#mysticism psychology and oedipus

[basicallyanotherwitchesthing]

Israel Regardie, J.M. Spiegelman, Christopher S. Hyatt - Mysticism, Psychology and Oedipus - New Falcon - 1985

[incarnateirony]

It's wild sitting in this chair.

So, as it turns out, until I had been haunting his feed and ear, astrotraveller genuinely did not know what a psychopomp was, it was literally just a word he heard from the aether. He even used that word, the aether. He also did not know of mercury as in the psychological or godly element but brainhiccupped to mercurius through the conversation. Until then he thought it was UFO fuel or something.

Um. Hm.

I finally get to be the big brother I didn't have, beyond myself. Noiz, and the others, and now this. I'm helping him get a few things in order he's struggled with. He had no idea, but is perfectly tracking the history of crackbear and lemons and why purple is hilarious or why the kangaroo plushie was worth dying over, because he's been on this ride, and has his own echos. But between mine are so loud he doesn't know why he's posting Infinite Reload.

It's just, I dunno. It's a weird spot. From my perspective it was like a spoopy force first tickled me, even if it led back to myself. I didn't expect to sound off fog horns to raise things and ending up on some strange course of finding lost brothers that have the gift and the ear but no guide, and holy crap.

It's just hard to process actually happening. Fuck man I just wanted to be normal, why couldn't she leave me alone and why can she still not be honest with even herself. All the way.

Fuck man.

Imagine when I even went over why he started dealing with kangaroo stuff a few months ago, and I showed him "what do we think of my new pet, chat?" kanga stuffy and the kanga athens bridge collapse, and he's just, "Is this... real? I mean, obviously it is but it just..."

Like do you know how weird it is that have people out there now that know what songs to use as a hypersigil to call my own background archetypical processes for backup in whatever form, mystic, mythic or musing. How am I here. why couldn't crackbear just stay away in her delusional house happy, why was she still so unhappy she had to waste her time knocking down this game lobby just to be told by the increasingly conscious collective to jump off it already

My face when he asked, "What about Hermanubis?"

The random schizo without education is at least as perceptive as her, but open to learning how to control it and how to master the archetypes and find his way. We've talked two hours and I think he understands more than her in twenty years.

He was like... I knew someone was answering my prayers. And I'm like, yeah, but I'm mostly here to teach you it was always there with you, but sit with me man. Let's watch this. I know you have a hard time focusing, but I'm here.

Honestly, he took this being a really weird retranslation of hermes trolling athena to death until she gets over herself and admits she messed up her strike and really just slapped herself, like, really well, his worst comment was like, "there's a little bit of oedipus going on here" and I was like "yeah we don't talk about that"

Guess what hypersigil for me I gave him

"So bro, wait, you really do the crisis suicide psych thing? Like, you use this... to bring people back or help even if you can't? That's... a psychopomp..." "Basically, yeah." "That's... the wokest shit I've ever heard." "I guess, it's about Works or whatever." "Yeah but I prayed for help and heard willy wonka talking about lemons on the radio and now I have like a psychologist in my inbox giving me the secrets of the universe, what up"

A possibly funny introduction, when challenging his concept of Mercury and Mercurius, I asked then what he knew of Mercurius or Hermes, and his first answer was, "For all I know, you could be the man himself!"

Th- that's the joke.

On All, he even was like "what's akasha" when the word floated by, and it was foreign beyond vaguely having heard of akashic records, but he grokked. He just needs his lensing and some personal stuff worked out, we all do. Unlike some people, he's willing to listen.

[tabs-notes]

Book Club: Demian by Hermann Hesse

[Originally published on my Medium page: link here]

Rate: 4/5

Time: Can be read in less than a day

Length: Smidge over 100 pages (short)

Demian is a coming-of-age novel of the protagonist and narrator Emil Sinclair. The reader is pulled into Sinclair's psychological labyrinth as it grows desire, fear, confusion, and frustrations with the world and his own being. The underlying themes of the book bringing up age-old discussion and interpretations that reads differently towards every reader. I'd like to say that the first half reads as an autobiography of an ordinary person. The last bit of the novel does venture deep into Carl Jung’s' theory of the collective unconscious, embedding archetypes and symbolisms that would make Jung proud.

I planned to take my time, reading only two chapters a sitting. However, it became impossible to want to put it down. Didn't love Sinclair nor felt particularly any hate for him, I was curious to see where Sinclair ended up; Hesse has a way of introducing a character and wrapping you into them, as opposed to their world or relationships. I will say that I had to double-take when trying to figure out the Emil/Demian/Eva scenes.

Would you need to know psychology to enjoy the book? Nope, it’s a good story for readers that love classics and take pride in discussion (either alone or with a book club!)

Would it help to know a little psychology? Yes, and it’ll take you on a margin scribbling joyride.

Final sayings? Totally PG should be in the school curriculum, and the egg/bird quote is phenomenal

If you've already read it or don't care for spoilers keep reading below.

Concept Spoilers:

TWO WORLDS: At first glance, this concept seems to reflect heavily on religious upbringing that a vast majority of individuals experience. The notion of growing up with preconceived ideologies attach Sinclair to dogmatic judgements of everything from the world, his peers, and even towards himself. While this concept and system of rights and wrongs does hold some foundation, it doesn’t encompass the complexity of the real world. The black and white perspective gets ultimately defeated and rendered useless when the argument of what is forbidden and permitted come up. The individual is in control of the rights and wrongs through their own boundaries, the external enforcement (be it laws or religion) deters back the Lawrence Kohlberg’s first level of cognitive development.

DEMIAN: Theres an interesting push and pull throughout the novel, as Demian, this enigmatic characters is a key figure in the development of Sinclair, allows Sinclair to do as he pleases only acting and speaking in pivotal scenes. Arriving with a district interpretation of the biblical Cain and Abel, he embodies the conflict and the temptation of breaking out of the two worlds view. He lets Emil retreat into his safe heaven after rescuing him from Franz’ tormenting, withdrawing his thoughts when going too far, and not interfering when seeing him at his lowest point. Guidance is the main word that comes up when thinking of Demian and he plays the role flawlessly.

ABRAXAS: I think the presence of the bird/egg painting and Abraxas is the major turning point in the novel where Emil goes from going through life to seeking a purpose and venturing into and outside of himself. Can write a 10 page essay on just how much I love the quote. The processes of Emil being introduced to his passion and his life goal and desires depends desperately on him breaking free from his past self and world. To be reborn into something new there must be the destruction of the old self/way. Abraxas also has strong attachment towards mysticism, mystery, and exclusivity of acquired knowledge - it is something that is not found by accident, but by intention.

PSYCHOLOGY: The concepts are there and this book provides great points of psychological discussion involving Freuds’ Oedipus complex and the majority of archetypes and symbols in Jung’s Collective unconscious. This shifts a lot of the relationships between the characters to be treated more like symbolic events/theories and personas. It’s would be simple to say Emil love Eva, but it wouldn’t do the novel justice by dismissing many other references that fit into this; such as the great mother, the dual mothers, and the animus-anima. Pick your poison, explore, and discuss.

Noteworthy Quotes:

When poets write novels they are apt to behave as if they were gods, with the power to look beyond and comprehend any human story and serve it up as if the almighty himself, omnipresent, were relating it in all its naked truth. (Prologue, Demian)

When I pictured the devil to myself, I found no difficulty in visualizing him in the streets below, disguised or undisguised, or at the fair or at the taverns but never at home. (Chapter 1, Demian)

He too was a ‘temper’ and moreover my link with the second, evil world with which I never wanted anything more to do. (Chapter 2, Demian)

Therefore each one of us must discover for himself what is permitted and what is forbidden as far as he himself is concerned. It is possible never to do a forbidden thing yet be the real villain. (Chapter 3, Demian)

It was the pattern of my life and death; It expressed the tone and rhythm of my fate. (Chapter 4, Demian)

The bird is struggling out of the egg. The egg is the world. Whoever wants to be born must first destroy a world. The bird id flying to god. The name of the god is called Abraxas. (Chapter 5, Demian)

When we hate someone we are hating something that is within ourselves, in his image. We are never stirred up by something which does not already exist within us. (Chapter 6, Demian)

I have grown accustomed to my inner life, resigned to the fact that I had lost my feeling for the outside world and that the loss of its bright colors was an inseparable part of the loss of childhood and that one must to some extent pay for the freedom and maturity of the soul with the renunciation of those pure gleams of light. (Chapter 6, Demian)

[decorticatedturnip]

I am standing outside of any greying building in the United States and there are silverfish on the pavement near my feet. The silverfish seem to me to be filled with duty. Maybe there is an invisible to the human eye silverfish supermarket going on or something. I am blowing a bubble, a bubble of gum, Bubble Yum gum, cotton candy flavored. As I am blowing this bubble gum bubble someone skates by on a longboard and pops it with precision all over my face. I wish I hadn't just recently started growing a beard. I walked up to the counter and began to deliver the line that I had been preparing for the entire walk over here: (meant to be read in a British accent) "One small decaffeinated, please." You see, I'm not British, but I thought it'd be funny to order something in a British accent, try to pass as British because I really didn't have anything better to do that night. When I got to the fourth word I fucked up big time, and instead of saying "decaffeinated" I said "decapitated." The two baristas working and I just started laughing and laughing, really laughing our asses off, yukking it up and having a good ol’ time for I don't even know how long. When I finally came to, back to the seriousness that supports the civilized world, I noticed that the person behind me wasn't laughing. They were wearing a silkscreened shirt and cut-offs. Their hair was asymmetrical, and I think they wanted to place their order. I've always been the kinda guy that doesn't go for a jog shirtless. Hell, I'll be honest because I don't have anything to hide, okay? I don't jog at all and I don't intend to go for a jog anytime soon. The main reason why I don't go for a jog is because I don't have jogging shoes and I can't imagine myself at the mall, standing there in front of seemingly infinite rows of shoes, attempting to select the proper pair. I know, I know, I could just snag a pair from the thrift store, but wearing someone else's shoes seems a bit unsanitary to me. Isn't this how people get athlete's foot? I had decided to ride my bike, the one with the kart that I fashioned from plans that I found in a photocopied zine one day many years ago. To this day, I don't know if I built it correctly because all of the tiny instructional writing was blurred by years of copying. Anyway, I was riding along in the bike lane without interruption. Green lights all the way. Freedom. I was thinking about goldfish crackers. I was improvisationally whistling variations of a song by The Clash. All of the sudden, I noticed a slug climbing up the down tube on my bicycle. Its body almost completely blocked out the "T" in Trek, leaving the letters "REK." I was struck by the urge to bring the slug somewhere very important to me. I could tell that this slug didn't end up on my bike by accident. This slug was a runaway and I was its accomplice. 

[didanawisgi]

What Nietzsche really meant: The Apollonian and Dionysian

One God stands for order, logic, and reason. The other stands for chaos, madness, and drunkenness. Nietzsche thinks you need both.

SCOTTY HENDRICKS 27 August, 2018

We all know the kind of person who likes to impose order on every situation. They want reason, logic, precise definitions, and despise chaos. Likewise, we all know people who throw order to the wind, follow every impulse they have, are drawn to chaos, and hate restraints on them.

While most of us would look at these kinds of people and see nothing more than personality differences, Friedrich Nietzsche saw an enduring dichotomy inside all of us which emerges from nature itself and can be applied to art, psychology, ethics, and politics.  

The Apollonian and Dionysian

In his first book The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche examines art, particularly ancient Greek plays. While he didn’t write the last word on the subject, he did use the book to introduce a concept which would continue to appear in his thinking long after he dismissed his earliest work as “badly written, ponderous, embarrassing, image-mad and image-confused.”

The two forces of nature he introduces show up everywhere. While their most famous iteration was as pillars of Greek culture, they can also appear as drives within us and even as historical forces. He names the two halves of this dichotomy the Apollonian and the Dionysian, after two Greek Gods.

Apollo, the God of the sun, truth, light, and logic, is the namesake for the first, ordered, half. This is the half that covers everything which is structured. Sculpture, an art which is pure form, is the most Apollonian art.

Rational thinking, which is based on logical structures, is also Apollonian. Since this drive tends to put things into their place, it also tends to individualize and distinctly separate people and ideas from one another.

Nietzsche thinks dreams are the most Apollonian state we can experience. He bases this on the idea that we understand what we see when dreaming isn't real, but merely an image. It has been suggested that he was a lucid dreamer to explain this strange notion.

Dionysus, the God of wine, festivals, and madness lends his name to the later, frenzied, half. Music is the pure Dionysian artform since it doesn’t appeal to our rational mind but rather to our emotions. The Dionysian doesn’t categorize and tends to blur the boundaries between the self and nature.

The esoteric and mystic cults of the Greeks, many of which were dedicated to Dionysus, offer an alternative to the rationalism of the Apollonian and were noted for their “sexual licentiousness.”

Drunkenness is suggested as the pure Dionysian state. He gives us a fantastic description of the Dionysian when he explains:

“Transform Beethoven’s ‘Hymn to Joy’ into a painting; let your imagination conceive the multitudes bowing to the dust, awestruck- then you will approach the Dionysian.”

Nietzsche suggests that folk music is especially Dionysian and that “it might also be historically demonstratable that every period rich in folk songs has been most violently stirred by Dionysian currents.” This explains a lot about the 1960’s.

Two men ride home after the Woodstock Music Festival; three days of music, free love, and drugs that dissolve the boundaries between self and the cosmos. A more Dionysian event is hard to come by. (Photo by Three Lions/Getty Images)

How can these drives ever be combined?

Getting these two drives to work together is difficult, but not impossible. Nietzsche saw their fusion as ideal, as it allowed the tremendous frenzied energy of the Dionysian to be applied constructively inside an Apollonian framework. He thought the ancient Greeks, perhaps uniquely, were able to blend the two drives in their culture.

In Greek tragedies like Oedipus Rex, dreadful concepts like death, fate, and unfairness were expressed in a beautiful and ordered way through plots and dialogue. The audience viewed these concepts in a Dionysian way since they were watching an unrelatable main character experience them as explained by the chorus.

The chorus' unity and detachment from the action helps the audience to separate from themselves and consider the ideas in the play in a depersonalized way. This allows the viewer to deal with unpleasant ideas in a way that is gentler than frank, Apollonian discussion.

The ability of Greece to fuse the two ideas didn’t last forever though, eventually, the Greeks drifted towards the Apollonian again, to Nietzsche’s disappointment.

He argues that the movement from plays which focused on great heroes towards subjects that the audience could relate to allowed audiences to judge the people on stage and restored their self-consciousness when watching plays. The audience, now individualized, could no longer get the same comfort from theatre as they could before.

Is the Apollonian bad?

It’s not bad at all, but Nietzsche knew that we need both. The loss of the Dionysian in drama and society is, therefore, a loss to our own ability to be complete people- let alone the effect it has on plays.

The Apollonian gives us reason, order, law, and harmony. These are often very good things.

How can I use this?

Even if you’re not a playwright or a classical scholar trying to make sense of Greek Civilization, these concepts can still be of use. We all have both an Apollonian and Dionysian side to us. While many thinkers have downplayed the Dionysian and sought to promote only the rational, structured parts of us, Nietzsche thinks this isn’t just folly but detrimental. He mocks those who try and avoid the Dionysian, saying they :

“turn away from such phenomena as from “folk-diseases,” with contempt or pity born of the consciousness of their own “healthy mindedness.” But of course such poor wretches have no idea how corpselike and ghostly their so-called “Healthy-mindedness” looks when the glowing life of the Dionysian revelers roars past them.”

But this doesn’t mean that you should utterly give into the drunkenness, madness, “sexual licentiousness,” and boundless chaos of the Dionysian. Instead, it means that you should accept that part of you wants those things and strive to harness that energy towards a more constructive goal.

Does this have use elsewhere?

Ruth Benedict has used the dichotomy to describe different cultures in her anthropological work. Camille Paglia wrote a controversial book suggesting men and women embody the archetypes and that there is a biological cause of this. Freud, whose ideas covered similar ground as Nietzsche's, described the Id in Dionysian terms.

While Nietzsche later dismissed his first book, the ideas he put forward in it are still of great interest. His understanding that we all have forces of reason, irrationality, structure, chaos, individualism, and cosmic unity within us all would later inform his psychological insights.

While his theories on aesthetics might not have been the end all answer he was looking for, the Apollonian and Dionysian dichotomy remains a useful way to view art, psychology, and society.

[seprofcorp]

▶ The Doors - When the Music's Over ( I RE-POSTED THIS TERRIFIC ANALYSIS FROM " BenS/b-rod, 7moths ago"}}: "Ew, he wants to what?" Well first of all, you've got to understand where Morrison was coming from. A little background information is certainly required for the uninitiated. Jim wanted first and foremost to be a filmmaker and a dramatist (and poet) before he ever wanted to be in rock n roll. He went on to graduate from UCLA (unlike the deplorable Oliver Stone movie where a full ONE THIRD of the thing is FICTION - ie, never happened, like certain scenes, and the very crass way Kilmer portrayed him was ludicrous - but that's another topic). In the film department there, he learned  many things about cinema and drama in general that he transposed into his music. He even had acting lessons according to Paul Ferrara. Anyway, I think the main work that influenced Jim on "The End" was Artaud's "Theatre & Its Double," which I reread recently and it made a lot more sense to me why Jim went in that theatrical direction. When I reread it, pieces fell into place that I'd never realized before. Artaud goes through his theories and in one instance, he even mentions "Oedipus Rex" itself by name (which, for those who don't know is an ancient Greek play that Freud psychologically postulated as universal, Oedipus for boys and Elektra for girls - deep in the unconscious). On a side note, Artaud also had a major influence on the Living Theatre, which Jim saw every show he could of, with their confrontational approach to theatre, which was right before Miami, and is what got Jim in trouble down there for allegedly exposing himself, with it fresh in his mind. Anyway, I believe its drama. Jim didn't get into personal confessional lyrics until LA Woman with things like "Hyacinth House" or "Cars Hiss By My Window." "The End" does start out about a break up with his girl prior to Pamela but then obviously goes in another direction when they would improvise to fill their slot at London Fog. But Artaud's work, I think, is key to understanding where Jim was coming from and the theatricality of some of his lyrics. And as Ray said about the Lizard King to Ben Fong-Torres - "That Lizard King thing - that's out of "Celebration Of The Lizard" and he's acting a part; its a theatre piece. Its a drama of which a guy is leading a small band of people...out into the desert and at the end of the whole piece he says "I am the Lizard King, I can do anything" and people are going "Oh, he's the Lizard King, he's the self-proclaimed Lizard King." You bastards, man! He's ACTING! ITS A ROLE, you know? Marlon Brando is not Stanley Kowalski, Jim Morrison is not the Lizard King, but they ground him down [for it]."Could the same be said for "The End?" You fuckin bet.Here's Jim speaking in late 1970 (also to Ben Fong-Torres) - "Are you still considering yourself the Lizard King?" "What I was trying to say with that, and that was years ago, and even then it was kind of ironic. I meant it ironically, and it wasn't meant to be - " and Pam cuts him off saying "That whole thing was done tongue-in-cheek" and Jim says, "Well, half tongue-in-cheek" and Pam continues, "and everybody thought it was like so serious." Jim: "Well, its an easy thing to pick up on." Its interesting to note that his production company with, I think, Paul Ferrara and Babe Hill, joking called themselves the Media Manipulators."Well, its an easy thing to pick up on" is the operative phrase - memorability, standing out, and this, I think, is key to understanding "The End" and other things. In the same interview with Fong-Torres, he also talks about how at newspapers there's someone who is there to write only the headlines of an article, that it has to be a catch phrase. Maybe its hard for literal-minded people to understand, but Jim says "THE killer" and then proceeds to take a face, an ancient drama mask that actors would wear on stage. He doesn't say "I" until he's set up the scene and in that role.  "The key to throwing the audience into a magical trance is to know where in advance the pressure points must be affected...But theatre poetry has long become unaccustomed to this invaluable skill...To make language convey what it does not normally convey. That is to use it in a new exceptional and unusual way, to give it its full, physical shock potential...and restore their shattering power...The thought it aims at, the states of mind it attempts to create, the mystical discoveries it offers...It all seems like an exorcism to make our devils FLOW...strange signs, matching some dark prodigious reality we have repressed...ready to hurl itself into chaos in a kind of magical state where feelings have become so sensitive they are suitable for visitation by the mind...We must not ask ourselves whether it can define thought but whether it makes us think [and feel], and leads the mind to assume deeply effective attitudes...Just as in former times, the masses today are thirsting for mystery" (Artaud) (And there are more quotes equally as good in his work).I'm not saying he was consciously thinking of Artaud's theories when he went up onstage that night at the Whiskey, but it certainly came out of him then - the culmination of many things going on in the background of his consciousness and trying to push the envelope as an artist. As a fellow INFP explorer (mine and Jim's personality type), I think I can understand Jim more than most in that respect. Its "drama of the highest order" said Jack Holzman

[penhive]

Quotes

Let the year 2022 be a winning streak of success.

Live your dreams with untiring effort.

There’s always a violent mob in a peaceful democracy.

The beginning of writing gave birth to the cradle of civilization.

God is an idea not an image.

Life cannot be lived backwards.

Propel your optimism to the summit of a hill.

I have a longing for financial freedom.

Hatred mars the soul.

I welcome money with the power of positive thinking.

Alchemy is the refinement of the soul.

Alfred Nobel was a dedicated man who loved humanity.

Will is the residue of the habitat of the mind.

Forgive yourself or going wrong.

Making love is music for the soul.

To read books is to have a thirst for knowledge.

Don’t break the ego of confidence.

Carry the cross if you have to follow Jesus.

God who forgave the repentant son will surely forgive you.

I exist not because of luck but only by the grace of God.

There is no discrimination in Heaven.

Life is a mystery to unravel.

Religion and culture are tenets of life’s society.

Travelling to different countries, meeting people, and experiencing cultures are a pilgrimage for me.

Customs are the heart of humanity.

I write my prayers in a journal.

The flight of a bird is a poem in beauty.

Love and joy are experiences of the soul.

The heart is a painting of emotions and feelings.

To find favor with God is a fortunate blessing.

I love my mother country India.

Jung the psychologist was a mystic.

The mirror of emotions is Kafkaesque.

Inner talk is the manner of streams of consciousness.

Freud has misinterpreted the Oedipus complex.

Freud sexualized psychology.

There is a hint of neuroticism in everyone.

True love has no color.

If all of life is luck it would have been nice.

To be in poverty is a worst human condition.

Anticipate the future positively.

Fame, money and success are not idols which can be bought cheap.

Drive your talent to the highest hill.

Console a grieving heart.

The stage of life is a drama of character.

Making love is melodious.

Break the chains of poverty from your life.

Give your soul a boost with positive thoughts.

Life is an art to be experienced.

Christ was the lamb that was slain for the sins of humanity.

Trust is the only chain that can be broken with hurt.

Heaven offers the gift of everlasting life.

I love to whisper in the ears of my beloved that I love you.

I have high aspirations as a writer.

God has been good to me.

The graph is the symbol and the phone the sound in writing.

Ecstasy is the experience of love.

When I am dead don’t place flowers on my grave.

I give into life to carry me with the flow.

The utterance of God is beautiful, sacred and holy.

I hope God multiplies my blessings as he has done to Abraham.

The Devil has been defeated with the blood shed on the cross.

The gaze is a symbol of appropriation.

Dance your body with a workout of perfection.

Existentialism is a philosophy of negativity.

Faith is a free gift given by God.

The Messiah came and the messiah will come again.

Passion is a bird soaring high.

Make dreams your goal.

The bond of friendship has to last forever.

The cross is a tool of sin sanctification.

Put money to work to earn more money.

Life’s pastures have to be grazed with care and affection.

Our thoughts feelings and actions are our best friends.

Yoke yourself with God and he will give your refuge and rest.

The beginning is life and the end the death.

I like to smile at death.

I have no fear of death as God is with me.

Thought is not an ivory tower.

Christ, I give you all honor, glory praise and worship.

The beatitudes are a part of wisdom literature.

Song of Songs is an erotic poem written in praise of God.

Retain conscience in your heart.

Nietzsche went mad by killing God.

Idols aren’t meant to be worshipped.

God will give you the strength to encounter the Goliath in your life.

An emotional mind cannot suffer from a castration complex.

The mansions in Heaven are flowers for the soul.

The philosopher Camus absurdized life where as for me I celebrate life.

Life is the literature of celebration.

Eve by being tempted as a woman became in History the first philosopher.

All sins on earth can be forgiven but not sins against the Holy Spirit.

The Trinity is a paradox of being one and three.

Language is a sign in interpretation.

I wish everyday be a Christmas tree of celebration.

The carnival of life is a fiesta.

The lessons in life come from failure.

Media prevents free thinking.

God is a presence of meaning.

God loved humanity more than he loved his Son.

Derrida killed language by deconstructing it.

Poets are lovers of the soul.

Don’t bastardize individuality.

The scar made by the pen is meaning interpreted.

In my walk of life, I am longing for multiple victories.

Poems have to felt in the heart.

It’s a gift to tolerate dissenting minds.

Hope is an echo that can travel from a mountain.

An active intellect is keen in discernment.

My life is an autobiography of the pen.

Life’s difficulties make one a philosopher.

The Indian independence movement was a revolution of non-violence.

The end of war is the beginning of peace.

Irony is sad laughter.

Arrogance brings disaster.

Democracy is the identity of a nation.

Quixote is a novel of triumphant individuality.

Marx said that religion is the opium of the masses but the real opium is Communism dead.

The Last Supper is a symbolic meal of forecasting death.

Listen to the voice of the inner self.

Meaning is the appropriation of presence.

Signs collapse when they are being deconstructed.

Do not analyze dreams accept the beauty in them.

It’s mania to say that literature has been exhausted.

God does not want luke-warm souls.

I wonder why Shakespeare was anti-Semitic.

Jews are not people with one pound of flesh.

To God be the glory, honor, praise and worship.

Play with your soul and be gentle to it.

God answers prayers in unexpected ways.

Sing songs of praise to God with the harp of David.

Jews are the only race who has endured much suffering.

I want to transcend the novelists, poets and philosophers that I have read.

It is essence that comes before existence and not existence before essence.

My heart has hurt much but still it finds peace with God.

[tomasorban]

Alchemical initiation: transforming the self

When discussing alchemy, the first thing you must understand is that in relation to modern chemistry, alchemy is relevant only in terms of history. Moreover, the value of the alchemists philosophical system has nothing to do with the literal interpretation of alchemical operations; but rather the message is hidden behind allegories, symbols and formulas. So the essence of alchemy is not the transformation of metals, but rather the transformation of the self.

Alchemists tell us the story of the matter passing through four main states: nigredo, albedo, citrinitas, rubedo. In nigredo, the matter is full of impurities, “unpolished”, so that in the albedo to be “cleaned” divided into two opposing principles. Citrinitas represent the transmutation of silver into gold, or the stage of “wise old man” – according to Carl.G.Jung‘s analytical psychology. Finally, in the state of rubedo the two opposing principles come together (coniunctio), giving birth to the two-headed eagle (Atahnor logo ), which symbolizes the discovery of the authentic self, the last stage of consciousness.

A similar initiatic journey we can find in tarot, as Oswald Wirth notes, where the story begins with the fool, which in French is called Le Fou, resembling Le Feu (Fire), thus referring to the alchemical process of transforming lead into gold. Perhaps the word game may lead us to the principle always reminded by alchemist Theophrastus noted Ph. Paracelsus, who urges alchemists to pass their theories through the fire, i.e. to test, experiment. Fire also symbolizes the active principle, or libido – described by Jung as the  [psychic] energy of the individual. Moreover, if we interpret fire as the potency or the will to transform of the individual, we conclude that the fire that burns in Athanor (the furnace of alchemists) is the necessary will that “burns impurities” – the fuel that turns lead into gold. Moreover, even Gaston Bachelard in “Psychoanalysis of Fire” talks about the Prometheus complex, wich is explained to be: “Oedipus complex in intellectual life“  – so fire is engine that makes us want to know more. Paracelsus said that no operation can be done without this fire.

 It is reasonable to consider both alchemy and tarot philosophical systems expressed through allegory, which focuses on the hidden potential in every individual (i.e. nigredo, the fool), which with labor and continuous “polishing” is able to discover his authentic self:

„nigredo is the revelation of the incompleteness of substance, that needs processing to become gold. This is why the matter  is crying for the help of a man, which, by knowing and understanding, will save its soul from the netherworld.”

Nigredo also symbolizes the shadow of self, or the self [unconsciously] confronting its shadow. In the state of albedo we become aware of the shadow of the self, and impurities (unnecessary, harmful concepts) are removed. Also, we become aware of the opposite concepts anima and animus, that will be joined togheter in an alchemical process in rubedo : the Sun (gold, male) and the Moon (silver, female) come together; thus this operation is also symbolizing the union of conscious and unconscious – the consciousness in its fullness. In this respect some Gnostics, and some psychoanalysts and historians of religions have concluded that The Great Art means combining masculine (Sulphur) and feminine (Mercury) – a process more or less sexual. Mircea Eliade, great historian of religions noticed:

„European alchemy defines the Great Art  as the <secret> to combine the <Masculine> with the <feminine>.”

Another thing that Paracelsus and other alchemists repeated was that to fulfill the alchemic operation, each step needs to be done perfectly, in perfect order. This reminds us that we must be diligent, not to deviate from the path, otherwise we will not obtain the rubedo state. The alchemist is somebody that makes order out of chaos (ordo ab chao), and in a sense, I believe that two-headed eagle symbol is representative of the whole process of acceptance, integration and transformation of the shadow in the entire being. The two-headed eagle is anima and animus fusioned, it’s the man aware of its shadow – unconscious becoming conscious.

Oswald Wirth notes that these ancient mystical symbols and allegories used to be a bridge between the conscious mind, and the collective unconscious. As I mentioned above, nigredo can also symbolize shadow or [collective] unconscious – the source of archetypes and symbols. So the moment we get out of the darkness (nigredo) – that miserable state of ignorance and unawarness -, is the moment we become aware of our shadow, when we distinguish subject from the object in the process of shadow projection.

Anyway, the alchemists have used different formulas to write their “alchemical recipes” to keep the knowledge away from the profane. A thing that was pretty common between alchemists was to associate different metals and different stages of processing (e.g. rotting) with various mythological names, thereby converting an alchemical recipe into a story or a myth – or vice versa. For example, Apollo (Sun) corresponded to gold. Jean Marie Ragon goes further and states that in the Greek myth of Apollo killing the snake Python hides an alchemical process, a meeting between coarse material and the philosophical fire. Moreover, many psychoanalysts (e.g. Jung) were concerned with the interpretation of myths in a rather metaphorical way, believing there are hidden meanings behind metaphors, myths and alchemical works (see C.Jung’s interpretation of the text “Consurgens Aurora“) . I wanted to mention this because most people are skeptical about alchemy (I am one of them), but I think that in many cases, the skepticism is due the literally interpretation of alchemical texts/ myths. And it seems clear that D’Espagnets alchemical recipe that included a red dragon and seven or nine clean eagles that turns into a swan, doesn’t ask us to get a red dragon itself (nor claimed it will turn into a swan). And regarding Count Saint-Germain’s The Most Holy Trinosophia, it would be really foolish to think that that fantastic  trip really took place (in the physical world).

A conclusion, and also a review could be that alchemy is a complex philosophical system, well-built, revealed in stages. Behind the seemingly chemical formulas or mythological character, there are beautiful teachings hiding, and the ultimate knowledge is reserved to the one with a sharp mind, escaping from the labyrinths built by alchemists. I think that Mircea Eliade concluded very nice his work “Cosmogony and babylonian alchemy“, reminding us that everyone has the potential to become gold, to transform his flaws and troublesome self (lead) into gold:

„Transmutation of metals, which at one point becomes the basic idea of alchemy, has its justification in the belief that any metal can perfect itself to the ultimate stage of matter, turning into Gold.”

[avatat198]

Sigmond Freud works

1891 On Aphasia

1892 A Case of Successful Treatment by Hypnotism

1893 Charcot

1893 On the Psychical Mechanism of Hysterical Phenomena

1894 The Neuro-Psychoses of Defence

1894 Obsessions and phobias

1894 On the Grounds for Detaching a Particular Syndrome from Neurasthenia under the Description “Anxiety Neurosis”

1895 Project for a Scientific Psychology

1895 Studies on Hysteria (German: Studien über Hysterie; co-authored with Josef Breuer)

1896 The Aetiology of Hysteria

1896 Heredity and the Aetiology of the Neuroses

1896 Further Remarks on the Neuro-Psychoses of Defence

1898 Sexuality in the Aetiology of the Neuroses

1899 Screen Memories

1899 An Autobiographical Note

1900 The Interpretation of Dreams (German: Die Traumdeutung)

1901 On Dreams (abridged version of The Interpretation of Dreams)

1904 The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (German: Zur Psychopathologie des Alltagslebens)

1905 Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious

1905 Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria (Dora)

1905 Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (German: Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie)

1905 On Psychotherapy

1905 Psychopathic Characters on the Stage

1906 My Views on the Part Played by Sexuality in the Aetiology of the Neuroses

1906 Psycho-Analysis and the Establishment of the Facts in Legal Proceedings

1907 Obsessive Actions and Religious Practices

1907 Delusions and Dreams in Jensen's Gradiva (German: Der Wahn und die Träume in W. Jensens "Gradiva")

1908 The Sexual Enlightenment of Children

1908 Character and Anal Erotism (German: Charakter und Analerotik)

1908 On the Sexual Theories of Children

1908 "Civilized" Sexual Morality and Modern Nervous Illness (German: Die „kulturelle“ Sexualmoral und die moderne Nervosität)

1908 Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming

1908 Hysterical Phantasies and their Relation to Bisexuality

1909 Family Romances

1909 Some General Remarks on Hysterical Attacks

1909 Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-Year-Old Boy (Little Hans)

1909 Notes upon a Case of Obsessional Neurosis (Rat Man)

1910 Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis

1910 Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood (German: Eine Kindheitserinnerung des Leonardo da Vinci)

1910 The Antithetical Meaning of Primal Words

1910 The Future Prospects of Psycho-analytic Therapy

1910 “Wild” psycho-analysis

1910 The Psycho-Analytic View of Psychogenic Disturbance of Vision

1910 A Special Type of Choice of Object made by Men

1911 The Handling of Dream-Interpretation in Psycho-Analysis

1911 Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning'

1911 Psycho-Analytic Notes on an Autobiographical Account of a Case of Paranoia (Schreber)

1912 On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love

1912 Recommendations to Physicians Practising Psycho-analysis

1912 Types of Onset of Neurosis

1912 The Dynamics of Transference

1912 Contributions to a Discussion on Masturbation

1912 A Note on the Unconscious in Psycho-Analysis

1913 Totem and Taboo: Resemblances Between the Psychic Lives of Savages and Neurotics (German: Totem und Tabu: Einige Übereinstimmungen im Seelenleben der Wilden und der Neurotiker)

1913 The Claims of Psycho-Analysis to Scientific Interest

1913 On Beginning the Treatment (Further recommendations on the technique of psycho-analysis)

1913 The Disposition to Obsessional Neurosis

1913 Theme of the Three Caskets

1914 Remembering, Repeating and Working-through (Further recommendations on the technique of psycho-analysis)

1914 On Narcissism: an Introduction

1914 The Moses of Michelangelo

1914 On the History of the Psycho-Analytic Movement (German: Zur Geschichte der psychoanalytischen Bewegung)

1915–17 Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (German: Vorlesungen zur Einführung in die Psychoanalyse)

1915 Thoughts for the Times on War and Death (German: Zeitgemäßes über Krieg und Tod)

1915 Instincts and their Vicissitudes

1915 Repression

1915 The Unconscious

1915 A Case of Paranoia Running Counter to the Psycho-Analytic Theory of the Disease

1915 Some Character-Types Met with in Psycho-Analytic Work

1915 On Transience

1916 Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis

1916 A Mythological Parallel to a Visual Obsession

1917 Mourning and Melancholia

1917 A Difficulty on the Path of Psycho-Analysis

1917 On Transformations of Instinct as Exemplified in Anal Erotism

1917 A Metapsychological Supplement to the Theory of Dreams

1918 From the History of an Infantile Neurosis (Wolfman)

1918 The Taboo of Virginity

1918 Lines of Advance in Psycho-Analytic Therapy

1918 Introduction to Psycho-Analysis and the War Neuroses

1918 On the Teaching of Psycho-Analysis in the Universities

1918 James J. Putnam

1919 A Child is Being Beaten

1919 The Uncanny (German: Das Unheimliche)

1920 The Psychogenesis of a Case of Homosexuality in a Woman

1920 Beyond the Pleasure Principle (German: Jenseits des Lustprinzips)

1920 A Note on the Prehistory of The Technique of Analysis

1920 Supplements to the Theory of Dreams

1921 Psycho-analysis and Telepathy

1921 Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (German: Massenpsychologie und Ich-Analyse)

1922 Medusa's Head (German: Das Medusenhaupt)

1922 Dreams and Telepathy

1922 Some Neurotic Mechanisms in Jealousy, Paranoia and Homosexuality

1923 The Ego and the Id (German: Das Ich und das Es)

1923 A Seventeenth-Century Demonological Neurosis (Christoph Haizmann)

1923 Infantile Genital Organisation

1924 Neurosis and Psychosis

1924 The Loss of Reality in Neurosis and Psychosis

1924 The Economic Problem of Masochism

1924 The Dissolution of the Oedipus Complex

1925 The Resistances to Psycho-analysis

1925 Josef Breuer

1925 A Note upon the "Mystic Writing-Pad"

1925 An Autobiographical Study (1935 Postscript)

1925 Negation

1925 Some Psychical Consequences of the Anatomical Distinction between the Sexes

1926 Karl Abraham

1926 Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety

1926 The Question of Lay Analysis (German: Die Frage der Laieanalyse)

1927 The Future of an Illusion (German: Die Zukunft einer Illusion)

1927 Fetishism

1927 Humour

1928 Dostoevsky and Parricide

1930 Civilization and Its Discontents (German: Das Unbehagen in der Kultur)

1931 Libidinal Types

1931 Female Sexuality

1932 The Acquisition of Control Over Fire

1933 Sandor Ferenczi

1933 New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis

1933 Why War? (German: Warum Krieg? co-authored with Albert Einstein)

1936 A Disturbance of Memory on the Acropolis

1937 Lou Andreas-Salome

1937 Analysis Terminable and Interminable

1937 Constructions in Analysis

1938 An Outline of Psycho-Analysis (German: Abriß der Psychoanalyse)

1938 Some Elementary Lessons in Psycho-Analysis

1938 The Splitting of the Ego in the Process of Defence

1938 A Comment on Anti-Semitism

1939 Moses and Monotheism (German: Der Mann Moses und die monotheistische Religion)

  Standard pack

ol. I Pre-Psycho-Analytic Publications and Unpublished Drafts (1886-1899).

Vol. II Studies in Hysteria (1893-1895). By Josef Breuer and S. Freud.

Vol. III Early Psycho-Analytic Publications (1893-1899)

Vol. IV The Interpretation of Dreams (I) (1900)

Vol. V The Interpretation of Dreams (II) and On Dreams (1900-1901)

Vol. VI The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901)

Vol. VII A Case of Hysteria, Three Essays on Sexuality and Other Works (1901-1905)

Vol. VIII Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious (1905)

Vol. IX Jensen's 'Gradiva,' and Other Works (1906-1909)

Vol. X The Cases of 'Little Hans' and the Rat Man' (1909)

Vol. XI Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, Leonardo and Other Works (1910)

Vol. XII Case History of Schreber, Papers on Technique and Other Works (1911-1913)

Vol. XIII Totem and Taboo and Other Works (1913-1914)

Vol. XIV On the History of the Psycho-Analytic Movement, Papers on Meta-psychology and Other Works (1914-1916)

Vol. XV Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (Parts I and II) (1915-1916)

Vol. XVI Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (Part III) (1916-1917)

Vol. XVII An Infantile Neurosis and Other Works (1917-1919)

Vol. XVIII Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Group Psychology and Other Works (1920-1922)

Vol. XIX The Ego and the Id and Other Works (1923-1925)

Vol. XX An Autobiographical Study, Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety, Lay Analysis and Other Works (1925-1926)

Vol. XXI The Future of an Illusion, Civilization and its Discontents and Other Works (1927-1931)

Vol. XXII New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis and Other Works (1932-1936)

Vol. XXIII Moses and Monotheism, An Outline of Psycho-Analysis and Other Works (1937-1939)

Vol. XXIV Indexes and Bibliographies (Compiled by Angela Richards,1974)

Ebből magyar

Álomfejtés (Somló Béla, 1935; Helikon, 1985, 1993)

Az álomról (Dick, 1915, 1919; Hat-ágú Síp, 1991)

Bevezetés a pszichoanalízisbe (Wien-Bp. 1932; Gondolat, 1986)

Esszék (Gondolat, 1982)

A halálösztön és az életösztönök (Világirodalmi, 1923; Múzsák, 1991)

Három értekezés a szexualitás elméletéről (Dick, 1915, 1919.; Könyvjelző, Nyíregyháza, 1993)

Egy illúzió jövője (Bibliotheca, 1945; Párbeszéd, 1991)

A lélekelemzés legújabb eredményei (Pannónia Nyomda, Debrecen, 1943)

A mindennapi élet pszichopatológiája (Világirodalmi, 1923; Somló Béla, 1932; Bibliotheca, 1958; Cserépfalvi 1992)

Mózes. Michelangelo Mózese (Európa, 1987)

Mózes és az egyistenhit (Bibliotheca, 1946)

Önéletrajz (Pantheon, 1936)

Önéletrajzi írások (Cserépfalvi, 1989, 1990)

Az ősvalami és az én (Panthenon, 1937; Hatágú Síp, 1991)

Pszichoanalízis (Kossuth, 1990, 1992)

Rossz közérzet a kultúrában (Kossuth, 1992)

Totem és tabu (Dick, 1918; Göncöl, 1990)

[vileart]

Angry Post on Oedipus

The plot of Oedipus Rex is frequently described as the working out of a curse laid upon the children of Laius, Oedipus’ father and victim. The story is familiar enough: despite Laius’ attempted infanticide, Oedipus returns to Thebes and, in ignorance of his biological parentage, kills his dad and fucks his mum. This terrible fate was ordained by the Gods, is frequently called a curse, and its inexorable revelation exposes the feckless maliciousness of the Greek deities.

Oedipus is some play: Aristotle would use it as the template for the ideal tragedy in the Poetics, its careful elaboration of Oedipus’ crimes is a masterful display of Sophocles’ skill of building dramatic tension and the final understanding of Oedipus of his own nature makes it a prototype for a horror story, in which the hero suddenly discovers that they are actually the villain. The skilful development of Oedipus ensures that the audience is drawn in and feels sympathy for the protagonist (his mother and wife, Jocasta, however, is inevitably a stock character whose death is a mere prelude to Oedipus’ blinding. So much for the female experience).

Because of Sophocles’ delicate yet inevitable description of fate finally catching up with the unfortunate monarch, the play is frequently understood as fatalistic and the curse itself a simple representation of ‘original sin’ (although the Christian term is anachronous). The fate is arbitrary, a bitter fact of a universe that doesn’t so much not give a fuck about humans but actively fuck with them. Oedipus’ peripeteia is to realise his actual nature, and he’s a mother-fucker.

Yes, that works, only it is only part of the story, isn’t it? Laius wasn’t just the victim of a curse. He was cursed because he fucked kids. He was supposed to be the tutor to Chrysippus, only he raped him and provoked the boy to suicide. The punishment, to be killed by his biological son – and to have his wife seduced by the same child – is a punishment for child-abuse. It has a bit of a gangster edge, but is clearly a moral response to criminal behaviour. Oedipus demonstrates the social and personal consequences of child-abuse: it stays around to fuck up the next generation.

And let’s just remind ourselves of the culture in fifth century Athens. Kenneth Dover’s Greek Homosexuality has a close look at the various sexual relationships enjoyed in the cradle of civilisation. Basically, he concludes that men would engage in relationships with young teenagers – at their most attractive just before puberty – because the legalistic nature of marriage (and the oppression of women, who were banished to the back of the house) meant that romantic love needed an outlet.

Contrary to some optimists, who like to believe that before Christianity, there was no homophobia, gay adult men (as far as they could be said to exist in any terms that overlap with contemporary notions of sexual identity or behaviour) were mocked and castigated. Wanting sex with a man of the same age was effeminate, and there’s plenty of jokes at the expense of such men in Aristophanes. An adult relationship between men wasn’t happening. What was okay in Athens of the fifth century was an adult male having with a child, in exchange for a few bits of educational advice.

So – to be clear: Sophocles wrote a play demonstrating the consequences of a relationship that was common in the city in which his plays were performed. It’s not just a meditation on a hostile universe (although this quality adds an apparent universality to the script).  It is about how damaging paedophilia is. Of course, admitting that the same men who invented democracy and equality before the law (isonomia, the principle that led to democracy) were involved in something like a paedophile ring is upsetting, so that gets ignored. And pointing to the treatment given to adult men attracted to other men, it’s a homophobic one, too.

The amount of evidence that Dover marshals for the prevalence of pederasty suggests that they were doing a fair job of making it seem acceptable. And even a classicist like Dover, who must have known that the word ‘homosexual’ was not even invented until Karl-Maria Benkert coined it in 1869 (Havelock Ellis was like, it’s a ‘barbarous… monstrous mingling of Greek and Latin’ (Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Vol. II, 1921)), uses it to describe behaviour that is better described as kiddy-fiddling. Congratulations on forging a link between the healthy desire of adult men for each other and systemic abuses of power.

I have two points here. One is that there is a further reading of Oedipus that is probably discussed in some classical scholarship but not generally known that makes the play fiercely moral and more connected to its specific historical genesis than the typical ‘it’s a universal play’ or ‘it’s about a subconscious desire all men have to sleep with their mum’. It doesn’t replace those readings, but it adds a layer.

My other point is that the conflation of homosexuality and paedophilia, which is bullshit and still hangs about in conservative homophobia, has one hell of a pedigree and is enforced by respectable sources that misapply the terms. I first discovered Laius’s antics in an encyclopedia of queer mythology, which coyly tries to reclaim Laius within some kind of hidden history.  Apart from suggesting I didn’t pay much attention when I studied Classics at St Andrews, this is supposed to be a queer positive handbook revealing the occluded queerness of mythology and that. I know I shouldn’t have faith in a book that discusses William Burroughs without mentioning heroin use, or has a longer section on astrology than Islam or Christianity (it’s bullshit mysticism), but the need to discover lost heroes doesn’t necessarily involving adding to the long list of attempts to misunderstand the simple fact that paedophilia is not homosexuality.

Add that next to Peter Ackroyd’s description of pederasty as a queer sexuality in Queer City, or the mistranslations of St Paul that assume his prohibitions on fucking kids are a general message against same-sex desire (he can’t have had a thing against homosexuality because, remember, the word wasn’t invented until the nineteenth century), and there’s a nice historical context for that big load of Daily Mail paranoia.

I think I need to make this clear. Homosexuality is a manifestation of same-sex desire, an orientation. Paedophilia is rape that is predicated on the replacement of compassion with a drive to dominate. A paedophile ring is a group of criminals enabling each other, a bit like the Involuntary Celibate communities online. I am tired of the homophobia that conflates them, especially in books that are supposed to be all about liberating queerness from oppression.

I am aware that intergenerational relationships do have a pedigree within recent gay society, but if the law is able to recognise equality for the age of consent, so can chicken-hawks. There's a long tradition of an older lover introducing a younger person to the intricacies of sexual desire and intimacy, which goes into heterosexuality as well, but informed consent needs to be part of that. Children have trouble with giving informed consent.

Oh yeah, and Ackroyd: there is no reason to think that female gladiators are lesbians. No reason not to, sure, but skeletal remains with no inscription don’t tend to have a sexual identity. And you might want to interrogate what the word sodomy means in medieval society before assuming it is all about anal sex. It’s not that Christianity hasn’t got a problem with homophobia, but a bit of context might provide some clues as how to disentangle a decidedly Unchristian attitude from the prejudices of fundamentalists.

Just saying.

from the vileblog https://ift.tt/2MCEa26

[decorticatedturnip]

To resist these cliched urges: I am brought to silence. I am reduced to the muscled technique of my heart. I am damn near sure I can hear my toenails growing.

Darwish: "This rumble---we've never heard it before. Low, distant, deep, and secret, as of it had come from the belly of the earth, like the awesome sound of the Day of Judgement. All of us feel---and we have now become experts in the silence of killer sounds---that something out of the ordinary, in this extraordinary war, is taking place. And that a new weapon is being tried out. When will this long day end? When will it end so we can find our if we're alive or dead?"

I have nothing but a host of pitiful analogues, analogues that I feel a deep gratitude to be groping with---not to a god or any government, surely not towards any father, but to something like chance or luck or that nagging feeling of I-could-have-been-anyone-else-anywhere-else, a mutated version of spin the globe to see where you'll live when you grow up, except with dying.

It's a game people play sometimes, or at least a game I have played in the past on the 4th of July: firework or gun? I didn't start playing this game until I moved into the city, and I recognize more gratitude, perhaps. Someone almost inevitably says that the 4th of July is the best day to murder or shoot someone, like the best murder weapon, as the story goes, is the icicle because there's no evidence afterwards. Amidst the independent drunkenness and the percussives played upon the chest, one could just discharge a bullet under the cover of festivity. Discharge a life.

I am standing on a sidewalk or a path that runs through the woods and my ears are sensitive to any songbird, thrush, dove, or flycatcher that is singing to win a mate, to scare an enemy, to warn about some impending danger. I have memorized the melodies like a pop-song or something prepared for smoke-filled karaoke; I hum the refrains in my mind as I walk at the speed of birdwatching.

Imagine the orchard oriole as missile. Imagine the distance between my sensitive body and the scarlet tanager replaced by the calculations of closeness, the estimation of proximity to some form of military might that makes ash out of families, that transmutes bodies into forms that even worms don't want. Imagine the perked up anticipation I feel as some song flits through the air that I've never heard before, replaced by the evolutionarily deep horror that mocks all hermeneutics, the sonic instantiation of presence that accompanies the destruction of a vacuum bomb.

I make a note in my notebook after I put the book down and it reads, verbatim: "Trying to write about anything, read about anything after encountering Memory for Forgetfulness."

The note that follows after this is a list of things that I want to get from the grocery store: Peppers, onions, greens, tofu, bread, peanut butter, fruit (of whatever kind), and snacks.

[seprofcorp]

The Doors - The End - Live At Hollywood Bowl 1968 ( I RE-POSTED THIS TERRIFIC ANALYSIS FROM " BenS/b-rod, 7moths ago"}}: "Ew, he wants to what?" Well first of all, you've got to understand where Morrison was coming from. A little background information is certainly required for the uninitiated. Jim wanted first and foremost to be a filmmaker and a dramatist (and poet) before he ever wanted to be in rock n roll. He went on to graduate from UCLA (unlike the deplorable Oliver Stone movie where a full ONE THIRD of the thing is FICTION - ie, never happened, like certain scenes, and the very crass way Kilmer portrayed him was ludicrous - but that's another topic). In the film department there, he learned  many things about cinema and drama in general that he transposed into his music. He even had acting lessons according to Paul Ferrara. Anyway, I think the main work that influenced Jim on "The End" was Artaud's "Theatre & Its Double," which I reread recently and it made a lot more sense to me why Jim went in that theatrical direction. When I reread it, pieces fell into place that I'd never realized before. Artaud goes through his theories and in one instance, he even mentions "Oedipus Rex" itself by name (which, for those who don't know is an ancient Greek play that Freud psychologically postulated as universal, Oedipus for boys and Elektra for girls - deep in the unconscious). On a side note, Artaud also had a major influence on the Living Theatre, which Jim saw every show he could of, with their confrontational approach to theatre, which was right before Miami, and is what got Jim in trouble down there for allegedly exposing himself, with it fresh in his mind. Anyway, I believe its drama. Jim didn't get into personal confessional lyrics until LA Woman with things like "Hyacinth House" or "Cars Hiss By My Window." "The End" does start out about a break up with his girl prior to Pamela but then obviously goes in another direction when they would improvise to fill their slot at London Fog. But Artaud's work, I think, is key to understanding where Jim was coming from and the theatricality of some of his lyrics. And as Ray said about the Lizard King to Ben Fong-Torres - "That Lizard King thing - that's out of "Celebration Of The Lizard" and he's acting a part; its a theatre piece. Its a drama of which a guy is leading a small band of people...out into the desert and at the end of the whole piece he says "I am the Lizard King, I can do anything" and people are going "Oh, he's the Lizard King, he's the self-proclaimed Lizard King." You bastards, man! He's ACTING! ITS A ROLE, you know? Marlon Brando is not Stanley Kowalski, Jim Morrison is not the Lizard King, but they ground him down [for it]."Could the same be said for "The End?" You fuckin bet.Here's Jim speaking in late 1970 (also to Ben Fong-Torres) - "Are you still considering yourself the Lizard King?" "What I was trying to say with that, and that was years ago, and even then it was kind of ironic. I meant it ironically, and it wasn't meant to be - " and Pam cuts him off saying "That whole thing was done tongue-in-cheek" and Jim says, "Well, half tongue-in-cheek" and Pam continues, "and everybody thought it was like so serious." Jim: "Well, its an easy thing to pick up on." Its interesting to note that his production company with, I think, Paul Ferrara and Babe Hill, joking called themselves the Media Manipulators."Well, its an easy thing to pick up on" is the operative phrase - memorability, standing out, and this, I think, is key to understanding "The End" and other things. In the same interview with Fong-Torres, he also talks about how at newspapers there's someone who is there to write only the headlines of an article, that it has to be a catch phrase. Maybe its hard for literal-minded people to understand, but Jim says "THE killer" and then proceeds to take a face, an ancient drama mask that actors would wear on stage. He doesn't say "I" until he's set up the scene and in that role.  "The key to throwing the audience into a magical trance is to know where in advance the pressure points must be affected...But theatre poetry has long become unaccustomed to this invaluable skill...To make language convey what it does not normally convey. That is to use it in a new exceptional and unusual way, to give it its full, physical shock potential...and restore their shattering power...The thought it aims at, the states of mind it attempts to create, the mystical discoveries it offers...It all seems like an exorcism to make our devils FLOW...strange signs, matching some dark prodigious reality we have repressed...ready to hurl itself into chaos in a kind of magical state where feelings have become so sensitive they are suitable for visitation by the mind...We must not ask ourselves whether it can define thought but whether it makes us think [and feel], and leads the mind to assume deeply effective attitudes...Just as in former times, the masses today are thirsting for mystery" (Artaud) (And there are more quotes equally as good in his work).I'm not saying he was consciously thinking of Artaud's theories when he went up onstage that night at the Whiskey, but it certainly came out of him then - the culmination of many things going on in the background of his consciousness and trying to push the envelope as an artist. As a fellow INFP explorer (mine and Jim's personality type), I think I can understand Jim more than most in that respect. Its "drama of the highest order" said Jack Holzman