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Based on Karen Armstrong’s book, this film examines the concept of God in the three major monotheistic religions from the days of Abraham to modern times. Through analysis of historic and holy texts and incorporation of ancient art and artifacts, the program explores the deity written about in the Bible and the Quran. The evolution and intertwining of various Christian, Jewish and Islamic interpretations of God are also addressed.
Divine Horsemen: the Voodoo Gods of Haiti
“Divine Horsemen: the Voodoo Gods of Haiti,” Lyrichord. Recorded in
1947 on a wire recorder with the microphone attachted to a post in
the middle of the ceremony by Maya Deren in the filming of her
documentary of the same name. No Hollywood silly business here, this
is the real deal: a trance/possession ceremony where participants are
actually possessed by the Rada Loa (the pantheon of voodoo gods, the
ancient gods of the East African Fon): Deren says, “There are moments
when the voices of the loa can be heard talking and singing on this
recording.” Astonishing and intricate drumming, powerful almost
beyond comprehension; you’ve never heard anything like it. Regards,
Face A
1. Legba
2. Damballah
3. Agwe
4. Erzulie
5. Ogoun
6. Litany
7. Ghede chant
Face B
1. Invocation to azacca
2. Azacca possession
3. Ghede
4. Azacca
5. Congo cult
6. Petro cult
7. Banda dance for ghede
8. Rara festival
9. Mardi gras carnival
all propers to nauma over at black star liners
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download the video: Maya Deren Divine Horsemen
or watch @guba.com
i couldn’t get sutostart turned off to embed
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_Horsemen:_The_Living_Gods_of_Haiti_(film)
Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti (1985) is a black and white documentary film about dance and possession in Haitian vodou that was shot by experimental filmmaker Maya Deren between 1947 and 1952 and edited and completed by Deren’s third husband Teiji Ito and his wife Cherel Winett Ito (1947-1999) in 1981, twenty years after Deren’s death. Most of the film consists of images of dancing and bodies in motion during rituals in Rada and Petro services.
Deren had studied dance as well as photography and filmmaking. She originally went to Haiti with the funding from a Guggenheim fellowship and the stated intention of filming the dancing that forms a crucial part of the vodou ceremony.
The film that resulted, however, reflected Deren’s increasing personal engagement with vodou and its practitioners (Wilcken, 1986). While this ultimately resulted in Deren disregarding the guidelines of the fellowship, Deren was able to record scenes that probably would have been inaccessible to other filmmakers.
Deren’s original notes, film footage, and wire recordings are in the Maya Deren Collection at Boston University’s Howard Gotlieb Archive Research Center
Disc 1 – Trance Speech and Direct Voice, Precognition
Disc 2 – Xenoglossy, Glossolalia
Disc 3 – Paranormal Music, Raps and Haunting Phenomena, Electric Voice Phenomena
3 disc box set of paranormal phenomena including “trance speech, direct voices, clairvoyance, xenoglossy, glossolalia including ethnological material, paranormal music, ‘rappings’ and other poltergeist manifestations as well as so-called ‘Electronic voice phenomena’” dating from 1905-2007
nice
i mean NICE doc on “this subject”
angles
ideas
perspectives
vid will mostlikely not play here
but will open to the tudou page proper
http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/W6Rjkr3Olvk
Interest in the Mayan Long Count Calendar and 2012 end-of-the-world prophecies is increasing rapidly with about four years left to the target date of December 21, 2012 (or thereabouts).
A significant number of new books, as well as reprints of older ones, on the topic of 2012 are being published, some becoming legitimate bestsellers, including: Apocalypse 2012: A Scientific Investigation into Civilization’s End by Lawrence E. Joseph; Maya Cosmogenesis 2012 by John Major Jenkins; and 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl by Daniel Pinchbeck.
On the fiction front, Whitley Strieber’s latest novel, 2012: The War for Souls, is slated to be a Michael Bay-produced (and possibly directed) film at Warner Bros. Pictures.
An increasing number of mainstream publications are writing about 2012. The New York Times Magazine ran a feature on the topic, focusing on John Major Jenkins, in its July 1, 2007 edition; USA Today published an article entitled “Does Maya calendar predict 2012 apocalypse?” on March 28, 2007; and Publishers Weekly ran a story about the large number of new books on the topic on March 26, 2007. A second PW story ran in the September 3, 2007 edition with a quote from a well-known editor saying that 2012 “has practically become its own category” of books; and proving that the trend is only strengthening, a year later the September 22, 2008 issue of PW in its cover story stated “publishers agree that New Age readers can’t get enough prophetic 2012 literature,” and “sales on this topic have been through the roof.”
Perhaps most significantly from a mainstream awareness perspective, Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, Day After Tomorrow, 10,000 BC) is directing a new tent-pole film for Sony Pictures entitled 2012. It is set for wide theatrical release in July, 2009.
The Disinformation Company specializes in publishing articles on topics surfacing in the culture on its popular website at www.disinfo.com and publishes books by authors writing in this and related fields. (For instance, Disinformation author Graham Hancock’s bestselling book Fingerprints of the Gods was one of the first to focus on the Mayan calendar and its end date in 2012, and will be one of the bases for the Roland Emmerich movie.) Of course, in addition to its publishing division, The Disinformation Company also produces and distributes documentary films.
Producer Gary Baddeley recognized that interest in 2012 was on a fast track into the zeitgeist in 2007 and initiated the process of planning and producing 2012: Science Or Superstition with director Nimrod Erez. The Disinformation team, including co-producer Ralph Bernardo, contacted and arranged interviews with multiple experts, often obtaining speedy access due to more than ten years of working with them or colleagues in their fields.
Interviews were conducted in New York, Los Angeles, San Diego, Palenque and also shot on location in Mexico and Egypt. Co-producer Bernardo worked with NASA to obtain illuminating footage of our solar system and galaxy and was able to locate leading astronomy professor Anthony Aveni, a cornerstone of the film’s balanced approach. Director Nimrod Erez worked closely with animators to illustrate the sometimes complicated concepts discussed in the film, allowing the viewer to see visually, the hard to grasp phenomenon of precession.
In accord with the Disinformation style of documentary filmmaking and publishing, the producers attempted to highlight multiple views of the subject matter and to interview experts who address the issues from varying and sometimes conflicting perspectives. The goal was to present the viewer with a balanced look at the 2012 phenomenon, allowing him or her to form an independent opinion on the debate about what the December 21, 2012 date means to all of us.
Story behind this clip:
This clip was recorded about ten years ago from a real program on a italian local television.
Through a myspage page (http://www.myspace.com/annamariagalanti ) and some extensive research we managed to get in touch both with Fausto and Anna Maria Galanti. The former is still in good health, and mostly ALIVE. The latter was immediatly fired after this transmission and found herself without a job or a home. In addition, she’s currently fighting with a impostor giving herselfout to be the ‘real’ Countess Anna Maria Galanti. If you understand italian, you can hear Anna Maria yell about the impostor here:
http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=rPEMvi-…
Finally, thanks a lot to Funda and Jordan for giving me a hand with the translation.-Statues03
from: aurorainthedesert
Hehehehe Jesus wants to ravish you with His Love! I am not ON ecstasy I’m experiencing ecstasy (or rapturous delight as the dictionary describes it) not a drug induced ecstasy but a God induced one!
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/magazine/20jung-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=1&ref=magazine
This is a story about a nearly 100-year-old book, bound in red leather, which has spent the last quarter century secreted away in a bank vault in Switzerland. The book is big and heavy and its spine is etched with gold letters that say “Liber Novus,” which is Latin for “New Book.” Its pages are made from thick cream-colored parchment and filled with paintings of otherworldly creatures and handwritten dialogues with gods and devils. If you didn’t know the book’s vintage, you might confuse it for a lost medieval tome.
And yet between the book’s heavy covers, a very modern story unfolds. It goes as follows: Man skids into midlife and loses his soul. Man goes looking for soul. After a lot of instructive hardship and adventure — taking place entirely in his head — he finds it again.
Some people feel that nobody should read the book, and some feel that everybody should read it. The truth is, nobody really knows. Most of what has been said about the book — what it is, what it means — is the product of guesswork, because from the time it was begun in 1914 in a smallish town in Switzerland, it seems that only about two dozen people have managed to read or even have much of a look at it.
Of those who did see it, at least one person, an educated Englishwoman who was allowed to read some of the book in the 1920s, thought it held infinite wisdom — “There are people in my country who would read it from cover to cover without stopping to breathe scarcely,” she wrote — while another, a well-known literary type who glimpsed it shortly after, deemed it both fascinating and worrisome, concluding that it was the work of a psychotic.
So for the better part of the past century, despite the fact that it is thought to be the pivotal work of one of the era’s great thinkers, the book has existed mostly just as a rumor, cosseted behind the skeins of its own legend — revered and puzzled over only from a great distance.
Which is why one rainy November night in 2007, I boarded a flight in Boston and rode the clouds until I woke up in Zurich, pulling up to the airport gate at about the same hour that the main branch of the United Bank of Switzerland, located on the city’s swanky Bahnhofstrasse, across from Tommy Hilfiger and close to Cartier, was opening its doors for the day. A change was under way: the book, which had spent the past 23 years locked inside a safe deposit box in one of the bank’s underground vaults, was just then being wrapped in black cloth and loaded into a discreet-looking padded suitcase on wheels. It was then rolled past the guards, out into the sunlight and clear, cold air, where it was loaded into a waiting car and whisked away.
THIS COULD SOUND, I realize, like the start of a spy novel or a Hollywood bank caper, but it is rather a story about genius and madness, as well as possession and obsession, with one object — this old, unusual book — skating among those things. Also, there are a lot of Jungians involved, a species of thinkers who subscribe to the theories of Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist and author of the big red leather book. And Jungians, almost by definition, tend to get enthused anytime something previously hidden reveals itself, when whatever’s been underground finally makes it to the surface.
Carl Jung founded the field of analytical psychology and, along with Sigmund Freud, was responsible for popularizing the idea that a person’s interior life merited not just attention but dedicated exploration — a notion that has since propelled tens of millions of people into psychotherapy. Freud, who started as Jung’s mentor and later became his rival, generally viewed the unconscious mind as a warehouse for repressed desires, which could then be codified and pathologized and treated. Jung, over time, came to see the psyche as an inherently more spiritual and fluid place, an ocean that could be fished for enlightenment and healing.
Whether or not he would have wanted it this way, Jung — who regarded himself as a scientist — is today remembered more as a countercultural icon, a proponent of spirituality outside religion and the ultimate champion of dreamers and seekers everywhere, which has earned him both posthumous respect and posthumous ridicule. Jung’s ideas laid the foundation for the widely used Myers-Briggs personality test and influenced the creation of Alcoholics Anonymous. His central tenets — the existence of a collective unconscious and the power of archetypes — have seeped into the larger domain of New Age thinking while remaining more at the fringes of mainstream psychology.
A big man with wire-rimmed glasses, a booming laugh and a penchant for the experimental, Jung was interested in the psychological aspects of séances, of astrology, of witchcraft. He could be jocular and also impatient. He was a dynamic speaker, an empathic listener. He had a famously magnetic appeal with women. Working at Zurich’s Burghölzli psychiatric hospital, Jung listened intently to the ravings of schizophrenics, believing they held clues to both personal and universal truths. At home, in his spare time, he pored over Dante, Goethe, Swedenborg and Nietzsche. He began to study mythology and world cultures, applying what he learned to the live feed from the unconscious — claiming that dreams offered a rich and symbolic narrative coming from the depths of the psyche. Somewhere along the way, he started to view the human soul — not just the mind and the body — as requiring specific care and development, an idea that pushed him into a province long occupied by poets and priests but not so much by medical doctors and empirical scientists.
Jung soon found himself in opposition not just to Freud but also to most of his field, the psychiatrists who constituted the dominant culture at the time, speaking the clinical language of symptom and diagnosis behind the deadbolts of asylum wards. Separation was not easy. As his convictions began to crystallize, Jung, who was at that point an outwardly successful and ambitious man with a young family, a thriving private practice and a big, elegant house on the shores of Lake Zurich, felt his own psyche starting to teeter and slide, until finally he was dumped into what would become a life-altering crisis.
What happened next to Carl Jung has become, among Jungians and other scholars, the topic of enduring legend and controversy. It has been characterized variously as a creative illness, a descent into the underworld, a bout with insanity, a narcissistic self-deification, a transcendence, a midlife breakdown and an inner disturbance mirroring the upheaval of World War I. Whatever the case, in 1913, Jung, who was then 38, got lost in the soup of his own psyche. He was haunted by troubling visions and heard inner voices. Grappling with the horror of some of what he saw, he worried in moments that he was, in his own words, “menaced by a psychosis” or “doing a schizophrenia.”
He later would compare this period of his life — this “confrontation with the unconscious,” as he called it — to a mescaline experiment. He described his visions as coming in an “incessant stream.” He likened them to rocks falling on his head, to thunderstorms, to molten lava. “I often had to cling to the table,” he recalled, “so as not to fall apart.”
Had he been a psychiatric patient, Jung might well have been told he had a nervous disorder and encouraged to ignore the circus going on in his head. But as a psychiatrist, and one with a decidedly maverick streak, he tried instead to tear down the wall between his rational self and his psyche. For about six years, Jung worked to prevent his conscious mind from blocking out what his unconscious mind wanted to show him. Between appointments with patients, after dinner with his wife and children, whenever there was a spare hour or two, Jung sat in a book-lined office on the second floor of his home and actually induced hallucinations — what he called “active imaginations.” “In order to grasp the fantasies which were stirring in me ‘underground,’ ” Jung wrote later in his book “Memories, Dreams, Reflections,” “I knew that I had to let myself plummet down into them.” He found himself in a liminal place, as full of creative abundance as it was of potential ruin, believing it to be the same borderlands traveled by both lunatics and great artists.
Jung recorded it all. First taking notes in a series of small, black journals, he then expounded upon and analyzed his fantasies, writing in a regal, prophetic tone in the big red-leather book. The book detailed an unabashedly psychedelic voyage through his own mind, a vaguely Homeric progression of encounters with strange people taking place in a curious, shifting dreamscape. Writing in German, he filled 205 oversize pages with elaborate calligraphy and with richly hued, staggeringly detailed paintings.
What he wrote did not belong to his previous canon of dispassionate, academic essays on psychiatry. Nor was it a straightforward diary. It did not mention his wife, or his children, or his colleagues, nor for that matter did it use any psychiatric language at all. Instead, the book was a kind of phantasmagoric morality play, driven by Jung’s own wish not just to chart a course out of the mangrove swamp of his inner world but also to take some of its riches with him. It was this last part — the idea that a person might move beneficially between the poles of the rational and irrational, the light and the dark, the conscious and the unconscious — that provided the germ for his later work and for what analytical psychology would become.
The book tells the story of Jung trying to face down his own demons as they emerged from the shadows. The results are humiliating, sometimes unsavory. In it, Jung travels the land of the dead, falls in love with a woman he later realizes is his sister, gets squeezed by a giant serpent and, in one terrifying moment, eats the liver of a little child. (“I swallow with desperate efforts — it is impossible — once again and once again — I almost faint — it is done.”) At one point, even the devil criticizes Jung as hateful.
He worked on his red book — and he called it just that, the Red Book — on and off for about 16 years, long after his personal crisis had passed, but he never managed to finish it. He actively fretted over it, wondering whether to have it published and face ridicule from his scientifically oriented peers or to put it in a drawer and forget it. Regarding the significance of what the book contained, however, Jung was unequivocal. “All my works, all my creative activity,” he would recall later, “has come from those initial fantasies and dreams.”
Jung evidently kept the Red Book locked in a cupboard in his house in the Zurich suburb of Küsnacht. When he died in 1961, he left no specific instructions about what to do with it. His son, Franz, an architect and the third of Jung’s five children, took over running the house and chose to leave the book, with its strange musings and elaborate paintings, where it was. Later, in 1984, the family transferred it to the bank, where since then it has fulminated as both an asset and a liability.
Anytime someone did ask to see the Red Book, family members said, without hesitation and sometimes without decorum, no. The book was private, they asserted, an intensely personal work. In 1989, an American analyst named Stephen Martin, who was then the editor of a Jungian journal and now directs a Jungian nonprofit foundation, visited Jung’s son (his other four children were daughters) and inquired about the Red Book. The question was met with a vehemence that surprised him. “Franz Jung, an otherwise genial and gracious man, reacted sharply, nearly with anger,” Martin later wrote in his foundation’s newsletter, saying “in no uncertain terms” that Martin could not “see the Red Book, nor could he ever imagine that it would be published.”
And yet, Carl Jung’s secret Red Book — scanned, translated and footnoted — will be in stores early next month, published by W. W. Norton and billed as the “most influential unpublished work in the history of psychology.” Surely it is a victory for someone, but it is too early yet to say for whom.
STEPHEN MARTIN IS a compact, bearded man of 57. He has a buoyant, irreverent wit and what feels like a fully intact sense of wonder. If you happen to have a conversation with him anytime before, say, 10 a.m., he will ask his first question — “How did you sleep?” — and likely follow it with a second one — “Did you dream?” Because for Martin, as it is for all Jungian analysts, dreaming offers a barometric reading of the psyche. At his house in a leafy suburb of Philadelphia, Martin keeps five thick books filled with notations on and interpretations of all the dreams he had while studying to be an analyst 30 years ago in Zurich, under the tutelage of a Swiss analyst then in her 70s named Liliane Frey-Rohn. These days, Martin stores his dreams on his computer, but his dream life is — as he says everybody’s dream life should be — as involving as ever.
Even as some of his peers in the Jungian world are cautious about regarding Carl Jung as a sage — a history of anti-Semitic remarks and his sometimes patriarchal views of women have caused some to distance themselves — Martin is unapologetically reverential. He keeps Jung’s 20 volumes of collected works on a shelf at home. He rereads “Memories, Dreams, Reflections” at least twice a year. Many years ago, when one of his daughters interviewed him as part of a school project and asked what his religion was, Martin, a nonobservant Jew, answered, “Oh, honey, I’m a Jungian.”
The first time I met him, at the train station in Ardmore, Pa., Martin shook my hand and thoughtfully took my suitcase. “Come,” he said. “I’ll take you to see the holy hankie.” We then walked several blocks to the office where Martin sees clients. The room was cozy and cavelike, with a thick rug and walls painted a deep, handsome shade of blue. There was a Mission-style sofa and two upholstered chairs and an espresso machine in one corner.
Several mounted vintage posters of Zurich hung on the walls, along with framed photographs of Carl Jung, looking wise and white-haired, and Liliane Frey-Rohn, a round-faced woman smiling maternally from behind a pair of severe glasses.
Martin tenderly lifted several first-edition books by Jung from a shelf, opening them so I could see how they had been inscribed to Frey-Rohn, who later bequeathed them to Martin. Finally, we found ourselves standing in front of a square frame hung on the room’s far wall, another gift from his former analyst and the centerpiece of Martin’s Jung arcana. Inside the frame was a delicate linen square, its crispness worn away by age — a folded handkerchief with the letters “CGJ” embroidered neatly in one corner in gray. Martin pointed. “There you have it,” he said with exaggerated pomp, “the holy hankie, the sacred nasal shroud of C. G. Jung.”
In addition to practicing as an analyst, Martin is the director of the Philemon Foundation, which focuses on preparing the unpublished works of Carl Jung for publication, with the Red Book as its central project. He has spent the last several years aggressively, sometimes evangelistically, raising money in the Jungian community to support his foundation. The foundation, in turn, helped pay for the translating of the book and the addition of a scholarly apparatus — a lengthy introduction and vast network of footnotes — written by a London-based historian named Sonu Shamdasani, who serves as the foundation’s general editor and who spent about three years persuading the family to endorse the publication of the book and to allow him access to it.
Given the Philemon Foundation’s aim to excavate and make public C. G. Jung’s old papers — lectures he delivered at Zurich’s Psychological Club or unpublished letters, for example — both Martin and Shamdasani, who started the foundation in 2003, have worked to develop a relationship with the Jung family, the owners and notoriously protective gatekeepers of Jung’s works. Martin echoed what nearly everybody I met subsequently would tell me about working with Jung’s descendants. “It’s sometimes delicate,” he said, adding by way of explanation, “They are very Swiss.”
What he likely meant by this was that the members of the Jung family who work most actively on maintaining Jung’s estate tend to do things carefully and with an emphasis on privacy and decorum and are on occasion taken aback by the relatively brazen and totally informal way that American Jungians — who it is safe to say are the most ardent of all Jungians — inject themselves into the family’s business. There are Americans knocking unannounced on the door of the family home in Küsnacht; Americans scaling the fence at Bollingen, the stone tower Jung built as a summer residence farther south on the shore of Lake Zurich. Americans pepper Ulrich Hoerni, one of Jung’s grandsons who manages Jung’s editorial and archival matters through a family foundation, almost weekly with requests for various permissions. The relationship between the Jungs and the people who are inspired by Jung is, almost by necessity, a complex symbiosis. The Red Book — which on one hand described Jung’s self-analysis and became the genesis for the Jungian method and on the other was just strange enough to possibly embarrass the family — held a certain electrical charge. Martin recognized the descendants’ quandary. “They own it, but they haven’t lived it,” he said, describing Jung’s legacy. “It’s very consternating for them because we all feel like we own it.” Even the old psychiatrist himself seemed to recognize the tension. “Thank God I am Jung,” he is rumored once to have said, “and not a Jungian.”
“This guy, he was a bodhisattva,” Martin said to me that day. “This is the greatest psychic explorer of the 20th century, and this book tells the story of his inner life.” He added, “It gives me goose bumps just thinking about it.” He had at that point yet to lay eyes on the book, but for him that made it all the more tantalizing. His hope was that the Red Book would “reinvigorate” Jungian psychology, or at the very least bring himself personally closer to Jung. “Will I understand it?” he said. “Probably not. Will it disappoint? Probably. Will it inspire? How could it not?” He paused a moment, seeming to think it through. “I want to be transformed by it,” he said finally. “That’s all there is.”
IN ORDER TO UNDERSTAND and decode the Red Book — a process he says required more than five years of concentrated work — Sonu Shamdasani took long, rambling walks on London’s Hampstead Heath. He would translate the book in the morning, then walk miles in the park in the afternoon, his mind trying to follow the rabbit’s path Jung had forged through his own mind.
Shamdasani is 46. He has thick black hair, a punctilious eye for detail and an understated, even somnolent, way of speaking. He is friendly but not particularly given to small talk. If Stephen Martin is — in Jungian terms — a “feeling type,” then Shamdasani, who teaches at the University College London’s Wellcome Trust Center for the History of Medicine and keeps a book by the ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus by his sofa for light reading, is a “thinking type.” He has studied Jungian psychology for more than 15 years and is particularly drawn to the breadth of Jung’s psychology and his knowledge of Eastern thought, as well as the historical richness of his era, a period when visionary writing was more common, when science and art were more entwined and when Europe was slipping into the psychic upheaval of war. He tends to be suspicious of interpretive thinking that’s not anchored by hard fact — and has, in fact, made a habit of attacking anybody he deems guilty of sloppy scholarship — and also maintains a generally unsentimental attitude toward Jung. Both of these qualities make him, at times, awkward company among both Jungians and Jungs.
The relationship between historians and the families of history’s luminaries is, almost by nature, one of mutual disenchantment. One side works to extract; the other to protect. One pushes; one pulls. Stephen Joyce, James Joyce’s literary executor and last living heir, has compared scholars and biographers to “rats and lice.” Vladimir Nabokov’s son Dmitri recently told an interviewer that he considered destroying his father’s last known novel in order to rescue it from the “monstrous nincompoops” who had already picked over his father’s life and works. T. S. Eliot’s widow, Valerie Fletcher, has actively kept his papers out of the hands of biographers, and Anna Freud was, during her lifetime, notoriously selective about who was allowed to read and quote from her father’s archives.
Even against this backdrop, the Jungs, led by Ulrich Hoerni, the chief literary administrator, have distinguished themselves with their custodial vigor. Over the years, they have tried to interfere with the publication of books perceived to be negative or inaccurate (including one by the award-winning biographer Deirdre Bair), engaged in legal standoffs with Jungians and other academics over rights to Jung’s work and maintained a state of high agitation concerning the way C. G. Jung is portrayed. Shamdasani was initially cautious with Jung’s heirs. “They had a retinue of people coming to them and asking to see the crown jewels,” he told me in London this summer. “And the standard reply was, ‘Get lost.’ ”
Shamdasani first approached the family with a proposal to edit and eventually publish the Red Book in 1997, which turned out to be an opportune moment. Franz Jung, a vehement opponent of exposing Jung’s private side, had recently died, and the family was reeling from the publication of two controversial and widely discussed books by an American psychologist named Richard Noll, who proposed that Jung was a philandering, self-appointed prophet of a sun-worshiping Aryan cult and that several of his central ideas were either plagiarized or based upon falsified research.
While the attacks by Noll might have normally propelled the family to more vociferously guard the Red Book, Shamdasani showed up with the right bargaining chips — two partial typed draft manuscripts (without illustrations) of the Red Book he had dug up elsewhere. One was sitting on a bookshelf in a house in southern Switzerland, at the home of the elderly daughter of a woman who once worked as a transcriptionist and translator for Jung. The second he found at Yale University’s Beinecke Library, in an uncataloged box of papers belonging to a well-known German publisher. The fact that there were partial copies of the Red Book signified two things — one, that Jung had distributed it to at least a few friends, presumably soliciting feedback for publication; and two, that the book, so long considered private and inaccessible, was in fact findable. The specter of Richard Noll and anybody else who, they feared, might want to taint Jung by quoting selectively from the book loomed large. With or without the family’s blessing, the Red Book — or at least parts of it — would likely become public at some point soon, “probably,” Shamdasani wrote ominously in a report to the family, “in sensationalistic form.”
For about two years, Shamdasani flew back and forth to Zurich, making his case to Jung’s heirs. He had lunches and coffees and delivered a lecture. Finally, after what were by all accounts tense deliberations inside the family, Shamdasani was given a small salary and a color copy of the original book and was granted permission to proceed in preparing it for publication, though he was bound by a strict confidentiality agreement. When money ran short in 2003, the Philemon Foundation was created to finance Shamdasani’s research.
Having lived more or less alone with the book for almost a decade, Shamdasani — who is a lover of fine wine and the intricacies of jazz — these days has the slightly stunned aspect of someone who has only very recently found his way out of an enormous maze. When I visited him this summer in the book-stuffed duplex overlooking the heath, he was just adding his 1,051st footnote to the Red Book.
The footnotes map both Shamdasani’s journey and Jung’s. They include references to Faust, Keats, Ovid, the Norse gods Odin and Thor, the Egyptian deities Isis and Osiris, the Greek goddess Hecate, ancient Gnostic texts, Greek Hyperboreans, King Herod, the Old Testament, the New Testament, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, astrology, the artist Giacometti and the alchemical formulation of gold. And that’s just naming a few. The central premise of the book, Shamdasani told me, was that Jung had become disillusioned with scientific rationalism — what he called “the spirit of the times” — and over the course of many quixotic encounters with his own soul and with other inner figures, he comes to know and appreciate “the spirit of the depths,” a field that makes room for magic, coincidence and the mythological metaphors delivered by dreams.
“It is the nuclear reactor for all his works,” Shamdasani said, noting that Jung’s more well-known concepts — including his belief that humanity shares a pool of ancient wisdom that he called the collective unconscious and the thought that personalities have both male and female components (animus and anima) — have their roots in the Red Book. Creating the book also led Jung to reformulate how he worked with clients, as evidenced by an entry Shamdasani found in a self-published book written by a former client, in which she recalls Jung’s advice for processing what went on in the deeper and sometimes frightening parts of her mind.
“I should advise you to put it all down as beautifully as you can — in some beautifully bound book,” Jung instructed. “It will seem as if you were making the visions banal — but then you need to do that — then you are freed from the power of them. . . . Then when these things are in some precious book you can go to the book & turn over the pages & for you it will be your church — your cathedral — the silent places of your spirit where you will find renewal. If anyone tells you that it is morbid or neurotic and you listen to them — then you will lose your soul — for in that book is your soul.”
ZURICH IS, IF NOTHING ELSE, one of Europe’s more purposeful cities. Its church bells clang precisely; its trains glide in and out on a flawless schedule. There are crowded fondue restaurants and chocolatiers and rosy-cheeked natives breezily pedaling their bicycles over the stone bridges that span the Limmat River. In summer, white-sailed yachts puff around Lake Zurich; in winter, the Alps glitter on the horizon. And during the lunch hour year-round, squads of young bankers stride the Bahnhofstrasse in their power suits and high-end watches, appearing eternally mindful of the fact that beneath everyone’s feet lie labyrinthine vaults stuffed with a dazzling and disproportionate amount of the world’s wealth.
But there, too, ventilating the city’s material splendor with their devotion to dreams, are the Jungians. Some 100 Jungian analysts practice in and around Zurich, examining their clients’ dreams in sessions held in small offices tucked inside buildings around the city. Another few hundred analysts in training can be found studying at one of the two Jungian institutes in the area. More than once, I have been told that, in addition to being a fantastic tourist destination and a good place to hide money, Zurich is an excellent city for dreaming.
Jungians are accustomed to being in the minority pretty much everywhere they go, but here, inside a city of 370,000, they have found a certain quiet purchase. Zurich, for Jungians, is spiritually loaded. It’s a kind of Jerusalem, the place where C. G. Jung began his career, held seminars, cultivated an inner circle of disciples, developed his theories of the psyche and eventually grew old. Many of the people who enroll in the institutes are Swiss, American, British or German, but some are from places like Japan and South Africa and Brazil. Though there are other Jungian institutes in other cities around the world offering diploma programs, learning the techniques of dream analysis in Zurich is a little bit like learning to hit a baseball in Yankee Stadium. For a believer, the place alone conveys a talismanic grace.
Just as I had, Stephen Martin flew to Zurich the week the Red Book was taken from its bank-vault home and moved to a small photo studio near the opera house to be scanned, page by page, for publication. (A separate English translation along with Shamdasani’s introduction and footnotes will be included at the back of the book.) Martin already made a habit of visiting Zurich a few times a year for “bratwurst and renewal” and to attend to Philemon Foundation business. My first morning there, we walked around the older parts of Zurich, before going to see the book. Zurich made Martin nostalgic. It was here that he met his wife, Charlotte, and here that he developed the almost equally important relationship with his analyst, Frey-Rohn, carrying himself and his dreams to her office two or three times weekly for several years.
Undergoing analysis is a central, learn-by-doing part of Jungian training, which usually takes about five years and also involves taking courses in folklore, mythology, comparative religion and psychopathology, among others. It is, Martin says, very much a “mentor-based discipline.” He is fond of pointing out his own conferred pedigree, because Frey-Rohn was herself analyzed by C. G. Jung. Most analysts seem to know their bloodlines. That morning, Martin and I were passing a cafe when he spotted another American analyst, someone he knew in school and who has since settled in Switzerland. “Oh, there’s Bob,” Martin said merrily, making his way toward the man. “Bob trained with Liliane,” he explained to me, “and that makes us kind of like brothers.”
Jungian analysis revolves largely around writing down your dreams (or drawing them) and bringing them to the analyst — someone who is patently good with both symbols and people — to be scoured for personal and archetypal meaning. Borrowing from Jung’s own experiences, analysts often encourage clients to experiment on their own with active imagination, to summon a waking dreamscape and to interact with whatever, or whoever, surfaces there. Analysis is considered to be a form of psychotherapy, and many analysts are in fact trained also as psychotherapists, but in its purist form, a Jungian analyst eschews clinical talk of diagnoses and recovery in favor of broader (and some might say fuzzier) goals of self-discovery and wholeness — a maturation process Jung himself referred to as “individuation.” Perhaps as a result, Jungian analysis has a distinct appeal to people in midlife. “The purpose of analysis is not treatment,” Martin explained to me. “That’s the purpose of psychotherapy. The purpose of analysis,” he added, a touch grandly, “is to give life back to someone who’s lost it.”
Later that day, we went to the photo studio where the work on the book was already under way. The room was a charmless space with concrete floors and black walls. Its hushed atmosphere and glaring lights added a slightly surgical aspect. There was the editor from Norton in a tweedy sport coat. There was an art director hired by Norton and two technicians from a company called DigitalFusion, who had flown to Zurich from Southern California with what looked to be a half-ton of computer and camera equipment.
Shamdasani arrived ahead of us. And so did Ulrich Hoerni, who, along with his cousin Peter Jung, had become a cautious supporter of Shamdasani, working to build consensus inside the family to allow the book out into the world. Hoerni was the one to fetch the book from the bank and was now standing by, his brow furrowed, appearing somewhat tortured. To talk to Jung’s heirs is to understand that nearly four decades after his death, they continue to reel inside the psychic tornado Jung created during his lifetime, caught between the opposing forces of his admirers and critics and between their own filial loyalties and history’s pressing tendency to judge and rejudge its own playmakers. Hoerni would later tell me that Shamdasani’s discovery of the stray copies of the Red Book surprised him, that even today he’s not entirely clear about whether Carl Jung ever intended for the Red Book to be published. “He left it an open question,” he said. “One might think he would have taken some of his children aside and said, ‘This is what it is and what I want done with it,’ but he didn’t.” It was a burden Hoerni seemed to wear heavily. He had shown up at the photo studio not just with the Red Book in its special padded suitcase but also with a bedroll and a toothbrush, since after the day’s work was wrapped, he would be spending the night curled up near the book — “a necessary insurance measure,” he would explain.
And finally, there sunbathing under the lights, sat Carl Jung’s Red Book, splayed open to Page 37. One side of the open page showed an intricate mosaic painting of a giant holding an ax, surrounded by winged serpents and crocodiles. The other side was filled with a cramped German calligraphy that seemed at once controlled and also, just given the number of words on the page, created the impression of something written feverishly, cathartically. Above the book a 10,200-pixel scanner suspended on a dolly clicked and whirred, capturing the book one-tenth of a millimeter at a time and uploading the images into a computer.
The Red Book had an undeniable beauty. Its colors seemed almost to pulse, its writing almost to crawl. Shamdasani’s relief was palpable, as was Hoerni’s anxiety. Everyone in the room seemed frozen in a kind of awe, especially Stephen Martin, who stood about eight feet away from the book but then finally, after a few minutes, began to inch closer to it. When the art director called for a break, Martin leaned in, tilting his head to read some of the German on the page. Whether he understood it or not, he didn’t say. He only looked up and smiled.
ONE AFTERNOON I took a break from the scanning and visited Andreas Jung, who lives with his wife, Vreni, in C. G. Jung’s old house at 228 Seestrasse in the town of Küsnacht. The house — a 5,000-square-foot, 1908 baroque-style home, designed by the psychiatrist and financed largely with his wife, Emma’s, inheritance — sits on an expanse between the road and the lake. Two rows of trimmed, towering topiary trees create a narrow passage to the entrance. The house faces the white-capped lake, a set of manicured gardens and, in one corner, an anomalous, unruly patch of bamboo.
Andreas is a tall man with a quiet demeanor and a gentlemanly way of dressing. At 64, he resembles a thinner, milder version of his famous grandfather, whom he refers to as “C. G.” Among Jung’s five children (all but one are dead) and 19 grandchildren (all but five are still living), he is one of the youngest and also known as the most accommodating to curious outsiders. It is an uneasy kind of celebrity. He and Vreni make tea and politely serve cookies and dispense little anecdotes about Jung to those courteous enough to make an advance appointment. “People want to talk to me and sometimes even touch me,” Andreas told me, seeming both amused and a little sheepish. “But it is not at all because of me, of course. It is because of my grandfather.” He mentioned that the gardeners who trim the trees are often perplexed when they encounter strangers — usually foreigners — snapping pictures of the house. “In Switzerland, C. G. Jung is not thought to be so important,” he said. “They don’t see the point of it.”
Jung, who was born in the mountain village of Kesswil, was a lifelong outsider in Zurich, even as in his adult years he seeded the city with his followers and became — along with Paul Klee and Karl Barth — one of the best-known Swissmen of his era. Perhaps his marginalization stemmed in part from the offbeat nature of his ideas. (He was mocked, for example, for publishing a book in the late 1950s that examined the psychological phenomenon of flying saucers.) Maybe it was his well-documented abrasiveness toward people he found uninteresting. Or maybe it was connected to the fact that he broke with the established ranks of his profession. (During the troubled period when he began writing the Red Book, Jung resigned from his position at Burghölzli, never to return.) Most likely, too, it had something to do with the unconventional, unhidden, 40-something-year affair he conducted with a shy but intellectually forbidding woman named Toni Wolff, one of Jung’s former analysands who went on to become an analyst as well as Jung’s close professional collaborator and a frequent, if not fully welcome, fixture at the Jung family dinner table.
“The life of C. G. Jung was not easy,” Andreas said. “For the family, it was not easy at all.” As a young man, Andreas had sometimes gone and found his grandfather’s Red Book in the cupboard and paged through it, just for fun. Knowing its author personally, he said, “It was not strange to me at all.”
For the family, C. G. Jung became more of a puzzle after his death, having left behind a large amount of unpublished work and an audience eager to get its hands on it. “There were big fights,” Andreas told me when I visited him again this summer. Andreas, who was 19 when his grandfather died, recalled family debates over whether or not to allow some of Jung’s private letters to be published. When the extended family gathered for the annual Christmas party in Küsnacht, Jung’s children would disappear into a room and have heated discussions about what to do with what he had left behind while his grandchildren played in another room. “My cousins and brothers and I, we thought they were silly to argue over these things,” Andreas said, with a light laugh. “But later when our parents died, we found ourselves having those same arguments.”
Even Jung’s great-grandchildren felt his presence. “He was omnipresent,” Daniel Baumann, whose grandmother was Jung’s daughter Gret, would tell me when I met him later. He described his own childhood with a mix of bitterness and sympathy directed at the older generations. “It was, ‘Jung said this,’ and ‘Jung did that,’ and ‘Jung thought that.’ When you did something, he was always present somehow. He just continued to live on. He was with us. He is still with us,” Baumann said. Baumann is an architect and also the president of the board of the C. G. Jung Institute in Küsnacht. He deals with Jungians all the time, and for them, he said, it was the same. Jung was both there and not there. “It’s sort of like a hologram,” he said. “Everyone projects something in the space, and Jung begins to be a real person again.”
ONE NIGHT DURING the week of the scanning in Zurich, I had a big dream. A big dream, the Jungians tell me, is a departure from all your regular dreams, which in my case meant this dream was not about falling off a cliff or missing an exam. This dream was about an elephant — a dead elephant with its head cut off. The head was on a grill at a suburban-style barbecue, and I was holding the spatula. Everybody milled around with cocktails; the head sizzled over the flames. I was angry at my daughter’s kindergarten teacher because she was supposed to be grilling the elephant head at the barbecue, but she hadn’t bothered to show up. And so the job fell to me. Then I woke up.
At the hotel breakfast buffet, I bumped into Stephen Martin and a Californian analyst named Nancy Furlotti, who is the vice president on the board of the Philemon Foundation and was at that moment having tea and muesli.
“How are you?” Martin said.
“Did you dream?” Furlotti asked
“What do elephants mean to you?” Martin asked after I relayed my dream.
“I like elephants,” I said. “I admire elephants.”
“There’s Ganesha,” Furlotti said, more to Martin than to me. “Ganesha is an Indian god of wisdom.”
“Elephants are maternal,” Martin offered, “very caring.”
They spent a few minutes puzzling over the archetypal role of the kindergarten teacher. “How do you feel about her?” “Would you say she is more like a mother figure or more like a witch?”
Giving a dream to a Jungian analyst is a little bit like feeding a complex quadratic equation to someone who really enjoys math. It takes time. The process itself is to be savored. The solution is not always immediately evident. In the following months, I told my dream to several more analysts, and each one circled around similar symbolic concepts about femininity and wisdom. One day I was in the office of Murray Stein, an American analyst who lives in Switzerland and serves as the president of the International School of Analytical Psychology, talking about the Red Book. Stein was telling me about how some Jungian analysts he knew were worried about the publication — worried specifically that it was a private document and would be apprehended as the work of a crazy person, which then reminded me of my crazy dream. I related it to him, saying that the very thought of eating an elephant’s head struck me as grotesque and embarrassing and possibly a sign there was something deeply wrong with my psyche. Stein assured me that eating is a symbol for integration. “Don’t worry,” he said soothingly. “It’s horrifying on a naturalistic level, but symbolically it is good.”
It turned out that nearly everybody around the Red Book was dreaming that week. Nancy Furlotti dreamed that we were all sitting at a table drinking amber liquid from glass globes and talking about death. (Was the scanning of the book a death? Wasn’t death followed by rebirth?) Sonu Shamdasani dreamed that he came upon Hoerni sleeping in the garden of a museum. Stephen Martin was sure that he had felt some invisible hand patting him on the back while he slept. And Hugh Milstein, one of the digital techs scanning the book, passed a tormented night watching a ghostly, white-faced child flash on a computer screen. (Furlotti and Martin debated: could that be Mercurius? The god of travelers at a crossroads?)
Early one morning we were standing around the photo studio discussing our various dreams when Ulrich Hoerni trudged through the door, having deputized his nephew Felix to spend the previous night next to the Red Book. Felix had done his job; the Red Book lay sleeping with its cover closed on the table. But Hoerni, appearing weary, seemed to be taking an extra hard look at the book. The Jungians greeted him. “How are you? Did you dream last night?”
“Yes,” Hoerni said quietly, not moving his gaze from the table. “I dreamed the book was on fire.”
ABOUT HALFWAY THROUGH the Red Book — after he has traversed a desert, scrambled up mountains, carried God on his back, committed murder, visited hell; and after he has had long and inconclusive talks with his guru, Philemon, a man with bullhorns and a long beard who flaps around on kingfisher wings — Jung is feeling understandably tired and insane. This is when his soul, a female figure who surfaces periodically throughout the book, shows up again. She tells him not to fear madness but to accept it, even to tap into it as a source of creativity. “If you want to find paths, you should also not spurn madness, since it makes up such a great part of your nature.”
The Red Book is not an easy journey — it wasn’t for Jung, it wasn’t for his family, nor for Shamdasani, and neither will it be for readers. The book is bombastic, baroque and like so much else about Carl Jung, a willful oddity, synched with an antediluvian and mystical reality. The text is dense, often poetic, always strange. The art is arresting and also strange. Even today, its publication feels risky, like an exposure. But then again, it is possible Jung intended it as such. In 1959, after having left the book more or less untouched for 30 or so years, he penned a brief epilogue, acknowledging the central dilemma in considering the book’s fate. “To the superficial observer,” he wrote, “it will appear like madness.” Yet the very fact he wrote an epilogue seems to indicate that he trusted his words would someday find the right audience.
Shamdasani figures that the Red Book’s contents will ignite both Jung’s fans and his critics. Already there are Jungians planning conferences and lectures devoted to the Red Book, something that Shamdasani finds amusing. Recalling that it took him years to feel as if he understood anything about the book, he’s curious to know what people will be saying about it just months after it is published. As far as he is concerned, once the book sees daylight, it will become a major and unignorable piece of Jung’s history, the gateway into Carl Jung’s most inner of inner experiences. “Once it’s published, there will be a ‘before’ and ‘after’ in Jungian scholarship,” he told me, adding, “it will wipe out all the biographies, just for starters.” What about the rest of us, the people who aren’t Jungians, I wondered. Was there something in the Red Book for us? “Absolutely, there is a human story here,” Shamdasani said. “The basic message he’s sending is ‘Value your inner life.’ ”
After it was scanned, the book went back to its bank-vault home, but it will move again — this time to New York, accompanied by a number of Jung’s descendents. For the next few months it will be on display at the Rubin Museum of Art. Ulrich Hoerni told me this summer that he assumed the book would generate “criticism and gossip,” but by bringing it out they were potentially rescuing future generations of Jungs from some of the struggles of the past. If another generation inherited the Red Book, he said, “the question would again have to be asked, ‘What do we do with it?’ ”
Stephen Martin too will be on hand for the book’s arrival in New York. He is already sensing that it will shed positive light on Jung — this thanks to a dream he had recently about an “inexpressively sublime” dawn breaking over the Swiss Alps — even as others are not so certain.
In the Red Book, after Jung’s soul urges him to embrace the madness, Jung is still doubtful. Then suddenly, as happens in dreams, his soul turns into “a fat, little professor,” who expresses a kind of paternal concern for Jung.
Jung says: “I too believe that I’ve completely lost myself. Am I really crazy? It’s all terribly confusing.”
The professor responds: “Have patience, everything will work out. Anyway, sleep well.”
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: September 20, 2009
An article on Page 34 this weekend about Carl Jung and a book he wrote about struggling with his own demons misspells the name of a street in Zurich where, before it was published, the book was held for years in a bank safe-deposit box, and a correction in this space on Saturday also misspelled the name. It is Bahnhofstrasse, not Banhofstrasse or Banhoffstrasse. The article also misstates the location of Bollingen, the town where Jung built a stone tower as a summer residence. While it is on the north shore of Lake Zurich, it is south of the Jung family home in Küsnacht.
ol boy has a helmet that can…
yeah
just watch
the helmet is in the intro to the lecture itself
i like to listen to this guy speak
his voice
his logic
searchin out more of his work now
kinda curious as to why im ignorant of him given the work n all
“christians” or christ likin folk should pay attention to the 36:45 min mark up until 39:00
and the info presented on rauvolfia
then his remarks on synergism
this is one h.a.i.r.y. fella
47:45 is another buena vista!
i(tj) thinks it’s retarded to not be expressively biased on here
especially now that it’s just me posting
so yeah
grrrrr and ahem!
Strange! Humans Glow in Visible Light
The human body literally glows, emitting a visible light in extremely small quantities at levels that rise and fall with the day, scientists now reveal.
Past research has shown that the body emits visible light, 1,000 times less intense than the levels to which our naked eyes are sensitive. In fact, virtually all living creatures emit very weak light, which is thought to be a byproduct of biochemical reactions involving free radicals.
(This visible light differs from the infrared radiation – an invisible form of light – that comes from body heat.)
To learn more about this faint visible light, scientists in Japan employed extraordinarily sensitive cameras capable of detecting single photons. Five healthy male volunteers in their 20s were placed bare-chested in front of the cameras in complete darkness in light-tight rooms for 20 minutes every three hours from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. for three days.
The researchers found the body glow rose and fell over the day, with its lowest point at 10 a.m. and its peak at 4 p.m., dropping gradually after that. These findings suggest there is light emission linked to our body clocks, most likely due to how our metabolic rhythms fluctuate over the course of the day.
Faces glowed more than the rest of the body. This might be because faces are more tanned than the rest of the body, since they get more exposure to sunlight - the pigment behind skin color, melanin, has fluorescent components that could enhance the body’s miniscule light production.
Since this faint light is linked with the body’s metabolism, this finding suggests cameras that can spot the weak emissions could help spot medical conditions, said researcher Hitoshi Okamura, a circadian biologist at Kyoto University in Japan.
“If you can see the glimmer from the body’s surface, you could see the whole body condition,” said researcher Masaki Kobayashi, a biomedical photonics specialist at the Tohoku Institute of Technology in Sendai, Japan.
The scientists detailed their findings online July 16 in the journal PLoS ONE.
Imaging of Ultraweak Spontaneous Photon Emission from Human Body Displaying Diurnal Rhythm
1 Department of Electronics and Intelligent Systems, Tohoku Institute of Technology, Sendai, Japan, 2 Department of Systems Biology, Kyoto University Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Kyoto, Japan, 3 Department of Brain Science, Kobe University Graduate School of Medicine, Kobe, Japan
The human body literally glimmers. The intensity of the light emitted by the body is 1000 times lower than the sensitivity of our naked eyes. Ultraweak photon emission is known as the energy released as light through the changes in energy metabolism. We successfully imaged the diurnal change of this ultraweak photon emission with an improved highly sensitive imaging system using cryogenic charge-coupled device (CCD) camera. We found that the human body directly and rhythmically emits light. The diurnal changes in photon emission might be linked to changes in energy metabolism.
Citation: Kobayashi M, Kikuchi D, Okamura H (2009) Imaging of Ultraweak Spontaneous Photon Emission from Human Body Displaying Diurnal Rhythm. PLoS ONE 4(7): e6256. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0006256
Editor: Joseph Najbauer, City of Hope Medical Center, United States of America
Received: March 4, 2009; Accepted: June 11, 2009; Published: July 16, 2009
Copyright: © 2009 Kobayashi et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Funding: This work was supported in part by The Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (M.K) and The Special Promotion Funds (H.O) from Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
* E-mail: masaki@tohtech.ac.jp (MK); okamurah@pharm.kyoto-u.ac.jp (HO)
Introduction Top
Bioluminescence, which is weak but visible, is sometimes produced in living organisms, such as fireflies or jellyfish, as the result of specialized enzymatic reactions that require adenosine triphosphate. However, virtually all living organisms emit extremely weak light, spontaneously without external photoexcitation [1]. This biophoton emission is categorized in different phenomena of light emission from bioluminescence, and is believed to be a by-product of biochemical reactions in which excited molecules are produced from bioenergetic processes that involves active oxygen species [1], [2]. Human body is glimmering with light of intensity weaker than 1/1000 times the sensitivity of naked eyes [3], [4]. By using a sensitive charge-coupled-device (CCD) camera with the ability to detect light at the level of a single photon, we succeeded in imaging the spontaneous photon emission from human bodies [3].
Previously, for obtaining an image, it took more than 1 hour of acquisition, which is practically impossible for the analysis of physiologically relevant biophoton emission. By improving the CCD camera and lens system, here we have succeeded in obtaining clear images using a short exposure time, comparable with the analysis of physiological phenomena. Since metabolic rates are known to change in a circadian fashion [5], [6], we investigated the temporal variations of biophoton emission across the day from healthy human body.
Results and Discussion Top
A cooled CCD camera operated at −120°C with slow scanning mode read-out was used with a specially designed high-throughput lens system. The camera was placed in a light-tight room in complete darkness (schematic illustration of the experimental setup is shown in Fig. 1A). Five healthy male volunteers, in their 20′s, were subjected to normal light-dark conditions and allowed to sleep from 0:00–7:00. On the days of photon imaging, volunteers were kept in a room (400 lux) adjacent to the dark room. For imaging purposes, the body surface was wiped and the subject was left 15 minutes in the dark room for dark adaptation, after which the naked subject in sitting position was exposed for 20 minutes to the CCD camera. Measurements were carried out in every 3 hours from 10:00 to 22:00 and continued for 3 days. Just before and after the measurements, the surface body (thermography) and oral temperature were taken. Saliva was also collected after the photon measurements for the analysis of cortisol level as a biomarker of endogenous circadian rhythms. Temporal variation of photon emission intensity was calculated from image data with extraction of the face and body intensity.
A. Schematic illustration of experimental setup. B–F. Images of ultraweak photon emission from human body. B. Image of the subject under light illumination. C. Image at 10:10. D. Image at 13:10. E. Image at 16:10. F. Image at 19:10. G. Image at 22:10 with a calibration bar which indicates the estimated radiation intensity expressed by photon number per unit of time per unit of skin surface. H. Daily rhythm of photon emission from face and body from 5 volunteers. Significant difference from the photon emission at 10:00 AM (n = 15, Mean±SD; **P<0.01, *P<0.05). I. A typical thermographic image of the subject from Fig. 1B–G.
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The daily variation of photon emission is shown in Fig. 1B–G. In all images, photon emission intensity from the face was higher than from the body. Moreover, photon emission intensity from the face was not homogeneous: the central area around the mouth and the cheeks was higher than the lateral area and the orbits. Furthermore, the photon emission intensity on the face and upper body appeared to display time-dependent changes. We plotted total photon emission intensity over the body and face against time, averaged across the 5 volunteers (Fig. 1H). Photon emission was weak in the morning, increased in the afternoon and peaked in the late afternoon (ca 16:00) (one way ANOVA, F4,74 = 4.10, P<0.005). These data strongly suggest that there is a diurnal rhythm of photon emission from the human body. To further support this conclusion, immediately following the end of the previous experiment three volunteers were kept awake in a light (400 lux) environment and photon emission was measured at 1:00, 4:00 and 7:00 AM (Supplementary Figure S1). Photon emission formed a peak at late afternoon, then gradually decreased and stayed low at 1:00–7:00 AM in a constantly exposed light condition (400 lux), indicating the diurnal rhythm of photon might be caused by endogenous circadian mechanism.
Ultraweak biophoton emission was completely different from thermographic images showing surface temperature (Fig.1I). High photon emission were detected from the cheeks, followed by the upper neck and the forehead, while high temperature was detected in the supraclavicular lateral neck region, from which photon emission was low. In cheek, the highest level of emission reaches to 3000 photon/s·cm2 at 16:00 which is about double to the value at 10:00.
Next, we examined the correlation of photon emission to other physiological parameters known to show circadian variations. In the subject of Fig.1B–G, we found a temporal decrease of cortisol from morning to evening, in opposite to the increase of photon emission (Fig. 2A). Cortisol concentration shows a clear daily rhythm, peaking in the morning and negatively correlated with photon emission intensity (p<0.002; from 5 volunteers; Fig. 2B). Body temperature, another parameter showing daily rhythms peaking at night, does not show significant correlation with photon emission (Supplementary Figure S2).
A. Comparison of temporal variation of biophoton emission intensity and cortisol concentration in saliva observed through 3 days. Shaded regions indicate sleeping time. The subject is the one of Fig. 1B–G. B. Daily change of cortisol secretion (left; n = 15, Mean±SD) and its correlation with photon emission intensity (right). A negative correlation was found (r = −0.3074, P<0.002).
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The photon emission mechanism is thought to originate from the generation of free radicals in energy metabolic processes. The spectra of photon emission detected from the palm skin span from 500 to 700 nm, with primary and secondary emission peaks at 630–670 nm and 520–580 nm, respectively [7]. Free radicals subsequently react with lipid or protein, generating electronically excited species as byproducts [1]. These excited molecules, such as carbonyl group in excited triplet state from lipid peroxidation or proteins including excited tyrosine or tryptophan, can further react with fluorophores through energy transfer and lead to photon emission [8], [9]. Higher level photon emission on facial skin might be caused by differences in the content of melanin fluorophores [10] between facial and thoracic skin.
No significant correlation of daily photon intensity and temperature was found, and the dissimilarity between photon emission and thermal image suggest that the diurnal rhythm of photon emission is not a consequence of a change of temperature or microcirculation. Moreover, a clear negative correlation of temporal changes of photon emission and cortisol might suggest that the diurnal rhythm of photon emission reflects the changes of cellular metabolic processes under the control of the circadian clock. Circadian rhythms are generated in most cells throughout the body, driven by clock genes interlocked in transcription/translation feedback loops [11], [12]. Recent advances of chronobiology have revealed that the redox state of the cells regulates circadian gene expression, indicating the importance of metabolic cues for clock oscillations [6], [13], [14]. Indeed, glucose utilization, accompanied by oxygen consumption, shows robust rhythms in the main mammalian circadian center [5]. By the regulation of cellular respiratory chain producing reactive oxygen species, which in turns react with molecules including proteins, lipids and fluorophores, whose excited states emit biophotons [1], [8], [9], [10], the human body glitters to the rhythm of the circadian clock.
Materials and Methods Top
CCD camera system
Spectral Instruments 600 series CCD camera system (Spectral Instruments, Inc., AZ, USA) was used. Mounted CCD42-40 (e2v technologies Ltd., Essex, UK), which is a back-illuminated, full-frame operation CCD with a 2048×2048 pixel resolution and 13.5×13.5 µm pixel size. The camera system is equipped with a cooling head to maintain the CCD at −120°C using a closed-cycle mechanical cryogenic unit. Under these conditions, quantum efficiency is 75% at the peak wavelength. Dark current is 0.65 electron/pixel/h and readout noise in the slow scanning mode is less than 4.5 electron rms. The CCD camera head has a specially designed lens system, which is designed to maximize the light collection efficiency (numerical aperture (NA) of the lens system on the detector side is 0.5 and the number of lenses is restricted 7 pieces). Magnification of the lens system is 1/20 and the light collection efficiency to the surface of the subject is 1.0×10−3. In this experiment, the CCD was operated in the 8×8 binning mode, and the actual pixel number was 256×256. Taking into account the detection limit, which is determined by dark current and readout noise of the CCD, as well as light collection efficiency, the minimum detectable number of photons on each pixel is estimated ca 100 photon/s/cm2 on the surface of the subject under the measurement condition.
Measurement procedure
All study participants were healthy males in their 20′s without any skin diseases or oral medications. The average time of sleep onset was 23:30 hours (range, 23:00 to 01:00 hours) and that for awakening was 06:15 hours (range, 06:00 to 07:00 hours). No attempt was made to synchronize the sleeping habits of the study participants before the study. From one week before the experiments, subjects were under controlled conditions to maintain regular sleeping hours. Subjects were not allowed to use cosmetics including aftershave lotion. Volunteers had lunch at 12:30 hours and dinner at 18:30 hours. Snacks and cold drinks were allowed between meals, at the study participant’s discretion. During body imaging, participants were naked from the waist up. After a slight wipe of the body with lukewarm water, one by one the subjects were invited in the darkroom and where a relax chair was provided. Before photon emission measurements, the subjects were left 15 minutes in the darkroom for dark adaptation. During the dark adaptation, a thermograph to check the surface temperature of the body and a picture of the subject under weak light illumination for focusing are taken. Biophoton emission measurements are taken continuously for 20 minutes by the CCD camera. During measurements, comfortable music was provided for relaxation but sleep was not allowed. At the end of the measurements, thermograph and picture under weak illumination are taken again, together with the oral temperature. Photon emission intensity from the face and upper body was calculated from imaging data. Salivary cortisol levels were measured by radioimmunoassay. For statistical analysis, one-way ANOVAs followed by Bonferroni/Dunn’s multiple comparisons were applied. The above experiments are approved by the Ethical Committee of Kobe University Graduate School of Medicine.
Supporting Information Top
Photon emission in sleep deprived volunteers. Three volunteers kept in constant light environment (400 lux) without sleep, and photon counts were measured at 25:00 (1:00AM), 28:00 (4:00AM) and 31:00 (7:00AM) (red dots). Note the levels of photon emissions at these time points are much lower than evening value. The values from 10:00–22:00 are adopted from Figure 1H (n = 15, Mean±SD).
(5.65 MB TIF)
Daily change of oral temperature (left; n = 15, Mean±SD) (a), and its correlation to photon emission intensity (b). There was no significant correlation between photon emission and oral temperature (r = 0.1630, p = 0.1682).
(7.76 MB TIF)
Author Contributions Top
Conceived and designed the experiments: MK HO. Performed the experiments: MK DK HO. Analyzed the data: MK DK. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: MK. Wrote the paper: MK HO.
References Top
- (1988) ‘Biophoton emission’ multi-author review. Experientia 44: 543–600. Find this article online
- (1999) In vivo imaging of spontaneous ultraweak photon emission from a rat’s brain correlated with cerebral energy metabolism and oxidative stress. Neurosci Res 34: 103–113. Find this article online
- (2003) Spontaneous ultraweak photon emission of living organisms—biophotons—phenomena and detection techniques for extracting biological information. Trends in Photohchem. Photobiol 10: 111–135. Find this article online
- (1999) Ultraweak photon emission of human skin in vivo: influence of topically applied antioxidants on human skin. Methods Enzymol 300: 419–428. Find this article online
- (1977) Suprachiasmatic nucleus: use of 14C-labeled deoxyglucose uptake as a functional marker. Science 97: 89–91. Find this article online
- (2001) Circadian clocks: running on redox. Cell 106: 141–143. Find this article online
- (1991) Physiological state and biophoton emission of living body. In: Inaba H, editor. Final report on Inaba Biophoton Project: Res. Develop. Corp. Japan. pp. 239–277. (in Japanese).
- (1984) Biological Chemiluminescence. Photochem Photobiol 40: 823–830. Find this article online
- (1989) Low-level chemiluminescence during lipid peroxidations and enzymatic reaction. J Biolum Chemilum 4: 231–240. Find this article online
- (1999) Femtosecond two-photon excited fluorescence of melanin. Photochem Photobiol 70: 146–151. Find this article online
- (2004) Clock genes in cell clocks: roles, actions, and mysteries. J. Biol. Rhythms 19: 388–399. Find this article online
- (2003) Synchronization of cellular clocks in the suprachiasmatic nucleus. Science 302: 1408–1412. Find this article online
- (2001) Circadian rhythms. Chronobiology–reducing time. Science 293: 437–438. Find this article online
- (2001) NPAS2: an analog of clock operative in the mammalian forebrain. Science 293: 506–510. Find this article online
A. Schematic illustration of experimental setup. B–F. Images of ultraweak photon emission from human body. B. Image of the subject under light illumination. C. Image at 10:10. D. Image at 13:10. E. Image at 16:10. F. Image at 19:10. G. Image at 22:10 with a calibration bar which indicates the estimated radiation intensity expressed by photon number per unit of time per unit of skin surface. H. Daily rhythm of photon emission from face and body from 5 volunteers. Significant difference from the photon emission at 10:00 AM (n = 15, Mean±SD; **P<0.01, *P<0.05). I. A typical thermographic image of the subject from Fig. 1B–G.
In the garden of my house there’s a tree with lots of randomly grown twigs. It looks odd and nice at the same time. One day I asked myself if I could create a piece of music with it.
To tune the tree I picked a fundamental note and tuned the twigs by trimming them with a pencil sharpener. I used two Røde NT6 and a NTG-2 as microphones, combined with a customized stethoscope.
I recorded the tracks live on a Pro Tools LE system. I didn’t use any synthesizer or sampler to create or modify the sounds. All the sounds come from playing the tree, by bowing the twigs, shaking the leaves, playing rhythms on the cortex and so on.
At this link you can see some pictures with more detailed descriptions: behance.net/Gallery/Music-from-a-Tree/263872
I hope you’ll like it.
The track is also available as an high-quality download on my Bandcamp page: diegostocco.bandcamp.com/track/music-from-a-tree
Lucky dragons live at sculpture center, Long Island city, Queens. Shot with photo camera.
http://aiwazzsaying.blogspot.com
aiwazzsaying is an esoteric library blog
right click to view larger and readable images
Hypnagogic pop is music that reaches beyond its performers’ abilities. It refashions 80s chart pop-rock into a hazy, psychedelic drone. It is listening to Beverly Hills Cop and hearing the music of the spheres. It is the sound that remains after the boys of summer have gone. - David Keenan(Writer and critic. Regular contributor to The Wire. Author of England’s Hidden Reverse. Founder of Volcanic Tongue record store/mail order. Available for talks/lectures/commissions etc.)
Everything is deeply intertwingled.
—Ted Nelson
The literatures that touch on synesthesias—scientific, art-historical, literary, phenomenological, ethnographic, psychedelic—vary widely in their definitions, interpretations, and in their degree of comfort with the first-person, subjective nature of experiential reports. The significances given to synesthetic experiences are similarly wide-ranging. This article explores the relationships among synesthesias, psychedelic experience, and language, highlighting Terence McKenna’s synesthetic language experiences on DMT and magic mushrooms. The complexities of creating and performing with the Intertwingulator, a system that provides the means to weave together, in multiple mappings, two or more complex visual, aural, and linguistic systems in live performance, are briefly described.
Contemporary neuroscience (Cytowic, Marks, Harrison) views synesthesia as a rare, (perhaps abnormal, perhaps pathological) ‘condition.’ Visionary artists, (Blake, Scriabin, Kandinsky, the French symbolists) link synesthetic perception to a spiritual dimension. Phenomenologists (Abram, based in Merleau-Ponty, the phenomenologist of perception) locates synesthesia as fundamental to perception and language, both spoken and written. Ethnographic reports of ayahuasca shamanism in the Amazonian rain forest (Luna, Amaringo) describe the centrality of the icaros, the shaman’s songs, that guide and create the content of the visionary experience on many levels, calling visual forms and presences into being with sound. Reports of psychedelic synesthesias (James, Pankhe, McKenna, Munn, Narby) link the states of multisensory perception to noetic experience of deep insights into the nature of reality and consciousness, and their profound intertwinglement.. A range of contemporary artistic practices, especially in immersive, interactive, electronic media environments seek to create, or invoke, synesthesias. The psychedelic connections to the creation and participation in many of these experiences (rave culture, Burning Man), and their enabling technologies—such as computer graphics, are common knowledge.
This paper touches on one example of such artistic experimentation. The Intertwingulator is a Max software implementation that can link the sensory qualities of two or more intricate systems, each producing complex, aesthetic forms in differing sensory modalities through an intermediate zone (the intertwingulator) where mappings can be constructed and tested in performance. The Glide system of dynamic, multidimensional visual language is mapped to keyboard input from a midi synthesizer and/or from another software system, such as composer Pauline Olivero’s EIS (Expanded Instrumentation System) to create a variety of synesthetic performances. The collaborators acknowledge the dual difficulties: technological and aesthetic. Making the technology work on the one hand and designing and performing a meaningful aesthetic experience with these highly complex instruments are interdependent challenges.
A Synesthetic Sampler
“Sounds seem to affect what I see. I see music; the textures of rhythms and the colors of melodies float before my eyes.. My visual images alter or change whenever I hear a sound or noise…Sight, feeling, motion, texture, thinking, sound—all are one….The interaction between sight, music, and physical feeling is most remarkable.” (Dobkin de Rios, p. 48.)
“When I get there I lie down with my eyes closed and sunglasses on, there is some interesting synesthesia going on, corresponding patterns in regards to distance and volume and other characteristics of the sounds I hear. The most interesting ‘looking’ sound comes from a moped that passes by on the bike road below the hill.” (DOM, Vaults of Erowid)
“I experienced powerful synesthesia between hearing and touch. I ran my
hands over the sharp edges of the springs underneath my girlfriend’s bed and simultaneously heard, felt, and saw an intense static/sharp/bright sensation.” (5-MeO-DMT,Vaults of Erowid)
“Your name, Richard, tastes like a chocolate bar,” she writes, “warm and melting on my tongue.” (Cytowic, p. 14)
“The spirits one sees in hallucinations are three-dimensional, sound-emitting images. In other words, they are made of their own language, like DNA.” (Narby, p. 71)
“Through his icaro, he also calls the rainbow with the whole range of colors that the boa yakumama has. He sings the icaro of the diamond, the gold, the silver, and of all the precious stones in order to put them on the woman to protect her…” (Luna, p. 112.)
“The first thing I saw was the ‘visible language’! … The ‘elves’ appeared. They sang/I saw/read/felt/heard. They are ‘made out’ of the visible language. The message is conveyed by the medium itself in several simultaneous sensory modalities.” (DMT, Vaults of Erowid)
“The ancient wise men, to describe the kaleidoscopic illuminations of their shamanistic nights, drew an analogy between the inside and the outside and formed a word that related the spectrum colors created by the sunshine in the spray of waterfalls and the mists of the morning to their conscious experiences of ecstatic enlightenment: these are the whirlwinds he speaks of, gyrating configurations of iridescent lights that appear to him as he speaks, turned round and round and round himself by the turbulent winds of the spirit.” (Henry Munn)
Neologisms in Ancient Geek
Xanadu never shipped, but Ted Nelson’s word still bears fruit, now in the context of synesthesia. Intertwingle: itself a blended word, (to say it is to do it: noeto-poetic?) a braid of intertwining, mingling, perhaps twisting together, the deepness of which suggests the mycelial networks of brain and WWW; the immersive, multisensory bombardment of a rave; googling around the fractal depths of contemporary dataspaces; navigating by synchronicities, “hints and allegations;” dense heterarchies of meaning emerging and dissolving; connecting paths and patterns, linkings, unlinkings. And this theme of intertwingularity is the common ground underlying the discourses of synesthesia, whatever the variances among epistemological theme parks, or the bewildering richness person to person in experiential reports, whether those reports are quoted in neuroscientific works, the Vaults of Erowid, William Blake’s visions, or the heavenly or hellish trip reports of Aldous Huxley.
The Noetic Disconnection
From this small sampling of quotes, it seems clear that under the broad rubric of “synesthesia” almost any sensory—and/or emotional—and/or cognitive experience can be cross-linked. Neuroscientist Richard Cytowic narrows the definition of synesthesia to
“the involuntary physical experience of a cross-modal association. That is, the stimulation of one sensory modality reliably causes a perception in one or more different senses. Its phenomenology clearly distinguishes it from metaphor, literary tropes, sound symbolism, and deliberate artistic contrivances that sometimes employ the term “synesthesia” to describe their multisensory joinings.”
Cytowic estimates the occurrence of the synesthetic experience to be statistically rare, one in 25,000. When psychedelics are the testbed of synesthesias, the occurrence of synesthesias increases dramatically:
“It is reasonably common for individuals who take hallucinogens to report that their senses become mixed. Given the illicit nature of the topic it is hard to find reliable data on this issue, but a recent web-based questionnaire conducted by Don DeGracia, suggested that, of a total of 62 respondents who admitted to using hallucinogenic compounds, 45.9% reported synesthetic symptoms. Clearly the most common manifestation (over 90%) was to see sounds. Now, just as with the patients described in the last section, it would be prudent to treat such accounts with an element of caution, as it can be hard to dissociate ‘true’ synesthesia from possibly imagined forms of the condition.” (Harrison)
Questioning the reality or validity of these experiences in the scientific discourses is common, and interesting ambivalences arise in the handling and evaluation of first person reports. On the one hand, Cytowic invokes The Varieties of Religious Experience, in which “William James’ spoke of ecstasy’s four qualities of ineffability, passivity, noesis, and transience,” claiming that “These same qualities are shared by synesthesia.” Further, in the section titled “The Rejection of Direct Experience,” Cytowic states that “Questioning its reality [synesthesia] without first having some technological confirmation shows how ready we are to reject any first-hand experience. We are addicted to the external and the rational. Our insistence on a third-person, “objective” understanding of the world has just about swept aside all other forms of knowledge.” At the same time, this very ineffability, is, for Cytowic, a bug not a feature. He sympathizes with Heinrich Kluver, who, in trying to get his subjects to report on their mescaline hallucinations, “was frustrated by the vagueness with which subjects described their experience, their eagerness to yield uncritically to cosmic or religious explanations, to “interpret” or poetically embroider the experience in lieu of straightforward but concrete description, and their tendency to be overwhelmed and awed by the “indescribableness” of their visions…Similarly, once Kluver got his subjects past elaborating or, even worse, explaining what they saw…” [emphasis added]. Clearly the noetic aspect of the experience is to be edited out by the “phenomenological” psychologist. Cytowic’s own example of pruning direct experience:
“In explicating MW’s description of mint, I distinguished between his factual description of curved, smooth, and cool tactile attributes, and his analogical explanation of the taste as “cool glass columns.”
For Kluver, Cytowic, and Harrison, the experiencing subjects’ data is inherently untrustworthy in some way, needing to be refined in such a way as to (conveniently) fit the categories established by the scientist for that experience. Further, when did adjectives such as cool and smooth attain such universal status? Is your smooth and my smooth the same? Are there degrees and admixtures of smooth? How does one fix as fact a word that can be used to describe wine, dance movements, and the way a pickup line is delivered? More significantly, perhaps, interpretation is assumed to be the privilege of the scientist; profound noesis, often a part of synesthetic experience, psychedelic or otherwise, is stripped from the ‘primary experience,’ denied epistemological potency, and tamed by the scientific reduction of ‘only the facts.’
The descriptive potency of natural language is put to the test in the discourses of synesthesia and psychedelics.
Hallucinogenic discourse, both of scientific and “recreational” nature, faces a similar rhetorical dilemma as the rest of the ecstatic traditions it responds to: It must report on an event which is in principle impossible to communicate. Writers of mystic experience from St Teresa to William James have treated the unrepresentable character of mystic events to be the very hallmark of ecstasies. Hallucinogenic discourse faced a similar struggle in the effort to report on the knowledge beyond what Aldous Huxley (and Jim Morrison…) described as the “doors of perception.” (Doyle)
The Noetic Connection
Jose Arguelles in his analysis of William Blake quotes the famous lines of Blake’s adopted by Huxley to describe the psychedelic visionary state:
“If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. / For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro narrow chinks of his cavern.”
Arguelles gets to the heart of the synesthetic matter in his interpretation of this passage:
“History is the result of an overelaboration and separation of the senses. . .Blake’s vision of man’s natural condition and the condition man shall return to following the apocalyptic disclosure of the present era—is that of a psychosensory unity in which each sense is not a “narrow chink walled off from the other senses but in a state of communication with them. This state of sensory interfusion, often referred to as synesthesia, is presupposed by a consciousness in which body and soul are realized to be one, and in turn presupposes a social order so totally different from the present one that its closest approximation is to be found in the remnant of so-called primitive societies.” (Arguelles)
David Abram, following Merleau-Ponty, finds this synesthetic unity in the very nature of perception itself.
“Although contemporary neuroscientists study “synaesthesia”—the overlap and blending of the senses—as though it were a rare or pathological experience to which only certain persons are prone (those who report “seeing sounds,” “hearing colors,” and the like), our primordial, preconceptual experience, as Merleau-Ponty makes evident, is inherently synaesthetic. The intertwining of sensory modalities seems unusual to us only to the extent that we have become estranged from our direct experience (and hence from our primordial contact with the entities and elements that surround us.):
…Synaesthetic perception is the rule, and we are unaware of it only because scientific knowledge shifts the center of gravity of experience, so that we have unlearned how to see, hear, and generally speaking, feel, in order to deduce, from our bodily organization and the world as the physicist conceives it, what we are to see, hear, and feel.” (Merleau-Ponty)
Walter Pahnke, of the famous “Good Friday” experiment in the heyday of Harvard psychedelic research, describes the noetic aspect of the psychedelic experience as one of it main features, along with synesthesia:
“The Noetic Quality, as named by William James, is a feeling of insight or illumination that, on an intuitive, nonrational level and with a tremendous force of certainty, subjectively has the status of Ultimate Reality. This knowledge is not an increase of facts but is a gain in psychological, philosophical, or theological insight.”
Psychedelic Language
All language is psychedelic by definition, functioning to make manifest the mind, to bring thoughts, feelings, information, from the interior of one mind and make them available to be interiorized in another. David Porush calls this “Technologically Mediated Telepathy.” And Porush, Abram, and Erik Davis all relate the story of how this psychedelic, originally synesthetic, oral language-making connected us deeply and reciprocally to our natural environment, a mutual be-speaking that was progressively lost when writing, and most particularly alphabetic writing, froze knowledge-making into eternal signs in rows on flat surfaces, signs you could come back to—and they hadn’t changed. These signs deployed progressively deeper disconnections—among the senses, between time and space, between reason and emotion. The alphabet: the cybernetic technology that changed everything. Synesthesia, in this light, comes to stand for the promise of reconnection, of noesis, of recovery of some long lost unity, within ourselves, among ourselves, within the world. Psychedelics can deliver synesthesias with a noetic quality, at intense, supersaturated, high-bandwidth delivery rates, as well as bringing tales of new forms of language that both create and express these altered states of consciousness. Psychedelics may appeal to some deep longing for knowledge not delivered as information arranged in hierarchical tree structures, taxonomized and bowdlerized, the promiscuous metaphor and the unseemly miscegenation amongst disciplines that it encourages, excised from the “phenomenological” reports. The psychonaut’s noesis can arrive live and lively, paradoxically gesturing, zany, even alien. Terence McKenna’s accounts of the DMT self-transforming machine elves made of language dispensing unbearably high-speed, condensed blasts of pure, and extraordinarily alien gnosis, and the mushroom experiences reverberating with the logos, seen and heard in synesthetic unity, weird as they are, have been reported, in varying forms, by many others. Do the reports of synesthesias in the scientific literature of psychedelic-like weirdnesses (Richard, your name is like chocolate melting in my mouth) leaking into baseline consciousness, (strangeness usually kept in bounds by the state-bound nature of other forms of consciousness—dreaming, meditating, drugs—according to Roland Fischer’s model of mind-states) fascinate us in the same way? There are entire classes of synesthesias attached to letters and numbers, flavored and colored linguistic objects. McKenna himself comes back to these language experiences time and again in his books and lectures: new forms of language perceived, theories of the evolution of language and consciousness catalyzed by psychedelics are proposed:
“Perhaps a human language is possible in which the intent of meaning is actually beheld in three-dimensional space. If this can happen on DMT, it means it is at least, under some circumstances, accessible to human beings. Given ten thousand years and high cultural involvement in such a talent, does anyone doubt that it could become a cultural convenience in the same way that mathematics or language has become a cultural convenience?” (McKenna, p. 39.)
The LiveGlide Synestheater
My own testbed for synesthesias has been in the seven year development project of LiveGlide, a visual performance instrument based on the psychedelically informed visual language, Glide. The Synestheater, an interface within LiveGlide, allows the software coupling of the parameters of two complex artistic systems, each organized around a different sensory modality (the aural, the visual, for instance). Parameters from the visual system, LiveGlide, can be flexibly mapped to aural parameters in a composer’s MAX patch. But the mapping of aspects of the aural experience to properties of the visual experience in such a way that in performance an aesthetically satisfying experience is created is largely unexplored territory, beyond the obvious mapping of beat or amplitude in dance music to synchronized changes in the visual. Often the visual is slaved to the aural, delivering an amplified entrainment, but not necessarily exploring other inter-relations possible between sight and sound.
We have, with the advent of sophisticated technologies emerging from the Protean sorcery of the CPU, come to a point where we are building new instruments—and instruments with which to build instruments (such as MAX-MSP, Jitter, Audio Mulch, etc.)—at a much faster rate than we are learning to play them in an artistically mature manner. How many years does it take to master a musical instrument? An abstract animation technique? How can they meaningfully link? How can our perceptions be re-educated to encompass multiple sensory modalities and make magic in these unexplored, complex, subtle, infinitely variable synesthetic zones? And yet, we keep doing it, always on the verge of overwhelm, drowning or going with the flow. As Terence McKenna put it,
“Information is loose on planet three….Earth is a place where language has literally become alive.”
The cyberspirits are out of the bottle. Chiasmatics 101 is a recommended course for psychedelic journeying. And if all knowledge ultimately comes down to what we sense, what new things will we know in what new ways when we get just a little more in control, not of the waves, but of our ability to stay on our feet on the surfboard as we ride the rainbow serpent down the wave-ways into the great unknown, reached by connecting new pathways in the mind?
References
1. Abram, David. The Spell of the Sensuous. New York: Vintage Books, 1997.
2. Arguelles, Jose A. The Transformative Vision: Reflections on the Nature and History of Human Expression. Berkeley and London: Shambala, 1975.
3. Cytowic, Richard E. “Synesthesia: Phenomenology and Neuropsychology, A Review of Current Knowledge.” Psyche, An Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Consciousness, 2 (10), July 1995.
4. Dobkin de Rios, Marlene, and Oscar Janiger, M.D. LSD: Spirituality and the Creative Process. Rochester Vermont: Park Street Press, 2003.
5. Doyle, Richard. “LSDNA.” In Semiotic Flesh: Information and the Human Body. Thurtle, Philip and Robert Mitchell, eds. Seattle, WA: Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities, 2003.
6. Fischer, Roland. “A Cartography of the Ecstatic and Meditative States.” Science, Vol. 174, Number 4012, November, 1971.
7. Harrison, John. Synaesthesia: The Strangest Thing. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
8. Kluver, Heinrich. Mescal and the Mechanism of Hallucinations. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966.
9. Luna, Eduardo, and Pablo César Amaringo. Ayauasca Visions: The Iconography of a Peruvian Shaman. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 1991, 1993, 1999.
10. Marks, Lawrence E. “Synesthesia.” in Cardeña, Etzel; Steven Jay Lynn and Stanley Krippner, eds. Varieties of Anomalous Experience: Examining the Scientific Evidence. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2000.
11. McKenna, Terence. The Archaic Revival. San Francisco: Harper, 1991.
12. Munn, Henry. “The Mushrooms of Language.” From Harner, Michael J., ed. Hallucinogens and Shamanism. Orford: Oxford University Press, 1973.
13. Narby, Jeremy. The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge. New York: Putnam, 1998.
14. Pahnke, Walter N. “The Psychedelic Mystical Experience in the Human Encounter With Death.” Psychedelic Review, No. 11, 1971.
15. Porush, David. “Telepathy: Alphabetic Consciousness, VR, and Postmodern Presence.” University of Warwick Conference on Virtual Futures.
16. Ternaux, Jean-Pierre. “Synesthesia: A Multimodal Combination of Senses.” Leonardo, Vol. 36, Number 4, 2003.
17. Vaults of Erowid.
(from the previous bashar blog)
Meet the Funkmeyers is a short film made for the 2008 Elevate Film Festival by Chris Bradley. Meet the Funkmeyers is the story of Jenny and Otis Funkmeyer, two kindred spirits who met on the spiritual path and decided to walk together.
The Funkmeyers are a group of people who following their excitement, moment to moment, from here to eternity.
You can be a Funkmeyer too!
Visit us at funkmeyers.com
Also, visit Elevate at elevateexperience.com
Bashar is a multi-dimensional being who speaks through channel Darryl Anka from what we perceive as the future.
Bashar explores a wide-range of subjects with great insight, humor and a profound understanding of how reality creation occurs.
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Bashar is a male member of a 5th dimensional civilization called the Essassani. This is an “informal” concentrated summary by Iasos of some of the core concepts of Bashar, based on his books “Quest for Truth” and “Bashar: Blueprint for Change” and also based on listening to many audio/video recordings of channeled evenings where Bashar responds to questions from the audience. The entire Essassani civilization is based on unconditional love, ecstasy, fun, following your excitement, being totally non-judgemental, and giving validity and equality to each individual in the society. Bashar, as experienced from the tapes of the channelings, is extremely enthusiastic – almost to the point of seeming cartoon-like! And yet he has an incredibly fast mind, an amazing wit, a loving heart, and of course a profound understanding of reality. -http://iasos.com/metaphys/bashar
Meeting With Bashar 1/19/07
I discovered Bashar one late night in December, 2006. I brought all my friends to a private session at Darryl’s house (the guy who channels Bashar) a few weeks later after I was SHOCKED and discovered that he lived in the same city as me, LA. Within 2 months this information had COMPLETELY CHANGED MY LIFE. I gave away all my possessions and tested the powers of reality “selection” (it’s a holographic universe so you don’t actually CREATE anything). Every since that point, my life has expanded in the most amazing ways.
Two films have been made about this progress and they are both pretty special: http://vimeo.com/2434635 & http://vimeo.com/2497823
I love Bashar so much and I find so much inspiration day after day, week after week, year after year from this material. I think it is the most profound information that has ever hit Earth–if you find anything better, PLEASE E-MAIL ME from our website! I tried to tell April from the start that putting videos like this on the internet would be great for spreading the information and getting people into Bashar. I’m glad to see it’s happening! To me, the BEST way to start with Bashar is this summary. I think this is the best explanation of the nature of reality that has ever been created. http://iasos.com/metaphys/bashar And me, I’m Otis Funkmeyer. Check out our website for Bashar-inspired inspiration: SHIVAI!!! (you’ll understand once you get really into Bashar) -Otis Funkmeyer – www.funkmeyers.com
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Bashar 20 yrs ago
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big love to Eddie Bravo for this
or somebody has figured out how to convert electrical taser energy
either way
WIN!
and no
despite a few similarities
that is not tj
Pocahaunted – 2006 – Moccasinging CS
A1. Mother Looms
A2. Dreamtime/Machinetime
B1. Rainbow Serpant
B2. Water Moccassins
http://letitbit.net/download/d15818571605/2006—Moccasinging-CS.rar.html
http://depositfiles.com/ru/files/2tvcs3tw0
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a037ee4/n/2006_-_Moccasinging_CS_rar
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Pocahaunted – 2006 – What the Spirit Tells Me CS
A. The Waking Wind
B. And How It Carried Me Away
http://letitbit.net/download/0b580d603265/2006—What-the-Spirit-Tells-Me-CS.rar.html
http://depositfiles.com/files/l8svd08e9
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a037eg0/n/2006_-_What_the_Spirit_Tells_Me_CS_rar
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Pocahaunted – 2007 – A Tear for Every Grain of Sand CS
A1. Virginal Lamb
A2. Shallow Washita
B. Bind the Blistered Feet
http://letitbit.net/download/b4233e993555/2007—A-Tear-for-Every-Grain-of-Sand-CS.rar.html
http://depositfiles.com/files/jroe7tzze
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a037f3c/n/2007_-_A_Tear_for_Every_Grain_of_Sand_CS_rar
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Pocahaunted – 2007 – Emerald Snake On Ruby Velvet MCDR
01. Emerald Snake on Ruby Velvet
http://letitbit.net/download/88ec8b229163/2007—Emerald-Snake-On-Ruby-Velvet-MCDR.rar.html
http://depositfiles.com/files/7cbdr15w2
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a037f5h/n/2007_-_Emerald_Snake_On_Ruby_Velvet_MCDR_rar
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VA – 2007 – Hunted Gathering (Pocahaunted & Robedoor Split)
CD1
01. Robedoor – Plague of Settlers
02. Pocahaunted – Roman Nose
03. Pocahaunted – Crow Scout
04. Robedoor – Spectral Outpost
CD2
01. Robedoor – Ancestress Moon
02. Pocahaunted – Warmest Knives
03. Robedoor – Razed Terrain
04. Pocahaunted & Robedoor – Hunted Gathering
part.1
http://letitbit.net/download/cd327e686237/2007—Hunted-Gathering–Pocahaunted—Robedoor-Split-.part1.rar.html
http://depositfiles.com/files/3f5po4ibk
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a037g14/n/2007_-_Hunted_Gathering_Pocahaunted_amp_Robedoor_Split_part1_rar
part.2
http://letitbit.net/download/530a83232743/2007—Hunted-Gathering–Pocahaunted—Robedoor-Split-.part2.rar.html
http://depositfiles.com/files/sxfgcvf9z
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a037h3f/n/2007_-_Hunted_Gathering_Pocahaunted_amp_Robedoor_Split_part2_rar
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Pocahaunted & Robedoor – 2007 – Mouth Of Prayer CDR
01. Mouth Of Prayer
http://letitbit.net/download/aac258655929/2007—Mouth-Of-Prayer-CDR.rar.html
http://depositfiles.com/files/zszvwljh7
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a03823e/n/2007_-_Mouth_Of_Prayer_CDR_rar
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Pocahaunted & Robedoor – 2007 – Mouth Of Prayer/Bright Sea Of Singing Bowls CDR
01. Mouth Of Prayer
02. Bright Sea Of Singing Bowls
http://letitbit.net/download/40cb13152597/2007—Mouth-Of-Prayer-Bright-Sea-Of-Singing-Bowls-CDR.rar.html
http://depositfiles.com/files/3xqxssoet
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a038290/n/2007_-_Mouth_Of_Prayer-Bright_Sea_Of_Singing_Bowls_CDR_rar
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Pocahaunted – 2007 – Native Seduction MCDR
01. Native Seduction
http://letitbit.net/download/d9f050228702/2007—Native-Seduction-MCDR.rar.html
http://depositfiles.com/files/4uczrix6x
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a037h4f/n/2007_-_Native_Seduction_MCDR_rar
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Pocahaunted – 2007 – Pocahaunted CDR
01. War Bonnet
02. Bigiong of Rebirth
http://letitbit.net/download/a68798545643/2007—Pocahaunted-CDR.rar.html
http://depositfiles.com/files/ih7pkf47o
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a03800d/n/2007_-_Pocahaunted_CDR_rar
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Pocahaunted – 2007 – Rough Magic CS
A. Singing Color
B. Warmer Knives
http://letitbit.net/download/8e8d59622530/2007—Rough-Magic-CS.rar.html
http://depositfiles.com/files/ryubbtkfq
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a03802a/n/2007_-_Rough_Magic_CS_rar
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VA – 2007 – Heavy Sets (Live at Echo Park) (Pocahaunted & Robedoor & Sasqrotch Split) CS
A. Pocahaunted & Robedoor – Untitled
B. Sasqrotch – Untitled
http://letitbit.net/download/961a1f652007/2007—Heavy-Sets–Live-at-Echo-Park—Pocahaunted—Robedoor—Sasqrotch-Split–CS.rar.html
http://depositfiles.com/files/lq6dgzee0
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a037g8a/n/2007_-_Heavy_Sets_Live_at_Echo_Park_Pocahaunted_Robedoor_&_Sasqrotch_Split_CS_rar
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VA – 2007 – Pocahaunted & Christina Carter Split LP
A1. Christina Carter – Aging
A2. Christina Carter – Death
A3. Christina Carter – Solitude
A4. Christina Carter – Dreams
B1. Pocahaunted – Sweat Lodge
B2. Pocahaunted – Silk Fog Traveler
http://letitbit.net/download/04d0a2364929/2007—Pocahaunted—Christina-Carter-Split-LP.rar.html
http://depositfiles.com/files/mvj5rysal
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a037hb7/n/2007_-_Pocahaunted_amp_Christina_Carter_Split_LP_rar
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Pocahaunted – 2007 – Out of a Common Bowl MCDR
01. Out Of A Common Bowl
http://letitbit.net/download/7a95cb597390/2007—Out-of-a-Common-Bowl-MCDR.rar.html
http://depositfiles.com/files/55sg327xk
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a037h62/n/2007_-_Out_of_a_Common_Bowl_MCDR_rar
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VA – 2007 – Pocahaunted & Mythical Beast Split LP
A1. Mythical Beast – Gone to Grey
B1. Pocahaunted – Swayed Tongues
Bonus. Mythical Beast – In Memory of Yellow Skin
Bonus. Pocahaunted – Solitary Vigils
http://letitbit.net/download/b2818994016/2007—Pocahaunted—Mythical-Beast-Split-LP.rar.html
http://depositfiles.com/files/orm38q91a
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a037hg7/n/2007_-_Pocahaunted_amp_Mythical_Beast_Split_LP_rar
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Pocahaunted – 2007 – Water-Born MCDR
01. Water-Born
http://letitbit.net/download/ba3897256725/2007—Water-Born-MCDR.rar.html
http://depositfiles.com/files/mnba5ehnt
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a038056/n/2007_-_Water-Born_MCDR_rar
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Pocahaunted – 2008 – Bearskin Rug MCDR
01. Bearskin Rug
http://letitbit.net/download/39ed5d9325/2008—Bearskin-Rug-MCDR.rar.html
http://depositfiles.com/files/svss5sb5e
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a03806g/n/2008_-_Bearskin_Rug_MCDR_rar
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Pocahaunted – 2008 – Beast That You Are CS
A. Untitled
B. Untitled
http://letitbit.net/download/d35983698828/2008—Beast-That-You-Are-CS.rar.html
http://depositfiles.com/files/320hrq5gf
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a0380ac/n/2008_-_Beast_That_You_Are_CS_rar
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Pocahaunted – 2008 – Chains LP
A1. The Weight
A2. No More Women
B1. Oh Woe
B2. Chains
http://letitbit.net/download/af342212482/2008—Chains-LP.rar.html
http://depositfiles.com/files/mgv3mhkgh
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a03810c/n/2008_-_Chains_LP_rar
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Pocahaunted – 2008 – Island Diamonds LP
A1. Ashes Is White
A2. Gehetto Ballet
B1. Riddim Queen
B2. Follow I
http://letitbit.net/download/898949112797/2008—Island-Diamonds-LP.rar.html
http://depositfiles.com/files/uux29fbub
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a038169/n/2008_-_Island_Diamonds_LP_rar
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Pocahaunted – 2008 – Island Diamonds
01. Ashes is White
02. Ghetto Ballet
03. Riddim Queen
04. Follow I
05. Iron Shirt
06. Time Fist
http://letitbit.net/download/117a5e307965/2008—Island-Diamonds.rar.html
http://depositfiles.com/files/gusy21yt1
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a038140/n/2008_-_Island_Diamonds_rar
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Pocahaunted – 2008 – Mirror Mics LP
A. One Another
B. Sister Calypso
http://letitbit.net/download/face07605715/2008—Mirror-Mics-LP.rar.html
http://depositfiles.com/files/0gf85tuu8
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a0381a5/n/2008_-_Mirror_Mics_LP_rar
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Pocahaunted – 2008 – Peyote Road LP
A. Divine Flesh
B. Heroic Doses
http://letitbit.net/download/6ebb8c942557/2008—Peyote-Road-LP.rar.html
http://depositfiles.com/files/b9sgpi1ex
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a0381da/n/2008_-_Peyote_Road_LP_rar
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Pocahaunted & Robedoor – 2008 – Plays Berkeley CS
A. Untitled
B. Untitled
http://letitbit.net/download/6b9779119447/2008—Plays-Berkeley-CS.rar.html
http://depositfiles.com/files/lc1uzhapv
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a0382d8/n/2008_-_Plays_Berkeley_CS_rar
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VA – 2008 – Bored Fortress (Charalambides & Pocahaunted Split) LP
A. Charalambides – Memory
B. Pocahaunted – Time Fist
http://letitbit.net/download/774a59564719/2008—Bored-Fortress–Charalambides—Pocahaunted-Split–LP.rar.html
http://depositfiles.com/files/q9zw4v681
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a0380ca/n/2008_-_Bored_Fortress_Charalambides_amp_Pocahaunted_Split_LP_rar
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VA – 2008 – Pocahaunted & Orphan Fairytale Split LP
A. Orphan Fairytale – Made By Mermaids
B. Pocahaunted – Warpaint
http://letitbit.net/download/66e1af594224/2008—Pocahaunted—Orphan-Fairytale-Split-LP.rar.html
http://depositfiles.com/files/02wcy6sij
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a0381ef/n/2008_-_Pocahaunted_amp_Orphan_Fairytale_Split_LP_rar
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Pocahaunted & Tovah Olson – 2008 – Tovahaunted 1-sided LP
A1. Untitled (Tovah Olson Remix)
A2. Untitled
http://letitbit.net/download/87497d729761/2008—Tovahaunted–1-sided-LP.rar.html
http://depositfiles.com/files/tx5w1nwoe
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a0382gg/n/2008_-_Tovahaunted_1-sided_LP_rar
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Pocahaunted – 2009 – Gold Miner’s Daughters CS
A1. Hideous
A2. Sun
B. Demon
http://letitbit.net/download/7b7293345102/2009—Gold-Miner-s-Daughters-CS.rar.html
http://depositfiles.com/files/6yp8sc3dd
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a03820d/n/2009_-_Gold_Miner_s_Daughters_CS_rar
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Pocahaunted 2009- Passage LP
A1. Palm
A2. Salt
B1. Dusk
B2. Veil
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?zjaynzknmli
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=ZBAVX6L0
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http://www.myspace.com/pocahaunted
respect and acknowledgment to itsbroodwich
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http://namemesomeonethatsnotaparasite.blogspot.com/2007/10/pocahaunted-interview.html
Wednesday, 10 October 2007
Pocahaunted Interview
Here is an interview I did with the free noise band Pocahaunted.
Pocahaunted
Pocahaunted make scary music. Music that twists and eats at your innermost fears like a plague-ridden maggot burrowing through your queasy unease. It’s all low level drones and voices from beyond the pail that clunk along in a shambolic, rootsified manor that Devandra could only dream of. It somehow sounds like some lost field recording of a bunch of Navajos subconsciously conversing with Anguta while hopped up on Mescal out in the middle of the dessert. They have been hand picked to support Thurston Moore and Sonic Youth and released a bunch of records on labels that you really should be familiar with by now like Not Not Fun and Ecstatic Peace! They currently have a split CDR with Robedoor out on the great UK label Blackest Rainbow. It scares the fuck out of me.
Where is the most haunted place you have ever been?
Bethany: My best friend in high school lived in this house, which my new age mom always suspected was haunted. Once we did this experiment where she left the house for a night with her rocking chair pushed against the wall. My mom said if the chair was in the middle of the room the next day, then we’d know a ghost moved it. Totally in the middle of the room the next day. Fucked up.
Amanda: I’ve never been anywhere haunted, I’m Jewish and we don’t go anywhere or do anything that has anything to do with the supernatural
Ok Amanada, what would you expect to see in a haunted wood that contained your greatest fears were you to find yourself in one theoretically speaking?
Amanda: I’d see Bethany wearing a Lakers jersey and dream catcher earrings. I imagine that she has been in every creepy place that there has ever been. Or I’d see my husband Britt leading a Manson-like cult of beautiful girls in white robes.
Bethany: The woods make my allergies flare up so I’d probably be hopped up on a whole bunch of Clarityin or Piriton if I was there.
How frightening on a scale of one to ten would you grade your music?
Bethany: The most fucked up, haunted sound ever is reverse talking. Thinking about it right now is making me freak out. I think our music is pretty spooky and up there with that sound. It’s like our own language of sisterhood, I can just stare into Amanda’s eyes and hear our music playing.
Amanda: It is more kind of psychedelic and woozy than straight frightening. Bethany’s voice is chamber-style dramatic and when the death metal pedal is on the mood is very heavy. We also insist on playing in 90 degree heat for optimum crazed sweatiness.
What are your favourite Disney movies?
Bethany: The Little Mermaid. That is where I get all my vocal cues. I’m also into Cruella DeVille because she’s wicked bad and my hair used to look like that.
Amanda: I’m more into live action stuff. The Parent Trap and Pollyanna. Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty could be Bethany’s replacement, she’s hot and cruel. I could definitely drone out with anyone from the animated Robin Hood, those dudes are just all soul.
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http://larecord.com/interviews/2008/03/14/fri-mar-14-pocahaunted-interview
FRI., MAR. 14: POCAHAUNTED INTERVIEW
March 14th, 2008
Pocahaunted is working on a dub record and has an art installation as part of Three Burritos at Tiny Creatures later this month. Amanda and Bethany speak to us about sea creatures, child acting and Senegalese funk.
What was it like playing for a class of third graders?
Bethany: It was amazing and weird.
Amanda: The Q&A was them asking us like ‘What kind of songs do you like?’ And us sitting there in dead silence trying to think of radio hits.
B: We’d be like, ‘You like Stevie Wonder?’ And they’d be like ‘…’ ‘What about the Rolling Stones?’ And two kids would raise their hands. They were like, ‘Do you like Souljah Boy?’
A: I realized how blissfully unaware we are of everything popular.
B: I like to pride myself in thinking I know what’s going on on the radio. In my car, my tape player is broken, so I’m like, ‘Oh, cool, I’ll listen to Star 98.7,’ and then switch to the classic rock station—
What’s the best experience you ever shared with the radio?
A: Any time Marcy Playground’s ‘I Love Sex And Candy’ comes on, it makes me really happy.
B: I’m obsessed with Billy Joel. I just saw him play last night. A beer was $9 and the pizza was just a piece of cheese with literally no dough—just cheese hanging off. It was amazing. It was all 40-year-old drunk women, and one kissed my hand like ‘I love you!’ Awesome.
What was the most constructive comment you got from the third-graders?
B: They drew all these drawings for us—
A: —while listening to our music. Their teacher is a big fan of ours. During art time, he’d play our record and sort of insist they draw something inspired by what they hear. They said we were scary Halloween music. They drew us monsters and alligators.
B: One was a haunted house and a ghost, and the caption on the ghost says ‘YOU CANNOT SEE ME.’ And one kid gave us a note: ‘YOUR BAND RULED. AND THE SONG.’
A: I think they were utterly confused. But so are adults.
B: I have a huge pottymouth, so I felt like I had to be really careful—like if I said anything in front of these kids, it’d go down on my permanent record.
A: She’s two seconds from saying ‘fuck’ any moment of the day. And then we went back to playing shows for hipsters—we were like, ‘Whew! Narrow escape!’
What was it like opening for Mike Watt and Thurston Moore on Halloween in Visalia?
B: The car we took up there broke down. Our friend Bobb [Bruno] who records us and plays drums for us a lot—it was his car and the speedometer just said DONE. So he pulls over and we’re in the middle of these vineyards, and we’re like ‘We have to go to the bathroom!’ And then a cop comes…
A: And apparently it’s a federal offense to pee in a vineyard? So we’re running through the vineyard—and my pee makes wine better anyway! I pee in everyone’s wine—not a big deal. But at that point, we thought for sure we were not getting to the show. The car was done and we were done.
B: We called Thurston and he was like, ‘It’s fine—you guys will make it.’ So we called a tow truck and we were towed—
A: —and we were in the car as they were towing us, which is illegal.
B: We were in the back seat taking shots of Jack Daniels, like ‘We might die, so we might as well be relaxed.’ And they dropped us off and another guy and his girlfriend towed us to Visalia, and they were listening to crazy screamo music and the Silversun Pickups, and we were like, ‘We know this band…’
A: We wanted to seem glamorous. And we were like, ‘Hey, we’re opening for Sonic Youth.’
B: And they were like ‘…’ We did sound check in like four seconds then ran to the bathroom and threw on our costumes.
A: We were playing in one of those weird pizza parlor sports bars in front of giant Budweiser flags, and I would never by any means call us high art, but we’re definitely not Budweiser-flag art.
B: We sat at the merch table and made little pouches of candy corn—we also like to think we’re a stand-up duo, so we wrote little jokes and make a hundred of the things with our own hands, and we could not give them away.
A: Everyone in Visalia was worried about getting fat from candy corn. I realized I was yelling at people: ‘You’re not gonna get fat! What are you, on a diet? It’s Halloween! Take the candy!’ Thurston took a few and was like, ‘Candy corn is awesome.’
B: And then he just left it on the table. He didn’t want it. And Thurston introduced us to Watt, who immediately started talking about San Pedro. We were like, ‘We know.’
A: He was wearing the most high-waisted jeans I’ve ever seen. And a flannel. He was probably the hippest person there.
B: He looked good.
A: In an utterly clueless lumberjack way.
What happened to Bobb’s car?
B: We left it there, and Bobb actually finally went up there—it was no longer done!
A: We’re really into playing for people that aren’t what we would consider regular fans of avant-garde experimental music. But there’s always very nervous energy when people are there to see rock or a standing performance—with traditional instruments and traditional structure—because we play one piece.
B: A lot of times we finish playing and people are waiting—no, that’s it! We have one song!
A: It makes people sort of vicious.
B: We did a little mini-tour and played this art gallery for I guess only ten minutes, but when you’re in the moment, it feels a lot longer, and apparently the cops came—
You attract a lot of cops.
A: I got pulled over by a cop that thought I was a prostitute.
How did they bring that up?
A: I had like fur coats and lipstick and I was on the west side by the Standard and I have a 17-year-old in my car, and they were like, ‘Honey, have you been drinking tonight?’ ‘Well, he’s having an Arizona Iced Tea and I’m having Kombucha.’ So anyway the cops came and that’s why people thought we had a second song. They were like, ‘We’re so bummed you had to stop early.’ And we were like, ‘Yeaaaaaahhhhh….’
You should call the cops on all your shows.
A: I’d prefer to call the firefighters.
B: We talk fast and we’re always screaming really loud—we have a joke that people probably hear our music and are like, ‘When are these bitches gonna shut up?’
Who came up with the Mary Kate and Ashley of drone idea?
B: Bobb. Bobb and I are both REALLY into the Olsen twins.
What does it mean to be REALLY into the Olsen twins?
B: They’re just kind of amazing. I always check the fansites to see what they’re wearing. Bobb had a thing where he was like ‘You’re Ashley and Amanda is Mary Kate.’
Is one the good one and one the bad one?
B: They’re both good. But Ashley wears more classy things, and Mary Kate is daring—she’s definitely a risk-taker.
Have you tried to make contact?
B: I’m pretty sure they would hate us.
A: But if you’re on drugs you like us no matter what. I feel like it doesn’t matter what kind of drugs you’re on. Music for people to take appetite suppressants to.
Taking appetite suppressants to make music to take appetite suppressants to?
B: We try to be the healthier version of Spacemen 3. With better teeth.
What’s in the filing cabinet of clippings that you use to make your collages?
B: Books and National Geographics, and we just talk and cut stuff out.
A: We have a gallery exhibit at Tiny Creatures in March, so we’ve been doing a ton of stuff for that.
What’s the best source material besides National Geographic?
A: Go to any Vogue and cut out diamonds.
B: Diamonds and fur.
A: I’m Jewish, so I think everything about diamonds is amazing. I’m really into being Jewish so I make these really bold statements like ‘Jews hate that,’ and then like five Jewish people ask me, ‘Why did you say that?’ But I think I’m really qualified to say what Jews like and don’t like. I said ‘Jews hate slurpees’ and a woman turned around and said, ‘I’m Jewish and I don’t hate slurpees.’ ‘Well, you’re not really Jewish then!’ But you don’t say that. Anyway, Jews love diamonds. Do Italians like diamonds?
B: Italians like gold.
A: Just fancy stuff.
B: We get into weird magazines. Weird books at the thrift store. Like a set where every book is weird: weird forest creatures, psychic connections, stuff like that.
What’s the weirdest animal in nature?
A: Is there any animal that’s not fucked up?
Dogs?
A: When you spend time with a dog, it’s like, ‘No, you’re so weird!’
B: We both hate the ocean. Any sea creature is just wrong. It’s the scariest thing on earth.
A: It’s like being jettisoned into outer space. Why would you wanna go floating through space? What if I was snorkeling and a dolphin went by and touched my leg? I’d throw up in my mouth!
Did you hear about the giant prehistoric sea scorpion?
B: Yes!
A: I’m glad I haven’t heard of that. I’m into babies. There’s really only room in my heart for one thing.
What’s the scariest thing on earth?
B: I hate the ocean, I hate silent films, I hate backwards talking. Silent films because I know everyone in them is dead, and that makes me feel weird. I’m taking an early film class and it’s such torture. The first two-and-a-half-weeks were all silent. Lumiere and Chaplin—kill me now!
What’s the heart of your set of effects pedals?
A: We’re created on the basic principle of voice and vision. Bethany is the voice and I’m the vision, and when Bethany is just in the most clear free like… zen state and her voice is just coming out, it just trumps anything—it’s the pure beauty of what we have to offer. And that’s why we don’t know much about our equipment. I barely know how to work a single pedal—put reverb on and some delay and then Bethany—give her a smart water, turn her back to the crowd and you’re gonna get something like Mariah! I’m like, ‘Give me Mariah tonight, baby!’ I spend most of the time like ‘Let’s use these instruments, or these are the new directions we should go in.’ When you play the same song over and over—a singular piece without a verse or chorus—you need to introduce elements that make you seem like you’re not trying to create the same thing. We know what works for us, and it’s better for us to challenge ourselves. Who wants to hear two girls singing the same vocal pattern and the same chord progression every month for years?
B: That’s definitely true. She’ll call me like ‘I have this awesome idea!’ And I’m like, ‘Fine, whatever.’
A: You’re the talent! You can’t be bothered. And I have no talent. One time I hit a note that harmonized. And she said, ‘Amanda, you’re harmonizing!’ Which—let’s just say—is rare.
How did you first find each other?
A: As a child, Bethany was one of those little show babies—
Like in TV commercials?
B: Definitely—a child actor.
A: Like Annie in Annie! But Bethany’s ex-boyfriend is a friend of ours, and expressed to me that she wanted to get back into music, but doesn’t want to go back to pop sensibilities. So we talked one night—and I run Not Not Fun, so all I deal with is underground sensibilities—and I said ‘If you wanna get back into music, we can do a project.’ We weren’t even friends then.
B: We went in the studio in their house and played a song and made it a routine thing—every Sunday we practiced.
A: Initially Bethany was like ‘This isn’t beautiful enough’ and I’d be like ‘This isn’t weird enough.’ Now it’s instinctive that Bethany brings a certain amount of beauty and I fuck it up—that’s good! Bring on the beauty—bring it on! And let me fuck it up! Now we’re like sisters—really close—we make all the decisions together. A two-person band is a blessing. The fighting stops pretty short.
Which recording is the definitive Pocahaunted recording?
A: Bethany and I have such a morphing sensibility that we tend to like things very quickly and at the time be very into them, and as time goes on—that recording we love doesn’t really hold up. Maybe what we did in March isn’t as potent now. It’d be really hard to put together a best-of. Maybe just a Billy Joel covers album.
B: I’m really trying to push for that. We discussed maybe trying to do a cover song, but we don’t have lyrics in our songs. It’d be fucked up if the only song we ever had lyrics to was a cover—but what would we cover? Maybe if we cover a Ramones song. Might be cool.
A: We only play two notes anyway. We got that Rockaway Beach kind of vibe.
What’s the next recording going to be?
A: Our dub album is coming out. Appetite suppressant music.
That’s awesome you make people not want to eat.
B: I used to work in this restaurant and a girl said to me, ‘What size are you? You must be a size 12!’ ‘I’m not that big.’ ‘I don’t believe you! Step on the scale!’ So we always say ‘step on the scale.’ And so as long as our music makes one person not want to eat…
What are the parameters of your dream project?
A: Honestly, getting the people that played with Paul Simon on Graceland. If we had a million African percussionists and drummers and back-up singers. Just like Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense. Amazing Senegalese funk.
B: And also a gospel choir.
A: Totally a gospel choir through so much delay.
B: I’m about ready to go sit outside a Baptist church, like ‘Can I get two of you to do a track?’
A: We’re so into studio musicians—we want so many strangers at the top of their game, making us sound like we’re amazing!
B: I’d also be into an orchestra—L.A. Philharmonic!
So you want total numerical superiority.
A: When you roll deep with four hundred people, you’re a force to be reckoned with.
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http://www.tinymixtapes.com/Pocahaunted
The Olsen Twins of Drone
[June 2008]
The other day took me from a positively gray day at the office to an art gallery opening. I walked up the stairs toward the gallery, surprised by its astonishing brightness. Apparently, the artist had put in especially bright fluorescent bulbs himself. I mean, walking into an art opening is usually bright enough — all white walls and people everywhere — but this light was blinding. My friend Shea eventually walked up the stairs too and met me outside, headphones in ears, all wide-eyed, and in some sort of trance. He stopped about a foot in front of me before realizing where he was. “What are you listening to, Shea?” I asked. As I suspected from his pale demeanor, distant glances, and the general returning-home-from-a-vision-quest vibe that he was giving off, he was listening to Island Diamonds, a recent LP by LA two-piece Pocahaunted. (I loaned him the album the day before.) From tepees to white-walled rooms with this sprawling murky dubby stuff as his soundtrack, I understood both his confusion and his elation.
Bethany and Amanda comprise Pocahaunted. Most of Pocahaunted’s music has been in the murkier, ambient sort of school of primitive experimentalism, but Island Diamonds is all druggy tribal rhythms and hypnotic dub jams, drenched in a grimey sort of reverb that smacks of the desert in a major Alejandro Jodorowsky kind of way. They’re El Topo on the streets of California, but they’re hard to pin down, extremely prolific, and always trying something new. They’ve now got several releases out on the likes of Not Not Fun (which Amanda co-runs), Ecstatic Piece, Arbor, Night People, and several more. I talked to Amanda and Bethany about a couple of their new records, Los Angeles, their recording processes, and Patrick Dempsey.
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So, did you guys just have band practice?
Amanda: We’re about to go in and record our album for Teardrops called Chains. Teardrops is Cali Dewitt’s amazing label that has put out such famers as No Age, No Age, and No Age.
Cool, I did an interview with Randy Randall last week. I’m really digging on their new record.
Bethany: Cool, where was Dean? I saw him at Target last week, probably during your interview.
Dean was in Target yeah. Maybe, probably. Anyway, what’s the deal with a new album? Do you have anything in mind for this one, if Island Diamonds was your self-proclaimed ‘dub record’?
A: We have one coming out in a few weeks on Weird Forest that has more of a “tribal soul” feel, and we just finished one for Troubleman which is like our “dark raga” album. It’s very schizophrenic around here. Tonight’s session will be “Pocahaunted does Tom Tom Club.” Cross your fingers for us.
I’ve been so obsessed with Tom Tom Club lately.
A: They’re the greatest.
That’s kind of a lot of albums you’re putting out though!
B: I’m about to move to New York, so we’re trying to get as much done as possible. Is it too much? Let me know when it’s too much.
It’s never enough. How do you guys work though? What’s your recording process? Do you often just jam and lay it down to tape?
A: Yeah, you nailed it; no practicing, just one take wonders.
Wow okay. Even on Island Diamonds?
B: Yeah, that one we just did one take, but Bobb Bruno worked his ass off
Yikes. I guess I thought it would’ve been more mapped out, maybe because it’s way more clear and direct than something like Hunted Gathering.
B: The concept of those albums are completely different. Hunted Gathering is supposed to have more of a free-flow vibe, and we tried to make the beats super focused for Island Diamonds.
I was thinking how well your sound works in a dub sort of form.
A: Dub is awesome; it was really inspiring for us during the time we were recording. I would just wake up and do the dishes to weird Soul Jazz box sets, and my husband Britt bought endless rare imports that Pete from Yellow Swans would suggest for us, and then there was the Lee Scratch Perry biography….
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“We really like to pride ourselves on being a band that changes.”
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Awesome. Those Soul Jazz compilations are terrific, eh? A lot of that super old vintage-y dub has kind of a spooky feel to it. A different spooky to you guys, but it makes sense with your sound I think.
A: God — rich, esoteric, white British men know what’s up, right? We should be on Soul Jazz.
Totally. So, is Chains going to be the tribal soul one?
B: No, that’s Mirror Mics. Chains is the pop Tom Tom stuff.
Is it quite dark, still?
B: Yeah, I mean… no. No, it’s like reggae pop with great jazzy wandering vocals.
Hmm, okay.
A: Noooooo, it’s really a Talking Heads Stop Making Sense ‘home’ thing. We’re not dark people, and we’re not spooky. We like to move and be moved; we like to dance and feel rhythmic. This just reflects that.
Yeah it seems obvious that you guys aren’t dark people; there seems to be a good sense of humor that comes with it. The stuff I’ve been reading always describes your music as quite scary/spooky. Would you say you agree with that at all?
B: Maybe because it’s a people’s projection thing. Like, we’re connected to great drone psychedelic music — and we’re proud of that — but we always want to be slipping in weird beats or pop into it. We get kind of spooky.
A: I mean, if you’re alone, listening and watching the eyes of Laura Mars on mute with us playing in the background… yeah, then we’re spooky for sure
Yeah, I know what you mean. Actually I was finding Hunted Gathering to be actually quite bright, as I was listening to it before. But maybe because the sun’s out in this afternoon.
A: I think it’s hopeful, sure.
You seem to like to dress it up a bit as well, making this mythology or mystique to go with the band. This general aesthetic you’ve got going on seems quite assured.
B: Our aesthetic is really important to us. If we were just our band making music and putting it out there with no mystique, we’d be utterly forgettable and boring. Our art helps us, like our personalities help us.
A: Also, we’re women, and so I think to not rest on the weird laurels of Bethany’s beautiful goddess voice, we want a bit of spook or mystery. Sometimes I think we’re performance art.
Yeah definitely. There’s a reasonably fine line between the distinction between music and sound art or performance art. With the aesthetic — the vision quest kind of native Indian vibe you have going on — I was wondering if you have any personal connections with the native Indian culture or anything like that?
B: Nah, I took a few native anthropology courses and got really into the culture, rituals, imagery… We have drawn some of our song titles and art from what I’ve learned, but we’re trying to move away from ‘moccasins’ or the pun of our band name.
A: Native Americans have amazing traditions, and their storytelling rituals through chanting are absolutely mesmerizing and something we would love to emulate. But now I don’t know. Now I guess we’re into Africa, haha. Northern Africa at this exact moment.
Which I guess could have connotations of the tribal or the innate. It seems like you guys are pretty into that.
B: I think we just aim to have a final product that is somewhat modern-sounding mixed with something tribal- and antique-sounding. In our personal lives, we both listen to mostly older music, so I think we tend to draw from what it is we listen to. We both have very eclectic tastes in what we listen to, which essentially is the reason we “change” so much. We have so many influences and so many things we want to try. We really like to pride ourselves on being a band that changes.
It seems boring not to — I mean, me personally, I change everyday, there’s so much stuff out there!
A: Seriously! And it’s not cool to be like ‘no good music was made after 1975,’ but sometimes it’s only your own personal influences and inspirations that keep you making music. There is great stuff out there, but we like what we like I guess!
I was thinking that there’s definitely some new age kind of vibe about your music and image too. Like ancient stuff translated into a modern voice.
B: I’m into Enya and Yoga; maybe it’s me who brings that to the table.
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“We like to move and be moved; we like to dance and feel rhythmic.”
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Yeah, Bethany I was reading somewhere that you have a really new age mom.
B: Yeah she’s pretty out there. She has this weird crystal that she asks questions to, and she seriously takes its advice. She is also really into spiritual healing. She also claims she can sense spirits, so she’s kind of like a ghost hunter. She’s into past lives.
Oh, wow. Does she like your music?
B: Yeah, she really likes it. Both of my parents are really supportive of what I choose to do, and they both really enjoy the band. I think they are kind of confused by it, but they’re still into it.
Cool. It seems like the sort of thing parents would think was really weird.
B: The weird thing is, most of the people who I would imagine to think something like ‘this is totally fucked’ are really supportive and into it.
I was working at this office job for a couple of weeks, and I was listening to stuff like you guys — as well as this Heather Leigh Murray record a lot and other noise stuff — and thinking that if the other people here heard what I was listening to, they’d think I was real wacky or something.
A: My parents think it’s totally weird. It’s weird and it isn’t. Sometimes you forget that the rest of the world isn’t listening to Double Leopards and Blues Control. I think we’re the least weird of all of it, and that’s certainly true. Sometimes I even hear serious melodies and harmonies in our music! That’s not weird, but moms… they’re into Pink Floyd and Peter Allen, so…
B: To be honest, sometimes I think we’re kind of weird. But I think that because we have this really lulling, underlying beautiful vibe hidden underneath a lot of other stuff. It can be appealing to variety of people.
Well, its certainly a long way from the mainstream. Do you feel like that’s the case for your everyday lives too?
A: Not exactly the margin, haha. Okay, it’s more like our personalities are strange, and definitely when we get together, the strangeness comes out. We’re very crazy together, and that makes our music “out” and special, I think.
Do you interact with mainstream culture much? Like TV, movies, music, or whatever?
B: Oh, we are only mainstream culture. We went to see Made of Honor last week. We’re both really into TV and celebrities, and seriously, the Olsen twins. Well, at least I am really into them — Amanda is more into British models.
Oh, rad. I saw Patricky Dempsey on The Late Show the other day, and for some reason, it really made me want to go see that film. But yeah, The Olsen Twins of Drone thing… it seems to make a lot of sense, but I’m not sure why. Do you know?
B: The Olsen Twins of Drone is a joke from Bobb stemming from the fact that one of us looks like a fancy and one of us looks like a crazy, and we drink a lot of tea and talk a lot of shit and hang out together. And then we play drone music, see?
Cool.
A: I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Do you ever find music to be a bit of a boy’s club?
B: I think that this style of music can sometimes be looked at as a “boy’s club.” I have joked before that Amanda and I are making music in a scene filled with “dirty boys.” I think that we just roll with it though; there are also some really amazing female musicians in this “scene.” Inca Ore, Christina Carter, etc.
Yeah, DIY scenes always seem filled with grungy boys
A: Our fans are mostly men, for sure — at least at our shows. And yes, our bandmates are mostly men. But so many women make music in every single genre too. We chose this one because it fits our wants and needs as musicians, not because we wanted to make any particular statement about women in the noise/drone scene. We’re lucky to be with Christina [Carter] and Liz [Grouper]; we’re big fans of theirs, but they’re not amazing because they’re women — they’re women and they’re amazing.
Oh, definitely. Another thing I was wondering about was how you got into making this music, and if you had training in any instruments or anything?
B: My dad is a musician, and I have grown up around music for my entire life. I grew up doing musical theater and took opera lessons, as well as guitar and piano. I’m not a musical genius or anything, but I do have some sort of [musical] background. Amanda and I just came together because I voiced to her my want to make music, but not the kind I had been making in my younger years.
A: I can’t play anything or do anything really. I was a playwriting major, and other than that, I dunno. I’m excellent at puzzles.
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on 05-28-2009 –>
http://globecat.blogspot.com/2008/08/aleatory-10-pocahaunted.html
8.01.2008
ALEATORY #10: Pocahaunted
Pocahaunted scares children.
Earlier this year, Amanda and Bethany played for a class of third graders, who described their sound as “scary Halloween music.” It’s not a bad description: their blend of drone, psychedelia and Native American music, full of reverb and foreboding, would make a great soundtrack to a haunted house. Remarkably prolific (their website lists well over 20 releases, often in runs of 100 or less), they are atmospheric in the good way, haunting without coming across as dark or gloomy, and of course, charming to talk to. The ladies of Pocahaunted:
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5. Favorite piece of equipment?
Amanda: Delay and reverb pedal.
Bethany: Holy Grail reverb pedal. I’d be nothing without one.
9. Favorite song to start (or end) a mixtape with?
Amanda: “Umi Says,” by Mos Def.
Bethany: “Gold Dust Woman,” Fleetwood Mac.
14. Favorite sound?
Amanda: Sax solos.
Bethany: The fan in my room blowing right at me when it’s 400 degrees with 99.9% humidity.
20. Favorite new band?
Amanda: White Magic
Bethany: Vivian Girls.
22. Favorite vice?
Amanda: Dark chocolate.
Bethany: Mike’s Hard Cranberry Lemonade.
23. Favorite natural oddity?
Amanda: Unibrows and lisps.
Bethany: Cats with thumbs.
25. Favorite historical figure?
Amanda: Queen Elizabeth and Nixon.
Bethany: Bruce Springsteen.
49. Now that you know a much larger audience will get to hear the music you’ve made, has your writing changed at all? How? What’s changed and what’s stayed the same?
Amanda: I’m always like to Bethany, “Oh man, in that last review they really didn’t like this or that, we’ve got to grow or move away from our previous songs…” But you can’t think like that, the writing should only change because we change and our influences change, and we try to stay true to that. I think we’ve gotten more sophisticated in our recording, with more collaborations with other amazing musicians, and that always morphs and improves our sound. But Bethany’s voice is our rock and it’s what makes us Pocahaunted, so that will never change. I’m just trying to get her to go off even more insane, deeper, crazier, with more soul, and more intensity. And she always brings it.
60. What’s the worst show you’ve ever played? What would you have done different?
Amanda: Our worst show was at Echo Curio, when we played with our friend Jonathan. He was amazing, and the sounds he was making were totally beautiful but Bethany’s amp was malfunctioning like crazy and feeding back, and I think we played for about six minutes. It was low… but when it was over we laughed. Like we genuinely laughed and hugged and got over it, so maybe that’s not so bad after all.
61. What’s the best advice you could give to a young, upstart band?
Amanda: Work hard and be sick and epic, I’d say. But I’d always say work hard, be sick and epic about anything. If you stay away from weird music trends and make yr own music then who cares if you don’t get the recognition right away or ever? If they like punk and yr making experimental drone, keep on keeping on. If they like experimental drone and yr making experimental drone, then enjoy it while it lasts. And of course, work with the best people you can. They’ll only make you sound better and go deeper.
Bethany: Move to Brooklyn.
65. Ever see yourself penning the score/soundtrack to a TV show or film?
Amanda: When we write a great song and we know it, like we hear it back and look at each other like, “oh yeah” — we always joke, oh just the perfect score for Last of the Mohicans 2. But it’s changing now, we’re trying to get more soulful… maybe like the soundtrack to an awesome movie about sad shit and redemption…
Bethany: The Sopranos movie.
70. What is a personal belief you hold that you would fight for to the death?
Amanda: My own aesthetics. And love, duh.
Bethany: Never eat mayonnaise.
72. A few years ago, Beck gave an interview for SPIN in which he lamented the glut of reality TV shows and blogs about musicians, wanting to know less details about their life because he felt they were more mysterious that way (he liked to envision Devo as living in a crazed art-deco pyramid when he was young, instead of just some guys in a tour bus). Do you feel that there’s a lack of mystique out there for musicians in today’s YouTube age? Do you feel your band carries any mystique?
Bethany: I guess it makes sense that there would be a total lack of mystique for this reason, but I am totally into YouTube—so I don’t really worry about it. Pocahaunted doesn’t seem to end up on the Internet as much, unless it’s links to my personal Flickr site—so I think we are doing pretty good at keeping up the mystique.
Amanda: There’s no mystique. My husband Britt used to be like, “I love that band, you can’t even email them… they don’t even exist on the Internet, it’s amazing.” We still get into that and get siked on it, then it comes time to email that band and it’s like, oh shit, you can’t even email those dudes. It’s hard to stay mysterious when being out there comes with Flickr account pics, and YouTube videos, and Myspace comments… I hope we have a mystique, but we ruin everything when we speak. It’s all jokes and Sopranos references. Not so strange at all.
77. What was the hardest part about recording your current release?
Amanda: Raising ourselves to the highest level. Each release has to be just a bit better or stranger or cooler than the last one for us. I get so stressed and go crazy over every song, and Bethany just trusts our performance and relaxes. Working with Bobb Bruno and Cameron Stallones is so dope, though. So there’s a lot of trust there.
Bethany: I think just the timing. I was about to move, and was trying to finish up my last semester at school in LA—and Amanda was working hard on Crops and Rawbers stuff, and trying to leave her job… so we both had a lot on our minds, and were pretty stressed out… but we finished it, so I guess stress doesn’t matter now.
80. Worst run-in with the law (to date)?
Bethany: The time Amanda and I got yelled at for peeing in a vineyard.
Amanda: The cops yelled at us because we tried to pee in a vineyard on the way to our Halloween show opening up for Thurston. We were totally late, had to pee of course, and didn’t realize it was illegal. Which led to my famous (not so famous) quote, “Whatever, I pee in everyone’s wine, it’s fine.”
81. If you could sync an album of yours to a movie (like Dark Side of the Moon and The Wizard of Oz), what movie would it be?
Amanda: Probably some James McAvoy movie. We love him.
Bethany: The Dark Knight.
83. Have you ever thought of pulling a Jack White-styled Raconteurs/White Stripes thing and be in multiple bands at once? If so, what would the other band sound like?
Amanda: Bethany’s would probably sound more beautiful than anything in the world (Enya meets Kate Bush meets Mazzy Star) and mine would just be straight up afro funk or stupid acid jazz. Or we’d probably just try to hang around with rappers and hope someone would let us sing the hook.
Bethany: Yeah, I’m down. I’d like to be in a really poppy band that just sounds like The Beach Boys. Amanda would probably hate it.
84. Most disappointing concert you ever attended?
Amanda: Kraftwerk at Coachella. It was like a car commercial. Straight up.
Bethany: I don’t know. It wasn’t Billy Joel, that’s for sure.
94. What’s your hardest song to replicate live?
Amanda: We can’t replicate any of them. We can’t replay any of them. So I guess, all of them.
100. Even with the gradual decay of the B-side, most artists still have vaults of unreleased songs. What’s in yours?
Amanda: So many weird live sets with different awesome friend musicians. And a few songs that I was like, no no no not good enough for the album. It gets shelved, and then Britt just archives it for us in case we get wistful one night and re-listen and go, ooohhhhhhh yeah.
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http://visitationsmusic.blogspot.com/2009/02/interview-with-pocahaunteds-bethany.html
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Pocahaunted: An Interview with Bethany Cosentino
Bethany Cosentino is one half of Los Angeles duo Pocahaunted (with Amanda Brown), known for their long, spooky, and almost meditative drone compositions. Their music is both calming and foreboding, often simultaneously, and can feel like being lullabyed into a nightmare-filled sleep. Amid war drums, lulling guitar, and howling voices, Pococaunted always seem to be beating, guiding, and gathering towards some sonic place, a place where we’ll probably never arrive. But if we can’t know where Pocahaunted are going, we can at least find out where they come from.
Alexander Frank: Can you tell me a little bit about your progression from more standard songwriting to the drone and noise of Pocahaunted? I know that before Pocahaunted, not so long ago, you wrote songs with lyrics and bridges and choruses and all that. So how and when did you make the transition something more discordant?
I was really kind of bored with traditional songwriting, and when Amanda approached me and asked me to start a band with her, we had no real concept in mind of what the music would sound like. Coming from a strong musical background, I figured I would go in there and attempt to construct something, but when the two of us came together, the Pocahaunted sound just happened. And we never questioned it or tried to throw a label on it, we just played the music that came to us, and came out of us. It was only later that people started to call us a “drone” band.
AF: Does genre mean anything to Pocahaunted? What would you label yourselves if you had to?
Well, like I said before, I think we play the music we play because it’s just what kind of comes out. Amanda and I have completely different tastes in music, and neither one of us really even listens to “drone” bands, so I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s important to us to be categorized as a drone band. We make the music we make because it is somehow inspired by our varying tastes, and it just so happens that the mash-up of all these cross genres creates this droney, blissed-out music.
AF: Can you talk a little bit about those influences? The drone and noise influences are obvious, but I also hear the 20th century diva. Your voice is Buffy-Saint Marie, Elizabeth Fraser, and Mariah Carey rolled into one! Can you talk about some divas that inspire Pocahaunted? I hear Patsy Cline, too. Am I crazy?
Well obviously, I am all about the Diva. Amanda and I kind of joke around that we are both divas, but honestly, it’s not a joke. We are loud, and demanding, and we require a lot of attention. But we are also really, really inspired by a lot of female musicians, and I think it’s pretty clear in our music. I think there is a real feminine quality to the songs, and I think even without the layers of female vocals, the music itself portrays a very feminine vibe. I am really inspired by Elizabeth Fraser, which I think is pretty obvious. I also love, love, love Patsy Cline, so the comparison is amazing. I’m inspired by a lot of female soul singers from the 60s and 70s like Irma Thomas, Doris Duke, and, of course, Aretha Franklin. We’re both also really into Nina Simone, and other women of jazz.
AF: Just knowing you as a friend, your personality seems so divergent from the sounds on your records. You’re so talkative and verbal and present in person, but on record you sound sort of distant, far away, nonverbal, in a sense. Do you become someone different when you’re recording and performing?
I don’t think I act any different when recording or performing. Amanda has a hard time getting me to act “seriously” on stage. I think she takes it more seriously than I do from a performance standpoint. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I am into it—but for me it’s harder, because I’m the one playing the guitar, and carrying the song, so I get a little nervous and I try to concentrate a lot. We recently started playing with a more basic band, so it’s easier for me now to ease up and put the guitar down at some point. And when I do that, I feel like I have more room to get into the performance.
AF: What’s the process of writing and creating a Pocahaunted song or album? How much do you have planned out and how much just happens during the recording process?
Basically what happens is Amanda and I will brainstorm ideas, meaning, we will say “we want this album to sound like…”, and then we throw out some insane jargon like “Talking Heads meets Cocteau Twins thrown into a blender after smoking a lot of weed”. We basically don’t write songs. I come up with a pretty simple guitar riff, and then we add on top of that. Most of our albums have concepts behind them though, and we go into them hoping that we will come across a certain way for a particular album. We have really tried to grow and change with each release, and I think our personal influences show through a lot more in the later albums than in any of the earlier stuff we released.
AF: One last question. What’s the best time of day to listen to a Pocahaunted album? Morning? Afternoon? Night, after a long day of work? Right before you go to bed?
At night, I guess…Yeah, at night. When it’s most spooky out. And kinda foggy. And close to some mountains, or maybe the ocean. Yeah: listen to us at night in nature.
Interview by Alex Geoffrey Frank
eh
fanmade teaser trailer
http://marketsaw.blogspot.com/2009/03/major-avatar-set-piece-details-see.html
http://www.firstshowing.net/2008/10/29/jon-favreau-calls-james-camerons-avatar-the-future
Jon Favreau Calls James Cameron’s Avatar ‘The Future’
October 29, 2008
Source: Ain’t It Cool News
by Alex Billington
Jon Favreau is another filmmaker who has really solidified his place in the cinematic world in directing Iron Man earlier this year. He’s returning for Iron Man 2, which is a relief, but looking towards the future, the door is open for so much more. Instead of dwelling on Iron Man 2, though, Quint from Ain’t It Cool News talked with Favreau in a recent interview about nearly everything else besides the sequel. And one area I was particularly interested in was his thoughts on James Cameron’s Avatar, since he’s one of the lucky few who has seen a few finished scenes from the film. “He’s trying to present this format in a way where it is a game-changer and in seeing it I think it’s the future,” Favreau explains.
We’ve been covering Avatar very closely for the last year, publishing nearly every last interview that Cameron has done. However, we still haven’t seen a single photo or anything from the film yet, but Favreau has. “I really liked the bits that I saw and I saw all the various stages of finished [footage], but he’s a purist in the way he approaches things, and he’s very meticulous.” Favreau jumps into explaining how Cameron “likes to put on a big show” and strive for cinematic revolution. “He’s really pushing the boundaries on motion capture, he’s integrating live action with motion capture and CGI. It takes a painstaking technical approach to that. And he really wants to make it a very visceral, emotional experience.”
“He’s sort of tireless in how much he invests into it as far as his time and effort. You know, he doesn’t make a lot of movies, so a lot of thought and effort goes into each one. And I think that he’s trying to present this format in a way where it is a game-changer and in seeing it I think it’s the future. I don’t think it’s a flash in the pan. I think it’s going to open up a whole new door and I think more so than the glasses it becomes about how many screens could actually present it in its pristine form.”
“The amount of screens is just growing at a very, very fast rate in the States and I think in Europe as well and I think Avatar is going to be the kind of movie that’s an event that you have to go see and you want to see again just to understand what you’re looking at. And then you still have his very effective storytelling. He really creates an adventure and draws you into it in the hero’s journey sense of storytelling, the Joseph Campbell sense of storytelling.”
Favreau adds that he has learned a great deal from Cameron in regards to motion capture and CGI and will be using similar techniques in Iron Man 2 because the way he made Avatar is such a technical revolution. “It is a game-changer from a production standpoint certainly in the way he’s using motion capture and operating a camera within a volume… the line between animation and live action is blurring in many ways.” He adds that even the typical process of filmmaking is changing due to Avatar. “The way that Jim’s doing it, it’s a much more organic process where post-production, production, and pre-production all sort of roll into one another and you’re moving back and forth between those media.”
I’ve been saying Avatar will be the next big cinematic revolution for years now, just because I believe James Cameron has achieved something truly spectacular. I don’t think any of us can really grasp what it will be like at this very moment. We’ll need to see it to believe it, because we can’t even comprehend what it’s all about until we get our first glimpse, which is why we haven’t seen any photos yet. Hearing Favreau say these kind of things only further solidifies my hope that it will be the next revolution. I just get excited thinking about how amazing Avatar could be and how big of a leap forward it will be for cinema.
Quint’s fantastic interview with Favreau also touches briefly on IMAX and why Favreau doesn’t think it’ll really work for Iron Man 2. He primarily believes that CGI at such a high resolution isn’t entirely believable yet and it’s a pain to lug around enormous cameras on set. I’m not entirely sure I can take his side, only because The Dark Knight looked so amazing, but it sounds like Iron Man 2 probably won’t have any scenes shot in IMAX. Either way, I’m very excited to see Favreau take on Iron Man 2 because it seems like he’s really going to push his own filmmaking boundaries even further than the first one. As for Avatar, I know I’m anxiously awaiting our first glimpse at the beautiful world the Cameron has created.
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Major “Avatar” Set Piece Details – See Through the Eyes of an Alien!
Thursday, March 05, 2009
**UPDATE: March 7 - Jim here, got a MASSIVE update to Michael’s story from a MarketSaw reader by the name of Cremany from Germany. He is claiming to have seen a 3 minute clip sequence of Na’vi running through Pandora! He also says there are 2 more clips involved – check out his quotes from the comments section of this post:
ok… i asked a friend who was at CeBit with me and he saw the whole sequence of avatar (3 minutes)! It was 100% avatar, but it wasn’t a promotion for the movie, it was a promotion for a company which works on the photorealistic enviroment in the movie. The company uses 3 clips from avatar to present the technology.
the clip is in a first-person viewpoint and shows a person running on a a root very fast, suddenly the root ends and the person jumps to another root and start running again. you can see big trees in the size of a skyscraper, it is a very dusty and dark.
a friend told me the second clip shows a convoy drivinig through a canyon and suddenly a few big rocks roll into the canyon and the third clip looks like the inside of a huge mushroom with a crystal in the middle.
the clips are really photorealistic but you can see it’s computer animated… impressiv but not mind-melting. it’s very hard for me to explain because i didn’t give the clip a lot of attention…i didn’t realize that this was from avatar.
it was only first-person, but in the second clip my friend saw a few na’vis.but when i saw the clip i didn’t know it could be avatar before i read the topic here on this site. i wasn’t sure, so i ask my friend and he knew more aboud it and he saw all 3 clips, too. he has also a few connections to the event-management, they confirmed the avatar clips as promotion for a company which works together with panasonic.
This could be the clip we have been waiting for guys! I know there were clips shown in Nuremberg, Germany at the Toy Fair so this makes a lot of sense. CeBit is in Hannover. Keep it here for more updates!
Hi everyone, Michael here. A few months ago, G@BRIEL GR@Y dropped into a discussion here on MarketSaw, where he described what he considered to be the standout visual effects set piece of Avatar: a 12 minute sequence seen through the eyes of Jake in Avatar form as, among other things, he runs through the Pandoran jungle. Now, I have heard from a completely different source, who I can confirm as legit, that there is indeed a first person set piece in the film.
First, here is what G@BRIEL GR@Y had to say a few months ago:
There is a twelve min segment entirely in the first person viewpoint. this as im sure you all could understand is a tricky thing, you`ve seen examples in doom. which look cool….but never felt real. for instance blinking blurring of vision. photoreal is now easy. animateing it to define real is very hard. this most definatly is the money shot of the biggest movie ever conceived.
G@BRIEL GR@Y also posted the following on ComingSoon.net (as reported by MarketSaw reader Darkoo):
I was told about a 12 min segment of avatar where its in the first person viewpoint.and they were having probs making the scene feel real because people blink and have blurred vision. and from what im told they have found a very interesting compromise.
Here is what my source, who spoke to someone who had seen parts of the sequence, had to say to me a couple days ago:
1) He said that ‘when you are running through the jungle of Pandora and their tails are moving in front of your face, your brain will melt.’
2) I asked whether it a return to Tech-Noir form from JC and he said ‘its like Aliens, but from the POV of the Aliens’ :)
3) Big Rock Candy Mountain is supposed to be ‘amazing.’
4) Slightly off topic, the BAA preprod at Lightstorm was ‘very much in line with Kishiro’s artwork.’ Imagine that in 3D? /brain melts
So G@BRIEL GR@Y’s report is almost certainly legit, which is very exciting. The concept of Avatar is very much about letting go of the confines of your body, and experiencing the world through a different set of eyes. I think this sequence will be an incredible way of driving this point home. And, yes, it will certainly be brain-meltingly cool. It will be fascinating to watch Battle Angel continue to develop, too. Mark Goerner’s interview shed some fascinating light on the huge amount of work that has gone into that project so far. I can’t wait to see where it goes from here.
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http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/news/james-cameron-not-messing-around-with-his-avatar-trailer.php
James Cameron Not Messing Around With His ‘Avatar’ Trailer
Posted by Neil Miller (neil@filmschoolrejects.com) on March 10, 2009
James Cameron takes his craft very seriously. And rightfully so, as Cameron’s upcoming film Avatar has built up some impressive buzz and even mightier expectations. Fans expect that the man who pioneered cool CGI effects with Terminator 2 and took scale to the umpteenth level with Titanic
will deliver something truly remarkable with his next film, said to be another potentially mind-boggling sensory experience. And to live up to such lofty expectations, one must choose carefully when cutting together a trailer — as it can severely modify the expectations, hopes and dreams of his faithful fans.
This is why we are now seeing a report from Market Saw that is claiming that eight trailers have failed to meet Cameron’s standards of excellence. There have been strong rumors from various sources saying that a trailer will play for press and industry folks at ShoWest in Las Vegas at the end of this month, but nothing has been confirmed. There has been some footage shown at various toy conferences in Europe, including a three minute clip of Na’vi running through Pandora that was shown at CeBit in Hannover, Germany. You can read a much more in-depth report about that footage here.
Also notable in the Market Saw report is some new information about how grounded the film will be in real science. For those not familiar, the film follows the story of a Marine (Sam Worthington) who is brought to the distant planet of Pandora, inhabited by a humanoid race known as the Na’vi. As he attempts to settle the planet as an alternative home for humanity, he gets in too deep with the Na’vi and ultimately crosses over to lead the indigenous race in a battle for survival. And as the report explains, the film will have a lot of hard-science based elements as Cameron and team build up this richly bio-diverse planet. “What Weta and Cameron have done is create a complete alien ecosystem grounded in hard science,” Explains Market Saw
’s source. “If Pandora were real, it would look and feel like what will be represented on screen.”
If true, this “eight trailers denied” rumor gives weight to the immense expectations that James Cameron has for this film, which would be his first directorial work since he made the highest grossing film of all-time, Titanic, in 1997. Also, I am digging the “real science” element of Pandora’s ecosystem. If anything, Cameron’s film will be a very cool experience.
Are you excited about Avatar?
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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/25/movies/25avatar.html
Fan Fever Is Rising for Debut of ‘Avatar’
LOS ANGELES — In an old airplane hangar near the beach here, James Cameron has been working feverishly to complete a movie that may:
(a) Change filmmaking forever
(b) Alter your brain
(c) Cure cancer
For certain expectant movie fans, the answer might as well be all of the above.
Eight months before its scheduled release on Dec. 18, Mr. Cameron’s “Avatar,” a science-fiction thriller filmed with his own specially devised 3-D technology, is stirring up a kind of anticipation that until now had been reserved for, say, the Rapture.
That might foretell a hit on the order of Mr. Cameron’s “Titanic,” with $1.8 billion in worldwide ticket sales.
Or it might just be a giant headache for 20th Century Fox, which is backing “Avatar” and will have to spend much of the year managing expectations for a film whose technological wizardry is presumed by more than a few to promise an experiential leap for audiences comparable to that of “The Jazz Singer,” the arrival of Technicolor or an Obama campaign rally.
To date, neither a trailer nor even a still photo from the film, which tells the story of a disabled soldier who uses technology to inhabit an alien body on a distant planet, has been made public by Mr. Cameron or Fox.
But a number of enthusiasts who have been swapping notes on the message boards at IMDB.com claim to have already seen the movie — in their dreams. “The special effects were mostly drawings and cartoons, but they looked 3-D still,” wrote one “planetshane,” whose particular dream involved a pirated copy of an early version.
“It was the best movie I had ever seen,” the post continued.
Only a few weeks ago, Joshua Quittner, a technology writer for Time magazine, fed the frenzy when he reported feeling a strange yearning to return to the movie’s mythical planet, Pandora, the morning after he was shown just 15 minutes of the film. Mr. Cameron, Mr. Quittner wrote, theorized that the movie’s 3-D action had set off actual “memory creation.”
Questioned by telephone recently at his home in Mill Valley, Calif., Mr. Quittner said he was still reeling from the experience.
“It was like doing some kind of drug,” he said, describing a scene in which the movie’s hero, played by Sam Worthington, ran around “with this kind of hot alien chick,” was attacked by jaguarlike creatures and was sprinkled with sprites that floated down, like snowflakes.
“You feel like the little feathery things are landing on your arm,” said Mr. Quittner, who remained eager for another dose.
Executives and producers of the film declined to be interviewed for this article. In a statement Fox said: “Jim Cameron is breaking new ground with this film. Like all movie fans, the studio is excited by the prospect of such an original piece of entertainment.”
In a brief interview reported by The Associated Press in December, Mr. Cameron said he was worried that “Avatar” could not live up to the expectations that were building around it. “Whatever they think it’s going to be, it’s probably not,” he said at the time about those who were speculating about the movie on the Internet and elsewhere.
Yet Mr. Cameron has done his share to feed the hype with his repeated assurances that a coming wave of 3-D cinema (yes, it still requires glasses) would have the power to penetrate the brain in a way that movies never have.
Some fans believe that Mr. Cameron and his colleagues have finally crossed the “uncanny valley.” That is a supposed point at which a viewer’s responsiveness to a simulated human takes a sudden drop into revulsion as the image comes close to reality but strikes the watcher as being zombielike, or not quite right.
Dr. Mario Mendez, a behavioral neurologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Medicine, said it is entirely possible that Mr. Cameron’s work could tap brain systems that are undisturbed by conventional 2-D movies. One, he said, is a kind of inner global-positioning system that orients a person to the surrounding world.
“Three-D demonstrably creates a space that triggers this GPS; it’s really very stimulating,” Dr. Mendez said. He added that he had used virtual-reality therapy in working with soldiers at the Veterans Administration hospital in Los Angeles — and found himself jarred by his experience with a “virtual Iraq” simulation.
“It was with me for days and days,” Dr. Mendez said.
At ShoWest, a convention of movie exhibitors, a few weeks ago, Mr. Cameron in a short promotional video compared watching “Avatar” to “dreaming with your eyes wide open.” (It was a neat complement to those who have been viewing the movie in their sleep.)
But, sooner rather than later, an increasingly restless group of the fans would like to sample the real thing. And that presents a conundrum for Fox, which will be hard pressed to release a conventional, 2-D trailer online — one of the most powerful ways to promote a movie these days — without undercutting the promise of a transcendental 3-D experience.
“I can’t believe they would spend 12 years developing the technology and telling us in words how great this is, then show us in 2-D,” said T. F. Powell, who runs AvatarMovieZone.com, an unofficial fan site devoted to the film. Mr. Powell recently spoke by telephone from Kansas.
Some fans are already teasing their peers about expecting too much.
“You would think this movie cures cancer,” taunted a skeptical Danny Danger in his “movie preview extravaganza” on a MySpace blog in January.
Typically, studios have given a peek at some of their biggest science-fiction and fantasy movies during the giant Comic-Con convention, an annual summer gathering of the fans in San Diego. But that also poses problems for “Avatar,” in that Comic-Con’s convention hall setting has not been equipped to showcase films in 3-D.
“I can’t imagine we will not have something, but nothing has been confirmed,” said David Glanzer, the convention’s director of marketing and public relations, speaking of the prospects for an “Avatar” moment at Comic-Con.
As for the movie’s release in December, Mr. Glanzer said, “Maybe they should have nurses in the lobby.”
It was a joking reference to a ploy once used by the producer William Castle. He posted fake nurses in the lobby of theaters that showed his own neuron-challenging horror film “Macabre,” while insuring every member of the audience for $1,000 against “death by fright.”
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http://www.slashfilm.com/2009/04/29/steven-soderbergh-praises-james-camerons-avatar
Steven Soderbergh Praises James Cameron’s Avatar
Posted on Wednesday, April 29th, 2009 by Peter Sciretta
It seems like every other week now a new filmmaker or studio executive makes a comment about how James Cameron’s Avatar is going to revolutionize cinema. Jon Favreau
has called Avatar “a game-changer” and having seen some footage, he thinks “it’s the future.” Recently Sony head Amy Pascal told Forbes that she thinks Avatar is “going to change the way you consume entertainment. I don’t know that it will ever be the way you see dramas, but I can’t say anymore that it won’t be.” And Steven Spielberg has even predicted that Avatar will be the biggest 3-D live-action film ever.
Academy Award winning director Steven Soderbergh is the latest filmmaker to praise Cameron’s upcoming sci-fi epic: “I’ve seen some stuff and holy sh*t,” Soderbergh told ComingSoon . “It’s the craziest sh*t ever. That could negate everything I just said.”
Cameron’s new film is being treated like the second coming. I’m not sure how the film could possibly live up to all the ginormously hype. But just like all of you, I’m riding on the high buzz and hoping it will be great.
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Cameron’s Avatar a 3D drug trip?
By John Howell 30 April 2009
http://sffmedia.com/films/science-fiction-films/352-camerons-avatar-a-3d-drug-trip.html
They have yet to release a trailer or even a publicity photo from actual footage, but James Cameron and his team have managed to generate some impressive hype for his upcoming 3D science fiction epic, Avatar. His first movie since Titanic has a budget pushing US $200 million and enough hype to power a mission to Mars. Now it appears the 3D technology he created to turn his vision into a reality, the key to the movie’s success or failure, may be habit forming. A technology writer for Time Magazine, after being shown 15 minutes of the movie, posited the movie’s 3D action had set off actual “memory creation.”
“I couldn’t tell what was real and what was animated–even knowing that the 9-ft.-tall blue, dappled dude couldn’t possibly be real. The scenes were so startling and absorbing that the following morning, I had the peculiar sensation of wanting to return there, as if Pandora were real,” he said.
The New York Times interviewed him later.
“It was like doing some kind of drug,” he said, describing a scene showing Sam Worthington running around “with this kind of hot alien chick,” and being attacked by jaguarlike creatures. He was sprinkled with sprites that floated down, like snowflakes. “You feel like the little feathery things are landing on your arm”.
In the same New York Times article, Dr. Mario Mendez, a behavioural neurologist at the University of California, said it is entirely possible Cameron’s 3D technology could tap brain systems that are undisturbed by conventional 2D movies. An inner global-positioning system that orients a person to the surrounding world, was one example he gave.
“Three-D demonstrably creates a space that triggers this GPS; it’s really very stimulating”.
He went on to say that he had used virtual-reality therapy in working with soldiers at the Veterans Administration hospital in Los Angeles, finding himself jarred by his experience with a “virtual Iraq” simulation.
Cameron himself told Time Magazine that 3D viewing “is so close to a real experience that it actually triggers memory creation in a way that 2D viewing doesn’t.” Cameron also believes that stereoscopic (3D) viewing uses more neurons, which would further heighten the impact of 3D.
So will we all become addicted to 3D films? I’m not sure reality will ever match the hype, but I’m certainly keen to see how close it comes. The last 3D movie I saw, Robert Zemeckis’s excellent animated feature Beowulf, certainly captured my imagination. I remember certain scenes with an unusual clarity (and not just those involving Angelina Jolie).
The only reason I haven’t watched more 3D movies since is that apart from animated cartoons, like Monsters VS Aliens, big screen productions with serious actors and scripts seem hard to find. Perhaps now that Hollywood appears to have caught the 3D bug on a massive scale, with Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson willing converts, we’ll be flooded by addictive 3D productions that will transform our viewing experience forever. Or maybe Avatar will come and go and the 3D hype with it? I hope for the former but expect the latter. Only time will tell.
James Cameron’s Avatar was supposed to be released in May, but the international released date has been pushed back until 19 December.
Welcome to Global One TV, an online social network broadcasting Spiritual Television 24 Hours a Day awakening the Divinity within.
(we are having some trouble getting this to load w/o auto-playing, hopefully it won’t auto-play and all you need to do is click on the video box and perhaps the “on-air: box to activate it, let us know how it’s working for you)
At any moment your heart could stop beating and it could all be over. The brain-body organism that thinks it is you would cease to exist.
If you can truly be with this thought for a moment, the body will produce sensations of fear that the intellect will have a hard time trying to combat. And this is how religion is born.
The era that has spanned for thousands of years – one that is rooted in fear, causes division, promotes superstition – that era is ending now. This is the dawning of a new age.
We no longer need to invent imaginary friends or a jealous father who lives in the sky. We can know who we are without all of this.
In order to be moral, we don’t need a list of 10 things or the threat of burning in a pit of fire for all eternity.
In order to be good, we don’t need the promise of eternal paradise dangled in front of us.
We, as a race of intelligent beings are in a stage of maturity. We no longer require the parental supervision of Popes, Rabbis and Mullahs.
We are free to seek the Divinity within.
We are free to seek the Divinity in all things.
The spiritual realm is no longer a place that is roped off, only to be visited by special people with special powers. It is everywhere, at all times in all places and yet it transcends place and time – just as we transcend place and time.
You are not your story.
You are not only the brain-body organism which you currently inhabit. You are so much less and so much more.
We as a society can now take off the training wheels of organized religion and awaken to “religiousness”.
Let us give up our jihads, our crusades and take a quantum leap in our consciousness toward radical spiritual evolution. Using the power of Collective Intention we can make this possible and it begins right now.
Peace,
Time lapse video of night sky as it passes over the 2009 Texas Star Party in Fort Davis, Texas. The galactic core of Milky Way is brightly displayed. Images taken with 15mm fisheye lens.
Check the original vid on vimeo for HD ->http://vimeo.com/4505537
Mission Impossible: The Code Even the CIA Can’t Crack
By Steven Levy 
04.20.09
04.20.09
The sculpture named Kryptos at CIA headquarters contains a secret message — but not even the agency’s brightest can crack its code.
Photo: Adrian Gaut
Photo: Adrian Gaut
The most celebrated inscription at the Central Intelligence Agency’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia, used to be the biblical phrase chiseled into marble in the main lobby: “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” But in recent years, another text has been the subject of intense scrutiny inside the Company and out: 865 characters of seeming gibberish, punched out of half-inch-thick copper in a courtyard.
It’s part of a sculpture called Kryptos, created by DC artist James Sanborn. He got the commission in 1988, when the CIA was constructing a new building behind its original headquarters. The agency wanted an outdoor installation for the area between the two buildings, so a solicitation went out for a piece of public art that the general public would never see. Sanborn named his proposal after the Greek word for hidden. The work is a meditation on the nature of secrecy and the elusiveness of truth, its message written entirely in code.
Almost 20 years after its dedication, the text has yet to be fully deciphered. A bleary-eyed global community of self-styled cryptanalysts—along with some of the agency’s own staffers—has seen three of its four sections solved, revealing evocative prose that only makes the puzzle more confusing. Still uncracked are the 97 characters of the fourth part (known as K4 in Kryptos-speak). And the longer the deadlock continues, the crazier people get.
Whether or not our top spooks intended it, the persistent opaqueness of Kryptos subversively embodies the nature of the CIA itself—and serves as a reminder of why secrecy and subterfuge so fascinate us. “The whole thing is about the power of secrecy,” Sanborn tells me when I visit his studio, a barnlike structure on Jimmy Island in Chesapeake Bay (population: 2). He is 6′7″, bearded, and looks a bit younger than his 63 years. Looming behind him is his latest work in progress, a 28-foot-high re-creation of the world’s first particle accelerator, surrounded by some of the original hardware from the Manhattan Project. The atomic gear fits nicely with the thrust of Sanborn’s oeuvre, which centers on what he calls invisible forces.
With Kryptos, Sanborn has made his strongest statement about what we don’t see and can’t know. “He designed a piece that would resonate with this workforce in particular,” says Toni Hiley, who curates the employees-only CIA museum. Sanborn’s ambitious work includes the 9-foot 11-inch-high main sculpture—an S-shaped wave of copper with cut-out letters, anchored by an 11-foot column of petrified wood—and huge pieces of granite abutting a low fountain. And although most of the installation resides in a space near the CIA cafeteria, where analysts and spies can enjoy it when they eat outside, Kryptos extends beyond the courtyard to the other side of the new building. There, copper plates near the entrance bear snippets of Morse code, and a naturally magnetized lodestone sits by a compass rose etched in granite.
“People call me an agent of Satan,” says artist Sanborn, “because I won’t tell my secret.”
Photo: Adrian Gaut
Photo: Adrian Gaut
The heart of the piece, though, is the encrypted text, scrambled, Sanborn says, by “a coding system that would unravel itself slowly over a period of time.”
When he began the work, Sanborn knew very little about cryptography, so he reluctantly accepted the CIA’s offer to work with Ed Scheidt, who had just retired as head of Langley’s Cryptographic Center. Scheidt himself was serving two masters. “I was reminded of my need to preserve the agency’s secrets,” Scheidt says. “You know, don’t tell him the current way of doing business. And don’t create something that you cannot break—but at the same time, make it something that will last a while.”
Scheidt schooled Sanborn in cryptographic techniques employed from the late 19th century until World War II, when field agents had to use pencil and paper to encode and decode their messages. (These days, of course, cryptography is all about rugged computer algorithms using long mathematical keys.) After experimenting with a range of techniques, including poly-alphabetic substitution, shifting matrices, and transposition, the two arrived at a form of old-school, artisanal cryptography that they felt would hold off code breakers long enough to generate some suspense. The solutions, however, were Sanborn’s alone, and he did not share them with Scheidt. “I assumed the first three sections would be deciphered in a matter of weeks, perhaps months,” Sanborn says. Scheidt figured the whole puzzle would be solved in less than seven years.
During the two years of construction, there were moments of intrigue and paranoia, in keeping with the subject matter and the client. “We had to play a little on the clandestine side,” says Scheidt, who talks of unnamed observers outside armed with long-range cameras and high-intensity microphones. “We had people with ladders climbing up the walls of my studio trying to photograph inside,” Sanborn says. He came to believe that factions within the CIA wanted to kill the project. There were unexplained obstacles. For instance, he says, “one day a big truckload of stone for the courtyard disappeared. Never found. I saw it in the evening, went back in the morning, and it had vanished. Nobody would tell me what happened to it.”
Sanborn finished the sculpture in time for a November 1990 dedication. The agency released the enciphered text, and a frenzy erupted in the crypto world as some of the best—and wackiest—cryptanalytic talent set to work. But it took them more than seven years, not the few months Sanborn had expected, to crack sections K1, K2, and K3. The first code breaker, a CIA employee named David Stein, spent 400 hours working by hand on his own time. Stein, who described the emergence of the first passage as a religious experience, revealed his partial solution to a packed auditorium at Langley in February 1998. But not a word was leaked to the press. Sixteen months later, Jim Gillogly, an LA-area cryptanalyst used a Pentium II computer and some custom software to crack the same three sections. When news of Gillogly’s success broke, the CIA publicized Stein’s earlier crack.
James Sanborn buried his sculpture’s message so deeply that a CIA staffer took seven years to solve just the first three sections. Here’s what we know.
The first section, K1, uses a modified Vigenère cipher. It’s encrypted through substitution—each letter corresponds to another—and can be solved only with the alphabetic rows of letters on the right. The keywords, which help determine the substitutions, are KRYPTOS and PALIMPSEST. A misspelling—in this case IQLUSION—may be a clue to cracking K4.
K2, like the first section, was also encrypted using the alphabets on the right. One new trick Sanborn used, though, was to insert an X between some sentences, making it harder to crack the code by tabulating letter frequency. The keywords here are KRYPTOS and ABSCISSA. And there’s another intriguing misspelling: UNDERGRUUND.
A different cryptographic technique was used for K3: transposition. All the letters are jumbled and can be deciphered only by uncovering the complex matrices and mathematics that determined their misplacement. Of course, there is a misspelling (DESPARATLY), and the last sentence (CAN YOU SEE ANYTHING?) is strangely bracketed by an X and a Q.
Sanborn intentionally made K4 much harder to crack, hinting that the plaintext itself is not standard English and would require a second level of cryptanalysis. Misspellings and other anomalies in previous sections may help. Some suspect that clues are present in other parts of the installation: the Morse code, the compass rose, or perhaps the adjacent fountain.
But if anyone expected that solving the first three sections would lead to a quick resolution of the whole puzzle, their hopes were soon dashed. The partial solutions only deepened the confusion.
K1 is a passage written by Sanborn. “I tried to make it sound good and be inscrutable enough to be interesting,” he says. Judge for yourself how well he did: “Between subtle shading and the absence of light lies the nuance of iqlusion.” Yes, iqlusion—one of several misspellings that Sanborn says are intentional. The second section reads like a telegraph transmission. There’s a reference to a magnetic field and information transmitted to a specific latitude and longitude—geo-coordinates for a location a couple of hundred feet south of the sculpture itself (a spot where nothing of apparent interest lies).
K3 paraphrases a diary entry of anthropologist Howard Carter from his 1922 discovery of King Tut’s tomb, ending with a question: “Can you see anything?” When Gillogly turned up that passage, he says, he had “the same excitement and exultation that Carter described. In a way, it seems that the plaintext is a metaphor for the work of the code breaker, or perhaps of the CIA itself.”
The 97 characters of K4 remain impenetrable. They have become, as one would-be cracker calls it, the Everest of codes. Both Scheidt and Sanborn confirm that they intended the final segment to be the biggest challenge. There are endless theories about how to solve it. Is access to the sculpture required? Is the Morse code a clue? Every aspect of the project has come under electron-microscopic scrutiny, as thousands of people—hardcore cryptographers and amateur code breakers alike—have taken a whack at it. Some have gone off the deep end: A Michigan man abandoned his computer-software business to do construction so he’d have more time to work on it. Thirteen hundred members of a fanatical Yahoo group try to move the ball forward with everything from complex math to astrology. One typical Kryptos maniac is Randy Thompson, a 43-year-old physicist who has devoted three years to the problem. “I think I’m onto the solution,” he says. “It could happen tomorrow, or it could take the rest of my life.” Meanwhile, some of the seekers are getting tired. “I just want to see it solved,” says Elonka Dunin, a 50-year-old St. Louis game developer who runs a clearinghouse site for Kryptos information and gossip. “I want it off my plate.”
Making the effort more complicated is the fact that the puzzle maker is alive and, in theory at least, a potential resource. For years, there has been a delicate pas de deux between the artist and the rabid Kryptos community. Every word Sanborn utters is eagerly examined for hints. But they also have to wonder whether he’s trying to help them or throw them off track. Scheidt says that this process parallels the work of the CIA: “The intelligence picture includes mirrors and obfuscation.”
Photo: Adrian Gaut
“It’s not my intent to put out disinformation,” Sanborn says. “I’m a benevolent cryptographer.” Some think otherwise, and Sanborn occasionally receives messages from people enraged that he knows the secret and they don’t. “It’s the fact that I have some sort of power,” he says. “You get stalkers. I don’t know how they get my cell numbers and everything off the Internet, but they do. People have called me and said pretty terrible things. There are some who say I’m an agent of Satan because I have a secret I won’t tell.”
Though Sanborn’s usual practice is to stay in the background, every so often he feels obliged to comment. In 2005, he refuted author Dan Brown’s claim that the “WW” in the plaintext of K3 could be inverted to “MM,” implying Mary Magdalene. (Brown included pieces of Kryptos on the book jacket of The Da Vinci Code and has hinted that his next novel will draw on the CIA sculpture, a prospect that deeply annoys Sanborn.)
Intentional or not, Sanborn’s comments (or lack thereof) seem to generate an added layer of confusion. Even a straightforward question, like who besides him knows the solution, opens up new wormholes. The official story is that Sanborn shared the answer with only one person, the CIA director at the time, William Webster. Indeed, the decoded K3 text reads in part, “Who knows the exact location only ww.” Sanborn has confirmed that these letters refer to Webster (not Mary Magdalene). And in 1999, Webster himself told The New York Times that the solution was “philosophical and obscure.”
But Sanborn also claims that the envelope he gave Webster didn’t contain the complete answer. “Nobody has it all,” he says. “I tricked them.”
So, Webster really doesn’t know?
“No,” says Sanborn, who has taken measures to ensure that someone will be able to confirm a successful solution even after he dies. He adds that even he doesn’t know the exact solution anymore. “If somebody tried to torture me, I couldn’t tell them,” he says. “I haven’t looked at the plaintext of K4 in a long time, and I don’t have a very good memory, so I don’t really know what it says.” What does the CIA make of all this? “When it comes to the solution,” says spokesperson Marie Harf, “those who need to know, know.”
If anyone manages to solve the last cipher, that won’t end the hunt for the ultimate truth about Kryptos. “There may be more to the puzzle than what you see,” Scheidt says. “Just because you broke it doesn’t mean you have the answer.” All of this leads one to ask: Is there a solution? Sanborn insists there is—but he would be just as happy if no one ever discovered it. “In some ways, I’d rather die knowing it wasn’t cracked,” he says. “Once an artwork loses its mystery, it’s lost a lot.”
The day I visited Kryptos, a rare snowstorm in Virginia had blanketed the courtyard in white. I circled the sculpture carefully, marveling at the way the colors and texture of the surrounding landscape affected the panels, as some character strings became highlighted in white and other phrases shimmered, reflecting the dull light bouncing off the windows. I examined all the pieces, brushing aside the snow to uncover the Morse code and the compass rose. It was like unearthing hieroglyphs in some ancient ruin. Agents and bureaucrats shuffled past, deep in thought, clutching cups of coffee from the onsite Starbucks. In their midst, Jim Sanborn’s statement in copper, wood, and granite remains, proof that even in the house of spies, some truths may never be found.
Senior writer Steven Levy (steven_levy@wired.com) wrote about the 20th anniversary of the Mac in issue 17.01.
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By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 6:15 PM on 02nd May 2009
It’s a familiar feeling – you park your car, head to the shops and on your return you forget where you left it.
But art student Sara Watson could be forgiven for such a lapse – because she has created an invisible car.
The University of Central Lancashire artist made the incredible optical illusion by spray painting a battered Skoda Fabia to match the car park and entrance to her art studio.
The car – which was created as part of Sara’s drawing and image making course – is reminiscent of the work of pavement artist Julian Beever whose work has caused a storm in central London.
To create his images, he uses a camera lens to look at the stretch of pavement he is working on and visualise the picture.
He then plots a drawing which will play tricks on the way in which our minds ‘read’ perspective to create an impression of depth on the flat surface of the paving stones.
Among his other works he has created a deep swimming pool realistic enough that shoppers swerve to avoid it, chalked on the street.
His lifelike 3D works of Coca-Cola bottles, sunbathing women and globes appear to spring out of the ground, ready to trip you up.
The caption translates to “A medieval missionary tells that he has found the point where heaven and Earth meet…”
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“What intelligent being, what being capable of responding emotionally to a beautiful sight, can look at the jagged, silvery lunar crescent trembling in the azure sky, even through the weakest of telescopes, and not be struck by it in an intensely pleasurable way, not feel cut off from everyday life here on earth and transported toward that first stop on the celestial journeys?
What thoughtful soul could look at brilliant Jupiter with its four attendant satellites, or splendid Saturn encircled by its mysterious ring, or a double star glowing scarlet and sapphire in the infinity of night, and not be filled with a sense of wonder?
Yes, indeed, if humankind – from humble farmers in the fields and toiling workers in the cities to teachers, people of independent means, those who have reached the pinnacle of fame or fortune, even the most frivolous of society women – if they knew what profound inner pleasure await those who gaze at the heavens, then France, nay, the whole of Europe, would be covered with telescopes instead of bayonets, thereby promoting universal happiness and peace.”
- Camille Flammarion, French astronomer, 1880
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from wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flammarion_woodcut
The Flammarion woodcut is an anonymous wood engraving (once thought to be a woodcut), so named because its first documented appearance is in Camille Flammarion’s 1888 book L’atmosphère: météorologie populaire (“The Atmosphere: Popular Meteorology“).[1]
The print depicts a man dressed as a medieval pilgrim and carrying a pilgrim’s staff, peering through the sky as if it were a curtain to look at the hidden workings of the universe. One of the elements of the cosmic machinery bears a strong resemblance to traditional pictorial representations of the “wheel in the middle of a wheel” described in the visions of the prophet Ezekiel (see Merkabah). The caption in Flammarion’s book translates as “A missionary of the Middle Ages tells that he had found the point where the sky and the Earth touched…” The image accompanies a text which reads, in part, “What, then, is this blue sky, which certainly does exist, and which veils from us the stars during the day? … And yet this dome does not exist. In a balloon, I myself have risen higher than where the Greek gods were supposed to live without getting to this point, which of course disappears at the same rate in which we approach it.”[2] The print is often described as being medieval due to its visual style, its fanciful vision of the world, and what appears to be a depiction of a flat Earth. It was, however, likely intended as an illustration that what the wanderer does in the picture cannot be possible, since there is no dome, nor is the Earth flat.
n 1957, astronomer Ernst Zinner claimed that the image dated to the German Renaissance, but he was unable to find any version published earlier than 1906.[3] Further investigation, however, revealed that the work was a composite of images characteristic of different historical periods, and that it had been made with a burin, the engraver’s tool, used on wood for wood engraving only from the late 18th century. The image was traced to Flammarion’s book by Arthur Beer, an astrophysicist and historian of German science at Cambridge and, independently, by Bruno Weber, the curator of rare books at the Zürich central library.[4]
According to Weber and to astronomer Joseph Ashbrook,[5] the depiction of a spherical heavenly vault separating the earth from an outer realm is similar to an illustration in Sebastian Münster’s Cosmographia of 1544, a book which Flammarion, an ardent bibliophile and book collector, might have owned [1]. The idea of a pilgrim finding the place where the Earth and sky meet might have been inspired by a legend associated with Saint Macarius of Rome, a legend which Flammarion recounts in detail in his book Les mondes imaginaires et les mondes réels (“The Imaginary Worlds and the Real Worlds”, 1865). Flammarion had been apprenticed at the age of twelve to an engraver in Paris and it is believed that many of the illustrations for his books were engraved from his own drawings, probably under his supervision. Therefore it is plausible that Flammarion himself created the image, though this has not been conclusively ascertained. There is no reason to believe that this earliest version was intended to be deceptive as to its date of creation.
The image was used as an illustration in C. G. Jung’s “Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies”, published in 1959, and also as the cover illustrations for Daniel J. Boorstin’s The Discoverers (1983), an account of the history of science and for The Mathematical Experience by Philip J. Davis and Reuben Hersh. The Flammarion woodcut has also been used in many other contexts to illustrate either the scientific or the mystical quests for knowledge.
- ^ Flammarion, Camille (1888). L’atmosphère: météorologie populaire (“The Atmosphere: Popular Meteorology“). Paris. p. 163.
- ^ [http://www.georgpeez.de/texte/flamku.htm Quotation from "The atmosphere", p. 163]
- ^ E. Zinner, in Börsenblatt für den Deutschen Buchhandel, Frankfurt, 18 March 1957
- ^ B. Weber, in Gutenberg Jahrbuch, p. 381, 1973
- ^ J. Ashbrook, Sky & Telescope, p. 356, May 1977
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there are several colored versions by various artists since the original’s creation
I’d rather be alone with a schizophrenic,
than a psychiatrist.
…Carol Batton 1998
Manchester based poet Carol Batton is unique. She is a living legend who shares her poetry with the world. A frequent performer at poetry events in and around Manchester, Carol also distributes copies of her poems to anyone who cares to read them. She estimates that she may have given away fifty thousand sheets of poems.
Her writing deals with a wide range of subjects including environmental issues and the difficult topic of mental illness. Her poetry can be sad, witty, angry and above all full of her strength of spirit. In fact, she has been described as ‘the poet laureate of the survivors movement’.
Her debut collection of poems ‘Page Fright’ is published by The Bad Press. ISBN 1-903160-00-6 www.thebadpress.co.uk
CAROL’S PROFILE
DOB: 1/3/51
Religion: Jewish; Quaker attending; Eclectic; Tao!
Favourite colour: Don’t know but I’ve been called The Psychedelic Sunbeam Kid.
What is your mission in life? To expose psychiatry as bad; to do the poems and get through life somehow.
Are you drawn to any particular places or cultures? The city centre, Manchester and people.
Regarding poetry, who are you inspired by? Emily Dickinson’s use of dashes – !
If you were a TV character who would you be ? Me!
But you’re not a TV character. But I could be!
Your favourite film stars or celebrities? Aiden Gillen from ‘Queer as Folk’ because I’m a fag hag, though reliable sources tell me he’s not gay!
What do you think is the most desirable profession? Poet. People are good at different things and we should do what we choose to do and what we’re good at.
Which would be the most unappealing profession to you? Something unethical or dangerous eg. making weapons.
Favourite people: My boyfriend and handsome young men and gay men and gay women because they love me. In fact nobody else loves me but gay women. Gay women think I’m the bees’ knees. Straight men only love my body!
Favourite animals: Cows, they’re delicious. Do you want to know the truth? I don’t actually eat that many of them. That’s why I find them delicious.
Favourite Plants: Every plant including dandelions. My ‘totem animal’ would be a plant.
What are your views on the state of the world? “Nothing can change ‘cept me, the world’s injustice remains, but I can be kind.” It’s alright I’ll be off it in twenty years.
Name three things one might find in your attic. Haven’t got an attic, do you mean my bedroom? You’ll never find anything in it, it’s so full of stuff.
What sort of stuff? Pieces of paper.
Name three things one might find in your food cupboard: Orange juice, stuffed vine leaves, a tin of baked beans I’ve never eaten that dad bought.
Don’t you like baked beans? Too much sugar and salt. There’s always something in the cupboard I never eat / I’ve never ate.
What are you reading just now if anything? Poetry books, 50 of them.
If you had three wishes, what would they be? For 50 more wishes – forget the rest, I’ll have to think about them.
Is there anything else you’d like to add? “I’d rather be alone with a schizophrenic, Yeah!
Than a psychiatrist”.
Biography and profile compiled by Helên Thomas http://www.creativewomensnetwork.co.uk/CWNvoicesCarolBatton.htm
-
a recitation of “judgement”
-
Making the Grade.
My Voices behave
In a Support Worker Way,
So why don’t they get pay…
Grade A?
My voice tells me to eat.
My voice says to be very careful on the street.
My voice wakes me up, to tell me to sleep.
My voice tells me to try harder.
My voice tells me not too weep, when I must weep.
My voice can be very unfriendly;
and sometimes, we don’t treat each other gently,
and it blames me.
I am lonely without my voice.
Three or four voices can ignore me,
and then chat among themselves.
My voices behave
In a Support Worker Way,
So why don’t they get pay…
Grade A?
-
BEE-ING
This is the reality of our flowering strength.
Listen you Dandelions!
Don’t try to be daisies. Don’t try to be tall, like the trees. Did some of you try to be pink? Be content – be yellow. It is not a failure if you are not a pink Dandelion. Be the flowers you were meant to be…but learn from others, learn from the thin grass and recover from life’s blows, even from trampling boots, all is not lost if you remember you have roots.
Live each summer for itself. Let it be a beautiful summer that lasts right up to the second frost. And in winter go underground and grow, don’t just wait.
You don’t have to sing at the very first day of sun, but by autumn try to have flowered at least once.
Wait for the friendly little flies. Take your turn for the sun to find your spot.
Some colours are unlikely, others imposible, (probably). Much can be achieved in a short flowering season for which we have waited all winter.
At any time there may appear opportunities.
Take credit for having flowered when you could, (remember some other year), and add it to your contentment.
It isn’t always as easy to be a flower, as the Trees think it is.
Life is a lot of waiting; things happen so slowly.
We do it for the seeds, we all know that.
No two flowers are ever the same. Every Dandelion matters! Trust all. Recognise that we are all flowers, together, even the trees are ‘sort of flowers’.
Talk flowers, try to talk. Stop looking at each other askeance. We are all insecure. Speak to each other. Communicate your plight. Share your doubts. Talk and tell of truth.
It will fill all that waiting, with meaning.
-
Weed
I’m a weed, disabled
I’m a seed; potential
I’m a deed of kindness,
And sometimes, I’m essential.
Even though I’m mad,
Even though I’m mental,
There are moments in my life,
When I’m influential.
-
Psychiatric Pills
It’s only got one side effect,
You really must give it a try.
It’s only got one side effect,
It makes you want to die.
-
Safety
Money is the best insulating material.
-
Subterranean Living Under the DSS
Hell is Fine
Lit by tiny candles
Water from the DSS above drips randomly down – I cannot be sure of my candles staying lit.
The ceiling is made of impenetrable denial, weakened in places by implausibility.
There is no wind, or rain, to worry about.
But there is no sun either.
I plan next year’s pacing: this year I plan the pacing, which I am definitely (Next time) going to do. I must do something with my death.
I hear the ‘Too-Late’ prayers of the doomed dead, (Repentance past the sell-by date). We are crushed at random, by the ‘Lack-of-benefits-system’…dripped on, one by one until it is our own turn to get soaked in the cold.
It’s cold as hell, in hell…let no one say it is hot. They’ve cut back the heating on which the myth is based.
Actually they tell you it’s perfectly warm…They’re right, but not if one has not eaten all day.
The boredom – one gets used to it. But not the loneliness. The loneliness just gets more desperate, with the inescapable dripping, squeezing the camaraderie – friendliness needs sufficiency.
I waste my time like some criminal in jail…guilty of unemployment.
A ‘Parasite’ they say.
There is no clock…I find clocks painful…still I wish I hadn’t destroyed it.
The tunnels leading off are open to me, but it is understood they are forbidden to us.
So I crouch by the nearest candle…it has been like this for many years.
The little candle. That drip is very near that little light… a flicker of excitement – at the threat…but no, I’ve moved the candle to yet another safer place …where ‘Splot’, a big blob of water – puts it out.
‘You’ll have to refer to the DSS for a grant to relight it’: I forgot my hunger. The DSS is an impregnable well-lit office, on floor three. There are still some other candles and while five candles should not be despair -
I cried.
I was hungry, I was cold, I was wet (but of course), and not making use of my death very well.
They relit the candle after two months disagreement -but he was not happy.
They blew it out again.
Hell is fine, said the memo from above the DSS, on floor six.
-
Veggie
One must go cold turkey
When going veggie
Or maybe, cold lentil
Is gentler.
-
Stage
If I were on stage again,
You’d clap.
It is only when I’m
In need
Of help,
You say,
“attention seeking”,
and walk off.
-
Choices
They ask how I want
The new buildings,
They put me on the User’s Group…
We are holding a kitty, of £200,
And we’re installing a small
Hearing loop.
They tell me, to take empowerment,
They ask, how I want my cup of tea?
But the Stelazine -
Well I have no choice…
I have to take it at three.
-
The Plant
It’s gone a most beautiful shade of browny-red.
And it’s dead.
-
Short Description of Manic Depression
1. Save the World.
2. “I can’t do it”.
3. “Let’s kill myself”.
-
Disabled
You deny us work,
And give us money,
It’s almost
Equality
-
Relax…
There is absolutely
Nothing the
Psychiatrist can do!
So take off your
Slippers, forgive
Yourself, and cry!
-
Another “The Pills” Poem
I say it makes me miserable,
She says, “That cannot be”
I say that I am certain,
(but so is she)
She says “So say the drug firms,
And they have done research”
I say “They make the profit.”
She says I am psychotic,
She says that I can’t know these things
And cannot be believed,
She says I’m being awkward, and should take more of these.
-
Too sad to kill myself
On major tranquillisers I don’t
Kill myself… I don’t do
Anything at all.
-
How??
How can I hope for world peace,
When I can’t get you to say, “Hello”
In the streets.
-
Anti Social-Behaviour
We have social-behaviour,
And the government
is against that.
-
“Got Me”
My boy-friend got me some
St John’s Wort
to cheer me up.
I put it in a vase
with some other yellow stuff.
The flowers don’t help….
The fact he tried….
-
Weedkiller?
I can’t find it in these Instructions –
(I know it’s not for Trees).
I’ve looked everywhere, for Reasons,
and comforted the Seeds.
I can’t see why it’s needed,
for the murdering of these.
Dear God, who created Them,
Which Flowers are the Weeds?
Dear God, who created Us,
Which of Us, are weeds?
-
Tamagochi
And the buttons won’t work on my Tamagochi
and the elephant touches his large infant, with
his trunk, repeatedly,
and the batteries will go, eventually,
and the dead child lies still, at the feet of its
persistent mother
and I put my Cyber Pet back into the cupboard,
at the back;
it cannot be pressed into mobility;
she stands, and sways, and pushes;
sometimes my Cyber Pet still beeps to me,
she cries, until life says, ‘continue’,
and she stays and nudges,
she thinks the batteries are dead,
whatever she touches.
-
Years Dominate
Like clouds
at the end
of the Season
…
Pausing, to wait,
and to go
…
I will go
Beyond the Horizon
now
…
of everything
that I know
…
And be glad
if I can do so.
-
Case Study
I’ve come across a situation
of a middle aged man
who never makes an effort
to change his clothes –
he was nearly arrested as a tramp
but talked his way out of it.
His home is a wreck –
he is very good musically
but totally ‘obsessed’ with it,
(there is nothing else in his life)
and papers. etc. are lying
scattered in his chaotic room.
He has no interest in
looking after himself,
some say his music is odd,
even mad,
though his music makes
enough money to support him.
He has some support from friends.
He has moved house about
thirty times.
He has poor hearing and this
depresses him extremely and makes
him very anxious about whether he can
continue his music.
Does he need social services to
take a look?
Should (or can),
residential care be considered?
This man’s name is Ludwig van Beethoven.
Score nil if you just prevented,
Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony,
being written.
Note: Carol Batton is happy about you using these poems as long as you acknowledge her authorship
a plast from the past via a friend’s re-found nostalgia
Here’s a real gem I recorded on Public Access TV back in the 90’s. I recently found the tape and want to share it with you all. If you like your religion peppered with profanity, “The Spirit of Truth” is the man for you. He does it all; reads from a giant phone-book size Bible, takes phone call and curses out callers with opposite opinions than his. This has to be seen to be believed. WARNING!!!: This man loves to drop the F-bomb! Enjoy! This was taken from a los angeles public access program in 1997. This is the only recording I have of him. I saw his show one week later, but he was very subdued, and didn’t curse. Then I never saw him again. I should have recorded the subdued version of him, but unfortunately, I didn’t. I really don’t know anything about this guy. I’ve researched this on the internet, but have never found any information. I even called the number on the screen back in ‘97, but never got through. What can I say, the guy remains a mystery. This video was originally 13 minutes, but the rest is filler and doesn’t add any impact to the piece. This is 8 minutes of the best stuff. Sorry that I don’t have more
“Life itself is only a vision, a dream.”
The Mysterious Stranger
A Romance
By
Mark Twain
With Illustrations By N. C. Wyeth
Harper & Brothers Publishers
New York
1916
Chapter 1
Chapter 1
IT WAS IN 1590 — winter. Austria was far away from the world, and asleep; it was still the Middle Ages in Austria, and promised to remain so forever. Some even set it away back centuries upon centuries and said that by the mental and spiritual clock it was still the Age of Belief in Austria. But they meant it as a compliment, not a slur, and it was so taken, and we were all proud of it. I remember it well, although I was only a boy; and I remember, too, the pleasure it gave me.
Yes, Austria was far from the world, and asleep, and our village was in the middle of that sleep, being in the middle of Austria. It drowsed in peace in the deep privacy of a hilly and woodsy solitude where news from the world hardly ever came to disturb its dreams, and was infinitely content. At its front flowed the tranquil river, its surface painted with cloud-forms and the reflections of drifting arks and stone-boats; behind it rose the woody steeps to the base of the lofty precipice; from the top of the precipice frowned a vast castle, its long stretch of towers and bastions mailed in vines; beyond the river, a league to the left, was a tumbled expanse of forest-clothed hills cloven by winding gorges where the sun never penetrated; and to the right a precipice overlooked the river, and between it and the hills just spoken of lay a far-reaching plain dotted with little homesteads nested among orchards and shade trees.
The whole region for leagues around was the hereditary property of a prince, whose servants kept the castle always in perfect condition for occupancy, but neither he nor his family came there oftener than once in five years. When they came it was as if the lord of the world had arrived, and had brought all the glories of its kingdoms along; and when they went they left a calm behind which was like the deep sleep which follows an orgy.
Eseldorf was a paradise for us boys. We were not overmuch pestered with schooling. Mainly we were trained to be good Christians; to revere the Virgin, the Church, and the saints above everything. Beyond these matters we were not required to know much; and, in fact, not allowed to. Knowledge was not good for the common people, and could make them discontented with the lot which God had appointed for them, and God would not endure discontentment with His plans. We had two priests. One of them, Father Adolf, was a very zealous and strenuous priest, much considered.
There may have been better priests, in some ways, than Father Adolf, but there was never one in our commune who was held in more solemn and awful respect. This was because he had absolutely no fear of the Devil. He was the only Christian I have ever known of whom that could be truly said. People stood in deep dread of him on that account; for they thought that there must be something supernatural about him, else he could not be so bold and so confident. All men speak in bitter disapproval of the Devil, but they do it reverently, not flippantly; but Father Adolf’s way was very different; he called him by every name he could lay his tongue to, and it made everyone shudder that heard him; and often he would even speak of him scornfully and scoffingly; then the people crossed themselves and went quickly out of his presence, fearing that something fearful might happen.
Father Adolf had actually met Satan face to face more than once, and defied him. This was known to be so. Father Adolf said it himself. He never made any secret of it, but spoke it right out. And that he was speaking true there was proof in at least one instance, for on that occasion he quarreled with the enemy, and intrepidly threw his bottle at him; and there, upon the wall of his study, was the ruddy splotch where it struck and broke.
But it was Father Peter, the other priest, that we all loved best and were sorriest for. Some people charged him with talking around in conversation that God was all goodness and would find a way to save all his poor human children. It was a horrible thing to say, but there was never any absolute proof that Father Peter said it; and it was out of character for him to say it, too, for he was always good and gentle and truthful. He wasn’t charged with saying it in the pulpit, where all the congregation could hear and testify, but only outside, in talk; and it is easy for enemies to manufacture that. Father Peter had an enemy and a very powerful one, the astrologer who lived in a tumbled old tower up the valley, and put in his nights studying the stars. Every one knew he could foretell wars and famines, though that was not so hard, for there was always a war, and generally a famine somewhere. But he could also read any man’s life through the stars in a big book he had, and find lost property, and every one in the village except Father Peter stood in awe of him. Even Father Adolf, who had defied the Devil, had a wholesome respect for the astrologer when he came through our village wearing his tall, pointed hat and his long, flowing robe with stars on it, carrying his big book, and a staff which was known to have magic power. The bishop himself sometimes listened to the astrologer, it was said, for, besides studying the stars and prophesying, the astrologer made a great show of piety, which would impress the bishop, of course.
But Father Peter took no stock in the astrologer. He denounced him openly as a charlatan — a fraud with no valuable knowledge of any kind, or powers beyond those of an ordinary and rather inferior human being, which naturally made the astrologer hate Father Peter and wish to ruin him. It was the astrologer, as we all believed, who originated the story about Father Peter’s shocking remark and carried it to the bishop. It was said that Father Peter had made the remark to his niece, Marget, though Marget denied it and implored the bishop to believe her and spare her old uncle from poverty and disgrace. But the bishop wouldn’t listen. He suspended Father Peter indefinitely, though he wouldn’t go so far as to excommunicate him on the evidence of only one witness; and now Father Peter had been out a couple of years, and our other priest, Father Adolf, had his flock.
Those had been hard years for the old priest and Marget. They had been favorites, but of course that changed when they came under the shadow of the bishop’s frown. Many of their friends fell away entirely, and the rest became cool and distant. Marget was a lovely girl of eighteen when the trouble came, and she had the best head in the village, and the most in it. She taught the harp, and earned all her clothes and pocket money by her own industry. But her scholars fell off one by one now; she was forgotten when there were dances and parties among the youth of the village; the young fellows stopped coming to the house, all except Wilhelm Meidling — and he could have been spared; she and her uncle were sad and forlorn in their neglect and disgrace, and the sunshine was gone out of their lives. Matters went worse and worse, all through the two years. Clothes were wearing out, bread was harder and harder to get. And now, at last, the very end was come. Solomon Isaacs had lent all the money he was willing to put on the house, and gave notice that to-morrow he would foreclose.
Chapter 2
Chapter 2
Three of us boys were always together, and had been so from the cradle, being fond of one another from the beginning, and this affection deepened as the years went on — Nikolaus Bauman, son of the principal judge of the local court; Seppi Wohlmeyer, son of the keeper of the principal inn, the “Golden Stag,” which had a nice garden, with shade trees reaching down to the riverside, and pleasure boats for hire; and I was the third — Theodor Fischer, son of the church organist, who was also leader of the village musicians, teacher of the violin, composer, tax-collector of the commune, sexton, and in other ways a useful citizen, and respected by all. We knew the hills and the woods as well as the birds knew them; for we were always roaming them when we had leisure — at least, when we were not swimming or boating or fishing, or playing on the ice or sliding down hill.
And we had the run of the castle park, and very few had that. It was because we were pets of the oldest servingman in the castle — Felix Brandt; and often we went there, nights, to hear him talk about old times and strange things, and to smoke with him (he taught us that) and to drink coffee; for he had served in the wars, and was at the siege of Vienna; and there, when the Turks were defeated and driven away, among the captured things were bags of coffee, and the Turkish prisoners explained the character of it and how to make a pleasant drink out of it, and now he always kept coffee by him, to drink himself and also to astonish the ignorant with. When it stormed he kept us all night; and while it thundered and lightened outside he told us about ghosts and horrors of every kind, and of battles and murders and mutilations, and such things, and made it pleasant and cozy inside; and he told these things from his own experience largely. He had seen many ghosts in his time, and witches and enchanters, and once he was lost in a fierce storm at midnight in the mountains, and by the glare of the lightning had seen the Wild Huntsman rage on the blast with his specter dogs chasing after him through the driving cloud-rack. Also he had seen an incubus once, and several times he had seen the great bat that sucks the blood from the necks of people while they are asleep, fanning them softly with its wings and so keeping them drowsy till they die.
He encouraged us not to fear supernatural things, such as ghosts, and said they did no harm, but only wandered about because they were lonely and distressed and wanted kindly notice and compassion; and in time we learned not to be afraid, and even went down with him in the night to the haunted chamber in the dungeons of the castle. The ghost appeared only once, and it went by very dim to the sight and floated noiseless through the air, and then disappeared; and we scarcely trembled, he had taught us so well. He said it came up sometimes in the night and woke him by passing its clammy hand over his face, but it did him no hurt; it only wanted sympathy and notice. But the strangest thing was that he had seen angels — actual angels out of heaven — and had talked with them. They had no wings, and wore clothes, and talked and looked and acted just like any natural person, and you would never know them for angels except for the wonderful things they did which a mortal could not do, and the way they suddenly disappeared while you were talking with them, which was also a thing which no mortal could do. And he said they were pleasant and cheerful, not gloomy and melancholy, like ghosts.
It was after that kind of a talk one May night that we got up next morning and had a good breakfast with him and then went down and crossed the bridge and went away up into the hills on the left to a woody hill-top which was a favorite place of ours, and there we stretched out on the grass in the shade to rest and smoke and talk over these strange things, for they were in our minds yet, and impressing us. But we couldn’t smoke, because we had been heedless and left our flint and steel behind.
Soon there came a youth strolling toward us through the trees, and he sat down and began to talk in a friendly way, just as if he knew us. But we did not answer him, for he was a stranger and we were not used to strangers and were shy of them. He had new and good clothes on, and was handsome and had a winning face and a pleasant voice, and was easy and graceful and unembarrassed, not slouchy and awkward and diffident, like other boys. We wanted to be friendly with him, but didn’t know how to begin. Then I thought of the pipe, and wondered if it would be taken as kindly meant if I offered it to him. But I remembered that we had no fire, so I was sorry and disappointed. But he looked up bright and pleased, and said:
“Fire? Oh, that is easy; I will furnish it.”
I was so astonished I couldn’t speak; for I had not said anything. He took the pipe and blew his breath on it, and the tobacco glowed red, and spirals of blue smoke rose up. We jumped up and were going to run, for that was natural; and we did run a few steps, although he was yearningly pleading for us to stay, and giving us his word that he would not do us any harm, but only wanted to be friends with us and have company. So we stopped and stood, and wanted to go back, being full of curiosity and wonder, but afraid to venture. He went on coaxing, in his soft, persuasive way; and when we saw that the pipe did not blow up and nothing happened, our confidence returned by little and little, and presently our curiosity got to be stronger than our fear, and we ventured back — but slowly, and ready to fly at any alarm.
He was bent on putting us at ease, and he had the right art; one could not remain doubtful and timorous where a person was so earnest and simple and gentle, and talked so alluringly as he did; no, he won us over, and it was not long before we were content and comfortable and chatty, and glad we had found this new friend. When the feeling of constraint was all gone we asked him how he had learned to do that strange thing, and he said he hadn’t learned it at all; it came natural to him — like other things — other curious things.
“What ones?”
“Oh, a number; I don’t know how many.”
“Will you let us see you do them?”
“Do — please!” the others said.
“You won’t run away again?”
“No — indeed we won’t. Please do. Won’t you?”
“Yes, with pleasure; but you mustn’t forget your promise, you know.”
We said we wouldn’t, and he went to a puddle and came back with water in a cup which he had made out of a leaf, and blew upon it and threw it out, and it was a lump of ice the shape of the cup. We were astonished and charmed, but not afraid any more; we were very glad to be there, and asked him to go on and do some more things. And he did. He said he would give us any kind of fruit we liked, whether it was in season or not. We all spoke at once;
“Orange!”
“Apple!”
“Grapes!”
“They are in your pockets,” he said, and it was true. And they were of the best, too, and we ate them and wished we had more, though none of us said so.
“You will find them where those came from,” he said, “and everything else your appetites call for; and you need not name the thing you wish; as long as I am with you, you have only to wish and find.”
And he said true. There was never anything so wonderful and so interesting. Bread, cakes, sweets, nuts — whatever one wanted, it was there. He ate nothing himself, but sat and chatted, and did one curious thing after another to amuse us. He made a tiny toy squirrel out of clay, and it ran up a tree and sat on a limb overhead and barked down at us. Then he made a dog that was not much larger than a mouse, and it treed the squirrel and danced about the tree, excited and barking, and was as alive as any dog could be. It frightened the squirrel from tree to tree and followed it up until both were out of sight in the forest. He made birds out of clay and set them free, and they flew away, singing.
At last I made bold to ask him to tell us who he was.
“An angel,” he said, quite simply, and set another bird free and clapped his hands and made it fly away.
A kind of awe fell upon us when we heard him say that, and we were afraid again; but he said we need not be troubled, there was no occasion for us to be afraid of an angel, and he liked us, anyway. He went on chatting as simply and unaffectedly as ever; and while he talked he made a crowd of little men and women the size of your finger, and they went diligently to work and cleared and leveled off a space a couple of yards square in the grass and began to build a cunning little castle in it, the women mixing the mortar and carrying it up the scaffoldings in pails on their heads, just as our work-women have always done, and the men laying the courses of masonry — five hundred of these toy people swarming briskly about and working diligently and wiping the sweat off their faces as natural as life. In the absorbing interest of watching those five hundred little people make the castle grow step by step and course by course, and take shape and symmetry, that feeling and awe soon passed away and we were quite comfortable and at home again. We asked if we might make some people, and he said yes, and told Seppi to make some cannon for the walls, and told Nikolaus to make some halberdiers, with breastplates and greaves and helmets, and I was to make some cavalry, with horses, and in allotting these tasks he called us by our names, but did not say how he knew them. Then Seppi asked him what his own name was, and he said, tranquilly, “Satan,” and held out a chip and caught a little woman on it who was falling from the scaffolding and put her back where she belonged, and said, “She is an idiot to step backward like that and not notice what she is about.”
It caught us suddenly, that name did, and our work dropped out of our hands and broke to pieces — a cannon, a halberdier, and a horse. Satan laughed, and asked what was the matter. I said, “Nothing, only it seemed a strange name for an angel.” He asked why.
“Because it’s — it’s — well, it’s his name, you know.”
“Yes — he is my uncle.”
He said it placidly, but it took our breath for a moment and made our hearts beat. He did not seem to notice that, but mended our halberdiers and things with a touch, handing them to us finished, and said, “Don’t you remember? — he was an angel himself, once.”
“Yes — it’s true,” said Seppi; “I didn’t think of that.”
“Before the Fall he was blameless.”
“Yes,” said Nikolaus, “he was without sin.”
“It is a good family — ours,” said Satan; “there is not a better. He is the only member of it that has ever sinned.”
I should not be able to make any one understand how exciting it all was. You know that kind of quiver that trembles around through you when you are seeing something so strange and enchanting and wonderful that it is just a fearful joy to be alive and look at it; and you know how you gaze, and your lips turn dry and your breath comes short, but you wouldn’t be anywhere but there, not for the world. I was bursting to ask one question — I had it on my tongue’s end and could hardly hold it back — but I was ashamed to ask it; it might be a rudeness. Satan set an ox down that he had been making, and smiled up at me and said:
“It wouldn’t be a rudeness, and I should forgive it if it was. Have I seen him? Millions of times. From the time that I was a little child a thousand years old I was his second favorite among the nursery angels of our blood and lineage — to use a human phrase — yes, from that time until the Fall, eight thousand years, measured as you count time.”
“Eight — thousand!”
“Yes.” He turned to Seppi, and went on as if answering something that was in Seppi’s mind: “Why, naturally I look like a boy, for that is what I am. With us what you call time is a spacious thing; it takes a long stretch of it to grow an angel to full age.” There was a question in my mind, and he turned to me and answered it, “I am sixteen thousand years old — counting as you count.” Then he turned to Nikolaus and said: “No, the Fall did not affect me nor the rest of the relationship. It was only he that I was named for who ate of the fruit of the tree and then beguiled the man and the woman with it. We others are still ignorant of sin; we are not able to commit it; we are without blemish, and shall abide in that estate always. We — ” Two of the little workmen were quarreling, and in buzzing little bumblebee voices they were cursing and swearing at each other; now came blows and blood; then they locked themselves together in a life-and-death struggle. Satan reached out his hand and crushed the life out of them with his fingers, threw them away, wiped the red from his fingers on his handkerchief, and went on talking where he had left off: “We cannot do wrong; neither have we any disposition to do it, for we do not know what it is.”
It seemed a strange speech, in the circumstances, but we barely noticed that, we were so shocked and grieved at the wanton murder he had committed — for murder it was, that was its true name, and it was without palliation or excuse, for the men had not wronged him in any way. It made us miserable, for we loved him, and had thought him so noble and so beautiful and gracious, and had honestly believed he was an angel; and to have him do this cruel thing — ah, it lowered him so, and we had had such pride in him. He went right on talking, just as if nothing had happened, telling about his travels, and the interesting things he had seen in the big worlds of our solar systems and of other solar systems far away in the remotenesses of space, and about the customs of the immortals that inhabit them, somehow fascinating us, enchanting us, charming us in spite of the pitiful scene that was now under our eyes, for the wives of the little dead men had found the crushed and shapeless bodies and were crying over them, and sobbing and lamenting, and a priest was kneeling there with his hands crossed upon his breast, praying; and crowds and crowds of pitying friends were massed about them, reverently uncovered, with their bare heads bowed, and many with the tears running down — a scene which Satan paid no attention to until the small noise of the weeping and praying began to annoy him, then he reached out and took the heavy board seat out of our swing and brought it down and mashed all those people into the earth just as if they had been flies, and went on talking just the same.
An angel, and kill a priest! An angel who did not know how to do wrong, and yet destroys in cold blood hundreds of helpless poor men and women who had never done him any harm! It made us sick to see that awful deed, and to think that none of those poor creatures was prepared except the priest, for none of them had ever heard a mass or seen a church. And we were witnesses; we had seen these murders done and it was our duty to tell, and let the law take its course.
But he went on talking right along, and worked his enchantments upon us again with that fatal music of his voice. He made us forget everything; we could only listen to him, and love him, and be his slaves, to do with us as he would. He made us drunk with the joy of being with him, and of looking into the heaven of his eyes, and of feeling the ecstasy that thrilled along our veins from the touch of his hand.
Chapter 3
Chapter 3
The Stranger had seen everything, he had been everywhere, he knew everything, and he forgot nothing. What another must study, he learned at a glance; there were no difficulties for him. And he made things live before you when he told about them. He saw the world made; he saw Adam created; he saw Samson surge against the pillars and bring the temple down in ruins about him; he saw Caesar’s death; he told of the daily life in heaven; he had seen the damned writhing in the red waves of hell; and he made us see all these things, and it was as if we were on the spot and looking at them with our own eyes. And we felt them, too, but there was no sign that they were anything to him beyond mere entertainments. Those visions of hell, those poor babes and women and girls and lads and men shrieking and supplicating in anguish — why, we could hardly bear it, but he was as bland about it as if it had been so many imitation rats in an artificial fire.
And always when he was talking about men and women here on the earth and their doings — even their grandest and sublimest — we were secretly ashamed, for his manner showed that to him they and their doings were of paltry poor consequence; often you would think he was talking about flies, if you didn’t know. Once he even said, in so many words, that our people down here were quite interesting to him, notwithstanding they were so dull and ignorant and trivial and conceited, and so diseased and rickety, and such a shabby, poor, worthless lot all around. He said it in a quite matter-of-course way and without bitterness, just as a person might talk about bricks or manure or any other thing that was of no consequence and hadn’t feelings. I could see he meant no offense, but in my thoughts I set it down as not very good manners.
“Manners!” he said. “Why, it is merely the truth, and truth is good manners; manners are a fiction. The castle is done. Do you like it?”
Any one would have been obliged to like it. It was lovely to look at, it was so shapely and fine, and so cunningly perfect in all its particulars, even to the little flags waving from the turrets. Satan said we must put the artillery in place now, and station the halberdiers and display the cavalry. Our men and horses were a spectacle to see, they were so little like what they were intended for; for, of course, we had no art in making such things. Satan said they were the worst he had seen; and when he touched them and made them alive, it was just ridiculous the way they acted, on account of their legs not being of uniform
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The Lightning Blazed Out Flash Upon Flask and Set the Castle on Fire
lengths. They reeled and sprawled around as if they were drunk, and endangered everybody’s lives around them, and finally fell over and lay helpless and kicking. It made us all laugh, though it was a shameful thing to see. The guns were charged with dirt, to fire a salute, but they were so crooked and so badly made that they all burst when they went off, and killed some of the gunners and crippled the others. Satan said we would have a storm now, and an earthquake, if we liked, but we must stand off a piece, out of danger. We wanted to call the people away, too, but he said never mind them; they were of no consequence, and we could make more, some time or other, if we needed them.
A small storm-cloud began to settle down black over the castle, and the miniature lightning and thunder began to play, and the ground to quiver, and the wind to pipe and wheeze, and the rain to fall, and all the people flocked into the castle for shelter. The cloud settled down blacker and blacker, and one could see the castle only dimly through it; the lightning blazed out flash upon flash and pierced the castle and set it on fire, and the flames shone out red and fierce through the cloud, and the people came flying out, shrieking, but Satan brushed them back, paying no attention to our begging and crying and imploring; and in the midst of the howling of the wind and volleying of the thunder the magazine blew up, the earthquake rent the ground wide, and the castle’s wreck and ruin tumbled into the chasm, which swallowed it from sight, and closed upon it, with all that innocent life, not one of the five hundred poor creatures escaping. Our hearts were broken; we could not keep from crying.
“Don’t cry,” Satan said; “they were of no value.”
“But they are gone to hell!”
“Oh, it is no matter; we can make plenty more.”
It was of no use to try to move him; evidently he was wholly without feeling, and could not understand. He was full of bubbling spirits, and as gay as if this were a wedding instead of a fiendish massacre. And he was bent on making us feel as he did, and of course his magic accomplished his desire. It was no trouble to him; he did whatever he pleased with us. In a little while we were dancing on that grave, and he was playing to us on a strange, sweet instrument which he took out of his pocket; and the music — but there is no music like that, unless perhaps in heaven, and that was where he brought it from, he said. It made one mad, for pleasure; and we could not take our eyes from him, and the looks that went out of our eyes came from our hearts, and their dumb speech was worship. He brought the dance from heaven, too, and the bliss of paradise was in it.
Presently he said he must go away on an errand. But we could not bear the thought of it, and clung to him, and pleaded with him to stay; and that pleased him, and he said so, and said he would not go yet, but would wait a little while and we would sit down and talk a few minutes longer; and he told us Satan was only his real name, and he was to be known by it to us alone, but he had chosen another one to be called by in the presence of others; just a common one, such as people have — Philip Traum.
It sounded so odd and mean for such a being! But it was his decision, and we said nothing; his decision was sufficient.
We had seen wonders this day; and my thoughts began to run on the pleasure it would be to tell them when I got home, but he noticed those thoughts, and said:
“No, all these matters are a secret among us four. I do not mind your trying to tell them, if you like, but I will protect your tongues, and nothing of the secret will escape from them.”
It was a disappointment, but it couldn’t be helped, and it cost us a sigh or two. We talked pleasantly along, and he was always reading our thoughts and responding to them, and it seemed to me that this was the most wonderful of all the things he did, but he interrupted my musings and said:
“No, it would be wonderful for you, but it is not wonderful for me. I am not limited like you. I am not subject to human conditions. I can measure and understand your human weaknesses, for I have studied them; but I have none of them. My flesh is not real, although it would seem firm to your touch; my clothes are not real; I am a spirit. Father Peter is coming.” We looked around, but did not see any one. “He is not in sight yet, but you will see him presently.”
“Do you know him, Satan?”
“No.”
“Won’t you talk with him when he comes? He is not ignorant and dull, like us, and he would so like to talk with you. Will you?”
“Another time, yes, but not now. I must go on my errand after a little. There he is now; you can see him. Sit still, and don’t say anything.”
We looked up and saw Father Peter approaching through the chestnuts. We three were sitting together in the grass, and Satan sat in front of us in the path. Father Peter came slowly along with his head down, thinking, and stopped within a couple of yards of us and took off his hat and got out his silk handkerchief, and stood there mopping his face and looking as if he were going to speak to us, but he didn’t. Presently he muttered, “I can’t think what brought me here; it seems as if I were in my study a minute ago — but I suppose I have been dreaming along for an hour and have come all this stretch without noticing; for I am not myself in these troubled days.” Then he went mumbling along to himself and walked straight through Satan, just as if nothing were there. It made us catch our breath to see it. We had the impulse to cry out, the way you nearly always do when a startling thing happens, but something mysteriously restrained us and we remained quiet, only breathing fast. Then the trees hid Father Peter after a little, and Satan said:
“It is as I told you — I am only a spirit.”
“Yes, one perceives it now,” said Nikolaus, “but we are not spirits. It is plain he did not see you, but were we invisible, too? He looked at us, but he didn’t seem to see us.”
“No, none of us was visible to him, for I wished it so.”
It seemed almost too good to be true, that we were actually seeing these romantic and wonderful things, and that it was not a dream. And there he sat, looking just like anybody — so natural and simple and charming, and chatting along again the same as ever, and — well, words cannot make you understand what we felt. It was an ecstasy; and an ecstasy is a thing that will not go into words; it feels like music, and one cannot tell about music so that another person can get the feeling of it. He was back in the old ages once more now, and making them live before us. He had seen so much, so much! It was just a wonder to look at him and try to think how it must seem to have such experience behind one.
But it made you seem sorrowfully trivial, and the creature of a day, and such a short and paltry day, too. And he didn’t say anything to raise up your drooping pride — no, not a word. He always spoke of men in the same old indifferent way — just as one speaks of bricks and manure-piles and such things; you could see that they were of no consequence to him, one way or the other. He didn’t mean to hurt us, you could see that; just as we don’t mean to insult a brick when we disparage it; a brick’s emotions are nothing to us; it never occurs to us to think whether it has any or not.
Once when he was bunching the most illustrious kings and conquerors and poets and prophets and pirates and beggars together — just a brick-pile — I was shamed into putting in a word for man, and asked him why he made so much difference between men and himself. He had to struggle with that a moment; he didn’t seem to understand how I could ask such a strange question. Then he said:
“The difference between man and me? The difference between a mortal and an immortal? between a cloud and a spirit?” He picked up a wood-louse that was creeping along a piece of bark: “What is the difference between Caesar and this?”
I said, “One cannot compare things which by their nature and by the interval between them are not comparable.”
“You have answered your own question,” he said. “I will expand it. Man is made of dirt — I saw him made. I am not made of dirt. Man is a museum of diseases, a home of impurities; he comes to-day and is gone to-morrow; he begins as dirt and departs as stench; I am of the aristocracy of the Imperishables. And man has the Moral Sense. You understand? He has the Moral Sense. That would seem to be difference enough between us, all by itself.”
He stopped there, as if that settled the matter. I was sorry, for at that time I had but a dim idea of what the Moral Sense was. I merely knew that we were proud of having it, and when he talked like that about it, it wounded me, and I felt as a girl feels who thinks her dearest finery is being admired and then overhears strangers making fun of it. For a while we were all silent, and I, for one, was depressed. Then Satan began to chat again, and soon he was sparkling along in such a cheerful and vivacious vein that my spirits rose once more. He told some very cunning things that put us in a gale of laughter; and when he was telling about the time that Samson tied the torches to the foxes’ tails and set them loose in the Philistines’ corn, and Samson sitting on the fence slapping his thighs and laughing, with the tears running down his cheeks, and lost his balance and fell off the fence, the memory of that picture got him to laughing, too, and we did have a most lovely and jolly time. By and by he said:
“I am going on my errand now.”
“Don’t!” we all said. “Don’t go; stay with us. You won’t come back.”
“Yes, I will; I give you my word.”
“When? To-night? Say when.”
“It won’t be long. You will see.”
“We like you.”
“And I you. And as a proof of it I will show you something fine to see. Usually when I go I merely vanish; but now I will dissolve myself and let you see me do it.”
He stood up, and it was quickly finished. He thinned away and thinned away until he was a soap-bubble, except that he kept his shape. You could see the bushes through him as clearly as you see things through a soap-bubble, and all over him played and flashed the delicate iridescent colors of the bubble, and along with them was that thing shaped like a window-sash which you always see on the globe of the bubble. You have seen a bubble strike the carpet and lightly bound along two or three times before it bursts. He did that. He sprang — touched the grass — bounded — floated along — touched again — and so on, and presently exploded — puff! and in his place was vacancy.
It was a strange and beautiful thing to see. We did not say anything, but sat wondering and dreaming and blinking; and finally Seppi roused up and said, mournfully sighing:
“I suppose none of it has happened.”
Nikolaus sighed and said about the same.
I was miserable to hear them say it, for it was the same cold fear that was in my own mind. Then we saw poor old Father Peter wandering along back, with his head bent down, searching the ground. When he was pretty close to us he looked up and saw us, and said, “How long have you been here, boys?”
“A little while, Father.”
“Then it is since I came by, and maybe you can help me. Did you come up by the path?”
“Yes, Father.”
“That is good. I came the same way. I have lost my wallet. There wasn’t much in it, but a very little is much to me, for it was all I had. I suppose you haven’t seen anything of it?”
“No, Father, but we will help you hunt.”
“It is what I was going to ask you. Why, here it is!”
We hadn’t noticed it; yet there it lay, right where Satan stood when he began to melt — if he did melt and it wasn’t a delusion. Father Peter picked it up and looked very much surprised.
“It is mine,” he said, “but not the contents. This is fat; mine was flat; mine was light; this is heavy.” He opened it; it was stuffed as full as it could hold with gold coins. He let us gaze our fill; and of course we did gaze, for we had never seen so much money at one time before. All our mouths came open to say “Satan did it!” but nothing came out. There it was, you see — we couldn’t tell what Satan didn’t want told; he had said so himself.
“Boys, did you do this?”
It made us laugh. And it made him laugh, too, as soon as he thought what a foolish question it was.
“Who has been here?”
Our mouths came open to answer, but stood so for a moment, because we couldn’t say “Nobody,” for it wouldn’t be true, and the right word didn’t seem to come; then I thought of the right one, and said it:
“Not a human being.”
“That is so,” said the others, and let their mouths go shut.
“It is not so,” said Father Peter, and looked at us very severely. “I came by here a while ago, and there was no one here, but that is nothing; some one has been here since. I don’t mean to say that the person didn’t pass here before you came, and I don’t mean to say you saw him, but some one did pass, that I know. On your honor — you saw no one?”
“Not a human being.”
“That is sufficient; I know you are telling me the truth.”
He began to count the money on the path, we on our knees eagerly helping to stack it in little piles.
“It’s eleven hundred ducats odd!” he said. “Oh dear! if it were only mine — and I need it so!” and his voice broke and his lips quivered.
“It is yours, sir!” we all cried out at once, “every heller!”
“No — it isn’t mine. Only four ducats are mine; the rest…!” He fell to dreaming, poor old soul, and caressing some of the coins in his hands, and forgot where he was, sitting there on his heels with his old gray head bare; it was pitiful to see. “No,” he said, waking up, “it isn’t mine. I can’t account for it. I think some enemy… it must be a trap.”
Nikolaus said: “Father Peter, with the exception of the astrologer you haven’t a real enemy in the village — nor Marget, either. And not even a half-enemy that’s rich enough to chance eleven hundred ducats to do you a mean turn. I’ll ask you if that’s so or not?”
He couldn’t get around that argument, and it cheered him up. “But it isn’t mine, you see — it isn’t mine, in any case.”
He said it in a wistful way, like a person that wouldn’t be sorry, but glad, if anybody would contradict him.
“It is yours, Father Peter, and we are witness to it. Aren’t we, boys?”
“Yes, we are — and we’ll stand by it, too.”
“Bless your hearts, you do almost persuade me; you do, indeed. If I had only a hundred-odd ducats of it! The house is mortgaged for it, and we’ve no home for our heads if we don’t pay to-morrow. And that four ducats is all we’ve got in the — “
“It’s yours, every bit of it, and you’ve got to take it — we are bail that it’s all right. Aren’t we, Theodor? Aren’t we, Seppi?”
We two said yes, and Nikolaus stuffed the money back into the shabby old wallet and made the owner take it. So he said he would use two hundred of it, for his house was good enough security for that, and would put the rest at interest till the rightful owner came for it; and on our side we must sign a paper showing how he got the money — a paper to show to the villagers as proof that he had not got out of his troubles dishonestly.
Chapter 4
Chapter 4
It made immense talk next day, when Father Peter paid Solomon Isaacs in gold and left the rest of the money with him at interest. Also, there was a pleasant change; many people called at the house to congratulate him, and a number of cool old friends became kind and friendly again; and, to top all, Marget was invited to a party.
And there was no mystery; Father Peter told the whole circumstance just as it happened, and said he could not account for it, only it was the plain hand of Providence, so far as he could see.
One or two shook their heads and said privately it looked more like the hand of Satan; and really that seemed a surprisingly good guess for ignorant people like that. Some came slyly buzzing around and tried to coax us boys to come out and “tell the truth;” and promised they wouldn’t ever tell, but only wanted to know for their own satisfaction, because the whole thing was so curious. They even wanted to buy the secret, and pay money for it; and if we could have invented something that would answer — but we couldn’t; we hadn’t the ingenuity, so we had to let the chance go by, and it was a pity.
We carried that secret around without any trouble, but the other one, the big one, the splendid one, burned the very vitals of us, it was so hot to get out and we so hot to let it out and astonish people with it. But we had to keep it in; in fact, it kept itself in. Satan said it would, and it did. We went off every day and got to ourselves in the woods so that we could talk about Satan, and really that was the only subject we thought of or cared anything about; and day and night we watched for him and hoped he would come, and we got more and more impatient all the time. We hadn’t any interest in the other boys any more, and wouldn’t take part in their games and enterprises. They seemed so tame, after Satan; and their doings so trifling and commonplace after his adventures in antiquity and the constellations, and his miracles and meltings and explosions, and all that.
During the first day we were in a state of anxiety on account of one thing, and we kept going to Father Peter’s house on one pretext or another to keep track of it. That was the gold coin; we were afraid it would crumble and turn to dust, like fairy money. If it did — But it didn’t. At the end of the day no complaint had been made about it, so after that we were satisfied that it was real gold, and dropped the anxiety out of our minds.
There was a question which we wanted to ask Father Peter, and finally we went there the second evening, a little diffidently, after drawing straws, and I asked it as casually as I could, though it did not sound as casual as I wanted, because I didn’t know how:
“What is the Moral Sense, sir?”
He looked down, surprised, over his great spectacles, and said, “Why, it is the faculty which enables us to distinguish good from evil.”
It threw some light, but not a glare, and I was a little disappointed, also to some degree embarrassed. He was waiting for me to go on, so, in default of anything else to say, I asked, “Is it valuable?”
“Valuable? Heavens! lad, it is the one thing that lifts man above the beasts that perish and makes him heir to immortality!”
This did not remind me of anything further to say, so I got out, with the other boys, and we went away with that indefinite sense you have often had of being filled but not fatted. They wanted me to explain, but I was tired.
We passed out through the parlor, and there was Marget at the spinnet teaching Marie Lueger. So one of the deserting pupils was back; and an influential one, too; the others would follow. Marget jumped up and ran and thanked us again, with tears in her eyes — this was the third time — for saving her and her uncle from being turned into the street, and we told her again we hadn’t done it; but that was her way, she never could be grateful enough for anything a person did for her; so we let her have her say. And as we passed through the garden, there was Wilhelm Meidling sitting there waiting, for it was getting toward the edge of the evening, and he would be asking Marget to take a walk along the river with him when she was done with the lesson. He was a young lawyer, and succeeding fairly well and working his way along, little by little. He was very fond of Marget, and she of him. He had not deserted along with the others, but had stood his ground all through. His faithfulness was not lost on Marget and her uncle. He hadn’t so very much talent, but he was handsome and good, and these are a kind of talents themselves and help along. He asked us how the lesson was getting along, and we told him it was about done. And maybe it was so; we didn’t know anything about it, but we judged it would please him, and it did, and didn’t cost us anything.
Chapter 5
Chapter 5
On the fourth day comes the astrologer from his crumbling old tower up the valley, where he had heard the news, I reckon. He had a private talk with us, and we told him what we could, for we were mightily in dread of him. He sat there studying and studying awhile to himself; then he asked:
“How many ducats did you say?”
“Eleven hundred and seven, sir.”
Then he said, as if he were talking to himself: “It is ver-y singular. Yes… very strange. A curious coincidence.” Then he began to ask questions, and went over the whole ground from the beginning, we answering. By and by he said: “Eleven hundred and six ducats. It is a large sum.”
“Seven,” said Seppi, correcting him.
“Oh, seven, was it? Of course a ducat more or less isn’t of consequence, but you said eleven hundred and six before.”
It would not have been safe for us to say he was mistaken, but we knew he was. Nikolaus said, “We ask pardon for the mistake, but we meant to say seven.”
“Oh, it is no matter, lad; it was merely that I noticed the discrepancy. It is several days, and you cannot be expected to remember precisely. One is apt to be inexact when there is no particular circumstance to impress the count upon the memory.”
“But there was one, sir,” said Seppi, eagerly.
“What was it, my son?” asked the astrologer, indifferently.
“First, we all counted the piles of coin, each in turn, and all made it the same — eleven hundred and six. But I had slipped one out, for fun, when the count began, and now I slipped it back and said, `I think there is a mistake — there are eleven hundred and seven; let us count again.’ We did, and of course I was right. They were astonished; then I told how it came about.”
The astrologer asked us if this was so, and we said it was.
“That settles it,” he said. “I know the thief now. Lads, the money was stolen.”
Then he went away, leaving us very much troubled, and wondering what he could mean. In about an hour we found out; for by that time it was all over the village that Father Peter had been arrested for stealing a great sum of money from the astrologer. Everybody’s tongue was loose and going. Many said it was not in Father Peter’s character and must be a mistake; but the others shook their heads and said misery and want could drive a suffering
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On the Fourth Day Comes the Astrologer From His Crumbling Old Tower
man to almost anything. About one detail there were no differences; all agreed that Father Peter’s account of how the money came into his hands was just about unbelievable — it had such an impossible look. They said it might have come into the astrologer’s hands in some such way, but into Father Peter’s, never! Our characters began to suffer now. We were Father Peter’s only witnesses; how much did he probably pay us to back up his fantastic tale? People talked that kind of talk to us pretty freely and frankly, and were full of scoffings when we begged them to believe really we had told only the truth. Our parents were harder on us than any one else. Our fathers said we were disgracing our families, and they commanded us to purge ourselves of our lie, and there was no limit to their anger when we continued to say we had spoken true. Our mothers cried over us and begged us to give back our bribe and get back our honest names and save our families from shame, and come out and honorably confess. And at last we were so worried and harassed that we tried to tell the whole thing, Satan and all — but no, it wouldn’t come out. We were hoping and longing all the time that Satan would come and help us out of our trouble, but there was no sign of him.
Within an hour after the astrologer’s talk with us, Father Peter was in prison and the money sealed up and in the hands of the officers of the law. The money was in a bag, and Solomon Isaacs said he had not touched it since he had counted it; his oath was taken that it was the same money, and that the amount was eleven hundred and seven ducats. Father Peter claimed trial by the ecclesiastical court, but our other priest, Father Adolf, said an ecclesiastical court hadn’t jurisdiction over a suspended priest. The bishop upheld him. That settled it; the case would go to trial in the civil court. The court would not sit for some time to come. Wilhelm Meidling would be Father Peter’s lawyer and do the best he could, of course, but he told us privately that a weak case on his side and all the power and prejudice on the other made the outlook bad.
So Marget’s new happiness died a quick death. No friends came to condole with her, and none were expected; an unsigned note withdrew her invitation to the party. There would be no scholars to take lessons. How could she support herself? She could remain in the house, for the mortgage was paid off, though the government and not poor Solomon Isaacs had the mortgage-money in its grip for the present. Old Ursula, who was cook, chambermaid, housekeeper, laundress, and everything else for Father Peter, and had been Marget’s nurse in earlier years, said God would provide. But she said that from habit, for she was a good Christian. She meant to help in the providing, to make sure, if she could find a way.
We boys wanted to go and see Marget and show friendliness for her, but our parents were afraid of offending the community and wouldn’t let us. The astrologer was going around inflaming everybody against Father Peter, and saying he was an abandoned thief and had stolen eleven hundred and seven gold ducats from him. He said he knew he was a thief from that fact, for it was exactly the sum he had lost and which Father Peter pretended he had “found.”
In the afternoon of the fourth day after the catastrophe old Ursula appeared at our house and asked for some washing to do, and begged my mother to keep this secret, to save Marget’s pride, who would stop this project if she found it out, yet Marget had not enough to eat and was growing weak. Ursula was growing weak herself, and showed it; and she ate of the food that was offered her like a starving person, but could not be persuaded to carry any home, for Marget would not eat charity food. She took some clothes down to the stream to wash them, but we saw from the window that handling the bat was too much for her strength; so she was called back and a trifle of money offered her, which she was afraid to take lest Marget should suspect; then she took it, saying she would explain that she found it in the road. To keep it from being a lie and damning her soul, she got me to drop it while she watched; then she went along by there and found it, and exclaimed with surprise and joy, and picked it up and went her way. Like the rest of the village, she could tell every-day lies fast enough and without taking any precautions against fire and brimstone on their account; but this was a new kind of lie, and it had a dangerous look because she hadn’t had any practice in it. After a week’s practice it wouldn’t have given her any trouble. It is the way we are made.
I was in trouble, for how would Marget live? Ursula could not find a coin in the road every day — perhaps not even a second one. And I was ashamed, too, for not having been near Marget, and she so in need of friends; but that was my parents’ fault, not mine, and I couldn’t help it.
I was walking along the path, feeling very down-hearted, when a most cheery and tingling freshening-up sensation went rippling through me, and I was too glad for any words, for I knew by that sign that Satan was by. I had noticed it before. Next moment he was alongside of me and I was telling him all my trouble and what had been happening to Marget and her uncle. While we were talking we turned a curve and saw old Ursula resting in the shade of a tree, and she had a lean stray kitten in her lap and was petting it. I asked her where she got it, and she said it came out of the woods and followed her; and she said it probably hadn’t any mother or any friends and she was going to take it home and take care of it. Satan said:
“I understand you are very poor. Why do you want to add another mouth to feed? Why don’t you give it to some rich person?”
Ursula bridled at this and said: “Perhaps you would like to have it. You must be rich, with your fine clothes and quality airs.” Then she sniffed and said: “Give it to the rich — the idea! The rich don’t care for anybody but themselves; it’s only the poor that have feeling for the poor, and help them. The poor and God. God will provide for this kitten.”
“What makes you think so?”
Ursula’s eyes snapped with anger. “Because I know it!” she said. “Not a sparrow falls to the ground without His seeing it.”
“But it falls, just the same. What good is seeing it fall?”
Old Ursula’s jaws worked, but she could not get any word out for the moment, she was so horrified. When she got her tongue, she stormed out, “Go about your business, you puppy, or I will take a stick to you!”
I could not speak, I was so scared. I knew that with his notions about the human race Satan would consider it a matter of no consequence to strike her dead, there being “plenty more”; but my tongue stood still, I could give her no warning. But nothing happened; Satan remained tranquil — tranquil and indifferent. I suppose he could not be insulted by Ursula any more than the king could be insulted by a tumble-bug. The old woman jumped to her feet when she made her remark, and did it as briskly as a young girl. It had been many years since she had done the like of that. That was Satan’s influence; he was a fresh breeze to the weak and the sick, wherever he came. His presence affected even the lean kitten, and it skipped to the ground and began to chase a leaf. This surprised Ursula, and she stood looking at the creature and nodding her head wonderingly, her anger quite forgotten.
“What’s come over it?” she said. “Awhile ago it could hardly walk.”
“You have not seen a kitten of that breed before,” said Satan.
Ursula was not proposing to be friendly with the mocking stranger, and she gave him an ungentle look and retorted: “Who asked you to come here and pester me, I’d like to know? And what do you know about what I’ve seen and what I haven’t seen?”
“You haven’t seen a kitten with the hair-spines on its tongue pointing to the front, have you?”
“No — nor you, either.”
“Well, examine this one and see.”
Ursula was become pretty spry, but the kitten was spryer, and she could not catch it, and had to give it up. Then Satan said:
“Give it a name, and maybe it will come.”
Ursula tried several names, but the kitten was not interested.
“Call it Agnes. Try that.”
The creature answered to the name and came. Ursula examined its tongue. “Upon my word, it’s true!” she said. “I have not seen this kind of a cat before. Is it yours?”
“No.”
“Then how did you know its name so pat?”
“Because all cats of that breed are named Agnes; they will not answer to any other.”
Ursula was impressed. “It is the most wonderful thing!” Then a shadow of trouble came into her face, for her superstitions were aroused, and she reluctantly put the creature down, saying: “I suppose I must let it go; I am not afraid — no, not exactly that, though the priest — well, I’ve heard people — indeed, many people… And, besides, it is quite well now and can take care of itself.” She sighed, and turned to go, murmuring: “It is such a pretty one, too, and would be such company — and the house is so sad and lonesome these troubled days… Miss Marget so mournful and just a shadow, and the old master shut up in jail.”
“It seems a pity not to keep it,” said Satan.
Ursula turned quickly — just as if she were hoping some one would encourage her.
“Why?” she asked, wistfully.
“Because this breed brings luck.”
“Does it? Is it true? Young man, do you know it to be true? How does it bring luck?”
“Well, it brings money, anyway.”
Ursula looked disappointed. “Money? A cat bring money? The idea! You could never sell it here; people do not buy cats here; one can’t even give them away.” She turned to go.
“I don’t mean sell it. I mean have an income from it. This kind is called the Lucky Cat. Its owner finds four silver groschen in his pocket every morning.”
I saw the indignation rising in the old woman’s face. She was insulted. This boy was making fun of her. That was her thought. She thrust her hands into her pockets and straightened up to give him a piece of her mind. Her temper was all up, and hot. Her mouth came open and let out three words of a bitter sentence,… then it fell silent, and the anger in her face turned to surprise or wonder or fear, or something, and she slowly brought out her hands from her pockets and opened them and held them so. In one was my piece of money, in the other lay four silver groschen. She gazed a little while, perhaps to see if the groschen would vanish away; then she said, fervently:
“It’s true — it’s true — and I’m ashamed and beg forgiveness, O dear master and benefactor!” And she ran to Satan and kissed his hand, over and over again, according to the Austrian custom.
In her heart she probably believed it was a witch-cat and an agent of the Devil; but no matter, it was all the more certain to be able to keep its contract and furnish a daily good living for the family, for in matters of finance even the piousest of our peasants would have more confidence in an arrangement with the Devil than with an archangel. Ursula started homeward, with Agnes in her arms, and I said I wished I had her privilege of seeing Marget.
Then I caught my breath, for we were there. There in the parlor, and Marget standing looking at us, astonished. She was feeble and pale, but I knew that those conditions would not last in Satan’s atmosphere, and it turned out so. I introduced Satan — that is, Philip Traum — and we sat down and talked. There was no constraint. We were simple folk, in our village, and when a stranger was a pleasant person we were soon friends. Marget wondered how we got in without her hearing us. Traum said the door was open, and we walked in and waited until she should turn around and greet us. This was not true; no door was open; we entered through the walls or the roof or down the chimney, or somehow; but no matter, what Satan wished a person to believe, the person was sure to believe, and so Marget was quite satisfied with that explanation. And then the main part of her mind was on Traum, anyway; she couldn’t keep her eyes off him, he was so beautiful. That gratified me, and made me proud. I hoped he would show off some, but he didn’t. He seemed only interested in being friendly and telling lies. He said he was an orphan. That made Marget pity him. The water came into her eyes. He said he had never known his mamma; she passed away while he was a young thing; and said his papa was in shattered health, and had no property to speak of — in fact, none of any earthly value — but he had an uncle in business down in the tropics, and he was very well off and had a monopoly, and it was from this uncle that he drew his support. The very mention of a kind uncle was enough to remind Marget of her own, and her eyes filled again. She said she hoped their two uncles would meet, some day. It made me shudder. Philip said he hoped so, too; and that made me shudder again.
“Maybe they will,” said Marget. “Does your uncle travel much?”
“Oh yes, he goes all about; he has business everywhere.”
And so they went on chatting, and poor Marget forgot her sorrow for one little while, anyway. It was probably the only really bright and cheery hour she had known lately. I saw she liked Philip, and I knew she would. And when he told her he was studying for the ministry I could see that she liked him better than ever. And then, when he promised to get her admitted to the jail so that she could see her uncle, that was the capstone. He said he would give the guards a little present, and she must always go in the evening after dark, and say nothing, “but just show this paper and pass in, and show it again when you come out” — and he scribbled some queer marks on the paper and gave it to her, and she was ever so thankful, and right away was in a fever for the sun to go down; for in that old, cruel time prisoners were not allowed to see their friends, and sometimes they spent years in the jails without ever seeing a friendly face. I judged that the marks on the paper were an enchantment, and that the guards would not know what they were doing, nor have any memory of it afterward; and that was indeed the way of it. Ursula put her head in at the door now and said:
“Supper’s ready, miss.” Then she saw us and looked frightened, and motioned me to come to her, which I did, and she asked if we had told about the cat. I said no, and she was relieved, and said please don’t; for if Miss Marget knew, she would think it was an unholy cat and would send for a priest and have its gifts all purified out of it, and then there wouldn’t be any more dividends. So I said we wouldn’t tell, and she was satisfied. Then I was beginning to say good-by to Marget, but Satan interrupted and said, ever so politely — well, I don’t remember just the words, but anyway he as good as invited himself to supper, and me, too. Of course Marget was miserably embarrassed, for she had no reason to suppose there would be half enough for a sick bird. Ursula heard him, and she came straight into the room, not a bit pleased. At first she was astonished to see Marget looking so fresh and rosy, and said so; then she spoke up in her native tongue, which was Bohemian, and said — as I learned afterward — “Send him away, Miss Marget; there’s not victuals enough.”
Before Marget could speak, Satan had the word, and was talking back to Ursula in her own language — which was a surprise to her, and for her mistress, too. He said, “Didn’t I see you down the road awhile ago?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Ah, that pleases me; I see you remember me.” He stepped to her and whispered: “I told you it is a Lucky Cat. Don’t be troubled; it will provide.”
That sponged the slate of Ursula’s feelings clean of its anxieties, and a deep, financial joy shone in her eyes. The cat’s value was augmenting. It was getting full time for Marget to take some sort of notice of Satan’s invitation, and she did it in the best way, the honest way that was natural to her. She said she had little to offer, but that we were welcome if we would share it with her.
We had supper in the kitchen, and Ursula waited at table. A small fish was in the frying-pan, crisp and brown and tempting, and one could see that Marget was not expecting such respectable food as this. Ursula brought it, and Marget divided it between Satan and me, declining to take any of it herself; and was beginning to say she did not care for fish to-day, but she did not finish the remark. It was because she noticed that another fish had appeared in the pan. She looked surprised, but did not say anything. She probably meant to inquire of Ursula about this later. There were other surprises: flesh and game and wines and fruits — things which had been strangers in that house lately; but Marget made no exclamations, and now even looked unsurprised, which was Satan’s influence, of course. Satan talked right along, and was entertaining, and made the time pass pleasantly and cheerfully; and although he told a good many lies, it was no harm in him, for he was only an angel and did not know any better. They do not know right from wrong; I knew this, because I remembered what he had said about it. He got on the good side of Ursula. He praised her to Marget, confidentially, but speaking just loud enough for Ursula to hear. He said she was a fine woman, and he hoped some day to bring her and his uncle together. Very soon Ursula was mincing and simpering around in a ridiculous girly way, and smoothing out her gown and prinking at herself like a foolish old hen, and all the time pretending she was not hearing what Satan was saying. I was ashamed, for it showed us to be what Satan considered us, a silly race and trivial. Satan said his uncle entertained a great deal, and to have a clever woman presiding over the festivities would double the attractions of the place.
“But your uncle is a gentleman, isn’t he?” asked Marget.
“Yes,” said Satan indifferently; “some even call him a Prince, out of compliment, but he is not bigoted; to him personal merit is everything, rank nothing.”
My hand was hanging down by my chair; Agnes came along and licked it; by this act a secret was revealed. I started to say, “It is all a mistake; this is just a common, ordinary cat; the hair-needles on her tongue point inward, not outward.” But the words did not come, because they couldn’t. Satan smiled upon me, and I understood.
When it was dark Marget took food and wine and fruit, in a basket, and hurried away to the jail, and Satan and I walked toward my home. I was thinking to myself that I should like to see what the inside of the jail was like; Satan overheard the thought, and the next moment we were in the jail. We were in the torture-chamber, Satan said. The rack was there, and the other instruments, and there was a smoky lantern or two hanging on the walls and helping to make the place look dim and dreadful. There were people there — and executioners — but as they took no notice of us, it meant that we were invisible. A young man lay bound, and Satan said he was suspected of being a heretic, and the executioners were about to inquire into it. They asked the man to confess to the charge, and he said he could not, for it was not true. Then they drove splinter after splinter under his nails, and he shrieked with the pain. Satan was not disturbed, but I could not endure it, and had to be whisked out of there. I was faint and sick, but the fresh air revived me, and we walked toward my home. I said it was a brutal thing.
“No, it was a human thing. You should not insult the brutes by such a misuse of that word; they have not deserved it,” and he went on talking like that. “It is like your paltry race — always lying, always claiming virtues which it hasn’t got, always denying them to the higher animals, which alone possess them. No brute ever does a cruel thing — that is the monopoly of those with the Moral Sense. When a brute inflicts pain he does it innocently; it is not wrong; for him there is no such thing as wrong. And he does not inflict pain for the pleasure of inflicting it — only man does that. Inspired by that mongrel Moral Sense of his! A sense whose function is to distinguish between right and wrong, with liberty to choose which of them he will do. Now what advantage can he get out of that? He is always choosing, and in nine cases out of ten he prefers the wrong. There shouldn’t be any wrong; and without the Moral Sense there couldn’t be any. And yet he is such an unreasoning creature that he is not able to perceive that the Moral Sense degrades him to the bottom layer of animated beings and is a shameful possession. Are you feeling better? Let me show you something.”
Chapter 6
Chapter 6
In a moment we were in a French village. We walked through a great factory of some sort, where men and women and little children were toiling in heat and dirt and a fog of dust; and they were clothed in rags, and drooped at their work, for they were worn and half starved, and weak and drowsy. Satan said:
“It is some more Moral Sense. The proprietors are rich, and very holy; but the wage they pay to these poor brothers and sisters of theirs is only enough to keep them from dropping dead with hunger. The work-hours are fourteen per day, winter and summer — from six in the morning till eight at night — little children and all. And they walk to and from the pigsties which they inhabit — four miles each way, through mud and slush, rain, snow, sleet, and storm, daily, year in and year out. They get four hours of sleep. They kennel together, three families in a room, in unimaginable filth and stench; and disease comes, and they die off like flies. Have they committed a crime, these mangy things? No. What have they done, that they are punished so? Nothing at all, except getting themselves born into your foolish race. You have seen how they treat a misdoer there in the jail; now you see how they treat the innocent and the worthy. Is your race logical? Are these ill-smelling innocents better off than that heretic? Indeed, no; his punishment is trivial compared with theirs. They broke him on the wheel and smashed him to rags and pulp after we left, and he is dead now, and free of your precious race; but these poor slaves here — why, they have been dying for years, and some of them will not escape from life for years to come. It is the Moral Sense which teaches the factory proprietors the difference between right and wrong — you perceive the result. They think themselves better than dogs. Ah, you are such an illogical, unreasoning race! And paltry — oh, unspeakably!”
Then he dropped all seriousness and just overstrained himself making fun of us, and deriding our pride in our warlike deeds, our great heroes, our imperishable fames, our mighty kings, our ancient aristocracies, our venerable history — and laughed and laughed till it was enough to make a person sick to hear him; and finally he sobered a little and said, “But, after all, it is not all ridiculous; there is a sort of pathos about it when one remembers how few are your days, how childish your pomps, and what shadows you are!”
Presently all things vanished suddenly from my sight, and I knew what it meant. The next moment we were walking along in our village; and down toward the river I saw the twinkling lights of the Golden Stag. Then in the dark I heard a joyful cry:
“He’s come again!”
It was Seppi Wohlmeyer. He had felt his blood leap and his spirits rise in a way that could mean only one thing, and he knew Satan was near, although it was too dark to see him. He came to us, and we walked along together, and Seppi poured out his gladness like water. It was as if he were a lover and had found his sweetheart who had been lost. Seppi was a smart and animated boy, and had enthusiasm and expression, and was a contrast to Nikolaus and me. He was full of the last new mystery, now — the disappearance of Hans Oppert, the village loafer. People were beginning to be curious about it, he said. He did not say anxious — curious was the right word, and strong enough. No one had seen Hans for a couple of days.
“Not since he did that brutal thing, you know,” he said.
“What brutal thing?” It was Satan that asked.
“Well, he is always clubbing his dog, which is a good dog, and his only friend, and is faithful, and loves him, and does no one any harm; and two days ago he was at it again, just for nothing — just for pleasure — and the dog was howling and begging, and Theodor and I begged, too, but he threatened us, and struck the dog again with all his might and knocked one of his eyes out, and he said to us, `There, I hope you are satisfied now; that’s what you have got for him by your damned meddling’ — and he laughed, the heartless brute.” Seppi’s voice trembled with pity and anger. I guessed what Satan would say, and he said it.
“There is that misused word again — that shabby slander. Brutes do not act like that, but only men.”
“Well, it was inhuman, anyway.”
“No, it wasn’t, Seppi; it was human — quite distinctly human. It is not pleasant to hear you libel the higher animals by attributing to them dispositions which they are free from, and which are found nowhere but in the human heart. None of the higher animals is tainted with the disease called the Moral Sense. Purify your language, Seppi; drop those lying phrases out of it.”
He spoke pretty sternly — for him — and I was sorry I hadn’t warned Seppi to be more particular about the word he used. I knew how he was feeling. He would not want to offend Satan; he would rather offend all his kin. There was an uncomfortable silence, but relief soon came, for that poor dog came along now, with his eye hanging down, and went straight to Satan, and began to moan and mutter brokenly, and Satan began to answer in the same way, and it was plain that they were talking together in the dog language. We all sat down in the grass, in the moonlight, for the clouds were breaking away now, and Satan took the dog’s head in his lap and put the eye back in its place, and the dog was comfortable, and he wagged his tail and licked Satan’s hand, and looked thankful and said the same; I knew he was saying it, though I did not understand the words. Then the two talked together a bit, and Satan said:
“He says his master was drunk.”
“Yes, he was,” said we.
“And an hour later he fell over the precipice there beyond the Cliff Pasture.”
“We know the place; it is three miles from here.”
“And the dog has been often to the village, begging people to go there, but he was only driven away and not listened to.”
We remembered it, but hadn’t understood what he wanted.
“He only wanted help for the man who had misused him, and he thought only of that, and has had no food nor sought any. He has watched by his master two nights. What do you think of your race? Is heaven reserved for it, and this dog ruled out, as your teachers tell you? Can your race add anything to this dog’s stock of morals and magnanimities?” He spoke to the creature, who jumped up, eager and happy, and apparently ready for orders and impatient to execute them. “Get some men; go with the dog — he will show you that carrion; and take a priest along to arrange about insurance, for death is near.”
With the last word he vanished, to our sorrow and disappointment. We got the men and Father Adolf, and we saw the man die. Nobody cared but the dog; he mourned and grieved, and licked the dead face, and could not be comforted. We buried him where he was, and without a coffin, for he had no money, and no friend but the dog. If we had been an hour earlier the priest would have been in time to send that poor creature to heaven, but now he was gone down into the awful fires, to burn forever. It seemed such a pity that in a world where so many people have difficulty to put in their time, one little hour could not have been spared for this poor creature who needed it so much, and to whom it would have made the difference between eternal joy and eternal pain. It gave an appalling idea of the value of an hour, and I thought I could never waste one again without remorse and terror. Seppi was depressed and grieved, and said it must be so much better to be a dog and not run such awful risks. We took this one home with us and kept him for our own. Seppi had a very good thought as we were walking along, and it cheered us up and made us feel much better. He said the dog had forgiven the man that had wronged him so, and maybe God would accept that absolution.
There was a very dull week, now, for Satan did not come, nothing much was going on, and we boys could not venture to go and see Marget, because the nights were moonlit and our parents might find us out if we tried. But we came across Ursula a couple of times taking a walk in the meadows beyond the river to air the cat, and we learned from her that things were going well. She had natty new clothes on and bore a prosperous look. The four groschen a day were arriving without a break, but were not being spent for food and wine and such things — the cat attended to all that.
Marget was enduring her forsakenness and isolation fairly well, all things considered, and was cheerful, by help of Wilhelm Meidling. She spent an hour or two every night in the jail with her uncle, and had fattened him up with the cat’s contributions. But she was curious to know more about Philip Traum, and hoped I would bring him again. Ursula was curious about him herself, and asked a good many questions about his uncle. It made the boys laugh, for I had told them the nonsense Satan had been stuffing her with. She got no satisfaction out of us, our tongues being tied.
Ursula gave us a small item of information: money being plenty now, she had taken on a servant to help about the house and run errands. She tried to tell it in a commonplace, matter-of-course way, but she was so set up by it and so vain of it that her pride in it leaked out pretty
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Marget Was Cheerful By Help of Wilhelm Meidling
plainly. It was beautiful to see her veiled delight in this grandeur, poor old thing, but when we heard the name of the servant we wondered if she had been altogether wise; for although we were young, and often thoughtless, we had fairly good perception on some matters. This boy was Gottfried Narr, a dull, good creature, with no harm in him and nothing against him personally; still, he was under a cloud, and properly so, for it had not been six months since a social blight had mildewed the family — his grandmother had been burned as a witch. When that kind of a malady is in the blood it does not always come out with just one burning. Just now was not a good time for Ursula and Marget to be having dealings with a member of such a family, for the witch-terror had risen higher during the past year than it had ever reached in the memory of the oldest villagers. The mere mention of a witch was almost enough to frighten us out of our wits. This was natural enough, because of late years there were more kinds of witches than there used to be; in old times it had been only old women, but of late years they were of all ages — even children of eight and nine; it was getting so that anybody might turn out to be a familiar of the Devil — age and sex hadn’t anything to do with it. In our little region we had tried to extirpate the witches, but the more of them we burned the more of the breed rose up in their places.
Once, in a school for girls only ten miles away, the teachers found that the back of one of the girls was all red and inflamed, and they were greatly frightened, believing it to be the Devil’s marks. The girl was scared, and begged them not to denounce her, and said it was only fleas; but of course it would not do to let the matter rest there. All the girls were examined, and eleven out of the fifty were badly marked, the rest less so. A commission was appointed, but the eleven only cried for their mothers and would not confess. Then they were shut up, each by herself, in the dark, and put on black bread and water for ten days and nights; and by that time they were haggard and wild, and their eyes were dry and they did not cry any more, but only sat and mumbled, and would not take the food. Then one of them confessed, and said they had often ridden through the air on broomsticks to the witches’ Sabbath, and in a bleak place high up in the mountains had danced and drunk and caroused with several hundred other witches and the Evil One, and all had conducted themselves in a scandalous way and had reviled the priests and blasphemed God. That is what she said — not in narrative form, for she was not able to remember any of the details without having them called to her mind one after the other; but the commission did that, for they knew just what questions to ask, they being all written down for the use of witch-commissioners two centuries before. They asked, “Did you do so and so?” and she always said yes, and looked weary and tired, and took no interest in it. And so when the other ten heard that this one confessed, they confessed, too, and answered yes to the questions. Then they were burned at the stake all together, which was just and right; and everybody went from all the countryside to see it. I went, too; but when I saw that one of them was a bonny, sweet girl I used to play with, and looked so pitiful there chained to the stake, and her mother crying over her and devouring her with kisses and clinging around her neck, and saying, “Oh, my God! oh, my God!” it was too dreadful, and I went away.
It was bitter cold weather when Gottfried’s grandmother was burned. It was charged that she had cured bad headaches by kneading the person’s head and neck with her fingers — as she said — but really by the Devil’s help, as everybody knew. They were going to examine her, but she stopped them, and confessed straight off that her power was from the Devil. So they appointed to burn her next morning, early, in our market-square. The officer who was to prepare the fire was there first, and prepared it. She was there next — brought by the constables, who left her and went to fetch another witch. Her family did not come with her. They might be reviled, maybe stoned, if the people were excited. I came, and gave her an apple. She was squatting at the fire, warming herself and waiting; and her old lips and hands were blue with the cold. A stranger came next. He was a traveler, passing through; and he spoke to her gently, and, seeing nobody but me there to hear, said he was sorry for her. And he asked if what she confessed was true, and she said no. He looked surprised and still more sorry then, and asked her:
“Then why did you confess?”
“I am old and very poor,” she said, “and I work for my living. There was no way but to confess. If I hadn’t they might have set me free. That would ruin me, for no one would forget that I had been suspected of being a witch, and so I would get no more work, and wherever I went they would set the dogs on me. In a little while I would starve. The fire is best; it is soon over. You have been good to me, you two, and I thank you.”
She snuggled closer to the fire, and put out her hands to warm them, the snow-flakes descending soft and still on her old gray head and making it white and whiter. The crowd was gathering now, and an egg came flying and struck her in the eye, and broke and ran down her face. There was a laugh at that.
I told Satan all about the eleven girls and the old woman, once, but it did not affect him. He only said it was the human race, and what the human race did was of no consequence. And he said he had seen it made; and it was not made of clay; it was made of mud — part of it was, anyway. I knew what he meant by that — the Moral Sense. He saw the thought in my head, and it tickled him and made him laugh. Then he called a bullock out of a pasture and petted it and talked with it, and said:
“There — he wouldn’t drive children mad with hunger and fright and loneliness, and then burn them for confessing to things invented for them which had never happened. And neither would he break the hearts of innocent, poor old women and make them afraid to trust themselves among their own race; and he would not insult them in their death-agony. For he is not besmirched with the Moral Sense, but is as the angels are, and knows no wrong, and never does it.”
Lovely as he was, Satan could be cruelly offensive when he chose; and he always chose when the human race was brought to his attention. He always turned up his nose at it, and never had a kind word for it.
Well, as I was saying, we boys doubted if it was a good time for Ursula to be hiring a member of the Narr family. We were right. When the people found it out they were naturally indignant. And, moreover, since Marget and Ursula hadn’t enough to eat themselves, where was the money coming from to feed another mouth? That is what they wanted to know; and in order to find out they stopped avoiding Gottfried and began to seek his society and have sociable conversations with him. He was pleased — not thinking any harm and not seeing the trap — and so he talked innocently along, and was no discreeter than a cow.
“Money!” he said; “they’ve got plenty of it. They pay me two groschen a week, besides my keep. And they live on the fat of the land, I can tell you; the prince himself can’t beat their table.”
This astonishing statement was conveyed by the astrologer to Father Adolf on a Sunday morning when he was returning from mass. He was deeply moved, and said:
“This must be looked into.”
He said there must be witchcraft at the bottom of it, and told the villagers to resume relations with Marget and Ursula in a private and unostentatious way, and keep both eyes open. They were told to keep their own counsel, and not rouse the suspicions of the household. The villagers were at first a bit reluctant to enter such a dreadful place, but the priest said they would be under his protection while there, and no harm could come to them, particularly if they carried a trifle of holy water along and kept their beads and crosses handy. This satisfied them and made them willing to go; envy and malice made the baser sort even eager to go.
And so poor Marget began to have company again, and was as pleased as a cat. She was like ‘most anybody else — just human, and happy in her prosperities and not averse from showing them off a little; and she was humanly grateful to have the warm shoulder turned to her and be smiled upon by her friends and the village again; for of all the hard things to bear, to be cut by your neighbors and left in contemptuous solitude is maybe the hardest.
The bars were down, and we could all go there now, and we did — our parents and all — day after day. The cat began to strain herself. She provided the top of everything for those companies, and in abundance — among them many a dish and many a wine which they had not tasted before and which they had not even heard of except at second-hand from the prince’s servants. And the tableware was much above ordinary, too.
Marget was troubled at times, and pursued Ursula with questions to an uncomfortable degree; but Ursula stood her ground and stuck to it that it was Providence, and said no word about the cat. Marget knew that nothing was impossible to Providence, but she could not help having doubts that this effort was from there, though she was afraid to say so, lest disaster come of it. Witchcraft occurred to her, but she put the thought aside, for this was before Gottfried joined the household, and she knew Ursula was pious and a bitter hater of witches. By the time Gottfried arrived Providence was established, unshakably intrenched, and getting all the gratitude. The cat made no murmur, but went on composedly improving in style and prodigality by experience.
In any community, big or little, there is always a fair proportion of people who are not malicious or unkind by nature, and who never do unkind things except when they are overmastered by fear, or when their self-interest is greatly in danger, or some such matter as that. Eseldorf had its proportion of such people, and ordinarily their good and gentle influence was felt, but these were not ordinary times — on account of the witch-dread — and so we did not seem to have any gentle and compassionate hearts left, to speak of. Every person was frightened at the unaccountable state of things at Marget’s house, not doubting that witchcraft was at the bottom of it, and fright frenzied their reason. Naturally there were some who pitied Marget and Ursula for the danger that was gathering about them, but naturally they did not say so; it would not have been safe. So the others had it all their own way, and there was none to advise the ignorant girl and the foolish woman and warn them to modify their doings. We boys wanted to warn them, but we backed down when it came to the pinch, being afraid. We found that we were not manly enough nor brave enough to do a generous action when there was a chance that it could get us into trouble. Neither of us confessed this poor spirit to the others, but did as other people would have done — dropped the subject and talked about something else. And I knew we all felt mean, eating and drinking Marget’s fine things along with those companies of spies, and petting her and complimenting her with the rest, and seeing with self-reproach how foolishly happy she was, and never saying a word to put her on her guard. And, indeed, she was happy, and as proud as a princess, and so grateful to have friends again. And all the time these people were watching with all their eyes and reporting all they saw to Father Adolf.
But he couldn’t make head or tail of the situation. There must be an enchanter somewhere on the premises, but who was it? Marget was not seen to do any jugglery, nor was Ursula, nor yet Gottfried; and still the wines and dainties never ran short, and a guest could not call for a thing and not get it. To produce these effects was usual enough with witches and enchanters — that part of it was not new; but to do it without any incantations, or even any rumblings or earthquakes or lightnings or apparitions — that was new, novel, wholly irregular. There was nothing in the books like this. Enchanted things were always unreal. Gold turned to dirt in an unenchanted atmosphere, food withered away and vanished. But this test failed in the present case. The spies brought samples: Father Adolf prayed over them, exorcised them, but it did no good; they remained sound and real, they yielded to natural decay only, and took the usual time to do it.
Father Adolf was not merely puzzled, he was also exasperated; for these evidences very nearly convinced him — privately — that there was no witchcraft in the matter. It did not wholly convince him, for this could be a new kind of witchcraft. There was a way to find out as to this: if this prodigal abundance of provender was not brought in from the outside, but produced on the premises, there was witchcraft, sure.
Chapter 7
Chapter 7
Marget announced a party, and invited forty people; the date for it was seven days away. This was a fine opportunity. Marget’s house stood by itself, and it could be easily watched. All the week it was watched night and day. Marget’s household went out and in as usual, but they carried nothing in their hands, and neither they nor others brought anything to the house. This was ascertained. Evidently rations for forty people were not being fetched. If they were furnished any sustenance it would have to be made on the premises. It was true that Marget went out with a basket every evening, but the spies ascertained that she always brought it back empty.
The guests arrived at noon and filled the place. Father Adolf followed; also, after a little, the astrologer, without invitation. The spies had informed him that neither at the back nor the front had any parcels been brought in. He entered, and found the eating and drinking going on finely, and everything progressing in a lively and festive way. He glanced around and perceived that many of the cooked delicacies and all of the native and foreign fruits were of a perishable character, and he also recognized that these were fresh and perfect. No apparitions, no incantations, no thunder. That settled it. This was witchcraft. And not only that, but of a new kind — a kind never dreamed of before. It was a prodigious power, an illustrious power; he resolved to discover its secret. The announcement of it would resound throughout the world, penetrate to the remotest lands, paralyze all the nations with amazement — and carry his name with it, and make him renowned forever. It was a wonderful piece of luck, a splendid piece of luck; the glory of it made him dizzy.
All the house made room for him; Marget politely seated him; Ursula ordered Gottfried to bring a special table for him. Then she decked it and furnished it, and asked for his orders.
“Bring me what you will,” he said.
The two servants brought supplies from the pantry, together with white wine and red — a bottle of each. The astrologer, who very likely had never seen such delicacies before, poured out a beaker of red wine, drank it off, poured another, then began to eat with a grand appetite.
I was not expecting Satan, for it was more than a week since I had seen or heard of him, but now he came in — I knew it by the feel, though people were in the way and I could not see him. I heard him apologizing for intruding; and he was going away, but Marget urged him to stay, and he thanked her and stayed. She brought him along, introducing him to the girls, and to Meidling, and to some of the elders; and there was quite a rustle of whispers: “It’s the young stranger we hear so much about and can’t get sight of, he is away so much.” “Dear, dear, but he is beautiful — what is his name?” “Philip Traum.” “Ah, it fits him!” (You see, “Traum” is German for “Dream.”) “What does he do?” “Studying for the ministry, they say.” “His face is his fortune — he’ll be a cardinal some day.” “Where is his home?” “Away down somewhere in the tropics, they say — has a rich uncle down there.” And so on. He made his way at once; everybody was anxious to know him and talk with him. Everybody noticed how cool and fresh it was, all of a sudden, and wondered at it, for they could see that the sun was beating down the same as before, outside, and the sky was clear of clouds, but no one guessed the reason, of course.
The astrologer had drunk his second beaker; he poured out a third. He set the bottle down, and by accident overturned it. He seized it before much was spilled, and held it up to the light, saying, “What a pity — it is royal wine.” Then his face lighted with joy or triumph, or something, and he said, “Quick! Bring a bowl.”
It was brought — a four-quart one. He took up that two-pint bottle and began to pour; went on pouring, the red liquor gurgling and gushing into the white bowl and rising higher and higher up its sides, everybody staring and holding their breath — and presently the bowl was full to the brim.
“Look at the bottle,” he said, holding it up; “it is full yet!” I glanced at Satan, and in that moment he vanished. Then Father Adolf rose up, flushed and excited, crossed himself, and began to thunder in his great voice, “This house is bewitched and accursed!” People began to cry and shriek and crowd toward the door. “I summon this detected household to — “
His words were cut off short. His face became red, then purple, but he could not utter another sound. Then I saw Satan, a transparent film, melt into the astrologer’s body; then the astrologer put up his hand, and apparently in his own voice said, “Wait — remain where you are.” All stopped where they stood. “Bring a funnel!” Ursula brought it, trembling and scared, and he stuck it in the bottle and took up the great bowl and began to pour the wine back, the people gazing and dazed with astonishment, for they knew the bottle was already full before he began. He emptied the whole of the bowl into the bottle, then smiled out over the room, chuckled, and said, indifferently: “It is nothing — anybody can do it! With my powers I can even do much more.”
A frightened cry burst out everywhere. “Oh, my God, he is possessed!” and there was a tumultuous rush for the
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The Astrologer Emptied the Whole of the Bowl into the Bottle
door which swiftly emptied the house of all who did not belong in it except us boys and Meidling. We boys knew the secret, and would have told it if we could, but we couldn’t. We were very thankful to Satan for furnishing that good help at the needful time.
Marget was pale, and crying; Meidling looked kind of petrified; Ursula the same; but Gottfried was the worst — he couldn’t stand, he was so weak and scared. For he was of a witch family, you know, and it would be bad for him to be suspected. Agnes came loafing in, looking pious and unaware, and wanted to rub up against Ursula and be petted, but Ursula was afraid of her and shrank away from her, but pretending she was not meaning any incivility, for she knew very well it wouldn’t answer to have strained relations with that kind of a cat. But we boys took Agnes and petted her, for Satan would not have befriended her if he had not had a good opinion of her, and that was indorsement enough for us. He seemed to trust anything that hadn’t the Moral Sense.
Outside, the guests, panic-stricken, scattered in every direction and fled in a pitiable state of terror; and such a tumult as they made with their running and sobbing and shrieking and shouting that soon all the village came flocking from their houses to see what had happened, and they thronged the street and shouldered and jostled one another in excitement and fright; and then Father Adolf appeared, and they fell apart in two walls like the cloven Red Sea, and presently down this lane the astrologer came striding and mumbling, and where he passed the lanes surged back in packed masses, and fell silent with awe, and their eyes stared and their breasts heaved, and several women fainted; and when he was gone by the crowd swarmed together and followed him at a distance, talking excitedly and asking questions and finding out the facts. Finding out the facts and passing them on to others, with improvements — improvements which soon enlarged the bowl of wine to a barrel, and made the one bottle hold it all and yet remain empty to the last.
When the astrologer reached the market-square he went straight to a juggler, fantastically dressed, who was keeping three brass balls in the air, and took them from him and faced around upon the approaching crowd and said: “This poor clown is ignorant of his art. Come forward and see an expert perform.”
So saying, he tossed the balls up one after another and set them whirling in a slender bright oval in the air, and added another, then another and another, and soon — no one seeing whence he got them — adding, adding, adding, the oval lengthening all the time, his hands moving so swiftly that they were just a web or a blur and not distinguishable as hands; and such as counted said there were now a hundred balls in the air. The spinning great oval reached up twenty feet in the air and was a shining and glinting and wonderful sight. Then he folded his arms and told the balls to go on spinning without his help — and they did it. After a couple of minutes he said, “There, that will do,” and the oval broke and came crashing down, and the balls scattered abroad and rolled every whither. And wherever one of them came the people fell back in dread, and no one would touch it. It made him laugh, and he scoffed at the people and called them cowards and old women. Then he turned and saw the tight-rope, and said foolish people were daily wasting their money to see a clumsy and ignorant varlet degrade that beautiful art; now they should see the work of a master. With that he made a spring into the air and lit firm on his feet on the rope. Then he hopped the whole length of it back and forth on one foot, with his hands clasped over his eyes; and next he began to throw somersaults, both backward and forward, and threw twenty-seven.
The people murmured, for the astrologer was old, and always before had been halting of movement and at times even lame, but he was nimble enough now and went on with his antics in the liveliest manner. Finally he sprang lightly down and walked away, and passed up the road and around the corner and disappeared. Then that great, pale, silent, solid crowd drew a deep breath and looked into one another’s faces as if they said: “Was it real? Did you see it, or was it only I — and was I dreaming?” Then they broke into a low murmur of talking, and fell apart in couples, and moved toward their homes, still talking in that awed way, with faces close together and laying a hand on an arm and making other such gestures as people make when they have been deeply impressed by something.
We boys followed behind our fathers, and listened, catching all we could of what they said; and when they sat down in our house and continued their talk they still had us for company. They were in a sad mood, for it was certain, they said, that disaster for the village must follow this awful visitation of witches and devils. Then my father remembered that Father Adolf had been struck dumb at the moment of his denunciation.
“They have not ventured to lay their hands upon an anointed servant of God before,” he said; “and how they could have dared it this time I cannot make out, for he wore his crucifix. Isn’t it so?”
“Yes,” said the others, “we saw it.”
“It is serious, friends, it is very serious. Always before, we had a protection. It has failed.”
The others shook, as with a sort of chill, and muttered those words over — “It has failed.” “God has forsaken us.”
“It is true,” said Seppi Wohlmeyer’s father; “there is nowhere to look for help.”
“The people will realize this,” said Nikolaus’s father, the judge, “and despair will take away their courage and their energies. We have indeed fallen upon evil times.”
He sighed, and Wohlmeyer said, in a troubled voice: “The report of it all will go about the country, and our village will be shunned as being under the displeasure of God. The Golden Stag will know hard times.”
“True, neighbor,” said my father; “all of us will suffer — all in repute, many in estate. And, good God! — “
“What is it?”
“That can come — to finish us!”
“Name it — um Gottes Willen!”
“The Interdict!”
It smote like a thunderclap, and they were like to swoon with the terror of it. Then the dread of this calamity roused their energies, and they stopped brooding and began to consider ways to avert it. They discussed this, that, and the other way, and talked till the afternoon was far spent, then confessed that at present they could arrive at no decision. So they parted sorrowfully, with oppressed hearts which were filled with bodings.
While they were saying their parting words I slipped out and set my course for Marget’s house to see what was happening there. I met many people, but none of them greeted me. It ought to have been surprising, but it was not, for they were so distraught with fear and dread that they were not in their right minds, I think; they were white and haggard, and walked like persons in a dream, their eyes open but seeing nothing, their lips moving but uttering nothing, and worriedly clasping and unclasping their hands without knowing it.
At Marget’s it was like a funeral. She and Wilhelm sat together on the sofa, but said nothing, and not even holding hands. Both were steeped in gloom, and Marget’s eyes were red from the crying she had been doing. She said:
“I have been begging him to go, and come no more, and so save himself alive. I cannot bear to be his murderer. This house is bewitched, and no inmate will escape the fire. But he will not go, and he will be lost with the rest.”
Wilhelm said he would not go; if there was danger for her, his place was by her, and there he would remain. Then she began to cry again, and it was all so mournful that I wished I had stayed away. There was a knock, now, and Satan came in, fresh and cheery and beautiful, and brought that winy atmosphere of his and changed the whole thing. He never said a word about what had been happening, nor about the awful fears which were freezing the blood in the hearts of the community, but began to talk and rattle on about all manner of gay and pleasant things; and next about music — an artful stroke which cleared away the remnant of Marget’s depression and brought her spirits and her interests broad awake. She had not heard any one talk so well and so knowingly on that subject before, and she was so uplifted by it and so charmed that what she was feeling lit up her face and came out in her words; and Wilhelm noticed it and did not look as pleased as he ought to have done. And next Satan branched off into poetry, and recited some, and did it well, and Marget was charmed again; and again Wilhelm was not as pleased as he ought to have been, and this time Marget noticed it and was remorseful.
I fell asleep to pleasant music that night — the patter of rain upon the panes and the dull growling of distant thunder. Away in the night Satan came and roused me and said: “Come with me. Where shall we go?”
“Anywhere — so it is with you.”
Then there was a fierce glare of sunlight, and he said, “This is China.”
That was a grand surprise, and made me sort of drunk with vanity and gladness to think I had come so far — so much, much farther than anybody else in our village, including Bartel Sperling, who had such a great opinion of his travels. We buzzed around over that empire for more than half an hour, and saw the whole of it. It was wonderful, the spectacles we saw; and some were beautiful, others too horrible to think. For instance — However, I may go into that by and by, and also why Satan chose China for this excursion instead of another place; it would interrupt my tale to do it now. Finally we stopped flitting and lit.
We sat upon a mountain commanding a vast landscape of mountain-range and gorge and valley and plain and river, with cities and villages slumbering in the sunlight, and a glimpse of blue sea on the farther verge. It was a tranquil and dreamy picture, beautiful to the eye and restful to the spirit. If we could only make a change like that whenever we wanted to, the world would be easier to live in than it is, for change of scene shifts the mind’s burdens to the other shoulder and banishes old, shop-worn wearinesses from mind and body both.
We talked together, and I had the idea of trying to reform Satan and persuade him to lead a better life. I told him about all those things he had been doing, and begged him to be more considerate and stop making people unhappy. I said I knew he did not mean any harm, but that he ought to stop and consider the possible consequences of a thing before launching it in that impulsive and random way of his; then he would not make so much trouble. He was not hurt by this plain speech; he only looked amused and surprised, and said:
“What? I do random things? Indeed, I never do. I stop and consider possible consequences? Where is the need? I know what the consequences are going to be — always.”
“Oh, Satan, then how could you do these things?”
“Well, I will tell you, and you must understand if you can. You belong to a singular race. Every man is a suffering-machine and a happiness-machine combined. The two functions work together harmoniously, with a fine and delicate precision, on the give-and-take principle. For every happiness turned out in the one department the other stands ready to modify it with a sorrow or a pain — maybe a dozen. In most cases the man’s life is about equally divided between happiness and unhappiness. When this is not the case the unhappiness predominates — always; never the other. Sometimes a man’s make and disposition are such that his misery-machine is able to do nearly all the business. Such a man goes through life almost ignorant of what happiness is. Everything he touches, everything he does, brings a misfortune upon him. You have seen such people? To that kind of a person life is not an advantage, is it? It is only a disaster. Sometimes for an hour’s happiness a man’s machinery makes him pay years of misery. Don’t you know that? It happens every now and then. I will give you a case or two presently. Now the people of your village are nothing to me — you know that, don’t you?”
I did not like to speak out too flatly, so I said I had suspected it.
“Well, it is true that they are nothing to me. It is not possible that they should be. The difference between them and me is abysmal, immeasurable. They have no intellect.”
“No intellect?”
“Nothing that resembles it. At a future time I will examine what man calls his mind and give you the details of that chaos, then you will see and understand. Men have nothing in common with me — there is no point of contact; they have foolish little feelings and foolish little vanities and impertinences and ambitions; their foolish little life is but a laugh, a sigh, and extinction; and they have no sense. Only the Moral Sense. I will show you what I mean. Here is a red spider, not so big as a pin’s head. Can you imagine an elephant being interested in him — caring whether he is happy or isn’t, or whether he is wealthy or poor, or whether his sweetheart returns his love or not, or whether his mother is sick or well, or whether he is looked up to in society or not, or whether his enemies will smite him or his friends desert him, or whether his hopes will suffer blight or his political ambitions fail, or whether he shall die in the bosom of his family or neglected and despised in a foreign land? These things can never be important to the elephant; they are nothing to him; he cannot shrink his sympathies to the microscopic size of them. Man is to me as the red spider is to the elephant. The elephant has nothing against the spider — he cannot get down to that remote level; I have nothing against man. The elephant is indifferent; I am indifferent. The elephant would not take the trouble to do the spider an ill turn; if he took the notion he might do him a good turn, if it came in his way and cost nothing. I have done men good service, but no ill turns.
“The elephant lives a century, the red spider a day; in power, intellect, and dignity the one creature is separated from the other by a distance which is simply astronomical. Yet in these, as in all qualities, man is immeasurably further below me than is the wee spider below the elephant.
“Man’s mind clumsily and tediously and laboriously patches little trivialities together and gets a result — such as it is. My mind creates! Do you get the force of that? Creates anything it desires — and in a moment. Creates without material. Creates fluids, solids, colors — anything, everything — out of the airy nothing which is called Thought. A man imagines a silk thread, imagines a machine to make it, imagines a picture, then by weeks of labor embroiders it on canvas with the thread. I think the whole thing, and in a moment it is before you — created.
“I think a poem, music, the record of a game of chess — anything — and it is there. This is the immortal mind — nothing is beyond its reach. Nothing can obstruct my vision; the rocks are transparent to me, and darkness is daylight. I do not need to open a book; I take the whole of its contents into my mind at a single glance, through the cover; and in a million years I could not forget a single word of it, or its place in the volume. Nothing goes on in the skull of man, bird, fish, insect, or other creature which can be hidden from me. I pierce the learned man’s brain with a single glance, and the treasures which cost him threescore years to accumulate are mine; he can forget, and he does forget, but I retain.
“Now, then, I perceive by your thoughts that you are understanding me fairly well. Let us proceed. Circumstances might so fall out that the elephant could like the spider — supposing he can see it — but he could not love it. His love is for his own kind — for his equals. An angel’s love is sublime, adorable, divine, beyond the imagination of man — infinitely beyond it! But it is limited to his own august order. If it fell upon one of your race for only an instant, it would consume its object to ashes. No, we cannot love men, but we can be harmlessly indifferent to them; we can also like them, sometimes. I like you and the boys, I like Father Peter, and for your sakes I am doing all these things for the villagers.”
He saw that I was thinking a sarcasm, and he explained his position.
“I have wrought well for the villagers, though it does not look like it on the surface. Your race never know good fortune from ill. They are always mistaking the one for the other. It is because they cannot see into the future. What I am doing for the villagers will bear good fruit some day; in some cases to themselves; in others, to unborn generations of men. No one will ever know that I was the cause, but it will be none the less true, for all that. Among you boys you have a game: you stand a row of bricks on end a few inches apart; you push a brick, it knocks its neighbor over, the neighbor knocks over the next brick — and so on till all the row is prostrate. That is human life. A child’s first act knocks over the initial brick, and the rest will follow inexorably. If you could see into the future, as I can, you would see everything that was going to happen to that creature; for nothing can change the order of its life after the first event has determined it. That is, nothing will change it, because each act unfailingly begets an act, that act begets another, and so on to the end, and the seer can look forward down the line and see just when each act is to have birth, from cradle to grave.”
“Does God order the career?”
“Foreordain it? No. The man’s circumstances and environment order it. His first act determines the second and all that follow after. But suppose, for argument’s sake, that the man should skip one of these acts; an apparently trifling one, for instance; suppose that it had been appointed that on a certain day, at a certain hour and minute and second and fraction of a second he should go to the well, and he didn’t go. That man’s career would change utterly, from that moment; thence to the grave it would be wholly different from the career which his first act as a child had arranged for him. Indeed, it might be that if he had gone to the well he would have ended his career on a throne, and that omitting to do it would set him upon a career that would lead to beggary and a pauper’s grave. For instance: if at any time — say in boyhood — Columbus had skipped the triflingest little link in the chain of acts projected and made inevitable by his first childish act, it would have changed his whole subsequent life, and he would have become a priest and died obscure in an Italian village, and America would not have been discovered for two centuries afterward. I know this. To skip any one of the billion acts in Columbus’s chain would have wholly changed his life. I have examined his billion of possible careers, and in only one of them occurs the discovery of America. You people do not suspect that all of your acts are of one size and importance, but it is true; to snatch at an appointed fly is as big with fate for you as is any other appointed act — “
“As the conquering of a continent, for instance?”
“Yes. Now, then, no man ever does drop a link — the thing has never happened! Even when he is trying to make up his mind as to whether he will do a thing or not, that itself is a link, an act, and has its proper place in his chain; and when he finally decides an act, that also was the thing which he was absolutely certain to do. You see, now, that a man will never drop a link in his chain. He cannot. If he made up his mind to try, that project would itself be an unavoidable link — a thought bound to occur to him at that precise moment, and made certain by the first act of his babyhood.”
It seemed so dismal!
“He is a prisoner for life,” I said sorrowfully, “and cannot get free.”
“No, of himself he cannot get away from the consequences of his first childish act. But I can free him.”
I looked up wistfully.
“I have changed the careers of a number of your villagers.”
I tried to thank him, but found it difficult, and let it drop.
“I shall make some other changes. You know that little Lisa Brandt?”
“Oh yes, everybody does. My mother says she is so sweet and so lovely that she is not like any other child. She says she will be the pride of the village when she grows up; and its idol, too, just as she is now.”
“I shall change her future.”
“Make it better?” I asked.
“Yes. And I will change the future of Nikolaus.”
I was glad, this time, and said, “I don’t need to ask about his case; you will be sure to do generously by him.”
“It is my intention.”
Straight off I was building that great future of Nicky’s in my imagination, and had already made a renowned general of him and hofmeister at the court, when I noticed that Satan was waiting for me to get ready to listen again. I was ashamed of having exposed my cheap imaginings to him, and was expecting some sarcasms, but it did not happen. He proceeded with his subject:
“Nicky’s appointed life is sixty-two years.”
“That’s grand!” I said.
“Lisa’s, thirty-six. But, as I told you, I shall change their lives and those ages. Two minutes and a quarter from now Nikolaus will wake out of his sleep and find the rain blowing in. It was appointed that he should turn over and go to sleep again. But I have appointed that he shall get up and close the window first. That trifle will change his career entirely. He will rise in the morning two minutes later than the chain of his life had appointed him to rise. By consequence, thenceforth nothing will ever happen to him in accordance with the details of the old chain.” He took out his watch and sat looking at it a few moments, then said: “Nikolaus has risen to close the window. His life is changed, his new career has begun. There will be consequences.”
It made me feel creepy; it was uncanny.
“But for this change certain things would happen twelve days from now. For instance, Nikolaus would save Lisa from drowning. He would arrive on the scene at exactly the right moment — four minutes past ten, the long-ago appointed instant of time — and the water would be shoal, the achievement easy and certain. But he will arrive some seconds too late, now; Lisa will have struggled into deeper water. He will do his best, but both will drown.”
“Oh, Satan! oh, dear Satan!” I cried, with the tears rising in my eyes, “save them! Don’t let it happen. I can’t bear to lose Nikolaus, he is my loving playmate and friend; and think of Lisa’s poor mother!”
I clung to him and begged and pleaded, but he was not moved. He made me sit down again, and told me I must hear him out.
“I have changed Nikolaus’s life, and this has changed Lisa’s. If I had not done this, Nikolaus would save Lisa, then he would catch cold from his drenching; one of your race’s fantastic and desolating scarlet fevers would follow, with pathetic after-effects; for forty-six years he would lie in his bed a paralytic log, deaf, dumb, blind, and praying night and day for the blessed relief of death. Shall I change his life back?”
“Oh no! Oh, not for the world! In charity and pity leave it as it is.”
“It is best so. I could not have changed any other link in his life and done him so good a service. He had a billion possible careers, but not one of them was worth living; they were charged full with miseries and disasters. But for my intervention he would do his brave deed twelve days from now — a deed begun and ended in six minutes — and get for all reward those forty-six years of sorrow and suffering I told you of. It is one of the cases I was thinking of awhile ago when I said that sometimes an act which brings the actor an hour’s happiness and self-satisfaction is paid for — or punished — by years of suffering.”
I wondered what poor little Lisa’s early death would save her from. He answered the thought:
“From ten years of pain and slow recovery from an accident, and then from nineteen years’ pollution, shame, depravity, crime, ending with death at the hands of the executioner. Twelve days hence she will die; her mother would save her life if she could. Am I not kinder than her mother?”
“Yes — oh, indeed yes; and wiser.”
“Father Peter’s case is coming on presently. He will be acquitted, through unassailable proofs of his innocence.”
“Why, Satan, how can that be? Do you really think it?”
“Indeed, I know it. His good name will be restored, and the rest of his life will be happy.”
“I can believe it. To restore his good name will have that effect.”
“His happiness will not proceed from that cause. I shall change his life that day, for his good. He will never know his good name has been restored.”
In my mind — and modestly — I asked for particulars, but Satan paid no attention to my thought. Next, my mind wandered to the astrologer, and I wondered where he might be.
“In the moon,” said Satan, with a fleeting sound which I believed was a chuckle. “I’ve got him on the cold side of it, too. He doesn’t know where he is, and is not having a pleasant time; still, it is good enough for him, a good place for his star studies. I shall need him presently; then I shall bring him back and possess him again. He has a long and cruel and odious life before him, but I will change that, for I have no feeling against him and am quite willing to do him a kindness. I think I shall get him burned.”
He had such strange notions of kindness! But angels are made so, and do not know any better. Their ways are not like our ways; and, besides, human beings are nothing to them; they think they are only freaks. It seems to me odd that he should put the astrologer so far away; he could have dumped him in Germany just as well, where he would be handy.
“Far away?” said Satan. “To me no place is far away; distance does not exist for me. The sun is less than a hundred million miles from here, and the light that is falling upon us has taken eight minutes to come; but I can make that flight, or any other, in a fraction of time so minute that it cannot be measured by a watch. I have but to think the journey, and it is accomplished.”
I held out my hand and said, “The light lies upon it; think it into a glass of wine, Satan.”
He did it. I drank the wine.
“Break the glass,” he said.
I broke it.
“There — you see it is real. The villagers thought the brass balls were magic stuff and as perishable as smoke. They were afraid to touch them. You are a curious lot — your race. But come along; I have business. I will put you to bed.” Said and done. Then he was gone; but his voice came back to me through the rain and darkness saying, “Yes, tell Seppi, but no other.”
It was the answer to my thought.
Chapter 8
Chapter 8
Sleep would not come. It was not because I was proud of my travels and excited about having been around the big world to China, and feeling contemptuous of Bartel Sperling, “the traveler,” as he called himself, and looked down upon us others because he had been to Vienna once and was the only Eseldorf boy who had made such a journey and seen the world’s wonders. At another time that would have kept me awake, but it did not affect me now. No, my mind was filled with Nikolaus, my thoughts ran upon him only, and the good days we had seen together at romps and frolics in the woods and the fields and the river in the long summer days, and skating and sliding in the winter when our parents thought we were in school. And now he was going out of this young life, and the summers and winters would come and go, and we others would rove and play as before, but his place would be vacant; we should see him no more. To-morrow he would not suspect, but would be as he had always been, and it would shock me to hear him laugh, and see him do lightsome and frivolous things, for to me he would be a corpse, with waxen hands and dull eyes, and I should see the shroud around his face; and next day he would not suspect, nor the next, and all the time his handful of days would be wasting swiftly away and that awful thing coming nearer and nearer, his fate closing steadily around him and no one knowing it but Seppi and me. Twelve days — only twelve days. It was awful to think of. I noticed that in my thoughts I was not calling him by his familiar names, Nick and Nicky, but was speaking of him by his full name, and reverently, as one speaks of the dead. Also, as incident after incident of our comradeship came thronging into my mind out of the past, I noticed that they were mainly cases where I had wronged him or hurt him, and they rebuked me and reproached me, and my heart was wrung with remorse, just as it is when we remember our unkindnesses to friends who have passed beyond the veil, and we wish we could have them back again, if only for a moment, so that we could go on our knees to them and say, “Have pity, and forgive.”
Once when we were nine years old he went a long errand of nearly two miles for the fruiterer, who gave him a splendid big apple for reward, and he was flying home with it, almost beside himself with astonishment and delight, and I met him, and he let me look at the apple, not thinking of treachery, and I ran off with it, eating it as I ran, he following me and begging; and when he overtook me I offered him the core, which was all that was left; and I laughed. Then he turned away, crying, and said he had meant to give it to his little sister. That smote me, for she was slowly getting well of a sickness, and it would have been a proud moment for him, to see her joy and surprise and have her caresses. But I was ashamed to say I was ashamed, and only said something rude and mean, to pretend I did not care, and he made no reply in words, but there was a wounded look in his face as he turned away toward his home which rose before me many times in after years, in the night, and reproached me and made me ashamed again. It had grown dim in my mind, by and by, then it disappeared; but it was back now, and not dim.
Once at school, when we were eleven, I upset my ink and spoiled four copy-books, and was in danger of severe punishment; but I put it upon him, and he got the whipping.
And only last year I had cheated him in a trade, giving him a large fish-hook which was partly broken through for three small sound ones. The first fish he caught broke the hook, but he did not know I was blamable, and he refused to take back one of the small hooks which my conscience forced me to offer him, but said, “A trade is a trade; the hook was bad, but that was not your fault.”
No, I could not sleep. These little, shabby wrongs upbraided me and tortured me, and with a pain much sharper than one feels when the wrongs have been done to the living. Nikolaus was living, but no matter; he was to me as one already dead. The wind was still moaning about the eaves, the rain still pattering upon the panes.
In the morning I sought out Seppi and told him. It was down by the river. His lips moved, but he did not say anything, he only looked dazed and stunned, and his face turned very white. He stood like that a few moments, the tears welling into his eyes, then he turned away and I locked my arm in his and we walked along thinking, but not speaking. We crossed the bridge and wandered through the meadows and up among the hills and the woods, and at last the talk came and flowed freely, and it was all about Nikolaus and was a recalling of the life we had lived with him. And every now and then Seppi said, as if to himself:
“Twelve days! — less than twelve days.”
We said we must be with him all the time; we must have all of him we could; the days were precious now. Yet we did not go to seek him. It would be like meeting the dead, and we were afraid. We did not say it, but that was what we were feeling. And so it gave us a shock when we turned a curve and came upon Nikolaus face to face. He shouted, gaily:
“Hi-hi! What is the matter? Have you seen a ghost?”
We couldn’t speak, but there was no occasion; he was willing to talk for us all, for he had just seen Satan and was in high spirits about it. Satan had told him about our trip to China, and he had begged Satan to take him a journey, and Satan had promised. It was to be a far journey, and wonderful and beautiful; and Nikolaus had begged him to take us, too, but he said no, he would take us some day, maybe, but not now. Satan would come for him on the 13th, and Nikolaus was already counting the hours, he was so impatient.
That was the fatal day. We were already counting the hours, too.
We wandered many a mile, always following paths which had been our favorites from the days when we were little, and always we talked about the old times. All the blitheness was with Nikolaus; we others could not shake off our depression. Our tone toward Nikolaus was so strangely gentle and tender and yearning that he noticed it, and was pleased; and we were constantly doing him deferential little offices of courtesy, and saying, “Wait, let me do that for you,” and that pleased him, too. I gave him seven fish-hooks — all I had — and made him take them; and Seppi gave him his new knife and a humming-top painted red and yellow — atonements for swindles practised upon him formerly, as I learned later, and probably no longer remembered by Nikolaus now. These things touched him, and he could not have believed that we loved him so; and his pride in it and gratefulness for it cut us to the heart, we were so undeserving of them. When we parted at last, he was radiant, and said he had never had such a happy day.
As we walked along homeward, Seppi said, “We always prized him, but never so much as now, when we are going to lose him.”
Next day and every day we spent all of our spare time with Nikolaus; and also added to it time which we (and he) stole from work and other duties, and this cost the three of us some sharp scoldings, and some threats of punishment. Every morning two of us woke with a start and a shudder, saying, as the days flew along, “Only ten days left;” “only nine days left;” “only eight;” “only seven.” Always it was narrowing. Always Nikolaus was gay and happy, and always puzzled because we were not. He wore his invention to the bone trying to invent ways to cheer us up, but it was only a hollow success; he could see that our jollity had no heart in it, and that the laughs we broke into came up against some obstruction or other and suffered damage and decayed into a sigh. He tried to find out what the matter was, so that he could help us out of our trouble or make it lighter by sharing it with us; so we had to tell many lies to deceive him and appease him.
But the most distressing thing of all was that he was always making plans, and often they went beyond the 13th! Whenever that happened it made us groan in spirit. All his mind was fixed upon finding some way to conquer our depression and cheer us up; and at last, when he had but three days to live, he fell upon the right idea and was jubilant over it — a boys-and-girls’ frolic and dance in the woods, up there where we first met Satan, and this was to occur on the 14th. It was ghastly, for that was his funeral day. We couldn’t venture to protest; it would only have brought a “Why?” which we could not answer. He wanted us to help him invite his guests, and we did it — one can refuse nothing to a dying friend. But it was dreadful, for really we were inviting them to his funeral.
It was an awful eleven days; and yet, with a lifetime stretching back between to-day and then, they are still a grateful memory to me, and beautiful. In effect they were days of companionship with one’s sacred dead, and I have known no comradeship that was so close or so precious. We clung to the hours and the minutes, counting them as they wasted away, and parting with them with that pain and bereavement which a miser feels who sees his hoard filched from him coin by coin by robbers and is helpless to prevent it.
When the evening of the last day came we stayed out too long; Seppi and I were in fault for that; we could not bear to part with Nikolaus; so it was very late when we left him at his door. We lingered near awhile, listening; and that happened which we were fearing. His father gave him the promised punishment, and we heard his shrieks. But we listened only a moment, then hurried away, remorseful for this thing which we had caused. And sorry for the father, too; our thought being, “If he only knew — if he only knew!”
In the morning Nikolaus did not meet us at the appointed place, so we went to his home to see what the matter was. His mother said:
“His father is out of all patience with these goings-on, and will not have any more of it. Half the time when Nick is needed he is not to be found; then it turns out that he has been gadding around with you two. His father gave him a flogging last night. It always grieved me before, and many’s the time I have begged him off and saved him, but this time he appealed to me in vain, for I was out of patience myself.”
“I wish you had saved him just this one time,” I said, my voice trembling a little; “it would ease a pain in your heart to remember it some day.”
She was ironing at the time, and her back was partly toward me. She turned about with a startled or wondering look in her face and said, “What do you mean by that?”
I was not prepared, and didn’t know anything to say; so it was awkward, for she kept looking at me; but Seppi was alert and spoke up:
“Why, of course it would be pleasant to remember, for the very reason we were out so late was that Nikolaus got to telling how good you are to him, and how he never got whipped when you were by to save him; and he was so full of it, and we were so full of the interest of it, that none of us noticed how late it was getting.”
“Did he say that? Did he?” and she put her apron to her eyes.
“You can ask Theodor — he will tell you the same.”
“It is a dear, good lad, my Nick,” she said. “I am sorry I let him get whipped; I will never do it again. To think — all the time I was sitting here last night, fretting and angry at him, he was loving me and praising me! Dear, dear, if we could only know! Then we shouldn’t ever go wrong; but we are only poor, dumb beasts groping around and making mistakes. I shan’t ever think of last night without a pang.”
She was like all the rest; it seemed as if nobody could open a mouth, in these wretched days, without saying something that made us shiver. They were “groping around,” and did not know what true, sorrowfully true things they were saying by accident.
Seppi asked if Nikolaus might go out with us.
“I am sorry,” she answered, “but he can’t. To punish him further, his father doesn’t allow him to go out of the house to-day.”
We had a great hope! I saw it in Seppi’s eyes. We thought, “If he cannot leave the house, he cannot be drowned.” Seppi asked, to make sure:
“Must he stay in all day, or only the morning?”
“All day. It’s such a pity, too; it’s a beautiful day, and he is so unused to being shut up. But he is busy planning his party, and maybe that is company for him. I do hope he isn’t too lonesome.”
Seppi saw that in her eye which emboldened him to ask if we might go up and help him pass his time.
“And welcome!” she said, right heartily. “Now I call that real friendship, when you might be abroad in the fields and the woods, having a happy time. You are good boys, I’ll allow that, though you don’t always find satisfactory ways of improving it. Take these cakes — for yourselves — and give him this one, from his mother.”
The first thing we noticed when we entered Nikolaus’s room was the time — a quarter to 10. Could that be correct? Only such a few minutes to live! I felt a contraction at my heart. Nikolaus jumped up and gave us a glad welcome. He was in good spirits over his plannings for his party and had not been lonesome.
“Sit down,” he said, “and look at what I’ve been doing. And I’ve finished a kite that you will say is a beauty. It’s drying, in the kitchen; I’ll fetch it.”
He had been spending his penny savings in fanciful trifles of various kinds, to go as prizes in the games, and they were marshaled with fine and showy effect upon the table. He said:
“Examine them at your leisure while I get mother to touch up the kite with her iron if it isn’t dry enough yet.”
Then he tripped out and went clattering down-stairs, whistling.
We did not look at the things; we couldn’t take any interest in anything but the clock. We sat staring at it in silence, listening to the ticking, and every time the minute-hand jumped we nodded recognition — one minute fewer to cover in the race for life or for death. Finally Seppi drew a deep breath and said:
“Two minutes to ten. Seven minutes more and he will pass the death-point. Theodor, he is going to be saved! He’s going to — “
“Hush! I’m on needles. Watch the clock and keep still.”
Five minutes more. We were panting with the strain and the excitement. Another three minutes, and there was a footstep on the stair.
“Saved!” And we jumped up and faced the door.
The old mother entered, bringing the kite. “Isn’t it a beauty?” she said. “And, dear me, how he has slaved over it — ever since daylight, I think, and only finished it awhile before you came.” She stood it against the wall, and stepped back to take a view of it. “He drew the pictures his own self, and I think they are very good. The church isn’t so very good, I’ll have to admit, but look at the bridge — any one can recognize the bridge in a minute. He asked me to bring it up…. Dear me! it’s seven minutes past ten, and I — “
“But where is he?”
“He? Oh, he’ll be here soon; he’s gone out a minute.”
“Gone out?”
“Yes. Just as he came down-stairs little Lisa’s mother came in and said the child had wandered off somewhere, and as she was a little uneasy I told Nikolaus to never mind about his father’s orders — go and look her up…. Why, how white you two do look! I do believe you are sick. Sit down; I’ll fetch something. That cake has disagreed with you. It is a little heavy, but I thought — “
She disappeared without finishing her sentence, and we hurried at once to the back window and looked toward the river. There was a great crowd at the other end of the bridge, and people were flying toward that point from every direction.
“Oh, it is all over — poor Nikolaus! Why, oh, why did she let him get out of the house!”
“Come away,” said Seppi, half sobbing, “come quick — we can’t bear to meet her; in five minutes she will know.”
But we were not to escape. She came upon us at the foot of the stairs, with her cordials in her hands, and made us come in and sit down and take the medicine. Then she watched the effect, and it did not satisfy her; so she made us wait longer, and kept upbraiding herself for giving us the unwholesome cake.
Presently the thing happened which we were dreading. There was a sound of tramping and scraping outside, and a crowd came solemnly in, with heads uncovered, and laid the two drowned bodies on the bed.
“Oh, my God!” that poor mother cried out, and fell on her knees, and put her arms about her dead boy and began to cover the wet face with kisses. “Oh, it was I that sent him, and I have been his death. If I had obeyed, and kept him in the house, this would not have happened. And I am rightly punished; I was cruel to him last night, and him begging me, his own mother, to be his friend.”
And so she went on and on, and all the women cried, and pitied her, and tried to comfort her, but she could not forgive herself and could not be comforted, and kept on saying if she had not sent him out he would be alive and well now, and she was the cause of his death.
It shows how foolish people are when they blame themselves for anything they have done. Satan knows, and he said nothing happens that your first act hasn’t arranged to happen and made inevitable; and so, of your own motion you can’t ever alter the scheme or do a thing that will break a link. Next we heard screams, and Frau Brandt came wildly plowing and plunging through the crowd with her dress in disorder and hair flying loose, and flung herself upon her dead child with moans and kisses and pleadings and endearments; and by and by she rose up almost exhausted with her outpourings of passionate emotion, and clenched her fist and lifted it toward the sky, and her tear-drenched face grew hard and resentful, and she said:
“For nearly two weeks I have had dreams and presentiments and warnings that death was going to strike what was most precious to me, and day and night and night and day I have groveled in the dirt before Him praying Him to have pity on my innocent child and save it from harm — and here is His answer!”
Why, He had saved it from harm — but she did not know.
She wiped the tears from her eyes and cheeks, and stood awhile gazing down at the child and caressing its face and its hair with her hands; then she spoke again in that bitter tone: “But in His hard heart is no compassion. I will never pray again.”
She gathered her dead child to her bosom and strode away, the crowd falling back to let her pass, and smitten dumb by the awful words they had heard. Ah, that poor woman! It is as Satan said, we do not know good fortune from bad, and are always mistaking the one for the other. Many a time since I have heard people pray to God to spare the life of sick persons, but I have never done it.
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There Was a Sound of Tramping Outside and the Crowd Came Solemnly In
Both funerals took place at the same time in our little church next day. Everybody was there, including the party guests. Satan was there, too; which was proper, for it was on account of his efforts that the funerals had happened. Nikolaus had departed this life without absolution, and a collection was taken up for masses, to get him out of purgatory. Only two-thirds of the required money was gathered, and the parents were going to try to borrow the rest, but Satan furnished it. He told us privately that there was no purgatory, but he had contributed in order that Nikolaus’s parents and their friends might be saved from worry and distress. We thought it very good of him, but he said money did not cost him anything.
At the graveyard the body of little Lisa was seized for debt by a carpenter to whom the mother owed fifty groschen for work done the year before. She had never been able to pay this, and was not able now. The carpenter took the corpse home and kept it four days in his cellar, the mother weeping and imploring about his house all the time; then he buried it in his brother’s cattle-yard, without religious ceremonies. It drove the mother wild with grief and shame, and she forsook her work and went daily about the town, cursing the carpenter and blaspheming the laws of the emperor and the church, and it was pitiful to see. Seppi asked Satan to interfere, but he said the carpenter and the rest were members of the human race and were acting quite neatly for that species of animal. He would interfere if he found a horse acting in such a way, and we must inform him when we came across that kind of horse doing that kind of human thing, so that he could stop it. We believed this was sarcasm, for of course there wasn’t any such horse.
But after a few days we found that we could not abide that poor woman’s distress, so we begged Satan to examine her several possible careers, and see if he could not change her, to her profit, to a new one. He said the longest of her careers as they now stood gave her forty-two years to live, and her shortest one twenty-nine, and that both were charged with grief and hunger and cold and pain. The only improvement he could make would be to enable her to skip a certain three minutes from now; and he asked us if he should do it. This was such a short time to decide in that we went to pieces with nervous excitement, and before we could pull ourselves together and ask for particulars he said the time would be up in a few more seconds; so then we gasped out, “Do it!”
“It is done,” he said; “she was going around a corner; I have turned her back; it has changed her career.”
“Then what will happen, Satan?”
“It is happening now. She is having words with Fischer, the weaver. In his anger Fischer will straightway do what he would not have done but for this accident. He was present when she stood over her child’s body and uttered those blasphemies.”
“What will he do?”
“He is doing it now — betraying her. In three days she will go to the stake.”
We could not speak; we were frozen with horror, for if we had not meddled with her career she would have been spared this awful fate. Satan noticed these thoughts, and said:
“What you are thinking is strictly human-like — that is to say, foolish. The woman is advantaged. Die when she might, she would go to heaven. By this prompt death she gets twenty-nine years more of heaven than she is entitled to, and escapes twenty-nine years of misery here.”
A moment before we were bitterly making up our minds that we would ask no more favors of Satan for friends of ours, for he did not seem to know any way to do a person a kindness but by killing him; but the whole aspect of the case was changed now, and we were glad of what we had done and full of happiness in the thought of it.
After a little I began to feel troubled about Fischer, and asked, timidly, “Does this episode change Fischer’s life-scheme, Satan?”
“Change it? Why, certainly. And radically. If he had not met Frau Brandt awhile ago he would die next year, thirty-four years of age. Now he will live to be ninety, and have a pretty prosperous and comfortable life of it, as human lives go.”
We felt a great joy and pride in what we had done for Fischer, and were expecting Satan to sympathize with this feeling; but he showed no sign and this made us uneasy. We waited for him to speak, but he didn’t; so, to assuage our solicitude we had to ask him if there was any defect in Fischer’s good luck. Satan considered the question a moment, then said, with some hesitation:
“Well, the fact is, it is a delicate point. Under his several former possible life-careers he was going to heaven.”
We were aghast. “Oh, Satan! and under this one — “
“There, don’t be so distressed. You were sincerely trying to do him a kindness; let that comfort you.”
“Oh, dear, dear, that cannot comfort us. You ought to have told us what we were doing, then we wouldn’t have acted so.”
But it made no impression on him. He had never felt a pain or a sorrow, and did not know what they were, in any really informing way. He had no knowledge of them except theoretically — that is to say, intellectually. And of course that is no good. One can never get any but a loose and ignorant notion of such things except by experience. We tried our best to make him comprehend the awful thing that had been done and how we were compromised by it, but he couldn’t seem to get hold of it. He said he did not think it important where Fischer went to; in heaven he would not be missed, there were “plenty there.” We tried to make him see that he was missing the point entirely; that Fischer, and not other people, was the proper one to decide about the importance of it; but it all went for nothing; he said he did not care for Fischer — there were plenty more Fischers.
The next minute Fischer went by on the other side of the way, and it made us sick and faint to see him, remembering the doom that was upon him, and we the cause of it. And how unconscious he was that anything had happened to him! You could see by his elastic step and his alert manner that he was well satisfied with himself for doing that hard turn for poor Frau Brandt. He kept glancing back over his shoulder expectantly. And, sure enough, pretty soon Frau Brandt followed after, in charge of the officers and wearing jingling chains. A mob was in her wake, jeering and shouting, “Blasphemer and heretic!” and some among them were neighbors and friends of her happier days. Some were trying to strike her, and the officers were not taking as much trouble as they might to keep them from it.
“Oh, stop them, Satan!” It was out before we remembered that he could not interrupt them for a moment without changing their whole after-lives. He puffed a little puff toward them with his lips and they began to reel and stagger and grab at the empty air; then they broke apart and fled in every direction, shrieking, as if in intolerable pain. He had crushed a rib of each of them with that little puff. We could not help asking if their life-chart was changed.
“Yes, entirely. Some have gained years, some have lost them. Some few will profit in various ways by the change, but only that few.”
We did not ask if we had brought poor Fischer’s luck to any of them. We did not wish to know. We fully believed in Satan’s desire to do us kindnesses, but we were losing confidence in his judgment. It was at this time that our growing anxiety to have him look over our life-charts and suggest improvements began to fade out and give place to other interests.
For a day or two the whole village was a chattering turmoil over Frau Brandt’s case and over the mysterious calamity that had overtaken the mob, and at her trial the place was crowded. She was easily convicted of her blasphemies, for she uttered those terrible words again and said she would not take them back. When warned that she was imperiling her life, she said they could take it in welcome, she did not want it, she would rather live with the professional devils in perdition than with these imitators in the village. They accused her of breaking all those ribs by witchcraft, and asked her if she was not a witch? She answered scornfully:
“No. If I had that power would any of you holy hypocrites be alive five minutes? No; I would strike you all dead. Pronounce your sentence and let me go; I am tired of your society.”
So they found her guilty, and she was excommunicated and cut off from the joys of heaven and doomed to the fires of hell; then she was clothed in a coarse robe and delivered to the secular arm, and conducted to the market-place, the bell solemnly tolling the while. We saw her chained to the stake, and saw the first film of blue smoke rise on the still air. Then her hard face softened, and she looked upon the packed crowd in front of her and said, with gentleness:
“We played together once, in long-agone days when we were innocent little creatures. For the sake of that, I forgive you.”
We went away then, and did not see the fires consume her, but we heard the shrieks, although we put our fingers in our ears. When they ceased we knew she was in heaven, notwithstanding the excommunication; and we were glad of her death and not sorry that we had brought it about.
One day, a little while after this, Satan appeared again. We were always watching out for him, for life was never very stagnant when he was by. He came upon us at that place in the woods where we had first met him. Being boys, we wanted to be entertained; we asked him to do a show for us.
“Very well,” he said; “would you like to see a history of the progress of the human race? — its development of that product which it calls civilization?”
We said we should.
So, with a thought, he turned the place into the Garden of Eden, and we saw Abel praying by his altar; then Cain came walking toward him with his club, and did not seem to see us, and would have stepped on my foot if I had not drawn it in. He spoke to his brother in a language which we did not understand; then he grew violent and threatening, and we knew what was going to happen, and turned away our heads for the moment; but we heard the crash of the blows and heard the shrieks and the groans; then there was silence, and we saw Abel lying in his blood and gasping out his life, and Cain standing over him and looking down at him, vengeful and unrepentant.
Then the vision vanished, and was followed by a long series of unknown wars, murders, and massacres. Next we had the Flood, and the Ark tossing around in the stormy waters, with lofty mountains in the distance showing veiled and dim through the rain. Satan said:
“The progress of your race was not satisfactory. It is to have another chance now.”
The scene changed, and we saw Noah overcome with wine.
Next, we had Sodom and Gomorrah, and “the attempt to discover two or three respectable persons there,” as Satan described it. Next, Lot and his daughters in the cave.
Next came the Hebraic wars, and we saw the victors massacre the survivors and their cattle, and save the young girls alive and distribute them around.
Next we had Jael; and saw her slip into the tent and drive the nail into the temple of her sleeping guest; and we were so close that when the blood gushed out it trickled in a little, red stream to our feet, and we could have stained our hands in it if we had wanted to.
Next we had Egyptian wars, Greek wars, Roman wars, hideous drenchings of the earth with blood; and we saw the treacheries of the Romans toward the Carthaginians, and the sickening spectacle of the massacre of those brave people. Also we saw Caesar invade Britain — “not that those barbarians had done him any harm, but because he wanted their land, and desired to confer the blessings of civilization upon their widows and orphans,” as Satan explained.
Next, Christianity was born. Then ages of Europe passed in review before us, and we saw Christianity and Civilization march hand in hand through those ages, “leaving famine and death and desolation in their wake, and other signs of the progress of the human race,” as Satan observed.
And always we had wars, and more wars, and still other wars — all over Europe, all over the world. “Sometimes in the private interest of royal families,” Satan said, “sometimes to crush a weak nation; but never a war started by the aggressor for any clean purpose — there is no such war in the history of the race.”
“Now,” said Satan, “you have seen your progress down to the present, and you must confess that it is wonderful — in its way. We must now exhibit the future.”
He showed us slaughters more terrible in their destruction of life, more devastating in their engines of war, than any we had seen.
“You perceive,” he said, “that you have made continual progress. Cain did his murder with a club; the Hebrews did their murders with javelins and swords; the Greeks and Romans added protective armor and the fine arts of military organization and generalship; the Christian has added guns and gunpowder; a few centuries from now he will have so greatly improved the deadly effectiveness of his weapons of slaughter that all men will confess that without Christian civilization war must have remained a poor and trifling thing to the end of time.”
Then he began to laugh in the most unfeeling way, and make fun of the human race, although he knew that what he had been saying shamed us and wounded us. No one but an angel could have acted so; but suffering is nothing to them; they do not know what it is, except by hearsay.
More than once Seppi and I had tried in a humble and diffident way to convert him, and as he had remained silent we had taken his silence as a sort of encouragement; necessarily, then, this talk of his was a disappointment to us, for it showed that we had made no deep impression upon him. The thought made us sad, and we knew then how the missionary must feel when he has been cherishing a glad hope and has seen it blighted. We kept our grief to ourselves, knowing that this was not the time to continue our work.
Satan laughed his unkind laugh to a finish; then he said: “It is a remarkable progress. In five or six thousand years five or six high civilizations have risen, flourished, commanded the wonder of the world, then faded out and disappeared; and not one of them except the latest ever invented any sweeping and adequate way to kill people. They all did their best — to kill being the chiefest ambition of the human race and the earliest incident in its history — but only the Christian civilization has scored a triumph to be proud of. Two or three centuries from now it will be recognized that all the competent killers are Christians; then the pagan world will go to school to the Christian — not to acquire his religion, but his guns. The Turk and the Chinaman will buy those to kill missionaries and converts with.”
By this time his theater was at work again, and before our eyes nation after nation drifted by, during two or three centuries, a mighty procession, an endless procession, raging, struggling, wallowing through seas of blood, smothered in battle-smoke through which the flags glinted and the red jets from the cannon darted; and always we heard the thunder of the guns and the cries of the dying.
“And what does it amount to?” said Satan, with his evil chuckle. “Nothing at all. You gain nothing; you always come out where you went in. For a million years the race has gone on monotonously propagating itself and monotonously reperforming this dull nonsense — to what end? No wisdom can guess! Who gets a profit out of it? Nobody but a parcel of usurping little monarchs and nobilities who despise you; would feel defiled if you touched them; would shut the door in your face if you proposed to call; whom you slave for, fight for, die for, and are not ashamed of it, but proud; whose existence is a perpetual insult to you and you are afraid to resent it; who are mendicants supported by your alms, yet assume toward you the airs of benefactor toward beggar; who address you in the language of master to slave, and are answered in the language of slave to master; who are worshiped by you with your mouth, while in your heart — if you have one — you despise yourselves for it. The first man was a hypocrite and a coward, qualities which have not yet failed in his line; it is the foundation upon which all civilizations have been built. Drink to their perpetuation! Drink to their augmentation! Drink to — ” Then he saw by our faces how much we were hurt, and he cut his sentence short and stopped chuckling, and his manner changed. He said, gently: “No, we will drink one another’s health, and let civilization go. The wine which has flown to our hands out of space by desire is earthly, and good enough for that other toast; but throw away the glasses; we will drink this one in wine which has not visited this world before.”
We obeyed, and reached up and received the new cups as they descended. They were shapely and beautiful goblets, but they were not made of any material that we were acquainted with. They seemed to be in motion, they seemed to be alive; and certainly the colors in them were in motion. They were very brilliant and sparkling, and of every tint, and they were never still, but flowed to and fro in rich tides which met and broke and flashed out dainty explosions of enchanting color. I think it was most like opals washing about in waves and flashing out their splendid fires. But there is nothing to compare the wine with. We drank it, and felt a strange and witching ecstasy as of heaven go stealing through us, and Seppi’s eyes filled and he said worshipingly:
“We shall be there some day, and then — “
He glanced furtively at Satan, and I think he hoped Satan would say, “Yes, you will be there some day,” but Satan seemed to be thinking about something else, and said nothing. This made me feel ghastly, for I knew he had heard; nothing, spoken or unspoken, ever escaped him. Poor Seppi looked distressed, and did not finish his remark. The goblets rose and clove their way into the sky, a triplet of radiant sundogs, and disappeared. Why didn’t they stay? It seemed a bad sign, and depressed me. Should I ever see mine again? Would Seppi ever see his?
Chapter 9
Chapter 9
It was wonderful, the mastery Satan had over time and distance. For him they did not exist. He called them human inventions, and said they were artificialities. We often went to the most distant parts of the globe with him, and stayed weeks and months, and yet were gone only a fraction of a second, as a rule. You could prove it by the clock. One day when our people were in such awful distress because the witch commission were afraid to proceed against the astrologer and Father Peter’s household, or against any, indeed, but the poor and the friendless, they lost patience and took to witch-hunting on their own score, and began to chase a born lady who was known to have the habit of curing people by devilish arts, such as bathing them, washing them, and nourishing them instead of bleeding them and purging them through the ministrations of a barber-surgeon in the proper way. She came flying down, with the howling and cursing mob after her, and tried to take refuge in houses, but the doors were shut in her face. They chased her more than half an hour, we following to see it, and at last she was exhausted and fell, and they caught her. They dragged her to a tree and threw a rope over the limb, and began to make a noose in it, some holding her, meantime, and she crying and begging, and her young daughter looking on and weeping, but afraid to say or do anything.
They hanged the lady, and I threw a stone at her, although in my heart I was sorry for her; but all were throwing stones and each was watching his neighbor, and if I had not done as the others did it would have been noticed and spoken of. Satan burst out laughing.
All that were near by turned upon him, astonished and not pleased. It was an ill time to laugh, for his free and scoffing ways and his supernatural music had brought him under suspicion all over the town and turned many privately against him. The big blacksmith called attention to him now, raising his voice so that all should hear, and said:
“What are you laughing at? Answer! Moreover, please explain to the company why you threw no stone.”
“Are you sure I did not throw a stone?”
“Yes. You needn’t try to get out of it; I had my eye on you.”
“And I — I noticed you!” shouted two others.
“Three witnesses,” said Satan: “Mueller, the blacksmith; Klein, the butcher’s man; Pfeiffer, the weaver’s journeyman. Three very ordinary liars. Are there any more?”
“Never mind whether there are others or not, and never mind about what you consider us — three’s enough to settle your matter for you. You’ll prove that you threw a stone, or it shall go hard with you.”
“That’s so!” shouted the crowd, and surged up as closely as they could to the center of interest.
“And first you will answer that other question,” cried the blacksmith, pleased with himself for being mouthpiece to the public and hero of the occasion. “What are you laughing at?”
Satan smiled and answered, pleasantly: “To see three cowards stoning a dying lady when they were so near death themselves.”
You could see the superstitious crowd shrink and catch their breath, under the sudden shock. The blacksmith, with a show of bravado, said:
“Pooh! What do you know about it?”
“I? Everything. By profession I am a fortune-teller, and I read the hands of you three — and some others — when you lifted them to stone the woman. One of you will die to-morrow week; another of you will die to-night; the third has but five minutes to live — and yonder is the clock!”
It made a sensation. The faces of the crowd blanched, and turned mechanically toward the clock. The butcher and the weaver seemed smitten with an illness, but the blacksmith braced up and said, with spirit:
“It is not long to wait for prediction number one. If it fails, young master, you will not live a whole minute after, I promise you that.”
No one said anything; all watched the clock in a deep stillness which was impressive. When four and a half minutes were gone the blacksmith gave a sudden gasp and clapped his hands upon his heart, saying, “Give me breath! Give me room!” and began to sink down. The crowd surged back, no one offering to support him, and he fell lumbering to the ground and was dead. The people stared at him, then at Satan, then at one another; and their lips moved, but no words came. Then Satan said:
“Three saw that I threw no stone. Perhaps there are others; let them speak.”
It struck a kind of panic into them, and, although no one answered him, many began to violently accuse one another, saying, “You said he didn’t throw,” and getting for reply, “It is a lie, and I will make you eat it!” And so in a moment they were in a raging and noisy turmoil, and beating and banging one another; and in the midst was the only indifferent one — the dead lady hanging from her rope, her troubles forgotten, her spirit at peace.
So we walked away, and I was not at ease, but was saying to myself, “He told them he was laughing at them, but it was a lie — he was laughing at me.”
That made him laugh again, and he said, “Yes, I was laughing at you, because, in fear of what others might report about you, you stoned the woman when your heart revolted at the act — but I was laughing at the others, too.”
“Why?”
“Because their case was yours.”
“How is that?”
“Well, there were sixty-eight people there, and sixty-two of them had no more desire to throw a stone than you had.”
“Satan!”
“Oh, it’s true. I know your race. It is made up of sheep. It is governed by minorities, seldom or never by majorities. It suppresses its feelings and its beliefs and follows the handful that makes the most noise. Sometimes the noisy handful is right, sometimes wrong; but no matter, the crowd follows it. The vast majority of the race, whether savage or civilized, are secretly kind-hearted and shrink from inflicting pain, but in the presence of the aggressive and pitiless minority they don’t dare to assert themselves. Think of it! One kind-hearted creature spies upon another, and sees to it that he loyally helps in iniquities which revolt both of them. Speaking as an expert, I know that ninety-nine out of a hundred of your race were strongly against the killing of witches when that foolishness was first agitated by a handful of pious lunatics in the long ago. And I know that even to-day, after ages of transmitted prejudice and silly teaching, only one person in twenty puts any real heart into the harrying of a witch. And yet apparently everybody hates witches and wants them killed. Some day a handful will rise up on the other side and make the most noise — perhaps even a single daring man with a big voice and a determined front will do it — and in a week all the sheep will wheel and follow him, and witch-hunting will come to a sudden end.
“Monarchies, aristocracies, and religions are all based upon that large defect in your race — the individual’s distrust of his neighbor, and his desire, for safety’s or comfort’s sake, to stand well in his neighbor’s eye. These institutions will always remain, and always flourish, and always oppress you, affront you, and degrade you, because you will always be and remain slaves of minorities. There was never a country where the majority of the people were in their secret hearts loyal to any of these institutions.”
I did not like to hear our race called sheep, and said I did not think they were.
“Still, it is true, lamb,” said Satan. “Look at you in war — what mutton you are, and how ridiculous!”
“In war? How?”
“There has never been a just one, never an honorable one — on the part of the instigator of the war. I can see a million years ahead, and this rule will never change in so many as half a dozen instances. The loud little handful — as usual — will shout for the war. The pulpit will — warily and cautiously — object — at first; the great, big, dull bulk of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out why there should be a war, and will say, earnestly and indignantly, “It is unjust and dishonorable, and there is no necessity for it.” Then the handful will shout louder. A few fair men on the other side will argue and reason against the war with speech and pen, and at first will have a hearing and be applauded; but it will not last long; those others will outshout them, and presently the anti-war audiences will thin out and lose popularity. Before long you will see this curious thing: the speakers stoned from the platform, and free speech strangled by hordes of furious men who in their secret hearts are still at one with those stoned speakers — as earlier — but do not dare to say so. And now the whole nation — pulpit and all — will take up the war-cry, and shout itself hoarse, and mob any honest man who ventures to open his mouth; and presently such mouths will cease to open. Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.”
Chapter 10
Chapter 10
Days and days went by now, and no Satan. It was dull without him. But the astrologer, who had returned from his excursion to the moon, went about the village, braving public opinion, and getting a stone in the middle of his back now and then when some witch-hater got a safe chance to throw it and dodge out of sight. Meantime two influences had been working well for Marget. That Satan, who was quite indifferent to her, had stopped going to her house after a visit or two had hurt her pride, and she had set herself the task of banishing him from her heart. Reports of Wilhelm Meidling’s dissipation brought to her from time to time by old Ursula had touched her with remorse, jealousy of Satan being the cause of it; and so now, these two matters working upon her together, she was getting a good profit out of the combination — her interest in Satan was steadily cooling, her interest in Wilhelm as steadily warming. All that was needed to complete her conversion was that Wilhelm should brace up and do something that should cause favorable talk and incline the public toward him again.
The opportunity came now. Marget sent and asked him to defend her uncle in the approaching trial, and he was greatly pleased, and stopped drinking and began his preparations with diligence. With more diligence than hope, in fact, for it was not a promising case. He had many interviews in his office with Seppi and me, and threshed out our testimony pretty thoroughly, thinking to find some valuable grains among the chaff, but the harvest was poor, of course.
If Satan would only come! That was my constant thought. He could invent some way to win the case; for he had said it would be won, so he necessarily knew how it could be done. But the days dragged on, and still he did not come. Of course I did not doubt that it would be won, and that Father Peter would be happy for the rest of his life, since Satan had said so; yet I knew I should be much more comfortable if he would come and tell us how to manage it. It was getting high time for Father Peter to have a saving change toward happiness, for by general report he was worn out with his imprisonment and the ignominy that was burdening him, and was like to die of his miseries unless he got relief soon.
At last the trial came on, and the people gathered from all around to witness it; among them many strangers from considerable distances. Yes, everybody was there except the accused. He was too feeble in body for the strain. But Marget was present, and keeping up her hope and her spirit the best she could. The money was present, too. It was emptied on the table, and was handled and caressed and examined by such as were privileged.
The astrologer was put in the witness-box. He had on his best hat and robe for the occasion.
QUESTION. You claim that this money is yours?
ANSWER. I do.
Q. How did you come by it?
A. I found the bag in the road when I was returning from a journey.
Q. When?
A. More than two years ago.
Q. What did you do with it?
A. I brought it home and hid it in a secret place in my observatory, intending to find the owner if I could.
Q. You endeavored to find him?
A. I made diligent inquiry during several months, but nothing came of it.
Q. And then?
A. I thought it not worth while to look further, and was minded to use the money in finishing the wing of the foundling-asylum connected with the priory and nunnery. So I took it out of its hiding-place and counted it to see if any of it was missing. And then –
Q. Why do you stop? Proceed.
A. I am sorry to have to say this, but just as I had finished and was restoring the bag to its place, I looked up and there stood Father Peter behind me.
Several murmured, “That looks bad,” but others answered, “Ah, but he is such a liar!”
Q. That made you uneasy?
A. No; I thought nothing of it at the time, for Father Peter often came to me unannounced to ask for a little help in his need.
Marget blushed crimson at hearing her uncle falsely and impudently charged with begging, especially from one he had always denounced as a fraud, and was going to speak, but remembered herself in time and held her peace.
Q. Proceed.
A. In the end I was afraid to contribute the money to the foundling-asylum, but elected to wait yet another year and continue my inquiries. When I heard of Father Peter’s find I was glad, and no suspicion entered my mind; when I came home a day or two later and discovered that my own money was gone I still did not suspect until three circumstances connected with Father Peter’s good fortune struck me as being singular coincidences.
Q. Pray name them.
A. Father Peter had found his money in a path — I had found mine in a road. Father Peter’s find consisted exclusively of gold ducats — mine also. Father Peter found eleven hundred and seven ducats — I exactly the same.
This closed his evidence, and certainly it made a strong impression on the house; one could see that.
Wilhelm Meidling asked him some questions, then called us boys, and we told our tale. It made the people laugh, and we were ashamed. We were feeling pretty badly, anyhow, because Wilhelm was hopeless, and showed it. He was doing as well as he could, poor young fellow, but nothing was in his favor, and such sympathy as there was was now plainly not with his client. It might be difficult for court and people to believe the astrologer’s story, considering his character, but it was almost impossible to believe Father Peter’s. We were already feeling badly enough, but when the astrologer’s lawyer said he believed he would not ask us any questions — for our story was a little delicate and it would be cruel for him to put any strain upon it — everybody tittered, and it was almost more than we could bear. Then he made a sarcastic little speech, and got so much fun out of our tale, and it seemed so ridiculous and childish and every way impossible and foolish, that it made everybody laugh till the tears came; and at last Marget could not keep up her courage any longer, but broke down and cried, and I was so sorry for her.
Now I noticed something that braced me up. It was Satan standing alongside of Wilhelm! And there was such a contrast! — Satan looked so confident, had such a spirit in his eyes and face, and Wilhelm looked so depressed and despondent. We two were comfortable now, and judged that he would testify and persuade the bench and the people that black was white and white black, or any other color he wanted it. We glanced around to see what the strangers in the house thought of him, for he was beautiful, you know — stunning, in fact — but no one was noticing him; so we knew by that that he was invisible.
The lawyer was saying his last words; and while he was saying them Satan began to melt into Wilhelm. He melted into him and disappeared; and then there was a change, when his spirit began to look out of Wilhelm’s eyes.
That lawyer finished quite seriously, and with dignity. He pointed to the money, and said:
“The love of it is the root of all evil. There it lies, the ancient tempter, newly red with the shame of its latest victory — the dishonor of a priest of God and his two poor juvenile helpers in crime. If it could but speak, let us hope that it would be constrained to confess that of all its conquests this was the basest and the most pathetic.”
He sat down. Wilhelm rose and said:
“From the testimony of the accuser I gather that he found this money in a road more than two years ago. Correct me, sir, if I misunderstood you.”
The astrologer said his understanding of it was correct.
“And the money so found was never out of his hands thenceforth up to a certain definite date — the last day of last year. Correct me, sir, if I am wrong.”
The astrologer nodded his head. Wilhelm turned to the bench and said:
“If I prove that this money here was not that money, then it is not his?”
“Certainly not; but this is irregular. If you had such a witness it was your duty to give proper notice of it and have him here to — ” He broke off and began to consult with the other judges. Meantime that other lawyer got up excited and began to protest against allowing new witnesses to be brought into the case at this late stage.
The judges decided that his contention was just and must be allowed.
“But this is not a new witness,” said Wilhelm. “It has already been partly examined. I speak of the coin.”
“The coin? What can the coin say?”
“It can say it is not the coin that the astrologer once possessed. It can say it was not in existence last December. By its date it can say this.”
And it was so! There was the greatest excitement in the court while that lawyer and the judges were reaching for coins and examining them and exclaiming. And everybody was full of admiration of Wilhelm’s brightness in happening to think of that neat idea. At last order was called and the court said:
“All of the coins but four are of the date of the present year. The court tenders its sincere sympathy to the accused, and its deep regret that he, an innocent man, through an unfortunate mistake, has suffered the undeserved humiliation of imprisonment and trial. The case is dismissed.”
So the money could speak, after all, though that lawyer thought it couldn’t. The court rose, and almost everybody came forward to shake hands with Marget and congratulate her, and then to shake with Wilhelm and praise him; and Satan had stepped out of Wilhelm and was standing around looking on full of interest, and people walking through him every which way, not knowing he was there. And Wilhelm could not explain why he only thought of the date on the coins at the last moment, instead of earlier; he said it just occurred to him, all of a sudden, like an inspiration, and he brought it right out without any hesitation, for, although he didn’t examine the coins, he seemed, somehow, to know it was true. That was honest of him, and like him; another would have pretended he had thought of it earlier, and was keeping it back for a surprise.
He had dulled down a little now; not much, but still you could notice that he hadn’t that luminous look in his eyes that he had while Satan was in him. He nearly got it back, though, for a moment when Marget came and praised him and thanked him and couldn’t keep him from seeing how proud she was of him. The astrologer went off dissatisfied and cursing, and Solomon Isaacs gathered up the money and carried it away. It was Father Peter’s for good and all, now.
Satan was gone. I judged that he had spirited himself away to the jail to tell the prisoner the news; and in this I was right. Marget and the rest of us hurried thither at our best speed, in a great state of rejoicing.
Well, what Satan had done was this: he had appeared before that poor prisoner, exclaiming, “The trial is over, and you stand forever disgraced as a thief — by verdict of the court!”
The shock unseated the old man’s reason. When we arrived, ten minutes later, he was parading pompously up and down and delivering commands to this and that and the other constable or jailer, and calling them Grand Chamberlain, and Prince This and Prince That, and Admiral of the Fleet, Field Marshal in Command, and all such fustian, and was as happy as a bird. He thought he was Emperor!
Marget flung herself on his breast and cried, and indeed everybody was moved almost to heartbreak. He recognized Marget, but could not understand why she should cry. He patted her on the shoulder and said:
“Don’t do it, dear; remember, there are witnesses, and it is not becoming in the Crown Princess. Tell me your trouble — it shall be mended; there is nothing the Emperor cannot do.” Then he looked around and saw old Ursula with her apron to her eyes. He was puzzled at that, and said, “And what is the matter with you?”
Through her sobs she got out words explaining that she was distressed to see him — “so.” He reflected over that a moment, then muttered, as if to himself: “A singular old thing, the Dowager Duchess — means well, but is always snuffling and never able to tell what it is about. It is because she doesn’t know.” His eyes fell on Wilhelm. “Prince of India,” he said, “I divine that it is you that the Crown Princess is concerned about. Her tears shall be dried; I will no longer stand between you; she shall share your throne; and between you you shall inherit mine. There, little lady, have I done well? You can smile now — isn’t it so?”
He petted Marget and kissed her, and was so contented with himself and with everybody that he could not do enough for us all, but began to give away kingdoms and such things right and left, and the least that any of us got was a principality. And so at last, being persuaded to go home, he marched in imposing state; and when the crowds along the way saw how it gratified him to be hurrahed at, they humored him to the top of his desire, and he responded with condescending bows and gracious smiles, and often stretched out a hand and said, “Bless you, my people!”
As pitiful a sight as ever I saw. And Marget, and old Ursula crying all the way.
On my road home I came upon Satan, and reproached him with deceiving me with that lie. He was not embarrassed, but said, quite simply and composedly:
“Ah, you mistake; it was the truth. I said he would be happy the rest of his days, and he will, for he will always think he is the Emperor, and his pride in it and his joy in it will endure to the end. He is now, and will remain, the one utterly happy person in this empire.”
“But the method of it, Satan, the method! Couldn’t you have done it without depriving him of his reason?”
It was difficult to irritate Satan, but that accomplished it.
“What an ass you are!” he said. “Are you so unobservant as not to have found out that sanity and happiness are an impossible combination? No sane man can be happy, for to him life is real, and he sees what a fearful thing it is. Only the mad can be happy, and not many of those. The few that imagine themselves kings or gods are happy, the rest are no happier than the sane. Of course, no man is entirely in his right mind at any time, but I have been referring to the extreme cases. I have taken from this man that trumpery thing which the race regards as a Mind; I have replaced his tin life with a silver-gilt fiction; you see the result — and you criticize! I said I would make him permanently happy, and I have done it. I have made him happy by the only means possible to his race — and you are not satisfied!” He heaved a discouraged sigh, and said, “It seems to me that this race is hard to please.”
There it was, you see. He didn’t seem to know any way to do a person a favor except by killing him or making a lunatic out of him. I apologized, as well as I could; but privately I did not think much of his processes — at that time.
Satan was accustomed to say that our race lived a life of continuous and uninterrupted self-deception. It duped itself from cradle to grave with shams and delusions which it mistook for realities, and this made its entire life a sham. Of the score of fine qualities which it imagined it had and was vain of, it really possessed hardly one. It regarded itself as gold, and was only brass. One day when he was in this vein he mentioned a detail — the sense of humor. I cheered up then, and took issue. I said we possessed it.
“There spoke the race!” he said; “always ready to claim what it hasn’t got, and mistake its ounce of brass filings for a ton of gold-dust. You have a mongrel perception of humor, nothing more; a multitude of you possess that. This multitude see the comic side of a thousand low-grade and trivial things — broad incongruities, mainly; grotesqueries, absurdities, evokers of the horse-laugh. The ten thousand high-grade comicalities which exist in the world are sealed from their dull vision. Will a day come when the race will detect the funniness of these juvenilities and laugh at them — and by laughing at them destroy them? For your race, in its poverty, has unquestionably one really effective weapon — laughter. Power, money, persuasion, supplication, persecution — these can lift at a colossal humbug — push it a little — weaken it a little, century by century; but only laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand. You are always fussing and fighting with your other weapons. Do you ever use that one? No; you leave it lying rusting. As a race, do you ever use it at all? No; you lack sense and the courage.”
We were traveling at the time and stopped at a little city in India and looked on while a juggler did his tricks before a group of natives. They were wonderful, but I knew Satan could beat that game, and I begged him to show off a little, and he said he would. He changed himself into a native in turban and breech-cloth, and very considerately conferred on me a temporary knowledge of the language.
The juggler exhibited a seed, covered it with earth in a small flower-pot, then put a rag over the pot; after a minute the rag began to rise; in ten minutes it had risen a foot; then the rag was removed and a little tree was exposed, with leaves upon it and ripe fruit. We ate the fruit, and it was good. But Satan said:
“Why do you cover the pot? Can’t you grow the tree in the sunlight?”
“No,” said the juggler; “no one can do that.”
“You are only an apprentice; you don’t know your trade. Give me the seed. I will show you.” He took the seed and said, “What shall I raise from it?”
“It is a cherry seed; of course you will raise a cherry.”
“Oh no; that is a trifle; any novice can do that. Shall I raise an orange-tree from it?”
“Oh yes!” and the juggler laughed.
“And shall I make it bear other fruits as well as oranges?”
“If God wills!” and they all laughed.
Satan put the seed in the ground, put a handful of dust on it, and said, “Rise!”
A tiny stem shot up and began to grow, and grew so fast that in five minutes it was a great tree, and we were sitting in the shade of it. There was a murmur of wonder, then all looked up and saw a strange and pretty sight, for the branches were heavy with fruits of many kinds and colors — oranges, grapes, bananas, peaches, cherries, apricots, and so on. Baskets were brought, and the unlading of the tree began; and the people crowded around Satan and kissed his hand, and praised him, calling him the prince of jugglers. The news went about the town, and everybody came running to see the wonder — and they remembered to bring baskets, too. But the tree was equal to the occasion; it put out new fruits as fast as any were removed; baskets were filled by the score and by the hundred, but always the supply remained undiminished. At last a foreigner in white linen and sun-helmet arrived, and exclaimed, angrily:
“Away from here! Clear out, you dogs; the tree is on my lands and is my property.”
The natives put down their baskets and made humble obeisance. Satan made humble obeisance, too, with his fingers to his forehead, in the native way, and said:
“Please let them have their pleasure for an hour, sir — only that, and no longer. Afterward you may forbid them; and you will still have more fruit than you and the state together can consume in a year.”
This made the foreigner very angry, and he cried out, “Who are you, you vagabond, to tell your betters what they may do and what they mayn’t!” and he struck Satan with his cane and followed this error with a kick.
The fruits rotted on the branches, and the leaves withered and fell. The foreigner gazed at the bare limbs with the look of one who is surprised, and not gratified. Satan said:
“Take good care of the tree, for its health and yours are bound together. It will never bear again, but if you tend it well it will live long. Water its roots once in each hour every night — and do it yourself; it must not be done by proxy, and to do it in daylight will not answer. If you fail only once in any night, the tree will die, and you likewise. Do not go home to your own country any more — you would not reach there; make no business or pleasure engagements which require you to go outside your gate at night — you cannot afford the risk; do not rent or sell this place — it would be injudicious.”
The foreigner was proud and wouldn’t beg, but I thought he looked as if he would like to. While he stood gazing at Satan we vanished away and landed in Ceylon.
I was sorry for that man; sorry Satan hadn’t been his customary self and killed him or made him a lunatic. It would have been a mercy. Satan overheard the thought, and said:
“I would have done it but for his wife, who has not offended me. She is coming to him presently from their native land, Portugal. She is well, but has not long to live, and has been yearning to see him and persuade him to go back with her next year. She will die without knowing he can’t leave that place.”
“He won’t tell her?”
“He? He will not trust that secret with any one; he will reflect that it could be revealed in sleep, in the hearing of some Portuguese guest’s servant some time or other.”
“Did none of those natives understand what you said to him?”
“None of them understood, but he will always be afraid that some of them did. That fear will be torture to him, for he has been a harsh master to them. In his dreams he will imagine them chopping his tree down. That will make his days uncomfortable — I have already arranged for his nights.”
It grieved me, though not sharply, to see him take such a malicious satisfaction in his plans for this foreigner.
“Does he believe what you told him, Satan?”
“He thought he didn’t, but our vanishing helped. The tree, where there had been no tree before — that helped. The insane and uncanny variety of fruits — the sudden withering — all these things are helps. Let him think as he may, reason as he may, one thing is certain, he will water the tree. But between this and night he will begin his changed career with a very natural precaution — for him.”
“What is that?”
“He will fetch a priest to cast out the tree’s devil. You are such a humorous race — and don’t suspect it.”
“Will he tell the priest?”
“No. He will say a juggler from Bombay created it, and that he wants the juggler’s devil driven out of it, so that it will thrive and be fruitful again. The priest’s incantations will fail; then the Portuguese will give up that scheme and get his watering-pot ready.”
“But the priest will burn the tree. I know it; he will not allow it to remain.”
“Yes, and anywhere in Europe he would burn the man, too. But in India the people are civilized, and these things will not happen. The man will drive the priest away and take care of the tree.”
I reflected a little, then said, “Satan, you have given him a hard life, I think.”
“Comparatively. It must not be mistaken for a holiday.”
We flitted from place to place around the world as we had done before, Satan showing me a hundred wonders, most of them reflecting in some way the weakness and triviality of our race. He did this now every few days — not out of malice — I am sure of that — it only seemed to amuse and interest him, just as a naturalist might be amused and interested by a collection of ants.
Chapter 11
Chapter 11
For as much as a year Satan continued these visits, but at last he came less often, and then for a long time he did not come at all. This always made me lonely and melancholy. I felt that he was losing interest in our tiny world and might at any time abandon his visits entirely. When one day he finally came to me I was overjoyed, but only for a little while. He had come to say good-by, he told me, and for the last time. He had investigations and undertakings in other corners of the universe, he said, that would keep him busy for a longer period than I could wait for his return.
“And you are going away, and will not come back any more?”
“Yes,” he said. “We have comraded long together, and it has been pleasant — pleasant for both; but I must go now, and we shall not see each other any more.”
“In this life, Satan, but in another? We shall meet in another, surely?”
Then, all tranquilly and soberly, he made the strange answer, “There is no other.”
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“Life Itself Is Only a Vision, a Dream”
A subtle influence blew upon my spirit from his, bringing with it a vague, dim, but blessed and hopeful feeling that the incredible words might be true — even must be true.
“Have you never suspected this, Theodor?”
“No. How could I? But if it can only be true — “
“It is true.”
A gust of thankfulness rose in my breast, but a doubt checked it before it could issue in words, and I said, “But — but — we have seen that future life — seen it in its actuality, and so — “
“It was a vision — it had no existence.”
I could hardly breathe for the great hope that was struggling in me. “A vision? — a vi — “
“Life itself is only a vision, a dream.”
It was electrical. By God! I had had that very thought a thousand times in my musings!
“Nothing exists; all is a dream. God — man — the world — the sun, the moon, the wilderness of stars — a dream, all a dream; they have no existence. Nothing exists save empty space — and you!”
“I!”
“And you are not you — you have no body, no blood, no bones, you are but a thought. I myself have no existence; I am but a dream — your dream, creature of your imagination. In a moment you will have realized this, then you will banish me from your visions and I shall dissolve into the nothingness out of which you made me….
“I am perishing already — I am failing — I am passing away. In a little while you will be alone in shoreless space, to wander its limitless solitudes without friend or comrade forever — for you will remain a thought, the only existent thought, and by your nature inextinguishable, indestructible. But I, your poor servant, have revealed you to yourself and set you free. Dream other dreams, and better!
“Strange! that you should not have suspected years ago — centuries, ages, eons, ago! — for you have existed, companionless, through all the eternities. Strange, indeed, that you should not have suspected that your universe and its contents were only dreams, visions, fiction! Strange, because they are so frankly and hysterically insane — like all dreams: a God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it; who gave his angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice and invented hell — mouths mercy and invented hell — mouths Golden Rules, and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man’s acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him!…
“You perceive, now, that these things are all impossible except in a dream. You perceive that they are pure and puerile insanities, the silly creations of an imagination that is not conscious of its freaks — in a word, that they are a dream, and you the maker of it. The dream-marks are all present; you should have recognized them earlier.
“It is true, that which I have revealed to you; there is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream — a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought — a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!”
He vanished, and left me appalled; for I knew, and realized, that all he had said was true.
Magical Death Projection
A film about a great shamen named Dedeheiwa and how he manipulates the hekura spirits for both good and evil.
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http://www.biroz.net/tricksters/six.htm
-:- shamanic allies – hekura spirits of the yanomami -:-
Under the dark canopy of the tropical Amazonian forest of Brazilian-Venezuelan border country live the Yanomami, a people renowned in the anthropological literature for their fierceness, their generosity and their unique culture. Living in round, communal villages called shabonos, these people live cheek by jowl with each other in one of the most biodiverse regions of the planet. In the Yanomami jungle, there are said to be more species of trees in one quarter mile area than can be found in the whole of Western Europe .
But, in the minds of the people who live there, the forest is not merely filled with plant and animal life. The trees are also teeming with what might be termed spiritual life. Every single plant, vine, tree, and every single animal from mouse to jaguar has a vital living soul.
But most important of all are the shamanic spirits, the hekura. These tiny glowing lights which live in the wilds of the mountains and distant uninhabited jungle can only be contacted by the use of the hallucinogenic snuff called ebene. Prepared from the bark of the virola tree, this snuff is used by shamans of the tribe, as well as a large percentage of the ‘layman’ Yanomami population.
On most afternoons, when the day’s work of hunting, gathering or tending to the fruit gardens is done, they gather in their shabono to socialise, using a combination of songs, dances and ebene to entice the hekura down from their distant homes to enter their bodies. Once they have entered, they begin to ‘shamanise’ the person in whom they are dwelling, which causes them to sing the healing or harming songs of the spirits within them.
A shaman can furthermore be initiated so that the hekura start to live permanently inside his body. Using very large amounts of ebene and extremely strong strains of wild tobacco, the spirits are contacted and eventually housed inside him, from where an almost permanent shamanic communication can begin. The Yanomami envisage entire communities of hekura inside the shaman, living in symbolic houses, villages, mountains and rivers within his body.
Keeping the hekura satisfied inside them is a priority for most shamans of this tribe – this is maintained by the regular use of tobacco, ebene and ceremonies – and by using on the power of the spirits within him, and understanding the quality of that power, the shaman can heal an ally or harm an enemy at will.
It appears from much of the literature about these people that the hekura, and the use of ebene to contact them, forms the vast majority of Yanomami religious practice. It might be said that the Yanomami are a profoundly internal people who prefer to communicate with aspects of the ‘inner’ world rather than entities such as ‘gods’ or ‘deities’.
We might thus consider that the Yanomami have made these living, powerful spooks the centre of their spiritual lives. It is clear that they value the magical aspect most strongly, and as shamanic allies, they determine the course of major political events such as inter-village warfare, in which the hekura-derived shamanic power is recruited to harm enemies, and trade, which is often concluded with a generous measure of ebene to cement the new relationship.
Furthermore, the Yanomami believe that the souls of the dead eventually become hekura, as do the souls of animals that the Yanomami have killed to provide themselves with food. At funerals and great feasts, ceremonies are often performed – again with the shamans and their hekura power presiding – to ensure that this transition – from living, to dead, to hekura – takes place in the natural order of things.
These shamanic allies, then, not only have a magical power, they also function as a kind of ancestor remembrance, and by allowing them into their bodies, the Yanomami recycle and remember the wisdom of the past, gathered by all that have died before them. More than this though, the hekura are overtly political in a way that the kami of Japan or the Taotao Mona of Guam could not be.
By taking up residence within a shaman’s body, they become agents for the furtherance of that particular shaman’s aims – whether he is a sorcerer who desires to control large populations across a wide territory or a weapon of war who wishes to protect his village from attacks from shamanic enemies. In fact, inter-village warfare is often begun out of a desire for revenge for some (imagined or real) shamanic attack on a tribal member.
The hekura are spooks par excellence. Taking centre stage in the spiritual and political life of the people, they are the most complex of the spooks we have seen so far. But of these it also appears that they are the most ancient.
The Yanomami speak a language which, according to most linguists, is related to no other currently spoken tongue. They are often considered to be an isolate people in the northwest Amazon, who remained in their mountains as many of their sister cultures were supplanted by incoming Carib and Arawak peoples from the north (*8). Thus it is likely that the Yanomami have been living in their present lands for several thousands of years. And in turn, it is likely that the mandala of culture relating to the hekura is just as ancient.
The Yanomami represent what Joseph Campbell refers to as a primitive planting culture, that is to say one that has turned to some extent towards the planting of crops for sustenance, but still maintains a healthy respect for hunting traditions, including shamanism. While in Japan , we see an almost aesthetic tradition typical of a civilised people, here in the Amazon we seem to be witness to an older substrate of spook, one that still maintains a profound magical power strong enough to inspire shamans and coordinate political and tribal events.
And as we turn to a place further back in time again, to a people who never knew the cultural innovations of planting crops but remained as hunters, we see the spooks returning even more to their central places – as the very Creators of the Dreaming Universe itself.
(c) Bruce Rimell, June 2005
