STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN OR GATEWAY TO HELL?

This one's courtesy Naresh Purushotham who sent me this video. It was accompanied by the following message which he also forwarded:

Most interesting unimaginable findings inside the sixth voult which was opened last week at Trivandrum Padmanabha temple. Inside they found flying saucer from the other world measuring thirty metre night by twenty metre wide and and also dead bodies of seven persons with well preserved with out any signs of decay who are from another world. Video below



I have no idea about the technicalities of temple architecture, nor do I have any idea if UFOs exist. And I sure as hell have no idea about the mummified bodies found. But this video is a mix of fact and unverified data that we will call fiction for now. I'll tell you why.

Yes, there is supposed to be immense wealth at Thiruvananthapuram's Padmanabha Swamy Temple's vault as per numerous articles including in The New Yorker. You can search for those later and make up your own mind about it.

The interesting aspect is the sheer number of videos on the subject where the temple, the wealth and the doorway are constant and there are variables added for amusement, including UFOs and mummified bodies.

Noticed that doorway that appears twice in the video? They are two different doors, both with serpents. There's a grainy black and white one and there's a colour one. 

Now my contention is that they are for purely representative purposes and not actual doors, although I know people who believe the black and white image is of the real door to vault 6. That's the door we'll focus on, because it has appeared alongside numerous articles on the subject and as results on every search string on the internet.

Look at the black and white doorway closely. This image that I found on Pinterest draws attention to the fleur de lis pattern on the door. While the French have colonised many parts of the world, including parts of India, it's unlikely that the fleur de lis will find itself on a temple door.



Also, to me, as a non-expert, the entire door looks like it is stylistically very different from Indian, especially South Indian temple architecture. It looks more medieval Europe and Game of Thrones than Kerala. And more like the screen-grab of a video game. The serpents look like dragons. The crawling figures on the pillars on either side reminded me of the circles of hell from Dante's Inferno. This looked like a representation of the Gates of Hell, which was the search string that finally, finally took me to this link.

For those too fatigued to click through the link, this is a representative image (which the makers of the video should have mentioned) and not the real photograph of the doorway to the 6th vault in Padmanabha Swamy Temple. It is a 3D rendering by a Mario Russo who posted on the site in 2009 detailing how he painstakingly put this together. He cites Rodin's sculpture of The Gates of Hell as inspiration. 

The flying saucer and seven dead bodies remain a quest for another day. For now, Mario Russo's account about how he created the doorway makes for fascinating reading. 

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