Hyborian Bridge 68

The naïve universe is two-sided. On the one side there are heroic monuments of renown. On the other human-as-animal frequenting ale-houses and meandering quadrants pungent in all senses of the word.

Red Sonja #7

Mel Gibson’s Apokalypto gets the balance quite well, with the clueless peasants meandering around the jungle until they find themselves, by some cosmic jest, the sacrificial pawns of the great urban monument to Aztec power. The film ends with the arrival of a Spanish galleon bringing with it, of course, the Christianity which was to exert an equally bloody conquest/conversion. The great monuments of Mexican and Andean civilization could be described as “an enigma wrapped in a mystery,” which was actually what Time said about Carlos Castaneda (of Don Juan) in 1973.

Of himself, Castaneda said,

To ask me to verify my life by giving you my statistics.. is like using science to verify sorcery.

Such deliberate mystification could be justifiable if science is itself sorcery; in this case a sorcery of convincing illusions (sun, reflection, perspective) that relate to the head (not the body).

Castaneda’s quote reminds one of Grace Slick’s remark on the compulsions (of the factual head) for numerical verification in Hyborian Bridge 62/1 . By being more relaxed and less obsessively verifiable, the picture painted by Castaneda (of Don Juan) is more like an animal-shaman dance, and less like a strictly factual field study.

Again, as fellow anthropologist David Silverman says,

Field research.. views the culture through a lens.

The lens in this case is the human head that deals in verifiable fact. But peyote (the plant used by Don Juan for animal trips) is a psychoactive compound that changes perceptions.

In a dance, a Nagual can mimic and psychically “become” an animal form. To what extent are the psyche and physical linked? He may perceive himself to be an animal in his altered state of perception.

You could say that is a state of fantasy; another way to put it is a world of fact is another type of illusion, an illusion of perspective, one that convinces the head.

The Nagual who psychically becomes an animal physically identifies with the animal. The universe they are in is not part of the head but of the physique. This universe is the naive one of physical proportions. Moon, sun; Earth, stars (constellations, figures in the sky.)

Yes, but physical proportions are just what we see; facts are the lens that  is applied to a culture such as the Yaqui Indians (of Don Juan, who was a descendent of Toltecs, the pre-Columbian civilization.) What is missing is the dance, the primeval rhythms that are actually what we see (on Earth or in the heavens, constellations).

The primal or naïve reality is what the modern world through its facts and its Siri phones can no longer apprehend. The one where physical proportions are observed and have identity in the natural forms that used to surround Man’s habitations (Tros of Samothrace)

The dancing and winding ways of woods figure largely in folklore and fairy tales. I’ve just been reading The White People by Arthur Machen which is just full of that type of Celtic notion.

..the ring of wild hills all around was still dark, and the hanging woods looked dark and dreadful, and the strange rocks were as grey as ever; and when I looked down on them from the great mound, sitting on the stone, I saw all their amazing circles and rounds within rounds, and I had to sit quite still and watch them as they began to turn about me, and each stone danced in its place, and they seemed to go round and round in a great whirl, as if one were in the middle of all the stars and heard them rushing through the air. (The Great God Pan, Penguin, page 157)

The White People is told through the eyes of a girl writing in A Green Book of things seen in woods and of tales told by an old lady and the old lady’s great grandmother. Machen was Welsh, and it seems likely the same type of sombre and sultry folklore was told to Howard by his Irish mother.

The secret ways of Earth that connect Man to animals.

..I could see that all the different shapes of the earth were arranged in patterns, something like the grey rocks, only the pattern was different. It was getting late, and the air was indistinct, but it looked from where I was standing something like two great figures of people lying on the grass. (page 138)

This sort of physical identification is very like “figures in a landscape” (Weird 11 “The Enchantment”). The physique of Man and animals that invest a landscape with meaning. The worms that twist and turn in the ground. All of this is outside of our factual reality, but it is part of the great strength of the winding ways of the physical, proportionate reality.

All this makes one think we are no longer in the physical world, and that the more “material” it gets the more immaterial in actual fact! This again makes one think that science is a sorcery, an illusion of perspective, of the head, that does without the bodily sense of physical reality, as well as psychic perception.

One is also reminded of Madame Blavatsky’s Theosophy, where the psyche emanates from the naïve physical universe of planets. Because science is imprisoned by precision and perspective vision, it neither has the physical nor the psychic sense of things.

Howard wrote of Conan (Hyborian Bridge 58)

He had entered the part of the city reserved for the temples. On all sides of him they glittered white in the starlight—snowy marble pillars and golden domes and silver arches, shrines of Zamora's myriad strange gods. He did not trouble his head about them; he knew that Zamora's religion, like all things of a civilized, long-settled people, was intricate and complex, and had lost most of the pristine essence in a maze of formulas and rituals. He had squatted for hours in the courtyard of the philosophers, listening to the arguments of theologians and teachers, and come away in a haze of bewilderment, sure of only one thing, and that, that they were all touched in the head. (The Tower of the Elephant)

Why is it that we, in our vastly more dominated future, are so credulous of the sorcery in our midst? It hurts my head to think of it, so here’s another Bolivian performer.

NARANJITAY

Pictorial 53

FLORILEGIUM

The Bolivian baroque choir took me back to my nigh-mythical kid-hood in Franco’s Spain. There’s something about Bolivia (Heads of Cerberus 1) that is quaintly old fashioned, as if they never got past the 50sor 60s. I guess it was founded by a rebel.

The baroque was rediscovered by some old European pastor and was largely Indian written, taught be the Spanish Mission. The guys performing it are probably villagers from around the country. Gee, I simply can’t get enough of those muchachos and senoritas, so here’s a traditional folksong

NARANJITAY

This is all inculcated in my mind, strangely enough, with Kukulkan from X-Men #s 25, 26 (which I read in “Power” reprints). Anyway, what is it the Bolivians have? Whereas mainstream reality is complex and weak, Bolivia comes across as simple and strong.

There’s also a connection with Moondog (prev.) who had some classical training, as well as Red Indian drums and jazz. Canons and rounds figure in his beats, which are relatively fugue-ish.

Baroque – as I see it – has a sense of stasis, of things revolving and developing gently and quaintly – tres naturelle. Without stasis – as previously noted  - there can neither be any change since it’s just a general mash-up (like contemporary pop).

The Bolivians – as I’m tending to say of other poverty-stricken Latin Americans (not that they’re poor, but rural and jungle-bound rather than electrically city-bound) – have spontaneous communal expression. I think it’s easy to detect in the videos.

The strength of commune gives rise to a facile simplicity that is a joy to see. This old strength – that is also in Moondog, the “hobo of the streets” – is the human-as-animal that is steadily being killed off by our Martian masters.

Hyborian Bridge 20 was saying that the ancient city-state has two sides: the established monuments (order) and the alleys that wind their ways, markets crowded with hoi-polloi and hawkers (freedom). The two sided state of affairs is quite easy to detect in Roy Krenkel’s illustrations for

 

It is really seen in the flow of line that meanders with a living vibration. The city is expressing itself in broken line (Bruce Lee, “broken rhythm”). I happen to have a copy of Metal Hurlant #14; this illo by Jean-Claude Gal has some resemblance

 

Again, the broken, pock-marked meandering unevenness has a living presence. Another example is BWS’s Pah-Dishah from Conan #19 splash

 

Broken rhythm and broken line are what you could call romantic decadence; the sense that ordered straightness doesn’t exist. That things weather, get beaten up, establish a chaotic order that is intoxicating to Man – see Detroit Drama3 From ruins will come strength (predator-prey rebirth) and that means leaving things well alone. The very fabric of reality is cyclical rebirth, and that strength is undone by all the routines of a competitive order. See Rome Hyborian Bridge 2

Here’s another Krenkel, with a lot of figures

 

A figure is physique, and so to do with proportion, especially if semi-naked. In the ancient universe everything is proportionate, one to the other. Sun to moon, and Earth to stars. This is the naïve, geocentric world that is strong and simple. If you have as look at Krenkel’s illo, there is some perspective there but it isn’t laborious. It’s when everything becomes ordered perspective that we are outside the geocentric model – where everything is proportionate – and inside the universe of precision.

This is what Vincent’s email was referring to (posted on swordsofreh.proboards) I think. Where everything is precision, you are outside the universe of relative proportion – as seen from Earth (geocentric).

This universe is simple and naïve and strong; it can’t be measured ultra-precisely because then it wouldn’t have the naivety that goes with strength. Things decay, and that is a source of strength. In the measured universe there is no decay, and so no revival. It is a death force that convinces (sun, reflection).

Earth is proportionate (to the cosmos), whereas the relative universe of light is not. The thing that is missing is the moon; the absence of light, its lunar reflection and

MOONSHADOW

The absence of light is just the proportionate symmetry of the universe. Why should that be? Why do we have four limbs? It just is.

To be naïve is not to be precise (robotic). To be precise is to be trapped in a world that is not proportionate, because of its very convincingness! It’s better to be naïve, animal-like; you can’t be fooled by the robots or Martians in our midst.

 

 

The Heads of Cerberus (part 4)

Tim Smith-Laing (labyrinth Hyborian Bridge 16), in a review of This Is Not Propaganda, says, “It is almost as head-swimmingly hyperactive as the process it uncovers.” The book is an expose by a noted Russian dissident of Putin’s fact=fiction world. As Smith-Laing notes, the real problem is we literally don’t need one more book; we need less books, less words.

For all its qualities, it feels akin to a nuanced essay on icebergs written from the tilting deck of the Titanic. It is worth reading, but you had better read it fast.

The real point is no one knows anymore what they’re writing about because the reference points have faded in the mist. The first thing is to find your reference point, there on the chart before the iceberg hits. If one were looking at an old chart, the reference points would be the stars, the nearest port, the waves on the sides of the ship, seagulls plus the maritime wreck reading the chart.

It all sounds like a mix-up between Jacques Brel (C13) and Tintin; old, right-wing Europe with maybe a dash of Bardot. Yeah, that is where I’m coming from, why deny it?
Let’s make it simple; there are shapes which are classically human, and Bardot is one. So is Coco Gauff, the black American tennis prodigy. So is The Boxer at Rest from circa 300 BC

 

What do those all have in common, apart from the classic physique? They’re all fighters. The naked boxer is stoic resistance personified. Gauff is quoted as saying, “I never stop fighting” and the same goes for BB.

Greeks were the prototype Europeans, forever feuding and reneging and beating back the Persian fleets. The physical world is feudal, the shape of the human body which is athletically muscular. This lost world of grandeur and glory was recaptured in the pulps, and especially heroic fantasy, whether Almuric or A Princess of Mars.

And – yes – Francis Stevens (ne Bennett) - this scene of Trenmore atop a balcony of fear speaks for itself.

Throwing off his coat he removed a large handkerchief from the pocket, wadding it in his right hand and grasped the blade high up. Seizing the pommel in his left hand, slowly but with gathering force, he twisted the sword. It did not move. His white shirt stood out in bulging lumps over his labouring shoulders. His face went dark red. The purple veins rose and throbbed on a forehead beaded with great drops of perspiration. He did not jerk or heave at the thing. He merely twisted – and the leverage was terrific. (page 161)

Further along the line, whirling the blade in “a crimson haze of fury” against the Red Bell (“Threat of Penn”) his blows take effect, and he is filled with “a savage delight”.

Pulps were essentially a rebellion against a world of words and empty rituals, and in favour of physical action. You tend to notice nowadays even the shooters post wordy manifestoes – very thoughtful of them!

Why is it that people - supposedly of action – think words so meaningful? When Trenmore’s blows have the effect of eclipsing this dire future and they are precipitated 200 years previously into the vast grey square of 1918, one of the first things they see

There was still an emblem above the southern arch. That morning it has been the ominous, sword-crossed Red Bell. Now it was a shield with the city colors, pale yellow and blue; above it glowed a huge “Welcome” and the letters “A.A.M.W.”; beneath it the one word “TRUTH”.

“Associated Advertising Men of the World,” he muttered half aloud, “and their convention was here – I mean is here. Yes, we’re back in our own century again.” (page 176)

I’ll leave you with a question. Is the modern world an advertising invention? An invention that is built of words that are designed to persuade us that we are living in a perspective illusion, and not in our fighting bodies; bodies which are built of balance, grace and primeval rhythm.

STAMPING GROUND  (sublime primitivism) Pictorial 13

The Heads of Cerberus (part 3 of 4)

I suppose you wonder why I keep coming up with Linear A (prev) as a sign of basic boredom? Well, because it’s a script which self-references. It contains lists and stocktaking for the storehouses at Crete but, even though many signs are identical to Linear B (Mycenian Greek), their use in the different language (Minoan) is opaque because of the meagre subject-matter.

What I really mean is a script is only interesting if it’s deciphered. Linear B was eventually deciphered by various people but the credit usually goes to amateur Michael Ventris, who went on the hunch that differences in the clay tablets would be found in localised place-names (eg Knossos) – which proved correct.

So, the decipherment of a language is down to relating it to the wider world. Developing that idea, a physically desirable world would inspire colourful language. Now, if this physically desirable world is inarticulate, it relates to non-verbal things like beauty, grace, color, gaiety.

These things are child’s play to write about as it’s simply a matter of observation. So what is an inarticulate world? One where there is spontaneous communal expression of Man in his animal guise, a four-limbed acrobat leaping onto saddles, sidling down streets or seasonal barn-dancing.

It’s not a case of there being no routine; the routine relates to Man the four-limbed animal, not Man the dissociated head (robot). What the modern world doesn’t seem to appreciate is that a world of the head is a world of script (words) that are self-referential – that do not relate to physical reality.

This harks back to Ayn Rand; in Pictorial 46 Randianism was opposed by a legend of rustic wildness.

 

 

Whereas the image of Rand amongst towering monuments is as illusory as a maze of mirrors, the rustic image has an irregularity that is disordered and free. Free, that is, to be rundown and to have a rundown spirit that precedes flourishing revival. Meaning, the place that merges with nature in a rustic way has a natural strength that will endure.

The illusion of modernity, by contrast, is a living death that cannot allow decay from crumbling walls, lichen and moss; revival as the way of nature. By leaving something be, it becomes part of the moon-dark reality that is the Earth spinning through space. The serpent that twirls twixt sun and moon. The sea (“Claimed”).

This reality is non-verbal, brim with poetry, whereas the ordered illusion of Randian sorcery is brim with words. Now, this is where we get back to Linear A: something that is indecipherable owing to meagre content.

The real problem with modernity is that the content of reality is not words; it’s the inarticulate beauty, grace, color, gaiety of the sky at night through which we travel. From this comes then power of poetry, from Homer to Howard.

In a universe of words the content is always illusory. This is the universe we are entering since, after all, that is what algorithms are (language). The trend is blatantly obvious in transhumanists, who speak a fantastical gobbledegook (Jeffrey Epstein of the sex shenanigans is one of their sympathisers, apparently). The Russians, actually, with their Bolshoi acrobats and tennis stars are a pretty good antidote.

Which brings us back to The Heads of Cerberus. In the run-up to the Civic championships at City Hall, Bennett’s Noto-like descriptions continue. The décor is

Entirely in green, a thick velvet carpet of that color covering the floor like moss, and the walls being decorated in a simulation of foliage. (page 123)

There is quite a decadent feel to the entire scenery; the Numbers (citizens) are enjoined to silence and only give off the sound of “dry leaves rustling”. By contrast, the Servants (“of Penn”) are not unlike the dandies from The Nikopol Trilogy (C8 etc)

All wore the green or yellow buttons of Superlativism, and all were dressed with a  gaiety that verged – in many cases more than verged – on distinct vulgarity. (page 123)

Theatrical grotesquerie is certainly a similarity to Noto’s “Red Lace” Aspects 3 etc and, when the Justice Supreme finally makes his appearance for the championships, he is an ancient wreck, “decrepit and loathsome”.

Bennett somewhere does say something like “the Quaker stronghold of Philadelphia”, and one almost gets the impression of a savage Quaker tribe (see “Indian Summer” Alternates 7)

This decadent streak becomes more apparent as the contest winds on, and the Numbers’ candidate for Musician, a gilded youth, loses and is set to be thrown into the pit. The Numbers rebel, surge forward, and the City Hall turns into a red slaughterhouse.

  (page 138)

This really does come straight out of Noto’s bag of tricks! Like Narca, the Justice Supreme

His face! It was lined and scarred by every vice of which Clever’s younger countenance had hinted.

(page 126)

Red Sonja #11

How is it that these scenes of pure evil can be swept aside, or even have desirable consequences such as Sonja’s sight being restored? Both Noto and Bennett write allegorically, and with the spilling of blood comes a sense of natural justice. The roc’s blood that cures Sonja’s blindness; here, there will be revenge.

This is a Quaker city where presumably good and evil exist. In nature there is blood, and there is a natural justice in the flowing of blood between predator and prey. Blood in human societies may be evil, but Nietzsche wrote Beyond Good and Evil. This provides a link between human societies and savage nature.

The Heads of Cerberus (part 2)

The way I’d put it is both Bennett and Howard’s fantasies take place in a physically desirable universe of blood and honour, in which there is often wild fighting. I haven’t read Lovecraft in centuries (literally) but doubt if his universe is physically desirable. For all that Howard is dark, he is intoxicated by nature’s gaiety, and Friend Island is that type of place.

"But sudden the ground begun to shake under my feet, and the air was

full of a queer, grinding, groaning sound, like the very earth was in

pain.

"I turned around sharp. There sat Nelson, holding his bleeding toe in

both fists and giving vent to such awful words as no decent sea-going

lady would ever speak nor hear to!

"'Stop it, stop it!' I shrieked at him, but 'twas too late.

"Island or no island, Anita was a lady, too! She had a gentle heart,

but she knowed how to behave when she was insulted.

The physically desirable – whether nature or woman – needs defending with blood and honour from those sorceries that would threaten it. Heroic fantasy, the fighting spirit of man and woman. Sorcery, in medieval parlance, is another term for evil – outwith the church. Blood and honour are at the service of conscience (religion) and the physically desirable in woman or nature (chivalry.)

That physical reality is very hard for moderns to follow since, in effect, we are living in a sorcerous world of “spells”. Meaning various lists, scripts, routines (of the head) that take the place of reality.

I read a review of a history of Charlemagne that related round various secondary sources, court “annals”, monastery documents, chartered estates. What I tend to think is, in those far-off days, “script” was vastly less vital than fighting deeds in defence of conscience, as this picture suggests.

  Casper Johanne Nepomuk Scheuren, 1848

Primary source, Charlemagne to Abbot Fulrad..

Let it be known to you that we have determined to hold our general assembly¹ this year in the eastern part of Saxony, on the River Bode, at the place which is known as Strassfurt.² Therefore, we enjoin that you come to this meeting-place, with all your men well armed and equipped, on the fifteenth day before the Kalends of July, that is, seven days before the festival of St. John the Baptist.¹ Come, therefore, so prepared with your men to the aforesaid place that you may be able to go thence well equipped in any direction in which our command shall direct; that is, with arms and accoutrements also, and other provisions for war in the way of food and clothing. Each horseman will be expected to have a shield, a lance, a sword, a dagger, a bow, and quivers with arrows; and in your carts shall be implements of various kinds, that is, axes, planes, augers, boards, spades, iron shovels, and other utensils which are necessary in an army. In the wagons also should be supplies of food for three months, dating from the time of the assembly, together with arms and clothing for six months. And furthermore we command that you see to it that you proceed peacefully to the aforesaid place, through whatever part of our realm your journey shall be made; that is, that you presume to take nothing except fodder, wood, and water. And let the followers of each one of your vassals march along with the carts and horsemen, and let the leader always be with them until they reach the aforesaid place, so that the absence of a lord may not give to his men an opportunity to do evil.

Secondary sources remind one a bit of Linear A at Knossos (Pictorial 8), closed to color and gaiety. The rough hues of a Hyborian map are far preferable

  C12

A world of “spells” is closed to color and gaiety, which is simple the reality that Man has four limbs and can be a natty dresser, like Charlemagne! This is the classical world of drama that is the source material of European civilization– physique and psyche.

IPHIGENIA IN TAURIDE

Sorcery works against that, because it is really the warrior ethos, blood and honour – how many Greek tragedies have revenge and blood? Sorcery replaces blood and death with the living death of a non-physical reality that cannot revive from decay.

If things are left alone, they have a strength of laissez-faire revival, the cycle of lifedeath, predator-prey. The dilapidated building is more “alive” that the picket-fence perfection (Drama 3). Moderns cannot really follow that idea, because they are not in physical reality.

This is the universe of the head we live in. The result is physical boredom since the physique can’t be denied and the compulsions of the (male) mind – monetary, numerical, algorithmic – put them in thrall to their own physique. We of the ever-present “spell” (of words, script) are ever more in thrall to our physique and ever less exposed to free-flowing imagination, the dream of the universe.

Expression –as Bruce Lee says –is neither routine nor flow, but both together. If routine is articulate and flow is inarticulate, both are needed. The modern world makes the assumption one can speak ABOUT words; actually that’s a contradiction in terms. One can speak about non-verbal things: beauty, grace, color, gaiety. The non-verbal is expression (body). Poetry is the way to put that into words.

Howard’s world is thus much closer to the primary source of Charlemagne, standing poised and mighty in Casper’s portrait, than any number of scholarly texts. In The Heads of Cerberus, Viola’s beast-like desirability is made very obvious in this fiery, fairly filmic description.

Despite his desperate preoccupation, Drayton’s first sight of Viola Trenmore brought him the same momentary flash of joy that comes with the sight of a bluebird in springtime. She was like a bluebird, fluttering in from the sunshine.  (page 41)

From bluebird to flowers, as the lichenous ruins the vapours of Cerberus sent them to become animated.

After all, why should not a castle grow up like a flower – like a flower with a magic scent? Down here on the plain the grass was filled with flowers and the air with their fragrance. There was something peculiarly soothing and reassuring in the very odor of them. (page 58)

This sequence reminded me of the sorcerous temple of animated wood and sullen stone from Noto’s “Red Lace” (Aspects 3 etc). In both, the revival is accompanied by images of death.  Noto has vats of dying roc’s blood (one that restores Sonja’s sight), while Bennett has

They stood no more than eight or nine yards from the road and could see very well what Drayton had perceived. The horses were large, heavy brutes, of the type bred centuries ago for battle.. But the men on their backs – why, those were not men, not even the ghosts of men! They were mere empty suits of gleaming armor. (page 59)

Noto’s yarns can have a tendency to remind one of freak shows

 Red Sonja #4

When the three intrepid wanderers of The Heads of Cerberus arrive in the Philadelphia of 2118, lo and behold carnivalesque grotesquerie is their lot. For at the intersection of Broad Street and Market, in the very bowels of City Hall, they find not grey vastness, but

Above, rounding to a level with the top of the fourth story, curved the golden hollow of a shallow but glorious dome..From the center of the dome, swung at the end of a twenty foot chain, depended a huge bell.. The color of it was a brilliant scarlet, so that it hung like an enourmous exotic blossom. (page 76)

This is all too reminiscent of Noto’s “Master of the Bells” from Red Sonja #5

 

They are brought there as common prisoners, having no knowledge of the “numerical buttons” that all citizens must wear and find themselves in a very “courtly” court vying for attention in the championships. The bull-like Irishman, Trenmore, is put in for Strongest at the behest of Loveliest, and will seemingly rule as her consort if he wins, in place of her present mate, Cleverest.

What transpires is that only the Superlatives have titles, everyone else being a number. That is almost the opposite of our own system, where anything numerical is cleverest! Bennett’s system of government, it should be noted, seems to place equal value on head (Cleverest) and body (Strongest), as well as both together (Loveliest).

Even though, as Cleverest says,

Now these competitions – the Civic Service Examinations, as they are properly named – are conducted on a perfectly fair basis. It is a system as democratic as it is natural and logical. (page 102)

It’s clearly not atall democratic. In fact, Bennett emphasises the “barbaric splendour” of the City Hall décor, and the savagery of the law as well as the custom of contests is made apparent.

This does rather seem to make the point that democracy is purely a system of the head, and not of the body, the physique, of the courtiers of old, preening and parading their wares for ostentatious show.

A system of the head has to be both physically and sexually lopsided, and makes the assumption that “Cleverest” is good in itself. How about Strongest and Loveliest? Our politicians may be clever, but tend to be either ugly or weak.

If our system is a false logic (of perspective illusion, prev.) Bennet’s is a much more natural logic of acrobatic human proportions that made Man the hunter, the wanderer, master of the seas and builder of renown. Man the animal as opposed to the immaterial electromagnetic impulse of the head or robot.

The Heads of Cerberus (part 1)

 

 

I suddenly realized this intro to Harlan Ellison’s Hornbook is intended as a homage to Claimed. There are those who see Francis Stevens, ne Bennett, ne Barrows as a pioneer of Dark Fantasy. I wonder if that’s because the late 20^th century sub-genre is oft associated with women?

As a reader solely of three or four tales I think a much more likely claim is as a pioneer of heroic fantasy with a marine bent. Of her fantasy I have read that five are set on an island; Claimed tells of an obsessive seaquest; Citadel of Fear of a lost city on a subterranean lake set with war galleys.

The heroic stuff is for sure not that feminine – apart from Friend Island.

Stern of feature, bronzed by wind and sun, her age could only be guessed, but I surmised at once that in her I beheld a survivor of the age of turbines and oil engines – a true sea-woman of that elder time when a woman’s superiority to man had not been so long recognized.

The two stories I read tell of the love of a man for a woman; a courageous and foolhardy love even unto reckless, impetuous death. Bennett writes of fighters, and

The Dusk Lady came of a warrior people. At his rough command she sprang back out of his way, and the fight was on. (Citadel of Fear page 252)

The warrior inhabits a physical universe of blood and honour, and her fantasies are really no less sorcerous than Howard’s, whether the living demon Nacoc Coatl, or the fleetly floating and fleetingly psychic remnants of archaic Atlantis.

Friend Island is a not bad thematic intro to the larger work, a sea-shantie-ish tale of a long-in-the-tooth sea-woman’s reminiscences of being stranded on an island that seemed to respond to her moods.

Somehow, living there alone my natural womanly intuition was stronger than ever before or since, and so I knowed.

The loneliness of an island is a different kind of thing to sheer mental boredom that we suffer from nowadays, and make one ponder. Is intuition a response to a state of the universe – in this case an island?

What would a friendly universe be? She first poses the question, “Is it civil or wild?” so clearly an uninhabited island is wild. A wild universe isn’t safe – a thing of blood and honour – but it also isn’t under the rule of order (civilization).

However, in days gone past civilization was not just the rule of order, it was wild and free. A very good example is the St Tropez of Bardot’s day; in Hyborian Bridge 9 she bemoans its demise

“At first, there was nothing. Then beaches appeared after the film And God Created Woman. Each was different, funny and unconventional. There was joy, it was a symbol of freedom,” she recalled.

“But with this reorganisation project, this beach will become monotone when it was so charming. It’s tragic.”

Civilization always has been a merging with nature (see Rome Hyborian Bridge 2). It cannot replace the natural cleanliness and rugged rustic pursuits of Man UNLESS it is simply an illusion. An illusion is something that is visually convincing (sun, perspective) but it has not the inarticulate grace and flow (of Bardot or a beach). We are, after all, run by words (script) as never before in the history of mankind.

Words can be useful – descriptions as in Bennett or Howard – but they can also be pure routine. If we live in a routine world, it cannot also be a free-flowing inarticulate universe. The two are incompatible.

If civilization has routines (customs, laws, edicts) it also has to have the spontaneity of free communal expression 

Raymond Depardon, Bolivia

There are two sides of reality; the order of a robot; the beauty of a wild beast. An island is a physical presence – like St Tropez used to be according to BB – providing free food, songbirds, nectar, rock pools and tidal detritus. The pleasure is of the body to express itself wholesomely in a non rule-bound sense

LA MADRAGUE

That side of civilization – that was there in the 60s from France to San Fran – that might make it barely bearable, has never been deader. The side that merges with nature, that lives like an island isolated from outside interference (Hong Kong, prev.)

It’s because civilization has become a perspective illusion that convinces the head that it has become cutoff from the physical experience of nature (cosmos) and therefore the psychic expression of freedom.

A non-physical universe suffers from physical boredom and is nevertheless trapped by its own physique. There is no escape from physique and therefore – whatever “they” tell us – that is what the universe is.

By ignoring the physical reality, we are permeated by facts of convincing rightness that only exist in the heads of acolytes, irrespective of physical desirability. This “rightness” - it has to be said – is a male thing; a compulsion – monetary, numerical, algorithmic – of the head that is indicative of physical boredom.

An island – and particularly the female island of the story – is a presence of physical desirability, bodily pleasure. Intoxicating and inarticulate reality. Now, this is exactly the sort of reality that our male politicians/acolytes of dead sorcerers are not atall convinced by, since it’s not of the head! Therefore, they continually destroy the thing that allows free-flowing imagination unencumbered by rule-bound boredom.

The more speeches you hear the more you know you are in the realm of rule-bound boredom. What is the way out of this nightmare? Every man or woman is an island. Our bodies are perfect and capable of country pursuits of yore (as well as sailing, canoeing). Cowboys – and cowboy-hippies – need to get out of their heads and onto their saddles. Yeehar!

The Citadel of Fear (part 2)

In ruinous reverie is a type of revival, a revival of blood sacrifice that is the moonlit hunt of yore. The old writers like Bennett were apparently not impressed by electrification and the new assemblies of Henry Ford (“history is bunk”). See Grace Slick quote from her memoir.

Slick says the difference is “aesthetic”. Also I think the inarticulate state of stasis. Every age of the Earth has a certain stasis, making it detectable in the geological record.

Stasis means simply being left to its own devices, which actually amounts to a ruinous reverie. Things grow, die, decay, revive.. and that is strength. To seek to deny this cycle is weak perfidy.

Bennett’s descriptions hark back to candlelit siestas

Alone in the hall O’Hara looked about with a judging, curious eye. His first impression had been pleasant. The room was agreeably lighted by a hanging fixture, whose translucent, cream-colored globe diffused a mellow radiance. A log glowed in the depths of a fireplace of black dignity and size. (page 138)

The astronauts quoted in Citadel of Fear 1 are obviously convinced of the illusory reality they saw from space – that doesn’t mean it’s not an illusion! A perspective reality is by definition convincing (sun) but certain things go with it.

If, as I tend to suppose, it’s going towards the vanishing point of technique, then it is going to have to be various things associated with technique. Apart from electricity, it’s going to be algorithmic (AI).

You could also assume it might be other things, like DNA. But technique is only one side of reality; the other is flow (Bruce Lee). If things didn’t flow there would be no perfection in form (figures in the sky, constellations).

The moon – seen from Earth – is perfectly proportionate, hanging there in the twilight sky. The moon is Diana, huntress with indefatigable hounds lusting for the blood of hinds poking their noses out of moon-dark forests.

This is THE moon, the one of myth that signifies physical action over wold and through wood. With the spilling of blood comes decay and revival and strength.

Physical reality, rather than convincing illusion born of technique (sun) that leads to the vanishing point (of technique) in perspective illusion.

That is, an illusion of the head that is weak; that cannot revive through ruin and decay and reverie. These things all are from the Earth as it twirls in space.

What is missing is a cosmology, since a cosmology is not something that is visually convincing. It is inarticulate, but proportionate to Earth’s place in the cosmos. From that “perspective”, perspective is irrelevant!

The sun is illusory and so is water (Bruce Lee "Claimed" 2) but, taken together with air and Earth, they form a cosmology. A cosmology is strong; it is not of the head, it is of the body and blood and sacrifice (Christianity). This is the strong, heroic world that Bennett and Howard are looking back towards.

The modern world finds it impossible to leave things well alone and just to let them be what they want to be. Two examples at random: Hong Kong (China) and Russia’s national park at Yugyd Va.

The reason is the modern world has no cosmology such as Rasputin’s Mother Russia naturalism (Pictorial 5) or China’s Tao. You can hear this in music; I happened to hear Solomon Linda’s Mbube from the 30s, which was the original South African Zulu choir of The Lion Sleeps Tonight.

On the last chorus, Linda improvises a soprano melody that was later lyricised into “In the jungle, the mighty jungle”. From freedom and naturalism springs creativity – that is the lost world..

MBUBE

.. of tribalism, really, the Zulus as distinct from the ANC or civilization.

He knew himself for an impetuous man, more used to rough, forthright ways of the open then the ruled order of civilization. (page 156)

There is a wild, animal-like ethos about O’Hara that is somewhat similar to Howard’s.

The winds’ voice no longer defied him – it was calling, pleading with him in great shouts and gasps of terror. It was a reckless, impetuous messenger, tearing at his windows and his heart in gusty throbs of wordless passion. (page 158)

The similarity is fairly blatant, and could even have helped to crystalize Howard’s anti-civilization ethos round about 1920 when the stories came out in Argosy. Francis Xavier Gordon may even have been named after the writer, seeing as Howard had no way of knowing her sex!

The wildness also affects the fay maiden he rescues from Reed’s menagerie

Her green gown, wet as ever, clung to the body and limbs in the revealing lines a thin bathing suit. Her dark hair hung in the same beautiful but informal curls, and for the first time Colin was aware of those worn places in her gown through which bare limbs shone whitely. (page 172)

The green-robed one is surely the Moth-maiden he met in Tlapallan, who was captured by the high priests of Nacoc Yaotl. Now she is in the clutches of he who prays to “the god of science” – none other than he who O’Hara left at Tlapallan, the slithering Kennedy.

Once O’Hara finds himself in Kennedy’s clutches in a putrescence viler than anything that is not as verifiable as scientific method, what happens is not – as he expected – sudden death by claw and fang, but page after page of Kennedy’s explanatory reminiscences. “Fool!” etc.

This is so true of this type of modernist weakling. O’Hara, of course, recognizes the true power behind these self-serving ramblings as the carved stone demon of Nacoc Yaotl himself.

Bennett actually mentions The Island of Dr. Moreau and that is clearly a source (as is Shelley’s Frankenstein and Poe’s macabre anti-scientism), but the sorcerous plot I find easy to identify with. For science is only unbiased to a certain type of cold-blooded mind; the cold-blooded compulsion to convincing rightness, irrespective of physical desirability. “Convincing rightness”, meaning a scripted world of routine. The routine could be experiment, or politics, or economics – it doesn’t matter. As Bruce Lee says, that is one side of reality only (sun, perspective, rule, illusion). The other side is flow, or what might be called the physical perfection of primeval rhythm.

This is something that is the exact opposite of routine – it is a beast, but a beautiful one. I mean, have you ever wondered how all animals are able to swallow and how birds flit so meaningfully? It’s because they’re physically perfect; there’s no need for thought.

From the inarticulate comes poetic expression. This sense of opposites is what a scientific mind (acolytes of Newton and other dead sorcerers, including politicians, natch) can never comprehend. Just to take one example, Boris Johnson became our new prime minister, and he is known for glib speechifying. He’s clever enough, but the idea that some things cannot be classified by words (script) would never occur.

 

Hence, the entire universe of inarticulate, proportionate physical reality – sun, moon, Earth – is lost. The inarticulate that can be expressed by poetry, blood-red and wolfish. Howard and Bennett. The sense of decay, that there is a natural progression that should not be diverted, for that is evil. Perfidy.

We live in a world that is not physical, and therefore from decay cannot arise revival. A form of living death that is bound-up in scripted routines (of politicians).

From ruins and decay will come strength (predator-prey rebirth) and that means leaving things well alone. The very fabric of reality is cyclical rebirth, and that strength is undone by all the routines of a competitive order.

The way “they” deal with this is by continually speechifying, one routine following another, What we should realize is that if we travel to the moon, or Mars, it’s immaterial. The REAL moon and Mars are proportionate seen from earth. I’m not saying don’t go there, just that it’s not a physical flight. There is no hunting up there, only algorithms and experiments on DNA. The physical universe is seen from Earth as it rotates, facing first one way, then the other.

Why should that be? Why do we have four limbs? It just is.

.. sweeping his Dusk Lady with him the Irishman made a rush for the doorway. Under their running feet the floor had a give and resilience like thin ice. Reaching the door, Colin would have closed it but lacked time. On the very threshold he turned to meet the first assailant, a thing of innumerable legs, rather like a magnified centipede, but whose head belonged somewhere in the mammalian scale. (page 251) C9

“I personally do not believe in the word style. Why? Because, unless there are human beings with three arms and four legs, unless we have another group of human beings that are structurally different from us, there can be no different style of fighting.” (Bruce Lee)