NOT TO TOUCH THE EARTH

NOT TO SEE THE SKY

  Post Rockstar career opportunities #n: Hunter Gatherer

"be careful when you remove the bladder, do not let urine spill onto the meat..."


 

The seclusion of girls at puberty is not always as punitive/paranoid as described in Ch.60 of The Golden Bough. It can be a terrifying, cathartic, and mysterious farewell to childhood. Fiorinda's night of initiation, in the seclusion of Sage's van, was highly unusual in that her sponsors were two young men; in other respects it's close to some magical models. See also (in a spirit of fair play) The Spiral Path.

 


Methodism, not strictly a revolution, more a socially concerned, anti-establishment revival movement, features in Bold As Love as the former allegiance of Aoxomoxoa (whose grandfather is a Minister) and the Heads, notably George Merrick See Luke's funeral, BAL; George's opinion of painkillers, CMOS

But it's the hymns, really.
That and the gonzo al fresco preaching

"The world changes all the time. Usually we're not aware of it, no more than we're aware of the dancing atoms in a tabletop..."


Superstrings, extra dimensions, branes, quantum vacuum fluctuations, dark matter, Higgs field, it's all so many mediaeval epicycles. There is neither one final reality nor many. Inevitably, ironically our best cosmological model may be human consciousness itself, contained and limitless, determined and ever-changing; where we know that the past is is constantly recreated, with updates, by the present (and this is real, it's not a metaphor) =brainstates have to scramble back into life in a new pair of shoes every time we remember something...

"If we cannot find ourself in our world picture -that image of the world which is the work we do in our brains- it is because the sentient self is itself the world picture..."
                                                              Erwin Schrödinger

 

Others may recall the cracking historical fantasy tv show (sorry its so expensive)Wu Zetian, the only woman to rule as Emperor in Chinese history, was finally declared Emperor in 690 CE, when she was around sixty years old, after a long and utterly ruthless struggle to reach the throne. She proved a surprisingly benign ruler, instituted Buddhism as the state religion, campaigned to improve the status of women, set up the practice of public civil service exams, favoured scholars above the military, and invested in public works.

This feature is dedicated to Jonathan Clements (anime expert, author of The First Emperor, etc). Here's your Empress Wu fantasy Jonathan, as promised.

The story of Song Taizu and the kingmakers is taken from All Under Heaven, Rayne Kruger.

 

For freedom is the unclosing of the idea which lies at our root, and is the vital power of our existence. The rose is the freedom of the rosetree.
                      George MacDonald


                                                             The Three Guinesas,  Reading, Feb 28th 1996- Brighton June 13th 2006

Tu Qiong Bi Xian: When the map is unrolled, the dagger is revealed. The saying refers to a botched assassination attempt on the man who would become Shi Huangdi, but "means" that it's only at the end that we see a person's real character and their true intentions.
from A Thousand Pieces Of Gold, Adeline Yen Mah