Pictorial 194

 I suppose proof may be required of the possibility that humans are becoming convincing copies as opposed to original spawn? If so, I give you the uneasy alliance of creative talents from Pilote circa 1979.

(#68)

The history of Pilote under René Goscinny could be said to be one of creative feuding, whereby disaffected types branched-off to front their own journals. Thus, Claire Bretécher, Gotlib and others started L'echo des Savanes in about 73. Though Bretécher has stated she would have preferred to work in tandem, the tactile patriarchy of Pilote had already debased her sex.

One of the first recordings of 'MeToo' shows two animal-like office-drones ambushing and despoiling her pristine body.

A few years later saw the launch of Métal Hurlant by Gir, Druillet and a couple of others, including Dionnet. However, Bretécher is notable for forging her early path by resolutely tracking-down those she admired from the school of Tintin.

'That was how I got to know Delporté, Jijé and Franquin. This was 1967 and it put me over the moon; Spirou was a totally mythic magazine.'

The venerable Belgian comic accepted her Gnagnan (adult-talking babies). 'Ligne Claire', as TCJ dubbed her, is highly appropriate as this quote suggests..

Franquin..might sketch a pig three hundred times before, in the end, he had something that satisfied him.

Bretécher dealt in 'types' that require a tactile line, an animalistic dexterity that was taken for body-positivism in women.

Her teen, Agrippine, premiered in 88, has been compared to the 'texto-speak' of modern teens.

These dialogues, half overheard and half made up, were Bretécher's invention. Yet now they seem uncanny - a preview of our texto-speak. (TCJ)

Yet, equally, her idiosyncratic dialect is the opposite of something that makes everyone the same. Even her feminism is not formal, since,

'I've always hated militants. The people who are sure they're right, who think they're the only ones equipped to right the wrongs.. It's they who embody the wrong and that's the end of the story.'

What I want to get to is that 'texto-speak' is machine-speak, whereas Bretécher speaks for the body. Texto-speak is designed for quickness, not for expressive acts. 

The female body expresses itself elegantly, as Bretécher herself is elegant. While social-media makes people the same, Bretécher's line identifies foibles of the female anatomy.

'Whatever I do, it's not actually observation. It's more like assembling an arsenal.'

Her females are somewhat animal-like, forging connections to chimps and free-swinging ways. Possibly not coincidentally, one of her first strips was for an ecological monthly called Le Sauvage. 

What is called body-positivism in women could also be seen as a desire to return to nature and away from the follies of suburban man and his over-eager ego. A return to nature implies something archaic and deadly, tactile and erotic in a Weird Tales way.

One only has to think of the first writer of a parallel world in The Heads of Cerberus, Francis Stevens (see prev.) There are the deadly plants of queasily tactile suckers in The Nightmare; the luridly spectral white wolves of Citadel of Fear; the salty and sultry sea-maiden of the lake of fire; horses gone to sea in Claimed.

The unreality of these scenes has the effect of amplifying the cosmos as an animated circus of tactile types that swirl around humankind. Unreality is something that one is not literally going to see except in dreams, but is true on a cosmic scale.

Being one with nature one can imagine being inside the belly of a whale (as in Pinocchio or Jonah). The unreality of the lyre in the mythical quest of Orpheus for Eurydice in Hades only to find

J'AI PERDU EURYDICE (Kozena)

Classical music is unreal because it pulls the strings of the lyre in an original way, harking back to beginnings (the difference between KT Tunstall and Ed Sheeran.)

What is real is also unreal for the reason everything has an origin. Instead of going even more inside the head as modern Man is wont (see Zuckerberg's 'Meta'), one should recognise that this so-called reality has no basis in psyche.

The psyche is expressed in tactile gestures that express the will of a commune. Going back to Bretécher, the joke of 'MeToo' is that modernism tends not to get the joke! A commune is made-up of various types of feuding, more or less resembling a school class. You may recall I mentioned my days at Newtown School in Ireland as a kid, and it was a wild time. As a coed, mock-copulation was not unheard of, and the boisterous goings-on gave clues as to how to respond. It’s called a free psyche with coordinated action that one is not told but has to learn. Boisterousness and tactile responses are the order of the day at that age. Have women forgotten how to slap men?

  Communes are feudal, tactile, they do not work on pure information. They are much more organic and visceral. The question with a 'Meta' future has to approach the basic problem that without unreality  - that is to say, the inaccurate imagination - then reality is not psychically real. A mere façade.

This is even more apparent in the communal organs like Argosy that Francis Stevens wrote for in the 20s. There is a culture of savage squalor and salty maidens/mariners.

The psyche is above all tactile, and this can also be seen in the 30s Junto and Robert E Howard's play-acting with swords (prev?)

Without the coordinated activity of the body, the psyche cannot express itself except in terms defined and restricted by that of a Meta-system that is itself a façade.

So, the links between these two women from almost a century apart are clear, as are the links to the imagineers and adventurers (Disney, Howard.)

Bretécher's bizarre faces can convey any feeling or any mixture of feelings and her expertise at using a minimum of background to situate the strips perfectly is evident throughout. (Kim Thompson)

In a word, unreality penetrates reality. The real problem with a 'Meta' reality is that it cannot penetrate beyond what 'they' set-out as the limits to perception- namely, the head.

But the head is nothing without the psyche, and this is expressed through the tactile freedom of the body (historically in country pursuits such as hunting, or even feuding!) This in itself is an adequate argument against the Meta-tyranny of tomorrow, since it's clear its aim is to indoctrinate with false stories read by expressive algorithms (see prev.)

In a world filled with Smileys and Likes there is now a bit less room, a bit less taste, for truths that bite. (TCJ)

The body requires freedom of expression, and this frees the mind. The imprisoned body enslaves the mind. The feisty Bretécher - for all her Bardot-pout - is clear on this.

..what counts is how you feel.. Whenever some guy tried to pay me a compliment I would think he was making me into a joke. I'd respond aggressively and he would think 'What a bitch!' What all that depends on is your frame of mind, and what creates that? It's created by Elle, by Marie Claire, by all those shitty papers and magazines. Publications that, instead of telling girls 'Make the best of what you've got, you too are beautiful', want them to spend eight thousand francs on some charlatan who sticks needles in their thighs to fight their cellulite!..I'd like to have their hides..

Hyborian Bridge 195

Arch-fantasist Druillet is a dab hand at pulling-off graphic tricks in his universe of the deadly and eggly. The top page appears to feature a breed of cosmic roosters, while in the other the Earth rests resplendent, poached on a plate.

The 6 Voyages of Lone Sloane

The dark origin of dark gods that he traces is given a trick of realism with the judicious use of perspective, both for the space-wall and the view of Earth. There is a connection here to the Renaissance narrative art of the likes of Botticelli or Titian.

Myth springs from the night, the land where the perspective illusion of day is sorely lacking. Giving the semblance of reality to such visions is a neat trick. The classical trick is to retain the sombre vision while giving it a semblance of illusory reality.

In the modern scene, the dark, cosmic vision has well nigh ceased to exist. One can see the scope of this in Greek myth, where Zeus claimed the sky, Poseidon the sea and Pluto the underworld (with Gaia shared between them.)

Scientifically, this entire area is covered by the carbon and nitrogen cycles that flow through sea, sky, earth. So, it's clear that both scientifically and mythically all these zones depend one on another. 

Nevertheless, the dark reality of that truth of cosmic debauchery and decay is nowhere seen. Unlike Druillet, who simply tricks the eye into accepting his gloomy fantasms, the modern eye is deluded into imagining such cosmic visions belong to history.

In other words, instead of a perspective illusion acting as an interesting trick, it deceives us into thinking reality IS a perspective illusion! The way this is done is simply with parallel lines, since the more parallel lines there are the more visible perspective there is.

For example, if Bezos builds a space-station, it will be full of cylinders and simple geometrical shapes. No one is going to build a Gothic cathedral in space!

Vanishingly small - Bezos's erection

I don't know about you, but Druillet's pages put me in mind of lush scenes of animated nature that one might find at Knossos or old China.

The dark forces of nature incorporate also the splendor of sea and sky, the flocks and shoals that cruise globally. Chinese porcelain or the Cretan dolphins (see prev.)

Druillet's structure is also vastly more massive than the egg-like Earth, representing a symbolism of the forces that animate the globe.

Animated life breeds, eats or is eaten, decays to the seabed or through earth. This in turn is sustenance for microbes that breed, and the cycle continues. The vast scope of this cosmic wheel amounts to far more than simple human motivation.

It is animation itself that Druillet seems to celebrate; the dark that leads to the light. The strength can be repellent, but one is still drawn to its spell.

This atmospheric reality is often what appears to be missing in modernity. It is the ripe smell of flesh at a market; the mud of a riverbank; gangplanks and blisters.

To take a current example, the recent British film Last Night in Soho sets out to celebrate the seediness of 60s and 70s Soho. Rita Tushingham of 70s classic A Taste of Honey (prev) has a cameo.

But where A Taste of Honey had genuine squalor somewhat skin to tribal mud huts on a riverbank, and Tushingham an animal-like sense of abandon, the modern stars gad about with no innate sense of melancholy.

What seems to be lacking is any celestial sense of realism, as opposed to the purely human. In our culture, to be human is to be a copy as opposed to an original spawn of the universe.

The likes of Bezos and Zuckerberg symbolise this trait. A copy is something that is very accurate but has no depth of light or shade.

The mirror of illusions, or electromagnetism, is a reflection that appears real. The more accurate it becomes the more realistic it appears. The 'Metaverse' of Zuckerberg is simply another perspective illusion that replaces visceral reality.

A Metaverse is always going to be composed of straight-lines (that appeal to the ego); what is missing is the animated realism of what is not human. Humans respond to this realism in original ways, culturally.

Culture and nature have this type of symbiotic relationship. The gods represent the animation that is not simply human motivation. Fate decrees otherwise. Byronic Fortune and destiny.

Hyborian Bridge 194

The ancient and medieval world appears to be a complete mix of what would today be termed squalor with beliefs of the cosmic underworld.

In the Tintin scene from HB193, the disappearance of the sun would to the Incas be equated to the dire region of the underworld. As Kari Hohne delineates in Decoding the Night Sky, to Babylonians and other peoples the sun travelled round the sky, going into the underworld at night.

Night is the fertile time of copulation. Western myths, particularly Greek, have goddesses in diaphanous clothing - scant, like underwear.

According to Hohne, the Babylonian astrologers of the constellations were the precursors of later Greek myth, which the Greeks more-or-less refined. The sky was read as a cuneiform text by the shapes of the constellations.

The night-attire of goddesses relates the underworld to underwear. Night is the fertile time of copulation; it fertilizes the sky. These diaphanous maidens have a way of being deadly if caught. There is the famous painting of Diana and Actaeon by Titian (prev). 

The fertile female body and the dire area of the underworld are linked by their underwear, and much the same might be said to apply to Red Sonja, particularly in Clair Noto's 'Red Lace' (prev.)

Where one sees a diaphanous goddess one might just glimpse the underworld as well. Remember the famous scene from Conan #16..

(from Dark Horse)

The ancients have a curious way of equating the sordid aspects of the body with both the deadly and the cosmic; Howard's classic tale carries all three off beautifully.

As Hohne says, the constellations carry cuneiform stories in their shapes, shapes which are visible at the nocturnal time of human fertility. The Greek gods embody those passions.

At the same time, the underworld is totally connected to the cosmos (even more in Egyptian glyphs). Proserpine (spring) spends six months of the year with Pluto in Hades before rejoining her mother Ceres (harvest).

This has the obvious meaning that the harvest emerges from the dormancy of winter from the cold earth. In a somewhat similar sense, the beautiful Venus is married to the greasy and ugly Vulcan in his vaults.

The mix of beauty with sordid din; of the fertile spring with the blighted winter; diaphanous maidens everywhere. Relating this to the sky, the nighttime is fertile and fertilizes the sky. The sordid situation is also strongly linked to death and decay (winter, Pluto.)

The reason for the revolutions has to be that the celestial sphere is s nighttime event; as Hohne says, Babylonian astrologers from 10,000 years ago gave the stories to the sky in cuneiform that the Greeks later developed.

To that way of looking at things, the night sky is a text written in stars and wandering stars (planets). It is connected to both female fertility and decay (the underworld.)

Our culture is very much the reverse: the fertile body and the underworld are nowhere. We look at the cosmos literally through perspective mirrors. This has the effect of putting the head (of acolytes) at a premium. Of course, the head is infertile. It has only ego.

In other words, the way we look at things very literally takes away the fertility of the cosmos - which includes the underworld - and its relation to diaphanous maidens in our culture.

In our universe, you (the observer) are the origin. Wherever you go in the universe you are viewing a perspective system with yourself as the origin.

This is what I tend to call the vanishing-point of technique, since the technical side of things (sun) approaches ones and zeros (algorithm.) This is the universe represented above all by electricity and spokespeople like Musk (of Mars.)

They are the origin of the universe and the it is made in their image - meaning the head or various forms of electromagnetic senses.

Outside of the head (of acolytes of the mirror of illusions) is the real universe with a real origin. Meaning the body, or anything that develops from an egg/seed

The real universe is fertile while the illusory one is infertile. From this perspective, perspective itself is just a good illusion that fools the head. While perspective appears to hold a lot of information, in reality it's just parallel lines and a vanishing-point.

It's useful, and is used in classical art, so long as the reality is there. So, what is that reality? Well, you could call it culture and nature in animation; the narrative myths of Titian or Turner; the erotic satyrs of Krenkel.

The myth needs anatomy and balance and proportion since this is the way things grow from an egg/seed. Life has an unreal aspect in that this animated miracle happens spontaneously.

Myths often illustrate erotic strength or athletic grace because this is the miracle that grows from an egg. The strength of myth is in its spontaneity of form. The unreal is made real (again.)

The night sky is a stockpile of Earth's myths - from the Feathered Serpent of the Incas to the morning sun or Venus of all men - for the reason that it is outside a perspective system.

If the universe can be thought of as growing spontaneously, the proportions of the night sky are a spontaneous occurrence that maps Earthspin (day and night.)

If one chooses not to believe in spontaneity, then one is left with a perspective system that looks real but has no origin apart from the head of the observer. The system continually approaches the vanishing-point of technique, which is where Musk&Co are determined to head for. 

While pondering that over, have a listen to something that might just be a narrative myth (or urban myth)

INCA ROADS

 

Hyborian Bridge 193

From animate nature to animate culture. While the facts of the sterile modern system are to do with sameness, the facts of animated nature/culture are to do with antagonistic differences.

An easy way to see this is to take the case of female elephants slaughtered for their tusks which are now breeding tuskless owing to the survival of tuskless females.

The gene for tusklessness is favoured in the female offspring. But, of course tusks are symbols of antagonistic opposites. The deselection of the gene is clearly created by antagonistic activity in the field; in other words, an illogical desire for the tusks by poachers.

Genes are like dollars: they have no value in themselves, only by what they specify in the animated reality. The modern system is back-to-front in that the specification itself - dollars or genes - is the value, not the thing itself.

The reason for this is partly that the ego is attracted to sterile systems. But these systems are bound to be non-antagonistic and run algorithmically (logic.)

Sterility means essentially no dirt; but as has been repeatedly pointed-out, dirt implies epistemological (meaning) such as the tracking of animal spoor by a hunter.

An animated nature/culture has to implicate dirt in order to have meaning/fertility. Another example is a recent discovery in England of a 17th century 'witch bottle'.

Healers in 17th century England used witch bottles as anti-witchcraft devices when someone was cursed by illness or other misfortune diagnosed as bewitchment. They would be filled with ingredients such as the victim's hair and urine, along with 'protective' pins, nails or thorns. Sealed within vessels, they would be placed around the hearth or buried under floorboards. (DT)

'Untidy' societies, whether medieval or early 20th century South America, have the exposure to benign microbes that confers disease-protection and hence allows the practice of witchcraft. The practice of witchcraft in 'untidy' situations allows for the strength both of herbs and of dirt to permeate the atmosphere. This environment is far from scientific as it is not sterile but fertile.

Fertility means life, and living things require dirt for their sustenance. This basic principle of animate nature/culture is denied by a sterile science. Hence, the facts are going to be different facts to areas where fertility is rife (such as planet Earth, as opposed to Mars.)

DNA, for example, is only a specification for animate fertility; it has no value in itself. Any selection is animated by antagonism and fertility(as with the elephant tusk.)

DNA is just part of the illusion of 'facts'of the order of empirical reason that approaches the vanishing-point of technique (or ones and zeros of algorithms), and away from animate nature/culture.

The information derived from animated nature/culture is empirical tradition- as opposed to empirical reason which dates from Newton (see passim.) So, the area one looks for facts is in animated nature, as opposed to a sterile lab (see prev, Mosaic Law.)

Another very good example is a medieval castle; symbol of a feudal establishment. A castle itself would have been a mixture of dirt and cleanliness; the rush floors would be laden with herbs to mask any rank odor.

Cleanliness is not hygiene, but two types of strength - one of dirt and one of freshness - that counteract one another (see also prev on Fulling.) Where there is dirt there will exist benign microbes, which is why it is a form of strength and disease-prevention.

As with the physical side of things, so with the psychology of feuding. One doesn't need to go back to medievalism to see this principle in action. Traditional communes have low-level feuding, as was noted previously of Lloyd Price's Louisiana memoir. 

Physical untidiness or squalor, and psychological conflict are two sides of one coin. Anything that is untidy will not be run efficiently and therefore will not have the degree of sameness that western democracies now do.

This point was brought-home by reading the Tintin volume 'Prisoners of the Sun', set in Peru.

Herge's stories tend to be set in places with rough infrastructure where local government is highly corrupt and inefficient. Hence, the way disputes are resolved is almost inevitably via feuding!

Here, Tintin gains an Inca accomplice who sees him come to the aid of a tile. As in DH Lawrence's The Feathered Serpent (prev), where differences in type are paramount, they have the affinity of their differences. Strength prevails as, later in the story, the Inca explains his gesture to the high priest..

..The high priest's decision allows Tintin to make use of a total eclipse of the sun.

Hyborian Bridge 192

Viewed from the alternate side, Pinocchio could be seen as a 'super-classic' which is better than the original fairy tale, owing to a crazy-eyed or loony-tune topicality.

The basic plot may be similar to the original, but for once Disney lets the grotesque distortions of animation work to horrific effect. Seduced by the applause of bright lights, Pinocchio has his 15 minutes of fame (some 20 years before Warhol) and is then caught lying to the blue fairy.

We then have the progressive elongation of his nose in one of the grotesque transformations of the body which can only really have a fairy tale origin (being unreal.)

Animation makes the unreal real, and similarities become apparent in macabre situations. Physical appearance is then ripe for offensive comments.

This is just an exaggeration of the reality that differences have similarities. Traditional communes have low-level feuding where psyches clash through strength, thereby forming affinities (as Pinocchio does with Pinshaw.)

If cartoons have a type of physical realism (as in stereotypes a la CC Beck, prev), this is what 'they' don't want as it ushers in normal abuse! They want a universal sameness, weak psyche.

Only a strong psyche has the lowdown on reality, and is not simply given the illusion of facts and figures (by our beloved leaders.) What is real is the physical state of innocence that can be seen in cartoons.

Those who look within awake (Jung) - spiritually, and therefore also to the physical reality.

People say I'm a Pollyanna Utopian, but I am still with purity and innocence. A state of grace is a state of mind. I have learnt through spiritual discipline that no matter what the world throws at me, I'm immune. (Carlos Santana, DT)

However, Carlos is also down with the physical reality of life on Earth.

I'm not discouraged, because the world is literally vomiting. And, you know, when you vomit, you're gonna feel better, because you're getting rid of something that doesn't belong in your system.

This double-faced nature of innocence and realism is a Mediterranean trait that goes back to the ancient Greeks -  the ideal Apollo, the degenerate Dionysus. (See also Raducanu insouciance.)

Without the realism, imagination can just be illusion (of the Musk order); without the idealism there is no cosmic vision.

When you're washing dishes and scrubbing big pots and pans, cleaning the yard and bleaching the floors, it's glorious to dream.. It's incredible how much imagination takes you into a realm of fruition. That, if you believe it, you can achieve it..

What I'm diving into is learning how to go deeper and deeper into the note.. You can take a melody outside of time and gravity. That's what real musicians do.

Classical music is unreal, and likewise animate nature is connected to the unreal, and myth to the physical reality. Myth and reality are linked by physical acts (Raducanu's free-form play). Somewhat similarly, Wung Fu has stylised animal forms of fighting (see Jeet Kune Do, prev.)

Unreal (transformations) have similarities in the movement of line, and the implied meaning - along with the subsequent scene on Pleasure Island - is obvious. One doesn't need to be told something that is so obvious, and in fact in the commentary no mention was made of this point.

However, in the 'real world' fame is an aphrodisiac to increasingly banal amorous pursuits of neither physical realism nor any sense of psychic purity. No one seems to notice owing to the convincing illusion we seemingly are supposed to cohabit.

Fairy tales clearly work because the story and imagery have archetypal significance (to the id) and so one doesn't need long-winded explanations. In Pinocchio, songs are often used to advance the story in clever, music hall-type routines.

Fairy tales, because they deal with the differences of form - human, animal, trees - have also the similarities of form in terms of the movement of line. This could be a branch on a trunk or antagonistic pairs of muscles, in the way opposites tend to adopt balanced positions in nature.

As has been noted previously, when things are different they also have similarities - in antagonistic principles of balance. The principle of similarities and the idea of differences are just two sides of the animate universe.

Humour and parody and caricature are clearly made possible by this eventuality, from Aesop to the late 20th century (see Pilote prev.) The donkey transformations just show how humorous the honking asses are, but of course in the context a mortally threatening earful. The macabre state of affairs is true to archetypal form and has the realism of form.

Whereas modem science ignores form in its DNA-style labs, the reality of transformation is utterly horrific. What passes for'their' reality is really only a pseudo-reality that convinces the ego (in terms of chains of reasoning etc.) Highly hermetic.

The unreality of fairytales has the realism of form that often plays-up the similarities of differences for comedic or horrific effect (the wolf in Red Riding Hood). 

Life lived as an antagonistic pursuit cannot possibly be logical (it can only contain logic, see prev.) Only the illogical (balanced) use of logic (DNA) can give us the simple braying of Dionysus's donkey. 

A logical world has to ignore the fertile ground that is where Dionysus and his beast frolic and celebrate the seasonal harvest (of the grape.) The active world where the donkey is in a field or carrying firewood in traditional country pursuits.

A simple fable is often right simply because it exists in the physical world of direct action where donkeys and crickets have their places. The world of the ego has an abstraction that is essentially illogical! Where Dionysus's donkey roams there exists fertile ground, forest and therefore the ritual pursuits of the hunt.

It is no abstraction but a coordinated countryside pursuit that creates gay abandon. In such a situation, the psyche is strong and pure, attached to natural processes and the cultural practices of skinning, storing etc.

On a maritime scale, this pursuit has been going on for hundreds of years on the Faroe Islands (Denmark), where dolphins are ritually slaughtered. The bloodiness of a recent event predictably incited comments, such as this from Zac (see 'the unmentionable').

This is one of the most sickening sights I've ever seen. It shames our species.

One suspects he means the visible blood (as opposed to invisible slaughterhouses) and the traditional use of blades to kill by anachronistic reactionary peoples of the island. On a historical scale, American Indians would slaughter buffalo in a cultural practice allied to the fertile grounds wherein they dwelt.

The fertile world has to contain opposites since it is to do with life and death (revival from decadence). The ancients were not slaves to hermetic systems but had the two-faced theatrical pursuits of comedy and tragedy (see prev on Aristophanes.)

A fertile world has the macabre gods and goddesses of Hyboria (see Yaple, the old gods.) The twin masks of sorrow and lightness have a somewhat Mediterranean bias, where a melancholy air can refresh the psyche (the counter to Adele.)

PORQUE TE VAS? Because You're Leaving (ignore question mark)

Pictorial 193

 In a hermetic system (see The Airtight Garage) the relation to reality is not physical but a type of coded program/routine. This is why DNA is the height of illusion, since on the one hand it's highly convincing - almost a panacea - and on the other it is simply random information.

How can something random be a panacea? For the reason that acolytes enter a parallel reality or the vanishing-point of technique, represented by the mirror of illusions (perspective, algorithm, number.) 

Inside the mirror of illusion, techniques are practiced by the process of logical assumptions. One example is gene-editing, they delivers disease-free vegetables. However, within the mirror of illusions resides the profane serpent of corrupt rhythm - see 'clean meat'.

Freedom from disease in a natural-system is simply a product of balance between predators/prey in an ecosystem - the physical reality. The parallel system occupies a parallel reality where proportionate growth - in animal or plant - becomes irrelevant. It is information-based, algorithmic.

What this implies is that gene-editing and fiddling with DNA for disease control does not take account of the proportions of the body that enable active pursuits in natural settings.

However, the latter is clearly the original source of health. Benign bacteria exist in the soil that humans in history have been exposed to. The exposure is a form of disease-prevention.

Culture that is a part of nature is exposed to cyclical processes; decomposition and revival with the seasonal variations. This exposure is a physical by-product of active life in-the-fields.

The basic point is that, while a hermetic system is governed by rules of logic (appealing to the heads of acolytes), a natural-system - communal or eco - is illogical.

As has been already noted, it can only be governed by opposites or antagonistic forces such as muscles, that supply proportionate balance in active situations. The 'facts' of modernity are highly convincing, but only within the hermetic system (of logic.)

The more convincing these facts become the more likely it is they exist within the mirror of illusions that attracts the head of acolytes. Within the mirror exists the profane serpent that distorts balanced, proportionate human or animal forms.

Only with a proportionate system can the profane serpent be deterred by what are the normal functions of active life of a coordinated, communal style. Hunting, slaughtering, dismembering and storing game, scything, carpentry - see next post.

That is, a coordinated or communal reality where the psyche has a means of expressing itself in song, patois (as in the cowboy on the range, say.)

Of course 'they' will simply keep churning-out their DNA-style facts that are seemingly convincing, so one way to approach this is via an area of alternative facts. That is to say, not from inert DNA studies, but from animate studies.

The idea that a skeleton can be designed without animation is preposterous, as a brief look at Walt Disney makes apparent.

The Art of Walt Disney, Christopher Finch

The artists at Disney in the 30s learned animation by a process of incremental study using free linework. The study of anatomy or animation is an incremental destiny of draftsmanship, in much the same way as Leonardo da Vinci's in The Virgin of the Rocks (prev.)

A line creates movement, and that is how animation is engineered. From the movement comes the ability to humorise situations, such as these balletic parodies. The musical atmosphere is cleverly synced to anthropomorphic behaviour.

Dance of Hours from Fantasia

The idea that the movements of a skeleton - and the body encasing it - can be discovered without animation is preposterous. It took Disney 10 years and it takes nature 10 million, but the process is the same. The evolution of line in contrapuntal situations of activity.

This makes it obvious that evolution is illogical, and involves contrapuntal opposites that must be balanced in proportionate ways. As Corneille (prev) said,

The illogical borrows from the logical.

An illogical system contains logic for obvious reasons; but the contrary is not the case. A logical system is a hermetic one.

The contrapuntal system of opposing elements clearly also allows for humour; the cheekiness of a donkey's ears, say. The alternate facts were explored by Disney and are in a sense vastly more real than are the hermetic'facts' of a DNA-style science.

Of course, 'they' will say nothing in nature is designed, but the fact is that contrapuntal elements have to involve a design in the fo of balance and proportion. Only a logical system can do without design, but that is sheer random chaos.

DNA is illusory for the reason the random element is needed for a logical system (that is not innately balanced.) The sequences that we see in Disney are the result of contrapuntal antagonism, and not of logic.

Any logical system produces convincing results, but they are bound to invoke the profane serpent of corrupt rhythm. The elements of balance and proportion (of a body) are outside the system. It is purely of the head (of acolytes of the mirror of illusions, algorithm, number). 

A hermetic system tends towards sameness mainly owing to its lack of reliance on linework (after all, Alchemy never changed reality as modern techniques do!) 

Personally, as a fan of early Disney, innovations have a way of peaking, and Pixar represents a decline. A decline into what is really copying algorithmically instead of exploring a situation with expressive line.

Pixar is essentially entering the mirror of illusions where there is a type of sameness to things. Is it fantasy or reality? Who knows? Sameness is a type of disease of modernity resulting from the vanishing-point of technique. 

Pixar is convincing but not atmospheric, and tends to nullify the imaginative faculty in kids. Anime tends to retain a painterly approach despite the techniques they use like motion-capture, and so the magic is there still. Without atmosphere and suggestion what you could call the psychic dimension is lacking. Without the psyche, what is there?

Hyborian Bridge 191

 The alternate UK newspaper The Light so far as I can gather is radically anti-corporate state, though whether you call that left or anarchist is anyone's guess. What they stand for tallies to a large degree with what I've been calling the physical reality (nature/culture) that is expressed in communal psyche (song, praise.)

This applies to diverse aspects, such as the Indian small-farmers' rebellion against Modi's free-market/infrastructure legislation; the Babcock ranch syndrome of an "electric-green future" (all prev) - and so forth. The future may be electric, but it is not green. Decadence and decay - of vegetable produce, or of fermenting pig manure - are clearly a strength of the physical reality of self-sufficient areas that are not governed by the efficiency of scale, but by the inefficiency of green nature!

Efficiency is itself inefficient because it is part of the electricalization of the world. The Light are very good on this aspect. 

You would never put all your best eggs in one place lest the one basket should fall..The notorious Georgia Guidestones reads 'Maintain' humanity, control over the world's energy needs is a very smart way to do that (pun intended). We used to have gas cookers, coal fires, wood stoves and now new homes will be banned from having gas central heating from 2025.. nothing that mega-corporations, governments and NGOs push for is meant to benefit the common people, it is meant to enslave us, eventually.

Yes, but slaves to what exactly? Corporations have always existed in history, and what The Light calls 'collective' could apply to monasteries, or even a Greek city-state!

In Hyborian language, the Red Brotherhood (of the Vilayet sea) or the Free Companions. One can't do without collectives whether historical or fantastical. I guess The Light mean enslavement to finance but, as has been noted passim, the money market is just the way the numerical order is run. 

Enslavement to numbers in the form of algorithms (ones and zeros) that are assumed to be right (logical). That is really to say, enslavement to calculation, so this is the same trend that can be deciphered in 17th century Poussin (HB190).

This is really why the language I'm using is not that realistic: the devious serpent, the Black Sun of Calculation, or even Puss in Boots! It's more like fairy tale language for the weird land that 'they' call reality.

If we are in a calculating world (of the head), we are not also in an active world (of the body), and it's clear that fairy tales apply to the active human and animal body, male and female, in a green world (of trees and owls and nightfall.)

What is called reality has the illusion of realism and is highly convincing, but it could still be a mirror (electromagnetism, straight-lines.) The Light takes a shot at the electric car as a 'green' standby, with their hazardous batteries. I looked this up , and a possible future battery is made from organic quinone, so could prove friendlier (after all, nothing is perfect.)

But, if electric cars are friendlier and all things become electric, is electricity itself green? No, it's the calculating engine of electromagnetism. 'They' don't really mean green energy, they mean clean. It's the same trend to tidyness and caution that originates from the 17th century and Poussin, and culminates in the all-electric future. Ironically, the more 'green' the less green (ie more electric.)

 Sterile, static, lab-harvested, run via algorithmic logic (‘clean meat’, gene-editing). The monotony of calculated sameness that is equated with efficiency. Except that nature’s inefficiencies are strong and purposeful, carefree as opposed to calculated, active as opposed to static, a world of coordinated differences that incorporate strength, rustic pride in the harvest and Dionysus, the psyche rebounds, the plains of plenty, the pounding rites of spring.

 

Carefree, dynamic, coordinated, communal, song, gay giggles, rustic milkmaids.

This goes down badly with the spokespeople such as politicians for the ego-centric accomplishments of sterile efficiency, who could not conceive that inefficiency is simply the way nature maintains fertility by allowing untidiness, decomposition and revival.

The sterility of the head of the acolyte – represented by the DNA-Dragon – versus the fertile areas where the body performs active country pursuits. Weakness versus strength.

A world the shadow of illusion hangs over all things, versus the heritage of a free psyche in a universe of dreams. A world where the greatest illusion of all – DNA – convinces acolytes with the logical sequence that ignores the coordination of antagonistic principle (the ideal figure, athletics).

 

“When my colleague Rick Ree sequenced it and told what family it belonged to (Picramniaceae) I told him.. no way. I just couldn’t believe it. (DT item on a newfound tree in the jungle)

A logical sequence is highly convincing and therefore true within a logical universe (the mirror of illusions) where the DNA-Dragon exists. The difference with reality is that coordinated antagonism ITSELF produces sequences of balanced proportion.

 

(see also the perspective of the lens – the false Apollo – in P56). A comic book sequence, by comparison, tells a story – a story is told through the elements of balance and proportion. We exist in the world of empirical reason as opposed to empirical tradition (see passim.)

The language of myth is strong and pure, unsullied by calculating reason. The reason of calculating number that is itself the sorcery of our age; an age of the death of carefree active and fertile plains of bold dreams. The free and melancholy psyche of Man’s lineage.

Within the mirror of illusions exists the profane serpent of corrupted rhythm; primal rhythm cannot be denied, only distorted. This language of fairy tale can't be fooled by the numbers of modern science (programmed, see The Airtight Garage.)

An elemental truth is always going to be so, and this is what modernity deviates from. One can go back to the last days of the cowboys and the classic 69 film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (George R Hill.)

This is told in a modern - ie 60s - rendition of nostalgia for the days round about the time of the onset of general electrification. The train at the first scene, for example, is a period piece that still emitted steam. There's the bicycle scene (Newman and Ross) that was just playful improvisation. The characters are carefree in the sense they live solely by wits and physical skills of riding, shooting, tracking. 

When they are tracked by the super-posse, they escape by throwing caution to the winds and jumping into the super-hazard of shallow rapids. The world they live in is one of Fortune (see Byron quote) which of course at the end runs out when they are gunned down by Bolivian cavalry.

However, the last shot they appear in sepia as a framed memento of their last escapade; they have become myth. The same thing applies to Hill's film, and myth (as Newman says in an interview) is always hard to disentangle from the reality.

The basic point is that, in an elemental world myth is real because it is elemental. That's why I'm using the language of fairy tale to describe the modern 'reality' (illusions). The myth contains elemental things such as friendship, camaraderie in active settings that rely on pure skill and coordination (hand/eye) as it as happened since time immemorial.

That physical coordination and the antagonistic principle of muscles-in-action is what makes us human, active in the world of action, and makes human part of nature (when that principle is active it can be startling, as in the Raducanu phenomenon.)

The language of fairy tale is the language of myth, that has a physical reality in the dynamics of bodies-in-motion. Human, animal, elemental. Where there is coordinated, communal reality, the psyche has a means of expression in song, or the song of life (and death.)

Physically (dynamically), the modern order approaches zero or the vanishing-point of technique. Rather than submitting to 'their' language of DNA information (that attracts the ego to the mirror of illusions), the language of fable invokes the DNA-Dragon.

In the mirror of illusions resides the profane serpent of corrupt rhythm. In Elena's picture, this is hidden by the DNA-Dragon of ego-lust and accomplishment.

Conan and Valeria - adventurers of active renown - are sombre but sure inside the id of age-old decadence - representedby a serpent's shed-skin - that revives in time.

The id is sure, but has the melancholy of

VENUS IN FURS

(Elena's drawing is loosely based on BWS 'Red Nails')

Hyborian Bridge 190

 

For power and strength in heroic fantasy art there is little to beat Roy Krenkel. I thought I'd start by placing this alongside two classical images, one from the French 17th century baroque, the other from the high renaissance.

Poussin, A Bacchanalian Revel

Titian, Bacchus and Ariadne

I think you'll recognise the fantastic contrast between Poussin - a vigorous draftsman of light and shade but mediocre painter - and Titian's noonglow allure between the startled Ariadne and the besotted god, trailed by gaily appointed satyrs and nymphs.

What happened between Poussin's vigorous pencil studies of f the figures in his tableau, and the finished article that appears so stiltedly posed? The reason is probably that Poussin was a child of the Enlightenment, whereby order and reason we're the principle attributes of beauty.

This has the effect of throwing-out fraught, fearful, fairytale imagery that forcefully affects the psyche. Amongst the cognoscenti, in fact, the austere painter is known as 'Poussin Boots', as he boots off the wild side in order to restore order to his rigid tableaux, tidying-up his own rigorous linework!

Instead of leaping lustily into the fray, consorting with nymphs and throwing caution to the winds, Poussin nerdishly calculates the tonal interplay of his forms to achieve a frieze- like ordered array.

In effect, 'Poussin Boots' sees the origin of what has become the scientific order of the Black Sun of Calculation, that shines where the sun don't shine (see Grace Slick quote P62/1).

Whereas danger is needful, useful and supplies the fantastic drama of Titian's giddy noonglow theatrics, the caution of the dessicated scientist informs Poussin's staid 'frolics'.

The caution that is a reflection of Newtonian dynamics that sees the mind as the arbiter of events, and the body as merely an outgrowth of the dominant brain (see Blake print of Newton, prev.)

This peculiar state of affairs seems to be reaching its culmination in 'the internet of bodies', whereby calculation (algorithms) is applied to all human activities.

Would you want anyone to be able to hack into your fridge, your children's monitor, your private conversations?..if you're not private then you're no longer an individual.  It's as if you're being pushed to eschew the natural world in favour of an artificial..which can be monitored, tracked, controlled, not to mention using electricity for absolutely everything.. (The Light)

Anita Roddick's quote (The Body Shop, prev) on the servitude of the body to the fashion industry seems like a premonition of these later profanities.

Profane because this caution on the part of technicians of the body (shades of Schumacher) merely serves to disguise and subdue the throbbing, reptilian urges that power active bodies (on the range.)

The physically strenuous pursuits that facilitate a strong psyche (of fairytale imagery) are suppressed by the weakness of calculation.

Instead of the danger of the serpent that lurks in knotting, rippling, coiling muscles, there is the caution that suppresses both physic and spirit. This s is the profane, altered serpent of 'clean meat', gene-editing and hybrid-DNA.

It's calculated weakness that relies on appearance fooling one as to what lies within, akin to the expressive algorithm (see Japanese example, prev.)

If the serpent is within the coiling and spinal strength of rhythmic form, it cannot be denied and must be expressed in dangerous pursuits of the outdoor world that rekindle dreams of clarity and vision.

Men took for a sign and standard the figure of the flying dragon, the winged dinosaur, a monster of past ages, which was the greatest foe of the serpent. (The Shadow Kingdom)

Howard's description of the two primeval reptile forms is intriguing, and might be taken as an implication the dragon can be tamed while the serpent cannot (Illyana Rasputin's Lockheed, say.)

A tame dragon might appear cute, but in the hands of the acolytes of caution and order its  flashytechnical accomplishments merely serve to disguise the vastly more subtle serpent that is hybrid and devious, and exists within the mirror of illusions (algorithm, DNA, electromagnetism, AI.)

Next: The DNA Dragon and Elena's prints

Hyborian Bridge 189

On the subject of Alchemy, it's an Arabian word along with algorithm (Al Gorith'm, Al Chem'y). There is no denying the human thirst for knowledge in antiquarian times. The real trouble is that in the future there will be machine-run Arabian cities which have The Airtight Garage as a prototype!  Everything in modernity trends to one thing, which is the dual-tone of ones and zeros of Jirel Meets Magic (prev), or a future run by AI.

This is the sorcerous area that seels us into the mirror of illusions (electromagnetism or straight-line logic), that has been previously referred to as The Black Sun of Numerical Calculation - from Clair Noto's story Wizards of the Black Sun (SS23) where the goat informs Sonja the city is an illusion.

The shadowy story concerns a compulsive and seemingly anal-obsessive illusion of black magic. The mirror of illusions is the area which has the facts of sterility, but there are also the facts of fertility.

The latter area is what is known as empirical tradition, or places of power. Gardeners who construct ponds will know about it; different things intermix in low-key jungle warfare.

Empirical reason dates from Newton's experiments with light ('Newton's Knives' C4-C6) and the facts of an alternate or parallel universe

It is this universe which trends towards ones and zeros; all human senses are forms of electromagnetism, and the facts of this universe attract the ego of acolytes.

Inside the mirror of illusions everything is convincing in a dreamlike way. Outside of the mirror is the physical reality of our symmetrical planet Earth which is not sterile, but composed of dirt and cleanliness (bathing rituals.)

In the real world, one is often able to se that physical activity is mildly coordinated between different things. The world can appear untidy - as in the Moondog video (P192) - or even squalid - as in Hyborian alleyways - but it has a type of magic that is missing in a world of logical illusion. The magic of fortune (O Henry.)

I have always believed that all things depended upon Fortune, and nothing upon ourselves. (Byron)

Fortune occurs where physical differences intermix and permit the emission of psychic vibrations. Friction, tension, stress, low-level feuds.

From untidiness and disarray, fortune arises; but thes are the exact things that are missing from modernity! Whether it's an Arabian city in the desert, or Walt Disney's original template in Florida, it's all the same.

'(Conservation) is a science whose principles are written in the oldest code in the world, the laws of nature.'

Nature is a 'science' and therefore comes under the sway of Newtonian dynamics. This logical order exists outside of the antagonistic pairing of opposites that constitute the flexing of muscles-in-action (the medieval/antiquarian world.)

This world is pre-inductive reason, and goes in exactly the other direction to the new-Disneys of Dubai and Neom city.

Futuristic optimism gives way to age-old patinas of watering-holes and age-old feuds between Bedouin tribes. Age contains feuds just as muscles contain antagonistic pairs; it's the way of action. (As Angus McKie wrote in a story for HM, the future depends on whether you're an optimist or s pessimist!)

The optimism of 50s Disney might be tenable if it was based on more than simply the 'favts' of an illusory order . But the fact is, inside this mirror of illusions of eternal optimism exists the profane serpent that corrupts organic form to toxic uses. 'Clean meat' (prev) or gene-editing that do without the cultivation of opposites (coordinated disarray, lack of logic in balanced systems of action.)

The irony is that from future-optimism springs only psychic weakness, a dream of listlessness with no future (the eternal present with no psychic depth.) Physical untidiness or even squalor are necessary for the growth of intriguing possibilities that otherwise are absent.

The psyche is real; physical untidiness is real; only the ego is attracted to illusions of sterile logic that appeal to reason, that are not felt in cosmic vistas of uncommon pursuit.

The stories found in Hyborian disarray and abandon contain the element of fortune, the zest that gives life a psychic foundation. In a world of no differences, the psyche is in a perpetual confusion between fact and fantasy. Authoritarianism runs amock without the coordinated disarray of fortune. 

Instead of antagonistic principles that create action - muscles, feuding - the modern order caves-in to the standard of technique. Often this takes the form of infrastructure, as in Biden's funding proposals; technique is just another word for the dollar devoid of the strength of communal psyche.

Politics has become a war of numbers, watched by listless psyches of a bemused and confused populace.

As noted previously, technique works but supplies a false standard where the psyche is in mortal peril. A classic example is Michael Schumacher's skiing accident, which broke his psyche into a million shards. Nevertheless, the standard of technique gives life to this shell (pun unintentional.)

A hermetic system.will always misdirect, be it Alchemy or electromagnetism, since it disregards primal rhythm; the serpent-power of Hyboria (see next post) or worms of the earth. The trail of a worm is forever in contrary directions, symbolising destruction and creation. Primal rhythm can't be denied, but can be corrupted inside the mirror of illusions into the profane serpent of amorous meat (prev.)

A hermetic system has no trail-bossism because it has no natural trails, only endless 'facts' of the illusory order. Only through feuding can rebellion occur; the alternate trail away from the psychic confusion of ones and zeros advocated by 'them'.

TOXIQUE AMOUR

(dual-tone electronic piece, not on YouTube apparently)