Is it true to say that the active universe of the warrior and the shaman
has to be pre-Galileo (prev)? Yes, because it's a question of
direction; the sun's rays are straight, and this creates a very
convincing "realism" composed of perspective and light.
Galileo's contemporary, Caravaggio, was the first artist to employ this
type of near-photographic realism that uses dark and light
(chiaroscuro). Realism tends to replace physical substance and psyche
with pure light effects (later Impressionism.)
David and Goliath
Realism is therefore only real with respect to the sun, not the Earth or
the moon. The art that's pre-Caravaggio/Galileo tends to have above all
physical substance - and therefore psyche. Caravaggio has a conviction
that can be convincing composed of light-effects;
compare with Durer.
By physical substance I mean the exploration of line and movement,
especially in cartooning and action. Living things are active as opposed
to just creations of light (photo.)
It's the exploration and cartooning that is the area of art that came to
prominence before Caravaggio, and is why comic books hark back to those
glory dfays of yore. I've been reading
Conan and the Gods of the Mountain in Savage Sword (from the Philip Green novel), and Kayanan's mesmerizing patinas of ruins and churchlike abodes are something to behold.
Savage Sword #211
This image of fungi growing over a rotting carcass has a curiously
spiritual aspect but then, why not? Ancient Man in caves would be
surrounded by fungi and spores and minerals such as phosphorus that
gives off spooky radiance. The ancient Greek Oracles are
thought to have got high on noxious subterranean fumes.
The spiritual and the physical are closely connected, and this is an
Earth-aspect of life. As I tend to say, the exposure of the body to
germs prompts the immune-system to produce antibodies. So, this is the
body being active in rough and unkempt situations
(see
HB108 trade-routes). The suggestion nowadays is that health
goes in one-direction, when it is always a balance between germs
(strength) and cleanliness (action in the field, rituals).
Because we now live in a straight-line world, we are told to believe
that sterile conditions are healthy when,in actual fact, dirt
strengthens us. We live in weakness and reap the consequences. We are
beset by words of acolytes reciting numbers (prev.) this
is the way that a straight-line system indoctrinates us.
Savage Sword #211
Here, Kayanan is drawing the dreamy, textual contours of a living planet exuding psyche.
GENERATION
Here is the Ichiribu's churchlike conclave. When Seyganku hears from the witch-doctor that Emwaya will live he cries,
"My heart soars sunward like a bird."
What I'm getting at is that all the beliefs of a pre-industrial age are born of activity, not inertia. In Nyoka (P110)
the rays of the sun goddess are harnessed to gradually inch toward the
rope suspending her from a fiery fate. Not just the sun, the
moon god is emblemised by a crescent-shaped pendulum. The wind gods are
harnessed in the tunnels of of Tauregs while, in the Conan yarn,
God-men of the mountain are the speakers for the Living Wind.
All the elements are products of the Earth spinning through space. The
Earth activates life, emblemises it and achieves a psychic rapport.
Today we are stuck in a no-man's land that is really emblematic by
talking and singing ciphers that spout nothing but
numbers. The sexual becomes the numerical through the dominion of the
head (see prev. on the expressive algorithm.)
It's a sterile situation, since sex in the field is just the act of
working and moving the body, women wearing clothing that bunches to
accentuate sinuous curves and the strength of spine (P103).
The transportation of the sun from the skies to some nebulous centre
sterilizes the situation, renders it infertile and inactive. The words
of acolytes then recite convincing numbers that seems to keep the
direction of thought in the same sterile zone.
I'm not saying it's deliberate. They are true believers. They live in
their heads and not in the field with the beasts and the herbs. They are
not warriors or shamans.
Behind the words of acolytes of course lies the inductive reason prophesied by
The New Atlantis, convincing in the sense a hall of mirrors is convincing (HB20). Sorcery is convincing, that's its job.
However, the nobility of the beliefs of being active on the face of
planet Earth, as opposed to Martian acolytes, harness a poetry that has a
psychic rapport with the cosmos, figures in a landscape.
You find in Howard, and Kayanan's intricate, Smith-influenced linework
has that primitive quality that harks back to Man's greatness. Yes,
Earth is primitive because it is not simply cerebral. There is fungi and
there are germs. There is a direction, the harmonic cosmos that is almost a battle of opposites; sun, moon, man, woman (see Bruce Lee " a battle between a robot and a wild beast".) There is a mystical quality that an
active life in the fields generates.
