frontispiece Savage Sword #47
Those three Hikers
of C11 were consulting ordnance survey which gives you the topography of
the landscape, like in those traditional old-school maps. Heights and features
like woods, steams, bridleways. It struck me old-school landscapes are fairly
organic; after all, this is the living planet.
In any organic
system, shape is paramount. As Hyborian Bridge 61/4 says, molecules –
particularly the proteins and hormones that control the body – depend on
shape-recognition, like a jigsaw. That simplicity enables the vastly complex
functioning.
If you take a
typical medieval illustration – it could be anything – this is the sleeve for
Veritas recordings of Binchois, Lescurel 14th, 15th
centuries rondeau, virelai (Alternates 4)
What you tend to
get are very easy-to-get shapes that could almost be models. Everything is
fairly flat and one shape dovetails into another – could be horse, angel,
minstrel, boat..
So, you could
assume that in the Middle Ages almost everything was shape-dependent, there
being no appreciable anatomy or perspective – in pictures foreshortening,
distance. Is it possible, then, that these two Renaissance techniques can destroy
shape? In a very gnarly landscape or a very gnarly harbour district (say) the
irregularity of interweaving lines, contours of all descriptions prioritises
everything away from straight-line perspective.
If you say that
perspective is order (sun, light C4, 5) then disorder is an area which
is less perspective-oriented. It could be a rocky copse, a hillocky hillwith rabbit droppings and rotten tree stumps dotted around along with a ruined
chapel, slabs of worn stone, a few tall poplars with ambling branches
surmounting an irregular stream with a rickety bridge –
BWS Cimmeria Weird 10
The extreme
irregularity of moss, lichen, tangled roots on a forest floor is an area of
shape-dependency and supplies habitats for innumerable creepy-crawlies. So,
disorder is extremely shapely, whereas order has much simpler shapes – see Ayn Rand
Pictorial 46.
Acolytes are
attracted to pure order which feeds their numerical compulsion (C11). This compulsion is irrespective of physical desirability; which really
means disorder, or the fertility of the earth we live on. Pure order is
therefore a type of compulsion of the head (of acolytes)which goes against
physical fertility, or the shapes of tangled wood, earth, organic humus
(decayed matter).
The physical fertile reality that those hikers from C11 were surveying
is built on shape. Actually, human beings are also built on shape, as opposed
to the immaterial head! It takes a shapely human figure to navigate a hillocky
habitat.
There are two types of habitats. One has lifts (elevators) and clean
lines a la Rand; the other is hillocky with steep angles fit for a
Cimmerian to climb. One habitat is perspective-oriented (sun, light C4,
5); the other is shape and growth – decay and regeneration.
This is the luxurious green and gold landscape of Diana, hounds, baying
beneath the moon. This is where I think it pays to say that this habitat is
also a type of rebellion, just as Weird Tales was a type of primitive
rebellion against straight-line progressive-thinking
Hugh Rankin illo to Red Nails
That’s one reason why our modernday acolytes have so much in common with
Howard’s sorcerers who seek to crush the physical and intellectual freedom of Conan,
Valeria and others. Whereas they may use dangerous rites or slithering snakes,
ours use the cold-blooded compulsion of a numerical order, irrespective of
physical desirability.
The area of Valeria is the area where physical rebelliousness and
intellectual freedom exist. A shapely habitat for a shapely form; the two are
completely interdependent.
Savage Tales #2 Red Nails