Mad Max: Thunderdome

In this one the only symbol is worn by the Emcee at the fight in the Thunderdome; he also carries a winged staff reminiscent of the cadeusus.

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The remarkable thing about this movie is that it treats two different themes used in the Kabbalah, one being Exile and Return, and the other is Loss and Recovery. In a post apocalyptic world, Max is stranded in the desert where he is found by Savannah who hauls him back to the oasis where she lives with the others, a group of about 30 children and teenagers.

Max- Who are you?

First Tracker- We're the waiting ones.

M- Waitng for what?

FT- Waitng for you.

M- And who do you think I am?

FT- This is a testing Walker? You reckon we been slack?

M- I don't know. Maybe you been slack.

FT- We ain't. We kept it straight. It's all there. Everything marked. Everything membered. You wait, you'll see.

The Tell

FT- This you knows. I be First Tracker. In times past count I done the Tell. But it weren't me that tumbled Walker, it was Savannah. So it only right that she take the Tell. [He hands her a large frame on a pole.]

S- This ain't one bodies story, it's the story of us all. We go it mouth to mouth, so you got to listen it and 'member, cause what you hears today you gotta tell the birthed tomorrow.

[The notion of a Univeral (oral) Tell resonates with both Kabbalists and Masons.]

I'm looking behind us now across the count of time, down the long haul into history back. I sees the end what was the start. It's Pock-Eclipse full of pain! [She frames an image on the wall of a cave, a mushroom cloud.] And out of it were birthed crackling dust and fearsome time. It were full on winter, and Mr Dead chasing them all, but one he couldn't catch and that were Captain Walker. He gathers up a gang, takes to the air, and flies to the sky. [Frames image of an airliner.]

So they left their home and said bidey-bi to the high-scrapers and what were left of the knowing they left behind. Some say that the wind just stoppered, others reckon it were a gang called Turbulence (Chaos). [Frames image of a plane wreck.] And after the wreck, some had been jumped by Mr Dead, but some had got the luck and it leads them here. One look and they's got the hots for it. They word it Planet Earth. And they says "We don't need the knowing. We can live here."

All together-We don't need the knowing. We can live here.

[In the Kabbalah, the knowing would be the Primordial non-dualistic Paradise, the top of the Tree, while the earth is the bottom of it. This completes the fall.]

Time counts and keeps counting and they gets to missing what they had. They got so lonely for the high-scrapers and the video; and they does the pictures so they'd 'member all the knowing that they lost.

[Pictures equals symbols, so they'd 'member and not loose all the knowing. "They gets to missing what they had" is the universal striving for the Golden Age, Utopia, childhood, etc. ]

[FT shows Max a videograph with images]

Then Captain Walker picked them of an age and good for a long haul; they counted 20, and that were them the Great Leaving. [Shows image of names and message carved on the wall of the cave.]

All- "Rescue party departed at first light led by Flight Captain G.L.Walker. May God have mercy on our souls".

[Souls that are leaving Planet Earth]

S- They said bidey-bi to them what they'd birthed, and from out of the nothing [the desert] they looked back and Captain Walker hollered back "Wait one of us will come.

All together- Wait one of us will come.

S- And someone did come.

[Image on wall revealed, looks like Max.]

All- Walker

S- We's heartful to you Captain Walker.

FT- We's ready now. Take us home.

[Max stands up walking away.]

FT- We kept it straight. It's all there ain't it? Everything marked, everything membered.

Max- Yeah, you kept it real good. You ain't been slack at all.

FT- Then what are we waiting for?

M- That ain't me, you got the wrong guy.

Quit joshin' Captain.

Yeah catch the wind.

All- We got to see Tomorrow-morrow land. Home Tomorrow-morrow land.

M- There were places like these, they were called cities, there were lots of them. And they had the knowing of a lot of things, they had skyscapers and videos, and they had the sonic. Then this happened, (makes sound of an explosion) this Pock-Eclipse happened, and it's finished. It just isn't there anymore.
So you got to understand, that this is home, and there's no Tomorrow land, and I ai'nt Captain Walker.

In the context of the movie, the Exile represents a removal from the ancestral home, the Golden Age or Paradise metaphorically. The loss and recovery refers to knowledge or meanings which this group has obviously lost and which Max recovers for them with his explanations.

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As it turns out, Savannah is the leader of the group that wants to leave and risk a trip through the desert, in order to try and find the cities; which they do, but with out Max. He then, turned out to, literally, be their deliverer. At the end of movie, we see Savannah and her group in the wreckage of a building in Sydney.

Savannah- This you knows, the years travel fast, and time after time I done the tell, but this ain't one bodies tell, it's the tell of us all, and you gotta listen it and 'member, cause what you hears today you gotta tell the newborn tomorrow.

I's looking behind us now into history back; I sees those of us that got the luck and started the haul for home. And I 'members how it lead us here and we was heartful 'cause we've seen what there once was. One look and we knewed we got it straight. Those what had gone before had the knowing of things beyond our reckoning, even beyond our dreaming. Time counts and keeps counting, and we knows now, finding the trick of what's been and lost ain't no easy ride. But that's our track and we gotta travel it.

[This is the promised Return of the Kabbalah. The last lines refer to the loss of knowledge and meaning.]

And there ain't nobody knows where it's gonna lead. Still and all, every night we does the Tell so that we 'memeber who we was, and where we came from.

[This refers to the gnostic notion that the soul has fallen from it's home in heaven and has forgotten it's divine origin; also to the idea that the god divided itself up to make the Universe, and those parts are all of us, and that at the end, the parts are going to be gathered up.]

But most of all we 'members the man who finded us, him that came the salvage (rescue, redeemer). And we lights the city, not just for him, but for all of them still out there; 'cause we knows that there will come a night when they sees the distant light, and they'll be coming home.

[The night refers to the soul in a body, and coming home in the Kabbalah means the soul becoming aware of itself as a spiritual entity.]

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