Hyborian Bridge 136

Going into the mirror of illusions – the sterile zone of electromagnetism – is akin to going into reflections (repetitions). The factual and numerical are attractive to the ego, outside of the strong physical style of nature seen in shape and symmetry.

Number and repetitive   take the place of natural origins which are reptilian and primeval. Instead of primeval rhythm, the profane serpent resides inside the mirror (since rhythm can’t be denied).

Instead of the clean rhythms of symmetrical animals that are associated with fertility and sex, the profane serpent is really an attachment of number to meat. This is most easily seen in “clean meat” () where cells multiply in queasy ways in trays.

But also DNA, since this is the body’s factory that supplies molecules by rote. DNA is to do with quantity (number), while primal rhythm is to do with quality (shape).

Of course, Richard Dawkins (with his ego) is attracted to the former, and he goes so far as to say the pleasure is a by-product of genes in breeding (The Selfish Gene.)
That’s like saying the shapes that we use in sex acts are arbitrary and that it’s the genes that are supplied that are the useful things.

If you think about it, though, sex is easy for the reason that the shapes we use fit into eachother in a highly symmetrical fashion. Pleasure is the benefit we gain from that act, which makes it even easier to accomplish.

Breeding has to be simple and beneficial or it wouldn’t work and God would be back at the drawing board. To say genes are the “overriding value”” is to miss the point that what is bred is iconic shape.

 Blue fin tuna

If it was information that was bred, Dawkins might have a point, but then we would be cyborgs (prev.)

Shape is simple and clean and pure, composed of lines in time. That is physical reality, whereas genes are just quantity (number).

Shape can’t be explained by quantity, only by rhythm. DNA attracts the ego of acolytes and thereby takes the ego outside of primordial rhythm and essentially into sex-by-proxy. This could well be an aspect of the profane serpent that breeds numerically rather than through the symmetries of nature.

Algorithmic calculation of gene sequences makes one suppose they’re essentially the same thing – as with Dawkins’ “memes”, natch. Information pure and simple (actually complex).

On the active side of nature that hunts, swims in shoals, flies in flocks, animals have to breed in simple fashion. Pleasure is more of a primordial principle that accompanies primordial shape. In the active areas, decline and death are related to fertility and revival.

In the sausage-factory envisaged by the likes of Dawkins and his breed, there is no primordial aspect that has dark meaning and power, the hunt and fertility, blood and newborn, the dark female principle (Noto “Red Lace” HB67 etc)

Inside their mirror of illusions, there are only numbers (quantity or information0. That is a type of repetition (reflection) that seems to attract the ego. But inside this mirror lurks the profane serpent, since physique and rhythms can’t be denied, only corrupted from within.

It might be worth going into this with reference to The Young Mutants film, to give a basic story as opposed to pure information.

X-gene mutants here are all teens with psychic angst. Their trauma and guilt – bad girl Illyana killing eighteen “one by one” – are the engines of this film. As with all adolescents, sexual pangs play their part, particularly in the lycanthropic lesbian Rahne’s dalliance with native psychic Danielle.

As always, the psyche and the physical join, delivering emotional meaning to a claustrophobic setting of creepy proportions. Whether the teens are X-gene mutants or not, the physical acts of closeness, and the emotional psyche always tell the story. No story is ever told by way of quantity over quality. This theme of the overriding value of quality is also found in Robert Pirsig’s 60s counterculture classic Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Quality is a human value that can be found where humans are physically and emotionally present. Possibly that was what Ada Lovelace () meant by saying she was a "poet scientist". Her mother - Byron's wife - Annabelle Milbank deliberately kept her away from the Byronic life of the sensational body. What you could assume is that an algorithm is a thing really of the head, and the poetry of Lovelace's algorithm was in its simplicity. Once number becomes mixed with the sexual and sensational body, corruption is inevitable.


The physique can't be denied, and algorithms tend to make head and body one thing (see print of Newton, prev.) A type of numerical ego-compulsion (see Grace Slick quote HB62/1).


The physical and emotional sphere is a foreign land to those who inhabit their own egos; egos which are attracted to the mirror of illusions (number, quantity.)

This is the illusion that causes repetition (reflection, sun) to replace the primordial rhythm that comes into physique and psyche both.

Illyana, by the way, carries a pet dragon which she talks to. Dragons can be sort of sexy (like Japanese cartoons) and, in a way, they are what make life go round

BABY SNAKES

If you call that the seedy side of life, there is a way in which seediness fertilizes dryness with gay limber movement and zestfull colour (see prev on Times Square).

In contrast to the previously seedy areas of New York, we now have the Dragon of Big Tech. This is the area where men like Zuckerberg are almost mating with machines, so close are they. He, for one, wants to be “merged” (P1).

The Big Tech Dragon is the corruption of primal rhythm – fertility and natural symmetry – by number. The associations of DNA and algorithms and other aspects alluded to are all aspects of the profane serpent.

Rhythm cannot be denied, and is simply replaced by a profane version, seemingly sterile but actually queasily sexual – as with the expressive algorithm (prev.)

This is the mirror of illusions “they” are marketing, with no relation to human fertility and the activities of rustics. Hunting, tilling the land, living in nature. The crumbs of the earth, the wriggling worms, are the reality that cannot be denied, only corrupted by Big Tech.

The baby snakes simply mutate into Big Tech Dragons. This could be likened to the Stygian city of Khemi, where snake-worship sanctions the giant reptiles coiling in the streets, striking at passers by when they please.

There is no denying of the primeval; it simply takes other forms. The sorcerers and acolytes take the place of the warrior and farmhand. Only by regaining the land from Big Tech can the human spirit revive and thrive in active lands.