The sparks of independent teen/hippy thought from the 60s have petered to a feeble flutter. As Grace Slick says, psychedelic drugs were an entry to an alternate reality, and clearly that alternate counter-culture was anti-logic. 'Head trips' were really anti-psychological trips that connected psyche to body.
Instead of the body being an outgrowth of a dominant head that is oblivious to its primal surroundings - see Blake print of Newton - head and body are both very aware of the fertile areas.
Psychological darkness in the modern sense could be said to be the dissociation of head from body, and the psychedelic setting is a way out of that predicament. Psychedelia disrupts the mind in fertile pathways.
Psychological darkness is also associated with black magic; the hypnotic illusions, mirrors and reflections of the dual-tone in Jirel Meets Magic (HB205).
Psychological darkness is associated with a head-based system such as our own, as opposed to the physical connection to the psyche which is associated with revival and fertility.
The illusion of darkness is therefore associated with the crumbling of physical reality in the modern order. Grace Slick's song seems to refer to a sort of vanishingly small physicality.
Head-based systems distort primal rhythms which have to be of the physical body, rather than the neutral mind. Our system depends on hyper-realistic measurements which distort the natural rhythm (see P200).
The measurements convince the ego, and enable a type of psychological darkness that is dissociated from physical revival (of the fertile body). A psycho-techno identity that connects mind to machine, and away from body.
As suggested in HB205, psychic toughness comes out of the physical revival of fertile situations. Youth and lightness of spirit are associated with the morbid fertility of a bayou.
The reality of modernity distorts the physical and the fertile in the name of sterility; psychic darkness. The truth is that life is dark when there can be no revival!
White magic is the dryad in CL Moore's story.
And dimly she recalled that, so legend said, a tree-sprite never survived the death of its tree. Gently she turned the girl over, wondering if she were beyond help.
At the feel of those gentle hands the dryad's lips quivered and rose. Brook brown eyes looked up at Jirel, with green swimming in their depths like leaf-reflection in a woodland pool. (page 89)
The physical association with growth, the herbal potions and naked satyrs. The physical and the psyche are connected in white magic.
On the comicbook front, some of that is contained in a comparison of BWS' Monsters with more typical teen fodder like the X-Men animation (prev.)
Myths are a connection of the physical and psyche with the associated gaiety of revival. In the animated episodes Stormfront, weather goddess Storm becomes besotted by the tyrannical Arkon, who builds statuary in her honour.
It becomes apparent that a propaganda machine is at work suppressing rebellion with pain, posters and a cult of personality. Storm finally twigs and unleashes her fury.
It strikes me that myths, and certainly comicbook myths, have a teen following. Partly because the teen years are exciting and have changes. The American Indian trickster Coyote, for example, has life-lessons for those in peril (adapted for comics by Englehart/Rogers.)
Myths contain useful energy that teens can convert, similar to comics. In the X-Men animation, the histrionic vocals and love-hate dynamics are typically teen. The team itself exemplifies the affinity of differences, psychic strength.
BWS' book seems to be beloved of academics and mainstream press for its literate tone (unlike, say, Kirby's New Gods). The pictorial verisimilitude is certainly awe-inspiring, and it is clearly an example of a darkly psychological piece. Unlike myth, there is no counterbalance of lightness from which revival can transpire.
My hunch is that it panders too far to the modern psycho-techno darkness, as opposed to the psychedelic transcendence of mind and body together. Not druggy enough. Not cartoony enough and more like Cerebus-type domestic abuse (paraphrasing John Clifton, prev.)
As CC Beck said, comicbooks can do these things but they don't have to (paraphrasing). The animalistic toughness of teen comics are the fertile content of myth, and thereby revival.
