CHAPTER I
For two thousand years a faithful mankind anxiously
awaited God's return to the world, but two thousand years is
a long time to wait for someone, even a God; and so, although
no trace of the body was ever found, He was finally
pronounced officially dead by His sole surviving son and
heir: man. Now the naked pursuit of power is the will of the
world- and of man himself; thus speaks metaphysics in the
West today, if that can be called metaphysics which never
lifts its eyes above the physical world or attempts to go
beyond the practical concerns of everyday life. For it is not
given that we should all be practical men, men of affairs,
wise to the ways of the world and well-versed in the
manipulation of people and events in order to bring about the
fulfillment of our own desires. Some of us, despite "living
in the material world", are dreamers instead; and even insist
upon regarding the material world itself as a dream, though we
do not insist that man's is the mind within which that dream
originated, it being possible that man is not dreamer only
but also the dreamed. And perhaps you, too, are a dreamer?
For I know "I'm not the only one", and it seems unlikely that
a practical man would be found holding in his hands a book
whose main topic of concern is the renaissance of myth from
the dance of a one-legged flutist- and a pop flutist at that.
But even if you are a practical man, a man who removed
this book from its no doubt dusty shelf only through error or
happenstance, you need not hasten to return it to the shelf
unread; it was written especially for you, in the hope that
"someday you'll join us, and the world will live as one".
Surely even a practical man may profit from investing a small
amount of his time in the perusal of an unassuming work that
claims to reveal, in all humility, not only the return of the
prophets (come to minister to the world this time under the
guise of minstrelsy- with songs flung like rainbow sparks
from a fountain of psychedelic fire) but also the return of
that beloved God who first arose in the East, in India: the
dancing, one-legged flutist extraordinaire- Lord Krishna.
That same God who later appeared in the West, in various
other incarnations, as Bacchus and Dionysos- the God of wine
and the God of the Theater, the son of man and the son of
God, the God of a thousand names and "the man of a thousand
voices talking perfectly loud". That God whom the world in
its confusion now calls Satan, but who is truly known, to
those who know Him best- the maenads, by the name an angel
bestowed upon Him: "My sweet Lord".
And yet, you will still ask, why should the comings and
goings of a God, particularly such an apparently frivolous
God- a God of drinkers, actors, musicians, and, above all,
women, be of any interest or concern to a practical man? As
Euripedes made clear in the Bacchae- the tragic myth of
Dionysos and the maenads (the women who, both then and now,
accompany the God into the hills and into prison) practical
men, men of otherwise sound mind, suffer from a most peculiar
madness- they refuse to recognize that the material world
surrounding them rests upon a purely spiritual foundation;
that man and the material world, the world man firmly
believes is the only real world, both exist only through the
will of God- the only real being. When God, accompanied by
His devotees, descends to the material world to reveal the
dream nature of man's reality and the reality, the identity,
of the One who is the Dreamer of both man and nature (to
perform, in other words, that which is called in Hinduism
sanatana dharma) then it is above all the practical man who
fails to perceive that the tomb once again stands empty; and
that once again, shrouded beneath a mortal frame, the Lord of
the living and the dead has returned to this lost fragment of
Paradise: a fragment sundered long ago from the rest of the
Heavenly realm to provide a fitting home for those consumed
with ego- a home where ego itself might be consumed. As in
the cautionary tale of the Bacchae, man's failure to
recognize that today a new God walks among us (that God who
is the eldest among the gods and Father to them all, even
Himself) now threatens to draw down upon man the same divine
retribution that destroyed King Pentheus of Thebes when, on
behalf of the establishment, the state, and all practical
men, he defied the wise counsel of the blind seer Teiresias
and refused to recognize the laughing stranger Dionysos,
"with those long curls flowing down the line of the neck-
inviting desire", as the "son of God born to the virgin,
bringing the counter-gift to bread: wine".
Rather than submit to the mysteries of Dionysos, rather
than pick up the thrysus, wreathe his head with ivy, and
learn to dance, Pentheus chose instead to have Dionysos
arrested, brought before him in chains, and then thrown into
"the state prison" for His crimes against society. Pentheus
thereby drew down upon himself the wrath of the God, a wrath
that ultimately destroyed the hapless king, and in a manner
consistent with the demands not only of divine but also
poetic justice. For the God's crimes against society
consisted mainly in luring the Theban women into the hills to
join in the rituals of His cult, the Bacchanalian rituals
legendary for their highly charged eroticism. As men were not
permitted to participate in the rituals, even as onlookers,
those erotic mysteries naturally aroused the libidinal
curiousity of the men of Thebes, and a desire to spy upon the
maenads in the midst of their sacred debauchery smoldered
even in the coldhearted breast of Pentheus.
Dionysos, whose name in the Mysteries is Eros, fanned
those smoldering embers into an incandescent blaze; and,
convincing Pentheus he must go disguised as a woman if he
would observe the maenads celebrating the Mysteries in their
own lusty fashion, putting the thrysus, the original "Steely
Dan", to good hard use (a "Woody Dan", of course, in those
ancient times, with a pine cone at one end to symbolize the
scrotum- and so that every girl might know, at least on
occasion, what it feels like to have a god by the balls)
Dionysos so bewitched the king with his softly persuasive
tongue that Pentheus, King of Thebes, grandson of the Hero
Kadmos (dragonslayer, founder of Thebes, and grandfather also
to Dionysos) first arrayed himself in the gown of a woman and
then, upon exiting the closet with a long flowing wig perched
prettily atop his head, he demanded that Dionysos parade him
through the main streets of Thebes before the startled eyes
of the populace. Thence the ill-matched pair proceeded to Mt.
Cithaeron so the king might fulfill his desire and spy upon
the maenads engaged in their esoteric rites; and there, on
Mt. Cithaeron, the vengeance of the God achieved its final
consumation: Pentheus was discovered by the enraged maenads,
among them his mother and his aunts, and died in bloody agony
as the barehanded women literally tore the king apart in the
strength of their manic frenzy. Pentheus, too, was a
practical man, a man of good sense, but as Tieresias tried
vainly to warn him, words may "sound like sense, and yet
their sense's unsound".
Although it may very well be true that in this world
only "no sense makes sense", my own words are not meant to
mystify the reader, or to confuse him, for let it be clear
that ultimately we must speak, not of yesterday nor yet of
tomorrow, but of today, of the now, for the song remains ever
the same; and though the setting may have changed
dramatically- the play has not. But the play so far has
lacked an audience; and, lacking the talent myself for even a
walk-on part in the play yet still desiring more somehow than
a "lead role in a cage", this book is written in hopes of at
least emboldening others to join me in the audience. For
perhaps you, too, sometimes:
... get the feeling that the
Story's too damn real and in the
present tense?
Or that everybody's on the stage, and
it seems like
You're the only person sitting in the
audience?
If you do, then:
Welcome back my friends
to the show that never ends.
We're so glad you could attend,
come inside, come inside....
Come inside the show's about to start
guaranteed to blow your head apart.
You gotta' see the show
it's a dynamo.
You gotta' see the show
it's rock'n'roll.
Rest assured you'll get your money's worth-
the greatest show
in heaven, hell, or earth!
What magical feat did these practicioners of psychedelic
minstrelsy perform that made rock'n'roll music the greatest
show on earth?
Not content with that
with our hands behind our back,
we pulled Jesus from a hat
get into that, get into that.
You demand a proof of God in order to believe? Perhaps a
rendition of the Bacchae, or the Passion Play, performed upon
the world stage by the God of Theater Himself, Lord Dionysos,
to the accompaniment of Dionysian music, would be enough to
convince you? But all this has been given to you already; and
with all good people you only turned your head away, sickened
and confused by the bloody spectacle you beheld. How came
that modern performance of ancient myth to render you so
nauseous you could not bear even to glance briefly up at the
stage as the play unfolded- a play which, if it "were not so
monstrous, elements of it would break the heart"? In part it
is because modern man simply does not have the stomach for
ancient tragedy, but even more it is because Nietzsche's
great doubt about you, you higher men, his secret jest and
laughter concerning you, was entirely correct: that when the
Overman came at last, you would call Him Devil. But not even
the wise can remain in ignorance forever, nor continue to
forever mistake the son of man for Satan. Ultimately, even
the ignorance of the wise must yield before that Divine folly
which constitutes the only irrefutable theodicy- a direct
incarnation of the Godhead into the material world, an event
the world anticipated for so long it finally gave up waiting,
convinced that even if, through some unknown miracle, such an
incarnation had in fact occured in the past, it would surely
never occur again.
And so, of course, when it did occur the world was
caught completely off-guard, as it was intended it should be-
for God is always an unexpected guest at the banquet,
arriving at the table late and unlooked for, with His majesty
and splendor well concealed beneath the cloak of a beggar.
For God need not trouble Himself nor be at any pains to
discover how you will treat Him when He stands before you
revealed in that majesty and splendor; He knows you
flatterers of power all too well to doubt the reception He
will receive from you then- "as you lick the boots of death
born out of fear". But you, you good men, you higher men,
have every reason to fear the reception He has planned for
you. Wrapped within the beggar's cloak He came before you
once more to test your hearts, only to discover that after
two thousand years you are still as heartless as ever.
Once again the God who said to you, upon the occasion of
His last visit to this most inhospitable of worlds, "I was
homeless and you refused me shelter; I was in prison and you
refused to visit me", has spent his entire life either
wandering the streets hungry, eating from your garbage cans
to stay alive, or else safely ensconced, with "three hots and
a cot", inside the secure confines of a prison. Once again
the son of man climbed up on your garbage dump and shared
what He found there with those children who could find no
place in your world; for, as he so ably demonstrated in the
past, a hungry man can always find a little bread and fish in
the mountain of rubbish left over by the rich, and perhaps
even a little wine to wash it down with. Nothing has changed:
Oh garbage dump, my garbage dump
why are you called a garbage dump?
You could feed the world with my garbage dump
that sums it up
in one big lump.
And once again, although He did nothing but take His children
up on that garbage dump and tell them this: "That in Love
there is no wrong", you have taken it upon yourselves to
stand in judgment of the son of man, and even your so-called
Christian justice has sentenced Him to death. For over
twenty-five years the son of man has languished in the tomb
you call a prison cell, waiting for that sentence to be
carried out. But the dithyrambic God is above all the God of
Love; thus, before He in turn stands in judgment of you,
"there's still time to change the road you're on". What we
speak of here is, after all, "the apotheosis of Love", and as
Love well knows:
... you were bred for Humanity
and sold to Society one day you'll
wake up
in the Present Day-
A million generations removed from expectations
of being who you really want to be.
And you, you children of God: "Do you believe in the day? Do
you? Believe in the day!" For:
The fading hero has returned to the night- and
fully pregnant with the day wise men
endorse the poet's sight.
But enough, at least the reader will not be able to complain
of being caught off-guard by what comes later, for fair
warning is hereby given that this is no mere book you hold in
your hand- but dynamite.
As heir to the Titans, the Lords of Time, even time cannot
bind Dionysos. He is, as we shall see, the Lord of Boundless
Time. Time itself is nothing more than an effect produced by the
succession of ideas imprinted on our understanding by the
Divine Will ofthis most psychedelic of gods. Once more Dionysos
has broken the bonds of time and manifested himself in the
world of man; now it is our time that has come. The song, indeed,
remaining ever the same, it should therefore come as no
surprise thatonce again, on behalf of the establishment, the state,
and all practical men, the leader of a great people, Richard
Nixon (King Richard, as he was called in his glory days
before he fell from that high estate) chose in the pride and
majesty of his power- that power flowing darkly to the White
House from the Pentagon across the potent black river, to
stand in judgment of the one True Power- the son of man,
declaring Him guilty of crimes against the state and
consigning Him to what is apparently the only place in this
world thought fit for a God to occupy: a jail cell "with a
concrete floor". King Richard, the Lord of the Pentagon, paid
dearly for offending a God. Like Pentheus, King Richard was
publicly humiliated, dethroned, and, metaphorically speaking,
dismembered by the press in the mother of all media feeding
frenzies. And the state Nixon led has paid dearly also. It
too, speaking literally this time, is in the process of being
dismembered, and along the most basic lines imaginable: the
old against the young, man against woman, but especially
along racial lines- a division demonstrated most
dramatically, of course, in the race war now brewing in this
country between the black man and the white man. In America,
as the Jefferson Starship noted, each race has its own
agenda:
Black wants out of the street
Yellow wants the country
Red wants the country back
And white wants out of this world.
Like Pentheus, Richard Nixon never realized it is not
given to the kings of men to stand in judgment of the King of
Kings; never understood either the nature of his offense
against the God or even that it was a God he had offended-
the same God who was ultimately responsible for his downfall.
How can we be sure that downfall came about through divine
retribution? The son of man went to prison for allegedly
ordering His followers to go creepy-crawling at the midnight
hour through the houses of His foes. King Richard was brought
down from his throne for actually giving such orders, orders
that were recorded on tape; thus once again the demands of
both divine and poetic justice have been met- the signature
mark left on the last page of every story ever written by
Dionysos- the God of the Theater. It is too late for King
Richard to repent of his conduct towards the son of man; it
is not too late for America to avoid the fate of its
erstwhile ruler. It is not too late, even now, to pick up the
thrysus, wreathe your head with ivy, and learn to dance- for
"you're never too old to Rock'n'Roll, if you're too young to
die". As Tieresias counseled Pentheus in a vain attempt to
save him from his inevitable fate:
Be not so sure
That force and order rule all-powerful
Over humanity. And be not governed
By one single certainty. That thought is sick,
don't think it's wisdom. There is too much
We do not know. And a new God may well be
A very old law, though yet unwritten
And unnamed. Accept this deity in your state;
Submit to his mysteries: pour your libation
To him- come, wreathe your head....
Among the gods it is Dionysos who stands closest to man,
for alone among the gods He finds His immortality, like man,
in dying only to be born again; thus He always appears before
man concealed behind two masks: masks representing not only
comedy and tragedy, birth and death, the mortal world and the
world of the immortals, but the reunification of all
opposites in the primordial unity dismembered by the God-
that primordial unity which is the God Himself. These two
masks are, in short, a dramatic portrayal of the Tao. Now
Dionysos, the God twice-born, the God who is both man and
woman, both black and white, is born again- once more the
Dreamer walks with open eyes through His own dream. Once
again, however, man has completely failed to recognize the
God beneath the mask of either the whirling, twirling, one-
legged flutist or the terrifying killer "behind blue eyes",
and this ignorance continues despite the fact that under both
these aspects the name and face of the God are well known,
and in the one case notorious, among the "towering, teeming
cities" of men. In defense, however, of the One who seems to
commit His crimes without rhyme or reason, it is only fair to
add that His "dreams/ they aren't as empty", as His
"conscience seems to be". Because man is aware of the God's
presence but not His divinity, that return has until now
spawned only further confusion and discord among a people
already confused and divided; for despite His "thousand
voices", it seems that "nobody ever hears him, or the sounds
he appears to make".
The present work on metaphysics, a re-presentation of
the oldest of all metaphysical systems- the mythological, was
therefore undertaken with the sole desire to reveal the
ancient God beneath the twin masks he wears today: that of
the dancing flutist and the world's most notorious criminal.
Although Nietzsche was no doubt correct when he observed that
"the advocates of a criminal are seldom artist enough to turn
the beautiful terribleness of the deed to the advantage of
the doer", and although, being a mere scholar, I make no such
artistic claims myself, there is, nevertheless, apparent even
to the dim eyes of a scholar, one criminal today fortunate
enough to find his cause championed by a whole host of such
artist advocates, a musical host led by the Piper Himself.
Through a hermeneutical exegesis of the psychedelic
music produced by the Piper and the minstrels accompanying
Him, we will attempt to bring an end to the confusion
surrounding God's return to the world of man: a return which
is destined to bring an end to the age of confusion- the age
of Kali; for although the world as yet remains deaf to the
message concealed within the music, it is only in music, in
rock'n'roll music no less, that the mystery surrounding the
return of God and His devotees to the material world is
revealed. For true to their word this well-travelled band of
strolling minstrels and the Pied Piper who leads them have
returned to the world and delivered a performance for the
ages- a performance which, judging from the almost complete
lack of response demonstrated by the world so far, apparently
still lacks only one key ingredient to make it a complete
success- an audience. As yet the world remains completely
ignorant of what took place before its unbelieving eyes- the
reenactment of The Bacchae, the Passion Play, on the stage of
what is now become a very old globe theater indeed. But since
the entire performance was conceived by one Mind and
performed with one purpose in mind only- to reveal the
reemergence of the Dreamer into the dream, such ignorance is,
by its very nature, soon destined to find a rememdy: a remedy
that is close at hand and easily available to anyone who
desires it. Common wisdom to the contrary, the voice of God
has been far from silent even in our own seemingly
Godforsaken time; instead, as the son of man noted at his
trial, "the music speaks to you every day"; indeed, it has
never spoken louder. Unfortunately, as the son of man also
noted, "you're too deaf, dumb, and blind to even listen to
the music".
And yet, man cannot remain forever ignorant of the
message concealed within rock'n'roll music, the message which
is the music- the return of Dionysos and Dionysian music to
the dissonant world of man. Like the sight of a radiant star
sparkling at the tip of the crescent moon on a late summer's
evening, the glad tidings found in the spirit of this music,
psychedelic music, are meant to be shared; for what man, if
he has good news to share with his neighbors, will choose to
keep that good news to himself? Save for those who have
turned their face from God and completely steeled their heart
against Him, what could be better news for man today than
God's return to the material world that is the dream of God?
Clearly, without that miraculous return the future held no
hope either for man or for those species unfortunate enough
to find themselves sharing the dream with him. Surely there
can be no one left today still naive enough to believe that
science and technology alone are enough to pull man back from
the abyss now opening up at his feet? It is, after all,
science and technology operating alone and unguided by the
love of wisdom that have brought man to the edge of that
abyss.
Most tragic of all in this mortal tragedy is that man,
like the beast he best personifies- the rabid beast, refuses
to go alone into that dark night now looming up before him
but seems determined instead to drag all other living things
into the darkness with him. Man, however, despite his
pretensions to the contrary, is not the only child of God.
Nor is he, despite his ambitions, the present or future heir
to "the good Lord's throne", for that is a throne which never
has nor ever will sit empty. With dualism reaffirmed and man
exposed as a mere pretender to the crown, the great
confusion- so terrible yet so necessary- is ended at last.
And now to the sound of the cock's crow trimphantly heralding
the dawn of a new Age- the Krta Age, the Age of Kali-Durga
draws to a close. And from the ancient cave of night, as the
morning sunlight pours into the grotto, Plato's joyful
laughter rings forth, for now rainbows dance where before
were only shadows.
For just when it seemed certain that man's long dark
night of the soul would be an eternal night with no daybreak
in sight, came the angels of the light, whispering softly to
the world: "here comes the sun, here comes the sun, and I
say/ it's all right". And yes, it does indeed seem "like
years since it's been here". Now the time has come to bring
that long dark night to its dawn by breaking the seals of
mystery and revealing to an astonished mankind the story of
God's return to the world in the form of a dancing flutist:
that form in which He has always chosen to appear before men-
and women, and to reveal as well the other form in which the
Dreamer has chosen to manifest Himself within the dream, that
form which is man's worst nightmare, for it is a reflection
of man- of the rabid beast that "lives inside each and every
one of you"; thereby bringing an end at last to the perhaps
fatal silence with which man has so far chosen to greet that
return. Herein you will therefore find revealed, without
presumption or pretense, the mystery of God so long concealed
from the world, especially from the wise; and although this
author may never find himself fortunate enough to be numbered
among that select company, he remains fully determined,
nevertheless, "to be the last clown to bring the house down".
CHAPTER II
Not from any hidden desire to profane the sacred will
the divine mysteries which for so long concealed the manner
and timing of God's return to the world here be spoken of
openly- and for the first time anywhere; instead, it is
because the seemingly long delayed return of the "son of the
virgin" to the profane world is already an accomplished fact,
known to all beings save the one being most desperately in
need of that knowledge: man. In truth it was only man who
ever deceived himself into believing God was truly dead, as
if the world could possibly have continued to survive even an
instant of time beyond the death of the One who is the
eternal source and soul of that world. The other living
things unfortunate enough to find themselves sharing the
earth with man were never so inclined towards self-deception:
although they share the earth with man- they do not share
man's ego. Now the God whom all other living things
instinctively revere as the Fountain of their existence has
manifested Himself in the world as the son of man so that
even man might finally realize God exists, not only in name
but in deed. Thus the great noon-time is now upon us, the
great noon-time when all shadows will be forever banished,
for the culmination of a star is its highest point- and man's
sun has reached its zenith and will not fall again.
Man, of course, is always the last to know when the God
rises up in mortal form within the material world that is His
dream: the birds of the air and the beasts of the field have
spoken of almost nothing else since that epochal event.
Armoured only in the faith of those who believe in the
miracles of their God and undeterred by the disappointments
of the past, they continue to cling tenaciously to their
belief, an ill-founded one perhaps, that God's dramatic
attempt to demonstrate His existence to man through an encore
performance of ancient myth upon the stage of the modern
world (the revelation of divine mystery by divine being- a
god-given theodicy) will finally succeed in opening even
man's eyes to a vision of the dancing God whose dream is the
world of man. It is their fervent hope, doubtless a forlorn
one, that through the revelation of the spiritual foundation
underlying all material reality- that spiritual foundation
which is the Divine Mind itself- the essential unity of all
nature might at last be revealed; thus bringing an end to
the endless slaughter of beings that are, as the son of man
himself has warned you, "better than you are". And perhaps
just thereby we will ring down the final curtain on the Age
of Kali and usher in a new age- the Krta Age: that age when
the Lion shall come together with the Lamb in an orgy of
Dionysian revelry. For at the end of the Age of Kali, as it
is written in the Visnu Purana:
Unable to support their avaricious kings, the
people of the Kali Age will take refuge in the
chasms between mountains, and they will eat honey,
vegetables, roots, fruits, leaves, and flowers.
They will wear ragged garments made of leaves and
the bark of trees, and they will have too many
children, and they will be forced to bear cold,
wind, sun, and rain.... When Vedic religion and the
dharma of the lawbooks have undergone total
confusion and reversal and the Kali Age is almost
exhausted, then a part of the creator of the entire
universe, of the guru of all that moves and is
still, without beginning, middle, or end, who is
made of Brahma and has the form of the soul, the
blessed Lord Vasudeva- he will become incarnate
here in the universe in the form of Kalkin.... His
power and glory will be unlimited, and he will
destroy all... men of evil acts and thoughts, and
he will re-establish everything, each in its
own dharma. Immediately at the conclusion of the
exhausted Kali Age, the minds of the people will
become pure as flawless crystal, and they will be
awakened as if at the conclusion of a night. And
these men, the residue of mankind, will thus be
transformed, and they will be the seeds of
creatures and will give birth to offspring
conceived at that very time. And these offspring
will follow the ways of the Krta Age.
Now comes upon us the dawning of that new age, the "Age of
Truth"- the Krta Age; for today Lord Kalkin, the master of
the horse, has come down from His celestial hills to survey
the strife torn fields of men, and even now He prepares to
join the fray, riding into battle in order to re-establish
the one true dharma- "Dharma for One"- dharma for all.
In a reprise of His role as the son of man, come back to
reclaim that "Lady we all know", that Lady who rightfully
belongs to Him (and whose name in the Greek is Psyche) Eros
has returned to the world stage in a modern rendition of that
most ancient of tragedies- the Passion Play. Although the
apprehension arising from that return is everywhere apparent,
for even the dullest among us can sense that something
mysterious is afoot in the world today (as if suddenly each one of us
stood alone in the cold, rarefied air found only among icy
peaks- where every penetrating breath bites deep into the
soul) man has nonetheless failed to apprehend the play's true
import: that in the music accompanying the play, that music
which is the play, stands revealed what the world's greatest
heroes have searched for in vain- the way that leads out of
the material world. The pathway home that begins at the foot
of the rainbow bridge and leads even to the snowy peaks of
the Magic Mountain itself, for the gates which forever barred
the way to those sacred peaks are now fallen at last. Nor was
it man who rent those gates asunder, for those gates were
divinely forged to resist man's most titanic efforts;
instead, precisely as the seer foretold, when the time was
ripe those gates were shattered effortlessly, from the other
side, by the wild piping of the one-legged flutist, and now
the bent and twisted wreckage of those gates lies scattered
in pieces on the ground. And perhaps on a lonely beach at
twilight by a western sea, hearing the "seagull's call", a
longing has arisen in your heart also to join that sacred
procession on its journey into the past behind the rainbow;
to follow along with that "slow marching band, and take
pleasure in the passsing/ of all we've shared through
yesterdays- in sorrows neverlasting"?
Man's failure to understand the divine performance
played out in front of him on the world stage is easily
understood, as soon as it is remembered that man remains,
even now, completely ignorant of that performance (and of the
reprisal awaiting those who are still ignorant at the end of
the show) though the entire play was staged strictly for
man's benefit, it being man who stands uniquely in need of
the knowledge the Director specifically intended to impart
through that repeat performance of the Passion Play (a
performance carefully tailored to suit the fashion of the
times) namely, the knowledge that God lives, for no matter
how often He dies, God is always born again- as the trueborn
son of man. Now that knowledge is returned to man, if only
man can tune in to the music, because today, "while the choir
softly sing":
The purple piper plays his tune...
For the court of the crimson king.
Only the certain knowledge of God's inevitable recurrence,
knowledge born of the myths given to man by the gods in the
very beginning of things and now miraculously returned to him
by the music of the Piper, can still provide man with a
future that holds a destiny worthy of this once great spirit
called man. Certain it is that man will never reach his final
destination without that guiding star, for only with the
living God is it still possible to sail into unknown seas.
To the philosopher, therefore, upon venturing forth into
the world today in search of wisdom, and of a possible future
destiny for man amidst new and uncharted waters, the most
ominous portent of the storm clouds now brewing darkly above
man's suddenly narrowed horizon is that modern man,
especially the white man, has no God; thus he has no myths to
teach him how to live and how to love, or even how to die
(i.e., how to die well) and without such knowledge man's
dreams have vanished along with his God. To conduct himself
properly in the world, and to exit from it in the same
fashion- impeccably, a man must understand both the purpose
for which the material world exists and the purpose behind
his own existence within that world, and to know these things
is what the world today claims is above all impossible to
know, for such wisdom can come only from those same god-given
myths, and man today believes neither in gods nor in myths.
But without that divinely inspired wisdom, what use remains
in any of the knowledge man takes such great pride in,
including his much vaunted scientific knowledge? The wisdom
man requires today can only be acquired from:
... traditions we have inherited
from our fathers, myths coeval with time
[that] No argument can spoil no subtlety
From even the most ingenious brains.
Lacking the mythological foundation which would, in a
healthy culture, provide that wisdom, the dream of man has
today been transformed into a nightmare. Surely there can be
no one left today, even within the once well-sheltered
groves of academia, who would care to boast that man has
reached a point in his moral evolution where he no longer
requires a God and the myths which bring that God to life-
that God who brings the myths to life through the mythopoeic
power of His music? If so naive a soul still lingers within
those groves, let him but step forth to survey the ruins in
which the world outside has been laid and contemplate, if
only for a moment, man's responsibility for those ruins, and
even so naive a soul must finally confess there can be no
graver threat to the world's future than a race of white-
skinned techno-barbarians wielding the thunderbolt of the
ancient gods, yet without a God in their heart to teach them
the proper use of that power. A race of men whose vision of
the world has grown so dim from looking at the world without,
at the same time, ever quite being able to see it (because
they have never learned to look within) that centuries have
passed since last they realized that the world around them is
a myth animated at all times by the spirit, the spirit of
music- Dionysian music.
In despair over the mysterious disappearance and
presumed death of his God, man's heart has grown cold, and
the spirit, like the light, has disappeared from his eyes.
What remains, finally, to be done with such men? As that
maenadic soul George Harrison once urged, if "in their eyes
there's something lacking/ what they need's a damn good
whacking!" With no God to provide purpose or meaning to his
life, with no myths to justify his grim existence, man- the
incarnation of the will to power in a world which is itself
nothing but the will to power given material form, now
threatens to bring life's long concert to a most premature
climax: a climax that will satisfy no one. Yet this is a
concert that began over three billion years before man joined
in: it will not be man who brings it to an end. Nor will the
band now playing, that "band beyond description... Jehovah's
favorite choir", be easily driven from the stage, for that
sacred band has but one purpose in life- "to kick out the
jams".
Perhaps, then, there might still be a chance, "if the
roadies don't mind/ and if the union don't mind", that "we
can leave it all behind", as we dance our way through time
and "let the band play/ just one more song"? A song that
would at last reveal to man the profound harmony woven into
and through the dissonance which lies at the surface of the
music, the "sweet dissonance" which keeps the music from
dying because it always brings the melody back on a new and
unexpected note. Today, however, it seems "the tune ends too
soon for us all". But what else, in the wake of the
unexpected and untimely death of his Composer, was to be
expected from this half-finished composition called man,
other than the shattered confusion he now displays in all his
movements? Now for many "years we've been on our own/ and
moss grows fat" even "on a rolling stone/ but that's not how
it used to be"; for "when the jester sang for the king and
queen/ in a coat he borrowed from James Dean", he warned you,
in a voice that came from the heart of the world:
Lose your dreams and you
will lose your mind
Ain't life unkind?
Although man has pondered the possibility of God's death
since Sophocles, and has been sure of it since Nietzsche, and
although that event, once so distant from man, is now spoken
of even by the women in the marketplace, there still remains
one question we should like to pose to a world which is now
as certain that God cannot exist as previously it was certain
that He must, namely: Can a God truly die? Or doesn't the
death of a God necessarily imply His miraculous rebirth and
triumphant return? And perhaps some life still remains in the
old myths left over from man's childhood? For:
When the white eagle of the North
is flying overhead
and the reds, browns, and golds of Autumn
lie in the gutter
dead,
remember then the summer bird
with wings of fire flaming
come to witness spring's new hope
born in the leaves' decay.
As new life must come from death
love will come at leisure.
Love of love, love of life, and giving
without measure
gives in return a wondrous yearn
of a promise- almost seen.
Live hand in hand
and together we'll stand
on the threshold of a dream.
Indeed, though radical disagreements concerning the
origin and significance of myths in mythopoeic cultures are
the rule between modern scholars (and the busy humming of
polite, academic discord the main fruit thereof) the myths
themselves, as Nietzsche revealed in the Birth of Tragedy
(wherein he spoke, not in the wavering voice of a mere
scholar but with the certainty of an inspired Dionysian
priest) are born of the "same impulse which calls art into
being, as the complement and consumation of existence,
seducing one to a continuance of life...". Thus the myths
served to shield man, not only against the oftimes grim
reality of his existence, but also against the terrible
shadow cast over even life's sunniest moments by the "hateful
darkness" waiting inevitably at the end of that existence.
The sharply contrasting theories regarding the genesis of
myth that are espoused by modern scholars, however, marry
themselves to only one legitimate conclusion: the modern
world has no clear understanding of the role played by myth
in a mythopoeic world. Myth no longer holds any meaning for
man, first of all because man has turned his back on the
gods, and can therefore neither create new myths nor even
understand the ones already in his possession, for even the
most perceptive of modern scholars remain scholars only-
never devotees; thus they either take the myths too
seriously, or else not seriously enough, and never do they
simply believe in the myths or the miracles performed
therein; and certainly even the most astute among them never
expected to see those myths brought back to life before their
eyes by the mythopoeic power of the living God.
On a more mundane level, the myths have failed of their
former influence because today the rising level of physical
comfort man has achieved through science has allowed him also
to achieve a contented, cowlike existence in which he no
longer appears to require the metaphysical comfort once
provided by myth. Yet what if God did not design the material
world with the comfort of man in mind? Never intended for man
to live a life of unalloyed ease in the "lap of luxury"? What
sort of response should we then be prepared to expect from
such a God, a mythopoeic God, in answer to man's increasing
level of physical comfort and material success- and the
concomitant degeneration of his spirit? In Goethe's Faust,
that last echo of Renaissance wisdom and perhaps Europe's
last great mythopoeic work, we have the clear and unequivocal
answer to that question, an answer supplied by God Himself
during the Prologue in Heaven- before the play has even
properly begun:
Man's efforts sink below their proper level
and since he seeks for unconditioned ease,
I send this fellow who must goad and tease
and toil to serve creation though a devil.
Man prospers best under the most adverse conditions;
thus whenever his material success threatens to seduce him
into a life of repose and contentment- the one life most
calculated to bring about his spiritual downfall, God,
"with most awful ease", sends the Devil (or perhaps in our
own time it is God Himself who appears before man as
Mephistopheles?) to rouse man from his peaceful slumber with
a "damn good whacking"! That is a mythopoeic God! Today the
justification of life through divine myth has been subsumed
under the scientific paradigm: what Nietzsche called the
Socratic-scientific world-view. Today, so the
inherently optimistic spirit of this naive world-view makes
bold enough to claim, the problematic nature of man's
existence in the material world has been tamed by man's
ability to dominate nature through the power of his
technology: through science man has become master over the
material world. Because of that domination, man no longer
requires an explanation of the world through myth; thus the
myths have vanished into the twilight mists from which they
came. And yet, what if science should one day reach its
limits and discover mystery waiting there? Should discover,
in other words, that everything is not knowable? That life
remains problematic; and that, despite the physical comfort
provided by science and technology, man still requires
metaphysical comfort? Perhaps man does not, after all, live
by bread alone?
Precisely these questions were first posed over a
century ago by Nietzsche, once again in the Birth of Tragedy,
a seminal work in which Nietzsche set out to uncover the
origin of tragic myth in ancient Greece, and to discover the
reason for its decline in the face of the rising Socratic-
scientific world-view which eventually supplanted it as the
ruling intellectual paradigm in the Western world.
Essentially, these questions arise from the conundrum which
has always haunted science, a conundrum which, though it has
long been ignored on account of the undeniable utility of
scientific knowledge, nonetheless refuses to go away because
it is not a problem in science, a problem that could be
resolved, at least in theory, by a suitable increase in
scientific knowledge; instead, it is the problem of
scientific knowledge itself- the question of the ultimate
worth and validity of that knowledge. For although science
has approached the veil of Maya (the phenomenal world) before
that veil, as the idealist philosophies of Kant,
Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche predicted, the most powerful and
the most delicate instruments of science alike have been
revealed as equally helpless.
As Bishop Berkeley demonstrated before philosophy
followed David Hume down the dead end street of materialism
(a dead end street because it is, ultimately, only a street
in the abstract; thus it is a street which leads nowhere) the
material world exists only within the mind; thus nature is,
in essence, an idea. Nor is it solely within the mind of man
that this idea finds its existence: before it is perceived by
man, the idea we call the material world is first conceived
in the mind of God; only then is it presented to man's
understanding by an act of Divine Will. With the admission,
forced from science by Kant, that science can perceive the
object only from a relative perspective- the perspective of
the subject (only the thing-for-itself but never the thing-
in-itself) the admissison, in other words, that science can
perceive only the shell but never the core of reality- that
core which conceals within it the true seeds of wisdom- the
credibility of the scientific paradigm itself begins to
crumble. As Nietzsche pointed out at the end of the 19th
century: "It is perhaps just now dawning on five or six minds
in Europe that physics, too, is only an exegesis of the text,
not the text itself". Today the shallowness of the scientific
world-view, the realization that science is an exegesis of
the world but not a hermeneutical exegesis, has dawned on far
more than "five or six minds"; perhaps it has even dawned on
science itself?
Nietzsche predicted that the breakdown of the scientific
world-view would coincide with the return of the Dionysian
spirit manifesting itself in the world as music, and the
renaissance of myth, of tragic myth, from the spirit of that
music. And what divinely ironic hand was it that, swanlike,
stretched down one day from an ebon sky to seduce the man
who would eventually become famous for proclaiming the death of
God into announcing, even beforehand, God's triumphant
return? And could all this be true? Is it possible we stand
once again on the threshold of a mythic age, witnesses to the
dawn of a divine era? Obviously, if we wish to discover
whether God plays a role upon the world stage in our own
time, we must first discover what type of role He is supposed
to have played upon that stage in the past. Such knowledge
can come, of course, only from the myths themselves, for only
in myth is the world revealed as a theater for the dramatic
deeds of a Thespian God.
Knowledge of the myths will therefore do more than
provide us with an insight into how it was that a mythopoeic
world-view arose in Greece to affirm life in the face of
despair (by finding joy rather than grief in the waiting
abyss) or how that mythopoeic world-view was finally
shattered by the rising poewr of the Socratic-scientific
world-view (which sought to accomplish that same task by
turning away from the abyss, refusing to glance even briefly
into those profound depths- a world-view which is therefore
thrown into confusion and threatened with complete collapse
at all turns, for wherever it turns, that same abyss appears
always at its feet) it will also enable us to discover
whether myth has indeed managed to reemerge from the
"hateful darkness" at the end of the scientific era, a
reemergencemade possible only through the mythopoeic power
of Dionysianmusic and signalled precisely by the explosive
eruption of that music onto the world scene, as the musical
chorus thatalways accompanies the Passion Play: a play that can be
performed only by the God of the Theater- Lord Dionysos.
Perhaps all along, then, in order to live in harmony with the
living God, that God who is dead only to man, man had only to
follow the sage advice rendered unto Socrates by his personal
daimon: that if a man would be reconciled with the gods, he
must first of all "practice music". Perhaps since Socrates
the West has simply been suffering from the sickness unto
death- the long dark night of the soul? But perhaps we owe
science a rooster? Perhaps science has even cured us of our
atheism? And now the break of day is at hand? For:
The dawn creation of the Kings
has begun, Soft Venus lonely maiden brings
the ageless one.
Do you believe in the day?
Do you believe in the day?
Believe in the day!
The tension between science and mythology, the
materialist and the idealist, the practical man and the
dreamer, the doer and the thinker, a tension which has often
flared into outright hostility, has not lessened any in the
present day; for proof of which we defer to the poet:
... The doer and the
thinker: no allowance for the
other- as the failing light
illuminates the mercenary's creed.
Now that the banquet years have come to an end for us all, it
may seem that nothing is revealed in the dying light which
yet lingers over the scene save the jest of a "Savage God"- a
world of will to power inhabited by beings of much the same
persuasion, but there is still time, if a body is swift and
the spirit willing, to catch the last act of a drama which
points the way to a will more powerful still than the will to
power. For the will to power is the will of man, and of
nature which is man's reflection, but the will that now
stands revealed on the world stage is the will that fashioned
a world from the will to power to serve as a mirror upon
whose surface man might behold himself: and behind which,
assuming Berkeley was right and Hume wrong, i.e., assuming
man's vision is indeed keen enough to penetrate that
apparently impenetrable surface, he might find the love that
fashioned the material world as an image of man's soul and
set it in time and space as a mirror for man- a mirror upon
which man might perceive his own self-will, his will to
power, his ego, with all possible clarity, and so come to
reject it- for the material world is where ego goes to die.
Thus the pathway home would also stand revealed to man-
the "stairway to heaven" which climbs over the rainbow and
culminates at last among the towers and columns of that
fabled hall "where the real mountain men are kings and the
sound of that piper/ counts for everything".
Do not hesitate too long, however, before buying your
ticket and finding a place in the audience, for the curtain
is about to rise on the final act of the Passion Play,
revealing:
The home fire burning: the kettle
almost boiling- but the master of
the house is far away. The horses
stamping- their warm breath clouding
in the sharp and frosty morning of
the day. And the poet lifts his
pen. While the soldier sheathes his
sword.
But though the "master of the house" may be far away, where
the horses are, there will the horsemen be also, and if the
horsemen have come, then the one beneath whose banner they
ride- the master of the horse, Lord Kalkin, approaches also.
And when he departs once more from this world of sorrows,
there will be nothing left worth sorrowing over:
So! Come all ye young men who are
building castles! Kindly state the
time of the year and join your voices in
a hellish chorus. Mark the precise
nature of your fear. See! The
summer lightning casts its bolts
upon you and the hour of judgment
draweth near. Would you be/ the
fool stood in his suit of armour or/
the wiser man who rushes clear?
It was not, ultimately, to confuse man that music
entered the world and gave birth to myth, but instead to
provide man with a talisman designed to guide him safely
through the labyrinth of the material world and prevent his
being lost forever in that "limbo large and broad... the
Paradise of fools". Divinely crafted phylacteries, the myths
are intended by their Maker to remind man that his true home
lies beyond the borders of this world, beyond all familiar
seas, in a world that is man's birthright as the beloved
child of God but which he can attain only through the
rejection of the ego- the principium individuationis. It was,
of course, precisely with the annihilation of man's ego in
mind that God thrust man into the material world; for, as it
is written in the Theologia Germanica: "Nothing burns in Hell
save self-will"- the ego itself. And at the evening hour when
the spirit of man grows weary at last of its long reign
in Hell, all that we lost, all that was most real to us,
reappears once more in the form of Dionysian music, as a
guiding star lighting the way for man's return across the
threshold of dreams to the fountain in the Garden of the
Lord- "my sweet Lord".
As Krishna, Schopenhauer, and the son of man made
abundantly clear, both in thought and in practice, if we
desire to return to the primordial will from which we came,
we must first learn to contemplate the world without desire,
without the attachments formed by ego or the will; for only
through that self-renunciation will man be able to
contemplate, not his own will in the mirror we call the
material world, but the Divine Will concealed behind the
mirror and revealed solely in the play of light at the heart
of the world. For although the material world is a reflection
of our own spirit, a shadow of the Divine Idea as we are a
shadow of the Divine Mind, the pathway home lies revealed
to us in the play of light between water and sun, for in the
rainbow we catch a glimpse of spirit's true colors-
psychedelic colors. And from beyond rainbow's end, sliding
merrily down the bannister of the Stairway from Heaven,
arrives the Piper, "come down from the sky to cry you a
song", with flute in hand and tongue-in-cheek, ready to
deliver, yet one more time, an encore performance of the
Passion Play.
CHAPTER III
Only through the explosive power of myth mixed with
music will we finally succeed in toppling the scientific
world-view that has dominated the intellectual landscape
since the time of Socrates; thus restoring to its former
prominence the mythological world-view, a world-view born of
music. Nor should it come as any surprise that music alone
holds the key which can unlock the secrets of myth, and thus
of life itself; for the profound union between music and the
will (or the will to power as it is more commonly referred to
since Nietzsche) was revealed by Schopenhauer in the World as
Will and Representation, while the intimate relationship
between myth and music was revealed by Nietzsche in the Birth
of Tragedy, originally subtitled Out of the Spirit of Music.
To summarize the complex arguments of these two philosophers
as briefly as possible, the will to power is indeed the will
of the world, but because in the material world "you can't
always get what you want", the will to power is doomed to
constant frustration: from that frustration is born music-
tragic music, what we call the blues. Only this music,
Dionysian music, music born of the broken heart and the
shattered dream, can once again breathe new life into myth's
now long faded soul, can stitch together again the long
sundered fragments of ancient myth, reanimating them with the
same dawn bright colors they wore in the mystic morning of
the world when the gods first hurled them down from the
heavens to an astonished and still half-bestial mankind.
Schopenhauer it was who first identified the will with
music: Schopenhauer who first demonstrated that where all
other forms of art (sculpture, painting, literature, etc.-
the Apollinian arts, as Nietzsche later defined them)
endeavor merely to produce a copy of the world (the
phenomenon) music generates from within itself a new and
unique world in the mind of each listener; for music is, like
the phenomenal world, an echo of the primordial will. Thus
Apollinian art stops at the phenomena and affirms the
illusion of ego's individual existence amidst a sea of
constant flux, while music, defined by Nietzsche as the
uniquely Dionysian art, transcends the phenomena and shatters
the illusion of ego's individuality, allowing it to merge
once more with that eternally dancing sea. When music no
longer generates its own reality, a reality born from the
melody itself, but seeks only to imitate what is already
given in the world, then it leaps no longer to the liberating
beat of the Dionysian drums and becomes mere tone painting
instead, i.e., Apollinian music- the music of Tin Pan Alley
and Hollywood: the shadow of a shadow. As Nietzsche himself
commented when he united his own views with those of
Schopenhauer:
In contrast to all those who are intent on deriving
the arts from one exclusive principle, as the
necessary vital source of every work of art, I
shall keep my eyes fixed on the two worlds of art
differing in their intrinsic essence and in their
highest aims. I see Apollo as the transfiguring
genius of the principium individuationis through
which alone the redemption in illusion is truly to
be obtained; while by the mystical triumphant cry
of Dionysus the spell of individuation is broken,
and the way lies open to the Mothers of Being, to
the innermost heart of things. This extraordinary
contrast, which stretches like a yawning gulf
between plastic art as the Apollinian, and music as
the Dionysian art has revealed itself to only one
of the great thinkers, to such an extent that, even
without this clue to the symbolism of the Hellenic
divinities, he conceded to music a character and
origin different from all the other arts, because,
unlike them, it is not a copy of the phenomenon,
but an immediate copy of the will itself, and
therefore complements everything physical in the
world and every phenomenon by representing what is
metaphysical, the thing in itself.
Despite its well-deserved reputation as a classic, and
despite having served as a harbinger and partial template for
several of the leading 20th century theories on myth, a
cursory examination of the literature on mythology reveals
that the Birth of Tragedy does not, in general, appear to
have commanded the scholarly attention its unique insights
into the origin of tragic drama from sacred ritual would seem
to merit, even from those scholars who have used the
foundation laid down by Nietzsche as the basis for the
construction of their own theories on myth, a disparate group
including such world renowned scholars as Freud, Jung,
Kereny, Levi-Strauss, and Campbell, to name only a few of the
more prominent examples. This paradox can only be explained
by the fact that these scholars oftentimes seem to consider
the Birth of Tragedy itself as sacred knowledge: accessible
to themselves alone- the high priests in the field of myth,
and revealed to the profane masses only in diluted portions,
like a strong wine that must be mixed with water before being
served. The apparent lack of attention devoted to Nietzsche
might strike the reader well versed in mythology as being
especially curious in light of the difficulty modern scholars
have experienced in attempting to construct a comprehensive
and generally accepted theory concerning myth. For fear of an
embarrassing anthropological refutation, there are few
scholars today who would care to put forth a comprehensive
and unambigous theory regarding the mysterious origin,
unknown significance, and shocking destiny of myth. Nietzsche
had no such fear, and as a result there runs through his text
an inexhaustible vein of theoretical and meta-theoretical
insight into the divine nature of myth and the divine myth of
nature- and into the tragic music which inevitably
accompanies both. Nietzsche himself, a man whose work on
mythology "left a generation of scholars toiling in its
wake", even referred to the Birth of Tragedy itself as music,
for it was, above all:
... a book for initiates, "music" for those
dedicated to music, those who are closely related
to begin with on the basis of common and rare
aesthetic experiences, "music" meant as a sign of
recognition for close relatives in artibus- an
arrogant and rhapsodic book that sought to exclude
right from the beginning the profanum vulgus of
"the educated" even more than the mass of "folk".
Still, the effect of the book proved and proves
that it had a knack for seeking out fellow
rhapsodizers and for luring them onto new secret
paths and dancing places. What found expression
here was... a strange voice, the disciple of a
still "unknown God".... What spoke here... was
something like a mystical, almost maenadic soul
that stammered with difficulty... almost undecided
whether it should communicate or conceal itself. It
should have sung, this "new soul"- and not spoken!
The neglect shown by modern scholars towards Nietzsche's
work on mythology is, of course, more apparent than real; and
Campbell for one has stated explicitly that "the justness of
his insight has since been demonstrated by the findings of a
century of archeological research into fields of which not
even the main outlines had appeared in his day". Those
thinkers who are drawn to Nietzsche tend, however, like
Nietzsche himself, to be playful spirits; they, too, often
seem to echo his confusion over whether they should reveal or
conceal sacred knowledge, in this case the sacred knowledge
obtained from The Birth of Tragedy itself. On the whole,
these scholars prefer to indicate the derivation of their
theories from Nietzsche with clever allusions rather than
carefully documented quotations. Michael Grant's oblique
reference to Nietzsche's concept of the image sparks of lyric
poetry is an excellent example of this tendency; Levi-
Strauss's employment of the concept of the "raw and the
cooked" as an extended metaphor for the contrast between the
Dionysian and the Apollinian is another, and still more may
crop up even in the course of my own comments on myth. But we
do not wish to wander forever through the shadow world of
theory. We will take the theoretical and meta-theoretical
insights derived from Nietzsche's panegyric to Dionysos and
apply it to the renaissance of mythopoeic activity in our own
time- the psychedelic music composed by some of the world's
most famous rock'n'roll bands; thus revealing to the world
the true identity of the living God.
To gaze intoxicated into the eyes of that God may cause
madness, surely it is what finally drove Nietzsche insane;
yet it is this divinely inspired madness which may, in the
end, prove the salvation of man, particularly the white man.
Perhaps it is too long since the white man lost himself in
divine mania? Too long since last he fell under the sway of
Dionysos the Liberator and joined in the dancing throng of
dark-skinned revelers roaring past? How else explain the
dramatic effects of rock music- its uncanny power, a power
arising from the beat of the music itself, to seduce the
children of the West into abandoning themselves to the
rhythms of the dance in Dionysian ecstacy, unless concealed
deep within the soul of the white man there lingered still a
profound need to lose himself once more in the rhythmic waves
of Dionysian music? It was this same deep-rooted need that
made possible the rebirth in our own time of the sacred
chorus, that sacred chorus whose ecstatic vision of the God
of tragedy in turn made possible the renaissance of myth from
the dance of that God. And who forms the chorus today? Those
who have always formed it: those maenadic spirits who
perceive the play and respond to it with songs from the
sacred wood. Nor need we spend our time poring over ancient
texts in order to understand the purpose of the chorus- its
role in the Passion Play- for today we have available to us
the One who brought that chorus into being, "the first piper
who calls the sweet tune". In his own words:
Let me bring you songs from the wood:
To make you feel much better than you
could know-
Dust you down from tip to toe-
Show you how the garden grows-
Hold you steady as you go-
Join the chorus if you can
It'll make of you an honest man.
Let me bring you love from the field:
Poppies red and roses filled with
summer rain
To heal the wound and still the pain
That threatens again and again
As you drag down every lover's lane.
Life's long celebration's here.
I'll toast you all in penny cheer.
Let me bring you all things refined:
Galliards and Lute songs served in chill-
ing ale.
Greetings well-met fellow, hail!
I am the wind to fill your sail.
I am the cross to take your nail:
A singer of these ageless times-
With kitchen prose and gutter rhymes.
And now that the music has well and truly begun:
Those who dance, must start to dance
and those who don't will sway
in time to this- our merry tune
that we play for you today.
So come all ye rolling minstrels and
together we will try
to rouse the spirits of the earth
and move the rolling sky.
The magic touch of the music itself is, of course,
crucial to the influence exerted by rock'n'roll upon the
human psyche. As we move through the tangled web of
psychedelic rock as lyric poetry, a rather pale shadow of its
real self as music, one thing above all must never be
forgotten: it is music which is mother to the myths, for only
music can bring the myths to life. To understand the meaning
behind the words it is not enough simply to read the lyrics;
instead, you must also listen to the music; even better, you
must dance to the music: "and never mind the words, just hum
along- and keep on going". As Nietzsche commented regarding
the relationship between music and the lyric poetry which
accompanies it:
... image and concept, under the influence of a
truly corresponding music, acquire a higher
significance. Dionysian art therefore is wont to
excercise two kinds of influences on the Apollinian
art faculty: music incites to the symbolic
intuition of Dionysian universality, and music
allows the symbolic image to emerge in its highest
significance. From these facts... I infer the
capacity of music to give birth to myth... and
particularly the tragic myth: the myth which
expresses Dionysian knowledge in symbols. In the
phenomenon of the lyrist... music strives to
express its nature in Apollinian images. If now we
reflect that music at its highest stage must seek
to attain also to its highest objectification in
image, we must deem it possible that it also knows
how to find the symbolic expression for its unique
Dionysian wisdom; and where shall we seek for this
expression if not in tragedy, and, in general, in
the conception of the tragic? ... Apollo overcomes
the suffering of the individual by the radiant
glorification of the eternity of the phenomenon....
In Dionysian art and its tragic symbolism the same
nature cries to us with its true undissembled
voice: "Be as I am! Amid the ceaseless flux of
phenomena I am the eternally creative primordial
mother, eternally impelling to existence, eternally
finding satisfaction in this change of phenomena.
Something mysterious happened to Western culture when
the children of the white man heard the music of their
African brother for the first time and realized at last what
it meant to be free- what it meant to leap up from their
seats and dance in the aisles, and this mysterious something
was fulfilled when the children of the white man began to use
psychedelic drugs and learned to make Dionysian music of
their own: there is a bond between soul music and psychedelic
music that runs much deeper than etymology. Let there be no
mistake here, and I say this especially to the children of
the white man, many of whom have learned to hate their
brother and who today form the youthful core of the white
supremacist movement: why do you hate the black man and say
how bad he is? Remember instead the words written by the man
the more literate among you call the prophet of your
movement:
A: I do not like him.
B: Why not?
A: He is better than I am.
Has anyone ever spoken so?
And remember also that it was dark-skinned Krishna, the
holder of the magic flute, who first revealed the path of
wisdom to Arjuna (or "white boy", to say it in the ancient
tongue of the Aryans) and grant the black man the respect an
elder brother is due; for it is impossible to believe the
white man would ever have regained the ability to create
Dionysian music on his own, without the example set for him
by his brother. And why?- Because the white man no longer
suffered enough from life to create Dionysian music: for
Dionysian music is born from the blues, and you've "got to
pay your dues if you wanna' sing the blues/ and you know it
don't come easy".
The white man had it too easy to sing the blues because
for centuries he pushed as much of life's hardship and
suffering as he could onto the shoulders of his African
brother. But the tragic wisdom, the Dionysian wisdom,
instilled by that suffering enabled the black man to present
the world with the greatest gift possible- Dionysian music, a
cultural achievement heretofore attained in its highest form
only by the Greeks, music filled with such passionate force
its triumphant chords eventually resounded even within the
lofty halls of Olympos itself, catching the ear of Dionysos,
the guardian at the door, and causing the son of Chthonian
Zeus to ferry back once more across the dark waters to this
world of the dammned- to our world, the world that is both
His mother and His lover, the world of which He is the
Father. The world owes much to the children of Africa; for it
is the children of Mother Africa who have restored to the
world its very soul. Finally, Arjuna, before you initiate a
race war with the black man, a war you are destined to lose
because, despite having every possible material advantage on
your side, Karmic justice itself stands against you, you
should consider carefully the following question: Is it truly
your ambition to engage in open warfare with the black man to
decide who will become master over America? If so, you have
found a most worthy opponent. I will, I trust, be forgiven if
I take this opportunity to express my profound doubt that,
when the crunch comes, you will prove equally worthy?
Aside from the Dionysian power of the beat, a power
inherent in rock music, one other factor remains crucial in
explaining its ability to seduce the children of the West
away from the music of their fathers, away from the music of
Tin Pan Alley and Hollywood. In its revelation of the
essentially tragic nature of man's existence in the material
world, these children encountered something they had never
experienced before, something strange and disturbing and yet,
at the same time, possessed also of a tremendous liberating
power: the truth. Under the influence of Dionysian music, and
Dionysian drugs, the veil of illusion was stripped away and
for the first time the children of the white man came face to
face with the undeniable reality regarding their own
priveleged position in this world: that it was built on a
foundation of suffering- the blood, sweat, and tears of an
exploited third world, including those minority populations
conceded only an artificially created and maintained third
world status within the United States itself, a status
dependent purely upon skin color.
As Nietzsche remarked when comparing Apollinian music to
Dionysian music (Nietzsche, who never had the good fortune to
actually hear Dionysian music and yet who understood it
better than those who have grown up with it) what could "the
psalmodizing artist of Apollo, with his phantom harp sound...
mean in the face of this daemonic folk-song! The muses of the
arts of 'illusion' paled before an art that in its
intoxication spoke the truth". What meaning could the music
of Tin Pan Alley hold for the world after the world had been
set ablaze by the thunderbolt of Bob Dylan's music? But
perhaps it was Chuck Berry who provided the best example of
the contrast between Apollinian and Dionysian music- in the
opening bars to Roll Over Beethoven, where the still romantic
tones of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony are followed
immediately by the jarring entrance of a vibrant lead guitar?
Chuck, playing it the way it feels, not the way it's written, and
shouting out, for all the world to hear: "Roll over
Beethoven, dig to these rhythm and blues!"
Ours, of course, is hardly the first generation in the
history of the world to witness a confrontation between these
two opposing artistic impulses- the Apollinian and the
Dionysian. The same conflict also erupted thousands of years
ago in India, when the Aryans first invaded the land of the
Dravidians, and again in ancient Greece, when the descendants
of those same Aryan tribes, having wandered westward, first
entered that sacred penninsula. The memory of that latter
confrontation lingers still in the myth which tells of the
legendary contest between Apollo- the master of the lyre,
playing the smooth, show biz tunes of Tin Pan Alley, and the
satyr god Pan- the mad Piper, playing the daemonic folk-rock
that Nietzsche forever emblazoned with the mantle of the
Dionysian.
As Ovid tells the tale, Pan was reclining in the shade
of the trees that skirt the slopes of Mt. Tmolus, whiling
away the lazy afternoon hours in his wonted manner, playing
his pipes for the nymphs and punctuating that performance
with the occasional ribald gesture- much to the amusement of
the nymphs, who laughed with delight at his obscene antics.
In the midst of this jovial mood, he chanced to criticize the
music of Apollo, commenting disdainfully that the tones
Apollo produced upon the lyre sounded forced and artificial
in comparison to the swiftly flowing melodies that seemed to
pour from the pipes as if of their own accord. Pan's careless
remark was overheard, unfortunately, by Apollo himself, never
one to take an insult lightly, no matter how slight, or to
let it go unpunished- personality traits shared by seemingly
every god (and goddess) of the Greek Pantheon; nor was it
long before a contest was arranged to decide which of these
two divine musicians would wear the victory wreath, and
whether that wreath would be of laurel- or ivy.
Tmolus, the god of the mountain, agreed to act as judge
in the contest, but the impartiality of his judgment in this
matter is highly suspect, for "the elderly judge" represented
the classical taste of the older generation, that generation
which looked with favor upon the illusory serenity of the
Olympians and turned away in horror from the tragic reality
represented by Dionysos, and presented by Dionysos upon the
stage of both the theater and the world. It should therefore
come as no surprise that Tmolus chose to place the laurel
wreath upon the brow of Apollo, declaring him the victor in
this original battle of the virtuosos, if hardly of the
virtous. But Tmolus was not the contest's only judge:
although the myth grants him no official recognition, the
ubiquitous King Midas also happened to make the scene; nor
could the bold but foolhardy King refrain from pronouncing
his own verdict, even in the face of Apollo himself. Midas, a
friend to Dionysos, "had once been instructed in the Bacchic
mysteries by Orpheus"; and, representing therefore the more
exotic taste of the younger generation, that generation which
felt itself drawn to the mysterious God from the East- lured
on by the swirling melodies of the dancing, goat-legged
flutist, Midas naturally chose Pan as champion, thereby
snatching the victory from Apollo's grasp. For while the gods
favored the music of Apollo, it was Pan's music that touched
the heart and soul of man. And what does it matter if Apollo,
that jealous god, made King Midas the scapegoat for his
failure to win the contest outright and rewarded Midas for
his honesty with the long ears of a donkey? Was not Dionysos
always accompanied by an ass, that humblest of beasts? Did he
not, in his later incarnation as Jesus, enter the holy city
of Jerusalem riding upon an ass?
Despite the discomiture and embarrassment that must
certainly have accompanied his new looks, and his new
tonsorial requirements, King Midas got off lightly in
comparison to the grim fate which befell the satyr Marsyas in
a related myth: an obscure myth standing much closer to the
original source than the charming fable given above. Marsyas
stumbled across the flute after it was invented by Athene and
just as promptly discarded by the goddess, who disliked the
new instrument "because it distorted her face unbecomingly
when she played". Although Athene is credited with inventing
the flute (actually "more like the oboe than the flute of
today", and generally played in pairs") the memory of their
origin in Bacchic ritual is, nonetheless, clearly preserved
by the myth, for Ovid mentions that their invention was
inspired by "the wild lamentations, mingled with the hissing
of their snaky hair, raised by the surviving Gorgons at the
death of the Medousa". In other words, the flute was born
from the tragic song of the Bacchants at the death of the
goat: the tragic scapegoat who represents, not only the
victim of the God of tragedy, but the tragic God Himself,
that God who "gave laughter to the flute".
So enamored did Marsyas become of his skill with the
flute that, like Great Pan, he dared to challenge even Apollo
himself to a contest on their respective instruments. Apollo
agreed to the agon, but only on condition that the victor
might do as he wished with the vanquished. Blindly confident
of victory and blissfully unaware of the tragic consequences
of defeat, Marsyas foolishly accepted the terms, but the wild
melodies of the Bacchic flute, like those produced by the
pipes of Pan, were once again deemed inferior to the serene
tones of Apollo's lyre. Marsyas, upon losing the contest,
found himself tied to a tree by an angry Apollo and forced to
pay a heavy price for his impertinence: the vengeful god
literally skinned him alive. Ovid's graphic description of
this horrifying scene leaves precious little to the
imagination:
'Help!' Marsyas clamoured. 'Why are you stripping
me from myself? Never again, I promise! Playing a
pipe is not worth this!' But in spite of his cries
the skin was torn off the whole surface of his
body: it was all one raw wound. Blood flowed
everywhere, his nerves were exposed, unprotected,
his veins pulsed with no skin to cover them. It was
possible to count his throbbing organs, and the
chambers of the lungs, clearly visible within his
breast.
Why must Marsyas be stripped of his self? For the spirit to
find its true life all ego must die: thus it is written.
Marsyas, of course, is no mere satyr. just as the erotic lies
thinly veiled beneath the violent imagery, so once again the
face of Dionysos, with that maddening, tear-stained smile,
lies close beneath the surface of the satyr's tragic mask.
For at the death of Marsyas:
... the woodland gods, the fauns who haunt the
countryside, mourned for him; his brother satyrs
too, and Olympus, dear to him even then, and the
nymphs, and all who pasture woolly sheep or horned
cattle in these mountains. The fertile earth grew
wet with tears, and when it was sodden, received
the falling drops into itself, and drank them into
its deepest veins. Then from these tears it
created a spring which it sent gushing forth into
the open air. From its source the water goes
rushing down to the sea, hemmed in by sloping
banks. It is the clearest river in Phrygia, and it
is named Marsyas.
Always at the core of tragedy two elements are found
commingled, birth and death, i.e., blood and sex; and weaving
through the both, binding the two together, the pulsating
rhythms of Dionysian music. Nor has the pattern changed any
in our own time.
Before we leave the mythological past behind, however,
and begin to examine more closely the tapestry of tragic myth
as it appears in our own age, it is worth noting that the
hostility between Dionysos and the Olympian establishment
extends to other spheres besides the musical, and to other
gods besides Apollo. Nor is it always Dionysos beneath the
actor's mask. Although, like her divine husband, she appears
under many different names, oftentimes it is Ariadne who
plays the starring role in the drama. By way of example, in
the well-known tale of the weaving contest between the
goddess Athene and Arachne, a mortal woman of humble origin
whose skill at the loom rivalled that of Athene herself- the
inventor of the distaff arts also- it is the ever-present
conflict between the Apollinian and the Dionysian that once
again provides the underlying structure, while Arachne is, as
we shall see, nothing but a stage name for Ariadne herself.
Proud of her skill, Arachne's hubris led her of her own
free will to impose the same conditions upon her contest with
Athene that Marsyas had accepted from Apollo only under
compulsion: proclaiming that if the goddess could surpass her
at the loom she might do with her as she pleased. Outraged by
the girl's presumptious behavior, and with that charming
self-honesty so often encountered among members of the
Greek Pantheon, Athene (just returned from a concert by the
Muses where she had listened admiringly to the ivy-wreathed
daughters of Thespis sing of their victory over the daughters
of Euippe) now proclaimed in turn that "it is not enough to
praise other people: what I want is to be praised myself, and
not to have others scorn my divine powers with impunity".
Disguised as an old woman, Athene appeared before the girl
(formerly her student, or so, at least, Ovid would have us
believe, though Arachne herself vehemently denied it) warning
her to cease her insolent boasting and beg the goddess to
forgive her. Arachne angrily refused, however, and, still not
recognizing the goddess, boldly renewed her challenge. Out of
patience at last, Athene tore off her disguise and a furious
contest straightway ensued between the two now bitter rivals.
At the center of the tapestry woven by Athene were
displayed scenes of her victory over Poseidon- the Lord of
the blue sea and brother to Zeus- in the contest between the
two for hegemony over the city of Athens: a victory won, of
course, by Athene, when she brought forth from the earth an
olive tree as her gift to the Greeks. In each corner of her
tapestry was woven a scene showing the unhappy fate of those
mortals foolish enough to challenge the gods, while around
the borders were embroidered olives- the "symbol of peace".
Thus, as Ovid noted, Athene "finished her weaving with her
own tree"- the sign of her divinity and emblematic of her
position within the Olympian Pantheon: that Pantheon which,
as Nietzsche was the first to realize, sprang full-blown from
the brow of Apollo.
Arachne's tapestry, on the other hand, revealing its
Dionysian colors, displayed the victories of Eros (who is, of
course, none other than Dionysos Himself- loosener of limbs,
the fifth and final ruler of the world, as he was also its
first) over the Olympian gods, over even Zeus, their King.
The tapestry woven by Arachne portrayed the scandalous love
affairs of the gods- their deceptions, adulteries, and rapes.
There was Zeus himself, disguised as a bull so that he might
carry Europa off to sea (Europa- who was sister to Kadmos,
great aunt to Dionysos, and also grandmother to Ariadne; for
when the gods become involved it is, indeed, a family affair)
and so skillfuly was the work done that "you would have
thought the bull a live one, and that the waves were real
waves". Numerous other of Zeus's love affairs were depicted
there, in all the colors of the rainbow, and the love affairs
of the other gods as well. Around the borders of her tapestry
were embroidered flowers, "intertwined with ivy"- the sign of
Dionysos.
Arachne's tapestry was without flaw, clearly superior
even to Athene's, and just as clearly it was Arachne's
flawless skill at the loom even more then her scandalous
subject matter which so enraged Athene that the virgin
goddess left her mark on the girl's forehead with a weaving
shuttle. So outraged was Arachne by the ill-treatment she
suffered at the hands of the petulant goddess that she hung
herself from a tree and would have died then had not the
goddess taken pity on her at the last and repented somewhat
of her poor conduct, saving the girl's life by sprinkling
over her a few drops from "the juice of Hecate's herb",
although it was that "baneful potion" itself which
transformed Arachne into the creature that still bears her
name today- the spider, unchallenged mistress of all who spin
and weave.
Arachne's metamorphosis into a spider is more than a
standard plot device borrowed from the folk-tale; it provides
us with a vital clue to Arachne's true identity: Ariadne.
Names indeed often provide us with an invaluable insight into
the meaning of a given myth, and in this case the identity
between Arachne and Ariadne is suggested first of all simply
by the similarity in their names: a type of word play much
favored by ancient audiences. In this respect it is even more
significant that it is the juice of Hecate, the Queen of the
Underworld, which transforms Arachne into a spider; for the
name Ariadne is itself only another form of the name Ariagne-
"the superlative form of Hagne, a surname of the Queen of the
Underworld". Thus it is her own potent juice that allowed
Arachne to escape death by transforming herself into a
spider, and the thread spun by this spider provides us with a
final clue to Arachne's true identity. Ariadne was the
daughter of Minos, King of Crete and the son of Europa.
Minos's wife, Pasiphae, as a result of her unnatural love
affair with a prize bull from the herd of Minos, gave birth
to a monster- the Minotaur. Minos had the labyrinth
constructed and confined the monster therein in a futile
attempt to hide his shame; but, to appease the monster's
wrath, every nine years he offered up to him, in grim
sacrifice, the flower of Athenian youth. It was Ariadne who
betrayed her half-brother, the Minotaur, by providing the
Athenian hero Theseus with the thread that enabled him to
escape from the labyrinth after slaying the monster. No
thread, of course, is finer than that spun by the spider:
Arachne.
Although even in the myth of Arachne and Athene (where
the Dionysian artist is at last triumphant) it is still the
Dionysian artist who is punished by the god, or in this case,
goddess of the Olympian establishment, it is clear,
nonetheless, that Dionysian art, art expressive of the tragic
mysteries lying at the very heart of human existence, was
beginning to mount a serious threat to the Apollinian art
favored by the older generation on account of its illusory
optimism, an optimism they depended upon to shield them from
the dark side of life- life's tragic inner core; the beast
that dwells at the heart of the labyrinth. The Dionysian art
of Pan and Arachne, not to mention that of Marsyas- the
ultimate examplar of the Dionysian, cried out a profound
warning:
... to the serene Olympians. The individual, with
all his restraint and proportion, succumbed to the
self-oblivion of the Dionysian states, forgetting
the precepts of Apollo.... Contradiction, the bliss
born of pain, spoke out from the heart of nature.
In our own time and in the same fashion, i.e., under the
influence of Dionysian music and Dionysian drugs, the
children of the West broke the shackles which had long held
their elders in bondage to Mammon. What was made possible by
this unshackling?:
Under the charm of the Dionysian not only is the
union between man and man reaffirmed, but nature
which has become alienated, hostile, or subjugated,
celebrates once more her reconciliation with her
lost son, man.... As if the veil of Maya had been
torn aside and were now merely fluttering in
tatters before the mysterious primordial unity. In
song and dance man expresses himself as a member of
a higher community... he feels himself a god, like
the gods he saw walking in his dreams. He is no
longer an artist, he has become a work of art: in
these paroxysms of intoxication the artistic power
of all nature reveals itself to the highest
gratification of the primordial unity. The noblest
clay, the most costly marble, man, is here kneaded
and cut, and to the sound of the chisel strokes of
the Dionysian world-artist rings out the cry of the
Eleusinian mysteries: "Do you prostrate yourselves,
millions? Do you sense your Maker, world?"
The reader may well be forgiven at this point if he is
wondering whether music, and rock'n'roll music at that, can
actually accomplish such an awesome task. Here we must base
ourselves on Nietzsche's tremendous insight into the nature
of the Dionysian if we wish to comprehend how it was possible
for rock'n'roll musicians to accomplish what even musical
geniuses such as Beethoven and Wagner could not: the
renaissance of myth from the spirit of music. Aside from the
primeval rhythmic power of the music itself, there is one
other factor, although its importance is almost always
completely overlooked, that explains how rock'n'roll
musicians were able to succeed where their great predecessors
failed. In the simplest possible terms, it is because the
lyric poetry of rock music, in contrast to that of Tin Pan
Alley and the opera, is in accord with what Nietzsche called
"the most important phenomenon of ancient lyric poetry... the
union, indeed the identity, of the lyrist with the musician,
compared with this, our modern lyric poetry is like the
statue of a God without a head". Rock'n'roll has put the head
back on the statue (and for that miraculous restoration Bob
Dylan in particular cannot be given enough credit) but how
were these rock musicians able to mend that which was broken,
to "rise and begin the melody of life anew"? In short, how
were they able to recreate the movements of the Dionysian
artist? To answer this question we must first understand what
those movements were, and for this understanding we rely once
again on Nietzsche's unique insight into the creative process
of the Dionysian artist:
In the first place, as a Dionysian artist he has
identified himself with the primal unity, its pain
and contradiction. Assuming that music has been
correctly termed a repetition and a recast of the
world, we may say that he produces the copy of this
primal unity as music. Now, however, under the
Apollinian dream inspiration, this music reveals
itself to him again as a symbolic dream image....
And now Apollo approaches and touches him with the
laurel. Then the Dionysian musical enchantment of
the sleeper seems to emit image sparks, lyrical
poems, which in their highest development are
called tragedies and dramatic dithyrambs. The
plastic artist, like the epic poet who is related
to him, is absorbed in the pure contemplation of
images. The Dionysian musician is without any
images, himself pure primordial pain and its
primordial re-echoing. The lyric genius is
conscious of a world of images and symbols growing
out of his state of mystical self-abnegation and
oneness.... Insofar as the subject is the artist,
however, he has already been released from his
individual will, and has become, as it were, the
medium through which the one truly existent subject
celebrates his release in appearance. For to our
humiliation and exaltation, one thing above all
must be clear to us. The entire comedy of art is
neither performed for our betterment or education
nor are we the true authors of this art world. On
the contrary, we may assume taht we are merely
images and artistic projections for the true
author, and that we have our highest dignity in our
significance as works of art- for it is only as an
aesthetic phenomenon that existence and the world
are eternally justified.... Thus all our knowledge
of art is basically quite illusory, because as
knowing beings we are not one and identical with
that being which, as the sole author and spectator
of this comedy of art, prepares a perpetual
entertainment for itself. Only insofar as the
genius in the act of artistic creation coalesces
with this primordial artist of the world, does he
know anything of the eternal essence of art; for in
this state he is, in a marvelous manner, like the
wierd image of the fairy tale which can turn its
eyes at will and behold itself; he is at once
subject and object, at once poet, actor, and
spectator.
It is more than ironic that the man who wrote these
words is best remembered in the public mind as the herald of
God's demise; for God never had a more passionate devotee
than this self-proclaimed "maenadic soul". Along with the
older Nietzsche, however, we might be wise to hesitate long
and carefully before endorsing the reckless premise of his
youth: that life in the material world receives its true
justification only when it is conceived of in aesthetic
terms, as the creation of a divine artist. Certainly the
world is the product of a world-artist, only a scientist or
those members of the bourgeoisie under the spell of science
would doubt that obvious truth, but today we would
inquire whether it is a self-portriat the artist has
rendered, or merely a divinely rendered portriat of man?
Schopenhauer and Nietzsche were undoubtedly correct when
they identified the material world as an image of the will to
power, the ego, but is it God's image we behold there, or is
the material world simply a mirror fashioned by God in order
that we might perceive, with absolute clarity, our own self,
our own ego, our own will to power? Not so we will lose
ourselves forever in admiration of that reflection, as was
the unhappy fate of Narcissus (a fate we will share if we
persist in following Nietzsche's advice in honoring the will
to power as that which is highest in man) but instead because
it is only by perceiving the self in its true form that we
can come to reject it.
For it occurs to us now, here at the end of all things,
that life requires an ethical as well as an aesthetic
justification, and that the foundation of God's ethical
conduct towards man can only be love. And if we choose to
call it "love and not just lust", then let us, by all means,
"live the lie" and:
... lie in trust
On golden daffodils, to catch the silver
stream
That washes out the wild oat seed on Velvet Green.
In perhaps less confusing terms, how were today's rock
musicians able to reproduce the movements of the Dionysian
artist and once more cast a spell of Dionysian music over the
world, freeing man from the cold-steel shackles of Apollo?
While Nietzsche is undoubtedly popular reading among rock
musicians (by way of example, the title of Black Sabbath's
classic album, Master of Reality, is taken from a line in
Nietzsche's Will to Power) it remains nonetheless doubtful
that they acquired their ability to create Dionysian music
from a perusal of the long quotation cited above from
Nietzsche; nor is it likely that reading the same will bestow
that ability upon anyone else. In combination, however, with
some innate musical talent and a hit or two of LSD...? For
not surprisingly, as George Harrison at least has had the
courage to state openly, much of the credit for the return of
Dionysian music to the world of man must go to the renewed
use of psychedelic drugs, drugs invested with the power of
Dionysos, the psychedelic God, and capable therefore of
arousing Dionysian melodies in the mind of a gifted musician.
From these melodies arise psychedelic images- the seeds of
myth.
As Nietzsche observed, the use of psychedelic drugs is a
vital part of mythopoeic culture; it is the libation of
Dionysos, an echo of which is still preserved in the Holy
Eucharist of the Catholic Church; and although their ritual
use is banned in the modern state, it is celebrated in the
"songs of all primitive men and peoples". And yet today the
repressive, hyper-Apollinian establishment of the modern
state would ban even the songs of the Bacchants! But perhaps
it is more than a happy coincidence that in the Bible itself
God is often referred to as "the Most High"? Or that the
creation myth of the Babylonians is entitled Enuma Elish-
"When on High"? Despite the many awe-inspiring breakthroughs
in technology, and the even more awe inspiring wars employing
that new technology, ultimately the two most historically
significant events of the 20th century remain the return of
the children of the West to the sacred libation of Dionysian
drugs and the music born of that intoxicated state:
rock'n'roll. And how is it these two events come to figure so
prominently for us when, from an Apollinian perspective, they
are normally relegated to the role of mere footnotes in the
forward march of historical progress? But surely it must be
obvious by now to all but the most obstinate of readers that
it is the libation of Dionysos and the music born from that
intoxicating libation which together form the indispensable
foundation for the renaissance of myth from the dance of the
one-legged flutist?
Does rock'n'roll music truly deserve the title of
Dionysian? Does it seduce us to life even as it reveals to us
the terrifying face of the living God? Is it tragic art in
the ancient sense of the word, tragic art as Kierkegaard
defined it- tragic action without the modern association of
personal guilt? Is it, in short, a Dionysian tragedy we
perceive arising today from the vision of that helter-skelter
chorus? For all this to be true, there would have to be a
tragic act of mythical proportions at the heart of what we call
mythopoeic acid rock: an act beyond good and evil, a
terrifying scene in which the stranger at the door is death
himself; a Passion Play expressing the contradiction lying at
the heart of existence, the conflict between the primordial
unity and the principium individuationis. It now remains only
to clearly identify this tragic act (and the actor or actors
involved) establish the parallels between that tragedy and
the tragedies of ancient Greece- mythic tragedy; and,
finally, to demonstrate that this tragic act is indeed
reflected in rock music in the manner outlined by Nietzsche
as characteristic of Dionysian music: namely, that:
... the myth wants to be experienced vividly as a
unique example of a universality and truth that
gaze into the infinite. The truly Dionysian music
presents itself as such a general mirror of the
universal will: the vivid event refracted in this
mirror expands at once for our consciousness to the
copy of an external truth.
CHAPTER IV
Although the mind of man can create, at best, only the
phantom images encountered in dreams, what images might not
be conceived of in the dreams of the Divine Mind? Might not
we ourselves be the product of such a dream? And what if the
Dreamer Himself should one day appear within the dream, must
not His presence ultimately become known to us? And if this
is so, how are we to know Him? First, to give the simplest,
most succinct, and, perhaps, most benevolent answer, we need
only heed the advice of A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada:
namely, that if a man would find Krishna, he must look for
the One who holds in His semaphoric hands the magic flute. As
even this sage advice may still fall on deaf ears, there is,
fortunately, still another avenue we can pursue in order to
establish with surety the existence and identity of the
Living God. Since all dreams, even the most chaotic, must
tell a story, and that story must employ any number of actors
to play the various roles called for in the dream, including
an actor to play the leading role- the role of the Dreamer,
it seems reasonable to suggest an attempt be made to discover
and identify a story line taking place in the world today
that can be closely correlated with a story line found in the
ancient myths born from the dreams of man's childhood,
particularly ancient myth in its most potent form- tragic
myth. If it can be demonstrated that such a story line is
indeed unfolding today before our eyes, particularly if it
can be further demonstrated that its unfolding has been made
possible only on the basis of an intimate relationship with
music- with Dionysian music (i.e., that the tragic story or
myth in question is both born of music and in turn gives
birth to music) then the dream nature of our reality must be
rendered transparent to all; and, by identifying the lead
actor in the drama, the identity of the Dreamer as well.
I would not, of course, have suggested the possibility
of such a theodicy without having a clear example already in
mind. As the discerning reader is doubtless well aware at
this point, I believe the existence of that theodicy can best
be demonstrated through a comparison of Euripedes' classic
rendering of the Bacchae with the exploits in our own time of
the Manson Family; for it must by now be only too clear
precisely what that tragic act is which we see reflected in
the Dionysian music mirror: the mass murders committed by the
Manson Family in the fiery summer of 1969. Although at first
glance the Manson Family might seem, to say the least, an
unlikely choice as the subject for a theodicy, upon closer
investigation the story of Charles Manson and the other
Family members reveals precisely that combination of music
and tragedy needed to demonstrate not only the mythic nature
of our reality, but also to identify the Maker of that myth.
For although the tragic elements associated with the
notorious career of the Manson Family are only too well-
known, what is all too often forgotten by the world- a world
which contemplated those actions with fear and loathing- is
that here was a Family that came together through music, that
lived and loved together for music; and whose tragic deeds
were not only born of music, particularly, as is well-known,
the music of the Beatles, especially the White Album, but
also gave birth to music, though today this is still known
only to the few. That knowledge, however, can no longer
remain confined within a chosen circle of initiates, for the
day long spoken of has finally arrived, the long awaited day
of destiny "when all will be revealed". For unbeknownst to
all save the most discrete of their admirers (present company
excepted, of course) and to all of their detractors (whose
opposition to rock'n'roll would have been even more draconian
than it actually was if they had somehow managed to
comprehend not only the lyrics themselves but also the
profound symbolism employed in those lyrics) the vast
majority of the legendary rock anthems from the decade
following the trial of the Manson Family, from Paul
McCartney's Band on the Run to Led Zeppelin's Stairway to
Heaven, from Jethro Tull's Aqualung to Black Sabbath's Iron
Man, were a part of the mythopoeic cycle of music centered
around the Passion Play- the grim deeds performed on the
world stage by the Manson Family and the trial they endured
before the world as a result of those deeds. The lead role in
the creation of this mythopoeic cycle of music was played,
not by the Beatles, as so many might suspect (though
certainly it was in the music of the Beatles, and in
Beatlemania, that the return of the Dionysian chorus first
became manifest to the world) but by Ian Anderson, the one-
legged flutist and Pied Piper of rock'n'roll, of whom Led
Zeppelin has sung:
And it's whispered that soon if we all
call the tune
then the Piper will lead us to reason.
And a new day will dawn for those
who stand long
and the forest will echo with laughter.
Far from calling out the tune, however, you threw only
the briefest of glances up at the stage as the Passion Play
unfolded there before your television benumbed eyes. Nor were
you tempted to leap to the fray "with your sword on your hip
and a cry/ on your lips" when the son of man found himself
once again reviled and rejected by those he came to save. And
when, in fulfillment of ancient prophecy, the son of man was
dragged into a courtroom and forced to stand trial before the
kings of the earth (represented symbolically in the person of
King Richard himself, self-appointed judge in the case) a
trial which came to its inevitable conclusion only when the
son of man was found guilty by that court and sentenced to
death, then, along with the rest of the world, along with all
the other good people, you only turned your head away and
refused to recognize what was transpiring on the stage- the
reenactment of the Passion Play. Having "seen all good people
turn their heads each day", I, too, should be more than happy
to be "on my way". And yet, how can anyone take their leave
when the question remains for us all: "How many times can a
man turn his head/ and pretend that he just doesn't see"?
(emphasis mine)
What was lost sight of in the appalling shadow cast over
the stage by the Manson Family's bloody deeds is that those
deeds were intended as a mirror for the spirit of mankind,
not as an expression of the Divine Spirit through whose will
those murders were carried out. To place things in their
proper perspective, let it be remembered that at the time of
the murders America was fully engaged in programming its
young people to go across the sea and, for no earthly
reason, slaughter the Vietnamese peasantry: a civilized,
peaceful people who posed absolutely no threat to this
country. Even so, you went unto the homes of these gentle
people, people who were complete strangers to you and who had
never offered you any harm, and you kicked down their doors
and brutally murdered everyone you found at home within-
women, even pregnant women, children, the old ones, all
slaughtered like animals. And so Charles Manson, also for no
earthly reason, did the same thing back to you, albeit on a
very minor scale, and oh, how like a stuck pig you screamed!
How could anyone be such an evil, murdering, bloodthirsty
monster as this Charles Manson? How indeed America? In case
you have not guessed it by now, it was not the son of man who
was on trial in that courtroom, but man himself; and well you
know the judgment that was rendered that day, being not only
the accused in this case but the judge and jury as well. And
perhaps the executioner also? Truly it was written: "Judge
not that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge,
ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall
be measured to you again".
No crimes were committed by the Manson Family that
America was not guilty of a thousand, a hundred thousand
times over; for the Manson Family served only to reflect
America back to itself, with, that is, one crucial
difference. Manson and his disciples performed their deeds
out of love, in a desperate attempt to stop the killing in
Vietnam by showing you a true image of your self- the beast,
in the hope that by confronting that beast you might overcome
it at last and thus become something more than a beast: a
man, and not only a man but the son of man. Who among you
will claim that love was at the heart of American foreign
policy in Vietnam? Or even that American foreign policy had a
heart? In Manson's own words, speaking to you from the
witness stand in the unmistakeable tones of a prophet:
There has been a lot of charges and a lot of things
said about me and brought against the co-defendants
in this case, of which a lot could be cleared up
and clarified...
I never went to school, so I never growed up to
read and write too good, so I have stayed in jail
and I have stayed stupid, and I have stayed a child
while I have watched your world grow up, and then I
look at the things that you do and I don't
understand...
You eat meat and you kill things that are better
than you are, and then you say how bad, and even
killers, your children are. You made your children
what they are... These children that come at you
with knives, they are your children. You taught
them. I didn't teach them. I just tried to help
them stand up.
Most of the people at the ranch that you call the
Family were just people that you did not want,
people that were alongside the road.... So I did
the best I could and I took them up on my garbage
dump and I told them this: that in love there is no
wrong....
I told them that anything they do for their
brothers and sisters is good if they do it
with a good thought....
I was working at cleaning up my house, something
that Nixon should have been doing. He should have
been on the side of the road, picking up his
children, but he wasn't. He was in the White House
sending them off to war....
I don't understand you but I don't try. I don't
try to judge nobody. I know that the only person I
can judge is me.... But I know this: that in your
hearts and your own souls, you are as much
responsible for the Vietnam war as I am for killing
these people....
I can't judge any of you. I have no malice
against you and no ribbons for you. But I think
that it is high time that you all start looking at
yourselves and judging the lie that you live in.
I can't dislike you, but I will say this to you:
you haven't got long before you are all going to
kill yourselves, because you are all crazy. And you
can project it back at me... but I am only what
lives inside each and every one of you.
Man had only to comprehend this divine lesson, and
signal that comprehension by freeing the son of man from
prison and welcoming him with the joy and reverence befitting
the occasion of the restoration of the Divine Spirit to the
world of man, and man and the entire material world along
with him would immediately have returned to the Spirit's
loving embrace. Instead, to the surprise of no one in Heaven,
when the son of man returned to the world as promised,
the world only thrust him back within the tomb as swiftly as
possible; then, once again, the stone was rolled back firmly
into place. But the tomb will not hold him today, any more
than it was able to hold him in the past. For:
Man/son of man/buy the flame of ever-life (yours to
breathe and/
breath the pain of living): living BE!
Here am I!
Roll the stone away from the dark into ever-day.
All unknowing, your failure to recognize the Dancer
beneath the grim visage of the Destroyer now threatens to
prove your undoing. And although the test you were presented
with was indeed a formidable one, it was, even so, composed
of only one challenging riddle- the same riddle the world was
presented with the last time it was honored with a
performance of the Passion Play- namely, to recognize the
Christened One beneath the mark of the criminal, and to
signal that recognition by setting the Christened One free
and condemning the true criminal displayed alongside him.
Unfortunately, as was also the case in the original version,
you have sadly failed to meet that test. Once again you have
sentenced to death the Christened One- Manson, the beloved
son of God, and once again you have set free the true
criminal- Barrabas, whose role in this modern rendition of
the Passion Play was performed by Lt. William Calley,
notorious for his deeds at My Lai. Now the time has come for
you to face the potentially apocalyptic consequences of that
failure before it is too late for you to benefit from the
solution to this age-old riddle, and that you are reading a
book which contains that solution- the revelation of Divine
Mystery, is a sure indication that time is running very short
indeed.
And so the ineffable mystery surrounding the manner in
which the God of the Mysteries would choose to stage his
reappearance in the world can now be spoken of openly (and by
a mere scholar at that) precisely because that mystery stands
already revealed in the music of the Bacchic chorus. It now
remains only for man to recognize precisely what was revealed
therein- the presentation on the world stage of a tragic
drama drawn from the fabled realm of ancient myth and
performed for our benefit by the God of the Theater Himself,
Lord Dionysos. That God appears before the world concealed
behind not one mask alone but two: the one-legged flutist
whose "kingdom is the unity of souls/ in the rhythm of the
dance", and the Christened One the world calls its most
dangerous criminal, though he bears upon his brow the mark of
the Way for all the world to see. A criminal you have called
him, a mad dog, a killer, the devil himself- Satan incarnate,
and you have buried him deep within the darkness of the tomb
you call a prison cell. Surely by now, however, you must
realize it is a God that you have, in your madness, attempted
to confine? Or have you failed to notice that the deeper you
attempt to bury that sepulcheral chamber beneath layers of
concrete and steel- the more resonant the echoes of his voice
become? And still, no matter how moving that divine voice, no
matter how passionately it sings out from the broken heart at
the core of the world, man hears it not. What more could even
the legendary Teiresias do today than point helplessly up at
the stage in the vain hope of somehow drawing the world's
attention to where the tragic drama now unfolding approaches
its final climax? Man may, of course, if he so desires, turn
his eyes from the stage and remain blind to the tragic events
now being played out there, but surely he cannot remain
forever deaf to the manic bourree now swelling up in a
dynamic crescendo from the orchestral pit: a revel rout
personally conducted by the Old Master- the Piper himself,
accompanied by a celebrated band of Bacchic minstrels in a
revelatory performance guaranteed to bring the house down,
and the crowd to its feet, as soon as the last note is
struck. And surely the time has now come to strike that last
note?
The actors and jesters are here.
the stage is in darkness and clear
For raising the curtain
and no-one's quite certain whose play it is.
How long ago, how long?
If only we had listened then.
If only we'd known just how right we were going to
be.//
For we dreamed a lot
And we schemed a lot
And we tried to sing of love before the stage fell
apart.//
If Everyone was listening you know
There'd be a chance that we could save the show....
Oh no, please no, don't let the curtain fall.
The stage may be about to fall apart, but there is still
time to discover the Author of the play. Although man's
initial ignorance of God's presence in his midst, followed by
the rejection of God's claims and the outright persecution of
the Lord and His followers is always an essential element of
the drama, equally inevitable is God's triumphant proof of
His divinity; thus we may rest assured that even man's
ignorance, well entrenched though it is, must eventually
give way before the wisdom of God. For twenty-five years the
face of Manson, "smiling, always smiling", has stared out at
you from magazine covers, newspapers, and television screens;
and even today it remains among the most recognizeable faces
in the world. Yet that it is a god behind those smiling eyes
remains completely unknown to you. But twenty-five years is
long enough for God's presence in the world of man to go
completely unremarked by man himself; that an entire quarter
century could elapse without a single response on the part of
man to the Passion Play now being presented on the world
stage by Charles Manson and his devotees is the surest
possible indication of the pathetic state to which human
dignity and intelligence have been reduced at the end of the
Kali Age. A generation ago, Charles Manson:
... was playing on the sidewalk
for passing change,
when something strange
happened- glory train passed through him,
so he buried the coins he made in People's Park
and went looking for a woman to court-
and spark.
It perhaps requires mentioning that:
Following his release from prison... Charles Manson
had gone to San Fancisco. A prison acquaintance
found him a room across the bay in Berkeley. In no
hurry to find a job, subsisting mostly by
panhandling, Manson would wander Telegraph Avenue
or sit on the steps of the Sather Gate entrance to
the University of California, playing his guitar.
Then one day along came this librarian.
That librarian was Mary Brunner: Mother Mary, the first of
the women who cast their lot with Manson. And so the Family
was born. In the generation gone by since Dionysos- the
beloved son of the Virgin, became incarnate as the son of
man, man has seen precious little of love but instead only
increasing chaos and confusion in a world grown ever more
violent and divided, a world being torn asunder because in
all that time man has granted the son of man and his
disciples not the slightest sign of recognition, not the
slightest hint of welcome. And though the prophets, due to
the power of their minstrelsy, have indeed been welcomed-
oftentimes royally so, neither have these minstrels been
recognized as prophets nor have their songs been received as
prophecy; thus the wisdom of the world, especially of the
wise, stands once more confounded and revealed as aimless
folly before the wisdom of God; for divine wisdom, even when
it appears as divine folly, is never without aim- and it is
always aimed straight at man.
But man, especially the wise man, remains as blind as
ever to the wisdom that divine folly conceals, for even the
wise, with all the world's history at their fingertips,
including an encyclopaedic knowledge, culled from that
history, of mythologies from all previous times and cultures,
were no more able to recognize the God of the Mysteries when
he presented Himself upon the world stage in the person of
Charles Manson to deliver an encore performance of the
Bacchae- the eternal Passion Play, than King Pentheus in the
original version was able to recognize that same God when he
appeared in Thebes in the person of the mysterious stranger,
the "magician from Lydia", to lead the Theban women astray-
"enticing them into the secret joys of this mysterious cult".
What use in a knowledge of the myths from all previous times
if the performance of myth in our own time, a divine
performance, must still go begging for an audience? What use
the carefully garnered and hard-won knowledge of man in the
face of overwhelming divine revelation which sweeps all
before it on a tidal wave of Dionysian rhythm? And of what
use are the dust covered tomes of obscure metaphysics now
that the Way stands revealed with absolute clarity in the
passion-born music of the dancing flutist?
But perhaps some small use might still be found for a
modest work whose only ambition is to reveal that revelation?
For when you looked up at the stage and beheld there Manson
in chains, you did not see in that spectacle what the Father
intended you to see- namely, divine love reincarnated as the
son of man; instead, you only turned your eyes away from the
stage in nausea and horror; beholding there, not the perfect
image of divine love but only divine vengeance embodied in
the terrifying form of "Iron Man"- of whom it is said, in
tones of Satanic dread:
Vengeance from the grave
kills the people he once saved.
Nobody wants him,
they just turn their head.
Nobody helps him,
now he has his revenge.
Those who possess any sense at all for the historical
truth contained in the dreams we call myths will surely feel
no surprise to learn that when God returned to the world to
teach man the Way which leads through the will to power to
the will which is beyond power (the Way of enlightenment that
takes a man through the dark and tangled maze of the material
world to the divinely lit garden world of the spirit- where,
instead of reflecting a light that comes from without,
objects are radiant with a psychedelic light that shines from
within) man chose not only to reject that teaching, but also
hounded the Lord and His disciples, His holy Bacchae, across
the face of the earth, even into the desert, where profane
hands were laid upon the long-haired God Himself. God's
response upon returning to the world only to be called a
monster and a devil by the very people He came to save, the
same people who immediately returned both Him and His
devotees to their normal accomodations in this cold-hearted
world- a jail cell? In His own words:
I have X'd myself from your world.... You have
created the monster. I am not of you, from you, nor
do I condone your unjust attitude toward things,
animals, and people you do not try to
understand.... I stand opposed to what you do and
have done in the past.... You make fun of God and
have murdered the world in the name of Jesus
Christ.... My faith in me is stronger than all your
armies, governments, gas chambers, or anything you
may want to do to me. I know what I have done. Your
courtroom is man's game. Love is my judge.
And if Love is His judge, must not He Himself be Love-
that God known in ancient Greece as Eros? As Teiresias said
of Him:
This god, yes, this new god you are making fun of,
I can't begin to say how great he'll prove
Throughout Greece...
His blood, a god's blood,
Is poured to the other god's in sacrifice,
and in his name mankind is blessed.
And this god is also a prophet. His
Ecstasy and bacchic mania have prophecy in it.
When too much god descends into one body
It overshoots time, and the maddened voice
Foretells the future. And he has a share
In the domain of Ares, the God of War.
A whole army in perfect order, with arms
And banners, may break in a sudden panic
Before a single spear clangs. This kind
Of madness also comes from Dionysus.
And I predict you'll see this god in Delphi
With pine torches, dancing on the holy rocks,
Sharing Parnassus' twin mountain peaks
with Apollo himself, shaking and hurling
His drunken Bacchic rod, great throughout
Greece....
Along with King Pentheus and the rest of the world, however,
you chose to ignore the timeless warning of the sage and
refused to heed the Piper's call to arms. Thus, if ever you
wish to leave this grave world behind and go "Skating Away"
with the Piper "on the Thin Ice of the/ New Day", you must
somehow discover why:
Your head is humming and it won't go- in case you
don't know/
The Piper's calling you to join him.
Dear lady can you hear the wind blow
and did you know
your Stairway lies on the whispering wind?
Yes, "Dear Lady", the answer is indeed "blowin' in the
wind", and the various bands involved in the creation of this
mythopoeic cycle of Dionysian music have somehow managed to
weave together the various strands of symbolic imagery they
employed into as tight a pattern as any the world has seen
rising up from the field of the arts since the days of the
Renaissance masters; for, like the paintings of the Old
Masters, Dionysian rock'n'roll music also displays a profound
symbolic code shared in common by a number of artists. My own
desire, although it may strike a jarring note in the long
ears of uninitiated academicians, is to do for Dionysian rock
music what Panofsky, Cassirer, Saxl, and other leading
scholars from the Warburg Institute did for Renaissance art-
reveal its symbolic content. The revelation of the symbolism
employed in Renaissance art had profound implications for
philosophy: although at first glance the parallel may seem an
absurd one, the revelation of the symbolism found within the
lyric poetry of the Dionysian music we call rock'n'roll will
have not only a profound but an apocalyptic effect on
philosophy. For "Iron Man" was:
... turned to steel
in the great magnetic field,
when he travelled time
for the future of mankind.
Through his self-sacrifice "Iron Man" became the Man of
Steel, the Superman (or Overman) of Nietzschean fame- the
"Master of Reality" known to the world as Charles Manson.
That the tragic deeds which resulted in his trial before the
world were inspired by the music of the Beatles is, as I have
said, well-known. What we wish to discover now is whether
that re-enactment of the Passion Play on the world stage had
an impact in turn on rock'n'roll music, the music of the
chorus, and whether that music will in turn have an impact on
philosophy, and on much more than philosophy. As evidence of
the effect Manson's trial had on rock music, consider first
of all the following lyrics:
You curl your toes in fun as you
smile at everyone- you meet the
stares. You're unaware that your
doings aren't done. And you laugh
most ruthlessly as you tell us what
not to be. But how are we supposed
to see where we should run? I see you
shuffle in the courtroom with/your
rings upon your fingers/your downy
little sidies and/your silver buckle
shoes. Playing at the hard-case, you
follow the example of the comic-paper
idol who lets you bend the rules.
No one possessing any familiarity at all with the
details of the case will deny that the preceding lyrics can
justly be applied only to Charles Manson, for Manson played
his role at all times with a laughing, childlike innocence.
As Marc Bolan once sang of him:
I'm walking down the highway
seen this cat his name was Charley.
He's the kind of guy who always love to sing
yeah, someone you meet at a scene or at a party
Charley, he don't care if the neighbors stare
biblical beard and his long black flowing hair.
Oh oh Charley
And when Manson was dragged into a courtroom to account for
his actions, he was accompanied, as always, by his maenads,
the "downy little sidies": for the hero has always his
sidekicks, and the villain his partners in crime. And here,
between rock music and a comic-book, the identity of the
living God is revealed, and the connection between that God
and the Nietzschean Superman rendered transparent. For the
"comic-paper/ idol who lets you bend the rules" is indeed the
Nietzschean Superman whose actions always "take place beyond
good and evil" because they are always performed "out of
love". Or, as Manson affirmed in defense of the notorious
deeds of his disciples: "In love there is no wrong".
Continuing with our comic-book analogy, what will be the
eventual fate of this "comic-paper idol"?:
So!
Come on ye childhood heroes! won't
you rise up from the pages of your
comic-books?/ your super-crooks? and
show us all the way. Well! Make your
will and testament. Won't you? Join
your local government. We'll have
superman for president/ let Robin
save the day.
And so the name and destiny of the living God is revealed in
a childhood poem about a comic-book hero. For the Superman
and the Son of Man, the Criminal and the Christened One,
along with the Piper himself, are all aspects of the One God-
that God who (much to the delight of the ladies) will one day
rule the world with his Bacchic rod of iron- albeit a drunken
rod.
It is the power Dionysos wields over death, however,
that makes him quintessentially the Living God; therefore in
the myths which tell of the God his tragic death is
inevitably followed by his miraculous rebirth. Nietzsche
himself relates the myth of Dionysos Zagreus (i.e., the
Mighty Hunter) wherein Dionysos, in his role as the Divine
Child, was captured and slain by a pair of Titans while
playing innocently at his toys. Upon butchering their captive
and boiling his flesh, the Titans proceeded to roast the
child over the hot flames and then, in a horrible feast,
consumed him entire- all save his heart: which was rescued by
the Great Mother so that Dionysos- the Mighty Hunter, might
live again. There is, however, an older and no doubt more
accurate version of the story in which it was not a pair of
Titans who slew Dionysos but his two elder brothers- the
Kouretes, as he gazed distracted upon his own enchanting
reflection in a mirror: a mirror held up to him by his own
dear mother, who, according to the Orphic tradition, was a
partner in the crime; even more, it was under her arrangement
that the entire monstrous affair took place.
According to the Orphic tradition wherein the early
tales of Dionysos are preserved, the mother of Dionysos was
Demeter herself, the Great Mother, appearing as her daughter
and alter ego, Persephone- the Queen of the Underworld.
Persephone was raped, not by Hades, as the story is commonly
told, but by Zeus: a rape arranged by Demeter so that, as
Persephone, she might once again becone the mother of the
laughing child of the Mysteries- Dionysos. And by killing
that laughing child, enable him to conquer death itself. Nor
in the Orphic version was it his heart that the Great Mother
rescued from the ashes, but his phallus; for the Greeks,
innocent children from the unspoiled morning of the world,
believed that a man's true life and vitality were to be
found, not in his heart but in his balls. Thus Dionysos was
also referred to "as Orthos, 'the erect', and Enorches, 'the
betesticled'". And, as the world is just beginning to
realize:
Now the time is here
for Iron Man to spread fear.
Running as fast as they can
Iron Man lives again!
Nietzsche also predicted that one day a new generation
of philosophers would appear: Nietzsche saw this new breed of
philosophers approaching on the horizon like a dark storm
cloud- now they are here before us on the stage. Nor is it
with dry words that they speak to us, which is all my poor
pen can muster, but with the "ever burning fire" of Dionysian
music- music born of the clear light and pouring down from
the heavens like the living lightning from the hammer of the
marvelous Thor. Although I cannot hope to replicate the
legendary scholarship Panofsky and his colleagues from the
Warburg Institute displayed in restoring to the world the
long forgotten symbolism employed in Renaissance art, neither
is there any need for such exquisite scholarship; for the
songs we must interpret are written, not in the language of
the past but of the present. No one who is at all familiar
with the genre will doubt, for example, that Jethro Tull's
Ian Anderson, rock music's most celebrated flutist, is indeed
the Pied Piper of rock'n'roll. As will be amply demonstrated
for the benefit of those who are not afficiandos, the Piper
motif is integral to Jethro Tull's music and resonates
clearly throughout the entire corpus of his work. Nor is
Skating Away, with its reference to "the New Day", the
Piper's only response to Led Zepellin, or the only echo from
the Warchild album of Stairway to Heaven's haunting imagery,
as the following lyrics well attest:
Just a trace of pride
upon our fixed
grins-
For there is no business like the show
we're in.
There is no reason, no rhyme, no right
To leave the circus 'til we've said
good night.
The same performance in the same
old way;
It's the same old story to this Passion Play.
So we'll shoot the moon, and hope to
call the tune-
And make no pin cushion of this big
balloon.
No matter who does the singing, no matter who calls the
tune, the song, my friends, remains ever the same; for
although the setting may change the Play itself never has,
nor has it ever deviated from its ancient script. Once again,
in the person of Charles Manson, Christ shambles across the
stage in the role of the Crucified One- the eternal
scapegoat, whilst down in the pit, conducting the orchestra,
dances the Piper- Ian Anderson, the one-legged flutist who
captures the dreams of the world in song and flings them back
to the world as living myths. As to whether Charles Manson
and Ian Anderson are separate avatars of Dionysos, as to
whether the two are in truth as one, that is a profound
mystery which I, for one, beware of solving. I did summon up
the nerve once to broach the subject with him, but he just
laughed at me and said:
I'm so proud of you
swimming up from the deep blue.
Which one of me do you run to?
I'm beside myself.
It should always be remembered, of course, that putting a god
in prison is difficult enough, keeping him there may prove to
be well nigh impossible. Oftentimes, as King Pentheus
discovered in the Bacchae, when the cell door is opened at
last, the god is vanished and only a gentle beast remains in
his stead. Ironically enough, however, now the one who holds
in his hands the keys to the bottomless pit, the one who
ascended from that yawning abyss to play the lead role upon
the world stage, spends his days in the dark pit of a prison
cell, while the one who holds in his hands the fabled pipes
of Great Pan, the one who descended from the Magic Mountain
to personally conduct the Bacchic chorale now emanating from
the orchestral pit, spends his nights under the bright lights
of the concert stage. They "will meet in the sweet light of
dawn". And despite the darkness that now covers the world,
perhaps the dawn is not so far away; after all, "everybody
know the morning time is coming- don't it make you want to
kinda' feel all right?"
Jethro Tull's music is, as we shall see, rife with
Dionysian symbolism; even the artwork on the album covers
suggests the Dionysian content waiting within: the most obvious
example, of course, being the masks of Dionysos
himself on the inside cover of the Passion Play album.
Dionysian symbolism also plays a prominent role in the life
story of Charles Manson; nor are we entirely lacking in
artistic support for that claim as well. In the photo section
of Helter-Skelter is reproduced a portriat drawn by Manson
during his trial, a self-portriat which is clearly intended
as a portriat of Dionysos. One side of that self-portriat is
light, the other is dark and filled with strange drawings of
misshapen figures- black tears flow from the dark eye. The
cover of Jethro Tull's A Little Light Music contains a
similar portriat of Ian Anderson, half in light and half in
dark. Between Ian Anderson's face and his bow-tie is another
face, a face very much like that of Manson with a full beard.
The bow-tie itself forms a very distinctive M (by which
letter, the thirteenth letter of the alphabet- the number of
Christ, Family members often referred to Manson) while the
back-drop for the portriat is a sun-burst criss-crossed by an
X that is almost more of a swastika. Concerning the
possibility of a mystical union in identity between Ian
Anderson and Charles Manson, the reader might also reflect
for a moment on the cryptic meaning concealed within the name
of Jethro Tull's music company- Salamander and Son; for the
two names of the One God are combined therein, along with the
name of the Goddess herself. At any rate, just because "both
of 'em say they're Jesus" doesn't necessarily mean "one of
'em must be wrong".
Comparisons between the Bacchae- the story of Lord
Dionysos and the maenads, and the Passion Play in its modern
form- the story of Charles Manson, a story in which a
prominent role, a maenadic role, was played by the women
members of the Family, will crop up throughout the course of
this work. These two stories, however, share one point in
common that- because of its significance to the theme of this
work as a whole- deserves special mention now. Namely, just
as Dionysos, in the Bacchae, was never truly imprisoned, for
the God of the Mysteries deluded the authorities into leading
a bull off to prison in his place, so Manson, too, in a very
real sense, has remained free all these years. The voice of
the Fool on the Hill, "the man of a thousand voices talking
perfectly loud", has never truly been silenced but has
continued to speak out very loudly indeed through many of our
most famous rock bands: amongst whose number can be found
Yes, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Emerson, Lake and Palmer,
Black Sabbath, and David Bowie, to name only a few of the
more prominent examples, all working around the central
figure of the Pied Piper in the creation of a mythopoeic
cycle of Dionysian music centered around the exploits of the
Manson Family. Not all rock bands, of course, have agreed to
christen Manson as the Son of Man. Steely Dan even went so
far as to refer to the self-styled King of Kings as "Kid
Charlemagne":
While the music played you walked by candlelight
Those San Francisco nights,
you were the best in town.
Just by chance you crossed a diamond with a pearl
You turned it on the world
that's when you turned the world around.
Did you feel like Jesus?
Did you realize
you were a champion in their eyes?....
Every A-frame had your number on the wall
you must have had it all
you go to L.A. on a dare and you go it alone.
Could you last forever?
Could you see the day?
Could you feel your whole world fall apart and fade
away?/
Get along, get along Kid Charlemagne
Get along Kid Charlemagne.
Now your patrons have all left you in the red
your low rent friends are dead
this life can be very strange.
All those day-glo freaks
who used to paint your face
they joined the human race.
Some things will never change.
Sign you on in Vegas
you are obsolete
look at all the white men on the street.
Manson "crossed a diamond with a pearl": he invented
something new (or, at least, something so old as to seem new)
a bewitching brew whose taste and potency the world no longer
remembered, and with that potent brew- "a song of love and
hatred"- he turned the world on its ear, put it through
Helter-Skelter. Although Steely Dan's contempt for both
Manson and his admirers is clear, it is just as clear that
their song belongs in the chorus; for it is undeniably a song
about Charles Manson: there is no one else on earth to whom
it could could possibly be said to apply. After all, no other
public figure of note claiming to be Jesus is associated with
the possibility of a coming race war: a possibility archly
dismissed here with the observation that there are still
plenty of "white men on the street". As is the case with many
of the songs about Manson, the two cities most closely
associated with his notorious career are also mentioned: San
Francisco and Los Angeles. As Joe Walsh observed: "Welcome to
the Hotel California". That "Hotel California" is also a song
about the Manson Family is confirmed by the following lyrics:
So I called to the Captain
"Please bring me some wine".
He said, "we haven't had that
spirit here since 1969."
That wine is the blood of Christ, and it was in 1969 that the
Manson Family first became known to the world: that the
spirit made its presence felt in the world- it is when he
"turned the world around". Any remaining doubts as to the
relevance of the preceding lyrics to the Manson Family should
be dispelled by the following lyrics:
And in the Master's chambers
they gather for the feast.
They stab it with their steely knives
but they just can't kill the Beast.
The songs surrounding the Family's deeds are legion; the
chorus is much larger than anyone has previously suspected.
Few of those songs, however, are so easily identifiable as
belonging to the Manson cycle than Jim Morrison's "The End":
This is the end
Beautiful friend
this is the end
My only friend
Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
No safety or surprise, the end
I'll never look into your eyes...again
Can you picture what will be
So limitless and free
Desperately in need...of some...stranger's hand
in a...desperate land
Lost in a Roman...wildnerness of pain
And all the children are insane
All the children are insane
Waiting for the summer rain, yeah
There's danger on the edge of town
Ride the King's highway, baby
Wierd scenes inside the gold mine
Ride the highway west, baby
Ride the snake, ride the snake
To the lake, the ancient lake, baby
The snake is long, seven miles
Ride the snake...he's old, and his skin is cold....
The blue bus is callin' us
The blue bus is callin' us
Driver, where you taken us?
The killer awoke before dawn, he put his boots on
He took a face from the ancient gallery
And he walked on down the hall
He went into the room where his sister lived,
and...then he//
Paid a visit to his brother, and then he
He walked on down the hall, and
And he came to a door...and he looked inside
Father, yes son, I want to kill you
Mother...I want to...fuck you
C'mon baby take a chance with us
C'mon baby take a chance with us
And meet me at the back of the blue bus
Doin' a blue rock
on a blue bus
Doin' a blue rock
C'mon yeah
Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill....
This is the end
To return to the beginning of the song, when Jerry Rubin
visited Manson in prison, Manson told him that:
When I was a child I was an orphan and too ugly to
be adopted. Now I am too beautiful to be set
free.
He is the "Beautiful friend". With the sentence of death
passed upon him by the court, came the end of all "elaborate
plans": now there is only the end- Judgement Day. The picture
that is painted is of what it will be like when Helter-
Skelter comes down, and you find yourself "desperately in
need...of some...stranger's hand, in a...desperate land".
Susan Atkins described Helter-Skelter to the Grand Jury in
the following manner:
It would be all the wars that have ever been fought
built one on top of the other, something that no
man could conceive of in his imagination. You can't
conceive of what it would be like to see every man
judge himself and then take it out on every other
man all over the earth.
When Squeaky Fromme testified before the court "that the
Christians in the caves and in the woods were a lot of kids
just living and being without guilt, without shame, being
able to take off their clothes and lay in the sun", she was
speaking, of course, of the Manson Family itself. But now
"all the children are insane"; they can only wait for the
"summer rain" to set them free. That storm is coming, but the
manner of its coming is still uknown to you. It is the storm
spoken of in myth: the storm that can shatter worlds. We will
speak more of that storm later, and also of the snake you
must ride to escape that storm, the snake that will take you
to the lake which is called in the ancient myths the
Acherusian Sea. Now, however, we come to the murders
themselves, when "the killer awoke before dawn" and "put his
boots on" before wandering off to kill his Father. Only, as
we shall see is also the case in the myths, the killer was
not the son but the daughter. As Sandra Good, that "L.A.
woman" and Manson Family maenad was overheard to remark in
jail: "I've finally reached the point where I can kill my
parents". Those killers lived out "at the edge of town".
There they would "meet...at the back of the blue bus". After
driving that bus from L.A. to Death Valley, it is said that Manson
flew it across the rough desert terrain and landed it
at Barker Ranch, up in the gold mine country. When asked
whether she really believed Manson had flown that bus, Sandra
Good replied, "Believe it? I was in it". Far fetched as the
story sounds, the following is another tale of Manson's
powers, this one provided by Bugliosi himself:
In Independece, Sandra Good had told me that once,
in the desert, Charlie had picked up a dead bird,
breathed on it and the bird had flown away. Sure
Sandy, sure, I replied. Since then I'd heard a
great deal about Manson's alleged powers; Susan
Atkins, for example, felt he could see and hear
everything she did or said.
Midway through the arraignment I looked at my
watch. It had stopped. Odd. It was the first time I
could remember that happening. Then I noticed that
Manson was staring at me, a slight grin on his
face.
It was, I told myself, simply a coincidence.
He is, as I have said, the Lord of Time. When reading
Bugliosi, it almost seems on occasion as if he, too, must
have wondered at times just who he was prosecuting. During
the trial, Family member Tex Watson lay near death, having
withdrawn into a fetal state- just as Valentine Michael Smith
used to do in Stranger in a Strange Land whenever he needed
to grok things in fullness. Manson asked Bugliosi to arrange
a half-hour visit for him with Tex, claiming, "I'm positive I
can cure him". Bugliosi replied:
I'm sorry Charlie.... I can't afford to take that
chance. If you cured him, then everyone would
believe you were Jesus Christ.
Pink Floyd, in a song called "Brain Damage" off of Dark
Side of the Moon, described Manson as a knife-wielding
lunatic, but, it is clear, a lunatic with the power to heal:
The lunatic is in my head
The lunatic is in my head
You raise the blade, you make the change
You re-arrange me till I'm sane.
You lock the door
And throw away the key
There's someone in my head, but it's not me.
He holds a knife in his bloodstained hands; but, as Emerson,
Lake, and Palmer also made clear, he wields that blade like a
scalpel:
Brain Salad Surgery
it'll murder you
it murdered me.
Brain Salad Surgery
it'll work for you
it worked for me.
Helter-Skelter means much more than people killing each
other; it means all ego must die so that the spirit may live.
As all Christians know, a man must first become dead to the
world before he can be born again in Jesus Christ. It is to
"wake the dead with the scream of life" that Manson and the
Piper, if indeed they are not one and the same, have entered
once more into the material world. As we saw with Steely Dan,
there is some doubt, even among the chorus itself, as to
whether they are equal to that task. Nor is it only Manson
who has been the target of such songs; for the following
lyrics can only have been directed at the music of the Piper:
Why do you keep on making mysterious songs
Telling us how you're gonna' change right from
wrong?/
Cause if you really want to hear our view
You haven't done nothing.
Returning to the question of an identity between Charles
Manson and Ian Anderson, the possibility that someone might
one day perceive such an identity seems to have occured long
ago to Ian Anderson himself, as witness the following
sardonic lines from "Rainbow Blues":
I packed my ammunition,
inside the crowd was shouting encore,
but I had a most funny feeling
it wasn't me they were shouting for.
That these lines are specifically intended as a reference to
Manson is signalled at the beginning of the song by the use
of a well-known numerical code- a numerical code used
originally by the Beatles and based on the identification of
Manson as the Fifth Angel described in the ninth chapter of
the Book of Revelation, to wit:
Through Northern Lights on back roads
I told the coachman just drive me home
it's the same old destination
but a different world to sing upon.
So he threw back his head and he counted
I jumped down about five to nine
and I waved to the station keeper
said mister get me to the train on time.
A detailed account of the reasons for the identification
of Manson as the fifth angel of the Apocalypse (with the
Beatles, of course, playing the role of the first four
angels, angels whose "faces were as the faces of men, though
their hair was as the hair of women", can be found, once
again, in Helter-Skelter; therefore it need not be repeated
here. Suffice it to say that the Beatles themselves, on the
cover of the Magical Mystery Tour album, mention that "away
in the sky, beyond the clouds, live four or five magicians".
Knowing in addition that the train is a traditional symbol of
the modern world (a symbol running throughout the works of
Jethro Tull) the remaining lyrics are clearly seen as a
reference to the Piper's descent from Heaven. Only to
discover, upon arriving in our world, that:
... the rain wasn't made of water
and the snow didn't have a place in the sun.
So we sailed behind a rainbow
and waited till the show was done.
But before the final act begins, an act which will see
destruction of Biblical proportions visited upon the earth,
for it is in truth, as the prophet foretold, "a hard rain"
that's "gonna fall", there is still time, in "the calm before
the storm", to catch a live performance of the Passion Play.
Not merely in symbolic form but in reality, a tragic reality
presented to the world by Charles Manson and the other
members of the Family, and accompanied by a Heavenly, or, if
you prefer, Hellish chorus of Dionysian musicians led by the
Piper himself- Ian Anderson, for the drama continues to
unfold even as we speak. And why is that drama now being
performed on the world stage? For the same reason it has
always been performed- to teach man sanatana dharma. This
time, however, it will not be the son of man who is nailed
to the cross, for the Christened One did not return to the
world only to be slain once again by the heartless mob, nor
has the Piper returned to the stage only to be flayed alive
yet one more time by the establishment Churches of a false
God, but instead, as the legends foretold, to lead the
Children of God to the refuge awaiting them beyond the
rainbow, on the other side of the gate which leads to the
Magic Mountain. Heed therefore the Piper's mystic call, and:
... as you push off from the shore, won't
you turn
your head once more-
And make your peace with everyone?
For those who choose to stay, will live
just one more day-
to do the things they should have done.
A description of the refuge that awaits those departing from
this shore may be found in Helter-Skelter:
... in Revelation, as well as in Hopi Indian
legend, there was mention of a "bottomless pit"....
The entrance to this pit, according to Charlie, was
"a cave that he says is underneath Death Valley
that leads down to a sea of gold that the Indians
know about". Charlie claimed that "every tuned-in
tribe of people that's ever lived escaped the
destruction of their race by going underground,
literally, and they're all living in a golden city
where there's a river that runs through it of milk
and honey, and a tree that bears twelve kinds of
fruit, a different fruit each month.... He says it
will be all lit up... the walls will glow and it
won't be cold and it won't be too hot.... and
people are already down there waiting for him."
We shall learn more of this underground refuge when we delve
more deeply into the myths, but for now it is enough to know
that the desert is an ocean with its "life underground and
the perfect disguise above". To reach that shelter you must
travel across "the desert on a horse with no name", but
whatever hardship you undergo will be worth it: it will,
indeed, feel "good to be out of the rain."
There is still time, before the final curtain falls, for the world
to experience a change of heart; still time for the
world to realize that, like Socrates, it has offended a god
without even knowing it and must therefore, like Socrates,
heed the advice of the daimon and learn music, Dionysian
music, for only in this music will the world find shelter
from the approaching storm: by finding, at long last, the
living God at the heart of that music. The performance on the
world stage of the Passion Play, accompanied by music which
meets Nietzsche's definition of the Dionysian, constitutes
the proof of God so long and desperately sought by a lost and
lonely world. Surely it must be obvious to all that man
cannot be the Author of this Passion Play, for no man is
artist enough to turn the entire world into his own magic
theater of the mind: only a god could accomplish such a
divine feat, and that it has been accomplished is a proof of
that god's existence: that god who, as the Orphic myths make
clear, is the true occupant of the divine throne- the Lord
Dionysos, God of the Theater.
Chapter V
You have heard the music that accompanies the play; but,
hearing it, you have failed to understand it. You have seen
the play; but, seeing it, you have failed to perceive it as a
play- as the play, the Passion Play: the return of Christ,
the Son of Man, in the form of Charles Manson. Perhaps, then,
it might be worthwhile to listen once again to that music; to
cast our eyes once more upon the stage and consider the
performance rendered there before an audience of the blind
and deaf- an audience of the dead. Merely to mention the name
of Charles Manson in the same breath with that of Jesus
Christ will, of course, strike many people as bordering on
the verge of blasphemy: is it possible that Charles Manson,
the most notorious criminal of the 20th century, is truly the
Second Coming of Christ? Is it possible that very question
was on the lips of the greatest rock'n'roll bands of that
era- the Bacchanalian chorus? The proof will be found in the
music itself; in the music, and in a comparison of Manson's
life with that of the Son of Man. Both, after all, were men
"born of a woman who did not know who the father of her baby
was".
Neither Jesus nor Manson acted alone: as Jesus gathered
together his disciples, so Manson gathered his Family
together. Our task now, therefore, is to discover whether the
relationship which existed between Jesus and the disciples is
similar to that which existed between Manson and the Family.
Although members of the Manson Family claimed they had no
leader, that they were simply "riding on the wind", the
prosecuting attorney in the case, Vincent Bugliosi, argued
that they were all under Manson's control: an argument
accepted, not only by the jury in the case, but by the
general public as well. Assuming, at least for the moment,
that Bugliosi was correct in his argument that the Family was
completely subservient to Manson, eager to fulfill his
slightest wish, would that be a refutation of their
Christianity, or its proof? To answer that question
decisively, we must rely on the work of a man many consider
the greatest Christian mystic of the 20th century: Dietrich
Bonhoeffer.
Being that rarest of all mystics, a Protestant mystic,
it will come as no surprise to discover that Bonhoeffer's
stance toward the world closely resembles Luther's: that the
"Christian worldly calling is sanctified only in so far as
that calling registers the final radical protest against the
world". Manson's first child, it might be mentioned, was
christened with the middle name of Luther. According to
Bonhoeffer, only through perfect obedience to the word of
Christ can a man hope to find escape from the evils of this
imperfect world. Obedience is, therefore, the key to a
discipleship in Christ:
"The call goes forth and is at once followed by the
response of obedience. The response of the
disciples is an act of obedience, not a confession
of faith in Jesus".
The call of Christ is obeyed because it is Jesus who calls,
and "because Jesus is the Christ he has the authority to call
and demand obedience to his word". To be a disciple of Christ
means only:
Follow me, run along behind me! That is all. To
follow in his steps is something which is devoid of
all content. It gives us no intelligible program
for a way of life, no goal or idea to strive
after.
The disciples of Jesus, it is clear, were also riding on
the wind. That way of life may seem absurd, even nonsensical,
by the standards of those who, with their feet planted firmly
on the ground, have chosen to pursue a more practical course
in the world. But if the world is, as suggested earlier, a
piece of absurdity, then to act in what seems a sensible
manner is in fact the greatest absurdity of all, while in the
apparently nonsensical life of the devotee lies the greater
wisdom. And if this discipleship is "nothing else than
bondage to Jesus Christ alone, completely breaking through
every programme, every ideal, every set of laws", if "Jesus
Christ is the only significance" for the disciples, then how
can we condemn them for answering that call? As for the one
who called them into companionship with him, how are we to
judge a man who has decided he is also a god: that he is
Emmanuel- "the God in man"? In the case of Charles Manson, we
cannot simply maintain that only Jesus Christ was entitled to
command such obedience, for Manson has openly declared
himself as the Christ, and by what standards are we to judge
the legitimacy of his claim? The thoughts of God are hidden
from the minds of men as by a thick fog, and our wisdom in
this matter is as straw in the wind; for "the world by wisdom
knew not God". And so:
God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to
confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak
things of the world to confound the things which
are mighty.
Assuming Manson is indeed the Son of Man, then his
abilty to command allegiance from his followers, the very
quality Bugliosi used to demonize him in the minds of the
people and convict him of murder, would, according to the
standards set forth by Bonhoeffer, qualify Manson as Christ,
while the obedience his Family members rendered unto him
would serve to qualify them as his true disciples. But then,
Manson and the Family were not tried in a Christian court. As
Bonhoeffer pointed out, a truly Christian discipleship can
exist only in the presence of the living Christ, for
"Christianity without the living Christ is inevitably
Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity
without Christ". Without Christ there would have been no
disciples; without Manson there would have been no Family.
Bonhoeffer died in a National Socialist prison camp during
World War II: what he would have thought of my
identification of Charles Manson as Jesus Christ must
therefore remain forever unknown. Nonetheless, by a curious
coincidence, one of Bonhoeffer's staunchest admirers in the
academic world, the late R.C. Zaehner, longtime Professor of
Comparative Religions at Oxford, remains the only scholar of
note to have even considered the religious implications so
prevalent in the story of the Manson Family. But rather than
present that story within the Christian framework for which
it is so obviously well suited, Zaehner chose instead to
identify Manson as a traditional mystic of the Eastern
variety. Zaehner believed that Manson- during the course of a
long trek through the rough desert terrain of Death Valley-
had achieved samadhi, "enlightenment": that he had become, in
other words, an Illuminated Master- a holy man.
Zaehner believed the crime Manson was guilty of, if
crime it was, was to take seriously the religious teachings
from the East which were even then sweeping over Western
shores, gaining a foothold especially among the young.
In the case of Manson, Zaehner pointed specifically to one of
Bhagavad-Gita's most celebrated passages: "If the killer says
I kill, or the killed says I am killed, then both are
deceived". Although of course condemning the atrocities
committed by the Manson Family, Zaehner argued nonetheless
that their bloody deeds could best be understood as religious
rather than criminal acts. Where criminal acts are always
performed from self-love, acts of a truly religious nature,
no matter how vile and reprehensible they may appear, are
based solely on love of others. As the motivations differ, so
also do the consequences:
Where the criminal has to suffer his punishment in
secret, the disciples will have to stand before
governors and kings for my sake for a testimony to
them and to the Gentiles... that is why they will
be given power to make a good confession and
deliver fearless testimony even in the hour when
they make answer before thrones and judgement
seats. The Holy Ghost himself will stand by their
side, and make them invincible. He will give them
"a mouth and a wisdom which all your adversaries
will not be able to withstand or gainsay".
As we have seen, King Richard himself, even while the
trial was still in progress, declared Manson and his Family
guilty of the crimes for which they stood accused. And no
matter how shocking were the deeds committed by the Family,
and shocking they were and had to be- for they were a mirror
image of the atrocities committed in Vietnam by American
soldiers- there can be no denying the eloquence of their
testimony before the court. That testimony could only have
come from the Holy Spirit, for the light that shone in their
eyes possessed a beauty beyond the children of men, and the
words which sprang from the lips of these beloved children of
God possessed a wisdom beyond the teachings of the Wise. As
Gypsy testified before the court:
We are all facing the same sentence.... We are all
in a gas chamber right here in L.A., a slow-acting
one. The air is going away from us in every city.
There is going to be no more air, and no more
water, and the food is dying. They are poisoning
you. The food you are eating is poisoning you.
There is going to be no more earth, and no more
trees. Man, especially white man, is killing the
earth.
What criminal has ever spoken so? These are the words of
a prophet- a maenad: it is the chorus itself that speaks out
here, with a wisdom born of the infinite, a wisdom poured
straight from the heart. From a Christian perspective, that
Manson and his followers are hated and despised on all sides
today, that they stand condemned by the judgement of the
world, only serves as further testimony to the legitimacy of
their claim to represent the true Christian Church: a Church
which can only be formed around the incarnate body of the
living Christ. As Bonhoeffer makes clear, the world loves
neither the Lord nor his disciples:
The messengers of Jesus will be hated to the end of
time. They will be blamed for the divisions which
rend cities and homes. Jesus and his disciples will
be condemned on all sides for undermining family
life, and for leading the nation astray; they will
be called crazy fanatics and disturbers of the
peace. The disciples will be sorely tempted to
desert their Lord but the end is also near, and
they must hold on and persevere until it comes.
Only he will be blessed who remains loyal to Jesus
and his word until the end. But when the end comes,
the hostility towards Jesus and his disciples will
be made manifest the whole world over, and only
then must the messengers flee from city to city, in
order that they may proclaim the Word where it can
still find a hearing.
That time has now come, for surely the world's
"hostility towards Jesus and his disciples" is now "made
manifest"? The remarkable parallels between Bonhoeffer's
comments on Jesus and his disciples on the one hand, and the
public's perception of Manson and his Family on the other,
are too obvious to be simply ignored or denied. If in the
quote given above I were simply to substitute the latter for
the former, no one today would have any difficulty in
associating the Manson Family with precisely those
characteristics Bonhoeffer attributed to Christ and his
disciples. In two thousand years nothing has changed.
Regarding the possibility of Christ's return, Bonhoeffer
noted that:
The Church has never forgotten Christ's promise of
his imminent return, and she has always believed
this promise is true. The exact manner of its
fulfillment remains obscure, but that is not a
problem for us to solve....
But the time has come to confront that problem, for the
promise has been fulfilled, though the "exact manner of its
fulfillment", or even that it has been fulfilled, remains a
mystery to the world. As always, that promise was kept in the
most unexpected way. Bonhoeffer, expressing the common view,
believed that:
This much is clear and all important for us today,
that the return of Jesus will take place suddenly.
It seems never to have occured to Bonhoeffer, however,
that his return might indeed take place suddenly, and yet
still go unrecognized, or that the world's hostility towards
the Son of Man might remain unchanged even after that return,
and yet that was precisely the case. But did he not warn you
that he would come "as a thief in the night"? And yet, even
so, he found the watchtower left empty when he slipped
through the gate, and "no man, no, not the angels of Heaven",
the Beatles themseves, knew beforehand the hour of his
coming. Even when that return finally occured, man still
understood nothing of what took place before his sleep-filled
eyes: the events of the day were too great for him. Even the
Beatles, as we shall see, were not sure at first whether he
was truly the one for whom they had waited so long: he was,
it must be admitted, far different than even they expected.
Once again Christ incarnated himself in the world to walk as
a man among men, seen and yet unseen; once again man knew him
not, though his return was indeed not only sudden but
spectacular. The hour had not yet come for the thunderbolt to
strike and reveal his presence to the world. That hour has
come upon you at last.
Where Jesus is, there are the disciples also, for they
are his Family. Once when Jesus spoke before the people, his
mother and his brothers came and "stood without, desiring to
speak with him". When informed of their desire, however,
Jesus replied:
'Who is my mother? and who are my brethren?' And he
stretched forth his hand toward his disciples, and
said, 'Behold my mother and my brethren!'
Then Jesus went forth to scatter his seed, some falling upon
hard stone, some among the thorns and briars, and some upon
fruitful soil- "the good earth". As the Son of Man was
rejected by the world, so, too, were his disciples, and this
is the case also with Manson and the Family. As Bonhoeffer
noted, quoting from Scripture:
If they have named Jesus a devil, how much more
shall they call the servants of his householdd
devils. Thus Jesus will be with them and they will
be in all things like unto him.
And as Paul Watkins observed of his fellow Family members:
"They were all Charlie". The Son of Man and his disciples
remain together even today- the bond between them
unbreakable. The Son of Man did not abandon his children but
entered with them into prison, where they will still be found
today, for you have suffered not one of them to go free, not
even the women, though Lt. Calley and all who took part in the
My Lai massacre were freed long ago. And if the members
of the Family are all Charlie, who, then is Charlie? As so
many have attempted to define Manson in their own terms, let
us be courteous enough to allow him, at least this once, to
speak for himself:
Mr. and Mrs. America you are wrong, I am not the
King of the Jews nor am I a hippie cult leader. I
am what you have made of me, and the mad dog,
killer, devil, leper, fiend that you see is merely
a reflection of you. Whatever the results of this
madness that you call a fair trial or Christian
justice, you can know this. In my mind's eye, my
thoughts light fires in your cities.
Whenever God in the past has taken upon Himself human
form and walked among men as one of them, the world has found
itself shocked by His actions and placed itself directly in
opposition to His will. The situation is no different today.
Consider, for example, how easily Bonhoeffer's statement
concerning the works of Christ here on earth could be applied
to Manson:
The peace of Jesus is the cross. But the cross is
the sword God wields on earth. It creates division.
The son against the father, the daughter against
her mother, the member of the house against the
head....
Charles Manson called that discord Helter-Skelter. As he
tried to explain to you, Helter-Skelter:
... doesn't mean any war with anyone. It doesn't
mean that some people are going to kill other
people... Helter-Skelter is confusion. Confusion is
coming down around you fast. If you can't see the
confusion coming down around you fast, you can call
it what you wish.
The world inhabited by man is indeed a grim one, and it is,
in word and deed, a reflection of man himself:
Let me tell you the tales of your life
of/ the cut and the thrust of the knife/
the tireless oppression/ the wisdom
instilled/ the desire to kill or be
killed. Let me sing of the losers
who lie in the street as the last bus
goes by. The pavements are empty:
the gutters run red- while the fool
toasts his god in the sky.
As Helter-Skelter is nothing but the peace brought to
the world by the cross of Jesus, perhaps there is, then,
little difference between Charles Manson and Jesus Christ? As
in the past, with the appearance of the Son of the Virgin
among the children of men a schism appeared between the older
and younger generations; the former were appalled by His
actions, among the latter were some who, almost despite
themselves, could not resist the desire to answer His call-
for "those who ancient lines did ley" must "heed this song
that calls them back". Bonhoeffer well understood that the
appearance of Christ does not, at least initially, bring
peace to mankind, but only further division and strife:
... all this will happen in the name of God's
Kingdom and his peace. That is the work which
Christ performs on earth. It is hardly surprising
that the harbinger of God's love has been accused
of hatred of the human race. Who has the right to
speak thus of love for father and mother, for son
and daughter, but the destroyer of all human life
on the one hand, or the creator of the new life on
the other? Who dares to lay such an exclusive
claim to man's love and devotion, but the enemy of
mankind on the one hand, and the savior of mankind
on the other? Who but the devil, or Christ, the
Prince of Peace, will carry the sword into men's
houses?
It is clear, then, that Manson can only be Jesus or the
Devil himself? From a truly Christian perspective, that the
world has concluded in its wisdom that Manson is the Devil,
amounts, of course, almost to a proof of his divinity: for
when has the wisdom of the world ever seen through the folly
of God? You have never been able to recognize Him at the
banquet before, what makes you believe you can do so now? And
perhaps there is, after all, little difference between the
Prince of Peace and the Prince of Hell? For the "creator of
the new life" can only be "the destroyer of all human life".
Man must, however, make the decision to end his reign in the
material world of his own free will. That is the decision the
Son of Man awaits. For even as he fell from the bright gates
of Heaven, Lucifer lost a feather from his wings, a feather
which became a beautiful angel called Liberty, the reconciler
between good and evil:
And who comes here to wish me well?
A sweetly-scented angel fell.
She laid her head upon my disbelief and bathed me
with her ever-smile.//
Here is the song dark Lucifer sang as he fell with her from
those starry heights:
We sleep by the ever-bright hole in the door/eat in
the corner/talk//
to the floor-----cheating the spiders who come to
say "Please,"//
(Politely)
They bend at the knees.
Well, I'll go to the foot of our stairs.
Old gentlemen talk/of when they were young/of
ladies lost and erring//
sons.
Lace-covered dandies revel (with friends) pure as
the truth-----//
tied at both ends.
Well I'll go to the foot of our stairs.
Scented cathedral-----spire pointed down.
We pray for souls in Kentish town.
A delicate hush-----the gods/floating by/wishing us
well-----//
pie in the sky.
God of Ages/Lord of Time-----mine is the right to
be wrong.//
Well I'll go to the foot of our stairs.
Jack rabbit mister-----spawn a new breed of love
hungry pilgrims//
(no bodies to feed)
Show me a good man.
I'll show you the door.
The last hymn is sung and the devil cries "More"
Well, I'm all for leaving and that being done, I've
put in a request//
to take up my turn in that forsaken paradise that
calls itself "Hell"//
-----where no-one has nothing and nothing is
well-meaning fool, pick up thy bed and rise up from
your gloom smiling//
Give me your hate and do as the loving heathen do.
Colours I've none----dark or light, red, white or
blue.//
Cold is my touch (freezing)
Summoned by name-----I am the overseer over you.
Given this command to watch o'er our miserable
sphere.//
Fallen from grace/called on to bring sun or rain.
Occasional corn from my oversight grew.
Fell with mine angels from a far better place,
offering services for//
the saving of face.
Now you're here, you may as well admire all whom
living has retired//
from the benign reconciliation.
And so the Son defiantly threw himself down from the heights
of Heaven; and, followed by his angels, entered into the
world of man. Even so, he could not escape his Father's
command: now his fate is intertwined with our own. It is a
tale of the Old Man and his Lady love lost, and of the erring
Son to whom he lost her. The true story behind that ancient
triangle- the love affair at "the Well Below the Valley",
remains veiled from the eyes of man, but soon that veil will
be stripped away. The "stairway to heaven" is also a stairway
from heaven: it is our own world that lies at the foot of
those stairs- the material world: Hell. It is said that at
the time of the end he would come even unto the underworld
and wake the shades of the dead. He is here. It is not his
first visit:
Legends were born surrounding mysterious lights
seen in the sky (flashing)//
I just/lit a fag then/took my leave in the blink of
an eye.//
Passionate play-----join round the maypole in dance
(primitive// rite) (wrongly).
Summoned by name I am / the overseer/over you.
Flee the icy Lucifer.
Oh, he's an awful fellow!
What a mistake!
I didn't take a feather from his pillow.
Here's the everlasting rub: neither am I good nor bad.
I'd give up my halo for a horn and the horn for the
hat I once had....
I would gladly be a dog barking up the wrong tree
Everyones saved-----were in the grave.
See you there for afternoon tea
I thank everybody for making me welcome.
Id stay but my wings have just.
He is, to say it again, beyond good and evil. That the dark
Prince of Angels who fell from Heaven is none other than the
Son of God is suggested once again in the following lyrics:
I've come down from the upper
class to mend your rotten ways.
My father was a man-of-power
whom everyone obeyed. So come
on all you criminals! I've got
to put you straight just like I
did with my old man- twenty years
too late. Your bread and water's
going cold. Your hair is short and
neat. I''ll judge you all and make
damn sure that no-one judges me.
The metaphorical meanings are so clear as to scarcely bear
pointing out. He has "come down from the upper class"-
heaven, to mend the "rotten ways" of mankind. His "father was
a man of power whom everyone obeyed"; he is the Son of God.
His hair is long and ragged, but he is not the criminal- we
are. And there is a song, too, of the feather that fell from
his wings when he came into this world, that feather which
became the angel called Liberty- free will. It is also said
that she is his beloved, and that he has sworn never to
abandon her, despite her crimes:
She peeled from a stretch black snake
which slipped up to the hotel door.
Darting looks from piercing eyes-
The stir of memory and then no more.
Well, you know how I have to believe-
She can almost remember my name.
It's been a long time coming, babe-
Long time loose amongst foreign hills-
Shaking my faith in this free will.
Years ago in a coastal town,
mosquitoes buzzed in her hair.
Schooldress torn and bare feet brown-
Then the rains came and she wasn't there.
You're closing your doors on me
when you had almost remembered my name.
It's been a long time coming babe-
Long time loose amongst foreign hills-
Shaking my faith in this free will.
Sharp points in an ink black sky-
Faint words collide, then are lost.
I'll follow you beneath this dome-
Win you back at any cost.
I know we were children then,
but you can almost remember my name.
It's been a long time coming, babe-
Long time loose amongst foreign hills-
Well, let's be children, still-
Don't shake my faith in this free will.
Don't shake my faith in this free will.
That there would come a day when she would, at last, remember
his name, was foretold in the following song:
She was working in a topless place
and I stopped in for a beer.
I just kept looking at the side of her face
In the spotlight so clear.
Later on when the crowd thinned out
I was just about to do the same;
she was standing there in back of my chair
saying to me "don't I know your name?"
I muttered something underneath my breath
She studied the lines on my face
I must admit I was a little uneasy
When she bent down to tie the laces
Of my shoes.
Tangled up in Blues.
She is Mary Magdalene, and surely even now you have not
forgotten the name of her lover?
It has never been easy for men to reconcile their
experiences in the material world with the idea of a loving
God; and Christians in particular have long struggled with
the notion that Jesus himself might ultimately be responsible
for bringing the sword into their homes: a possibility that
has now become an all-too literal truth. That confusion
arises because men seek always to understand the love of God
in their own terms. When we love someone, we naturally seek
to improve their lot in the material world: that is not the
way with God's love- and yet God's love, a supernatural love,
is nonetheless greater than man's. As we saw in Goethe's
Faust, God works against our happiness in this world because
He knows what we do not: that our true happiness lies in
another world. Not through science will you come to the
gateway that leads to that other world, but through myth: for
in myth alone is concealed the memory of your true being. Those
myths were born of music: that music is a gift from the
Muses- the daughters of Mnemosyne. Bonhoeffer well
understood, from personal experience, the mysteries of God's
love for man:
God's love for man is altogether different from the
love of men for their own flesh and blood. God's
love for man means the cross and the way of
discipleship. But that cross and that way are both
life and resurrection.... In this promise we hear
the voice of him who holds the keys of death, the
Son of God, who goes to the cross and the
resurrection, and with him takes his own.
As Christ himself said:
He that loveth father or mother more than me
is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or
daughter more than me is not worthy of me.
And he that taketh not his cross, and
followeth after me, is not worthy of me.
He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he
that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.
Manson put the same thought in the form of a song:
Cease to exist, just come and say you love me,
give up your world, yeah, come on now, you can be".
As is revealed by the following comments from his interview
with one-time Family member Diane Lake, Bugliosi- although a
brilliant prosecuting attorney- was completely blind to the
biblical parallels:
The interview lasted several hours. One thing Diane
said struck me as very sad. Squeaky, Sandy, and the
other girls in the Family could never love anyone
else, not even their parents, she told me. "Why
not?" I asked. "Because," she replied, "they've
given all their love to Charlie".
I left... with the very strong feeling that Diane
Lake had now escaped that fate.
It is hard for the world to comprehend the relationship
between Christ and his disciples. An earlier generation would
have spotted the biblical parallels immediatly;
unfortunately, by the time Christ returned, man had stopped
reading the Bible.
Given Zaehner's intimate familiarity with Bonhoeffer's
work, and given the ease with which, as we have just seen,
Bonhoeffer's writings on Christ and his disciples may be
applied to the Manson Family, it seems rather curious that,
in his discussion of Manson's life as holy man, Zaehner
concentrated solely on the influence exerted upon Manson's
spiritual development by Eastern religions, ignoring
completely the overwhelming Christian symbolism that
surrounds Manson. That symbolism is present, of course, even
in his very name: a point so obvious a child could not
possibly have missed it, let alone a scholar of Zaehner's
calibre, and yet still he said nothing. Whether or not
Zaehner perceived the Christian symbolism inherent in the
life of Manson and simply chose, for whatever reason, not to
discuss it, with the publication by a world renowned
religious scholar of a work concluding that Charles Manson is
best understood within a religious, rather than a criminal
context, even if that religious context was Eastern rather
than Western, it became inevitable that someone else would
sooner or later come along to point out the even more obvious
connections between Manson and the Christian mystic
tradition. After all, Manson has spent much more of his time
in prison reading the Bible than Bhagavad-Gita. And, of
course, where mysticism is concerned, there is only one
tradition- East or West.
As I have already confessed, the claim that Charles
Manson is the Second Coming of Christ will strike many
readers as blasphemy; even that is perhaps putting it too
mildly: the perverse ravings of a sociopathic lunatic may
strike many as being far closer to the mark. Nonetheless,
enough evidence in support of that claim has already been
presented herein to demonstrate at least the possibility of
its truth: that being the case, pursuit of the truth in this
matter, despite the risk of giving offense, hardly requires
defending. If God has once again entered into the house of
man, if he has once again stepped across the threshold
bearing in his hands the sword that is the Cross of Christ,
then surely there can be no more vital task before us than
discovering why he has chosen to present himself in such
demonic guise. It is, after all, as Manson suggested, not
impossible that we ourselves are responsible for the form
that return has taken. It was not Manson and the Family who
pulled off the "crime of the century"; the true criminals are
revealed below:
Now they're planning the crime of the century
Well, what will it be?
Read all about their schemes and adventuring,
It's well worth the fee,
Roll up and see
How they rape the universe
How they've gone from bad to worse
Who are these men of lust, greed and glory?
Rip off the masks and let's see.
But that's not right- oh no, what's the story?
There's you and there's me....
And if it is we ourselves and not Manson who are the
real criminals, then perhaps it is also possible that Manson
is not a criminal at all but precisely who he claims to be-
"the harbinger of God's love"? Thus the task which now
confronts us: to discover whether Manson is indeed the Son of
Man, the Living Christ. Unfortunately, as none among the Wise
have seen fit to take up the task, God has chosen to leave it
to a fool: that the wisdom of the world may be revealed as
vanity before the wisdom of God. Therefore it has fallen upon
myself to present, as best I can, the arguments in support of
Manson's claim to be the Resurrection, while to the academic
world- haven of minds most subtle- falls the awesome task of
refutation or confirmation. To them, therefore, I can only
say, as Montaigne and Horace said before me, if you have
stronger counterarguments, bring them forth and refute me; if
not, depart from the battlefield and concede yourself
vanquished. In either case, let truth be the victor. As
Nietzsche once remarked; it is best to begin public life with
a duel.
The relationship between God and his devotees, between
Christ and his disciples, between Manson and the Family, is
admirably summed up by Bonhoeffer in the following comment on
the significance of the living Christ:
The Body of Christ takes up space on earth. That is
a consequence of the Incarnation.... Hence the Body
of Christ can only be a visible Body or it is not a
Body at all. The physical body of the man Jesus is
visible to all, his divine sonship only to the eyes
of faith.... "To this man thou shalt point and say,
Here is God". A truth, a doctrine, or a religion
need no space for themselves.... But the incarnate
Son of God needs not only ears or hearts but living
men who will follow him. That is why he called his
disciples into a literal, bodily following, and
thus made his fellowship with them a visible
reality. That fellowship was founded and sustained
by Jesus Christ, the incarnate Lord himself. It was
the word made flesh which had called them and
created their bodily fellowship with him. Having
been called they could no longer remain in
obscurity, for they were the light that must shine,
the city set on the hill which must be seen. Their
fellowship with him was visibly overshadowed by the
cross and passion of Jesus Christ.
In the same vein, once the Family was called together in
our own time by Manson, they could no longer remain obscure,
hidden, but must erupt forth onto the world stage, must
become known and visible to all: a light shining in the
darkness, though the darkness was blinded by that light. And
erupt upon the world stage they did, in as bizarre and
spectacular a fashion as possible, shocking the world with
their deeds as Thebes was shocked by the deeds of Dionysos
upon his return from the East. As the maenad Susan Atkins
stated while incarcerated at Sybil Brand prison: the Family
"wanted to do a crime that would shock the world, that the
world would have to stand up and take notice". By those
crimes the return of the King was made known to man. That
was, it will be remembered, the same purpose that lay behind
the murder committed by the maenads in the Bacchae. And
surely only one of his holy Bacchae could have given voice to
the sentiments linked together in the following pair of
statements, statements linked together by Bugliosi himself:
We were just like woood nymphs and wood
creatures. We would run through the woods with
flowers in our hair, and Charlie would have a small
flute...
And I had a knife in my hands, and she took off
running, and she ran- she ran out through the back
door... and I stabbed her and kept stabbing her.
I fully realize how strange and disturbing such a pairing
must sound to modern ears, yet it must be realized also that
there are parallels here with some of the most ancient and
sacred texts known to mankind. Bugliosi can be forgiven if he
was too preoccupied with matters at hand to notice the
similarities with those ancient texts- he had his own role to
play- but where were the Wise?
The crimes committed by the Manson Family revealed the
true state of man's spirit in the material world: forcing man
to confront at last his greatest enemy- himself, by showing
him that self as in a mirror- brightly. We are surrounded
here by the heavy, ominous air of ancient tragedy: a tragedy
the world has not witnessed for millenia. Unfortunately, the
performance of that tragedy in Los Angeles was understood no
better than the earlier peformances at Thebes or Jerusalem.
As the love between Dionysos and the maenads was driven into
the background by the death of Pentheus, as the love between
Christ and his disciples was overshadowed by his bloody death
on the Cross, so, too, the bloody murders committed by the
Family blinded the eyes of men to the love that inspired them
and bound them so tightly together. That love infused their
entire being, radiating from them with an almost physical
force. As even Bugliosi was forced to admit after an
encounter with Sandra Good and Squeaky Fromme:
They were the first Family members I had talked
to... and I was immediately struck by their
expressions. They seemed to radiate inner
contentment. I'd seen others like this- true
believers, religious fanatics- yet I was both
shocked and impressed. Nothing seemed to faze them.
They smiled almost continously, no matter what was
said. For them all the questions had been answered.
There was no need to search any more, because they
had found the truth. And their truth was "Charlie
is love".
The women of the Manson Family were not criminals: they
were maenads. Despite the opinions of Pentheus, Richard
Nixon, and Vincent Bugliosi, there is a difference. Even in
our own time man perceives only the blood and none of the
love that surrounds their sacrificial act. Nothing of what
the Family was affirming or denying by their actions is
understood, nothing of what they lost through that sacrifice-
or of what they gained back in return. In Helter-Skelter,
Susan Atkins described the relationship between her and
Manson in the following terms:
... before she met Manson she felt she was
"lacking something". But then "I gave myself to
him, and in return for that he gave me back myself.
He gave me the faith in myself to know that I am a
woman".
Susan Atkins also said of Manson that "he was the strongest
man on earth":
Charlie is the only man I have ever met... on the
face of this earth... that is a complete man. He
will not take back-talk from a woman. He will not
let a woman talk him into doing anything. He is a
man.
Perhaps it is now clear why he is called the God of women?
They wanted to serve him because they knew that in serving
him they had found their life's true purpose. And so he let
them: that is why they love him: "the men don't know, but the
little girls understand". That the relationship between the
God and his holy Bacchae has not changed since the days when
they frolicked together through the hills above Thebes is
demonstrated by the following song:
-On Bacchae.
From the lands of Asia,
And the sacred Tmolus
I have followed the call
Of my God,
For him labor is sweet,
And weariness is strength;
In his service is
The only freedom.
"Submission", as Manson told his Bacchae, "is a gift, go on,
give it to your brother." As he also told them, "I am your
kind, oh your kind, I'm your brother".
As Bonhoeffer makes clear, although, of course, without
the erotic overtones, the situation was the same for the
original Christians:
In order that they might enjoy that fellowship with
him, the disciples must leave everything else
behind and submit to suffering and persecution.
Yet even in the midst of their persecutions, they
receive back all they had lost in visible form-
brethren, sisters, fields and houses in his
fellowship. The Church consisting of Christ's
followers manifest to the world as a visible
community. Here were bodies which acted, worked and
suffered in fellowship with Jesus.
Those days have returned; once again the true Church is
visible to the world as a community in fellowship with Jesus:
that Church is called the Manson Family. The papal seat of
that Church is not located in Rome, amidst the pomp and
splendor of the Vatican, but in prison; nor is it the steward
of the King who occupies that chair: it is the King himself.
As Bugliosi noted:
Manson claimed that the members of the Family were
the original Christians, reincarnated, and that the
Romans had returned as the establishment. It was
now time, Manson told his closest followers, for
the Romans to have their turn on the cross.
It is called Karma. As Zaehner observed, Manson was strongly
influenced by Eastern thought. Although Manson may have
achieved enlightenment on a trip through the desert, it was
in San Francisco, on a different kind of trip, that Manson
became Christ. After having taken some magic mushrooms,
Manson:
... was lying on a bed, but it became a cross, and
he could feel the nails in his feet and hands and
the sword in his side, and when he looked down at
the foot of the cross he saw Mary Magdalene (Mary
Brunner), and she was crying, and he said, "I'm all
right, Mary." He had been fighting it, but now he
gave up, surrendered himself to death, and when he
did, he could suddenly see through the eyes of
everyone at the same time, and at that moment he
became the whole world.
The hour is swiftly approaching when the veil will be
stripped from the face of the world, leaving Mother Nature-
the Goddess herself, exposed to the ridicule of the vulgar.
The hour approaches also when man will worship at the altar
of a heretofore unknown God, that "shambling behemoth coming
out of Egypt, moving towards Bethlehem to be born". What is
it that approaches with such a heavy, ominous tread? As Yeats
himself commented after viewing a performance of Jarry's Ubu
Roi at the Theater de l'Oeuvre:
Feeling bound to support the most spirited party,
we have shouted for the play, but that night at the
Hotel Corneille I am very sad, for comedy,
objectivity, has displayed its growing power once
more. After S. Mallarme, after Verlaine, after G.
Moreau, after Puvis de Chavannes, after our own
verse, after the faint mixed tints of Conder, what
more is possible? After us the Savage God.
Now it would appear that Savage God stands before us on
the world stage itself:
And as I watched him on the stage
my hands were clenched in fists of rage
no angel born in hell
could break that Satan's spell
And as the flames climbed high into the night
to light the sacrificial rite
I saw Satan laughing with delight
the day the music died.
The music of the Bacchic chorus can be as American as apple pie,
but that music can never truly die; for there is, indeed,
so very much "more to the picture, than meets the eye- hey
hey,my my". It is time, then, to start singing:
Sing with me, sing for the years
Sing for the laughter, sing for the tears
Sing with me just for today
maybe tomorrow the good Lord will take you away....
Dream On Dream On Dream On
Dream until your dream comes true.
It may well be that Manson has come to "take you away": that
he is indeed the Grim Reaper come to the material world to
collect a harvest most bounteous- a harvest of souls. Even
so, you need not fear him. After all:
Seasons don't fear the Reaper
Nor do the wind, the sun or the rain
We can be like they are
Come on baby...don't fear the Reaper....
Love of two is one
Here but now they're gone.
Came the last night of sadness
And it was clear she couldn't go on
Then the door was open and the wind appeared
The candles blew and then disappeared
The curtains flew and then he appeared
Saying don't be afraid
Come on baby...and she had no fear
And she ran to him...then they started to fly
They looked backward and said goodbye
She had become like they are.
She had taken his hand....
Come on baby, don't fear the Reaper.
They are two and they are one. Now they stand before you on
the stage, but soon they will make their final exit. Night is
falling, and the Reaper has returned to take you away with
him- "off to Never-Never Land".
And let us sing also of "helter-skelter in a summer
swelter", of how "the birds flew off with the fallout
shelter- eight miles high and falling fast", as Helter-
Skelter itself is "coming down fast".The most
famous rock'n'roll band associated in the public mind with
Manson (and also, at least until Guns'n'Roses came along, the
only band so associated) is, of course, that most famous of
all rock'n'roll bands: the Beatles. Although, as I have said,
the connection between the Beatles' music and Manson was
discussed by Bugliosi at some length in Helter-Skelter, that
discussion established only that Manson was indeed influenced
by the Beatles' music, while yielding no insights as to
whether the Beatles were in fact making an attempt to
communicate with Manson through their music. Bugliosi,
however, did manage to imply- and, I am sure, sincerely
believed- that Manson was simply a madman who tragically
misinterpreted the Beatles in his own uniquely demented
fashion. It is a mystery the Beatles themselves have chosen
not to resolve, at least, not openly. If, then, an answer is
to be found, it must be found in the music.
For the Beatles to have communicated with Manson through
their music, it would have been necessary first of all that
they be aware of his existence. Since most of their music
that might arguably apply to Manson came from albums released
before the murders took place, it might well be wondered how
they could even have been aware of his existence, much less
attempted to communicate with him, before he burst so
spectacularly onto the world stage. There is no mystery,
however, as to how they came by that knowledge; it required
no mystic channel- only the postal service: Manson and the
rest of the Family mailed the Beatles voluminous stacks of
letters. Those letters, even if their author was at the time
"a little old scroungy nobody that eats out of a garbage
can", may very well have been intriguing enough to inspire a
response. Being musicians, it is only to be expected that the
Beatles should choose to phrase their response to Manson in
song. Manson may very well be the "Nowhere Man":
He's a real nowhere man,
sitting in his nowhere land,
Making all his nowhere plans
for nobody.
Nowhere man, please listen:
You don't know what you're missing
Nowhere man
the world is at your command....
He's as blind as he can be
just sees what he wants to see,
nowhere man,
Can you see me at all?
Nowhere man, don't worry.
Take your time, don't hurry.
Leave it all
till somebody else
lends you a hand.
If the song is indeed about Manson, then clearly the
Beatles were at that point unimpressed by his bizarre
philosophy, and wondered if he, in turn, understood them "at
all". It cannot, be said, however, that Manson was completely
unknown even before the murders; at least, not among the
Hollywood community: a Hollywood community in turn not
completely unknown to the Beatles. Even a quick reading of
Helter-Skelter reveals him living with Dennis Wilson of the
Beach Boys, playing music for Doris Day's son, Terry Melcher,
offering a ring to Dean Martin's daughter Deana and inviting
her to join the Family: as Steely Dan said to him, taunting
him but apparently with some truth as well: "every A-frame
had your number on the wall". There are many among you, of
course, who will find the attempt to forge a link between
Manson and the Beatles almost as offensive as identifying
Manson with Jesus Christ: it is, however, no less possible.
As we have seen, despite the aura of peace and love that
surrounds Jesus Christ, it is the Prince of Peace who carries
the sword into the houses of men. Even so, despite the aura
of peace and love that surrounds the Beatles, it cannot be
denied that they, too, carried the sword into the houses of
men. We have seen already how the Beatles called for the
pigs, the establishment, the Romans, to be given "a damn good
whacking". And that, of course, is just what Manson gave
them. Should he be faulted for having taken the Beatles at
their word? After all, as Bob Dylan once challenged the
world:
I started out on burgundy
but soon hit the harder stuff.
Everybody said they'd stand behind me
when the game got rough.
But the joke was on me
there was nobody even there to bluff.
I'm going back to New York City,
I do believe I've had enough.
But if the joke was on anyone, it was on Charles Manson;
for Manson was there: and he did far more than bluff. It was
Bob Dylan who first wrote lyrics that mattered: appearing
before you like a lightning bolt falling unexpected from a
clear sky and singing in a voice so real it shook the world.
Even that, however, was not enough for you, though Sodom and
Gomorrah themselves would have repented at his words if he
had appeared before them: therefore it will be better on that
day for Sodom and Gomorrah then it will be for you. Is it to
be wondered, then, that he has "had enough"? That he would
return whence he came- not New York City but the Garden
within the "Gates of Eden"? That a Bob Dylan song should
feature Christian symbolism is a thesis that hardly requires
defending; even so, that its presence in the preceding song
is deliberate is confirmed both by the mention of wine, or
spirits, and by the song's opening lines:
when you're lost in the rain in Juarez
and it's Easter time too.
We are all of us "lost in the rain in Juarez", but the
"Easter time" is coming. Although it was with Bob Dylan that
the music once again became sacred, that tradition was
carried on most ably by the Piper: they are the "Dead Beat"
and the "Old Greaser"- they drink from the same well. As the
Piper once commented in a similar vein:
"Do you still see me even here?"
(the silver cord lies on the ground.)
"And so I'm dead," the young man said-----over the
hill (not a wish away).//
Ny friends (as one) all stand aligned, although
their taxis came//
too late.
The Son of Man can still be seen, "even here", in the midst
of the material world- the world of the dead, the world that
lies under the shadow of the Moon's silver spell. Again, the
Son of Man was left to stand alone; even his friends from
across the water showing up too late to save him "from the
gallows' pole". And yet he has, nonetheless, managed to win a
reprieve from the hangman's noose; his sister is still to
come; perhaps this time her sacrifice may be enough to save
him from the wrath of the madmen.
As is well known, the Beatles delved deeply into Eastern
philosophy: the tradition of communicating with the God
through music is an ancient one in Hinduism. The tone the
singer, the devotee, adopts towards the Lord in his songs is
not always one of adoration: just as frequently the singer
expresses his bewilderment, even rage, at the mysterious and
often shocking ways of the Lord. Above all, however, those
songs express the aching loneliness of the devotee at being
sundered from the Lord, apparently abandoned to the
vicissitudes of life in the material world- and the desire
that the separation may one day come to an end:
I listen for your footsteps
coming up the drive
listen for your footsteps
but they don't arrive.
Waiting for your knock dear
on my old front door
I don't hear it
does it mean you don't love me anymore?
I hear the clock a ticking
on the mantle shelf
see the hands a moving
but I'm by myself.
I wonder where you are tonight
and why I'm by myself
I don't see you
does it mean you don't love me anymore?
Don't pass me by
Don't make me cry
Don't make me blue
Cause you know darling
I love only you.
You'll never know it hurt me so
How I hate to see you go
don't pass me by
don't make me cry.
I'm sorry that I doubted you
I was so unfair.
You were in a car crash
and you lost your hair.
You said that you would be late
about an hour or two
Well that's all right
I'm waiting here
Just waiting to hear from you.
Despite the use of endearments such as "darling" and "dear",
the preceding song is not a love song; or rather, it is a
love song, only it is not a love song from a man to a woman:
it is a song from a devotee to the Lord. Indeed, all it took,
apparently, to disguise the song's hermeneutical meaning from
the mass audience was precisely the use of those endearments.
As I have said, even his angels were at first unsure it was
really him: struggling to recognize him as we might struggle
to recognize a friend we had not seen in some time- a friend
who had been "in a car crash" and lost his hair.
Coincidentally, perhaps, while he was on trial for his life,
Manson did shave off his hair: for "the devil", said Manson,
"always shaves his head". The love that the devotee feels for
the Lord, the longing that the separation betwen them may one
day come to an end, is expressed again in the following song,
also from the White Album:
Who knows how long I've loved you
you know I love you still
will I wait a lonely lifetime?
If you want me to I will.
For if I ever saw you
I didn't catch your name
but it never really mattered
I will always feel the same.
Love you forever and forever
Love you with all my heart.
love you whenever we're together
love you when we're apart
And when at last I find you
your song will fill the air.
Sing it loud so I can hear you
make it easy to be near you
For the things you do
endear you to me.
Ah, you know I will, I will.
It is not given to the devotee to decide the day of
reconciliation: that does not always sit well, even among the
most devoted:
You call me
You say, meet me in Verona
it's too late, the summer's gone.
You call me
You say you can't stand being alone.
I don't care, you see I've grown.
Oh, but there was a time
under linden trees
I'd wait for you
shaking at the knees
saying take me tonight
the time is right.
But time has flown
don't known where it's gone
like a fairy tale
crumbled and torn
the same way my life has flown on the wind.
I can hear you crying in the night
but my heart
has turned to stone.
Having established that rock'n'roll, at least since
Dylan, is often concerned with religous themes, even the most
profound, having established that the Beatles themselves
employed religious metaphors in their music- metaphors
concerned with the relationship between the disciple and his
God, perhaps the possibility of a connection between the
Beatles' music and Charles Manson, and that the connection is
religious, may no longer seem so improbable. The strongest
evidence for the existence of that connection will be found
on the White Album, in songs such as "Sexy Sadie":
Sexy Sadie, what have you done?
You made a fool of everyone
you made a fool of everyone
Sexy Sadie, what have you done?
Sexy Sadie, you broke the rules
you laid it down for all to see
you laid it down for all to see
Sexy Sadie, oh you break the rules.
A sunny day, the world was waiting for the lover
she came along to turn on everyone
Sexy Sadie- the greatest of them all.
Sexy Sadie, how did you know
The world was waiting just for you?
The world was waiting just for you
Sexy Sadie, oh how did you know?
Sexy Sadie, you'll get yours yet
however big you think you are
however big you think you are
Sexy Sadie, you'll get yours yet.
We gave her everything we owned
just to sit at her table
just a smile would lighten everything
Sexy Sadie, she's the latest
and the greatest of them all.
Before the White Album came out, Susan Atkins was renamed
Sadie Mae Glutz by Manson: she was also called Sexy Sadie. It
was Susan Atkins who stabbed Sharon Tate; Susan Atkins who
"broke the rules" and "laid it down for all to see". And even
Bugliosi noted the accuracy with which the Beatles had warned
her of her impending fate: "Sexy Sadie, you'll get yours yet/
however big you think you are".
As few of the songs about Manson ever mention him
directly by name (at first because he was completely unknown-
the "Nowhere Man", and then later because he was only too
well-known) it becomes necessary to search instead for more
subtle clues. Those clues will be found in the elaborate set
of motifs employed in the lyrics, a set of motifs used in
common by a variety of bands, to identify a particular song
as belonging to the Manson cycle. Being unable or unwilling
to mention Manson by name, one of the most common of those
motifs is, as we have seen, to name instead the cities he is
most closely associated with: San Francisco and, above all,
Los Angeles. Oftimes the weather plays a part in that motif
as well; for the Bacchic chorus is "the Stormwatch", and the
storm they see approaching is a storm beyond "Force Ten".
Although employed by many other bands in the years since,
including Jethro Tull, that motif, along with a comment on
the weather, was used first by the Beatles:
There's a fog upon L.A.
and my friends have lost their way
We'll be over soon they said
Now they've lost themselves instead.
Please don't be long Please don't you be very long
Please don't be long, for I may be asleep.
Well it only goes to show
And I told them where to go
Ask a policeman on the street
There's so many there to meet.
As I have said, even the Beatles found it difficult to
reconcile their preconceived image of Christ with the more
complex reality as it presented itself to them in the person
of Charles Manson. It is a dilemna that the original
disciples of Jesus might well have sympathized with: they,
too, were often shocked by the reality that is Christ. As
Christ himself declared: "In vain do men worship me, teaching
as doctrine the precepts of men". Whatever doubts the Beatles
may have had concerning the validity of Charles Manson's
claim to be the Messiah, they would appear, nonetheless, to
have been well aware of his location:
Oh honey pie
my position is tragic
come and show me the magic
of your Hollywood song.
And of his destiny as well:
You became a legend of the silver screen
and now the thought of meeting you
makes me weak in the knees.
And that, of course, was precisely what Manson did. Only to
find that when he did stand up, he stood alone. The Beatles
oftimes equivocal relationship with Manson is nowhere better
illustrated than in the following song:
You say you want a Revolution
well you know
we all want to change the world.
You tell me that it's evolution
well you know
we all want to change the world.
But when you talk about destruction
don't you know that you can count me out- in....
You say you got a real solution
well you know
we'd all love to see the plan.
You ask me for a contribution
well you know
we all doing what we can.
But if you want money for people with minds that
hate//
all I can tell you is brother you have to wait....
You say you'll change the constitution
well you know
we'd all love to change your head.
You tell me it's the institution
well you know
you better free your mind instead....
Certainly Manson believed he had a solution to the
problems of the day; and, as is well known, he tried to
enlist the Beatles' help in implementing that solution. His
philosophy being so bizarre, however, and in many ways so
completely opposite to the orthodox pacifistic hippie
philosophy of the day (having more in common, perhaps, with
Chairman Mao's view that justice blooms from the barrel of a
gun) the Beatles were not at all sure they wanted any part of
it. They, too, were confused as to whether Manson's message
was one of love or hate. As the Piper would later describe
the situation:
He brewed a song of love and hatred
oblique suggestions and he waited
He is still waiting today. It is well known that Manson, even
before the murders, spent practically his entire life in
institutions. That fact was apparently not unknown to the
Beatles- even before the murders took place. Rather than
sympathizing, however, with his desire to destroy the
establishment that had confined him, they advised him instead
to free himself of resentment and by so doing free his mind
as well. Again, it seems clear that in many ways they were
still completely baffled by Manson's predilection for
destruction, finding it hard to reconcile with their own,
more constructive impulses; or, to put it another way, having
not yet fully realized that creation necessarily entails
destruction. Finally, however, that last quiet "in" coming at
the end of the first verse, not printed in the lyrics and
almost indiscernible after the apparent rejection of the
violent path pursued by Manson, signals the Beatles
acceptance of Manson's apocalyptic world-view, and thus by
extension of Manson's claim to be the Christ. That
apocalyptic vision of the world, as is well known, was
wrapped up with the seemingly inevitable prospects of a race
war in America. Where the Beatles stood in that conflict is
evident in songs such as "Blackbird":
Blackbird singing in the dead of night
take these broken wings and learn to fly.
All your life
you were only waiting for this moment to arise.
Blackbird singing in the dead of night
take these sunken eyes and learn to see.
All your life
you were only waiting for this moment to be free.
Blackbird fly, blackbird fly
into the light of the dark black night.
It will be conceded, I hope, by even the most skeptical
of readers that blackbirds have little to rise up against and
free themselves from; therefore we may safely conclude that
they are employed here as a metaphor of the black man's
struggle against racial oppression in America- a struggle
that at this point seems destined to end in open warfare on
the streets of our cities. That vision of an apocalyptic race
war is also the inspiration for another song from the White
Album- "Rocky Raccoon"; only here that conflict is presented
with a more humorous touch, albeit gallows humor:
Somewhere in the Black Mountain Hills of Dakota
there lived a young boy named Rocky Raccoon, yeah.
And one day his woman ran off with another guy
hit young Rocky in the eye.
Rocky didn't like that.
He said "I'm going to get that boy".
So one day he walked into town
booked himself a room in the local saloon.
Rocky Raccoon
checked into his room
only to find Gideon's Bible.
Now Rocky had come
equipped with a gun
to shoot out the legs of his rival.
His rival it seems
had broken his dreams
by stealing the girl of his fancy.
Her name was Magil
and she called herself Lil
but everyone knew her as Nancy.
Now she and her man
who called himself Dan
were in the next room at the hoedown.
Rocky burst in
and grinning a grin
he said "Danny boy
this is a showdown."
But Daniel was hot
he drew first and shot
and Rocky collapsed in the corner.
The Doctor came in
stinking of gin
and proceded to lie on the table.
He said "Rocky you met your match."
And Rocky said, "Doc, it's only a scratch.
And I'll be better Doc
as soon as I am able".
And now Rocky Raccoon
he fell back in his room
only to find Gideon's Bible.
Gideon checked out
and he left it no doubt
to help with good Rocky's revival.
His name is Rocky Raccoon; he comes from the Black
Mountain Hills. Like Blackbird, the song is a metaphor for
the struggle in America between the black man and the white
man. And if the black man is Abel, then surely Dan, the white
man at the hoedown, must be Cain himself. It is a tale of the
Rose, the Cypress, and the Pine. Their tale is an old one,
enshrined in fairy tale, myth, religion, art, and music: writ
large on the face of life herself, the maiden eternal with
her "silly blonde tresses"- the Goddess of many names. And
yet, for all that, the full story of what the Rose did to the
Cypress, and, even more, of what the Cypress did in return to
the Rose, remains unknown to man. The conflict between them
has not yet ended. Even now, however, this much at least is
clear:
There is unrest in the forest
There is trouble with the trees
For the maples want more sunlight
and the oaks ignore their pleas.
The most famous song concerning the race war that looms
so ominously upon the American horizon is, of course,
"Helter-Skelter" itself:
When I get to the bottom
I go back to the top of the slide
where I stop and I turn and I go for a ride
till I get to the bottom and I see you again.
Do you, don't you want me to love you?
I'm coming down fast
but I'm miles above you.
Tell me, tell me, tell me
the answer.
Well you may be a lover but you ain't
no dancer.
Helter Skelter....
It's coming down fast, yes it is.
Will you, won't you want me to make you?
I'm coming down fast
but don't let me break you.
Tell me, tell me, tell me
the answer.
Well you may be a lover but you ain't
no dancer.
But despite the aspersions cast upon him even by the Beatles,
Manson is not merely a dancer, he is the Dancer- Shiva, the
Destroyer. It is the Dionysian beat of those dancing feet
that is driving the world towards chaos and confusion:
towards Helter-Skelter. He will tread the eternal cycle of
life, death, and rebirth in the material world under his
feet: by that loving act leaving the material world itself
shattered and broken. There will be no more going up and down
the slide, for there will be no more slide. You would be
wise, at that time, to be out of the playground.
Aside from the murders themselves, perhaps the most
serious objection to the possibility of a link between Manson
and rock'n'roll music in general, and between Manson and the
Beatles in particular, is Manson's well known fascination
with Hitler. If, therefore, Hitler himself can somehow be
woven into the tapestry here unfolding, the tapestry that is
rock'n'roll, then perhaps finding Charles Manson there also
will no longer seem so unlikely. The threads for that weaving
must come, of course, from the loom of the music itself, and
it is there that we shall find them, spun from the following
enigmatic lyrics: "Adolf builds a bonfire, Enrico plays with
it". Adolf, of course, requires no last name to render his
identity plain. Without dwelling on the fact that, on the
record itself, "Enrico" comes out sounding something very
suspiciously like "and Ringo", (it may, after all, be purely
coincidental) let us concentrate instead on Adolf Hitler.
Hitler was willing to set the world ablaze in order to bring
forth a new race of men. Failing in that attempt, Hitler,
along with his bride, Eva Braun (Adolf and Eva- the twentieth
century's Adam and Eve, parents of the coming race) committed
suicide and their bodies were consumed by the flames. It is
dangerous to play with the fire of the gods. Even at the very
end, it might be mentioned, Eva was surprised to discover
that the creation of the new world should entail the
sacrifice, not merely of the old world, but of the self as
well: she had not yet realized that the two are as one, and
that the same fire will destroy them both. The Beatles were
playing with that same sacrificial fire: a fire that will
mark the end of the present age and the beginning of the
next. As Paul McCartney tried to tell you, at that hour the
new man will emerge at last from where he has remained hidden
all these years:
A seed is waiting in the earth
For rain to come and give him birth
It's all he really needs to set him free,
So next time you see L.A. rainclouds
Don't complain, it rains for you.
As we have seen, the rain is not always "made of water".
Additional evidence that, in "Games Without Frontiers", Peter
Gabriel may have had in mind the speculation that has long
surrounded the possibility of a connection between the
Beatles and Manson- speculation based above all on the lyrics
from the White Album- is supplied by that song's refrain:
If looks could kill
they probably will
in games without frontiers
war without tears.
Those lines are an obvious play off the lyrics to "Cry, Baby,
Cry- a song appearing, naturally, on the White Album:
The children asked him if to kill was not a sin?
Not when he looked so fierce
his mommy butted in.
If looks could kill
it would have been us instead of him.
All the children sing
Hey, Bungalow Bill
what did you kill
Bungalow Bill?
"Bungalow Bill" is Charles Manson, and those children are the
children of Manson. They are the children who came together
at midnight to meet:
... round the table
For a seance in the dark
With voices out of nowhere
Put on especially by the children for a lark.
Their macabre performance was triggered at least in part,
however, by the Vietnam War. The conclusion that "Bungalow
Bill" is Manson may, therefore, be still somewhat premature.
There is, after all, another verse:
Deep in the Jungle where the mighty Tiger lies
Bill and his elephants were taken by surprise
So Captain Marvel zapped him right between the eyes
Zap!
As "the mighty tiger" surprised "Bill and his elephants"
when they were "deep in the Jungle", so were American forces
surprised by the fierce resistance they encountered in the
jungles of Vietnam- the jungles of the Tiger. And as that
comic-book hero Captain Marvel zapped Bill, so Manson, the
"comic-paper idol", the Nietzschean Superman who preached
that "in love there is no wrong", zapped America- "right
between the eyes". Although it may seem coincidental, it
should be noted as well that, in addition to sharing the same
initials, Captain Marvel and Charles Manson both have
thirteen letters in their name: as we have seen, a most
auspicious number. Those wishing to argue that only someone
very high on drugs would either notice or employ such a
connection are, of course, missing the point entirely:
everyone involved in this performance has, at one time or
another, been very high on drugs; that is why we are able to
communicate in notes no one else can hear.
Save for "Mamunia", all the Beatles' music discussed so
far was recorded before the murders, but the most definitive
answer to the question of their connection with Manson was
provided in a song that came out long after the murders took
place; indeed, after the Beatles themselves had disbanded.
Far from obscure, that song remains perhaps the biggest hit
of Paul McCartney's solo career:
Stuck inside these four walls
sent inside forever
never seeing no one
nice again
like you, mama....
If I ever get out of here
gonna' give it all away
to a registered charity
all I need is a pint a day
if I ever get out of here
if we ever get out of here.
LINK
Well the rain exploded with a mighty crash
as we buried into the Sun
and the first one said to the second one there
"I hope you're having fun".
Band on the Run
Band on the Run
And the Jailor Man, and Sailor Sam
will search forevermore
for the Band on the Run.
Well the undertaker drew a heavy sigh
seeing no one else had come
and a bell was ringing in the village square
for the rabbits on the run
Refrain
Night was falling as the desert world
began to settle down
in the town they're searching for us everywhere
but we never will be found....
And the county judge
who held a grudge
will search forevermore
for the Band on the Run....
Because "Band on the Run" was written following Paul
McCartney's well publicized arrest for marijuana possession
in Japan, it has always been assumed that the song refers to
his brief stay in a Japanese prison. But that stay was indeed
a brief one. He was not "sent inside forever". Charles
Manson, however, was sentenced to spend his life surrounded
by prison walls: never to see one of his "young loves"- his
"downy little sidies" again. And when the day comes, against
all odds, that Charles Manson walks out of the tomb in which
you have placed him, he will indeed, in a manner most
unexpected, "give it all away".
Immediately following the narrative shift from "I" to
"we", the music explodes in a swiftly moving instrumental
passage: that music will come to an end only when you see the
rain itself, "with a mighty crash", exploding at your feet as
it falls burning to the tortured earth. On that day you will
see the son of man coming in power. As Gypsy tried to warn
you, as Manson tried to warn you, and yes, as the Beatles
tried to warn you, we are all of us trapped within a prison:
we are all of us under sentence of death. Soon the
thunderbolt will fall from the sky and with it the "hard
rain"- the burning rain, the rain you will see "coming down
on a sunny day". Nowhere on earth will you be safe from that
coming conflagration: only within the earth itself will
shelter be found. As we have seen, the entrance to that
underground refuge lies in the desert: in Death Valley. When
the thunderbolt falls and the final destruction comes upon
you at last, at that hour when "the hostility towards Jesus
and his disciples" is "made manifest", Manson will gather
together his Family and lead them through the desert night:
then they will disappear forever from the knowledge of men.
Not all your police force or military will be able to find
them. Many have been picked to make that journey: few will be
chosen, for when "the symphony sounds underground" many will
ignore the call, or falter along the way; thus the
Undertaker's "heavy sigh". Charles Manson, the "hard-headed
miracle worker who bathes his hands in blood", is, of course,
the Undertaker himself. He "will welcome you to the final nod
and cover you with mud". Those who accompany him are the
"rabbits on the run".
Precisely through his use of the "rabbits on the run"
motif, Paul McCartney confirmed the existence, not only of a
link between the Beatles' music and Manson, but between his
own music and that of Jethro Tull. That rabbit is the "Jack
Rabbit Mister" we first met with on the Passion Play album-
the "Jack Rabbit Mister" who will "spawn a new breed" after
"the last hymn is sung". The precise definition of a "rabbit
on the run" is provided by the Piper in "Skating Away":
And as you cross the circle line
where the ice-wall creaks behind
you're a rabbit on the run.
That definition is precise, but not yet complete. It makes
sense only when considered in conjunction with the following
lines from Passion Play:
Break the circle
stretch the line
call upon the Devil
bring the god's, the gods own fire
in the conflict revel.
Where the sheep follow along after Christ, rabbits run
with the Devil. The Devil prefers rabbits to sheep because,
being more wary, they are also more aware: they have large
ears. Encircling the realm of Lucifer, as Dante pointed out,
was a wall of ice: cold is his touch- "freezing". Around the
pentagram was drawn a circle to protect the practicioner of
the magic arts from the demons with which he trafficked. To
break that circle is to join forces with the demonic: to
become one with them. Only those who have called upon the one
you call the Devil- Charles Manson, the one whom Hitler called
"the Coming Man", will find shelter from the fire that is
coming- "the god's own fire". The rabbits on the run are
those who have broken the circle and cast their lot with the
Devil; they are the devotees of the Lord, the disciples of
the Son of Man; they are the Manson Family, and they are all
of them, each and every one- Manson himself:
The Minstrel in the Gallery
looked down on the rabbit run
then he threw away his looking glass
and saw his face in every one.
As Bonhoeffer said, they shall be in all ways like unto
him. As Paul Watkins said: "They were all Charlie". Through
the gallery dances the Minstrel, weaving his way among the
crowd: you will not see him until, instead of looking in the
mirror, you learn to look through it. When in the love that
shines forth from our eyes he may contemplate, not an image
of himself but the reality of his being, then he will throw
away the looking glass- the material world itself, and we
shall enter together into Wonderland. It was, it will be
remembered, a white rabbit that led Alice down the
underground passage that leads to the land of magic. An
underground passage may also be called a gallery. Normally,
of course, a gallery is the place from which spectators may
observe the play. Not only in theatres, however, will such
galleries be found, but in courtrooms also: for trials too
were once- and sometimes still are- considered gala events,
entertainment for the masses. That the Beatles and Jethro
Tull employ the same symbolic imagery, and that the image
emerging from those symbols is of Manson standing trial
before the gallery of public opinion, is confirmed once again
by the following song:
P.C. Thirty-One said "we caught a dirty one"
Maxwell stands alone
Painting testimonial pictures ohh-oh-oh-oh
Rose and Valerie screaming from the gallery
Maxwell must go free (Maxwwell must go free)
The judge does not agree and he tells them so.
But as the words are leaving his lips
a noise comes from behind
Bang Bang Maxwell's silver hammer
came down upon his head.
Bang Bang Maxwell's silver hammer
made sure that he was dead.
One must be wary of the Beatles whenever their music
takes on that childlike, almost nursery rhyme quality; for at
the heart of those nursery rhymes are the "nursery crimes"-
the murders committed by the children of Manson. Maxwell
Edison also has thirteen letters in his name; although his
initials are not C.M. (instead, they spell ME) his first name
does begin with an "M", while his last name ends in "son".
Manson, it will be remembered, "crossed a diamond with a
pearl", i.e., he came up with something new. Edison, of
course, was also an inventor. In addition, Maxwell Edison was
"majoring in medicine"; like Christ, he is a healer. And yet,
he is also a killer who "creeps up from behind". It is a
unique combination. Maxwell Edison is, it must by now be
obvious, Charles Manson himself. During the trial, his
maenads tried desperately to warn you that it was a god you
were about to crucify: "screaming from the gallery" for
Manson's freedom. Unfortunately, the judge in the case, the
aptly named Judge Older, did not agree. But when at last the
silver hammer of the gods comes crashing down to earth, it is
Manson who will have the last laugh. That the symbolic
imagery these two songs share is deliberately wrought, that
there is a link between the Minstrel, the Son of Man, and
Maxwell Edison, is confirmed by the following lines:
One day I'll be a Minstrel in the Gallery
and paint you a picture of the Queen
and if sometimes I sing to a cynical degree
it's just the nonsense that it seems.
It is the nonsense that makes sense. For the Minstrel, too,
was in the gallery that day along with Rose and Valerie: an
observer at his own trial- "painting testimonial pictures".
Testimony has been given, the signs of his presence surround
you, but the eyes of men are blind, nor will glasses help
cure that blindness. Indeed, as is revealed in the rather
charming little story that follows, a story found on Passion
Play, the first step towards learning to see, the first step
in becoming a rabbit on the run, is to throw away the glasses
that society has made for you (both figuratively and, in many
cases, literally) and learn to use your own eyes:
THE STORY OF THE HARE WHO LOST HIS SPECTACLES
Owl loved to rest quietly whilst no one was
watching. Sitting//
on a fence one day, he was surprised, when suddenly
a kangaroo ran//
close by.
Now this may not seem strange, but when Owl
overheard Kangaroo//
whisper to no one in particular, "The hare has
lost his spectacles,"//
well, he began to wonder.
Presently, the moon appeared from behind a
cloud and there, lying//
on the grass, was Hare. In the stream that flowed
by the grass-----//
a newt. And sitting astride a twig of a bush------
a bee.//
Ostensibly motionless, the hare was trembling with
excitement,//
for without his spectacles he appeared completely
helpless. Where//
were his spectacles? Could someone have stolen
them? Had he mislaid//
them? What was he to do?
At this point a mad discussion ensues between the other
animals as to how poor Hare might best go about recovering
his spectacles. Kangaroo advised Hare to "go in search of the
optician", but "Hare was completely helpess without his
spectacles". Newt then suggested Kangaroo take him in her
pouch, "but alas, Hare was much too big to fit into
Kangaroo's pouch". Their discussion ultimately proved
fruitless, but:
All this time it had been quite plain to Hare
that the others knew//
nothing about spectacles. And as for all their
tempting ideas well,//
Hare didn't care.
The lost spectacles were his own affair.
And after all, Hare did have a spare pair.
THE END.
A curious story, it will be admitted, from an album with
such profoundly religious overtones, and the reader will be
forgiven if he is shaking his head at this point, wondering
how on earth I intend to relate this whimsical, Milneesque
rock'n'roll nursery rhyme with Helter-Skelter and the Manson
Family. Once again, that confusion arises because the
preceding story is only a piece of the puzzle, and not the
puzzle in its entirety. To understand that clue properly, it
must be considered in conjunction with the cover of the
Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour album. Searching for hidden
meanings on Beatles' album covers is a time-honored pursuit:
indeed, it has been pursued for such a long time it would
seem nothing new could possibly be said on the subject.
Nonetheless, here is a clue that was missed. On the cover of
Magical Mystery Tour, the four Beatles are each dressed in
animal costumes: as we know, "the walrus was Paul". As John
Lennon was the only member of the Beatles who wore glasses,
and those famous glasses are perched upon the nose of what
appears to be a rooster, it might well be thought that John
Lennon hides behind that mask: a closer look, however,
reveals that rooster as Ringo. As Ringo is on the far right,
we may assume that George Harrison is on the far left, behind
what appears to be a gorilla mask. John Lennon, therefore, is
the Hare, but "the Hare has lost his spectacles". Why should
the loss of those spectacles have any bearing on the
relationship between the Beatles' music and Charles Manson?
And even more, on the possibility that, in addition to having
been influenced by the Beatles, Charles Manson may also have
exerted some influence in return upon them? For a long time
"the single most important clue found at the murder scene" in
the Tate killings was a pair of glasses. In the course of
interrogating Danny DeCarlo, a member of the Straight Satan's
motorcycle club who lived for awhile with the Family at
Spahn's Movie Ranch, the detectives asked whether anyone in
the Family wore glasses: "None of 'em wore glasses because
Charlie wouldn't let 'em wear glasses". DeCarlo added that
"Mary Brunner had had several pairs; Charlie had broken
them". Why did Charlie break their glasses?: to make their
eyes stronger. That Lennon decided to doff his spectacles on
the cover of Magical Mystery Tour may, therefore, be taken as
a signal that the Beatles had decided to accept Manson's
philosophy, an acceptance that was confirmed once again by
McCartney's use of the motif years later on "Band on the
Run".
It was not, of course, merely with the intention of
improving their eyesight that Manson forbid anyone in his
Family from wearing glasses. On the door at Spahn Ranch were
written some lyrics- an old nursery rhyme actually- from the
White Album:
One, two, three, four
five, six, seven
all good children
go to heaven.
It was Robert Heinlein, the man many believe was, albeit
unknowingly, the spiritual founder of the Manson Family, who
taught Manson that no one gets to heaven wearing glasses.
Although Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land is often
credited with having served as the inspiration for the
founding of the Manson Family, the motif of the "hare who
lost his spectacles" orginated in one of Heinlein's earlier
works, an obscure short story entitled The Man Who Travelled
in Elephants. At the beginning of the story, the
protagonist, John Watts, is riding in a bus:
Rain streamed across the bus's window. John Watts
peered out at wooded hills, content despite the
weather.
The rain is coming down, and John Watts, a near sighted
little rabbit, is on the run. Recently widowed, he is touring
the country, keeping on the move to still the loneliness in
his heart. John and his wife, Martha, had travelled the
country together: first on John's sales route, and then,
after John's retirement, they had continued their journeying
together under the pretense that they were now travelling in
elephants. A childless couple, they travelled with a crew of
invisible pets, among those pets were a litter of 'possums.
'Possums, like kangarooos, are marsupial creatures: having
learned that up to six 'possums in a litter were orphaned
because there was no room for them in the mother's pouch,
they had "immediately formed the Society for the Rescue and
Sustenance of the Other Six 'Possums". Martha had selected
John's round stomach as the perfect sanctuary for them; thus,
despite belonging to the male sex, John, like the sea horse,
found himself playing the role of the mother.
One of the couple's pets, however, was not invisible:
their dog- Bindlestiff. He "was a dog they had picked up
beside the road, far out in the desert, given water and
succor and received in return his large and uncritical
heart". Bindlestiff had died just after Martha, leaving John
alone in the world. As he rolled on down the road, John
wondered about his dog, if now he was able to "roam free in
the Dog Star, in a land lush with rabbits and uncovered
garbage pails". John had just explained to the elderly woman
seated next to him that he travelled in elephants, prompting
the old lady to remember an acquaintance of hers, an
exterminator who had sold mongeese for a living, when a dog
ran out in the road, causing the bus to swerve and crash
"against the curb of the approach to the bridge". John bumped
his head against the seat in front of him, smashing his
glasses in the process. John did not allow the loss of his
spectacles to disturb him: after all, he told himself, he
could always "dig a spare pair out of his bags". Stepping out
of the bus to assess the situation, even his near-sighted
gaze could not miss the "large, mean-looking rocks" in the
chasm below the bridge. Trembling at the sight of those
rocks, John returned to the bus.
Finally another bus came along to rescue them, and John
seated himself once again next to the old woman, whose name
was Alma Hill Evans: she is the Mountain Mother. She smiled
up at him, and commented on what "a heavenly day" it was.
John looked out the window, startled. He must have dozed off
while waiting for the relief bus to show up, he thought to
himself, for now the rain had stopped and the sun had broken
through the clouds:
Great fleecy clouds tumbling up into warm blue sky:
a smell of clean wet pavement, drenched field and
green things growing- he lay back and savored it.
While he was soaking it up a great double rainbow
formed and blazed in the eastern sky.... The
rainbow's colors seemed to be reflected in
everything he saw.
When they arrived at the Fair and disembarked, John
attempted to retrieve his baggage, but the driver told him
not to worry, that it would be taken care of. That was "all
very well", John said to himself, "but what was he to do
without his glasses?" At last deciding that he could always
move closer if he needed to see something better, he turned
around and entered the Fair "at the gate". Inside he found
"the greatest show ever assembled for the wonderment of
mankind". At the Fair, John found a dog bearing an uncanny
resemblance to his own lost Bindlestiff, but the dog ran off
to a woman during a "Priests of Pallas parade", and John lost
sight of them both in the crowd. Searching for them, he went
next to the carousel, where a man, claiming to be a
detective, told him to try Canal Street: "Women love to mask;
it means they can unmask". On his way:
He did see a dog, but it was a seeing-eye dog- and
that was a great wonder, too, for the live clear
eyes of the dog's master could and did see
everything that was going on around him, yet the
man and the dog travelled together with the man
letting the dog direct their way, as if no other
way of travel were conceivable, or even desired, by
either one.
Arriving on Canal Street, John found the dog once again,
this time dressed in a clown suit, but there was no sign of
the woman he had spotted earlier in the throng. Leaving Canal
Street, he came upon a huge procession, an unending parade
led by "King Kamehameha himself playing Alii, Lord of
Carnival, with royal abandon". Then came the dance of the
Mummers:
... something older than the country celebrating
it, the shuffling jig of the masquers, a step that
was young when mankind was young and first
celebrating the birth of spring.
Seeing the dog once again, wandering through the parade,
John called him to his side. At that moment, the procession
came to a sudden halt; the Grand Marshall of the parade
stopped his horse in front of John. Upon confirming that he
was, indeed, "the Man who Travels in Elephants", the Grand
Marshall led him up to a magnificent carriage at the end of
the procession. Gazing upon the woman seated there before
him, John realized at last that he had entered into heaven in
the only way possible: without his spectacles but with his
dog at his side.
Although John Watts never saw his spectacles again, John
Lennon's spectacles, covered in blood, would appear once more
on an album cover. As Marc Bolan said, John Lennon was one of
the Knowers. What did John Lennon know?: He knew the name and
nature of the Goddess responsible for the material world. It
was knowledge for which he ultimately paid dearly. Marc Bolan
described that Goddess in the following manner:
You gonna' look fine
be primed for dancing
you're gonna' trip and glide
all on the trembling plane
your diamond hands
will be stacked with roses
and winds and cars
and people of the past
I'll call you thing
just when the moon sings
and place your face in stone
upon the hills of stars
and gripped in the arms
of the changeless madman
we'll dance our lives away
in the ballrooms of Mars
You talk about day
I'm talking 'bout night time
when the monsters call out
the names of men
Bob Dylan knows
and I bet Alan Freed did
there are things in night
that are better not to behold
You dance
with your lizard leather boots on
and pull the strings
that change the faces of men
you diamond browed hag
you're a gutter gaunt gangster
John Lennon knows your name
and I've seen his
She is, of course, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. Soon you will
know why Marc Bolan referred to the Goddess in
such sinister terms. Suffice it to say for now, however, that
nothing is more dangerous to man than true knowledge of the
secret that lies behind his existence- the secret of the
thunderbolt. Marc Bolan spoke truly when he warned you that
"there are things in night that are better not to behold". It
is my intention to bring those things into the light and show
them to you, but it is only fair to warn you that not without
reason has the truth been hidden from your eyes for untold
ages of the world: it is a truth you were not yet ready to
face. It may be that you are still not ready to face that
truth, but you have run out of time: you stand now at the
edge of the abyss. Before reading any further, therefore, you
might do well to consider carefully the fate of those who
discover that secret: John Lennon and Alan Freed are now
dead; Bob Dylan almost died in a motorcycle accident, while
Marc Bolan himself died in a car crash. Beware of searching
too long for monsters in the dark: they may find you.
David Bowie, another of the "Bewlay Brothers", also knew
of that Goddess, of her plans for the world and of how she
might, at last, be overcome. It is a song in which Bob Dylan
once again figures prominently, for it was Dylan who first
discovered her in the darkness, her face hidden behind a veil
of mystery. That knowledge does not come without a price:
Now hear this Robert Zimmerman
I wrote a song for you
About a strange young man called Dylan
With a voice like sand and glue
His words of truthful vengeance
They could pin us to the floor
Brought a few more people on
And put the fear in a whole lot more
Ah, Here she comes
Here she comes
Here she comes again
The same old painted lady
From the brow of the Superbrain
She'll scratch this world to pieces
As she comes on like a friend
But a couple of songs
From your old scrapbook
Could send her home again
You gave your heart to every bedsit room
At least a picture on the wall
And you sat behind a million pairs of eyes
And told them how they saw
Then we lost your train of thought
The paintings are all your own
While troubles are rising
We'd rather be scared
Together than alone
Now hear this Robert Zimmerman
Though I don't suppose we'll meet
Ask your good friend Dylan
If he'd gaze awhile down the old street
Tell him we've lost his poems
So they're writing on the walls
Give us back our unity
Give us back our sanity
You're every nation's refugee
Don't leave us with their sanity....
Only in music, in Dionysian music, will the answer be found.
That music is the music that accompanies the Passion Play. In
"Boys", David Bowie advised "Charlie Manson" to "catch a
play". There was no need: that play was written by the Son of
Man, but written for the benefit of the Goddess herself; so
she might at last discover, for herself, "that there's no
place like home". It is the music itself that will draw her
back over the rainbow.
Of all the albums that, taken together, comprise the
Manson cycle, there is none that can be more explicitly
linked to Manson than Aqualung. That with Aqualung we stand
in the presence of Dionysus- and Dionysian music- is revealed
first of all in the album's title track:
Do you still remember
December's foggy freeze-
when the ice that
clings on to your beard is
screaming agony.
And you snatch your rattling last breaths
with deep-sea-diver sounds
and the flowers bloom like
madness in the spring.
The roots of those flowers will be found in ancient Greece,
in myth. When Dionysos returned from the Underworld,
delivered from the Mother's "womb by the lightning fire", the
long dark winter of the world was ended- spring awoke:
Now, be crowned with ivy!
Burst into flower
Burst, burst
Into flowering bryony!
Go wild!
Let wild sprays
Of fir trees
and oak,
Burst
shoot through the stones,
Burst into flower!
Shake, shake
Soon the whole land
will shake, shake
and dance!
Dance round the thrysus,
In adoration
Of its power
Brute Thrysus
Inhuman rod!
Soon the whole land will shake
and dance,
Dionysos
Dionysos leads the way!
Up to the mount'n!
The music of Dionysos and his holy Bacchae was, above all,
the music that beats in the heart "of all things that grow"-
rock'n'roll music: "shake, rattle, and roll". The passing of
millenia has not altered the beat of that music:
Have you seen Jack-in-the Green
with his long tail hanging down?
He wears the colors of the
summer soldier
carries the green flag all the winter long.
Jack do you never sleep
does the green still run
deep in your heart?
Or will these changing times
Motor-ways, power lines
keep us apart?
Well, I don't think so
I saw some grass growing
through the pavement today.
As in the Bacchae, however, the god's return has
resulted, paradoxically enough, not only in the liberation of
nature, but in his own incarceration at the hands of the
state:
People- what have you done-
locked him in his golden cage.
Made him bend to your religion-
him resurrected from the grave.
He is the God of nothing-
if that's all that you can see
He is the God of everything
he's inside you and me.
It will be remembered that Manson, "him resurrected from the
grave", stated at his trial, "I am only what lives inside
each and every one of you". That the lyrics from "My God" are
deliberately intended as a reference to Manson, and not
simply as an intellectual critique of man's penchant for
reforming God in his own image, is confirmed by the next song
on the album- "Hymn 43":
Oh father high in heaven- smile down upon your son
who's busy with his money games- his women and his
guns.//
And the unsung Western hero killed an indian or
three//
and made his name in Hollywood to set the white man
free.//
If Jesus saves- well, he'd better save himself
from the gory glory seekers who use his name in
death.//
I saw him in the city and on the mountains of the
moon-//
his cross was rather bloody- he could hardly roll
his stone.//
Admittedly, it is oftentimes difficult to establish with
any certainty the precise meaning of a song or a poem. Once
again, however, there is no one else on earth to whom the
preceding song could possibly be said to apply save Charles
Manson. What other Christlike figure has come before the
world who is, at the same time, so famous for "his women and
his guns"? Who, in addition, became famous "in Hollywood",
when "he tried to set the white man free?" The Family, it
will be remembered, also lived for a time at Spahn's Movie
Ranch, where many of the Hollywood westerns were filmed:
Manson is "the unsung western hero who killed an Indian or
three." And, of course, in the eyes of the world, those who
follow Manson and claim he is Jesus are but "gory glory
seekers who use his name in death". Although in "Hymn 43" the
Piper himself gave voice to the serious doubts the world must
entertain concerning the legitimacy of that claim, his final
word on the subject is delivered in the song that follows
"Hymn 43", a song which Jethro Tull has used to close many a
concert in in the years since its release: "Locomotive
Breath". But perhaps, even now, you remain skeptical that the
music actually refers to Manson? Perhaps you require that a
name be given to that god before you will believe? On Passion
Play was given his last name: "Man/son of man/". In
"Locomotive Breath" is revealed both his first name and, in
the final line, his true identity:
In the shuffling madness
of the locomotive breath,
runs the alltime loser,
headlong to his death.
He feels the piston scraping-
steam breaking on his brow-
old Charlie stole the handle and
the train it won't stop going
no way to slow down.
He sees his children jumping off
at the station- one by one.
His woman and his best friend
in bed and having fun.
Crawling down the corridor
on his hands and knees-
old Charlie stole the handle and
the train it won't stop going
no way to slow down.
As explained previously, the train is a metaphor for the
modern world. The "all-time loser" is, of course, Manson
himself. The handle Charlie stole is the handle on the brake
that might have slowed our beloved train's headlong progress:
there is no way now to prevent her from careening off the
tracks. That the children jumping from the train are indeed
the children of Manson is surely confirmed for us when we are
told also of their unconventional behavior: "his women and
his best friend, in bed and having fun". What happens after
the children jump from the train, both to them and to the
train itself, is revealed in another song:
As you slip on the greasy platform,
And you land upon your back--
You make a wish and you wipe
your nose
Upon the railway track.
While the high-strung locomotive,
with furnace burning bright,
lumbers on-- you wave goodbye--
And the sparks fade into night.
And as you join the Good Ship Earth
And you mingle with the dust--
You'd better leave your underpants
With someone you can trust.
And when the Old Man with the
telescope
Cuts the final strand--
You'd better lick two fingers clean, before
You shake his hand.
The meaning behind those last, mocking lines will be made
clear when we come to understand, at last, "how it feels, to
be Thick as a Brick". Returning to "Locomotive Breath", even
the escape route the Family will use to leave the train is
revealed: for in leaving the train, Charlie must go "crawling
down the corridor, on his hands and knees": it is the journey
through the tunnel that leads to the center of the earth. On
that journey:
He hears the silence howling-
catches angels as they fall
and the all-time winner
has got him by the balls.
He picks up Gideons' Bible
open at page one-
And on that page we find revealed the name of the Living God,
for although the lyrics printed on the album sleeve read,
once again, "old Charlie stole the handle", in the singing of
them those words undergo a startling metamorphosis:
I said God- he stole the handle
and the train it won't stop going-
no way to slow down.
As must by now be only too clear, "Charlie" can only be
"Charles Manson, a.k.a. Jesus Christ, God". Although you have
sentenced him to death, now it is he who has you by the
balls. Now "the winner is the loser, and there ain't no
blame: just the end of the game". It will be remembered that
the Family believed the Beatles were the four angels of the
Apocalypse, and that Manson was their king- the fifth angel.
In "Helter-Skelter", the Beatles warned Manson not to let
their fall from Heaven break him. Their concern was
groundless: for here is one who "catches angels as they
fall". Only he who is King over the angels of Heaven may
break their fall. It is, of course, precisely with that
purpose in mind that He has returned to the world.
And so Helter-Skelter has became a reality; once again
the God and his devotees have performed the Passion Play
before the startled eyes of mankind- all apparently to no
avail. On the other side of the confusion that is Helter-
Skelter, however, man will find at last the peace that comes
with wisdom- "ancient wisdom". Before you come to the end of
this book I will, in violation of the most sacred trust known
to mankind, a trust unbroken for thousands of years, place
the key to that wisdom in your hands. What you do with that
key will ultimately determine, not only your own destiny, but
the destiny of the world as well.
CHAPTER VI
I fully realize the enormity of what I am suggesting
here: that Charles Manson, a man many of you consider the
most despicable criminal of the 20th century, a monster no
less, is actually an incarnation of the godhead- the return
of Dionysos, the second coming of Christ. It therefore
becomes incumbent upon me to offer some sort of proof so that
you will know I speak the truth. Proof beyond what you might
call the mere exegesis of a few rock and roll songs, for you
might easily say to me: "What do we care what a handful of
stoned rock and roll musicians say? They're just songs".
Therefore I must prove to you why that music is important.
And so I propose to strike a bargain with you, a Faustian
bargain if you will- a bargain for your very soul. Not to
take it from you, but to introduce you to it.
Almost three thousand years ago Hesiod presented the
Greeks with the Theogony: it is the oldest and most sacred
text we have of the Greek religion. In it are given the
genealogies of the Greek gods. Those genealogies have
confounded scholars ever since, for it is clear that Hesiod,
knowingly or unknowingly, completely obscured the original
genealogies; and, once broken, no one has ever been able to
put Humpty-Dumpty back together again- to reconstruct the
genealogies in their true and original form. Here, then, is
my bargain with you: if I can, to your satisfaction, return
those ancient genealogies to their proper form, with a
clarity and truth apparent to all, solving along the way such
related mysteries as the origin of the pyramids and the
reason for the enigmatic smile on the transfigured face of
Leonardo- the painting called the Mona Lisa, tying it all
back in with Charles Manson and that same rock and roll
music, while revealing in the process the origin, purpose,
and destiny, not only of mankind but the material universe
itself, and the true nature of the gods who created both man
and the universe he inhabits, then you must accept that I
have spoken truly, and that Charles Manson is indeed the
Christ. For what more can I do? What greater proofs can I
offer you?
The path we follow will not be a straight one; the road
that leads to the truth is a "long and winding road"- a
serpentine path through woods where all "short cuts make long
delays". There may be times on our journey together where you
will want to question both my method and my sanity, wondering
if I know what I am doing or where I am going. Be patient for
but a little while. I promised at the outset of our journey
together that all would be revealed. I did not speak falsely
to you. Despite the seemingly bizarre nature of my topic, up
to now I have demonstrated, I hope, an ability to pursue an
inquiry in a sane and rational manner, proceeding in
scholarly fashion toward an elucidation of the truth. Only,
as you shall see, one cannot come upon the truth directly;
nor is it possible to discover the truth by proceeding in a
sane and rational manner. Eventually, if one wishes to pierce
to the heart, one must first go mad.
Before that time comes, it will be useful to study the
following charts for a moment: these are the genealogies I
propose to rearrange. It is said that you can't tell the
players without a scorecard, and this is especially the case
with the characters of Greek mythology. Often, when
commentators repeat the Greek myths for the entertainment or
edificaiton of modern audiences, they either ignore these
genealogies or bury them in a back appendix where they are
ignored by all but the most scholarly minded of readers. Yet
it has been truly said that the key to the Greek myths lies
in correctly understanding the genealogies and etymologies of
the various deities. To work our way through the labyrinth of
the genealogies, we must pull the structure out of the
stories wherein it is concealed and consider it in isolation.
Then, by exhaustive cross referencing with the stories
themselves, with mythic texts ranging from Hesiod to Homer to
Aeschylus to Ovid, to name only the greatest, the true
meaning concealed behind the story, behind the structure, may
at last be permitted to unfold itself, like a flower
blooming in the light. No scholar has ever entered the
labyrinth of the Greek myths and returned successful, having
slain the Minotaur who guards that shrine and come forth with
the key to the genealogies in his hands. That is about to be
changed.
Although a correct understanding of the genealogies and
etymologies of the gods is acknowledged on all sides as
essential to a hermeneutical interpretation of the Greek
myths- the Greek religion, unfortunately, since, as I have
mentioned, no one has ever been able to correctly figure out
what those true genealogical relationships were, the
relationships cleverly concealed by Hesiod himself, the true
meaning of the Greek myths remains a mystery. Many have
stumbled upon that mystery, many have solved it; none have
ever spoken of it openly- until now. Here, then, are the
genealogies of the Greek gods as Hesiod gave them to us:
Chart A Chart B Chart
The first thing to notice is that we have, once again,
the initial division of the Primordial One into earth, sea,
air (heaven), and fire- the Underworld. But, to give a
preliminary indication of the significance of the
genealogies, it should also be noticed that the separate
lines of Gaia=Ouranos (Earth=Heaven) and Gaia=Pontus
(Earth=Sea) are reunited by the marriage of the son of
Ouranos- the Titan Krios, and the daughter of Pontus-
Eurybia, of whom it was said that she had a heart of steel.
Although mostly ignored by scholars, it seemed clear that, as
this was the line that reunited sea, heaven, and earth, it
must be the key branch on the family tree of the Greek gods.
The children of Krios and Eurybia are Perses, Pallas, and
Asterios: three of the most obscure figures in all of Greek
mythology. As we shall see, however, they are also three of
the most significant figures in all of Greek mythology.
Indeed, a correct understanding of their identity and the
role they play is essential to a correct, i.e., hermeneutical
understanding of the myths.
The next chart, Chart B, lists the various divinities of
the Greek myths according to the generation in which they
appear, while Chart C merely adds a few additional
characters, with the King of Thebes underlined in each
generation, beginning with Kadmos. Also indicated on Chart C
is the approximate chronological placement of several key
events in Greek mythology. The genealogies given above
have remained basically unchanged since Hesiod: soon they
will be changed forever, back to their original form. I will
change those genealogies back to their original form, and do
so indisputably, so that you will know I speak the truth: so
you will know that Charles Manson is indeed the son of man
and the son of God. I hope that you will then have the
wisdom, the heart, the courage, or, at least, the courtesy,
to set him free. He is not the one who belongs in a prison
cell under pain of death- we are. He is not the guilty one:
we are. For twenty-five years Charley has been doing time
"for some other fucker's crime", and that "other fucker" is
me- and you. How that came to pass is a long story, but it is
a story that must now be told; for, short of making
confession, I know of no other way to free him; and if he is
not freed soon you will finally discover, as I have
discovered, to my sorrow and joy, what madness truly means:
what it means to enter the twilight zone- and be unable to
leave.
There is, however, a key. David Koresh was searching for
that key; but, not content with imprisoning him in his home,
you killed him and the children along with him. But I am
alive, and I have the key: soon you will have it too. When
you know what it is, you may no longer want it, but by then
it will be too late for you to put it down. On the White
Album the Beatles asked "can you take me back where I came
from, can you take me back?" The Grateful Dead replied, "if I
knew the way, I would take you home". I am not the Way, but
the Way was shown to me by the Mothers, that I might share it
with you, though you "stand to gain" thereby, "and I to
lose". As I have said, the path that leads home is a "long
and winding road", but it is the shortest road, and the only
road, that I know. One must be dead, and gratefully so, to
walk that road, but it is only from the chrysalis of death
that life's true soul emerges.
Under the spell of psychedelic music and psychedelic
drugs, the world has once again been transformed from a
mundane arena for the mindless excercise of will to power
into a magic theater where all things are possible, a theatre
where Dionysos, the living god of the mysteries, performs his
eternally recurring role. The question remains, however, who
is Dionysos? And how did the god of wine and theater, an
effeminate god, the "Zeus of women" as he was called, become
ruler over the world? For the figure of Dionysos remains
shrouded in darkness: obscure, perhaps, even to those
familiar with his name not only through myth but through
Nietzsche as well. Despite Nietzsche's attempt to crown him
as the Anti-Christ (or, for that matter, the earlier and
equally well justified attempt by Holderlin to portray him as
the Christ) Dionysos remains neither as well known nor as
clearly delineated in the public mind as his more celebrated
Olympian relatives- Zeus, Apollo, or Athene, to name only the
most prominent: if, that is, the Olympian deities of the
invading Aryan tribes were in fact related to Dionysos at
all, for the genealogies of the Greek Gods are, as I have
tried to suggest, ambiguous at best, constructed as much to
conceal as to reveal. Athene, for example, second in fame and
power among the Olympians only to Zeus, her alleged father
(alleged because she is also, in some stories, identified as
the daughter of the Giant Pallas, hence her surname, Pallas
Athene) was herself the pre-Aryan goddess of a religion
which, after being swallowed up by the faith of the invaders,
reemerged fully formed from the head of her erstwhile
conqueror.
When Zeus, the chief god of the Aryan peoples, first
with his thunderbolt shattered the serene tranquility of the
Great Mother's favored realm, he was dealt with in much the
same way that religion dealt with the original dismemberment
of all things- reunification through the all-conquering power
of Eros, i.e., he was married to the goddess and then
overthrown by their divine son, who then took his rightful
place once again at the side of the Great Mother, as not only
her son but her consort as well. For as much as Zeus subsumed
the religion of the Great Mother by entering into matrimonial
alliances with her various local manifestations, so was Zeus
himself swallowed up within the framework of the Minoan
mythos, becoming identified in particular with the Cretan
Divine Child (the Kouros) whom we have met already under the
name of Dionysos Zagreus, that Dionysos who is the son and
husband of the Kore, the Maiden, she who is also called
Persephone. Indeed, instead of saying that Zeus took the
place of the earlier Minoan Divine Child, perhaps it would be
more accurate to say that the Kouros eventually took over the
name of Zeus.
Once there was a time when schoolboys memorized the love
affairs of both Goethe and Jove, but that time is no more and
the world is the poorer for it, for education has thereby
lost much of its former allure. As we no longer attempt to
provide our children with even the pretense of a classical
education, a rudimentary knowledge of the Greek myths may no
longer be the cultural given it once was; and yet, in order
to reveal Charles Manson as yet another of the many masks
worn by Dionysos, we must drain "the cup of ancient wisdom"
to the very dregs, for only in ancient myth will we find the
key to resolving the modern dilemna: by discovering the
identity of the living God. The myths that tell of Dionysos
are many and varied, but they permit, nonetheless, of a
natural division into three main categories. First, there are
the myths which tell of his birth and childhood, a childhood
spent surrounded by loving, "breast-giving women", his
nurses- the nymphs of Mt. Nysa. Secondly, there are the myths
dealing with his persecution at the hands of non-believers,
principally men. Finally, there are the myths telling of his
ultimate triumph, with maenads and wild animals dancing in
procession at his side to the music of flute and drums. He
has lived in the desert with his women; he lives now in the
prison you have built for him: the day of his triumph is
still to come.
Any attempt at a critical analysis of the Dionysian
mythos, however, must deal with two complicating factors.
First, as mentioned earlier, because they represent the
synthesis of two originally opposed pantheons- the Aryan and
the Minoan, the varied genealogies of the Greek gods that
have come down to us present a very confusing picture of the
lineage of these deities. In particular, the identity of the
original male consort to the Great Mother is often lost
because he has been replaced in that role by Zeus; thus
obscuring the symbolic content of the older genealogies: for
that symblic content is most clearly seen in the names and
marriage relations of the original deities themselves. As we
shall see, nowhere is this pattern more obvious than in the
genealogies of Dionysos and Ariadne. As the world was first
divided by the power of Eros, so through the power of Eros
the world would be reunited once more- if not in life, then
in death: that is the promise of the Siren song to Odysseus.
Secondly, we cannot limit our search simply to those myths in
which Dionysos is named directly as the protagonist, for
behind the faces of the various characters from Greek
mythology one finds, over and over again, only Dionysos
himself, smiling through his tears. As Nietzsche observed:
The tradition is undisputed that Greek tragedy in
its earliest form had for its sole theme the
sufferings of Dionysos and that for a long time the
only stage hero was Dionysos himself. But it may be
claimed with equal confidence that until Euripedes,
Dionysos never ceased to be the tragic hero; that
all the celebrated figures of the Greek stage-
Prometheus, Oedipus, etc.- are mere masks of this
original hero, Dionysos. That behind all these
masks there is a deity, that is one essential
reason for the typical "ideality" of these famous
figures which has caused so much astonishment.
Oedipus, or Oidipos, commited the same deed as the
Divine Child, he slew his father, the king, and married his
mother, as Zeus overthrew his father, Kronos, and married
Demeter, i.e., Mother Rhea- his own mother, and as Kronos had
earlier overthrown his father- Ouranos, and married Rhea,
i.e., Gaia, his own mother. Prometheus, meanwhile, was
entrusted with the secret name of the goddess who would one
day bear the Divine Child destined to overthrow Zeus himself.
We shall see whether the great Titan proved worthy of that
trust. This same "ideality" is also the reason why, in
Aeschylus's famed trilogy, the Oresteia (described by
Swinburne as "probably on the whole the greatest spiritual
work of man") "even Clytemnestra, the only character who
appears in all three plays, is depicted with a massive
simplicity and awful grandiloquence which rejects detailed
characterization".
Left behind in Argos when the Greeks sailed away for
Troy to rescue her sister Helen, Clytemnestra proved
unfaithful to her husband Agamemnon- king of kings among the
Greeks, taking to her bed his cousin, Aegisthus- "goat-man".
At the same time, she sent her young son Orestes off to the
neighboring realm of Phocis, in order to conceal from him the
scandalous state of affairs within the royal household. When
Agamemnon returned at last from the fighting, after ten long
years at war, she, like a "bitch, who... with lifted ears",
licks her master's hands, feigning love for him still, rolled
out a carpet dyed deepest crimson on which he might enter the
palace in state. Once inside the hall, she dressed him in
ceremonial robes of the finest material, richly embroidered
in brightly colored thread. Enmeshed in those luxurious robes
like a fish caught in the net, the king was helpless against
the swift strike of the dagger, appearing suddenly in
Clytemnestra's upraised hand.
Learning of his mother's treachery, Orestes, now grown
into a young man, returned from Phocis to avenge his father's
death. While laying a lock from his hair at the tomb of
Agamemnon, Orestes encountered his sister, Electra, "the
Shining", the same name given to that great goddess Hesiod
calls an Okeanine, she who was mother to Harmonia- the wife
of Kadmos, and thus the grandmother of Semele and the great
grandmother of Dionysos. Recognizing her brother by the robe
he carried, a robe she herself had embroidered, she helped
him enter the palace, where he slew both Aegisthus and his
own mother. Orestes threw open the palace doors in triumph
and displayed to the crowd the two corpses and the
bloodstained robes of Agamemnon. But the story does not end
there. Clytemnestra's mother was Leda, which was simply
another name for the Great Mother, for the Lady: she who
coupled with Zeus when he took upon himself the form of a
swan. Therefore behind the tragic character portrayed on the
stage by Clytemnestra was a goddess; and not simply a
goddess, but the Goddess, the Great Mother herself, an
identification confirmed by the name of her daughter,
Electra: for the mother of Electra was Tethys, the wife of
Okeanos, she "who is rightly invoked as Mother".
Clytemnestra, or Klytaimnestra, is, of course, simply a
variant spelling of Klymene, the wife of Iapetos and the
mother of Prometheus. Leda, curiously enough, is not only a
name for the Great Mother Goddess; it is the name for both a
genus of spiders and a genus of amphipod crustaceans.
What explains the fascination of Greek audiences for the
Oresteia? It did not lie in the slaying of a mother by her
son and the pursuit of a family blood feud (though certainly
the play allows of an intriguing reading on that level also)
but on a deeper level, where the play tells of a crime
committed, not by an individual, but by an entire people. And
although the crime committed was indeed matricide, it was not
simply Orestes' mother who was killed in the play, it was the
Mother, the Great Mother, the Goddess; thus the guilt lay not
only upon Orestes, but on all the Greeks. As Michael Grant
observed, "the subject of the Oresteia, is not only the myth,
it is the pressing theme drawn out of the myth, that crime
must be punished by crime". What had they done, these Greeks?
They had slain the Great Mother, and for that crime they lay
in peril of a curse, for even the descendants of those who
perpetrated such a monstrous crime could hardly be expected
to escape justice.
How could the Greeks be purified of their great sin and
avoid the vengeance of the Furies, i.e., the Maniai? That was
what held Greek audiences spellbound, not Freud's fantasy
about an Electra complex. That the focus of the play is an
attempt to achieve a reconciliation between the overthrown
but still powerful goddess of the Minoan civilization and the
younger gods of the Aryans who supplanted her, is revealed
with unremitting clarity near the end of the trilogy, when
the Maniai vent their fury on Apollo for giving sanctuary to
the fugitive Orestes:
The executioner's cutting whip is mine to feel
and the weight of pain is big, heavy to bear.
Such are the actions of the younger gods. These
hold/
by unconditional force, beyond all right, a throne
that runs reeking blood,
blood at the feet, blood at the head.
The very stone, centre of earth, here in our eyes
horrible/
with blood and curse stands plain to see.
That stone at the center of the earth is, of course, the
omphalos itself, supposedly located at Delphi, only Delphi is
not its true location. Or, rather, Delphi is its true
location, but the true Delphi is not in Greece. The original
location of the oracle, along with its true name and purpose,
unknown for millenia, will ultimately be revealed herein.
Apollo's reply to the Furies' challenge is equally savage: in
no uncertain terms he commands them to leave the temple:
... else you may feel the flesh and bite of a
flying snake launched from the twisted thong of
gold that spans my bow, to make you in your pain
spew out the black and foaming blood of men, vomit
the clots sucked from their veins. This house is no
right place for such as you to cling upon; but
where by judgment given, heads are lopped and eyes
gouged out, throats cut, and by the spoil of sex
the glory of young boys is defeated, where
mutilation lives, and stoning, and the long moan of
tortured men spiked underneath the spine and stuck
on pales.
Reconciliation between the two sides is finally achieved
at the end of the play, thanks to the intercession of Athene.
Summoning a special court, she listened to the opposing
arguments and, when the judges split their decision down the
middle, cast the deciding vote in favor of Apollo's argument:
"that the father, not the mother, is a child's true parent;
and that Orestes' deed is sanctioned by... the authority of
Zeus". To appease the still wrathful Furies, Athene provided
them with a temple of their own in the city of Athens.
Although it is common today to romanticize the Goddess
religion in much the same manner as one used to romanticize
the Greeks, like the Greeks, the Goddess worship surely had
its dark side as well. Apollo's comments, therefore, placed
in his mouth as they are by Aeschylus, the universally
acknowledged master mythographer of the ancient world,
should not be lightly dismissed as repressive political
propoganda on the part of a representive of the patriarchy. It
cannot be denied that the rites of the Great Mother were
drenched in blood, nor can it be denied that at least some of
that blood was human. That Clytemnestra's murder of gamemnon
is an echo of the rites that were once held in honor of the Great
Mother (a rite introduced by the Great Mother herself- the
Dragon of the Moon; for it is the tale of her mating with the Lion
of the Sun) is clearly indicated by the words she speaks as she
strikes the fatal blow:
Inextricable like a net of fishes
I cast about him a vicious wealth of raiment.
And struck him twice, and with two groans he loosed
His limbs beneath him, and upon him fallen
I deal him the third blow to the God beneath the
earth,/
to the safe keeper of the dead a votive gift
And with that he spits his life out where he lies,
And smartly spouting blood he sprays me with
The sombre drizzle of bloody dew- and I
Rejoice, no less than in God's gift of rain
The crops are glad when the ear of corn gives
birth./
There is about this tale an air of almost inhuman
savagery. If a black widow spider or a female praying mantis
could sing, would it not sing a song such as this one? And
was that glorious raiment with which she clothed Agamemnon
spun from the loom, or from her own spinnarets? And was it a
knife that she slew him with, or her stinger of sharp-pointed
steel? The song of the Mother, Clytemnestra, is not
dissimilar to that of the Furies as they pursue Orestes:
Over the beast doomed to the fire
This is the chant, scatter of wits,
Frenzy and fear hurting the heart,
Song of the Furies
Binding brain and blighting blood
In its stringless melody.
He is strong, but we wear him down
For the blood that is still wet on him...
For with a long leap from high
Above and a dead drop of weight
I bring foot's force crashing down
To cut the legs from under even
The runner, and spill him to ruin...
Another of Clytemnestra's daughters was named
Chrysothemis, "golden law of nature", which was also the name
of one of the Nymphs who dwelt with the serpent in the Garden
of the Hesperides. There is an ancient vase painting:
which depicts goddesses or nymphs.... without
wings, but with mighty serpent's bodies below the
hips. Four of them, in two couples, are performing
secret rites in a vineyard, whilst on the other
side of the picture goats are attacking the
vines.... One of these nymphs plays the double
flute.
Although we do not know all the details that were involved in
the worship of the Mothers, whom even Mephistopheles spoke of
with such awe, we do know that:
when our forebears heard the notes of a flute at
dusk or by night, they knew that such notes were
often an enticement to secret rites and
initiations: they knew, too, that the secrets of
these ceremonies could sometimes be repulsive and
terrifying.
By the time we leave the labyrinth, you, too, will know the
meaning of that secret, repulsive, and oh, so very enticing
terror.
The Nymphs of the Hesperides are normally three in
number, although occasionally a fourth is mentioned. In
addition to Chrysothemis, there was a nymph named Asterope,
"star-brilliant", or "star-eyes", who is said to have been
the mother of the Sirens. The musical ability of the
Hesperides, which talent extended to their beautiful singing
voices, confirms the existence of a relationship between the
Hesperidean Nymphs and the Sirens. As Kerenyi pointed out:
The distinguishing characteristic of the Sirens...
is, apart from their birdlike shape- their talent
for music.... They play on the lyre or the double
flute.... And as they play they sing. To all this
both the tales and the Sirens own names bear
witness, and so do the pictures of them. These
pictures, which appear on the tombstones of our
classical age, are of a marvelous beauty, and
clearly were inspired not by our seaman's fables,
but by other old stories that are now forgotten.
Although Odysseus, that ancient mariner, did not relate
the name of the Sirens, one of them is named as Himeropa,
"she whose voice awakens desire", and Kerenyi provides us
with two sets of names for a trinity of Sirens. In Homeric
Greece they were called Thelxiope, "she of the enchanting
voice"; Aglaope, "she of the glorious voice"; and Pasinoe,
"the seductive". In Italy they were called Parthenope, "the
Virginal"; Ligeia, "she of the bright voice", and Leucosia,
"the White Goddess". The name Ligeia is similar to that of
the Nereid Leiagore, "Gentle in Speech", while Leucosia is
simply a variant spelling of Leukothea, the title of Ino, who
was the daughter of Kadmos and the sister of Semele. Although
not listed as a Nereid like her other two sisters- Agaue and
Autonoe, Ino's identity as a sea-goddess or sea-nymph is
confirmed in the many stories that have come down to us of
her strange life. In one such tale, Ino was born a mortal
woman, but ended her life by leaping from a cliff into the
sea as she fled from the wrath of her husband, King Athamas.
Ino did not die, however, for Aphrodite interceded with Zeus
on her behalf; and both she and her son, Melikertes, were
transformed by Zeus into deities of the sea. Ino was not only
Dionysos's aunt, that she became his step-mother identifies
her as his true mother; thus explaining why Zeus placed the
child under her care, as he also placed the child under the
care of the Nymphs of Mt. Nysa. It also explains why Kadmos
had four daughters instead of three: Ino and Semele are the
same goddess by different names. Ino and Melikertes must leap
into the sea to escape the pursuit of Athamas: they are
succoured by Aphrodite. In another story, Dionysus, while
still only a child, living with the Nymphs of Mt. Nysa, was
forced to leap into the sea in order to escape the pursuit of
Lycaon; only the intercession of Thetis saved him that day.
The two stories are, of course, the same; thus identifying
Ino with the Nymphs of Mt. Nysa, Melikertes with Dionysos,
and also Thetis with Aphrodite. As we shall see, Ino was also
one of the three Kabirian Nymphs, those Nymphs who were the
sister-wives of the Kabeiroi, or Korybants, and whom we have
met with already under the name of Kouretes at the birth of the
Divine Child. It is a story we will be returning to again and again,
for there is in truth no other story. But the tales of Ino's life do not
come to an end with her transformation into a nymph of the
sea; she also plays a role in the Odyssey, where:
She lent Odysseus her veil so that, by tying it
like a belt around his waist, he was able to escape
from the shipwreck and swim to the distant coast.
Afterwards he had to throw the veil back into the
sea. It was later said that this veil was really
that strip of purple cloth which people initiated
into the Mysteries of the Kabeiroi received on
Samothrace....
With Leukothea's help Odysseus reached the Isle of the
Phaiakians, i.e., the Phoenicians, the race of Kadmos. The
color purple, it should be noted, was closely associated in
the ancient world with Phoenicia. We will return to this
purple cloth again, and for the first time in two thousand
years unveil the dark mystery that lies behind it. Remain
patient but a little while longer- soon the thunderbolt will
fall. Atlas's daughter, Calypso, "the hidden one", warned
Odysseus to steer clear of the Sirens because they were
servants of the Mistress who ruled the Underworld- the shadow
land of the dead, where flows the white river of Lethe, the
River of Forgetfulness. Kerenyi described the role of the
Sirens thusly:
It was the Sirens' task to bring all approaching
travellers before the great queen, to entice them
into her presence by the sweet tones of their music
and song. And this they did... to all who must
enter the realm of the dead.
And so the souls of the dead were lured by the Sirens' call
into the presence of Persephone, Queen of the Underworld,
there to await the judgment of the Maid. And what was the
nature of that song Odysseus heard, "when his naked ears were
tortured by the Sirens' sweetly singing"?:
Never has any man voyaged past this place in his
black ship without listening to our song. It flows
like honey from our mouths. He who has heard it
finds delight and gains wisdom. For... we know all
that happens on the earth, everywhere and at all
times!
That ship is, of course, a metaphor for the body, and
that it is a black ship reveals the origin of that metaphor,
and of the stories that masquerade under the misnomer of the
Greek myths. It has been too often overlooked that Phaethon
was prince in Ethiopia, not Greece, and that Perseus was king
over that African realm. European civilization was built on
the foundation of Greek culture, but the origins of Greek
culture itself lie in Africa, not in Europe. There is indeed
a bridge between the races: we can give our children a
classical, European education, but let us, at the same time,
also inform them of its African roots. It should also be clear that
the Sirens were originallyfar different creatures from the nightmarish
monsters of the Underworld that later myths made them out to be.
They were sent out into the world, not to terrify men with the spectre
of death, but to make it easier for men to look that grim
spectre in the eye, for "by their art the bitterness of death
is alleviated and disguised". The Sirens, therefore, "were
always goddesses of death and love". Serving both love and
death may seem an unlikely calling to the modern mind, and
yet, even today, many of Manson's followers have fervently
proclaimed that "Charley is Love", while the rest of society,
including former followers such as Paul Watkins, has
concluded with equal fervor that "Charley is death". Perhaps
the chasm which yawns between these two primeval forces-
Eros and Thanatos, to say it in the Greek, is neither as wide nor
as deep as we might think? And perhaps the bridge between
them is built on music?
It was said also of the Sirens that they were fated to
die if ever a man should ignore that bright vision of
paradise: should ignore, as Campbell so aptly put it, quoting
the Hindus, "the taste of the juice". When the Greeks, in the
person of Odysseus, rejected that lovely vision of paradise,
and not even for so lofty a goal as the Buddhist nirvana but
merely to continue with the mindless pursuit of power in the
material world, the Sirens, in despair for the future of
mankind- the child of the Dragon, committed suicide and left
the world of men behind. In recognition of their role as
servants of the love that lies concealed even behind the mask
of death itself, "Zeus gave the Sirens the island of
Anthemoessa, 'rich in flowers', as their dwelling place". But
now "the light of the Lady, is on the land", and the Siren
song once again rings through the night:
They are strangers from afar seen by the holy!
They bring secrets of the stars to the lost and
the lowly!
This is the song they sing in order to soothe the tortured
ears of mankind:
We who of the earth are born
Will lead you through the healing storm
It's time to follow the path of the ancient ones!
It's sunrise and high tide!
In the blue endless space my eys open wide
There's a land I can see!
There's a land I can see
It's where I long to be!
Where the rivers run swiftly
And carry your soul to the farthest star
There is a land that I know
Where I've lived long ago
Oh! strong comes the voice of the wild-hearted
lover
Who is calling to me!
He says there's a land of the sun!
Where all men may come.
Oh! It's not easy to win
It can fade like the spring dew
that runs through your hands.
Come with me tonight!
Now the young moon is bright.
You can feel the earth spinning
Down pathways of starlight that dazzle your
sight
There is a land I can see!
Even Odysseus, the prototype for all Greek sailors who
came after him, the rogue who disdained the fairest vision of
paradise the ancient world had to offer, is not a purely
Greek character. His roots, too, extend into the Minoan
civilization that preceded the Greeks: not for nothing is he
addressed throughout the Odyssey as "the son of Laertes and
the gods of old", (emphasis mine). The Illiad and the Odyssey
reflect the same divided world-view. In the Illiad, Odysseus
spent ten long years in battle before the walls of Troy, the
poet expounding all the while the world-view of the Aryans;
the poet used the next ten years of wandering, the odyssey
home, to express the world-view of the Minoans. When Odysseus
finally returned home to Ithaca, after his twenty year
absence, he came in the guise of a beggar. His own wife,
Penelope, failed to recognize him when he entered his great
hall again, and inquired of him his lineage, whence he came,
and how he happened to find himself on Ithaca, "for I am
sure", she said, "that you did not come here walking on the
water".
Odysseus's reply, a complete fabrication, nonetheless
reveals the true origin of the motifs employed by Homer in
the Odyssey: that they are Minoan- not Greek. Odysseus
replied that his name was Aithon, adding that he was the son
of Deucalion and the grandson of Minos. Deucalion, of course,
is the Greek Noah. Along with his wife, Pyrrha, he renewed
the human race after Zeus, in one of his infamous tempers,
destroyed the world by flood. They were the children of the
Titan Prometheus and Pandora, the first woman and yet another
name for the earth-goddess, as is demonstrated by that
ancient painting where she rises up from the earth under the
hammer blow of Epimetheus. Minos, of course, is Crete's
legendary king. Thus, in a manner most subtle, Homer linked
Minos with the rule of the ancient Titans, identifying Minos
as the father of Deucalion and so identical to Prometheus
himself- king of the generation of Titans that followed
Kronos, and also placing Odysseus firmly within the framework
of the ancient Minoan religion. We shall see if for once the
poet has put true words into the mouth of Odysseus, and put
them there in the form of a lie; and we will return also to
the story of Deucalion and Pyrrha. The name Aithon, it should
be mentioned, was also given to one of the steeds of the sun-
god Helios, whose father was the Titan Hyperion. In addition,
that name also links Odysseus with Aither, who is, as we
shall see, a very old god indeed.
It was Nietzsche who first pointed out that the true
origin of what we call Greek culture lay in the initial
confrontation and eventual synthesis of two very distinct
cultures; tribes of mounted Aryans on the one hand,
descending from the North under the banner of their primitive
storm-god Zeus, and the native Minoan culture on the other,
with its flourishing cultural life and complex religious
system under the rule of the Great Mother, she of many names,
and her equally namy named son and consort- the Hunter.
Although modern scholars have to some extent acknowledged
Nietzsche's immense contribution to our current understanding
of the Greek myths, they have not always made explicit
precisely what those insights were. The following comments
from Nietzsche constitute not only the theoretical basis for
all that follows in this chapter, and for our attempt to
discover whether Charles Manson is but one more of the many
roles played through the ages by Dionysos, they have also
served as an infallible guide for the last one hundred years
of scholarship on the Greek myths. It was Nietzsche who first
pointed out that Dionysos, a true "son of the old gods", had
in the end subsumed the gods of the invaders within his own
cult. As a result, upon the stage of the Greek theater:
... the one truly real Dionysus appears in a
variety of forms, in the mask of a fighting hero,
and entangled, as it were, in the net of the
individual will. The god who appears talks and
acts so as to resemble an erring, striving,
suffering individual.... In truth, however, the
hero is the suffering Dionysos of the Mysteries,
the god experiencing in himself the agonies of
individuation, of whom wonderful myths tell that as
a boy he was torn to pieces by the Titans and now
is worshipped in this state as Zagreus. Thus it is
intimated that this dismemberment, the properly
Dionysian suffering, is like a transformation into
air, water, earth, and fire, that we are therefore
to regard the state of individuation as the origin
and primal cause of all suffering, as something
objectionable in itself.... In this existence as a
dismembered god, Dionysus possesses the dual nature
of a cruel, barbarized demon and a mild, gentle
ruler. But the hope of the epopts looked toward a
rebirth of Dionysus, which we must now dimly
conceive as the end of individuation. It was for
this coming third Dionysus that the epopts roaring
hymn of joy resounded. And it is this hope alone
that casts a gleam of joy upon the features of a
world torn asunder and shattered into
individuals.... This view of things already
provides us with all the elements of a profound and
pessimistic view of the world, together with the
mystery doctrine of tragedy: the fundamental
knowledge of the oneness of everything existent,
the concept of individuation as the primal cause of
evil, and of art as the joyous hope that the spell
of individuation may be broken in an augury of a
restored oneness.
From the union of Heaven and Earth came the birth of
the ten thousand things, but the day is swiftly approaching
when all will again be one, for while the ten thousand were
whispering there was one who was listening: the man upon the
waters. Greece is not the only land, of course, where the
clash between two cultures breathed new life into the spirit
of myth. As mentioned earlier, the same confrontation between
cultures occured also in India, and the story was told there
of how Indra, the Zeus of the Hindu pantheon, struck down the
dragon Varuna with his thunderbolt and became king of the
gods. But there is another myth that comes to us from that
land, a myth telling of Indra's fate after he mounted the
apparently vacant throne of Heaven: a myth of charming
profundity entitled the Parade of Ants. When Dionysos,
disguised as a votary, was captured by Pentheus's men and
brought before him for questioning, the king asked him if
Thebes were the first city in which Dionysos had appeared.
"The whole East dances his mysteries", proclaimed Dionysos.
"Oriental mentality is lower than ours", replied the king.
"On this matter," Dionysos rejoined, "higher". The following
myth may go far towards resolving that ancient debate.
Indra slew the dragon, a "giant Titan", because the
dragon held "the waters of heaven captive in its belly".
These waters are "the sap of field and forest, the blood
coursing in the veins" of the earth. With the death of the
dragon, the waters which belong to all of us were released:
"The titans were retreating to the underworld; the gods were
returning to the summit of the central mountain of the earth,
there to reign from on high." Because the citadel of the gods
had been thrown down during the overlordship of the dragon,
Indra was determined to build a new palace, a palace as
unequaled in its splendor as he, Indra, was unequalled among
the gods.
In order to fulfill his ambition, Indra hired the divine
craftsman Vishvakarman. Vishvakarman succeeded in
constructing a fantastic faery palace, with graceful towers
and splendidly appointed chambers, all surrounded by
carefully tended gardens of dazzling color and variety,
Such was the palace that Vishvakarman constructed for Indra.
Indra, however, still dissatisfied, even by the wonderful
accomplishments of Vishvakarman, continually hounded the
architect to improve upon his work, until Vishvakrman, driven
to despair by the importunate ruler of the gods, at last
sought help from Brahma, who agreed to intercede for him with
Vishnu, who is also called Krishna. That help was not long in
coming. The very "next morning a brahmin boy, carrying the
staff of a pilgrim made his appearance at the gate of Indra".
Indra came personally to welcome the boy, who was "slender,
some ten years old", and "radiant with the luster of wisdom".
Indra invited the attractive boy to enter his hall; and,
after offering him an oblation of fruits and honey, inquired
of him the reason for his visit. And now:
The beautiful child replied with a voice that was
as deep and soft as the slow thundering of
auspicous rain clouds. "O King of Gods, I have
heard of the mighty palace you are building, and
have come to refer to you the questions in my mind.
How many years will it require to complete this
rich and extensive residence? What further feats
of engineering will Vishvakarman be expected to
accomplish? O Highest of the Gods," the boy's
luminous features moved with a gentle, scarcely
perceptible smile- "no Indra before you has ever
succeeded in completing such a palace as yours is
to be".
Full of the wine of triumph, the king of the gods
was entertained by this mere boy's pretension to a
knowledge of Indra's earlier than himself. With a
fatherly smile he put the question: "Tell me child!
are they then so very many, the Indras and the
Vishvakarmans whom you have seen- or at least, whom
you have heard of?" The wonderful guest calmly
nodded. "Yes, indeed, many have I seen." The voice
was as warm and sweet as milk fresh from the cow,
but the words sent a slow chill through Indra's
veins. "My dear child," the boy continued, "I knew
your father, Kashyapa, the Old Tortoise Man, lord
and progenitor of all the creatures of the earth.
And I knew your grandfather... who was the son of
Brahma.... Also I know Brahma, who was brought
forth by Vishnu from the lotus calix growing from
Vishnu's navel. And Vishnu himself- the Supreme
Being, supporting Brahma in his creative endeavor-
him too I know. O King of Gods, I have known the
dreadful dissolution of the universe. I have seen
all perish again and again, at the end of every
cycle. At that terrible time, every single atom
dissolves into the primal, pure waters of eternity,
whence originally all arose. Everything then goes
back into the fathomless, wild infinity of the
ocean, which is covered with utter darkness and is
empty of every sign of animate being. Ah, who will
count the universes that have passed away, or the
creations that have arisen afresh, again and again,
from the formless abyss of the vast waters? Who
will number the passing ages of the world, as they
follow each other endlessly? And who will search
through the wide infinities of space to count the
universes side by side, each containing its Brahma,
its Vishnu, and its Shiva? Who will count the
Indras in them all- those Indras side by side, who
reign at once in all the innumerable worlds; those
others who have passed away before them; or even
the Indras who succeed each other in any given
line, ascending to godly kingship, one by one, and,
one by one, passing away? King of Gods... it may
be possible to number the grains of sand on earth
and the drops of rain that fall from the sky, but
no one will ever number all those Indras. This is
what the knowers know.... Beyond the farthest
vision, crowding outer space, the universes come
and go, an innumerable host. Like delicate boats
they float on the fathomless pure waters that form
the body of Vishnu.... Will you presume to count
them? Will you number the gods in all those
worlds- the worlds present and the worlds past?"
A procession of ants had made its appearance in the
hall during the discourse of the boy. In military
array, in a column four yards wide, the tribe
paraded across the floor. The boy noted them,
paused, and stared, then suddenly laughed with an
astonishing peal, but immediately subsided into a
profoundly withdrawn and thoughful silence.
"Why do you laugh?" stammered Indra. "Who are you,
mysterious being, under this deceiving guise of a
boy?" The proud king's throat and lips had gone
dry, and his voice continually broke. "Who are you,
Ocean of Virtues, enshrouded in deluding mist?"
The magnificent boy resumed: "I laughed because of
the ants. The reason is not to be told. Do not ask
me to disclose it. The seed of woe and the fruit of
wisdom are enclosed within this secret. It is the
secret that smites with an axe the tree of worldly
vanity, hews away its roots, and scatters its
crown. This secret is a lamp to those groping
in ignorance. This secret lies buried in the
wisdom of the ages, and is rarely revealed even to
saints. This secret is the living air of those
ascetics who renounce and transcend mortal
existence; but worldlings, deluded by desire and
pride, it destroys."
The boy smiled and sank into silence. Indra
regarded him unable to move. "O Son of a Brahmin,"
the king pleaded... "I do not know who you are. You
would seem to be Wisdom Incarnate. Reveal to me
this secret of the ages, this light that dispels
the dark."
Thus requested to teach, the boy opened to the god
the hidden wisdom. "I saw the ants, O Indra, filing
in long parade. Each was once an Indra. Like you,
each by virtue of pious deeds once ascended to the
rank of a king of gods. But now, through many
rebirths, each has become again an ant. This army
is an army of former Indras.... It is by deeds that
one merits happiness or anguish, and becomes a
master or a serf. It is by deeds that one attains
the rank of a king or brahmin, or of some god, or
of an Indra or a Brahma. And through deeds again,
one contracts disease... or is reborn in the
condition of a monster.
This is the whole substance of the secret. This
wisdom is the ferry to beatitude across the ocean
of hell. Life in the cycle of countless rebirths
is like a vision in a dream. The gods on high, the
mute trees and the stones, are alike apparitions in
this phantasy, but death administers the law of
time. Death is the master of all. Perishable as
bubbles are the good and the evil of the beings of
the dream. In unending cycles the good and the
evil alternate. Hence the wise are attached to
neither, neither the evil nor the good. The wise
are not attached to anything at all." The boy
concluded the appalling lesson and quietly regarded
his host. The king of gods, for all his celestial
splendor, had been reduced in his own regard to
insignificance.
And so, Krishna, for that, of course, is who the Divine
Child was, went on his way and left the thunderer to the
contemplation of his dharma. Nowhere has the human, or, for
that matter, the divine condition, ever been more accurately
or more eloquently portrayed; it is not, however, "the whole
substance of the secret", but only its outer shell- Krishna
did not reveal everything. But what he did not reveal to
Indra, I will soon reveal to you. Thus it was in India, as
the Dravidian gods humbled the gods of the invaders and
assimilated them with the native religion. To a lesser
degree, and without the sophistication found in the Hindu
myth, the pattern is Greece was much the same, as Nietzsche
made eminently clear:
... the Homeric epos is the poem of Olympian
culture, in which this culture has sung its own
song of victory over the terrors of the war of the
Titans. Under the predominating influence of
tragic poetry, these Homeric myths are now born
anew; and this metempsychosis reveals that in the
meantime the Olympian culture also has been
conquered by a still more profound view of the
world. The defiant Titan Prometheus has announced
to his Olympian tormentor that some day the
greatest danger will menace his rule, unless Zeus
should enter into an alliance with him in time. In
Aeschylus we recognize how the terrified Zeus,
fearful of his end, allies himself with the Titan.
Thus the former age of the Titans is once more
recovered from Tartarus and brought to the light.
We have just met, in the form of Krishna, that Divine Child
who would one day threaten Zeus's rule. It was not through
power that Krishna brought an end to the rule of Zeus, but
through wisdom. Nietzsche also brought to light the ultimate
fate of the Aryan mythos as a result of its encounter with
the "more profound" world view of the Minoans; and, even
more, as a result of its encounter with the music of that
culture, a type of music heretofore completely alien to them
but which became, nonetheless, a "European Legacy":
The philosophy of wild and naked nature beholds
with the frank, undissembling gaze of truth the
myths of the Homeric world as they dance past: they
turn pale, they tremble under the piercing glance
of this goddess- till the powerful fist of the
Dionysian artist forces them into the service of
the new deity. Dionysian truth takes over the
entire domain of myth as the symbolism of its
knowledge which it makes known partly in the public
cult of tragedy and partly in the secret
celebrations of dramatic mysteries, but always in
the old mythical garb. What power was it that
freed Prometheus from his vultures and transformed
the myth into a vehicle of Dionysian wisdom? It is
the Heracleian power of music: having reached its
highest manifestation in tragedy, it can invest
myths with a new and most profound significance.
This we have already characterized as the most
powerful function of music.
Without the saving power of music, the myths would
quickly have degenerated for the Greeks, under the
rationalizing influence of the Socratic world-view which was
even then coming to power, into a sterile psuedo-history: a
process which, as Nietzsche observed, had already begun.
Instead, under the benevolent spell of Dionysos:
This dying myth was now seized by the new born
genius of Dionysian music; and in these hands it
flourished once more with colors such as it had
never yet displayed, with a fragrance that awakened
a longing anticipation of a metaphysical world.
After this final effulgence it collapses, its
leaves wither, and soon the mocking Lucians of
antiquity catch at the discolored and faded flowers
carried away by the four winds. Through tragedy
the myth attains its most profound content, its
most expressive form; it rises once more like a
wounded hero, and its whole excess of strength,
together with the philosophic calm of the dying,
burns in its eyes with a last powerful gleam.
But here we have come already to the death of tragic myth.
Let us, therefore, return to the origin of the myth, indeed,
to the origin of all things, to the birth of Eros from the
silver Egg of Night.
CHAPTER VII
In the beginning was, according to the Orphic tradition,
only the roaring Wind blowing through the darkness of Night.
Night, in the form of a jet-black bird with wings outspread,
conceived of the Wind and:
... laid her silver Egg in the gigantic lap of
Darkness. From the Egg sprang the son of the
rushing Wind, a god with golden wings. He is called
Eros, the god of love; but this is only one name,
the loveliest of all the names this god bore.
But the son of the Wind Spirit is also the daughter of solid
Night, for Eros is, naturally, hermaphroditic, "a woman
before and a man behind". The double-sexed nature of that
loveliest of gods is revealed, in the original Greek, even by
the letters of his name- . Because he was the first being
to emerge from the Egg he is called Protogonos- "firstborn".
The archaic form of that name, as Kerenyi pointed out, is
Proteus, the Old One of the Sea, a familiar figure in many
tales. In the Odyssey, Homer tells the tale of his wrestling
match with Menelaus in Egypt, where Meneleaus was marooned
on the way home from the war at Troy. Proteus is also called
Phorkys, whose name is associated with both "gray" and
"Porpoise".
He is also called Nereus, "the truthful one", the Father
of the Nereides- the lovely sea nymphs who first brought the
Mysteries of Dionysos to a slumbering mankind. Because his
wisdom surpasses that of all other beings he is named Metis-
"Wise Counsel"; because the golden light of his wisdom
revealed what had previously lain hidden within the silver
Egg, he is called Phanes- "he who reveals". The upper half of
the Egg became Ouranos- "the Starry Sky", the lower half
became Gaia, the life-giving earth. The earth was encircled
by the stream of Okeanos- father of waters, who dwelt at the
earth's perimeter with his wife Tethys, while beneath the
earth raged the fires of Tartaros- the Underworld. In the
birth of Eros, therefore, can be seen once again the original
dismemberment of the Primordial One: its division into air,
earth, water, and fire. It is the story of Dionysos Zagreus.
In the tale as it is most commonly told, Ouranos was the
first king over the gods, ruling alongside his mother, Gaia.
But it was Eros, that god whose "dazzling white robe was the
silver Egg" itself, who created (or whose light revealed) the
earth below and the sky above. It was Eros who fashioned the
moon and set the sun in its place:
This he did, the Father, as he dwelt in his cave
with the threefold goddess Night. Properly
speaking, there were three goddesses in the cave,
daughters of the double-sexed Father Phanes. The
first goddess, Night, gave the Oracle. The
second... became the Father's wife, whom he
ravished. The third was the mother of justice...
the high goddess Dike.... Before the cave sat
Adrasteia. With the tones of her brazen drum- the
instrument of great Mother Rhea- she held men in
the spell of justice. Phanes in his cave was the
first king. He laid the sceptre in the hand of
Night. From her it passed to Ouranos, from Ouranos
to Kronos, from Kronos to Zeus, who was the fifth
to rule the world. After Zeus came the sixth
ruler, Dionysus, with whose reign the song of
Orpheus ended.
Before the struggle for power began, Gaia brought forth
Ouranos- the heavens, and also Pontus- the raging sea. Below
the earth was Tartaros, beneath Tartaros was Erebos- the
lightless Darkness. Above the earth, above the starry sky,
was Aither- the brightness of the upper atmosphere. Aither
was also called Akmon, which in Sanskrit means not only sky,
but also stone, or anvil; for the ancients believed the sky
was made of bronze or iron. It is the light that comes into
the world before the sun and lingers long after the sun is
gone. It is the Alpha and the Omega. In Greek mythology, as
in Genesis, light appears before the sun, a phenomenon long
puzzling to modern scholars, who are not, as a rule, much
accustomed to lying in meadows at night on magic mushrooms,
surveying the night sky while they await the coming dawn.
Thus they seldom perceive the magical light that appears
before the sun- the light of bright Aither, the celestial
blue of the upper heavens, the realm above Ouranos, the
backdrop of the starry sky. Because it exists without
apparent physical cause, it is the spirit light, the magic
light, the twilight glow that stirs within our hearts the
memory of elvish skies. Don Juan called it the crack between
the worlds. "Cause", you see now, "never was the reason for
the evening".
With the passing of the sceptre to Ouranos we are now on
familiar ground. The story is well known how Ouranos, fired
by the passion of Eros, came again and again to the embrace
of Gaia: fathering upon her a brood of Titanic children.
Ouranos, however, forewarned by the goddess Night (his
grandmother) that one of his children was destined to
overthrow him, refused to withdraw his phallus long enough to
allow his children to come into the light. And so, through
fear, lust, and will to power, Ouranos was tempted by his
grandmother, dark Night, into becoming "the first to commit
an evil act". Gaia, tormented beyond endurance by the
children in her womb and the inescapable phallus of Ouranos,
took counsel with her children as to how they might be
avenged upon their cruel sire and free themselves from the
maternal cave. Only Kronos, he of crooked thoughts, had the
courage to rise up against the Father.
Gaia brought forth from within herself a sickle of
adamantean steel and placed it in the hands of Kronos; then
she brought him down into her vagina to await the coming of
the Father. At the climactic moment, Kronos stretched out his
left hand and seized the great rod of the king, while his
right hand struck quickly with the adamantean sickle and
severed his father's manhood. From the severed member of
Ouranos, thrown into the sea, Aphrodite was born, and from
the drops of blood spilling onto the moist womb of the earth
were born the Ash-Nymphs and a fierce race of giants, along,
of course, with the Erinyes, i.e., the Maniai who pursued
Orestes. Kronos wrested the sceptre of power from the now
impotent hands of his father and became in turn the new ruler
of the world, king over the sons of heaven and the daughters
of earth. Kronos crowned his victory by taking to wife his
sister, Rhea, i.e.., Gaia herself; for it was "only in the
Hesiodic genealogy that so strong a distinction was made
between Gaia and Rhea that the former became the latter's
mother".
Having attained the victory he sought, and the prize
that went along with that victory, Kronos, like his father
before him, now chose to leave the path of justice behind in
pursuit of power. Gaia and Ouranos had warned Kronos that,
like his father before him, he too was destined to be
overthrown by a son more powerful than himself. And so, as
each of his children left the divine womb of Mother Rhea,
their grim father swallowed them up, ignoring their helpless
cries. Those children were the Olympian gods- Hestia,
Demeter, Hera, Hades, and Poseidon, with Zeus, the youngest
child, still unborn. Thus, where the Titans of the Minoan
religion were trapped within the womb of the Great Mother,
the Olympian deities of the Aryan peoples were trapped within
the belly of the Father, illustrating their patriarchal
origin. Like Ouranos before him, Kronos committed his evil
deeds out of fear and will to power, dreading the day when
one of his sons might topple him from his high throne; and
yet it was, of course, the very attempt to hold onto his
power which insured his eventual downfall.
After watching five of her children swallowed up within
the cavernous maw of their father, a desperate Rhea turned to
Gaia and Ouranos for help, seeking safety for the son she now
carried and vengeance upon her rapacious husband. When her
time was near, Rhea presented Kronos with a stone "wrapped in
swaddling clothes, and fled in the dark of night to the
island of Crete. There on Mt. Ida Rhea gave birth to Zeus,
the future ruler of the world, he who would one day be king
over gods and men- that god whom we call Deus, or God
Himself. As many commentators on the myths have noted,
however, the birth of Zeus, the Olympian storm god of the
Aryans, became inextricably linked with the birth of the
Cretan Divine Child- the Kouros, as a result of the synthesis
between the Aryan and Minoan religions. So bound together
have the stories become that, at this point, it is difficult
to say whether Zeus was able to take over the myth of the
Divine Child's birth, or whether that Divine Child simply
added the name of Zeus to his many other titles. As Zeus, the
Aryan storm god, is clearly out of place as the Kouros, our
task is to uncover the Divine Child's true identity and
lineage; thereby revealing as well his ultimate destiny. The
details surrounding the birth of Zeus, in his role as the
Divine Child, though complex and oftentimes bizarre,
nonetheless provide us with the thread that can lead us to
the resolution of those mysteries; for it is at the birth of
Zeus, the future ruler of the Olympian gods, that the
synthesis between the two religions is most obvious.
Zeus, if Zeus it was, was not the only child born of the
Great Mother that day on the slopes of Mt. Ida. In her labor
pains Rhea dug her fingers deeply into the sacred slopes of
the mountain; from the earth sprang forth the magical beings
known as the Daktyl Idaioi. The birth of the Kouros was
ascribed to many locations, for naturally every people
desired to claim such a miraculous event for their own.
Therefore the Daktyl Idaioi have many names, for wherever the
Divine Child was born, they were born also: as brothers,
comrades, or rivals. These magical, earth-born spirits were
also called the Kabeiroi, in the stories which ascribe their
birth to Mt. Kabeiroi in Berekyntia, wherefore they are also
called the Berekyndai. In Crete they were called the
Kouretes- "young men"; and they were also called the
Korybants, or "whirlers". It was said of them that they were
dancers and lovers of play.
The festival processions of the Great Mother always
included young men "who accompanied her in wild, ecstatic
dance, to the shrill tones of 'highland instuments'- flutes,
cymbals, hand-drums, rattles... and bull-roarers". The youths
who danced in these processions did so in imitation of the
Kouretes, "spirits of gods such as in our language are called
daimones, 'demons'". It was a daimon, it will be remembered,
who advised Socrates to learn music. Socrates, in response to
the demon's entreaty, took up the flute. But the Kouretes had
their dark side as well: it was said of them that they
practiced human sacrifice, offering it up to Kronos. The
sacrifice offered up to Kronos is undoubtedly the Divine
Child himself, for as we saw earlier in the tale of Zagreus,
these earth-born beings are normally three in number, with
the two eldest brothers, often twins, ill-disposed towards
the third- the youngest son of the Great Mother, the son
destined to assume the mantle of heaven. The two elder
brothers, naturally, resent his claim to the kingship: resent
it enough, as we also saw in the tale of Zagreus, to kill
him.
There were many tales of the Daktyl Idaioi, both under
that name and their many other names. On Crete it was said
that two Daktyloi "sat beside the Idaen Mother, shared her
throne and were the 'leaders of the Moirai' amongst all the
many Kabeiroi". These two Daktyloi were named Titias and
Kyllenos; the name Titias, of course, associates them closely
with the Titans, who included among their number the creator
of mankind- Prometheus. The name Kyllenos may be associated,
not only with Kelaino, "the Dark One", as was pointed out by
Kerenyi, but also with Kyllene, the nurse of Hermes, and the
nymph of the mountain where he was born.
In tales of the Kabeiroi, whose name may be derived not
only from Mt. Kabeiroi but also from the Phoenician qabirim,
"mighty", it was said that they came from Phrygia, where
there is also a Mt. Ida, and that after leaving Phrygia, they
came first (or were brought there by the Great Mother) to the
storied island of Samothrace. There on Samothrace they
introduced mankind to their dark mysteries and made the
people of the island "the first converts to their secret
cult". Among those disciples was said to have been the bard
Orpheus himself. The Kabeiroi were three in number, two older
brothers and the youngest. Their mother was Rhea, but their
identity, and the identity of their father, was a mystery
revealed "only in the secret cult". Even so, the identity of
their father was preserved in the following genealogy:
Kabeiro, mother of the Kabeiroi, she whose name was
translated in our language as Rhea, Demeter,
Hekate, or Aphrodite, was a daughter of Proteus: or
so, at least, it was said in Lemnos. Kabeiro bore
to Hephaistos the boy Kadmilos. The latter begat
three Kabeiroi and three Cabirian Nymphs.
Kadmilos is, of course, Kadmos himself, the father of
Dionysos. The following comments by Kerenyi may help to shed
further light on the nature of the relationship between the
Kabeiroi and the Great Mother, particularly on the role of
Kadmos. In Samothrace itself, Kerenyi observed:
... there stood on both sides of the entrance to
the All Holiest the two brazen phallic statues like
our statues of Hermes. They were said to be twin
brothers, sons of Zeus, the Dioskouroi. In the All-
Holiest stood- so much even an uninitiate may
guess- the third brother, who was worshipped both
as a small and as a great Kaiberos, as a small
Kadmilos and as the great and mysterious Korybas.
His relationship with the Great Mother was kept
secret. But it has been said that the father of the
Korybantes was also kept secret, and yet it was
revealed in a genealogy that the Kabeiroi and their
Nymphs were descended from Kadmilos. 'Korybantes'
and 'Kabeiroi' are well known to be two names for
the same beings. The boy Kadmilos and the father of
the Kabeiroi seem to have been one and the same
person. You here recognize an identification by
which the Great Mother is doubly connected with her
youngest son: he is both her husband and her child.
This relation between the two is often to be found
in tales concerning our mysteries. The four names
of divinities that have reached us from Samothrace-
Axieros, Axiokersa, Axiokersos and Kadmilos- were
said to be identical with Demeter, Persephone,
Hades and Hermes respectively.
Although no stories of the Kabeiroi have come down to us from
the island, and the Mysteries remain as mysterious as ever,
there is a tale from the mainland opposite Samothrace-
Macedonia, which reveals their role in the Dionysian
Mysteries:
... there were once three Korybantes, three
brothers, two of whom murdered the third. They
wrapped the head of the murdered brother in a
purple robe, wreathed it and carried the basket of
mysteries, containing a phallus, the male member of
Dionysos, to the country of the Etruscans.
Once again the purple robe makes its appearance, and now
we know where it was that Ino obtained that strip of purple
cloth which she loaned to Odysseus. And so, in our attempt to
tell the tale of the birth of Zeus, we have come once more to
the birth of Dionysos Zagreus and his death at the hands of
the Kabeiroi- his brothers. Zeus is obviously completely out
place in these tales, and it must be equally obvious by now
that Zeus was never the father of Dionysos, for the father of
Dionysos can only be he who was the youngest of the Kabeiroi
and the father of them all- Kadmos. In the orthodox
genealogies, Kadmos has no sons and is merely the grandfather
of Dionysos; yet here he is listed as the father of three
sons, one of whom is Kadmos himself reborn, i.e., Dionysos.
Kadmos is indeed the grandfather of Dionysos, but even in the
traditional genealogies he is also the father of three
daughters: Agaue, Autonoe, and Ino Leukothea, now revealed as
the three Cabirian Nymphs, and by Ino Leukothea he became the
father of Dionysos. That Ino later became the step-mother of
Dionysos only serves to confirm her identity as his true
mother.
The dual role Kadmos played made it easy for the Greeks
to simply substitute Zeus as the father of Dionysos; thus
concealing at the same time the incestous relationship
between Kadmos and his daughter- the Nymph Ino, she who was
also called Semele. In its Phrygian form as Zemelo, Semele
means "Queen of the Underworld": she is Persephone. In the
orthodox genealogies Persephone was raped by Hades and had
no children- Semele was Dionysos's mother by Zeus, but
accordingto the Orphic genealogies, she became the mother of
Dionysosupon being raped by her father, supposedly Zeus
himself. On Lemnos the Divine Child was called Hephaistos, and
his father was Prometheus. It was said of Prometheus that he:
belonged to a primitive tribe of Kabeiroi. He and
his son Aitnaios- which may be taken to mean
Hephaistos- were two Kabeiroi in the neighborhood
of Thebes, where they were visited by Demeter, who
brought them her Mysteries....
Kerenyi has here laid the foundation for identifying Dionysos
with Hephaistos, and Kadmos with Prometheus. As we have seen,
Odysseus identified himself as the son of Deukalion and the
grandson of Minos, thus equating Minos with Prometheus, for
Deukalion was the Titan's son. As both Kadmos and Prometheus
have been called the father of the Kabeiroi, it is clear that
they are identical- that Kadmos and Prometheus are one and
the same god; and thus, by extension, that Kadmos and Minos
are also but different names for the same god. The son of
Prometheus was Deukalion. It was he, along with his wife
Pyrrha, who recreated mankind after Zeus destroyed the
previous race of men with the Flood. If Prometheus and Kadmos
are identical, then their sons, Deukalion and Dionysos, must
also be the same god by different names. And so Homer, in the
context of a great lie, has revealed a profound truth
concerning the hermeneutical reading of the Odyssey: that
Odysseus is the divine child of Kadmilos (a.k.a. Hermes) the
child called Dionysos, i.e., Deukalion; for, as we have just
seen, the father of the Divine Child is also his grandfather;
and so Odysseus is both son and grandson to Minos, i.e., he
is Deukalion himself.
Should you still find it difficult to accept the common
identity of these various deities, stronger proofs are
forthcoming; here it is enough merely to plant the seeds of
that possibility in your mind. In addition, it should be
mentioned that Aitnaios and Hephaistos may both be identified
with Prometheus's brother Epimetheus- "after-thought", as is
clearly demonstrated in a relief from a Roman sarcophagus,
where Prometheus is shown meditating carefully upon the task
of creation before bringing man to life, while in the lower
right-hand corner Hephaistos is already lustily swinging his
hammer, busily engaged in the creation of woman- and with
never a thought for the consequences of his actions. It was
was the bandy-legged Hephaistos, with his womanly breasts,
the dwarf-craftsman who was also called Pygmalion, who
created woman, and Epimetheus who accepted her into the
human race: the "Mysteries" that Demeter brought to
Prometheus and Aitnaios were Pandora and the notorious box she
carried with her. It must be remembered that, for the Greeks, it was not
Zeus who created mankind, but the Titans, specificially
Prometheus. It was said of the Titans that:
... this was the name that their father, great
Ouranos,
gave as a taunt to them, the children whom he had
sired.
'Straining', titainontes, he said, they had
commited a/
terrible,
criminal act, and tisis, 'vengeance', was destined
to follow./
It has always been assumed that this "criminal act"
relates solely to the castration of Ouranos; I believe it was
Kerenyi who first pointed out that it refers not only to the
castration itself but to the consequences of that castration.
When those earth-born beings, whether called Kabeiroi or
Titans, slew the Divine Child, they were slain in turn by the
thunderbolt of Zeus. From the ashes, which also contained the
burnt flesh of the Divine Child they had consumed, mankind
was born. The Nymphai Kabeirides, it should be recalled, were
also referred to as the Nymphai Meliai, the Ash-Nymphs, who
were born from the blood of the severed member of Ouranos,
along with the Giants and the Maniai. Although Nymphai Meliai
is normally translated as "the Ash-Nymphs", a more literal
translation would be "the Black Nymphs"; thus revealing once
more that the origin of the "Greek Myths" is to to found in
Africa. It is said that the Maniai, the avenging Furies who
pursued Orestes, also had black skin: not only are they the
Ash-Nymphs, they are, of course, the maenads themselves. Of
the Giants, it is said that they "pop up fully armed, like
the men whom Kadmos and Iason (Jason) bring into being by
sowing the earth with dragon's teeth". Clearly, the "great
work" that was attempted by the Titans, the task in which
they had "'overreached' themselves, in their foolhardiness,"
was the creation of man, and it was for this act that they
"were later punished."
It was Kronos who castrated Ouranos; thus making
possible the creation of mankind, and it was Prometheus who
first fashioned man from the earth, "in the form of a small
statue" upon which Athene bestowed "a soul, by bringing to it
a butterfly- which in our language is called psyche, like the
soul". Ouranos, however, spoke truly when he said that the
Titan, who, like Kronos, was "a being of crooked thoughts",
had taken up a task that was too great for him, for man was a
flawed creation from the start, born of an act of violence
and revenge, of the most naked will to power and aggression.
The product of a "criminal act", he therefore required a
spiritual rebirth to achieve perfection: a spiritual rebirth
which must necessarily be preceded however, by a ritual
death. The Mysteries which provided that ritual of death and
rebirth, the Mysteries which raised man to the level of
perfection, from beast to god, required "the further gifts of
Demeter and Dionysos".
We will soon return to the tales of Prometheus, whom
Nietzsche himself called a mask of Dionysos (for the Father
and the Son, of course, are one) but by now it should be
apparent to all that the story of Zeus's birth is in truth
the story of the birth of the Divine Child of Crete, the son
of the Great Mother, the Kouros- Dionysos Zagreus, albeit
slightly revised, for the Greeks could not stomach the
decapitation, dismemberment, castration, and cooking of Zeus
himself, though that sacrificial rite is the one motif that
runs like a unifying thread through the entire tapestry of
Greek mythology. Not even in the story of Zeus's birth could
that theme be entirely avoided; instead, it was simply
transferred. The Daktyl Idaioi became the boyhood comrades
rather than the brothers of the Divine Child, and it is the
youngest of these brothers who endures the sacrificial rite
in place of Zeus.
It was said in Crete that the three brothers were named
Akmon, "the anvil" or "stone"; Damnameneus, "the hammer"; and
the youngest brother- Kelmis, "the knife". Kelmis was
especially close to Zeus, but the story is told that one day
he insulted Mother Rhea herself. To punish him for his
insolence, Rhea had him turned into steel, "which is what
happens to iron between anvil and hammer, if it is to be made
into a good knife". As we know, however, the name Akmon means
more than a simple anvil, or stone; it is also connected with
the sky- it is the anvil, or stone, of heaven. Thus in
pictures of Atlas holding up the sky, he is shown holding on
his shoulders a giant stone. Ouranos himself, the starry sky,
is "not infrequently called Akmonides, i.e., son of Akmon....
Sometimes, again, Ouranos is the son of Aither, in other
words, heaven is begotten of sky", the bright sky that lies
above the heavens. As Iron Man was "turned to steel/ in the
great magnetic field", so Kelmis was turned to steel in the
upper atmosphere, the "anvil of the sky". Hesiod's claim that
if an anvil were to fall from the sky it would fall nine days
before it struck the earth, is therefore revealed as a clever
pun, for the anvil is the sky itself; or, rather, the anvil
or stone is associated with the sky because one day a stone,
but no ordinary stone, fell from the sky. The ancients had a
great love of word-play; thus, when Rhea handed Kronos a
"stone" wrapped in swaddling clothes, we may be sure that the
reason Kronos was so completely deceived is that it was no
mere stone that he received from Rhea, but the child Akmon in
the place of Zeus.
Kronos was not long deceived by the stone, if stone it
was, and soon set out in search of Rhea and the child. After
giving birth to Zeus, Rhea concealed him in a cave hidden on
the slopes of Mt. Aigaion- "Goat-Mountain", and left him in
the care of the Diktaen Ash-Nymphs, those Nymphs who were
also called the Cabirian Nymphs, or the Nymphai Kaiberides,
the daughters of the Great Mother and Kadmilos, "the
companions of those Kouretes or Korybantes who took charge of
the Zeus-child in other tales". Soon we will discover the
true and heretofore secret location of their Magic Mountain-
and the maternal cave hidden within: a location well known to
to Da Vinci, and revealed with particular clarity- to those
with eyes to see- in two of his most famous paintings, the
Virgin of the Rocks and the Mona Lisa. The location of the
maternal cave where the nurses tended their divine charge is
variously given, and descriptions of it also vary, but among
the most beautiful is Homer's description of the sacred cave
on Ithaka, by the cove where the Phaiakians left Odysseus
asleep on the beach, home at last after twenty years of
fighting and wandering:
When on the East the sheer bright star arose
that tells of the coming Dawn, the ship made
landfall/
and came up islandward in the dim of night.
Phorkys, the old sea baron, has a cove
here in the realm of Ithaka; two points
of high rock, breaking sharply, hunch around it,
making a haven from the plunging surf
that gales at sea roll shoreward. Deep inside,
at mooring range, good ships can ride unmoored.
There on the inmost shore, an olive tree
throws wide its boughs over the bay, nearby
a cave of dusky light is hidden
for those immortal girls, the Naides.
Within are winebowls hollowed in the rock
and amphorai, bees bring their honey here;
and there are looms of stone, great looms, whereon
the weaving nymphs make tissues, richly dyed
as the deep sea is; and clear springs in the cavern
flow forever. Of two entrances,
one on the north allows descent of mortals,
but beings out of light alone, the undying,
can pass by the south slit; no men come there....
They hoisted up Odysseus
unruffled on his bed, under his cover,
handing him overside still fast asleep,
to lay him on the sand; and they unloaded
all those gifts the princes of Phaiakia
gave him, when by Athene's heart and will
he won his passage home. They bore this treasure
off the beach, and piled it close around
the roots of the olive tree, that no one passing
should steal Odysseus's gear before he woke.
When Odysseus awoke from his sleep he found the treasure
the Phaiakians left for him, but did not yet realize he was
back in Ithaka, for Athene had placed a glamor on the beach
to prevent him from recognizing his homeland- she desiring to
take counsel with him before he set out on the final road
home. And now Athene, in the guise of a shepherd, comely as a
king's son, came towards Odysseus. Odysseus inquired of the
young lad, for so she seemed, upon what shore he had landed.
Athene replied that he was in Ithaka, whereupon Odysseus made
up a prodigious lie to explain his presence on the beach,
claiming he had been left there by a Phoenician galley.
In case anyone remains dubious as to the identity between the
Phaiakians and the Phoenicians, Odysseus's lie should go far
towards dispelling those doubts; for, as should be obvious by
now, it is only when lying that Odysseus reveals the truth.
Athene laughed at his lies and revealed herself as a goddess.
Her remarks to Odysseus as they stand outside the maternal
cave, the cave of Phorkys, reveals that we are witness here
to the birth of Dionysos- the serpent child:
Whoever gets around you must be sharp
and guileful as a snake: even a god
might bow to you in ways of dissimulation.
You! You chameleon!
Bottomless bag of tricks! Here in your own country
would you not give your stratagems a rest
or stop spellbinding for an instant?
You play a part as if it were your own tough skin.
After associating Odysseus's return home with the birth
of the serpent, that animal who achieves immortality by
sloughing off his old skin to grow another: by dying, in
other words, only to be born again, the eternal story of
Dionysos- the Phoenix, Athene at last removed the glamor from
Oddyseus's eyes and revealed to him his true surroundings:
Here is the cove the sea lord Phorkys owns,
there is the olive spreading out her leaves
over the inner bay, and there the cavern
dusky and lovely, hallowed by the feet
of those immortal girls, the Naides-
the same wide cave under whose vault you came
to honor them with hekatombs....
Recognizing his homeland at last, "Odysseus' heart stirred
with joy". After kissing the earth of his homeland, Odysseus
lifted his hands in prayer to the Nymphs:
O slim shy Naides, young maids of Zeus,
I had not thought to see you ever again!
O listen smiling
to my gentle prayers, and we'll make offering
plentiful as in the old time, granted I
live, granted my son grows tall, by favor
of great Athena, Zeus's daughter,
who gives the winning fighter his reward!
Nietzsche claimed that, in the hands of the Attic
playwrights, the Homeric fighting-hero became a mask for
Dionysos. Clearly, however, that process is already well
under way in Homer himself. After storing Odysseus's treasure
within the cave, Athene blocked off the mouth of the cave by
rolling a large stone firmly in place; then she addressed
Odysseus by the following title:
Son of Laertes and the gods of old
Odysseus, master of land ways and sea ways....
Following one upon the other in dizzying succession, the
religious connotations of Odysseus's homecoming bid fair to
overwhelm the reader. From the bright star rising in the
East, to the gifts left by the Phaiakians, i.e., the
Phoenicians- children of the Phoenix, the true kings of the
East, and from the appearance of Athene in the guise of a
shepherd to the appearance of the cave itself, with the olive
tree in front of it, a cave which is closed by rolling a
stone into place over the entrance, we know we are at the
threshold of the Christian mythos; or, rather, we behold the
passion play of which Christianity is merely the last encore.
To those of you who may still be offended, even in the
present era, by my reference to Christianity as a mythology,
I do not offend for the sake of offending: it is only because
Christianity is still linked to the ancient mythos that it
has any truth at all. It is not its mythological baggage that
Christianity should throw overboard, but everything else it
has acquired over the centuries instead- beginning with the
teachings of Paul.
All of the elements presented here are present also in
the story of Jesus, yet another of the many names of
Dionysos; and the connections between the homecoming of
Odysseus and the birth of Dionysos are even more apparent. At
the entrance to the cove "two points of high rock, breaking
sharply, hunch around it", just as at either side of the
entrance to the shrine of the All-Holiest upon Samothrace
stood an erect, phallus shaped pillar of rock- a herm, in
honor of the Divine Child Kadmos, i.e., Hermes. As we have
seen, Phorkys is yet another name for Proteus; thus we are at
the cave of Protogonos, the firstborn, i.e., Phanes, or Eros.
It is the cave of the Naides (or Nereides- the daughters of
Nereus) and it was the Naides who first brought to mankind
the mysteries of Dionysos. Their association with Dionysos is
emphasized by the presence of the winebowls carved into the
rock, while Odysseus's first words on returning to Ithaka
were to express his great joy at being able once again to see
the Naides, among whom were named Autonoe and Agaue, along
with their sister- Thetis. The presence of the bees refers to
the honey upon which the divine child in the cave was raised-
and to something more besides: what that something more is
will soon be revealed. It is a revelation that will change
the world forever. Suffice it to say for now, however, that
there was:
... a sacred cave of bees in which Rhea bore Zeus.
No god or man might enter the place. Every year, at
a certain time, a great flame broke forth from the
cave. This occured at times of the fermentation of
the blood shed at the god's birth.
That fermentation, of course, represents the creation of
wine, for the blood spilled is that of the Divine Child
himself, Dionysos. "Drink this wine", said Jesus, "it is my
blood". Nor should it be forgotten that the first miracle
Jesus performed was at the wedding feast, when he turned the
water into wine. He is Dionysos. To continue:
The cave was inhabited by sacred bees, the nurses
of Zeus. Once upon a time there were four bold men,
named Laios, Keleos, Kerberos and Aigolios, who
tried to enter the cave to steal as much honey as
they could get. They clad themselves in brazen
armour and helped themselves to the bees' honey.
Then they saw Zeus's swaddling clothes and the
blood: at this the armour fell from their bodies.
An old vase-painting shows the four naked men being
attacked by gigantic bees. It was said that Zeus
first gave these bees their bronze golden colour,
and their remarkable vigour, in gratitude to them
for having fed him. He turned the four men into
birds.... He could not slay the robbers with his
lightning, because in that cave nobody might die.
Returning to the cave of Phorkys, the two doors that
provide entrance to that cave, one for mortals and the other
for immortals- "beings of light only", may refer to
Dionysos's title of Dithyrambos, for, albeit "by dint of bad
etymology", Dithyrambos can be "explained as meaning 'he of
the double door'", an allusion to Dionysos's entrance into
the world from both the womb of his mother and, on another
occasion, from the thigh of his father. The more likely
etymology of Dithyrambos, which connects it to the Phrygian
word for tomb, dithrera, and the guardian over those tombs-
Diounsis, only strengthens the connection between Dionysos,
the cave of Odysseus, the maternal cave of the Divine Child,
the cave of Phanes, and the tomb of Christ, within which he
was born again, like the serpent, after his death upon the
cross. The "northern" door that allowed access to the cave
was, of course, its upper world entrance, while the
"southern" door was the gateway to the Underworld. Before we
leave Odysseus by his cave, it should be noted that the name
of his father, Laertes, closely resembles the word laas-
"stone", as does the name of Oedipus's father- Laios, which
was also the name of one of the men who broke into the sacred
cave to steal the golden honey. As noted previously,
Deucalion, whom Odysseus calls his father, and who was the
son of Prometheus (mankind's creator) recreated humanity by
throwing behind him the stones of the earth, and so the word
for people is laoi. By calling Odysseus the "son of Laertes
and the gods of old", the manner in which Odysseus is most
commonly referred to throughout the Odyssey, the poet is
therefore referring to him, as Jesus would later be referred
to, as the "son of man and the son of God".
In the cave on Mt. Aigaion where Rhea left the Divine
Child, other nurses were mentioned besides the Cabirian
Nymphs. Among these nurses were animals, including pigs,
doves, a goat, and also bees. Sometimes the goat is named
Amalthea, and in other stories the goat belongs to a goddess
of that name, who also served as a nurse to the Kouros. So
that Kronos would not find the child, either in heaven or on
earth, the goddess Amalthea placed the child in a cradle and
hung it from the branch of a tree, as the Golden Fleece was
hung from a tree in the land of Kolchis. A faint echo of that
ancient myth can still be heard in the following familiar, if
nonetheless somewhat disturbing nursery song:
Rock'a'by baby
in the tree top
when the wind blows
the cradle will rock
when the bough breaks
the cradle will fall
and down will come baby
cradle and all.
That bough upon which the cradle hangs is, of course, the
Golden Bough, and within that cradle lies the new king. To
prevent Kronos from hearing the cries of the Divine Child,
Amalthea assembled the Kouretes around him. To the clang of
sword on shield they performed a weapons dance around the
new-born babe. In the pre-Aryan version of the Divine Child's
birth, that version which did not name Zeus as the child,
that dance doubtless ended with his decapitation, but that
part of the story was excised from the tale when Zeus took
over the role.
There is, however, a well-known variant to the story
demonstrating that decapitation is indeed the fate of the
Divine Child: it is the female version of the story; the tale
of the Medousa. The Medousa was the youngest daughter of
Phorkys. Just as the youngest son of the Great Mother had two
older brothers, the Medousa had two older sisters. The
youngest son of the Great Mother was slain by his elder
brothers- the Kouretes, as they danced around him with sword
and shield. Medousa was slain by Perseus, "dancing madly
backwards through a sea of air", gazing upon her only in the
reflection of his shield before swiftly severing her head
from her shoulders. Although Medousa was slain by Perseus,
not by her elder sisters, Perseus was able to accomplish his
task only with the assistance of Pallas Athene. One of the
sisters of Medousa, a cousin of the giant Pallas, was named
Sthenno, which name was given also to Athene. In addition,
before she was slain by Perseus, Medousa had been raped by
Poseidon (or her father Phorkys) either within the temple of
Athena itself or just outside that temple, in a flowery
meadow by the sea, and was pregnant with the god's children
at the time of her death.
When Perseus decapitated her, the shining hero Chrysaoar
leaped forth from the wound, bearing in his hands a sword of
gold, as Athene leaped forth from the head of Zeus, dressed
in gleaming armor, javelin in her hand. On her breastplate,
Athene wore the Gorgon's face, the mask of the Medousa.
Pegasus, too, sprang forth from the decapitated body of the
Medousa: spreading wide his wings, he set off aloft for the
home of the gods upon Mt. Olympos, though later he came to
favor the slopes of Mt. Helikon, the home of the Muses. In
the most ancient portrayals of the goddess, Athene, too, was
portrayed with wings.
Unlike Medousa, Zeus, protected by the Kouretes, slept
peacefully in his cradle. It was said that Adrasteia, the
goddess who sat before the cave of Phanes, placed the child
in a golden cradle and gave him a golden ball as a toy-
symbol of his future mastery over the world. Nietzsche, after
establishing the will to power as the ruling paradigm in
philosophy (his response to Schopenhauer) challenged his
disciples to overthrow that principle in turn, not bow down
before it, exclaiming, "Do not you, too, wish to play with
the golden ball?" Also named as nurse to the Divine Child was
Melissa, "Honeybee", who fed the child on honey while
Amalthea, or her goat, provided the milk. Musaios, who is
said to have been the son of Orpheus, claimed that the goat
was a daughter of Helios, and that she was so grotesque the
gods begged Gaia to hide her away in a Cretan cave. It was
also said that the goat bore on its back the nightmarish
visage of the Medousa.
On the loving care of his nurses, young Zeus grew to
manhood (if that is the right term for a god) and at last
stood ready to challenge Kronos for mastery over the earth;
yet he still required weapons for the coming struggle. He
thereupon slew the goat, stripped it of its skin, and wore
that goatskin as his armor- the famed aegis of Zeus, which
granted its wearer invulnerability. That aegis was worn most
often, however, not by Zeus but by his daughter, Athene, "she
of the aegis". That same goat was also said to have been the
mother of Aigipan- "Goat-Pan", who, along with Kadmos (i.e.,
Hermes) with his music rescued Zeus from the cave of the
dragon Typhon, and aided Zeus in the wars against the Titans
and the Giants by blowing upon his conch horn, like Krishna
on the battlefield of Kuruksetra, when he drove the chariot
of Arjuna.
It was Metis who came to Zeus's aid against Kronos,
supplying him with a potion of fermented honeymead, the
world's first alcoholic drink. Employing a tactic more
typical of Dionysos than the Thunderer, Zeus proceded to get
his father so drunk that the old god, after getting
wretchedly sick and vomiting up Zeus's brothers and sisters,
passed out stone cold upon the ground. Zeus quickly bound his
Titanic father in chains of strong steel; and then, snatching
up that same adamantean sickle with which Kronos had unmanned
his own father- Ouranos, Zeus severed his father's manhood in
the same manner; and, like Kronos before him, wrested the
sceptre of power from the suddenly impotent hands of the Old
King. With the passing of the Titan, the Golden Age of the
world passed also: no longer did the rivers run with milk, no
longer did honey flow from the sacred oak, or the earth
freely yield her fruit. It was taught by the disciples of
Orpheus that:
Zeus enchained the old god in order to carry him
off to the place where he, Kronos- and with him the
Golden Age- still exists: at the outermost edge of
the earth, on the Isles of the Blest. Thither Zeus
betook himself with his father. There the breezes
sent by Okeanos bathe the Tower of Kronos. There he
is king, the husband of Rhea, the goddess enthroned
supreme over all.
At the end of the Bacchae, Dionysos, for no apparent
reason, likewise banished Kadmos from the city of Thebes,
sending him far to the west. The purpose of that banishment
is now clear, it confirms Kadmos's identity as the true
father of Dionysos, for the Divine Child always banishes his
father at the end of the story. Having established himself as
king over the gods, Zeus now took to wife "that Metis who
knew more than all other gods or men". The same description
is also applied to Perses, who ravished his own mother,
Eurybia, she who is also called Asterie, a star in Heaven:
their daughter was Hekate. Although it is stated
categorically (and with incomparable irony) by Kerenyi
himself (who knew more about the Greek Myths than any other
man of our time and still said nothing- and by saying nothing
said everything) that "no other god save Zeus is mentioned as
the father of Persephone", clearly, no other god save Perses
can be the father of the goddess called Persephone- "the
voice of Perses". As confirmation, it should be remembered
that, even in the orthodox genealogies, wherein Perses is the
father by Asterie of Hekate, Hekate is also called Perseis-
"daughter of Perses", and under that name was married to
Helios. Hekate was the wife of Helios and the mother of three
children: Aeetes- the father of Medea, Circe- the enchantress
from the Odyssey, and Pasiphae- the wife of Minos and mother
of Ariadne. Only two beings are said to have witnessed the
rape of Persephone by Hades: they are Helios and Hekate.
Hades, whose name may be roughly translated as the invisible,
is the Underworld counterpart of Helios, for as the light of
the sun renders things visible, the darkness of Hades renders
them invisible.
Already we have had numerous occasion to observe how the
same god or goddess can be concealed behind a variety of
different names, each with its own story attached, while the
similarities in the structure of those stories reveals the
common identity of their protagonists. Sometimes, as was the
case with Arachne and Ariadne, the similarity in names alone,
even when no real etymological relationship is involved and
it is based completely on sheer delight in word play, is
enough to provide us with a clue that the same divinity is
meant by both names; then we must look for the parallels in
the separate stories that will confirm their common identity.
The myths are like a precious stone or prism that divides the
overwhelming light of the thunderbolt into all the colors of
the rainbow, each color revealing a different aspect of the
god's nature, a nature too multi-faceted to be encompassed by
any one story or name. Now the time has come to weave those
colors together again, for the true nature of that God whom,
following Nietzsche, we have chosen to call Dionysos, is
revealed only by the entire spectrum of Greek Mythology, all
of which, taken together, constitutes not a collection of
myths, but one myth, one song: a song composed of a seemingly
infinite number of variations on a single theme: the
suffering Dionysos of the Mysteries and his ultimate triumph.
Hesiod, in a bald-faced ploy to subordinate Metis to
Zeus, referred to the hermaphroditic progenitor of gods and
men as an Okeanine, a daughter of Okeanos and Tethys (a
tactic all too typical of Hesiod, and one he employs with any
number of the Goddess's manifestations, for example Styx,
Europa, Perseis, and Elektra, to name only a few) but it was
said of Metis, as it was also said of the phallus of
Dionysos, that "she carried the semen of the gods". And
Hesiod, even when referring to her as an Okeanine,
acknowledges her as "the Wise One". The name of Metis is
similar in sound not only to that of Tethys, the Goddess who
ruled with Okeanos at the perimeter of the earth, it is even
closer to that of the Nereid Thetis, the granddaughter of
Tethys. As Kerenyi noted in regard to Tethys and Thetis,
although we differentiate between the two names, it remains
possible that:
... for people who lived in Greece before us, they
were closer together in sound and meaning, and
meant one and the same great Mistress of the
Sea.... The prevalence of this tale, and the
dominance of these deities all over our seas
probably go back to a time before peoples of Greek
stock lived in these regions.
Not only is there a similarity in sound between the names of
Thetis and Metis, they also appear in nearly identical
stories; thus confirming their common identity.
The Succession Myth did not end with the exile of Kronos
to the Isles of the Blest and the assumption of power by
Zeus; danger still threatened the king of the gods in the
form of a disturbing prophecy: that one day he, too, would be
overthrown by a son whose power would be greater than his
own. Metis and Thetis, in separate versions of the myth, were
each named as potential mothers of the coming ruler of the
world, but the story of Thetis, because of its association
with the Trojan War and the birth of Achilles, has remained
well-known, while the tale of Metis has faded into obscurity
and is now known mainly to scholars of the myths. In the
story involving Thetis, Zeus knew only that, like Kronos and
Ouranos before him, he was in danger of one day fathering a
child more powerful than himself, but he did not know "who
the mother of the new ruler of gods and men was to be". That
secret was originally known only to Themis (whose name is
also not that dissimilar to Tethys, Thetis, and Metis) and
she shared that secret with her son Prometheus, whose name is
itself simply a variation of the name Metis. Prometheus,
however, refused to share that secret with Zeus on account of
the longstanding rivalry between the two cousins, a rivalry
that can be traced directly to the creation of man by
Prometheus.
After the creation of mankind, gods and men met together
at Mecone, the Field of Poppies, to decide how the sacrifice
should be divided between them. Prior to the arrival of the
gods, Prometheus, that Great Trickster and Champion of
mankind, led the bull into the field and slaughtered it.
Taking the meat, he concealed it carefully within the
animal's stomach, at the same time wrapping the bones in
another pile under a deceiving layer of gleaming fat. When
the gods finally arrived upon the scene, Prometheus, under
the pretense of genial good fellowship, generously offered to
let Zeus have the first choice. Apologists for Zeus, Hesiod
among them, have always maintained that he saw through the
Titan's deception from the start, while others maintain that
he was indeed deceived; in either case, great Zeus reached
out with both hands and grabbed the tantalizingly wrapped
pile of bones, and great was his wrath when he perceived that
the Titan's apparent generosity was merely a ruse intended to
deceive him.
Swearing vengeance upon both Prometheus and man also,
his youthful protege, Zeus, in righteous anger, withdrew from
the world the gift of fire, leaving man in darkness absolute;
for it was not merely physical fire that Zeus withdrew from
men, but the spark of the soul as well- the knowledge of the
Mysteries. Prometheus perceived the plight into which his
children had fallen as a result of his attempt to help them,
and so he, the master thief (thus identifying him once more
with Hermes- the god of thieves) crept stealthily into the
Hall of Olympos, and while the gods slumbered beneath his
opiate spell, stole the psychedelic fire from the sacred
hearth, returning it to the mortal world "in the hollowed out
stalk of a narthex- the same sort of plant as served in
Dionysiac processions as the thrysus". So it was that after
the conquest of the Titans by Zeus had banished the knowledge
of the Mysteries from the ancient world (those Mysteries
which, in their clearest form were communicated directly from
Krishna to Indra- the Thunderer) they were once again
retrieved for a desperate mankind by the Father of Man-
Prometheus.
Angered beyond measure by the Titan's defiant act, the
rage of Zeus was now terrible to behold as he plotted new
wickedness for mankind, something that would prove to be even
more painful than the withdrawal of the sacred fire. It was
then that God created woman: "that threatening wile against
which men are defenseless". As Zeus himself remarked:
For they shall receive from me, in retaliation for
the theft of fire, an evil thing in which they will
all rejoice, surrounding with love their own pain.
And even today, what man will claim to have plumbed the
depths of the mystery that is called woman? Not since
Schopenhauer has a man of the West possessed eyes sharp
enough to pierce through the web this delightful creature
weaves, for although:
There's lots of people talking
few of them know
soul of a woman was created below.
From the earth, under the hammer blows of Hephaistos,
Pandora was born. Zeus sent her to man, giving her as well
that famous box and warning her not to open it. Overcome by
curiousity, Pandora, precisely as Zeus had planned, opened
her box at the first possible moment; thus releasing into the
world that flood of evil which has plagued man ever since,
leaving only hope trapped within the box when she closed the
lid. Although the other demons have long had their way with
the world, the spirit of hope remains trapped within that
box; the time has come at last to set him free. There is a
key that will open that box; soon I will give it to you: then
you must use it to free the son of man. That is my bargain
with you. Against the advice of his wiser brother-
Prometheus, Epimetheus accepted Pandora and took her to wife;
thus the human race became man and woman: their daughter was
Pyrrha- "fire". How it was that the human race existed as one
sex- the male, before the birth of Pandora, will ultimately
be made clear, when we enter at last into the hall of the
Mountain Wizards. Prometheus himself eventually bowed to the
inevitable and also took Pandora to wife: their son was
Deucalion.
Zeus, however, would not leave the Titan in peace: he
had him bound to a high peak at the eastern edge of the
world, at the land of the Dawn, as his brother Atlas was
bound at the western edge of the world, by the Garden of the
Hesperides, that Garden which lay in the land of the sunset,
where Atlas held the sky upon his shoulders. Breughel
captured the scene brilliantly in Haytime, portraying the
sorrowful face of the Titan, encased in the Mountain after
his encounter with the Mask of the Medousa, staring down at
the mythic realm, now transformed into a medieval
village. Atlas was turned to stone when Bellerophon, holding
in his hand the Mask of the Medousa, flew past him on
Pegasus. Pegasus is also in the painting; he is the Mountain
across the bridge from the Titan: Pegasus, too, has been
turned to stone. Although there is no individual myth telling
of that startling transformation, the reason for it will
eventually be made clear by the pattern that runs beneath the
myth. Breughel did not err when he identiified the fate of
the Titan with that of Pegasus; instead, he revealed himself
as a Master. We will return to Breughel's painting again: it
is a master key to the Greek myths.
As mentioned previously, the ancients often portrayed
the sky as a stone. It is generally believed that Sisyphus
pushed his stone up the hill until it rolled back down just
before he reached the top. Ancient vase paintings reveal the
truth: he carried it upon his back- he is Atlas, behind him
is a coiled serpent. In the Breughel painting also the stone
of the sky is clearly visible upon the bowed shoulders of
Atlas: visible also in the middle of that stone is the face
of Akmon. Perhaps the correct manner in which the Greek myths
are meant to be read is now becoming apparent? Perhaps it
should also be pointed out that the Chinese word for Heaven-
Tyan, which also means "day", is written . He is "an
anthropomorphic god, conceived as a big man, his arms
outstretched, his head touching heaven". The word "Tyan", it
will be immediately observed, is almost identical to the
Greek word Titan, which can itself be translated as "day",
and is also "conceived as a big man"- a Giant. To say it
again, the term Greek mythology is a complete misnomer.
Kratos and Bia- "Strength" and "Force", accompanied by
Hephaistos, bound Prometheus to that high peak, bound him at
the ankles and wrists with bonds they thought unbreakable;
then they impaled him upon a sharpened stake, like a
scarecrow in a cornfield. If that were not torture enough,
Zeus sent his eagle to torment the Titan still further by
tearing out his liver. Overnight the liver regenerated, only
to be torn out again the next day when the eagle returned. If
we were to put the story as it has been told thus far in
structural form, it might look something like this:
Prometheus: 1. Creation of Man
2. Meeting at Mecone- division of the sacrifice.
3. Fire withdrawn from mankind by Zeus.
4. Fire retrieved for mankind by Prometheus.
Hephaistos: 1. Creation of Woman
2. Acceptance of woman by Epimetheus- division
of Man into male and female.
3. Spirits released from box by Pandora.
4. Spirit trapped within box by Pandora.
The first thing to note is that the division of the
sacrifice by Prometheus and the division of mankind into two
sexes each occupy the same logical position on their
respective charts; that sacrificial rite must therefore be
related in some way to the creation of mankind. Just as
intriguing, fire- mystic knowledge, and the spirits or
daimones (i.e., demons) those who inspire mankind with that
mystic knowledge, also occupy matching positions on the
charts. When Pandora opened her tantalizing box, the demons
escaped, and knowledge of the mysteries was lost to mankind,
plunging the race into darkness. Only hope, whom Nietzsche
called the most terrifying of all demons, remained trapped
within the box when Pandora shut the lid. But that demon, no
matter how terrifying, is also the last hope of mankind. We
therefore have no choice except to reopen that box and
confront our demon at last, returning him to the light, for
only by facing the demon that is our self can we recover the
wisdom of the ancient mysteries; thus restoring the lost soul
of our race.
When Pandora opened her box a plague of demons poured
out into the world. Normally, however, when the gods gave a
mortal woman a chest or a box of some kind, that chest
contained a child: either a child guarded by serpents, or a
child who was himself a monstrous half-serpent or serpent-
like being, the mere sight of which drove mortals to madness,
or even death. Although its connotations are bizarre in the
extreme, although its origin is lost in the antiquity of our
race, we will never be able to understand the myths correctly
unless we understand the motif of the serpent child, for it
winds like a continous thread throughout the entire tapestry
of the Greek mythos: it is the thread from which that
tapestry was woven. And yet the meaning behind that motif
remains a complete mystery to the world. We have pursued the
normal lines of scholarship as far as we could, and that
intellectual pursuit has left us still in darkness, unable to
solve the mystery, unable to pierce to the heart of the myth.
The Gate has fallen, but where will we find the courage
needed to cross the final threshold and enter within the
Magic Mountain itself? Perhaps to know madness, to know what
Nietzsche knew, to know what the Knowers know, we must go
madourselves? It appears, then, that at this point:
There's nothing left to do tonight
but go crazy on you
crazy on you
Let me go crazy, crazy on you.
My love is the evening breeze
touching your skin
the gentle sweet singing of leaves
in the wind
the whisper that calls after you in
the night
and kisses your ear in the early
light
You don't need to wonder
you're doing fine
and my love, the pleasure's mine
let me go crazy on you
Wild man's world is crying in pain
whatcha gonna' do when
everybody's insane
so afraid of one who's so afraid of
you
whatcha gonna' do?
I was a willow last night in my
dream
I bent down over a clear running
stream
I sang you the song that I heard
up above
and you kept me alive with your
sweet flowing love
Crazy on you
Crazy all of you
Let me go crazy, crazy on you.
Or perhaps, last note of sanity and caution, it is in daring
to even mention the secret that we err? It is, after all, no
ordinary child we would speak of here: it is the serpent
child hidden within the secret chest. In the Chinese Zodiac,
the sign of the Serpent can be represented as a man on stilts
with a finger to his lips: in his other hand he carries a
chest. He must walk on stilts and keep his silence regarding
the contents of that chest in order to avoid being bitten.
I- no longer fear the bite of the serpent; indeed, I would
welcome it- and the accompanying metamorphosis. Not because
I am impervious to that bite, but because now I know that it
alone can break the spell that binds us here. As I no longer
fear the loss of my present form, the punishment that always
accompanies the revelation of the mysteries, I will plant my
feet upon the earth, all four of them, as befits an ass among
men, and bear witness to the truth, as the Muse has
commanded: nor will I attempt to avoid the avenging strike of
the serpent that is destined to follow- the strike of the
thunderbolt. Instead, I invite it. It is, at any rate, too
late to turn aside from the appointed path: as was the case
with Ocyrhoe, the transformation has already begun.
When Apollo saved his son Aesculapius from the blazing
pyre that consumed his unfaithful wife Koronis, he brought
the child to the centaur Chiron- who rejoiced to find himself
given charge of such a glorious child. Now Ocyrhoe, his
daughter by the nymph Chariklo, arrived upon the scene, "her
red-gold hair streaming over her shoulders". Chiron's
daughter "had not been content merely to learn her father's
arts, but could reveal in prophecy the secrets of the fates".
Now at the sight of the divine child before her:
... the prophetic frenzy gripped her mind, and the
god's presence set her breast aglow. She looked
upon the babe, and said: Grow and prosper, my
child, you who are destined to bring health to all
the world. Often mortal men will owe their lives to
you, and you will be granted the right to restore
those who are already dead; till, in this one case,
you will incur the god's displeasure by daring to
do so, and will be prevented by your grandfather's
bolt from ever again bestowing such a boon. From an
immortal god you will be reduced to a lifeless
corpse, but later, from being a corpse, you will be
raised up to be a god again, and will twice renew
your destiny.
Ocyrhoe's prophecy concering Aesculapios is, of course,
the story of Jesus of Nazareth, who died on the cross and was
reborn in the tomb; it is the story of Dionysos- the twice
born; it is the story of Charles Manson, who will be born
again when you release him from the box in which you have
locked him. There is no other story. After revealing her
father's destiny- to free Prometheus from his long captivity
by exchanging places with him, i.e., descending into the
Underworld for him:
Some secrets of fate still remained to be revealed;
but she sighed deeply, tears started to her eyes,
and flowed down her cheeks, as she sobbed: 'The
fates forestall me, and forbid me to say more. My
words are checked; too dearly bought were those
powers which have drawn down heaven's wrath upon
me. Would that I did not know the future! Now I
seem to see my human form stolen away; now meadow
grass is my food, to gallop over the broad plains
is my delight. I am changed into a mare, a creature
to which I am already akin. Yet why should I be
wholly such? Surely my father is half human?' Even
as she spoke, the last part of her lament was
barely intelligible, for her words became blurred.
Then the sound seemed to be neither human speech,
nor yet the neighing of a horse, but it was like
someone trying to imitate a horse. In a little
while she gave vent to shrill whinnyings, and
drooped her arms towards the grass. Her fingers
grew together and a thin hoof of smooth continous
horn bound her five finger nails. Her head grew
larger, her neck lengthened out, the greater part
of her trailing robe bcame a tail, and her loosened
hair, as it streamed down her neck, fell as a mane
on her right shoulder. Her voice and shape altered
together: and from the miracle she acquired a new
name too.
She is the mother of the Divine Child; thus she
addresses Aesculapios as "my child". Parmigianino, in his
famous Renaissance masterpiece, called her the Madonna with
the Long Neck. It is always a terrifying experience for the
Nymph to resume her rightful shape, just as it was terrifying
for her to lose it in the first place. When she dwelt within
the secret garden as the Nymph, the mere thought of becoming
human would have filled her with loathing and disgust. Now
that she is human, she feels the same way about returning to
her original form. But once the metamorphosis is complete,
her fear vanishes, and only joy and wonderment remain. The
German director Max Rheinhard captured the Nymph's reaction
perfectly in his film version of Shakespeare's A Midsummer
Night's Dream: the moment when it finally dawns upon Titania
that it was Oberon who made her fall in love with an ass. The
Nymph Io was also overjoyed when, after much suffering, she
returned to the banks of the Nile and her true shape was
restored to her. And what might that form be? It is not, let
it be clear from the outset, a human form.
CHAPTER VIII
It is said of Hephaistos that he tried to rape Athene;
although he could not rob her of her fabled virginity,
nonetheless, his lust for her was so great that in his
trembling excitement he could not keep himself from
prematurely ejaculating upon her as they wrestled.
Understandably outraged, the goddess wiped his semen from
her with a piece of wool; or perhaps she merely "pulled his eyes
over her wool"? And so Hephaistos' sperm ended up "in the
gutter", his "love in the sink". But the seed of a god is a
potent substance, from the union of the wool- the lamb of
god, with the sperm was born the child Erichthonios.
Embarrassed to find herself linked in any way with the child
of the misshapen Hephaistos, Athene:
sought to bring it up in secret, so that the other
gods should not know of it. She laid the child in a
covered, round basket, probably such as those which
are used in the Mysteries, and from which... a
serpent crawls out.
At that time the king of Athens, its first king, was
named Kekrops. His name is a pun on the word Kerkops, "the
tailed one", for it was said of him that he was half-man and
half-serpent. That more than a mere snake is meant is
revealed by the name of Kekrops' wife, Agraulos- "the dweller
on tilled land", and by the name given to her and her
daughters- Drakaulos, meaning they were housemates to the
dragon: that dragon, the seeing one, who first taught man the
arts of agriculture and gave him the starry plough. The
daughters of Agraulos were Aglauros- "the glorious" (and
another word play, for it is an obvious pun on the name of
her mother) Herse, and Pandrosos, whose names are connected
with the dew: the dew that comes with the Golden Dawn, the
dew which appears upon the poet's tongue as the "bridal dew".
It is sweet, like honey. It burns like fire. Athene entrusted
the chest containing Erichthonios to the daughters of
Kekrops, warning them not to open it. Like Pandora, Aglauros,
overcome by curiousity, pried that chest open and discovered
the secret hidden within. In the various versions still
available to us, that secret was either a serpent, a child
guarded by a serpent, or a monstrous half-serpent child.
Whatever was contained within the chest, the sight of it
drove Aglauros and one of the other girls (versions differ,
but it most certainly must have been Pandrosos, i.e.,
Pandora herself) to madness. The two girls leaped to their
death from the rock on which one day the Acropolis would be
built. It remains possible, however, as Kerenyi pointed out,
that the two girls did not simply go mad; but because they
had discovered the secret of the serpent child within the
chest, the secret of the thunderbolt, they were chased to the
edge of the cliff by the serpent guardians of the child, who
forced the girls to leap over the edge to their death so that
the secret of the serpent child would die with them and
remain hidden from a blind and ignorant mankind. And so
curiousity did indeed kill the cat: the Dragon destroyed them
for their impiety. Now we must pry open that long locked box
and discover the secret that drove them to their death, even
if by doing so we risk bringing down upon ourselves the wrath
of the Dragon. It is, of course, only in the blast of the
thunderbolt itself that enlightenmnent can be found. One
thing is certain: once we set foot upon the path that leads
to the thunderbolt enlightenment, no return is possible; our
journey can end only in wisdom or madness- or in the madness
that leads to wisdom.
If we are determined to walk the serpentine path that
leads through the labyrinth, the first step is to discover
what it was about this strange child that caused such panic.
It is clear that the child within the chest was in some way
deformed, but surely the mere appearance of a deformed child,
though cause enough for grief, could hardly have been
shocking enough to resonate within the subconscious of the
race until it became enshrined as myth. The answer to this
mystery must be bound up in the apparent nature of the
deformity itself. The children that are concealed within the
chest, and whose revelation causes such consternation, are
not randomly deformed; instead, their deformities are all
linked to a common pattern: they are serpent-like, or serpent
below the waist, or serpent-footed, or guarded by serpents.
In this context, it should be mentioned that:
In the stories, as told in our oldest mythology, of
any god or goddess of the great family of Phorkys,
Proteus and Nereus- or of the corresponding old
gods of the earth, such as Typhon or the Athenian
Kekrops or the Kychreus of Salamis- it is always
difficult to make out whether the deity concerned
was believed to resemble, in the parts below the
hips, a serpent, a dolphin or a fish.
Or, it might be added, a dragon. These older deities,
then, are associated with the sea, from whence the Mysteries
first appeared, or they emerged within from the earth. The
implication seems clear that the child was not completely
human- if at all. If we were to describe the situation in the
terminology used by the modern tabloid press, we might say
that these children were the result of an extraterrestrial
breeding project, utilizing genetically altered human stock
to create a race of beings able to survive in our world,
particularly in our seas; thus allowing them to establish a
beachhead on our planet while they set about the slow process
of transforming our environment into one more to their
liking. Those who wrote the myths we naively persist in
calling the Greek Myths did not have a tabloid press; nor
were they raised on episodes of the Twilight Zone. Having
always known the company of another intelligent race on our
planet, they took it for granted and were not disconcerted by
it. Indeed, they told stories of those beings: some profound,
some amusing; many of them both. We still possess those
stories: they are the stories; they are the myths. They are
the tales of the gods, and they were, truly, given to man by
the gods themselves. The myths, and not the video camera,
provide the clearest evidence of contact between another
intelligent species and our own.
The evils released into the world when Pandora opened
her box represent the arrival upon the earth of the dragons.
That evil, if evil it was, entered the world through woman;
not, apparently, through any fault of her own, but through
the altering of the human genotype by the dragon: if, indeed,
the human genotype was not itself developed by the dragon.
Perhaps we now have an inkling as to what Nietzsche meant
when he described man as the "noblest clay", the "most costly
marble"? Kassandra-like, I make the statement, knowing none
of you will believe me, even as you continue transforming
your atmosphere into one that will not support your being but
another, even as you watch the earth begin to warm and the
polar ice caps begin to melt. No, you would not like the
world you are creating, but then, it does not matter: it is
not being created for you, but for those who created you. The
gods have not yet finished with man, nor have they ceased
tampering with the human genotype. This will not be the first
time they have transformed mankind. It is the tale of the
time before our own; it is the tale of our own time: let us
hope it will not be the tale of the time that follows. Ovid
told that story in the following manner. After the Ages of
Gold and Silver had passed:
Last of all arose the age of hard iron; immediately
in this period which took its name from a baser
ore, all manner of crime broke out; modesty, truth,
and loyalty fled. Treachery and trickery took their
place, deceit and violence and criminal greed....
The land, which had previously been common to all,
like the sunlight and the breezes, was now divided
up far and wide by boundaries, set by cautious
surveyors. Nor was it only corn and their due
nourishment that men demanded of the rich earth:
they explored its very bowels, and dug out the
wealth which it had hidden away, close to the
Stygian shades, and this wealth was a further
incitement to wickeness.... War made its
appearance.
It is the time spoken of in the Book of Revelations, the
time that lies behind us, the time that is with us now: the
time when mothers are turned against daughters, fathers
against sons- when "friend was not safe from friend". It was
a time when:
All proper affection lay vanquished and, last of
the immortals, the maiden Justice left the blood-
soaked earth.
It was at this time that the twin giants Otos and Ephialtes:
assailed the kingdom of the gods, and, piling
mountains together, built them up to the stars
above. Then the almighty Father hurled his
thunderbolt, smashed through Olympos, and flung
down Pelion from where it had been piled on top of
Ossa.
Like most people perhaps, I had always imagined the gods
residing in a palace atop Mt. Olympos; and yet, strangely
enough, it will be noted that Zeus did not merely come down
from Olympos, he smashed through it, as if he were within the
mountain itself. The incredible explanation behind Ovid's
seemingly curious choice of words will, ultimately, be given
herein; suffice it to say for now that the poet's diction is
not only deliberate, but accurate. From the blood of the
slain giants that flowed into the earth was born a new race
of men. These men differed little from their predecessors,
the giants; they were "violent and cruel with a lust to kill:
it was obvious that they were the children of blood". The
evil men do does not escape the attention of those who dwell
within, nor of those who dwell above:
When the father of the gods, the son of Saturn,
looked down from his high citadel, and saw what was
going on, he groaned aloud. He recalled the horrid
banquet of Lycaon which had not yet become common
knowledge, so recent was the deed, and his heart
swelled with dreadful wrath.... He called together
his council, and they did not delay when they heard
his summons.
Whence did they come, that council of gods, those "elders of
a gentle race"?
There is a track across the heavens, plain to see
in the clear sky. It is called the Milky Way, and
is famous for its brightness. It is by this road
that the gods come to the palace of the mighty
Thunderer, and to his royal home.
So the gods came down the path of the Milky Way, sailing
down the sea of stars till they came to the "marble council
chamber" of Jupiter, that hall of gleaming white atop the
highest mountain on earth: that hall is theMoon itself. Now
Jupiter uttered words of doom
for mankind:
Never was I more anxious concerning the sovereignty
of the universe, no, not even at that time when
each of the snaky-footed giants was preparing to
throw his hundred arms round the sky and take it
captive. For then the attack was made by one small
group of enemies and, although they were fierce
ones, still the trouble originated from one source.
Now the entire human race must be destroyed,
throughout all the lands which Nereus surrounds
with his waters. I swear by the rivers of the
underworld that flow through the Stygian groves
beneath the earth: all other remedies have already
been tried. This cancer is incurable, and must be
cut out by the knife, in case the healthy part
become infected. We have the demigods to care for,
the spirits of the countryside, nymphs and fauns,
satyrs and silvani, who roam the hills. Since we
have not, as yet, considered them worthy of a place
in heaven, let us at least ensure that they can
live on the earth which we have given them. For can
you believe, you gods, that they will go unmolested
when Lycaon, a man notorious for his savagery, has
laid plots against me, the lord and master of the
thunderbolt, aye, and your king and master too?
After the uproar of the gods at this shocking news, that a
mortal had dared lift his hand against the thunderbolt (as if
sheep should conspire against men) Zeus resumed his story:
Scandalous rumours concerning the state of the
times had reached my ears. Hoping to find them
false, I descended from the heights of Olympus, and
walked the earth, a god in human form. It would
take long to tell what wickedness I found on every
side. Even the scandalous rumours were less than
the truth.... when the last shades of twilight were
heralding the night, I entered the inhospitable
home of the Arcadian tyrant. I revealed myself as a
god and the people began to do me homage. Lycaon,
however, first laughed at their pious prayers, and
then exclaimed: 'I shall find out... whether he be
god or mortal: there will be no doubts about the
truth'. His plan was to take me unawares, as I lay
sound asleep at night, and kill me. This was the
test of truth on which he was resolved. Not content
with that he took a hostage sent him by the
Molossian people, slit the man's throat with his
sharp blade and cooked his limbs, still warm with
life, boiling some and roasting others over the
fire. Then he set this banquet on the table. No
sooner had he done so, then I with my avenging
flames brought the house crashing down upon its
household gods, gods worthy of such a master.
Lycaon fled, terrified, until he reached the safety
of the silent countryside... and he became a
wolf....
Lycaon was transformed into a wolf, but it is made clear
by the poet that he has simply been transformed into an
expression of his true self: for "his face showed the same
violence, his eyes gleamed as before, and he presented the
same picture of ferocity". Zeus was not content with the
metamorphosis of Lycaon; for the evil was borne by all. "You
would think", exclaimed Zeus, that "men had sworn allegiance
to crime! They shall all be punished forthwith, as they
deserve. Such is my resolve". Little has happened in the
millenia since to change the god's opinion of mankind; thus
at his trial Charles Manson stood up and threatened to take
his microphone "and beat your brains out with it, because
that is what you deserve....". The response made by the
council of elders to Zeus's request reveals much about the
nature of the relationship between our own race and these
star-faring ones:
Some of the gods shouted their approval of Jove's
words, and sought to increase his indignation:
others played the part of silent supporters. Yet
all were grieved at the thought of the destruction
of the human race, and wondered what the earth
would be like, in future, when it had been cleared
of mortal inhabitants. They inquired who would
bring offerings of incense to their altars....
As men gather honey from the hives of bees, so the gods
gathered offerings of ambrosia and nectar from the hives they
keep- the hives of men. Although they appreciated the urgent
need to destroy such a murderous race of men, as we feel a
like urgency regarding the appearance of the notorious
"killer bees" among the hives we keep, they were nonetheless
concerned as to where they might in the future acquire their
honey. Jupiter was quick to reassure them: "He promised them
a new stock of men, unlike the former ones, a race of
miraculous origin". As Zeus raised the thunderbolt and
prepared to launch it against the earth itself:
he felt a sudden dread lest he should set light to
the pure upper air by so many fiery bolts, and send
the whole vault of heaven up in flames. He
remembered, too, one of fate's decrees, that a time
would come when sea and earth and the dome of the
sky would blaze up, and the massive structure of
the universe collapse in ruins. So he laid aside
the weapons forged by the hands of the Cyclopes,
and resolved on a different punishment, namely to
send rain pouring down from every quarter of the
sky, and so destroy mankind beneath the waters. He
wasted no time, but imprisoned the North wind in
Aeolus' caves, together with all the gusts which
dispel the gathering clouds, and he let loose the
South wind.
With the South Wind came the Deluge that flooded the
world, destroying all living things upon the face of the
earth: that Flood which is spoken of in the Bible- the Flood
survived only by Noah and those he brought with him. In the
Greek version that Deluge was like a powerful cyclone,
carrying all before it:
Wolves swam among the flocks, and the waves
supported tawny lions, and tigers too. The
lightning stroke of his strong tusk was of no use,
then, to the wild boar, nor his swift legs to the
stag- both alike were swept away.
Lions and Tigers and Boars, oh my! Now the waters
"overwhelmed the hills, and waves were washing the mountain
peaks, a sight never seen before". When the rest of the human
race had been "swallowed up by the waters", and only the twin
summits of the highest mountain on earth were left above the
waves, "the little boat which carried Deucalion and his wife
ran aground" atop that magic mountain which touches the
stars, that mountain here called Parnassus. Deucalion was the
son of Prometheus and Pandora. Pyrrha was the daughter of
Epimetheus and Pandora. It was said that:
Of all the men who ever lived, Deucalion was the
best and the most upright, no woman ever showed
more reverence for the gods than Pyrrha, his wife.
Their first action was to offer prayers to the
Corycian nymphs, to the deities of the mountain,
and to Themis, the goddess who foretold the future
from her oracular shrine.
Thus, in coming to the summit of the highest mountain on
earth, Deucalion and Pyrrha have come also to the temple of
Themis, mother of the Corycian nymphs. From on high, Jove:
perceived that one alone survived of so many
thousand men, one only of so many thousand women,
and he knew that both were guiltless, both true
worshippers of god. So, with the help of the North
wind he drove away the storm clouds and, scattering
the veil of mist, displayed heaven to earth and
earth to heaven. The sea was no longer angry, for
the ruler of ocean soothed the waves, laying aside
his trident.
Jove had withdrawn the raging waters, but the world
below was left a desolate wasteland. That there may also be
a story within the story begins to become apparent in the
ensuing conversation between heaven and earth, i.e.,
Deucalion and Pyrrha:
My cousin, my wife, the only woman left alive,
related to me first by birth and blood, then joined
to me in marriage, now, Pyrrha, our very dangers
unite us. We two are the sole inhabitants of all
the lands which east and west behold. The sea has
taken the rest. Indeed, even yet, I feel no
certainty that we shall survive; even now the
clouds strike terror to my heart. What would your
feelings be now, my poor wife, had fate snatched
you to safety, without saving me? How could you
have endured your fears, had you been left all
alone? Who would have comforted you in your grief?
For believe me, if the sea had taken you with the
rest, I should follow you, my dear one, and the sea
would have me too.
With tears in his eyes, he regarded the wasteland spread out
below, turning away from Pyrrha as if overcome by grief. "If
only", he said, "I could create the nations anew, by my
father's skill! If only I could mould the earth and give it
breath: now the human race depends upon us two. It is god's
will: we have been left as samples of mankind". It is not
enough, of course, simply to mould the earth into the shape
of a man, one must give it breath as well- a soul. Now the
pair, "without delay... went side by side to the waters of
Cephisus which, though not yet clear, were already flowing in
their accustomed channel". After they had baptized themselves
with the water of that sacred river, the river that flows
from the maternal cave, sprinkling the holy water upon their
heads and garments, they threw themselves down before the
entrance to the temple and begged the oracle to reveal how
they might "repair the destruction that has overtaken our
race". Themis took pity upon her grandchildren (for it will
be remembered that she was the mother of Prometheus) and
instructed the pair thusly:
Depart from my temple, veil your heads, loosen the
girdles of your garments and throw behind you the
bones of your great mother.
Stunned by this seemingly blasphemous reply, neither
said a word, till Pyrrha declared "she would not obey the
commands of the goddess"; for she feared to offend her
"mother's ghost". Together the pair sat down upon the ground
to scratch their heads and puzzle over the goddess's bizarre
oracle, till at last Deucalion calmed Pyrrha's fears with the
following words:
Oracles are righteous, and never advise guilty
action: so, unless my intuition deceives me, our
great mother is the earth, and by her bones I think
the oracle means the stones in the body of the
earth. It is those we are instructed to throw
behind our backs.
Ovid added that "the Titan's daughter was impressed by
her husband's surmise". It would appear that he was the
brains of the outfit. It was, in fact, a rather ingenious
solution to the riddle of the oracle. Though still somewhat
dubious, Pyrrha accompanied her husband down the hill into
the valley below. They veiled their faces, loosed the girdles
from around their waists, and tossed behind them the bones of
their mother, the stones of the earth. As their mother is
Pandora, Ovid here identifies Pandora with the earth, i.e.,
Gaia, i.e., Mother Rhea- the Mountain Mother. Pyrrha is thus
identified with Parvati- the daughter of the Mountain and the
wife of Shiva. Then the stones began to soften; and, after
acquiring what the poet calls a "tender nature", they began
to take on the likeness of "a human form... they were like
marble images, begun but not yet properly chiselled out, or
like unfinished statues".
I know of no finer image of this sleight of hand than
the self-portriat by Durer: not the famous one from 1500,
after he had become the Master, but the one from 1498, when
he was still the apprentice; or, more precisely, the Master
portraying the apprentice. In that painting the new race of
mankind emerges half-formed from Durer's sleeve, disguised as
his fingers- they are Daktyloi. The one closest to the
viewer, with the beetling brow of a Neanderthal, has the most
completely developed features. It is said that by "the divine
will of the gods" the stones thrown by Deucalion became men,
those thrown by Pyrrha became women. It is also said that
Prometheus brought the sacred fire from heaven and with it
gave life to the stones. And so the Ages of Gold, Silver, and
Iron came to a close, and our own Age begun- the Stone Age.
And yet, consider, must it not be thought most curious that
the former Ages of the world witnessed the birth of only one
daughter? The world has never seen the face behind the veil
of the daughter; nor the slender waist that faery girdle
encircles. That will soon be changed.
Perhaps you think that the gods have finished with man,
or that these are simply old fables from the past, fit only
for the amusement of children; but those whom we call the
gods have not abandoned the world completely, nor have they
ceased their tampering with the human gene pool. If you wish
to see them, a dangerous wish, they rest upon your shoulder,
or, more precisely, beneath it. I am not attempting to be
mysterious; indeed, I am speaking as plainly as I possibly
can. The gods have not lost their ancient power, the power of
metamorphosis, the power that created mankind. With their
knowledge of genetics, they still have the ability to assume
any form they wish, and to metamorphosize other creatures
also, man included. Of course, I am not the first to wake up:
others have achieved this same insight. David Bowie tried to
tell you years ago about the "Pretty Things":
Wake up you sleepy head
put on some clothes, shake off your bed,
put another log on the fire for me,
I've made some breakfast and coffee.
Look out my window
what do I see?
A crack in the sky
and a hand reaching down to me.
Oh, the Nightmares came today
and it looks as though they're
here to stay....
What are we coming to?
No room for me, no fun for you
I think about a world to come, where the books were
found by the Golden Ones,/
written in pain, written in awe, by a puzzled man
who questioned what/
we were here for.
All the strangers came today,
and it looks as though they're here to stay....
Look out at your children
see their faces in golden rays
don't kid yourself they belong to you
they're the start of the coming race.
The earth is a bitch
we've finished our news
Homo Sapiens have outgrown their use.
All the strangers came today-
and it looks as though they're here to stay.
Oh, you pretty things
don't you know you're driving your
mamas and papas insane?
Let me make it plain
gotta' make way for the Homo Superior.
But only death will separate you from your noxious
automobiles; and so, completely unaware of the true purpose
behind your behavior, you continue poisoning yourselves in
order to transform the earth's environment into one more
suitable for those who will replace you- beings who prefer an
earth with a higher carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere
and the resultant greeenhouse effect: a warmer earth with a
trace of acid in the rain, along with a depleted ozone layer
allowing for a marked increase in the amount of ultraviolet
radiation that strikes the earth. While all the time, as one
who "drives nobody's car" has warned you:
Down at the robot factory
things are humming
radical suspension
no humans testing.
These transformations in our enviornment are not being
carried out at random: they are being carefully tailored to
suit the needs of an alien species. Whether you believe me or
not matters little, for even if you did believe me, it is
doubtful that man any longer has the balls needed to stand up
against his alien rival. The pesticides we spray on our food-
the "poison pellets" in our ocean which, upon entering the
body, mimic the female hormone, have chemically castrated
man, lowering his testosterone level by 30-40% in the last
half century, and this coming only at the end of a long
period (Nietzsche called it the history of the last two
thousand years) of domestication. My friends, let us be
honest, even the women have noticed. As Nietzsche wrote at
the end of the 19th century, long before pesticides were
invented, woman no longer fears man because the man in man is
gone.
That a conspiracy lies behind that disappearance is
clear, for surely only the most naive could believe that the
chemicals we spray on our food have this emasculating effect
purely through coincidence. The responsibility for that
conspiracy is, however, not a question of who, but of what,
for just as clearly no human agency could stand to benefit
from such a conspiracy- including the Jews, you white
supremacist wing-nuts, whom I admire because of your
paranoia, but whom I also despair of and even at times
despise because your paranoia does not go nearly far enough.
You dislike blacks and Jews because you believe they are
alien to you? You do not know the meaning of the word alien-
but I will teach you. The agency responsible for this
conspiracy must, therefore, be a non-human agency, that same
non-human agency which has already, as Robert Heinlein tried
to warn you, seized complete control over the world's
governments and now, behind the scenes, plays the role of the
Puppet Master, patiently awaiting man's genetically
programmed self-destruction while man completes the
transformation of the earth. As man has dreamed of designing
bacteria that would one day aid him in terraforming other
planets in order to settle there, so is man for the Dragon.
Nothing could be more amusing than listening to the UFO
enthusiasts indignantly decrying the government cover-up on
UFO's. The belief seems to be wide-spread today that there is
a benevolent alien race, evidence of whose existence is being
kept from us by our own oppressive government. What seems to
have been strangely forgotten by everyone involved in this
controversy is that a government coverup of the alien's
existence can only have been carried out with the cooperation
of the aliens themselves. That both the aliens and the
government are involved in a coverup of the alien's existence
strongly implies that there is no longer any difference
between the two; if, indeed, there ever was. To put it
plainly, if the aliens actually exist and are concealing
their existence from us, and if our government is at the same
time involved in a UFO coverup, it can only be because, at
the highest levels, the government has already been
infiltrated and is presently under the control of the aliens.
Indeed, it may well be that Ronald Reagan's curiously named
"Star Wars" program, ostensibly the placing of platform
mounted lasers in the upper atmosphere as a defense against
incoming Russian missiles, was actually a last-ditch attempt
(and a pathetically inadequate one) to construct some sort of
defensive system against the aliens. That Buck Rogers was
never able to get his ray-gun out of its holster is, perhaps,
the strongest testimony to the alien's control over the
nations of the earth. There is no need to wait for the space
ships to land, they are already here- the serpent men, and
they have already won.
But you remain skeptical? You ae not convinced that the
world is all under the control of one power, a power not of
this world? That it is all one world now, but that it is no
longer our world, if indeed it ever was? And yet, what of the
changes in the political landscape that we have been witness
to in the last few years alone? What of the final war we were
all raised to believe could happen at any moment: a war that
would render the earth unliveable for all life forms? That
war now seems more remote than at any time in recent memory.
Yet if the dragons have prevented that war by taking control
over the governments of the earth, was it for our sake they
did so, or their own? Today we can answer that question if,
like Aglauros the glorious, we are brave enough, or foolish
enough, to risk madness by prying open that forbidden chest
to confront the serpent child locked within, that serpent
child which may very well be our own true self- the soul of
the race. We have a chance to open that chest because today
it is man himself who has locked the serpent child, the son
of man, within a box and forbidden his release. And what does
Manson, who has sat locked within a box almost his entire
life, have to say of the alien presence in our world?:
... we're not going to blow the world up.... We
saved it. We stopped it, we checked the nuclear
buttons. Now we're disarming this, and we're
putting that on one computer, and we're coming back
through the space wars where we're going to check
out all them computers and stop all them to where
we can get one sky. And then we got one sky coming
with great ships, big airships coming, where we're
going to cut down all the pollution. We've already
got these things in motion that you don't even know
about. You're watching on TV and you think they're
science fiction. [Laughs] But we were sincere, and
we still are sincere.
Having prevented the cataclysmic destruction of a
nuclear war, Manson and his friends have begun concentrating
on other means of protecting the earth. What means they may
take to do so is anyone's guess, but it should not be
forgotten that Manson's first arrest after he started the
Family was for burning an earth-moving machine. As we have
just seen, Jupiter once destroyed the entire human race in
order to protect the earth from further harm; nor will the
gods hesitate to do so again, for from the very stones they
can raise up a new batch of men.
And so the serpent children entered into the world of
man, but whether as friends or foes, as the Dragon or the
Butterfly, will only be determined at the end. The punishment
Zeus imposed upon Prometheus was originally intended to last
forever. But in the 13th generation, at the end of the mythic
era, Prometheus, at the command of Zeus himself, was freed
from his bonds by the spirit of music- the Daktyl Herakles.
Only it was not a command from Zeus- it was a prayer. It was
Zeus, not Prometheus who required rescuing. The Titan, the
Big Man, could have freed himself from those chains any time
he wished. He was not only wiser than Zeus, he was also
stronger, even when he feigned weakness in order to teach
Zeus the limits of power and the meaning of love. This is a
lesson Zeus has now well learned. Let us see if we can
discover how it was that he, or, to speak truly she (for
Zeus, i.e., Deus, i.e., God, is indeed a woman, as so many
today have come to suspect- though Prometheus, the Devil, is
a man) came to learn that lesson. In order to understand why
Zeus must eventually free Prometheus, and why man in turn
must free the son of man, we must first understand how the
Titan came to be bound in the first place. In other words, in
order to understand our present circumstance and future
destiny, we must first of all understand our past.
CHAPTER IX
Once again we must return to the time when Kronos took
the adamantean sickle from his mother's hands and with it
sliced off his father's phallus, flinging it behind him into
the womb of Gaia. The drops of blood that fell from the
phallus of Ouranos landed upon Gaia (like stones falling from
heaven to the earth) and from those drops of blood were born
the Erinyes (i.e., the Furies or Maniai) later called the
Eumenides- "the Kindly Ones": although, as Kerenyi pointed
out, it is difficult to tell "whether it was that they really
became benevolent, or simply that people wished they would do
so". Also born from those burning drops of blood that fell
from the starry sky were the Giants, who appear dressed in
gleaming armor, spears in hand, along with their companions,
the Ash-Nymphs. Finally, from the phallus itself, thrown into
the sea, was born Aphrodite.
Kerenyi affirmed that the goddess Aphrodite was never a
purely Greek goddess; that she was indeed the same goddess
the East worshipped under the name of "Ishtar or Ashtaroth...
later reproduced as Astarte", and also, of course, as
Asterie. She was a star who fell, like a stone, from the
heavens to the sea, where she became known as Amphitrite. In
one tale of the Goddess, it is said that "the fish in the
river Euphrates found a marvelous great Egg. They pushed it
ashore, a dove hatched it out," and so the Goddess of Love
emerged into the material world. In another tale from the
East, we are told how Myrrha fell in love with her father-
King Theias. Myrrha deceived her father, getting him drunk
and entering his chamber in the darkness, and succeeded in
lying with him in incestous love. After several nights her
father, grown increasingly curious over who was sharing his
bed, surprised her with a lamp and discovered her identity.
Outraged, he pursued her with a sword, but Aphrodite
preserved Myrrha's life, and the life of the child she
carried within her- the son, by transforming her into a myrrh
tree. From the sap, the blood of the tree, Adonis was born.
Aphrodite hid Adonis in a chest, giving it "to
Persephone for safekeeping", as Athene gave the chest
containing Erichthonios to Aglauros. As Aglauros opened the
chest she received, so, too, did Persephone. Where Aglauros
went mad from the sight that met her eyes when she opened
the chest, Persephone fell in love with the beautiful serpent
child concealed therein and refused to return him to
Aphrodite. The dispute between the two Goddesses (the Mother
and the Maid) over the body of the son was brought before
Zeus, who rendered the following judgment: that for 1/3 of
year Adonis would live in the Underworld with Persephone, for
1/3 of the year on Olympus with Aphrodite, and 1/3 of the
year wherever he chose- which was in Heaven at the side of
Aphrodite.
Persephone, of course, spent half the year in the
Underworld with Dionysos, and half the year on Olympos with
her mother, Demeter; thus making the identity between Adonis
and Dionysos, and between Aphrodite and Demeter, a rather
obvious one, and also making clear that the relationship
between Aphrodite and Persephone is that of the Mother and
the Maid. At the festival of Adonis, women "gave themselves
to strangers. Whoever did not do this must at least sacrifice
her hair to Adonis". Even today, women still sacrifice their
hair to Adonis: there are pictures of them in the photo
section of Helter-Skelter. It is understood, of course, that
Myrrha and Persephone are one and the same; thus identifying
Myrrha with Pyrrha? That Perses, here called Theias, who
fathered Adonis upon Persephone, is the son of Aphrodite,
while Persephone is the daughter of the union between Theias
and his mother- Aphrodite? How can that be? Soon the mystery
will be unveiled.
In still another story, we are told how Zeus (actually
the Phrygian sky-god called Papas) fell asleep upon the rock
of Agdos, which "had assumed the shape of the Great Mother".
While sleeping on that rock, Zeus had a wet dream and his
semen spurted out upon the rock. It is also said that the
Agdos rock was the Mother herself, and that Zeus, while
wrestling with her, experienced one of his premature but
nonetheless divine ejaculations. Ten months later, the Agdos
rock "brought forth an untamable, savage being" named
Agdistis- a bisexual, both by nature and proclivity. The
savage hermaphrodite took its delight in rape, pillage, and
murder, respecting neither gods nor men: it was the will to
power incarnate, and even the very gods were at a loss as to
how they might deal with the unnatural monster. At last,
Dionysos himself took a hand. He turned Agdistis's favorite
spring into wine, and hid himself nearby. When the monster,
tired from the hunt, came to the stream to quench its thirst,
it soon became drunk on the unfamiliar brew and fell
into a besotted slumber. Dionysos leaped quickly from
concealment and tied a noose around the phallus of Agdistis:
a task requiring, no doubt, a delicate touch. When the
monster awoke, it leaped up and "castrated itself by its own
strength".
From the castrated phallus of Agdistis, just as from
that of Ouranos, drops of blood fell to earth. From those
drops of blood an almond-tree (or a pomegranate) swiftly
arose, as Nymphs and Giants arose from the castration of
Ouranos. The Nymph Nana, the daughter of King Sangarios (who
was also called a river-god) plucked the fruit and "hid it in
her lap"- thereby becoming pregnant. Her father, upon
discovering that she was no longer a maiden, locked her away
in a chamber with the intent of starving her to death; but
the Mother, who can only be Aphrodite herself, took pity upon
her and kept her alive "on fruits and the food of the gods".
At last she gave birth to a son, Attis. Sangarios had
the child exposed on a hillside to die, as Laios did to
Oidipos, but the child was raised by a male goat and grew
into a beautiful young lad; thus his name, for Attis in
Lydian means "handsome boy", while in Phrygian it means "male
goat". Like Adonis, Attis was indeed a beautiful boy, and
Agdistis fell in love with him. The two became inseperable
companions, hunting together deep in the greenwood.
Attempting to break the bond between them, King Midas gave
Attis his daughter as wife, but at the wedding feast Agdistis
appeared, playing upon the syrinx, and all who heard that
demonic tune went mad. Now it was Attis who castrated
himself, crying out, "unto thee, Agdistis!", before he died.
The blood from his wound fell upon the ground and from the
earth violets sprang forth. Now Agdistis regretted her
actions and implored Zeus to restore the life of Attis, but
"all that Zeus could grant... was that Attis's body should
never putrefy, his hair should evermore continue to grow and
his smallest finger should remain alive and move of its own
accord". He is a Daktyl.
Of Amphitrite it is "expressly stated" that all sea
monsters belong to her. The word for sea monsters is Ketos,
which in the feminine form is Keto. Amphitrite may thus be
identified with Keto, the wife of Phorkys. Elektra is the
shining star who fell from Heaven and married Thaumas, also
called Tammuz, the lover of Aphrodite. The wife of Nereus,
"the Old Man", is Doris, who is "the Giver". Thus she is the
Mother, Demeter, for Demeter is also called the "giver of
rich gifts" by her daughter Hekate. Demeter is the giver of
"all gifts"; she gave the world Pandora. Her daughter is also
named Pyrrha, which not only means "fire", but is also
similar in sound to Perseis and Persephone. It is for the
sake of the Mother and the Maid that men esteem gold, for it
is a symbol of the mana, the golden light that pours from the
moon at the union of the Dragon Mother and her Son, the
Golden Lion, the Son who is also her Father.
Amphitrite was also identified with Thetis; for, as
Eurynome- "dweller in the sea" and a daughter of Tethys, she
and Thetis saved Hephaistos when Hera grabbed him by the heel
and threw him into the sea; thus identifying the goddess,
under either name, as the true mother of Hephaistos- "fire",
which is what fell from the moon at the conception of this
cycle of the world, a misbegotten cycle, an omotocia. In
confirmation of Hephaistos' parentage, note that Thetis's
other famous son, Achilles, was also vulnerable in his heel,
that same heel by which his mother held him when she dipped
him in the River Styx, although it was also said that it was
a cauldron upon a tripod in which she held him: that same
cauldron where her previous six children had perished. It is
the mother-son relationship between Hephaistos and Thetis, or
Eurynome, which explains the seemingly odd anomaly of
Aphrodite's marriage to Hephaistos- her son: the marriage of
the most beautiful goddess with the ugliest of gods, for the
Great Mother is always united with her son. We will return to
the marriage of Hephaistos and Aphrodite, but for now it is
enough to point out that the Kabeiroi of Lemnos were not only
called Hephaistoi, they were also called Karkionoi- "the
Crabs".
Thetis was forbidden, not only to Zeus but to Poseidon
as well: it was foretold that her marriage to either god
would bring an end to the reign of the Olympians. Zeus,
apparently, obeyed that prohibition. At first glance, so,
too, did Poseidon; for Poseidon was married to Amphitrite.
And yet, as we have just seen, Amphitrite and Thetis are the
same Goddess, and both are Nereids. While Zeus married the
Okeanids Metis, Europa, Elektra, Eurynome, and Perseis
(Hekate) he married none of the Nereids. It appears that he
respected the warning of Themis and did not mount the much
desired couch of Aphrodite. Thus is explained one of the
great, undiscussed mysteries of Greek mythology: how it was
that Zeus, lusty sire of the gods, he whose list of wives is
prodigious, never sought to lie with the loveliest of
goddesses- golden Aphrodite. It seems rather curious that
such a striking paradox should have been overlooked so
completely in commentaries on the myth, for it is one of the
most obvious clues to the common identity of Aphrodite and
Thetis. Unfortunately for Zeus, as we have also just seen,
Eurynome (not to mention Metis, Europa, Elektra, and Hekate)
can also be identified with Aphrodite.
But Poseidon, the wilder of the two brothers, exhibited
even less restraint than Zeus. One day he saw Amphitrite "as
she danced with the Nereids on the island of Naxos" and raped
her. Amphitrite (formerly Asterie, now a star fallen to the
sea) fled to the Western border of the world, to the palace
of Okeanos, or to Atlas by the Garden of the Hesperides. A
dolphin, however, revealed her hiding place, persuaded the
goddess to come forth, and "led her to her bridegroom". It
was rewarded by being set amongst the stars. Thus it was a
dolphin, the one animal who came into the material world with
a purpose other than the pursuit of power, who succeeded in
bringing sky and sea together upon the earth. That dolphin,
with the palace of Okeanos on his back, may be glimpsed in
Dante Rossetti's version of the birth of Venus, his famous
painting of the Maid- La Ghirlandata. He is concealed in the
lower left hand corner of the painting: to find him, one must
first find the Old Man of the Sea- his left arm is draped
over the body of the dolphin. The Old Masters often included
a painting within the painting, either done in minaiture or
else simply disguised in the seemingly random colors and
shapes of the painting: that hidden painting tells the story
of the Dragons and their mating ritual- it is a tale of the
Faery Kingdom.
Consider La Ghirlandata again- the Maid of Spring in her
robe of green, a golden band around her wrist. She plays upon
the harp; the fingers of her left hand are placed at the
soundhole, which is not a circle, as on a guitar, but a
stylized reproduction of Old Tortoise Man- Kashyapa: it is
the gateway. Above her left shoulder, disguised in the
foilage, is the her mother, the Bird of Night. In the middle
of one of the blue flowers beneath her left arm is a bright-
eyed, baldheaded old elf with a white beard. Slightly beneath
him and to the right, a witch rides upon her broomstick, eyes
aglow beneath her black hat. There are other figures in those
flowers, including the faery princess herself. Draw a line
from the top of the painting precisely through the middle of
La Ghirlandata's face, at the bottom of the painting you will
find her. It is their ability to conceal the ancient myth of
the Dragon race in their paintings which earned the Old
Masters their title. The subtlety with which the task is
performed determines the degree to which one is acknowledged
as a Master by the cognoscenti. That sleight-of-hand practicd
by the Old Masters, the concealment of the old myth, went on
for centuries and can easily be discerned in artists ranging
from Botticelli to Renoir: easily discerned, that is, as soon
as one knows to look for it.
The story of how Poseidon, in the shape of a ram,
married Theophane- "she in whom a god appears", is the same
story as that of Krios and Medousa; for Krios is the "Ram
of Heaven"- the sun, a golden ram, while Eurybia is the daughter,
not the sister, of Phorkys. Eurybia is the Medousa herself, and
she was raped by her father- Phorkys, for whom the Greeks
substituted Poseidon. Theophane, of course, is the mother of the
Ram with the Golden Fleece. When the Medousa was slain by
Perseus, from her decapitated body sprang Chrysaoar- the
Hero with the Golden Sword, and the gloriosly bewinged
Pegasus. Phorkys and Krios are Father and Son. The son of Krios
and Eurybia is Perses, who decapitated the Medousa, the Great
Mother herself: that decapitation made possible the birth of his
father, Krios, i.e., Chrysaoar. This is the first loop in the
labyrinth; the reason for it will eventually be made clear. What is
mostimportant to note here, however, is that Medousa,
i.e., Eurybia, the Mother, is killed. This is an anomaly, for it is
the Father who dies that the Son may be born: the Mother
never dies- she cannot die. The reason behind this anomaly
will soon be unfolded: it is the key, not only to the myths
but to the fate of your soul in the material world, for by
this act the material world came into being, the material
world- and your soul along with it.
When Poseidon was born his mother, Rhea, concealed him
on Rhodes with the Okeanid Kapheira and the Telchines- the
Daktyloi of the island. It was the Telchines who forged the
trident for him, as the Kyklopes forged the thunderbolt for
Zeus. The sister of the Telchines was Halia- "sea goddess",
another "dweller in the sea", another Nereid: Poseidon
married her, who was also Aphrodite. They had six sons and a
daughter, Rhodos, who gave the island its name, for she is
the Nymph of the Mountain which is the island itself. To make
matters still clearer, at this time "Giants had sprung up in
the eastern part of the island", Zeus had recently defeated
the Titans, and Aphrodite had just been born from the sea
near Cythera and was on her way to Cyprus. The sons of
Poseidon prevented her landing on Rhodes, so Aphrodite caused
them to ravish their mother, Halia. This they did, whereupon
they were thrown into the Underworld by Poseidon.
Halia, meanwhile, reenacting the fall of Asterie, leaped
into the sea to be reborn, like Aphrodite, as a sea goddess-
Leukothea, the "White Goddess"- the white light of the
Charites. Not the golden light that falls to earth at the
death of the Lion of the Sun, but the white light that fell
to earth at the death of the Mother: the white light that
flows from Lethe- the River of Forgetfulness, the purifier of
those in the Underworld. She is a star on the sea; and, as
Ino Leukothea, she became the nurse and step-mother of
Dionysos, and the savior of Odysseus. In case the reader has
somehow missed it, Kerenyi then pointed out that "all three
names- Halia, Aphrodite, Amphitrite... and Kapheira, must
have been applied to one and the same great goddess". She was
also called- in the northern islands around Samothrace-
Hekate, Kabeiro, or Demeter Kabeiro, and was thought to be
the mother of the Kabeiroi. She is Eurybia, whose three sons
are Perses, Pallas, and Asterios.
That it was on Naxos where Poseidon first saw Amphitrite
and ravished her is significant, for it was also said that
Hera brought Hephaistos to Naxos and placed him there under
the tutelage of Kedalion- the phallic one. Kedalion was
numbered among the Kyklopes and taught Hephaistos
the secrets
of the blacksmith's art. Kedalion also came to the aid of
Orion when the Giant's eyes were blinded for ravishing his
mother- Merope, one of the Pleides, i.e., a star. We will
speak of Orion again, but Naxos is also the scene of other
stories concerning the wives and children of Poseidon.
In a story similar to that of the Medousa, Iphimedeia,
the daughter of King Aloeus, also conceived progeny of
Poseidon, who was commonly substituted for Phorkys as the
rapist of Medousa. Only, where Medousa was raped by Poseidon,
Iphimedeia was so enamored of the shaggy haired god of the
sea that, in a manner reminescent of Nana, she went down upon
the sand and repeatedly scooped the sea water over her high-
pointed breasts until she conceived the celebrated twins,
Otos and Ephialtes. They were giants among men, surpassed in
beauty only by Orion. Like Dionysos Zagreus, Orion was
referred to as "the Mighty Hunter". That these Giants are
also Daktyloi is revealed by the fortunately preserved detail
that they grew "nine fingers" taller every month. And so the
Giants once more stand revealed as Daktyloi, the fathers of
mankind, and the war between the Gods and the Giants as the
war between the Gods and the creators of mankind, those who
would teach their children The Way. Or, to say it in Chinese,
those who would teach their , for in Chinese the sign
for child and the sign for The Tao are the same. Like the
Greeks, the Chinese received their script from the Dragons.
So the Alodai, mighty among men, declared war on the
Olympian Gods, plannning to throw one high peaked mountain
atop another until they built a Stairway unto Heaven.
Unfortunately, before they could put their plan into effect,
they were destroyed by the thunderbolt of Zeus; or, again,
they were slain by Apollo while trying to rape Hera and
Artemis. Or, as still another story has it, the two Giants
could only be slain by each other, as was also the case with
the warriors who sprang up from the dragon's teeth sown by
Kadmos in Thebes and by Jason in Kolchis. And so a doe sprang
between the Alodai in the middle of their attempted rape and
each threw his spear at the doe (Artenmis herself, in some
versions of the story) striking the other dead. It is said
that at the time of their death they had reached 900 feet in
height.
That the Giant Alodai were in fact Daktyloi is also
indicated by another of their titles- the "Sons of the
Earth". As we have seen, where there are two Daktyloi, they
are usually accompanied by a third, the youngest. A hostile
relationship normally exists between the older two and the
youngest one, for it is the youngest son who wins the hand
of the Mother. This seems also to be the case with the
Alodai. When the Alodai were still only boys, it is told that
they captured Ares, while the god was still a child himself,
and confined him in a huge bronze jar. That they are the two
elder brothers is indicated by their height, 900 feet, as
compared to Ares' mere 700 feet.
Ares would have died like a giant bug in that jar, but
the boy's step-mother, Eriboia, revealed Ares' location to
Hermes, who rescued him forthwith. Eriboia, however, is
clearly a pun on the name of their real mother- Eurybia.
That Eriboia is Eurybia, and that both are names for the
Mother of the Alodai- Iphimedeia, positively identifies
Eurybia with the Medousa, for Iphimedeia- "Mighty Ruleress",
is simply an honorific form of Medousa- "Ruleress". That
Eriboia is called the step-mother of Otos, Ephialtes, and, we
must assume, Ares as well, is the clearest demonstration yet
of the consistency with which the myths place the child's
true mother in the role of the step-mother. And that Eriboia
is, in fact, Eurybia, whose three sons were Perses, Pallas,
and Asterios, confirms the identity between Ares, Otos, and
Ephialtes on the one hand, and Perses, Pallas, and Asterios
on the other.
On Naxos it was told that Ares, in a manner similar to
that in which Kelmis was "purified like iron upon the anvil"
by his two elder brothers, sought refuge from his brothers in
"an iron-eating stone". Eurybia herself, it is said, had a
heart of steel; and it is also said that Gaia brought forth a
steel sickle from within herself, handing it to Kronos that
he might castrate the Father- Ouranos. The Alodai went to
Naxos to rescue their kidnapped mother and sister- Pankratis,
"all strong". Iphimedeia and Pankratis, it should be pointed
out, were the nurses of Dionysos; and Naxos, where the cult
of Dionysos flourished, was that island where the Great
Mother was worshipped in the form of Aphrodite Ariadne, the
Heavenly Bride of Dionysos, as Persephone, i.e., Hekate, is
the Underworld version. Iphimedeia is the Mother, Demeter;
Pankratis is Pandora: she is the Maid, Persephone.
The origin of the Alodai's rivalry towards Ares, it
should also be related, was that Ares bore the responsibility
for the death of Adonis: Ares having either sent or turned
himself into the giant boar that slew the favorite of
Aphrodite, who had been placed in the care of the Alodai by
Aphrodite herself. Although Ares has, in general, a rather
unsavory reputation (thanks largely to Homer) it should be
remembered that many of the stories concerning him were lost,
including those, presumably, which might portray him in a
more favorable light. What has been preserved, fortunately,
is that Hera gave him as student to Priapos, who taught him
to dance before he taught him the arts of war. Ares is also,
as is well known, the lover of Aphrodite; their daughter is
Harmonia, the wife of Kadmos, who is, as we have seen,
identical with Hermes. It is also said that Priapos, the
tutor of Ares, was the father of Hermes; thus implying that
Hermes and Ares are also one and the same god. That being the
case, the identity between Kadmos and Ares would also be
firmly established, meaning either that Harmonia is not the
daughter of Aphrodite, but Aphrodite herself, or that Kadmos
was married to both his mother and his daughter.
We have seen as well that Iphimedeia and Medousa are the
same Goddess, and identified her as Eurybia. Eurybia is not,
as the traditional genealogies maintain, the sister of
Phorkys: she is his daughter- Medousa herself. The confusion
arises because Eurybia is married to Krios, who is, according
to those same traditional genealogies, a generation older
than the Medousa- his mother. The reason for these serpentine
loops in the genealogies of the older generations of the
Greek Gods will, I promise, shortly be made clear, for the
first time outside of cult. The same confusion we observe
surrounding Eurybia is repeated in the genealogies when
Europa is presented as the sister of Kadmos, or as his niece-
the daughter of his brother, Phoenix. Of the Phoenix, only
one story is told herein: it is the foundation of the entire
world mythos. It will also be the last story told.
As intimated earlier, the identity between Eurybia, the wife
of Krios, andMedousa, the ravished daughter of Phorkys, is
revealed byKrios's name, which, as we saw, means "The Ram of Heaven",
a golden ram, i.e., the sun, and the tale of Poseidon's other
wife- Theophane. Theophane was the daughter of King Bisaltes,
the latter being the son of Helios and Gaia. Poseidon carried
her off to "the island of the Ram" (Sun Mountain) where he
transformed himself into a ram and his bride into a ewe. From
that union, the union of Phorkys and Eurybia, was born the
Ram with the Golden Fleece- Krios, for it is also said the
Ram was "a man called Krios"- only he was not a man. That
ram carried Phrixos and Helle, the step-children of Ino
Leukothea, across the sea to safety in Kolchis. Or Phrixos,
at least, was carried to safety, for it is said that Helle
fell into the sea en route, at the Bosporus, the cow-
crossing.
Aeetes was king over the land of Kolchis. He was the son
of Hekate and Helios, and the brother of Kirke- the
enchantress of the Odyssey, and brother also to Pasiphae, who
ruled alongside Minos in Crete, where she was the mother of
both the Minotaur and Ariadne. Finally, Aeetes was also the
father of Medea. Medea, whose name, "Ruleress", is simply
another form of Medousa, was the lover of Jason. When Jason
sowed the earth with teeth from the Dragon of Ares, the
Dragon slain by Kadmos (thus identifying Jason with Kadmos)
it was Medea who instructed him on how to overcome the
warriors who sprang from the earth with spears in their
hands. As Athene warned Kadmos to refrain from fighting with
those warriors at Thebes, so Medea told Jason to throw a
stone in their midst, a mere pebble; that he might then stand
back and watch them kill each other for it, just as the
Spartoi at Thebes killed each other until only five were left
standing.
It is said that Medea helped Jason to recover the Golden
Fleece by charming the Dragon that guarded it (as, in
somewhat similar fashion, Athene appeared on the scene to
assist Kadmos after he had slain the Dragon at Thebes) but
what of that ancient picture which shows Jason emerging from
the mouth of the Dragon beneath the tree upon which hangs the
Golden Fleece? Then again, is he emerging from the Dragon's
mouth, or is he being swallowed feet first? Clearly, deeper
mysteries are concealed here in the darkness beneath the
surface glow of the myths: we will plumb those mysteries to
their ultimate depths. Medea protected the escape of Jason
and the Argonauts by taking her brother, a mere child, and
cutting him into pieces, strewing them along the path behind
her in order to slow the vengeful pursuit of her father.
In sum, Medousa was first raped by Phorkys, her father,
only Phorkys is called Poseidon by the Greeks to disguise his
pre-Aryan identity. That rape took place in a flowery meadow
by the sea, outside the temple of Athene. The sons of that
union were Pegasus and Chrysaoar, i.e. Krios. Krios married
his mother, Eurybia. He is also called Koios- "Golden Ball of
Heaven", the "God on Heaven's Pole"; and, as we shall see, he
is also called Kronos- "he of crooked thoughts", an epithet
which can be equally well applied to Prometheus. Poseidon
turned himself into a ram in order to consumate his marriage
with Theophane, whom he had transformed into a ewe. Krios,
the husband of Eurybia, is "the Ram of Heaven"- the golden
sun. From the union of Poseidon and Theophane was born the
Ram with the Golden Fleece. In short, from the rape of
Medousa by Poseidon, i.e., Phorkys, emerge Pegasus- a flying
horse, and Chrysaoar with his golden sword, while the Ram
with the Golden Fleece possesses the power of flight. Could
the identification possibly be any more obvious? It should
also be noted that just as Athene, the sister of Dionysos
(for both are children of Metis) saved the castrated phallus
of Dionysos from the fire, so she likewise saved the
decapitated head of her sister- the Medousa.
But if more evidence is required that what we have here
is only one story and not a multitude, consider that when
Demeter was searching for Persephone, Poseidon caught sight
of her and immediately attempted her rape. Demeter
transformed herself into a mare and fled, but Poseidon turned
himself into a stallion and he, Skewball, "that gallant
racing pony", overtook "the grey Griselda" and mounted her.
Two children were born of that union- the magical horse Arion
and an unspeakable daughter whose very name might not be
mentioned. Do not be misled by the timing of that rape, that
it takes place after the rape of Persephone by Hades: the
chronology is deliberately constructed to conceal from the
uninitiated the true name of Poseidon and Demeter's
unspeakable daughter. If you have already concluded that
Arion is Chiron, that the unspeakable daughter is Okyrhoe
after her transformation, and that Poseidon and Demeter are
in fact Phorkys and Eurybia, you are beginning to understand
the structure beneath the surface of the Greek Mythos.
Okyrhoe is, of course, Persephone herself, the daughter
of Demeter, i.e., Eurybia, or Okypete; thus explaining
Persephone's possession of the Gorgon's head, the mask of the
Medousa, in the Underworld: it is her mother's head. Soon you
will also understand why the name of the daughter was
considered unspeakable, the name of the only daughter ever
born to the Great Mother- that daughter who is called
Okyrhoe or Persephone or Pasiphae or Hekate. That daughter,
with her witch's face, whom Leonardo caught so accurately in
his painting the Virgin of the Rocks: she who broke the law
of Themis, her own law, and tasted of the fruit of the Tree,
that fruit which contained within its seeds the knowledge of
good and evil- that one fruit in all the Garden that was
forbidden to her. The one fruit that she therefore desired
above all others, as he knew she would. And so she disobeyed
him, plucked the fruit, and fell into his trap, down into
Wonderland with the White Rabbit, down into the Underworld as
Persephone. Thus the Mother was reborn as the Maid. The mask
of the Medousa was not merely her mother's head; it is her
own head as well, the head of the one called Eurybia, or
Europa, for this daughter wears many names to conceal her
ancient crime. She is called the daughter of Eve, but she is
Eve herself. She is not only woman, she is not only the
Goddess, the Great Mother, she is, as we shall see, the human
race itself as it stands in relationship to God- the Father.
Eurybia gave birth to three sons- the Giants called
Perses, Pallas, and Asterios. As Europa she married her son
Asterios and became mother of Minos, who was the husband of
Pasiphae. Pasiphae was the daughter of Hekate and the mother
of Ariadne, who was the wife of Dionysos. As Asterie, Eurybia
married her son, Perses. The child of that union is
Persephone, also called Hekate or Perseis. Persephone was
raped, not by Hades, as the story is commonly told, nor by
Zeus, as the Orphic Mysteries maintain; instead, she was
raped by her father- Perses. The child of that incestous rape
was Dionysos, the beloved of Ariadne, who spends half the
year ruling over the Underworld as Attis, Aeetes, Hades, Ais,
Aidoneus, Adonis, Adam, or Dionysos, and the other half of
the year as king upon the throne of Heaven with the radiant
Ariadne at his side. As Hades and Persephone rule over the
Underworld, so Helios and Hekate rule the daytime sky of the
upper world, while Asterios and Europa rule the night. She is
his mother, his wife, his daughter. He is her father, her
husband, her son. They are two and they are one- they are the
intertwined serpents that together form the staff of life.
The genealogies presented on the following page may help to
bring the relationships between the deities we have been
discussing into sharper focus:
Poring over the genealogies and the etymologies, cross-
referencing them with the texts themselves, may seem like a
tedious, labyrinthine task; it is also the key to
comprehending the true myth within the myth. Therefore we
will continue to follow along the path of the genealogies,
the yellowbrick road, and see if thereby we cannot come at
last to the Emerald City and the Great Wizard himself, the
old humbug, seated on the Dragon Throne.
CHAPTER X
Although the Giants were often portrayed, both in
painting and in myth, as a savage, warlike race of men, Rose
argued instead that the Giants originally represented the
spirits of powerful natural phenomena such as volcanoes, and
that attempts, both ancient and modern, to portray them as a
backward race inhabiting the area prior to the arrival upon
the scene of the Greeks generally arise from a sadly
misguided desire to transform the myths into something
rational when they are- by their very nature- something
irrational. In defense of his argument, Rose pointed out that
in the earliest artistic representations of the race, the
Giants are not portrayed as half-naked barbarians but are
arrayed in the splendid armor of a Greek warrior, spear in
hand: as in the painting of Poseidon slaying the gloriously
arrayed Polybotes. Polybotes, with the radiant crest of the
sun gleaming upon his breastplate, fell beneath the trident
of Poseidon, which pierced him through the side. The name
Polybotes means "Many Cows". He was given that name because
there are "many cows" on the Island of the Sun. He is, of
course, Helios himself: that is why the sun is emblazoned on
his armor. Although, like Prometheus, Helios is often called
a Titan, as the son of the Titans Hyperion and Theia, he is
more accurately referred to, as is the case with Prometheus
also, as a Giant.
While I would be the last to argue that the Giants
reprsent nothing more than a race of savages, I would also
hesitate to identify them simply as powers of nature. What
Rose has failed to point out concerning those earliest
artistic portrayals is that, whereas the Giants, as in the
example of Polybotes, were indeed arrayed in resplendent
armor and helmet, the gods, like Poseidon, were shown nude:
as the barbarian Gauls still fought in Caesar's time. It was
not the Giants- the gods of the Minoans, nor the inhabitants
of the Minoan civilization the true gods left behind when
they abandoned the earth who were the naked barbarians: the
real barbarians were the invading Aryan peoples who descended
upon that civilization long after the serpent folk who
founded it had vanished. I am speaking, of course, of the
Greeks themselves.
Polybotes, it might be mentioned, in the painting
wherein he is slain by Poseidon, has only one foot upon the
ground- he walks on one foot, the mark of the serpent race,
for all serpents travel upon one foot. Perhaps it should also
be pointed out that Polybotes (and how many commentators
have leaped to point out, wrongly, that it was a different
Polybotes!) is also the name of the step-father of Oidipos,
the lame footed hero. Oidipos was lame because his father,
Laios, put a spike through his feet and exposed him as a babe
on Mt. Kithaeron: the oracle at Delphi having warned him that
one day his son would kill him and marry his wife Iocaste,
she whom Homer calls Epikaste. It would seem, therefore, that
she is the daughter of the Okeanid Akaste; and thus the
granddaughter of the Titans, Okeanos and Tethys.
In the manner typical of the Greek Myths, that Oidipos
finds refuge with Polybotes, who becomes his step-father,
identifies the Giant, rather than the cruel Laios, as his
true father, Or, to put it another way, it identifies Laios
and Polybotes as different names for different aspects of
Oidipos's father. And so Oidipos, the "lame foot", is the son
of a Giant, the serpent footed ones. As Odysseus was the "son
of Laertes and the gods of old", Oidipos was the son of Laios
and the gods of old. As the name Laios is related to stones,
and we have seen already the relationship that exists between
man and the stones of the earth, it is clear that Oidipos,
like Odysseus, may be called the son of man and the son of
God. They are both masks of Dionysos: Nietzsche really did
have an amazing grasp of the Greek myths.
As we have seen, Hephaistos' true mother was revealed in
a similar manner, when the lame-footed smith of the gods was
plucked from the sea by Eurynome and Thetis (under either
name, she is Aphrodite in the sea) and raised by them. Just
as, it might be added, the Divine Child Dionysos found refuge
with Ino Leukothea (i.e, Halia reborn) and Athamas (i.e.,
Adonis) after his mother Semele was sent to the Underworld by
the Thunderbolt of Zeus: the revelation of Zeus's true form.
Dionysos could rescue her from the Underworld only if he won
the help of a guide. He could win that guide only by
achieving complete female submission. He immediately sat down
at the crossroads, constructed a phallus of fig-wood, and,
"beneath that certain fig tree", achieved complete surrender
in the normal manner. Thus he found his guide to the
Underworld and rescued the Mother. And when Dionysos left the
sheltering arms of the Nymphs of Mt. Nysa and was forced by
the pursuing Lykourgos to leap into the sea, it was once
again Thetis- the mother of Achilles, who rescued him.
Nor should it be forgotten that the wife of Polybotes,
the step-mother of Oidipos, was called Merope. That name was
given also to one of the Pleiades- a daughter of Atlas, the
Titan who held up the sky. Bellerophon- the "voice of war",
did not care for the Titan's manners; and, flying by on
Pegasus, turned the Titan to stone with the Mask of the
Medousa, where he still stands guard today over the Garden of
the Hesperides at the Western border of the ancient world.
The revelation of the true location of that Garden will make
clear precisely how inaccurate the term "Greek Mythology"
really is. As a Pleias, Merope is a star in the heavens.
Merope is also called the mother of Orion. That Merope is
named as the mother of both Orion and Oidipos does not mean
there are two Merope's; it means that Orion and Oidipos are
one and the same. As confirmation, it remains only to point
out that Oidipos married his mother, while Orion raped his:
each suffered blinding as a result. Both were kings. And, as
we shall see when we unravel, for the first time outside of
cult, the true riddle of the Sphinx (revealing at the same
time the true location of the Delphic Oracle) Oidipos is much
more closely linked to the Giants than has been previously
imagined.
It is said that Orion ravished his own mother; or, at
least, that he attempted to do so: accounts differ as to his
success. For his great crime he was blinded and, as Ophion, a
god in the body of a serpent (or, perhaps, a serpent in the
body of a man) he was forced to walk across the water (a
simple feat, no doubt, for the serpent-footed Giant) to seek
the aid of Kedalion, the one-eyed dwarf Kyklope who was the
tutor of Hephaistos. That is not a journey to be taken
lightly, even by the immortals- beings of light. To find
Kedalion, one must travel through the darkness beneath the
mountain to the land of the Hoolie-goos and remain with them
for Christmas: Easter will be upon you before you leave their
fabled hall- if ever you do leave that hall. Kedalion led
Orion to the East, to the healing rays of the sun; thus
restoring not only his sight but his vision as well. Even
today it is still possible for a blind man to regain his
vision when touched by the hand of the Son: credo experto.
Helios, whose rays cured Orion's blindness, was called
Tallios on Rhodes, and was portrayed there in the form of a
bull. In his nightime aspect, Helios was called Asterios, the
bull-shaped god of the starry-sky, whose brothers were the
Giants- Perses and Pallas. Asterios is called the husband of
Europa because it was he, not Zeus, who carried Europa off to
sea on his broad back and raped her. Their son was Minos,
King of Crete, who married Pasiphae, mother by Minos of
Ariadne, and mother by the bull Asterios to the Minotaur- the
son of the star god, the monster at the heart of the
Labyrinth, the Underworld. It will be further recalled that
when Persephone was stolen away in the chariot of Hades,
Demeter was forced to seek out Helios in order to discover
her daughter's whereabouts, for only Helios in his chariot
saw the deed, although it is said that Hekate, i.e., Perseis,
from her cave heard Persephone screaming.
The rape of Persephone by Hades was not the only
lovemaking witnessed by the ever-vigilant eyes of the sun.
Helios it was who spied out the tryst between Aphrodite,
i.e., Asterie, the mother of Persephone, and Ares, i.e.,
Perses, the father of Persephone. Helios warned Hephaistos,
Aphrodite's husband, of the couple's love, and he, the
cuckold, devised an ingenious trap for the lovers: fashioning
a net, fine and strong, he suspended it above the much
desired bed of Aphrodite. Hephaistos then pretended, with
suitable fanfare, to set forth for Lemnos, his island
retreat. And now "golden Ares' watch had its reward". Swiftly
he came to Aphrodite's door and made his way into her
chamber; "tenderly he pressed her hand" and invited her to
mount the soft couch upon the dais. A far different portrayal
of Ares, the bold but gentle lover, from his normal character
as the bellicose but cowardly god of war!
Aphrodite was not slow to respond to his gentle
proddings, and together the pair fell upon the bed- "into a
shower of clever chains, the netting of Hephaistos". Now the
adulterous pair were fairly trapped and could only wait
helplessly as Hephaistos came raging back to the house, "for
Helios had spied for him and told him" how matters stood at
home. Now he stood in the doorway, regarding golden Aphrodite
in the arms of Ares: a jealous rage burning in his heart.
Hephaistos appears as the typical jealous husband, and yet
there is more to the scene than meets the eye. Whereas in the
myth of Kore, Demeter confronted her son-in-law (Hades, in
his upper world persona as Helios) about the rape of her
daughter, here it is the son who confronts his parents (for
such they are) in the midst of their passion.
It was not the jeaous husband who came bursting in the
bedroom door while the golden pair were playing at the love
game. Instead, it was a figure better known to married
couples: their son. The purpose of the myth is to reveal, not
only the true relationship between Ares and Aphrodite, shown
here by the poet riding together in bed (as in ancient vase
paintings they were often shown riding together in a chariot)
but also to reveal the true relationship between the lovers
and Hephaistos himself. That Ares and Aphrodite are indeed
the parents of Hephaistos is confirmed by Hephaistos' own
words as he calls upon Zeus and the other immortal gods to
come and witness the lovers:
... here is indecorous entertainment for you,
Aphrodite, Zeus's daughter,
caught in the act, cheating me, her cripple,
with Ares- devestating Ares.
Clean-limbed beauty is her joy, not these
bandylegs I came into the world with:
no one to blame but the two gods who bred me!
Come see this pair entwining here
in my own bed! How hot it makes me burn!
Hephaistos calls himself "her cripple": the first hint
that he is actually her son, but still inconclusive for it
might easily be construed as a reference to their marital
status. Hephaistos then refers to his own serpentine nature,
his "bandylegs". But do not be deceived by the contrast
between Hephaistos' serpent feet and the "clean-limbed beauty
of Ares". That Ares and Aphrodite are also of the serpent
race is quickly made clear when, after complaining of his
serpent-feet, Hephaistos immediately adds:
no one to blame but the two gods who bred me!
Come see this pair entwining here...
The parents of Hephaistos are, of course, the intertwined
pair themselves, Aphrodite and Ares. That they are
described as entwined together indicates not only their
serpent nature, but also that they are the intertwined
serpents called, in the orthodox stories, Zeus and Demeter.
The scene that Hephaistos has called upon all the gods to
witness is therefore revealed as the rape, if rape it can be
called, of the Mother by the Father: the rape that resulted
in the birth of Persephone, i.e., Perseis- the daughter of
Perses. It is also the story of the blind seer of Thebes,
Teiresias, who saw the same intertwined couple on a hillside.
Teiresias struck one of the snakes with a stick, and for his
impiety was turned into a woman. Seven years later he saw the
same pair and again struck one of the snakes, upon which he
was transformed back into a man. Only now he had knowledge of
the yin as well as the yang: now he knew The Way and, though
blind himself, could teach it to others. He is Lao Tzu- .
At Hephaistos' shout the other gods crowded the doorway.
Great was their delight at the sight that met their eyes, and
"irrepressible among them all arose the laughter of the happy
gods." Sharp pointed barbs flew fast and furious above the
general tumult, one of the gods being overheard to jest that:
The tortoise tags the hare
Hephaistos catches Ares and Ares outran the wind.
Aside from giving us an insight into the true origin of the
fable wherein the Tortoise proved swifter than the Hare,
there is another reason this bit of light-hearted raillery
should intrigue us. The hare is a common motif in ancient
vase-painting, and the jest made above by Hermes (although
his name is not mentioned, it is a jest that can only have
been made by the god who, on the day of his birth, outran the
tortoise) may provide us with the key we need to unlock that
motif.
On a Caeratan vase is a picture of Europa, holding in
her hands a cluster of grapes and dressed in a dark robe
covered with stars, riding on a tri-colored bull. Only one of
the bull's two front feet rests upon the surface of the
water, while Europa's feet are drawn so that they come
together to form one foot. On the bull's body are three dark
patches, forming three recognizeable figures. The first
patch, running across his chest and down his front legs,
forms a misshapen giant reaching out with a huge hand- a hand
with equally huge fingers- towards a smaller figure. That
smaller figure, which includes the two hind legs, is drawn in
the image of a maid, the tips of her breasts touching lightly
against the bull's phallus: a phallus formed by the finger
tips of the Giant. The final dark patch is an image of the
Mother, looking down upon the scene she has orchestrated- the
bull's dark tail is her long flowing hair. The tradition of
hiding a painting within the painting in order to reveal the
dark secrets lurking beneath the surface of the myth did not
begin in the Renaissance- it was only reborn there.
The pair, led by a dolphin (whose dark tail, in the
shape of a quarter-moon, forms against the chest of the bull
an image of the waxing moon) are headed towards an island, a
huge mountain rising up from the sea. At the top of the
mountain are three trees- the three Kabeiroi. Botticelli knew
the meaning of those three trees; that is why they appear in
his painting- the Birth of Venus, with serpents looped
through their branches. Wrapped in the blue mantle of heaven,
Aeolus (i.e., Aloeus) King of the Winds, whom men also call
Eros, carried Aphrodite down to the sea, and left her here,
without her wings, a stranger in this strange land. On the
vase painting, a hare is shown leaping toward those three
trees. The bull is tri-colored, and three animals are
portrayed. The dolphin is an image of Phorkys, the Old Man of
the Sea, the Grey One. Phorkys raped his daughter, the
Medousa, who became, as Eurybia, the mother of Perses. The
dolphin is the father come home from the sea to mate on the
land with the Nymph- his daughter, by the sacred mountain
that hides the secret garden where the Tree of Life is found.
In Botticelli's painting that dolphin, or sea monster, is
symbolized by the two protruding pieces of coastline that
seem to form a large inlet or bay, but are actually the
gaping jaws of the Leviathan himself. His jaws are reaching
for the child hidden at the mons venus: it is not a human
child you will find there.
One can catch a glimpse of that same sea monster in
Renoir's Two Sisters on the Terrace- between her right arm
and her waist. As in Botticelli's Birth of Venus, the
Leviathan is plunging towards a child: the Kouros hidden in
the basket of yarn, dressed in white pants and with his arms
upraised in supplication towards the Old Man- his father.
That child is the serpent child within the basket. Beneath
the charming veil of the surface painting is concealed, once
again, a profound portrayal of the ancient Mysteries. Two
small, goblin-like creatures are pulling up string on one
side of the basket, while on the other side the younger
sister rocks it gently with her hand, like a cradle. The ball
of yarn closest to her, almost touching her fingertips, a
golden ball, bears upon its surface the image of a baby's
face. The hat perched upon her head is Mother Night in the
form of a black bird: her feet, eyes, and beak clearly
visible. The hat perched upon the head of her older sister is
in turn a most subtle rendition of the Rooster of the Sun. On
that hat is an image in minaiture of the Red Fairy herself,
crowned in gold: she stands before a giant peacock. The tree
above her hat is no mere tree: the scrutinizing glance of a
discerning eye reveals it as the winged figure of the Hunter,
bow in hand, in pursuit of the white Nymph, who flees from
him on butterfly wings. Where the Hunter is, there the Hound
is also, assisting him in the chase. The Hound has already
shot past the Nymph: his grinning jaws touch the left border
of the painting. The tree trunk that appears to be the
Hunter's bow continues to descend and begins to look
suspiciously like a soup ladle that is ready to stir the
Nymph into the cauldron waiting just below her feet. That
continually metamorphosizing tree continues to descend
through one of the rings on the railing- a ring that
resembles a wheel- and ends in a hook that holds up the
baby's cradle. Beneath the Nymph a one-eyed Golden Lion looks
out through the bars of the fence: what appears to be a small
gold ring at the bottom of the fence ring on the far left
forms a golden crown centered perfectly upon his head. That
Lion's face forms but half the face of a larger Lion: his
face is split almost down the middle by the fencepost. The
Lion is, therefore, behind bars, as if he were in a cage,
while in front of the cage sit the two sisters. The fencepost
itself, however, is placed at the neck of the older sister,
as if she were on the guillotine, while the two tree trunks
directly behind her head complete the picture: they are the
posts that hold up the blade. The older sister, like the Mona
Lisa in Da Vinci's painting, is dressed in black. As in the
Mona Lisa also, there is a white river in the background: it
is the river Lethe that flows through the Underworld. The
similarities between the Mona Lisa and the Two Sisters do not
result from coincidence: both are portriats of Persephone
during her stay in the Underworld.
Returning to the vase painting of Europa, it might seem
that the third animal- the hare, is intended to represent
Ares. That would be an error; it is not quite so simple as
that. As usual, Homer and the Greeks have it backwards; the
Hare is the Nymph herself, Aphrodite, the snow white Hare,
luring the Old Man out of the sea to chase her before they
mate. But if one goes back far enough into the myths, closer
to their matriarchal roots, as, for instance, Joseph Campbell
has done, the realization dawns that it is not always the
hound who chases the hare- sometimes it is the hare who
chases the hound. The reason for the delight of the gods in
the story of the tryst between Aphrodite and Ares is hinted
at in an old folk song about a drunken lord named Martin and
his nameless serving man:
I saw the Man in the Moon
fie man, fie
I saw the Man in the Moon
who's a fool now?
I saw the Man in the Moon
Climbing up St. Peter's spoon
Thou wast well-drunken man
who's a fool now?
I saw a mouse chase a cat
fie man, fie
I saw a mouse chase a cat
who's a fool now?
I saw a mouse chase a cat
saw a cheese eat a rat
Thou wast well-drunken man
who's a fool now?
I saw a hare chase a hound
fie man, fie
I saw a hare chase a hound
who's a fool now?
I saw a hare chase a hound
twenty miles above the ground
Thou wast well-drunken man
who's a fool now?
Do not despair, as I said earlier, only in nonsense can sense
be found, and found it eventually will be. Not for nothing
were the ancient gods of our race portrayed with wings; when
the time came for the Nymph to mate she took to the air,
spiraling upwards: if not as high as the moon, then at least
"twenty miles above the ground". High in the sky the mouse
chased the cat, and when the race was over, the cheese ate
the rat. As Led Zeppelin described the same scene:
The sky is filled with good and bad
mortals never know.
Ares, the son of Iphimedeia, i.e., Eriboia, has already
been identified as Perses, the son of Eurybia, i.e. the
Medousa; and we have seen as well that Perses is also called
Krios; thus he is her husband as well as her son. The Medousa
was raped by her father, Phorkys, the Old Man of the Sea,
whose role in the myths, when they were retold by the Greeks,
was frequently played by Poseidon- the Greek god of the sea.
Indeed, as Phorkys was the father and husband of Eurybia,
while Krios was her son and husband, it was relatively easy
for the Greeks, depending on the needs of the individual
storyteller, to substitute Poseidon for either role; thus
obscuring the incestous relationships which form the
foundation for the entire mythic superstructure: incestous
relationships the full import of which neither the Greeks nor
Freud ever fully comprehended. If all that I say is true, if
Poseidon is used by the Greeks to play the role of Phorkys,
and that of Krios also, and if Phorkys is indeed the father
of Krios, and, finally, if Krios is Perses, i.e., Ares, then
the reader may reasonably expect to see Poseidon appear in
the tale of the tryst between Ares and Aphrodite in a role
suitable for either the father of Ares or Ares himself. As we
shall see, that expectation will not be disappointed.
The other gods surveyed the scene in amusement, busy
with their light-hearted bantering. Apollo even turned to
Hermes and asked him if he would be willing to wear chains,
if only he might lie at the side of golden Aphrodite. Hermes,
no neophyte to the ways of the nymphs (for was he not himself
the son of a nymph?) zestfully replied:
Would I not though, Apollo of the distances!
Wrap me in chains three times the weight of these,
come goddesses and gods to see the fun:
only let me lie beside the pale-golden one!
In the jest by Hermes is cleverly revealed the reason for the
association between Ares and the hare, for it is well known
that speed was also an attribute of Hermes, as shown by his
famous winged sandals. It is Hermes, of all the gods present,
who professes his desire to lie with Aphrodite, even though
in chains- the place now occupied by Ares himself; thus
confirming the identity between Ares and Hermes. As we know
that Hermes and Kadmos are identical, we now know that
Kadmos, Hermes, and Ares are all one and the same god. They
are all Perses, the son of Phorkys and Eurybia; they are all
names for the serpent king of old.
At Hermes' jest the gods broke out again in uproarious
laughter, all save Poseidon, whose behavior stands out in
stark contrast to all the rest. For Poseidon "never smiled
but urged Hephaistos to unpinion Ares". Poseidon, who is
Phorkys, the Father, knows the true fate of the male when he
lies enmeshed in chains at the side of the Nymph. Hephaistos,
naturally, was still loath to release the adulterer without
some guarantee of compensation, nor was he willing to accept
the word of Ares as that guarantee. Poseidon then declared he
would stand surety for Ares, and Hephaistos was forced to
yield to the older god's request.
I have claimed that the Greeks used Poseidon as a
substitute for both Phorkys and his son Krios, whom we have
already linked with Ares through Perses. In the preceding
scene, Poseidon acts both like the father of Ares,
guaranteeing his word, and like Ares himself, the father of
Hephaistos, commanding the crippled child to release him: a
command issued in a stern voice that the pouting Hephaistos
knew better than to disobey. Poseidon's reaction to the
entrapment of Ares by Hephaistos is indeed appropriate, both
to the father of Ares and to Ares himself; thus confirming
the identity between Ares and Perses, and the role of Phorkys
as the father of Perses by Eurybia. It must be remembered, of
course, that the Greeks often had it backwards. Although
Hephaistos is presented in Homer's famous story as the son of
Aphrodite and Ares, as we shall see, he is in truth himself
the father, angered over losing his daughter, the Nymph, to
his son Ares. Or perhaps he is only trying to save him? As
Oberon saved his son from the talons of Titania? Shakespeare
mastered the old myth, the ways of the faery folk; thus he
became a Master himself. It was not Hephaistos who trapped
Ares: it was Aphrodite who bound him in her net and would
have killed him then had not his father, Hephaistos,
interfered and saved his life. Poseidon did not command
Hephaistos to release Ares, instead it was Hephaistos who
commanded Aphrodite to release Ares. More precisely still,
Hephaistos and Poseidon are both simply Greek masks for the
father of Ares- Phorkys himself. How can that be? The final
resolution to the mystery behind their common identity will
be found only when we enter together into the heart of the
labyrinth. Even now, however, we are not far from that sacred
heart.
Returning now to the rape of Persephone, it will be
remembered that Helios, the only witness to that rape, was
the upper world aspect of Hades. The name of Helios's son by
Perseis is Aeetes, another form of Hades, for both are
derived from Aides, which means "the invisible", or
"invisibility giving". Hades was also called Aidoneus, i.e.,
Adonis, who spent part of the year with Persephone in the
Underworld and the rest of the year on Olympos at the side of
Aphrodite. The other name of Persephone's Underworld husband
was Dionysos, who was married in the heavenly realm to
Aphrodite Ariadne. It should be remembered also, however,
that Dionysos has but one bride, and that one bride, by
whatever name she is called, is Queen alike over both Heaven
above and the Underworld below.
Persephone, too, as is well known, spent part of the
year in the Underworld with her husband, and part of the year
on Olympos with her mother Demeter. Less well known is that
she did not reign over that Underworld realm at the side of
Hades, the grim brother of Zeus; instead, as ancient vase
paintings again make unmistakably clear, Dionysos is the
dread Lord who sits alongside her on the Dragon Throne of
Hell. But if Dionysos is with her in the Underworld, we can
be sure that he is with her on Olympos as well. And if they
are the rulers of the Underworld, which is undeniable given
what we know from both the vase paintings and the Orphic
stories, then it is equally undeniable that they rule
together on Olympos; and at last has come to pass what Hesiod
told Homer could never happen: that "horses with clattering
hoofs" should "run their course around Zeus's tomb and
shatter their chariots striving for victory". Zeus is dead.
Nor should it be forgotten that the first person Demeter
encountered when searching for Persephone was Hekate, i.e.,
Perseis. As Helios was the only witness to that rape, only
Hekate, hidden in her cave, heard Persephone's desperate
scream. On the third morning after Persephone, the female
Christ, disappeared into the Underworld, Demeter encountered
Hekate, each goddess carrying in her hand a torch. Hekate's
first words to Demeter are fraught with meaning:
Lady Demeter, bringer of ripeness and giver of rich
gifts, who was it, then, who stole Persephone and
so deeply troubled thy heart? I heard the cry, but
I did not see who it was. Had I done so, I would
tell you the truth.
It must be remembered, of course, and I say this with
all possible reverence and respect for the goddess, whom I
love like I love myself, that Hekate was a lying bitch. As
Angelos, the "messenger", she stole her mother's perfume for
herself. In another version, it was a beauty cream she stole
for Europa; thus linking Hekate once again with Europa. Hera,
who is Hekate's mother in both accounts, pursued the
nymphette who had stolen the secret to her beauty, but Hekate
first took refuge at the bed of a woman giving birth, and
then at a funeral procession: impure places where the
celestial deities could not follow her, for the immortals are
necessarily barred from participating in the cycle of birth
and death. Hera therefore sent the earthborn Kabeiroi to take
her to the Acherusian Sea in the Underworld to purify her. It
was in this manner that Hekate became goddess of the
Underworld, for beneath the charming story of the teenage
tramp is told once again the tale of how the Kore, the Maid,
was taken to the Underworld by the Kabeiroi (this time
clearly at the direction of the Mother) there to become Queen
over that dark realm by marrying its King. It is, of course,
the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.
Demeter knew her daughter well, the little slut, nor was
she deceived by Hekate's protestations of innocence.
Instead, "without a word", she grabbed the torch from
Hekate's hands and "sprang with her, carrying in her hands
the two burning torches, up to Helios, the watcher over gods
and men". With a superb sense of understatement, we are told
how they halted the horses of Helios, as the sun was halted
at the crucifixion of Christ, and "the great goddess inquired
concerning her daughter and the ravisher". Forthrightly,
Helios declared that she shall learn the truth. "None other
than Zeus is responsible", lied the rapist sauvely in
response to the Mother's accusing stare. Beneath the lie,
however, the storyteller cleverly reveals the Orphic version
of that rape, for the followers of Orpheus taught that the
true rapist of Persephone was not Hades but her Father, Zeus,
though Zeus himself is simply a substitute for the true
rapist, Persephone's father Perses; thus linking Helios, the
husband of Hekate, who was also called Perseis, with Perses
himself.
To make the identification even clearer, Helios then
added that Zeus gave Persephone to Hades, whom we know to be
the Underworld, or Katachthonian Zeus- the Zeus Meilichios
who was worshipped in the form of a serpent. "Hades", said
Helios, "carried her off in his chariot, taking her by force
to the realm of darkness and paying small heed to her loud
weeping. But thou, goddess, cease lamenting. There is no need
to scold so inconsolably. In thy brother, Hades, thou has
received no unworthy son-in-law amongst the gods. Since the
apportionment he has been honored with a third of the world,
and where he rules he is indeed King". Helios then departed
in his chariot.
It perhaps still requires to be pointed out that when
Helios descended towards the land of the evening twilight,
finally dropping below the rim of the earth, he became Lord
over the land west of the setting moon and east of the rising
sun- the Underworld. The chariot that Hades used to abduct
Persephone is, therefore, the same chariot in which Helios
now rides haughtily away, leaving the Great Mother fuming
behind him. In Hekate and Helios, Demeter has, as is well
known, encountered the erring if unabashed couple themselves:
that is why they were the only witnesses to that dark rape-
they were the participants. Although, judging from Hekate's
smugly self-satisfied manner, it seems more like a case of
seduction than rape, and Helios was no doubt wise to
disregard her loud weeping. Sometimes no really does mean
now. Here is the song that Hekate, in an attempt to explain
her fatal attraction for the grim Lord of the Dead, sang to
her Mother when she reemerged from the Underworld:
Cold late night so long ago
When I was not so strong you
know
A pretty man came to me
Never seen eyes so blue.
I could not run away
it seemed we'd seen each other
in a dream
It seemed like he knew me
He looked right through me.
"Come on home girl" he said with
a smile
"You don't have to love me yet
Let's get high awhile
but try to understand
Try to understand
Try try try to understand
I'm a magic man".
Winter nights we sang in tune
Played inside the months of moon
Never think of never
Let this spell last forever
Summer lover passed to fall
Tried to realize it all
Mama says she's worried
Growing up in a hurry
"Come on home girl" Mama cried
on the phone
"too soon to lose my baby yet
my girl should be at home!"
"But try to understand
Try to understand
Try try try to understand
He's a magic man, Mama
Oh, he got the magic hands".
"Come on home, girl" he said with
a smile
"I cast my spell of love on you
a woman from a child!
but try to understand
try to understand
I'm a magic man!"
Hekate has been secluded in the Underworld with her
lover- Helios (in his dark aspect as Hades); thus Demeter did
not find her until the third day when, like a female Christ,
she rises from the Underworld. Only now she is the Kore no
longer: she has tasted of the fruit of the pomegranate tree
and now knows Eros. As the real Mary Poppins, not the
travesty created by Disney, would certainly have observed,
she has sat "on the blanket, beneath a moonbeam", and fed "on
wild strawberries, snakes and nut cream". The name of Mary
Poppins mother, it might be mentioned, is Mrs. Corry. It
would never do, of course, to inquire of Mary Poppins the
meaning behind her mother's name, for:
... Mary Poppins never explained. One might as
well ask the Sphinx.
To continue, the Maid has now become the Mother of the Divine
Child and knows neither guilt nor shame. Helios is likewise
unashamed, and indeed seems somewhat put out by Demeter's
hesitation in accepting him as a suitable husband for her
daughter. Helios need not trouble himself; Demeter's
reluctance must eventually end: she must accept the Maid's
transformation into the Mother so that the cycle of life can
continue.
That Demeter will eventually reconcile herself to her
daughter's new station in life, that the crops will once
again rise from the earth, is brilliantly foreshadowed when
Mother and Daughter meet each other for the first time after
Persephone's, i.e., Hekate's disappearance. On that occasion,
it will be remembred that each goddess carried in her hand a
torch: Demeter's torch represents her daughter- Hekate.
Hekate's torch symbolizes that she in turn has become the
Mother. Demeter took the torch from Hekate, the torch that
symbolized her grandhcild, and with the other torch in her
hand, i.e., her tramp of a daughter, confronted her
prospective son-in-law with the love child, only to find the
marriage already a fait accompli: not only arranged by the
will of the Father, but actually carried out by him. The name
of that son, that burning torch, is Dionysos. One can only
imagine the hilarity that must have prevailed when this scene
was performed as part of the mystery plays. The ancient
world, unlike our own, knew how to laugh at its gods. Of
course, it's much easier to laugh at beings you are familiar
with; and, if you can watch them having sex, it becomes
easier still. Beneath the somber facade religion normally
turns to the world, there is an element of humor- a comedy if
you will. When you have found that divine comedy, you have
penetrated also to the heart of the Mysteries: the Mysteries
which lie at the heart of all man's religious beliefs.
Dionysos is symbolized by a burning torch because he is
a child of the Phoenix- born from the fire. When Demeter took
the torch from Hekate, it signalled her recognition of Hekate
as the new Mother, and her acceptance of her own new position
as nurse to her grandchild, a point that is confirmed when
Demeter becomes nurse to the child called Demophoon. It is
said in the orthodox versions of the myth that when Demeter
and Hekate went their separate ways it was, ostensibly at
least, with the intention of continuing the search for
Persephone. As they have already found each other, however,
it would be ludicrous to believe that was the real purpose
behind Demeter's continued journey. That deeper purpose is
revealed in the story that details the founding of the
Eleusinian Mysteries themselves.
It is said that after much wandering Demeter came
disconsolate to the house of King Celeus of Eleus. There the
daughters of the King encountered her while fetching water at
the well Parthenion- the Virgin. These kind girls offered the
now pathetic looking Demeter (who is said to have resembled
at this point an old, gray-haired woman) a respectable
position within the royal household as nurse to Queen
Metaneira's newborn son Demophoon: a position normally held
by women of the Demeter's apparent age. Demeter, however,
remained inconsolable until at last an old servant maid of
the Queen, one Iambe by name, by her joking and clownish
antics brought a brought a smile to the Mother's lips and
induced her to accept a drink of barley water. In another
version, it was an old servant wench named Baubo who broke
through the wall of grief surrounding Demeter. She did so by
raising her skirts with a bawdy jest and revealing to Demeter
the laughing child of the Mysteries- Iakchos, also known as
Bakchos, Zagreus, and Dionysos: the laughing child concealed
within her hideous womb. Upon seeing the Divine Child, the
serpent child, Demeter "laughed too, and smilingly accepted
the drink".
The reader will already have realized, of course, that
Iambe and Baubo are one and the same. The shocking true
identity of that mysterious figure, and why she was able to
make the Mother laugh by raising her skirts, will be revealed
later. Suffice it to say for now that if one would like a
picture of that Divine Child, that serpent child, one need
only look within the moon shaped hair of Botticelli's Venus,
for he is clearly portrayed there above her left shoulder,
just above where her wings would be, if wings she still had.
To say it clearly, her hair is divided into four sections:
one section forms a serpentine loop around her neck, the
part below the ribbon that binds her hair represents her
missing wings, and the crescent-moon section contains the
serpent child itself, as does the last section, the length of
hair that she holds at the mons venus, that holiest of
mountains.
Gazing upon that child is a Dragon-headed serpent: he is
at the bottom of the bass clef that forms the collar on the
red robe that will hide her nakedness from the eyes of men.
It is the Charite Aglaia, "the glorious", who is hurrying to
her with that flower-embroidered robe: it will be recalled
that the name of Aglauros also means "the glorious". At the
end of the branch directly above Aphrodite's head is a leaf
in the form of a serpent child making the ritual posture of
obeisance: just as there is a leaf in the form of a serpent
poised above the head of Rossetti's La Ghirlandata.
Botticelli portrayed Venus in three different aspects: her
fall from the sky- the Grandmother, her birth from the sea-
the Mother, and her emergence upon the land- the Daughter.
Rossetti also portrayed the goddess in three different
aspects: in each painting one aspect of the goddess is
winged.
Once Demeter has resigned herself to her new role, to
the turning of the wheel, the cycle of life can continue.
Once more the corn springs forth from the earth- the field
thrice plowed by Demeter's lover, Iasion, famous in the
ancient world as the inventor of the plow, as Jethro Tull won
fame in the 16th century for inventing a new type of seed
plow. For the ancients, of course, corn meant wheat. And what
on earth might the crop circles, those mysterious images
appearing overnight in the fields of men, have to do with the
birth of Dragons? What is it they are preparing to raise up
from the earth? And why do those images resemble ancient
heiroglyphics from our own past, as Led Zeppelin has made
clear? It is not the coming of something new, it is the
return of something older than the word old can possibly
describe. It is the return of the King, and the dawning of a
new order, a "new disorder". That ancient drawings of magical
force have once again begun to appear in the fields of men,
fields that have long lain fallow, signals the turning of the
cosmic wheel: once again the starry plough of the Dragons
will strike the earth, and a new crop of Giants will rise up.
Once again we will be ruled by magic.
After Iambe/Baubo succeeded in lifting the goddess up
from her gloom, "smiling", Metaneira, the wife of King
Celeus, put Demeter in charge of rearing her son Demophoon.
Demeter's child raising methods would seem bizarre, but by
now it must be apparent that, for the gods, it simply
represents the normal course of events: each day she
annointed his young body with ambrosia, and each night "she
exposed the child to the full strength of the fire, like a
billet of wood that is being made into a torch". Inhuman her
actions might seem, but the boy thrived under her unorthodox
care; indeed, it was said of him that "he was as fair as one
of the gods". One night, however, Metaneira chanced to enter
the nursery just as Demeter ws roasting the child over the
flames, and her terrified screams interrupted that holy rite.
Demeter snatched Demophoon from the fire and angrily
exclaimed: "Ignorant are ye human beings, and thoughtless, ye
can foresee neither good nor evil... I swear... I would have
made thy dear son into an immortal who would have remained
eternally young.... Now he no longer has any way of avoiding
death".
Demeter placed Demophoon in the fire to "burn away his
mortality and make him divine". But when a mortal discovered
the secret of the process, man's hopes for immortality were
accidentally lost. And yet, if the discovery of that process
cost man his immortality, then its rediscovery might restore
that hope- or destroy it forever. That is the risk at the
heart of the Thunderbolt enlightenment, for of all things
what is most difficult is to know when to speak- and when to
keep silent. No one who has attained the Thunderbolt
enlightenment has ever failed of the sacred trust of silence
that accompanies it: no one until now.
It is thought that the story of Demeter's visit to Eleus
is an episode that follows the encounter with Hekate and
Helios. Metaneira, however, is simply an honorific form of
the name Neaira- "the New One", i.e., "the new moon, the moon
in its darkest phase": that time when the sun and the moon
appear closest to each other. Neaira is, therefore, simply
another name for the wife of Helios. As we know from the
traditional genealogies, the wife of Helios was also called
Perseis, or Perse, and "the name of the Queen of the
Underworld, Persephone, can be taken to be a longer... more
ceremonious form of Perse". If you have already realized that
Metaneira is, in fact, Persephone herself, the lost Maid, and
that King Celeus of Eleus is Helios, and, finally, that
Demophoon is the Divine Child Dionysos who was thrown into a
cauldron hanging from a tripod, then roasted over the flames
by the Mother and the Maid as his two elder brothers, the
Kabeiroi, looked on (as is clearly shown in the accompanying
vase painting) then you have begun to read the myths
correctly. In that vase painting, it should be noted that one
brother carries a serpent staff, his two feet drawn together
to form one foot, while the other brother walks on three
feet, i.e., with a cane, only one of his feet touching the
ground. Demophoon, of course, as his name implies, is of the
serpent people. Celeus, his father, is the same Keleos who
broke into the maternal cave to steal the honey from the
Golden Bees.
We have spoken much of the ravished Maid, be she called
Persephone, Perseis, Perse, Neaira, Metaneira, Hekate,
Europa, Eurybia, Iphimedeia, or simply the Medousa-
"Ruleress". Now let us speak of the one who not only ravished
her, but left her for dead in the green grass by the water's
edge. Perseus was the name of the great hero who, armed with
sword and shield, slew the Maid, the Medousa, cutting the
head from her body and placing it in the leather sack he
carried so that he could transport it safely back to Athene,
she who likewise rescued the phallus of Dionysos after his
murder and castration at the hands of the Kabeiroi- his two
elder brothers. It was Athene who carried that precious
phallus, the rod of power, Eros, the Most High One of the
Triple Universe, safely back to Zeus, who put it in the cave
called leather sack, the Korukion Atron: the cave where
Typhoeus concealed the sinews of Zeus in a bear's pelt and
set the Dragon Delphyne as guard over them. As Kerenyi
pointed out, Perseus was also called Eurymedon, "as if he
were a 'ruler of the sea' and Medousa's husband, not merely
her slayer". Perses, the son of Krios and Eurybia, the
brother of Pallas and Asterios, the husband of Asterie, the
father of Persephone, was also called Perseus. Rose's comment
that the Giant Perses "must be differentiated from the hero
Perseus", is typical of the orthodox approach to the Greek
myths: an approach which ignores their underlying unity,
their common structure, and insists on seeing a variety of
myths featuring a multitude of different characters when in
truth there is only the one myth- the myth of Dionysos, the
Mighty Hunter, "who's seeking for the heart of the River-
Daughter".
Perses and Medousa are the two who became one: therefore
they are called Hermaphroditus. They are also called
Archemoros, for it is through them that death first entered
the world, the death born of love, the death that brings a
final end to the seemingly endless nightmare we call the
material world- the hell of our own devising, the mirror in
which, look where we will, we perceive only ourselves. That
we perceive only ourselves does not mean, however, that there
is no one else. It was not we, after all, who fashioned the
mirror.
With all due respect for Prof. Campbell, whose
erudition and scholarship far exceed my own, I must
nonetheless take exception with him on two main points
regarding his interpretation of the ancient mythos. First,
Campbell believed there was nothing behind the mask of God
save man himself, but it has been my task to show that behind
the mask of God lies a being very much other than man. That
alien being, the Dragon, was the inspiration behind the world
mythos, which served in turn as the foundation upon which all
the world's great religions were constructed. Campbell was
correct, however, insofar as we have ended up worshipping,
not the God who created us, but merely an image of ourselves
slipped like a mask over the true face of God. That the god
man worships is a false god, an image of himself, does not
mean, however, that there is no God: it means only that man
has not yet found Him. There is indeed a relationship between
man and the Dragon, and the true nature of that relationship
will ultimately be revealed herein; suffice it to say for now
that, as opposed to Campbell's claim that there is nothing to
be found behind the mask of God save man himself, it might
just as easily- and more accurately- be claimed that there is
nothing behind the mask of man save the goddess herself.
Secondly, Campbell denied the existence of another
world- believing the material world to be the mythical realm
itself; thus Campbell as a true disciple of Nietzsche:
denying the existence of God and the spirit world. But the
true disciples of Nietzsche are those who deny him, with full
knowledge of why they do so, having followed the path of will
to power to its final goal- the point where it self-destructs
into absolute nihilism: that point where the emptiness of
self-love becomes all too apparent. At that point man finds
at last his true self. Campbell was correct in his assumption
that there is indeed only one world- the world of the living,
but the world we inhabit is not, unfortunately, that one
world: it is but its shadow. There is in truth only the one
world, but that one true world remains hidden from us behind
a veil of deceiving mist: a silvery mist that can be
dispelled only by the golden fire that falls from the sky at
the marriage of the Sun and Moon.
The key to understanding the role of the Dragon in the
origin of the world mythos lies in penetrating through the
multiplicity of characters presented in the myths and
perceiving the common identity that exists between them.
Although Nietzsche pointed out the existence of that common
identity over a century ago, his approach- carried out most
successfully by Kerenyi- still meets with great opposition
amongst more orthodox scholars. Rose, for instance, denied
that Perses and Perseus are one and the same character; yet
it is well known that there are many versions of the life of
his brother- Pallas. Kerenyi himself made it clear that "the
male Pallas was always the same figure, although given
various genealogies". Pallas can be identified first of all
as one of the Giants born from the castration of Ouranos; for
he is mentioned in the story of the war between the Gods and
the Giants as the opponent of Athene. She tore off his skin
and wore it ever afterwards as her breastplate. Athene, of
course, is also called Pallas Athene. It is said that her
father, Pallas, the son of Krios and Eurybia, tried to rape
her when she was grown into a maid but she killed him, flayed
him, and, again, wore his skin as her breastplate. Who will
deny that it is, in both stories, the same Pallas? After all,
she can only have worn one breastplate into battle. On that
breastplate was the head of the Medousa, which can only have
fallen into her hands because she is, in fact, Sthenno,
sister to the Medousa and cousin to Pallas. Having now been
identified, however, as Athene herself, Sthenno can hardly be
the cousin of Pallas, as the traditional genealogies
mistakenly claim; she is instead his daughter. Given the ease
with which various characters from the myths may be
identified with each other, surely it should not be so
difficult to believe that Perses and Perseus are the same
character, a character of whom various stories are told?
Again, it will be remembered that in one account of
their lives, Otos and Ephialtes slew each other during the
final battle of the Gigantomachy, when both threw their
spears at a doe that leaped between them as they attempted to
rape Artemis. In another account, it is said that Zeus slew
them with the thunderbolt when they dared to assault Olympos
itself. Does anyone doubt that it is the same pair of Giants
in both stories? Or believe that the Ephialtes who was
wounded in the left eye by the arrow of Apollo, in the right
eye by the arrow of Herakles, is still another Ephialtes?
Although it is said they were the children of Poseidon and
Iphimedeia, Otos and Ephialtes were also called Giants:
meaning they, too, arose from the drops of blood that fell
from the severed member of Ouranos. That Pallas is likewise a
Giant would seem to render it indisputable that his brothers
Perses and Asterios must also be Giants, born from that same
castration; yet they, too, are also called the sons of Krios
and Eurybia. I have identified the Giants with the Titans;
yet in the orthodox genealogy, the Hesiodic genealogy, the
Giants are called the children of the Titans. Is it truly
possible for someone to come along almost three thousand
years later and still have any hopes at all of successfully
correcting the errors made by Hesiod, or even identifying
precisely where those errors lie? Knowing that the hero
Perseus was also called Eurymedon, who "was king among the
giants", and remembering as well that Orion was also King
over the Giants, the identity between Perseus, Perses,
Eurymedon, and Orion is rendered transparent.
The tale has been told of how the two older Kabeiroi
slew their younger brother, cut off his head and phallus,
then boiled him before roasting him over the fire: the
baptism of water followed by the baptism of fire. In another
version, the two older brothers cut off his head and phallus,
wrapped the head in a purple cloth and, placing it on a
shield, carried it to Mt. Olympos, where they buried it at
the foot of the Mountain. From the buried head parsley sprang
up; therefore those who were initiates into the Holy
Mysteries of Samothrace, the Mysteries of the Kabeiroi and
the Great Mother, did not eat parsley in order to avoid
sharing in the sin of the two brothers. The true names of the
Kabeiroi of Samothrace have until now been concealed from the
world, but the seemingly irrelevant, if charmingly quaint
detail of the parsley was not preserved through accident: it
is the clue that reveals their identity. For this detail is
irrelevant only to those who do not realize that the archaic
spelling of parsley is perseline; thus revealing the true
name of the slain Divine Child, the third brother- Perses,
who was killed by the spear of his brother, Pallas, as he
gazed upon his reflection in the other's shield. Thus the
three Kabeiroi of Samothrace are now revealed as Perses,
Pallas, and Asterios. It is Pallas and Asterios who kill
Perses. Perses is both Father and Husband to Persephone- he
is also her Son. She is his true love, and there is a song
about the love between them that is still sung today:
Are you going to Scarborough Fair?
Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme
Remember me to the one who lives there
she once was a true love of mine....
He is parsley, the Divine Child called Perses; she is
Rosemary, i.e. Mary, the Mother of that Divine Child. Sage
means wizard, which is, as we know, another word for Dragon,
while thyme, of course, stands for time itself, which is also
the meaning of the word Titan; thus sage and thyme are
revealed as the two older brothers who slew the third:
Perses. Curious it is indeed how the holiest mysteries of the
past are often found preserved in the simplest of folk songs.
Archilocus sang songs that were old before the fall of Troy.
His name is almost unknown today, but the Greeks ranked him
with Homer. And old Handel surely knew what he was about
when, despite the mockery of the ignorant, he abandoned
composing his own music in favor of traipsing around the
countryside collecting old folk tunes. Handel turned to folk
music because he had discovered that in folk music was
preserved the original source of the myth: a discovery that
was repeated almost two hundred years later by a young Bob
Dylan. With the keys that have been given to me to give to
you, anyone- anyone, will be able to turn to those folk
songs, or to the songs of Bob Dylan, or to the Renaissance
paintings of the true Masters- Da Vinci, Breughel, Durer,
Botticelli, or to the myths themselves, and find the secret
of their soul: the revelation of the thunderbolt. It is the
Vajra itself that I bring you.
That it was a cloth of purple in which the two brothers
wrapped the head of the third is also a clue to that third
brother's identity. As will, perhaps, surprise no one at this
point, the word perse also means blue, blue green, dark blue,
the color of the sea- the color of divine lord Krishna's
skin; it is also a purple gray (lavender) cloth, and perhaps
it will not be thought amiss to mention that when silken
material is decorated with flowers it is called a persiana;
thus revealing the hidden meaning behind one of the most
common motifs in ancient art- East and West. The Charite in
Botticelli's Birth of Venus is Aphrodite's Daughter-
Persephone. But wait, there is more. In the most famous
version of the Kore myth, it is told how Zeus agreed to allow
Persephone to return to the Mother as long as she had not
tasted of the fruit of the pomegranate tree. The sexual
connotations are, of course, most obvious; and, considering
that it was Zeus himself who raped her, he was hardly in any
doubt as to whether she had indeed tasted of that most
delicious of fruits, the fruits of Eros. Of course, it was
not really a pomegranate fruit that Persephone ate: that was
simply for public consumption; in order to conceal, once
again, the true identity of Persephone's father- Perses, the
dread lord of the Underworld. For besides meaning parsley and
purple and flower embroidered silks, Perses has still another
meaning: it is the name of that tree which is called in Latin
the Persicum-the peach tree, another sensual fruit with a
large seed inside. Persephone has tasted of the fruit of the
Persicum, the fruit of her father. She now knows Eros and is
the Maid no longer: now she is the Mother; she carries within
her the seed of the gods.
The father of Asterie, it might be mentioned, was Koios,
whose name means Sphairos, or ball; thus he is "the ball of
Heaven". He is also called the god "Heaven's Pole". In the
southern United States the expression is still heard that the
"longest pole knocks the persimmon". Another word for ball is
palla. The masculine form of the word, palum, means pale,
stake, or pole, a pointed piece of wood, like a spear, driven
into the ground to make a fence, a picket, or a palisade. The
verb pallo means "to brandish", as in "brandishing a spear":
as in the spear wielding Giants that sprang up from the drops
of blood that fell from the sky like a deluge of bright,
fiery stones. This in an attempt to clarify the depth of
meaning that lies concealed behind the name of Pallas;
thereby revealing the role Pallas played in the Mysteries in
relation to his brother Perses, i.e., his Son, Dionysos:
Pallas is Apollo, the Destroyer.
It will be remembered that when the Divine Child was
slain by his brothers as they danced the weapons dance around
him with spear and shield, one of the toys by which he was
distracted, along with his reflection in the mirror (or the
polished metal of his brother's shield) was a ball, a golden
ball, symbol of the sun: that ball may also have been a
symbol for the gleaming spear tip itself. It will be
remembered that it was a sharp-pointed sword which lured
Achilles from a woman's dress and onto the battlefield of
Troy. There he met his death on the plains before the city,
when the arrow of Paris (an arrow aimed by Apollo) pierced
him through that notoriously vulnerable heel. In the same
fashion, the bronze giant Tallaios (or Talos) the Sun-God of
Rhodes, was vulnerble only in his heel. He was killed by
Medea, called in the orthodox genealogies the granddaughter
of Hekate and Helios. Assuming, however, that Aeetes is
simply another name for Hades, the Underworld persona of
Helios, she may more accurately be named as his daughter
instead. As Tallaios can only be Helios himself, that would
make Medea the murderer, not only of her brother, but her
father as well. But what compelling reason could there be in
the structure of the myth that would require Medea to commit
patricide when she had already left her own country far
behind?
There are other definitions of the word pall which may
be relevant here, for the word pall also connotes "nausea, to
fail, to lose taste, life, spirit, become vapid as wine or
ale, spiritless". In short, it means death and gloom. It also
means pallet, and perhaps the hauntingly uplifting lyrics of
the Passion Play will now resonate through your soul in a
"different key":
Well-meaning fool pick up thy bed
and rise
up from your gloom smiling.
Give me your hate
and do as the loving heathen do.
It will be remembered that the man Christ healed by the
fountain, the man lying on a pallet, was lame, crippled in
the legs, and so could not walk like a man. He was of the
serpent folk.
There is yet another meaning attached to the name Pallas
(for it is, like Perses, a very old name, and has had time to
acquire many subtle shades of meaning) as pallium it means
robe, shroud, mantle, or cloak. It is the cloth thrown over
the tomb; it is the purple shroud in which Pallas wrapped the
head of his brother- Perses: the Omadhaun who created mankind
and then taught him the Mysteries. His name is Prometheus,
and the time has come to relese him from the cross. And let
it be said again, as it was said by Nietzsche, that it was
only the spirit of music- a Dionysian spirit, which had the
power to free him. Prometheus, the serpent who created
mankind and has always been at man's shoulder, is the true
God, not the impostor Zeus. He is Tyan, the Big Man: Allahu
Akbar!
It was Prometheus who taught man agriculture, who taught
man the arts, who gave man fire, not physical fire only but
also the Fire of the Mysteries- a greater Fire. He is the
true God of our race, though he has been called an archetype
of Satan. Zeus, who wrought nothing but evil for man, who
always hated mankind, yet who is still worshipped by the
world as Deus, or God, is, of course, the Devil himself. Or,
as I have said before, herself; for the being the world calls
God is indeed a woman: she is the Mother herself, the
Matriarch; thus it is Zeus who gave birth to both Athene and
Dionysos. And so, after the defeat of the Titans at the hands
of the Kyklopes and the Hekatoncheires- the demonic spirits
Zeus brought forth from the Underworld into the Light,
Prometheus, the God of Love, is pinned against a mountain and
staked through the middle upon the pole of the axis mundi:
hung up like a scarecrow in a cornfield, like Jesus on the
cross with a spear through his side. Thus the power of the
Vajra was turned against its rightful possessor by the one
who had stolen it- man, i.e., Zeus, or Indra. The Giants are
not, as so many believe, the first men, they are the creators
of men. They themselves are the true gods, the blessed gods.
The god man worships is man himself- the goddess. The true
nature of the relationship between man and God has long been
understood by the Muslims: it is time that the Christians
learned it as well. If there is any remaining confusion left
in the mind of the reader it will, I promise, soon be
dispelled.
One final comment before we move on to elucidate the
most closely guarded secrets of the Mysteries: the
matriarchal relationships perceived amongst the megaloi theoi
have been commonly misinterpreted as an imitation of the
matriarchal social structure found in Crete and the rest of
the ancient world. It is, however, the other way around; the
ancient world's matriarchal social structure was actually an
imitation of the matriarchy presented in the myths and
genealogies of the gods, for contained in those myths and
genealogies is the life cycle of the megaloi theoi- the
blessed gods. They are not human, their life cycle is alien
to ours. In that life cycle, as among the insects, it is the
female who plays the dominant role. None of this was ever
fully understood by the patriarchal Aryan peoples who came
along afterwards and never experienced any direct contact
with the Dragon. Thus they never knew quite what to make of
the tales they found; nor have modern scholars fared any
better: even such brilliant scholars as Joseph Campbell, who
naively assumed that behind the mask of god only man himself
was hiding. By rejecting dualism and denying the existence of
God, Campbell believed he was following faithfully in the
footsteps of his Master- Nietzsche; but in doing so he has
apparently forgotten Nietzsche's own observation that the
last two thousand years of history might well be interpreted
by the discerning one as an attempt on the part of the gods
to domesticate man himself. Or, as Kierkegaard pointed out,
"there is still another proof for the existence of God, one
which has hitherto been overlooked". That proof will be found
in Aristophanes:
Demosthenes: Shrines? Shrines? Why surely you don't believe
in the gods?
NIcias: I do.
Demosthenes: But what's your argument? Where's your proof?
Nicias: Because I feel they persecute me and hate me,
in spite of everything I try to please 'em.
Demosthenes: Well, well. That's true; you're right about
that.
Chapter XI
The alien beings responsible for the domestication of
the human race are, of course, the gods of our most distant
past: not the Olympian gods of the Greeks, but the Giants,
the Titans, the Daktyloi, the serpent-footed Kabeiroi, the
Kyklopes, the Hekatoncheires. As the Daktyl Idaioi, the
Kabeiroi, and the Kouretes all sprang up from the earth where
the fingers of Mother Rhea dug into the sacred mountain; so
where the drops of blood from the severed member of Ouranos
struck the earth Giants sprang up, brandishing spears and
dressed in gleaming armor: just as the Kouretes, with spear
and shield, performed a weapons dance at the birth of the
Divine Child- the Kouros. Because it was the Titanic act of
Kronos which created the Giants, along with their female
counterparts, the Ash-Nymphs, they are the children, or the
creation, of the Titans. The drops of blood fell to the earth
as stones; from the stones the Titan Prometheus fashioned
mankind, while Pallas Athene, whose name alone makes clear
her relationship to the children of the Titans (for she can
only be the daughter of the Giant- Pallas) bestowed upon man
a soul. It is said that the Giants arose from the earth in
Phlegra- "the burning plains", the land which is also called
the Pallene, for Pallas, the son of Krios and Eurybia.
The castration of Ouranos and the birth of the Giants
from the blood that spilled upon the fertile earth is also,
once again, the story of the sacrifice and castration of
Dionysos: that sacrificial act which resulted in the creation
of both mankind and the Olympian Gods. As I have stressed
repeatedly, it was Prometheus, and not Zeus, who created
mankind. Although Prometheus is often referred to not only as
a Titan but even as the Titan, he is in fact the son of the
Titan Iapetos; thus he is, properly speaking, a Giant, not a
Titan at all. As the genealogical charts given earlier
clearly show, the children of the Titans are the Giants. Thus
it would seem that the Giants, and not the Titans, were the
creators of mankind. Or is it possible that the genealogies
are wrong and that Prometheus actually is a Titan? But if
Prometheus is indeed a Titan, then his father, Iapetos, can
only be Ouranos himself. Or perhaps there is, in fact, little
difference between the Giants and the Titans? This paradox,
too, will be resolved; here it is enough merely to give the
reader an indication of the type of confusion that exists
among the genealogies in their present form.
Although man may indeed be related by blood to the gods,
even blood relatives quarrel at times; thus warfare erupted
also between mankind and the gods. Man, of course, was the
loser in that war, a war which seemed to end, temporarily at
least, when Prometheus, the leader of mankind, met with Zeus
at Mecone- the Field of Poppies, the Field of Peace, to
negotiate a treaty between the two warring sides and to
divide the sacrificial bull between them. As we have seen,
despite losing the war, mankind, thanks to the cunning of
Prometheus (cunning for which he paid dearly) received the
meat, while the gods received nothing but bones wrapped in a
dazzling package of gleaming fat. It was, however, no
ordinary piece of meat that Prometheus concealed within the
hide that day at Mecone, when he switched the sacrifice on an
unsuspecting Zeus; nor has Zeus, or, for that matter, a
slumbering mankind, yet perceived the full extent of the
Titan's devious scheme.
That the children of the Titans are referred to as
Giants may, at least in part, be nothing more than a classic
example of Greek irony. A hint regarding the ambigous stature
of the Giants is provided by an ancient vase painting
depicting the abduction of Leto by the Giant Tityos, whose
name alone demonstrates once again the close ties that
existed between the Titans and the Giants. In that painting,
the figure of Tityos is significantly shorter than either
Apollo or Artemis, or even their Mother, Leto. As punishment
for his attempted rape, Tityos was confined to the
Underworld, where each day, like Prometheus, his liver was
ripped out and devoured by a bird, only not an eagle but a
vulture, or even, in some versions of the story, not a bird
at all but a serpent. Although it is said Prometheus was
staked out on a mountain, it was also said that, to free him,
Chiron had to descend to the Underworld to change places with
him. The size of the Giants was, in fact, a matter of some
dispute: they were called the Giants but they were also
called the Kabeiroi- dwarflike in stature but nonetheless
megaloi theoi- "mighty gods", on account of their deeds. The
same relatonship between size and power is found in Hesiod's
pairing of the Kyklopes with the Hekatoncheires, for the
power of the Kyklopes "is shown in their works", while the
power of the Hekatoncheires "is shown in their huge forms".
As we shall see, it is the huge form of their works which
truly demonstrates their power.
One other aspect of the Giant's anatomy must be kept in
mind: they were serpent-footed; thus Zeus referred to Otos
and Ephialtes as the "snaky footed Giants". Their serpent
feet also identify the Giants with the Kabeiroi; for it will
be remembered that the Kabeiroi are descended from Hephaistos
through Kadmilos, or Kadmos; and the Kabeiroi of Lemnos were
even called the sons of Hephaistos- the misshapen dwarf who
served as smith to the gods. Hephaistos, as Kerenyi pointed
out, could not actually walk, but was capable only of a
forward rolling motion because the soles and heels of his
feet were turned back to front, making them resemble serpent
feet, as "is clearly shown on ancient vase paintings".
Although it is often overlooked as inconsequential, it should
be remembered as well that when Gaia brought forth Ouranos
and Pontus in the second verse of the Theogony, she also
brought forth the Mountains, rising up like spearheads to be
"the charming retreats of the goddess nymphs", the gentle
companions to the spear wielding Giants. Thus even at the
very beginning of the Theogony, the origin from Gaia of the
first Gods, Ouranos and Pontus- Heaven and Sea, Gaia gave
birth as well to the Mountain born Daktyloi, the Giants, the
Fathers of mankind, and also to the Nymphs- the Mothers.
In the war between the gods and the Giants, "even the
100-armed ones are thought to have sided with the Giants".
And yet, as Ovid slyly revealed by following closely his
description of the Alodai's assault upon heaven with a
reference to the occasion of the hundred-handers own assault
upon heaven, the Hekatoncheires are the Giants. But the
Hekatoncheires, as the genealogical chart given in Chapter V
makes clear, belong to the same generation as the Titans. If
the Giants can be identified with the Kyklopes and the
Hekatoncheires, while they in turn can be identified with the
Titans, then it logically follows that the Giants can also be
identified with the Titans: that they are all, in sum, simply
different names for the same race of beings. By the time you
finish reading this book, the confusion surrounding the
genealogies will be forever dispelled. The true resolution of
the Mystery posed by the genealogies will confound even the
wisest among you, for even today it remains true that "your
wise men don't know how it feels, to be thick as a brick".
The first task, naturally, is to establish with
certainty the existence of a link between the Kyklopes and
the Hekatoncheires themselves. The three Kyklopes were named
Brontes- "Thunder"; Steropes- "Lightning" (or, more
literally, "Star-eyes"); and Arges- "Bright". The wife of
Brontes was Metis, and it was said of Brontes, as it was said
also of the Giant Pallas, that he was the father of Athene.
Indeed, it will be remembered that Zeus swallowed Metis
because he feared that, after giving birth to the Maid,
Athene, she would then bear a son who would be stronger than
his father, stronger than the thunder, and so topple Zeus
from his throne. The Kyklopes, of course, were the divine
smiths who forged the thunderbolt that was the symbol of
Zeus's power.
It was said of the Kyklopes that they were similar to
"the gods in every respect but one, that they have only one
eye set in their foreheads at midpoint". But if, as seems the
case, it is the poet's aim to reveal to us the true nature of
the gods of ancient Greece, then perhaps he is really telling
us that one of the characteristics distinguishing the gods
from mankind is that the gods have only one eye? After all,
how can the gods, whose true nature is unknown to us,
possibly serve as a useful reference point to the Kyklopes?
In other words, what Hesiod is actually telling us is that
the true gods of ancient Greece had only one eye, as they had
also only one foot, for they are in truth the one-eyed,
serpent-footed Giants. The Graiai, it will be remembered,
guardians of of the way to the Medousa, had only one eye and
one tooth between them.
The Kyklopes are closely associated with the
Hekatoncheires, who were named Briareos- "the Strong One",
Gyges- "the Be-membered One" (derived from guia-"limbs") and
Kottos- "Rancor". Where the Kyklopes have only one eye, i.e.,
one less than the normal compliment, the Hekatoncheires have
a hundred hands- many times more than normal; or, at least,
what would be normal for men. It would seem, therefore, that
the true gods of mankind are a race of multi-limbed creatures
with only one eye- an eye as bright as the stars. As Brontes
was said to have been married to Metis, so Briareos may well
have been been married to the sea goddess Thetis, for it was
she who fetched him from the depths of the sea to stand guard
over Zeus himself. The link between Metis and Thetis- that
marriage to either goddess meant the downfall of Olympian
Zeus, has already been clearly established: that Brontes is
married to Metis, while Briareos is apparently married to
Thetis, confirms the link between the Kyklopes and the
Hekatoncheires- that they are simply different names for the
same gods. Of the Hekatoncheires, Hesiod has told how:
Since from the first their father Ouranos was angry
at heart with/
Briareos, Kottos, and Gyges, he bound them in
bondage/ secure
for their overpowering strength, the shapes of
their bodies/ their hugeness
held him in awe; he kept them under the wide-wayed
earth,/ sitting at earth's end, at the great
earth's ultimate limits,
being for a long time in much anguish, having great
grief/
in their hearts.
After the castration of Ouranos, while the
Hekatoncheires yet languished in the Underworld, war erupted
between the Titans and the Gods. Like the Trojan war at the
end of the mythic cycle, the war between the Titans and the
Gods at the beginnning of that cycle had been raging for ten
long years, with neither side able to gain a decisive
advantage. Then it was that Zeus and the other gods born of
Kronos and Rhea, following the advice of Gaia, sought out the
Hekatoncheires and "led them back to the light". Zeus plied
the misshapen Giants with ambrosia and nectar, then spoke to
them in the following manner:
Come, I beg you, and show your mighty power to the
Titans,/
Show your invincible hands against them in terrible
warfare; think of my kindness, my friendship to
you, how after much/ suffering
you have returned to the light from tortuous
bondage below/ and
risen out of invincible darkness because I devised
it.
Grant called the Hekatoncheires "more fantastic than the
savage race of giants who died with King Eurymedon".
Fantastic they may be, but they are no more primitive than
the supposedly backwards, savage race of giants who lived
under the rule of King Eurymedon, i.e., Orion or Perses or
Perseus, as witness the eloquent reply of the noble Kottos:
What are you saying? We acknowledge your claim. We
by/
experience
know for ourselves your superior mind, your
superior sagacity./
You have become a shield for immortals from
chilling disaster;/
by your careful devising out of invisible darkness
We have returned, we have been freed from bondage
secure,/
we, unexpectedly blessed, are here, O Lord, Son of
Kronos./
So now in purpose unbending, with spirits eager to
help you/
we shall grant your power our strength in terrible
warfare,/
fighting against the Titans in mighty encounters of
battle.
Even more intriguing than the eloquence of his reply, it
must now be obvious (from the text itself) that, unlike the
Titans, who had always remained confined within the womb of
Gaia until Kronos freed them by castrating Ouranos, the
Hekatoncheires had at one time been free, in the light,
outside the womb of Gaia, although until the castration of
Ouranos no creature had ever left that dark womb. How to
resolve this striking paradox, a paradox which, up to now,
has gone completely unnoticed? Frazer, for example, the
translator of the Theogony, simply notes that the Kyklopes
and the Hekatoncheires were not:
released from the womb of Gaia when Kronos
castrates Ouranos. They must wait until Zeus rises
to power.
Frazer thus tacitly accepts, in agreement with every
other commentator on the myth of the Theogony, that the
Kyklopes and the Hekatoncheires were simply conceived by
Ouranos and Gaia in the normal manner, along with their
brothers and sisters- the Titans, and had always been
confined with them in the womb of Gaia: continuing to remain
confined there even after the castration of Ouranos by Kronos
allowed the Titans exit, and released from that womb, the
Underworld, only when freed by Zeus. Yet it is made
explicitly clear by the poet (who repeats it three times,
meaning, as Robert Heinlein would certainly have remarked,
that he is for once telling the truth) that Zeus does not
merely bring these fantastic creatures to the light, he
"returns" them to the light. Obviously, had they always been
confined with the Titans, and had Kronos merely left them in
bondage, they would not at this point be returning from the
"invisible darkness" (the invisibility giving darkness of
Hades, the Underworld, where the two brothers who castrated
and slaughtered Dionysos were sent by the Thunderbolt of
Zeus); they would be emerging into the light for the first
time. Nor can it be supposed that they wandered freely in the
light after the castration of Ouranos until Kronos chained
them, for it is expressly stated by the poet that Ouranos,
"angry at heart" with them, was the one who sent them to the
Underworld, where they were still confined when rescued by
Zeus.
What has previously gone unnoticed, but what must by now
be obvious to everyone, particularly if we recall the
identity between the heart of Zagreus and his phallus, is
that the Kyklopes and the Hekatoncheires were born from the
castration of Ouranos and were swallowed up by the earth
(their confinement in the Underworld) only to spring up from
the earth as spear wielding Giants, as the hundred-handed
Daktyloi, as the Kyklopean smiths who fashioned the
Thunderbolts that fell from the sky, "causing an awesome fire
to arise as they fell": the Thunderbolts from which they
came. That Ouranos was angry with them and confined them in
the Underworld until they reappeared as Giants, is simply
another way of saying they were the fruits of Ouranos' anger
and resentment; thus the name of Kottos means "Rancor": they
are the spirits of vengeance, male versions of the Erinyes;
they wreak vengeance upon the Titans. When the Hekatoncheires
returned from the womb of the Underworld, just as when the
Greek warriors returned to the light from the belly of the
Trojan horse, the tide of battle was turned. Each of those
three hundred hands seized a stone, and now the stones poured
down upon the Titans, the drops of blood from the gaping
wound of Ouranos, those drops of blood which, upon striking
the earth, gave birth to spear wielding warriors- Giants,
springing up from the earth like mountains. And so, as
Ouranos mockingly foretold, the Titans were vanquished by the
consequences of their own criminal act: the castration and
slaughter of the Divine Child, this time in the person of
Ouranos himself- their father. Now consider once more the
scene of the final battle in the war between the Titans and
the Gods, both sides drawn up, facing each other across the
burning plains. The Hekatoncheires:
... stood there facing the Titans in terrible
MT. warfare,/ each with an enormous rock in each of
his strong hands;/ and the Titans on their side
KRATOS mustered their army's strength,/
eager for battle. Both sides now were showing their
BIA force, what their hands could accomplish. The
WATER boundless sea/
(PONTUS) terribly echoed,
EARTH- earth roared loudly, broad heaven above was
AIR (GAIA shaken and/
OURANOS) groaned, and
MT. high Olympos was trembling for it was struck to its
base/
under the rushing immortals, the quaking caused by
their feet/
FIRE reached into shadowy Tartaros, as did the
(TARTAR.) piercing noise/
of their enormous onrush, and the whir of their
MT. powerful missiles
Thus they hurled against each other their pain
dealing/
MT. missiles,
and the voices of both sides mounted to star-
SKY studded heaven,/
(OURANOS) as they attacked each other and clashed with
enormous shouting.
Here in the midst of the battle between the Titans and
the Gods is to be found the origin of Gods and men; for once
more we stand at the very beginning of the Theogony, the
birth of the earliest, primeval powers: Pontus, the
"boundless sea"; Gaia- the "roaring earth"; Ouranos- the
"broad heaven above". The Mountains, too, are present, in the
form of "high Olympus", which is described by the poet as
"trembling"; and well it might be, for "the Most High One",
the phallus of the starry sky, the phallus that forms the
bridge on the lyre held by the Divine Child called Eros, was
about to be struck to its base and severed from the Heavens,
to come crashing down to earth, or, more precisely speaking,
the sea. Here we have once again (to the surprise by now, it
is hoped, of no one) the initial division of the primordial
One into water, earth, air, and fire (Tartaros) accompanied
by the castration of the Divine Child, who was torn into
seven pieces by his brothers, then thrown into a cauldron for
the banquet. It will be recalled that there are seven notes
in an octave, the eighth being a repetition of the first. We
shall speak more of this when we come to the role played by
Hermes in the creation of the lyre.
Once again, as in the maternal cave where Dionysos was
born (the cave where those underground beings, not Titans but
his brother Kabeiroi, were destroyed by the Thunderbolt and
from whose ashes sprang both mankind and the gods) the
castration of the Divine Child was accompanied by the clash
of spear on shield and "enormous shouting", as "the voices of
both sides mounted to star-studded heaven", to Ouranos
himself- i.e., Akmonides, the Son of the Sky- Akmon, the
stone or anvil upon whom Kelmis the knife was laid and turned
to steel by the Hammer of the Thunderbolt; the stone that
rests upon the shoulders of Atlas. In other words, that birth
was accompanied, as always, by the weapons dance of the
Kouretes. To say it again, the battle between the Titans and
the Gods is the myth of Dionysos, of Eros, the story of the
castration of the Divine Child and the birth therefrom of
mankind- and his gods.
The association between the Hekatoncheires and the
Daktyl Idaioi is made clear, both in name and story, by the
emphasis placed on their hands. As to the number of those
hands- one hundred, it should be noted that the Daktyl
Idaioi, though normally listed as two or three in number, or
nine or ten, were sometimes as many as fifty, or even one
hundred. It is further to be noted that, at the beginning of
the battle, they stand prepared with stones in their hands,
but those stones do not fly until Olympos is struck to its
base, i.e., until after the castration of Ouranos. To say it
again, since it has never been said until now, because Hesiod
described their birth as taking place before the castration
of Ouranos, it has never been understood that the Kyklopes
and the Hekatoncheires were the Giants born from the drops of
blood that fell upon the womb of the Mother; they are the
spear brandishing warriors in gleaming metallic armor who
sprang up like mountains alongside the Ash-Nymphs when the
fiery stones fell from the sky onto the burning plains of
earth. Hesiod, of course, told the tale in the form of a
metaphor partly to conceal the true story from the
uninitiated, and partly to teach that same story to the
uniinitiated; so that they might no longer be- uninitiated.
When reading Hesiod, it must always be remembered that the
Muses, like Nereus, knew how to tell the truth: unlike
Nereus, they also knew how to lie.
That there is much more to the Theogony than meets the
eye must by now be obvious to all. Not for nothing was it the
most sacred work of one of the greatest cultures the world
has ever known. It will be remembered that, according to the
Orphic version of creation given earlier, the primal Egg was
laid in the lap of Darkness by the black bird Night. When
Eros emerged from the egg, the shining light of his golden
wings revealed the upper half of the egg as Ouranos, the
lower half as Gaia. Beneath Gaia was Tartaros, the fiery
underworld, all encircled by Ocean. In other words, the birth
of Eros from the Egg is the story of the One and its
subsequent division, according to the principium
individuationis, into air, earth, fire, and water. All is
created by Eros, revealed by Eros and, eventually, reunited,
by Eros- the Divine Child who holds in his hand the lyre of
the stars.
In somewhat different form, namely, beginnning after the
Egg has already yawned open, and with Chaos- the great abyss,
the yawning gap, taking the place of engirdling Okeanos, the
same story- the birth of Dionysos, the division of the One,
is told also in the first verse of Hesiod's Theogony. It is a
tale of Giants. From Chaos, from the spirit moving upon the
waters, arose Gaia- the earth, and earth is the "ever-
immovable base for all the immortals who dwell on the peaks
of snowy Olympos". Even here, in the very first verse of the
Theogony, reference is made to its true heroes, its true
gods, not the Olympians but the Giants, the Titans, the
Fathers of Men, the megaloi theoi- "the mighty gods", the
Daktyloi, the Kabeiroi, the Kouretes, the Kyklopes, the
Hekatoncheires: call them what you will; I call them the
Dragon race, or the Serpent folk, keeping in mind at the same
time their affinity for the sea and the dolphin, and also for
the wise sea-horse. In one simple metaphor the poet
brilliantly captures the image of the phallus that plummeted
from the sky as if castrated from Heaven, "shedding semen" as
it fell- "snowy Olympos", and the Giants that sprang forth
from that phallus- "the peaks".
And though Chaos and earth and Tartaros and the waters
and Eros, along with Night and Darkness, and even the
children of Night and Darkness- Aither, who is also called
Akmon, the name of a Daktyl, and Hemera- "Day", are all
mentioned in the first verse of the Theogony, Ouranos alone
is conspicous by his absence; for Ouranos is in truth the son
of Akmon by Gaia, though the poet lies and claims that Gaia
brought forth Ouranos on her own, without Eros, without Love.
But nothing is conceived without Eros. According to the
Hesiodic genealogy, Hemera and Aither are the children of
Night and Darkness; they therefore belong to the same
generation as Ouranos, Pontus, and the Mountains, whose birth
takes place in the next verse; yet the poet lists them in the
first verse. As we know from the Orphic version, however, the
child of Night and Darkness, be he called Aither or Hemera,
is Eros himself, for the wind that fathered Eros was the Wind
that roars through the Darkness below Tartaros- the Wind that
fills even the Olympian Gods with dread, the Wind called
Aeolus, from whose harp pours the song called life. He is
also called Aloeus, by the Irish Ailil: the Muslims call him
Allah. Hesiod was therefore correct when he placed that
child, by whatever name, in the first verse of the Theogony.
I have claimed that the Mountains are a metaphor of the
Giants, of the Titans themselves, meaning that the Titans are
present almost at the very beginning of the Theogony, at the
birth of Ouranos. The name Hemera means "Day", as does the
name Titan; thus confirming the existence of the Titans, by
whatever name they are known, at the very beginning of the
Theogony, prior even to the birth of Ouranos himself, who is
supposedly the Father of their race..
In this tale is concealed the fate of the Daktyl called
Akmon, upon whom the steel knife of Kelmis was laid. For if
the Mountains, who are the Giants, the products of the
castration of the sky, are present, then that castration must
already have taken place. The castration of Akmon is not
mentioned in the Theogony. Instead, Ouranos is simply
portrayed as having been brought forth without Eros, without
a Father, and in a way the poet has spoken truly: he has no
Father now, for his Father no longer has a phallus; indeed,
Ouranos, "shedding semen", is that phallus, the castrated
phallus that fell into the sea and, dripping blood, gave
birth to spear wielding Giants. For what comes forth in the
second verse of the Theogony? Ouranos, Pontus, and the
Mountains!
Commentators on the myth have always ignored the birth
of the Mountains in this verse, considering it
inconsequential, irrelevant, out of place: almost as if it
did not belong there at all, as if the poet had somehow
thoughtlessly placed an extraneous element at the threshold
of the holiest text in the Greek religion. On the contrary,
the birth of the Mountains is the most important of the
births mentioned therein: the poet did not err, only his
readers, who failed somehow to perceive the importance of
those Mountains, their link to the Giants (failed because
they insisted on a literal reading of a metaphor- a gigantic
metaphor) though it is stressed by the poet again and again.
Sometimes, of course, the best way to hide something truly
precious is to leave it where every one can see it. Being
where everyone can see it, it is sure to be dismissed as
trivial, even when its significance is monumental.
The Theogony is therefore revealed, above all, as the
story of the Giants who spring up like mountains from the
surface of the earth, brandishing spears: those serpent-
footed ones of seemingly magical skill and power, the
Dragons, who first appeared on the earth when the brightly
shining stones fell from the starry sky, when the stars came
down, when the bright lights of the heavens descended to
earth. As will be guessed by now, the story of their birth,
and of the divine serpent child who brought knowledge of the
Mysteries to mankind, will be repeated throughout the
Theogony; thus explaining the prominent role played by the
Mountains in that sacred text, for the Mountains are now
clearly established as a metaphor for the Giants, the true
gods, the fathers of mankind. Precisely why the Mountains are
a metaphor of the Giants, and why the spear tips are a
metaphor for the Mountains those Giants raised, will be
explained shortly. It is the story within the story; and it
is a story that, as we shall see, takes many forms.
In sum, after telling his readers of the birth of the
Giants in the first verse of the Theogony, in the metaphor of
the "peaks of snowy Olympos", Hesiod tells us of their birth
again in the second verse: in order to emphasize their
central role, to make sure we know that the poem is about the
Giants- that they are the true gods of the Theogony. For
after Gaia has been brought forth as a base for the Olympian
gods, Ouranos, the starry sky, is brought forth to be the
"ever-immovable base for the gods who are blessed". It has
always been assumed that these two groups of gods are one and
the same. That assumption is incorrect, for the gods who are
blessed are not the Olympians, those Aryan deities who are
merely the shadow reflections of the men who worship them:
the "blessed gods" are the celestial deities born from the
castration of Ouranos; their base lies among the stars, and
none save these "blessed gods", the fathers of mankind, the
Giants, the Kabeiroi, the megaloi theoi- "the mighty gods",
ever set foot upon the true Olympos, or even knew of its
location.
Although they came from the stars, they did, at one
time, have a base upon the earth, for Ouranos fell from the
sky and became their home on our world. That home is called
Mt. Olympos; it was never in Greece: the true Gods, the
Giants, preferred a more central location. They are not men,
nor are they the creation of man's overactive imagination:
they are the creators of man. The poet spoke truly when he
placed them above the Olympians. It is immediatey following
the mention of "semen shedding" Ouranos, the starry sky, that
we are told of how Gaia brought forth "the high mountains",
rising up like spear-heads from the surface of the earth, to
provide a home upon the earth for the "goddess nymphs"- those
gentle companions to the spear wielding Giants. Again, it
seems incredible that anyone has ever interpreted those "high
mountains" literally, as mountains, when they are so clearly
metaphorical in nature. Of course, it would seem less
incredible to me had I not myself interpreted them literally-
over and over again.
It is only now, with the birth of the Giants and the
Nymphs firmly established (those Giants who, along with their
companions, the Ash-Nymphs, supposedly do not appear until
after the castration of Ouranos by the Titan Kronos) that the
Titans themselves appear. And what are the Titans? They are
Giants on the face of the earth- the progeny of Ouranos and
Gaia. What must be understood here is that Ouranos is not the
starry sky itself, he is the phallus, shedding semen, that
fell from the starry sky, the Milky Way, the road by which
the Dragons came to earth; and from that phallus- Ouranos,
dragons came forth to raise mountains on the surface of the
earth. Since the mountains, and the beings most closely
associated with the mountains- the Giants and the Nymphs,
play a prominent role in the first two verses of the
Theogony, while the birth of the Kyklopes and the
Hekatoncheires is described in the following verse, it must
now be concluded that the first three verses of the Theogony,
the Greek equivalent of the Biblical Book of Genesis, all
tell the the same story- the story of the Mountain Kings: the
Giants.
Text file Source (historic): geocities.com/zarathustra_baby
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