"You don't invent technology and then decide what to do with it - you come up with an artistic problem, and then you have to invent the technology in order to accomplish it.
So, it is the opposite to what everyone thinks it is, and any Artist will tell you that.
And Art - on ALL levels - is just Technology.
Which why - people will say 'Monkeys can do paintings'
Well, they can't, really.
They can do scribbling, they can do, like my 2 year old does -but if you want to say ' I want to convey an emotion, to another Human Being', that's something only Human Beings can do.
Animals can do it by roaring in your face or biting your hand off (that usually has an effect).
But to do it in a painting; to do it in a play, or a story, in poetry - or anything that's in The Arts - you have to be a Human Being.
The Patron creates The Propaganda - and what I wanted to do was go back to some of the Older Propaganda, which was consistant through ALL of The Societies, Mythology -
Which is to say "What Do They ALL Believe..?"
Because all of this propaganda was created INDEPENDENTLY.
And what are these things which they ALL believe, which is, Relationships with your Father, Relationships with your Society, Relationships with Your History, Relationships with The Gods - all of this stuff, it's old, but there were psychological motiffs that were created, through storytelling, primarily ORAL storytelling, that explained WHAT they believed in and WHO they believed in.
So what I wanted to do was go back and find the psychological motiffs that underlie that - those grow out of Popularism.
And to say that - not all - but a majority of people, BOYS, have a certain psychological relationship with Their Father -
And that's been going on through History, and trying to explain that to say : "We Know Your DARKEST SECRET. And Therefore, You're Part of US.
Because We All Know The SAME THINGS -
We Know What You're Thinking About Your Mother; We Know What You Think About Your Bother; We Know What You Think About Your Father REALLY -" - George Lucas
“On my Fortieth Birthday, rather than merely bore my friends by
having anything as mundane as a midlife crisis, I decided it might be
more interesting to terrify them, by going completely mad, and declaring
myself as a magician. This had been something that had been coming for a
while. It seemed to be a logical end step in my career as a writer, and
the problem is that with magic, being in many respects a science of
language, you have to be very careful of what you say. Because if you
suddenly declare yourself to be a magician, without any knowledge of
what that entails, then one day you are likely to wake up and to
discover that is exactly what you are.
There is some confusion as to what magic actually is. I think this
can be cleared up if you just look at the very earliest descriptions of
magic. Magic in its earliest form is often referred to as “the art”. I
believe this is completely literal. I believe that magic IS art, and
that art, whether it be writing, music, sculpture, or any other form, IS
literally magic. Art is, like magic, the science of manipulating
symbols, words, or images, to achieve changes in consciousness. The very
language of magic seems to be talking as much about writing or art, as
it about supernatural events. A “Grimoire” for example, “the book of
spells”, is simply a fancy way of saying “grammar”. Indeed, to cast a
spell, is simply “to spell”, to manipulate words, to change people’s
consciousness. And I believe that this is why an artist or a writer is
the closest thing, in the contemporary world, you are likely to see to a
shaman.
I believe that all culture must have arisen from cult. Originally,
all of the facets of our culture, whether they be in the arts or the
sciences, were the providence of the shaman. The fact that in present
times, this magical power has degenerated to the level of cheap
entertainment and manipulation is, I think, a tragedy. At the moment,
the people who are using shamanism and magic to shape our culture are
advertisers. Rather than trying to wake people up, THEIR shamanism is
used as an opiate, to tranquilize people, to make people more
manipulable Their “magic box” of television, and by their “magic words”,
their jingles, can cause everybody in the country to be thinking the
same words, and have the same banal thoughts, all at exactly the same
moment…
In all of magic, there is an incredibly large linguistic component.
The “Bardic” tradition of magic would place a Bard as being much higher
and more fearsome than a magician. A magician might curse you, That
might make your hands lay funny, or you might have a child born with a
clubbed food. If a bard were to place, not a curse upon you, but a
satire, that could destroy you. If it was a clever satire, it might not
just destroy you in the eyes of your associates, it would destroy you in
the eyes of your family. It would destroy you in your own eyes. And if
it was a (extremely) finely worded and clever satire, that might survive
and be remembered for decades, even centuries, then years after you
were dead, people still might be reading it, and laughing… at you, your
wretchedness, and absurdity. Writers, and people who had command of
words were respected and feared, (just) as people who manipulated magic.
In latter times, I think the artists and writers have allowed
themselves to be ‘sold down the river’. They have ACCEPTED the
prevailing belief that art, that writing, are merely forms of
entertainment.
They’re not seen as transformative forces… that can
change a human being, that can change a society.
They are seen as simple
entertainment Things with which we can fill 20 minutes, half an hour,
while we’re waiting to die…
It is not the job of the artist to give the audience what the audience WANTS.
If the audience knew what they needed, then they wouldn’t be the audience. They would be The Artist.
It is the job of artists to give The Audience what they NEED.
My career as a magician continues to evolve. Since I, to a certain
degree, believe art and magic to be interchangeable, it has seemed only
natural that art should be the means by which I express magical ideas.
This has found its way into my prose writing, in works such as “Voice of
the Fire”, and probably most visibly has found its way into the
performance pieces that i’ve done in various locations over the past 8
years. Beautiful little psychedelic artifacts in their own right, which
actually capture the kind of narrative journey that we’ve tried to take
the readers on as part of these performances; to overwhelm the
sensibilities of the audience; to tip them over into a kind of
psychedelic state where we can hopefully actually change their
consciousness and direct it to different places, different levels,
hopefully into new and magical spaces.
When we are doing the will of our True Self, we are inevitably doing
the Will of the Universe. In Magic these are seen as indistinguishable;
that Every human soul is in fact One human soul. It is the soul of the
Universe itself, and as long as you are doing the Will of the Universe,
then it is impossible to do anything wrong.
The one place in which Gods and Demons inarguably exist is in the
human mind, where they are real in all their grandeur and monstrosity.
Much of magic, as I understand it in the Western occult tradition, is a
search for the Self, with a capital ‘S’. This is understood as being the
‘Great Work’, as being the Gold the Alchemists sought, as being the
Will, the Soul, the thing that we have inside us that is behind the
intellect, the body, the dreams. The “inner dynamo of us” if you like.
Now this is the Single. Most. Important. Thing. that we can ever
attain, the knowledge of our own Self. And yet, there are a frightening
amount of people who seem to have the urge to, not just IGNORE the self,
but actually seem to have the urge to OBLITERATE themselves. This is
horrific… but you can almost understand the desire to simply “wipe out”
that awareness, because it’s too much of a responsibility to actually
POSSESS such a thing as a “soul”. Such a precious thing. ‘What if you
break it? What if you lose it?’ Mightn’t it be best to anaesthetize it,
to deaden it, to destroy it, to not have to live with the pain of
struggling towards it and trying to keep it pure. I think that the way
that people immerse themselves in alcohol, in drugs, in television, in
any of the addictions that our culture throws up, can be seen as a
deliberate attempt to destroy any connection between themselves and the
responsibility of accepting and owning a higher Self, and then having to
maintain it.
I’ve been looking at the history of magical thinking, and where it
starts to go wrong. And, for my money, where it starts to go wrong is
“monotheism”. I mean, if you look at the history of magic, you’ve got
its origins in the caves, you’ve got its origins in shamanism, in
animism, in a belief that everything around you (every tree, every rock,
every animal) was inhabited by some sort of ‘essence’, some sort of
spirit, that could perhaps be communicated with. You would have had some
central shaman or visionary who would have been responsible for
channeling ideas that were useful for survival.
By the time you have
reached the classical civilizations, you can see that this has
formalized to a degree. The shaman was acting purely as an intermediary
between the spirits and the people. He was, in his position in the
village or community, I should imagine very much like a spiritual
plumber. The people in the group would have had their own roles.. The
person who was best at hunting would’ve been a hunter. The person who
was best at talking to the spirits, perhaps because he or she was a bit
crazy, a bit detached from our normal, material world, then they would
have been the Shaman. They would not have been the masters of a ‘sacred
craft’. They would have simply been dispensing their information
throughout the community because it was believed to be helpful to the
community.
When you get the actual classical cultures emerging, this has been
formalized so that you’ve now got pantheons of gods, and each of those
gods have a priest caste, that will act (to a certain degree) as
intermediaries, who will instruct you in the worship of that god. So the
relationship between ‘humans and their gods’, which could be seen a
relationship between ‘humans & their highest Selves’, that was still
a very direct one…
When Christianity & monotheism comes in, then
all of a sudden you’ve got a priest caste moving between the worshipper
and the object of worship. You’ve got a priest caste becoming a kind of
‘spiritual middle management’ between humanity and the divine within
itself that it is seeking. You no longer have a direct relationship with
the godhead. ThePriestsdon’t really necessarily have a direct
relationship with the godhead.
They’ve just got a book that tells you
about some people who lived a long time ago who DID have a direct
relationship with the godhead… and that’s alright.
“You don’t need to
have miraculous visions. You don’t need to have gods talking to you. In
fact if you do have any of that stuff, you’re probably insane.”
In the
modern world, "That stuff doesn’t happen".
The only people who are allowed
to talk to gods, and in a very kind of one-sided way, are priests…
Monotheism, to me, is a great simplification. I mean, the Kabbalah
has a great mulitiplicity of gods, but at the very top of the
Kabbalistic diagram —the tree of life—who have this one sphere that is
absolute God. The Monad.
Something that is indivisible, you know? And
all of the other gods, and indeed everything else in the Universe, is a
kind of emanation of that God. Now that’s fine, but it’s when you
suggest that there is ‘only that one God’, at this kind of unreachable
height above humanity, and there is nothing in between, you’re limiting
and simplifying the thing… I mean I tend to think of Paganism as a kind
of alphabet, as a language. It’s like all of the Gods are letters in
this alphabet.
They express nuances, shades of meaning, or certain
subtleties of ideas. Whereas monotheism tends to be just one vowel, and
it’s just something like “ooooh”. It’s like this monkey sound. You can
almost imagine the Gods becoming frustrated, contemptuous.. that with
all this richness of spiritual concepts that are available, why reduce
it to one plaintive single note that the utterer does not even
understand?
The alchemists had two components to their philosophy. These were the
principles of “solve” and “coagula”. Solve was basically the equivalent
of ‘analysis’. It was taking things apart to see how they worked.
Coagula was basically ‘synthesis’. It was trying to put the disassembled
pieces back together so that they worked more efficiently.
These are two very important principles which can be applied to
almost anything in culture. Recently in literature, for example, there
has been a wave of post-modernism, deconstructionism. This is Solve.
Perhaps it’s time, in the arts, for a little more Coagula. Having
deconstructed everything, perhaps we really should be starting to think
about putting everything back together.
Spiritualism was the natural state of human thinking up until the
Renaissance and the subsequent age of reason that grew out of it. Our
original way of seeing the world, was as a place entirely inhabited by
spirits, where everything had its indwelling essence, where everything
was, in some sense, sacred, including ourselves. The age of reason
changed all that. While it’s inarguable that Reason brought many great
benefits, and was a necessary stage of our development, unfortunately
this lead to materialism, where the physical material world was seen as
the be-all and end-all of existence, where inevitably, we are seen as
creatures that have no spiritual dimensions, that have no souls, in a
soulless Universe of dead matter…”
Treat yourself like you would someone you are responsible for helping
Rule #3 :
Make friends with people who want the best for you
Rule #4 :
Compare yourself with who you were yesterday, not with who someone else is today
Rule #5 :
Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them
Rule #6 :
Set your house in perfect order before you criticise The World
Rule #7 :
Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient)
Rule #8 :
Tell The Truth – or, at least, don’t lie.
Rule #9
Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t
Rule #10 :
Be precise in your speech
Rule #11 :
Do not bother children when they are skate-boarding
Rule #12 :
Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street
" Now, one of the complications of transplantation is rejection.
Your body does not like it when parts of someone else’s body are stitched into it. Your immune system will attack and destroy such foreign elements, even when they are crucial to your survival.
To stop this from happening, you must take anti-rejection drugs, which weaken immunity, increasing your susceptibility to infectious disease. Most people are happy to accept the trade-off.
Recipients of transplants still suffer the effects of organ rejection, despite the existence and utility of these drugs.
It’s not because the drugs fail (although they sometimes do).
It’s more often because those prescribed the drugs do not take them.
This beggars belief. It is seriously not good to have your kidneys fail. Dialysis is no picnic.
Transplantation surgery occurs after long waiting, at high risk and great expense.
To lose all that because you don’t take your medication? How could people do that to themselves? How could this possibly be?
It’s complicated, to be fair. Many people who receive a transplanted organ are isolated, or beset by multiple physical health problems (to say nothing of problems associated with unemployment or family crisis).
They may be cognitively impaired or depressed. They may not entirely trust their doctor, or understand the necessity of the medication. Maybe they can barely afford the drugs, and ration them, desperately and unproductively.
But—and this is the amazing thing—imagine that it isn’t you who feels sick. It’s your dog.
So, you take him to the vet. The vet gives you a prescription. What happens then? You have just as many reasons to distrust a vet as a doctor.
Furthermore, if you cared so little for your pet that you weren’t concerned with what improper, substandard or error-ridden prescription he might be given, you wouldn’t have taken him to the vet in the first place.
Thus, you care. Your actions prove it.
In fact, on average, you care more. People are better at filling and properly administering prescription medication to their pets than to themselves. That’s not good. Even from your pet’s perspective, it’s not good.
Your pet (probably) loves you, and would be happier if you took your medication. "
UHURA:
But they do give us something, Mister Spock.
They give us Love.
Well, Cyrano Jones says a tribble is the only love that money can buy.
KIRK:
Too much of anything, Lieutenant, even love, isn't necessarily a good thing.
"There was not much, but there was enough - an empty phial, another nearly full, a hypodermic syringe, several letters in a crabbed, foreign hand. The marks on the envelopes showed that they were those which had disturbed the routine of the secretary, and each was dated from the Commercial Road and signed ' A. Dorak'. They were mere invoices to say that a fresh bottle was being sent to Professor Presbury, or receipts to acknowledge money. There was one other envelope, however, in a more educated hand and bearing the Austrian stamp with the postmark of Prague. 'Here we have our material!' cried Holmes, as he tore out the enclosure. HONOURED COLLEAGUE, [it ran] Since your esteemed visit I have thought much of your case, and though in your circumstances there are some special reasons for the treatment, I would none the less enjoin caution, as my results have shown that it is not without danger of a kind. It is possible that the serum of Anthropoid would have been better. I have, as I explained to you, used black-faced Langur because a specimen was accessible. Langur is, of course, a crawler and climber, while Anthropoid walks erect, and is in all ways nearer. I beg you to take every possible precaution that there be no premature revelation of the process. I have one other client in England, and Dorak is my agent for both. Weekly reports will oblige. Yours with high esteem, H. LOWENSTEIN
Lowenstein! The name brought back to me the memory of some snippet from a newspaper which spoke of an obscure scientist who was striving in some unknown way for the secret of rejuvenescence and the elixir of life. Lowenstein of Prague! Lowenstein with the wondrous strengthgiving serum, tabooed by the profession because he refused to reveal its source. In a few words I said what I remembered. Bennett had taken a manual of zoology from the shelves.
'"Langur",' he read, '"the great black-faced monkey of the Himalayan slopes, biggest and most human of climbing monkeys." Many details are added. Well, thanks to you, Mr Holmes, it is very clear that we have traced the evil to its source.' 'The real source,' said Holmes, 'lies, of course, in that untimely love affair which gave our impetuous Professor the idea that he could only gain his wish by turning himself into a younger man. When one tries to rise above Nature one is liable to fall below it. The highest type of man may revert to the animal if he leaves the straight road of destiny.'
He sat musing for a little with the phial in his hand, looking at the clear liquid within. 'When I have written to this man and told him that I hold him criminally responsible for the poisons which he circulates, we will have no more trouble. But it may recur. Others may find a better way. There is danger there - a very real danger to humanity. Consider, Watson, that the material, the sensual, the worldly would all prolong their worthless lives. The spiritual would not avoid the call to something higher. It would be the survival of the least fit. What sort of cesspool may not our poor world become?'
Suddenly the dreamer disappeared, and Holmes, the man of action, sprang from his chair. 'I think there is nothing more to be said, Mr Bennett. The various incidents will now fit themselves easily into the general scheme. The dog, of course, was aware of the change far more quickly than you. His smell would ensure that. It was the monkey, not the Professor, whom Roy attacked, just as it was the monkey who teased Roy. Climbing was a joy to the creature, and it was a mere chance, I take it, that the pastime brought him to the young lady's window. There is an early train to town, Watson, but I think we shall just have time for a cup of tea at the "Chequers" before we catch it.'
“On my 40th Birthday, rather than merely bore my friends by
having anything as mundane as a midlife crisis, I decided it might be
more interesting to terrify them, by going completely mad, and declaring
myself as a magician. This had been something that had been coming for a
while.
It seemed to be a logical end step in my career as a writer, and
the problem is that with magic, being in many respects a science of
language, you have to be very careful of what you say.
Because if you
suddenly declare yourself to be A Magician, without any knowledge of
what that entails, then one day you are likely to wake up and to
discover that is exactly what you are.
There is some confusion as to what magic actually is. I think this
can be cleared up if you just look at the very earliest descriptions of
magic. Magic in its earliest form is often referred to as “the art”. I
believe this is completely literal. I believe that magic IS art, and
that art, whether it be writing, music, sculpture, or any other form, IS
literally magic. Art is, like magic, the science of manipulating
symbols, words, or images, to achieve changes in consciousness.
The very
language of magic seems to be talking as much about writing or art, as
it about supernatural events. A “Grimoire” for example, “the book of
spells”, is simply a fancy way of saying “grammar”. Indeed, to cast a
spell, is simply “to spell”, to manipulate words, to change people’s
consciousness. And I believe that this is why an artist or a writer is
the closest thing, in the contemporary world, you are likely to see to a
shaman. I believe that all culture must have arisen from cult. Originally,
all of the facets of our culture, whether they be in the arts or the
sciences, were the providence of the shaman. The fact that in present
times, this magical power has degenerated to the level of cheap
entertainment and manipulation is, I think, a tragedy. At the moment,
the people who are using shamanism and magic to shape our culture are
advertisers. Rather than trying to wake people up, THEIR shamanism is
used as an opiate, to tranquilize people, to make people more
manipulable Their “magic box” of television, and by their “magic words”,
their jingles, can cause everybody in the country to be thinking the
same words, and have the same banal thoughts, all at exactly the same
moment… In all of magic, there is an incredibly large linguistic component.
The “Bardic” tradition of magic would place a Bard as being much higher
and more fearsome than a magician. A magician might curse you, That
might make your hands lay funny, or you might have a child born with a
clubbed food. If a bard were to place, not a curse upon you, but a
satire, that could destroy you. If it was a clever satire, it might not
just destroy you in the eyes of your associates, it would destroy you in
the eyes of your family. It would destroy you in your own eyes. And if
it was a (extremely) finely worded and clever satire, that might survive
and be remembered for decades, even centuries, then years after you
were dead, people still might be reading it, and laughing… at you, your
wretchedness, and absurdity.
Writers, and people who had command of
words were respected and feared, (just) as people who manipulated magic. In latter times, I think the artists and writers have allowed
themselves to be ‘sold down the river’ :-They have ACCEPTED the
prevailing belief that art, that writing, are merely forms of
entertainment.
They’re not seen
as transformative forces…
that can
change a human being,
that can change A Society.
They are seen as simple
entertainment Things with which we can fill 20 minutes, half an hour,
while we’re waiting to die… It is not the job of The Artist
to give The Audience
what The Audience WANTS.
If the audience knew what they needed, then they wouldn’t be the audience.
They would be The artist.
It is the job of artists to give the audience what they NEED. My career as a magician continues to evolve. Since I, to a certain
degree, believe art and magic to be interchangeable, it has seemed only
natural that art should be the means by which I express magical ideas.
This has found its way into my prose writing, in works such as “Voice of
the Fire”, and probably most visibly has found its way into the
performance pieces that i’ve done in various locations over the past 8
years. Beautiful little psychedelic artifacts in their own right, which
actually capture the kind of narrative journey that we’ve tried to take
the readers on as part of these performances; to overwhelm the
sensibilities of the audience; to tip them over into a kind of
psychedelic state where we can hopefully actually change their
consciousness and direct it to different places, different levels,
hopefully into new and magical spaces.
When we are doing the will of our True Self, we are inevitably doing
the Will of the Universe.
In Magick these are seen as indistinguishable;
that Every human soul is in fact One human soul.
It is the soul of the
Universe itself, and as long as you are doing the Will of the Universe,
then it is impossible to do anything wrong. The one place in which Gods and Demons inarguably exist is in the
human mind, where they are real in all their grandeur and monstrosity.
Much of magick, as I understand it in the Western occult tradition, is a
search for the Self, with a capital ‘S’. This is understood as being The
‘Great Work’, as being the Gold the Alchemists sought, as being the
Will, the Soul, the thing that we have inside us that is behind the
intellect, the body, the dreams. The “inner dynamo of us” if you like.
Now this is the Single. Most. Important. Thing. that we can ever
attain, the knowledge of our own Self. And yet, there are a frightening
amount of people who seem to have the urge to, not just IGNORE the self,
but actually seem to have the urge to OBLITERATE themselves. This is
horrific… but you can almost understand the desire to simply “wipe out”
that awareness, because it’s too much of a responsibility to actually
POSSESS such a thing as a “soul”. Such a precious thing. ‘What if you
break it? What if you lose it?’ Mightn’t it be best to anaesthetize it,
to deaden it, to destroy it, to not have to live with the pain of
struggling towards it and trying to keep it pure. I think that the way
that people immerse themselves in alcohol, in drugs, in television, in
any of the addictions that our culture throws up, can be seen as a
deliberate attempt to destroy any connection between themselves and the
responsibility of accepting and owning a higher Self, and then having to
maintain it.
I’ve been looking at the history of magical thinking, and where it
starts to go wrong. And, for my money, where it starts to go wrong is
“monotheism”. I mean, if you look at the history of magic, you’ve got
its origins in the caves, you’ve got its origins in shamanism, in
animism, in a belief that everything around you (every tree, every rock,
every animal) was inhabited by some sort of ‘essence’, some sort of
spirit, that could perhaps be communicated with. You would have had some
central shaman or visionary who would have been responsible for
channeling ideas that were useful for survival. By the time you have
reached the classical civilizations, you can see that this has
formalized to a degree.
The shaman was acting purely as an intermediary
between the spirits and the people.
He was, in his position in the
village or community,
I should imagine very much like
a spiritual
plumber.
The people in the group would have had their own roles.. The
person who was best at hunting would’ve been a hunter. The person who
was best at talking to the spirits, perhaps because he or she was a bit
crazy, a bit detached from our normal, material World, then they would
have been The Shaman.
They would not have been the masters of a ‘sacred
craft’.
They would have simply been dispensing their information
throughout the community because it was believed
to be helpful to the
community. When you get the actual classical cultures emerging, this has been
formalized so that you’ve now got pantheons of gods, and each of those
gods have a priest caste, that will act (to a certain degree) as
intermediaries, who will instruct you in the worship of that god. So the
relationship between ‘humans and their gods’, which could be seen a
relationship between ‘humans & their highest Selves’, that was still
a very direct one… When Christianity & monotheism comes in, then
all of a sudden you’ve got a priest caste moving between the worshipper
and the object of worship. You’ve got a priest caste becoming a kind of
‘spiritual middle management’ between humanity and the divine within
itself that it is seeking. You no longer have a direct relationship with
the godhead. The Priests don’t really necessarily have a direct
relationship with the godhead.
They’ve just got a book that tells you
about some people who lived a long time ago who DID have a direct
relationship with the godhead… and that’s alright.
“You don’t need to
have miraculous visions. You don’t need to have gods talking to you. In
fact if you do have any of that stuff, you’re probably insane.”
In the
modern world, that stuff doesn’t happen.
The only people who are allowed
to talk to gods, and in a very kind of one-sided way, are priests… Monotheism, to me, is a great simplification. I mean, the Kabbalah
has a great mulitiplicity of gods, but at the very top of the
Kabbalistic diagram —the tree of life—who have this one sphere that is
absolute God. The Monad. Something that is indivisible, you know? And
all of the other gods, and indeed everything else in the Universe, is a
kind of emanation of that God. Now that’s fine, but it’s when you
suggest that there is ‘only that one God’, at this kind of unreachable
height above humanity, and there is nothing in between, you’re limiting
and simplifying the thing… I mean I tend to think of Paganism as a kind
of alphabet, as a language. It’s like all of the Gods are letters in
this alphabet. They express nuances, shades of meaning, or certain
subtleties of ideas. Whereas monotheism tends to be just one vowel, and
it’s just something like “ooooh”. It’s like this monkey sound.
You can
almost imagine the Gods becoming frustrated, contemptuous.. that with
all this richness of spiritual concepts that are available, why reduce
it to one plaintive single note that the utterer does not even
understand?
The alchemists had two components to their philosophy. These were the
principles of “solve” and “coagula”.
Solve was basically the equivalent
of ‘analysis’. It was taking things apart to see how they worked. [Breaking].
Coagula was basically ‘synthesis’. It was trying to put the disassembled
pieces back together so that they worked more efficiently.
These are two very important principles which can be applied to
almost anything in culture. Recently in literature, for example, there
has been a wave of post-modernism, deconstructionism. This is Solve.
Perhaps it’s time, in the arts, for a little more Coagula. Having
deconstructed everything, perhaps we really should be starting to think
about putting everything back together. Spiritualism was the natural state of human thinking up until the
Renaissance and the subsequent age of reason that grew out of it. Our
original way of seeing the world, was as a place entirely inhabited by
spirits, where everything had its indwelling essence, where everything
was, in some sense, sacred, including ourselves. The age of reason
changed all that. While it’s inarguable that Reason brought many great
benefits, and was a necessary stage of our development, unfortunately
this lead to materialism, where the physical material world was seen as
the be-all and end-all of existence, where inevitably, we are seen as
creatures that have no spiritual dimensions, that have no souls, in a
soulless Universe of dead matter…”
Negative, sir. The subspace shockwave originated at bearing
three two three, mark seven five.
Location...
It's Praxis, sir. It's a
Klingon moon.
SULU:
Praxis is their key energy production facility.
...Send to Klingon
High Command :
'This is Excelsior, a Federation starship.
We have
monitored a large explosion in your sector.
Do you require assistance?'
RAND:
Aye sir.
SULU:
Mister Valtane, any more data?
VALTANE:
Yes sir. I have confirmed the location of Praxis, sir, but...
SULU:
What is it?
VALTANE:
I cannot confirm the existence of Praxis.
SULU:
On screen! ...Magnify!
COMPUTER VOICE:
Computer enhancement.
SULU:
Praxis?
VALTANE:
What's left of it, sir.
RAND:
Captain, I'm getting a message from Praxis.
SULU:
Let's have it.
KERLA (on viewscreen):
This is Brigadier Kerla, speaking for the High
Command.
There has been an incident on Praxis.
However everything is
under control.
We have no need for assistance.
Obey treaty stipulations
and remain outside the Neutral Zone.
This transmission ends, now.
SULU:
An incident?
RAND:
Do we report this, sir?
SULU:
Are you kidding?
AIDE-DE-CAMP:
This briefing is Classified.
Ladies and Gentlemen, the C-in-C.
C in C:
As you were.
I'll break this information down succinctly :
The
Klingon Empire has roughly fifty years of life left in it.
...For full
details, I am turning this briefing over to Federation Special Envoy.
SPOCK:
Good morning.
Two months ago a Federation starship monitored an
explosion on the Klingon moon Praxis.
We believe it was caused by
over-mining and insufficient safety precautions.
The moon's decimation
means a deadly pollution of their ozone.
They will have depleted their
supply of oxygen in approximately fifty Earth years.
Due to their
enormous military budget, the Klingon economy does not have the
resources to combat this catastrophe.
Last month, at the behest of the
Vulcan Ambassador I opened a dialogue with Gorkon, Chancellor of the
Klingon High Council.
He proposes to commence negotiations at once.
CARTWRIGHT:
Negotiations for, what..?
SPOCK:
The dismantling of our space stations and starbases along the
Neutral Zone,
an end to almost seventy years of unremitting hostility
with the Klingons,
which the Klingons, can no longer afford.
MILITARY AIDE:
Bill, are we talking about mothballing the Starfleet..?
C in C:
I'm sure that our exploration and scientific programs would be unaffected, Captain, but...
CARTWRIGHT:
I must protest.
To offer the Klingons a safe haven within
Federation space is suicide.
Klingons would become the alien trash of
the galaxy.
And if we dismantle the fleet, we'd be defenceless before an
aggressive species with a foothold on our territory.
The opportunity
here, is to bring them to their knees.
Then we'll be in a far better
position to dictate terms.
KIRK:
Sir!
C in C:
Captain Kirk?
KIRK:
The Klingons have never been trustworthy.
I'm forced to agree with Admiral Cartwright.
This is a terrifying idea.
SPOCK:
It is imperative that we act now to support the Gorkon
initiative, lest more conservative elements persuade his Empire that it
is better to attempt a military solution and die fighting.
In the indefinite future, the "Stalker" (Alexander Kaidanovsky) works in some unclear territory as a guide who leads people through the "Zone," an area in which the normal laws of reality do not apply.
The Zone contains a place called the "Room," said to grant the wishes of anyone who steps inside. The area containing the Zone is sealed off by the government and great hazards exist within it. At home with his wife and daughter, the Stalker's wife (Alisa Freindlich) begs him not to go into the Zone but he ignores her pleas. In a rundown bar, the Stalker meets his next clients for a trip into the Zone. The "Writer" (Anatoly Solonitsyn) and the "Professor" (Nikolai Grinko) agree to put their fates in the Stalker's hands. They remain nameless and the characters refer to one another by their professions.
They evade the military blockade that guards the Zone, surviving gunfire from the guards. They then ride into the heart of the Zone on a railway work car. The Stalker tells his clients they must do exactly as he says to survive the dangers which lie ahead and explains the Zone's dangers are invisible. The Stalker tests for traps by throwing metal nuts tied to strips of cloth ahead of them. The complicated path that they must take cannot be specifically seen nor heard but can only be sensed. The shortest path is never the straight path.
The Writer is skeptical of any real danger, but the Professor generally follows the Stalker's advice. As they travel, the three men discuss their reasons for wanting to visit the Room. The Writer expresses his fear of losing his inspiration. He appears angry and stressed. The Professor seems less anxious, though he insists on carrying along a small backpack, its contents unknown. While the Professor's desires are not clear, he reluctantly gives in to repeated pleas from the Writer and admits he hopes to win a Nobel Prize for a scientific analysis of the Zone. The Stalker insists he has no motive beyond the altruistic aim of aiding the desperate. At times, he refers to a previous Stalker named "Porcupine," who had led his brother to his death in the Zone, visited the Room, come into possession of a large sum of money, and then hanged himself, completely contradicting what the Room is supposed to supply.
While the Room appears to fulfill a visitor's wishes, these might not be consciously expressed wishes but unconscious desires. In addition it appears that the Zone itself has a kind of sentience. When the Writer later confronts the Stalker about his knowledge of the Zone and the Room, the Stalker replies that his information came from the now deceased Porcupine. After traveling through tunnels the three reach their destination. They determine that their goal lies inside a decayed and decrepit industrial building. In a small antechamber, a phone begins to ring. The Writer answers and cryptically speaks into the phone, stating "this is not the clinic," before hanging up. The surprised Professor decides to use the phone to telephone a colleague. In the ensuing conversation, he reveals his true intentions in undertaking the journey. The Professor has brought a nuclear device with him, and he intends to destroy the Room to prevent its use by evil men.
The three then fight verbally and physically in a larger antechamber just outside the Room. The fight ends in a draw with all three of them exhausted. As they catch their breath, the Writer experiences an epiphany about the Room's true nature. He argues that when Porcupine met his goal, despite his conscious motives, the room fulfilled Porcupine's secret desire for wealth, instead of bringing back his brother from death. This in turn prompted Porcupine to commit suicide. The Writer further reasons the Room is dangerous to those who seek it for negative reasons. With his earlier fears assuaged, the Professor gives up on his plan of destroying the Room. Instead, he disassembles his bomb and scatters its pieces. The men rest before the doorway and never enter the Room. Rain begins to fall into the Room through its ruined ceiling, then gradually fades away.
The Stalker, the Writer, and the Professor are shown back in the bar, and are met there by the Stalker's wife and daughter. A black dog that had followed the three men through the Zone is in the bar with them. When his wife asks where he got the dog, Stalker declares that it just came to him, and he remarks that he felt unable to leave it behind.
Later, when the Stalker's wife tells him that she would like to visit the Room herself, he expresses doubts about the Zone. He states that he fears her dreams will not be fulfilled. As the Stalker sleeps, his wife contemplates their relationship in a monologue delivered directly to the camera. She declares that she knew perfectly well that life with him would be hard, since he would be unreliable and their children would face challenges, but she concludes that she is better off with him despite their many trials. "Monkey," the couple's daughter, sitting alone in the kitchen, recites a love poem by Fyodor Tyutchev.
Monkey holds the large book and lays her head on a table. She then appears to use psychokinesis to push three drinking glasses across it, one after the other moving across the table, the third one falling to the floor. A train passes by where the Stalker's family lives, and the entire apartment shakes. As the noise of the train begin to subside, the film ends.
