Another CL Moore
story, The Code, is as confusing as anything I’ve read even if it
contains a neat description of parallel realities Tales of Faith 12
The mutability of genes and genesis of
body in the story become almost infinite, branching into parallel lines of
reality – and it all hinges on the Einsteinian idea that “Time doesn’t exist” (Pictorial 17
); it’s an invention of the mind.
(page 584)
Here, Moore is saying that mind affects body – and vice versa.
Yes, but where you have affect there are circadian and other wider rhythms that
transmit the affect. Time is not a mental phenomenon, it is a powerful physical
reality of wheels-within-wheels. Because acolytes think logically, they tend to
identify easily with computer-time (certainty) and not with intersecting
rhythms that are actually how the body functions (bones, lungs, breathing,
singing, eating, sipping).
This leads to the conclusion that time does not exist organically, even
though in order for an ear or a throat to develop (in the watery womb) they can
only do so rhythmically.
Moore’s story, which imagines a parallel reality of development, can be
taken as an idea of what might happen in a universe where time functioned like
clockwork, or like computer-switches (or an exchange).
But that’s exactly how organic time doesn’t work! If you replace
“temporal idols” with “physical idols”, these are very powerful and archetypal
shapes that have symmetry and proportion.
Sirius the dog-star (Earth-myth)
Have you ever wondered why all dog breeds are fairly cutely proportioned?
That’s why. It’s not temporal, it’s archetypal. Archetypal forms have strong
rhythms; they’re irrational forms and not based on temporal certainty.
Acolytes crave certainty – their ego-logic – and archetypal rhythms are
uncertain. In the story, when Moore imagines the genesis of this guy Rufus,
rearranging in time, it’s predicated on time being a certain factor, one that
can branch into different avenues.
But the archetypal forms are constructed of intersecting rhythms that are
uncertain and that – together – form something unique, such as a dachshund. We
can trace figures in the sky because they have primordial shape (power, ability
to hunt, leap, prowl). So, when Moore talks of the genes rearranging, genesis
rearranging, she’s talking of the certainties of DNA, and not the uncertainty
of rhythmic form.
What follows from that is that the science of DNA has no connection with
rhythmic form, yet rhythmic form is the ultimate source of health. CL Moore’s
story, even though I think it’s wrong, is also very convincing because a wrong
rhythm can be convincing (disturbing, weird).
It’s also very dark so, in the sense that it accurately mimics the
mindset of science, that’s its strong feature. Accuracy and certainty are dark
because they are so convincing – and so wrong that they enter a parallel
dimension.
The parallel dimension is the product of certainty, like the mirrored
reptile-helix of DNA. In there, everything is certain, but also indescribably
wrong. The wrongness is the certainty itself, since the easy thing is to attach
DNA to AI, thus bypassing organic rhythm itself.
More words from the tongue of acolytes
Savage splendour, uncertain silence
In that respect, the “wrongness” is also that of the symbiot of Heir
Apparent; the “improper geometry” of Kiss of the Black God. In the
latter, Jirel is shrived as she faces some anti-moral force that harbours hell
itself. Reptilian form that is attached to a brain gone mad. A brain that
cannot sail the seas of destiny with soul intact.
The delicate song, the lusty fantasy – Howard’s writing has the sensual
meaning of both.
Conan #90
