Pictorial 79

Ladder to a Sun

(homage to Jefferson Starship’s Sunfighter album, done in wood beads and acrylic)

ZERO

Simplicity is the great theme of the heavenly orbs, the theme that Man tries to decipher with astrology and Tarot. So one arrives at subtlety, rather than the scientific sense that the more complex things are the closer one gets to solving the puzzle.

Subtlety is not a solution but an interpretation. It depends on a simple framework – the movements of the planets – while to scientists the simplicity is simply proof that nothing is there! Science is preternaturally blind to simplicity because it is something that just is. There happen to be nine planets by pure fortune or happenstance. To Pythagoras or the Egyptians this meant mystery and meaning; to scientists it is meaningless.

The same applies to any archetypal shape, from a dog to a snake. To science they have no meaning save that of competition (see prev); to story and myth the meanings are manifold. So science rigorously denies meaning, since only simple things can have a story and a myth!

Those who search for meaning in the modern scene are more likely to be out-of-time. Burne Hogarth (Pictorial 1, 4) was a true Renaissance Man who brought to pulps a connoisseur’s eye of the moral force of “a man armed only with a knife” in Tarza.

The jungle is a labyrinth that only the pure heart can penetrate (NOTE: there’s a para in Denizens of the Netherworld 2 that refers to the “labyrinth”. At that time I was meaning the modern maze of logic, so read it in that way or there could be a lot of confusion!) Yes, the labyrinth of the forest in Gilgamesh (Kari Hohne Pictorial 65). Subtle interweavings and traps that are not just randomly complex. The call of the hunt and the scent of blood, the kill and the carrion, the cycle of lifedeath, strength and fear.

One searches for meaning outside of the modern maze of logic, and inside the primeval labyrinth of arboreal stories, of shipwrecks and berocked sirens. So, one assumes, do others outside the modern uni-mind, be it DH Lawrence (The Plumed Serpent) or Leigh Brackett (The Long Tomorrow).

Both books make the assumption that Modern Man is basically batty and foresee alternate paths that connect to a more primitive conscious and the primeval reptile. Beckett’s agrarian society poses the same question that I posed at the end of Elektra: the Sequel (Hyborian Bridge 91). Is going Amish justified, or are we justified to keep the mechanical devices that we happen to like?

It’s almost impossible to answer, and Leigh Brackett’s later work was prone to deal with alien societies under peril of extinction from human endeavours. EC sci-fi titles were often prone to show species at vastly different levels of development, from  primeval forest dwellers to flashing starship troopers.

In The Long Tomorrow, Leigh depicts the honest toil of barging through the American mid-west, sweat beading down, hair matted, and this has a moral force. I once worked on an organic farm and the rituals of baling and scything are for sure sweaty fun (Cider With Rosie Pictorial 5).

Grabbing at straws, could we, say, go back to castles and peasantry but still keep the odd Harley Davidson? The Long Tomorrow faces the same quandary when, at the end, they acknowledge that information can never be destroyed and someone, somewhere, will eventually revive it.

Yes, there’s something in that but, equally, one can’t live a lie and that we live in an information age is the biggest lie of all. We live in “their” information age, the Martians in our midst. Some things are morally pure, such as the smell of hay or dry compost. This is the cyclical world of seasonal power under the mighty orbs above. So, it’s not so much a case of we shouldn’t advance as that we should recognize the cosmos for what it is.

This world is story, and the other world is weak – physically and psychically. One way to put it is to place two of BWS’s Howard prints side-by-side (BWS is another guy seemingly out-of-time, as well as out-of-sight)

 

 

If Bran represents the reptile strength of the fens, Thoth represents the mental-spiritual aeriness that knows only ego-lust. In between the two is the way of the barbarian where strength of body and moral codes place them on a higher pedestal than either peasant or king.

Both Kull and Conan were barbarians who conquered kingdoms, learning wisdom and curbing their unruly excesses. Both Valusia and Aquilonia are civilized kingdoms that respond well to strength of arm and mind.

 

Both face sorcerous foes and both throw them off. Modern civilization has to throw off the yoke of sorcery. That doesn’t mean science (which just means knowledge). It means the malevolence of techniques that are born of a lie.

Kull #7

Kull overthrows orthodoxy

Pictorial 78

From the preceding, it seems obvious that science approaches information – since we are in the information age – and in the process loses story. Story is not information, it is action and action comes from movement and line (shape).

That shape is, of course, the human figure

Vitruvian Man

In the Renaissance science was based on the human figure, and had the moral basis of fleshly form. As science drifts away into the digital zone, it becomes more like a negative moral force, akin to the wholly immoral Thoth Amon.

If there is no moral story, the obvious step is to invent a story for devious immoral purposes (of ego-lust). Then story “they” invent is that everything is the product of technique. So that, by advance, one could approach human perfection.

If you go back to Denizens of the Netherworld 2 there is a discussion of BWS’s influence on Rob Leifeld. His expressionist “broken line” approach..

..where it says that technique and expression are two different things: you have to forget one to do the other (Bruce Lee’s Jeet Kune Do). Expression is something that happens, while technique is something that’s planned.

What can’t be planned is expressed, and this applies to the dynamically developing anatomy of a foetus in the womb. The reason this is so is that every part of the body is dynamically balanced with every other part; one cannot exist without all the others. The quality of this is dance and, as noted previously, it has a cartoon simplicity ().

This has to be the origin of the human story, since without the simplicity there would be no sensual experience of the virile, the feminine. Simplicity has to be the counter to information, since information can only be complex.

So, the simplicity we achieve in active life can’t possibly be information; it can only be story. The story is moral – for the reasons outlined previously – while the invented story of the Thoth Amon clones is a negative moral force.

Well, this applies to quite a lot of things! Obviously, a dance is not competitive or evolutionary, since it just happens. Hence, any theory of competitive evolution can only apply outside of this dance. But, what is all life is a dance? It’s an open question.

Then there’s the question of death. Information can’t die, but a dance can stop. Following death is the cycle of destruction and creation (another dance?)

 

If all things dance by just happening, it makes the investigation of elementary particles look like a lost cause. Something that happens is not coherent information. It’s not even a story if it happens in a vacuum.

Whereas modern science creates information with hygienic techniques (prev), the cycle of destruction and creation is what just happens. The result in the field is sweet smelling compost and what you might call the triumphant worm. In the field the rule is let it dry (Buffy St Marie quote Hyborian Bridge 70) since things rot and the process itself is strengthening, the rich loam, the clean smell of pure strength (see Laurens van der Post).

Scientific information is very beholden to techniques like microscopy (lenses HB56) and there’s quite a question to ask. It is: does the information appeal to the scientific mind, and is that why it becomes established orthodoxy? (see Francis Bacon “Idol of the Den”).

What I really mean is that the information is complex, not simple. The most blatant example is DNA, which is visible through X-ray diffraction. The problem is that DNA becomes (more) real when we enter a parallel reality run by DNA (and AI). It’s not so much a case of fact or fiction as which reality you choose to occupy.

Of course, strength comes from the Earth, and the genuinely moral human figure in a landscape of power. Outside of scientific equipment and technique is the unpalatable truth that living things are simple. They have to be because they develop dynamically – and this is where it helps to go back to Bruce Lee (The Big Pretence).

In Artist of Life he is at pains to say that there is no routine when in the midst of a fight. Yes, one trains at routine, but in a fight one must be flexible. One cannot think in a routine way and be in-the-moment (in time).

To be flexible is to just instantly react. The training then kicks-in. He speaks of “a war between a robot and a wild beast”. The two are totally separate; one forgets then robot to become the beast. In the same way, DNA is a code, it is not the beast. That is the expression of movement and line that is the shape, that has story (myth).

The two are totally separate and there’s no connection apart from the fact they are both in the same place; but one is the robot, the other is the beast.

So, to divide the two out is not to arrive at truth, it is to arrive at a lie. The lie is that technique will lead to perfection; so this leads to another question.

Why has the Great Public swallowed this lie? I guess you can guess! The organs of media speak for the acolytes of sorcerers with one voice. Leonardo da Vinci is the apex of the Renaissance and it’s clear he’s aiming at cosmic simplicity.

Hyborian Bridge 93

The Plumed Serpent, page 273

This sort of ancient and primitive unconscious has quite a lot in common with heroic fantasy. Instead of abstract thought, there is a genuine moral attachment to the earth. What DH Lawrence calls the “mental-spiritual” attributes of whites is opposed by the dark unconscious and fleshily virile attributes of the Indians.

Written in the 20s, almost a hundred years ago, the rise of the “mental-spiritual” has led to a worship of “smart” things. In terms of Indian attributes, health and genuine wealth are much more to do with the physical and erotic fleshiness of communal living.

Peru, Raymond Depardon

Naïve gaiety in the flaunting of ostentatious eroticism are signifiers of wealth in the primitive wellbeing DH Lawrence encounters in Mexico. I did mention somewhere (Hyborian Bridge 14) that this is the opposite of Freud, where wealth (money) signifies the erotic (carnal).

What seems to follow from that is that money (capital, Freud) – whether or not it signifies the erotic – does destroy the flaunting of primitive eroticism. The type of thing that Laurie Lee writes about in Cider With Rosie.

Money (or the $) signifies “smart” as opposed to primitive; in that sense sexuality is yet another activity that occupies the thought-process, instead of just happening. I’m not one to decry fashion (being a fan of Gaultier) but the pornographic industry has to be almost as big.

Real wealth is a matter of health, and health is much more to do with the primitive spine that articulates the body, if we’re talking communes that live on and from the land.

Pictorial 75

..where the body is a supple, strong, counterpoised instrument for cultivating the land.

Howard’s heroes and heroines often have primitive aspects of temper and temperament, but to what extent is the genuinely moral primitive by nature? One can’t rationalise a moral instinct, and if the circumstances dictate action to avenge a deed, so be it. The same goes for the negative moral force of A Thoth Amon. There is no rationale, only naked ego and lust for ungodly power. So you could say Howard’s heroes and heroines and villains are all primitive, in the same sense DH Lawrence means.

They are hippy and fleshy and undulating as opposed to cerebral. This connects them to Ymir and the bones of Earth, and to our reptile ancestors.

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

Ymir, Pictorial 56

The reptile is a destructive force, but its unconscious spinal manifestation is a power that is ignored at the peril of one’s soul. The head that is “smart” as opposed to moral is always impressed by information (DNA,AI) at the expense of the virile, the manly and heroic, and the feminine and supple.

Human culture is moral because it is flesh and bone, not because it is abstract thought. Flesh dies and becomes part of the cyclical forces of nature. These forces are strong and pure and provide health and wealth – see prev on BWS Adastra in Africa, tribal mythos and power. The opposite scenario is Bill Gates’ pathogen-killing toilet, a hygiene-machine or “smart” solution that also kills primitive culture.

Weird Tales, as seen through the prism of Margaret Brundage’s sensual and mildly bondage-oriented covers, is fleshily supple and virile. Set against this, the figure of death often stalks the covers, as with The People of the Black Circle.

The creepiness – which later recurred in EC’s terror titles – has been decried but there is an undeniable moral aspect in the figure of a lusty damsel beset by evil forces and, in the course of the story, thwarting them either through wiles or by the aid of some heroic actor.

There is a vast contrast between, on the one hand the embodiment of life and beauty and, on the other, the possibility of the life being snuffed out and the onset of decay. Lovercraft somewhere says that Weird Tales contributor Clark Ashton-Smith is preoccupied with images of death, decay and abnormality, or some such phrase.

The point is that for a magazine to be fleshily sensual and virile at the same time as being prone to advance the spectre of death is a type of honesty that one has to say is moral. For those who think there is a fetishistic aspect to Weird Tales, the presence of death one could equally say is a good counterbalance to the fleshly. The idea of a nubile maiden who continually cheats death is quite a common pulp trope – as in Nyoka.

Where life is seen in such fairly primitive terms of flesh and threat – as opposed to being seen in purely cerebral terms – fetishistic aspects are difficult to deny. That is a type of honesty. Pornography, which pretends everything is all about genitalia, is peddling a type of profitable lie.

Where death is present, then the powerful forces of decay and rebirth are also there. This entire area is vital to life, and really governs the entire process of organic farming which depends on predator-prey relationships. The humus in the soil is built-up of decaying organic matter that plants thrive on.

This type of culture is strong because it involves cyclical relationships. Whereas modern culture tends to be built-up of information, this is built-up of constant transformation, as one thing changes into another.

Where living is seen to be fleshly, that is going to be the case. Flesh is sensual, virile, feminine. Really we’re in the world of the power to act through the shape of things – animal, plant – to put them to use (see prev.) This world has a story, a myth; the seasons turn; the harvest moon shines down. The story has to invoke the face of death or it would be immoral, a mere façade.

Opposed to these moral forces of the fleshly and the decaying, modern science proposes “smart” machines that more or less pretend there is no such thing as death and decay. They kill pathogens, but only to sterilize a process (as in Gates’ toilet). The idea that the process itself is death, and that this supports life, falls outside the range of “smart” or hygienic-machines that operate outside of cyclical processes (eg pesticides kill, they do not balance the prey with a predator).

I know Weird Tales isn’t a farming magazine; it’s simply that the primitive fleshiness has the same moral basis as an organic farm! The question is, how much of the information in modern science is immoral because it is outside of cyclical forces?

For a start, cyclical forces are not hygienic; they are smelly and degrading. Their power is in the continual change of one thing into another through a process of corruption. Almost all the information in modern science is hygienic. Hygiene is needed to sterilize an area so that no cyclical process (of degradation) can occur.

If you say that fleshly living has story that involves death and corruption, maybe the scientific story is different – but what is it? It seems to mainly be composed of information; but if the information is obtained via sterile processes, it could be immoral.

Semiconductors have to be kept airtight and watertight to ensure they function in sterile conditions (“A vagrant charge,” said Gutierrez, “A speck of dust, a relay too worn to function right” – The Long Tomorrow). CERN is another machine that requires a near-vacuum to function. If you take DNA, in order to isolate it there must be a surgical procedure of sterility or it would just disintegrate in a trice.

Is it true to say, though, that these procedures are outside of a cyclical system of destruction and creation? I think so, because they are not fleshly. DNA only exists in a microscope; inside a cell it’s invisible. The sterile process isolates information. But that information is outside of cyclical processes that give living things strength.

As far as CERN goes – or the reflector telescopes, see Hyborian Bridge 56 – the information gets more abstract by the year. If we lived in an abstract universe that might be ok, but we live in a physical one. Seen from Earth, that is sun, moon, planets, stars.

The question is, why is the scientific information getting so abstract (and indecipherable)? I tend to suppose it’s because only physical information is balanced and proportionate. The Earth is the domain of life. I know “they” keep saying there’s life out there – show it, then. Earth exists in a delicate balance, and that is the physical reality. The psyche emanates from the physical, in the Theosophy of Madame Blavatsky.

This pretty well takes us back in a circle to Weird Tales (and Talbot Mundy’s Tros of Samothrace). The way heroes and heroines unflinchingly face the dark or reptilian forces – such as Jirel’s descent through insane geometry to a dreamland of fallen idols – has a fleshly aspect that traces back to lost ages.

The stories have meaning and power and a moral force that is simply the human figure in its guise of hunter, knight, adventurer; keen spirit under the orbs of the mighty cosmos above.

Pictorial 77

I was on a bus near Hythe and overheard a conversation between a local and a couple from London. The guy was obviously quite historical, and was saying things like, “That’s the Royal Military Canal..it was built as a defence against Napoleon.. There are Martello towers..fortified with heavy pounders.. It was strengthened in WWII.. Up there’s St Leonard’s church.. It has an ossuary with 500 skulls.. The knights rested there before going to Canterbury to murder Thomas A’Beckett.”

It was a bit of a monologue and I just got to thinking that everything – bar nothing – that you hear or see is information. Usually that’s ok as the information is interesting enough. A stained glass of Thomas A’Beckett’s murder, say.

Even if everything is information, that’s almost a negative comment since there are various aspects or tonalities such as the sensual, the virile, the feminine, These aspects can be likened to Plato’s idealism ().

From that comes storytelling, the psychic content of the story (the what), and the style it’s told in (the how). Idealism almost implies there is something a priori, which is the shape that things have. None of the information obtained from DNA has anything to say on shape. So, to be positive, shape and power and the use made of plants and animals by humans has to be much more than information.

What I really mean is that, to say that the shape and power of things is not as important as DNA is to be negative. It’s a pessimistic, defeatist attitude to say that the power of our own limbs is not sufficient unto itself, and that it needs to be subordinated to “information”.

In fact, power and use and shape are far superior and have inherent storytelling. They have line and movement, content and style. What Man has done through history is differentiate these various aspects because a culture is so much more than information.

To say that everything is information is actually to do without this process of differentiation, which says exactly the opposite: that there is something a priori and archetypal. In

 a way it’s laziness to reduce everything to one monologous trait, as Dawkins does in The Selfish Gene, missing out all the shapes of power and presence in the universe. What it does is confuse data with physical reality – movement and line.

To take a concrete example: Elizabeth Taylor had beauty, power and presence. You can be told, “ET is beautiful”, and that can be classified as data. However, some things don’t have to be told; they are a priori.

 

So, a society of information is really saying something like: information is not something else, it is just information. We’re being told everything is information, even though some things DON’T need to be told!

The effect of this is tautologous – a vicious circle. You are effectively being told – by the organs of the media – that “information is information” in all sorts of different ways. Of course, this is attractive to the ego.

Outside of the ego is the creative-unconscious, or basically the inspiration we gain from the cosmos at large. Well, this is really the cultural history of Man, from Homer to the Bible! I know a lot of this sounds like it’s nothing to do with heroic fantasy and Howard, but fantasy is not as different from reality as “they” would have us believe.

There is a mundane reality which has no fantasy, that is cut-off from the cosmic experience. But Egyptians and Greeks weren’t cut-off from this experience, they were inspired to invention and philosophy by the heavens.

This is why I say the cosmic experience is a type of fantasy-land, not unlike our unconscious pathways (tracing back to ages lost). Life is only mundane if you’re told these are all different types of information, instead of powerful and fascinating stories, myths.

But a human figure, when it forms in the womb, is writing an age-old story of bone and flesh. It’s all story, narrative sequence of interlocking rhythms, and that is the cosmic reality a mundane world denies with its facts.

Bone and flesh are strong. What “they” want to know is how these events happen (the story), but the answer is some things just happen. It’s called naivety, or just living in the instant. It’s partly order and partly freedom; the sublime balance.

If – as the ancient Greeks attested – the universe is very finely balanced and all things are proportionate, all that is a priori. A society of information is simply a denial of these ancient truths. Flesh and bone are strong, the underlying health of organic matter. They are part of physical cycles that are strong and pure.

So, in other words, a world of data is weak – in the head – and outside of the physical cycles of destruction and creation that are emblemised by a serpent. The undulating spine is our link to this ancient, ancestral reptilian unconscious.

She had a strange feeling, in Mexico, of the old prehistoric humanity, the dark-eyed humanity of the days, perhaps, before the glacial period. When the world was colder, and the seas emptier, and all the land-formation was different. When the waters of the world were piled in stupendous glaciers on the high places, and high, high upon the poles. When great plains stretched away to the oceans, like Atlantis, and the lost continents of Polynesia, so that seas were only great lakes, and the soft, dark-eyed people of that world could walk around the globe. Then there was a mysterious, hot-blooded, soft-footed humanity with a strange civilization of its own.. (The Plumed Serpent Hyborian Bridge 81)

The hero steals knowledge from the dragon and slays it with his will. A world of power has a fantastical aspect since the strong lines and shapes have storytelling potential.

The storytelling potential is really proof against data (DNA,AI) and it is strong , virile, feminine. The negative, nihilistic, pessimism of the likes of Dawkins can be defeated by these aspects. To be made of bone and flesh at least is tangible exposure to honesty and moral truthfulness.

Bone and flesh die and become immersed in creative/destructive forces; the dream of the universe. This sense of destiny that is both gay and melancholy has a meaning that is manifested in story. Howard’s writing, with its naturalistic descriptions of dainty fronds, savage events of blood and mayhem, take us into the dream of the universe. It is a dream which is denied by the spokespeople of mundanity because they choose to ignore the powerful manifestation of cosmic forces – the crags that are bones; the earth that is flesh; the seas that are blood; destiny.

HEADS WILL ROLL

Hyborian Bridge 92

The mousepad of Harlan Ellison’s I Have no Mouth and I Must Scream occupies a place of pride in my domain. Harlan, who spoke against the onrushing tide of human flotsam that desecrates the wild aspects of culture, be it a 20s Sullivan skyscraper or the sea stacks on the Isle of Lewis, or a darting swallow on a Granada tile.

“The world is getting sick of these ridiculous excuses.” Virginia Roberts

I just picked that as typical of the ego that attaches itself to the octopus tendrils of global media. They have an unnatural affinity; they deserve eachother. Because the head is unnaturally attracted to propaganda.

Let’s go back in time a short way to when instead of electronics there was neon bathing city-dwellers in an ambient glow, head to foot, swirling along the sidewalks of your mind. Say about 1979, when city countryside were more-or-less demarcated by light and sound.

BACK TO THE NIGHT1-20 in (spot the joke at 1-25)

“I like the skinny burlesque queen”. That’s romance – the city of yesteryear. I remember it well from the Soho of London. I noticed Picaddilly Circus has an immersive proactive digital ad display – all aimed at the head, not the burlesque body of gay romance gone by.

So, neon needn’t be bad so long as it’s surrounded by dancing types, and is not just a stage on the way to total immersion by “sons of neon”. Yes, the romance of city lights almost goes back to Biblical times; harlots at street corners.

Where everything is pitched at the head, the naïve gaiety of dancing and running, riding and hunting are lost. The Bible – O.T. – has a naïve honesty with regard to pleasures of the flesh.

I mean, all of that is to do with movement and line; the dynamics of the body. Fashion accentuates line to supplement the feminine mystique. When Prince Andrew said recently, “sex is a positive act” (prev) I think he was being naively honest in the same way. Someone who is active as a rider, a hunter tends to have a physical turn of mind.

Joan “Armor-plating” I also see as something of a naïve genius. Her songs more than hint at physical infatuation, all done in a gay, romantic loose-rhythm style that is really sublime. Guileless beyond hope’s imagining. Byron

So, romance – whether medieval or city lights – has a physical naivety which really undermines the totalitarian head of digital propaganda and advertising. It’s almost like saying Joan os more medieval than we are today – or how far down the road we have gone in this new millennium to a society that is not sensual nor virile nor feminine (DH Lawrence Hyborian Bridge 82 etc)

All of these are the product of movement and line.

Hyborian Bridge 22

The Song of Red Sonja is a story with music and emotion. It is bewitching even if a mite clichéd. Everything I’ve said here is completely abrogated by a society of information which bypasses the naïve nervous disarming actions of the body – whether on the lamplit street or in some medieval nunnery.

One could reel off a list of pre-modern/post-medieval books/heroes/heroines. From Robin Hood, Friar Tuck, Maid Marion to Moll Flanders and Huck Finn. All the content and style is completely outside of a society of information and completely inside of the charm of the active body in its pursuits and adventures.

Howard’s fantasies are not really so different, just a shade bloodier. Like the previous stories, they are honest and morally straight, and most of the reason is down to their physicality.

A lot of the moral ambiguities in modern literature and entertainment is down to the dishonest pitching of jokes and emotion at the head – verbally as opposed to using the shape and power of the body in active, fluid, dancing pursuits

(this was my dig at Phoebe Waller-Bridge).

Millet

Pictorial 11

The body has a shape and it has a power, and clothing accentuates both.

Ruth

Pictorial 7

Howard’s stories and characters are naively truthful in the Biblical sense, outside of modern ambiguities (Conan’s hot kisses to in Hour of the Dragon). All that really comes from movement and line which are outside of rational information, and as much to do with fantasy as reality (heroic romance).

All literature is fantasy. The Bible is a history that is literary, so contains both aspects. I say that because fantasy is the creative-unconsious speaking to us.

To live in a world without psyche is to be told all that is hocus-pocus, when it is really the beliefs of the psyche which influence events (in reality Hyborian Bridge 89)

This points to the fact that a world (our own) of rational information is a parallel reality without psyche, without physical power (of body, dance in rural pursuits). The parallel reality appeals to the ego (of acolytes) but it is fearful of the primeval physicality (Biblical, O.T. Hyborian Bridge 91)

WOODSTOCK

Hyborian Bridge 91

There could be some people who are thinking this stuff on the roots of fantasy is too abstract by far. The problem is, we live in an abstract world (of numbers and symbols and signs) so, unless you understand that, nothing you say will wash.

The archetypal forms of owl and pussycat and vixen and raven and snake are fantasy in that they are the creation of movement and line alone, and nothing to do with information - DNA as “they” would have it.

I don’t pretend to know all there is about it; only that it’s information that is fed into an AI. It’s one side of reality since, without data, all would be chaos. The other side of reality is the physical and psychic side.

Information is something that attaches to the ego. It’s not just me talking; have a look around at the smartphones and screens. Yes, it exists, but I keep noticing how many celebs are switching off, saying the feedback is all negative (comments). Something is missing. It’s all head.

That something is the physical substance of planet Earth. I was taking a look at one of my favorite cartoons – da Vinci’s The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and John the Baptist at the London National. That led me on a trail which led to the Medicis and 15^th century Fra Filippo Lippi.

Leonardo cartoon

The cartoon is basically a study, very well-worked in charcoal and chalk, for a possible painting (that apparently never was). The study will trace lines and their evolutions intensely, and almost through the working, arrive at dynamic equilibrium (see wiki).

So, a cartoon is a very fluid, mobile thing, since pretty much the same applies to classic Walt Disney. So, movement and line make things dynamic, pretty transparently. I’ve been writing a treatment for a sequel to Elektra the film, and have always thought Frank Miller’s work on that one of the most gracefully dynamic ever!
So, a world of in information does not have that – atall. Now, another Leonardo is Madonna of the Rocks, of which there are two versions, one at the National which I know, the other at the Louvre. The latter is thought to be the earlier.

To have a rocky, cave-like formation was pretty novel, but even earlier Fra Filippo Lippi had painted an Adoration for Cosmo Medici, in a setting of wilderness forest, rugged and earthy.

What was this Italian fashion that moved away from a traditional stable and into woods and caves? For a start, Cosmo Medici was concerned with his soul, having lived a life of semi-decadence. He took the Adorations intensely seriously, and they are intended to show God as physically part of the Earth. The physical aspect of the paintings is indispensable.

The Renaissance was a revival, meaning a rebirth of ancient soul. Part Christian, part classical Greece. Meaning a connection to the physical cosmos, and through that the psyche, the narrative of ancient idols. These two elements – physical and psyche – are what a world of information completely abrogates.

You see it in superhero films – like the aforementioned Elektra – but not in “real” life. “Real” life consists of news (information), which could also be looked at as pure exposition. In a comic book, exposition happens when there is no action; Miller’s Elektra Saga is so great for the total lack of exposition.

Another good example is the Turanian War (War of the Tarim) from Conan #19-25. BWS’s work is cartooning at its best, moving characters around in landscapes and seascapes with joyful fluidity (Hyborian Bridge 19,20). Roy Thomas weaves it all into a sustaining narrative thrust of wit and pathos. He’s good, but without the dynamic that BWS (and later Buscema) brings to the series it wouldn’t be superlative. 

Conan #24

This is what cartooning does, and if it’s also earthy and rugged it can affect the very soul. Why are we on Earth except to experience some small measure of the great cosmic soul? Where there is action, as in the Turanian War, then the action takes the place of news – the action is the news.

This is what I mean by the fact that a world of news is tautological because it’s news about news (without the action). Action is our connection to Earth – the physical earthiness. So, a barn owl flying off is action as opposed to news.

The connection to Earth affects our psyche – the two are intermingled. In other words, our world of news is psychically empty. This is beginning to sound abstract, so what I’m basically saying is we can have news so long as we have lives also that are physically active on Earth, like the barn owl on its roost. Barn dancing, cave, forest, soul.

Again, if the entire cosmos were a product of reason, then the news could cover it entirely. But it’s not; there is a cartoon simplicity that is the product of movement and line. Tribal peoples often think in cartoony, figurative ways since it’s essentially true (physically, psychically).

The Amazonians are telling Bolsonaro of Brazil to “have a conscience” because logging is an industry y while they have an arborial history, ancestry, strong roots. Most of the news we hear is industrial – be it the military or finance – and the best I can do here is sign-off with a line from my Elektra sequel treatment.

In the story, Elektra has joined a Himalayan kingdom called Prester, which has renounced all mod-cons. Here at the end of a high-speed chase and fight against seven ninjas, talking to Daredevil.

DD: SO, YOU’RE STILL THE SAME ELEKTRA (he grins)

E: NO, I’M A PRESTERAN NOW. I NO LONGER WORK BLINDLY FOR THE DOLLAR, FOR PAYMENT

DD: STILL, YOU’VE GOT AN ELECTRIC-POWERED HARLEY DAVIDSON

E: WELL.. ROME WASN’T BUILT IN A DAY!

(The film poses a quandary. The question is worth asking, but the film doesn’t answer it).

 

Hyborian Bridge 90

Godric de Villehard in Red Blades of Black Cathay chanced on a kingdom (and a queen) while following the trail of Prester John. Howard makes mention of how the Norman knights sacked Constantinople, and other ports when the “mercenary” Venetians denied them ships.

These posts quite a few times have made mention of mercenary and mercantile activities in past ages – including Hyboria (Hyborian Bridge 1,5). Mercantilism as a facet of human behaviour is one thing; it didn’t govern them, since city-states such as Venice functioned on a self-organizing principle.

This principle is really the natural one that lines are irregular, that things just happen (Makkalet Hyborian Bridge 19). Even in towns and cities that are regularly laid-out, the self-organizing principle of localities develop spontaneously – until Big Govt steps in.

The self-organizing principle can be seen in Detroit (C3) and can be seen as a counterpoint to the coroporate state. It’s a type of social harmony similar to music. Harmonics – like the development of organic form – is uncertain and indefinite and also prone to disorder and strife.

Another word for that is freedom of behaviour – there is never pure order. Where there is pure order there is no freedom, no irregularity and therefore none of the variations on a theme that constitute traditional human settlements.

Such as fantastical or naturalistic architecture, art-deco skyscrapers and the corresponding romance of its citizenry (the Neapolitan dinginess and disdain for light). The theme is the psyche of the citizens; their reliance on the countryside they hail from, the Earth at large. The theme counters the pure order of a logical system. Otherwise one inhabits a parallel system (Hyborian Bridge 89).

The parallel system – of straight-lines from the sun – impresses acolytes and the corporate dragon of ego-lust. This is what takes the form of (most) mainstream news – economic, political – and the news is what governs people’s behaviour.

This is why the principle of self-organization is so indispensable to any rebellion against mainstream ego-lust. Where there is an Earth-theme there are also bound to be sensual and romantic relationships with nature, the blood-cycle of strength and vigour.

So, the hunt and the chase and the virility of rural pursuits constitute a counter to rampant ego-lust. Blood and death inspire fear in the ego of the mainstream. I happened on this news item from Cambridge 

Frans Snyder, Fowl Market

Blood sacrifice is a powerful theme through human history, as well as of course in pulps – see Noto Hyborian Bridge 71,72 . I happened to see the film of Elektra the other day. Films have storytelling, music and emotional impact, and Elektra is practically a study in theme-making with her metal jewellery which says death, armband which says assassin and belt which says destiny!

On the DVD, Sienkevicz made the observation that working on the Elektra Assassin series with Frank Miller, he had

“..no certainty in the dialogue between them.”

He seemed to work from chiaroscuro themes alone and let the graphics take him where they would. This ability of pulp idols to take you into a thematic world of twilight contrasts is akin to delving into the uncertain psyche. What that really amounts to saying is that the unconscious is itself a fantasy-world, and the myths we make are fantasies that we apply to reality.

This is an old idea, going back really to Plato (idealism) versus Aristotle (realism). While the modern world says there is something called “reality”, it means neither psyche nor physical reality, because both are interlinked.

It means a parallel reality of straight line accuracy (sun), a convincing illusion to bolster the ego. Physical reality is something that happens – like Sienkevicz’s work process – and is not thought. Self-organization; tribal drumming. The psyche emanates from the physical (Hyborian Bridge 10)

This must be why films like Elektra seem so emotionally real (even with the CGI). They are in actual fact more psychically real than our outdoor lives in this era usually get to.

I mean, we do our best with our sex lives and so forth, but what’s missing is the sinuous pleasure through proportionate balance with reason. Without balance the pleasure is directed by the reasoning aspect of society.

But, reason is not story, music or emotion – which is what a film is. While we inhabit a reality which is “certain” (logical), it doesn’t have the uncertain psychic aura of Elektra. An uncertain reality is sensual and virile feminine because all those are self-organizing aspects – they cannot be governed, they just develop (by uncertain rhythms).

That is why a self-governing society has to be uncertain. It’s the old Western township of Lil Abner. We are being sold the idea that certainty = reality; by economists, politicians, bankers, AI pioneers and gene aficionados. In fact, it means a parallel reality that is not sensual or virile or feminine. A life-by-numbers.

It is pleasing to the ego, almost a comfort-zone that is afraid of the big bad wolf of the forest. Myth is the fantasy that occurs deep in the human mind and that connects to the cosmos. Since the cosmos is uncertain and irregular, that is the reality.

Reality has to contain a fantasy element because that is the nature of irregularity. By “fantasy” I mean archetypal forms like owls, raven, worms. Platonic idealism. We are being sold the idea that straight lines are reality when it is simply a world without archetypes, without art-deco skyscrapers, run by super-computers run by clockwork.

Superheroes and pulps and heroic fantasy are strongly biased toward the fantasy-unconscious, sensual, virile and feminine. Perhaps this is a ploy on the part of the creative unconscious to rebalance society toward a more human and less abstract/robot state?

BREATHE NO MORE

Myths are themes, self-governing themes, that cannot be governed, that just are. The counterpoint to the corporate-dragon of ego-lust that must be slain by the pure knight so that mundanity can be seen for what it is, a corporate lie that serves the dollar and not the soul.