A Novel
Our Lady Of The Blues
Book VII
The Heart Of The Matter
by
R.E. Prindle
The Souls of Black Folk had taken definite form when Bert Williams captured the essence in his magnificent song: ‘Nobody.’
When life seems full of clouds and rain
And I am filled with naught but pain,
Who soothes my funkin’ bunkin’ brain?
Bert In Blackface
Nobody.
And when winter comes with snow and sleet
And me with hunger and cold feet,
Who say: Yars a quarta boy, now ya’ll go and eat?
Nobody.
Refrain.
Now I ain’t never done nothin’ to nobody
And I ain’t never got nothin’ from nobody
no time.
Until I get somethin’ from somebody sometime
Well, I don’t intend to do nothin’ for nobody
no time.
Then summer comes all cool an clean
And all my friends see me drawin’ near,
Who says: Come on over here, man, and have a beer?
Nobody.
Last Christmas Eve, ’twas about daybreak,
I was in that railroad wreck.
And who pulled the en-jine off my neck?
Not a livin’ soul.
Now, I ain’t never done nothin’ to nobody
And I ain’t never got nothin’ from nobody
no time.
Until I get somethin’ from somebody sometime
Well, I don’t intend to do nothin’ for nobody
no time.
An excellent version of the song is available by the musicologist Ry Cooder on his disc: Jazz.
page 1810.
Williams’ lyrics accurately portray the despair of the maltreated Negro in the heart of the Jim Crow period. The formation of the psychic block that forms the ‘hole’ in the Black soul is also apparent in the frustration of being abused without recourse. Dewey knew what Williams’ was talking about; he suffered from the same problem.
The intense anger which could not be safely expressed during the era is suppressed and sublimated into a festering resentment. At the end of the Jim Crow period and the beginning of the Self-Wareness Period this hurt, anger and resentment erupted in the Black revolt of the Long Hot Summer of ’67.
Politically the result took the form of Affirmative Action:
And I ain’t never got nothin’ from nobody no time
Until I get somethin’ from somebody sometime
Well, I don’t intend to do nothin’ for nobody
No time.
Thus Affirmative Action is an attempt to get somethin’ from somebody at the expense of someone else. It is important to deprive a White person of something for no good reason to compensate Blacks for being denied and deprived for no good reason earlier. As the slang has it: What goes around, comes around. But the resulting injury created against Whites will have to be compensated by Blacks later along. What goes around just keeps coming around. So, hey, hey, baby take a whiff on me.
page 1811
On the social level the attitude is reflected in the phenomenally high crime rate among Black youth. Rather than work which would be doin’ somethin’ for somebody, most likely White employers, a large percentage of Blacks prefer to do nothin’ for nobody no time.
The problem considered in the abstract is, however quite different than dealing with it in the concrete. Actual personalities are much differerent than hypothetical situations. Whoever said: In order to make an omelet you have to break a few eggs was not talking about his own eggs. One only talks so blithely about breaking eggs when they belong to someone else and you’re going to eat the omelet. The question was a serious one for White women who lived down along the interface where they were prey to Black men.
‘All those Black bastards want is our women.’ Black Jack thrust in demandingly while Dewey searched for an approach to an answer.
Dewey had had little experience with Black people, and that all bad, as he had been fortunate enough to have been brought up in an entirely White environment. this was so even though just across the River at Valley High the juxtaposition of the two races caused innumerable conflicts. In many ways there was open racial warfare.
page 1812.
A girl he had known and had a crush on in Junior High had transferred to the East Side where she had been raped by a Black guy and had his baby thereby destroying her life. Society looked at it as her fate as an inevitable sacrifice, especially as the egg broken wasn’t one of theirs. But, you know, omelets. That’s the way it goes. Dewey had taken it personally. Society forbade him to mention the race of the Black guy but his subconscious was not so easily intimidated. You can shut a man up buy you can’t keep his brain from working.
Dewey was not an integrationist. He was opposed to miscegenation. His notions on these issues were separate from his notions on equal opportunity and fairness. His talents had been shunted aside to provide greater opportunity for the elite. Even among whites the Aristocracy favored itself over the Other Half. Fairness was not a concern of the Aristocracy.
Thus Dewey did not oppose denying the Negro opportunity. The reason d’ etre of the United States, officially at least, was fair play. But you had to know how to get it.
On the other hand any advance of the Blacks could only be done at the expense of Whites. In order to raise Blacks Whites would have to be denied opportunity. And we know which Whites. The Aristocracy would not have to pay. All the expenses would be borne by the Other Half of the social order where both Dewey and Black Jack Davy were.
Dewey understood how Black Jack felt. His mind went back to that dance at Castlemont when he had seen and overheard the girls talking. The riots and battles down South had their effect on him. While the Blacks might be fighting for ‘justice’ they were also creating injustice. Affirmative Action meant that they would be given preferential treatment over Whites who had worked hard to prepare themselves and would now be denied.
page 1813.
Dewey didn’t know the answer but he saw no reason to offer up his body as a sacrifice to appease Blacks and gratify the guilt of the Urban Aristocracy.
‘Well, I know it’s a problem out in California. I spend a lot of liberty time in Oakland which is almost half Black. I know that in high schools like Castlemont any girls that don’t clear out immediately after school are considered fair game for Black guys who scour the halls looking for the late ones. The girls don’t even complain if they do get raped. It’s just assumed they were asking for it or they would have cleared right out. Boy, I don’t know what to do about it. The best thing you can do is get as far away from the Black areas as possible.’
‘That may be the only answer. They pull knives on girls in Chicago. You have to watch out all the time so they don’t get the jump on you. I know a couple girls who got the big thrill while a knife point was buried in their throat. Cops won’t listen to you in Chicago either; at least not where we live.’ Dixie Darlin’ said matter of factly while she comtemplated the card of the Hanging Man.
‘That’s just it.’ Black Jack said. ‘There’s a double standard operating here.’
page 1814.
‘Yeah, I know. This is a country of double standards, triple standards, heck, quadruple standards. Everything depends on who you are; there’s nothing honest in America. What’s a virtue in one case is a fault in another. No consistency. Some go to jail some walk. One guy kills somebody, he walks; another guy kills somebody he gets the chair. Lots of duplicity all the time. Doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with money either.’
Black Jack didn’t want to drift from his theme so he brought the conversation back.
‘The Second Coming Of The Golden Dawn deals with all those problems. It’s a modern religion for modern times. It won’t be too long before we’re more important than the Catholics. We’re going to revitalize and rejuvenate America; bring it back to the ideals that made it great. And you’re going to be in the middle of it as my lieutenant.
Dewey was about to frame a reply when Black Jack spotted a wreck on the highway. The crack up was a fairly serious one. One car must have wandered over the meridian hitting the other head on. The cars were really nothing more than twisted metal. The bodies lay around on the ground in sickening postures. A number of cars had stopped leaving groups of people either milling or standing around.
Dewey hoped that Black Jack would just drive through as the sight of mangled and torn bodies had no appeal for him but as a minister Black Jack thought his services might be needed. The three Chicagoans bored in close to get a good look. Dewey hung back disgusted and revolted. Two Black men and a woman stood not too far away.
‘Say man. You dig who that White guy in the plaid jacket is?’ One man asked.
‘I know him. Tha’s that crazy peckerwood who’s walkin’ around the Stockade in black face, ain’t he?’ The other said.
‘Black face? Wha’s he do that for?’ The woman asked.
‘Nobody kin figure it out. Funny dude, man. Acts like we don’t know he’s white with burnt cork on. Shit, he so dumb he even put blacking on the palm of his hands.’
‘No.’ The woman said laughing.
‘Shit yes. Nobody kin figure what he be doin’. He be tryin’ to get funny stuff on us he better be careful or the laugh is goin’ to be on him.’
‘I don’t know what else he kin be doin’. Kin you?’
‘Hell no.’
Dewey’s chest heaved as he suppressed the laughter welling up inside him. He got back in the car where he could laugh in safey. If those Black Folk had known the real reason they wouldn’t have known what to think. Black Jack in black face; Dewey giggled away. Then with a masterful effort he suppressed his laughter as Black Jack and the girls came back to the car.
‘I just can’t believe it.’ Black Jack lamented. ‘I just can’t believe it. A terrible crash on the highway like that and I didn’t hear nobody pray.’
‘Didn’t hear nobody pray?’ Dewey asked thinking that the last thing he had thought about.
‘No. there was whiskey and blood mixed together in the glass where they lay but I didn’t hear nobody pray. I was the only one who had the sense to call down the mercy of the Lord on those poor mangled souls.’
Mercy of the Lord on those poor mangled souls.’ Dewey repeated in wonder at what mercy those poor mangled souls could expect. They’d had little mercy in this world and in the next they were on their own.
‘Amen, brother.’ Black Jack intoned. ‘We’re going to get along just fine.’
Then Black Jack and Dewey came to that old fork in the road. Black Jack said: ‘Now, right up here we have to turn left to go into Chicago; if you go straight that will take you up into Gary. Like I say: I need you in Chicago to build the Second Coming Of The Golden Dawn and save America and probably the world. What say, are you made of the right stuff?’
‘Uh, no, Black Jack. I can’t. I’m in the Navy. I have to get back or they’ll courtmartial me.’
‘They can’t courtmartial some one who isn’t there, Dewey. What’s wrong with you?
‘Sure, Black Jack but it would ruin my life. They would come and get me.’
‘Oh, sheez. No one’s going to come after you. They wouldn’t even know where to begin looking. You’d be like that A-Bomb in Darktown. Why would they think you were in Chicago?’
‘Because it’s the center of the country? Aw, come on, Black Jack, when I get a driver’s license or apply for jobs they’d get me right away, besides, let me tell you something you don’t know; Chicago is no California.
‘Just change your name…’
‘Aw, Jesus, change my name! I’m not going to Chicago with you Black Jack. Now, let me out here.’
Black Jack was a very disappointed guy because he had convinced himself that Dewey had been sent by God to be his lieutenant. Providence had failed him or, perhaps, he had misinterpreted the signs. Dewey’s wanting to depart seemed to Black Jack a betrayal on the order of the kiss Judas gave Jesus.
He continued to half remonstrate with and half excoriate Trueman as he got out of the car. Dewey took it all in good measure because, after all, he had been given a handsome and entertaining ride and besides, as screwy as he considered most of Black Jack’s ideas he liked him.
Dewey knew what longing and frustration were. He knew what it meant to be reviled and rejected for no good reason. He took Black Jack’s raging as just the raving of an injured psyche. If the wounds were aggravated then society would just have to pay the price of its sins whatever that price might be. That was only just. If the wounds were allowed to heal then Black Jack would probably be a pretty decent guy.
In fact, Black Jack, or rather, Derek Drainsfield, as he did resume his original identity, turned out straight. He was able to move away from the Interface as Dewey suggested. As his women were no longer in danger from Black predators the pressure on his psyche decreased and as his mind cleared he once again realized that fear and revulsion were not bases for religion.
page 1818.
He turned to a gospel of love and wealth. He shed most of his repulsive majick elements of his approach leaving Aleister Crowley behind while miving closer to Rosicrucian Christianity. he remained a preacher. He was seeking to be respectable. He attained his goal. He had a congregation that varied between five and six hundred.
They were well satisfied with him while he was content with tending his flock. Circumstances required him to take a compassionate stand on race relations which he did but the misgivings he had acquired down on the Interface never left him. As, why should they?
‘Good luck finding that A-Bomb, Black Jack. Good bye Dixie Darlin’- Belle.’ Dewey said politely shutting the door. ‘Thanks for the ride.’
More hurt than angry Black Jack drove away muttering about the guy’s ingratitude under his breath.
Hitchhiking Is No Picnic
‘Christ, it’s cold.’ Dewey thought as the heat from the car left him. A cold blast of wind whistled down across Lake Michigan to rattle his teeth.
‘Oh, not again.’ Dewey said to himself as a cop car pulled to a stop in front of him. There was Navy on the Great Lakes so he wasn’t such an oddity to the Illinois State Police as he had been to those in Oklahoma.
page 1819.
The cop was one of those tall big men of limited mental resources who really like to lord it over other men. Maybe he was just amusing himself. Taking Dewey’s leave papers and ID he sat for fifteen minutes in his car leaving Dewey to shiver in the cold.
He got back out offering a few sneering comments then dropped Dewey’s papers to the ground and drove off. That good strong North Wind caught Dewey’s leave papers sending them off like an eagle taking wing. There was little sense in chasing them so Dewey stood watching as they wafted back down the highway.
‘Oh well, I probably won’t need them anymore. Boy, cops must all be cut from the same mold.’ Dewey thought as his resentment against the police grew. ‘And they wonder why everybody despises them.’
It’s not so much that they receive the same education in police academies as that they all do come from the same mental approach to life. They’re just bullies with badges made safe from retaliation.
The sun was going down. The temperature was dropping. Once out of his face Dewey had other things to think about than coppers although he was acquiring a bitter understanding of the attitudes of men like John Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd the Outlaw.
A couple rides later he was dropped off in front of a service station in Gary, Indiana. Named after Judge Gary. Night had fallen on the lakeside city. A superb lake effect snowstorn was in progress from Gary up to Benton Harbor from which point Dewey intended to shunt East across Michigan to the Valley.
page 1820.
Gary was not yet the Black town it would be. Eventually it would become another East St. Louis. For the present Dewey was safe from racial harassment.
He took up a position under the lights of the station sign where he could really be seen. It was a pitiless night. No one would stop. Every time a semi went by, which was every other vehicle, the big rigs swirled the snow wildly burying Dewey in the rearranged drift. The hours passed.
Finally a big rig pulled to a stop. The tractor was a nice new cab over but the driver was crossing over to Cleveland.
The driver seemed decent enough, tried to explain to him that there would be no traffic heading North. He told Dewey that it would be better to cross over beneath Detroit and go North from there where there would be a lot more traffic.
Dewey feared Detroit for a number of reaons of which race was one, while the time involved crossing then heading up the Dixie seemed excessive. That coupled with the fact that his mind was slowing from lack of both sleep and nourishment determined his decision. He had no idea that the highway would have less traffice than the Claremore road if possible.
Without being aware of it Dewey had become quite dehydrated. Suddenly his thirst hit him. He looked over to spot the Coke machine in the gas station. Really discouraged he walked over and drained five bottles of Coke in a row. They were the old 7 oz. size.
page 1821.
This gave the attendant who had been watching him an excuse to talk to him.
‘Wow. You must really be thirsty.’
‘Yeah. I was anyway.’
‘How come you didn’t take the ride that trucker offered?’
‘Oh, he was going East to Cleveland. Offered to drop me off below Detroit but gosh, that’s several more hours and I’ve been on the road forever. This was supposed to be a forty-eight hour trip.'[
‘How long you been on the road?’
‘I don’t know. I started last Thursday.’
‘Where you going?’
‘The Valley in Michigan. Thought I’d cut over at Benton Harbor.’
‘Oh man, that’s a tough one any night. Very little traffic. In this storm there probably won’t be any at all. Sunday night too. You should have taken that trucker’s offer. Tell you what I’ll do for you. I’ll ask any driver going North if they’ll give you a ride. You can stand out there if you want. I’ll call you over if I find someone.’
Dewey thanked him kindly but was so discouraged he forgot about it immediately. He was digging himself out of the umpteenth snow bank when the attendant called to him.
‘Hey, hey Sailor, come on. I’ve got a ride for you.’
Dewey couldn’t believe his ears but he stepped smartly over.
‘He’s going to St. Joe. Says he’ll give you a ride.’
Dewey thanked the attendant but didn’t offer the tip he was obviously expected to give and hopped in.
Four Strong Winds
As the saying goes: Dewey was running on empty. There weren’t even any fumes left. He was going simply because he was going.
There were several towns they had to pass through on the way to Benton Harbor not to mention the good sized city of South Bend but all Dewey would ever be able to remember was big white snow flakes falling from a patent leather sky and the blazing white snow banks illuminated by the headlights. The night had the surreal aspects of the Hopper picture ‘Nighthawks At The Diner.’
Terry Gaste, the driver, was the first respectable looking person Dewey had seen for days. He was a pleasant looking man of about twenty-seven. Plump, even quivering with baby fat, delicate, well dressed, well groomed, impeccably mannered, he was meticulously cared for. Every hair of his dark head had a well defined place for which it occupied. He looked like he had just shaved. He had an air of refinement. In fact, he was a high school English teacher at Benton Harbor. Even out in the boonies Benton Harbor had more cachet than its twin city St. Joseph so Terry Gaste lived in St. Joe where rents were cheaper. Hard to believe.
page 1823.
If Dewey hadn’t been grappling to keep his grip on reality he would have thought that Gaste was a very creditable guy. Having been five days on the road he mainly noticed that Gaste seemed very effeminate.
‘I offered you a ride because in this terrible weather I thought I might need your help if I got stuck. You would help me if that happened wouldn’t you? You wouldn’t just abandon me?’
‘No.’ Dewey said. ‘That’s a very fair exchange. This is a lot of snow. We don’t get snow like this up in the Valley. Cold, but no snow.’
‘We get a lot of snow here.’
‘I always noticed that. There’s a strip right across Southern Michigan that always gets a lot of snow. I mean look at these snowbanks, four or five feet high. Couldn’t have been any worse than that storm in Flagstaff. What are you doing out so late in this weather?’
‘I’m returning from Chicago. I live in St. Joseph but I teach English in Benton Harbor. My girl friend lives in Chicago and I visit her every weekend. I make this trip every week.’
Dewey’s mind was about to go free form. It was about to take the same relationship to his body that the Milky Way takes to Earth. Fortunately he still had enough control not to express an unasked for opinion of Terry Gaste. His own thoughts were that Gaste was gay but he had enough sense to stay in the closet in Benton Harbor. Dewey thought that he probably went to Chicago on weekends for sex. Heaven was merciful to Trueman; he kept his speculations to himself but converted his opinions into a series of malicious comments.
page 1824.
‘Wow, that’s a long way to go to see your girl firend.’
If Dewey’s mind had been functioning he might have reflected on that statement. Gaste was driving only two hundred miles round trip. Dewey thought nothing of an over night jaunt from San Diego to LA which was about the same distance. He regularly traveled twelve hundred miles round trip to San Francisco on a weekend. And then he had to hitchhike more often than not. But in Michigan a hundred miles seems like a great long trip.
‘I don’t mind. We’re in love. She’s worth it.’
‘Really? I don’t know if I could do that. I’d get a girl in Benton Harbor.’
Then Dewey egan to talk about things that, had he been rested, he wouldn’t have mentioned. But under that patent leather black and white environment of shimmering snow flakes and dazzlingly white snow banks an inchoate fear seized his vitals causing unnamed specters to be released from the right side of his brain. Perhaps his subconscious flooded his conscious mind. No, that wasn’t it. It was the right side.
‘I’m quite happy this way actually.’ Gaste said trying to edge off the subject.
‘Boy, I’d be afraid she’d be cheating on me.’
‘Oh no. I have absolute trust in her.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Do you call her weekdays.’
‘Yes. We talk.’
page 1825.
‘Is she always there?’
‘Well, no. Not always.’
‘See.’
‘See what? She can’t always be home. That doesn’t mean she’s out with someone else.’
Dewey’s emotional development had been arrested by the sharp break in his routines caused by entering the Navy. He still had a teenage notion of fidelity. Thus his fears now amounting to a panic kept him on the subject even though he could see the discomfort he was causing Gaste.
He liked Gaste and could see his error but he couldn’t get his mind out of its rut. He insisted to the point of being obtuse. Gaste, who was kind and considerate to a fault was being driven to his wit’s end. Perhaps for that reason his concentration wavered. The car lost traction and slid up against the snowbank.
Gaste couldn’t regain traction. The tires spun uselessly.
‘I think you’re going to have to get out and push.’ Gaste said tersely fearful that Trueman wouldn’t keep his end of the bargain.
‘Oh well. Nobody rides for free.’ Trueman replied with mock ruefullness, thankful for the intrusion into his feeling of nauseating panic.
Pushing was out of the question. Gaste’s De Soto, the marque of the car wasn’t mentioned but his was the last model year of De Soto, ’58 if I remember correctly, blue and white, was a heavy car but even had it been lighter Dewey’s feet would have slid out from under him.
page 1826.
Dewey had no intention of being stranded for hours, there must be a way out. He noticed that as slick as the road was and as high and firm as the snowbank was it was possible to perhaps wedge himself between the snowbank and the car and push the car sideways back into the road.
‘There’s no way I can push it, Terry.’ He ssid speaking rhough Gaste’s open window. ‘This road’s too slick. But we can try this. I’ll wedge myself in between the car and the snowback, when I shout Now! give it the gas and I’ll push sideways with my foot. That might get it out of the groove it’s in and back in the road where the wheels won’t be in slick ruts.’
‘You don’t think you will hurt my car, do you?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘If you push with your foot on the fin the metal might cave in.’
‘Terry, in a contest between me and steel I’ll bet against myself every time. You should too.’
‘Well, I suppose it’s worth a try.’
‘Sure it is.’
Dewey got into position and shouted to Gaste to give it the gas. Belying his apparent timidity Gaste gunned the engine mightily. Dewey pushed. Almost perfect; the DeSoto left the ruts and shot out into the middle of the road straight as an arrow as Dewey slid down the snowbank with a painful bump.
There was a moment of anxiety for Dewey as he feared Gaste might drive off without him. Such was not the case.
1827.
In the first place Gaste was much too decent a guy to even think of abandoning Dewey even though Dewey’s chatter had him running up walls. Also if he spun out once he could spin out twice; why take chances, still he thought Dewey might have dented his car.
‘You didn’t dent my car.’ He asked Dewey as the sailor, smiling at his success, slid back in the seat.
‘No. It worked perfectly, Terry. We’re even pointed straight down the road. I was afraid it might to into the opposite snowbank. Let’s go.’
‘I’m going to check.’
‘It’s alright Terry, don’t check. Let’s go before we lose traction again.’
Gaste hopped out to run around the car like a ferret to check Dewey’s word. Finding the fender without a dent he got back in the car much relieved. Easing the car forward slowly they regained traction.
In the time he had been able to divert Dewey’s rattling chat Dewey had revealed some rather remarkable details of his journey. He wasn’t aware yet of the effect of the trip on himself but Gaste was amazed even horrified at the details Dewey had given him. The motorcycle ride with Rodeo Frank had made quite an impression.
Now determined to keep Dewey off subjects offensive to himself, Gaste had a line of converstaion ready when he got back in the car.
page 1828.
Dewey himself had had a transformation out in the cold. Still obsessed with the legendary snowstorm in Flagstaff he could hardly believe that that storm was worse than this one. He therefore dismissed the story as some writer’s hyperbole thereby putting to rest a piece of ephemera that had bothered him for years.
The combination of white snow and black sky blew through his mind like a gale. The extreme black shininess of the deep browed sky seemed to him like Mother Space while the cold white flakes came down like bits of bone white death.
The reason that the car had slid was that a snow plow had preceded them turning the road into a white carpeted path of packed snow which added to the sharp contrast accentuated by the ricocheting light from the headlamps.
Dewey’s mind was overwhelmed by the white and black as he half slid and half skated back to the car.
His despair caused him to conceive his situation as one of death in life. A quiet panic festered in his mind. His fatigue began to swirl his mind as though it were the center of four strong contending winds, like the great swirl of the Milky Way sliding backwards from the center of the Big Blast through space. The white and black seared his mind.
As the conversation developed Dewey made connections and expressed opinions that would have been blocked by a rested and conscious mind. He expressed opinions and analyses he never knew he had. He could never have repeated them on the spot nor could he have remembered them after rest.
page 1829.
Meaning to seize the initiative Terry Gaste used the key that opened Dewey’s mind to a flood of opinion that Gaste had not expected. There had been nothing said to this point that gave any indication of Dewey’s intellectual depth. Indeed, his pimpled face and cold staring expression indicated just the opposite. Gaste had expected to toy with him and dazzle him with his brilliance.
Gaste was impressed by the idea of Dewey having hitchhiked all the way across country from San Diego. Like many others in his class Gaste repressed such desires but greatly romanticized them. He had also read Jack Kerouac’s ‘On The Road’ that had been out for over a year now. He imagined there was some similarity between Kerouac’s and Trueman’s experience.
‘Have you read that new book ‘On The Road’ by Jack Kerouac?’ He asked expecting that Dewey had never heard of it.
‘Yes.’ Dewey replied.
‘You have?’ Gaste said raising the pitch of his voice in surprise. Before he went on he sought to know how as he imagined not without reason that Dewey would have been cut off by Navylife from more recent literary developments. ‘Umm, do you read a lot?’
‘Actually quite a bit.’ Dewey replied. ‘That book you mentioned was one they passed aound. I had to read it, as it were, I didn’t like it but it has made a terrific impression aboard ship. They talk about it all the time.’
‘You had to read it? Why’s that?’
page 1830
‘Well, being aboard ship is a pretty peculiar way to live. There’s a whole big difference between what is called the ‘officers’ and the ‘men.’ I’m obviously of that part called ‘the men.’ Being in the Navy is like being in the orphanage or in prison. They don’t allow for a lot of individuality. It’s very easy to be thought weird. They don’t want you to know anything they don’t. If you do that makes them feel insecure and inferior. They don’t want you read, become familiar with literature like, oh say, Victor Hugo or John Dos Passos, so certain books are passed around that you are expected to be familiar with or not. They don’t care if you don’t read the books; they do allow for greater ignorance than theirs.’
‘What kind of books?’
‘Well, mostly they’re kind of dirty, soft corn porn, you might say. Although some have a quite serious side and even have a backhanded moral or, at least, lesson you have to a fringe person to get it. One of them was about a guy who got knocked over the head, had amneisa, and becomes a criminal under an assumed name, naturally, as he can’t remember his own. Happened to me I’d use the name of the guy who lived kitty corner from me, mess up his reputation. His wife goes in search of him. In the pursuit she becomes a prostitute because, even thought this course is repugnant to her, she believes this is the only way to find her beloved. It goes on like that. Some guy cornholes her and we get a description of her patting her rectum back into shape. Stuff you need to know to get through life. In the end the boy gets his memory back but instead of being angry with his wife he cherishes her because she made this great sacrifice of her virtue just for him. So crime is kind a natural part of life is the moral. It kind of keeps your mind off the stars and in the muck so you don’t get to thinking you’re better than the scum you live with. That’s what the French call ‘egalite.’
‘Do you mean as in the slogan of the French Revolution: Liberte, egalite, fraternite?
‘That’s it. What egalite means is than anyone who tries to excel is put down. Therefore egalite cancels liberte and makes fraternite impossible because who would want to associate with such a bunch of bums. Ha ha ha.’
‘But what was the moral of this book about the woman who became a prostitute?’
‘The argument goes that you would forgive your wife if she became a prostitute to save you, wouldn’t you? Of course you would, is the correct answer. And then, by extension, that if you would forgive her for screwing other guys to save your life then it is ridiculous to be jealous of your wife if she is screwing other guys for pleasure. So you should just let anybody who want to screw her screw her and just shut up. Nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so, see? My argument was that it may work well when you’re screwing the other guy’s wife but you aren’t going to be so tolerant when it happens to you. I asked if they thought I should be jealous if any of them were screwing my wife, should I have one, and they said no. Then I asked how they would they feel if I were screwing their wife and to a man they said they would stomp my ass into dust.
Anyway if you approve prostitution or promiscuity for one reason then it can’t be wrong for any reason. So the tendency of these books including ‘On The Road’, seems to be in inculcate a tolerance for criminality. Besides which all these guys are all hypocrites.’
page 1832.
‘Do you know how these books are selected? Who does it?’
‘Not exactly. But control seems to be coming from the midships area. I tried to get a couple books inserted in the rounds but they were coldly rejected so I have to believe the books were selected for a political purpose. Pretty undemocratic censorship, hey?’
‘What books did you try to insert?’
‘Well, from the content of the books I’ve seen passed around it wouldn’t do any good to try for books you English teachers think are literature, but, you know, there is much more pertinent writing than guys like Mailer, Roth or Herman Wouk going around.
I mean they even gave a Pulitzer prize to that piece of crap, ‘The Caine Mutiny.’ What an impossible story. I doubt if Wouk was even ever aboard ship. But then other stuff doesn’t get a chance with major publishers. Actually ‘On The Road’ is an exception. That book is outside the acceptable tradition of polite literature, what you might call ‘outlaw.’ It’s about the same mental caliber as this book called ‘Junkie’ that was passed around.
There’s a couple of very interesting publishers who put out this kind of stuff in Kerouac’s style. One’s Ace and the other is Gold Seal. Ever heard of them? No? You’ve probably seen them on the paper back racks. One despises them because they only come out in paper back, no hard cover. Turned up your nose and walked away, eh? I had to get over the prejudice myself. Broaden out, it won’t hurt you.
page 1833.
Gold Seals’s got one, out of several I’ve read, that’s particularly interesting called ‘I Am Legend.’ I tried to get this one in.
(This book was later made into a distorted movie verson that completely betrays the impact of the novel, called ‘The Omega Man’ starring Charlton Heston. This story was converted into a version acceptable to the Revolution. It was again released as ‘I Am Legend’ after the turn of the century as the story of Black and White race issues.)
It’s about a world in which vampires start out as a small persecuted group, somewhat like the early Christians or present day Commies, but gradually enlarge in numbers until there are more of them than us. Finally there is only one regular guy left, everyone else has been turned into a vampire. Technically the vampires cannot suck each other’s blood without dying out as there is no fresh blood left but if that were allowed, no story.
Finally there’s only one guy left. He goes around by day killing as many vampires as he can find. they turn around and persecute him by night. They assault him in his impregnable, apparently fire proof wooden fortress all night long. Never could figure when he got any sleep, must have been a bundle of nerves.
There’s a real stalemate until the vampires learn how to survive in daylight. Then they put on tanning lotion, must have been left over on some drugstore shelf, on the most beautiful of their women. In my book she must have been fair of face, 40D, 25, 38. Like them proportions? But the author was vague.
page 1834.
She infiltrates this guy’s lair, betrays him and he ends up being on the gallows. The last sane man left alive, hence he is legendary.
I don’t know why my shipmates rejected it unless it was resistance to the end.’
That was part of it. The book was interpreted as an anti-Communist allegory. Dewey was correct in sensing that control of the books came from midships. The Revolution’s agent on board was Teal Kanary and the Yeoman’s office was midship.
At this time the Navy was very sensitive to Communist infiltration. All swabbies were supposed to be on lookout for Communist agents and report them. The Navy only understood the problem in terms of espionage not as social attitude. The Revolution accordingly disparaged the notion of espionage but Russian agents did exist.
The author was once stopped at gunpoint on Treasure Island because he had inadvertantly strolled into an unmarked restricted area at night. The Navy didn’t post warnings so that attention wouldn’t be called to the area. The Russian spies adopted the perfect camouflage; they were among the officers supervising the area. Navy arrogance was such that they thought officers could do no wrong. Any such spies were above suspicion. It was ‘the men’ you had to look out for.
The Communist Party was only the political arm of the Revolution. the Revolution exists on many different fronts. It is wrong to assume that the Revolution is interested only in armed revolt. That method will succeed only under very special conditions which have been present merely two times in the last three hundred years: 1789 and 1917. The better method is to bore from within.
page 1835.
The Revolution takes place more effectively in literature, movies and records where White standards are systematically undermined and replaced by Red ideals. Hence the books passed around the ship were subversive to White morality. ‘I Am Legend’ was subversive or Revolutionary objectives. Thus, the book was thrown back in Dewey’s face. So much for the slogan of liberty, equality and fraternity except as double speak.
‘Well.’ Terry said, trying to get back on ground he understood. ‘But, didn’t you think ‘On The Road’ was a terrific read?’
‘It bothered me. I saw just a bunch of petty grifters involved in theft, drugs and illicit sex. Have you heard of this guy Allen Ginsberg?’
This was getting onto ground forbidden to Terry Gaste. It might be OK to have heard of Ginsberg amongst the academic community but certainly not to be familiar with his work. Ginsberg had after all used the word ‘fuck.’ In these antediluvian days before Lenny Bruce had made the seven forbidden works commonplace the use of the f word was enough to disqualify anyone from consideration. Gaste had read Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’, even recently, but the knowledge was carefully concealed by the high school English teacher. However here in his car with the heater going in a freezing snowstorm with Dewey he felt safe to talk freely. He didn’t think Dewey would ever be able to turn him in.
‘You mean the poet who wrote ‘Howl?’ Terry said with awe of both Ginsberg and Dewey who he would never have thought would have ever heard of the ‘poet’ Ginsberg. Terry didn’t seem to realize that the poem was directed at precisely the social class of Trueman and not at polite culture.
‘Poem? Oh yeah, maybe. I think the title, Howl, is the whole message. He could have skipped the verbiage. This guy is supposed to be the poet type guy in ‘On The Road.’ He was Kerouac’s friend. He’s the model and in Howl he has this line about how he has seen the best minds of his generation driven insane of something to that effect. If these guys in ‘On The Road’ are the best minds of his generation I think we should all check into the asylum right now.’
In fact, one of the best minds, Neal Cassady, model for Dean Moriarty in the novel, had set up a major marijuana smuggling operation in San Francisco surpassing that of the Kreskins. He, however, had been caught. He was at this time undergoing trial and about to be sent to San Quentin.
‘You feel that strongly?’ Terry said, feeling disappointed.
‘Sure. the book is just another example of ephemeral fruits to my way of thinking.’
The term was so unexpected in this little capsule inching along the frozen slippery path in the snowstorm behind the snow plow which they had overtaken but couldn’t pass that Gaste had to laugh. ‘Ephemeral fruits?’
pare 1837.
‘Yeah. It’s like so much happening today. It doesn’t have any intellectual value. I mean, they got this guy in San Francisco by the name of Lenny Bruce whose whole pitch is dirty words. I mean, you know, his whole act seems to be to introduce the words Fuck and Cocksucker into parlor conversation. The guy’s disgusting yet he’s a hero to some of these guys aboard ship. I mean, that’s really something to strive for, isn’t it? Really betters humanity, doesn’t it?
All the things we’re doing, filling our minds with, are just shallow entertainment so-called, perhaps entertaining but actually demeaning. After all a mind has only so much time a day for something to be put into it. When all that is put in is nothing but stupid movies and crusades to say Fuck in normal conversation, that’s not very intellectually nourishing, don’t you think? We’re just gorging ourselves on sterile information.’
‘What do you mean by ephemeral fruits? Is this a term you’ve conceived.’
‘Who me? No. It’s something I picked up in Mrs. Hicks’ English class in twelfth grade. Stuck in my mind. I like the sound of it: Ephemeral fruits. You should know it being an English teacher and all.’
‘Evaline Hicks at Valley Melville?’
‘Mrs. Hicks is all I know. One doesn’t inquire into the first names of old broads and English teachers; but yes, I went to Herman Melville in the Valley. Valley Melville as you guys down here refer to it.’
page 1838.
‘Yes. Now what about ephemeral fruits?’
‘Well, it comes from a Greek myth, she was big on Greek myths, King Arthur, Roland and all that, where the monster Typhon takes on Zeus, beats him up, takes out his tendons and leaves them in a sack somewhere.
Then to help out Zeus in his exremity some nymphs feed Typhon with ephemeral fruits that look good but contain no nourishment so that the more Typhon gorges himself the weaker he gets. you see the comparison I’m making, right?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Yes. Well, Mrs. Hicks had this theory about Typhon. She didn’t call it a theory, I think she said it was an hypothesis. You have to take responsibility for theories but you can get away with hypotheses. It’s kind of like a joke. Anyway, you’ve heard of the island of Thera? Exploded some time way back when? Bigger than Krakatoa, bigger than the H-Bomb to hear people talk who weren’t there.
So, she figures if this happened that it would make such a huge impression on everyone that it would have to be mentioned in Greek mythology, but it doesn’t appear to be. But, she says, it has to be. So she thinks that maybe the story of Typhon and Zeus is a mythological account of the explosion of Thera. but, uh, I don’t know.’
‘I’m sure I don’t either. Evaline, uh, Mrs. Hicks has been injudicious enough to mention her, uh, hypothesis at a couple conferences I’ve attended. I think she’s a delightful lady but she lost credibility over this issue.’
page 1839.
‘How’s that.’
‘Well, no one’s ever heard it before. There’s no authority for it.’
‘Well, yeah, but she only said there must be a reference to Thera and I think there must and that Typhon might possibly be it.’
In fact as subsequent events have shown the author, there is every reason to believe that the explosion of Thera is accounted for by the myth of Hera, Zeus and Typhon. Let us consider it a moment, especially as the myth would eliminate Thera as a place for Atlantis.
At one time Zeus ingested the goddess Metis but found her not entirely digestible. She gave him a great headache. This was relieved when he gave girth to Athene through his forehead. This birth without female aid made Hera very envious. In a fit of rage she gave birth to the monster Typhon without the aid of a male. Typhon had roots deep into the earth while his head touched the stars. Great wings sprouted from his shoulders which hid the sun. His name has been interpreted to mean stupefying smoke or hot wind. He was said to emit great boulders from his mouth as well as belching fire. Sounds like a volcano to me.
There are some who say the thrashing of his tail roused great tidal waves.
Zeus stared bugeyed when he realized that this giant was invading his realm of the sky. The earth monster of the Earth goddess Hera was attacking the Lord of the Sky. The Great One was not keen on battle but to battle he must. The skies flashed and roared from Zeus’ thunderbolts as he hurled them against the wasting hot breath of Typhon.
page 1840
The mighty monster brought the Great One down, crushing him as though a matchstick. Zeus being immortal could not be killed so Typhon stripped the body of the tendons rending Zeus immobile. Then Typhon put the tendons in a leather sack which he hid in a cave in Cilicia, a nation on the coast of Anatolia. The body he chucked away leaving Zeus an immobile hunk on the ground.
Typhon would have emerged triumphant except that the great gods Hermes and Pan located the sinews and restrung the inert Father of the Gods. As they were doing so the Fates fed Typhon with basket loads of Ephemeral Fruits. The more the monster ate the weaker he got, thus Zeus returning to battle was able to defeat Hera’s creation returning the cosmos to normal.
The myth on the surface of it appears to be merely a pretty tale. When Herodotus, the father of historians hence a father of mine, was in Egypt he told the priests the story of Phaeton and Helios. The priests advised him that the myth undoubtedly concealed an historical event, as in their opinion, all myths did.
The myth of Phaeton concerns his desire to drive the horses of the sun across the sky. He approached his father Helios who reluctantly consented. Phaeton was unable to control the great beasts so the sun wobbled in its course coming so close to earth that the resulting fires nearly destroyed mankind.
One would have been hard pressed to give a natural explanation to that one until the Summer of 2000 when a scorching heat wave in Greece drove the temperatures up to 120 degrees igniting the dry brush into great fires burning out of control. Such a season might be described by people with meager meteorological knowledge as the sun wobbling off course close to earth.
page 1841.
Let us suppose the ancient Egyptians to be right. Let us suppose that the myth of Hera and Typhon is based on an actual event. The myth is, of course, undated. It merely happened once upon a time. The myth does however perfectly describe the eruption of a specific type of volcano. Thera was a dormant volcano of the type of Krakatoa, St. Helens and Mazama. Both St. Helens and Mazama are in the Cascade Range of the Western United States.
World famous Crater Lake is located in the crater created by Mt. Mazama when it exploded in prehistoric times. Mazama was a big one of 12,000 to 14,000 feet which is apparently about as big as the type of volcano gets. The mountain of Mazama was bigger than the island of Thera.
The author was present when Mt. St. Helens exploded in the 1980s. He was about sixty miles to the South in Portland, Oregon. The rupture occured nearly at the summit. The explosion sent rocks flying for miles as though hurled from Typon’s mouth. The hot pyroclastic blast of gases rolled down the Northeast slope flattening tens of thousands of acres of forest. The volcano vented gases and ash for two or three days which rose billowing up to 40,000 feet or better until they flattened out like a thunderhead drifting with the prevailing wind which was a Zephyr.
page 1842.
The falling ash blocked the sun in Yakima, Washington about fifty miles East where ash accumualted to a depth of about eighteen inches. A terrifying situation even when you knew what was happening.. Spokane, three hundred miles away received several inches.
Mt. St. Helens was a nine thousand foot mountain before it exploded and about 6000 after the eruption. The missing three thousand feet was not blown away by the explosion but worn away the venting ash and gases.
St. Helens and Thera appear to have been about the same size so there is no reason to believe that Thera was a more cataclysmic disaster than St. Helens.
People who imagine a fantastic disaster say that Thera exploded with a force of hundred hydrogen bombs. This is so much nonsense. St. Helens didn’t go off with even the force of one hydrogen bomb. Such a disaster is geologically impossible. What must have happened at Thera was what happened in Washington State in the nineteen eighties, a very impressive eruption but nothing equating a hundred hydrogen bombs.
Hera being an earth goddess was assigned the parentage of Typhon because she represented Gaia, or Earth. The eruption must have been terrifying to people without knowledge of volcanic causes so the event was interpreted as Hera challenging Zeus, the sky god, through her creation. As Zeus’ sinews were hidden in a cave to the East of the eruption that means that the Zephyr was blowing the ash East at the time. The great billows of ash would be interpreted as blocking the sun. The thunderhead would interpreted as the head of Typhon reaching to the stars.
There is no chance that the ash covered Greece to the West or Egypt to the South. The ash would have streamed East in a fairly narrow band. Thus Cilicia would have corresponded to Yakima in Washington State. Further to the East the Hittites have a myth quite similar to Hera and the Typhon. Their relationship to the explosion would have been approximately that of Spokane, Washington so their myth lacks the terror of the Greek myth. The Hebrew Yahweh may also be based on the eruption.
Initially the Sky God was overpowered hence his sinews were deposited in a cave in Cilicia where the ash fall was undoubtedly the heaviest. Caves are representative of Gaia, so one may say the sinews were buried in the Earth.
The Fates feeding Typhon Ephemeral Fruits merely means that after a couple days the repressed gases were vented and the vented ash had worn away the mountain sides creating present day Thera, or Santorini. The ash stopped and Typhon died.
Mrs. Hicks’ hypothesis cannot be conclusively proven although as indicated above it must be true. It must also be true that there is a thick layer of ash in Cilicia that can be dated back to 1600 BC or so when Thera erupted. Comparatively however the eruption of Thera could not have been of greater magnitude than St. Helens.
Dewey added to the explanation of Mrs. Hicks’ theory: ‘But I don’t know whether she’s right or not.’
‘I’m sure I don’t.’ Terry assented. ‘I think it was very foolish of Evaline to give voice to her opinion in public; that is something that can’t be done. All people are hypocrites on that score. Any crowd of people can find comfort only in a trite acceptable explanation of something.’
page 1844.
Gaste cast a sideways glance at Dewey who was so exhausted his eyes were spinning. Terry thought to himself that now was the time to vent all those opinions boiling inside him that he could confide to no one without risking his reputation. He was positive that what he had to say would never go beyond the confines of his car.
‘I don’t mean to say that I personally thought ill of Mrs. Hicks for having a controversial opinion but I certainly had to side with the majority to protect my career.’ Terry cleared his throat. ‘I’m certainly familiar with controversial opinions; I have one or two myself which I wouldn’t dare mention in public.’
‘I guess I was right all along.’ Dewey said to himself preparing to push Gaste’s hand off his knee without offending him so much that he would make him get out into the swirling snowstorm.
‘First, let me give you a little background on myself so you will know how I come by these opinions. I was born in Battle Creek and grew in up in Grand Rapids. Of course I have a sound academic education from Wesleyan but my real education began, as it were, at my mother’s knee.’
Dewey relaxed. It was clear to him that Terry was not going to approach him. As the English teacher appeared to be off on a long explanation Dewey put his brain in overdrive just letting Gaste’s story flow around his mind like the the light from a distant star around our own sun.
page 1845.
‘My mother was almost, well, she was really an obsessed woman. She drove my father away when I was five when she declared to me that I would be the little man of her life; a man who would never leave her. Strange that we no longer speak, wouldn’t you say?
We were inseparable. She took me along with her everywhere. She made me her assistant and trained me in her researches at a quite early age. She was obsessed with Astrology and by reference to the so-called Occult. the Occult is merely a counter religion without its own pope; there is nothing inherently evil about it.
She actually supported us in relatively decent tyle by casting horoscopes. You would be amazed at the number of people who use Astrology. Wealthy successful people too. I was never able to develop the gift of gab that is necessary to be successful as an Astrologer but my mother could reel off these incredible analyses that were quite often correct: past, present and future.
She wouldn’t admit that she was superstitious so she clothed her interest in scientific dress. She learned enough about Astronomy and mathematics so she could pinpoint one’s natal horoscope. She became quite learned in Greek, Mesopotamian and Egyptian mythology and consequently so am I. That’s why I’ve always liked Evaline so much.
My mother’s patter as a consequence of this really substantial learning was very impressive. Her clients really got their money’s worth. She astounded them with revelations of their past and present which gave credence to her predictions for the future. You might think that she researched her clients but she didn’t. She had a remarkable ability to read a person’s character from their appearance. She used to say that a person carried their whole history about them in their physiognomy, posture and dress. Every fold of the clothes, every drape, every gesture and twitch, every line of their face tells who they are and what’s happened to them she used to tell me. Vocabulary and speech patterns also give one away, the tone of the voice. She was as remarkable in her way as Sherlock Holmes in his. I once saw her identify a man as having gradutated from Ohio State on verbal clues which have always escaped me and I still think about it almost every day.
She considered herself a genius but she couldn’t differentiate between academic standards and Occult methods. She was always hurt because the academics not only rejected her but wouldn’t even listen to her. She was right in thinking she was more learned too.
When we were in Grand Rapids she cultivated a relationship with Cornelia Steketee Hulst. Have you heard of her by any chance? No. Well, she was a very learned woman in Ancient History, gone now, but she lost her academic standing when she sided with an out of favor group of scholars who believe that a period of Matriarchy preceded the Patriarchal society in which we live today. They are opposed and derided by the controlling Patriarchal academics who take a very narrow view of Greek history and mythology.
page 1847.
They project a vision of the Greeks which fills their emotional needs but isn’t supported by the facts. They willfully disregard many salient points so as not to damage the fabric of their beliefs. But being numerically superior they succeed.
At any rate Mrs. Hulst no longer had official standing. Her very intelligent studies were published by what amounted to her private press ‘dedicated to freedom of speech.’
My mother and I learned a great deal from her.
So, now you know how I know what I know.
Now I’m going to lead into a very controversial subject through the story of the Great Flood. This is strictly my own opinion. It has little relationship to the thought of either Mrs. Hulst or my mother. As Mother was into Astrology I had a lot of time to study and think about the Zodiac.
No. No. I know Astrology as a means of predicting the future is a lot of hooey but, remember, the Zodiac is a historical fact having had a great influence on hstory as I hope to show you. Poor old Mother couldn’t even get the academics to admit the Zodiac was an historical fact.
The question is, did the Flood really occur and, if so, how and when did it happen. I’m not talking about the version in the Bible but about the earlier Sumerian account on which the Bible story is based. Have you ever heard of that? No. Well, the story is related in an epic poem called the Gilgamesh. It precedes the Biblical story by thousands of years.
My researches have led me away from a riparian explanation. Scientific studies tell us that the planet was in the grip of an ice age that ended something like ten thousand years ago. During the ice age the seas are thought to have been several hundred feet lower than they currently are when untold millions of tons of water were stored in glaciers and ice caps.
page 1848.
Back in those ante-diluvian times it was said that a civilization existed that was known as Atlantis. No. No. Please, just listen. This civilization was referred to by the Egyptians and hinted at by the Mesopotamians. The myths of the Greeks and Hebrews do not share this ancient tradition but merely reflect it as they are much too recent on the stage of history to have authentic traditions.
I hesitate to mention some of these things because some of the people who hold some of these views or views like them have been so discredited. But my Mother was influenced by people like Edgar Cayce and Madame Blavatsky. You know the names but that’all…well, they were privy to a lot of knowledge which is not academically accessible or acceptable.
I say this confidentially, but in the light of our present knowledge of evolution and such matters if you compare the discredited Madame Blavatsky with an academic scholar like J.G. Fraser I think you will find in certain areas that Madame B. was light years ahead of Fraser and he was on the academic cutting edge, barely acceptable in his time.
Madame B’s ‘Isis Unveiled’ came out thirty years before Frazer’s ‘Golden Bough’ but her understanding of the the meaning of Genesis is so much more profound than Frazer’s that she sounds modern while he sounds archaic. Reputations are such that the two roles will never be rectified.
page 1849.
As I say, my Mother was exposed to opinions of which very very few people are aware. There are people who actually believe that the Sphinx was carved during the Zodiacal Age of Leo. At the time the Greek legislator Solon was in Egypt the priests told him that Atlantis had existed some nine thousand years previously. That would be under the sign of Leo the Lion. The Sphinx was carved in the form of a lion. Coincidence? Perhaps. But let us go over to Mesopotamia and examine some of their legends.
I don’t know how much knowledge you have Dewey but some of the names I’m going to mention may be unknown to you. If they are don’t let that bother you. You won’t need specialized information to understand the import of what I’m saying.
Now, in the Gilgamesh epic of Sumer Gilgamesh lives during the reign of the Fifth King after the Deluge circa two thousand BC. We have tended to disregard such information as mere fancy or fable. If that were true it would mean the Ancients were just talking from the backs of their necks for no other reason than to amuse themselves. I don’t think that’s true. I think they’re talking sense but we just don’t know the frame of reference.
The fifth king? What can that mean? Well, if we interpret each Age or Sign of the Zociac as a king and move back four signs from the Age of Aries which was just dawning in the period of Gilgamesh one finds Taurus, Genini, Cancer…and Leo. So the Egyptians say that Atlantis disappeared under the sign of Leo and the Mesopotamians say that the Great Flood occurred during the reign of King Leo.
page 1850.
This means that the Zodiac as a means of time reckoning is very old indeed. It also indicates that the system had an existence before the Flood being inherited from a predecessor people. it is interesting that the Mesopotamians said that the Gods existed before the Flood.
The Gilgamesh epic itself on one level depicts the transition from one ‘king’ to another. The transition is from the Age of Taurus to the Age of Aries. The mind of man depicts the transit as one of conflict between the two signs. For instance, Gilgamesh rules in the guise of Taurus while his successor, Enkidu, although the story seems garbled by later redactors who didn’t understand, is named a Wild Man living beyond the pale of civilization who is drawn into civilization where he serves his apprenticeship as a shepherd, a function of Aries, before going to Ur to challenge Gilgamesh, the representative of the old Age in a wrestling match. There are differing outcomes to the match but I’m sure the version that has Enkidu triumphing is the original.
In fact, after becoming friends, Gilgamesh and Enkidu combine their efforts to kill the ‘Bull of Heaven.’ What can this mean but that the Age of Taurus has been replaced by the Age of Aries.
Thus a shepherd ushers in the Age Of Aries the Ram just as Christ ushered in the Age of Pisces becoming a Fisher of Men.
page 1851.
Consider Greek mythology. We know that Zeus did not always exist. We are given the details of his birth. We are further told that he will not rule forever but will be replaced by one of his sons.
We know that Zeus did not survive the transition from Aries to Pisces. When exactly was Zeus born? It must have been two thousand years earlier. In other words Zeus was an Arien god who could not survive the transition into the Age of Pisces. A different age requires a different archetype. He had replaced his Taurean father, Cronus. Being immortal Zeus merely slid back a notch in the Zodiac until Aries returns twenty three thousand years later.
The period around two thousand BC was also a time of troubles in Egypt.
The Jewish god, Yahweh, was also an Arien god. Is it a coincidence that in the transition from Aries to Pisces that Jewish religious fanatics believed that the ‘End of Days’ was transpiring and that in the new world order they were to come into their own? Is it possible that the terrible Jewish wars were based on Astrological motives?
Why the Jews should have become so inflamed at that precise moment is a question to be investigated as it appears that no other people took the changing of the Ages quite so seriously.
Judaism therefore is a survival of an Arien religion into the Age of Pisces and will even survive into the Age of Aquarius. This makes the religion an anachronism and a real curiosity. Could Jewish problems in the Age of Pisces be related to their refusal to accept the archetypes of the New Age?
page 1852.
The rest of the world accepted the Piscean gods but not without travail. By the time of Constantine the Piscean religion of Jesus the Christ had triumphed. We can look for a major change in relgious outlook when the Aquarian archetypes replace the Piscean ones of Jesus and Mary.
May I be so bold as to offer a prediction as to the nature of those archetypes? The character of Jesus is a strange one. He is curiously effeminate. He is also a god of bread and wine as is indicated at the Last Supper when he offers the disciples a wafer as the flesh of his flesh and wine as the blood of his blood. By that act he associates hemself with the rites of Eleusis, hence connecting himself with the Greek god, Dionysus.
In later years the wine god Dionysus was connected with the rites of Eleusis where he was associated with the bread of Demeter. Jesus is related only to the gentler effeminate side of Dionysus who was nearly half man, half woman. Thus only half of Dionysus was associated with the Piscean incarnation of Kyrios Christos. the other orgiastic wild nature side of Dionysus was absorbed by the Medieval creation of the Green Man.
The Green Man is eternal resurgent nature. Now, Aquarius is the the water bearer. His rule in the Olympian Zodiac is Hera the goddess of Earth. The Age of Aquarius is almost upon us so I predict that when the archetypes of the Piscean religion are replaced by the Aquarian, those archetypes will be the Green Man and Hera in the person of Gaia. Remember, you heard it here first.
page 1853.
But I digress. Nor was the influence of Astrological beliefs, as distinct from the Zodiac, limited merely to the replacement of Aries by Pisces. As you may have noted if you read the astrological column in the newspaper the sign of Pisces is two fish facing in the opposite directions connected by a cord. One is male, one is female.
Now, this is really extraordinary. The first thousand years is ruled by the male, Jesus, while rulership reverses in the second half of Pisces to the female, Mary. This actually happened. Beginning sometime after the year one thousand the importance of Christ in the Catholic Church was superseded by Mary so that during the last half of Pisces the female spirit has been uppermost. This is most extraordinary.
Does this make sense to you so far?’
(Terry, while adept in Greek mythology and astrology was not versed in Arthurian lore. If he had been he would have noticed the supersession of the male principle in even more dramatic form. Merlin, who had been the magician of the first thousand years of Pisces falls in love with Vivian, The Lady Of The Lake. She induces him to transmit his lore to her. Merlin knows what his fate is to be but he makes no attempt to avoid it. When Vivian has obtained the lore, she imprisons Merlin in the female Earth under a great rock where he remains today, alive and expecting release. One may assume that he may be assimilated to the Green Man and that his release will occur during the Age of Aquarius, the seventh king from the deluge.
page 1854
There are probable other evidences of this remarkable change in direction in mid-Pisces. What is outstanding is that the course of history is being influenced by subterranean currents which are not visible and do not appear to be directed by known secret societies.
Further the entombment of Merlin was recorded by Church figures.
This mystery is not imaginary but actually occurred and continues into the Age of Aquarius. Ask yourself why the song ‘The Dawning Of The Age Of Aquarius’ was placed in the musical ‘Hair’ which song heralds the actual dawning of the Age of Aquarius. Consider the relatively intense interest in the Green Man who appears to be emerging as the male archetype of the Age. Consider the emergence of the cult of Gaia who is the female archetype. The days of the Piscean archetypes are indeed numbered. Who directs or how such movements are directed is a mystery and well worth investigating.)
‘Sure it make sense but I’m sure I don’t have enough knowledge to judge whether it’s true or not.’
‘I’m sure I don’t know whether it’s true nor not either but this is where my thoughts are leading me. Now, Mrs. Hicks’ notion of Thera being accounted for by the myth of Hera and Typhon is satisfying because it eliminates Thera as a possible site of Atlantis. There is no need to have two myths do the same thing besides which the myth of Atlantis is not integral to Greek culture. The myth only makes its appearance in Greece from six hundred to three hundred BC when Solon brings it back from Egypt and Plato popularized it.
Besides Thera couldn’t have made an impression so far South as Egypt. There is no evidence of the explosion in their mythology. At least I haven’t found any.
If we accept the evidence of the Sphinx and the idea that the ‘five kings’ of Mesopotamia represent astrological ages then it follows that the Zodiac was operative before the Flood.
Some other people or civilization devised it.
The Mesopotamians also list epochs of thousands and tens of thousands of years before the Flood. Because of the influences of the Hebrew Bible with its absurd chronology these epochs have been dismissed as hyperbole. Folk myths. As I think the notion of the five kings makes sense as Astrological ages then probably too do these eons which add up to about a hundred thousand years.
What happened in those hundred thousand years? I reason that the Zodiac originally represented the story of the terrestrial year. After all the signs mean nothing in the celestial Zodiac but the signs accurately represent the progress of the terrestrial year.
Now, the celestial Zodiac is imagined as a belt of astral constellations that surround the horizon. what it means when we say that we are in the Age of Pisces is that the constellation of Pisces is in the due East position of the Zodiac so that the Sun rises in it. When the year two thousand or so arrives as a result of precession Pisces will appear to have moved back while Aquarius will appear to slide into the sun position. Thus as the Age of Taurus was slain by the Age of Aries, Aquarius will flood out Pisces.
page 1856.
Yes. Precession. The Precession of the Equinoxes is a term that describes the effect of the Plane of the Ecliptic. Yes. The planet is off center or tilted by about twenty-three and a half degrees. On the vernal equinox one might expect the sun’s ray on the equator to strike the same spot every year. This is not the case because of the ecliptic. The ray actually strikes several hundred yards behind the previous year’s place so that a period of twenty-five hundred years or so passes before the Sun’s ray strikes at the beginning point.
This immense period is known as the Great Year. The notion with the Ancients is always as above, so below. It therefore follows that as the Zodiac applies to the terrestrial year so also must it apply to the Great Year.
The Hermetic philosophy is a belief system that evolved out of the collapse of the Egyptian belief system after the Persian conquest. Its characteristic saying was as above, so below and vice versa. Thus the concept of as above, so below may appear to be much later than the origin of the Zodiac but just as the embryo contains the individual from birth to old age so every idea man has or ever will have is contained in the seed of his origins.
page 1857.
As a teacher we are taught that the word educate is from the Latin term ‘e-ducere’ which means to lead from. thus every idea leads from or is developed from its seed at the beginning of time and can be traced back to it. It may be that no Atlantean ever used the words as above, so below but the translation of the Zodiac from Earth to the sky proves the concept was in his mind.
Where was I? Oh, yes. The celestial Zodiac progresses backward or counter-clockwise through the Great Year. A circle is of three hundred sixty degrees now as then so that it takes seventy-two years to pass through a single degree which would be scarcely noticable to the small number of priests who lived as long so I don’t believe any one priest was so quick as to note one degree of movement, extend that out to the whole process and formulate the concept so that his fellows could accept it, understand it and pass it on. That’s rubbish.
So I think the phenomenon of the Great Year had to be observed at least four times. The first time to notice it, the second to formulate it, the third to prove it and the fourth to establish it. That amounts to about a hundred thousand years which coincides with the Mesopotamian dates.
The purpose of the celestial Zodiac was obviously as a counting and mnemonic device. By noting the position of the celestial Zodiac immense notions of time could be kept. Before writing, events of importance could be associated with each degree of an age while previous ages were visible with their memories attached. For instance, the Flood is said to have occurred five ages back. Had it happened in the previous Great Year it would be said that it happened seventeen kings back. Twelve plus five. Or, alternatively, thirty-five thousand years ago.
page 1858
So much for the origins of the celestial Zodiac. The signs we use to represent the ages of the Zodiac go no further back than the Greeks. Still the notions behind the signs are undoubtedly identical to the notions of the originators. As the embryo grows in form it changes but the genetic identity remains the same. Do you see what I mean?
Science has always been present in the world but its idea has to be drawn from point to point in sense of e-ducere. That’s why it is ridiculous to compare the nineteenth century views of primitives with Mediterranean mythology. The Med mythology is an education of a hundred thousand yeawrs in the most active speculative area on Earth with results obtained no where else.
Idea after idea was drawn from previous thought in the clash of opinions leading to intelligence. In backwaters like Australia there was no real means of advancing thought so the society stagnated. One might think of e-ducere as cross fertilization.
The discovery of fire was not scientific because as the Ancients say, it was the ‘gift’ of the gods. Fire hardening a stick to make a spear is science no matter how primitive. However the greatest scientific advance of early man was the development of the ability to measure the length of the actual solar year.
page 1859.
Possibly early man used the moon as his first calendar. If so, however long it took him to discover it, he learned much more quickly that the moon had little value as a timekeeper. He needed something better which he recognized in the solar year.
Once again I am extrapolating Greek mythology back in time.
The first thing man noticed was the two halves of the solar year. In one half the days lengthened with his hopes while in the other half the length of the days diminished increasing his fears. Thus in Greek mythology you have the myth of Castor and Polydeukes or by his Latin name, Pollux.
In the Greek myth Zeus coupled with an Earth goddess named Leda when he assumed the form of a swan. Leda then laid two eggs. Out of one emerged the two halves of the solar year, Castor and Polydeukes. Castor was mortal while Polydeukes was immortal.
Castor who was a trainer of horses represents the first half of the year from December twenty-first to June twentieth. He is probably associated with horses because one has the impression that the first half of the year passes so quickly and horses are so fleet.
Polydeukes rpresents the second half of the year as a boxer. He was a boxer because, as I read it, he fights the shortening of the days while battling against the Hydra to prevent the Unconquerable Sun from being extinguished.
Castor is mortal because his half of the year is terminated when the days begin to shorten. Polydeukes is immortal because in his battle to defeat the Hydra he is successful in that the days begin to lengthn at the end of his term.
page 1860
R.E. Prindle 