Pictorial 58

The default setting for modern commentators is that society is progressive because ordered. I quoted Juliet Samuel of DT in Hyborian Bridge 4

In New York, grime and underdevelopment are crammed in alongside excess and ambition. “The oculus”, the new transport hub of the World Trade Centre is a study in both. I entered it on the Path train, a transit link from New Jersey that rattles slowly and unimpressively to a stop by a grubby platform.. you emerge into the brand new concourse of the $4 billion oculus..The whole thing is totally impractical.. But damn, it’s impressive.

Actually, New York districts of yore were self-governing and existed on the basis of “the logic of the illogical”; the movements of people with interrelated habitats and attitudes.

There is the example of Detroit (Drama3) which became derelict and still is able to thrive independently. The federal state can only impose order, but actually disorder – spontaneity of movement and leaving things well alone (C5 etc) – is much more true to the cosmic spirit.

Order can come out of disorder because it is a cyclical system (growth, decay) whereas order is mainly a type of illusion of words. Words come from the head. The cosmos resembles a body in its symmetry and proportion.

This brings round another quote of Juliet Samuel; this time round she’s visiting an Austrian spa, and made a couple of odd observations

Sigmund Freud once wrote that rapid shifts between hot and cold, as when a person cosy in bed slides her arm out from the warm bedclothes and then back in again, are nothing more than “cheap pleasures” that hold no benefits for the mind. But this must be one of many things the founding father of psychology didn’t understand about the human brain, because actually, somewhere along the way in the intense cycle of cold and hot, a mysterious change takes place. The mind seems to reboot itself, as if refreshed by a deep sleep,and lapses in a calm, alert state. Aside from which, as “cheap pleasures” go, most spas certainly aren’t cheap... The real alchemy here, of course, is to turn Grade A nonsense into cash. For all that, though, the massage I bought did feel rather good.

Aside from the implication of quackery, the focus on the brain is odd since a spa, or sauna, is all about sweat. The fat of the body sweats; and then with a plunge in an Alpine lake (which she also did) the blood rushes to the peripheries, natch.

A spa or sauna is all about blood, flesh and sweat; as a consequence the brain in its bony casement may be affected, but it’s all about body.

This is sort of typical of the tendency within the media to put head before body in all events. This has to be a consequence of the fact we inhabit an ordered universe; one essentially designed for and by the head.

Her intimations of quackery are aimed at the fringe medicine that a spa represents, relying on fluctuating energies of the body somewhat akin to Chinese traditional medicine. Only the body has energies, obviously, since the brain is just a way of organizing the disreputable body.

In short, the idea that things are ordered is an illusion of the head, when most things in nature resemble the attributes of a symmetrical body. Something that is active, fleshy, bloody, hot, sweaty, cold, clammy (a lot like a Liza Minnelli concert, let’s say!)

All this speaks of balance and spontaneity; the sort of thing gamekeepers deal with in their treks round grouse moors and so on. In this country that is another bone of contention, as grouse moors and the whole gamekeeping practice of hunting and shooting is under a creeping marginalization.

Ian Botham – the England all-rounder of legend – has taken this up as a rural resident of Yorkshire, and had this to say on the RSPB’s approach to stoats (raiders of ground-nesters)

..many of them seem destined for the Orkney Islands, where the RSPB has won a contract to kill stoats, with a stated purpose to eradicate them.. Packham.. recently accused grouse moors of committing “genocide” by using traps to kill animals “relentlessly”.. Packham – who hates countryside sports – as (the BBC’s) main presenter.. passing him off as an impartial expert and giving him a huge platform.(DT)

Botham is a hunter and shooter, while the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds’ Packham is not – it comes down to that. There is a way you could say that nature resembles the vicissitudes of fortune – and that’s just the way it works.

Stoats or weasels are killers and it’s the job of gamekeepers to keep an eye on their numbers, grounded as they are in the cut-and-thrust of day-to-day living and dying (C6 House of Elrig).

Again it’s the difference between the body, which is flesh and bone and honest labour under the sky above; and the head imposing arbitrary order – when order doesn’t exist. Pure order only exists in the head (of acolytes) – and this is the system we are imprisoned in. Instead of the symmetry and proportion of the body, we have DNA and algorithms. An illusion of ordered, scripted routine (Apollo), without the spontaneous grace of motion, animal action (Dionysus).

Because we live in an ordered system of acolytes (of dead sorcerers), it infects all the other levels of control (actually just one level). From the acolytes (scientists) to the media to the political establishment – and via them to the people.

When we say “political control” we really mean sanity, reason, order. But, as GK Chesterton says, “A madman is not someone who has lost his reason but someone who has lost everything but his reason”(The False Apollo). Because, what is the opposite of reason? It is the stoat preying on ground-nesters with blood in its jaws. It is flesh, blood and the thrill of the chase.

It’s the cyclical existence of flesh and blood (body) in nature. Strength and fertility. Reason, to the acolytes of modernity, applies to the competitive order of advance (unbroken progress); but this is only an advance of the head, since the body has a cyclical existence of flesh and blood in nature.

The head occupies this illusory order, beamed at us through the media. Their voices are so reasonable they just have to be insane, because what is missing is the disorder of the active body in the cyclical existence of nature.

Chinese landscape with Hong Kong in all its glory to the right

When the spontaneous movements of grace of interrelated activities of human bodies hold sway, there is an independence of spirit. One harks back to the days of the free-ports – Shanghai, Hong Kong C17 – and the sense of anarchic freedom, sordid or picturesque (both), dirt and cleanliness all together.

Nowadays, one lives in a world of “script” – the financial order, algorithms – while in the 19^th century the gods of place held sway. There can be no gods of place in a numerical monetary order. This seems to be part of what is happening to Hong Kong, because it exists in an immaterial, parallel reality of script (numerical data, algorithmic heads.“A lot of Westerners try to stay away from it, because they just want to work, make money, go home,” says Daniel, 26, a consultant, DT). When a human society is physically speaking flesh and blood.

Flesh and blood and the spirit of place are colliding with the usual media onslaught of words and pictures. Nothing is real in that situation; it’s all a type of play-acting illusion. If the Hong Kong people were serious, they would simply grab the reins of power – power to the people. The onus is then on China to invade; but anything is better than words and pictures and no action. The UK will support you, people.

In lyrical tragedy, the hero/heroine is forever dominated by the forces of Nature, the gods and Destiny (Tarot). This happens again and again in the classical idiom that is the western tradition. Idomeneo(Sacrifice: Sombre Gaiety); Gluck’s Orpheo; Les Troyens, Berlioz’s opera based on Virgil’s Aeneid.

Destiny is a place where there is no rational order. There are cities – like Carthage, Troy, Knossos – and there are the gods and goddesses of nature and shrines and sacred groves. The cities may be ordered, but the gods are fickle instruments of Nature. You may say we have tamed nature, but it’s an illusion of the head. The body has a flesh and blood existence that exists in the cycles of Nature. Strength and fertility.

Strength, and the pure signs of nature – the sacred groves – are a fertile destiny that the reasoning heads can choose to ignore. It can ignore the strength of the hunt and choose to impose arbitrary order. Order is weakness without the disorder of flesh and the cycles of blood in the field – and this is the world we are in. We no longer need political control; we need rural pursuits that reconnect us to land, lakes, rivers of flesh and blood, decay and substance, root and bone, the body of Ymir.

 

Pictorial 57

So, the illusory reality – and the future of proselytes the likes of Bezos (who drops his wife at the drop of a hat) – is a logical fallacy that supposes the universe to be ordered, as opposed to having the attributes of a body (symmetry, proportion).

The fallacy in part results from the fact that the heads (of acolytes) can’t deny their own physique, and the result seems to be physical boredom (see Grace Slick quote Hyborian Bridge 62/1)

Staying with Le Mepris (Pictorial 56) the sheer symmetry of Bardot (as Penelope) is breathtaking. There’s a scene which cuts from a playhouse in Italy, where Bardot is wearing a black wig, to a boat in Capri, where she is resplendent in her golden locks. Truly a Mediterranean goddess brought to life!

 

In the Ymir myth “hair=plants” (here seaweed)

It’s our universe of the warrior and the maiden (priest and farmer) - also Tarot, physical/psychic destiny, lifedeath - which has been stolen by the carrion-feeders of the earth (see Ymir Pictorial 56) doubling as scientists. How can I say that? Because we all live on Earth and we all need to utilize its resources.

It’s futile to maintain one lives in one’s brain when all the visual signs are that we live on Earth and are constantly burrowing into it. In other words, scientists act like carion-feeders while posing as logical thinkers.

I know this can all sound terribly abstract; here’s one example that was in the news. Grand Teton National Park plans to utilize phone masts so that, “You’re denying people the ability to disconnect” (Jeff Ruch, Pacific dept of PEER). The installations should set the tone for US parks in the future.

This plan is just one example of the disregard of the physical reality of Earth for the mental unreality of the head. As I believe I said previously (Hyborian Bridge 37) the head is electrochemical impulses; everything, bar nothing, we experience is nothing but that.

What has to count much more is our appreciation of physical reality as a thing in itself outside of our heads. Now, how do we know it’s outside of our heads? Again, by the fact that it’s not ordered – not strictly verifiable – and in short is not part of the Apollonian order.

Hence, it is part of the hunt, the American Indian tradition, the cowboy tradition of steering, the dirt and stench of the range. The other side to that equation is the fairyland of gambolling kids in rosebuds of May. The cycle of lifedeath.

The way to get out of the head is simply to saddle-up. It’s as simple and seemingly impractical as that!

 

My Darling Clementine (spot the cow bones and vultures)

People merging with landscape in the stockades of yore. The scene invites cattle to stampede into the frame. The filth and noises and ripe aromas are not to everyone’s taste, to be sure

CITY LIGHTS

The city has its place, but the country is where the body connects to the rugged grandeur of the body of nature. Opposed to both are the carrion-feeders/fact-feeding acolytes who live only in their heads.

Instead of the visual simplicity of a symmetrical universe, they supply a non-physical universe of algorithms and DNA. The fallacy of this is that, even as the head becomes less aware of its own physicality, it relies ever-more on the physical resources of Earth, as an oblivious carrion-feeder.

There is no action inside the head, and this is what a primeval landscape represents. The clouds, the cliffs, the crags, the wooden posts, the damsel in billowing skirts.

The land of earth and flesh and the primeval cow is original and therefore strong and pure. What “they” want is for the body no longer to merge into primeval reality, and therefore they aim to change the head to become ever less physically aware. This unreality, the hall-of-mirrors, has the illusion of truth, very persuasive to the perspective head.

The answer to this is really to use the head in the opposite way, introspectively, to dream and connect with ancient signs in our subconscious. These signs match to the body of the physical landscape, the fierce symmetry of bovine herds, the harsh flatness of the plain, crags and scudding clouds (all together).

The harsh simplicity is strong and pure and feeds our dreams and reason to live (the lyric “Feed your head” in White Rabbit one assumes to mean introspectively, dreamlike, rather than factual/political).

Pictorial 56

The Hunter

Apparently French films are now comfortable establishment workhorses for aging actors (with the odd cameo by Kristen Stewart, natch) and have completely lost their razor’s edge. So now I know why Gerard Depardieu became Russian. The last French film I remember was his namesake, Gerard Lauzier’s Mon Pere, Ce Heros (1991 – the French version, natch, not the English language namesake C5)

Films are visual storytelling, and Lauzier is a direct descendent of Godard and Chabrol of 60s New Wave evanescence.  Perhaps not totally surprising as he is a comic artist by trade (Alternates 6.) I mentioned Kristen Stewart, and her latest film happens to be Seberg, a piece set in the post-Breathless (Godard) days when Seberg became involved with a Black Panther, and performed a black power salute.

While the story is fascinating, the film is not, and it’s clear Stewart is there to sell it on the basis of a neat doppelganger.

The idea of visual storytelling in modern film has been replaced by the routine of a star that sells a bad film. Going back to Mon Pere, Ce Heros, it is quite understated and the Mauritius background does a lot of the work, sultry silhouettes, rock pools and beach retreats a la Tati. The story, the scenery, the surroundings and characters merging into one thing; realism as far as it goes, as against merely seeing actors going through their paces like the blatant copyists they are.

Reality   in the New Wave tradition of the 60s is location merging into characters; the camera as the witness to the merging of scenery with story. This happened in the Paris of Breathless and the darker interior Paris of Alphaville.

It happened in Seberg films such as Le Route de Corinth (Chabrol) and the English language Bonjour Tristesse, set in a sea resort similar to Mon Pere, Ce Heros.

So, what has happened to French film since 1991? Have they joined the global capitulation to the actor as workhorses for an establishment of text, and not visual language?

This was Godard’s view (the last I heard as he’s gone a bit quiet for 50 years or so). Visual language is essentially the physical world; that is, the real world that we see. It’s why the stars (in the sky) make such good storytellers as they stay in position, enabling Man to weave spectacular narratives on their designs.

If this physical world (of the turning Earth) is naive and not complex, that makes it visual, because animals and humans have simple, symmetrical shapes. What we see in the sky at night is the visual simplicity of a symmetrical universe. The pictures that we project against the celestial background. The pictures that match bodily symmetry to the stars.

The physical universe (of bodies and stars) is our universe because it is naïve and simple. Its rhythms are the rhythms the body can be attuned to (starmythworld).

In myth, this correspondence of body to the cosmos is everywhere apparent. When Ymir was usurped and killed by the sons of Borr, his body became our world.

His flesh became earth

His blood the sea

His bones the mountains

His teeth, cliffs and crags

His skull, the heavens and vaulted Asgard

His brain floating clouds

The gods dismembered the cosmic giant and made of him the cosmos. From his rotting flesh, carrion-feeders thrived which Odin changed into Trolls, industrious subterranean inventors (ring any bells?) The Mythology of Sleep, Kari Hohne.

Ymir – see Pictorial 55 – is associated with the root Gemini (twin), the same root found in Yima (Persian) and Yama (Indian).

This twin root can be confusing, but it seems to be owing to the androgyny of these entities, who produce offspring from their own bodies; so have male and female elements. They are always associated in Indo-European myth with a primeval cow, the source of life (and still in India).

I’d best pause there, as you may be wondering what the connection is to French New Wave? Well, myth makes sense of the natural world through alloforms: matching elements of the body to nature. It’s essentially a visual language of the world of action (clouds, cliffs, sea).

This is very close to Godard’s idea of image over text, as in

LE MEPRIS

Godard explicitly makes myth (Poseidon here) the subject of his films to subvert the “analytical man” (here Paul) of neurotic modernism. Modern Man is in his head, and this applies equally to modern films, which are all text which actors act, as opposed to the locales and surroundings being merged into the story (as here).

I could literally pick any of Godard’s early films and the same would be so. In short, at the moment we do not inhabit a mythical alloform of body; it’s more as if we exist in the brain of Ymir, the floating clouds. Not even the skull, as that has a craggy form.

It’s a parallel reality of scripted routines – DNA, algorithms – that resembles a hall of mirrors, run by acolytes of the original sorcerers (Darwin, Newton).

Pictorial 55

Precession astrologically is the way that the zodiac falls out of kilter with the positions of astronomical constellations owing to Earth’s slow wobble round its axis, about every 25,000 years.

The Lascaux wounded man – or bird-headed man – painting may contain this idea in that Ymir (Gemini) was overthrown and the ice cow (Taurus) then precedes him, the star-signs changing places.

The weird thing is that, for all the narrative stargazing that appears to be there, there is an astronomical amount of lewdness! The bird-headed shaman (Gemini) has an erect phallus, maybe indicating a trance state (Pictorial 54)

The bull is pierced through the scrotum, while the raised tail of the rhino suggests defecation. However, the tail also marks Leo, so it’s almost like a type of visual pun.

However, as I said of Katie Bouman (Hyborian Bridge 56), lewdness exists in the universe if it has naïve symmetry, and is not just factual. The factual universe of order omits the real universe which contains disorder.

The lewdness seems to be at least a part of Paleolithic cave-painting (as well as Australian Aborigine folklore, for a modern comparison).

The problem is that a cave-painting isn’t factual. It’s shapes and lines, often quite abstract. The figures have symmetries; a front, a back; a left, a right, and these create the narrative (Weird 11)

A factual world is essentially the head without the symmetries of the body. An astronomical and physical world is of the body.

So, if you assume the universe has a naïve symmetry to match the body, it also has a type of disorder, which is the active principle of nature. Disorder is left to either rot or “dry out” (Buffy Hyborian Bridge 70). The hunters build fires, dance, tell stories.

Disordered nature is active nature, the everlasting chase. The sense that something is disordered  and active is somewhat like the Chinese dragon, the principle of Tao. Strength is gained from disorder; as forest vegetation decays the organic humus feeds the fertility of continual growth, herbivores roaming and grazing.

This is the sacrificial universe of powerful beasts and blood (see Noto Hyborian Bridge 71). It is a type of continual revival from disorder, and hence the counter to a Darwinian universe of competitive order. The problem with Darwin is its underlying principle is order, which comes down to the facts of advance, as opposed to the strength of cyclical existence.

What are the facts of advance? They are the facts of an ordered universe, such as DNA and Katie Bouman (Hyborian bridge 56). As the guy on starmythworld says, instead of an unbroken line of progress, there are apparent high spots – such as the caves at Lascaux – as well as a sense of stasis in Man’s response to astral rhythms – the interpretation of star-signs (myth).

These astral rhythms are all part of the physical universe that is created by the Earth turning on its axis, be it sunrise, moonrise, or the circuit of the stars and wandering planets

Note that in this passage, you have just heard a modern board-certified neurologist confirm for you, in case you had any doubt, that our bodies are connected to the rhythms of the heavenly cycles, including the rising of the moon. starmythworld

There is an intrinsic sense of rhythm in the physical universe to which the body can be attuned. The real, physical universe is rhythmic and disordered through the continual contrast of night and day, Artemis and Apollo (The House that Rand Built 1).

This physical universe is – as I tend to keep saying – rather vague and elusive to strictly factual interpretation. That’s because only a parallel reality of order (Apollo) is strictly factual; the universe of DNA and Katie Bouman – mirror, illusion.

The body – as opposed to DNA – is symmetrical, balanced and proportionate. The body is physical whereas DNA is a factual illusion. If you want to live in a future of factual illusions, you’re welcome, but it will be a hall of mirrors (Hyborian Bridge 20); very convincing but no narrative meaning (content) or physical power – decay, blood, hunt, sacrifice.

Narrative meaning comes from the grace and movement of humans in communal situations. Narrative meaning and power together have given us religious beliefs over the millennia. DNA could save your life but it couldn’t give you a reason to live (or die since they’re both the same).

Religions have to live in the physical world of disorder, decay, tumult, and transcend through belief. I always got the impression that was the aim of the hippy culture, and even if it ultimately fell short it was well worth the effort.

This song from Kantner’s Blows is thoroughly communal in sensibility (compare to Gaye’s What’s Going On CH5) and pretty much a hymn to the stars. Kantner can also be typically lewd, another link to the paleolithic hunter-gatherers of 17,000 BC.

A CHILD IS COMING

MALAYALAN MAPPILA

 

Pictorial 54

Trying to outdo through order (competition) denies the strength of physical disorder that replenishes life from blood (see Noto Hyborian Bridge 71)

Competitive order – at least through Man- creates a precise universe of facts. It’s the very precision that makes it a parallel reality, convincing to the head but not physical (of the body).

The physical luster of things is completely absent from the parallel reality of facts. Physical luster is the sign of a naïve symmetry that is present in things that we see, from the pattern of stars in the sky - - to the lines on a palm.

Are these patterns arbitrary or do they have meaning? Well, in the parallel reality they are arbitrary facts; in a physical universe of naïve symmetry they have meaning!

It all depends if you want to live in a physical universe or a non-physical one that is very convincing (factual) but has no physical meaning.

I know this can start to sound quite circular so, being specific. If you asked a biochemist to physically draw a human it’s quite likely you would get a stick-man as generally they can’t draw. That is actually a good representation of a non-physical reality; one that has a lot of correct facts but no strong, tense presence. In a word, it’s absent (quote from Kantner’s STARSHIP)

Now, of course you’ll say what about photos, TV channels, X-rays and all the rest of the images that have presence? As I may have mentioned I live in near a Creative Quarter of artists, and have noticed more than half are copyists (of photos). The others often have an abstract sense of shape and line; the underlying presence of an object.

The combination of abstract and concrete is really the history of Western art. That to me is realism, while a photo is a good copy; a copy of a copy is still a good copy. Because we live in a world of photos doesn’t make it physical, it makes it accurate.

A physical world has a strong line and a sense of abstraction, the classic example being prehistoric cave art.

Lascaux grotto

Abstraction is the strength that underlies realism. That’s why I say Margaret Brundage’s Weird Tales covers are much more physically present than the vast majority of modern art and photography. They’re a combination of abstraction and concrete. The line is everything.

Photographic realism is almost too accurate for its own good. If there is some abstraction then it is physically more real (as BWS’s prints) It’s like the old Val Lewton horror films (Hyborian Bridge 53); they are quite abstract and have a tense ambiance.

Yes, so we live in a world of copyists which has the appearance of “realism”. Appearance is Apollo. As to what physical reality is, you see it in Weird Tales.

The Dionysian exuberance of life and death; blood and decadence; Artemis as well as Apollo. Without the exuberant freedom of the body in revelry and rites – the cowboy and Indian of yore – all is just Apollonian image. Appearance not reality. The copy, not the truth; the mirror, not the object.

The object itself has a meaning attached to it, as of blood, the hunt. Almost the best possible examples are the prehistoric cave paintings at Lascaux.

  The wounded man

As you can see there is a certain abstraction as well as formidable power. I was actually reading about this the other day, and there is an astonishing correlation between these hunter gatherers of about 17, 000 BC (?) with Egyptian and Zoroastrian myths.

There are credible reasons to believe the picture is an astronomical starchart, with the bull representing the constellation Taurus, and the wounded man Gemini. In the sky, Gemini is at this odd angle to the bull.

Notice that the man is drawn with two parallel lines to get the angle. In other words, the simplicity of the image is its celestial meaning, its “physicality” (compare to the biochemical stick-man). These two figures are associated with Yima and the Bull (or Yama in Hindu myth), and Ymir in Norse.

Not only that, the rhino represents Leo; see odd tail configuration..

 

Even more astonishingly, the bird on a pole is Sirius, which is associated with Horus in Egyptian myth (see Bilal C6 etc.) One obstacle to this interpretation is that Sirius wasn’t visible in the Europe of 17,000 BC..

Mr. Glyn-Jones points out that Sirius was not visible from the latitude of Lascaux in the remote epoch of 17,500 BC, and because of this he modifies his position to suggest that perhaps in the Lascaux cave the image represents Procyon instead of Sirius.

The physical meanings are breathtaking; a cosmic narrative of figures in the sky that are Man’s prey (totems) and his gods.

From this context, the hunt has a cosmic meaning that relates to the physical power of animals and their sacrificial blood. The power and meaning of these pictures contrasts with the accurate copying and almost zero meaning that we advanced societies are so good at! We live in a world of appearance but not of physical realism.

The physical world is not the accurate world of science (of the head of acolytes); it is the cosmic world of the hunt, blood, sacrifice. That world is vague because it has a myth of correspondances, of powerful figures, lines in the sky.

Yes, it is vague (and not verifiable through fact) because only a parallel reality is strictly accurate. Why should that be so?
Because if the universe were strictly accurate, it would be ordered and hence Apollonian. So therefore there would be no Dionysian rites of blood and decadence. No revival of Artemis, no cycle of lifedeath.

The competitive order that Man has created (via Darwin, or acolytes of) denies the strength of physical disorder (blood, decay) and creates a precise world of facts. These facts – such as DNA, or Katie Bouman Hyborian Bridge 56 – inhabit a parallel reality, not the real one of blood and power (or lewdness, natch.)

Our politicians are bearers of this world of weakness. Their speech and signs affirm a world of the head that has zero meaning to the exuberance of body in grace and motion, in country pursuits, in landed estates, the neglected Highlands, the Indians of Allegheny (prev), the cowboy of the mid-west.

Hyborian Bridge 75

'The mind, the ego, the essence of the god-dream..that is real, that is immortal' - Tuzun Thune's quote on the destiny of Man (prev.)
If you can say there are two types of destiny – mental and physical – one of them is illusory because mind cannot exist without body. This is Aristotelian teleology; that a body exists not because it is meat, but because the psyche (soul) uses it for human ends (I got this from watching Macross Plus anime). Taking that as a given (or just watch the anime and Sharon Apple’s fatal AI rebellion), one can assume the psyche emanates from the physical world.

Taking that further, the physical world according to Madame Blavatsky’s Theosophy is above all the planets, each one exemplifying some aspect of psyche.

We’re now in an area of fate and destiny that has to be both physical and psychic; both are connected by the planets. It’s not the perspective order of rectilinear towns, but a type of cosmic symmetry.

I’ve nothing against rectilinear townscapes, let me assure you, but a town should be thought of as existing in a land/lake-scape under the stars above. A town is “a” reality (order), not “the” reality (cosmos).

MY WORLD

For the sake of argument, let’s suppose that that order is more of an Anglo point of view. I can’t be sure of that, but got to thinking this from reading Pirate Queen, a graphic novel on 16^th century Irishwoman Grace O’Malley.

She was the original pirate who battled Henry VIII, and met Queen Elizabeth with spirited defiance. I guess she is the original model for Howard’s views of piratical women. The graphic novel is one of those worthy historical efforts, not exactly scintillating, but not bad.

 

(c) Lee and Hart 2019

Usually – see HB70 – the ordered head wins out in that civilization tends towards order. However, as noted of Rome and Greece, odder was one side of their universe; the other was pantheistic worship, sacred shrines associated with elaborate baths (HB2). The disorder of nature was sanctified and left alone.

The ancient world never knew anything like “pure order”, only urban order (linked by Roman roads, natch.) This only really changed with the rise of the Anglo-world and modern civilization. The fight between the two worlds is probably well illustrated by the history of Ireland, starting with Henry VIII’s colonisation and going through to Cromwell’s massacres, the Republic and finally the Stormont power sharing

 in Ulster (NI).

 

Grace is laying it on a bit thick here. English rule was always a precarious garrison-mentality.The phrase “beyond the pale” refers to the “Pale” (fence) of Eastern Ireland run by the English, which the Tudors fortified. Nevertheless, Normans assimilated and intermarried with Gaelic lords.

In any case, the notion of “order” in those days didn’t extend to agriculture, which was still Virgilian (the Georgics) and emphasised the natural state of Man (not unlike Milton). This state of affairs was widespread right up to the 18^th century and the swirling country estates of Capability Brown. At about that time, though, Jethro Tull was revolutionizing agriculture, paving the way for modernity (intentional pun).

To the Tudors order meant only political governance and urban centres (Dublin, Kildare). It’s only when order starts to apply to natural origins that the mind leaves the physical universe and starts to drift in uncharted waters. You probably notice yourselves that people who believe most in science know least about it? To me, that makes it seem like they are living inside the head – a mental universe of “tongues” (words and facts, prev.) – and not in the real, physical universe.

Isn’t it likely, then, that we (and especially “they”) are living in a logical fallacy that supposes the universe to be ordered? This is the exact opposite of Virgilian ideals of agriculture, which is the creation of order out of disorder. By that, the Roman meant a universe of naïve symmetry between Earth, sun, moon and planets; the world of antiquity (and Theosophy).

In rustic landscapes, doing nothing is a sign of action because nature is active. The rustic ethic that nature is sacrosanct and is left to rot or – as Buffy says Hyborian Bridge 70 – to “dry out” abd be useful. Drying out is a good way of describing the creation of order from disorder, revival from decay, the essence of the huntsman, the Virgilian husbandsman.

The Georgics are very close to the natural origin of species, not with competition but with disorder, strength of lifedeath. Meaning the physical order that replaces life from blood – the wild hunt, the scavenger, raven on the wing (see Noto “Red Lace”).

If our destiny is physical, it is restored by sacrificial blood, as where Noto’s roc spills its heart’s blood. The blood of a wild hunt is also the theme of Jean-Luc Godard’s Weekend, which ends with “analytical man”, Roland, sacrificed to the hunter ethic of the hippy-cannibal savages.

 “Pas mal” is the verdict of Corrine (still from Speaking About Godard, Silverman/Farocki)

If the universe is actually ordered, as science supposes, then it is Apollonian – Apollo being associated with urban society in antiquity. Therefore, the ordered universe is not associated with the rustic revelry and revival of Dionysus, the gay god and opposite tendency to Apollo (Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy)

But the Greeks were aware that Apollo was appearance, not reality. They would never have dreamt of living in towns without the majestic steeps of olive-groved hills and the glory of mount Olympus itself. The ancient world is much more geographical and much less political/scientific (ie precise).

  C12

This is where confusion can set in, as ancient maps are vague, whereas modern maps are precise. Scientists know all about geology and epochs in Earth’s history, which the ancients had no knowledge of. Yes, that’s because Apollonian science is precise. So there’s no surprise about that. Exactly the same applies to Katie Bouman’s black hole (HB65) - the building-up of a cosmic image from trace-data.

The real question is: is an Apollonian universe of precise data real, or an illusion? How can one say geographical facts are an illusion? Because it’s one side of life, the factual one. One lives in one’s body, and that is symmetrical and undulates like a landscape.

This takes us back to Greek line, because without line there is no style.

Line is tied in Greek art to the undulating body, so is that not reality? The reality of expression. All Greek sculptures have the expression of line, however realistically depicted. That balance or tension.

Modern science is a factual illusion, whether it’s Katie Bouman or DNA. Because we are not DNA, we are undulating line. Where does the line come from? From the primeval serpent, primitive rhythm. From the physical universe of Earth, sun, moon and planets.

Hyborian Bridge 74

The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune reads a bit like Plato’s riddle of the cave. “The people watch shadows projected on the wall from objects passing in front of a fire behind them, and give names to these shadows.”  Are we humans but shadow projections of an infinitely more verdant universe, in Howard’s case, on the other side of the mirrors?

Howard’s descriptions are somewhat reminiscent of Francis Stevens’ Claimed

Sometimes it seemed that he gazed upon hard shallowness; at other times gigantic depths seemed to loom before him. Like the surface of the sea was the mirror of Tuzun Thune; hard as the sea in the sun’s slanting beams, in the darkness of the stars, when no eye can pierce her deeps..

As one might notice, the sea can be mighty illusory, as can the sun. So can the air..and what is earth but merely wads of clay? Yet together is a symmetry formed that has the feel of unspeakable truth.

A mirror is one facet of this illusory world, and in a way is the most convincing. Yet a mirror is also the least real, since it is composed of light beams; so it is a combination of “truth” and physical non-existence.

This is the sense that Tuzun Thune uses in his hall of mirrors. His tongue takes Kull away from the sense of his corporeality - Grace Slick’s Be Young You Hyborian Bridge 73. A tongue – or a language – is articulate reality. This is the reality we live in and –actually – a lot of that takes place behind this very same hall of mirrors.

Mathematics is a language, and you remember Hyborian bridge 73 says that “mathematical vistas were opened-up” by crystal diffraction (Ramachandra)? Crystal diffraction is simply another type of mirror illusion; light is bent and an angular image formed.

I’m not saying it’s not real; it’s a combination of “truth” and physical non-existence. Physical existence is our bodies, our corporeality. Diffraction patterns are mathematical entities created by light. Since light is non-corporeal they have no physical existence.

Like Kull’s “entity” on the other side of the glass, they exist (in light), they are not our shadows. They speak another language – mathematics – which is essentially a creation of light (diffraction). It’s the angular language of crystals which is both logically true and a logical fallacy in terms of our own physique, which is fairly disordered and pliable (to use Bruce Lee’s expressions).

The body is not ordered in terms of straight lines and angles – like a crystal – only in terms of symmetries. It therefore makes some sense to think of the cosmos in terms of symmetries – however naïve that may appear to the acolytes of the mirror illusion.

Yes, but that’s because a mirror is highly convincing (to the head). Let me give a concrete example. If you walk through a town you see a lot of signs; you could follow them, and they would be “true”. They also tend to exist in a universe of straight lines and angles. There also exists another universe of symmetries; you could also follow that one, but the signs would not be as concrete!

So it’s no wonder Kull was “mazed”. A mirror is devilishly confusing; it’s the combination of “truth” (image) and the mathematical non-physicality that drags us into a language of acolytes; the tongues that speak a mixture of “truth” (image) and physical non-existence, merging us into a world of (their) minds, and away from (our) bodies.

The nations pass and are forgotten, for that is the destiny of man.”

“Yes,” said Kull. “Yet is it not a pity that the beauty and glory of men should fade like smoke on a summer sea?”

“For what reason, since that is their destiny?

Yes, the “destiny” that leads inevitably to AI – algorithmic language that articulates the aims of the acolytes (of the head). So it’s all about tongue, or as the song says,

“The tongues of some men are made of silence

And your eyes will listen - “Be Young You”

Perhaps these are the laconic rovers who work pack-horses and mule-trains with a shotgun on their saddle? This is a different destiny, for one skins rabbit or bones a fish. One is then living, experiencing the cyclical sense of things dying, being eaten, morsels being scavenged, the squawk of the crow in the pine.

This primitive physical existence is no less than the origin of culture and all its products. To forsake our own origins does feel weirdly like being dragged through Tuzun Thune’s mirrors.

“See and believe,” droned the wizard. “Man must believe to accomplish. Form is shadow, substance is illusion, materiality is dream; man is because he believes he is; what is man but a dream of the gods? Yet man can be that which he wishes to be; form and substance, they are but shadows. The mind, the ego, the essence of the god-dream — that is real, that is immortal.

The land of pure-ego, of course, is the non-physical land of mathematical AI, articulate, algorithmic, and we know where that leads (see Katie Bouman’s black hole Hyborian Bridge 60).It seems to lead to a reality that is not physically active and therefore cannot revive through decay (via hunting, carrion).

The heads (of acolytes) may not be physical but cannot deny the physique (Claimed1), and so the result may well be physical boredom. Again, this seems to relate to Grace Slick’s quote on numerical compulsion (Hyborian bridge 62/1), that relates to the physique and attitudes of boredom.

Since we can’t escape from the physique, you could say that it is our destiny, whether or not we use our heads or our bodies. If that is our destiny, then it has to be related to the physical universe – of sun, moon, planets – which again the acolytes deny.

What you could say is that acolytes are adopting attitudes of boredom in their own physiques, and that the alternative is something like Bruce Lee’s intelligent body, whereby the attitude is the exact opposite of boredom, a vital awareness and response to threat. One has to be aware (to catch fish) and in surroundings that fit our bodily needs.

Anything that exists in the head – in the ego – cannot exist in physical reality of the body that is active in the field. But it’s this physical reality that revives through decay, and that has strength and purity.

Something Ic Waes

If this universe is the physical universe, then it does seem to have a certain naivety. And poetry, if you include Papa Hemingway. The naivety is that of the hunter, the adventurer who sails the sea or roams the forest, the river. The places that don’t have straight lines or angles but have cosmic symmetries. Now, according to the universe of order (illusion) these places are just real estate, hence Bolsonaro’s razing of Amazanian forest for intensive cattle raising..and so forth.

 

Hyborian Bridge 73

The sorcerer (acolyte) lives in an articulate world of scripted routine (like DNA). These are the product of an ordered universe, but what of the disordered universe of yore? What of the woods, the fields, the Biblical threshing and larking around?

Several things come to mind. The physical activity that accentuates the body, as in the tradition of fulling (Hyborian Bridge 60). This closeness or overlap of work to pleasure is typically traditional. Basically, because the body is involved in work.

The other idea is the disordered world is not a hygienic one; there’s dirt and wet and cow pats and those that work are exposed to microbes in dirt. These have a strengthening effect on the immune system(Tales of Faith 10, Pictorial 14,44). Once the work is over, one bathes the dirt away (Pictorial 21). The ancient Greeks used to anoint with oil, which is another deep cleansing method.

Our view of medieval times is often quite negative owing to this disordered universe. I’ve been watching a Dutch medieval film called Floris which is a sequel to the original Dutch TV series starring Rutger Hauer and his Indian accomplice. However, Floris the film is much more of a parody, and I got some quite interesting things off it.

There are some quite good jokes though I think a lot of the Dutch bypassed me. At the start he meets Pi, a travelling Chinawoman, who becomes his accomplice. He introduces her to his father, Floris senior (the son of the original) with,

“Pa, Pi; Pi, Pa”

Since there are quite a few druggy gags, I reckon that’s a reference to poppy.

Floris is a travelling actor, and there’s quite a lot of tumbling; physical humour and acrobatory. Apart from that, he and Pi have quite a lot of tramping through mud, on the trail of a holy relic. There are horse ass gags, and Pi plays a shadow-show on a white horses midriff that shows her stripping off, to distract a couple of guards.

It did strike me as quite medieval with a lot of turrets and bare stonework, moats (for falling into), mud, birds and woods. Pi demonstrates her martial skills in a fight with a pole, and it made me realize the similarity between ancient Chinese philosophy and medievalism. Bruce Lee’s quote..

“Notice that the stiffer tree is much easier cracked, while the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind.”

..applies to active civilizations that use the body to fight or work (Biblical threshing). The act of being active in the field creates an active universe of horses, hedgerows and critters, mud and wet, straw, hay, compost, ploughing, crops and cattle. The “field” meaning somewhere that is seeded side-by-side with wildness, where there is give-and-take and no ungiving monoculture (of beef or crop).

There’s a parallel here with biochemical science, which is based on detection of crystals (X-ray diffraction, prev.) since a crystal is a rigid structure which is easy to shatter. This is what happens to a hall of mirrors

Conan #20

Hyborian Bridge 20

Something that is unbending, that is a scripted routine appeals to a society of the head. To a society of the body, the flexibility of give-and-take is much more natural to an active life on the range.

“I want to get back in the dirt where I can feel clean!” says Vic in A Boy and His Dog, going from Topeka to the disordered universe that cannot be shattered because it bends and gives. Reality.

What a hall of mirrors gives you is crystal medicine which is ultra-precise and very compatible with DNA. But a living body is not inert DNA; it is water and air, bone and sinew that reacts to the fire of the sun.

There are two universes, and the disordered universe of action (body) is a creature of the surroundings, of give-and-take. The ordered universe of the head is a creature of acolytes of a hall of mirrors (angle of light C4) It’s a universe that has no give-and-take of the surroundings that feed our needs.

I already mentioned somewhere the ordering effect of intensive beef lots (Drama1 Pictorial 44) on what used to be cowboy country. The cattle are not given freedom to graze on hay, which is a relaxed and humane (or cowmane) herd lifestyle.

It’s typical that vegans complain of methane, which is a product of intensive breeding with oats, which acidify the herbivore stomach. They are so ignorant they probably don’t know the difference. They – along with the unfortunate cattle – are products of an ordered universe that cannot bend in relaxed manner, and must be dosed with various types of crystal medicine.

They, along with the political classes – exist in articulate reality that cannot conceive of the gay abandon of the forest groves of yore (I noticed Boris Johnson’s girlfriend, Carrie Symonds, is not only vegan but a puffin-lover) and speak the language of habitual order.

Meaning, not the free range of give-and-take that bends with the wind, but the crystal medicine of intensive lots, vegans and grouse moor clearances that only exist in articulate reality. The laconic warriors of poetry speak a physical language of strength and purity, of the expressive body and free range of yore. Yeehar!

BE YOUNG YOU (with Papa John Creache)