Magic Posters

I was about to do a post or two about magic. I was looking at images of vintage magic posters and I ran across this one for Thurston the Great. I remember him. For one post I was going to mention that about 99.9% of all magic posters feature demons or devils, and there you go, but there's much more to this poster. It's really extraordinary and so I wanted to mention it separately. As Frank Zappa would say, it's worthy of SKA-ROOOOOO-tiny.
 Pretend for a moment that you're a paranoid person with too much time on your hands and you're geeked up on way too much coffee or you're off your meds or whatever it is and you're in a darkened room with the windows blacked out and the doors triple-bolted and the only light is coming from your computer screen and you have big dark circles under your eyes and you live in your parents basement and you're a total whackjob conspiracy theorist and they're out to get you...get the picture? It's who they say we are. Anyway, if on top of all that you had a working knowledge of the Good Book and you saw this poster, might anything look a little strange? This is the largest image I can find, but take a look. It'll blow up about 10%. I'll go have a smoke. Brb.
 Find anything? It says "Noah's Vision." Right there it says that the whole Noah story was a myth or a vision. Near the top is a cabinet that says "Empty." Presumably it's a prop from the show where a lady disappears or whatever, but it appears to show cherubs looking into an empty box. Could it represent an empty tomb? Granted that could be a stretch, but the rest isn't. First of all...where's Noah? We see animals coming out, but the only people are women. Are they his wife and daughter-in-law? Are they supposed to be Noah's hos? Perhaps. It looks like there's a shadowy image of an old man with a hat and a beard just behind Thurston. Could that be Noah? If so it would seem to support the idea that none of it is real.

Here's a crop, and this will blow up a good bit if you want to have a look. The animals are coming through the gate, but not two-by-two. A pig is coming out with a rabbit and a mule with a donkey. I'll leave that one alone because it'd sound crazy to most people, but if that's the message, it's real. There appears to be a weird floating skull with bat wings. Crazy, right?
 You have a big flock of doves, which probably represents the Holy Spirit, but it looks like they're skedaddling. Is the message that they won't be around to help? It sorta looks like it. In the lower-right corner there's three ugly little troll-looking motherfuckers that seem to be discussing the situation. They look like half-man/half-demon creatures, which many people say some humans have actually become. Interestingly the lower cabinet reads: "An avalanche of life mysteriously produced." That's heavy. I don't suppose it could be an anti-creation message, could it?
 The two devils are holding up a skull that also seems to be some kind of Pandora's Box. All kinds of little demons and shit are pouring out. There are animals too, including more rabbits. Rabbits from a hat, or counterfeits? It's hard to say, but almost anyone from any culture, if they knew a bit about the story, would probably say that while God is starting a new creation, the Devil is counteracting and trying to take it down from the get-go. Symbols STILL rule the world, although most people don't realize it.
 If you have any trouble with the idea, next time you're in a foreign country and you can't speak or read a single word of the language and you're in a car and you see a red, octagonal sign at a busy intersection but you can't understand the word on it, go ahead and plow right through and see what happens. Symbols are much more powerful than any language. Symbols are picked up by both the conscious and subconscious mind, and they have a MUCH bigger effect on the subconscious. Most people grasp that, but fail to note that it still applies. If you want symbols, there are symbols a-plenty. It tells a complete story without a single word.
 Am I reading too much into this? Maybe. Is it totally out of the realm of possibility? Not for a second. Could it be sending a message, or more importantly, trying to cover one up? Depends how you see it.