Pictorial 92

THE LIGHT

The only answer that I have found
Above the sky or below the ground
Is that there are no answers
There never were any answers
There will never be any answers
And as Gertrude Stein said, “That's the answer.”

Kantner’s lyric would seem not very optimistic, but it depends how much you reckon the modern world is an illusion. Kantner is not speaking as a scientist but as someone who can feel, smell, hear, see.

While “they” spout words, we can perceive the folly for ourselves. Compare with John Clifton’s anti-scientific Bite Now Suckers! From TCJ 90 (1984)

The function of art is not to challenge our knowledge, that meagre corpus of answers we have managed to intuit from the experience of a few millennia of mortal history, Rather the aim of art is to challenge the questions, to quell the analytical faculty of mind from swallowing everything up in indecision and rationalism, by presenting ultimate versions of those intuited truths, some lasting witness of a final rest for things, some lasting witness to debunk the Garand Inquisitor.(page 108)

Clifton was writing in defence of “the final version” of artists like Neal Adams; of art as superior to analytical science; of formula as superior to culture-science experiment.

There’s a lot to be said for that view, in that comic books affect young minds on a basic level of appreciation. Colour, shape, tonality, sequence, action. Comics are there to be seen and felt; if the artist can make you feel and see then they’re good.

It’s almost the opposite of the scientific mode of explaining laboriously and intellectually. I’ve been questioning the answers (and therefore the questions) of science from the basic level of feeling, hearing, smelling what is in the world.

There is also Alan Moore’s essay “Blood From the Shoulder of Pallas” from Watchmen on a similar theme (). It seems that it is possible to deceive the ego with a convincing illusion through “the mirror of nothingness” (electromagnetism). The result is physical boredom, whereby the numerical and sexual become one;  tools of the dragon of data.

I know all this sounds pretty fancy, but it’s actually a matter of simplicity. A good way to put it is to take a classic comic book, say the silver age Flash by Gardner Fox and Carmen Infantino. I was reading a review by Gene Phillips in TCJ

#58 (1980) the other day (as you do) and he had this comparison.

 

He brought to comics a storytelling style not too far derived from early “sense of wonder2 SF, whose formulaic approach stressed the wonder inherent in exotic worlds and bizarre devices (a la Jack Williamson) (page 47)

The formulaic approach with stereotypical characters engenders a classical formal style. The relation between pictures and words is also a question of style. To inspire a good story, it’s often true to say that the pictures 9sight) work independently of the words (“sounds”). They both supply something different which together makes up the action.

RC Harvey in the same issue gives as an example the Daredevil

of Miller and Roger McKenzie

 

Action is sight, sound and also feel, smell, atmosphere. In later years, TCJ seemed to forget the old formulas of storytelling. Now, if you have a world where there is no sight, sound, action (etc) then that entire world is wrong. It’s also psychotic and sexualised. The reason is that everything that lives expresses action (the fronds of plants waving in desert breezes).

Action is the way something expresses itself. In terms of the human, the body is the vehicle of expression. In the modern ear the body is no longer a vehicle of expression. By “expression” I mean, say, a farmer shouldering a spade, a hunter shouldering a carcass, a cowboy vaulting onto a saddle.. and so forth.

If you go back to Hyborian Bridge 60 there is the example of Fulling where women would strip-off and engage in rhythmical actions. There are also the old grape-treading rituals of Dionysus. I went to Newtown Boarding School (class of ’69), an Irish Quaker-run establishment, and remember rumpty-tumpty classroom rumbles and sex-games like wild animals on-heat (is that normal?)

Essentially, the entire province of Dionysian physical expression is missing in an electromagnetic universe (of the ego). Dionysian activity enables people to engage in communal frolicks related to work that are by their nature sexual. Man is a sexual animal and physique can’t be denied.

Therefore, the lack of Dionysian activity is bound to sexualise people who are no longer engaging the body in the physical, communal acts which come naturally. There is a looseness and a grace of free-form movement. Did you see the clip of Monterey? This is free human expression of young, old and infant with a communal setting.

Instead of this naturalistic freedom, we now have a state of boredom which is numerical (machine). This physical state is like a straightjacket that immobilises the body. We also get constant heat-pumps designed for serpent-men (sun-seekers, slow-thinkers). The body is sexualised disproportionately – as in social-media.

A universe of physical boredom – the product of the ego – does not impress someone who is able to feel, smell, hear, see with a mythical sense of freedom. The connection is with art and comic books and the taste and values of our own “age of myth” (prev.)

Our personal “age of myth” is a safeguard to our perceptions, and another reason to discount the answers “they” give. Their answers only convince the ego through “the mirror of nothingness” that invites physical boredom, the numerical compulsion that is the sexual tool of the dragon of data.

The reason comes down to the cosmic reality we’ve lost through living in this numerical illusion through “the mirror of nothingness” (cosmic silence). Instead of living through a blood-cycle of decay and rebirth, modern civilization lives in the head.

This blood-cycle is nothing less than meaning and power; the strength of red earth, of roots and vines, places of power. This is the scene from Red Sonja #9 where Apah Alah draws Sonja down into her underground forest kingdom. 

 

This is feminine power, physical substance, the moon rising over wooded hills, Diana bounding, hounds baying in loping pursuit of deer bouncing away or slain bloodily. Red Shiva, Red Venus, the bull-like Dionysus.. the destructive myths prev.)

Without destruction there can be no creation; that is to say, a sequence of events that takes place in the cosmos. This sequence is nothing less than the harmonic cosmos that is red-blood female, muscular and manly, at one time dainty and virile.

So, when I say “everything is wrong” (in modernity), it’s that the feminine moon that animates our physical blood-lust is no longer harmonizing with her brother. Artemis and Apollo are close almost to incestuous levels in mythology. That link is broken to Man’s eternal sorrow, for it is simply the physical reality of action – animal, plant, stone, wind, celestial sounds and sights.

Hyborian Bridge 104

I suppose fans of Howard don’t necessarily like the idea of relating his fantasy stories to the state of contemporary reality we find ourselves in? Nevertheless, if a link is there it should inevitably be found so I’ll carry on regardless.

From HB101 and HB103 it seems clear that The Skull of Silence and The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune are related. The wizard says,

“What matters men’s forgetfulness of you when you have forgotten yourself in the silent worlds of death? Gaze into my mirrors and be wise.” (page 174)

The mirrors have no harmonic sound (silence of the cosmos) because they are images with no sequence of events, representing the ego. A world of mirrors would therefore effectively be a cosmic silence of straight-line (electromagnetic) management and planning, run by acolytes.

So, the question to ask is: is electromagnetism mirrors? That question is difficult to answer; perhaps the best is to go forward on that assumption and see where it lands. A camera – as I think was mentioned previously – is the same as a mirror except that the image isn’t inverted. A self-drive car would operate with cameras analogously to a driver using mirrors.

Basically, all these apparatuses bend light, and light is composed of straight lines. Hence you’re in a perspective universe that could be an illusion, but it is managed, planned and run by acolytes.

The reason it’s not an illusion is that it is managed, planned and run by acolytes. IE the more straight line things get the easier they are to run that way. For example, self-drive cars will probably only ever operate in straight line areas because the illusion of reality is so much greater. The question is: is that futuristic world just a convincing illusion (of the ego)?

It looks real (like The 5^th Element) but it is really composed of light. What’s missing is the moon and the blood-cycle of decay and regeneration in twilight landscapes where Diana roams, hunting-bow over her shoulder, deer in her sights and hounds ready for the kill.

Hyborian Bridge 31

One universe is appearance (order, Apollo); the other is reality (blood, Artemis). One is the haed (ego); the other is the body (lithe huntress). Clearly, the latter is very close to Howard’s so it must have a fantasy element which the other doesn’t.

Yes, but an illusion is not the same as reality; it only has the appearance (Apollo) of reality. It is a universe of cosmic silence and the ego. That universe I think can be related to stories like The Skull of Silence and The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune. In other words, Howard’s world exists in a moonlit landscape where the wizards are somewhat like our solar scientists who operate with illusions.

To Howard moonlight, as at the battle scene in Swords of the Purple Kingdom, symbolises and actually is reality. Blood and decay and the lithe body in action. This world is also harmonic and is exposed to the sounds and sights of the cosmos of tumbling stars. It is not run by the ego (of wizards) but by the sword and battle-axe of heroic figures.

To a world of illusion that world is fantasy; but in another sense it is the cosmic reality we’ve lost through illusion. The reality of cosmic sound (silence.)

In a world of electromagnetic illusion, the straight line is reality. So, for example, in the US election all the candidates appear to be managers. They want spending (infrastructure) and Biden was asking Sanders to cost his proposals.

Where are the candidates who want less government and more self-organization by communities? They don’t exist because that is not their reality (illusion). Where is the America of Lil Abner that is not so much political as mythical?

That is not the America that “they” care about. A world of electromagnetic illusions also faces “the riddle of steel” (prev.) since it is aimed at the head. Words feed the ego through “the mirror of nothingness (electromagnetism). The assumption is that one should trust one’s head rather than assume the head may be deceived – as in “the riddle of steel”.

So, the idea of a universe of the ego, managed by acolytes, one could easily think of as a fantastic illusion. I remember as a kid the only TV program I remember watching was the 60s Batman, since we had no TV and went to watch at a friend’s home. The program has always been a mythic memory. Marvel Comics also had a mythic impact.

The age of myth is probably something like 7 or 8 when the power of perception is quite great (Harlan Ellison used to say he “was still that kid”). What you notice nowadays is that the age factor is much less defined in that people watch social media/youtube from about 4 and you almost might suppose that the risk is that they miss “the age of myth” entirely, which is really apprehending something that has a lifelong impact in shaping values and tastes.

These memories, for good or ill, inform my mature mythology. What are they but pure fantasy? Memories should not be the product of ego, but of a vague apprehension of cosmic harmony, in sound, sight, action.

This is what I get from the 60s films of Jean-Luc Godard; at this point there are a couple on order and are due in about a week. Meanwhile, at

MONTEREY

Hyborian Bridge 103

In Swords of the Purple Kingdom, the famous moonlit spectacle of Kull at bay atop a crumbling stair joined by Dalgar to fight for king and lady (also Kull #9 HB100) has a thematic resemblance to “Red Lace”.

In the story Dalgar is said by Kull to have

fought by my side as gayly as he ever rode to a feast

The mix of death, love and gaiety by the light of the moon was

since immortalized by singers and poets

The dark forces of decay and death mix with renewal and rebirth, and Murom smiled softly..

“Out of a night of blood and terror, joy and happiness are born”

This is the same ecology of dark gaiety that in Noto’s tale ends on a melancholy note while Howard, for once, is less sombre.

“Life is that way, Count..” grunts Kull. The false optimism by which we are beset is the product of sorcerous mirrors of illusion (the sun) - which brings us neatly to The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune.

“See and believe” intones the wizard repeatingly, and there is a sense that his words impinge upon king Kull to such an extent that he sees something from nothing.

At times Kull halted to wonder how such thoughts and dreams had come to enter his mind, and at times he wondered if they came of his own volition – here his thoughts would become mazed. (page 176)

There is something about the story that is at once very simple and monstrous.“..the greatest are they who soonest learn the simplest things..” (page 173)

This type of injunction draws home the simplicity of living now, and neither in the past or the future, which are “illusions of substance”. The ego alone is real.

“What matters men’s forgetfulness of you when you have forgotten yourself in the silent worlds of death? Gaze into my mirrors and be wise.” (page 174)

The very simplicity of an image that has no past or future, no sequence of events, and that also is silent. For all the lack of content and reality, the wizard’s words supply the rationale – which is ego.

The simplicity of the story is that the mirrors represent the ego devoid of substance. Adding words provides a rationale for this world of nothingness.

In The Annotated Robert Howard, Robert Weinberg notes that Kull is taciturn, and sees this as a fault in the stories completed by Carter, such as Riders Beyond the Sunset and Black Abyss). Words, in the world of action, are not necessary; they are terse, reflecting events.

Kull is introspective, and for once this tells against him when the wizard’s words tell him to reflect on.. nothingness.

..strange visions entered his mind, like flying unbidden from the whispering void of non-existence. (page 176)

Kull is gazing at himself – which means the ego – and the wizard feeds his ego through “the mirror of nothingness”. What that could imply (see prev.) is that a world of words is there to impinge on “the mirror of nothingness” (electromagnetism) for the sake of the ego.

What is electromagnetism but ones and zeros? It is whatever is fed into it; it is simply a convincing illusion of straight lines (sun, reflection) as opposed to physical substance.

What is physical substance but blood and decay? This lead back to the decadent ecology of Noto’s “Red Lace” where the dainty morsels of nature grow into monstrous forms that are killed to preserve a bizarre lifecycle.

Noto’s world is hard to fathom, but it has physical substance in spades – which is where all meaning and power originate. From the earth, the roots, vines, the crazy creatures that thrive there.

These worlds – like the comic book ones – depend on a sequence of events; on line and movement from past to future. Everything that is there in the physical substance of growth and decay is not there in a mirror, which is just image (Hyborian Bridge 48). Very convincing, but with no history or continuity (sequence of events). The point of a mirror is that it is aimed solely at the head – not the body. Whereas the body needs a physical environment to live (and die) in, the head (ego) doesn’t).

This could imply we live in a world of the ego (head) as opposed to blood and decay and rebirth – roots, vines, grubs, birds, hunters, Diana..

The question you could ask is: what does electromagnetism enable? It enables anything that is straight line order. That means things like management (communication), planning (infrastructure) and politics (acolytes).

That entire universe is symbolised by Apollo (sun), which is appearance, not reality. So, what exactly is missing from that universe?

UNIVERSAL COPERNICAN MUMBLES

A straight line order has to be missing out on harmonic constellations whereby the moon reflects the sun in a physical sense. The harmonic universe is not silent; or rather the silence has the sounds of the cosmos Hyborian Bridge 101

If a straight line order has harmonic silence, in what sense does it exist in the cosmos 9of sounds)? Kull, in his introspection, is incapacitated in that he cannot think to draw his sword and shatter the mirrors of illusion. What saves the day is a ringing sound; “Kull!” ejaculates Brule.

If we live in a world of cosmic silence, then words are the equivalent of Tuzun Thune’s intonations to Kull; they feed the ego through “the mirror of nothingness”, which is electromagnetism.

Of course, you can turn round and say to me; you like films, which are electromagnetism. I know, and I also use the net. I do like some films, but don’t watch TV or do social media.  I use light bulbs but would as soon use candles. My ideal would be sort of like the 60s hippies who make a big point of not consuming and use beat-up vans and gear. One can’t uninvent electricity but one shouldn’t stare. There are other things to see, smell, hear, feel.

In fact the $, the servant of electromagnetism, is the destroyer of urban and rural and communal ambiance, feel, smell, sounds.

Hyborian Bridge 102

When the head becomes the body, steel becomes flesh (prev.) This is the opposite of “the riddle of steel” (Pictorial 87) whereby the warrior trusts his sword over his head, which can be deceived by foul sorcery.

This seems to imply we live in the age of sorcery, stemming from Newton’s induction from a light box. Everything else – words of acolytes, material goods – is part-and-parcel of the sorcerous reality. Outside of this are the feminine dreams of blood and savagery.

The feminine element in heroic fantasy is the romantic harmonic of the universe (of sun, moon and planets and constellations of Earth-myth). Sun and moon together are a mix of masculine and feminine, the Earth-spin.

The feminine element is indispensable as it is simply half of the physical universe. The universe we inhabit is not physical; it is a convincing illusion of light (reflection) which subdues the physical. The ego is seduced by the numerical illusion, which has the appearance of physical boredom. The physique can’t be denied, and the numerical and the sexual become one. Hygienic weakness invites the dragon which feeds the ego through “the mirror of nothingness”.

Data is the dragon the ego feeds off in the hygienic world of materialism (electromagnetism). Materialism is convincing to the ego, which exists in a state of physical boredom; the numerical becomes sexual.

This sorcerous reality of metal and numbers is opposed by feminine blood and savagery. While metal and numbers have the appearance (Apollo) of reality, the feminine moon (Artemis) reflects the sun and so has an innate harmonic.

It is this harmonic which goes to the heart of heroic fantasy. If Kull has the decadence and dreamy romance of Valusia, possibly the most decadent of them all was dreamed-up by Clair Noto for Red Sonja #s 10-13.

In the lead-up to “Red Lace”, Sonja is rescued form lynching in the triple-walled Argosian city of Skranos by smooth-chinned Suumaro, rebel scion of Apah Alah and half-brother to hairy Oryx.

One detail I noticed in #8 was that the women in Suumaro’s seraglio wore metal fetters which Sonja, with her steel, slices asunder. The savage use of metal that frees metal shackles.

In #9 Sonja is drawn by Apah Alah into her root-roofed kingdom under the forest; but this is merely a prelude to #10 when she and Suumaro encounter Apah Alah’s forgotten temple to Quillos, her paramour and Suumaro’s father, who’s betrayal caused her to contort the temple into a fantastic symbiosis of tree and stone Aspects3

The temple harbours probably the most savagely female fantasy-world ever put to paper (no offense to Ghita of Alizzar!) Noto creates nothing less than a savage lifecycle of blood born of the dainty aspect of nature. Or, more precisely, the workshop of a fabled artisan (Vulcan?) who here takes the shape of a centaur.

 

  Red Sonja #10

There is the scent of decay in this land of gnarled wood and stone; the age-old patina of things left to intertwine (vines, roots). Death in this land is also wood, in the form of Narca’s bow. The bald huntswoman likes nothing more than shooting down the rocs which grow serenely out of the dainty piped eggs.

The lifecycle takes the form of the blood of the slain rocs which feeds the bizarre ecology of the plant-kingdom. Into this spring the lithe warriors Sonja and Suumaro – the only ones to bear metal swords – along with the japing and insidious thief Marmo.

Sonja eventually kills the leering Narca, after her sight is restored by the heartblood of a dying roc. It is this mixture of evil and good that gives the story its unquiet mystery. Even Cat Yronwode in a letter to #13 was sorely struggling with the oddity of the bloodletting!

The blood imagery of #210 and 11 pulls deep chords in any woman, yet I was again left wondering why. Why did Narca kill the Big Birds and tumble them into a vat of blood? Why did the heart’s blood of one of the birds cure Sonja’s blindness?

The whys and wherefores are completely tricky. Is the dragon Kthon, who desires the emblem, a force for good or evil – and what is the emblem? When it is lost, the temple disintegrates – Sonja feels this is a rebirth of sorts Hyborian Bridge 15

It’s difficult to say apart from the fact that a universe that is innately decadent contains withing it the seeds of rebirth. Blood and death feed rebirth because they are strong and of the earth – of the roots. Evil lurks there, but good can conquer evil – as Sonja’s sword does Narca.

Strength conquers the dragon; weakness invites it. The emblem is unspeakably powerful, and this was the force that Sonja and Suumaro succeeded in keeping from the vengeful Apah Alah.

In the end, the Greek tragedy of jealousy and vengeance is dispelled as Apah Alah’s powers are deprived and she is reconciled to her love for the aged Quillos.

Red Sonja #13

The motto could be that blood and decay are strong and can be both good and evil. Within them is the harmonic of the universe which the warrior, with metal sword in hand, encounters.

The harmonic of the universe is a cycle; like the forest a labyrinth of ways; it is a hunt; it is love and death. It is all these things, and they are all seen by the light of the moon (that reflects the sun).

We essentially live in a half-world that is the sun (reflection) but not the reflection by a physical reality (moon).

The sun represents materialism, but it is an illusion, a harmonic silence without the moon, blood, decay and rebirth.

Hyborian Bridge 101

The Skull of Silence has the scholar Kuthulos the slave broach a seeming paradox.

“Is not sound the absence of silence, and silence the absence of sound? The absence of a thing is not material substance. It is – no-thing.” (page 89)

But somewhere exists “the soul of silence” that is absolute and takes material form. Kull, in his kingly folly, encounters this entity and for the first time knows blind, unreckoning brain-shattering fear.

But the mystic demi-god Raama has left a riddle in the shape of a jade gong which Kull, in his bubbling fear, reads as the ever-changing, ever-illusory but ever-sounding sea.

That’s the essentials of the story, and one could also note that the sea is a feminine element (of mystery). Silence in the story is the absence of the natural sounds – of leaves rustling – even of grass growing in the wind – that are ever there.

In other words, the physical reality of Earth as she whirls in the cosmos; the small harmonics that are felt through sound. That’s almost like saying the sound of silence is sound – the small things in the universe we seem to feel. So, when the sound of silence disappears, then we face absolute silence – a material thing.

We live in a world of words – which are sounds – but the unthinking cosmos of silence – which is also sound – is almost obliterated.  In other words, the sound of the cosmos is obliterated by the sound of words. So, then, are words silence? In Howard’s parlance, absolute silence takes material form, so it is a thing.

We live in a material world, and the words (of acolytes) are there to sell that material. Does that material, though, cause to cease the sound of silence of the cosmos?

The sound of the cosmos has a harmonic and a sort of naïve grandeur. If we live in a tautology of words, we lose that poetry. The savage simplicity of things that is strong and has use in the domain of action – Cobbles on the rutted roads of Khitai Hyborian Bridge 89

This is the world that words may aptly describe; as opposed to the world of words (of acolytes) that stills the silent harmonics that are small sounds of the cosmos.

The craggy cliffs of Atlantis rose stark and gaunt; they were brutal and terrible with youth, even as Kull himself. Age had not softened the knife-edge of their strength; the naked stars impaled themselves upon their fang-like peaks.

But these Zalgaran hills were older, rounded. They rose like kindly gods. Green groves and great trees laughed upon their shoulders. (page 101)

What is this description from Riders Beyond the Sunset but the harmonic universe – of sight, sound, feel? The story may be minor but the feel is Homeric and pure Howard.

The sound of silence is a type of unthinking awareness of looseness; psychic calm; a vibration that is more than the electro-impulses of the head.

Ancient voices from the 60s SON OF JESUS

When that voice is stilled, silence becomes a material thing. Material things are sold to provide pleasure – so in that sense to take the place of reality. At the most extreme, the pleasure is sexual (Hyborian Bridge 99.)

This type of empty lust of the bacchantes from Black Abyss , a mad desire to compensate for feelings of longueur (in a material existence of harmonic nothingness). Materialism is the metallic and masculine; Howard’s descriptions are frequently feminine and soft.

The feminine aspect is crucial to heroic fantasy because it carries the darkness of fertility that is blood.

BWS,

Season Passing

Diana bounds through the hillside groves flattening anything that moves! Woman is feral and savage and will kill to survive (Pictorial 89). Howard’s descriptions are of the stars and the moon and not of the masculine sun. This is the land where Diana roams; the land of savage fertility.

The masculine cosmos is metal; materialism that kills the sound of silence. The feminine cosmos is the sea; ever-sounding, ever-illusory; the jade emblem of harmony (see Francis Stevens Claimed).

This is why I say both these aspects are vital to Howard’s fantasy. The hero does not wear a sword in a masculine kingdom, he wears it in a fairly feminine and illusory kingdom (of dreams).

Only when both are present – see also the artwork! – can there be a savage fertility that is dark and has the dreams of ancient ages.

The sorcerers of metal obliterate that which is feminine and illusory (the sea); the metal becomes one with the head; steel becomes flesh (the riddle of steel) Pictorial 87

This is the world of inductive sorcery, which stifles feminine intuitive awareness (psychic calm, 60s songs). Is this world therefore the materialisation of silence? Is materialism in effect a silence of the cosmos which requires compensation with material goods ($)?

NEXT: “RED LACE”

Pictorial 91

Not to put too fine a point on it, Jena-Luc Godard’s 60s films have an athletic womanly grace to die for. Literally in Made In USA, where Karina survives a treacherous state secret by sanguinely shooting those she deems her enemies.

Such savage grace is to die for; or simply romantic love. Romance is the active female form – the fencing socialite Helene in Mundy’s Tros of Samothrace (Hyborian Bridge 18.) Howard seems to be one of the pioneers of American romance – as well as heroic fantasy – and his women are lusty and as morally powerful as the men.

The athleticism has a darkness – that of blood – so the fertility is tinged with the hunt; Diana bounding, bow in hand, hounds baying under the ivory moon. It is the darkness of savagery – common to both Kull and Brule – rather than the obscene darkness that hides behind the masks of the languid smile. Such was Kamula, the city of pleasure in Black Abyss.

The scent of rare incense filled the air from hanging censers of silver openwork and all about lay evidence of a high culture gone lax and soft, degenerate, weak, hovering on the brink of decay. (page 54)

Kamula’s is a serpentine palace of

undulating, curving halls wherein were niched alabaster statuary and great jade urns of flowers

where “even the men stank of perfume”. At least Brule feels free to spit on the “rose-strewn marble flags” as at an honest banqueting hall. But the blackness at the core of Kamula holds more than a trace of The Shadow Kingdom, where the phrase is spoken,

“The – snake – that – speaks”

There is a hellish intelligence glinting behind serpentine eyes, and what Kull and Brule stumble on in Kamula is the sad spectacle of insane joy at such macabre worship.

For they stumble on the apparently fey nobility disrobed and capering in “loathsome obscene joy”. The longueur and seemingly civilized veneer of Kamula bears more than a semblance of Euripides - Hyborian Bridge 62/2.

Taligaro, the pampered, silken, languid poet.. crouched like an animal, naked, slimed with sweat, piping like a mad bacchante, grovelling before a heathen altar!  (page 59)

And the naked dancing girl, Zareta is worshipping nothing more than a monstrous, oozing worm which seems to hold the spark of inhuman intellect in its appalling orbs.

Unlike the cities of the south, luxury-loving Kamula seems to have no military code and is steeped in a slumber almost akin to death. This merely hides a Dionysian reality of inhuman lust.

The disrobed nobles are easy prey to the “luxury-despising primitive” Brule – and blood spurts. From that one grasps the divide between the darkness of savagery – blood – and the inhuman worship of darkness.

While the dancing girl Zareta whirls in nude rapture, Kull’s blood is stirred. But when he sees what writhes on the altar his blood is stirred in another way.

This is the savage fertility of moral action. The girl is not always an innocent, and the athletic darkness of the hero must strike with moral force. The savage fertility of Man the hunter is his protection against the forces of necromancy and inhuman, serpentine intellect.

What I mean is there is really a feminine aspect to this, and woman is the object of fertility. As I’ve been trying to suggest, the dainty aspects of nature are frequently found in Howard’s prose; the strong and the dainty are often found together – as in By This Axe I Rule (prev.)

Unlike Kamula where longueur reigns, the dainty sights of nature are bright and bold and speak of gay girls dancing with sprightly abandon – to no devil-tune.

The female side, at one level Daphne - sweet repose - at another Diana - blood and sweat – are an aspect of Howard that combats the overly masculine stereotype.

Illustrations are a good example of what I mean by that.

 

The Achilleos cover has strong curves, the bronzed shoulder-armor, and just the shaft of the axe to break-up the curves of shields and limbs. It has a heroic aesthetic of limber grace harking to Frank Frazetta, who is known for his lissom beauties. It is masculine and feminine together.

Of course, BWS is known for his curvaceous lines.

 

As a counter-example, I came across Conan and Kull artist Jason Sweet.

 

Which I would term masculine and photo-realistic, rather than the line which moves with grace and abandon.

Hyborian Bridge 100

The Kull story which most hints at archaic reptilian forces that once ruled men is The Shadow Kingdom. In it – very typically – the savage clean-limbed body, here of Kull and Brule, is set against the sky-soaring antiquity of a city young only when Atlantis was yet to be born.

Valusia is fading, decadent yet still with the power of ages. The unholy scale (unintentional pun) of the degeneracy becomes known to ambassador Ka-nu of the Picts, and Brule is dispatched to lead Kull a merry chase through the serpentine layers of the palace.

Though in past ages serpent men had taken the shape of kings, now only the decadent depths of the palace itself keeps them from the sight of men, and it is into this labyrinth Brule leads Kull.

The ancient, slithering spine is hard to kill, and it is kept alive by the sinuous uncertainty of the palace itself. The slitherers weave in and out of the stonework itself, through treacherous tunnels. They are hard to kill since the spine is just the primitive unconscious of Man that does not even need a body, that undulates with sickening ease.

The sickening sexuality of these archaic people is somewhat similar to the physical boredom of Modern Man, whereby the (sexual) physique and the numerical head become one (see prev.) This is really our hygienic order, whereby the head is the tool of smart-machines and houses. Dyson, Musk, Bezos are the serpents in plain sight!

In the palace of Valusia, the serpent men must be hidden because the palace has a mythical darkness that is built for clean-limbed bodies dancing to the tune of time.

Kull seems to have a mild disdain for the conventional dances of the social calendar that frequent the halls of his domain, but is a pleasing human whirl of artifice amid the dust-strewn halls. The vast palace has probably only a few clean areas and the patina of age and sweat peppers the corridors.

What I really mean is a palace is a living thing of stone, wood – and gardens. Kull at one point leans over the sill onto the inner courtyard.

The moon had not risen when Kull, hand to hilt, stepped to a window. The windows opened upon the great inner gardens of the royal palace, and the breezes of the night, bearing the scents of spice trees, blew the filmy curtains about. The king looked out. The walks and groves were deserted; carefully trimmed trees were bulky shadows; fountains near by flung their slender sheen of silver in the starlight and distant fountains rippled steadily. No guards walked those gardens, for so closely were the outer walls guarded that it seemed impossible for any invader to gain access to them.

Vines curled up the walls of the palace, and even as Kull mused upon the ease with which they might be climbed, a segment of shadow detached itself from the darkness

 

It is really the decadent dinginess of the palace that maintains it as fit for a savage king and the thronging dances in musty halls with billowing tapestries and drapes for windows where breezes idly eddy.

Eddy from the garden below, since this is a living palace with the currents of life through it. Kull, through the story, has an eerie sense of unreality or a dream; is it this age-old patina and dark fertility of Daphne?

DAPHNE

The human myth is born of sweat and the body, the agile lustiness, the throb of the dance, the swirling sweep of the blade. Honed athletic grace is what keeps the serpent at bay; the spine may be ancient, but the body is human. A moral action, a harmonic performance.

Kull #9 © Marvel 1973

In the modern order one can have a head without being human (in that sense). It is the hygiene of the snake (in human guise). Darkness and fertility are the mythical aspects of the body that protect it from slithering peril.

The physical action and grace of the body in places of power, the wild groves, the hunt, the kill in order to survive.. these are our mythic heritage.

This is why I say Jean-Luc Godard has much to say to the Howard mythos (see Made In USA prev.) This is why esoteric European lore is still germaine in the 21^st century, for it is still the4 century of age-old patina. That can only change if “they” (the serpents among men) win.

Pictorial 90

So she did not hear the light footfall nor see the tall broad-shouldered man who came out of the bushes and stood above her. She was not aware of his presence until he knelt and lifted her, wiping her eyes with hands as gentle as a woman’s.

The little slave girl looked into a dark immobile face, with cold narrow grey eyes which just now were strangely soft.

This is the start of chapter 3 of By This Axe I Rule. Of course, the slave girl isn’t wrong as by the end of chapter 4 the savage call of blood will have turned Kull into the personification of battle.

But Howard is not one to say nature is dark and fearsome with no respite. There is always respite by the silent brooks of Valusia’s sun-dappled forests. The dainty flower – like the little slave girl – has its place and all is not stern and sombre.

In typical romantic fashion, sombreness stalks the heaths and moors, the red-wood forests, the fir-clad slopes. Nature in her frivolous gaiety cares not one wit for the doings of Man. 

Nature is the carefree dancer and the golden bull of dangerous ferocity. Both – like Dionysus the half-moon horned god.

Selene, mother of Dionysus

To the Greeks of Alexander the Great, Dionysus was “the god of the orient”, and the companion to the golden Agni, the bull of Shiva. In the Rigveda, Rudra-Shiva represents the fierce, destructive storms; Shiva the placid rains that farmers yearn for.

Rudra is the red Siva. There is also Shiva Atalas (or Atlantis) of the destroyed, submerged continent.

ATLANTIS MAGNA

Now I’ll hold my horses! You think I’ve gone all far-right/esoteric on you, I can hear it in your thoughts. It’s like this..

I did some reading online and see there is material on all the above – plus a lot more. This is not a route I’m taking, and the reason is..

Parvulesco is a writer and inventor of myth; Howard is a fantasist myth-maker. Both write compellingly and with fantastic conviction. To me, that is what counts: the force and blood-minded determination of the writer, and his creations.

Scholarship alone can lead to weakness; a verbal trap. World myths may be connected, but the complexity is such it’s for others to say. What I know is that myths tell essential truths that Modern Man seems to no longer be aware of.

The reason for that seems to be that the head becomes a tool of physical boredom; the numerical and the sexual become one (see prev.)

Whether you agree with that or not, our physical condition in the modern state is worrying. We exist in the material world, whereas ancient philosophy consists of Brahma (creator), Vishnu (preserver), Shiva (destroyer).

The Greeks were somewhat similar, with the reckless, bull-like Dionysus (Rudra-Shiva) and Apollo (light-bearer/creator). See Hyborian Bridge 62/2 Euripides’ The Bacchae.

Myths are stories that Man tells of nature. Where you have creation (sun/Brahman) there must also be destruction (Dionysus, Rudra). Destruction is a form of decay, and it brings with it new-shoots. The cycle continues.

This cycle is an Earth-myth, the red-brown earth which fertilizes all living things. Whereas we live almost in the eternal present of Alphaville, where most things are new and futurist, the Earth-myth is left to develop as it will.

In nature this often takes the shape of symbiosis, whereby fungi grow on trees and rotten trunks, vines on branches. Something which is left alone, like an old country house or cabin in the woods, develops a rustic patina which is the visible presence of decay. Things grow on walls, wood develops red, rusty shades; musty ochres of uncertain lineage.

This is Howard’s world of ancient elder-places; but it’s also an abandoned Southern estate or an old Texan ranch with musty stone walls and dark ochre stockade.

Mordecai House, North Carolina 

There is a lot missing in the modern world that is in this presence of destruction that is simply the patina of decay that things develop over time. Destruction is the red bull of Agni; the uncertain donkey of Dionysus.

The presence of shambles in amongst the order that tells you this is a living presence that has strength over time, that is not simply carbon fibre alloy.

The red bull of Agni and the donkey of Dionysus are what is missing in a material order where the head is merely a tool of physical boredom, existing in numerical smart-houses (head) and sexuality (physique).

The nothingness of this existence is that it is neither creation nor destruction, but simply a material order run by the likes of Dyson (cleaning), Musk (travelling), Bezos (buying). You might say you have to clean, travel and buy? Yes, but you have to live and die rather than merely exist to do these things. Creation, preservation, destruction.

These so-called esoteric themes are no stranger to Kull, of Atlantis.

“I Thought You a Human Tiger!”. 

A cool wind whispered through the green woodlands. A silver thread of a brook wound among great tree boles, whence hung large vines and gayly festooned creepers. A bird sang and the soft late summer sunlight was sifted through the interlocking branches to fall in gold and black velvet patterns of shade and light on the grass-covered earth.

No stranger to the hunter, the trapper, men of the wild places. Of places of power; of dirt and cleanliness. To adventurers of the introspective “Invisible Empire”. Age, patina, myth, darkness, fertility, Daphne of the laurel (Tales of Faith 5).

Pictorial 89

Destruction, vengeance; corroded textures, primal color. Godard’s 60s opus has that in common with the eschatological epics of pan-European mystic Jean Parvulesco (prev.)
To Parvu, the dawning of the cosmopolitan Age of Aquarius is a moral inferno that the forces of the Red-Brown Shiva are fighting in an occult battle that has been going on – probably since about 1770.

These are the red-brown, burnt ochre forces of Atlantis to whom destruction of the material illusion ushers in being. The eternal Tantric self.

What is self but the ephemeral being that materialism attempts to wipe out; that Godard’s films capture with deft magic? The ephemeral in line and movement, music and magic, captured for all eternity.

 

Parvu’s books are waxed in esoteric lore; to wit:

The agents of the Inner Continent are awake. In the night sky of out repulsive civilization appears the magic star heralding the imminent transformation of the Inner into Outer. This is the star of the Invisible Empire.

(any relation to The Plumed Serpent is coincidental!) Could this magic star be feminine? The red-brown is Shiva, Tantric deity of the Hindu, whose other self is Shakti. The two are one indivisible self, and Shakti simply the female personified.

 

Parvu – somewhat like Howard – invents his cosmogony by taking what exists in Indo-European lore, and adapting it to a world view where the mystical is much closer to the surface. In The Plumed Serpent (rev) this mystery is ordained by the low, throbbing drum; the symbol of Quetzalcoatl; and by the green-clad Katie as the goddess Malintzi, bride of the living Huitzilopochtli.

Without the female principle – even as the blessed Mary reclining on the white moon – the melody that marks the universe is gone. In Godard’s movies this is always quite clear, as the technical tricks he pulls are often at the service of the higher poetry of love in a universe of danger.

ALPHAVILLE

Karina, as Paula Nelson, references this in Made In USA, where she say

We are living in an old part of the universe where nothing happens, while elsewhere galaxies are being created by explosions.

Even the squawk-box, a reel-to-reel recorder emitting a metallic voice, seems to resemble the circular motif of Alpha 60. This is maleness, or the world without melody (where we live).

The feminine principle is the begetter of life; the womb is the moon. Diana the huntress; blood and destruction.

What happens in the womb is a priori all that happens in the world of men. All is stillmess and gentle sounds of ambient presence, somewhat like a Dutch interior!

Stillness is a quality lacking in modernity, since it speaks of Inner movement. This Inner life has a harmonic akin to the sphere. After all, how can something develop into a distinct personality unless the entire process is harmonised?

The Inner is therefore the very opposite of Darwinian competition. And yet if, as Parvu says, the Inner shall become the Outer, this harmonic can also become visible in the world (again).

All this is quite visible in Godard’s 60s films. If you noticed in the clip of Karina in Made In USA there was a percussive rhythm that was arbitrarily tied to the flick of her head. The melodic grace of woman as a technical trick.

Both in Godard are equally important. Neither dominates in the moral sphere. Only when one dominates – as in the metallic squawk-box – is there a negative factor.

That is the world we live in; a negative factor, an anti-life of technical tricks tied to the male and his numerical fixation (of physical boredom); the numerical and the sexual are one.

Only physical strength can free us of this; but where is physical strength produced? Only in the womb of woman. She is melody and harmony; she knows not abstract competition.

Physical strength is a moral right, and it is tied to the feminine principle. In America, the men and women with guns in Richmond, Virginia (capital of the Confederation) are asserting a moral right of strength. A commune that defends itself is composed equally of men and women.

Thus does the feminine principle carry a harmonic that is tied to the moon; blood and the womb; the hunt and destruction to preserve life. In Made In USA Paula has to kill to survive; I'd stay alive at any price..

In old Dutch paintings the harmonic principle is visible, and women are sturdy and strong. The same would be so of a Puritan settlement.

Howard’s Hyboria too harbours the feminine principle of harmony, in the proportions of the city-state, the principle of feuding to preserve one’s space. It is in the feminine principle, the red-brown ochre of destruction, that is the mythical key that one can see in the films of Godard, the writings of Parvu, the painting of Pieter de Hooch; in Richmond and in Hyboria.