The prophecies of Rachel, verse 33. The entity kept pestering Rachel, poking his nose into her affairs in order to ascertain weaknesses, likes, dislikes, foibles. He finally approached her standing with a trowel on the rock of ages.

“Rachel, I see that you dig city-states in history and pre-history.” She looked up surprised and pleased in spite of herself. “That is true, I do.”

“Rachel, I say unto you that they are full of irresolvable conflicts, wretches and untold misery, flies buzzing, filthy hags with sores..”

“.. and glorious architecture”, interrupted Rachel.

“Yes, but I say unto you once you’ve seen one city-state you’ve seen them all. They are all glorious and grand – Rome, Athens, Aghrapur – but all in their different ways, no uniformity.”

“So, what’s your point?” said Rachel, bored. “You want them all to be mud huts?”

“That’s just as bad, for all mud huts are different! The ideal city is pure glass, metal and electromagnetic currents of pure information, all completely uniform, free of conflict - and no people too.”

“Rachel thought she’d misheard, and blurted, “where’d they go?”

“They become happy currents of EMF. That is the future I offer you. No rat-infested alleyways, all is simply electrochemical compounds of happy information.”

Rachel started laughing. “Ha hur urr hurr uh.. you poor sap – what are they happy.. ABOUT?!”

(to be continued)

The microcosm rules itself, that seems to be the lesson of the Tower of David ..a microcosmic feel of bodies and buildings as in days of yore. Of course, that’s not going to happen when the head is in charge, and where everything is relative (to the ego).

At the top of the pyramid of inflated egos is the supreme sorcerer, whether you call them Thoth Amon or Einstein



Like the duo rhythmic ambience (Duncan/Cipollini) of Quicksilver on stage playing “Who Do You Love”

I got a cobra skin for a necktie

I got a house by the roadside

Made out of rattlesnake hide

Nothing “happens” without the body and buildings, as in a Wild West locale. Quicksilver I tend to notice don’t have much stage repartee; they are there to play, pure and simple. Heroes are there to do what they do, heroines too, and so cannot be suborned. They are absolutes of rhyme and timing, harking back to days of yore. Remember the warrior woman known as Joan “Armorplating”? No sign of a disembodied ego on this (hullo Swift &Co)

ME MYSELF I (warrior introspection)

It’s not that I love myself

I just don’t want company

The indomitable body with the guitar on stage, urban Surtur personified, head intelligently in-tune that cannot be suborned by another’s truths. The beating heart is speaking for the human being, the very antithesis of pure mental power harboured by Martian advisors to our dear leaders, call them what you will.

What is meant by the supreme sorcerer (Hyborian Bridge 24)? The powerful mind that takes on itself the mantle of the universe. All are treading on the feet of Einstein but, as I tend to say, are seeking verifiable facts that flatter the ego. The facts are directed to the most verifiable sources (CERN or electromagnetism, see passim). The same essentially as the ego of the supreme sorcerer.

Ego is not necessarily strength, which can be a type of humility; the priest-sorcerer can recognize the melancholy of affairs, and perceive that the bright lights of the sun are a false truth. The truth of appearance that is susceptible to logical thought, not the truth of a cyclical reality. This is the reality of time and space; the percussive foundations of the city-state (urban Surtur.)

You can say “time is an illusion” and restrict thought to a logical system (that is only appearance, idealism), and become as one with the ego. Or you can perceive that the body is proportionate and run not by the head but by the heart. That is humility, and allows the head to perceive humble truths lost to the ego is its clouds of nothingness, where everything is relative, and there is no foundational, percussive beat.)

A supreme sorcerer – Thoth Amon – takes everything into his own ram’s horns world-devouring ego, a self-contained universe that is subservient to his will (logic) and not to proportion, dynamic reality. When things are allowed to just “happen”, they thereby attain a cosmic balance through time: now we are in the reality of bodies and city-states and not of logical systems of the mind.

But, not all sorcerers are supreme. Not all strive to bend the universe to their will. Conan the Barbarian, shrewd and thewed, is loathe to ally his wits with necromancers with crystal balls, but fate can transpire to pit them together in common cause.


The Hand of Nergal

“The heart is ever stronger than the hand” – Atalis of Yaralet

One of the best short stories – completed by Lin Carter – has Conan Shanghaied from a battlefield by the pleas of courtesan Hildico. He finds himself in the company of prince Than of Yaralt and the sorcerous Atalis, who bears some resemblance to Zukala (Zukala’s Daughter).

You may recall Zukala lost his powers and became much more pliant and careworn in Conan #s14,15? Here, much the same happens as the sorcerer and prince are helpless before the foul spells of the murderous Muntheassem Khan, who has come into possession of the Hand of Nergal. The story revolves round the Heart of Tammuz, a counter-talisman that has found its way into the Cimmerian’s hands.

The story is interesting because of the Manichean battle between Hand and Heart, and Atalis’s observation “The heart is ever stronger than the Hand”. It’s because there often is a conflict of that sort (between freedom and order, say), that city-states are founded on primal, musical properties of body and buildings. They are of the body, not the mind, because the mind can be suborned by logic and reason. That is the way of Apollo that is appearance (idealism), not reality. The body is not an invention of ego and cannot be suborned.

The same type of Manichean conflict is found in Mozart’s The Magic Flute. Set in Egypt, its charm is the flip-flop between good and evil. First, Tamino falls in love with the Queen of the Night’s daughter and is told by her attendants she’s been stolen by the high-priest, the evil Zorastro. He is given a magic flute to find her and kill the high-priest. On encountering Zorastro, he finds a calm, wise scholar-priest (somewhat like Atalis) who tells him he must undergo rituals to test his worth for Pamina.

At the finale, the stage blazes with solar power as the Queen of the Night screams in “hellish rage”. Zorastro is a sun worshipper, not a supreme sorcerer: the calm madness of logic has not afflicted his judgement, he knows what love is. There is a Manichean conflict with the lustful fury and fires of desire of the Queen of the Night that is never resolved. Only logic seeks to resolve the irresolvable. Wisdom is ritual conflict.

Now, I’m not gonna get into a Freemasonic debate here! All I care to say is that a pyramid is a solar vessel that represents solar power. The fight with the night can never be won. Freemasons are there to build, but there is another force out there, and it is the desire to be free to do what you want to do (Me Myself I).

There is a Manichean struggle between planned and unplanned, between logic and illogic (see Corneille Hyborian Bridge 16). That battle can NEVER BE WON, they are irreconcilable, irresolvable opposites. This is what our dear leaders are blind to, under the influence of Martians and sorcerers of the overweening ego. The supreme sorcerer represents the sun, and the relativity of pure order that can never exist.

I read somewhere that Trump was too corrupt to be welcomed into the Masonic Order, and that has the ring of truth! Even if there is no global conspiracy, calm logic and order are their own conspiracy.