Here’s where it gets really confusing! In a world of
hyper-accuracy, words are misused because organic lifeforms do not live in that
parallel reality. When Price Andrew said (in an interview), “Sex is a positive
act”, that’s an accurate statement from the point of view of organic life. So
that’s why the media was all over it – take it from me.
Yellow Flower you possibly thought was a misused song, since it
has nothing to do with Belit? But it has to do with memory and death – feelings
that permeate Queen of the Black Coast. Words and images that are apt
can have allegorical similarities and lyrical correspondances. In that sense,
they are not hyper-accurate, but well-used. In a world of hyper-accuracy, we
become like robots; less sensual, less virile, less feminine.
The world of hyper-accuracy cannot
The spokesperson for accuracy and certainty in a parallel dimension is of
course The Selfish Gene’s Dicky Dawkins. The dimension being the logic
that words construct to convince the ego of their veracity.
Since nature is not the product of reason, it comes of an economy of line
that is simple and emblematic.
(
more Granada tiles, natch)
Those things that just are, whose archaic simplicity is proof of meaning
and use in the realm of acts. Cobbles on the rutted roads of Khitai
Conan #32
Their worth is a savage simplicity that is strong and graceful. The world
that is not the world of words, but the world that words may aptly describe. The
difference is that the words are meaningful because meaning comes not from
words alone; that is a false tautology we forcibly inhabit.
Meaning comes from the unthinking power of the cosmos that manifests as
the forgotten idols of Earth’s past. The lost past which does not enter a
parallel dimension of certainty and temporal accuracy (“We count not time” –
Howard poem). For accuracy is also a product of straight lines (sun), the atomic
clock that powers super-computers.
AI is nothing less than a super-accurate clock – as much atomic as is
atomic combustion (see The Long Tomorrow Pictorial 75). Add to the
mix DNA, and the words flow from acolytes’ lips like poison from a nest of
vipers.
The meaning words have in our forced confinement is a logical tautology that
is ever-more dependent on.. words that are ever-more detached from cosmic
simplicity, psychic grandeur, forgotten
idols of the invisible empire of Earth’s physical form.
Conan 32
Flame Wind of Lost Khitai from Conan #32-34 –was
adapted from Norvell Page’s pulp, which was actually about the far East
adventures of Prester John (Wan Tengri). It’s quite typical of US pulp writers
to make fantastical versions of European history, and Prester John is ideally
suited to this as he was very close to a medieval fantasm!
It all centres round one of Howard’s favorite haunts, Black Khitai, and a
Christian kingdom called Keraits who carried the cross against these Black
Saracens. I did some reading, and round about the 12th century the
Crusaders were on the lookout for Christian knights from the far East to
fortify their struggle against near east Saracens. The notion of Prester John
became practically talismanic as the Crusades progressed and were forced onto
the back foot.
So, while there is some historical evidence, what came to the Crusaders
was hearsay, a barely tangible hope. This hearsay is found in Howard’s
historical The Sowers of the Thunder. Now, “hope”, meaning a type of
feeling, a bolstering of the psyche, does have an effect on physical
circumstances – the ability to change circumstances for the good.
Going even further than that, Christianity is “Good News” which is
designed to bolster the spirit of mankind against the forces of darkness. In
other words, “news” in the Middle Ages was much more to do with psyche.
Once that is the case, the psyche – or state of mind of men and women of
good faith – affects the physical circumstances. This is almost the other way
round to nowadays!
Whereas today “news” is factual events where the psyche is not given any
credence (to change the events), in the Middle Ages “news” could easily be
non-factual or amount to hearsay. That news had a psychic truth that impacted
on believers, affecting their behaviour.
In other words, the psychic effect that “news” imparted then had the
result of producing or influencing physical behaviour that THEN resulted in
facts. This gets to the root of the tautology at the heart of a “factual”
world. A “fact” is really tantamount to words emitted by news channels; but how
are the facts produced?
By-and-large by logical processes of the market and politics. Processes
that have no affinity to the human psyche – apart perhaps from greed. This
world is ordered, but is not psychically attuned to human needs.
So therefore, “news” and logical processes amount to pretty much the same
thing. In what you could call the lost world of forgotten idols – like Prester
John – “news” meant a psychic spur to action. The psyche and the physical were
connected, and events followed.
When the psyche influences the physical (action), then the facts that
result are also tainted by psyche. What that essentially means is that a
belief-system needs to be in place. In the high medieval, each city-state had
an idol – or patron-saint – that epitomised its own belief-system.
Unless one has a belief purely in money (the $) one has to believe in
some psychic reality, some force for good work (or bad, actually, as in Flame
Winds, where the city Wan Tengri is ruled by seven malevolent wizards).
The city is under the influence of nefarious forces, in the form of the
seven. Conan adopts the mantle of Prester John and undergoes a series of adventures
that finally overthrow the false idols
Conan #34
And the restoration of the imprisoned princess. Unfortunately, she turns
out to be an even worse sorceress and Conan and Bourtai are left..
Conan 34
The real question is, why do we in the modern age give credence to
marketing and politicians without any psychic manifestation of belief? I mean,
at the moment we’re in the “X-mas season”, but what does that mean? Just
shopping. Then we’re in some other season – and so on.
Where is the psychic manifestation of human behaviour on Earth? Nowhere.
It’s back there with the forgotten idols. What seems to happen is that shopping
becomes essentially electronic and what we are actually getting is
electromagnetic impulses beamed into our brains (by acolytes of sorcerers). These
same acolytes in the press then use words to give us a good impression, of what
is essentially nothing (physical on planet Earth).
Where is the mix of psychic
strength and physical action that gives meaning to existence?
Happy Trails Pictorial 75
The answer seems to be that it’s in the Earth
itself – the hills and ranges and fields and streams and ancient forests, habitations
and horses, women and men of good faith. We are being sold something that is a
copy, merely straight-lines from the sun, not the authentic irregularity of
Mother Earth.