Immanence of Myth Early Version

The Immanence of Myth
EDITOR: JAMES CURCIO
Published by
WEAPONIZED
2011
Published by Weaponized August 2011
Editor: James Curcio

Copy Editors: Lucy Harrigan, Jazmin Idakaar
Reference Assistance: Jazmin Idakaar
Internal layout: Judith Curcio, Julie Greystone
Cover design: James Curcio
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Contributors
James Curcio
Stephane Griswold
Tony Thomas
Mr. VI
Rowan Tepper, MA
Yakov Rabinovich
Brian Corra
Stephen Hershey
Catherine Svehla, Ph.D
Brian George
David Metcalfe
Michael Anthony Ricciardi
Damien Williams
Jason Kephas
Mica Gries
Tons May
Conversations
David Mack
Rudy Rauben
S Jenx
David Aronson (with writing by Leslie Powell)
John Harrigan
Laurie Lipton
Additional illustrations by P. Emerson Williams
Special Thanks
To family, friends, lovers and collaborators, past and future. Especially to my wife, Jazmin, who
helped cull the bibliographies and weed out typos, and Allison Fastman, William Clark, and Rowan
Tepper, for the endless hours of conversation that fed many of the ideas I explore in this book.
Finally, thanks to Professor John Lobell, for giving me critical advice about the formation of this
project, which brought me to reconsider many things, even if we didn’t necessarily come to the same
conclusions.
The dialog started in this book continues online at http://www.modernmythology.net
Contributor’s works used under Creative Commons 3.0 License

in the name of their authors.
OFFERINGS
Introduction to the First Edition xi

JAMES CURCIO
Part I: Re-interpreting Myth

 An Untrue but Regularly Held Belief 16
STEPHANE GRISWOLD
 Is Myth Dead? 17
JAMES CURCIO
 Can Your Elbow Play Beethoven’s 5th Symphony

in the Key of Purple? 26
JAMES CURCIO
 What Is Modern About Mythology? 31

TONY THOMAS
 Dissecting A Living Thing:

The Difficulties of Mythic Analysis 34
JAMES CURCIO
 Myth is a Mirror 52
JAMES CURCIO
 Immanence and Butchery 61

MR. VI & JAMES CURCIO
 From and To the Body 64

MR. VI & JAMES CURCIO
 Taliesin 66
MR. VI
 The Power of Symbols: Beyond Representation 71

JAMES CURCIO
 The Power of Symbols: Sacred Art and Personal Myth 80

JAMES CURCIO
 After God: The Revolutionary Absolute 86
ROWAN G. TEPPER, M.A.
Part II: Modern Myth

 Mythology And Business 93
JAMES CURCIO
 Pretty Suicide Machine 97

JAMES CURCIO
 A Mythology of Estrangement 108

JAMES CURCIO
 Twilight Selves: Cannibalism 112

MR. VI
 Myths of Artistic Progress 123

JAMES CURCIO
 The Shining World 127

YAKOV RABINOVICH
 Counterculture Myths:
A Brief Jaunt Through Psychedelic History 134
JAMES CURCIO
 Guising along the Web:

Online Role-Playing and Human Tradition 141
BRIAN CORRA
 Playing War 144

STEPHEN HERSHEY
 The Myth of Unlimited Potential 147

DR. CATHERINE SVEHLA
 New Myths of Space and Time 152

JONATHAN JAMES TODD
 Initiation: the Masks of Identity 156

JAMES CURCIO
 Initiation: A Long Road Out Of Hell 167
JAMES CURCIO
 Excuse Me: Who Are You?

An Analysis of Identity in Perfect Blue 170
JAMES CURCIO
 The Fountain 171

JAMES CURCIO
 The Dark Side of a Culture: Thoughts on Abu Ghraib

and the Pornography of Cruelty 173
JAMES CURCIO
 Excerpts from “Eshu and Ananse;

Liberation by Subversive Knowledge” 177
BRIAN GEORGE
 Christmas, the Sacred, and Disembowelment 183

JAMES CURCIO
Part III: Personal Mythology

 A View of the Gods 186
MICHAEL ANTHONY RICCIARDI
 Living Your Myth 187

JAMES CURCIO
 Artist’s Statement 192

BRIAN GEORGE
 Breathing 194
DAMIEN WILLIAMS
 A Trail Of Breadcrumbs 198

JAMES CURCIO
 Making Do Without a Guide 214

JAMES CURCIO
 Paper Tiger 223
JASON KEPHAS
 Of Dice and Divinity—

Gambling and the Western Tradition 239
DAVID METCALFE
 I Am Ecstasy:
The emergence of Dionysus into waking life 242
MICA GRIES
 Message in My Body:
Introducing the Medea Companion 246
TONS MAY
Part IV: Conversations

 Drawing outside the Lines 252
DAVID MACK
 Chins vs. Beards 258

RUDY RAUBEN
 Imagery of the Underground 273

S JENX
 Alchemical Wedding 278

DAVID ARONSON
 Foolish People 283

JOHN HARRIGAN
 The Subconscious in Black And White 290

LAURIE LIPTON
 Bibliography 294
the IMMANENCE oF MYTH
Laurie Lipton
• xi •
Introduction
Introduction to the First Edition

James Curcio
“Myths and legends die hard in America.

We love them for the extra dimension they provide,
the illusion of near-infinite possibility
to erase the narrow confines of most men’s reality.
Weird heroes and mold-breaking champions
exist as living proof to those who
need it that the tyranny of “the rat race” is not yet final.”
Hunter S. Thompson [1]
M
yth is immanent. Myth is alive.
I know, the idea of living myth is kind of hard to swallow at first. We imagine that thoughts
cannot be alive. What does it even mean for myth to be immanent, let alone alive? What is myth,
really? That’s where this investigation began, and I think—now that it is in preparation to be published—
that this book has opened up the floor for the discussion of these ideas, more than having proven any of
them. Which is as it should be. This book is meant to pose questions, to start conversations. It is a question
mark, not a period.
So, where did it begin? Much of the material I first wrote for this book expands on the ideas I first presented
in “Living The Myth,” my contribution to the Generation Hex
anthology, published by Disinformation Press in 2005. [2]
The idea of “living myth” implies at once two interpretations:
that myth is in some way alive, and that we can live it. These
two are, to use a cliché, like two sides of a coin.
This idea underlies everything else that is to follow. My
essays for this book, though varying in scope and content,
all deal with the overarching concepts of myth and art, and
all of the issues that invariably are tied into them: from the
nature of representation to initiation and its psychological
and social roles.
Immanent myth is a concept that has guided all of the
creative work I have done. Implicitly so, before I came to
explore and reflect on it these past few years. However, as I
have collaborated with other artists over the past decade, I also
realized that I was not at all alone in this perspective of art,
even if all of our processes differ somewhat. In this context, I
often use the word “artist” when I mean to include filmmakers,
writers, musicians, and so on all under that term, because there
is no better common term. The same is true for the term “art”
which could just as well mean any myth with an intended aesthetic dimension. Art is not one particular
medium, and I don’t play favorites amongst medium in terms of which is “more” artistic.
This book began as a solo endeavor, a collection of essays based around the issues and ideas that arose
naturally as I worked on various collaborative creative projects. Eventually, it dawned on me that I should
open this process up to others who might contribute their own thoughts on the subject. My pieces still
represent a substantive part of this written project. For more of the thoughts from the contributors to this
work, I suggest you explore our collective website, ModernMythology.net.
• xii •
THE IMMANENCE oF MYTH
I believe myth is an assemblage, and that we are ourselves a set of overlapping systems, which interact in
one way or another with all of the other systems in the universe. No systems are closed. How could I get any
kind of grasp, however admittedly biased, of this subject without opening it up? In retrospect, it is almost
self-explanatory that an anthology such as this one would need to come about.
I’d like to think that The Immanence of Myth provides a sideways glance at an artistic movement already
well underway, which, even with the release of this book, will likely remain somewhat in the shadows. Even
if artists themselves attain some kind of fame, the cultural mythic process remains obscured. It is complex.
It is not neat or clearly understood.
“Man’s world is manifold, and his attitudes are manifold”, Walter Kauffman writes in the prologue to his
edition of Buber’s I-Thou. [3] “What is manifold is often frightening because it is not neat and simple. Men
prefer to forget how many possibilities are open to them.”
It is for this reason that I expect there will be some who find this exploration frustrating, as we do not
present any final solutions. If anything, we seek to open up the floor for more possibilities. Myth cannot be
closed; it is the enemy of intellectual or ideological tyranny, even if it is a tool often used by tyrants. Myths
can support xenophobia, they can support and re-enforce racism and all other ideological divisions. In fact,
those ideological divisions are nothing other than myths themselves. But the nature of myth is not only
divisive, even when it is destructive. For instance, animals that prey upon one another, bacteria that infects
and destroys our bodies—all these things are acting in accord with one another in a systemic sense.
The mythic current of art has always been underway. All art, except the exceptionally conceptual or
technical, is at least partially mythological. Yet, to be blunt, much of the modern art world has lost touch
with a conscious sense of this mythological foundation. Instead it wanders endlessly in a hall of mirrors, a
kind of neurotic self-analysis, shrilly proclaiming autonomy from the market powers that still control it.
Perhaps it all comes down to Duchamp’s urinal, Fountain. The urinal is not art, unless everything is. A
message you can take away from the urinal is: the art world is a farce. If you place a piece of garbage in a
gallery, it has been magically transformed into art. This comments on the nature of galleries and how we view
art as a commodity far more than it does on the actual nature of art. In much contemporary, abstract art,
signifier and signified are externally decoupled; the piece becomes completely self-referential, a conceptual
ouroboros with no real entry or exit point back into personal experience.
A piece such as Fountain also raises the question, “Why does something require a point?” Right now, an
artist I live with is building a four foot tall pink penis in the living room. This became the spring-board for
“Clark,” the gonzomentary series we shot between October 2010 and January 2011. Everyone is drawn to
ask what the motivation behind something like this might be, what purpose does it serve?
On the surface, its point is that it has no point. An object or event can only have a “point” thanks to myth.
There is an argument to be made that much art in the past fifty years asks this question, “Why do I need
a purpose, an underlying narrative? Why can’t I just be?” This changes nothing: we still mythologize these
pieces and the lives of the artists that make them, even if they exist entirely without inherent purpose or
narrative. A purposeless piece of art without a surrounding myth can be of interest to no one. Additionally,
no work of art can actually be purposeless any more than any utterance can be. The subconscious plays a key
role in the creation process. We’ll discuss this at length later.
An art world quarantined from everyday life is also a myth that may have outlived any imaginable purpose
that doesn’t have to do with art industry. As I discovered in my gonzo journalistic forays while working as
editor of Alterati in 2007, much of the “real” art scene is isn’t happening in the galleries. It is often occurring
on the street, in seemingly abandoned factories, or behind closed doors in small studios. Art needn’t be
obsessed over either self-commentary or being terrified into proving its worth in the face of blind industry.
There is much more to explore in the psyche, which is where art excels. If there is a universal bias in this work
about the nature of art, it is that.
We will be exploring from many angles, through articles, essays, and interviews from a variety of people
actively engaged in mythic work and research. As our exploration progresses, we will move from a rather
abstract view of myth as an existential dimension to increasingly specific instances of personal myth.
Much as with the experience of viewing a painting, at twenty feet, ten feet, five feet, and up close, our
experience will vary. It may even seem that the painting changes forms, as you’d see with an impressionist
like Monet. This methodology and format will also shift to match our ongoing change of perspective. The
tone is also going to shift, not just in the natural modulations of voice from one writer to another, but also
• xiii •
Introduction
because our focus is going to move from the general to the specific. As this book progresses you will notice
this shift of tone and style from more abstract and formal to more personal and conversational. Keep this
shifting scale in mind as you read through, as it should provide a frame of reference.
The book is broken into four parts.
In part one, we will take on a big picture exploration of immanent mythology as a philosophical concept.
Many of these investigations will come from the initial materials I prepared for this book. In part two, we
will take a look at examples of modern myth in a variety of fields. Part three will open up yet more personal
perspectives on immanent mythology, and the final section of this book is composed of conversations that
I’ve had with artists and other would-be myth-makers.
As you progress, you will likely discover that many of us have similar perspectives, framed in slightly
different ways. Some of us may, on the other hand, flat out contradict one another. (Though, amongst the
contributors of this volume, this happened so infrequently that it seems worthy of note.)
The purpose of this introduction is to comment on the book itself, rather than myth, however it seems
an opportune moment to make this preliminary point. Variety is the nature of myth. Myth is naturally
idiosyncratic. No one can expect a truly homogeneous tradition to arise, as myths naturally do, from life
experiences in one location, and then another. The task of building a homogenized syncretism from a diverse
tradition like Hinduism is not a mythological impulse, even if it’s the bureaucrat’s dream.
All of this answers why I organized and wrote this material. Next, of course, is who is it written for? That’s
where you come in. The Immanence of Myth was written for anyone who wants to explore the possibilities
myth provides, but especially for creative artists who, like myself, wish to inform their work with knowledge
of the internal world that myth connects us to. It is this internal current that I hope to both amplify
and emphasize. Together we will explore some of the endless possibilities provided by myth as a creative
dimension, even if an essay must necessarily remain in the field of didactics. For those that work in some
creative medium, it is my intention to assist you in shaping genuinely mythic experiences for your audiences.
If you want to get the most out of it, you must read this book with an attentive and open mind. That seems
a tall order these days, but I know you are up for it.
To the next and final question that follows from our reportorial trinity: what is mythically inspired art?
What is myth? That’s a great deal more difficult to answer.
Though there is no true tabula rasa, let’s begin from a place of vulnerability: let’s propose that everything we
know about myth is wrong, or at least, subject to re-interpretation. Mythology is itself a myth. Admittedly,
this is putting the cart before the horse, but it is the only way that we can resurrect what so many seem to
consider dead. Myth defies understanding, for the process of ‘understanding’ obscures objectivity, or at the
least, serves as a means by which myth reproduces itself. The critic, the philosopher, the commentator, the
guy standing on the street corner preaching, the news-caster, the politician, the painter—they’re all myth-
makers. But what do they have in common? You see the problem.
I will give a very provisional definition for myth which stands as a refinement of the common definition.
Myths are our symbolic interface with the world, often but not always presented in allegorical or metaphorical
form. There are immediately problems with this proposition however, for instance,
Friedrich Schelling with his Philosophie der Mythologie set a new tone by rejecting all attempts
to impose on myth a secondary ‘meaning,’ be it euhemeristic or allegorical. Instead he applied
to myth the term ‘tautological,’ implying that it must be understood on its own terms as an
autonomous configuration of the human spirit, with its own mode of reality and content that
cannot be translated into rational terms. [4]
The semiotic intricacies of myth are explored by Roland Barthes in his essay “Myth Today.” [5] The
following quotation from the introduction is especially relevant, in that it exposes just how broad our
investigation must be if we want to provide a legitimate inquiry into the subject,
Myth is not defined by the object of its message, but by the way in which it utters this message:
there are formal limits to myth, there are no ‘substantial’ ones. Everything, then, can be a myth?
Yes, I believe this, for the universe is infinitely fertile in suggestions. Every object in the world
can pass from a closed, silent existence to an oral state, open to appropriation by society, for
there is no law, whether natural or not, which forbids talking about things. (Emphasis mine.)
• xiv •
THE IMMANENCE oF MYTH
We may use myths to explore why something is the way it is, or what we are to do with it, but a given
myth remains just an interface. It is through us, through embodiment and direct interaction, that it is made
immanent. There is no transcendent realm beyond the symbols, and in themselves, the symbols are empty
shells. The myth is living because we are ever-changing and transitory. In other words, we are living, and
myth too is living. It is a part of us, our mirror. It is like the moon in relation to the sun—without the sun,
the moon would cast no light, but in the presence of the sun, it appears to have a light of its own. If this
seems far-flung, consider this statement: coming world conflicts will be driven by ideological forces along
cultural fault lines. In other words, by our ideas about ourselves, others, and the nature of the world we live
in. Ideas are not just ideas, when they take hold of us.
In many ways, this provisional definition remains unsatisfactory. The function of myth is too complex to
cleanly codify. In the final reckoning, myth is a process of creative participation in reality, and so there is no
way to dissect it, label its parts, and offer it up for analysis without rendering yet another myth.
Further, we are nowhere with this word “myth” until we can determine what its personal and cultural
function is, and where the intersections and overlaps are between the cultural and personal elements of
myth, in the general or the particular. In other words, we need to build a map of a cognitive terrain that is
not necessarily a “where” or even a “when,” and so this book is dedicated towards exploring an ideological
topology of myth. You may even say that such a topology can serve as a rough map of the potential elementary
ideas of divinity. To that extent, a book such as this can only serve as a doorway rather than a destination.
From these fragments we can begin to piece together the Gods of our image.
It is worth noting that many books already exist which provide a systematic philosophical analysis of the
history and function of myth. Though in various ways this work is indebted to those, my ultimate mission is
not to explore what myth has been, except inasmuch as that can shed light on what its function is at present,
nor is it to merely further the thesis of these works. Indeed, there is no system at all. Rather, it is my aim to
continue a movement already well underway, namely, the re-legitimization of myth and myth-making as one
of the principal—if not the principal—means of human creative representation.
The approach we take nevertheless flies in the face of the majority of scholarly works in comparative
mythology in the past. That is, in part, because the intention of this book is contrary to a historical,
anthropological approach to the subject. It is invariable that some will encounter this work and write it off
much in the same way Jaan Puhvel writes of Claude Levi-Strauss,
The obvious danger is that the approach is by nature generalist, universalizing, and a-historical,
thus the very opposite of text-oriented, philological, and time conscious. Overlaying known
data with binaristic gimmickry in the name of greater “understanding” is no substitute for a
deeper probing of the records themselves as documents of a specific synchronistic culture on
the one hand and as outcomes of diachronic evolutionary processes on the other. In mythology,
as in any other scholarly or scientific activity, it is important to recall that the datum is more
important than any theory that may be applied to it. [4]
This leaves no room for differing intentions, and presupposes only one method of inquiry. His research
in Comparative Mythology has been of use to me, but this is a different endeavor. I am not interested in a
broken record written in cuneiform on a block of clay unless it can be used to shed some greater light on
who we are right now, and furthermore add a deeper understanding to our own understanding of the world.
It would appear that most of the contributors to this volume would agree with me. The chronological view
of comparative mythology is not the only approach one can use to engage in a study of myth, though it is a
valuable one.
What you have before you is something quite different: an unconventional whisper in a dark room or
the amplification of a long-standing movement that most recently could be tied to the Surrealists and
Situationists. Only time will tell.
—James Curcio, February 14, 2011.

www.jamescurcio.com
THE • IMMANENCE • OF • MYTH
PART I
RE-INTERPRETING MYTH
• 16 •
An Untrue but Regularly Held Belief

Stephane Griswold
The unreal is more powerful than the real.

Because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it.
Because it’s only intangible ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last.
Stone crumbles. Wood rots. People, well, they die.
But things as fragile as a thought, a dream, a legend, they can go on and on.
Chuck Palahniuk [6]
W
hen I was a young boy, I was given a book by my father, the Srimad Bhagavatam. It was a very
interesting little book, full of wonderful pictures. There was one that had a sick old man having
his soul torn out of him by hairy demons as his oblivious family damned him by crying over
his corpse.
When my father died, I cried over his corpse. Do you think I damned his soul to be borne on the backs of
hairy demons into hell? I’d like to think I didn’t. That’s just my belief.
In the book there was also a picture of a man, at varying stages of his life. They were all lined up next to
each other: an embryo, a baby, a boy, a young man, a mature man, an old man, a dying man. A little wisp of
white that was supposed to be his soul held them all together in a big circle.
“Creative people, these Indians,” I chuckled to myself. There were cities flying through the air, and men
with several heads riding on the backs of fabulous beasts.
Incredulously, I asked my father if they were real. “Of course,” he said.
“Those were different times, five-thousand years or so ago. People had more powerful minds. They could
do things like make flying cities.” I loved my father.
Do you suppose he kept going after his body broke down? I sure hope so.
Joseph Campbell said a lot of things about the meanings in our lives and how they relate to myths held by
many people. Before his body broke down, that is. I don’t suppose he says a hell of a lot, now.
Everyone is a myth, or at least, the best people are. I want to tell you a personal myth of mine. It’s about
magic. This myth happens to be true. It’s also a story about a fish. Isn’t the universe awfully cruel?
Somewhere around the time my mom got real sick, in New Mexico, my father and I were hiking through a
canyon. We walked until it was all muddy everywhere, and the crows kept bothering us, and we got upset by
this and crowed back at them in disgust. We turned around and came upon a crevasse in the cliff side. There
was a small creek flowing through the canyon, and part of it went under this crevasse. You could barely fit a
finger through it, but my dad said he saw a fish in there.
“I’m going to see if I can get his attention,” my father said. He picked up a little pebble, and tossed it into
the crevasse.
An enormous long fish came hopping out, splash, splash, just like that. We gaped at it for a moment as it
flopped about, trapped in our alien world. My father didn’t at all suppose the fish would come out, much
less be shocked clear out of the crevasse.
“I figured he would be much smaller than that to fit in there,” is what my father said. It- he was the size
of my father’s foot. So my father scooted him back into his crevasse with his shoe, lest the little guy die of
too much air.
This is the sort of thing we make myths out of. Sometimes we tell people about it, sometimes we don’t.
But it informs how we live, because it shows us the world is much stranger than we’d ever hoped for, and
sometimes, this is a good thing. Unless you’re the fish, in which case, you’ve had a fairly terrifying experience
indeed.
• 17 •
pART I: rE-INTERPRETING MYTH
Is Myth Dead?
James Curcio
Everything is flux.
Heraclitus
T
he word “myth” has lost its meaning to us as a psychological or spiritual term.
No, the situation is more drastic than that. Myth has become the opposite of fact, something that
is generally accepted but untrue; “it is a myth that reading by flashlight ruins your eyesight.” The
popular television show on the Discovery Channel, MythBusters, uses this definition, attempting to disprove
“myths” with something vaguely resembling science.
The myths of antiquity are looked upon as quaint stories, despite the fact that they have shaped our
cultural history. It is neatly overlooked that myths remain at the center of the bloody stage of modern
religious, national, economic or ideological dynamics, not to mention our personal and everyday lives.
The fact that the word “myth” has become synonymous with untruth belies an underlying shift in
epistemological focus over the past several thousand years, especially in the secular corners of the world,
though it does not end there. This is clearly a sweeping generalization, and in these we are also inventing a
myth, but bear with us.
We have become, in this juncture of time and culture, more concerned with verifiable facts and less
concerned with existential experiences which appear to have little relation to fact. This happened as the result
of an Enlightenment history, focused on rationality and the scientific method, an ideology of Enlightenment
the supported the birth of colonization and industrialization; but perhaps more pervasively, we can see our
redefinition of myth following from the needs of industrialization.
This shift from the superstitions of the sacred to the superstitions of the profane, though not concocted as
some conspiratorial scheme in a cigar-smoke filled boardroom, does serve a purpose. Or perhaps it re-orients
us, creating a solar system where productivity itself is the central star. Productivity, not experience. This has
re-valued all other myths; paths, present and future.
Our myths have reformed the definition of “myth”
itself.
Business principles rely on actions that are easy
to reproduce, and which produce similar (if not
identical) results with each repetition. A vast array
of myths keep workers productive, en masse, for the
sake of the corporate or national entity. This cultural
homogeneity promotes an economy of scale that is
absolutely necessary for so-called big business.
Similarly, the myths of a culture oriented around
productivity, with profit as the sole representative
of this formula, must ultimately serve the best
interest of industry. Without a mythic framework,
such massive cultural shifts could never occur.
The evolution of such co-related myths is often
symbiotic; for instance, it is through the spread
of industry as the backbone of a civilization that
myths which better serve industrialization spread.
These in turn effect the further growth and spread
of an industrialized infrastructure. It is likely a linear
process until other systems inhibit or otherwise
regulate the reproduction of living myths. These
• 18 •
forces synergize and catalyze one another, and myths can certainly serve many functions—acting as catalysts,
as enzymes, as sorting mechanism.
Living within the confines of the reality sculpted by the history of industry, we must come to terms with it,
but only once we have first explored the rough contours of myth itself. The expectation that myth is a failed
epistemology seems to come as a by-product of the enlightenment-industrialist-capitalist worldview1, and
provides a certain cultural insight that we will be exploring throughout this book.
In its proper sense, myth has no necessary relation to fact whatsoever. Asking if a myth is factually true
may make as much sense as asking if your elbow can play Beethoven’s 5th Symphony in the key of purple.
It depends on the myth. Generally speaking, a myth is true insofar as it renders a psychological effect, and
false insofar as it doesn’t.
This is not to say that historical or empirical fact has no bearing on myth, however. Far from it. That
our inner and outer lives appear as mirror images of one another, separated by what appears to be a vast
divide, is another issue that we must contend with. This Cartesian crisis of the mind and body is also the
result of a shared mythic history, not an inherent, insurmountable limitation of our biology. This crisis has
mythological repercussions, as do all points at which we must re-orient or interpret much of anything that
does not fit a pre-established order.2 Chaos produces a mythological crisis. This will be one of the themes we
explore at length in this text.
The “modern” idea that myths are merely untrue beliefs also exists within the archaeological approach to
mythology, originating in the 19th century. It has remained there, in many cases, ever since. For example,
consider this quote from the introduction to the 1897 edition of Andrew Lang’s Modern Mythology,
The essence of myth, as of fairy tale, we agree, is the conception of the things in the world as
all alike animated, personal, capable of endless interchanges of form. Men may become beasts;
beasts may change into men; gods may appear as human or bestial; stones, plants, winds,
water, may speak and act like human beings, and change shapes with them. Anthropologists
demonstrate that the belief in this universal kinship, universal personality of things, which we
find surviving only in the myths of civilized races, is even now to some degree part of the living
creed of savages. Civilized myths, then, they urge, are survivals from a parallel state of belief
once prevalent among the ancestors of even the Aryan race. But how did this mental condition,
this early sort of false metaphysics, come into existence? (Emphasis mine.) [8]
However, an academic approach towards the study of myth presents a different attitude than the common
idea that all myths are false. A scholar of comparative mythologies attempts to maintain a so-called objectivity
towards the subject. In other words, the truth or untruth of the myth is, or at any rate should be, entirely
irrelevant to them. They are studying, comparing, and uncovering myths as if they are empirical objects. A
clay pot or rug from the 4th century BCE is neither “true” nor “false,” it simply is, and from it, we may be
able to ascertain things about the people who made it. The myths of anthropology reside not in the objects
themselves, but rather in the narratives that those artifacts help inform. They approach the narrative content
of myths with similar detachment.
The idea that myths are false seems distinct from the approach of the social sciences, though as it turns
out, there may be a connection. Jaan Puhvel gives us a brief history of the word “myth” in the introduction
to Comparative Mythology,
There are many notions that the ancient Greeks not only defined but named forevermore,
such as “hybris,” [sic] “irony,” and “tragedy.” Another such is “myth.” No modern language has
a substitute—the word comes with the concept. …In Homer and the tragedians it can also
1. What is a worldview? “Generally, it is assumed that worldview, in the sense of a cognitive set by means of which people perceive,
consciously or unconsciously, relationships between self, other, and cosmos, and the day-to-day living of life, is patterned.” (Kluckhon
1949:358; Redfield 1953:86). [7] We will be looking more at the mythological underpinnings of this particular worldview in part 2 of this
book.
2. All such binary anti-poles (inner/outer, mental/material, order/chaos, etc), or linear or teleological schemas, (end/beginning and all of the
myriad ways that could factor into our lives), or circular ones (the various phases of recapitulation and repetition, the center of the circle, the
perimeter, to “leave the circle,” leave the domain and enter a new one…) are points of mythic necessity; that is, they demand to be contested
with. They are existential dilemmas that we must directly content with in our lives— and the myths we spin as a result of those crisis points
defines our way of being in that world. “We are segmented from all around and in every direction. The human being is a segmentary animal.
Segmentarity is inherent to all the strata composing us. Dwelling, getting around, working playing: life is spatially and socially segmented.”
For more on this, and many other ideas of segmentation, see Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus. [9]
• 19 •
mean “tale, story, narrative,” without reference to truth content. But starting with prose writers
such as Herodotus, the word muthos [sic] takes non a polarized image of “fictive narrative,”
“tall tale,” “legend.” As such it contrasts with logos, another term for “word,” which came to
denote “true story” to Herodotus; the father of history had no compunction about terming his
own hodgepodge of legendary “Logoi” and reserving the term muthos for things that not even
he could believe. From Plato onward a technical sense of “myth” begins to emerge in muthos,
while logos takes on ever more rational, philosophical, and even transcendental overtones.
…It is in retrospect ironic that modern usage has managed to defeat such exalted semantic
monopolies and revert at least to the pre-Platonic colloquialism of the ancients. “It’s a myth”
means to the average American that there is not a shred of truth in it. [4]
This distinction between mythos and logos isn’t necessarily a clear one. Yet through it, we come to the issue
which is probably paramount in many of our minds: the imagined division between myth and science.
Though this may come as a surprise to some, science is also a mythology in a general sense. This is not a new
observation, so rather than belabor the point, I’ll refer to a few poignant instances out of many. Mauthner’s
Critique of Language deals with this topic in no uncertain terms, [10]
Mauthner’s Critique of Language thus appeared to have dire consequences for science. …
Mauthner considered hypotheses to be good guesses—successful “shots in the dark,” so to say.
The foundation of all science is exceptionally good inductions; the so-called laws of nature are
nothing more than historical generalizations, and Mauthner spared no effort to explain the
historical origin of the notion that physical laws are inexorable.3 [11]
Mauthner has certain concepts about the nature of myth that we are availing ourselves of, as his work was
a product of his time as much as this is a product of ours. However, the point is nevertheless valid in regard
to the deification of axioms and principles in science.
Compare that with the following,
Any study of myth that does not recognize myth’s potential to be alive and existentially powerful,
even in modern life, has missed something. Myths are not truth in any scientific sense—nor
are they true philosophically, theologically, metaphysically or ontologically. Myth’s power arises
from its ability to articulate the existential need for identity. [12]
George Williams point is well taken, especially in regard to an understanding of the vitality and primacy
of myth. But it also overlooks an underlying complexity, that the models and stories rendered by science,
theology, and so on are all essentially mythological, even if they aren’t accepted as myths in the traditional
sense.4 “Science must begin with myth,” Karl Popper writes,
…and with the criticism of myths; neither with the collection of observations, nor with the
invention of experiments, but with the critical discussion of myths, and of magical techniques
and practices. The scientific tradition is distinguished from the pre-scientific tradition in having
two layers. Like the latter, it passes on its theories; but it also passes on a critical attitude towards
them. The theories are passed on, not as dogmas, but rather with the challenge to discuss them
and improve upon them. [13]
This is where most concepts about the nature of myth immediately run aground, as science attempts to deal
with the empirical world (far-flung theoretical physics notwithstanding), and the real function of myth is to be
found in the subjective intersections between self, culture, and world. Their intended functions differ.
Scientists teach their intellectual children at an early age to be wary of the wily Personification.
Should Personification appear—in any of its several guises of animism, anthropomorphism,
3. The continuation of this quote is worth including, “…He considers that the term “law of nature” is a metaphor left over from the bygone
days of mythological explanation, when Nature was personified in the endeavor to comprehend it. He traces the origins of the notion back to
Plato and Aristotle, and particularly to Lucretius, who first used the phrase explicitly. In the Middle Ages, the notion became incorporated into
theology as the “natural law” of God. With Spinoza’s Deus sive Natura it became secularized, along with much else that had earlier belonged
exclusively to the sphere of theology. Thus did the myth of the “laws of nature” pass down to the present time; the phrase began as a metaphor
and later became reified and universally adopted by scientists.”
4. Also see Ernst Cassirer’s Philosophy Of Symbolic Forms Vol 2 for some relevant ideas on the relationship between mythic and scientific
thought. [15]
• 20 •
and projection—it should be treated as an evil, to be avoided or stamped out. The Particular is
also not to be trusted. It can mislead. Those in the charge of nomothetic science quickly learn
to banish The Particular by immediately labeling it, then ignoring it. These anathematizing
labels include: merely anecdotal, a single case, an n of one, a single data point, an uncontrolled
observation, a single instance, an exception, a suggestive indication, an interesting possibility
to be followed up by more careful study. [14]
This is the clearest distinction one can draw between what has been misapprehended as the opposing
spheres of the scientific and the mythological viewpoints. I say “misapprehended” because, of course, science
is a mythologizing process along with being a method, and myth is derived from experience—psychological
if not physical—in a way which makes the modeling processes used in science useful for analyzing it, as well.
Cassirer’s Philosophy of Symbolic Forms explores this distinction clearly, but did not seek to find their unity,
how they apply one to the other.
Science models, myth generates narrative. Models are designed to be tested. Narrative cannot, but more
to the point, there is no reason we would want to, in many cases. A scientific proof of the existence or non-
existence of God misses the point. The method of science is not inherently mythic, but when the results of that
method enter our world, when we interpret it, when we frame it and build beliefs from it, this matter becomes
confused. We try to remove the scientist from science, and say that, should we still see the fingerprints of the
scientist in their work, then they have done us all a disservice. Is there science without scientists? Of course
not. Science, derived from and used to represent nature, is, yet again, a form of mythology.
But there’s still an important distinction to be made between a model which can be tested, and a narrative
which cannot. Theoretical physics has implications not just in terms of cosmology but also mythology. It is
beyond the scope of science-as-method to derive a meaning from the big bang theory.
Science does not concern itself directly with the existential “why?” However, a scientific theory still has a
cultural effect and value, and it will generate myths, especially if the theory permeates the culture thoroughly
enough. Relativity had a dramatic effect on the art that followed it, for instance. If it is scientifically postulated
that the universe is structured a certain way—or that for instance every star will eventually burn out—it’ll
have cultural implications that go far beyond the strict scope of the scientific method. And this is not the
only entanglement we find between the two.
Some of the functional axioms of the mythology of science—especially that of pure physics—make it
quite dissimilar from other forms of mythology. Mathematics and formal logic are able to unearth the
relationship of specific facts and truths axiomatically, without an actor, and serve as the requisite tools for a
mythology unlike any previously known to Western Civilization.5 It is a myth so uniquely suited to modeling
the empirical world, and of removing and reducing the consciousness of the minds in which it occurs to
nothing, that we have almost completely lost sight that it is still a mythology at work. This is where we can
begin to see the import and significance of mythos shrinking in regard to logos.
On the other hand, we mustn’t forget the representation inherent in all models posited by science, or of the
removal of the subject so as to derive any clearer view of a world, which of course requires a mind to call it
into existence.
“The world is my representation” is, like the axioms of Euclid, a proposition which everyone
must recognize as true as soon as he understands it, although it is not a proposition that
everyone understands as soon as he hears it. To have brought this proposition to consciousness
and to have connected it with the problem of the relation of the ideal to the real, in other
words, of the world in the head to the world outside of the head, constitutes, together with the
problem of moral freedom, the distinctive character of the moderns. [16]
Of course, there is no singular “myth of science” but in fact countless scientific myths supported on the
back of various cultural or personal suppositions, and many scientists are anything if not aware of—or at
least burdened by—the lurking shadow of the subject, of the hall of mirrors or infinite regress posed by
consciousness and its own self awareness. This point is more important to make in regard to concepts of
“science” held by the general public, rather than most professional scientists, who regard “science” as nothing
more than an iterative method for testing and refining theories.
5. Though let’s not suppose that there is one universal set of axioms that can be applied to all of mathematics—see Godel’s Incompleteness
Theorem.
• 21 •
However, it has nevertheless been made apparent that science is presently facing its own post-modern
crisis. This crisis is well summed up by Hawking and Mlodinow in Scientific American,
These examples [Ed: they covered the discontinuity between quantum physics and relativity,
among others] bring us to a conclusion that provides an important framework with which to
interpret modern science. In our view, there is no picture-or theory-independent concept of
reality. Instead we adopt a view that we call model-dependent realism: the idea that a physical
theory or world picture is a model (generally of a mathematical nature) and a set of rules that
connect the elements of the model to observations. [17]
Even if Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle is frequently misunderstood as a thought experiment or some
kind of mystical maxim, it poses the useful insight that experiments cannot be conducted free of bias and
perception. Theories of cognitive science that don’t presuppose a static, underlying strata of materialistic or
positivist myth are all burdened with similar levels of uncertainty. Only in those corners of belief where a
claim has already been staked can certainty of any kind be defined. Reality and truth myths are, in other
words, tautological. We’ll talk about this much more closely in the next section.
This, too, further muddles the unity and distinction between mythology and science, and narrative and
model. Referring back to Barthes’s essay “Myth Today” once again, he says “…myth in fact belongs to the
province of general sciences.” [5] Can we safely say myth and science are one and the same? No. But can
we untangle them and say they are entirely separate, as some would have us do (possibly misleadingly) with
painting and mathematics? Again, the answer is no.
However, these quandaries don’t seem to permeate deep enough to cleanse the modern psyche of the
certainty of its intrinsic materialism. Science and mathematics have already dealt with many of these issues,
but cultural myths of “science” and “math” within the public mind never quite caught up. Nonlinear
equations and dynamics, systems theory, not to mention quantum physics and so on all punch holes in the
incredibly outmoded “static” worldviews that support the idea of a clear distinction between science and
myth, or of world and self.
However, in a culture fixated on the external world it is no wonder that myth became misconstrued with
untruth. We will begin the exploration of these intersections, and the problems that will undoubtedly arise
from our approach, in the essays to follow.
To anyone who winces at the thought of a story being just fiction, the relegation of myth to the status
of untruth should appear incredibly unfortunate. Myths have been the lifeblood of culture since the birth
of civilization, and they live on in all of the beliefs that structure our experience of reality. So the modern
definition, “a commonly accepted but untrue belief,” is not at all what we mean when we say “myth” in this
book. However, the common definition tacitly defines the predominant myth of our times, our cultural
stance in regards to spirituality, our dependence upon fact as our only source of psychological nourishment.
(It also belies our misunderstanding of the purpose of a symbol, but that will have to wait until we dig a bit
deeper.)
The value that myth provides is demonstrated in the fact that it has been with us since the birth of
civilization. The myths, art, and religions of antiquity sprung into existence together. The earliest artistic
artifacts are religious, or is it the other way around? It is hard to say. Myth and art, still nearly inseparable
terms, provide a distorted mirror for us to regard ourselves in. We see ourselves in a new light, the best artists
showing us existential truths through the distortion or even complete abandonment of empirical truths.
Thus artists, and the myths they weave from their own lives, direct our eyes inward, both as individuals and
as a culture, in a new way.
It is a self evident fact that myths speak to our humanity. They convey meaning. This was clear to me
from an early age. As a youth I remember staring at the television in befuddlement as documentaries would
attempt to discover the supposed “historic truth” of a myth. Did giants actually walk the Earth before the
time of King Arthur’s court? How did Noah manage to get every species of animal aboard a single ship? These
are the wrong questions to ask, and for the wrong reasons. Myths speak to the narrative, the qualitative, to
the side of us which quite simply need stories and images, both grand and mundane, for us to relate ourselves
to. It can provide psychological nourishment, and cultures that are devoid of the ability to distinguish myth
from literal truth suffer for it. Such a thing could hardly be called a culture at all.
If you bear with us a moment in the premise that myth is something vital to our nature, then an absence
of it, or more accurately, an absence of the ability to recognize it, would be a deep cultural and existential
• 22 •
crisis. A quick glance at current events makes it clear that we are in just such a position, even though no
solid connection between the two has yet been drawn. This is a feeling that I experienced strongly as I passed
through adolescence, and I discovered that it was something many others were feeling, though few were
inclined to voice it. I tried to convey this in my first novel, Join My Cult!,
Spiritual, cultural apocalypse is much more subtle than mushroom clouds, fallout, and radiation
burns. People can deny it. No statistics can prove it. The only evidence we have is a feeling
of profound loss, and hope for a future that does not reduce the qualitative values of life to
quantities, and for companions to share these stories with so that they can have value, and pass
on to our children in the next world. [18]
Apocalypse literally means “lifting the veil.” (Greek: Apokálypsis.) I’m using the more modern version,
but maybe not without a hint of the possibility for great transformation in times of uncertainty and turmoil.
Lurking in even the most mundane hearts lies the possibility for transformation, however distant. The
symbolism of the Blasted Tower in the Major Arcana of the traditional Tarot deck reflects this idea:
moments of revelations most often occur at the points when all previous expectations have been utterly
destroyed. Emmanuel Kant even hints at this with his aesthetics which include the sublime. The sublime
could be the beatific vision, but at the same time, it can include the powerful, horrific forces of nature
and the psyche. This is apocalypse, and it is an idea closely linked with the sacred, as we will see moving
forward.
Neil Stephenson’s novel Anathem deals with the modern crisis of the sacred as well. The following passage
is especially relevant,
So I looked with fascination at those people in their mobes, and tried to fathom what it would
be like. Thousands of years ago, the work that people did had been broken down into jobs
that were the same each day, in organizations where people were interchangeable parts. All
of the story had been bled out of their lives. That was how it had to be; it was how you got a
productive economy. But it would be easy to see a will at work behind this: not exactly an evil
will, but a selfish will. The people who’d made the system thus were jealous, not of money and
not of power but of story. If their employees came home at day’s end with interesting stories to
tell, it meant that something had gone wrong: a blackout, a strike, a spree killing. The Powers
That Be would not suffer other to be in stories of their own unless they were fake stories that
had been made up to motivate them. [19]
An obvious conclusion of modernity is that we have no unifying myth, as Georges Bataille proposes:6 we
live in a myth which is an absence of myth. [20] Our world is a fast-paced, materialistically oriented, cultural
melting pot, in which it seems that any need for mythology would quickly boil away. We are, at the same
time, untethered from any common shared myth, so that the task of simply creating a new mono-myth
that possess the collective imagination is generally less fruitful than the artist may hope, as Bataille himself
discovered in his rather ill-conceived idea of re-instituting human sacrifice.7
Even amongst the ranks of those who are generally most sympathetic to the psychological value of myth,
there has been increasing question of if myth has any place in our modern lives. For instance, Michael
Vannoy Adams presented this material at the “Psyche and Imagination” conference of the International
Association for Jungian Studies,
Recently, one Jungian, Wolfgang Giegerich, has argued that, at this stage in the history of
consciousness, myth no longer has any psychological function…Ancient mythological figures,
he contends, “do not suffice.” They are insufficient because, he says, “even though they may
display certain formal similarities” to the modern situation, “they are incommensurable”
with it. …Giegerich, however, maintains that the modern psychological situation is utterly
without precedent, without parallel. It is so radically different—or, as he says, so logically
different—from the ancient mythological situation that any similarity is merely formal and
thus insignificant. Giegerich says that the modern situation has “fundamentally broken with
6. “If we state simply, for the sake of lucidity, that today’s man defines himself by his avidity for myth, and if we add that he defines himself
also by the consciousness of not having the power to gain access to the possibility of creating a true myth, we have defined a sort of myth
which is the absence of myth.” [20]
7. See the introduction to The Absence of Myth written by Michael Richardson. [20]
• 23 •
myth as such, that is, with the entire level of consciousness on which truly mythic experience
was feasible.” [21]
The most obvious conclusion is often not the most poignant one. We do have myths, though they often
exist in mediums not surrounded by the aura of the sacred. This will be demonstrated time and again
throughout this work, as it is demonstrated in our daily lives if we know what to look for. Modern myths
are so pervasive that they are nearly invisible. Those that are considered archaic, that is, they have ceased to
function in the manner that they were meant to, become more apparent to us. We call our relics “myth,” but
they are not. They are the myths that have died.
On its face it certainly feels more accurate to say that we have lost touch with an understanding of the
sacred rather than with myth, though exactly what that means, and whether it is ultimately accurate, also
remains to be explored. It is far more likely that we have lost a sense of the sacred, but we cannot as a race
lose our myths—certainly not before such a point that we have no beliefs or culture whatsoever. The history
of civilization is, at one and the same time, the history of myth. Mircea Eliade explores this subject in The
Sacred & The Profane.
For our purposes at the moment it should be enough to highlight that the sacred represents not a single
idea, but rather an entire category of ideation—a world-view. It is a world-view that perceives the world
manifest to our senses as itself symbolic of an invisible world.
By manifesting the sacred, any object becomes something else, yet it continues to be itself. A
sacred stone remains a stone; apparently (or, more precisely, from the profane point of view),
nothing distinguished it from all other stones. But for those to whom a stone reveals itself as
sacred, its immediate reality is transmuted into a supernatural reality. [22]
This conception of the sacred seems to demand the transcendent, the invention of the supernatural. This
category is required for no other reason than to draw a contrast with the profane.
It stands to reason that everything is natural; even if the universe is unexplainable, it would still remain
“natural.” Forgive the tautology: nature is what is. The distinction between “natural” and “supernatural” is
only relevant, only meaningful, in the context of the profane when contrasted with the sacred. Needless
to say, inventing the “supernatural,” a new category of being to house the sacred, creates its own slew of
problems that must be dealt with, such as superstition.
In Eliade’s conception, a sacred object is so because it is a symbol, a link, with the archetype standing
“behind” the physical, profane object. A sacred canoe is not just a canoe, it is “canoe,” or it is a canoe within
the context of a specific myth pertaining to canoes, or the sacred river, etc.
This distinction also cuts across experiential boundaries. The sacred and profane show themselves not only
in the perception of things but also in the perception of time. For instance during a sacred festival—a concept
that we have mostly lost touch with in our purely profane holidays8—one enters into the time before time,
recapitulating the birth of the world, or some other mythological event which occurs outside of profane time.
The phrase “time before time” is an odd approximation, a metaphor created from within the field of time.
Sacred time and sacred objects do not truly stand “outside,” “behind,” or “before” their profane counterparts;
they are distinguished as occupying two separate ontological categories simultaneously, and there may even
be some kind of exchange or interplay between the two, as sacred festivals and rituals demonstrate.9
It is to that point, the crossroads of the sacred and profane, that this work is ultimately aimed; for it is in
this intermediary zone that myth actually occurs. The constructed supernatural realm loops back into the
otherwise inaccessible elements of our own being, as a piece of psychological sleight-of-hand that allows us
to conditionally stake a claim in the ever-shifting, dark chaos that is nature itself, un-sculpted by human
sensation, consideration, organization and expectation. The condition we must accept when engaging with
myth is that we pretend the shadows on the wall, the image on the screen, or the entities in our dreams
represent some type of reality.
8. All of the major holidays in the United States, for instance, are profane: means of re-enforcing consumer behavior or an excuse to drink.
They borrow iconography, of course, most commonly from Christianity, many of those symbols themselves taken wholesale from Pagan
sources.
9. This is to some extent shown in the distinction between kairos and chronos, the time of experience which stands on its own, divine or
sacred time, perhaps even an “eternal” moment, and chronological time.
• 24 •
The realm we call the sacred cannot be left to sociologists, even if … the use of this word has
become questionable if we do not frame with reference to sociology. … Science always abstracts
the object it studies from the totality of the world. … It might in turn be pointed out that the
sacred can just as easily be envisaged on its own. … But a question remains: suppose that the
sacred, far from being like the other objects of science, subject to separation, is defined as the
exact opposite of abstract objects (things, tools, and clearly definable elements), precisely as the
concrete totality itself is resistant to it. [20]
It may come as a surprise to some that we are never too far from the trappings of mythology in our daily
lives. They are in movies, books, our mutually created narratives on the Internet, even on television. They
permeate our ideas about ourselves, our relation to the world, and our relationships with others. They can
be insightful or vapid. The very drive for people to make complete fools of themselves on reality TV is also
the attempt to fulfill a mythic need. To be famous is to be externally mythologized. The thing that many of
us find so repellent about these trends in pop culture is the complete and utter lack of the sacred. Myth is not
absent.
We relate with these stories differently than people who lived in a world before the computer, television or
typewriter. There seems to be something different about how we experience stories, even though the analogy
of campfire storytelling and Internet communication is occasionally drawn.10
Modern myths of this nature often don’t strike their audiences as deeply because they are perceived as
just stories, or movies. The lights come up in the theater and the illusion is dispelled. Or, more frequently
nowadays, we lose attention entirely mid-stream and surf to another channel or web-page, to take another
fragment into the bricolage of our wandering consciousness. In a capitalist society, myths too take on a
capitalist bent. Further, they serve its ends. They are more readily consumed than engaged with, but this does
not mean that they do not leave their mark. All of this hearkens back to the lack of the sacred, rather than of
myth. The formative or even subliminal effect of the media we’re steeped in is hard to say, but certainly the
multi-billion dollar industries of marketing and advertising would be useless if it was not far-reaching.11
There are many examples of what could be considered modern myths embodied in media. Rather than
saying that The Lord of the Rings is a modern myth, though clearly it is, it is more relevant to say that every
piece of media available contains layer upon layer of myth. Any given myth is implicitly built upon other
myths, and myths are used to make them readily accessible to us.
For instance, there are a variety of common myths which allow access to the viewership of a news broadcast
with a particular political agenda. The broadcast can further establish or re-establish these myths, and build
new ones, but it is already working upon certain expectations. So, you don’t find many polyamorous bisexuals
watching Fox News in rapt attention. This is an example of myth acting both as amplification and sorting
device.12 Myths even affect our evolutionary selection processes, but that’ll have to wait.
In the case of the myths that resonate with the multitude on a level deeper than entertainment, the anxiety
that underlies the wholesale exchange of the profane for the sacred can produce a nostalgic throwback to the
“old time religion.” The mythic aura of a yesterday that never existed drives such cultural movements as we
see demonstrated in the movie Jesus Camp, and this trend is evident in many revivalist and reactionary groups
across the world, not just Christianity. It is also the basis of many American myths that sprang out of the
1950s, of idyllic family values, which reach from that time, and before, right up to the present.
10. The Virtual Campfire: An Ethnography of Online Social Networking, Jennifer Ryan. [23]
11. A note about characterization, and the usage of terms such as “capitalist society.” It should be obvious that, within the contexts we are
beginning to explore, “capitalist society,” “existential philosophy,” “corporate culture,” and so on are all myth-structures that were at one point
posed, and which have since been presupposed so frequently that they are taken for granted. Like any other myth, they may or may not relate
to a series of facts, but more important the effects of the characterization is real. In other words, there are sufficient people that believe in such
a thing as “capitalist society” as to make it worth talking about, even if, speaking very strictly, there may be no such thing. Even “culture” can
be considered a myth in this sense. This applies equally to phrases like “world-view,” a term which has become fairly commonly even outside
anthropological writing. Terms like this sometimes create more questions than they answer. What exactly does it mean? Is it a passive or active
process? Can it be willfully changed, or is it provided fully-formed? We will attempt to engage with as many of these terms as possible, but
there must be a level of approximation in using such terms, or else we would be footnoting every couple words, and the book in front of you
would be thousands of pages long. Let us say that it could be either of these things, in different contexts, and move forward.
12. Many rhetorical devices of modern news broadcasts utilize a knowledge of the power of mythology with startling effect, crippling the
rational capacity of the audience with the use of a few well times key words and some ideological hand-waving. Fox News is most well known
for this approach, but it is at its core a methodology without any inherent political stance. A “liberal agenda” is as easily served by this approach
as any other. If you’re preaching to the choir, amplification both further indoctrinates and further excites the converts.
• 25 •
This defensive reaction, to look backwards in times of chaos, cannot be restricted to one ideology. It is one
of the forms of modern mythology that we most frequently encounter. As Samuel P. Huntington explores
in his book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, the coming world conflicts will be
driven along ideological and cultural fault lines, even if underlying motivational factors in some cases include
more material concerns, such as territory or overburdened resources. [24] In other words, even resource-
driven conflicts are likely to be painted in ideological terms, especially in regard to the motivating force
presented to the people who make up the backbone of any military force. The idea of the US as a “global
peacekeeper” is such a myth as well, as much as the idea that jewels could be cut from the bellies of Muslims,
a story ostensibly propagated during the third crusade.
In the Third Crusade, after Richard the Lion-Hearted captured Acre in 1191, he ordered 3,000
captives—many of them women and children—taken outside the city and slaughtered. Some
were disemboweled in a search for swallowed gems. [25]
The drive behind fanaticism, and fascism—which is an affliction not unlike fanaticism—is psychological,
not material. William Reich explored this in The Mass Psychology of Fascism. Consider this, taken from a
chapter appropriately named Ideology as a Material Force,
Those who followed…the revolutionary Left’s application of Marxism between 1917 and 1933
had to notice that it was restricted to the sphere of objective economic processes and government
policies, but that it neither kept a close eye on nor comprehended the development and
contradictions of the so-called ‘subjective factor’ of history, i.e., the ideology of the masses. [26]
The extremists driving ideological conflicts are borrowing from mere echoes of myths originating thousands
of years ago, catalyzing the existential fear, hate, or desire latent in a culture, and more pointedly, within
the individuals that comprise that culture. Again borrowing from Reich’s study on fascism, or Deleuze
and Guittari’s examination in Anti-Oedipus, the principles of personal psychology also control mass-
psychology. [27] The fascist of the state is the fascist within. This alchemy produces poisonous splinter
factions, fundamentalist groups that cause many of the pathological habits our cultures otherwise exhibit, in
concentrated form. The atrocities perpetrated by the State far exceed those any one individual could account
for, but the will to those ends must be spread through a sufficient public body for any of them to occur.
Far from being an exception, these splinter groups have been responsible for much of the history of the
19th and 20th centuries that has made its way into the books, whether we are speaking of the rise and fall of
Soviet communism, the second World War, or the ongoing strife in the Middle East.
Exploring politics or even religious ideology as the only lens to gaze at myth in modern forms is misleading.
We want to look at the very mechanisms of myth, not how it manifests in just the relation of nations, or
corporations, or individuals, or the religio-politics of previous eras. It is nevertheless worth noting that the
mythologies utilized by these groups have all been re-purposed, whether we speak of the selective use of
scripture by religious fundamentalists, or the more bizarre relationship between National Socialism and
occultism, which underlined the rise of the Third Reich despite Hitler’s professed abhorrence for the occult.
These fringe elements are at most times culturally inert, but have the potential to overcome the whole of a
culture during crisis points, as the Nazis did after World War I.
However, myth as a whole cannot be considered a result of such use. Nor can myth be “killed,” in any
event. It can be a healing, as well as destructive, force. But we’ve only given the most tentative glimpse at the
many roles myth plays in our lives.

• 26 •
Can Your Elbow Play Beethoven’s 5th

Symphony in the Key of Purple?
James Curcio
The mind creates symbols to interpret the data of experience; to understand knowledge and the
significance of science it is necessary to understand the function of symbolic forms of explanation.
Forms of cognition are affected by language and myth; language, myth, and science are all forms of
human expression. Experience begins with the immediacy of feelings; but as living creatures respond
in accordance with their needs, certain items in their experience take on sign and symbol functions.
Ernst Cassirer [15]
T
he idea of the centrality and singularity of truth remains a barrier to our understanding of immanent
myth. It can be difficult to recognize that certain facts pertain to one dimensions of our lives, and yet
not at all to others. “Of course it matters if it really happened!” is a frequent contention when I bring
this up in conversation. So perhaps more needs to be said about the issue of truth.
Let’s look at a sense of truth that is commonly in use, rather than its purely theoretical, even grandiose
meaning. In everyday speech, by “truth” we often mean honesty—congruence between what we believe to
be the case, and the objective information we can gather about it. When a trusted source tells us something,
and we later discover they intentionally misled us, even if it was to our benefit, we get angry. I’d propose it
has something to do with this truth-myth.
Even when we aren’t speaking of truth as “honesty,” the basic idea of correspondence or congruence
remains. This is a prevalent myth about truth that originates in the representational nature of language itself.
It is also the perspective of truth forwarded by Socrates and Aristotle, and clarified by Emmanuel Kant,
called, not unsurprisingly, the “correspondence theory of truth.”13
For instance, we might say, “he’s not telling the truth.” Implied in the statement is the belief in a static
truth that exists free from the limitations of both context and interpretation. We believe truth is “out there”
if we can find it, and a statement is true or untrue to the extent that it represents that which it imitates. This
truth-myth is so old, so pervasive to our thinking, that it appears to be a given. But if we look first to life,
rather than formulas, we may not notice that the ground we’re standing on isn’t solid, or static: this truth
framework is itself a myth.
It is easy enough to demonstrate that even facts, the currency of truth statements, are fluid rather than
static, and potentially meaningless outside a specific context or framework. Facts depend on axioms, if
they can ever be made relevant. This is obvious to everyone except philosophers. For example, it is a fact
that the Earth orbits around the Sun at the moment, though in 100 billion years that may not be the
case. Our interpretations of these facts are even more transient, and relative, as the history of astronomy
demonstrates. So what exactly is a fact? Surprisingly, there are many answers to this question, but perhaps
none so pragmatically direct as that provided by General Semantics,
“What is a fact?” …under any circumstance a fact is an observation and that as such it is an act
of an individual, a personal affair consisting in large measure of complicated neural, muscular
and glandular events taking place in an ever-changing organism whose capacity for observation
exhibits decided limitations. It follows that a fact must be incomplete, always, and that it amounts
to an abstraction of something concerning the full-blown character of which the perceiver can
but conjecture. Because of the uncertainties that attach to introspective methods in the effort
to distinguish between fact and fancy, a ‘fact’ cannot properly be said to be established as such
13. The origin of it is from the Greeks, and is central to Plato and Aristotle’s philosophy. “To say that [either] that which is is not or that
which is not is, is a falsehood; and to say that that which is is and that which is not is not, is true.” Aristotle, in his Metaphysics. [28]
• 27 •
unless it has been confirmed by at least one person other than the original reporter. Indeed, its
usefulness at any particular time in the biosocial evolution of man depends to a considerable
degree upon the extent to which others agree with the perceiver concerning it. [29]
It is evident that the singular word “truth” is used to represent a plurality of situations which don’t
hold the same epistemological status. Most of the so-called truths that we take for granted are untestable
cultural myths. They become personally held beliefs through imitation and repetition. Most commonly held
assumptions about “human nature” fall into this category. The same can be said of our spiritual beliefs, or
those about “reality,” let alone the relative value of the sexes, or races, or nations. These beliefs may or may
not have verifiable facts behind them, but as beliefs, they are presumed true a priori. We don’t reconsider the
entire nature of our existence every time we choose to buy a sweater, or shoot somebody if so ordered when
in military service.
Other truths are fact-based statements, which can be verified, or not, depending on the context and
presuppositions provided, but which may nevertheless be untrue, useless or even harmful in the wrong
contexts. Even such testable statements are subject to misunderstanding—there are any number of ways that
data can be totally misconstrued, especially when taken out of context or applied to an inappropriate one. A
slight miscalculation can skew scientific data, and the task of interpreting data is a mythological one.
Thus, the veracity, meaning, and function of a truth depends on the specific context of its use. In other
words, the truth that it is five o’clock (a contextually relevant fact, which can be said to be “true” under certain
contexts) is not the same kind of truth as “killing is wrong” (an untestable but potentially useful belief, with
obvious social and ethical implications), or “everything happens for a reason,” (an untestable metaphysical
belief.) These “truth statements” are as different as apples and oranges; their primary resemblance is that all
are based on the symmetry or asymmetry of the correspondence between one thing and another. They are,
at the same time, all potentially useful in some cases, even if they don’t quality as “truth” according to the
correspondence theory.14
Existentially, myth-making is truth-making. Facts depends not only on axioms but also on myths to
become commonly accepted truths. But this doesn’t mean that all empirical facts will necessarily conform
with those myths. These things are categorically different, and this confusion is the reason that myth has
become “a commonly held, but untrue belief.” This is not to say that there is no sense in the correspondence
theory, but simply that context plays a role in the very framework that might best be applied. All statements,
all truths, all experiences are not created equal, nor is there any truth which is entirely immune to the forces
of time and context.
It may even be that the more we talk abstractly about truth, the less likely it is that it resides nearby.
Some of this is unavoidable. We aren’t entirely conscious of the cultural bedrock that informs our truths.
If someone tells us that they were just kidnapped and raped by fairies, as was common in the abduction
myths of the past, we can’t actually be certain that the individual is out of their minds, but many would
immediately come to that conclusion. We simply react, based upon years of compiled myths and facts,
most of them unexplored, handed from one individual to the next. This is the case most of all when a belief
engages our emotions, which occur at a more primal part of our psyche.15
The more we identify with our beliefs and ideas, the more we internalize and make them a replacement for
our own identity, the more complete and overwhelming this reaction is. Would some be slightly less dubious
if the story was framed instead as an alien abduction? It depends more on our investment in the beliefs that
support the statement—for instance, if you believe that alien abductions are something that can occur. You
are already predisposed to accept or reject a narrative, based on the narratives you already cling to.
We could even build a complex scientific experiment to determine if there is any truth to our friend’s
claim, but all we could determine is if there is any empirical backing to their story. Here we come full circle:
the myth that the empirical world is the only experiential reality supports our cultural myopia, and vice
versa. Considered as a totality, the world is chaos and multiplicity; no singular schema can contain it without
14. It’s worth mentioning that most statements with the ring of truth (they ring true, which is to say they resonate a sense of congruence),
often have equally true statements as their apparent opposite. For instance, on the one hand, mainstream American culture is almost entirely
externally oriented, from fixation on the beauty of surfaces to the manufacture of devices based on the premise of external mastery or comfort;
yet we are at the same time, thanks in part to the myth of the individual, fixated on ourselves. Whereas, in a culture that has more of a group
mentality, such as Japan, you nevertheless see the epidemic of isolation amongst its individual members. We’ll talk more about the specifics
used in this example in later sections on myth and modernity; right now this is just a simple illustrative point.
15. Though there is neurological research supporting this idea, it’s easy enough to witness in others or even ourselves.
• 28 •
committing an act of utmost violence upon nature itself. Perhaps that’s the only general “truth” of which we
can be certain, but most recoil at the thought.
Even the most certain truth is only more or less true. Real Truth is a metaphysical concept. Men
attained to the concept of Truth just as they did the concept of God: without any experience.
In this sense one may indeed assert: God is Truth. [11]
Ultimately, there is no better way to express the questions, trials and tribulations of life than in the form
of myth; whether they take the form of narratives or meta-narratives that express the significance of these
questions that wrestle with them, and often, in one way or another, define the way that we exist within the
world. All of this follows when you realize that the only concept of truth which mirrors life is not static.16
This flies in the face of the concept of Enlightenment truth that has been philosophically central to
Western Civilization since, and arguably before, Plato. However, it is a common observation that the only
existential constant is change: everything is in the process of coming or going. Letting go of the need to
define, delineate and dominate through the imposition of singular truth (the tyrant), is not the end of reason
or sanity, it is it’s beginning. Even if we found such an enduring, unchanging and absolute truth, what would
we do with it? More to the point, what would it do with us? Certainty is often a harbinger of fascism.
This is a conclusion which is mirrored in science, which has long since had to break ranks with many
underlying premises about truth that remain in our lay understanding of the subject. Let’s look at another
quotation from Hawking and Mlodinow’s article:
According to model-dependent realism, it is pointless to ask whether a model is real, only
whether it agrees with observation. If two models agree with observation, neither one can be
considered more reality than the other. A person can use whichever model is more convenient
in the situation under consideration. [17]
In an interdisciplinary sense, this is a point that shouldn’t need to be made. But it seems that some
disciplines have come to this conclusion before others, and it is about time that all disciplines—psychiatry
most of all!—accepts this idea. All models, all explanations, all beliefs that we form are contextual in every
sense. Contextually derived, contextually dependent, and contextually useful, irrelevant, or even dangerous.
There is no such thing as “use” outside of context. Nor truth, nor purpose or meaning.
The philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach—who was seminal in the formation of Marx and Engel’s ideas—made
the assertion that God is the objectified essence of humanity, and in this sense he was correct, although I
would add parenthetically that God is not merely human nature writ large, rather, he is the objectified
human representational system. As he says, “religion is human nature reflected, mirrored in itself.” [30]
Friedrich Nietzsche took this a step further, “I am afraid we are not rid of God because we still have faith
in grammar.” [31] So this is not so much a point about God, specifically, as it is about how we perceive and
represent reality.
I’d like to talk a little more about the nature of ideological mythology before moving forward. In the
terminology of Jean-Francois Lyotard, these self evident, often invisible axioms can be called meta-narratives,17
which are, [32]
the supposedly universal, absolute or ultimate truths that are used to legitimize various projects,
political or scientific. Examples are: the emancipation of humanity through that of the workers
(Marx); the creation of wealth (Adam Smith); the evolution of life (Darwin); the dominance of
the Unconscious mind (Freud), and so on. [33]
16. This is familiar territory to those familiar with Eastern paradigms. The literal realization of this is presented, in subtly different forms, as
an existential possibility: most notably in Taoism, where it is recognized as a given, and in Zen Buddhism, where the emphasis is on immediacy
(Satori) and paradox (expressed in the koan) In fact it seems likely that the more Western thought strives to define, divide, and conquer the
world through literal qualification and quantification, the less such an experience seems possible for those truly existing within the cultural
topology. The insistence on truth as an external “thing” itself seems uniquely Western; most Eastern philosophical concepts of truth, whether
they originate in India, China, or Japan, all seem to see truth as the result of letting go of the “illusions” of perception in one way or another.
This seems so universal, regardless of sect or denomination, that it could be considered a defining characteristic of Eastern philosophy. Again,
this is possibly most clear in the various forms of Taoism and Zen, most of which have antinomian / anti-authoritarian qualities that take a
fairly critical stance against all dogma or static concepts. Curiously, this seems to have had less effect on the history of violence and oppression
in those cultures at large than one might immediately assume.
17. Throughout, I’ve folded “meta-narrative” into “myth” as a whole. But a meta-narrative is a specific type of myth; rather it is a supporting
framework. The following analogy may be useful. Meta-narrative is to myth as axioms are to logically derived facts.
• 29 •
A meta-narrative is a linchpin idea, upon which the rest of a mythology is based. Take it away, and the entire
structure crumbles. They are often slipped in rather subtly; for instance, Freud wrote a seemingly innocuous
though insightful essay on the nature of parapraxis. (What we now call “Freudian Slips.”) However, for
you to imagine that it is possible for someone to slip up and say something unintended, something that
originates in the subconscious, you have to first believe in the subconscious. He sold you from the get-go,
if you entertain the idea. Meta-narratives may be clothed as myth or social science. There is no difference
between Freud’s Elektra-complex, and the myth of Sisyphus, in regards to their “truth”—both are stories or
concepts which are used to frame reality.
Lyotard actually defines the Post-modern condition as “skepticism towards all meta-narratives.” [32] To
truly be free thinkers, we must strip ourselves of the pretense that our ideas themselves are realities. Perhaps
intellectual freedom comes about in part through a recognition of our indebtedness to all other thoughts,
all other myths.
As is often said, nothing exists in a vacuum. Nothing that survives through respiration of oxygen, certainly.
No matter how much we may depend on the useful fiction of an unconscious in the process of psychoanalyzing
ourselves, or even of the gravity which keeps us glued to the surface of the Earth, these ideas which we use
to represent the forces we experience are nevertheless never more nor less than ideas. The forces at play in
our lives are themselves forever unknowable as they are except through the intermediary of representation.
Thus, our world is composed almost entirely of myths. Let us embrace them, rather than run in terror to the
seemingly more solid ground of the modern secular myths-that-are-not-myths.
This process of building conceptual worlds atop the frame of a meta-narrative is myth-making. It is a
myth because we are reaching into the dark—we pose scenarios, hypothesis, we may even devise ways to test
them a million times over and yet they remain myths: the intermediary between man and the void, the dark
unknowable.
Taking all of this to heart, the belief in static, irreducible, non-contextual truth is the great deceiver. When
we have limited reality to what we can know with certainty, it merely becomes a list of tautologies. It is only
when life is opened up to the possible paradoxes of contextualism that we can find a sensible relationship
with truth; a recognition that two opposing things can be true, in different circumstances, or where truths
can change over time, or even change when our perspective changes. Truth is not killed, it is brought to life.
With this, truth is again nurtured by the realm of myth. There should be no equivocation on this point:
everything that we believe is a myth.
Even more poignantly, everything we believe has an affect on us, and that is real.
In what strange simplification and falsification man lives!…How we have made everything
around us clear and free and simple! How we have been able to give our sense a passport to
everything superficial, our thoughts a divine desire for wanton leaps and wrong inferences!
How from the beginning we have contrived to retain our ignorance in order to enjoy an almost
inconceivable freedom, lack of scruple and caution, heartiness, and gaiety of life—in order to
enjoy life! And only on this now solid, granite foundation of ignorance could knowledge rise so
far…Even if language, here as elsewhere, will not get over its awkwardness, and will continue
to talk of opposites where there are only degrees an many subtleties of gradation; even if the
inveterate Tartuffery of morals, which now belongs to our unconquerable “flesh and blood,”
infects the words even of those of us who know better—here and there we understand it and
laugh at the way in which precisely science at its best seeks most to keep us in this simplified,
thoroughly artificial, suitably constructed and suitably falsified world—at the way in which,
willy-nilly, it loves error, because being alive, it loves life. [34]
Much could be unpacked from what little has already been said on the topic of truth, but the central
point has already been made: all truths are not created equal. Life is a process; it cannot be reduced into facts
which, like bricks, are used to build a singular bastion of truth.
We mustn’t be quite so hasty to write off our friend raving about his experience with fairies in the woods.
At the very least, the experience is valid on its own grounds as a psychological event, and the label of insanity
tends to be used as a culturally normalizing reaction far more than it refers clinically to a physiological
malaise. I would like to leave off on this point for now with the following quote:
• 30 •
The only principle that does not inhibit progress is: anything goes. Without chaos, no knowledge.
Without a frequent dismissal of reason, no progress. For what appears as sloppiness, chaos,
or opportunism has a most important function in the development of those very theories
which we today regard as essential parts of our knowledge. These deviations, these errors, are
preconditions of progress. [35]
I realize I’m leaving many stones unturned here. Some of you may consider all of this old news. Others
might be wondering, “Fine, then what is the purpose of myth?” or perhaps, “If myth has a different meaning
than the commonly accepted one, then what is it?” And still others may feel like a child that just got told
that Santa Claus is a lie.
Answering these questions, and many more, is the purpose of this collective investigation. We will move
through whatever disciplines seem to best suit the nature of the questions being asked, seeking more to
explode the subject of myth, and its vitality, rather than lay out a thorough historic analysis. We will explicate
the reasons behind this methodology throughout.

• 31 •
What Is Modern About Mythology?

Tony Thomas
M
ythology is generally considered to be the study of myths, as opposed to their creation, and usually
evokes the idea of past civilizations and the fanciful stories associated with ancient religions and
rituals. As was explored in previous sections, ethnologists make the distinction between myths
themselves and the rationalizations given by the people who believe them, such explanations being made
by living people under questioning by the researcher. Beliefs and their rationalization, rather than scientific
facts, are therefore central to the inquiry. Such beliefs may be personal and rather muddled justifications, or
consistent, orthodox doctrines strictly maintained by priests within a religious institution, such as the Catholic
Church. These are often supported and re-enforced by the personal and cultural forces of myth.
Thus, the purpose of myth, according to the anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski, is “to strengthen tradition
and endow it with a greater value and prestige by tracing it back to a higher, better, more supernatural reality
of ancient events.” [36] The corollary is that a functioning myth serves to bind the past to the present in
the consciousness of living individuals. The definition also implies conservatism and continuity of belief,
which, in our postmodern age suggests that such a function no longer applies. A related explanation is that
myths arose to explain ancient practices whose purpose was no
longer understood, apart from reconstructions by ethnologists.
Sir James Frazer’s enormous work The Golden Bough was such
an exercise in explaining the utterly obscure rites enacted by the
priests of Nemi, in Italy. [37] This work proved to be immensely
influential on 20th Century scholars, including T S Eliot and
Ludwig Wittgenstein.
A further issue is the less exalted category known as folklore,
examples of which are still active today in the form of children’s
fairy stories and persistent superstitions. One of the most
important examples of a modern folklore tradition derives from
the days of African slavery, particularly in the United States.
The phenomenon of jazz music and its successors, Rock and
Roll and pop music, generally had their genesis in this tradition.
Important events, such as the Great Depression, also gave rise
to literature, such as The Grapes of Wrath, which records a social
trauma of national importance in fictional form. [38] It is but
a step to understand the relation between such an event and
the watery myths of Gilgamesh and Noah, which are only
speculatively grounded in history.
The preservation of myths in present day art and literature is commonplace, although there was a strong
reaction against this in the 19th Century by realist movements, which included Courbet, the Barbizon
School and the Impressionists, which have persisted to the present day. Gauguin is notable in succumbing
to the charms of pacific culture and the creation of a utopian mythology as an antidote to the ravages of
French Colonialism. Picasso extended and strengthened the ancient roots of visual art through a deliberate
study and imitation of classical figure drawing derived from Greek pottery. Matisse was unsuccessful when
emulating Picasso’s use of Greek mythology as shown by his unfinished painting, The Rape of Europa, 1929.
The neo-classical revival and its mythological overtones, spearheaded by Jacques Louis David, was largely
rejected by Delacroix and Gericault, who concerned themselves with depicting more recent events, such
as The Raft of the Medusa, 1818 by Gericault. J M W Turner’s Slave Ship, 1840 shows a similar concern
with political issues of the day. The Napoleonic mythology, linking the Emperor to ancient Rome, was yet
another example of sycophantic myth making by David, which merely continued the tradition of flattering
monarchs common to painters like, Hans Holbein, Velasquez and Van Dyke.
Art in the service of church and state has always been a form of propaganda, conforming to Malinowski’s
• 32 •
definition of the function of mythology. This is clearly evident in Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel Ceiling, a
powerful synthesis of Christian and classical myths. By contrast, the two greatest examples of mythological
painting during the Renaissance are Botticelli’s Primavera and Birth of Venus, neither of which contain
the slightest hint of Christianity or the materialism of the rising mercantile class. These were private rather
than public works of art, where soft pornography and mythological scholarship are combined for the
pleasure of the ruling class. Perhaps the prime example of creative art trumping orthodox religion is Dante’s
Divine Comedy, which succeeded in reconciling Neo-Platonism with Christianity, under the influence of an
enduring paedophilic passion. This impressive work can be linked back to the Eleusinian mysteries, which
were concerned with the soul’s journey through the underworld, a theme also found in the myth of Theseus
and the Minotaur.
Poetry and literature have long been the refuge of mythology, sheltering from potential persecution by
both Roman Catholicism and its Protestant rival. Neither Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream nor
Milton’s Comus appear to have been the cause of religious persecution on account of their mythological
content. Spencer’s Faery Queen had masked its mythological themes in books entitled: Holiness, Temperance,
Chastity, Friendship, Justice and Courtesy, which even the most ardent bishops couldn’t find fault with. In
any case, the tastes of the aristocracy who patronized such works were not to be trifled with in an age bent
on absorbing the classical learning preserved by the Moors of Spain and transmitted by the scholars of the
Church itself. The exaggerated fancies of mythology could be safely ignored as entertaining follies, unlike the
peculiar work being done by dangerous scholars like Giordano Bruno and Galileo, who insisted that their
works were demonstrably true, even if they contradicted Church doctrine.
Classical learning, including the bulk of Greco-Roman mythology had been a staple of teaching at Oxford,
Cambridge and the continental universities of Paris and Bologna. Herodotus, Aristotle, Plato, Ovid and
many more repositories of mythological knowledge were essential to the curriculum of the learned man.
Apart from Heloise, the emancipation of women through learning was quickly stifled, in this case by the
castration of Abelard. Much earlier, the wrath of the desert fathers had been meted out even more radical
surgery to Hypatia, the librarian of Alexandria.
The survival of the classical myths embodied in Homer, Plato and the Greek dramatists was assured by
this orthodox stream of transmission. With the rise of the French and British Empires in the 18th and
19th Centuries, the passion for Greek and Roman culture reached fever pitch, spilling over to include
all things Egyptian after Napoleon’s conquest and the discovery and interpretation of the Rosetta Stone.
Byron felt compelled to free Greece from the Ottomans and died of his wounds after attacking the Turkish
fort at Lepanto. Delacroix’s painting The Massacre of Chios memorialized the Greco Turkish wars and the
enthusiasm of artists and writers for Greek culture. It is notable that Byron bitterly opposed the purloining
of the Elgin marbles, although the rationale was to save such neglected artifacts from the ravages of war and
their neglect by the Turks. The huge collection of ancient artifacts from wars of conquest in London, Paris
and elsewhere stimulated the science of archeology and associated disciplines, including the study of the
myths of these ancient societies so enigmatically preserved in their works of art.
Shelley’s sonnet Ozymandias perfectly captures the hubris of an imaginary but forgotten tyrant, whose
only remains lie buried in the desert sands. The political message is a universal one and rests on the long
history of despotic rule from Hammurabi, the Egyptian Pharaohs through to despots of our own age. Such
is the power of myth to remind us that our present political struggles are a constant of human history.
The passion for mythology came to a head, with such works as Keats’ enormous poem, Endymion, whose
opening lines became the epitome of that Romantic poetry, so suitable for frustrated young ladies with too
much time on their hands waiting for an acceptable suitor to carry them off from the wastes of Georgian
society to the bucolic meads of ancient Greece. We cannot but admire this tour de force by such a youthful
but doomed genius, but I doubt that many would have the patience to get through it today, even with the
aid of Thomas Bulfinch’s The Golden Age of Myth and Legend, [39]
A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:

Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
John Keats [40]
• 33 •
T S Eliot declared that Byron and Keats were “not nearly such great poets as they are supposed to be,”
which is rather non-committal. [41] But needless to say, the early 20th Century poets, like other artists
of their age, were after something different, which we now call modernism. The ubiquity of nymphs and
shepherds characteristic of the Victorian age was bound to prove sickening, especially where it became
trivialized and divorced from any credible depiction of classical cultures, replete with their tyrants, slaves and
the erotic and murderous propensities of their gods and heroes.
In The Wasteland, Eliot flirts briefly with the theme of Philomela and manages to be witty about her rape
(“Jug Jug to dirty ears”) but soon abandons this “withered stump(s) of time” in favor of discussing Lil’s
problem with her bad teeth, and her husband Albert’s likely departure on this account, if she doesn’t get
them fixed. [42]
In this comic performance, the American Eliot poses as the quintessential uptight, English intellectual
parodying his own prudery at the expense of the working class, neatly calling “TIME GENTLEMEN
PLEASE,” on all the “stony rubbish” of Romantic poetry. Unfortunately, Eliot abandoned his subtle wit
in favor of a Christian seriousness which eventually descended into boring the unpretentious reader more
deeply than any work by Keats could.
In The Shield of Achilles, W H Auden demonstrates the value of mythology in nine stanzas. The immense
power of this anti-war poem, published in 1955, links the pity of war in the pre-Hellenic age with the threat
of global destruction by atomic weapons during the Cold War. The last stanza expresses not only the horror
of a mother fated to lose her son in war, but the inhuman indifference of the artificer Hephaestus who forges
the weapons of war with incomparable technical skill,
The thin-lipped armorer,

Hephaestus, hobbled away,
Thetis of the shining breasts
Cried out in dismay
At what the god had wrought
To please her son, the strong
Iron-hearted man-slaying Achilles
Who would not live long.
W H Auden [43]
In this short piece, Auden carries on the tradition of Homer, and many other war poets, in exposing the
true nature of war, depicting both its glory and its tragedy. Mythology in all its ramifications is a vast subject,
but the question can now be posed: is there such a thing as modern mythology? A similar question can be
asked about biological evolution and the answer is that it does continue to apply as a mechanism, albeit to
a mature but continually changing genetic base. As in the case of biology, the immense layers of myth laid
down over millennia are both resistant to change and influences what changes can occur. Furthermore, these
layers at the surface are the very stuff of common belief, often deeply embedded in language.
An obvious example of contemporary myth-making is the raking over and bowdlerization of American
history, centering on what now may be fairly called the foundation myths. While historical documents and
scholarship about this relatively recent history abound, the attitudes and beliefs of American citizens in the
intervening period have overlaid these myths with legal, academic and popular beliefs. One result has been
the gross caricatures of the Tea Party Movement, which have achieved a cultural dynamic of their own.
In short, popular myths subvert history and can lead to the kind of revisionism seen in America and other
nations today, which are on the verge of radical change. The implication seems to be that such myth-making
is a necessary precursor of historical change, where ideology competes for dominance until myth and history
converge.
• 34 •
Dissecting A Living Thing

The Difficulties of Mythic Analysis
James Curcio
M
ythology isn’t just Bullfinch’s; far less is
it Frazier’s Golden Bough. It is the living,
breathing story of humanity. Myths deal
with the questions we all face in our lives, propose
ways of being in the world which put us in accord
or conflict with those various common dilemmas,
and ultimately structure the cultures of the future.
Our myths deal with those things that would be
difficult, if not impossible, to approach in any other
manner.
Thus, in an exploration of the subject, it is almost
as if we need to explore all of the connective tissue
linking to the heart of myth, without striking at
that heart directly. For that heart is at once our own,
and also the truly unknowable font of being which
supports it. This is the realm of the unquantifiable:
that which is felt, glimpsed, experienced, but never
fully secured. Nevertheless, this representation of the
unknowable, which we call myth, can be tentatively
defined and owned through the “magical” process
of naming.18
Cutting to that heart directly and cleanly defining
what myth is and is not will not suffice. The very topic
of mythology, when considered philosophically and
psychologically, provides so many quandaries that it can be difficult to know where to begin. The function
of myth, even possibly its identity, changes based on the granularity of inquiry. In other words, a particular
myth, received by an individual, may not serve the same function as that myth’s effect upon a society, and
vice versa. Christianity and Islam have both been tools of unspeakable acts of torture and violence in the
hands of some groups, but it is small-minded almost to the point of bigotry to think that these things are
the core components of religion itself.
Following is a sampling of issues that we are likely to encounter in the rest of our journey. Hours of
heated debate could easily spring from any of these; certainly, each could serve as the topic for books unto
themselves. These will serve as general caveats and considerations that need to be brought to the attention of
anyone intending to seriously contemplate the role of myth in our lives.
Is that a snake in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?
(Symbolic Asymmetry)
A single myth is not merely one thing, nor are the symbolic elements that compose it easily compartmentalized
or even understood. Suppose a mythic element (A) is compared with another (C). Thinking mathematically,
the two are said to be the same. A=C. Another mythic element (B) is equated with (C) as well. B=C. It would
18. We will explore this process more closely in Beyond Representation. In short, this is the means whereby an experience, event, or object is
transformed into a symbol. In this rendering, its very nature can be transfigured. This is significant because although you can’t literally turn a
rabbit into a table through words alone, you can change people’s perception through the symbols you use. Far from an obscure, theoretical or
arcane art, “spin doctors” in media and politics do this as a full-time job. However, in a more occult sense this is why words and incantations
are infused with an almost supernatural aura, because language does have the power to transmute, to invoke and evoke, and these are, at least
psychologically speaking, magical powers.
• 35 •
then follow, according to the transitive property, that A = B. But more often than not, when speaking
mythologically, this is not the case. This makes many seemingly obvious mythological analogies facile. For
instance, Odin or Wotan is generally considered in a similar class as other sky-father Gods such as Zeus. But
closer analysis of some of the symbols associated with Odin have more in common with Hermes than Zeus.
And Hermes is often associated with Loki by virtue of their dual classification as “tricksters,” but Hermes
has many roles, and many sub-symbols, which have little to do with Loki. The same is true of corporate
mythology, and the list of myths that support it, though this can only be explored more clearly as we move
forward.
Another example may help illustrate this point. Gods, heroes and myth are made up of specific elements
of many different symbols, blended in a unique way. The snake may be associated with several other Gods.
It might appear easy to associate those Gods with one another through these shared symbols. But what
does the snake symbolize? Pat interpretations of imagery, whether it be symbols from dreams, works of
art, or religious icons, are specious at best. When presented as an image, (all images are potentially mythic
ideas when read symbolically), “snake” is not always emphasized for its venom, or constriction, or mode of
locomotion, or its tendency to shed its skin. Snakes associated with Satan are not the same snakes that curl
their way up the Caduceus of Hermes; or at least, it doesn’t necessarily link Hermes and the Devil in any
significant way that goes beyond certain elements of their shared symbols.19 One element of a symbol may
be emphasized in the case of a specific myth, and not in others. Drawing such analogies is not pointless,
but it must be remembered that symbols are always open to interpretation or re-interpretation; nothing is
final.20 We also mustn’t forget that the symbol of an animal, plant, or season may be interpreted differently
by different cultures, at different times.
Moreover, an individual myth can be different things to different people, as we see when a mythic motif
is transfigured by another culture, in another time and place, for a new purpose—for example, as may have
been the case with the mythology created around Jesus’ torture and death. What was once a torture device
became a glyph for rebirth through entry into the ideological sphere of Christian salvation. The slain and
reborn god motif itself has appeared in so many agricultural traditions that it can nearly be considered a
constant in human mythology. And the early Gnostic interpretations of the meaning of the crucifixion differ
wildly from the Catholic or Protestant interpretations of later centuries.
Symbols can have connotations that change based on cultural location and historic periods; the Bengali
interpretation of a symbol might differ from how it is read in Punjab, or even just a few villages over. Or we
might consider Vlad Tepis, a Romanian folk hero who has also been personified as the living devil, Vlad the
Impaler, the Dragon, the primary inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which helped to commercialize the
myth of the vampire.
As the walking quote-machine Winston Churchill said, “History is made by the victors.” Perhaps so, but
myths are made by everyone. As a result, we must return time and again to the question “what is myth?” from
one angle and then another, to get any sort of approximate sense of its totality.
A mythological history is not a material one (The History of Ideas)

“History is an epic poem issuing from the divine spirit…
the departure of humanity from its Center to the furthest limits…
and its return to the Center.
The first part is like the Iliad, the other, like the Odyssey.”
Schelling [44]
In exploring a myth, one can focus on the external, historic and sociological implications of the story, or
on the internal, psychological and symbolic implications of the story, as it is representative of the inner life
of a person at a particular time.
The external method is that of the historian and anthropologist, and it is certainly necessary to pay attention
to that dimension when unfolding the significance of a myth within the context of history and culture. It is
19. Otherwise, symbols lose their potency. We can go through an entire pantheon, relating one deity with the next, one symbol with
the next, based on apparent commonalities. This presents a reduction that naturally exaggerates those commonalities and erases or at least
minimizes the distinctions, though that isn’t to say it’s an entirely pointless exercise.
20. As the Freudian joke goes, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. But sometimes, it’s a big black cock.”
• 36 •
their job to weave a myth from these factual elements, verified to whatever extent possible based on available
source materials. History as a discipline focuses its efforts on the unearthing of objective fact, with little
attention paid to the interior elements of ideology which structure the myth of its progress.
“History is that mythological variant we have chosen to take literally,” says Patrick Harpur.21 The job of
most academic studies of myth and folklore isn’t unlike that of a historical fiction writer, confined to absolute
precision in regard to research, but free to work within that framework. Of course, there is no quicker
way to irritate a historian than to tell them that they’re creating fiction, though in my opinion no higher
compliment could be paid.
The narrative of history does not reside in the trinkets that time hasn’t eroded away. Its vitality remains in
the ideas and beliefs of the transmitters and the receivers. (Often, though not always, the former are artists,
and the latter, historians.) All works of art, myth, and even historical documentation take equal precedent,
they are all “messages in a bottle,” which now uncorked, are re-interpreted. If life is left in these artifacts,
we are the ones breathing it into them. We may relate it to our internal lives. We may attempt to draw an
accurate picture of the past with it but it is ours now, not theirs, for they have passed on to where we have
not yet gone, but will soon go, ourselves. (The forgetfulness of death.)
The best artists, in this regard, pursue their art with an awareness of what Joseph Campbell often referred
to as their own “depth potentialities,” whether or not they are consciously aware of it. That is, what they
shored up was something common in human experience, or so says the symbolic perspective furthered by
the theory of archetypes and elementary ideas.22 Whether through Homer, Virgil, Kurt Vonnegut or E. E.
Cummings, much of our sense of ourselves and the past is cast through individual lenses. The greater the
gulf of time between the source and the reception, the more this is so. Thousands of years on, our knowledge
of a given village, nation, or even culture may be told only through the mouths of a couple storytellers, and
fragments of empirical fact. Some bones, tattered papyrus, the foundations of buildings.
Of course, posthumous fame doesn’t always follow from this approach, but no artist except those dealing
in pure abstract concept can wrestle with the issues most pressing to them and not create something with
mythic resonance. How will modern art paint us for our descendents? Where are we in it? How will our
digital information networks weather the passage of time?
From this perspective, it is the purpose of the external, historical approach to come to terms with the
internal, and so the inevitable conclusion of any analysis of myth depends on a psychological reading of
symbols. Joseph Campbell hits the nail on the head on this issue in Masks of God: Creative Mythologies, where
he says,
For we move—each—in two worlds: the inward world of our awareness, and the outward of
participation in the history of a time and place. The scientist and historian serve the latter: the
world, that is to say, of things ‘out there,’ where people are interchangeable and language serves
to communicate information or commands. Creative artists, on the other hands, are mankind’s
wakeners to recollection: summoners of our outward mind to conscious contact with ourselves,
not as participants in this or that morsel of history, but as spirit, in the consciousness of being.
Their task, therefore [sic], is to communicate directly from one inward world to another, in
such a way that an actual shock of experience will have been rendered: not a mere statement for
the information or persuasion of our brain, but an effective communication across the void of
space and time from one center of consciousness to another. [46]
This work aims at that interior dimension of myth, and our journey from here will take us both further
inward and towards how these ideas manifest themselves in our personal lives. Again, myth has no necessary
relation to fact whatsoever. It is neither true nor untrue in the strictest sense, because truth is simply the
wrong demand to make. This creates an odd conundrum for the historian, as myths can, and often are,
interpreted as historic artifacts. Whether archetypes23 are “real” is as irrelevant as if there was a man named
21. pg. 106 Philosophers Secret Fire: A History of the Imagination. [45]
22. See later notes on Jung’s theory of archetypes and Bastian’s “Elementary ideas” (Elementargedanke)
23. “Whereas the personal unconscious consists for the most part of ‘complexes,’ the content of the collective unconscious is made up essentially
of ‘archetypes.’ The concept of the archetype, which is an indispensable correlate of the idea of the collective unconscious, indicates the existence
of definite forms in the psyche which seem to be present always and everywhere. Mythological research calls them ‘motifs’; in the psychology of
primitives they correspond to Levy-Bruhl’s concept of ‘representations collectives,’ and in the field of comparative religion they have been defined
by Hubert and Mauss as ‘categories of the imagination’…My thesis, then, is as follows: In addition to our immediate consciousness, which is of
a thoroughly personal nature and which we believe to be the only empirical psyche (even if we tack on the personal unconscious as an appendix),
• 37 •
Orpheus. In any event the usefulness of a myth now lies in its human, psychic and symbolic character rather
than as a matter of historical trivia.
Our knowledge of history is always somewhat questionable, and the factual basis of these myths is
absolutely irrelevant to their psychological function. If we have an emotional connection with a symbol,
whether the ground of that understanding is historically accurate or not, then we have learned something.
If not about them, then about ourselves. Though, and this must be underlined and etched in stone, this says
nothing of what fruit that knowledge will bear.
This is not the only way that a history of ideas may be considered. We can also come to understand
the history of our mythic axioms. By this, I mean that to understand any philosophical or religious train of
thought, the preconceptions, what you might call the ground of the system, is in many ways more important
than its final conclusions. Certainly those preconceptions are more telling of the psychology of the mind
that produced them. You often learn most about the man (or woman) from the biases they reveal in the
philosophies they invent to explain the world. Traditionally, this “ground” is a thesis or hypothesis, however
it has as its ground any number of silent preconceptions which may or may not be contextually true, which
may or may not be useful or appropriate to the context of the question at hand. The history of axioms is an
ideological history, an ideological mythology.
Cultural presuppositions cannot be seen precisely because they are so pervasive. The myths a culture holds
about truth aren’t merely skewed, not only entrenched: they actually support the entire structure upon which
the framework is built. For example, the philosophy of St. Anselm, Boethius, St. Thomas Aquinas, Descartes,
etc. are all grounded on a presupposition, silent or not, of the existence of God.
Much effort was expended in attempting to unify the scholastic, scientific and rational methods of inquiry
with the theological because, to the thinking of the culture at the time, anything else would be heresy. Plato
might be forgiven such heresy, if his theories could be used to lead back to God. It is difficult to say how
much of this was done for political reasons, and how much of it was born out of an internal, psychological
need on the part of these individuals to unify these seemingly different methods of understanding the world.
Probably, it varied in one case to the next. Regardless, viewed from our vantage point in history, their work
demonstrates more about the cultural and psychological forces at work at that time, than demonstrating any
particular truth. The same is true now, we just can’t so easily see outside the bias of our own history.
The method we use to come to our conclusions are the product of an age and its ideological history, a
particular nervous system, a social and physiological disposition. We can learn a great deal of history, philology,
and psychology from philosophical and scientific inquiries, and yet we may find nothing a-historically “true”
in them. An anthropologist or even historian may study the outside world and create symbolic systems
of likeness for studying those perceptions, but inevitably they are studying those representational systems
they created, bounded by the cultural and personal historic bias of their time, rather than a world somehow
unburdened by such things.24
We do not exist as completely disparate, floating totalities. Myth is born of the social fabric. To live our
myth we need to first come to terms with the history of the beliefs of the cultures around us, their ideas, their
practices, their assumptions and axioms, their demons. Are we a part of it? That is a part of the equation.
there exists a second psychic system of a collective, universal, and impersonal nature which is identical in all individuals.” [47]
24. Since this metaphysical method is the specific device used to investigate as well as “prove” a proposed system of thought, (whatever it
may be), it is really the method itself that is brought to question when we investigate the validity of an argument, rather than the philosophy
itself. Or perhaps, more succinctly said, the heart of philosophy, insofar as philosophy is not art, is this method of “like” and “not like”—which
is the analogy structure of Aristotelian logic, and the basis of linguistic representation as well. I would suggest that all forms of individual and
cultural cognition are expressible through this application of the structure of logic-language, however it is a tool unsuited to existential and
even ontological or metaphysical questions, thus leading us to propose concepts that do not bear out in life. For example, the most obvious
expression of this binary is “being” and “non-being.” A great deal of conjecture has been spun around these seemingly opposite ideas; yet what
exactly is “non-being”? What is its relationship to “being”? Surely it is not the relationship that 0 has to 1, as 0 still exists in the same sense that
1 does, it merely lacks any quantity. This linguistic concept of “non-being,” formed from the idea of the negation of that which is (“being”),
cannot, by definition, be. If you took and negated all things that were, are, and ever will be, one might say “then, you are left with non-being.”
Yet that doesn’t mean anything at all. From the perspective of being, non-being is a conceptual phantom, created by the structure of language,
and thus, the structure of logic. (Non-being would have to be some form or modality of being for it to be in any way represented or spoken
about.) At a fundamental level no two things can ever be said to be true opposites except for in mathematics. Male and female, for example,
are not rooted in opposition, they are not opposite categories, they are merely two different alternatives provided as pre-requisites for species
that procreate through sexual means. Love and hate have a bi-polarity but indifference is more literally the opposite of either. Language creates
the simplistic forms of opposition which logic depends upon. Thus the crucial point, which underlies much of Nietzsche’s later writings:
this exalted method of extracting truth does not, as many philosophers would like to think, strip away the illusions until only truth remains.
Rather, it is a form of representational illusion, a form of myth-making, itself.
• 38 •
The culture that bore us into this world helped shape who we are, regardless of whether we went along with
the program or not. As James Joyce famously said, “History is a nightmare from which [we are] desperately
trying to awake.” [48]
An ideological history is also a personal history. What does it mean to be at this place and this time, and
how has it made you who you are? How do the beliefs of our ancestors continue to structure and define the
face of the reality we experience on a day-to-day basis?
Preliminary answers can be found in our family trees and personal psychological makeup, which each
of us can unearth in the creative process, but it is also, and I would say more importantly, present in the
ideological history of our culture, as well as the historical revisionism we all play with our past, re-tooling
memories to conform to a procession of newly adopted narratives.
We are then, like the myths that tie us together, an ever-shifting collage or assemblage, without singular
identity or import if separated from that context. If we trace our heritage back far enough, all we can say
for sure is that we are all solar beings, since all matter almost originated from one star or another.25 Which
sounds a bit like saying we’re all unicorns, but there it is. To see the material manifestation of God, and
simultaneously look backwards in time, all we need do is look to the stars.
The boundaries of self ultimately exist where we say they are. In reality everything is interlocking,
interconnected, semi-permeable. Self is defined by myth, and so is the shadow self, the not-me, the enemy
or the adversary.
God upon high (Spatialization and Hierarchy in Metaphors)

The metaphors or models that we create to represent abstract realities depend a great deal on the modes of
our sensory experience. Often, when we are referring to a concept without spatial qualities, we nevertheless
make our metaphors spatial. This could even be the crux of the metaphor. For instance, we may say something
like “I’m feeling up” or “I’m feeling down.” There’s something that we immediately understand from these
metaphors that bears no relationship with reality. In other words, even though it shouldn’t make sense, it
makes perfect sense. There is nothing “up” about feeling up, time does not travel in a “line,” (nor does it
necessarily “travel” at all), there is no “light” of goodness and “darkness” of evil. These are all metaphors
derived from sensory experience, used as a means of mapping things that are a part of our psychological
experience, but not our physical one.
This is the nature of a metaphor. As Joseph Campbell points out in The Hero’s Journey, we don’t say “She
ran like a deer,” we say “She was a deer.” [49] There’s a sense in which something that is logically untrue is
true in another sense; the conjoining of these two or more ideas tells us something about its nature, even
though the actual statement is false.26
These linguistic, spatial models often take on an almost idiomatic quality. In that way, though these
metaphors can be useful, even indispensable, they are also problematic. They imply hierarchies where there
are none, and may carry valuations along with them that aren’t meant in that specific case. The metaphor
may carry a valuation along with it which colors the concept in unintended ways, or the meaning of those
things may change over time. It is, in other words, an invaluable but rather crude tool. If a signifier loses its
referent, as often happens as metaphors and idioms age or are re-appropriated, very odd things can be done
with them.
However, metaphors used to describe metaphysical concepts can reach incredible levels of complexity.
Let me provide an extended example, so that I can demonstrate what I mean. I’d like to focus on the
Kabbalah, a Judaic mystical system, and the various non-Jewish systems that derived themselves from it,
generally referred to as the Qabbalah. Before we begin, a few caveats. Due to the complexity and obscurity
of the subject, this will require a fair amount of jargon, for that I apologize.
I do not want to descend into a discussion about the history or validity of K/Qabbalah. My only intent
is to demonstrate a point about spatial metaphors, hierarchical thinking, and transcendence. Countless
scholarly (and not so scholarly) books are available that walk us through the ideological and chronological
history of this school of thought.
25. Which is to say, many of the particles that seeded the known universe originated in stars, and the most assuredly the light energy they
give off is necessary for the formation of life as we know it.
26. This creates a secondary problem with metaphors, that they are undervalued in much the same way myths are. But that is a topic for
our later investigations.
• 39 •
The Qabbalah deals with abstract, metaphysical ideas. It conceptualizes them through the use of spatial
and numerological metaphors which are said to lie beneath, or otherwise structure the apparent world. A
framework was built, or at any rate developed over the course of many years, represented as an image, a
metaphysical map, the “tree of life.” This map allows for the relation of abstract ideas with one another in a
way that is both concrete and even intuitive, once you take the time to figure out the logic behind it all.
We might easily assume that like many metaphysical systems, the tree of life was born as an answer to
a problem. That problem was simple: “How do we think about or talk about a monotheistic God?” By
definition such a being is indivisible. A monotheistic God isn’t even strictly speaking a being, so much as the
governing principle through which being comes to be.
Nowadays we might not care about such a quandary, but for a time, questions like this were of life and
death importance to some people. It was well recognized by priests and scholars alike at the point of the
birth of Kabbalah27 that the Divine could not exist separate from anything. That is to say, the Divine cannot
itself have qualities, for to have a quality is to acknowledge the absence of another quality, for example, if
God is all, and at the same time good, then does evil exist within God? How can anything exist outside of the
absolute, infinite, etc.? Yet if God is without qualities, then how can God be said to exist at all? Moreover,
how do we divide or even think about the attributes of a being that must by nature transcend opposites?
Idolatry, whether conceptual or otherwise, was a central prohibition of Judaic monotheism.
In one manner of thinking, the inheritors of this system of thought were apologists, attempting to work
around these apparent problems through the use of some very tricky philosophical sleights-of-hand. They
did this by saying that all of the seemingly distinct elements of divinity—quality-less in themselves—are
essentially the result of one indivisible element (God), one sphere of being, outpouring to the next; separate
elements which are not only linked but actually inseparable, like the trinity in Catholicism. The chalice on
high pours down and fills the others, which overflow, until it eventually reaches the tenth and final cup,
Malkuth, the Kingdom, wherein the world of the senses is manifest. In this conception, they developed a
system whereby something could be created out of nothing. Ex nihilo. The divine essence, born of nothing,
pours or overflows each “sphere,” pouring right down to the material world, where the cycle is mystically
re-capitulated.
This “tree” is broken up into “layers” of reality, ten
“spheres” called Sephiroth (“emanations”), from the
Godhead, the crown, the single point out of which
Nothing manifests itself (Keter), through various
layers of opposites which synthesize as the Kingdom,
Malkuth. From top to bottom, we see the progression
from the monad, the divine seed down to the material
world. From top to bottom, the manifestation
from nothing to something. This same process of
manifestation is seen in the cosmology of Hinduism,
for instance, and all other religions when considered
from a metaphysical or mystical dimension, though
details differ.
The tree is also split left and right: on the right
side, the active principles, on the left, the receptive.
Though I don’t want to take a thorough look at each
of the ten Sephiroth here, it is worth noting that they
are identified partially through the attribution of
other symbols: for example, the sixth, Tiphereth, is
associated with Sol, the Sun. Attributed to it we will
find stones, colors, a note in the diatonic scale, animals,
Gods from various pantheons, and so on. There is, of
course, much argument between different sources of
which symbols should be associated to which sphere
or path; the most sensible advice on this subject
27. Anywhere between the 4th and 12th centuries.

• 40 •
comes, rather miraculously, from Aleister Crowley in Magick Without Tears, where he explains to a student
that once the basic system has been understood, each individual should build up such symbolic associations
themselves. [50] Each of our “trees” are in unique, even if they’re built upon the same framework.
The metaphor of the tree can be mapped on top of the human body as well, traditionally this is done
through a conception of Adam Kadmon, the first man, but more recently it has been connected to seemingly
disparate symbol system such as the Kundalini; in fact, many have said that just about any other system can
be considered Qabbalistically. Through this, taking our above example, we could for instance associate the
heart with Tiphereth, and through that, all of the symbols associated with that sphere.
These spheres (Sephiroth) are connected to one another by paths which correspond to the psychological
states apparent in the transition from one of these spheres to the next, and as such though there are dense
correspondences associated with the Sephiroth, the associations for the paths are more narrative. This is most
clearly seen in the association of the Major Arcana cards of the Tarot—or the archetypes they represent—
with each of those paths. Twenty-two paths, twenty two major arcana, and Hebrew characters.28
Perhaps most fundamentally, the basis of this system of thought is philosophically Neo-Platonic. It
proposes that there is a singular and immutable, underlying framework that structures reality. (As we’ve seen,
this is also an assumption made by science up until fairly recently.) Unlike science, K/Qabbalah supposes a
symbolic link between the material and metaphysical worlds, which can be apprehended through a mystical
understanding of language and number. To put it plainly, the foundation of the Hebrew language is said to
be divine, and can be reverse engineered to catch a glimpse of the face of God.
Because of its unique correspondence to the structure of the world—because in effect, by
articulating it, it creates that structure—language has a power that is more than notative
or descriptive. In Hebrew the same root D V R can mean both ‘word’ and ‘thing’: it is not
surprising, then, that some Kabbalists helped that the Hebrew alphabet was the one used by
God as a medium for the creation of the world. It is written in the Sepher Yetsirah: “Twenty-
two letter elements: He outlined them, hewed them out, weighed them, combined them and
exchanged them, and through them created the soul of all creation and everything else that
was ever to be created.” The Torah was considered to be a degraded or garbled version of the
original, primordial Torah out of which God had summoned the world…[51]
The meaning of the associations I have been speaking of is best understood not only psychologically
but also anthropologically. This quotation from Claude Levi-Strauss is strangely appropriate, though it is
unlikely that he had K/Qabbalah in mind when he wrote it:
The customs of a community, taken as a whole, always have a particular style and are reducible
to systems…the number of systems is not unlimited and…in their games, dreams, or wild
imaginings…human societies, like individuals, never create absolutely, but merely choose
certain combinations from an ideal repertoire…By making an inventory of all recorded
customs, of all those imagined in myths or suggested in children’s and adult games, or in the
dreams of healthy or sick individuals or in psycho-pathological behavior, one could arrive at
a sort of table, like that of the chemical elements, in which all actual or hypothetical customs
would be grouped into families, so that one could see at a glance which customs a particular
society had in fact adopted. [52]
Though this is not the intention of the Kabbalah we see in the Sefer Yetzirah or Zohar, it is nevertheless
what it evolved into, through the work of Christian and Jewish mystics alike, taking on its penultimate form,
in this particular regard, in the Hermetic Qabbalah that then inspired the so-called magical orders of the
Victorian age. [53] [54] Although much of the analysis and charts of associations produced by these groups
may arguably be flawed, or at the least culturally biased themselves, and though they are to some extent
subjective in any case, it is nevertheless an analytical as well as creative tool that represents a long-running
tradition of exploring metaphysical concepts, and looking for a single underlying symbolic structure. 29
28. The Major Arcana are distinct from the other cards, in that they represent archetypical personas that can also be seen as “journey
states,” though some, such as the Fool, the Magus, the High Priestess, etc. which are personalities, whereas The Blasted Tower or Death could
be considered more as settings or context.
29. You can see in the duality of ideas such as Ein Sof and Ein Sof Aur that we are actually incapable of creating a truly monistic concept
without at least implying a duality “behind” it, (and often a syncretic trinity behind that). It is difficult to say if this is simply a product of our
own nervous system or an inherent quality of the universe: when thinking of any single thing we must “frame” it within an area that is not that
• 41 •
This example demonstrates, among other things, how dualistic and dialectical perspectives of reality both
lend themselves, seemingly paradoxically, to an underlying premise of transcendence. You will also find that
systems that use spatial and kinesthetic means of “mapping” a metaphysical reality—forward and backward,
left and right, up and down, high and low, fast and slow, and so on—often contain within them an underlying
premise of transcendence rather than immanence. All of the field of opposites imply within them a unity
of those opposites, even if such union defies dualistic systems. This is the central conceit of transcendence
and its sister, the Absolute: that it is an undifferentiated whole distinct from the manifest world, fraught as
it is through opposites and plurality, yet it supports all of this manifest world. In one sense or another we
find this idea in Hinduism, we find it in Buddhism, and we find it in the more mystical interpretations of
Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.
So far-reaching is this belief that it is very hard to say exactly where it originated. Approaching life from
our direct experience alone, this seems bizarre if not incoherent thinking, but from within the Neo-Platonic
standpoint, where the sensual world is illusory and the forms represent ultimate reality, this worldview appears
coherent. Thus, the Gnostic currents of Neo-Platonism and Christianity so easily absorbed Kabbalistic ideas,
and vice-versa. They all share a concept of Absolute reality, and of its transcendence. These are ideas which
clearly stand in contrast to immanence.
It should be apparent from this exercise that the spatial nature of such metaphors structure the very system
itself, so we may at some point, quite sanely, stop and ask “What are we modeling here?” In books on the
subject of K/Qabbalah, we can find pages upon pages of compiled associations and layers upon layers of
meaning arranged upon the underlying implicity linear, hierarchical framework of the tree of life; but what
exactly does this metaphysical engine produce? I for instance know that the element of Wood in the Chinese
5 element system corresponds to the season of Spring, and with the Heirophant in the Major Arcana of the
Tarot. When practicing the root Chi Gung exercise for Wood your mental focus is on the thumbs, and I’ve
practiced this exercise enough that these associations are more or less automatic. If I see the color green I
immediately become conscious of my thumbs. Same with the number 5. But what if these associations that
are drilled into the nervous system through weird esoteric practices like this are culturally arbitrary? Why
not meditate on the letter Q while visualizing a peacock and getting head from a blue-skinned Na’vi Avatar?
What lies and delusions such systems can perpetrate, if we believe they are objective fact!
Not to dramatize but I have had friends come totally unhinged as a result of their occult studies. This fact
alone may be the strongest tangible evidence I have that occultism can do much of anything at all. While
some come “back” stronger for the experience, others never do. Whereas myths can be calcified through
fundamentalism, made unreachable through deification, they can also easily be transformed into purely
theoretical exercises. The immanence of myth is not to be found in believing in absolute spiritual laws. And
the transcendent remains merely a compelling idea.
Deep, or just deeply confusing? (Emergent symbolism)
thing. It is an odd prerequisite of thought. To think of a thing outside of which there exist nothing but that thing is mind-boggling. At best
we think of it ever expanding, but what would it have to expand into? We cannot really conceive of “no boundary.” This is the ground that
Kabbalah and other similar metaphysical systems attempt to strike at, through some of the conceptual tricks already discussed.
Here we return to via negativa. Jewish mystics such as Abraham ben Samuel Abulafia recognized that God can only be intelligently spoken
of as a “not,” as the identification of God with one thing implies that which he is not. This is an idea found in many mystical schools of
thought, Jnani Yoga for instance. Every assertion immediately enters the field of opposites. Qabbalah is one of many means of attempting
to explicate elements of what cannot otherwise be explicated, using the conceptual and metaphorical tools available to us; however, in so
doing, we can easily lead ourselves far astray. Thus, we also see the inherent dualism and hierarchical elements of a system such as this. In
bifurcating the divine, an inherent hierarchy is created within the tree of life so long as you think of that spatial metaphor as literal, that the
Sephiroth Keter is “above” Chesed or Netzach, that one “ascends” to “travel” from Malkuth to Yesod, etc. None of these are the case—they
are metaphysical and psychological concepts which have no spatial reality. They are only said to have spatial reality for illustrative purposes,
otherwise we simply can’t wrap our head around these ideas. It’s a small lie to avoid a larger one.
Speaking philosophically, immanence manifests in Malkuth, the Kingdom, empirical world, and tenth and final Sephiroth. But
transcendence is rooted in Ein Sof, the unmanifest, which surrounds the tree and germinates in Keter, the first Sephiroth. But even the monad
of Ein Sof couldn’t be left alone. In oddly Hegellian form, the Rabbis later created the idea of Ein Sof Aur, the boundless possibility to pair
against the “empty,” almost Sunyata-like Ein Sof. Sunyata is the Buddhist void which is also the ground of being; both are essentially the same
concept, or in this case, category, since Sunyata and Ein Sof both represent the true monad which simply cannot be conceived, nor thought
of as anything other than a quality-less void containing in potentia all possible qualities. The idea of Sunyata may be argued to contain both
Ein Sof (the negative aspect) and Ein Sof Aur (the positive) within it, but this is irrelevant to the point. These two conceptions of nothingness
represent the endless pairs of opposites that the transcendent shatters into when perceived from within the field of time. They too could be
broken in two, again and again, and it may be this very instinct which produces dialectic metaphysical systems such as the Qabbalah.
• 42 •
The metaphor-analogy system that comprise mythological symbols are another common stumbling block.
As we will consider again in a moment, a mythology is an emergent system composed of symbols. Each
symbol is given form through its relation to all the others. They form a mesh-work, or even a variety of
inter-locking meshworks, which may have varying primacy for an individual at different times, or in varying
situations. This is one of the reasons our beliefs may seem so contradictory, when viewed from outside. Some
of these layers are material or genetic, which is one of the reasons why philosophers such as Deleuze and De
Landa take issue with the use of the word “metaphor” for such things. We will deal with this in a moment
in regard to the study of myth.
This meshwork, the view of reality where we see systems tied to systems in an infinite regress, is presented
mythologically in ideas like Indra’s net, a Buddhist invention possibly originating from the Avatamsaka
Sutra, [55]
When Indra fashioned the world, he made it as a web, and at every knot in the web is tied a
pearl. Everything that exists, or has ever existed, every idea that can be thought about, every
datum that is true—every dharma, in the language of Indian philosophy—is a pearl in Indra’s
net. Not only is every pearl tied to every other pearly by virtue of the web on which they hang,
but on the surface of every pearl is reflected every other jewel on the net. Everything that exists
in Indra’s web implies all else that exists. [56]
We will speak of the emergent nature of myth again in a moment, but by comparison of this mythological
idea, consider this quote from De Landa,
Certain combinations will display emergent properties, that is, properties of the combination as
a whole which are more than the sum of the individual parts. These emergent (or “synergistic”)
properties belong to the interactions between parts, so it follows that a top-down analytical
approach that begins with the whole and dissects it into its constituent parts (an ecosystem
into a species, a society into its institutions) is bound to miss precisely those properties. In
other words, analyzing a whole into parts and then attempting to model it by adding up the
components will fail to capture any property that emerged from complex interactions. [57]
How do we approach myth with this in mind? De Landa attempts a nonlinear, systemic (though not
necessarily systematic), material analysis of history. This allows a more literal grounding for the metaphors
employed in an investigation. For example, the metaphor he provides later of a city being a mineral
exoskeleton, an almost mollusk-like outer husk allowing the softer bodies to ebb and flow, is not only
potentially accurate, it could be considered an engineering diagram,
We need to employ something along the lines of engineering diagrams to specify them. A
concrete example may help clarify this crucial point. When we say (as Marxists used to say) that
“class struggle is the motor of history” we are using the word “motor” in a purely metaphorical
sense. However, when we say that “a hurricane is a steam motor” we are not simply making
a linguistic analogy; rather we are saying that hurricanes embody the same diagram used by
engineers to build steam motors—that is we are saying that a hurricane, like a steam engine,
contains a reservoir of heat, operates via thermal differences…[57]
Mythical symbols allow no such distinction. They defy them, in fact, and if we attempt to force them
to comply with a specific schema we merely create something new, a recursion of explanatory myths, ad
infinitum.
A bee hive, a black hole, the scent-communication of insects, literally anything we observe may be interpreted
symbolically and either blown up or shrunk down in scale, stripped of empirical relevance and re-purposed
in a mythological sense. A leaf that I find on the ground may be imbued with great mythological significance;
not only can it become a sacred object, representing, perhaps a particular state of mind, individual, or point
in time, it can also contribute to its own mythology through its physical or natural structure. For instance,
I may observe the vein-like structures within the leaf, and interpret what that vein-structure “means” within
the context of the myth that I have invented, or perhaps discovered, within this leaf.
All mythological symbols serve as models for systems, “Instead of studying a rain-forest top down, starting
with the forest as a whole and dividing it into species, we …attempt to generate from their interactions
whatever systemic properties we ascribe to the ecosystem as a whole.” [57] However, unlike the case of a
• 43 •
rain forest, myths model psychological, cultural, and universal energies or trends that tend to defy singular
definition. There may or may not be a physical process underlying a mythological metaphor for it to be
valid; the only true sounding board is experiential. This idea is likely infuriating to social scientists, but it is
patently absurd to think that, devoid of a specific context, one myth can be more or less true, or better or
worse than another. We show our myths, our bias, whenever we take a side or express an opinion.
With this sole caveat in mind in regard to metaphors, there are elements of De Landa’s approach that I
think are invaluable in regard to inventing a new methodology for the study as well as experience of myth
as immanent. There is a veritable gaping hole when it comes to an approach to mythology that is not
hamstrung by linear, hierarchical approaches that have been outmoded in so many other disciplines.
Towards this end, in this work, we will look at mythological symbols as representations of actual forces
which are so enmeshed in an emergent whole that they can only safely be referred to, almost from afar, at
a different scale, through the intermediary of these symbols. We must overcome the belittling of metaphor,
that if something is metaphorical it is somehow “less” than something that is not. All representation is at
bottom a metaphor, a stand-in signifier. Only when you realize that metaphors are psychologically true,
maybe even the “facts” of subconscious, can you have an immanent experience of myth.
These are not the droids you’re looking for (the force of attention)
When you focus your attention on the study of any particular concept, two things likely happen: first,
you see your underlying theme everywhere. This is exemplified in the concept of a meta-narrative, whereby
reality is reduced to a simple principle like the subversion of subliminal sexuality (Freud).30 These provide
an often useful insight into an aspect of reality, while at the same time distorting reality around the contours
of the concept. What conceals often also reveals, and the inverse is also true. Within the context of a study
on myth, everything becomes myth. You have already witnessed this force at work. (I’m sure you’ve seen the
word “myth” enough at this point that you’re subconsciously deleting it out of the sentences passing into
your brain.)
Approached from the opposite direction, you may deconstruct and re-define your core concept to such a
point that it ceases to mean what it does for everyone else. For example, consider the word “will” as used by
Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, or Adler. Their ideas of “will” go so far beyond what is commonly meant by the
term that, unless you are intimately familiar with the nature of their work and thought, it is easy to mistake
their actual meaning. Similarly, this word “will” does not lead to the same concepts for Nietzsche as it does
with Adler or Schopenhauer, but rather is a sort of conceptual key to a unique thought process for each. They
assume we can grasp this meaning from their context. That is why a philosopher may expound on “being”
or “will” or “myth” for 500 pages. However, our interpretation of their language also produces its own child
myth, as we consume, masticate and incorporate their ideas.
I am fully aware of both of these factors playing into our ongoing exploration of the concept of immanent
myth. As we move towards the final two sections of this book, we will seek to embrace rather than hide from
this, a philosophical equivalent of the Gonzo approach to journalism: embedding one’s self firmly within the
narrative rather than pretending to not be a part of it, embracing subjective observation rather than masking
it in the guise of scientific objectivity. Take it in enough to think about these things for yourself.
Who is this story about, anyway? (Abstraction)

Whenever we abstract or generalize, we produce a myth.31 The mythological instinct actually seems to
depend on linking specific, personal experiences with ever-shifting, abstract concepts. The suffering of Christ
is a relevant myth when it is linked with one’s own suffering; likewise, characters in stories and movies
become mythic to the extent that their abstract nature is re-aligned with our interior landscape. “What does
it mean?” actually means “What does it mean to me?” Anything else is sophistry.
30. “Above all, Freud’s attitude towards the spirit seemed to me highly questionable. Wherever, in a person or work of art, an expression
of spirituality (in the intellectual not the super-natural sense) came to light, he suspected it, and insinuated that it was repressed sexuality.
Anything that could not be directly interpreted as sexuality he referred to as ‘psychosexuality.’ I protested that this hypothesis, carried to its
logical conclusion would lead to annihilating judgment upon culture. Culture would appear as a mere farce, the morbid consequence of
repressed sexuality. ‘Yes,’ he assented, ‘so it is and that is just a curse of fate against which we are powerless to contend.’” [58]
31. The Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads, Freud’s The Future of An Illusion, Neil Gaiman’s Sandman or David Mack’s Kabuki—every literary
or artistic act, regardless of time or intent, are the same in this one sense: they all cast the abstract in a specific form, the abstract is given a
mask to wear.
• 44 •
Successful myths strike at our unmediated personal experience, and at the same time are directed at an
audience. There is clearly a magic trick involved, composed of symbols, sounds, and images. A myth is never
just this problem or this person, even when it originates from a personal experience or dilemma.
By their very nature, myths abstract and generalize, in a Jungian sense they are said to be archetypical,
but it may be possible that the mythic perspective creates archetypes. This essential abstraction is also an
inherent danger, as narrative metaphors are essentially untethered from necessity and thus from what many
would refer to as reality, and it is easy to then turn around and reduce all mythology into one mono-myth,
as Frazier, Campbell, and many before and after have done.32 This makes exploration of myth something of a
tightrope walk. If we err too far on the side of abstraction, none of it can be accessed by our experience. But
fixation on particulars will lead us out of the realm of myth before we’ve even arrived.
So in beginning this exploration, we have had to employ an unfortunately meta- approach, or else the
overall method may get lost through a particular peculiarity, as with Freud and formative sexuality, or even
the folk elements of a particular story about Shiva. As a result, in dealing with myth as a subject I am not
entirely concerned with the details of a single story or meta-narrative, at least in the first section of this
book. These particulars or peculiarities can and should be noted by way of example, but if we think that
by exploding a single mythic/psychological complex we are uncovering the actual nature of myth, then
we will continue to chase our own tail in misleading dialogue about trivial or obsessive points. This is a
methodological shortcoming of much mythic analysis, including some of the most thorough and scholarly.
As the book progresses, you will be provided more specific examples, and I hope that you can make this
connection with your own work and experiences.
The problems of psychology (Projection and the Unconscious)

Many other questions bubble to the surface at the briefest serious consideration of the nature of myth,
many of them psychological in nature. For example, the role projection plays in both the production and
interpretation of mythological thought and imagery. Alan Dundes deals with this in his essay, “Projection In
Folklore: A Plea For Psychoanalytic Semiotics,” which is a great deal more interesting of a read than the title
might imply, thanks in part to Dundes’ skill at rendering complicated ideas in a straightforward manner. I
will turn directly to some of his comments on this subject:
In psychology, projection refers to the tendency to attribute to another person or the environment
what is within one’s self. What is attributed is usually some internal impulse or feeling which
is painful, unacceptable, or taboo. The ascription of feelings and qualities of one’s own to a
source in the external world is accomplished without the individuals being consciously aware
of the fact. The individual perceives the external object as possessing the taboo tendencies
without recognizing their source in himself. I might mention Charles S. Peirce was aware of the
existence of projection. He wrote, “I think it is probably true that every element of experience
is in the first instance applied to an external object. A man gets up out of the wrong side of
the bed, for example, attributes wrongness to almost every object he perceives. This is the way
in which he experiences his bad temper.” Despite the triviality of the example, the aptness of
the insight remains valid. Of course, Freud said it too and with specific reference to folklore:
“As a matter of fact, I believe that a large portion of the mythological conception of the world
which reaches far into the most modern religions is nothing but psychology projected onto the
outside world.” [59]
When we consider that the emotions and sensations that we experience in life arise within ourselves, even if
they are generally triggered externally, the importance of projection begins to become clear. How obvious this
seems, almost not worth mentioning, but give it more than cursory consideration. This is further emphasized
by the fact that one can contort and exercise a body— as is done in a physical-spiritual practice such as
yoga— and experience an unlocking of “energy” that appears to trigger these latent or “trapped” emotional
responses. That reaction can be so intense and surprising to many beginning practitioners that they assume
32. Such as “the storm Gods of Adalbert Kuhn, the animal allegories of Angelo de Gubernatis, the fire mythology of Johannes Hertel, the
moon myths of Georg Husing, and above all the solarism of Max Muller.” [4] One can use any mythic concept as the axis mundi for all myth,
and hang it all from that central point like Foucault’s Pendulum. This does not invalidate those investigations, but they are disingenuous to
the extent that they pose as the model for myth.
• 45 •
something is wrong with them, and cease practice immediately! Though what exactly is at work is anybody’s
guess. (I’ve personally experienced it too many times to write it off, but I still can’t resist “finger quotes.”)
It is essentially impossible for any external event to in itself cause anger, happiness, despair, or any of the
other myriad emotions that exist in the continuum of possible human emotions. These things exist within
us, which is not to say that we control them. Yoga may be especially direct in its ability to throw this in our
face, but it is certainly not the only process whereby one can slowly, inch by agonizing inch, peel back the
curtain obscuring this psychological sleight of hand.
Emotions present themselves to us almost as if they were facts. But our reaction to them can be conditioned,
though this conditioning often needs to begin in the body. Our ideas can only reach so far, especially when
presented with embedded mental habits or the immediacy of burning anger or mind-numbing fear or stress.
Doubtless, completely removing this process would make us something other than human, but making us
conscious of it—that is the task ahead of us, and it is a task that myths are uniquely suited to, when analyzed
with the right set of eyes.
This may seem off-point, however, it is at the heart of myth. Without an understanding of this participation
mystique, one cannot understand myth.33 All imagined and historic events serve simply as triggers of
psychological symbolism, which is to say projected symbolism. We shouldn’t gloss this over, and either accept
or reject it out of hand. Hidden within this statement is the reason that Christian mystics have visions of the
Virgin Mary, and Hindus might see Shiva. This may not rule out the possibility of experience arising from
outside one’s direct culture, but these occurrences are the exception rather than the rule. An encounter with
our myth is an encounter with ourselves. Much, if not all of this process occurs under the water, as it were.
(And of course, mythologically speaking, the waters, ocean, and so on are often understood as a reference to
the boundary between conscious and unconscious.) Again from Dundes,
It is my contention that much of the meaning of folkloristic fantasy is unconscious. Indeed,
it would have to be unconscious—in the Freudian sense—for folklore to function as it does.
Among its functions, folklore provides a socially sanctioned outlet for the expression of what
cannot be articulated in the more usual, direct way. It is precisely in jokes, folktales, folksongs,
proverbs, children’s games, gestures, etc. that anxieties can be vented. If a person knew exactly
what he was doing when he told a joke to his boss or to his spouse (or if the boss or spouse
knew what he was doing), the joke would probably cease to be an escape mechanism. Man
needs such mechanisms. [7]
This poses another quandary. The unconscious (or subconscious) itself is a fairly recent myth, historically
speaking. Even when it is generally agreed that there is an unconscious, that is, that whatever it is, it exerts
some kind of effect on our lives, there is no agreement as to what it is, how those effects are manifested, how
it relates to biological/neurological models, and so on. Even during its first major resurgence under Freud
and Jung, the two couldn’t at all get together on the nature of the unconscious, and it became one of the
primary sources of the rift in their professional relationship.34
In other words, though we can witness behaviors, thought patterns and so on that can ostensibly be
attributed to an unconscious of some kind, its very nature is not directly knowable. Our unconscious self is
the invisible double, or third, in the room (supposing “the room” is our own psyche.) Though it may not be
what he intended, this calls to mind a famous stanza from T.S. Eliot’s Wasteland,
Who is the third who walks always beside you?

When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
—But who is that on the other side of you? [42]
33. This is a term derived from Levy-Bruhl. “It denotes a peculiar kind of psychological connection with objects, and consists in the fact
that the subject cannot clearly distinguish himself from the object but is bound to it by a direct relationship which amounts to partial identity.
This identity results from an a priori oneness of subject and object. Participation mystique is a vestige of this primitive condition.” [60] We
will return to this idea again in Beyond Representation within the context of the idea of magical thinking, perhaps with the idea that it is not
strictly “primitive” or pathological, as is typically thought.
34. Jung gives a thorough explanation of this in his autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections. [58]
• 46 •
It would appear that mythology, projection, and the unconscious are inextricably linked; like the bone,
tendons, and muscle in an arm all working in tandem to produce a specific movement. “It is not enough for
the primitive man to see the sun rise and set; this external observation must at the same time be a psychic
happening: the sun in its course must represent the fate of a god or hero who, in the last analysis, dwells
nowhere except the soul of man.” [60]
Without diverting our point too much, I’d like to point out that like most thinkers of his time, in this
passage Jung specified “primitive man.” This is in a way misleading on Jung’s part, since so much of his work
depended on the idea that these principles bears equal weight for modern humans as “primitives,” even if we
mythologize in slightly different ways on the surface than aborigines.
Let’s take that word out of the quote. Through the simple omission of the word “primitive,” a little of the
intention and necessity of our present work becomes clear. When myths exist, and continue to direct our
lives, but they do so under the auspices of something other than myth, great trouble can arise. Perhaps this
is the nature of modern humans: creatures that mythologize without realizing it.
This matter of the unconscious bears more thought as we move forward, but for now, within the context
of the mythological domain, it can easily be bypassed with the question: “is the unconscious itself a useful
myth?” And that question can only be answered within a specific context and frame of reference. In regard
to the issue of projection, which we can consider a psychological fact on experiential grounds, it is not only a
useful fiction but also a requisite one. In other words, we have ample evidence of projection, and projection
depends in some part on the unconscious.
Rarely is the nature of the projection consciously recognized. I am always amused of would-
be critics of the Oedipal reading of the Oedipus story when they claim that the Freudian
interpretation is invalid because Oedipus didn’t know that he was killing his father and
marrying his mother. Of course, he didn’t know consciously. That is precisely the point. It
is the bringing of the unconscious into the purview of the conscious which is difficult and
painful for the psyche. Projection is one of a number of psychological defense mechanisms
which provide an unconscious screen or arena for the display of the causes of anxiety and it is
for this reason that folkloristic projections are so indispensable as tools for the human arsenal
for mental health. [7]
Now that we have broadened this arena from that of folklore to myth at large, and even expanded our
view of what “myth” refers to, this point becomes all the more poignant. At the same time, I’m not sure
if this proves anything, as our perception of projection and the unconscious could both be based on faulty
hypothesis; but it will suffice, for now. The unconscious is not only a useful fiction in regard to mythology;
it is necessitated by our very definition of myth.
Thus, the answer to our question of the existence of the unconscious must be a resounding, if provisional,
“yes.”
The 101st Monkey is a Conspiracy Theorist

I’d like to briefly turn our attention to one of the chief problems that arises in a comparative analysis of
myth: that of simultaneous arising, and other peculiar transcultural similarities.
There are common myths, or myth-elements, which cross the borders of tribes, the imagined lines of state
and trade, and oftentimes this commonality defies obvious explanations, such as that of cultural diffusion.35
(Myths following the flow of trade and conquest, for instance.) That this phenomenon exists is well
established. Variants of the flood myth, for instance, occur all across the world amongst cultures with little
or no contact with one another at that time. One interpretation is a materialistic one, that there was a time
where there was literally a world-wide “flood.” Many myths are formed by personal experience. But as we’ve
explored, the form of origin is unimportant in regard to the myth itself. Further, it appears that themes and
points of conflict—from which new mythic forms are derived—often occur across the gamut of cultures,
rather than remaining truly isolated events. At this point, mythologically speaking, it wouldn’t change much
if there had been a historical man named Jesus, or not. (Or Mohammed for that matter, though the record
seems more clear in that regard.)
Anyone who opens collected books of mythology from different cultures will be driven to notice this
35. A term likely first coined by Alfred L. Kroeber in his influential 1940 paper Stimulus Diffusions. [61]
• 47 •
phenomenon, especially if they compare the dates and known axes and means of cultural diffusion at the
time when a narrative seems to arise.36 Merely determining that something exists isn’t enough for most of us.
Determining the significance of a transcultural similarity is far more difficult.
It is the surprising mirroring of psyche and culture that caused Jung to create his theory of archetypes,
which expresses that there are abstract forms generating transcultural trends, and that these forms also play
an active role in the mechanics of our unconscious. These archetypes manifest themselves on an individual
level through the intermediary of the personal unconscious. It also follows from this perspective that there
is an inherent mythic nature at work within our species, if not reality itself, which is similar, regardless of
upbringing, even regardless of the times we are raised in. Contrasting this, we clearly see the cultural ideas
which do shift from time to time and place to place. This is the definition of elementary and ethnic ideas a
la Bastian, which provided the logical foundation for Jung’s theory of archetypes.37
Historically, in some cases we may see how one myth blends into the next following lines of cultural
dissemination and friction, and how, generally speaking, there are certain similar archetypes or God-forms
which are fulfilled by different figures in different cultures. Tricksters the world round share certain common
traits. So do most Sky Gods, Gods and Goddesses of Love, of the Hunt, and so on. When there are distinctions,
they tell us a great deal about the psychological posture of the people inventing these symbols. Throughout
history these figures appear and disappear, almost as if their appearance is the fulfillment of a need within a
society at that certain time. More likely, it is merely the mirror reflection of the overall psychological state
of a culture, or of those re-inventing the poignant symbols of their times. In other words, the psychological
interpretation of this phenomenon lends itself to an anthropological approach in how we analyze symbols.
This can easily lead to reductionism. Despite these commonalities, the cultural significance is shown
more clearly in the stark relief of what differs from one culture, sub-culture, place or time to the next. It is
in the comparison of mythic images that we learn the most about the people who created them. We can
subtractively come to understand the perspective of a culture in how it personifies a God-form, as in the
juxtaposition of tricksters.38 There are distinct differences from one culture to the next, both aesthetic and
ideological, and these differences are shown in sharp relief when overlapped, almost like comparing two
different DNA samples. The commonalities of our myths at first appear to be the real mystery, and the most
important element in the study of myth in a cultural context, but it is their differences that are often the
most insightful. The commonalities can almost be stated as a given, minus that pending question of how
they all seem to derive themselves from the same elementary ideas.
This is only a point worth repeating because so much noise has been made about the common elements
of myths that oftentimes their uniqueness is brushed under the carpet. If an individual has a pet system,
everything else must be forced to conform to that mono-myth, that schema. Nowhere is this often so rampant
as amongst academics and modern occultists alike. No one perspective is entirely true to the exclusion of all
others, though certain systems may be more so in certain contexts.39
While many cultural anthropologists engage in minute and careful study of the underpinnings of common
and divergent mythological trends through observation, many of the theories which attempt to explain
more peculiar or perplexing mythic commonalities, or even the apparent simultaneous arising of stories
in geographically disparate cultures are not the result of scientific scrutiny. While there was likely more
contact between ancient civilizations than is commonly accepted, many explanatory theories go far afield
to explain this shared mythic heritage. Such theories even attempt to explain this, as well as many other
36. Urban centers and ports, sea-worthy ships, etc. Electronic communication is an incredible threat to previous methods that enforced
cultural homogeneity, though cities themselves pose a similar threat not only to cultural but also genetic “stasis.” Tangentially, China’s current
stance towards the Internet, though still quite tyrannical by Western standards, is simply a newer version of the xenophobia that probably
kept them from out-developing Europe in the first place. Whether the virtual version will have the same kind of retarding effect is unlikely,
but hard to say.
37. Adolf Bastian. Among other things he made a clear case of distinction between these common elementary
ideas (Elementargedanke) and variable folk ideas.
38. For example, on the surface, Hermes and Coyote share a Mercurial aspect, and as tricksters they share something in common with a
wide variety of other God images, such as the Norse Loki. However, they are clearly not the same, and so a great deal can be learned about the
character of one by comparing these images, subtracting them from one another and seeing what remains. This remainder, you might say, is
the cultural particularity. Through it, we can learn what these people believed, certainly, but also what they feared, hoped for, and so on, if we
can understand the role that the symbol in question served in specific or general cases.
39. For instance, the study of variations in and exterior analysis of mythology and culture as opposed to an interior, psychological
perspective, which often emphasizes the commonalities between them.
• 48 •
legitimate mysterious of antiquity, as the result of alien intervention, the effect of extra-dimensional forces or
intelligences, and so on.40 Most of these theories don’t seem to be taken very seriously in the academic world,
but they have taken on a certain fervor in some pockets of the public mind.
Such esoteric explanations do not solve this puzzle any better than far simpler ones, nor is there any need to
explore how these mythic ideas jumped from one culture to the next across continents and make the “100th
Monkey”41 conclusion that aliens, mass-telepathy or morphogenetic fields are necessarily involved; although
the stories that arise when we wrestle with such questions are potentially useful as myths themselves.42
As unsatisfying as it may be, for the purposes of a cultural inquiry into transcultural trends, it is enough
to recognize that amongst humans, certain roles, conflicts, concerns, desires, and so on are par for the course
regardless of culture, and by virtue of that they will appear in different garb, in different places, at the same
time. We are more alike than we are different, creatures given the same general set of impulses who explore
the world in fairly similar biological vehicles: our bodies, which forms its own mono-myth that underlies
many other mythic constructs.43 Our modes of sense, our perception of space and time, all of the elements
of our experience structure the nature of our mythologies, so it winds up being less of a surprise that so
many culturally divergent mythologies should share underlying similarities. Much that we have learned of
the world we have in fact simply learned about ourselves.
Even if this answer, attained through a quick flick of Occam’s Razor, isn’t entirely satisfactory, the ultimate
point is that this commonality exists within the crossroads between the cultural and the biological, and it is
the binding glue which makes talk of “myth” sensible, or in any way useful.
Yet again, for the purpose of working with myth, it is merely enough to recognize that a trend exists, and
look at the psychological ramifications of that, rather than concoct pseudo-science or flat out science fiction
as a means of explaining it away rather than as a means of mythologizing a mystery. In other words, these
observations would again lend themselves to Jung and Bastian’s psychological formulation of mythology, but
not definitively. The archetypes of the collective unconscious serve as a myth, which in many contexts may
be a useful one, (as we have said of the unconscious in general.)
Let’s look at an example of “simultaneous arising” in more modern terms. Is there any relation between
the dates of the General Theory of Relativity, Joyce’s Ulysses, and Cubism? (All between 1906-1920.) These
three are examples of transitions in thought that appeared to be occurring systemically, and are curiously
related in terms of content. Let’s propose a further myth to our example: cubism is an expression of the kind
of thinking that Joyce was applying to literature and Einstein to the nature of space and time. I’m weaving
a myth to connect the dots. Further, let’s suppose that none of the people we attribute these works to had
any direct contact with one another. This way we have a true incident of “simultaneous arising” within the
context of more modern mythology.
So, with the proposition of one myth, I seek another to explain it. All systems are open and entangled with
one another. The theory of General Relativity didn’t come about from one man, operating alone. It came
about through the concurrence of an incalculable series of interrelated systems, events, etc. Every moment
in time would require the entire history of the world before and after to render it in any kind of true causal
framework. The river of time may flow one way, but causality seems to be more an interlocked web, with
many systems allowing passage both ways in a chain, in other instances, only one way. In other words, the
40. For example, Zecharia Sitchin has written several books about the “true” origin of Sumerian mythology: aliens. This, or the mythology
of planet Niburu, is a wonderful modernization of ancient mythic elements, but considered as empirical fact, one may as well buy into the
hollow Earth theory. The author David Icke takes it a step further: aliens, or reptilians, exist in the world today and control the world economy.
Though there is some truth to the argument from ignorance “the absence of evidence is not the absence of evidence,” that doesn’t mean either
of these scenarios are even remotely likely in a factual or historic sense.
41. The story of the “Hundredth Monkey Effect,” popularized by Ken Keyes, was originally published in the foreword to Lawrence Blair’s
Rhythms of Vision. [62]
42. “The term [morphic fields] is more general in its meaning than morphogenetic fields, and includes other kinds of organizing fields
in addition to those of morphogenesis; the organizing fields of animal and human behaviour, of social and cultural systems, and of mental
activity can all be regarded as morphic fields which contain an inherent memory.” [63] The concept I am referring to is that of the spontaneous
biological or social shifts that occur between organisms that don’t appear to have any point of contact, rather than the term more commonly
used in biology. While it is undoubtedly true that we are connected on many levels that we have yet to fathom, and invisible fields and
waves effect us all the time, even in such ways as the Wi-Fi signal presently allowing my laptop to communicate with networked computers
thousands of miles away, my point is simply that the invention of a concept as a means to explain a question is a form of myth-making.
43. Consider, as one example among many, the human and animal properties given to gods and other mythic beings in pantheistic
religions, or the human attributes given to a singular God. Even the moral, ethical, and intellectual qualities attributed to divinity can easily be
traced back to human modes of experience, and to our bodies, as is well documented in Feuerbach’s The Essence of Christianity. [30]
• 49 •
concurrence of events, “simultaneous arising,” may best be looked at within the terminology and mythology
of systems theory.44
If further elaboration on this problem were necessary, the transcultural similarities in myth could be
understood as a phenomenon of hive mind. We see evidence of hive-mind in other species, so it is not
out of the question that we are keyed into some of this nature as well. Of course, it would be difficult, if
not impossible, for us to see, as the swarm behaves without observable decision making on the part of any
individual member. This is the fascinating element of hive behavior amongst bees and ants. Hive-mind
is much easier to identify from an outside perspective, as we are so far removed from a bee hive or flock
of birds, both in terms of scale and the nature of our respective minds. It would certainly explain a great
deal if humans were plugged into something like this, in a way that remains relatively invisible to us on an
individual level. However, in all matters like this, the burden of proof outweighs the benefits of certainty. Let
hive-mind, archetypes, and so on serve as myths themselves.
Myth is a Nautilus (Scalability)

In our initial topological exploration of myth, we have seen that there may be an inclination to begin
distinguishing between the various meanings that can be associated with myth, and the scale that we’re
employing it on.45 One might be inclined to distinguish between the impact and content of myths (and
the various sub-myths that construct them in different cultures) on historic, geographic, and other material
grounds.
In other words, we might be inclined to do what many scholars are trained to do, and schematize with
the close attention of a mathematician. In regard to maintaining the creative and living nature of myth, this
approach turns jazz into bug collecting. In doing so we would develop an artificial schema, building myth
upon myth, and enter into the dissection ourselves. This approach does have its place, but it is not congruent
with an approach emphasizing immanence. Myth’s immanence is better rendered out of the corner of the
eye, or as a series of conceptual sketches that consider the whole of myth as a single entity, allowing a shift of
frame, of scale, of context, without pulling out the scalpel.
A myth is in this sense like a nautilus, the shell of which adheres roughly to the Fibonacci sequence as it
spirals outward. There is an element of recapitulation between scales, an underlying, unchanging form. The
smallest is in the largest, and the largest is within the smallest.
Yet scale can change everything. Sub-atomic particles don’t behave the same way that trains on a track or
pendulums do; behaviors within a system depend on context and a variety of variables. Scale is one of them.
Behavioral modeling appears easier when approached from a cultural level. Put a single person in a room and
things may not follow the models you built off a study built off of well evaluated statistics. Scales changes
everything and scale changes nothing.
Once again we’re swimming in contradiction. In fact, if certainty and singularity are like air to us, then
we’re not swimming—we’re drowning.
Stumbling in the Dark

Considering what has already been said about truth and certainty, it would be sensible to wonder what,
exactly, we can base our thinking on as we move forward. This is a heavy question, that of epistemology. And
we have already casually dismissed many of the rhetorical tools used to interject a preconceived conclusion as
if it were a legitimate answer. This line of questioning takes on a personal bent, as it is uniquely subjective.
All authors have an agenda; even if our story is a fiction, there is an intention, a message lurking somewhere
around the periphery. Life, stripped of reflection, has no such narrative until we write it in the margins, so
an attempt at writing absolutely honestly about the processes that underlie our narrative psychology contains
an element of futility. It is at least honest to instead begin with doubt.
44. We draw the line with the first or second apparent cause when passing blame or causality because it’s just too damn hard to do otherwise.
The buck stops there, we say. But it does not. Nothing is inherently “ours.” “We,” and “I,” too are fundamentally mythic structures.
45. Of course I mean “topological” in a loose, metaphorical sense. These ideas have topologies, deformed geometries, but that is not to say
that any of it is nearly as precise as mathematics. Nevertheless, even terrain as abstract as this still strikes me foremost as a terrain; in this case
one that can only be defined through quasi-poetics. Any given myth is just such a “reaching,” an attempt at mapping an ideological topology,
but so is an essay such as this one. The previously employed term “mesh-work” may serve equally well. Thus far our exploration is been done
by way of negation, defining what may be by way of what is not.
• 50 •
Whenever I write a single thought, it is clear there are tens if not hundreds or thousands of silent assumptions
lurking behind it; the elements that support it, bring me to say it, and which, submerged under the surface,
contain the actual inter-mixture of truth and fallacy which our statements generally contain. Might one
of those assumptions, generalized facts and abstractions, agendas and so on be incorrectly considered or
abruptly assumed? Aren’t I also subject to the aggregate myths I’ve accumulated through this life? Certainly.
Nor is there safety in numbers. How do you statistically analyze the sweeping generalizations that are required
to perform any kind of philosophical investigation of myth, culture, or personal psychology? Even in cases
where social behavior is quantifiable, the results are dubious—as we have demonstrated, even if not with the
kind of obsessive rigor that Wittgenstein employed in his Tractatus.
For example, how does one really remove all cultural bias from a study on social cognition done in the
United States? You cannot ignore that bias! The fact that you cannot is not something that should be ignored
casually, as if recognizing that it is a factor is enough to make it go away.
…This unnerving possibility springs from recent research by a loose group of anthropologists
and cross-cultural psychiatrists. Swimming against the biomedical currents of the time, they
have argued that mental illnesses are not discrete entities like the polio virus with their own
natural histories. These researchers have amassed an impressive body of evidence suggesting
that mental illnesses have never been the same the world over (either in prevalence or in form)
but are inevitably sparked and shaped by the ethos of particular times and places. [64]
The fact that this surprises anyone, or that it is something that has just dawned on some professionals in
this field, is both hilarious and terrifying. However, my aim is not to poke fun at the massive and curiously
lucrative blind-spots of psychiatry, but rather to point out my own. I am aware that most of this work falls
to anecdotal and personal experience, cross-referenced with significant research, written large as a means
of exploring myth. There is no real means to statistically verify a qualitative analysis of abstract processes.
Anecdote is antithetical to the scientific method.
Let me be clear at the extent of this: I’m not even convinced that there is such a thing as “culture,” in any
measurable, concrete sense outside the understanding that culture is a useful myth. I am not talking about a
particular community that can be clearly identified. I am talking about “culture” as an abstract but material
force, entity or category that influences groups of individuals. We must make many presuppositions to
imagine such a force. We can measure various trends, forces, effects that we might attribute to culture, from
methods of behavior and speech to manner of dress, aesthetic bent, diet, musical trends, and so on—but
that doesn’t grant certainty.
As we have already discussed, “culture” is a potentially useful fiction, or more specifically, a meta-narrative.
You can’t observe it like you would a table or even a tree. The independent trends we observe that we
attribute to “culture” could be the surface contour, the mythical topology, of anything.
We see this all the time as trends come and go in sociology, anthropology, neuroscience and so on. New
models demand new myths. There’s a new fad, and suddenly whereas yesterday all Xs were Ys, they’ve now
been transformed overnight into Zs. Academics and editors alike may then tell you, “those Xs sure are out of
vogue. You’d best get with the program.” Certainly, the myth of the unconscious is something that has gone
into and out of vogue several times, and despite the fact that homosexuality was considered a disease in the
DSM-III, the most up-to-date version of the DSM is always treated like scripture.
Yet at each turn everyone involved thinks of their new model as proof that there is such a thing as culture,
and that it operates in this specific way—doubly so when statistical analysis has been performed. (And, of
course, mythologized.) Correlation, as is often said, does not indicate causation.
This is not “merely academic.” These are issues we find ourselves smacking up against on a daily, if not
moment-to-moment, basis. In my life, this comes out more frequently than I’d like. How often am I in
the dark, working to gather some facts to help inform a decision, only to find that the information that I
gathered was more appropriate to a different context, that they changed, that I changed, or that I had some
false assumption lying under the very question? (That’s rhetorical. The answer is: “really often.”)
We are still left in the cloud of unknowing. The extent to which we’re all stumbling around in the dark
is amazing, mostly due to the fact that so many seem to have this deluded sense of certainty. It is not
some philosophically rhetorical reduction to say: I know that I don’t know. And I’m going to keep asking
questions.
• 51 •
But certainly, an author should write a book about what they know, right? Non-fiction, analytical writing
has the aura of science to it. We are taught to support our arguments, to verify, verify, verify. But outside the
rigidly defined confines of formal logic and mathematics, what this actually means is we are taught to lie, lie,
lie, as no true verification is possible. All that we can do is “philosophical due diligence,” and if the subject of
an investigation falls outside the bounds of reason, then we must use a different yardstick, and develop the
philosophical tools to make sense of those measurements.
So far we’ve done due diligence. We’ve front-loaded you with a sort of gauntlet that includes many (though
not all!) of the presuppositions that must be made when trying to responsibly explore the psychological and
cultural territory of myth, before opening up the floor to the contributors in this collective investigation. If
you’ve stuck with us this far, then I assure you we can soon begin looking beneath the surface that we have
so resolutely rendered opaque.
But because this is not an entirely logical exploration, we must employ other senses as well. We must turn,
at least in part, to intuition. Intuition, a sense that draws a holistic image which, though also fallible, is far
more adept with emergent systems than logic, the great vivisector. The existence of this sense is manifest in
all of our lives in varying degrees. Perhaps intuition is the sense that allows us to see what a person is feeling
without having any sensory cue, something I experience on a daily basis, or the knowledge that we should
follow a certain course of action without having any post hoc rationalization. It is the sense that makes us feel
uncomfortable if someone bores into the back of our head with their eyes.
Intuition is not some secret through-line to truth. The challenge with intuition is dual. On the one hand,
we must to a certain extent take it on faith, and this can lead us deep into the wilderness. The other challenge
lies in unifying an intuition which might say “You must get across that river,” and the actual process of
somehow doing it. Intuition does not provide means, it only provides the direction. The mechanics are up to
us. Should I build a raft? Should I try to swim? Should I see if I can circumvent it by foot? How strong is the
current, and how deep does it get? Intuition doesn’t help us with any of those things. It just screams in your
ear, with no explanation, “GET ACROSS THAT RIVER.” It whispers the name of our friends, our enemies,
our lovers into our ear, before we have even the slightest bit of real fact to work off of. Trust this one, don’t
trust that one. And in all these cases we’d best pray that the intuition is right, that it isn’t a desire posing as
your intuition, and that halfway across, another won’t suddenly scream into your ear “What are you doing
in this river, you fool? Climb that mountain over there!”
So it is with observations about mythology, when we approach it from this angle. Maybe it is only a useful
tool because our goal is to find ourselves, not the truth.
This is the formula of artistic and creative work: one must dive inwards, be honest to that, and hope that
what springs from within will resonate with the inner lives of others. The idea of a creative process born and
verified by statistical analysis is both curious and nauseating. (I’m looking at you, Hollywood.) So though this
book is not a work of art, it is an investigation that uses artistic methods to explore the creative process.
As we continue our journey, I hope you can glean the various meanings that can be derived from “myth”
by the specific context of its use, and we can do away with the complex semiotics that would otherwise be
necessary to talk about this subject. A clear example of this is provided in cases such as Roland Barthes essay
“Myth Today,” in Mythologies, where he gives a thorough, even byzantine, analysis of the word “myth.” This is
not to belittle works of that nature, but they nevertheless stand contrary to the intention of this one. Perhaps
some clarity is lost when the “thousand things” that myth may refer to are all simply signified as “myth,” but
the cost of this clarity is open-endedness. Myth must remain open. Open to interpretation, open to change,
open to contradiction, open most of all to personal experience.
All of these segues may seem an apology for the methodology to follow. It is not an apology, but rather
a firm declaration of the intentions of this book, and the challenges it poses. Expressing the immanence of
myth in the form of a book is a paradoxical thing. We must remain absolutely aware of the need to re-tether
the abstract (myth) with the necessary (experience). A text alone cannot do this. It can only point the way. It
demands, first and foremost, that you meet it halfway, and run with it from there. To that end, the value of
this book, if it has any, remains in your hands.
• 52 •
Myth is a Mirror
James Curcio
In early times, the legend goes, the world of mirrors and the world of humans were not
separated as they would be later on. In those days specular beings and human beings were
quite different from each other in color and form, though they mingled and lived in harmony.
In that time it was also possible to come and go through mirrors. However, one night the
mirror people invaded the earth without warning and chaos ensued. Indeed, human beings
quickly realized that the mirror people were chaos. The power of the invaders was great,
and it was only through the magic arts of the Yellow Emperor that they were defeated and
driven back to their mirrors. To keep them there the emperor cast a spell that compelled the
chaotic beings mechanically to repeat the actions and appearances of men. The emperor’s
spell was strong but it would not be eternal, the legend says. The story predicts that one day
the spell will weaken and the turbulent shapes in our mirrors will begin to stir. At first the
difference between the mirror shapes and our familiar shapes will be unnoticeable. But little
by little gestures will separate, colors and forms will transmogrify, and suddenly the long-
imprisoned world of chaos will come boiling out into our own. Perhaps it is already here.
John Briggs & F. David Peat [65]
T
he caveats done with, we can now
begin to look at how myth functions,
which we will continue to expand
upon throughout the rest of this book in
increasingly specific terms.
To do so we will employ a simple metaphor,
and see where it leads us. Myths are
“mirrors of the soul,” which can only reveal
to us what we already have in ourselves: so
what is a message of love and compassion
to one can be a distorting call to hatred
and bigotry for another. Meaning exists
in the surface interaction with the mythic
object, rather than in the myth itself; it is
not, as we have said, intrinsic to the myth-
object.46
We discover ourselves in these stories,
and they are given life through us. We might also say “Myths exist at the cross-roads,” and we find ourselves
there, as well. The cross-roads become a potent mythic image: that point where the worlds meet, converge
or diverge. We find a similar overlapping of worlds in the symbolism of fog, in the abyssal ocean, and, quite
obviously, in the mirror. The mirror is the crossroads, a juncture between two worlds. How do we cross over
to the other side?
46. It doesn’t matter so much what an artist meant as what you allowed yourself to get from it. Bad art and writing is in a sense your fault as
much as the authors, in terms of what you are able to make of it. Of course, a part of the task of the mythic artist is to create something which
entertains, resonates, and carries within it deeper layers of meaning. This is a tall task, and takes a lifetime of passionate determination.
• 53 •
Mirrors are curious things. Many animals don’t recognize themselves when they see their reflection. A cat
may cringe, howl, or seem unaware that the image exists at all. Rather than demonstrating the insufficiency of
cat-consciousness, (in not recognizing their self in the image of themselves as an other), it simply demonstrates
a little of how they perceive the world—they may, and likely do, perceive it in many ways more clearly than
we do. But they do not appear to perceive themselves in it, at least not in the sense that we do.
When we say we are “self conscious,” this has a dual meaning: we are aware of ourselves within the world,
and thereby, as in the myth of the Garden of Eden, we might feel shame, and guilt. We stand outside
ourselves, and thus, outside the garden. In an existential sense it is hard to say if we’ve actually made out in
the deal; we gained language and other forms of representation as some sort of consolation prize in exchange
for the immediacy of just being. Being in one dimension is exchanged for the possibility of awareness,
divided in two.
When we see ourselves, we see our “selves” in this image of an other. What does self-reflection mean? It
implies an exile from one’s self. To see a thing clearly we have to stand beside it, outside of it. I see a glass
in front of me; I’m one with it in my senses, but I know it through its negation in relation to “myself.” It is
not me. If I swallow saliva in my mouth, this is considered normal. If I spat in that glass and then swallowed
it a moment later, I might feel revulsion. This is the borderline. After leaving me, bringing it back into
myself makes me nauseous. My boundaries were transgressed. The saliva became other. The psychoanalyst
R.D. Lang uses this as an example of an element of schizophrenic perception. [66] These barriers are more
permeable and confused for them. An author may say “I’m too close to this book to see it clearly, now,” and
it is often observed that in some ways, those who know us best know us the least.
In our minds, some kind of trick must be occurring within this matrix of networked neural cells playing
hot-potato with electrochemical impulses. Conceptually, the “reflecting mirror” could be brought into the
mechanisms of our mind as well. I might ask, “how is it that I might ‘hear’ my thoughts? And who is it that
‘hears’ them?” Internally, a thought must be perceived by an other, or at least it would seem that it must be
other from that which perceives it. We imagine that if a thought is “heard” it must also be “spoken,” and
though it is not an actual requirement, there is a sense that these two must somehow remain separate. We
speak through the mouth and hear through the ears; different organs of sense, but consciousness appears to
do these acts simultaneously. Any real thought about self-consciousness produces an infinite regress, a fractal
which in Aristotelian terms is a paradox. Our mirror breaks apart, the model is not sufficient to deal with
what is actually occurring.
An impulse reflects upon itself, and to exist must be perceived by another, ad infinitum. It is tortoises all
the way down. Every thought, every being, splitting off from itself, like cells splitting by mitosis, so that they
might know themselves in the Other. The unified self is a thing that cannot be. Yet, here we are. Looking at
ourselves in the mirror, experiencing ourselves through the definition of our boundaries.
Even when we look out into the world, it is in seeing this opposite, this Other, that we are drawn to expand
beyond the already established self-territory. Much like that mythologized “meeting of the eyes” in the
Troubadour tradition, or the white stag in the forest, a nymph, a siren, it lures us forward, though whether
that winding path leads to our center or our demise is really just a particularity of that myth. As we chase,
the boundary of our self expands. We discover ourselves in new territories. This, too, is a common motif, as
the hero is tossed into the adventure unwittingly in the process of giving pursuit to this fleeting ideal. More
is taken in, our “self ” territory expands through experience. So we see in many myths, where one is lured
upon the path but the real journey is one of self-discovery.
The lure for union on the other side is the asymptotic invisible gravity that sets us all upon the path that
becomes our lives. This is at once the lure of myth and of romantic love. When it takes you—as it oftentimes
does, completely by surprise—you can know it most of all because of how it is at once so familiar and yet so
other, so overwhelming and yet so completely intangible. Of course, sex and love both are mythically linked
to death, la petit mort, most of all in that they both move towards a unification. However brief that hot
moment may be, it forms a singularity in itself if the involved parties are transformed in one way or another
by way of the interaction. We speak of “chemistry” in sex and love. This may be more apt than many of us
realize.
In an absolute sense, for there to be union, there must be destruction. The initial terms are reformed
in a new shape. A+B=C, or C=A+B. Sexual beings think of this as death though it’s doubtful if those that
reproduce asexually by mitosis would see thanatos within eros and vice versa, if they thought of themselves at
• 54 •
all. Our lives don’t actually move in absolutes—no one is completely reformed in the process of merging with
another in such a way—but the movement towards such imagined absolutes is ubiquitous. This gets at the
discontinuity between beings, which Bataille uses as part of the framework for Erotism, wherein he supports
the general thesis that eroticism, a truly human act, is the “assenting of life up to the point of death.” [67]
Reproduction implies the existence of discontinuous beings. Beings that reproduce themselves
are distinct from one another, and those reproduced are themselves distinct from one another,
just as they are distinct from their parents. …This gulf exists, for instance, between you, listening
to me, and me, speaking to you. We are attempting to communicate but no communication
between us can abolish our fundamental difference. …It is my intention to suggest that for
us, discontinuous beings that we are, death means continuity of being. Reproduction leads to
the discontinuity of beings, but brings into play their continuity; that is to say, it is intimately
linked with death. [67]
By saying that myth is a mirror, we are getting at the thread of continuity and discontinuity that underlies
perception, sex and death. It is a pull, almost like gravity, which tugs at us from the “other side” of things.
The Other that exerts this inexplicable gravity on us needn’t be a person, an activity, a mythic image, or even
a dream of ourselves as a perfected whole rather than an incomplete fragment; it could be any of these things,
or anything else.
The commonality is that it is this transfixing image, standing on the other side of the mythic mirror, that
catches hold of us, driving us to frightful and even dangerous extremes in an attempt to break through,
whatever it may be. And we cannot break through, for we are discontinuous, but in pursuit we asymptotically
“approach the limit,” up to the point of death, which is to say, union. Perhaps it is like a moth to a flame,
but without this there would be no exceptional artists or thinkers, there would be no one willing to put their
lives on the line, or do much of anything except what is simple and practical. An individual captured by this
“mirror” is possessed, half-mad at the least. At the same time some might say they have been touched by
God. This is equally true with all the passions, which originate in the impossible Hubris that makes us think
we can break through the mirror of perception, make time stand still with the force of our love, or ever leave
our cage on one “side” of the mirror.
What else can we extract from this observation? The self is dependent on the other, on the mirror, for its
very existence. Existence lies neither wholly with the self or the other, (which may be a self, as well), but in
the relation between them. It is the simultaneous correspondence of two things—the seen and the seer—
which neither proves nor disproves their ‘absolute existence’ separate from each other. When I experience X,
X is as fundamentally necessary to that experience as I am. There is no separation, no looking glass reflection.
Our myth is in the mirror, reality an undifferentiated monad that we will never see in itself. Our brains
themselves are characterized, along with primates and several other “higher” mammals, by the presence of
“mirror neurons,” which explains just how crucial mimicry and mirroring are to our psychological makeup.
Neither I nor my experience exists in a vacuum, as there is no discontinuity between myself and the
object, and my existence in that moment is a synthesis of these relationships. In fact, the Cartesian model
wherein there is a separate “I” which experiences objects separate from itself does not follow. We experience
self in the other, in all our points of intersection; of those areas where there is none, we simply cannot know.
Our experience occurs in self-contained wholes, in the time of kairos. Time as chronos creates the illusion of
fragmentation.
All of this from the simple symbol of a mirror. If we stare into it for too long, we might find ourselves on
the other side. Here too, many myths and stories come to mind, though none so readily as Alice’s second
glance through the looking glass. It is in looking across that divide, into that mirror, that the necessity of
myth becomes clear, because we must make sense of ourselves, and can only do so through what reflects
back at us.
Let’s look at the larger picture. A culture can only be understood through the myths it reflects. This is
because our myths represent a culture’s deep structure, at least in symbolic form.47 Concurrently, it is difficult
to speak meaningfully of myth without recognizing a seeming paradox that runs through all contexts, all
level of granularity: myth is the meaning we glean from representation, yet it does not contain this meaning.
Myth has no meaning. It is almost as if every time a series of symbols (a book, for instance), passes into a
47. A “deep structure” is the common form underlying various different statements that might exist about something.
• 55 •
new nervous system, it is born for the first time. Words, sentences, and pictures are, on their own, no more
a myth than the notes written on a staff are music, however all of these are the embodiment, that is, the
representation, of psychological experience.
Myth is, in the final summation, truly a mirror image of our inner lives, even our unconscious prejudices,
for better or worse. We did not create our flesh or bone, nor did we choose the circumstances we were born
into. The myths we value or create, on the other hand, are unbounded. They are the closest we can get to the
creative power of divinity, demonstrating our ability to build worlds from the clay we are given, to infuse it
with our own meaning, and to choose what the very nature of the universe will be in our tale. In a sense, we
live within them.
Authors may find it a little silly to talk overmuch of their characters as having a “life of their own,” but
the process of writing a novel makes certain demands on any serious author. Most poignantly, it requires the
author to stand as an observer in a created world, imagined or otherwise. I think it is a common experience
of spouses of authors that when in the thick of a project, an author is only half here. The other half is…
where? We asked earlier how one gets “to the other side.” Maybe without knowing that it’s through accessing
the power of the active imagination, many authors and artists know a way to hop through.
In this, we have our entry point into the function of myth. On a personal level, a myth is the story of
life; most commonly, it is a narrative abstracted from the specific to the general, and then back again. For
example, an artist pulls from specific life experiences, and abstracts them to a general or archetypal form, in
other words, a form with general resonance. This narrative is then re-portrayed as if it is a particular instance.
The archetypes are given a unique character. This may not be the only method a myth may take, but it is
certainly one that most modern artist and writers are most familiar with.
Plenty of examples exist in the myths that have entered the pop-culture, for instance the portrayal of the
Maenad in HBO’s popular series True Blood, or Neil Gaiman’s Morpheus in Sandman. These characters
may be modernized versions of an old archetype, but they have resonance because of the unique traits and
personality that gives them a sense of reality and immediate relevance. In this way, though it would certainly
enrich the experience, the audience doesn’t need to know Greek mythology to get something worthwhile
from the modern variant of a myth.
A mythology arises around the artist as well as their creations, and they must play to that role. They are
often, in essence, typecast as their alter ego. When success finds them, they are asked to produce the same
thing over and over again, by the audience if not the studio. A rare few have made careers out of killing and
remaking themselves in new or modified forms—David Bowie, for instance, immediately comes to mind.
But this is the exception rather than the rule. Hunter S. Thompson said that he found it difficult publicly
being Thompson, rather than his alter ego, Raoul Duke,
I’m never sure which one people expect me to be. Very often, they conflict—most often, as a
matter of fact. …I’m leading a normal life and right alongside me there is this myth, and it is
growing and mushrooming and getting more and more warped. When I get invited to, say,
speak at universities, I’m not sure if they are inviting Duke or Thompson. I’m not sure who
to be. I suppose that my plans are to figure out some new identity, kill off one life and start
another. [68]
Having method acted this mythological character for a short time, I can say that this rabbit-
hole goes still deeper. When you open yourself up to a character like Duke, it’s almost as if he
forever inhabits a place in your mind from that point on. Is this any different from the Orisha
or Loa, which seem to change form and pop up in a constant interplay with the culture of its
participants? It is hard to say, but when you play with these things, even if it is in a sense just
play, also consider that that, like Hunter himself, you are playing with live ammunition. I
doubt I could drink Wild Turkey and smoke a cigarette with a filter and not “risk” shifting at
least partially into character. How different is this from the possession some seek with Baron
Samedi, with his favored rum and top hat?
Numerous, often bizarre theories abound about the deaths of such characters, as if to say that as their
myth lives on, so must they. Perhaps Elvis Presley, Jimmi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, Jim Morrison, and Michael
Jackson all grew tired of their mythologies and attempted to escape it through some brilliant faked death,
jamming out together on a tropical island somewhere. More likely, the price of living their myth overran
• 56 •
them in various ways, and they all paid the price that often comes along with being burned into the cultural
consciousness.
As living itself can act as intermediary between the chance and arbitrary nature of life and the possibility
of an underlying, unifying cultural consciousness, myths are also the emergent and recursive cultural code
that has always driven human civilization. They are recursive because the stories that carry through the ages
repeat themselves, in different forms, from one generation to the next, growing and yet never changing deep
structure. They are emergent because, at the cultural level, this code gives rise to complex behaviors that
surpass the sum of their parts, and can be considered to have a life of its own—whether we mythologize that
cultural intelligence as the Will of God, the hive-mind, zeitgeist, archetype of the collective unconscious, or
some form of manifest destiny.
Put another way, the mythic life is the whole, of which our current awareness is but a fragment. There
is a sense in which we are living within our lives as the protagonist cast into a random situation that was
neither our design nor our intention, and yet another in which we are disconnected from time, observers and
creators, partaking in each others creations. The personal life, its pains, frustrations, successes and hopes, are all
transient and relatively insignificant outside the relatively small sphere of our lives, except when given mythic
resonance. The tale is what matters. Legends and heroes always lag a generation or two behind the present, and
the times we live in are desperately in need of both, as it has always been. You’re living it right now.
Part of our life passes like a drama written by a novelist biographer, but behind that there is a
mysterious process of growth which follows its own laws and takes place behind the biographical
peripeteias of life and goes from childhood to old age. Viewed in mythological context, the
greater human being, the anthropos, is likened to a tree. [69]
Life is a dream you won’t remember upon awakening, and myth is that dream, retold. This retold dream
is the realm of myth, and concurrently, its representatives take the form of art, music, and literature.48 Myth
commonly borrows from the realm of dream, and in some ways shares a similar dual nature as both real
and unreal, (it is real as a psychological fact, but does not directly carry into the material world without our
mediation.) However, myth cannot be simply reduced to dream images. Dreams on their own do not define,
transform, or destroy cultures.49
Though there is a cultural dimension of myth, the key to first understanding—and thereby creating—a
living mythology comes through self-examination and exploration, rather than a strict exploration of the
“world out there.” We transmit our living, personal mythologies to each other through our art, but equally
so, through our impact upon one another in our day-to-day lives; in the secret languages we invent and share;
in the dreams and histories we share, so long as they transform, and regardless of whether they otherwise die
with us, secrets to the end.
Each of our lives is a story, an album, a painting, in which we play the starring role, but only posthumously,
in hindsight, or through the internal wrestling of the creative process which separate us, momentarily, from
our day-to-day concerns. Proof of this is found, and re-enforced, through the primacy of the protagonist
(and antagonist) within the acceptable narrative framework. No one is an extra, and identification with the
core protagonist is considered essential for the saleability of a story because of this psychological fact. Though
it is reasonable to wonder if this “fact” isn’t a culturally re-enforced idea that has in part structured the very
way we interpret our life experience.
These stories—our own stories and the fictional myths born from them—weave together into an ever-
changing tapestry which we call culture. Though it sounds a bit high-flung, we can become demigods
for those who inherit the worlds we create. This mantle is both a boon and a curse that is often bestowed
posthumously upon certain writers, artists, etc. This worthiness is far from egalitarian, and often strikes a
harsh contrast to the living reality of that individual’s life. Many of the individuals that our present cultures
owe themselves to died impoverished, unfulfilled, or (most famously), crucified. An ongoing mythical
48. In other words, those very forms of representation which were banished from Plato’s Republic on account of their ephemeral nature. In
terms of Plato’s metaphysics ephemerality = deception. The primary nature of the forms are their immortality, immutability, etc. Plato turns
everything on its head, (not unlike the Christian metaphysic), making that immutable idea or form the “ultimate reality” and this fleeting
world of phenomena the “shadows on the wall.”
49. Carl Jung distinguished between “archetypal” dreams, those which somehow borrowed from the font of myth on a cultural level, and
personal dreams, which deal with one’s personal myth only. This might be a simply analytical solution, but doesn’t sufficiently deal with the
shades of gray which make up the bulk of our dreams, or of mythologies themselves.
• 57 •
tradition is like a river that flows ever forward, sometimes branching off, or dying to drought or dam, yet
nevertheless continually flowing, never reaching an ultimate destination.
From this we may recognize that the beliefs and symbols that live on through us, which we convey to
those around us, are the currency of the mythological realm. Many have used the term meme50 to represent
this currency, and to systematize this cultural economy. Though perhaps a buzz-word of our time, this
term nevertheless is useful in that it distinguishes the symbol from the sign in a structural way, allowing
us to recognize that represented ideas themselves operate, in a sense, like organisms. Memes serve a greater
function than being mere packets of information, as “…Magic has always been about the encoding of
meaning, about symbolic literacy, about the creation and even the restoration of calendars. Memetics is a
way of comprehending the ramifications of such encoding, identifying the systems that result from rituals,
and transmitting meaning into a goal-oriented complex system, the meme space. Memes are more than a
linguistic phenomenon.” [70]
Though I don’t want to get side-tracked, I think the idea of memes requires more consideration. It’s a term
that we toss around and either accept on its face that cultural information can, in some way, be likened to the
behavior of viruses. As with most metaphors, there are ways in which it is accurate, and ways that it is not.
More importantly, what are the repercussions of this idea in terms of the overlapping relationship of genes
and culture? In other words, do myths play a role in our evolution, as a part of our mirrored relationship
with ourselves?
I would like to provide a few quotations from A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History on this subject, and
then give commentary more aligned with our specific line of inquiry. “Darwin’s basic insight was that animal
and plant species are the cumulative result of a process of descent and modification. Later on, however,
scientists came to realize that any variable replicator (not just genetic replicators) coupled to any sorting
device (not just ecological selection pressures) would generate a capacity for evolution.” [57] Thus, the
attraction or repulsion we feel when encountering a certain facial structure, or from a pattern of symbols
constructed—we might say—right out of the genetic intelligence of an individual, helps provide one of the
key sorting mechanisms in literal and figurative mating rituals. A lot of sorting is taking place when we are
attracted to one book and not another, or one song and not another. When we find a common movie or
favorite show with someone, there is a bond there. Think about the sorting and matching occurring here,
and how it might affect things far larger than mere entertainment.
What do I mean by “figurative?” I mean that sexual attraction belies an inherent biological imperative
to produce offspring, but humans have in various ways circumvented that, sublimated that, and so the
“children” that can be born from the co-mingling of our ideas needn’t be physical or literal. Nevertheless, the
ideas that are most compelling to us, the art that attracts and changes us, seems to operate more-or-less on
the same principles that determine a mating selection process.
In other words, we can indeed use a genetic metaphor in regard to our myths. Read that again. Selection
processes, sorting mechanisms, and other systemic relationships apply to the ways myths replicate, spread,
feed, and die. And these myths have an affect on our own breeding, as well as the basic relationships we form
with one another and the environment around us. They are a part of these feedback mechanisms.
“Richard Dawkins independently realized that patterns of animal behavior (such as bird-songs or the use
of tools by apes) could indeed replicate themselves if they spread across a population (and across generations)
by imitation.” [57] This has clear repercussions in the study of the diffusion of language and culture, and
carried right along with them is the undercurrent of all forms of human representation, as we’ve seen, which
we’ve taken to refer to simply as “myth.” This opens up the door for a new approach to mythic study which
goes far beyond what can be accomplished in a single introductory volume, but I am hopeful that more work
will be done in this direction in the future.
Let’s take this line of thought a step further, perhaps folding it back into itself like a ribbon. Within the
context of modern markets, we are taught to think of the sale of media (books, movies, music, etc) not
much different than the sale of a sandwich, or any other commodity. This misses the function a book or
other piece of content that embodies mythic content serves—it is “weaponized content.” The memes that are
reproduced through exposure to the medium, that being the “audience” or “user,” rather than the container
or vessel that merely serves to propagate the content in a material world. A book is dead trees, glue. A CD
or hard drive is petroleum. There is an art to the container. My wife is obsessed with the beauty of the
50. This term was first coined by Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene, meaning a “unit of cultural imitation.” [71]
• 58 •
hand constructed book, of paper or inks that are rendered by hand, constructed conscientiously, carefully.
Regardless, containers are designed to attract us to that object, an object which in many cases cannot be
reduced to the object itself.
So, a better metaphor than those following from ideas of consumption and commodity might be found
in the relationship of flowering plants and the insects that help them spread. Imagine that pollen is cultural
information. Flowers generate pollen and passively make themselves attractive to the insects that also
somewhat blindly lap up the nectar, in the process carrying pollen from one flower to the next. Of course, a
random breath of wind also plays its role in disseminating this genetic material.
To an extent we all serve both as “bees” (memebearers) and “flowers” (nexus points, which can be codified
within books, movies, or really in whatever container seems most appropriate to the nature of the narrative.)
So we may be lured in by the narrative, or some other element, but what we take in and carry on are the
memes embedded within it, which may very well have been placed there completely unconsciously by the
author. As I previously stated, this can be seen as the genetic code of a myth, and I imagine few of us are
consciously aware of our genes. Consider this rather bizarre fragment from my even more bizarre first novel,
Join My Cult!, [18]
Black Osiris: Time to start spreading us a little pollen, ain’ that right boys ’n girls?
Anne: Pollen?
Leri: That’s how we look at spreading memes.
Crazy Fingers: Viral marketing.
Anne: Memes?
Black Osiris: Bees help big flowers make little flowers, Anne. A meme’s a…thought-language
pattern, a contagious one.
Leri: (READING FROM DICTIONARY) “A unit of culturalinformation, such as a cultural
practice or idea, that is transmittedverbally or by repeated action from one mind to another.”
Anne: Like… “mother hive brain,” or “I am America’s favorite soft drink,” or “I am the monkey
flower, pollinate me,” or “I am aneurosurgeon,” or…
Black Osiris: So like I was saying about d’ bees…
Leri: (CUTTING HIM OFF) They have no vested interest in the spreading of pollen. It’s just an
accident that flowers capitalize on. It allows them to reproduce.
Black Osiris: Yeah, yeah! Gettin’ wu wei with that shit. If I’m really doing things right, I’m doin’
them effortless.
Crazy Fingers: I was watching Muhammed Ali box today. He looked almost careless to an untrained
eye. But he tore Holyfield apart, or more accurately, pecked at him until he made himself fall
apart.
Leri: That’s why Bruce Lee was so impressed with him.
Black Osiris: So ya see, If I’m operatin’ effortless, dialed up the morphone see, then I’m really
spreadin’ pollen.
Rachelle: There’s a saying in the Hopi tradition…when you’re acting effortlessly like that, you’re
“on the pollen path.”
What sweet nectar and bright colors will lure in the unwitting insects? That’s the question advertisers are
bound to ask. The market is strictly concerned with selling the container. We imagine bees are blissfully
unaware of the pollen. They are drawn by the flower. The same is true in advertising. Countless dollars have
been spent researching customer reaction to different colors, configurations of symbols and patterns. Certainly,
much of this plays into the cutting edge of UX design. But, in contradiction of the common wisdom that says
our biological similarities make us all susceptible to the same patterns, at least if we are looking for big-picture
trends, it has been my experience that results vary depending on the “species of insect.”
In other words, though the audience and the authors may all be consciously unaware of the genetic code
of their work, we can readily sniff out what suits us and what does not, in the same way we have sized up
• 59 •
potential mates through smell before a single word has been spoken. Even our immune systems are keyed
to seek viable mates—this relates to our sense of smell as well—and further there is some evidence that
even activities such as kissing have a matching and mating purpose, preparing our immune systems for one
another.
We can employ the metaphor of insects and flowers to this idea, but it is equally subject to the over-arching
metaphor of this essay: the mirror, Narcissus and Echo.
Perhaps the myth of the genius of the author, or the sexiness of an idea, or the sense of lack manufactured
or inherent in the market is what lures an audience to certain material, on the surface. We are all attracted
by different ideas and aesthetics, and so much of this is learned, a reaction in accord or in conflict with what
we experience around us, a reaction against basic biological and psychological forces.
Women’s magazines of course capitalize on this approach almost singularly, triggering insecurity and
competition amongst females to drive sales, by directly leveraging these biologically and culturally re-enforced
mechanisms. Nearly everyone is aware that sex is used to sell just about everything from deodorant to cars.
What’s being sold is the representation itself, and it is up to us to ensure that the “container” does not over
strip the actual function of any piece of art, (which is discussed throughout the rest of this book). Pollen that
does not impregnate may as well be sterile.
If you’ll pardon further symbolic exploration, consider that the market itself is subject to a sort of
evolutionary and genetic model. “…[I]t becomes clear that interactive species in an ecosystem have the
ability to change each other’s adaptive landscapes. (This is just another way of saying that in a predator-prey
arms race there is not a fixed definition of what counts as “the fittest.”) [57]
A market is essentially a conceptual domain mapped on top of the pre-existent ecosystem, so ecological and
evolutionary dynamics are more likely causal agents within that system than the formal rules of economics
which, based on various logical presuppositions, have shown themselves demonstrably false.
The economists Richard Nelson and Sidney Winter, for instance, espouse an evolutionary
theory of economics based on the idea that once the internal operations of an organization
have become routinized, the routines themselves constitute a kind of “organizational memory.”
For example, when an economic institution (e.g. a bank), opens a branch in a foreign city, it
sends a portion of its staff to recruit and train new people; in this way, it transmits its internal
routines to the new branch. Thus, institutions may be said to transmit information vertically
to their ‘offspring.’ [57]
While we could spin into a tangential discussion of the relationship of various mythic interpretations
of economics, my point in introducing this idea is simply to demonstrate that we can glance across many
domains at once, and find congruent forms as well as patches of discontinuity; however, it stands to reason
that the layer that contains genetic and biological patterns should be considered before the other strata, even
if this demonstrates a shard of conceptual hierarchy into what is clearly a series of non-linear systems.
If, in this specific sense, we choose to employ the metaphor of memes, then it is worth asking how these
memes are carried from one individual to the next. Clearly there is a secondary medium (symbols), but
the points of intersection, and the amalgam that results, is the real “burning point of myth,” a nice phrase
Campbell once used in a much publicized discussion with Bill Moyers. Perhaps there are too many variables
involved in the specifics to look at it from such a generalized perspective, but we can at least glimpse the
shape of it.
This is the key: myths arise as relationships, or points of intersection. The relationship between ritual
object or work of art and individual audience member, the relationship between audience members within
the framework provided by the myth, and so on. They can represent not only the information carried within
the transmitted signifiers, but also, perhaps more importantly in the long run, they exist in the sorting
mechanism and desire which fuels the consumption and reprocessing of the signified.
The authors of these relationships we call artists, it doesn’t actually matter what the medium, and in many
ways artists simply serve as the scribes or mediums for a discussion which is constantly occurring. None of our
ideas are entirely our own. The ownership of ideas, too, is a myth based on some rather curious presuppositions
about the isolation of the individual from a social fabric that we could just as easily say underlies every action
and thought we can and will ever have. Where do we draw the line? Our myths tell us.
It is impossible to speak of myth and not simultaneously speak of artists, and the arts. Religion, art, and
myth were born of the same impulse, rendered with the same brush-stroke. I am not just referring to those
• 60 •
who manage to find a vocation of art. All myth-builders are artists, on the most fundamental level, as art
is not just about what different people or cultures find aesthetically pleasing—it is also, and possibly more
fundamentally, a process which tells people what things mean in an ontological rather than ethical sense.51
(At the same time, outside the context of the mirror-relationship, myth remains meaningless.)
The purpose of a myth is to lead us into a relationship. They helps us cognitively orient ourselves. It may
be a relationship with our own inner life, with our past, with the complexities of our present choices and
challenges; or it may be the shared myth of a couple, a tribe, a people, a nation. It must be engaging, in
other words it must be true, not in the sense of abstract philosophical truth, but in the sense we really mean
it when we use the word with conviction. Mythic “truth” may first signal itself simply through a feeling of
congruence, suddenly you feel a strong attraction to a certain image, or manner of thought. Intuition defies
final analysis.
Let me give two examples of what I mean. My friend William Clark was suddenly overwhelmed by an
intense vision that had many elements of Hindu iconography in it, specifically those related to Kali Ma. He
was so affected by it that he took a trip to India thereafter. Initially the goal of this trip was to learn tabla,
but his journey ultimately led to living with Aghoris in the cremation grounds, goat sacrifices to Kali, and
many other experiences that seemed deeply connected to the visions that started the journey in the first
place. It seems to have become an indelible part of who he is as a person, or perhaps, it was a part of himself
expressing itself in that way. In either event, the result is the same. It’s especially notable that prior to his
visions he had next to no experience with these symbols, or the surrounding culture.52
In another instance, I left a copy of a book I was reading in the lounge when I was in my sophomore year
at Bard college. That book happened to be Aleister Crowley’s Book 4. A girl apparently picked it up, and took
it. She proceeded to read it, and it so changed her perspective of her life’s direction that she dropped out of
school and began a backpacking pilgrimage. I know about this because at a later date I mentioned to friend
that my book had been stolen, and she related this story to me. I guess she needed it more than I did.
In a month-long series of talks titled “Living Your personal Myth” at Esalen Institute, Joseph Campbell said
“Mythology begins where madness starts, where a person is seized or gripped by some fascination for which
he will sacrifice his life, his security, his personal relationships, his prestige, and his self-realization…it’s not
always easy or possible to know by what it is that you are seized.” [72] So you can see these things can have real
impact in terms of our own lives. Their truth lies in their resonance, and this is not a relationship that anyone
else’s opinion should interfere with. If something speaks to you, speak back, and engage with it.
Even if this entire process can simply be reduced to staring into a mirror, it is truly amazing what worlds
we can find there.
51. The use of “ontological” here refers to what is best expressed - though it is admittedly poor grammar - as the “being” of a thing. Thus,
I am saying that at its root a myth does not strike at aesthetic truth. That falls into the realm of didactics. It does not fall in the realm of ethical
commandment either, though as you say it is easily interpreted this way and even utilized in this way (e.g. the ethical commandments given
in Leviticus, those given by Moses, by Krishna to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita, etc.) Myth’s primary function is ontological, that is pointing
at the unnameable realities underlying our collective experience. In this particular respect science as well is mythological. Ethical and aesthetic
qualifications, stipulations, regulations, etc. can be extracted from a reading of that ontology, but this isn’t the myth’s primary function. The
cost of commodifying art, thus losing sight of its fundamental cultural function, is not one that most in our culture can comprehend.
52. I recorded a conversation with him about this and other experiences, which you can find on modernmythology.net or a search for
“Clark Williams Alterati”
• 61 •
Immanence and Butchery

Mr. VI & James Curcio
A
new view of myth is beginning to form. But where can we begin a genuine discussion of immanence
in myth? Do we engage the tools of analysis on the dissection table of academia? Or perhaps it is best
not dealt with in sterile light, being rather an arcane synthesis, a syncretism.
If myth is something long dead, a corpse exhumed with philosophical disinterest, then please consider
this work an attempt at necromancy. But if myth
is considered something dangerous; full of falsities,
dead ends and mazes luring the unwary into a fugue
of superstition, then consider it a whispered pass-
phrase into another world: the world beyond the
wallpaper. A world that recognizes the real is in the
effect rendered, rather than in the thing symbolized.
Conflicting fictions drive Holy wars. How is a history
born of spilled blood unreal? How is it meaningless,
even if all the Gods are just shadows cast on the wall
by finger-puppets? Myth is not dead, nor is it false;
it is living, and misunderstood.
This anthology is a book. For the philosophers
Deleuze and Guattari, a book is an assemblage:
“Comparative rates of flow on these lines produce phenomena of relative slowness and viscosity, or, on the
contrary, of acceleration and rupture. All this, lines and measurable speeds, constitutes an assemblage. A
book is an assemblage of this kind, and as such is unattributable. It is a multiplicity…” [9]
It is an assemblage of voices gathered together to speak on the immanence of myth. It is, as already stated, a
multiplicity, which is fitting as myth embraces multiplicity. Contrasting Mythos with Logos, we contrast those
multiple voices against the singular, the transcendent. Whereas the logos is the word of God, the divine fiat
that structures and moves our universe, so the mythos is an indefinite set of articles, tales told for the telling
itself, with no hard and fast authority, no assertable Ultimate Truth, no attributable origin grounded in cold
solidity. It is immanent rather than transcendent because it is the codification of our direct experience, forms
and ideas ground from our collective bones and flesh.
Creativity derives from this multiplicity of conflicting ideas and symbols—the butchery of the singular, of
chaos, of nature. “Life is not possible without an opening towards the transcendent; in other words, humans
cannot live in chaos.” [22] Myth tells us this, over and over in innumerable cultures, giving us a myth of the
transcendent in the process. Consider this quotation, from Joseph Campbell:
Mythological, theological, metaphysical analogies, in other words, do not point indirectly to an
only partially understood ‘metaphysical’ term (God, Brahman, Atman, the Self, the Absolute,
for instance), but directly to a relationship between two terms, the one empirical, the other
metaphysical; the latter being absolutely and forever and from every conceivable human
standpoint, unknowable: unconditioned as it is by Time, Space, Causality, the categories of
logic—and to such a degree that even to speak of it is to represent, and so to misrepresent it,
which cannot be represented…It is evident that Kant’s metaphysical Ding-an-ich (being in
itself ), therefore, is equivalent to the Brahman of the Upanishads, the void of the Buddhists,
and the ‘Nameless’ of the Tao the Ching. [56]
This again brings up the seeming necessity of transcendence, of the metaphysical absolute. In many ways
this model is not only sensible, but accurate. It is even implied in the sketched model of representation that
we already covered. If symbols are a means of reaching into the unknowable, that unknowable is transcendent
of our immediate experience. Yet, at the same time, it is the transcendental necessity in spirituality that most
threatens to cut us off from the real immediacy of the sacred. This is a paradox that we hope we can shed some
• 62 •
light on moving forward. There would be no sense in calling this book the Immanence of Myth, otherwise.
This conflict begins, interestingly enough, in what we have rightly or wrongly referred to as the “cradle of
civilization.” Consider the slaughter of Tiamat in the Babylonian epic of the Enuma Elish—with its ranks
upon ranks of deities and monsters in which humanity springs from the blood of a fallen singular chaos,
dissected and enslaved by the very gods themselves. Or perhaps the colder, but similarly brutal murder of the
primal giant Ymir in Norse myth, wherein the mountains are the bones of that giant, the seas and oceans his
blood, the dome of his skull the sky and his brains the scudding clouds. In such an opening we see the guts
of our world revealed—Kali pleasures herself on the cold, hard lingam of Shiva the corpse. Sex and death,
murder and theft, crime and punishment, the entire potential of human experience is encoded in our myths.
The darkest realities of existence can be dealt with mythologically, allowing us an intermediary for dealing
with our demons.
Since “our world” is a cosmos, any attack from without threatens to turn it into chaos. And as
“our world” was founded by imitating the paradigmatic work of the gods, the cosmogony, so
the enemies who attack it are assimilated to be enemies of the God’s, the demons, and especially
to the archdemon, the primordial dragon conquered by the gods at the beginning of the time.
…This is the reason the Pharaoh was assimilated to the God Re, conqueror of the dragon
Apophis, while his enemies were assimilated to the mythical dragon. Darius regarded himself as
a new Thraetaona, the mythical Iranian hero who was said to have slain a three-headed dragon.
In Judaic tradition the pagan kings were represented in the likeness of a dragon…[22]
The list of associations between the singular, primordial chaos and the symbol of the dragon goes on
and on, including Tiamat herself. This process of slaying and reconsecrating runs through our process of
individuation, a child crying in a new, dry world, separating from that umbilicus again and again, by claiming
and defining.53 It is a pattern underlying a tradition that lead, inevitably, to monotheism, as it underlies
many of the mythic traditions of the near East. Consider this,
In [Psalms] 74:12-17 we have an account of how Yahweh, in a contest with the waters, smote
the many-headed Leviathan, and then proceeded to create day and nigh, the heavenly bodies,
and the order of the seasons. We have already seen that in the Akkadian Epic of Creation
Marduk’s slaying of the chaos-dragon Tiamat is followed by his ordering of the universe, and by
the building of Esagila. It is also accepted by the majority of scholars that in the Hebrew word
tehom used to denote the abyss of waters in Gen 1:2 there is a reference to the chaos-dragon
Tiamat …But in the passage from Ps. 74 the name of the water-dragon, Leviathan, is the same
as the Ugaritic Lotan, the dragon slain by Baal. [73]
This is of course not indicative of all creation myths. Myths like the Enuma Elish and similar creation myths
espouse an original or primordial chaos that pre-existed any structuring or ordering principles, but there are
others which are based on an underlying order, such as Kabbalistic and Christian theology. Science itself seems
divided on this matter, since it methodologically derives from the necessity of repetition and testability, and
yet cosmological theories like the big bang, or cyclical views that include a big bang and big crunch, bring into
question the cosmological framework creation myths have asked since the earliest dawn of recorded mythic
thought, even if the application of meaning goes beyond the strict scope of scientific inquiry.
Nevertheless, more than calling into question the actual historic origins of the universe, this raises a more
immediate cognitive one: what is the actual meaning of “order,” and “chaos,” how do we recognize one
from the other? This question is reduced quite simply by the realization that the difference between order
and chaos is not just in the ability to see a pattern, but that a pattern recognition machine—such as our
own nervous systems—is required to make such a distinction. Though there may appear to be an inherent
order in the progression 1,2,3,…and no coherent order in another assortment of numbers that “order” is
53. A concise outline of the Enuma Elish is given on pg. 24 of Comparative Mythology, which includes the primordial pantheon before the
time of the established order, “In the beginning there are a male/female pair; Apsu and Tiamat, or freshwater and saltwater deities respectively.
Their bodies commingle and engender a host of deities, notably Ea, the god of wisdom and magic. When this new generation becomes unruly
and troublesome for the old pair, Apsu wants to destroy it, but Ea is quicker and more decisive and slays Apsu first, leaving Tiamat widowed.
Apsu remains an inert entity from then on, the mythical sweetwater ocean beneath the earth that is the abode of Ea, where he sires Marduk.
…In a great struggle he (Marduk) slays Tiamat, wipes out the monsters …Marduk and Ea then bisect Tiamat’s body to form heaven and earth,
and Marduk’s rule is consolidated forevermore.” This pattern is not unlike what we see in Greek myth, with Kronos and the other titans the
precede the Olympic pantheon. [4]
• 63 •
simply a representation of our expectation. 1, 2, 3…representing, among other things, an expectation of

chronological and linear progression.
As we’ve seen, attributing that to the universe as a “natural law” defies a great deal of what we experience,
let alone what new, complex schemas and myths theoretical physicists are likely tinkering with this very
moment. The crisis point for this conflict actually occurred between the 19th and 20th century. Science
and math has moved past this point, but our culture is still lodged firmly within the myths that prevailed
hundreds and even thousands of years ago,
As the 19th century closed, belief in reductionism and mechanism prevailed. Humankind now saw
itself as the product of an improbable collision of particles following indifferent universal laws…The
ancient Babylonians had envisioned many faces to chaos. Nineteenth-century reductionist science had
disguised the chaotic face of entropy. It also masked another face of chaos by using a trick of reductionistic
mathematics. [65]
Ultimately, chaos and order are defined by our expectations. Everything is a Rorschach test. Our
predispositions, be they biological, cultural, personal, or more likely some fusion of all of the above, are
revealed in the patterns we see. To us, they will appear self-evident. As Robert Anton Wilson puts it, “what
the thinker thinks, the prover proves.” [74] Even if there is no fundamental value in the idea of order or chaos
without a structuring principle whatsoever, primacy can be placed on the idea of chaos for this very reason.
Thus, the position of immanence in myth finds its ground more readily in myths that recognize a primal
chaos underlying the structures and laws even of nature and the gods, rather than those that do not. It is here
that we can find an entrance to immanence.
The pattern represented in such creation myths, where chaos is transformed into order, other into self, is
part of how myth feeds and replicates. Again from Eliade, “When Scandinavian colonists took possession
of Iceland (land-nama) and cleared it, they regarded the enterprise neither as an original undertaking nor as
human and profane work. For them, their labor was only repetition of a primordial act, the transformation
of chaos into cosmos by the divine act of creation.” [22] The land itself must first be claimed by myth before
it can be of any use. Every element of our environment is open to mythic interpretation, further, it must be
consumed and reformed, reclaimed, through a mythology so as to be rendered a part of the human sphere
of concern that we imagine to exist separate from nature.54 This appears a fundamental principle of culture.
Like a living being, a culture must feed.
The dialectic, the ongoing conflict, between order and chaos is one of those primal mythic intersections
that was mentioned in Is Myth Dead. The primordial chaos is not just random, or formless, or ever-changing,
though it can represent all of these things. It is the world unclaimed, unshaped by human consciousness.
Thus, it is undifferentiated life, the terrifying abomination which the orderly, monotheistic traditions try to
yoke. It is the mother goddess, in the guise of her darker aspect.
Nowhere is this as clear as in the Hindu image of Kali Ma, “black time,” representing the creative and
destructive womb of the universe. This is of course the “womb and the tomb” often referred to by Joseph
Campbell and other anthropologists. This space has been recreated throughout the ages in an initiatory sense
in caves, or other explorations into darkness. Thus initiation, as we will discuss later, is a “second birth,” and
while the womb represented by the cave, by darkness, by sensory deprivation is easily linked with birth and
death, it is also life itself. Life outside the walls erected by human hands and minds.
Why “black time?” This womb exists before birth, and after death; it is in fact in its own source formless
and timeless, as to the identity, there is no “before” birth, “after” death. It is the eternity that undercuts our
illusions of time and space (or so we imagine). In a basic sense this is a Saturnine image, Saturn personified
both as an old man and young child, as the lord of the Underworld; however the female inflection shifts
the emphasis to birth, sex, and death. Much more will be said on these issues throughout the rest of the
book, especially in regards to the historic trend in myth to move from this sense of the world to an orderly,
patriarchal one. Perhaps, it seems that many of us now hear the siren song of Kali Ma strongly once again;
but this is clearly getting ahead of ourselves.
Moving forward, we must constantly ask: can we look behind a repeated image, and see the root impulse
at work? In a profane world, can we recognize the immanence of myth without returning to a myth of
transcendence? We must, because our existence demands it.
54. It really is a consumption process, but this topic deserves its own chapter which Mr. VI will cover under Cannibalism.
• 64 •
From and To the Body

Mr. VI & James Curcio
H
ow many incisions must we make, how many times may we enter and exit from eyes and ears,
mouths, noses, and fundaments? This is the beauty of myth; it is organic, as organic as the bodies it
springs from, irrespective of whether they are living or dead. Myth is often the closest we come to
immortality, as creators, and the closest we come to speaking with the dead, for the living. This can occur in
any number of ways, whether a lifelong quest, or the momentary act of impossibility that propels us beyond
normal status, from mere mortal into hero, into spirit, perhaps even to divinity.
These are not structures to be weighed in the balance of validity, and judged either viable or wanting. They
are, as Deleuze and Guttari would have it, “lines of flight.” [9] They are pathways, transportation machines.
Meaning is not paramount; the content should not merely be rated in terms of signal vs. noise.
One does not ask what the tales of Herakles or Odysseus mean, unless the intent is to use myth as a
mirror of the personal psyche. Meaning comes from the outside, an exuded by-product, like a snake’s shed
skin. Myth is not purposed, nor a thing (in and of itself ) purely of sign and symbol. It may be treated
symbolically—the lance and the cup may symbolize the generative organs of either gender, but they do not
mean such things.
Any encoding in mythical terms fail the test of transmission, when relevancy is dependent on meaning.
Myth is essentially meaningless. To give it meaning is to create a secondary myth. Such a statement may be
viewed by some as a little extreme, but such extremity is in and of itself a product of a teleological mindset.
If utility and purposefulness are the grand arbiter of validity then myth is an irrelevancy—it has no use, no
point, no end goal in itself.55 It remains at odds with industry and capitalism even as its organs are used to
create brands and fascist regimes.
So be it, we say. Far better when myth is discarded from consideration by those who would use it to justify
and perpetuate their agendas, far better that it is viewed as backward and irrelevant. For us, in embracing a
form of metaphysical nihilism in common with Nietzsche—as a stage towards greater awareness rather than
a bleak end provided by the singular—myth is co-equal with all human activity. Indeed, myth is human
activity. It is as intimate as breathing, as internalized as metabolism.
The reason myths exist after thousands of years is not that they contain information which must be
preserved. Rather, it is because they shift and mutate. Any attempt to fix it, to say “this is the final word on
a narrative” robs myth of its creativity and turns its ossified corpse into dogma. There is no final word. The
myths themselves roll forever downhill, accumulating new cultural fragments, personal nuances, dying and
reborn every time someone new chooses to sing along.
If representation and meaning are so important—if politicians, philosophers, priests and other authorities
insist that a given myth has a specified, singular meaning—it is for one purpose alone. That purpose is the
appropriation of the limitless power of myth for their own ends. Fascism and myth can go hand-in-hand,
and this certainly has soured it for some, (such as Horkheimer and Adorno), but this is like blaming the tool
for the use it was put to. Myth is a powerful tool of fascism because, when the spark strikes tinder, at the right
time, with the right people, it can burn the world to ash. It is not itself fascistic.
But we say, “Myth is essentially meaningless.” You see, a meaningless thing can still be used to generate
meaning. Myth manufactures meaning, but that element of its nature cannot be singularly codified. It is,
in itself, meaningless. From its meaninglessness, meaning arises, as plants arise from soil. Without it, there
could be no meaning—without Tiamat or Ymir, there are no worlds. It is said that from the Tao came the
ten thousand things, and so it is with myth—the ground of being is vast and heaving, with myriad lines of
flight surging upward. This is primal chaos, wild and dark and unpredictable—dangerous to life but never
inimical to it—merely indifferent to man’s attempts to structure experience. The Qabbalah, and many other
mystical systems as well, propose that multiplicity derives from a totality, a singularity, but perhaps these two
are inseparable. Hierarchy and teleology both result from this idea of “the one to many.” So the one returns
55. Specific myths may have a use, whether personal or cultural, or both, but myth as a whole does not. Nor does the mythic mechanism
have a generalized use aside from producing more myths.
• 65 •
to the many, but this still deludes us, following from and contributing to a teleological worldview. We cannot
resist the temptation of building schemas, pictures from random dots—constellations from random stars.
And in that tendency, we can first glimpse the true paradox of the mythological impulse.
Myth is immanent. It dwells within us.
• 66 •
Taliesin
Mr. VI
W
e truly are lost in the forest, and only those who can accept this can enter the realm of myth, a
creator rather than a potential pawn. Acknowledging that straining towards meaning and sense
ultimately ends in exhaustion and dust, we begin to accept the notion that myth occurs, not as a
product of, but inherent to, our humanity.
Myths are grounded in humanity and our relation to the world. Whether spoken or written, they arise
from within us, and from within the assemblages that give rise to us. For we are not simple creatures, clones
of our forefathers, differing only in temporality. Each of us is not limited to filial influences—what makes
us does not descend from on high—we are not the trickle-down of a creator-logos, whatever centuries of
hierarchy have told us by unspoken command.
No, we transvect, blurring and blending. We are not limited to the arrow of time, to inexorable progress
in any one direction, to any specific goal—even to any goal at all. The primal cry “I AM!” is an echo of
the burning bush on a desert hillside thousands of years ago, the individuation so feted by mankind is the
product of a blind demiurgos that presupposes itself the Creator of All.
Even in such a state, amidst those many centuries of capture, the myth within allows us to walk backward
to a time when there were those myriad voices in Eden that feared mankind might eat the fruit and become
as-Them. So it is that myth provides an antidote to stasis, its multiplicity contrasting with a singular scream
doomed to exhaustion and failure; a growing psychopathology of viciousness in order to maintain some
modicum of ‘control’.
(The Ten Commandments tighten like a noose,

the shepherd’s crook bludgeons the sheep that move out of line—
for the Greater Good, of course.)
Yet Taliesin, bard of Elphin, shape-shifter and thief, sings a shining song. A 6th Century poet, bard and
singer, Taliesin is one of those who steps into myth. By the 16th Century, he is the mythical son of the
sorceress Ceridwen. The Book of Taliesin circa 10th century also contains several poems attributed to him. It
is in one of these, “The Hostile Confederacy,” that the words of the bard resonate with us. Just as the biblical
genealogies ground their scions within the context of narrative, conferring upon those lineages a kind of
divine mandate descending from the creator—a royal science—so the bard denies the boundaries of identity,
of being, as solely singular:
I have been a blue salmon,

I have been a dog, I have been a deer,
I have been a goat on the mountain,
I have been a trunk, I have been a beech,
I have been an axe in the hand
I have been a pin in the tongs.
[…]
Fecund and nourishing,

I have been a grain discovered
and I have grown on the hill.
The harvester took me
in a corner full of smoke
in order to free my essence
I have been in great suffering;

a red hen took me,
• 67 •
she had red wings and double comb;

I rested nine months
in her belly, as a child.
I have been matured,
I have been offered to the king,
I have been dead, I have been alive,
I have possessed the ivy branch,
I have had an escort;
before God I have been poor.
[...]
I am Taliesin
and I defend the true lineage
until the end of time
to the profit of Elphin.’ [75] [76]
Myth provides us the keys to create our own way of being, unencumbered by any authority except our
own creativity, and the seemingly limitless potential of symbols past and present. It is as if we stand at the
crossroads, presented with the chance to become co-equal creators with all those who have been before us,
joyously shifting and moving as we will.
While Taliesin still states his identity—both here and earlier in the poem—in a manner that might be
considered the norm, this section is indicative of something far more subtle and mythic. The phrase “I have
been…” seems not simply to be a recounting of deeds, but rather of experience. It is distinctly noticeable
when applied to non-human forms of being.
These are shapes, past existences, part of the multiplicity of that which emerges in the moment of the Now
as Taliesin. In the parlance of Deleuze and Guttari, they too are machines, assemblages. Rather than being
progressions, wherein Taliesin is the culmination—the summit of such experience, the bard is unbound in
time. At any moment, he may become-as these machines, these shapes. Death, life, smoke from burning
grain. All are available, not to be possessed, or even brought forth, but to be-as. Past and present are co-
mingled, and inextricably so.
Taliesin is hence an ever-occurring event. Even concepts are haecceities, events. Such things are atemporal—
even if an event is grounded in a temporal context, be it political, historical, etc. the event is itself. It is
narrative that pulls the self-contained-singularity, connects it to others and builds relationships, networks.
Obviously, one must take care not to read events as isolated entities, since one cannot consider an event
unpeeled or divorced—such thoughts breed abstract notions of transcendence that lead nowhere. Confronted
with such entities, such points, the temptation is to “join the dots” as it were, to infer necessary connection
and causation, and once again to raise the specter of meaning-as-truth. But such dots, such co-ordinates in
space-time, are not the stuff of myth. Rather, time is a field, a space which is constantly being deterritorialized
and reterritorialized, and which may be traveled through. Time and space shift and blur—truly a continuum,
a flow, rather than a discrete division into days, years and so on.
When myth makes reference to some touchstone, it is because this is a movement deeper into itself.
Whether the Fall of Troy or the coming of the Tuatha De Daanan, Odin hanging for nine nights, or the
seven days to create the world, we are not dealing with simple measures, but shifting territories.
Rather, we find ourselves nodding sagely, for such things are landmarks, paths—yet more mythic
machines.56
In the Havamal, a poem of the Poetic Edda, the speaker, purportedly Odin, says:
[I] Waxed and throve well;

Word from word gave words to me,
Deed from deed gave deeds to me…[77]
56. Nine is a recurring number within the myths of the Norse, especially in reference to Odin. It is part of the assemblage which draws us
into the field of that god. Through it, we are capable of seeing the essence of the figure as themselves, as multiplicity reaching beyond simple
definitions.
• 68 •
Growing stronger, the speaker follows the flow of words and deeds, each providing a plurality. In today’s
culture, mythic beings and gods are often described as ‘god of ’ a particular domain. They are perceived as
having varying degrees of sovereignty over areas and domains, yet the newcomer often asks themselves, how
may there be multiple gods doing the same thing? Again, we would argue this is a product of generations of
singular thinking, monolithic in nature.
Instead of such things, it may be argued that the perception regarding the word ‘of ’ itself has changed. If
one is to consider a god of poetry, might it not be more fruitful to suggest that the “god is of poetry”? By
this we mean to conceive of such a figure as emerging from poetry—as words issue from a mouth. This is
not to suggest that our putative poet-god is in any way created or caused by poetry, but that the numinous
quality of the god is found within poetry. Poetry and the god are inextricably linked. In the case of gods
with multiple attributions, we find the deity or figure moving within these territories, flowing between
them smoothly, unimpeded by the striated boundaries which define these territories within the dimensions
of their borders.
It is usual when discussing an emergence to try and examine that which has been emerged from. Yet
such an examination often results in the search for an Archetype or Form, some kind of mystical X-factor
that renders the material under consideration capable of producing such an emergence. The joke here is, of
course, that such an emergence is built upon innumerable factors which may occur in an unrelated fashion
through principles of alliance and connectivity, as opposed to causality. In this sense, such thought and
emergence is transverse and transgressive—it comes from nowhere and everywhere, no specific site.
In Norse myth, there are three beings which lay down the existence of all things. They are called the
Nornir, and their names Urd, Verdandi, and Skuld are often translated simply as Past, Present and Future.
But these women are more complex than that. Indeed, a closer inspection reveals that it is better to delve
into their complexity.
Urd is that-which-has-been, Verdandi that-which-is-becoming, and Skuld is that-which-is-obliged or more
simply the-debt-that is-to-be-paid.
These three bind even the gods to their wyrd—sometimes translated as fate or destiny—and it is said that
they hold court by a well in the realm of the gods. As with many cultures the Norse put great store in their
ancestors. Aware of their existence being directly related to the assembled ancestors, and realizing that the
deeds of earlier generations affect their descendants, they sought to look backward, to step into memory after
death as their ancestors also did. It is this impulse, this awareness of the inter-connectivity of word and deed
throughout time, which is often recorded in the sagas of Iceland—oral tradition eventually committed to
paper by the Christian monk Snorri Sturlson. [78]
It is easy to see that for them, one’s past consisted of that-which-has-gone-before. The narrative of their lives
was grounded in the hands of Urd; their deeds flowing back to meet approval with the ancestors—indeed
strengthening the ancestors’ name by association with the descendant. Yet Verdandi also held them, for the
Now was seen as a becoming, thus the past carried an affect, a flow. When this flow met with the Now, in
combination they drove an assemblage of machines which cross-pollinated, self-cannibalized and became
allied with other flows.
This altered the past, changing the narrative. Hence Urd and Verdandi being sisters, the Now and the
past flowing smoothly together. But what of Skuld, the third sister—and how does such ancient myth
relate today?
Skuld is the debt, the obligation. If Urd might be said to be the movement of a projectile, the potential
motion, Verdandi the movement to throw, then Skuld is the follow-through, the weight of action manifesting
a particular shape. Thus, any event is woven by the hands of these Wyrd Sisters, any concept a whirlpool in
their well.
It’s here that we must view myth as a fluid, as vital as blood, as breath. In the monomyth, all fluidity has
been channeled, canalized, brought to a central authority, moral arbiter and approved narrator. The blood
spilt by the extermination of other narratives has been re-purposed to strengthen that great central reservoir
which has led to the notion that power must be given, or taken instead of being inherent. A masterful piece
of manipulation, thereby infecting humanity with the notion of powerlessness and claiming power as the
property of authority alone.
In the late 70’s and early 80’s, yet again the cry of No Future! echoed out of raw throats, and was daubed
across walls. Punk was born—rage swelling in the hearts of boys. The Establishment, long nourished by
• 69 •
acceptance of the monomythical, once again had an adversary. We, as a people, had been lied to, the narrative
began to break down—the smooth running of the machines of progress, fueled by carefully manipulated
hope and desire, began suddenly to grind. Its lubricant ran dry and heat rose, friction and resistance exploding
into defiance as it always does, as it always must do in a world governed by combustion, by metabolism—by
the biochemical processes of life itself.
The End Was Nigh—the boundary had been reached. As it has been countless times before. There was no
future—only exhaustion. We had reached the end of it—the bullet had hit the heart and the only thing left
was the fevered death-throes and decay.
Like ghosts, the existential cold and dark seemed to creep in—still dogging us even now in this, the 21st
century. Our planet, once so capable of sustaining our excesses, is beginning to push back, like the giants
marching against the gods at Ragnarok. Yet, at the same time, we accelerate, becoming more and more
capable of strange things. What place does myth have in a world growing ever smaller, ever faster? Are we
smashing towards a wall, or approaching the much vaunted Singularity?
We are in the future. It’s just not what we thought it was. The narratives we are used to are suddenly
not providing us with the meaning, the anchoring we once gained from them. Like babies deprived of the
breast, or junkies needing a greater hit, we whimper and rage alternately, craving the fix of meaning which
we have been told we need to have valid existences. Transhumanism has been ever-present, from the dawn
of civilization. It is a process, full of ebbs, flows, stasis points and plateaus, rather than a singularity as the
culmination of the straight line of progress.
The flying car, the jetpack? They have joined the rank of paleofutures, passed beyond the event horizon.
Their time is gone.
Or is it?
We have abandoned them, because they force us to ask questions about the way we identify ourselves, they
do not match the Now, and we cannot see them as the Future. We shy away from the true face of things we
once treasured, now seeming like monstrous mistakes. Yet, stripped of their meaning, they are like skulls, the
bones of those once familiar and comforting. Corpses now worm-eaten and grinning—displaying the slick,
shining structure underneath that gleams in meaningless, naked glory.
(They sit with the dead, feasting, waiting. The Days of Future-Past. À la recherche du temps perdu.)
The well of the Nornir is not the only one in Norse myth—there are two others, and it is the last of these,
Hverglemir or ‘Roaring Kettle’ which we next concern ourselves with. It is a seething, roiling mass of white
water guarded by a dragon and innumerable serpents in a misty underworld. It is the primal upwelling at
the root of things, chaotic and fierce.
Such is the prima materia of myth—underneath any structures placed upon it, it bubbles chaotically,
defying predictability. This is the raw, even primordial force of myth—the urge which is supposedly soothed
and seemingly shaped by narratives, ordered by speech, by language and desire. It bubbles up from the
dark Urth, from the shadowy underworlds and buried atavisms. These existential truths are cast, melted,
and re-cast time and again. It is the roar of the avalanche, the rebel yell, the rush of water that cuts through
seemingly impervious rock.
Those who embrace myth in all its visceral nature, rather than for the meaning it provides, are already on a
path which diverges from the norm. Those seeking reason, safety—they carve the canals, diverting the flows
into something more pleasant. Reducing such things to an academic curiosity, safe within the knowledge
that any other narrative is quaint, primitive or dangerous. The weapon of reductionism is their primary
armament—universal thematics, aspects and unification, grand theories of Everything and Everyone.
Outsiders, myth-makers, cultural creators, we become as Grendel—devourers and breakers, cracking open
the bones of structures and sucking greedily at the marrow, upending the halls and murdering time honored
meanings. We thus become war-machines, to borrow a term from Delueze and Guttari. Machines that dig
and burrow, like sappers undermining the city walls, soaring and diving down with terrible speed. They must
be driven into a culture with such force and repetition that they undermine the defensive structures of the
status quo.
Even Beowulf, of whom the oldest English written tale speaks, knew that his sword would not do against
Grendel, so faced the monster bare-handed. Both figures weaponless, they did battle. Wrestling and roaring,
locked together—monster and hero straining and struggling, hater and hated grappling til the death.
So it goes, until with a great rending, Beowulf rips Grendel’s arm from its shoulder, and the monster flees
• 70 •
to die in his lair surrounded by his own bubbling blood. But it is not yet over, for Grendel’s Mother comes
back to wreak vengeance against the slayer of her kin. Once again Beowulf does battle and is victorious,
slaying her in her own watery bower. Covered in the blood, down in the fluid rich depths, Beowulf crosses
the boundary between man and myth. Even his death after a third, final battle with an enraged dragon, he
lives forever as the exemplar of the warrior-hero.
Yet Beowulf ’s first victory, the beginning of the movement which sees him become part of the mythic flow,
is not by anything more than his bare hands—his own might and main. Beowulf, a warrior in his own right
before even arriving at the hall of Heorot, stands as an Event after partaking of Grendel’s dismemberment.
In this, he leaves humanity behind, the migration across a threshold of demonic, murderous blood—for
Grendel himself is said to be of the line of Cain.
The war machine is really an assemblage—a multiplicity that is a singularity. All we see is its ominous
silhouette, a figure which cannot be fully resolved. In fact it may be seen only by observing the results of its
affect. This is distinctly different from any effect it may bring about.
A black hole, that most well known of singularities, cannot be observed. Its existence must be deduced
from the effects it has on its local area. Beyond that event horizon, observation is occluded.
The war machine operates under a so-called Fog of War. Its passage disrupts normalized structures,
destabilizing traditional narratives—perception is unbound and information becomes meaningless by
contagion. Looming out of the fog, emerging from the darkness, rumor and misinformation increase paranoia,
leading to self-mutilation masquerading as reconfiguration in the face of the enemy. The stresses induced tear
apart the victim from the inside out—it is if they are under attack by an invisible alien enemy with horrific
inhuman powers. Such demonization rebounds; jitters and friendly fire increase. Myriad narratives form
around the singularity, transforming all those who come into contact with them into vectors of war.
In any plague, there must be a Patient Zero. There must be an origin, a cause. So runs conventional wisdom.
Yet beyond the horizon, down with the dead and the immortal, one asks the question: “Are not Time and
Space haecceities themselves, the fields of forever?” Like the Enuma Elish, we have the chaos in our blood,
grandchildren of myth itself. We, through myth, are capable of moving as Patient Zero, as Omega Point and
Big Bang, as all of these and none. For all these are signifiers, and as such are born out of myth itself.
So-called weaponized myth, art, disease—these things are purpose-built, made to affect—that is their goal.
Making all these things into weapons limits them and narrows their affect, makes them specialized. What’s
more they are easily recognized as such, and can be easily dealt with.
But for the war machine, to make war is not the goal; it is not to strike, to even move. It simply is. And
where blades fail, where diseases are cured, and art becomes outmoded, the capability of myth to change and
adapt without effort in any environment suggests a fundamental survivability, like that of the war machine.
Both are formless, in the context of the eidos of Plato and strategy of Sun Tzu—they may be found anywhere
and nowhere. The mythic war machine operates on an ideal level—with only its effects traceable. Therefore,
since it exists beyond the threshold, and indeed acknowledges nothing or acts as nothing apart from itself, it is
an imperceptible gateway, a cornucopia of possibilities which disrupts monomyth by its very nature.
By reading this book, you are exposing yourself to multiplicity—a plethora of lines of thought. This is no
fixed text. This is a field manual, a travelogue, a scrawl of graffiti on a palimpsest of the mind, long faded
narratives suddenly juiced up by flashing neurons, looming out of the icy fog to surprise you with their
richness and to take you places you only half remember.
Such effects offer a potent method of obtaining freedom through creativity and self-determination. The
only question is, how deep a draught of myth’s elixir are you willing to take? How much of yourself are you
willing to give to feel it creep into your life, until your life becomes myth itself?
• 71 •
The Power of Symbols: Beyond Representation

James Curcio
But our conceptual system is not something we are normally aware of.
In most of the little things we do every day, we simply think and act more or less
automatically along certain lines. Just what these lines are is by no means obvious.
One way to find out is by looking at language. Since communication is based
on the same conceptual system that we use in thinking and acting,
language is an important source of evidence for what that system is like.
Primarily on the basis of linguistic evidence, we have found that

most of our ordinary conceptual system is metaphorical in nature.
And we have found a way to begin to identify in detail just
what the metaphors are that structure how we perceive,
how we think, and what we do.”
George Lakoff & Mark Johnson [79]
F
or those who depend on a sense of a certain, orderly universe, by this point we’ve left you treading in
murky water. (And there are sharks, razor-sharp reefs, and your head just might be full of mescaline.)
The fear that arises from uncertainty is unwarranted. Or perhaps it is warranted, but no more than
life itself warrants fear, uncertainty, or stark mind-numbing terror. How desperately many of us clutch for
the illusion of solid ground, even if we have to sacrifice everything genuine to have it. Not everyone needs
such blinders, and if you’re still with us, chances are you’re one of the brave few who simply cannot take
things as they are presented, who cannot accept “because we say it is so,” who doubts everything including
their own senses and yet has the passion to overcome the crippling weight of cynicism and apathy that can
spring from such weak post-modern awareness when not infused with the white-hot fire of creativity.
Myth makers all die for their myths. Every single one. But this should come as no surprise: we all die.
Some just do it as a part of their narrative, some resist their narrative all their lives, and some never even
manage to get their hands on the script.
To mis-quote the recently deceased trickster Hunter S. Thompson: we bought the ticket, we may as well
enjoy the ride, right? We don’t need truth, faith, or hope to live, when it is a static truth, a static faith.
Politicians may get slammed for being “wafflers,” but it’s a sign of a thinking human being to actually take
in a new situation, and make a judgment that might contradict the ideology of yesterday. Uncertainty isn’t a
terror so much as certainty, which shuts out thought. Words and the concepts they represent, when thought
of as absolutes, become opaque. Language lies; after all, art and myths are lies that tell the truth.
It is an immanent act of faith to get out of bed in the morning, to take a step and count on solid ground
beneath us, let alone to think or feel something and imagine that it is grounded in what we imagine it to
be. It is as I say immanent rather than transcendental, as we don’t need to call on any higher power to make
such a leap.
We must make leaps of faith to do much of anything, but these leaps are contextually dependent, and
they are such a constant part of our life that we’ve become accustomed to them. A myth of normalcy is born
from an expectation of an imagined status quo. Anyone who has lived through great and unexpected tragedy
knows the ground of such myths is far from static or certain. Terror and confusion are offset by shoving such
uncertainties far out of sight. Think of how casually many of us hop into a box of metal, weighing many
• 72 •
tons, and hurtle across the ground at speeds far higher than our bodies could ever possibly propel us. Our
life could be violently ended through any split-second, minor inattention.
Most of us aren’t frequently troubled by such things. The truth is, many of our daily activities are far more
terrifying than a little philosophical uncertainty, but because they have become habitual, we become unaware
of them. Philosophical uncertainty such as what we have already considered appears more terrifying to some,
simply because it is unfamiliar. We should be skeptical of anything outside the condition and context it arises
in. Yet, habitually, we are not.
When I first recognized these things, not as an intellectual exercise, but really began to realize them, I
found a strange thing happened. Even in moments of absolute skepticism, we can still have a connection
with myth, with the sacred, and at the same time not lose our sense of grounding in that nebulous thing that
people casually refer to as “reality.” You just have to play along, and learn how to recognize the relationships
between our inner and outer worlds, both rendered in the internal as myth. In other words, we need to live a
life of constant examination, swimming in a chaotic, choppy sea full of reflections, projections and illusions.
It’s only possible if we accept all of our ideas as completely provisional.
We need to loosen our grip on static concepts and labels. How do we identify ourselves? What party,
religion, sexual orientation? What kind of music do you listen to? Even casual identifiers like these enmesh
us in false security, and limit what we are in terms of a static concept of what we produce, desire, or consume.
Stasis is anathema to life. Our bodies, our ideas, and every constituating element that composes them all
remain in a constant state of flux, even when tending an overall equilibrium. Like a top, the systems of our
mind and body maintain stasis in the balance of movement, opposing forces held in symmetrical balance.
The generalizing force of philosophy and ideology is another danger of myth that we have to contend
with. Nothing is knowable without creating a myth of it. Reality is not a fixed territory that can be owned.
(Though, as we have already seen, many myths attempt to stake this claim regardless.)
As we loosen our grip on static concepts, other possibilities begin to open up…Life takes on a mystery,
a magic, in its constant uncertainty. Our minds grasp for sense and coherence even in this state, and out of
this, for better or worse, we arrive at various forms of intuition, which we can generally lump in the category
of magical thinking.
This may seem an odd entrance-way into the topic at hand: the significance and power of personal
mythology and symbolism. But here we are. With a contextual sense of truth, we are again opened up to the
creative possibilities of a particular type of magical thinking, which has existed as a central element of culture
as far back as can be reliably traced. Am I leading us into madness? Bear with me for a moment.
Magical thinking is a process which has not so much left us as left our conscious sphere. Though Frazier’s
work in many ways has been invalidated in the years since, his basic definition of sympathetic magic and
magical thinking is still useful. As defined by Frazier, magic depends on two principles: the law of similarity
(between effect and cause) and the law of contagion (things which affect each other continue to affect one
another even when taken out of contact.) Throughout anthropological literature this definition is more or
less the same: magical thinking is the assumption that events or items that are thematically or otherwise
exponentially linked with one another can therefore affect one another. Though there are more possibilities
than the ones Frazier outlined, all of them come down to how we determine causality from the events of our
lives, and interpreting the meaning that we attribute to this causal web. It is the latter aspect which we will
be focusing on now.
The somewhat bigoted perspective on “primitive” magical beliefs that frames this perspective on magical
thinking is well stated in MacLeod Yearsley’s The Folklore of Fairy-Tale,
…[P]rimitive man had no knowledge, such as is possessed by his descendants, of the real causes
underlying the workings of nature. He considered that everything going on around him was
the work of spirits, whose nature was similar to his own. It was this confusion between the
spirit or animistic idea and the ordinary operation of nature which led to the system of magic.
The idea upon which magic was build up were two: first, that like produces like, i.e. that an
effect resembles its cause; second, that things which have once been in contact continue to
act upon each other after that contact is broken. The two together are comprised in the term
sympathetic magic, while separately they are spoken of as homeopathic, mimetic or imitative,
and contagious or contact magic respectively. [80]
• 73 •
Much could be said about this perspective on magic. Most importantly, it is one that continues to the
present day. To an extent it is correct: despite efforts of some authors57 to re-invigorate ideas like sympathetic
magic through more recent frameworks such as Quantum Physics,58 it is generally our experience that in the
empirical world, a strand of a person’s hair does not confer us some particular control over their well being.
However, and this is the central point: these systems of magic pertain to how the subconscious mind
appears to work. It is a world of symbol, intuition, and feeling, which has a strange logic all of its own. These
magical or quasi-magical beliefs are strongly evident in children’s games, within deep fugue states and trances,
and within our dreams. This is ample enough evidence to at least consider the hypothesis that, rather than
being entirely naive savages, this is instead a system of thought born by cultures with more inwardly-facing
orientations; people who, in part due to that orientation, had less of a focus on the exterior, quantifiable, or
at any rate empirical world that we so value at present.
The positions posed by Yearsley, Frazier, and so many other sociologists, ethnologists, and anthropologists
in the 19th and early 20th century assume that we now have some deep and final understanding of the inner
workings of nature and causality, which we simply don’t have—though it is inarguable that we have more
reliable methods of testing theorems that relate to the empirical world. With a grasp of the material we’ve
already covered, it should be clear enough that any absolute certainty in regards to causality, or the nature of
reality, is impossible.
This is doubly true when such apparent truths are represented. Our lives are full of myths based on
assumptions of causality based on spatial or temporal association, assumptions that we assume out of faith.
Essentially our feelings about events form our ideas about them more than any thoroughgoing rational
analysis of causal links. As Gilbert Lewis says, “habit is unthinking” and much of our thinking about reality
is habitual. [81] Over time, feelings and assumptions, re-enforced by anecdotal evidence, often solidifies into
the beliefs that entirely structure future thinking.
All of this said, the magical thinking we arrive at need not be that of the schizophrenic or bushman
who misappropriates cause. Instead, we can recognize our participation in the process of determining the
meaning of everything we experience. Magical thinking as a general concept assumes that causality works
“both ways,” that is, if things are linked they can have an effect on one another. Though this often may not
be the case in an external sense, it is generally the case in an internal one. (The externalizing element taking
the form of projection or mythologization in one way or another.)
Though some may go so far as to call it a participation in the creation of reality, I have personally seen
people turn into Humpty Dumpty just because of the slight difference between these two statements. 59 The
following quotation cuts to the heart of this distinction,
There is the story of the American in the train who saw another American carrying a basket
of unusual shape.
His curiosity mastered him, and he leaned across and said: “Say, stranger, what you got in
that bag?”
The other, lantern-jawed and taciturn, replied: “Mongoose.”
The first man was rather baffled, as he had never heard of a mongoose. After a pause he
pursued, at the risk of a rebuff: “But say, what is a Mongoose?”
“Mongoose eats snakes,” replied the other.
This was another poser, but he pursued: “What in hell do you want a Mongoose for?”
“Well, you see,” said the second man (in a confidential whisper) “my brother sees snakes.”
The first man was more puzzled than ever; but after a long think, he continued rather
pathetically: “But say, them ain’t real snakes.”
“Sure,” said the man with the basket, “but this Mongoose ain’t real either.” [82]
Believing in the empirical reality of those snakes will likely lead to a misappropriation of cause. You think
the imaginary snakes are literally, materially real. In common parlance, you’ve lost your fucking marbles.
If you become so sure in your beliefs that you cease to question them within a specific context, whatever
57. Such as Robert Anton Wilson, Michael Talbot (The Holographic Universe), and many others.
58. Whereby it has been demonstrated that particles in contact in a sense maintain contact at a distance afterward (Bell’s Theorum).
However, it has frequently been pointed out that the peculiar behavior of subatomic particles clearly doesn’t translate to our scale. As physicist
Richard Feynman famously said, “Nobody understands Quantum Mechanics.”
59. Participation in the process of attributing meaning vs. participation in the process of creating reality.
• 74 •
they and it may be, you will likely find yourself falling prey to the same sort of superstition which is easily
identified in tribal and aboriginal cultures throughout the world. Many similar logical fallacies can be found
in some New Age publications, and health stores. Richard Feynman has a talk that you can track down on
the Internet called “Cargo Cult science” that deals with many elements of pseudoscience and how some of
what we might consider science can fall into this category as well.
Bias also plays its role in the re-enforcement of beliefs. If a person spends days or even years working to
bring about a certain end result, they are more likely to attribute a successful result with their prior efforts.
It is altogether possible, if not even probable, that success had little or nothing to do with the operation,
though the operation may have set them in motion. If the results are not what they were hoping for, the
magical belief structure allows for “intrusions” of various kinds, such as another shaman operating at cross
purposes, or some other more subtle force which waylaid the operation. (“It was not God’s will,” “I sinned
in some way,” “my magic was not strong enough,” etc.) The terminology would shift for a religious believer
or psychologist, but the underlying premise remains the same.
Consider this hypothetical situation: suppose that during the middle ages, a meteor falls to earth, which a
young farm boy discovers. This meteorite is placed in a church, and considered a holy relic. The local despot,
who is preparing for war, takes this as a sign from God, and leads his army to victory. The historians of the
time attribute his victory to the meteorite, thus further increasing its “magical power.”
Now, there’s nothing to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the meteorite was not a sign from God
that he should ride to battle and certain victory, but Occam’s razor would certainly point to the confluence of
other factors, from the skill and number of his troops and the weather on that particular day to the location
that they fought, and so on. However, at the same time, such factors cannot account for the correlation
of those events, (defined by Carl Jung as “synchronicity60,”) or the fact that the falling meteorite was the
galvanizing cause, without which the success would not, and therefore could not, have occurred. So, in this
sense it is true to say that the attributed meaning (“the meteorite is a sign from God that we will be victorious
on this day”) was correct, if only because that attributed meaning led to a successful outcome.
This distinction can be the difference between a creative human being and a raving lunatic, set adrift
in a terrifying world of portent and symbol. Some of those wayfaring souls eventually come back to solid
ground stronger for the experience, and others do not. This is not to imply that there’s anything other than a
cultural distinction between the two, in many cases. From the perspective of their own culture, surely artists
are often channels or seers more often than engineers. Even those who lived more in the world of symbol
than the empirical world, like Antonin Artaud, can contribute something worthwhile for the rest of us. The
term “insane” is about as bigoted a blanket term as any racial epithet. Each “insanity” is unique, and some
have unusual side effects, a specific capacity that is a natural part of their total state of being. The same is
sometimes observed in individuals otherwise labeled as “disabled.”
So, let’s give ourselves the license to be insane in this sense, hopefully without smearing the surrounding
walls with shit. The meaning we give to experiences and sensations, even something as simple as a color, lies
in our hands in a certain, as-of-yet undetermined measure. We can only highlight some of the general ways
that this “symbolic biofeedback” exists; in reality it is so specific, and so contextual that you will need to
apply these general principles through a much more active means, within the actual ebb and flow of life.
This process is primarily automatic or subconscious, but also not entirely outside our influence. Meaning
isn’t attributed consciously. Yet, at some point, on some level, we have to choose what the pieces of our
personal history mean. There are many underlying narratives in our lives. We imagine that they are formed
at first by experience: you burn your hand enough times on the hot stove, and you draw a connection.
60. “My example concerns a young woman patient who, in spite of efforts made on both sides, proved to be psychologically inaccessible.
The difficulty lay in the fact that she always knew better about everything. Her excellent education had provided her with a weapon ideally
suited to this purpose, namely a highly polished Cartesian rationalism with an impeccably “geometrical” idea of reality. After several fruitless
attempts to sweeten her rationalism with a somewhat more human understanding, I had to confine myself to the hope that something
unexpected and irrational would turn up, something that burst the intellectual retort into which she had sealed herself. Well, I was sitting
opposite of her one day, with my back to the window, listening to her flow of rhetoric. She had an impressive dream the night before, in
which someone had given her a golden scarab-a costly piece of jewellery. While she was still telling me this dream, I heard something behind
me gently tapping on the window. I turned round and saw that it was a fairly large flying insect that was knocking against the window from
outside in the obvious effort to get into the dark room. This seemed to me very strange. I opened the window and immediately and caught the
insect in the air as it flew in. It was a scarab beetle, or common rose-chafer, whose golden green color most nearly resembles that of a golden
scarab. I handed the beetle to my patient with the words “Here is your scarab.” This broke the ice of her intellectual resistance. The treatment
could now be continued with satisfactory results.” [83]
• 75 •
However, the subconscious narratives we build up, even by adolescence, are far more complicated than
this. They are composed of an often contradictory array of beliefs and myths, which, when they develop a
sufficient emotional gravity, begin to bend our very lives around it. I’m sure you have noticed trends in your
life, where you might say “why does this same thing keep happening to me?” And it is somewhere between
shallow and cruel to imagine that a person always chooses or wills these things to occur, especially when
they are painful. Yet here they are, different situations, different people, and yet the same pattern. Again and
again. This is an underlying narrative, a myth, at work.
“We are our narratives” has become a popular slogan. “We” refers to our selves, in the full-
blooded person-constituting sense. “Narratives” refer to the stories we tell about our selves and
our exploits in settings as trivial as cocktail parties and as serious as intimate discussions with
loved ones. We express some in speech. Others we tell silently to ourselves, in that constant
little inner voice. The full collection of one’s internal and external narratives generates the self
we are intimately acquainted with. Our narrative selves continually unfold.
State-of-the-art neuro-imaging and cognitive neuropsychology both uphold the idea that we
create our “selves” through narrative. Based on a half-century’s research on “split-brain” patients,
neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga argues that the human brain’s left hemisphere is specialised
for intelligent behaviour and hypothesis formation. It also possesses the unique capacity to
interpret—that is, narrate—behaviours and emotional states initiated by either hemisphere.
Not surprisingly, the left hemisphere is also the language hemisphere, with specialised cortical
regions for producing, interpreting and understanding speech. It is also the hemisphere that
produces narratives. [84]
There are many ways this plays into our lives. In cases of clinical depression, for instance, there is some
evidence that the thought processes that produce depression are habitually formed, even if some are more
biologically or genetically predisposed to such habitual thought patterns than others. It is likely, if not
absolutely certain, that at some point the pathways were conscious, or at least they lay closer to the surface,
like young roots that have yet to fully embed themselves in anything other than topsoil. As habits become
less conscious, they seem to become more structural. The expert musician needs to think very little about
what they are doing, they need only feel it, will it, and muscle memory does the rest. In another way, the same
appears to be true with other learned or habitual behavior.61
I acknowledge that this is a sweeping statement to make. Only very generalized examples can be provided,
but they will still hopefully be insightful, and help you identify specific situations in your life that would
serve as appropriate examples as well. An early event in someone’s life, lets say, demonstrated to a child that
their parents don’t really care for them. It shows them that caretakers are not to be trusted. A certain number
of other thoughts are linked with this early belief.
Eventually, even the slightest mention of one of those triggers follows the mental path, now burned in like
the grooves cut by wagon wheels along a well-traversed path, and the person in question feels overwhelming
despair as a result of a minor set-back, or a single thoughtless comment, because they always exist in a state
that conforms to a subconscious narrative that says “you cannot trust those around you.” The more trust this
person infuses in someone, the more anxious it will make them, most likely without any sense of why.
All of those who embody the “caretaker” role must now contend with this personal mythological history.
All would be care-takers are considered ambivalent in the way that the original “caretakers” were. This can
be transformed only through a personal re-exploration, re-definition of the nature of the “caretaker.” The
model that was used to define that role needs to be replaced with another, more suitable figure. When a role
is conferred to a new actor, consciously and especially otherwise, they are inheriting the entire past history
of that role.
Consider also the rare and yet wonderful event that many of us may be familiar with, of meeting someone
and having a sudden and instant rapport. That rapport might arise from any level, yet very quickly we will
conduct a sort of revisionist history; saying, for example, “you remind me so much of so-and-so” (who
61. Whether we find the results of those habits pleasing or horrible seems irrelevant, so far as the habit is concerned. It is habitual precisely
to the extent that it remains outside the realm of our conscious processes. Thus telling someone with habitual depressive thinking to “just stop”
is about as useful as telling the sky to turn green for a change, even though it might seem so plainly obvious to everyone around them that they
have themselves stuck in a self-destructive loop that they don’t actually want any part of.
• 76 •
perhaps had a great impact on our lives), or we attribute to them a certain role. It is not long before we
have contextualized this random occurrence—we feel a terrific urgency of meaning, and we react through
mythologizing. We must make sense of that urgency, we feel that we must give it a name, a form, so that we
can immediately contextualize it and gain some measure of control over it. This revisionist history will be
re-written, again, should they later abandon us or not conform to the role that we cast them in. Oftentimes,
White Knights are quickly and easily re-cast as Villains.
The greater the force of the sudden connection, the greater the need to mythologize and also label the
connection. We fall in love, and we ask “what are we?” Where do we stand, how do we categorize these
feelings and meanings that we’re experiencing? On the whole, society provides very limited categories that
people can exist within: an acquaintance, a friend, a lover, a fiancée, a wife, an enemy. These categories bring
along with them a set of behaviors and expectations, which we all assume to share, although oftentimes much
pain results when we discover that we were mistaken. Within the life of someone who is more mythologically
inclined, so to speak, there may be room for more flexible categorization. You may fall back on Jung’s
archetypes; a connection might take the role of a guru, a judge, a muse, a seducer, and so on, although
these are more useful in terms of figuring out what we are projecting on them, or what we need from the
interaction, rather than providing the kind of feeling of safety that we seem to crave from the process of
naming a relationship.
This does not so much define who they are, but rather what they are to us. Of course, this attribution can
change over time, and it isn’t without its own inherent dangers. A lot of care needs to be taken as this process
occurs, because—as I will later explore more in an evaluation of some of my personal mythology—we can
very easily find ourselves interacting not with the individual behind the “mask” we have given them, but
simply with the mask itself. Similarly, if it is a “mask” that we have a history with, our past psychological
history in regard to that mask comes to bear, and the individual can quickly become a scapegoat, or we
could, on the other end of the spectrum, be carried away by the momentum of the mask and the archetype
that it represents.
If we’re aware of this process, however, we can engage both with the mask and archetype it represents, and
the person behind it. This is part of the task we face in any relationship with any real significance in our lives.
Relationships between people can be an alchemical process, when it is a relationship that involves something
other than the interaction of surfaces (psychological or physical), and cultural clichés. As Jung says, “The
meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are
transformed.” It is something of a paradox that all archetypes are, in a sense, cultural clichés.
What I say here is mostly the result of my personal experience in these matters, though I’m quite sure that
many psychologists have provided similar insights. Let’s look a little closer at how this meaning-attribution
process occurs.
An emotionally charged event, like a divorce, death, falling in love—all demand explanation, which is to
say, they demand mythologization. That myth is also bound to change over time, to be overwritten. All of
our personal histories are a palimpsest, overwritten time and again, though traces of the underlying layers
remain, haunting or informing the present. We write a lot of that story in our heads. Like it or not, as time
goes on, our memories are re-written time and again by that internal narrative—that internal myth.
That’s a part of what I mean when I talk about “living myth.” Whether we take it the next step and build
literal creative myths out of our experiences and dreams is probably as much a matter of personal inclination
as anything else. The root of mythological impulse is in all of us, even if the capacity to render it in such a
way that it is an effective tool or even entertaining past-time for others is another matter entirely. That is, we
all mythologize; only some of us have the calling and persistence required to become artists and attempt to
render those mythologies in such a way that they are both useful and entertaining for others.
Our past is entirely narrative in this respect. Our present is conditioned by past myths, unless they are
over-written. Our futures, also, are sculpted by expectations developed from our past and present myths
about ourselves, the world, our fears, our goals, etc. Through this personal myth, our relationship with these
things can change, although it is not so easy a process as it might at first appear.
At this point, another short detour is necessary to bring up a related psychological issue. It is becoming
increasing evident in recent neuroscientific research that, whatever its true nature, self-consciousness appears
to be post hoc. We begin to move our arm before we realize and narrate the action to ourselves. “Our brains
have become particular adapted to creating coherent, gap-free stories…This propensity for narrative creation
• 77 •
is part of what predisposes us humans to religious thought.” [85]

This is both a perplexing and troubling line of thought for many of us; considering all possibilities of
human experience as purely electro-chemical reactions seems to take us down a somewhat behaviorist path.
We become, in this view, merely machines.
However, it stands to reason that the idea of “electro-chemical reactions” may itself be perceived within the
framework of myth, and thus the neurological perspective stands as one method of interpreting the mind,
rather than a replacement for all other theories of mind. What is most interesting, of course, is how chemicals
might narrate, and moreover, interpret that narration, let alone build layers of metaphor and so on.
As neuroscientists will no doubt someday discover, metaphor is something that the brain does
when complexity renders it incapable of thinking straight. One cannot really write about the
source of human agency without indulging in the pathetic fallacy; what differentiates these
writers from Cartesian dualists is the nature and location of the agent. “There is no separate
spectator for the movie-in-the-brain,” writes Damasio, using his own metaphor for our sense
that we are a narrative held together by an interior author. “No ghostly homunculus haunts the
theater. Objective brain processes knit the subjectivity of the conscious mind out of the cloth
of sensory mapping.” Behind the curtain is no little man but only the all-powerful brain, and
selfhood is a bootstrap operation: of the brain but not in it. “The brain lords over us, makes
us out of neurochemicals and meat in the same way that we used to think God made us out
of dust. [86]
In a way this idea of metaphor and narrative building chemicals is more magical, rather than less, though
many of us can’t help but feel a sense of reduction, a shrinking, slightly terrified feeling when the neurological-
materialist perspective is fully understood, at least before the point that we wonder what exists on “the other
side” of the post hoc reflection of self-consciousness. In other words, it doesn’t entirely answer the looming
question of agency.
Unfortunately, exploring this tangent any further would take us far afield. I suggest tracking down that
article by Greenberg in Harper’s if you’d like to consider the neurological issue more thoroughly. He presents
many interesting ideas on the subject. Let us return to thinking about personal mythology.
Often, associated meanings are arrived at simply by child emulating parent emulating culture, literally or
figuratively. Or it comes from a simple instinctual response. Nevertheless, there remains a place for personal
choice in all of this. We all have the capacity to question everything, and choose for ourselves what narrative
to build from an assortment of fragmented facts and half-remembered memories, even if it is not the popular
choice. Whether or not we’re willing to take advantage of that capability, or overcome the cultural gravity
that chooses one interpretation over another, is another matter entirely.
The emphasis on this power of individual choice is one of the defining myths and characteristics of
Western civilization, and may be our largest contribution to the world’s cultural tapestry. This was the
underlying thesis of the penultimate book in Joseph Campbell’s Masks of God series: Creative Mythologies
[46]. We have the ability, the freedom, to choose to make things mean what we want them to mean, at least
for ourselves, and to live our lives accordingly; to grow, to heal, to transform. Those choices may make us
outsiders, they may even make us subject to the hatred of others who simply don’t understand or agree with
our choices. We could even be killed for them; but the right, and the freedom, is there. All we have to do is be
brave enough to take it, and accept the consequences of living life in our own way, whatever it might be.62
What I’m getting at here is the difference between a static and conditional belief. Static belief is unavailable
to new information, new contexts. It is inflexible and unnatural. Conditional belief is a bulwark for the
creative soul against abject insanity, as well as a practical necessity of life. We’ve dealt with this so extensively
in past chapters that little more probably need be said about that.
It is through choosing to accept predetermined meanings that we opt into cultures. Of course, much of
this occurs as we’re growing, before we realize we have any choice in the matter. As we grow into adulthood,
the onus of choosing an unpopular path is the fear of being an outsider. The crisis period for this is in
62. Americans seem to fixate on the idea of “freedom,” but without the reckless willingness to give the middle finger to establishment or
authoritative powers—as the colonial Americans did—and the capacity to self-govern, it remains a myth that can be paradoxically used to limit
choices. The American myth of freedom can be used to kill personal freedom. The post 9/11 rhetoric and shrinking personal rights in the face
of the war on terror demonstrates this in a way that has always seemed to me as nothing short of painfully obvious.
• 78 •
adolescence, when issues of identity and social hierarchy seem to reach a fever pitch.63 Entire sub-cultures
spring out of this conflict—rock, punk, goth, etc. all resulted from the clash of “insider” and “outsider”
culture, and our own warring interests as the mold of identity begins to set. Of course, when any of these
sub-cultures reaches a certain size or popularity it begins to flip-flop, exhibiting more behaviors and concerns
that go along with insider, or popular culture. The fashion overtakes the ideology.
The cogency of a culture arises, in part, through an agreement upon certain terms. If a group all choose to
give X meaning to object Y, they are then entering the same ideological domain together, at least in regard
to that object or practice. Let’s say one night you wake up in your bed, and look under your bed. There,
shuffling amongst the dust bunnies, is a lobster. Would you even consider the option of eating it? We had to
be instructed of the possibility of this course of action by the surrounding culture. Of course, you may now
think that sea cockroaches are disgusting, or they might be your favorite food.
Some such domains are more ubiquitous than others, possibly as a result of our biological commonality,
so there are some “truth pacts” which are in certain places and times more likely to take hold and last. One
outcropping of this implicit cogency is language. It should be fairly obvious that the meaning of language
is derived, to one extent or another, through context. A “soldier” could be a man, or an ant, or it could be a
way that one goes about something. “Myth” can be any number of things, as we are discovering, and only a
keen ear can glean the subtleties of use in what is essentially an ongoing symphony. G# may be played twenty
times in a musical composition. In terms of its frequency, it remains the same pitch, but does it always have
the same meaning? If so, Western music only has twelve words. We all know this is untrue. Notes in music
work more like letters, which can be permutated, and meaning shifts along with it. Their meaning can be
transmuted through juxtaposition with notes that come later, or those that are played at the same time, at
the rate they are played, the velocity or emphasis of the note, and so on. The underlying system allows for
homogeneity of meaning even if there are seemingly infinite possibilities for variation. This is a fairly obvious
point about music theory. I ask that you consider it instead as a statement about all symbolic systems.
We might also recognize that there is another heterogeneous layer, a personal one, hidden under the
supposedly homogeneous meaning of a statement.64 Imagine that your son went off to war and died. Would
you experience the same feeling tone from the word “soldier” as an enthusiastic new recruit? That’s a personal
layer. There are cultural ones as well. Take something so simple and everyday as the color yellow. There is the
English association of cowardice. Yet Buddhist monk’s robes are a yellow-orange because to them it is the color
of death. Even death itself has a different connotation for a Chinese Buddhist than a Catholic in London.
We may also hold a personal association with a color. As a result of a past experience, it may bring about
deep joy, or despair. It may produce no reaction what-so-ever. Someone may say something offhandedly to
you, they meant it as a joke, but you suddenly feel tears welling to your eyes, because it reminded you of an
old dead friend. These associations often operate on multiple levels, and different reactions are triggered in
different circumstances. Colors can even, oddly, be gendered, as we clearly see in the American insistence
that the color pink is, somehow, a female color.
This is a straightforward enough idea in reference to linguistics and semiotics, but what often gets ignored is
the effect this contextual and transient meaning can have on our state of mind, and how it can be transmitted,
transmuted; how it, in the final summation, entirely mutable.
All of what I have said so far on this topic can be applied equally to both psychological analysis and
therapeutic applications, or towards the role of the artist attempting to use a knowledge of meaning-
attribution to bring about an experience in an audience. Although I personally have great interest in both,
my professional experience to date falls more in the latter camp, and so it is in this vein that we will continue
this exploration.
As Joseph Campbell frequently pointed out, whether as a result of abstract metaphors or the high-flung
hero fantasies of the past or present, it would be all too easy to come to the conclusion that myths are stories
told about other people, which in any event have only a transient relation to our lives. The inner voice that
creates myth is also the internal narrator that you are listening to, possibly even right now, which serves as
our primary interpreter of life experience.
63. Some of this may be a cultural peculiarity, but it’s worth noting that the physical and social shifts that occur during this period are so
commonly accompanied by rites of initiation that the crisis itself seems to be a biological necessity. The fact that capitalist societies seem to
lack a clear ritual of this kind is the real peculiarity. More on this in Initiation: The Masks of Eternity.
64. For instance, what the OED would say about a word, as opposed to how it actually impacts you.
• 79 •
This personal narration may take the form of the stories we tell ourselves, as we narrate or explain the facts
presented to us, as we understand or experience them; they also take on a micro-cultural role in the stories
that we tell to those around us, which may or may not mirror those internal myths. This point may seem
relatively insignificant in comparison to the myths that have captured imaginations for thousands of years,
and certainly much of it can hardly be called art. Yet these myths have a profound effect on our lives: they
effect how we feel, they put us into a mental framework that determines the nature of the next personal myth
we will weave; what is most important, they determine the decisions we make.
Our personal myths determine how we live our lives.
• 80 •
The Power of Symbols:

Sacred Art and Personal Myth
James Curcio
P
lay a song for twenty different people, and you might get twenty different experiences. Or you might
get only a handful of similar experiences. It is difficult to predict, though the industrialization of
the artistic process has created methods and formulas that are applied in attempt to homogenize the
entertainment response of the audience. No one can account for the specific experiences and feelings that
will arise from the use of a series of symbols, when they interact with the specific experiences of a specific
audience, at a specific point in time.
A common experience will likely arise in a large enough sample group, but as an artist, if you become
obsessed with focus groups, you’re in the wrong line of work. Nevertheless, all traditional narrative techniques,
literary or otherwise, are based around striking the common chords, much as Western music forces a system
upon sound structured by a specific aesthetic sense of harmony. Again, the agreement on certain terms is
essential. Culture is inherently self-referential. From a marketing standpoint this allows for the production
of media that will strike those most common chords. Thus, so many say that so-called mass market media
drives at the lowest common denominator.
The most visceral myth we can deal with is our own. If an artist is true to their own experience, it will
naturally resonate with like minds. This seems like the only way to avoid driving one’s self insane wondering
if the work we create will have the intended, or at least some, effect on an audience. Of course, standing on
the periphery of a manufactured mainstream, the honest portrayal of a life may seem quite alien to those
moving in lock step with the more accepted narratives of the time.
Artists re-interpret and externalize elements of this, but that does not mean that those without the artistic
obsession live without the raw material. An individual’s internal, linguistic history is like the genetic code of
their identity. On a basic level these common elements are a cultural binding glue, but on a more personal
one, it may be the de-individualizing impulse of a relationship whereby two or more become as one,
operating with a shared center of concern. This begins with the sharing of the inner life of this “linguistic
history.” Coming to know this language, and what it means to them, is a means of coming to learn their
story, through their story their myth, and through their myth—them.
It is this association of meaning, this “naming” of things, which is the root of our ability to build worlds.
The power of this ability must not be understated. The simple choice to consider the base biological drives a
hindrance to spiritual life, rather than the path to it, helped create one of the predominant ideological trends
of Western History.65 It is this ability to choose to create and give meaning, to turn sand to pearl, which
defines man as myth-maker.
This capacity exists within us all. We construct our reality through mental images and words which we use
to represent our experience. The references become bounded to that which they refer. In this light, many of
the so-called “primitive” magical beliefs may seem less bizarre. For instance, the clichéd tribal beliefs that a
person’s true name shouldn’t be given away lightly, or that a photograph might steal or trap someone’s soul.
We also see this aversion with the Druids, of whom we know so little because they refused to commit much
of their beliefs and traditions to writing.66
To this extent myth can be considered a disease of language, as Ernst Cassirer notes in The Philosophy of
Symbolic Forms: “The source and origin of all mythology is linguistic ambivalence, and myth itself is a kind of
disease of the mind, having its ultimate root in a ‘disease of language.’” This is the case because “…man puts
language between himself and the nature which inwardly and outwardly acts upon him, that he surrounds
himself with a world of words in order to assimilate and elaborate the world of objects.” [15]
65. This will be discussed in more detail in Pretty Suicide Machine.

66. “Among the articles and reviews by Dumezil appearing in 1940, one of the most interesting deals with the possibility that the well
known Druidic aversion to writing stemmed from the notion that the vivifying spirit of the spoken word, the spirit that renders sacred words
powerful in themselves would die if these words were committed to letters and thus ‘fossilized’.” [87]
• 81 •
This idea seems to derive from Friedrich Max Muller,67 “According to Muller human language is a
wretched device hiding and corrupting the purity of thought and is in constant danger of disintegration
through the decay of metaphors. The creation of myth is a defense mechanism against the evanescence of
metaphors, a kind of antibody formation to this disease of language.” (Emphasis mine.) [4] Certainly, when
looking at myth from the perspective of the arts, this statement takes on a sense of validity that it might lack
when approaching myth from other angles, such as the historic.
All literary conventions show us intrinsic myths about how we perceive ourselves and the world. The
centrality of a protagonist or group of protagonists we can identify with, the need for a plot that moves
coherently forward, these things are based both on how we are trained to conceive of narrative, and it is how
also how we expect or want it to be. They do not, in fact, strictly follow the pattern laid out by life. Rather,
it is a narrative structure imposed upon life. Art is the lie that tells the truth, after all. Even the sense of time,
place, and gender afforded by the language that a story is written in, encodes the limitations of the thoughts
that can be expressed within that language.
Take “Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall…” Even this snippet of a nursery rhyme reveals how
much languages can differ from one another. In English, we have to mark the verb for tense; in
this case, we say “sat” rather than “sit.” In Indonesian you need not (in fact, you can’t) change
the verb to mark tense.
In Russian, you would have to mark tense and also gender, changing the verb if Mrs. Dumpty
did the sitting. You would also have to decide if the sitting event was completed or not. If our
ovoid hero sat on the wall for the entire time he was meant to, it would be a different form of
the verb than if, say, he had a great fall. In Turkish, you would have to include in the verb how
you acquired this information. For example, if you saw the chubby fellow on the wall with your
own eyes, you’d use one form of the verb, but if you had simply read or heard about it, you’d
use a different form.
Do English, Indonesian, Russian and Turkish speakers end up attending to, understanding, and
remembering their experiences differently simply because they speak different languages? [88]
These points may seem dully self apparent to some of you, but think about the conventions of fiction
literature: not only different genres but also different literary movements. For instance, the so called post-
modern desire to attack or change linearity or the self within a piece: also a psychological orientation. What
is post-modernism but a hall of mirrors, a boundary which could not be traversed? Many tried to use the
bricolage of all times, all cultures to create a new, open narrative but found themselves bounded, all the same,
within the confines of what they were. What they know.
As an author, thankfully, we can embrace these limitations, or at least choose them with greater freedom than
ever before. We needn’t escape ourselves, but we do need to be aware of relationships between consciousness,
experience, and culture to be a writer. Or so I have come to realize. However, we must also learn the mystical
art of making a living in an industry built from paper-thin profits, and it wouldn’t hurt to be able to reverse
engineer a tank and create an irrigation system out of branches and vines while you’re at it.
The publishing world has moved far away from the position of post-modernism, seeking as always to find
a safe, dark place where it can grow, unchallenged. (In my imagination, the publishing industry has just
transformed into Shelob.) The menu is ostensibly based on what people are buying, and people buy off the
menu because it is menu we are trained to pick from.
Genre fiction does not rule in sales just because of its ease, but because it primarily serves to provide a
kind of predictability, a kind of preselected experience, which we find lacking in life. It is comfort food in all
times, but we need it most in times when the most well-adapted learn that hiding in fantasy can be a survival
technique. Harry Potter, Luke Skywalker, etc are intrinsically “special.” We are not. At the least, we believe
we are not, and we seek to be. How many stories depend on some variant of this principle? The narratives
of pop culture further simplify and centralize the desire for an ego to be gratified in its uniqueness, to be
recognized and rewarded. To stand out, to have meaning conferred from the outside. This too is the opiate
of consumerism, value granted not from within but without. (And any amount of self-congratulation falls
pretty flat when your stomach is empty.)
67. As Cassirer’s Philosophy of Symbolic Forms was published in 1923 and Muller died in 1900.
• 82 •
Certainly it would seem odd to us to have a story full of protagonists who accomplish fairly little, a story
arranged in no particular order which begins somewhere around chapter 3 and ends at chapter 6, right before
it seems it just might go somewhere. (Heart failure. Poor guy.) But this might be a more accurate portrayal
of many of our lives.
Of course, this approach too could be analyzed as the need for banality to structure experience. All attempts
at rendering story, or of obscuring all the parts that we think of as story, belies an underlying intent. John
Cage’s 4’33” of silence still attempts to make a statement. As I said previously about myth and the arts, it
is impossible for a piece of art or literature to be spoken of, even if the actual piece is a blank page, without
a myth or narrative forming around that empty space. Perhaps the narrative is simply “the man has gone
stark raving mad, clearly.” But then that is the story, and for all we know the artist could play that up and his
relatives could make millions long after his impoverished body is interned under some unmarked grave.68
Let’s take this full circle: the form and format of an art form, literature in this case, shows things not as
they are, not even as we personally wish they may be (though some try), no—to those in the process of
crafting a message, they represent what various people in between the artist and you think you want to hear.
Agents, film studios, publishers, etc want to get behind something they think represents an identified—
codified, even—mechanism of desire. What is the point of a piece then? To satisfy their concept of your
desire, represented and quantified through sales, focus groups, and so on ad nauseam. When you’re framing
something for them, then, it’s a guessing game. You’re pitching to what you think they think you want to
read. That’s convoluted, right? It’s the kind of thing that’ll trip you up worse the more you think about it.
Formulas, genres and so on obviously work on this method, as a cost/risk value assessment, and the only
way to expand them is to go straight to the source. In other words, some guy over in the corner can write a
book or maybe—if they’re really resourceful and have a ton of talented, reliable friends—make a movie. Or
someone can pitch an idea and “crowdsource” the funds. They can do so without any consideration of the
psychological desire that the piece fulfills. Or they can base it on something else, something rooted in their
personal narrative.
However, there is no solid mechanism for taking that and delivering it to people who may find value in
it. You’re lost in the wilderness and now you have this nice paperweight to keep you company. It’s called
your novel. Or album. Or film. Whatever it is, it’s an albatross across your neck until you “Sell It” one way
or another. Some people might like it but most likely they won’t hear about it, and even if they do, and
they’re interested, ten thousand other things with larger budgets are vying for their attention. Every. Waking.
Second. (If you want to really experience what this is like first hand, go to Comic Con and try to push your
book with a budget of $500. Make sure to get a booth right next to Marvel.)
So, the mythic artist must take these things into account, be aware of them, and yet be able to completely
ignore them in the midst of the creative process if there is any hope of the sacred ever peeking its head
through. In this regard, the sacred must be conjoined with the creative act. When we speak of religion
without any sense of understanding of the sacred, we are indeed not talking about religion at all but rather
politics or history. Even the most “devout” atheist, without realizing it, is committing a deeply religious,
deeply sacred act if they are creating a work of art with mythic resonance.
Let’s take a look backwards and tie this into what has already been discussed, before moving forward.
Because we create maps of our environment that are not the same as the environment, we may analyze our
maps—our ideological history, as I said in Dissecting A Living Thing—and through this, continually deepen
our experience of our self. This deepening can occur in a dialog through the form of art that is informed by
personal myth. Art is public psychoanalysis, and symbols are devices which refer to psychological realities, so
long as you can decipher the reference, and avoid the disastrous consequences of fundamentalism. (Mistaking
the symbol for that which is referenced.) Religious symbols are particularly potent in this regard; they too
represent reality, but to the believer, they in fact represent ultimate reality. Through unraveling the reality
that the symbols points at, and invoking it, one does not merely understand religious symbols—one lives
through them. This, not fanatical belief or even blind faith, is what religion is.
Just through looking at the etymology of the word, we can see this. “Religion” comes from the Latin
religiō, religiōn-, perhaps from religāre, “to tie fast.” Note that the meaning of this word is fundamentally
the same as the meaning of the Sanskrit word Yoga, literally “union, yoking,” or “to join.” In both cases it is
an attempt at joining the reference, which the religion refers to but cannot in itself embody, the social body,
68. This is part of what we’ve been playing with in “the world’s first Gonzomentary series,” Clark.
• 83 •
and the individual. 69 “Sutra” also comes from the root from which we get the word “suture,” to bind or
tie together. So it may seem strange to work our way into a discussion of sacred art through religion, but it
is through that avenue that it can be best understood, if “religion” is stripped of baggage. Though I may be
accused of the etymological fallacy by implying that the “true” meaning of these words is to be found in their
origins, that does not dispel the underlying point. Perhaps if we simply think of it as a means of bringing the
sacred into our consideration of the profane, this baggage can naturally fall away.
When we look at a Hindu God, or the brand representing a company for that matter, we see a symbol.
They are symbols composed of many other interlocking symbols. We’ve dealt with some of the complexities
and problems posed by this already. However, I’ve given no sense of what we can do with these symbols, how
we can see it as immanent or more importantly, how we can interact with or otherwise invoke them.
How is such a symbol invoked? I’ll use the example given through the occult framework, as it is so
generalized that it can be applied to many other seemingly incongruous frames. What I’m about to say
should be taken as a metaphor which can extend into any domain. One steps outside of their normal role,
making their body and mind a fit receptacle for a particular energy70 which is codified in symbols. These
symbols may be impressed upon the mind as words, but during ritual, through art, theater, meditation, and
so on, scent, colors, etc. all congruent with the nature of the invocation strengthen these associations, further
exalting the mind to allow this “deity” to indwell within it.71 This is, as I said, the occult framework for how
this is done. It is actually not much different from the religious formula. But the underlying method is not
tied to any particular conceptual frame. Many artists work with the sacred, even if their work appears vulgar,
even if they have no awareness of an occult tradition. We can look at it psychologically, as Jungians do, but
that perspective also isn’t requisite for someone to build myths. Many modern occultists attempt to engage
with these symbols in such a formalized way that their personal myth is nowhere to be found. There is no
power in it. Words read blankly from a Medieval Grimoire have as little potency as a Catholic Mass, if you
have no personal connection with either.72
One thing does appear to be certain. In the 21st Century we most commonly connect with mythology
not through occultism or even religious ceremony, but rather through our media: movies, albums, video
clips, books, etc. The Internet has created a new dissemination medium, the repercussions of which are not
fully know. For many Americans, movie stars and the like have become our pantheon, and the mirage of
Hollywood our Olympus. We have, perhaps, lost touch with the function of art because so many have lost
touch with the function of myth. However, it is impossible to ignore the way that mythology overruns the
life of popular artists and musicians.
The difference between different practices is cultural and aesthetic. I theorize that the ritual garb and mask
of a Siberian shaman and the makeup of a pseudonymous performer like Alice Cooper or Marilyn Manson
could serve the same function, if the performer approaches the act with this kind of intent, although this is
69. This “joining” may also apply to the social body of the religion, though it is usually through the imposition of social dynamics that
the religion polarizes into its opposite, and atrocities (holy wars as with the Crusades, bloody in-fighting over interpretation as with the
Protestants, inquisitions, etc.), occur.
70. “Energy” may not be the most telling word to use, but it carries less baggage than the term “archetype,” which in some ways is more
appropriate. What we are speaking of is that disembodied character, whatever it may be, that the symbols refer to. Gods, spirits, and the like
exist, in the least, as objectifications of existential, human realities, as well as the disembodied forces that may effect us on a variety of levels.
So it is that the Gods resemble us, and are more like us than unlike— otherwise, what use would the Gods themselves have for War? At the
same time, War reflects an aspect of the nature of the universe outside of the human sphere, and could be said to inform it: bellum omnium
contra omnes. Does Hobbes’ war of all against all derive from man or nature? This is the paradox. There are some convincing arguments, for
instance that in Marvin Harris’ Cannibals and Kings, that despite its historic prevalence, war is the result of a cultural rather than biological
imperative. [89]
71. There are many methods of practice, however, a thorough investigation of them all would lead us far astray. There has also been
considerable work done to provide systems for charting the semiotics of occult and religious symbol in a way that can be practically useful to
individuals wishing to perform rituals, although nothing of the sort is necessary in terms of efficacy. Not surprisingly, these efforts often come
in forms generally scoffed at by the scientific and academic community, on the one hand, and indigenous practitioners on the other. (Aleister
Crowley’s Book of Thoth, Israel Regardie’s Garden of Pomegranates, and Dion Fortune’s Mystical Qabbalah, to name a few.) Less systematic
approaches exist, shamanic traditions from around the world, internal martial arts, Voudon and Santeria, and so on, but of course these are
more difficult to systematize, by virtue of what they are. For this reason I personally am more drawn to them, as the intuitive rather than
rational function seem to be closer to the fault-line of the creative fire. Regardless, all of these studies are invaluable to artists that recognize that
art is a form of ritual, and ritual is a (often theatrical) form of symbolic psychotherapy. As Aleister Crowley himself points out, in this regard,
their historic accuracy is irrelevant, though all of them seem quite fond of inventing historical lineages for the sake of austerity, Crowley being
a chief architect of this approach to cult-building.
72. And by “personal connection” I mean driving passion. You have to feel it to your bones or get the hell out and find something where
you do!
• 84 •
not to say that Alice Cooper is a shaman. The mask serves as an interface with the audience.
In creating myths, working from the materials provided both by experience and the past experience of
those who have come before, we don’t merely create new distractions. It has been observed that technological
progress often follows a course set out years before in science fiction. Of course, in the process of actualizing
such ideas, the technologies may change. But the seed of that progress comes from fiction.
The same is true in any field. The power of the creative imagination cannot be understated. Even in
business, where difference is overtly punished, there is a growing realization at the upper levels that the
squashing of untamable creativity is having a retarding effect on profits. Career consultants and marketers
like Seth Godin make their living, in part, by bringing this fact to the awareness of the stodgy powers-that-
be. As he said once on his blog, “the future is unmatched socks.”
The narratives we build and symbols we use have a great, if conditional, power. They do not exist within
a void, however. I do not mean to imply that simply by changing the linguistic structure and associations
connected with a war zone we can transmute it into Shangri-La, though this is of course part of the rhetorical
style developed by Rupert Murdoch and Fox News. We are social animals, and the “magic” that we work
with language operates primarily in the social and historic, in other words, human sphere, even though
mythic consciousness may not recognize this boundary. Under most circumstances, we aren’t capable of
entirely changing the nature of reality outside ourselves merely by calling it by a different name, even though
there is a “magical” power in naming which goes beyond mere representation.
This is how myth can serve an active function in our lives. Consider the Hindu goddess Kali. The
quintessential image of Kali Ma shows her dancing on the slain body of her initiate (or Shiva, depending on
the image), wearing a belt of human skulls, and a long tongue one could imagine licking the marrow out of
a bone. She is the devouring side of the mother archetype, a symbol that appears in many forms but possibly
nowhere so clearly as here. To some, this is just an odd image painted on canvas. But to others, those who
wish to enter the psychological domain represented by the symbol, she is much more than an image, symbol,
or idea. Worshipers of Kali become that initiate, offer themselves up as a sacrifice in a mythological sense, so
as to effect a psychological shift whereby they release attachment to the elements of life that might otherwise
bar them from becoming truly human. This path of practice does not require the asceticism of monk-hood
because the binding glue, you might say, of possession is undone.
A similar transformation is possible through any of the symbols we deeply identify with. All mythic characters
can be analyzed and experienced in this way: as elements of the complex that makes up the individual, the
culture, the natural necessities of the universe. All gods, demons, heroes, and villains are constructed from
symbols which can have real, psychological impact. But only if engaged with directly, rather than passively.
This kind of engagement can be arrived at through mythic art, though the audience must meet the artist
halfway, with this knowledge and a willingness to participate. This is a difficult task for the modern, mythic
artist, because audiences almost have to be tricked into this kind of participation. Entertainment takes center
stage, and jadedness has become the defense mechanism of an over-stimulated public.
I’d like to provide a more specific example of this process, though I hesitate for fear of implying that there is
any one “right” way of exploring it. When I was in Asheville with my wife Jazmin, we saw a wide assortment
of clearly mythological pieces of art. (That I keep seeing examples of this outside the sphere of my personal
contacts only further amplifies my sense that there is a resurgence of this approach to the creative process, at
least in a conscious sense.) Some of these were like miniature altars or sacred objects, many involved various
pieces of found objects, re-constructed elements, miniature books, personal relics, and so on. This got us
to thinking about building our own—not by way of forming a derivative current, but simply as a way of
exploring a particular idea.
Jazmin found a number of $.25 books at the local library and this served as a jumping off point. 25 does
not immediately have significance to me, but it is the square of 5, and that has many symbolic meanings.
We chose to focus in on the Hierophant, (which is the fifth Major Arcana card), the throat chakra (which
is the fifth), and the Fibonacci sequence (of which five is one number of the sequence), mostly to serve as a
jumping off point for what these objects are to become.
One can get fixated on the symbolism and use it as a strict metric rather than a loose guide. This can
be constricting. As you fixate in on such seemingly arbitrary things, you may begin to be taken by various
connections—for instance, the ideas behind the throat chakra, of taking the root power from the first
and third chakras and expressing it upon the world, is something we both need to work on, or of the
• 85 •
association of 5 and the Hierophant. This “meaning out of chaos” is, as we’ve said time and again, a root
of the mythological process. So right away this becomes not only an exploration and meditation, but also a
means of attempting to take a first step towards making psychological changes in ourselves.
The more you work with the objects themselves, in constructing and assembling them, the more opportunity
you are given to infuse it with personal meaning, which is the ritual element. That is really where the power
in ritual lies; the repetitive nature of it that can occur in large organizations, where people parrot the same
motions generation after generation, eventually leeches it of its power. The sacred gradually becomes inert,
the gold becomes ash. The sacred is turned profane.
Of course, some artists build objects like this and then say they can’t possibly sell it or even display it later
because it means too much to them. However, I immediately think of Tibetan sand paintings, mandalas that
require an incredible amount of skill to build and which are destroyed no sooner than they are completed.
Such things become aesthetic rather than sacred objects the moment they are completed. At that point, they
may reflect some of their meaning, or even different meanings, to an audience. They may inspire, as the
pieces that we saw in the galleries we went to did for us. But their sacred purpose, the process of creating
them, has already been spent. The artist moves on.
To summarize, and paint this large: ritual is an enactment of a mythology allowing us access to dimensions
of our singular and collective being, through the language of symbols with specific connotations, in what is
essentially a play-acting process. Yet by designating it as “play-acting” one should not be misled into thinking
that this is merely representational. Far from it, the energies and beings dealt with may be thought of as real
or psychological projections, depending on the mindset of the viewer, but ultimately they are as real or unreal
as any other impression that we might have. Every action, word and gesture may have symbolic meaning
or mythological resonance. This resonance must occur between the myth or ritual and the individual(s)
enacting it, in whatever mediums they choose to work.
Many different myths can be woven from the same grouping of facts. Losing everything can be the
beginning of a hero’s or fool’s journey, or it could be the beginning of a descent into the abyss. As we will
later see in Initiation: Masks of Identity, even the descent into the abyss has transformational potentialities.
• 86 •
After God: The Revolutionary Absolute

Rowan G. Tepper, M.A.
The Creation of a Concept
The “Idea” of the “absolute” is just as deadening (fatal) as the refusal of the absolute.
“Insufferable, true, but still to carry on, and in the pleasure of carrying on
to draw a new knowledge of the absolute. Inexpressible, true, but to say it is
inexpressible is twice as reprehensible. It is to turn one’s back on it twice.”
Roger Giroux [93]
I. The Metaphysical Necessity: From Essential Experience Toward a Revolutionary Absolute

The concept of the absolute responds to a psychological necessity. However, in our contemporary
historical situation, all philosophical and theological conceptions of the absolute (including Hegel’s) have
been thoroughly repudiated and discredited following Nietzsche’s proclamation of the death of God, which
has resulted in a disconcerting, and sometimes distressing, absence in contemporary thought.
And yet, this necessity remains, as René Daumal writes in You’ve Always Been Wrong: “In order to exercise
his reason, his judgment, and his will, man needs to believe in an absolute which is real being and highest
truth and supreme value all in one.” [94] The distress felt in the face of the void left by the death of God
calls for the creation of a new concept of the Absolute appropriate to the contemporary situation: a concept
of the Absolute which owes nothing to either traditional theology or to Idealism, for it is as Pierre Drieu la
Rochelle wrote in his wartime journal: “the suppression of a divine absolute forces us to revive the absolute
on a human level.” [95]
It may be objected that all conceptions of the Absolute are obsolete, that while there may be a psychological
need that is fulfilled by the concept of the Absolute, this need is nothing more than a relic of a past theological
hegemony, and, as such, we ought rather to consign the Absolute to oblivion so as to free ourselves from our
last, invisible dogmatic chains.
On the other hand, the Absolute is not merely a category of theology and metaphysics, but it is also a
political concept, for Carl Schmitt observes in Political Theology, that “All significant concepts of the modem
theory of the state are secularized theological concepts…because of their systematic structure.” [96] It is the
inherently political nature of the concept of the Absolute that demands that it not merely be abandoned, for
it would then be left only in the hands of those who would attach it to the State, that is, to make use of it to
authorize unchecked, absolute power and, in its name, engage in state-sanctioned political violence to sustain
the absolute State and to defend it from the vicissitudes of time and history. The concept of the Absolute thus
demands that it be not only rehabilitated, but rather reinvented or, if you prefer, created anew.
This effort, which attempts to construct a radical concept of the Absolute, one devoid of all traces of
theology, must produce an intrinsically temporal concept, opposed to the eternal stasis of the (Platonic) idea
in every previous conceptualization of the Absolute. Such a concept would, correlatively, be oriented toward
reality, rather than toward abstract ideas; toward the transient, rather than the unchanging; and toward the
particular, rather than the general or universal, into which the traditional concept of the Absolute subsumes
them by means of obliterating difference.
Furthermore, the opposition between the Absolute as it has traditionally been conceived and the concept
of the Absolute just proposed maps directly onto the opposition between the emanative tradition and
immanence. It is not possible here to give due consideration to the texts of the Neoplatonic emanative
tradition, which makes it necessary to limit our consideration of this matter, such that only the connection
and compatibility of immanence and the Absolute can adequately be addressed.
• 87 •
In this task, a relatively small number of remarks scattered throughout Gilles Deleuze’s Expressionism and
Philosophy: Spinoza, will serve as our point of departure.73 As a consequence of the fact that Deleuze’s remarks
concerning the Absolute in Spinoza are relatively few outside of the chapter bearing the Absolute for its title,
and that they are also widely dispersed throughout the rest of the book. The concept of the Absolute, insofar
as this book is concerned with it at all,74 will not, and should not be the primary focus of this essay.
Our work will, rather, draw upon the writings of many who hadn’t had the good fortune to become or
remain widely known. These thinkers inhabit a space on the margins of the canon, and it is only fitting
to draw upon the relatively obscure so as to undertake an apparently “untimely” effort to rehabilitate or
re-create a concept which has not been a major object of serious philosophical study in the last century.75
The most prominent of these thinkers include René Daumal, Roger Gilbert-Lecomte and Edmond Jabès.
Furthermore, if the production of a concept of the Absolute is to be the fundamental problem posed here,
then we must be equally concerned with the question of the contemporary relevance of metaphysics. It is
thus fortuitous that we encounter the pseudo-philosophy invented by Alfred Jarry, pataphysics in Daumal,
for whom the irruption of the absurd into experience permits the Absolute to momentarily emerge in the
form of reality laid bare of the words and concepts with which we ordinarily clothe it. This reality, according
to the definition of pataphysics is one in which the particular, rather than the general is of greatest import.
[97]
One further prefatory note remains: while not central to the argument of this essay, reference will be made
to The Little Book of Unsuspected Subversion, by Edmond Jabès. In the singular case of Jabès’ text, I interpret
his use of the word “God” to be equivalent to the term “the Absolute,” an interpretation supported by Jabès
own statement that “his kind of Judaism is ‘Judaism after God.’” In his own words: “It is true, the word,
‘Jew,’ the word, ‘God,’ are metaphors for me: ‘God,’ the metaphor for the void…” [98] And, of course, it
takes no philosophical contortionist to establish a close relation between the void and the Absolute; the void
either as constituting a “negative absolute,” that is, “absolute absence,” or as a figure for the metaphysical
vacuum that is the contemporary era—the absence of any Absolute (or the untenability and anachronism of
any remaining inherited concept of the Absolute). We find further justification for provisionally and for our
purposes equating God and the Absolute in Daumal as well: “What one takes absolutely seriously, what one
doubts in no way whatsoever can take on the name god.” [94]
In the history of Western philosophy we can clearly see the kinship between virtually every concept of
the Absolute that has appeared since Antiquity. The Neoplatonic, emanative tradition thus has a concept
of the Absolute that differs little from the one which would emerge around the turn of the 19th century in
German Idealism. In the Enneads of Plotinus “the One” is identical to that which we now call the Absolute.
In the fifth Ennead we read: “there is first the One beyond being…and then in turn being and intellect, and
third comes the nature of the soul. And just as in nature there are these three of which we have spoken,
so we should consider them also to be in us…Our soul…therefore is something divine and of a different
nature.” [99] Furthermore, “all being are beings by the one,” [VI, 9 [9], 1] and yet “since the nature of the
One is generative of all things, it is none of them. So it is neither something nor qualified or quantified
or intellect or soul; it is not in movement or again at rest, not in place, not in time, but itself by itself of
a singular form, and rather formless, being before all form…” [VI, 9 [9], 3] Not only is the Absolute One
of Neoplatonism immediately transcendent, “beyond being,” but it unifies the diversity of beings as their
origin and guarantees an ontological continuity between them. Moreover, as Deleuze notes in numerous
instances, the descent and differentiation of beings from their origin in the One establishes an ontological
hierarchy—and this hierarchy was in fact already present, insofar as being exist on a lower ontological plane
than does the One (if it may be said that the one exists, properly speaking, given that its place is “beyond
being” and thereby is not a being per se). While there is a limited, unidirectional form of immanence to be
seen in the relationship of beings and the One, for all beings are immanent in the One, the primacy of the
One prohibits us from attributing to Neoplatonism any version of ontological univocity.
73. The repeated use of the term “the Absolute” in this book appears rather incongruous with respect to my reading and understanding
of Deleuze’s Oeuvre as a whole. It is, on closer inspection, reconcilable with his philosophical positions, provided that it is modified in a
particular manner, such as the way it will be herein transformed.
74. It would appear that the concept of the absolute was certainly not one of Deleuze’s major concerns, whether in this book or
elsewhere.
75. A survey of the relevant literature revealed that only an extremely small proportion was published after approximately 1920. This
is not to say that no work has been done on the concept of the Absolute (exempting, for obvious reasons, Absolute Knowledge in Hegel’s
Phenomenology) since then, but more recent work makes up no more than 15% of the literature reviewed.
• 88 •
We may find one of the most lucid presentations of the concept of the Absolute in German Idealism in F.
W. Schelling’s System of Transcendental Idealism (1800). Schelling’s formulation, in my view, characterizes the
Absolute not only as he understood it, but is also adequate, if not identical, to the concept of the Absolute
in both Fichte and Hegel. Schelling writes that: “the absolute acts through each single intelligence, whose
action is thus itself absolute, and to that extent neither free nor restricted, but both at once, absolutely free,
and for that very reason also necessary.” [100] We immediately begin to see how minute the difference
between Schelling’s “Absolute” and Plotinus’ “One” are: beings are again united by virtue of the Absolute
which acts through the activity of every being endowed with intellect, likewise the Absolute is a necessary,
eternal origin out of which beings emerge, differentiate and become individuated, all the while remaining
united by virtue of their common origin in the Absolute.
It is warranted to use Schelling’s concept for German Idealism in general, including Hegel, for “history
as a whole is a progressive, gradually self-disclosing revelation of the absolute.” [100] While Schelling’s
concept is certainly not identical in every way to Hegel or Fichte’s, it differs principally insofar as the
concept would take on additional features for Hegel or Fichte—all three, however, share the characteristics
specified by Schelling.
II. Absolute Buggery: Turning Deleuze & Spinoza Around

While the particular point of departure changes little, if anything, it is perhaps best to at least acknowledge
the specific definition in part one of Spinoza’s Ethics out of which the question of the Absolute arises:
By ‘God’ I understand: a thing that is absolutely infinite, i.e. a substance consisting of an infinity of
attributes, each of which expresses an eternal and infinite essence. I say ‘absolutely infinite’ in contrast to
‘infinite in its own kind’.
If something is infinite only in its own kind, there can be attributes that it doesn’t have; but if something
is absolutely infinite its nature contains every positive way in which a thing can exist—which means that
it has all possible attributes. It follows, therefore, that the Absolute (conceived as the absolute infinite in its
relation to finite being) would figure for God, insofar as Spinoza conceives of God as possessing, essentially,
every attribute (while we mere mortals can only even know of two) to an infinite degree. God as Nature and
therefore as the Absolute is thus expressive according to forms latent in it, for:
The differences in which the Absolute finds expression are determinate forms of the Absolute
itself, and each of them must, therefore, be conceived as an infinite mind, infinite, in Spinoza’s
language, in suo genere and in the Absolute. What appear to us as things are in their inner
being the centers from which the Absolute experiences and appreciates in infinite ways the one
world in which it is revealed. [101]
This convincing interpretation is remarkably well suited to the task of elaborating the less than thorough
treatment of the Absolute in Deleuze’s reading of Spinoza.
It is interesting that early in the book, within the chapter on the Absolute, Deleuze makes a passing remark
in which it is difficult not to see that he is making an extremely rare allusion to Hegel, specifically the preface
to the Phenomenology of Spirit. He writes: “expressionist philosophy brings with it…[a] metaphor: …that of a
seed which “expresses” the tree as a whole,” a statement which goes beyond mere allusion to a stunningly rare
parallelism between Deleuze and Hegel! [102] This allusion highlights a point raised by Kojève concerning
Spinoza in his Lectures on Hegel, that is, according to Kojeve’s interpretation, “Spinoza’s absolute Knowledge
must [like Hegel’s] be symbolized by a closed circle. Indeed, if Spinoza says that the Concept is Eternity,
whereas Hegel says it is Time, they have much in common: the Concept is not a relationship.” [103]
Fortunately, further elaboration on “the Concept” as such for our purposes would be superfluous. What I
would like to highlight here is the proximity of the Hegelian and Spinozistic concepts of the Absolute, while
they differ on the relative value attributed to either Time or Eternity.
Furthermore, if God is by nature expressive, “expression is not simply manifestation, but is also the
constitution of God himself. Life, that is, expressivity, is carried into the absolute.” [102] By virtue of his
expressive nature, God, or, if you will, the Absolute, is immanent in relation to life. God, or the Absolute, in
this view would amount to the apotheosis of life, considered as fundamentally expressive in nature.
In this way, Deleuze can write that “no ‘nature’ lacks anything; all forms of being are affirmed without
limitation, attributed to something absolute, since the absolute is in its nature infinite in all its forms.” [102]
• 89 •
Inversely, all beings are constitutive elements of nature and are therefore in a relation not only of being
expressed and subsequently, as re-expressive, but are also equally expressive in essence.
The Absolute, as such, is radically unique, and this is not merely by virtue of being singular, but rather of
being both capable of expression and predicable, albeit to a radically limited extent. Moreover, it is by virtue
of the fact that “Only a quantitative distinction of beings is consistent with the qualitative identity of the
absolute. So that each finite being must be said to express the absolute, according to the intensive quantity
that constitutes its essence, according. …to the degree of its power. Individuation is, in Spinoza, neither
qualitative nor extrinsic, but qualitative and intrinsic, intensive.” [102]
The Absolute of the Spinoza as portrayed in Deleuze’s book, is thus intimately and inextricably bound
up with the individuation of beings, who then express the Absolute once again, albeit at this juncture, they
express the Absolute in concrete and social reality in all of its particularity, in a finite and frequently absurd
world. Actual reality, thus conceived as the reflection and expression of the Absolute in the finite world,
is revealed as containing, at least in potentia every possible expression of the absolute, which would thus
constitute a reality governed by a principle of immanence.76
III. Awakening to the Absolute (René Daumal)

René Daumal opens You’ve Always Been Wrong77 by enjoining his readers to begin the process of awakening
and to continually maintain such wakefulness by means of countless, ceaseless awakenings, lest one succumb
to “spiritual death.” He asks of his reader: “What I would like you to try to do with me can be summed up
in two words: remain awake. I first asked you to awaken, to realize what you’re conscious of right now. You
are conscious of a continual change,” and he forcefully reminds us that “awakening is not a state, it’s an act…
of reflexion.” [94] Daumal then exhorts his readers to resist the “inertia of consciousness,” which is to return
to the slumbering state, that is of the automatism of the everyday that at once blind us to the Absolute that
is the raw, precognitive experience of the world that we inhabit that, during the fleeting instants in which
it does irrupt into the field of experience it confronts us with absolute absurdity; the absurdity of a world
stripped of literally every preconceived notion which are necessary fictions (in the full Nietzschean sense) that
make life possible. [94] The Absolute, so conceived, is to us ephemeral, and likewise our experience of it is a
fleeting and momentary one. Our experience is, to quote from Jabès, one in which there are “moments that
are born and die in a moment. They will never be accounted for.” [98] Daumal wrote of such a momentary
experience years earlier in an essay intended for the never-published fifth issue of Le Grand Jeu, in 1932. He
contends that “the existence of each and every thing in the world, the presence of consciousnesses distinct
from yours, your own existence, finally, as an individual and finite being—all… must…appear intolerably
absurd to you.” [104]
Here, the term “the Absolute” has not been hastily chosen, for we can see that reality as perceived by
wakeful consciousness might of its own warrant such a designation. It is not, however, necessary to forge an
artificial link between the experience of the absurd and the absolute, for Daumal quite explicitly gives us a
definition of the Absolute as he understood it. In the third chapter of You’ve Always Been Wrong (leaving aside
the second for later consideration) he clearly defines the Absolute in an almost axiomatic manner. He writes
“For my part, I name as absolute whatever I cannot doubt even as I doubt everything…the only thing worthy
of the name is the limit which is the goal of the unceasing effort made my awakening consciousness.” [94]
Naturally, this limit would be either unreachable in principle, or it resists and eludes our grasp, such that
we must ceaselessly reflect upon it, awaken to its reality, so as to have even the slightest possibility of resisting
that inertia which has the results in the reduction the experience of the Absolute into a mere abstraction: “in
order to grasp this notion as a living truth and not just as a simple abstract concept, one must affect in one’s
own mind the dynamics for which the absolute is the limit term. This requires thinking.” [94] And, more
76. By way of transition to Daumal’s conception of the Absolute, the following fragment, translated from the Œuvres complètes of Roger Gilbert-
Lecomte, who was Daumal’s closest and most consistent collaborator, as well as a founding member of Le Grand Jeu in 1928, might well prove informative:
“Everything is in everything.”
1) The cosmic totality is not chaos. The unity of life has a sense, a polarized evolution. It walks, it is an animate being, an animal.
2)The cosmic totality has a unity, which is a living organism. Everything participates in the whole. Their appearance as separate leads all to
the same root. Therefore, every action upon one part resounds across the whole and all other parts. The cosmos is a tree.
The cosmic totality is not amorphous. It is a total crystal, and each of its parts is a crystal which reproduces it completely.” [259]
77. An incomplete work at the time of his early death in 1944 which was completed by his brother Jack Daumal according to his outlines,
which are included as an appendix to the book.
• 90 •
specifically, it calls for “act[s] of negating [which] separates, throws all appearances into the world of forms,
into manifestation.” [94]
It would not be unwarranted to make the claim that for Daumal, this process of ceaseless awakening to
concrete reality in all its particularity is no mere thought experiment or even worse, a form of mysticism; it
is rather the very condition of possibility for real agency and, by extension, politics. Moreover, according to
Daumal, the effect that experience of the Absolute is the necessary impetus for:
the act of revolt, in essence, [that] is negation; it sets into motion a dialectical process whose final term is
the limit at which consciousness realizes its own status as absolute negation fully separated from the objects
negated. But the I which is thus posited with no determinations other than the negation of all determinations
can no longer be called the individual. This moment of consciousness coincides with the God of the ‘negative
theology’ of Plotinus, that is, God considered from an exclusively transcendent angle, rigorously separate
from anything to which a positive predicate can be attributed…by renouncing its corporeal or social being,
consciousness gives rise to the visible manifestation of revolt; once the spirit of revolt dries up. [94]
Let us not hastily conclude that such radical separation and the coincidence of undetermined consciousness
(qua negation) with “the God of the ‘negative theology’ of Plotinus,” a God who is radically transcendent
and “to which no positive predicate can be attributed.” In order to attain this liminal state, the opposing
liminal state must first be experienced so as to reveal consciousness to be “absolute negation.” This other limit
of awakening consciousness is an awakening to the Double, the Contradictory, the Absurd, consciousness
containing the seed of its own death; a violent break with inertia and spiritual death, but also with primal
unity which shatters upon awakening…a warning to man that he must unceasingly renew his tremendous
effort to awaken if he is to avoid falling into the void by taking conscious possession of himself during the act
of revolt, man will know henceforth and forever in his own present awareness the Distinction between Good
and Evil; in the eternal present of that primal act, he now calls himself Prometheus and Lucifer. [94]
Let there be no mistake: there is not the slightest hint of nostalgia for “primal unity,” but neither is
there a rejection of community, nor does the first liminal state affirm the position of radical transcendence.
This position is, in fact, obliterated at the moment when individual revolt becomes collective revolutionary
struggle. These liminal states rather “are two metaphysical points serving as ultimate boundary markers for
the future development of every revolt. The particular course of any given revolt can be inscribed on the line
that runs from one to the other.” [94]
Because the “I” has been dissociated from all of the determinations that constitute individuality, “the spirit
of revolt [can] evolve into the revolutionary spirit.” [94] The obvious tension or contradiction that exists
between these points is resolved in a suitably dialectical manner (for Daumal was a very perceptive reader
of Marx): in the first place, if one were to act so as to provoke a conflict or struggle with another radically
separate individual, he
proceeds necessarily toward his own destruction. If he wants to escape contradiction, he must understand
that the things to be combated are all those inclinations toward death, all the forces of spiritual inertia, and
that he must fight them for the sake of something greater than his own individual identity if he doesn’t
want to fight against himself. He will find this supra-individuality in his own awareness of being human
and, consequently, in the awareness of humanity insofar as it is awakening. And since this awakening…
corresponds to the uprising of the oppressed part of society, the rebel will have to give his individual revolt
over to the revolutionary class of his era. [94]
It is thus that the thought of the Absolute, insofar as it enters into the field of experience in the act of
awakening, is anything but a sterile, irrelevant pipe-dream of armchair metaphysicians so far as Daumal
is concerned. Rather it is an essential moment of self-negation which “must be unendingly repeated and
pursued, leading consciousness ever closer to its complete liberation from all forms in the Universal.
Revolutionary conviction is therefore only a moment in this…journey, yet a moment which can endure
for an entire human lifetime.” [94] There is no vacation for the true revolutionary, The concrete experience
of contact with the Absolute, is always both “the apprehension of that pure Essence which negates; on the
other, it is sleep, so long as we consent to mistake it for a definitive state, a resting place.” [94] Complacency
and respite are prohibited if one have and sustain authentically Revolutionary conviction. Indeed, there is an
authentically revolutionary conviction expressed in the following lines from Drieu La Rochelle’s diary: “I do
not believe in individuals, I never have done. I do not believe in geniuses, in ‘characters’; what I admire about
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them is a substance they have in common with everybody, what attracts me are the resemblances, because
they lead me to unity.” [95]
It is perhaps imprecise and even counterproductive to speak of “the Absolute” in language, as a name
for that which is properly beyond linguistic expression. And while this means I have given name to that to
which no name could be equal, for each act of such naming is “one of [the] degradations of the absolute
[that] can thus correspond to an awakening of consciousness at a particular moment in time; once that
moment is past, it becomes an inertial force. But even then…each successive attribution of supreme reality
to wider and wider collectivities has to have been the fruit of real experiences.” [94] Thus is the means by
which it is possible for truly revolutionary, and subsequently Utopian, communities to emerge and perhaps
even to thrive (such an outcome would presuppose a sort of dynamic social equilibrium supporting it, that
is the perpetual maintenance of a critical mass of individuals who are at any given moment engaged in
awakening to the Absolute, to the absurd. It is, moreover, in the constitution of a community endowed with
a revolutionary consciousness that the radical transcendence of the I without predicates or the possibility of
predication is canceled when the spirit of revolt becomes collective revolutionary consciousness which is the
very ground and possibility of community, rather than being, as one might be tempted to think, but one
possibility which most often lies dormant within a constituted community.
IV. The Absolute By Any Other Name…

Neither revolt nor revolution need loudly announce the upcoming insurrection. Indeed, both revolution
and revolt are better served by maintaining silence and subverting the counter-revolutionary threats which are
always already too close for comfort. Without cause, we begin to suspect our own of counter-revolutionary,
reactionary sympathies and actions, and thus subversion can always turn back upon itself. In this little book
by Edmond Jabès, subversion figures prominently as its dominant leitmotif. God is, according to Jabès,
subversive himself, and it is the same for us, we who are likewise immanent in relation to the Absolute.
The God of Jabès is essentially absent, even as his position in the metaphysical structures of our thought
continues to operate, even when devoid of content. This God is virtually identical to the individual considered
as absolute negation by Daumal, except, perhaps, that this God may have no means of saying “I,” for he
is, in Jabès formulation: “A prisoner of thought, could God be subject to the universe? The unthought—
His inconceivable nonduration—would then, alone, perpetuate Him in secret, for eternity is also limpid
nonduration escaping perceived duration. God is a stranger to time, since he is without extension.” [105]
While this God certainly has the attribute of extension, to use Spinozistic terminology, he is unextended, and
is thus not subject to the ravages of time.
It is the standard of the Absolute against which we think to give the measure “of All or Nothing, fulfillment
or void, but [instead, the measure] of the incomplete,’” [105] Relative to the Absolute, all finite beings, and
indeed all of history, is incomplete and fundamentally unable to become complete, to become One. And yet
if a being, whether finite, infinite or Absolute “were One He would be double, since the unique is only the
unthought form of the One, which, no sooner thought, stops being unique.” [105] The Absolute, aka God,
must remain unique, and thus cannot be thought of as “One,” as in Plotinus or Schelling, but rather as the
absolutely singular ground of an experience that opens us to collective existence and can transform solitary
acts of revolt into a revolutionary collectivity. Thus, by articulating a process by means of which collectivity,
viz authentic communal existence, is constituted by our encounter with the Absolute, in its various guises,
we can clearly see the neglected and overlooked political relevance of a newly reinvented version of the
anachronistic concept of the Absolute.
PART II
MODERN MYTH
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pART II: MODERN MYTH
Mythology And Business

James Curcio
T
he marketing and advertising used to disseminate films, books and music shows the profound value
that mythology has within the marketplace. You just need to know what you’re looking for. A brand,
especially in an increasingly interactive media environment, is myth. This role is made more pervasive,
and as a result, also more potentially beneficial or dangerous, thanks to the proliferation of instantaneous and
virtually limitless communication mediums. Despite this, myth is so entrenched in the nature of business
that it is often overlooked within the advertising rhetoric, however, the building of a mythology is the
centerpiece of all effective branding. Though the commercialization of desire and fear, and creation of “false
needs” is essentially coercive, it is the long-term cultural effects that must be considered once we understand
the extent to which marketing and advertising are myth.
Demonstration of this fact clearly requires an understanding both of the function of myth and the function
of a brand. Prevalent misconceptions in both of these cases has clouded what should otherwise be a self-
evident thesis, so the purpose of this brief essay is to identify these misconceptions and clarify the position.
First, a little review of what we’ve already discussed is necessary to frame our transition into consideration
of modern myths. Myth is difficult to explain in a top down manner: it is not merely a story, for some stories
are myths while others are not; it is not merely the beliefs of people retold in stories or other media, because
here again retold beliefs can be devoid of mythic resonance.
Because of this complexity, for the time being let us define a few of these basic qualities through a backward
glance at the function of myths past, before turning to ways that these qualities may or may not be applied
within the world of commerce and industry.
The myths of the past, it is commonly held, were erroneous explanations for the way that the world
is; fanciful stories, which, though colorful and interesting curiosities, surely bear no particular use to our
“modern” lives. This interpretation mistakes the thing (fanciful stories and the accompanying art, etc.) for
their function. As was later re-discovered by an expansive list of preeminent scholars and authors, including
Mircea Eliade, Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, and many others previously mentioned in this work, these
myths do not explain the world, rather, they explain our place within it. Thus, it is not a singular, universal
and static truth that myths represent, but instead a personal, cultural one.
It is commonly accepted that mythology served a central role in the lives of humans up until a time when
science and industry somehow stole away or otherwise replaced our myths. This belief itself serves as a myth
which allows us to establish a place within history for ourselves. It is an internal narrative that defines us in
Enlightenment terms.
This is another role which myth serves: it defines who we are, and defines where we are in time; what
role we serve, and what the nature of that role is. To the actor, the central question is often “What is my
motivation?” The myth underlies our motive, or at least, it gives it voice. It may be encoded in any medium,
but its defining characteristic is its psychological function.
When looking at stories, movies, or any other form of media, we may then, once again, ask: what qualifies
as a myth?
Perhaps first we should look at how we define anything. The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein explained
the nature of meaning in language as a case of “family resemblance.” For example, sisters and brothers,
mothers and daughters, and so on, can all share certain traits, not others, and yet be considered part of the
same family. This, he proposed, was the nature of linguistic definition. Without this concept, we cannot
properly define a game, for by any static qualifier certain activities which all of us consider games would be
ruled out. This concept of “definition” contradicts the Aristotelian categories most of us are still used to,
where a thing is either A or B, and cannot exist as an amalgam of many different potentially contradictory
components, occupying a space somewhere between these various “pure” concepts.
Without a recognition of this fact, it is impossible to properly identify the various elements of myth at
work within the diverse industries of the world today. We lose site of how these elements can function in a
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piecemeal configuration, for example with elements of mythological thinking occurring within a seemingly
unrelated milieu.
Granting these complexities, we may consider how myth functions in the world of business and industry.
The function of a brand is to bring the story of a company to its market. It is to engage the audience in a
way where, ideally, a product or service becomes firmly lodged in he habitual behavior and thinking of a
consumer. In earlier advertising, this was often conveyed through a narrative in a traditional sense.78 It has
transformed into something more visceral than a fully developed narrative, so that McDonald’s for instance
merely conveys the message “I’m lovin’ it,” alongside images of a breakfast sandwich in pleasant morning
light. It presents an image of generic pleasant associations, lacking a narrator: the would-be narrator, of
course, is the customer. As consumer “resistance” to advertising grows, there is an increasing need to build
“engagement” with an audience, which means developing involved narratives that actually integrate with
people’s lives.
When you look at a logo, read the copy on the back of a label, or watch an advertisement on television, it
is commonly believed that the intent is to sell the product to you. Of course, in a sense, this is true. But what
is actually being sold is the myth of the company: what that product or brand represents. The myth of Lexus
doesn’t sell you cars, it sells you luxury. More specifically, it sells a myth of luxury that you can participate
with if you buy into it. (Literally.) Thus, it is of utmost importance for advertisers to understand the function
of myth every bit as much as script writers. All products and their associated myths—people in advertising
speak fairly openly about developing the “story” of the brand, which is the brand’s myth—having to find
a home within the lives and thoughts of the market. We use branded products to identify ourselves, if a
company can leverage mind-share of that ideal.
Like all other forms of myth, when accomplished successfully, the myth of a brand also brings with it a form
of community. For example, witness the success of Apple’s branding: those who identify as “Mac users” do so
with an odd sense of pride, as if they are bucking the system by sharing in the aura of coolness that radiates from
their stylish gear. Every element of this is mythological, including the system that they are bucking, represented
by the doltish PC anthropomorphisized by John Hodgman in their recent advertising campaigns.79
As the business guru Peter Drucker demonstrates in his book Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices,
the marketing of a product is not a function of sales in a traditional sense [108]. It is instead the means of
fulfilling a need. In other words, the function of business itself is the fulfillment of human needs; the more
ubiquitous the need, the more easy the marketing of that product will be if handled properly. The reason
Lexus sells you luxury, rather than a car, is that, within the social apparatus of most industrialized nations,
everyone “needs” a car.80 Lexus is identifying the niche of people with that need who they wish to call their
own, and they are doing it through people who self identify with, or idolize, the values that the myth of their
brand embodies.
Of course, myths also fulfill as well as direct a human need, experienced around the globe and throughout
the history of our species: the need for meaning. The cultish following associated with certain properties is
the result of this “mythic demand,” provided through characters and often fictional worlds which represent
aspects of our inner psychology. To the fans, these worlds are often every bit as real as the phenomenal world
of the everyday. Series such as Vertigo’s Sandman comics, or Serenity, which first appeared as a Fox television
series, then a graphic novel and movie when the series was canceled, Lord of the Rings, and etc are all examples
of how the development of a general world and context in the mind of an audience can provide endless
storytelling possibilities. They also demonstrate that the success of these stories are not based on the medium.
This is of course quite apparent to anyone who considers the recent success of various comics’ franchises
almost overwhelming storming of Hollywood. Without which, surely Marvel wouldn’t have their own film
production studio, nor would San Diego’s massively popular Comic Con be showing such a wholesale
recognition of the mythic power of their media franchises, regardless of the medium that it is presented in.
The success of any media brand demands that it serve as an effective myth: whether Star Trek, Doctor Who,
or Lost, to the “true” fans, these shows represent a pantheon with psychological, even ethical or cultural,
78. Though this isn’t a strict rule. Consider Hal Riney’s work for Ronald Reagan’s 1984 presidential campaign, “Morning In America,”
which painted idyllic narratives for the viewer.
79. This concept is explored at length in James B. Twitchell’s book AdCult USA [107], containing many
worthwhile thoughts on the mythological machinery of corporate advertising.
80. Of course this “need” is something that is re-enforced by a culture and industry alike. Certainly, everyone “needs” a car in a nation of
detached suburbs, traffic jams, and so on. But these things arose alongside the rise of the automobile and petroleum industries.
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significance. Further, one cannot overlook the Star Wars franchise; what began as a low-budget movie
specifically steeped in mythic archetypes has spawned a multimedia empire that today encompasses novels,
comic books, television shows, video games, and a dizzying array of toys and ancillary products. In the case
of the first three movies, the connection with myth was more than implicit: George Lucas was a friend of
Joseph Campbell, and based the cosmology of the Star Wars world on the heroic cycle outlined in his books.
These ancient traditions were simply made relevant to the concerns and aesthetic tastes of the modern age.
Any form of entertainment can be considered as a device for inducing a neurological reaction.
Entertainment is a delivery system for stimulus of certain neurotransmitters; for stimulus of
certain parts of the brain. Romance films supply images which induce a wired-in response.
Over the centuries, storytellers have experimented to find which arrays of symbols and images
induce the desired responses reliably. They usually think of the desired response as ‘an agreeable
sentimental feeling’ or ‘a thrill’ of one kind or another. But what they are doing is organizing
symbols to create neurological reactions. [81]
Any form of entertainment can be considered a device for inducing a neurological reaction. Entertainment
is a delivery system for the stimulus of certain neurotransmitters; for stimulus of certain parts of the brain.
Stimulus, reward. Some of us are fear or adrenaline junkies. Some get off on falling in love or crying in an
alley. To an extent, our brains mistake our own situation for that of the fictional characters projected on the
wall, just as Plato had feared.
Despite the exciting creative possibilities posed by new media in regard to myth, they do not come without
a price. The danger presented by the presence of myth in modern media is paramount, and must be considered
outside the mythic framework of industry, for instance, which reduces the material world to a matrix of
profit and risk. Though the propaganda of Fascist mythologies such as those of Nazis or the U.S.S.R. serve as
the clearest example of these dangers, they exist in only slightly more subtle forms in the media produced by
modern capitalist states. (Subtlety in this case not being an indicator of benevolence, necessarily.) After all,
it was Mussolini who declared fascism to be the merger of state and corporate power.
Though media is ostensibly the watchdog of the government, both the government and media agencies of
the capitalist state are beholden to international corporations and their interests. As we already explored, the
contextual nature of truth makes myth in media a potential form of national or even international coercion.
The story of American politics and News media between the 1950s and the present serves as a cautionary
tale of such possibilities.
There is no ensuring that mythological images, and the powerful psychological forces that they represent
aren’t being used by corporations towards short-sightedly greedy ends, not to mention a benefit for the
“self ” of the corporation to the detriment of all others. When there is no mechanism for establishing human
needs and rights as paramount to corporate or industrial myths, this is an increasingly dire concern. As they
invariably present themselves in the most positive light it is impossible to get a read of the actual values of an
organization from its intentionally fabricated myth.
This myth of benevolence presents itself on a National level as well. American culture in particular has a
need to present itself as a benevolent superpower, leading the rest of the world into an Enlightened era of
growth and commerce. This is not unlike Britain’s Empire, upon which the sun never set. In both cases the
hubris exhibited was not merely of capacity, but more importantly, more catastrophically, it represents the
rigid and wholesale self-congratulation of a myth that has so overshadowed reality that the two share nothing
in common.
However, many countries integrate elements of America’s capitalism without bringing its culture along
with it. Samuel P. Huntington explores this fact in great detail in his book The Clash of Civilizations, in
which he provides both the myth of the New American Century, where we are approaching integration and
the ascension of the American nation, contrasted with the myth held by most of the rest of the world, that
America is in decline and its contribution to the ascension of other nations and state unions will take the
form of the co-opted systems of commerce and government “we” borrowed and helped develop. [24] These
systems will nevertheless grow in truly unprecedented ways within non-Western cultural soil.
This amalgam presents some very interesting possibilities for the future of capitalism as it arises in other
cultures, though at the same time we mustn’t forget that in times past, Asian nations (for instance) seem to
81. The source of this quote is from an essay by John Shirley from Edge Trends. It is no longer available anywhere online.
• 96 •
have no cultural fear of appearing tyrannical, though they may be no more or less so in reality. Thus, we will
likely see the myths of the brand developing in unexpected ways as the various elements of these cultures
blend and come into conflict with one another, and it is unlikely that these forms will be clear of malevolence
and oppression.
“Politics devoid of statesmanship is just theater,” said Aaron Sorkin through the mouth of fictional Chief
of Staff Leo Mcgarry. Economics and politics are then, to an extent, merely extensions of psychology.
This established the need for an analysis of the cultural ramifications of corporate / industrial myths. We
may consider this modern myth’s darker side: not the darkness of evil, but rather of ignorance. When we look
out into the world, it is our myths that look back at us. Myths conceal as well as reveal, and the resulting
ignorance can be devastating. Clearly, an exploration of this may evoke Weltschmertz in some of you, and an
easy reaction to that is to brush it all off as pessimism. I ask you to look past that. Deep uncertainty evokes
a terror that is assuaged by belief, but the real enemy is blind certainty.

• 97 •
Pretty Suicide Machine

James Curcio
You get up on your little 21-inch screen and howl about America and democracy.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT, and
AT&T, and Du Pont, Dow, Union Carbide and Exxon. Those are the nations
of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils
of state? Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical
decision theories, minimax solutions and compute price-cost probabilities of their
transactions and investments, like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and
ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations…inexorably determined
by the… immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale.
Network [109]
I
t should already be clear that the civilization that we live in is the direct result of our collective ideas
and understanding of the universe. Gravity does not work because it obeys Newton’s laws, however
we just used such theories to get men to the moon and back. Thus we glean the nature of things by
extension, extrapolation, and representation, like a cosmologist studying distant galaxies without having
ever been there. However, the scientific method and its atomizing focus on the external world has its
drawbacks when coupled with an industrial, corporate mythology. The resulting culture neither engenders
nor supports spiritual or psychological insight. While we advance exponentially in technological capability,
standing, as it has been said, “upon the backs of giants,” our spiritual or interior knowledge, in other words
our maturity as a race, has yet to advance in any significant and lasting way since the so-called dawn of
western civilization.
This is not to say that there have not been amazing advances in the areas of astronomy, mathematics,
literacy and education, medicine, and so on. I am casting no aspersions on the scientific method itself, nor
the use of reason to derive theoretical natural laws. Science and reason do not, in themselves, determine
what ends they are put to. The scientific method is iterative, and so long as the strict parameters of that
method is adhered to, it functionally improves with each iteration. It improves in terms of veracity, it
may improve in terms of effectiveness; however, the scientific method on its own bears no connection to
ethical or social imperatives. It is a method, and it works well if it is followed properly. The way that these
improvements are used—and funded—is determined by the ideologies prominent in a society that supports
the scientific process.
In other words, the ethical bias of a legislator is far more likely to affect the progress of a scientific project
than the other way around. The function that a scientific discovery can be applied to occurs after the initial
discovery. The best science, it has often been said, is done completely free from questions such as “how will
this benefit industry?” “how can this be turned into a weapon?” and so on.
We also hold many myths about the actual practice of science, as well as the objectivity and even efficacy
of the scientific process as it plays out in a literal rather than theoretical capacity. The article “Accept Defeat:
The Neuroscience of Screwing Up” looks at this quickly but closely,
The reason we’re so resistant to anomalous information—the real reason researchers auto-
matically assume that every unexpected result is a stupid mistake—is rooted in the way the
human brain works. Over the past few decades, psychologists have dismantled the myth of
objectivity. The fact is, we carefully edit our reality, searching for evidence that confirms what
we already believe. Although we pretend we’re empiricists—our views dictated by nothing but
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the facts—we’re actually blinkered, especially when it comes to information that contradicts
our theories. The problem with science, then, isn’t that most experiments fail—it’s that most
failures are ignored. [110]
It is also worth noting that the scientific method is ill-equipped to deal with the psychological dimension of
myth. This dimension falls into the logically unknowable which Wittgenstein referred to as “the metaphysical.”
As he famously said, “That about which we cannot speak clearly, we must pass over in silence.”
While the positivists took Wittgenstein’s early work as a call to expand only upon the principles of what
can be philosophically expressed by logic-language, there is ample evidence that this is precisely the opposite
of his intentions, as in many ways that which falls into the realm of myth, or what he called the metaphysical,
was the real task of philosophy. In this light, perhaps the Tractatus was initially proclaimed by its author
as the final work of philosophy not because it heralded the success of philosophy, but rather because it
announced its boundaries, which as a whole hearkens its general failure!82 The realm “of which we cannot
speak clearly” contains, among other things, the very mysteries of existence and consciousness which are to
a certain extent forever unknowable no matter what models science invents to explain its machinations. The
goal of myth is to point towards this mystery, without having any particular goal to unclothe it. Rather, it
seeks to garb it in new ways. This is the realm that myth is best suited to. However, there is no parallel to be
found within the positivist view; a view which we can, in the context of culture, relate to both science and
industry. This can be seen in the positivists interpreted of the Tractactus,
For the pragmatically-minded men of 1920, on the other hand, the absolute moral
individualism which represented the unspoken point of the Tractatus was, quite simply, useless.
For their purpose, all that appeared important in the book was the parts that could be put
to constructive use …The sweeping away of the old Central European dynasties had left a
new world waiting to be built—on the scientific and cultural, as much as on the political
plane. Positivism, one might say, is the utilitarianism of the philosophical rationalist—the
metaphysical, or dogmatically antimetaphysical, justification of an empirical pragmatism that
other men “accept upon instinct.” [11]
So let these considerations stand in the way of any idea that the following essay is a unilateral attack upon
science. To begin with, I am not a scientist, and have no ground to make such an attack. But having had
many discussions on this matter with individuals who do make science their vocation, and having seen what
I have seen and having read what I have read, I feel confident that the misuse of science in the name of blind
progress, much as the misuse of religion in the name of tyranny in years before, is a cultural trend desperately
in need of our immediate attention. Thus, we can draw a distinction between industrial science, and science
as a whole. We will focus on this trend, in light of what we have already discovered about myth, without
bothering ourselves with what science clearly excels at. Let’s continue.
Each new myth has a ripple effect on every other, rendering an interference pattern in its wake. Some
may consider those results positive or negative, and those determinations of course depend a great deal on
the cultural bias of the interpreter. For every action, it is likely that some will benefit, and others suffer. The
Enlightenment gave us a new license on nature itself, and in the process, brought about new possibilities
for global conquest. Science gave us both penicillin and the bomb. If a myth of individual and progress was
not embedded in our culture, something else would be, yielding its own mixed results. However, there is a
particular problem that arises when a teleological myth, a goal-oriented obsession, is married to the other
myths that appear to frame the rise of industrial societies.
A myth like “progress” or “individuality” represents not a single belief but a complex belief structure, often
with levels of strata that can be hard to excavate. Different results follow from different cultural complexes,
different myths. This is what we will explore in the following sections: not the direct myths of science or
industry, but some of the myths that support and inform them.
82. “The logical positivists were overlooking the very problems about language which the Tractatus had been meant to reveal; and they
were turning an argument designed to circumvent all philosophical doctrines into a source of new doctrines, meanwhile leaving the original
difficulties unresolved.”
Also of relevance to the point as a whole is this quote from the following paragraphs, “According to the Tractatus, the function of a
formalized theory in science was to provide a possible ‘method of representing’ the relevant kinds of facts about the natural world. As
Wittgenstein had learned from Hertz, the application of any axiomatic formalism- whether Euclid’s, Newton’s, or Russel’s- is necessarily
problematic. It is one thing to lay out such a system in the form of explicit definitions and deductions; it is another thing entirely to show how
the resulting categories and logical articulations can be applied to the world as we know it.” [11]
• 99 •
It is not easy to draw a distinction between myths that participate more in what we might consider the
sacred, and those that do not. This is a crisis that I hinted at in Is Myth Dead? although I avoided confronting
it directly for a reason. We cannot so easily separate myths from the sacred, nor can we extricate either of
them from the biases of a specific culture, least of all the ones we are immersed in. Artistic movements such
as the Surrealists did move in this direction. There was a general desire to rediscover, reconnect with some
primal, sacred source. Consider this quote from Bataille’s essay The Surrealist Religion, “Everything Breton has
put forward—whether it concerns the quest for the sacred, the concern with myths, or rediscovering rituals
similar to those of primitives— represents the exploration of the possibility we again discover, possibility in
another sense; this time it is simply a question of exploring all that can be explored by man, it is a question
of reconstituting all that was fundamental to man before human nature had been enslaved by the necessity
for technical work.” [111]
It is easy to make this distinction, and feel a need to somehow return to a state of sacredness, real or
imagined, which seems to have been stripped from or lives, from our very psychological beings, by the
realities of global industrialization. Let’s resist the urge to see it as such a clear dialectic, and instead move
forward under the supposition that we are exploring an ideological history through the unfolding of a select
few of the legion of mythic ideas that differentiate the world now from the world four thousand years ago. A
multiplicity of myths, not clear, opposed opposites. If new myths are born, re-tethered to something sacred,
they must be brutally immediate, possessing unavoidable gravity, poignant, fragile, they must be anything
but contrived, planned, and developed with the intention of bringing us the sacred. (She does not come to
us on a platter. More likely, the platter will have your beating heart on it.)
With that in mind, let’s plunge forward into this “industrial mythology”…
Many of our modern myths are based on presuppositions that were ground-breaking in 500 BCE, 27
A.D., or so on. Even when the veneer of our ideology is shiny and new, if you scratch that surface, you will
find layers tracing back into our distant, collective past. Certainly, the worldview of the fundamentalist is
grounded in such an archaic past. But they are not the only ones. In their day-to-day lives, how many are
willing to truly question everything—why do we do things the way we do, why do we think as we do, what
are the end results, at what cost? The “common man” of our society wants to get by, get his paycheck, and
that means following protocol and playing the game dictated by the symbiosis of corporate, industrial and
consumer culture. Questioning such things can be mentally exhausting, and if done too loudly, it can get you
in trouble. Adolescents are more prone to question the status quo, though they are generally not equipped
with the tools to do a whole lot about it. Their rebellion is predictable, and generally toothless, but the
underlying motive is valid. Eventually, as they transition into adulthood, the demands of survival seem to
require compliance.
It may be through the few statistical and cultural outliers, most of them ignored, misunderstood or even
persecuted in their time, that any knowledge outside the fortified walls of cultural orthodoxy carries forward
at all. Even amongst those brave or stubborn few who are strangers to their time and place, it can be difficult
to wrestle with the weight of several thousand years of invisible cultural history. Finally, there is no clear-
cut means of absolutely valuating the answers that we may gather from such questions, though the process
of question and answer itself does seem to allow us to gain new insight that can lead to growth outside
culturally defined boundaries.
It is our inherited myths that define our way of being in the world, and even when the results they yield are
abhorrent we often cling to them to the bitter last. This is not restricted to existential or philosophical issues.
Just look at some of the push-button topics of our time: there is little evidence that torture is a useful method
of gathering information, solitary confinement has never been proven an effective means of generating
reform, and a war on something such as “terror” or “drugs” most likely never be won with bombs, guns, or
prison terms. And yet we continue to follow these methods, in the open or in private, because they are a part
of our accepted myths. Even efficacy must give way to tradition, to habit.
The premises people hold as given, and the realities we each live in, are a direct product of archaic beliefs
that are often incongruous with the universe as we currently know it. New myths are framed within the
context of the myths of the past, as is demonstrated in the scholastic period of Christianity as the budding
mythology of science and reason challenged the beliefs of the time. Those that did not clothe their new
methods of thinking in theological terms faced torture or death. Right through the Enlightenment, science
was framed within a modified view of divinity proposed by Aristotle. Only when science was rendered
• 100 •
within the framework of religion was it safe. Who can say how the history of science may have otherwise
developed. This is just one example of countless legions, and the atrocities that accompany transgressive
ideology are not restricted to religious zealots.
The metaphor of geological stratification seems the easiest way of getting at how myths layer, one atop the
other. The layers of mythic or ideological accumulation may also operate exactly like geological sediment,
including the sorting mechanisms that inhibit or excite the flow of particles, such as mountains and rivers,
which block and aid in cultural diffusion. Ideological histories, or belief structures, build upon each other
like layers of sediment. It is never a simple, linear progress, each layer is composed of a selection of some
myths, and yet not others. For example, the initial American government was founded on Masonic ideals,
themselves predicated on myths that can be traced back to Rome and Greece, and so on, leapfrogging
through time.
This can create some interesting juxtapositions. Consider the Roman fasces, a “bundle of sticks” which
symbolized power through unity. It appears in many seals and symbols across many cultures, and certainly
factors into American iconography. Even the bundle of arrows clutched by the bald Eagle is a form of
fasces. Yet the fasces is also the root of the word “fascism,” thanks to its use by Mussolini. This didn’t mar
the meaning of the symbol enough to keep it from continued use in countries that at least claim to be anti-
fascist, perhaps because it was already so embedded in their iconography. This theory seems more probable
based on the history of other symbols, such as the swastika, which has been tainted in the West ever since
the Nazis co-opted it. Similarly, though Americans attribute the origins of Democracy with ancient Greece,
much of the iconography of the young American government was more accurately Roman. (Though of
course Roman culture co-opted Greek mythology in many ways.)
On top of such symbols as the fasces that still adorn the chamber of the United States House
of Representatives on Capitol Hill, Rome handed don a lore of patriotic anecdotes. …The
Founding Fathers were so steeped in Roman lore that the great seal of the United States bears
three legends from Virgil: “Novus Ordo Seclorum” (Eclogues 4.5: Magnus ab integro saeclorum
nascitur ordo ‘The great succession of ages is born anew’); “Annuit Coeptis” (Aeneid 9.625:
Jupiter omnipotens, audacibus annue coeptis ‘Almighty Jupiter, beam on bold beginnings!’);
“E Pluribus Unum” (Moretum 103: color est e pluribus unus [When you mix a salad,] there
is one color out of many’). Perhaps unwittingly but certainly appositely, Jefferson picked the
image of the melting pot from a Vergilian salad bowl. [4]
This merely serves as illustration of a general observation. Our cultural heritage is a palimpsest; the beliefs
held in the past continue to affect the world we live in today, regardless of if we see them, or presently believe
in them. Cultures and belief systems through time create a mesh-work that contributes inevitably to new
forms in coming generations. These cultural underpinnings may co-exist harmoniously, or they may lead to
acts of fascism or genocide, depending on the combination of influences and circumstance.
Due to the invisibility of cultural belief when viewed from the inside, most people act upon this heritage
without ever seeing it. The universe we exist in exponentially was formed by Newton, by Kant, by Picasso,
and equally by the lives of millions if not billions of unknown cultural sculptors. In a sense, their ghosts are
all still with us. Many of those who contributed the most to the creation of the cultural fabric were simply
serving their role within it. Intent is irrelevant in the long-view. After all, it isn’t as if Albert Einstein pulled
the curtain off the atom so we could turn around and bomb Hiroshima. The river, as I said previously, forever
flows downhill; none of us can truly foresee what the next group standing in line will do with our creations,
or how our children (real or figurative) will behave once they have left the nest.
The following passage from Jung’s autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections is one of the clearest
demonstrations of just how complete the “invisibility” of a culture is to those living within it:
We always require an outside point to stand on, in order to apply the lever of criticism. …
How, for example, can we become conscious of national peculiarities if we have never had the
opportunity to regard our own nation from outside? Regarding it from outside means regarding
it from the standpoint of another nation. To do so, we must acquire sufficient knowledge of the
foreign collective psyche, and in the course of the process of assimilation we encounter all these
incompatibilities which constitute the national bias and national peculiarity. [58]
When speaking with Ochiaway Biano of the Pueblo Indians, this seems to come together most clearly:
• 101 •
“See,” Ochiaway Biano said, “how cruel the whites look. Their lips are thin, their faces
furrowed and distorted by folds. Their eyes have a staring expression; they are always seeking
something. What are they seeking? The whites always want something; they are always uneasy
and restless. We do not know what they want. We do not understand them. We think they
are mad.”
I asked him why he thought the whites were all mad.
“They say that they think with their heads,” he replied.
“Why of course. What do you think with?” I asked him in surprise.
“We think here,” he said, indicating his heart.
I fell into long meditation. For the first time in my life, or so it seemed to me, someone had
drawn for me a picture of the real white man. …I felt rising within me like a shapeless mist
something unknown and yet deeply familiar. And out of this mist, image upon image detached
itself: first Roman legions smashing into the cities of Gaul, and the keenly incised features of
Julius Caesar, Scipio Africanus, and Pompey. I saw the Roman eagle on the North Sea and
on the banks of the White Nile. Then I saw St. Augustine transmitting the Christian creed to
the Britons on the tips of Roman lances, and Charlemagne’s most glorious forced conversions
of the heathens; then the pillaging and murdering bands of the Crusading armies. …What
we from our point of view call colonization, etc., has another face—the face of a bird of
prey seeking with cruel intentness for distant quarry—a face worthy of a race of pirates and
highwaymen. [58]
Though I don’t want to stray too far off course, there is a striking passage I would like to share from Noam
Chomsky’s essay, “After Pinkville,” that further demonstrates the scope of cultural subjectivity, even, or
perhaps especially, in the face of genocide.
Some time ago, I read with a slight shock the statement by Eqbal Ahmad that “America has
institutionalized even its genocide,” referring to the fact that the extermination of the Indians
“has become the object of public entertainment and children’s games.” Shortly after, I was
thumbing through my daughter’s fourth-grade social science reader. The protagonist, Robert,
is told the story of the extermination of the Pequot tribe by Captain John Mason: His little
army attacked in the morning before it was light and took the Pequot by surprise. The soldiers
broke down the stockade with their axes, rushed inside, and set fire to the wigwams. They killed
nearly all the braves, squaws, and children, and burned their corn and other food. There were
no Pequot left to make trouble. “I wish I were a man and had been there,” thought Robert.”
[112]
These two passages show two very different cultural biases. Clearly, each culture has its own, and within
each culture, there are divisions and sub-divisions down to the view of each individual. This is the very kind
of cultural relativism that so many academics desperately want to dismiss, for it implies a groundless chaos,
but with the revisions of the word “relativism” to “contextualism,” I think it most clearly demonstrates the
way our world works, horrifying or not.
This is not said to posit a stance that genocide is a strictly “white” phenomenon. Far from it. “Rebelling
Indians in Peru and African slaves in Haiti, for instance, committed genocidal massacres of European settlers
and planters. Elsewhere mass killing occurred in the absence of colonialism.” [113] These examples just pose
some of the starkest examples of the extreme power of myths as they contribute to cultural bias.
The development of technology also follows the course of myth. The concept almost always moves a step
ahead of actualization, so it was only after the myth of the atom was born that we could develop technologies
that harnessed its power. Underlying the technological history of the Western world is the ever-present myth
of progress, which found its crystallization in the Enlightenment that reformed the 18th and 19th centuries.
This myth presupposes that time moves in a straight line, a teleology with man at its center, approaching
god-hood by half-steps through the divine providence of reason.
However, this myth did not end there. As the industrial revolution progressed, this myth was reformed in
the likeness of industry, rather than divinity. This had far-reaching repercussions.
Our public education system was fashioned after the machinations of the factory, a regimented process
developed to create good workers to tend the machine, sent from task to task by the ring of an alarm bell.
• 102 •
Increasing populations and a cultural emphasis on quantity rather than quality structured, and continues to
structure our grading system.
Our technology, too, is focused on the utility of the consumer market that supported it. Cost is driven
not by the human needs of those working in the supply chain, but rather by “what the market will bear.”
As Marx recognized, the best interest of this system, in abeyance to some kind of inverted gravity, falls up
rather than down.
To put it bluntly, much of our technology is ecologically and spiritually stupid. In recent years this statement
has become self-evident: an increasing majority of the scientific community now agrees that our very way
of life is unsustainable without serious modification. Western culture—certainly American culture—has
dedicated its effort almost exclusively towards industry and the worship of God money. As a result, the
technology we have developed has been smart in the terms defined by the corporate / consumer relationship,
but that is simply not enough.
For example, designed obsolescence makes perfect sense from a consumer and manufacturing standpoint:
it keeps people buying new units, and with the rate of technological advance, most of us want to buy a new
laptop every couple years, so we don’t mind so long as the technology is relatively affordable. However, it also
means committing non-renewable, often highly toxic material resources to be transformed into short-lived
devices that wind up in a landfill.
An even clearer example of this came about when corporations realized they could sell us bottled water:
packaged in plastic, oftentimes shipped halfway across the world, and bought at nearly the price of fruit
juice. What clearer example is there of a myth perpetrated by ad campaigns for bottled water, which are held
to less stringent health guidelines than tap water, which say “this is pure water,” as if to imply that the water
from the tap is not. And this myth costs Americans to the tune of an unbelievable markup, and makes many
of us unreasonably paranoid about our tap water.83 Our culture simply doesn’t support the consideration of
value outside the economic matrix of desire and fulfillment. This is most concerning because of the corporate
push to own everything from necessary resources to the genome itself.
None of this is to say that there is anything inherently wrong with corporations or industry. It’s arguable
that without them our inflated population would have already taken a terrible dive. However, when they
become the sole indicators of cultural and personal value, there are considerable repercussions. Rather than
being a system that we use, it becomes a system that uses us.
Let’s consider yet another example. It is hard to imagine that just seventy years ago, there was no real
military industry in the United States. The second great industrial boom in America came on the heels of
World War II. The war was one of the factors that brought about the industrial demand necessary to pull us
out of the depression of the 1930s. The department of defense now takes up more than half of the federal
budget. In 1961, President (and former General) Eisenhower gave a speech about the military industrial
complex that has an almost prophetic air to it. I think the following extensive quote sheds light not only on
this particular issue, but much of what has been discussed in this section:
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the
American experience. The total influence—economic, political, even spiritual—is felt in every
city, every State house, and every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative
need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil,
resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence,
whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous
rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic
processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can
compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our
peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
83. This is not to say there’s not a benefit in a water filter, or that water issues in less developed nations isn’t an issue. But you’d better believe
the corporations that manage that commodity are exporting the drinkable water from those areas to customers that can afford the markup
afford by the magic of the brand on the water bottle label.
• 103 •
Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has
been the technological revolution during recent decades.
In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex,
and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal
government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of
scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically
the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the
conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes
virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds
of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations,
and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be
alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a
scientific technological elite.
It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new
and old, within the principles of our democratic system—ever aiming toward the supreme
goals of our free society.
Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society’s
future, we—you and I, and our government—must avoid the impulse to live only for today,
plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot
mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political
and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become
the insolvent phantom of tomorrow. [114]
This is precisely what has happened. Since 1961, the financial demands of this military industrial complex
have required the invention of wars-without-end based on what is a faulty concept, even in an economic
sense. (Wars may help failing economies recover, at least in the Keynesian model, but they are a drag on
healthy economies.) I am not making this point to political ends. This is just another instance of how each
point in history draws on its past: now we must contend with this complex, and it makes its demands upon
us, rather than the other way around.
The corporate / consumer system carries us forward to an inevitable end, and that end is the end of history,
the end of its own desire, its own motivation. The motivating factor behind our growth to the furthest
reaches of our planet, even to outer space, is nothing other than the urge to compete, destroy or multiply.
We like to frame our Promethean jaunt to the moon as a journey motivated purely by scientific curiosity,
but it was surely more motivated by our ongoing race with the Russians. After the Cold War, we see no such
concerted drives, and the US space program languishes under the weight of bureaucracy and poor funding.
I am also using this purely as an example, I’m sure you can think of many others.
These are the motivations of human as animal: health, wealth, progeny, conquest, and so on. In fact, all of
the basic animals drives, which essentially power civilization as gasoline powers a car, is libido. Despite the
fact that the term, in common parlance, has been reduced strictly to sexual energy, that doesn’t tell the entire
story.84 Carl Jung helped explore this in Wandlugen und Symbole, which he paraphrases,
My idea was to escape from the then prevailing concretism of the libido theory— in other
words, I wished no longer to speak of the instincts of hunger, aggression, and sex, but to regard
all these phenomena as expressions of psychic energy. In physics, too, we speak of energy and
84. Nor does Freud’s formulation of the pleasure principle, the sublimation of sexuality as the sole motivating factor in the formation of
civilization. [115]
• 104 •
its various manifestations, such as electricity, light, heat, etc. The situation in psychology is
precisely the same. [58]
What is of note, then, is not that libido is the fuel powering the machine, but rather the direction that
the driver seems to be taking us in. The corporate / consumer paradigm is yielding poisons rather than
elixirs: pollution and the rapid consumption of non-renewable resources, increasingly virulent “modern
diseases” even as our medical science conquers other ailments, vastly unequal distributions of resources, a
looming population crisis, human “assisted” climate shifts, and so on. These have been somewhat offset by
technological advances that have staved off any kind of complete systemic collapse, but there is little long-
term hope that technology can keep us forever ahead of this wave if we “stay the course.”
Most curiously, these trends are being categorically carried out as if they willed their own annihilation. To
put it both clearly and dramatically: this paradigm is our suicide machine. Though Kurzweil’s predictions85
about the exponential growth of processing power seems correct, it seems he forgot to realize that such
“progress” bears no necessary relation to our own internal evolution. A tool is only an extension of its maker.
Modern man is an ape with a rocket launcher.
This brings us to our place within the machine. For most of us, the bulk of the technology which we
receive in the private sector may as well be magic devices. Without the relative few who truly understand
the principles used in the manufacture and upkeep of these devices we would be plunged back into the
technological dark ages. I am not proposing this as some sort of doomsday scenario, but it says something
about our cultural role as consumers. Most of us are no longer equipped to deal with the harsh realities that
such a dark age would entail. This makes nearly all of us—including myself—dependents upon the system,
“domesticated primates”86 without any capacity to thrive or even survive on our own without accepting our
role as the cog in a cultural machine which is primarily beneficial to those who build and propagate this
machine, such as it is.
The retreat into the forest (Waldgang) is not to be understood as a form of anarchism directed
against the world of technology, although this is a temptation, particularly for those who strive
to regain a myth. Undoubtedly, mythology will appear again. It is always present and arises in a
propitious hour like a treasure coming to the surface. But man does not return to the realm of
myth, he re-encounters it when the age is out of joint and in the magic circle of extreme danger.
It is not a question therefore of choosing the forest or the ship but of choosing both the forest
and the ship. The number of those who want to abandon the ship is growing, and among them
are clear heads and fine minds. But it amounts to a disembarkation in mid-ocean. Hunger will
follow, and cannibalism, and the sharks: in short, all the terrors that have been reported from
the raft of Medusa. Hence it is advisable under all circumstances to stay aboard even at the
danger of being blown up. [117]
We may feel a kind of Stockholm Syndrome, and many of us are certainly afforded many comforts,
even luxuries, as a result of our place within this system, but we are nevertheless to one degree or another
complicit in the results that this machine renders. Any successful cultural solution to this problem must take
this to heart, as all “escape to the forest,” Luddite communes are doomed to failure from the inception in
a cultural sense, when founded on an idealized concept of survival truly “off the grid.” Thoreau could have
been correct when he said “most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not
indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.” However, it is unlikely that the future
of mankind will be lived out in log cabins, and a mass-culture of isolationists seems improbable to say the
least. Despite the fact that teleological progress is a myth, it is impossible to move backwards. We are all
connected, and we cannot undo what has been done, only take action in the present.
This “suicide machine” is the ultimate result of compounded ideological forces, carrying themselves out
through the theater of history. In a historic sense, America is moments past its industrial boom, with countries
like China and India rushing even more quickly through theirs, with just as little attention paid to the
ultimate results of such blind progress.87 We will very soon reach a crisis point wherein these technological
85. The Singularity Is Near, Ray Kurzweil. [116]

86. To use a term from Robert Anton Wilson, which I believe he first introduced in Prometheus Rising. [74]
87. It is especially interesting to me that India and China in particular are going through this process. Though political events over the
past hundred years or so have distanced them from their past in some ways, both have an ideological history that seems richer in psychological
• 105 •
and cultural ignitions will either lead to paradigm shifting technologies and a new way of being in the world
for all of us, or nature will force that change upon us—the latter route being, most likely, on the heels of a
die-out event unlike any we have seen, at least since the bubonic plague. That’s where we are, “interesting
times,” like the “famous Chinese curse” refers to.
We cannot say we have really looked at the ideological forces at play here without also considering our
cultural experience of time. While this may seem perplexing to some, it is indeed our experience of time that
is colored by our cultural upbringings, not merely our ideas about time. Granted, there is an element to the
passage of time that occurs the same regardless of culture, or so we must generally assume; but the way that
we process our experience, in relationship to time, is a very cultural manner.
Speaking generally, we may live with an emphasis on the past, the present, or the future. Many so-called
primitive cultures are past-oriented; the focus of their cosmogony, their festivals and rites and so on all relate
towards connecting with the time “before,” when the world was hewn, when man was taught to work with
fire or tools, or so on. Examples of this exist throughout Eliade’s The Sacred and the Profane, as well as Alan
Dundes’ essay “Thinking Ahead,” which we will be turning to in a moment. There are also examples of
present oriented cultures, or even models of time that we can’t easily frame in any of these contexts, as has
been observed in several Australian Aborigine tribes.88 [22]
We, however—and for this moment by “we” I am referring most specifically to Americans and those
closely tied to American culture—live in the future. Dundes spells this out very thoroughly in Thinking
Ahead, but a few examples may help clarify the point:
It is not only the past that is sacrificed for the future; it is also the present. Sometimes it is an
unpleasant present which is denied in favor of a reference to a brighter future. “Better luck next
time” and “Tomorrow’s another day” are examples. In addition, there is the proverbial cry of
baseball fans backing a loser: “Wait till next year.” …But it is not just the unpleasant present
which is denied. Americans are so future-oriented they are discontent even with pleasant
presents. For the present reality, no matter how good it is, can never be as good as the future
might be. …With Americans and their belief in efficiency, evolution, perfectibility, etc., “The
best is yet to come.” Whatever one has, one hears, “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.” The same kind
of sentiment is expressed in the American military slogan: “We have not yet begun to fight.”
Nevertheless, in American culture, one never does catch up with the carrot on a stick in front
of the donkey; one never does reach the “pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.” (Now there is
a compact folkloristic expression of the American worldview!) [118]
Consider this observation in light of what we have been discussing. Is it any wonder that blind progress
has yielded the results that it has? One cannot help but be reminded of the word of the “hungry ghosts”
in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. For those unfamiliar with this image, Chogyam Trungpa provides a
concise summary, “In the hungry ghost realm, there is a tremendous feeling of richness, of gathering a lot of
possessions; whatever you want you do not have to look for.” [120] We only need to turn on the television
to see that element of our psychology being worked upon; after all the Bardo refers not to just the state after
death, but psychological realms we must contend with at all stages of existence. He continues,
…this makes us more hungry, more deprived, because we get satisfaction not from possessing
alone but from searching. …This is symbolized by the image of a person with a gigantic belly
and spiritual insight. Nevertheless, the demands of developing in an industrial sense seems to require turning a blind eye towards that, and
regardless, both have violent histories as anywhere else. Where their industrial revolutions will lead them is anyone’s guess.
88. “As recently as 1902 it was debated in the Parliament of Australia as to whether Aboriginal people were human beings. As recently as the
1960s a text book for kids, a treasury of fauna of Australia, included the Aborigines as among the interesting examples of Australian wildlife.
But what was it that was really going on? What the British failed to understand was that the Aboriginal people had in fact developed one of the
most extraordinary philosophical traditions in the history of humanity. We know from the studies of Y chromosome that the Aboriginal people
of Australia were the first wave of human beings to walk out of Africa. They reached Australia remarkably quickly and certainly had settled the
continent by 50,000 years ago. They reached that most parsimonious of continents and then they went walking over time establishing as many
as 10,000 clan territories all of which were linked together by a single idea. And that idea was the dreaming. And the dreaming wasn’t a dream
it was a state of perpetual existence in multi-dimensional space. The purpose of life for the Australian was not to improve on anything but
simply to do the ritual gestures that were necessary to maintain the world exactly as it was at the time of the first dawning when the rainbow
serpent spread its body across the earth and the ancestors sang the world into being. In not one of the 670 dialects and languages of Australia is
there a word for time, past, present, or future. The Aboriginal people of Australia were not victims of history, they were people who in a sense
had defeated the notion of history itself. A people whose traditions answered both the question how and why.” [119]
• 106 •
and extremely thin neck and tiny mouth. …The joy of possessing does not bring us pleasure
any more once we already possess something, and we are constantly trying to look for more
possessions. [120]
The economic system that we have developed, in accord with our cultural experience of time, in accord
with our ideology of progress, and so on, not only promote the psychological state being described here: they
depend on it. The American economy depends on consumption. Though it may prove nothing definitively,
it is both interesting and horrifying to consider the growing obesity problem in this country, as we think
of the image provided of the “hungry ghosts,” eating food that provides no real sustenance; always hungry,
never satisfied. Always yearning for a future that is yet to come.
None of this is to say that the society we live in is the direct result of conscious planning on the part of a
government, or some secret Illuminati or Masonic order. Though there are surely sociopaths at the helm of
many major corporations, this “suicide machine” does not require any conscious malice to run its course.
Even the best intentions, when rendered within the framework of this system, will yield the same results
so long as you follow its definition of success and progress. Everything that we have discussed has been set
in place and kept in motion by mass psychological factors. The machine is simply the result of unchecked
ideological forces.
In the face of ecological and environmental challenges, it is easy to assume that at some point, people
will have to “wake up,” and bring about some kind of change from the bottom up. This is a myth that is
especially rampant in conjunction with the capitalistic green movement, as well as more anarchist ideologies.
I’ve supported this premise as well, and in some contexts will again, that if people “vote with their dollars”
within the framework of capitalism, and if the “vote” comes from a majority, it’ll force a shift of priorities
and may be the only way for a capitalist state to maintain cogency in the face of declining resources (material
and human) that cannot support a never-ending increase in profits, even with the addition of technological
advance in the mix.
Despite the hopeful optimism of this opinion, there is a fair chance the underlying premise is flawed. We
may be able to generate cultural reform from within the system in the way that counterculture attempts, and
more rarely, succeeds at doing. But this does not extend nearly so far as we’d like. Consider instead the idea
that the ecological and economic pressures are already intensifying, the destratification is already underway,
though we have a hard time seeing it because even rapid change in a historic sense may still seem slow to
our eyes.
What’s the result of these pressures? Depression. Wild hope. Fear. Panic. In that order. All of these things
make people easier to manipulate, not less. We do see anger and outrage, embodied, for instance, by the
exaggerated posturing of the Teabaggers in the United States, but it seems fairly impotent in terms of enacting
the kind of change that would even improve the standard of living for their own. The new slaves don’t build
monuments to dying rulers and blood-thirsty Gods, they work in Walmart and McDonalds. It is a mistake to
assume that at some point mistreated, underpaid, undereducated peasants will inevitably rise up in arms. For
thousands of years civilizations have built their empires on the back of a workforce living little better than
their livestock. This has been, if anything, the norm rather than the exception over the past 3000 years.
We may also want to consider the core identity of Capitalism to understand the crisis in progress:
Capitalism is a system that is committed to an unbounded increase in production in the name of
an unbounded increase in profits. Production, however, cannot be increased in an unbounded
way. Freed from the restraints of despots and paupers, capitalist entrepreneurs still have to
confront the restraints of nature. The profitability of production cannot expand indefinitely.
Any increase in the quantity of soil, water, minerals or plants put into a particular production
process per unit of time constitutes intensification. It has been the intention of this book to
show that intensification inevitably leads to declining efficiencies. That declining efficiencies
have adverse effects upon the average standard of living cannot be doubted. [89]
This follows from Harris’ general thesis, that the processes of human history shows groups and even
civilizations following a pattern of production which, if population is not kept in check through internal or
external means, results in a forced movement to another method of production which often has a decreasing
effect on the standard of living. Again based on Harris’ research, we see that in plentiful times, effective
hunter gatherers have to put in far fewer hours per day than farmers, who have to invest their energies into
• 107 •
the entire life cycle of the plants that they are harvesting, as well as deal with the repercussions of the strain
that may put on the environment as population increases.
The ills that capitalism produces will inevitably outweigh the boons, and that it may be unlikely that a
transition to a different method of production can occur from within that same system. If history has anything
to say about this, it simply cannot. What history cannot show us is the end-game result of production at
its present scale and rate of increase, nor on the concurrent effects of globally intertwined civilizations and
economies. But it may not be very hard to guess. This is one of the reasons why the apocalypse myth has so
forcefully become the zeitgeist of our age, even as capitalism tries to pull a profit out of that as well, from
Blockbusters to Televangelists.
There are other dimensions of this mythic complex to explore, but I’d like to sew a seed in the back of
your mind to consider not only through the rest of this book, but hopefully far after you’ve put it down. At
this point, you may be feeling a certain amount of despair at our predicament. It is something we all have
to wrestle with every day. We have thousands of years of history crushing down on our heads; and, if you’ll
pardon the mixed metaphor, it should be quite evident that any single attempt to change the course of this
history will gain little more result than a pebble tossed into a river with the intent of diverting its flow.
However, there is one thing that we might take solace in, and which may provide some hint at a future
solution: this history, all of our histories, have been the result of accumulated myth, and the behavior that
has followed from those myths, as they attempt to contend with reality. This, above all else, is why I think
modern myths are so absolutely essential—not any one myth, unless it sets fire to the imaginations of a
generation, but rather the collective force of all of our myths, if directed towards a goal. If any goal is worthy
of such an effort, it would be to provide new perspectives, and new methods of being in the world, which
result is something far better than our eventual, mutual annihilation.

• 108 •
A Mythology of Estrangement
James Curcio
The apocalypse is finished, today it is the precession of the neutral, of forms of the
neutral and of indifference…all that remains, is the fascination for desertlike
and indifferent forms, for the very operation of the system that annihilates us.
Now, fascination (in contrast to seduction, which was attached to appearances,
and to dialectical reason, which was attached to meaning) is a nihilistic passion
par excellence, it is the passion proper to the mode of disappearance. We are
fascinated by all forms of disappearance, of our disappearance. Melancholic and
fascinated, such is our general situation in an era of involuntary transparency.”
Jean Baudrillard [121]
L
et’s explore a new angle of the mirror-myth we looked at earlier in this book. We stand “outside the
Garden,” as we said, estranged from ourselves. What does this estrangement mean? Where does it
originate? What mythic repercussions does it have?
Amongst the multiplicity of myths that have played themselves out through the history of the so-called
Western world, there is a single idea that seems a prerequisite for all of them. The ideological history we
discussed in Pretty Suicide Machine is the legacy of this simple valuation: the priests, scientists, and even
artists painted the natural order as something which must be overcome, restructured, and dominated for personal,
economic, or even spiritual progress to take place. This prefiguring idea amounts to an underlying assumption
that structures the world that we know today. It is not an assumption that lies under all cultural heritages:
most Native Americans, for instance, had no such concept in their mythic DNA. However, it would appear
that cultures that do not maintain the necessity of mastery, control, and possession quickly become the
possession of cultures that do, or they are simply driven into obscurity or even oblivion.89
This is one of the premises explored at length by Horkheimer and Adorno in Dialectic of Enlightenment,
“In thought, human beings distance themselves from nature in order to arrange it in such a way that it can
be mastered.” [122] Though this thesis is arrived at in part through only considering the negative function
of myth, their point is valid nevertheless. Mastery of nature is far from the only valuation that shapes our
heritage, but it is a ubiquitous one. The myth of ownership, the myths of social hierarchies, the myth of
capital, individuality, freedom, and so on are all the true backbone of our culture, for better and worse, and
all of them are informed by this valuation.
As a result, our current corporate, mass-media culture owes itself, in part, to an ideology that poses itself
against nature and the natural order. Though this valuation exists within these many seemingly disparate
cultures, there is no singular source for this belief. You will find this ideology present in the religion of
Zoroaster, Judaism, Manichaeism, Christianity, but that is not to say it is an instinct that only exists because
these traditions gave them voice. No, it is more likely the other way around: these traditions happened to
give voice to a tendency that human instinct already desired. The “civilized” world that was likely birthed
from the Tigris and Euphrates was carved out of the body of God. We desired mastery, and it was made
possible through our myths of conquest. As animals were made into livestock, myths arose which established
a tradition of the subjugation of animals: God placed them on the Earth so that we might use them. Arising
hand-in-hand with the institutionalization of agriculture were myths that contextualized mankind as the
farmer. As a result, we selectively manipulated the genetic stock of the biosphere of the planet to match our
89. This is not to imply that there aren’t plenty of warrior traditions throughout many tribes and cultures which have little or not concept
of the mastery of nature. A glance at the practices of the Iroquois will quickly dispel any romantic notion of the ubiquity or historical accuracy
of the “gentle savage” myth.
• 109 •
needs and our myths. It’s plainly obvious that the metaphors employed the describe nature describe our
prescribed place within it. Though we come ever closer to mastering the Earth itself, we have not mastered
ourselves.
While most people today are unaware of Zarathustra, all of us live in a world fashioned from these models.
Though it is hard to say for sure, it seems reasonable that this core concept was transmitted throughout the
ages via a sordid history of conquests, inquisitions, and other forced and unintentional cultural intermingling.
In an evolutionary sense, the idea of the mastery and subjugation of nature seems to have been all too
successful. It has replicated and survived conquest, subjugation, and genocide.
A world where human civilization is held in tension against nature, where the purpose of humankind is to
bringing light to the world in emulation of the warlike Father-god, changing a dark, wild chaos into a world
of order through rational intention is also inevitably a world governed by the laws of rationality, with all of
its blind spots.90 The history of the Church and of science is a sordid one; at times the two were opposed,
yet this conflict was integral to both. Despite our beliefs about the conflict of science and Christianity, the
two are essentially contentious brothers: science, the younger and more ambitious of the pair. Through this
conflict, and the painful conquests and Diasporas that surrounded it, the myths of capitalism and industry
were born.
The progression of civilization, as we know it, the Classical age leapfrogging forward and giving birth to the
Renaissance, and that giving birth to the Age of Reason, and that giving birth to the Industrial Revolution,
and so on, has involved a process of re-learning, of modeling the complexity already existent in the natural
world that we perceive around us. As we have explored in depth now, this modeling is done through
representation, mythologization. This could reach a theoretical culmination, if such progress is teleological
and not asymptotic; we could reach a point where we are able to successfully model and manipulate the
complexities of the natural world, putting aside for a moment the problems of model dependence. Our
invented models will allow us access to the secrets of the atom, the genome, time and space, consciousness
itself. Does this Promethean process lead us closer to Godhood, or further from the Garden?91 Do we reach
a point of complete alienation and isolation when we reach this theoretical singularity?92
It may appear that we’re running the wrong way, away from nature, as we come to know it through the
models we build to represent it. However, at this stage in our evolution, who can argue for a complete “return
to nature” that would undo the benefits we’ve gained as a result, or that such a shift would be beneficial, or
for that matter, even possible? Yet we must also take stock of the actual processes at work here, and shrug off
the blind optimism of the Enlightenment mentality that still clings to the Western narrative of progress.
This mastery of nature sculpted our so-called Western world-view. The American myth of the individual,
the idea that an individual can change his social destiny, are the results of these underlying presuppositions as
much as the hubris, corruption and unwitting bigotry which follows from them. The myth of the individual,
so central to the Western myth of progress, (as it contrasts the ubiquitous, identical smiling faces of the
Communist myth of progress, for instance), a myth so crucial for the development of the wonders that we
have accomplished, is as flawed as any other. Like all myths, it distorts and deletes—inventing further myths
in its own image, deleting what doesn’t match. And like all personalities, a culture’s myth is rendered unique
as much by its perceived detriments as its virtues.
How different would our culture be if we instead inherited it from the Jainist aphorism “Parasparopagraho
Jivanam,” roughly translated to mean: “All life is bound together by mutual support and interdependence”?
Though Jainism isn’t the only mythology that could logically be derived from this premise, all myths derived
from this aphorism would be vastly different than those which seem to have an underlying belief in the credo
“divide and conquer.”
The cultural heritage of the so-called West carries more baggage with it: lurking beneath or perhaps alongside
the sentiment of the superiority of our species and our culture is a myth of psychological estrangement and
personal sin.
90. Mythically, “light” itself was equated with reason.

91. The parallels between the myth of Prometheus and the Garden of Eden myth are well explored, and certainly that exile after eating the
fruit of knowledge from the tree of good and evil ties right into this idea, doesn’t it?
92. If “the real” is in part the ontological necessities that impinge themselves upon us, which we cannot control, then does this movement
towards Revelation or Rapture not have some strange internal consistency? To be Absolute Master, one is no longer conditioned by reality.
One has become…what? God?
• 110 •
This idea of estrangement is particularly worth highlighting.93 Though Christianity ostensibly did away
with the need of a Priestly caste to act as an intermediary between man and God, this ideology was quickly
brushed under the carpet as the Catholic Church rose to power. Thus the early Judaic idea of estrangement or
exile remained—along with this growing belief that the physical world itself was a sort of purgatory from the
union with God. Obviously, this myth germinated in the cultural soil of a people who were constantly being
kicked out of their chosen homeland(s).94 This belief most likely begins with one of the oldest monotheistic
religions, Zoroastrianism, which originated somewhere between the 9th and 11th centuries BCE in or
around what is modern day Afghanistan.
In these early monotheistic traditions, God took the role of an absolute Other, which makes a genuine
relationship impossible: communication depends on commonality. Our relationship to this Other may be
supplication to the extreme forces of nature, or the absence felt of a lost or estranged lover. It is, regardless, a
feeling of estrangement from the source. This is even implied in the etymology of the word Religion, as we
explored already.
To the Zoroastrians, he was Ahura Mazda, the source of wisdom pitted against the evil of the world.
Mazda was possibly derived from the Assyrian God Ashur, patron God of Assur, who in the Assyrian version
of the Enuma Elish slays Tiamat, rather than Marduk. This is of interest because, as we have already explored,
the Enuma Elish details the slaying of chaotic nature to make way for the world of man, rather than being a
myth pertaining to our place within nature.
This is further driven home by the fact that, to an even greater extent than the Christian God or Judaic
Yahweh, Ahura Mazda is not immanent. He exists elsewhere and we know him through his intermediaries.
Yahweh or Jehovah was raised from the position of a somewhat secondary war or sky God to the position
of supreme overlord who said “no Gods before me.” Manichaeism, a slightly later development which at
one time was the most widespread religion in the world, further emphasizes the contrast of light and dark.
Though the realm of sole father God is not prominent, here we see the idea that the “light” is the soul, and
the “darkness” is the body, the material. In other words, evil is embodied in nature. All of these ideas should
seem rather familiar to those who are at all aware of Christian cosmology.
To hoi polloi, these myths re-enforce the social paradigm of patriarchy; God became a father-figure so
elevated that we could only follow his commands, but never understand him. To attempt to relate to this
absolute, estranged Father-God, one can only cry up to the heavens in hope of a response that cannot come
but through an intermediary—half divine himself—thus sharing a part of our essence and part of his. It is
in response to this need for an intermediary that Jesus, historic figure that he may be, took on the mythic
resonance of an age, simultaneously adopting many of the elements of the male agrarian regenerative Gods
that the Israelites had discarded. As the Christian cult grew from its early antinomian days into an institution,
(most notably after the Council of Nicea and subsequent Nicene Creed), their leadership developed many
political tools out of their myths. An example of this is the political leverage of Original Sin, and as a result
of the historic and mythic resonance of this belief, we have this revolt against nature which has been with
us for the duration of Western Civilization. This is not a linear progression but rather a series of feedback
loops, which moves temporally in one direction, but with resonances that can cross cultural boundaries, even
inexplicably occur simultaneously in geographically disparate locations.
We are all often guilty of missing very obvious connections because we compartmentalize and label the
world so thoroughly. It would be very easy to see these ideas of ownership and exile as a phenomenon
relegated strictly to the religious sphere, as if such a “sphere” actually existed. The fact is that this valuation,
like all of our sub and semi- conscious myths, color the way we view the world so profoundly that we’re
bound to miss it.
By way of example, consider this idea of the “exile from nature” when you next visit a supermarket. Look
at the “meat products,” homogenized, packaged and ordered in neat rows. How divorced is this meat from
the process of killing, or from the life of the animal that provides it? What kind of effect has the ideology
of industry had on the way that we prepare and consume food? In the industrial context, food is simply
fuel for the human machine. The very physical buildings through which such products are sold further
93. Again, Dialectic of Enlightenment echoes this sentiment: “Enlightenment is more than enlightenment: it is nature made audible in its
estrangement.” [122]
94. “The dispersal of the Jews began with Nebuchadnezzar conquest of Jerusalem in 586 B.C.E. and the deportation of its inhabitants to
Babylon. After Rome’s destruction of Carthage in 146 B.C.E., its annexation of Egypt in 6 C.E. excluded Alexandria’s large Jewish community
from the privileges accorded to citizens, and Jews suffered two expulsions from Rome itself.” [113]
• 111 •
emphasize our consumer worldview, while downplaying the elements that are at odds with its underlying
mythology. The psychology of a specific desire is analyzed, reduced to common denominators, and presented
in manifest, profane form: the supermarket. (Cue dramatic music.)
In the abstract, this is an idea we’ve returned to time and again, yet as it may at first seem hard to trace
the line from ancient sky Gods to our dinner table, it is worth underlining. The natural world is all that is.
As such, we are in many ways at war with our own nature to the extent that we attempt control: chewing
down, regurgitating, restructuring, reclaiming, building a world in our own image. “It is through mastery
that reality can be tamed.” This was the cry of peasants and kings, evangelical zealots and boardrooms, not
a divine decree.
• 112 •
Twilight Selves: Cannibalism

Mr. VI
“We now see…wolfpack behaviours [in global markets], and if we will not stop these
packs, even if it is self-inflicted weakness, they will tear the weaker countries apart,”
Swedish Finance Minister Anders Borg [123]
E
conomics, politics, sociology and philosophy; history and diplomacy. All these involve study of
narratives, both the past and the present, in order to predict and possibly control the environment.
That which is controlled is in a sense rendered stable and coherent, it is fixated like an insect in
amber; integrity is preserved and the body politic is kept intact. The meaning extracted from mythic
narratives provides reference, often an origin point—a kind of social genealogy which specifically situates
the community at large within time itself. As has been said previously, the very border of our Self is drawn
not just by the dividing wall of our skin, but also by the myths that we use to structure our world. My nation,
my team, my family, my wife, my body. These are layers of mythically defined self. They are, as it were, like
mythic layers of skin.
Let’s dive and divine deeper into a dissident metaphor pertaining to the body in the variety of senses that
we use it. We speak of our own bodies, of course, or of your body, which may be an Other, but we also speak
of a social body, and there are Others and kin to be found within that body as well.
It is the idea of control and bodily integrity as a singularity, distinct from all others, which generates a
shadow. An uncontrolled, insatiable hunger; an enemy which devours all those things which enable the
maintenance of the status quo. The food of the community is consumed, the shelter burned, the earth
quakes—the volcano explodes and grounds the flights which bring food and resources to the community,
to give a recent real world example! The ground, seemingly so solid, is rife with faults and crevasses, slowly
creaking in tellurian shifts; the body, so functional with its processes and cell divisions, suddenly accelerates
and cells turn cancerous in an uncontrolled metastasis, a ravening tide from organ to organ. Other Selves fall
within this shadow, those we identify as Other.
As can be seen by the quote at the beginning of this piece, the old metaphors still hold evocative power—
with the economic upheavals of the early years of the 21st century, the wolves are once again to blame; their
greed has supposedly placed the right thinking folk in a great deal of trouble. Are the “wolves” of board
rooms and financial institutions different from the self-interested bands of nomads that rampaged from the
steppes of Mongolia? Has the turmoil increased as they were consolidated and organized under a chieftain
or CEO? Mythologically speaking, if one is elevated to the post-scarcity of godhood, what happens to one’s
humanity? What happens when a group of individuals are able to communicate in their own jargon, their
own secret language; sub-prime mortgages, exchange-rates, currency fluctuations, hedge-funds?
All these are occult, beyond the ken of those not inculcated or initiated into the mysteries of finance; the
virtual trading of ideas and potentials is as esoteric as the Greek Magical Papyri, and yet these hidden spells
influence the lives of billions.
By these secret ways, they render the utilization of easily accessible resources into cryptic acts, only
performable by those properly trained and operating within their particular framework.
As Welsh horror writer Arthur Machen puts it: “[W]e lead two lives, and the half of our soul is madness,
and half heaven is lit by a black sun. I say I am a man, but who is the other that hides in me?” [124]
And lest we think the discussion of wolves and predators is purely theoretical, this article dated 7th
February 2011 from Britain’s Daily Mail on a so-called “super-pack” of four hundred wolves killing horses
should put that to rest. As the article states: “Dr Valerius Geist, a wildlife behavior expert, said the harsh
Siberian winter—where temperatures plummet to minus 49C—had killed off the animal’s usual prey.”
He said: “It is unusual for wolves to gather in such numbers of hunt large animal like horses. However,
the population of their usual prey, rabbits, has decreased this year due to lack of food, so wolves have had
to change their habits. Wolves are very careful to choose the most nutritious food source easiest obtained
• 113 •
without danger—which in this case happens to be horses. They will start tackling dangerous prey when they
run out of non-dangerous prey.” [125]
The whole metaphor of a ravenous, insatiable wolf with great big teeth—all the better to eat you with, my
dear—is predicated on the idea that the creatures will kill and eat anything; nothing can stop that hunger.
In actuality, they hunt easy prey, and this in itself is the true root of the terror. Easy prey is vulnerable prey,
defenseless or otherwise weak.
The sick, the disabled, the old and the very young; these are perfect prey for the wolves, and to devour
them is to commit an act which is beyond the pale of society—pale being a pointed stick which serves as
marker or boundary, as in impale or fence paling.
This violation of the social order is an act of violence against it by those beyond the boundary.
Where does this idea of violence fit within the status quo? Suppose we posit that in fact, the actuality of
the situation is more complex; the function of the metaphor is to provide a descriptor for those whom the
rules of a culture of scarcity do not apply.
What is this terror then? This fear of another form of life, of existence, which somehow exists outside the
norm, and is unnatural enough to evoke such a violent response? Or to frame it another way, in terms of
myth, why is the monster a recurring theme, its unspeakable hunger something that arises again and again,
irrespective of time and place?
The wolves are at the door—the brand or boardroom, biker gang or religious creed—their loyalty only
to the pack, rather than the community at large. The wolf as mythic figure evokes a wildness, possessing
a peculiar bond which is usually well outside of the standard social contract. The term “wolf ’s head” is a
peculiarity of Middle Age English common law referring to outlaws; those placed outside of the law and
able to be hunted like an animal, equating the price on their head with the price of that of a wolf: both were
threats to society. This is the dual nature of transgression, of outliers and auslanders. To the social body they
are a threat and a secret boon.
All we need to do is view the recent banking crisis to see how quickly the dichotomy is revealed. The
individuals who ran the Western world’s financial system were once economic giants moving millions and
fueling the globalization machine which has brought us wonders undreamt by our great-grandparents.
Now they are abruptly wolves, preying on the weak and the vulnerable, ruining lives and wiping out life-
savings. Supposedly violating the trust of investors, they are said to have committed an act of violence against
those who trusted them. Similarly, governmental bodies in the United States, and surely around the world,
turn from benefactor to wolf in the eye of the public when social services are cut in lieu of the best interests
of these “villains in the boardroom.”
Yet, the ease with which they moved through the world, their wealth and power, is still desirable. If
anything, the rage occurs because the act of violence is sublimated as theft. The perceived removal of power
breeds anger—the loss of the signifier of power highlights the division between have and have not. Not every
villain is an Iago. Along with the fear of these Others resides the jealousy that we are not amongst them.
This increases desire—again scarcity tightens the knot. That same desire leads to increased occurrences of
‘wolfish’ behavior. In time, scarcity renders us all wolves, but the lone wolf stands little chance against a pack.
A pack is able to hunt prey that would be dangerous to a single individual.
In a pack therefore, the danger quotient falls, increasing yield. Thus, the individuals are perceived to be
more powerful both in and of themselves as well, as members of the pack. Again, it is desirable to become
part of the group.
But at what cost? The larger a pack, the greater risk of internal conflict—only under extreme conditions
can necessity overwhelm dominance, and this is not always enough. Thus often, multiple packs or groups
evolve, each with an exclusive set of identifiers and protocols. This creates an inclusive and exclusive division,
an inner and an outer within the larger group.
One symbol seems to embody these all at once, a “symbol” which is at times properly a symbol, at others a
symbolic act, and others an act without symbolization altogether. Cannibalism stands as motif and process;
the flesh is a territory and movement, its expansion, growth and subsequent decline is echoed throughout
the psyche and the physical world. Life processes are writ large—birth, growth via consumption and then
death and decay. The body is axis mundi, the point around which each of our individual and collective
worlds turn. Without the senses provided by the flesh, there is no world with which we may interact. We
also mustn’t forget the role of artist as self-cannibalizer, exemplified by the Capote-esque transformation of
• 114 •
experience into creative capital. But this cannibalization is not reserved just for Truman Capote, or even for
artists in general.
Indeed, few things are more terrible than the consumption of the body itself—the site of perception and
identity. Self-hood devoured; consumed by that which has no respect for morals or taboos. Stripping these
out of the equation, we arrive at the mere facts of consumption; the discovery of the edible as that which
is desired by the consumer— either a conscious or subconscious wish to integrate the object of desire into
the same; to capture and devour. The object is dismembered, chewed—taken apart and homogenized. The
differentiation of the food, its distinctive qualities, be they muscle, skin, meat, is reduced. The other is made
a part of the orthodoxy. We cannot understand mythology as an immanent process until we recognize how
it feeds and reproduces.
Do those within the in-body view those outside as like themselves, or has the very act of assumption of
identifiers induced a sense of difference? At what point do our myths turn cannibalism into something else?
As an elite evolves, it separates itself from the larger body, becoming a law unto itself. Could we argue that
this sense of difference and identity is a primary root of almost all ideological conflict? The myths of Aztec
human cannibalism were not exaggerated. They were underrated. Consider this,
…Aztec cannibalism was not a perfunctory tasting of ceremonial tidbits. All edible parts were
used in a manner strictly comparable to the consumption of the flesh of domesticated animals.
The Aztec priests can legitimately be described as ritual slaughterers in a state-sponsored system
geared to the production and redistribution of substantial amounts of animal protein in the
form of human flesh. [89]
These levels of identity-within-identity raise interesting questions about the very idea of cannibalism
itself. If cannibalism is the consumption of one’s own kind, then what of the consumption of those who
are not of the same kind? We call the Aztecs cannibals but they were surely not eating their own. A similar
question arises in regard to the relation of corporations that attempt to war and devour one another, or of
warfare itself.
Since the metaphor of consumption also implies incorporation, it follows that those within the body
necessarily utilize those without. The co-option and capture of the external to maintain and enhance the
body can easily be seen in the actions of say, large corporations or the enslavement of the enemy and the
conquered. On the microcosmic scale, we ingest external entities and re-purpose them for our own bodies.
The history of empire building involves a brutal re-purposing of material by force, be it genetic, mineral,
flesh and labor.
By this reduction, the food becomes merely a property of the hunger; it loses its identity, instead becoming
a reflex of cannibalism—its narrative is overwhelmed and subsumed, captured and put to work. The digestion
process reduces still further, and thus the flesh becomes food, then fuel. Now essentialized solely as property
and resource of the consumer, the eaten becomes enslaved to its devourer—strengthening it, its vitality
repurposed to the consumer’s end. Finally excreted, what remains is unrecognizable; the waste a combined
mass of that which cannot be repurposed and that which the consumer wishes to eject from the territory of
themselves. The “planet’s interconnected watery parts are effectively a thin soup of plastic refuse.” [126]
Let’s shift focus to the “outsider cannibals.” Whereas the simple consumer is content to metabolize in order
to grow stronger, the cannibalistic do not cease after digestion and excretion are completed. Rather, they are
furious in their processes; constant devourers—jotnar and eotenas in Norse and Old English—threats to the
orders of mankind and gods. As such they are often carrion-eaters, consumers of the “waste” left behind after
life, themselves indigestible, unintelligible and awful.
Many cultures have narratives and theologies which posit some kind of post mortem existence, mythic
extensions into the unknown beyond death. After proper rites and processes, the individual enters a
sanctioned afterlife—whether that be the complex embalming and mummification of Ancient Egypt, the
Hindu cremation, or the Christian and secular rites of the West. It should be noted here that even non-
existence after death is a narrative also, beyond the boundary, the horizon of experience, lies the land marked
Here Be Dragons on ancient maps. Conceptualizing these realms is an essential function of myth—from it,
we extract meaning, though as argued in an earlier piece, we contend that myth itself is meaningless.
Yet this conceptualization requires a site on which to operate—the form of the body as human shape
logically extends the world of humanity into the after-death experience. If the body is not intact, or the
proper rites are not performed, there is no way into those spaces, either for the dead person, or for the living
• 115 •
community left behind. Without that site, without a body or symbolic marker, control is lost, the narrative
cannot be continued, and the Otherness of the unknown injects itself into the world of mankind. Just
as the excreta is external to the body, so the corpse is external to the narrative of life which only becomes
comfortable post-decomposition, both literally and otherwise. The post-mortem narratives require that the
corpse become something other than mere decaying meat. Our myths of life silently rest upon the charnel
ground, our orientation towards death.
In a very real sense, the familiar becomes strange; the possibility occurs that the known can, in fact be
hiding the unknown at its core. The ravening cannibal is the figure of the inhuman, the embodiment of the
Other, maintained at the expense of society and never satisfied. Indeed, their embodiment comes from the
consumption of the bodies of those in society. Evoking the predator, it speaks to the primal fears. Nobody
wishes to be eaten, gobbled up by wolves in the night, forgotten and unremarked.
For the Other is an image made by others; a catch-all bogeyman; neat division and convenient vessel. It
is animated by the darkness, the hidden, the unexamined. By remaining vital in a method outside of the
compact of human society, they offer a direct threat to it. Often from within that society, they are seen as
antinomian—from anti + nomos, against law.
To combat the unknown, the uncontrollable and unnamed, we fall back on apotropaic rites, warding and
appeasing those things which inspire such discomfort; fetishize and worship the familiar. Safety is and has
always been a driving force of cultural cohesion. Fear serves both as control mechanism and bottle-neck.
Cohesiveness has its cost, but when faced with the alternative of blind chaos, most humans are willing to
sacrifice a great deal to a guarding sovereign. It is only when the sovereigns turn against their own that they
are themselves at risk of becoming the flesh of the Other.
In modern form, vampires become sexy, revenants transformed into sex symbols; werewolves, cursed
figures in need of gentle love.95 Historically, we civilize bloody gods with strange rites to appease them,
chain down the awe of the mystic experience with liturgy and societal acceptance—we turn them into pillars
of the community, institutions and priesthoods which themselves wield influence over society.
The notion that the gods themselves are often of the same bloodline as some furious, bloody cannibals is
forgotten, as is the savagery which enabled their re-ordering of the universe into the cosmos which is more
familiar to us. The Olympian deities of Ancient Greece were the children of the Titans, and were devoured
by their own father Kronos, while Odinn is a direct descendant of a line of giants and Buri who emerged
from icy Nifel. Many of the Norse gods also marry giant-women who are then venerated as goddesses.
Slowly these figures become sanitized versions of themselves, worthy even of veneration and lauded for their
strength while the roots of that power go quietly unmentioned. The nascent form of a God would be an
outcast in any “civilized” culture.
The sheer primality of many of these functions renders their consideration uncomfortable—literal
cannibalism may occur during food shortages, as in the siege of Leningrad. By its very nature, accusations of
cannibalism are often used to demonize those who are charged with it. The Aghori sect of Hinduism is often
castigated by other sects as not at all Hindu, being as Aghori praxis involves deliberate violation of Hindu
taboos, including the consumption of dead human flesh from corpses in pursuit of moksha, or liberation.
Non-dualist in nature, the Aghori believe that even the polluted things are in fact perfect, being created
by Shiva who is perfected and perfecting. Often residing in charnel grounds and indulging in ritualized
meditation on the nature of death, they are adjuncts to the social order—their consumption of that which
is unclean puts them outside social norms. Some may find transformation through this route, but most find
little more than the obvious results of excess, even madness.
Here, a distinction should be made between killing for food, and the consumption of that already dead.
We must therefore admit that such acts, whatever their origin, are extra-normal. As a taboo, such things are
hence methods of exit or entrance, thresholds and methods of becoming.
If this is so, then extending the metaphor of cannibalism, we arrive at the notion of consumption and
deterritorializiation of almost any site, wherein a site may be an object, process or even individual. Whether
we “kill” or feed from “carrion”—removing the thing from that which forms it, or taking up and using the
properties of the discarded and seemingly decayed, we essentially re-purpose the thing to our own aims.
Here we run the risk of conflict with the status quo; the definition and purpose, direction and form is
often seen as the purview of the authorities, be they moral, social or otherwise. Land-nama is inherently a
95. Twilight, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, and True Blood, to name just a few recent examples in popular media.
• 116 •
function of cannibalism, and all myths, cultures, and bodies be they social or physical ultimately consume
or are consumed, though there is also the unique possibility for synthesis, as feeding is not the only function
that life serves. However, in regard to feeding specifically, if we think of the ecosystems of the planet as
systemically interlocked network of entangled and emergent systems, the planet itself as a body, then what
else could we call the state of life itself but “cannibalistic”?
In breaking these taboos, by removing the sites from conventional structures and re-ordering them to
suit our needs and engendering new meaning, those who put themselves outside exercise an illegitimate
power, apparently arrogating to themselves “royal” powers to which they have no right. Every remix, every
re-arrangement is an assumption of authority. They become rulers, denying the status quo its due. In this
sense they become sovereign, and hence place themselves outside of the territory governed by conventional
mores—again, returning to an earlier notion that such things are viewed as a kind of declaration of war upon
standard narratives by an alien, Outsider force.
Such becomings are not solely limited to cannibalism; in fact the setting apart is fundamentally the root
behind the notion of both sacrifice and holiness.
“The cannibal’s chief concern would seem to be essentially metaphysical…the killing and
devouring of sows at festivals, eating the first fruits when tubers are harvested, are eating of the
divine body, exactly as it is eaten in cannibal feasts.” [22]
sacred
c.1300, from pp. of obsolete verb sacren “to make holy” (early 13c.), from O.Fr. sacrer (12c.), from
L. sacrare “to make sacred, consecrate,” from sacer (gen. sacri) “sacred, dedicated, holy, accursed,”
from O.L. Saceres. [127]
holy
O.E. halig “holy,” from P.Gmc. *khailagas (cf. O.N. heilagr, Ger. heilig, Goth. hailags “holy”),
adopted at conversion for L. sanctus. Primary (pre-Christian) meaning is not impossible to determine,
but it was probably “that must be preserved whole or intact, that cannot be transgressed or violated,”
and connected with O.E. hal and O.H.G. heil “health, happiness, good luck” (source of the Ger.
salutation “heil”). Holy water was in Old English. [128]
By seeking to make the profane sacred—by making the motifs of life, eating, drinking, sex, and death
more than simply reflexive, and instead noting that it is possible to perform them with an awareness which
diverges from the norm—we attack the roots of the attitude towards existence which is held by the norm.
The sacred can be found in nearly anything. For instance, many artists and mystics alike have found it in the
arms of prostitutes, even if Dante insisted his Beatrice be a muse in spirit only. This is of course a Christian
bias, not one ordained by nature.
These fundamental actions may be rendered heretical and dangerous—this is what was spoken of in
previous pieces when mentioning the Deleuzian notion of the war machine; an effortless attack brought on
by a re-ordering which renders everything as a potential weapon without changing its nature at all. To the
observer, the war machine is capable of producing weapons from thin air, necessitating a distrust of one’s
own perception when it appears as if it is unarmed. This makes disruption even easier.
disruption
1640s, from L. disruptionem, from stem of disrumpere “break apart, split,” from dis- “apart” +
rumpere “to break.” [129]
While the status quo by definition seeks a kind of beneficent stasis, the disruptor shatters the very same—
the mystic who finds divine insight through unapproved methods becomes divergent—even heretical. By
demonstrating divine contact outside of the norm, he attacks the body of religious dogma and the authority
of the priesthoods as mediators of the divine.
Similarly, by sacralizing the common, he disrupts the notion of ritual machinery as necessity for contact with
the numinous. Abruptly, the narrative is broken, and the threat-response is engaged; the numinous is suddenly
revealed as beyond our control or even understanding. By breaking apart narratives, disrupting the flow-as-
maintenance, alternative options are seen, ushering in an Apocalypse in its original sense of a great revelation.
• 117 •
The world is wild and chaotic once more. The necessity of systemic failure is revealed; the precariousness
which underlies all things now shown—the implications engender an exultant horror, a terrible shudder at
the ease with which the underpinnings of mankind’s world may be manipulated. Seemingly fixed borders may
suddenly be redrawn or erased—landscapes may be mythologized, deterritorialized and reterritorialized in the
blink of an eye. Cultures may be strip-mined and actions may be caused to happen by mere manipulation of
emotion. The ease with which capture can and does occur, and similarly, how easily humans allow themselves
to be captured and reconfigured is extremely telling, as is the ease with which events may easily spiral out
of control. The moment before and the moment after the Spaniards entered the consciousness of South
America would be such a border.
Consuming the flesh of an enemy or an honored ancestor moves into another realm beyond simple
need for food. The atavistic nature of such things operates well below and beyond the strictures of the
human—they existed long before the evolution of homo sapiens—therefore such hungers appear almost
insatiable when manifest by the inhuman. Excavations in France in the end of the 20th Century discovered
78 Neanderthal bones from six individuals bearing the marks of cannibalism, seemingly in a ritual context
from approximately 100,000 years ago.96 For a long
time, Neanderthals have falsely been portrayed as
brutes and monsters. We find comfort in investing
difference with horror.
The progenitor giants become great devouring
creatures, witches are hypersexualized women with
no interest in procreation, or ancient crones who
are unsightly beyond belief and desire to devour
children. Big Bad Wolves cut up Grandma and make
innocent young Red Riding Hood consume the old
woman’s flesh, before luring her into bed to devour
her with ravenous hairy fury. Fairy folk offer foods
that put men to sleep, trap them in the Otherworld,
or change them irrevocably—the motifs are rife in
folklore, always told from the side of those who
are not wicked. They provide mythic cohesion, in
safety: “avoid these paths, these interlopers, these
outsiders.”
The idea that heresy is necessary to reveal a truth
beyond singular orthodox myths is frightening to
many. To understand that the ordinary is in fact not
“how things are” but “how many would wish them
to be” is often a great shock. That the bedrock of
existence may be seen as bubbling, roaring quantum
foam, devoid of solidity; this is not a conducive way to live, or so many think. To gain sustenance from
blood, human flesh, sexual activity; to have these things not be merely reflexively human but examined
and re-ordered by certain individuals—this is unnatural. Always, these figures are cast as insatiable and
monstrous—their divergence must be terminally halted or imprisoned and they are held as warnings;
uncanny spirits that are merely facsimiles of humans, untrustworthy and unpredictable in their mutable
shapes. Transversive, and subversive; over, across and under; these are ways of seeing the fact that the barrier
is passable, while at the same time maintaining that the barriers still exist to keep integrity. Recall that these
“transgressions” can and likely should be considered symbols pointing ways out or through the dead ends
and cul-de-sacs orthodox society invents in the name of safety, order, and, of course, the mastery of nature,
whether in the guise of the awesome and fierce power of storms or the nearly uncontrollable psychological
forces of sexual desire and individual will which bar the possibility of public work and productivity in the
name and interest of those orthodox forces, whatever they may be at that place and moment in history.
Examining this, we find that there is a kind of awareness exhibited by those deemed wicked, outsiders, or
just plain strangers. Said to possess magical or unwholesome powers, they often are in possession of arcane
96. See “Neanderthals Were Cannibals,” BBC News. The European Others to homo sapiens seem to confirm our biases. [130]
• 118 •
knowledge as well. This fact is of great importance for many myths. Whether through drinking from the
Holy Grail, the sacrifice of Odinn’s eye in the well of the giant Mimir, Freyja sleeping with multiple dwarves
to gain Brisingamen, or Sigurd eating the heart of the dragon and learning the mystical language of birds, to
name but a few, the knowledge gained alters perception and reveals new faculties.
Within the myths themselves, such perceptual shifts render figures fundamentally different, increasing
their power, knowledge and often enlarging their sense of self. Odinn continues his quest to become wisest
god of all, while Freyja’s wrath is feared throughout the halls of the gods, and her wisdom is sought by
Odinn to whom she teaches mysterious magic which later lead Loki to accuse him of being like a woman!97
Contrasting this, such a change cannot be undone.
Drinking from the Grail alternately grants immortality or enables healing of wounds, spiritual or otherwise.
The language of the birds learnt by Sigurd may be linked to the language of angels or the language of birds
spoken by shamans—again indicating a distinct shift through contact.
Entering conceptual domains beyond the shores of the established territory may be a one-way trip,
especially if a new myth is not brought back as part of a return voyage. If one “returns,” they must create
a new social body around the new myth and ultimately become orthodoxy themselves, or risk exile,
dismemberment, or disenfranchisement. The phrase “In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is
king” is particularly relevant here. After all, if one has a broader awareness than the norm, one may be
able to take advantage of the same to increase one’s influence over others. If one is capable of a seemingly
impossible thing, then all other acts which are impossible may believed to be within one’s power; this is the
difficulty of ambiguity—if one has knowledge above and beyond the norm say of herbs which one uses to
heal, it may also be suspected that one can harm by the use of the same. Consider the fear that surrounded
Rasputin, and his eventual demise. Just as in the Tarot the first Arcana is the Magus, he is often depicted
as a juggler, keeping the balls in the air. The conjurer and the con-man are twinned—Odinn and Loki are
said to be blood-brothers after all.
If perception is directly influenced by society, as it surely must be—one only has to look at the power the
media has—then those who break away from the approved narratives may be presented with whole vistas of
possibility unseen by those who prefer the status quo. It is a tricky high-wire act, and we all are familiar of
the image of the Fool, a co-valent symbol to the Magus or Juggler, falling off the cliff.
Let’s turn a moment back to current events, to get a firmer hold of the abstracts we’re dealing in. As writer
and thinker Jasmina Tešanović put it in a post on the widely read BoingBoing blog:
“Silvio Berlusconi will be the first head of a G-7 state to be arraigned in court on charges of paid
sex with a minor.” [132] The G-7 are seven of the largest developed countries whose finance ministers
meet once a year to discuss economic and financial policy. In terms of elites and finance, such a group is
surely an exemplar. These ‘developed’ countries are supposedly world-leaders, they literally have provided
other nations with something to aspire to in terms of wealth and power. Yet one of their leaders allegedly
performed an act which, amongst others, might be seen as a few inches above the ultimate crime in the
West—that of paedophilia:
The Church as well as Catholic believers are divided. It’s not about sex, says one of the high
ranked church officials: hardly any Italian anymore confesses those misdeeds as sins. It’s his
way of doing it. Then there’s the hardcore of Italian machismo, who aspire to that level of
misbehavior themselves, and frankly admire Berlusconi for his orgies.
So what did Berlusconi do so wrong in his unfortunate dalliance with Ruby, and the numerous
other girls that he invited to his home and paid generously? The court in Milan issued 27
pages of evidence. Ruby was a minor when she was partying “bunga bunga” style at his place,
and he knew it. Ruby was caught stealing from friends, and he freed her from the police
although the cops had her in custody as a minor. Ruby was an illegal immigrant, and he
smilingly promised to forge her papers for her. Finally, he arranged to deceive the Italian police
by absurdly claiming that Ruby was the niece of recently deposed president Hosni Mubarak,
in order to set her free. [132]
97. See Lokasenna for more of Loki’s accusations against the gods— an interesting insight into Old Icelandic
social mores. [131]
• 119 •
The former de facto dictator of Egypt who was recently ousted by a popular insurrection after twenty nine
years. Currently, a wave of unrest is sweeping the Middle-East. Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria, Libya and Bahrain—
all these places are writhing against the status quo.
All these are protesting against the current power-dynamic in their nations, and they are doing so by
banding together, becoming a pack which may very well topple regimes through sheer force of numbers and
will.
These are not bloodless revolutions either, and nor should we expect them to be. A vicious response from
the power-holding elite is to be expected. Teeth must be shown; the urbane suited figures must shift to strike
and strike hard. It is the size and connectivity of the band which is the threat, and thus the bonds must be
severed—a reflex which may be seen with the clamp-down on Internet access in affected countries.
Terror is therefore the primary weapon deployed by such an elite, that and speed. These things are
archetypically wolfish. They are affects, in the Deluezian sense. Communication is also an affect—it’s no
coincidence that elites often have controlling interests in the media. Berlusconi is the head of a vast media
empire after all, and it is standard practice of dictators to control television and newspapers. The transmission
of ideas, whether they be open or cryptic, and the way they are received and used by those within the group
is also a characteristic of the group itself.
These effects are what shape and maintain the identity. By partaking of the effects they reinforce the
identity—by acting wolfishly, they reinforce the perception of themselves as wolf which enhances the potency
of the actions taken-as-wolf, creating a feedback loop.
This reinforcement further emphasizes the predator/prey dynamic. Mythologically speaking, it is possible
to assume wolf-shape by wearing a skin, as with the ulfheðnar or berserkers, or drinking from a wolf ’s paw
print, to name two examples.
Terror and rapidity of hostility subject the victims to a significant perceived threat which triggers behaviors
within the reptile brain in the same way that enforced scarcity may render a need for protection and
leadership.
This scarcity plays a large part in many mythological narratives. Valhalla, Judeo-Christian and Islamic
thought also posits a post-mortem existence where the adherents-as-elect may be freed from scarcity. Running
throughout these religions is the motif of mankind’s fall from grace—quite literally a refusal to abide by
the conditions wherein the species may remain in pre-scarcity bliss. Moses, Jesus and Mohammed—these
individuals purportedly carried the knowledge of the conditions which would once again return humanity
to a place where scarcity no longer occurs.
Those who follow these conditions are able to achieve reintegration, and those who do not are doomed
to wander outside the ultimate gated community, until the inevitable forces that engender privation and
scarcity destroy the world—literally all that is extant—and it is remade as being perfect.
So runs the standard exoteric interpretation, an interpretation which a variety of fundamentalist sects
have taken to heart. Regardless of the iteration of the monotheist stream, they have performed an act of
spectacular hermeneutics:
The chosen—chosen by virtue of adherence to practices which form an identity—are due to inhabit this
walled garden and are thus apart from the general populace. The world-as-is exists solely to bring about the
exteriority of this new environment.
God, or Allah is utterly exterior to the human world—for it is the domain of the Devil, imperfect and
lacking in the full grace of co-existence with deity. The prophets and/or Christ are agents of that grace—to
Christians, the potency of Jesus is that he is the living embodiment of that grace. As we will explore in
coming sections, to the fundamentalists, the world is hence something to be ended. The environment is a
resource to be consumed, and the unbeliever to be eliminated if they can’t be converted. The ending and
removal of all that does not acknowledge the utter exteriority of the deity actually hastens a return to grace.
To put it bluntly; killing or converting the unbeliever gets your name on the Paradisial guest list. It makes
opening time come quicker. This is the doctrine espoused at multiple points through the ages, most notably
during the Crusades, and finds its most violent expression in the modern-day suicide bombers.
It is at the root of much sectarian religious violence, and the reflex to sacralize—literally “to set apart” also
echoes this exteriority. To many fundamentalists, they are strangers to the world. It is their job to re-order it
according to the precepts of their group. There are myriad religious groups who campaign for certain changes
to be made—too many and varied to be discussed here.
• 120 •
This same reflex is often what forms pressure groups, and on a larger scale forms the protests we have been
seeing. The urge to break down current structures and change their arrangement is what binds them together
and gives them an identity. The protests in Egypt were not designed to kill or destroy the nation, rather they
were to cannibalize and re-purpose the structures within it.
But, ironically it is an analysis of the suicide bomber/terrorist as the exemplar of modern bogeyman which
leads us to an intriguing proposition. The primary weapon is that of fear, something it shares with many
existing power-structures. What is unique, is that the suicide bomber operates from a position of inexorable
success because they can induce that effect without an army or police force.
Even if they fail to detonate, do damage or kill people, the mere fact that they exist induces terror. They
hold the status quo in a double bind. Even the fact that they might exist has an effect. What’s more, like
werewolves, they often appear ordinary until a critical point—until they change into the extra-ordinary. This
means that anybody has the potential to be one.
As such, the doctrine of total war occurs when an entire population may become weaponized—
everyone becomes a weapon in potentia. Far from it being driven merely by radicals, politically Egypt
and other movements prove that a population has a potential to detonate—everyone carries the ‘virus’ of
‘lycanthropy’.
This does not limit itself to politics either—one may argue the potential to form packs is inherent to
humanity, and the narrative of the werewolf is one that is inherently liminal. One bite, one contact with a
sorcerer, one horrific combat experience and it may emerge.
This is in itself amoral—a simple fact. One event may affect a larger group. The werewolf is inherently
a myth about bonding and connection, even when viewed as the outsider or Other. It does not have to be
elitist, rather it can be read as a figure in constant flux, emblematic of necessity and change.
Rather than being isolationist, it can serve as an acknowledgment of the very concept of identity itself
being shared amongst all; if it stands for recognition of difference, as a borderland figure, it provides entrance
and exit.
In the Eastern Orthodox Church, St. Christopher, patron saint of ferrymen, travelers and many others, is
held to have been dog-headed, while in Egypt the jackal headed god Anubis served as guide to the dead.
Immersion in the archetype provides us with an in-between state of utmost potential, regardless of
circumstance. Once again we return to the idea that scarcity need not apply, only this time through utilization
of personal resources applied to whatever environment we encounter.
Might it be then, that certain forms of awareness reveal unused resources within the world which
fundamentally disrupt the notion of the status quo, resources which appear to shift those who draw on
them outside of society, so that the notion of ‘home’ becomes foreign? Distinctly extra-ordinary in nature,
these acts are nevertheless carried out in sometimes shockingly prosaic ways; the Fall from Eden comes when
Adam and Eve eat the apple, with the bene elohim saying:
“The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to
reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.”
Thus is mankind exiled from paradise—which itself is a place of enclosure:
paradise
late 12c., “Garden of Eden,” from O.Fr. paradis, from L.L. paradisus, from Gk. paradeisos “park,
paradise, Garden of Eden,” from an Iranian source, cf. Avestan pairidaeza “enclosure, park” (Mod.
Pers. and Arabic firdaus “garden, paradise”), compound of pairi- “around” + diz “to make, form
(a wall).” The first element is cognate with Gk. peri- “around, about,” the second is from PIE base
*dheigh- “to form, build.” The Gk. word, originally used for an orchard or hunting park in Persia,
was used in Septuagint to mean “Garden of Eden,” and in New Testament translations of Luke
xxiii. to mean “heaven” (a sense attested in Eng. from c.1200). Meaning “place like or compared to
Paradise” is from c.1300. [133]
After consuming that apple, thanks to the wily serpent, Adam and Eve experience a shift in perception
which reveals their nakedness, and they are ejected into a harsh world, instead of the place of safety.
Yet much can be made of the phrase “The man has become like one of us”; for it would seem the bene
elohim—the sons of god—also possess this altered perception. These are the same beings, who under the
• 121 •
leadership of the Tetragrammaton, create the universe and man in their image. The race before, the Annunaki,
mythically similar to the other progenitors, giants, titans, and the like.
As mentioned earlier, these acts are becomings; Adam and Eve become exiles, suddenly aware of the
precarious nature of life—such that it forces them into tilling the soil in a desperate attempt to maintain
their integrity. Denied eternal life, they become subject to entropic forces and eventual death.
Propelled into externality, they nevertheless attempt to mimic their creators, by in some sense creating their
own garden out beyond the walls. In this sense, within the mainstream Judeo-Christian sense, mankind,
the human, requires intercession—the failed experiment needs rectifying. Is it any wonder that the central
Mystery of Christianity is the consumption of the body and blood of Christ, who through his role as
perfected man, elevates all who partake of the sacrament to eternal life?
Such a sacrament, whether symbolic or actual, as in the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation,
is intriguing since it is the ingestion of sanctioned Otherness. When we contrast this with the Black Mass so
beloved of witch-hunters, we find that both the original version and its opposite both partake of the same
technology—a reterritorialization of the process of consumption, a sacred Eucharist.
Whether sanctioned or not, it becomes a reinforcement of a particular narrative—an idea given form
within the flesh of the participant. Just as the consumption of an enemy’s heart bestowed upon the grisly
gourmand the strength of his enemy, so the Host bestows upon the receiver the divine attributes of Christ,
and as such renders him suitable to sit with the Father in Heaven. It matters not whether this is literal—we
are after all dealing in the realm of myth.
However, the fact remains that the integration of a mythic act into one of the necessary functions of life
embeds it within the individual psyche, and in the case of Christianity wherein the ritual is known as Holy
Communion, it is a sacred communion between God and man through the mediating flesh and blood of
Jesus Christ. This act, far from being mere superstition, is a method of literally incorporating the participant
into the myth; it’s literally embodying it with their flesh and existence. That is, of course, if the ritual hasn’t
become a blindly repeated pantomime.
It should also be noted that in the early days of Christianity, this central fact lead to Christians being seen
as cannibals and baby-eaters in ancient Rome! This at the very least should indicate the validity of the idea
of such charges as a defense of the status quo against difference.
The key at the heart of such practice is a ritual re-enactment of the moment of becoming, repetition in a
time set apart from the everyday. Eliade terms such things returning to the illud tempus—the beginning times
when the world was made by the creators. If he is correct, then the urge to contact with the order might be
seen as an attempt to revivify the status quo, a maintenance process wherein man may reconnect to the divine
ordering and in a sense participate in it. Thus, again the charge of heresy may be seen in light of diverting
the necessary energies from the status quo and placing them in an unsanctioned contexts. Participation is
mandatory to be a good citizen, to do otherwise is to be deviant and apostate.
However, even if it is not the case, the rites become elevated and sacralized themselves, the actions feted—
thus is the cargo-cult of religion and ceremony formed. The rites themselves become, as mentioned earlier,
attempts to ward off the inevitable forces of decay and entropy. The body and blood of Christ little more
than stale wafers and cheap wine, by which the rote adherents to religion struggle to find a center of gravity
in an ever-changing world.
This does not interest us. For though one may seek the creative wellspring which gives birth to myth—
which in turn allows us to extract meaning—it is not simply done to fend off the horror of an uncertain
world and shore up our senses of integrity.
On the contrary, what is sought is not the product of that altered perception, but the altered perception
itself. In experiencing the same, the awareness arises that perception is itself tautological, and hence cannot
be trusted, since it is so easily influenced. Our bodies house our myths, we are their hosts, enacting them
without even intending to.
Or to put it another way, the fundamental disruption reveals the system in naked totality—the starkness of
the situation causes a shift which is frankly uncivilized. The notion of sacred versus profane is destroyed and
the individual becomes a thing of awe, capable of operating without the strictures of rite, morals or standard
human perception. Indeed, an individual is indefinable, and attempts at perception give rise to myth itself
in an attempt to make them intelligible within a standard frame of reference and allotment. Does this point
to transcending myth through heresy? Not necessarily. Rather, it points towards becoming a vessel of the
• 122 •
energies at work within us regardless of the restrictions society attempts to place upon us. It is, if there is such
a thing at all, our singular Divine commandment. The sacred is found in embracing what one is.
But if such things are not bound by chronos, by the ordered rules of men and gods, what then? Perhaps they
may be described as kairotic in nature—a Greek term which St Paul re-tasked to refer to the time of God as
distinct from the time of men.98
Yet here we return to the idea of a living verb, for those educated in rhetoric before Paul understood kairos
as the opportune time, a qualitative in-between time of potential. The faculty to make use of opportunity
for maximal effect in any environment or conditions lends itself once more to the idea of the ambivalence
of creation and destruction. This ambivalence is a primary signifier of those figures which have given rise to
myths, their ambiguous action, combined with intensity of being, even at points when others would consider
them at rest, engenders awe.
To conclude this exploration, I’d like to turn to the Greek Magical Papyri, and a text known as the Stele of
Jeu the Hieroglyphist, circa 350 CE—an adaptation of which forms the preliminary invocation of one version
of the Goetia and was adapted by Aleister Crowley into The Rite of the Bornless One. [134] [135] Originally
an exorcism, it contains one of the most evocative descriptions of the motif of a furious creator combined
with the word or logos:
He is the lord of the gods; he is the lord of the inhabited world; he is the one whom the winds
fear; he is the one who made all things by the command of his voice.[…]
I am the headless daimôn with sight in my feet; I am the mighty one who possesseth the
immortal fire; I am the truth who hateth the fact that unjust deeds are done in the world; I am
the one that maketh the lightning flash and the thunder roll;
I am the one whose sweat is the heavy rain which falleth upon the earth that it might be
inseminated; I am the one whose mouth is utterly aflame; I am the one who begeteth and
destroyeth; I am the Favor of the Aiôn; my name is a heart encircled by a serpent; come forth
and follow!
Aeons or Aiôns are ages or cycles of time, and also intelligences in Gnostic theology. These are once again
enclosed spaces—the creator making their own world by destroying the old, or by dividing the prima materia
through discernment, moving from enclosure to enclosure via the mechanisms of capture. The common
theme of a new age emerging from the ashes of the old, a new order or set of rulers emerging after conflict,
exists in countless myths all over the world. Yet what arises is often a cyclic repetition rather than any form of
enduring stasis—one only has to examine the notion of Ragnarok to suspect that the awareness of fragility
was often in the minds of pre-modern cultures.
However, amidst these mythic ashes lies the incontrovertible fact that awe may be found even amidst the
end of worlds, and even at the beginnings, that there will always be those who will dine as easily on carrion
as they would on fine meat brought to the table of kings. Vital in incomprehensible ways, capable of taking
what is dead and gone and making it speak as if alive, so that the stories say they come from the beginning
times, or some distant world—because the alternative is unthinkable and would undermine reality itself.
The End is Nigh.
Always.
98. The idea of kairos as supreme moment lends itself to a continuum of time which, by virtue of being ‘above’ enables viewing of the
whole. In terms of myth, this is both the Golden Age of the Titans spoken of in Graeco-Roman mythology, and also where events are not seen
in terms of large or small, but contributing to the whole. This leads to the intriguing proposition that affect should not be thought in terms of
control, modulation etc., but in terms of itself in a violation of teleology.
• 123 •
Myths of Artistic Progress

James Curcio
T
he next topic in our deconstruction of modern
mythology is how these myths of progress and
individuality affect our perspective of art and
creativity. Though we regarded it from a macro- level in
Pretty Suicide Machine, I would like to turn our attention
back to the micro- level: specifically the myths that we
have of artistic progress, which we can then fold back
into some of the larger issues of progress within Western,
which is to say, industrialized and capitalist, culture. It is
impossible that the myths that structure the place of art
within the world should not similarly structure our views
of value and commodity, or perhaps it could be flipped
around and remain the same.
Let’s consider: it is a common conception that
breakthroughs in science, philosophy and the arts have
all come about through critical analysis of an established
corpus of previous works, and that the process is a gradual
one. This is a myth cemented in the natural methodology of teaching art history, or history in general: we
assume a gradual progress from one point to the next through time, carrying up to the present day. Perhaps
the rate of progress accelerates or slows down, whether through the convergence or divergence of trade
routes, the friction and choke points of information of culture in the formation of cities, or the growth of an
arts culture in a certain location, (not unlike a bacterial culture) and so on. But we imagine that we can safely
assume that this Hegelian myth of gradual synthesis is a sound one. “In all ways we have Progressed, and this
progression is towards some end,” so says the teleological myth. Let’s proceed with it, but also consider the
possibility that, like all myths, it is also misleading.
It also follows that wherever we have a prevailing myth of “the artist,” rather than a tradition of artisans
and skilled tradesman that attempt to do nothing beyond furthering and perfecting traditional methods, the
real breakthroughs occur in the hands of rare individuals who change the playing field in varying degrees.
Through figures such as Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Thelonius Monk, or Ornette Coleman, blues and jazz
were transformed into bebop and free jazz. They all had varying experience in the traditions that came before,
but all of their contributions are measured in the uniqueness of their own voice, and how the addition of
that voice forever changed the tune afterward. An artist is often somewhere between a medium and a curator,
picking which elements in the screaming cacophony around us to focus on, to enlarge or elaborate upon,
or to rail against. The emphasis on the role of artist in this process, which really involves everyone engaged
within a particular social domain, is clearly something valued in Western culture, even if it is also feared by
the conservative elements of that culture. (If a conservative perspective is one that seeks to be backwards
facing, emphasizing and idealizing the importance of tradition rather than revolution.)
We simply don’t find the same emphasis on an artist as a unique individual, at least as the rule, in
traditional tribal cultures of South America, or in many Asian cultures before Western values began to
take hold. (Through it does crop up in various forms of guru worship, which is probably a variation on a
similar theme.)
These are two very different, equally valid perceptions of the nature of art. One emphasizes upholding and
refining a particular tradition. The other emphasizes a revolution of forms by the individual, and as such
is oftentimes as much about the artist as the art. We know of Dali’s persona almost as much as his work;
imagine the same thing from the Ndebele of South Africa. We know the style, but rarely the creator. The
art is more of a cultural and community practice. The work remains, the creator remain nameless outside
of the community. The work of Piet Mondrian, which carries a somewhat similar aesthetic as the Ndebele,
• 124 •
the same boldness of color and solid geometric simplicity, is distinguished in part because of the artist, even
in the case of a less flamboyant artist such as he. There is an element to the individualistic, progress-centric
concept of art that is always autobiographical, whether it is implicit or explicit. Even in art focused on form
or concept, the value of the art comes through the creator, rather than the piece itself.
Imagine that living at the same time as Picasso, there was another artist with a similar style and equal skill.
This fictional shadow never attained any amount of notoriety as an artist, however, eking out an existence
as an accountant. In the present day, which artists work is more valuable? The fact that this question is
rhetorical only proves the power of this myth in the Western world. These works only become valuable if
someone manages to bolster the myth of this shadow artist; if he attains sainthood within the art world,
then perhaps the work will command high prices by virtue of the name. An artist’s foremost task as myth-
maker in a world fixated on commodity is to build cultural value through one’s own myth. Andy Warhol and
Britney Spears both serve as examples of what importance the spectacle has in this fickle process.
Breakthroughs at the hands of these individuals are literally just that, changing the playing field altogether,
rather than being a part of an unbroken, linear progression from antiquity to modernity. This may seem
confusing, since the myth of progress itself is linear. It is only in retrospect that we identify, or even invent,
the ideological connections between one movement and sub-culture and the next, in essence drawing a line
in a field of dots.
This idea of contention, opposition, and temporary synthesis is key in analyzing the procession of creative
work. Creativity thrives in an environment of nurturing conflict, and a motivating factor for many artists,
as well as scientists, is the need to express themselves in contrast or conflict with the prevailing ideologies of
the culture(s) around them.99The framing of this situation is depending on the premise of the myth: that the
individual will is central to the creative process, and that there is a single history of civilization that is based
on a single narrative of progress. Though this may seem at first an oxymoronic statement, within this frame
it’s clear that the life-blood of artistic and philosophical advancement lies in struggle: each new “great” school
of art or philosophy comes about as a reaction to the previous, now ossified system. Calling it a “system” at
all is a demonstration of this. Nature is systematized. Contained, controlled, mastered. This is one of the
conceits of progress.
When something has become a system it has entered the adult stage. Along with this comes stasis, and
ultimately, degeneration or replacement by a young upstart. The Golden Bough’s mono-myth finds some
purchase in this territory, as does the Graal myth of the wounded king and Percival—what we now establish
must be overthrown or outgrown tomorrow. [37] The myth of progress depends on this. According to it,
each generation must exceed the past. And perhaps in some sense it often does, but this linear, teleological
myth implies a singular goal. It contradicts those traditions that attempt to mirror rather than master
nature, which reveals itself as the circle or spiral, never a line. It contradicts a narrative of decline, which
continues to try to interject itself in the form of myths of apocalypse and revelation.100 And it contradicts
an interpretation of history that says that at various times, one thing has been emphasized over another, and
at the present time, myths of progress and conquest are merely the “genre of fiction” that’s selling in certain
parts of the world.
Many of the breakthroughs used to further the narrative of progress come as a result of critically analyzing,
even challenging, the mythic axioms held by the surrounding culture, as we see in the history of Christianity
with Eckhart, with Bruno, and so on. Whether artist, inventor, or philosopher becomes less relevant within
this context. Each took a new gambit, however subtle or gross, based on the risks taken by those that came
before. The challenge is not just in regard to an invented “art world,” but towards the culture as a whole. If
successful, these gambits can reform the culture itself. Yet it is subsumed into this underlying teleological
myth, like cobblestones laid to build a road.
Art is a medium of cultural revolution. It is even a constant revolution, in the Marxist sense—a continual
process of self-criticism—though certainly not necessarily towards Marxist ends. The Western myth of art
seems indistinguishable from the myth of the revolutionary individual. This mythic current could even be
called Luciferian, though only to the extent that Lucifer is conceived of as a symbol divorced of Christian
99. It is also commonly observed that there is some clear link between the obsessive pursuit of creative expression and the sex drive,
following along the general lines drawn by Freud in Civilization and its Discontents. But that would take us far afield. [115]
100. Revolutionary concepts of time can serve a teleological movement towards an “End Times” state, but do so in the sense that we see
in the Hindu yugas,
• 125 •
morality. He is the light-bearer, not all that unlike Prometheus; a figure that disobeys the laws of the land.
But this transgression is not without purpose. It is done in the name of progress. Thus the Western myth of
art, in the form of the revolutionary artist, is inexorably tied into the myth of progress.
The advances brought about by these individuals generally occur as a result of people thinking about old
problems in new ways. At first, they are seen as mavericks. The unlucky are excommunicated, exiled, even
killed. This further proves this thesis of the revolutionary power of the individual artist in this paradigm of
the artist as Lucifer. They pose a threat to the status quo.
Secretly, this myth gains some of its power through the reactionary reflex of the established order, rather
than directly from itself. This is ongoing. A hundred—or even ten—years later, this Luciferian, “dangerous”
idea, represents the next tradition that needs to be smashed in the name of progress. Where does this road
lead? (We have already begun an critique of that in the previous chapter, though it’s unlikely any final
conclusions can be drawn.)
There is a misconception within the myths perpetuated by capitalistic culture, which claims that art and
philosophy are useless endeavors—at best, a mental exercise, at worst, an activity for criminals and dilettantes.
Even arts organizations that demand the arts behave well in business terms are tacitly buying into this myth,
such as NEA chairman Rocco Landesman, when he said, “Look … you can either increase demand or
decrease supply. Demand is not going to increase. So it is time to think about decreasing supply.” [136]
Though inarguable within the context of business, this view forgets that all of the great periods in human
history, leaps of progress in terms of science, mathematics, and other disciplines that produce more tangible
results, have occurred side-by-side with paradigm shifts in the arts and philosophy. It is impossible, and
irrelevant, to definitively argue which came first.
How can that be quantified? Art and philosophy, without trade, commerce, and application, is sterile and
masturbatory. Similarly, trade and commerce is brutish and myopic when it isn’t applied with the sensibility
that comes from in-depth philosophical and artistic debate. Both are crucial to cultural evolution, but only
when applied together, and the cultural value of art cannot be comprehended from within the valuation
system of commerce.
This misconception is one of the dangers of prevalent capitalistic myths. It is possible that it has actually
further divorced these two currents, modern art rendering itself a theoretical, navel-gazing reflection upon its
place as separate from the profane world of markets and commodity. This, in part, came about through the
hands of the art world itself as a reaction to its position within a world defined by corporate and capitalistic
myths, an “art world” arises which in many cases consists of happenings where nothing happens, of canvases
painted white, and music performances where nothing is performed.101
In a capitalistic society, the qualities of what cannot be quantified are irrelevant. What cannot be
commodified cannot be useful, cannot be meaningful. Max Horkheimer deals with this in The Eclipse of
Reason, for example:
…[T]he transformation of all products of human activity into commodities was achieved only
with the emergence of industrialist society. The functions once performed by objective reason,
by authoritarian religion, or by metaphysics have been taken over by the reifying mechanism
of the anonymous economic apparatus. It is the price paid on the market that determines the
saleability of merchandise and thus the productiveness of a specific kind of labor. Activities
are branded as senseless or superfluous, as luxuries, unless they are useful or, as in wartime,
contribute to the maintenance and safeguarding of the general conditions under which industry
can flourish. Productive work, manual or intellectual, has become respectable, indeed the only
accepted way of spending one’s life. [137]
However, Horkeimer attributes this to the “subjective reason” which to his thinking performed a coupe
d’etat of both so-called “objective reason,” on the one hand, and the mythological impulse on the other. I
would instead argue that this end result, which he is quite correct about, was not arrived at through the
overthrow of objective reason, but it is instead its ultimate conclusion. It is the inevitable evolution of a
specific mythology heritage, which gave birth to reason, which gave birth to the nation-state, which, through
101. Which is not to say that there has been no value produced, for instance, by John Cage’s 4’33”, but there can be little argument that
this movement in art has unintentionally furthered the capitalist myth that art is purely masturbatory. Conceptual art seems in a sense to
merely be a revolt against the capitalistic or at least industrial idea that every thing, every action must have a purpose. Where does this revolt
lead?
• 126 •
many other turn-abouts, gave birth to blind industry. Zeus consumed his own father, Kronos. That is not to
say that he was not born by him. The same could be said of Horkheimer’s objective and subjective reason, as
presented in the Eclipse of Reason. No return to objective reason is possible: we are living in its aftermath. At
the same time, it is arguable if it existed, save as an ideal, in the first place.
Instead, the alternative can only come to life through the culture, embodied in the form of new art, and
new myths. An example of this in practice was the situationist movement.

• 127 •
The Shining World

Yakov Rabinovich
The Trilobite’s Amusing Dream
N
ewspaper headlines, machine parts, mass produced objects, media icons, off-the-rack prêt-a-voyer
artifacts—from Duchamp’s ready-mades on, the enshrinement of such in a museum causes the
uninstructed viewer to bristle at once. How could this painfully ordinary detritus of manufactured
culture, these cullings from the garbage heap of the immediately obsolete, possibly be art?
This view misses immediately what is most meaningful in such objects. Though, being infinitely
reproducible, they lack all uniqueness in space, they have a counterbalancing specialness in terms of time. Any
viewer can place to the decade even a hat or a hubcap. Mass produced products, in their instant obsolescence,
are, in the popular phrase “dated.” We should take this label literally: they possess intense temporal identity,
an unparalleled historical particularity of which a petrified trilobite could only dream. Instant fossils. Just
add money. The same applies to photography, equally reproducible, mechanically produced, and even more
poignantly fixed in the moment of its manufacture. Photography cannot be judged by the criteria one
applies to paintings, because its goal is different. Photography reveals the poetry of time. Thence the boredom
of photos of nebulas: these lack expressive value because the things themselves are, from our point of view
timeless. Seen directly through the telescope, we carry in ourselves the dimension of time that gives them
interest, and experience through the star-view a sense of thrilling insignificance. We feel our mortality as a
celestial phenomenon.
Whereas pre-Renaissance art typically expressed the particular symbolically, through the universal forms
provided by mythology and religion, the modern world has discovered an equal gift for raising the particular
to the level of the universal. The technique is easily seen in literature where such historical characters as
Aristophanes’ Cleon or Socrates, Shakespeare’s Falstaff and Joyce’s Leopold Bloom are clearly contingent
characters become mythic figures. The contemporaries who populate Dante’s worlds show the same principle
in play, which is what makes the divine poem a comedy.
All art achieves its beauty by a balance of freedom and necessity. In tragedy, the element of necessity is
without, and called fate. (In modern tragedy, where fate takes the form of character, it is still beyond the
conscious control of the protagonist, and so functionally external to him.) The freedom which is achieved by
the hero’s struggle with divine or psychic determinisms exists internally, in the hero’s realization, hard-won
resignation and acceptance.
Comedy reverses this relation. Here the hero is “constant as the Northern star,” ever and only more
himself, while outward circumstances show a capricious fluidity like that of human consciousness. Thus
Fielding’s marvelous insight that “Repetition is the essence of Comedy.” The comic hero’s “true, fix’d and
resting quality” offers no tragic interior tension, but rather the only-too-durable optimism of an invincibly
shallow protagonist. At last, someone in whom one may have absolute confidence! The security of the comic
hero’s inner balance, his unsinkability, yields us our relaxation into laughter. Necessity is incarnate in a fixed
figure of fun.
This is why true comedy is never mean, why it is instantly involving but never distressing. The Socrates
of Aristophanes is no more the merely historical philosopher than Andy Warhol’s soup can is the item on
the supermarket shelf. Both are schematized, made two dimensional, in the direction of the symbolic or
archetypal. Were it otherwise, we would have a slander or an infringement of copyright.
In biological rather than literary terms, the necessary and predetermined world is that of nature. The
individual rushes about irrelevantly differentiating himself from the species which alone is immortal. There
is no comedy in nature—a dismal insight, but at least it raises comedy to the dignity of an unnatural act.
Now Pop art takes its comic heroes from the unnatural natural world of the manufactured. The
famous soup can has an air of timeless necessity because of its multiplicity. This is the key to Warhol’s
unparalleled fascination with the series and the multiple. One might see it as the out of control fecundity
of a fully artificial nature. The strange sexuality of the nature morte (if we want to stress the trace element
• 128 •
of Surrealism). One could characterize the Warhol multiples as the species of his interior world. Art does
imitate nature, after all.
Some will here object that whole Warhol “factory” concept was primarily an Apache gesture aimed at
what he called “art fantasies,” the exalted notions people have about art and artists. But we should be wary
of attributing to Warhol that kind of earnestness. One would be on safer, though no less superficial ground,
if one maintained his motivation was to multiply saleable products. Warhol himself claimed this was the
case, that he was not engaged in Art but “art business,” yet there is far more humor than truth in his words.
Remember that nature is, itself, the great exemplar of mass-production, and whether it yields water-lilies
or irate badgers, nature produces no “one-offs.” Yet, unlike the creations of nature, those of industry are
temporally determinate. Today’s duck appears the same as the one we see on the wall of an Egyptian tomb,
but the Campbell’s concoction is best enjoyed before the printed date.
Andy was “Cool”

When the manufactured is taken up by art in place of the organic, and the strip mall is rendered as an
impressionist landscape, then a cool irony replaces the inhuman coldness of nature. Here we may appreciate
the affectless, unengaged, deliberately shallow “cool” of Andy Warhol’s public persona. It is an extension
of his subject matter. His impenetrability is that of comedy’s fixedly grinning mask. Warhol was indeed “a
fellow of infinite jest.”
This, of course, falls far short of exhausting Warhol’s depth. His distance obliquely hints at his neurotic
guardedness and dread of intimacy, which gave a wistfulness to his silk-screened treatments of unattainably
glamorous people like Marilyn, that archetype of emotional and erotic largesse. With similar reticence, he
never discussed the painterly and selective treatment of his mass produced subjects that made them nearly
abstractions, achieving aesthetic sublimity in the midst of triviality. Though he was very fond of referring to
this or that individual as “a beauty,” and he had a special interest in the Hollywood and social icons of female
loveliness, he never discussed aesthetic beauty, of which he was an indisputable if not consistent master. Even
in conversation, he was scrupulous to note the beautiful only in the particular.
In the landscape of Pop art, the element of the eternal and necessary is parodied by the temporary and
selected. The counterbalancing element of freedom finds its place (as in all comedy) on the periphery. In
literature, this is the plot; in art, what frames the composition is quite literally, a frame. The composition
itself, the arrangement of the images, their texture and treatment, even the simple act of placing the work
in a gallery, in these we see the freedom of an art which raises the object from a merely true reproduction
to a beautiful one—albeit beautiful in its absurdity. But despite the clues, clear as road signs, how few have
gotten Duchamp’s clearly labeled jokes. Though some of them, like R. Mutt’s porcelain, are perhaps more a
dig at the idea of the enshrined art object, the full development of Pop is already there in germ, and the entire
comedy is hinted at in Duchamp’s mysterious grin. Oracular Marcel! Propounder of eternity’s own riddles.
Everyone hears his laughter, and none are angrier than those who can’t figure out how to share it.
Perhaps the most valuable spiritual knowledge to be drawn from Pop art is the potential beauty of the
artificial world. Once one has grasped this, the neon sign in a pizza parlor may disclose in its play of gas, glass
and electrified pastel color, the exuberance which is beauty. The Pop artists have performed for us the same
service as Van Gogh, before whom no one saw the majesty in that common weed, the sunflower. How one
wishes that one’s friends, who trundle off to Zen centers and spiritual retreats in hopes of gaining a glimpse
of the Real, would make the less troublesome trip to the Whitney or the Modern, and learn there to see the
splendors hidden on every supermarket shelf, uncritically dismissed.
Artificial Paradise
Anarchism, Communism, the whole stuffed tumbril of left political “isms,” now amount to Luddism—
the doctrine that all who work should wage war against labor-saving machinery. These systems date from the
nineteenth century, and represent different strategies for arresting or directing the tide of industrialization.
Today they’re as implausible as a stove-pipe hat. Technology, mass-production, popular culture, these make
up the world we actually inhabit. To this practical consideration I can add the moral one that this world, of
packaged meat and recorded music, is as far-reaching and factual as gravity. And like gravity, it may at times
be good or bad, but it can never be good or evil.
• 129 •
You choose to be a tourist or a pilgrim, a colonialist or an ethnographer, a stupid consumer or a canny

shopper, but you really can’t blame the plane that flew you to this pass. Access to everything is, if anything,
liberating, a new age of exploration, not a closing of the map—for the individual there is always another
terra incognita (unless you’re a know-it-all). The Leftist criticism that access flattens and homogenizes all real
differences is a half-truth: the differences it annihilates are not the only real ones—unless we confine ourselves
to what flatters a nineteenth-century sense of the picturesque, and automatically invalidate anything that
has ever appeared on TV. Our dismay at the very real, and quite global, death of traditional cultures should
not blind us to the traditional arts now being born. As Napoleon said when taken to task for his want of
illustrious ancestors, “I am an ancestor.”
Religious dogmas are even sillier now than the political ones. The “religions of the book” came into
being in the first wave of modernism, the rise of cities and international trade around the beginning of the
Common Era. Though religious experience is a human given, its domestication within a creed and a church
was only possible in the context of a walkable localized life that no longer exists. The industrialized world,
which gave us the means to be as individual as we dare, and especially via the Internet to gratify our every
taste, has atomized us. Communal experience, even so common a one as shared public transportation is,
proportional to auto travel, as rare as a quilting bee. We have lost the art of community life, and attempts
to revive it on scheduled days in a house of worship do nothing to mitigate our selfishness—see how pastors
are treated! If we are authentically religious we must be hermits and wanderers, traveling far as grail knights
to find our fellowship.
One cannot be an anarchist or a Sufi today. Nor for that matter, can one be (except by accident) a
recognized artist in any field. There is no longer any cultural establishment, nor any avant-garde. Not only is
no one minding the store, the store closed its doors a hundred years ago. The twentieth-century art market
was the final clearance sale.
But if you can’t be politically engaged or spiritually committed or acclaimed for your art, how can an
earnest twenty-something hope to be taken seriously?
Being taken seriously is still being “taken.”
Hopefully this has helped to clear the air of the second-hand smoke left by the Luddite panic-reaction to
our first glimpse of modernity’s “dark satanic mills.” But when the smoke clears, what if there’s nothing left?
Not the worst outcome. Jackson Bentley asks T. E. Lawrence in the famous film, [138]
“What is it that attracts you personally to the desert?”
“It’s clean.”
And our desert turns out to be richly symboled. The world we actually and deliberately inhabit is mainly
made of telephone conversations, movies, long novels and manufactured things. An artificial paradise, yes,
but not an unnatural one: no man-made substance comes into being outside of nature.
As paradises go, ours is an uncommonly real one. Actual as fabric, malleable as metal, pleasing as plastic.
It is a realm of intelligible emblems, where sound perfectly echoes sense, where the name and the thing are
perfectly one, where the physical thing is the archetype, as in Kleenex, Xerox and Coca-Cola. To find our
way through this dense forest of meanings, we need at least philosophy, and ideally theology. And we must
read what physically lies before us, however fine the print, not dismiss the poem because it takes the form of
a label or a slogan (“Raid Kills Bugs Dead.”)
Nothing has been lost, but all has transmigrated. As Whitman said of the Classical Muse,
I say I see, my friends, if you do not, the illustrious émigré, (having it is true in her day, although the same,
changed, journey’d considerable,)
Making directly for this rendezvous, vigorously clearing a path for herself, striding through the confusion,
By thud of machinery and shrill steam-whistle undismay’d,
Bluff’d not a bit by drain-pipe, gasometers, artificial fertilizers,
Smiling and pleas’d with palpable intent to stay,
She’s here, install’d amid the kitchen ware! [139]
The Heaven of Glass

We have access now to all recorded time and more of space than we can imagine the measurements of.
Through lenses we see and record what is, to the naked mortal eye, invisible: we peer through a Gnostic
• 130 •
stargate. The universal culture and limitless knowledge of which the Enlightenment dreamed has been
realized. Words and particularly images are the fabric of our existence. Even money has become, as it were,
spiritualized into pure concept, no longer metal but mental, globally and instantly catalyzing every kind of
exchange. Even buildings, the archetypes of solidity, are now more the creations of mind than of mortar, feats
of pure engineering and design, visibly dematerialized by their ever greater incorporation of glass.
Glass is as close as a physical thing can come to being light itself. And gloss, the effulgence of glass, is
likewise an emblem of transfiguration, of all things made new.
Red steak, shrink-wrapped to glitter with intrinsic numinosity, labeled with wistful hint of time’s passage
(the sell-by date.)
Kleenex boxes in infinite patterned variety to coordinate Zen-precise with any decor.
Advertising itself, which amplifies reality to the power of ten, revealing the intrinsic shininess of any
activity, however mundane.
Lawn flamingos, eternal as Egyptian hieroglyphs, more than mortal in their pinkness, durability and
obedience (so long as your command is “stay!”)
Anti-perspirant, transmuting man’s mortal condition (people stink); and scented! (So you can stink
weirder.)
That modern Flora, “the lady in the tutti-frutti hat,” Carmen Miranda, her countless echo-avatars,
the Land O Lakes Girls, the Sun-Maid Raisin Girl, all the way back to the Mucha Maiden proclaiming
Chocolate Ideal.
All the Pop artists are prophets of this living polytheism, but none more so than James Rosenquist, the
wall-dog and public heterosexual, who outdid in exuberance (exuberance is beauty) the brilliant but faintly
dismal Warhol, art-god and fey illustrator of ladies shoes.
The Tragic Art of Abstraction

No One Really Likes the History Channel
Art history has its uses, primarily as a way of organizing and surveying the material, that is, as a catalogue—
which is indeed where most of it gets printed. Also, it is not without its occasional gossipy pleasures. But
its rationale is essentially old-fashioned aestheticism, which is fruitful only in turgid Ruskin-esque prose
descriptions of artwork. The Renaissance conceptions of what is the proper form and content of art, already
articulated by Vasari and given classical formulation by Winckelmann, are all unexamined givens. Rooted
in late Neo-Platonism and its simplistic theology of beauty, the whole affair is so philosophically naive that
it is inadequate to analyze even a Rembrandt in meaningful depth. Aestheticism equips one only to make
displays of expertise and engage in the witty disagreements of the connoisseur, to show by flippancy and
bitchiness one’s imperial control of the material. The critic becomes a Caligula of good taste.
But aesthetes are powerless creatures, essentially harmless. The only sting carried by these bees busily
sipping nectar from beauty’s blooms is the concept of progress, the idea that the destiny of art is to rival and
finally surpass the perfect productions of classical antiquity. Evolution is indeed a fact, but in art as in nature
it proceeds rather randomly towards its goal. The attempt to tidy this into a gripping narrative ignores too
many facts.
Very considerable abstraction was already to be seen in the clouds and draperies of El Greco. More than
a foretaste of Pop art can be found in the still lives that have been part of painting since Egypt. The famous
Roman mosaic floor strewn with fish bones and dinner debris shows that even the modern sense of Pop irony
was not lacking. The Romans already understood “just what it is that makes today’s homes so different, so
appealing.”
Virtually every trend in twentieth-century art was already shown in confused unity in the works of the Four
Horsemen of Modernism: Picasso, Braque, Duchamp and Cezanne, decades before independent development
made their innovations into movements. The historical model, which would see in art a progress like that in
the sciences, with each innovator building deliberately on an ever growing wealth of discovered data, doesn’t
fit the facts without an unacceptable struggle with zippers and the unsightly resultant muffin-top.
What it does accomplish is the generation of concepts whose use is small or negative, like that of movements.
This didn’t even apply well when the movements in question were still alive—think of Breton’s musical chairs
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of Surrealist excommunication. Useful enough as a generality, the idea only really works when the movement
in question is dead—which should lead one to wonder whether the idea itself isn’t deadening.
A more embarrassing waste product of the idea of progress and movements in art is that it forces one
to admire people one doesn’t like and work one doesn’t enjoy, like most of Impressionism, because of its
“importance,” that is, its influence on what came after. But if a work’s value lies in what it leads to, it can
hardly reside in the work itself, which fairness should really add to the evolution chart, not the pantheon.
The historical model also opens the Pandora’s Box of political criticism. Art actually stands sovereign
and sublime above the flow of historical determinism. When it lowers itself to serving so ignoble a master
as politics, the result is the kitsch of recruiting posters, Socialist Realism, or Judy Chicago, whose feminist
populism resulted in works that rank with plastic novelty knockoffs of Mannekin-Pis. Not that I am here
maintaining, with the art-for-art’s-sake nineteenth-century critics, that nothing which serves a purpose is
truly art. The great industrial designers (Dreyfus, Eames, Moholy-Nagy) achieved art of the highest order.
But for them the practical purpose was no more than a form: it was not the entire content. This is why an
Eames chair is as much at home in a museum as in a living room.
Nor should we take kitsch and mass production as invalid. The naiveté and reproducibility of a plastic
snow globe is just as observable in an African mask. But when political kitsch is produced without the saving
grace of innocence, the result is the ham-fisted allegory of Guernica and the loathsome Neue Sachlichkeit of
George Grosz: ineffectual as propaganda, and tainted by the notion that misery = meaning. The Russian
Suprematists offer a tragic-comic version of the situation. Their art could be great because it had so poor an
integration with its intention, as Stalin realized without benefit of an art education. A final contradiction in
the political critique may be mentioned: the leftist persuasion that market value somehow annuls art (Beuys
and Warhol are favorite targets here). If this were true, then the opposite would also hold, and all art which
fails to sell would be priceless.
Even art critics acknowledge, though indirectly, the above observations, as often as they mournfully note
the vanishing of any avant-garde. The speed with which the shocking and new has been accepted by the
establishment shows that the dynamic supposed in the succession of movements was no more significant
than a family spat. Everything is accepted today, (as it always was, despite the protests). The public can no
longer be startled, only annoyed, and then primarily by the prices. As a rule, the artists themselves offer
nothing new now, only recombinations of past newness into novelties. Thus the critics, in tones of learned
pessimism, announce then end of (art) history. But a history, that is a determining succession of events, that
can end, never actually happened—at least not historically.
Once we overcome the obsession with history, we arrive at last at the most interesting and cryptic of all
epochs: the present, the time which is always with us. Art’s development is not determined by a connected
succession of mad scientists. The world is always modern, and great art, however old, is always new. Though
we tend to date our era by the preponderation of technology, it is too large to be humanly viewed as
other than trans-temporal, a spectacle of simultaneous trends, not discrete periods. Thus we may consider it
logically, rather than causally, as a dialectic of the real, the ideal and the synthesis of the two into the non-
different. (I find it helpful here to employ the terminology of Schelling’s terms, the greatest, and til now the
only theologist of art.) In this essay, however, I shall focus on the last century, with the understanding that
the concepts might be applied with equal justice to previous periods as well.
1) Where the ideal fully preponderates, we have naive, primitive, outsider and kitsch art. Innocent of
individual expression, this reveals the epic quality of the human existence.
2) Where the real preponderates, we have found objects, to some extent photography, and the shapes of
pop culture employed with an antithetical self-awareness. The “ordinary,” raised to the level of the non-
ordinary by its very historical particularity. This signifies the comic element in our world.
3) The full synthesis of the ideal and the real appears in abstract art. Here the modern artist most
unequivocally achieves beauty, and passes beyond it to sublimity, working like that nature itself—in content
only though, and not by an imitation of its physical appearance. This is the tragic image of our reality.
These concise definitions, comparing the trends of modern art to epic, comedy and tragedy, will be of
limited use until I have shown how they play out in specific works of art, and how they operate in complex
combinations and their derivative forms, which one could compare to lyric, didactic, satiric, elegiac poetry,
and so on.
• 132 •
Metaphysics of Modern Art

Form and content, activity and being, perceived as separate in the material world, are perfectly one in
the absolute. Manifest in nature and in art, their primal unity can by recognized by equipoise, a balance of
conflicts. Nature shows this contradictory stability in all its productions, but most clearly in those that are
written large, as in water, rock formations, clouds coastlines and galaxies. These things have harmonious shape
without determinate form. Even plants show this balance of irregularity and symmetry. It is no coincidence
that Mondrian began with views of the ocean and trees as his almost exclusive subjects, and refined from
them the basis of all his later abstractions.
Classical Greek art shows foreknowledge of this truth. But there, since the subject is the human body, we
are shown not formlessness wrestling with form, but the same drama in human terms, as freedom striving
with necessity. The body, boundary and vessel of human existence, is most acutely perceived in pain. But
Greek art, whether it depicts battling Achilles or grieving Niobe, always preserves the dignified harmony
and self-mastery of spiritual freedom. For this reason the limbs of these sculptures streamline the rigid
sinews into fluent smoothness, veins never stand out on the straining limbs. The face is always calm: at most
the expression is a little dazed. The smiling serenity of the Bodhisattva in East Asian art shows a similar
transfiguration of compassion, which is, after all, the act of sharing in another’s pain.
The same overall harmony amid furious action characterizes even the most frenetic Pollock action painting,
or the explosively juxtaposed shapes in a Suprematist composition. Significantly, the flattening of the forms
in abstraction is a precise parallel to the flattening of musculature and affect in Greek sculpture.
Another point in common with the tragic art of the Greeks is the equal importance given empty and
environing space. This may be compared to the tragedies of Aeschylus and Sophocles, where what is not
shown on stage is as momentous as anything visibly enacted. Like the serene vision achieved by the completed
tragedy, the sublime equalizing calm of the abstract painting exalts and purifies the viewer, who is privileged
to see, as it were, with the eyes of God, for whom the vast and the minutely particular are as one. In Isaiah’s
formulation,
Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance;
behold, he taketh up the yles as a very little thing. (Isaiah 40:15)
Tragedy, unlike epic, is not essentially narrative. Though it presupposes a story, every effort is made to
telescope this into a single situation, by the strictest unities of time and place, and even more by the chorus,
which constantly exalts and abstracts the action into the timelessness of cognition. It replaces the determined
and linear relations in time’s progression with the self-caused and circular relations of logic. (A=B is no
different than B=A.) In less high-flown language, it presents not a story but a situation, that is to say, what
is.
In tragedy, the world and circumstances of the hero are both ineluctable and random. The tragic hero’s
plight is a guiltless one. Honest error, lack of necessary information, poorly motivated deceit by higher
powers—these mindless and inescapable factors are what give tragedy its terror. Freedom enters only through
the hero’s realization and acceptance, his taking responsibility for things he never chose. This is what makes
him a hero and a model for us rather than a simple victim or a criminal justly punished.
Abstract art has the same dynamic, the same interactive system of competing forces, as tragedy, but very
differently arranged. In abstract art we are shown the interior world rather than the exterior one, and the
uncontrollable element is not events which occur but feelings which arise.
The forms of abstraction are not imitations of visible nature, but spontaneous, intuitive, improvised ones
that a mood or a feeling gives rise to of itself. They are a reflection of the Absolute, the totality, in the
microcosm of the individual.
On the cosmic level, the Absolute is God, all that is, being itself. Now the “absolute,” which etymologically
means “untied from,” is that which is not limited by any restrictions, that which is not caused by or related
to anything but itself. And this will also do as a description of human emotion. Even more than thought,
feelings have free and self-contradictory play.
The real-world chaos of the tragedy, the interior chaos of the emotions. The chaotic completeness which is
God—glimpses of all of these may be seen in chaotic forms of abstract art. Hence there is actually an element
of insight in the philistine’s complaint that abstract art is “just random.” In fact, it is justly random. The
cheap and tired criticism that an abstract painting could be hung upside down and no one be the wiser, that
• 133 •
it has no top or bottom, is a clumsy but not entirely empty observation. What is lacking is not, as supposed,
a spatial orientation, but a causal one, a beginning or an end. Built out of the freedom of the emotions,
abstract art is a limitless and significant glimpse of the incalculable and chaotic whole of existence.
And because it arises from the emotions, like music, it is uncommonly difficult to talk about abstract art
in positive terms. All too often the critic is reduced the silly descriptiveness of a wine connoisseur. Feelings,
like flavors, are easy to experience but hard to explain—at least in isolation.
The difficulty is overcome however if we pursue the analogy with tragedy. If the free formlessness of feeling
pays the role of fate, that which is and must be and cannot be mastered, where is the dimension of freedom?
In the abstract artist’s organization of forms and colors into a balanced and controlled whole. This is the
artist’s self-overcoming, his heroism, and the source of our delight in his productions.

• 134 •
Counterculture Myths
A Brief Jaunt Through Psychedelic History
James Curcio
The cybernaut generation is intrinsically anarchistic, endlessly anti-authoritarian, and hates

Corporate America. Therefore, this is not an ad for Coke. We repeat, this is not an ad for Coke.
Coke Advertisement [140]
E
ven by definition, the idea of a counterculture expresses itself as a negation. It is arguable if a
counterculture could possibly exist without the myths of the mainstream. As such it is a product of the
market, and exists only insofar as it serves a function within that market.
Yet there are ideals which have been part of various vibrant (if short-lived) countercultures, which rest close
to the heart of the creative process as structured by the myth of the individual: unfettered self-expression,
freedom from the externally imposed social boundaries, irreverent humor, an element of egalitarianism
mixed liberally with pirate capitalism, maybe even a sense of pragmatic community. History shows that these
ideals are quickly lost in such movements, however, oftentimes as soon as they gain a true pulpit. The largest
expression of that in recent history is of course the now somewhat idealized 1960s, a clear view of which has
been obscured through a haze of pot-smoke and partisan politics.
However, “counterculture bubbles,” Temporary Autonomous Zones102 and so on are regularly coming
into and out of being. Countercultures remain rather toothless in regard to having any capacity to sustain
themselves outside the context of the society they stand in opposition to, instead utilizing a self-referential
social currency of cool-points, sprinkled liberally with pointless elitism and a side of Who Gives A Fuck?
One need merely look at the transformation of musical and sub-cultural genres founded on rebellion: punk,
rock and roll, and the like, and what they have transformed into during the decades of their existence. In this
domain, the territory between aesthetic, ideals, and social movement becomes blurry at best.
Let’s begin with a quintessential mainstream icon of the branded, shiny counterculture: The Matrix. Even
as an example it’s a cliché, and that’s part of my ultimate point. Here’s a framed sketch of the first movie: in
the scenes where Keanu Reeves doesn’t seem to be desperately attempting to recall his lines, it is a slick take
on the alienation most suburban American youth feel, packaged within the context of the epistemological
skepticism Descartes wrestled with in the 17th century. Taken out of the cubicle and into the underworld, we
witness the protagonist “keeping it real” by eating mush, donning co-opted fetish fashion,103 and fighting an
army of identical men in business suits in slow motion. The movie superimposes the oligarchic and imperialist
powers-that-be in the world over the adolescent’s authority figures. A successful piece of marketing—you can
be sure no one collecting profits off of points or licensing deals had any misgivings about “the Man.”
This is not to point an accusatory finger, but rather to show the essential dependence of the counterculture
upon the mainstream, because they are not self-sustaining, and every culture produces a counter-culture
in its shadow, just as every Self produces an Other. Any counterculture. Punk, underground, beatnik,
hippy, psychedelic, straight edge, or occult culture all stand as the cardboard cut-out Shadows of corporate
America.
They will be co-opted the moment their shtick becomes profitable. It doesn’t matter that these ideologies
have little in common. It is the fashion or mystique that gets sold. When all an ideology really boils down
to is an easy to replicate aesthetic, how could they not? “Cool” is what customers pay a premium for, along
with the comfort of a world with easy definitions and pre-packaged, harmless rebellions. Psychedelic and
straight edge can share the same rack in a store if the store owner can co-brand the fashions, and people
can brand themselves “green” through their purchasing power without ever leaving those boxes or worrying
102. A term coined by Hakim Bey, in T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism. [141]
103. Yet another example of how this process works. Shortly after the release of The Matrix fetish sheik was suddenly all the rage in the
magazines, whereas before it still remained part of an oft-maligned underground.
• 135 •
about the big picture. Buy nothing day, AdBusters, etc. ad nauseum all utilize this principle. Without laying
the material, mythic, and social groundwork for a new society, counterculture cannot be a bridge; it almost
invariably leads back to the mainstream, though not necessarily without first making its mark and pushing
some new envelope.
Where do we draw the line? As Yogi Bhajan put it, “money is as money does.”104 The question is how
individuals utilize or leverage the potential energy represented by that currency, and what ends it is applied
to. Hard nosed books on business such as Drucker’s Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices say exactly
the same thing, in a less epigrammatic, Yoda-like way: profit is not a motive, it is a means. [108] Within our
present economic paradigm, without profit, nothing happens. Game over.105
Though this “revolution” certainly didn’t start in the 1960s, there we have one of the clearest instances of
what good bed-fellows mass marketing and manufacturing make when branded under the zeitgeist of the
counterculture. The moment that psychedelic culture gained a certain momentum, Madison Avenue chewed
it up and spit it out in 7up ads. If a movement gains momentum, it becomes a market. This was used to sell
these “psychedelic clothes” to a wider market. When people bought those hip clothes to make a statement,
whose pockets were they lining? It’s a revolving door of product tie-ins, and it all feeds on the needs of the
individual, embodied in a sub-culture. The rise of Rolling Stone magazine could also be seen as an example
of this; a counterculture upstart turned mainstream institution.
Fashion embodies a state of mind, a culture. But it is not that culture. An example of this can be seen
in Harley Davidson driving lawyers in their forties. As the company rose to prominence in the 1920s and
beyond, Harley Davidson developed its brand off of what they sold, functionally, yet in later years that
became a shtick that was re-marketed to people that needed not an alternate form of transportation, but
instead what Harley Davidson had come to “mean.” The bottom line here, as discussed previously: we live in
a culture where appearances count for a lot more than reality.
Growth on its own is never a clear indicator that the underlying ideals of a movement will remain preserved.
If history has shown anything, it is that successful movements lose substance either through shallowing their
core values until they become an empty, parroted aesthetic, as with most musical scenes and their transition
from content to fashion; or the movement’s core values are so emphasized that the meaning within them is
lost through literalism, as we can see in the history of the world’s major religions. The early Christian Gnostic
traditions of “love thy neighbor,” “all is one,” and the agape orgies were replaced by the Roman Orthodoxy
and the authority provided through the ultimate union of State and Religion. The hippies traded in their
sandals and beat up VWs for SUVs and overpriced Birkenstocks. It oftentimes seems that succeeding too
well can be the greatest curse to befall a movement, and it is a well-documented fact of cultural trends that
when the pendulum swings far in one direction, it often turns into its opposite without having the common
decency to wait to swing back the other way.106
Ultimately, consumers live as shills to various corporate myths because they choose to, implicitly or
explicitly, by habit or conscious choice. If your life revolves around how the shoes you wear define you as a
person, or which line of body spray is most likely to get you laid, you’ve turned yourself into a patsy. The only
way out of this cycle for the consumer is to take control of their choices: to become myth-makers, to create,
and forget about trying to be original. People don’t set the artistic trends by trying to set the trends. They are
genuine to what gets them in the vitals. Fight long enough and it will find its market, or you will die trying.
You only lose if you give up, and let your identity get co-opted because it’s easier that way.
Despite popular opinion, effective marketing is not about outright manipulation. It is about finding a need
within the public, focusing it, and fulfilling that need in a way that makes them dependent on you to fulfill
104. I’ll share the true story behind this little bit of myth-making. This quote was stated at The Generation Hex roundtable at Alex Grey’s
Chapel of Sacred Mirrors in 2005 by one of the contributors. I’ve never seen written proof that Yogi Bhajan ever said this, though he well may
have. Nevertheless, I began spreading the word of mouth around the Internet, attributing the quote to him. Eventually the quotation began
popping up in other spots, though many of those have since faded from the Internet. You’ll find many more entrenched (and meaningful)
modern myths that were born in a similar way. Have you ever heard of John Galt? Ong’s Hat? What about Master Li’Kao?
105. All you read and / Wear or see and / Hear on TV / Is a product / Begging for your / Fatass dirty / Dollar. (“Hooker With a Penis,” Tool)
[142] Those who position themselves as extreme radicals within the counter culture framework merely disenfranchise themselves through an
act of inept transference, finding anything with a dollar sign on it questionable. To this view, anyone that’s made a red cent off of their work is
somehow morally bankrupt. This mentality can only end one way: they will wind up howling after the piece of meat on the end of someone
else’s string, working by day for a major corporation, covering their self-loathing at night in tattoos, and body-modifications they can hide.
That is, unless they lock themselves in a cave or try to start an agrarian commune.
106. You can read a great deal more about this anti-advertising advertising trend in a book called Nation of Rebels by Joseph Heath and
Andrew Potter. [260]
• 136 •
it. Yoga was boiled down from a very demanding esoteric practice with a rich and complex ideology behind
it into an activity that any housewife can do with a little effort, a mat, and a DVD.107 These housewives were
looking for a lifestyle change, a way to stay healthy and feel good. This was provided to them in an effective,
albeit diluted, package. They wouldn’t have gotten into the yoga baby-pool if it wasn’t packaged in a way that
catered to their needs and beliefs.
Yet, at least at the moment, those more rich and intricate ideologies behind yoga still exist, and they can
be sought out. More to the point, though purists can snub such mainstream examples, there’s no sensible
argument that the spread of something like yoga into the mainstream is actually a bad thing in any way that
matters, especially in a country with dramatically surging obesity statistics. To take this back to our central
theme, countercultures can accomplish a great deal of good as a cultural counterbalance of the mainstream.
But this ends at the water’s edge.
If people demand organic products, and have money to invest in that need, companies will meet that
demand. Though the proliferation of yoga, organic food, specialty food products, high quality imports, and
the like are being supplied to an increasing degree by the “evil empire,” it is also a sign that consumers have
much more power in their hands than they realize. In fact, within the market framework, the consumers
have a great deal of power, although this power only stretches so far as the paradigm which supports it. The
criticism that this approach doesn’t engender “real change” is a legitimate one, as we have seen and will
continue to explore.
Along with that “power,” of course, comes a responsibility that most consumers are unwilling to take on.
For instance, though it is perhaps easy to complain about the quality of Hollywood movies today, if people
stopped going to see them en masse, Hollywood would very quickly work to develop a new formula. Good
or bad, within a capitalist society your dollar is possibly an even stronger form of “voting power” than what
is exercised in the voting booth. How many “green” Americans complain about Wallmart and then go there
the next day?
This leads me to something of a tangent, but I hope you’ll bear me out, as it is relevant to this counter/
mainstream dialectic. The lottery, television award shows such as “American Idol,” and mainstream movie
icons are all carrots which keep the middle and lower classes on the corporate treadmill, accumulating debt
for the sake of another’s profit. Sex, also, and the repression and structuring of the sexual impulse, are similar
mechanisms of motivation and manipulation.
In management, other myths prevail, still rooted in the idea of teleological progress: the representation of
success matter more than the things they represent. As a matter of fact, they replace them. The sports car,
the expensive watch, the designer suit are all, from a utilitarian perspective, often less valuable than items
half their cost. Though luxury items such as these are said to cost more because of increased craftsmanship—
which may well be true—the customer is still buying them because they are symbols of wealth and success.
To have either of these on their own is not enough; the symbols are of greater value. Though this seems
harmless enough in itself, a common indulgence of the upper class, it is the same mis-valuation (weighing
the symbol over what is represented) which leads to vastly damaging business practices. The social dynamics
of “have” and “have not” polarize—and thereby power—the ecology of the economy. This dialectic is not an
unfortunate by-product, it is an essential constituent. What American doesn’t think they too might one day
be rich, or famous? How many in the American working class would be able to go to their tedious job every
day without that dream of success to keep them going?
A friend of mine, who has had decades of entrepreneurial experience dealing with many national and
international brands, summarized the mentality of American ‘business-think’ rather well: “if you’re smiling
when you close a deal, you’re not fucking the person over…even if you are.” The almost cultish corporate
mentality which puts all weight on what a thing seems rather than what it is culminates in a complete lack
of responsibility for the repercussions of corporate actions. The movie Czech Dream implicitly explores one
side of this; however you can easily see it in most business-oriented NLP seminars. [143] Myth itself is based
on the principle of the “seeming” (naming) of things, and so this could very well be called an underlying
“myth of business.” The surface is the thing, and the value is in the illusion that serves the interests of profit
and unmitigated “progress” at any cost, so long as that cost is not felt in the boardroom. The ethical value is
107. Following that, you may get sold some special clothing, or some foam blocks…A ton of ancillary products have been developed to
accompany a practice which traditionally requires nothing more than a guru. (Not that gurus don’t also interject themselves between a need
and its fulfillment.)
• 137 •
not to be seen in the content or method of action of a myth, but rather in its social effects. At face value all
myths are morally ambiguous.
Thus, the utopian dreams of most countercultures are rendered somewhat toothless by the brilliantly
co-optive myths of capitalist culture. One might hope this is a temporary state of affairs, as the hippy
movement hoped that primal territorial and ideological conflicts are some sort of prolonged hold-back rather
than the underlying reality of the human condition. Regardless, hope alone does not bring change. The
paradigms that root a culture in ideological stasis are too strong for any single “revolutionary” or grass-roots
movement to effectively shift them all at once—all that results from defiantly demonstrative radicalization
is further polarization, disenfranchisement and estrangement. If, on the other hand, people find alternatives
that truly work for them, which allow for new cultural possibilities (and blind-spots), they will likely spread
by virtue of their efficacy. If social groups can establish greater sufficiency, they become less dependent on
the structures of government and business, though it’s unlikely they’ll be able to escape the establishment of
their own versions of the same. It almost seems that such things can only happen blindly, naturally, as bees
pollinate flowers.
So we come to it. As counterculture scenes grow and enter the market place—all the elements of it have
been defined, commodified, and made replicable. This is precisely the same process that occurs from one
generation to the next. It isn’t that any subculture—or any “scene” for that matter—needs to be revitalized
once it has reached this stage. They are all dead shells, ideas which at one point in time served a purpose, and
are now just fetishes. We can continue to build places, both virtual and material, that can be utilized by people
who share common goals. We can continue to evolve and avoid being stuck into our cast off stereotypes. The
capacity for creation is never outweighed by the capacity for destruction; the two are mutually dependent.
Over-identification with ideas creates stereotypes.
Nobody is Original Anymore

With all of this said, there are many artists who would still insist on the existence of an independent
counterculture or underground. It is true: though the so-called counterculture is full of underground posers,
sharpening their sticks for the coming revolution against an opposition that doesn’t exist, artistes who haven’t
done a lick of real artistic work in a decade, who use their supposed underground artistic cred to get them
in bed with whomever they can scam, would-be rock stars that think they are evolving music by turning it
into a vapid fashion show, and old school DIY punks who haven’t yet realized that their ideological stance,
though noble in its way, simply limits them, there are also daring innovators and experimenters within all of
these fields and more, who only really give a damn about the work. The posturing, the politics, the bullshit
be damned. (And I’m sure few of us would agree about whom to put in which category.)
These innovators I’m speaking of are the people who push their own boundaries, and the boundaries of the
culture around them enough that they are simply classified as “counterculture” or “revolutionary” because
the culture, and the media, doesn’t really know what to make of them. (My hope is, you could very well be
one yourself.)
These creators are the people that the fashionista Counterculture du jour will forever try to play catch-up
with, without necessarily even realizing it. When something has been branded as a movement, most of these
people have moved on. Often someone in pop or mainstream culture will “discover” something that has been
around for years on the fringe, as if they conjured it out of thin air.
However, let’s be clear: originality is not a requirement of innovation. They aren’t inventing these things ex
nihilo. Ideas, art, and rhetoric are and have always been built on what has come before. This isn’t to say that
posthumously declared “movements” are not unique. But there are lineages and traditions underlying our
creations, no matter how fragmented they may seem to the outside observer.
It is to my mind a great loss that the practice of mentorship under accomplished artists has mostly died out
in the past century. Not only does it keep the lineage of a cultural perspective alive, it also fosters a familial
aspect of community that has, at least in my experience, mostly been removed from the artistic process. The
closest we seem to have is the revolving door found in art schools and universities, which doesn’t provide the
time or often the one-on-one relationship required to really bring about the benefits of mentorship. It is also
interesting that in our society, like with smoking pot, college is one of the only places where “experimenting
with” art is condoned. Though many bad artists may be weaned from their aspirations in the “real world,” just
as many or more with real potential are driven to other occupations which they may be poorly suited to.
• 138 •
The idea that originality is the primary indicator of artistic value is perplexing. It is the vitality of a piece,
its ability to strike the heart or the mind and wring things out of us we didn’t even know we had in us, which
speaks loudest. But the elements: the story, the medium, or even the components of the piece itself could
have been used a thousand times before. So what? This is equally true in business, where the true innovators
take something that’s being done, and figure out how to do it better, or more efficiently. Attempts at “true”
originality usually result in bizarre and often useless gizmos that at the end of the day do several incompatible
things poorly and nothing well. The art of the collage or montage demonstrates what we all do as thinkers,
as painters, as poets, or as scientists. The message of the collage approach is clear enough: do not be afraid
to show and honor your influences, and at the same time, don’t be afraid to break those idols or re-use them
in unforeseen ways.
Innovation comes from the fact that each person is unique: our observations, our experiences are our own.
We cannot but be original if we are brave enough to be true to that, if by original we actually mean “vital”
and “genuine,” and throw out this idea of creativity occurring in a vacuum. Nothing is more poseur artiste
than the desperate drive to create originality for its own sake, without putting your voice, your interest, your
passion first. Finally, it isn’t about whether a story has been told a hundred times, it’s about how you tell it,
and how you live it.
Branding a Movement
One cannot have a movement within the context of a culture that doesn’t react directly to that culture. It
is nevertheless undeniable that there can be cultural value in a fringe, in an underground, in the paradox of
an anarchist community. Even in a concrete way, such ever-changing, forward thinking movements provide
something valuable that a healthy culture at large could not do without—they challenge the status quo; they
bring in new ideas from the outside. Most importantly, they create living myths.
Let me be clear: a movement, a specific sub-culture, is itself based upon a myth. You may find people
proclaiming to be a part of such a movement, I have also seen them pop into and out of existence all over the
place; but you’ll never find an absolute, concrete demonstration of what that sub-culture is said to embody.
A movement is an ideal which holds the lure of total freedom, a sweet taste that often quickly sours on the
tongue, which is nevertheless integral, and indispensable to the artistic spirit. Like any good myth, or art
itself, there’s definite value in it, and there is a kind of truth in it, even if it is also a lie in a literal sense. It may
be coined intentionally, as Andre Breton did with Surrealism, announced with manifestos and a movement,
or it can happen later, a convention for the benefit of journalists that need to name something.
There are several layers of myth building involved in branding a movement. There is, first, the myth of there
being a particular movement, such as the Beats. Like a corporate entity or any other egregore, this movement
develops a brand identity. I can say, “the Beats,” and most people even vaguely aware of American art and
literature know what I’m talking about. Here were separate artists, living separate lives. Sure, they may have
been friends, and they influenced one another. But this idea of “the Beats.” That was branding on Kerouac’s
part, plain and simple. Though the “in-crowd” surely had a hand in it, most of the momentum around this
term spontaneously came about over time from the outside. Perhaps, more than anything else, people just
needed a name to call them by, and it stuck. This has more relevance in a world increasingly spidered by
search engines. Movement building is part politics, yes, and part luck, but it is mostly branding.
“Nothing is original anymore.” That tired old cliché. The Beats borrowed from jazz at that time, from
Buddhism, which was seeing a new, if still very muted, popularity in the West, and from the culture and
politics at that time; none of it was “original” in that sense, but it was all unique, thanks to their unique
voices. Love them or hate them, you probably know about the Beats as a “concept.” Why? From this melting
pot of experience, personality, and social context a group identity forms, and it might do our more recent
would-be underground movements some good to remember that if you do everything else right, and have a
cohesive community of vital people who have the means to produce their work, this happens all on its own.
You needn’t brand before you have an identity.
Then there is the myth of the personalities, for example, the anecdotes about Burroughs, Kerouac,
Ginsberg, and so on, which also helps perpetuate the myth of the movement. This isn’t to say that “William
Tell routine” did or didn’t happen, but as it moves into the realm of myth, it ceases to matter. Hunter S.
Thompson was also well aware of the myth-building necessary to have any kind of success as a writer, even
if, as we explored, the caricature or double that he created in many ways became a cage.
• 139 •
Then, finally, there is the myth contained in the individual works themselves, unique for each artist or
group of collaborators, but which would in no way exist as they do without the group as a whole living,
growing, arguing, fucking, and ultimately dissipating and dying as they did. This was part of the supposed
downfall of counter-culture in capitalism, suits decided they could deconstruct this organic process and
manufacture it, own it from the ground up. The Grunge movement in the 90s, before it was discovered, had
some legitimacy. This was the very reason it struck disenfranchised youth differently than the manufactured
versions of this that we’ve seen since, and also in terms of the tragic meltdowns the sudden catapulting into
fame that this had on some of the figureheads of that “movement.”
Enriching the Soil

The Requirements of a Mythic Artistic Movement
It is quite apparent that fringe political movements, which for instance seek to liberate the workers from
wage slavery or develop alternative and sustainable methods of energy, communication, or commerce may
appear more essential in the coming years than the mere development and disbursement of myths or art
movements. However, all of these developments are knitted together. We cannot, in fact, have one without
the other. There is a desperate need for both.
Artists and thinkers are neither engendered nor supported for the value they can produce within other sectors
of the economy. This is partially because this value, both in being qualitative, and in being a part of a systemic
benefit, is difficult if not impossible to evaluate. That is a valid problem, as there is a meaningful distinction
between advocating the arts, and giving all would-be artists a free ride. If the government subsidized all art,
we’d simply have warehouses full of garbage. This is a very tough nut to crack in a bureaucratic sense.
However, this benefit is hardly recognized. What is worse, social and economic systems don’t engender it.
In the US, the arts are mostly seen as a nuisance, with endowments shrinking every year. (Even if this wasn’t
the case, the parameters and requirements for artistic grants are so specific and oftentimes so complicated
and arcane that they make Heidegger seem plainspoken.) In a country where scientific research is most
enfranchised when it can be used to make bombs, and the Department of Defense budget exceeds what is
spent on the entire rest of the country, this comes as no large surprise.
Yet, for this as well, we all suffer as a result.
In revealing the nature of the counter culture myth, we also have to return to the myth of the artist as a
unique and individual creator, slaving away in solitude, because in the final summation this doesn’t seem to
line up with the history of art. Nor does it make a whole lot of sense for the myth-makers to be working in
isolation, given the cultural significance of myth itself.
It is true that the unique perspective of a genuine, engaged outsider is part of what gives art its teeth. The
“revolution” comes from listening to your experience, everything else be damned; the necessary compromise
comes in learning how to play well with others without putting a pair of scissors in their eye. Art is not a
solitary endeavor, and its benefits are social, even if they are hard to delineate or define. This is the blind
spot left by the myth of progress and the individual artist which we have already explored. No artist “made”
it alone, and you’d best believe they had friends you never heard of that helped form a work that became
immortal.
For an art movement to have integrity, each individual must be true to themselves above all else, yet for
that to come about, it needs solidarity of purpose. This is the dilemma. Creators need one another, for
critique, for diversity, for sustainability. They need each other to build a myth of a “scene.” You needn’t
agree about anything else, but without an alignment of collective and mutual best interest, a movement,
a commons, a culture cannot come to be. It will collapse in on itself before it attains any sort of critical
mass. This seeming paradox is part of what keeps many creative individuals disenfranchised, biting at
each others ankles: they’re arguing about the wrong things, and focusing their energy and attention in the
wrong place. Movements only occur when people learn to work together towards common goals, to hell
with the politics.
Such groups require no closed manifestos, no party lines, no armbands, tattoos or uniforms. What is
needed is space to meet up and share ideas and collaborate, a means of making the relevancy of their work
evident outside the insular and seemingly elitist circles that form around such groups and the ability to eat
without completely shilling the underlying premise or making other creative prerequisites impossible. Space,
resources, an understanding of mutual benefit, and a determination that goes far beyond any benefit that
• 140 •
aesthetic posturing could possibly provide. In the words of the intentionally maligned Aleister Crowley (a
counter culture figure himself if ever there was one), “man has the right to live (and love) by his own law.”108
Last but not least, they require time, and colossal dedication. I have personally worked towards such ends,
and have even at times been part of such groups. The question worth asking is not what we can imagine,
but what we can realize. The artists I have gathered to work on this book are just the very tip of the veritable
iceberg, serving, if anything, to demonstrate just how vast the cultural need for recognition of the function
of myth in the arts truly is.
There Is No Movement; Apply Within

As in many times in the past, there is a strong and demonstrable need for creative movements and cultural
revolutions that the mainstream culture may neither recognize, understand, nor support. All these facts do
not mean that you should not, or can not, bring it about. Supposing this is a course that speaks to you as
it does to me, barring bad luck and the “acts of God,” the only real barrier is in ourselves, in the forms of
egotism, laziness, isolation, a lack of vision, planning, or making the wrong compromise.
We have no need for a counterculture or any other movement so long as it is for the sake of fashion, so
long as we hobble ourselves or one another or use elitism or ideological disagreements as excuses that keep us
from getting something done. Nor do we have any use for these things if they are anything but a means to an
end which realize the common and manifest goals of its members. It doesn’t matter if you consider yourself
a Pagan, a Christian, or a Muslim, a plumber, an artist, or an information architect. That is, so long as we
can mutually find the fulcrum point of a common ground, and a common good, to lift us both up with. If,
on the other hand, we both define ourselves as artists, but can find no such leverage, we’d probably be better
off going our own ways. We can have our ideological arguments over tea; there is no ideology in my mind
which trumps someone being a genuine, open-minded, passionate person, and no party line agreement can
provide reparations if they are not.
Revolution, or evolution for that matter, isn’t going to be found in a common manner of dress, speech, or
ideology. If it is found at all, it will come in the chance meeting of equals in this wasteland that we call the
world, and the work they do to water the desert until it flowers.
When any counter culture gets big enough, it gets co-opted by a “Major.” If there is any value in a
“counterculture” it is in a core ideology which cannot be replicated, cannot be sold. As I said, it is the
trappings and mystique which get marketed and sold. So if you have it in you, and shooting from the hip
is getting old: make a shtick. Make it huge and mythic. Sell it off to the highest bidder. Sell out without
“selling out.”
And use that to build something wonderful.
108. 1. Man has the right to live by his own law

to live in the way that he wills to do:
to work as he will:
to play as he will:
to rest as he will:
to die when and how he will.
2. Man has the right to eat what he will:
to drink what he will:
to dwell where he will:
to move as he will on the face of the earth.
3. Man has the right to think what he will:
to speak what he will:
to write what he will:
to draw, paint, carve, etch, mould, build as he will:
to dress as he will.
4. Man has the right to love as he will:
“take your fill and will of love as ye will,
when, where, and with whom ye will.”
5. Man has the right to kill those who would thwart these rights.
“the slaves shall serve.” [144]
• 141 •
Guising along the Web

Online Role-Playing and Human Tradition
Brian Corra
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person.

Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
Oscar Wilde
B
efore his death, the late Dr. Timothy Leary was fond of saying that “PCs were the LSD of the ‘90s.”
The Divine Doctor was in some ways a man ahead of his time and this quip remains relevant. In fact,
this observation is truer now than it was in the 90s. In many ways, the PC is the LSD of the new
21st Century.
As Dr. Leary (rightly) understood it, LSD peels back the culturally conditioned and neurochemically
imprinted habits which anchor us to the mask we wear every day and mistake for our selves. The rise of the
Internet does not provide us the same kind of universal solvent, but it does allow us to play with new guises
and roles, in a unique way.
Let’s begin with the hallucinogens and ecstatic practices. Yoga, Zen, and various Tantric and Shamanic
paths have been designed to achieve a similar state of plasticity, of malleability. Unlike psychedelics, these
practices confer more control, and take longer to cultivate. However, there are nevertheless many similarities.
In those idioms, this unfettered state has come to be known as “transcendence,” (or Satori, enlightenment,
etc. The gist is the same.) Most vividly, it is named “ego death,” in that the semantic illusion of “self ” or
“identity” is unwound. Bombarded with uninterpretable signals, the mind is shocked free from its robotic
cultural programming, resulting in a direct consciousness of the continuity of experience. Undergoing this,
some become aware of themselves as a genuine avatar of the very Ground of Being, as a pattern emerging from
the static. Perhaps we go “out of our minds,” as Uncle Tim used to say, “and come back to our senses.”
Philosophy, general semantics, and those few branches of psychology that have demonstrated anything
akin to therapeutic treatment, have all unequivocally demonstrated that the vast majority of social and
psychological problems are rooted in semantic errors and philosophical misunderstandings. By coming
back to our senses, by returning to a biological and somatic awareness of the organism in relation to its
environment, we can let go of these erroneous cultural imperatives and double-binds, gaining a more directly
experiential gnosis of living. This is the ecstasy and the “peace surpassing understanding,” of which the Saints
and Shamans of all time have so lovingly spoken. We are the masks of God.
The arts of ecstasy, of stepping out of one’s “self,” have always been feared by the keepers of the status quo.
Those idolatrous individuals who confuse words with what they were intended to signify, who favor the dead
letter to the living spirit, have repeatedly attempted to prohibit the means by which humans attempt to seek
liberation. The most sudden, the most drastically effective of these means are typically perceived as the most
threatening to the normative traditions of culture. They are also the most readily persecuted of approaches.
This is justified, to some extent. LSD, for instance, is not a magic bullet for the secrets of the universe. It
does not come with any assurance of wisdom. There are many who have no idea what to do with a temporary
liberation, once they’ve achieved it. Doors of perception can be opened; we still must step through them
ourselves. Such individuals may well become burdens to society. Likewise, the person addicted to drunkenness
is not the same as the Dionysian celebrant whose winebibbing intoxication is an act of sacramental self-
transformation.
Some ways of liberation, such as those of the Aghori Tantra sects, even use transgression, taboo breaking
and the direct confrontation and exploitation of fears and hang-ups to break the mind free of its conditioning.
These methods, although quite effective, can be dangerous. Worse yet, they are always perceived as a threat
by the priggish cults of social conformity. The Yoga of Transgression is the surest road to the gallows, cross
or pyre.
• 142 •
Even without the assistance of any of these means, we are experiencing a shift of consciousness in how we
define Self. Many people these days now go inside to go outside. The development of the personal computer,
and nigh ubiquitous access to the World Wide Web, has given us a means by which to step outside of ourselves
and learn to think and experience the world in new ways, all from within the comfort of our own brain.
The web has become a digital psychedelic so prevalent and so thoroughly integrated into our society, its
technologies and sciences, that we have no recourse to prohibition. This is not some chemical to be outlawed.
People aren’t gathering in secret congregations or underground clubs. McCarthy style Witch Hunts and
Inquisitorial torture chambers are of no use. It’s uncertain where this is leading, but one thing is certain: we
have grown dependent on this electronic infostructure. If we were to somehow shut down our electronic,
global-cultural-economic nervous system, our society would likely grind to a screeching halt. Lives would
end. Economies would crash. Civilization might fall apart overnight.
Culturally, this began in the ‘90s; a budding movement of cybernetic shamans took the form of accessing
and processing new information. We learned to think digitally and to communicate cross culturally. We
discovered we could get to know people, or at least certain parts of their identities, without ever meeting
them in person. As the years passed, albums, books, even entire organizations and companies began to spring
up between people who have rarely if ever met in person.
We became savvy, and realized what has always been true: namely, that the person we meet is little more
than a mask, however firmly ingrained in their nature. What we know of them constitutes a mere fraction
of their total identity.
Internet predators and mischievous pranksters have shown us to what extent we may be deceived by the
words of another. Chat rooms taught us that words and information can create psychological locations,
having no real world existence. Humanity began awakening to the hypnotic effects of words and the
distortions created by thought. This too is no magic bullet. Every tool can be used or misused. In the years
since we’ve seen Anonymous, Wikileaks, DoS attacks. The news is beginning to read like a poorly-conceived
Gibson novel.
Advances in technology have also brought the Role Playing Game to the Internet. In this new millennium,
we’ve seen people who spend countless hours of their waking life in a mutually created cyber-fantasy, fighting
ogres and cyborgs, and interacting socially via deliberately created personalities. As actors, writers, artists,
and tribal priests have long known, these adopted identities can take on a reality of their own. If we play a
role long enough, we can begin to think in new ways. We adapt our behavior and respond to old situations
in new and different fashion.
Of course, only a very small minority of online role players are exploiting these innovations consciously,
with an eye to creating new and beneficial changes in their daily lives and personalities. ARGs and Transmedia
projects also provide more leeway for an exploration of this concept, though as usual corporations seem to
have burdened these platforms so much that rather than helping to monetize them, they have simply turned
them into new methods of marketing products, which entirely misses the point.
Nevertheless, the potential looms in the background, and the subconscious effect is real. A member of
a tribe’s False Face Society, or some mummer, guiser or Punch and Judy Professor needn’t have set out to
attain liberation from socio-semantic Maya, or even to create definitive changes in their own natures in
order to experience startling moments in which they actually become the alter-ego which they portray. So
too, the enthusiastic gamer may find him or herself responding from their character’s nature rather than
their own. Or they may find themselves having genuine emotional and psychosomatic responses to digital
game events occurring only within the rules of play and having no reality beyond the ones and zeros of
binary cyberspace. If it wasn’t for this, how could booming virtual sex trades exist within worlds such as
Second Life, where various sex acts are performed between the virtual avatars of people, oftentimes paying
USD for the honor? Along with this virtual version of the one-night-stand, many people develop complex
and very real relationships with people in these virtual worlds, which may even spill into our physical lives,
for better or worse.
One friend relates a story of how, upon pressing the wrong key while fumbling around in Second Life,
he accidentally begun massaging another player’s “avatar.” The other gamer reacted quite emotionally to
a perceived invasion of her personal space and to this unwanted touching. She felt genuinely violated by
this digital non-event. My friend, of course, became apologetic and defensive, as would any person whose
accidental action had been so thoroughly misconstrued.
• 143 •
Since most of life’s problems and society’s ills are the result of philosophical error and semantic dissonance,
a massively multi-person online confrontation of the nature of self and the conditions of reality may provide
people the psychic distance to work these things out. It matters little if, at first, this is attained only through
play-acting. Real wealth becomes, more and more, replaced by information systems involving credits and
debits. Fantasy world purchases cost real “money,” while genuine economic and social structures develop
between fantasy personalities in a nonexistent game world. Meta-structures develop in which “real world”
references exist in game reality, and some people even set up role-playing game communities within game
worlds so that their characters in their MMOG of choice get together and, rather than going off on some
adventure, hang out in cyberspace and play Dungeons & Dragons™ or some other role-playing game.
Children learn a great deal about the world through play-acting. Who is to say adults do not as well?
This Shakespearian layering of plays within plays, games within games, has the many levels of a Russian
nesting doll, the complexity of a Chinese puzzle box, and the surreal dynamism of a Led Zeppelin Laser
Show at the local Planetarium. It not only boggles the mind, but forces us to reexamine our lives and
preconceptions. Certainly, Socrates was right when he suggested that “an unexamined life is not worth
living.” More to the point, however, an unexamined metaphysical presumption is dangerous and can lead
to social and psychological damage, physical ailments, and even widespread ecological disaster. Unexamined
myths are unconscious myths, and unconscious myths are potentially toxic.
Modern society has become largely desacralized, due to the inability and unwillingness of traditional
spiritual culture to reexamine its fundamental preconceptions and keep up with the changing circumstances
and moral necessities of the times. This includes, of course, the desacralization of religion. Thus we are
forced to invent our own games, to create new characters, to experiment with new socials structures and to
don masks of our own device. This is somewhat different than the method of the Shaman or Saint whose
role-playing transformations involve culturally received characters and game-rules and for whom innovation
comes directly from visionary experiences and moments of liberation. Even Uncle Tim’s LSD analogy isn’t
quite right.
LSD seems to suspend some conditioning, for a few hours. It can even allow for the formation of new
neurochemical imprints. With Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games, and the related wonders
of PCs and World Wide Web, we are not lifted out of our cultural conditioning and semantic illusions.
We don’t experience an ego-death experience. With the Internet we are increasingly confronted with and
involved in the illusions and game-rules of others. We are seduced into many different points of view. It
becomes hard to trust information without investigating it thoroughly, and at some point we have to pull
back and admit defeat in our search for absolute truth and undeniable fact. Truth becomes secondary to the
reality of one’s psychological needs and emotions. The MMORPGs give us the added advantage of adopting
new personas, playing new games, and engaging in multi-layered perception. We aren’t suspending Maya,
but shifting it around so much that we begin to perceive the cracks in the walls.
Under these conditions, it becomes obvious that under each mask is just another mask, and so on, until we
come to the abyssal Void itself. This Ground of Being exists, as the Buddhists say, beyond namarupa (“name
and form”). We learn that our game rules, social presumptions, and perceived realities are as much a virtual
construct as anything in cyberspace.
As the world stage and its play-acting become more obvious to more people, the jaded ennui and existential
depression will eventually be faced, accepted, and understood. It will fall away as it too is rooted, not in the
revelation of the truth beyond name and form, but in fearful attachment to the roles we play.
Inevitably, the Internet’s MTV montage approach to reality selection will have far reaching results. First,
no doubt, we will experience this liberation process as a plague, like some alchemical poison released just
before the dross of life is transmuted into philosophic gold. This is to be expected when we learn to integrate
a new level of perception. In time, however, we may reap the rewards of this digital revelation and role-
playing may teach us how to swim in the deep waters of ecstasy, how to navigate the formless truth.
• 144 •
Playing War
Stephen Hershey
I
am an electronically-generated avatar, imprinting the efforts of others into virtual space, fueled by an imaginative
lust for living beyond one’s self. The enemy, or the goal, waits to be destroyed, or overcome. The rules and
options of this world are limited to controlled algorithms, which must be interpreted to win and proceed to
accomplishment. Once the scenario is grasped, I formulate my strategy, operating by the rules of my controller, and
after a period of trial and error, dominate my opponent.
Consider the universe established by a series of programs, laws, and rules—albeit ones we are far from
understanding—revealed by what erupts in ancient and modern mythology. The foundations of practical
physics, such as gravity and mass, are crumbling with each new scientific breakthrough, and the collective
dream of attaining superhuman-like powers is closing on realization, if not actualization.
Video games offer virtual reality—a Matrix, or attained mythological construct—that maintains rules
based on a pre-conceived model of reality. The experience transports us to other worlds, granting faux-
enlightened states of awareness, but is ultimately an illusion that feeds our senses.
At the young age when one might subscribe to be a gamer, the mind is ready to be shaped and evolve
within the environment, easily susceptible to any manipulation occurring on and off the digital screen.
The in-game avatar is the perfect soldier; he doesn’t ask questions, or think outside the specific box that is
given to him. He is confined to a set of tasks and obligations. The American Military, understanding this, is
unparalleled in complexity and strength.
Growing up, each of my siblings went in a completely opposite direction. I went to New York to be an
artist. One brother joined the military, while the other joined Bible School. My sister became a basketball
star. I’d been vexed by video games, and the incredible journeys I’d take with Link, Cloud, and Earthworm
Jim, to name a few. My brother, always carrying the archetype of the protector, grew distant at the sudden
death of my younger cousin, no doubt feeling as if he’d failed somehow. Eventually, while I was traipsing
around with the theater, he decided to join the Army.
While he was already quiet and reserved, his visits home from being on tour were stifling and awkward. He
was physically bigger, and carried an applied sense of entitlement upon his shoulders, which he proceeded to
coldly flaunt toward others. With us in his jeep, he’d go ninety down back roads as if he was still careening
through a No Man’s Land.
I thought about the sudden loss of his humanity. It is far from me to cast any judgment upon anyone
in the military—there is a sanctity I have chosen in my lifestyle that are degrees easier than those called to
war—but I increasingly felt ill about the prospect.
In the past century, war has grown beyond being the world’s biggest export; the blood shed on a battlefield
pulses throughout the life-force of the global economy. Hideo Kojima, in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the
Patriots, states:
War has changed. It’s no longer about nations, ideologies, or ethnicity. It’s an endless series of
proxy battles fought by mercenaries and machines. War—and its consumption of life—has
become a well-oiled machine. [145]
I saw the hero archetype inside my brother. The Army worked along these lines, casting him as the
protector, cherished and glamorized. They asked him to step forward and fight for our country’s freedom; to
commit to a collective force greater than ourselves. It spoke to a psychological need within him.
There’s more than one opportunity to answer this call. One can live the experience through the increasingly-
realistic scenarios of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Call of Duty: Black Ops, Halo, Medal of Honor, Killzone, and
more. During a video review of Modern Warfare, the editor remarks that certain homing HUDs looks exactly
like they do in real life. Some of these games are notably fantastic, though do they inspire—through the
military’s genius mass-marketing campaign—children faced with extreme social and emotional oppression to
escape from their worlds, and eventually, into the nurturing arms of Uncle Sam? Certainly it is not unheard
• 145 •
of for the military to fund the development of these games, or to use them as a part of recruitment or even
early training strategies.
The films War Games and Toys have both explored scenarios where gaming and computers might
unwittingly take over the realm of warfare. On screen, there is no emotional response in what developers
call the “uncanny valley”—the more alien and fake something created looks, the more detached we feel from
them. In Halo, one mounts an assault upon the alien Covenant: monsters and demons to our eyes. The same
could be said about Tolkien’s orcs and classic Disney villains. These are the demonic Others, a force against
which morality need not apply.
Through the impact of this separation, soldiers are allowed to forget the people they may be killing, and
instead target aliens, zombies, demons, or any other entity prescribed
as an enemy combatant, as determined by the corporate or political interests behind the military force.
Further, strictly corporate armies are no longer a myth strictly for science fiction.
Our enemies look like us. I feel it is cowardice to run away from the pain of murder. I am far from
understanding the consequence of war, and knowing the trauma my brother felt overseas. Circumstances
aside, I do know the deep emotional conflict it caused between us. We bottle up, contain, and fester natural
discord until eventually it is purged with violent release. The taboo of murder is suspended in the context
of war. It has always been thus, and thereby maintains an intimate relationship with the psychology of the
violent sacrifice.
To keep these emotions at bay, under any degree of consequence, we turn to the soft suppression of
technology. Ray Bradbury’s sleepwalking society of Fahrenheit 451 places tiny bugs in their ears to play
music. They surround themselves with walls of television screens. David Whyte, an acclaimed international
poet, implies that we encircle ourselves with distractions—radio, television, pop culture, the Internet—to
keep ourselves from turning inward and facing our darkness and pain. (Though media can also help guide
us through such darkness.)
Seeking clarity, I offered a draft of my ideas to my brother, who was now thankfully stationed in Colorado
Springs’ Fort Carson. I wrote, “To be fair, if there’s anything you feel is wrong, please communicate that to
me.” Eagerly awaiting his response, and his respect, I received his reply about a month later.
Sentences scrambled together, though admittedly well-thought out, he quoted Aristotle and even Tennyson,
attacking the notion of being “anti-war” while barely addressing my questions, using the flame to ignite his
defense. It often and unfortunately read like a fascist manifesto, capitalizing words like “Soldier” and, in
reference to America, “She.”
There was little evidence of my brother left, only aspects of a machine forced to repeatedly digest one
highly-propagandized, brainwashed perspective. He confirmed his “lust for living beyond himself,” a quality
we both share, and surprisingly confessed that, regarding my questions, “…none wish to believe they have
been wrong for so long.”
The desire to keep freedom alive, the idea that our country has an almost divine right to primacy, fueled
his martyred hero archetype. He encouraged dependence upon the violent authority that dictates military
strategy, driven home with the words, “deploy, engage, and destroy.” This is the strategy to ensure enduring
free will and happiness. My brother was only confirming my fears.
A powerful monologue from Avatar: The Last Airbender showcases the character’s discord with the ideology
of his country, a cancerous patriotism:
Growing up we were taught that the Fire Nation was the greatest civilization in history. And
somehow the war was our way of sharing our greatness with the rest of the world. What an
amazing lie that was. The people of the world are terrified by the Fire Nation. They don’t see
our greatness, they hate us. And we deserve it. We have created an era of fear in the world. If
we don’t want the world to destroy itself, we need to replace it with an era of kindness and
peace. [109]
In an article titled “Barack Obama: Papa in Chief,” Tom Junod describes a speech where the President
announced sending troops to war without playing the conventional “evil card,” leading to a less-than-
enthusiastic response. Ironically, when he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize, he defended war, this time
109. Ehasz, Aaron. 2007. Avatar: The Last Airbender. “The Day of Black Sun: Part 2 - The Eclipse.” Episode 51, Nickelodeon, November
30, 2007.
• 146 •
proclaiming, “Evil does exist.” Junod comments that it was “…clearly something he felt he had to say
because he didn’t quite make the sale in his earlier speech. In the end, it’s awfully hard to make the case for
war without making the case for evil [emphasis added].” [146] In my opinion, that’s all the more reason not to
make the case. If the President needs help selling war, he should talk to the folks at Electronic Arts.
With the effect of a repressive emotional response, media can both inspire and suffocate our imagination;
incubating, among other things, better soldiers and worse human beings. The world of video games, while
continually more interactive, fun, and entertaining, is currently limited, one that’s barely become aware of
the mind’s psychedelic potential. Through our culture’s recent evolution, mythology glides into co-existence
with reality, where we are tasked with shaping the world into “an era of kindness and peace.” [146]
We must evolve without the expense of our sons and daughters in a blind, bloody war. At the very least,
if one feels called to the military, allow them to feel and acknowledge the emotional conflicts they face—as
ancient warriors must have when charging into their enemy’s eyes—rather than transforming live souls into
dead pixels.
Video games have become more significant and powerful with each passing year, amplifying themselves as
the newest mass mythic expression of our culture. If comic book heroes and celebrities are mirrors for gods,
then video games’ immersive storytelling experiences allow for vivid reenactments of such new and classic
archetypal journeys.
Developers and storytellers should have a responsibility to cast healthy, progressive imagery into the hearts
and minds of the current generation. They could challenge us with the darkness, use entertainment as a tool
for learning, as play is certainly one of the key learning tools of all mammals. But instead their efforts are
sculpted entirely by the synthetic desire of consumerism. Infinity Ward’s epic war franchise hits too close
to home, feeding wartime propaganda instead of challenging it. Even after trained soldiers experience the
aftermath of a bloody battle, no world is real anymore, and the victims wander, caught between the shell of
the military and their core of their souls, buried under layers of cast-iron conditioning.
My avatar is now a fully-realized impression of myself, the whole human being, and I explore virtual space as
freely and openly as I do my own world, aware of the boundaries, and aware of their ability to be surpassed. I
find clarity in forming my own world, with the rules of my choosing, where all myths might exist in harmony. No
obstacle is finite. No dream untold. The universe is my new game.

• 147 •
The Myth of Unlimited Potential

Dr. Catherine Svehla
B
eliefs, theories, or mythologies define and shape the world and human experience. In the United States
in particular, self-help psychology creates and disseminates powerful mythologies about the individual,
the world, and the means to happiness. One of the most popular self-help belief systems, a combination
of metaphysics and self-help advice, claims that human beings can manifest anything they desire through the
energy of thoughts and feelings. I call this “do, be, and have it all” genre the “myth of unlimited potential.”
This paper provides an introduction to the myth of unlimited potential, and a brief reflection on the model
for success and personal development it offers. The myth of unlimited promises individual fulfillment and
planetary transformation, but is belief in the myth an effective way to achieve these goals?
What is the Myth of Unlimited Potential?

According to the myth of unlimited potential, human beings live in a mutable, responsive, quantum
universe, and continually create their life circumstances through their thoughts and feelings. Wealth,
love, happiness, health, even physical immortality can be obtained by anyone who understands the one
cosmic “Law”—that positive vibrations reliably generate positive results, and negative vibrations generate
negative results. This theory has been called “the power of positive thinking,” “creative visualization,”
the “Law of Attraction,” “The Secret,” “the power of intention,” or the spiritual law of success. Other,
earlier, American iterations of this philosophy include Mind Cure, New Thought, and Christian Science.
The myth comprises a large segment of American self-help literature, including perennial favorites like
Norman Vincent Peale and Napoleon Hill, and more recent best sellers written by Deepak Chopra, Wayne
Dyer, Louise Hay, and others.
Devotees of the myth say that if you dream big, and think and feel positively about yourself and your
desires, you can improve any situation and bring anything that you want into your life. “And when we realize
our true Self is one of pure potentiality,” writes Deepak Chopra, “We align with the power that manifests
everything in the universe.” [147] According to the myth, the universe is designed to bring us everything that
we desire, if we participate properly. In fact, if you’re not actively cultivating optimism, you are sabotaging
yourself, not realizing your greatest potential, and playing the victim. You are also contributing to the ills
of the world and refusing to participate in the natural evolution of human consciousness towards total
transcendence.
The nature of the universe, its laws of operation and relationship to human happiness, are central issues in
the myth of unlimited human potential. In essence, the myth is a cosmology, a theory about a harmonious,
systematic universe.110 This cosmology can be summarized as follows:
1. There is a force in the universe that is resident in every particle, which may be called energy or
intelligence or God. Wayne Dyer calls this force “intention,” which he describes as “an invisible
energy field inherent in all physical forms.” [148] Louise Hay uses the term “One Intelligence” to
describe a power that continually flows through everything and is the source of “all the answers,
all the solutions, all the healings, and all the new creations.” [149]
2. Humans share in the properties of this universal energy/intelligence/god, which vibrates,
harmonizes, or magnetizes with us, or us with it, because that energy is inside every person.
Shakti Gawain writes, “There is no separation between us and God; we are divine expressions
of the creative principle on this level of existence […] we contain the potential for everything
within us.” [150] Wayne Dyer says, “By combining free will with intention, you harmonize with
the universal mind.” [148]
3. The nature of this universal energy/intelligence/god is beneficent, even loving, and it cooperates
with humanity to co-create a reality of unlimited abundance. Louise Hay writes, “The Universe
110. A “cosmology,” from the Greek kosmos, meaning “orderly arrangement” or “fitting order.”
• 148 •
Totally Supports Us in Every Thought We Choose to Think and Believe.” [149] Deepak Chopra
writes, “Having all your heartfelt wishes come true is what God wants for each person; it is our
natural state as creators of our own reality.” [151] “God loves to express himself through you as
harmony, peace, beauty, joy, and abundance,” says Joseph Murphy. “This is called the will of God
or the tendency of life.” [152]
4. The universal energy/intelligence/god operates according to discoverable natural laws or principles,
readily accessible to any individual. When one knows the laws and applies that knowledge,
anything can be accomplished. Scientific observations of nature are often used to describe and
validate this perspective. “By looking at the behavior of the cells of our own body, we can observe
the most extraordinary and efficient expression of The Seven Spiritual Laws,” Deepak Chopra
says. “This is the genius of nature’s intelligence.” [147]
“Energy” refers to that intangible and yet palpable “something else” that pervades sensory experience
and material reality. Use of the metaphor “energy” to describe and explain all kinds of phenomenon is
very common, even among people who resist equating God with an energy field. People routinely describe
themselves and others as high or low energy, or refer to the energy of a place or situation. Energy can be fuel
or force, an emotion or a vibe.
In the myth of unlimited potential, “energy” is important because it signifies potential. Potential is
understood as infinite mutability. The cosmos, and by extension, all human participants, is dynamic, endlessly
transforming without limit. The existence of potential energy in the myth, which is often called “intention,”
“power,” or simply “potential,” is highly significant as the basis for all human interaction with the world. As
participants in the world of energy, people can tap into this potential and make choices among an infinite
realm of possibilities to improve themselves and their lives. Wayne Dyer asks his readers to “[I]magine that
intention is not something that you do, but rather a force that exists as an invisible field of energy!” [148]
The creation of abundance is the highest realization of the positive power of intention. Myth gurus advise
the reader to set aside the lessons of scarcity and past experiences of lack, forget old definitions of what is
“realistic” and revive discarded dreams. Shakti Gawain calls the universe “[ . . .] a cornucopia of everything
that your heart could ever desire, both on the material plane and on emotional, mental, and spiritual planes
as well.” [150] Abundance can take any form in the myth; what a given person wants and receives is open to
the individual imagination. But in the literature, abundance primarily means money. There is invariably a
chapter or two in each book devoted specifically to finances, in addition to those books written with the sole
purpose of promoting techniques to increase personal prosperity. The desire for money played an important
role in older theories of mind cure, thought control, and positive thinking. In a survey of earlier American
variations of the myth, for example, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, Donald Meyer observes, “The
role of the ‘subconscious’ in these regimens was to vibrate with the mystic ether of money.” [153] “Ether” is
now “energy.”
Positive thoughts and feelings direct potential into the desired forms, so self-acceptance, explain myth
gurus, is the essential first step to a satisfying and abundant life. Most people don’t have everything that they
want because they identify with, and create from, their ego. The ego feels powerless and defensive, cultivates
negative attitudes, and holds mistaken, negative beliefs.
Most people are confused about whom they really are; they don’t realize that they are infinite beings. But
within every person, state myth practitioners, is a higher self, a link to the cosmic intelligence that transcends
the common experience of separation, limitation, and lack. Shakti Gawain describes this self as “my higher
nature,” “my higher self,” or “the God who lives within me.” [150] According to the myth, everything that
the higher self wants and creates is good. The reader is encouraged to discover and identify with the higher
self because it is powerful, and because it is the original, naturally good, true self.
The discovery of the higher self is a return to one’s natural state of being. This original, joyful state is often
equated in the myth, with infancy or childhood. The image of the baby is offered as proof of one’s original
perfection, a perfection that can and should be recovered. “How perfect you were when you were a baby,”
Louise Hay writes. [149] Chopra describes the innocence of a baby as “self-acceptance, trust, and love.” A
baby, he explains, “does not question its existence […]. The nagging voice of doubt is not heard.” [151] The
image of the child also appears in the language of personal growth, in the emphasis on the future, and the
absence of history. According to the myth, it’s never too late to wake up to the truth of positive energy and
abundance. “The point of power is now,”—whoever you have been and whatever you have done in the past
• 149 •
has no bearing on the future. You can always wipe the slate clean. Start now, urges Wayne Dyer, “Visualize
the beautiful automobile that’s your dream car [. . .].” [154]
The central idea is that the defining characteristic of the cosmos is “unlimited.” Everything in the myth
is unlimited; energy, abundance, love, life, and most significantly, the creative individual at the center of it
all. And this unlimited condition is available and accessible because the creation of unlimited abundance for
everyone who asks is the natural function of the universe. Myth gurus say that the advice and techniques
provided in the myth of unlimited human potential are derived from proven universal laws that govern both
natural and spiritual realms. “In a universe that’s an intelligent system with a divine creative force supporting
it,” explains Wayne Dyer, “there simply can be no accidents.” [154] In the myth of unlimited potential, cause
and effect is not only guaranteed, it is explainable if not completely observable. Chopra writes “Everyone has
a right, then, to consider himself the center of the cosmos, holding untold powers in his hands.” [155]
Is the Myth of Unlimited Potential Really a Myth?

You have probably never heard of the myth of unlimited potential, even if you are familiar with the Law
of Attraction, positive thinking, or the work of Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer, Louise Hay, or other myth
gurus. The energetic powers in the myth are not personified into deities, and the everyday heroes mentioned
in anecdotes and success stories are not catalogued in classical mythology dictionaries. Deepak Chopra
isn’t listed in Bulfinch. But the myth of unlimited potential is a myth by virtue of the questions it attempts
to answer; questions about the nature and mysterious workings of the universe and human destiny, the
existence of a transcendent principle, and the meaning, purpose, and proper techniques for life. The myth of
unlimited potential also conforms to academic definitions of myth.
In Mythography, William Doty provides the following distillation of shared elements from various
definitions of myth in common usage:
A myth is an aesthetic device, a narrative, literary form.
The subject matter has to do with the gods or the “other” world.
A myth explains origins (etiology).
A myth is mistaken or primitive science.
A myth is the word in rituals, or myth is dependent upon ritual, which it explicates.
Myths make universals concrete or intelligible.
Myths explicate beliefs, collective experiences or values.
Myths are a form of spiritual or psychic expression. [156]
Followers of the myth of unlimited potential don’t consider it to be a “myth.” They consider it to be a
factual, or literal, statement of truth. This confusion about literal and metaphorical truth is an important
problem with the myth and in contemporary culture. People commonly imagine that mythology has
been abandoned because what people today believe and know is in fact, “true.” But however far people
have pushed the boundaries of knowledge, a great deal is still unknown. Human experience, thought, and
language is primarily metaphorical, a constant process of bridging the gaps. Insistence on absolute truth
leads to fundamentalism. Fundamentalist thinking is not limited to religious systems; it can occur anytime
metaphors are literalized.
A myth is a lie that is true, or as Wendy Doniger writes, “something that has been given the shadowy status
of what has been called an ‘inoperative truth,’ when in fact they might be better characterized as ‘operative
fictions.’” [157] Understanding myths metaphorically is valuable because it makes them visible, available
for reflection, evaluation, and revision. Seeing through the metaphors creates the possibility of multiple
interpretations and multiple truths. This approach also reveals the psychological dimensions of the myth and
the need to believe in it. Because a staunchly literal approach denies the reality of the myth, the psychology
that drives the narrative is also largely unconscious. The difference between culture’s past and the present
moment may be our ability to be conscious of our myths as myths, constructs that are both necessary and
provisional.
Is the Myth of Unlimited Potential a “good” myth?

Joseph Campbell attributed four functions to traditional mythologies: mystical, cosmological, sociological,
and psychological. The psychological function, he explains, “[ . . .] is that, namely, of shaping individuals to
• 150 •
the aims and ideals of their various social groups, bearing them on from birth to death through the course of
a human life.” [158] Myths teach people how to live. This is one reason that we need them, and one reason
we need to be conscious of them to the greatest degree possible. Campbell’s scheme is easily applied to the
myth of unlimited potential. For purposes of this paper, and given that the myth is “self-help,” considering
the psychological function of the myth is a useful way to evaluate its current effectiveness. Does the myth of
unlimited potential help people realize their highest good and live a satisfying life?
The trajectory described in the myth is simple: connect with your higher self, and then practice (and
practice) positive thinking and feeling. The awareness of the higher self is crucial. This divine spark represents
the ability to manifest abundance. Equally important, the higher self in the myth satisfies the desire to be
true to one’s self, to be happy, and to be a morally good person at the same time. We think of potential when
we reflect on a baby or small child. Myth gurus exhort the reader to return to the attitudes of childhood—
openness, curiosity, innocence and wonder. There is something magical about these aspects of children and
childhood. But this representation is incomplete. A small child is also weak, helpless, self-centered, greedy,
naïve, and ignorant. These qualities peek through the rhetoric of the myth, behind the claims that the
“universe wants” you to have all that your heart desires.
According to the myth, living an abundant life in harmony with the higher self depends on the recovery
of the unexamined self-acceptance we possessed before we learned to listen to others, or even knew that
other people existed.111 “If we deny our good in any way,” explains Louise Hay, “it is an act of not loving
ourselves.” [149] Self-love is important, but the higher self in the myth sounds a bit like Narcissus from
Greek mythology. Narcissus was a very beautiful young man with many admirers and potential lovers.
The young Echo was completely smitten, and she tried and tried to capture Narcissus’s attention. One
day, Narcissus came across a clear, still pool of water and saw his own reflection. Such beauty! He fell in
love with himself. Narcissus didn’t see or hear Echo, who pined away for lack of his love. Narcissus also
dies, lying alone by the pool. He denies any need for relationship and refuses the love of others in favor of
a singular devotion to self and self-image. Is this myopic and presumably self-sufficient self-love the kind
prescribed in the myth?
The themes of self-sufficiency and self-determination reappear in the idea that “the point of power is
Now.” The ability to leave the past behind and begin again, is a useful and familiar skill in the land of the
self-made individual, the pilgrim, and the pioneer. But roots, a sense of place, home, and belonging, are part
of the discarded baggage. The ties that bind are also the ties that connect. History, as memory, also carries
consequences. In the myth, what are wiped clean each day are the mistakes and presumably negative feelings
they generate—guilt, shame, regret, grief. Myth devotees claim there are no lessons to be learned from these
negative experiences, but how is personal growth and maturation accomplished if one is always starting over?
What is denied and repressed cannot be transcended; it merely works incognito, turning the treadmill of
self-improvement. True self-knowledge is exchanged for a comfortable, infantile fantasy.
The “secret” to success in the myth is optimism. The myth of unlimited human potential is clearly,
unequivocally optimistic about everything: optimistic about the operations of the universe, which is
predictable if not actively loving; optimistic about the goodness of individuals, especially the natural moral
integrity of the higher self; optimistic about the existence of meaning and purpose in life; and optimistic
about the individual’s ability to create her unique form of happiness. Optimism is the power in the myth,
the power of positive thinking or feeling. No matter what happens, it is all good. Louise Hay suggests this
affirmation for the reader who has trouble believing this sweeping assessment: “All is well, everything is
working out for my highest good. Out of this situation only good will come.” [159]
The general belief that good will prevail in the world is a philosophical position famously satirized by
Voltaire in Candide (which translates as “optimism” in French). The protagonist, Candide, is a naïve young
man inculcated with the philosophy of optimism by Dr Pangloss. As the plot unfolds, Candide travels the
world and is both subject and witness to a plenitude of suffering: earthquakes, flogging, rapes and ransacking,
murder, torture, and slavery. His commitment to his philosophy, which includes a cheerful outlook on his
own character, reaches comic proportions. After killing a man in a brief moment of fury he exclaims,
“Good God! I have killed my old master, my friend, my brother-in-law. I am the best man in
the world, and yet I have already killed three men, and of these three, two were priests.” [160]
111. Ironically, the naturally perfect self is in constant need of improvement, which may reflect the advice to imagine our primary identity
as “energy.” Energy means the ability to work. Myths and metaphors often say more than is consciously intended or desired.
• 151 •
Voltaire doesn’t argue in favor of pessimism; rather he makes the obvious point that good is a relative term,
and unclouded optimism is easily the philosophical haven of the innocent and of the scoundrel, who may
be indistinguishable from each other.
What is “good” for one person is not always good for everyone. Another relative term, bandied about with
great certainty in the myth, is the “natural.” Myth devotees claim that optimistic self-interest is appropriate
because the creation of unlimited abundance is the natural function of the universe, in accordance with
natural, universal laws. “We are nature’s privileged children,” Chopra says, “Once we fix upon our deepest
desires, they must come true.” [155] But claims that a given belief or practice is “natural,” have been used to
justify slavery, genocide, genital mutilation, and a host of other cruel or simply unusual practices that people
today view as aberrations or downright evil. The “natural” is a human idea, one that reflects changing cultural
values. The insistence in the myth that it’s “all natural,” is an attempt to lend the promises and principles
some cosmic authority, and relieve the follower of the responsibility of weighing costs and consequences.
This assertion of naturalness, like the denial of any negative feedback, suggests an unwillingness to grapple
with ambiguity and possible unpleasantness, in one’s own character and in the world. “Select what you want
from the catalog of the universe” advises Dr. Joe Vitale MSC.D., and there’s no need to be concerned with
the details. [161] This is a dangerous philosophy in a country that consumes so much and is willing to exploit
and even kill other people for the continued right and freedom to do so. But this possibility of harm is not
part of the myth, which is about happiness and harmony and light, the beautiful higher self, enlightened
consciousness, cultural evolution, and love. There are no ecological limits in a naturally abundant, quantum
universe. There are no social consequences either because the universe can (and will) provide for anyone,
anyone who vibrates with enough positive energy, even in Iraq or Darfur or Bombay. Myth devotes say that
“it’s all good.” Oscar Wilde said, “The basis of optimism is sheer terror.” [162]
Beyond the myth of unlimited potential

Is the unlimited a recipe for happiness, or is this a contradiction? Unlimited amounts of anything, whether
its money, success, freedom, health, love, or life, cannot have lasting significance. Creative desire is born of
lack, love is connected with loss, and life is valuable because it ends. Appreciation, gratitude, and worth are
the result of limits, and the conscious awareness that all good things must end. Failure also has value simply
because, as a painful part of life, it can reveal unconscious fantasies, create more options, and expand the
realm of the meaningful. If the impulse to perfect oneself and the world denies the possibility or meaning
of significant, albeit painful events in life, for character shaped by suffering, for compassion, love, and even
death, the final arbiter of value, than where are the opportunities for depth, maturity, and wisdom?112
According to the myth of unlimited potential, we are each 100% responsible for our lives, we are the
creators of a world that reflects the contents of our individual consciousness, so we must take charge, stop
playing the victim, and be happy. There is truth to this claim. Myths teach people how to live, they tell us
where to find meaning and what to hold dear. What we believe does impact our reality, our relationships
with the world, and our sense of what is true. So we must examine our assumptions carefully and look for
metaphorical truth and psychological significance, as well as literal fact. In the myth of unlimited potential,
happiness is equated with total freedom: the freedom to do, be, and have it all. This prescription sounds
liberating and empowering, and myth gurus claim that it’s the only, natural, path to fulfillment. But this
popular self-help philosophy is a fundamentalist cosmology of goodness, one-sided in its relentless optimism
and metaphysical certainty. This notion of unlimited potential is of limited value to the self-aware individual,
living in a complex and mysterious world.
112. The image of “perfect health” includes the possibility of physical immortality. For example, Wayne Dyer claims that aging is a mistake;
it’s not normal, it’s a learned way of being. [163] Lyn Grabhorn says, “Death is a joke.” [164] In Everyday Immortality: A Concise Course in
Spiritual Transformation and Ageless Body, Timeless Mind: The Quantum Alternative to Growing Old, Deepak Chopra discusses aging and death
as the result of learned conditioning that can be reversed. [165] [166]
• 152 •
New Myths of Space and Time

Jonathan James Todd
Personal myth
Our myths orient us. They enable us to deal with the transitions of life, from birth to adulthood to
maturity to death. Our myth tells us who we are, where we are, what we are doing, and why. How we relate
to society and the world. Where we go when we die.
Without posing these questions we cannot live. The answers we draw from them may be incoherent,
inconsistent and illogical. Myth is as personal as dream, and comes from the same realm—one which cannot
be subjected to the judgment of logic. What matters about these answers is if they work. Myth satisfies the
part of ourselves beyond words.
Most importantly, as Mircea Eliade knew, suffering may be borne when it is meaningful. By providing the
appearance of meaning, myth enables us to deal with suffering. [167]
Group myth
The task before us is to form a living relationship with the world, to form a myth that allows identification
with the Other. This kind of expansion of Self will take many steps, but it can begin small. Identify with
more. Widen the view. Widen the field of the moment. Allow direct experience of the moment. In the
process of expansion, the parts where we stop, where we pull back from experience reveal our ego, reveal the
limitation of Self and the illusory border of the Other. They are the frontline in the battle of consciousness
to be present. What will be fed by this extraordinary energy of attention?
The process never ends, as John Lilly well knew. [168] All beliefs are also limitations to be transcended. All
myths are truths to be experienced then transcended. We must constantly make and remake our myths as
life and world changes. Myth is a tool. A ritual, an experience, a Wittgenstein’s ladder. A catalyst to provoke
an experience by which we are transformed. There is no final myth; or if there is it cannot be spoken. Our
loftiest words are tawdry things when used to define the transcendent.
In this age we have the treasury of world myth to choose from. The coded maps of a thousand approaches to
the wordless. Since they are not widely used, we may assume their value is not understood. We need new myths
to speak to those alive today in their own language. How can this be done when we do not have words for what
is behind the myth? When we can only murmur of Unity with the Oneness, or Dissolution with Divinity?
Currently there appears to be a void of meaning at the group level. The West has cast down its religious
mythos. Despite our best apocalyptic fervor, Y2K and 2012 are merely comfort tits to reflexively suckle at.
The anthropomorphic bearded man on the cloud was not found when the rockets flew past to the moon.
But the heretic science has not provided a myth we can live with. Malaise, apathy, and depression are the new
normality. Scientifically, our suffering has no meaning.
The dominant scientific paradigm fails to provide mythic meaning. It has banished religious myths, but
not replaced their human function. Logos cannot replace mythos. Science can only tell us about the past,
not the future. If the future is like the past, we can extrapolate. But all the charts plotted by science say
everything is changing and we are heading into the unknowable, and it is the future, not the past, we face
with uncertainty and fear. Logos tells us about what has been. Mythos tells us about what is in the process
of becoming.
At the group level we need new myths adapted to our times. Myths which will enable us, collectively, to
survive. Joseph Campbell observed that we need a new planetary myth to survive. [169] Society needs to
identify itself on the planetary level. Karen Armstrong argues we need myths to prompt compassion for our
fellow beings, allowing us to realize our unity with them and the sacred earth. [170]
Such myths must be accepted on a group level but lived on an individual level. Who can create them for
us? To what authority can we submit? The irony is, we already have them if only we could see.
Since science is currently a dominant creator and destroyer of myth, let us work with science. In fact, let
us demand that science takes itself seriously—let us demand science takes itself mythically.
• 153 •
Our current myth of space and time is that of the Newtonian evolutionary thermodynamic cosmos. Thus
we believe we are in an empty void of space out of which appeared randomly assembled forms which are
slowly winding down to utter dissolution. In this view we came by chance from nowhere and are going
nowhere against a background of nothingness. While we are here in our accidental existence we are engaged
in a merciless struggle for survival, to procreate and provide for our offspring, so that the whole sorry
shambles can propagate itself pointlessly, until they too perish without meaning.
Living by this myth has led us astray. We are horribly out of balance with the world. As the globe warms
and oil runs out, gradually awareness looms that our treatment of the earth and humanity is rapaciously
exploitative. Faced with technological and material abundance, the first world staggers under the weight of
misery, alienation and mental illness. This is a failing of myth.
We have not updated our myth of space and time to the Einsteinian, let alone the Quantum. Taking
science seriously—adopting new myths of space and time—we could believe that we are in a world in which
all is one undivided whole, a four dimensional spacetime object in which nothing is ever lost. In this view
the unknowable whole sparkles with random creation and destruction; all manifests from and then returns
to a playful boundless energy. We are connected to everything, exchange energy with everything, and are
indistinguishable from everything else. We are part of an indescribable whole in endless transformation.
Successive life stages are movements in the dance. The role is simply to dance each movement well.
If we embrace this myth, and engage with it as a reality, it leads to a transformation in values and actions—
one which is adaptive to the present ecological, economic and political crisis. The awareness that we are one
living system provides the framework for sustainable actions and meaningful global interaction. The creation
of group level rituals to instantiate this knowledge into understanding is an urgent task ahead.
Myths structure human reality. They structure what we think of as real.
New Myths of Space and Time

Space and time are primary myths. All others are built on them, constrained by them. Even in the creation
myth of science, space and time appeared right at the big bang. They were the battleground on which the
demigods—gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces—fought, as they rent the
cosmos from energy into matter.
Our sense of self, identity, etc, are all are based on a Newtonian sense of space. Our identity is defined
by the notion that two bodies cannot occupy the same space. Thus we are separate from the world, ending
at our skin. But we know this is false. Reality is a vibrating soup of overlapping interpenetrating entangled
systems. Boundaries are porous. Wireless communications pass through us, radio and television waves pass
through us, subatomic particles speed through us leaving nary a distinguishing mark.
Even functionally it becomes hard to say where we end. A decade ago philosophers David Chalmers and
Andy Clark argued that we are cyborgs including our environmental tools as part of us. [171] As iPhones and
iPads proliferate, the trend deepens. We are interconnected, we extend beyond our bodies; the ever-prescient
McLuhan foretold our electric nervous system spanning the globe.
Our myths of space and time are much like metaphors, and it is useful to consider space and time as
metaphors. They are primary in that all other metaphors are given in terms of them, explicitly or implicitly.
Mathematics, a more obviously human construction, is founded on number theory; number theory requires
set theory, the proof and definition of which is rendered diagrammatically, thus implicitly spatial. (Can you
imagine a set without a circle, or other spatial container, defining what is “in” and “out” of the set?) Take
a moment to reflect on the unconscious metaphoric connotations (and their origins) of why “good is up”;
then work out a way to express the same sentiment which doesn’t involve Newtonian metaphors of space and
time. Tuning in to higher vibrations, perhaps, retains the word.
Our metaphors are stacked, meanings layered—if we shift the most fundamental layer, then, to be coherent,
the rest must come into line. (Cognitive linguist Lakoff found that we maintain metaphoric coherence at all
costs. [79]) When we shift our underlying metaphors and myths, when we fully internalize and embrace this
new mythic understanding, everything changes. This shift changes direct experience.
Other experiences are possible. Can you imagine a world without left and right? The Piraha people of
the Amazon live in it. They have no sense of personal direction—no sense of left or right in relation to
themselves. Instead they orient wholly in terms of external geography, for instance, by where they are in
relation to the river (to the river, away from the river, etc).
• 154 •
Emergence
Our experience gives us “common sense” and what is “self-evident”. These are not fixed but are a product
of our myths, metaphors and conditioning. We act according to the world suggested by our mutually
reinforcing beliefs and experience.
The point is that the world we make, the kinds of institutions we build, and how we live, all flow from our
choice of primary myths and metaphors.
So what kind of world do we make, what institutions will we build, and what practices and societal
interactions do we create if we adopt a new myth or metaphor of space and time—the long-standing
understanding of undivided wholeness?
…the classical idea of the separability of the world into distinct but interacting parts is no
longer valid or relevant. Rather, we have to regard the universe as an undivided and unbroken
whole. Division into particles, or into particles and fields, is only a crude abstraction and
approximation. Thus, we come to an order that is radically different from that of Galileo and
Newton - the order of undivided wholeness. [172]
Coherence with a new metaphor of space and time calls for a total overhaul of our economic, ecologic,
political and social structures. A full accounting is beyond the scope of this essay. Let us briefly sketch some
major implications.
First, as the environment changes, we change. There is no separation. A change in a part of the whole is a
change in the whole. Thus we must become very interested in the world and what is happening to it, for it is us.
This calls for reconsideration of our ecological stewardship of the planet of which we are a part—our pollution,
despoliation, and the annihilation of biodiversity are incoherent with this myth. Thus this is a myth that will
enable us to survive, in Campbell’s sense and one that encourages compassion, in Armstrong’s sense.
Second, individual objects cease being of primary importance. What matters is dynamic systems,
relationships and processes within the whole. We can come to understand ourselves as processes—nested
processes, embedded in a world of process.
Third, nation states and political divisions evaporate. The notion of competition becomes outmoded—
how can parts of one whole turn against each other?—To be replaced by cooperation. The focus shifts from
the evolution of individual species to the development of the whole.
The profit motive that drives capitalism is incoherent with this new myth. For by definition it relies on
inequality and exploitation. On the micro- level, it is a zero sum. One can only make profit at someone
else’s expense.
Another major effect which follows from adopting the axiom all is one is experiential—a feeling of
connectedness with all that is around us. In seeing all as one system, we cannot see what has generally been
perceived as separate and external to us as possessing a different fundamental character from ourselves.
Self-transformation
Through most of human history, pre-Newton and the Enlightenment, people regarded the world as
possessing much the same character as themselves. Owen Barfield calls this sense participation.
The whole basis of epistemology from Aristotle to Aquinas assumed participation, and the
problem was merely the precise manner in which that participation operated. We ca either
conclude that this persistent assumption was a piece of elaborate self-deception, which just
happened to last …from the beginnings of human thought down to the 15th or 16th century
AD, or we can assume that there really was participation. [173]
Where we end up is a view similar to animism—the idea that the world is the same as us, of a piece
with us, conscious like us. This view has unexpected convergence with the work of multi-talented scientist
Stephen Wolfram, who argues that our computational complexity is equivalent to that of our environment,
such that treating it as conscious seems a natural outcome. [174]
How might we engage with the world in a more animistic way? Occult philosopher Ramsey Dukes has
a clever suggestion useful for making the transition—personify aspects of the world that form persistent
patterns. He notes that most of our brain’s capacity is developed to deal with communication and social
interaction. [175] So let us assume conscious awareness, or selfhood, is widespread, and interacts with more
• 155 •
aspects of the world in that way, and see what it does for our experience.
Our attachment and identification with the body as ourselves is the biggest limitation we have to acting in
accordance with this new view. A lifetime trained in believing and perceiving ourselves as this body, separate,
hypnotized by various myths of space and time. Understanding space and time as spacetime, we might see
the “body” differently. We are a stage of systemic unfolding; a 4-dimensional mycelial network snaking
through spacetime. Moreover, we are not just our body, we are entwined, overlapping, infusing and infused
with all that is as we twist through the pattern of the whole.
But this is an intellectual approach. The most direct way to realize you are not your body is to have an out
of body experience. While often occurring unexpectedly during spiritual crises, these can be generated on
demand. West African shaman Malidoma Somé described an out-of-body experience during his initiatory
training. Candidates for initiation were buried up to their necks in the desert. They were left cooking in
the heat, sweat slowly boiling on the body in an earth oven, until the extreme physical distress was so great
that consciousness fled the body. [176] This extreme physical distress model fits with my own experience.
However, other approaches than induced or naturally occurring crises exist. But this step is not for everybody.
(For methodologies of projecting consciousness out of the body, the interested explorer is referred to Vitimus
or Alli. [177] [178]) “You never change an existing reality by fighting it. Create a new model that makes it
obsolete,” Buckminster Fuller.
Society is the aggregate of her individual constituents. To transform society we must transform ourselves,
establish bulkheads and institutions, until some tipping point arises, and culture is changed. Fortunately, this
new myth is in accordance with science—it is acceptable to the group mind, so we can readily explain our
position and actions. It is for the collective to develop new rituals. However obviously our commercial system
based on profit and greed will go so we will have huge new bases for interaction other than commodification.
Burning Man provides an example of a short-term economy based on gifting.
To live a new myth we must transform ourselves. We must become different. This requires an experiential
shift. It will take time. We have had a lifetime of conditioning under outdated myths taken for truth.
We need to lead the way with a viral contagion; we need to live new mythic understandings, and visibly
flourish, that others will notice and ask how is it done. Living well is the best revenge. It is also the best
example. Be the change you want to see in the world. Let others follow. Find the others. Band together. Start
cooperatives. Don’t just reject the status quo, render it irrelevant.
How do we live this myth?

Retrain perception until it is second nature. Deprogram and recondition. Brainwash yourself to be “we”
rather than “I.” As you look someone in the eye, realize they are we. As you walk past a tree, recognize that
it is we. As you look at what is on your plate, realize that it is we, and is about to become us, in the most
intimate way.
Adopt the corollaries. Realize that you are interconnected with everyone you meet. Act accordingly, realizing
what you do to others you do to yourself. There is a reason the golden rule has appeared and reappeared in
every major religion man has produced. Indeed, the most crucial belief and behavior that follows from our
new myth of space and time is that we should have respect for all life and all existence, including the life we
sustain ourselves on. If all is one, all parts seem to be of equal importance to the whole; in fact, parts are only
something we mistakenly perceive.
The work of self transformation is ongoing. Many books are written on how to extend and develop
ourselves. There is a meta-lesson here, however. The point is, we can identify, challenge and change our
fundamental assumptions about the world, and realize different myths give rise to different experiences.
Indeed honesty, congruence and adaptation require that we must update our myths to fit with our current
best information about the world. We have only myths—or models—of the world. Some are more accurate,
some are more useful. But we make our own myths, and we live by them. Most of all we must be conscious
of this, and the effects we are choosing to live with.
We can adopt any belief as our core myths and metaphors. We can adopt any myth of space and time, and
make it fundamental. However, we had best choose carefully what we do, and what the effects are, as we will
live with them. The point is to make selecting our myths a conscious process. The process hinted at here can
be adopted in the creation of any new world-view. For a comprehensive coverage of this, as well as expansion
on many of the themes of this essay, see my forthcoming book, Consciousness and Reality.
• 156 •
Initiation: the Masks of Identity

James Curcio
“I tell you: one must have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star.”
Friedrich Nietzsche [179]
I
nitiation is such a constant in the cultural body
that it is evident in some form in nearly every
human culture before the industrial age, at which
point it became notably absent, at least on the
surface. It would seem this absence has produced
a very real psychological crisis on a cultural scale,
although as we will see in many ways the initiatory
impulse has merely transferred itself, oftentimes to
behaviors and beliefs which only shallowly fulfill
that impulse. (Or perhaps its absence is a symptom
of a psychological crisis; it is probably the same,
either way.)113
There are many works available that systematically
explore the vicissitudes of initiation within tribal
and so-called primitive or archaic cultures. At the
forefront of the works that deal with this subject
is Mircea Eliade’s Rites and Symbols of Initiation,
which covers the various functions initiation can
serve, and provides elaborate examples of all of
them, from the shamanic process of rebirth to that
of the men’s rites whereby a boy becomes a man.
[180]
Similarly, his tome Shamanism goes into even greater depth of the shamanic current of initiation. [271]
Though a sketch of these ideas will serve us in regard to dealing with the main issue of this chapter, I will
avoid elaborate restatement for the sake of brevity. In fact, much of the picture I’m going to create for you
is generalized: the point here is to cut to the heart of what initiation is, what the proposed “initiatory crisis”
is in modern life, and explore issues tied directly to that. It is not to compare the slightly different practices
of Tungus or Yakut shamans.
There are several types of initiation: those that arrange one’s role in society, those that confer knowledge,
and the similar but slightly unique phenomenon of shamanic initiations. However, they all share many
things in common, so I will speak at times of all three, hopefully without causing too much confusion.
The initiatory impulse is not merely fulfilling the need to belong to a social group, although that is one
of its exogenetic outcroppings. Lying submerged under such conscious needs is its prefiguring function: to
forge our being, almost like a tool, for a specific purpose. It is a tool that in equal amounts—depending
on the nature of the initiation—indoctrinates and confers meaning and knowledge appropriate with that
transformation. Regardless of the specifics, initiation is always a tool of psychological transformation.
For instance, one of the most common forms that the initiatory ceremony takes is that of the adolescent
113. Ultimately, culture is not synonymous with community. Rather, civility is demanded for community to arise; people must actively
and consciously identify as a part of something to form a community. You must be made a part of a body to be a part of a community. Culture
just happens. Where community is increasingly absent, as in modern urban centers, civilization regresses towards barbarism in a cultural if
not literal sense. Gangs are one of the many signs that this exists, gangs being a de-mythologized tribalism which attempts to serve the same
function as the men’s initiatory societies which we see in the vast majority of documented tribal societies. With initiation rituals that mostly
encapsulate a rage of cultural disenfranchisement, mixed with the idle violence listless males can be prone to, these groups serve precisely the
opposite function of a traditional “men’s society,” exacerbating the malaise rather than creating a micro-community.
• 157 •
transformation. Before the ritual, whatever it might be, one exists in the world of childhood concern, and
afterward, the initiate is both individuated, in a specific, culturally prescribed manner, and consigned to the
service of a particular role within the societal body, offered by the symbolism of the ceremony. “Indoctrination”
has a certain feeling-tone to many of us, especially in light of the dystopian future so many seem to predict
and fear, but devoid of intent it is essentially neutral. Feral children are rarely able to be brought back into
the fold, if found too late. In Masks of God: Creative Mythology, Joseph Campbell has some very interesting
things to say on this subject,
The intent of old mythologies to integrate the individual into his group, to imprint on his
mind the ideals of that group, to fashion him according to one or another orthodox stereotype,
and to convert him thus into an absolutely dependable cliché, has become assumed in the
modern world by an increasingly officious array of ostensibly permissive, but actually coercive,
demythologized secular institutions. A new anxiety in relation to this development is now
becoming evident, however, for with this increase, on one hand, of our efficiencies in mass
indoctrination and, on the other, of our uniquely modern Occidental interest in the fostering
of authentic individuals, there is dawning upon many a new and painful realization of the
depth to which the imprints, stereotypes, and archetypes of the social sphere determined our
personal sentiments, deeds, thoughts, and even capacities for experience. [46]
One can be transformed by way of initiation into a soldier, into a priest, or into most anything else that
a culture dreams up not just as a profession but as a way of life. To really be a soldier one must be a soldier.
This transformation is re-enforced through a desacralized, ongoing initiation process. Such ceremonies are
only truly effective when they make such a shock on the organism that the psychology is quite literally
transfigured, but it is re-enforced in the presentation of myths with coercive underpinnings. Most ceremony
has become routine. Other techniques have proven effective for mass conversion than the traditional models
of initiation. In other words, the seeming absence of the initiatory complex is misleading. As the world
of manufacturing has changed from one-offs to the factory line, the same has occurred in the initiatory
process.
Initiation must be performed en masse because, frankly, there are far more humans than there were a
thousand years ago. Industrial mythology has some very broad mechanisms to stamp out lines of marching
soldiers. However, this process seems to be breaking down. When people fail to be indoctrinated, to be mass-
initiated, they seem to turn to various versions of archaic tradition first.
With traditional methods of initiation, especially the shamanic, the symbolism involved usually focuses
on death and rebirth: death to the old life, and the birth of the new. This must occur for transference of roles
and models to occur. In some cultures, children are ripped away from their parents, tortured, or otherwise
terrified in the name of the transformation. A boy enters a cave a boy, and leaves a man. This is simply a
matter of attaining the social status that accompanies such a transformation; they are enacted instead for the
very real, long lasting psychological shift that must result for it to be truly called an “initiation.” This comes
along with the archaic recognition of the sacrifice: the need to lose in order to gain. Death and rebirth is the
formula of initiation. We’ll look at that more closely in a moment.
Such transfiguration can hardly be a possibility for most modern individuals. For one, we are already
individuated, even at the expense of our own in-born needs. Our submission to the needs of the society tend
to be more through the guise of necessary concessions—“I must work this job to pay the bills”—rather than
a conscious, concerted dedication of one’s self to a role in life or society. This is a gain and a loss. It would
be unthinkable in many other traditions to consider going “one’s own way,” let alone openly challenging the
demands made by society upon the individual. I’d like to consider both what has been lost, and what has
been gained.
The initiatory rituals that persist are, by and large, pale imitations of those that came before. It may be evident
that there remains a sort of passive initiation process in industrialized culture, as Campbell alluded to. The
initiations that I refer to as “lacking” may be more of the shamanic and knowledge conferring type. Secularized
versions of the role-conferring type of initiations still exist, generally stripped of any sacred dimension.
Modern baptism does not truly re-consecrate the individual, neither does the bar mitzvah or induction
ceremony when joining an academy or a new career. Strangely, the closest thing that most Americans
experience to the adolescent initiation is the bastardized rites of the fraternity. Yet, though they may approach
the extremes requisite for psychological transformation, these pranks are so devoid of effective symbolism
• 158 •
that at best they can only hope to enhance a feeling of belonging to the group, which as we already discussed
is a mere outcropping of the initiatory complex.
Though many are able to find initiations in their own experience, which mark the transition from one
phase of life to another, those not taken in by the factory-style initiation find themselves stumbling about
in the dark, with no affiliation to nation or religion. Those of us willing to actively consecrate ourselves to a
spiritual or social task may not feel this absence, but those psychologies which require the imposition of an
external force to bring about this change are likely to be forever lost, adrift from situation to situation, ever
struggling to find a truly elusive meaning or purpose.
These are the very types who are most at risk for indoctrination in cults, in the military, etc. because that
psychological need can be so great that it strangles out the voice of reason. Because of all of this, an initiatory
formula more appropriate as a model required for the rebirth of the modern psyche would be the heroic
or shamanic initiation. Although it isn’t universal, one general distinction between the otherwise similar
shamanistic and heroic initiations come in whether that quest is rendered internally, or externally. Often, the
hero has the symbols rendered upon the external world, the shaman, the interior.114 Yet, dealing as we are
with symbols in either case, it is difficult to say if this distinction is a truly worthwhile one, and if there is, in
the final evaluation, a distinction between the shaman and hero in this regard.
Joseph Campbell was well aware of this, and dedicated a majority of his life to clothing this message in
various forms and disseminating it. For this, he has received flak in the academic community, yet I would
suggest that often the academic insistence on restraint is in fact a symptom of a form of creative sterility,
which could never effect an initiation of any kind. In my humble opinion, we need more teachers like Joseph
Campbell, and fewer purely academically-minded scholars.
Be that as it may, the model of heroic or shamanic initiation is most relevant to our investigation of
the modern “initiatory crisis” because it is either willed by the individual, taken on as a task or a test, or
it is conferred by the very energies of life—one is thrust into the initiatory crisis and must either muddle
through it, or drown. In the case of the shamanistic mode, it is well recognized that a psychological illness,
or “otherness,” is requisite. However, the shaman gains the title precisely because he has been rendered whole
by the trials and ultimate re-consecration of the self as a shaman. In this way the shamanistic worldview
and experience, though superficially similar to what we consider mental illness, is in fact its diametrical
opposite. It might be considered no different than molding of the self into a policeman, soldier, etc. as but
of course, in a sense it is—and in our society, it is an entirely moot point as we have no such profession, and
no such societal role as “shaman.” While it is inarguable that all the mentally ill of our society are not would-
be shamans who never gained the training and insight that would have otherwise made them beneficial
members of society, it is equally unlikely to say that none of them would. Thus, the heroic or shamanic
understanding of initiation will be our focus from here on out, rather than the role-conferring type.
There is a quote from Jung’s autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, which cuts right to the heart
of this:
It is obvious that in the course of his practice a doctor will come across people who have a great
effect on him too. He meets personalities who, for better or worse, never stir the interest of the
public and who nevertheless, or for that very reason, possess unusual qualities, or whose destiny
it is to pass through unprecedented developments and disasters. Sometimes they are persons of
extraordinary talents, who might well inspire another to give his life for them; but these talents
may be implanted in so strangely unfavorable a psychic disposition that we cannot tell whether
it is a question of genius or fragmentary development. [58]
Let’s distill this initiatory formula as it relates to our exploration here: first, crisis and the plunge into
the sub-conscious, then self exploration—we must make sense of the crisis, we must mythologize it, give it
meaning though we feel as if we are discovering—and ultimately knowledge or mastery. Crisis is key in creating
initiatory situations, but this is easier said than done. Any rite attempting to bring about transformation
must deal with the psychology of the individual and the “shape” of the surrounding culture at that specific
time and place.
Through the initiatory process, that which was unknown or beyond our power has been rendered in a
form that has put us into accord or conflict with it. In either event, through mythologizing the crisis, we feel
114. Yet again we return to a spatial metaphor that attempts to represent psychological experience with potentially misleading results.
• 159 •
that we now have a sense of it. The nature of the crisis differs from individual to individual, however the first
two steps of this process are easiest to express as the ancient Greek aphorism: “know thyself.” What easily
slips by is that this was created like a narrative; our environment conditioned us to invent a story. This story.
My story. Your story.
Humans are almost neurotically afraid of genuine self analysis. We will exert great force to maintain
our story. In the next section of this book we will consider the myth that took hold of the Japanese writer
Mishima. He was willing to kill himself in testament to it. The inner world to many of us, is a complete
mystery, terrifying to think of one’s thoughts as living beings. There are some of us, to be sure, who can’t help
but go spelunking in there; fewer still live there all the time.
There are no absolute guides in this path, and without any sort of shamanic or heroic tradition, there are
few true mentors or teachers. Psychologists of past generations began to open these doors, only to have them
slammed shut when the institution, indeed the industry, became big business and went pharmaceutical. The
psychoanalytic approach, and certainly any sort of shamanic approach, is often sneered at by psychiatry. It
does not have an exceedingly high success rate, but then again, all factors are weighed against it. Especially
because successful psychoanalysis demands an emphasis of the uniqueness of each personality, whereas
psychiatry attempts to do the exact opposite.
Of course, those who still attempt such approaches are dealing with something that is more art than
science, especially if we consider a mythic approach to psychoanalysis, and consequently we are forced to
sort the wheat from the chaff by trial and error or word of mouth alone. Artists, too, are natural explorers of
the interior psychological spaces, but in our mass market culture, many of them are forced to either pander
to the outside, surface world of fashion and appearance, or languish in dark caves themselves.
When an artist expresses psychological truths, pointing at their common or mythic roots, they commonly
seem to fall on deaf ears with an audience so obsessed with plot, action, and everything else external. As has
been said time and again, this remains the primary challenge to mythic artists: to render the psychological in
the clothing of these external elements, with the hope that the underlying symbols will work their way into
the narratives of people’s lives, whether they are aware of it or not. Media is still show business. But the real
trick is getting people to take a hard look at themselves.
This “fear of the mirror” is more than a psychological affliction: it is a spiritual one. It is a condition that
shamans, yogis and the like have long served to help cure. Yet to the indigenous practitioners of these arts,
how strange we must seem—coming to their lands in khakis, asking for a brief tour of ourselves, so that
we can return to the village and tell our friends about our Ayahuasca visions over sushi. We obsess, and ask
whether the contents of such visions could be “real.” Cracking open our heads must be a true challenge. As a
civilization, we have come so far in terms of capability in the outside world, and as a result have left ourselves
far behind.
Thankfully, we needn’t merely resort to the tribal method of shamanism: it is fairly likely that those
songs and symbols no longer truly reach us, and if they do, it can have a regressive result. The true value
is in the formula, which—I know from personal experience—can be effective without requiring a trip to
the Amazon. We need to invent our own, and we are, though the hurdles faced by mythic artists are too
easily written off with narratives about “free rides” and “trust fund” kids. Being so deeply compelled to do
something that you would rather die than not do it, and being told time and again that you “had best grow
up and stop,” is a real psychological conundrum. “Just do it in your spare time,” is not an adequate solution.
Anyone that says otherwise clearly has no personal experience to base that evaluation on. This poses another
layer of initiatory crisis, but only for those who are deeply compelled to be something that their society or
social status insists they must not be.
Another element of the shamanic initiatory formula is that ecstasy becomes a transformative tool, and
in many ways fear becomes that which must be overcome, rather than a tool unto itself. Truly, many of
the trials faced in this sort of initiation are terrifying; but in the shamanic mode, success, (in the form of
transformation), is acquired through overcoming fear, whereas in many adolescent rites the fear is that
transformative force.
As we move into personal mythology, we will see some examples of how initiations can and do occur
within even a culture such as ours, devoid of a singular mythic fabric or initiatory system. The fact is that
this absence is also a great boon: we get to choose, to a far greater degree, what course to take. However, none
are prescribed for us, and for the majority, we aren’t made aware that the possibility for such psychological
• 160 •
transformation even exists. Without a well-formed tradition, without a social mechanism for training let
alone sustaining the individuals that would keep such a tradition alive, we are all on our own. More often
than not it is the charlatans, motivated by personal greed or ego, that are the most likely to attempt to peck
around the edges of the initiatory traditions of other cultures, in an attempt to further their own ends. Worse
yet, others experiment with the pieces of these traditions that they can glean from National Geographic, with
potentially dangerous or simply useless results.
An example from my own life comes to mind. I was at a Psytrance Festival somewhere just outside of
Pennsylvania. As many of these events are, it was a mash-up of neo-hippy, trans-humanist, and other neo-
this and post-that movements in music, art and culture; most with good intentions, and many (though not
all) without any clear sense of where to go with those intentions. I noticed someone standing next to me
had tribal scarring, all up and down their legs. So without thinking much about it, I asked him what he
had learned from the experience; regardless of the specific culture, these scars are almost always a symbol of
having gone from one stage of life to another. He seemed confused, and then talked for many minutes about
how much it hurt, and about how proud he was to have gone through that level of excruciating agony.
“How did you change?” I asked. Again, he seemed perplexed, as if the question had never entered his
mind.
“The point of an initiation is that you come into it from one phase of life, and leave it another—it’s an
external way of symbolizing an internal transformation,” I said. Or something along those lines.
He explained that he had done it because he had seen other people doing it, and he wanted to go through
something that intense. The virtue of an initiation is not in having endured “something intense,” it is not an
“extreme sport.” To live and not be totally shut down, we’ve all endured “something intense.”
I can’t think of a more clear example of the initiatory crisis facing the youth of today—yearning for
meaning, a purpose, a place, a hope or home—born from a culture that allows them more freedom than
most other cultures in the history of mankind, yet possessing absolutely no idea what to do with it. A
freedom of thought and expression does not in itself ensure the ability to do anything with that freedom. I
say this not from a position of superiority but more, if anything, of understanding. After all, it is not as if I
write this outside the boundaries of time or experience.
Before we move to a view of the myths of modernity, there is more worth exploring about initiation in
general. Initiation from what? To what end?
Initiation is directly connected to the primary phases of transformation in life. Some are commonly
arranged by the society: marriage, for instance. But most of them are ongoing processes that are set in
motion by forces far greater than ourselves. Death. Sex. The recapitulation of life through the cycles of time.
The intelligences of our body and environment, which the thinking mind so eagerly blocks out. These are
the things that it attempts to put us back into accord with. That we are out of accord with them is a point
driven home well enough by many of the previous sections of this book. They involve a consecration of the
primal energies of life, and a means of directing them into one form, or another. In other words, they are a
means by which natural forces are given a cultural, human shape. Myths serve this function too; initiation
is one “limb” of the mythic body.
Speaking of limbs, the dismemberment of the God or hero, and spreading of his remains into the water is
a re-occurring theme in many myths that share an initiatory quality. We see it with Orpheus, torn asunder
by Dionysus’ Bacchante long after the relative failure of his journey into the underworld; we of course see it
with Osiris, slain by his brother and re-assembled like some kind of Vegetative Frankenstein by his wife, Isis;
we see echoes of it in the myth of Jesus on the Christ and his rebirth, with Kali, depicted in some images
cutting off her own head, feeding her initiates with spouts of her blood as she rides the corpse of Shiva…
and on, and on, and on.115 Many books have been dedicated to exploring the subtle elements of these
connections; it is sufficient to say that they are a common, indeed an essential, quality to the initiatory myth.
So we can move forward and ask why? What does it mean?
By way of example, let’s look at the model of Osiris, and symbols that arise in that analysis. Perhaps we can
get a sense of how this myth of death and rebirth serves as a model for other similar myths. As is the case with
most myths, there are multiple versions of these stories, as they pass from town to town and ear to ear. The
115. It predates these images, as well. For instance, “…since the notion of a dying god, a cyclical divinity whose life span could be …
recycled, attaches to the very figure of Dumuzi, who becomes the Babylonian Tammuz and is a first cousin to his Frazarian counterparts,
Adonis in Syria, Attis in Anatolia, and Osiris in Egypt.” [4]
• 161 •
intent of these investigations is to get to the gristle, the central themes, not argue about historic precedent.
Osiris was betrayed by his brother. Here we see the classic “brothers” myth. He was cut into pieces, and
these pieces were dispersed into water, and later reclaimed by his wife, who through magic, reformed him.
This rebirth gives him power over the underworld.
It is his agricultural and regenerative character that we will explore, beginning with a footnote of the
traditions that came immediately before. In the earlier traditions of Uruk and throughout the Indus valley,
the cow goddess Ninhursag and Innana links the image of the bull and the moon, as does Hathoor in the
later Egyptian tradition. Both have a fundamental relevance to the symbolism of Osiris. In Masks of God:
Oriental Mythology, Joseph Campbell writes about the age of this mythic current: “…suggesting that the
widely known myth must already have been developed” (before 4500 B.C.) “of the earth-goddess fertilized
by the moon-bull who dies and is resurrected. Familiar derivatives of this myth are the Late Classical legends
of Europa and the Bull of Zeus, Pasiphae and the Bull of Poseidon, Io turned into a cow, and the killing of
the Minotaur.” [182]
In 2850 B.C., we see evidence of the Egyptian style of art and mythological thinking springing seemingly
out of nowhere. An example of this outburst is the Narmer Palette, which details the horned heads of the
cow-goddess Hathoor. Joseph Campbell continues: “She was known as Hathoor of the Horizon, and her
animal was the cow-not the domestic cow, however, as in the cult of Ninhursag, the Sumerian dairy goddess,
but the wild cow living in the marshes… and yet intelligently scrutinized they are indeed the same; namely,
of the Neolithic cosmic goddess cow… moreover the sun, the golden solar falcon, the god Horus, flying east
to west, entered her mouth each evening, to be born again the next dawn. Horus, thus, was the ‘bull of his
mother,’ his own father.”
This, like most Egyptian mythology, involves a complicated and subtle system of symbols. Osiris is the
father of Horus, who in one aspect is the God, or Hero, going out to avenge his father’s death. In this sense,
we can consider Osiris and Horus as two phases of the same energy: metaphorically the life that has come
before, slain by its brother, and its recapitulation in the life of the younger. The “rebirth,” or transition of the
life energy, occurs in the darkness of the womb. “Horus, thus, was the bull of his mother, his own father,” is
said with an eye towards the eternal character or form of forms.
Osiris is generally lunar, but bears some resemblance to the kind of solar implications we see with Khephra,
the scarab that carries the sun through the underworld. Like Hermes in his role in the Underworld, Osiris
brings something from our world with him. Underworlds are often sustained by a fallen God, such as Lucifer
or Iblis, or a deity who has been placed in that position through trickery or duty. A surface dweller, like the
initiate, must maintain the existence of the underworld.
Within a Solar-Phallic tradition, religious references to the ‘father’ are obviously genetic: the father is
the ancestor who transmits himself in the generations through woman. Osiris, as the agricultural god of
renewal, can be connected with the image of this moon-bull that fertilizes the earth-goddess, which is one
of the many attributions of his wife, Isis. His connection to the moon is symbolic of the chthonic aspect of
his dual nature.
This confusion resides in the bifurcation and periodic inversion of male and female that occurs throughout
all systems of religious symbols, as you will find, for instance, in the attribution of Venus to the “male” side of
the Qabbalistic tree of life, or Mercury to the “female.” This is due to the fact that every symbol, and for that
matter, every existing thing, appears bivalent. There are male and female qualities in anything that can be
personified. Adding to this, many cultures have viewed the mythic meaning of the sexes differently, especially
as the role of male or female within a given culture in many ways determines the culture’s view of the eternal
principle behind it, rather than the other way around.
The moon has, for obvious reasons, long been a symbol of renewal: it waxes and wanes on a regular cycle,
is prominent in the sky, and can be connected with the menstruation cycle of females. There is, however,
a disagreement between whether the moon is a male or female energy. The sun is a symbol of eternal life,
obviously a feminine principle as we are all born of woman, and as Campbell points out on the subject, she
traditionally doesn’t need to go anywhere or do anything to be what she is, whereas the cycles of the moon
are representative of the male role of movement within the “apriority of space and time.” The knight must
go out on a conquest within this field that is the mythological body of woman.
As we are all born of woman, mythological speaking the world we are born into is also female. However,
the energy of the moon, its character, is often perceived as distinctly female, while the nature of solar energy
• 162 •
is characteristically male. So in different traditions you see these aspects of life portrayed as both male and
female. Within the context of more recent gender theory, this idea of symbols having gender at all seems
biased if not bigoted. However, it is clearly evident within the context of any given culture that gender is
attributed to even non-gendered objects. What these attributions mean, that is, what they say about us, is a
subject of great mythic and psychological interest, but they won’t reveal much more about the symbolism of
Osiris as an initiatory figure.
Osiris is externally linked to the moon for obvious reasons. But in a slightly more esoteric sense, Osiris is
a distinctly solar symbol. The crops are directly linked to the sun, and his time spent in the abyssal waters is
also a solar process of incubation or exile, as is seen in the symbols of the Orphic egg and Khephra, the scarab
beetle that carries the sun through the underworld. Thus it is said that “Osiris is a black God,” meaning he
is the sun at night.
The meanings of the lunar and solar symbols can be different in different cultures. Whereas the other
planets are used to explicate aspects of our reflected, which is to say divided consciousness; the sun, moon
and earth create a basic trinity which, if explained in other way, would be the super-conscious, sub-conscious,
and conscious respectively.116 In the context of the slain and resurrected God complex, again, I propose that
the moon represents reflected consciousness, the consciousness of our mind which is broken up and reflected
by the vicissitudes of time and space.
According to Aleister Crowley, who had a dubious understanding of Egyptology but a masterful
understanding of the power of myth, this is the form of consciousness which we think of as “ourselves.” The
light being reflected is solar, undifferentiated consciousness. Plants grow towards the sun, but not towards a
self. The moon consciousness is a particularization of the solar consciousness, so from this perspective to find
the source of our identity we must trace back the footsteps consciousness took to become the “I,” a separate
ego reflecting undifferentiated consciousness. This is the nature of the initiatory mythology that borrows
from Egyptian iconography, though it is not a perspective constrained to that singular cultural or historic
source.
The two operations of birth and death operate simultaneously, both within the abyssal waters which may
be understand psychologically as the subconscious, or physically as the amniotic fluid; or, on a grander scale,
as the water from which our amphibian ancestors slowly crawled out of. Mythically, the question is “what
does water mean within the context of these symbols?” not “what is water composed of?”
This memory is, at the least, carried within our genes, and is also mirrored microcosmically in the gestation
in the womb which all of us experienced but, chances are, do not consciously remember. And in our adult
life, it is to these depths that we return in awakening to a spiritual life. Mythologically this process is brought
about both through the transmission from father to son, and the implications we can see in the Semitic ark
myth, as well as through the strife of the brothers. These processes are both implied by the Osiris figure, and
in this we can come to understand how he is lunar, but also the sun at night: “black” Osiris.
This long digression is made in part to demonstrate just how quickly any of these tangents can be unfurled
into a branch, into an entire tree. Much of it must be left in seed form for the sake, or at least appearance,
of brevity.
The initiatory ritual is an attempt to enter sacred time and space, to recapitulate the death and rebirth of
personified by these symbols, so that we can attain a psychological unity ourselves. This is admittedly a Jungian
reading of the initiatory formula—to Jung the purpose of psychotherapy is individuation and unity—but
in my experience this is the right, which is to say the most useful, reading of these myths. In a successful
initiation, the elements of the ritual reference events within one’s own life; that of the dismemberment of the
animal nature or ego, a hope for rebirth through redemption from those binding forces, the demons that we
cling to, which keep us stuck in the “karmic rung” that we presently exist within.
This brings some of the ideas behind the Bardo Thodol, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, to play. This book
was ostensibly written as something to be read as an individual lies dying, to help them let go of their
attachments to this world and ascend to the plane most properly aligned with their own psychological stage
of development. I do not challenge this interpretation, but offer that it is an ongoing process. That is, it isn’t
limited just to the dying process, unless if you want to take an additional step and say that all of our life is a
process of letting go of attachments, until that point when they are ripped from us if we haven’t yet learned
to live with them without clinging.
116. In Qabbalah these three almost entirely constitute the Middle Pillar : Tiphereth, Yesod and Malkuth.
• 163 •
The initiation attempts to prepare us for this—to recognize our true condition in life as transient beings,
to let go, open up, and hopefully experience some of the bliss and joy that is only allowed to the Gods simply
because they are not tethered to the world we have hitherto known. Far from forcing us to renounce our
life in the world, a successful initiation attempts to allow us to live with an awareness of the ever-present
companionship of death, to see beyond present conditions. At the same time, we must acknowledge that our
experience now may be the full extent of what it will ever be.
It’s pointless to try to express the knowledge a particular initiation confers. If it could be taught, the entire
framework would be unnecessary. It is an inherently personal experience. Words simply aren’t powerful
enough to create the break necessary to truly come to bone-deep realizations of life and death. Thus, the
need for initiation.
Some paths attempt to steer us along a more ascetic path of renunciation, but I believe this is more because
they simply feel that we are not strong enough to take the other route: the path of initiation and moksha
within the world, whether through the “blissful participation in the sorrows of the world” of a Bodhi-Satva,
the extremism of the Aghoris, or really any other path which allows an individual to attain liberation from
the world while remaining within it. This can be as “simple” as discovering what you are, embracing it, and
learning how to make the society around you accept it, if you wish to remain a part of that society.
This smacks somewhat of the Zen koan, “How do you get the goose out of the bottle?”117 How can we be
liberated from the elements of participation in the world that bind us to it, without simply renouncing it?
A question worthy of consideration, and one that is more connected to initiation than most might at first
assume—but certainly not a question that can be answered in an essay!118
Moving on, the exact meaning of the death and rebirth symbol is disputable, and thus the nature of
this redemption differs somewhat from tradition to tradition. It is mutable. In the standard Christian
interpretation that we are familiar with, it is redemption in the hereafter, as these symbols are taken more or
less as signs of historic facts. Heaven is a place that will happen at a specific time.
In the mythology of Dionysus as presented within Euripides’ The Bacchae, the dismemberment occurs to
Pentheus at the hands of the Bacchante. (And to Orpheus as well, at another point.) For those who aren’t
familiar with The Bacchae, here’s a CliffsNotes version of the first half: Dionysus is displeased with Thebes,
he rolls in and makes the women go “mad,” they have their orgies in the forests, Pentheus gets all out of
sorts, and tries to put a stop to it. [183] Pentheus, being the stand-in for the patriarchal, domineering ego,
the dismemberment can be interpreted as the conflict between the systems of the mind and the needs and
energies of the body. When the mind comes out of accord with the body, when it insists, like Yahweh, that
“I am IT,” the other organs revolt. The sword turns upon itself. My novel Fallen Nation: Party At The World’s
End is a modern spin on the themes presented in this work.
Without going through a case-by-case analysis, an overview of Gnostic and Orphic cults demonstrate
that the death and rebirth occurs in a series of ritualized stages which are meant to bring the neophyte into
contact with his eternal nature. The same is seen in Masonic rituals and symbolism, and in fact most of
the rituals that have become the core of Western Esotericism.119 Yet again, a side-by-side comparison of the
variety of initiatory rites presented by the several thousand years of history which runs, either broken or
unbroken, from ancient Egyptian mystery schools to the present would lead us far off task, even though it is
precisely what most scholars would insist that we do.
117. An example of this can be found in The Book of Serenity, case 91: “Nanquan’s Peony.” However, it is an oft repeated koan. [184]
118. There is a passage in Memories, Dreams, Reflections that reflects my feelings on this matter rather well: “The Indian’s goal is not moral
perfection, but the condition of nirdvandva. He wishes to free himself from nature; in keeping with this aim, he seeks in meditation the
condition of imagelessness and emptiness. I, on the other hand, wish to persist in the state of lively contemplation of nature and of the psychic
images. I want to be freed neither from human beings, nor from myself, nor from nature; for all these appear to me the greatest miracles.
Nature, the psyche, and life appear to me like divinity unfolded- and what more could I wish for? To me the supreme meaning of Being can
consist only in the fact that is it, not that it is not or so no longer. To mere there is no liberation a tout prix. I cannot be liberated from anything
that I do not possess, have not done or experienced. Real liberation only becomes possible for me when have done all that I was able to do,
when I have completely devoted myself to a thing and participated in it to the utmost.” [58
119. The Golden Dawn, for instance. Many of these traditions, like Catholicism itself, have lost the manna, the real power, behind their
rituals, so that they have become nothing more than the repeating of empty phrases and formulas. Rituals are plays, but when they don’t
manage to touch the sacred, they are a little better than Kindergardeners putting on Hamlet. There is only one guide that can possibly steer
you right: if you choose to participate in such a ritual, and you don’t feel it right down to your bones and organs, laugh with all your might.
And if your laughing offends them, get out of there as fast as your feet can carry you.
• 164 •
A single example of the rites of Eleusis is given in Arkon Daraul’s History of Secret Societies which serves as
a good model of what might occur at such an event,
The candidate had to undergo fasting and abstinence from certain foods. There were processions,
with sacred statues carried from Athens to Eleusis. Those who were initiated waited for long
periods of time outside the hall in the temple where the rites were being held. Eventually a
torchbearer led them within the precincts. The ceremonies included a ritualistic meal; one or two
dramas; the exhibition of sacred objects; the ‘giving of the word’; an address by the hierophant;
and oddly enough, closure with the Sanskrit words ‘Cansha om pacsha.’ The elements included
the clashing of cymbals, tensions and a certain degree of debilitation, eating something, plus
conditions which were awe-inspiring, strange. The candidate was in the hands of, and guided
by, the priesthood. Other factors were: drinking a soporific drought; symbolic sentence of
death; whirling in a circle… The effect of certain experiences was a carefully worked program
of mind training which is familiar in modern times as that which is used in certain totalitarian
states to ‘condition’ or reshape the thinking of an individual… This process produces a state
in which the mind is pliant enough to have certain ideas implanted: ideas which resist a great
deal of counter-influence… the orgiastic side of the mysteries, too, has a place in the sphere
of psychology. The catharsis which the secret cult of the Cathari experienced after ecstasy is
paralleled by the modern therapist’s procedure in bringing his patient to a state of excitement
and collapse before implanting what he considers to be more suitable ideas into his mind.
[185]
Rather than belabor the comparison of various initiation practices, I want to help you cut to the quick
in regard to the function and apparent cultural necessity of initiation. Just a few examples will do. In the
myth of Orpheus, he is slain by the women of Dionysus. As the tale relates, his head, severed from his
body, floats away to sea, still singing. Much could be made of this symbolically, as we think of Orpheus,
patron of the artists, who attempted to resurrect the past (his beloved Eurydice) with his art, destroyed by
women that serve a divinity who in many ways is a symbol of the present; the head, the rational function,
floating off downstream, into the water, the unconscious, still singing…However, the point of initiation is
experience, not analysis. One cannot know what the symbol refers to without having lived through it, at least
in ritualized form, and only if the ritual was actually successful at creating the psychological shock or arrest
necessary to generate the kind of intense experience we need to truly begin anew. The symbols are guides,
but they won’t take us there alone.
There’s another element of death and dying worthy of considering in light of myths of initiation. Death is
forgetting. A central motive in myth-making is the creation of meaning that counters both the meaninglessness
of boundless existence, (literally existing without meaning, not as a reaction to meaning), and also the
forgetfulness which is a symptom of the passage of time, of entropy—death, which reduces the very edifices
of meaning recollection to ash.
The “knowledge conferring” initiatory myth is an agent of an-entropy. All such myth-making is in
some sense heroic and Promethean, though perhaps also in the long run ultimately futile, as boundless
existence and endless time is a realm where the eternal continuity of thought and meaning itself seems
unthinkable. Initiation seeks to deal with this very dilemma, whether it is through a participation with what
are seen as eternal principles, becoming a member of a sacred or immortal brotherhood (or, more rarely,
sisterhood), or any of the other countless examples of secret society or mystical rite initiations that claim to
provide experiential knowledge of immortal life. It is not surprising that, for instance, Hermes in his role as
psychopomp is a very common image within the Greek-influenced Gnostic mysteries.120 It attempts to pass
120. A psychopomp is a mediator or guide between the realms below and those above, which is to say, between consciousness
and the unconscious, between life and death, and so on. Shamans, in their role as initiators, are psychopomps themselves.
From this idea of the “dark depths” to which the initiate must go and return from, we can already see the relationship and re-occurrence of
certain symbols, for instance, the fish. The fish is a Mercurial symbol. Mercury, or Hermes, is in this aspect the figure who brings souls to the
knowledge of their immortal character as well as their guide through the underworld. The Caduceus of Hermes, a symbol that has since been
used as a sign of Western medicine, is a glyph for this and can be considered one of this symbolic tools, much as the pine-cone tipped Thrysius
is Dionysus’. The snakes that curl their way upwards are a glyph of the in-transience within transience. It is not accidental that this figure is
arranged in a double helix. It is often, though not always, a function of these Gnostic (that is, knowledge-conferring), initiations to confer the
knowledge that not only our bodies, but also everything we invest value in are all as insubstantial and fleeting as the shadows on Plato’s cave
wall. It is due to the mortal implications of this realization the Mercury is the guide both to immortal life and the underworld. Though it isn’t
a role or concept that exists solely in one culture or symbol.
• 165 •
a form of experience and knowledge from one generation to the next.

There are two general paths one may take to bring about this kind of experience. These opposites are fear/
abstinence/challenge, and ecstasy/excitation/overload, presented alongside symbolic representations of the
transformation that is taking place. These methods of excess or trial are used to bring the mind, and the
energies of the body as well, into direct contact with those energies referred to by the symbols.
Examples of this abound, the clearest are brutal to the extreme, such as the Apache practice involving the
flaying of flesh and expulsion into the wilds with the commandment “return with a vision, or don’t return
at all.” An even more extreme example of this can be seen amongst the male members of the Sambia tribe
of New Guinea. Young men are taken into the wilderness, and their noses are punctured with sticks. They
bleed profusely. They are made to give oral sex to the older males of the tribe, and drink their semen. It is
believed that this will protect them from the deleterious power of their future wives’ vaginas, as well as allow
them to create babies in the future.
The symbols in themselves are powerless to create this change, and so we see so many devotees of traditions,
as well as academics of these subjects who haven’t at all opened themselves up to the references, at which
point it seems almost a futile joke. Mythic symbols are only meaningful when they reflect something that is
actually alive, not when they are collected and annotated. The powers they represent are only powers at all
if they are unleashed through that connection that you must make with it. No one else can, and no one can
tell you where you will find it.
Of course, there are many levels of cultural difference between approaches that might be seen as more less
the same; for example, as Eliade comments in Shamanism, “The Dionysiac mystical current appears to have
a completely different structure; Bacchic enthusiasm does not resemble shamanic ecstasy.” [181] However,
Eliade’s comment relates more towards distinguishing variants of shamanistic practice, rather than identifying
the initiatory complex as a whole. It remains fact that the dual current of initiation remains fear, pain, and or
abstinence on one hand, and pleasure, ecstasy, and other forms of sensory overload on the other.
A powerful initiation allows us access to a new model of the world which may, based on our intentions and
character, be experienced as heaven or hell. These are the kinds of experiences that most mythic artists I know
work so very hard to bring about in a public that have been trained to experience art with a sense of distance,
that even the most extreme shock techniques often no longer work. It is somewhat ironic that, while the
tools available to create these kind of mythic experiences nowadays outpace the simple drug and light show
of the Greek oracles, for instance, it is far more difficult to actually bring about some kind of psychological
transformation in an audience fixated so firmly in our “myths of modernity.”
The challenge of creating such a personal experience in the audience remains the biggest challenge to artists
such as myself, those that I regularly work with, and the many other thousands of mythic artists world-wide.
It is my present opinion that sometimes what cannot be accomplished with a sledgehammer may be arrived
at with a tuning hammer. But time will tell.121
Rather than belabor the symbolic intricacies of rituals in times past, I would like to take a look at a movie
This realization is Buddhist as easily as it is Neo-Platonic or Gnostic: the forms of the world are all but reflections or echoes of something
else, the nature of which differs slightly from tradition to tradition, and this supposedly eternal truth is broken up by the fields of time, space,
and experience like ripples on the surface of a lake. Life is a dream you won’t recall upon awakening. To this method of thinking, the spiritual life
is always won, at least in potential, at the expense of physical, although that spiritual life must be experienced and actualized in the immediate
present within the body. Perhaps nowhere is this lesson clothed in clearer symbols than in the Christ image, yet even here it is so commonly
misunderstood. The separation of spirit and body is never fully reconciled. The hereafter becomes sought to the exception of the present, and
the impulses of the body become barriers to our experience of the Divine, rather than the vehicles of its manifestation.
121. This is rather obscure, however: Friedrich Nietzsche regularly referred to “hammers” in his work, “How to philosophize with a
hammer,” the subtitle to Twilight Of The Idols, which he suggested be instead entitled “Hammer of the Idols” rather than “Twilight of the
Idols,” as his vitriol against Wagner at that point was supposedly already spent and the reference was taken to be meant as a parody of Wagner’s
“Twilight of the Gods.” However, and this is the point here, within Twilight of the Idols the hammer is not one used for bashing but rather
one used to “sound out” the true quality of idols, as one rings a bell. Not that it’s important, but a tuning hammer isn’t even “banged” with
at all. Either way the metaphor is acoustic, it’s about careful listening and resonant frequency, rather than the application of brute force. In
regard to what I meant with this somewhat cryptic statement, the “resonant frequencies” that myths attempt to bring out in an audience must
already exist within the audience, the way a certain pitch makes a glass or bell vibrate, or even shatter. One does not simply pound harder,
or simply use more shocking techniques in the hopes of drumming over the din of the polite and dispassionate speech of an audience as it
strolls through the gallery. That glass has a specific frequency that derives that result from it. If the frequency is off, no result. The same may
be true in regard to the task of the mythic artist, and so the challenging task for us, is to find the frequencies that will move the audience in
such a way that it moves them beyond the detached mental state of mere entertainment, without falling into the opposite defensive posture
of intellectual contemplation that much performance art does, where one goes “ah that is interesting,” and then tries to snaffle more wine and
cheese before it runs out. This is of course, supposing that the intention of the mythic artist is an initiatory one, which it often is but certainly
needn’t be. [186]
• 166 •
that came out over a decade ago now that used the Bardo, and the interpretation of initiation that I have
been talking about, to create an experience that was, in my opinion, a perfect example of what I am talking
about here. To the general public it was a horror movie, that made them feel uncomfortable in a way they
couldn’t quite place. And to those a little more familiar with psychological symbols and the idea of non-linear
narrative, it was something much more: a road-map of the final, eternal moments of all of our lives, and
how an understanding of that can help us really appreciate just how vital, and just how fragile our eternal
moment here on Earth truly is. The movie I’m referring to is Jacob’s Ladder. Following that I’d like to give
a quick mythological read of a few other films, mostly as an example of some of the theoretical ideas we’ve
discussed to show how they present themselves within modern media.

• 167 •
Initiation: A Long Road Out Of Hell

James Curcio
L
ike most kids in America, I grew up on the programming that is made available through the mass
media. We take it in as a given. The innocence of childhood may not so much be innocence as a simple
willingness to take in everything at face value. Whether or not it represents a lack of critical thinking,
I don’t know, but it is a kind of wonder that is easy to manipulate. How advertisers must wish we could
remain so unjaded?
I grew up before the Internet boom, even before the real propagation of cable and satellite television, so
I remained relatively inexperienced about what the possibilities of cinema and even television really are. I
imbibed PBS like it was crack, which I guess is somewhat unusual; the rest of my subconscious was populated
by the likes of Transformers, or a sneaked peek at Jaws or Friday the 13th. (Which, if I remember correctly,
frightened me much less than it frustrated me at the relative brevity of all the sex scenes.) Movies were
entertainment: nothing less, nothing more. I thought the only way to tell a story was from the beginning,
to the end. This is precisely the view of
movies and television that most people hold
throughout their adulthood, from what I can
tell.
Then, still relatively young, I saw Jacob’s
Ladder. I can’t remember how. Maybe it was
on late night. It doesn’t really matter. The
main thing I remember is a first inkling of
a sensation I had never before experienced:
gnawing, existential terror. Despite its
somewhat lurid imagery, Jacob’s Ladder is
not horrifying because of what it shows,
like Hellraiser, not even because of what it
doesn’t show, as with Hitchcock’s Psycho. It is
horrifying because you really don’t know how
solid the ground beneath you is. If you let
yourself take it in, if you begin to apply it to
your perspective of your own life, you might
begin to wonder: am I dead already, living in
the feverish flash-forward of the impending
end? Is my entire life a moment like this, a
white-hot moment lived and relived from
different angles, a moment simultaneously
already finished and not-yet-begun?
This, before I’d ever encountered hallucinogens, before I explored the occult or read James Joyce; this was
my first contact with that kind of uncertainty. At the time, I didn’t know why it made me feel so uneasy. Not
really. At the time, it seemed like a weird movie about a troubled Vietnam vet who was uncovering some kind
of government conspiracy. I was not at first aware of the fact that this “story” was just the feverish delusions
in a dying man’s mind. But I couldn’t get the movie out of my head, I found myself playing it over and again,
piecing it together in different configurations, and for a while that existential terror remained.
Later, I came to understand and to love the idea of a tale that contains many stories or layers within it;
a story which changes, like a hologram, depending on where you are standing or what you bring to it. (A
non-linear meta-narrative, if you will.) Jacob’s Ladder isn’t the only instance of this approach, I later found it
in Grant Morrison’s Invisibles, in Alan Moore’s Promethea. It is a technique changed and rendered differently
in the hands of hundreds of different artists. This is an idea and approach to myth and media making that
has inspired my work ever since.
• 168 •
The odd truth is, by the time I had started writing my first novel in my early college years, I had completely
forgotten about Jacob’s Ladder. It was only by sheer chance that I recently saw this movie again, and was
reminded where many of these seeds were first sewn. Now, almost two decades since I first saw it, I could
recognize this piece of storytelling for what it really is, and just how much I was indebted to it, (which is not
to say I ever stole from it. This is not how inspiration works.)
So let’s get to the movie itself, since I have talked around it so much. If this story isn’t really “about” Jacob
Singer, a man with post-traumatic stress disorder, forced to re-live his past again and again, then what is it
about? It is a modern re-interpretation of many of the ideas of the Christian Mystic Meister Eckhart, and the
Bardo. It is about the timeless final passage into the hinterlands which all of us must take—and which, in a
manner of speaking, we have already taken. And which we are taking right this very moment.
This is the only true hell, which results from clinging to the things of this world as they are stripped away,
one at a time. The beings we encounter there, they too will be demons should we resist them. Or like Jacob’s
chiropractor, they can be angels, if we follow the natural order of things and let the bliss shine through. Every
character serves as a metaphor for this psychological process: Jezebel, clearly an emissary of the lower realms
of lust; Sarah, his wife in an alternate life, Sarah, mythologically, the first wife of Abraham, the princess, and
the counterpoint of Jezebel, who could just as well be considered a stand-in for Lilith. There comes a point in
film analysis where clearly the analyst is projecting, but there is ample evidence that most of this symbolism
is intentional. Even when it isn’t, a truly successful work of art succeeds both through intent and as a blank
mythic canvas: it is what we say it is.
The “secrets” of quantum physics are in Taoism or Alice In Wonderland or even the vampire-action movie
Blade. Profundity can be found anywhere. Or, as an equally useful skill, we can laugh and turn everything,
even the greatest tragedies, into comedy.
In the process of building a modern myth, original sources must be bent and re-worked to fit the new
form. Purists will snub their noses at this, but artists should recognize it for what it is: progress and creativity
at work. For instance, an original Eckhart passage relevant to the subject of this movie goes:
“They ask, what burns in hell?” Authorities [the Fathers] usually reply: “This is what happens
to willfulness” [to individual will, self-interest]. But I say it is “Not” [it is the Nothing] that is
burned out [that burns] in hell. For example: suppose a burning coal is placed in my hand. If I
say the coal burns me I do it a great injustice. To say precisely what does the burning, it is the
“Not”. The coal has something in it that my hand does not. Observe! It is just this “Not” that
is burning me—for if my hand had in it what the coal has, and can do what the coal can do,
it, too, would blaze with fire, in which case all the fire that ever burned might be spilled on this
hand and I should not feel hurt.122 [187]
An interesting point but not exactly riveting material for a screenplay. In the movie, it becomes:
The only thing that burns in hell is the part of you that won’t let go of your life: your memories,
your attachments. They burn them all away, but they’re not punishing you, they’re freeing your
soul. If you’re frightened of dying and you’re holding on, you’ll see devils tearing your life away.
If you’ve made your peace, then the devils are really angels freeing you from the earth. [187]
Keeping on task, this idea of the dual and yet intertwined nature of heaven and hell appears in Buddhism,
in Hinduism, and Christian Mysticism. They are psychological states, rather than physical places. The same
can be said for this idea of the duality of angels and devils, after all the root of the words “devil” and “deva”
(angel) are tied together.123 They are the psychological agents of the inbetween lands, depicted as the River
Styx in Greek Mythology. The Bardo is the “inbetween state,” the gap, the psychological realms between here
and there, whether in life or in death. Should we reach divinity, or unity, or nothingness, as we choose to call
it, there is no room for ego, for separate divinity. All of those things have been burned away. That union is
annihilation. As we see in the Jewish tradition, in Greek mythology, and many other places: to look upon the
122. Speech 5b, DW ]

123. “The word deva is derived from the word for light, since a deva is one who shines forth. … Opposing the devas are the asuras
(demons). In ancient Persian (avestan) the term meant the opposite: ahura referred to the “lord of lords,” and daivas to the loud, aggressive
beings who did not follow truth (asha).” (Hindu Mythology, Williams.) Also, however, “…the Gypsy language, descending directly from the
Sanskrit, has retained in its primitive exalted sense a word which the English language has received only in its debased and perverted sense. The
Teutonic words devil, teufel, diuval, djofull, djevful, may all be traced back to the Zend dev, a name in which is implicitly contained the record
of the oldest monotheistic revolution known to history.” And note “deva” (angel) dev in Devanagari script means “divine.” [189]
• 169 •
face of God is to be annihilated in fire. Heaven or hell. The end or the beginning. Neither and both. They
are right here, if we open our eyes.
When this film first entered my mind, I had no awareness of the Bardo, or of Gnostic concepts of death
and transcendence. I simply had a semi-conscious feeling, a mixture of dread, anxiety, and elation that
occasionally lurked close to the surface. What was it? That I might already be dead, or dying, and that I was
going through a process not unlike what Jacob was experiencing. Again and again he is told “you are already
dead,” and he denies his impending condition, and then in the process of clinging, is tortured by the things
that once brought him joy. So I was moved, though I say again in an only semi-conscious way, by a sort of
wonderment that someone else had felt this way. I had never articulated it to anyone else, or been able to
articulate it. It was through this movie that I first came upon the Bardo.
As the world around us becomes more turbulent, so our lives become more fragmented. Out
of touch and disconnected from ourselves, we are anxious, restless, and often paranoid. A tiny
crisis pricks the balloon of the strategies we hide behind. To live in the modern world is to
live in what is clearly a Bardo realm; you don’t have to die to experience one. … Because life
is nothing but a perpetual fluctuation of birth, death, and transition, so Bardo experiences are
happening to us all the time and are a basic part of our psychological makeup. [188]
The name “Jacob’s Ladder” originates from the Book of Genesis, where Jacob sees a ladder ascending into
heaven. On the way up, one encounters different “spheres of existence,” which were associated by Christian
and Jewish mystics alike with the Sephiroth on the Tree of Life. There can be little doubt that all of these
inferences were intentional on the par of the script writer and film-makers, they say as much in interviews
on the Director’s Cut of the DVD.
Psychological facts such as these, which transcend cultural boundaries (even if they wear different garb or
go by different names) can truly be called “myths,” and so, in the end, Jacob’s Ladder is precisely what I mean
when I refer to a “modern myth,” and say that modern media, and art, can serve as modern myths. They can
occur in the public sphere rather than in a pedestal or in some rarefied temple in Tibet. They can happen in
a place as profane as a movie theater. The producers just need to learn the tricks of the trade to sneak it by
the gatekeepers that fund such endeavors.
Perhaps this is as good a point as any to finally make this point about modern mythology absolutely clear,
now that we have made some progress in our “topological expedition.” Though we could enter into a point-
by-point comparison of a work such as Jacob’s Ladder, and the sources that inspired it, (or that we imagine
inspired it), we would be wasting both paper and the reader’s precious time. A modern myth is a living myth,
it cannot help but borrow inspiration from historical sources—the lives and thoughts, myths and images
of those who have come before—but it is transformed, re-forged we might say, in the heat of our personal
experience, and may come out looking quite different from any of those original sources. Thus inspirational
sources became a good jumping off point, for cutting right to the heart of where a myth is leading us, but
if we take the step beyond that, we wind up forcing a new creation back into an old, dead mold. We cram
it in the sarcophagus and bury it in the ground. This is a real danger for scholars of this work in particular,
as the academic tendency is more akin to an entomologist—collecting and cataloging dead bugs—than a
creative artist of any kind.
As an artist, we must never fear doing something that has been done before. Fear doing a thing that neither
challenges you nor makes you feel something to your bones. Taking others to beautiful or painful places,
exploring old ideas from new angles: be both an artist and a philosopher or don’t create myths at all. It is the
repetition of the “Safe Bet” perpetrated by the publishing and movie industries squanders our attention and
demands that we find our mythic “meat” in movies like Blade. Thankfully, as I said, if we need to, we can do
just that. We are scavengers as well as carnivores.
• 170 •
Excuse Me: Who Are You?

An Analysis of Identity in Perfect Blue.
James Curcio
I
n a world where we are expected to play a variety of conflicting roles, in which our lives are all interconnected,
broadcast and dissected, we invariably develop situational identities. We are not one person, we are many
people who go by the same name.
Though all of us deal with this in varying ways as we go through life, nowhere is it more of an issue than
in pop culture. The long list of psychologically and emotionally fractured ex-teen stars is ample proof. “Who
are you?” Mima asks of herself, in Satoshi Kon’s animated film. It is her first line in our ‘play within a play.’
It is a question that really seeks no answer, instead expressing the complete lack of a frame of reference.
Just a decade after its release some of the devices of this film may now seem old—websites pretending to
portray the ‘real life’ of pop idols, obsessive paparazzi, frothing J-pop fans—however, many of the questions
explored by Perfect Blue remain as vital as ever. In fact, it is possible they have become even more so as the
line between reality and fiction continues to blur.
In many ways it seems downright prophetic. To the Facebook Generation, everything is either performance,
or irrelevant. If you can’t photograph, blog, videotape or otherwise record something, it may as well not have
happened. I’m sure you’ve heard it before: A.D.D. running rampant in our children, cultish obsession with
actresses that only recently got their periods, on and on. I’m not about to contribute to all of that alarmist
noise.
However, it is rare that we take a step back and think about how all of these things are symptoms of
underlying identity crisis, a crisis that actually transcends most of our other sexual, cultural or racial
boundaries.124 The teen idol, acting out the pre-scripted, cut-out role, and their screaming fans are united
in their lack of intrinsic identity. The former plays to the expectant dreams of the latter, yet neither of them
actually are that illusion. When it shatters, there is nothing there. Playing to the expectation of a lover is
ultimately no different than playing to the hopes of the audience. It is all acted in the mirror.
Is she Mima the pop star? Mima the actress? Mima the shy girl who loves her tetra fish? Unless if
pantomiming is all it takes, the answer is “no.” She is none of the above, an infinite surface without depth.
Sure, there are several things about Perfect Blue that don’t quite hit the mark. The filmmakers probably
could have made their point without busting the 4th wall every couple minutes once the film gets rolling. It
may have gone further if Mima’s actress-persona developed an actual personality of its own.
However, despite its occasional stylistic heavy-handedness, this movie is positively brilliant for its ability
to deal with the ‘heavy’ themes of identity and cultural expectation without being a ‘heavy’ movie. (It doesn’t
hurt that the animation has the ambiance and grace of classic anime such as Akira.)
“Who are you?” Mima asks herself, never really finding an answer. Everyone in the film is united in their
desire to be this perfect idol. This is the reality Perfect Blue gives us a glimpse of, although you see it anytime
you turn on the television. Japanese or American, all of our cultures seem to meet at this crossroad: we are
a planet of voyeurs.
124. Humanity is always in crisis. But in this area it is one of identity, which is why this material appeals so much to adolescents.
• 171 •
The Fountain
James Curcio
D
arren Aronofsky first gained notoriety in the film world through his movie Pi, a black and white
excursion into the fine line between genius and madness, riddled with fascinating but largely
unexplored Kabbalistic overtones. Later, his adaptation Requiem For A Dream, though masterfully
shot and lushly scored, seemed to lead us into an even deeper abyss, without even the scantest light at the
end of the tunnel. In fact, it would be easy to misinterpret as a simple morality play. I remember feeling the
desperate need to shower after watching the film, but under that portrayal of the shallow horror that is the
downward spiral of addiction, when neither will nor hope nor love ever show us a way out, there was also a
darker glimpse at the reality of American life. Nevertheless, I could see no redemption there.
His more recent film, The Fountain, which was in and out of production for several years and almost never
made it onto the screen at all, is in my opinion by far his best to date. Many people do not agree with me on
this, which is fine, but I’d like to share what I saw in it.
Partially as a result of these production issues, it was also made into a graphic novel as well, based off of the
original script for the movie. The graphic novel, which I recently picked up at a comic convention, is a true
work of art in its own right, with a sketchy and yet strangely painterly style that is uncommon and much
called for in comics.
The Fountain deals with some of the most central issues we face as humans, the big ones: life, death,
what is lost, and what remains. It is done in a visually stunning, deeply moving manner if you approach
it on a mythic or emotional level rather than from the level of literal materialism. Aronofsky’s background
in myth and metaphor is as clearly apparent as most people’s complete lack of understanding in these
areas. To begin with, from review to review, and even in the Wikipedia entry (a source well known for its
standard of infallibility), there is talk of this story taking place in three times, or of consisting of three plots:
a Conquistador, set in the time of Spain’s conquests and search for glory, a scientist, dead-set upon saving his
dying wife, and an astronaut or mystic exploring a nebula referenced in the other “time-lines” as relating to
the Mayan creation myth. These converging and diverging time-lines seem to confuse people, as they try to
track how they might relate to one another in a temporal rather than conceptual sense, and try to wrap their
heads around three different stories.
There is only one story here, with three narratives filled with symbolic devices, all of which exist primarily
to enrich each other. It is constantly baffling to me what a hard time most people have with layered
metaphors. At its most extreme, this literary problem results in holy wars. In this case, it just results in
baffled critics. Conceive of time as a vast ocean rather than a line, and of the possibility of narratives just
being representations of psychological states, and all these “problems” dissolve.
The through-line of a plot is most clearly expressed in the narrative of the scientist, as the other two,
one above and one below, express emotional and spiritual elements of a futile quest to save what cannot be
saved. For, as we learn through millennia of myths, from various derivations of the pagan “green man” to the
Egyptian Osiris and even the more familiar Christian icons, there cannot be gain without loss, and it is not
the flesh which remains. In many of these myths it is in fact the flesh which must be ultimately sacrificed to
the spirit, which is to say to the rest of the universe so that more matter can come into being, in new forms.
This is not unlike the Kabbalistic idea of permutation of symbol, energy, and form. (See the Sefer Yetzirah.)
All of these thoughts were almost undoubtedly in Aronofsky’s mind, in one form or another, when he gave
birth to this story.
The true fountain of immortality is a bittersweet potion, as flesh feeds on flesh, life feeds on life. Our
bodies feed future life, in one sense or another. The pain and bliss of love are the same, and some of the
overwhelming potency of love comes from its immediacy, which is also to say, its fragility and temporality.
What remains is a seed of consciousness, a kernel, which floats willy-nilly from one place to the next. It is
irrelevant what time period these characters exist in, as ultimately they are all merely devices for expressing
and exploring those ideas which otherwise cannot be explored, cannot be expressed. The price of immortality
is death. Life is change, it outruns the entropy of the past by consuming itself. The transhuman utopia that
• 172 •
screams “we must transcend death” is a static hell, ironically not unlike the timeless eternity of Christian
Heaven where nothing can happen. Because change is tragedy, sorrow, death. Life.
As with Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain is oftentimes a dark meditation, but here at the end there
is a form of redemption, and many insights into what truly matters, as we all make this journey from one
shore to the next. It presents a manner of time more akin to kairos, and the sacred time of Eliade, than
the chronological time which we have been culturally acquainted with. In fact, the “immortal life” that is
ultimately offered is only offered at the cost of the same sacrifice referenced in the myth of Christ: our body
fuels and feeds the world, as it was born from it.
The Fountain takes its place as a work of stunning visual poetry, even if we find the narrative somewhat
lacking, and should be enjoyed as such. I’ve watched it twice so far in the past day, and was rewarded with
fresh insights with each viewing. I’ll leave seeking out those delicious secrets to you. Happy hunting.

• 173 •
The Dark Side of a Culture:

Thoughts on Abu Ghraib and the Pornography of Cruelty
James Curcio
The torture? A more serious blow to the US than the 9-11 attacks. Except the blow was not
inflicted by terrorists but by American citizens.
Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo [190]
S
everal months after the atrocities at Abu Ghraib were first reported, porn was produced based on the
events that took place there. Some of the copy accompanying the video reads: “I’m sure you’ve seen the
news where they had those prisoners on top of the box with electrodes and a hood on the person’s face,
and if they fell off they would get a zap? Well we did just that. We put her up on the box with the electrodes
on her fingers and hood on her head and did everything imaginable to her in her jail cell.”
I worked for a year and a half for a film rental, distribution and marketing company that kept itself afloat
mostly through the porn titles. I saw material like this, and material far “worse,” every day. Rape porn based
on real events, films based on cases of necrophilia and cannibalism, also based on true stories. These sold like
mad, so much so that they required the least marketing design to help sell them.
This particular title got me thinking about the psychology of vicariousness, which seems to underlie much
of the “evil” perpetrated through passive rather than active participation, often revealed through art-forms
that confront us with our cultural “dark side.” In this case, the revelation was embodied in the form of
pornography, a simulacra based on actual rape and abuse, which itself doubtless didn’t have the self awareness
to recognize the power of its inadvertent satire. I’m not talking about the “dark side” from Star Wars. So-
called evil rarely identifies itself as such, in fact evil is only an identity. It is not so much a state of being as a
label applied from outside, to the other.
Much as faith and hope are psychological states which don’t refer to anything empirical until they have,
through their presence, rendered an empirical effect through our action. Nevertheless, through such “evil”
we come face to face with the dark side of the moon, psychologically, which is never revealed to us unless if
we ourselves go there. As Nietzsche rightfully recognized, this is not a safe exploration. You can’t do it entirely
from behind a windshield; the “abysses we look into also look back into us.”
This confrontation, and even the idealization of fascism and oppression as a means of demonstrating
their opposite, is very closely tied to what such art seeks to bring about. It is a realm that does not just
accidentally lead to misunderstanding, it provokes it. It demands it. Let me provide a long quotation from
the introduction to the book Interrogation Machine, which I think makes the point quite elegantly:
In his reaction to the photos showing Iraqi prisoners tortured and humiliated by US soldiers,
made public at the end of April 2004, George Bush, as expected, emphasized how the deeds
of these soldiers were isolated crimes which do not reflect what America stands and fights
for: the values of democracy, freedom, and personal dignity. If this is true, how, then, are we
to account for their main feature, the contrast between the “standard” way prisoners were
tortured in Saddam’s regime, and the US army tortures? In Saddam’s regime, the emphasis was
on direct brutal infliction of pain, while the US soldiers focused on psychological humiliation.
Furthermore, recording the humiliation with a camera, with the perpetrators included in the
picture, their faces smiling stupidly alongside the twisted, naked bodies of the prisoners, is an
integral part of the process, in stark contrast with the secrecy of Saddam’s tortures. When I
saw the famous photo of a naked prisoner with a black hood covering his head, electric cable
attached to his limbs, standing on a chair in a ridiculous theatrical pose, my first reaction was
that this was a shot of the latest performance-art show in Lower Manhattan. The very positions
and costumes of the prisoners suggest a theatrical staging, a kind of tableau vivant, which
• 174 •
cannot but bring to mind the whole scope of American performance art and theatre of cruelty.
[191]
Antonin Artaud’s approach to theater was based directly on shedding light on this unpleasant cultural
dark side, and the reference here, though speaking of American performance art, surely is in fact speaking to
the French surrealist movement that Artaud started, the Theatre of Cruelty. This is not a strictly American
issue, it is a psychological one, and one which has throughout history played its role in the definition of
in-group and out-group—initiation and all other rituals which bring us in to the social circle, or which
thrust us from it—the enactment of taboo, by which societies define their relations to one another and the
world around us.
In other words, the debasement of the sacrifice is not merely, as the quotation would imply, an expression
of our dark half, our defining “dirty bits,” it is a psychological demand of the modern, narcissistic cultural
identity. Not that this particular pornographic artifact has any value, but its underlying impulse shows us
more about ourselves than we might like to see. Nor is vicarious participation in sadism or masochism quite
as simple an act as one may assume, (as a tangential note, Foucault was well known in the BDSM scene.) To
continue with the quotation:
…It is in this feature that brings us to the crux of the matter: to anyone acquainted with the
reality of the US way of life, the photos immediately brought to mind the obscene underside
of US popular culture- for example, the initiation rituals of torture and humiliation one has to
undergo in order to be accepted into a closed community.” A note: this is not at all isolated to
American culture, only its mode of expression is. Continuing: “Do we not see similar photos
at regular intervals in the US press, when some scandal explodes in an Army unit or on a high
school campus, where an initiation ritual goes too far and soldiers or students get hurt beyond a
level considered tolerable? … Abu Ghraib was not simply a case of American arrogance toward
a Third World nation: in being submitted to these humiliating tortures, the Iraqi prisoners wee
effectively initiated into American culture. They got a taste of its obscene underside, which
forms the necessary supplement to the public values of personal dignity, democracy, and
freedom. [191]
When placed in the context of pornography, or later, a children’s Halloween costume parodying
the now iconic image of the prisoner standing, arms outstretched, electrical wires running to
a car battery, obviously we left to wonder where the line between reality and the spectacle
lies. But, considering how Adolf Hitler, or the genocide of millions has become the butt of an
endless procession of jokes, we may also wonder what the true relationship between tragedy
and comedy is. Rape, murder, genocide, drug abuse, really anything is fair game within the
framework of comedy, especially the tragicomic or “black comedy” of the present day, and we
mustn’t dismiss this all out of hand merely as bad taste. When someone asks “too soon?” after
delivering a joke about a recent tragedy, we may ask, “too soon for what?” Too soon before we
can begin to process the horror of reality within the narrative of the absurd? Too soon before
we can depersonalize it? Or is there something else at work here? As Alan Dundes pointed out
in the quotation I used when talked about the subconscious: jokes are one of the secret passages
to our unexplored regions.
If we look backwards towards the Satyr plays of ancient Greece, we see that tragedy and comedy
were recognized as part of a similar current when viewed through the satyr mask, a means of
exposing some layer of reality, the perverse sense of humor of the universe, perhaps. The origin
of the Satyr play is likely concurrent with the rural worship of Dionysus, and recognition of the
dual current of creation and destruction.
It was with some awareness of this that I participated in a “gonzomentary” about an artist
fixated on creating phallic art. I played Clark’s “manager,” who mostly served as an enabler
in our mutual spiral of self destruction for the amusement of the audience. I’d like to share a
somewhat tongue-in-cheek post that I made upon the completion of our first season, from the
perspective of the actor standing behind the character, who is “himself ” merely a character,
• 175 •
…I’ve been approached by a number of professional actors who’ve told me how realistic the
acting in the show seems, to the point that it seems like we’re not acting at all. I’d like to share
a tiny bit of the occult method approach that I devised which, unsurprisingly, got me kicked
out of Juilliard. (Assholes. I still get letters in the mail about my “student loans.” For What?
Fuck them.)
We only call it “acting” because what you see, as a viewer, is what an act is. If you wander in
front of a camera and think a great deal, but stand perfectly still, no one is going to know
what you’re thinking. Ritual magic is usually entirely internal, so you pretty much have to toss
all that bullshit out, unless if visualizing yourself as giant centipede is going to help you act a
certain way.
So a lot of actors derive this idea from that…that they should fixate on the act. I’m told this is
the British style of acting. I wouldn’t know. I haven’t been to Britain, though you could ask the
actor who plays Tito about that. (Hearing him talk with his native accent is so unnerving.) It’s
true, some days you can’t get into the completely natural flow that is ideal and it’s called for you
to get angry, so you just yell. There’s nothing behind it, you just do it because you have to. But
those will never be your best performances. The best moments are when you connect with it,
and it’s not necessarily hard. Maybe you’re angry because you can’t remember any of your lines.
Then use that anger. No one will know that you’re angry because you stubbed your toe and not
because your character’s life is a total mess.
That’s basic method. Here’s where you can take it a step further: through embodying things that
you may despise, or things that other people project on you, you can engage what Carl Jung
called the “shadow self,” and transmute them into something else. Let me mix some metaphors.
The impulses and parts of yourself that you turn your back on, the fears other people project
on you, take on a hidden life. But you can eat them alive.
That’s one of the reasons I chose to play “JC.” He is a character who, through being a failed
artist himself, has come to value absolutely nothing but money and cheap thrills. He’s the
quintessential cynic and there’s really no hope for him. He’ll take advantage of every situation
and try to manipulate whatever is around him to manage to accomplish those goals. I think this
is something that all artists have had to fight against, because there’s a great deal of pressure not
just to succeed creatively, but to turn a profit. And if you have no other means of income, the
pressure can be unimaginable. The only way out is through. By the end of this process, I expect
to be as empathic as a kitten, and as altruistic as Gandhi.
“JC” is the mirror of what I wouldn’t want to become. But since I could, since the potential is
in all of us—to murder, maim, or invent the polio vaccine—it’s not usually as much of a leap
as you might guess. It was incredibly easy to be him. The motivation is biosurvival fear, not
greed.
Or, really, his internal fear is transmuted into external greed. The whole season produces a
mirror, from episode one where I tell Daniel (the documentarian) that the art is happening
here, behind the scenes, rather than in what we give the galleries, and when we turn the table
on him and give him a taste of his own medicine. At the get-go we have a situation not unlike I
imagine there was with Pollock. Who is to say the “creative break” that “revolutionized” his art
from abstraction to paint splatter wasn’t a bottle of whiskey? The line between substance abuse,
mental and emotional instability, and the “myth of the artist” grows incredibly thin. And we
all secretly want the artist to cross that line, and transgress against all societal norms so that we
don’t have to. Because to really go to that limit and beyond, as Hunter S. Thompson said, is not
something that someone can do, and live.
What’s interesting is that when you play a character like JC, (or Clark for that matter), some
people might be afraid about letting “in” that kind of persona. After all, any persona that you
• 176 •
wear winds up taking on a life of its own. The more you feed it, the more it comes alive. This
is where a little background in ritual magick may actually come in handy—it is maybe one
of the only places it is “handy” for anything other than alienating you from your peers—you
can readily draw a circle around the elements of yourself that you intend to maintain intact,
for later. You could approach the process of invoking a persona as a concurrent banishment of
those elements, at the completion of the movie, play, or whatever it is that you’re doing. Or
you could, as I said, instead look at it as the opportunity for a meal. Bring those parts out into
the light, own them through acting them, and take charge of them. Consume them. When
we begin the season, I’m a soft spoken but clearly enabling “art manager.” By the end, I’m a
monster. [192]
The lines blur. We cannot escape darkness by turning our back on it, but there are risks
associated with engaging with it as well, and so we have the reflex of comedy. Returning to Abu
Ghraib and pornography as a means of unveiling this relationship between fiction and reality,
comedy and tragedy,
…In March 2003, none other than Donald Rumsfeld engaged in a little bit of amateur
philosophizing about the relationship between the known and the unknown: “there are known
knowns, There are things we known that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say,
there are things we known we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are
things we don’t know we don’t know.” What he forgot to add was the crucial forth term: the
“unknown knowns,” things we don’t know that we know—which is precisely the Freudian
unconscious—the “knowledge which doesn’t know itself ” as Lacan used to say. If Rumsfeld
thinks that the main dangers in the confrontation with Iraq are the “unknown unknowns”
the threats from Saddam which we do not even suspect, the Abu Ghraib scandal shows where
the dangers are: in the “unknown knowns,” the disavowed beliefs, suppositions, and obscene
practices we pretend not to know about, although they form the background of our public
values. … So Bush was wrong: what we get when we see the photos of the humiliated Iraqi
prisoners on our screens and front pages is precisely a direct insight into “American values,”
into the very core of the obscene enjoyment that sustains the US way of life. [191]
Now to the central point: what better example of our unknown knowing is there than a brutal, even horrific,
re-enactment of the Abu Ghraib incident, shown on a porn website as a form of entertainment, for people
to masturbate to from a safe distance—safe from the potential shame of participation, but allowed to engage
with it by proxy, like drivers rubbernecking at an accident? Nothing could be more to the point than this
vicarious violence, enacted upon the degraded subject of our (supposed) desire. What better demonstration
of precisely what is hidden behind our collective cultural mask of civility, or the outstretched hand of our
“foreign diplomacy”? It is the drive that fuels Reality TV, celebrity gossip, tabloids and talk shows. What
better way to see it than in something so absurd?
At the same time pornography like this has an unintentional element of the comedic. Even this kind of
analysis of such a subject is, in its way, nothing more than comedy. Yet we shouldn’t let this mislead us: it is
often only when we laugh that we are taking something seriously. To find amusement in the horrific is one of
the “secrets” of many so-called Secret Societies. The alchemical process deals with the unification of the dark
and the light, of the transformation of the dross, of base materials, to a more refined form. Shit to gold. But
properly understood, this process does not mean we should support the horrific, it does not mean condone
it: it means that we must identify the darkness, peel it back, look into its eye, and laugh. We make the horrific
both cognizant of itself, and smaller when we laugh at it. So long as we run from the dark, so long as we keep
it an “unknown known,” lurking on the periphery, it controls us from those sidelines
He who is illuminated with the brightest of lights will have the darkest of shadows. As Heinlein recognized,
man is a creature that laughs at wrongness. Does this laughter transform? Does tragi-comedy relieve us of
complicity? Perhaps not, but it does allow us to approach it without fear of being taken in by it, and this
proximity allows for further transformation to occur.
We must confront it and do so by stealing it of its teeth and claws. We make it a joke. Only then can we
change. Only then can we change others.
• 177 •
Excerpts from “Eshu and Ananse;

Liberation by Subversive Knowledge”
Brian George
Ananse
L
et me begin this section on the trickster Ananse with a story that illustrates how he plays with normal
expectations, reversing categories to keep the world fresh. The right result comes from what appears to
be the wrong action. This is common of trickster myths.
On pain of death, Ananse has promised to cure the mother of Nyame, the high god. He fails. As he is
no doctor, he never should have attempted the cure. Nyame demands that the Ananse too must die. The
executioners prepare to carry out the sentence. Unknown to any, Ananse had instructed his son to burrow
under the place of judgment. At the last moment, the son repeats what the father had instructed him to say:
“If you kill Ananse, the tribe will come to ruin! If you pardon Ananse, the tribe will shake with voices!”
Turning to the high god, Nyame’s chief minister says, “This people belongs to you and Asase Yaa. You
are planning to kill Ananse. The mother of the Earth says that if you let him go it will be a benefit for
all.” Nyame agrees, and so it is until today. This was the origin of the still current expression. “You are as
wonderful as Ananse.” [193]
For, in advance, without him, as in our sleep we would be able to determine the beginning of each
circle, and the end of any story. Life would be boring, and the Earth flat. We would not have access to
our supernatural weapons, or to the tongues inside our mouths, and would have no means by which to
declare war on the gods—whose bad habits would, at length, destroy them. The storehouse of the infinite
would be bare.
Was Ananse’s alternate scenario a deception? In one sense, of course, it was. It was a deception performed
in the service of truth, or at least of mutual benefit. [194] There was wishful thinking but no malice in his
behavior. It was his job, after all, to confuse existing roles, to overturn the established harmonies of heaven.
He was no doctor, but only played one in the story. Due to his desire to try his hand at everything, to be all
things to all people, and to activate the occult potency of each archetype, he had no choice but to break the
rules. From all of his mistakes he has learned to make bigger and better mistakes.
Nyame acted from paternal judgment and Asase Yaa from maternal practicality. If Ananse had been put to
death, they would only have had to invent a new “agent provocateur,” one who might well perform his work
with less of a sense of joy. Without Ananse, they would both be much the poorer.
Ananse can seem almost like a cartoon character. He is often described as a spider with an ugly, bulbous
head, eight thin but enormously strong arms, and knowledge of every language in the world. As reported
by himself, his phallus is over 70 yards long. [194] Yet it can be difficult to form any image of Ananse; he is
simultaneously a human and an arachnid, a god and the recombinant DNA of all stories told about him. Is
he monstrous? Yes and no; as there is no way to disentangle any one strand from the others. It is said that,
in ancient times, he was the human ruler of a large part of West Africa. One day, he decided to climb higher
than anyone else ever had. He climbed up and outward across the geometry of an inter-dimensional web,
until he met Nyame—the arch masturbator, the first fossil—whose daughter he then married.
He is predictable only in that he does and says what is least expected. He has a talent for rearranging his
body parts, and an insatiable appetite for food, experience, beauty, wealth, and intercourse.
For him, no behavior is too outrageous and no motive is too gross. If we had not heard of how powerful
his magic was, it would be difficult to infer it from his image. [195] As the confidant and first agent for
Nyame, he is happy to let go of all of the tokens of omnipotence. He is the blind all-seeing eye, the deaf long-
ear, the hermetically sealed big-mouth. What he says, goes!—But someone has forgotten to inform Earth’s
population. He does not mind playing dumb. We are all encouraged to blame him for our own unconscious
actions. He does not mind being seen in a negative light, as there is no true opposition between “light” and
“dark” at the higher levels of the Ashanti cosmos. [196] The opposition is provisional, only.
Like the Sufi figure of Nasruddin, he is both an incarnate joke and the most divine of fools. In listening to
the stories about him, we do not know if we are being teased or instructed. Should we gape in horror, take
• 178 •
notes, or laugh? The person who first hears the story is not the same one who will later understand. It is this
freedom from mechanical response that is the trickster’s gift to the human race.
It is due to Ananse that the sum of knowledge does not exist in any one location; it cannot be reinserted
into the calabash that once held it—since, in a fit of anger, he has smashed it on a rock. Instead, it is spread
out far and wide, and a piece has been entrusted to each one of us.

When Hates-To-Be-Contradicted visited the family compound, Ananse had instructed his children to say,
“Our father cannot see you now. For, yesterday, his penis broke in seven places, and he had to take it to a
blacksmith to repair. As the job was very big, he has had to return today to have it finished.” He was told,
“Out mother went out yesterday to the stream, and her water pot would have fallen and broken if she had
not caught it just in time, but she did not quite finish catching it, and has returned today to do so.”
After a series of escalating absurdities, during which their guest is getting thirstier and thirstier, due to the
hot peppers they have fed him, Ananse’s son, Ntikuma, says, “The water belonging to my father is at the top
of the urn, that of my mother’s co-wife is in the middle, and that of my own mother is at the bottom. If I do
not draw only the water belonging to my mother, it will cause a great dispute.” Hates-To-Be-Contradicted
shouts, “You are lying, you little brat!”
Ananse thinks, “Enough is enough. This is a breach of diplomatic protocol.” He says, “Come, my children;
beat this man until he dies!” Why should Hates-To-Be-Contradicted not be held to the same standard that
he himself had created, and for which he had killed so many unsuspecting guests?
Eshu
In Yorubaland, an image of the trickster Eshu was traditionally set just outside of the compound. In the
New World, due to a greater need for secrecy, Eshu, in the form of Eleggua, is set just inside the door. Where
Ananse is present mostly through the stories others tell about him, Eshu is, or was, present throughout every
aspect of Yoruba society. [197] He takes part in every interaction, transforming paths into dead ends and
dead ends into paths. In his primal form, he is the guardian of the crossroads.
The marketplace is consecrated to Eshu, and was traditionally located right next to the palace at the center
of an extended wheel, so great was the importance of exchange. [198] Cult officials would each day rub the
market’s “Eshu post” with palm oil. Beginning and ending with the opening of the market, the four day
week revolves. Rhythm lifts the simplest of activities. Eshu does not acknowledge the difference between
Ikole Orun, the House of Heaven, and Ikole Aiye, the House of Earth. If the drumming stops, he is often
too excited to notice. He dances to the sound of mortars as women prepare food for the evening meal.
Eshu is said to have 21 paths, or incarnations, each with its own set of characteristics and mode of action.
Eshu Laroye sits behind the door. Eshu Alabwanna lives in the woods. Eshu Aye works with Olokun, the
Orisha of the ocean’s depth. The buoyant Eshu Barakeno, youngest of the Orishas, delights in creating
confusion. Eshu Elufe and Eshu Anagui are the most ancient of Earth’s wanderers. [199]
It is said that, quite frequently, Eshu will appear in the form of a young boy or a beggar—figures without
status whom others might be tempted to disregard. For this reason, it is important to be generous toward
strangers. This lack of power is a kind of “inside joke,” in Nicholas de Cusa’s phrase, a “coincidence of
opposites.”
For, out of nowhere, and with context-shattering force, it is Eshu who appears at the key moment.
Without Eshu, the complex of relations that activate a ritual would cease to function. It would be like
trying to cook food without a fire, by the power of human thought. It would be like trying to cross between
two continents without a boat. For it is Eshu who is the guardian of Ashe—or primordial energy. Ashe
means literally “It is so,” or “May it be so.” Ashe is not moral, nor is it yet immoral. It is no more conscious
than it is unconscious. It originates in a world before such a split existed; the one law it follows is that of
unintended consequences. Uncoiling, as from the future, and yet simultaneously thrusting into present from
the past, it is the force whose action takes us by surprise. Ashe is the means by which one’s vision or intent
must be projected into manifest form.[200]
When the movement of the worlds had once ground to a halt, Olodumare—the high god—went to Eshu,
to beg him to unblock the circuits between one Orisha—or activating power of creation—and another; he
should also reconnect the world of the Orishas with that of their human “vehicles.” He agreed to carry out
• 179 •
the task, on condition that he be granted a portion of the offerings made to each of the Orishas. Since that
day, all rituals must begin and end with an invocation to Eshu, that is, with the generation and integration
of Ashe.
According to the priest Awolalu, “If (Eshu) did not receive the elements needed to fulfill his constructive
function, he would retaliate by blocking the way of goodness and opening up ways that are inimical and
destructive to human beings. Hence he is both feared and revered.” [196]
In the ritual of divination, when shells are cast by the Oriate, it is the face of Eshu that looks back at us
from the straw mat. Eshu’s energy creates an organizing field, suspending time and space so that information
can reveal itself. The Oriate then interprets the Odu—or signals—in a form that is appropriate for human
use. Any blockage or imbalance is diagnosed. For a new pattern to be created, it may very well be necessary
to break apart an old one. It is for this reason that Eshu destroys.
To say that Eshu is destructive is like saying that fire is hot. It is a function of his volatility, his mercurial
power of transformation. He liberates trapped energy. He keeps things moving.
In Brazilian “Candomble”, where he is called Exu, Eshu is sometimes associated with the devil. The first
Christian missionaries to Yorubaland lost no time in condemning him as the very image of the prince of
darkness. A few Yoruba share in this distrust, echoing an ambivalence which seems to go back many centuries,
whose origins are lost to view. The majority approaches him with an attitude of carefully crafted affection.
Is this split the aftermath of an outside influence, or does the split occur within the Yoruba tradition itself?
How a figure as indispensable as breath could come to be viewed as evil would be a fascinating subject to
explore in a separate essay. It is not relevant to the figure as I present him here.
Joan Westcot, in “The Sculpture and Myths of Eshu-Elegba,” says: “(Elegba) tricks men into offending the
gods, thereby providing them with sacrifices. It is said that without Elegba the Orisha would starve…Elegba’s
two-way involvement prompts men to offend the gods on the one hand and aids the gods in their vengeance
on the other. He is the force which makes men turn to the Orisha both in expiation and propitiation…
The Yoruba say… Eshu is the anger of the gods, and that Eshu is the first to visit the victim of an Orisha.
When…a man’s house is struck by lightning, the Yoruba say that Eshu provoked the sin that resulted in the
man offending Shango…He is thus the agent provocateur, and, in a sense, a messenger of the gods…He is
superior to the others in cunning, and many myths tell of the battles he has won at their expense.” [197]
In the most famous of the stories about Eshu, there are two farmers who are good friends, who have
known each other for years. Their compounds and fields are side by side. One day, deciding to test their
friendship, Eshu puts on a hat that is red on one side and black on the other. After he has walked along the
boundary between the two fields, the friends begin to argue about who went by and what color hat he was
wearing. Eshu then turned the hat around and walked facing backwards along the same route. Ever eager to
jump to conclusions, the friends reversed their earlier opinions, and now could not even agree on which way
the figure was walking. The confrontation quickly escalated towards violence. Punches were thrown. [198]
Should we blame Eshu for creating trouble where none earlier existed? If the two farmers were really
friends, then why were they so quick to assume the worst about each other? Their apparent harmony would
appear to have been a mask for deeper discord. They did not, in fact, see the figure that was right in front
of them, but only what the figure had intended for them to see. They were mounted from behind—as they
stared at their own subjection in the mirror. You could argue that each was 50 percent right, yet they were
both almost 100 percent wrong—dead wrong—since it was the part that they did not see that was by far
the most important. If the two had stepped outside of their limited perspectives, perhaps Eshu would have
turned the boundary into a path. [201]
Like a Zen koan, the most famous of which is, “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” Eshu provides us
with one half of what we need to know. It is up to us to provide the other half through a leap of association.
How do we reconcile the contradictions found in the figure of the trickster? Perhaps we should not attempt
such a reconciliation. It might prove difficult to accomplish without turning the figure into something
else—something cuter and less volatile no doubt, like Brier Rabbit. Always, our reflex will be to underplay
the primal threat that he poses, and this we should never do. We can, however, by means of a leap through
the Abyss, begin to see his contradictions as the parts of an interactive whole.

Ananse and Eshu are not general figures who act from general motives, such as lust or greed, to produce a
general outcome, such as chaos. They are particular figures, initiates of the most ancient of traditions, who
• 180 •
encompass all forces but are bound by none. They act, in response to an ever shifting network of connections,
at one moment to produce a particular result.
By complex mathematics the trickster has aimed a symbol from the circumference. What to us it looks
like an accident was intended as an ultimatum. Time suddenly runs out. The past is over. With no good
alternatives we must consent to transformation.
Ananse’s knowledge is as encyclopedic as that of an anthropologist, as focused as that of a computer
programmer. Eshu’s touch is as quick and sure as that of a jazz virtuoso. From behind his mask, the trickster
employs randomness as a weapon in his arsenal, or as an instrument in his hands, but in no way is he
arbitrary in his goals. [195]
It is not that one result or another is preferable, that one abstract truth would be better for us all—as a
Christian true believer or a Marxian theorist might argue—but rather that a particular force demands to
manifest its until then occult potency, and to do so in a fixed rhythm at that one particular time. A particular
individual, or less frequently a group, is the target at which the weapon will be aimed. For each of us has his/
her own role in the story, and the small is far easier to penetrate than the large,
If a question is to be interpreted, it must first of all be heard; it must be turned by the intellect as it registers
in the bones. The signs at the crossroads point in a multitude of directions; a particular choice is correct. The
answer must be one that comes as a surprise, even as it bears the imprint of necessity. To grow is to expand
the context of one’s actions. There can be no argument if there is no one left to argue.
In his efforts to disrupt the status quo, the trickster does not “change” the world, but rather he substitutes
a new world for the old one. “Death is the solution to all problems,” said the catalyst Joseph Stalin. “No
people, no problems.” But even if the victim of such instruction proves obtuse, the stage set spread around
him/her will look irrevocably different, as will each tiny detail of the props.
If the trickster is decapitated by the magic of the knife he set in motion, as was Ananse, he does not protest
for long. [195] Though not a hero, he is nonetheless determined. Who can say that he had not planned all
along to project himself towards death? A different story is just now searching for its not yet opened mouth.
There is a kind of safety net at the bottom of catastrophe.

Says Mary Douglas, “The trickster exploits the symbol of creativity which is contained in the joke, for a
joke implies that anything is possible.” [202]

As modern empiricists we may follow Einstein in speaking of a Unified Field Theory, or as monotheists
speak of the one God, but at its roots our thinking is profoundly dualistic. We cannot think without opposing
“true” and “false,” “self ” and irreconcilably “other,” “subject” and “object.” Our categories multiply like
hydras. Firm in our faith, we have imagined a beginning for the wheel, instead of looking for the entrance
that leads from center to circumference.
The gods of West Africa are relegated to the cases of a museum, in which their images are stripped of
content while being celebrated for their form, as though the Ashanti and Yoruba were children who took
their pantheons apart but could not put them back together.
West African polytheism may appear to twist and turn in all directions. As though drunk, the gods wander
randomly across the coordinates of a long out of date map. The playful tolerance for destruction found in
these traditions points to an underlying unity. The world cannot be broken. The high god acts through
intermediaries. He does not take sides. Oshun and Asase Yaa are reluctant to choose between their children.

The trickster launches the observer through a maze of transformation in order to create the world as it is,
to return him to the world with new and deeper knowledge. Is his behavior unthinking or his motivation
gross? Acting upon his own agenda, he defines the human race against the arrogance of gods or the dreams
of monsters. [203] He does not preach, and has no use for the self-righteous. Since we do not like those who
do not like us, it should come as no surprise that he has been demonized by the Calvinist elect and their
corporate descendants.
Driven by some obscure resentment of our way of life, hateful towards freedom, jealous of any wealth
some portion of which has not been shared with him as tribute, the trickster is after all a kind of terrorist,
• 181 •
who has nothing better to do with his energy than to destroy. If destruction were the intent of the guardian
of Ashe, of course, the planet could not long survive. The problem is that the ego resents the disruption of
self-knowledge, that the mind confuses order with dead habit, and that the body feels itself inadequate to
the demands of perpetual motion.
To suggest that an encounter could be simultaneously both beneficial and destructive would be to engage
in an act of ontological subversion. It would be to open oneself to the influence of the gatekeeper of non-
ego centered reality. It would be to overthrow the Ptolemaic model of the solar system. A new reality- based
community would discover at its center the paradox of primordial energy.

If the cosmos is a wheel that is not different from a sphere, a calabash that’s upper and lower halves are
each the image of the other, transcendence need not move only upwards. Any movement upwards must
not only be counterbalanced by a movement downwards, it is, in a sense, that very movement downwards.
Kaleidoscopic flux is integrated by the spokes of an unbroken wheel. If the cosmos is whole, darkness is not
a threat but an energizing potency. [204]
Any movement on the surface of a sphere becomes its own opposing movement. The world traveler
approaches himself or herself from behind. “Up” becomes “down.” “In” becomes “out.” “Then” becomes
“now.” What appears to be contradiction is the great kaleidoscopic turning of the sphere. Movement activates
the agents of the invisible, as the sphere moves from abstract into living form.
Let us imagine that the trickster is an agent of involuntary initiation. Does he victimize those who ignore
the signals, who do not honor the synchronistic now, who refuse to realign their consciousness by choice?
The victim as novice might appear to be harmed at random, but perhaps his or her guardian spirit made
some arrangement before birth. In the novel “The World at Evening” by Christopher Isherwood, a jaded
Hollywood writer is almost killed in a car accident. During the year of his recovery he is at first unable to see
or move. In a liminal state of consciousness, he drifts back and forth to revisit every period of his life. By the
end of the year a kind of rebirth has taken place. The mummy is unwrapped to pursue a new and different
career, far away from the hallucinatory intrigues of the court. The self has cracked open. The world is fresh.
Perhaps accident and disease perform the same service for the average person that ritualized discomfort
does for the novice. Theatrical props may vary; the underlying pattern is consistent. Fear serves as a catalyst
for awakening. If we do not embrace the fact of suffering we might easily short circuit or prolong the process,
thus sentencing ourselves to a limbo of un-integrated trauma, whose only release is through the accusation
that we direct against our helpers. Too often, we may unknowingly deny ourselves the gift that the hand of
the mystery extends to us.
The severity of the process can, of course, vary. Initiation throws the sometimes hard to detect pattern into
high relief. “Again and again we notice a coercive element in initiations all over the world. It is perhaps a
universal trait”, writes Evan V. Zuesse in “Ritual Cosmos.” [205]
Picked up and dragged off to be tested and transformed, the novice is treated more like an object than a
person. Fierce guards, silent so as to demonstrate their contempt for human language, from out of nowhere
appropriate the body of the novice, and remove it, forcibly, from his or her control. There is something
perhaps a bit familiar about the guards; they are also alien. Irreducibly. In this replay of the first act of
abduction. They stare from behind the large eyes of their masks. Supports are removed from the ego, which
is treated as if it were not there, scrambling the world like the parts of an incomprehensible puzzle.
The mind returns to infancy. The body becomes as passive as a corpse. The soul is a toy turned in the
hands of powerful unseen forces. Evan V. Zuesse again explains, “Initiation destroys the self-centered world
of childhood, at least this is its primary intent. The adult produced by initiation is a person whose self and
entire life is defined by a center outside of himself or herself.” [205]
Is each initiate, in fact, a perfect citizen of the larger cosmos? Although one is a reflection of the other,
the ego is not the soul. The wheel of society is not the cosmos. A spell intervenes. The surface of an ocean
divides them.
The initiate has become aware of the larger order but does not at every moment embody it. The god’s image
both is and is not the god. The material must be energized and the subtle given roots. Signs do not interpret
themselves. There is nothing fixed about a relationship. Its terms must be continuously renegotiated.
In the Ashanti and Yoruba traditions, the gods too can make mistakes, act foolishly or fall into a stupor.
The worlds decompose. Energy fades. The omnipotent must be fed and the dead removed. Even incarnations
• 182 •
of the highest consciousness must be shaken up now and then to be kept awake.
The gods, because of their great power, can be arrogant, and must be reminded of their place in the scheme
of things. If the gods themselves can be subject to the lowest of impulses, should a human being be any less
divided? Kicking and screaming, the god or the human is pulled back into relation with the signals of Ifa,
the instructions of Nyame.
Since he exists at a perpetual beginning, it is possible that for the trickster no initiation is complete. Habit
always reasserts itself. If he does not spare himself from embarrassment or harm, should he do any less for
others? The gods must be fed. Humans must be shaken out of ego-bound myopia. Centered but open to
fresh energies from the bush, society must be provoked to reinvent the wheel.

• 183 •
Christmas, the Sacred, and Disembowelment

James Curcio
I
’ve had some thoughts this Christmas eve, as creatures stir all throughout the house. I’d like to share them
with you, as we begin to transition from looking at modern myths on an impersonal or cultural level, to
an increasingly personal one.
I think it’s fair to say that there is an evident divorce between anything resembling the sacred and the
experience that we have of “Christmas,” referred to in some circles as “the holidays” so as to avoid offending
non-Christians, as if Christmas itself wasn’t entirely secularized. Viewed as a secular holiday, the best we can
hope for in the midst of the consumer flurry is to incorporate the idea of intentional family—the people
you live for and would likely die for—into whatever it is that we do. Though doing that every day might be
a better idea.
What is Christmas for many Americans?
Swig as much alcohol as you imagine you can stomach, and waddle through an awkward mine-field of
hazily recalled, distant relatives.
What else is it?
And let’s not ask what it is for people who still cling to the 50s myth of the family, a veneer often painted
thickly over a reality of alcoholism, wife beating, child abuse and molestation. That just stopped my reverie
cold in its tracks, and replaced it with a desperate need for about a 5th of scotch. Which I guess could
perpetuate the whole cycle, if I was prone to violence. Moving on…
It is possible that some might actually maintain a handhold on the saccharine myth of a perfect world of
sugar plums (have you ever had a sugar plum?) and eagerly anticipated presents, parents that never fight,
and a fluffy Christmas tree that magically floated in the window without puncturing a thousand holes in
daddy’s clumsy hands. The damn thing also wasn’t carrying a host of slumbering insects and a family of
enraged squirrels. Kids don’t scream, snow doesn’t melt, and Mommy’s drinking isn’t eating its way through
her liver.
Obviously, I have my own biases based on personal experience. No way I know what the holiday is for
several million people.
This much I do know: it doesn’t have anything to do with the sacred. The clamoring of the marketplace
scares away the sacred, the sense of time which holidays attempt to re-connect us with. In their most
traditional sense, cultural rules and chronological time is cast aside in lieu of primal, universal forces and
sacred time.
This is an idea explored elegantly by Eliade in the Sacred and the Profane. [22] Let me give a loosely Jungian
reading of this idea, because it’s quick and to the point. If we imagine the orbit of the Earth around the Sun
as the psychological circle that all of us live in relation to, then the element of the sacred which is meant
to permeate holidays originates from that supposedly fixed center—the transcendent, the Sun. Of course,
in the material world, the Sun is hurtling through space as well. But metaphors have never needed the
agreement of empirical fact to have psychological impact.
There is a lot more I could say about the co-opting of holidays by political and cultural ideology—the
forces of consumerism and corporatism hiding behind the benevolent masks of smiling St. Nick comes to
mind. But, instead, I’d like to show just a taste of some of the more horrifying beings lurking behind that
mask, elsewhere in history and our imaginations.
I’ve been doing a bit of research today as I return to the text of Nyssa, an illustrated novel I’ve been slowly
nursing. As it is a dark vignette that occurs during the Christmas holiday, part of the research has led me to
the Krampus and Perschta, his female counterpart. There is a really solid core idea of the psychological nature
of winter in these two, Perschta, a swan goddess of light, and at the same time, a horrifying figure that makes
the Krampus look good natured. The Perchten are considered virtually indistinguishable from Krampus, so
closely tied are these symbols.
All three of them: St. Nick, the Krampus, and Perschta are the same in this one way. All of them represent
the darkest time of the year, a time when the fields lie fallow, when the unconscious gestates. Sounds pretty
• 184 •
abstract, what it means is that there’s a part of our conscious mind that wonders “What have I done well this
past year? What can I do better in the future?” It wants to orient in relation to a larger picture of the self, and
put us in accord with some kind of personal or cultural myth as a result.
If we are in doubt of the sacred origins of holidays, we might consider some of the ideas put forth in
Eliade’s The Sacred and the Profane,
The New Year coincides with the first day of Creation. The year is the temporal dimension of the cosmos.
‘The world has passed!’ expresses that a year has run its course. At each New Year the cosmogony is reiterated,
the world re-created, and to do this is also to create time - that is, to regenerate it by beginning it anew. This
is why the cosmogony myth serves as paradigmatic model for every creation or construction; it is even used
as a ritual means of healing. [22]
Thus, the role served by this entity which rewards and punishes, is to cut what we might call the karmic
ties with the previous year. This seems an unusual attribution for the seemingly benevolent Santa Claus, but
this is only because the holiday has become so desacralized that he has merely become a stand-in, a cardboard
cutout, signifying nothing.
This connection between karma and the eternal return of the holiday cycle is not without precedent.
Again we can turn to The Sacred and the Profane, “…to Indian thought, this eternal return implied eternal
return to existence by force of karma, the law of universal causality. Then, too, time was homologized to the
cosmic illusion (Maya), and the eternal return to existence signified indefinite prolongation of suffering and
slavery.” [22]
These karmic ties don’t require an actual belief in karma within the Buddhist or Hindu framework of
reincarnation. What it refers to is an element of our memory. Consider something that you own that has a
great deal of “sentimental value.” Pick it up. Hold it in your hand. Think about the people you associate with
it. Grab hold of those emotions, and travel back to the time that the object brings you to.
That’s your karmic tie. You are bound to those things. The same is true of the memories and emotions we
hold onto of those we love, who are now gone, and of the life we lived which is also gone. Of course, outside
a framework that espouses transcendence, these are neither positive nor negative in themselves, but they are
attachments. From this, we can see that a mythic symbol serving some kind of ethical function would arise,
when it comes to recapitulation and renewing. To renew, the soil must be tilled. Some attachments can be
maintained but others must be severed.
The winter solstice is a passage from darkness back to light, and out of that can spring guilt, no pun
intended. It is the negredo process, the fallow soil, frosted over; petrifaction. We need something that comes
from outside, a bestial or demonic Other, a force both benevolent and terrible, to keep our sorry asses in
line. Krampus charges out of the frigid night, howling, beating the Christ out of women and children with
branches and switches. He carries the especially bad ones away. Perschta benignly asks, “Have you been
weaving your flax little girl? Have you been good? Are you eating the awful gruel and fish that are to be
consumed on my holiday?” If the answer is no, the poor children are disemboweled, and their insides are
stuffed with straw and stones. So, you know. Don’t fuck up.
Jolly old Santa just gives you a bit of coal. For once capitalism sees fit to work us with the carrot rather
than the stick. If you’re good, you get new toys that you can stuff full of firecrackers and blow up in the front
lawn the next day. (Or maybe that was just me.)
The joyous, peaceful facade of the deritualized festival, stripped of any reference to a surrogate
victim and its unifying powers, rests on this basis of sacrificial crisis attended by reciprocal
violence. That is why genuine artists can still sense that tragedy lurks somewhere behind the
bland festivals, the tawdry utopianism of the “leisure society.” The more trivial, vulgar, and
banal holidays become, the more acutely one senses the approach of something uncanny and
terrifying. The theme of holiday-gone-wrong dominates Fellini’s films and has recently surfaced
in various different forms in the work of many other artists. [208]
Maybe something could be drawn from the relation between the much the kinder, gentler Coke-a-Cola
Santa, Saint Nick, Christ and his misattributed birthday (if “he” had one at all), and these Pagan throwbacks
from the Swiss Alps. It’s late and I don’t care enough at the moment. This much I know: Krampus and Frau
Perschta would totally kick both Santa and Jesus’ ass. That’s for damn sure.
PART III
PERSONAL MYTHOLOGY
Do not be satisfied with the stories that come before you.
Unfold your own myth.
Rumi
• 186 •
A View of the Gods

Michael Anthony Ricciardi
T
he large windows of my small studio offer me a fine southwest view of Seattle’s cityscape—only
partially obscured by the two-story west wing of this somewhat dilapidated apartment building.
Quite recently, the opposing apartment became occupied. The new occupant was an older woman
who, immediately upon moving in, placed a large color tapestry of Jesus Christ in the window opposite
mine. This particular image was of the kind favored by those of Catholic inclination: the enlarged, bleeding
heart exposed and luminous, a thorny crown upon his head, stigmata oozing and huge, homage-imploring
eyes that seem to follow you from every angle.
Each morning, I rise, the curtains open: JESUS.
Come rain or less rain, good coffee or bad: JESUS.
Soon enough, I came to a routine anticipation of this daily divine greeting.
“Morning J.C.”
“Morning Michael.”
I permitted some efficacy of icon, perhaps subconsciously at first; the possibility of epiphany or the
miraculous…“Well, J.C.,” I would say, “got anything for me today?”
How easy it was to desire hope as I looked into the face of messiahhood. A signal or a sign. But as the days
and nights passed, as the face of this Jesus became ever more imprinted upon my occipital lobe, I evolved
the thought that something might be lacking on my part. I began to consider the possibility that ol’ J.C.
might be in equal expectation of me, seeing the mirror of hope in his brown eyes—as much in need of my
efficacy…
“Well, Mikey,” he seemed to say, “got anything for me today?”
Having already permitted a half-skeptical hope, it was a simple matter to invest this image with a degree
of consciousness. Perhaps, after two millennia of psychic dissipation, there was now a need for psychic
rejuvenation. No, it was not homage that those eyes implored, but inspiration.
And so, not wishing to disappoint, I made offerings: my music, my poetry, my philosophy, and my daily
activities within my rented ritual space. I confess that I wished in these offerings some potency, some grace
and gratification for him, or, at least, some voyeuristic amusement.
But I will never know for certain if my offerings were found acceptable or if I, like he, had been weighed
and found wanting….
One morning, as I prepared to greet the Nazarene, I beheld instead a transformation—a royal
changeling…
It was ELVIS.
ELVIS, in purple and black. ELVIS, eyes imploring.
Gone was The Christ. Here now was The King…from Jesus to Elvis: a divine metamorphosis…Oh well, I
thought, and so it must go, this dance of messianic succession. A continuum: Deus ad nauseum.
And though I am no great fan, still, in these days of transient spiritual trends and instant idolatry of
celebrity, some credit is due. Elvis has staked his claim on the collective unconscious. He has achieved status
and staying power in the public pantheon. Yes, some homage is due…
So now, I carry on this communion. Come rain or less rain, good coffee or bad, I continue my offerings
of music, and poetry, and philosophy…
“Morning Elvis, you in the mood for any Nietzsche today?”
• 187 •
PART III: PERSONAL MYTHOLOGY
Living Your Myth

James Curcio
T
o die for an idea is stupid, people say. Ideas aren’t real.
Nowadays, the posture of choice is disengagement. Sure, we’ll discuss ideas. Especially if it has any
hope of getting us laid. But commitment to an idea or an ideal is so…passe. That was something that
died with the 20th century, along with a lot of things that we can happily say we’ve left to rot in the past.
Intellectual is a synonym with ineffectual. Art is a pretense by definition. The highest art now is art that
makes fun of itself, or so says the co-creator of just such a piece.
I’ve talked a great deal about the ways that ideas-as-myths are living as much as we are. The ways that they
enter into the world, enter into “reality,” especially through our actions. The ways they real-ize ideas, and
how we re-ify the world through them.
Sounds like a lot of bullshit ideas to me.
A writer deals in words. Words symbolize ideas. They can evoke emotions. But what’s in a word, really?
When is it time for action, and what is that action?
What is the greatest act a person can make? Is it the greatest sacrifice? And how many of you think
your ideas are worth dying for? Certainly the suicide bomber has been convinced of this. We look away in
discomfort or snub our noses at such fanatics. Mostly, I’d say, rightly so. They’ve been duped. They’ve been
sold a unicorn and paid for it with flesh blood and mortar, and not all of it was theirs to sacrifice.
But there’s another side to this posture of disengagement and apathy. It turns us to good cattle, good
consumers. Good slaves who do our master’s bidding because it is easier that way, easier than challenging and
possibly facing death as the repercussion of our actions. Maybe this was the future that Yukio Mishima saw
for his dying Empire; a future so bereft of honor and dignity that the only thing he could do in response was
shove a blade through his innards. The death of a warrior, not a writer. His suicide could then be seen as a
final transformation: writer into warrior. Thinker into actor. But this transformation is only complete when
it resonates with a culture. When those ripples reach outwards across the years, transform entire civilizations.
We all know the power of a martyr.
This was not Mishima’s fate. He was a man in so many ways out of step with his time, a relic. To mix
metaphors, if a man can become a metaphor, he was the final gasp of a dying mythology. The modern
narrative on suicide, even in Japan, is not what it was. To the West, his was the death of a coward. We even
sigh sadly at the thought of Hunter S Thompson blowing his brains out, a sound not unlike a book dropping
heavily to the floor, or so said his son Juan. What poetry, the final sound for a writer to make. A book falling
to the floor. Or perhaps Juan was doing a little myth-making of his own.
We say: they did it before their time. We say: they had no right. And how possessive of us, to think that we
own a person that it is their duty to stick around and churn out material for us until our absentee landlord
God finally pulls the plug? Maybe Hunter’s wife or son gets to say he had no right, or at least, you son of a
bitch. You left us here because you were selfish.
Does she feel she failed him? “Oh, I did. The job of a wife is to protect your husband when
there are dark forces around, or when he is feeling dark and depressed. I failed at it.”
The biggest problem was his health; after an operation on his back, Thompson fell over and broke
a leg while on a faintly improbable assignment to cover the Honolulu marathon. This reignited
the back problems and raised the spectre of yet another operation—which he dreaded.
“But he had so much more work ahead of him. He was so much fun,” says Anita. Still in
thrall to him, despite all the arguments, she has just written a book called The Gonzo Way—a
thoroughly readable account of Thompson’s philosophy and final years.
“The best thing about our marriage was that it was like being married to a teenage girl trapped
in the body of an elderly dope fiend,” says Anita. “Which was also the hardest thing about our
marriage.”
• 188 •
She sighs and wells up again: “As of January 1 this year, I thought I’d start dating again. But
I miss him. I’ve realised it’s going to be a challenge finding anything interesting in life after
his death. But the last thing he would want me to do is to spend the rest of my days simply
mourning.”
She’s right. It’s not the Gonzo Way. [206]

I could be wrong myself, but I think they got it wrong. I think this was masking the fact that he didn’t
have much left in him, that his story was over. That his story had been done for a little while. He alluded to
it in the note he left.
He could’ve stuck around for his wife. Maybe he should have. But for us, the public? We have no right to
ask that of him. Hunter, Mishima, anyone that said: “it is time.” Let them be the author of their lives. And
let them realize that when you hit return on that final sentence, there are no do-overs. There is no editorial
review. That. Is. It.
What right do any of us have, if not to choose how and when we leave this life? We did not choose to come
here. So many things in our lives—most things—appear to be in our control but actually are not. It is one of
the most predominant myths of the West, these days. Self empowerment. You control your destiny!
Here’s a little wake up call. We control nearly nothing. We are links in a chain, cells in a body, accidents
in a cosmic equation. Gods of our inner worlds, yes, but when we sit down at the table with the board of
directors, do we get to make demands? No. We don’t. Because reality is that which does not go away when
we cease to believe in it. (Or so said Phillip K. Dick.)
I’d like to turn back to Yukio Mishima. Are you familiar with him? He was, by the time of his death, a
celebrated, famous author. I’ve only read fragments of his writing. It is full of emotionally reserved or stunted
men. The characters are, frankly, less interesting than he himself was, although his protagonists all seem to
be foils for himself anyhow, as if often the case. At least Hunter made us laugh.
But Mishima was also a genius, and it wasn’t just because of his craftsmanship with the pen. It was because,
in his own way, he faced this conflict between the word and reality, and when it came to it, he didn’t back
down. It was an unyielding, possibly obsessive commitment to the narrative he had build that eventually
guided the blade that killed him.
The comedy in this tragedy was that it meant nothing. He killed himself because the soldiers, who were
meant to be roused by the speech he made after barricading himself in with the Tatenokai, merely laughed at
him. Their laughter must have rung in his ears like the jests of the schoolboys who snidely called him “poet,”
who teased him so mercilessly that he had to hide his aspirations as a writer. Later in life, nominated to be a
Nobel Laureate, and still the punchline of a joke. He spent years weight training, focusing on his body. Sun
and Steel. Still he was just the poet. There was nothing to do but die honorably, and that too was a failure.
His second could not perform his deed, and Koga had to step in and behead them both.
John-Ivan Palmer began a search, years after their ritual suicide, to track down Koga. To ask the questions
that no one was asking, beginning with: why did no one speak to Koga? Why was the speculation about
Mishima’s death so fixated on odd miscellanea like his sublimated (or not so sublimated) homosexuality? Can
we look past our bias about suicide and see how, at least as an author, an author of his own life, he concluded
the story in the only way, ultimately, that it could be concluded? This too is a part of living our myth.
In the end, John-Ivan Palmer never reached Koga directly. This may have been because he didn’t ultimately
follow the right channels. But it could also be for a more poetic reason. All he got was a phone call, signifying
silence. Read this:
That night my phone rang at 3 a.m., but when I picked it up I heard only background noise,
like traffic. Otherwise silence. Twenty minutes later the phone rang a second time, and there
was a different kind of background noise in the silence. Twenty minutes after that the phone
rang a third time and there was yet a third kind of silence. Now insomnia kicked in as my mind
came up with more questions.
In Japanese, unlike English, there exists an onomatopoeic sound for absolute silence. You
sometimes see it in Japanese comic books (manga) where there are so many words that resemble
the sound they denote that special English translators have been hired separately to translate
them. The Japanese word for silence is “sin,” pronounced more or less like “sheeeen….” with
• 189 •
the sound trailing off at the end. Like “whoosh” is the sound of a sword cutting through the air,
and “gurgle” is the sound of blood spurting out the neck hole, “sin” is the “sound” afterward,
when all is done, the bodies removed, everyone gone home, and only the silence remains.
Did the silence of those phone calls represent a Zen answer, one each from Hiroyasu Koga,
Masayoshi Koga, and Masahiro Ogawa, or did all three calls come from Koga himself? Or
was it merely three different wrong numbers in the middle of the night that just happened
to be spaced exactly 20 minutes apart, disturbing my sleep by reminding me, reminding me,
reminding me? [207]
That silence could be the sound of our resignation. Not blood spurting from a wound. Just the whimper
of a world sucking sustenance though tubes. No bang. No surprises.
Are there ideas that are so tightly wound into your myth that you are willing to die for them? If not, does
that make you stronger, for carrying out the story past the final chapter, or does it simply make you like
the actor who, after the final curtain call, stands on the stage, and repeats his lines over and over in some
delusional hope that the curtain will rise again?
Why is it so important how they died? We are interested because of how they got there, yet we fixate on
the end. Thus we see our teleological obsession, our fixation on ends; the culmination, finish, or goal, the
idealized future, and also the ends to means.
I want to direct our gaze towards living rather than dying, for those who might interpret what I said
as advocacy of suicide. There are, maybe, many people this world could use less of. The likes of Hunter S
Thompson and Yukio Mishima are not amongst them.
Maybe the literary nature of the suicides of authors, we can for instance add Hemingway to this list,
should not be especially surprising. As every story, we believe, must have a beginning middle and end.
There is the end, and if we are so committed to a particular identity, or if our body simply will no longer
bear us forward into a new story, then that end will be literal.
But what about this identification with character?
Let’s return to this quote from Hunter Thompson’s 1978 BBC interview,
I’m never sure which one people expect me to be. Very often, they conflict—most often, as a
matter of fact. …I’m leading a normal life and right along side me there is this myth, and it
is growing and mushrooming and getting more and more warped. When I get invited to, say,
speak at universities, I’m not sure if they are inviting Duke or Thompson. I’m not sure who to
be. [68]
We are prone to say someone “has a big ego,” that they are “full of themselves,” and that someone is too
connected to their ego if they think that they must literally die to move beyond a persona that has outlived
its usefulness, or its place.
Maybe we mean several different things when we say “ego.” The negative aspects of ego don’t come about
as a result of its “size” or “strength.” They come about when it becomes opaque, either to the outside or to
itself. We mistake persona for ego, or use them interchangeably, and identify with beliefs and ideas to such
an extent that they become like our second skin.
I think that’s where the appearance of shallowness arises from. I can’t imagine that any person is inherently
any more “deep” than a shrill-voiced sorority girl. People aren’t inherently more or less “deep” by nature,
though some are prone to introspection, some are prone to vanity, etc. It is in the act that our spiritual wealth
or bankruptcy becomes evident. The “play is the thing,” yes?
In fact, in my experience, the people we often accuse of having a “big ego” simply can’t see under their own
surface, they are opaque to themselves. Let’s count the number of times the word “I” or “me” shows up in a
sentence when we speak. Why should we be ashamed of our self? I’ve talked a great deal about myself in this
book, but I’ve done it with the express intent of making you ask questions about yourself. I’m of no global
importance, I just happen to be the thing that I know the most about.
What looks like a big ego, one that’s stuck on itself in a person or a culture, is really one that’s opaque.
Opacity makes it “small,” in a way. It makes it fixed, hungry and confused.
While the ego of a Zen master, say, is huge. It encompasses far more than the small ego that clings to
trinkets. What a small ego, to think that it is made more illustrious because its flesh puppet wears an expensive
gold watch!
• 190 •
But anyone who would ever go by “teacher” “master” etc and simultaneously claim to be entirely without
ego…well, that’s just absurd. The teachers that claim they have transcended ego and through that “know
reality” are the ones I’m wary of. Like Adi Da. That guy is a nut. “I know what everything is,” he says, as his
sycophants mumble a revelatory “aaaaah” in response as if he’d said anything at all. And you’ve transcended
ego? Come on, now.
My feelings about transcendence and ego aren’t some kind of resentment. These terms are used to
manipulate and dupe people. All myths can be used to this purpose, though it is contextual whether that
manipulation is a good or a bad thing. (“Good” or “bad”? Yeah. That you’ll have to sort out for yourself, one
moment to the next. They aren’t universals.)
Transcendence is problematic except in the real of pure idea—at best—which is why I worked on fleshing
out immanence.
Immanence is usually seen as the dialectical opposite of transcendence. I have come to see it as a solution
to the problem of transcendence, or even the problem which the idea of transcendence itself seeks to resolve.
This problem is one of a generalization in regard to goals. Should we “transcend” life, or should we take it as
“immanent,” that is, seek the sacred in life?
I realize this may seem theoretical to some of you. This ceases to be armchair philosophy the moment
we can make the jump and realize that our myths determine how we parse the world, and how we behave
within it.
So, all of these terms—“transcendent,” “immanent,” etc—pose problems of psychological or spiritual
orientation. If you take an entirely materialist perspective of the world, these are not problems that would
even occur to you. If you are more inward-facing in your psychological makeup, certainly if you are more
spiritual, then these problems will seem more like common sense.
We have stated our opposition to the idea of transcendence and the absolute, but only to the extent that
they are used to block out immanence, manifestation, and actual experience. It renders the experience in
clothing we can cope with. It is a narrative, a patchwork of myths that draws the outline of what was initially
a natural occurrence.
When people say “they have transcended their ego” I tend to raise an eyebrow and give them a bit of a wide
berth until I see what exactly they mean by that. It makes me uneasy, because it means one of two things,
and from where I am standing, one of them is not good.
The first seems progressive, radical. They are engaged in an evolutionary act, “shooting the moon,” and
seeking to grasp at the immanent particulars of their life, to exceed, and excel. And yet, by virtue of being
alive, they will never actually transcend ego. “Ego” is just a myth, but that which it represents is a precondition
of self-consciousness.
But from this arises the second possibility. There is a much quoted Zen koan that we can now return to,
of the goose in the bottle. How do you get it out without killing the poor thing or breaking the bottle? To
make matters worse, the master that says they’ve transcended ego are like a goose that doesn’t even know
it’s still stuck in there. If someone has really “transcended,” why would they proclaim their transcendence?
The Boddhisatvas compassion-as-motivation seems like a cheap excuse delivered by someone covered in
chest hair and gold chains. How did ego transcendence become a core doctrine of the self-help movement?
Why do you want me to give you $19.95 to help me transcend my ego? Watch footage of Adi Da speak.
Pay attention to his rhetoric. Listen to the hushed “oohs” and “aahs” of the audience, and the shift he makes
when he begins speaking as the voice of God, that which knows what everything is.
This is “transcending ego”?
The closest I can imagine to true transcendence would be the mythic old Taoist sage, a Lao Tzu, wandering
the mountains. (Lao Tzu only means “old man,” or “elder teacher.”) Or perhaps a Sufi, living with the
common folk, but not of them. To be true to its own tenets, it is almost a wonder that Taoism ever became
an -ism. Such a Taoist sage would have no desire to start a cult of any kind. Indeed, they would present an
example of immanence, engaging with the divine in manifestation, rather than transcendence of any kind.
Ego transcendence is anathema to immanence.
If we say that Ego is the center of the self, the Pole-star of the internal “I,” or even a vague sense which
travels through our lives and says “me,” then we see that it is not something that need be transcended. Why
look down on that? Why should we? Doesn’t it originate from the same part in us that creates Gods who
shame us into relinquishing pleasure?
• 191 •
Be proud of yourself, but not so proud that you delude yourself. Go easier on yourself. Work harder.
Remember you’re going to die every moment and try to live more. Those are things an ego can do, just as
much as it can fixate on wealth or lead us to kill a friend for a grilled cheese sandwich. Which of these is bad?
It would seem that is an ethical question, not a metaphysical one. Ego transcendence may just be a matter
of bad taste.
The issue isn’t the ego, but rather its opacity or transparency. In other words, where do our thoughts or
ideas stop, where do the cluster and bunch up and fixate, against what barrier do we bang ourselves bloody,
what skin? Where does our center of concern fall? What fears and desires obsess us? We don’t need to
annihilate our fears or desires, but we can see our ego outlined in the contours of them.
That’s the level we’re operating at, and I think that’s why people call something or someone “shallow”—that
metaphor represents something right? Something is “shallow” or “deep”? Why is depth the natural dimension
to employ in this metaphor? There seems to be something lurking in this metaphor: If you’ve got water with
light shining into it, how deep does that light penetrate? The water itself goes “all the way down,” whether
or not the light penetrates a mere inch or for miles.
There are many Zen metaphors that speak of making the mind clear and undisturbed, like a mountain
lake reflecting the moon. (Which, of course, is itself reflecting something.) This does not mean anything
need be transcended. It means just what it says: make yourself transparent enough that you can see through
to so much beauty.
To end at the beginning, we talked about Yukio Mishima’s suicide. Some might see such an act of Seppuku
as something beyond any moral consideration, an act of transcendence. However, it was the absolute fixation
of the ego and the narrative that it dictated which demanded its own head be cut off.
You see? We’ve made Yukio Mishima into a symbol. Yukio Mishima is a pen name by the way, an implied
double, an it. The name of the man was Kimitake Hiraoka, but his double demanded that he die.
Is this the same with Hunter? I don’t think we’ll ever know.
How will it be for us? What is our “character”? What does it demand? Is it more virtuous to adhere to
those demands, to grasp them firmly with both hands and “love them violently,” (like Charlie Sheen, or God
willing, not like him) or to transcend them? That’s for all of us to determine. Virtue is another problem for us
to contend with in our own way, with our own myths, not to foist upon one another at the end of a sword.
Asking these questions alone is not living your myth. But it can be a good first step.

• 192 •
Artist’s Statement
Brian George
T
he I is an other,” said French Symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud. When I write or paint, this has also
been my experience—or perhaps that of the Other, who appropriates my hand. As at preexistent
moments, or with no cause—bit by bit, then suddenly, as soon as energy accelerates around the body
and coheres, dismantling the ego—the one self empties, becoming not less but more. Moving from behind,
a strange but oddly familiar shadow takes control, a doppelganger. Both one and many, it can be harsh, and
it is difficult to know to what extent our interests may diverge.
This daemon or doppelganger is a teacher who communicates by paradox. Fuel, or raw material. It is not
concerned about my comfort. You might say that this is just a metaphor for the personal subconscious, but
that explains little, at least if you think of the subconscious as being the bargain basement of the brain.
The alternate self is not an epiphenomenon of biology. I inhale. The Other exhales; each dies the other’s
life and lives the other’s death—as Heraclitus said. Forces are few when the nonexistent first appears. There
are not many actors. The different parts of my consciousness now assume archetypal roles; I am this Other.
Waves break in the background. Hallucinations erupt from the red ocean. It is dawn.
Treating the dream as a kind of ultimatum, able to exist in a state of “negative capability”—until the
synchronistic symbol reinvents the dreamer in its image, creating the world, each day, through the primordial
act of speech, the true artist can execute the role of “shaman.” Existing at the perpetual moment of creation.
She subverts the boundary between self and other. Memory becomes transpersonal.
A mysterious conjunction projects my Self towards an unknown destination. I am an electric spheroid,
crackling with contradictions. As from a great height looking out and down, I observe that this is so. Desire
creates a corresponding body. An ancient audience watches from the circumference. Should cloud separate
from the oceanic mirror, my prosthetic limbs would flash like lightning. Cultures sit down on chairs around
the table of my solar plexus. An argument is about to start.
Forever new, the technology of the shaman has changed little since prehistory. Does consciousness evolve?
30,000 years have made the labyrinth of the constellations only less transparent. Neither here nor there, the
artist mediates between worlds, creating something out of what appeared to be nothing, and is then forced
to move on. He follows where cultural memory leads.
The past is a museum. Jagged glass hangs from the windows. I hear mummified builders banging on the
insides of their pots, trying to get out. I confront the scent of my childhood fascinations. Externalized.
Gallery by gallery. There are reconstructed skeletons from species that never existed.
Amazed, my feet know where to go. Security guards lurk in death’s doorways. Fascist columns grow where
they were planted by a colossus. My expanded self must first find and then appropriate the traditions that
await his breath.
A taboo begs to be broken. Incest between humans and omnivorous gods was once the origin of the
superhero. Geniuses are loaded into classical cannons. Beauties mourn the sacrifice of youth. The muse of the
inanimate consumes the fears of her active but until now robotic mate. Their vows to each other violate the
golden silence of amnesia. Stars judging his performance of a poem at the first Olympic Games are happy to
have found their “agent provocateur,” the epileptic champion of their lust. She must establish a provenance
for each memory he invents. He must make “The Shroud of Turin” retroactively real. Weaving a new body
out of dreams, she must prove the truth of his hallucinations.
The goal of this revolutionary project is to liberate the inner teacher, who at first was dark.
Though now integrated with the conscious self, not viewed as foreign—aware of social roles, perhaps,
and concerned about the care and feeding of his/her image in the world—the alternate self is not now less
uncanny.
The agendas of the expanded and the contracted self are different.
Energies break my head apart. The dream body burns. It is painful, as the surrogate mother intended. Acts
of violence help to heal the nostalgic amputee.
• 193 •
Trauma is perhaps the catalyst that prompts the imagination to leap. It is the hand of necessity, the wound
that throws doors open, the test of faith, the blood donation to be sprinkled on the bones of past creations,
the remover of cobwebs from a search engine in the future. It is also possible that a virus has corrupted the
configuration files of the zodiac. My lineage is obscure. The “I” is “Other.” Irreducibly.
Other is. Self must struggle to exist. Other must be reminded of the difference between life and death. Self
must pay credit card bills, help child with homework, get up at 6 AM, hold job, and be conscientious in care
of others. Other records. Self is a shadow from a death flash video projected backwards onto Earth. Other
is so militantly pure that it has taken off its appearance; it throws its voice through a mask. Self barbarously
branches. Other mounts the crackling electric vehicle of the self.
Self is rude to its guest. Contact should not be taken to mean mutual understanding. The result of this
interface is action at a distance, as the laws of physics are again subject to negotiation. Isaac Newton’s head
falls upward and gets reattached to the apple tree. The true artist is an early bird, the last survivor of a deluge
that left consciousness in its wake.
Knowledge comes as a gift to both the artist and the recipient of the work.
The void is hungry. Consciousness upon death determines the distribution of foodstuffs.
The show begins. The eyes of an ancient audience now open a bit wider.

• 194 •
Breathing
Damien Williams
I
don’t generally think of myth-making as terribly important. No, that’s not right. I do think myth is
important, but in much the same way that breathing is important. Both breathing and the creation of my
personal mythology are automatic, are literally vital, and if they don’t happen it means that something
is deeply wrong, and I should see to fixing whatever the blockage is, as quickly as possible. But, as with
breathing, myth isn’t the end of the story, it’s the very first line, the one which makes the rest of the story
possible. It’s the opening cry that lets others know we’re alive in the first place. But if we’re to live, we don’t
stop there. We can’t. We make the effort to grow and change and we develop, and stretch out, and eventually
the process of myth becomes sublimated, unconscious, and it breaks down and then we have to stop and
remember what it is. We take myths in, deeply, and we hold them, and let them carry vital truth-making
story components to every cell of our selves. Myth is what we use to make sense of life, but it isn’t the only
end of our lives.
For instance, within the mythic worldview of magic, reality is a matrix of inputs of interconnected beliefs
and these beliefs are recursive, self-referential, reflexive (meaning they respond to input, and create new
output), and subjective. Each of these beliefs are coherent within the context of an overarching worldview,
even if they may seem peculiar outside of it. The ways of expressing these beliefs are more or less useful, in
that they get more or less work done, on a number of levels: Either as a personal worldview, the guiding
principles of a group or community, or the rules by which we operate and try to manipulate the world
around us, as a species. As we take certain conceptual tools for granted—like gravity, or mathematics, or the
love of God for us, personally—we no longer question that even if these are Things That Exist, they only
have meaning and value because we put words to them, names to them, and input them into any number of
fundamental systems as variables for figuring out and operating within the world around us.
These myths hold that scientific methodologies give us wonderful understandings of the world, and of
the facts that things are. They give us data points and allow us an understanding of how things interact.
But they are not truth. They are not even, themselves, fact. They are parts of a system we have invented to
describe something that we likely cannot ever fully understand and comprehend. Why can’t we? Because the
“data” at hand is literally meaningless. Without the process of interpretation, without someone taking the
time to imprint a Pattern on this Chaos, to correlate point to initially-disparate point, it never becomes “a
duck,” or “a giraffe with a hat on.” It always stays dots. And those dots aren’t even dots, because the name
“dot” references “a point in space,” and the words “a,” “point,” “in,” and “space” all reference yet more
things. They are constructed definitions, with no truth or meaning, prior to our learning about them, prior to
deciding, teaching, and learning what they mean. They’re words. They’re names and descriptions of things,
as complicated or simple as we choose to make them and the operations and methods we use to apply them
to the world have as many input variables of causality as we choose to acknowledge.
On the other hand, our words and ideas come together, form plans, systems and ultimately make narratives
we use to get through, day to day, to make cars, and life and bottled water. They have real and lasting
effects, on our experience of reality. So, theoretically, if I can change what a thing means, what it does, in
the worldview of, say, 3 billion people, then I can functionally change what that thing is. That’s magic. If I
can conceive of the world the “right” way, so that my ideas and patterns of understanding are transmitted
instantaneously from one point to another (a phenomenon we know is possible, at very small scales, across
vast spaces; all we need to know is how to Do it), then I can make actions happen at a distance. That is magic.
If I can understand how rain and the universe work on a level of symbol and meaning as well as particles and
atoms, to the point where I understand exactly that (and maybe how) every single movement of my body,
word from my mouth, intention, utterance, thought, and gesture affects the physical constituents of the
universe, and the mental frameworks of every conscious being, ever, then I can influence what they think,
what they believe to be true, what they know. And that is magic.
My magic and my myth about magic are about approaching these things with self-consciousness, with
awareness that one particular understanding may not work, may not gel, but that there tends to be a common
• 195 •
understanding of things, and that’s not always a bad place to start, even if you’re only looking to burn down
that very commonality and make new bricks out of the mud and ashes. The lens we use to view, direct, and
reflect the data we take in helps to define the thing that the world sees, from now on; the lenses we create
and use change the information that gets transmitted about the very things we use them to view. Though
different groups will always disagree about what the meaning of anything is, to some extent, I seek to create a
myth system that can help me to be okay with that disagreement. Because of the understanding I’ve crafted
out of the things I’ve learned, over the years, I think that, on the time-line of a universe—with which I am
not yet on par—Paradox is the true and natural state of things. The infinite is equivalent to zero, and so
irreconcilable positions and differing reportages of experience are simply local effects of that law.
My myths hold that Things Are. Things exist, and we try to name them, arrange them, list them, to give
them form, and then to give that form a use and a meaning. The meanings and uses that we derive may
contradict, and even cause schisms on a local level, but they have weight for those who use them. Even if
that meaning is only “it’s all randomness,” it is still a reason, and it lets the person who believes it continue
on day to day, because even that supposed “randomness” is a name, a categorization, heavy-laden with even
more implicit meaning. We cannot escape it. We are pattern-seeking, pattern-creating collections of symbols,
concepts, reflection, and chemicals. We are driven to analyze ourselves, our beliefs, our methods and the sets
of conceptual lenses we find to be the most useful and beneficial to us, in our lives (whatever that means),
and we call the outcomes of these investigation our preferences and beliefs. Finally, we can kind of start to
see the place and purpose of our mythmaking.
But let’s go back to the breathing metaphor. In fact, let’s note that there are certain practices which say
that breathing is all that there is, and remember that attention to one’s breath is the key component of many
forms of meditation and physical exercise. To consciously control how we inhale, hold, and exhale our breath
gives us greater control over our bodies and minds. I say the same is true of myth. While mythmaking will
merely happen, as long as we aren’t obstructed, aren’t mentally choking on some blockage, when we attune
our consciousness to the active doing of it, we can do more, with it. You see, I am greatly concerned with
magic, but to be a magician, I feel that I need to be conscious of the tools at my disposal: all the tales of
gods and heroes, ritual and traditional practices, common conceptual traps and ways of defeating them are
all vital to my work, and they’re why I went to school to engage in philosophy and the academic study of
religious traditions and practices. I was pretty sure I could become a better magician by doing it, and I don’t
think I’m wrong, yet.
The purpose of “magic,” as I use it, is to cultivate an awareness of all kinds of connections in the world.
Magic is there to make you pay more attention, and to help you be better prepared to act on the things you
might otherwise miss. Your thoughts, your actions, your unconscious conceptual patterns which only make
themselves evident in dreams and seen from the outside, all of these are able to be accessed, manipulated, and
expanded out into the world around you, if you learn how to speak, act, and do, with a cultivated, mindful
attention. When you do this to yourself, you can help other people do it, too. You can change perceptions,
you can change actions, and so you can change the world. What does that have to do with myth-making?
Everything. The stories we tell ourselves, in our personal myths—that we are smart, that we are capable, that
we are faceted, aspecting incarnations of gods, that the God of Abraham speaks to us through the flight of
birds, that dreams are living fabric, that there will be a day when everyone will understand—are what give
us the conceptual framework with which we approach the world. They are the very foundation on which all
of our actions are built.
So we breathe. We take in those assumptions about reality which aren’t really assumptions, but which were
so completely learned, at some point so far past that we can’t even separate them from who we are, anymore,
and we put out actions, thoughts, words which shape and color our world. But we are mindful of our breath.
We are aware of how we take in and make these assumptions, and we are careful about what their context and
application mean for us, and for those whom we expose to our being and creation. It’s the breathing exercise
described in Zen in the Art of Archery:
…But the day came when it was I who lost patience and brought myself to admit that I
absolutely could not draw the bow in the manner prescribed.
“You cannot do it,” explained the Master, “because you do not breathe right. Press your breath
down gently after breathing in, so that the abdominal wall is tightly stretched, and hold it there
• 196 •
for a while. Then breathe out as slowly and evenly as possible, and, after a short pause, draw a
quick breath of air again—out and in continually, in a rhythm that will gradually settle itself. If
it is done properly, you will feel the shooting becoming easier every day…[90]
Quick intake of breath; hold it, pressing it down into your diaphragm; slowly and completely exhale.
Quickly breathe in: take in and learn all you can. Hold it, press it down. Parse it, understand it, figure out
what it means to you, if you believe in it. Slowly, completely exhale: Put what you believe back out into the
world, with care, purpose, and meticulousness. We breathe, and we create the myths that sustain us, and
others, even as they create us, having been there, long before us.
If you like, I’ll tell you a story. There once was a young man who was given a book by the principal of his
high school. Late in his junior year, she gave him a copy of Robert M. Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle
Maintenance. [91] It changed his entire way of understanding the world. Here, before him, were laid out
concepts and terms for things he had felt and thought, so often, but couldn’t fully articulate. Here, the ideals
of mindfulness, of quality, of dualistic and non-dualistic paradox, of two parts making a more complete,
unique whole. The young man took these ideals with him, to college, and lo, did he encounter similar but
very distinct ideals: Mindfulness as a path to separation, via unity; words like “Samsara,” “Maya,” “Satori,”
and “Kensho.” The young man took these concepts into himself and he expanded, expounding on the
themes he’d previously encountered, and he grew and changed. The young man began to integrate these
concepts with yet other stories he’d heard, tales he’d been told, instructions he’d learned. “Prana” (or “Vital
Breath”), “Kundalini,” and “Shakti,” became part of the young man’s vocabulary, and they greatly appealed
to him. One day he read:
There was neither existence nor non-existence then…There was no distinguishing sign of night
or day. That One breathed, windless, by its own impulse. Other than that there was nothing
beyond. Darkness was hidden by darkness in the beginning; with no distinguishing sign, all
this was water. The life force that was covered with emptiness, that one arose through the power
of heat…Who really knows? Who will here proclaim it?…Whence is this creation? The gods
came afterwards, with the creation of this universe…Whence this creation has arisen—perhaps
it formed itself, or perhaps it did not—the one who looks down on it, in the highest heaven,
only he knows—or perhaps he does not know. [92]
This idea of self-creation combined with the concepts of creating and destroying, of building upon
an all-consuming inner fire with every inhalation and exhalation, and it was easily mapped onto certain
philosophical positions he was beginning to hold, and he continued to compile new information.
The young man sought to increase his understanding of Síva’s tightly coiled twin serpents, and to learn of
the ancient Phoenix and its cyclical regeneration, and its darker destructive potential. He wanted to know
more about the techniques of breath and body control, of their connection to a physical sense of place.
Above all, he wanted to master the art of intentionality inherent in these tales of the dance of creation and
destruction. Through all of this, he began to believe that being present in every single moment was to be
present in all moments, that to breathe in this moment of Now was to bridge all the singular moments of
Now, and to do this, he crafted a simple maxim, a starting principle: Pay Attention. Pay attention to the
thing in front of you, pay attention to the world around you, pay attention to everything. Take a deep breath,
hold it, and be intensely aware of the world around you, of the thing in front of you, and know that they’re
all connected, even as they’re separate, even as they’re illusory. Through all of this, these things were unified,
in the young man: Breath, Creation, Destruction, Centeredness, Boundlessness, Fire, and Attention. At their
centre, the young man sought to find himself.
That’s a story. A neat little myth, some parts real, and some parts re-imagined, all remixed in time, to
provide a little window onto what you’re reading, right this moment. Now, since I first encountered Zen and
the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, I’ve found more of the “traditional” tenets and practices of Zen, and I
have become more aware of the ways in which Pirsig’s story departs from them; but the fact remains that this
was my first named encounter with Mindfulness, and with many other concepts, besides. As I increased my
research areas, seeking more and more paradoxes of attention and control, I found them, and parsed them
in ways to build a system for continued growth and self-creation.
So, though the active, intentional cultivation of my personal myths started in my early to mid-teens, the
things I’ve learned, since, whether in graduate school, high school, or just over coffee with friends at three
• 197 •
in the morning, are all components of my personal mythology, now. My mythologies are made of my own
perceptions and associations. They’re made of syncretic appropriations of other cultures, of their gods and
spirits and rituals. They’re the stories that help me make sense of the world, to put it together, and to let me
know how to make my own myths, because that’s some of the strongest magic there is.
If you can make your own myths—knowing full well that everyone makes their own, as well, knowing that
they breathe in story and fact and hearsay, and breathe out Personal Truth—then you can mould and model
your myths more carefully, craft them to be more flexible, more resilient, more adaptable to the changing
every-day. Because Jung and Campbell taught me that myths aren’t synonymous with “lies.” Myths are what
we use to survive and navigate the contextual hell-storm of the day-to-day world. Myths are, as a friend of
mine put it, the only way we find truth.
But it’s not just finding that truth that matters; it’s what we do with it, in the long term. And that’s why it’s
hard for me to simply talk about “Myth.” The work of even writing is entirely dependent on the myths and
stories that I hold to be true, on some fundamental level. That means that the driving urge is to dissect and
deconstruct them, here, in front of you, like some kind of conceptual burlesque show, until I’m down to my
formative firsts, where the memories of my childhood lie. They may as well be memories of dreams.
If I want to say something which can be of use to someone other than me, then the story of the creation
of my personal myths has to begin, somewhere. I have to tailor the telling of the tale to the audience at
hand, and make it personal, moving, useful. I have to start somewhere in the process of starting somewhere,
and so I start by saying that myth-making is like breathing; that the creation of a personal mythology is the
beginning of a story, not its end. It is the point at which we begin to encounter the world, and the stories it
has to tell, but it is when we examine those stories, our stories, and the co-mutual power contained between
us and them, that we can begin to affect the world in new and interesting ways. In short, investigating myth-
making, like paying attention to how we breathe, gives us access to the tools to help us Be and Do, better.
That is why you’re reading this book, I imagine.
Last time, for the back of the house: Myth, to me, is breathing. Breathing is creation and destruction.
Breathing is the building of an internal flame; the interplay of a bellow and a forge. Our first breath is the
defining moment of our lives, the action on which all subsequent actions will be predicated. Though it is
unconscious, at first, we come to be able to question what it is and what it can be made to do, and we turn
our full attention to its workings. When we master it, we can do more and more with what we create, and we
can twist and turn the standard workings to unique purposes, and amazing, spectacular feats. We can shape
and form the world into such wonderful things, and we can tell stories that no one has ever heard or seen,
before. But it’s true that, first, we have to breathe.

• 198 •
A Trail Of Breadcrumbs
James Curcio
Introduction
The man who, being really on the Way, falls upon hard times in the world, will not, as a consequence,
turn to that friend who offers him refuge and comfort and encourages his old self to survive. Rather,
he will seek out someone who will faithfully and inexorably help him to risk himself, so that he may
endure the suffering and pass courageously through it, thus making of it a “raft that leads to the far
shore.” Only to the extent that man exposes himself over and over again to annihilation, can that which
is indestructible arise within him. In this lies the dignity of daring. Thus, the aim of practice is not to
develop an attitude which allows a man to acquire a state of harmony and peace wherein nothing can
ever trouble him. On the contrary, practice should teach him to let himself be assaulted, perturbed, moved,
insulted, broke and battered—that is to say, it should enable him to dare to let go his futile hankering
after harmony, sure ease of pain, and a comfortable life in order that he may discover, in doing battle
with the forces that oppose him, that which awaits him beyond the world of opposites. The first necessity
is that we should have the courage to face life and encounter all that is most perilous in the world. When
this is possible, meditation itself becomes the means by which we accept and welcome the demons which
arise from the unconscious—a process very different from the practice of concentration on some objects
as a protection against such forces. Only if we venture repeatedly through zones of annihilation, can our
contact with Divine Being, which is beyond annihilation, become firm and stable. The more a man
learns whole-heartedly to confront the world that threatens him with isolation, the more are the depths of
the Ground of Being revealed and the possibilities of new life and Becoming opened.
Karlfried Durckheim [209]
T
he way symbols enter our lives is often mysterious. It is like following a trail of breadcrumbs. We
notice one, we are attracted to it, then another; eventually we have walked a long path and we can
look back and realize that, though the path may have been winding, it forged a path in the wilderness.
And that path has been our life.
I want to explore a couple of such symbols. I hope that this can shed greater light on what you’ve already
read, and can help make it absolutely clear how personal even the most seemingly abstract mythological ideas
can become. These are meant to be painted with a large brush, abstractly and quickly, and they are not meant
to be historical portraits. They are glimpses into one of the infinite ways that a symbol can enter into, color,
or even help direct our lives.
By “symbols” I’m referring to entire constellations of symbols that most people refer to as Gods, like
Dionysus, or demons, like Lilith. I like the word “symbol” better because it is more open ended, and passes
no real judgment on the nature of what’s being symbolized. I don’t want to get into a discussion of what is
“real” or not. Let that play out in the rendering. Our lives are real enough, or if not, then nothing is.
I’ll be talking about past events, though I’ll not be using people’s names. It’s all done to serve as part of
that example. I have finally reached a point in my life where my past no longer lures or haunts me, even if I
still have something of an ongoing struggle with my expectations of the future. The following reflection isn’t
about other people, it’s about me.
Maybe this is the first point to make about symbols like this: they reflect us, and they can even obscure other
people in their place. Jung noted this about the anima and animus. We can be so overtaken by the symbol
evoked by an individual that our internal relationship becomes entirely with the symbol; our relationship
with the person behind that symbol atrophies, if it was ever there at all.
I spoke about this issue, tangentially, in Beyond Representation as well as Dissecting a Living Thing. I don’t
want to re-iterate those comments, but it is worth reminding that when an individual triggers a response
in us, whether it is emotional, intellectual, or in some other way mythological, that reaction originates
• 199 •
within us. However, it does not entirely terminate within us. This is part of the mystery. Though I tend
towards a psychological interpretation of symbols, (and indeed most everything else), it is only because of the
scientific posturing that we associate with psychology that this seems to strip these symbols of their living or
interactive qualities. I hope that the whole of this work has already dismissed that illusion, even if it hasn’t
replaced certainty with anything other than the passion to search endlessly for things that can never be fully
grasped or realized.
There’s also an extent to which symbolic themes reoccur in our lives because we become conditioned to
notice them, and not others; there are countless mythological symbols out there, but only certain ones stick
out to us, almost as if the others didn’t exist. However, it is even more common for people to say, with great
depth of feeling and mystery, “they found me.” It could be Kali, or Baron Samehdi. It could be Jesus Christ.
But time and again you will hear people say this: they found them. Not the other way around.
Regardless, this two-way psychological relationship speaks volumes about us, but little else can be made
of it without tempting the production of endless superstitious nonsense. I think a lot of damage has been
wreaked throughout history as a result of people being overwhelmed by the power of an image that appears
to them, followed by the myopic assumption that the presence, significance, reality of that symbol was an
imperative for everyone else as well.
We will begin with Dionysus.
Dionysus
I came to “Dionysus” as such first through symbols, before I recognized his significance in terms of my life.
So we will begin there, again. The individual symbols that make up a complex, a God, are all multifaceted,
and they are all entrance points into an emergent network of symbols and ideas. Let’s look at just a few before
making some generalizations about the symbol itself, and turning to my personal experience.
The common association with Dionysus is with wine. This is usually what most people think when you say
“Dionysus” to them. “Ah, the God of wine,” they often say, as if this explains anything at all. There is some
validity to this association; certainly a state of “divine intoxication” that exists outside of all social boundaries
is the entrance-point to his realm, and wine was a common part of Dionysian festivals.
According to Rene Girard, Karl Kerenyi, and other scholars that have written on the history of this God,
though wine was his sacrament in many Grecian traditions, this association is hammered home more firmly
in the form of the Roman Bacchus. Dionysus, especially the “proto-Dionysus” forms of Zagreuss, Bromeus,
and other similar outsider divinities originating in the Mediterranean and Asia Minor, all shared sacramental
drinks of fermented honey and other grains before the association with wine took center stage. This may
seem incidental but it isn’t. Different plants have different mythological connotations. These earlier forms
of Dionysus also seemed to emphasize him as a bull-god, in which context barley drinks make sense, but
honey?
Honey comes up in several places in reference to Dionysus. The pine-cone tipped wands that the Bacchante
(women of Dionysus) carry drip honey. It can be fermented into a drink, and it is also a curiously effective
emulsion for making elixirs with hallucinogenic properties. Honey itself was often considered to originate
from a form of fermentation out of death,
According to Virgil, Aristaois sacrificed four bulls and four cows. He let their bodies lie for
nine days; then bees swarmed from their entrails which had become liquid. Here the number
four certainly has cosmic significance. It corresponds to the four cardinal points. …The animal
is transformed into a sack containing its own liquids. After four weeks and ten days—roughly
forty days, as in the traditional brewing of mead—grape-like clusters of bees fill the hut. …The
natural phenomenon ushering in the great festival for the early rising of Sirius …an awakening
of bees from a dead animal. [210]
Honey is the sweetness of life, a nourishing source, which is mythically derived as a result of death and
rebirth, even if this is not the most scientific interpretation. As Jonathan Swift said, “We have chosen to fill
our hives with honey and wax; thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, which are sweetness
and light.” Again we see the sex and death connection, now nestled rather comfortably within the context
of Dionysian symbolism. They have also been considerably linked with creativity, as is explored at length by
Hattie Ellis in her book Sweetness and Light, named after that Swift quote. It may be facile to point out that
• 200 •
alcoholic libations are also called “spirits,” especially without an analysis of the etymology of the term, but
on its surface it nevertheless seems appropriate.125 [211]
Let’s look just for a moment at this one symbolic thread, of bees and Dionysus. Bees are themselves a solar
symbol, between the six sided cells they create in their hives (six is a solar number), to the royal structure of
their society, and the refinement of honey into royal jelly to feed their queen. The bee pattern even worked
itself into the vestments of the British monarchy. It shows up in the Emperor card of Crowley’s Thoth tarot
deck.
The Egyptians were arguably the first to keep apiaries, and of course their own mythology was centrally
solar in nature. Bees use photo-navigation to find their way back to their hive, always knowing where the
sun is even when the sun is obscured from view. I do not mean to imply that bees are the secret key to
understanding Dionysus; rather, this gives just one of the countless avenues of symbolic exploration available
within the context of a deity. All of these royal elements work their way back into Dionysian symbolism,
though he is something of an estranged prince (demigod, son of Zeus), who only eventually regains his
proper place in Olympus. In the syncretic myths that gave birth to Dionysus as a symbol, he is not entirely
distinct from his father—the Zeus/Dionysus complex is in this primordial form the same.
I also developed a mythological fascination with bees, at the time entirely independent of any connection
with Dionysus. Those familiar with my works will recognize this readily. When I was working on the first
draft of my novel Join My Cult!, I randomly happened upon Wax: Or The Discovery of Television Among
The Bees. [212] This is a bizarre pseudo-documentary that mythologizes bees and beekeeping through a
schizophrenic lens. I had already been taken in by the image of the hive, many agents acting independently
yet, secretly, operating in tandem, but this movie only further pushed me into the realms of lunacy as I
continued through that literary experiment. The hive (a housing structure that we speak of as alive), the
honey (life-source), and the incredible directional sense of these curious creatures all seemed magical to me,
and like the other disparate symbols of Dionysus, have appeared and re-appeared throughout my lives as
what seem like separate metaphors until I came to realize that they are all tied together through this central
or mono-mythical figure, Dionysus. Is this an element of the self-fulfilling nature of the mythological
impulse? Maybe.
There is much that could be unpacked from this rarely considered association, but my intention is just to
touch on a handful of related symbols so that we can catch a glimpse of the full picture.
The color purple is also often attributed to Dionysus. One common association with the color purple
is that it is the color of royalty, ostensibly because the dyes were especially expensive, and so only nobility
could afford it. Something could be made of this, as we’ve seen the royal implications with bees, but it
doesn’t strike me as the only conclusion that can be drawn. We may also observe that purple is the fusion
of red and blue. Red, a warm, active color associated with the element of fire, blue, a cool, passive color
associated with water.
One interpretation of the hexagram symbol is that it is the conjunction of two triangles, one downward
facing, and one upward. This is an alchemical idea. The upward facing triangle is that of the flame, consuming
matter, transforming it into a gaseous (spiritual) state. The downward triangle is condensation, the process of
distillation of gaseous states into more material ones. Water takes the form of what holds it. Fire transforms.
At their point of union, you might say, is purple. The upward facing triangle moves from many to one, and
the downward facing triangle moves from one to many. Thus we have, in simple symbolic form, a glyph
of the spiritual hero’s journey, or what is sometimes mythologized as going up upon the mountain, (the
mystical path), and the return, ideally with knowledge or transformation attained by the journey.
Many have spent much time and effort trying to update old alchemical ideas with modern science. I
suppose there may be some value in this. Obviously modern science evolved in part out of alchemy, and
the mythological impulse isn’t that different from the scientific in a nascent sense. However, I am prone to
interpret symbols psychologically, and then there’s little concern about how they factor into the empirical
world, except through the intermediary of our minds and experience. “Water” refers to certain qualities that
we may experience in the physical manifestation, H2O, but it refers to those properties, not to the empirical
thing—in the same way that, astrologically, we associate the seductive principles of “Venus” to a planet with
125. That it is essentially regurgitated nectar, bee vomit, is also somewhat amusing but seems less mythologically significant. Just like the
fact that much can be said about the mythological significance of the moon,but the moon is essentially a large, cold hunk of rock. These two
things may or may not have bearing on each other, depending on whether the physical reality has an immediate bearing on the psychological
reality of a thing.
• 201 •
a rather inhospitable “disposition.” We might say that astrological and alchemical symbols are not symbols at
all, as they refer to themselves rather than to something else. Rather, they take the elements of others things,
suck them in like black holes, and relate them back to themselves without ever referring outward. (This is not
entirely unlike the self-referential quality we often find in the symbolic worldviews of schizophrenics.)
Karl Kerenyi explores many of these symbols quite thoroughly in his work Dionysus: Archetypal Image of
Indestructible Life. [210] It is not my intention to repeat his scholastic efforts in these directions; I suggest
you investigate that book if you would like a more thorough historical analysis of these symbols. Instead, let’s
look at a couple generalizations that might best encompass the whole of a very dynamic, complex deity.
As we see in even the most cursory glance at associated symbols—such as the color purple—Dionysus
is a unifier of opposites, bridging apparent dualities. He represents reality, nature, the necessary force that
controls us. Nature is not the dual, though he is often called bi-valent or dual-natured. It is rather an
undifferentiated multiplicity, the Taoist “ten-thousand things.” He is a mask worn by the undifferentiated
world, the divine, unknowable world behind the material, behind the spiritual, behind all sensation or
apprehension. In this aspect, he may appear paradoxical, even absurd. Form and function, rational and
irrational, male and female, sacred and profane: all of these distinctions that we make become blurry, even
irrelevant when viewed through this mask.
If we were to express this nature succinctly, it would be easiest to say that he is patron of the chaos inherent
in nature. This is an important distinction. You will recall that we have repeatedly referred to the “dark chaos”
of nature as a female energy. We see it in the Enuma Elish as Tiamat. We have talked about how this chaos
was tamed, reformed, made sensible, and made useful to mankind. Dionysus is not that primordial energy,
he is its patron. You might then say that the devotees of Dionysus, the “wild women of the wood,” the
Bacchante, the Maenad, they are the ones who get to embody this force. This is quite an interesting reversal.
The devotees, though in a sense they do his will, they could also be called the true divinity. Dionysus is a
God of women.
With its sensuality and emphasis on sexual love, it presented a market affinity to the feminine
nature, and its appeal was primarily to women; it was among women that it found its most
loyal supporters, its most assiduous servants, and their enthusiasm was the foundation of its
power. Dionysus is a woman’s god in the fullest sense of the word, the source of all woman’s
sensual and transcendent hopes, the center of her whole existence. It was to women that he
was first revealed in his glory, and it was women who propagated his cult and brought about
its triumph. [213]
There is one other point I’d like to make about Dionysus in general before moving on to my personal
experience. As a patron of the natural order, there is no denial of the opposites that are contained in toto
within nature. Duality is rendered through the “humanification,” one might say, of nature. The pleasure and
horror of material existence is emphasized, side-by-side, as part of the same experience; the chorus rejoices,
the orgies are boundless, sometimes the sacrament is fermented grapes, barley or honey, and sometimes
it is blood.126 Dialectics crumble, opposites are not actually opposites but rather complementaries. The
Dionysian is and can only be experienced right now, not in a hereafter. Not once is it alluded to that Heaven
is somewhere else.
In opposition to much of this, Girard says the following of Dionysus: “Only the quixotic masochism of
our own age, the result of a long immunity to the violence that threatens primitive societies, allows us to see
anything attractive in the Dionysus of The Bacchae.” I believe that the bulk of this book demonstrates the
contrary, though one is certainly free to write this entire work off as “quixotic masochism,” if they like. [208]
Certainly, if ever there was a singular God representing the immanence of myth, it would be Dionysus. It
might appear that immanence and transcendence are dialectical opposites, the one implying absolute presence
and the other dissociation, absolute de-tethering. The word ecstasy itself lends itself to some implication of
the unity of these two seeming opposites: to be in ecstasy is to be beside or outside of one’s self, yet we at the
same time experience ecstasy as immediate presence, even as immanence.127
126. By now, I hope that you understand that these may be interpreted as metaphors on any number of levels. Yes, wine, mead, and
even the bloody sacrifice have a historical and literal basis in the context of the Dionysus myth, but what these things mean is so much more
important; even more important is what we make them mean within the context of our lives.
127. Ecstasy, “…in a frenzy or stupor, fearful, excited,” from O.Fr. extasie, from L.L. extasis, from Gk. ekstasis “trance, distraction,” from
• 202 •
With that said, I think I can move to my personal experience. I had a strong connection with Dionysus
before I recognized what this connection was. This occurred in many ways: in my identification with females
rather than males, the regular slumber parties I had with girls as a child, or my constant fascination with
rock stars, especially those that embodied the greatest heights of excess that a human could possibly muster.
I learned to play electric guitar because I identified with these figures, and this identification obviously did
not end there.
However, my initial contact with “Dionysus,” and mythology in general, was nothing unusual. I was
part of a “gifted” program in my High School that included an English class that mixed in a great deal of
mythology. It was taught by a wonderful, rather eccentric man named Mr. Ulrich. In a way I feel pretty
thankful for having this kind of class at that age; though we were mostly working with Bulfinch’s Mythology,
he was especially passionate about the subject of mythology and repeatedly tried to get it into our heads that
these were psychological metaphors. He would ask us, again and again, “what does it mean that such and
such happened?” In other words, where are you in this metaphor? At the time I was mainlining Mountain
Dew, fixated on most of the things adolescents fixate on, but it must’ve gotten in. Dionysus was portrayed as
something of a sideline divinity in most of those texts; his real role in the pantheon or in my life was not at
all clear at this point. But this was the first point at which mythology was presented to me as something that
might be something more than weird stories that long-dead people told one another.
Not long after, I became obsessed with Nietzsche—there’s something about his writing that seems
particularly attractive to young, intellectually-oriented outsiders. His framing of the Apollonian / Dionysian
dichotomy in art was compelling to me, but still, the symbol remained fairly intellectual. It did lead me to a
class in college on Dionysus, which framed the Dionysian in the context of creativity, rather than the more
mundane Roman rendering of the image as Bacchus. We read artists like Artaud. I remember a number of
classes with particular amusement, like when the professor came in, clearly with a stiff back, and offhandedly
commented that he’d injured himself having what I imagine would have had to be rather vigorous sex.
It started to gel at this point that there was something about the image of Dionysus that kept pulling
me back. There are many approaches to creativity and the arts. Dionysian creativity is about getting out
of the way of yourself. This is one of the reasons that drug use is so tied in with this current, for better and
worse. Certain substances lessen the pull of the conscious self, letting what lies underneath to rise to the
surface. The creative is a medium, the body is the point at which the upward and downward triangle of
aspiration and the force of gravity meet, out of which alchemical transfiguration can occur. That sounds
pretty high-minded and abstract, but it directly influenced my earliest approaches to writing, visual art, and
music—diving in, often in chemically charged, manic binges. The result was characteristically intense and
unfocused. There’s no evaluation in that place. This is the creativity of the fugue, or channeling. Art has to
be wed to this process through restraint that comes with practice. The danger of the Dionysian approach is
the complete lack of valuation; you will produce gems, but they’ll be mixed in with the shit. In the fugue,
you simply can’t distinguish between the two, and later, in editorial, you may discover that they are very
hard to separate from one another, as if the insights are connected to the dross through some invisible organ
system. Kill the body and the head will die. “Ever since Aristotle it has become commonplace to say that no
one ever creates anything without a dash of madness. We would rather say: without a constant solicitation
to madness.” [215]
There was a more personal side to this connection, too. From my earliest memories on, women have
always served a central role in my life. This is unsurprising, given that my parents were always women—my
Mother, and her girlfriends. I didn’t have a real male friend until I was thirteen, most of my early socialization
was with girls. Boys always seemed to sense something “other” in me and had a strong desire to attempt to
squash it, like a bug. The most common insult from their quarter was always to call me a girl. Even at the
time I remember finding this curious. The insults stopped when I began meeting every slight related to this
supposed insult with disproportional amounts of violence, but it always confused me: why was being a “girl”
such an insult, when it seemed to clear to me that, before society had its way with them, women were closer
to nature? Maybe I didn’t consciously think this last part just yet, but the feeling was there. I remember it
clearly. And even when the insults stopped, thanks to a little “shock and awe” campaign I staged after reading
existanai “displace,” also “drive out of one’s mind” (existanai phrenon), from ek “out” + histanai “to place, cause to stand,” from PIE base *sta-
“to stand” (see stet). Used by 17c. mystical writers for “a state of rapture that stupefied the body while the soul contemplated divine things.”
[214]
• 203 •
Lord of the Flies, I still remained Other, especially until adolescence. The ground of their subliminal contempt
was probably my own reflected back at me: they were Other to me. Through escalating violence there was
a social demand to attempt to normalize me to certain rites of passage, sports, wearing the right brand of
sneakers, certainly not reading books or playing with girls. Though at times I made a passing attempt at
towing the line, in general, if anything, I flaunted that otherness, and the more violence I was met with, the
harder I identified with the behavior I was being “punished” for. I’ve always been that way.
For those that know Dionysus, this should be familiar. For those that aren’t, by the time he had attained
the status of a deity, the first sign of his appearance came in the form of the Bacchante, the wild women of
Dionysus; in his earlier life, he was alternately hidden by his mother Semele from the wrath of Hera—he was
raised by nymphs in seclusion—or he was hidden by Zeus “in his thigh,” in the variant of the story where
Semele is killed by seeing Zeus’ true form, his divine light. This is not to say that I was raised by nymphs, but
the psychological significance of this element of the symbol is there. Dionysus is unquestionably male, yet
exists as an Other in relation to male social institutions and patriarchy. Viewed from the outside, how easy
would it be to see the Maenads as his harem? But this is not accurate.
These symbols always must be read psychologically. I never identified myself with Dionysus so much as
what the myth as a whole represents: the necessity of a feminine current that seeks to return a society divorced
from nature back into accord with her, even if it is the nature that Lord Tennyson refers to, “red in tooth
and claw.” [216]
In Western mythological terms, the male solar energy is necessary to give the lunar, female energy light.
You can read this as the sexist statement of an aeon of male dominated mythology, but there is a sense to it
if we consider the meaning of the symbols themselves outside the context of human society. It is the lurking
sense that the passive is “weaker” than the “active” that is the coloration of a male dominated mythology,
rather than the value of the symbol. Is the negative pole of a magnet “weaker” than the positive? The Chinese
Yang and Yin are preferable symbols; they can be roughly translated as the “sunny” and “shady” side of the
hill, which is to say two states of the same thing, the active and receptive. Dionysus is also traditionally a bull
god, and from this we can call to mind some of what was already said about Osiris in this context, as well as
their shared lunar association as “moon bulls.” Also, the feminine energy expressed by Dionysus is anything
but passive when roused.
Dionysus is a mythological necessity, which focuses the counter-patriarchal forces of chaotic nature—
nature being closer in many ways to the female energy than the male. (Whether we are speaking of the
chromosomal shift in utero, or the primordial idea of “mother Earth,” which itself finds firm ground in our
own experience, as most of our first experiences of this world are of our mother’s body.)
In the screenplay and novel for Fallen Nation: Party At The World’s End we deal with this idea of a counter-
patriarchal current; the character Dionysus expresses the idea that he is “an agent of chaos.” This is what he
means. Again, not the chaos of the anarchist but the chaos of natural order, of Tiamat, existing before the
discriminatory force of reason slayed that dragon and made a sensible world from her corpse.128
This idea ties nicely into the Garden of Eden as well, when Adam and Eve ate of the Tree of Knowledge
of Good and Evil, what happened is they became self aware. They knew shame because they had become
divorced from nature, from themselves, by reason. This is the cost. The benefits we know all too well—as I
sit in a cafe, typing this out on a laptop, music paying from a digital disc in the background—none of these
things could come to be without having stepped outside of the Garden. But at what cost? The Dionysian
current attempts to lead us back to that primal source. Maybe we can wed the last two-thousand years of our
development with what we lost in the process; that would certainly be a step towards Nietzsche’s deleteriously
conceived ubermensch. But there should be no mistake, this path is a dangerous one.
Let me provide some experiences from my life which tie into this symbol, before moving on.
I was at a festival in the middle-of-nowhere, which my friends and I generally refer to as Pennsyltucky. If
you’ve ever strayed outside the urban areas in Pennsylvania, you know exactly why. This was a festival held on
grounds tended by a Pagan commune, and we were several days into it. As is often the case at events like this,
there was a fire circle, surrounded by sand, and an area where drummers often congregate. The night was
young. There was a slight chill in the air for summer, but faint. Also the kind of pregnancy you can feel before
an enormous storm hits. The leaves were turning up. The fire was low, there were a few people huddled about
128. Not long after I saw Dark Knight, and the Joker delivered the same line. However, the meaning there was a bit different, the Joker is
not the innocent Fool that wanders where he will, but rather something of a primarily destructive and accidentally re-structuring force.
• 204 •
the fire in conversation, and one or two people idly tapping on their drums. I sat down behind an assortment
of goat skin drums, lashed together by ropes. I began playing with mallets, hesitantly at first.
Now, I don’t want to cut the flow of the narrative, but I feel the need to interject that I don’t feel that
anything that happened after this was the result of some incredible talent on my part—rhythm comes
naturally to me, and I have played bass for over a decade, but I’m no exceptional drummer by any stretch of
the imagination.
Things started to coalesce every so slightly. More people joined the circle. Those who had been sitting
stood up and began swaying around the fire. There was the distant rumbling of thunder, echoing off the hills
that surrounded us. Ozone and wood smoke scented the air.
More joined, and still more. Soon we had a full assortment of percussive instruments, and dancers
ecstatically dancing. The skies opened. Lightning forked horizontally, leaping from one cloud to the next. I
completely left my body; there was just the trance, the drumming, the dancing. Ecstasy. The fire weathered
the sheets of water that poured from the sky, though much clothing was lost in the process.
Occasionally I’d come to my senses and try to stop playing. My hands felt like they were on fire; they were
swelling, bleeding, and cracking. However, every time I tried to stop, the entire circle would lose cohesion.
The dancers would get lost. The other drummers would lose their center. I don’t know how, but I was
somehow at the center of this storm. I let go and dove into the trance. Hours of screaming, hooting, dancing,
bleeding…The storm blew past, one of several that struck that weekend. I knew I couldn’t stop until it was
time to stop.
The power peaked in the early hours of the morning, as the sky glowed a deep electric blue-purple. I had
been drumming for countless hours, surrounded by fellow drummers, playing to incite the frenzy of the
dancers stomping in the sandpit around the fire. I was pushed beyond exhaustion. My hands were slick with
blood and the skin was sloughing off like a snakes. I was pouring sweat, and I felt healed. I thought, maybe
I’ll never see any of these strangers again, maybe if we met on the street somewhere, a couple years on, we
wouldn’t even recognize each other, but for that moment, we were family, and we had come home.
Eventually, the horizon turned pink, and the sun crested the hills, cutting through early morning fog.
Finally, the drumming came to a natural stop. I wandered into the circle, collapsed on the ground, and found
myself rolling around in the wet sand with several beautiful girls, all kissing. We laughed hysterically as the
sun broke through the clouds completely. The laughter came in waves. I felt like everyone there had shared
some kind of deep bonding experience, although we were all strangers. We didn’t exchange a single word.
This was not the only time I had nearly this exact experience. In fact, it played itself out almost identically on
several consecutive summers, until I came to expect it, at which point the magic was immediately dispelled
and had to appear elsewhere.
It is a rare occasion where you really test your boundaries and see just how far you can go. Or where you
find the drive and energy inside yourself to become the backbone of something bigger than you, and help
nurture a vibe that goes far beyond your petty concerns, your feelings of superiority or inadequacy. Weeks
later, my shredded hands were still healing. I still have some small scars, reminders of that magical night.
I felt cleansed, re-connected with everything, the precise opposite of how the factory or office is designed to
make us feel. At the time I was working a freelance contract, so I had no cubicle, no yoke, to return to. I can’t
even imagine what that would have been like, if I did. Like returning to prison, to hell or at least purgatory.
A sleep-walking, zombie-life.
I don’t think it is too much of a stretch to say that I channeled something of Dionysus that night; though
of course it could have been anyone. At the same time, it is quite obvious that anyone who stood outside the
circle, (circle as a frame of mind as well as, or perhaps more importantly than, the physical circle we stood
within), would simply have seen a bunch of lunatics beating drums and a lot of whacked out, naked or
half-naked people dancing around a fire. There’s nothing magical or divine about that. As we have explored,
almost ad nauseum, both are true.
I don’t want to give the impression that the only modern expression of Dionysian energy is to be found
in drum circles. Far from it. Nor, as we’ve said, is ecstasy the only human experience that brings us in touch
with it.
Another story comes to mind. It has the added benefit of being comical at my expense. When I was in my
early twenties I become very interested in Kung Fu, both Shaolin and Bagua. I never got incredibly good at
it, but I was more expert at it than the average person. This is always a dangerous amount of knowledge.
• 205 •
I was at a party over the summer. It was a picnic kind of event, with alcohol and live bands. I decided to
dress up in one of my Shaolin outfits, and was already pretty punchy by midday. A friend was bar tending,
and lit an evil-looking shot of what looked like Windex and 151 on fire. Quickly blowing it out, I grabbed
it. It never got to my mouth. An invisible flame must have been burning off the fumes, and the glass was
scorching hot. I twitched when it made contact with my bare flesh, and the alcohol poured across my hand,
re-igniting in the process. I stared for a moment at bubbling skin. My friend grabbed a bucket of ice, and
very much like a cartoon, I shoved my hand into it. It expelled a little huff of steam. Or so I recall. Maybe
it didn’t.
I wrapped the hand up, and then proceeded to wander around with the obligatory bottle of Patron, as
I was want to do in those days. After, I started doing my daily stretching exercises and forms—a little bit
of alcohol and a burned hand wasn’t about to stop me. I’d also worked up quite a bit of the mad kind of
enthusiasm that can come from an energetic practice like Kung Fu, especially when mixed with alcohol.
Some people noticed me, and somehow a short demonstration of some exercises turned into a full out
sparring match. Ten or twenty of us were fighting in the back yard—some with shinai, others (such as
myself ) bare-handed. A couple minutes in, two people approached me to attack simultaneously with their
shinai. Without thinking I took two sprinting steps and leapt into the air, connecting with each of them
with my feet. What I hadn’t counted on was connecting slightly below their center of gravity, and I also had
no particular plan for how I was going to land. So much for looking ahead. They fell on me, and there was
a definitive crunch.
When I got to my feet, I was greeted by a flock of people staring at me in disgust. I still remember the
look on one girl’s face—it was a look of horror that you might expect, say, if a giant centipede had just burst
out of my chest. I felt a dull pain, but it didn’t match what I saw when I looked down. My arm was bent at
a near ninety degree angle, about six inches below my wrist. Both bones in my forearm were snapped like
twigs, though thankfully the bone hadn’t punched through skin.
I felt oddly calm. It was likely shock, but all I could feel was an eerie elation. Pride? A battle wound! I don’t
know. I sat down and asked for someone to get me to a hospital. They called an ambulance. On the ride to
the hospital, I had a great time retelling the story for of my arm had snapped, and why my other hand was
wrapped in bandages. The nurses seemed to get a kick out of it, (“this kid was Kung fu fighting!”), and I
continued to talk it up once I arrived at the hospital—a performance which, I think, got me a couple extra
shots of morphine in the process. One of the nurses charged with my care was especially cute. I felt on top
of the world, and I’m pretty sure in my delirium I managed to get her phone number, though I promptly
lost it. I proceeded back to the party when I was discharged, eventually passing out under a tree in the back
yard at around five in the morning. It wasn’t until I awoke the next day with wrenching pain in my arm that
I realized what had actually happened.
Now, you may wonder how this in any way related to Dionysus. What I’m getting at is the frenzy of
excitement that can carry you to a point like this—and potentially far beyond. If the circumstances had been
different, I very well could have pushed myself to the brink of destruction, with a big smile on my face. The
flip side of it is when this kind of energy is driven into a negatively oriented frame of mind. Both of these
poles stand in pretty stark contrast to how I am most of the time, somewhat reserved, peaceful, calm, at least
on the exterior.
Internally, the opposite is the case, and sometimes that inner nature can bubble into the outside, with
anything from comedic to heroic to utterly tragic results. I’ve felt the same kind of potentially dangerous
exuberance when performing with bands onstage, or even more, after the show, when you feel the need to
keep that burn going or else face a hard crash into depression. This is another facet to “creative madness”: we
aren’t the one at the helm, and the destination, or even the trip, may not be in our best interest, even if it is a
lot of fun to retell later. The current could well pull you under, the fire consume you. Within the framework
of modern psychiatry, what I’m describing is easily pathologized as manic depression. Funny that Dionysus
is dual-natured.129
129. Putting Gods in the context we have throughout this book, and then re-interpreting them through the lens of psychological pathology,
it could be easy enough to associate a disorder from the DSM to the Gods of any given pantheon. Dionysus would be bipolar disorders,
Mercury would likely be some kind of oppositional personality disorder, Zeus would be megalomania, Hera clearly has some serious emotional
and behavioral issues based around jealousy and the need to control others through her relationships with them, and so on. Of course, when
viewed as Gods, they have positive and negative sides. But when viewed within the framework of modern psychiatry, only their negative sides
have a place diagnostically, since few people come to a doctor complaining about a bout of uncontrollable pleasure.
• 206 •
I’d like to cut deeper still. Much ink has been spilled about the relationship of sex and death. I’ve contributed
to it in some small measure—although I don’t think any intellectual or academic investigation has ever fully
cut to the heart of the matter, and I doubt any ever well. Because, quite plainly, it would be impossible to
do so in a satisfactory manner.
The sex-death connection lies outside the realm of dialectical ideas, although we may choose to come at
it from the angle of biology or religious symbolism, the interrelationships of iconography and psychology,
and so on.
But the truth of this connection still seems to lie somewhere in the visceral. Our ideas are in our biology
but not of it, which is a turn of phrase a friend used recently that I found memorable. So, like much of our
awkward relation to our own sexuality, at least in public, we also find an awkward relationship with death.
And when we see that there is a juncture between sexuality and biological sex, a juncture that transcends
reproduction, that links in fact into eroticism itself—which is an activity that has transcended its own
function, if we are to consider sexuality to be functionally a reproductive act—then we really have to admit
our blind ignorance in the face of what must either be taken to be fact, or not. It is said there is a link between
sex and death, and it has been spun a million ways, but what can we actually trust in this relation? Who can
entirely rule out that there is no link between sexuality and death beyond reproduction, and we’re all just
incredibly perverse?
So, as seems to be my inclination, I find myself wanting to throw another variable in the pot when I’ve
realized I can’t even come to grips with the two that are already floating around in there. That’s just my way,
and it has always been. Who am I to question what it is that I am?
I’ve been thinking about this recently because I have seen a further linkage in here, I felt it, chewed on it,
worked it around my body. These ideas only came up after the fact. This is the rare kind of idea I’m more
prone to trust. There is a connection between sex, death, and food. Not just a one-to-one relationship. Many
have noticed the connection between food and sex. Or sex and food. For some reason I’ve rarely seen the
complete chain actually pieced together when it is really quite obvious. It is between all three of them that
we see a clear picture of primal life.
Just as they make a circle in the natural world, in their functional incarnations—sex as reproduction, death
as an evolutionary necessity among other things, and food, of course, as what occurs unendingly between
the point of conception to the point when our neurons all decide they’ve had enough of our nonsense and
bugger off to get a pint at the pub. (Which is really weird of them since neither they nor I are British, Irish,
or anything of the sort, but I’d be dead at this point so no one would be the wiser.)
What I’m implying is that in addition to the material linkage between the “circle of life” (birth-life-death)
there is another dimension, a mirror image of these facets, rendered within our psychology. I might go so far
as to imply that there is a mirror image within our psychology of all of what we might describe as material,
natural or necessary phenomenon. Sex becomes erotism when shown through the mirror of the psyche, and
stripped of its reproductive purpose. Death becomes the great initiator. And food? What of food? More on
that, in a moment, because it ties into the other two in a fundamental way.
These mirrors can contain great insight. We must react to the urge to procreate; we must react to all the
things that produce an urge, or we must fight against it; we must react to what our culture prescribes for us
sexually; or in terms of how and what we eat and we must react to death and the loss of our own function; we
must react to the fact that we have to eat to survive. These are all defining points where we may go along with
the status quo or work against it, we may go along with our own inclinations or nature or work against it, and
these things themselves may be in or out of alignment. There is no more fundamental way of getting directly
at our way of being in the world than through this holy trinity. Fuck the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. They
have nothing on these three that are one: fuck, consume, and die.
This seems very obvious and yet something gets lost in the translation. Maybe we just don’t like to think
we are so simple when all the mirrors are removed, and some of what we might find through such reduction
makes us emotionally conflicted. There’s a lot of psychological discomfort that has to be overcome to eat a
snail much less realize that when we butcher and consume an animal, lapping at its blood on our knives,
we are indulging not just in a necessary act, nor a sensory one, but one which is in this mirrored world of
the psyche, intrinsically linked to our relationship with both sex and death. These emotional conflicts can
cover a broad range of possibilities from guilt to fear, as well as all the moral quandaries which seem to assail
so many of us in regard to our food, especially since we have industrialized the very process of eating. (And
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sexuality and death too have their odd roles in the marketplace.) Embracing what lies on our plates is no
easier for many of us than doing the same with those we’d most like to have in our beds, or what we’d most
like to do with them.
All of this was impressed on me again recently. “Again” because it is not an entirely new line of thought. I
had an interesting weekend. Among other things, I found myself building up an incredible excess of sexual
energy, not discharging it, but instead adding more and more fuel to that internal fire. In the past, I have
felt the way sexual frustration can create hostility, especially in males. I have felt how yearning for a thing
that seems out of reach can produce depression—we identify with what we yearn for as an ideal state that we
could attain if we were somehow more sufficient, more handsome maybe or smarter or younger or whatever
it is—but this thing that I experienced, this time, wasn’t like any of that. Not that there isn’t inherent tension
in the building of a state like this, but it occurred to me that we narrate to ourselves what it means to be
feeling that way—that is up to us. And it didn’t hurt that I am very loved by some wonderful people at the
moment and that can always help bolster our fragile egos.
What got me on this thing was that there was a strong secondary effect. I noticed that all of my other
appetites were increasing as well. This is like and yet unlike its opposite—the mirror image, opposite again,
standing in a mirror, left is right and right is left—of a Catholic, say, who starves and restricts their appetites.130
I saw into my shadow for a moment.
The emphasis placed upon one’s inherent urges being “bad,” something that we should be ashamed of, is
what creates this second inversion of Catholicism. It’s the narrative I was talking about which takes the base
biological accumulation of manna which has no place to go and says, “I am bad for wanting that thing” or
“this must be stamped out.” It just isn’t my nature, and I’ve gone the extra mile to embrace rather than run
from these things in myself, so if I hunger for something and it is within my grasp—…
You might think, “Great, so you discovered that if you get pent up, you eat a gallon of ice cream. Brilliant,
genius.” But, it wasn’t a matter of the quantity of my appetites increasing, or just the realization that they
were actually playing off of one another. I haven’t been shoving pizzas down my throat or anything of
the sort. I’ve instead been craving the most sensual and sensory stimulating foods I can imagine—dark
chocolates made by the indigenous people of…wherever, red wines with flavors within flavors from grapes
that were grown in volcanic soil and probably harvested by underpaid migrant workers, olives, hot peppers,
all things that are incredibly salty, sweet but with layers of flavor behind or in front of it. Anything that is
quite plainly the analog of sex. Sucking on a mango or working your way into an artichoke, Freud may have
been a reductionistic coke-head with an amazing essay-writing ability, but he was also onto something when
it came to the sublimation of wills. I just think he may have gone a bit far with his reduction.131
It may be a bit of a digression, yet again, but I can’t help myself. There’s nothing so grounding as
indulging in every part of what you consume. I love crushing freshly roasted coffee beans, and smelling
it as it breaks up in the mortar and pestle. Is a mechanical device more efficient? Sure. That’s not the
point. You can feel each piece crack upon under the heel of your hand, which for some reason is intensely
satisfying, and if you breathe right and shift your weight you can find a point where gravity does most of
the work. (The same is true with massage, for what it’s worth. No one has ever pulverized and kneaded his
way through my back the way this little old Chinese man in Chinatown does and I doubt he could bench
press a chopstick.) I like the feel of a knife as it slices vegetables or works its way through meat. I’ve eaten
brain, sucked marrow, and all the while thought of how I am a piece of this world, too. The nature of life
is to feed upon itself.
As Mr. VI spells out very well, we are all cannibals, if we rightly understand what a Self truly is. We are
enmeshed. This is my marrow, too. And it’s fucking delicious. I am incredibly aware of what it is that I’m
eating, and cooking only intensifies that. If it had a face, I’d like to see it. If I’m eating a bird, a fish, a snail, or
a carrot, I want to know that thing as intimately as possible without, you know, implying I’m sticking carrots
in my ass. (Not that I’d slight you if you are, but please, wash it if you’re going to eat it.) Hiding our food
in packaging, slathering them with crappy cheese before you even saw what went into it in the first place.
How do you relate to that? It’s disposable. We live disposable lives. No one is going to infuse it with meaning
for you. Significance doesn’t have a label or have a handy “sell by” date, and that’s an especially slippery idea
130. Whether it begins on the level of sex instead of food is irrelevant, though consider the boiled down, lifeless fare of the 50s housewife
and we might make a few quick guesses about their regard for sexuality, as I wonder we may also do with languages with an overabundance of
consonants as opposed to vowels. But I digress, as usual.
131. And I don’t advise giving a woman head quite the way you go about getting the meat from artichokes. Teeth = bad.
• 208 •
when it comes to what we eat since we’ve all been so trained to cram something down our throat toss it and
GO on to that important thing you’re supposed to do.
Nothing is more important than this. Nothing.
You could build an entire religion, a pantheon, around the sources and combinations of what we eat, the
possibilities of flavor, and their relationship to thoughts and moods. This kind of systematized thinking
seems less absurd to some people who study, say, Western Esoteric Qabbalah when they are drawing out
charts of the colors and notes in a scale that correspond to paths on the tree of life, but food. That’s just
crazy! It’s not that I am always drawn to eat a certain food when I’m sad or happy, but everyone has heard
of “comfort food” (some people live on it, which is not so good and might say something about your overall
psychology.) Relationships of flavors and textures may be a more accurate representation of the actual nature
of emotions than any rationalizations, and only the most talented painter or poet can hit those notes without
forcing an emotion into the shape of an idea, which is not quite the same thing. In other words, a food is
among other things a feeling.
So you can imagine, the seemingly simple act of producing, preparing, and consuming food is infinitely
complex. You could trace the history of humanity, the history of oppression, of colonization, or reproduction,
by the trade and choke points of civilizations through the foods that pass through them and how they are
prepared…but certainly there doesn’t need to be any beating around the bush as it were of the psychological
role of chocolate and red wine, even with the most basic chemistry ignored. The marketing of Valentine’s
Day can’t be blamed for that one—most of the “chocolate” that gets pawned off on that date can barely
pass for what it is meant to signify, and remains about as sensual as a cold wet noodle that’s been soaking in
dishwater overnight. So let’s bring this back down to the micro-cosmic scale before I spin you off into the
dimension where we can start attributing different kinds of curries to different Chakras and Mudras.
When I noticed this connection between sex drive and fixation on taste, it got me thinking. Not that,
you know, “I should never have an orgasm again and I’ll eat food like a fucking king!” But rather, that you
don’t need to be De Sade, don’t even need to be prone to violence, for this linkage to arise. And if so, what
about the violence that stands behind food—even vegetarians must contend with a form of violence, though
it is far more muted because it is ecological and has more to do with the supposed necessities of industrial
farming—and what about obvious violence that stands behind death, even if it is nature that in many cases
wields the scythe?
I know the vegetarians and vegans out there are going to say duck confit isn’t the same as a head of broccoli
from an ethical or ecological standpoint. I won’t argue that. Though it is worth mentioning that, cabbage
or duck, it’s the human population that’s growing out of control, not the duck or cabbage population.
So maybe we should be talking about population control rather than whether we’re farming cabbage or
ducks because eventually, an ever-increasing population is going to outgrow any foodstuff. (But you damn
vegetarians never let me get to my point with all your moralizing when I’m just trying to eat and talk about
sex and drinking blood.)
It’s not especially surprising to me that when any desire increases, and by that I mean the desire that is
aroused either by the craving of food or sex, or in the appreciation and open indulgence in sensation which
is—if nothing else!—our birthright as beings, there comes an increase in the awareness of this latent violence
as well. Even if one is not inclined to violence, as I am not by general nature, well. Get us hungry or horny
enough, and we’ll probably gnaw straight through a jugular vein. Context is a powerful force, and there are
yet greater systemic forces around us. But we all think it comes down to the singular will. (And you know,
every German in World War 2 Germany was an evil Nazi, right?)
In the past, I always approached the latent violence behind food, sex, and death with a certain guilt, it is
one of the few things which can arouse guilt in me, and I often pull back before I get to a level of intensity
where I have to look it straight in the eye.
But not this time. I’m not flinching, I’m not blinking. This time, I found myself hitting a point where
I could imagine plunging my hand into a chest. I’d tear out a beating heart, and bite into it. And is the
spurting of that heart all that different than the eruptions from sex? Not as much as the squeamish would
like to believe, that is for sure. I realized at that point that I could no more be a vegetarian than I could be a
Catholic, though the more we ourselves can identify with the bloody sacrifice, the more we can connect with
our true self which expands far beyond the barriers of this flesh, in this moment.
There’s no malice in any of this. This is incredibly important, especially for those who are going into this
• 209 •
with a foreknowledge of Dionysian symbolism. The violence of the mob, the bloodlust of the revolutionary
pleb or the fascist regime has no place here. This is where my interpretation of Dionysian symbolism parts
ways drastically with Rene Girard’s. “And if he later appears as the god of wine, that is probably a more sedate
version of his original designation as the god of homicidal fury.” [208] That is altogether different, even if
the outcome could be the same. It is more like a cat which, let us pretend, plays with a mouse and only then
realizes that their fierce play has snapped the poor things back.132
The frenzy of the Bacchante does manifest in some cases, as in the Euripides play, as a reaction against
a social order, and in those cases, if Dionysian rites aren’t performed in the glade then they storm and
drench the streets. But more naturally, and I think more accurately outside the strictly Grecian sense wherein
Dionysus, like all Greek gods, has quite the ego, this blood-lust is the kind of frenzy that overtakes us if
we drop our social masks when in the throes of any true passion. True passion and ecstasy bring us at once
outside ourselves, and simultaneously make us immanent to ourselves. They embed us in ourselves and force
us, in the end, to commit to what is within us, even if it seems horrible to the culture at large.
Sex and love, consumption, death and grief: these things are beyond our thoughts, outside of our analysis,
of our control. We are animals that imagine we are Gods, or we are animals that bow down in blind
supplication to Gods made in our own image. Maybe one day we can be worthy of such a title, but for now
we remain, in the glacial progress of evolution even against the increasing tide of our culture of industrialized
technology, apes with rocket launchers. Imagine an ape with a rocket launcher that fancies himself God, and,
reductionist or not, we can see a bit of the problem of War especially when it is juxtaposed with the power
that myth holds over our psyches.
For my part, I don’t seek release, in the form of Moksha, or like the devout Christian, who hopes to be
removed from their own flesh. I am an animal, I am embodied, I am immanent, and to the extent that I can
come to grips with the forces that control me: such as this trinity of death, sex, and food—the more I can
come into accord with what it is that I actually am, rather than what I believe I am, what I am told that I am
or should be. Acceptance of my self, and the extension of my idea of “self ” to include all the systems with
which I am actually a part of (which includes what I eat) is more my “spiritual path,” if I can be said to have
one, than supplication to any idea or ideal, let alone God.
There should be no room for shame or guilt for what we are. Our only task is to discover, enhance, hone,
and embrace it. There is nothing else. To first acknowledge and then accept or even embrace what one is,
that’s a spiritual aspiration. If you call it sin, then you’ve turned God into a “feckless thug.”133
There’s an extent to which even this roundabout abstraction is still not pulling us out of that first conundrum
I alluded to. It’d cut much more to the chase for my wife and I to fuck until dawn, or for that matter for us
to collectively fuck a lover—I have a real sexist proclivity for women so we can assume she’d be a she—to the
point where she’s speaking in tongues, full-on glossolalia, before we sate our mutual desires in her quaking
loins blah, blah, blah. (And then maybe we could make our wobbly-legged way to sake and sushi after if that
wasn’t the appetizer that got us there in the first place.)
That’d make more sense than to write all this, wouldn’t it? Maybe you gained something from reading
about it and maybe not, but it’s not like it changed our relationship to the facts. These facts which, at the
moment include that I’m on a bus for at the very least an hour away from such an eventuality, and there are
probably other things that could interfere with such a plan being hatched immediately. That interference
between the thing and the thing represented—T. S. Eliot said “between the emotion and the response falls
the shadow,” and we could well apply it here—that thing, that dissociation between analysis and vitality, is
what has kept me from jumping at the opportunity to re-enter academia. [217] Well, that and my clearly
questionable morals. (And some less amusing financial and logistical considerations.)
The fact there’s any dividing line between signifier and signified in terms of sex, death and food might be
a primary cause of all of civilization and its discontents in the first place. What we eat, who we fuck, how
we face death, these things are real. So are all the myths and ideas we spin out of the mirror. As I have said,
myth is a mirror. Nothing more, nothing less. But if we get lost in that mirror…
You know what? I lost my train of thought. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather be fucking in a field
somewhere. Makes the crops more fertile, dontcha know?
132. Nor am I actively advocating literal cannibalism, though, on the one hand, I assume you understand the power of metaphor if you are
a reader here, and two, I’m not about to knock the Aghoris for going that extra mile. You get an “A+” for effort, you lunatics!
133. By the way, plenty could be said on the virtue of love, originating from self love, and that supporting all of these other things, even
the seemingly most brutal.
• 210 •
All of these ideas are central to understanding the significance of the Dionysus symbol, though hopefully
I explore that more successfully in my fiction than I could here. A modern interpretation of this symbol
factors heavily into Fallen Nation: Party At The World’s End. Dionysus also plays a role in the script that I
worked on with John Harrigan for the immersive event Citizen Y. I think that my creative work may give
a stronger sense of the symbol than I can share in this format. I hope you check those out and come along
for the ride.
Lilith
By way of another example, I wanted to touch on another symbol that has had some impact on my life:
Lilith.
There are many possible interpretations of Lilith, and like most symbols, its meaning has changed by
location and time. She too is a mirror, and it isn’t my point in this brief essay to follow its myriad reflections.
Just a few. You may recall some earlier thoughts posed about the mythological significance of the mirror, in a
more abstract sense. These apply as well, especially as the mirror is a symbol of seductive illusions.
Lilith begins not as a Goddess, but as a demon, a malevolent force that you can hear when the wind howls
in the desert, carrying with it the sharp sting of sand. The distinction between Demon and God is in the eye
of the beholder; it isn’t so much a matter of power as of function. Demons are that which are cast out, at the
same time divine themselves. I’d like to point attention to the way that Lilith represents forces that are cast
out of the social sphere, a force that must be banished to make domesticity possible, at least when conducted
within the confines of the paradigm of marriage-as-ownership. From within that circle, she would certainly
look frightful. Consider that, moving forward.
She appears in the Fallen Nation novel I have been working on concurrently with this project. Or, at least,
we find there a woman who believes she is the modern incarnation of Lilith. When she has led a number of
would be initiates (nubile girls themselves) to a hot tub with her, she reveals this, explaining,
Women told tales of me…I would steal the men away from them. I would devour their
children. I was an abomination. I lived inside mirrors to seduce the vanity of nubile girls.
Can you imagine? [218]
Lilith, the first Eve, is first recognized by her defiant nature; she is another anti-patriarchal, anti-authoritative
symbol. At least, this is the form we encounter her in as she left Babylon with the Jewish exile.
So, on the one hand we have Lilith as a spirit of the desert, a creature that could slip into your house and
devour your children. This is how she would be presented to women, a bogeyman to keep them in place. Of
course, this fear tactic isn’t often capitulated consciously; it is something that all the members of a cultural
domain participate in unconsciously.
But on the other, there is this idea of her as the seductress, luring men away from their societal commitment
to the “good mother.” This is an element which some superficially similar symbols, such as Kali, lacks.
Without needing to return to textual source, it’s easy enough to typify “this sort” of woman. She has the
audacity to do what she wants, and it very well might not be what you or the society wants. There is
something impetuous and child-like about her, which can manifest as a resolute defiance when placed within
the context of a system of rules. So long as she’s cast in the role of villain, this arouses the suspicion and fear
of the wives of men, and their shameful observance to whichever force is the stronger.
This is an important point: Lilith often appears in a different guise to men than women. To women,
especially within sexually restrictive cultures, we see more of the “devourer of children,” aspect. To men,
she appears as the seductress, the dark anima. The kind of girl that you don’t take home to mother. But in
either case she represents a direct threat to the established social order, especially the order of marriage and
monogamy. She is an enemy of stasis, of duty and societal bonds.
In modern contexts, the threat posed to women is re-enforced by the ad and fashion industries efforts to
increases competition and insecurity, as well as the conflict of the myths of domesticity, “slut shaming,” and
so on. In a softer, more romanticized form, it is not surprising that Lilith has re-appeared as a potent symbol
in bi-, lesbian, and polyamorous communities, especially amongst those who might have some derision
towards “breeders.” However, Lilith is not simply a symbol of liberation. She also represents a point of
contention between personal senses of restriction and freedom.
Her craft is more likely to lead to destruction than any kind of immediate synthesis. She’s the sort that
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might knock down your sandcastle just for the fun of it. Not even Lucifer has such a defiant nature. Lucifer
defies authority to follow his inner code. Lilith’s psychology seems to be more along the lines of, “you’re not
the boss of me.” Plain and simple.
This is one of the things that distinguish Lilith from a “dark mother” symbol like Kali. Kali may appear
frightful from within the field of time, but as an agent of transformation, specifically within the context
of sex and death, she is a synthesizer. She may be dark but she remains a mother goddess. Alchemically,
psychologically, synthesis is a process of union. To make way for that, there needs to be destruction. To
accomplish this, Lilith divides, even seemingly without point. This too serves an important psychological /
alchemical purpose. Perhaps synthesis is the result, and such destruction can lead to the birth of something
new, something better. In this they are the same. But that is up to the individual. She certainly isn’t going to
do it for you, or wait around to find out.
I acknowledge that these things may be different for all of you. If you’re really engaging with a myth, it is
going to work differently for you, and you might find something else in her. They are, as I’ve said time and
again, mirrors.
I’ve encountered quite a few women in my life that embodied what I recognized as various elements of
this archetype. I’ve always had an affinity for forward, sexually empowered, impulsive women. But my first
explicit contact with Lilith came through my relationship with my ex-wife. I’m not sure how our mutual
fascination with the idea grew, but it wasn’t too long before it was a conscious endeavor, although I can
never recall a point where we really reasoned out why we would want to enter this domain. Maybe it’s spotty
memory, and maybe we didn’t.
The invocation of the Lilith-complex quickly became a sort of subtext to many of our collaborative projects:
our first music project together was called Lady Babylon. She had the seven-sided star of Babalon tattooed
on her shoulder.134 Lilith themes appeared throughout the play that my ex-wife wrote for her final undergrad
project. We changed the name of the band to “Babalon” with a new lineup after moving to California, with
the intent of focusing on the band.
I had locked the vast and terrifying world of my subconscious in some kind of box after my first encounter
with it around age sixteen, and through the creative work I was doing with her, I was attempting to open that
box and work with it in a more focused way. I believe the same was true for her, though I’m sure the view
was somewhat different from her side, and most certainly is quite different today. Most of our music dealt
with our relationship, and our relationship dealt in great part with our art, our dreams, and our mutual ritual
workings which were practiced nearly daily. They bubbled one into the other. At a point I don’t have any idea
what meaning those songs have for anyone else, because they were so internally motivated; but there is no
doubt that for me, what we were invoking was potent, and it had teeth. I was, yet again, out of my depth.
I mentioned at the beginning of this series that symbols can actually obscure our genuine relationship
with the person that evoked them. This was quite true with us, I think. I have the benefit of hindsight now.
At the time, I couldn’t make the distinction. In the process of bringing up such a potent and destructive
134. “Babalon” was a Crowleyian invention, his interpretation of the the Whore of Babylon, with a revised spelling based on Qabbalistic
numerology, or his voracious appetite for intoxicants, depending on your interpretation of the man. In either event, these symbols are all
incredibly similar to Lilith.
• 212 •
archetype, our relation ran constantly between explosive fire and torpor. I can only imagine that, whatever
our conscious motivations in bringing such a symbol into our lives, we were truly yearning from a release
from prior “karma,” or at least the personas we create and mistake for ourselves. We were both coming out
of adolescence when we met, and adult identity can make different demands.
This is where Lilith and Kali remain somewhat the same. When the fire has burned everything to the
ground, you are finally at a point where you can leave the past behind and begin anew—supposing that you
survive the process more or less intact. Lilith can be like the mythological equivalent of a forest fire, even if
she appears to topple buildings just to watch them fall.
That is what happened. While I clung to the personal element, I was stuck in a house, and it was on fire.
All your attachments will be burned away, one by one, until you learn to truly let go, or there is simply
nothing left. This is a theme of initiation we looked at more abstractly, but it was from the ensuing events
that I realized it in my own life.
Shortly before we were prepared to record our first album with our new lineup, she disappeared to Mexico
with our drummer, after cultivating a whirlwind romance with him. I stewed in the predictable cocktail of
possessiveness, jealousy, and insecurity, and was set to go off. She finally appeared at the foot of the bed one
morning and calmly informed me that it was time to end it. The marriage, the band, whatever it took to
just end it.
There’s nothing like crisis to really snap you out of the haze of your habits, and become complete present.
I remember a single moment of that absolute presence and clarity. But then, there was all of this terrible
emotional baggage that had to be exorcised. The series of events that followed that moment of clarity were
the predictable mammalian script played out time and again on TV shows like COPS. My rage turned
towards myself, and furniture turned to kindling.
When the cops arrived I was rampaging around bare-chested in my pajamas, streaming blood. I’m sure
they were wishing they had a film crew with them. Their tone changed when they realized I didn’t pose
any threat to her, but they weren’t so sure about the risk I posed to myself. It didn’t help anything that the
bedroom was a mess of broken glass and piles of ritual and sentimental artifacts from both of our altars.
“What’s this?” They’d ask, holding up a collection of animal teeth, carved bones, or bag of salvia.
In such times we normally maintain a kind of facade of normalcy, but I was far beyond that point. I tried
to explain that animal spirits are metaphors for evolutionary and emotional domains, and psychologically we
can link with them through the…who the hell knows? By the time they had arrived I’d taken pain killers for
my swollen hands, and I was out of my mind. So I was feeling chatty, and I had a captive audience. I think I
may have also referred to myself as a shaman. I’m not sure. It was into the cruiser with me, handcuffed, while
a procession of my friends watched me march away, a maniacal grin on my face. On the ride to a night in the
holding cell, the sun was just beginning to crest the hill. I felt the most unimaginable feeling of peace just
bathe over me. Like basking on the beach. I was full of other emotions, of course, and they came crashing in
later and had to be dealt with for months. But for that brief, oddly profound moment I got a real taste of the
meaning of that Janis Joplin tune, “freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.” [219]
I eventually did let go, and, though many new trials have followed, I have become who I am today as a
result. I very much believe that without having performed the working that we did —difficult as it was—I
would in some way still be stuck where I was psychologically. In that way it was an initiation. I lived and
believed a certain way, it was shattered, and for years after I worked on building a new personal reality. In
theory we could break and reform this way an infinite number of times, if old age and apathy didn’t also
play a role.
One way or another, we will lose everything that we hold onto. We can hold on tightly, or we can learn to
let go and maybe get just the distance necessary to fully appreciate life in all of its bittersweet glory. Tightly
clinging cuts out the possibility of growth. I think many Americans never get that, and are stuck in a kind
of perpetual psychological limbo. We yearn for an initiation, brought about by this symbol or another, but
often don’t even know what we’re yearning for.
• 213 •
Dionysus may be a patron, but Lilith was my first real initiator. And I know that in a sense that doesn’t
mean anything. I may as well be worshiping Mr. T in hopes of embodying whatever the hell it was that made
him famous. But Mr. T didn’t speak to me, Dionysus and Lilith did. Amongst others. So, there it is.
At this point—and I mean this quite genuinely—I am thankful for everything that happened. Nothing
subtle could have helped me grow out of certain habitual patterns. I would have resisted. It is only when
nothing short of personal apocalypse can shake up the status quo that anyone would seek a symbol like Lilith,
certainly not with such regularity. We got exactly what we were asking for from her, even if we didn’t know
the question at the time. So how could there be any misgivings towards Lilith delivering precisely what was
in her nature? And as for our projection of symbols on one another, it’s impossible at any rate to say which is
which. I’m only driving at this particular point in the hopes of expressing to you that blame is only possible
if we allow ourselves to be incredibly short-sighted.
Does any of this clarify for you what Lilith is? Maybe, maybe not. I hope so. But if you manage to engage
with her, expect a confrontation with some of the most challenging layers of the Bardo, here on Earth. Like
all such challenges, if you see it through to the other side, or rebuild the pieces, you can be freed of your past
“karma”— to the things in your past that you’re still holding on to. Aside from the superstition of appeasing
a wrathful deity, this is the only sensible reason to deal with such forces.

• 214 •
Making Do Without a Guide

James Curcio
Frequently, too, in this unlikely soil there flower rare blossoms of the psyche which we would never have
thought to find in the flatlands of society…Among the so-called neurotics of our day there are a good many
who in other ages would not have been neurotic- that is, divided against themselves. If they had lived
in a period and in a milieu in which man was still linked by myth with the world of the ancestors, and
thus with nature truly experienced and not merely seen from outside, they would have been spared this
division with themselves. I am speaking of those who cannot tolerate the loss of myth and who can neither
find a way to a merely exterior world, to the world as seen by science, nor rest satisfied with an intellectual
juggled with words, which has nothing whatsoever to do with wisdom. These victims of the psychic
dichotomy of our time are merely optional neurotics, their apparent morbidity drops away the moment the
gulf between the ego and the unconscious is closed. …The spirit does not dwell in concepts, but in deeds
and in facts. Words butter no parsnips; nevertheless, this futile procedure is repeated ad infinitum.
C.G. Jung [58]
I
n the previous section, I said that Lilith had been an initiatrix in my life. That is true. However, not only
are initiations ongoing, but they are manifold. They represent a breaking point between one psychological
center and another; and in the life of any creative individual there about bound to be many “little
deaths.”
When I was sixteen I had my first real contact with one of these crises. In every way, it falls in line with
the “afflictions” that are listed for would-be shamans. Somatoform, relapsing and remitting but essentially
unending illness—visions, some of them so intense and unexpected as to be completely overwhelming, and
a sudden contact with a world that anyone in this culture would describe as schizophrenic. I began talking
to entities that I encountered in the woods, or at physical crossroads. All such things start almost like an
uncontrollable daydream or fixation, but can quickly take on a life of their own if you indulge in them. It’s
simple to say I simply didn’t know better, but I was also just plain stupid curious. Even with recognition at
that time that I was probably dealing with some interface between personal and collective unconscious, it
certainly felt like it was coming from the outside. They felt real. This means a connection with a vital life-
power, and also, a dangerous one.
They would ask me to do things, and I would often do them without a second thought. Nothing like
“FEED THE WALLS HUMAN BLOOD” or anything, but it did get pretty weird. They would ask me for
possession of my body for a time, and I would, with the usual “what the fuck?” nonchalance of a sixteen
year old, give “them” complete and free access, just to see what might happen. I fed my blood as penance to
trees in a forest where I was “told”—by the forest, mind you—that a burial ground had been disturbed.135 I
could go on, my point is that, by all accounts within this society, I had gone from a sensitive, artistic child,
obviously a bit odd, a bit of a loner but “normal” nevertheless, to someone on the very brink of some kind
of complete and total breakdown. No one knew what to do with me.
And so the medications began. This is the prescribed course of treatment within our mental health
paradigm: a couple questionnaires, (“Do you hear voices? Y/N”, “Are you a deranged lunatic? Y/N”, etc),
and then a seemingly endless trial-and-error process with often clinically suspect substances. They threw
one thing into me after the other—Paxil, Prozac, Depakote, drugs with names that sound like alien races
from Star Trek—and each one produced worse results. I couldn’t see straight, my penis stopped working,
I couldn’t stand, I was puking every day, I had suicidal thoughts so strong that I had to curl into a ball for
hours until they passed—something that never happened before the meds. Paxil made me think I had a
parasitic, symbiotic organism living in my throat that was controlling my thoughts. I eventually wound up
hospitalized at the age of sixteen.
135. An odd but possibly irrelevant fact: later research showed that there was indeed an Indian burial ground nearby, and the elementary/
middle school I went to was actually built right near it.
• 215 •
Yet the doctors continued to say, “No, let us just adjust your meds. You’re just experiencing mild side
effects.” After a point I couldn’t tell what was me and what was a reaction to the chemicals they were
haphazardly throwing into my body.
It was apparent to me that they were shooting in the dark more than I was. And part of it was because,
they weren’t treating the content of my psychological state, my visions and so on, as symptoms of my body,
my mind, my spirit trying to tell me something meaningful. The modern clinical paradigm is so focused on the
material perspective that it’s lost sight with the other half of the equation, which is one of emergent wholes
rather than reducible, discrete atoms. Each individual has their own mythology which needs to be engaged
in, and as much as there are clear similarities from one to the next, there are also differences, which is the
secret nook where identity hides out. This process is time-consuming and work-intensive for all involved,
and requires a less standard methodology than strict science allows.
Whether or not you give any credence to the exterior existence of the entities I claimed were trying to
communicate with me, they simply saw them as something no more clinically relevant than a fart in a patient
complaining of gas. Perhaps if I had Jung as a psychologist, we would have made progress. But I did not, and
when I mentioned Jung to my doctor, he dismissed him as “someone that could no longer be considered a
real scientist.” (Are you beginning to see why the psychologist and patient relationship is one that has worked
its way into so many of my subsequent works?)
This was another element of my personality that was still already well developed at that point. I always
trusted my experience over the opinion of the experts if it didn’t match those experiences. I was never afraid
to come off like a pompous upstart, questioning a billion dollar industry, thousands of clinical trials, or the
philosophy behind two hundred years of psychoanalytic history if it didn’t jive with “my truth.” I knew I
had to find something else, and after my hopes were dashed again and again that I could find the answers I
needed within the culture around me, I started to look outside of it.
What I needed, and what I never did manage to find, was a shaman. Forgive me if the following definition
is unnecessary for most of you, but just to be clear,
Shamanism is important not only for the place it holds in the history of mysticism. The shamans
have played an essential role in the defense of the psychic integrity of the community. They
are pre-eminently the antidemonic champions; they combat not only demons and disease,
but also the black magicians. …In a general way, it can be said that shamanism defends life,
health, fertility, the world of “light” against death, disease, sterility, disaster and the world of
“darkness.” 136 [181]
Clearly, some of this refers to what most of us would call superstition. And due to a mixture of superstitious
“magical thinking,” and cultural differences, the entirety of the shamanic role is essentially white-washed,
(perhaps the unintentional pun is a poignant one.) This is a joke I play with in the screenplay for Fallen
Nation, when the modern embodiment of Dionysus confronts his psychiatrist,
DIONYSUS
What experience gives you the right to be my shaman?
DOCTOR FEIN
(blinks a moment before replying)
I’m sorry? I’m a psychiatrist. And I’m here to help you,
but only if you want it.
DIONYSUS
I just spent the past three hours driving myself nuts trying to
figure out what caused my most recent bout of heartburn.
Could be repressed childhood trauma.
Could be the awful food you feed me. The meds.
It could be the displaced, angry spirit of an Ibo tribesman
who, for reasons passing understanding,
feels the need to take out his vengeance on my bowels.
136. Viewed from within the various myths of modernity, demons are psychological forces that either by design or happenstance are
destructive to the integrity of the core identity. A demon is, among other things, a force representing a need that hasn’t been integrated.
• 216 •
Any excuse I can come up with to explain the sensation

is just that…an EXCUSE. A guess.
(beat)
If you don’t know what is giving me heartburn,
then how the fuck are you supposed to treat me?
Not a shaman, not even a real doctor. [218]
Within our present cultural models it is easier to look at a shaman as a sort of priest, even if their role
within most traditional cultures was more somewhere between doctor, psychiatrist, priest, and honored
outcast. I bring all of this up in light regard to our present discussion because the intertwined issues of
spiritual and psychological guidance have mostly been pushed to the wayside in our culture. If there is such
a thing, guidance comes in the form of pure indoctrination.137 Teenagers are “tuned out” mostly as a means
to defend themselves. Their veil of indifference is there because society, especially in the form of self-defined
authority figures, have failed to manage the transition from demand to guidance. Hormones might also
be making them moody bitches, but the desire for real guidance that is in alignment with their passions is a
genuine one. This is one of the many places where our society fails itself on a daily basis.
To return to our semblance of a narrative, here is this uppity, sixteen year old kid that has the audacity to
question the prescribed treatment. After all, what is adolescence for but brazen rebellion? What else would
an adolescent at that point do but turn to their peers? This is the point at which this story gets interesting,
at least so far as I am concerned. While these effects were beginning to manifest for me, a small group of
outsider kids such as myself had banded into a strange little group; full of adolescent posturing and all the
rest, but there was something else going on there too. We would go out into the woods, and without having
a clue what we were doing or why, we would conduct rituals. Though in varying degrees and ways—they
experienced their own versions of the “craziness” that I too was experiencing.
The mythologized tale of all of this was retold in my first novel, Join My Cult!, which New Falcon press,
rather oddly, chose to publish with little or no revision or editorial. Here is an excerpt from that story, written
by the protagonist at one stage of his life to himself at a later stage of his life.
I’m in the mental hospital now, writing down the closing chapter of this story. While I do this,
I look back upon the project you asked me to undertake, exploring what led me to you, but I
feel that I’ve only provided a veneer. You asked for a concise record of my probation and instead
I give you a jigsaw puzzle of my parts which, if put in the proper order, like the permutations
of the name of God in Sefer Yetzirah, will make me whole again.
I feel an overwhelming compulsion to schematize my experience. I have digested and

regurgitated these events countless times. They are jumbled and rearranged, reinterpreted,
and recontextualized by events running both directions in my timeline. In the process, these
disparate events become me, my alpha and my omega.
We cannot understand a thing until we make it in our own image. For my own part, I can’t
seem to avoid putting myself in a hall of mirrors…and, it is only through our own darkened
mirror that we can see each other. Those events, those mirror reflections that do not resemble
us disappear. They hide, unnoticed, as a part of our shadow.
When we see our reflected opposite in that mirror, we are pulled up to its surface, maybe
through a fascination with what stands on the other side, if we could only break through. So
far in my experience, the result of this action, this attempt at reconciling opposites, is either
frustration or assimilation. If we do manage to appear through the looking glass, we merge
with our opposite there on the other side. They become us, we become them. Our union and
dissolution is at first bliss, but afterwards there is nothing to be done. And, if you are like
most other Americans, you are still here, alone no matter how many thighs or oceans you have
parted, existing in spiritual exile from the world out there.
137. Which is not to say that this is a historically new occurrence. Nor that all forms of guidance aren’t indoctrination in some form: but
there is a difference between being taught to cook, being fed a meal, and being shot up with heroin instead. As a guide or teacher, one can
intend liberation, enslavement, or something in-between.
• 217 •
Thus I see this account in many ways as an attempt at valid communication, where the hall of
mirrors of my ego will reflect a bigger picture, a birds-eye view. If I cannot understand, relate
to and experience another as they are in themselves, without the intrusion of my perception,
then perhaps we can relate through what I create.
The story you have before you is, at first, the mere appearance of the events that have transpired,
and it was only when my imagination began to run wild, when the white walls of my room
became a blank slate for my projections, that the real story, what you’re looking for as my
appointed teacher, become apparent. Even then it was clear, at least to me, only as a sidelong
glance, a fleeting mirage in the corner of my eyes. Whenever I look directly at anything, it
disappears. I’ve learned that these projections, these ocular hallucinations, playing themselves
out as the external circumstances that create my life experiences, were simply references to
inner truths. Not the truth, but my myth, my truth.
To you, I hope, these phantasms will appear clearly. This is, as you know, why I first approached
the Order.
These painful, somewhat lonely realizations have led me to yet another conclusion: I have not
yet managed to turn around from this inner journey and come back into the world of events,
a prophet, a warrior—a Yes. I spend days looking out at the world, internally and externally
silent, lost somewhere in the gap between possibility and actuality, the past and the future. The
moment passes me by. My soul is catatonic.
What am I waiting for?
It is slow, gradual pressure that is the formula for both genius and earthquakes. Life tells us
our secrets in these cracks, the way events conspire with each other in hidden grottos. This
movement is at times very subtle, over a long time, like plate tectonics. If you don’t have
the right eyes, you might miss these patterns altogether. Although our lives do not occur in
geological scales of time, it is still the gradual pressure and our minute reactions, our habits
that actually speak of our true natures. Our true will and intent is contained in potential within
each of us, though in many it is buried very, very deep.
I was young at the time the story begins, still half asleep in the dream of my childhood. We
were all too young, but who amongst us can predict precisely when the pot is finally going
to boil over? There is a time, for some of us, when we are able to step outside the events that
formed us, the environment that shaped us, and in that moment, we look back upon the
sum of our experience and ask “where was I in that?” Where in the equation do you express
yourself, not as a reaction but as a whole person? And, should we be unable to find ourselves
in that equation, do we then become, as the sleeper awakening, indifferent to the events that
composed the whole of that dream or memory? Do we turn a blind eye upon our past when
we step forward? [18]
I am rushing you through the details pertaining to that story because I want to talk about this from
a slightly different angle than I could from within the confines of the adolescent, fragmented, pluralist
narrative of Join My Cult!. I’d like to look at the impulse that led me to write that book, fifteen years on, as a
symptom of the “initiatory crisis” that we have discussed in several sections of this book. I was not the only
one going through this painful crisis, even though all of our crises were our own, and I could only write
from my own perspective. That is what is culturally relevant; not the particular story, but the fact that it is a
symptom of something larger.
As we’ve explored, adolescence is always the crisis point, in any culture, when individuation has reached a
point that a society must snatch up the unwary youth and consecrate them for a task. We have no such thing
outside of what is accomplished by the secular institutions of industry and even religion, and the outsiders
are the worst off for it. To this day I know many people that I care for who are deeply in need of guidance
of a sort that is not easily found. Almost no modern psychiatrist can provide this, because psychology has
been, forgive the dramatization, gobbled up by the pharmacological-industrial complex; by the mythology
• 218 •
of homogeneity that is a pre-requisite of industry, as we’ve already explored. It wants to treat humans as if we
are interchangeable, complex machines that can be repaired in the same manner as a car or computer.
So we have these people who may very well have a great deal to contribute to the world, but who really
have no place within this system, no culturally recognized value, because that value is not easily monetized.
Though most outsiders are not shamans because, at the least, they’ve never been officially trained as such,
even most trained shamans would have no place here. They would either need to “get with the program,” or
become that toothless man that just yelled at you as you were rushing down the street and into the subway.
We are left without a cultural place, like many of those in third world countries, who have been raped
by this same system to such a degree that outsiders in this culture can’t even begin to dream of. (I’ve never
had to root through garbage to find my next meal). We are left to make the best of what tools are provided
to us within our personal networks, and fall back on another prominent American myth: the myth of the
individual.
Many outsiders do stake a claim within the mainstream society, by hook or by crook as they say. I have
met self-made CEOs who never finished high school. I have met several—though fewer—self-made CEOs
and entrepreneurs who went through their own “shamanic initiatory crisis,” who traveled all the way to the
“other side” of those Doors of Perception, and returned with the ability to traverse this world with a foot in
the other world—to beat them at their own game, to use the system to their benefit and get away with it.
This is quite a high-wire act, however. As Immortal Technique says on his first album,
…talk about change and working within the system to achieve that. The problem with always
being a conformist is that when you try to change the system from within, it’s not you who
changes the system; it’s the system that will eventually change you. There is usually nothing
wrong with compromise in a situation, but compromising yourself in a situation is another
story completely, and I have seen this happen long enough in the few years that I’ve been alive
to know that it’s a serious problem. [220]
The idea of being a sort of Robin Hood is appealing. Robin Hood is actually an excellent example of the
myth of a forced outsider, (forced into the role, stripped of rank), who, in following his heart’s egalitarian
values rather than the laws of the land, attempts to “stick it to the man” with the aid of his “merry men,” all
outsiders themselves.
On its face, it even seems simple enough; looking at the corporate world from the outside, it seems like a
fairly easy “secret society” to infiltrate. Yet I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve seen people, and companies,
tread this path and discover the same Catch 22s. I know I espoused “selling out without selling out,” but I’ve
never seen it come easily.
In reality, most outsiders of the type I’m talking about struggle through life, half-broken, the walking
wounded, fighting off visions, impressions and habitual complexes that they can’t begin to understand,
perhaps not clinically schizophrenic, but quickly approaching that point for lack of any real guidance or
assistance that doesn’t come as part of a system aimed at nothing more than shutting them up and getting
them out of their hair. If you don’t start out on this outsider path as a schizophrenic, you will end it that way
if you don’t find a way of finding integration. What begins as a bad mental habit at age thirteen can become
full-blown clinical depression by age thirty, and the more our mental pathways burn themselves through
repetition, the more things become internalized and subconscious, they harder they are to yank out at the
root. This might be a wonderful thing when it comes to training one’s self to play an instrument, but it is
a curse when it is the legacy of a gifted but troubled outcast who can’t seem to quite “make it” in a world
that, truth be told, wants nothing to do with what they have to offer because they simply don’t understand
them.
So I’ve gone a long way in describing the crux of this situation, the cultural challenge posed to outsiders,
and yet I never explained how I went from this crisis to the present—still searching for my place in this
schizophrenic multiplicity of cultures that we falsely call a singular “culture,” but also more rooted within
myself. (Except for when seeking a place deludes me into thinking otherwise.)
Well, it was probably a multitude of things…
Most esoterically, I think the intuitive rituals I did with my friends began a process. During most of
them—and some became rather elaborate despite the fact that we were stumbling in the dark in those
woods, figuratively and literally—I was trying to send some kind of message to myself in the future, to find
a teacher in myself, and to find wisdom from that, because I had even at that age mostly given up on finding
• 219 •
it in a physical person around myself. Maybe in some weird way, I set myself into a frame of mind where I
would have to eventually transform into that person who could give my past self some kind of wisdom, or
guidance. The character Aleonis De Gabrael, in Join My Cult!, was my first envisioning of this person. (There
is a historic precedent to this as well—many Indians who have been taught by gurus in various traditions
have later revealed, without any apparent sense of irony, that their teachers were non-corporeal.)
There is another method I explored that some might consider rather dangerous. After having been pumped
full of various drugs which did nothing more than exacerbate my problems, when I was released from the
mental hospital, I decided that there was at that point nothing to really risk by taking hallucinogens. What,
would they drive me crazy? Good luck with that! I was feeding blood to trees and trying to communicate
with time-traveling entities with flashlights. I couldn’t imagine what LSD could do to me that my brain, and
the awful meds I’d been given, hadn’t already done.
My first experience with LSD was eye-opening in a way that I don’t think many experience: I felt normal.
Which isn’t to say I wasn’t seeing colors, and all the rest. But after that first hour of obligatory confusion
when your neurotransmitters scramble and re-orient, I felt more clear-headed than I had ever before in my
life. As an added bonus, the sunset was more beautiful than ever. But this was just an added benefit.
After several years of experimentation with this, I discovered that I was developing a resistance to the
psychological ailments that had so traumatized me before. I have become so nonplussed by certain psychological
phenomena that it’s like their “trick” no longer works on me. The machine elves can be screaming from my
spine as the world dissolves and dances in triangles, and I’m simply not fazed. For the most part, I stopped.
My challenges have changed, having to do more with carving a place for myself in a society that has a hard
time understanding let alone valuing what I actually have to offer. The existential dilemmas of identity are
no longer interesting or relevant, though I deal with them in some of my work for the sake of those who are
still wrestling with those things.
The actual lessons provided by these chemicals seems relatively simple, and fits rather nicely into the
themes developed in the previous section on initiation, as well as here. It’s a lesson as simple as: let go. Hey
look, the walls are bleeding. Let go. I’m fifty and my life is a wreck. Let go. That hawk-headed God has giant
tits and it’s starting to unnerve me. Let go. If you hold on, it can become a demon, and if you let go, it
becomes bliss. Death will come for us all. Let’s not be altogether unprepared. Will you be surprised when it
is your turn, as if you were somehow exempt?
After a certain point, once you’ve grasped this, you simply don’t need any drugs to “force” you to face the
chaos of the Real, that which has not been rendered neat and orderly by the properly functioning pattern
recognition of your neurology. (Which, believe me, isn’t something you simply learn and then manage to
hold on to forever after.)
It’s questionable if any of us ever did need them—though for suburban adolescents going through a crisis
such as I was, there may have been no other way. You can get to the same place by doing yoga all day. There
are many ways to come to this realization on a level deeper than logic. Sure, you’ll lose that ability to just let
go and be present all the time and get caught up in life. You’ll do that because you’re human and that’s a part
of the experience of being alive. But in the back of your mind now, you have that spot you can fall back to,
that place where you learned you can fall back from anything and observe a sensation from the outside. And
if that sounds a lot like a defense mechanism you read about in Psych 101, that’s because it may well be.
Like all defense mechanisms, dissociation is only pathological when it is out of control. The point is being
able to access such mechanisms—and to come out of them—consciously. It is no more important than the
ability to be completely and utterly present, to focus, and to be—for lack of a better term—immanent as an
agent of divinity manifest in time. (I have already implied the synthetic rather than dialectical relationship
between these two.)
Reading this, I’m sure there are some that will misinterpret my point, and think that I’m suggesting, as
many others have, that psychedelics are some kind of magic bullet for psychological difficulties. They are not.
Do I suggest this method to others? Only if they see no other recourse, and if they have the kind of strange
capacity to accept weirdness I have been told that I have. Just don’t blame me if you try it as your method
and it cracks you wide open and leaves you crying like a baby for eight hours: because that just might be
your first step on the path. Go with it. A little crying while the walls bleed isn’t going to kill you, and death
is something you’re going to have to come to grips with. If not now, then later.
In the counterculture since the 1960s of course, there has been a myth about the positive effects of
• 220 •
psychedelics and similar drugs. While many people extol the virtues of psychedelics in circles such as these,
mostly in opposition to the parroted rhetoric of the mainstream culture, I think it’s simply meaningless to
propose that a substance is inherently good or bad. The statement doesn’t even make sense. Psychotropic
chemicals have a variety of effects, most of which are not really understood, on a nervous system and
consciousness that also exists more in the shadows than the light. The question of their use is whether
exploring these uncharted waters is worth more than the risk. What could be a more American pursuit than
blindly using a little of that Manifest Destiny machismo and plunging forward? That is a question that is, all
political posturing aside, best left in the hands of each individual.
There may be yet another reason why I’ve managed to go from there to here, with only the initiations
that life has provided through happenstance, my own blind ritual explorations, and several years of self-
medication. I was lucky enough to encounter several teachers in later years. They were not shamans, which
in this day and age, is probably a good thing—most people in the Western world that proclaim themselves
“shamans” should be avoided at all costs. (You have been warned. That smelly long-hair at the trance festival
all painted up in black-light paint that calls himself a “shaman” because he did ayahuasca once? Beware.)
The teachers I refer to were practitioners of internal Kung Fu (Bagua and Xingyi), of Ericksonian
hypnotherapy, of NLP, of various forms of yoga, and from all of them I developed still other skills for
working internally which, even if atrophied from a lack of regular practice in recent years, still remains a part
of who I am.
Even though we don’t have any tradition, and the world is full of very few true teachers, in a strange
way, that is also a boon. We can find our own way, and find occasional guides through acts of serendipity
when the time is right. Many self-proclaimed teachers will just lead you further astray. And if you look hard
enough, and are willing to be a genuine human being and not hide behind a wall when you do happen to
come face-to-face with another genuine human, you might be surprised. Be patient.
Gurus and teachers ultimately aren’t necessary. It is more the lack of the right road map when we are at a
formative stage that can be problematic.
…The whole thing (ed: The Bardo process) is based on another way of looking at the psychological
picture of ourselves in terms of a practical meditative situation. Nobody is going to save us,
everything is left to the individual, the commitment to who we are. Gurus or spiritual friends
might instigate that possibility, but fundamentally they have no function. [120]
If you are especially lucky, you might even find others in the wilderness. Guides or not, true companionship
amongst individuals is both rare and vital. I hope this book might even provide a little assistance with that
task. To quote Margaret Mead, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can
change the world.” Why is that the case? Because it is the only thing that ever has.
The story does not end here, however. (Initiation never ends, not really.) Our subconscious can never be
truly boxed away; and the ability to deal with the experienced that are shored up from that “world” conferred
by psychedelics or a practice like yoga can never fully prepare us for a confrontation with the full strength of
the subconscious, though they certainly can help. You can spend years on solid ground and then, as I recently
experienced, you can take a single small step and fall back into the water. Luckily, swimming is a skill one
doesn’t need to entirely relearn, even if it’s been a long time.
To conclude this section I’d like to give an example of this, even if being honest about it in published print
may very well hinder my professional life in the future. Nothing theoretical or conjectural, but rather an
experience taken directly from my recent life.
This does require a short preamble. Since I was a teenager, I have had very occasional “spells.” (No, I am
not a character from a Tennessee William’s play.) One version of this is an uncontrollable lassitude and even
paralysis. It can be very frightening to others around me, as well as myself; I’ve gone limp as a rag-doll, and
am only half in this world.
Some of these experiences were not unlike what “alien abductees” describe. For instance, one night, when
I was sixteen or seventeen, I felt compelled beyond all sense and reason to climb out my window and go
into the woods. In the woods, I saw a brilliant light in the sky, radiating down on me. And as I looked, I
felt myself floating up towards it. Then…darkness. I awoke in my room. This could easily be dismissed as a
dream, except my window was open.
I’m not attempting to prove anything beyond the fact that this has been my experience, and others have
witnessed it. It wasn’t until yesterday that I pieced together what some of this might actually be, with the
• 221 •
input of Jazmin, my wife, sitting patiently and always at my side as I gibbered like a madman while in the
throes of this thing. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
As has often been the case in my life, what cracked open the otherwise dark “box” of the unconscious was
a woman, a deep connection springing from out of nowhere. But this part of the story isn’t about her. It is
about the symbolic “world” that exists within our own, and those liminal states, those shadows that walk
alongside us, if we can step across the gap. It’s also worth mentioning that I was on no drugs at the time that
this occurred. I will endeavor to retell my experience as directly and honestly as is possible, although some of
it stretches the possibilities of what can be easily expressed in common language. I’ll do my best.
Like those times before, I was lying in bed and I could barely move. It’s not unlike being impossibly drunk,
or attempting to move your arm by will alone, rather than simply…moving it. Sleep paralysis is terrifying.
Experiencing it while awake is even more peculiar. However, in the past, I fought my way out of it. This time,
fighting wasn’t working. It wasn’t getting better or worse.
So I decided to try to dive deeper into it, instead. Everything in the field of my view gave way. I felt as if
I was moving through empty space. The feeling had a visual component to it, even though everything was
dark; like a darkness seen somehow behind or underneath everything that appears to have surfaces. And then
I felt I wasn’t anything at all, except awareness in a void.
Despite how alien this was, a piece of me remained fairly rational, and I wondered if nothingness could
exist without a point of reference. I realized I must be that point. Even if a point has no dimensions (width,
height), position of some kind is necessary to give form to void. The point was my consciousness, like a
bubble, drifting through empty space. Ex nihilo, nihil fit is a lie.
I still couldn’t move my body. Jazmin was checking to see if I was having a stroke, if I was breathing, and
so on. I mumbled something, “no, it’s not that,” maybe.
In the void (behind, under, tangential to all apparent things) I heard voices singing. They were a kind of
sing-song, like the make-believe songs that children sing. I tried to mouth along, and felt that in the process
of imitating the silly songs that these voices were singing, I was helping to coalesce something. The feeling
was not unlike going through a door, blowing into a balloon, and falling through space all at once, though
it was really none of those things.
When this happened, I realized there were other dots—other bubbles—in this void. Some contained more
than one consciousness, but all contained at least one. I felt that I could either push forward into this weird
other world or I could try to fight my way back into my body and shake it off.
For some reason, this time, I went forward, instead of back. It seemed that “size” wasn’t relevant in reference
to these “bubbles.” They were self-contained worlds. Or so my rational mind thought. You must understand
at the same time as one part of my brain was analyzing this, another was simply half-muttering, singing along
with the gibberish sing-song of the guides that seemed to be leading me into this completely alien space.
While some bubbles came into being, others were popping. “It’s so painful, when they pop,” I said, and for
a moment, began to cry, before I found myself colliding with one of these bubbles. It jolted some kind of
shift.
At this point in time I was lying curled around a body pillow. The body pillow appeared to turn into
a giant centipede. Pitch black, covered in shiny scales like a dragon. Light reflected off of the scales and I
kept saying, “They’re like rainbows.” (I am really surprised that Jazmin managed to avoid laughing at me at
this point. Probably if she wasn’t scared she would have.) I grabbed a-hold of the centipede and squeezed
it, thinking that the only way to take something so horrifying and make it safe would be to envelop it, to
become it; to “eat” it. I did this and the centipede became a pillow again.
I became distracted by the perception of some “thing” that was a train—that is, I felt the comforting
rocking motion like I might while in the cabin of a train, and it felt like it was moving forward like a train
might—but it was also a snake, slithering to and fro, shedding its skin, it was …
I saw a bath-tub full of milk, and a goat standing inside it. The milk was goat’s milk, I assume. The snake/
train became the moon, or rather it was the moon. I was in the train, looking up at the moon above, and at
the same time looking down from this giant moon…down to the tub, the milk, and the goat staring at me
blankly with those alien, square-pupilled eyes. The moon turned blood red, and dripped into the bath, each
drop splashing complex patterns of deep red in the milky white. Fragments of my consciousness fell in those
drops of blood, each self-contained worlds themselves. Drip. Drip.
Somewhere around this point Jazmin said, “Jamie, you’re having a waking dream.”
• 222 •
It suddenly made sense. Everything clicked into place. I rocked back and forth, laughing, saying again and
again, “That’s it!”
When you are sleeping, normally, your brain paralyzes your body. Sleep or neurological disturbances
can affect this, so that you might kick when running in a dream, but normally, these bodily motions are
essentially shut off. Granted, I have no scientific evidence of this but it seems to stand to reason that the
paralysis I occasionally experience is the result of this, my brain thinking I am entering sleep.138
As I think of this now, it occurs to me that children exist much closer to this “dreaming world” than
acculturated adults do. They may not often delve so deep as the initiated can, but perhaps only because they
are wise enough to be scared of what lurks under the bed. But this world of symbol, where a thing can “be”
many things at once, and yet none of them, trespassing the boundaries of time, form, and physical reality as
we are accustomed to it, is the birthing well of myth. And it needn’t be experienced from afar, academically,
theoretically, or even just through the stories of others who have gone there.
However, as is always the case with all sources of great power, it is also dangerous. In the past, there were
the shamans to guide us. Now, for both better and worse, all we have is each other.

138. Later sleep study analysis did show that there is something weird going on with my brainwaves in sleep. Part of my diagnosis was that
it was idiopathic, which is Doctorese for “We don’t know what the hell is causing this.”
• 223 •
Paper Tiger
Jason Kephas
When the stars threw down their spears,

And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
William Blake, “The Tyger” [221]
My Brother, My Keeper
Dear Cain
I don’t expect you to believe me, but none of this was my idea. I’m not angry at you for what you
did. You were only following your nature, as I was mine. The story was predetermined from the start.
You were written to play the slayer, as I was the slain. As long as I was Abel, you had to be Cain.
Suicide by brother? I can’t think of a better way to go. This is not just a goodbye note; it’s also a
thank you letter for all you have done. By being such a ferocious lion, you have led me to lie down
with the lamb.
Thank you, brother, and fare thee well. Death is indeed the crown of all, and I couldn’t have
done it without you!
Abel
A Tale of Two Brothers
And the LORD said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother
And he said, I know not: Am I my brother’s keeper?
Genesis 4: 6-9
This is the tale of two brothers. I am one, the subject of this story is the other. Perhaps the strangest thing
about this story is that, although it is my own, I am little more than a bystander in the narrative.
The forest is now empty, for the tree that fell landed right on top of the only one around to hear it. And
so there was no sound, besides his cry.
What follows is the echo of that cry, as it is swallowed by the silence. It is a tale of brotherly love, and of
brotherly violence.
There are two things I will say about my brother. The first is that he is without doubt the biggest asshole I
have ever known, as well as my greatest, indeed only, enemy in this life.
The other is that, more than any person alive, he made me the man I am today. He is both the hero and
the villain of my story, while I am both his victim and his beneficiary.
Love comes in many guises. One thing that I can say about my love for my brother: it has never been
lukewarm. He is the first man I ever loved and the only man I ever hated.
He likes to refer to himself as “mediocrity on stilts”; the truth is more disturbing and complex than that.
If much of what follows seems to be about the smallness of his spirit, that is only because I, more than any
other, know the true greatness that lies within his heart.
• 224 •
The Slayer & the Slain
The greatest burden a child must bear is the unlived life of the parents.
C.G. Jung
A word about myself. My mother loved me so much that she stunted my growth. Though I was never
breast-fed, I was all but smothered by her embrace. Her love was not unconditional, you see. I was used as an
even greater source of comfort to her than the bottle. I was not quite comfort enough to replace it, however;
in fact, she was even drinking through my (unnaturally induced) birth. Considering the amount she drunk
while I was in the womb, it is a wonder I didn’t come out pickled.
I was for my mother what is known (these days) as “a husband surrogate child.” I suppose that must have
been quite nice for me at the time, getting to be the special one. But it can wreak havoc in a man’s psyche
later in life. I was forty before I realized that I had been attached to my mother by a psychic umbilical chord
for my whole life. No wonder my relationships never seemed to work out.
Before I came along, my brother had been the only male child, so it is easy to imagine his consternation
when I entered the picture and he found himself playing second fiddle to a golden-haired intruder. Our
father was already indifferent to him, having favored our sister, the first-born. So my brother was caught in
the middle, and doubly rejected, by both his father and his mother. I have no idea what it was like for him;
I don’t remember anything. But, judging by how my brother still bristles today, it seems safe to say that
his bristling begun early in life. How could it not have? The situation must have been intolerable for him.
Parents wound their children without even trying.
Is there more? My friends, there is so much more to this story that pretty soon you will be sorry you
ever asked. I am not Dostoyevsky, however, so have no fear: this is not the start of a thousand-page novel
of mother-bondage and fratricide. It is the start of a 14,000-word article posing as a short story of mother-
bondage and fratricide. I will try to keep to the main points, but please bear with me if I seem to ramble or
digress. There are many layers to this narrative, for this is not only a personal story. It is also a blueprint. And
if you read it closely enough, you may find this story is your own.
A Binary System
I remember having a vision about my brother with whom my relationship had always been fraught—
the usual sibling rivalries carried to some pretty nasty and petty extremes. He was, after all, a potential
threat to my individuality. We like to speak casually about ‘sibling rivalry’ as though it were some kind
of by-product of growing up, a bit of competitiveness and selfishness in children who have been spoilt,
who haven’t yet grown into a generous social nature. But it is too all-absorbing and relentless to be an
aberration; it expresses the heart of the creature—the desire to stand out. Now, suddenly, I saw that the
war was over. We flew together until we faced each other. I took off my head. He took off his. I placed
mine on his shoulders and he placed his on mine. I have to say that I think he got the better deal.
The Brother’s Ibogaine experience [222]
That my brother and I are polar opposites is a fact that has been evident to both of us for many years. The
more he pulls in one direction, the more I am driven to the other extreme, and vice versa. I have lived most
of my life as a virtual aesthete and a sometimes celibate. He has lived his life as a libertine dandy, a hedonist
who has slept with a thousand whores. Pulling apart. I have always had a Christ complex; yet it was he who
opted to be crucified. He has always wished to be the center of the Universe, yet it was I who wound up
lobbying to be “the One.” Pulling together. It is as if we are two parts of a single organism, a binary system
in which the one pole is forever reacting to and compensating for the other. For years, I assumed this was
something genetic, that we were, like twins, a single psyche split into two bodies. Now I know that it has less
to do with genetic hardwiring than with those early, formative years outlined above, and whatever it was that
occurred, during that mostly forgotten time.
Fittingly enough, the way in which this polarity has most obviously played out between us is in our
“religious” beliefs. My brother is a nihilist who has turned himself into a sort of Luciferian embodiment of
the denial of God: “Even if God existed, I wouldn’t believe in Him.” Although I have never been religious
(our father’s staunch atheism imprinted us both from an early age), I have spent most of my adult life on
what might be called a quest for higher meaning, for the possibility of a reality beyond the sovereign self. Yet,
• 225 •
since opposites meet in the extreme, my brother and I are actually quite alike in essence. Isn’t questing after
truth as sure a way to stay out of truth as a denial of truth? We were cast from the same mold and shaped
in the same laboratory: that of our alcohol-infused, sexually promiscuous family circle. It is only the ways in
which we have reacted to our environment that differ so radically.
The bitter pill of truth that both of us must now swallow is that, while steadfastly pulling in opposite
directions, we have both wound up in the same place: living a false narrative, defined by the unconscious
load we have been carrying, a load made up of the unlived lives of our parents.
Some Personal Background

Think not that I came to send peace on the earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I
came to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother …
Matthew 10:34-35
I suffered from night terrors as a child, and repeated minor illnesses. This carried through into adulthood,
with chronic body pains, sore throats, headaches, and constant fatigue. My childhood is mostly a barren
wasteland, a shadowy void in which monsters seem to lurk. Our mother doesn’t remember much of what
happened, since most of her attention was taken up by alcohol and an obsessive fixation on two men.
(Another binary system.) She refers to that time as “like a nightmare,” without being able to account for this
feeling with anything concrete. Oddly, my brother has a similar take: “It’s as if something terrible happened,”
he says, while insisting that nothing ever did. As with murder, sometimes the only evidence is an absence.
As an adolescent and teenager I looked up to him and wanted to be just like him. As I grew up, I copied
my brother’s interests, his taste in music, his style of dress. Although he subtly encouraged me in this by
giving me his old clothes, records, and such, he also resented me for it. Eventually, I did manage to find my
own persona. Or so I thought.
The persona that I created for myself in adolescence and adulthood was that of a writer and film buff.
Although I dabbled in poetry as a teenager, my real focus was on writing film reviews and scripts (and
even some amateur filmmaking). Later on, I developed an interest in Castaneda, Crowley and the occult
(something I had also been drawn to as a teenager, but only briefly). It is curious to note that these two
interests (film and the supernatural) seem to echo my brother’s obsession with Hammer horror films when I
was growing up. The walls of his bedroom were covered with gory images, making his room a source of terror
and fascination for me. My brother’s world, though menacing and foreboding, was a world I desperately
wished to enter into.
In 2007, my brother published his “unauthorized autobiography.” By that time, I had already published
five books, three of which were about film, another of which was about the occult, and the most recent,
Matrix Warrior, published in 2003, was a mixture of occult lore and movie analysis. The book was part of my
testing the waters as to whether I was “the One,” and the verdict, naturally enough, would depend on how
well the book sold. The book tanked. I was not the One. My brother’s book, on the other hand, was reviewed
by all the major periodicals and quickly optioned for a movie adaptation. With his first serious foray into
writing, he had achieved the goal I had worked half my life to attain.
Mind Control and Body Pains

We all know that people who hear voices are crazy. Yet we talk to ourselves all day long, and not all of our
internal dialogue is friendly. So where do we draw the line? If a voice were installed into our consciousness
early enough, we might take it for our own voice, regardless of how antithetical it might be to us. This is the
case for me. My brother’s voice has been inside my head for as long as I can remember, but this is a fact I have
only just come to recognize. All these years, I thought it was my own voice. I knew all about mind control
and schizophrenia, but that was something that happened to other people (rather like child abuse). I imagine
the reader feels much the same way.
Yet if I cast my mind back, I first became aware of this voice in my head in my mid twenties, during
the time I started writing seriously. I developed a habit of reading back what I had written as if through my
brother’s eyes, imagining what he would think of it. This was a rather odd habit because I was fully aware that
what I was writing would be of no interest to him, that it was beneath his contempt. So why imagine him
as my audience? You might say that I was using him as an imaginary foil, a way of testing out my arguments
in my own mind, and no doubt this was part of it. But there was something else there, something that took
• 226 •
me twenty years to get to. My brother was actually inside my mind. He had installed himself there, like an
MKULTRA programmer, pulling my strings. I was a victim of the most mundane kind of mind-control:
family patterns.
Fitting, then, that the truth finally came to the surface when I was reading about the links between
mind control programs and serial killers. The book presented evidence that many of the more famous serial
murderers had not acted alone, but were part of a larger network that included organized crime, drug rings,
child pornography and snuff movies, and elements of the US military and intelligence groups. While reading
the book, I found myself imagining my brother’s scornful reaction throughout, like a ceaseless nagging in my
skull. The fact was my brother did dismiss any such subjects whenever they came up between us, with scorn
and derision and in such a way that I tended to quickly drop the subject in order to avoid conflict. I am sure
you have experienced something similar with family members: it is normal enough to have opposing points
of view, and to have arguments that are charged way beyond the importance of the subjects themselves.
But this was something else. Here I was arguing with my brother and he wasn’t even on the same continent
as me! This went beyond the normal sort of family disagreement or sibling rivalry. It was closer to a kind
of obsession. It was as though some part of me needed to have my point of view, my version of reality,
acknowledged, and was butting heads with a counter narrative in order to achieve this. The trouble was, I
was butting heads with myself.
Glamour Magik Vs. Grammar Magik

I was the classic unreliable narrator whose passion to entertain overrode my duty to inform. My highly enameled
prose was merely an extension of my rather gaudy clothes. I am not a writer. I am a performer. Writing is merely
a way of bringing myself to the notice of the world. And it is the world I care about, not the writing.
The Brother [223]
It took me over two years to finally read the book. I had dipped into the first chapter, and that had
been enough. My brother’s descriptions of our mother and other elements from my childhood seemed like
deliberate distortion, for shock effect and easy laughs. Of course, I looked for any references to myself. There
were only two passages about me in the book, much to my relief. The longest was as follows:
“I was particularly horrible to my brother. It started early. When [my sister], coming back from the
hospital, told me ‘It’s a boy,’ my face fell to the floor. ‘Stillborn’ was kinda what I was hoping for. Jake was a
potential threat to my individuality. From that moment on, my relationship with him was always fraught ~
any excuse I got to slap, stab, or shoot him, I took it. I remember pushing his pram down the sloping lawn
and then letting it go to career into a ditch and turn over. ‘Jake’s dead I think,’ I informed my mother. When
he was older I used more subtle tactics. I remember kicking him in the stomach and watching him crumple
like a deflating airbag. Once he was ostentatiously tapping his foot to Marc Bolan. I stood up and stamped
on it. ‘Find you own music,’ I said. Later, he stole my clothes and possessions, trying to inhabit me. He
failed. Nobody can be exactly like me. Even I have trouble doing it.” [223]
What my brother describes here is a fairly intense level of violence directed by one brother against another.
Since there was almost five years difference between us, as the younger child, I would have been helpless to
retaliate, at least for those first few years. Yet his description makes this intensely violent scenario seem of no
real consequence, no more than rough play between siblings. It gives no hint of what it might have been like
for me to be born under the shadow of such murderous rage. So my brother’s actions are hidden in plain
sight. This is the essence of his sorcery.
Here’s another example. According to my brother, I was “a threat to [his] individuality.” Actually, I was a
threat to his centrality as the only son, and in reaction to that, he became a threat to my own individuality.
In his version of the tale, since I am the threat to him, his attempt to murder me becomes “self-defense.” The
reader’s sympathy remains with the protagonist, whose sovereignty remains unchallenged. It is telling also
that my brother states that I was trying to “inhabit” him, when my experience is the reverse: it was he who
inhabited me, possessed me, occupied my thoughts and moods with his relentless violations.
The facts my brother presents are distorted by the force of his own distortions. He projects his reality onto
the facts, and thereby puts them in service to a false narrative. The reader sees but does not register what he
sees, because his gaze is already being directed elsewhere. My brother’s glamour magik extended onto the
page and become grammar magik.
Since I am the most inconvenient detail in his life, he takes pains to reduce me to irrelevancy in his
• 227 •
narrative. Erasure is the subtlest and most effective form of violence. Yet I then become conspicuous for my
absence. The only evidence of murder is that there is no body to be found.
How deeply installed is this false narrative in our family? It took almost forty years for my mother to realize
that I had been bullied by my brother while we were growing up.
One thing that my brother does get right in his memoir is that our father was also most conspicuous by his
absence, and largely indifferent to us as children. Both he and our mother were heavy drinkers and for much
of the time oblivious to what we were doing. My brother has always been an intensely secretive individual,
but even combining these factors, the reader may well ask: how did he ensure his treatment of me never come
to our mother’s attention? Somehow, he had to make me complicit, at least in keeping silent. To this day, I
don’t know how he managed it, but whatever went on during that time, my brother effectively pulled the
wool over everyone’s eyes, including my own. Even though his violent handling of me is now down in black
and white in his memoir, I still find it hard to admit that any “abuse” occurred. It seems in bad taste to do
so. After all, he has already “made light” of it.
The thing about cover stories is: they are never as interesting as what really happened. Who would want to
read Crime and Punishment written by an unrepentant Raskolnikov?
Which Way is Up? The Rabbit Hole of Personal History

When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate.
C. G. Jung
The imposition of a false narrative begins the moment we are born, with the Cesarean birth, the induced
contractions, or the moment we are slapped on the backside and forced to breathe. It continues when our
mother tells us when to be hungry and when not to be; when to cry and when to smile. We learn table
manners and do what we are told. Infants are wild, instinctive creatures; they must be domesticated for their
own good.
Our parents, already firmly inculcated with the correct modes of social behavior, indoctrinate us with the
same “false narrative.” Instinctive behavior is anti-social and must be suppressed. Social norms are imposed
upon us from day one, rewarding us for meeting expectations (going along with the false narrative), and
punishing us for failing to do so. Our fear of monsters is dismissed along with our imaginary friends; we are
taught to be tough and resilient, and at the same time meek and obedient, in order to get along in the world.
Adults fear the wildness of children. They project their fears onto the child and impose restrictions to protect
it from their own (often imaginary) fears. This is called “good parenting.”
The idea that, as instinctive creatures, infant children might know exactly what they need and when they
need it (though not how to get it), this possibility is never allowed; and so the possibility of listening and
responding to a child is reduced, in those early years, almost to zero. This then gives rise to impossibly
demanding toddlers, and eventually, to impossibly demanding adults. Children who have not been heard,
learn to make a lot of noise. Take my brother and me as examples.
The narrative we inherit is our physical, emotional, and psychological imprinting as infants. As adults,
we have imprints instead of instincts, and our life trajectories have little or nothing to do with any conscious
decisions we make. We cling to our narratives as if our life depends on it; to a certain extent it does. The
way we view the world defines who we think we are: it is our constructed identity. Deconstructing these
narratives then would be akin to identity suicide. Ideally, what we want is the reverse: to construct and
sustain a narrative in which we are Kings, sovereign royalty who get to decide the difference between right
and wrong and in which everyone else slavishly agrees with us or suffers the consequences. This is a world
that only A-list celebrities and the very, very rich ever get to experience: a world of Yes-people. Such a desire
is a natural enough reaction to the powerlessness and anxiety we experience as children. The more intense
the trauma of childhood (absent fathers, drunken mothers, bullying brothers, etc), the more desperately we
cling to a compensatory narrative in which we have complete control and can feel totally safe.
How does this pertain to the present narrative? My brother traffics in illusion. He does it quite well and
has managed to charm his way onto book shelves and talk shows; he may even wind up, one of these days, as
a 50-foot Hollywood-incarnation at your local multiplex. Near the start of his book, citing how his Mother
taught him the only thing worth knowing, he writes: “where there is contest between illusion and reality,
reality should be requested to give in gracefully.” [224] Like Lucifer, my brother creates false realities in which
he can be sovereign and supreme. He has done it since the day I was born, and he is still doing it today.
• 228 •
Blueprint of a Wound
Distant relatives are the best kind, and the further the better. You see, as a natural loner
and auto-invention I grasped early the irrelevance of family life.
The Brother [223]
My parents split up when I was seven and my brother was eleven or twelve. Before this, when I was
only five, my mother took another lover (the man who eventually replaced my father). It’s safe to say the
marriage was nearing the rocks when I was born, and I think also safe to say that, as a result of this growing
estrangement (as is often the case), my mother turned to her youngest son for comfort and well-being. My
father might have experienced a degree of hostility towards the newborn as a result of this; but if so, it was
my brother who received the brunt of it. The older the son, the more of a threat he is perceived to be, and
the more suited a receptacle he is for the father’s resentment. My brother is angry at our (deceased) father to
this day, a feeling clearly expressed in his memoirs. It is perhaps the deepest wound he carries.
When my brother was young, our father scorned him for his stupidity, his perceived lack of intellect.
My brother suffered from dyslexia, itself a likely symptom of stress; but there was little awareness of such
a condition at the time. My brother alludes to this, while also brushing over it, when he writes: “I longed
for dyslexia or some such alibi. Any attempts to dignify my idiocy where inevitably shot down by Father.
‘Dyslexia is the term posh people use to describe their children’s stupidity,’ he would drawl.” (This does not
seem like a likely conversation between a father and a six-year-old.) My father’s scornful dismissal of my
brother for his stupidity would have cut extra deep, because our father continuously praised our sister for her
intelligence. She was the only child our father showed interest in.
In his memoir, my brother describes how he learned to associate airy ruthlessness and distance with
maleness, and passion with the female: “I searched myself for vestiges of masculinity as though for lice. I did
not worry about my character but about my hair and clothes. . . . It took months but finally I had grown my
hair as long as I could and tried with a yearning heart—and a few cunning simpers—to pass myself off as a
girl.” Our sister received from our father what my brother most desperately wanted. Like Dionysus, he came
up with the most literal solution: to turn himself into a girl. As an unconscious attempt to appeal to our
father, however, it was bound to backfire. He goes on to describe being caught by our father while dressed
in our mother’s clothing, miming to Marc Bolan, and how he crumpled in on himself and fell to the floor
in embarrassment. His description is oddly echoed by his account of how I crumpled up “like a deflating
airbag” when he kicked me.
As it happens, this incident is the earliest encounter with my brother that I remember in full. I was perhaps
eight years old at the time, making my brother around twelve or thirteen, the age he lost his virginity (i.e.,
became a fully sexual being). I was coming up the stairs, berating him for a malicious prank he had played
on me, when he kicked me squarely in the stomach. As I remember it, his kick was quite hard, perhaps
hard enough to have knocked me backwards down the stairs (though it didn’t). Was my brother aware of
this possibility? Is this the clearest early memory I have of him because it was the one time (in my later
childhood) that he most fully expressed his murderous hostility towards me?
There is another incident from this same period that is almost certainly connected. I had brought two
gerbils home from school in a cage for the weekend. Inspired by I knew not what dark impulse, I took
them out of their cage, wrapped them inside a piece of clothing, and threw them violently across the room.
Though they were unharmed physically, they were of course terrified; exercising such control over these
defenseless creatures gave me a feeling of excitation, of sexual arousal, all mixed up with confusion and
guilt, followed by shame and pity. I had no idea at that time why I had done such a thing. I assumed there
was something wrong with me. Looking back now, however, it seems logical enough: all the helpless anger
of those first few years under the tyranny of my brother had to come out somehow. Hadn’t I treated those
helpless gerbils exactly as I had been treated?
Being the receptacle of violence is like receiving a negative charge into the body. And just as in the case of
lightning, the one the charge stops at receives the full jolt. If we receive such a charge, naturally we look for
someone else to pass it onto, in order to relieve the pressure in our psyches. This is done by acting out the
same scenes we were caught up in as children while taking the reverse position, that of the aggressor. So we
become the tormentor rather than the tormented, the slayer instead of the slain.
• 229 •
Clothes without an Emperor

“I was frightened that I had become a self-parody—
but without going to the trouble of acquiring a self first.”
The Brother [223]
As we entered into adolescence, like most boys, both my brother and I sought comfort through sex. Where
my brother succeeded, I failed. What neither of us realized was how much we were following our father’s
example. The models of masculinity we are given in childhood define us, and there’s no model more lasting
than that of the father. Either we end up imitating his example or we rebel against it, but in either case, we
are letting that example drive us. My brother eventually took to whoring, alcoholism, and entrepreneurship,
just like our father. I wound up a reluctant celibate (virginal till I was 27) and a tee-totaling aesthete, living
destitute on the streets as a vagabond: the negative image of my father and my brother. Hypersexuality and
asexuality are complementary poles of the same distortion, the same wound; ditto extremes of high and low
status. We were acting out a polarity consciousness, shouldering between us the load of our father’s disowned
unconscious.
My brother has been driven by pain his whole life. Anyone who reads his book cannot fail to hear the wail
that sounds plaintive behind the endless string of one-liners. As he himself writes, he is a self-parody without
a self. A shell of a man. Clothes without an emperor. Style devoid of substance. But the question he never
raises, the question conspicuous for its absence, is: Why? What could have happened to drive him to seek
refuge in purest artifice, in a semblance of superficiality at any cost? If this immersion in external darkness
and depravity is what it takes for him to stay out of the depths of his own psyche, what must be lurking in
those depths?
Few people who read his book will get the sense that my brother is trying to conceal anything or that he
is attempting to paint a rose-tinted picture of himself. On the contrary, he is at pains to paint himself in the
darkest tones imaginable. As a self-promoting, self-parodying author, he sets it up so that any charges aimed
at him he has already leveled at himself. This is a cunning subterfuge: to expose oneself first in order to retain
control over the exposure. On the other hand, when a person has something they wish to hide, an effective
method is to reveal all sorts of information that most people would be ashamed to admit. This diverts our
attention from whatever it is they wish to conceal. My brother reveals all the sordid details he can dredge
up about himself (some of which are almost certainly exaggerated), as a way of ensuring that his real secret
remains safe, perhaps even from himself.
Here is a man who has no qualms about telling tales of crack addiction, of eating his own feces and of
being whipped with a belt while his head is submerged in a toilet bowl. So what about some of the things he
chooses not to share with the world? What might they be? We can only imagine. There is one central aspect
of his life that is conspicuously absent from his book, however: myself. And an autobiographer reveals most
about himself by what he chooses to omit.
A Personal Attack, and an Impersonal Defense

A paradox is the truth standing on its head in order to get attention.
G.K. Chesterton [225]
Here are two pieces that I wrote about my brother, at different phases in my life. The first is from 2007,
after one of our many fallings out (a piece I never shared with anyone but our sister, written before I read
his book):
The fact that my brother acts as his own pimp doesn’t make him any less of a whore. My brother
would no doubt have no objection to this, and would probably counter that prostitution is a
perfectly noble profession. As a writer, my brother indeed possesses some of the sensibilities
of a whore: he turns everything—his family and friends, his ex-wife, even his mother—into a
“trick” for his own amusement, excuses to display his self-lacerating narcissism and his droll,
nihilistic wit. In his glamorizing of prostitution, however, he conveniently ignores the core
of self-loathing at the heart of so many ladies of the night. Is it not the same self-loathing at
the center of his book: a self-loathing which can surely only be exasperated by the business of
whoring?
• 230 •
My brother embodies the essence of fame—the glamorization of the superficial—and yet, as

his many insights make plain, he is anything but superficial. His success represents the superior
man’s attempt to hide in a false persona that is nothing but “glamour”— illusion, self-serving
vanity and the shallow gratification of ego. So it should come as no surprise if the world
instantaneously approves and rewards such sly subterfuge. Yet his success raises the essential
question: is recognition in itself more meaningful than what one becomes recognized for?
Since the first thing he has done to gain the world’s notice (at least since getting crucified)
is to write his autobiography, he is in danger of following in the footsteps of Zsa-Zsa Gabor,
and becoming famous for being famous. But underneath the painstakingly assembled veneer
of glamorous corruption and glib cynicism lurks a soul in torment. I am only sorry that my
brother chooses not to bare his soul as boldly and uncompromisingly as he bares his ass: he
might present to the world more of a Greek tragedy, and less of a freak show.
On the other hand, here is one from 2009, when we were on friendly terms (a piece I sent to my brother
as a “gift,” but did not use elsewhere):
My brother (the man, not the work) is in the tradition of the old-style satirists, with one
crucial difference. The old-style satirists, through their humorous prose, mocked society and its
members, putting themselves outside and above it. For him, no such dividing line is permitted:
the subject and the object of his satire are one and the same: himself. Largely eschewing the
more traditional (and safer) methods of cultural artifice (novels, plays, paintings, and suchlike),
which allow the artist a comfortable from the audience, he has turned himself into his own
product. He invites his audience—implores it—to consume him, as a rare wine generously
laced with strychnine, a voluptuous harlot riddled with sexually transmitted diseases. A living
parody, he parades his glamorously deformed psyche before the world, and dares us to call him
on it.
Self-publicity is not the end of his sorcery, however. Merely the means. By being apparently
willing to do anything (even get crucified) to earn the world’s attention, my brother is taking a
collective kind of dementia (the desire for fame at any cost) and stripping it bare. By showing
us a man made almost wholly of clothing, he is letting the world see how dependent he is on
artifact to conceal his true nature, and how utterly ineffective—and obvious—his disguises are.
A cunningly assembled harlequin of self-doubt cloaked in self-aggrandizement, my brother
almost perfectly (though perhaps unconsciously) mirrors the culture of self-worship in which
he lives and breathes. He is a self-aware symptom of a sickening society that reflects back at us
our own image. “This is what you could be if you dared,” is only the first part of the message.
The other part is: “This is what you are.”
Truth in a Top Hat: Insanity as Insistence

I often wonder how it is that I who have always had a mind and the nerves
and the history to go mad, have never actually done so.
The Brother [226]
Here my brother asks a reasonable question, and I think there’s a reasonable answer. There is more than
one kind of insanity. There is the kind of madness my brother and I witnessed growing up with our mother,
for example. The wailing harpy, hurling plates and hissing venom one minute, clawing at our father’s legs and
weeping the next. One defense against this sort of madness would be to take refuge in excessively rigid and
inflexible modes of thought and action, the kind of obsessive-compulsive behavior exhibited by my brother,
for example. This would actually be the flip side of the very same madness.
Insisting on imposing our own version of reality onto existence, trying to become a law, a moral force,
unto oneself is also a kind of madness. My brother is an autocrat of ideology. He is a petty tyrant who
enforces his version of reality with violence. For perhaps a third of my adult life, he hasn’t been speaking to
me. What was my crime? Daring to be myself in his presence. Being myself in his presence is something I
have never found easy at the best of times. As adults, the same old order prevails: my brother has continued
to impose his view of me onto my words and actions. Should I dare to stand up to him and tell him what
• 231 •
I really think about any of this, the axe swiftly descends. There is really only one way to get along with my
brother and that is to agree with him. If he doesn’t like what you have to say, he either stonewalls it with
anger or, more in keeping with his charismatic persona, he beats you to death with a relentless string of
one-liners. It is very hard to maintain a serious conversation with someone who apparently wishes only to
have an audience for their wit. My brother pretends this is simple vanity on his part; the truth is that there
is a subtler and deeper rationale behind it. That’s what my brother is all about: disguising subtler and deeper
agendas with a seemingly transparent veneer. That is also his sorcery.
My brother calls himself “an authentic phony.” We are all fakes, but since he has the honesty and courage
to admit it, that makes him less of a phony. Try suggesting, however, the possibility that an authentic
being might exist beneath the façade of our constructed identities, and you will risk incurring the tyrant’s
displeasure. He has put an awful lot of work and effort into perfecting his shallow façade: woe betide anyone
who suggests that it might all be for nothing. His dandy-nihilism insists that surface is all there is, and that
style is synonymous with substance. His identity is more lovingly constructed than ordinary mortals’; he is
“a futile blaze of color in a futile, colorless world.” Life is just meaningless chaos, so any belief in a design
beneath the chaos is simply the vain projection of weaker, death-denying minds. It is not merely wrong, it
is “unmanly.” This is a convenient way to win arguments. The root of the word “royal” is reality: Kings and
Queens got to decide what was real and what was not. “The best way to contradict me is to let me speak”
quips my brother. This can be translated as—I am quite happy having a conversation with myself, thank you;
your input is not required, because only I get to say what is real.
If my brother were more honest about it, what he would say is “If God existed, He would have told me
about it. Since He didn’t, God does not exist.”
To become a God, Lucifer must first deny the existence of any God outside of himself.
If I Want Your Opinion, I’ll give it to you: Tyranny in Action

As a dandy I have always elegantly acknowledged the fact that to live is to be defeated
while steadfastly declining to surrender to that knowledge.
The Brother [223]
My brother has spent time in the AA and NA; his biggest stumbling block was acknowledging a force
greater than himself. “I do not believe there is any force greater than myself ” got a big laugh from the crowd.
If the worth of a man is measured by what he values most highly, what can you say of the man who values
nothing more highly than himself?
For one who believes in nothing, my brother’s position is rigid and unbending, yet also untenable. Like
all fanatics, it is doubt that strengthens his convictions. He not only disbelieves in everything (and disbelief
is itself a form of belief ), he despises those who do believe, and most of all those who know. If a man cannot
recognize a deeper reality beneath the veneer of constructed identity, does that mean such a reality does not
exist? If that man is my brother it does. Tell him you have experienced such a reality and that simply makes
you a liar or a fool, or both. This is megalomania in action, and that is what I grew up with.
Here’s an example of my brother’s tyranny of disbelief: I once knew someone who claimed to have a dim
memory of her birth. Since she was an intelligent and honest person (and although I remember little from
before the age of six myself ), I had no reason to doubt her. When I told my brother about it, he dismissed the
idea scornfully. He could not remember that far back so no one could; it was simply a delusion, unworthy
of further discussion. Since there are no rocks in the sky, rocks cannot fall from the sky, so meteorites do not
exist. If you say they do, you are simply deluded. For an iconoclast, my brother is astonishingly conservative
in his views. Anything outside of what he has cobbled together for his personal narrative must be dismissed
as nonsense, be it God, UFOs, or Children.
This may be the key to my brother, and to his life-long art of creating distorted surrogate realities and false
narratives. Oddly enough, it often seems to revolve around children and memories of childhood. To give
another example, my brother (with me at least) has also insisted that children do not really exist, in the strict
sense of the word, because they have no minds of their own, no personalities. Paradoxically, he also claims
that, as a child, he was the exact same person he is now. This is more of the same insistence: since only the
constructed identity is real, children, not having yet constructed their identities, cannot exist. If they did
exist, that would mean that some sort of consciousness were possible outside the confines of the sovereign
ego-self. To acknowledge that possibility would be tantamount to allowing for the existence of the divine:
• 232 •
a substance beyond the surface, content independent of style. Through these tiny chinks in the armor, the
light of truth sneaks in.
My brother argues, therefore, that anything that happens to us as children can have no lasting impact
upon us, because we weren’t “real people” then. He has also argued (to me), just as passionately, that no harm
could come to a small child from being sexually molested. This, he insists, is merely the imposition of moral
assumptions onto an otherwise neutral and “harmless” experience. Why would he argue such an absurd
point so virulently, you might ask? You might answer that this is also all part of the same insistence. Since
children are not innocent or pure to begin with (in fact they are nothing at all), they cannot be violated.
Where nothing is sacred, nothing can be profaned. I would suggest, however, that we are now getting to
the very root of this insistence, and so must be careful not to mistake an effect for a cause. A more piercing
question might be: did something of the kind happen to him? Or did he himself commit a similar kind of
act? Is this why he is so heavily invested in a system of belief that denies the sanctity of children? Because his
own sanctity was violated? Where there is a smoke screen of such thickness and stench, it is reasonable to
look for a fire behind it.
The idea of childhood trauma is beneath my brother. It is the product of an overly analytical age, of minds
that have become enamored of psychotherapy and that are anxious to pass the buck and play the role of
victim (a word he despises). He had a difficult childhood and he got over it. Why can’t everyone else? Blaming
our parents for our adult distortions is “dreary” and lacks style. This isn’t simply about him refusing to blame
his parents (a respectable enough position), because he will not allow that such early experiences have any
significant impact at all. Not on him at least. He is, after all, a dandy. A self-created man.
Anyone who has observed this underworld dandy in action or read his book and interviews, anyone who
has even the most rudimentary knowledge of psychology, can attest that my brother is very far from being
“over his childhood.” Consider it thus: If a man’s body is covered with scars and yet he has no memory of
how the scars got there; and if the man knows for a fact that he spent some years in the war when he was
younger; isn’t it a reasonably safe deduction that at least some of those scars are the result of wounds inflicted
during that war? It might even be deduced from the lack of memory (as well as the severity of the scars) just
how traumatic those events must have been. So it is with the psyche. If there are scars found therein, with no
clear memory of how they got there, there is only one logical place to look.
My brother’s willful ignorance and denial of the impact of those early years on his psyche doesn’t reduce
that impact. If anything, it only makes it all the more profound. Kept in the unconscious, the unprocessed
trauma gets to work away in secret, and do the most possible damage. What is left on the surface? It is little
more than a well-dressed marionette, singing and dancing to the shrill and grisly back-beat of those long-
suppressed, long-denied childhood wounds. It is a freak show in which the freak on show was created, from
birth, to be exactly what it is.
Family Circle, Family Secrets

As a child my insides were full of nightmares, of impossible battles, terrifying anxieties of blood, pain,
aloneness, darkness and destruction, mixed with limitless desires, sensations of unspeakable beauty,
majesty, awe and mystery. Sometimes my adolescence was spent in quiet but dark revolt. And yet, these
were the happiest days of my life. What made them great was Mother.
The Brother [223]
Besides the paragraph quoted earlier (in which he describes his violent treatment of me), there is only
one other description of myself in my brother’s book. It is equally telling, though for somewhat different
reasons.
“[Our paternal grandparents’ house] had even dodgier visitors. A pedophile friend of Grandfather’s, his
face riddled with cancer, once took a shine to Brother. Brother, as a child, had one of those faces of marvelous
beauty which stopped strangers in the streets, so a paedophile invited into the family circle could hardly have
been expected to be indifferent. I detested his ingratiating manner, his obsequious compliments—but solely
because they weren’t directed at me.” [223]
Two things can be inferred from this. The first is that my brother’s sovereignty was threatened above all
by my physical beauty. Nothing could outshine him and rob him of the attention he deserved more than
this. It’s easy to imagine how he must have brooded each time a stranger stopped us in the street to admire
me—a cruel reminder of his having been supplanted. (Before I came along, strangers had perhaps stopped
• 233 •
to admire him in the street.) So it can hardly be called a coincidence that, as an adult, my brother relies
upon his physical beauty as his chief virtue. As a dandy, his appearance is his currency. With his outlandish
and elaborate dress, he is guaranteed to get all the attention he craved as a child and to never be upstaged
again. His appearance is so extravagant, in fact, that strangers have been known to applaud him when he
walks into a room.
The second thing that comes clearly into focus in the above passage is somewhat darker and more disturbing:
the notion that, because of my child’s beauty, I was a natural bait for sexual deviants.
“A pedophile invited into the family circle…”
Was this an isolated incident, or is it the tip of a family iceberg? In the liberal-socialist background which
we grew up in (the “family circle” that of my father’s father), there was no shortage of sexual libertines
hanging around. Judging by the above, a predilection for young boys was not considered a reason to be
barred access to the circle either. In my parents’ house, drunken parties were frequent, and although they
were less than Roman orgies, there was no shortage of alcoholic excess and, knowing our father, probably a
degree of sexual excess also.
None of this proves anything. But it does indicate that there was ample opportunity for sexual meddling
to have occurred, either with myself or my brother (or both). Add to this the various strange behaviors
exhibited by both my brother and myself in adulthood —behavior quite in keeping with symptoms of sexual
abuse—and the possibility, while still only a possibility, becomes more tangible. The truth may never be
known. But to assume that nothing of the kind occurred because there is no record of it is perhaps no more
intelligent than to dismiss the idea because no one in our family has ever spoken about it. People generally
don’t speak about such things, for obvious reasons. And incidents of this nature are very often entirely
forgotten later in life, for equally obvious reasons, particularly if the abuse occurs very young. Forgetting is
the most effective means of coping that we have.
The only clues that remain, then, are those found in our patterns of behavior as adults. Though he may
hate me for life for saying it, my brother is a text book case of how victims of child abuse wind up behaving
as adults. He is unusual only in being so extreme; in fact, he is practically a caricature. So then, is this what
all his ostentatious manifestations of amorality and darkness, compulsive, self-harming behavior, sexual
depravity and licentiousness, are really about? Is this what, unconsciously, he is drawing the world’s attention
to: whatever he was forced to keep secret as a child, so secret that it wound up becoming a secret even to
himself?
On the Run from Intimacy:

The Dandy as the Quintessential Mother’s Boy
Having a secret life is exhilarating. I also have problems with unpaid-for sex. I am repulsed by the animality
of the body, by its dirt and decay. The horror for me is the fact that the sublime, the beautiful and the divine are
inextricable from basic animal functions. For some reason money mitigates this. Because it is anonymous.
The Brother [227]
Running through his memoirs, like blood from an open wound onto every page, is my brother’s deep fear
of intimacy, and of the vulnerability which it brings. This is particularly evident in his views on women.
Naturally, growing up with a crazed and drunken mother would have made it highly unsafe for him to
experience a loving connection to women. (This is something I can also testify to also.) There is nothing
comparative to the vulnerability of a child, and the wounding that occurs while we are in this vulnerable
state creates enough scar tissue to keep us closed for life. My brother’s book testifies to this wounding. It
shows how he has been at pains to avoid intimacy and vulnerability at any cost, but most especially around
women. Of course he would be at pains to avoid it: they might turn on him at any moment, just as our
mother did. It is natural for him to be drawn to prostitutes as the safest surrogate for a genuine experience
of intimacy. A prostitute must harden and close herself up emotionally, simply in order to survive. No
wonder my brother identifies with them: he has done the same thing, and for the exact same reasons. As
his own “product,” he is even in much the same line of work. Yet my brother’s elaborate and eloquent
philosophy of self-justification and denial betrays itself at every turn, often deliberately. “The best way to
contradict me is to let me speak.” The absurdity of his arguments is often unintentional, however, as when
he calls “Prostitutes the most open and honest creatures on God’s earth.” Does he really believe this? Does
he also believe it when they fake their orgasms for him? Is that part of the bargain? Mutual enjoyment
• 234 •
would entail a real connection, and this would mean genuine intimacy, of soul as well as body. And that is
most certainly not part of the deal.
Jesus Christ also had a predilection for prostitutes, and I suspect my brother’s interest in fallen women goes
a fair bit deeper than he lets on. The desire to save a fallen woman (who stands in for the anima, his very
own soul) fuels the fantasies of many romantic males who suffer from arrested emotional development. It is
the desire to play Christ to Mary Magdalene, to rescue the whore from her sins (and from the judging eyes
of the mob), and to redeem her with his healing touch and sacred cock. Such a romantic desire would have
been first sown in my brother’s heart by the countless times he saw our mother falling down (literally and
figuratively), and lacked the strength or wherewithal to lift her up and carry her to safety.
Women and prostitutes are virtual synonyms in my brother’s world. Here he is expounding on both: “Part
of me used to enjoy the deception. There was something about the poverty of desire with one’s girlfriend. Sex
without betrayal I found meaningless.” [227]
This is a pattern sourced in our childhood: our father cheated on our mother, and our mother responded
by taking another man into her bed. The things we grow up witnessing are our yardsticks for reality because
we have nothing to juxtapose them with. They are what constitutes normality. As a result, we seek out
similar patterns of behavior as adults, because they are safer, but also more emotionally charged—more
“meaningful”—to us. In his memoir, my brother describes two relationship triangles that are key to his
narrative, triangles between himself, a woman, and another man. Such a triangle is in fact precisely what we
grew up with, when our mother had two “husbands” simultaneously. Perhaps more pertinent to this piece,
we were also part of such a triangle: the one created by the rivalry between the two of us for our mother’s
affections.
My brother writes of sexual love: “Without cruelty there was no banquet.”
Our first experience of sexual love was what we witnessed between our parents, and it was indeed both
opulent and cruel. “What I hate with women generally is the intimacy, the invasion of my innermost space, the
slow strangulation of my art. . . . When I love somebody, I feel sort of trapped.” [227]
Here he describes precisely how we both would have felt around our mother as children, as she fluctuated
between cold indifference, irrational rage, smothering affection, and drunken sentimentality.
“The whore fuck is the purest fuck of all. . . . I love the artificial paradise; the anonymity; using money, the
most impersonal instrument of intimacy, to buy the most personal act of intimacy. Lust over love, sensation
over security, and to fall into a woman’s arms without falling into her hands.” (Italics mine.)
That first, imprinting experience of our mother was one in which intimacy was potentially terrifying, in
which security threatened us with suffocation, and in which we would have been powerless to defend against
her unpredictable outbursts. No wonder my brother only feels safe with prostitutes. (And no wonder I was
mostly celibate for the first thirty five years of my life.)
My brother practices a contrived form of honesty. It is a kind of selective truth-telling that is invariably
self-serving. He spins the truth in such a way that it is as effective to his ends as lying would be, yet with
the added advantage of closely resembling honesty. By parading his flaws before the world, for example, he
renders himself exempt from having to look at these flaws himself. He exaggerates his countless neuroses
and turns them into vices; and by glamorizing his vices, he makes them seem almost like virtues. He owns
his vices and uses them to define himself, rather than owning up to them and moving beyond them. It is
the behavior of a child who longs only for attention and doesn’t care how he gets it. But my brother is a
child in the body of a forty seven year-old man. By his own admission, he is “a buffoon in a velvet cocoon.”
He is a small child’s idea of what being a man might be like; fittingly, he has created a persona that (for all
its sordid darkness) is geared above all to pleasing his mother: a man of wit and charm, of great beauty and
social graces, a poet and a romantic. A dandy. While as a father or husband (as he would concur), he is every
woman’s worst nightmare, he remains, in our mother’s own words, “the perfect date.”
Like all dandies, he is the quintessential mother-bonded male. The one that will never get away. No matter
how many lovers he takes or whores he sleeps with, he will always return to his first love. His mother, his
keeper.
Crack is the whore. Heroin is the mother. Together they make a mother with a cunt. It doesn’t get any better
than that.
The Brother [223]
• 235 •
Through the Looking Glass, Darkly

And Cain said unto the LORD, My punishment is greater than I can bear. Behold, thou hast driven me out
this day from the face of the earth; and from thy face shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in
the earth; and it shall come to pass, that every one that findeth me shall slay me.
Genesis 4: 10-14
Dear Brother
There is no sense in asking you to forgive me. That would be dishonest. I did what I had to do,
and what I did was true, not just to me but also to you.
If one child receives a parent’s blessing, then is the other child cursed. If God’s love is conditional,
then to Hell with God’s love, and to Hell with hers.
Sticks and stones may break your bones, but it takes words to strike the killing blow.
Somewhere along the way we switched roles. I crossed a line and found myself on the other side
of the mirror. If you, my brother, were my enemy, then my enemy was myself. By submitting to your
violence I became the violator. But I was not cut out for murder; that was your calling. All I ever did
here was to restore the balance.
This is not an act of vengeance, but of mercy.
Would you hate the mirror for refusing to give in gracefully to illusion?
Can you not see this? Are you not Abel?
Then you can also see why that makes me Cain.
Cracking the Cosmic Egg

It seems you have been living two lives. One of these lives has a future. The other does not.
Agent Smith, The Matrix
The myth of Cain and Abel is echoed by that of Esau and Jacob and (more esoterically) of Lucifer and
Christ. Cain/Esau/Lucifer is the first-born, but also the disfavored son. (In Lucifer’s case he is the “brightest
angel” who is also the rejected Son of God.) Why is the first-born or brightest angel also the one that is
spurned? What are these myths trying to tell us? Lucifer’s fall sowed the seed of original sin; Christ came as
the redeemer to die for our sins. An occult reading of the Cain/Abel story is represented in the Tarot by The
Lovers card: Cain is the masculine side of the alchemical marriage, Abel the feminine. The blood shed and
the blow struck is that of sexual union, the wound that of the bloody vagina. In such a reading, although it
is Abel who is wounded by Cain’s “club,” this is the necessary means for Cain’s essence to enter into Abel.
So then it is Cain who “dies,” in order to sow the seed of the next generation. (This is why “dandies do not
breed,” because to do so would be to become obsolete.) Like Agent Smith and Neo in The Matrix, Tyler
Durden and the narrator in Fight Club, or Maximus and Commodus in Gladiator, the two antagonists are
absorbed into one, that a third being may come into existence, a composite of the two. Cain is the outermost
part of consciousness—the ego self—and Abel is the innermost, the soul or essence. Cain is the male, Abel
is the female; the synthesis of the two is the child.
To enter into the Kingdom of God, we must become as little children. It is harder for a rich man to enter
Heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.
The constructed identity is a protective shell for the consciousness of the child to hide inside, as it extends
into the hostile environment that is its world. It is a shell inside which the bird of our innermost being can
grow to full strength, and begin to move. This movement is meant to crack the shell when the time is right
(probably in adolescence), so the child can become a man. The constructed identity is there to hold a space
for the child-self of pure consciousness to move into and through, into its full expression in manhood. This
never happens in our world, however. What happens in our world is that the constructed identity, instead of
giving this space over to the innermost, takes it for itself.
Lucifer usurps the throne and chooses to reign in Hell rather than serve in Heaven. There is then no way
for our innermost being to move or to express itself, since it remains trapped inside the constructed identity,
like a bird stuck inside an egg. To crack that egg of identity from the outside then becomes the only way for
our being to live. We must slay ourselves using whatever means available. The harder and more rigid the
constructed identity becomes, the more brittle and fragile, and the more fiercely it defends itself with its
beliefs, its insistence on a false narrative. In the end, all it takes is the gentlest touch of truth in the right place
• 236 •
for that egg to crack open. This is birth for the true being; but, as often as not, it is death to the person.
Writing this story has been an act of self-slaying for its author. These fragments are the pieces of the shell
that I leave behind.
The End of Sovereignty

The time for honoring yourself will soon be at an end.
Maximus to Commodus, Gladiator
I am not interested in slaying my brother, but I am compelled to slay myself. Because my own constructed
identity was designed primarily as a defense against my brother’s hostile, murderous presence in those early
years, this led to my becoming an unconscious imitation of him. Reflecting this, he also became the living
embodiment of my own distortions. By confronting that distortion head-on and gazing unflinchingly at the
image it reflects back at me, I am able to see myself as I am, and to see, clearly and finally, that I am not that.
I never was that. This narrative is a false narrative.
In this moment, the mirror of self-reflection shatters into a thousand pieces. The bubble bursts, the egg
cracks open.
This piece has been my way of addressing that internal critic voice of my brother, once and for all, giving
it what it wants, and allowing it to be still. If I can get this one past that psychic guardian, it will no longer
have anything left to guard. The dialogue will be at an end.
The moment we let in whatever it is that our identity armor was constructed to keep out, the armor begins
to crumble like the skin of a snake. It no longer serves any purpose to our beings. What we needed protection
from as children, we do not need protection from as adults. In fact, what we most fear as adults is total
exposure, total vulnerability, which is the very state we were born into that proved so devastating to us, all
those years ago. Now, what we most fear is what we most desire: the touch of our innermost being. All our
defenses cannot keep that touch away, because the truth is inside us. As it begins to move, the shell—which
is all we ever thought we were—begins to tremble and crack.
There is nothing we can do except to give in gracefully.
There are only two possible responses to an encounter with reality. Either we surrender, or we stand our
ground and suffer the ignominy of defeat. To know that to live is to be defeated and to decline to surrender
to that knowledge is the original sin, Lucifer’s defiance: “Not Thy will, but my will be done!” It is an empty
show of bravado, yet one that creates a Hell in the heart of Paradise, an isolate, self-contained reality with
no room for truth to enter into it, a world that offers the cold and lonely solace of being, at least, our own
version of reality. It is our own self-created narrative, in which we can at long last be King.
Ask Macbeth where such a path leads. He will tell you what a life of service to the sovereign self consists
of. His words echo the mood of my brother’s tale, “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying
nothing.”
Fearful Symmetry
Nothing on the face of this earth—and I do mean nothing—is half so dangerous as a children’s story that
happens to be real, and you and I are wandering blindfolded through a myth devised by a maniac.
Master Li Kao (T’ang Dynasty)139
In myths about brothers, there is invariably animosity between the two. In these stories, the malevolent
brother generally depends upon the trusting naiveté of the other brother in order to work his wiles more
effectively. This malevolence or trickiness invariably backfires, however, so that innocence and guilelessness
eventually prevails (as in the story of the Tortoise and the Hare). Besides the Bible stories already cited, there
is an older, more abstract myth-story that, for its very lack of realism, gets closer to the psychic reality of my
own narrative. It is the story of Set and Osiris.
Told simply: set, jealous of his brother Osiris being chosen to rule over Egypt, plots to kill him. Set throws
a party for his brother and prepares a trap for him, building a beautiful sarcophagus (coffin) and offering to
make a gift of it to whoever fits inside it. He has already built the coffin to match his brother’s dimensions,
however, and of course his earnest brother Osiris, guileless and wholly unsuspecting, climbs inside the
139. There is some historical evidence that, in the 3rd century, Master Li Kao may have briefly studied under Lao Tzu before the lotus ]
] schism.
• 237 •
coffin. Set slams it shut and, with his cohorts, whisks the King away and throws the heavy sarcophagus into
the Nile. Osiris’ Wife Isis saves the body and buries it, but Set finds it, and this time he cuts the body into
fourteen parts and scatters them throughout Egypt.
The second part of the myth entails Isis’ dedicated search for her dead husband’s body parts in order to put
him back together again. She manages to find all the parts except one, his penis, which Set has thrown into
the Nile and which was subsequently eaten by a fish. (In some accounts, Set himself eats it.) Undeterred, Isis
forges a surrogate phallus out of gold, and thereby completes Osiris’ restoration and resurrection.
The third part of the story entails Isis’ impregnation (via the golden phallus) with a son, Horus, and Osiris’
departure to Amenta, where he becomes the Lord of the Dead. Horus grows up to be a great warrior and
seeks vengeance for his father’s murder. He confronts his uncle Set and slays him, thereby restoring balance
to the land. In some stories, Horus is actually Set’s younger brother, making Horus in effect the resurrected
Osiris: Osiris’ death is his “translation” to a higher realm of being, via the act of giving a son to Isis.
As everyone who has ever enjoyed an action-adventure yarn knows, there can be no real story without an
antagonist to get things moving. Without Judas and Pontius Pilate to get Jesus up on the cross, there would
have been no resurrection; without Agent Smith, Neo would never have become the One. What’s implicit
in these stories is the idea that the villain of the piece—the apparent enemy of the protagonist—is really
acting as an agent of transformation, both his own (via death) and that of the hero, through rebirth. The story
of Osiris and Set illustrates this much more clearly than that of Abel and Cain. Bringing it back to my own
story, symbolically speaking, and even to a degree literally (though I may never know to what degree), my
brother, like Set, put his hands on my masculinity and rendered me impotent. What he did to me was a
sort of psychic castration, an energetic dismemberment. Since I was a threat to his masculinity, he became
a threat to mine. And as in the story of Osiris and Set, it was not a contest of equals. My brother used his
trickery to take advantage of my innocence. I lay passively down inside the trap he laid for me. He took a
hold of my cradle (pram), pushed it down the hill, and declared me dead.
There is another of my early memories that seems significant at this juncture, one that happened around
the same time as the stomach blow. I had made myself a fake cigarette, using a rolled up piece of paper or
cardboard, and I was pretending to smoke it at the kitchen table. My brother saw it and began to mock me
for my childishness and naiveté. I can still remember the sheer vitriol behind his words and how it scalded
me. What he expressed so viscerally with his verbal attack was complete disgust at my attempting to be a man
or to act like an adult. I didn’t know anything about it, his words inferred, because only he knew what it was
to be a man (or to smoke a cigarette, since he probably had smoked cigarettes by that time). Since our father
himself smoked while he was still living with us, I was probably trying to copy his behavior. That would have
added an even more personal charge to my brother’s scorn. I could never be like (or replace) our father; only
he could do that. He was right: I never did become like my father.
In this case it’s safe to say that a cigarette is not just a cigarette. Once again I had been “castrated.” Yet my
brother was inadvertently doing me a favor.
My brother is the biggest asshole I have ever known. He’s always been that way and he probably always will
be. But if writing this piece has allowed me to see anything, it is that he never really had any choice about it.
My angelic existence forced him into the only role left for him, that of diabolic opposition. He became an
asshole out of self-preservation; and in the end, self-preservation makes assholes of us all. To make amends
with my brother is something I have tried my whole life. How do you make amends with someone who acts
like an asshole? As Osiris discovered, earnestness is no match for trickery.
This piece is me owning my own inner asshole.
I threatened by brother’s masculinity simply by being. In return, he threatened my masculinity by doing.
Since it is my mere being that threatens my brother, the only way to approach him as a doing and not be a
threat, is to match his own doing and be an asshole. Because it is my way of being that has threatened him
and forced him to act (and to see himself ) as an asshole his whole life, so now let the shoe be on the other
foot, and let the lamb devour the lion.
Whatever we inherit in this life is what we have been given. It’s our “lot.” Whatever my brother may say
about it, we are more than just persons scrambling for sovereignty in a hostile environment. We are also
fragments of the divine, evolving through adversity and restriction. For the deepest possible experience of
ourselves, inside this mortal coil, we naturally seek out those circumstances that allow us to come to the
fullness of our potential. If myths, as psychological blueprints, show us anything it is that nothing is random.
• 238 •
We come into this world like unfinished, partly written stories. All the elements are there, but it is up to us,
that tiny fragment of self-awareness that allows for “free will,” to figure out how the pieces fit together and
come up with an ending.
The primary obstacle to this is the illusion that, once we are fully grown, we are finished products, and that
there is nothing we can do within the limitations of our “fixed” identity, besides seeking external happiness,
worldly status, or personal sovereignty. The secondary mistake is when we look at our limitations as something
outside of ourselves to be lamented, and see our wounds exclusively as the result of what was “done to us”
as children (or later in life). These wounds then become what is holding us back and keeping us from being
what we could be, if only things had been different. But the reverse is really the case: these wounds are cracks
in the egg of our constructed identities. It is only by going all the way into them that we can pass through
them to the other side, into a new way of being.
Being dismantled psychically is the only chance we have of being put back together in the right way. It’s how
the unfinished story of our mythic unfolding gets finished. The agent of our wounding and dismemberment—
be he Set, or Cain, or Judas, or Agent Smith or Commodus—is the most essential ingredient in the soul’s
alchemy. My brother has been my greatest ally in this life. By wounding my sexuality, he allowed me to see
the distortion that already existed in me, because it was there even before the original wound was inflicted.
It is a distortion that exists in all of us because it is generational. So who is the victim here? By being born,
I caused a deep wound to my brother’s sexuality. He struck back, in rage and pain, to wound me back. As a
child, he didn’t know any different. We were both innocent. But that innocence is far behind us now.
So I reach out, with the gentlest of touches, to push softly on the wall of the shell between us, to watch
it crack and crumble. And with it goes the lifelong illusion of adversity and animosity and of difference,
leaving what?
The petty tyrant was just a paper tiger after all.
And it reaches its most gorgeous apotheosis now, by this act of catching fire.
Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright

In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
William Blake [221]
(Editor’s Note: Sebastian Horsley died June 2010, during the editorial of this book.)

• 239 •
Of Dice and Divinity—Gambling and the Western Tradition

David Metcalfe
Always been a gambling man, rolling bones with either hand,

7 is the Promised Land, early in the morning…
Townes Van Zandt
M
y grandfather was a gambler. During the Great Depression he worked at a country club near
Louisville, Kentucky and could spend hours on stories about the rough and random happenings
of card tables and craps games. I remember as a kid he would show me how to hold the dice so
that your throw always came up 7s, how to palm a coin or switch a card. His lessons, coming as they did
during holidays, drew bemusement from the family. My grandmother murmuring “Oh Daddy, what are you
teaching him?”
Gambling has a bad reputation. In the Protestant tradition that guides much of Western society, the idea
of taking resources that could be grown slowly and tossing them into a game of chance seems averse to the
natural order. However if one steps out of the slow pragmatism of the Protestant ideal and into the realm of
the ‘gods’, this act becomes a devotional exercise in trust, and lifting the puritan veil we see that much of our
daily existence is ruled by these games of luck.
Take a trip to the gas station or convenient store and you’ll stand in line behind eager devotees, their
fingers pinching worn sheets of paper with their lucky numbers ecstatically scrawled or penned patiently
in neat lines. We don’t even talk about the lottery any more, it’s a given that this system exists for the most
desperate to drop down a dollar in the hopes that good fortune will come round to bless them.
How many prayers go into gambling? If they were all totaled it would probably amount to more than
those offered up for altruistic pursuits. Our very economy is based on the stock market, a complex game of
chance that recently dealt the Western world a bad hand.
Despite what many people think regarding the direct influence of the stock market on corporate enterprise,
the truth is that it is a separate system, aloof from the actual capital being wagered, that is more in line with
the lottery than any direct investment in a corporation or social cause. As Adolf Berle, a former Assistant
Secretary of State and Professor Emeritus of Law at Columbia University, puts it in his book The American
Economic Republic, “in American folklore, purchase of stock, directly through the stock exchange or indirectly
through mutual funds, is called ‘investment’. So it is—for the individual. His ‘investment,’ though, is in the
stock-market quotation, not in the corporation.” [228]
These games of chance influence even our most esoteric pursuits. The ubiquity of Tarot in Western
divinatory explorations has been explained in innumerable ways, a reworking of the Kabbalistic Sephirot,
an ancient Egyptian system of Gnosis, or an 19th century magical amalgam; however, it’s most historical
interpretation is simply the clever co-opting of the decorative aspects on a deck of playing cards. Our minds
race for meaning where the most basic interpretation suffices to draw out the mytho-poetic root of the
Tarot.
The game itself, passed over in the search for some deeper esoteric origin, provides a truer image for what
we are doing with these evocative cards. Seeking an advantage in the game of life, playing at the cards to try
to find some answer that will gives us a step ahead in the competition for survival.
In craps the winning roll is on 7 or 11, the deuce ends the game. In Hebrew Gematria Gad, which means
luck, has the numerical equivalent of 7. In Christian symbology 7 is used to represent paradise, or as Townes
Van Zandt sings in his version of the Dollar Bill Blues, “7 is the promised land.” [106] 11 is well known to
Thelemites as the number representing Nuit, or night, the 11 letters in ABRAHADABRA, and equates with
“Magnum Opus” and “the Great Work.”
The deuce is an age old enemy, the Manichean duality that marks the fall into materiality, the breaking
off point where the One begins the degrading fall into material. In antiquated slang “the deuce” is the devil,
master of the material realm. “Snake eyes” marks the losing roll.
• 240 •
So what are we dealing with? Who is the devil dealing the cards that we pit ourselves against in our heroic
quest to overcome chance and gain the favor of easy living?
Hermes, master of the cross-roads, who hovers behind the Western Esoteric Tradition, and if we pull
back the veil we find that he’s also the archetypal master of games that we’re encountering in all of these far
flung facets of society. We know him as Hermes Trismegestus, master of magic, music, fortune, and travel, a
symbolic figure that has come to stand most often for an Apollonian solar tradition based on Neo-Platonic
mysticism and the republican ideal. When we hear Hermes, we think of a positive form, a beautiful youth,
walking with winged sandals and carrying that clever Cadeuceus which graces austere medical institutions.
There is a flip side to Hermes, however, that finds itself peaking out when we least expect it, the tradition
of Hermes the thief, Hermes the gambler. Even this Apollonian Hermes is a bit of a trick, a clever theft of
Apollo’s image and legacy, unnoticed by most.
And Hermes mingles now

with all men and gods.
And even though
he helps a few people,
he cheats an endless number
of the race of mortal men
in the darkness of night.
Hymn to Hermes [229]
In times of desperation, when we find ourselves at the cross roads, that liminal state between one path and
another, we meet him by the road marker, a soft smile on his face and a deck of cards in his hand. “Wanna
play a game?”
As Karl Kerenyi points out in Hermes, Guide of Souls, his detailed exploration of the Hermetic archetype,
the ancient tradition allots both a life giving, phallic aspect, as well as a chthonic aspect to the god; the
traditional Hermes gives to, as well as takes from, his devotees. [230] Taken as such we find that Hermes is
well known across traditions in guises and masks that are much less favorable to the Western aesthetic than
the winged messenger gracing the logo of florists and delivery services. Here we find a Hermes at home in
the gambling hall, a denizen of night side ways and crooked path.
In Mexico this chthonic Hermes takes the form of La Santisima Muerte, Our Lady of Death, an
androgynous skeleton adorned with the attire of the more familiar Catholic deity, the Virgin Mary. Patron
of thieves, street musicians, prostitutes, kidnappers and gamblers, Our Lady is also the benefactor of the
destitute and forlorn.
Catherine Yronwode identifies a tradition of Santisima Muerte in which Holy Death is petitioned in
Meso-American spell work to assure the fidelity of wandering husbands. Here we have the phallic aspect
of the Hermetic archetype clearly identified and united with the Chthonic in prayers that promise to keep
infidelity at bay. [231]
Middle class Americans who feel comfortable tossing in their lot on the stock market, or dropping a
few dollars to the lottery, are much less likely to feel at home faced with a lavishly adorned corpse. As La
Santisima Muerte, Hermes promises fecundity, while at the same time forces devotees to reckon with their
mortality and the real stakes behind the game of life.
The African Diaspora traditions have not forgotten this underworld aspect of the Hermetic archetype,
and through the blues tradition and American folk music, this figure has been ingrained in our collective
consciousness.
It was down in Big Kid’s barroom, on the corner beyond the square,
everybody drinking liquor…the regular crowd was there.
Jimmie Rodgers, Those Gambler’s Blues
As a guide for musicians, La Santisima Muerte reminds us of the legends of blues musicians finding their
talent at the cross roads. Her devotions include gifts of rum and tobacco, the same devotions given to the
cross dressing Voudon deity Gede, lord of the cross roads and the dead. The same devotions that mark so
many blues songs about wine, whiskey and women.
• 241 •
From the same Yoruba traditions that give us Haitian Voudon, and Louisiana Voodoo, comes the root
work and conjure traditions of American Hoodoo, all of which play a part in the underlying basis of many
blues songs. Drinking, gambling and sex have here the duplicitous meaning of both relief from the daylight
world of work and responsibility, and the cost of that freedom when the games played out and the gambler
has lost.
Mixed with music, Hermes hides his true face; classic Greco-Roman representations of him show a youth
or bearded man in traveling clothes, in the blues tradition he becomes the traveling musician. His tortoise
shelled lyre replaced with a banjo or guitar, the times have changed, but his signs are still there for knowing
eyes to seek them out.
Move further on into the late 20th and early 21st century, we still find the same themes repeated in urban
music, of gambling, prostitution, guns and money. All areas where our Chthonic Hermes acts as patron, his
Caduceus sign so close to the $ on our dollar bills, he’s never far behind any trade or gamble.
Wherever you look there’s a game of chance to be played, a cross roads where Hermes stands waiting.
Whether as a corpse dressed in the blue robes of the Virgin Mary, a Hougan in a wedding dress, top hat and
shades, or as a humble musician singing road weary songs, in stock markets, casinos, bar rooms and brothels
Hermes dances on into the 21st century to a gambler’s tune.
My grandfather was giving me more than he knew during those off the cuff lessons drawn from his youth.
He was introducing me to the hidden aspect of Hermes, the master of the cross roads, the guide of souls, and
the betrayer of marked men. The next time you feel called to put a dollar in on the lottery, pour a libation to
the wily messenger and patron of thieves, perhaps he’ll smile on your venture giving you a moment of luck
and a few days rest, before he returns with his skeletal grin to carry you on to the next incarnation.

• 242 •
I Am Ecstasy:
The Emergence of Dionysus into Waking Life
Mica Gries
Appear, appear, whatso Thy shape or name.

O Mountain Bull,
Snake of a Hundred Heads,
Lion of the Burning Flame!
O God, Beast, Mystery, come!
Fill soul and flesh with Thy mystic power.
O God whose gifts are joy and union of soul in dancing!
Hymn to Dionysus [183]
B
efore I could even bring this God’s name to my lips, my body understood Him. It was at the annual
Oregon Country Fair, over fifteen years ago, when I first became infected with the dance. There was a
special sanctum of archaic tribal madness, called the Tower of Drums, held in a large clearing with a
beautiful tree in the center, reaching out its branches as if to embrace and protect the congregation. Despite
there being no tower, it fully lived up to its title.
For three days and three nights of the year, the “Tower” was packed with over fifty drummers. Djembes,
doumbeks, tom-toms, taiko drums, rattles of every shape and size, anything capable of producing rhythm, not
to mention the screamers, dancers, flute-players, half-naked hippie girls with painted breasts, all welcome,
welcome! It was a glorious cacophony in honor of the ancient gods and animal spirits. How could that not
be seductive?
I was fourteen, and I had experienced nothing like it before. But I was not unprepared. Well before that,
it was the Lizard King. The Doors were my first musical passion, and I practically worshipped Morrison.
I listened to him upon waking, during the drive to school, recess, coming back home, doing homework. I
listened to them when I slept. To me, he wasn’t just another rock star; he was a shaman on the stage. Only
much later did I learn that Jim Morrison identified himself very strongly with Dionysus. [232]
It was four years later I finally learned about this God who was often called Liber, “the free one.” I was
studying the history of theater in a university course, learning how the very roots of the performing arts were
in the pagan rites and ceremonies of ancient Greece, principally those in honor of Dionysus.
The words “pagan rites and ceremonies,” have a singular and unique effect on me. It is perhaps the kind of
feeling that a trigger-happy hunter must feel when he hears the words, “smooth operating bolt action rifle.”
I might even go so far as to say that if whispered in my ear, my heart rate would rise, my cheeks would flush
and my breath catch in my throat like an eager virgin.
Dionysus imbibed my innocence. He exalted my lust from youthful titillation to levels previously
unimagined. I knew of the Horned God; the solar God, the Sacrificed God. But the “Lord of Ecstasy”? This
was new, and his energies seeped into my fantasy life, dominating it as he dominated whole cities in all his
wild glory.
I can just close my eyes and picture his cult: wild women, his maenads, tearing through the forest, naked,
in trance, wrapped in serpents, shredding every living thing in their path, every drop of blood an offering. As
a throng, they emerge into a clearing, surround a bonfire, and then the music starts. Chthonic and savage,
the beat drives them further, deeper into altered states; the eerie piping of the flutes seeming to lift their feet
off the ground into the air. All at once, there is an inhuman howl. Women here and there drop to their hands
and knees in absolute surrender and identification with their God. Possessed now, they crawl upon the earth,
panthers and tigers amidst the flames. I am among them, thyrsus in hand, eyes rolled back in my head,
• 243 •
prophecies uttering over my tongue. The earth blooms before us. Animals speak, and at our touch, rivers of
wine, milk and honey bled the stone.
Then, as one, we strike into the city. “Forget your labor and your toil!” we cry. “Join us and live free!” There
is dancing in the streets. Men, women and children abandon their cares and, covered in wreaths of flowers
and ivy, sing praises to their Lord. There is no sovereign, only Nature! All those who resist are turned into the
birds and beats of the forest. We, together, are Dionysus.
“Now is the slave a free man,” writes Nietzsche, “now all the stiff, hostile barriers break apart, those things
which necessity and arbitrary power or ‘saucy fashion’ have established between men. Now, with the gospel
of world harmony, every man feels himself not only united with his neighbor, reconciled and fused together,
but also as if the veil of Maja has been ripped apart, with only scraps fluttering around before the mysterious
original unity. Singing and dancing, man expresses himself as a member of a higher unity. He has forgotten
how to walk and talk and is on the verge of flying up into the air as he dances.
The enchantment speaks out in his gestures. Just as the animals speak and the earth gives milk and honey,
so now something supernatural echoes out of him. He feels himself a god. He now moves in a lofty ecstasy, as
he saw the gods move in his dream. The man is no longer an artist. He has become a work of art. The artistic
power of all of nature, the rhapsodic satisfaction of the primordial unity, reveals itself here in the intoxicated
performance. The finest clay, the most expensive marble— man—is here worked and chiseled, and the cry
of the Eleusianian mysteries rings out to the chisel blows of the Dionysian world artist: ‘Do you fall down,
you millions? World, do you have a sense of your creator?’” [233]
Or, as Jim Morrison put it, echoing the same Dionysian call to arms in a more simple manner: “How
many of you people know you’re alive? How many of you people know you’re really alive?”140
I believe that when one is discovered by their myth, they must pursue it relentlessly. They must find
opportunities in daily life to bring it from the depths of cryptic symbolism and vague emotion into something
tangible, something real. Myth is meant to be reified. It was once explained to me that myth is the divine core
of existence. It is the language of Nature, speaking to us from the depths of our own being. And when we
answer its call, a door is opened through which we might know the secret center that birthed our being into
corporeality. In these moments, we give ourselves permission to step out of the way, and permit the archetype,
the “mask of God”, to step through us into our own world.
As my fertile psyche imbibed the Dionysian brew, that door began to open; slowly, ever slowly, until
one night, I glimpsed the mad God. I was at a café, during an open mic night, with friends from my
Creative Writing class. We took turns getting on stage, sharing our work, and after each consecutive reading,
excitement overtook us and turned to frenzy. We couldn’t stop. We kept going until the café closed, and still
we didn’t stop. We took to the streets, hurling our words into the night. It was around midnight, standing
before a darkened church, screaming with all the apocalyptic zeal of a preacher before his congregation, when
the wave struck. Something happened. We didn’t think about it, we just went with it. While quiet couples
walked hand in hand through the night, and cars zigzagged to their respective destinations, we leapt into the
churchyard, shed our clothes, and ran naked and free. We hit the streets laughing and shrieking; breasts and
penises flying like national banners. A police car strolled past, and just kept on going.
We reconvened, came down a little, and found our clothes. One of us expressed the desire for ice cream,
but lamented that it was close to one in the morning, and what kind of ice cream store would be open now.
But the God would have no lamentations, only the squealing glee of his flock. And what use is a God, if he
can’t make at least minor miracles? Dionysus brought us ice cream. One of us had a friend who often worked
at an ice cream store, doing maintenance and clean-up after business hours. He opened the shop for us and
gave us anything we wanted, then sat back and observed with a kind of awe the strange aura that surrounded
us. It bonded us together as a single unit, filled us with that childlike innocence and joy you so easily forget
as an adult. We were no longer separate artists, each struggling in isolation to achieve our work. We, together,
became the art, giving birth to something divine, and sharing in it together; each of us confirming for each
other that this was really happening. We, together, were Dionysus.
“The ‘sacred insanity’ of Dionysus spread among the celebrants like wildfire, turning them into a single
body, swaying, turbulent, possessed by an ecstatic spirit.” [234]
In modern, popular culture, there is nothing more purely Dionysian than the “rave.” As once, thousands
of years ago, atop the peaks of sacred mountains, revelers lost themselves to the beat of the drums and
140. It is unclear if Jim Morrison ever actually said this, or if it was written just for the film.
• 244 •
became “empty vessels” to be filled with ecstasy. So it is now. The dance floor is my chapel, and I pray with
my whole body. In dancing, I open myself to the essence of Dionysus, and allow his sirens’ call to pull my
flesh into his maelstrom. All the dancers together form a single body, a single field of raw energy and rapture.
The wave hits, and, as a single mass, all bodies writhe and pulse, riding it with the music. The mob carries its
own music, its own beat, organically linked to the sound that you hear, and it pulls you in just as much as
the audible rhythm. Though few may be consciously aware of it, we are Dionysus’ vessels, and he speaks to
us through the swaying of our limbs and the throbbing of our heads.
In ecstatic dance, all sight breaks up into a whirling of shapes and light. All sound collapses into the
muscles, writhing, aching, yearning, and filling with a savage exultation, almost like the bloodlust of a
warrior. The body strains against the wild urge, stretching itself beyond its capacity in an effort to match the
pull. The mind shifts into something new, something alien and free. No thoughts. Only images, strange,
vague and thrilling: a wolf closing in on its prey; the surging movement of a bushman rite; flames; sex; the
opportunity for metamorphosis. The woman in me shrieks, blood and semen pouring from her lips. I am
frightened that my spine will snap under the pressure.
While drugs are often taken at such events, and indeed do much to heighten and intensify the energy of
the crowd, never let it be said that such extreme altered states of consciousness, such states of ecstasy, are
unreachable without the aid of intoxicants. While Dionysus is the patron deity of all intoxication, whether it
be by music, poetry, dance, or alcohol and drugs, he ultimately invites us to know him from within ourselves,
from within the chthonic depths of our own unconscious minds. Know the God not as his sacraments,
but as that which they bring out in us. As an illustration, let me share with you one last tale of my own
experience.
Once, I took part in the initiatory ritual of a mystical order, what may be dubbed as one of the “pagan rites
and ceremonies” available to the seeker. In the midst of the ritual, I was told to shed my fear of the light of
the divine, and face the burning flames of God in all its glory. The next day, I was sitting on the couch after
watching a film. The movie was finished, and my wife was in the other room. As I sat there in idleness, I
suddenly felt awash with this strange, restless feeling, as if some huge force was moving about inside of me.
I saw in my mind’s eye the image of a wrathful angel, Archangel Michael perhaps, holding aloft a sword,
and slashing away at the forces of darkness, to unveil the soul’s vision. I began to pace up and down the
room, confused and disoriented. Finally, not knowing what else to do, and moved by some tremendous,
incomprehensible presence, I knelt on the ground, brought my hands together, and prayed, “Lord, I am
here. I am here, Lord. What have you of me?”
At that moment, my wife returned to the room, and I immediately stood up and wrapped my arms around
her. Locked in embrace, I whispered to her on the edge of tears, “My heart feels so full.” And she answered,
“Just let go, and open to it,” whereupon I threw myself backwards in a tremendous whoop of delirious
joy. My poor wife’s strength was brought to its limits as she held on to me, trying to keep me from flying
backwards onto the floor. I felt as if every cell of my body was on fire with cosmic bliss and shooting out
into infinity at the speed of light. I found myself crying and laughing at the same time. I was aflame with the
divine sun, burning, devouring my consciousness, so that all that remained was that which most pristinely
reflected its light. It was as if I had lived in a cave all my life, and all the happiness I had ever known, even
the most exuberant joys, were all but pathetic, fluttering candles in the darkness. Now I had seen the sun.
That sun we all know in the sky pales in comparison to such light. It is so bright, it is black. Our mortal
sight fails us.
Semele knew such light. Semele, the mortal mother of Dionysus, was the only one of Zeus’s mistresses
to have seen the king of all the Gods in his true form, that of whirling, divine lightning. She was burned to
ashes, and the infant God was recovered from her remains. Dionysus, son of Zeus, blesses us with his own
light. He does not burn, he liberates. It is no coincidence then that Dionysus is the God of theater. There
have been moments where I have felt more alive on stage than at any other time in my life. The theater has
given me the permission I need to become anything; as if all the doors of perception swing wide open, and
I may leave myself behind to explore any avenue of sentience and feeling that may be conceived of. In this
sacred space, just as it was from the time before there was “theater,” myth comes alive, and the archetypal
“masks of God” are free to break through into our world.
Dionysus showed me the potential of the mind to achieve the highest states of ecstasy, to awaken as if
from a slumber into a new world. Now I seek to unleash the archetype upon the stage; to bring forth the
• 245 •
God’s presence not merely for myself or for a few, but for a multitude. And looking back, I realize that this is
precisely what the artist, Jim Morrison, did. Just as the shamans of old once danced the animals, and shape-
shifted into gods, Morrison took to the stage, broke free, danced with the gods, and channeled a mass ecstasy
into the world, until it consumed him.
I, too, shall never cease dancing with my God.
As a parting word, I would like to urge the reader to seek out his or her own myth. Without myth, the
soul is bereft. As the ecstatic dancer, Gabrielle Roth, wrote in her book, Maps to Ecstasy, “In many shamanic
societies, if you came to a shaman or medicine person complaining of being disheartened, dispirited, or
depressed, they would ask … When did you stop dancing? When did you stop singing? When did you stop
being enchanted by stories?” [235] The function of myth is to hook us into that divine core from which all
life unfolded, so that our own life becomes the voice through which the songs of the gods are made real.
Never stop singing, never stop dancing, and be among the few to answer in the affirmative Morrison’s query:
“How many of you know you’re really alive?”

• 246 •
Message in My Body
Introducing the Medea Companion
Tons May
Myths are the most general and effective means of awakening and maintaining consciousness of
another world (…) The World ‘speaks’ to man, and to understand its language he needs only to
know the myths and decipher the symbols.
Mircea Eliade [236]
F
or years, Medea and I have been conversing. I evoke or invoke her and invite her into my circle, my
body. Then I pray, drink to her and say something like this: Give me meaning.
She looks at me, from above, afar or behind me and says something like:
----
Which I translate into: There is no meaning. Wake up.
My conversations with Medea began years ago. She became interesting for many reasons. She is a healer, I
am in need of healing. She is a witch, so am I. She is an ambivalently complex figure linked to the death of
her children, her brother and several other people. Instant attraction on my part. Without initially knowing
much about Medea beyond Euripides, I fell in love with her. Like the proverbial Argo, she became the
vehicle from which I began to hop from one phase of my life to the next—in order to come to some sort
of understanding of what is happening to me, to define my evolution on my terms. She was there when I
realized that meaning isn’t something I stumble upon. It’s not some treasure chest hidden in the basement
(although, that’s where I looked as well). Meaning is something I define and redefine. A flexible, malleable
grid through which I can explore and change my world.
Through working with her and other entities, I’ve come to realize I have to create meaning myself, to
explore and appreciate the ambivalent gift of life, to deal with what I was given on my terms. I have to start
writing my own story. Using mythology to explore the world was a first step. Recreating it to explore mine
was the next one. This is where Medea enters the stage: Opening a door into inner space she has become a
filter through which I perceive, a language through which I explain, a system of symbols that resonate on
levels I didn’t even know existed. If she hasn’t saved my life, Medea surely increased my appreciation of it.
Most of my work with Medea has been very personal, but I started to realize that others might be interested
in her as well—or in the kind of entity work that uses mythology to reevaluate and consequently rewrite the
story of our life. Medea, of course, is just one example of how you can use any mythical character, symbol
or idea and appropriate it for personal use, tap creative potential, find meaning and open up new ways of
intra-personal communication. If you are seeking healing, self-knowledge or gnosis, mythology can give you
some answers—as long as you create your own mythological tool kit as an evolutionary companion of your
quest. Here’s a peek into mine.
Fire and Water

Nay, in this disaster this marvel, too, has happened: water feeds the flames,
and the more ‘tis checked the more fiercely burns the fire; the very defences [sic] does it seize upon.
Seneca [237]
Mythological Medea: mishap, accident, curse or catastrophe. There is no consistent story growing out of
her mytho-historical roots, just an ominously dark Pandora’s Box spouting a confusing array of conflicting
myths, old and modern narratives, legends from different times, regions, religions and social backgrounds,
used for a multitude of purposes. Goddess or human, queen or witch, mother or murderess, victim or
kidnapper, wronged wife or marriage-wrecker—Medea is everything we want her to be.
• 247 •
Her origins reach back into the early archaic period (c. 800-700 BC): According to various sources, her
mother is Eydyia, the youngest of the Oceanids, a daughter of Oceanus and Tethys. Medea’s grandfather
Oceanus, the father of all things, bounds the world like the serpent Ophion separating the living from
the dead. [238] Her grandmother Tethys, Oceanus’ wife and sister, is a sea goddess reeking of Babylonian
Tiamat’s chaos. Together they symbolize primordial waters and the beginning of life as well as the unformed
creative potential of the unconscious.
Medea’s father is Aeëtes of Corinth, who emigrates to Colchis at the Black Sea (today’s Georgia). He is
the son of the sun god Helios, adding the element of fire to Medea’s pedigree. By combining these basic
polarities, the life-giving element of water and the immortalizing element of fire, she slays and creates. [239]
This is the stuff her magic brew is made of, the monstrous, incomprehensible source of her strength. An
early alchemist, she possesses the secret of transformation and uses it to change her world. In this world,
she commands the elements in all their forms and disguises—sea, storm, lightning, rocks and waves—and
is known to enlist animals as well. As Martha C. Nussbaum notes: “Fire is her patrimony, as snakes are her
familiars.” [240]
Snakes and rams are the animals most commonly linked to her. While the latter represents solar heat,
creative energy and aggressive will, the snake symbolizes fluidity, renewal, healing, fertility and wisdom in
ancient Greece. [241] Like fire and water, these animals reflect the range of her powers, the polarities that she
combines in her life-giving/life-taking alchemical cauldron.
The Roman writer Seneca who dwells on Medea’s magic skills and her special relationship with snakes
writes:
To thee I offer these wreaths wrought with bloody hands, each entwined with nine serpent
coils; to thee, these serpent limbs which rebellious Typhoeus wore, who caused Jove’s throne
to tremble. [237]
Here, the snake represents the subversive force of Medea’s love and passion that opposes the strategic
will of Jason—a serpentine manifestation of “the power of erõs [as] an age-old cosmic power, a divine force
connected with regeneration and birth, as well as death and slaughter.” [240] As can be seen in the play,
Jason’s ram-headed will is no match for this force. His former confidence and the sexual energy with which
he seduced Medea gives way to strategical planning: wishing for social acceptance he collaborates with
Medea’s enemies, forsaking love and loyalty in favor of political matchmaking. The wild ram within him has
been tamed and turned into a “docile, cowardly, gregarious and succulent beast,” his Golden Fleece a lifeless
symbol of former glories. [242] The snake has overtaken the fire. In this battle of wills, the witch wins and
escapes in a chariot drawn by her serpent helpers.
Jason should have known better. With her extended genealogy also including Hecate, Circe and Nemesis,
Medea is the culmination of a long line of strong, powerful, sinister and revengeful women and goddesses.
The intricate, convoluted family structure of Greek mythology is the web in which she operates and through
which she can guide us when we focus on her character.
Initiating Inner Demons

Like Medea’s rejuvenating brew, which has different effects depending on the situation in which it
is used, myths are elusive, shifting bodies of knowledge that offer partial truths in their particular
context. [243]
The mythological complex revolving around Medea (including the legends of Jason and the Argonauts, the
Golden Fleece, Theseus and the founding of various cities) has been popular since at least the eighth century
B.C. [244] Different traditions make it difficult to give a consistent account of her character and biography.
Picking my way through the various legends and focusing on pivotal elements is already part of the process
of recreating her story for ritual practice.
One of the key motifs of the Medea myth is her role as initiatrix: She helps Jason master the Herculean
tasks devised by her father to obtain the Golden Fleece, assisting at his rites of passage, the heroic adventure
of “separation—initiation—return.” [245] [246] Even more so, her magic, with which she rejuvenates, heals
and kills, is essentially initiatory in character as it involves rebirth and transformation. By throwing her
brother’s bones into the sea (whom she might or might not have killed depending on the version) she not
only reminds us of the legend of Isis and Osiris, but also anticipates her own magical skills by which she
• 248 •
later cuts up an old ram and an old man (Jason’s father Aeson) and rejuvenates them in her “cauldron of
regeneration.” [39] [239]
Modeled on universal shamanistic practices of dismemberment and the mystical experience of ego
disintegration, these rituals link her to a tradition more ancient than that told by the Greek and Roman
dramatists. When another old king, Jason’s uncle Pelias of Iolcus, is cut up and boiled by his daughters acting
on Medea’s advice he does not survive and his daughters are banished. [239] If there is a moral to the story
it might be this: while an encounter with Medea might not always leave you dismembered (or dissolved), it
will always irrevocably change you. And: she might not give you what you think you want.
One of her most notorious deeds, immortalized by Euripides and Seneca, has her sending a poisoned robe
to her rival Glauce (also called Creusa), daughter of the Corinthian King Creon. Her gift sets fire to the
palace, killing both daughter and father. Another initiatory tool, the robe of poison destroys (which is to
say, deconstructs) the body with a fire that might have been cleansing from a more benevolent point of view.
Yet, in the versions depicting her as an evil sorceress, the fire raging within her—her creative-destructive
spark—burns her adversaries to a cinder. The sacred fire, which grants her and everyone it touches mythic
immortality, has turned into a lethal force wielded for petty mortal reasons, such as jealousy and pride. This
perspective leaves no room for the wider implications of what it might also be good for: ego disintegration,
rebirth and transcendence.
Furthermore, in a society focused on ego identification, the robe can also be interpreted as representing the
repressed parts we try to disengage from. The more the princess struggles to get out of the trap of the robe,
the deeper the poison seeps into her body. The message cannot be deciphered when formerly hidden desires
flare up and burn the self. “I’ll turn the bride into a wedding torch,” Heiner Müller’s Medea says. [247] Her
wedding gift is revealed to be a special kind of toaster: initiation through illumination. The princess fails the
acid test and fire walks with her.
After the robe incident, Medea curses Jason (the fallen hero, cause of her distress) and abandons her children
(or kills them, depending, again, on the version). [238] [239] This part of the myth in particular made her
infamous as the negligent or murderous mother. Possibly based on a Corinthian cult involving children,
Medea might have lost goddess status to become a “reproductive demon” in the vein of the Sumerian demon
goddess Lilith or Greek child-eater Lamia. [248]
Used as an explanation for the untimely death of little children or their mothers, reproductive demons were
believed to be the souls of women who did not “complete the reproductive cycle” and therefore remained
incomplete. [248] According to Sarah Iles Johnston, Medea originally might have been a goddess who was
protecting mothers and children against these reproductive demons. When her cult was displaced by that of
Hera Akraia, she might have become a demon herself. [248]
To me, this demonization is particularly interesting as it demonstrates the strong fear Medea continues
to arouse after her abolishment as protective goddess. As a demon or sorceress with demonic powers she is
in league with the dark forces stepping into the realm of the rebellious fallen angel, the other, the hidden,
the repressed, the undead. Standing on the thin line between life and death she represents the ambivalence
of nature: the unfathomable void behind existence, the place where prayers disappear unanswered, and a
chthonic creature that doesn’t know or care about moral categories such as good or evil.
She also represents the chthonic streak within us, the death-loving, void-seeking, ambivalent part that
opposes the other (i.e. “socially adjusted”) parts. Thus, the shrouded figure of Medea can provide us with
a place where we can channel our fears and repressed desires. This is where I confront what I don’t want to
face rationally, explain or work through. She is the anima to my animus’ demanding energies, the altar upon
which I may sacrifice parts of me, the voice guiding me through depressions, the initiatrix who gathers my
demons into her cauldron and cooks them up for a more creative use. By embracing Medea I embrace the
scary stranger within me.
Stranger in a Strange Land

Medea (…) does not do laundry
James J. Clauss [249]
From the beginning of legend, Medea has been cast as an outsider and stranger. She is described as a
stranger when Jason meets her (seen as an alluringly alien enchantress from his Hellenistic point of view)
and she continues to be a stranger after leaving her homeland. Traveling from Colchis to Iolcus, then to
• 249 •
Corinth, Athens and finally settling in Iran she is constantly on the move, conflicting with the natives, a
political enemy to many. Vase paintings from the fifth century BC show her in Oriental dress linking her to
the Persians, archenemies of the Greek during the Greco-Persian Wars. [250]
Thus, Medea is not only an expatriate, she is a dangerous expatriate; a virus of otherness exported from the
East, infecting the West and slowly returning to the East again. As befits a virus, she is not being punished for
spreading the disease of otherness, but rather elevated to godlike status when she flees the scene in a serpent-
drawn chariot. As a viral idea she cannot be fought directly but only by propaganda (i.e. art and literature).
As a divine disease she refuses to cooperate and be assimilated into the mainstream of the dominant culture.
Throughout her story, she remains a stranger, yet in another way she might be much closer to us, the
audience, than we would care to think. Embodying the virus of discontent and unacceptable desires most of
us suppress, she symbolizes the strangeness, the shadow in everyone. The scapegoat we are afraid of becoming
ourselves.
With a mythological background ranging from divine being to mortal witch and oracle, goddess of
childbirth to reproductive demon, kidnapped maiden to kidnapper, sorceress to prophetess, her ambivalent
nature encompasses status, gender and function. Her aggressively active attitude, heroic travels and the fact
that she founds cities (a task usually assigned to males) add to the ambiguous image we have of her resulting
in “an extraordinary capacity for destruction.” [251]
It is this fearful ambiguity, this indefiniteness that makes her into a monster: She knows no boundaries,
she cannot be categorized, she switches identities, genders and motivations like a chimera. She is what Julia
Kristeva describes as the abject that “signifies the lack of undifferentiation, the permeable boundaries (as in
pregnancy) between self and other, inside and outside, life and death (as Freud described the uncanny).” [252]
She also belongs to the domain of the uncanny in the Freudian sense in that she seems to be omnipotent,
by dismembering bodies and playing on the castration complex, by awakening the dead (by way of
dismemberment/death and rejuvenation/rebirth) and by conversing with spirits and gods. [253] According
to Camille Paglia, Medea is the “form-dissolving fountain of chthonian force, erupting from primeval chaos
(…) a sexually ambiguous, magic-working alien.” [254]
Medea is the quintessential other, the shadow lurking in the dark recesses of a turbulent mind. Refusing to
be used by a man, refusing to be a forgiving lover and mother, she survives Euripides and Seneca to become a
proto-witch and feminist heroine, a projection screen for everything that is abject, expelled, barbarian, alien,
controversial. As Me-Dea, she has come to represent the other within myself, ghost and goddess, the outsider
I can identify with in my own drama of social alienation.
Her vagueness works like a mirror fogged over: I can project anything I want onto it, filter it, channel it,
wipe away the fog and look at the results. If I have a question for her I go into a trance and visualize her. The
first image that comes to mind is part of the answer. Her form (human, animal, plant, shape), her demeanor
(aloof, motherly, stern, friendly), her position and size (in front of or behind me, small, tall), her location (my
room, a desert, a mountain, a forest, a boat) and all the other submodalities of the encounter (visual, auditory,
kinesthetic) add to the information I receive. Thus, her initial vagueness metamorphoses into the shape I need
at this moment, to complete the task at hand. By communicating with her in a trance state I not only learn
about the answer, I also find out more about the question, whether it is the right one or needs to be rephrased,
whether she wants to communicate, whether I really want to know what I think I want to know.
Consequently, conversing with Me-Dea helps me structure her messages into a narrative by using methods
such as writing or drawing. Alternatively, she guides me through divination. Using Tarot cards, mirrors,
paper or any other medium that helps me interpret more or less random signals I can ask her for information,
inspiration and protection. To me, it does not matter, whether her oracular voice aims at my unconscious or
is produced by it. Her presence engages the part within me that has no words, and translates the signals to
something the language-based part of my mind can understand. Images, feelings, sounds and sensations are
turned into an inner film of revelation.
Like a mirror she reflects some of my emotions and memories while deflecting those I cannot look at
directly. Me-Dea thusly becomes my personal Perseus’ Shield, protecting me from the paralyzing gaze of
Medusa or Me-Dusa (for that entity is also a part of me). When confronted with memories or revelations
we don’t want to or can’t look at (because we don’t even know they exist), Medea’s mirror/shield can help us
come to terms with transformation processes taking place in the dark, dusty corners of the mind. For she will
only show what you are able to see, in ways that you are able to understand.
• 250 •
“Medusa is the abyss of transformation (…) hers is the way of the medium priestess or healer, the inspired
artist, or an erratic, hysterical devouring borderline personality.” [255] What Edward C. Whitmont writes
about Medusa applies to a certain extent also to Medea. As dark super heroines of Greek mythology they
inhabit a zone between demon and deity. Both of them are connected to snakes and used as weapons, both of
them have come to symbolize rage. And both are icons of cerebral terror: Medusa’s power lies in her stare and
snaky hair that adorns the shield of head-born Athene, goddess of war and wisdom. Medea’s strength resides
in her cunning and in her voice as a prophet, singer, sorceress and outspoken enemy of Creon. [256]
Combining these entities in a ritual series devised to deal with depression and disease, I sense Medea’s
protective presence. When I consciously retrace my steps into another Medusa phase or realize I’ve entered
Chapel Perilous Medea is on my side. [255] [257] She puts the lightning into my clouds and relieves sluggish
moods by dreaming up tempests of electrical discharge: “I whip up the calm seas, I drive away the clouds /
and I enshroud the sky with clouds.”141 Driving out the devils of self-pity and hopelessness invoked Medea
turns me into her hot cauldron, making me bubble with visions and voices. As her magic power is verbal,
bordering on the poetic, she acts as muse and bard, medium and mediator.142
Sibyl without the Fumes

For the cauldron is not only the vessel of life and death, rejuvenation and rebirth,
but also of magic and inspiration. [258]
As muse, prophetess and singer Medea combines the skills of three mythological female entities: the
Olympian Muses, the Sibyls and the Sirens. Both the Muses and the Sirens were considered dangerous
because of their intoxicating and irresistible impact, which had to be either harnessed (by poets) or avoided
(by captains). Known for their enigmatic messages the Sibyls also had to be dealt with by experts, rendering
them potentially unsafe and risky for the uninitiated.
To some extent, this notoriety had to do with their “power over truth and lies,” a power traditionally
allotted to women in general for only a mother would know about her child’s true paternity. [256] Sibyls relate
messages that can be interpreted in right and wrong ways. Sirens seduce with illusions and false promises.
Muses tell truths and lies that have to be translated by mortal males. The fear of female reproductive and
sexual secrets comes alive in these alluring, but ultimately perilous mythological females of which Medea is
a hybridized version.
Furthermore, Medea is a sorceress who knows about drugs, enabling her to disorient her victims or
strengthen her agents’ skills. Drugging various guardians (the dragon watching over the Golden Fleece and
Tálos, the bronze giant guarding Crete) she helps Jason pass the various initiatory tests surrounding his quest.
Likewise, her magic potions reduce internal protective mechanisms such as fear and transform Jason into a
sort of Herculean superhero.
With her pharmaceutical powers conferring sensations of invincibility, prophetic skills, youth
and death she is the perfect medium of inspiration. By lulling the consciousness Medea opens a
pathway into the subconscious strata of the mind, providing a vehicle for creative impulses: her subtle
presence throughout my life, around and within my body, permanently coding and decoding the strata
of my existence constitute her deeper meaning, motivation and mystery for me, her messages a constant
companion.
M.E.D.E.A.
Meaning expresses dead end of all.
No meanings.
No boundaries.
Mean yourself.
141. Ovid quoted in Newlands, ”The Metamorphosis of Ovid’s Medea.”

PART IV
CONVERSATIONS
• 252 •
Drawing outside the Lines

David Mack
(This interview expands upon an interview David and I conducted in 2007 for Alterati.com.)
James Curcio: I still remember the first time I encountered Kabuki. I was just browsing around a Barnes
& Noble, buzzing on caffeine, and this beautifully illustrated hardcover book found its way into my
hands.It’s not hard to be taken in by the art. It is both graceful and bold—but I actually laughed out
loud when I started reading it—there was a section where the characters were talking to one another,
while walking through a building. Now most sequential artists would draw panel after panel of them
walking and talking, West Wing style, maybe breaking it up with different angles and whatnot so
it’s not just a bunch of talking heads. Instead you establish the scene and then give us a top down
view of the building, with talk bubbles as they wind their way around the maze. I just thought that
was completely brilliant… I never would have thought of that, but then looking at it, it’s just like
“of course!” This is something I’ve seen continuing through these books, that you are really good at
finding the straightest line, the best means of telling the story rather than just adhering to whatever
storytelling conventions people might be used to.
David Mack: I like how you described that. I think you described it very astutely. That is how I approach the
art. As a tool of the writing. I try to consider what pace, or rhythm, or medium or visual personality of
style of art will best and most effectively communicate that particular story or scene of the story.
JC: Do you refer to previous myths and stories when you write? Are there any that you find yourself
returning to frequently?
DM: I allude to myth quite a bit in my work. Certainly, Kabuki often refers to a certain amount of Japanese
mythology. The story often incorporates the framework of Japanese myths and the Japanese Ghost
Story that was a central theme in the Kabuki plays.
Kabuki also incorporates the traditional “Hero’s Journey.” The central myth, that myths from
all cultures and times continue to orbit around; from Biblical literature, which was probably my
introduction to literature and mythology, to Greek Mythology, to folk stories around the globe. The
scholar Joseph Campbell has written some incredible books about this:the journey of the hero, and
the use of masks in mythology and storytelling.
But Kabuki also corresponds to a template of children’s literature and the mythology that has grown
around that. Each of the Kabuki volumes alludes to a kind of children’s fairy tail. Both western and
eastern fairy tale mythology and children’s literature is interwoven into the store. For instance the first
volume of Kabuki is a retelling of Alice in Wonderland. Lewis Carroll told a fantastical story that was
essentially the journey of a child into adult consciousness. Hence the allegory of chess pieces. The
story of a pawn into a queen. If the pawn can make it to the other side of the board they become the
most powerful piece on the board. I used this iconography in Kabuki as well.
In Kabuki Vol. 1, each main character pertains to a piece on the chess board. And each main character
correlates to a character from Alice in Wonderland. The Twins, Siamese, are Tweedle Dee and Dum.
The General is Humpty Dumpty, Scarab is the Beetle, Tigerlily and Snapdragon are named after
the talking flowers in Through the Looking Glass and so on. When you know this, it is quite easy
to correlate the characters. But when you don’t know it consciously, there is still a mythological
iconography that gives weight to the story subconsciously.
JC: This is how I find it best to work as well…you don’t depend on your audience to be familiar with a
certain myth, but if older myths inform the birth of newer ones, it’s almost like people can feel the
power of that structure, even if they don’t catch the reference…
• 253 •
pART IV: CONVERSATIONS
DM: In the character of Echo in Daredevil, I told the vision quest story using the template of traditional
Native American folk tales and mythology. I used the same act structure that the tales use. The same
framing devices. The traditional vision quest stories are echoed in this story beat for beat. The Native
American Manitou character is enacted by the Logan or Wolverine character in the story even though
we never say his name. If you know the Marvel universe, you can recognize him as Wolverine. But if
you are reading it as a Native American vision quest story, he is the Manitou, one of the animal spirits
or nature spirits that appears in the last act of the Vision Quest to deliver helpful information to the
questor that will benefit her tribe.
In my children’s book The Shy Creatures, mythology is central. All of the characters are mythological
or cryptozoological creatures. They are borrowed from Greek myth in the case of the Cyclops, Pegasus
and phoenix, literary mythology in the case of the Push-me-pull-you, and international modern
urban mythology in the case of the Latin Chupacabra, the Himalayan Abominable Snowman, and
the Scottish Loch Ness Monster.
JC: Where do the inspiration for you characters come from?
DM: My stories are, in a sense, my playground to make sense of, and give an order to…all the things that
I experience and think about.
As such, key inspiration for characters and story comes from my childhood, my family, aspects of
myself, people I’ve known, stories I’ve experienced and that have been told to me. Then the character’s
take on a life of their own in the context of story.
JC: Because the storytelling of comics can oftentimes be so visual, I often find myself writing for comics
in image vignettes and then working the dialogue off of that image inspiration. What’s your writing
process like?
DM: I always begin with the story. I write a very full script. I think of myself as a writer primarily and that
gives me the freedom to use the art as another tool of the writing. As such, I try to think of what visual
tone, or media, or art style, colors, or visual rhythm will best communicate each individual story or
section of the story. And then I try to develop a visual look or visual theme that will best tell that
particular scene or sequence and serve as an overall visual identity to that particular story.
Often, in the scripting stage I may think of several different visual motifs for a particular scene, and
I will just write them into the script as notes of possible visual avenues to explore when drawing the
scene later.
But on each level there is room for spontaneity and improvement. After I do the art, I will then go
back and rewrite and edit the original text to accommodate the new epiphanies that have happened
in the visual translation.
JC: Do you start with an image, words, a character, or does it really depend on the circumstance?
DM: It does vary from story to story, but in general, things begin with the character. Sometimes scenes
begin with an idea of a striking visual image. Something that I know begins the scene and an image
that may end it. But character arc is usually where things begin.
Where is this character coming from—where do they want to go- what is causing them to behave as
they do—if they continue that behavior where does it take them? Can they change the behavior? Why
would they do that? External and internal causal incidents.
Sometimes this is very conscious in planning and it is also always intertwined to a certain amount
of unconscious planning. The things in your head and soul that are happening and making order of
things without you really knowing why at first.
JC: I have come to think the exact same way about writing, no matter the ultimate medium that the story
will be told in.
Have you discovered any resistance to these less traditional storytelling devices? I can imagine some
• 254 •
people who are really stuck on one method might get frustrated or confused, the same way the linear-
obsessed oftentimes go nuts over non-linear narratives…
DM: You mentioned two great points. New forms of storytelling beyond the completely conventional and
non-linear narratives.
I love the traditional and conventional tropes of storytelling and panel design in comics. However,
I also feel I would be doing a disservice to the story, if I did not invent new ways of telling the story
that are custom designed for the feel of that particular story. It would be ridiculous to tell every story
the same way. Not to mention just plain lazy. The conventional and traditional tropes and devices of
comics were originally invented for problem solving of specific storytelling situations.
These problem solving techniques contributed and built the early grammar of comics.
I’m actually being traditional in a way by continuing to invent new problem solving for particular
stories. And by adding and building to the lexicon of comics, by contributing more options and
subtleties to the grammar of comics.
It seems lazy and ignorant to use solutions that were designed for specific storytelling problems, and
use those as a rigid template for each and every story. I believe there is actually more clarity to each
story, by letting that story solve its own storytelling challenges and have each story and issue that I do
add a new dimension to the medium.
I’ve built on so many things that brilliant creators before me have brought to the medium of comics,
it is only fair that I give back to the medium with new designs for future stories to build on and
revolutionize.
As for linear vs. non-linear storytelling: Each is a solution for a particular story that may best be served
by it.
I believe what is considered “linear storytelling” is actually the more stylized and fanciful, where
“Non-linear storytelling” is closer to how we experience the real world day to day.
JC: I would have to agree.
DM: Non-linear storytelling is the way each of us make our way through the day as we are having a
conversation with someone and a physical action, and that conversation or action triggers a memory
of something from the past, and part of us follows the tangent in that direction. Then we think of
something we have to do in the future and another part of our consciousness follows that stream
of storytelling, and the various streams converge at points back with the physical action or external
conversation or interaction we are having. It happens just about every minute of the day. All humans
are able to follow that. So I see no reason not to show that in a story if that is the best solution for
that particular story. Especially if you are following a story from a specific character’s personal point
of view.
JC: I also noticed—at least in Metamorphosis, the Kabuki graphic novel I’ve been reading—that there are
multiple overlapping narratives. You can read most of it like a traditional comic, just following the
illustrations and the talk bubbles, but worked into the illustrations is a subtext that seems to come
from the subconscious of the characters, if you want to call it that. In places it almost seems to come
directly from their physical experience, written on their bodies like a tattoo. I’m curious how that
storytelling device occurred to you, whether it’s been gestating in your work for a long time or if you
just started breaking away like that one day?
DM: A lot of this relates to the so called linear and non-linear storytelling choices. There is a hierarchy of
things happening. What is being said, versus what is being done, versus what is being thought. So I
figured out ways to show that visually.
Mostly it was problem solving of how to incorporate the lettering with the image. Unlike in film,
words in comics take actual physical space. In film a character can talk for paragraphs and none of the
words will encroach over the image that you see.
• 255 •
In comics you have to be very mindful of your word to image ratio, and your panel to time, to beat,
to word ratio.
JC: Yeah. There is in my opinion no better form of chops-building for novel writers or film writers to try
their hand at writing for a comic, for that very reason.
DM: When I am lettering a comic book, I find that I have written entirely too many words to fit comfortably
with images. So it then forces me to edit very considerately what words must remain for special and
pacing reasons.
One of my solutions to this was to put one level of text into the images, so it creates a movement, if
the idea it describes is meant to have a movement, and to be a sub-level of wording, if it is a thought
or unconscious, subconscious or private string of words, to contrast the surface wording.
It is a way to establish an order to the wording, and a rhythm to the actions, and an insight of words
vs. image of the characters. One of the things that I love about the medium of comics is that if they
are done right, you can not distinguish between the art and the story. The art is the story, and words
contribute to the design and art. At its most effective, you cannot distinguish where one starts and
the other ends.
JC: Can you tell me a bit about your early introduction to visual art and storytelling? How you got
interested in it, how you feel you learned your trade?
DM: I’d say my mother has been my biggest artistic influence. She was a first grade teacher, and I was
introduced to how she made art as visual learning devices for her students. She also introduced me very
early on to visual stories in the form of children’s books. My new children’s book The Shy Creatures is
in bookstores this week, as well as Amazon.com. It kind of picks up where my memory and experience
of children’s books as a kid left off.
With comics, my real introduction of storytelling came when I read a friend’s Daredevil when I was
nine years old. It was a Frank Miller issue and it had quite an effect on me. I remember realizing how
the writer was using so many visual techniques to set the mood and pacing of the story.
After that, I later searched out more of Frank Miller’s work, and in an interview of Miller and Klaus
Jansen, I learned that Miller was inspired by Wil Eisner. So I then sought out Eisner’s work and
ordered his book, Comics and Sequential Art, and began my study of comic book storytelling.
I should mention that I’m working on a new Daredevil series right now in which I am thrilled to
collaborate with some of the creators that inspired me as a kid. It is called Daredevil: End of Days. I’m
co-writing it with Brian Michael Bendis, and we are working with Klaus Jansen and Bill Sienkiewicz
who are doing the art for it. Alex Maleev is doing the covers, and Brian and I are thrilled to be writing
this as our love letter to Daredevil with such incredible artists that have dedicated large chunks of their
careers to building the history of this character.
JC: I see you’ve worked with Andy Lee. I had a table at Megacon in 2005 and met him when I was making
my rounds, and have been talking off and on since… I’d never seen someone work so fast—a real
benefit to him at conventions, I’m sure, when people are paying you $30 an original. He actually
struck me with a similar, really open and friendly vibe. You know there’s this conception of comic
artists being these kind of socially retarded troglodytes. I keep getting that illusion shattered. What
did you collaborate with him on?
DM: I’ve been close friends with Andy Lee for over fifteen years. When he was beginning his art career
he moved into my house and we shared it as a studio and learned quite a bit from one another. Not
unlike the relationship with Kabuki, and Akemi, and M.C. Square working from the House 13 in the
current Kabuki—The Alchemy series. It was kind of like Fight Club. But with art instead of soap.
I learned quite a bit from his Chinese Calligraphy and his quick spontaneous style. And I like to think
I contributed some insights to his art approach as well. He was living and working from my house
while I created the Kabuki—Metamorphosis volume that you mentioned.
• 256 •
We’ve collaborated a lot on various personal works and paintings as well as some comic book work.
For Marvel, we worked on Brian Michael Bendis’ Marvel Team Up story on the Master of Kung Fu
issues. Andy Lee contributed some Kabuki gallery work to the Kabuki Images book that included
interpretations from some of my favorite artists. Also to Brian Michael Bendis’ Jinx collection and
more.
You can find more info on this and any of my other work at davidmackguide.com which is updated
with new stuff every day.
David Mack is the New York Times best selling author and artist of the Kabuki Graphic Novels, the
writer and artist of Daredevil from Marvel Comics, and the author and artist of his new children’s book The
Shy Creatures from MacMillan publishing’s new kids book imprint which is in stores now and available
at Amazon.com. Mack’s work has garnered nominations for seven Eisner Awards, four International Eagle
Awards, and both the Harvey and Kirby Awards in the category of Best New Talent, as well as many other
national and international awards and nominations.
David Mack is one of the only creators to be listed in both the Top Ten Writers List, and the Top Ten
Artists List in Wizard Magazine. Mack’s writing and art work on KABUKI, have earned him international
acclaim for his innovative storytelling, sophisticated content, mixed media painting techniques, and page
design. KABUKI is available internationally and has been translated in seven different languages, in addition
to nearly two million copies of KABUKI Comics, Paperbacks, and Hard cover graphic novels in print in the
U.S. alone. Mack has toured and exhibited his work throughout, Europe, Asia, and America with numerous
gallery shows, and book signing tours at premier bookstores in over a dozen countries. He was the first
American to be nominated for Germany’s most prestigious Max-Und-Moritz award in the category of Best
Imported Comic.
Mack has illustrated and designed jazz and rock albums for both American and Japanese Labels (including
work for Paul McCartney), painted Tori Amos for her RAINN benefit calendars, designed toys and packaging
for companies in Hong Kong, animation art for MTV, ad campaigns for SAKURA art materials, written and
designed video games for film director John Woo and Electronic Arts, and contributed the artwork for Dr.
Arun Ghandi’s essay on the “Culture of Non-Violence”.
Mack’s KABUKI books have been the subject of under-graduate and graduate university courses in Art
and Literature, and listed as required reading. His work has been studied in graduate seminars at USC and
hung in the Los Angeles Museum of Art. He’s lectured at universities and taught classes in writing, drawing,
and painting all over the world, including a masterclass at the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia,
for Japan’s School of Communication Arts of Tokyo, Nagoya, and Osaka, and an invitation to speak at
Harvard as the Guest of Honor at their annual Science Fiction Writing convention for 2005.
Besides working for Twentieth Century Fox as a writer of the treatment to the Kabuki motion picture,
Mack’s film credits also include, Visual Designer, Creative Consultant, and Co-Producer.
Currently Mack is working with the Philip K. Dick Estate to adapt the Science Fiction Master’s work to
graphic novels at Marvel Comics, Co-writing a new Daredevil story with Brian Michael Bendis, and writing
his new children’s books.

• 257 •
• 258 •
Chins vs. Beards

Rudy Raube
R
udy Rauben has lived and died a few lives, from the sound of it. In a previous incarnation he once
served as art director, graphic designer or illustrator for a variety of magazines, including Dragon,
Amazing Stories, and Reality Hackers. You may have seen some his of illustrations in collectible card
games like Magic: The Gathering or the H.P. Lovecraft inspired Mythos.
He first contacted me out of interest for Mythos Media, we got to talking, and developed a dialog that
went on for quite some time. The first conversation here was transcribed in 2007, wherein we touch on
everything from myth and creativity, the I Ching, internal Kung fu and the artistic process to bizarre times
at Reality Hackers and experiences working for TSR and Wizards of the Coast. The second was in 2010,
where we discuss a shift of perspective and challenges facing creative artists attempting to find a place for
themselves in the modern marketplace.
(Part 1 was first run under a creative commons license on Alterati.com.)
Part 1: (2007)
James Curcio: To start, I’m interested in hearing more about your most recent comic project, and your past
history as an artist.
Rudy Rauben: As my current project is based more closely upon my actual experiences (than The Medicine
Show), I can kill two birds with one stone here, to some degree…
Here’s the skeletal version:
For better or for worse, I grew up near the home town of Dungeons & Dragons. It was just starting to
get popular when I was in high school. Being a very rebellious, artistic teen, in a religiously conservative
family and rural area, I soon fell in with the gaming community that the burgeoning D&D business
was attracting nearby. I ended up working at TSR (D&D’s parent company) for a number of years,
moving through the ranks, finally ending up as the art director of the magazine section.
At first it was great. The environment was very creative. My mentors were these laid back ol’ veteran
newspaper men or beatniks with great record collections. One of my earliest jobs was to send out back
issue orders and keep the LP record changer stacked and running! The offices were in an old, broken-
down Victorian. Got to learn the tricks of the trade from artists and editors who had much more
hands on experience and training than I, and I just sucked that up like a dry sponge. The atmosphere
was so very congenial. It really spoiled me.
As D&D became more popular, TSR became more corporate. Eventually, our nice little publication
staff was required to leave the Victorian hide-away and move into the corporate HQ with the suits.
We all were stuffed into this windowless, industrial cubicle-land and subjected to the suit’s BS
management tactics du jour—all your typical corporate horror stories basically. Rot set in.
That almost gave me a nervous breakdown: increasing stress and workloads, fewer and then eventually
no carrots, lay-off anxiety driving horrific morale all around, almost every day for months and then
even years at a time… I was still quite young and had little capacity to place it all in context.
About this time, I made the acquaintance of a guy (pen named Dr. Mabuse) who happened to be
a writer for this Berkeley, CA magazine called Reality Hackers. We hit it off immediately. We were
into similar things: Robert Anton Wilson, Peter Tosh, Church of the Subgenius, boho wackiness in
general. As it turned out, this kind of thing was par for the course with Reality Hackers as well, and
they happened to be minus an art director. By then I was so sick to death of D&D-land: I just bolted
for Berkeley with “Dr. Mabuse,” to take the job, never really looking back or bothering to make sure
that the contracts were in order.
• 259 •
• 260 •
So, at Reality Hackers (which later became Mondo 2000, after I had already left) I met Queen Mu,
R.U. Sirius and St. Jude (the pseudonyms we routinely employed). Leary, Wilson, McKenna, Rupert
Sheldrake and John Lilly were kind of routine fixtures of that scene, along with plenty of hackers,
crackers, artists, hippies, anarchists, punks, occultists, swingers, Silicon Valley overspill, and designer
drugs. The list of robust characters was endless. It was a tremendous amount of fun, creatively very
stimulating, and I really loved the people I was working with. I became close friends with the notorious
hacker grrrl-nerd St. Jude.
She had great taste in comics by the way, turned me on to a lot of great Indy comix stuff… poor little
Errata Stigmata…
But eventually I ran afoul of Queen Mu (the publisher of Reality Hackers). First impression: she
seemed to be this kind of brainy, psychedelic hippy hostess who espoused these very egalitarian ethics,
but that later proved not to be the case, at least not when push came to shove with me. R.U. Sirius
was the heart and soul of the magazine, but ultimately it seemed as though he had to defer to her, I
guess ‘cause she held the purse strings or something. She kind of sold me a bill of goods, and I bought
it hook, line and sinker. R.U. Sirius tried his best to compensate me for the resulting disparity, but
there was only so much he could do without jeopardizing the magazine’s financing. Later, Sirius and
St. Jude would fall out with Queen Mu, but I was long gone by then. I wasn’t there all that long, when
all was said and done, but they sure were tumultuous times.
Because the housing Queen Mu had promised me (to compensate for a lower salary set against a much
higher cost of living) never materialized I ended up bunking with this peculiar computer programmer/
hacker who I knew through Reality Hackers, another of their writers. I’ll just call him “Max.” Now
Max had a rather elaborate resume, very little of which anyone seemed to be able to substantiate. I’m
still not exactly sure what parts are fact and which fiction. He was adept with computer programming,
that was about all that was certain. Max basically claimed to be on the run from the NSA. In his teens
he had supposedly been caught hacking into sensitive military/intelligence databases. As a result he
had been forced to work for the spooks or suffer the consequences. The spooks gave him specialized
training: he acted like he was Jason Bourne or something. Once operational, he began crafting and
planting computer viruses in foreign nations’ computer systems for the spooks, but then used similar
viruses to blackmail his way out of spook service. Or so he said.
Max cruised along “revealing” bits and pieces of this sorted story, and that certainly gave him a certain
cache that this nerdy young man would not otherwise have had. Strange people were always just
across the street watching him. The easy answer would be to say it was all just BS crafted by a troubled
personality to get attention. He tended to be “Mr. Know-it-all,” loved to hold forth, play at celebrity.
The thing is I did repeatedly witness Max being visited by a man who others in the Berkeley scene
identified as a Naval Intelligence officer who had been shopping at the local “alchemists’” pharmacies.
The plot thickens. Whenever Max got a visit from this guy he was left swimming in cold, hard cash.
Max was rather blasé about it all: yeah the guy was a spook, and yeah, he was designing viruses for
him. Okay…
My savings were almost nil when one day I woke up to find Max sitting at the foot of my bed in lotus
position, staring at me with way too much grim, unblinking aplomb. “Hey, what are you doing?” I
ask. Max says to me, and he didn’t seem to be joking, “oh I’ve just been sitting here for the last few
hours considering how any day when I find that I haven’t killed my roommate while he slept, so that
I could observe the Rorschach pattern his splattering brains would create on the wall behind his bed,
is a good day, I guess.” Okay. This is really psycho freak show time now…
That episode was just the beginning. I suppose it may have had something to do with me trying to
explain to him that people were comparing notes on things he had said and claims he had made, and
thereby he was losing credibility: people were discovering that he had said one thing to one person
and then contradictory things to another. I tried to suggest to him that he might want to chill out and
stop playing so fast and loose with the truth. Dead cold silence was his only response, and ongoing,
brooding iciness thereafter. I was trying to be helpful, but he may have either seen me as the instigator
of his undoing or just decided to shoot the messenger in frustration.
• 261 •
Around that scene the idea of there being baseline “truth” or “reality” was terribly out of fashion.
Reality was generally considered to be wholly malleable (so personal ethics were similarly malleable)…
I think it is our perceptions of reality that are malleable, but this is not to say that there is no baseline
reality at all, you know?
JC: Yes…
RR: And Max loved to play with guns. He was endlessly reading pulp fantasy and sci-fi novels, like one or
more a day, most days. He seriously claimed to me a Zen master as well as professional shaman, ninja
and gambler…All at around 22 years old. Pathetic boy-man or seriously dangerous? My guts told
me there was something seriously wrong there, I just wasn’t sure what the threat level might actually
be. Queen Mu and I were at each other’s throats as well, so I just decided to split that scene before
something tragic happened.
I wandered down through Arizona and worked odd jobs for a while, eventually started freelancing
illustration again. Illustrated a lot of RPGs, some science fiction journals and various junk. The pay
usually sucked. Tried working in comics a few times, but the pay was even worse—truly laughable.
Eventually the whole collectible card thing took off. Did many, many of those: On The Edge, Everway,
Mythos, and Magic the Gathering most notably. The Magic illustrations paid better than usual, so
that made getting by a bit easier than it had been since going freelance. The art directors were decent
and respectful, there was a good deal of creative freedom, and they were attempting to freshen up the
tired old sword and sorcery themes.
When Hasbro bought out Wizards of the Coast that scene quickly went to hell. The game was more
popular and profitable than ever, but commissions and royalties were nonetheless cut. My art directors
became increasingly demoralized. The creative freedom soon evaporated along with the multi-ethnic,
cross-gender themes.
Marketing, toy and product tie-ins began to directly encumber the creative process. I began to feel like
I couldn’t generate any sincere inspiration with all the awkward logistics that became involved. After a
year or so of that continually worsening I just decided I needed a break from it. But then I never went
back. Just couldn’t. Got my bearings back, finally, and they were markedly in a different direction.
So much so that, coupled with a brutal divorce, I shaved my head, renounced my vanity, legally
changed my name and just wandered off.
I had been doing comics on the side for quite a few years already, and I finally decided “all right
already, time I put my money where my mouth is here and give the comic priority—that’s what I feel
genuine inspiration for, I need to be true to that.” I mean, my muse had been increasingly peevish
with me for some time about this.
That brings us up into fairly recent history.
JC: I have seen this in media and arts businesses I’ve worked with or helped create. Succeeding “too well”
in business terms is its own kind of curse.
I’ve also had a similar experience in my way, in terms of hitting a breaking point, dropping everything,
shaving my head, and disappearing, right down to the nasty divorce—but I’m not sure I was really
walking away from quite so much. My “fame” only extends to very small circles at this point… Back
then, even less.
RR: I hardly consider what notoriety I had much wider. And yours seems like a more accurate reflection
of the artistic concerns we seem to share. Anyway, that which we call a bull thistle by any other name
would smell…
I still remember that day’s message via the I Ching:
“He lends grace to the beard on his chin: Regards form (the beard) being treated as more important
than content (the chin on which the beard grows).”
• 262 •
• 263 •
In my case it was amusing, and occasionally slightly disturbing to see how marketing was cooking
most of this minor fame up. It’s rather ingenious how that gets done, with the bigger collectible card
operations, for instance. The slightly disturbing aspect is how some folks actually start to take that
ersatz PR/marketing-generated “star power” seriously when they’re given a moment in the spotlight…
but hey, it’s the cult of celebrity that most of modern society and commerce bows down to, I guess.
Me, I’m thinking of Hokusai, or Sun Luc Tang…thinking how much more there is to learn and do,
no time to rest on laurels, especially plastic ones. Or I’m thinking “what would Joe Strummer say?”
It just embarrasses me.
So, to get back to your initial question… Part of my current project draws upon some of the
characters and scenarios of these circumstances, particularly the Berkeley experiences. Subtexts
having to do with the I Ching, internal Kung fu and lucid dreaming are also involved—inner and
outer dimensions kind of riffing on one another. I’ll likely be exploring how Leary’s and McKenna’s
ideas about human “mutation” or “transformation” stack up against those of people like Chuang
Tzu, Jiddu Krishnamurti and David Bohm. The protagonist’s understanding is gradually developed,
through various circumstances and encounters, in a way that’s roughly analogous to my own. You
know how it goes: elements from multiple actual people get conflated into single characters, the
names get changed to protect the innocent, banal events get downplayed or omitted, history is
jiggled, and your Dakini gets to take on flesh and walk the pages so Her otherwise unseen influence
can be made visible to others.
JC: I know exactly how that goes, yes… it’s the same process I’ve been following for as long as I can
remember… For better or worse.
RR: My contacting you initially was prompted by reading that interview with you on Reality Sandwich. I
was impressed with your take on art and myth; it very much parallels where my own head is at these
days, and for seemingly similar reasons…
JC: I’m happy you did. I’ve been reading The Medicine Show… it has the added benefit of fitting in
surprisingly well to the general cosmology we created for some of our other Mythos Media… How do
you look at the world-building and literary aspect of it?
RR: In the past, I’ve tended to relate to my comics more like poetry than prose. As such, I’m surprisingly
content with they way The Medicine Show turned out. But this next comic project is looking
less allegorical. I’m referencing experiences I’ve actually had more directly now, so it’s likely to be
more contemporary and naturalistic in that way. Nonetheless, as the Medicine Show’s underlying
“cosmology” is basically expanded upon in this current project.
I’d certainly be more curious to hear more about your take on this tree we both, apparently, seem
to be barking up. For instance, this “agent” business, which seems to come up a lot in your work:
Privately I’ve been employing the term “agents of evolution” for quite a few years now, never realizing
others were also using it in a similar context—for this whole loose, elusive, subterranean current
of people conscientiously working, each in their own way, with their own resources and talents, to
somehow evolve the conditions on this planet. That seems synchronous with the notion of “wayfarers”
or “wanderers” (found in classical Taoist literature): having to find your own path, steadfastly go your
own way, and thereby organically and psychically improving the conditions for the whole environment,
naturally. These “agents” are an unfolding element in my current project.
JC: That’s kind of eerie, actually. It is one of those things I never really bothered to fully explain because I
don’t think it can be fully explained—you kind of either get it, or you don’t. And we definitely seem
to be coming from a similar corner on these things… Which is, quite frankly, pretty rare.
RR: Generally I just stand clear, keep my mouth shut and observe; but in your case the affinities seem
pronounced enough that I feel as if I would somehow be doing them a disservice if I was to remain
too circumspect.
• 264 •
I tend to think it occurs when people start to really tap into their own creative voice, be they a
visual artist, writer, musician, yogi or yogini, martial artist, weekend gardener, parent, small child or
whatever; everybody can drink at this “well,” whether their conscious of it or not. There is always the
creative, inspired option in Life. I mean, that is how it unfolded for me—it started with the Zen-like
experience of learning how to let inspiration come through unimpeded.
It is like there is this instinctive impetus coming through that so many of us are feeling. We each
cloth that in our own way, but the underlying signal seems to be basically the same. We’re not just
fantasizing, this isn’t escapist, there is some serious mojo percolating up. It’s the “mysterious pass”—it’s
wuji—it’s the pregnant void—it’s the lotus blossom floating on the pond of our minds. You don’t
know exactly where that insight or inspiration emerged from, but that doesn’t diminish its vitality or
cogency.
It tends to be very personal, meaningful and developmental, even if that doesn’t necessarily
communicate to others so readily.
Speaking of us “barking up the same tree,” as well as alluding to my own cosmology: while attempting
to familiarize myself with Mythos Media, I encountered an interview with you on Greylodge, and
was, once again, intrigued by the uncanny parallels with my own experience and artistic intentions.
I was pleased to hear you advocating interacting “laterally” rather than hierarchically. Some folks
suggest that the classical Taoists like Chuang Tzu were anarchists, but I think this notion of lateral
cooperation is the more graceful way of framing those ethics, given how much baggage now comes
with the word “anarchy.” It certainly is a central message in the I Ching, once you strip out the
feudal and patriarchal overlays that were interjected over the centuries of Chinese history to maintain
hierarchy by twisting or obscuring the egalitarian message.
I work almost exclusively with Carol Anthony and Hanna Moog’s version of the I Ching these days,
and it really emphasizes that dichotomy there; which made the whole function of the I Ching far
more clear to me.
JC: I would be very interested in seeing this work translated into a language that would be more accessible
to people living in today’s world, rather than the world of China quite some time ago. Some things
about our lives, and many things about the world haven’t changed, but many have—especially the
language and mental maps we use to describe it.
RR: It is a great psycho nautical tool once all that clutter is cleared away, or at least pointed out. These
ladies really did something beautiful here. Please understand, this isn’t your average fortune-telling
version of the I Ching. If that’s what your looking for you’ll likely find it disappointing or even
heretical. This one is an incisive tool of psychological yoga and self-reflection. It’ll burn your ego if
you give it half a chance! Very liberating.
JC: About anarchy… The Chuang Tzu was somewhat anarchistic, at least it seemed like that kind of an
ideological, political motion when compared with Confucianism. There’s always that pendulum swing
between chaos and order, you see it in the history of any culture, anywhere on the globe, throughout
time. The Chuang Tzu was also more political than the Tao Teh Ching. On the other hand, I’m the
asshole who gave his Taoism professor in college a blank page, when she asked on a written test “What
is the Tao?” “Whatever isn’t asking this question,” right? …She gave me an F. I guess she was looking
for it in a historical context. Stupid stunt, but what a question!
RR: I’d say you were right on! I give you an “A,” for anarchy, in the finest sense of that word. The classical
Taoists were oh so wary of indoctrination and misguided pedagogy.
Makes me think of something from years ago… I was watching as this Kung fu teacher spent a
great deal of time lecturing his would be followers on what he framed as traditional “martial code of
conduct”: social duties and obligations to your “superiors”, how to kowtow to “superiors” properly—
even in public, outside his classroom—why you should never challenge the price your “master” sets
his fees at, just this endless array of Confucian-inspired B.S. Finally he aroused the trickster in me and
I had to pass him this quote from Chung Tzu:
• 265 •
Confucius visited Lao-Tzu and lectured him regarding the virtues of charity and duty to one’s
neighbors. Lao-Tzu listened patiently, but then had this to say: ”The chaff kicked up from winnowing
grain will blind a person’s eyes so that he cannot see whether he is coming or going, much less the
points of the compass. Mosquitoes will keep a person awake all night long with their incessant biting.
And just in the same way all this talk of charity and duty to one’s neighbor drives me insane! Please
sir! Let’s try to keep the world’s affairs in their original state of simplicity. Let us try to maintain our
natural modesty. Just like the wind blowing where it will, let virtue establish itself. Why do you feel
the need to force these issues so? It’s like you’re trying to hunt down an escaped convict while all the
while beating a loud drum.
“The snow-goose is white without having to bleach itself. The raven is black without having to
apply any dye. The original simplicity of black and white are not something you can argue about.
The fabricated worlds of fame and reputation are not worthy of expansion. When the pool in your
courtyard dries up, and the fishes you have supposedly cared for so lovingly are left on dry ground,
moistening them with your spitty kisses will provide pitifully little consolation to them. Better that
you had left them in their native waters in the first place.”
When Confucius left Lao-Tzu that day he would not speak for another three. He returned to his
disciples and they grew concerned: “Master, so how did it go? Did you set that old codger Lao-Tzu
straight?”
“I saw a rainbow-colored creature,” replied Confucius, “soaring amid the clouds as naturally as he
lingered upon the meadows and threaded through the trees.
Wavering hues danced upon his hide as he lead us to a sparkling stream, both lit by the same dance of
sunlight. He fed on earth and sky, the formed, and the unformed, the visible, and the invisible. How
could my mouth not fall agape? I struggled to close it. How then would you suggest that I should set
Lao-Tzu straight?”
He tried to not reveal his agitation, but then he launched into a lengthy refutation of Chung Tzu’s
message, suggesting how society was falling into dangerous chaos because of such ideas. As an example
of this he offered this seemingly exaggerated story of a “hippy” student who would not wear his
uniform and supposedly belched and farted at formal meals with his “masters”. It was both sad
and hilarious, how his ego was struggling to maintain his privileged status in the face of this classic
egalitarian message that basically says “be yourself and stop trying to lord over other people, you’re
making matters worse, not better.”
It brought to mind the image of that wandering Taoist who, on a cold night, happily warmed his bare
ass by wagging it in front of a camp fire stoked by a large wood carving of a Buddha. You know, fuck
the idols, fuck worship, get to the practical essence of the teaching: Liberate your own true self and
thereby liberate others! That is the most respectful, loving and dynamic thing a person can do. Society
won’t crumble if you do, quite the contrary. Contrary to the common propaganda this is not a recipe
for unbridled licentiousness or mental disease.
JC: It would seem to me that both extremes wouldn’t really be ideal from the perspective of Taoist alchemy.
Or any sane perspective, for that matter.
RR: It is foolhardy for beginners to focus on that before they have the insight to see how ego, cause and
effect interact, thereby naturally having good reason to moderate their behavior without any need to
rely on external controllers; yet somehow the value of autonomy, adaptability and transformation can
hardly be emphasized enough, in their proper context, with an eye out for the underlying principles
and ethics that are not just there arbitrarily…
JC: You’d think any would-be sefu should realize that the whole point of the training is that an untrained,
undisciplined individual, when told to “do as they will” would be an unruly barbarian. The training
itself, if it holds any value whatsoever, results in someone who can “do as they will” and accomplish
goals, make sensible decisions, and yet take things as they are and live life from the perspective that it
is transient and can’t be possessed. If the training can’t do that, why bother with it?
• 266 •
RR: To make money, flatter one’s ego, collect followers? Join their cult?
JC: Even punk rock kids these days don’t seem to get that anti-authoritarianism requires discipline, of
a sort, discrimination, and responsibility. Not very punk rock sounding, those words… But it’s the
truth. Authorities make it so we don’t have to really venture into the wild, and accept that there are no
static answers, no promises.
RR: When you were interviewed on Greylodge (2005) you made a brief mention of using Baguazhang in a
manner I haven’t heard many people openly discuss. Being steeped in the I Ching—and Joe Campbell
for that matter—for quite a few years before ever coming to Bagua, I recognized certain shamanistic
elements in it and began employing them before I ever realized that was not exactly considered kosher
(or even possible) by the broader internal Kung fu community, at least not among the folk I’ve
encountered. Between that, and the hierarchical brinkmanship so often involved, I generally hesitate
to discuss such issues with anyone who hasn’t personally expressed interest in those more psychical
aspects.
JC: That might be because I was initially taught Bagua by an individual with a background in Ericksonian
Hypnotherapy, B.O.T.A. Qabbalah, and method acting. Initially the training was very internal, it was
much more of a creative than martial exercise. A lot of visualization, trance induction, breathing and
partner sensitivity exercises… He was a really sweet and incredibly knowledgeable man, but also at
times very paranoid. So it goes sometimes when you try to work within so many models all the time,
I guess.
RR: “Empty Cup”, my first internal Kung fu instructor, was a rather ancient Benedictine priest who had
been involved with martial arts for a long, long time. He claimed to know like seven different versions
of Taiji, then Bagua, Xing Yi, Escrima and Kenpo, too. He tended to be very rather pretentious and
tight-lipped about everything. He had been advertising as a Chi Kung teacher and I was looking to
deepen my understanding of that—looking for someone who had more practical experience with
it than I had. Turned out that his sense of Chi Kung was little better than my own, but I he did
introduce me to Baguazhang and I took an immediate shine to it. I’m still totally in love with it.
Empty Cup’s second was this easy-going, old Harley biker musician guy we’ll just call “Neil Pert,”
and it was he who was assigned to mentor me. Empty Cup was the boss, but Neil was a far better
teacher—friendly, unpretentious. He instinctively appreciated the value of playing around, not being
so dour, mechanistic or hierarchical about it all. Eventually I discovered that Empty Cup was very
often just parroting Erle Montaigue’s training tapes, so I invested in that same resource myself so as
to be able to digest the lessons more fully, more directly. Meanwhile, I also researched for and then
practiced whatever credible training insights I could find from other sources as well; weeding through
them one by one, checking for actual efficacy, looking to triangulate in on those much vaunted but
often poorly defined “core principles.”
When my Bagua suddenly began to excel beyond that of other students in the class who had been
with Empty Cup longer, and my explanation involved recommendations of Park Bok Nom’s training
approach, it was suddenly revealed that I had apparently violated some unspoken code of conduct and
I was asked to leave. You see, Empty Cup liked to use that ol’ “empty your cup” routine. He used it
on me. You ever hear that one?
JC: Don’t think so, no.
RR: There’s this classic story about a Zen master who received a curious professor. The Zen master served
the professor tea. He began pouring the professor’s cup, but then wouldn’t stop as the tea reached the
cup’s brim. The tea flowed over the top, still the Zen master kept pouring and pouring. The professor
watched this perplexed, but finally thought he had better intervene—perhaps the Zen master was a
little daft or something, “it’s full already, why do you keep pouring when it is full?!” The Zen master
replied, “Like this cup, you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How am I supposed to
show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?”
• 267 •
• 268 •
In one sense, this is meant to suggest that a student must be open-minded, prepared to leave his
assumptions, expectations and erroneous ideas behind. And that is crucial, it’s true. But there is a flip
side to that as well. There is also a danger in this when the teacher fails to be conscientious enough in
terms of his own ego’s mischievous influence: when the “empty cup” mantra becomes an underhanded
way of basically saying “just do as I tell you to do and don’t question it.” This is dangerous. For the
teacher it can become an unfortunate way of insulating themselves from having to empty their own
cups—remain open to new ideas, questions or insights that may challenge their own assumptions,
expectations, erroneous ideas or status as an authority figure.
In the original story you see where the guy who needs to empty his cup is a professor, he’s not
portrayed as a student without reason. The Zen master can be seen as another authority figure too,
but traditionally that image is meant to suggest a sage or wise insight advocating a more instinctive
and personally empowering awareness. I tend to be willing to pull back the Great Oz’s curtain, to
advocate “lateral” cooperation, if or when others will not. There seem to be a lot of those “wizard”
flunkies out there…
I find this whole business of knocking people around with chi at a distance fascinating. When the
person getting knocked around is a student of the supposed “chi master” it all seems perfectly viable:
the master projects his chi and the student is thrown back accordingly. But bring in someone who
hasn’t worked with that master and nothing happens. The excuses these “chi masters” offer for this
lack of effect are pathetic. It suggests how much voodoo can be involved in these esoteric arts. The
more nebulous the practices are the harder it is to substantiate what is being accomplished, the easier
it is to delude oneself and dupe others. The power of suggestion and a person’s suggestibility need
some very careful examination.
JC: Yes. It’s often hard to know what is what. The downside of the more flow-based, intuitive kind of
teaching is that though it was really incredible in terms of giving me creative tools to work with in my
own work, music, writing, visual art…it wasn’t actually teaching me valuable martial tools. I didn’t
realize this until I later went to a school out in California and my sefu there was like, “in terms of
martial arts, you really haven’t learned anything.” I was of course pretty skeptical of that, but within
a matter of minutes he proved himself right. It’s pretty embarrassing not being able to push back a
middle aged man with a cane, when he can knock you over with his fingertips.
RR: The last few years I’ve found Wang Xiang Zhai’s (founder of Yi Quan / Dacheng quan) insights very
key in all this. He basically, confirmed the suspicions I had about Xing Yi, among other things. I
actually just recently discovered a Chinese-speaking Finnish martial artist who has produced a very,
very good English translation of Wang’s treatise and interviews.
I’m finding it all incredibly helpful: cutting out even more of the extraneous mumbo-jumbo, getting
at the truly functional training methods and the genuine meanings behind so many of the metaphors
that have so routinely been misconstrued. Amazingly clear take on internal Kung fu with minimal
B.S.
But this is not to underrate that more instinctive or aesthetic approach to Kung fu that you speak
of. You certainly don’t want to lose sight of the applications that show the way to the core principles,
but neither do you want to lose sight of the personally adaptive, intuitive evolutions on the theme.
In the Taoist approach at least, dogma is anathema. It’s not like most of us modern westerners are
in imminent physical danger from bandits; that is not our reality. But the threats to our health and
psychological well-being are very much part of our reality. So, the health and psychological functions
are actually more prescient now. We need to learn how fear and insecurity can be placed in a healthier
context, but physical competition proves very little in the bigger scheme of things, and can actually
become a very problematic character defect. Does might make right?
Another model some people kick around a lot, when bringing this into a more western framework, is
Leary’s 8 circuit model, however it has always struck me as unnecessarily hierarchical. That just doesn’t
jive with the Trigram’s 8 transformative functions (“energies” or aspects of consciousness) as I have
found them to apply: which is more lateral, cooperatively or holistically.
• 269 •
JC: I completely agree. At the very least, it’s linear, if not hierarchical. When you try to take this stuff into
practice… shamanism, reality hacking, chaos magick, whatever paradigm you want to play in… you
have the same situation where it can take you a long way, but you can just as easily think you’re lifting
mountains with your mind when in reality you’re sitting in a corner masturbating.
RR: I laugh, but it is sad to see people’s very genuine longing for a deeper experience of life diverted into
such nonsense. Tantric and sexual yoga, for instance, has been so used and abused—diverted into
this egoistic demonstration of male prowess, masquerading as something healthy and empowering.
People… please… the finest thing you can do with sex, the most arcane and healthy simultaneously,
is make it a genuine expression of love as sincere heartfelt affection. You don’t need to collect energy
or suck it from other people with your penis. You don’t need to go for hours and hours—tends to be
rough on vaginas.
Come on now. You can’t meaningfully direct Kundalini or chi without first removing the ego-driven
conceits that obstructed its flow in the first place. There is no end run or short cut around how we’ve
been erroneously programmed since we were small children about sex and our animal natures.
JC: I’ve been saying the same thing for quite some time. Also interesting to compare the Taoist sexual
practices, which are strangely male-oriented, with certain Hindu Tantric practices, which place more
of an emphasis on the female… quite to the contrary of their social inflection. That aside, without
a connection it’s just masturbation, which I suppose isn’t bad but there’s no opportunity for growth
there either. Without some amount of humbleness, play and adoration it’s just “sport fucking” as Tyler
Durden said.
RR: There is a lot of denigration and repression we have to shake off here. Ego demeans genuine love, and
genuine love dispels ego. I mean, I’ve been there, I’ve naively played with these techniques, and I’ve
come out the other side of that dark forest. Men, listen to what intelligent, truly liberated women
have to say about it. There’s a great deal of patriarchal conceit operative in these practices. The absence
of equally strong feminine voices in these techniques’ traditions makes me very wary of them these
days.
My own personal take on yoga in general (with the capitol Y, as sublime “union”) has come to be that
to the degree a person internally dispenses with ego and faulty conditioning, they reconnect mind
with body, restore instincts and awareness, clarify perception and thereby eventually find reality is
exactly what it needs to be, and that there is really no need to try and tamper with its external aspects.
Avoid too much forcing, instead entrain finesse. There are no magic bullets. Fix yourself before you
presume to fix the world. That’s where you can exercise the most significant affect.
JC: Yeah. I feel like it’s far too easy to lead yourself astray turning everything into a purely conceptual
system… having led myself far astray with it in the past. I kind of branded myself initially in the
‘occult world,’ publishing through New Falcon, but by the time the Generation Hex anthology came
out with Disinfo, I was getting pretty wary of talking too much about the occult…
RR: I segued into the Taoist and Zen approaches purposely to avoid falling prey to that myself. I mean, I
did catch myself falling into that at times. Zen and classical Philosophical Taoism both offer methods
that can safeguard against that, but even those are not entirely immune. Maybe there are others as
well, but those are the ones I’ve had the most resonance with.
JC: It’s funny because I think it’s a really valuable tool, but if you take it as your primary means of
interpreting reality it becomes a means of driving yourself perfectly insane. Some of us need a little of
that, to break us out of whatever we might be sleepwalking in, but if anything my natural disposition
is to walk in the ‘ether’ and have no fucking clue what’s going on around me physically.
RR: I certainly did. Robert Anton Wilson kicked my ass forward early on. That was crucial then and there.
JC: Working so much on the computer doesn’t help. So my Occult need is to probably spend more
time stretching or cooking food or lying in the sun, not “traveling the aethyrs.” That’s totally just me
• 270 •
though. A lot of people are completely stuck in other habitual patterns that require a hard look at
the big picture. There’s such a thing as being too grounded. The Prince of Pentacles is described as a
dullard in Crowley’s Book of Thoth.
RR: Eventually one will become embarrassed by how the talking has exceeded the doing. Personally, my
chagrin was enormous, but it propelled me forward, made me “transform.” It’s never-ending.
Maybe it could be framed in terms of healthy maturation, phasing out of adolescence, but not losing
creative vigor in the process. Simple things become more precious. You learn you can make just
as much progress, if not more, without having to press forward so zealously. You can abandon the
training wheels.
I’m not so occultly- fond of tall pine groves, full moons on September nights, comical dogs and
buccatini myself.
Part 2: (2010)
James Curcio: You’ve been talking about a shift of creative focus in your work…
Rudy Rauben: An early spring allowed me to finish up several sculptures that had been lingering about. So
I delivered those commissions and placed the others before the public, and the response has been very
promising and immediate.
It got me to thinking why make the carving a second-class medium to my comic work…which I have
always done just because I was failing to see I had some rather arbitrary preconceptions about which
was the stronger medium? The sculptures can communicate everything I’ve been signaling in my
comics, and the audience finds them far more accessible, seemingly; so why resist that? Why not work
with that artistic opportunity? None of the birth-struggles of publishing, just inspiration, visceral
execution of the imagery, and tangible completion; then move on to the next.
As you may recall, this all comes on a strong push to complete more comic work last winter and
earlier this year. And I did rack up a lot of pages. But in the process I kind of painted myself into a
corner—brought myself to a dead stop and a rather painful reckoning.
Simultaneously, I had been studying David Lynch’s more recent approach to story-telling. Inland
Empire, especially, caused me to ponder why he had loosened the narrative threads so. Mulholland
Drive ventured into this territory, and Inland Empire was like the coup de grace to me. I trust Lynch
artistically, but that film’s troubling ambiguity really pissed me off at first. I guess, at first, I thought he
was just abusing the audience with a kind of self-indulgent, even petulant, or sloppy—communication
style.
However, reading interviews with him or about this film I later came to appreciate what he was
attempting to do, even if it didn’t necessarily succeed.
His rather oblique explanation strikes me as an old poetic and surrealist concern made prescient again
by our latest media/marketing environment: As a creator, why not insert more ambiguity?
In a mass-media marketplace now over-filled with pre-progammed—in a Skinnerian/Pavlovian
sense—images, sounds and plot-lines, mostly expected to engender specific, commonplace, reactions
in an audience…often quite divisive in their over-all cumulative effect on people’s psyche’s…Ought
not an artist consider throwing a wrench into such workings? Ought not an artist consider an approach
that returns a person to having to think and feel for themselves, so that they must derive their own
meanings rather than having them all too conveniently and routinely delivered, along with product
placements and advertising and contemporary political mythologies…?
The Walking Dead hate this ambiguity. They get very frustrated when left without a predetermined,
spoon-fed, program or state of conditioning.
JC: That was my perspective when I started doing creative or artistic work. And I was criticized, especially
by friends, for just being obscure to be obscure, and being all over the place. There is maybe some real
• 271 •
validity to the second part because I was trying to play free jazz before I’d gone through playing all
the standards. But in your case, that’s clearly not the case. It’s not like you don’t have a solid grasp of
the foundations. It comes down to the intention of the work at a given time, I think. I mean, you can
have this turn of direction, and maybe in five years another one will come…as we both know, that’s
all part of the process.
For my part, I’ve been working more on honing my craft, telling the things I want to tell in a way
that I know—or at least hope—will convey that content. Now my challenge is that I’ve been focusing
more and more on scripts, and those can just pile up when something doesn’t work out with this or
that producer or production company, and no one ever gets to experience the work. Eventually I may
come full circle, it’s hard to say.
As you point out, people are so conditioned to look at media in a certain way, and if it doesn’t take off
its clothes and lie down in front of them, legs spread, the stock response will be “this is too confusing,”
“this is boring,” “what is this garbage?” I’m an advocate of trying to meet the audience half-way, but
even then…
On the flip side, the art-world can play a funny trick. If something has the right magic wand waved
over it, it becomes “a great artistic work.” And in the context of “a great artistic work,” people then go
“oh, my need to delve in and understand this is due to a lack in myself,” whereas when something is
commercially available outside that setting, the onus winds up being on the creator.
RR: Yeah. With you I need not belabor the mechanics of this approach, but further a psychiatrist—writing
on Lynch’s work, especially Inland Empire—suggested this: anyone familiar with dream analysis will
see parallels in how Lynch is increasingly structuring his films. The psychiatrist (or psychologist,
whichever he was) suggested that dreams occur, basically, as a sequence of disconnected images or
scenes. Any sense of narrative is created by the psyche after the initial flash of these images, scenes,
symbols.
Now, I’m not exactly sure if that’s completely true or not. I can’t say that is always the case in my
dreams, although it certainly seems to be at times.
JC: I think that thing about narrative is true so long as it implies the “meaning” behind the conjunction of
symbols in a dream. Dreams are essentially meaningless, as are myths. But we don’t experience them
“essentially.” The meaning comes from us.
RR: It all did chime powerfully in terms of sequential art. That Understanding Comics guy made it quite
clear how a reader fills in between the panels, and this is what Lynch is playing with, and what
dreamers often do as well.
All this then prompted me to contemplate just how much “filling in between the panels” a reader or
viewer can do and how much an artist might allow?
I flashed on early manga like Hokusai’s 100 Views of Mt. Fuji—how there could be a narrative there,
albeit it begs more of the viewer than a modern comic book would, just as Lynch’s last few films beg
more of movie-goers than most Hollywood films do.
And then I flashed on how exhausting drawing all these panels was—minor variations on one another
just to indicate the passage of time and supply space for word balloons: Is that really necessary? Is it
really effective?
For me the gut feeling to these questions was NO NO NO. Finally.
My style is one of environments and dreamscapes, not drawing talking heads so that word balloons
have a place to call home. My imagery could actually work better with a graphic composition more
like Hokusai’s, and a narrative approach more like Lynch’s. Die-hard comics people might find some
offense in that, but a much broader range of potential viewers made available to me more than
compensates.
There are many, many people who are put off by the comic book format itself. A lot of people have a
lot of negative preconceptions about what comics are, and not always without due cause.
• 272 •
I’ve long been hankering to dispense with word balloons. It has definitely not been feeling “wu wei”
to me for a long time now. I feel I now have the insight and a satisfying resolution to dispense with
them confidently.
Of course, this means confronting the loss of a great deal of accumulated artwork; though it seems
like an urgent necessity, at this point. I’ve been loathe to accept that, even though it has been nagging
at me for quite some time, like some chronic low-level bacteria that just slows you down for months
on end, but never completely makes you bed-ridden.
JC: I like to think that even unreleased work isn’t lost. It still may affect people, and even if it is never seen,
it’s a stepping stone for your own transformation and growth. Or at least, I like to think that, because
otherwise many years of my life have been “wasted” on collaborative projects which, for one reason or
another, wound up stillborn.
RR: Truth be told, I’ve out-grown so much of it anyhow. In order to move forward, a sacrifice needs to
be made. The basic themes and images are still sound, as they ever were, if they ever were, it’s just a
matter of adapting work finished in the old format to the new one. It’s really just a matter of losing
redundancies.
Long-winded, but there you have it: Rudy is saying “fuck-off” to the conventional, modern comic
book format in favor of something more like a manga of 200 years ago. There will be continuity
between the page panels, and captions, but far more room for the reader to dream in between them.
• 273 •
Imagery of the Underground

S Jenx
James Curcio: Tell me about how you started working in the arts.
S Jenx: When I was about 8 years old, my father handed me my very first camera: a beat-up 35mm Hanimex
Praktica super TL. While the light meter barely worked and aesthetically it was a train-wreck, it was
mine and I fell deeply in love with the photographic arts. I was hooked. I soaked in every medium I
could. As a family we frequented theatrical productions on a small scale and also larger productions
in Philadelphia. I devoured everything I could learn about every medium I could find. Once in high
school I had many more resources available and I took full advantage of all of it. We were required, if
you were concentrating on the arts, to showcase work at the end of the year in the school’s “Celebration
of the Arts”. In my sophomore year, I had more imagery up than some juniors. As a junior, I had my
first “wall”, meaning a partition wall where only my work was showcased, an honor typically held for
seniors and the advanced. Senior year, I had yet another wall and received “honorable mention” for
the overall layout and work created. When I graduated and moved on to St. Joseph’s University I was
immersed in the creative world. While the program wasn’t huge or widely known, it was extremely
powerful and aided in shaping much of my outlook on art today. My professors taught me daily,
by example, what it meant to be an artist. In addition, I had to take other classes which opened my
eyes even further to new worlds. Classes like philosophy, psychology, sociology and even theology
helped to further mold opinions on the world around me and helped to form an educated and
creative response with my work regardless of the chosen medium. After college I continued to create
and show on a regular basis in various mediums and forums, which helped me to grow and expand
exponentially. Surrounding myself with the creative and prolific people pushed me to be innovative
and consistent even though I had lost the constant input of a college setting.
For me, art is about perception, I feel my vision is becoming clear enough to create something truly
ground breaking. The general populace needs a reprogramming and I believe firmly that the arts
are the only way for them to truly appreciate the world surrounding them again. I always tell my
students to think about their “end game” prior to even starting with concept. I can honestly say since
the beginning of my career my goal has never really changed: I want to bring truly emotive art to the
masses, in an attempt to bring society’s awareness back to the creative realm, where anything is truly
possible.
JC: How does myth factor in to the work you do?
SJ: I would have to say that it factors in fairly heavily. A lot of my most recent series (Antipathy: Chaos
and Discord) circles around mythology along with occult practice and theory. Each image deals with
the sigilization of different desires, and mythology is ultimately a catalyst in that equation. The thing
that most fail to realize is photography is only one medium that I use to create. I use everything I can
from performances to installations to experiences to help mold my immediate surroundings and the
world around in the hopes of affecting even the outer most rings of consciousness. Every step of the
way is an attempt to pay homage. A humble nod to the myths that still reign true and are very much
a part of society and the mass consciousness. No matter how much we feign enlightenment, there is
little to no difference in the human condition as a whole or the evolution therein.
JC: I can see that. There’s oftentimes a narrative or story that develops behind a visual piece—I feel a lot
of the work I’ve done has that too but I wonder how it is reshaped in the mind of the viewer, or if it
comes through at all.
SJ: I’ve always loved Cindy Sherman’s work, just the simple fact that each of her images look like film stills
intrigues me, add in that they’re all self portraits and I’m in love! I think narrative is very important
• 274 •
and unfortunately a lost art. These days it’s less about concept or process, and more about who spends
more. That is one of my pet peeves about the onset of the digital work-flow; talent has become
proportional to the almighty dollar. Frankly, I couldn’t care less how much you spend on your body
and light rig. I want results. I have seen people spend thousands of dollars on equipment, decide to
go the self taught route and they can’t understand why their images aren’t getting better! The age of
the apprentice is long gone and with it went the respect for hierarchy. People think that just because,
again, they spent a ridiculous amount of cash that instantly they deserve respect. Forget learning your
craft. Forget understanding how to not only choose the right tools for the job but also how to work
with them. There is no reason why someone who has no knowledge of their craft should be held in
the same regard as people with experience. There has to be a punch line in there somewhere.
JC: I know it can be difficult to get “under the hood” with processes like this. But, can you give me an
example of a specific piece—what was intended with it and how that process unfolded?
SJ: My work has always been about catharsis, it is primarily purging the things that clouded and plague
my view. One of the key parts in creating a sigil is to forget the initial meaning and carry on with just
the symbol, essentially in the same vein as Dharma or teachings in Buddhism. Typically the goals are
fairly broad to begin with such as a general direction I’d like things to go. I’ve learned that if you make
outrageous and extremely specific goals that you are setting yourself up for a let down.
I have never created something as rewarding and painful as I have with “Antipathy: Chaos and
Discord.” The series began as my way of dealing with factors in my life that were completely out of
my hands. In addition, it was a way in which to reclaim my psyche, in the hopes to put things back
on track. My work is conceptually rooted as much in things literary, philosophical and theological as
it is in visual mediums. The process is extremely important to me. After conceptualization and pre-
visualization are to a point where I am comfortable, the set is designed, lit and test shot. Once the
image is almost ready to be finalized, all that is left is one of the most difficult parts; finding someone
who embodies the concept. Finding a person who can embrace intangible things is certainly a trying
task but once they present themselves, it makes it worth it. I have a tendency to not actively seek out
models with a “name,” actually if anything I prefer the opposite. Frankly, I have no desire to shoot
someone’s 15 minutes of fame; I’ll leave that for the fashion photographers. The people that I work
with understand the dynamics of the concept and also know that they are simply a part of the medium
and it isn’t about them but their involvement is a part of something larger. Once everything is set,
prior to physically walking into the shooting studio, I perform a scrying ritual, to open myself up to
any and all possibilities. I have always thought that artists, visual or otherwise, are more scribes then
creators. Essentially the work flows through us, not from us hence utilizing ritual. For the first few
months, I would shoot the images digitally, print them and then shoot an inter-negative which is then
manipulated by hand with scratches, punctures, burns, dirt rubs and anything else you could possibly
thing of. Recently, I decided to cut out the inter-negative technique and shoot primarily in medium
or large format film with a Bronica GS-1 (120/220), Calumet 4x5 or an antique Deerdorf 4x5/8x10.
I’ve chosen to go this route for quite a few reasons but the most important is that I like the idea of
fewer steps between what I see in my head and the final image, not to mention film seems to yield a
more visceral image. In addition, I have been using some alternative techniques such as Polaroid lifts,
hand coloring, toy cameras and cross processing.
Many of the images are shrouded or their faces obscured in some fashion throughout the series, a lot
of the reason for that is simply that I wanted anonymity. It isn’t that these men and women feel any
sense of shame or anything negative for that matter. More so it’s for the simple reason that I want you,
as the viewer, to become lost within the image or even better find yourself in it and hopefully set the
“self ” afloat in a sea of Stendhal.
JC: What do you try to explore—or create—through your work?
SJ: A lot of what I’m seeking through my work is what every artist is, a greater sense of self awareness
and a whole lot of catharsis. As far as exploration, I believe the means this exploration takes shape is
far more important then the physical “end.” Let’s face it, the end is essentially all the same regardless
• 275 •
of what beliefs you hold. The question of what’s next is what separates us. I’ve studied a great deal of
Egyptian and Greek mythology dealing with the subject, in conjunction to Asian, Middle Eastern
and Mexican belief systems. The role of gender in society as a whole plays a large part in my work as
well. While the sexes and sexual practice are well defined verbally, aesthetically gender, gender roles
and even a sense of sexual preference aren’t as cut and dry when dealing with the realms of myth. I
personally enjoy those blurred lines. I think it’s only natural as beings of the human condition to be
unsure and to celebrate that uncertainty.
In my work I attempt to create a place for my viewer to get lost in the hopes of finding a deeper sense
of self, once they come through to the other side. I feel that by appealing to a few different layers
of the human condition, it makes it easier to invoke/evoke a number of different states in a single
viewing. I think the Freudian model of psychological divide is the most accurate in this situation: the
superego, the ego and the id. The super ego strives for perfection and when looking at a piece of art
the common expectation is that the artist holds art in a place of deity. The images in this series are the
exact opposite, the beauty is in the imperfection. To quote Picasso, “every act of creation is first an
act of destruction.” According to Freud, the ego moderates the sense of reality. While these pieces are
certainly rooted in the surreal without a strong sense of the real, juxtaposition would be impossible.
Most important to this entire equation is the id. The id is the primitive and in my opinion, what
society has distanced itself from for far too long. The animal instinct. Chaos.
JC: There are, I think, as many methods

of going about creating and exploring
art as there are different psychological
orientations. What I’m saying is that
though the forms might all be clichés
in some form the actual possibilities
are boundless and infinite.
There is still a lot of talk these days
about alternative culture, counter
culture, and so on. What are your
thoughts about these things? Are they
still useful categories to talk about?
SJ: Counter culture will always hold

weight. As long as there is popular
culture there will be an equally strong
and affluent alternative culture. So long
as there is the daily grind, there will be
the insomniacs and the free thinkers
hiding out in diners…scheming.
As idealistic as it may seem, counter
culture needs the mainstream as much
as the mainstream needs the opposition.
It’s one of the things that keeps the rest
of the machine spinning consistently.
It’s all part of the same beast.
JC: Yes. I think part of what bristles me somewhat about modern ideas of counter—or alternative—
culture is that many of them think of themselves as being outside the capitalistic system, or at least
in direct opposition to it, when in reality, they play into it as well. And that isn’t necessarily a bad
thing—I think you can create a lot of good while still existing within a culture, obviously, even one so
fragmented as this one…But when artists talk about being “outside the system,” when they’re sitting
on the Internet, driving around in their cars, shopping at the same stores as everyone else, it strikes
me as kind of absurd. The counter-culture within a different culture would take on a different form.
• 276 •
Within the context of Christianity, Satan is a reaction to those specific cultural ideas, he transgresses
their boundaries. Literally, Satan—though not Lucifer—was a Christian bogeyman, an invention
on the part of the mainstream ideology. A counter-culture needn’t be that exactly, but it’s still inside
the “circle” that encompasses a total culture. Creating a new, or a different culture grounded on a
completely different set of myths is something different altogether.
SJ: In this day and age I don’t think people care enough, they don’t know enough to really be a part of
creating new myths let alone reshape culture. I mean that takes work. Why would anyone want to
actively seek it out when pop culture can just be masked and fed to them? There are so few anomalies
these days, at least interesting ones. Of course, people just lap up whatever shit is available. There is
something really strange about seeing people like Brittney and Christina take on the counter culture
or fetish inspired persona. Seeing someone like Lady Gaga pop onto the scene and actually become
a bit successful is bizarre to me as well. I mean, at first, I have to admit my gag reflex was going nuts.
As I did a little research I have to admit I was mildly impressed, especially with her MTV music video
awards “suicide.”
The fact of the matter is that the people who are at the top of the heap don’t have time to seek out
what’s current, let alone what’s next. They want it quick, clean and available. Tattoos? Ok, done.
Nipple piercing? Ok, sure. Latex? Hell yeah. They want to be able to hand one of us a stack of money
and ta-da! Weekend warrior. I used to be so angry about those people but I’ve come to realize they’re
just as much a part of the whole cultural construct as we are. Until capitalism becomes a thing of the
past there will always be war, famine, racism, classism, gender bias and just about every other -ism we
can muster. It is far easier to chase us indoors and program us however they want. They keep us fat
and stupid because its easy. All because we are slaves to a capitalist system, that oddly enough has no
concrete financial backing. That’s one thing that’s always killed me but that’s a whole other story.
JC: It is. What projects are you currently working on?
SJ: Oh man…I always tend to involve myself in a ridiculous number of projects…Well there is the
photographic series already in progress that I mentioned earlier, antipathy: chaos and discord. I’m
• 277 •
also starting another series of images that’ll be dealing with androgyny and gender-bending. I’ll be
using cross-processing, some other alternative processes and cameras; including some home-made
solutions.
In addition, I’m working with some stop motion animation films that will feature visuals, sets and
characters/sculptures that will be a collaboration between a cast of artists and myself. The films will
also feature a musical score by yours truly.
That’s excellent. I didn’t know that was a direction you were exploring.
As far as culturally and the grand scheme, I’m working on putting the studio back together but with a
dynamic that is closer to what I was originally looking for, more of an artist co-op, less of a weekend
retreat and fashion show. We’re going to start offering more to the alt community as a whole such as
low cost classes and seminars.
I already have a few events in line; including more release parties/art exhibitions for both books “The
Desecration Diaries” and “Seconds From Impact” with some performances and whatnot added in for
color.
Join us:
www.thefallstudios.com
• 278 •
Alchemical Wedding
David Aronson
I encountered the rich and deeply disturbing work of David Aronson in a strangely convoluted way. After
having come on his work through several mutual friends on the Internet several years ago, I spent a long
time one evening drinking coffee and going through his website, Alchemical Wedding. I was inspired and
somewhat galvanized by what I found there, but this story probably would’ve ended there if it wasn’t for the
coincidences that came next.
A year or so later, a friend of mine was given his Tarot deck in person at a convention and showed them to
me. I immediately recognized the work, of course, and asked for his contact information. We started talking
in email that way, and even had some discussions about collaborating on a graphic novel series (which sadly
never came to be due to circumstances beyond our control.) Since then I’ve bumped into him several times
in my first Friday jaunts in Philadelphia, and then, yet again another coincidence, I put out an anonymous
Alterati casting call on craigslist, and he replied to it. Since then I’ve bumped into him at several different
galleries, always quite randomly.
When things like this happen in our lives, we can call them synchronicity, or coincidence, and attribute
meaning to it, or not. But either way, it is strangely appropriate, given the nature of his work: psychological,
often spiritual and troubling, with more than a hint of that mystery that we can genuinely call the occult,
rather than the mere trappings of it which we now see bleeding into a lot of corporate, faux-counterculture
milieus. After bumping into it so many times myself, whether by accident or design, I am happy to be able
to introduce you to it.
• 279 •
James Curcio: What first motivated you to get into this kind of work? Is it the same thing now?
David Aronson: I’ve always been drawn to

surrealism and the fantastic. I went to a
commercial art school and majored in
illustration, and after I graduated I started
looking at painting and fine art and it
dawned on me that I should say something
much deeper and more profound about
my self and my life with art. I could talk
about things which couldn’t be expressed
with words—deeply buried, painful
and ambiguous feelings, thoughts and
experiences. It was a revelation which was
very liberating. I started creating images
that expressed the deeper parts of myself.
Actually, it was and is more like allowing
the deeper parts of myself, parts that have
been silenced, cut off and disconnected,
to have a voice. This kind of work became
very cathartic and ultimately healing, along
with exploration and the freedom of the
imagination, is really the main theme of my
art.
JC: I’ve noticed something with your work that I think is a common thread with most of my favorite
musicians and artists. On the surface, it is very dark, and some people get turned off by that because
they don’t really understand—or don’t care to understand—the alchemy going on. I mean creating
“dark” work for the sake of being dark is pretty adolescent, but really going to those places, exploring
them, and clearing them out or transforming them—that’s really as “light” as you can get, no matter
how grim the cast off matter might be. It seems very alchemical to me. Are there any particular
traditions that you follow or use as inspiration in this vein—alchemical, Gnostic, mystical, and so
on—or has it really been completely your own?
DA: I totally agree with you. The idea is to bring the darkness to light in order to heal whatever is in the
shadow and then use it as a source of power—you befriend your demons and then they work for
you instead of against you. I have studied many esoteric systems of magick and mysticism and have
practiced several. I have been involved in ritual magick for many years—mostly basic witchcraft with
a bit of Kabbalah and western tradition as well. I have also been a practitioner of Hatha yoga on
and off for a long time and have dabbled in Kundalini yoga. I have studied eastern philosophies and
religions, quantum physics, and Jungian psychology, to name a few. I am a healer: a second degree
Reiki practitioner and integrated energy therapy master. I am also a certified hypnotherapist and do
past life regression. To answer your question more directly, all of these things have influenced me, but
I do not adhere to any particular path or philosophy exclusively. I subscribe to the chaos magick meta-
model which basically says “use whatever works.” A lot of my art comes out of my ongoing personal
healing and transformative process (Jung’s process of individuation) that I have been involved with for
my entire adult life.
JC: There’s obviously many mythological themes running through most of what you do. But a lot of it
seems pretty personal as well. Can you give examples of your process with a couple pieces?
DA: Mythological stories are stories about archetypes—deep, collective, often unconscious cycles and
patterns that continually reappear and play themselves out in the lives of human beings. I really don’t
have a scholarly familiarity with mythology, but often a myth I’m familiar with will resonate with the
• 280 •
personal aspects of the art and so the mythological and the personal combine.
JC: How do you get into the personal aspect of it? I mean do you have a means of bringing them up
consciously, or is it something that just occurs naturally when you approach a blank canvas or
screen?
DA: My process is basically the process of the

early surrealists: I allow images to arise
uncensored from my subconscious mind
and then put them down on paper. The
meaning of them is often revealed layer by
layer as time goes on and different people
give me their interpretations of the work. Of
course, sometimes I have an idea or theme in
mind when I start working, but I try to get
out of my own way and allow the piece to
shape itself, and it often ends up becoming
something very different than what I had first
imagined. I usually don’t have images fully
formed in my mind—just vague impressions,
feelings and general ideas. The process is
akin to channeling and I’m often surprised
at what presents itself. Sometimes images are
based on my dreams. For example, the piece
“The Book” from Shadows in Heaven is
based on a childhood dream which remains
vivid to this day. I’m still not sure what all
the symbolism means, but the book on the
dais is/was the book of my life, and in the
dream I’m looking through it to find out
where things went wrong.
The women glaring at me probably represent the intense anger that was always flying around my
house due to my parents’ bad marriage. The dream was pervaded with a sense of abandonment and
decay, hence the dilapidated interior.
JC: A related question…What’s the basis for your tarot deck series? Did you base inspiration off of other
existing decks, or is the imagery more from your own imagination?
DA: My tarot images are based on the standard Rider-Waite images, but instead of adhering to them
verbatim, I used them as a jumping-off point and employed the process which I just described of
allowing my subconscious mind to express itself. I am a tarot reader myself, and so I am very familiar
with the basic meanings, the essences, of the cards, and I did try to retain those essences while at the
same time allowing new and unique visual interpretations to present themselves.
JC: Can you walk through some of your past projects, maybe what you learned from them—missteps,
abject failures, successes?
DA: The first project I ever did that got any kind of recognition was my Holocaust series. At the time
I was experimenting with using a computer as a tool for making art and so the series is not very
cohesive stylistically. Some of the pieces are much stronger than others. I think that if I did that
series now it would be much more unified and each piece would be equally developed. I feel that
my most successful project to date is the Shadows in Heaven book that I co-created with my friend
Leslie Powell, a very gifted writer and poet. Our aesthetic sensibilities are very similar and her stories
and prose-poems, which she created after I created the illustrations, mesh together with my images
beautifully and in such a way as to create a sum that is greater than the parts. I had little to no idea
• 281 •
what the images meant when I created them, so Leslie had to reach into deep parts of herself to write
for them and she often ended up telling me what they meant and totally surprising me in the doing
so.
(David and Leslie have kindly agreed to have several pages from this collaboration reproduced here.)
Shadows in Heaven
David Aronson & Leslie Powell
The Plague of True Nudity
Anatomically-correct people wandered into his dreams that night, talking to him of disease and redemption,
of truth and impossibility, of fleshlessness in limbo.
“It wasn’t something I would have chosen to be,” said the woman, flanked by her companions, who set
about wrecking his desert of dreams.
He tried comforting her with a kiss, but didn’t know where to place it. Instead, he danced with her on the
rocky terrain of his psyche, to a tune that had been stuck there since his own face had disappeared.
“I have this habit of disappearing completely under the scrutiny of love,” she said.
He comforted her with his own disappearing flesh, wrapping it around her like an ancient mink stole.
“I will love you for your mind,” he vowed, staring at her breasts. Her companions knew of his ulterior
motives, and decided to gather to her defense. She sat upon the ground, unaware
and sightless.
“What intentions do you have towards our sister?” asked the one whose eyes were still intact.
“I only want to love her,” said the dreamer, unconvincingly.
“I would have clothed her myself,” said the fleshless man, menacingly.
The man, who was an artist by trade, fought the abominations until they disappeared in a puff of lies. The
brainy girl watched, amused at the idea that anyone would still fight for her honor.
They created babies shaped like more rocks, like wet sand. They made love in the limbo that existed in the
spaces between his synapses. They escaped his thoughts with nothing more than the bones that held them
together.
The Sea, It Held But Just Ourselves and Immortality

Immortality was something easily done by that point in history. Grandfather says that he remembers a
time in his youth where people died after unfulfilled, short lives. He was one of the first to taste a bit of
immortality.
Part of the problem with it, though, was that chimerization wasn’t quite the skillful science it is today. They
kind of overdosed him on the sea tortoise genes, and well…he looks only a little like he used to.
He likes lettuce, and summertime. He likes leaving on the ocean waves and disappearing for a few decades
at a time. He comes back each time with tales of real tortoises caught in ancient nets. He comes back with
tales of sunken ships and whale skeletons, of the endless, endless ocean.
He always comes back with a smile for me.
Shadows in Heaven
Gabriel was not long for the world, this time around. An unfortunate childhood accident left the body he
occupied dead. It left the boy he briefly was grieved for by people he hardly got to know.
Unbaptized, he found himself in hell, speaking to old colleagues.
“Greetings, Djibril,” said Penemue, the fallen one who had taught humanity to write. “133,306,668 of us
have fallen so far from the places you dwell. Won’t you tell us a story, Messenger?”
Gabriel, wearing the skin of his former life, and the wings of his rank, stood small and naked before the
glowering demons of Hell. He breathed once, and then sang.
The song was a story of his previous life as an infant brother, a second son, and of the accidental life and
death that God Himself had granted to a faithful servant. Gabriel had only sought to experience enough of
• 282 •
the flesh to be reminded of whom he was created to protect. It was an old arrangement, made not long after
the many angels had fallen.
This experience, however, had not made him more sympathetic of God’s most beloved creatures. Coming
to the end of his song, he told of his desire to inform God of his grievous mistake in making these creatures
who only spat upon the rest of divine creation.
The angel, wearing the guise of the child he would have been, swore to the demons of Hell that if he
were allowed, the songs he would sing would be tall as monsters, casting shadows across the landscape of
Heaven itself.
• 283 •
Foolish People
John Harrigan
(The following is the introduction I wrote for Foolish People’s release of their script Dead Language.)
When I first saw FoolishPeople put on a production, it was at the EsoZone event in Portland, 2007. The
venue wasn’t especially conducive to the performance. The audience had been hypnotized into a sort of stasis
from hours of panel discussions and lectures, not to mention half-drunk from the bar, if my personal state
was any indicator. Despite all of these things, it was a magical experience: sometimes slightly uncomfortable,
sometimes hilarious. Most importantly, it passed beyond the realm of passive entertainment and managed to
ask a very old, tired question in a new way: what is art, and what is the role of the artist in society?
Anymore, it seems generally facile to ask question like “What is art?” Within the context of the art world,
art has spent the past couple decades talking about itself, deconstructing itself, removing itself from the
sphere of people’s lives and actual concerns that it seems even more of a futile or masturbatory exercise than
ever. This might be the only reason why it is worth re-approaching this question, precisely because it has
been asked so much that the answers all become a cacophony of white noise. We don’t need answers, we
need demonstrations. Or perhaps, we need to actually be pulled into the process ourselves. We need to see
for ourselves. To feel, to touch, to have personal experiences that cannot be reproduced.
Having worked with John Harrigan in writing projects since, I think I can safely say that this is one of the
reoccurring themes in his work- not, as many artists attempt, to make you look at the artist or the artistic
process from the outside, but rather to grab you by the head and drag you inside it. For those without any
experience of this terrain, I imagine the experience can be quite off-putting, and I also imagine that there
might be some glee on the creator’s part in that. But maybe I’m projecting.
Joseph Campbell once said that if an artist wants to insult you, he’ll explain what his work “means.”
We shouldn’t need to ask, we just need experience. So I don’t want to go any further into that for fear of
inadvertently insulting you. Instead, I’d just like to share some more thoughts on the artistic process, before
letting you get to what you came here for: the blueprint of an experience. (What is a script but the blueprint
of an experience?)
At its most basic level, art is a form of self psychotherapy. The real challenge for the artist comes in
with you, the audience. Should an artist focus entirely on this imaginary audience—and forgive me for
calling you imaginary, but during the process of creating something, it is the artist’s idea of an audience
that comes into play—they become something other than an artist. It becomes about demographics, about
desire, homogenization and consumption. In other words, it becomes industrialized. On the other hand,
should an artist focus entirely on themselves, using only the language of their internal mythology, what they
produce might have no place in the world. It is the detritus of a therapeutic process, shed skin, a discarded
membrane.
So, we have to ask, how is any of this relevant to any of us? I’d like to quote a little section from One Half
of Robertson Davies, where he poses his theory that all writing comes from dreams:
The dream world is the arena of human experience in which the Conscious Mind and the
Unconscious Mind meet and the elements of the dream come from both realms in varying
proportions.
Literature—poetry, novel, and drama—is a product of its creator that draws upon the conscious
experience and reflection, but important elements in it come from the Unconscious realm.
The reader, or the playgoer, is powerfully affected by the elements of the poem, the novel, or
the play that arise from the writer’s Unconscious, and anyone who is sensitive to literature
is sensitive to this dream-like aspect which speaks to the dreamer in himself, and the more
powerful this dream-like aspect the more powerfully it will affect him.
• 284 •
The application of this way of looking at literature to drama is special, because in the theatre
an audience, large or small, encounters the play at one time, and in so far as they play they
encounter is a dream, they may be said to dream it together. …In the theatre we dream together,
and the sense of community gives special power to our dream.
The binding thread between the dream of the artist and your own dream lies in something that the
psychologist Carl Jung recognized, that dreams are the root of myth as well; that some dreams are, in other
words, the seeds of our common experience. Artists cannibalize themselves, fuck their dead past selves for
your entertainment and edification, so that you might also have an encounter with these root experiences,
these elementary ideas, if you dare go there.
This transformation can only happen within you, resurrecting the dead words on the page into something
new and living. Otherwise they remain little corpses, stamped on dead trees. Resurrect them, or don’t. The
choice is entirely up to you.
James Curcio: The first thing I wanted to ask is if there’s a particular myth—or groups of myths—that
have spoken to you over a period of time. Like for me, obviously, Dionysus is a kind of re-occuring
theme…a patron saint, almost. The most un-saintly of saints. Do you have something like that?
John Harrigan: Yes, that’s a really good question, I think that the earliest group of myths that I connected
with both for good and bad was those of the Christian Pantheon. This was because my mother used
them as a way to get through a number of deaths, she leaned heavily on this religion and I saw it help
her get through the death of my father, then her father and then her mother in a fairly short period
of time. Through these occurrences she believed it was important for whatever reason to spend time
tending to graves etc and through that I spent a large period of my younger years in graveyards.
Reading headstones, being in that space, looking at remembrance books…My mother had and has a
very strange relationship with religion. She is a very magical person for want of a better term and she
used Christianity in a different way than most.
JC: That’s really interesting—it has become somewhat fashionable to be snide about Christianity, and to
kind of brush off the insights in that myth because of how much it has been abused. But there is a lot
there…
JH: Yes.
JC: The gravestone part doesn’t surprise me so much though. As a feeling of remembrance or “haunting”
does seem to factor into several of the scripts I’ve read of yours.
JH: I think that I’ve always been able to see religion for what it was. This goes for all religions. A system
and viewpoint from which to engage with reality—does not make it real, does not make it unreal. The
same goes for science, from the start myth has allowed me to see all these different systems of belief as
just that, they only burst into life when you choose to believe and engage with them. I do not endorse
any one system, but an amalgomation of different beliefs and pantheons I have engaged with in the
creation of stories and myths for FoolishPeople.
JC: That’s true. If people just go to the root of the word religion, it means essentially the same as yoga,
or the ox goad character in Hebrew, linking one thing to another. In other words, it’s an interface.
People think of it as an interface with divinity, and that’s fine. But it’s really just an interface with the
unknown.
JH: Yes, I’m much more interested in the space before, within the period of unknown. When people have
imagined something, spent years giving it value, it loses its interest for me. I am happiest working and
being in a space where I almost willfully don’t know, or have all of the answers yet.
JC: There’s another side to it, too. I think we’ve talked about this a little—existing in that razor’s edge
between chaos and having some kind of a plan. For some reason it reminds me of the comedian Doug
Stanhope, throughout a performance he’ll fluctuate between being a sort of rambling drunken clown,
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and a comedic genius. But that’s because he’s on that edge. Obviously none of us are comedians, and
maybe we’re not drunks—but I still think that there’s nothing interesting in complete safety, repeating
something you’ve done a thousand times before. In exploration there’s folly, and in folly—is that also
why you choose the name Foolish People or am I off on that?
JH: It’s funny. Yes you’re right but the name came about in a very simple way, and the true meaning
came to me much later. I needed a name for my work. Very early on, in 1989, I decided that I’d
like something of a brand name. A kind of statement. I couldn’t think of anything, so I decided that
FoolishPeople would suit for now, thinking I’d find something later that would be more appropriate.
Of course it was the most appropriate, and has become a gift. Now I understand that this name would
come to represent my work entirely. The Fool is one of the major arcana of the tarot; it encourages us
to walk our own path, not the path of the ‘herd’, to become a free spirit, free from societal constraints,
who is able to let go of outmoded beliefs and ideals, stepping off the cliff. A form of ignorant wisdom
that allows you to break boundaries that society sets for us.
JC: One of my first impressions of meeting you was at EsoZone, we were speaking at a panel on art and
magic. I don’t remember if it was during the panel or after, but you made it incredibly clear how
you felt about people referring to the performance you do as “plays.” How would you describe what
FoolishPeople do?
JH: Foolish People create art that aims to raise a numinous experience within the audience. The majority
of what people call “plays” are so far removed from the immersive, large scale rituals we create and
manifest.
JC: Getting back to my initial question, do you think those early influences still work their way into your
more recent work?
JH: Yes, because I’m always looking for ways to work with myths that I don’t truly understand, so I’m at
the stage where I see lots of repeating patterns, that I think exist in art that deals with the themes we’re
both interested in. I see people create through their own personal viewfinder. It’s hard to keep the
stories clean of your own interference if you know what I mean, but I’ve learned that the stories that
challenge me when I write tend to be the stronger ones.
JC: I know completely what you mean about “keeping it clean of your own interference.” In fact, I’d say
for a while I just embraced that “interference” entirely, but as I get older I find myself starting to want
to write stories that aren’t just about me anymore. What’s interesting is that even when you focus
entirely on yourself—to the point that you break into a hall of mirrors and all your characters are just
reflections of yourself—it can still be a transpersonal myth. People will remake it in their own image.
I don’t think there’s any way to get away from that.
JH: I think that you see this in all writers who take the written word very seriously. They need to work
through the history of their lives, purging until they can start to really talk about the human condition.
I know some panic, thinking they will run out of material. I think the material becomes reduced and
reformed into something much more potent and you then are able to choose the elements of yourself
you wish to work with.
JC: Changing gears a little. Obviously both the mainstream theatrical and film industries are being shaken
up a bit right now. Maybe the film industry even more so. That’s both an opportunity and a challenge.
Do you have any thoughts about that state of affairs, from what you’ve seen putting on these events a
bit outside the beaten path?
JH: I think that they have a playing field, and they have policed the field where the work is created for
mass consumption. Thankfully everyone now understands how the game is played over and over and
are not interested as much.
At present I see something interesting happening. Like an animal that knows instinctively that it’s hurt
and seeks out a certain property, something correlated is happening in London. A scene is growing in
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where people are looking for events or art which engage an unspoken desire to grow and become. Art
that engages thought and expression in a manner that places knowledge and learning at its center.
So at the same time, almost simultaneously, you’re seeing these events come into existence as artists of
all mediums somehow feel the hunger for this and try to meet it by creating new myths that can help
us tackle all we currently face.
We’re entering a time where more than ever audience and artist are attempting to learn, grow and face
challenges together.
FoolishPeople is at a stage where we create truly unique work, by finding our own venues in the UK,
so we don’t have to be reliant on venues and can remain true to our workings. I really do think that all
people who create art need to find a way to make sure they are reliant on no others to create.
JC: That can be incredibly difficult in some mediums. I always have wanted to focus on film and comic
writing but shied away from it for some time because you can spend so much time writing a script and
at the end of that process have no means of getting it produced. With a novel, all you need is a word
processor, time, dedication, and a lot of coffee. So, I agree, but the more projects depend on other
people, the more it becomes more than just your baby. This gets into something else, on the creative
front—the issue of collaboration.
JH: Collaboration is everything. With yourself, with ideas, with others, with buildings, with myths…
JC: I completely agree. I find it very hard to work on projects in a vacuum. Before I know it I’ll be working
with ten or twenty other people on something that I initially set out to just be a solo endeavor. And
there are so many good things about it, it can be easy to let enthusiasm carry you through until that
point where someone stakes a creative claim on the project, it becomes their baby, and suddenly
collaboration breaks down. Obviously, conflict can be a part of collaboration, but I think you know
what I mean. When ego takes over as the arbiter of decisions rather than really trying to guess at what
is best for the project, and the end result.
JH: Yes, it’s hard, but the longer you do it and the older you get the better you are at spotting people who
are not interested in collaboration but want to derail and feed on others’ work because they can’t create
their own. I believe that if someone comes up with an initial idea and they received the signal from
whatever place that the people working on that idea need to respect the recipient of the signal and all
try to help that person get as close as possible to becoming a conduit. Otherwise it does become chaos,
although I’m open to that on certain types of projects.
JC: You’re right, it really depends on the project. For me it’s very important to know what my role is, and
to make sure that role matches my strengths. Many creative misunderstandings simply come from
people misunderstanding their role. If I’m supporting a project, or providing design for a project, it’s
a very different mentality than if I’m producing it, or writing for it.
JH: Yes, I think that its important for there to be an advocate for the idea. For the core concept, this is
something I learnt working in social care. You need someone who will speak up for something which
cannot communicate its needs or desires directly. The person who should do this is the person who
would be willing to do whatever is necessary to protect the idea, no matter the cost to themselves. For
whatever reason, I’m fucking crazy enough that it normally turns out to be me who will go hungry
or give up my home…but often you’d be surprised how many people who will die for an idea they
believe in.
JC: What you said about advocacy is really interesting, I hadn’t thought of it that way. But it makes sense.
Of course, an artist shouldn’t need to go hungry to do their work, and I don’t think it means you’re a
better artist if you are, but certainly if there’s no commitment behind it the person is probably better
off going into accounting.
JH: Yes, I don’t think artists should seek to go hungry but I’d angle it another way. How far are you willing
to follow the idea? To get to its purest essence, are you willing to give up your plasma? Are you willing
• 287 •
to forgo your coffee so you can afford a rare book with a passage you need? To me its about how far
will you go to get the purest and most powerful idea, for good and bad.
JC: I’m especially interested in shedding some light on the processes that occur between the point where
you decide upon a concept for a project, and when it is embodied with an audience. I realize that
this changes from one project to the next, and that it is a very organic process, but looking back I’m
hoping you can find some sort of series of stages—like that from egg to larva to pupae. Your most
recent project, “Abattoir Pages,” was conceived and performed in a very short frame of time, so maybe
that would be the easiest to use as an example…
JH: There are many stages.

At the first stage I either have an idea or we have a venue. If I have an idea I normally have time to take
it from the stage of research to final draft of the script from which the members of FP will work. This
is a typical writer’s process with many stages, which I know you’re familiar with. Although the one
aspect which is fundamentally different in my own process is the fact I am always aware of the current
the idea I’m working with resides within. I look for connections and signs that exist. The easiest way to
explain it would be to use the analogy of a magician or shaman in the process of creating a blueprint
for a ritual, spell or similar magickal act.
I then adapt the script for the space I am working within, taking into account its history and the
psycho-geography of the area. Once this is completed we audition the performers required who will
manifest the characters alongside the core members of FP working on the project. We then enter
rehearsals which can be anything from two to eight weeks, this process is very complicated and would
take a long time to set out in stages.
JC: With The Abattoir Pages, did you decide ahead of time that you wanted to do an event, and
then the location and so on materialized, or were you presented with a venue and then the rest
happened…
JH: We were looking for a venue and one became available that was on a very tight schedule and we knew
we could lose the chance of using the space at a later date, so we had to come up with something very
quickly. I work better under tight deadlines, so I used the basis of another project, Pleasure to create
a prologue story to that project, I think the script was written in three weeks and the whole thing
rehearsal and all was six and a half weeks.
JC: I’m curious to hear more about the processes you use to help people get in character and stay there.
JH: Well…It does depend on the person, but I’ll normally create a large, ritual working with the members
of FP, which offers the person an experience which would encompass the character and their own
experiences in life, I will actively try to blur the line between the character and performer.
JC: That seems quite involved if there are many characters…
JH: Yes, it takes a long time, weeks of doing these rituals, to give the character a real life within the person
who is playing them. But, they have become important to our process and they can be very rewarding.
We also use other methods, such as, I’ll try to work with the core archetypes of a performer, scratching
away at these to find connections with the character they are playing.
JC: How do you get that process to be externalized? Something that’s always struck me about acting—as
a writer and an introvert by nature—is that a great deal can be going on internally but without some
sort of physical act or way of showing it, it likely won’t communicate.
JH: I think that the three most important things are truth and the story. I’m always asking myself, “Would
this be happening for the character and is this right for the story?” If you’re honest with both, it helps
the performer because you’re half way there already. Also the biggest and most important thing that
most people ignore is common fucking sense. So many artists have their head up their arses, really if you
use common sense to lead you, you’ll find the right pathway, but you have to be willing to follow it
• 288 •
down the difficult roads as well. So, if common sense says do something a little risky to win the battles
and achieve your goal and it’s gonna hurt then tough, that’s what you have to do.
JC: While we’re on the subject there’s something I’ve wanted to ask you about acting. A lot of actors
I think misunderstand “method” acting. Of course, I’m not an expert so I could be the one in the
wrong. But it seems to me that accessing your own experience to make something genuine doesn’t
mean that you have to be feeling it all the time. If the script calls for you to scream, I imagine you
don’t have to actually be angry. If you happen to be able to access that state at that point of time, all
the better. But the act itself doesn’t demand it.
JH: No, but you’ll find different performers access different states and emotions easier than others due
to their own lives, perhaps they have lots of love, hate or depression so know and understand the
landscape. However, in regards to method I can only speak to that in its relation to shamanistic
practice and the art of becoming something else or raising a ritual state that connects you with a
character or emotion…that takes time, it’s not something that should be switched on at a drop of hat.
It needs to be respected and taught. You need preparation which could take months, days, or years.
I see so many actors who come in to perform, and they think that they will just walk out onto stage
and do their job and connect. They’re surprised when they come off at the end of the night and they
didn’t feel it or it did not work. Well, that’s no surprise because you did not prepare, it’s about respect
and sacrifice. You have to put the work first or you can’t complain when you suck.
JC: I don’t see you letting that happen too often with actors working with you on your production…
JH: No, but it’s a constant battle when you work with young actors out of drama school, even the ones
who are naturally gifted. You’d be surprised how many times you need to tell someone to do something
before they get why, especially in acting, because it draws a lot of people who are not in it for the
artistry. They want to be famous. People can be taught to act, they can’t be taught to be a true artist
who puts the work above themselves.
JC: The same is true in terms of teaching people how to write or design. Schools tend to focus on the
technical elements, or on the abstract process, without asking the basic question, “Why are you doing
this in the first place?” If it’s because your parents want you to, or you’re rebelling against them,
or just thought it might be fun, then it is certainly best kept a hobby. Though sometimes people
can stumble into something blindly and only later really connect with it—and become great. So
serendipity shouldn’t be written off.
JH: Yes, but I think in terms of myth creation and art, all the interesting landscapes are to be explored
much later, you don’t get access straight away. You need to travel through a great deal of ground. Most
people who don’t have the urge or are doing it because their parents wanted them to play music or be
a painter like themselves don’t visit these lands, because they stop or drop off the map when the terrain
gets too difficult or hard to navigate, you have to travel far to get to the most interesting ideas. It does
not need to always be hard, but it may take quite a few connecting flights in economy class with no
leg room.
JC: I don’t know if this is how it is for you, but with my own work, I see my growth moving towards
the audience. I feel like the past ten years has been spent focusing on the internal elements of a
project—making a fully integrated mythology, or world, tying all the pieces of a project together,
elaborating and embellishing within that framework, and so on. Some people are naturally drawn into
that kind of thing, but a lot of other people are left standing at the gates with a confused expression
on their faces. Some of that is to be expected, but I also think it’s a sign of a need to keep working on
accessibility. After all, a myth that doesn’t communicate isn’t a myth at all. I imagine this problem is
compounded when creating a multi-narrative, live event. It’s almost like everyone involved needs to
have the gift of tongues, and be able to communicate on multiple levels simultaneously. Has this been
a challenge with your own work?
• 289 •
JH: Yes it can be a problem, I think you do your best to ensure that you are true to the idea and myth you
are creating, some people will be more than willing to take the jump with you, others not. If the choice
is between being truthful to the work or making sure everyone gets and understands the content I’ll
always choose the truth of the work, because I feel you would make it harder to understand anyway
if you tried to adapt the core concept so that everyone had access to the myth. I don’t think everyone
should, that in of itself is something to consider when working with an audience, maybe the aim is
to show people that they don’t get something that maybe they might need to, so they can take the
necessary steps if they so wish to gain insight.

• 290 •
The Subconscious in Black And White

Laurie Lipton
Laurie Lipton was born in New York and began

drawing at the age of four. She was the first person
to graduate from Carnegie-Mellon University in
Pennsylvania with a Fine Arts Degree in Drawing
(with honors). She has lived in Holland, Belgium,
Germany and France and has made her home in
London since 1986. Her work has been exhibited
extensively throughout Europe and the USA.
Lipton was inspired by the religious paintings of the
Flemish School. She tried to teach herself how to paint
in the style of the 17th century Dutch Masters and
failed. When traveling around Europe as a student,
she began developing her very own peculiar drawing
technique building up tone with thousands of fine
cross-hatching lines like an egg tempera painting. “It’s
an insane way to draw,” she says, “but the resulting
detail and luminosity is worth the amount of effort.”
James Curcio: Do you see exploring these images as a
way of actively engaging with the issues behind
them? Do you think that process is the same
for someone looking at your work in a gallery?
Laurie Lipton: I have been drawing since the age of four. It served as my main means of communicating,
so my work has more facets to it than a mere engagement with an “issue.” When I sit down to draw a
whole life time of experience comes into play. How do other people engage with my work? Everyone
is different. I can only tell you how I personally respond to a work of art. When I see a painting, read
a book, or listen to music it is a deeply subjective experience. If the work connects to me it hits me
on a number of levels; intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, but not necessarily all three. It speaks to
me about the “story” of my life and tells me something about who or where I am. It gives me another
piece of myself and or clarifies something I’ve felt to be true. I feel a sense of self recognition in a
good work of art, a “Yes! That’s it!” moment. I hope to do this for the viewers of my work. Whether I
succeed or not is debatable and changes in degree from individual to individual.
JC: It’s amazing how different reactions can be when you put something out into the world. In a way I
think it’s like having a child. You give it your genes, and have some influence certainly, but as they
become a part of the world, I imagine you come to realize that they were never “yours.” I’m imagining
based on my friend’s experience. Thus far, my work has been my child…Well, and my cats. Was there
a sudden point when you realized “I’m an artist,” or has that always been with you?
LL: I’ve always drawn and created art, but an Artist seemed like a rarefied Being. I felt it would be too
grandiose to crown myself with that title. I traveled a lot between Europe and the USA and you need
to fill out a Landing Card every time you pass between countries. I finally wrote in the Occupation
section, “Self-Employed Artist,” when I was 26. I remember it distinctly. It hit me: “I am an artist!”
JC: Is there a narrative running behind your work? Do you think it’s important for that to explicitly carry
through to the audience, or just remain a part of the creation process?
• 291 •
LL: The “story” that ties my work together is from my conscious and unconscious self. My imagery is the
result of many associations, thoughts, feelings…I think in images. They come to me easily. I have
never experienced an artistic block in my life and always have too many drawings lined up in my head
and not enough time to do them. I try to remain “true” to my self, not a slave to fashion or influenced
by what I believe people would buy. I am trying to be unutterably subjective so that I can come
close to a kind of Objective Reality. The creation process is the effort to communicate…not only to
an “audience” but to myself. It serves an inner need. If I weren’t allowed to create, I believe I would
become psychologically, perhaps even physically, ill.
JC: A couple things that you said just now are interesting to me. First off, you said you are embracing
the subjective so as to reach the objective. These two things are often shown as diametrical opposites,
certainly the myth of objectivity is most commonly related to science and mathematics. Can you
expand a bit on what you mean by that?
LL: Why do myths and legends, written thousands of years ago, still affect us today? How can a work of
art by a dead Italian Catholic man in Renaissance Europe speak to a live Jewish girl in 21st century
New York? What makes certain things reach beyond their time and culture? I believe it is because
the artist somehow hit a core subjective truth within himself. All of humanity, from the beginning of
history, has experienced certain fears, yearnings, questions. Look at The Epic of Gilgamesh: thousands
of years ago mankind was asking “why am I here, what is the meaning of all this?” just as we are today.
So the personal becomes the Universal, the subjective becomes Objective… to a degree.
JC: And we define ourselves by how we answer that question, yes. That’s one of the reasons I decided
to organize this anthology. With as much has been said about myth and the arts, it oftentimes gets
framed as separate from daily life. When a person or place gets mythologized, it takes on an element
of being “other,” or leaves this world altogether. But ground zero for myth is our daily lives. It’s very
interesting to me that you can go so far into the “inside” as an artist you can wind up communicating
to thousands or millions from your hermit cave. These are difficult things to talk about sensibly.
Are there any processes that you use to try to access what you call your unconscious self? It’s very
mysterious how art seems to constantly shore up material from those liminal states, between waking
and sleep, living and dying, and so on. Also, these seem to be themes that come up quite frequently
in your work…
LL: I live a very simple, solitary life. Monks and

mystics usually had direct access to their God
because there were no distractions. I find that
I need to be alone to be able to “sink” into
my work. If I know that I will be going out
in the evening or that someone is stopping by
sometime during the day, I can’t really let go
and draw. It’s a very strange, sometimes hard,
existence. Most times it is sheer bliss. I am cut
off from reality in order to get at Reality. Being
on my own is the only way I can let rip and
expose my underbelly Self. This way of life
would drive most people insane but as I am
already off my proverbial trolley, I’m perfectly
safe.
JC: That’s true of many artists. On the more

technical end, I’m curious about the process
you use to get such detail.
LL: Simple: I sit for hours and work my butt off.

• 292 •
JC: I don’t doubt that a bit. When composing a piece, do you envision the image ahead of time…like that
idea of sculpture existing somehow “inside” unhewn stone, or is it more of an exploratory process?
LL: I keep small sketch books around or near me and either write out images in words as they appear in
my head, or do a tiny, quick sketch. Then I let them simmer. I play with the composition for a while.
When I feel fired enough to actually put an image down on a large piece of paper, the basics are there.
For example: a woman standing in a living room. The details are not yet formed (i.e. the woman’s face,
her clothing, the furniture). I suppose it is similar to a writer composing a story: he sees the characters
and the situations, but then has to dive in to get at the core, the meat of it all. Forgive the metaphor
mix. Once I surround myself with the drawing, it becomes clearer to me bit by bit. It reveals itself to
me slowly and I have to be patient. If I hurry or force anything, I cut off the life-flow and it dies. So
to answer your question: it is both.
• 293 •
• 294 •
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The Immanence of Myth

The Immanence of Myth

EDITOR: JAMES CURCIO

Editor: James Curcio

Additional illustrations by P. Emerson Williams

The dialog started in this book continues online at http://www.modernmythology.net

Contributor’s works used under Creative Commons 3.0 License

Introduction to the First Edition xi

Part I: Re-interpreting Myth

 Can Your Elbow Play Beethoven’s 5th Symphony

 What Is Modern About Mythology? 31

 Dissecting A Living Thing:

 Immanence and Butchery 61

 From and To the Body 64

 The Power of Symbols: Beyond Representation 71

 The Power of Symbols: Sacred Art and Personal Myth 80

Part II: Modern Myth

 Pretty Suicide Machine 97

 A Mythology of Estrangement 108

 Twilight Selves: Cannibalism 112

 Myths of Artistic Progress 123

 The Shining World 127

 Guising along the Web:

 Playing War 144

 The Myth of Unlimited Potential 147

 New Myths of Space and Time 152

 Initiation: the Masks of Identity 156

 Excuse Me: Who Are You?

 The Fountain 171

 The Dark Side of a Culture: Thoughts on Abu Ghraib

 Excerpts from “Eshu and Ananse;

 Christmas, the Sacred, and Disembowelment 183

Part III: Personal Mythology

 Living Your Myth 187

 Artist’s Statement 192

 A Trail Of Breadcrumbs 198

 Making Do Without a Guide 214

 Of Dice and Divinity—

Part IV: Conversations

 Chins vs. Beards 258

 Imagery of the Underground 273

 Alchemical Wedding 278

 Foolish People 283

 The Subconscious in Black And White 290

Introduction to the First Edition

“Myths and legends die hard in America.

—James Curcio, February 14, 2011.

An Untrue but Regularly Held Belief

The unreal is more powerful than the real.

Can Your Elbow Play Beethoven’s 5th

What Is Modern About Mythology?

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:

The thin-lipped armorer,

Dissecting A Living Thing

A mythological history is not a material one (The History of Ideas)

God upon high (Spatialization and Hierarchy in Metaphors)

27. Anywhere between the 4th and 12th centuries.

Deep, or just deeply confusing? (Emergent symbolism)

Who is this story about, anyway? (Abstraction)

The problems of psychology (Projection and the Unconscious)

Who is the third who walks always beside you?

The 101st Monkey is a Conspiracy Theorist

Myth is a Nautilus (Scalability)

Stumbling in the Dark