Millennium and the Masons

Recently I got a tremendous bargain when I picked up all nine seasons of the X-Files on sale. I also picked up Millennium while I was at it— you know, Millennium, the other spooky series that came, along with the X-Files, from the fertile and febrile mind of Chris Carter?

I used to follow both those TV series with a passion. Millennium was never as popular as the X-Files, and it was canceled after its third season. I always thought that had something to do with the fact that Millennium was quite a dark and brooding show. But then, back in those days, in the late 90s, I was going through a very dark time in life myself, so it sort of fit.

Millennium: the protagonist, Frank Black, was a former FBI agent, now working with a consulting detective outfit known as the Millennium Group. Frank had a special gift, an uncanny ability to see into the minds of killers. He also seemed to be carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders, grim, wearied, bowed but not defeated, determined to carry on against the powers of darkness in a world of gathering gloom and evil, a world on the eve of the millennium.

The first season of Millennium was a rather dark detective show, and little more: as someone has called it, "serial killer of the week."

Second season, Millennium took more of a turn for the fantastic. Frank began to learn that there was far more to the Millennium Group than he had known. Far from being merely a detective outfit, the Millennium Group was a secretive body of initiates, something like the Masons. Its history extended back many hundreds of years, back into the Middle Ages at least, when it had been known as the Order of Knights Chronicler. Now the Millennium Group operated at the heart of a vast and dark conspiracy. Just how dark, Frank realized too late, as the Millennium Group staged a "test," unleashing a genetically engineered plague on the Seattle area, killing dozens of people including Frank's wife.

"It was always about control." Third season found Frank back at the FBI, his hair literally turned white overnight, now trying to warn people about the Millennium Group and its nefarious plans. Of course most people were like, "Frank, well yeah he's a good fellow, but you know he's a bit cracked."

One thing that always struck me about Millennium is that the three seasons of the show trace Frank's initiatic journey, from (1) not knowing what's going on, to (2) gaining some insight into what's going on, and finally to (3) fathoming something of how and why these things are going on. Sort of like the three degrees of Blue Lodge in the Masons: Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft, and Master Mason; or, in the case of Frank, Master Anti-Mason. This was never stated outright, but the Masonic parallels were certainly played up more and more as the series progressed.

It may sound strange to people who know me, but I always rather identified with Frank Black. And with his dark and brooding temperament. Like I say, the late 90s, when this show was airing, was a very dark time in my own life. Plus, as you may have perceived, the incandescent radioactive-core-meltdown imagination I put on display here in my blog stems from some very dark roots dating back to my childhood. Roots that maintain their hold on me inwardly to this day.

Part of the initiatic journey is entering into the realm of transformation— learning how to take those dark experiences in us, and transform them. Transform them into something profound, bottomless, fathomless. Transform them, and in transforming them, be transformed oneself.

As the old pop song put it, "You will see light in the darkness, you will make some sense of this. When you make your secret journey, you will be a holy man."

Or as Nietzsche more profoundly put it, "Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster; and if you gaze into the Abyss, the Abyss gazes also into you."

Millennium. The "secret journey" of one Frank Black from prentice to journeyman to master anti-anti-hero. The Millennium Group and its deep, dark Masonic schemes. Gazing into the Abyss. It was a TV show that deserved a wider viewership than it ever achieved.