Pictorial 66

“Dancing ambiguity” (Trickster, prev) might apply not just to the fantasy lands of Hyboria, but to the real religions and wars depicted in Howard’s historical adventures. Before dealing directly with that, it might be a good idea to go back in time to the superstitious era that predated the medieval battles of faith, from the walls of Vienna to Outremer and beyond.

Hohne, in her book, had something to say on the doctrine of Christianity, such as original sin, that is neither in the Old Testament nor the words of Christ, and were honed into a standard theology by Greek scholars of Alexandria.

This idea of obedience to the established word of doctrine runs through the first chapter of the Turanian Holy War in Conan #19 and, in that instance, Conan and Fafnir are highly sceptical. Fafnir even points to the fact that Makkalet is a trading rival of Aghrapur.

Be that as it may, while it may be healthy to be cynical to organized religion or organized war, it doesn’t follow that religions don’t hold truths of conscience. DH Lawrence, another primeval throwback to pre-industrial days, wrote at least two works on these themes. One is his interpretation of The Book of Revelations, called Apocalypse, which I’ve yet to read. The other is a novela called The Man who Died, a fantasy on the risen Christ meeting and falling for a priestess of Isis.

While reading I’m thinking to myself, why is it not that these mystery religions and cults of the latter days of Rome couldn’t all be said to be superstitions, upheld by the faithful?

 

 

Conan #19 (c) Marvel 1972

Conan’s remark would seem to despise superstitions, or at least in the context of naval wars that may have ulterior motives. However, the concept of knights of faith runs through Howard’s historical adventures. Some, such as Gottfried Von Kalmbach from The Shadow of the Vulture, may be less faithful than others.

John Watkiss

Yet all are Christian knights for the faith against the infidel. Faith, you could say, has to be simple to be pure and it is not dependent on words but on gut instinct.

‘The word is but the midge that bites at evening. Man is tormented with words like midges, and they follow him right into the tomb. But beyond the tomb they cannot go. Now I have passed the place where words can bite no more and the air is clear, and there is nothing to say. And I am alone within my own skin, which is the walls of my domain.’ (page 142, Love Among the Haystacks and other stories, Penguin, 1960)

This is the phenomenal world, which is “dirty and clean together” (page 143). The priestess is a priestess of Isis of the Search, forever on the trail of the bits of Osiris that Seth has scattered over the earth. The priestess has come to wonder if the mysterious stranger in the low brim (Odin?) is actually Osiris, and entices him to her shrine.

‘Great is Isis!’ he said. ‘In her search she is greater than death. Wonderful is such walking in a woman, wonderful the goal. All men praise thee, Isis, thou greater than the mother unto man.’

(page 157)

It is a humble temple, for

..she had built it at her own expense, and tended it for seven years. There it stood, pink and white, like a flower in the little clearing, backed by blackish evergreen oaks; and the shadow of afternoon was already washing over its pillar bases. (page 149)

Descriptions of this phenomenal world on the seashore, with slaves and nets permeate the story and one almost conjures up Greek octopus pots and Minoan frescoes! Simplicity is in the balance of opposing forces, which are here visualised in sealife, yellow narcissus flowers on rocks, the golden sunset.

‘Will you too sit to see the sun go down?’ he said.

He had not risen to speak to her. He had known too much pain. So she sat on the dry brown pine-needles, gathering her saffron mantle round her knees. A boat was coming in, out of the open glow into the shadow of the bay, and slaves were lifting small nets, their babble coming off the surface of the water. (page 159)

Knowing Lawrence, the belief in the needs of the unconscious body is strong, the wholeness of the flesh. The world of the temple in its small enclave is one of Earth-time and Earth movements. Nature is strong in its unthinking glory.

Isn’t all that a type of superstition that can affect the contemplative psyche? None of it exists except in the basic simplicity of the Earth turning on its axis, with no intermediary from word or electronic image or chatter of traffic. Is that part of DH Lawrence’s nostalgia?

An Earth power is not word or intellect, it’s simply a physical reality that is cyclical and cosmic and hence instinctive. It’s also as irregular and imperfect as the stones and flowers of this temple enclave. To experience all that is to experience uncertainty on Earth. A place of physical strength, and therefore where the psyche too intrudes.

Unthinking strength of nature (abandoned inn C6) strident advance

Again, lack of thought makes one thoughtful! In the modern world one is continually listening to words and expected to think rationally. All that happens is that one cannot think in solitary and contemplative ways in the physical reality of Mother Earth in the cosmos (of twinkling stars).

Words are simply facts that are not physically real; they exist to sustain the acolyte’s parallel reality of a sorcerous illusion. In order to escape a sorcerous illusion one has to become uncertain, and that means going back to solitary enclaves set in nature’s vastness. We can then experience the strength of nature, and perhaps that is where superstition comes from?

The undulating Welsh Marches are home to Norman and baronial motte-and-bailey castles, small fortifications that were used to defend England and eventually subdue the rampaging Welshmen.

 

earthwork mound and stone keep, Golden Valley, Herefordshire

Being romantic, one can imagine the odd knight of the round table traipsing across the contemplative landscape. For that matter, one can imagine Conan or Red Sonja traipsing across! One can equally imagine cultish superstitions, and those of the old Welsh druids themselves (sickle and hawthorne).

The undulating bushiness of such regions is not unlike the human body in a vaguely splendid sense. It’s almost like an alternate world of sensual meanderings, and one that is close to the glowing lustiness of DH Lawrence as well as to Howard’s muscular yarns.

This alternate world of romance has the unthinking splendour of the sparkling things of nature, and it is these that provide the room for contemplative thoughts.

In short, one cannot think ABOUT thought; it’s a tautologous situation that we’re in today. One can only contemplate when surrounded by a cosmic vastness, the very thing “they” are busy disabling with hard, straight lines that vanish into a future of.. nothingness.

Pictorial 65

Trickster teaches us that we must sometimes dance with ambiguity awhile to discover life’s deeper mysteries. (page 133) We can break the shell that holds us prisoner to the illusion of certainty, unleashing renewal that dances like the whirlwind across the inner landscape. (page 159)

Trickster is the intermediary who is not that good nor that wicked, who doesn’t seek the absolutes of certainty that civilization is always approaching (and never reaches).

We find that the middle road.. becomes our willingness to let go. (page 133)

This is a clear echo of Paul Kantner’s Blows Against the Empire, and specifically

STARSHIP

Full title of quote: “It’s a fresh wind that blows against the empire”. A fresh wind is the province of action, and is seen in the description of the fight between Gilgamesh and Enkidu (prev), as well as in the way Shamash

heard the prayers of Gilgamesh and against Humbaba he stirred up the mighty winds.. Lo! He cannot move forward! Lo! He cannot move backward! And so Humbaba relented. Gilgamesh said: “Now that I have discovered your dwelling, I will enter your house!” (page 179)

Hohne makes the point that

The whirlwind in many cultures represents the divine as it manifest on earth.

And that, in dream

We will be picked up and placed into another context, releasing us of our controlling tendencies. (page 193)

It is the principle of movement that frees us from suffocating certainty (of the head) and places us in the land of action (body), or The Wizard of Oz.

The gusty laughter of the barbarian is a signpost of Conan’s footloose, elemental nature that cannot be held by civilized ways. The principle of movement, the divine spark of independent will and unwillingness to be held by civilized certainties, is also present in the barbaric awareness.

Civilized Man is now trapped by the illusion of certainty, essentially since it’s an illusion of the head, of words and images (perspective, sun). Outside of that is the regenerative principle of renewal that spreads vitality and real meaning in the movement of people across landscape (the pioneer wagon trail going East to West).

Whether it is Kantner’s naked children in the Universe, or the dream of the hippies, it is a real dream of planting the seeds of renewal, starting afresh and with purpose.

The modern world in its certainties (numerical, monetary) contains in its collective consciousness the Shadow Self of the Forest (Pictorial 64). The inner becomes the outer projection of fear; fear of disorder, of the mythical substratum that is the principle of regeneration from decay, all of which are personified by the hunt (the moon, Artemis).

The hunt is everlasting action, blood, death and renewal through regenerative principles of lifecycle and rebirth. This entire area of myth and of independent human existence under the stars is a subject of fear and repression. The reason seems to be that the concept of pure order contains within it a Shadow Self that is repressed, and projected as fear of disorder, the primal forest, the labyrinth of myth.

Essentially, pure order can only exist as illusion, since it really means the sun (reflection, perspective). The principle of regeneration contains within it mortality, disorder and decay. This was the rationale behind Gilgamesh’s wish to build a fitting monument to his rule, by felling the cedars and usurping the mythical rule of the Guardian of the Forest (his Shadow Self Pictorial 65).

Kantner’s album expresses the spirit of freshness and wild regeneration in the Universe (or Earth) and especially in the act of rebellion against the Empire of the Acolyte (sorcerer, head) – as opposed to the lusty freedom of the body.

The modern world is a weak illusion of acolytes, but a very convincing one of the sun (perspective) and so we view the universe in terms of parallel lines (the vanishing point of technique).

But that is not what the universe is if it is symmetrical. The Earth spins midway between moon and sun (Artemis and Apollo) and as it spins we see the stars and planets in their configurations and wandering ways.

So, why is the universe symmetrical? Because it is an Earth power of movement in the cosmos. Because of myth. Myth is a way of recognizing an underlying substratum of reality.

If you don’t wanna recognize that, you’re welcome to your solar illusions with Bezos and the rest of the “smart planet” aficionados. For the rest of us, a good point of departure is this Hyborian map.

 

(Conan the Unconquered, Robert Jordan)

Or the one previously shown of a plotline from Savage Sword

  C12

The really big thing about archaic maps is that they depict the symmetry of reality. The North is frigid and Ymir-like; the South is jungle-drummed; the East is exotic, turbaned, sultry; the West is castled, dim-lit and rousting.

All that is so because the Earth spins, identifying the direction of East-West and the South and North poles. The East has certain attributes of psyche (oneness or wholeness); the west the opposites of individualism. The North has ice giants; the South Witch Doctors.

Even if no one can deny the Earth spins, “they” do deny it explicitly by the use of atomic clocks to run global AI. When Einstein said, “Time is an illusion” (prev), he may have had in mind atomic clocks, since the only certain thing about them is that they’re certain!

By contrast, the movements of Earth through space establish some of the most real experiences of all; the everlasting sunrise, the crescent moon, solstices at Stonehenge. So, why is it real? Because you’re experiencing physical symmetry in the universe, accomplished by the movements of physical objects.

The movements are not as certain as atomic clocks, since they wobble and precess, but they are real whereas atomic clocks are only certain.

We live in a world of the illusion of certainty; this is why East is West and North becoming South; we all live in the same illusion.

If you say the illusion started with Newton (C4), it is reaching its nadir in the smart planet of pure order run by atomic clocks (AI). It’s an illusion because time is something we experience – as imperfect beings. We cannot experience it as certainty, that is simply predictable death (Korvac Weird 8)

Living things need uncertainty to express their physical presence on the Earth. In other words, in terms of culture. This is the glory of those archaic-looking maps of Hyboria! The geographic features outlined allow one to zoom in and see in one’s mind’s eye the fierce sea-battles on the Vilayet sea, in the Turanian Holy War (Hyborian Bridge 19, 20). The ripe quarters of the Maze in Shadizar the Wicked; the gloomy crags of Cimmeria; the opulent Marches of Aquilonia.

Uncertainty, or what you could call the irregularity of line, is the living, breathing expression of cultures, of movement on Earth. It is Earth-time, Earth-movement. OK, let people have their Rolex watches as a gimmick. Accuracy is simply the vanishing point of technique; it takes you to illusion.

If you’re in an illusory world, the reality is in there (the repressed Shadow Self), and projects out there (fear of the uncertain Forest, labyrinth of myth, dreams). What is taken as order is simply a figment that takes no account of the dream landscape of mythology, of history and prehistory or of the fantasy lands and seas of Hyboria.

 

Pictorial 64

The Indians celebrated Trickster as part of the Great Mystery, which displayed many faces. At the psychic trading post, we can trade our anger for compassion; we can exchange our robe for animal skins and we can release our pain for laughter. We can break the shell that holds us prisoner to the illusion of certainty, unleashing renewal that dances like the whirlwind across the inner landscape. (page 159)

This quote from chapter six acts as quite a good intro to chapter seven, and the epic of Gilgamesh. Trickster is a familiar figure from American Indian folklore who transcends the certainty of order and perfection, who walks the middle way (of the Raven, the scavenger, coyote).

“The illusion of certainty” can often apply to the mind that cannot access its own dreams, and via the dream the mythical landscape. This is really where Gilgamesh is set, and particularly in the person of Enkidu, created by Ishtar as a fitting foil to the mighty Gilgamesh.

The plan is for the increasingly vain and oppressive Gilgamesh to be taken down by the embodiment of the steppes, who starts off eating grass with the beasts. After getting close with a priestess of love, he gains wisdom, though his

hair still resembles grass that sprouts on the steppes. (cf Ymir)

News then comes of Gilgamesh’s rule of Uruk that is shocking and invites instant action.

Any new bride from the people is his; Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, may mate with any new bride even before the lawful husband may have her! (page 173)

They fight, but then become good companions. Idleness sets in, prompting Gilgamesh to go on a pilgrimage to the Cedar Forest, where rumour has it the Humbaba rules with bestial fury. Gilgamesh aims to cut down the cedars to build his own memorial, and he is acco0mpanied by Enkidu. The Cedar felling probably has historical roots.

After arriving at the Green Mountain, they both stood quite still. Silently they looked at the Forest and saw how high the Great Cedars were. They gazed upon the entrance and saw the tracks where Humbaba often trod.. They saw also the Cedar Mountain where the gods lived. The Cedar rose aloft its great luxuriant growth; what cool shade, what delight! Mountain and glade were green with brushwood.

(page 177)

 

Wooded Turanian steppes outside Makkalet from Conan #23 © Marvel 1971

The Mesopotamia of this ancient time bore more similarity to Howard’s opulent Eastern kingdoms, and their sending off too.

They went to Ninsun who offered up incense to Shamash (sun). With the smoke offering in progress, she raised her hands.. She prayed for her son’s protection. (page 176)

Rude, sexual and gusty, it bears useful comparison to Howard’s own prose, and Hohne devotes much of chapter seven to a bracing translation (from Akkadian). Her interpretation of Gilgamesh as dream incorporates Humbaba as repressed energy or a Shadow Self.

The characters come up against Humbaba who they believe must be destroyed. The elements lost within will always appear first as a threat. This repressed energy can be sent underground to fund the idea of the boogeyman out there, although it holds the power of all we fear in here. (page 185)

Why, though, is Humbaba the Shadow? Enkidu complains of a feeling of idleness, and this prompts Gilgamesh to think of his own mortality, and how felling the Cedar Forest will enable him to establish a noble monument to posterity.

The enclosed idleness of Uruk, then, could be a foretaste of the idleness that Modern Man feels, essentially enclosed in his head. The Cedar Forest represents regenerative greenery that is repressed in the face of all that is hygienic in modern life.

It’s not to say that there isn’t any regenerative greenery out there, in National Parks and so on, but how many folks actually live there? What I mean is that Enkidu embodies the steppes in his own form (body). The cowboy and horse embody the corral and steer-herding on the ranges and round the hills. The Indian embodies plains, lakes, the thundering hoofs, sweetgrass.

The embodiment of natural form is the opposite to idleness, it is action. The world of action that encompasses the landscape and lakescape is lost to Man. His Shadow Self is the regenerative greenery that is, after all, where hunting takes place.

The entire area of Man’s link to “blood sports” – grouse shooting or hunting pursuits in general – then becomes the boogeyman. That is, the entire area of the history and prehistory of Man as a hunter-gatherer. The dreams he dreamt and the landscape he dreamt them in (Cimmeria, land of darkness and deep night.. hill upon hill, each hooded like its brothers).

Enkidu and Gilgamesh start as opponents, when the wild man Enkidu meets the prince of Uruk

Gilgamesh meets Enkidu.. “as something mysterious coming out of the woods. Let him look as into mirrors – Give a second self to him. Like bulls they held together as rushing wind met rushing wind. Heart to heart and against, yet they held fast and shattered the doorpost of the holy gate. The wall shook with the fateful act.”

Their firm friendship integrates their two apsects of psyche. Perhaps Enkidu subsequently became too palace-bound, and this sets Gilgamesh off on their fateful quest for the Guardian of the Forest

To actualize our destiny, we discover how being civilized is not the true measure of self (page 187).. In this story Enkidu has become civilized (page 189)

The civilized man fears the Forest, the labyrinth of belief (myth) that is disordered and where hidden things nose around at will.

If even Enkidu – who was brought up by Humbaba – is urging Gilgamesh to kill him, how much more is the fear of Modern Man, brought up from Kindergarten with civilization’s Holy Grail of pure order? The Shadow in there that projects the boogeyman out there.

 

Pictorial 63

It was said that Merlin (imagination) was enchanted by the Lady of the Lake (unconscious) and disappeared into the deep waters, never to be seen again. Like Van Gogh, Hemingway and Nietzsche, we have seen prolific creators dissolve backward into this watery abyss. In all cases, approaching inspiration requires that we do not abandon life, but maintain a concrete footing in the world around us. (page 126)

The world around us being flesh and blood – one of the main themes of chapter six, in the clash of cultures between the Indian Medicine Men and the European conquerors and missionaries from the 16^th century.

Denials of the flesh, Puritan hypocrisy and sin are one thing, and I guess have been covered to exhaustion already; the thing which caught my eye was Hohne’s comparison between the folk tale of two Indian twins, and the Old Testament story of Jacob and Esau.

Indian myths are supernatural, and this one concerns two twins called Flesh and Stump, who were cut from their dead mother’s womb. One of them was hidden in a stump in a wood; the other stayed in the lodge and was called Flesh by his father.

The boys met up and had various adventures, being killed and brought back to life several times. Eventually, Earth Maker sent Rucewe to bring the Twins to him, and told them they could stay in heaven as they had become too troublesome.

In Genesis, Rebekah felt the struggle between Jacob and Esau in her womb. Esau became a hunter (Stump) while Jacob was a “man of tents” (Flesh). After various escapades, Jacob returns home years later and wrestles in a dream with a “mysterious adversary”. This being turns out to be Yahweh (Earth Maker), and Jacob is renamed Israel, which means “he who strives with Yahweh" (and prevails).

As Hohne says, this is very far from the obedient dogma of Cortez’s Catholic missionaries, and is really quite rowdy and earthy behaviour, allowing for “natural curiosity” (page 151).

CC Beck had makes a similar comment in Cosmic Curmudgeon

In the Old Testament, those angels were terrible creatures. They came down armed with fiery swords and everything else.”

Christianity had a tendency to be unwordly, but most blatant of all were the Gnostics of eraly Christianity, who

taught that the sensory world had been created as a mistake and that Jesus had come to deliver man from Yahweh’s error. (page 150).

Even though Gnosticism was never official teaching, the idea of an imperfect creation (Man and nature) did become currency, To the Indians nature is perfect, and Man gains by mimicking her.

What is perfection, though? She quotes Aristotle.

He taught that the flaws in nature were due to the substance that the orchestrating force of life utilized to achieve perfection. The inability of matter to fully realize its form was similar to a sculptor using brittle or faulty material to achieve his vision. Nothing in nature is perfect; this is at the root of why it explores change. (page 152).

In other words, perfection and imperfection are part of one process – otherwise there would just be stasis (death). Nature is perfect because imperfect t.

The Aristotelian concept is much more true to American Indians or Old Testament than it is to the modern idea of competitive order – since order means something that cannot deviate from unbroken progress.

Actually, nature is disordered as well as being ordered, in that flesh rots, becomes carrion and the cycle of lifedeath continues. In fact, the idea of an ordered world is much more true to the Gnostic idea that the sensory world (flesh) is a mistake!

The world we actually live in is a convincing numerical illusion that just happens to have flesh living inside it. A world of pure order is like Korvac (Weird 8); a type of living death with no revival, no decadence.

Order cannot exist in nature without disorder. All it means is that we live in a very convincing (perspective) illusion that is not physical (body) nor psychic (the clues that are found in nature to feed our inspiration).

The clues we find are what Hohne’s book is about; our dreams which mirror age old myths that connect Man to the cosmos. As I tend to say, the clues of astrology or Tarot are vague for the reason they’re not part of an ordered numerical universe (of perspective or light).

The real universe is symmetrical and proportionate. Why is it symmetrical and proportionate? Because it’s not pure order. If you want pure order you get precision, not the strength of a lifecycle that balances life and death in a disordered naturalism.

The Poems of Edgar Allan Poe

We live in a world that happens to have flesh and blood in it, but it does not have the strenght of lifecycle. It is barren; the land of Seth (Pictorial 61) and of reptilian urges that emerge from the deep unconscious that cannot be repressed. Reptiles that slither towards the sun (order).

We are at the mercy of innumerable acolytes of sorcerers of so-called order which is just a convincing illusion of the head.

Hyborian Bridge 30

PIctorial 62

Si vis pacem, para bellum


Huhne’s scepticism of “Rome the Protector” runs through chapter four, and especially the way Rome used attack as a means of defence - eventually conquering the known world.

She uses phrases, such as “the dynamics of repressive autonomy”, and “the subconscious empire of repressive ideas”. By and large, defence becomes a trap to our freedom, in an over-controlled environment of resentment and obligation.

She seems to have an almost Howard-like suspicion of the march of civitas and Romanitas, while admiring the achievement.

Rome – Hyborian Bridge 2 – coopted native deities (Sulis-Minerva), and the “uncivilized naturalness” is the subject of chapter five. There is the whole Arthurian cycle and the round table as a type of mandala. There is the Celtic worship of water and,

The Celts would make sacrifices of prized possessions by ritualistically throwing them into rivers, lakes and streams. In these myths we meet the Lady of the Lake and the Fisher King, both who appear from a mysterious realm to guide the hero. (page 102)

Something similar happens in the Kull story, Delcardes’ Cat.

The cat, Saremes, is a ploy of a noble lady who persuades Kull it can talk. The cat sends Kull on a fool’s errand to rescue Brule from The Forbidden Lake. After fighting some beasts, he meets the lake people in their hidden city. It finally transpires Sameres lied, and the lake people here act as Kull’s guidance, parting amicably.

Kull #7 (c) Marvel

The noble lady’s ploy being uncovered, to have the cat persuade Kull to allow her to marry a savage, Kull relents.

The Celtic dominion of water carries-over into Christianity and the numerous holy wells and healing waters such as Lourdes. Hohne has released a number of short music videos under “Get Tribal” that prove she is something of Bruce Lee and something of Howard!

THE WATER WAY

The direction she seems to go in is “uncivilized naturalness”, and she is probing this idea that beneath all scientific thought is a mystery.

There remains a mysterious quality to life that no amount of measuring has been able to uncover. (page 120)

She attributes this to the number 3 that exists between two opposites.

We can only access inspiration and intuition if we give ourselves permission not to know. Asking questions, we move into a space opposite from logical reasoning. (page 121)

She interprets the Arthurian tales in a similar sense, the knights finding “clues to solving a deeper mystery.”

To put it in (my) nutshell, the mystery is: why is there a sun, a moon, an Earth and the planets and stars? This is the physical reality that we see and apprehend. It’s not the same as a photo or a video, which are composed of light. It’s not a theory such as Relativity. It’s simply, why are things as they are and not something else?

The answer is actually psychic. So therefore I think her dream universe of myths must contain that question, even if unspecified. The psychic realm is a type of perfection of understanding that is beyond logic.

The Arthurian tales often read like a type of heedless action, especially of Percival, the fool! No real thought, just odd events and encounters and gallant deeds. This is the type of dreamlike mythical universe that has been lost to solar measurement – which is not the physical universe (lenses Hyborian Bridge 56).

In the Arthurian tales, the Lady of the Lake

The Lady of the Lake attends to the mysteries of her deeper realm, while projecting an image of the Lake as a barrier to her true residence. (page 120)

These resemble the blocks that in dreamsleep are lowered and the ego-defences crumble.

Merlin guides Arthur toward the shores of the mysterious Lake (unconscious). Portraying the inspiration of our untapped potential, the Lady of the Lake has a more real residence, deep below the water. It is guarded by a reflection or imaginary image just as the subconscious keeps us recreating our version of existence. The strange events at the Lake resemble how this gate recedes as we drift off to sleep. This allows for the free expression of our more real residence that remains deep below the surface. (page 122)

Obviously a lake is physical and the psyche (Self) is psychic. The physical world resembles or carries clues to the psychic.

Unfortunately, science is neither physical nor psychic, but is order (measurement). This puts us in a solar universe of perspective (the vanishing point of technique). Essentially, everything that “they” say is material – the dollar or wormdollar $ -isn’t physical in the sense of a lake, a forest (which have psychic symbols). It exists in a universe of numerical compulsion (see Slick Hyborian Bridge 62/1) and competitive order. If you watch a film by David Atten-bore you will see hunting and flying and so on but you will be told it is a competitive order.

This misses out the entire world of disorder or death, which is the result of predation. From disorder is rebirthed order and this is the strength of a cyclical destiny.

Order does not exist in the physical (body) sense of Earth/sun/moon, only in the theories of acolytes of dead sorcerers.

A hunt is an exercise in disorder slashing through forest and dale (much as Sir Percival jousting with saplings). This quote by Luc Besson says it all.

“In mid-debate over the ecology and biodiversity tragedy hitting the entire planet, Orne hunters are asking me to kill deer that pass by my home!? Should I put my children on the balcony while I’m at it? These people are on the wrong side of history.”

This must be typical of the modern mindset that thinks death is less important than life even though both are equally vital for life! On Earth, forest, range, river.

Burne-Jones, The Beguiling of Merlin

 

 

Pictorial 61

Using the symbolism of the granaries which the Egyptians established to safeguard the crops fed by the ever unpredictable Nile, Hohne notes the “healing journey” that establishes an inner terrain of self-worth, that can be associated with Isis. Feminine introspection overturns Seth, the god of the wasteland.

Isis seems to represent inner belief in earthy sensuality as well as sexual desire (allied to dirt). While Howard’s serpent-man and man-serpent represent the Stygian wasteland of fire and fury that is ruled over by Seth (Set) and the repressed energy of the snake, Horus and his mother Isis represent hope reborn and fertility.

It seems possible, then, that Howard’s Stygia is not so much Egypt as the wasteland of the mind that holds repressed energy in the form of a snake. That land is actually much closer to our own than it is to ancient Egypt. In order to bring forth the reborn child Horus (A Child is Coming) and the goddess of feminine introspection and fertile terrain – inner reflecting the experience of outer – our world has to imagine a modernday Nile.

Meaning something that is earthily sensual and associated with dirt and fertility. The wide open ranges, cowboys and herds, or the Indians of Allegheny (prev.)

Out would go the hygiene-machines of vast beef-lots and factory-farmed chickens etc; and in would come the more happy-go-lucky atmosphere of dirt and cleanliness (moral or Mosaic Law). This is a fertile atmosphere and hence associated with Isis.

Hohne identifies Isis with Maat, or “the way” (inner worth). The outer sensual world of work and the inner sense of worth are strongly connected. This atmosphere tends to assert the energy of reptilian anxiety, or at least gives it a means of expression. Reptilian energy, in out modernday mind, is identified with the way our outer world is fantastically over-ordered and like a logical brain.

This is another way of saying order doesn’t exist, since our unconscious universe is reptilian at a primitive level (Pictorial 1). This brings us naturally to the Greeks, who brought in detached logic and Aristotelian syllogisms to a universe that was actually full of the misdirected urges of omnipotent gods and goddesses (The House that Rand Built 2).

Hohne makes the point that logical games inhabit a strange detached labyrinth of the mind, away from feeling, while the Sophists believed truth was unattainable. The difference with us is the Greeks exercised logic of the brain, whereas we live IN a logic of the brain.

This is the fallacy at the heart of modernity since, as she points out (page 70), Greek studies

In trying to understand the true nature of the universe still remain a mystery today. When we go out to measure the fabric of life, we find we somehow  participate in the measurement by affecting the result.

She uses the myth of Prometheus to personify the scientist, who develops a fire of the mind while denying gut feelings as primeval throwbacks. Prometheus’s punishment was to be chained to a rock and have an eagle eat his liver every day, only for it to grow back overnight, and the cycle to repeat.

She likens this not only to the “sugar rush” of an addict, but also to the hiding place of the scientist –

a mountain of thought in a world of puzzles.

The point of the eagle daily devouring the liver is “escaped” by mental processes. This is the reality of mortality, which like Icarus who “thought he was invincible”, melts and we come face to face with death.

This is the cyclical world of disorder, symmetry and proportion that a scientist can never feel, in their logical labyrinths of the detached minds. In this altered state, they resemble the depersonalised characters of Greek myths who are turned into inanimate objects.

Daphne is pursued by Apollo and is changed into a laurel tree. Arethusa is pursued by Alpheus and becomes a spring, while Alpheus changes into a river.. (page 68)

The mind, unlike the body, is not active, not like the eagle on a dive, not muscular and lithe, not graceful and pirouetting. In its labyrinth, its detached logic denies it the chance to see and feel the pirouettes of birds in trees, the lowing of cows at sundown, any of the rhythmically physical things that constitute the simple reality of balance and proportion on Earth.

While the Greeks only exercised logic, keeping all their rural pursuits intact, modernday scientists have – like Blake’s print of Newton (Pictorial 59) – transmuted the mind into this land (body) of inertia we inhabit. The arid wasteland of Seth where anxious reptiles are daily attracted to the order of the artificial brains (algorithms) of Musk and Bezos, who seek to entice us from heroic bodies that exist in balance with self-governing minds, on the hunts and ranges of the mind.

Weird  Science

"The People's Choice" (Orlando art)

Pictorial 60

Mythical characters allow us to uncover additional meaning in dream symbolism; and our understanding of dream interpretation allows us to see myths in a new light. (page 5)

The first two chapters of Kari Hohne’s The Mythology of Sleep: the Waking Power of Dreams are contrasting and practically opposites. The warriors of Viking blood and Norse mythology are over-achieving conquerors. She’s pretty kind to them (more than Howard, at least) and their vast fairy tale influence over vast reaches, even into Russia.

Odin sacrifices an eye to Mimir, guardian of the well at the root of Yggdrasil, in order to gain the knowledge of the future hidden at the bottom of the water. Later, he hangs upside down on Yggdrasil for nine days and nights to gain the power and wisdom of the norns.

With this power and knowledge he grows ever-more withdrawn, sending out his two ravens (conscience) and two wolves (instinct), while he skulks about wearing a wide-brimmed hat.

The Grey God Passes

His depressive symptoms are a product of knowledge of a future Twilight of the Gods, while his own strength persuades him that he may yet trick fate. The two wolves at Odin’s side represent the instinctive aggression that he converts into depression. Yeah, he is introspective and it’s tough being the all-father – that’s without even mentioning Fenris, his begetter Loki or the world serpent, another Loki offspring.

While Odin eschews action, it’s actually the Egyptian pantheon of chapter two (of eight) that vastly more resembles our modern order. Hohne has a symbolic description of the Norse charioteer as the warrior holding the reins of will to drive the instinctive horse. By contrast, the Egyptian powers are much more reptilian (the brain, she explains, has three levels – reptilian, mammalian and rational).

She describes how the sacrificial eye of Ra becomes a daughter, who grows angry when in her absence she was replaced (anxiety). Ra turns her into a snake and places her at the centre of the forehead,

As a symbolic representation of how reptilian urges can take precedence over logical processes. (page 50).

Now, how can I say that we, today, live in a reptilian (fight or flight) order when all along I’ve been saying we live in a logical order? Owing to this quote.

We compulsively seek order in proportion to the disorder we feel within. (page 50).

Have you ever wondered why we all have to buy things? The cycle of reptilian anxiety (fight or flight) becomes a

Lifestyle where we are always feeling empty. (page 50)

The reptile within governs our behaviour and,

We may create a reward system which revolves around self-gratifying behaviour. (page 50).

The question is, why have we become reptilian? Because we no longer have control over the logical processes of the body that is active in hunting, riding the hills and forests, killing and preparing game. The logical and the illogical always act together (Pictorial 13, Le Mepris). This is a balanced lifestyle, which Hohne covers further on in the book (i ching).

All logical processes in the modern order are outside the body, courtesy of the great god Ra (sun), and the sorcerer of light (Newton C4).

The Egyptians were believers in cyclical recurrence (the Nile) which gave their anxieties a source of constant fulfilment. Modern Man is a believer in nothing. Nothing save what is outside the body.

To quote Hohne again, it is

not an image of the charioteer driving the horses, but the horses driving the charioteer in a state of panic.. Whereas the warrior’s aggressive energy is checked and arrested… unchecked energy dissipates as anxiety. (page 48).

And this is the neurotic age we live in.

Pictorial 59

The myth of Ymir implies that the cosmos resembles a body in its symmetry and proportions. The physical Earth – the rivers and grasses and hills – matches the undulating flesh and blood of the body. What, then, of Blake’s print of Newton?

C4

In the white-hot visionary fire of Blake’s imagination, Newton’s body grows out of the silhouette of a human brain so that, in effect, the brain is transmuted into the body. This could easily be taken as a symbol for a world of the head; where there is really no escape since the head and body have become one thing, rather than being two different things in balance and proportion.

Blake, being the doyen of physique, seems also to make it apparent that the mind becomes trapped by its own physique – since it can’t be denied. The consequence of this seems to be a state of inaction or physical boredom.

This seems to relate to the fallacy of a logical order, which applies only to the head, not the body. The active body is disordered and exists in the cycles of nature. The recurring cycle of flesh and blood, decay and revival, that spells strength and purity of spirit.

Newton’s world cannot apply to the active body that exists in the cycles of nature, only to the inactive body that exists in a state of physical boredom. This seems to be the fallacy of a world that is built by and for the head, while the savage grace of Man is as a hunter.

 

I came across this great Biggles-style illustration for a financial ad that shows just how delusional is the mindset. Here you have the hunter-adventurer chasing big game, when clearly the ad is representing work that is akin to typing on a keyboard. Here’s a quote on the NPD in Germany.

..a member of the council who voted for (neo-Nazi) Mr Jagsch said, “We voted for him due to the fact we have nobody else.. who is familiar with computers and who can send emails.” Mr Jagsch promised legal action should his appointment be rescinded. (DT)

All these types of jobs represent physical boredom, whereby the body is just and extension of the head (brain), rather than having an active, independent existence (as the ad illo suggests). This has all sorts of repercussions. For example, the body is fed through the head. Where the body is treated as an extension of the head, much the same applies to factory-farmed animals, where bodies are just an extension of what is really a hygiene-machine (Pictorial 44)

“It is inexpensive and can be sprayed onto a wound by farmers.. Dechra is applying for approval to launch Tri-Solfen for.. during castration for piglets.. to prevent their meat from developing a flavour known as “boar taint”.. in sheep when the skin is removed below the anus to stop blowflies from infecting them. (DT)

These practices are clearly flawed and relate to animals in static environments. The standard tradition for blowfly in the field is shearing, especially round the breech area, and regular inspection (I was an apprentice on an organic farm). It just goes to show how drastic are the “health” remedies prescribed for animals kept in wretched conditions. Dechra reap the rewards for the inert conditions.

A state of inertia is when the body no longer has an independent existence in field or forest. A state which approaches the state of death. In Berlioz’s opera Orpheo et Eurydice, Sir John Eliot Gardner’s production has a very effective sequence of statuesque ballets, whereby the barely moving figures of the Underworld drift by with stately postures.

ORPHEO ET EURYDICE (with mezzo Magdalena Kozena)

This chimes with the myth, whereby Eurydice will follow Orpheus out of the caverns of the Underworld, provided he does not glance at her shade. He becomes so nervous as they approach the light of life that he does glance back, and so loses Eurydice forever,

One way to interpret this is that a shade is inanimate matter, it does not live, and the living should not get unduly attached to the non-living. Or, put another way, Orpheus’s head (that turns) should not get unduly attached to Eurydice’s dead body.

You see the connection with Blake’s print of Newton? Newton’s head is attached to his inert body which has been transmuted into a brain. If the body were mobile, it would no longer resemble a brain; it would be free and easy and active.

You could almost liken the print to The Metamorphosis of Narcissus (Weird 11) in that something that was mobile has become immobile.

If a body is inert, or an extension of the brain, then it is no longer active in the rhythms and cycles of nature. This is actually the world we inhabit, since the rhythms we see are those of traffic and the internet, both of which are attached to the head, as extensions of the head,

In other words, the advance of society, reason and order, is purely of the head, not the body. The body is merely an extension, and has become one with the brain as in Blake’s print. This has repercussions, because our destiny as flesh and blood exists in the cycles of nature; of decay and rebirth. These cycles impact on our Psyche.

(detail)  

Without the independent body that expresses grace and ease, the psyche is inward-turning and stultified. This is the fallacy of a universe that is built by and for the head; everything comes to resemble the brain, and not the body.

That is to say, reason and order, not the disorder that accompanies a hunt and that the flesh and blood is exposed to in the cycles of nature.  The fallacy is that a brain exists apart from the body but, as Blake’s print shows, the physique cannot be denied and the result is physical boredom. Not just for Man but for the factory-farmed animals in their hygiene-machines.

A body of symmetry and proportion, of Man, animal or Ymir, cannot make the mistakes that a head of reason and order can.

SUNRISE (acoustic demo)