nc/charlotte/weather/2021/01/19/how-weather-caused-the-loss-of-the-space-shuttle-challenger (accessed December 28, 2023).
Robert W. Sullivan IV 