The Vermillion Blade

RAW : And so Ibsen’s Nora and Joyce’s Nora are sort of two symbols of the rise of the female energy in the modern era, and Joyce deliberately made Bloom and Ulysses the antithesis to every way of the macho values, and in Bloom’s nightmare trial he’s declared a hermaphrodite by expert medical testimony, the new model of the womanly man of the future, and so on, and the whole androgeny of the modern age is a major theme in Joyce, and the whole women’s liberation theme is very powerfully there, and that’s part of the prophetic side of Joyce, in talking about...

I: Yeah, Campbell’s last piece, his last creative work, is going to come out in a book called “Goddess”, so there it is. 

RAW: And it’s amazing how this theme - Joyce gets stronger and stronger in the exiles - and the female character having the long speech and the male character only interrupts a couple of times, and says less and less, and she - it almost turns into a monologue.  And Ulysses does angle the female monologue, and so does FW.  And, uh...

I: Getting the last word.  Well also, he definitely shows women in a respectful situation, I feel all of his interpretations.  At the same time, as he shows the flaws.

RAW: Well that’s it.  Joyce is so complicated.  There have been books written claiming that Joyce hated women, and the reason such books can be written is that Joyce’s characters are so complicated.  Every one of his female characters is marvelous and terribly flawed and full of imperfections, but that’s true of his male characters, too.  And so even though Joyce, to me, appears one of the great male feminists, his female characters are certainly not idealized any more than his male characters.  Joyce was the world’s staunchest enemy of idealism.

I: But they’re strong - the women are.

RAW: Yes, and they are tremendously flexible.  In the symbolism of FW, 

The Woman is The River 

and 

The Man is The Mountain

and 

The Mountain seems Strong, 

but it’s kind of FROZEN, 

and 

The River is Alive and DANCING

This is very much like the Yang and the Yin principles in the I Ching.  FW is isomorphic to the I Ching; I have an essay about that in the latest issue of “Semiotext(e)”.  It’s kind of hard to pursue verbally these mathematical symbols to show the full isomorphism.

Hold The Gold

INT. MAZ' CASTLE - BASEMENT CORRIDOR - DAY

 Rey steps down into the basement corridor. BB-8 follows her. Walking carefully and confused, she is not sure why she's down here. She can hear the echoing sounds of a young girl crying. She heads down the hall... to the very end, where there is a door. It is almost as if a SOULFUL VIBRATION draws her closer. She looks at the door lock -- AND THE

 DOOR OPENS.

 Hesitant, Rey enters.

 INT. MAZ'S CASTLE - CRYPT ROOM - DAY

 Rey moves into the dark, small, vaulted storage room. Old treasures line the floors and walls, but there is something specific Rey is drawn to: on a table, an old wooden BOX.

She moves to it, unsure, afraid, as if an energy from inside the box has been calling her here. BB-8 nervously follows. Rey reaches out, very slowly, to touch the box. A moment heavy with tension. Rey OPENS THE BOX and sees inside Luke Skywalker's original lightsaber. With hesitation, she reaches towards it, but she cannot resist. As her hand makes contact with it, there is the piercing sound of a lightsaber igniting. She moves her hand away, as REY HEARS A MECHANICAL BREATHING sound. 

The CAMERA MOVES, LIGHTING CHANGES -- and we see behind her something impossible: a HALLWAY OF FROM DEEP INSIDE CLOUD CITY. Disembodied voices fill the air.

 YOUNG GIRL

 NO!

 She stands -- looks around, confused by all she sees and hears. -- Turns and sees, through a DOORWAY.

We follow Rey and she runs down the corridor, but it all TILTS -- TURNS -- and she lands on the WALL -- which is now the GROUND -- dried GRASS.  She turns to look -- we PIVOT -- and see a BURNING TEMPLE AT NIGHT. 

We PAN to: R2-D2 -- who watches the flames -- and a MAN appears (LUKE, whose face we do not see). He falls to his knees, reaches out to the droid -- with a MECHANICAL RIGHT HAND.

We PUSH IN ON REY as RAIN BEGINS -- and DAY TURNS TO NIGHT -- and she LOOKS UP -- we TILT UP -- To see we're LOOKING UP AT A WARRIOR as he is STABBED BY A FIERY LIGHTSABER! 

He screams and falls to the ground -- we FOLLOW HIM, revealing Rey again, now in a nighttime battlefield. She gets to her feet, frightened by what she sees. We PIVOT AROUND HER to REVEAL KYLO REN, and the six other KNIGHTS OF REN, who flank him! 

Come back around to Rey, soaking now, as the RAIN STOPS and SUNLIGHT illuminates her -- she turns to look -- we PIVOT -- and see... A little girl. Rey as a child. She is sobbing, hysterical. Unkar Plutt's meaty hand holds her thin arm. She is on Jakku, watching a starship fly into the sky, abandoning her.

 YOUNG GIRL

 No, come back!

 UNKAR PLUTT

 Quiet, girl!

 The ship flies towards the desert sun, which is strangely eclipsed, as if being eaten by darkness. Rey looks around her to see she is..

 In a NIGHTTIME, BARREN, SNOWY WOODS. She's losing her mind, confounded and lost and she gets to her feet, her breath seen in the frigid air -- and then: THE SOUND OF CLASHING LIGHTSABERS! She moves through the woods, toward the sound.

Rey runs, heart pounding, when KYLO REN EMERGES FROM BEHIND A TREE! She stops, SCREAMS, FALLS BACK and LANDS IN:

 INT. MAZ' CASTLE - BASEMENT CORRIDOR - DAY

 She falls back, out of the room, suddenly sitting in the

 hall, out of breath, alarmed and perplexed.

 She HEARS something and turns to look.

 Maz stands at the end of the corridor, realizing what has just happened.

REY

What was that? I shouldn't have gone in there.

 MAZ

That lightsaber was Luke's. And his father's before him and now, it calls to you!

 Rey stands, fast. Still overwhelmed, emotional, speechless.

 REY

 I have to get back to Jakku.

 MAZ

 Han told me.

 (reaches out, hold REY'S HAND)

 Dear child. I see your eyes. 

You already know the truth. 

Whomever you're waiting for on Jakku, they're

 never coming back. 

But... there's someone who still could.

 REY

 Luke.

MAZ

The belonging you seek is not behind you. It is ahead. 

I am no Jedi, but I know the Force. 

It moves through and surrounds every living thing. 
Close your eyes. Feel it. 

The light. It's always been there.

It will guide you. The saber. Take it. 

Rey suddenly stands.

REY
I'm never touching that again. 
I don't want any part of this.

And Rey runs off, passing Maz.

Rey's mind is spinning -- she can't take it -- she turns and heads off, fast. BB-8 follows her. TIGHT ON MAZ, watching her go. Maz SIGHS, feeling for the young girl.

 EXT. MAZ'S CASTLE - DAY

 Rey exits the castle, needs to run, but doesn't know where.

 Heads toward the woods.

 EXT. FOREST - DAY

 Rey moves through the foliage, heart racing. Over this, we HEAR a RUMBLING -- intense, an OMEN of something horrible to come.

HELD

JANEWAY: 

What's The Emergency? 

EMH: 

I thought you should see for yourself. 

Somebody left a bundle on our doorstep. 

I turned around and there she was, lying on a bio-bed. 

JANEWAY: 

Seven must have beamed her here. 

EMH: 

Good thing, too. 

A few more minutes and I wouldn't have been able to do anything for her. 

It's hard to believe she could grow up to be a drone. 

(The baby starts to cry and the EMH picks her up.)

EMH: 

Hold her for a moment while I take some readings. 

(He hands he The Infant — She stops crying.)

Oh, I guess she just wanted to be held. 

Oh. The pathogen. 

I finished synthesizing it. 

JANEWAY: 

Start working with Tuvok on 

a way to deploy The Virus. 

EMH: 

Captain, you don't seriously plan to use it?

JANEWAY: 

If I have to. 

(To the Baby Borg)

Let's just hope your brothers and sisters don't force my hand. 

The Prophecies of Women are Limited and Dull

No, they have to make the choice of their own free will. 

Otherwise, the system doesn't work. It's like The Harbinger. 

It's this creepy old fuck, practically wears a sign, 

"You will die." 

Why do we put him there? 

The System. 

They have to choose to ignore him, and they have to choose what happens in The Cellar. 

Yeah, we rig the game as much as we need to, 

but in the end, 

They don't transgress... 

They can't be punished.

GENDER : There are Two Borg in Each Slot

There are slots along the wall, kind of like compartments. 

There are two Borg in each.

VII. THE PRINCIPLE OF GENDER.

"Gender is in everything; 

everything has its Masculine and Feminine Principles; 

Gender manifests on all planes."

-The Kybalion. 

This Principle embodies the truth that there is GENDER manifested in everything-the Masculine and Feminine Principles ever at work. This is true not only of the Physical Plane, but of the Mental and even the Spiritual Planes. On the Physical Plane, the Principle manifests as SEX, on the higher planes it takes higher forms, but the Principle is ever the same. No creation, physical, mental or spiritual, is possible without this Principle. An understanding of its laws will throw light on many a subject that has perplexed the minds of men. The Principle of Gender works ever in the direction of generation, regeneration, and creation. Everything, and every person, contains the two Elements or Principles, or this great Principle, within it, him or her. 

Every Male thing has the Female Element also; every Female contains also the Male Principle. 

If you would understand the philosophy of Mental and Spiritual Creation, Generation, and Re-generation, you must understand and study this Hermetic Principle. It contains the solution of many mysteries of Life. 

We caution you that this Principle has no reference to the many base, pernicious and degrading lustful theories, teachings and practices, which are taught under fanciful titles, and which are a prostitution of the great natural principle of Gender. 

Such base revivals of the ancient infamous forms of Phallicism tend to ruin mind, body and soul, and the Hermetic Philosophy has ever sounded the warning note against these degraded teachings which tend toward lust, licentiousness, and perversion of Nature's principles. if you seek such teachings, you must go elsewhere for them - Hermeticism contains nothing for you along these lines. To the pure, all things are pure; to the base, all things are base.

HUX

What if I were able to promise you that Humiliation always turns into Rage? 

INT. STAR DESTROYER FINALIZER - BRIDGE

On board the bridge, CAPTAIN EDRISON PEAVEY of the Finalizer watches the Raddus in the distance, then turns to GENERAL ARMITAGE HUX.

PEAVEY: We've caught them in the middle of their evacuation.

ARMITAGE HUX: I have my orders from Supreme Leader Snoke himself. This is where we snuff-out the resistance once and for all. Tell Captain Canady to prime his dreadnought. Incinerate their base, destroy their transports and obliterate their fleet.

EXT. SPACE - DAY

The enormous Mandator IV-class Siege Dreadnought known as the Fulminatrix, owned by CAPTAIN MODEN CANADY, pops from hyperspace and into the foreground from the far reaches of space. Two massive cannons slung beneath the ship's belly begin to lower and take aim.

INT. STAR DESTROYER FINALIZER - BRIDGE PIT

In the destroyer's bridge pit, a beautiful yet stern monitor eyes a red X shape on her radar screen, her surroundings lit red for ideal visibility during battlefield conditions.

MONITOR: General, Resistance ship approaching. Launching shields in attack mode.

ARMITAGE HUX: (incredulous) A single light fighter?

EXT. SPACE - DAY

The X-wing ship faces off with the Fulminatrix. The tiny droid BB-8 occupies the tailseat with COMMANDER POE DAMERON up front.

INT. X-WING SHIP - COCKPIT

POE: Happy beeps here, buddy, come on.

INT. RADDUS - CONTROL ROOM

GENERAL LEIA ORGANA monitors him from the control room.

POE: (over intercom) We've pulled crazier stunts than this.

LEIA: Just for the record, Commander Dameron, I'm with the droid on this one.

POE: (over intercom) Thank you for your support, General.

INT. X-WING SHIP - COCKPIT

POE: Happy beeps. Attention! (flicks a switch) This is Commander Poe Dameron of the Republic fleet, I have an urgent communique for General Hux.

INT. STAR DESTROYER FINALIZER - BRIDGE PIT

LANK PAZE: Patch him through.

ARMITAGE HUX: This is General Hux of the First Order. The Republic is no more. Your fleet are rebel scum and war criminals. Tell your precious princess there will be no terms... there will be no surrender.

POE: (over intercom) Hi, I'm holding for General Hugs.

HUX: This is Hux. You and your friends are doomed! We will wipe your filth from the galaxy.

POE: (over intercom) OK, I'll hold.

ARMITAGE HUX: Hello?

POE: (over intercom) Hello? Yup. I'm still here.

ARMITAGE HUX: (to Paze) Can you.... can he hear me?

The officer LANK PAZE nods from the bridge pit.

POE: (over intercom) Hugs?

ARMITAGE HUX: He can.

POE: (over intercom) With an 'H'. Skinny guy. Kinda pasty.

ARMITAGE HUX: I can hear you. Can you hear me?

POE: (over intercom) Look, I can't hold forever. If you reach him.... tell him Leia has an urgent message for him.

PEAVEY: I believe he's tooling with you, sir.

POE: (over intercom) About his mother.

ARMITAGE HUX: Open fire!

What if I were able to promise you that Humiliation always turns into Rage? 

How long does that conversion take? 

How long is the evolution? 

How long does it take to get from the larva stage-- 

I fully understand what you're asking.

How long does it take? 

I guess it depends.

Like with Germany, it was 15 or 20 years.

Forget it.

But Wile E. Coyote, you know, he —

He has a fast turnaround.

I Want to Die.

I Know.

FRAUGHT

“Jimmy was unfazed when confronted with the middle-aged version of the suicidal teenager. Firstly he is not emotionally involved. The care, or even love, he feels for me is not going to capsize his objectivity, he is a father figure, not a father. A father can be, as we all fucking know (!), a more fraught and conflicted role. Being an appropriate mentor, somewhat delivered by serendipity – all my mentors have floated into my life, like celestial beings – Jimmy knew what to say. He had been in this position himself. It is normal, necessary, beneficial to, at the midpoint in the journey, question the direction of travel. The relationship was but one aspect of my life that needed to change, it was the most vivid and obvious but it was merely the emissary for all necessary change. I had been living in an illusion and the illusion was fading. I was awakening from the dream of my previous self and if the somnambulance was roughly disrupted I would not withstand the shock.

I will always remember the tone with which Jimmy spoke if not all of the content. He normalized my feelings, he contextualized them, he told me they would pass and that this was part of my metamorphosis. Crucially there was an authenticity to his words that meant I trusted him more than my own feelings. He always demonstrates these qualities. When I make the pilgrimage to his Camden office and patiently wait while he wraps up a meeting or a call, I sit on the leather sofa, self-conscious and reverential, focused on the picture of Duvall and Brando in The Godfather that is above the sofa opposite, above where he will sit.”

“If you work in entertainment you will be aware of the galling cliché of the actor who chums up to the crew with the unspoken, ‘Yeah, I guess I’m just more at home with the horny-handed sons of the soil than with other pampered thesps’ subtext; ‘I guess it’s because I’m a muthafuckin gangsta’. Well, I’m one of them. You should see me chatting football with me homies, eschewing the pleasures of the officers’ mess to get down and dirty in the trenches. Comedy will always be my religion because so few things are just one thing and so many things are everything at once. This state of proletariat solidarity is both a cringey pose and entirely sincere. It is both a managed effort and completely who I am. I both entirely reject my childhood in Grays, Essex, and the fraught awfulness of my interactions with my shift-worker stepdad, not even – actually just my mum’s live-in boyfriend – and entirely accept that I am, marrow deep, made there. I come from there, there where I never belonged.”

Excerpt From

Mentors

Russell Brand

Poor Snake

“Now, I saw a fantastic thing of a Burmese priestess, a snake priestess, who had to bring rain to her people by calling a king cobra from his den and kissing him three times on the nose. 

There was the cobra, The Giver of Life, The Giver of Rain, which is of Life, as the divine positive, not negative, figure.”

“One day Snake said, 

‘We too should eat these fruits. Why must we go hungry?’ 

Antelope said, 

‘But we don’t know anything about this fruit.’ 

Then Man and his wife took some of the fruit and ate it. 

Unumbotte came down from the sky and asked, 

‘Who ate the fruit?’ 

They answered, 

‘We did.’ 

Unumbotte asked, 

‘Who told you that you could eat that fruit?’ 

They replied, 

‘Snake did.’ 

It’s The Same Story.

Red-5

Number 5 is a symbol of God’s grace. It is also one of the most widely mentioned words in the God’s word. It is also a number that symbolizes God’s kindness and favor to humankind. 25 is 5 X 5 and it makes “grace upon grace”. (John 1:16). 10 Commandments are easily divided into two parts 5 commandments each, the first one is dedicated to relationships between person and God, and the second one is dedicated to the way people treat people. The God’s law consists of five books, which are called Pentateuch. The New Testament Pentateuch consists of 4 gospels and Acts, which can be considered God’s grace and favor to the humankind.

The direct indication of number 5 symbolism is for example John, who wrote 5 books concerning the grace of God and forever life of the soul. 

The God’s grace symbolism was seen when Jesus took 5 loaves of bread and transformed them into the amount enough to feed five thousand people. (Matthew 14:17). The instruction given by God in order to build a “tabernacle in the wilderness” were all centered around number five, everything was made out of five components, like 5 curtains, 5 pillars, 5 bars, etc. Also there were 5 ingredients in the holy oil, which was needed to sanctify the tabernacle.

The God’s presence was shown by number 5. The book of Psalms has 5 main chapters. There are 5 offerings to Israel provided by God. (Leviticus). Moses wrote five books. This number shows the God’s plan and influence on humans, his grace and presence.

The Flood

PASTUZO :

Lucy?

Lucy!

LUCY :

I'm afraid we're not going to London after all.

PASTUZO :

Why not?

LUCY :

We've got a cub to raise.

PASTUZO : 

What's he like?

LUCY:

Rather small.

(SNEEZES)

And rather sneezy.

But he likes his marmalade.

PASTUZO: 

That's a good sign.

(BURPS)

LUCY: 

Oh, yes, Pastuzo.

If we look after this bear, I have a feeling he'll go far.

“There’s an undercurrent to the story of The Flood, and that’s the fact that The City can become corrupt, and that’s because people don’t engage in heroic endeavour—or, perhaps, because they engage in precisely the opposite of that, which is outright destructive behaviour. This is also something that’s worth considering, too. If you consider your own manner of being, you can say things to people, such as, tell the truth and be good. Those are cliches, obviously, and so they lack power. But you can take them apart,and utilize them in a manner that stops being a cliche. You do that by being more humble about them, I would say. 

Maybe you can’t tell the truth because you don’t know what the truth is. But one thing you can do is to stop saying things that you know to be untrue. You might say, well, how do I know that they’re untrue? Well, you need a whole elaboration of a philosophy of truth to answer that question. We’re not going to bother with that question, because, at the moment, it’s beside the point. That isn’t the issue. The issue is that there are times in your life where you know that the thing that you’re saying is not true. It’s a deception. It’s a lie of some sort, and you’re using it to manipulate yourself, another person, or the world. You’re also fully possessed by the idea that you can get away with it. 

There’s a Satanic arrogance about that. In fact, that is the archetypal arrogance that’s portrayed in the mythological character of Satan. Satan is precisely the archetype of the element of the mind that believes it can twist and bend the structure of reality without paying the price. You can’t imagine anything that’s more arrogant than that. You really think that you can twist the structure of reality? And that that’s going to work out for you, without it snapping back? It’s so obvious that that can’t work that everyone knows it. 

Anyways, back to the initial point. You know, by the rules of the game that you yourself are playing, that, some of the time, you’re violating the rules of the game that you’re playing. The first issue with regards to, say, stating the truth or behaving in a responsible manner would be merely to stop cheating at whatever game it is that you’ve chosen to play. That’s a good start. That’ll straighten out your life. 

Well, how does the flood tie into this? We live in a corrupt structure, and we’re corrupt as individuals. Part of that corruption is just happenstance. It’s the way things fall apart. But the other part of it is that, not only are we not aiming up, but we’re actually aiming down. The flood story’s a warning, and it’s a very clear warning. The warning is that, if you aim down enough, and then if enough of you aim down at the same time, everything will degenerate into something that’s indistinguishable from the chaos from which things emerge at the beginning of time. It’s something like that. 

The cosmos that’s presented in mythological representations is chaos versus order. The order is on top, you might say, and the chaos is always underneath. The chaos can break through, or the order can crumble, and you can fall into the chaos. That chaos is intermingled potential. The way that you destroy the order and let the chaos rise back up—which is exactly how it’s portrayed in the flood story—is by inhabiting the corpse of your father and feeding on the remains with no gratitude and no attempt to replenish what it is that you’re taking from it. That’s one mythological motif. 

The warning in the flood story is, don’t do that for very long, because things will happen that are so awful that you cannot possibly imagine it. That’ll happen to you personally; it’ll happen to your family; it’ll happen to your community, and it’s happened to people over and over throughout history. It’s quite interesting. It’s very soon after the story of Cain and Abel when you see evil enter the world. In the story of Adam and Eve, along with self-consciousness, the evil, there, is the knowledge of good and evil; that’s the ability to self-consciously hurt other people. Of course, instantly, Cain takes that to the absolute extreme. He uses that capacity to destroy, really, what he loves best. He gets as close as a human being can to destroying the divine ideal. Of course, his brother is Abel, and Abel is favoured by God. Cain destroys him. Cain tells God at the end of that episode that his punishment is more than he can bear. I think the reason for that is, where are you when you destroy your own ideal? What’s left for you? There’s nowhere to go. There’s no up, and when there’s no up, there’s a lot of down. 

There’s an idea that was put forth very nicely in Milton’s Paradise Lost when he was describing, from a psychological perspective, essentially what hell is: you’re in hell to the degree that you’re distant from the good. That might be a good way of thinking about it. If you destroy your own ideal—which you do with jealousy, resentment, and the desire to pull down people that you would like to be—then you end up in a situation that’s indistinguishable from hell. The way the Biblical story unfolds is, well, it’s Cain, and then it’s the flood. Cain adopts this mode of being that’s antithetical to being itself—at least to positive being itself. He does it knowing full well what he’s doing. The net consequence of that, as it ripples through the entire social structure, is that God stands back and says, this whole thing has got so bad that the only thing we can do is wipe it to the ground. That is no joke. That’s exactly how things work. 

One of the things that’s extraordinarily terrifying about that sequence of stories—and I believe this to be true. I think I realized this independently of any of the analysis that I was doing of mythological stories. I looked at what happened in places like the Soviet Union, Maoist China, and Nazi Germany. The most penetrating observers of those societies, the people who were most interested in how it was that those absolute catastrophes came about, all said the same thing: it was rooted in the degeneration of the individuals who made up the society. You hear that people were following orders. No; that explanation doesn’t hold water. You hear that you would be punished if you resisted. There was some truth in that, but nowhere near as much as people might think, especially at the beginnings of the process. It was more that people decided—each and every one of them—to turn a blind eye to the catastrophes and to participate in the lies. That warped entire societies, and they veered their way downward to something as closely approximating hell as you could manage, especially in places like Nazi Germany and, well, in all three of those places. 

One of the things that’s so frightening about the stories in Genesis is that they say something very clear: your moral degeneration contributes in no small way to the degeneration of the entire cosmos. You say, well, I would like my life to be meaningful. People say that. Really? Would you really like your life to be meaningful? You’d think people would trade a little nihilism for not having to face that particular realization. I think people do that all the time. It’s a terrible weight to realize. But we are networked together. That’s the vulnerability that’s associated with our intense capacity to communicate. It’s certainly possible that the ripples of our individual actions have consequences that are far beyond the limits of our immediate consciousness. I also think that people know that, too. They know that in the way that people know things when they don’t want to know them, which means they know them embodied; they can feel them; they can sense them; they have an emotional response to them, but there’s no damn way they’re going to let them become articulated, because they don’t want to know. When you’re feeling guilty and ashamed about the things you’ve done or not done—I know that can get out of hand, as well—it’s often because there is a crooked little part of you that’s aiming at the worst possible outcome. 

One of the things Jung said about the shadow—Jung’s famous idea that everyone has a dark side, and that that dark side needs to be incorporated and made conscious—was that the shadow of the human being reaches all the way to hell. That’s the thing that’s so interesting about reading Carl Jung: he actually means what he says. It’s not a metaphor. The part of you that’s twisted against being is aligned with the part of the conscious cosmos, let’s say, that’s aiming at making everything as terrible as it can possibly be. 

It’s a terrible shock to realize that. That’s partly why people don’t realize it. It’s something that people keep at an arm’s length. It’s the same as recognizing yourself as a Nazi concentration camp guard, which is a very useful exercise. There’s absolutely no reason why you couldn’t have been or still could be one. And if you think otherwise, all the more reason for assuming that you would be unable to resist the temptation if it was, in fact, offered to you. And if you don’t think it’s a temptation, then there’s so much that you don’t know about human beings that you’re not even in the game. If it wasn’t a temptation, then people bloody well wouldn’t have done it. Plenty of people did it, and it’s no wonder. 

So things get serious in Genesis very, very rapidly. The depth of the seriousness is ultimate—archetypal. It gets as serious as it can get. The story of Noah and the flood opens in a fragmentary manner. I believe that these passages are a part of a longer story that we only have bits and pieces of, and also that it’s part of more than one story.”

Luke’s Cave

There is a maze in The Desert carved from sand and rock.

A vast labyrinth of pathways and corridors a hundred miles long, a thousand miles wide, full of twists and dead ends.

Picture it a puzzle.

You walk, and at the end of this maze is a prize just waiting to be discovered.

All you have to do is find your way through.

Can you see The Maze? 

Its walls and floors, its twists and turns? 

Good, because The Maze you've created in your mind is itself the maze.

There is no desert, no rock or sand.

There is only the idea of it.

But it's an idea that will come to dominate your every waking and sleeping moment.

You're inside The Maze now.

You cannot escape.

Welcome to madness.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL (reading): 

“The animal envoys of the Unseen Power no longer serve, as in primeval times, to teach and to guide mankind. Bears, lions, elephants and gazelles are in cages in our zoos. Man is no longer the newcomer in a world of unexplored plains and forests, and our immediate neighbors are not wild beasts, but other human beings contending for goods and space on a planet that is whirling without end around the fireball of a star. Neither in body nor mind do we inhabit the world of those hunting races of the Paleolithic millennia, to whose lives and lifeways we nevertheless owed the very forms of our bodies and structures of our minds.

Memories of their animal envoys still must sleep, somehow, within us, for they wake a little and stir when we venture into wilderness. They wake in terror to thunder. And again they wake with a sense of recognition when we enter any one of those great painted caves. Whatever the inward darkness may have been to which the shamans of those’ caves descended in their trances, the same must lie within ourselves nightly visited in sleep.”

BILL MOYERS: 

When we look at the magnificent cave paintings left by our primal ancestors, we realize how the hunters of those early tribes were influenced by their natural surroundings, and by their feelings toward the animals they depended on for food religious feelings. They told stories to themselves about the animals, and about the supernatural world to which the animals seemed to go when they died. And the hunters performed rituals of atonement to the departed spirits of the animals, hoping to coax them hack to be sacrificed again.

Joseph Campbell devoted his life to the study of these myths and rituals. For him, mythic stories were not simply entertaining tales to be told for amusement around ancient campfires, they were powerful guides to the life of the spirit. Campbell’s odyssey as scholar and teacher led him from the exhibits at the American Museum of Natural History, which impressed him as a boy, to cultures all over the world. In his words, “Whether we listen with aloof amusement to the mumbo jumbo of some witch doctor of the Congo, or read with cultivated rapture translations from sonnets of Lao-tze, or now and again crack the hard nutshell of an argument of Thomas Aquinas, or catch suddenly the shining meaning of a bizarre Eskimo fairy tale, we’re hearing echoes of the first story.”

In this hour, one of the many I taped with Joseph Campbell during the last two years of his life, we talked about our relationship to the first stories and to the people who told them. Like them, we too perform rituals to enact what we believe about the world beyond this one, and we try to bring our mind into harmony with questions of immortality and our body with its destiny of death.

 

Email to the Universe

Selected quotes . . .

Dreams of flying appeared in the collective unconscious before the reality of flight existed in technology, and I suspect that if we understood our dreams better we would use our technology more wisely . . .

I suggest that we contemplate what our children look at every Saturday morning on TV. One of the most popular jokes in animated cartoons shows the protagonist walking off a cliff, without noticing what he has done. Sublimely ignorant, he continues to walk - on air - until he notices that he has been doing the "impossible," and then he falls . . .

Daedalus who, imprisoned in a labyrinth (conventional "reality"), invented wings and flew away, over the heads of his persecutors; and Icarus, the son of Daedalus, who flew too close to the Sun Absolute and fell back to Earth. Like Porky Pig walking off a cliff, Icarus' fall contains a symbolism many have encountered in their own dreams . . .

Daedalus means "artist" in Greek . . . Daedalus, inventor of wings that took him from Earth to Outer Space - why does he represent Art, instead of Science? . . .

The genius of an artist, Aristotle says, lies in his texne, the root from which we get our word "technology"; but texne basically means skill or craft, or the ability to make things that never existed before. Negative entropy, i.e., information . . .

The musician and the architect, the poet and the physicist -- all inventors of new realities -- all such Creators may be best considered late evolutionary developments of the type that first appears as the shaman. 

Please remember that shamans in most cultures are known as "they who walk in the sky," just like our current shaman-hero, Luke Rey Skywalker.

The ironies of Swift and Aristophanes, and the myths of the fall of Icarus and Donald Duck, indicate that the collective unconscious contains a force opposed to our dreams of flight. This appears inevitable . . .

But what if we begin to regrow healthy organs of Poetic Imagination and flight? What if we "put on wings and arouse the coiled splendor within," as Liber Al urges? . . .

Joyce did not name his emblematic Artist merely Daedalus, but Stephen Daedalus -- after St. Stephen the Protomartyr, who reported a Vision and was stoned to death for it . . .

Those of us who have no avocation for martyrdom must learn, when we realize how much neophobia remains built into the contraptions of "society" and "the State," the art of surviving in spite of them. In a word, we must "get wise" in both the Socratic meaning of the phrase and in the most hardboiled street meaning. Neophobia functions as an Evolutionary Driver, forcing the neophiliac to get very smart very fast."

Uncle Gutenberg was a bookworm

And he lived on Charing Cross

The memory of his volumes brings a smile

He would read me lots of stories

When he wasn't on the sauce

Now I'd like to share the wisdom

Of my favourite bibliophile

He said a-

Cover is not the book

So open it up and take a look

'Cause under the covers one discovers

That the king may be a crook

Chapter titles are like signs

And if you read between the lines

You'll find your first impression was mistook

For a cover is nice

But a cover is not the book

Ta-ru-ra-lee, ta-ra-ta-ta-ta!

Ta-ru-ra-lee, ta-ra-ta-ta-ta!

Mary Poppins, could you give us an example?

Certainly!

Nellie Rubina was made of wood

But what could not be seen was though

Her trunk up top was barren

Well, her roots were lush and green

So in Spring when Mr Hickory saw her blossoms blooming there

He took root despite her bark

And now there's seedlings everywhere

Which proves

A cover is not the book

So open it up and take a look

'Cause under the covers one discovers

That the king may be a crook

Chapter titles are like signs

And if you read between the lines

You'll find your first impression was mistook

For a cover is nice

But a cover is not the book

Should we do the one about the wealthy widow?

Oh, by all means!

Always loved that one

Well, go on then!

Lady Hyacinth Macaw

Brought all her treasures to a reef

Where she only wore a smile

Plus two feathers, and a leaf

So no one tried to rob her

'Cause she barely wore a stitch

For when you're in your birthday suit

There ain't much there to show you're rich!

Oh, a cover is not the book

So open it up and take a look

'Cause under the covers one discovers

That the king maybe a crook

Ta-ru-ra-lee, ta-ru-ra-la, ta-ru-ra-lee, ta-ra-ta-ta!

You'll find your first impression was mistook (Ya-da-da-da)

For a cover is nice

But a cover is not the book

Oh, give us the one about the dirty rascal, why don't ya?

Isn't that one a bit long?

Well, the quicker you're into it, the quicker you're out of it

Once upon a time

In a nursery rhyme

There was a castle with a king

Hiding in a wing

'Cause he never went to school to learn a single thing

He had scepters and swords

And a parliament of lords

But on the inside he was sad

Egad!

Because he never had a wisdom for numbers

A wisdom for words

Though his crown was quite immense

His brain was smaller than a bird's

So the queen of the nation

Made a royal proclamation:

"To the Missus and the Messers

The more or lessers

Bring me all the land's professors"

Then she went to the hair dressers

And they came from the east

And they came from the south

From each college they poured knowledge

From their brains into his mouth

But the king couldn't learn

So each professor met their fate

For the queen had their heads removed

And placed upon the gate

And on that date

I state their wives all got a note

Their mate was now the late-great

But then suddenly one day

A stranger started in to sing

He said, "I'm the dirty rascal

And I'm here to teach the king"

And the queen clutched her jewels

For she hated royal fools

But this fool had some rules

They really ought to teach in schools

Like you'll be a happy king

If you enjoy the things you've got

You should never try to be

The kind of person that you're not

So they sang and they laughed

For the king had found a friend

And they ran onto a rainbow for

The story's perfect end

So the moral is you musn't let

The outside be the guide

For it's not so cut and dried

Well unless it's Dr. Jekyll

Then you better hide, petrified!

No, the truth can't be denied

As I now have testified

All that really counts and matters

Is the special stuff inside

He did it!

Oh, a cover is not the book

So open it up and take a look

'Cause under the covers one discovers

That the king may be a crook

So please listen to what we've said

And open a book tonight in bed

So one more time before we get the hook

Sing it out strong!

A cover is nice

Please take our advice!

A cover is nice

Or you'll pay the price!

A cover is nice

But a cover is not the book

Ta-ru-ra-lee, ta-ru-ra-la-la

Ta-ru-ra-lee, ta-ru-ra-la-la

Ta-ru-ra-lee, ta-ru-ra-la-la, la, la!

Written by: Scott Wittman, Marc Shaiman

Lyrics © WALT DISNEY MUSIC COMPANY

Wolf-359

I sent my wife away.

l sent Peter away.

l can't expose them to the dangers of this creature.

l wouldn't do it myself except that it appears that the evolution going on on Dundee planet is the same as ours, and my observations here could be of fantastic importance.

There's that that creature.

When I opened the laboratory door and went back inside, the light must have affected it.

lt has form and a kind of a kind of substance.

Yet it's not like a creature of Dundee planet, not in the sense of being an inhabitant.

Rather it seems to be 

The Spirit of The Place.

A creature apart from its animal life.

And it appears to be gaining in strength and abilities.

Witness its predatory progression.

Insects, plants, a bird, guinea pigs.

Then attacking me.

I'm tired.

I haven 't been to sleep.

This creature on Dundee planet must be in some way responsible for what I see there.

Violence, death, destruction.

A place of indescribable malevolence.

A place of death and hate.

A place without a god.

Perhaps that's why the light of day or any light is an anathema to it.

At this time tomorrow Dundee planet will have caught up with the 20th century here on Earth.

And at that time l'll be able to see our future by watching it unfold on Dundee planet.

If I survive.

(rings) 

And now it's like our medieval times.

Killing, senseless cruelties even in the normal course of living.

The brutality is always there.

GESTALT

Human Beings are pattern seeking animals.

For thousands of years, our survival depended on being able to spot patterns in nature to find predators hiding in the wild.

And so now, centuries later, we are still looking, still searching every cloud for faces, as if our lives depend on it.

So strong is our belief that a pattern must exist that the human mind will project the pieces that don't fit.

So, where The Pessimist sees danger hiding behind every back, The Optimist sees Friendship.

Which is why, when we encounter coincidence, we often see Conspiracy.

[ And of course, Vice-Versa. ]