Hyborian Bridge 186

The Darwinists are caught on the horns of a dilemma in that they cannot admit design is present in evolution even though, in order for dynamic action to take place, different forces (muscles attached to skeleton) pull in different directions to stabilize movement.

Athletic grace is clearly designed with muscular tension, so that side of reality is simply ignored. A suspension bridge is designed with tensile stress; the stressing of opposing forces is impossible to ignore in practical mechanics.

In the shape of things; a mountain. The Danube crossings and Roman earthworks (HB2) that merge with the strength of nature. The physical situation is that groups of masses have opposing shapes that slot into one another. Yin and Yang.

The physical principle of the tension of opposites is dramatic, and applies just as much to the body as to picturesque scenes of Roman earthworks.

Group dynamics create shape. BWS's lean and limber calves (P186) of primordial warriors are iconic in their subtle strength.

Spirit emerges from the great shapes of iconic strength that interweave in nature. Take away the groups and masses of interlocking forces, and one is left with the idea of an abstract vector - the fundamental of modern physics.

A vector can be thought of as applying to any action that also has a reaction, as in balls on a billiards table. Newton's Laws of Motion can be taken as presaging a world where the schisms - groups of opposing masses - that determine a spiritual becoming, have been replaced by points of force. An abstract concept.

Newton also studied light, of course (see C4-C6 on "Newton's Knives"), and the parallel reality of straight-line geometry has opened the door to quantum mechanics. Quanta are essentially points of force that have a vector (and spin, which implies they're not points!)

This is the parallel reality we live in, since it does without groups of masses that have schismatic presence. A body-in-motion clearly has them.for athletic speed and grace. Equally, traditional societies have them in the feuding counterparts of clan and villages (see Afghanistan, prev.)

A society that has a spiritual shape - a shapeliness that is au naturel and womanly (see Bardot, prev) cannot do without the group dynamic that fractures and divides.

Differences supply the glue in society, in contradistinction to modernity. Where there is sameness, nor only is society artificial, but group dynamic is no longer sacrosanct.

Animals are formed of the group dynamic in their shape (cow, pig), but " clean meat" (prev) eradicates the dynamic in favour of growth as a vector in a lab-vat (with possibilities for amorous meat or even algorithmic/DNA expression, natch.)

This technique and others approach the vanishing point of technique in that the only thing left is high-speed information (DNA, algorithms). Without schismatic shape we enter an illusory world of number and monetary fixation.

This parallel reality of speed is a product of the fixated-ego. Is it surprising that so many of these types have a common element in their aspergers (Musk, Thunberg or the Beeb's Packham)?

Aspergers-types live in the logical head way more than they do in the dynamically intuitive body.

These are the sorcerers' acolytes of our day - fixated on the illusory, parallel world of the vanishing point and endless dollars for failing states (vis Zanzibar's high-rise horror.) 

A fantasy world like Hyboria is obviously free of the illusory fixation of the ego of acolytes and true to schismatic reality of groups and masses. Primordial shape. The warrior and the woman are free to be themselves under the cosmos above, where gods and goddesses of love and power roam free.

Pictorial 186

Going  by the previous post, schisms occur in feudal societies as a matter of course, basically owing to this overlap of spiritual and temporal authority. Clair Noto's "Red Lace" captures that idea in a Hyborean-era fantasy that is second to nun (if nuns there were in the palace of Apah Alah.)

This seems to imply that a sorcerous or spiritual dimension is required for schisms to occur or - as noted - the monetary authority becomes like unto a dictatorship. In the modern state, this dictatorship has become fixed on the ego of acolytes of electromagnetism - straight line logic, algorithms.

But, if schisms are real things then this modern straight-line reality is simply an illusion that serves the ego. The ego is convinced because it is convincing, like a fantasy of CG.

But, where does spirit come from? For a start, it comes from schisms, since living things are completely fragmented in their design.

Muscles (a protein) are banded and generally attached to joints by ligaments. They weave round the skeletal structure in elongated, compartmentalised shapes. The shape of a male calf is typically male; the shape of a female calf is typically female.

Why? It's not because one has an X and the other a Y chromosome (that's just information.) The reason is that muscle is inherently shapely, whether snake-shape  or male-shape or female-shape (or female-snake).

We live in a world that ignores the fact that shape has  spiritual component, that there is an.overlap between the spirit and the temporal.

Because shape is impossible to explain in temporal terms, it is simply ignored (protein-folding can be algorithmically computed, but see prev.) The temporal - the world of pure information or DNA - then becomes a dictatorship.

The dictatorship is convincing to the ego of acolytes of the mirror of illusions. It's a self-reinforcing illusion of fact. I noticed that Kemp commented on "protein spikes" as a consequence of the malprogramming of mRNA, which is certainly feasible.

A programmable worldexists alongside the real world of shape and spirit. Living things occupy different levels of development; higher levels have the development of spirit. Each member of the body is a spiritual dimension. The organization of muscles is schismatic (arranged in mutually opposing groups.) The body is organized feudally and can even turn on itself in the cancerous growths.

This feudal facet of nature is ignored by the "facts" of an.information system. The trend was possibly anticipated by Ada Lovelace (prev), the "poetic" programmer. Without poetry, everything is partial.

Muscles are designed mechanically to operate antagonistically (on joints etc), but with a higher purpose (antagonism or schism is necessary for purpose - acts of meaning.)

That purpose is the shape of the body. Anything that is designed to operate at a higher purpose constitutes spirit. A single human body operating antagonistically in the field (scything, tilling etc) is active in a place of power. The physical strength and fertility renders the psyche palpable.

The physical and the psyche are difficult to disentangle in these active situations (where physical power exists). Traditional communal harvesting rituals under the sun are especially noteworthy. There may be Dionysus in his bull guise.

Possibly, going by ethnologist Paul Radin (prev), the shaman strives upward with the psyche, while the man/woman-of-action strives physically with the scythe.

The intermingling of the mechanical with the spirit or psyche constitutes higher strength; conventional Darwinism (or neo-Darwinism) has no source of strength, and tends to be considered as pure information like DNA (for vaccines etc.)

If the body is a series of stages of development, a community is the next stage, and a society the next. Deities of the universe are next; religious shapes Man gives to societies.

Relating this to Afghanistan, Bruno Maçães (Portuguese politician) has said that American power was remote and "a divinity of sorts". He means here a secular divinity of total authority.

It feels like an end. Not the end of Western.power, but the end of the view that power alonematters and the societies over which it is exercised can safely be ignored. Instead of a distant but absolute power, the recognition that important decisions may well have to be taken outside Washington. Instead of conviction in our own truths, curiosity and an open mind. Instead of abstract human rights, the value of the human being in front of us. Instead of the dream of total control, the virtue of balance. (DT)

Maçães also speaks of his familiarity with the north Àfrican region of Somaliland. Why, he wondered, was it prospering when Somalia was not? He suddenly realized it was BECAUSE of Western noninterference.

Without foreign interference, rgw region was able to build a political model rooted in its own traditions. The parliament has an upper house representing the local clans, and it is this upper house that helps maintain cohesion.

It is easy to imagine what would happen if Western experts were put in charge. The parliament would be reformedand the upper house abolished. The fabric of small businesses covering every corner of Hargeisa would be replaced by local cronies fwd by vast transfers of Western funds. Local elites would be replaced by the local version of (Afghan) Ashraf Ghani, the celebrated author of "Fixing Failed States"_ an academic from an obscure American University to educate his fellow citizens in the Western ways. (DT)

Dictatorial power is an.illusion; the spiritual dimension of society is shapely and incurs taste and belief. Western power is temporal only - and that is the illusion.

I'm not talking about guys like Moamar Gaddafi who are tin-pot dictators (with taste and belief.) I'm talking about absolute temporal power backed by the dollar.

As was previously hinted, Turkey and Iran are shaped by spiritual belief. They may be relatively tin-pot but they still have a normalcy. The same in general applies to India despite Modi's indiscretions. 

Temporal authority with a spiritual dimension always has a capacity for schism. The Supreme Leader in Iran may not be as secure as they feel, and rebellion around the next corner.

Who knows? The feudal domain is schismatic and thoroughly unpredictable. It has spirit, active force. 

" Scotland "

(BWS Fantastic Islands 1974)

Maçães practically uses the language of fantasy to describe American power. That's because it's illusory without the spiritual dimension that shapes societies.

The West lives an illusion that is convincing in terms of number and monetary considerations, but that illusion was exposed in Afghanistan.

Hyborian Bridge 185

Clair Noto is something of a favorite, as you may have gathered. At the time (1977), the emblematic fragments of "Red Lace" came under fire from no lesser a personage than Cat Yronwode herself.

The blood imagery.. pulls deep chords in any woman, yet I was again left wondering why. Why did the centaur smear his blood on Sonja's eyes? Why did Narca kill the Big Birds and tumble them into a vat of blood? Why did the heart's blood of one of the birds cure Sonja's blindness? (#13)

At the time (rehsongcycle, suspended) I think I may have related the centaur's artisan work of filigree roc-eggs to Vulcan, and the lordly rocs to the primordial cycle of blood and clay that their death rejuvenates (along with Sonja's eyesight.)

Apart from the symbolism, the city of Skranos has no overriding authority as the dynastic family is riven. Suumaro, the exiled prince, is beloved of his mother the sorceress Apah Alah, and enemy to his brother, lord of the behemoths.

The city is in schism, symbolised almost literally by the accursed palace of wood-turned-stone reared by the spurned Apah Alah. Most of the action takes place in the accursed palace.

Those who criticize the emblematic fragmentation of the narrative seem to miss the point that most beliefs do have that element of fragmentation. The obscurity of it is part of what makes it a belief.

The feminine aspect of Noto, the revival through blood and clay, has the strength and purity of strong (red) wine.

The raw, physical power of renewal constitutes beliefs which have these obscure or obscene sides (see Yaple, prev.) This frees the psyche from the reins of logic (Apollo) to the festive, fertile area of Dionysian abandon.

There is a ruinous side to revival which I think Noto captures in the root-entangled, fiery decadence and ultimate destruction of the accursed palace.

The cycles of schism and even schizophrenia followed by revival have no place in modernity where the straight lines of logic are the only authority.

The successes of logic and science are undeniable, yet the price is a psychic weakness of numbing infidelity. Where there is no room for renewal, the Dionysian urge cannot be satisfied.

The end-product of that society is efficiency with no meaning or joy. Modern work creates the habitat where that work is possible that becomes successful - the mirror of illusions, or straight-line programming.

Advance (of the Muskian order) is an illusion without the sophistication and taste that are matters of psychic belief. A dictatorial reality cannot have these, nor can it have a schizophrenia of body and mind, or schisms of society.

Instead of schism we have similarities, such as was noted in P185 of the robotic Taliban to the ultra-ordered West. We have pure social-media clichés and trolls; the Taliban are emblematic of Trolls from the ancient world.

The Taliban are only believers in money, as is the West, because this is equated with robotic success. When the monetary system came into play (with the maritime powers, prev), schizophrenic belief and schism were outlawed.

This culminated in the establishment of the Vatican as an independent state in 1929, meaning that the temporal authority of the church was at an end. The spiritual/temporal dichotomy was outlawed.

To see exactly what this means, one has to recognize the overlap that occurred between ecclesiastical and secular authority throughout the Middle Ages 

Papal conflicts were the order of the day, owing to favors bestowed by the Pope - or 'king of kings' - on one kingdom or another.

For about a hundred years Rome was in fact occupied by the Holy Roman Empire or its vassals, and the Pope resided at Avignon where mostly French were elected.

When  Rome was retaken by the Papal army, the French contingent created an anti-Pope at Avignon. This ultimate Western schism of having two pontiffs was finally resolved in about 1415.

Schisms are normal where temporal power is also held by spiritual authority. The conflicts with the Holy Roman Empire took the form.of regular excommunications for acts of physical expansion.

In Italy, local 'vicars' were more  like hereditary lords little different to princes. The only difference was that they were obligated to Rome as the temporal authority.

When temporal authority is lost to the spiritual dimension, there is no possibility of having schisms since the dictatorial authority of monetary and managerial economy is overwhelming.

The Taliban are as much under that authority as is the West. Both sides are robotic ally successful  - mirror images of logistical illusions.

One has to have some freedom.from dictatorship to recognize the psychic freedom of belief and taste, as opposed to simply wealth. 

The ego can.only be tamed by humility. If the success of such work is a success for the ego, the ego itself creates the work that creates the habitat that creates the work.

It's an.illusory system that serves only the cravings of the ego as opposed to a reality that is strong and pure. This reality is both sexually schizophrenic and schismatic, a product of body and mind, female blood and male muscle.

 

Pictorial 185

So, according to this reporter (P184) the ancient or archaic establishment was a schizophrenic order of church and state, not an order of systematic control such as we are subject to in modernity?

That may be what is implied; this reporter is only human and one would need a celestial perspective to know for sure. In order to reconcile body with mind, schizophrenia could be seen as a loosening of the reins of logic.

As seems now to be more and more apparent, systematic logic curtails the normal expression of the body in terms of a balanced and proportional commune.

Many examples occur to this reporter. From the 70s, there are the Blaxploitation movies with overt Black Power aesthetic and morals (Foxy Brown, prev.) Contrast this with the present practically police-state mentality of control!

The Taliban in Afghanistan are an example of dictatorial control, but their language is not so far removed from that of a typical Latin American regime (say, Brazil). The West has the language of the dictatorial dollar - but aren't the Taliban simply the mirror image of this?

Where the dollar rules at the expense of proportion, the languages of the ego is predominant.

And then we will take the money..the outrageous sums of money you will give us because it also means more wealth for you.. and we will.invest it.

We will.buy your banks. We will buy your schools. We will buy your media. We will buy your politicians. And then, when we have bought all.the rest, we will buy you..because you have taught us that everything has a price. And we are happy to pay.

Then, when we have this influence..we will.use it. We will.make sure that the wrong people..and you know who..no longer have any economic power. We will.not allow them.inside our institutions, because it is important they do not have anywhere to peddle their dangerous, outdated ideas 

..Yes, of course there will still be people who hate us..they just simply won't be able to do anything about it any longer.

So as I said..there will be no war..amts

No, not a spokesman from Kabul but Magneto at a Davos dinner in Dawn of X #5!

What is missing from this whole managerial view of human behaviour is the raw physical state that harbors psychic power. The planets in their orbits have it (see Blavatsky, prev); apparently modern Man does not.

The psyche has to be freed of the language of managerial economics for the body to exercise its proportionate expression. Only from ruins, rags and ruffians can revival be reestablished on planet Earth. 

Dionysian abandon is an expression of elemental fertility; the language of female fertility is attuned to this domain while the ego of acolytes is not.

The sexual, schizophrenic state of the body is strong and pure and produces strong wine. Weakness is the bane of modernity, which often goes by the name of liberal values.

What the liberals want is more stereotypes, not less.. They want everything a sexless robot, or a wax figure. Same as in Bernini's day when all.the angels had to be sexless, ethereal creatures, you couldn't tell.if they were boys or girls or men. In the Old Testament, those angels were terrible creatures. They came down armed with fiery swords and everything else. And that's what I hate to see go by the board, because it's a sign of a declining civilization. (CC Beck, TCJ #185, 1985)

CC goes on to say how useful conventional images are in comics.

I've often said when we used stereotypes, if you went into a hockshop, there was always a Jew behind the counter, not an Irishman or a Swede, or a Dutchman, or a black person. Went into a bank, there's an old conservative guy with a Hoover collar, he wasn't sitting there in blue jeans and a T-shirt. And you knew where you were and you could go to the next panel, and show a typical farmer with a straw hanging out of his mouth and bare feet and, as I said to.my kids, if you wanted to.show a slob, you had him.running around in his undershirt and his stocking feet. Now today, everybody runs around like that. It's not the stereotype of s slob anymore because you don't know, it might be a university professor, or a heart surgeon or something. And that's democracy taken to its ultimate limit; everybody's so.much alike that they might as well.be in uniform.

Similarly, Crumb reckoned the hippy gradually became a uniform and rote. Stereotypes are impossible to avoid - the ultimate being the male and female bodies. But they can either be strong and on the correct side; or weak and meaningless.

Medieval behavior was bodily strong, somewhat schizophrenic, and somewhat stereotypical. Different castes would perform different acts, and church dogma would continually equivocate to allow battle to commence and blood to flow.

Even though this reporter was not there to witness the events, it seems obvious that hypocrisy and schizophrenia were involved. That's just history, since the alternative is to hear the language of dictatorial control from the Taliban, or alternatively the language of managerial economics from.the acolytes of the dollar.

Neither of these things may involve schizophrenia, but neither do they allow for the free-expression of the body in proportional surroundings.

This takes a less than.dollar-fixated mentality, as has been apparent in establishments such as the Hotel Chelsea in New York (squalid habitat of bohemians of note - see also Fred of Pilote, prev.)

Not everything is language - or at least it's poetic and atmospheric - and we are fooled in the modern world into relating action to the head, not to the proportional body/habitat (wolflike.)

The end result of that is that AI governs human behaviour, and we all enter the mirror of illusions (of electromagnetism and algorithm, straight-lines, sun.)

Not everything can be controlled since, after all, the proportions of the body are God-given. God-given freedom shall dispell Mammon, and allow events to transpire naturally without egotistical concern. The fates.

In a way, this fate has befallen a lot of modern comics, whereby characters are running events (in terms of egotistical assumptions), instead of the events forcing characters to act (naturally and bodily).

With honorable exceptions (such as Tini Howard) the language of modern comics is dictatorial as opposed to freely poetic. Let the body speak.

Looking back at my pictures when I shoot it's insane the psychology in seeing myself in my purest form gives evidence that pain, hurt, tears and heavy burdens aren't who I am..a beautiful, sensitive woman who needs to look at myself in my purest form. (Britney Spears)

Pictorial 184

In the world as vacuum (P183) there is no struggle between Man and bestial strength. The struggle between Castle Radium and BEM in Gilbert Hernandez' story (P180) could almost be taken as a parody of Man's religious struggle, as well as the more recent superheroic fantasies.

Bestial strength is forever linked with elemental fertility, and such images make their appearance in the Bible. Moses was supposedly a serpent-worshipper and medicine man, and there is the image of the golden calf in the desert.

The strength of the images is such that Christian saints are often represented in a poise of battle, as with St George and the dragon.

The syncretism of Christian with pre-Christian elements is apparent, and it seems that any new universe is formed from.fragments of old and new, without being completely systematic.

In the world of systematic order we inhabit, we are impelled to be logical, whereas a world of fragments has the logic of desire.

Anthony and Cleopatra (P183) desired to have a syncretic ritual, and so it came to be. The desire is to have a logical course of events by utilizing fragments from different cultures. Rather than being logical or systematic as is the modern way, the desire is to be logical in a basically illogical universe (see Corneille, prev.)

The modern order, in its attempt to be systematic, simply drives people further into a vacuum.of psychic nothingness. In an illogical universe (of balance and proportion) we are continually dealing with fragments which are formed from the internal logic of desire.

I happened to come upon a very good example of this in the Mexican church (dimensionantropologia). Mexico has always appeared to me to be baroque and quintessentially Spanish, but it's clear from this article that the medieval Spanish customs also appealed in a mysterious way to the Amerindian inhabitants.

The colonial evangelists held sway in a vague universe of stelae, feathered serpents and the recently imported Divinities. Rather than attempt a systematic abstraction of native into Christian belief, there were tangible emblems that can constitute a link.

There was the Tarasca, a medieval Spanish dragon. Colonial images of St Michael severing the head of a dragon, or the flowering of Patriarch Joseph's staff, found echoes with remnants of the old beliefs. Xipe Totec, the thunderer (rain) was identified with St Matthews ax.

The tangible and emblematic focus of the Spanish mission allowed tribes such as the Muevas to follow a logic to build a bridge to the rituals of the new church. Probably where there is a relation between dragon (snake), blood, rain (spring equinox.) See prev DH Lawrence, The Plumed Serpent.

The internal logic of desire may be on the bizarre side; by contrast, a world of pure logic outlaws the bizarre and ends up with a vacuum of psychic nothingness.

The reason is probably that the universe is balanced and proportionate first, and that is where desire originates. The female element.

Females tend to be the ones stitching the frayed tapestries of sequential events that constitute fate in the cosmos.

Pictorial 183

 Having not read the Moore/Gebbie "Lost Girls", I can only go by the odd glimpse to ascertain it's a floridly decadent almost doll-like in a Geisha fashion exploration of tucks and folds in the continually-changing clothes as well as sexual experiences of the three protagonists.

It seems that the clothes and exotic surroundings are integral to the sexual experience. In a somewhat similar way, ecological issues have a sensual dimension in the fiercely fertile undergrowth, the bowers and hidden ponds naiads and dryads frequent in the vast forests of antiquity.

But the ancient sense  of ecology as espoused in Greek myth is the exact opposite to what passes for the ecological mainstream of today (Atten-bore &Co.)

One way to look at it is through the prism of the French decadents of the 19th century, who overlapped heavily with the symbolists, of whom Maeterlinck - Pelleas and Melisande, prev - is one.

The decadents were wary of nature to the point of deviating from the norm and being "unnatural" or beyond nature. However, this is also true of classical myth in that Zeus takes the form of various animals - bull, heffer - to pursue his lusts (see The Rape of Europa, prev.)

Man is beyond nature in that he employs animals to do his bidding, which no other animal (or plant) does. The decadents went so far as welcoming depravity, at least in-the-field, so they would have shrugged at sheep-shagging - or women cavorting with donkeys (rehsongcycle, suspended.)

It all depends what is called "natural". In Cider With Rosie (prev), Laurie Lee invokes mention of those who found animal pleasure being frowned on, so such decadence was not unheard of (incest likewise.)

If we lived in a reality full of fertility and bestial strength, then it is very far from our illusory reality of logical order. It can cause revulsion but equally attraction, and this may be the "unnatural order" that Clair Noto set out to create in "The Tourist" (P182)

The alien bestiality of these erotic zones is very close to the ancient cult of Dionysus. The gay god was often equated to a bull, which was sacrificed at spring equinox and the heart held aloft, symbolizing the resurrection of Dionysus from consumption by the Titans.

The agricultural province of this ritual speaks heavily of frenzied dancing and cavorting amongst the vines. Such experience of expressive acts that release the psyche from inhibitions are hard to find nowadays, and evoke mainly memories of the hippy-era of the 60s.

The "unnatural", or what you could call beyond nature, is typical of antiquity. Dionysus was syncretically linked to Osiris, the risen god of the Egyptians (killed by Seth). In fact, when the Roman Marc Anthony fell in love with Cleopatra (Ptolemy, Greek) of the Egyptians, they held a ceremony where he was consecrated as Dionysus-Osiris and she as Isis-Aphrodite.

If the fertile and the bestial in human culture are a part of the unnatural or " beyond nature", it is typical of ancient dynasties.

By contrast, the infertile (sterile or hygienic) and human-obsessives are only normal to an illusory system.

It's not that surprising the net attracts humans obsessives since it is really an illusory system (of straight-lines or algorithms, sun or electromagnetism.)

Fertility is also seen in the almost fetishistic folds and pins found in doll-like Geishas. Moderns tend to frown at this from their perspective of illusory normality. Where fertility is the norm, such flamboyant acts release inhibitions and mediate experience.

The psyche cannot experience a vacuum and that may be the case with modern obsessives (of an illusory reality.) It's nor possible to explain a Dionysian world by means of Apollo (logic and social order.)

Pictorial 182

There must be people out there thinking who is this guy to badmouth established environmentalusts the likes of Zac - the unmentionable - Goldsmith, Chris - hare-brain - Packham, David Atten-bore? What can he possibly know that the established order doesn't?

The clue is in the word "established", since this is the order that says ecology is just one subject among the paradigm of science, which is supposedly superior because it is a neutral observation of the natural order, unbiased by belief or witchcraftery.

This neutrality may have been what led Edward Goldsmith into a cybernetic dead-end. The point is that neutrality is itself biased since nature is red in tooth and claw; a mixture of bestiality and innocence that is as far from neutral as Richard Dawkins is from godhood.

It's not neutral and it's not hygienic; it's filthy and with repulsive aspects. These obscene aspects are seen in the Hyborian old gods described by Yaple - see HB140.

The link between repulsive and obscene in animalistic rites that celebrate the fertility of the Earth. This sexual aspect can also take the form of frolics with donkeys - see rehsongcycle (suspended)

The fact is that pornography and repulsiveness are clearly related. The film previously discussed, I Married a Monster from Outer Space, has that subcurrent running through it, obviously muted owing to the 50s puritanical ethos! (Alien Vows is a recent "remake" that centres exclusively on the dirty side of the encounter.)

The fact that sex is related to the blood and bestiality of nature is something that a neutral science naturally tends to mute, so in that sense it's not atall neutral. It's only neutral in the sense it's not filthy.

This brings in Alan Moore and Clair Noto, both of whom (along with Melinda Gebbie) have taken pornographic aspects to extreme. The Moore/Gebbie "Lost Girls" was noted previously (rehsongcycle, suspended).

Perhaps more notably, Noto in "The Tourist" creates an entire alien underworld of devious sexual expression. Possibly there is some relation here to the literal underworld she created in Red Sonja ("Red Lace" prev), where blood is mixed with clay to fire an unholy furnace of carnivorous plants.

The strength that comes from the underworld is far from neutral since it is death and decay and the resulting irons and minerals that give plants growth.

Fertility, death and the relation between love and death are again far from neutral topics. This is the subject of Maeterlinck's Pelleas and Melisande (see prev) from a French fable of a water sprite.

Foul-smelling waters, or at least an abandoned swimming pool of moss and lichen, was a theme of Jaime Hernandez's Ghost of Hoppers (P144)

Anything that reeks of abandon and the intrusion of moss and lichen also reeks of fertility and the abandon of passion.

The power of that theme can't be equated with a science of numbers since it's much more to do with experience and the strength of psyche.

Experience and the strength of psyche are not neutral topics.. What happens is that neutral science underpowers the very things that have power and longevity in nature.

I guess I'm a type of outsider, and maybe others of the comic book industry such as BWS may be. Blood and passion are strong, fertile and pure, as well as bestial and innocent.

We live in an illusory world of acolytes of scientific neutrality, and they are just as likely to be ecologists. Only the German Greens' Baerbock (the love-child of Paul Kantner, apparently) has grasped the bull by the horns and said that ecological issues have to trump all the rest.

It remains to be seen whether they achieve power, or another mini-Merkel is installed.

Hyborian Bridge 184

‘Thine is a sickness uncommon in youth these days: since young folk have given up tending their betters. The remedy is sleep and certain drugs,’ said the Sahiba; and he was glad to give himself up to the blankness that half menaced and half soothed him.

She brewed drinks, in some mysterious Asiatic equivalent to the still room – drenches that smelt pestilently and tasted worse. She stood over Kim till they went down, and inquired exhaustively after they had come up.. ..Best of all, when the body was cleared, she cut out from the mass of poor relations that crowded the back of the buildings – household dogs, we name them – a cousin’s widow., skilled in what Europeans, who know nothing about it, call massage..

The ground was good clean dust – no new herbage that, living, is half-way to death already, but the hopeful dust that holds the seeds of life.. And Mother Earth was as faithful as the Shiba. She breathed through him to restore the poise he had lost lying so long on a cot cut off from good currents. His head lay powerless upon her breast, and his opened hands surrendered to her strength. The many-rooted tree above him, and even the dead manhandled wood beside, knew what he sought, as he himself did not know. (Kim, page 412, 413)

Starting from where P181 finished, in the old days medicine was meant to be repulsive since that is the way the body was meant to be purged of foulness and invasions.

Incidentally, in the classic B movie, I Married a Monster from Outer Space, one of the aliens remarks,

"I find the human female the most disgusting of all - though it can be fun if you relax."

An invasion of foreign bodies always seems to have its repulsive aspects, and like-for-like treatments were in the past deemed efficacious.

In the Conan mythos, there runs the idea that cities have their repulsive aspects. In Milius's 1982 film, the Cimmerian wrinkles his nose in disgust and his companion says something like, "The wind cannot enter here."

The implication is that nature harbors repulsive aspects that are cleansed by the free processes of nature. In a city, the squalid areas - such as the maze in Rogues in the House - invite alien invaders and do not sufficiently quench them.

In modern days these would be termed infectious and would be "cured" with hygiene. However, hygiene itself is not the cure since living involves both dirt and cleanliness. An organic mixed farm cycles materials in this guise in order to retain fertility.

A city does not need to be hygienic - witness the scene of Jenna thrown into an open cesspit - but in order to be healthy it has to have a balance that maintains a level of cleanliness amongst the squalor.

If nature contains repugnance, it also contains the means to deal with it. This is the ecological balance that provides strength and fertility (to the cities and the farmers' markets.)

In terms of fertility, some revulsion is par for the course, and in Hyboria seen in the obscene cults of Shemitic peasants (see Yaple, prev.)

Obscenity in traditional societies is par for the course, and occurs in the Amerindian trickster Wesakechak (see Buffy website/art)

So, in that sense it's a sign of strength that acknowledges the repulsive aspects in nature that must be contained by a balance of forces.

This cannot happen in a society that believes only in information and, in fact, degrades stable ecosystems (see P181) that harbor contained viruses.

Without the stable environment, viruses are free to mutate at will in the preformed hygienic areas that have more-or-less banned repulsive aspects. 

As was noted in P181, the ego (of acolytes) is attracted to the same hygienic areas as the viruses for the same reason - that they're unstable. They are pure information (straight-line or resolved space, algorithm) and attractive to the ego. The same ego that will detect and attempt to repel these repulsive invaders.

In place of resolved space, ancient societies honored places of power that harbored the gods of nature (see HB2 Roman Baths, Minerva). The bedrock of nature is mineral and bountiful, powerfully health-giving and robust, and allusive to the stars in the strong rhythms of place (Earthspin.)

In other words, there is a psychic element to the beliefs in ancient power, manifested in goddesses such as Minerva. Modern technology does without these elemental beliefs and, of course, in many ways it improves on the old.

I noticed Kemp put-up a link to a Toledo cane-sword, and I happened on a piece in Linde-story on the Viking Ulfberht, a 9th century supersword made of wootz or crucible steel.

The raw material of crucible-fired wootz originated in India, and was exported westward to the Arabs where Damascus became a centre of swordcraft. The Vikings, as river and sea traders, probably got their wootz from the Arabian source.

I read some more, and the high carbon content of the crucible steel appears to contain nano-tubules that may be formed from charcoal or plant-matter during the forge-welding.

One way to look at this is to say that ancient technologies can approach similar areas to modern advanced techniques while not losing the essential, elemental sense of balance and proportion.

A finely tempered blade has to be both hard in the edge and bendable in the centre so that it did not break on encountering resistance. The finished product also relied on the use by practiced and muscular swordsmen (or women).

The fact that modern.technology is superior in technique disguises the fact that we no longer have the sense of balance and proportion in an age where information alone is a belief.

Viking technology - or Damascene technology - lived amongst the harsh and lusty tremendousness of crags and lakes that personify nature as a force of rough balance, replete with repulsive aspects.

The denial of the need for rough, outdoor balance (of the body), that has its repulsive aspects in city squalor, is the bane of modernity and the reazon why technological advance is an illusion of straight-lines (sun or resolved space, algorithm, AI).

WHO DO YOU LOVE PART 2

Pictorial 181

When I was barely out of cami knickers I had a mini tiff with the founder/editor of The Ecologist magazine Edward Goldsmith (later taken-up by his nephew Zac the unmentionable, now extinct), known to my father through The Conservation Society (founded in Spain), over  his book "The Stable Society, its Structure and Control: Towards a Social Cybernetic".

I wrote a long-winded piece called " Cybernetics or Aesthetics?", the gist of which was that nature is much more to do with poetic shape than with information.

At the time I had no idea of the atrocious scale of Goldsmith's faux pas, but now it can be seen as a perfect example of a parallel reality that is unbeknown to the person writing.

While it's true that cybernetics is the science of control, to equate that with stability is the ultimate in confused thinking! Stability in nature is essentially a state of power that is highly rhythmical and intricately linked with fertility.

Without the physical presence of places of power there can't possibly be stability, even if the society is under perfect control (order). This is the theme of Euripides's "The Bacchae" (prev) where Pentheus suffers the fate of being ripped to pieces by the followers of Dionysus, by denying his godhood.

The error in Goldsmith's book is really to believe there can be order without disorder and, by association, cleanliness without dirt (the fields). Cybernetics is only a belief in information, as opposed to a belief in strength and fertility.

Fertility and conception are the genesis of shape, and almost everything we touch and use - nose, throat - is proportional to a very fine degree. In this guise is song and the very breath of life.

If we live in a parallel system it's because the ego is attracted to it for its own purposes of situating information in resolved space (straight lines). This is where AI (aka cybernetics) is most happy. While that might not have been obvious in 1970, it is now.

(It may however have been so to Ada Lovelace in the 19tj century, designer of the first algorithm, who called herself a "poetic scientist".)

Resolved space is tidy space, hygienic space, where it is possible to detect micro-mutations such as virons (RNA) using x-ray diffraction (light.)

Viruses are so prone to mutations they could be views as programmable by the environment, so the type of environment is fundamentally vital. 

The University of Minnesota's Institute of the Environment is a world leader in " ecological economics", especially on the effects of disrupting stable ecosystems on displaced viruses (from animal.hosts.)

Viruses really thrive in weakness, which is an environment that is degraded and where plants and animals no longer live in close conjunction (as in a jungle - actually also a mixed farm.)

Degraded environments have a tendency to straight-lines (resolved space) whereas stable environments go every which way. The ego is attracted to instability, as is the virus.

It's an illusory world of information that basically lacks the strength of places of power where there are fertile situations, and where there tends to be a balance between dirt and cleanliness.

Where this balance exists in stability and fertility, there exists an identity of shape. Trees are totally identifiable by species or sub-species purely by shape.

These typical landscapes also have a symbolic or allusive meaning. In a cosmos where the Earth spins, fertility and meaning are always going to be related to the stars.

There are basically two ways to view things. One through facts, which can be fairly disgusting; one through symbolism and meaning.

The lama's knowledge of medicine was, of course, sympathetic only. He believed that the dung of a black horse, mixed with sulphur, and carried in a snake-skin, was a sound remedy for cholera; but the symbolism interested him far more than the science. (Kim, page 331)

This reminds me of the scene of the three witches in Macbeth, "eye of newt" etc. Witchcraft and traditional medicine (as in Chinese) use strong substances that taken out of context can appear disgusting, while in the context of the medicine they could well be appropriate (see also Fulling, prev.)

This applies equally to mainstream economics. Traditional Iowa mixed pig farms (with hens, veg, crops, herds) have been taken-over by intensive lots of pure pig-breeding, resulting in manure contaminating aquifers.

Such a system is weak because it relies on economic facts (efficiency) without the ecological balance (strength). With balance comes strength (revival) and what you could call a vague sense of vigor.

Measurement is done in resolved space, which is which makes it attractive to acolytes. But this is also where mutations and viruses are harbored.

The strength of places of power can't be measured accurately. It's in the air, in the sea breeze, the tangs of forest mushrooms and exciting aromas.

The problem is that it's all too easy to measure mutations - via x-ray diffraction - and all too difficult to measure natural strength. One is an inductive system of light and logic; one is shade and woodcraft, pace and poetry under the heavens above.

'Our scientists are working on ways to mutate human female chromosomes until we can have children with them.'

(I Married a Monster from Outer Space)