LYRICS

The applications are to blameAll the people do all dayIs stare into a phone (Placebo, Too Many people)

“Take nothing but memories, leave nothing but footprints!” (Chief Seattle)

When rock stars were myths (Sandi Thom, I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker)

Machines were mice and men were lions once upon a time, Now that it's the opposite it's twice upon a time (Moondog)

Time is an illusion (Einstein)

Thursday, 23 April 2020

Hyborian Bridge 113

Talking about Clair Noto's "Red Lace" HB71 made the comment: In this story, sorcery and sword are never wholly parted... Only when the sorcery departs from the purely physical – and hence human – is it a black and inhuman force.

Apah Alah is like some sort of misguided Earth Mother figure, peeking through the twisting bush at the imperiled Sonja (HB70). She is not out for self-gain as would be Thoth Amon; she is interested in the human themes that now play-out between Sonja and her rebellious son Suumaro, as any serpentine mother would be.

As the themes of blood and death play-out in the classic "Red Lace", the universe of Apah Alah is shown to have a strength of revival born of physical substance (blood).

It's the very opposite to the cerebral sorcery of Thoth Amon; it does not have the logic-chopping capabilities of black sorcery, and is more like misguided motherly love.

A gothic world of rapid growth, bloody death and revival is always going to have a fairly filthy fertility that is almost akin to a life-force. It is as far  from black sorcery as it is from hygiene!

This gives the clue that the cerebral sorcery of Thoth Amon is also akin to a hygienic universe of logic-chopping. If you look back at the top of HB71 there is a piece on the bending of light by crystals, used in X-ray diffraction for instance for identification of DNA. The point made there was that the crystal world is precise but not real. The reality is the water and gel in a cell. But the precise world can be measured. Logic--chopping is therefore also hygienic - outside of the natural cycles of decay and rebirth of the physical substance of a cell.

Logic-chopping is numerical (precision) and nowhere is this more apparent than in the news-media. Piers Morgan, in an interview with a corona-minister, quote
 
First he asked how many NHS and care workers had died. “43,” Dowden said confidently.
Actually it was 80, said Morgan, illustrating his assertion by holding up a double-page spread from a morning paper that clearly the minister hadn’t been bothered to read.
Hell, it was early and it wasn’t like he had a serious job where it was his business to know the news. OK, Morgan continued. How many care home residents had died? “217,” Dowden replied. Er ... how about 7,500? (see "numerical" in Tout va Bien, prev.)

It's because we live in a hygienic logical system that we are assaulted by such numbers. Outside of this system is the balance between dirt and cleanliness (germs). Meaning, the active life in fields and forests that exposes the body to dirt and invites the act of cleaning (see places of power and Mosaic Law, prev.)

It's because we live in a world of the head that these cycles of dirt and cleanliness no longer exist, and are usually declared unhealthy. In fact, they're a way the body self-governs its health, as opposed to being treated by external measures. Since we live in an Airtight Garage of facts relating to a logical universe of hygiene, this tends to go unnoticed.

So, Apah Alah's white sorcery of blood and dirt is very germaine to the human themes that relate to death and revival. As noted also in HB71 ancestor worship is an acknowledgement of the psyche in the blood-cycles of rebirth.

The Earth turns, the sun shoots across the sky, followed by Artemis and the transformative enabling of Apollo. Transformation,decay followed by revival (see also Buffy Saint Marie HB72) Because this transformative world of blood and strength is outside a sorcery of straight-lines, it is also outside the verbal/numerical proclamations of acolytes that one is given to think is reality.

This is the black sorcery of hygiene where numbers rule through the mouths of acolytes. Reason being that a universe of numbers is a universe of straight-lines (sun) that originated with Galileo (circa 1600, after the Renaissance heyday, natch.)

Straight lines (light) are obviously not cyclical, and so are outside of the cycles of blood and dirt, of death and revival that you see in "Red Lace". The area from where the psyche emanates and Primitive Man worships ancestors.

Modern Man has turned his back on this area of mystery, and it is left to fantasy writers like Howard. One of his best - and earliest - Conan tales is The Scarlet Citadel, much of it set amongst the macabre lifeforms of the said citadel of Tsotha Lanti.
Savage Sword #30



This page I think you might recognize as similar to Clair Noto's obscene fronds that here lasciviously draw the life-essence of Tsotha's rival, Pelius.

For Tsotha Lanti is lord of a symbiotic citadel, host to all sort of creepy-crawlies out of arcane, clammy wells. Neither of these two wizards strike me as truly black; they are too much in the world of living things, albeit really strange (though nothing like the level of Piers Morgan, natch.)

The ending is again macabre and not exactly typical Howard humour. 

They almost act like light relief to the arcane cerebral ferocirty of Thoth Amon of the black circle (black sun). Black sorcery exists where the head is really detached and exists in a reality devoid of living things, save the intellect itself.

In such a land there can be no death, and so no revival. There is no blood and no dirt, as in the plant and symbiotic-infested kingdoms of "Red Lace" and The Scarlet Citadel.

Black sorcery is quite akin to hygiene or a pure cerebral space. This goes back to ancient Greek philosophers like Diogenes, who was sceptical of all advance and lived in a barrel. The basic point is that, even if advance happens, it shouldn't upset the psychic vistas with which living things thrive. A cerebral order does just that.

A cerebral order is essentially words, but nowadays the words are much akin to numbers; numbers and the straight-line order (sun). This is why anything associated with dirt is outside of a logical order. IE the Earthspin that transforms sunlight into the eternally turning sky of day and night, Apollo and Artemis, the transformative enabler through growth and decay and blood.

The acolytes use words and numbers to constantly establish a black sorcery of hygiene. The process is self-reinforcing, since numbers are always going to be convincing (to the ego, see Grace Slick quote HB62/1).

As P109 did note, this is a black sun, not the true sun that races across the sky. The black sun  deprives the Earth of fertility, physical and psychic. This is the Earth of the serpent brood, of Thoth Amon and the black circle.