Cathedral of geometrical science at Lake Geneva

CERN is simply the descendent of Einstein, and therefore operates in the same fake space that cannot be unified. That is why a space-station of faith needs a patron-saint and the rebellious Magdalene seems ideal for a place with an inbuilt female aura, fertility and abundance. The classical side of the gospel.

Tina Turner asked that the new musical of her story be not “Disneyfied”. With Ike, that would be quite a task! It is what it is and you could say the same of Liza Minnelli (CH5) – they make their own story with the wildness that is within. That is human history and we're just taking it off-planet.

Along with Grace Slick (not forgetting Janice) and the cream of Motown (Martha, Marvin) there was a cotton-pickin' continuity; pick up any Gaye record and you are listening to a street-culture on the move (CH5). The circular expression of time that looks back as much as forward.

Music, almost more than any other artform, moves you with the proportion and balance of the performer (the human throat Pictorial 1,2). This is music as celebration; a gospel for the times. A celebration is a circular experience of time, rebirth in another guise – as Ike's soul-inflected RnB is sometimes akin to old-time Mississippi blues (yezuh).

The circular expression of time is completely dependent on proportion and balance – Phoebus Apollo shines and not the false glitter of industrial pop. There can be no continuity without celebration; only fragments of time that put out a meaningless rhythm. Ticktockticktock (Harlequin) Celebration (rebirth) takes you outside the atomic clock of our dear leaders and into the glory of the zodiac. The realm of cosmic proportion. Now we are impinging on superstition.



Part 5 of Scott's The Armor of Light has this as its theme. The gentle parfait knight is reborn on the stage (as in Spenser's Faerie Queen) and bursts of white and black sorcery infuse the prose with a Howardesque brilliance.

The lances met, tip to tip as Sidney had intended, with a crack like lightning striking. The twinned spells dissipated in the same instant, Bothwell’s attack turned aside by Sidney’s countermagic… his shattered lance smoking in his hand. Sidney.. drove the stub of his own lance into the soft ground beside the lists. (page 417)

With the help of a foreign wizard, Sir Philip Sidney's conceit is a solar ceremony of zodiac symbols to repel the dark forces that afflict James VI's stronghold. Scott makes quite a thing of the mage being a Catholic, and such superstitious rites smacking of popery (see prev.)

James was at his best on horseback, freed of the limitations of his ungainly limbs. He handled his horse.. with an offhand skill as impressive as it was mildly frightening. It’s to James’s credit, Sidney thought, that we are willing to ride so close at hand to such an ill-tempered brute.. At Sidney’s nod, the king rode out into the risen day, and boys’ voices broke to either side of the gate.

.. then music, the same odd measured music.. sounded from the heart of the wood. Children in white and gold..came forward, bowing deeply. They joined hands and began to dance a solemn figure, moving in a circle before the king. James gentled his horse.. and watched with open wonder. A boy’s voice.. called on the angel of the east to protect the king. (pages 449-451)

So, what of this idea that superstition and chivalry are childish fantasies of the mind? What of King James' easy bearing aboard a mighty stallion that recalls passages from Kull? What does such poetic prose arouse in our blood? “God's blood”, as they say in these stories, it was a world of meaning and power. King James has the power of presence that shines forth a primal strength of form – man and horse – the instinctive animal side of humanity that is all but lost now. Kull, James VI of Scotland and I of England, “by this axe I rule” and for James, by this cross we serve.

Now, here’s a Passion for Easter from modernday composer Howard Goodall:

I find the details of the ancient tale less plausible and less musically inspiring that its powerful message.. the resurrection represents the survival of an idea: that our capacity for love is indestructible.

So, here's a secularist writing a requiem without the actual belief of rebirth! It's as bad as the previous quote by Woodhead on “something unfortunate happened on Calvary”. In bygone days this was a cosmic story of redemption, starting from the Fall (Eden), with hell on one side and heaven on the other, the crucifixion as the focal point (meaning) and resurrection as the power.

That entire epic staging of human history is missing in Goodall's interpretation (see Milton and Blake). What “they” say is that none of this is proved and it's “just” a belief. A belief of meaning and power. A belief in the zodiac and the sign of the fish. A belief in proportion and balance. The mystery of any religion is it's not down to a case of proof; it's down to a narrative with such a broad scope that it encompasses cosmic balance. As a non-practitioner I'm not gonna say more on that score; what is just as apparent is that the infidel is in a trap of their own making. If the zodiac is a superstition, they have to believe in the Anti-Life of atomic precision (CERN).

The zodiac is by definition imprecise because it has proportion and balance. But, if everything was precise we would live in a geometric universe – the death of psyche. If there was no superstition there would be no psyche and we would be dead, to all intents. If religion impinges on superstition – as do the Catholic rites in Scott's epic – it's a type of reality that is maybe overblown, but does evoke real events.

If the universe impinges on superstition it may be a manifestation, an immanence in BWS's phrase, of the psyche. The solar ceremony that Scott describes does evoke elements of high Catholic drama, and all of human history is riddled with such ritual drama, such as at Stonehenge, say.

Is the universe, then, not dramatic? We have a choice. Either we are born of blood and fire with the freedom of faith in our sinews; or we are merely existing until our material shape disintegrates. “They” will tell us we are atomic precision-clocks like CERN (DNA dragon); we who believe in the power of the zodiac and the cosmic meaning of drama know different. “They” have verifiable proof. “They” have talking-head – the dragon of ego-lust. We have physique and the proportionate balance of warriors (see W15 Pictorial 1).

The more right they think they are the more wrong they are because it is all Apollonian alchemy. That explains their fantastic over-confidence – from Musk's atom-powered spaceship to the latest dronings from CERN. Trapped in the world of atomic precision, all they can do is spout verifiable proofs.

That language is leading inevitably to AI and the death of psyche, Man the introspective adventurer. Apollonian alchemy is nothing more that Weird Tales sorcery: malefactors who concern themselves with the imbalance of masculine ego-lust and self-regard, dragonspawn of hellfire factoid-fiction.

Rome, for all her faults, never decended to such hatred of the other; of femininity and frolicsome twilit vistas, hounds a-baying on Diana's lusty footfalls, blood calling to blood. Rome was never a totalitarian order; it was balance by the water deities, sungods, nymphs in grottos (see Sulis-Minerva). Scott in The Armor of Light even uses the phrase “Papist-pagan” to describe ceremonial mysticism. What the Reformation zealots did to Catholicism, now the secular zealots are doing to the religious reality.

A reality that is balanced and proportionate and springs from the personality. There is a choice. Either we cave in to the infidel and lose our very heritage of the lusty vine (Dionysus), the fragrant laurel (Daphne), the wild dreamland of mist and vale, hunter and hound. Or we fight; by this axe I rule. By our sinew, blood and bone we fight the sorcerous dragonspawn of factoid-fiction. We become warriors; we become servants.

We fight with reality, with power and presence. The four winds, the four elements: ceremonial superstition to fight alchemical sorcery that is trapped in its Godless maze. The more right they think they are, the further their dragonsnouts spout, the more we will reply with the power and presence of ceremonial truth.

The infidel has non-life, non-death, mere existence (Hyborian Bridge 2). Their future of material goods and the wormdollar cannot prevail over the fidelity of Man the wanderer, nomadic shepherd, warrior, poet, king.

Our future is a revival of ceremonial mystique which seems to have its roots in the early years of the church.

recently uncovered in Naples, 5th century fresco of a female bishop with the four gospels flaming round her.

The mainstream church almost seems embarrassed by literalism; for a start the resurrection is a mystery – facts will lead you into a maze of nothingness, which is what we wish to escape. To believe in a mystery is the origin of the church. The belief has power, and the figures have meaning. Mary Magdalene is one such figure and, as a rebellious order, we take her as our patron-saint. Our culture will be Magdalenean, on the classical side, dressed-down milk-maidenishly, rustic and agrarian. On the space-station, tech will be a means, never an end as that upsets the male/female balance. Our prayers to Magdalene will reaffirm that faith.

Faith reaffirms the power of mystique. The big danger of a faith that has no mystique – the cathedral of CERN – is that it is literally trapped by fact! As you can see from the photo, the entire edifice is pure geometry. None of the facts exist without the geometry. It’s a male or phallocentric view of the universe that has no time for opposites or cosmic balance, or proportion.

The real trouble is, the more they believe, the more phallocentric and ego-lust craven they become. Hence, the more right they think they are the more wrong they are in reality. The glory of Greek temples is their fantastic proportionality and the sensational physique that in bygone days would have been vigorously painted – brought to the appearance of life (Apollo) or the ideal world (not reality).

This power of presence is totally lacking in the cathedral to a masculine science that is on a hiding to nothing: what you see is what there is, which is ultra-precise geometry. That is the only information. Period. The weird thing is the more precise the geometry the more facts are visible! And the more fake the facts. It’s almost like a retelling of the Icarus myth only this time with mathematicians staring at the sun and seeing “apparent” spots of matter.

Their cathedral is a monument to masculine ego-lust second to nun (Starstruck). Incredibly, they could build a bigger even more accurate version (this time in China) and get more math and award themselves more Nobels. That is the real problem of a cathedral based not on faith but on fact. You are entering a neverending maze, a shrine to yourself and another myth, Narcissus.

At the end of The Armor of Light Scott says sorcery has escaped its archaic rituals and is “in the air”. Perhaps that is the point of ritual, to contain what Man in his folly need not know (Pandora).

BWS

Taking CERN as the cathedral off our age (whatever that is) what you sem to get from that view is facts that are also fiction. Does that ring a bell?

Roseanne is asked in her reboot why she voted for Trump and she explains that he talked about jobs: “We almost lost our house, the way things are going.” Her sister replies: “Have you looked at the news? Cos now things are worse.” Roseanne shouts back: “Not on the real news.”

The big star is now Trump’s pal and spinning the same tune. Why is it so difficult in an age of sophisticated media-culture to tell fact from fiction? Why, in short, do things appear fake? Is it because the circuit of activities, the round that defines a community, these things are much harder to pin down. Even in cities, neighbourhoods were self-reliant and self-entertaining (see CH5 New York Harlem). The proportionality of living in a commune affects our experience of time; there is a grace and serenity in the air; in rural areas the bells ring for evensong, the cotton-pickers tumble in to praise the Lord (pardon the cliché).

I’m basically going back to the 50s, the society more or less of the Waltons, and of the roots of rock’n’roll, the free spirit of America, “Hail hail rock’n’roll”. Now, you’ll say I’m rather pointedly picking-up racial differences; by the same token, though, both white and black rural areas are now despondent or not there. I spotted a news-item on young farmers in New York state, so there is the will out there, but how about black share-croppers (Joe Tex)?

If that is reality, then facts and figures are not; they exist in atomic-space. It’s all very well to watch Roseanne but it doesn’t replace the lost sense of ritual in communal living. It could be that the actual reality we live in, our experience of time, is fake. In other words, the reason for that sense is our ultra-masculine faith in fact: and that is symbolised by the cathedral at CERN.

Sorcerers have their own arcane rituals – as you see in the photo of the guy tuning some contraption. Their rituals are imbalanced, symbolising a monster of the phallus. The element completely absent is Dionysus, the sensual, primitive psyche, and you are left with the false Apollo of AI, their fake future of fact and fiction.

When Scott says in The Armor of Light that the demise of (high Catholic) ceremony let loose arcane sorcery into the world, one way to interpret that is the loss of balance allows in arcane facts. These are the “facts” garnered by extreme masculine science. Holy ceremonies are ineluctably based on the human psyche and physique, the supreme balance, the mystery of nature. In fact, without them there could be no blasphemy. I noted earlier in Scott’s epic some casual phrases like, “Christ’s balls,” or “God’s ass” that just seem like overly familiar terms. She also quotes from Raleigh.

And if we cannot deny but that God hath given virtues to springs and fountains, to cold earth, to plants and stones, minerals, and to the excremental parts of the basest of creatures, why should we rob the beautiful stars of their working powers? (History of the World quoted page 433]

This seems like almost a truism that supreme balance means that God is everywhere. Once the balance is lost, once the ceremonies of psyche and physique are lost, arcane facts are allowed in that are not part of God’s holy figure. What that could mean is that modern sorcerers are phallo-centric, ultra-masculine dragon-forms of ego-lust (DNA dragon). As said previously (multiple times!) the dragon of ego-lust stalks the halls of big science.