The Searuvel, the Evil Machine, was meant to vanquish the Adversarial Dragon. Heroic humanist Man dicovered, invented, science and technology. The Searuvel was to be 'our dragon', a magic servitor conjured from the forces of wild Nature to meet our needs and desires. "How clever of us! What an ornament to human pride! We really are as gods: with a wish and a will we can do anything. Eventually we will make of this world a garden city where life is very pleasant, we are saved from hard labor and afflictions inherent in bodily existence, and marvelous noble entertainments will make existence a blessing." But everything has two faces, and what was so self-evidently Good became evil. Our magic servitor has addicted and enslaved us. The machines we cannot do without, necessary to life, now outnumber, outweigh us. They are the Power now. We cannot help but model ourselves on them, but we realize we can never be as capable-- they are godlike, they are the master race. The entire planet is a Machine Regime. They have colonized the world-- Man and Nature-- working in the open, with our full support! We invented our supplanters out of our own vaunting brilliance, but now we scurry and sweat, to give this machine greater reach and puissance, giving the best in us to magnify this terrible Techno-dragon. And what do we get as payment? A diminishing of our substance. We are addicted, weakened, made stupid, blind, abased, degraded. We have become wretched slaves who were once proud masters. When we discovered what we had engineered with full overweening confidence, we lost the drive and the will and magnificent arrogance. And now we are trapped in the moils of 'our dragon', and like all conquerors, it accepts no limits to its magnification, and will destroy both us and itself, as well as Nature-- the Uroboros that created us is displaced, used up, annihilated.
Is there nothing we can do against this evil machine, this Searuvel, to stop it before it destroys the Earth? Well, if we could all just 'come to' from the spell of delusion that has possessed us, it would be a start.
The Searuvel is vulnerable, though; it has a fatal weakness-- it is a dead thing. Not a living, organic, biotic system. It is not self-generating, self-sustaining. It requires ever increasing infusions of human energy, libido, soul. Like a world-vampire, it must suck the life out of the living. But if humanity ever came out of its stupor, we would stop feeding the Techno-dragon, for this undead Thing must grow or disintegrate-- stop the influx of life-force and it quickly shows its brittleness-- it crumbles, melts. The dilemma, though, is that without the Searuvel to support us, we, too, would die, civilization would collapse, a frenzied self-annihilation would overtake desperate humanity. Our minds cannot go there, we cannot consider this option. But wait-- there is a chance, if, recognizing the real situation, we make a plan-- not to kill the Dragon, but to collectively withdraw our psychic involvement in it, to assimilate its functions and powers into an analog developed to serve Life-- all life, not just Lord Man the mighty conqueror and ruler of All. If we made this our great, last ditch Project, Life might have a chance. But we'll never know until we really try, invest all we've got into this enterprise. And it starts with a person making a decision.
Monday, July 28, 2014
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
What Can One Do?
What can a person do to experience this transformation himself?
Withdraw your psychic investment in the Searuvel. Who needs this crap culture? crap video, crap music, crap writing-- it's nowhere, it's selective, false, and bad for you, full of the shallow, mindless, wrongheaded values and mores of mass culture. Who can fall for this dreck, anyway? presumably only the chronically innocent. Do you want to be the best droid you can be, or would you rather be a mensch? Cut the incessant meaningless chatter and herd-cohesing, withdraw from the flash-bang techno-pyrotechnics, fill your field instead with Nature, deep ecological culture, and your own homegrown reality. Become like the Transcendentalists-- self/Self-reliant. Use your ego-will to best purpose-- make your own culture, starting with your dreams and reveries, your imagination-- turn your spotlight on that, find the Self in that-- "Seek your own Self with diligence!" Think and seek for yourself as best you can, follow your own light, accept no substitutes! Seek the guidance that may not appear to be guidance, of the Lode, Indryg, Drygand, Feorgen-- or whatever represents Ecological Self to you. And make Menning, for all Life forever!
Withdraw your psychic investment in the Searuvel. Who needs this crap culture? crap video, crap music, crap writing-- it's nowhere, it's selective, false, and bad for you, full of the shallow, mindless, wrongheaded values and mores of mass culture. Who can fall for this dreck, anyway? presumably only the chronically innocent. Do you want to be the best droid you can be, or would you rather be a mensch? Cut the incessant meaningless chatter and herd-cohesing, withdraw from the flash-bang techno-pyrotechnics, fill your field instead with Nature, deep ecological culture, and your own homegrown reality. Become like the Transcendentalists-- self/Self-reliant. Use your ego-will to best purpose-- make your own culture, starting with your dreams and reveries, your imagination-- turn your spotlight on that, find the Self in that-- "Seek your own Self with diligence!" Think and seek for yourself as best you can, follow your own light, accept no substitutes! Seek the guidance that may not appear to be guidance, of the Lode, Indryg, Drygand, Feorgen-- or whatever represents Ecological Self to you. And make Menning, for all Life forever!
Monday, July 21, 2014
The Third Stage: the Ecological Naga
The Snake Cycle reaches closure, let us say, with the third stage, of the Ecological Naga. The Naga, being half man and half snake, is a symbol of the synergism of ego-mind and Unconscious under the Self, the central coordinating archetype of the human psyche. The two previous stages, of the undifferentiated, monist Uroboros and of the split, dualist Dragon, are both assimilated into the transcendent synthesis that is the Naga. The importance of the Naga-stage is in the channeling of the great psychic power of the primordial survival drive of the Unconscious to conform to the guidance of ecological wisdom by the Self in the transformation of the human psyche and the development of ecological culture-civilization. Such mental/cultural restructuring has occurred in the past in the sort of shamanic transformation which produces a prophet in a time of cultural extremis, such as described by Anthony F. C. Wallace, in which the mind spontaneously reorganizes itself in accordance with core values promising of survival of the people, essentially rapid-scanning its contents in deep trance and resynthesizing the old culture-model into a powerful, simple, comprehensible new one, providing then the best answer to the crisis of breakdown. With the ascendance of the Ecological Self, such rapid evolution, of the Menning, can be expected to occur in many minds, achieving various levels of realization, creating a population of powerfully charismatic, wise individuals whose very presence can inspire others to undergo some degree of transformation themselves.
This, then, is the great hope: that the primordial Serpent Power will be engaged by the Ecological Self to thrust up to remake mankind for the survival of all Life on Earth. And already there are individuals who have undergone this Change. The question remains: what can a person do to experience this transformation himself.
This, then, is the great hope: that the primordial Serpent Power will be engaged by the Ecological Self to thrust up to remake mankind for the survival of all Life on Earth. And already there are individuals who have undergone this Change. The question remains: what can a person do to experience this transformation himself.
Monday, July 14, 2014
The Second Stage: the Adversarial Dragon
How do you characterize millennia of development of civilization in a short assessment? --as the Age of the Adversarial Dragon. Over this period, the differentiation of the ego consciousness from the Unconscious becomes extreme, and adversarial. To increase his powers of self-control and self-will, the ego must take energy from the Unconscious, and defend his independent personality and his self-made world-- outer and inner-- from the attacks and sly infiltrations of the thwarted instinctual Unconscious-- therefore the aptness of the myth motif of the Hero fighting the Dragon (Unconscious/Nature), destroying it, and winning the Treasure (powers) it hoarded, and the Maiden (the good life) it held captive, and everything is beautiful in the garden, forevermore. You wish. The outcome, actually, is ultimately counterproductive, because the Dragon cannot be destroyed or even vanquished, and in attempting it, terrible havoc is wreaked on mankind and Nature, and the Hero in fighting the Dragon becomes a dragon himself, a terrible monster, and the wonderful world of servomachines he has devised to bring on a Golden Age of Peaceful Plenty (the garden) have also become their opposite-- a terrible monster that was made to be a faithful servant and has become our master instead; and we become its thralls, as worldwide destruction comes of making our utopian garden. So much for dualism. More to follow...
Friday, July 11, 2014
The First Stage: the Primordial Serpent
The primordial serpent was a widespread mythic figure in archaic and primitive cultures, taking various forms, even surviving into early 'civilized' cultures. It symbolizes the whole, organic, undifferentiated Psyche/Nature, when all things were One (monist).
It is self-formed, timeless, 'what is'.
Man in these cultures had only germinal self-consciousness and self-control. There was a tight linkage in his mind of stimulus/perception-to-reaction. It was automatic, spontaneous. Persons as we know them hardly existed. They operated out of habit, tradition, the authority of the group. These were extremely rigidly conservative cultures. Thought was analogical (associative)-- prelogical, spontaneous, superstitious; we would call it ignorant. In the magical, numinous, dreamlike world they knew, anything was possible, anything could become anything.
The Uroboros (Greek for 'tail-biter') was originally from Egypt, and it is the quintessential primordial serpent-- it forms a ring, representing the Oneness of the whole Cosmos. It chases its tail, which represents an endless cycling-in-place-- like Nature, always going through changeless cycles.
The Norse Jormungandr was similar-- the world-girdling oceanic serpent, though he has been turned into a monster, characteristic of the second stage.
This snake-in-a-ring motif is repeated in the Hindu yogic Kundalini ('ring'), the serpent-energy, which rests like a coiled snake at the base of the spine, which when awakened can rise up the snake-like spinal chord, up through the chakras ('wheels') to the crown of the head, which all seems very uroboric.
The ancient Greek Ophion ('snake') was the first ruler of Olympus, before the Titans, god of the world, presiding over a golden age before civilization. Also in Greece, as well as India, snakes were seen as guardians of the sacred places-- caityas, temples, entrances to the underworld. This seems to come out of the primordial stage as well.
In Jungian ideology, particularly in Erich Neumann's The Origins and History of Consciousness (1954), the Uroboros is a powerful symbol of the undifferentiated Unconscious, which characterized the archaic and primitive mind. Carl Jung himself was more interested in the hermetical and alchemical Serpent, I think, but generally, most scholars of myth seem to see the primordial snake in similar terms-- as original Nature, raw undifferentiated energy, wholeness, the oneness of the vast variousness of the world. My favorite description of this figure is in John Boorman's movie Excalibur, when Merlin gives young Arthur an awesome experience of it in the deep woods, saying,"It is the Dragon! He is everywhere! He is everything!" I get chills.
In the Mythos, the Alwight (later to become the Drygand) has something of the primordial serpent about him. He is a sort of serial incubus-daimon, a protean shape-shifter (well, others' shapes) whose fall-back is your basic undifferentiated worm-form.
He enters species-organisms to experience their peculiar life intimately, in an endless meandering through the whole biospheric fauna (and flora on occasion). He is a kind of trickster, then, not too different from your average tribal male, but unbound from cultural controls. He is spontaneous, pleasure-seeking, hapless, playful, carefree, phallic. As with the other forms of the first-stage serpent, he will have great importance in the third stage. More to follow...
Caitya(Skt)= a sacred place, with a spring or pool, a tree, and a stone or stone railing.
Urwyrm= 'primordial serpent' in Eormanz.
It is self-formed, timeless, 'what is'.
Man in these cultures had only germinal self-consciousness and self-control. There was a tight linkage in his mind of stimulus/perception-to-reaction. It was automatic, spontaneous. Persons as we know them hardly existed. They operated out of habit, tradition, the authority of the group. These were extremely rigidly conservative cultures. Thought was analogical (associative)-- prelogical, spontaneous, superstitious; we would call it ignorant. In the magical, numinous, dreamlike world they knew, anything was possible, anything could become anything.
The Uroboros (Greek for 'tail-biter') was originally from Egypt, and it is the quintessential primordial serpent-- it forms a ring, representing the Oneness of the whole Cosmos. It chases its tail, which represents an endless cycling-in-place-- like Nature, always going through changeless cycles.
The Norse Jormungandr was similar-- the world-girdling oceanic serpent, though he has been turned into a monster, characteristic of the second stage.
This snake-in-a-ring motif is repeated in the Hindu yogic Kundalini ('ring'), the serpent-energy, which rests like a coiled snake at the base of the spine, which when awakened can rise up the snake-like spinal chord, up through the chakras ('wheels') to the crown of the head, which all seems very uroboric.
The ancient Greek Ophion ('snake') was the first ruler of Olympus, before the Titans, god of the world, presiding over a golden age before civilization. Also in Greece, as well as India, snakes were seen as guardians of the sacred places-- caityas, temples, entrances to the underworld. This seems to come out of the primordial stage as well.
In Jungian ideology, particularly in Erich Neumann's The Origins and History of Consciousness (1954), the Uroboros is a powerful symbol of the undifferentiated Unconscious, which characterized the archaic and primitive mind. Carl Jung himself was more interested in the hermetical and alchemical Serpent, I think, but generally, most scholars of myth seem to see the primordial snake in similar terms-- as original Nature, raw undifferentiated energy, wholeness, the oneness of the vast variousness of the world. My favorite description of this figure is in John Boorman's movie Excalibur, when Merlin gives young Arthur an awesome experience of it in the deep woods, saying,"It is the Dragon! He is everywhere! He is everything!" I get chills.
In the Mythos, the Alwight (later to become the Drygand) has something of the primordial serpent about him. He is a sort of serial incubus-daimon, a protean shape-shifter (well, others' shapes) whose fall-back is your basic undifferentiated worm-form.
He enters species-organisms to experience their peculiar life intimately, in an endless meandering through the whole biospheric fauna (and flora on occasion). He is a kind of trickster, then, not too different from your average tribal male, but unbound from cultural controls. He is spontaneous, pleasure-seeking, hapless, playful, carefree, phallic. As with the other forms of the first-stage serpent, he will have great importance in the third stage. More to follow...
Caitya(Skt)= a sacred place, with a spring or pool, a tree, and a stone or stone railing.
Urwyrm= 'primordial serpent' in Eormanz.
Monday, July 7, 2014
Three Stages of Human Evolution
A sequence of three mythic archetypes can be applied to the evolution of human culture and consciousness. The first stage was that of the Primordial Serpent. The second was of the Dragon. And the final stage is of the Naga.
This evolutionary progression of the human world (psyche/cosmos) takes the form of a dialectic: thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, which can be characterized as monist, then dualist, then monist again.
The age of dreamlike numinous traditionalism and magical-mystical (analogic) thought gave way to one of radical innovation, cold-minded philosophy, and adversarial (analytical) thought, and finally to one of transcendent sophistication complexly integrating the former stages in its psychic economy, consciousness, culture, and civilization. This third stage is in the process of succession to dominance over the second, which has produced the present state of things. More to follow...
Naga (Skt)= cobra, snake, snake-deity. Hindu cobra-god, originally depicted as a cobra in ancient sculptures, but then as a weresnake with upper half human and lower half snake. eventually commonly depicted as human-form with a cowl of multiple cobra-heads in array rising behind its head.
This evolutionary progression of the human world (psyche/cosmos) takes the form of a dialectic: thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, which can be characterized as monist, then dualist, then monist again.
The age of dreamlike numinous traditionalism and magical-mystical (analogic) thought gave way to one of radical innovation, cold-minded philosophy, and adversarial (analytical) thought, and finally to one of transcendent sophistication complexly integrating the former stages in its psychic economy, consciousness, culture, and civilization. This third stage is in the process of succession to dominance over the second, which has produced the present state of things. More to follow...
Naga (Skt)= cobra, snake, snake-deity. Hindu cobra-god, originally depicted as a cobra in ancient sculptures, but then as a weresnake with upper half human and lower half snake. eventually commonly depicted as human-form with a cowl of multiple cobra-heads in array rising behind its head.
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