William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Plate 14

A Door To Huxley
Tonight Keith Hansen (Vyzygoth) and I had a free ranging discussion (Part II) on Aldous Huxley. We covered the Orwell/Huxley dialectic, our early exposures to Orwell and Huxley, where we are in the predictive programming scenarios of the two, Crowley and Huxley, Huxley on drugs and lots more. When the show is posted it will be available here: Think Or Be Eaten Radio . Here is the Link.

Quotes of interest:

Who is the real enemy?

"The people who make wars, the people who reduce their fellows to slavery, the people who kill and torture and tell lies in the name of their sacred causes, the really evil people in a word—these are never the publicans and the sinners. No, they're the virtuous, respectable men, who have the finest feelings, the best brains, the noblest ideals." -Aldous Huxley, After Many a Summer Dies the Swan

Huxley was skeptical about the religion of progress and the belief in the inevitable benefits deriving from science.

"Science has 'explained' nothing; the more we know the more fantastic the world becomes and the profounder the surrounding darkness." -Aldous Huxley, Views of Holland, 1925

Huxley on Beer:

Yes!... if you stop before it's too late.

"From the nonverbal world of culturally uncontaminated consciousness we pass to the subverbal world of physiology and biochemistry. A human being is a temperament and a product of cultural conditioning; he is also, and primarily, an extremely complex and delicate biochemical system, whose inwardness, as the system changes from one state of equilibrium to another, is changing consciousness. It is because each one of us is a biochemical system that (according to Housman)

Malt does more than Milton can
To justify God's ways to man.

Beer achieves its theological triumphs because, in William James' words, "Drunkenness is the great exciter of the Yes function in man." And he adds that "It is part of the deeper mystery and tragedy of life that whiffs and gleams of something that we immediately recognize as excellent should be vouchsafed to so many of us only in the fleeting earlier phases of what, in its totality, is so degrading a poisoning." The tree is known by its fruits, and the fruits of too much reliance upon ethyl alcohol as an exciter of the Yes function are bitter indeed. No less bitter are the fruits of reliance upon such habit-forming sedatives, hallucinogens and mood elevators as opium and its derivatives, as cocaine (once so blithely recommended to his friends and patients by Dr. Freud), as the barbiturates and amphetamine. But in recent years the pharmacologists have extracted or synthesized several compounds that powerfully affect the mind without doing any harm to the body, either at the time of ingestion or, through addiction, later on. Through these new psychedelics, the subject's normal waking consciousness may be modified in many different ways. It is as though, for each individual, his deeper self decides which kind of experience will be most advantageous."- Aldous Huxley, Culture and the Individual, originally published in Playboy Magazine, 1963

Huxley felt it was important that some, if not all, people learn to look at the universe as if looking at it anew, for the first time. It is essential to the artist or any seeker to escape the cultural prison which has been our dwelling place since birth. This selective filter through which we process reality has been the primary weapon of human ascendance. Where would we be without language, written and oral? How valuable is the transmission of knowledge necessary to the making of a sword; or a plow? Disputes are controlled by myriad rules surrounding such human activities as courtship, food sharing, and religious practices. Yet the inherently conservative nature of culture can stifle necessary change and stunt the ability to adapt to new conditions. Yes, knowledge may be transmitted through culture but understanding and the wisdom which flows from it may not. Huxley's proposed solution to free us from the blinding effect of culture involved training youth in what he called a "methodology of non-verbal education." This would prepare them for the use of drugs and other methods, which "tear a hole" in the curtain of culture and allow them to experience truth directly. The most commonly accepted drugs in our society operate via front brain sedation and lead to addiction. LSD, a drug that requires training to use, in fact has no physically negative effects and does not lead to addiction. Any negative effects are the result of the lack of "non-verbal methodological" skills on the part of the untrained individual.
LSD's argument is NON-VERBAL. LSD is profoundly Non-ironic. It means what it (non-verbally) says. Huxley's LSD progression of consciousness goes through these stages: Normal [or perhaps more accurately, cultural consciousness] *!Ingestion of LSD!*~Aesthetic consciousness (Beauty)~Visionary consciousness (Infinity)~Mystical consciousness (Unity).

"It was quite an experience, but it did make one feel extraordinarily clean." Aldous Huxley to Anita Loos after a fire destroyed his home, library, letters, and manuscripts in 1961.

Antiglobalism?

"It is at this point [when food and natural resources become scarce with the industrialization of the third world-JB] that internationally organized scientists and technicians might contribute greatly to the cause of peace by planning a world-wide campaign, not merely for greater food production, but also (and this is the really important point) for regional self-sufficiency in food production."-Aldous Huxley, The Scientist's Role

Here we infer Huxley's animus for the politically powerful.

[After discussing the desirablility of the advent of efficient solar power-JB] "For the peoples of such tropical countries as India and Africa the new device for directly harnessing solar power should be of enormous and enduring benefit-unless, of course, those at present possessing economic and political power should choose to build mass-producing factories around enormous mirrors, thus perverting the invention to their own centralistic purposes, instead of encouraging its small scale use for the benefit of individuals and village communities. The technicians of solar power will be confronted with a clear-cut choice. They can work either for the completer enslavement of the industrially backward peoples of the tropics, or for their progressive liberation from the twin curses of poverty and servitude to political and economic bosses."-Aldous Huxley, The Scientist's Role

“After the Age of Utopias came what we may call the American Age, lasting as long as the Boom. Men like Ford or Mond seemed to many to have solved the social riddle and made capitalism the common good. But it was not native to us; it went with a buoyant, not to say blatant optimism, which is not our negligent or negative optimism. Much more than Victorian righteousness, or even Victorian self-righteousness, that optimism has driven people into pessimism. For the Slump brought even more disillusionment than the War. A new bitterness, and a new bewilderment, ran through all social life, and was reflected in all literature and art. It was contemptuous, not only of the old Capitalism, but of the old Socialism. Brave New World is more of a revolt against Utopia than against Victoria.”-G.K. Chesterton

Goya, Inquisition Scene, 1816

"Si bene calculum ponas, ubique naufragium est."-Petronius (All in all, an objective consideration of life leads one to conclude that shipwreck is everywhere. -My translation)

"Let the human mind loose. It must be loose. It will be loose. Superstition and dogmatism cannot confine it."-- John Adams, letter to his son, John Quincy Adams, November 13, 1816

Real Rules of the Inquisition

...a list I prepared mostly using the article "The Inquisition", from the Encyclopedia Britannica, 1911 edition

1. The Inquisition is not bound by ordinary rules.
2. Acts of piety and professions of faith have no value as evidence.
3. Suspicion is enough for imprisonment.
4. The accuser is the judge.
5. The accused are presumed guilty.
6. Contumacy is expressed by flight and increases presumption of guilt.
   
7. Names of witnesses against the accused are withheld from him. (Bulls of Innocent IV: Cumnegocium & Licet Sicut Accepimus)
8. The accused is kept in ignorance of who denounced him.
9. Heretics or infames are admitted as witnesses.
10. Women, children & slaves could be witnesses.
11. If a witness retracted hostile evidence he could be punished for false witness, but his evidence should be retained with full effect.
12. A witness who refuses to give evidence is guilty of heresy.
    
13. Prosecution is carried out in secrecy.
14. The accused must swear to tell the truth and denounce all partners in heresy or any other heretics known to him. [I would denounce my Inquisitor.]
15. The accused may be "reconciled" to the Church only by so denouncing others.
16. Further "examination" is continued by various methods including moral subterfuge. (The Dominican Bernardus Guidonis enumerates weakening physical strength, perhaps through withholding water or food, and as a last resort, torture.)
17. Canon Law condemned torture but Innocent IV in his Bull, Ad Extirpanda, May 15, 1252, allowed its use to discover heresy. (This was later confirmed by Urban IV. Remember, the Inquisition is not bound by ordinary rules.)
18. At the discretion of the Inquisitor, torture of witnesses is allowed.
19. All evidence or confessions obtained in the torture chamber must be freely confirmed. (How liberal! But one would remember that the torture chamber is still there.)
20. Any lawyer defending the accused is guilty of heresy.
21. The inquiry may last as long as necessary.
22. Those who confess as minor heretics are punished by penance, fasting, scourges, markings or fines, but full acquittal should never be allowed. More serious punishments are imprisonments of various degrees of severity. Obstinate heretics are turned over to the secular arm for punishment debita animadversione usually death by fire. Such property of heretics so remanded is turned over to the ecclesiastic and secular authorities. (In Spain all went to the Church, in France, Italy and Germany church and state divided the spoils.)
23. Sorcery and magic as well as doctrinal heresy are objects of inquisition.
24. Confiscation of the property of an 'enemy of the state' (hostis) was found in ancient Roman Law. The dictator Sulla, his early mentor and later opponent Marius, and the Second Triumvirate were infamous for long proscription lists. Julius Caesar famously disapproved proscription, perhaps to his ultimate regret. The Church and the Princes of the Inquisition could not resist the temptation to apply the precedent of this law to enemies of God. Today, enemies of the state in the "War On Drugs" can expect to lose their property in a modern variation of proscription. I predict that the state will find new innovations implementing this concept as its various forms tumble into bankruptcy in our brave new world.
    
25. Thus church and state happily colluded to rid the world of "heretics" and pocket their wealth and property.
    

"Glamour", John Bonanno, 1999, 4" X 6", acrylic on card paper, $150

Some Simple Suggestions to Instantly Reform Government

If I were in a position to issue the ukaz (указ, any proclamation of the tsar in imperial Russia had the force of law) these would be my first:

1. Henceforth, all representatives to Congress will be chosen by lot.

Candidates would have to apply. Only adult citizens may apply. Convicted felons may not apply.
I am certain we would end up with a more honest and representative Congress.

2. The Size of Congress shall be increased to 7,000 members.

A large Congress would ensure a costly effort to buy it; and it would be impossible to keep such a project secret. Punishment would be harsh if discovered. (See ukaz 6) And each congressman would represent less than 50,000 people. I would entertain the notion of more, not fewer representatives than this. But in no way shall a congressman represent more than 50,000 people.

3. The Term of a Representative to Congress shall be increased to four years.

It takes a while to learn a job.

4. Half of the standing members of Congress shall be chosen by lot to remain in Congress at the end of each term.

No representative should be assured of tenure. But, institutional memory is a good thing. And, new blood is a good thing. We shall have half and half. With this many representatives a few lucky ones may remain a long time.

5. Congress must abolish an old law before a new law may be passed. All old laws shall be reviewed by a committee of all the new Representatives at the beginning of each term who shall produce a list of at least a hundred laws to be presented to Congress for a vote on abolition.

This, my most brilliant innovation will eventually limit the great waste of human talent that goes into lawyering.

6. Corruption of a Member of Congress shall be punishable by death to all guilty parties involved.

7. Only legal residents of the district of a member of Congress shall be allowed to lobby that member.

Violation is evidence of corruption. See ukaz 6.

Some Quotes of the Bloomsbury Group

"At its simplest, the Bloomsbury Group was the circle round Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell. When the Victorian man of letters Sir Leslie Stephen died in 1904, his daughters, Virginia and Vanessa, being determined to put their constrained middle-class girlhoods behind them, set up house at 46 Gordon Square in the then-shabby district of Bloomsbury with their two brothers, Thoby and Adrian. Thoby brought home his Cambridge friends Leonard Woolf, Clive Bell, Lytton Strachey and Saxon Sydney-Turner, inviting them for social evenings with his sisters, the scene being set of earnest youths sitting around the room sipping cocoa and whisky and discussing intently such matters as the ‘meaning of truth’. Most of these young men had been elected to the Apostles, a secret society of intellectually notable undergraduates from Trinity and King’s Colleges. Through the link with the Apostles the Group widened to include E.M. Forster, Roger Fry, Desmond MacCarthy and John Maynard Keynes who had left Cambridge earlier. The Group also included Duncan Grant, Lytton Strachey’s cousin.

Apart from Saxon Sydney-Turner, who remained an obscure Treasury official, all of the Bloomsbury Group made a very significant contribution to British intellectual and artistic life in the first part of the twentieth century. The two giants, famed internationally, are Virginia Woolf, who broke new ground with her ‘stream of consciousness’ writing; and the economist, Maynard Keynes, whose revolutionary economic theories and significant efforts to build new economic orders after the traumas of two world wars remain an abiding legacy."- Tony Bradshaw, Introduction, "A Bloomsbury Canvas"

Do I have to say this? I do not necessarily endorse or condemn any of these quotes or the activities of these people. But, familiarity with the works and ideas of these undeniably brilliant men and women is essential to understanding the early twentieth century; their influence persists.

"A rose is the visible result of an infinitude of complicated goings on in the bosom of the earth and in the air above, and similarly a work of art is the product of strange activities in the human mind."- Clive Bell (art critic, husband in a very open marriage of Vanessa Stephen Bell, sister of Virginia Woolf)

"As a woman I have no country. As a woman my country is the whole world."-Virginia (Stephen) Woolf (writer, a suicide)

"I read the book of Job last night, I don't think God comes out well in it." -Virginia Woolf

"The older one grows, the more one likes indecency." -Virginia Woolf


"Capitalism did not arise because capitalists stole the land or the workmen's tools but because it was more efficient than feudalism. It will perish because it is not merely less efficient than socialism, but actually self-destructive." J.B.S. Haldane (biochemist, geneticist)

"Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone."- John Maynard Keynes (economist)

"Education is the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent."- John Maynard Keynes

"I work for a Government I despise for ends I think criminal."- John Maynard Keynes

"But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead."- John Maynard Keynes

“The whole of art is an appeal to a reality which is not without us but in our minds”-Desmond MacCarthy (journalist, editor)

''Relations we may be: have them, we may not''- Duncan Grant, artist, to his older cousin Lytton Strachey in the midst of an ultimately unsuccessful effort to rebuff multiple attempts at seduction, later, Grant became a lover of John Maynard Keynes

"Discretion is not the better part of biography." - Lytton Strachey, historian, (and friend of Thoby Stephen, "the Goth", brother of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell; Thoby died at 26 of typhoid) Strachey loved Ralph Partridge who married Dora Carrington; Dora loved Lytton Strachey and performed a suicide after Strachey died

"Happiness is the perpetual possession of being well-deceived."- Lytton Strachey

Jack-In-The-Pulpit, Arisaema triphyllum, Hiram, Maine
John Bonanno photo, June 21,2009

"When I hear a man preach, I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees."-Abraham Lincoln

It has been much more than less damp and gray for weeks in Maine so it was a perfect time for a wet walk in the woods. These plants had to grow through over two feet of the packed twigs from heaped branches left after logging three years ago.
Euell Gibbons, in Stalking the Healthful Herbs, informs us that the root (or more accurately, the corm) is full of burning calcium oxalate crystals when fresh, but becomes pleasingly palatable after slicing and leaving it to dry for at least five months to break down the poison. Perhaps in a prolonged period of want I would give it a try; but for now I'll just enjoy the beauty of these arums and let those corms lie beneath the forest trash.

Broken plate found in an old farm midden, Hiram, Maine
John Bonanno photo, June 21, 2009

Midden: "dung hill," c.1340, of Scand. origin, cf. Dan. mødding, from møg "muck" + dynge "heap, dung." Modern archaeological sense of "kitchen midden" is from Danish excavations.-Online Etymology Dictionary

"What is the ape to man? A ridicule, or a grievous shame. And that is just what man is to be to the Superman- a ridicule, or a grievous shame."-Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra

"Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!"- George Taylor, The Planet of the Apes

"Mrs. Briggs, I've known and respected your husband Alky for many years. And what's good enough for him is good enough for me." [He suddenly grabs her and pulls her down onto a couch] -Groucho, Monkey Business, 1931

"Astrum Perpetuum" John Bonanno, 1996, acrylic, paper card, 4 1/4" X 6 3/8", $200

"Varium et mutabile semper
Femina."

Virgil, The Aeneid, (Orator per Mercurius)

The Larch, photo by John Bonanno, Hiram, Maine 2003

Clouds Without Water III/IX

As one entranced by dint of cannabis,
Whose sense of time is changed past recognition,
Whether he suffer woe or taste of bliss,
He loses both his reason and volition.
He says one word -- what countless ages pass !
He walks across the room -- a voyage as far
As the astronomer's who turns his glass
On faintest star-webs past the farthest star
And travels thither in the spirit. So
It seems impossible to me that ever
The sands of our ill luck should run so low
That splendidly success should match endeavour ;
Yet it must be, and very soon must be :
For I believe in you, and you in me.-Rev. C. Verey (Aleister Crowley)

This sonnet is from Crowley's collection, Clouds Without Water. Crowley wrote to Israel Regardie, his personal secretary in 1930 as follows:

"Please send a copy of "Clouds Without Water" to Aldous Huxley Esq., Athenaeum Club, Pall Mall (with prospectuses etc.) with my compliments-we had a gorgeous 3 days with him in Berlin. Also please set up a figure [astrological chart] for him. Goldalming 4 A.M., July 26 '94"

In my Think Or Be Eaten Radio discussion with Vyzygoth on Huxley I stated that I could find no evidence that Huxley and Crowley had met. The above quote is from Richard Kaczynski's formidable biography of Crowley, Perdurabo, The Life of Aleister Crowley, New Falcon, 2002. AC may have been exaggerating his association with Huxley to polish the apple for Regardie, but this is indeed evidence that they had been in contact. If anyone can provide citations from Huxley's works mentioning Crowley, I would appreciate the information.

"Partition in the Air" (scanned detail), acrylic on 16 1/2" x 13 1/2" paper, relatively early work by John Bonanno, 1986, $500

This painting illustrates some of the distractions a soul encounters on its sojourn to Earth.

"What then is the evil Soul?
It is, we read, the Soul that has entered into the service of that in which soul-evil is implanted by nature, in whose service the unreasoning phase of the Soul accepts evil unmeasure, excess and shortcoming, which brings forth licentiousness, cowardice and all other flaws of the Soul, all the states, foreign to the true nature, which set up false judgements, so that the Soul comes to name things good or evil not by their true value but by the mere test of like and dislike."-Plotinus, the Ethical Treatises

"The Culling" John Bonanno, Acrylic on watercolor paper, 10" X 14" circa 2000, substantial portion scanned. $500

This painting is concerned with human sacrifice.

An Historic Sonic Document!

Here is an unedited reading of Liber Al Vel Legis Sub Figura CCXX performed by yours truly in 1986. It was done in a single take. There are a few slips but all in all, it is not a bad reading. The music in the background was playing during the recital. I believe it is a César Franck organ composition. I found this cassette in a box in a closet yesterday. I thought it had been lost. In a certain sense I wish it had been lost. I created a slight portentious echo with Audacity before converting to mp3.
You may fear the Book of the Law or you may despise it, and perhaps you should. But it is important to be aware of it.
Listen!
It is worth a few laughs.

"Cupid In Chaos" John Bonanno, about 2000, acrylic on paper, about 9" X 12", $400

"The First Meaning" John Bonanno, 1999, Acrylic on Paper, 2 3/8" X 4 1/4", $100

"The Red Robe" John Bonanno, 1999, acrylic on card paper, 4 1/4" X 6 1/2", $200

On Interpretation of Scripture and the Limits of a Literal Reading
(Or, Using Kabbalah to Clarify the Way to Understanding)

Rabbi Shim'on said,
"Woe to the human being who says
that Torah presents mere stories and ordinary words!
If so, we could compose a Torah right now with ordinary words
and better than all of them!
To present matters of the world?
Even rulers of the world possess words more sublime.
If so, let us follow them and make a Torah out of them!
Ah, but all the words of Torah are sublime words, sublime secrets!

"Come and see:
The world above and the world below are perfectly balanced:
Israel below, the angels above.
Of the angels it is written:
'He makes His angels spirits'
(Psalms 104:4).
But when they descend, they put on the garment of this world.
If they did not put on a garment befitting this world
they could not endure in this world
and the world could not endure them.

If this is so with the angels, how much more so with Torah
who created them and all the worlds
and for whose sake they all exist!
In descending to this world,
if she did not put on the garments of this world
the world could not endure.

"So this story of Torah is the garment of Torah.
Whoever thinks that the garment is the real Torah
and not something else—
may his spirit deflate!
He will have no portion in the world that is coming.
That is why David said:
'Open my eyes, so I can see wonders out of your Torah,'
what is under the garment of Torah.

"Come and see: There is a garment visible to all.
When those fools see someone in a good-looking garment
they look no further.
But the essence of the garment is the body;
the essence of the body is the soul.

"So it is with Torah.
She has a body: the commandments of Torah,
called 'the embodiment of Torah.'
This body is clothed in garments: the stories of this world.
Fools of the world look only at that garment, the story of Torah;
they know nothing more.
The do not look at what is under that garment.
Those who know more do not look at the garment,
but rather at the body under that garment,
The wise ones, servants of the King on high,
those who stood at Mount Sinai,
look only at the soul, root of all, real Torah.
In the time to come, they are destined to look at the soul of the soul of Torah.

"Come and see: So it is above.
There is garment, body, soul, and soul of soul.
The heavens and their host are the garment.
The Communion of Israel is the body,
who receives the soul, Beauty of Israel.
So she is the body of the soul.
The soul we have mentioned is Beauty fo Israel, real Torah.
The soul of the soul is the Holy Ancient One.
All is connected, this one to that one.

"Woe to the wicked who say that Torah is merely a story!
They look at this garment and no further.
Happy are the righteous who look at Torah properly!
As wine must sit in a jar, so Torah must sit in this garment.
So look only at what is under the garment.
All those words and all those stories are garments."-Zohar 3:152a

PaRDeS "Paradise"

"...Moses de Leon employed this highly suggestive term, so rich in shades of meaning, as a cipher for the four levels of interpretation. Each consonant of the word PaRDeS denotes one of the levels: P stands for peshat, the literal meaning, R for remez, the allegorical meaning, D for derasha, the Talmudic and Aggadic interpretation, S for sod, the mystical meaning."-Gershom Scholem, On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism

"..the Bible must be understood on many different levels simultaneously. Certainly one level can be taught as simple stories to children. But many other levels exist at the same time. Jewish mystics have long regarded the Bible as manifesting four different yet simultaneous levels of meaning. These are the plain meaning, the symbolic meaning, the allegorical meaning, and the esoteric meaning. For example, the Bible's opening phrase, "In the beginning", must be understood on each of these four levels to fully comprehend its divine message. Interestingly, some Kabbalists have said that only through understanding the deepest, esoteric strata of the Bible can we come to an accurate understanding of even its plain level-that we must "work backwards", in a sense, in biblical interpretation."-David Sheinkin, M.D., Path of the Kabbalah

Tomorrow my daughter Dominica marries Chris. I wish them all the blessings of marriage and as little of the travail as necessary. L'Chaim!
Short video record Here!
The second chapter of the Song of Songs:

א אֲנִי חֲבַצֶּלֶת הַשָּׁרוֹן, שׁוֹשַׁנַּת הָעֲמָקִים.	I am a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valleys.
ב כְּשׁוֹשַׁנָּה בֵּין הַחוֹחִים, כֵּן רַעְיָתִי בֵּין הַבָּנוֹת.	As a lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters.
ג כְּתַפּוּחַ בַּעֲצֵי הַיַּעַר, כֵּן דּוֹדִי בֵּין הַבָּנִים; בְּצִלּוֹ חִמַּדְתִּי וְיָשַׁבְתִּי, וּפִרְיוֹ מָתוֹק לְחִכִּי.	As an apple-tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. Under its shadow I delighted to sit, and its fruit was sweet to my taste.
ד הֱבִיאַנִי אֶל-בֵּית הַיָּיִן, וְדִגְלוֹ עָלַי אַהֲבָה.	He hath brought me to the banqueting-house, and his banner over me is love.
ה סַמְּכוּנִי, בָּאֲשִׁישׁוֹת--רַפְּדוּנִי, בַּתַּפּוּחִים: כִּי-חוֹלַת אַהֲבָה, אָנִי.	'Stay ye me with dainties, refresh me with apples; for I am love-sick.'
ו שְׂמֹאלוֹ תַּחַת לְרֹאשִׁי, וִימִינוֹ תְּחַבְּקֵנִי.	Let his left hand be under my head, and his right hand embrace me.
ז הִשְׁבַּעְתִּי אֶתְכֶם בְּנוֹת יְרוּשָׁלִַם, בִּצְבָאוֹת, אוֹ, בְּאַיְלוֹת הַשָּׂדֶה: אִם-תָּעִירוּ וְאִם-תְּעוֹרְרוּ אֶת-הָאַהֲבָה, עַד שֶׁתֶּחְפָּץ. {ס}	'I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles, and by the hinds of the field, that ye awaken not, nor stir up love, until it please.'
ח קוֹל דּוֹדִי, הִנֵּה-זֶה בָּא; מְדַלֵּג, עַל-הֶהָרִים--מְקַפֵּץ, עַל-הַגְּבָעוֹת.	Hark! my beloved! behold, he cometh, leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills.
ט דּוֹמֶה דוֹדִי לִצְבִי, אוֹ לְעֹפֶר הָאַיָּלִים; הִנֵּה-זֶה עוֹמֵד, אַחַר כָּתְלֵנוּ--מַשְׁגִּיחַ מִן-הַחַלֹּנוֹת, מֵצִיץ מִן-הַחֲרַכִּים.	My beloved is like a gazelle or a young hart; behold, he standeth behind our wall, he looketh in through the windows, he peereth through the lattice.
י עָנָה דוֹדִי, וְאָמַר לִי: קוּמִי לָךְ רַעְיָתִי יָפָתִי, וּלְכִי-לָךְ.	My beloved spoke, and said unto me: 'Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.
יא כִּי-הִנֵּה הַסְּתָו, עָבָר; הַגֶּשֶׁם, חָלַף הָלַךְ לוֹ.	For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;
יב הַנִּצָּנִים נִרְאוּ בָאָרֶץ, עֵת הַזָּמִיר הִגִּיעַ; וְקוֹל הַתּוֹר, נִשְׁמַע בְּאַרְצֵנוּ.	The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land;
יג הַתְּאֵנָה חָנְטָה פַגֶּיהָ, וְהַגְּפָנִים סְמָדַר נָתְנוּ רֵיחַ; קוּמִי לכי (לָךְ) רַעְיָתִי יָפָתִי, וּלְכִי-לָךְ. {ס}	The fig-tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines in blossom give forth their fragrance. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.
יד יוֹנָתִי בְּחַגְוֵי הַסֶּלַע, בְּסֵתֶר הַמַּדְרֵגָה, הַרְאִינִי אֶת-מַרְאַיִךְ, הַשְׁמִיעִנִי אֶת-קוֹלֵךְ: כִּי-קוֹלֵךְ עָרֵב, וּמַרְאֵיךְ נָאוֶה. {ס}	O my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock, in the covert of the cliff, let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice; for sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely.'
טו אֶחֱזוּ-לָנוּ, שֻׁעָלִים--שֻׁעָלִים קְטַנִּים, מְחַבְּלִים כְּרָמִים; וּכְרָמֵינוּ, סְמָדַר.	'Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vineyards; for our vineyards are in blossom.'
טז דּוֹדִי לִי וַאֲנִי לוֹ, הָרֹעֶה בַּשּׁוֹשַׁנִּים.	My beloved is mine, and I am his, that feedeth among the lilies.
יז עַד שֶׁיָּפוּחַ הַיּוֹם, וְנָסוּ הַצְּלָלִים: סֹב דְּמֵה-לְךָ דוֹדִי לִצְבִי, אוֹ לְעֹפֶר הָאַיָּלִים--עַל-הָרֵי בָתֶר. {ס}	Until the day breathe, and the shadows flee away, turn, my beloved, and be thou like a gazelle or a young hart upon the mountains of spices.

Copper engraving by Cornelius Huyberts from Fredericus Ruysch's Thesaurus anatomicus, Amsterdam, 1710

"Ruysch made about a dozen tableaux, constructed of human fetal skeletons with backgrounds of other body parts, on allegorical themes of death and the transiency of life...Ruysch built the 'geological' landscapes of these tableaux from gallstones and kidneystones, and 'botanical' backgrounds from injected and hardened major veins and arteries for "trees," and more ramified tissue of lungs and smaller vessels for 'bushes' and 'grass.' The fetal skeletons, several per tableau, were ornamented with symbols of death and short life - hands may hold mayflies (which live but a day in their adult state); skulls bemoan their fate by weeping into 'handkerchiefs' made of elegantly injected mesentery or brain meninges; 'snakes' and 'worms,' symbols of corruption made of intestine, wind around pelvis and rib cage. Quotations and moral exhortations, emphasizing the brevity of life and the vanity of earthly riches, festooned the compositions. One fetal skeleton holding a string of pearls in its hand proclaims, 'Why should I long for the things of this world?' Another, playing a violin with a bow made of a dried artery, sings, 'Ah fate, ah bitter fate.'"

-- Stephen Jay Gould in Finders, Keepers: Eight Collectors
Quote and illustration found here.

In the seventeenth century science began to document the diffences between modern observation and accepted belief ranging from Scripture to Aristotle. Sir Walter Raleigh, while locked up in the tower of London wrote a memoir recounting his expeditions to the new world and in it, he addressed the serious question of how Noah had been able to transport all of the beasts of the world in his Ark, taking into account the astounding number previously unknown species found in the New World and not in the Old, and why they strayed so far from Ararat while leaving no descendants behind. Raleigh concluded that familiar animals had changed in adapting to the New World thus satisfying many theologians previously perplexed by the mystery. However, this introduction of the concept of changeability of species, began a process that would overthrow the Aristotelean notion of the immutability of nature and lead finally to Darwin and the theory of evolution, an outcome that would trouble later generations of theologians and cast doubt not only on the story of Noah, but the literal reading of Berashith itself.

"Passions are likened best to floods and streams, The shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb."-Raleigh, The Silent Lover

Ironically the first paleontogists of this era were creationists, seeking evidence of the flood.
The interest they stirred in the field led to the work of those who would discredit them.
This mysterious world is so full of evidence that anything, through selective collection of that evidence, may be compellingly asserted.

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."-Hamlet to Horatio before the Ghost, Hamlet, I:5, William Shakespeare

Theodore Sturgeon, February 26 1918-May 8 1985, Andros Sturgeon photo, 1972 or 1973


“Nothing is always absolutely so.”-The Original Sturgeon's Law

"Ninety percent of everything is crap."-Sturgeon's Revelation (Later Sturgeon's Law) Theodore Sturgeon, early 1950's

“I repeat Sturgeon’s Revelation, which was wrung out of me after twenty years of wearying defense of science fiction against attacks of people who used the worst examples of the field for ammunition, and whose conclusion was that ninety percent of SF is crud."- Theodore Sturgeon

Of course, there is a corollary to the above quote (Sturgeon's Revelation, now known as Sturgeon's Law, that 90% of everything is crap): why does it matter; and why bother saying that any specific thing is 90% crap or crud? That is a given. And perhaps, why waste time and dwell on less than good things?

His credo? "Ask the next question."

My favorite Sturgeon story when I was a lad was the novelette, 'Killdozer', published in Astounding Science Fiction in 1944.
It was made into a successful TV movie in 1974, which, unfortunately does not appear to be available on DVD (some old VHS copies are floating around). The star is the underrated Clint Walker. The plot is simply this: an ancient sentient being consisting of an organized electron field and designed to destroy intelligent biological life predating man is revived by the activities of a construction crew on an isolated South Sea Island. It takes control of a bulldozer and proceeds in fulfilling its mission. Sturgeon was not the first and he was certainly not the last writer to present to us a single-minded destructive menace. Imagine the Terminator as a bulldozer. Here's some of Sturgeon's set up:

" The ages came and went, and chemical action and reaction did their mysterious work, and once again there was life and evolution. And a tribe found the mass of neutronium, which is not a substance but a static force, and were awed by its aura of indescribable chill, and they worshiped it and built a temple around it and made sacrifices to it. And ice and fire and the seas came and went, and the land rose and fell as the years went by, until the ruined temple was on a knoll, and the knoll was an island. Islanders came and went, lived and built and died, and races forgot. So now, somewhere in the Pacific to the west of the archipelago called Islas Revillagigeda, there was an uninhabited island. And one day--"

Poetic, eh?

Photograph: Aldous Huxley; Maria Huxley (née Nys); Matthew Huxley; Mimi Gielgud, by Lady Ottoline Morrell (died 1938).

Aldous Huxley (26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963)

Aldous Huxley: Good Guy or Bad Guy?

Or just another guy stuck in the middle of it all?
(A collection of notes.)

Discussion with Keith Hansen, the artist formerly, and perhaps currently, known as Vyzygoth at Think Or Be Eaten Radio:

http://beyondthegrassyknoll.com/audio/huxley.mp3

Aldous Huxley was a tall, striking, eloquent Englishman who abandoned his land for Hollywood, like so many others. He similarly and eventually adopted a transcendent view (the perennial philosophy) that naturally and ultimately brings one to abandon his humanity and personality for something more. He was the grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley the great autodidact biologist known as “Darwin's Bulldog”. His granduncle was Matthew Arnold, conservative critic and poet of the Victorian Age whose most famous work was "Dover Beach".

The Huxleys were upper middle class, scholarly people. Their erudition certainly and obviously gave them access to the British ruling class. T.H. Huxley believed in inductive reasoning. That is, in relying on strictly observable facts. Aldous, as a mystic, would later challenge strict inductive reasoning. T.H. Huxley later was famous as a reformer of education, opposing learning by rote, and favoring aesthetic education for all, domestic economy for girls, and, famously, teaching the Bible, not necessarily because he believed in it, but because (perhaps cynically) he “was seriously perplexed to know by what practical measure the religious feeling, which is the essential basis of conduct, was to be kept up, in the present utterly chaotic state of opinion in these matters, without its use.” He also called it “the most democratic book in the world.” T.H. Huxley popularized the term 'agnostic' (defined as subordination of belief to evidence and reason) to describe his theology.

Aldous Huxley said he would have preferred to become a medical researcher if his eyesight hadn't be so compromised by disease. He admitted he would have been a poor personal physician because his people skills in youth were a bit lacking. So he took to writing, which came easily and became associated for a time with the Bloomsbury Group, comprised of intellectuals such as Virginia Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, E.M. Forster, Clive Bell and Lytton Strachey. Huxley's first novels were satirical critiques of British middle class society, which perhaps estranged him from certain members of the Bloomsbury Group. I admit that reading these works long ago inoculated me against Anglophilia, for which I am grateful. He moved permanently to the United States partly for his health and partly because of the stultifying effect of British class structure, and partly for the lure of California and Hollywood, where he found work writing screenplays, especially adaptations of "classic" novels. He loved his freedom and marveled at the strange mixture of freedom and puritanical inhibition he found in the USA. Huxley enjoyed the company of women and it is said that his first wife, bisexual Maria Nys, procured partners for the both of them to spare him the problem of the finding suitable lovers with his poor eyesight and awkward social skills.

Brave New World

"O brave new world, that hath such people in it." Miranda, The Tempest, Shakespeare

Huxley called it (and Orwell's 1984) a parable (a fiction to illustrate a moral attitude or a religious principle).

"Oh, she's a splendid girl. Wonderfully pneumatic.”- AH Brave New World

Grishkin is nice: her Russian eye
Is underlined for emphasis;
Uncorseted, her friendly bust
Gives promise of pneumatic bliss.
- T.S. Eliot, Whispers of Immortality

"At sixty our powers and tastes are what they were at seventeen. Old men in the bad old days used to renounce, retire, take to religion, spend their time reading, thinking. Now - such is progress - the old men work, the old men copulate, the old men have no time, no leisure from pleasure." - Brave New World

"And that," put in the Director sententiously, "that is the secret of happiness and virtue-liking what you've got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their inescapable social destiny."-Brave New World, Chapter 1, pg. 16 -(This is the book in a nutshell.)

Huxley's science in Brave New World may have been inaccurate in the details, but the effects he envisioned have in many ways come true or are very possible. The genetic manipulation of embryos can and no doubt will happen. The somewhat sketchy environmental methods of altering a fetus (a bit reminiscent of Lysenko) in the book are doubtless ineffective. The mass use of mind altering drugs to make us more 'productive' and satisfied with our position is an obvious prophecy fulfilled. Mind control techniques abound. Euthanasia may be on the way. Political correctness, the list of taboo subjects for public discussion is here now. Huxley's BNW depicts a sexist world. But we must remember that Huxley characterized this world as a dystopia, not a utopia. There is no doubt he would enjoy some aspects of his creation, he was making it pleasurable and desirable to pacify the masses after all, but BNW's goal of limiting human freedom nullified the pleasing aspects. He would love the frequent sex but he would have also found making a routine of it would eliminate the excitement and lessen the release of tension which is necessary to good sex. At the time of the writing of BNW Huxley was concerned about the negative effects of drugs as a limiter of human freedom. Later (ironically) he would discover and embrace their potential for expanding it.

Brave New World would have been a different book if that dystopia, or kakotopia, had developed physical immortality. The Alphas would then, much more vigorously, defend their prerogative.
When science cures aging and death will it be a good thing? Who will get the cure? And it is a depressing thought to know that the same bastards running the world today will always run the world unless they are killed. The grim reaper is sometimes a welcome guest.

“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we desire will ruin us.”- Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death


More quotes and notes:

"Too much consistency is as bad for the mind as it is for the body. Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead."-‘Do What You Will’ (1929) ‘Wordsworth in the Tropics’

"Several excuses are always less convincing than one." Point Counterpoint

“In a world inhabited by what the theologians call unregenerate, or natural men, church and state can probably never become appreciably better than the best of the states and churches, of which the past has left us record. Society can never be greatly improved until such time as most of its members choose to become theocentric saints.”- Aldous Huxley essay 'Salt of the Earth'

“To this odd shrine (so characteristic, in its excessive unpretentiousness, of that nook-shotten isle of Albion) I paid my visit of curiosity in company with one of the most extraordinary, one of the most admirable men of our time, Albert Schweitzer. Many years have passed since then; but I remember very clearly the expression of affectionate amusement that appeared on Schweitzer’s face, as he looked at the mummy. “Dear Bentham!” he said at last. “I like him so much better than Hegel. He was responsible for so much less harm.” And of course Schweitzer was perfectly right. The German philosopher was proud of being tief, but lacked the humility which is the necessary condition of the ultimate profundity. That was why he ended up as the idolater of the Prussian state, as the spiritual father of those Marxian dogmas of history, in terms of which it is possible to justify every atrocity on the part of true believers, and to condemn every good or reasonable act performed by infidels. Bentham, on the contrary, had no pretensions to tiefness. Shallow with the kindly, sensible shallowness of the eighteenth century, he thought of individuals as real people, not as trivial bubbles on the surface of the river of History, not as mere cells in the brawn and bone of a social organism, whose soul is the State. From Hegel’s depths have sprung tyranny, war and persecution; from the shallows of Bentham, a host of unpretentious but real benefits—the repeal of antiquated laws, the introduction of sewage systems, the reform of municipal government, almost everything sensible and humane in the civilisation of the nineteenth century.”-Aldous Huxley, Piranesi's Prisons

"This Book Is A Weapon"
Acrylic on canvasboard with decorated wooden frame.
SOLD

"Books rule the world, or at least those nations that have a written language; the others do not count."
Voltaire

Your humble correspondent, Master of the Camel Call, taming the beast, Giza, 1983

Unhappiness can result due to miscalculation (or an absence of calculation) of the effect of an act of Will. One must keep in mind that limited measurements of infinite processes yield meaningless numbers.

"Surely (as for) those who reject Our communications and turn away from them haughtily, the doors of heaven shall not be opened for them, nor shall they enter the garden until the camel pass through the eye of the needle; and thus do We reward the guilty." The Qur'an, The Elevated Places [7:40]

"It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven."- Jesus (Luke 18:25)

"Christians and camels receive their burdens kneeling."- Ambrose Bierce

"The Bottomless Cup" Acrylic on layered cardboard, 1996 This is the first painting I ever SOLD, from my first show.

"Intuition is the conscious experience -in pure spirit-of a purely spiritual content. Only through an intuition can the essence of thinking be grasped."-Rudolf Steiner, "The Idea of Freedom"