The movie Predestination (2014 AD; starring Ethan Hawke, Sarah Snook and Noah Taylor—which you can purchase here) was written and directed by the Spierig Brothers: Michael and Peter. It is one of the premiere Gnostic movies and thus, deeply philosophical.
The story is deeply occult in two ways. 1) It is literally occult as in hidden because the Gnosticism is hidden behind the auspices of a sci-fi movie with a love story. 2) It is an aspect of the revelation of the method or externalization of the hierarchy, to name two manners in which a concept has been termed; the concept of bringing long hidden gnosis right into the open. Today, the gnosis/knowledge of the ancient secret societies and/or mystery religions are available for all to see within movies, lyrics, concerts, books, online, etc.
Predestination is based on the Robert A. Heinlein story “…All You Zombies…” (1959 AD) which is, superficially, premised on time travel paradoxes. Heinlein was exploring the concept of intersexuality which is all the rage these pop-gnosis days with the glorification of androgyny, hermaphroditism, bisexuality, gender fluidity, transgenderism, etc., etc., etc. Yet, the Gnostic aspect goes much deeper as it pertains to self-creation and thus, self-existence. Of course, to create oneself one would already have to exist and thus, the paradox which Robert Heinlein sought to solve by appealing to time travel. Of course, this resolves nothing as it creates a loop but make for some good ol’ fashioned sci-fi.
The story, anachronistically told as it is a time travel story, involves an agency called the Temporal Bureau which prevents crime before it occurs by traveling back in time to stop it before it happens.
A bureau agent poses as a bartender in order to intercept John who writes stories for confession magazines under the pseudonym Unmarried Mother. John begins to tell the tale of when he was a young girl; yes, he was a girl.
When John was Jane (as in John and Jane Doe) she eventually met an older man, fell in love, was impregnated by him and he abandoned her. The birth was difficult, resulting in a caesarean-section at which time it was discovered the, internally, she had both female and male organs. The damage to her body was such that her external female sex organ had to be reconstructed into an external male sex organ; thus, Jane became John.
This was an existential upheaval, made her/him lose all hopes of being accepted into the space travel program of his/her dreams. He/she had to learn how to be a man, talk like a man, act like a man, etc.
John became obsessed of finding the older man who loved and left him when he was a she, as that man ruined his life. The bureau agent was placed in John’s path in order to offer him the technological ability to travel back to when Jane met the man, and murder him. This was a styled test to see if John had what it takes to become an agent.
John travels back to the moment of the initial meeting and, as it turns out, the initial meeting was between Jane and John. Thus, John traveled back in time, met his female self, fell in love and impregnated himself in herself.
Thus far, we have the ultimate merging of the so called sacred masculine and sacred feminine; the literal merging of male and female as and within one single being. Now, Jane’s baby survived the birth but was stolen from the hospital’s nursery; the bureau agent took the baby into the past.
At one point, in time, the agent is shown to have a c-section scar himself. It turns out that every character is the same person. The baby was taken back in time, the baby was Jane, Jane became John, John impregnated Jane, Jane gave birth to baby Jane, ad infinitum. And yet, moreover, the agent had recruited John, John became an agent, John posed as a bartender, etc. Thus, the agent is John, is Jane, is the baby. In fact, at one point a jukebox in the bar is playing a song, the lyrics to which are “I’m my own grandpa.”
The title of the book and movie come from this line from the book:
I know where I came from—but where did all you zombies come from? I felt a headache coming on, but a headache powder is one thing I do not take. I did once—and you all went away. So I crawled into bed and whistled out the light. You aren’t really there at all. There isn’t anybody but me—Jane—here alone in the dark. I miss you dreadfully!
Another aspect of the story relates to a terrorist called the Fizzle Bomber. As an agent, John’s main task has been to track down and stop the bomber. When he finally does, it turns out that, you guessed it, the terrorist is John himself as an older man.
In a very typical manner of modern storytelling, John the terrorist is, or so he claims, mass murdering people for good reasons. Many, many, many modern day stories (such as Breaking Bad—see here for a breakdown of symbolism within that show) promulgate the concept of a false dichotomy where we are lead to believe that there are only two options which are generally perish or do evil for good reasons (which, of course, make good and evil utterly subjective). This denotes the death of the hero as, anymore, the hero does the same exact things are the bad guy does but is heroic only because the hero wins in the end.
John the terrorist explains that he mass murders people via explosions based on his statistical calculations that doing so prevent even greater tragedies. In other words, if evil terrorists were going to rob a munitions building and use the weapons for a terrorist attack, John would blow up the building so as to prevent the robbery.
Sure, this resulted in mass murder but hey, it is statistically less mass murder than the bad guy terrorists would have committed. John the terrorist has an album of newspaper clipping from another time which show the evil bad guy terrorist actions and proves that he prevented them.
Well, the agent John is deadest on killing the terrorist John who tells him that it is the very act of killing him(self) which turns him into a terrorist good guy; apparently, from seeing the evidence within the album.
So, in the end (end or, beginning or, middle or, whatever) Jane/John—who is his/her own mother/father—mass murders illusory, non-existent, zombie for statistically good reasons in a paradox wrapped in a riddle served on an endless loop of self-creation and self-destruction.