“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).