Pictorial 54

Trying to outdo through order (competition) denies the strength of physical disorder that replenishes life from blood (see Noto Hyborian Bridge 71)

Competitive order – at least through Man- creates a precise universe of facts. It’s the very precision that makes it a parallel reality, convincing to the head but not physical (of the body).

The physical luster of things is completely absent from the parallel reality of facts. Physical luster is the sign of a naïve symmetry that is present in things that we see, from the pattern of stars in the sky - - to the lines on a palm.

Are these patterns arbitrary or do they have meaning? Well, in the parallel reality they are arbitrary facts; in a physical universe of naïve symmetry they have meaning!

It all depends if you want to live in a physical universe or a non-physical one that is very convincing (factual) but has no physical meaning.

I know this can start to sound quite circular so, being specific. If you asked a biochemist to physically draw a human it’s quite likely you would get a stick-man as generally they can’t draw. That is actually a good representation of a non-physical reality; one that has a lot of correct facts but no strong, tense presence. In a word, it’s absent (quote from Kantner’s STARSHIP)

Now, of course you’ll say what about photos, TV channels, X-rays and all the rest of the images that have presence? As I may have mentioned I live in near a Creative Quarter of artists, and have noticed more than half are copyists (of photos). The others often have an abstract sense of shape and line; the underlying presence of an object.

The combination of abstract and concrete is really the history of Western art. That to me is realism, while a photo is a good copy; a copy of a copy is still a good copy. Because we live in a world of photos doesn’t make it physical, it makes it accurate.

A physical world has a strong line and a sense of abstraction, the classic example being prehistoric cave art.

Lascaux grotto

Abstraction is the strength that underlies realism. That’s why I say Margaret Brundage’s Weird Tales covers are much more physically present than the vast majority of modern art and photography. They’re a combination of abstraction and concrete. The line is everything.

Photographic realism is almost too accurate for its own good. If there is some abstraction then it is physically more real (as BWS’s prints) It’s like the old Val Lewton horror films (Hyborian Bridge 53); they are quite abstract and have a tense ambiance.

Yes, so we live in a world of copyists which has the appearance of “realism”. Appearance is Apollo. As to what physical reality is, you see it in Weird Tales.

The Dionysian exuberance of life and death; blood and decadence; Artemis as well as Apollo. Without the exuberant freedom of the body in revelry and rites – the cowboy and Indian of yore – all is just Apollonian image. Appearance not reality. The copy, not the truth; the mirror, not the object.

The object itself has a meaning attached to it, as of blood, the hunt. Almost the best possible examples are the prehistoric cave paintings at Lascaux.

  The wounded man

As you can see there is a certain abstraction as well as formidable power. I was actually reading about this the other day, and there is an astonishing correlation between these hunter gatherers of about 17, 000 BC (?) with Egyptian and Zoroastrian myths.

There are credible reasons to believe the picture is an astronomical starchart, with the bull representing the constellation Taurus, and the wounded man Gemini. In the sky, Gemini is at this odd angle to the bull.

Notice that the man is drawn with two parallel lines to get the angle. In other words, the simplicity of the image is its celestial meaning, its “physicality” (compare to the biochemical stick-man). These two figures are associated with Yima and the Bull (or Yama in Hindu myth), and Ymir in Norse.

Not only that, the rhino represents Leo; see odd tail configuration..

 

Even more astonishingly, the bird on a pole is Sirius, which is associated with Horus in Egyptian myth (see Bilal C6 etc.) One obstacle to this interpretation is that Sirius wasn’t visible in the Europe of 17,000 BC..

Mr. Glyn-Jones points out that Sirius was not visible from the latitude of Lascaux in the remote epoch of 17,500 BC, and because of this he modifies his position to suggest that perhaps in the Lascaux cave the image represents Procyon instead of Sirius.

The physical meanings are breathtaking; a cosmic narrative of figures in the sky that are Man’s prey (totems) and his gods.

From this context, the hunt has a cosmic meaning that relates to the physical power of animals and their sacrificial blood. The power and meaning of these pictures contrasts with the accurate copying and almost zero meaning that we advanced societies are so good at! We live in a world of appearance but not of physical realism.

The physical world is not the accurate world of science (of the head of acolytes); it is the cosmic world of the hunt, blood, sacrifice. That world is vague because it has a myth of correspondances, of powerful figures, lines in the sky.

Yes, it is vague (and not verifiable through fact) because only a parallel reality is strictly accurate. Why should that be so?
Because if the universe were strictly accurate, it would be ordered and hence Apollonian. So therefore there would be no Dionysian rites of blood and decadence. No revival of Artemis, no cycle of lifedeath.

The competitive order that Man has created (via Darwin, or acolytes of) denies the strength of physical disorder (blood, decay) and creates a precise world of facts. These facts – such as DNA, or Katie Bouman Hyborian Bridge 56 – inhabit a parallel reality, not the real one of blood and power (or lewdness, natch.)

Our politicians are bearers of this world of weakness. Their speech and signs affirm a world of the head that has zero meaning to the exuberance of body in grace and motion, in country pursuits, in landed estates, the neglected Highlands, the Indians of Allegheny (prev), the cowboy of the mid-west.

Hyborian Bridge 75

'The mind, the ego, the essence of the god-dream..that is real, that is immortal' - Tuzun Thune's quote on the destiny of Man (prev.)
If you can say there are two types of destiny – mental and physical – one of them is illusory because mind cannot exist without body. This is Aristotelian teleology; that a body exists not because it is meat, but because the psyche (soul) uses it for human ends (I got this from watching Macross Plus anime). Taking that as a given (or just watch the anime and Sharon Apple’s fatal AI rebellion), one can assume the psyche emanates from the physical world.

Taking that further, the physical world according to Madame Blavatsky’s Theosophy is above all the planets, each one exemplifying some aspect of psyche.

We’re now in an area of fate and destiny that has to be both physical and psychic; both are connected by the planets. It’s not the perspective order of rectilinear towns, but a type of cosmic symmetry.

I’ve nothing against rectilinear townscapes, let me assure you, but a town should be thought of as existing in a land/lake-scape under the stars above. A town is “a” reality (order), not “the” reality (cosmos).

MY WORLD

For the sake of argument, let’s suppose that that order is more of an Anglo point of view. I can’t be sure of that, but got to thinking this from reading Pirate Queen, a graphic novel on 16^th century Irishwoman Grace O’Malley.

She was the original pirate who battled Henry VIII, and met Queen Elizabeth with spirited defiance. I guess she is the original model for Howard’s views of piratical women. The graphic novel is one of those worthy historical efforts, not exactly scintillating, but not bad.

 

(c) Lee and Hart 2019

Usually – see HB70 – the ordered head wins out in that civilization tends towards order. However, as noted of Rome and Greece, odder was one side of their universe; the other was pantheistic worship, sacred shrines associated with elaborate baths (HB2). The disorder of nature was sanctified and left alone.

The ancient world never knew anything like “pure order”, only urban order (linked by Roman roads, natch.) This only really changed with the rise of the Anglo-world and modern civilization. The fight between the two worlds is probably well illustrated by the history of Ireland, starting with Henry VIII’s colonisation and going through to Cromwell’s massacres, the Republic and finally the Stormont power sharing

 in Ulster (NI).

 

Grace is laying it on a bit thick here. English rule was always a precarious garrison-mentality.The phrase “beyond the pale” refers to the “Pale” (fence) of Eastern Ireland run by the English, which the Tudors fortified. Nevertheless, Normans assimilated and intermarried with Gaelic lords.

In any case, the notion of “order” in those days didn’t extend to agriculture, which was still Virgilian (the Georgics) and emphasised the natural state of Man (not unlike Milton). This state of affairs was widespread right up to the 18^th century and the swirling country estates of Capability Brown. At about that time, though, Jethro Tull was revolutionizing agriculture, paving the way for modernity (intentional pun).

To the Tudors order meant only political governance and urban centres (Dublin, Kildare). It’s only when order starts to apply to natural origins that the mind leaves the physical universe and starts to drift in uncharted waters. You probably notice yourselves that people who believe most in science know least about it? To me, that makes it seem like they are living inside the head – a mental universe of “tongues” (words and facts, prev.) – and not in the real, physical universe.

Isn’t it likely, then, that we (and especially “they”) are living in a logical fallacy that supposes the universe to be ordered? This is the exact opposite of Virgilian ideals of agriculture, which is the creation of order out of disorder. By that, the Roman meant a universe of naïve symmetry between Earth, sun, moon and planets; the world of antiquity (and Theosophy).

In rustic landscapes, doing nothing is a sign of action because nature is active. The rustic ethic that nature is sacrosanct and is left to rot or – as Buffy says Hyborian Bridge 70 – to “dry out” abd be useful. Drying out is a good way of describing the creation of order from disorder, revival from decay, the essence of the huntsman, the Virgilian husbandsman.

The Georgics are very close to the natural origin of species, not with competition but with disorder, strength of lifedeath. Meaning the physical order that replaces life from blood – the wild hunt, the scavenger, raven on the wing (see Noto “Red Lace”).

If our destiny is physical, it is restored by sacrificial blood, as where Noto’s roc spills its heart’s blood. The blood of a wild hunt is also the theme of Jean-Luc Godard’s Weekend, which ends with “analytical man”, Roland, sacrificed to the hunter ethic of the hippy-cannibal savages.

 “Pas mal” is the verdict of Corrine (still from Speaking About Godard, Silverman/Farocki)

If the universe is actually ordered, as science supposes, then it is Apollonian – Apollo being associated with urban society in antiquity. Therefore, the ordered universe is not associated with the rustic revelry and revival of Dionysus, the gay god and opposite tendency to Apollo (Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy)

But the Greeks were aware that Apollo was appearance, not reality. They would never have dreamt of living in towns without the majestic steeps of olive-groved hills and the glory of mount Olympus itself. The ancient world is much more geographical and much less political/scientific (ie precise).

  C12

This is where confusion can set in, as ancient maps are vague, whereas modern maps are precise. Scientists know all about geology and epochs in Earth’s history, which the ancients had no knowledge of. Yes, that’s because Apollonian science is precise. So there’s no surprise about that. Exactly the same applies to Katie Bouman’s black hole (HB65) - the building-up of a cosmic image from trace-data.

The real question is: is an Apollonian universe of precise data real, or an illusion? How can one say geographical facts are an illusion? Because it’s one side of life, the factual one. One lives in one’s body, and that is symmetrical and undulates like a landscape.

This takes us back to Greek line, because without line there is no style.

Line is tied in Greek art to the undulating body, so is that not reality? The reality of expression. All Greek sculptures have the expression of line, however realistically depicted. That balance or tension.

Modern science is a factual illusion, whether it’s Katie Bouman or DNA. Because we are not DNA, we are undulating line. Where does the line come from? From the primeval serpent, primitive rhythm. From the physical universe of Earth, sun, moon and planets.

Hyborian Bridge 74

The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune reads a bit like Plato’s riddle of the cave. “The people watch shadows projected on the wall from objects passing in front of a fire behind them, and give names to these shadows.”  Are we humans but shadow projections of an infinitely more verdant universe, in Howard’s case, on the other side of the mirrors?

Howard’s descriptions are somewhat reminiscent of Francis Stevens’ Claimed

Sometimes it seemed that he gazed upon hard shallowness; at other times gigantic depths seemed to loom before him. Like the surface of the sea was the mirror of Tuzun Thune; hard as the sea in the sun’s slanting beams, in the darkness of the stars, when no eye can pierce her deeps..

As one might notice, the sea can be mighty illusory, as can the sun. So can the air..and what is earth but merely wads of clay? Yet together is a symmetry formed that has the feel of unspeakable truth.

A mirror is one facet of this illusory world, and in a way is the most convincing. Yet a mirror is also the least real, since it is composed of light beams; so it is a combination of “truth” and physical non-existence.

This is the sense that Tuzun Thune uses in his hall of mirrors. His tongue takes Kull away from the sense of his corporeality - Grace Slick’s Be Young You Hyborian Bridge 73. A tongue – or a language – is articulate reality. This is the reality we live in and –actually – a lot of that takes place behind this very same hall of mirrors.

Mathematics is a language, and you remember Hyborian bridge 73 says that “mathematical vistas were opened-up” by crystal diffraction (Ramachandra)? Crystal diffraction is simply another type of mirror illusion; light is bent and an angular image formed.

I’m not saying it’s not real; it’s a combination of “truth” and physical non-existence. Physical existence is our bodies, our corporeality. Diffraction patterns are mathematical entities created by light. Since light is non-corporeal they have no physical existence.

Like Kull’s “entity” on the other side of the glass, they exist (in light), they are not our shadows. They speak another language – mathematics – which is essentially a creation of light (diffraction). It’s the angular language of crystals which is both logically true and a logical fallacy in terms of our own physique, which is fairly disordered and pliable (to use Bruce Lee’s expressions).

The body is not ordered in terms of straight lines and angles – like a crystal – only in terms of symmetries. It therefore makes some sense to think of the cosmos in terms of symmetries – however naïve that may appear to the acolytes of the mirror illusion.

Yes, but that’s because a mirror is highly convincing (to the head). Let me give a concrete example. If you walk through a town you see a lot of signs; you could follow them, and they would be “true”. They also tend to exist in a universe of straight lines and angles. There also exists another universe of symmetries; you could also follow that one, but the signs would not be as concrete!

So it’s no wonder Kull was “mazed”. A mirror is devilishly confusing; it’s the combination of “truth” (image) and the mathematical non-physicality that drags us into a language of acolytes; the tongues that speak a mixture of “truth” (image) and physical non-existence, merging us into a world of (their) minds, and away from (our) bodies.

The nations pass and are forgotten, for that is the destiny of man.”

“Yes,” said Kull. “Yet is it not a pity that the beauty and glory of men should fade like smoke on a summer sea?”

“For what reason, since that is their destiny?

Yes, the “destiny” that leads inevitably to AI – algorithmic language that articulates the aims of the acolytes (of the head). So it’s all about tongue, or as the song says,

“The tongues of some men are made of silence

And your eyes will listen - “Be Young You”

Perhaps these are the laconic rovers who work pack-horses and mule-trains with a shotgun on their saddle? This is a different destiny, for one skins rabbit or bones a fish. One is then living, experiencing the cyclical sense of things dying, being eaten, morsels being scavenged, the squawk of the crow in the pine.

This primitive physical existence is no less than the origin of culture and all its products. To forsake our own origins does feel weirdly like being dragged through Tuzun Thune’s mirrors.

“See and believe,” droned the wizard. “Man must believe to accomplish. Form is shadow, substance is illusion, materiality is dream; man is because he believes he is; what is man but a dream of the gods? Yet man can be that which he wishes to be; form and substance, they are but shadows. The mind, the ego, the essence of the god-dream — that is real, that is immortal.

The land of pure-ego, of course, is the non-physical land of mathematical AI, articulate, algorithmic, and we know where that leads (see Katie Bouman’s black hole Hyborian Bridge 60).It seems to lead to a reality that is not physically active and therefore cannot revive through decay (via hunting, carrion).

The heads (of acolytes) may not be physical but cannot deny the physique (Claimed1), and so the result may well be physical boredom. Again, this seems to relate to Grace Slick’s quote on numerical compulsion (Hyborian bridge 62/1), that relates to the physique and attitudes of boredom.

Since we can’t escape from the physique, you could say that it is our destiny, whether or not we use our heads or our bodies. If that is our destiny, then it has to be related to the physical universe – of sun, moon, planets – which again the acolytes deny.

What you could say is that acolytes are adopting attitudes of boredom in their own physiques, and that the alternative is something like Bruce Lee’s intelligent body, whereby the attitude is the exact opposite of boredom, a vital awareness and response to threat. One has to be aware (to catch fish) and in surroundings that fit our bodily needs.

Anything that exists in the head – in the ego – cannot exist in physical reality of the body that is active in the field. But it’s this physical reality that revives through decay, and that has strength and purity.

Something Ic Waes

If this universe is the physical universe, then it does seem to have a certain naivety. And poetry, if you include Papa Hemingway. The naivety is that of the hunter, the adventurer who sails the sea or roams the forest, the river. The places that don’t have straight lines or angles but have cosmic symmetries. Now, according to the universe of order (illusion) these places are just real estate, hence Bolsonaro’s razing of Amazanian forest for intensive cattle raising..and so forth.

 

Hyborian Bridge 73

The sorcerer (acolyte) lives in an articulate world of scripted routine (like DNA). These are the product of an ordered universe, but what of the disordered universe of yore? What of the woods, the fields, the Biblical threshing and larking around?

Several things come to mind. The physical activity that accentuates the body, as in the tradition of fulling (Hyborian Bridge 60). This closeness or overlap of work to pleasure is typically traditional. Basically, because the body is involved in work.

The other idea is the disordered world is not a hygienic one; there’s dirt and wet and cow pats and those that work are exposed to microbes in dirt. These have a strengthening effect on the immune system(Tales of Faith 10, Pictorial 14,44). Once the work is over, one bathes the dirt away (Pictorial 21). The ancient Greeks used to anoint with oil, which is another deep cleansing method.

Our view of medieval times is often quite negative owing to this disordered universe. I’ve been watching a Dutch medieval film called Floris which is a sequel to the original Dutch TV series starring Rutger Hauer and his Indian accomplice. However, Floris the film is much more of a parody, and I got some quite interesting things off it.

There are some quite good jokes though I think a lot of the Dutch bypassed me. At the start he meets Pi, a travelling Chinawoman, who becomes his accomplice. He introduces her to his father, Floris senior (the son of the original) with,

“Pa, Pi; Pi, Pa”

Since there are quite a few druggy gags, I reckon that’s a reference to poppy.

Floris is a travelling actor, and there’s quite a lot of tumbling; physical humour and acrobatory. Apart from that, he and Pi have quite a lot of tramping through mud, on the trail of a holy relic. There are horse ass gags, and Pi plays a shadow-show on a white horses midriff that shows her stripping off, to distract a couple of guards.

It did strike me as quite medieval with a lot of turrets and bare stonework, moats (for falling into), mud, birds and woods. Pi demonstrates her martial skills in a fight with a pole, and it made me realize the similarity between ancient Chinese philosophy and medievalism. Bruce Lee’s quote..

“Notice that the stiffer tree is much easier cracked, while the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind.”

..applies to active civilizations that use the body to fight or work (Biblical threshing). The act of being active in the field creates an active universe of horses, hedgerows and critters, mud and wet, straw, hay, compost, ploughing, crops and cattle. The “field” meaning somewhere that is seeded side-by-side with wildness, where there is give-and-take and no ungiving monoculture (of beef or crop).

There’s a parallel here with biochemical science, which is based on detection of crystals (X-ray diffraction, prev.) since a crystal is a rigid structure which is easy to shatter. This is what happens to a hall of mirrors

Conan #20

Hyborian Bridge 20

Something that is unbending, that is a scripted routine appeals to a society of the head. To a society of the body, the flexibility of give-and-take is much more natural to an active life on the range.

“I want to get back in the dirt where I can feel clean!” says Vic in A Boy and His Dog, going from Topeka to the disordered universe that cannot be shattered because it bends and gives. Reality.

What a hall of mirrors gives you is crystal medicine which is ultra-precise and very compatible with DNA. But a living body is not inert DNA; it is water and air, bone and sinew that reacts to the fire of the sun.

There are two universes, and the disordered universe of action (body) is a creature of the surroundings, of give-and-take. The ordered universe of the head is a creature of acolytes of a hall of mirrors (angle of light C4) It’s a universe that has no give-and-take of the surroundings that feed our needs.

I already mentioned somewhere the ordering effect of intensive beef lots (Drama1 Pictorial 44) on what used to be cowboy country. The cattle are not given freedom to graze on hay, which is a relaxed and humane (or cowmane) herd lifestyle.

It’s typical that vegans complain of methane, which is a product of intensive breeding with oats, which acidify the herbivore stomach. They are so ignorant they probably don’t know the difference. They – along with the unfortunate cattle – are products of an ordered universe that cannot bend in relaxed manner, and must be dosed with various types of crystal medicine.

They, along with the political classes – exist in articulate reality that cannot conceive of the gay abandon of the forest groves of yore (I noticed Boris Johnson’s girlfriend, Carrie Symonds, is not only vegan but a puffin-lover) and speak the language of habitual order.

Meaning, not the free range of give-and-take that bends with the wind, but the crystal medicine of intensive lots, vegans and grouse moor clearances that only exist in articulate reality. The laconic warriors of poetry speak a physical language of strength and purity, of the expressive body and free range of yore. Yeehar!

BE YOUNG YOU (with Papa John Creache)

 

Hyborian Bridge 72

I quoted Einstein awhile back

“Since the mathematicians have invaded the theory of relativity, I do not understand it myself anymore.”

One of the reasons for this is that mathematics develops very rapidly in a perspective universe – one of straight lines and angles (light).

Biochemistry, for example, is completely defined by straight lines and angles. The precision is so great that there is a mathematical method called after Ramachandra (US-Indian neuroscientist) to measure angles of peptide bonds.

 

Ramachandran plot for amino-acid residues in proteins showing peptide backbone (N) and methyl side-chains (R)

The mathematics exists in the perspective universe of light diffracted from crystals (prev.) In other words, once the diffraction pattern is formed it opens-up mathematical vistas.

The mathematics exists in the parallel reality that is cast by light diffracted from crystals. This universe is pure order, it’s not reality whatever “they” may say, as there is another universe of disorder. This universe is physically grounded in reality.

As previously mentioned, the cells of the body are largely water, so that is one of the realities. Cell cytoplasm is water with gel-like properties. The earth we move on is another. Air and fire are the final two. As Buffy Saint-Marie says (Hyborian Bridge 70), one can make a fire of dried buffalo manure and sit around, talking or dancing.

This is the universe of simple symbolism that is strong and pure. Strong because it has physical, athletic substance; and pure because it is psychically attuned to its surroundings.

When Sonja encounters the unicorn in Red Sonja #1 their affinity is mystical and profound.

RedSonja #1

Their need for cool, clear water is identical. The power of the spirited animal echoes Sonja’s thirst for vengeance and blood. Symbolism must come from seeing similarities of things that are different, in a universe with a physical ground.

Without that grounding – here a forest as in many of Noto’s stories, including the classic “Red Lace” set in and around a tree-girthed palace – there can be no similarities. No sweet sense of destiny fulfilled, and only a dull and habitual existence.

The physical sense of affinity that Sonja feels with the forest is a recurring motif – and even man’s lustful ways cannot deny her.

 

Red Sonja #9

What I’m basically saying is the physical surroundings that fulfil our needs and give us hope (psyche) are real. Anything else is an illusion, and the more persuasive and precise it is, the more of a mirage it will prove to be (in time).

I know what you’re gonna say: the old idea of the four elements is a naïve fantasy that was overtaken by science. I suppose it’s possible, but there is the myth of Prometheus who stole fire from the gods!

Our modern universe is defined by principles of the sun, namely angular perspective (Newton C4). Could it be that the very naivety of a universe of symmetryis more correct? Less precisely quantified, numerical and so on (Grace Slick quote Hyborian Bridge 62/1)

How precise is the bark of the branch Sonja is sitting on? Not very, but it is grounded in physical reality. You might say, what’s the problem with all this perspective precision? Well, Red Sonja is a warrior who uses her body athletically. She’s at home in the woods, by the rippling stream, and tends to be opposed to black sorcery.

So, what is black sorcery? Something outside the natural, which you see in the twists and turns of a tree trunk, or the undulations of a human body. If something is defined by very precise angles (as in Ramachandran etc.) then you are essentially in a hall of mirrors that bends light very precisely.

The hall of mirrors is where biochemists do their research. It’s not physical reality (body), it’s an illusion that is attractive to a certain type of head, ie a sorcerer or acolyte of mirrors

 

Conan #20 Hyborian Bridge 20 – truth or illusion?

The physical world has symbolism that echoes our hopes and fears. It fills a need – also psychic. The modern world cannot compete with such profound and authentic spirits of ground and water. No, it can’t compete but it can change the physical to an imitation planted in the head. In this way, everything becomes a perspective illusion and thereby under the dominion of mathematical minds – vis AI.

A tree, like a body, has a physique and it is perfect. So where does the perfection come from? From physical reality, the symmetry of opposing forces. Our lungs breathe air through moist alveoli; without physical perfection it couldn’t happen.

Physical perfection is what physique is, as it makes action possible. The physique is action, whereas the perspective universe is inert, inactive, founded of the head (Bruce Lee: routines versus expression).

One universe is scripted routines (head); the other is physical action (body). In the latter universe, the body will search for food and therefore hunt. This is the universe of blood and death that revives through decay; rebirth.

The surroundings of a frolicsome wood fulfil our needs and give us hope (psyche). Hunting is a destiny that craves the raven and the carrion they feed on.

In this country, anything that smacks of death – like hunting – comes under political scrutiny for that reason. Hence, Labour want to avoid killing such as grouse moors – a practice as ancient as the domesday chronicles.

Hyborian Bridge 71

So, X-ray diffraction crystallography, which detects so many biochemical molecules – from peptides to DNA - is a universe whereby light is bent by crystals. Even molecules which are not in crystalline form can be precipitated, and hence detected via diffraction.

The biochemical universe is therefore highly crystalline and, while crystals aren’t lenses, they act in a lens-like way. When light is bent, an image is cast, and that image is a perspective image (ultra-precise).

Therefore, you could easily say biochemical science is a parallel universe of light cast by crystals. Scientists are noted for their brains and, if the information they get convinces them of the rightness of their methodology, it feeds into their reasoning logic.

But it’s not actually real. It’s an illusory universe of crystalline molecules. Yes, they exist, but the vast bulk of living matter is cell protoplasm (cytoplasm). This is mostly water, with molecules suspended in colloid – a jelly-like medium (substrate.)

What that tells you is that living things – plant and animal – are mainly water and colloid, and that is how they operate. If you take a slug, it literally leaves a trail of jelly as it squirms on by. The vast predominance of water in vascular plants and our own blood is not to be overlooked either.

The real trouble with biochemical science is it’s not real. It applies to crystalline forms which get treated with crystalline medicine. The fact that blood courses through our veins and that we are muscular and athletic is only a side-issue.

In a way, it would be easier if we were a literally crystalline form for any treatment to be issued. The fact that we have a physical substance is quite a nuisance, really. To take that a stage further, physical substance when it dies will decay and return to the earth. The strength of decomposition is in the revival of life from the raw components. This cycle is a physical destiny, and from it one can assume that psyche emanates.

There is quite strong evidence to that effect. The universal presence of ancestor worship in all tribal cultures, for example.

 

Heinrich Schliemann

A physical universe is strong, and the psyche is correspondingly strong. We live in a universe of the predominant brain which is manifestly weak. The brains of our scientists live in an illusory universe of biochemical crystals – essentially a hall of mirrors (light). It is a non-physical universe, so is bound to be weak (Hyborian Bridge 20)

Strength comes from physical revival, from the ground of Mother Earth. This was the theme of BWS’s Adastra in Africa (Sacrifice: Sombre Gaiety) The revival feeds the psyche of tribal beliefs (see Red Indian quotes Hyborian Bridge)

In a physical universe, Earth, sun and moon co-exist along with the planets. It’s not a perspective universe of precise facts but it is naïve and real. This world of blood and revival is brought into sharp relief in Clair Noto’s “Skranos” plot-cycle (prev.)

In “Red Lace” particularly, the blood-cycle of rapid growth, death and rebirth is played-out in a  Dante-esque fantasy second to none.

 

  Red Sonja #10

The centaur who grows the eggs like some Vulcan of the wood-embraced cavern, the roc that grows monstrously, only to perish in #11 at the bow of the deadly Narca.

In that selfsame issue, Sonja’s sight is restored by yet another perishing roc, which sheds its heart’s blood over her weeping eyes.

What of Apah Alah, the sorceress who built this naturalistic fortress of the rooted ground? She it was who placed a curse on the fated temple, in revenge at Suumaro’s father for forsaking her. It is this curse which Sonja and Suumaro play their part in lifting.

The red lace takes them to an emblem of unspeakable power coveted by Apah Alah. Her son then safeguards the emblem, while tasking Sonja with taking his cause to his father, Quilos, who lies near death.

To cut a long story short, loyalty defeats revenge, and love conquers death. Such purely human themes make this a curiously moving yarn, for all its supposed sorcerous malevolence. The motifs of rebirth and the feline grace of the warrior woman.

In this story, sorcery and sword are never wholly parted. Sonja herself evidences a trace of shadowy power (observes Suumaro – “bite your lip”, she replies!) Only when the sorcery departs from the purely physical – and hence human – is it a black and inhuman force.

Such was the emblem – the golden chalice which Suumaro spirited away – the fatal pact with a demon that was never to be.

Red Sonja #13 (Buscema/Milgrom art)

In that context, has Man made a pact with a nameless demon? By “nameless”, meaning something that is inhuman, that is not flesh and blood, that cannot laugh and love, only live and die. As one of the guys says at the end of Codine, “all our songs are love songs”

CODINE (cover of Buffy Saint-Marie)

Hyborian Bridge 70

I was listening to a talk on the Indians of Allegheny valley by Chuck Erdeljac, having segued in from Buffy’s Now That the Buffalo’s Gone. Amongst all the Senecas and Delawares, he said (several times) the traders and trackers of the Allegheny “got on” till the late 18^th century. At about that time, instead of individual parleys and actions amid the creeks and rivers, there began a full-throated battle of two cultures; one of high Enlightenment idealism; the other of Dionysian savagery.

Chuck did say the term “savage” was used disparagingly, but I think for the sake of comparison it may be justified. The Enlightenment is the sense that one argues from the authority of logical thinking; Dionysian is muscular exertion, song and dance. At that time European civilization was fully on the side of the former.

In the 20^th century – as mentioned previously  - there were two significant rebellions. The first was the pulps, and particularly Weird Tales of the 30s, the second was the hippy era culminating in Woodstock in 1969. Both were essentially rebellions against a culture of words of the head (scripted routines) and in favour of a poetry of the physical substance of the body.

So far, the culture of the head has won out since it’s essentially a culture of precision, whereas the body is a culture of vague sentiments of discord. To give an example of what I mean, here’s a model of DNA

 

DNA is a perspective image which gives rise to a perspective universe of products. That is, products which are observed through lenses (microscopes) in order to maintain precision. Here’s one example of a Japanese experiment based on chromosome observation

..Scientists looked for receptor molecules that were only on the outside of X-chromosomes, and found a pair called Toll-like receptor 7 and 8.

A precise universe has got to be perspective (light) because it is “run” by lenses (see Hyborian Bridge 56) That makes it very convincing, but it is not a universe of physique which is imprecise and strong (muscular, athletic, games).

I know this can get confusing, since photographers photograph physique (of models etc). Yes, I know, but science operates in a world of lenses (light) which makes it a perspective world. Photographers operate in the real world. Same goes for (most) film.

Scientists, because they see the world through the head rather than experience it with the body, have perspective views always, as it’s the most precise. What that does is takes you away from disorder – which is the general attribute of strength in nature – and towards order.

Disorder in nature (see prev) is the strength of revival that comes from decay. Buffy, in an interview with co-conspirator Andrea Warner, made reference to dried buffalo manure as a physical use of a product with a pungency that is strong and pure (see Laurens Van der Post prev.)

What tribal people tend to realize is that there is strength in metamorphosis. The decay or rotting process is ultimately cleansing. This is an ancient ethical question which pits order against disorder; dirt against cleanliness (see Mosaic Law). If one lives in a world of order, that balance of seeming opposites is no longer possible. Therefore the very precision of science leads to a robotic universe that cannot revive through disorder (decay or dried buffalo manure).

How come more people are not seeing this already? Is it because the human is being made less physical, and more in the head? (I’ll leave that as an open question!)
If that latter point has any semblance, though, it does point to a type of sorcery that changes human nature to its own “reality” – which is actually false.

What you could call the black magic of modern sorcery gives overwhelming authority to the reasoning head over the unreasoning body. But it’s a reason which tends to overlook the physical reality that is out there in the grace and danger of natural forms.

Whereas the ideal for science/medicine is to ease the way towards death (or not even notice it!) the physical ideal is to be ready for and aware of danger. In Clair Noto’s “Skranos” plot-cycle (from Red Sonja #7 -13 and including the classic “Red Lace”) Suumaro’s mother, the sorceress Apah Alah, tests Red Sonja with a mystical serpent, having previously rescued her with a bough.

  Red Sonja #8

To me, this sorcery is natural mysticism along the lines of Van der Post and what I would call white, and not black. Apah Alah, builder of the wooden-stone temple from “Red Lace” (Weird1 Aspects3) still loves Suumaro’s father, and love plays strange tricks on human soulds. I’ll leave it there.

In the same issue, Red Sonja has a fight to the death with one of Suumaro’s generals, and lures him onto the carcass of one of Skranos’s famed behemoths. Fighting atop the beast’s rotting body, the heavyweight Jimodo starts to sink.

Hyborial Bridge 69

Castaneda had a notion of another world of perception that is hidden by the “factual” one. This hidden world could be the naïve one of physical proportion.

.. as I looked about I saw there was a wonderful well just under the high, steep wall of grass. All the ground round it was covered with bright, green, dripping moss; there was every kind of moss there, moss like beautiful green ferns, and like palms and fir trees, and it was all green as jewellery, and drops of water hung on it like diamonds. And in the middle was the great well, deep and shining and beautiful, so clear that it looked as if I could touch the red sand at the bottom, but it was far below. (The Great God Pan, page 135)

This universe is defined by irregular flow, of water or lines. What you could say is all the lichen and moss you see has scripted routine (of DNA), which is one side of reality. The other is flow, and taken together they express their identity in the world.

Without expression (as Bruce Lee says) there is no independent identity. No free, naturalistic creativity with a sense of cosmic destiny. The naïve world, you could say, is one of destiny, of figures in a landscape, of figures in the sky.

Because it is naïve it also is not the universe of perspective accuracy. That’s not to say there is no perspective. BWS’s “The Enchantment” has perspective but not to an overriding degree.

 

The sweeping curve of the turf and deep waters make quite a weird space, embroidered with blossoms and grasses, even if there is more than a hint of perspective in the flagstones and jetty.

The naïve world is actually full of weird spaces, shifting and twisting animate/inanimate shapes. If this is the expressive world of cosmic destiny (of the cowboy and Indian!) it has a flow that is not to be seen in the straightline mainstream.

The vast perspective illusion hides the real world of naïve proportion, that I think is represented in their various ways by Madame Blavatsky, Arthur Machen, Talbot Mundy, Francis Stevens, Howard and the ethos of Weird Tales .. and Castaneda?

I quoted David Silverman

Field research.. views the culture through a lens.

A lens, though, is also a type of perspective illusion that lets us see an invisible world (Hyborian Bridge 56) There’s nothing wrong with using perspective, as I’ve repeatedly said; it’s only when the world BECOMES perspective that the illusion dominates reality.

You know the quote from Machen’s The White People

..I could see that all the different shapes of the earth were arranged in patterns, something like the grey rocks, only the pattern was different. It was getting late, and the air was indistinct, but it looked from where I was standing something like two great figures of people lying on the grass. (page 138)

The sense one gets is that the strong human shapes are far from crystal clear; there is a vagueness that’s very atmospheric. Where does the vagueness come from? From the interweaving shapes, inanimate ground and animate nature

 

Machrie, Arran

The suggestion of things that might be there is a peculiarity of the flow of line that merges and emerges in the dense tangle of the long, low shadows. It’s not to say either they’re there or they’re not, but the very suggestion is magic. Machen’s images seem to recur in the Narnia chronicles of CS Lewis in the 60s.

A world where not everything is crystal clear, and there is a vagueness, sounds much like the hidden world that is part of the Castaneda mythos. After all, things are only crystal clear in a perspective vision. In terms of shape and pattern things are often suggestive.

Now, in the scientific world of lenses (microscopes and telescopes) this suggestive world doesn’t exist. Nevertheless, in a human body – or in any physique – the jumble of shapes is suggestive of hills and valleys and that type of thing.

So, perspective illusion creates very definite shapes (ie biochemical molecules) but not the subtle hollows and highs of a physique. It’s the very precision of science that is false, and of course very convincing!

What is the undulating vagueness? It’s the flow of line that can’t be precisely measured. Even if precise shapes exist, so does flow and the two together create the expression of a physique, of a place (of magic).

In other words, the very persuasive precision of science is incorrect! Without the flow, the primeval rhythm, there can be no expression, only what “they” call information. It’s the same as saying that we, as homo sapiens, are identical to robots, an artificial, cyborg lifeform.

The way “they” get away with this is by being ultra-precise. But the very precision is robotic. Not only that but incorrect. In order to have precision one must also have imprecision – the atmosphere, the state of being.

 

The Big Pretence Titian was painting the very same hollows and highs of a magical wood as was Machen describing. A description can be precise if the thing being described is imprecise, and that is poetry. An all-precise world couldn’t be described poetically; it would be a living death.

It’s like Nietzsche says, “Without music, life would be a mistake” (Pictorial 27). It’s incorrect to be living in a robotic situation, unless literally forced by circumstances (like, say, Michael Schumacher).

Compare this photo of the Erechtheion (Athens) to BWS’s “The Enchantment”

 

What you see beyond a Greek temple is the other side of reality to monumental idealism. The filigree foliage that is like enlarged lichen. A Greek temple is proportionate order, whereas the surroundings are proportionate disorder. Disorder is the cycle of life that rises and falls, like the sweep of the turf. The theme of “The Enchantment” is the doppelganger on the other shore; the reality that all must face.

To the Greeks, their monuments were appearance, not reality. What you could call a magnificent illusion or, as Howard might have put it, the monuments of Man fade with his conquests.

But a Greek ruin is also a sign of heroic revival. An illusion can only revive in the grand sweep of conquest by nature herself! The Greeks did not live an illusion; they lived for the everlasting revival of nature that is the Dionysia, the theatrical festivities dedicated to the gay god of rustic pursuits.

This world is what you could call the ever shifting, undulating lines of leaves that fall off boughs that soar over hills and stones and moss soft and uneven. The world of disorder that is simply the other side of reality to a Greek temple. The world that existed throughout the Middle Ages and that is easy to identify in Howard’s fantasy descriptions.