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.