Techno Shamanism

Even though this blog covers some pretty esoteric topics, it's meant to work toward a solution to a concrete problem. It's a search for a better way of life, which of course is a perennial quest for people all over the planet.

The quest currently takes place against the backdrop of technologies like high speed networks and low cost ubiquitous computers that enable decentralization of the economy. Applications of those technologies like home built CNC machines or low-cost 3D printing puts advanced manufacturing techniques into the hands of anybody who wants to use them. YouTube provides graduate level courses on a variety of subjects for free. The corresponding societal changes spurred by these technologies are yet to be seen.

There is a lot of experimentation going toward creating new modes and orders. Since much of this experimentation is taking place within the confines of settled and well established nations, like western European countries, or Canada or the US, it looks more like individual, or maybe small scale cultural secession rather than political secession. (except for some interesting an isolated cases: see Liberland as one example.)

Amish buggy in Middlefield, Ohio

The Amish are one familiar case of cultural secession. Here in Geauga County, Ohio, there is a large (about 12,000 out of the 93,000+ people in the county) , prosperous Amish community and there's a lot of interaction between the "English" and the Amish.

The Amish show it's possible to set up a parallel economy and culture with a relatively small group of people. The Amish community, for example, seems to include a high number of businesses relative to the rest of the county. My guess is this is possible because the Amish self finance enterprises rather than rely exclusively on the banking system. The culture of the Amish enables the to make choices that align to advance their own self interest as well as what they deem to be morally good.

It seems plausible to build other parallel cultures within the Western countries by following the Amish as a basic template and synthesizing it with other, maybe older models.

The idea I have in mind is a techno shamanic culture, a culture of people who know how to do things and how to make things; a culture of people who do not depend on systems to supply their needs.

The Power of Paradox

Archer Hou Yi Shooting
the Sun

Human beings live with severe limitations, a short life, limited senses, physical weakness, etc... yet we can conceive of things like infinities, or vast power, and can desire immortality. (The Count of Saint Germain is an alchemist who according to legend discovered the secret of immortality.) We can desire transformation and an escape from the necessity of cycles. We are like a bow drawn between mundane reality and imaginary worlds.

Our symbolic languages fail to capture the essence of  that imaginary world. The millions of man years spent earnestly making inky scratches on paper can't capture its concepts in a net made of paper. They slip away like a slender doe bounding through the woods.

Art helps blaze a trail into that world. One method for illuminating that world is by depicting what amounts to a negative space. A favorite trope of SciFi, for example, is showing what it means to be human by including a robot character who wishes to be human.

The idea of a zen koan is similar, I think. Contemplating a paradoxical question like, "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" forces the mind out of mere logical thinking, or mere regurgitation and assembly of facts.

The gap between logical and symbolic thinking and imagination seems to be a source of human creativity.

Odin and Hermes

Hermes Trismegistus

A. L. Frothingham's excellent article on Hermes and the Caduceus traces the roots of the god into Babylon and the near East and postulates that Hermes origin was as a god of fertilization. Hermes was the spirit of the union between the male sun and the female earth and the caduceus symbolizes that union.

His role in the classical pantheon expands to every conceivable analogous case. By Roman times, the temple of Mercury served as a marketplace, and Mercury and Hermes were gods of commerce. By the time of the Roman Empire's decline, the character of Hermes and the Egyptian wisdom god, and teacher of mankind Thoth combined as Hermes Trismegistus.

It is really intriguing that Odin, the chief god of the Germanic people, seems to have more of the character of Hermes Trismegistus than a sky god like Zeus. As I noted in a previous post, Odin's day of the week "Wednesday" corresponds to Mercury's day in Romance languages. Dan McCoy's excellent article on Odin elaborates his character and, in my opinion, the parallels with Hermes are evident.

Perhaps Odin reflects the character of the Germanic tribesmen, who were possibly more democratic (cf thing) and more independent than their peers in the classical world. An all powerful sky god just didn't work for them. Perhaps they saw Jesus as the same character. A centuries long experiment with Oriental despotism aka feudalism ultimately was rejected by modern adherents of Hermes.

My interpretation is Hermes is the chief god of the western world and he still is today.

Conan the Barbarian: Consciousness Rising

The 1982 movie Conan the Barbarian was directed by Oliver Stone and stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as Conan. The movie was based on the Conan books by Robert E. Howard.

Robert Howard was connected to H.P. Lovecraft's circle and to theosophy and the occult revival of the mid 19th century. Some commentators in the alt-media see theosophy or the western esoteric tradition as "evil" or the work of devils.

My interpretation is many of the authors and thinkers of the 19th and 20th centuries like Robert E. Howard were drawn to the western esoteric tradition and to archaeological and historical studies of the origins of Western people to renew culture. Political control is frequently, maybe always, coupled with religious control, which really means control of the wilds of the imagination. As the institutions of Christian Europe decayed, the space for imagination grew. The gods of mythology and the wilderness of the imagination made a return. Conan is one of them.

James Earl Jones as Thulsa Doom

Conan the Barbarian is ostensibly a revenge story that's framed within a quest for an answer to "The Riddle of Steel". Conan's parents are slaughtered by a raiding party of Thulsa Doom, and young Conan is abducted into slavery. Somehow as a slave he manages to grow big and strong by pushing a human powered grist mill, so he matures into a gladiator and is doted on by his captors, learns to read and write, and learns advanced fighting skills, finally he's set free, where he becomes a thief, meets two companions, and conceives of a plan to exact revenge on Thulsa Doom. He confronts Thulsa Doom, but is defeated and crucified on the Tree of Woe. He's resurrected by a sorcerer and finally defeats Thulsa Doom and decapitates him.

The Conan character seems to be a product of the historical theorizing of the 19th and 20th centuries. Researchers sought to explain the origins of Western civilization through archaeological and linguistic evidence. (See the Kurgan Hypothesis as a similar example.) They sought, like Hegel, or for a modern example see Jared Diamond's Gun Germs and Steel, an underlying mechanism or reason for how western civilization evolved.

So the Conan character is drawn from imagining the remote, pre-christian, even pre-classical past, but also serves as a microcosm of History. Conan, by virtue of acquiring knowledge and an expanding consciousness transforms multiple times until he finally gets backstage with Thulsa Doom.

Doom's two snake headed insignia is a version of the Caduceus. In the movie, he plays a dark trickster, who keeps the masses hypnotized and in his thrall. However, he also serves as Conan's tutor. He provides an explanation for the riddle of steel, that steel is weaker than the hand that wields it, and the ultimate power is the power of mind. He's responsible for the ultimate transformation of Conan. As the Egyptian God Seth binds Osiris in a form fitting coffin, Thulsa Doom pins Conan to the Tree of Woe. Like Odin who hangs from a tree for nine days to learn the runes, Conan dies and is resurrected with new wisdom that allows him to infiltrate Thulsa Doom's cult and finally defeat and decapitate him.

Vikings: The Gods and Actors

In a previous post, I noted that for many people in my generation Star Wars is like our bible and in fact its themes and characters are based on ancient stories that somehow seem to be coded in our DNA or maybe even in the physical fabric of our reality.

Vikings is similarly based on the legendary stories of Ragnar Lothbrok, which in turn, are based on mythological stories. Most of the characters in the story are the gods and the team of artists that produce the series rely on mythological imagery and allusions, and hence imagery and allusions drawn from nature, to dramatize the gods. Some of the characters seem to be based directly on one god in the Norse pantheon, while others, maybe even Ragnar, are syntheses of multiple gods. Indeed, syncretism seems to be one of the major themes of the series as Christianity bumps into the ancient religion of the people.

Floki Slithering through Tall Grass

The task of the actors in the series, then is channeling or evoking the gods. Vikings uses some subtle, and some not so subtle cues to accomplish this.

Ragnar takes on the roll of Odin. Throughout the series Travis Fimmel moves his head in an odd way and eyes the camera to evoke a bird, maybe alluding to Odin's ravens. He wears a raven insignia on his shoulder. He sometimes hops up on furniture in a scene or sits on a perch. Floki in the series is obviously Loki. He wears eye make up that evokes a snake's eye patches and moves in a serpent-like manner.

Aslaug

The female characters in the series, Lagertha and Aslaug evoke the ancient goddess character(s). (Check out David Mathisen's post on Isis and Nephthys for the dual nature of the goddess.)

As mentioned in an earlier post, Lagertha's a version of the kick-ass-moon-girl, although in her case, she's a full grown woman, the female version of Ragnar.

Aslaug's the pretty, icy, unfaithful, magic oriented red haired Venus type character. She first appears in water (like Aphrodite's birth), then shows up wearing a net (cf. Net of Hephaestus), and holding an apple (cf Judgement of Paris) and walking a dog. (I don't know the meaning of that one.) It's notable that the female characters don't seem to adopt the animal imitating style of the male characters.

The New Gods

Even a cursory exploration of mythology will lead an earnest researcher to a syncretic view of religious belief and pure bafflement at the durability of mythological characters and stories. Any time there's a new god, it's almost always grafted onto an older root and when we follow the root, inevitably it vanishes into the ancient past.

There are a couple of modern gods, though, that don't seem to have any ancient ancestors. The History God and the Disembodied Math God don't seem to have parents in the ancient mythological systems.

Sauron, Lord of the Cycles

The ancient mythical systems seem to revolve around the idea that everything in the world is governed by cycles. Again and again the heroes and gods try to escape the cycle, but inevitably they're consumed.

The artificial, the man made world seems to be a refuge from the cycles. Cities endure from generation to generation. Civilization rise and grow. Through Art (in the most general sense of the word), then, maybe man can escape the necessity of the cycles once and for all.

Columbia as Manifest Destiny

The History God is, I think, relatively new compared to the entities that populate the ancient pantheons. Possibly, the concept comes from the historians of the classical era, which maybe got their idea from legends of founder kings and dynasties such as Pelops or of course Romulus and Remus or King David or Moses. Those stories seem to be composed entirely of ancient mythological themes, but rather than graft the same old gods onto new gods, they're grafted onto human, supposedly once living, figures.

It's a subtle change, like the difference between science fiction or fantasy novels and historical fiction. The remote, divine, mythical past gets linked to the present. History, rather than an impossibly complicated and disconnected series of events suddenly becomes a linear, unfolding narrative and History becomes not only the god of the past, or the record of events, but a sort of prophetically defined road into the future.

The History God, maybe is like the pre-frontal cortex of the meta-animal of civilization. Maybe it's the negative space concept of cyclicality and limitations; it's the idea of linear and logical unfolding of events.

Article on Hermes and Caduceus History

A really in-depth, fascinating interpretation of the meaning of the Caduceus and Hermes by A. L. Frothingham is available online here. The article follows the thread of the god Hermes back to his Babylonian antecedent Ningishzida, who was a snake god. One of the interpretations of the snake symbolism of the Caduceus is that the twin snakes are a fertility symbol and represent the sun (male snake) and the earth (female snake) in the spring.

The article delves into different associations of the snake symbol.

The single snake, the great

earth snake was the primal embodiment of the Mother Goddess

as the source of life. This was probably due to its fecundity,

love of moisture and its response to the spring heat-characteristics

that made it the emblem not only of life but of resurrection.

There are certain passages in the divination texts relating to

snakes which show how closely the Babylonians associated them

with life and with wealth. The following are taken from Dr.

Jastrow's work:1

" If a snake crawls up a man's foot it means a long life. That

man will become rich and will cry out: 'Where shall I house

my corn? Where shall I store my silver?'

" If a snake falls upon a little child and frightens it, that child

shall live under the protection of God.

" If a snake lies down on a little child, so shall it, whether it be

male or female, obtain renown and wealth, or its father and

mother will obtain renown and wealth.

" If a queen bears a snake the king will be strengthened."

As Dr. Jastrow says: "In the Semitic languages the groundstem

underlying the word for snake is identical with that of the

word meaning life and a similar unity of concept between snake

and life appear to lie at the base of the widespread belief among

Indo-germanic races that snakes are the embodiment of dead

ancestors."

In other words we must realize that in practically all ancient

thought the snake was the typical life-spirit or daimon. That

it was passed on to the Assyrians is shown, for example, in an

apparently insignificant detail in the notable Assyrian relief of

Bel fighting the Dragon, found in the palace of Assurnazirpal at

Nineveh. In drawing the dragon the artist has made his phallus

in the form of a serpent, so clinching the fact that the male

serpent stood for the organ of generation in the ancient Oriental

mind. This helps, later on, in the case of the Hellenic Hermes

to span the distance between his two emblems-snakes and phallus.

Bitcoin and Hermes

Statue of Odin in Hannover

Germanic tribesmen thought their chief god Odin matched up with the Mediterranean civilizations' god Hermes or Mercury. This idea is captured in the names of the days of the week, Odin's day is Wednesday, which is Miercoles (Mercury's day) in Spanish.

Arguably Hermes, still, is the chief god of the Western world in his various guises. His signs and symbols are everywhere (e.g. the caduceus). As a consequence, the mythology related to Hermes is vast and varied. The character plays an important role in many of the classical mythological stories. As Hermes Trismegistus he shows up in the mythology of the major monotheist religions today.

As stated in the previous post, it's possible the name Satoshi Nakamoto ("quick witted"/"of the center") is an allusion to Hermes. (Some speculate it's an allusion to the CIA) Hermes role in classical mythology is as the wing-footed messenger of the gods, intelligence, writing and eloquence, and boundaries, and much more. Perhaps a neat summarizing phrase is intelligence in action.

Buffy and Giles

Hermes is one of the most beloved characters when he's translated into science fiction and action adventure movies. The audience of those movies and TV shows is probably difficult to distinguish from the bitcoin community. His role in SciFi is, generally, to serve as a helper to the hero of the story by providing him or her (think Buffy and Giles) with the knowledge or tools they need to win. He can get involved in the action himself, but usually only reluctantly.

Much of the language of the bitcoin community is drawn from the SciFi, and hence the mythological, tradition. Using bitcoin is considered an act of rebellion versus an overwhelming Empire. To a certain extent that's true, however, I think implicit in that language of rebellion is a strong assumption that the status quo is winning and will win without the aid of supernatural forces. That is, falling into the language of a heroic struggle also inflates the adversary. It also creates false expectations and ideas, for example, that the truth will win out, or light will always triumph over darkness and might obscure what needs to be done to really effect change.

An understanding of mythology can help people see patterns of thought and behavior that are deeply ingrained in us all, and so allows us to get a few degrees closer to reality, and act accordingly.

Bitcoin and the Frontier

Many people in the alternative research/alternative media community see money as a prime method of control of the masses. The realities of debt money are shocking to anyone who investigates the subject--our future productivity is sold to us by banks whose role in any transaction seems to be completely parasitic and arbitrary.

The alternative media has been a forum for discussing concrete solutions to this problem. One obvious solution is to issue our own currency. Local currencies (see Ithaca Hours as one example) are an attempt to eliminate debt money. In 18th/19th century America, settlers community-financed houses and businesses and didn't rely on money at all, and instead used goods or hours of labor as currency. However current application of any of these methods barely make a hair-fine scratch in the market for Federal Reserve Notes, aka US Dollars.

If you delve into the money problem, you'll find currency and banking are only one component, maybe just a small component. I think this great article on salt as a currency and commodity illuminates the problem. Today, we consider salt to be all but worthless. It's readily available everywhere. There seems to be a never ending supply. In fact there's a super abundance of salt that diets of people in the western world include far too much of it, and it contributes to chronic health problems.

However, that wasn't always the case. Venice maintained a salt trade monopoly in Europe for hundreds of years. While salt wasn't exactly scarce, it was vital, and households needed it in larger quantities than we do today because it was used to preserve food when there was no refrigeration. Control of a vital commodity (e.g. petroleum) either militarily, or more subtly through monopoly of a market creates a financial system. That is, political power translates into financial power, not the other way around.

Another important element, which is really the subject of this blog, is control of the mind. When a token is used for money, that is, as a stand in for real wealth, people need to agree that it's valuable, that it's worth fighting and dying for.

Bitcoin is a relatively new entrant into this game. As the currency of people with no political or military control of vital resources (except computing power; maybe it becomes backed by CPU cycles, storage, and other computational commodities), it can only gain market share by convincing people to use it. Consequently, it relies on exploiting story telling and mythology to get traction in the market.

Many bitcoin fans slip into mythological or archetypal roles without realizing it. Bitcoin is something they conceive of as outside The City's walls, and participating in bitcoin, usually just buying and selling it on exchanges while paying high fees and potentially incurring tax liabilities, is like a ticket into this wild space, something that signifies membership in The Rebellion.

It seems like there are two Patron deities of Bitcoin--Hermes and Apollo. Indeed, the name of Bitcoin's mythological founder Satoshi Nakamoto seems to be an allusion to Hermes. Satoshi, apparently meaning "quick witted", and "Nakamoto" means "of the center". Hermes is the quick, clever god who's the intermediary between gods and men. Bitcoin's seen as a replacement for a completely corrupt system. Adherents see its purity, its mathematical, Apollonian purity, as preferable to the glad-handing political corruption that surrounds our present  financial system.

I'll dive into these associations more in future posts.

Manipulation and Mythology

In previous posts, I've tried to make the case that the stories of mythology are the echo of the song of the universe that's stored in each of us, and possibly in matter itself. From my perspective, the concepts of mythology exist independently of humans, and therefore, transcend mere psychology. That said, mythical stories can be used to manipulate people to a certain extent.

Star Wars provides an excellent example: by imbuing his saga with imagery and concepts drawn from mythology, George Lucas was able to reap enormous financial rewards. However, I think one can make almost the opposite point about Star Wars--if mythology and the gods have some independent existence, it's not possible to use them arbitrarily. Someone like George Lucas is acting as a conduit or channel, more like a servant of them, or perhaps a troubadour singing their praises rather than acting as their master.

Actor that's Always in Character?

Another current example of this view of the gods and mythology is provided by Donald Trump's election campaign. Trump channels the sun god Ra. He provides a vessel for the concepts of Ra by acting them out and being them. Just as people respond positively to Star Wars because it is imbued with solar and lunar imagery and mythological concepts, they respond well to Trump's campaign--but not really to Trump. They respond to his character, that is, Ra.

Another strategy of myth based manipulation that places less demands on the manipulators is claiming descent from the gods. This tactic was employed by rulers of the classical world. Roman senatorial families, for example, claimed divine descent. Julius Caesar claimed a link to Venus. This sort of claim seems logical in a world of patricians and plebs and its systems of patronage.

Finally, the last strategy to consider in this post is pretending to be an intercessor or speaker for the gods. This is something we see all day, every day by myriad people. We see financial analysts attempt to speak for The Economy or to interpret the signs and portends of the Disembodied Math God. We see libertarians sing the praises of The Market (another Disembodied Math God). We see evangelical Christian preachers interpret the meaning of storms or earthquakes. If one's able to institutionalize these gods and hide them in a literal Holy of Holies in a building then it's possible to serve as an official oracle.

Fashionable Imperial Citizens

The Hunger Games depicts a type that's well known to anyone in the West. We see them all the time in our media or on the streets of cosmopolitan cities: Fashionable Imperial Citizens. The FIC wears the right clothes, has the right opinions, and makes their nest deep in the bowels of the Empire's main cities. They're completely cut off from the natural world and live in a delightful man-made creation that's made possible by injustice and oppression. In the case of The Hunger Games, they're in The Capitol, in our time, they're mainly in the world cities, but can be found in more remote cosmopolitan outposts.

I think the FIC makes for some interesting analysis. They show the correspondence between an individual's mind and opinions, and the mind and opinions of a meta-animal like an Empire. The opinions of the FIC seem to arise spontaneously from the needs of the Empire, or to zealously and automatically reflect its needs. You can find a good sampling of the opinions of the FIC on the front page of the HuffPo or The Guardian.

The FIC, like the Empire itself, regards the local customs and traditions that might tie an individual to his home and his tribe as obstacles to greatness. Such customs are necessarily parochial. This idea imbues the pejorative term "pagan", which once meant country bumpkin, specifically the people who adhered to the old, pre-christian gods. (Amazingly, the word only found currency in the 14th century!)

Currently, pagan has the opposite connotation. As Christianity became unfashionable, really only recently maybe the 19th century, and as Empire consumed non-Christian realms, other beliefs become adornments and costumes. Elements of the systems of belief that are opposed to the FIC and the Empire's needs can be discarded. The beliefs are removed from their origins and local ties and can be sampled like craft beers or worn like different hats. Of course, not all people who partake in these traditions are mere tourists, but then, those people aren't FICs. Real contact with these ideas is transforming and disruptive and renders the opinions and fashions of the FIC ridiculous.

Snowden and Manning: An Elaborate Production?

It's common for authors to include elements drawn from mythology to make a story more compelling for the audience. I think there's some evidence to suggest the Edward Snowden/Bradley Manning stories are a fabrication that's based on mythological themes. The breadth and diversity of mythical material to draw from means that it is all too easy for parallels to emerge randomly. (see Apophenia) Therefore, when we apply a myth based analysis to contemporary events we should be skeptical of our conclusions.

If my analysis is correct, Snowden and Manning are characters in an elaborate production. That would probably mean Manning isn't really in prison and Snowden is, perhaps, not really in Russia and that the public facts about their life stories are mostly fabricated.

In my analysis Manning is based on the root mythological character Aquarius, and Snowden is based on Orion who rules the cold, winter night skies in the Northern Hemisphere. As stated in an earlier post, the mythological characters have attributes that form a web of poetic associations. For characters that have been used many, many times, they have many complex associations and names. That's especially true for these two characters.

Manning's backstory is strangely detailed. The backstory is neatly summarized on the Wikipedia. From my perspective this detailed backstory is one way the creator of the Manning character lets us know he's supposed to be associated with Aquarius. Manning was from a dysfunctional family of alcoholics. For some reason, the backstory includes the detail that as a child Manning was fed only milk and baby food until the age of two. This stunted his growth so he's only 5 feet tall and feeble which are appropriate traits for a character based on the constellation Aquarius, whose faint stars make it barely visible in the night sky.

Aquarius is associated with alcohol. As Ganymede, he's the cupbearer of Zeus, or as Noah, he's so drunk he lays around naked. He's often depicted with a big old jug of wine.

Aquarius with a Bottomless Jug of Wine

The weird detail about milk and baby food is similar to the Aquarian character John the Baptist's exclusive diet of locusts and honey. In fact, that's one of the strange details that got me thinking about the possibility that the story was fabricated. Why would that detail be prominent in anyone's backstory?

John the Baptist: Locusts and Wild Honey

Finally, Manning turns into a woman and all we ever see of him are photos of his head with long hair. I think this detail alludes to two stories associated with the Aquarius constellation: first, the androgynous Ganymede who is the Greek mythical character associated with the constellation and also to John the Baptist, who loses his head.

John's head On Templar Door

Manning

The Snowden character draws on a mythological character who's got so many associations that basically every man's life probably has parallels. The Egyptian god Osiris serves as one of the main templates and he draws in the association with the constellation Orion, but also the planet Saturn. There are countless iterations of this character such as Prometheus and Jesus. I think much of Snowden's story is drawn directly from the Prometheus myth. Many fans of Snowden conceive of him as a similar, self sacrificing hero.

Prometheus is the Titan who pities human kind who have been deprived fire by angry Zeus and so steals it on their behalf. This enrages Zeus who casts him from Olympus and has him bound to a rock in the Scythian land. The parallels with the Snowden story are obvious, including his theft of government secrets, and flight and "binding" in Russia, with Putin playing the part of Hephaestus.

One of the odd details in the Snowden story, which some believe to be a complete fabrication, is that he attempted to be a member of the special forces, because he "felt like [he] had an obligation as a human being to help free people from oppression." but failed to complete his training because he broke his legs in a training accident. The broken legs could be an allusion to Saturn based mythological characters. Osiris, for example, is often shown with bound legs.

All this analysis, if correct, begs the question "why"? Use of mythological themes makes Snowden and Manning more interesting. They're folk heroes because they are based on literary folk heroes that are deeply ingrained in our psyche. Previous leakers about similar issues languish in relative obscurity and are only known to the alt-media audience.

It is possible that those who might have orchestrated the story are well meaning. One theme common to Manning and Snowden is that individuals within the government need to hold it accountable.

A darker interpretation, though, is that the Snowden and Manning story helps establish a credible channel for leaking US secrets to the world, and eventually this channel will be used to help kick off a controlled demolition of the US empire, not to liberate mankind, but to usher in a replacement global empire. In reality, there's no way for us to know the real intentions.

However, if the myth based analysis is on the money, we can guess what will happen next to Snowden. At some point he might have a virtual meeting with Manning. Some spring, ideally next year (2016) when he's 33, he'll return to the United States, probably to Washington DC where he'll be greeted by throngs probably in a parade held for the occasion. He'll be betrayed by a close confidant. Then he'll be abused and severely punished, at least that's the story we'll be told.

Cycle Lords

Sauron as depicted in Lord of The Rings;
Perhaps The Ring is a metaphor for cycles.

All is cycles. The day, the seasons, the beat of a human heart, the menstrual cycle, the roaring Solar Cycle. Men and women as individuals are subject to cycles, nations and regions are subject to cycles, and indeed all life on earth is subject to mega-cycles of plate tectonics and the changing power output of our Sun.

In an agrarian or pastoral society humans are subject to the seasons and to the rains and the fertility of the soil. Life and death depend on the cycles and the favor of the gods. Human beings lived that way for countless generations, really back to the beginning of time.

Incan Human Sacrifice

Rulers rely on the priest class to enforce their connection with the gods and their control of the cycles. In ancient times the priest class celebrated the cycles of the seasons, and in some cases participated in ceremonies to attempt to propel the cycle. One of the most extreme examples is the ritual human sacrifice performed by the Inca.

Our modern western world is entirely artificial, it is a man made world and the day-to-day effect of cycles are not as obvious and many can be controlled. Indeed some people believe they are not even subject to the cycle of life and will live forever. In the case of transhumanists, they believe it literally, but for average people it is just a case of denial aided by sports cars, plastic surgery, and Viagra.

In the modern world, technocrats and bureaucrats replaced the priests role in control of the cycles and pleading with The Disembodied Math God (More on It Later).

The best example of this is the supposed control of the "business cycle", or at least since 2008, an attempt to eradicate the business cycle. A large portion of that control is spent training masses of people to follow numeric representations of the economy: GDP, unemployment rates, and other statistics. These statistics are mathematical models of imagined things.

The belief that technocrats are in control of the cycles is as delusional as the Incan's belief that hearts offered to the Sun propelled the day or the seasons, but the belief in the technocrats is built on the very solid foundation of cycle driven myths.

The Zombie Apocalypse and Hatred of Civilization

A Depiction of Tribal Life

The Walking Dead is an incredibly popular TV series. Men and women are fans, people of all ages are fans, and the series continues year after year in spite of its repetition and over the top melodrama. Many commentators in the alternative media interpret the show as the latest installment of predictive programming, that is setting the mental stage for future manipulation. I do believe such large scale manipulation is feasible and takes place all the time, however, I think the Zombie Apocalypse, is a new iteration of an old enduring theme in science fiction and fantasy present in movies like The Omega Man (1971).

As I've noted numerous times, people of the West live an unnatural life. In the United States and Europe, we basically live inside a vast property development that's controlled by enormous Kafkaesque bureaucracies that drain our wealth and energy through numerals. For most people, day to day existence is a series of pointless tasks that serve to keep this parasitic system alive. Furthermore, we're thoroughly de-tribed. We have a natural need to belong to a band beyond our family, but that need is a detriment, its a door for poison. It's used by politicians, clergy, and con-men to manipulate and scam us.

We hate our civilization, but it's all we know, and our hatred of it has no conscious manifestation. The Zombie Apocalypse is an artistic manifestation of that. The enemies of the small band of survivors are mindless hordes of zombies, creatures that are nothing but a ravenous appetite and a perversion of the natural order; they are a-cyclic, living dead things. Rick's band of survivors is a tribe. They wander through the woods and roads living something resembling a pastoral life. Seeing their small group stirs our ancient memory of belonging, and having a life that's unique and significant.

Why is Star Wars Interesting?

Money from They Live

In the remote past, my ancestors lived a life that was governed only by the cycles of nature, by the rising and setting sun, by the seasons, and by rain and drought. They were of nature, and in nature. Their gods and mythology was right there. What was within them was also all around them.

Today, the people of the West are far removed from our origins. As discussed in an earlier post, we're cut off from nature, and our ancestors have lived in a succession of cities, states, and Empires. Historically, Empires have stripped people of their religious identity by dissolving old systems of belief, and imposing new ones. Also, Empires strip people of their tribal identity. Beliefs and ties of loyalty to a tribe stand in the way of domination from a central location by a small group of people. After millenia of this process, the wild places of the western mind were settled and paved over, and controlled by imperialists. Shamanic religion and mythology were replaced with History and a strident insistence that mythical stories really happened.

Serapis

One prime example of this process is provided by the introduction of the god Serapis by the Ptolemies. The cult was fabricated to fuse the Greeks and Egyptians together and bind them to their rulers. Another example is the Christianization of pagan Europe by the Catholic Church, but perhaps the most recent, and therefore best documented example is the ethnic cleansing and forced conversions of Native Americans by the succession of Empires that dominated the New World from the 15th century on. The cultures of the Native Americans were probably analogous to western peoples' ancient cultures. They lived in tribes and had shamanic religions, and in many cases, they lived a pastoral way of life.

Their way of life conflicted with the English way of life, of land ownership and agriculture, money, and domination by remote rulers through bureaucratic systems. This type of conflict, on the surface of it, seems to be about land and resources but maybe on a deeper level it's about what you're going to do with those resources or maybe its about which gods have hold of your consciousness.

Star Wars relies on buried, paved over and nearly forgotten mythological themes for story telling. As a retelling of The Contendings of Horus and Set, one of countless such clones, it draws upon a very basic story that was well known in the ancient world. It is a story about the cycle of the sun, about the seasons and vegetation, and about birth, death, and rebirth, and the body and the soul. For the average person living in the West, these myths are unknown, and the natural cycles that inform them only exist on TV and beyond the concrete covered landscape they inhabit.

Terminally ill Star Wars Fan Daniel Fleetwood

By imbuing the movie with imagery drawn from mythology, consequently, imagery drawn from nature: solar imagery, lunar imagery, phallic forms, and rounded breast forms, Star Wars resonates with patterns that are stored inside us, patterns that make us. But for most people, those patterns are buried under layer after layer of debris. They are not conscious of why they like the movies so much. For many people the movies are a religion. Daniel Fleetwood, for example, was a huge Star Wars fan and was able to see the latest unreleased version of the movie before his recent death. His remains will be stored in a light sabre shaped urn.

The connection with the gods, with mythology can be a source of liberation, a source of delusion, or a tool of manipulation. A point I'll make over and over again is that by its very nature, this exploration is radically subjective and personal and loaded with paradoxes. (like a blog about what's radically personal)

The Constellation Lepus, a rascally rabbit

Star Wars and the Osiris Cycle

The Star Wars movies were the bible of many people in Generation X. I saw Star Wars: A New Hope in 1977 when I was only 5 or 6 years old. It was the first distinct event I remember being excited about. There was some build-up to it among the kids in the neighborhood and somehow everyone knew presumably through advertising and media buzz that the movies were going to be not only entertaining, but important. I do not remember the experience of sitting in the theater and watching the movie, but I know I loved it.

I'm not a huge fanboy, but since then, I've watched the entire series many times. Before I knew about the mythology content, I watched the series for its nostalgic value, to relive my childhood. Once I started studying mythology more intensely, though, I realized the series is entirely imbued with it.

George Lucas gave an extensive interview (It used to be on YouTube, but removed) about how he relied on Joseph Campbell's ideas of the Monomyth to craft Star Wars. (The monomyth's a generalized version of cyclical solar hero myths.) More specifically, the series seems to rely on the Osiris Cycle and its derivatives to provide not only the main story arc, but to inform the entire movie, including the imagery. Star Wars is literally about conflict between heavenly bodies, the constellations, stars and planets of Earth's night sky, that is their anthropomorphic characters as imagined by our ancient ancestors countless years ago. It's a retelling of the Osiris cycle--mostly found in The Contendings of Horus and Set.

Even though I find the parallels between the movies and the mythology completely fascinating, I think elaborating the entire thing will get tedious quickly, even for ardent fans. Instead I'll focus on some fairly arbitrary highlights.

Sunman/Moonman

Luke and Han, Sun/Moonman

Luke Skywalker and Han Solo are, together, Horus the Egyptian sky god, whose eyes are the Sun and Moon. The Sunman/moonman buddy movie trope is pervasive. The sunman is usually the "smart one" with long hair (Luke). The moonman is often portrayed as a gruff, action oriented military man (Han, the smuggler). Gilgamesh and Enkidu are such a pairing. Peachey and Danny from The Man Who Would Be King are another. More recent versions are Bo and Luke Duke from the Dukes of Hazard, Daniel Jackson and Colonel O'Brien from Stargate, Starsky and Hutch, or Sam and Dean Winchester from Supernatural.

The imagery associated with Luke is Solar. He flies an X-Wing fighter, which evokes the solar cross. His flight suit is fiery orange and his flight goggles are yellow tinted.

The imagery associated with Han is Lunar. He flies the Millennium Falcon (Falcon = Horus), which evokes the disk of the moon complete with cracks and craters. All the spaces in the Millenium Falcon are rounded to evoke the Moon.

The sunman/moonman pairing of Luke and Han is lampooned in the pairing of C3PO and R2D2. C3PO is golden, he's stiff and tall and "by the book", a protocol droid. R2D2 is short, stumpy and rounded and is fond of improvisation and is not afraid to go his own way.

Dick Pics

C3PO Collector Card
with Erection

An important element of the Osiris cycle is the creation of a Golden Phallus that Isis uses to replace Osiris' missing member and so get pregnant with baby Horus. In Star Wars C3PO seems to fill that role. C3PO is stiff and tall, in fact a collector card that appears to show C3PO with a big erection was "accidentally" released. In the series, C3PO gives aid to Padme to birth Leia and Luke.

The X-Wing fighter nose is obviously phallic, and the destruction the Death Star is destroyed by a sperm like photon-torpedo.

Underwater and Buried

Many fans think The Empire Strikes Back is the best of the Star Wars movies. Scenes in the movie are drawn directly from the Contendings. In The Empire Strikes back, Luke loses a hand to Darth Vader, just as Horus loses both hands to Set. When Luke is recovering, he's suspended in a watery tube, which parallels Horus and Set's contest to see who can remain underwater the longest.

Han Solo, instead of going under the water, ends up buried in "carbonite" with his hands sticking out, which is arguably one of the most iconic images of Star Wars, reproduced numerous times as coffee tables, ice cube trays, and wall hangings and Halloween costumes. (Maybe this represents the waning crescent moon?) And it parallels events in The Contendings when Set blinds Horus in the desert.

Princess Leia

In Star Wars, Leia is a Kick Ass Moon Girl, and she serves as a composite goddess character taking on the roles of both Isis and Hathor in The Contendings. She takes the Hathor role when she rescues Han in The Return of the Jedi.

Several of the key scenes with Princess Leia have direct parallels with scenes from The Contendings, but since this post is getting really wordy, I'll save that for another day.

In the next post, I'm going to riff on the Star Wars use of myths to explore how it works, that is, why are we so drawn to these stories.

Meta-Animals, Thoughtforms, Egregore

When I was a college student at Hiram studying Physics, I was struck how improbable it is that numbers and algorithms are able to describe and predict natural phenomenon. I began probing the concept that there's something else out there. I was attracted to "The Ideas" of Plato, which served as a formal introduction to the concept of thought forms. Roughly at the same time, the concepts of emergent properties worked their way into the popular imagination. I started to see how the two concepts were complementary. The idea of emergent properties could serve as a sort of skeleton for thoughtforms.

Scientism is the dominant view in Western thinking today, that is, that Physics explains all, that the interaction of particles and forces causes everything. From the scientist's point of view, consciousness must arise from matter and really not be any more mysterious or any less mechanical than the operation of a computer. My instinct, though, is this interpretation is simplistic and wrong and that thought forms, or the more musical sounding term egregore offers an alternate and more compelling explanation for the relationship of consciousness and the material universe.

The term egregore has its roots in The Book of Enoch, and found new usage in the occult revival of the 19th century. My interpretation of the concept is that thought forms, the egregore actually exist, that is, they have an independent existence from human beings but that they arise from our consciousness. We have a symbiotic, or perhaps simultaneous co-existence.

This concept can be broadened, or maybe given a more technical spin if we think about a new idea: the meta-animal. That is, an organism that arises from a group of organisms. One very familiar example is the state, which rises from the people of a nation. A biological example is a slime mold, which is a colony of cells that behave as an individual creature. (See slime mold problem solving as an example of emergent behavior.)

The concept of the meta-animal, though, differs from the orthodox notion of  "the state" in that this meta-animal has an independent consciousness and an independent will from its members. It is a thing that emerges from the sum of the parts.

I very recently realized that when you look at an animal, or at consciousness from an information theory point of view, it becomes possible to imagine ways to detect these creatures and discern this flow of information within a meta-animal. How one would do this is not apparent, or obvious, so this is undoubtedly a long term project.

Regardless, the concept of the egregore or a meta-animal is intimately tied to mythology; the egregore, the thoughtforms are the gods.

The Divine Cow

Ymir,Auðumbla, Búri Nicolai Abildgaard (1790)

The goddess known as Hathor to the Egyptians is the Divine Cow. Her belly is Heaven and her four legs stand on each corner of the world. For the Norse, Audumbla was the Divine Cow who fed Ymir and licked Buri from a block of ice. The Egyptians and the Norse were thousands of years apart and thousands of miles apart but shared the concept of a divine cow. It seems like these mythical beings share a common origin, or stem from a common concept.

Some authors associate Hathor with the Milky Way, while others imagine the Egyptians thought she was the sky itself (the House of Horus), or clouds (sky cows), thus her milk was life giving rain.

The Egyptian Hathor has multiple forms and animal associations as do the other gods in the Egyptian pantheon. In the Egyptian stories, such as the "Contendings of Horus and Set", for example, each of the gods readily transforms into different animal forms such as hippos or birds. It takes a significant exercise of imagination to try to adopt this mode of thinking to really grasp the significance of the Egyptian's (or Norse) animal godforms.

Our relationship with animals, except domestic pets, and with nature in general can be extremely attenuated, and for many people it's non-existent. It is possible to live within a completely man-made landscape, and indeed to only interact through the world via an electronic medium like TV or a computer or a phone.

Deforestation in the US

Our current way of life keeps most people far removed from nature. In the United States and most of the western world, the landscape has been tamed and turned into a version of the Eurasian Steppe grassland--our ancient ancestral home. Animals and plants have been slaughtered to make the land hospitable to livestock and crops and families who are unfamiliar with the wilderness. Furthermore, commercial, corporate, retail society sets the rhythms, boundaries,

Eurasian Steppe

and interactions of day-to-day life. The world has been remade for man and commerce.

This is not a new phenomenon. Our ancient ancestors domesticated cattle sometime in the distant past. As new archaeological discoveries are made, the date moves back. Some researchers discovered evidence for cattle domestication in northeastern China as early as 10,000 years ago. It's noteworthy that this date is many thousand years later than the fusion of wolf packs and human tribes. [See articles on the co-evolution of dogs and people.] Cows are the domesticated descendants of wild (now extinct) Aurochs. Clearly, there's no divine cow myth without cows.

Researchers have speculated on a Proto-Indo European religion, which includes an Audumbla-like divine cow in it's canonical myths, but establishing dates or the origins of these stories is probably not practical. Depictions of Hathor date to the Fourth Dynasty in Egypt (2613 to 2494 BC), "only" 4,500 years ago so we're forced to wildly speculate.

Maybe the divine cow myth originates with those cows who first decided to live with people. It's not difficult to imagine processions of newly minted cows arriving in far flung settlements across the world. In ancient times, the arrival of a new handful of cattle to your village would have been as exciting as electricity was to people in 20th century America. They would have been celebrated, and glorious. They solve numerous problems (while creating numerous other ones). Cattle are a miraculous self-contained, self propelled, self-propagating industry that provides milk, cheese, meat, and leather.

We are completely removed, today, from the divinity of the cow and from what our relationship with her represents. When humans domesticated cattle and horses, they also domesticated themselves. Hopefully by meditating on these myths we can enliven what was lost.

Synedoche, Kennings and the Kick Ass Moon Girl

Katniss Everdeen; Kick Ass Moon Girl

Arguably, the most beloved character in  Western mythology is the Kick Ass Moon Girl. A close runner up is Kick Ass Moon Man, but we'll get to him in a future post. Since KAMG is well known to all, she serves as a good set of concepts to meditate upon.

The Katniss Everdeen character in the Hunger Games series is a recent well known edition of KAMG. Katniss has dark hair pulled away from her face, is a wild child, a virgin, at home with creatures of the forest, and opposed to the strange, corrupt, and perverse city dwellers.

Waxing Crescent Moon Among The Trees

KAMG is a set of concepts associated with the young crescent moon, shown at left (a great photo [I'm not the author]). There's no This=That equivalence in mythology. There's no dictionary. There's no canonical meanings, rather, there's a network of associations that are inside us. They exist inside the wilds of our imagination. By meditating on these characters we explore that landscape. Furthermore by meditating on these concepts, writing about them or making art about them, we change them and add to them.

Women are associated with the moon because the duration of the lunar cycle is approximately the same as the duration of the menstrual cycle. (One of the strong messages in the mythology is that cycles govern all.) Coincidentally, the duration of the orbit of Saturn is about 29.5 years, while the lunar cycle is about 29.5 days.

This pairing of women with the moon is a poetic association. It forms nodes in a web of information and mythology "facts" that only make sense within that web. It's like Synedoche, poetic kennings or even  Cockney Rhyming Slang. If the moon is a woman, then the young moon, the waxing Crescent is a young woman with dark hair pulled away from her white face, and maybe she's carrying a bow. If she's got a bow, then she's a hunter, or more generally kicks ass.

Scarlett Johansson as KAMG in Lucy

Like many other mythological characters male or female, KAMG's at home in the frontier. She abandons, or is plucked from her boring day to day life to kick ass and possibly to change the world. However, unlike male god or hero characters whose journey takes a more linear trajectory, change is an essential component of KAMG.

Two recent works play on this aspect of her. The movie Lucy uses the Persephone-Demeter story as the base theme for the plot. In the movie, Lucy goes through a mega cycle, and her character rapidly transforms again and again, and her consciousness and knowledge expand until matter and time yield to her mind and she reaches back to implant her wisdom in the hominid Lucy, the mother of all.

Tatiana Maslany portrays Clones in Orphan Black

A second, more comical take on this theme is Orphan Black where the main character is a series of clones all portrayed by the talented actress Tatiana Maslany.

One interpretation of the of the goddess characters in mythology is that they are all representations of some underlying polymorphous substance. In this aspect, they resemble the Earth from which plants grow, or the formless waters. There's some archaic, barely expressible concept nestled in this web of associations: perhaps at one time the world was undifferentiated for our most ancient ancestors (maybe pre-human, pre-mammalian even). All was one.

KAMG Lagertha and Cold Venus Aslaug from Vikings

However, there are distinctions among the goddess characters. KAMG, for example, is quite unlike the Venus character. KAMG is beloved, arguably the most beloved god in the pantheon. She's loved by all: men, women and children. The TV show Vikings even includes a joke about this aspect of her. Aslaug complains that everyone loves Lagertha while she's not accepted by the people.

Myths, Cycles, and Information

Monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey

The cycles of the day, of the seasons, of the moon, and countless other great and small cycles have been affecting Earth since the very beginning. For billions of years, the sun rose and set, and the moon circled the globe going through her phases and tugging at the seas and the earth orbited the sun and cycled through winters and summers. Life on Earth has been imprinted with these cycles for billions of years.

The cycles of nature, the rhythms of nature, all kinds of rhythms from periodic, predictable clockwork phenomenon like sunrises and sunsets, to the roaring chaos of the solar cycle, or the slow grind of plate tectonics and pops of earthquakes or volcanoes, or the random rain beat of cosmic rays carry information in transitions, changes of light, heat, or sound. This primordial symphony carries the most basic, most ancient code.

The code is carried at all scales and written into life and indeed into matter itself. In life on Earth, in people and animals and plants it's written in DNA, and in the culture and thoughts of each species. Human language is a specific type of symbolic representation of this primordial symphony. It's several degrees removed, though.

The Tree of Knowledge is the nervous system, where the world pours into us through our senses, and through various active filtering mechanisms and pre-processing systems that condense it down and down and down into code our brains can store and process. We are painfully aware of the limitations of this system. The images and sounds in our mind's experience are attenuated renderings of the reality that's just beyond the tips of our fingers.

Anakin Skywalker Sealed Into his Suit

It is most amazing that we feel this separation from the world. It is a tangible experience. We notice there's a void between us and the world. We feel that our body is like the coffin of Osiris, and has been made by Seth to perfectly seal us inside.

The separation is even more profound when we attempt to recode the primordial symphony in language. We become aware that no matter how much we might write, or how eloquent we might be, our inky scratches or electronic records are sad, dim, cartoonish things. Even so, somehow, when we turn within our poetic language and symbols and art seem able to tap more directly into the primordial code of the universe than the highest fidelity recording of visual or auditory experience can. The wild territory of inner experience is the place the gods live. This seems to be the home of mythology. Art and poetic thought rely on this deeply embedded information we all carry within.