Pt. II Edgar Rice Burroughs And The Accreted Personality

Part II

Edgar Rice Burroughs And The Accreted Personality

by

R.E. Prindle

 

Time may fly but life seems long. Long enough for circumstances to alter your personality more than once. Consider for instance the National Guardsman secure in job, wife and family who is jerked out of his ideal existence to take a tour of duty in Iran or Afghanistan, foreign wars which betray the promises of his enlistment which were to defend his home state. Do you think a personality change didn’t occur when he received his notice? If he was kept in for several tours of duty over a period of years so that his former existence doesn’t appear to him as a dream that took place in a parallel universe? And if he comes home without an arm or a leg or, perhaps, both, that he doesn’t suffer from reminiscences or have a dual or multiple personality. You can bet he does. Nor does your life have to be as hard as the National Guardsman for your own personality to acquire personality accretions over your lifetime, all of which are stored in your mind and may be reassumed at any time.

As I said in the first part, these various existential states don’t disappear, they become part of your reminiscences whether suppressed or remembered and as possible fixations or idees fixe they influence your daily actions.

So now, let’s turn to the life of Edgar Rice Burroughs to illustrate the idea of the accreted personality. Psychology is simple if you don’t make it complex by mystifying it. I hope I can make Burroughs’ story clear without unnecessarily complicating it. I will try to use Occam’s Razor judiciously.

Edgar Rice Burroughs, who would become very famous as a fiction writer, entered this world of pain of pleasure on September 7, 1875 in Chicago, Illinois. He was parented by George T. and Mary Burroughs, he of Anglo-Irish ancestry and she of Pennsylvania Dutch, that is say, German. Eddie always considered himself pure English at a time when being English meant something, a much depreciated coin these days.

George T. was an upright man who had been an officer on the Union side in the Civil War a scant ten years previously. George Custer had not yet gone down at the Little Big Horn nor was Sitting Bull yet starring in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West. George T. had two other sons, George and Harry, who were born just after the Civil War.

George T. was a whisky distiller while at this time the Whisky Trust was coming into existence. George T. was an independent sort who needed the Trust less than they wanted him. I don’t say the Trust was responsible but George T. was burned out. Chicago loved a good fire.

The relationship between Ed and his parents was not a warm one. His father made his life difficult, seemingly on purpose, while his mother seems to have been rather cold. Burroughs seldom mentions her nor were any of his characters named Mary, or George for that matter.

Nevertheless, born into a world of creature comforts with high expectations in a fine house on Chicago’s West Side with two Irish maids Ed began life in a happy state of mind walking down the street singing Zippity Do Dah or the equivalent. He stayed that way for about eight years until his first personality changing event occurred.

Eddie attended Brown School in his neighborhood. I haven’t been able to find out much about Brown but the schools stands out as special in Ed’s mind. The school had several prominent graduates one of which was the showman, Flo Ziegfeld. As Ziegfeld was Jewish it is quite possible the school was close to Maxwell St. Maxwell St. would figure prominently in Ed’s later novel, The Mucker.

One day when Ed was eight he found a big twelve year old Irish kid by the name of John belligerently blocking his way. It isn’t known whether he was walking with future wife Emma Hulbert or not but I suspect he was. At any rate John threatened to beat him up. Thoroughly terrorized Ed took to his heels and as he did so several suggestions entered his terrorized mind. To be in terror is to enter a hypnoid state in which all ones psychic defenses are lowered or discarded. Suggestions are easily fixated in your mind. Thus at the age of eight Ed’s original personality was submerged, he assumed his central childhood fixation. Not only was he emasculated on his Animus but, perhaps because he shamed himself in front of Emma, he transferred his Anima to John; he then set up John as his ideal of manhood wishing to be just like him.

The result was that John became his favorite name. In his future novels he named a disproportionate number of characters both good and bad John. His two key characters were both named John- John Clayton, aka Tarzan Of The Apes and John Carter of Mars. Both have the initials JC referring to Jesus Christ, one supposes. Thus on the masculine side their names commemorate John the Bully while on the feminine side Jesus Christ. Ed also wore a book under the assume name of John McCullough.

As Ed was shamed by running, defenses against cowardice are liberally sprinkled throughout his works with justifications for the advance to the rear maneuver, or running.

Particularly troubling to him was the occupation of his Anima by a male. Probably not very usual but given the limited range of responses available to humans, probably not that uncommon. But this result of the fixation was particularly troubling to him appearing in a succession of his initial output of the ‘teens.

The clearest exposition of the results of this fixation was reproduced in the pages of Ed’s second novel, The Outlaw Of Torn. The hero of the novel is a boy of Ed’s age on the street corner, who is the king of England’s son c. 1400 AD. The King has a quarrel with his fencing instructor, De Vac, who then avenges himself by kidnapping the son, Norman.

The scene is that Norman is playing in the garden under the watchful eye of his nurse/Anima when De Vac appears outside the garden gate- I. e. Ed’s mind- luring Norman to him. Norman has passed the gate when his nurse who had been chatting with another woman notices. She rushed through the gate where De Vac struck her dead. Thus his Anima was outside Ed’s mind when she was destroyed.

Now, this is the replication of a dream story. The meaning is that Norman/Ed was safe inside when De Vac/John caught him, as it were, with his pants down, killing and assuming the role of his Anima. The nurse represents his Anima or right brain which was then disabled.

So, as an eight year old boy Eddie has an emasculated Animus, left brain, and destroyed or shattered Anima, right brain. This has to be dealt with in some way so he can carry on and survive.

What Burroughs does then is create a myth to repair the damage as well as he can. De Vac now on the run with his prize who he must conceal takes Norman to a three story house in the slums of London built on stilts out over the water of the River Thames. The two live in this attic/mind for three or four years. During this entire period De Vac is dressed as an old woman. So, here we have the emasculated Animus combined with the dead Anima with the waters of the feminine flowing beneath the house, I.e. Burroughs’ self.

The two live this way for three or four years, Norman never leaving the attic. At the end of this period De Vac dons men’s clothes and takes Norman to a ruined castle in the Shires. The remarkable thing about this castle is that on one side, the right side, the roof has completely fallen in, can’t be used.

The interpretation is that Ed so identified himself with John that he had to put his own life on hold until he turned twelve, the same age John had been. At that point he recovered or began to recover some control of his Animus while his Anima remained destroyed.

De Vac then began to train Norman in the manly arts to be a killing machine to attain physical vengeance for De Vac on the King.

One can’t be sure of what effect the encounter had on his personality but the next year after the confrontation his father took him from Brown transferring him to an all girl’s school. George T.’s reason for this was that there was a fever going around and he wanted to protect Ed from it. How one would be safe from a communicable disease in a girl’s school isn’t clear so perhaps Ed’s father had another reason.

In Ed’s psychological state it is not unlikely that he went into a fairly serious depression while emasculated and crippled he may have become very effeminate. The placement in the girl’s school may have been one of disgust and to teach the boy a lesson to act like a man.

The humiliation on top of the emasculation was difficult for Ed to bear. He pleaded and pleaded to be transferred from the girl’s school. His pleas were heard although his father didn’t send him back to Brown but a couple miles across town to Chicago’s Harvard Latin School where Ed stayed through what would have been his Junior High years. During this period, the date isn’t clear, Ed fell off his bicycle banging his head against the curb; it isn’t known whether it was the right or left side. This left him dizzy and walking round in circles for three or four days, then the obvious effects disappeared. George T. then jerked him out the Latin School and sent him West to his brothers’ cattle ranch in Idaho. He doesn’t seem to have attended any school for the year he was in Idaho. However he learned to be a cowboy and had a great time.

Even without school the period was not without intellectual stimulation. George and Harry Burroughs were graduates of the Sheffield Scientific School attached to Yale University but not yet integrated with it, along with their partner Lew Sweetser. Sweetser was a fairly remarkable guy deeply interested in psychology when the subject was just beginning to assume its modern form.

William James had just published his two volumes on Psychology but I haven’t been able to discover who Sweetser’s teachers may have been at Yale. Departments of Psychology were rare at American Universities in the 1880s. However, as Sweetser apparently studied whatever psychology was available it seems certain that he would have been at least aware of Charcot’s experiments at the Salpetriere that were world famous. It is also clear that he was familiar with the idea of the sub- or unconscious. However much Ed may have retained, as he himself was relatively well informed on psychological matters when he began writing the foundations of his knowledge were probably formed at Sweetser’s knee.

Having left Ed in the wilderness for a year, George T. then moved him to the East Coast to Massachusetts’ Phillips Academy. Ed was now being moved around almost with the frequency of a military brat with its devastating personality consequences. Having consorted with a rough bunch of fellows for a year, Ed was now in an elite school without a great deal of preparation.

He was in Idaho at the end of Wyoming’s Johnson County War when the big ranchers squeezed out the small ranchers. Many of the small ranch soldiers whose shootings were classified as murders had fled to Idaho where Ed knew one or two; from the company of murderers, or killers at any rate, he was now in with a bunch of elitist schoolboys.

When his brothers had attended Yale their father had refused them an allowance that would have allowed them to associate with their richer school fellows as equals. If he continued the practice with Ed at Phillips then an extra burden was placed on the kid that would help explain his behavior. At any rate he assumed the posture of clown to gain acceptance while neglecting his studies. Naturally he was requested to leave.

Certainly he could have expected to return home and attend school in Chicago but this was not his father’s plan. His father enrolled him at the Michigan Military Academy outside Detroit billed as The Paris Of The West which is most laughable. This was the second great psychological trauma in his life adding another major accretion to his personality. Ed rebelled at being sent away again.

This was not merely rejection but also a condemnation of him by his father. As Ed saw the situation, with a great deal of accuracy, the Military Academy was just a holding pen for juvenile delinquents whose parents didn’t know how to handle them so they put them away in what was essentially an asylum or reform school where they could get some ‘discipline.’

Ed was horrified at these suggestions about himself coming from his own father. He rebelled at the rejection and its implications. He left the academy to return home or as his biographer Porges puts it, he ran away. George T. wasn’t going to put up with that. He collared Ed and dragged him back to Detroit, told him to stay put or…who can say or what? At any rate crushed and rejected Ed had no choice but to obey, but his mother and father died for him that day, slain by their own hand. Thus when Ed’s literary alter ego Tarzan came into existence in 1912 his parents had been slain by murderous apes and Tarzan was an orphan as Ed imagined himself.

General Charles King, Soldier and Author

Ed stayed at the Academy into 1896 when he was between twenty and twenty-one. He took the Commandant of the Academy, Charles King, as his surrogate father and mother. Because King was a captain in the Army, later a general, Ed decided he wanted to be an Army officer too. It is also noteworthy that King was a successful author of novels which Ed may have wanted to emulate when he too chose to become an author. One of King’s first novels was An Apache Princess while Ed’s first commercial effort was titled A Princess Of Mars.

Ed attempted in vain to win an appointment to West Point but failed. Then in 1896 while serving as an instructor at the Michigan Military Academy Ed foolishly abandoned his post choosing to join the Army as an enlisted man before the school term ended.

By now twenty years old his past with its many personality accretions had formed him. His original personality had been destroyed to be replaced by that caused by John. The accretions accumulated as he was shifted from school to school and West to East to MidWest leaving him dazed and confused while the final accretion of that youthful period was the devastating rejection by his parents all of which left him depressed and fatalistic. The high expectations of his childhood had been completely eliminated. The bright young boy had been transformed into a gloomy young man. But no former personality had disappeared; they all lived on in his unconscious where circumstances could revive any or all at the appropriate moment.

But, one is still alive and one must toddle on. Ed was not lazy or adverse to work. His intellectual interests were vast. He was a great wide ranging reader.

In the next part then, let’s turn to his personality forming accretions from reading and his general intellectual , social and political milieu.

　

Pt. I: Edgar Rice Burroughs And The Accreted Personality

Edgar Rice Burroughs

And

The Accreted Personality

Part I

by

R.E. Prindle

Dr. Pinel Unchaining The Inmates

 

The post-French Revolution period begins the rapid development of the Aryan mind. The Enlightenment laid the foundation of that development. Shortly after mid-nineteenth century the French astronomer, Camille Flammarion, was able to announce that Astronomy and Psychology would be the key disciplines of the future. The break with the religious consciousness of the past ten thousand years or so would be fraught with immense dangers, dangers which we are still combating.

The social ideology of the present asserts that all people are of the same stage of mental development. This is, of course, absolute nonsense. There are still hundreds of millions if not a billion or two who still maintain a stone age view of the world. Nor are all of them in other parts of the world, a vast number are here in the Americas and Europe. In addition there are billions still enmeshed in a religious consciousness while only perhaps a hundred million or two have actually evolved into the scientific consciousness. Hence we have the terrifically repressive  attempted subversion of science by the Semitic religions.

So, it should be clear at first glance that not all people are equally developed or endowed nor are all cultures of the same value.

The French scientist and neo-romantic novelist Camille Flammarion noted mid-nineteenth century that the two most important intellectual disciplines for the future would be Astronomy and Psychology. I think that has proven true.

A major discovery of the century was the notion of the split or multiple personality. A term currently in use is Dissociation. Neither is accurate. I advance the term Accretive Personality. That is one’s personality is made up of many personality variations as a result of growth and experience. In periods of stress it is quite easy to escape oppressive reality by slipping into what is essentially an alternate reality or a parallel personality, if you will.

The Salpetriere

This was not a new phenomenon, merely the shock of recognition. In Greek mythology, for instance, when the stress of the mid life crisis hit, the hero went through a period of madness, that is to say he adopted a parallel personality until he was able to reorganize his mental attitude to new realities.

In Europe, under the stress of an insane quasi-Semitic religion in which Satan took a prominent role, it was common for the stressed to become ‘possessed’ by demons or, in other words, to split the personality. That is the person showed a parallel personality. The transition point to the beginning of secular understanding came when Dr. Anton Mesmer matched his secular method of exorcism against the ecclesiastical method of exorcism and won. So one might say that modern psychology derived from the problem of the dual personality- the Jekyll and Hyde effect. However dual or multiple personality was not recognized as such until announced in Jean-Martin Charcot’s clinic at the Salpetriere hospital in Paris in the mid-eighties.

Charcot studied hysterics. Hysterics are dealing with a lot of stress, hence escape through an alternate personality would be an easy choice. Charcot and the Salpetriere aren’t exactly household words so let’s take a moment to explain the situation in which modern psychology was born.

It is also necessary to bear in mind changes in scale. What is good for one stage of growth is not good for another. As the scale of things progresses from tiny to small to medium to large to huge to gigantic new forms have to be adopted to suit the new circumstances. These transition points are difficult to adjust to but once adjusted to are considered so normal that those who resisted the old change are equally resistant to adapt to the next level. Of course the young of each scale is born into it and has no adaptation to make although they will at the next change of scale.

Thus the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Era masked to a very large degree a major change of scale so that after Waterloo a seemingly complete break with the past had taken place. It was a new world in the morning. So in the years leading up to the Great War another change of scale had taken place that masked the new world that popped into place in the twenties. I picked up the concept from that astute observer, H.G. Wells, who noted the emerging change in scale at the turn of the century. That great ship, the Titanic, that went down in ‘12 may be considered as representative of that change.

Thus with the change of consciousness that actually took place in 1795 the new consciousness became clear after Waterloo. Gone was the religious notion of ‘possession by evil spirits’ to be replaced soon by the concept of multiple personality. Thus whereas in the past the insane had been treated as raving beasts, chained to walls and whatever a Dr. Pinel at Paris’ Salpetriere began a more humane treatment with an attempt to understand the causes of insanity. The approach was parodied amusingly by Edgar Allen Poe in his story The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether in which the inmates revolted and took over the asylum.

The Salpetriere was a large compound of several acres with thousands of residents, mainly women from whom the subjects who became the hysterics that the great Dr. Jean-Martin Charcot began to study as a neurologist, as the early psychiatrists were known. The field of Psychology is divided in two. On the one side psychiatrists who must be MDs and who believe mental ailments are biologically derived and hence to be treated medically with drugs or, one shudders to think of it, operations like pre-frontal lobotomy or electric or insulin shock ‘therapy.’ Psychologists, who are PhDs with little or no medical training treat neuroses and psychoses as malfunctions of reason caused by experiential traumas.

Charcot as an MD originally sought biological causes for the hysteria he studied although he was coming around to a psychological viewpoint just before he died in 1893. Thus from being chained before Dr. Pinel released them these women, hysterics, while being confined to the Salpetriere were given freedom of movement within the hospital with its flowers and walkways making for a much more pleasant environment for them and one unobtainable to them on the outside.

Now, the great Dr. Anton Mesmer introduced hypnotism to Europe as a discipline in the years just before the Revolution. Naturally something so new and seemingly revelatory did not find immediate acceptance, indeed, it was treated as nonsense. Nevertheless people of learning, doctors, persisted in experimenting with it. Thus, when Charcot came to be the director of the Salpetriere, to the dismay of his profession he introduced the practice in his treatment of his hysterics and thus legitimized its use. Hypnosis, too, was new and little understood.

Pierre Janet

The essence of hypnosis is suggestion and Charcot did not understand suggestion. The rival hypnosis school led by Auguste Liebeault and Hippolyte Bernstein at Nancy to the East of Paris was aware of the effect of suggestion but not necessarily the nature of what it was. Actually suggestion is whatever enters the mind and is accepted. If one wakes to a beautiful sunny morning it is suggested to oneself that the day will be a good day. Acting on that suggestion, post-hypnotic one might say, one will try to make the day a great one to hang onto that feeling. The mind is naturally open to suggestion as it must be; in an active mind one can discriminate to some extent as to what suggestions will be accepted and which rejected. Under hypnosis in which the mind has been put into a passive state the ability to discriminate and reject has been greatly reduced so that a hypnotist can plant a suggestion that then becomes what Charcot’s associate, Pierre Janet, called an idee fixe, or in other words, a fixation that will remain in your mind until executed. This notion may be imparted by a human agent, books, movies, radio or any medium that is capable of influencing the mind. One must be aware of this. It isn’t necessary to have a hypnotist standing in front of you saying ‘look into my eyes.’

As I say, Charcot was convinced that hysteria was biological, that is to say caused by a lesion to the brain, so that while he hypnotized his female subjects at the Salpetriere he wasn’t aware of the nature of suggestion.

Marie Corelli

Now, the eighteen seventies and eighties were terrifically exciting at all levels. They did things differently then. As has been said: The past is another country; they do things differently there. The past is never to be judged by current standards although the latter are useful for comparison. Thus when Lister suggested that antiseptics ought to be used in the operating room his suggestion was stoutly resisted although true and nearly universally accepted today. On the other hand Evolution although true is more stoutly resisted today in a religious reaction than it was in the last quarter of the nineteenth century so don’t feel all that superior.

While Charcot was arguing with himself as to whether hysteria was biological or mental, in the mid-eighties two of his associates easily grasped that hysteria was a mental problem. These two were Sigmund Freud and Pierre Janet.

Freud at that time, 1886, was making the transition to psychology from medicine. He was an MD. Charcot was not alone in dealing with mental matters. The understanding of dreams for instance was developing rapidly. When Freud published his Interpretation Of Dreams in 1900 he cited dozens of competent researchers dating as far back as the 1860s. In 1886 alone two novels dealing with the subconscious and split personality were published, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde and Marie Corelli’s Wormwood. Corelli cites Charcot as an influence so she very likely had attended his semi-public presentations of hysterics under hypnosis at his hospital.

Sigmund Freud

Going back further, Freud, a German Jew, was undoubtedly familiar with the psychological work of the German romantics. At any rate he spent about four months at the Salpetriere studying Charcot’s work and methods. It is likely that the foundation of his psychoanalysis was laid there. While Charcot was struggling to determine whether hysteria was biological or mental, Freud, himself a neurologist, was able to perceive that, as he later put it, hysterics were suffering from reminiscences. In other words they fixated on past experiences which dominated their minds and behavior.

Pierre Janet, Charcot’s student and associate, came to the same conclusion probably at the same time. He expressed the problem more accurately when he determined that hysterics suffered from one or more idee fixes, that is a fixed idea or, in other words, a fixation centered around a specific past event or events.

Indeed, all the women at the Salpetriere had been battered and brutalized by life with no means of self-assertion or resistance. Unable to express their own will they retreated into ineffective hysterics finally ending up as semi-insane in Charcot’s hospital.

Now, split or multiple personality. No one, especially these women, have the personality they are born with. Over the course of our lives circumstances require us to respond in different ways, sometimes a personality is overwhelmed with a consequent personality adaptation or change and in extreme cases, insanity.

All very well, but what happens to the original and/or various personalities that were submerged. It is impossible for them to vanish from the mind so they must live on submerged by a more powerful personality impulse. Depending on the individual then, everybody must have at least one alternate personality. Stevenson and Corelli were demonstrating this in their novels.

The good Dr. Jekyll had had a wild streak in his youth that he forcefully repressed to become the totally respectable man of medicine. But, he longed for his rough and rowdy days so in Stevenson’s story he invents a potion, I’m sure whisky would have been just as effective, that allows him to free his original personality. In the course of his experiment the earlier personality suppresses the later one assuming control of Jekyll’s mind. Much the same thing happens in Corelli’s novel. Thus we have personality accretion.

Charcot’s hysterics, because of the side show atmosphere the Good Doctor created, became world famous, a sort of show people. Charcot even took them on the road for demonstrations and, heaven forbid, loaned them to other doctors for experimentation.

It was during one such loan in 1888 that Jules Janet, Pierre’s brother, made a startling discovery. He was experimenting on Blanche Wittman, the Queen of Hysterics, when having hypnotized her into what Charcot called the first state, instead of progressing to the second state, he decided to put her into a deeper trance. At that point Blanche was able to dissociate her personality from her normal state to what I assume was her original personality. She turned into a happy effervescent bubbly girl. In other words she had stripped every accreted personality adjustment to return to the period before society violated her womanhood.

One might ask where this personality came from? It is not necessary to assume either the supernatural or the paranormal. The personality did not come from outside her but was merely an early personality that had been submerged and denied existence by repeated abuse. If Jules Janet had pressed on he might have found three, four or more variations of Blanche Wittman. Indeed, when Charcot died in 1893 Blanche ceased having hysterical attacks and became quite normal assuming yet another personality although it was not recognized as such. She then took responsible employment at the hospital until she died under tragic circumstances.

Thus during one’s life one assumes many variations as one’s personal circumstances dictate. And one expresses them in many different ways. As an example of personality accretion I am going to use the history of the American fantasy and science fiction writer, Edgar Rice Burroughs. He has especial value as his biography is well developed and he has talked voluminously about his mental states through his large body of fiction which is all autobiographical in nature.

Dr. Jean Martin Charcot Demonstrating Hypnosis And Hysteria

Part II follows.

A Review: Psychoanalyzing Captain America

A Review

Psychoanalyzing Captain America

by

R.E. Prindle

From Out Of The Depths

 Must we be responsible for our own dreams?

 –Sigmund Freud

     In answer to the above question by Herr Doktor Professor Freud in his dream book, The Interpretation Of Dreams. published in the year 1900 Prof. Freud said that dreams were the royal road to the unconscious.  He then proceeded to suppress the conscious will releasing the unconscious will to dominate the personality.

     Of course in 1900 movies, TV and comic books were in the future and unforeseen by the Professor.  It is through those media that the unconscious visualizes itself.  The Dream is manifested, the unconscious becomes realized.

     In the case of the movie, Captain America: The First Avenger, first came the dream then came the comic book, then with movie technology undreamed of  in 1940 when Joe Simon and Jack Kirby conceived the character, brought to the screen today.  Comic books and movies are true projections of the unconscious.    As might be seen by anyone with a ticket Capt. America is less a story than a dream, a dream that Sigmund Freud defined as wish fulfillment.  So, one must examine the movie as a wish from the subconscious fulfilled as a visualization on the screen.  What does the dream-wish fulfill?

     First off we have a powerless wimp being knocked about by the big bad bully.  We have a brief anti-bully list and then move on.  However in this Cain and Abel story the rolls of bully and bullied are clear.  The wimp then wishes to join the army to fight Hitler and is rejected on several counts of inferiority.  But, never fear, the last shall be first.

     Now, in 1940 the US was not at war with anybody while the America First Committee was determined to keep the country that way.  But a powerful coalition led by the Jews had determined the European conflict  was a ‘just’ war while it was morally compulsory for the US to butt in somewhat like Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, Libya and a few other places today.  Unlike Viet Nam the usual suspects who opposed that war endorse all the current wars.  The voice of dissent is unheard throughout the land.

     So, bearing Freud’s Interpretation Of Dreams in mind that demonstrates the connection between dreams and the unconscious, Captain America is a daydream or psychological projection of Jack Kirby’s ne Jacob Kurtzberg and Joe Simon’s of Brooklyn N.Y.  The relationship of these comic book writers to Judaism is explained by Rabbi Simcha Weinstein in his book Up, Up, And Oy Vey!:  How Jewish History, Culture, And Values Shaped The Comic Book Superhero.  This quote explains the real life origin of Capt. America:

     Growing up in poverty, Kirby (born Jacob Kurtzberg) dreamed of being an artist but was forced to drop out of Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute after only one day because of financial hardship.  Instead Kirby worked on newspaper comic strips under gentile-sounding pseudonyms such as Jack Curtis, Curt Davis, and Lance Kirby until he finally settled on the name Jack Kirby.

     Kirby and his partner, Joe Simon, worked at Martin Goodman’s Timely Comics, where the mostly Jewish staff openly despised Hitler.  When Goodman saw the preliminary sketches for Captain America, he immediately give Kirby and Simon their own comic book.  The character was an instant hit, selling almost one million copies an issue.  “The U.S. hadn’t yet entered the war when Jack and I did Captain America, so maybe he was our way of lashing out against the Nazi menace.  Evidently, Captain America symbolized the American people’s sentiments.  When we were producing Captain America we were outselling Batman, Superman and all the others.”  Simon later commented.

     Well, not quite all the others, as Whiz Comics Captain Marvel was the best selling comic of both the war years and the later forties.  Certainly my favorite.

     As in the years before the War The America First Committee enjoyed overwhelming popularity amongst Americans I would question Simon’s notion that Captain America overwhelmingly represented American opinion.  As there were six million Jews in the country I might suggest the response from that quarter of ’Americans’ was more overwhelming than elsewhere.  Jews might easily have accounted for sixty to eighty percent of sales.

     It is also probable that no real American would ever have invented a corny jingoistic persona like Captain American.  The image was certainly repulsive to me as a child.   My prime comic reading years were from 1947 to 1950 and I and my entire generation rejected Captain America while embracing Captain Marvel.  Even then Superman was a distant competitor to Captain Marvel which is why DC comics sued Whiz for copyright violation.

     We disliked the hokey repulsive jingoism of Captain America as well as his dumb outfit and the stupid shield.  (I’m speaking as a nine year old here.)  Of course we knew from nothing about Judaism and almost less about any other religious sects but there was something othery about Capt. America and Superman although we embraced the equally Jewish Batman.

     The origins of Captain America then emanated from the Jewish dream subconscious of Jack Kirby which was quite different from ours.  He, therefor, as all writers must, made Capt. America in his real existence and from his dream fantasies.  Thus, giving his creation the goy name of Steve Rogers he nevertheless gave him a Brooklyn Jewish origin.  As Rabbi Weinstein also a Brooklyn Jew explains Jews had a sort of dual identity as powerless Jews posing as goys in a powerful goy world.  Thus the sickly ineffective Rogers undergoes a scientific experiment that turns him essentially from a 98 lb. Jewish weakling into an all powerful goy Charles Atlas.  I’m sure Kirby saw those ads while growing up.

     Rogers having now been turned into a Superman had to have a name.  Superman being taken Super Jew was out for obvious reasons or even Super Hebrew, there was no Israel at the time, so Kirby settled on Captain America.  Rabbi Weinstein again:

     Of course a more literal reading of the costume is that it is the American flag brought to life.  Captain America’s star is, after all, five-pointed, not six pointed like the Star of David.  The flag-as-costume notion reinforces the ideal of assimilation [Jews 'becoming' Americans].  By literally cloaking their character in patriotism, Kirby and Simon became true Americans.

     In 1940 there was a desperate struggle going on between the Jews and America First who the Jews styled as American Fascists, i.e. actual Hitlerites.  By that line of reasoning  the Jews became the true Americans, creators and protector of genuine American Democracy while Anglo-Americans or Native Americans or America Firsters were out to destroy the great American Dream the Jews had discovered.  This is the theme of Philip Roth’s novel The Plot Against America backdated to this period.  The movie Captain America could easily be subtitled The Plot Against America Foiled.

     Rabbi Weinstein once again:

     Despite the patriotic appearance, Captain America’s costume also denotes deeply rooted [Jewish] tradition.  Along with other Jewish-penned superheroes, Captain America was in part an allusion to the golem, the legendary creature said to have been constructed by the sixteenth century mystic Rabbi Judah Loew to defend the Jews of medieval Prague.  “The golem was pretty much the precursor of the superhero in that in every society there is a need for mythological chracters, wish fulfillment.  And the wish fulfillment in the Jewish case of the hero would be someone who could protect us.  This kind of storytelling seems to dominate in Jewish culture,” commented Will Eisner.

      According to tradition a golem is sustained by inscribing the Hebrew word emet (truth) upon its forehead.  When the first letter is removed, leaving the word met (death) the golem will be destroyed.  Emet is spelled with the letters aleph, rem and tav.  The first letter, aleph, is also the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, the equivalent of the letter A.  Captain America wears a mask with a white A on his forehead- the very letter needed to empower the golem.

     So, you and I thought the A stood for America but it is actually a symbol of Judaism.  Captain America then is an unconscious dream projection of the Jewish subconscious following Freud’s thought in his Interpretation of Dreams.  Now we know who and what the  Captain America or The First Avenger is.

2.

     Like Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America the movie is backdated to 1940 although as the US is already in the war perhaps 1942-43 although in Kirby and Simon’s dream vision they could have already employed the usurped power of America in 1940.  However the movie writers, are writing today so assume different interpretations and aspects.

     In point of fact Hitler no longer exists except in the Jewish mind so the relevance of the movie is hampered.  Goys are not reliving the Hitler experience on a daily basis.  To correct this and bring the Nazi threat forward Hitler is relegated to an inept showman while the real brain behind Nazism is the Hydra.

      The Hydra in Greek mythology was a matriarchal year deity with seven heads and one neck,  Six of the heads prepresented the last six months of the year while the seventh head and neck represented the recurring and indestructible year.  Everytime a head was cut off it grew back as time does march on.

      When the Patriarchy was displacing the Matriarchy the story changed somewhat.  Hercules was sent to fight the Hydra and everytime he cut off a head three grew back.  Thus the Hydra is represented in the movie as a Red Octopus with eight arms thus embracing the world.  Ils sont partout. Obviously Hydra is a dream projection of anti-Semitism the arch fiend of the Jewish unconscious.

     The Jewish Doctor Erskine, Reinstein in the comic, playing God botches his first attempt at creating the superman, Hydra/Cain, but finds perfection in Capt. America/Abel.  Thus Cain is blighted while Abel is God’s favorite.  While Captain America begins as a song and dance man belittling Hitler on stage, when the fighting starts Hitler is relegated offstage while the super-Hitler, Hydra, steps front and center.

     While the Americans that Rogers as Capt. America have nothing like the incredible weapons and organization of Hydra they are nevertheless with their bare hands able to defeat him.  He is however immortal like all dream fears so that as Arnold said:  He’ll be back.

     The action is standard comic book action fare and needs no further comment.  You could have written it yourself.  Pretty clicheed but if you like this stuff you’ll find it very satisfying.

     However Captain America remains a Jewish hero in American drag with a purloined identity.

Cartoon Jack Kirby

A Review, Pt. 10: Tarzan The Invincible by Edgar Rice Burroughs

A Review

Themes And Variations

The Tarzan Novels Of Edgar Rice Burroughs

#14  Tarzan The Invincible

by

R.E. Prindle

Part 10

The Prohpet- Edgar Rice Burroughs

Religion: Standing On The Promises

Even though at the beginning of the novel Burroughs says he does not consider Politics and Religion suitable topics for fiction- unless highly fictionalized- the two topics seem to constitute a major portion of his work.

The Great One does not feel called upon to exhibit a foolish consistency.   In Invincible the first sentence is:  I am no historian.  In Tarzan Triumphant he says: ‘Being merely a simple historian and no prophet…’   So in the few months between Invincible and Triumphant he has gone from no historian to a mere simple one while hinting that while he is no prophet he may become one.  We can’t be certain what the future holds in store for him.  I’ve already sensed that he is a prophet.  Tarzan is the god and Edgar Rice Burroughs is his prophet.  So much for Mohammed being the end of the prophetic line.

Under cover of fiction Triumphant will deal extensively with the Jewish and Christian religions so this might be an appropriate place to review some aspects of the history and nature of religion.

Evolution occurs on many levels other than the biological.  The biological naturally controls all other forms of evolution.  The species has developed from a time of pre-hominid ancestors that must at some time have diverged from that of the other anthropoids as unpleasant as that may be for a certain type of mind although, for the life of me, I can’t imagine why.  One of the more significant areas of evolution has been that of the brain.  Nothing should be clearer than that the brain of HSIII is superior to the brain of the first Homo Sapiens and species which evolved from the Last Hominid Predecessor.  I mean gorillas must have a relatively primitive brain.

There is no reason for this not to be so.  The brain of the infant Homo Sapiens continues to develop outside the womb until at least the early twenties.  At each stage the ability of the brain to function increases.  As above, so below; as in the macro so in the micro.

Thus as in each stage of evolution from the first Homo Sapiens to the present most highly evolved specimen Homo Sapiens III, abilities to think and function have increased.  Thus HS’s understanding of the world and universe are immeasurably different from the first Homo Sapiens model.  I can’t imagine anyone who would dissent from that conclusion.

Now, except for the intermingling of human species certain human species would still be unacquainted with the approximately true nature of the world and universe that we have attained.  I don’t see how this can be disputed.  Without European influence the rest of the world would still think the earth was flat.  These are facts whether one likes them or not.  Indeed, even among the most advanced human species there are very large numbers who resist the scientific explanation of nature. These people still prefer the atavistic, antiquated religious Semitic explanation of natural phenomena.  These people can barely accept the notion of a heliocentric solar system, many don’t.  Why should anyone pay attention to them?

If one accepts that Homo Sapiens is 150K to 200K years old then it seems to me impossible that all human  intellectual development has occurred in the last ten thousand years.  Weapons of some sort have been in existence for many tens of thousands of years if not from the beginning of Homo Sapiens having been evolved from the Last Hominid Predecessor.  It seems evident to me that a highly developed civilization existed in the Med Basin beginning c. 100K years ago.  That doesn’t mean they had advanced Science it merely means that they had an organized society with relatively sophisticated thought processes and tools.  Religion is basically an attempt to understand and make order of the world.  All interpretations of the natural order must be based on that order.

Hence the North Polar stars which never set are the basis of religion.  The Polar stars rotate about the Pole over a period of some 25K odd years forming what is called a Great Year.  The Great year was made to conform to the terrestrial year of twelve months therefore being divided into twelve periods called Ages.

The Great Year with it twelve Ages formed the basis of religion.  We will call that religion the Astrological Religion.  Thus the religion goes back for tens of thousands of years as Sumerian records indicate.  These Ancients did not make up their lives or talk through the backs of their necks.

Each Age of the Astrological Religion had its male and female religious archetypes.  These are, perhaps most easily traced as far back as four ages, possibly five, in the Greco-Cretan mythology.  The historical ages are the Taurian, Arien, Piscean and the next, the Aquarian.  I am not a New Ager although I see no reason to disparage them and I am in sympathy with the outlook.  One may say that I am of the Astrological religious tradition as we will see, I think, was Edgar Rice Burroughs.

In ancient days the Hom Sapiens species were separated each having distinct territories so that in the Darwinian sense they were not yet in conflict.  When the last Ice Age came to an end flooding the Med Basin- this is not speculation, but fact- the civilization of the Basin was forced to higher ground bringing them into contact with the highland savages from West to East.  Thus civilization as we now know it began.

The first settlers of Mesopotamia brought the Astrological Religion with them or, according to Mesopotamian mythology a man-god named Oannes- the name Oannes evolved into Johannes or John- appeared from the sea to teach them the rudiments of civilization and the Astrological Religion.  Immense amounts of lore must have been lost, that is forgotten,  so perhaps that is where the legend of the Lost Word comes in.

Now, off to the East on the Arabian Peninsula a different species lived.  These were called the Semites or would be after the later Hebrews so named them after their mythical ancestor, Shem.  Mere desert dwellers the Semites were attracted to the glitter of the Astrological Religion.  There is no evidence that the Semites had a civilization or anything that could be called an actual culture of their own.  They merely mimicked the existing culture infiltrating it much as Europe and America are being infiltrated today by their descendants.  Eventually they will succeed the European civilization just as their ancestors did the Sumerian.

The evidence is that they had no religious forms of their own so that they attempted to take over both the physical and cultural edifices of their predecessor civilization, the Sumerian.

The Semites did not have the same mental organization or capabilities as their predecessors so they could maintain neither the civilization nor the religion.  The major conflict came at the transition from the Age of Taurus to the Age of Aries.  Here is where the real conflict between the Semites and Indo-Europeans or  the Semites and HSII & III begins to take its historical form.

When the Astrological Age changes the religious archetypes change.  For instance Cronus had been succeeded by Zeus at the transition from Taurus to Aries.  Zeus himself was succeeded by Jesus the Christ at the transition from Aries to Pisces.  Zeus would have been succeeded by Dionysus but the Semites either had to be accommodated or they forced Jesus of Nazareth on the Age which was later combined with the Kyrios Christos to form the composite deity the Semitic Jesus and Hellenic Christ.  The role of Paul was very important in forcing Jesus of Nazareth on the goyim as Burroughs attests in Triumphant.

As we are now about to transit from Pisces to Aquarius a new set of archetypes will emerge representing the current intellectual and psychological development of Homo Sapiens.

This raises the question of whether Burroughs was merely a simple historian or was he also a prophet.  Is Tarzan his offering for the role of the male archetype for the Aquarian Age?  I think he is.  For those who scoff at such an idea it would be wise to examine Burroughs relation to Mormonism during his stay in Salt Lake City.  If it was possible for Joseph Smith to befuddle the minds of intelligent Westerners with his nonsense in the middle of the nineteenth century, or Mohammed to impose his twaddle even in the seventh, then I see no reson to be amazed that Burroughs would attempt the same thing in the twentieth century.  I mean, look at this stuff for what it is.

Also, believe it or not, I read recently where someone thinks Oprah Winfrey could be the female archetype for the Aquarian Age.  Get out of here.  I don’t whether to laugh or barf.  So, the notion of religious archetypes for the new age is a fairly active one.  Any such discussions are in conflict with Semitism.  So, we’re back to that problem.

Semitism took identifiable form at the transit from Taurus to Aries.

The record of such happenings is, of course, much more recent than the transition from Taurus to Aries.  It could have been made up during the Babylonian captivity.  The Old Testament record was only recorded, perhaps even formulated, after the Captivity which began in 586 BC lasting for only fifty years although rather than return to the pleasure of the temple most Jews remained behind by the waters of Babylon just as their ancestors yearned for the fleshpots of Egypt.

To clarify the nature of human species according to Jewish sources:  The Jews argue that all mankind is derived from Jewish or Hebrew stock.  The only survivors of the great flood were Jews- Noah and his family.  The ancient Hebrews while knowing many cultures knew of only three species or stocks.  They acccordingly named them Hamites, Shemites and Japhetites after sons of Noah.  In their conversations with De Great Lawd which were frequently carried on in public He apparently dispensed information on a need to know basis so he withheld the info on the Mongolids and West African Negroes as no account of them is taken in the descendants of Noah.  A little gap in the perfect knowledge of the Old Testament.

Thus the Old Testament acknowledges the differences between the Semites, the Europeans or Japhetites and the Hamites are more than merely racial, which is to say Cosmetic.  Such an idea is of course in line with genetic learning.

The Med People or HSII devised a fluid religious system that allowed for the development or evolution of the human mind.  In other words they not only accepted but embraced change.  This is a quality of mind not shared by HSI, the Semites or the Mongolids.

Depending on what time period the Semites began the infiltration of Mesopotamia which may have overlapped the Geminian and Taurian Ages or perhaps fell completely within the Taurian Age there would have been no conflict with the Semitic need for stasis and the Astrological allowance for development, evolution or growth.  However, by the time of the transit from Taurus to Aries the Semites had gained political control of Mesopotamia while the religious control was still in the hands of the Aryan priesthood.

Following Astrological precedents the ancient Aryan priesthood wanted to change to the Arien archetypes.  In European Greece where the Semitic influence was lower the transit from Cronus to Zeus was made with only the usual warfare hence the legends of the Cronian Titans and the Olympians.

In Mesopotamia where the Semites were in the ascendant, according to Jewish myhthology, the Terahites, under the tutelage of Abram, disputed the succession with the ancient priesthood.  According to Jewish mythology Abram and the Terahites argued that the religious archetypes were eternal and there was no Astrological tradition.  Thus in the ancient world the Jews were believed to worship Saturn.  If Saturn were the Taurian archetype then this was very likely true as Saturn would then be the basis for the Eternal which the Jews do acknowledge worshipping.

In the Semitic manner, then, the Semitic mind being incapable of  accepting change, having been fully developed before they emerged from the desert, went into opposition to the Astrological Religion.   Thus the conflict changed from a termporal one to a ‘spiritual’ one.  At that point then diaspora was possible without the laws of national identity.  As a spiritual entity, Judaism was born.  The notion of Semitism developed along with  its opposite anti-Semitism.  Christ = Anti-Christ.  Thus the explanation of the origin of this so-called anti-Semitism is simply explained.  In reality Semitism was in conflict with the Astrological Religion and hence was anti-Astrological.  Any other religion must perforce be anti-Semitism.  The struggle then became a struggle for the souls of men as well as their bodies.

Once again in direct conflict Europe and Asia began a long theological dispute.  As the Piscean transition progressed the Semites began their attempt to convert the Astrological religion to Semitism.  They were effective in shutting down intellectual inquiry which is the motive force for change.  We will see this again in the nineteenth century efforts of Marx, Freud and Einstein.

As the ancient world ended, its religious legatees were the Catholic Church and Judaism.  All other ancient religions disappeared from the face of the earth except in ineffective remnants or underground movements.

It is interesting that fourteen hundred years after being forbidden the Arien Age worship of Zeus has been made lawful again in Greece.  There’s really no place in the Aquarian Age for the Olympian pantheon but it is an interesting atavistic attempt reviving as it were the struggle between the Arien Age religions of Olympia and Israel.

Gradually the Egyptian and Anatolian elements of the Christian manifestation of the Piscean archetypes have been displaced in favor of the Semitic models.  The Catholic Church was able to contain the Semitic influence in Europe from the end of the Western Roman Empire to the Age of the Enlightenment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.  The Enlightenment let Simitism loose on the world again.

While the Roman Empire militarily defeated the political entity of Jerusalem from 66 AD to 135 AD the battle weakened the Empire allowing in Asiatic influences like the Emperor Heliogabalus.  Then in the seventh century AD the present form of the struggle between Europe and Asia took form when the prophet Mohammed formed the Moslem Religion based largely on its predecessor religion, Judaism.

The Moslems stormed across North Africa into Spain and France where they were stopped at Tours by Charles The Hammer.  It took nearly one thousand years to drive the Moslems from France and Spain which result was finally obtained in 1492.

As the Moors were driven from Europe by Ferdinand and Isabella they also expelled the Semitic Jews.  In the evolutionary sense this was the other correct response to an invasion of a competing species.  The other, of course, would have been extermination.  Thus at this stage of European history they were responding in an evolutionarily correct manner.  England had expelled the Jews in 1190 and France in 1307.  The various small German States fluctuated in their attitude sometimes expelling sometimes readmitting.  There were always German States that allowed Semites.  Otherwise the great mass of European Semites lived in the no-mans land between Russia and Germany that would after Russian annexation be called the Pale of the Settlement meaning this area was roped off for Jewish residence.

While these actions may have been evolutionarily correct and probably even politically correct the defensive party seldom thinks in such grand terms as evolutionary inevitability.  So, really, in evolutionary terms the only correct response is extermination.  The Shona of Zimbabwe fully understand this principle.  I say this to show I am not springing anything new or unusual on you.  These natural responses are going on today in Zimbabawe, South Africa, South and West Sudan, Indonesia, in former Yugoslavia where Moslems are exterminating non-Moslems.  If you don’t believe these things, open your eyes, open your eyes.

Now, wars do not end after seeming victory.  The expelled Moslems of Spain continued the war establishing the Barbary Pirates who then preyed on Europe for the next three hundred years plundering and enslaving Europeans.  The actual invasion of North Africa first by Spain and then by France was an attempt to end this savage warfare.

Burroughs would have been brought up on the legend of millions for defense but not one cent for tribute as was my generation.  Until recently I believed that Americans had ended Barbary piracy.  This was just something we were told in the fourth grade.  Actually the Barbary pirates were put down only in 1830 when France conquered and annexed Algeria.

France at that time ought to have either exterminated or driven out the Moslems.  Having once expelled them, if they had had the power, they should have swept across North Africa, as the Moslems had done, driving the Moslems before them until they had reached Suez.

Thus Africa would have been reclaimed for Europe.  First it was held by the HSII survivors of the Med Basin flooding, then the Semitic-Carthaginians, then HSII Romans and back again to the Semitic Arabs.  So such a preemption was certainly historically justified.  The Moslems make a great noise about the Crusades but the modern problem was their offense of the Eruption From The Desert.  Get straight.

At the same time the Jewish and Arab Semitic struggles were going on  the yeast of the suppressed religions of the Middle East and philosophies of Greece were converting the Europeans from Semitic stasis to Aryan intellectual activity.  The Eastern Roman Empire fell at the time of the expulsion of the Jews and Moslems from Spain.  Scholars flooded out of the East.  These Egyptian, Greek and Syrian influences burst forth in the seventeenth and eighteenth century as the Enlightenment.  Previously the discussion had been between the Semitic reigions of Judaism, Moslemism and Christianity.  The level of human consciousness between the three was nearly equal although still retaining some measure of the Astrological Religion.  This is a very serious subject for study.  Christianity, such as it was, was intellectually superior.  Remember, however, that Catholicism was so imbued with the limited Semitic intellect that the Pope made Galileo deny the notion of a heliocentric system.

The release of the Scientific Consciousness after the long suppression of several hundreds of years put the inferior religious consciousnesses on the defensive.  The Semitic counterattack going on today is the culmination of the Jewish response to the Enlightenment.  It is imperative that a Scientific offensive be made against this anterior and surpassed form of the evolution of human consciousness.  As in the past a victory cannot be achieved without a perhaps bloody and costly struggle.  Such as is going on now.

We, you readers, Burroughs and I, are concerned with the middle of the Englightenment period here, say from 1890 to 1935.  I think we will see that Edgar Rice Burroughs is deeply and constructively involved in this struggle between the Religious and Scientific Consciousnesses.

As I’ve noted before, the Christian response to the scientific challenge was to declare either the Pope or the Bible infallible. Protestants didn’t have a Pope so they declared the Bible infallible.  Same thing.  American Liberals who evolved from the Puritan/Abolitionist nexus essentially became secular religionists.  It is to be remembered that the Puritans the Liberals evolved from considered themselves neo-Hebrews hence the new Chosen People.  According to John Adams as Neo-Hebrews they even rejected the celebration of Christmas.  Thus Liberals tend to give science  a religious spin rejecting Christianity.

The Jews on the other hand confronted by a hard edged Science that could not be bent to Semitic ideas decided to co-opt Science perverting it so that it resembles their religion.  All these responses have been taking place since the French Revolution of 1789 which emancipated the Jews removing them from Roman Catholic control.

As I pointed out in an earlier essay there was a brilliant episode on the TV show Twilight Zone in which monks had captured and imprisoned Satan.  They made the mistake of allowing a lost traveler to stay the night in the monestery.  The monks warned the visitor to pay no attention to the entreaties of the prisoner to release him.  The traveler did not heed the warning and prisoner who was Satan was released again in the world.  A little allegory.

Thus the Revolution and Napoleon emancipated the Jews who immediately began the conquest of Europe.  France was the first to fall.  Karl Marx then hi-jacked Socialism in the name of Communism.  Communism negates change in favor of stasis.  Its story is all regulation and control, no different than Judaism.  An elite administers to the ‘masses’ as the Chosen People administers to the goys.

Just as the Moslems are called to prayer five times a day and the Jews are expected to apply their 613 commands to every action before they take it, so Communism coopts the individual into the collectivity and regulates his every action.

Using Socialism as its cutting edge the way was paved for Communism in Europe.

Burroughs first encountered Socialism on the streets of Chicago as Socialists marched along under their waving red banners.  The scene made an indelible impression on the young boy resulting after the Russian Revolution in his book, Under The Red Flag.  Thus the Semites coopted the political ideology of the next one hundred years.

Science unfolded very quickly in the years following Darwin’s Origin Of Species.  Particularly great progress was made in the scientific understanding of the mind.  Psychology then was coopted by the Jew, Sigmund Freud.  It is rather difficult to understand why all research seems to have been channeled through Freudianism.  A rather fecund area of research seems to have been enveloped into one train of thought.

Freud quickly established his version of the static ‘unconscious’ as the sole vision of the mind.  He demoted the conscious mnd to a position of irrelvance.  His intention is quite clear.  The conscious mind is the engine of change.  By emphasizing the static unconscious combined with is vision of sex, which is to say only sexual intercourse, he was attempting to disarm the conscious mind and hence stop change or in other words establish stasis.  Success in such a course is not instantaneous so naturally science continues to progress as the pall of the unconscious spreads.  It doesn’t take a genius to understand why scientists are male and white.  Once you have established the fact that scientists will be male and white it becomes necessary to stultify and emasculate white males, thereby establishing stasis.    One would have to be blind not to see that that is exactly what is happening.

In point of fact the unconscious does not have an objective existence.  Its apparent existence is merely a mind in an arrested state of development.  The stasis is caused by fixations from challenges too stressful for the conscious mind to handle.  Once the fixations are dealt with and disappear, which is included in Freud’s understanding of the mind, the mind or personality is allowed to integrate, the Freudian unconscious disappearing.

Freud never integrated his personality remaining under the influence of his ‘unconscious’ so it is possible he didn’t understand the integration of the personality although his disciple, Jung, did.

However in Freud’s hands the unconscious became a weapon in the Semitic attempt to subjugate mankind.  This subjugation is not religious or moral but a matter of one species seeking dominance over the others.  Thus as Marx perverted the science of politics so Freud perverted the science of the mind.  The third perversion of Science was the conquest of physics by Einstein.  As Marx and Freud had interjected Semitic religious concepts into Politics and Psychology so Einstein did the same in Physics.  It matters little that there is some scientific content in the the theories of these men.  Their intent is to subordinate science to religion just as they had done vis-a-vis the Astrological Religion to the Semitic Religion when the Religious Consciousness was supreme.

That Einsten has been able to befog the minds of very intelligent men with his nonsense about the ‘fabric’ of space and time is nothing short of incredible.  Yet, by the second decade of the twentieth century the perverted notions of these three men were directing the course of research in these three essential disciplines.

Thus cored from within the Aryans were made susceptible to the rising time of Wahabi Moslemism that Lothrop Stoddard noted and warned against but which warning was defused due to the machinations of Jewish Semites within Western Civilization.

Running concurrently in the background contra to the Semitic stream was the evolving Astrological Religion.  Just as the evolution of the Dionysiac Archetype of the Age of Pisces developed for hundreds of years within the Arien dispensation of Zeus so the formation of the Aquarian has been taking place in the Age of Pisces.

The Enlightenment with its advance in the development of scientific consciousness was undoubtedly the opening salvo.  Unlike Semitic development the Astrological evolution was not institutionalized.  It is an idea that once set in motion is maintained by volunteers who get the idea and keep it perpetuating.

The principle is known.  For instance the notion that America is a land of immigrants has been allowed to develop to the point of self-destruction.  Of course that notion is constantly forwarded by the Liberal Coalition.  Even though it is obvious to the feeblest intelligence that the land is capable of supporting only a finite number of humans the madness has now reached the point where it is beleived that the whole world can be imported ‘to share what we have.’  One of the most, if not the most, bizarre notions in all history.  Such insanity is difficult to understand.

If one assumes, as one must, that human consciousness has been developing over the 150K years since humans evolved from the Last Hominid Predecessor then this transition to the Aquarian Age is the most dramatic development of history.  All previous stages of evolution have involved the progression from one stage of supernatural religion to another.  In this transition, for the first time, it has been proclaimed that ‘God is dead.’  That is to say a supernatural being who guide’s our destiny.

With the age of Science mankind realizes the true nature of appearances or Nature itself.  The concept of Evolution destroyed the basis of the Semitic religion.  There is no God, no Yahweh, no Allah, no stasis.  Oh, Lord, crikey Massa, don’t put me jail for saying that!  People who still believe in such non-existent deities have not been relegated to the dustbin of history.

Burroughs, and I consider this fairly remarkable, seems to have accepted the New Order of Science upon his first contact with Darwin and Evolution.  To say that ‘God is dead’ creates a vacuum in human consciousness such as the integration of the personality changes one’s mental structure leaving an aching vacancy between the vacation of the old personality and its replacement by the new.  Thus for the last hundred years or so mankind has been seaching for a metaphysical sucessor to the supernatural concept of God.

Just as the Enlightenment may have opened the way to the transition to the new consciousness so men have appeared to direct consciousness into constructive channels.  One of these writing as Burroughs writhed through the years between his marriage and the epiphany that produced his writing career and Tarzan was a man called Levi Dowling writing under the name of Levi.  His effort, I’m certain what he considered his gift to the world, was a work called The Aquarian Gospel Of Jesus The Christ.

I doubt Burroughs read this book although one never knows.  Chicago in the period before Los Angeles was the American hotbed of religious speculation.  One should never overlook that.  Burroughs lived in a welter of religious speculation.  Added to that Burroughs was heavily influenced by Lew Sweetser who was particularly interested and well informed on such topics.  Plus Burroughs lived in Mormonland for a decent period of time making a special visit ot the Mormon capital in 1898, while living in Salt Lake City for several months in 1903-04.  It would be hard to believe that he wasn’t learning of the Mormon doctrines especially how a noodle brain like Joseph Smith was able in the nineteenth century to impose his religious will on thousands of people.

Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, came from an area highly influenced by the fantastic religious notions of the Rhineland Pietistic Germans who became known as the Pennsylvania Dutch in America.  Magazines would have been full of this stuff while the Chicago papers must have covered these religious speculations in detail.  There is no reason to believe that Burroughs’ mind wasn’t filled with these speculations.  Such ideas spill out all over the pages of his books.

Many writers have noted that the initials of John Carter and John Clayton are JC the same as Jesus the Christ.  No Freudian believes in coincidence so there must be an intellectual connection.  Burroughs repeatedly says that the next deity must be a man-god and that is explicitly what Tarzan is.

There is nothing supernatural about Tarzan.  He is completely a man of science.  The most highly involved specimen of humanity ever.  If like Jesus the Christ he doesn’t have a magical birth he certainly has a miraculous upbringing from the age of one.  Unlike Sargon and Moses who were fished from rivers in baskets thus breaking continuity with human predecessors Tarzan was taken from the cradle by an ape thus breaking continuity with human predecessors while establishing a new human paradigm.  He in fact unites nature with civilization or, at least, a thin veneer of it.  Now, this is completely in keeping with the Dionysiac paradigm.

Dionysus has two sides.  The soft feminine side which has characterized the Piscean Age and the wild natural side which is meant to characterize the Aquarian Age.  The undisciplined natural side of human consciousness that the Patriarachy tried to suppress in favor of the strictly rational as characterized by Apollo wouldn’t be suppressed.  As mythology relates it, women could not be rational thus they embraced the Dionysiac religion imposing its ecstasies on society.  The Dionysiac ethos was so strong that it forced itself on the Delphic Oracle in partnership with Apollo.  Thus Delphi came to represent both the rational and irrational sides of consciousness.  The conscious and unconscious if you will.

Thus as the Piscean Age dawned and the religious archetypes changed from Zeus and Hera to Dionysus and Isis the struggle was to keep consciousness or the rational uppermost.  Of course, Dionysus and Isis were supplanted by the Semitic ideals Jesus and his mother, Mary who later became the Mother of God.  Later the Dionysiac Kyrios Christos was grafted onto Jesus of Nazareth and he became Jesus the Christ as Levi Dowling correctly notes.

One can’t be certain how learned Burroughs was in this lore.  He most probably was somewhat read in it while brilliantly intuiting the direction the evolution of consciousness must take.  One can never be sure although there is little in the surviving library to indicate he read deeply in such lore.  But then, so much of his knowledge he does evidence can’t be found in the library either.  Suffice it to say that such knowledge seems to be apparent in his stories.

Needless to say the idea of Tarzan expanded and developed over his career.  The Tarzan of the teens is quite different from the Tarzan of the thirties.  There are a couple of passages in Tarzan Triumphant that make you do a double take.  To wit:  p. 12

…Tarzan with knitted brows, looked down upon the black kneeling at his feet.

“Rise!” he commanded, and then; “Who are you and why have you sought Tarzan Of The Apes?”

“I am Kabarega, O Great Bwana,” replied the black.  “I am chief of the Bangalo people of Bungalo.  I come to the Great Bwana because my people suffer much sorrow and great fear and our neighbors, who are related to the Gallas, have told us that you are the friend of those who suffer wrongs at the hands of bad men.”

So here Tarzan as become a Sultan, a King, an Emperor, a great judge and dispenser of justice; shall we say a god?  Certainly the Lord Of The Jungle.  He also seems to have lost perspective but then, perhaps a god must keep up appearances.  We do have a new imperious Tarzan here who was not in any books before Invincible.

And then in Chapter 13, p. 98 in the Bowlderized Ballantine edition:

The “Gunner” was waiting for him upon the summit of the cliff directly behind the village, and for the second time these strangely dissimilar men met- dissimilar and yet, in some respects alike.  Each was ordinarily quiet to taciturnity, each was self-reliant, each was a law unto himself in his own environment; but there their similarity ceased for the extremes of environment had produced psychological extremes (opposites) as remotely separated as the poles.

The ape-man had been reared amidst scenes of eternal beauty and grandeur, his associates the beast of the jungle, savage perhaps, but devoid of avarice, petty jealousy, treachery, meanness, and intentional cruelty; while the “Gunner” had known naught but the squalid aspects of scenery defiled by man, of horizons grotesque with screaming atrocities of architecture, of an earth hidden by concrete and asphaltum and littered with tin cans and garbage, his associates, in all walks of life activated by grand and petty meannesses unknown to any but mankind.

“A machine gun has its possibilities,” said the ape-man, with the flicker of a smile.

The last near hundred years has been characterized by the attempt to overturn the Scientific  Consciousness in the name of two Arien Age Semitic religions, Judaism and Moslemism.  Indeed the ‘hand of God’ moves in mysterious ways.  Let’s look at one called ‘The Iron Law Of Wages.’  When you read in the Old Testament that ‘the poor shall be always with us’ you probably didn’t notice the arrogance of the remark nor that it is an actual ‘eternal’ tenet of Semitic religious belief.  The remark put into academic terms might be that the price of labor is the lowest price that a man can be gotten to do a job and that they may be worked to death like slaves thereby insuring that the poor shall always be with us.

The religious theory was formulated in scientific terms by David Ricardo in 1817.  Described as a British economist Ricardo was actually a Sephardic Jew.  That is to say his people fled Spain c.1492 in this case first to Holland and then to England which was undoubtedly done illegally after a period of Dutch acculturation.  It will be easily seen that Ricardo is adapting the ancient Semitic belief that the poor will always be with us to British conditions.  Indeed, as his formulation became the bedrock of employment practices it may be said he created poverty as the industrial age took shape until Henry Ford disproved this ancient historical bunk in 1914.  At that time he ‘unilaterally’ doubled the wages of unskilled labor to begin to create the prosperity that characterized American society until the reemergence of Semitic beliefs in the twenty-first century.

I personally deplore unionism but I also see its necessity.  Ford’s action raised the price of labor across the board.  Unionism was successfully fought by managers until unionism gained the backing of the government under FDR.  Backed by the government support unions made excessive and ridiculous demands until their momentum was stopped when Ronald Reagan sent the Air Controllers back to work which put unionism on the defensive.

Ricardo’s Iron Law Of Wages was not re-instituted at that time.  Fordism still prevailed.  Then jobs were exported wholesale to ‘multi-cultural’ areas of  low wages.  This was a crucial mistake for the world.  Even this did not break the back of labor.

The next strategic move was simply to open the borders allowing millions of immigrants who would work for lower wages under distressing conditions.  While immigration makes no sense on any other level it does put the Biblical managers in control of labor once again.  President Bush himself was a primitive religionist unacquainted even with the twentieth century who had surrounded himself with even more primitive Jewish religionists.  The war of religion against Science goes on.

Thus the Semitic counterattack against Science goes on.  Both major races of Semites, the Jews and Arabs, are waging war on the most primitive basis.  The issue is not the issue.  Immigration, the ostensible issue, is simply a Red Herring to disguise the true issue which is to defeat Fordism and re-institute Ricardo’s Iron Law Of Wages to ensure that the poor will always be with us.  The streets are now filled with the homeless.

This is the real reason Ford is called an anti-Semite and on that basis he certainly was.  God bless his memory.

So, the unsuspecting young Burroughs thrust himself into this melee.  Just as Ford was in actuality a religious prophet with a new industrial dispensation so Burroughs, judging from results set himself the task of creating an archetype for the Aquarian Age.  Something of value for one to aspire to.  One can trace the development of Tarzan from the miraculous babe to the finished archetype as the man-god.

As H.G. Wells noted in his First And Last Things there is a necessity for metaphysics.  Man does not live by bread alone.  While Science reduced everything to its material basis it destroyed the means of  ‘spiritual’ or psychological comfort.  With God dead mankind lost its identity and sense of direction.  As the old psychological projection of its identity had failed a new one was required that would be based on scientific material realities.

Levi Dowling’s vision of an Aquarian Jesus is unsatisfactory.  Burroughs vision of the competent Tarzan satisfies on several different levels.  Burroughs seems to have caught the essence of the Astrological Religion although there is difficulty in understanding how he came by his knowledge.  The rudiments can be clearly seen so the answer must be in his personal digestion of the ideas.  Lew Sweetser is obvious while perhaps Burroughs loyalty to a medical charlatan like Dr. Stace may possibly be explained by the man’s esoteric knowledge.  Such knowledge frequently goes hand in hand with special diets and medical nostrums.  There is no reason to believe that Stace didn’t sincerly believe in his nostums just because science couldn’t find a reason for them to be effective.  Men have misled themselves to a much greater degree than that.  Nevertheless I am convinced that Burroughs acquired his New Age beliefs as evidenced by Tarzan more from his associates’ conversation than reading.

The idea of Tarzan as the man-god culminates in Tarzan The Invincible and Tarzan Triumphant.  With these two novels he is a fully functioning psychological projection of the Aquarian Age.  The ‘spritual’ basis for Western man to regain its psychological balance destroyed by the ‘death’ of God.

He is what stands between the immolation of Euroamerican men on the altars of Semitism and the triumph of the scientific Aquarian Age.

Mankind, or at least Euroamerican mankind, must make the great leap for mankind into the Scientific Consciousness, into evolution to the next level.  The old Religious Consciousness must be rejected.  One cannot tolerate primitive belief systems any more than there can be no tolerance of the intolerant whatever that may mean.

Burroughs has given us an avatar of the future.  It is up to us only to accept him and make use of the gifts he brought us.

Exhuming Bob XXVI: Bob And Edie (Sooner Or Later All Of Us Must Know)

Exhuming Bob XXVI

Bob And Edie

(Sooner Or Later All Of Us  Must Know)

by

R.E. Prindle

On the New York Bohemian scene 1965 and 1966 were the pivotal years.  Near the beginning of 1965 Edie Sedgwick came down from Boston to become the catalyst in the struggle for dominance of the Bohemian scene between Andy Warhol and Bob Dylan.

Both men began their rise almost simultaneously in 1960-61.  Both camps were drug fueled primarily by amphetamines.

While Edie, who as I perceive it was a psychotic nothing chick, entered Warhol’s world about March of ’65 it seems probable that Dylan was eyeing her from earlier in the year through the offices of his advance man, Bobby Neuwirth.  While the early period is poorly documented as the battle for the soul of Edie Sedgwick reached fever heat in the summer of  ’65 when Dylan recorded his diatribes Like A Rolling Stone and Positively Fourth Street concerning Edie and Andy the origins must reach further back into the first half of the year.  It is interesting that in Dylan’s song Desolation Row he cast Edie in the role of Hamlet’s Ophelia.

Thus the key to understanding Dylan’s albums Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde On Blonde is primarily Edie Sedgwick.  I haven’t analyzed the data thoroughly but the meaning of One Of Us Must Know (Sooner Or Later) became transparent while studying Warhol.  One of my favorite Dylan’s songs its meaning has always troubled me.

In November of ’65 Dylan married Sara Lownds while still carrying on an affair with Edie, among others.  Warhol told Edie that Dylan was married shortly thereafter.  Edie was as a pawn in their game torn between leaving with Dylan and staying with Warhol.  In their effort to steal Edie away Dylan and his manager Albert Grossman were promising her stardom and money in both recording and movies.

Finally in a December 6th meeting with Edie, Warhol and Dylan Edie was forced to choose between the one or the other.  Dylan commemorated this scene in his song One Of Us Must Know (Sooner Or Later).  The ‘poem’ of this ‘great poet’ is in three stanzas and reads like a letter to Edie when you have the key.  The first four lines are a mocking apology for using Edie as a pawn:

I didn’t mean to treat you so bad

You shouldn’t take it so personal

I didn’t mean to make you so sad

You just happened to be there, that’s all.

So Dylan admits he was using Edie who just happened to be Warhol’s chick, nothing personal, Dylan was after Warhol.  But he didn’t mean to hurt her ‘so bad’ or make her ‘so sad’.  Hey, it just happened.  The second and fourth lines are so insulting, callous and sadistic as to pass the bounds of good judgment to write.  They shouldn’t have been written and if written they shouldn’t have been shouted to the world to hear.   It must have been obvious to Dylan that both Edie and Warhol would know he was talking about them.  The Ballad Of Plain D was just mean but this is almost too hateful to bear.   Ah well, the love and peace crowd.

The fifth line:

When I saw you say “goodbye” to your friend and smile…

The scene is The Kettle Of Fish and the friend is Andy Warhol.

I thought it was understood

That you’d be comin’ back in a little while

I didn’t know that you were sayin’  “goodbye” for good.

This is an outright lie else why put goodbye in parentheses.  Dylan’s attempt to disavow his and Grossman’s promises making it seem like a trivial boy-girl thing is too coarse.  This whole verse is definitely meant to hurt while both Edie and Warhol will understand the full import.

Ever Weird

Andy, Elvis, Bob

And then the chorus which will be used three times for maximum pain:

But sooner or later, one of us must know

You just did what you were supposed to do

Sooner or later one of us must know

That I really did try to get close to you.

The key line here is that ‘I really did try to get close to you.’  At The Kettle Of Fish Edie murmured to Dylan that no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t get close to him.  ‘Who?’ asked Dylan.  ‘Andy.’  Edie replied.  Dylan apparently took that as a rebuff although he was already married to Sara and would soon spawn a host of children on her.

I quote the second verse in its entirety:

I couldn’t see what you could show me

Your scarf had kept your mouth well hid

I couldn’t see how you could know me

But you said you knew me and I believed you did.

When you whispered in my ear

And asked me if I was leavin’ with you or her

I didn’t realize just what I did hear

I didn’t realize how young you were.

Apparently Edie didn’t realize that she was just a rainy day woman.  While it’s a matter of interpretation I assume that Edie confronted Dylan with the fact of his marriage to Sara and naively asked if he were going to dump Sara for herself.   Dylan was incredulous, astonished by her request, he thought she was more sophisticated than that, after all, a rainy day woman….

Rainy Day Woman is a very mocking put down of women as the lead off song and theme setter of the album titled Blonde On Blonde.  Perhaps the title might be interpreted as Woman On or After Woman with Rainy Day Women establishing the theme.  The song limits the range of women to two- numbers 12 and 35.  Why 12, why 35?  Who are they?  One has to be Edie.  If one does a little number manipulation a la Freud, in sequence the numbers add up to 11 which in turn adds up to 2.  Two women.  Seven come eleven?  Three and eight, twelve and thirty-five added separately- three for male, eight for female.  Twelve subtracted from thirty-five is twenty-three, Edie’s age.  Just guessing.

As Sara is the only other identifiable woman in the lyrics the two women must be Edie and Sara.  Let me venture the guess that all women are rainy day women for Dylan.  Thus once Sara had borne his offspring fullfilling a religious obligation Dylan took seriously he drove her away oblivious to the pain and suffering he was causing or perhaps he was continuing to punish mother surrogates.

Dylan was drugged and crazed while he was writing this so this is a reflection of deep subconscious drives.

Andy And Edie As Beautiful People

 

The final lyric begins:

I couldn’t see when it started snowin’

Your voice was all I heard

Snowin’ either refers to a snow job by Edie so he was blinded by light hearing only her words or drugs of some sort, either amphetamines or cocaine.

I couldn’t see where you were goin’

But you said you knew an’ I took your word.

Once again Dylan shifts the full responsibility from himself and Grossman to Edie.  He implies that she was leading him on rather than vice versa.  This when it was clear to everyone that he and Grossman were promising her the moon in the attempt to pry her loose from Warhol.

And then you told me later, as I apologized

That you were just kiddin’ me, you weren’t really from the farm

An’ I told you as you clawed out my eyes

That I never really meant t’ do you any harm

Well, Dylan’s intents were pure, he says, but the results were deplorable; Edie was done harm by Dylan’s actions and the harm was deep and lasting, well beyond any hypocritical apologies.  If the lines are to be believed Edie’s reaction was quite violent.  As she was a total amphetamine addict her reaction would be quite plausible.

And then Dylan mockingly closes with his ‘whadaya goin’ to do about it line’-  I really did try to get close to you.

As this period clears up for me I suspect that the whole of Blonde On Blonde is concerned with this Edie, Andy/Dylan duel.  Blonde On Blonde itself then may refer to the silver hair of both Edie and Andy.

It should be clear that Dylan’s motorcycle fall was no accident.  In  Exhuming Bob 23b: Bob, Andy and Edie I hypothesize that Dylan’s bike was rigged by the Factory crowd.  Dylan survived with minimal damage.  For his own sins Warhol was shot a couple years later but he survived that one too.   Edie died a physical wreck in 1971.

Dead Ophelia- Consider Ciao Manhattan with Edie shot in a swimming pool/

What goes around comes around as they used to say.

R.E. Prindle

A Review: Woman: The Incredible Life Of Yoko Ono by Alan Clayson

 

 

A Review

Woman

by

Alan Clayson

Yoko Ono And The Men Who Influenced Her

Review by R.E. Prindle

Clayson, Alan: Woman: The Incredible Life Of Yoko Ono, Chrome Dreams, 2004.

 

Girlish Yoko- Warhol School by Richard Bernstein

     Yoko Ono involved herself with several of the most influential men in the arts during the sixties, seventies and eighties of the twentieth century.  She drew her inspiration from them patterning her own efforts after them.  At the same time she was one of the leading feminists of the day having her share in shaping and furthering the movement.  The mantra was female liberation, equality between men and women.  In fact women were equal to men in the West but only by acknowledging the biological differences between men and women.  The fact is the differences are real and not social constructs as women would have us believe.  The fact is women are women and men are men.   So, in seeking ‘female liberation’ feminists were seeking much more than ‘equality’ however the term may be defined.

     The fact is that in the Ages old war between the sexes feminists are seeking to restore the Matriarchy and destroy the Patriarchy.  That is why many men favor feminism, they prefer the Matriarchy.  Thus the feminists are atavistic.  Yoko and her cohorts wished, in her words, to restore ‘heart’ as she viewed the Matriarchy and eliminate ‘reason’ as she viewed quite rightly the basis of  Patriarchalism.  Nevermind that bilogical science has invalidated the concepts of Matriarachy and Patriarchy.  This is a post Matriarchy and Patriarchy world.

     Circa -2000 in the West men revolted against the mind stifling Matriarchy and the vaginal swamp of the ‘heart’ seeking to establish

Smilin' Jack Cage

the authority of the infinite power of the mind of Zeus on ethereal Olympus.  This is the story of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and the Greek myths in general recording the struggle.

     The Western male was able to impose the ascendency of reason over the heart for 3000 years until the disestablishment of the old order by science about mid-nineteenth century.  The center could not hold during this period of extreme change as W.B. Yeats put it as the rearrangement of the intellectual order moved into the twentieth century.

     Yoko Ono sought with her feminist fellows to return to the biological innocence of 2000 BC.  She herself had no talent.  Filled with audacity she pitted her ‘heart’ against the reason of John Cage, Andy Warhol and John Lennon.  I’m sure she had a mentor for her so-called performance art but I am as yet unaware of who he may be.  Perhaps Maciunas and the Fluxus group.

     Thus her first manifestation as an artist was based on the musical ideas of John Cage while her artistic efforts were at least based in the avant garde ideas of the Fluxus group.  Her first assault on the NYC art world failed so in 1961 she returned in defeat to Japan.  When she returned to NYC in 1964 she found an entirely different art scene.  On the musical side the focus was on Bobby Dylan and the Beatles while on the artistic side Andy Warhol and his Factory had destroyed the Abstract Expressionists and the old avant garde.  Dylan, the Beatles and Warhol had in fact usurped the avant garde which now had little meaning.  From my point of view held at the time the avant garde had ceased to exist.  Of course I didn’t understand exactly why or how.

     From 1964 when Yoko returned to NYC until 1966 when she left for London I’m sure Yoko was at a loss.  She developed her silly

The Bag Yoko And Tony Are In

notion of Bagism at this time even having a black bag on a stand in Max’s Kansas City that some one or ones were supposed to slide into.  This seems to have been thought a lame idea at the time as it seems now.

      At this time while retaining allegiance to John Cage’s musical ideas she was falling under the influence of Andy Warhol’s artistic notions.  Warhol’s intent had been to destroy the idea of ‘fine art’.  In this he pretty well succeeded.  As Yoko expressed it you didn’t need any talent to be an artist.  She seems to demonstrate this notion in her own artistic efforts.  Warhol had also redefined the notion of film with his static studies.  He then sought to combine his film ideas with live music, probably in competition with Bob Dylan who was also attempting to move in that direction.   Warhol adopted Lou Reed and his band the Velvet Underground as the Factory house band while creating a multi-media show called the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, innovative for its time.  Thus a concert at his hall, the Dom, was an ‘experience.’

     While Yoko makes no mention about how this, actually, incredible development affected her there can be no doubt that she was well aware of Dylan, the Beatles and the Warhol Experience and was affected by it.  Indeed, the first manifestation was the making of her Warhol style films such as Bottoms.

     The second manifestation was her removal to London to seduce either Lennon or McCartney of the Beatles, thus in the manner of Warhol’s adoption of the Velvet Underground she sought to co-opt the Beatles, the premier rock group in the world.  Real chutzpah and more than one upping Warhol.  I think it would be nonsense to think she had any other goal in mind.

     She undoubteldy learned that Paul McCartney was actively involved with John Dunbar and his Indica Gallery that opened in 1965. 

Psychedelic Dylan

Some say she first set her sights on McCartney but the more vulnerable Lennon showed up and the Spider Woman spread her web.

     She was still married to her second husband, Tony Cox, but, regardless of what she says she very aggressively pursued, or attacked, Lennon.  Lennon was emotionally under water unable to handle his success while drugging himself out of his mind.  He was unwillingly married to his wife Cynthia.  It appears that he married Cynthia out of duty when she became pregnant.  He doesn’t seem to have been happy in his virtue.  Yoko had no difficulty in capturing his affections.

      Now, just as Warhol had adopted the Velvets and imposed his female singer, Nico, on the band Yoko sought to imp[ose herself on the Beatles through Lennon.  At this time she was still musically completely in thrall to John Cage understanding nothing about Rock music.  She and Lennon had made a ridiculous LP called Two Virgins in 1968.  She combined her cagian screechings while using an avant garde 'performance' notion of the couple posing nude on the cover; full frontal on the obverse, full posterior on the reverse.  As no store would carry the cover the couple reverted to Yoko's idea of Bagism placing the cover inside a plain manila envelope or bag.  While it didn't sell the record this form of Bagism was actually a successful artistic statement.  The nude cover given an outer garment so to speak.

     Well, the public was prepared to forgive the Beatles anything but the other three Beatles weren't prepared to forgive Yoko for forcing herself on them thus she broke up the most successful act of the sixties.  Still, she had succeeded according to her wildest dream.  Lennon and his wonderful reputation and fortune were hers.  She had gone from a neglected, nondescript 'performance' artist to center stage, not on her own womanly talents but by attaching herself to a talented man.   Yoko's 'heart' was useless without the male intellect.   Yoko was now the most influencial feminist in the world.  She knew what to do with that.

     After several 'performance' acts such as the 'Bed In For Peace' the couple left England to return to the place Yoko wished to subjugate artistically, New York City.  She had raised herself to a par with Andy Warhol.  She now had to meld her musical and artistic goals through Lennon and Warhol.

     On the musical side she began to develop her rock n' roll skills under  the tutelage of Lennon.  While not abandoning the avant garde notions of John Cage she now emasculated her husband.  Always semi-delusional or perhaps completely so, she fantasized that she was not only equal to Lennon in skill and popularity but superior to him.   She imagined herself more popular than Lennon.  Thus one has such travesties as the LP Double Fantasy.  It was only after Lennon's death that she was forced to recognize than Lennon's fans did not appreciate her efforts.  So she failed as a musician.

     She quickly tired of being Mrs. Lennon.  Thus she and Lennon separated for eighteen months or so during the years 1973-75.  She then realized that her financial well being and musical acceptance depended on Lennon.  In 1975 she called him back resuming their relationship until his death in 1980.  But, things had changed.

     She began to adopt Warhol's life style on her return to NYC.  While she propagated the notion that she was some sort of business whiz Iam having difficulties discovering any such skills.  It appears that with the enormous income of Lennon she emulated Warhol in

Andy the Demon

spending her way to prosperity.

     She was in a position to not only match Warhol’s spending but exceeding it by many times.  Through the seventies and eighties Warhol came into his own as an artist while reaping a fortune doing portraits.  There appears to have been no effort on his part to invest in income producing vehicles.  Rather he bought stuff.  He purchased buildings in NYC and elsewhere while acquring undeveloped acreage in places like Aspen.  He shopped nearly every day buying antiques from furniture to objets d’ art by the bushel almost as though he were trying to excel the incredible W.R. Hearst.

     He usually didn’t even look at the stuff once he bought it merely filling rooms with his shopping bags.  At his death all this junk was auctioned off for 25 million dollars, a nice appreciation in value.

      Yoko followed the exact pattern buying apartments and houses as well as an extensive dairy farm with a herd of prize cows.  She not only had but has five apartments in her principal dwelling, the Dakota apartment building and many other houses scattered around.

     Like Warhol the Dakota apartments are stuffed with junk.  Valuable, but, you know, stuff.  She bought at good prices.  Her extensive collection of Egyptian antiquities was mostly purchased before a steep rise in value.

     Like the Rothschilds of old Yoko didn’t do all her own shopping but employed agents to search things out.  Chief among these was an associate of Warhol’s, Sam Green, and an Hungarian immigrant by the name of Sam Havadtoy.

Buddies- Yoko, John, Andy

     There should be no surprise then that she now has an extensive collection of  Warhol’s artwork as well as his portraits of Lennon.  The Warhols would have been purchased for form 25 to 50K while now being listed on her assets at tens of millions.  She also has been said to have a good collection of Magrittes as well as one assumes other artists.  So, much of her net worth is tied up in artwork purchased through Sam Green.

     Sam Havadtoy was an antiques dealer as well as an interior designer.  He appears to have been a somewhat shady character.  It is very difficult to find much about him, however there is a sharp portrait available from the notorious A.J. Weberman ( http://www.acid-trip.org/lennon/ )

     …(the Lennons) hired a sleazy Eastern European bisexual to renovate the pad. (Dakota)  I had heard of this dude, whose name escapes me, from an asswipe named BRUCE KIRSH, who worked for him.   KIRSH told me that the dude, who worked for the King of Morocco, would form a dummy renovation company, hire employees like Kirsch who were willing to work under false names, then, when it came time to pay taxes, everyone would disappear.  I learned of him long before he was hired by John and Yoko, and I was taken aback when Yoko took up with him after John’s death.

     I know that Weberman is not particularly well thought of by fandom but this is because of his harassment of Dylan who did, after all, misrepresent himself to the revolutionaries like Weberman.  A.J. himself is an intelligent observer who was wading through it when it was deep.  I do believe he knows what he’s talking about although his interpretations of Dylan’s lyrics seem absurd.

     I would have to question Yoko’s judgment in taking him in.  Both he and Sam Green were candidates as successors to Lennon with

Lennon by Warhol

whom she consorted in front of  Lennon before he died while Yoko chose Havadtoy as his successor the day he died.

     Perhaps she selected Havadtoy over Green because he was more rough trade.  With Lennon while managing to reconcile revolution with peace and love with Havadtoy she discarded peace and love in favor of strong arm methods against her former employee Fred Seaman when it was totally unnecessary.

     Havadtoy was living in a homosexual arrangement with his business partner when Yoko beckoned him to switch to her.  Apparently an able switch hitter he was lured by the money to this much older woman.  The arrangement did last for twenty years before Havadtoy removed to his native Hungary taking a nice cash settlement and several of the Warhols.

     Thus, just as Warhol had his live-in homosexual arrangement so after Lennon’s death Yoko adopted the exact arrrangement.  Today she apparently lives alone, a seventy-eight year old woman.

     After Lennon’s death there was an accession of from 30 million to a possible 100 million dollars as their last album, Double Fantasy, sold into the millions while the rest of Lennon’s catalog and one assumes the Beatles’ catalog was reinvigorated while all things Lennon sold.   This is, of course, no reflection on Yoko but the inevitable result  with intellectual properties when the maker dies.

     Post-Lennon, then, Yoko realized that her recording and art careers were nil.  Heart without intellect is worthless.  She then became the caretaker of the Lennon legacy.  His recordings, of course, continued to sell, but even his artwork eclipsed that of Yoko.  So she suffered the humiliation of being a mere appendage to a man.  The feminine dismal swamp was eclipsed by the Olympian heights of the male intellect.   As in ancient times the God had trumped the Goddess.  And yet as with Hera and Zeus the Goddess gets her way.   Yoko came up with the money and goods while Lennon’s spirit was wafted into the stratosphere.

     As any reader of mythology knows Hera ruled the Lernean swamps of Argolis while Zeus ruled the gods on ethereal Olympus.  Thus one has the symbolism of the biological difference between the male and female.

     In ancient times the female had her share in magic.  She knew herbs and plants, was familiar with poisons and cures as with the arch witch of the ancient world, Medea.  The reputation of the female witch even as a consort of Satan persisted down through medieval and post-medieval times, indeed, even up to the dawn of the scientific enlightenment.  One would have thought that magic and witchery were a thing of the past in the 1960s and yet Yoko embodied the whole female swamp mentality.

     She established something called the Spirit Foundation attributing the direction to Lennon who in fact knew nothing of these matters but followed her lead.  The Spirit Foundation celebrated the ancient art of the Shaman or witch doctor.  Shamanism itself even preceded the Matriarchal swamps of Argolis.  It was a rich repository of magical tradition.  Further the Foundation was feminist in that it was dedicated to preserving the magical traditions of the women of the Pacific islands still living in such archaic societies.  The wealth generated by the male intellect was appropriated by the female vagina or ‘heart.’

     In her own life and that of Lennon’s Yoko was addicted to a variety of magical practices- astrology, numerology, Tarot readings, and indeed she traveled to the Caribbean to sell her soul to Satan through the offices of a female curandera.  Her Tarot reader, John Green, was a priest in the shamanistic, magical, Yoruban African cult of Santeria.

     Her feminism was more a magical effort to restory Matriarchal supremacy over the Patriarchy thus reversing the Patriarchal victory of three thousand years previously.  Indeed, what has been called the movement for female equality is nothing more than a covert campaign to restore the Matriarchy.

      Thus while Yoko o9riginatd nothing she usurped the abilities of the reason of men- Cage, Warhol, Lennon and male magicians such as John Green.  Indeed the Trojan War itself was a war of men in service of  women.

     In her associations with men she preferrred to deal with emasculated types such as homosexuals like Cage, Warhol, Sam Green and Sam Havadtoy.  Lennon claimed to have always been dependent of women for comfort and guidance while Yoko caught him at his most confused and vulnerable. 

     While she received direction from Cage and Warhol she was able to manipulate Lennon out of his talent somewhat as Vivian did that of Merlin of the Arthurian saga.  When Vivian had usurped Merlin’s magical knowledge she buried him deep much as Lennon was put out of the way.  Yoko  then appropriated his wealth and residual income after his death.   It was this constant inflow of cash that allowed her to propagate the notion that she was a financial genius.

      Then as the female of the ‘heart’ or vaginal swamp she managed and appropriated the reason of Olympus through Cage, Warhol and Lennon.  What she got from Havadtoy other than brute strength is not clear to me.

     As such Yoko is Woman.  In her case a seeming reversion to the archetypal Shaman of the most ancient times.

 

 

Part III: Mourning Becomes Yoko

 

Mourning Becomes Yoko Ono

The Passing Of John Lennon Part III

by

R.E. Prindle

 

Doppleganger #1

     When John Lennon met Yoko Ono he knew very little of art and nothing of the New York art scene.  His high school years had been spent in open and futile rebellion; the next few years had been spent only in the German underworld with no time for cultivation.  From there he went into the whirl of the Beatles years so one might say he had been in cultural suspended animation for all his adult life.

     Yoko Ono since 1960 had been engaged in the New York avant garde art scene.  She was au courant when she left for London in 1966.  Hooking up with Lennon she began to educate him according to her understanding of art.  By the time the Ono-Lennons arrived in New York in the late sixties that scene was dominated by the POP art of Andy Warhol while the world both she and Lennon knew in 1960 was unrecognizable.  Yoko wasted  no time in ingratiating herself with Andy but not the factory.  After he was shot in 1969 the old Factory disappeared and after his recovery Warhol began a new life.  It is possible that she tried to establish

Doppelganger #2

contact with him between ’64 and ’66.  She did know warhol’s associate, Sam Green, from her first days in the Village in 1960.

     By the time of her return to NYC Yoko had achieved world wide fame by using Lennon and his fame  in their charades for ‘Peace.’  Now she had the perfect entree to enter Warhol’s circle.  Warhol was a sucker for celebrities, he did Lennon’s portrait, so he was flattered when Yoko asked him to introduce she and John into society.  If Warhol could pester, Yoko was unstoppable.  While Andy wasn’t exactly persona gratis at that time he was thick with Sam Adams Green who did have entree to society.  Between the the two of them they set up a party to introduce the Ono-Lennons.

John was, of course, no Mick Jagger.  While Mick adapted himself quickly to the demands of his fame and moved easily in society, John was awkward being out of the element of his self-styled working class hero.  Yoko, too, was no mixer so at the party Yoko and John sat silently in a corner as though in one of Yoko’s bags watching the party goers.

Warhol Jagger 2

Warhol Jagger

     It might be apropos to point out that Jagger and Warhol were fairly close.  Jagger was one of the few people attending Warhol’s funeral in Pittsburgh while Bianca was in Warhol’s entourage in the eighties.  Warhol also painted a portfolio of Jagger pictures that today command healthy prices.

   

The Devil In Disguise

Witchy Woman and Warhol

  Yoko still persisted with Warhol but Andy having been disappointed once was not up for it twice.  He distanced himself from the pair describing them to Sam Green as boring.  An ultimate putdown.

     Initially the Lennons  lived in the Bohemian scene downtown.  Mickey Ruskin, the owner of Max’s Kansas City, described the Bohemian scene thusly:  the well-to-do Bohos, the middle and the lower class.  Those associated with the Kettle of Fish and its environs of which Dylan was a member were of the lower class while the Kettle of Fish itself was owned by the Mafia.  He believed Max’s was in the middle.  John and Yoko first lived in New York in the West Village at 105 Bank Street next door to Yoko’s her, John Cage.  They took over Joe Butler’s apartment, he formerly the drummer of Lovin’ Spoonful so Ruskin would have classed John and Yoko as haut ton beatniks.

     At any rate they soon left those environs to migrate to the Upper West Side where they secured apartments in the famous, or soon to be famous, Dakota.  It was then that their NYC life took its definitive form.

     I have been to NYC a few times so that I know the general layout and have some feel for the place but I have by no means an intimate knowledge so essentially I’m working from maps.  I know where MOMA and some few prominent art landmarks are from experience but not that many.

     At any rate the Dakota is a famous landmark..  Acceptance as a tenant is by committee approval.  John and Yoko were strenuously vetted but finally admitted.  They took over actor Robert Ryan’s apartment #72.  If you have seen the movie Rosemary’s Baby the camera pans past apartments 71 and 72.  No filming was allowed inside the Dakota so while the exterior shots are authentic the interiors were shot on sets.  Thus the apartment of the Satanists is a fictional 7E.  The apartment next to it  in which the young couple resided may have been number 72.  The man of the couple who was an actor sold his wife’s body to Satan as the carrier of his child for success in the theatre which he was granted.  Thus the Ono-Lennons moved into an apartment closely associated with devil worship, the occult and witchcraft..  This will become more important as Yoko associated herself with all three.  In fact, Yoko through John Green would have been familiar with the Yoruban Santeria religion that she in all likelihood would have reverenced.  The Spirit Foundation that she established is concerned with the preservation of just such tribal institutions. 

   

Dakota Entrance

  These are magnificent apartments that I presume Rosemary’s Baby duplicates.   Huge fifty foot long living rooms as part of a ten room apartment.  The Ono-Lennons would soon own both 71 and 72 lacking only the fictional 7E  while having a Studio apartment as well. 

     Being now permanently settled Yoko having access to John’s superb income began to spend it.  Of course, she virtually cleaned out department stores on her buying binges, any girl’s dream.  But, she also began to buy heavily into art and antiques as investments.  This brought Warhol’s friend Sam Adams Green into a close association with her.  Rich society women were Sam’s forte.  He has an interesting story.  He was actually descended from the second president of the United States, Samuel Adams.  He arrived in New york in 1960 about the same time Andy Warhol was trying to establish himself as a fine artist and Yoko the same.  Warhol of course began as a commercial artist doing shoe ads but in 1960 he changed the emphasis of his career.

     In the fine arts field one of the first gallery people Andy met was Sam Green of the Green Gallery.  Different Green, Sam only

The Dakota

worked there and shared the name.  He and Andy hit it off.  By 1965 Green was associated with the art department of UPennsylvania where he staged a Warhol exhibition in the same  year.  From there he gravitated bck to NYC where he began a career as art consultant to rich women on both continents.  They liked him.  Through the socialite Cecile Rothschild he was introduced to Greta Garbo with whom he was sort of a trusted companion for 15 years.

     He was very knowledgeable about art as an investment traveling between Euorpe and the US advising socialites on the most investment worthy art.  He apparently derived a more than comfortable  income from his efforts.  He was a trusted advisor of Yoko.  Some say that he and Yoko’s Tarot reader, John Green, who would enter John and Yoko’s life at about this time, combined to bilk Yoko for overpriced objects.  This presumes that both men were dishonest and that Yoko was a fool.  As Yoko’s investments have prospered I think we can dismiss the latter, although Yoko did take pride in being able to spend vast sums.  She would have taken pleasure in overpaying.

 

Sam Green- Current

    Rather I would say that Sam Green was a very knowledgeable expert whose task was to find art that would appreciate in value.  Thus the question is did he perform that function and the answer is, yes.  Yoko’s acquistions increased in value far above her purchase prices.  I think it is unfair then to say that the Greens bilked her.  Surely the laborer is worth his hire.

   

Warhol Portrait

  Now, Sam Green as her agent had to buy the items he acquired for her.  Being knowledgeable as to who in society wanted to sell what at distressed prices he may have made some excellent buys that he then tacked on his margin which of course meant that he sold to Yoko for ‘more than they were worth.’  But, heck, even Christie’s and Sotheby’s take twenty per cent each from the buyer and seller.  That’s a forty per cent surcharge.  However Sam served his function of providing investment pieces  so I see no evidence of bilking.

     Sam Green also formed a close, probably romantic, liaison with Yoko that persisted until after John’s death.  Another art dealser she became close to was a Sam Havadtoy with whom she subsequently lived for twenty years beginning immediately the day after John’s death.

     Now the men Yoko associated herself with were all effetes, that were either emasculated when she found them or who she emasculated.  Strangely Lennon was the strongest of the lot.  Both her first Japanese husband and Tony Cox appear to have been heterosexuals but both Sam Green and Sam Havadtoy were dependent homosexuals.  With Havadtoy Yoko may have had her ideal relationship.  He was thoroughly emasculated while with the fortune Yoko  inherited from Lennon he was totally dependent on her.  The classic toy boy a couple decades younger than herself.  He, by the way, after his twenty year stint as live-in retired to Hungary with an abundant palimony but he isn’t talking.

     In my reading of the situation then, a not particularly compliant John became somewhat of a liability to her, especially as he began to reassert himself with the return to the recording studio in 1980.  The problem has the surface appearance of separating the man form his money and discarding the man.

     Yoko began building her entourage, Sam Green, John Green, Sam Havadtoy and her various occult people with what appears to be an admiration for and some sort of connection with Andy Warhol.  Sam Green and Havadtoy would be a troublesome presence in Lennon’s life during the recording of Double Fantasy while he does not appear to have been enchanted with the Warhol connection

     As has been mentioned Yoko became involved in occult practices.  She did practice hypnotism on Lennon and was an adept at suggestion which is the essence of hypnotism.  Thus on the one hand she suggested forcefully to May Pang that she take up with Lennon while it is probable she hypnotized Lennon into taking up with May Pang.  Post hypnotic suggestion would give her a command over all Lennon’s actions.  Once implanted she would only have to say the word and Lennon would follow her suggestions.

     How complicit John Green would have been in this isn’t exactly clear but any of Yoko’s suggestions to John could have been complemented by a reading.  John Green was after all dependent on Yoko for a very generous income beyond whatever he may have scammed.

     John Green is another interesting case.  He was apparently successful as a Tarot reader before he met Yoko while he is reported to hae been a student of the African Yoruba religion called Santeria.  The Yoruba are a tribe in Nigeria, middle river, Western side.  He would have obtained much of the magic information he displayed in Cartagena, Columbia, SA from that source.  The sixties themselves  were the great period of the dissolution of the American mind and personality.  One of the key items in the disintegration was the 1962 movie, Mondo Cane. (It’s A Dog’s World).  It is difficult to assess the impact of this movie on the malleable college age mind of the times.

      I saw the movie then and while it passed out of my conscious mind it struck me most forcibly and lodged in my subconscious mind.  I, of course, reviewed the movie for this essay and while I at first remembered little gradually my conscious mind recovered the images so that I remember almost all.  The viewing at the time was very repulsive and unsettling to my mind as it was for everyone I talked to about it and every college kid saw it.  Still, consciously I missed the true import of the movie completely.

     The filmmakers equated some New Guinea stone age people with modern Whites and equated them- said both states of

Mondo Cane Poster

consciousness were the same-  and that there had been no advance between the primitive and modern.  Then they showed Whites at their goofiest and most ridiculous.  Drunks at a German Oktoberfest, aged tourists clumsily trying to do a hula.  The movie was a real exercise in moral relativity.  It was shortly after viewing the movie that I first remember hearing the phrase ‘Nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so.’  I don’t want to philosophize on this but my thought was that  if I think something is bad therefore it must be because I think it and I can’t be wrong.

     The movie had a devastating effect on the attitude of the generation.  It was a form of hypnosis with a great deal of post-hypnotic suggestion.  Whether John Green saw the movie or not I can’t say but if he had it would have prepared him for accepting Yoruban Santeria.   In fact these primitive forms of religion and what not flourished in the wake of Mondo Cane.  At the same, as I indicated, Yoko would have been very open to Santeria.  I think there is little doubt that Green and she at least discussed the religion and its African tribal origin.  Especially as she established something she calls the Spirit Foundation.  In the online prospectus she describes the foundation thusly:

     The Spirit Foundation is…concerned with the protection and promotion of creative and cultural diversity amongst shamanic tribal communities worldwide.  Part of the foundations work is the International Shamanic Network which aims at promoting the ancient creative archetypes of man and their binding ecological realtionship to the world.

     Our emphasis is on education for action.

          As mentioned Yoko and Lennon moved into the suites used in Rosemary’s Baby with its Satanic overtones.  In the movie a young woman living with the Satanic couple either jumps or is pushed to her death not far from where Lennon was shot.  In this very location Yoko took up Satanism.  She decided she wanted to make a pact with the Devil to obtain her wishes.  The ubiquitous Sam Green knew of a witch who could serve as an intermediary between Yoko and Satan.  (Remember I am only retailing the story, I don’t believe Satan exists.)

     Sam Green who had prospered as an art consultant had used some of his earnings to purchase what he called a castle in Cartagena, Colombia.  He recommended his witch to Yoko who asked John Green to take her to the witch as he doubled as Tarot reader and Wizard.  John Green did so and the witch duly negotiated a deal between Yoko and the Lord of Fire.  When it came time to sign the pact Yoko asked Green to do it for her which he did.  She was aghast when he told her he didn’t sign his name but hers.  Yoko trying to cheat the devil.

      We don’t know what she asked Satan for but we are compelled to believe she got it.

Santeria Illustration

     As I believe she hypnotized Lennon into taking the Long Weekend I don’t know exactly why she wanted him out of the house.  She certainly closely monitored his activities while he was away both in NYC and LA.  During his absence  Yoko didn’t have a Power of Attorney so she was somewhat constrained as John had her on a 300K budget.  When he returned she quickly obtained his POA so that she had unlimited use of his money and, in fact, his identity.

     Lennon is criticized for being a recluse in the years between 1975-80.  He certainly wasn’t a recluse in that he withdrew from the world.  He merely limited his contacts with it.  It is said there was a fifteen month period when he was completely withdrawn.  While he was obviously suffering from a mental malise in my opinion the withdrawal was completely justified.  He had mental issues that had to be resolved.  He had the money and time to work at it as he did.

     He had a mother/father fixation he had to resolve.  he had the feeling that he had been either a genius or a lunatic from boyhood.  In a remarkable rant within the 1970 Rolling Stone interview he rants for pages because no one recognized him as a genius in his youth while he had now convinced himself that he was and had been a genius.  The fact that he never did his schoolwork doesn’t  seem to him that that may have a reason why people missed his genius and though him somewhat mad.  What would theyhave done if they had?  So he had to reconcile the issue in his mind.

     He seems to have made no advance past his school years except in music.  The years between leaving school and taking up with Yoko were completely wasted intellectually while the pressures of phenomenal success and wealth disoriented him completely not to mention the massive doses of drugs.  At some time then he had to come down and organize his mind and life.    From 1968 to let us say 1980 he was completely dependent on Yoko for his mental balance.  In NYC he went where she did and did what she did.  Hence the connection to Andy Warhol and Sam Green.

     There are numerous pictures of Yoko, Lennon and Warhol.  Yoko even patterned some of her work after Warhol’s style as in the ‘work’ below patterned after Warhol’s double Elvis.  Thus she associates herself and Lennon with Presley.

Yoko Goes Warhol, Imitation of Double Elvis

     As I mentioned before the social entree arranged by Warhol and Sam Green failed because of the social ineptness of the Ono-Lennons.

     While we have a full record of what Lennon was doing during his ‘Lost Weekend’ we have a less full account of what Yoko was doing.  She seems to have had romantic liaisons with at least three men- Sam Green, Sam Havadtoy and the guitarist David Spinozza.

Sam Havadtoy

     Perhaps she wanted to see how well she could do on her own as a musician, to see if her reputation as a performance artist and, in her mind, musician, was sufficient to maintain a career on her own without John.  If so, she was brutally disappointed as in her only solo performance she failed miserably.  Thus she realized that as of 1974 her reputation as well as her wealth depended on Lennon.

     It was during Lennon’s absence that John Green came into her life.  While John Green tells a fairly smooth story in his Dakota Years one has the feeling that he is being highly selective in what he tells while he slyly ridicules the Ono-Lennons as their superior.  The attitude easily leads to contempt and from contempt to abuse.  Of course he would have to dissimulate both the contempt and abuse as Ono would be reading the book.  As I imagine, a priest in the Santeria religion, he would have been in the company of  some shady characters.  I don’t know how many actual Yorubas were in NYC but I have met a couple elsewhere.

     One imagines most of the hierarchy Green came into contact with was African or American Blacks.  Santeria involves a deal of ritual sacrifice while money would be needed.  I suspect that John Green was involved in the extortion attempt on the Ono-Lennons.  This may have been Santeria related.  Thus a sort of Black Hand organization was created.  Rather than go for the big money that would have created a stir, the group settled for hitting up people with millions for a mere 200K each.  An unpleasant tax for being rich but one more conveniently paid than to die resisting.

      We have only Green’s version of the extortion and his relationship to it.  He paints himself in a relatively good light.  The Ono-Lennons did call in the FBI, they did give the extortionists newspaper rather than cash as the FBI advised.  But then things went wrong.  The FBI apparently had only one tail on the extortionist who came for the money rather than a series of back ups.  The agent inexplicably lost his man.  The Ono-Lennons never received another call but they had been warned that if they failed to pay Lennon would be killed whether it took one, two or more years.  In December of 1980 the bill fell due.  On December 8th he was shot.  December 7th is Pearl Harbor Day so there may be a Japanese connection.  Yoko Ono being Japanese, her numerologist and the assassin’s wife while Chapman missed the appointed day by one.

     The question then hangs on Mark David Chapman the shooter.  He is still alive and in prison.  He was an assassin as the classic lone nut like Lee Harvey Oswald and any number of assassins who pay the law for the crime while the organizers go free.  The technique has been well known to criminals for centuries.  Any time a lone nut assassinates someone you may be sure that they were a patsy as Oswald announced over TV he was.

     It seems likely that Chapman had been hypnotized.  Witnesses said Chapman acted as though in a trance and he himself said he heard a voice in his head saying:  Do it. Do it. Do it.  The problem would be how he was recruited.  I, of course, can say nothing for certain  while what I am saying now is merely an hypothesis or inquiry.  The main thing is that Chapman was supposed to be a lone nut.  Ridiculous.

     The most obvious recruitment method was the Santeria of which John Green was a member and to which Yoko Ono was

Mark Chapman

sympathetic.  There are some oddities in the Chapman story that have to be explained not least of which are the large sums of money expended by Chapman in relation to his income.  He was a married man therefore had a wife to support.  Yet in 1978 he was in Japan at the same time as the Ono-Lennons beginning an around the world flight.

     Perhaps Tokyo was the first stop of the trip around the world that then led to Seoul, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Delhi, Israel, Geneva, Paris, London, Dublin, Atlanta and back to Hawaii.  His travel agent was a Japanese woman, Gloria Abe, who he then courted and married.  She is reported to have been involved in occult circles.  She may have seen so involved that, through Takahashi Yoshikawa, Yoko’s numerologist she was brought in to arrange the trip.  Such an around the world trip in a Westerly direction- sundown to sunup- according to Yoshikawa’s numerology would be characteristic of Yoko Ono.  She and Lennon made a round the world trip for occult reasons as did both Lennon individually and John Green at her instance.  Green made his trip in 59 1/2 hours only leaving a plane once to change to another.  As the financing of Chapman’s trip is unknown I would suggest Yoko Ono.

      Two years after this very costly trip around the world Chapman flew from Hawaii to first Chicago, then Atlanta, then to New York where he landed a few days before the assassination.  Once again, well beyond his means.  It is said that he took paintings to Chicago that he sold.  Where he would have gotten the paintings isn’t known but once again Yoko is the obvious source.  She had an art gallery of valuable art work.

     While in Atlanta he contacted a former roommate, then a Deputy Sheriff, Gene Scott, who gave him the hollow point exploding

Santeria Priestess

bullets for a handgun.  One assumes such bullets couldn’t be bought over the counter.  One wonders why Scott didn’t ask what Chapman intended to do with them.  And if he did and Chapman told him Gene Scott is clearly an accomplice and should be questioned.

     Chapman himself came from Atlanta where in his teen years he was known to ingest any and all drugs.  Atlanta was also a Santeria center with several weird Black cults.  Lennon’s death took place at the same time as the Atlanta child murders for which Wayne Williams was later convicted.  The Santeria religion has been suspected in these obvious sacrificial murders while John Green establishes a Santeria connection to the Ono-Lennons and Yoko in particular.

     Yoko was an excellent hypnotist who understood the use and power of suggestion.  The Santerists as Africans would be well versed in the use of suggestion and hypnotism.

     Chapman said he was possessed by the Devil while appearing to be in a hypnotic trance.  All this rather amusingly is taking place at the Dakota, the scene of the Devil’s birth in Rosemary’s Baby.  Indeed, the identical apartment.

     After Lennon’s death there was no period of mourning or sense of loss by Yoko.  All Lennon’s assets were in her control and name before his death.  The so-called will of Lennon is suspicious, although the will was unnecessary becaue I doubt if Lennon thought of a will while the will appointed the art dealer Sam Green as the gaurdian of son Sean in the event the Ono-Lennons perished together.  Lennon wasn’t that enamored of Sam Green.

     Within a few days Sam Havadtoy was installed as Yoko’s live-in where  he remained for twenty years.

     While Yoko’s success as an artist and rock n’ roller wasn’t affected by Lennon’s death she now had the money to pay to have her art exhibited.  Even then she found her reputation was indissolubly linked to her dead husband.  She has become a caretaker for the Lennon legend parceling out old recordings while humiliatingly Lennon’s artwork is more in demand than hers.

     She seems to have patterned her later career on that of Andy Warhol who as he acquired fame and fortune managed to insinutate himself into certain society circles.  So has Yoko.  Now, at 78, she has attained a certain status although still extremely self-centered while having an appearance of terminal aloneness.

 

Animus and Anima

A Review: Part IV, She by H. Rider Haggard

A Contribution To The

ERBzine Library Project

A Review Of

SHE

by

H. Rider Haggard

Review by R.E. Prindle

Part IV and end:

Herself Portrayed

Model of She

     The idea of a twenty-two hundred year old woman patiently waiting for the reincarnation of a man she had murdered in that far off time is in itself an extraordinary concept.  As an imaginative flight of fancy very likely Rider Haggard can be seen as its originator.  Burroughs would borrow the notion twenty-seven years later in his The Eternal Lover when he reverses the sexes and has a cave man asleep for millennia wake to find his reincarnated woman.  Since then variations on the theme have become quite common.

     She, or Ayesha, was a powerful image of a woman.  C.G. Jung saw her as the personification of his Anima theory.  Haggard drew on many personal and historical details to create her.  Ayesha was titled She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed.  As a child Haggard had a doll to which he gave that name.  The doll must have represented his mother.  If he invested characteristics of his mother into Ayesha then she must have been both warm and loving and cold and imperious.  Over all one gets the impression that she was not particularly loving.  Thus, Ayesha, while appearing to be in love with Leo/Kallicrates is nevertheless imperious, demanding and self-centered. In her only real display of afftection she kisses Leo on the forehead, as Haggard says, like a mother.   As Haggard says of Meriamun in The World’s Desire, her love was not so much for her lover but an expression of her own vanity.

     Haggard represents her as a living corpse in white funereal garments, completely shrouded.  She has a strange accoutrement in the serpent belt with two heads facing each other.  This is  close to the caduceus.  Perhaps Haggard had no idea of what the symbol meant in 1886 but by 1890 he had come up with an explanation.  In The World’s Desire of that year Queen Meriamun of Egypt keeps something she calls the Ancient Evil  in a box.   The Evil is a small blob.  When she warms it in her bosom it grows.   World’s Desire pp. 144-45:

          Thrice she breathed upon it, thrice she whispered, “Awake! Awake! Awake!”

     And the first breath she breathed the Thing stirred and sparkled.  The second time that she breathed it undid its shining folds and reared its head to her.  The third time that she breathed it slid from her bosom to the floor, then coiled itself about her feet and grew as grows a magician’s magic tree.

     Greater it grew and greater yet, and as it grew it shone like a torch in a tomb, and wound itself about the body of Meriamun, wrapping her in its fiery folds till it reached her middle.  Then it reared its head on high, and from its eyes there flowed a light like the light of a flame, and lo! its face was the face of a fair woman- it was the face of Meriamun!

     Now face looked on face, and eyes glared on eyes.  Still as a white statue of the Gods stood Meriamun the Queen, and all about her form and in and out of her dark hair twined the flaming snake.

     At length the Evil spoke- spoke with a human voice, with the voice of Meriamun, but in the dead speech of a dead people!

     “Tell me my name,” it said.

     “Sin is thy name,”  answered Meriamun the Queen.

     “Tell me whence I came.”  it said again.

     “From the evil within me.”  answered Meriamun.

     “Tell me where I go.”

     “Where I go there thou goest, for I have war and thee in my breast and thou art twined about my heart.”

     This quote gives an idea of what the snake belt worn by Ayesha signifies.

          Of signficance while Meriamun is dealing in magic Ayesha denies all connection with the art saying she utilizes nature.  She doesn’t use the word science but nature; nature would include psychology.  She therefore draws on natural processes discovered but not scientific processes exposed.  Thus when she kills her rival Ustane she does it by utilizing electro-magnetism, somehow using her own electro-magnetism  to negate Ustane’s thus extinguishing her life force.  We have then an example of tele-kinesis- action at a distance.  As I’ve noted in other essays tele-kinesis was amongst an array of mental powers thought to reside in the unconscious being investigated by the Society For Psychical Research.  Thus Haggard, probably through Lang, is up on the latest psychic developments.

Ursula Andress As She

    The ability to kill by telekinesis places a moral burden on Ayesha.  If one agrees that the use of such a power may be necessary the question arises of when it may be misused.  It would seem that the killing of a sexual rival was an inappropriate use, so the warring good and evil heads of her snake belt refers to the moral dilemma Ayesha faces.

      Her belt seems somewhat different than that of Queen Meriamun of The World’s Desire.  The latter having accepted the aid of the Ancient Evil was committed to evil being unable to remove the belt.  There seems to be an element of volition remaining to Ayesha.  She is not ‘possessed.’  Of course Ayesha began her life some thousand years after Meriamun so perhaps psychology was somewhat further evolved at that time or evolved with her over her two thousand year life span.

      Indeed, a topic of discussion Haggard introduces shouldn’t be dimissed lightly.  That topic is the age old discussion of whether good can come from evil and evil from good.  This is indeed a dilemma as bad results can arise from good intentions and vice versa.  There is a serious side here.

     Ayesha is pure irresistable beauty.  Once she shows her face no man can resist her.  She glories in this power.  In The World’s Desire of four years hence Haggard will separate good and evil making  Meriamun represent evil while Helen, the world’s desire, is all good.

     Holly is an interesting character who may be a back hand slap at the concept of evolution.  Holly also makes this the story of a beauty and a beast.  Holly is described as having a low forehead with a hairline growing out of his eyebrows, further his beard and his hairline meet.  He is said to have a hugely broad chest and shoulders with extra long arms, perhaps down to his knees although this is not stated.  What we have in Holly then is the Wolf Man combined with King Kong.   Monstrous indeed.

     In contrast Leo Vincey is a Greek god, a sort of Apollo.  As Ayesha is irresistable to men Leo seems likewise to be irresistable to women.  Indeed, he was married to Ustane within minutes of arriving in Kor.  He appears to have sincerely liked Ustane even though on sighting Ayesha’s face he too loved her.  Ustane was a rival for a portion of Leo’s affections  so Ayesha cut off her electrical supply.

     Of several truly dramatic scenes in this spectacularly well constructed story a very dramatic one is when Leo confronts his twenty-two hundred year old incarnation 0f Kallicrates.  Haggard doesn’t dwell on Leo’s understanding of this strange phenomenon although from the potsherd and his father’s letter he must have been convinced of the truth.  Strangely he doesn’t ask Ayesha for an account of this earlier life, nor how it was that she came to Egypt from Yemen to interfere in his romance with Amenartas.

     Haggard and Lang were aware of the early history of Yemen from whence Ayesha as a pure Semite came.  She was pre-Christian, although not pre-Jewish,  of some ancient Arabic religious beliefs.  How she got to Egypt is never disclosed or how she came into conflict with the Egyptian princess Amenartas for Kallicrate’s affections.

     Ayesha, by the way the name translates as Life,  merely confronts Leo as the neo-Kallicrates without any preparation.  A year or so to get to know her and become accustomed to her face might have been nice.  Although, Leo was married within minutes of arrival in Kor and was apparently satisfied with his wife.  He was a pretty adaptable guy.

     At any rate Ayesha rushes him into immortality and while tomorrow may be a long, long time, eternity is even longer.  One might want to consider a moment about a relationship of that duration.  Nor does she adequately prepare Leo’s mind for the ordeal of fire that she wants him to go through to become immortal.  Twenty-two hundred years of waiting had done little to improve her patience.

     Haggard has put everything he has into this story.  He was granted clear vision only once in his life and he took advantage of it.  In later years he was frequently asked why he didn’t write another story as good as She.  His reply was that such a story may only come once in a man’s lifetime.  The concentration and focus probably will never return again.  While Allan Quatermain, his third successive attempt to create a lost civilization was on the weak side I would argue that his last, Treasure of the Lake, comes close to She.

     So, the four of them set out for the place of the fire of life.  Masterful effects.  High in the mountains there is a gigantic balancing rock, a huge mushroom type cap balanced on a spire.  It would seems that Zane Grey was also greatly affected by She as Riders Of The Purple Sage  hews very close to She.   A narrow ledge of rock extends out opposite with a gap of fifteen feet.  To cross this gap with high winds howling through, a plank carried by the ever patient Job has to be lowered across the gap.  No mean task I’m sure, with only one chance of getting it right.  Once in place, thousands of feet above the gorge each has to walk from side to side; plus they have only a few minutes for all four to get over during a single beam of light from the setting sun.

     Fortunately all four make it crossing the balancing rock to descend into a cave leading to the bowels of the mountain.   There an eternal flame that ensures the life of the planet rumbles by every so often.  Twenty-two hundred years before Ayesha had bathed in this fire which following esoteric doctrines had burned away her gross, earthly, moral impurities making her essentially, pure spirit.

     A famous incident of the process is recounted of the goddess Demeter in her travels after the abduction of her daughter Persephone by Hades.  Coming to Eleusis Demeter in her form of an old crone was taken in by King Celeus and his wife Metaneira.  As a reward for her kind treatment Demeter set about to make their infant son Demophon immortal.  Thus each night she held him over the hearth fire to burn away his mortal impurities.  Surprised one night by a startled mother, Metaneira, the process was disrupted so that Demophon retained mortal impurities and failed to attain to godhood.

     In this sense then the fire that maintained the life of the Earth traveled a route through this mountain at the center of the Earth.  It appeared something like Old Faithful at Yellowstone periodically.  When it swept by, if one stood in the flame it burned away one’s mortal impurities leaving one, it is to be assumed, wholly Spiritual.  All the materiality was gone.

     Spirituality and materiality are still being discussed today.  Some talk of Spirit as though it exists while the materialists aver that all so-called spirituality is a seeming effect of materiality.  I am of the latter school of thought.  Oneself is all there is, there is nothing more.  The effect of spirituality is nothing more than a mirage created by intellect and consciousness which is entirely material.  It is all reduced to psychology which is a description of material existence.

Come To Me

     In Haggard’s story it is clear that Ayesha having lost her materiality to the flames is purely spiritual.  This is going to cause her problems as she steps into the flames the second time.

     The flame passes by while Leo dithers.  Impatient for Leo to assume immortality Ayesha strips, as the flames will flame the material garments about her but not her body.  As the flame comes around again Ayesha eagerly stands in its way.  However having been once purified it is good for eternity.  The second time is disastrous.  Perhaps spiritually dessicated by the double dose Ayesha begins to wither devasted even in her death throes by her loss of beauty.  Love in vain.

     Job is so horrified he dies of fright leaving Leo and Holly alone.

     The story for all intents is over but Haggard takes a dozen pages or so to get his heroes out of the caves and back to civilization.

     Ayesha’s existence wasn’t extinguished.  Her dying words were that She would return.  Room left for the sequel which not surprisingly was called The Return Of She appeared in 1906.

     Haggard hit the groove sharp as a knife in this incredibly well devised and executed story.  One will find evidences of it strewn all through Burroughs’ corpus.  Not least in his own character of La of Opar.  La itself translates from the French as She, of course,  so Burroughs even appropriates the name.

     La is as ardent for Tarzan as She was for Leo/Kallicrates.  Tarzan himself remains cold and indifferent to La throughout all four Opar stories finally abandoning her in Tarzan The Invincible.

     She by Haggard is well worth three or four reads to set the story in mind and savor the wonderful and unearthly details

The End.

End of Review

A Review: Pt. III She by H. Rider Haggard

 

A Contribution To The

ERBzine  ERB Library Project

She

by

H. Rider Haggard

Review by R.E. Prindle

Part III

The Gruesome, The Morbid AndThe  Hideous

     Rider Haggard was criticized severely by certain of his contemporaries for employing so many gruesome, morbid and hideous details.  Indeed, ’ She’ seems to be a study in the hideous, the gruesome and the morbid.  If one concentrates on those aspects of the story one might actually question Haggard’s mental health.

     Haggard himself calls attention to this morbidity.  In King Solomon’s Mines he pointed out  his humor with references to the Ingoldsby Legends; in She he makes a pointed reference to a Mark Tapley.  I had no idea who Mark Tapley might be but thought I’d consult that most magnificent of encyclopedias, the internet.  No problem.   Mark Tapley was a character from Charles Dickens’  Martin Chuzzlewit.  No matter how adverse the circumstances were Tapley was always cheerful and ebullient.  Haggard must have thought him ridiculous.  Thus he is devising a series of incidents that would bring even Mark Tapley down.  Hmm.  Interesting experiment.

     It would seem then that Haggard was suffering from a fairly deep depression.  In that sense She is sort of a horror story not too different in intent than, say, Bram Stoker’s Dracula.  Indeed,  at one point Ayesha explains that she rules by terror.  That being the most effective way to control brutes like the Amahagger.

     Certainly the storm at sea prior to entering Kor was an example of terror on the part of nature, a portent of things to come.   Not least of these was the hot potting and projected cannibalism of the surviving member of the ship’s crew, Mohammed.  ‘She’ had only required the safety of the Whites; as Mohammed was apparently a negrified Arab the Amahagger excluded him from the ban on Whites.  An interesting example of White Skin privilege.

     Their custom of killing their victims was to heat a pot red hot and turn it over on the victim’s head.  There’s a gruesome and hideous enough example.  You can see where Burroughs picked up his fascination for the gruesome and hideous.

     The Caves of Kor are actually a city of the dead.  Kor was an active civilization before Egypt existed  in the fifth or sixth millennium BC.  As embalming was a known practice when the Dynasties began c. 3400 the practice must have developed long before.  Quite possibly it was practiced by the peoples of the Basin before the Mediterranean was flooded.  In The World’s Desire Haggard mentions that the ancient Egyptians possessed writings in a precedent language.  If so, how far back things like embalming go might be prodigious.

     Egyptian embalming was primitive compared to that of the Korians.   While Egyptian mummies became desicated the Korian process was such that the body was preserved forever in an apparent state of health.  Thus bodies perhaps ten thousand years old or older had the appearance of  freshness. 

     Now, this is positively creepy.  Holly’s Amahagger attendent Bilalli while discussing Korian embalming  told Holly that while he was a young man a particularly beautiful female corpse occupied the very slab on which Holly slept.  Bilalli used to enter the cell and sit looking admiringly on the beautiful corpse by the hour.  One day his mother caught him at it.  The embalming fluid used was extremely flammable.  Bilalli’s mother stood the body up and lit it.  Like a huge torch the body burned down to the feet.  The feet were still as good as new.  Bilalli wrapped them and stored them beneath Holly’s slab.  Groping around beneath the slab he brought out those ten thousand year old feet, still fresh, except for some charring at the ankles.

     Haggard doesn’t stop there but goes on to emphasize the beauty of one particular foot.  One wonders if perhaps George Du Maurier read She becoming entranced by the foot image thus reproducing the image in his novel Trilby when Little Billee draws Trilby’s beautiful foot on th wall.  It is a thing Du Maurier would do as he inserted his literary baggage as profusely as Burroughs.

     What effect this image had on Haggard’s contemporary readers may be guessed from the complaints about his gruesomeness.

     In fact Haggard projects a depressed brooding evil permeating the Caves of Kor very well.  This may have been caused by his and Lang’s theories of the Matriarchy.  Human sacrifice was an integral part of the Matriarchal world.  The sacrifices were invariably of men because women had greater economic value.  When men were no longer sacrificed bulls, rams, the males of the species were substituted, the female still having greater economic value.  Thus the story of Isaac and the Ram.  That would be a great advance in civilization.  About that time Isis ceased being the Egyptian symbol of the firmament being replaced by the female cow as the symbol of economics.  Something like the kings of England sitting on the woolsack.

     Depending on Haggard’s and Lang’s theories of the Matriarchy then Haggard may have been portraying a consciousness that has ceased to exist.  There is always an element of misogyny in Haggard’s stories that is no longer tolerated.  Then men were men and women were women instead of the attempted strange unisexuality of today.  Thus the tens of miles of swamp between the Amahagger quarters  and the citadel of Kor indicate the extent and quality of the Matriarchy.  Swamps are the symbol of the female and the Matriarchy or, in other words, this very primitive superstitious consciousness.

     The Korian swamp was haunted by mephitic vapors, evil smelling and oppressive.  The ground they walked on was of uncertain solidity; it might look firm but this was only illusory as one could break through the crust.  Often the litter bearers were walking through evil smelling muck up to their knees.

     At one point an accident occurs and Bilalli’s litter with him in it is dumped into the slimy water.  He would have drowned if Holly hadn’t leaped into the rank female waters to save him.  They emerge looking something like the creature from the Black Lagoon.

     It will be remembered that Holly was something of a misogynist.  One may be stretching a point but even though rejecting women and marriage Holly managed to inherit a son from a man who was also a womanless widower.  Haggard makes a strong contrasting point when he says that Leo was not averse to female company.  The manservant, Job, is absolutely terrified of the female.

     After traversing this desolate swamp of the female for days they arrive at the citadel or temple of Kor.  Now, the citadel of Kor was built on an ancient lake bed that had been drained ten thousand years before.  In that sense Ayesha is the same as Nimue or the Lady Of The Lake of King Arthur.  Nemue lived at the bottom of a lake where she raised Lanclot who consequently was called Lancelot of the Lake.

     Compare this also with Haggard’s postumously published Treasure of the Lake in which the Anima figure lives on an island in the middle of  a lake in the middle of a volcanic crater.  The lake of Kor was also in the middle of a crater.

     When the Korian civilization was extinguished it wasn’t by invasion or other external reasons but by a  monster plague something like the fourteenth century european Black Death that wiped out nearly everyone.  At the resulting rate of death it wasn’t possible to embalm everyone so that tens of thousands of bodies were dumped into a huge subterranean pit.

     In conducting Holly and Leo on a guided tour of Kor which was one gigantic necropolis, talk about depressing, Ayesha brings them to this pit.  I quote:

     Accordingly I followed (She) to a side passage opening out of the main cave, then down a great number of steps, and along an underground shaft that cannot have been less than sixty feet beneath the surface of the rock, and was ventilated by curious borings that ran upward, I do not know where.  Suddenly this passage ended, and Ayesha halted, bidding the mutes return, and, as she prophesied, I saw a scene such as I was not likely to behold again.  We were standing in an enormous pit, or rather on the brink of it, for it went down deeper- I do not know how much- than the level on which we stood, and was edged in with a low wall of rock.  So far as I could judge, this was about the size of the space beneath the dome of St. Paul’s in London, and when the lamps were held up I saw that it was nothing but one vast charnel-house, being literally fullof thousands of human skeletons, which lay piled up in an enormous gleaming pyramid, formed by the slipping down of the bodies at the apex as others were dropped in from above.  Anything more appalling than this mass of human remains of a departed race I  cannot imagine, and what made it even more dreadful was that in this dry air a considerable number of bodies had become dessicated with the skin still on them, and now, fixed in every conceivable position, stared at us out of a mountain of white bones, grotesquely horrible caricatures of humanity.  In my astonishment I uttered an ejaculation, and the echoes of my voice, ringing in that vaulted space, disturbed a skull which hd been accurately balanced for many thousands of years near the apex of the pile.  Down it came with a run, bounding along merrily towards us, and of course bringing an avalanche of other bones after it, till at last the whole pit rattled with their movement, even as though the skeletons were rising up to greet us.

          Talk about a holocaust!  Imagine standing in that dimly lit space far beneath ground, in the grave itself so to speak,and viewing that.  Holly was overcome and perhap Mark Tapley himself would have lost a little of his cheeriness.  If that didn’t do it the ball Ayesha threw would have.

    Before I move on to that though let’s take a penultimate example that might actually unsettle Mark Tapley.  This is truly unsettling with truly macabre and voyeuristic soft porn details that are quite remarkable.    Let me say that it is only with the fourth reading that the horrific nature of these details really began to sink in.  I hope to really make this clear in the next section in which I intend to do an in depth analysis of Ayesha.

     In his cell at the citadel of Kor Holly notices a cleft in the wall he hadn’t noticed before.  This cleft is going to lead him to Ayesha’s sleeping room.  This is not unlike King Solomon’s Mines in which upon  entering the symbolic vagina  they were led to the womb or treasure box.  As I say Holly entered this cleft, let your imagination dwell on that,  and followed a dark, dank, narrow corridor until he perceived a light.

     He is looking into Ayesha’s sleeping room where in a certain deshabille, very erotic, she is addressing a covered form on a bier next to hers.  This is the embalmed body of Kallicrates who she murdered twenty-two hundred years before.  So she has been sleeping with this corpse for twenty-two centuries.  Now, dwell on that for moment, let the horror of it sink in.

     She addresses the corpse in a fairly demented way.  Twenty-two hundred years of this would drive anybody nuts.  Finally to the dismay of Holly she animates the body by telekinetic powers actually causing it to stand zombie like so she can kiss and caress it.  A lot of necrophilia in this novel.  Haggard must have been half dotty when he wrote this.  Of course Kallicrates is a double of Leo so Holly has all he can do to keep from crying out.  Causing the dead man to lay himself down Ayesha covers him and blows out the light.

     Holly has to find his way back in the dark reminding one of innumerable passages in Burroughs where his characters have to find their way in the dark.  Holly gets only so far and collapses in the tunnel.  Waking he sees a light coming in from his cell allowing him to find his way back.

     And then Ayesha throws her ball.  If you’ve read carefully and really ingested these macabre, gruesome, and as Burroughs’ would say, hideous details they’re beginning to oppress your mind, perhaps even a mind like Mark Tapley’s.

     Now Haggard trundles out the frosting.  To illuminate her ball Ayesha brings out piles of ten thousand year old corpses placing them around the perimeter as human torches.  Laying out a large bonfire the corpses are stacked alternately like so much cordwood and replaced as they were consumed.  Remember these are as fresh looking as you or I.  The Roman emperor Nero actually used live humans in the same manner.  Haggard notes this in the text which I thought weakened the effect.

     Ayesha seems to be aware of the effect, indeed, intended it and appears to relish the reaction.

     These are the high points of these horrfic details.  Minor ones are constant so that the cumulative effect leading up to the terrific images of the demise of Ayesha, temporary though it might be, is overwhelming.  But about She, Ayesha, in the next part.

 

 

 

Edgar Rice Burroughs Meets H. Rider Haggard

 

A Contribution To The

ERBzine Library Project

Edgar Rice Burroughs Meets Rider Haggard

by

R.E. Prindle

 

     Among the very many important influences on Edgar Rice Burroughs, contending for the top spot was the English novelist of Africa, Henry Rider Haggard, frequently named as just Rider Haggard.

     Haggard was born on June 22, 1856 in Norfolkshire.  He died on May 14, 1925.   When Burroughs was born in 1875 his future idol was beginning his stay in South Africa of seven years duration.  It was there that Haggard learned the history of the Zulu chiefs from Chaka to Cetywayo that figures so prominently in his African novels.

     In Africa at twenty, he was back in England at 27.  Even though Science was surging through England and Europe curiously Haggard was untouched by it all his life.  There is not even an acknowledgement that he had ever heard of Evolution in his novels.  Nor was he religious in the Christian sense.  Instead he became well versed in the esoteric tradition leaning even toward a pagan pre-Christian sensibility.  Perhaps very close to African animism.

     One supposes that on his return to England he might have immersed himself in Madame Blavatsky’s Isis Unveiled published in 1877.  He certainly seems to be a theosophical adept in his first two African novels, King Solomon’s Mines and She but he must have been pursuing his esoteric studies in Africa to have known so much.  If so, he is certainly knowledgeable of Zulu and African lore having a deep sympathy for it.  Indeed, he frequently comes across as half African intellectually. 

     Once he began writing he apparently never put down his pen.  I am unclear as to how many novels he wrote.  For convenience sake I have used the fantasticfiction.com bibliography which lists 50, but as I have sixty so there are obviously some missing.  In addition Haggard wrote a dozen non-fiction titles.

     While writing dozens of African novels Haggard also wrote a dozen or so esoteric novels placed throughout the eastern Mediterranean, Mexico and Nicaragua.  These are all terrifically impressive displays of esoteric understanding, breathtaking as a whole.  Usually disparaged by those without an esoteric background and education these volumes are almost essential reading for anyone so inclined.  For those who would deny ERB’s esoteric training and background I refer them to Haggard’s novels.

     The key to understanding Haggard’s thinking and works are a batch of novels exploring the relationship of the Anima and Animus.  Haggard’s quest in which he failed was to find union with his Anima.

     His fictional seeker and alter ego was Allan Quatermain.  Thus the first of his esoteric novels is King Solomon’s Mines, in which he introduces Quatermain establishes his Ego or Animus.  With his next novel, She, he introduces his Anima figure Ayesha otherwise known as She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed.  Early Sheena, Queen Of The Jungle.

     She was much acclaimed as the epitome of the Theosophical doctrine by Madame Blavatsky while C.G. Jung asserted that She was a perfect representation of the Anima figure.  Haggard followed She (1886) with Ayesha, The Return Of She (1905) and the final volume of the trilogy, Wisdom’s Daughter: The Life And Love Story Of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed (1923).  Terrific stuff, well worth a couple reads each.  She, of course, became the model for Burroughs’ La of Opar.

     Haggard died in 1925 so it can be seen that he was obsessed by his quest for union with his Anima.  Two additional volumes deal with his problem.  The trilogy does not include Allan Quatermain so Haggard had to write his alter-ego into Ayesha’s story.  This was begun in She And Allen of 1920.  You can see that he closer he got to his death the problem became more urgent.  The end of the story was told in his postumously published Treasure Of The Lake (1926).

     Treasure is the most hauntingly beautiful title Haggard wrote.  Just astonishing.  In the novel Quatermain is ‘called’ to travel to a hidden land.  He has no idea why but fate is visibly arranging things so that he must obey.  Terrific stuff.  The Treasure Of The Lake is none other than Allan’s Anima although no longer called Ayesha.  She lives on an island in the middle of a lake in an extinct volcano, She being the Treasure.  Heartbreakingly she is not for Allan.  He is only to get a glimpse of the grail while a character is rescued by Allan who bears a striking resemblance to Leo Vincey, the hero of She who is winner of  the Treasure.  The Treasure is reserved for him.  Thus Allan and Haggard journey back from the mountain’s top having seen the promised land but not allowed to enter.  By the time the first readers, which included Edgar Rice Burroughs, turned the pages H. Rider Haggard had crossed the bar, his bark being far out on the sea.

     Burroughs was impressed.   His 1931 novel, Tarzan Triumphant, is a direct imitation in certain episodes.  Largely on that basis I have to speculate that Burroughs read the entire Haggard corpus at least once.

     The Anima novels of Haggard then are:

1. King Solomon’s Mines

2.  She

3.  Ayesha, The Return Of She

4.Wisdom’s Daughter: The Life And Love Story Of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed

5.  She And Allan

6.  The Treasure Of The Lake

     The writing of the titles span Haggard’s writing career.

     His first esoteric novels which I heartily recommend are Cleopatra, The World’s Desire (top notch), The Pearl Maiden, Montezuma’s Daughter, Heart Of The World, Morning Star and Queen Sheba’s Ring.

     What most people think of and when anyone thinks of Haggard is his character Allan Quatermain.  The makes and remakes of Quatermain and She movies are numerous.  You could entertain yourself for many an hour.

     Fourteen novels were published during Haggard’s lifetime, the best known being King Soloman’s Mines and Allan Quatermain.  Many people have no idea he wrote anything else.  She, of the first African trilogy, doesn’t include Quatermain.

     Both of the first Quatermains were highly influential on Burroughs.  Tarzan was fashioned to some extent on the character Sir Henry Curtis, the original white giant.  While most people look for the origins of Tarzan in the Romulus and Remus myth of Rome that is only a small part of it that reflects Burroughs’ understanding of ancient mythology.  The models for Tarzan are more diverse including not only Curtis but The Great Sandow who Burroughs saw and possibly met at the great Columbian Exposition of 1893.  The list of titles in the Quatermain series:  (N.B.  It is Quatermain not Quartermain.)

1. King Solomon’s Mines

2.  Allan Quatermain

3.  Allan’s Wife

4,  Maiwa’s Revenge

5. Marie

6.  Child Of The Storm

7.  The Holy Flower

8.  Finished

9.  The Ivory Child

10.  The Ancient Allan

11.  She And Allan

12.  Heu-Heu or The Monster

13.  Treasure Of The Lake

14.  Allan And The Ice Gods

      As I look over the list I find that they were all pretty good.  The trilogy of Marie, Child Of The Storm and Finished, concerning Chaka’s wars is excellent.  The Holy Flower and The Ivory Child are also outstanding.  The Ivory Child introduces the notion of the Elephant’s Graveyard that captivated Hollywood while taking a central place in MGM’s Tarzan series of movies.

     Other noteworthy African titles are Nada, The Lily,  The People Of The Mist and Benita.

     In addition to the Esoteric and African novels Haggard wrote various contemporary and historical novels.  All of them are high quality but mainly for the Haggard enthusiast.  Burroughs may have been influenced to write the diverse range of his stories by Haggard’s example.

     In the current print on demand (POD) publishing situation nearly the entire catalog is available.  The Wildside Press publishes attractive editons of forty-some titles.  Kessinger Publishing publishes most of what Wildside doesn’t and most of what they do but in relatively unattractive editions.  You can search other POD publishers and probably come up with what you want.

     Haggard is wonderful stuff.  You can choose at random and come up with something that truly entertains you.