Pictorial 98

Mr Howard’s Son weaves a droll bit of Western tomfoolery around the legend of the James brothers. Here, Bob Ford buttonholes Rio while his brother Charley waits. Later..

 

Frank James survived the numerous sprees, and wasn’t averse to quote Shakespeare and Francis Bacon (The Old West Gunfighters, TimeLife, 1974 page 56)

 

(Page 87)

Wildey is clearly an admirer, and portrays Jesse almost like A Marvel superhero (having started his career drawing Atlas westerns). I’ll get back to Wildey’s plot presently, but Frank’s espousal of Bacon caught my eye.

As previously noted, The New Atlantis is the basis of all later scientific methodology involving gathering data (facts) from the natural world, and conducting experiments. In a way, this process of induction has been vastly profitable (eg Newton’s optics.)

What exactly is wrong about it was foreseen by Bacon’s 4 Idols (Tales of Faith 10.) “The Idol of the Den” being the type of mind that correlates facts. With Newton’s optics, science enters a world of appearance (Apollo) – as opposed to reality.

That is the world we are in, where appearances are highly convincing to the ego, but also illusory. What is missing is the physical substance, consisting of line and movement. This is the world cartoonists like Wildey explore with atmospheric grace.

Cartooning explores line and movement – ie action – while appearance is just accuracy. Hence, The Idol of the Den – appearance – convinces a certain type of mind that is numerical and egotistical. This is where methodology has brought us.

Again, as stated in P93, the movements of the moon and the spin of the Earth are actions that take away the dominance of the sun (light) by having the moon as the equal-and-opposite partner. While the sun is straight lines (perspective), sun and moon combined are the symmetry of movement. In a world of facts, symmetry can be ignored since it basically isn’t part of the experiment.

So, for example, DNA is “fact” but not the symmetry of the body. The Japanese animated face (P96) is not a whole body. “The Idol of the Den” – or a certain type of mind – is convinced of these “facts”. Meanwhile, the symmetries of the body are ignored. By that I mean up-down, left-right, back-front – see Weird 11 “The Enchantment”.

Facts are often things which have no symmetrical basis in the world, but are numerical and therefore convincing. The whole of economics, as well as DNA, algorithms and so on. The problem is that symmetry is probably a-priori to fact. All atoms have symmetrical orbits; galaxies are spiral. A human body above all has a back and a front; a top and a bottom; a left and a right.

From this comes meaning and power – for details see W11 above. So a world of facts (The Idol of the Den) is highly convincing and numerical, but with no intrinsic symmetries. In a sense it is null and void – hence the metaphor from P97. Meaning and power are derived from manhood and maidenhood and strong symmetries. The universe is sexual while the world of facts is asexual; the universe is active while the world of facts is inert.

This seems to relate to the entire “industry” of green. Buffy Saint-Marie’s motto HB70 (link to Andrea Warner) of drying things out, making fires of dried buffalo manure, is a process of disorder that changes something into a useful product. The appearance is changed through the process of drying.

This happens a lot in nature so that useless things are changed to useful ones. In nature, appearances change through processes of decay and renewal (action). That is a good description of “green” yet it is exactly the opposite of what “they” mean. Usually they mean hygienic tidiness and the use of electricity for travel. But electricity – P97 – is not green! It is expressionless light that cannot be burned as wood can.

What “they” say is that electricity is green, while wood-burning is not, but the reverse is true. Electricity simply creates a world that is null and void, that has no physical substance, that is just light (electromagnetism).

This world is numerical (algorithms), whereby the numerical and the sexual become one through physical boredom (the Japanese animated head). It’s not green; it’s psychically dead, psychotic.

A green world is an active one where Man is free to work among trees, to make log cabins and log fires. This world has symmetries that place Man in a landscape of sky-Earth, day-night. The world of symmetries is much simpler than a numerical/electrical one. They’re trying to persuade us that black is white, but the reality is that a forest is a forest and some things never change.

Trees have roots and they aspire to the sky. It’s simple and true rather than complicated and false.

(page 66)

Woodsmoke is a physical substance that has line and movement and that impinges on our psyche as we gaze into its depths (P96). The romance of such an image is intrinsically outdoor and active. It is the body as a symmetrical construct of nature in a milieu that supplies story and myth.

What “they” offer is “the mirror of nothingness” (electromagnetism); appearance without the meaning or power of a world of physical substance.

Pictorial 97

Man has gazed into the flickering flames of the campfire for thousands of years (The Norse Shaman prev.) The rapid combination of shadow and flame acts on the visual apparatus of the neural cortex to induce dreamlike states.

The same holds of the flickering flames of candle-lit medieval halls. Man’s old and fierce friend fire has fed his dreams as well as his belly since the dawn of prehistory.

 

Does that mean that Man’s dreams came to a stumbling stop with the invention of electric bulbs in about 1880 by Edison? Certainly after that period dullsville entered Man’s life in the shape of industrial products – not to mention industrial warfare.

 

Doug Wildey’s Rio is set round about that time, when frontier towns were the crucible of in industrial advances that were fated to tame the West and drive (pun?) the cowboy off the plains. Just at this time, halls are still lit by flickering wicks, and seemingly the only electrical appliance is the telegraph.

 

Wildey’s artwork is highly atmospheric – somewhat indebted to Caniff – and his linework conveys the shimmering shadowy disorder of the times

 

The ruffians of a border stronghold in riotous mood

The fact that undulating, shadowy line creates a sense of reality is quite germaine to the idea that an electrical universe – the one we now inhabit – is a factual illusion.

As was said back in HB75 facts or precise data are one side of the universe (like DNA). The other side is the experience of undulating lines in our bodies, in the landscape. Line and movement are explored in cartooning; the reality of expression that has a serpentine, primitive rhythm HB91

Another form of this line is the hazy shadow and flame of a log fire. A line that is expressive in that sense is not electrical. This argument is slightly muddied by music, since a musical line of an electric guitar expresses the movements of the fingers of the person playing it.

A lot of the sounds we hear electrically are non-electronic. Similarly, a lot of the sights we see are au naturelle. So, what I’m really saying is electricity is an illusion; the reality is the organic line that has musical expression.

Electricity can only copy this accurately, but is itself expressionless. This points to the fact there is no line in an expressionless world of light; this affects our psyche badly, starting from about 1880 with Edison’s invention of the electric bulb.

This brings in a very interesting question, since we are told now that electricity is a “green future” (eg by the small Swede). However, psychically-speaking, electricity is null and void only able to copy (or repeat) organic sights and sounds.

If we live in a reality of constant electrical copying, it should be obvious from that that electromagnetism is not the reality, only what it is copying (the organic). However, that is not what we are told. We are actually told that computer algorithms can approach the organic. This is the biggest lie of all time since that side of reality (the factual) has no expression.

The only thing it can do is copy (repeat). For example, the Japanese animated face (P96) is an accurate copy of an organic face. The fact that we see it as expressive is just an illusion; the face has no soul, it is null and void. You could say, “but the face can express a story”; right – so the story is real, otherwise it is “the mirror of nothingness”. Stories are inventions that relate to reality; they can’t be switched off like a machine (on/off, ones and zeros). That’s all you are seeing.

a rugged story

An algorithm is a numerical construction, but the numerical and the sexual become one through physical boredom (see prev.) That is what that face represents; the prototype of a robot sex-toy. It’s as meaningless as that because there is no actual physical content in an electronic construction. Our destiny as humans is physical, which means blood and death and restoration through decay and rebirth.

This physical reality impinges on the deep psyche of Man in our relation with the cosmos (P97) Meaning can only come from physical substance that deeply connects to the psyche, and not from electrical copies. Repeats that are basically immaterial.

One way to put it is that the electronic universe is essentially anal, or a mere hole. In Weekend, Jean-Luc Godard’s 1967 satire of capital, the passion for consumer goods is related to the anus, or

The sexual organ that does not recognize gender. (Speaking About Godard, page 87)

The male figures inWeekend, cling to their illusions of mastery.

Hence, Roland ends up being killed, cooked and eaten by the hippy cannibals, and his ex, Corrine (HB75) In the film, Roland is the sacrificial male who clings to his illusions, that the male is dominant in the capitalist world of consumer goods. That could be the traditional or Freudian view, but Godard subverts it (at one point “Anal Ysis”) appears on screen, to make the point clear).

The problem with the modern world is that “order and method” – the masculine virtues – are applied to consumer goods which are essentially null and void. They have no physical substance and are in fact disposable – as Weekend implies with the famous traffic jam and abandoned cars

WEEKEND

Only physical reality can have psychic meaning – and, actually, sexual meaning. Physical reality has the serpent’s line of primitive undulating rhythm. It has the hazy smoke of a log fire, the sparks igniting and flaring.

Traditional Swiss chalet

A fire is a good example of physical substance that is ignited, the flame represents its consumption. We gaze into its depths in a hazy dreamland, our psyches attracted to the curling tongues of flame and shadow. These induced dreams are the product of material substance; of wood that becomes charcoal. An electric-green future (Tales of Faith 2

) does not have that material substance, and we are continually being told that material substance – the burning of carbon – is not green.

Native American rock art

However, Man has been burning carbon since the day we came on the scene; it simply enters the carbon-cycle. An “electric-green future” is outside of all that because it is immaterial. By the same token we, as humans, lose our souls to the immaterial future of copies that are not real. Burning wood is the prerogative of living a life comparable to the beasts that scamper amongst the trees. “They” cannot take that away from us; if these essays have any revolutionary aspect, that is it.

Pictorial 96

Modern culture seems to convince the body through the mirror of illusions – screens viewed by the head – that the world can be apprehended by sight. Images are ultra-convincing but also immaterial; the two seem to go together!

I say “convince the body” since images are kinetic; playing video games is a muscular endeavour of hand-eye- coordination. The fact that ultra-clear images are almost pornographically convincing shouldn’t come as a shock; by the same token they are also as unreal as a video-game.

So the two aspects, unreality and clarity, go together. This is the way the modern world works, since it’s at one and the same time convincing to the ego and an illusion. The real problem is, how to know what is real. Are your bodily responses real?

Of course, they have to be, but there’s a phenomenological problem (P21 Dark Star) All sense-data could be an illusion, one that seems real. This is the real problem of the modern world (of futurism) since everything – bar nothing – is electrochemical impulses in the brain (HB37)

Instead of everything being images, a better way to think of it is that humans have a psyche.

Visual experiences arise from anywhere within the optical system.. which includes the occipital lobes.. and many other portions of the neural cortex that process visual stimuli. (The Norse Shaman, Evelyn Rysdyk, Destiny 2016 page 9)

Trance states were dream states that were used by Eurasian shamans to contact nature spirits, to seek to harmonise and propitiate animals, landscapes. Since all shamanic experience from a wide ambit ranging from Amerindian to Siberian and European share many common facets, this is a very good indication that the visual/psychedelic experiences are not illusory.

They are actually wired into the brain and form part of our psyche. Rysdyk uses the example of a campfire that wavers and gives off flickering shadows as we gaze into its depths, as a material substance that can help induce trance-states. In that a trance is a psychic phenomenon that connects us to the natural forms, it is not simply an accurate illusion.

It’s the very accuracy of modern images, their lack of spiritual ramifications and metaphorical significance that makes them illusory (made in Japan) 

  (page 42)

Rysdyk also makes the point that ancient European shamans were often or probably usually women. Women represent not only fertility but also blood. A woman at Dolni Vestonice (Czechoslovakia) 28,000 years ago was buried and she and the whole grave painted with red ochre.

Over her head was a flint spearhead, and in one hand she held the body of a fox. (page 40)

Rysdyk speaks a lot about harmonising and fostering relationships with the sprits of animals, plants, landscape. It’s all very New Age, but red ochre also puts me in mind of Shiva, the destroyer in Hindu myth (prev.)

The female shaman buried at Bad Durrenburg was

Interred in a foot-thick layer of red ochre (page 40)

This reminds me of nothing so much as Clair Noto’s “Red Lace” (var) This woman is wearing the animals that were hunted and eaten. The tribes inhabited a tangled web of blood, death and renewal that it was the shaman’s role to propitiate, through the spirits. Ritual dance, trance, psychedelic plants.

The visions that these special people had – and that were drawn on rock walls are wired into the human brain. The human brain being an evolution of nature along with the beasts the priestess wears.

This makes it clear it is not sense-data but a psychic experience – common to all shamans – that is being pictured. So, in other words, shamanic psychic experiences are proof that images are not illusory, as they are experienced universally.

The real point is, without these types of experiences, we have no real proof. It’s like grasping at straws and the more head-bound, screen-bound the thinner the straw.

If the body is convinced – via the images that the head receives (as education, see La Chinoise) – the body is no longer rough and cowboy-tough, but is soft and surrounded by “smart eco”. This is the same “order and method” (Les Carabiniers) that seems to masquerade as industrial competition. The order and method “they” want is the one attached to the head (via screens), the one that educates the head that the body is no longer rough and tough.

Do you see where this is heading? The images and words “they” send us may be convincing, but they dissociate us further from a psychological affinity to nature that is actually wired into our psyche.

Just the small matter of cold and heat. Our bodies are designed to live in variable temperatures and are thermostatically controlled (by the brain). A castle or an old shack that has hot and cold and drafts is ideal for the body to experience. Instead we are told (by “them”) that smart-eco means heat-pumps and a vapid fog of air (all apparently Mitsubishi Heavy Industry).

This is what they mean by eco; the very opposite of allowing our bodies to experience natural climate! The reason is really that climate is not tidy or hygienic or methodical; it’s rough and tough, dirty and decadent.

This really points to the fact that the body that is rough and tough, that is exposed to dirt, to the smells and feel of nature as well as the sights and sounds, is also in touch with a very ancient psyche. The affinity of the human brain to the planet it evolved on.

The ancient human culture, the hunter and gatherer, is not so far removed from that of the Western cowboy. Musically, one can get a sense of this – ironically always via YouTube! I happened to find that Catherine Ribeiro – who starred in Les Carabiniers – is a French folk singer-composer. Her 70sa band +Alpes here pay tribute to the trans-European culture that also takes in ancient Greek and Celtic.

AME DEBOUT (UPRIGHT SOUL)

The trans-Alpine ideal of non-political rusticality is somewhat akin to the US ideal of yore (“Indian Summer”). Yeah it’s Brietling watches and banks but that’s much more superficial than a global order of masculine egotists (Jean-Jacques Rousseau was Swiss; Jean-Luc Godard is Franco-Swiss).

Pictorial 95

The straight line vistas of all politicians comes across clearly enough in the US elections. Everything – bar nothing – is “order and method” (Les Carabiniers). Everything is numerical, nothing is humanist. Bloomberg’s quote

"There's this huge cohort of black and Latino men, say, 16 to 25 years old, who have no job, no prospects, don't know how to find a job, don't know not what their skills are, don't know how to behave in the workplace where they have to work collaboratively and collectively. "

Is worth picking out for what it says about the guy who took the seediness out of Times Square and the kitchen smells out of NYC. What is that but the living material that has the capacity for direct experience of the city without intermediation by spokespersons for order and method?

There are two things going on. One is the competitive milieu of a numerical order that uses numerical language. The milieu of physical boredom where the numerical and sexual become one (through the dragon of data).

The other is the living material that has a harmonic of life such as, say, Harlem

 

If you look at the photos there is a lot of work going on; what you could call neighbourhood businesses in-tune with neighbourhood affairs (see also Ghost World). That clearly involves collaborations and collective behaviour, but it is not competitive; more to do with a direct appreciation of the commune, the vibe, what’s happening.

There are other factors within such communes. Products are often artisanal and there are wrought iron staircases with the patina of age on weathered red stone. The people skip gaily down the street and tend to experience life without that directly competing with eachother.

In other words, the milieu for competition is not a traditional community with a harmonic vibe; it’s the illusory world of straight lines created by the likes of Bloomberg. Competition to “them” is just a word bandied about- by acolytes of order and method! The straight lines of electromagnetism; the masculine method.

This is an illusory situation without the gay air provided by a feminine harmonic. The female is womb and blood, the giver and taker of life. Ishtar, the goddess of war and fertility. For with fertility comes the blood-cycle of predator-prey. This is seen in the type of decadence that is power in nature; the growth through decay of strength and colour (Pictorial 66)

A traditional community weathers storms and is stronger for them. This was the case I previously made for Detroit, which was not subject to the federal processes of the civil rights era. Its poverty became a visible blight, if a picturesque one (Drama3)

However, the underlying communal fabric flourished and investment flowed. Detroit is a classic example of letting the female harmonic of blood – fertility and decay – run wild and not be pushed around by a masculine ethic of order.

The body is a harmonic instrument; the throat is coated with mucus that enables the voicebox to sing.  None of that worries acolytes (politicians) because they are only worried about the competitive order of the head gazing at screens – data, or “the mirror of nothingness.” This convinces the ego, and we move steadily towards a world built of straight lines, an illusion of the masculine ego.

That could explain why Clint Hillary or Merk el Angela are like all the others. They all inhabit a masculine ego of straight line data seen through screens. It’s all so convincing and fits a competitive ethos, but is totally lacking in blood and spirit of revival, Artemis, the moon, lithe limbs under the stars above, sweat and flesh.

As previously mentioned, field work accentuates the strength of the female body; milk maids loll with skirts a-billowing. Jena-Luc Godard’s La Chinoise is partly about the revolutionary aspect of direct experience. Veronique is considering throwing bombs, but to appreciate the universe directly is also to let in dirt and the wholesome smells of flesh and blood, animal and human, food and sex.

The hygiene-merchants are living in a world of weakness where the physical sense of living with looseness, style and psychic content is crushed and direct experience left to the goats and donkeys of the Earth. Whether “right” wing Trump, “leftist” or “moderate” Bloomberg, their paltry speeches are the other side of the world from dreams of western glory that are rightly ours.

Pictorial 94

What proof is there of this sorcerous system that seemingly circumvents sensations such as sight and sound to surround the psyche subliminally? Well, just sight and sound, smell and feel.

A familiar sight in the modern world is of a head gazing at a screen intently, the experience of straight lines consuming the attention. What is never seen, and what is seen as totally reactionary, is for things to be preordained, for each person or animal to know their place.

Yet in the womb this has to be so to create a distinctive personality of uniqueness in the cosmos. What is preordination but action? Line and movement in the bold language of cartooning (Hyborian Bridge 91). This is exactly what Modern Man has decided to do without, in the domain of facts and information flowing through screens.

Simple scenes of sight and sound can often seem preordained, like a ritual dance. Jean-Luc Godard’s dark fairy tale, Les Carabiniers (1963) reads like a silent film where characters act and react like marionettes.

LES CARABINIERS

Godard insists he doesn’t write the script till after the film is shot! A slight exaggeration, but the point is: what is the script for action in the world, for development in the womb? DNA? DNA is information, not a script. A script is action and reaction in time and place. The action-and-reaction is not Newtonian, it is fluid and serpentine. There is no such thing as disproportionate action in nature. But what causes the proportion, the grace?

The feminine principle of harmony within the womb (water, moon) where there is no competitive element. Godard’s 60s films are as much a hymn to woman as they are explorations of revolutionary attitudes. “Women are more natural”; “Their ideas are better.”

Godard uses light to create action and beauty on the screen, the two things which counteract a masculine world of information (or text, which is what most mainstream films are). Les Carabiniers is an ode almost to there being no story; the action then becomes the story through guile and boldness. Well, there is a fundamental question here.

A story is told by characters or animals that are proportionate (such as Aesop’s fables). Therefore, the principle of proportionality comes before the story. In other words, action is what creates the story, by being proportionate.

This is why a masculine world of competition has an illusory narrative. Myth and fantasy tell stories of times and places where the principle of proportionality holds sway. The feminine principle of the hunt – Artemis, moon – is pure action, blood and glory. Everything in this world of myth is proportionate, and the story flows from the sweat and bounding grace of glorious limbs in motion.

 

The female principle is inherently proportionate and fleet of foot, and it is this which is lacking in a masculine order of competition (Darwin). Proportion is simply the application of a harmonic in the womb, which reflects that of the moon and water (Hyborian Bridge 82)

What “they” call natural selection is actually unnatural selection within a system of straight lines (electromagnetism, sun). This unnatural selection convinces the ego (of numerical economics, speeches of acolytes). The ego is trapped by the physique, so that the numerical and sexual become one (physical boredom – see Blake’s print of Newton).

The feminine principle of proportionality (in the womb) gives rise to predator-prey relationships (of the hunt). The talons of the bird rend; the carrion feeders feed; blood, tree, grub and root are one tangled web of life and death.

Red Sonja #11

This is strength, and it is the lusty destruction of Dionysus, uncaring like the stoic donkey.

This lost world of uncaring gaiety is built on strength and beauty. The warrior and the huntress will outlast the charade of competition in an illusory order of straight lines.

Hyborian Bridge 105

Much has been written on the deities of Hyboria. There is a certain symmetry in the invocations to “Ishtar’s girdle!” and “Mitra!” One is an Akkadian war goddess associated with fertility; the other a Persian sungod.

Essentially, the symmetry is of day and night, since ancient deities reflect the reality of Earth-moon-sun. Whereas our own era is “the reality of a reflection” – quoting La Chinoise Pictorial 93– or sun alone, ancient deities harmonise with the movements of all 3 orbs.

The cosmic harmonic stands in the way of sorcerers, somewhat akin to the checks-and-balances of the US constitution (against monarchs). In all the kingdoms – save that of pre-Hyborian Stygia – the principle of proportionality is upheld, and that feuding city-states worship different deities and thereby maintain the cosmic balance.

Exceptions prove the rule.

Yes, I invented Makkalet as an Hyrkanian seaport... more of a city-state, really, where Turan was the capital of a growing nation/empire.  Of course, REH often called Turanians "Hyrkanians," but I thought that would be too confusing so I kept them separate as entities.  Makkalet was just a city-state that had thus far resisted Turanian encroachment.

(reply to email by RT)

The Turanian war starts when Makkalet steals the holy Tarim from Aghrapur, the nominal capital of Turan. It is a holy war between rival; city-states within the Turanian Empire.

The living Tarim is more totemic of a martial order, and could be likened to statues of the Caesars, or later to the Cross and the Crescent.

Here’s where a link to La Chinoise could come in! Marx is the figurehead or totem for the advance of communism, as well as Lenin and Mao. A totemic order tends to have expansionist ambitions to conquer others.

A big theme of La Chinoise is actually education, and how the requirements of a particular order – communism, capitalism – are delivered by teachers to students.

“The attitude of the universities tis to consider the others we address as mere receivers” (of information)

The fact that Francis Jeanson delivers this on a

TRAIN RIDE

may be coincidence, but a train happens to be a parallel system of straight lines (Hyborian Bridge 88 CL Moore). The parallel system dates from Newton’s experiments with optics (light). Straight lines – meaning the sun – represent “the reality of a reflection”; something that is very convincing to the ego – as recapitulated ad nauseam.

In other words, the industrial order – of communism and capitalism – is illusory or the reality of a reflection (of reality). It is this which actually makes it convincing to theorists and speech-makers. Darwin can be taken to be part-and-parcel of this order since - TBS – it is a masculine order of competition that occurs outside of the gentle harmonic of the womb (moon).

In other words, what we are told by “them” (acolytes) is a process of natural selection (in nature) is actually unnatural selection in a straight line order (of the sun), rather than a harmonic of sun and moon – day and night, bloodlust, hunting.

Darwin and Marx both exist within this sorcerous system, which has its origins in The New Atlantis of Francis Bacon (Hyborian Bridge 61 idol of the den). One could almost look on those 17^th century Tudors as a cabal of sorcerers making plans for the rise of modernism in The New World (The Armor of Light by Melissa Scott is vaguely connected, incidentally).

 

Modernity can therefore be likened to a flow of information from “them” to “us” that facilitates the new order. This seems to be why ideas alone are never enough to combat the sorcerous undercurrent, which is just the presence of straight lines (or light), as in a railway junction. A parallel order to reality.

The flow of information is really the flow of the parallel system of light that facilitates industry and the egos of speech-makers. What is not egotistical (of the head) are the sights and sounds, the smells and feel of action in a world of physical proportionality that is not under the domain of fact or information.

Facts in the modern order constitute a flow of information that is facilitated by the straight-line order of light (electromagnetism). This in turn facilitates the ego of acolytes and their speech-makers.

Take away the parallel system and there is no longer the charade of competition; there is a harmonic between day and night, between order and the hunt. Order (Apollo) is no longer the master; instead, blood and the womb are the dark givers of life and death. The hunt, Artemis.

 

This is the world of decadence, which was perhaps most developed in Clair Noto’s “Red Lace” (Pictorial 92). The underworld or the darkness present is necessary for a harmonic universe that is not merely illusory information or products. The missing ingredient is found not only in Howard, but in writers like Noto and Thomas, and particularly that illustrated by BWS (and Thorne, natch.)

Red Sonja #9 

The life-giving decadence is simply the lack of an order that crushes and molds Man to a standard for the reception of information by “them”, the sorcerers of the 17^th century cabal.

Pictorial 93

Simplfying things rather a lot. Earth orbits the sun; the moon orbits Earth; Earthspins. We are prisoners of a sorcerous illusion that takes out 2 of the 3 components, leaving the sun as undisputed master. There is a sense of stasis because the large movements of moon and Earth vis-à-vis eachother and the sun are not deemed worthy of note.

The sun supplies the ego with illusory data via screens, or “the mirror of nothingness”. The illusion is simply the lack of physical substance; action in the cosmos, the hunt and Diana, decay and rebirth, blood and moon.

Wizards of the Black Sun

Physical substance is the subject of Renaissance art; line and movement and the investigation of both through cartooning (Hyborian Bridge 91). Frank Thorne is much closer to Leonardo da Vinci than the mainstream for that reason. Formal development of the human physique takes place in the womb, one of the missing components of our sorcerous masters (Pictorial 89)

From form obviously comes style, as well as psychological content (psyche), and form is the primary thing that a modern order lacks. From form arises the predator-prey relationships, and thereby the cycles of decay and rebirth. Destruction, the hunt, Dionysus. Without form there is merely an empty charade of competition - information, and the numerical/sexual fixations of the ego.

This leads neatly into Jean-Luc Godard’s La Chinoise (67), his satire on 60s student revolutionaries. It has his usual tricks of fourth wall breakdowns in the picturesque communal household of confirmed Maoists.

Farcical it may be, it’s a sympathetic study and does take one back to the Chinese revolutionary spirit of ruralist idealism; shades of The Water Margin. The fact that it all quickly became hell on earth points to a radical wrongness. The film consists of students plus a few assorted drop-in teachers, and these are often depicted (by Godard) as reciting robots.

When one girl says (rightly) that aesthetics is imagination, the teacher trots out the mantra:

“Art doesn’t reflect reality, it’s the reality of a reflection.”

Such nonsense-speak points to the illusion at the heart of what left-wing revolutionaries call “objective reality.” Veronique falls for this linguistic mash-up and, in a long sequence on a train with the one teacher who talks sense, her phalangist credentials are brutally exposed.

Science itself is partial; a masculine version of nature that lacks the feminine harmonic (moon). Revolutionaries are forever stuck in “objective reality”, which is simply the world that exists without a feminine harmonic of the womb (moon).

“The lessons are very abstract”; “Culture is cutoff from action.”  Again, very correct statements. To Veronique, action against an inactive culture (throwing bombs and killing people) is justified. Her over-enthusiasm is rebutted by her teacher, who explains that she is not a recognizable sector of society, more like an angry girl (note that the film is 67, the year before the failed Paris uprising).

Nevertheless, one’s sympathies are with the students, for what is action in the modern world? We live in the world of the false Apollo, which is simply speech-making about ideas without the physical substance; the hunt, decay and revival, blood and moon.

Sibyl

Godard’s film is a horrendous hoot, and all too real about the way ideas twist people in knots in a masculine universe that consists of nothing else. This is the mirror of illusions that traps us in a land of nothingness – products, information, screens Pictorial 87

They are also wise to this, and the “revisionists”

LA CHINOISE

who make ideas the prostitutes for capitalist luxury (shades of modern China).

Godard’s other meta-fixation in the 60s was the tenacious hold of myth on the psyche. Myths are the lost world of the harmonic cosmos where male and female components are happily (?) balanced in the vigour of sea, land, sky, Earth.

If you’re wondering where America has gone to, it’s gone to the past where actions speak louder than words, where men are men, ladies are ladies and hosses are hosses. The land, in short, of physical substance on the Earth as she spins merrily through the cosmos on high (Chaparral).

  THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND

 

The Big Summary (mark 2 - see Outtakes)

Modern Man exists in a state of physical boredom, dating from Newton’s light-box experiments. Essentially, he is studying the sun which is the static centre of things. This sense of stasis is implied in Blake’s print, whereby Newton’s body becomes a giant brain.

Pictorial 59

Because the physique can’t be denied, numerical compulsions (of the head) become the sexual tool of the dragon of data. The numerical compulsions of the ego are maintained by a convincing illusion of straight lines (sun, electromagnetism).

The end-product is AI, or simply a giant brain, which takes the place of action (body.) Action comprises things that you see, hear, smell, feel in a sequence of events. This sequence in nature is the blood-cycle of lifedeath, and in human terms it is the hunt. Diana and her hounds bounding by the light of the moon.

Artemis

The hunt is the feminine bloodlust that is the twin to the male sun – Artemis and Apollo. This is the world of action (body), basically because the Earth turns her face now to moon and now to sun. Because we live in a static universe (of the sun) the old Earth deities are denied. The deities of life that exists in the cosmic ambiance of things that just happen under the stars above - of decay and rebirth.

The sights and sounds, smells and feel of the physical substance of Earth are expressions of physical action. Roots, vines, grubs, leaves waving in the wind. The expression of physical action on Earth in human terms is seen in communal gamboling related to work.

Bruegel, Wedding Dance

Gamboling is by its nature sexual, and the human is a sexual animal. This sexual reality relates to action in a harmonic cosmos (of sun and moon). Like a dance, movements in nature are bounding and graceful of limb. Natural movements are not really Newtonian, which is a universe of straight lines (or spheres in space)  

See Hyborian Bridge 91 – cartooning, line and movement. The harmonic physique that develops in the womb. Things that are balanced and proportionate, things that seem to exist a priori, as one can see in the art of Frank Thorne

The Wizards of the Black Sun

As noted previously, symmetries and proportions of living things develop in the womb. What Darwin says is that when a gazelle is caught by a predator, that is survival of the fittest. However, all gazelles have the same symmeteries and proportions – see “The Enchantment” Weird 11 figures in a landscape.

The female womb is the quiet repose of formal development – style and content, physique and psyche. A harmonic physique “of woman born”, out of which emerge the predator-prey relations.

Nature also has a symmetry of night and day which acts on animal and plant behaviour. In short, science as straight-line (sun, Newton) and competition (Darwin) is a masculine arena which gives rise to a universe of straight lines and competition. Namely, electromagnetic devices that attach to the head, feeding the ego through the dragon of data – also known as “the mirror of nothingness” Hyborian Bridge 103

The mirror-land we seem to live in can be likened to a sorcerous illusion, such as The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune. A mirror, if you think about it, is an electromagnetic repeat image: a repeat in light of the physical reality.

So, a mirror is not physical, but it is a very convincing illusion. Most convincing of all to the ego are straight lines (numerical data) and the competition associated with that. These are the images and graphs that acolytes (politicians) view.

We humble peasants watch our politicians and seem to accept what they say, even though it is not the harmonic universe of sun and moon, but only the repetitive one of sun (mirror or reflection) speaking.

Why are we convinced by their lies? Because a straight line universe is convincing to the ego that is fixated on numbers. The ego is the slave to the mirror of illusions.

 

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the klone of Merkel?