Princess Moonlight (5)

 Primal rhythm can't be denied, it can only be corrupted within the parallel universe of electromagnetism (perspective). This is the profane serpent as described several times - see P136

..which is all about the domain of Illyana Rasputin, the Darkchilde, mistress of Limbo. The sterile realm of Limbo is ruled by the egos of demons - who eventually psy homage to the Darkchilde's primal animal force and charisma.

As described in P136, the ego can rule a sterile world of 'Einsteinian space' - or logical perspective spacetime - but it is the dark and negative beauty of the Darkchilde that is the physical reality.

Nastirh wants her as his dark bride. There is a bestial crudity in Illyana's permutations of form that is unmistakably lewd (see quote on Princess Moonlight HB161).

The Darkchilde is the very antithesis of Limbo - the spirit of revival that lurks within the soul - and in that way conquers the demons (they fall in love). She is physical reality in a dormant realm.

There are parallels in the ancient world, in Aristophanes or lewd Roman graffiti. As argued in PM4 , science is like news in that it has no story, no negative. The neutral is made to seem positive.

All this means is that the dark physical reality of lusty, hungry lewd forms is basically bypassed.

This entire area is the fertile ground where living things spread their seed. Science corrupts it to a logical order of perspective ruled by egos of acolytes.

One example is Pasteur (prev); another is DNA (passim). The media or the news is the spokesperson of this barren system.

Going back to the Darkchilde, P136 relates Limbo to 'Einsteinian spacetime'. The Darkchilde rules this by virtue of her primal physical reality. Limbo is dormant in terms of the physical reality; without the Darkchilde it's just, well, Limbo, home to demons of the ego.

This corresponds equally well to the news. I noticed during the Trump debacle there was a fantastic spread of online news-channels that left almost everyone scratching their collective head! 

The news is like Limbo because it has no physical reality. Especially not a primal throwback to reptilian origins as the Darkchilde can manifest (see illo P136).

Limbo is dormant, a sterile system of talking heads with plans. In a sterile system there is no physical reality, no lustiness, no fertility, no death or life 

It is the sun - electromagnetism, perspective - without the counterbalancing moon. The moon symbolises the symmetries of time and space. Einsteinian spacetime attracts the egos of acolytes while the moon is a primitive physical reality.

The belief is it's a priori (PM4). Beliefs take account of cosmic symmetries. The savage, bestial nudity of Dionysian rites.

Rather than assume there are political conspiracies, it's safer to assume that the modern paradigm is flawed. It can't approach reality because it is dormant, effectively a type of Limbo that thwarts Man's primitive lusts and passions (the news).

The strength of rustic communities can be reestablished in place of this sterile mainstream - whether Biden or Trump. Those who feel repressed by a remote government have that in common - whether white or black.

Whereas modernity leads to sameness, differences can be retained and have the strength of psychic affinity (see prev and P11). There's no reason why the old tunes of Cathy Richardson can't come together with the new tunes of Kanye West. It's all 'hippy' rebellion and a type of resistance to mainstream repression.

Princess Moonlight (4)

 yes and maybe it's the time of the year

yes and maybe it's the time of man (Woodstock)

I was listening to Cathy Richardson's warmups on Jefferson Starship's Roswell CD and disc 4 is virtually a cornucopia of American folk. Guthrie, Mitchell and including a gorgeous rendition of 'Oh Darling'.

If that to some extent IS the America of myth, what exactly is lacking in the America of 2020 Biden (and possiblly 2024 Trump)?

It's almost too simple. Spirit. In the warmups there is a group coordination that is almost unthinking. Once a level of technical facility is achieved, it comes natural ('yeah, F#').

That's what is lacking in a world of pure technique and ego. The ego transmits itself by words, and words can very easily recite numbers.

It's an Einsteinian universe of logic (sun, electromagnetism) as opposed to a psychic universe that exists in cyclical time.

The symmetries of time and space harmonise the stars with the earth. The rotations of earth expose us to these symmetries.

This is the ancient way of perceiving things, and is echoed by such disparate voices as Vincent of UVS and Yukio Mishima (The Sea of Fertility on the moon).

Basically, if symmetry is a "thing" - a state of physical existence such as we have in the proportions of the human body - then it exists as a thing in itself.

That is to say, it's a priori as opposed to being capable of technical explanation. Only from the physical universe can psyche emanate - since psyche is also a "thing" (see Madame Blavatsky's Theosophy, prev.)

So what is lacking is 'thingness'. The ego is always attracted by numbers and equations, to such an extent that the material system.is now dominated by an Amazon shop.

What's the point of shopping if psyche is weakened in a degraded physical reality? The material world and the Einsteinian universe are two sides of one coin: the coin of the numerical-ego.

A physical universe is one of dirt and revival. The physical strength is agricultural and chthonic and comes from the symmetries of time and space (the rotating earth).

It's not rocket science. The fact the Earth rotates - as is contained in both Vincent's and Mishima's philosophies - is only detectable by science. But our perception is founded on that fact.

We live in a spinning universe and that's just an a priori fact. Science is continually asking deeper and deeper questions so that it becomes like Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The answer to the ultimate question is 42 - but what is the question?

Scientific information is like the news in that it has no story and no negative - it's neutral and so comes across as positive. It gives a mouthpiece to numerous acolytes of reason (words, numbers).

The 'negative' is the entire chthonic universe of deities of the earth and agriculture (prev.) Modern Man is afraid of germs (prev) that are simply living things that process material.

Germs exist in living things and make us strong. There is a risk attached (prev), but the alternative is to live in fear and under the tyranny of numbers.

Musk is heading into space - again it's a case of numerical-ego. Well, I don't want to be 100% Luddite as there's always been space for technology, but it can't replace natural strength. That comes from the Earth and the symmetries of time and space. It's both negative and positive; it has a story.

In view of the present system, I was wondering if it could be possible to vote for an alternative future; to seize power by legitimate means.

The only way I can think of is by voting for someone who is coming from agrarian, folksy roots. There is no one who wants to lead apart from the aforementioned Kanye West!

Therefore I reiterate my support of West as a leader who is much more psychic and physical than the numerical-egos of the establishment.

To be alternative is to be first of all neither right nor left. After all, both these aspects can exist on planet Earth, as well as the agricultural deities like Dionysus. Diversity is good and it's a big place.

Princess Moonlight (3)

And they left the desert clean

And they left the desert golden

WHEN THE EARTH MOVES AGAIN

Kantner of Jefferson Starship fronted an.itinerant band of restless hippy spacefarers, heading towards the sun, spreading the seed of love and peace.

That view of outer space has got to be anti-Musk as well as Trump and whoever else is in the White House! Rebellion is a physical act whereas government and technology are the numerical-ego at work.

It seems like "the people" are restless, but both sides indulge in lazy thinking. The hippies have a lot to say on rebellion, whereas moderns don't.

The secret is first to get physical; maybe move into a rural compound with goats and kids. Getting physical means existing in the primeval world of sun and moon, stars above, the Earth and agriculture below.

The chthonic deities of ancient Greece were also the agricultural deities; the two were closely linked, and with the associated mystery cycles (cults).

Proserpine (Persephone), queen of Hades, is the daughter of Demeter of the harvest. Persephone (spring) leaves Hades for six months of the year to go home with her mother.

In ancient Egypt, fertility deities were strongly associated with the underworld. Osiris, took a crocodile form of Sobek - god of the Nile and fertility - in the myth of his death and resurrection. The myth follows Isis's pregnancy and birth of Horus, avenger of Osiris and slayer of Set.

In stories of the afterlife, the stellar and the underworld essentially exist in the same area as the Pharaoh undergoes their journey through pitfalls to paradise.

As with Dionysus, the theme is the afterlife and revival and the symmetries of time and space. As agricultural system is strong because these symmetries exist.

An agricultural system is supported by the dirt of the Earth and through this comes revival.

The modern political system has become a product purely of the numerical-ego. It's all very well for Biden to say "the people", but there are also the land, the air, the seas and the waterways, the beasts and the fields.

An itinerant populace is exposed to all that, as well as the germs born of free-living. Free-living is healthy but not risk-free. The mainstream establishment, by attempting to be risk-free, risks creating a prison-camp mentality in a restless populace too fearful to be sure of alternatives.

It's not necessarily a Martian conspiracy, but the way to rebel is not via the usual channels. It's more of a rural-Bohemian cowboy-revival of the western plains.

Princess Moonlight (2)

 It is more important to know what sort of person has a disease than to know what sort of disease a person has. (Hippocrates)

That seems to be about the size of it, since a weakened immune-system is prey to disease. According to Bechamp, "germs seek their natural habitat, diseased tissue." A weakened immune-system is prey to disease and tries to rid itself of toxins, meaning things become toxic to a weakened body.

Otherwise, they're just germs that are ever-present. There is a strength through decadence; through the process of decay. The environment that breeds germs. Stagnant water.

Whereas the Western immune-system gradually weakens, the presence of germs in the environment strengthens it. Why is this?

It's basically because drugs in the environment have to continually build-up - because western medicine does not consider the environment.

Every living thing has a resistance to disease - that's health. Once an antibiotic is released, a virus will start to build resistance. Another drug may then be needed (etc.)

Jim Ratcliffe of Ineos UK has just donated £100million for an Oxford University to be created studying antibacterial resistance! The industry they're creating is really the inevitable consequence of industrial pharma weakening the human body.

The immune-system is weakened by the presence of man-made and denatured products. Germs are just living things that exist naturally where decay and regeneration are normal. Stagnant water.

It's obvious that Western medicine creates an environment that suits it, which just happens to be the opposite to the one that suits the body. While medicine is sterile and germ-free, the body requires dirt where decay and germs are ever-present.

The latter is the fertile fields and forests and hills and waterways that have supplied the physical needs of Man since prehistory. One doesn't have to go back far to see that sort of itinerant life existing in the States.

Roy Rogers, for example, had a Bohemian upbringing, living in a houseboat which traveled up the Ohio, his family building a farm where he played the fiddle and sang at square dances 

The type of life is rural-Bohemian cowboy, the sort The Misfits with Monroe and Gable elegized (prev.)

It's a sad, cute film where what's missing are the great beef herds that cowboys used to steer over the plains, from Texas towards the east. What's missing is the clatter of hooves, the mud and dirt, sounds, sights and smells of the range.

After all, an environment is created by the sort of people, animals and fodder that make use of it. Instead of an industry of pharma, what's needed us an industry of farm.fodder supplied by cowboys on hosses.

What started with Pasteur as a cleaning-up process to kill pathogens in milk ends up as an environment where there are far fewer beneficial bacteria (contained in raw milk, along with raw proteins and minerals) that strengthen the immune-system, along with a man-made cocktail that further weakens us.

Farming is a healthy exercise, but that doesn't mean it's risk free. Herds have to be steered carefully, horses rear, slipping on a cowpat could injure your dignity (etc.,)

Pasteurization is based on fear of disease but unfortunately disease will always be with Man the active user of animals. I read in Huff that older breeds of cattle are recommended for raw milk as there is much less risk. There are sensible types of research and looksee that any self-respecting Bohemian wannabe should do.

Bohemians and their kids like dirt and germs and that's perfectly healthy. It's just not risk-free. But why by ruled by fear? The real problem is that the egotists who create the industrial system are not exactly stupid; they know there are emotions such as fear in a population. This can help drive the industry.

But ego is attracted to environments that are sterile for the exact reason that they're not balanced naturally. A balance exists where danger exists and where death exists too, and where decay exists and also regeneration and fertility exist - in the fields, in the forests, in the waterways.

What I want to get to is the entire chthonic area which supports life and health. The elemental area of sun, moon, stars and raw prairie air that we share with Mother Earth.

ALL I WANNA DO

Princess Moonlight (1)

 She suddenly took off a shoe and with one sharp, stocking-clad toe casually scratched the calf of her other leg with the exquisite balance of a flamingo, holding the teacup perfectly steady and not spilling a single drop into the saucer.(page 274)

Is inductive science voyeurism that betrays the sacred? On the last page of The Temple of Dawn is another quote that links Ying Chan to the forest.

..after returning from her studies in Japan, Ying Chan's father discovered that she had benefited little from her stay, and he tried to send her to the United States..Ying Chan had not agreed and had chosen to live in her residence in Bangkok surrounded by flowers.

She is a flower who attracts the toxins of the jungle? 'Toxin' is the root of intoxicated, and Byron said, "The best of life is but intoxication."

In a forest these two aspects are part of the whole scene. A forest is a place where the chthonic universe of dead matter supports the living - and even.more obviously, the associated peatland and wetlands (see prev.)

There is a strength through decadence (decay) that is associated with terrain that is left to itself.

Kemp and others in 'Collapse of Civilization' have been talking about Covid and the excuse it gives governments for authoritarian regimes, and I happened on a free paper called The Light that comes off that area.

The problem I find is that we live in a civilization of information; then one has The Light and other sources that supply counter-information. Life is literally too short to be reading all this stuff!

What's needed is something that's not 'pure information', and the article that hit me was on Terrain Theory and Antoine Bechamp.

Modern Western medicine is based on germ theory..Germ theory posits that we become ill when infected by microorganisms in our external environment..

Terrain theory forms the basis for most ancient healing systems..and is based on strengthening the environment of the host so that the disease cannot flourish.. If a fish is sick, Terrain theory says you should clean the water that the fish swims in. Germ theory treats the symptoms of the fish..

Bechamp was a lifelong rival of Pasteur.. Pasteur enjoyed greater commercial recognition and he was credited with the bacterial discoveries that catalysed medical advancement.. Microbes and pathogens were identified and drugs and vaccines were created to combat them.

But we now live in an environment where bacteria and virons are themselves resistant to drugs; in other words, it's impossible to eradicate the environment. All you can do is change it. Who is hubristic enough to say they change it for the better?

If we live in a logical, inductive universe (of the Western male mind), there exists another universe that is imagination, flow, elegant and feminine - associated with the moon.

Terrain Theory could be a way of getting back to that place in that it is nor inductive and rational - the two things that lead to male dominated industrial corporations and pharma.

What the theory says is that germs exist in the body which has a strong immune system. They're endogenous to the cells of the healthy body. Why do germs exist? Because the environment isn't sterile and is in fact dirty involving contact with animals etc.

'Cow pox' appears to have been the first use of inoculation that protected Man against the deadly small pox. Western Man developed some immunity to diseases via exposure. In other words, dirt and exposure in a terrain are toxins that also supply antidotes.

Disease is bad but, like in an ecosystem, a moderate bout can supply some protection. When Western Man came into contact with indigenous people who had no exposure to diseases like malaria, they had no immune-defence.

Terrain theory advocates a universe that the is balanced - predator-prey - and that does not contain man-made, denatured products like pesticides (and numerous chemicals that may disturb our internal systems, natch.)

In essence, that means living in a world where common dirt of the fields and forests - dead matter, the chthonic substance that gives strength - is strong and toxic, in the sense of supplying poisons, aromatic herbs, parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme.

That universe can be intoxicating owing to the fact that it is not governed by human will or mind or any agency except unthinking rhythm.

Hyborian Bridge 161

 Ying Chan - Princess Moonlight - affects to have no memory of her pre Lausanne childhood where she was educated. At the age of 19 she has fulfilled her promise, ripe and firm breasts over slender legs of a dancing gazelle.

She danced on her toes, and under her swaying skirt her beautiful legs, like two palms in a distant island, moved swiftly.. her body had already turned, but the gleam of her white teeth remained visible like a half moon.(page 222)

Honda is intoxicated, yet the way he approaches her is as a scrutineer. He is not only a dedicated investigator of esoteric lore but also has a predilection as a voyeur. Honda's whole persona is intriguing, and I wonder if Mishima was implying Western science - investigation - is a form of voyeurism? A betrayal of the sacred.

Of course Honda was convinced that having Ying Chan in a transparent crystal would constitute the core of his pleasure, but he could not separate that from his innate desire for investigation. Was there no way by which he could harmoniously reconcile these two contradictory tastes and overcome Ying Chan, this black lotus that had bloomed from the mud of life's flow? (page 209)

There's a strange mixture of a wilderness lore that equates Ying Chan with splitting fruit and hanging vines, with a desire to investigate and possibly destroy the sacred object.

Voyeurism is an odd act that does not "act" yet it does investigate; what type of investigation is it? Alan Moore's essay, 'Blood From the Shoulder of Pallas' asks a similar question.

A typical scene is where Honda is talking with Ying Chan, and the black beauty of her body is on full display.

The center of gravity lay at the contact point of crushed breast and.thigh, around which her body swayed slightly in an incredibly vulgar manner.(page 235)

He is clearly linking her to the wilderness and it is almost like describing fruity products of the Thai forest.

This is even more fantastically apparent in a dream sequence.

Just then the brilliant, pathetic sound of bugles arose from the buffet tent, the ground suddenly split asunder, and Princess Moonlight clad in a golden dress emerged on the wings of a golden peacock.. Princess Moonlight's shiny, brown thighs astride the golden peacock exposes her privates, and in short order she sent down a shower of fragrant urine onto the upturned faces of the onlookers. (page 260)

Honda is in dire straits, and events take a turn where the princess rebuffs him by returning the emerald topaz ring. He goes to Keiko in despair.

Briefly Honda told her what had happened, but he was disgusted to be speaking like a defense lawyer. He could not escape the habit of describing logically, inductively, even in this matter of burning urgency.(page 285)

Sadly the betrayal is toxic, as Keiko and Ying Chan are lovers, as he shockingly sees through the peep-hole of his study - like two succulent plants at play - even though he also sees the three moles that betoken her reincarnation.

The chthonic strength of samsara is revealed on the last page, where Ying Chan dies but is presumably reborn in book 4.

According to her lady-in-wairing, Ying Chan was alone in the garden, standing under a phoenix tree with its smoky vermilion flowers. Although there was no one else there, she was heard laughing. The lady-in-waiting thought it strange that she should be laughing all by herself. Clear, innocent sounds that rose in the sunny blue sky. The laughter ceased and almost at once turned into shrill screams. The lady-in-waiting rushed up to find Ying Chan on the ground, her thigh bitten by a cobra.(page 330)

It's a weird story. Nowadays Western Man watches everything, but does he perceive wilderness and the succulence of death? See Conan and Valeria in 'Red Nails' - the dragon sequence, Valeria's swordplay, the sequel in time-lost caverns with rotting carcasses and moss (prev).

The news is sterilized for consumption, yet chthonic growth is a strength that is not necessarily perceived by the use of information alone. It needs a dark strength; a goddess or a witch.

It sort of reminded me oddly of 'Ghost of Hoppers" (P143,144) where there is also two women entangled. There's also a pool scene (stagnant water), the pool which at story's end is fiercely lit by flames of calamity.

The encased breasts and their dusky ripeness reminded Honda of the fresco at Ajanta cave temple depicting the dying dancer. From this side of the pool he could clearly see her teeth gleaming whiter than her bathing suit when she smiled.

As she drew nearer, Honda stood up to great this girl he had so eagerly awaited.

"Now everyone's here," said Rie, hastening over, but he made no reply.

Keiko greeted the Princess and waved to the Prince in the pool.(page 310) 

TAN AND SEE (HB154)

Hyborian Bridge 160

 Why live in a state of confusion? Perhaps this was Honda's thinking on the first leg of his journey to the holy places of Benares - full of Hindu ghats - and the ruins of the Buddhist caves of Ajanta.

The pestilential rivers of humanity of the former, as well as a majestic holy cow, have a great effect on him,as do the pure waterfalls and serene emptiness of the ancient Buddhist retreats.

As he explains, Buddhism became a footnote to Hinduism in India, while flourishing abroad. Buddha is merely the ninth avatar of Vishnu.

Then he mentions Greek colonies in India and, on his return to Japan (at the height of WWII) fervently pursues philosophical enquiries. King Milinda of Sagara receives the wise man Nagesema and his questions and answers form an ancient text.

The king's castle is surrounded by fortifications, a variety of ramparts, majestic, forbidding side gates, high white walls, deep moats, and the protection provided is complete. The city's squares, crossroads, and marketplace are most aptly designed: beautifully decorated stores are filled with countless invaluable merchandise. Several hundred of charitable hospitals add dignity to the city, while several thousand mansions and high pavilions tower like the Himalayas high in the clouds. And in the city streets, throngs of people are visible, men like pines, women like flowers, priests, warriors, farmers and traders, serfs - people of all classes pass by in groups. The Questions of King Milinda (page 110)

There is a long sequence on the development of anatman alaya Buddhism. Buddhism maintains atman - self - is not an independent entity, and a long period of development was required to explain consciousness.

This harks back to Honda's meeting in book 1 with the abbess of Ghessu, and her speech on instantaneous creation and destruction being time. It seemed to me as if Honda was rethinking his opposition to that doctrine.

These ancient philosophies are exploring cause and effect, which clearly involves time. As a side-note I googled 'time is an.illusion', and someone online mentioned that in the Upanishads virtually everything is an.illusion! Maybe so, but why is it relevant that we should view time a illusory in modern physics?

Anyway, the mention of the Greek colony in India allows Mishima to introduce a large chunk of Greek and medieval philosophy. This was meat and blood to me, and he makes a strong case for Asian influence.

For a start, Dionysus is an Asian god, a frivolous and sensual being who was fused with local Earth goddesses. Dionysian cults sought ecstatic exit from self (atman), which he allies with the Eucharist.

The Greek myth says that the Titans eat Dionysus and only his heart remained, which bore another Dionysus. The Titans who became Man carried that original sin.

The cults of Dionysus are bordering on a type of physical dissolution, an urge to bloody sacrifice leading to a joy that presages rebirth.

This is a sense parallels Honda's experience at Benares where goats are sacrificed by the hundreds, and the skulls of newly dead devotees roasted by the cremator. Honda is astonished by the leprous odors but equally recognizes the joy of samsara (reincarnation).

In any case, all these ancient beliefs and practices take place in primitive absolute time - the sun and moon. The moon goddesses and Earth goddesses are the substance that we lack in our modern confusion of numerical science. Ishtar, in the Hyborian lands, who was mated with subservient sky gods who died and were reborn annually (see Yaple HB106).

The sun, like the sea, is illusory, but the moon supplies a counterbalance that is visible with Earth's rotation in the cosmos. Primitive absolute time is psychic, if you think of sun and moon as deities or brother and sister (Artemis and Apollo).

Cause and effect in the ancient world refer to absolute psychic experience, so it is another sense to the one spoken of by modernday physicists, which is simply numerical (whether you call it illusion or reality!)

That seems to be a confusion, in that Hinduism is on a par with Stonehenge in antiquity. We often in the modern day seem to be talking about two different things, and hence the underlying confusion.

The fact that the Earth's rotation - as noted by Mishima (as well as by Vincent of UVS) - is not perceivable except scientifically is simply a fact of our existence in a cosmos where all things spin. A cosmic dance of time - the dance of the four-armed Shiva that destroys but also enables creation.

What I took from Honda's investigation was a strong sense of pestilential almost fly-fattening dissolution that one can identify with Benares as well as the Greek Dionysus.

The physical dissolution is a chthonic substance that produces inchoate living form. The mosses and lichens that are associated with rotting trunks - see Kayanan's illustrations to the 'Red Nails' sequel in time-lost caverns     .

The inchoate or the developing forms that are associated with blood and the dark womb of rebirth and the female moon. Hecate, the primitive chthonic witch goddess of moon.

All these things are nothing to do with the physics of atoms in resolved space, and all to do with absolute experience of time on Earth (midgard) under the archetypal planets.

It seems to have much more to do with Jung than it does with the dry-as-dust world of quantum physics. We happen to live in a spinning universe that gives us an absolute conception of reality. If things spin in aether then the harmonics are also part of that reality. 

When the Thai Princess of Moonlight, Ying Chan, visits Japan at the age of nineteen, Mishima invokes a sense of chthonic power long hidden to western eyes.

Ying Chan, this black lotus that had blossomed from the mud of life's flow..(page 209)

Hyborian Bridge 159

 At page 50 of The Temple of Dawn, thought I'd write impressions prior to completion of the 330p.

First of all, it's a crystal clear reality of reincarnation, as Honda's first meeting with the seven year Princess Chan makes clear.

"What did she say? Translate!" Honda called to Hishikawa who was standing in amazement.

Hishikawa translated in a low voice: "Mr Honda! Mr Honda! How I've missed you! You were so kind, and yet I killed myself without telling you anything. I have been waiting for this meeting to apologize to you for more than seven years. I have taken the form of a princess, but I am really Japanese. I spent my former life in Japan, and that is really my home.." (page 40)

Honda asks her two questions - one to do with Kiyoaki and one with Isao (book 2) - both of which she answers correctly. Towards the end of the book he has a shattering disillusion - what that is is opaque as yet. This follows a long trek through Indian holy places in quest of enlightenment.

For now (1940), his interest in the princess is interrelated to the morbid listlessness that the sweltering jungle fastness of Bangkok induces in Honda's romantic affiliation with the brown-skinned Thais.

The distant horizon was covered by low-lying jungle. The foreground sparkled in radiant green, as though it were part of another world, grasping the sunshine that poured from the rift in the cloud. But the jungle farther away under the lower black portion  was drenched in rain of such violence that fog seemed to be rising. The rain hung like some elaborate fungoid network, wrapping the dark jungle in its misty vapor. (page 45)

Mishima's infatuation with fertility is apparent throughout in thrilling descriptions of jungle, cloud, temples like Ban Pa In, and this hint of innocent sexuality a la Lewis Carroll.

His response to the charming idea of the little Princess going to the bathroom was an intimation of flesh and blood and a totally new emotional experience. He wished it was possible for him to hold the Princess's smooth brown thighs in his hands as she urinated. (page 49)

The power of difference is apparent throughout. The childish princess has an innocence that is beguiling. The warrior and the priest. The warrior and the lady.

Her hair was cut short in the characteristic Thai style. This traditional coiffure honored the brave maidens of Khorat who long ago, dressed as men, had fought against an invading Cambodian army. (page 38)

To be a traditional right winger is to be aware of differences that are sacred to the human form. Difference is power; sameness is weakness. Difference is beguiling and strange, exotic.

Instead of these ancient powers, nowadays we are afflicted with "positive" news of neutral sameness, supplied by the likes of Pelosi. What "they" call positive is simply lack of difference, discrimination and cosmic power.

Mishima hints at cosmic affiliation in his romantic attachment to the ancients.

It was a pact joining German, Roman and Japanese mythology; a friendship among the beautiful, masculine, pagan gods of East and West.(page 21)

This is where I want to go back to Vincent's email (on swords message board). If we are heading into a neutral future of zero differences, that future has something to do with the western worldview - ie the scientific one.

Roman engineering - not unlike the temples of Thailand - edged against natural strength and merged with the fastness of nature (HB2). Their shrines celebrated the springs that glowed with vitality.

Similarly, Mishima mentions "the four inchoate elements" (book 1) that are the substance of reality.

The chthonic substance of crumbling temples is simply clods of clay that withstand the perils of time. The elements of air, sea, sun have illusory qualities (see prev) but taken together are real. Reality has a type of quality of line, the expression of things that are composed not just of technique but of flow.

What is this substance in scientific terms? It could be aether or, as Einstein said, without ether space has no substance (paraphrasing).

If you take water, hydrogen electrons are flowing continually in instantaneous formations through the oxygen atoms (H2O) forming H-bonds.

In terms of quantum physics, electrons have 4 types of spin that settles where they are in the atom (Pauli). However, in terms of aether any spin or vibration in aether sets off harmonic frequencies.

In other words, aether is a musical medium, pan-cosmic and connecting everything (see Dr Strange HB82). While quantum physics is logically correct, that doesn't mean it's reality! Logic is not reality (again Einstein, prev.)

Since James Clerk Maxwell (HB158), science has disowned aether and so exists in a logical resolved mathematical space - that attracts the ego of acolytes, natch.

This applies to the whole area of quantum physics; it's logically true only, not real in terms of harmonic reality.

Living things are mostly water. The inchoate is us. Add the chthonic substance that Mishima's descriptions of the Thai jungle evoke so magnificently. This is much more like the ancient world, and so unlike the neutral, positive, logical "news" of the modern western establishment.

Hyborian Bridge 158

 Einstein said of Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell's equations on unifying electricity and magnetism

They are the most profound and fruitful since Newton.. I stand not on the shoulders of Newton, but of JCM

One way to look at this is that JCM's equations on electromagnetism and light are so convincing that they led Einstein to formulate his special theory of relativity. But it's the old question that, just because something is convincing doesn't mean it is real; it could equally be a convincing illusion!

Is it possible that Einstein followed an illusion? Yes, because the inductive mirror of illusions is in resolved (perspective) space - that attracts the ego (via number).

Once inside the mirror, human symmetries and rhythms are basically banished. But underlying that is the cold-blooded serpent of archaism - from The Shadow Kingdom - that can't be banished.

The inhuman reptile of primal rhythm could nowadays be likened to the man-serpent from The God in the Bowl (P133). It speaks with a human voice while manifesting profane serpentine lust.

Convincing illusions of the sorcerous universe will usher in the coldblooded serpent of primal rhythm because it is simply the profane version of our own human ancestry.

The only way to banish such convincing illusions of the electromagnetic world is for human symmetries and rhythms to reassert themselves. 

One way to say it is that, instead of JCM's electrical and magnetic "fields", Man has to return to the fields, the honest dirt of physical toil, the almost morbid fertility of swamp and glade. Flesh and bone join with the soil and honest human toil.

As was said previously of Francis Stevens' Claimed, the sea and air and sun are all somewhat illusory. How do we know for sure what is real?

We know from the ruins of living rituals of the ancient world - from Samothrace and Delphi. A crumbling ruin is a sign of strength, held together by microbes and vines and clods of clay - variegated life. The chthonic substance of archaic clay.

We know from the restraint and poise of the classical Greek figured vase. Expression is a combination of technique and flow of line (Bruce Lee).

While JCM.personified Scottish engineering, he also opened a window on the illusory world that is revealed by what is really a universe of lenses (HB56). X-ray diffraction and DNA(prev.)

" Facts" in this universe are also an illusion of the mirror of electromagnetism. Because this mirror also ushers-in the coldblooded serpent of primal rhythm, it can also be known as the Black Sun from Clair Noto's Red Sonja, that shines where the sun don't shine.

It is a type of nothingness, but at the same time ultra-convinving, like an atom bomb (P135). The likes of Musk - now the world's richest man - are led into this electromagnetic fairytale land of the acolyte's ego.

With them slithers the coldblooded serpent, and the way to banish the beast is with the syncopated rhythms that dovetail into human origins and well-being on planet Earth.

THREE IN ONE (Lee Perry)

It's the future where everything is run by electromagnetic impulses (algorithms) but nothing is balanced or poised like a Greek statue. If Musk is going to Mars, he's also going into this universe. The future of Amazon House and Babcock Ranch (ToF2), of 'clean meat', not animal husbandry (prev.) 

Is that advance of the human race or merely advancing within the mirror of illusions? It could almost be a recipe for confusion whereby what we are told (by 'them') belies what is actually there. The news is a positive hoax (prev.) The Black Sun, profanity of sex and rhythm.

(Postscript isn't it red America?)

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 The hint of melancholy in "Black Vest" (prev) has something of the feel of a stately pavan. The stop-start beats and the preacherly words. If you compare it with this 14th century virelai from.Lescurel I think you could see a connection.

GRACIEUSETTE

in those days, music was ritualistic verse narrative that was part of the fabric of courtly etiquette. The social fabric has its melancholy side, in that in time it will come to an end.

This is also contained in Liza Minnelli's "Life's a cabaret, old chum". The double-side of life was one of Mishima's principle themes, the connection between death and the erotic (Queen of the Black Coast).

The double-side has to have a psychic strength that is sorely lacking in modernity. There was the speech by Kiyoaki's grandmother on the grand old days when women washed linen on the riverbank as corpses floated on by.

Primitive realities comprise life and death and hence the ancient imagination invests psyche in scenes of natural power. The unthinking rhythms of the stars and planets evoke verse.

In Mishima's The Sea of Fertility (on the moon), Honda is the central character who imagines that Kiyoaki is reborn three times in each of the three subsequent books. In other words, it could be his pure imagination.

But if the universe is a psychic place, it is invested with imagination so that Man's fancies are more likely to be more realistic. Mishima is up against 200 years of Western advance, and this is his imaginative riposte.

Modern life advances away from primitive realities of dissolution, which carry both sadness and strength. Instead, we are overwhelmingly positive, even as the planetary debt of being outside natural cycles escalates unbelievably under the corona crisis!

Socially too, the positive side of things is ever over-emphasized (see HB156), when it is actually the differences between people that secure a psychic affinity of strength (see P11 Outremer).

This reminds me of a CC Beck quote on the use of stereotypes, that it's easier to say "cat" than "a furry animal with whiskers". Or, similarly, " The thing that was a bit furry but not slimy was on top of the thing that was slimy and wriggly but not that furry" (a cat killing a grass snake).

While waiting on The Temple of Dawn (book 3), the DVD of New Mutants happened to arrive and here is a most un-modern scene of ranquer amongst the differing races of the teens that develops into strong connections that bridge life and death.

It starts with Danielle Moonstar's reciting of the Cheyenne belief that there are warring factors within each soul; the good such as compassion, the bad such as fear and self-destruction.

It continues with a group meeting under Dr Reyes, and Rahn's recollection of her fear as a were child with an unbridled animal lust.

These two hit it off in a cunning sequence of lesbian scenes, but meanwhile the most unbridled of all, Illyana Rasputin, is calling Danielle the pet Pocahontas of the pack. A tussle ensues, and the dark childe is a bestial mane of fury, halted only by Reyes' autocratic devices. 

Differences stoke fire and ire, and strengthen the ripostes of seeming adversaries. Life is a mini-war that kindles a grudging affinity of adversarial positions. Almost a type of ritual conflict as in Siena (the annual bareback race).

We live and die and that is the ultimate case of differences that are real. Modern societies are scared of living in reality and instead invent a seeming positive that merely replaces the negative side - death and adversity - with a type of zero information (see prev.)

Zero information and infinite planetary debt are their legacy; the acolytes of advance within the mirror of illusions (electromagnetism and numerical compulsion); the Black Sun of Noto.

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 It's a sad ending to Spring Snow; Kiyoaki's pilgrimage to Gesshu and the Abbess fails as Satoko has vowed to Buddha never to again see him in this life.

Bedridden with fever and - despite Honda's best efforts - the karmic nun sends them.on their way. On the ride back to Tokyo it's clear Kiyo is dying, and duly does so a few days later.

Don't worry, though, he's reincarnated in book 2 of the series as a violent nationalist! I might give that one a miss, though book 3, The Temple of Dawn, looks promising. Satoko and other characters recur, and young Honda zooms through the whole set.

The abbess gives a nice speech to Honda on the Buddhist principle of karmic reincarnation. The theory of time as continual creation and destruction he disputes, making a mental note to read up on and get back to her at a later date.

This set me to thinking that different cultures may have different theories on the origin of time, but they never dispute that it exists. The basic reason is that time is not complex at all; it's what Jamaicans call "riddim" (prev.)

The sense of time is innately musical, and the sense enables one to create music. Whether it's Mozart or Lee Perry, the exact same holds true.

BLACK VEST (Perry's exotic reworking of Max Romeo's War Ina Babylon)

With time comes dissolution, and that is the basic "fact" of life. On the train ride home, Kiyo seems to have a sort of vision.

He wondered about the tortured look he had seen on his friend's face just a moment before. Hadn't it in fact been an expression of intense joy, the kind to be found nowhere but at the extremes of human existence? Perhaps Kiyo had seen something, and Honda envied him.that, an emotion that in turn stirred an odd shame and self-reproach in him. (page 389)

Time is storytelling, so whatever one's theories of reincarnation, the story goes on. Time is both simple and subtle, so the story can be as involved as, say, Theosophy.

With time safely stored on one's journey, one can then tackle "the four great inchoate elements" - earth, sun, ocean, air. These themes come into play in Francis Stevens' pulp fantasy Claimed (prev). The sea is eternal rhythm, and in the story becomes a chthonic substance representing eternal dissolution.

..a change over swept the ancient triremes; a startling change, if there be such in witnessing a revivification of a rotting corpse, in seeing a dead ship come to life.

Stevens was a dark fantasist, and the story echoes the sombre mysticism of Samothrace and Delphi, rather than the sun-bathed Apollo.

Where there is sombreness and rotting carcasses, there is classical revival. The chthonic strength comes from the acceptance of time as the arch-destroyer - and reviver (Chronos, father of Zeus).

The sea is inchoate in reason; the midgard serpent; the black, feminine moon. In the story, the theme of sacrifice is invoked; the curio-shop owner buys

the blooded Mirror, out of Sunlight, by Chalmers III (CH VI "White Horses")

The sea is illusory in its reflections. While sunlight is "high sorcery", the sea is also " the great deep, the abyss". That strength renders it ultimately flexible (see Bruce Lee).

The thought occurred to me that if the West's version of time is delusional or inadequate (as personified by Einstein), who does one ask?

As mentioned in HB154, the West seems to replace "negative" stories (history) with a positive that adds up to zero information. "Pure information" lacks blood and passion since the basic principle of rotting that revivifies is missing. The hot and sultry Southern states, swamps, alligators. The course of time that tells a chthonic story is lacking in the materialist West; the living ruins of landscape; places of power that revive through decay. What is left is a positive of more or less zero information in terms of psychic reality (history).

If you go to Tokyo, they are more or less mimicking the West, as Mishima's tetralogy more or less points out. To get a meaningful answer, you have to ask the true East, or the South, or the North.

The Eastern answer came from the Abbess. The South might come from Lee Perry's "riddims". The North might come out of the fantasies of REH.

The bay was lined with built-up terraces of red stone, and from which jutted many wharfs and docks. Its waters were not empty but thronged with shipping of a type as anachronistic, though by no means as time-rotted, as the galley of the dolphin figurehead. Great triremes, with which shields of their warriors ranged glittering down the length of their bulwarks, shared the anchorage with merchant vessels of more peaceful appearance, gilded from stem to stern and of sails varie-hued as bright banners. (Claimed)

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 People of the flesh have "riddim",in the Jamaican patois. The hot, fleshy realities of life expressed in the guise of primitive folk tales (possibly the origin of Max Romeo's Tan and See?)

You wonder though if, in the days of Mozart, hot flesh was not more rampant in the decorous salons? If flesh is the reality then it's going to be hovering in the vicinity. Languid nature and hot flesh sort of go together, as this quote from Mishima seems to suggest.

The ferns along the road, the red-berried spearflowers, the pin needles rustling in the wind, the abundance of tall dry grass, the road itself, rutted and white with frost as it passed through the midst of it all - Kiyoaki's eyes followed everything until it finally merged into the black shadow that lay across the road ahead as it rose through the grove of cedars. Surrounded by unbroken silence and utter clarity was a world untouched by blemish of any kind. At its center, so inexpressiblt poignant, at its innermost heart, he knew, was Satoko herself, her figure as quiet and still as an exquisite gold statue. But could such a still and perfect world, which eschewed all intimacy, really bear any relation to the familiar world he knew? (page 374)

I was attempting to make a similar point back in the day, with the colonial affectations that forged a common bond with native culture - see Corto Maltese and Surinam Alternates 4.

Affectations of courtly ritual, such as the British tea ceremony, make an appearance in Spring Snow. From the sedate rituals of landowning gentry spring the courseness of lust among the fruits and vines. 

Nowadays we are told (by 'them') anything pre-modern is negative, when the truth is it's both negative and positive. The affectionate common bonds of primitive rituals is the positive side. It's only possible to deny lustiness between races if one is living in an illusion of the head (as opposed to the expressive body).

R Crumb's obsessions with big black women is echoed in Joe Tex's

AIN'T GOING TO BUMP NO MORE

When Lee Perry explores "riddims" he is exploring the basic balance of life, without which Man could not have run, hunted, lit fires for food, danced to deities at festivals (see Gobetlitepe).

The pre-modern days had "riddim" first and foremost. When 'they' say it's negative they mean it's not of the head, the head that is attracted to a parallel universe of mirrors.

As stated in HB154, mirrors are both truthful and illusory. They embody the vanishing point of technique, the cold serpent of illusion. Any advance we do without the riddims of primordial balance has to be seen as both truthful and illusory (either/or).

A mirror is perspective truth but, as was noted back in HB56, the bending of light is a basic technique whereby data is obtained. Whether it's a mirror or a lens, the principle is the same (see DNA, X-ray diffraction, prev.)

The only reason we know atoms are there is because they are detected by diffraction patterns. Our societies live inside the mirror that is both illusory and truthful.

The ego is attracted to this information that has zero fleshly input. What started with Newton's experiments on light (C4-6) ends up as relativity.

Inside the mirror everything is relative to the speed of light (obviously); and when light us bent (by reflection or refraction or diffraction) data is obtained. 

To advance within the mirror, you have to be prepared to leave behind primordial balance ("riddims") in a world that is both illusory and truthful ('fact').

The lie of advance is that it doesn't only have a positive; it has the very big negative of being basically unreal, though highly convincing sorcerous illusion (perspective), like an atom bomb - see P133 (P135)