Ladder to a Sun
(homage to
Jefferson Starship’s Sunfighter album, done in wood beads and acrylic)
Simplicity is
the great theme of the heavenly orbs, the theme that Man tries to decipher with
astrology and Tarot. So one arrives at subtlety, rather than the scientific
sense that the more complex things are the closer one gets to solving the puzzle.
Subtlety is not
a solution but an interpretation. It depends on a simple framework – the movements
of the planets – while to scientists the simplicity is simply proof that
nothing is there! Science is preternaturally blind to simplicity because it is
something that just is. There happen to be nine planets by pure fortune or
happenstance. To Pythagoras or the Egyptians this meant mystery and meaning; to
scientists it is meaningless.
The same applies
to any archetypal shape, from a dog to a snake. To science they have no meaning
save that of competition (see prev); to story and myth the meanings are manifold.
So science rigorously denies meaning, since only simple things can have a story
and a myth!
Those who search
for meaning in the modern scene are more likely to be out-of-time. Burne
Hogarth (Pictorial 1, 4) was a true Renaissance
Man who brought to pulps a connoisseur’s eye of the moral force of “a man armed
only with a knife” in Tarza.
The jungle is a labyrinth that only the pure heart can penetrate (NOTE:
there’s a para in Denizens of the
Netherworld 2 that refers to the “labyrinth”. At that time I was meaning
the modern maze of logic, so read it in that way or there could be a lot of confusion!)
Yes, the labyrinth of the forest in Gilgamesh (Kari Hohne Pictorial
65). Subtle interweavings and traps that are not just randomly complex. The
call of the hunt and the scent of blood, the kill and the carrion, the cycle of
lifedeath, strength and fear.
One searches for meaning outside of the modern maze of logic, and
inside the primeval labyrinth of arboreal stories, of shipwrecks and berocked sirens.
So, one assumes, do others outside the modern uni-mind, be it DH Lawrence (The
Plumed Serpent) or Leigh
Brackett (The Long Tomorrow).
Both books make
the assumption that Modern Man is basically batty and foresee alternate paths
that connect to a more primitive conscious and the primeval reptile. Beckett’s agrarian
society poses the same question that I posed at the end of Elektra: the
Sequel (Hyborian Bridge 91). Is going Amish justified, or are we
justified to keep the mechanical devices that we happen to like?
It’s almost
impossible to answer, and Leigh Brackett’s later work was prone to deal with
alien societies under peril of extinction from human endeavours. EC sci-fi
titles were often prone to show species at vastly different levels of development,
from primeval forest dwellers to flashing
starship troopers.
In The Long
Tomorrow, Leigh depicts the honest toil of barging through the American
mid-west, sweat beading down, hair matted, and this has a moral force. I once worked
on an organic farm and the rituals of baling and scything are for sure sweaty
fun (Cider With Rosie Pictorial 5).
Grabbing at straws, could we, say, go back to castles and peasantry but still
keep the odd Harley Davidson? The Long Tomorrow faces the same quandary
when, at the end, they acknowledge that information can never be destroyed and
someone, somewhere, will eventually revive it.
Yes, there’s something in that but, equally, one can’t live a lie and
that we live in an information age is the biggest lie of all. We live in “their”
information age, the Martians in our midst. Some things are morally pure, such
as the smell of hay or dry compost. This is the cyclical world of seasonal
power under the mighty orbs above. So, it’s not so much a case of we shouldn’t
advance as that we should recognize the cosmos for what it is.
This world is story, and the other world is weak – physically and
psychically. One way to put it is to place two of BWS’s Howard prints
side-by-side (BWS is another guy seemingly out-of-time, as well as
out-of-sight)
If Bran represents the reptile strength of the fens, Thoth represents the
mental-spiritual aeriness that knows only ego-lust. In between the two is the
way of the barbarian where strength of body and moral codes place them on a
higher pedestal than either peasant or king.
Both Kull and Conan were barbarians who conquered kingdoms, learning
wisdom and curbing their unruly excesses. Both Valusia and Aquilonia are
civilized kingdoms that respond well to strength of arm and mind.
Both face sorcerous foes and both throw them off. Modern civilization has
to throw off the yoke of sorcery. That doesn’t mean science (which just means
knowledge). It means the malevolence of techniques that are born of a lie.
Kull #7
Kull overthrows orthodoxy