Antiauthoritarianism
(Pictorial 67) is the primitive reptilian backbone of Quetzalcoatl, god
of wind and rain, harvest season, corn dolly
Earth turns her
face to the cosmic symmetry that is otherwise lost to the ever-onward authority
of a straight-line perspective vision. The Age of Acolytes. Words upon words to
substantiate what is a parallel system – the sorcerous system of light.
The words are
bolstered by egos that are fed by the perspective illusion. There is no room
for doubt because doubt comes out of an “ambiguous symmetry” (CL Moore) that is
the cosmos of planets and stars, sun and moon, Artemis and Apollo.
This is the lost
world of the lost gods and goddesses of Earth as - in The Plumed Serpent
- Christ reaches out to the Mexican Quetzalcoatl. The lost deities are
agricultural and regenerative, their backbones are rooted in earth strength,
introspective primitivism of wisdom.
The primitive
reptilian nervous system that supports the body, that has no ego, that is
indomitable. In short, the very thing of primeval strength that modern culture
has not, because it is directed at the “clever” head. The “clever” ones
(acolytes) are able to take what is an illusory system of perspective (light)
and make of it an abstract reality – numerical, monetary.
The very abstraction
bolsters the ego of the acolytes in the illusory reality; a weakness that takes
no account of the primeval strength of the body in action that is the primitive
spinal nervous system – bequeathed at birth.
Their god is
Crom. He dwells on a great mountain. What use to call on him? Little he cares if
men live or die. Better to be silent than to call his attention to you; he will
send you dooms, not fortune! He is grim and loveless, but at birth he breathes
power to strive and slay into a man’s soul.. (Queen of the Black Coast)
Strength that is
primitive, pristine, that supports the body physically and psychically.
Antiauthoritarianism is flesh, blood, bone and sudden death.
The vast power
of the upper-body that drives the sword into taloned flesh, splintering bone. We
are entering the labyrinth of hunter and prey of the primeval forest; the world
that faces the cosmos; the world that raises fear in the ego. Fear because the
ego is not part of this world; not part of a cosmos of death and rebirth. Within
the warrior is the primitive reptilian force that he, by means of intelligent
will, must conquer so it serves to defend the dainty and delicate with naked steel.
When the ego is
free of restraint, the dragon-form of impure lusts is also free; devourer of
the simple and pure. Allure is all, grace and symmetry are all, the rhythmic
sense of being, the power of erotic urge and of searing vision.
(Declaration)
The warrior and
the hunter are instinctive forces that protect us from proselytisers of sorcerous
rule, from weakness. The knight, the priest, the poet (Outremer C8 Weird 8)
What “they” give
us nowadays, frankly, is “linear A”(Pictorial 8); the untranslatable
language from Knossos that is a list of items in store-rooms at the palace;
whereas “linear B” is the Greek of Homer’s Odyssey.
We, as heirs of
mankind, are stored as inferior copies of the original – which we still are in
our hearts! – because we have lost the mysterious storytelling that connects us
with the primitive cosmos. It is this primitive power that Howard has, and thatWeird Tales and other pulp writers have.
So, on that
note, to return to Leigh Brackett’s The Long Tomorrow.