Hyborian Bridge 111

I wonder if it's true that all these corona-conspiracy theorists are on a similar illusory tack as the mainstream? After all, they deal solely in "facts" - non-ionizing emr - which is just mainstream science. Like the flat-Earthers, they think in straight-lines when the cosmos is throwing a curveball.

Facing a live centaur just a moment ago. Facing the creature that had left the world before there had been a name to fit the man that Niven had become. A god without worshippers, this centaur. In a world that did not believe, facing a man who did not believe... Now he had to face one of the lost gods. A god who now sought revenge on the race of Men who had devised machines that would banish them from the real world.. (O Ye of Little Faith by Harlan Ellison, The Time of the Eye, Panther 1974, page 76)

..For as he had believed in no god...

No god believed in him. (page 78)

This comes from a collection of theoretically lonely stories. Harlan says in the Introduction that in all but three of the stories loneliness is not triumphant. Maybe, but even so the theme has an overpowering resonance. Is it loneliness where facts have replaced the gods?

Is loneliness closely associated with an absence of dirt? Meaning the field and therefore fertility. In The Wizard of Oz, Garland sang Over the Rainbow in a barnyard. It's far from a rustic song (as Louis B Mayer was wont to point out) but it is the peasant homeliness the film ultimately represents.

It is the land of disordered dirt and little girls with pigtails running wild in the fields, Toto to heel. There's something archaic and quasi-erotic about women working in fields or as dairymaids. The clothes are full and bunched to give the body space and grace, to be lithe and accentuate strength of figure (HB92)

Garland trained as a dancer (as did Naveena, prev.) and The Wizard of Oz is a skipping trip in many senses. It's less easy to be lonely when dancing gaily through kaleidoscopic landscapes, a place where the psyche meets the physical in sound and motion.

That place is the harmonic power of the Earth, sun, moon and planets that emanates psyche (Madame Blavastsky HB67) Water is intrinsically harmonic; the womb is wet (HB82)

The planets have infinite inertia, and that land has been co-opted by solar-centrists into an equation of straight-lines.

LET X = X

The most powerful superstition would be one that was supposed not to be one. And that is where the acolytes have led us. Instead of a dance of the planets that is fun and gay, we have a drone of solar radiation.

The Wizard of Oz (like a lot of Bollywood, natch.) is a dance and a dance makes it less easy to be lonesome. Robert Yaple, in part 1 of The Gods of Hyboria (Savage Sword #6), sets out his case by saying that sorcery and religious ritual have a lot in common. The rituals we endure in the modern world are mostly to do with news and numbers, and that is the superstition that seeps into our brains masquerading as "fact".

Facts are in a world without dance. Or, to quote Nietzsche, "Life without music would be a mistake."The mistake was entered many years ago, and we are now reaping the benefits with the "safe and sterile" lies of acolytes and their expressive algorithms. Lies that deny the primitive dance of fertility seen in The Wizard of Oz.

The primitive in religion is very often allied with animals - here the closeness to Toto. Derketo, the Shemite/Acheronian fertility goddess with obscene cults, is related to the Phoenician Atargatis, or fish-goddess.

The priests were described by Apuleius as mendicants that traveled around with an image of the goddess dressed in a silken robe on the back of a donkey... The priests were described as effeminate, wearing heavy makeup, turbans on their heads, and dressed in saffron colored robes of silk and linen; some in white tunics painted with purple stripes. They shouted and danced wildly to the music of flutes, whirling around with necks bent so that their long hair flew out..

Fertility is a celebration of dirt - prairie - and disorder, and has always been associated with wild or obscene rituals and corn dollies. Our (or "their") rituals are stories of sterility otherwise known as the black hole of hygiene. Where there is sterility there can be no fertility, and no dancing in the fields, either by little farm girls or tantric cults.

As Yaple remarks in Savage Sword #6, the western peasants of Zingara and associated places would likely have adopted primitive fertility cults or imported Shemite ones rather than the widespread Mitraism of cities. Rituals are meaning and power related to work practices. Since our rituals are without meaning and power it shows our superstitions about facts are only a way to weaken us, make us susceptible to cybernetic transformation, friend to the expressive algorithm.

Equations and numbers are not reality and it's pure superstition. A superstition of sterility that has denied Dionysus entry to the sausage-factory (see Tout va Bien). The facts that are "their" religion. A world of disorder has the infallible harmonic of the cosmos. while a world of social-distancing and hygiene has the fallibility of ego, the weakness of number and calculation.

Dancing in the gloaming, the feminine dynamic, the shapes of animals, the creatures that crawl in a clod of earth. Exposure to germs teaches the immune-system to make antibodies; they are health-empowering "deities" of yore. Symbiotic shapes as opposed to information.

Hyborian Bridge 110

Without a belief-system, the reality you're in depends on whatever the sorcerer happens to favor. In this case, our reality is a numerical one; one that favors the ego of the acolyte.

The masculine reality is represented by the sausage-factory of Jean-Luc Godard's Tout va Bien (prev.) Where number dominates, the head (ego) becomes the body (sex) and the two become one.

This is represented by the expressive algorithm, or animated face. Stories will be written for these that are the opposite to a feminine dynamic. The stories will centre on sterilized hygiene, since that is where our "facts" come from (see prev on corona ecology, human-microchipping).

In a belief system, information is valued when it accords with the underlying belief in strength and fertility. A belief-system has a dynamic which is geared to rustic harmony, the land where the bulk of peasants live.

Because we live in a system of inductive reason, it has to favor the acolytes of sorcerers of number. Number is always going to be very persuasive to the ego but, for the same reasons, has no dynamic of the body in the field.

This is a way of saying it's inert and factual, whereas the feminine dynamic is lithe and graceful, roaming hills and valleys. In the Hyborian lands, belief n an Earth Mother figure like Ishtar corresponds to the primitive elder gods, especially of Shem. Eastern nomads later invaded, bringing with them skygods, but only Ishtar proved exportable to neighboring Koth, already under the universal influence of Mitra (Robert Yaple, Savage Sword #8).

To a rustic peasant, the universal influence of the sungod Mitra in the depths of winter would be very apparent. But it should also be born in mind that city-states would have their own patron gods and goddesses (such as Bel god of thieves in Zamoran Arenjun), so customs and specificities were very diverse.

Some have suggested that Christianity - as a type of universal proxy for the sun - favored the rise of the scientific world order. However, it should be noted that this order didn't develop from Christianity, but from inductive reason - as foreseen in The New Atlantis (). In medieval times the Arabs tended to be more advanced mathematically that Europeans - algorithm is an Arab word - so it doesn't seem as if Christianity innately favored advance.

The modern era is really solar-centric - as opposed to solar worship. As mentioned previously () even if Earth orbits sun, there is also the moon's orbit of Earth and Earthspin, both of which are equally vital in the dynamic. Science, from this angle, may not be a belief but a sorcery of the sun that denies the equal-and-opposite dynamic of the moon round Earth.

A belief in Mitra is like a belief in Hermes; the fiery path of the sun across the sky - which is a product of Earthspin. Beliefs are above all dynamic since the rustic peasant depends on the dynamic to maintain their existence.

Sun, moon, Earth (and planets) are all dynamic objects in flux; no one is greater than the other if looked at as a dance. In that case, we enter a picturesque and feminine world, where the dance induces fertility. This engenders gaiety and thanksgiving, whether the society is medieval or Hyborian.

The second day of the Fair was the feast of Corpus Christi, a Holy Day of the church, when all good people attended Mass and there was a great procession..

Even before the cross-bearer appeared round the distant corner Nicholas could hear the choir, as it emerged from the church, chanting the great processional hymn, 'Lauda Sion'. Behind the cross, their embroidered banners held high, followed the Trade Guilds of the town.. with the various crafts of the Cloth Trade, weavers, fullers, dyers, shearmen, massed together at the end. Last of all came the great Company of the Clothiers, under whose emblem walled the merchants, wearing their rich fur-trimmed gowns and heavy gold chains. (The Wool-sack, page 151)

This brings-in the odd idea that solar-centrism may be a type of verbal illusion. In a state of dance nothing is in the centre since all objects are spinning-round from the vantage-point of the observer - that is, Earth.

That is to say, Earth is spinning; moon is spinning and orbiting; and Earth is spinning and orbiting sun. Taken together, that is the dance (and add the planets). Galileo's revolt against Church orthodoxy isn't simply a case of superstition versus truth, but it imposed a new superstition of solar-centrism.

In terms of dynamics, Earth , sun and moon are all equal; solar-centrism tends to lead to an inert system of facts, and the dance is lost. So, what is the proof that life is a dance? Only in a belief in rustic harmony; the gods and goddesses are strong and engender belief.

Solar-centrism is therefore a type of weakness that favors the ecolyte's ego. It's an illusion - if what you favor is the strength of a rural idyll. Dionysus is the counter to the false Apollo.

The sheer profusion of native deities just in Zamora gives an indication of the difference between rustic and urban beliefs.

The urban ones are often devilish and cultish, attracting votaries of unruly mien. The entire city of Yezud is given-up to a Spider God cult (see de Camp's Conan and the Spider God), while Arenjun is the city of Bel god of thieves. Shadizar, in Conan #6, was the home of a sacrificial cult to a nighted skygod.

None of the urban deities bear much relation to the more widespread beliefs of Ishtar, Mitra, Erlik, Ashtoreth. There may be something in Conan's line that Zamora is, “very ancient and very evil”. Cities tend to harbour vices the countryside is mercifully free of. The one thing they have in common is a dirth of order, as this splash of Arenjun city of thieves from Savage Sword #53 shows.

 

There were long trestle tables set round the sides where travellers of a more humble class sat on benches, cutting their meats on wooden trenchers, or tearing them with their fingers. Some produced food from their own packs, others supped simply with horns of ale, and broken loaves of bread. Torches stick in holders gave a flaring smoky light. The noise was deafening and the floor slippery with trodden rushes and rejected food. (The Wool-Pack,page 179)

Perhaps what you can say is that the economy itself is largely rustic, and so the adherents of Mitra (sun) and Ishtar (Earth) deliver goods to the markets inside the city-gates. A rustic pantheon is a celebration of the dance of sun, moon and Earth, as mentioned previously.

The country festivals are highly dynamic and seasonal rhythms of the cosmos. By comparison, our modernday economy is almost like a superstitious awe of the sun as an emblem of straight-line order.

Yes, but the sun also flies across the sky like Hermes in his chariot; the cosmic dance. Because a numerical order appeals to the ego of acolytes, they are persuaded that this is reality, rather than illusion.

Their reality, as I've been saying for awhile, is the head (ego) that becomes the body (sex). The two become one through the dominion of the intellect over the (instinctive) body. This was well-visualized by William Blake's print of Newton. 

Pictorial 59

Even though the body is “neutralized”, physique can't be denied, and so the result is physical boredom. This is the inert state of facts that is the modernday reality, a black hole of hygiene (as opposed to the black hole of Calcutta!)

So, the modern scene is like a mix between inert fact and pornography (see Weekend, prev.) That will probably become more clear with the influx of expressive algorithms – animated faces, see Japanese example, prev. “They” will write stories for these that will tell us the usual “safe and sterile” lies.

All this goes against the feminine dynamic of lithe dancing in the gloaming. The female body is not pornographic when it's fertile; it's a question of meaning. Life as a dance has cosmic meaning in the heavens. Artemis of the moon and her hounds.

Hyborian peasants believe in the gods because they live a life of rustic harmony. This reflects markets and trade-routes with towns and cities and the general disorder of the markets and towns. From disorder and dirt comes strength and rebirth and the cycle continues.

Naveena, classical Indian dancer/actress

Hyborian Bridge 109

If physical geography is the "unthinking" side of human societies, its predominance is highly visible where beliefs are part of the fabric of the land. Not only the Hyborian beliefs in Ishtar - goddess of war and fertility - but really a Christian belief in rustic harmony.

This was brought home to me by rereading The Wool-pack, a favorite of childhood, a lusty frolic round the fields and lanes and country houses of the Cotswolds (see Cider with Rosie). Putting the dastardly Lombard plot to one side, Cynthia Harnett's field-based ecosystem of village life puts the likes of Hilary Mantel (Wolf Hall) to shame.

In Harnett's tale, the intrigue may be dastardly, but it's only a shadow over the cheery grace and music of a mercantile life in the wool-trade.

Sheep were smelly things at the best of times, but wet sheep were the smelliest of all. His clothes fairly reeked, and his mother would be bound to notice it. (page 10)

There is always the weekly bath to clear matters up. The faith is part of the fabric, with Vespers, the odd Ave and grace said at mealtime. The life is mixture of savagery and nobility, with blooded hounds bounding through the deer parks.

He's bred a strain of hound which was the4 swiftest in the country, and strong enough to tackle a stag at bay. (page 103)

A children's book is always going to be more action-based than the likes of Mantel, and it is a book about the activities of the body rather than the mind. A field-based ecology is always going to have its fair share of dirt and wholesome cleanliness, and this is really the origin of rustic harmony.

Horses need to be groomed and de-ticked; sheep's wool is an ecosystem in itself. Taken as a unit, a field - a meadow, a prairie - is a fertile dynnaimc that is fairly filthy but cleaning to the soul. It is this harmonic that Man gives thanks to in his rituals.

In other words, the fertility of a filed is an object of worship, be it Ishtar or the little statue on a carved wooden bracket. From the fertility comes information because - see HB106 - the strength and grace of a healthy dynamic is a feminine quality (of the Earth). A masculine order does not have this dynamic; in fact, it tends to be inert and factual.

Yes, but these "facts", since they're not dynamic, are a product of weakness. A field is an example of something rough that is perfectly balanced and a mixture of subtlety and simplicity. From fertility comes charm and grace and hence the thanksgiving that is the ritual of Man. It's really the opposite to the modern tendency of sterilized hygiene, which is simply lack of grace in the field.

The state of grace is where ecology and economy are much closer than they are today, and there is as belief in Mother Earth - or Mother Mary - as a symbol of fertility. This was the point of saying in P106 that worshippers of Ishtar valued information that accorded with their beliefs, since the belief is in the string and fertile.

From this comes dirt and the smells of the field, along with the perfumes and oils to anoint the sweet sweat of the body. It's a picturesque ecology with an almost Biblical state of grace. The irony is that where dirt is allowed to prosper, so does the picturesque, which is a dynamic of maintaining cleanliness in the field.

A masculine order does not have this dynamic since it is inert and factual. If you go back to P107 on Tout va Bien, Fonda has a problem because everything is headlines (or sounbites) associated with the numbers of a sausage-factory. This seems to foresee a masculine world where number represents everything through the expressive algorithm (Japanese animated face, prev.) The algorithm will then tell us a story that is the exact opposite of a feminine dynamic.

Reason being that number is a type of order whereas a feminine dynamic is a type of destruction (of order) and represents decay and rebirth in the field. Dionysus is denied entry to this factory.

Commerce in the masculine order comes down to number since everything in an ordered system is numerical, right down to atomic number (prev.)

Everything is only number in the ordered universe; the feminine shape, the sinuous line and movement, the androgenous serpent - these are all a priori. The serpent is destruction - slithering chaos. In other words, where there is a belief system in the strength and simplicity of rustic harmony, then we are entering a picturesque and feminine land of dance.

It's in this picturesque sense of movement and line that we find the Hyborian commercial network of trade-routes. Hyborian lands are believers in myriads of odd gods and goddesses. In our own age the sorcerer has gained ascendancy; nowhere is this true in Hyboria. Even in thrice-cursed Stygia, the picture painted by Howard is of subterranean chambers and nighted sacrifices to coiling gods hidden from prying eyes.

Robert Yaple, in Hyborian Trade-routes (Savage Sword #5) barely mentions the presence of Set in Stygia. After all, religious beliefs are the affair of the people concerneed. They underly the stability of the commerce on which trade is based.

Whatever a people's belief, they desire goods and they desire profit. As Yaple notes:

Trade with the black lands was very profitable - ivory, copper, pearls, ostrich plumes, furs and hides, copra, and slaves obtained in exchange for northern manufacture (especially arms, armour, and trinkets) - though the bulkiest items would largely have been confined to the coastal trade in the west and markets on or near the upper Styx in the east.

While Yaple's study isn't about belief, it should be noted that - as in medieval times - strong belief systems underly the picturesque caravans and silks that trail east to glittering Turan - or fabled Cathay. Our age is noted for its lack of belief in anything save the sorcerous number of an acolyte's member.

Hyborian Bridge 108

Some more definitions of words, since we live in a verbal world. Human Geography is the study of the spread of race, ideology, wealth (goods), pandemics, religions and the outlines or boundaries of city-states, regions, countries.

Physical Geography is, as you might expect, the study of the natural world and as it relates to the human in terms of plants, animals, water. If you can say that physical geography represents the "unthinking", its preponderance is vastly more in the Hyborian world than in our own.

After all, religions, pandemics or goods may spread, but they spread by way of trade-routes. They go along the surface of the Earth and round various features. Overland the routes would employ camels, mules, oxen. Humans would tend to be in close proximity with animals. Even on sea-routes, the ubiquitous rat would frequent ships.

Whereas nowadays all the space on trade-routes is taken-up by the goods themselves, in the Hyborian world animals of various types take up a lot of the space. What that basically means is that an ecosystem is following Man, accompanying his trade-routes by land or sea. This is a good illustration of the fact that the ecology and the economy cannot be separated into distinct disciplines, as today (P108).

In practice, this means the economy is part of an active system as opposed to a numerical (monetary) one. Active systems always comprise the elements of dirt and cleanliness, since it is just the process of living and feeding.

As I tend to keep saying, there is no cleanliness without dirt, there is only hygiene. But hygiene - or sterilizartion - allows in resistant microbes. Whereas Hyborian trade is fairly filthy, as long as it maintains a balance of cleanliness it is also fairly healthy and devoid of contamination. Before going into more Hyborian details, it's worth specifying the difference with our modern order.

Well, first of all the ancient world - whether fantasy or Roman - was a balanced one, while we inhabit a masculine order of inductive reason. This "sausage-factory" (P107, 108) is run by the acolytes' heads and has no real picturesque quality (of the body). At its most banal it consists of number and sex, or the expressive algorithm (prev.)

Our masters will write stories for the expressive faces, and one can imagine a future where the story we are told by these animated faces is that rteal money is now too dangerous - not hygienic enough - and we must now be microchipped to pay by waving. This is actually a thesis of a Christian cult who prophecy that human-microchipping is the mark of the beast (from Revelations).

This gives quite a nice link to Jack London's Before Adam which I read awhile back and may have cited. The book tells of ultra-vivid dreams of antideluvian times. He terms this his "dissociated personality"; different, before Man and something arboreal.

London talks of "race memory" for the reality that he sees, hears, smells and touches. The picturesque quality is highly apparent; in fact, the first three words of the book are, Pictures!" Pictures! Pictures!

The book is clearly above all about the body, about the shapes of animals and plants.

Snakes? Long before I had heard of the existence of snakes I was tormented by them in my sleep. They lurked for me in the forest glades; leaped up, striking, under my feet; squirming off through the dry grass or acrosss naked patches of rocks; or pursued me through the tree-tops, encircling the trunks with their great shining bodies, driving me higher and higher or further out on swaying and crackling branches, the ground a dizzy distance beneath me. (page 7)

This same focus on the attributes of the body is also apparent in Conan, as can be seen from these panels from Savage Sword #211 that obviously pays homage to the original with the surly banter.

Where the body is active in wilderness areas, the aspect of hygiene is never of any concern, since most of the activity is taken up with survival. Survival is completely to do with shape, with the acrobatic performances of monkeys, the muscular endeavors of snakes. Survival is therefore very picturesque, as well as being fairly filthy and smelly.

It probably hasn't escaped you that all these shape-dependent phenomena are outside of modern civilization even though - as noted previously - the body is controlled by shape-dependent hormones (protein messengers).

Hormones are aromatic substances - as noted with plants - and control the sexual burgeoning of the body. So where is all this leading to? Just this. That an active system is shape-dependent and comprises the elements of dirt and cleanliness, since it is part of the process of living and feeding. If - as previously stated - trade-routes in ancient times are part of an active system, they will contain the same cycles of dirt and cleanliness - for example in the fur of animals that harbor tics, fleas.

All this is to do with the female harmonic that comprises shape and fertility. The primordial snake or a priori movement. The ground litter that decays and establishes a new cycle of fertility.

This is the real, a priori universe that consists of dirt and cleanliness, and that is string and healthy. As noted HB107 ancient societies gather information from this feminine harmonic. Their belief in fertility is sacrosanct.

Modern societies gather information from an illusory universe of a masculine order. Not just DNA but the numerical, monetary order of straight-lines. This mirror-universe is convincing to the ego, but has no feminine power of dirt and cleanliness.

It is a product of weakness and hygiene. As previously noted, it is a type of void or black hole whereby number becomes sex (head becomes body.) Without the feminine dynamic - which is the a priori reality of shape and grace - there is no reality since reality means dirt (living a feeding). With dirt comes cleanliness and health. Without that cycle one can only have the banality of hygiene which is a type of weakness.

The romance of Jack London - and equally of Howard - is the romance of a feminine dynamic of shape; dance' line; movement. This is the a priori reality that is the genesis of both dirt and cleanliness (see Mosaic Law). The physical activity, the sweat of the body that is expressed artistically. In Before Adam the pre-human ritual of a "hee-hee council" is described, where desires and needs are put into the abandonment of a group performance, "art nascent".

Here were we drawn together by mutual rage and the impulse toward co-operation, led off into forgetfulness by the establishment of a rude rhythm... In ways the hee-hee council was an adumbration of the councils of primitive man, and of the great national assemblies.. of latter-day man.. Then would come thew rhythm - a clapping of hands; the beating of a stick upon a log; the example of one that leaped with repetitions; or the chanting of one that uttered, explosively and regularly, with inflection that rose and fell, 'A-bang, a-bang! A-bang, a-bang!'

..And so with mad antics,leaping, reeling, and over-balancing, we danced and sang in the sombre twilight of the primeval world, inducing forgetfulness, achieving unanimity, and working ourselves up into a sensuous frenzy.

.. We had no germs of religion, no conceptions of an unseen world. We knew only the real world, and the things we feared were the real things, the concrfete dangers, the flesh-and-blood animals that preyed. (page 84)

The primitive-seeming visions of London and Howard are actually vastly more realistic since they are not burdened by "facts" of a masculine order. One can almost predict that, once this corona episode is over, "they" will be doubling down on regimes of hygiene that are the exact opposite to reality in a balance of male and female.

Ancient societies - from Hindu to Hyboria - are lithe and graceful in their expressions. This is a type of reality that is nothing to do with "fact" (of a masculine order),a nd is the action of the body that expresses desire, needs of an individual within a harmonic ritual. The fertile dynamic that gives societies grace and artistry that Man needs for the soul.

Pictorial 108

Ecology = Oikos (Greek "house") "science"

Economy = Oikos (Greek "house") "management"

How can two words so seemingly similar be so miles apart in meaning and influence? It comes down to the word "management", meaning the head of the acolyte - numerical, monetary - which nowadays means the soulless machines of digital munificence.

Oikos has gradually mutated till it means whatever "they" choose. The best counter to this is Marvin Gaye's

WHAT'S GOING ON

a symphony for the ecology of the street. Whereas economy is number, ecology is action - dance, line, movement. As described HB106 the belief system of primitive societies has a feminine harmonic. Here, the Shemite Earth Mother Ishtar. The information they derive from nature is a product of this feminine harmonic.

Primitive knowledge is therefore much more like ecology (house or home) than it is economy (number or money). Gaye's album, with its repeated refrains of "sister", "brother", "hey man" etc features the ecology of the street in dance, line, movement.

The ecology of the street - see Detroit prev - which became poor but maintained its street culture, later attracting investors. Detroit took the route of ecology over economy - and won. Ecology has the decadence of living material, and so partakes of the scenic and picturesque (Drama3)

Because ecology is action (fertility or decay), there is always something there in terms of line and movement. Street culture can be deadly, as was so in the dark days of Detroit, and recovery equally dynamic.

Ecology represents the reality of living material (action), while economy represents the illusion of number; the expressive algorithm with a story full of nothing (see Japanese animated head prev.)

Action is line and movement, which is always very apparent in cartoony styles. Cartooning is very good at storytelling, since the line has a dramatic intensity of expression. Like Kayanan, Alfredo Alcala is Filipino with a great flair for drama.

In terms of cartooning, without the expressive linework there's not much there. These fantasy styles are quite close to wood blocks, and the old-fashioned book-plates of Margaret Ely Webb.

I happened to notice the cover to Savage Sword #113, by Jim Hoston, is photo-realistic, which brings in quite a visible problem.

Namely that cartooning is much less apparent in the blocking out and definition of the posture. Hoston in the inside feature admitted he used several different photos to achieve the effect.

At its most evident, photo-realism has a definition problem that can make heads appear disembodied. See the hag's head in Howard David Johnson's 

The thing about cartooning is it brings in a classical simplicity which photos don't have (see also CC Beck's comments on cross-stitch embroidery). The simplicity gives the linework the freedom to delineate and then tell the story dramatically.

Without drawing there can be no telling of myth with drama and intensity. Photo-realism is neither realism nor fantasy but illusory-reality (somewhat akin to Japanese animated heads, natch.) What you really lose is the psychic intensity that comes from the simple and stable design of face and figure.

Myth occupies the ecological side of reality that is to do with action, whether Wagner of Hansel and Gretel. The problem with Howard David Johnson's mythological pictures is that they negate myth by way of illusion!

An illusion is like a mirror; it has no physical reality. The psyche comes from the simplicity of drawing a stable and dramatic composition; without that stability and composed sense of dramatic tension, it's all illusion.

Illusion is the world we are entering because it doesn't partake of line and movement that give us the fertile drama of myth. By illusion I mean number, or photo-realism, or eletromagnetism, or algorithms (ones and zeros).

It all leads to the same sausage-factory of numerical sex P107 "They" will write stories for these illusory realities that have nothing to do with a fertile drama of myth, of blood, predator-prey cycles, of the hunt and Artemis.

It's all part of the sterilization of culture that is economically viable but ecologically dead. in our future are lies and viruses.

Pictorial 106

The mix of the rational and sexual in modernity is nowhere better mirrored than in Euripides’ The Bacchae (HB62/2) Pentheus, king of Thebes, is a totally split personality. He at omce cages Dionysus in the pursuit of social order, then succumbs to his temptations of wild and ill-clothed women frolicking on the hillsides.

He is almost the picture of someone who uses “nice calculations” (Euripides, The Bacchae and other Plays, Penguin Classics 1954, page 188) in a very bureaucratic sense, ticking all the boxes of officialdom, law and order.

But is that rational – or pettiness? “The insane man is the man who has lost everything except his reason” – GK Chesterton (The False Apollo). A rational man, in the classical sense, must have empathy so as not to be cut-off from nature’s call.

Pentheus’s rationality is only skin-deep so that, when Dionysus offers his thrilling sights from a wood,

“I would give a large sum of gold to see that.” (page 206)

Yes, indeed, money is the very heart and soul of reason, when it is applied to pleasure! Pentheus cannot release his mind from the petty calculations of officialdom in his wood-spying antics, persuading himself it is just research (“just”, legal) - and calls down berserk frenzy of the capering Maenads.

(page 215)  

It is this ungodly mix of petty officialdom with sex which is so very modern. This is what I call the dark metamorphosis whereby calculation (number) and sex become one through the dominion of thought.

This is wholly unnatural, since sex is a dance like the Maenads. It is being like the wild animals and, in fact, in the play,

(page 203)

Pentheus’s pettiness brings down the savagery of the wild women, who cannot abide his calculating infiltration.

Pentheus could be taken to represent number (or money) as against the spirit of dance that partakes of the beast in the field, running round with gay abandon (P14) This spirit when roused is blood and power, or as gentle as the lamb. The two sides of nature, predator and prey.

Also plants, since the women wear garlands and other bits of shrubbery. The spirit of the plants, I just recalled, was invoked at Findhorn community by Dorothy MacLean and others (having just seen her obit.)

Dorothy discovered that she was able to make contact with vegetable spirits called devas. The deva of the garden pea promised help, though it instructed them not to be too hard on the slugs. More practical assistance was provided by a local farmer who invited them to help themselves to his horse manure.

Soon there were stories of 40lb cabbages, broccoli so large it could barely be lifted, and winter-flowering roses. The gardens began to attract people to visit Findhorn to find out how it was done.

Is that spirit or horseshit? Well, both since horses are spirited beasts! Every living thing is a dance as opposed to a calculation of numbers. This points also to the fact that “nice calculation” is a type of hygiene that detaches itself from the dirt that enriches life.

The calculator – sorcerer or acolyte – can only conduct reports on appearance (Apollo) rather than the reality of blood and power that springs from the land.

Nietzsche associates this reality with Dionysus, though there is also the wild hunt of Artemis of the moon. It is true that Dionysus is the “Oriental” god most often associated with frenzied rites in forest groves.

In the play he is the “effeminate” god with ringlets in his hair. Pentheus also sees his “animal horns”, so it’s clear his animal nature can be sided with the destructive Artemis of the hunt, running silently under the silent moon.

The play does also make reference to the fate of Actaeon, the hunter who was turned into a deer and slain by the hounds of Diana (Artemis).

HB31

The 1972 Jean-Luc Godard film Tout va Bien does have a few similarities with the Euripides play. The scene of the factory takeover has a sequence of singing and dancing “grevistes”.

TOUT VA BIEN

Jane Fonda plays an American journalist trapped in the building with Yves Montand and the boss, Vittorio Caprioli. There is a lot of Union talk of “figures” (ie numbers) which are pitted against the anarchic closure of the building by “les marginales.”

There’s also an extended gag where the boss, locked with Fonda and Montand in his room, phones out to say, “Je veux pisser.” They escort him out but, lo and behold, as they tour the building every toilet is taken,

He is desperate, and starts running round the building. Finally he breaks a window. It is a sort of Latin humour, crude and lewd, that would have gone down well in ancient Greece (see Aristophanes P47) The reality of his distress is the savagery of the anarchists versus the rational and numerical.

Pentheus is torn apart by his mother and sister

Pictorial 105

Say Hello to Jupiter

has a fair agreement with a lot of my own material. Bouquerel’s summary of environmental “bad guy” Morlock and “good gal” Gaia, for instance.

 

  (Page 361)

There’s the affinity for art-deco skyscrapers.

  (page 364)

There’s the notion that Earth is a spiritual entity, like the stars. And there’s the “cosmic harmonic”.

(page 352)

There is also his apparent belief that evil is part of the system you inherit. Capitalism, with its emphasis on appearance, tries to do without this and falls into internal contradiction (see long quote, prev.)  

I don’t know exactly what he means by evil. From my perspective, it must be the bloodiness of nature that one can abhor but not ignore. Good and evil are quite closely linked by blood, and one has to acknowledge the lustiness of living to appreciate the finer principles of nobility.

The Christian centuries were no peaceful. The opening story of Jirel, Black God’s Kiss is a good case in point: hatred and battle are powerfully rendered. Jirel descends to hell to regain her castle, and only later does it occur to her she was prey to love.

The underworld, or decay, is something that has to be acknowledged by those who would aspire to nobility in a Christian or any moral order. There is a strength about decay that gives to the world strong style and psychic content. The primary reality to primitive Man is the earth and the beasts that inhabit it.

Their carcasses are the prize, as was shown in this link to a prehistoric temple composed of the bones of 60 mammoths in the Russian steppes. The body of the beast is the cosmic reality that sustains Man physically and spiritually. The great curved tusks and woolly hide are ornament and shelter.

This is the feminine principle of grace which nurtures information (prev.) Going back to Bouquerel’s quote on béchamel above; the microcosm and the macrocosm are one when leftb to be what they choose to be.

Every cell of the body is a certain size; every organ fits. Why should that be? Because there’s a feminine harmonic that makes it right. Sometimes they have mathematical proportion, like the petals of a flower, sometimes not.

It’s like asking why is Mozart a facile composer. He has a lightness and apparent thoughtlessness. Those qualities render ineffective the processes of thought because music at its highest level has celestial harmonies of grace (as with Joan Armatrading).

Why does modern Man not understand that plants, animals and Man have this aspect of grace that cannot be infiltrated by thought? That thought is the very thing that denies it via the masculine illusion of DNA?

There is a dark metamorphosis that accompanies this illusion, whereby the brain (numerical thought) becomes the body. The numerical and the sexual then become one via algorithmic sorcery (prev.)

What that does is deny a celestial harmonic which is really what the body is, that cannot be rendered by thought. Left to its own devices the body has strong style associated with psychic belief (in the land, commune).

The vacuity of capital-goods produces a dark metamorphosis that renders obsolete the heroic romance of the past. I happened to see legendary javeliner Dana Zatopkova’s obit with this quote.

The newly-weds set up home in Prague – she found a job as a secretary with a sports magazine – and their flat became a magnet for fellow athletes and athletics enthusiasts. Gordon Pirie, one of Zatopek’s English rivals, described it as “the gayest and merriest home I ever visited.” (DT)

The land, the commune whether Eastern European or Latin American are a state of grace. The very hegemony of capital is its weakness because it is now a dark metamorphosis of number and sex.

Metamorphoses are legion in nature, but they are always harmonic, tied-up with powerful internal dynamics. The latter day sorcery is the very antithesis of this state-of-affairs where many things are happening simultaneously, a cascade of effects.

If the body is like a universe where many things happen simultaneously in harmony then straight-line thought simply enters another universe of data, such as DNA.

The two are opposites; one cancels out the other. That is the illusion we live in where the information gathered from living in a state of relative harmony with land, animals, plants and stars is lost and sorcerers reign supreme.

(page 411)

The internal dynamics of a dog are visible in the sky to those who believe. Sirius P54 

P55