Pictorial 152

Daily Record 24 Feb

Primitive totemic belief, line and shape, symmetrical arrangements on the Plain, long-house bedding arrangements.. Tribes are systems that aren't civilized, if by civilization one means civil society of the Greek polis. Urban being the word, beloved of the great cultures of the Mediterranean and obviously not unknown to the mesoamericans.

But Plains Indians or the Sioux of the lakes found no need in their trapping and fishing for extended conurbations. Farming was practiced - see Journey - so if it's not civilization it's also not the woodsman-type of Messner-Loebs yarns (prev.)

Primitive in my lexicon means the lack of urban conurbations. By the same standard, cowboys of the west who worked the range and rode into town on weekends were primitive stock.

In a civilization of advancing conurbations, it seems everyone seems to feel they ought to be advancing in tandem with everyone else. This seems to lead to odd confusions, such as that the term "Redskins" on NFL's Washington DC franchise is demeaning.

This was carried to ludicrous heights (or depths) by the Cherokee Nation who recently objected to Jeep's use of its tribal name. Chief Chuck Hoskins said,

It does not honor us.. The best way..is to learn about our sovereign government, our role in this country..language and have dialogue with federally recognized tribes on cultural appropriateness.

This seems to be confusing two different things (as per); one is the story of American Indians, the other is a word on a product.

A word can.honor by association, assuming Jeeps are desirable autos. The notion that a word by definition demeans by its association with the products of civilization is bizarre.

The only thing I can think is that Redskins and Cherokee have connotations of savagery to the average citizen. The implication really is that savagery is "bad" and civilization "good", and Chief Hoskins, like the political representative he is, will tend to downplay the " bad".

However, this is a bit offensive to the story of the West, which has been written in blood. Both sides were equally savage.

The other assumption is usually that civilizations advance for the better inevitably, so I think it's worth looking more closely at what this word primitive might mean.

As Paul Radin has attested (along with Levi-Strauss, natch), tribal Indian arrangements are symmetrical in belief. The story of a north western tribe is symbolized in animal spirit guardians on elaborate totem carvings.

Around this cultural centre, there is a symmetry of hunter-gatherer/agricultural patterns; blood on one side, life on the other.

Symmetries are evident in kinship patterns and the male/female, sun/moon opposites. To Radin and Levi-Strauss, primitivan Man lives closer to nature in kinship groups and beliefs; knowledge and practices are related to that fact.

The assumption that civilization is advancing towards a greater truth is contradicted by these studies of structural.relations in the primitive mind.

Primitive in that context simply means a living relationship to nature or to the timelines in nature. There is no difference in the minds, only in the type of things the mind studies.

Taking this a bit further, civilization seems to be heading to the idea that by studying information one can arrive at closer and closer approximations to reality. One recent example is the decoding of protein folding by an Oxford cyber-bio group - see HB150 HB147 P150 This could lead to synthesis of novel proteins.

As previously noted, though, information in the modern order (sun or electromagnetism) enters a two-tone or parallel line, parallel reality of numbers. Basically ones and zeros that are used by algorithms.

The parallel lines of electromagnetism enable detection (see prev on x-ray diffraction, DNA). Proteins automatically conform to a shape, but entering a parallel reality of parallel lines (number, algorithm) seems to have some success in predicting - see the Oxford link cited.

Entering the parallel reality means going away from the automatic process of action. While the automatic process - the conformation of proteins - is strong and simple, numbers create complexity and a flawed dynamic. Flaws sort of appeal to the ego that has to work out solutions.

But inside a cell clearly the processes are automatic, conforming to shape and in the process temporal. Clearly anything temporal is undetectable by the method of parallel lines (reflection, refraction, diffraction). 

Actions tend to follow circular patterns and spirals that are just a fact of nature - see multiple examples in UVS website.

Spiral shapes are strong; DNA is a shape first, and information second. The strength of shape itself supplies information in the temporal sphere, and the development of cells in the body - morphogenesis - is principally a temporal phenomenon, rather than being dependent on information.

Physically, what I mean can be seen in artists drawings. See nose, eyes, cheeks of BWS Medusa VII. Similarly, lips, nose, eyes, cheeks of cover to Bilal Nikopol Trilogy. The artists are drawing concentric circles to enable them to form the shapes.

BWS

Bilal 

With the spiral shapes of automatic development comes strength and proportion. These ancient and primitive facts are lacking in a numerical universe that attracts the ego of acolytes. The primitive or Shamanic mind may not be that different to modern mind, but the difference lies in the use of intuition to respond to the active strength of natural processes (herbs, aromatic compounds). 

So it is really on the opposite trajectory to the ego of acolytes that is attracted solely to information. By analysing the shapes of proteins and the structures of living things to such an extent, the boffins essentially end up with no shape - pure information. They enter a parallel reality that is essentially an illusion of parallel lines, reflections that are the ones and zeros of algorithms (see prev Jirel Meets Magic).

The basic reason for the illusion is that information does not produce shape. The opposite is true; shape produces information. 

Proteins are molecular shapes that carry out all the body's sophisticated metabolism. The information they supply is totally vast; from hormonal (time-based) control.of growth, to manufacture of new proteins from RNA.

In an exact analogous way primitive societies use shapes to determine the meaning of information. In this case the shapes are not the messenger-proteins but messenger-animals as spirit guides on totem.poles.

This is the way stories are transmitted (culturally). Modern advance is at a dead end because any further advance into analysing of shape takes one further into the illusory universe of information, the mirror of illusions.

"They" don't realize this because the ego is attracted by numbers and the "solutions" they engender. The advance is only real to the ego.

Apart from.the stories of physical shape, there is also decay and the cycles of life and death. There is a negative side that the mirror of illusions does not reflect. Both growth and decay are things that happen inside time and are literally composed of time.

History has negative aspects, and this is part of the story. There was the journey out of bondage of Southern Blacks following the civil war. The song "Follow the Drinking Gourd" (Havens) represents the traditional route towards the north, or the Big Dipper (in Ursa Major) that points to Polaris.

The lyrics are eloquent of the rustic trail in days gone by. The lifestyle, the rural lifestyle is primitive, and, as Radin and Levi-Strauss attest, the mind is the same only with different subject-matter.

The shape of things is primitive and associated with fortune (see HB165). The dead-end of advance will finally have to acknowledge that truth, or be lost in the mirror of illusions.

Hyborian Bridge 165

 As was said in P151, CL Moore's Jirel of Joiry is replete with decadence and ultimate revival. There are dark and sorcerous tales but the one with the most pronounced medieval feel is probably Hellsgarde.

This is an ominous castle set in a marsh with one sole causeway to its threshold. Marshes are places of strength and vigorous revival as well as mossified wastelands. The primitive roots of Venice remain that it is set on a lagoon.

On a political footnote, our dear progressive leaders - be it Trump or Modi - don't get the idea that one can stake-out claims to the moon and Mars and still retain primitive roots on the home planet

Progress is not a one-way ticket because then it is simply weakness - the ego triumphant in a sterile world. Modi, in a bid to banish backwardness, has taken on the small farmers, and I can't do better than quote (again) from The Light.

However, the ultimate goal is to displace 400,000,000 from rural areas in India into smart cities. Make no mistake: these bills are integral to the globalist's Agenda 21 strategy and the Sustainable Development Goals they want in place by 2030: for land and food acquisition and the elimination of SME's of any description, with the populous being beholden to megalithic, monopostic corporations, same as everywhere else on earth. Yogeeta Mistry (that para told me a whole lot I never knew before, such as the UN's nefarious SDG. See

bit.ly/indian-uprising, trolley times.online

Strength lies in nature that is left to perform.its journeys of metamorphosis, while Man is merely the keeper who cannot ultimately change its foul odors.

The sense is accurately drawn in the story.

The hall was as Andred's murderers must have left it two centuries ago. What shields and armor had not fallen from.the walls were thick with rust in the damp air of the marshes, and the tatters of pennons and tapestries had long ago taken on a uniform color of decay. But Alaric seemed to savor the damp and the desolation as a normal man might savor luxury. (page 186)

There is an obscenity here that in this case feeds on death. It is indecent and gives Jirel the willies. Her muscular physicality is set against their downright decadence.

Slowly the stars wheeled by the arrow-slit windows high up.in the darkness of the walls.. How much it might avail her she did not know, but they thought they had disarmed her, and Jirel hugged her greave-sheathed legs in the darkness and smiled a wicked smile, knowing they had not.(page 196)

The cultish antics of devotees are not always pleasant. There is a connection to the Dionysian ecstasies described by Mishima (prev) and to the obscene fertility cults of the old Hyborian gods described by Yaple (HB140).

Man lives and dies and there is a strength and savagery to both occupations.

And now suddenly fright was past and the familiar winy exultation of tension before battle rushed along her limbs and she looked up.into the darkness defiantly and shouted to the great vaults of the ceiling, "Come out of Hell, dead Andred! Come if you dare, Andred the damned!"(page 201)

This is so like Byron's quote that, " The best of life is but intoxication. " (from Don Juan). Byron's decadence seems to give him easy access to the damned, and that's part of his everlasting appeal!

The strength of death is to be a strong ghost who haunts people's memories (Dead Poets Society). Strength as an independent personality that persists and conquers time (the musky strength of Zappa is with us still).

To Byron, all that was part of a mysterious "Fortune" that to moderns doesn't exist. That could be because the ego has no Fortune in its universe of sterile logic.

Fortune could be the missing ingredient in the world of advance and the likes of Modi and bin Salman of Neon city are plumb wrong.

Is it not fortunate that developmental lines move in circles to form.eyes, to forge crinkly ridges and lobed ears? I previously mentioned the likeness of descriptions in Jirel Meets Magic to early Disney.

As the irritating two notes began their seesawing tuneJl Jirel saw something amazing happen.. In a queer way they were visible, pouring in twos from.the flute and dashing outward like little needles of light. The walls reflected them, and those reflections became swifter and brighter and more numerous until.the air was full.of flying slivers of silvery brilliance, until shimmers began to dance among them and over them, and that bewildering shift of mirrored planes started up once more.(page 108)

Isn't early animated cartooning fortunate in that the artists' lines have such facile shapes? What I'm meaning to say is that linework in nature has such a sense of perfection and correctness that it amounts to fortune.

A world of information is completely outside that sense of rightness; it has no story of metamorphosis (P151). The Plains Indians and their totem poles had a primitive sense of story in line and anthropomorphic shape that tied them to natural strength.

The fact that something is primitive doesn't mean that people can't advance and go to live in cities; there is room.for both, as Modi may one day find out.

This sense of primitive symmetry in people and arrangements is contained in the aforementioned Love and Rockets - see Jaime "Ghost of Hoppers". Being a Hispanic subculture, they bring-in a tribal feel of beat-up neighborhoods and decadent undress.

The foul-smelling waters of an abandoned swimming pool mix with the zestful abandon of radical sluts. These things have their obscene aspects, but the strength is palpable.

If - as suggested in P151 - DNA copies the cosmos, one has to be aware of the thing being copied, or merely exist as a copy. The danger of that is contained in Jirel Meets Magic, where a sorcerous reality is enacted by means of a dual-note played on a magical flute.

If form is function, DNA has the dual-structure that denotes accurate copying; the two-tones that attract the ego into a logical universe that is really a sorcerous illusion.

That reality is analogous to digital information (ones and zeros) or parallel lines (see P151). All information can be digital, but it leaves out the cosmos, or the source.

This danger was possibly prophesied by Byron's daughter, Ada Lovelace, writer of the first algorithm, who called herself a " poetic scientist". Poetry being rhythm and shape and charm and all the things that are not information.

Basically, that means everything, because information does not describe things accurately. What it mainly does is attract the ego of acolytes, often by way of words (the news). See Alan Moore's essay, Blood From the Shoulder of Pallas (Watchmen).

Alongside Plains Indians there were also cowboys, and the fact is that action on the range itself is a producer of useful information. The vernacular way of living, of building and sharing. It's a way of safeguarding strength that results from the primitive lines and shapes of things that are left to their own devices.

The independent personality relishes strength and the ambiguities of living in the primitive reality that is lost to a science of numbers.

Pictorial 151 (please wait till images are up)

 Contrary to the quote at top of HB164, things that appear similar are facilitated by the same primal.rhythms that animate natural forms. The limbs of trees that appear like quaint or grotesque human apparitions. The fairy tale mystique.

You'd think a poet might have that in mind! It could be today's writers of fantasy - the likes of Philip Pullman (prev) - are yet another iteration of the egotists in our midst.

The contrast with Francis Stevens - and of course Howard - is blatant.

There was him whose flowing robes were woven of the beaded gray rain. White foam was his beard, and his eyes were like blue ice-caverns. Tlaloc was he, Neptune, and Mananan, son of that great one who dwells forever invisible in the Slieve Faud.(page 335)

Deities may be naive figureheads of Man's mystical youth; so, is it that "they" are saying the universe is not naive at core? The dilemma is it becomes an advance that only an insane AI can navigate - to what end?

The dilemma modernism poses is that in managerial systems things always go wrong because you enter a parallel universe of sterile logic run by acolytes of sorcerers of the mirror of illusions (electromagnetism, light, sun, DNA..)

What is missing is everything that is inherently interesting, that has tensions and visual contrasts. Sun and moon as counterbalancing cosmic forces.

That basic conundrum invokes primitive powers of decay (microbes) and the chthonic underworld that is indivisibly linked to the agricultural (se e prev.)

It's not so much a political problem as a paradigmic one. I happened to notice that Cathy Yan - the Sino-American director of Birds of Prey (the rise of Harley Quinn) - became known through Dead Pigs, her Shanghai debut at Sundance.

It seems Margot Robbie saw it and lobbied for her to direct. The Shanghai flic is a fairly obvious but sleekly done character-driven piece where all the pieces start to fall apart owing to the inherent contradictions of Shanghai's epic rise from a quagmire of pig-farms (see Tales of Faith2).

If you call that ironic parody, one can quickly come up with various examples in different cultures. I saw this piece in DT on the interwar writer's paradise set in a small Dorset village (Through the keyhole of England's last literary salon).

Long Crichel Rectory

Raymond Mortimer

Nancy Mitford

The house was exceptionally cold. There was no electricity, so light came from oil lamps and candles (so Barry Lyndon). The water supply was feeble. The septic tank in the garden was a typhoid risk. 

.."Soft furnishings were designed by Duncan Grant (of Bloomsbury)". That truly is old-school elegance worthy of a medieval castle.

Talking of castles, Princess Leonor of Spain is taking-up studies at Atlantic College on the Welsh coast, an 11th century spread. I guess it's fairly decorous, and not quite the savagery of Lindsay Anderson's If with the cold showers and toilet humor (see Outtakes4-6).

Princess Leonor

Atlantic College

Old-school elegance has a rustic charm that puts one in mind of Greek tragedy; Electra stalking the halls and barns of Agamemnon's old spread in Argos while pondering the shedding of Clytemnestra's blood!

Staying with the gift-bearers, irony or parody or anything inherently interesting like tragedy or comedy rely on the individual destiny versus the power of establishment.

The individual is paramount and, as CC Beck has said (HB157), easy to stereotype. If the individual is paramount, what is an individual?

In dramatic terms, someone who breathes, speaks, sings - as well as swallows food and wine. The dramatic source is primitive; the reptilian throat that connects head to body (see P1).

In other words, there's a primal rhythmic source to the individual - person or pig. Rhythm creates action and manners have grace. To return to this primary source is to reestablish the individual as an independent type.

The reason is mainly because the establishment is anti-induvidual. If an independent individual is primal rhythm, the establishment is sterile logic. Sterile logic - see prev - tends to banish thoughts of the primitive, which means the behaviour of individuals from microbes to men.

Everything is an individual; a cell of the body is one, and so has primal rhythm. The ego is persuaded by sterile logic to do without this, and the results are seen in the disturbed ecosystems from which emerge infectious microbes on weakened hosts (see prev.)

"..these things depend on everything else happening - how the millions of tiny organisms in the soil.make it possible for the flower to grow: how the trees become home to lots of insects and give shelter to birds as they build nests." (Prince Charles, DT).

Our predicament is caused by sterile logic - and the solution is the same! An individual is something with a painterly quaintness that is irreducible. Their strong individuality which is a product of grace and charm.

This individuality has to be reestablished - be it the hereditary nobility or the aristocracy of pop - and then the rustic grace and charm that are also a product of strong individual types - be it pig, buffalo or germ (meaning seed).

The strong type is something that has been repressed - be it black, white, noble or common - by the weakness of a parallel system.of numbers and DNA-logic that is convincing to the eyes of acolytes of sorcerers of the mirror of illusions (Musk&Co).

This parallel reality is a sorcerous illusion; CL Moore's almost scientific descriptions of the scenario in Jirel Meets Magic give some very telling imagery.

You could say Moore is more high-fantasy even than Stevens, but at the same time her intuition is at work in a way that builds on Stevens' earlier yarns.

On a quest to track down and kill (vis split to the teeth) the wizard Giraud, Jirel meets the witch-queen of a seemingly fair land, Jarisme. For more on this story see P7, especially the ambiguity contained in landscape, where a tree is a snake, a snake is a jewel, and there is a steaming decadence of swift change.

Jarisme plays a flute melody on two notes, and the music dances in tune with the chaotic surroundings of her palace.

The whole place was a chaos of blaze and confusion.. Queer reflections danced through the dazzle of it..

Then she saw Jarisme in her violet robe watching her from a hundred identical golden couches reflected upon a hundred surfaces. The figure held a flute to its lips, and the music pulsed from it in perfect time with the pulsing of the sorceress' swelling white throat. Jirel stared round in confusion at the myriad Jarismes all piping the interminable monotones.page 107)

There are a couple of noteworthy things in her descriptions. The way she describes the animated notes is reminiscent of early Disney and especially Fantasia (which could be about contemporaneous).

Jarisme pipes on two notes, as in the finale where fantasticallt disparate representatives of the cosmos are arranged in ambiguous symmetry.

They were grouped with a queer irregularity which, though meaningless to Jirel, yet gave the impression of definite purpose and design..

Then Jarisme's flute spoke softly.. it hsrped still on the two seesawing notes, with low, rippling sounds so different from.the other two that Jirel marveled at the range of the sorceress' ability on the two notes. (page 113)

Another feature is that a dual-tone becomes both a monotone, or a multiplicity, able to split into parts (or copies).

That is a very accurate description of our digital reality, which is composed of ones and zeros. The information contained in ones and zeros is able to  copy anything in the "real" physical world.

Jarisme's dual-tone flute is an instrument that copies, and at the same time confuses. If one relates that to our digital reality, the reason is that a digital reality is synonymous with parallel lines.

Two parallel lines have a space between them, so they are equivalent to 1,0,1.. etc. In that sense, a dual-tone reality or a parallel lines reality are the same and both are digital.

Jarisme represents the ego of acolytes who operate within the mirror of illusions; her flute both directs and confuses. In the story, the dryad who dies at the start could represent the physical world- of trees - that has a decadence that regenerates over time. The dryad gives Jirel the means to kill Jarisme.

Trees have growth-lines that curve every which way, and that is the natural order. This natural - or cosmic - order is able to manifest metamorphosis because growth-lines contain primeval rhythms (of the cosmos).

The strength that draws different things together is really the mythical story of Man, from.the anthropomorphic deities of Egypt to the ever-shifting licentious attributes of Zeus (see prev.)

What you could say is that, in a digital world where everything is a copy, there is no ground-root of fecundity. In the ancient world the opposite is true, for the very stars spread like seeds on the face of the cosmos.

A copy is a reproduction, whether sexual or not. In fact, the two become confused! DNA is a copy, but is it sexual? "They" would tell us so, ie that it is a fundamental component of sex.

To the ancients, the fecund universe itself is sexual, and Man copies the universe with his acts. The fundamental component of that universe is metamorphosis - or the similarity of different things (seen in fairy tales).

Metamorphosis is an elemental.story of the growth of lines in nature. Of decay and revival. Of strength.

In the modern universe DNA is equivalent to the digital order in being pure information. But, really, this goes away from the ancient idea of fecundity (or seed). DNA is essentially contained IN seed. Even a virus is essentially a pod (protein capsule) containing DNA. The DNA is necessary, but that doesn't make it the fundamental component of life, which is fecundity (ie we are not "composed of information" despite what "they" continually drone on about in their seesawing monotones.)

DNA is a way of copying the cosmos. Copying is not necessarily sexual; in fact, it can become a type of profane sex (see prev on profane rhythm, clean meat, the basic lack of decay and organic growth).

Sexuality retains the elements of grace and charm (seduction). If "they" seek to tell us these aren't essential, that's only so from a perspective of pure information.

Health and cleanliness are to do with physical strength in a world of decay and revival. These principles are ever-present in CL Moore's Jirel of Joiry (of which more in the next post.)

The weakness of a parallel system of numbers ans DNA-logic is heading forever towards a digital future. This is where Musk is heading, in that rockets are controlled by algorithms.

Any future colony on Mars will.be largely algorithmic, so the choice is, by heading into space Man also becomes as one with the machine. Space is sterile, so that's the logic. And that's what attracts the ego, natch.

As a footnote, what are NASA playing at? The samples collected by Perseverance are to be collected in 2031. Why wait all.that time to answer the question, "Is there life on Mars?" Couldn't they ask Musk to launch a rocket and pick them.up next year? Is the real.conspiracy that they already know the answer to that question?

Hyborian Bridge 164

 A commissioned collaboration with geneticist Sir John Sulston two decades ago changed my own thinking and writing forever. Once you've seen that the genomic difference between your own body and that of a salamander or an apple tree is a rearrangement of the same base (pairs..) the borders between those bodies seem less sure. (poet Michael Symmons Roberts, Metamorphosis from Ovid to Marvel Comics, DT)

As I tend to say, the modern delusion lies in confusing different things for the same thing. 

Metamorphosis in my lexicon is more like a manifestation of cosmic fecundity, from the stars above to the beasts of the fields. See prev. Titian The Rape of Europa (by Zeus as a bull).

If it's true that different things share similarities, the similarity is the primeval rhythm that is expressed in lust and the hunger to be part of something else (Leda and the swan, Apollo and Daphne of the laurel tree).

That is strength and grace and charm (seduction). What Symmons Roberts is talking about is simply an egotistical assertion that genes control shape.

For that to be so, genes have to be inside time in terms of a rhythmic curve of proportion and harmonics - as occurs in the womb over the gestation period prior to birth.

In fact, the exact opposite is the case; genes are convincing because they are entirely factual - ie consisting of base-pairs in a long chain. It's the material that's used - as a tapestry is woven out of colored fibres.

Anything that comes out of time - such as speech, song, dance, break-dancing, grace or charm - is a woven tapestry as opposed to the material it's made of. The time-dimension imparts a dainty realness that is seen in a frog's face as much as a princess's visage (God is a cartoonist?)

In other words, time is the missing ingredient of geneticists such as Sulston (or Dawkins, for that matter). It's because the time element is lacking that their egos are entirely caught-up in the logic of the factual universe of the genome.

A very similar argument comes into the plot of Francis Stevens' The Citadel of Fear. Stevens' points to a basic type who conforms to the scientific viewpoint. One is MacClellan, the stolid detective, who appears to banish from his mind those "facts" that don't conform to his bias (this is something like the "motivational arguments" we now know from the net, where people pick the facts that fit their case. Of course, there are an.infinite number of "facts" in a logical universe of genes, electromagnetism, algorithms that "they" preside over!)

"I smelled something queer myself when we went inside." This from Forester, an intelligent-looking but very young man. "Don't you remember I called your attention to it?"

"Yes, and I said you was dreamin'," snapped his superior. "If there was any smell it got out the windows before we reached there." (page 181)

Like Roc Sandford (prev) he does not see the physical substance and smell of decay (Max Romeo: " The more you look, the less you see").

"They" (the scientists) do not see it, and such primal rhythms of decay are corrupted, as happens in Stevens' yarn. In normal circumstances, renewal happens where the chthonic strength of microbial life is present (see Buffy quote on dried buffalo manure).

Where the cycles are strong, health is generated as on the African plains of yore (see van der Post on the fragrance of smoke on the savanna). Once there's a lack of balance, the microbes emerge in weakened hosts (see prev.)

Leaving things be allows in metamorphosis; the strength of microbial decay is somewhat similar to digestion, hence the presence of micro-fauna in the gut.

In Stevens' yarn the microbial and macro become one in a blend stirred by the scientifically-minded Archer Kennedy in his subterranean lab.

"These beasts have a faculty that they share with no other creature save the simplest organisms. They do no multiply slowly, but split in twos as easily as.."

The process of decay is insanely interrupted. Recognition of decay in the environment promotes healthy, clean and strong, lusty and smelly situations. Leaving things to decline naturally tends to impart a lively aura that is often charming. 

The liveliness of these strong and dirty environments contrast with the dormancy of the modern sterile logic of so-called "health" that is akin to a Limbo run by egos of acolytes of sorcerers (see Darkchilde, prev.)

When.primal rhythms of chthonic decay are interrupted, there is no revival and this is what happens in Kennedy's laboratory beneath the dome of Nacoc-Yaotl. Whereas on the range, decay is part of a general cycle of revival and clean growth of animals and plants, in the enclosed space of his ghostlike marsh the clean cycles of life and death no longer apply.

The fact that scientists don't recognize it is immaterial. There is a dark side to the universe which can have a dark beauty of otherworldly decadence - in the Moth Lady or Miss Reed, the elfin maiden in the clinging green dress (the "chiquitta" from the story's start).

From the dead man he looked up to his mad Dusk Lady. She was watching him with dark, wondering eyes. Her wet, green gown clung to limbs and body, close as the green bark to a young tree, and the thick curls of her hair glistened black and shining.

Like some sorrowful spirit of the storm-torn forest she stood there, and Colin was ashamed before her. (page 165)

Darkness is part of reality in the clean and strong cycles of life and death that generate health and fertility. In the enclosed space of Kennedy's laboratory (somewhat akin to our modern hospital environments where we all wear the mask of Nacoc-Yaotl!) only information matters and not the grace and proportion of natural rhythms (of the cosmos).

Kennedy is delusional, insisting "I preside here", despite the glinting, profane presence of the carved black stone likeness of Nacoc-Yaotl.

No, as Colin O'Hara realizes, " Nacoc-Yaotl is another matter.". Kennedy's ego doesn't allow him to realize the obvious; that he is the prey of a black god where decay is a corrupted power, a profanity within the cosmic order of health and strength.

Hyborian Bridge 163

 The Leviathan of modernity - of facts that swiftly become fictions - is somewhat connected to Pasteur's doctrine of germs (prev.) Germs are the "facts" that Man the scientist is combatting. However, this is also a fiction, since a natural environment is simply one where germs flourish and breakdown organic matter on the prairies, in the forests and ponds.

This fiction is like a gigantic hospital. Francis Stevens' The Citadel of Fear seems to presage this, with the "hospital hush" of the lost Aztec lake-city of Tlapallan. Fifteen years on from Colin O'Hara's escape, his erstwhile friend and frankly fiendish Archer Kennedy's scientific replication is taking shape.

Before going into the rest of the book in more detail, my eye was caught by Blue Sandford's Euston station underground protest at the HS2 speed link to the Highlands. Investigation revealed her to be the daughter of eccentric environmentalist and Scottish aristocratic Roc, who owns the island of Gometra off Mull.

I was frankly appalled by what I read on Gometra.org and here quote an extract.

When people talk about being carbon neutral, they are not usually talking about drawdown (removal) of the cumulative historical forcing..

Forcing is the trapping of excess heat in CO2, methane.. Much of this drawdown will need to be provided by ceasing livestock husbandry..(gometra.org)

This is like saying that a very small Scottish island with free-ranging farmed herds and off-grid electricity isn't necessarily "green".

So ludicrous an assertion is that that it could be he's a 5th columnist, more likely an eccentric coot especially going by the names of his flock. Blue and Laser are the two in the tunnel; then there's N.S.S.for No Sheep Shagging ( known affectionately as Nessie) and Punt (to commemorate his Cambridge Alma Mater).

What he's really doing is using "facts" without the much more blatant fact that he is on an island surrounded by sea.the sea itself is a gigantic carbon-sink of decayed fish, while free-range gorse and heather where cattle roam to graze stores carbon in the natural cycles of animal metabolism.

In his obsession with "scientific facts", Herr Sandford doesn't seem.to be aware of these rather commonplace functions of animals. Well, Stevens' book seems to take this forgetfulness towards a use of science in a frankly deranged manner - in a manor.

The enclosed space of Kennedy's experimental chambers contains a chilling allegory - as Lovecraft stated - of modernity as a giant hospital where the primitive lusts and hungers of living things are taken out-of-context and distorted to deranged ends.

Science tries to operate without the open range, which is simply the strong and clean balance of life and death. Country pursuits involve an active ecosystem that generates health in forest, fen, swamp, stream, sea. 

The chthonic and the agricultural are linked in a psychic realm of balance or harmony. This is the realm where physical strength is reflected in the gods that Man worships. The lord of the air Quetzalcoatl. The Spider God Tezcatlipoca and his sinister alter ego Nacoc-Yaotl (cont.)

Hyborian Bridge 162

 The manifesto says that the law on hunting will not change and foxhunts will not be brought back.(Carrie Symonds)

How can one person be so wrong yet seem so right? That conundrum could apply to the Western system, which seems to slowly suck-in south, north and east like some Leviathan of the deep.

The Leviathan - or the profane serpent - is essentially the individual who up-close seems to radiate normality, but taken as a whole they lack the cosmic harmony that makes things work.

There's a quote from CC Beck on over descriptive descriptions that could be likened to Mishima's equating of modern science with voyeurism (prev.)

Description in the modern lexicon applies to everything from microbes to galactic clusters - what can be so wrong with that?

Because description itemises everything into a logical universe of lenses and perspective (numbers, algorithms, AI). Description is both very right and completely wrong from a cosmic perspective.

Description is a way of compartmentalising things and tidying the universe (see.  ) The modernist universe is weak because it is a process of tidying, rather than actively living in it.

This is where pulps are paragons of strength in that their descriptions are much more holistic. Francis Stevens' first substantial published story, The Nightmare, reads like an advertisement for the lusty, hungry lifeforms of some primeval throwback. It us a land of the night.

The upper rim of the sun was just disappearing below the western wall.. and only a few minutes later the tropical night was upon them, with its wonderful stars and refreshing , fragrant breath of coolness.

It brought something more than coolness in its wake, it brought a rising wave of sound from the jungle beyond the open meadow. The valley of the day was no more, and the valley of night has swung wide its doors for all the creatures which crouched, awaiting the liberating touch of darkness.

Hidden on a volcanic island, it is not only noisy but gloriously scenic and at the same time nauseatingly saprophytic.

As they approached the dreadful charnel odor became more intense.. Shoulders thrust forward, eyes half-shut and smarting, they pushed through it as through some tangible obstruction.

Then the first of the many-hued mushrooms were crunching beneath their feet..

Her later and possibly most fabulous fantasy of all, The Citadel of Fear, practically replicates this chthonic area of unsettling, primeval power.

"You are in a city where mercy and kindness excel, and their roots are set in a monstrous cruelty. Where beauty springs out of horror, and they worship benignant gods with the powers of a devil!" (page 44)

The place was shaped like a cathedral rotunda, but it was floored like-like nothing on earth that he had ever seen.

A sort of unnatural marsh, or fen it was, where pale slimy rushes grew out of steaming mire, and globular fungi shone with a livid, phosphorescent light..

among them.moved living shapes..he had met those shapes before.. "The white hounds of the Guardians..!" (page 62)

Near the start, "Boots" linguistically stumbles over a snake.

"It's Eden without the-" began Boots, when whirr-r-r came a sharp warning sound from the long grass that bordered the path. Boots bowed in mock salutation toward the sound, "Asking your pardon, Mr Rattler! Eden, serpent and all, is what I'd meant to be saying."(page 17, Paperback Library, 1970)

Since the story concerns Quetzalcoatl - the feathered serpent, see DH Lawrence, prev - this makes it somewhat obvious that serpents - primeval rhythm - are associated with ancient cultures inimitably (see also Kari Hohne, prev.)

Modern Western Man is moving away from these ancient areas. The areas that contain lusty, hungry lewd forms - be it white prairie dogs or bugs in the swamps (ever took a close look at a garden pond?)

This is the fertile ground where living things spread their seed (see prev on Darkchilde and Limbo). Limbo - modernism - is dormant but convinces with an ever-expanding universe of information. The more that develops, the more it becomes the Leviathan to engulf us all, and the less physically realistic the situation!

I happen to receive Pamela Geller's emails and, following the Trump debacle, her lies flow even easier so you are almost tempted to believe them. So plausible it's uncanny.

The chthonic universe is there for the same reason Greek Oracles or garden  toads are/were. Life is not logically tidy and its harmonics are dark and disturbing.

Germs are not terribly nice things (another Stevens story tells of a device that displays enlarged microbes to devastating effect). They eat or are eaten. That's life (or death).

However, if you want Carrie Symonds-style niceness you're in the wrong universe. Strength and decay and revival are chthonic areas that need reviving.

An ancient ecosystem - such as the Brazilian forests - is one where the chthonic areas strengthen the living with microbial forms. Health us ultimately dependent on the germ population - the exact opposite of what "they" tell us.

The germ.population is simply the state of abandon - of leaving things be. Amazonian Indians are on the cusp of development and so tend to get exposed to emerging infections.

Outbreaks such as Covid are really down to disrupted ecosystems and therefore ultimately the disrupted germ populations (that are hosted in animals that may stray into human habitats).

Harmoni s are not logical; if anything they thrive in illogical untidiness. I've previously put in a word for religious states such as Turkey, Iran, India for the reason of their paramount psychic symmetries. A mosque or a temple is a scene of cosmic harmony. The fact that the Ganges is filthy is just one of those things. This scenario is akin to the Hyborian Age; the autocratic Ayatollah Khameni is much more a Hyborian type than any Israeli democrat.

On the Israeli front, they are using social media influenzas to create content for Arab neighbours. You can pretty well predict the way that will go. In the direction of confident wrongness of the individual, as opposed to harmonic disorder of the ancient souks and oases. The same direction as bin Salman's Neon City, natch.

Princess Moonlight (5)

 Primal rhythm can't be denied, it can only be corrupted within the parallel universe of electromagnetism (perspective). This is the profane serpent as described several times - see P136

..which is all about the domain of Illyana Rasputin, the Darkchilde, mistress of Limbo. The sterile realm of Limbo is ruled by the egos of demons - who eventually psy homage to the Darkchilde's primal animal force and charisma.

As described in P136, the ego can rule a sterile world of 'Einsteinian space' - or logical perspective spacetime - but it is the dark and negative beauty of the Darkchilde that is the physical reality.

Nastirh wants her as his dark bride. There is a bestial crudity in Illyana's permutations of form that is unmistakably lewd (see quote on Princess Moonlight HB161).

The Darkchilde is the very antithesis of Limbo - the spirit of revival that lurks within the soul - and in that way conquers the demons (they fall in love). She is physical reality in a dormant realm.

There are parallels in the ancient world, in Aristophanes or lewd Roman graffiti. As argued in PM4 , science is like news in that it has no story, no negative. The neutral is made to seem positive.

All this means is that the dark physical reality of lusty, hungry lewd forms is basically bypassed.

This entire area is the fertile ground where living things spread their seed. Science corrupts it to a logical order of perspective ruled by egos of acolytes.

One example is Pasteur (prev); another is DNA (passim). The media or the news is the spokesperson of this barren system.

Going back to the Darkchilde, P136 relates Limbo to 'Einsteinian spacetime'. The Darkchilde rules this by virtue of her primal physical reality. Limbo is dormant in terms of the physical reality; without the Darkchilde it's just, well, Limbo, home to demons of the ego.

This corresponds equally well to the news. I noticed during the Trump debacle there was a fantastic spread of online news-channels that left almost everyone scratching their collective head! 

The news is like Limbo because it has no physical reality. Especially not a primal throwback to reptilian origins as the Darkchilde can manifest (see illo P136).

Limbo is dormant, a sterile system of talking heads with plans. In a sterile system there is no physical reality, no lustiness, no fertility, no death or life 

It is the sun - electromagnetism, perspective - without the counterbalancing moon. The moon symbolises the symmetries of time and space. Einsteinian spacetime attracts the egos of acolytes while the moon is a primitive physical reality.

The belief is it's a priori (PM4). Beliefs take account of cosmic symmetries. The savage, bestial nudity of Dionysian rites.

Rather than assume there are political conspiracies, it's safer to assume that the modern paradigm is flawed. It can't approach reality because it is dormant, effectively a type of Limbo that thwarts Man's primitive lusts and passions (the news).

The strength of rustic communities can be reestablished in place of this sterile mainstream - whether Biden or Trump. Those who feel repressed by a remote government have that in common - whether white or black.

Whereas modernity leads to sameness, differences can be retained and have the strength of psychic affinity (see prev and P11). There's no reason why the old tunes of Cathy Richardson can't come together with the new tunes of Kanye West. It's all 'hippy' rebellion and a type of resistance to mainstream repression.

Princess Moonlight (4)

 yes and maybe it's the time of the year

yes and maybe it's the time of man (Woodstock)

I was listening to Cathy Richardson's warmups on Jefferson Starship's Roswell CD and disc 4 is virtually a cornucopia of American folk. Guthrie, Mitchell and including a gorgeous rendition of 'Oh Darling'.

If that to some extent IS the America of myth, what exactly is lacking in the America of 2020 Biden (and possiblly 2024 Trump)?

It's almost too simple. Spirit. In the warmups there is a group coordination that is almost unthinking. Once a level of technical facility is achieved, it comes natural ('yeah, F#').

That's what is lacking in a world of pure technique and ego. The ego transmits itself by words, and words can very easily recite numbers.

It's an Einsteinian universe of logic (sun, electromagnetism) as opposed to a psychic universe that exists in cyclical time.

The symmetries of time and space harmonise the stars with the earth. The rotations of earth expose us to these symmetries.

This is the ancient way of perceiving things, and is echoed by such disparate voices as Vincent of UVS and Yukio Mishima (The Sea of Fertility on the moon).

Basically, if symmetry is a "thing" - a state of physical existence such as we have in the proportions of the human body - then it exists as a thing in itself.

That is to say, it's a priori as opposed to being capable of technical explanation. Only from the physical universe can psyche emanate - since psyche is also a "thing" (see Madame Blavatsky's Theosophy, prev.)

So what is lacking is 'thingness'. The ego is always attracted by numbers and equations, to such an extent that the material system.is now dominated by an Amazon shop.

What's the point of shopping if psyche is weakened in a degraded physical reality? The material world and the Einsteinian universe are two sides of one coin: the coin of the numerical-ego.

A physical universe is one of dirt and revival. The physical strength is agricultural and chthonic and comes from the symmetries of time and space (the rotating earth).

It's not rocket science. The fact the Earth rotates - as is contained in both Vincent's and Mishima's philosophies - is only detectable by science. But our perception is founded on that fact.

We live in a spinning universe and that's just an a priori fact. Science is continually asking deeper and deeper questions so that it becomes like Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The answer to the ultimate question is 42 - but what is the question?

Scientific information is like the news in that it has no story and no negative - it's neutral and so comes across as positive. It gives a mouthpiece to numerous acolytes of reason (words, numbers).

The 'negative' is the entire chthonic universe of deities of the earth and agriculture (prev.) Modern Man is afraid of germs (prev) that are simply living things that process material.

Germs exist in living things and make us strong. There is a risk attached (prev), but the alternative is to live in fear and under the tyranny of numbers.

Musk is heading into space - again it's a case of numerical-ego. Well, I don't want to be 100% Luddite as there's always been space for technology, but it can't replace natural strength. That comes from the Earth and the symmetries of time and space. It's both negative and positive; it has a story.

In view of the present system, I was wondering if it could be possible to vote for an alternative future; to seize power by legitimate means.

The only way I can think of is by voting for someone who is coming from agrarian, folksy roots. There is no one who wants to lead apart from the aforementioned Kanye West!

Therefore I reiterate my support of West as a leader who is much more psychic and physical than the numerical-egos of the establishment.

To be alternative is to be first of all neither right nor left. After all, both these aspects can exist on planet Earth, as well as the agricultural deities like Dionysus. Diversity is good and it's a big place.

Princess Moonlight (3)

And they left the desert clean

And they left the desert golden

WHEN THE EARTH MOVES AGAIN

Kantner of Jefferson Starship fronted an.itinerant band of restless hippy spacefarers, heading towards the sun, spreading the seed of love and peace.

That view of outer space has got to be anti-Musk as well as Trump and whoever else is in the White House! Rebellion is a physical act whereas government and technology are the numerical-ego at work.

It seems like "the people" are restless, but both sides indulge in lazy thinking. The hippies have a lot to say on rebellion, whereas moderns don't.

The secret is first to get physical; maybe move into a rural compound with goats and kids. Getting physical means existing in the primeval world of sun and moon, stars above, the Earth and agriculture below.

The chthonic deities of ancient Greece were also the agricultural deities; the two were closely linked, and with the associated mystery cycles (cults).

Proserpine (Persephone), queen of Hades, is the daughter of Demeter of the harvest. Persephone (spring) leaves Hades for six months of the year to go home with her mother.

In ancient Egypt, fertility deities were strongly associated with the underworld. Osiris, took a crocodile form of Sobek - god of the Nile and fertility - in the myth of his death and resurrection. The myth follows Isis's pregnancy and birth of Horus, avenger of Osiris and slayer of Set.

In stories of the afterlife, the stellar and the underworld essentially exist in the same area as the Pharaoh undergoes their journey through pitfalls to paradise.

As with Dionysus, the theme is the afterlife and revival and the symmetries of time and space. As agricultural system is strong because these symmetries exist.

An agricultural system is supported by the dirt of the Earth and through this comes revival.

The modern political system has become a product purely of the numerical-ego. It's all very well for Biden to say "the people", but there are also the land, the air, the seas and the waterways, the beasts and the fields.

An itinerant populace is exposed to all that, as well as the germs born of free-living. Free-living is healthy but not risk-free. The mainstream establishment, by attempting to be risk-free, risks creating a prison-camp mentality in a restless populace too fearful to be sure of alternatives.

It's not necessarily a Martian conspiracy, but the way to rebel is not via the usual channels. It's more of a rural-Bohemian cowboy-revival of the western plains.

Princess Moonlight (2)

 It is more important to know what sort of person has a disease than to know what sort of disease a person has. (Hippocrates)

That seems to be about the size of it, since a weakened immune-system is prey to disease. According to Bechamp, "germs seek their natural habitat, diseased tissue." A weakened immune-system is prey to disease and tries to rid itself of toxins, meaning things become toxic to a weakened body.

Otherwise, they're just germs that are ever-present. There is a strength through decadence; through the process of decay. The environment that breeds germs. Stagnant water.

Whereas the Western immune-system gradually weakens, the presence of germs in the environment strengthens it. Why is this?

It's basically because drugs in the environment have to continually build-up - because western medicine does not consider the environment.

Every living thing has a resistance to disease - that's health. Once an antibiotic is released, a virus will start to build resistance. Another drug may then be needed (etc.)

Jim Ratcliffe of Ineos UK has just donated £100million for an Oxford University to be created studying antibacterial resistance! The industry they're creating is really the inevitable consequence of industrial pharma weakening the human body.

The immune-system is weakened by the presence of man-made and denatured products. Germs are just living things that exist naturally where decay and regeneration are normal. Stagnant water.

It's obvious that Western medicine creates an environment that suits it, which just happens to be the opposite to the one that suits the body. While medicine is sterile and germ-free, the body requires dirt where decay and germs are ever-present.

The latter is the fertile fields and forests and hills and waterways that have supplied the physical needs of Man since prehistory. One doesn't have to go back far to see that sort of itinerant life existing in the States.

Roy Rogers, for example, had a Bohemian upbringing, living in a houseboat which traveled up the Ohio, his family building a farm where he played the fiddle and sang at square dances 

The type of life is rural-Bohemian cowboy, the sort The Misfits with Monroe and Gable elegized (prev.)

It's a sad, cute film where what's missing are the great beef herds that cowboys used to steer over the plains, from Texas towards the east. What's missing is the clatter of hooves, the mud and dirt, sounds, sights and smells of the range.

After all, an environment is created by the sort of people, animals and fodder that make use of it. Instead of an industry of pharma, what's needed us an industry of farm.fodder supplied by cowboys on hosses.

What started with Pasteur as a cleaning-up process to kill pathogens in milk ends up as an environment where there are far fewer beneficial bacteria (contained in raw milk, along with raw proteins and minerals) that strengthen the immune-system, along with a man-made cocktail that further weakens us.

Farming is a healthy exercise, but that doesn't mean it's risk free. Herds have to be steered carefully, horses rear, slipping on a cowpat could injure your dignity (etc.,)

Pasteurization is based on fear of disease but unfortunately disease will always be with Man the active user of animals. I read in Huff that older breeds of cattle are recommended for raw milk as there is much less risk. There are sensible types of research and looksee that any self-respecting Bohemian wannabe should do.

Bohemians and their kids like dirt and germs and that's perfectly healthy. It's just not risk-free. But why by ruled by fear? The real problem is that the egotists who create the industrial system are not exactly stupid; they know there are emotions such as fear in a population. This can help drive the industry.

But ego is attracted to environments that are sterile for the exact reason that they're not balanced naturally. A balance exists where danger exists and where death exists too, and where decay exists and also regeneration and fertility exist - in the fields, in the forests, in the waterways.

What I want to get to is the entire chthonic area which supports life and health. The elemental area of sun, moon, stars and raw prairie air that we share with Mother Earth.

ALL I WANNA DO

Princess Moonlight (1)

 She suddenly took off a shoe and with one sharp, stocking-clad toe casually scratched the calf of her other leg with the exquisite balance of a flamingo, holding the teacup perfectly steady and not spilling a single drop into the saucer.(page 274)

Is inductive science voyeurism that betrays the sacred? On the last page of The Temple of Dawn is another quote that links Ying Chan to the forest.

..after returning from her studies in Japan, Ying Chan's father discovered that she had benefited little from her stay, and he tried to send her to the United States..Ying Chan had not agreed and had chosen to live in her residence in Bangkok surrounded by flowers.

She is a flower who attracts the toxins of the jungle? 'Toxin' is the root of intoxicated, and Byron said, "The best of life is but intoxication."

In a forest these two aspects are part of the whole scene. A forest is a place where the chthonic universe of dead matter supports the living - and even.more obviously, the associated peatland and wetlands (see prev.)

There is a strength through decadence (decay) that is associated with terrain that is left to itself.

Kemp and others in 'Collapse of Civilization' have been talking about Covid and the excuse it gives governments for authoritarian regimes, and I happened on a free paper called The Light that comes off that area.

The problem I find is that we live in a civilization of information; then one has The Light and other sources that supply counter-information. Life is literally too short to be reading all this stuff!

What's needed is something that's not 'pure information', and the article that hit me was on Terrain Theory and Antoine Bechamp.

Modern Western medicine is based on germ theory..Germ theory posits that we become ill when infected by microorganisms in our external environment..

Terrain theory forms the basis for most ancient healing systems..and is based on strengthening the environment of the host so that the disease cannot flourish.. If a fish is sick, Terrain theory says you should clean the water that the fish swims in. Germ theory treats the symptoms of the fish..

Bechamp was a lifelong rival of Pasteur.. Pasteur enjoyed greater commercial recognition and he was credited with the bacterial discoveries that catalysed medical advancement.. Microbes and pathogens were identified and drugs and vaccines were created to combat them.

But we now live in an environment where bacteria and virons are themselves resistant to drugs; in other words, it's impossible to eradicate the environment. All you can do is change it. Who is hubristic enough to say they change it for the better?

If we live in a logical, inductive universe (of the Western male mind), there exists another universe that is imagination, flow, elegant and feminine - associated with the moon.

Terrain Theory could be a way of getting back to that place in that it is nor inductive and rational - the two things that lead to male dominated industrial corporations and pharma.

What the theory says is that germs exist in the body which has a strong immune system. They're endogenous to the cells of the healthy body. Why do germs exist? Because the environment isn't sterile and is in fact dirty involving contact with animals etc.

'Cow pox' appears to have been the first use of inoculation that protected Man against the deadly small pox. Western Man developed some immunity to diseases via exposure. In other words, dirt and exposure in a terrain are toxins that also supply antidotes.

Disease is bad but, like in an ecosystem, a moderate bout can supply some protection. When Western Man came into contact with indigenous people who had no exposure to diseases like malaria, they had no immune-defence.

Terrain theory advocates a universe that the is balanced - predator-prey - and that does not contain man-made, denatured products like pesticides (and numerous chemicals that may disturb our internal systems, natch.)

In essence, that means living in a world where common dirt of the fields and forests - dead matter, the chthonic substance that gives strength - is strong and toxic, in the sense of supplying poisons, aromatic herbs, parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme.

That universe can be intoxicating owing to the fact that it is not governed by human will or mind or any agency except unthinking rhythm.

Hyborian Bridge 161

 Ying Chan - Princess Moonlight - affects to have no memory of her pre Lausanne childhood where she was educated. At the age of 19 she has fulfilled her promise, ripe and firm breasts over slender legs of a dancing gazelle.

She danced on her toes, and under her swaying skirt her beautiful legs, like two palms in a distant island, moved swiftly.. her body had already turned, but the gleam of her white teeth remained visible like a half moon.(page 222)

Honda is intoxicated, yet the way he approaches her is as a scrutineer. He is not only a dedicated investigator of esoteric lore but also has a predilection as a voyeur. Honda's whole persona is intriguing, and I wonder if Mishima was implying Western science - investigation - is a form of voyeurism? A betrayal of the sacred.

Of course Honda was convinced that having Ying Chan in a transparent crystal would constitute the core of his pleasure, but he could not separate that from his innate desire for investigation. Was there no way by which he could harmoniously reconcile these two contradictory tastes and overcome Ying Chan, this black lotus that had bloomed from the mud of life's flow? (page 209)

There's a strange mixture of a wilderness lore that equates Ying Chan with splitting fruit and hanging vines, with a desire to investigate and possibly destroy the sacred object.

Voyeurism is an odd act that does not "act" yet it does investigate; what type of investigation is it? Alan Moore's essay, 'Blood From the Shoulder of Pallas' asks a similar question.

A typical scene is where Honda is talking with Ying Chan, and the black beauty of her body is on full display.

The center of gravity lay at the contact point of crushed breast and.thigh, around which her body swayed slightly in an incredibly vulgar manner.(page 235)

He is clearly linking her to the wilderness and it is almost like describing fruity products of the Thai forest.

This is even more fantastically apparent in a dream sequence.

Just then the brilliant, pathetic sound of bugles arose from the buffet tent, the ground suddenly split asunder, and Princess Moonlight clad in a golden dress emerged on the wings of a golden peacock.. Princess Moonlight's shiny, brown thighs astride the golden peacock exposes her privates, and in short order she sent down a shower of fragrant urine onto the upturned faces of the onlookers. (page 260)

Honda is in dire straits, and events take a turn where the princess rebuffs him by returning the emerald topaz ring. He goes to Keiko in despair.

Briefly Honda told her what had happened, but he was disgusted to be speaking like a defense lawyer. He could not escape the habit of describing logically, inductively, even in this matter of burning urgency.(page 285)

Sadly the betrayal is toxic, as Keiko and Ying Chan are lovers, as he shockingly sees through the peep-hole of his study - like two succulent plants at play - even though he also sees the three moles that betoken her reincarnation.

The chthonic strength of samsara is revealed on the last page, where Ying Chan dies but is presumably reborn in book 4.

According to her lady-in-wairing, Ying Chan was alone in the garden, standing under a phoenix tree with its smoky vermilion flowers. Although there was no one else there, she was heard laughing. The lady-in-waiting thought it strange that she should be laughing all by herself. Clear, innocent sounds that rose in the sunny blue sky. The laughter ceased and almost at once turned into shrill screams. The lady-in-waiting rushed up to find Ying Chan on the ground, her thigh bitten by a cobra.(page 330)

It's a weird story. Nowadays Western Man watches everything, but does he perceive wilderness and the succulence of death? See Conan and Valeria in 'Red Nails' - the dragon sequence, Valeria's swordplay, the sequel in time-lost caverns with rotting carcasses and moss (prev).

The news is sterilized for consumption, yet chthonic growth is a strength that is not necessarily perceived by the use of information alone. It needs a dark strength; a goddess or a witch.

It sort of reminded me oddly of 'Ghost of Hoppers" (P143,144) where there is also two women entangled. There's also a pool scene (stagnant water), the pool which at story's end is fiercely lit by flames of calamity.

The encased breasts and their dusky ripeness reminded Honda of the fresco at Ajanta cave temple depicting the dying dancer. From this side of the pool he could clearly see her teeth gleaming whiter than her bathing suit when she smiled.

As she drew nearer, Honda stood up to great this girl he had so eagerly awaited.

"Now everyone's here," said Rie, hastening over, but he made no reply.

Keiko greeted the Princess and waved to the Prince in the pool.(page 310) 

TAN AND SEE (HB154)