Hyborian Bridge 182

Logical mutations of order produce monstrosities, is an interpretation of "BEM" (P180). There is a hidden side to order which is that mutations occur purely randomly to create monstrosities. Castle Radium's schizophrenic delusions are actually very real.

DNA is a signpost for the modern dilemma - like AI - since that is the age we live in. The ego is attracted to the facilities of logic, and steps inside the mirror of illusions where resides the profane serpent of endless mutations.

Where "land developers" represent real estate and money (the wormdollar), architecture in its primal condition represents balance and proportion - the Greek temple 

While a framework of logic enables many mini-mutations, and the modern monstrosity, a disordered framework has an internal logic of desire.

Disorder simply means lack of an overall plan that has a logical basis; the only rules are balance and proportion.

A man who knows his way there can defy all the police of India"s summer capital, so cunningly does veranda communicate with veranda, alley-way with alley-way, and bolt-hole with bolt-hole..

Together they set off through the mysterious dusk, full of the noises of a city below the hillside, and the breath of a cool wind in deodar-crowned Jakko, shouldering the stars. The house lights, scattered on every level, made, as it were, a double firmament. (page 214,217 Kim.)

Of course, these scenic townscapes that blend into landscape are familiar from Hyborian settings. The situation allows for psyche, in that desire and free-expression (dance, sleep, rhythm) are enabled in a disordered framework that a logical one mutates into monstrosity.

The monster in "BEM" is just the other side of the striving for order in society. It becomes more obvious where "smart-buildings" act like programmable DNA and mutate at the expense of the ability to soothe the psyche.

The psyche is the missing element of modernity. Where Yimsa is calming to the psyche in its quaint proportions and odd lighting effects, modern buildings act as efficient programs.

The reason for this is again that AI is a signpost of modernity. The heads that are attracted to AI are the standard-bearers of modern design (as with Apple.)

This is partly why I previously said the psychic intoxication of Charlotte Perriand (P179) seems more suited to retro-futurism than futurism per se. The retro trending Japan being one of her influences.

In the modern sense, the Japanese strike one as schizophrenically conservative while pursuing futuristic dreams. These retro-elements also hark back to the 60s, as this quote from Grace Slick's memoir makes clear.

As you walk onto the dance floor, you have the feeling you've just entered seven different centuries all thrown together in one room. The interior of the building is turn-of-the-century rococo, and a man in red briefs and silver body paint is handing out East India incense.  A girl in full Renaissance drag is spinning around by herself listening to some Baroque music in her head, while several people in jeans and American Indian headbands are sitting in.a circle on the floor smoking weed. (page 97).

While there is a standard "type" of modern head, those halcyon days would invoke native Indian lore in the same breath as Art Nouveau and Baroque.

The monetary system of information in resolved space (straight-lines) has the effect of using money to create convincing spaces that are prone to mini-mutations with no food for the psyche.

On a personal basis, in bygone days I frequented Aberdeen University Student Union (near Upperkirkgate), a fantastical  warren of a building in the granite city.

As one's eyes adjusted to the dark hall, lit here and there by dull pools of white-green fluorescent light, it wasn't hard to reimagine the reckless abandon and cathartic expression that the Union provided for its student body; the smell of alcohol seemed to still linger in the air, on the carpets and floorboards, consuming much of the open space at Sivel's Bar which operated in the largest, mural-covered hall.. (Our Abandoned Union, The Gaudie )

An epic rumble, with the apparent claymore, put a finish to the vaulted presincts as a den of dubious delights. The abandoned shell has been replaced by a student "Hub" of the sort that resembles a school canteen.

The logic of desire - which is food for the psyche - has been replaced by purely functional requirements.

This is the logic of the modern order that convinces the ego while ushering-in mini-mutations of monstrosity. With the psyche weakened, belief in information replaces the cosmic-oneness of a disordered state, a frayed tapestry of stars and human destiny, kismet.

Hyborian Bridge 181

 Hyborian pragmatism, or the belief in archaic fertility goddesses and obscene deities (Yaple) that validates information that gives strength to the rural economy(HB178), is the idea that goods are valued for the pragmatic purposes of trade.

Information is subservient to belief, in other words, which is a typical tribal doctrine. The modern order, in making the assumption that information is universal, arrives at the present efficient monetary order whereby balance and proportion have no intrinsic value. 

As was previously noted, economy and ecology were in past ages combined in the sense that trade-routes were occupied by pack-animals and unsanitary vessels that transported a mini-ecosystem with the goods. There was a balance between the pests and germs with the need for cleanliness.

Information has now become the belief itself (DNA or AI) and the previous picturesque state of affairs has been abolished. The acolytes of this order assume there is no need for disorder, when it is needed both ecologically and for psychic strength (desire).

Ecologically-spealing, predators need controlling and in order to do this a balance has to be achieved with sensitive species. This is so on grouse-moors where ground-nesting birds are preyed-on and require gamekeeping.

The ecological order is a bloody one that has the strength of roughness and disorder, where rotten wood is home to many species that are prey to.predators, and those to others.

Balance is the natural order, but we happen to live in the monetary order that runs the information system of resolved space (or straight-lines) that attracts the ego of acolytes.

To take the most high-flying example, Bezos in the sky (with dollars). Bezos is an aficionado of smart-machines (algorithms) that operate like reflections or copies of reality. Once Branson had been up.it seemed there was little purpose left to a copycat billionaire, but purpose and meaning are not the exercise.

All these acts may lack purpose, though Branson's design of a belly-pod accelerator in the stratosphere has some flair. Even the FAA (Fuck-All Astronauts?) seemed to think Bezos ought to have made an appropriate action in space, and clipped his buds!

Where money is running the show to such an extent, the billionaire is riding the algorithm into space without performing activities culturally appropriate to the medium.

This is where the vanishing-point of technique goes; everything is a reflection (electromagnetism), and nothing is culturally appropriate. Money is essentially manipulating resolved space, rather than the true space that is self-ordered (organic).

Naïve belief has to exist in disordered situations since these are situations of strength. No tribal or archaic belief could survive in a state of weakness (for long.)

Living in our present state of information delusion, there is an anomaly with our genetic identity to our forebears, who lived in untidy, rural and rough situations of disorder (or squalor). 

I noted the other day Liverpool lost its "Heritage" status owing to anonymous modernist constructions over the dark and doleful Mersey.

Where I am, there are two semi-subterranean Victorian edifices of unparalleled worth on the cliffside Leas that are being gradually overridden by residential monstrosities.

Our genetic identity as information represents the logical side of things only, not the balance and proportion that constitute reality. "The illogical borrows from the logical" (Corneille).

The universe may "borrow from the logical", but it is a frayed tapestry that has meaning and strength. The illusion of monetary information gives us logical differences instead of cosmic sameness.

Culturally-speaking, the modern world has a lot of minor differences (between people) but no sense of cosmic sameness (strength or meaning). Contrary to what we're generally informed, where people are different there are also more similarities in terms of psychic affinity (see W11).

I'm reminded of Corto Maltese (P125, Alternates4 currently in suspension) the fictional sailor from the colonial era of Surinam. As an adventurer, his affinities with tribes and outsiders (and gulls) are genuine and felt. One could say much the same of Tintin (in Peru, Tibet, China).

I recently picked-up Kim, having somehow escaped reading this boys' own Empire staple, and was struck by this para.

The life of the parao was very like that of the Kashmir Serai on a small scale. Kim dived into the happy Asiatic disorder which, if you only allow time, will bring you everything that a simple man needs. (page 94, Puffin)

Kim is a sahib who is brought-up Hindu and befriends a wandering Tibetal lama, and it struck me the very differences and disorder endemic in the situation create a sense of affinity, a cosmic oneness. The Afghan horsetrader here likens Kim to a colt.

'As regards that young horse,' said Mahbub, 'I say that when a colt is born to be a polo-pony, closely following the ball without teaching - when such a colt knows the game by divination - then I say it is a great wrong to break that colt to a heavy cart, Sahib!'

'So say I also, Mahbub. The colt will.be entered for polo only. (These fellows think of nothing in the world but horses, Padre). I'll see you tomorrow, Mahbub, if you've anything likely for sale.' (page 166)

If empathy (spirit) is a manifestation of disorder (strength or ecology), the modern era is clearly heading into the vanishing-point of a spiritual vacuum, as epitomised by Bezos's vacant voyage.

Not only billionaires but most politicians of the likes of Modi accentuate order at the expense of the affinity of the bazaar-type of polyglot disorder.

The entire plot of Kim concerns kismet - as well as the intrigues of war. Kismet is strongly linked to a type of naivety in belief that the lama possesses. Beliefs are personal affairs of individual psyche. 

Nor only Modi but others are social-media marketeers who sell information egregiously, where primitive religion and naïve belief are often sufficient for people to establish empathy.

There is common ground, and with commonality insults. What you get in Kim are references to mad pig-eyed sahibs or wogs. The casual use of insults reminds me of a schools playground in a way. On the other hand, ignorance of native speech or ignorance of lore are cardinal sins. 

In culturally adverse situations, the disorder and stress of the situation can adversely affect language. Language represents emotion and desire. One has to distance that situation from the logical order of programming an algorithm! (or flying a billionaire's rocket). In disordered situations the internal logic of desire rules. You could call that Howardesque or equally Kiplingesque or Mundyesque.

Colonial situations are situations where might is right but also where differences are also right. The affinity of differences is what one takes from Kim, and the sense that kismet is a real thing that exists in a state of naïve disorder.

Order cannot exist without continual mutation somewhat analogous to DNA (viruses) or the "land developers" of Gilbert Hernandez' "BEM" (P180).

Pictorial 180

A weak continuum that supports schizophrenic delusions of grandeur (from HB177) could be an apt description of "BEM", from the first issue of Love and Rockets back in 1982.

In this sequence, quasi-scientific expert Paolo P Piñata is so enamored of the monster that the two become one!

This theme goes through the story elwhich reads at times like a 70s issue of X-Men, and at times like magic realism - one of Gilbert's main influences.

It is still a riot to read, with phrases like " valid intrepidness" leaping off the page.

A weak continuum produces the need for bestial strength, the monster which detective Radium is forever chasing (BEM has in fact fooled him.by hiding within his own body!)

But, what is s weak continuum? I would assume it to be a logical order (light or technique) that assumes things have to be tidy to advance onto tomorrow.

This is really the monetary system, possibly alluded to by references to "land developers" (real estate, natch.) However, ecologically-speaking this is delusory.

If you think of an untidy garden, it could either be left by laziness or deliberately wilded so as to allow bugs and predators to revivify it (see Monty Don, prev.)

Prince Charles at Highgrove took this action by letting borders to crops on the farm grow wild (prev.) The difference between "wild" and "natural order" is zero in that where pests are allowed in is strength and fertility.

Where monstrous situations tend to flourish is actually in ordered settings of mono-agriculture where there are sewage-disposal problems. In England, sewage-treatment plants along the banks of rivers regularly release untreated waste, resulting in algal blooms that kill fish and aquatic insects.

The ego is attracted to "tidy" solutions that are essentially weak and prone to failure. "The land of logic" that is even more pernicious in the city.

As was noted in Alternates5 (rehsongcycle.com suspended till next week), the "land of logic" has a tendency to nonsense, whereas ramshackle neighborhoods have "the logic of desire". There is an internal logic associated to disorder (Corneille, prev.)

One only has to go back to the 70s to see how much more equable were city neighbourhoods which were to a large degree self-governing.

It's a type of low-level feuding in disordered situations previously alluded to (W11 and Rab Nesbit). The drama of the situation resolves the conflict; drama is required for resolution. This necessitates a rough attitude as opposed to the robotic management of modernity.

Take the 1970 Blaxploitation film " Cotton Comes to Harlem" ( by black director Ossie Davis). Two black officers aggressively restore order to the streets of Harlem almost in the face of white chiefs.

The white chief is inclined to credit the tall tales of community favorite Reverend O'Malley, while the two black officers have their ear to the nitty-gritty street. It's sexy and violent and neon-lit, with a dingy shabbiness that is fairly alluring.

Back in the 70s, the cultural and political milieu of neighborhoods was more right-on black and far less federally-managed. The allurement is cultural - with pockets of Swahili - and has the intoxication of desire - as opposed to rational order.

PAPER BAG SEQUENCE

Neighborhoods which are rough are like wilded gardens where insects lay eggs and get eaten by predators. One can't have a healthy neighborhood without some risks, be they enticement or physical violence. 

Societies manage the risks with law-enforcement, but the idea that society has to be managed is a deadly delusion of the ego. There is instead a desire for law-enforcement, a rough  hand tempered by restraint, by the fact the officers are part of the communal.pattern.

And the right-on patter. "That's police brutality", asserts the Rev when Digger knocks aside his cig. "No, brother, that's cancer prevention."

Disordered societies have an internal logic of desire; pure order only produces weakness and delusion. The choice for the future is stark. Between belief in a monetary order of "facts" and gadgets for weaklings; or ease-of-access to places of power that soothe the psyche.

Instead of dismal, authoritarian sameness, differences can get on in similar situations (see Black Mama, White Mama, prev.). The situation is cosmically the same for everyone. The cosmos is rough and textured, a frayed tapestry and not a literal reflection.

The Hudson Bay forms a backdrop to the film, a moodiness that frames neon-candles that glimmer in the starlight. 

BILLY JOEL

On a side-note, the turmoil in South Africa speaks of the deactivated vitality of the suburbs under the authorities of the city. Activating the agrarian is something that could expand white-owned farm-holdings by uptraining suburban blacks into agrarian pursuits of economic worth. The Chinese psycho-blasters are waiting in the wings to complete the monetary stranglehold.

Pictorial 179

One good way to explicate a situation that is not logical and light-bound is to take a physical example of such, in this case Charlotte Perriand's Les Arcs ski resort, often perceived as futurist and brutalist.

These are just words, though, so it's worth going back in time - actually right back to the Roman Emperor Trajan! For a start, the Les Arcs villages are cantilevered from the slope of the mountain.

This style of rugged engineering against rockface was practiced in the Danube way and crossing described in

HB2

Perriand's goal was in overridingly functional design that has much in common with Roman forebears.

The buildings are offset on a slope so that each tier catches the sun. Ornamentation - both exterior and interior - is kept to s minimum as the principle is to allow the landscape to speak with its own voice.

The effect is to be almost precisely mechanical in much the same way Roman aqueducts were - or even the skeleton of an animal.

In a way, she designed it from.the inside with the view of enabling an equal view of the mountain, in egalitarian fashion.

This also puts one in mind of medieval castles, which are built mechanically to be brutally functional and with egalitarian spaces (for those in favour with the Lord, obviously.)

Because these types of mechanical buildings utilize the strength of the landscape, they have common features.

For a start, there is a natural sense of well-being, a boost to the psyche from.the feeling that the building is at one with the landscape, rooted or almost merged or emerging from it (within it.)

The power of the mountain is both physical, and affects the psyche. The way I want to put this is that the foundation of things is illogical. A mountain is an irrational force of nature (like the Danube or a castle on a crag.)

Through the genius of her design, Perriand uses trees and slopes - and also snow on roofs - as a type of camouflage so that the buildings can appear to disappear.

Trees in forest create shade, so one way you could put it is that the villages are designed half in shade and half in sunlight.

When.buildings are designed with natural forces in mind they have the internal logic of the irrational in their actual construction.

The American Frank Lloyd Wright designed in that type of way to forge elemental buildings over water and through trees (PS there's also a Japanese connection in that Perriand lived and worked there.)

A landscape tends to be composed of light and dark forces; a forest is dark, water is dark - or can also be reflective light - crags are moulded by shadow.

In nature this is highly obvious since there are very few straight lines and therefore there is a continual gradation in tone. Trees absorb light through photosynthesis and so actually create shade (foliage.)

All this is obvious enough, but the fact that sunlight is continually being destroyed in the natural course of events doesn't seem.to occur to our modern Utopia of electromagnetic advance!

The fact is we live in a logical world of straight lines and light, as opposed to an irrational one of curvilinear shapes and shade. Diana the huntress is only ever going to be a force in this irrational kingdom 

In ancient days, buildings could be hidden by forest or natural formations because of the dominance of nature. Light is only half of the story; the other is the absence of light.

It's because we live in a logical world (of light) that that fact is consistentlt overlooked. A world of pure light could not have spinning objects such as Earth which is half in darkness (night, moon.)

The irrational tends to come less from building per se as from.letting things happen in inspirational ways.

As was noted back in Alternates5), the city of O'Henry was irrational but with its own internal logic. Desires are enabled to breath; drama is in the air.

This world is not thousands of years old but only goes back to the 40s, 50s, 60s. Inspiration comes from natural formations in the Art Deco skyscrapers of the 30s.

The foundations of nature are irrational, whereas the foundations of modernity are rational. It's more true really to see Perriand as a retro-futurist with one foot in the past. To her a mountain was physical and mental exhilaration, and her desire was to retain both.

In the modern order, both the physical strength of nature, and the psyche that makes people feel good are lost in the equation of real estate and the Almighty Dollar (be it Biden or his predecessor.)

Hyborian Bridge 180

 The neoplatonic 9th century monk Dun Scotus's doctrine of hylomorphism - which he called haecceinty - was a medieval anticipation of the Aristotelian Aquinas's materia signata quantitate.

This makes it clear enough that the medieval mind had an interest in the material knowledge of things -as had the Greeks - and only lacked the "facts" of quantum theory.

Haecceinty is analogous to Heidegger's "thingness", which is itself a move away from the material-minded Enlightenment! 

The implication is that the facts of a material universe may not satisfy the cravings of will and destiny. Thingness can be related to a cosmos of psyche, whereas matter can't.

The pursuit of matter since Galileo has done without psyche in the pursuit of "reality", or the universe seen through the lens of a perspective vision (P56).

The real problem with this approach is that facts can be a type of nothingness, as one continually approaches the vanishing-point of technique (sun, Apollo, ego P178).

One seems to enter a mathematical universe where coffee and haircuts are the order of the day, and nothing happens (no action.)

Action is the missing quality in this universe of facts in that we on Earth are spinning through the void and experiencing the seasons and fertility. In other words, fact is not a priori but fertility is.

Fertility is the tantalizing spinning of the Chinese Dragon, a story popularized by Lao Tzu in the classical era. Instead of logic, fertility proposes strength. Instead of information derived from a perspective system (of lenses P56), information is valued and verified by belief in strength.

This is a very tribal notion, and is mirrored in the ancient Greek dichotomy of Dionysus and Apollo.

A universe of action has pace so therefore one's view of the universe is seen through the medium of pace - the stars at night.

The patterns in the night sky are allusions to the stories told by the ancients. Stories are allusive and not factual.

The simplicity of this is alluring in that it represents the view of the general - as opposed to the particular of inductive reason (from Newton.) Well-being and rigour are dynamic and self-governing in this primeval situation (and setting.)

However, as noted in P178, techniques are convincing and produce results in resolved space (electromagnetic gadgets such as drills, information such as DNA).

Yes, but a belief in fact negates both pace and the allusive (or literary) meaning of the cosmos. Human beings could live to be older in a negative-zone of pure fact.

This could be the mistake of a material universe, in the sense that matter is an illusion. The truth is proportionate, and soothes the psyche with ease of access to places of power.

The poetic vision of the universe cannot have technical certainty, which is an illusion, but has the strength of belief in dynamic fertility.

The Hyborian cults - as described by Yaple, prev - are gross and curious - and that is their strength. A world of infinite facts invites the ego to a mirror of nothingness, where sameness replaces the vitality of difference.

A world of differences exists like a type of low-level feuding (see W11) which mirrors the vitality of nature in-the-field. Problems are solved through the drama of the situation. The rewards are the harvest and the open range.

These rugged aspects of healthy living are negated by a society of information in an illusory world of sameness. The problem with these information-theories is that they will.inevitability produce sameness instead of the vitality of difference. The theories attract the ego of acolytes so that the system is inevitably run by acolytes.

This makes a nonsense of race theories advanced by academics! The real problem is that the theories imply a certain type of head is needed to run society. The same type that runs Silicon Valley, natch.

In fact, differences are strong and produce strong societies. Psychic sureness as opposed to weakness of psychic indecision and delusion.

Pictorial 178 (IN PROGRESS)

 As "Crusty Curmudgeon" I seemingly represent a primeval variant of the original, CC Beck, who wrote the original "Vanishing Point" for Astonished Science (1959).

In the story, the inventor of the machine is trying to figure out whether the scientists are right - that reality is unapproachable - or the artists. He switches it on and a tiny tesseract appears.

"Who was right?" asks the narrator, noting his shock.

"The artists! It's all a fabric of illusion we've created ourselves.."

It's a good gag, but is it conceivable the modern world is in reality an illusion, one that is ultra-convincing to the senses - if nor the psyche?

I approached this topic back in C6, noting that Newton's inductive universe of the particular (experiment) negates a universe of the general (proportions). The trees, the stars, the moon and sun are part of the proportionate universe, but not of the experimental universe that creates an illusory (parallel) world.

This illusory universe of straight-lines and perspective is always approaching the vanishing point of technique. The way this was visualised in P43 was through a camera attached to a speeding motorcycle.

It's easy to see that a speeding object always approaches the vanishing point when it is in perspective space (of straight lines). To see where this argument is going, consider that Musk is building a Tesla giga-plant in Berlin-Brandenburg.

He excitedly proclaimed he wanted a "rave café under the giga-floor". People can drink coffee at breaks to choreographed sequences of ambient noise of " mucho mocha".

Musk inhabits the inductive universe of experiment where the prize is a psyche of empty excess. Coincidentally, Brandenburg was where JS Bach composed  his legendary concertos (3&5), at the time (and still.largely) a physical milieu of pine and church spires.

Slower pace and genteel proportions are signs of the dream of the universe, where technique is mellowed by psychic emanations from pine and church spire.

As has previously been noted, woodland breaks-up light so that straight-line perspective (resolved space) becomes entangled in the proportions of trees.

Resolved space (light) becomes more convincing the less it is broken-up; less fertile, less rustic, more hygienic, more electromagnetic.

The tesseract could represent a convincing geometry (to the ego) that has no relation to reality. In a likewise way, Relativity is the gateway to a geometrical world (Minkowski) that is read by electromagnetic monitors (CERN).

The hermetic pseudo-space is electromagnetic order (light). Disorder happens when light is destroyed by trees and one is in the world of a leaf-dappled forest.

Destruction creates order through the strength of the eternal flame of renewal. Flaming leaves fall to the ground (see The Sterile Cuckoo, prev) and Diana the huntress lopes over the springy turf.

Materials flame with an inner radiance; the tints of stained glass, or of flesh in candlelight. The red of flesh, or the green of leaves, the azure tints of stained glass falling on icons. The elusive area where the physical reacts with the psyche; physical colour that has psychic meaning.

The Tesla plant may be renewable, but it is not green. Light is an illusion whithout the destruction that presages renewal. The entire area of the strong underworld of decay and regeneration is missing; the Noto-esque female blood that mixes with roots and dirt. The Eleusian mysteries of the rise of Persephone from Pluto's dark domain to greet her mother, Demeter of the harvest.

What is this but the subtle simplicity of the rotation of Earth; the physical realism of the cosmos? The physical substance of Earth - the carbon-cycles of land and sea - are born of simple repetition that gives music to the cosmos.

The pace of place that lends story to the art of living; a psychic demeanor of fortitude. Instead, Musk gives us the illusion of perfection through the vanishing point of technique, which is just another name for the Almighty Dollar.

 We are approaching the vanishing point (of technique) from the fact that a giga-plant is ultra-convincing to the ego of acolytes.

The monetary system runs the information system through the spokespeople for electromagnetism. Loudness (Trumpet) replaces the silent meandering places; the springy turf that supports myriad roots and the loping feet of Diana of the moon.

In a world where information is a belief, there is no belief in strength and therefore the fertility that arises from strength. The electromagnetic cosmos is the information cosmos - radio-telescopes of the dumbverse - without story; the technical cosmos without balance or proportion.

As has also been noted, modern techniques work, whereas in Bach's day he had a bodged operation on his eyes that may have contributed to his death. In those days they pulled teeth, now we use antibiotics.

Yes, but dodgy eyesight and toothache have to be set against a world where information is a belief (DNA, see prev) and all movement is in resolved space.

Empirical reason suspends belief in dirt and cleanliness, which is physical well-being. Belief is a psychic phenomenon, and reflects the fertility of the Earth which is strong and pure. A compost-heap is sweet-smelling and pathogen-killing. Ancient beliefs - whether Hyborian-cults or medieval-Christian - reflect an empirical tradition whereby information that is strong is valued and verified by custom.

The physique is strong and inhabits a world of decadence and revival. The gaiety of peasant song. Brandenburg is the gateway to the old world of proportionate strength and gaiety, where resolved space is broken-up by steeple and steep pined slopes.

Likewise, the flame of flesh and psyche are seen in candlelight; blood and spirit.

"You walk into the early Italian section of the National Gallery, where you see fragments of art that have been sawed off, cut out and stuck up in a white room. That's not what they were painted for. You walked into an Italian church, and there at the end, lit by the glimmer of candles, was the gold shimmering, the Virgin Mary.. The image is what counts, not the artist. (Joe Tilson, DT)

If everything is nothing it can come across as sameness, as we approach the vanishing point of technique in resolved space. There is a scene in Tarkovsky's Solaris of an extended car journey where it is forever approaching the vanishing point through flyovers and tunnels, possibly as a counteraction to the bloody female psyche of the living planet of the title.

Blood, flesh, flame, decadence and revival and a simple compost-heap are the counteraction to the conviction of an electromagnetic universe of information in resolved space.

Hyborian Bridge 179

 Midnight winds are landing

at the end of time

a true story will be mine

"Evening of Light"

 Nico's funereal ditties prompt thought of fertility deities. As was said of Hyborian trade (HB 177,178), the pragmatic exchange of goods is underlaid by primal beliefs in agricultural entities such as Ishtar, the mother goddess of revival (Yaple, prev.)

Pragmatic exchange is not a monetary system - which is a belief of egotists - but a facility for beliefs to interact. Stygian beliefs may be abhorrent to most Hyborian kingdoms; that's irrelevant to the pursuit of profitable trading.

Beliefs are strength, even though they may be abhorrent - the bloated and sacrificial Pteor of Shem. The strength comes from blood and sacrifice; the primal physical reality.

Without fertility there can be no hunting or fishing. The boisterous agricultural psyche of peasants is the mark of Dionysian gaiety, not Apollonian order.

Strength of psyche is a primordial quality that that affects human behavior at every level (see prev on comparison of Tchaikovsky's Pathetique to a modern piece).

Classical music is a technical exercise ), but without the strength of psyche one of empty excess. This lesson comes from primordial depths, both physical and of the soul.

HP Lovecraft's Shadow Over Innsmouth is an ichthyic journey of a tortured family history set in a fantasy fishing port of Massachusetts. The rewards of happy hunting - or fine fishing - comes at the cost of a human soul.

But, perhaps the ichthyic soul is good in its own way? Who knows, and that is the journey. It is born of slaughter, which is strength in-the-field, or sea.

With slaughter comes revival (see Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, prev.) With revival comes the boisterous psyche of fishermen and lobster-boats. 

Where I live, incidentally, there is a "creative quarter" which is built over a harbour district. Where there used to be a fine fresco of a giant lobster and assorted crabs and shells is now a district of typical straight-lines (C6).

That's not only by-the-way but also pertinent, in that the symbols of trade of s port town have been eclipsed.

Meaning has been eclipsed by coffee and haircuts; the global sameness. If Lovecraft's story conjures-up atavistic visions, our age is vanishing into electromagnetic delusions (straight lines, logic, order, ego.) The ego is nothing without psychic strength and blood.

We live in the age of the sofa, artefact for the deluded ego, not the chaise longue, artefact for the reclining form. One has to go back to about 1930 and le Corbusier's collaborator, Charlotte Perriand. Like Corbu, she was a futurist, but she  liked to design in a traditional way, using national materials.

Her chaise longue basculant is one example; she took this to Japan and made use of machined bamboo. She intended to inspire Japanese vernacular tradition with creative energy, to embolden not demolish.

Bamboo and vernacular tradition clearly rely on the fertility of natural products. There is also a certain sense in which the vernacular houses in "The Wool-sack" (prev) - set in the English Cotswolds in the 15th century - have futuristic leanings.

Because without strong traditions of a vernacular world there is no future (the Malay House, or Brazilian jungle dwellings). Just an electromagnetic illusion of the ego of the likes of Bolsaro that is attracted to illusory products such as iphones and Teslas and rockets to Mars.

They may well.work (through AI), while the human psyche degrades to the level of a "realistic" Banksy.

As 60s pop-art pioneer Joe Tilson says,

That's very transient art..it will.disappear without a trace. (DT)

Tilson is a study in fertile use of line, shape, colour and the musical word-world of James Joyce (or Eric Gill for that matter.) A fitting choice to design a new window at Rosslyn chapel, set in the heathen heather of the Scottish highlands.

Hyborian Bridge 178 (definitions)

 Hyborian pragmatism refers to trade that is not tidy and logical but is carried by pack-animals with an "ecosystem" of pests and germs. The pragmatic emphasis is on balance as opposed to hygiene; the picturesque physical situation is good for the health and the psyche.

Medieval or Hyborian trade-routes create strength through physical untidiness. By contrast, all information-systems are hygienic, which is a form of weakness.

The monetary system was created by the maritime powers by way of imposing import tarrifs, and was what Adam Smith called "Mercantilism". This has to be distinguished from profiteering Venetian mariners of the golden age.

The Venetian traders were travelling in ships round the Mediterranean; the body is active in-the-field. Monetarism is a creation of the head that imposes a logical order on events.

One counter-example is typical. The Romans imposed a 1% across-the-board levey on goods as the cost of running the empire. This increased to 3% in times of war.

Such piffling amounts are not monetary, they are purely pragmatic even if unloved by the Picts! Monetarism exists in the modern linguistic trap of information that attracts the ego of acolytes (of logic and order, or electromagnetic information).

One extreme example is microfinance, started by Yunus in Bangladesh, which imposed 23% for microloans to small farmers. Unsurprisingly, loan-sharks got involved and Yunus was eventually arrested!

In a more mainstream sense, a monetary order is the means whereby a logical system is produced or engineered. Modern scientists are monetary-engineers; they produce and engineer logical systems (whether DNA or robots). They have no interest in the disorder and robust health seen in-the-field (dirt and germs.)

Modern economies are generally said to tend either to Milton Friedman - create money - or to Maynard Keynes - create demand (for goods). However, if the goods are monetary-goods, the difference is mainly theoretical only.

We are going to be living in a smart-energy environment (the Amazon House), which means an information-environment, which means a logical order of the head and of s monetary order.

We are not going to be living in a "harvest-economy" of powerful deities of fertility!

Hunting and blood and pragmatic design are topics to come.

Hyborian Bridge 177

 Bringing together some of the previous stuff on the monetary universe of "facts" - or logical differences - versus the oneness of cosmos, might be a way of approaching Hyborian pragmatism.

If we live in a type of linguistic trap of information, this applies equally to DNA or AI. Both are a type of tidiness for tidy minds; pure ego as opposed to the robust strength of the active body (in-the-field.)

A body that is active in-the-field is by definition in contact with germs and a disordered environment, which strengthens the immune-system. In our present condition, human immune-systems are not only weak, they are being given gene-based treatments such as the covid vaccines, which are subject to random mutations (variant strains.)

The reason is probably that information-based systems are easier to run logically (by AI) and so attract the ego of acolytes. These guys are true believers, not nefarious per se.

However, the universal tidiness has an anal quality that was earlier personified in Blake's print of Newton (P83). Nature is not that tidy, and can be squalid and disordered as a sign of physical strength and renewal.

Filth is associated with health, as the physical universe is associated with the psyche. In medieval as in Hyboria the emphasis is on balance. A medieval or Hyborian trade-route carries with it an ecosystem in the pack-animals, their pests and germs (see HB108).

In a way, information-based systems are the opposite of germs because one is hygienic and the other is not! All information-systems are hygienic, whether it's CERN or a hospital ward. On the other hand, germs strengthen us so that we don't require information-based treatments in the first case.

The old order up to what is called the monetary order of Western expansion was always somewhat squalid (see eg Monty Python and the Holy Grail). The monetary order gradually developed a stranglehold through methods such as levies on imports by the maritime powers.

Adam.Smith called this "Mercantilism"; the profiteering merchants of previous eras such as Venetian were therefore not by his definition Mercantilist.

What I mean is that a monetary system takes no account of the ecology of any system. Before there was a monetary order, ecology and economy were together in the trade-routes consisting of pack-animals, or of ships at sea with rodents and unsanitary conditions (HB108).

A monetary system replaces any type of natural disorder - pests, germs or squalor - with money.

A monetary system is pure order, meaning that the logic of economy replaces the illogic of ecology. This is very attractive to the ego of acolytes. As previously noted, the end-product is the vanishing point of technique (or AI, ones and zeros.)

Basically, oneness or harmony of the cosmos is not a numerical subject, it's a case of balance between order and disorder. Squalor or pests or germs are good if they are balanced with cleanliness and robust rituals of good living (see prev on Monty Don).

The universe is clearly ecological as opposed to economic; that's not to say money had no pragmatic use for the exchange of goods. Pragmatic trade cannot become a religion! (money has no intrinsic value beyond the symbol of exchange.)

This point was made of Hyborian trade, where Stygian beliefs underlaid their purely pragmatic ventures in profitable exchange. The two shouldn't be confused; Stygian beliefs may be repellent to most Hyborian kingdoms, but that doesn't prevent the exchange of valuable goods.

The modern scene is confused in that true believers are monetary theorists! Belief has to be a matter of fertility and the rustic dance of life and death. Anything else is an illusion of the ego (within the mirror of illusions.)

EVENING OF LIGHT

"Midnight winds are landing

at the end of time

a true story wants to be mine"

The Germanic Nico's funereal ditties from 1969's The Marble Index (with the Velvet Underground) seem to reek of primal slaughter. Not necessarily Vikings and Visigoths. I'm thinking more of the slaughtered boar and deer from Sir Gawain and the Green  Knight (prev.)

Women as the harbingers of fate and a warrior's destiny are archetypal symbols. There is Valeria's phrase, "Do you want to live forever?" and resurrection in Milius's Conan (1982).

Howard brought aboard a Nordic choosers of the slain to the Celtic god Bori in The Grey God Passes (Conan #3). Whether the slain or carriers of the slain, the theme is blood and the growth and fertility that results. Beauty and death in Maeterlinck's sense (Pelleas and Melisande).

The Irish myth of Deirdre of the sorrows carries a like resonance. Prophesied from birth to be s beauty allied to bloodshed, Deirdre grows-up in with Naoise, a handsome hunter, but king Conchobar hears of her. He forces marriage upon her, then spurns her and she dashes her head our on rocks.

There is a boisterous physicality that one could align with tribal lore. With slaughter and fertility, revival is never far away. Blood and revival are the physical attributes represented by the Hindu Kali that a logical monetary order can never attain to since it involves disorder, and from the disorder renewal, a cosmic balance of archetypes.

With the physical revival is associated a boisterousness of psyche. The Dionysian gaiety of agricultural deities; the resurrection of Osiris, the hero Horus (see Bilal's The Nikopol Trilogy, prev.)

As in Hyborian lore, such physical revival inspires the psyche with belief in Ishtar, the mother goddess of revival (see Yaple, prev.) As was stated in HB140, tribes credit information that accords with their beliefs.

The empirical tradition (of the shaman as well as the farmer/herbalist), reflects an unthinking cosmos of poetic vistas that inspires Man in active pursuits in nature.

With empiricism comes bodily rituals; anointing with oils, athletic games, bathing and mineral springs (HB2).

As with Liza Minnelli's shapeshifting dance of the mirrors in HB175, rude, lusty animal movements convince by their exuberance of rhythm and grace (irresolvable space of balance and proportion that is captured by reptilian mirrors - the cold-light of logic).

Red Sonja #1

The psychic luster of Dionysian pleasure-pursuits rides over the physical strength of a Noto-esque underworld that supports floral growth ("Red Lace" prev, with carnivorous bloodsucking plants.)

The two are inseparable, as was the case in the Grecian rise of Persephone every spring (the Eleusian mysteries, prev.)

The old world of empirical tradition (prev Mosaic Law) is the fertile one of dirt and cleanliness. By contnrast, the world of empirical reason we currently inhabit is a hygienic one of monetary illusions that the ego of acolytes views through the mirror of illusions (electromagnetism, straight lines, ones and zeros.)

The ultimate destination is the sterility of irradiated space navigated by the AI beloved of billionaires (resolved space, natch.)

This hermetic pseudo-space of electromagnetic order (light) invites schizophrenic delusions of grandeur, which a false psyche is prone to. A weak continuum produces the need for bestial strength, possibly a reason for the current superheroic explosion (see P180, next.)

Hyborian Bridge 176

 Gaiety is in the spirit of revival that springs from blood and slaughter. Clair Noto's tales of Red Sonja ("Red Lace", prev) go into the underworld where the power of blood is represented by the titanic rocs that fly high and are shot down by strong-armed Narca of Khitai, to feed the cycle of death and revival.

Like the Eleusian mysteries (or those of Samothrace, HB175), the only mystery is that of life and death. Mysteries occur in darkness; mere existence is no mystery, and takes place in the presence of the light-equation (ego).

Mysteries establish meaning (epistemology) and power (ontology) by way of destiny and death (eschatology). While light-equations establish the facts of our complex monetary world, the mysteries establish the simplicity of agricultural rituals that worship the rise of Persephone (spring) from the underworld.

All things must feed, and death becomes part of life, and the mystery is in this cycle. Thevl Earth spins and we have day and night; the seasons go round the sun; the eternal balance is the call of destiny.

Realism is in a state of balance if one values grace and timing on actions. In that sense, monetary rules have no value, and money itself has no intrinsic value. The natural.liberty of exchanging goods (Adam Smith) is not a monetary order (see HB6 on the Royal Exchange in Tudor times.)

We live in a world where the routines ofa monetary order have become the only value (which is valueless); where order has no taken-over from freedom and words lose meaning (similarly, the NRA touts freedom as a type of militia order!)

Routines never have value because value is always a product of both order and disorder; of theme and variation.

In order to understand nature one must experience its lightness and grace. Poetry is a means of doing this; the story and the sense are both found in the sounds and rhymes.

This mellifluousness is apparent in the ancient text of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (C3). The Green Knight is a manifestation of nature whose flesh and blood cruelty Gawain must make a pact with. Gawain's trust and purity are tested.

The tale is told as a sort of tension of opposites, with the courtly scenes interspersed with slaughtered deer; bawdy badinage and innuendo with knighly combat.

First he hacks off its head and hoists it aloft,

then roughly rives it right along the spine;

he gouges out the guts and grills them.over coals,

and blended with bread they are titbits for the bloodhounds.

Next he fetches out the fillets of glimmering flesh

and retrieves the intestines in time-honourwd style,

then the two sides are stitched together intact

and proudly displayed on a strong pole.

So with the swine swinging.they stagger home,

bearing the boar's head before that huntsman

who fought with his fists in the ford till the beast was slain.

The day dragged, it seemed,

before he found Gawain,

who comes when called, most keen

to countenance the claim. (page 75)

In a world of order, sameness is the order of the day. However, in a world of differences, conflicts are resolved through the drama of the situation (see prev.)

The light-equation only allows for a certain type of head, one which approaches the vanishing point of technique (AI or monetary number).

This attracts the ego of guys like Balsonaro (HB175), while extinguishing the gaiety of dark revival. Blood itself is in the balance. Argentine leader Alberto Fernandez

said Octavio Paz, the Mexican poet, wrote that 'Mexicans came from the Indians, Brazilians from.the jungle, but we Argentines came from boats, and they were boats that came from there, from Europe. And that is how we built our society. (DT)

Fernandez "apologized", but it's obvious he meant to imply the European type of head was more suitable. What he really meant was the type of head that runs Silicon Valley, which is the one that worships AI.

Jaime Hernandez (Ghost of Hoppers, prev) grappled with the idea of white America versus dusky Mexico with a more honest sensibility (see also The Plumed Serpent, prev). White in the modern world tends to mean a certain type of head that is ordered, routine, monetary and therefore that approaches the vanishing-point of technique (AI).

One can see that easily with China, which tends to replace all different cultures with a cyber-sameness. I mean the communist-state, not the Chinese as a race (or various races of Cantonese, Manchu, Han).

The ego is attracted to certainty and, at the same time, balance and disorder are left out of the equation. The equation of light (straight-lines, electromagnetism, Minkowski geometry, the illusion of number, reflections of reflections). The sorcery of Jirel Meets Magic where all reflections are real, and all reality is reflections.

Hyborian Bridge 175

 In a drive for simplicity, some pictures that are related to the realism that goes beyond words and facts.

Smith's print is somewhat mysterious, not least because the lore of the priests and priestesses of Samothrace (notably in Talbot Mundy's Tros) has been lost to the ages.

Our own mystery in the modern era has to do with light (electromagnetism), so I choose that interpretation. The book is burning, representing the mystery of fire.

Many may not be aware that long-living Vesta matches were invented by Newton, and named after the eternal flame of Rome. My interpretation starts with the observation that flame is not fire.

Fire is an abstract concept that is represented by the sun and is, technically-speaking, electromagnetism. A flame, by contrast, has psyche, moral and physical attributes.

The galleries and chambers were illuminated by artificial light. Globes of cold white fire hovered motionless in midair near the ceilings of the rooms.. The Valkarthan could not guess how this strange art was accomplished; neither could he imagine how they were hung motionless in the air; nevertheless, they were there, and provided uncanny light that did not flicker nor burn low. (Thongor in the City of Magicians, Lin Carter, page 99.) The city resembles Howard's reptilian Khemi but with a more direct science-sorcerer parallel.

The main reason for this is that the flame consumes matter. In the case of the Roman Vesta, it may have consumed wax or possibly pig fat (lard) in a drum. The process is fairly simple in that fat (COOH) is metamorphosed into CO2 and H2O, using oxygen (O2) from air.

Meanwhile, a log fire burns carbon to produce charcoal. As was described previously in The Northern Shaman, staring into a log fire's flickering, sinuous flames prompts ruminations of the human.psyche.

A fire in those far-off days (circa 15,000 BC) thus had a moral significance in the flame of wisdom. When one speaks of fire in ancient days, one tends to mean flame, which is how it was perceived.

If flame is a physical metamorphosis, what is fire by contradistinction? According to Newton it is light, and light is reflection in the mirror of illusions (inductive reason). The mirror of illusions is geometrical-space, which is where we are today (numbers and algorithms). 

In other words, since Newton fire has become the logic of mathematics. In previous eras, fire was flame with psyche, moral and physical powers (Vestal).

The modern order is extremely convincing in terms of words and facts, but what it doesn't have is the eternally balancing flame that swirls with living tongues. One can observe these light-effects in candlelit vistas.

Afghan schoolchildren in mosque

The cold-light of western education is an.illusion that does not have the realism of physical lighting - by tapers or wax.

Stories told round a fire can be playful lies, and have psyche and moral truths (that instruct children).

Flames, with their intricate whirls, prompt a niche for narrative, an intricate balance of embers that reflects the cosmos.

The cosmos has a type of curvilinear sameness that is strong and fertile and allows differences. Western education, by contradistinction, occupies a universe of fact (inductive reason) where everything becomes the same.

What I really mean is the swirling nature of the reality where kids in Iran or Afghanistan or Pakistan are educated is a big part of their education (see Addis Ababa, P173).

Things seen under the bright stars or by candlelight are psychically secure; the psyche is part of the physical reality. The fact that the milieux can.be somewhat squalid and nor entirely hygienic is  also to advantage.

Modern education is a type of tidiness that occupies tidy minds; it's an.illusion of the mirror. Asfa Yemiru, of Addis Ababa, taught the 3 "Rs", plus the pragmatic skills of farming. By contrast, Malala studied P,P and E at Oxford, which is what prospective politicians do!

It's philosophy, politics and economics, or the cold-light of reason. The cold-light does not include a psychic vista that is associated to physical reality (pigs and hens and camels amid the stars above.)

I mean, teachers do their best but they are up against a straight-line order that paves-over anything haphazard that impinges positively on the flaming psyche (see rustic harmony and grace in-thr-field, HB205).

As Liza Minnelli says of Charles Aznavour, his songs are stories with a beginning, middle and end. Fire has heat but flame has passion.

Minnelli is the complete performer whose flame has ceremonial timing and flashes of exuberance

STEPPING OUT (sequence where Liza becomes Lizard)

The cosmic-balance is reflected in a flame that curls and blossoms. Human culture is a development from natural strength and the fertile substance (wax, wood).

In antique days, these would be harvested from places of power, in ceremonies of Dionysian passion. Empirical tradition in antique societies is related to places of power where things grow and are harvested.

Man's labours in the field and wood instigate empirical traditions of dirt and cleanliness. An active society is by necessity psychically and physically balanced.

This meaning is really the opposite to the cold-light of induction, or empirical reason. The one convinces the head (ego of reptilian acolytes), while the other convinces by timing and execution.

Watching Minnelli, you're totally convinced by her moves, and in the seductive realism of the flame. Ancient rituals flame with passion and ceremonial timing.

?

The stories and myths of the ancient world are the product of ceremonial timing and balance; the graceful actions of the body (Salome, Helene of Rome, the swordwoman socialite in Tros), versus the inert ego that is convinced by "facts" of an illusory reality (geometry, numbers).

Realism to the citizens of flame was the perpetual balance of the human psyche. To the citizen of fire, there is neither a psychic nor a physical reality.

Instead, acolytes of sorcerers create the space for an imagined reality. This is the geometrical world of electromagnetism and relativity (Minkowski, CERN prev.)

Their pursuit of mathematical nothingness is a game of the ego that has no unthinking realism of the places of power on Earth, where fertility and strength exist.

If a flame is physical balance, the Noto-esque underworld (Red Sonja, prev) is the eternal realism that stores carbon and decayed matter (see carbon- cycle, prev) in the land and seas and lakes.

Realism is not necessarily visible, but it has psyche and moral strength as well as a physical reality that the likes of Baloroso cannot sustain.

"The Bolsonaro government is trying to legalise the exploitation of the Amazon at all costs, causing irreparable damage to our land, people and life on this planet," said Alberto Terena, of the Articulation of Indigenous People in Brazil activist group.(DT)

"To find a connection to the universe, hold onto one of your favorite rocks." (Britney Spears)

Pictorial 177

 'Would it work logically to say there are 2 universes: one has a geometry that is related to geometry of light, the other doesn't? The 2 universes are split and are not consistent one with the other.'

I put this to Vincent of UVS with the understanding that it is a very ancient proposition, a Manichean battle for supremacy.

There is an underlying presumption of mathematical science that there is one universe and that it is technical. This quote is from Thongor in the City of Magicians by Lin Carter.

(The wizard's) voice rang out, thrilling with cold fanaticism, but Thongor's lips twisted in a grimace of disgust.

"The mind lives, the body dies," he growled. "And tell me, Druid-what of the soul?"

Cold mockery gleamed from the green eyes.." In all.our anatomical researches, I fear we have not discovered the seat of that elusive component. "

The basic assumption of sorcery or scientism is that the universe is capable of understanding by rational principles. However, as pointed out back on HB95, there is another view that opposites such as order and freedom cannot be reconciled.

They are balanced, and there exist on Earth primitive places of power. There is an empirical traditional of dirt and cleanliness that sanctifies the strength of the earth in fertility rites.

Bathing rituals often take place in mineral-rich sites that exemplify the restorative power of the Earth (HB2).

Balance produces strength; it is not a product of a rational universe of mathematical particles. That universe is Apollo; an illusory reality of order that does without the unthinking or Dionysus.

Unthinking development is a primitive act of naturalism that organized thought attempts to quell. The creative-unconscious of the unthinking cosmos.

A world of order (the mirror of illusion) reads the hymn-book of profit motive that weakens the ambience of unthinking realism in the silent biers and flowers of the country.

If that world of strength is a product of primordial balance, it is not also a product of geometric order. The sorcerers and scientists - from Newton on - are convinced by the geometry of light (the mirror of infinite reflections where differences become sameness) into entering a mathematical space.

In Relativity, that is Minkowski space. It is a convincing illusion that enables the mathematical reality - of the geometry of light - to become universal.

In fact, it is the unthinking reality that is universal, in that it produces strength and fertility, dirt and cleanliness, rituals of the places of power on Earth.

Without balance, our psyche, moral and physical powers are weakened, corrupted by the words of order and comfort from acolytes of a mathematical illusion.