Was Alan Moore on Oceanic flight 815? It was either him, or someone deliberately meant to look like him (note the rings!). I noticed this guy and commented on him while watching the season premiere (“LA X”), but didn’t think much of it. That is, until I was the above screencap from Bleeding Cool.

What are the chances it was actually him? Well, Moore appeared on The Simpsons and recently name dropped the Sopranos in an interview, so we know he’s not totally adverse to American television.

See also: Alan Moore’s influence on LOST.

There do seem to be different rules involved when it comes to death and the island. It reminds me of both Donnie Darko and The Invisibles. In Donnie Darko dying in the time loop allowed someone to step out of regular time as Frank the Bunny does. From this new position he is able to effect events. Similar effects are in play in The Invisibles comic series by Grant Morrison.

Hatch 23: Lost and the Supercontext

Technocracy Incorporated is one of the great vanishing acts of history. At the peak of its existence, Technocracy Inc. had half a million members in California alone and received extensive press. Today, they are virtually forgotten.

To over simplify: the goal of Technocracy Inc. was to create a socio-economic system run entirely by engineers. It was founded by Howard Scott, an engineer with dubious credentials.

Full Story: Hatch 23

Global Business Network (GBN) is a consulting firm that grew out of Shell’s Planning Group, Stanford Research Institute, and Stewart Brand and the community based around his “Whole Earth” businesses. In other words, it’s an unlikely alliance of oil industry insiders, mad scientists, and hippie visionaries. They specialize in “scenario planning.”

Schwartz has also studied Tibetan Buddhism and worked closely with Willis Harman, a key figure in the transpersonal psychology movement in San Francisco. Before accepting a post at Shell’s Planning Group, he worked at SRI International, the famed Menlo Park, California, research outfit that came up with the widely used psychographic measuring system known as VALS (for “values and life styles”). SRI also developed the computer mouse. Schwartz’s is a tame résumé by the standards of GBN.

Full Story: Hatch 23

One of the various projects of the Esalen Institute was the Physics Consciousness Research Group, founded to study time travel, ESP, consciousness after death, and other fringe subjects. Various people have made the claim that Physics Consciousness Research Group was the inspiration for the movie Ghostbusters. Jack Sarfatti, one of the founders of the Physics Consciousness Research Group, is a physicist and archetypal “mad scientist” – in fact, he claims to be the inspiration for both from Back to the Future and Egon Spangler from Ghostbusters.

Full Story: Hatch 23

SRI International (previously known as Stanford Research Institute) is the clearest influence on the DHARMA Initiative (though DARPA is closer in name. Incidentally, SRI has been known to work for DARPA). SRI is a non-profit research institute working in a broad range of fields including, according to Wikipedia: “communications and networks, computing, economic development and science and technology policy, education, energy and the environment, engineering systems, pharmaceuticals and health sciences, homeland security and national defense, materials and structures, and robotics.”

Things got weird for SRI during the 60s and 70s, when it was engaged in parapsychology and LSD research. They hired L. Ron Hubbard, tested Uri Geller’s claims, and experimented with remote viewing.

They also compiled a report called The Changing Images of Man, contracted and funded by The Charles F. Kettering Foundation (the real life equivalent of Alvar Hanso?).

Full Story: Hatch 23

I suspect time travel is responsible for most of the paranormal/supernatural phenomena that have occurred – Alpert’s apparent non-aging, the whispers, Walt appearing in places he shouldn’t be, appearances by the dead, moving the Island, etc. The “synchronicities” that occur regularly could be explained by time travels deliberately manipulating certain events.

Lost: Overview of My Current Theories

See also: LOST Theory: The Island is the Village from the Prisoner (which contains some Prisoner spoilers).

And: Lost Theories

What was Alternative 3? What does it have to do with Lost?

Alternative 3 is a television programme, broadcast in the UK in 1977 as a fictional hoax, an heir to Orson Welles’ radio production of The War of the Worlds. Purporting to be an investigation into Britain’s contemporary “brain drain,” Alternative 3 uncovered a plan to make the moon and Mars habitable in the event of a terminal environmental catastrophe on Earth.

The programme was originally meant to be broadcast on April Fools Day, 1977. While its broadcast was delayed until June by industrial action, the credits explicitly date the film to April 1st. Alternative 3 ended with credits for the actors involved in the production and featured interviews with a fictitious American astronaut. However, some conspiracy theory supporters have argued Alternative 3 is at least partly true.

Find out more at Hatch 23.

Cobalt connects Lost to, well, pretty much everything.

Full Story: Hatch 23.

Full Story: Hatch 23.

Retroactive magic is either the most cutting edge arena of modern magical practice or the most self-delusional (or both). According to Edward Wilson: ‘Retroactivity is the idea that actions taken in the present or the future can affect the past and therefore the affect can proceed the cause… It creates of causation an Ouroborus or Mobius strip.’ In other words an occulist can alter the past as well as the future.

Full Story: Hatch 23.

There wasn’t a whole lot of new occult stuff to chew on in the season premiere. But the last ‘Missing Pieces’ clip reminds of me of an interesting occult reference Trevor Blake pointed out:

In 1875 Madame Blavatsky founded the Theosophical Society, a proto-New Age occult organization that would have been quite an influence on The DHARMA Initiative. The ‘New Age’ movement that the DHARMA Initiative invokes has its origins in Theosophy.

Full Story: Hatch 23.

Just in time for the season premiere of Lost! Hatch 23 is an Esozone/PDX Occulture educational project seeking to uncover the occult undercurrents of the popular television series:

There’s a lot going on beneath the surface of the ABC television series Lost. Lost is sprinkled with references and allusions to the occult and esoteric secrets. Perhaps the most explicit reference is the use of the number 23. Since the release of the Jim Carrey movie,the significance of that number has become widely known.

But Lindelof and company started sprinkling the number throughout the first season, over 2 years before the movie. The number comes from Robert Anton Wilson, as Lindelof has confirmed at various times

Full Story: Hatch 23.

I’ve been watching the TV series Lost – it’s the only TV show I watch, and it’s the only show I’ve watched on a regular basis in years. I first got interested when I read about how much of an influence the Watchmen was on it. Later Wu pointed to an article mentioning that Robert Anton Wilson was an influence as well.

Here’s a snip from a lengthy interview with the creators:

This is a theme we’re very much exploring in Season 3, this notion of “us versus them.” And who is us? And who is them? I mean I think we all tend to objectify people who we don’t know much about and I think that’s the audience’s view of The Others right now – they are bad, they are the malevolent force on the island. But over the course of the stories we’re going to be telling this season on the show we expect the audience’s view of The Others to change a lot.

Full Story: ABC News.