Hyborian Bridge 101

The Skull of Silence has the scholar Kuthulos the slave broach a seeming paradox.

“Is not sound the absence of silence, and silence the absence of sound? The absence of a thing is not material substance. It is – no-thing.” (page 89)

But somewhere exists “the soul of silence” that is absolute and takes material form. Kull, in his kingly folly, encounters this entity and for the first time knows blind, unreckoning brain-shattering fear.

But the mystic demi-god Raama has left a riddle in the shape of a jade gong which Kull, in his bubbling fear, reads as the ever-changing, ever-illusory but ever-sounding sea.

That’s the essentials of the story, and one could also note that the sea is a feminine element (of mystery). Silence in the story is the absence of the natural sounds – of leaves rustling – even of grass growing in the wind – that are ever there.

In other words, the physical reality of Earth as she whirls in the cosmos; the small harmonics that are felt through sound. That’s almost like saying the sound of silence is sound – the small things in the universe we seem to feel. So, when the sound of silence disappears, then we face absolute silence – a material thing.

We live in a world of words – which are sounds – but the unthinking cosmos of silence – which is also sound – is almost obliterated.  In other words, the sound of the cosmos is obliterated by the sound of words. So, then, are words silence? In Howard’s parlance, absolute silence takes material form, so it is a thing.

We live in a material world, and the words (of acolytes) are there to sell that material. Does that material, though, cause to cease the sound of silence of the cosmos?

The sound of the cosmos has a harmonic and a sort of naïve grandeur. If we live in a tautology of words, we lose that poetry. The savage simplicity of things that is strong and has use in the domain of action – Cobbles on the rutted roads of Khitai Hyborian Bridge 89

This is the world that words may aptly describe; as opposed to the world of words (of acolytes) that stills the silent harmonics that are small sounds of the cosmos.

The craggy cliffs of Atlantis rose stark and gaunt; they were brutal and terrible with youth, even as Kull himself. Age had not softened the knife-edge of their strength; the naked stars impaled themselves upon their fang-like peaks.

But these Zalgaran hills were older, rounded. They rose like kindly gods. Green groves and great trees laughed upon their shoulders. (page 101)

What is this description from Riders Beyond the Sunset but the harmonic universe – of sight, sound, feel? The story may be minor but the feel is Homeric and pure Howard.

The sound of silence is a type of unthinking awareness of looseness; psychic calm; a vibration that is more than the electro-impulses of the head.

Ancient voices from the 60s SON OF JESUS

When that voice is stilled, silence becomes a material thing. Material things are sold to provide pleasure – so in that sense to take the place of reality. At the most extreme, the pleasure is sexual (Hyborian Bridge 99.)

This type of empty lust of the bacchantes from Black Abyss , a mad desire to compensate for feelings of longueur (in a material existence of harmonic nothingness). Materialism is the metallic and masculine; Howard’s descriptions are frequently feminine and soft.

The feminine aspect is crucial to heroic fantasy because it carries the darkness of fertility that is blood.

BWS,

Season Passing

Diana bounds through the hillside groves flattening anything that moves! Woman is feral and savage and will kill to survive (Pictorial 89). Howard’s descriptions are of the stars and the moon and not of the masculine sun. This is the land where Diana roams; the land of savage fertility.

The masculine cosmos is metal; materialism that kills the sound of silence. The feminine cosmos is the sea; ever-sounding, ever-illusory; the jade emblem of harmony (see Francis Stevens Claimed).

This is why I say both these aspects are vital to Howard’s fantasy. The hero does not wear a sword in a masculine kingdom, he wears it in a fairly feminine and illusory kingdom (of dreams).

Only when both are present – see also the artwork! – can there be a savage fertility that is dark and has the dreams of ancient ages.

The sorcerers of metal obliterate that which is feminine and illusory (the sea); the metal becomes one with the head; steel becomes flesh (the riddle of steel) Pictorial 87

This is the world of inductive sorcery, which stifles feminine intuitive awareness (psychic calm, 60s songs). Is this world therefore the materialisation of silence? Is materialism in effect a silence of the cosmos which requires compensation with material goods ($)?

NEXT: “RED LACE”

Pictorial 91

Not to put too fine a point on it, Jena-Luc Godard’s 60s films have an athletic womanly grace to die for. Literally in Made In USA, where Karina survives a treacherous state secret by sanguinely shooting those she deems her enemies.

Such savage grace is to die for; or simply romantic love. Romance is the active female form – the fencing socialite Helene in Mundy’s Tros of Samothrace (Hyborian Bridge 18.) Howard seems to be one of the pioneers of American romance – as well as heroic fantasy – and his women are lusty and as morally powerful as the men.

The athleticism has a darkness – that of blood – so the fertility is tinged with the hunt; Diana bounding, bow in hand, hounds baying under the ivory moon. It is the darkness of savagery – common to both Kull and Brule – rather than the obscene darkness that hides behind the masks of the languid smile. Such was Kamula, the city of pleasure in Black Abyss.

The scent of rare incense filled the air from hanging censers of silver openwork and all about lay evidence of a high culture gone lax and soft, degenerate, weak, hovering on the brink of decay. (page 54)

Kamula’s is a serpentine palace of

undulating, curving halls wherein were niched alabaster statuary and great jade urns of flowers

where “even the men stank of perfume”. At least Brule feels free to spit on the “rose-strewn marble flags” as at an honest banqueting hall. But the blackness at the core of Kamula holds more than a trace of The Shadow Kingdom, where the phrase is spoken,

“The – snake – that – speaks”

There is a hellish intelligence glinting behind serpentine eyes, and what Kull and Brule stumble on in Kamula is the sad spectacle of insane joy at such macabre worship.

For they stumble on the apparently fey nobility disrobed and capering in “loathsome obscene joy”. The longueur and seemingly civilized veneer of Kamula bears more than a semblance of Euripides - Hyborian Bridge 62/2.

Taligaro, the pampered, silken, languid poet.. crouched like an animal, naked, slimed with sweat, piping like a mad bacchante, grovelling before a heathen altar!  (page 59)

And the naked dancing girl, Zareta is worshipping nothing more than a monstrous, oozing worm which seems to hold the spark of inhuman intellect in its appalling orbs.

Unlike the cities of the south, luxury-loving Kamula seems to have no military code and is steeped in a slumber almost akin to death. This merely hides a Dionysian reality of inhuman lust.

The disrobed nobles are easy prey to the “luxury-despising primitive” Brule – and blood spurts. From that one grasps the divide between the darkness of savagery – blood – and the inhuman worship of darkness.

While the dancing girl Zareta whirls in nude rapture, Kull’s blood is stirred. But when he sees what writhes on the altar his blood is stirred in another way.

This is the savage fertility of moral action. The girl is not always an innocent, and the athletic darkness of the hero must strike with moral force. The savage fertility of Man the hunter is his protection against the forces of necromancy and inhuman, serpentine intellect.

What I mean is there is really a feminine aspect to this, and woman is the object of fertility. As I’ve been trying to suggest, the dainty aspects of nature are frequently found in Howard’s prose; the strong and the dainty are often found together – as in By This Axe I Rule (prev.)

Unlike Kamula where longueur reigns, the dainty sights of nature are bright and bold and speak of gay girls dancing with sprightly abandon – to no devil-tune.

The female side, at one level Daphne - sweet repose - at another Diana - blood and sweat – are an aspect of Howard that combats the overly masculine stereotype.

Illustrations are a good example of what I mean by that.

 

The Achilleos cover has strong curves, the bronzed shoulder-armor, and just the shaft of the axe to break-up the curves of shields and limbs. It has a heroic aesthetic of limber grace harking to Frank Frazetta, who is known for his lissom beauties. It is masculine and feminine together.

Of course, BWS is known for his curvaceous lines.

 

As a counter-example, I came across Conan and Kull artist Jason Sweet.

 

Which I would term masculine and photo-realistic, rather than the line which moves with grace and abandon.

Hyborian Bridge 100

The Kull story which most hints at archaic reptilian forces that once ruled men is The Shadow Kingdom. In it – very typically – the savage clean-limbed body, here of Kull and Brule, is set against the sky-soaring antiquity of a city young only when Atlantis was yet to be born.

Valusia is fading, decadent yet still with the power of ages. The unholy scale (unintentional pun) of the degeneracy becomes known to ambassador Ka-nu of the Picts, and Brule is dispatched to lead Kull a merry chase through the serpentine layers of the palace.

Though in past ages serpent men had taken the shape of kings, now only the decadent depths of the palace itself keeps them from the sight of men, and it is into this labyrinth Brule leads Kull.

The ancient, slithering spine is hard to kill, and it is kept alive by the sinuous uncertainty of the palace itself. The slitherers weave in and out of the stonework itself, through treacherous tunnels. They are hard to kill since the spine is just the primitive unconscious of Man that does not even need a body, that undulates with sickening ease.

The sickening sexuality of these archaic people is somewhat similar to the physical boredom of Modern Man, whereby the (sexual) physique and the numerical head become one (see prev.) This is really our hygienic order, whereby the head is the tool of smart-machines and houses. Dyson, Musk, Bezos are the serpents in plain sight!

In the palace of Valusia, the serpent men must be hidden because the palace has a mythical darkness that is built for clean-limbed bodies dancing to the tune of time.

Kull seems to have a mild disdain for the conventional dances of the social calendar that frequent the halls of his domain, but is a pleasing human whirl of artifice amid the dust-strewn halls. The vast palace has probably only a few clean areas and the patina of age and sweat peppers the corridors.

What I really mean is a palace is a living thing of stone, wood – and gardens. Kull at one point leans over the sill onto the inner courtyard.

The moon had not risen when Kull, hand to hilt, stepped to a window. The windows opened upon the great inner gardens of the royal palace, and the breezes of the night, bearing the scents of spice trees, blew the filmy curtains about. The king looked out. The walks and groves were deserted; carefully trimmed trees were bulky shadows; fountains near by flung their slender sheen of silver in the starlight and distant fountains rippled steadily. No guards walked those gardens, for so closely were the outer walls guarded that it seemed impossible for any invader to gain access to them.

Vines curled up the walls of the palace, and even as Kull mused upon the ease with which they might be climbed, a segment of shadow detached itself from the darkness

 

It is really the decadent dinginess of the palace that maintains it as fit for a savage king and the thronging dances in musty halls with billowing tapestries and drapes for windows where breezes idly eddy.

Eddy from the garden below, since this is a living palace with the currents of life through it. Kull, through the story, has an eerie sense of unreality or a dream; is it this age-old patina and dark fertility of Daphne?

DAPHNE

The human myth is born of sweat and the body, the agile lustiness, the throb of the dance, the swirling sweep of the blade. Honed athletic grace is what keeps the serpent at bay; the spine may be ancient, but the body is human. A moral action, a harmonic performance.

Kull #9 © Marvel 1973

In the modern order one can have a head without being human (in that sense). It is the hygiene of the snake (in human guise). Darkness and fertility are the mythical aspects of the body that protect it from slithering peril.

The physical action and grace of the body in places of power, the wild groves, the hunt, the kill in order to survive.. these are our mythic heritage.

This is why I say Jean-Luc Godard has much to say to the Howard mythos (see Made In USA prev.) This is why esoteric European lore is still germaine in the 21^st century, for it is still the4 century of age-old patina. That can only change if “they” (the serpents among men) win.

Pictorial 90

So she did not hear the light footfall nor see the tall broad-shouldered man who came out of the bushes and stood above her. She was not aware of his presence until he knelt and lifted her, wiping her eyes with hands as gentle as a woman’s.

The little slave girl looked into a dark immobile face, with cold narrow grey eyes which just now were strangely soft.

This is the start of chapter 3 of By This Axe I Rule. Of course, the slave girl isn’t wrong as by the end of chapter 4 the savage call of blood will have turned Kull into the personification of battle.

But Howard is not one to say nature is dark and fearsome with no respite. There is always respite by the silent brooks of Valusia’s sun-dappled forests. The dainty flower – like the little slave girl – has its place and all is not stern and sombre.

In typical romantic fashion, sombreness stalks the heaths and moors, the red-wood forests, the fir-clad slopes. Nature in her frivolous gaiety cares not one wit for the doings of Man. 

Nature is the carefree dancer and the golden bull of dangerous ferocity. Both – like Dionysus the half-moon horned god.

Selene, mother of Dionysus

To the Greeks of Alexander the Great, Dionysus was “the god of the orient”, and the companion to the golden Agni, the bull of Shiva. In the Rigveda, Rudra-Shiva represents the fierce, destructive storms; Shiva the placid rains that farmers yearn for.

Rudra is the red Siva. There is also Shiva Atalas (or Atlantis) of the destroyed, submerged continent.

ATLANTIS MAGNA

Now I’ll hold my horses! You think I’ve gone all far-right/esoteric on you, I can hear it in your thoughts. It’s like this..

I did some reading online and see there is material on all the above – plus a lot more. This is not a route I’m taking, and the reason is..

Parvulesco is a writer and inventor of myth; Howard is a fantasist myth-maker. Both write compellingly and with fantastic conviction. To me, that is what counts: the force and blood-minded determination of the writer, and his creations.

Scholarship alone can lead to weakness; a verbal trap. World myths may be connected, but the complexity is such it’s for others to say. What I know is that myths tell essential truths that Modern Man seems to no longer be aware of.

The reason for that seems to be that the head becomes a tool of physical boredom; the numerical and the sexual become one (see prev.)

Whether you agree with that or not, our physical condition in the modern state is worrying. We exist in the material world, whereas ancient philosophy consists of Brahma (creator), Vishnu (preserver), Shiva (destroyer).

The Greeks were somewhat similar, with the reckless, bull-like Dionysus (Rudra-Shiva) and Apollo (light-bearer/creator). See Hyborian Bridge 62/2 Euripides’ The Bacchae.

Myths are stories that Man tells of nature. Where you have creation (sun/Brahman) there must also be destruction (Dionysus, Rudra). Destruction is a form of decay, and it brings with it new-shoots. The cycle continues.

This cycle is an Earth-myth, the red-brown earth which fertilizes all living things. Whereas we live almost in the eternal present of Alphaville, where most things are new and futurist, the Earth-myth is left to develop as it will.

In nature this often takes the shape of symbiosis, whereby fungi grow on trees and rotten trunks, vines on branches. Something which is left alone, like an old country house or cabin in the woods, develops a rustic patina which is the visible presence of decay. Things grow on walls, wood develops red, rusty shades; musty ochres of uncertain lineage.

This is Howard’s world of ancient elder-places; but it’s also an abandoned Southern estate or an old Texan ranch with musty stone walls and dark ochre stockade.

Mordecai House, North Carolina 

There is a lot missing in the modern world that is in this presence of destruction that is simply the patina of decay that things develop over time. Destruction is the red bull of Agni; the uncertain donkey of Dionysus.

The presence of shambles in amongst the order that tells you this is a living presence that has strength over time, that is not simply carbon fibre alloy.

The red bull of Agni and the donkey of Dionysus are what is missing in a material order where the head is merely a tool of physical boredom, existing in numerical smart-houses (head) and sexuality (physique).

The nothingness of this existence is that it is neither creation nor destruction, but simply a material order run by the likes of Dyson (cleaning), Musk (travelling), Bezos (buying). You might say you have to clean, travel and buy? Yes, but you have to live and die rather than merely exist to do these things. Creation, preservation, destruction.

These so-called esoteric themes are no stranger to Kull, of Atlantis.

“I Thought You a Human Tiger!”. 

A cool wind whispered through the green woodlands. A silver thread of a brook wound among great tree boles, whence hung large vines and gayly festooned creepers. A bird sang and the soft late summer sunlight was sifted through the interlocking branches to fall in gold and black velvet patterns of shade and light on the grass-covered earth.

No stranger to the hunter, the trapper, men of the wild places. Of places of power; of dirt and cleanliness. To adventurers of the introspective “Invisible Empire”. Age, patina, myth, darkness, fertility, Daphne of the laurel (Tales of Faith 5).

Pictorial 89

Destruction, vengeance; corroded textures, primal color. Godard’s 60s opus has that in common with the eschatological epics of pan-European mystic Jean Parvulesco (prev.)
To Parvu, the dawning of the cosmopolitan Age of Aquarius is a moral inferno that the forces of the Red-Brown Shiva are fighting in an occult battle that has been going on – probably since about 1770.

These are the red-brown, burnt ochre forces of Atlantis to whom destruction of the material illusion ushers in being. The eternal Tantric self.

What is self but the ephemeral being that materialism attempts to wipe out; that Godard’s films capture with deft magic? The ephemeral in line and movement, music and magic, captured for all eternity.

 

Parvu’s books are waxed in esoteric lore; to wit:

The agents of the Inner Continent are awake. In the night sky of out repulsive civilization appears the magic star heralding the imminent transformation of the Inner into Outer. This is the star of the Invisible Empire.

(any relation to The Plumed Serpent is coincidental!) Could this magic star be feminine? The red-brown is Shiva, Tantric deity of the Hindu, whose other self is Shakti. The two are one indivisible self, and Shakti simply the female personified.

 

Parvu – somewhat like Howard – invents his cosmogony by taking what exists in Indo-European lore, and adapting it to a world view where the mystical is much closer to the surface. In The Plumed Serpent (rev) this mystery is ordained by the low, throbbing drum; the symbol of Quetzalcoatl; and by the green-clad Katie as the goddess Malintzi, bride of the living Huitzilopochtli.

Without the female principle – even as the blessed Mary reclining on the white moon – the melody that marks the universe is gone. In Godard’s movies this is always quite clear, as the technical tricks he pulls are often at the service of the higher poetry of love in a universe of danger.

ALPHAVILLE

Karina, as Paula Nelson, references this in Made In USA, where she say

We are living in an old part of the universe where nothing happens, while elsewhere galaxies are being created by explosions.

Even the squawk-box, a reel-to-reel recorder emitting a metallic voice, seems to resemble the circular motif of Alpha 60. This is maleness, or the world without melody (where we live).

The feminine principle is the begetter of life; the womb is the moon. Diana the huntress; blood and destruction.

What happens in the womb is a priori all that happens in the world of men. All is stillmess and gentle sounds of ambient presence, somewhat like a Dutch interior!

Stillness is a quality lacking in modernity, since it speaks of Inner movement. This Inner life has a harmonic akin to the sphere. After all, how can something develop into a distinct personality unless the entire process is harmonised?

The Inner is therefore the very opposite of Darwinian competition. And yet if, as Parvu says, the Inner shall become the Outer, this harmonic can also become visible in the world (again).

All this is quite visible in Godard’s 60s films. If you noticed in the clip of Karina in Made In USA there was a percussive rhythm that was arbitrarily tied to the flick of her head. The melodic grace of woman as a technical trick.

Both in Godard are equally important. Neither dominates in the moral sphere. Only when one dominates – as in the metallic squawk-box – is there a negative factor.

That is the world we live in; a negative factor, an anti-life of technical tricks tied to the male and his numerical fixation (of physical boredom); the numerical and the sexual are one.

Only physical strength can free us of this; but where is physical strength produced? Only in the womb of woman. She is melody and harmony; she knows not abstract competition.

Physical strength is a moral right, and it is tied to the feminine principle. In America, the men and women with guns in Richmond, Virginia (capital of the Confederation) are asserting a moral right of strength. A commune that defends itself is composed equally of men and women.

Thus does the feminine principle carry a harmonic that is tied to the moon; blood and the womb; the hunt and destruction to preserve life. In Made In USA Paula has to kill to survive; I'd stay alive at any price..

In old Dutch paintings the harmonic principle is visible, and women are sturdy and strong. The same would be so of a Puritan settlement.

Howard’s Hyboria too harbours the feminine principle of harmony, in the proportions of the city-state, the principle of feuding to preserve one’s space. It is in the feminine principle, the red-brown ochre of destruction, that is the mythical key that one can see in the films of Godard, the writings of Parvu, the painting of Pieter de Hooch; in Richmond and in Hyboria.

Pictorial 88

Onward to the next 60s Godard film on my list, Made in USA. Again, ambiance figures very highly; there is charming Japanese guitar song (Kyoko Kosaka), walks round patios and garden-shrubbery; the ubiquitous swimming-pool/fitness routines (from the Alphaville massacre); a long sequence in a garage featuring an old-fashioned squawk-box playing polemical left-wing recordings.

There is a type of beauty about that; why is ancient technology often beautiful? Maybe m,ainly owing to the materials – metal, wood – and the visible mechanics? Set against gay shrubbery and shambolic walkways plastered with fabulous French posters, it has a rare beauty.

MADE IN USA

You tend to forget you’re watching a thriller, though at least Leaud – from Masculin, Feminin – is shot by the vengeful Karina in a trenchcoat as Paula Nelson in “Atlantic City”.

FAITHFULL

Godard is spawn of practically European nobility, while Marianne Faithfull is close the Austro-Hungarian Hapsburgs (and Jewry), so you could say they have that almost a far-right connection! The film’s content – what there is of it – is almost a spoof of communist idealism, via the squawk-box. Godard is friendly with Romanian-born pan-European mystic Jean Parvulesco, whose cameo in Breathless left him with a lifetime ban from entering the US (your loss!)

On the DVD, Karina is interviewed (just deceased, so RIP) and comments that Godard’s (whom she was then married to) “genius” for spontaneity was totally invented and was only an appearance. This reminded me of Grace Slick’s comments on rehearsal (Hyborian Bridge 67). It’s also Bruce Lee’s dichotomy between routines and expression; one is practiced, the other is unthought and instant.

If, in fact, there is a cosmic harmonic it is liable to have a spontaneity akin to music. Godard dislikes what he sometimes referred to as the American/Jewish predilection for words, over action that is unscripted. He likes the populist American gangster/noir action and style.

MWK,

Margo Lane and Lamont Cranston

Kull has a quote in By This Axe I Rule that the minstrel’s music would outlive his rule. The magic of the musical feel of BWS’s The Song of Red Sonja (#24) I’ve previously alluded to. The feel of figures serenading through ornamental city gardens is quite similar to the feel of Made In USA

Hyborian Bridge 91

Line, movement, dance, the medieval minstrel that is Faithfull (well, she has that air!) There’s no boredom in Godard, there is too much of sound or color or movement going on for that, even if the plot is, like, somewhere else entirely. He almost staples the ephemeral to the wall for all eternity.

Boredom would be a lifetime of words and nothing ephemeral atall – modernity. Put another way, where the head plans everything and bodies just go through the motions. The genius of Godard is that the ephemeral is made to seem permanent. As in a garden the bees pollinate the flowers without much thought. The spontaneity of nature is simply instinct, after all. Nothing is purely random; animals and plants are very well engineered for their use. Such is a Godard film.

If modern Man lives in the head, so much more so is the transhumanism of those like Michael Anissimov (prev.) They are the true heirs apparent of Newton, for whom the brain becomes the body.

They seek immortality, which can only mean the survival of the brain (electro-impulses) in some other form of body. Where brain and body are one, the numerical and the sexual also become one, as the psychotic tools of AI (Hyborian Bridge 99).

They seem to think of themselves as the saviours of humanity but it’s like the serpent race as a whole; the downsides are too great. Their perennial optimism hides a sexual lust that is born of physical boredom, the opposite of rugged romance.

Romance has a dark side that is nothing less than the cyclical destruction (by the primeval serpent) of the body in the harmonic cosmos. By seeking to do without destruction, transhumans kill music and myth (which in Alphaville win the day).

The strength that is ours illuminates the present through the past; we are not prey to Pied Pipers of futurist brains that claim the body as the tool of their devious lust; because the physique can’t be denied, the ego perpetuates the compulsive behaviour of physical boredom that confuses the numerical with the sexual.

Strength is in the romantic sense that the ephemeral is true and the stuff of myth. Not blind optimism, but true to the strong arm of righteous action. True to the maiden with whiskey in one hand; to various hardware in adventurous terrain; to the harmonic cosmos which harbours the primeval serpent of destruction.

No lust born of physical boredom; no weakness born of illusion.

MISSILE

Pictorial 87

Starting with the obvious question from Pictorial 86, exactly what is wrong with the micro-surgery med-tech Baltimore robocorp Galen? Nothing’s wrong with it – that’s the whole problem! What it does it does well.

It’s like saying, “what’s wrong with DNA?” Nothing, it does its job well, almost perfectly. Modern products are pretty perfect – that’s why it’s such a struggle working out what is wrong with the system.. a Dyson hoover, a Musk Tesla..

They’re good and they do what they should, and one of the reasons is that they exist in a hygienic environment of design and manufacture. This environment is born of physical boredom which feeds the ego through “the mirror of nothingness” (or dragonfeed).

What I’m really saying is, DNA may be perfection PLC, but it’s not reality. It could only be reality if we lived in a world of data, but that world would be an illusion.

Why? Well, because data is the dragon the ego feeds off. It is physical boredom. A world of physical boredom is weak. The physique cannot be denied, and data feeds into sexual fantasies and psychoses (see Hyborian Bridge 99 reason applied to pleasure).

This world is hygienic, born of weakness. It has no ambiance and so is dull, prey to phantasms of the mind. Strength is dirt and cleanliness. The body conquers through strength what weakness invites (the dragon of ego-lust).

The real problem is the world of the dragon (screens) is very convincing to the ego (of the acolyte) through “the mirror of nothingness”. You remember in Milius’s Conan (1982) there is “the riddle of steel”? It’s a very interesting riddle, and there may be more than one answer but, from the perspective of what I’ve been writing about for awhile, Man is known as the tool maker.

The plot has Conan’s father forging the sword and telling him, “This you can trust.” Later on, Thulsa Doom says, “Flesh is strong” (meaning steel is weak). Then, as the end, Conan is under Thulsa Doom’s hypnotic spell, he sways, lost and faraway, then sees in his hand his father’s sword, and suddenly strikes!

In a primitive way, he could have just seen that, “This is my sword in my strong arm – it is there to kill my enemies.” His mind was cleared of illusion and he struck.

The riddle could be saying, trust the strength of your arm, your flesh, but not your head which is also flesh. The world is deceitful and this sword will slice through illusions. So, it’s not necessarily about a struggle (Howard) or the will (Nietzsche) as about the head (brain) versus the body (brawn). As a side-issue, 2001 has Bowman while Apollo 11 had Armstrong (both Scottish border names from the medieval battlefields).

Now, in order for that to hold water, head and body have to be separate, distinct entities. When Thulsa says, “Flesh is strong”, he may have meant the flesh of his head – his hypnotic powers of suggestion (as a side-issue, Milius could have made Thulsa more obviously magical and Howardesque.) By turning away from steel he is moving into the flesh of his head – not his body.

But that equation doesn’t hold if head (brain) and body become one, as in Blake’s print of Newton.

Pictorial 59

One way to look at this print is that the body of Man (Newton) becomes the tool of his brain. Man becomes his tool; the two become one.

“Tool” in this context has a very wide meaning, ranging from anything numerical (used in industrial processes – meaning everything AI) to the sexual (Hyborian Bridge 99.) In other words, the mixing of brain and body creates a confusion between the two (see Grace Slick quote Hyborian Bridge 62/1).

One question you might ask is why might this be happening now rather than in 1770? Probably because we live in an accelerating future

In Newton’s day none of this would be visible; it would all be the height of decorum. As Grace Slick says, the 1770s, in terms of artefacts is much more enduring and authentic than the Nokia fabrication.

Hyborian Bridge 61/2

The end-product of Newton is that Man becomes the tool of AI (note also that in 2001 a bone becomes a spaceship powered by AI). The way out of that sorcerous land of illusions is through sweat, dirt and dance; and the way into a psyche of the flesh, blood and bone. The psyche arises from the physical strength of blood and bone. This is quite a pulp scenario. The adventurers of The Eye of Zeitoon (prev) have an almost mercenary moral code of guns and cartridges and military hardware. Alongside it they have an Apollonian vision of rugged freedom (Zeitoon), and romantic Dionysian urges of man and woman riding into wild terrain, campfire glory.

The physical strength lets in romantic traits that exist in the harmonic cosmos (could we but see it!) This is the cosmos of the strong arm that is distinct from the head (that can be fed illusions; the dragon or “mirror of nothingness”). Of dirt and sweat and dance; flesh, blood and bone.

So, the 60s may have been a time when the harmonic was more visible to men and women of dirt and dance. Also, I suppose Jean-Luc Godard, whose Alphaville (65) has a future Paris run by AI, which eventually succumbs to a riddle posed by the man of myth, PI Lemmy Caution.

ALPHAVILLE (this is Alpha 60 degenerating)

Pictorial 86

In the “unreal dream world” of plants, animals and Man the adventurer, things co-exist side-by-side with a tacit acceptance and no real order. The body is strength that conquers through sweat, dirt and dance. Conquers in a type of coincidental harmony of half-abandoned streets, fields, homesteads and hamlets.

As it says in Americana  “a ragtaggle showcase of corporate logos, a veritable shambles with a vaguely rustic appearance. You can just imagine Dogpatch round the bend of the sloway”.

So, OK, one can’t live in the 30s all the time and competitive industry can co-exist side-by-side with commune (as at Motown). It’s not that I’m a Luddite but nowadays when industry spreads, it is spreading by-and-large through “the mirror of nothingness”.

Vis Trump’s Opportunity Zones; here’s a typical photo; Galen Robotics, Baltimore. The image of physical boredom, reptile eyes gleaming. A life of straight lines and death to primitive urges of the psyche (of flesh, blood and living bone).

These are industries that are attracted by having tax breaks and investment to abandoned districts. All you are seeing is screens, since that’s what most new industry is. Opportunity Zone in effect means the spread of Silicon Valley. What’s my exact gripe?

That abandonment can have a naïve harmonic that is part of its charm. Once they become “joined up” by development that is essentially of one type, in comes order and out goes coincidental harmony.

Opportunity is always going to follow “the mirror of nothingness” because that is the dragon that attaches to the ego of sorcerers of straight lines. The American Dream is an interior dream built of urges and visions that produce the indefatigable images found in pulps and comics. It is a magic land where ambiance reigns and order does not. It is the land of poetry from Walt Whitman to Little Nemo in Slumberland, an eccentric mix of Dionysian urges and Apollonian visions.

Such images speak of life and can conquer death; the death-wish of lack of awareness that comes with the dragonfeed of news that kills the interior life; dreamlike images, desires and urges of the psyche; images that are part of the American meta-culture of bison and eagles and 20s art-deco skyscrapers.

A meta-culture is not completely real; Americana mentions Planetary with its weird pulp pre-history of 20^th century events. As I tend to say, datafeeds – dragonfeeds – are convincing to the ego because they are born of physical boredom. The reality we live in is a product of boredom.

In other words, boredom seems real, and the American meta-culture of iconic dream images seems unreal. The sense that the mythic or unreal have a tenacious hold on the psyche is a prominent theme of Jean-Luc Godard’s 60s films, and I recently watched Masculin, Feminin, probably his most UIS-satirical piece: “The children of Marx and Coca-Cola”.

Through his 60s films, Godard seems to be struggling with the reality of the psyche verus the visible, material reality of brash capitalist mores. There is always a death; in Le Mepris Camille and Prokosch are killed by a truck; in Weekend Roland is killed by the cannibals and eaten by Corrine; in Masculin, Feminin Godard himself is shot be a jealous woman.

Partly, it’s playing to the tropes of gangster films, to show that the films are also about filming. Again, there is that unreality; yet Masculin, Feminin is probably his most ambient filmj and steeped in the Parisian noises, glare, majestic arcades, light and sound in constant motion.

MASCULIN FEMININ

Filmed in 66 – 50 years gone – my overriding impression was that the reality on display is actually the ambiance that does not show the hand of government or revolution, that just is (somewhat akin to Breathless).

It’s also the reality of line, movement, dance – of which there some – and pop as Chantal Goya was a ye-ye girl. What there is never a sign of is hygiene (in one scene, Paul is about to go to the lavatory, and brushes a flea off his crotch).

There is a certain lewdness, with a hustler and an irate German, breast jokes. All of this hints at a magic that 50 years later has all but gone. Vis, the idea that dirt and ambiance conquer through strength the dragon (of ego-lust and datafeed) that weakness invites. Into a hygienic reality of newsfeeds that convinces the ego of illusions of fact born of physical boredom and shorn of psychic urges. The dream dies; the fact lives.

This illusory world is now hosted by the ubiquitous screens (electro-impulses). As a side-issue: why is it that iphone photos don’t make the grade? Because they can only photograph what is there, which is lack of ambiance and lack of dirt!

Godard’s 60s films are dirty, cool and ambient chic in ways that indicate what has truly been lost in the intervening years to an order of straight lines that cages the interior world of urges, dreams, visions.

Pictorial 85

Data, because it appeals to the compulsive ego (of the head) which worships the primeval serpent through “the mirror of nothingness” – lines of light, reflections on screens – dominates through the sorcery of information.

Maga’s dance

A dance appeals to worshippers of the graceful body in motion and, in Talbot Mundy’s tale, in places of disgraceful ambiance. Ambiance again has to have a numerical relationship that is the opposite of data, to do with harmonic correspondences that occur spontaneously or by chance. Dark wooden roof beams; Persian carpets; horse dung; ivory limbs; low wooden –frame chandeliers; stray whisps of mountain eddies.

The problem with modernity – see Tales of Faith 2 – is that, while DNA can save your life, it can’t give meaning to living. Meaning does not come from data, but from proportions. It’s not Euclid but Pythagoras. The lie is born of reason ($) applied to pleasure for effect (HB99). The eternal sunshine of lifestyle and wellness (sic) that lives with lines of light (electro-impulses).

Those who worship their own image in all its abysmal mortality. Theirs is the death of the awareness of death as they become one with the machine of “effect”. Such is data, the death of awareness.

A dance – the wild gypsy dance of Maga – is line and movement in a harmonic that speaks in the language of the rafters. At once as abandoned as the wind and as strong as an oak.

Whereas data is born of the head which is one with the machine, a dance is born of the body that is one with the wind. The blind unthinking wind that cares not what Man does; that leads into wildness and abandon (Crom’s mountain).

It is the physical reality that carries an emmanance of psyche; that is one with the soil of the earth and the beasts of the fields. It is the physical adventure of bucolic life where line and movement hold sway in the ambient terrain..

..of the cosmos. The harmonics of the spheres are echoed by those of the body. Data is the compulsion of the sorcerer of the head that is physical boredom and hence death of awareness; death of the body. Dance is line and movement that echoes that of the stars and hence the harmonic awareness of the ambient cosmos.

Well, this leads naturally to Joan Armatrading! Here, her whole expression is harmonic, in the pose, the poise in cotton-picking costume, the cherubic countenance, the lack of effort.. as opposed to the strangled accuracy of moderns

BABY I (18 mins in)

The sorcerers steal our awareness because there is nothing without line and movement. All is a lie that deceives through the sorcery of information, born of physical boredom that compels the ego to worship the primeval serpent. The dance dies as reason is applied to pleasure for the sake of “effect”. Seen through “the mirror of nothingness” (Hyborian Bridge 20) – lines of light, reflections on screens, electro-chemical impulses.

With ambiance comes dirt and the aura of decay, of the lifecycles that bear fruit (literally!) We are heirs to Dionysus and not to the false Apollo; why be mental slaves to a sorcery of information while holding no sway over the fields and groves that bear Dionysian fruit? 

 

Humans can apply reason when it suits them, not at the expense of their own non-progressive origins which are physical and strong, psychically pure, no slave to dragonspawn of inhuman lust, profane hygiene. Dirt and ambience conquer through strength what human weakness invites through psychosis.

A dance can conquer with starborn strength the very presence of death that stalks a land. The zest for life can conquer the presence of death. All is strength, all is line and movement in the adventure that can only be killed by inward-turning lies of the sorcerers of psychotic data of the mind, the mind that sees through “the mirror of nothingness”.

Aristocratic hunting party on Scottish moors, circa ? Collection of Murray MacKinnon.

Unthinking acts and cosmic harmony of Man, animal, plant.