The prophecies of Rachel, verse 159.

Having travelled until darkest eve, the Dark Knight finally reined-in at the European Parliament and clattered down off his snorting steed, shouting,

“I am the Dark Knight of Hyborian Hosts! I have a light task for Donald Tusk”.

Eventually after much clattering through corridors, Tusk was located and confronted the loose-limbed apparition.

“What’s this about a task? I have a lot on my plate.”

“You must locate the European centre of light, or your head is forfeit.”

“You’re mad – zettes fou. Policier!”

“Wait! Guns are useless to a man of wood. With this wooden sword will I behead you.”

“Alright – stand off!” commanded Tusk to the duty-officers nervously drawing their weapons. “The European centre of light you refer to must be CERN in Lake Geneva. But how does that concern you?”

“The light must be extinguished, or your head is forfeit.”

“Again you use that horrible phrase. By what right do you say these things?”

“By the right of night that comes at sunset. Obey or your head is forfeit.”

“I tire of these idle threats. CERN is not my concern.”

With that he turned on his heel. A tussle ensued, but the wooden warrior proved as adept as he said. Leaping on his steed he cantered away and, in the deepening dark, was lost in the hills.

(to be continued)

Sometime back in the mists of time is a reference to Linear A - Pictorial 8 – the undeciphered script found on tablets at Knossos. Even though it bears relation to Linear B – which is early Greek – there are so many differences that it is thought to be proto-Indo-European and therefore related to many other continental languages.

Basically, individual words can be hazarded and often determined but, since the information contained in Linear A is simply a list of palace stores, that’s as far as you can get. What you could say is the script is “content free”, if content is taken to be a free-flowing narrative containing figures in a landscape, mythical adventures and so forth (Homer).

Another way to put it is Linear A has no descriptions of proportionate bodies that travel the world and have adventures. If some book or poem were found, then Minoan script would be deciphered with ease. It is pure information and therefore exists outside of time and space. Store-rooms in a palace you could easily say are a type of life-support system, so make the point that a description of a life-support system is often found to be “content free” as it simply contains the material facts that pertain to existence.

If you want to see content at Knossos then you look at the fantastically expressive frescoes preserved by Sir Arthur Evans (Wild Horses). This is the very origins of European culture, and you find art-deco-esque marine flowing forms, as well as gaily clad courtiers and the fabled bull-dancing.

Free-flowing forms speak with stylish ease across the millennia, while material information says precisely nothing. The one is primordial rhythm; the other is basically bureaucracy. Primordial rhythm exists in time and has a chronology. If you know anything about archaeology, chronology is almost everything. There are about five Troys built one over the other and apparently Schliemann’s methods weren’t fullproof. By contrast, the Knossos unearthed by Evans has a crystal clarity that destroys time.

Without chronology we may as well forget living as the only other information you’re gonna get is bureaucratic. I think this is where Franz Kafka came in, actually, where the eternal round of peasants and courtiers was replaced by new-fangled apparatus and state-directives. As we know, the supreme-sorcerer said, “time is an illusion”; in other words, the world we live in is a product of thought-processes, not ACTUAL processes (prev.) Here’s a pretty good example of that that happens to be close to my home



Yes, it’s the neverending Brexit negotiations from Europe. Boris Johnson, ex-foreign secretary delivering daily sermons in DT, a good example of “nothingness”; that is to say nothing except the ego of Boris, which will keep rationalising his own thought-processes.

Exactly the same applies to all the other commentators in business, or the gene-freakery of Dawkins. They are not talking about genes or banks (or gene-banks), they are talking about their own thought-processes.

Banks (Hyborian Bridge 6) should really be just facilitators for mercantile trade; genes are molecules that have no relation to fundamental principles of symmetry, proportion, balance, rhythm. All these principles take place in time and through time (not through thought).

A market, like a bazaar, is a place like the market towns of the shtetls, the lost world that bureaucratic thought-processes have replaced. Because thought-processes are not ACTUAL processes, it is exactly as if the pathology of the ego is reciting the list from Linear A. It’s pathological because the primal rhythms of life and death, decay and rebirth that are enduring and strengthening don’t enter into the equation, which is simply a list of material goods. The wormdollar.

Without strength, all we have is a system that requires ever-more pathological order – the global economy. Now, I’ve been reading Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the 14th century verse romance (translated by Simon Armitage)..



..partly for ideas for “The prophecies of Rachel”. Gawain is the “pure knight” whose deed and courtesy are of the utmost valour. The Green Knight is a type of trickster character, a man of wood who holds Gawain to an impossible bargain that he should fight the forces of nature and win.

Through Gawain’s quest he is impeccably courteous and there is a continual contrast between courtly behaviour and the slaughter of the fields.

They brought him to a bedroom, beautifully furnished with fine silken fabrics finished in gold and curious coverlets lavishly quilted in bloodless ermine and embroidered to each border. (855)

Without giving the plot away, they indulge in jolly badinage.

So he held out his arms and hugged the lord and kissed him in the kindliest way he could. "You’re welcome to my winnings-to my one profit, though I'd gladly have given you any greater prize." "I'm grateful," said the lord, "and Gawain, this gift would carry more weight if you cared to confess by what wit you won it..."

"That wasn't our pact," he replied,"so don't pry.." They laugh aloud and trade wise words which match their mood. When supper's meal is made they dine on dainty food. (1400)

Like Homer, the tale wends its way through time

So the morning dawns when man remembers the day our redeemer was born to die, and every house on earth is joyful for Lord Jesus. (995)

As Gawain is being furnished with all favour at the castle of a lord and lady, the details of a hunt are divulged.

And the lord of the land still led the hunt, driving hinds to their death through holts and heaths, and by the setting of the sun had slaughtered so many of the does and other deer that it beggared belief. (1320)

Through the sliced-open throat they seized the stomach and the butchered innards were bound in a bundle. Next they lopped off the legs and peeled back the pelt and hooked out the bowels through the broken belly, but carefully, being cautious not to cleave the knot.. Then the shoulder blades were severed with sharp knives and slotted through a slit so the hide stayed whole. (1338)

What you have is a world that is at one and the same time coarse and courtly, bloodthirsty and dainty, stenching and delicate. It is the world of predators and prey, and also of the trickster who is mid-way between the two (Claude Levi-Strauss see prev). That is, the bountiful harvest, the carrion crow, blood and sacrifice, strength of nature symbolised by this romance.

Then the heads and necks of hinds were hewn off, and the choice meat of the flanks chopped away from the chine, and a fee for the crows was cast into the copse. (1355)

All this strength comes from the chronology of natural forces – primordial and eternal. That clearly exists in Howard, and in blood-sacrifice that ties Man to nature at Christmas time. Civilization has become anti-romantic and it seems likely that, more than anything, was Howard’s jibing.

America was life and death on the open range of the west and meat-yards of the east (Bardot), thrumming hooves, men and women of cunning and derring-do, lost to Martian brainwave-patterns of nothingness, the pathology of thought-processes that are merely bureaucratic.

The prophecies of Rachel, verse 165.

“The Dark Knight is loose”. The phrase thrilled the European populace as they imagined Tusk’s head flying off his sober-suited trunk, little suspecting  that the Knight was already kindling. The Transylvanians did nothing to appease the situation.

“The Dark Knight has spoken, and his eldritch sorcery has ever triumphed. Tusk is already history, unless..”

Moshe left the words trailing, and this was taken-up by CNN’s Coral Armstrong.

“Secretary Tusk is evidently under the shadow of doom, unless he heeds the Dark Knight’s warning. The eldritch technology of Transylvania is already transforming Europe’s awareness of Israeli capabilities – if such they be, I hasten to add, since Prime Minister Netanyahu has vehemently denied any alliance. Nevertheless, how much is a denial worth in today’s cut-throat intelligence world?”

“Whatever the truth of the matter, the Dark Knight now holds all the cards and it is up to Secretary Tusk to do something. Earlier, I spoke to the Secretary.”

“Mr Tusk, how do you intend to counter this threat?”

“Threat? I-I-I shall do precisely nothing!”

“Then why are you stammering – fear?”

“Fear? Ha ha –n – o-of course not.”

“Thankyou, secretary Tusk.”

“With fear now stalking the corridors of Brussels, it seems that Transylvania has won a hands-down victory today.”

(to be continued)