Hyborian Bridge 61 (part1)

“A madman is not someone who has lost his reason but someone who has lost everything but his reason”(The False Apollo)

Or, as I like to say, one who is stuck inside their head, denying the physical reality of rudimentary living on the Earth and under the stars. The physical reality rotates under the stars above, and this is where one found the Delphic oracles, dancing in the moonlight to the strains of Chaquico on guitar from the Starship… hold on, something wrong there? Yes, of course, only women!

Mad, screeching Greek divas. After all, what makes modern Man think the universe is rational and ordered? His a priori assumptions that the head (psyche) is separate from the body (physique). The end-result of that line of thought is the universe we have of perspective boredom.

Robert Robertson, erudite and eclectic, gathered multi-lingual and multi-geographical examples of Fulling through the ages which tell the opposite story. Namely, that there are ancient and early physical (bodily) origins for human practices – cleansing skins and cloth, wool-making.

These empirical traditions (of practical or accidental discovery) continued, as previously noted of Mosaic Law (Tales of Faith 10). Only with Francis Bacon’s The New Atlantis (Drama2) was the empirical tradition abandoned for the new empirical reason (head). Bacon realized the dangers of this, which he called “The Idol of the Den”. If you say we are now in this “Den”, it is the den of acolytes. In this den, the physical, rudimentary origins of our psyche are abandoned, and we are beset by “facts” (fictions of the perspective order).

What I mean by physical, rudimentary origins are the earthily smells, physical presence of animals round Man, of rustic dances and unwashed peasants, as well as ancient arts like Fulling that are psychically very free (loose or hippy-like activities). The smells and textures of a hovel, or

Somebody to Love? Grace Slick, Warner 1998

Physical rough-play and psychic freedom are closely linked, and both are strong. Nowadays we like to be hygienic but, the fact is, being rough and unclean is just the other side of the coin to cleanliness and psychic strength (rough treatment – Hippocrates Hyborian Bridge 60) The hairshirt aesthetic.

How is it we are still in this “sane” world of acolytes continually mouthing off on the sacred principles of sorcerers? It could be a type of mass-hypnosis, and this is where Howard’s aesthetic of the warrior versus the ethete sorcerer has a lot of strength and clarity.

The Masters of Yimsha, in People of the Black Circle, are adepts at hypnosis, or the ability of the psyche to overwhelm the physical reality – and make it illusory. It’s worth going through the story a bit as the contrasts are pretty self-evident.

 

Buscema/Alcala art, Savage Sword #17

For a start, the Devi may be aristocratic and refined, but she is woman enough to not be offended by Conan’s rough ways (see Buscema/Alcala art prev.) “Adaptability is the test of true aristocracy”. Yasmina is forever clenching her hands in strident defiance, bosom heaving and her physical lustre all too plain. Conan’s muscular feat of manhandling a steaming stallion into submission is almost like a metaphor for the physical allure that plays between Devi and hill-chieftain.

Her head is already full of ways for stringing Conan to her bow – when she is spirited away by the four acolytes. These four, who defeat Khemsa with naked stares, are pure head and hardly even bother to shuffle around, ferried as they are by their conoid cloud. This is the Howard story that I would say is closest to sci-fi as Conan and his allies storm up the hill and are beset by what could be a robot hawk of “burnished steel” and combustible puff-balls.

Once past the watchtower, what they see are the fleeing acolytes falling through mist that refracts light, distorting it and the figures within it.

..there suddenly came to him Khemsa's cryptic words—"Follow the golden vein!" On the brink, under his very hand as he crouched, he found it, a thin vein of sparkling gold running from an outcropping of ore to the edge and down across the silvery floor. And he found something else, which had before been invisible to him because of the peculiar refraction of the light. The gold vein followed a narrow ramp which slanted down into the ravine, fitted with niches for hand and foot hold.

Visually, you have in the mist what could easily be a giant lens surrounding the castle of the Seers. The lens represents the reality of the Master of Yimsha, which is distorted and illusory. The psyche of the Master distorts physical reality and he is all head; his voice intones like a bell, pleasant to the ear, he is not unhandsome.

Once Conan and his allies gain access to the castle, the four acolytes put up a fight. After some bloodshed, Conan utters “an involuntary cry” and breaks free of their mental control. Rushing past the crystal sphere, “his reaction was almost without his own volition,” as he whirls to strike it.

The way to defeat an acolyte of perspective-sorcery (sun or lens Hyborian Bridge 56 “Pets”) is always with action. The muscular symmetry of the proportionate physique. Conan reacts exactly as Bruce Lee in Jeet Kune Du (The Big Pretence). There is no pre-thought, no plan, no routine and no technique – just pure instantaneous reflex.

Whereas the Masters inhabit the technical world, Lee and Conan inhabit the instinctive, primal world. What Lee says is that routines are learnt and the body honed but, in the moment it is pure action with no thought, no technique, no pre-learnt routine. Muscular coordination and conquest.

The question is, whatever we are told nowadays by the acolytes of perspective lenses, to what degree are we still ritualistic cavemen and women? Conan represents the roughness of absolute power on Earth, and not the perspective illusion of the sun.

The rough ways are reciprocated by the Devi, who has been taught a lesson in humility. Without the earthpower of the body (physique), even the mightiest of empires can fall to the acolytes of perspective illusion (head).

STAIRWAY TO CLEVELAND

 

Pictorial 49

Titian, Diana and Actaeon Hyborian Bridge 31

The body that is roughly used in the wild ways of the everlasting hunt through dale and grove is sometimes to be found in a bathing grotto. The tough skin is lathered, the smells of the chase anointed with heady perfume.

A grotto; a cave; ancient folk memories of women washing animal skins; pungent smells and cunning fragrances; bodily fluids and empirical tradition (prev.) How much of what is deemed psyche has an ancient early physical origin? Contrariwise, how much of modern psyche has no such early origin? Bodily smells – animal or human – act on the memory.

If you say that a lot of our psyche in primitive society has an ancient and early physical origin, it begs the question of what actually is in the modern head, aside from facts. Greek oracles at Delphi imbued heady fumes from underground vents, probably from oily lime (ethylene, a sweet-smelling noxious vapour).

The ancient Greeks placed an Omphalos signifying the navel at Delphi, the spiritual centre of their universe. The womanly origin of things is deep in classical culture; even if the shrine was dedicated to Apollo, oracles were ever women and known as the Thriae and fed on nectar (see

Noto Hyborian Bridge 14)

For there are sisters three, called Thriae, maiden things,

Three they are and they joy in the glory of swift wings.

Upon their head is sprinkled the flour of barley white,

They dwell aloof in dwellings beneath Parnassos’ height.

They taught me love of soothsaying, whilst I my flocks did feed,

Being yet a boy; of me and mine my father took no heed.

And they flitted, now this way, now that, upon the wing,

And of all things that were to be they uttered soothsaying;

What time they fed on honey fresh, food of the gods divine,

The holy maidens made their hearts to speak the truth incline.

But if from food of honeycomb they needs must keep aloof,

Confused they buzz among themselves and speak no word of

sooth. Apollo, Homeric Hymn to Hermes

The physical origins of mystical visions they would have had no problem with. Perhaps it is more absurd to think that the head can be detached from physical reality and deduce things from pure reason!

So the Greeks seemed to mix physical with psychology and, I guess, the performance of the oracle in filmy garments, perhaps sighing and wailing out the prophecy in verse. This brings-in a real problem with empirical reason, dating from The New Atlantis (Hyborian Bridge 22). Isn’t it true to say that life is physical and psychical and performance art? In that case, the facts that modern societies get are in another universe to do with ordered logic; if that universe is “won” isn’t the other universe lost?

The pungency of prophecies may not be “true”, but maybe their very ambiguity is more true than our convincing facts – that are fictions of perspective illusion. It’s because our illusions are so convincing that we (or “they”) cannot actually see the physical, psychic and performance or dramatic narrative (of the stars). They see “facts” such as the supermassive black hole (prev) but cannot interpret it in physical terms.

The oracular tradition is the exact opposite of that, a heady mix of fumes, performance and interpretation on-the-hoof. The question is, would you rather a world of perspective illusion or one of dramatic narrative? One is factual (and fictive); the other is interpretive (and ambiguous). Do you want the universe to be some sort of perspective boredom? There’s music in them there spheres.

I’m reading an interview of Craig Chaquico – the surviving member of Jefferson Starship – and his espousal of musical healing. Whatever is in the head is physical and psychic and performance, which means an interpretation rather than a fact. He mentions that when Paul Kantner died, five planets were in alignment

I’m hoping the five of us will get together, especially with the idea that Paul passed on a very cosmic time with five planets in alignment at dawn which doesn’t happen again until the summer. I thought that would be a great time for the five remaining members to play under those same planets underneath the stars with Paul. If we can get Grace also, it would be like Venus, the Goddess of Love (laughs). Maybe we can get it all going on. (Smashing Interviews)

To some that would seem as barmy as ancient Greek oracles; it depends if you want a dramatic narrative (interpretation) or a fact (the black hole) that is also a fiction with no physical, figurative meaning. The oracles were fairly filthy hippies half-clothed in ragged raiments. In fact, the threads they wore could be likened to the threads pulled by the fuller’s art (prev.) Strong and silken, worn like skins of yore, animal-women who get high on Earth-power, or absolute physical reality of earth’s rotation.

This is the active reality (of performance), whereas we live in the perspective reality of an inert Earth (staring at the sun). Absolute reality has absolute power of divination by the stars; you can disbelieve it and choose to believe in a convincing illusion (of the sun) run by acolytes of sorcerers (see passim). In that case you will be in the head and lose the physical absolutes of the body.

It was very clear from Robert Robertson’s book on the art of fulling (prev) that the ancient art springs from raw and rudimentary products of the history of man and woman. Even if competition is there it is at the rudimentary level of women washing linen on riverbanks (singing and yelling).

The competition takes place in the absolute world ; the thread that binds us to nature if you like. It is an Earth power with the physicality of woman. Where you see birds stockpiling twigs for nests you see that Earth power. The absolute world is an active one that migrates with Earth’s orbit.

These are the threads that bind us to earth, and they receive rough treatment, as in Fulling (see prev, Hippocrates quote). The roughness of absolute power is very visible in Hyboria, right down to the strong, loose vestments that women tend to wear (and men, natch.) Awhile back I mentioned my favorite fashion designer was Gaultier (Pictorial 13

), who dresses for women and men, and I happened to see this picture of Eva Green in a Gaultier number

The fabric and design are very classic, and actually a close match to Margo Lane of The Shadow

Treat this as a classical diversion; I’m just winding up for some spiel on Howard for the next instalment (actually, starting reading People of the Black Circle on Gutenberg, having ludicrously lost my Complete Conan)

Hyborian Bridge 60

I was leafing through Fuller’s Earth, A History (prev, Robert Robertson, who founded The Resource Use Institute in Pitlochry) and realized some fascinating similarities with some of the themes I’ve been following.

Since fuller’s earth is a “found substance”, Man uses it with no need for processing, from the raw properties, and it’s worth quoting in full.

(page 8 -- humans giving birth in caves long, long ago)

(The Roman discovery of lime for concrete might have been equally accidental Hyborian Bridge 18)

Cleansing properties have to be pretty strong and pungent so you’re really in a different universe to one of hygiene, where things are weak. Cleansing breaks things down, often organic things carried in with sheep’s wool before spinning. One way to look at it is there are two things which are strong: one is the raw sheep’s wool, greasy and matted; the other is the material used for cleansing. Two strong things make one pristine product.

None of the things are hygienic, which is usually just a way of masking the effects of bad practice (such as chlorinating chickens.) As a general rule, things which get really dirty are of the figure in action– whether animal or Man, cowboys or Indians. These things then need the strength of cleansing.

(page 32) There meaning “laundry”, since

Another similarity I found in Robert’s book is that, in a world of primitive action, the body-in-action has a sexual symbolism that is taken for granted.

(page 230) Similarly, in Ireland, fulling of raw cloth or “frize”

The fact that the body in its physical labors is picturesque is seemingly seen in all societies of free communal action. The sexual symbolism is completely the norm. JM Synge, the Irish playwright, takes it to even more fantasy levels.

Synge is my favorite modern playwright, and his dreamy, madcap fantasies were his response to the rude rural peasantry he saw in Aran and elsewhere on the west. It’s the free action of the body, under no order save the primitive rhythms and proportionate grace of limb.

That anarchic order is what we, as free-dwelling humans, are, born of sweat and dirt and cleansed by spring and fuller’s art. The body-in-action tends to have a dynamic psyche since head and body are acting together, as warrior or hunter..

I did make mention before of the physical allure of psyche in ancient times (Drama1) The physical or sexual allure of figures is taken together with their strength of psyche. In Robert’s book, he mentions the “tension of opposites” of Heraclitus. That two things – like night and day – are indispensable parts of one thing. In Fulling, rough treatment gains softness of thread, as Hippocrates, page 33

Again, mud is a form of dirt, but is a cleansing agent. Stale urine is a pollutant. In nature there is the idea of pungency, that things act one-on-another. Is there then a great thread of life that is acted on roughly and with force and that gives it supple grace? The dynamic, primitive world of action that is very similar to Howard’s.

In our modern world, our heads exist in a type of hygienic weakness (electromagnetism, lenses – prev.); in Howard and ancient and medieval states, body and head are one indispensable thing.

So, physical allure and psyche are much closer than in our own pornographically-saturated era. What I tend to mean is, like the Scorch Fullers, women are unabashedly sexual as it is associated with their physical activity (People of the Black Circle Part 2, Savage Sword 17 1976)

Both the Devi and the hill-woman wear loose-fitting baggy clothes fitted to saddle or the grace of courtiers (And God Created)

So the dynamic of two things together – head and body, or rough and smooth – have one pristine result. The psyche that is joined with the active body.

Hyborian Bridge 59

What you might be thinking is, “What are the heinous acts that modernday sorcerers commit that can compare to the followers of Set?” You might also be thinking, “Isn’t it true that so many innovations of lab-techniques have proved beneficial?” And, “How are you gonna discover penicillin without a microscope?”



The end result of that line of argument would be I’d have to accept that lenses (micros and teles) are not illusory but factual.



What I’m saying is facts are also fictions because they are not figurative (proportionate, balanced). Second, we have a choice between living in a factual world or a figurative one. If everything were factual we would just be DNA, and that’s the way things are going (every day in DT has a new gene I’ve noticed!)



The balance is between a factual and a figurative world. Penicillin is useful, not infallible since, as we know, microbes breed immunity. The argument is essentially that there is an invisible world viewed through lenses that is very convincing. That makes it a perspective illusion.



The more we view things with lenses the more illusory and convincing things are. Therefore, the less figurative they are. This entire universe is hygienic order, and the aim of sorcerers is to breed from DNA the cold-blooded serpent of psychotic reason, run by algorithms (AI). The “sausage sellers” of the future, sex by another name. Dead meat.



DNA is meat because that’s where the money is. Meat that is grown hygienically for profane purposes; in other words, bi-passing normal sexuality. The profane demonstrates psychic weakness because there is no physical substance (physique of animals) or psyche (behaviour, farm manners, see prev.)



Hygiene does without dirt and therefore without the strength of cleanliness, since exposure to pathogens immunises and hardens. So, the invisible perspective world is really one of diminishing returns, psychotic, profane and prolix.



Farming, and the primitive predator/prey relationship is the subject of Claude Levi-Strauss’s The Savage Mind. This is a very good example of an original world of animals and plants that Man takes as is, with no processing (let alone DNA processing), and that is “structured” – his term for intermediaries, or midway states between predator and prey (the trickster or scavenger) – or between hunting and harvest.



When Levi-Strauss met Chief Seattle for the annual buffalo hunt (prev.) he donned jeans and saddled-up, freeing his mind from its formulaic structuralism. This apparently led to his famous fight with Jacques Derrida over the vexed question of, “When deconstructing structuralism, is the structure entered structured?”



The Derrida fight makes quite a good point, since it’s difficult to deny the theory’s usefulness whether it’s true or not. Acolytes always assume things are true and thereby create of them a perspective reality (the ubiquitous DNA/Dawkins).



Things actually have a certain vagueness – like the definition of oikos (prev). The stars at night with their mythical patterns affect us psychically – but how? The fact that something is useful doesn’t make it true. Levi-Strauss covers this point by considering opposing principles, such as harvest (life) versus beasts of prey (death) and intermediaries (tricksters). That makes it very useful in the same way that myths are moral fables. That doesn’t make them “true” and, OK, things have a certain structure but also a certain vagueness.

“They” are happy to leap on this as signs of alternative pseudery, simply because it’s not factual.

 

Conan found the scene gloomy and unreal; the silence of the people, their furtive haste, the great black stone walls that rose on each side of the streets. There was a grim massiveness about Stygian architecture that was overpowering and oppressive. (page 142)



This reminded me quite a lot of Rand standing there beneath her monuments (Pictorial 46). The difference is there are snakes slithering in the streets or coiled in temples. However, the contradiction between the deliberate order of a le Corbusier with the practical reality of living is a fairly common motif. There’s Motter’s Radiant City (Mr X) or the Belgian series La Fievre d’Urbicand (Alternates 8)



The serpent of psychotic reason always seems to be loose in settings of pure order. Pure reason doesn’t exist in nature, so what you are going to get is profane psychosis. Our modernday sorcerers use DNA to profanely procure beef or other types of processed meat (the “sausage seller” Pictorial 47)



The meat is bred in vats hygienically and without the physique of a cow (physiology). In this profane reality, physique is much more difficult to detect (in DNA) and therefore the reality is much less figurative (and more factual). If you take the “bleeding” beef (of Gates Hyborian Bridge 56) say you have a cut of brisket - since they could breed something that was “cuttable” – how do you know it’s brisket and not rump? Because “they” tell you. In other words, you don’t know your ass from your elbow in the profane reality.

Animals have symmetries and asymmetries; that is what they are. In a figurative reality, this interpretation is applied to the universe (prev.) Even if you can’t see the figure, the human imagination suppies the interpretation.

That’s why Katie Bouman’s apparent innocence of what she was looking at is so funny; to her and “them” it’s just another fact. They are the Khemites of our era, solar serpentine sorcerers of the lenses (see Traylor’s Pets Hyborian Bridge 56)

This film is dedicated to those who use their eyes to make us see – tagline to a Leica ad that was predictably Trolled on Weibo, which brings in the basic question, “What makes a trustworthy image?” It’s up to your discretion, though I am a Leica fan. I heard this running gag about a bare-faced liar who claimed to have invented celluloid cinefilm. He starts off,

"I was working in an electrical shop and sold a camera to a girl in a red dress.”  “Leica?”
“She wasn’t bad.” (Maxwell House radio show circa 1940)

There are two things there: the camera one side; the subject the other. Any confusion of the two is bad because there is no physical substance (ie things getting more electronic, CGI). I tend to think there should be a physical reality that you see with your eyes, and then apply to the lens. This brings-in a psychic closeness that can be felt.

Without the physical and the psyche, I think the subject becomes very detached and we are in the realm of “truth and lies” – every fact is a fiction. Scientists are fantastically good liars because the facts they produce are so convincing! And they’re more convincing where they’re not tied to a physical reality that needs primordial rhythms, proportion and balance. In other words, in a perspective illusion.

Going back to Conan the Conqueror, the way he gets to Khemi is he is Shanghaied aboard a trading vessel which happens to be southbound. Seeing the negro slaves chained along the rowing galley, he manages to effect a rebellion and re-establishes his leadership as “Amra”. In chasing Thutothmes all the way dwon to Khemis, he in a way uses the black corsairs although, since seafaring brigandry is the life they love, their freedom seems a fair exchange.
The anarchy of primordial rhythm in the eternal hunt for treasure on the seas.
In this case, their destination is Khemi, which could be likened to a Randian reality with the addition of snakes.
 
Conan knew it was one of the ritualistic processions so inexplicable to a foreigner, but one which played a strong – and often sinister – part in the Stygian religion. The last figure turned his head slightly toward the motionless Cimmerian, as if expecting him to follow. (page 145)

The formulas of the priesthood are based on one thing – worship of the serpent god Set. This iconic figure might seem a world away from modernity, except we live in a cult of order which seems somewhat similar!


There is no such thing as pure order (in nature) so instead a profane psychosis is let loose inside the perspective illusion of science. Because the illusion is so convincing, we’re inclined to go along with it, even though we get the profanity of hygienic meat and other hygiene-machines.



So, the similarities to the soaring buildings of Khemi, with the wriggling reptiles is obvious. Instead of the iconic human figure, science has simply chosen another figure: the serpent or processed meat of DNA (the “sausage seller”).

Our formulaic rituals are hygienic, and not related to the human figure; the free-living figure which exists alongside monumental grandeur. The extent to which previous societies were anarchic is probably not appreciated. French singer/songwriter Jean Patrick Capdevieille has his own ideas


 QUAND T’ES DANS LE DESERT

Pictorial 48

History of Fuller’s Earth,

Robert Robertson (at my sister’s graduation, via my father’s clay mineralogy)

I put this in mainly because Fuller’s earth is a found object that Man makes use of with no processing (see Levi-Strauss Hyborian Bridge 58) Like peat, its properties are unbeatable. Like teak and hardwood planks for shipping.

The reason for that is something to do with primordial rhythm and the stars above, the very things that don’t concern our Martian buddies. Yes, since this is Earth Mother (Traylor’s anthem).

If the Martians have their land of order and perspective illusion, we have the anarchy of things that are active (body) and not inert (head). As I’ve been hinting for awhile, the society of free communal action was the norm up ‘til the modern era. No competitive order; low-level disorder, minor unrest, quarrels or even all-out brawls.

This is a quote I took from a review of Chaucer: A European Life (Marion Turner)

On his many diplomatic missions Chaucer himself travelled through a dynamically networked continent in which small kingdoms like Navarre and Hainaut, and city states like Genoa and Florence, were engaged in continuous cultural and economic exchange. Chaucer, a merchant’s son engaged in high-level diplomacy for much of his life, closely associated with the internationally powerful house of Lancaster, saw and understood far more of this than one would ever guess from his bumbling narratorial personae. (Tim Smith-Laing, DT)

It’s a vision of freedom or, in other words, primordial rhythms of polyglot humanity under the stars and over the earth. In that situation there is no perspective reality and we are not “bugs in a jar” (Traylor). You wonder if that’s what the French artists like Raphael (Caravane) to Capdevieille are struggling to decipher?

Capdevieille later turned his hand to early Renaissance opera with libretti in 14^th century Italian – about the same era as Chaucer. Are we hearing windows into the freedom of action that we, as human beings with bodies, have lost to competitive order and perspective illusion?

This is the modern world that has no physical substance or psyche, children of DNA – processed meat a la Aristophanes’ sausage seller – profane and misplaced. The basic point is that without physical substance (of proportion) and psyche (narrative content) we cannot know what is the cut of the “beef” we see. It’s just a fact, like Katie Bouman’s famous black hole. There’s no light there, right?

Elena is adding some taglines to her series of “Songline” prints, now called “The Age of Acolytes”

sword and sorcery

the land of the treasure hunt

physical and psychic substance

 hidden by the dragon

Hyborian Bridge 58

“People create their own questions because they are afraid to look straight. All you have to do is look straight and see the road, and when you see it, don't sit looking at it - walk.” (Ayn Rand)

If you’re following this, then, the acolytes (of sorcerers) live in the order of perspective-AI, which is the vanishing point of technique (AI is always perspective because it is built virtually, in straight lines).

To give a concrete example, one of David Atten-bore’s programs on Planet Earth illustrates the competitive order. What that means is the images you see purport to be ordered – as opposed to disordered. Is a shoal of fish ordered or disordered? I’d say it’s both: if you look at ancient Minoan frescoes, they were attracted to what you could call the mermaid romance – as were Greek vases.

Wild Horses

This is the graceful reality; but the mind in a perspective order is prone to illusions and to see order where there is none. What you see is actually primordial rhythm implicated in serene movement. The order of competition is an illusion fed us by acolytes of sorcerers (in this case Darwin).

There is style (proportion) and psyche - behaviour, hunting - see Pictorial 5 on matriarchy of the high aerie. The fish you see are hunting or being hunted, so that is balance or the lifecycle. They are fluid and easy in their manner. This primordial grace is there in the film Countryman about the eponymous Jamaican fisherman who lives in a shack on the beach with his family, stray goats and Rastas. They live alongside the mainstream Kingston, and it struck me Countryman, who speaks of “guidance” from “elements of the earth” that will “defend I”, is not in the slightest competing in his seaborne lifestyle.

COUNTRYMAN (catching and cutting prey a la Gavin Maxwell Pictorial 42, 43)

Like Hannam (The House of Elrig) he is a mix of practical maritime (woodland) skill with seaborne (earthbound) philosophy.

..close to his heels as a shadow while with the wisdom of a lifetime he outwitted birds and beasts classified by his rules as vermin, listening to the low rumble of his voice as, sheltering behind a stone dyke from some blinding hill shower, he would try to impart to me his intimate knowledge of wild life. At the end of some long speech or reminiscence he would pause, tamp the black tobacco dottle on his pipe, and add, “Ay, you come to know through time.” (page 108)

Is the order of competition then an illusion of perspective reality? In other words, the reality that is always ordered (always “straight”). What I mean is, whatever the theory (of sorcerers) the same order pertains, the one of straight lines and therefore the vanishing point (of technique). In nature things are crooked (disordered); take a look at the two pictures contrasting Objectivism and Wildness inPictorial 46

Rand is dwarfed by her monuments; in the other there is a merging of buildings with disordered nature (see Rome). Rand’s universe by her own reckoning is straight, disorder is disallowed. That’s another way of saying it’s a perspective illusion – one that will be run by AI one day.

Intensive beef lots are another case of the same thing; hygiene or lack of disorder. Conventional farming uses the strength of fertile loam, of dirt and cleansing. One world is inert; the other is active.

I know Rand said mental processes are active (Pictorial 46), but if you live in a world of the mind you are not physically active. There is no balance between body and mind. The mind in a perspective order is prone to illusions so the way out of the dilemma is action. The world of action is figurative – figures in a landscape with meaning (epistemology Weird 11). A landscape or a wood (or the sea) have labyrinthine qualities in which the action takes place, a type of rustic or seaborne disorder.

You can easily see this in action-series such as the jungle and hill-country set Nyoka. The rocky terrain of gorges would look equally at home in a Hyborian story. I noticed the interior sets are deliberately made for the actors to clamber and vault around during set-piece combat. Ragged balconies, knobbly walls with hidden levers, trap-doors, twists and turns in the gloom.

In Britain we have children’s icon Enid Blyton who’s Famous Five always have adventures in hidden coves and what not. In such rustic or seaborne settings there is always far less order and therefore much more freedom of action. Similar things could be said of classic Noir set in dingy neighbourhoods of run-down tenements where each winding alley is an event. Val Lewton’s Cat People, for example, where nothing is really clear apart from the suspense.

There is very little perspective reality, yet a lot of atmosphere. Similarly, in Nyoka, galloping around the bluffs the figures and horses are in their element, with no straight lines to impede them. Likewise their costumes are loose jodhpur-ish riding gear which accentuates the figure.

In the Randian universe everything is convincing because everything is an illusion. If you’ve seen A Boy and his Dog, the film has two parts. The first is above ground in the dirt and mud of Spartan desert hunts, everything is grey or mottled by desert sun. The second part is down in Topeka, and everything is spangly and glowing in red, white and blue, bands playing, voices braying and yet the entire society is illusory, a bad recreation of olde America. The neon fantasy is quite a Randian one.

Now, an illusion can be very convincing (reflection). If you take DNA, it is always taken to support a competitive order. But, as I said inDrama, what you see in nature is primordial rhythm implicated in movement, which is a mixture of order and disorder (or order and freedom from order).

Basically, the scientific method has a very convincing order (DNA) but a very ambiguous or non-existent freedom (primordial rhythm in movement, action and physique). Hence our reality could be an illusion of order (sun). This clearly goes way back – not just to Kant (prev.) but to the Church and Galileo in the 17^th century.

The first innovation of that order was the practical advance in lenses (optics) and the telescope which enabled them to see planets and the moon clearly. Obviously that innovation was revolutionary and led to a new outlook. Now that we live in an innovative order of competition and “Randian architects” you can begin to see that we’ve lost the freedom not to be ordered!

Every innovation adds another bit of order, and it is inevitably leading to AI (electromagnetism). Our universe of order ultimately takes place in the head (electrochemical impulses see Hyborian Bridge 37) and not in the universe of primordial rhythm – the body or free-and-easy grace of action (Hyborian Bridge 18). The church was clearly very cagy to the point of paranoia about the dissemination of ancient Greek knowledge, with the exceptions of the mystical Plato and the pragmatic Aristotle.

Actually, the city-state played a vital role in preserving ancient texts. I’ve just ordered a book called The Map of Knowledge (Violet Moller) telling the story of seven cities from 300BC – 1500, on the basis of a review by Tim Smith-Laing. Arab scholarship was prevalent, and the cities included Baghdad and the Cordoba of the Moors.

In his Hyborian tales, Howard gives the odd hint of a scholarly class existing alongside all the riotous revelry.

He had entered the part of the city reserved for the temples. On all sides of him they glittered white in the starlight—snowy marble pillars and golden domes and silver arches, shrines of Zamora's myriad strange gods. He did not trouble his head about them; he knew that Zamora's religion, like all things of a civilized, long-settled people, was intricate and complex, and had lost most of the pristine essence in a maze of formulas and rituals. He had squatted for hours in the courtyard of the philosophers, listening to the arguments of theologians and teachers, and come away in a haze of bewilderment, sure of only one thing, and that, that they were all touched in the head. (The Tower of the Elephant)

Howard doesn’t consider such things to be understandable, but the more blatant point is a church attempts to impose a moral or metaphysical order (of the philosophical mind) on the world of action. A medieval city-state was much like those depicted in Howard’s Hyboria; monumental but disordered and rife with free and easy human flesh (and animals, natch.)

No society bar our own has sought to do without the freedom of action of people in communal settings. This is why I picked the example of Detroit that seems to go counter to the universal planning ethic. As I was saying, what you want in a city is style (proportion) and psyche (or narrative content or behaviour) of citizens. In other words, you don’t want universal order or competition or any of those things.

This is true throughout history. You probably know that in Spain there was a centuries old battle between Christians and Muslims, called the Reconquista by the Catholic Church. Ivan Espinosa of Vox (a right-wing party) says,

“We admire what’s left of the Islamic culture in Spain,” he says. “It’s part of our history.” He pauses, then adds: “By the way, part of our history is also fighting against them for 800 years.” (DT)

That immediately made me think of Howard’s Outremer (Pictorial 11, 13) and the psychic affinity of the different breeds of men that fought there. To have differences in medieval times was the norm and, for all the bloodshed, there was an affinity between warriors.

Basically because a strong psyche, with a seductive narrative content as with the Moors in southern Spain, will be different, so there is an affinity of differences. Note that this is not a competitive order, since there is no order!

This is roughly what I was saying in Pictorial 13 - that there is never order in traditional societies because there is low-level conflict. The conception that there is a competitive order in nature is essentially to do without action, because action is not order. It is a mixture of style (proportion, balance) and psyche (behaviour or narrative content). It’s quite like an adventure serial in labyrinthine terrain.

Pictorial 5 has the view from the high aerie, matriarchal province of high flying eagle, serene and gliding on high dappled skies, perfection of primitive rhythm. You will see exactly the same picture in an Atten-bore film and be told, “eagles are ferocious competitors and killing machines.”

So, you are now in a competitive order, rather than the serene freedom of airborne skies. All these animals do is hunt or scavenge (crows) or be hunted (prey), the primitive lifecycle, not competition; they are hunting as Man used to do.

Weird 10

What you see is an irregularity and freedom – order is just a perspective illusion (of acolytes). This has to be why we assume things are ordered when visually speaking they have free behaviour as hunter and prey. This ancient universe was described by Claude Levi-Strauss (the French anthropologist who, on his annual visits to US tribes, popularized the jeans which bear his name on buffalo hunts on horseback with his Hopi friend, Chief Seattle).

Levi-Strauss describes scavengers (crow, coyote) as “tricksters” or intermediaries, a common theme in myth (Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods). This entire ancient universe has nothing to do with Darwinian competition and everything to do with Man the hunter.

A competitive order is the perspective illusion we inhabit (sun); it has no basis in anthropology; it’s a pseudo-science of acolytes (Vincent of UVS says the same of CERN). How did it happen and what can be done? It’s over to Conan the Conqueror again.