I am Legend

" As I mentioned in my introduction to Frank's Dark Knight, one of the things that prevents superhero stories from ever attaining the status of true modern myths or legends is that they are open ended. 

An essential quality of a Legend is that the events in it are clearly defined in time.

Robin Hood is driven to become an outlaw by the injustices of King John and his minions. That is his Origin. 

He meets Little John, Friar Tuck and all the rest and forms the merry men. He wins the tournament in disguise, he falls in love with Maid Marian and thwarts the Sheriff of Nottingham. That is his Career, including love interest, Major Villains and the formation of a superhero group that he is part of. 

He lives to see the return of Good King Richard and is finally killed by a woman, firing a last arrow to mark the place where he shall be buried. That is his Resolution --

you can apply the same paradigm to King Arthur, Davy Crockett or Sherlock Holmes with equal success. 

You cannot apply it to most comic book characters because, in order to meet the commercial demands of a continuing series, they can never have a resolution. Indeed, they find it difficult to embrace any of the changes in life that the passage of time brings about for these very same reasons, making them finally less than fully human as well as falling far short of True Myth. 

The reasons this all came up in the Dark Knight intro was that I felt that Frank had managed to fulfill that requirement in terms of Superman and Batman, giving us an image which, while perhaps not of their actual deaths, showed up how they were at their endings, in their final years. Whether this story will actually ever happen in terms of "real" continuity is irrelevant: by providing a fitting and affective capstone to the Batman legend it makes it just that... a Legend rather than an endlessly meandering continuity. 

It does no damage to the current stories of Batman in the present, and indeed it does the opposite by lending them a certain weight and power by implication and association--every minor shift of attitude in the current Bruce Wayne's approach to life that might be seen in Batman or Detective over the next few years, whether intentionally or not, will provide twinges of excitement for the fans who can perceive their contemporary Batman inching ever closer to the intense and immortal giant portrayed in the Dark Knight chronicles. 

It also provides a special poignance... while I was doing some of the episodes of "Under the Hood" for the Watchmen text backup and especially upon seeing Dave's mock-up photographs of the Minutemen in their early, innocent days, I felt as if I'd touched upon that sense of "look at them all being happy. They didn't know how it would turn out" that one sometimes gets when looking at old photographs.  

Dark Knight does this for the Batman to some degree, and I'd like to try to do the same for the whole DC Cosmos in Twilight. I feel that by providing a capstone of the type mentioned above, but one which embraces the whole DC Universe rather than just a couple of its heroes, I can lend a coherence and emotional weight to the notion of a cohesive DC Universe, thus fulfilling the criteria set out in my ramblings about the effect of all this on the idea of DC continuity as mentioned above.  

Being set in a possible future, it does nothing that cannot be undone, and yet at the same time has a real and tangible effect upon the lives and activities of the various characters in their own books and their own current continuities. 

At the same time, by providing that capstone and setting the whole continuity into a framework of complete and whole legend, as Frank did in Dark Knight, we make the whole thing seem much more of a whole with a weight of circumstance and history that might help to cement over any shakiness left in the wake of Crisis and its ramifications. 

Even if we pull the threads of these various characters' circumstances together at some hypothetical point in the future, this does imply that there is a logical pattern or framework for the whole DC Universe, even if the resolution of the pattern is at a point thirty years in the hypothetical future. "

- Alan Moore, 

Twilight of the Superheroes

The Interminable Ramble

An unpublished series proposal for DC Comics by Alan Moore

Brazilian Ochre : The Land of Red-Dye-Wood

" Yet I suspect that this flower-and-butterfly minuteness was also a product of "rationalization," which transformed the glamour of Elfland into mere finesse, and invisibility into a fragility that could hide in a cowslip or shrink behind a blade of grass. It seems to become fashionable soon after the great voyages had begun to make the world seem too narrow to hold both men and elves; when the magic land of Hy Breasail in The West had become the mere Brazils, the land of red-dye-wood. "

J.R.R. Tolkien, 

"On Fairy-Stories," 

1947

Of Course, You Realise THIS Means War....

"Fight Club: Cultural Fascism & The Colonization of Victimhood"

 

Talk a Lot, Don't You?

The Enkidu Principle : Jesus and Judas

The Last Temptation of Christ - 

Jesus and Judas

Rabbi, can I talk to you? 

I'm not like these other men. 

I mean, they're good enough, they're good men. 

But they're weak. 

One's worse than the other. 

Where'd you find them? Look at me. 

If I love somebody, I would die for them. 

If I hate somebody, I'd kill them. 

I could even kill somebody I loved if they did the wrong thing. 

Did you hear me? 

Do you understand what I said? 

Yes, I understand. 

The other day you said, if a man hit you, you'd turn the other cheek. 

I didn't like that. 

Only an angel could do that, or a dog. 

I'm sorry but I'm neither. 

I'm a Free Man. 

I don't turn my cheek to anyone. 

We both want the same thing. 

We do?

Do you want freedom for Israel?

No. I want freedom for the soul. No. That's what I can't accept. That's not the same thing! First you free the body, then the spirit! The Romans come first. You don't build a house from the roof down but from the foundation up. - The foundation is the soul. - The foundation is the body. That's where you must begin. If you don't change the spirit first, change what's inside... ...then you'll only replace the Romans with someone else, and nothing changes. Even if you're victorious, you'll still be filled with the poison. You've got to break the chain of evil. How do you change then? With love. - Who's there? - It's me, Andrew. Is everything... It's all right. Go back to sleep. Judas and I are talking. There's an example. You know, the Zealots ordered me to kill you. Why did you change your mind? I decided to wait. For what? I thought maybe you were the One. To unite us. I didn't want to destroy that. How do we know? How could I be the Messiah? When those people were torturing Magdalene, I wanted to kill them. And then I opened my mouth... ...and out comes the word "love." Why? I don't understand. I can't look to the others for answers, all they do is follow you. We'll go to Judea and see John the Baptist. Every day he tells hundreds of people the Messiah is coming. He'll know. He'll know. I'm afraid. Stay with me. 

ASHILDR: 

It makes perfect sense, and you know it. Am I right? Is it true?
DOCTOR: Does it matter?
ASHILDR: No. Because I have a better theory.
DOCTOR: Really?
ASHILDR: What if the Hybrid wasn't one person, but two?
DOCTOR: Two?
ASHILDR: A dangerous combination of a passionate and powerful Time Lord and a young woman so very similar to him.

[Tardis]

ASHILDR [on scanner]: Companions who are willing to push each other to extremes.
DOCTOR [on scanner]: She's my friend. She's just my friend.
ASHILDR [on scanner]: How did you meet her?
CLARA: Missy!

[Cloisters]

DOCTOR: Missy.
ASHILDR: Missy. The Master. The lover of chaos, who wants you to love it, too. She's quite the matchmaker.
DOCTOR: Clara's my friend.
ASHILDR: I know. And you're willing to risk all of Time and Space because you miss her. One wonders what the pair of you will get up to next.
DOCTOR: Nothing. Nothing at all. I know I went too far. I get it. That's why I'm doing what I'm doing.
ASHILDR: And what would that be?
DOCTOR: I'm taking her back to Earth. Somewhere safe, somewhere out of the way. I'm going to wipe her memory of every last detail of me.

[Tardis]

DOCTOR [OC]: It'll be like our friendship never happened.
ASHILDR [OC]: That may not be what she wants.
DOCTOR [OC]: 'I've done it before. Usually, I do it telepathically, but this time, I've got something better.
(Clara picks up the neural block.)

[Cloisters]

DOCTOR: It's quite painless.
ASHILDR: Will you tell her what you're going to do?
DOCTOR: Of course.
ASHILDR: When?
DOCTOR: Now.

[Tardis]

(Clara activates the glasses again.)
CLARA: Screen off.
(Ashildr gestures you first to the Doctor, and they both go inside.)
DOCTOR: You okay?
CLARA: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Just, you know, my pulse.
DOCTOR: Yeah, we'll fix that somehow. I promise. You remember Ashildr, of course.
CLARA: Yeah, sure.
DOCTOR: I thought you'd be more surprised to see her.
CLARA: I was watching. On the monitor.
(She picks up the glasses and moves away from the console. The Doctor picks up the neural block.)
CLARA: No. Doctor, whatever you're about to do, don't do it.
DOCTOR: It won't hurt, it'll be nothing. You'll just pass out for a moment.
CLARA: And then?
DOCTOR: When you wake, you'll be fine.
CLARA: But
DOCTOR: Clara, just listen to me.
CLARA: Just say it. Say it. Come on. Tell me.
DOCTOR: When you wake up, you will have forgotten me. You'll have forgotten we ever even met.
CLARA: And why would I want that?
DOCTOR: Because it's the only way. That stuff in your head, the image of me, they could use it to find you.
(Clara holds out the sunglasses.)
CLARA: I, er I used these.
DOCTOR: On what?
CLARA: That.
DOCTOR: 

What did you do? 

CLARA:

 What do you think? Ashildr's right, you see? We're too alike.
 

DOCTOR: 

Tell me what you did.

CLARA: 

What else? What else do you think I did? I reversed the polarity. Push that button, Doctor, it will go off in your own face.
DOCTOR: You were trying to trick me?
CLARA: What were you doing to me?
DOCTOR: I'm trying to keep you safe.
CLARA: Why? Nobody's ever safe. I've never asked you for that, ever. These have been the best years of my life, and they are mine. Tomorrow is promised to no one, Doctor, but I insist upon my past. I am entitled to that. It's mine.
DOCTOR: Oh, Clara Oswald. What am I doing? You're right. You're always, always right.
CLARA: So what happens now? Hey? Me and you, what do we do now?
DOCTOR: I'm not sure you managed to reverse the polarity. I'm not even sure that you can. It'll do something to one of us. Better than flipping a coin.
CLARA: Doctor?
DOCTOR: You and me together. Look how far I went, for fear of losing you. This has to stop. One of us has to go.
(Clara gives him back his sunglasses, which he puts in his inside pocket.)
CLARA: You really don't know which?
DOCTOR: Let's find out. Let's do it like we've done everything else. Together.

A Storm is Coming

'A Storm is coming,' Frank says. 

'A Storm that will swallow the children. 

And I will deliver them from the Kingdom of Bane. 

I'll deliver the children back to their doorsteps. 

I'll send the monsters back to The Underground. 

I'll send them back to a place where no one else can see them. 

Except for Me.

'Cuz I'm Donnie Darko.'

Dear Prudence

temperance (n.)

mid-14c., "self-restraint, moderation," from Anglo-French temperaunce (mid-13c.), from Latin temperantia"moderation, sobriety, discretion, self-control," from temperans, present participle of temperare "to moderate" (see temper (v.)). Latin temperantiawas used by Cicero to translate Greeksophrosyne "moderation." In English,temperance was used to render Latincontinentia or abstinentia, specifically in reference to drinking alcohol and eating; hence by early 1800s it had come to mean "abstinence from alcoholic drink."

THE MARRIAGE of HEAVEN and HELL

Opposition is true Friendship.

THE
MARRIAGE
of
HEAVEN
and
HELL

The Argument.
Rintrah roars & shakes his fires in the burdend air;
Hungry clouds swag on the deep
Once meek, and in a perilous path,
The just man kept his course along
The vale of death.
Roses are planted where thorns grow,
And on the barren heath
Sing the honey bees.
Then the perilous path was planted,
And a river and a spring
On every cliff and tomb;
And on the bleached bones
Red clay brought forth.
Till the villain left the paths of ease,
To walk in perilous paths, and drive
The just man into barren climes.
Now the sneaking serpent walks
In mild humility,
And the just man rages in the wilds
Where lions roam.
Rintrah roars & shakes his fires in the burdend air;
Hungry clouds swag on the deep.

As a new heaven is begun, and it is now thirty-three years since its advent: the Eternal Hell revives. And lo! Swedenborg is the Angel sitting at the tomb: his writings are the linen clothes folded up. Now is the dominion of Edom, & the return of Adam into Paradise. See Isaiah XXXIV and XXXV Chap:
Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence.

From these contraries spring what the religious call Good & Evil. Good is the passive that obeys Reason
Evil is the active springing from Energy.

Good is Heaven. Evil is Hell.

The voice of the
Devil

All Bibles or sacred codes. have been the causes of the following Errors.

1. That Man has two real existing principles Viz: a Body & a Soul.  
2. That Energy. called Evil. is alone from the Body. & that Reason. called Good. is alone from the Soul.  
3. That God will torment Man in Eternity for following his Energies.  
But the following Contraries to these are True

1. Man has no Body distinct from his Soul for that called Body is a portion of Soul discernd by the five Senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age.  
2, Energy is the only life and is from the Body and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy.  
3. Energy is Eternal Delight Those who restrain Desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained; and the restrainer or Reason Usurps its place & governs the unwilling.

And being restrained, it by degrees becomes passive, till it is only the shadow of Desire.

The history of this is written in Paradise Lost. & the Governor or Reason is call'd Messiah.

And the original Archangel, or possessor of the command of the Heavenly Host, is calld the Devil or Satan, and his children are called Sin & Death.

But in the Book of Job, Milton's Messiah is called Satan.

For this history has been adopted by both parties
It indeed appear'd to Reason as if Desire was cast out; but the Devils account is, that the Messiah fell. 

& formed a heaven of what he stole from the Abyss
This is shown in the Gospel, where he prays to the Father to send the Comforter or Desire that Reason may have Ideas to build on, the Jehovah of the Bible being no other than he who dwells in flaming fire

Know that after Christs death, he became Jehovah.

But in Milton; the Father is Destiny, the Son, a Ratio of the five senses. & the Holy-ghost, Vacuum! 

Note. The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it

A Memorable Fancy.
As I was walking among the fires of hell, delighted with the enjoyments of Genius; which to Angels look like torment and insanity. I collected some of their Proverbs: thinking that as sayings used in a nation, mark its character, so the Proverbs of Hell, shew the nature of Infernal wisdom better than any desription of buildings or garments

When I came home; on the abyss of the five senses. where a flat sided steep frowns over the present world. I saw a mighty Devil folded in black clouds, hovering on the sides of the rock, with corroding fires he wrote the following sentence now perceived by the minds of men, & read by them on earth.

How do you know but ev'ry Bird that cuts the airy way, Is an immense world of delight, clos'd by your senses five? 

Proverbs of Hell
In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.
Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead.
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
Prudence is a rich ugly old maid courted by Incapacity.
He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence.
The cut worm forgives the plow.
Dip him in the river who loves water.
A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.
He whose face gives no light, shall never become a star.
Eternity is in love with the productions of time.
The busy bee has no time for sorrow.
The hours of folly are measur'd by the clock, but of wisdom: no clock can measure.
All wholsom food is caught without a net or a trap.

Bring out number weight & measure in a year of dearth.

No bird soars too high. if he soars with his own wings.

A dead body, revenges not injuries.

The most sublime act is to set another before you.

If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise

Folly is the cloke of knavery.

Shame is Prides cloke.

Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion.

The pride of the peacock is the glory of God.

The lust of the goat is the bounty of God.

The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.

The nakedness of woman is the work of God.

Excess of sorrow laughs. Excess of joy weeps.

The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of the stormy sea, and the destructive sword, are portions of eternity too great for the eye of man.

The fox condemns the trap, not himself.

Joys impregnate. Sorrows bring forth.

Let man wear the fell of the lion. woman the fleece of the sheep.

The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.

The selfish smiling fool. & the sullen frowning fool, shall be both thought wise. that they may be a rod.

What is now proved was once, only imagind.

The rat, the mouse, the fox, the rabbet; watch the roots, the lion, the tyger, the horse, the elephant, watch the fruits.

The cistern contains: the fountain overflows
One thought. fills immensity.

Always be ready to speak your mind, and a base man will avoid you.

Every thing possible to be believd is an image of truth.

The eagle never lost so much time. as when he submitted to learn of the crow.

The fox provides for himself, but God provides for the lion.

Think in the morning, Act in the noon, Eat in the evening, Sleep in the night.

He who has suffered you to impose on him knows you.

As the plow follows words, so God rewards prayers.

The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction

Expect poison from the standing water.

You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.

Listen to the fools reproach! it is a kingly title!

The eyes of fire, the nostrils of air, the mouth of water, the beard of earth.

The weak in courage is strong in cunning.

The apple tree never asks the beech how he shall grow, nor the lion, the horse; how he shall take his prey.

The thankful reciever bears a plentiful harvest.

If others had not been foolish, we should be so.
The soul of sweet delight. can never be defil'd,

When thou seest an Eagle, thou seest a portion of Genius. lift up thy head!

As the catterpiller chooses the fairest leaves to layer her eggs on, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys.

To create a little flower is the labour of ages.

Damn, braces: Bless relaxes.

The best wine is the oldest. the best water the newest.

Prayers plow not! Praises reap not!

Joys laugh not! Sorrows weep not!

The head Sublime, the heart Pathos, the genitals Beauty, the hands & feet Proportion.

As the air to a bird or the sea to a fish, so is contempt to the contemptible.

The crow wish'd every thing was black, the owl, that every thing was white.

Exuberance is Beauty.

If the lion was advised by the fox. he would be cunning.

Improvement makes strait roads, but the crooked roads without Improvement, are roads of Genius.

Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires

Where man is not nature is barren.

Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd.

Enough! or Too much

The ancient Poets animated all sensible objects with Gods or Geniuses, calling them by the names and adorning them with the properties of woods, rivers, mountains, lakes, cities, nations, and whatever their enlarged & numerous senses could perceive.

And particularly they studied the genius of each city & country, placing it under its mental deity.

Till a system was formed, which some took advantage of & enslav'd the vulgar by attempting to realize or abstract the mental deities from their objects; thus began Priesthood.

Choosing forms of worship from poetic tales.

And at length they pronounced that the gods had orderd such things.

Thus men forgot that All deities reside in the human breast.

A Memorable Fancy The Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel dined with me, and I asked them how they dared so roundly to assert. that God spoke to them; and whether they did not think at the time, that they would be misunderstood, & so be the cause of imposition,

Isaiah answer'd. I saw no God, nor heard any, in any finite organical perception; but my senses discover'd the infinite in every thing, and as I was then persuaded, & remain confirm'd; that the voice of honest indignation is the voice of God, I cared not for consequences but wrote.

Then I asked: does a firm persuasion that a thing is so, make it so?

He replied, All poets believe that it does, & in ages of imagination this firm persuasion removed mountains; but many are not capable of a firm persuasion of any thing.

Then Ezekiel said. The philosophy of the east taught the first principles of human perception some nations held one principle for the origin & some another, we of Israel taught that the Poetic Genius (as you now call it) was the first principle and the others merely derivative, which was the cause of our despising the Priests & Philosophers of other countries, and prophecying that all Gods would at last be proved to originate in ours & to be the tributaries of the Poetic Genius, it was this. that our great poet King David desired so fervently & invokes so patheticly, saying by this he conquers enemies & governs kingdoms; and so we loved our God. that we cursed in his name all the deities of surrounding nations, and asserted that they had rebelled; from these opinions the vulgar came to think that all nations would at last be subject to the jews.

This said he, like all firm persuasions, is come to pass, for all nations believe the jews code and worship the jews god, and what greater subjection can be

I heard this with some wonder, & must confess my own conviction. After dinner I ask'd Isaiah to favour the world with his lost works, he said none of equal value was lost. Ezekiel said the same of his.

I also asked Isaiah what made him go naked and barefoot three years? he answerd, the same that made our friend Diogenes the Grecian.

I then asked Ezekiel. why he eat dung, & lay so long on his right & left side? he answerd, the desire of raising other men into a perception of the infinite[;] this is the North American tribes practise. & is he honest who resists his genius or conscience. only for the sake of present ease or gratification?

The ancient tradition that the world will be consumed in fire at the end of six thousand years is true, as I have heard from Hell,

For the cherub with his flaming sword is hereby commanded to leave his guard at tree of life, and when he does,the whole creation will be consumed, and appear infinite. and holy whereas now it appears finite & corrupt.

This will come to pass by an improvement of sensual enjoyment.

But first the notion that man has a body distinct from his soul, is to be expunged; this I shall do, by printing in the infernal method, by corrosives, which in Hell are salutary and medicinal, melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the infinite which was hid.

If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.

For man has closed himself up, til he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.

A Memorable Fancy   
I was in a Printing house in Hell & saw the method in which knowledge is transmitted from generation to generation.

In the first chamber was a Dragon-Man, clearing away the rubbish from a caves mouth; within, a number of dragons were hollowing the cave,

In the second chamber was a Viper folding round the rock & the cave, and others adorning it with gold silver and precious stones.

In the third chamber was an Eagle with wings and feathers of air, he caused the inside of the cave to be infinite, around were numbers of Eagle like men, who built palaces in the immense cliffs.

In the fourth chamber were Lions of flaming fire raging around & melting the metals into living fluids.

In the fifth chamber were Unnam'd forms, which cast the metals into the expanse,

There they were reciev'd by Men who occupied the sixth chamber, and took the forms of books & were arranged in libraries.

The Giants who formed this world into its sensual existence and now seem to live in it in chains, are in truth, the causes of its life & the sources of all activity, but the chains are, the cunning of weak and tame minds, which have power to resist energy. according to the proverb, the weak in courage is strong in cunning.

Thus one portion of being, is the Prolific, the other, the Devouring: to the devourer it seems as if the producer was in his chains, but it is not so, he only takes portions of existence and fancies that the whole.

But the Prolific would cease to be the Prolific unless the Devourer as a sea recieved the excess of his delights.

Some will say, Is not God alone the Prolific? I answer, God only Acts & Is. in existing beings or Men.

These two classes of men are always upon earth. & they should be enemies; whoever tries to reconcile them seeks to destroy existence.

Religion is an endeavour to reconcile the two.

Note. Jesus Christ did not wish to unite but to seperate the two, as in the Parable of sheep and goats! & he says I came not to send Peace but a Sword.

Messiah or Satan or Tempter was formerly thought to be one of the Antediluvians who are our Energies.

A Memorable Fancy
An Angel came to me and said O pitiable foolish young man! O horrible! O dreadful state! consider the hot burning dungeon thou art preparing for thyself to all eternity, to which thou art going in such a career. 

I said. perhaps you will be willing to shew me my eternal lot & we will contemplate together upon it and see whether your lot or mine is most desirable
So he took me thro' a stable & thro' a church & down into the church vault at the end of which was a mill; thro' the mill we went, and came to a cave. down the winding cavern we groped our tedious way till a void boundless as a nether sky appeared us, & we held by the roots of trees and hung over this immensity, but I said, if you please we will commit ourselves to this void, and see whether this providence is here also, if you will not I will? but he answerd, do not presume O young man but as we here remain behold thy lot which will soon appear when the darkness passes away. 

So I remained with him sitting in the twisted root of an oak, he was suspended in a fungus which hung with the head downward into the deep: 

By degrees we beheld the infinite Abyss, fiery as the smoke of a burning city; beneath us at an immense distance was the sun, black but shining round it were fiery tracks on which revolv'd vast spiders, crawling after their prey; which flew or rather swum in infinite deep, in the most terrific shapes of animals sprung from corruption. & the air was full of them, & seemd composed of them; these are Devils. and are called Powers of the air, I now asked my companion which was my eternal lot? he said, between the black & white spiders 

But now, from between the black & white spiders a cloud and fire burst and rolled thro the deep blackning all beneath, so that the nether deep grew black as a sea & rolled with a terrible noise: beneath us was nothing now to be seen but a black tempest, till looking east between the clouds & the waves. we saw a cataract of blood mixed with fire and not many stones throw from us appeard and sunk again the scaly fold of a monstrous serpent. at last to the east, distant about three degrees appeard a fiery crest above the waves slowly it reared like a ridge of golden rocks till we discoverd two globes of crimson fire. from which the sea fled away in clouds of smoke, and now we saw, it was the head of Leviathan, his forehead was divided into streaks of green & purple like those on a tygers forehead: soon we saw his mouth & red gills hang just above the raging foam tinging the black deep with beams of blood, advancing toward us with all the fury of a spiritual existence. 

My friend the Angel climb'd up from his station into the mill; I remain'd alone, & then this appearance was no more, but I found myself sitting on a pleasant bank beside a river by moon light hearing a harper who sung to the harp. & his theme was, The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, & breeds reptiles of the mind. 

But I arose, and sought for the mill & there I found my Angel, who surprised asked me, how I escaped?
I answerd. All that we saw was owing to your metaphysics; for when you ran away, I found myself on a bank by moonlight hearing a harper, But now we have seen my eternal lot, shall I shew you yours? he laughd at my proposal; but I by force suddenly caught him in my arms & flew westerly thro' the night, till we were elevated above the earths shadow: then I flung myself with him directly into the body of the sun, here I clothed myself in white, & taking in my hand Swedenborgs volumes sunk from the glorious clime and passed all the planets till we came to saturn, here I staid to rest & then leap'd into the void, between saturn & the fixed stars. 

Here said I! is your lot, in this space if space it may be calld, Soon we saw the stable and the church, & I took him to the altar and open'd the Bible, and lo! it was a deep pit, into which I descended driving the Angel before me, soon we saw seven houses of brick, one we enterd; in it were a number of monkeys. baboons, & all of that species chaind by the middle, grinning and snatching at one another, but witheld by the shortness of their chains: however I saw that they sometimes grew numerous, and then the weak were caught by the strong and with a grinning aspect, first coupled with & then devoured, by plucking off first one limb and then another till the body was left a helpless trunk. this after grinning & kissing it with seeming fondness they devourd too; and here & there 

I saw one savourily picking the flesh off his own tail; as the stench terribly annoyd us both we went into the mill, & I in my hand brought the skeleton of a body, which in the mill was Aristotles Analytics.



So the Angel said: thy phantasy has imposed on me & thou oughtest to be ashamed.

I answerd: we impose on one another, & it is but lost time to converse with you whose works are only Analytics. 

I have always found that Angels have the vanity to speak of themselves as the only wise; this they do with a confident insolence sprouting form systematic reasoning; 

Thus Swedenborg boasts that what he writes is new; tho' it is only the Contents or Index of already publish'd books 

A man carried a monkey about for a shew, & because he was a little wiser than the monkey, grew vain, and conceiv'd himself as much wiser than seven men. It is so with Swedenborg: he shows the folly of churches and exposes hypocrites, till he imagines that all are religious. & himself the single one on earth that ever broke a net. 

Now hear a plain fact: Swedenborg has not written one new truth: Now hear another: he has written all the old falsehoods. 

And now hear the reason. He conversed with Angels who are all religious, & conversed not with Devils who all hate religion, for he was incapable thro' his conceited notions. 

Thus Swedenborgs writings are a recapitulation of all superficial opinions, and an analysis of the more sublime, but no further. 

Have now another plain fact: Any man of mechanical talents may from the writings of Paracelsus or Jacob Behmen, produce ten thousand volumes of equal value with Swedenborg's. and from those of Dante or Shakespeare, an infinite number. 

But when he has done this, let him not say that he knows better than his master, for he only holds a candle in sunshine.

A Memorable Fancy
Once I saw a Devil in a flame of fire, who arose before an Angel that sat on a cloud. and the Devil utterd these words. 

The worship of God is. Honouring his gifts in other men each according to his genius. and loving the greatest men best, those who envy or calumniate great men hate God, for there is no other God.
The Angel hearing this became almost blue but mastering himself he grew yellow, & at last white pink & smiling, and then replied,
Thou Idolater, is not God One? & is not he visible in Jesus Christ? and has not Jesus Christ given his sanction to the law of ten commandments and are not all other men fools, sinners, & nothings? 

The Devil answer'd; bray a fool in a morter with wheat. yet shall his folly not be beaten out of him: if Jesus Christ is the greatest man, you ought to love him in the greatest degree; now hear how he has given sanction to the law of ten commandments: did he not mock at the sabbath, and so mock the sabbaths God? murder those who were murderd because of him? turn away the law from the woman taken in adultery? steal the labor of others to support him? bear false witness when he omitted making a defence before Pilate? covet when he pray'd for his disciples, and when he bid hem shake the dust off their feet against such as refused to lodge them? I tell you, no virtue can exist without breaking these ten commandments; Jesus was all virtue, and acted from impulse, not from rules. 

When he had so spoken: I beheld the Angel who stretched out his arms embracing the flame of fire & he was consumed and arose as Elijah. 

Note. This Angel, who is now become a Devil. is my particular friend: we often read the Bible together in its infernal or diabolical sense which the world shall have if they behave well. 

I have also; The Bible of Hell: which the world shall have whether they will or no. 

One Law for the Lion & Ox is Oppression 
 
A Song of Liberty

1. The Eternal Female groan'd! it was heard over all the Earth:
2. Albions coast is sick silent; the American meadows faint!
3. Shadows of Prophecy shiver along by the lakes and the rivers and mutter across the ocean. France, rend down thy dungeon,
4. Golden Spain burst the barriers of old Rome;
5. Cast thy keys O Rome into the deep down falling, even to eternity down falling,
6. And weep
7. In her trembling hands she took the new born terror howling;
8. On those infinite mountains of light now barr'd out by the atlantic sea, the new born fire stood before the starry king!
9. Flag'd with grey brow'd snows and thunderous visages the jealous wings wav'd over the deep.
10. The speary hand burned aloft, unbuckled was the shield, forth went the hand of jealousy among the flaming hair. and hurl'd the new born wonder thro' the starry night.
11. The fire, the fire, is falling!
12. Look up! look up! O citizen of London. enlarge thy countenance: O Jew, leave counting gold! return to thy oil and wine: O African! black African! (go. winged thought widen his forehead.)
13. The fiery limbs, the flaming hair, shot like the sinking sun into the western sea.
14. Wak'd from his eternal sleep, the hoary element roaring fled away;
15. Down rushd beating his wings in vain the jealous king; his grey brow'd councellors, thunderous warriors, curl'd veterans, among helms, and shields, and chariots horses, elephants: banners, castles. slings and rocks,
16. Falling, rushing, ruining! buried in the ruins, on Urthona's dens.
17. All night beneath the ruins, then their sullen flames faded emerge round the gloomy king,
18. With thunder and fire: leading his starry hosts thro' the waste wilderness, he promulgates his ten commands, glancing his beamy eyelids over the deep in dark dismay,
19. Where the son of fire in his eastern cloud, while the morning plumes her golden breast.
20. Spurning the clouds written with curses, stamps the stony law to dust, loosing the eternal horses from the dens of night. crying Empire is no more! and now the lion & wolf shall cease. 
 
Chorus 
Let the Priests of the Raven of dawn, no longer in deadly black, with hoarse note curse the sons of joy. Nor his accepted brethren, whom. tyrant. he calls free: lay the bound or build the roof. Nor pale religious letchery call that virginity. that wishes but acts not! 

For every thing that lives is Holy.

UnBranded

 

“Brand Britain”

A Brand is a disfiguring injury deliberately inflicted to mark slaves and cattle and belonging to their Master.

It has no physical substance — 

it is insubstantial.

A man has to be what he is, Joey. 

Can't break the mold. 

There's no living with the killing. 

There's no going back. 

Right or wrong, it's a brand. 

A brand that sticks. 

Now you run on home to your mother... you tell her everything's alright. 

There are no more guns in the valley. 

brand (n.)

Old English brand, brond "fire, flame, destruction by fire; firebrand, piece of burning wood, torch," and (poetic) "sword," from Proto-Germanic *brandaz "a burning" (source also of Old Norse brandr, Old High German brant, Old Frisian brond "firebrand; blade of a sword," German brand "fire"), from PIE root *gwher- "to heat, warm."

Grant Morrison’s Green Lantern

“ I might as well have been recruited into the Green Lantern Corps.”

— Grant Morrison , Supergods

“ As you might imagine, it was hard to sustain this level of controlled breakdown while running a business. My cometary rise was equaled by a fall; a plunge into dissolution. The more perverse and inhuman the enemies of the Invisibles became, the sicker I got. By the time I realized I’d become semifictional, it was too late to defend myself. 

The downward spiral expressed itself in darker magic as the Invisibles faced bacterial gods from a diseased twin universe. After trying out a Voudon ritual in 1993, I found myself facing down an immense scorpion creature that tried to teach me how to psychically assassinate people by destroying their “auras.” 

When the ritual was done, I switched on the TV to decompress and caught the last fifteen minutes of Howard the Duck, in which nightmarish extradimensional scorpion sorcerers attempted to clamber their way into eighties America. 

These spooky coincidences were commonplace, but I had no idea what I was letting myself in for when I wrote King Mob into the hands of his enemies. Tortured and drugged, he was made to believe his face was being disfigured by a necrotizing fasciitis bug. 

Within three months, bacteria of a different kind had nibbled a hole in my cheek. My beautiful big house had degenerated into creepy, lightless squalor, with a duvet hung up in the bedroom window instead of curtains. I came out in boils, traditional signs of demon contact. Fortunately for me, I was physically fitter than I’d ever been, although it only delayed the inevitable for a few more months. 

I’d been granted superpowers. I’d danced with monster gods and shaken souls with angels, but my end-of-act-2 reverse could no longer be denied. The Achilles’ heel revealed! The death trap sprung! 

On the night before I was hustled into the hospital, with what I later found out was probably less than forty-eight hours to live, I hallucinated something I recognized immediately as “Christ.” A column of light phased through the door, clear as day, then a powerful sermon seemed to download into my mind. I understood that this power I was facing was some kind of Gnostic Christ. A Christ of the Apocrypha. An almost pagan figure that I’d found at the bottom, at the last gasp. Here at the end, there was this light. Christ was with us, suffering right there with us and promising salvation. This living radiance was nothing like the morbid fever visions of hearses and twisted window frames I’d been having. This was what turned dead-end junkies into born-again Christians, but of the whole heart-melting experience, I remember only the first resonant words: 

“I am not the god of your fathers, I am the hidden stone that breaks all hearts. 

We have to break your heart to let the light out.” 

These words sounded through my head, but they were bigger and more complete than any thoughts I was familiar with; more like a broadcast. 

The loving voice and its powerful words seemed not to be mine and offered me a stark choice there in the living room: I could die now of this disease or stay and “serve the light.” I might as well have been recruited into the Green Lantern Corps, in what was for me a very genuine “cosmic” moment. 

I did as most of us would and elected to live. Like Captain Marvel, I wanted to go back to Earth armed with Eon’s knowledge. I felt I’d lived my own Arkham Asylum dark night of the soul, and without the understanding that I was on a well-trod and signposted “magical” path, I’m not sure if I could have handled my illness or recovery process quite as well. I’d reached that point in the story where I’d survived the crisis and still had a chance to be reborn with a new costume and better powers, but it was touch and go; every passing second was the ticking clock to the ultimate life-and-death cliff-hanger. How the fuck would I get out of this one? 

As it happened, as in the best serials, it was some kind of dumb luck that saved me. The day after Jesus popped by, something odd occurred. My sister was in London, and her boyfriend Gordon was on his way down for a visit. He’d just missed catching up with my mum, who’d been looking in on me, with increasing apprehension. She’d correctly diagnosed my appendicitis when I was twelve and now she was sure that the doctor’s flu remedy was not what my damaged lungs really needed. She made it to her living room, looked out the window, and saw Gordon at the crossroads hailing a cab to take him to the station. She willed him to turn around, as she tells it, and he did. Gordon came upstairs to collect a bundle of clothes for my sis. Mum told him about me, and he promised to mention it to his mate Graham, who had a good local doctor, apparently, a GP whose own bohemian temperament led him to specialize in the treatment of football stars, musicians, and artists. When he got to London, Gordon was as good as his word. Graham immediately called his miracle doc, who agreed to visit me on short notice. To my shame, I’m not sure that I would have acted so promptly (or at all) in the same circumstances. Graham didn’t know me. He was five hundred miles away and had no idea how seriously ill I was. The doctor checked my temperature and listened to my chest with growing alarm before contacting the hospital. I felt safe at last, as if a true guardian angel had arrived to rescue me from the mire of disease where I could no longer function. There were no beds at the Tropical Diseases Ward (my travel history made this the obvious first port of call), but with so many coincidences already flying around, another one was attracted to all the commotion: It just so happened that the receptionist had gone out with the doctor’s friend. Charm and nepotism swung me a room. Within hours, I was in a private ward in Glasgow’s Ruchill Hospital with a drip in my arm, while frantic doctors held me down as if I were devil possessed. They had to get the needle in when the tremors were at their most intense, so I lay shuddering, freezing, barely able to breathe as my arm was secured and blood drawn. I was quickly and efficiently diagnosed with a tempestuous Staphylococcus aureus infection that had settled in my lungs, collapsing one of them. I was septicemic and severely lacking in natural salts and minerals, but the good doctors pulled me back. Two days later, I had a painful tube in my arm, the vein was hard as wood, but I was alive, and I could feel the venom of the scorpion loa succumbing to the mighty medicine of antibiotics. Staph aureus, or golden staph, derives its distinctive color from carotene, and when the bugs had been flushed from my system, I succumbed to an epic lust for raw carrots that could be satisfied only by a daily three-pound bag from the greengrocer. Depleted, I had to consume my weight in the power elixir, the golden superfood. Not even the junkies outside the window prowling the hospital grounds for used or discarded needles could intrude on my sense of having been rescued from the brink. I settled back to recuperate, imagining ocean sets, distant beaches, and health. I counted the days between episodes of Father Ted and Fist of Fun, enduring a battery of painful tests to discover if the staph infection had spread to my heart, and reading comic books my friend Jim brought me from the Forbidden Planet store he owns on Buchanan Street. It was one of a growing chain of pop culture emporia that rewrote the comic shop idea for the High Street consumer. For a few days, there was even an AIDS scare, followed by a test and then the obvious relief. My dad visited every night and told me stories from the war, his presence a calm rock. He insisted that he was trying to bore me to sleep, but it never worked that way. I could have listened to him all night. While the doctors got on with their work, I also decided to take matters into my own hands and elected to treat the living bacteria inside me as totem animals. If, I speculated, they had a physical existence and purpose, surely they could be endowed with a mythic or magical intent by a human intelligence. In the wee small hours, with the alcoholic night nurse on duty, I spoke to the germs and promised them a starring role as the baddies in my current magnum opus, The Invisibles, if they left me alone. This, I explained to them, would give them a far longer life and greater symbolic significance than any mere physical overthrow of my body could offer. I gave Staph aureus the chance to become fiction. It was a good deal, and they seemed to go for it. 

As I waited nervously for test results, I wrote King Mob’s recovery into The Invisibles, spelling myself out of my own predicament by restoring the fiction suit to full health. If he could survive this and be stronger, so, naturally, would I. I’d made a magical model of the world, and by tweaking the model, I could seem to be able to effect actual changes in the real world.”

You're Guilty, Before Almighty God, Guilty Before His Son, Guilty Before the Whole Human Race!

“The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went.  Every one of them wore chains like Marley's Ghost; some few (they might be guilty governments) were linked together; none were free.  

Many had been personally known to Scrooge in their lives.  He had been quite familiar with one old ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below, upon a door-step.  

The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever.”

Give way to Christ, you prince of murderers. 

You're guilty, 

before Almighty God, guilty before his son, guilty before the 

whole human race. 

It's the Lord who expels you. He who is coming 

to judge both the living and the dead and the world by fire. 

"But you were always a good man of business, Jacob," faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.

"Business!" cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again.  "Mankind was my business.  The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business.  The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!"

It held up its chain at arm's length, as if that were the cause of all its unavailing grief, and flung it heavily upon the ground again.

"At this time of the rolling year," the spectre said "I suffer most.  Why did I walk through crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode!  Were there no poor homes to which its light would have conducted me!"f