/rp/ is for the discussion of religion, philosophy and its related literature, specifically books (fiction & non-fiction), short stories, poetry, creative writing, etc. If you want to discuss numbers go to /404/. Philosophical discussion can go on either /rp/ or /404/, but those discussions of philosophy that take place on /rp/ should be based around specific philosophical and religious works to which posters can refer.
/rp/ is a slow board!
what is anonymous? it is the unnamed, what is a name? a name is related projection of something. an image, a symbol, a representation. some would go as far as to say these representations are not real, but they are still related to the thing that has created them via lemur-connection, then what is the nature of this symbol-projection-image nature?
to know of anything there is a source, but what does it mean that there is a source? it means that there is a separation between what is kept (the thing) and what is discarded (luminance/radiance). then what is radiance? is radiance itself a part of the thing or is it already not the thing? they are both the thing and not at the same time, they carry within them the nature of the thing but at the same time must necessarily escape it. light is contradiction, to speak is to separate, words are power, in the nature that it is utter meaninglessness. a floating signifier, but a floating signifier with a parameter that would allow itself to manifest in manifold ways. is there a quintessential word that can finally be approached at the end of days? to answer is folly, as word is contradiction and unity manifest in itself, blasphemous, demonic, and begins the descent into a age of paranoia and self-destruction. this is the nature of sin, and has been inside the speech and power of god from the very beginning. to love god is to fight god, but in such a perverse way, that even that itself is wrong. where do we begin, where do we end? yhesh, the framework of denying institutional religion is valid but how do you make it so that it doesn't devolve into a fit of rage? that means bearing witness to the truth of all things, like a moth to a flame, dying to a flame, there is true radiance, the origin, and outside of it it digs back into itself, the project begins not by a spatial anomaly, the project doesn't begin with a strict adherence to norms, to established truths, it means to dwell in sin, penetrate sin, transmogrifying transmortifying sin, to burn, to atone, to become one with it, to crawl to search to claw in the land of lustrous illusions and bite off the neck of the dragon to feed it to itself, like a flame that burns itself, a lemurian is not a lemurian, but a monstrous hell that lives in the center of omnipresence, claw claw claw, and write all the demons you see, bite off their faces, eat their bodies, alter your body, your mind, your bodies, alter your alternations, set your sights on a thousand worlds, a thousand seas, and until every world is drowned in the flames of paradise, can there be a beginning again
Hello everyone!!
At the behest of >>105 I've decided to make a unique thread for these posts to talk about a collection of tales centered around forbidden, lost, passed up, incestuous, violent, spiteful, unrequited, unrecognized, criminal or the otherwise tragically inclined love affairs which drive one of my favorite manga; Angel Sanctuary. So many ships passing in the night, bursting on each other, or falling away into oblivion without a word. A beautiful and serene world whose cold surfaces never lose their warm core of hope held in the hearts of its actors throughout their trials, doomed as each may be.
The series features twenty volumes, two official art books: bearing the titles Angels Gate and Lost Angel, as well as a 3 episode OVA. All of which, I believe, is worth a look. There are also some audio dramas which I haven't had the chance, or the skill, to take a listen to.
For this initial post I'm just going to outline a few I'm hoping to get to, but I'll be sure to spoiler all of that so we don't ruin anybody's fun. Also here is my initial post >>104, which I probably ought to have spoilered* as well ^^;
The complicated and incestuous love of the inorganic angel Rosiel directed at his sister the Organic angel Axiel both of whom hold the highest [pun] rank possible as three winged
Lucifer and his romantic involvements with other angels, fallen or otherwise and a few with humans to boot. what a dog ;)
Kurai, the soon to be dragon master of the Evils clan who occuppy the uppermost level of hell, with her relative Arcane and a bit the protagonist Setsuna
some more about Belial, the Mad Hatter, whom I love so much, but whose affairs are too numerous for an appropriate accounting here
Uriel the angel of death who keeps a sentient doll in the likeness of the water Angel Jebril, and consequently Sara Mudo
The grotesquely entangled affairs of Sevothtarte Sandalphon and NidHegg
a look at the various rabbits that inhabit the lower levels of heaven
Sarah and her effects on Raphael
Astoreth and Astarte the black and white snake siblings whom are cursed by god to inhabit the same body and never meet
maybe something about Setsuna and Sarah too, but their related story is perhaps too clear cut to be all that interesting despite the incest
*I hope this is how you spell it! if not I'm sorry.
Having waited so long, I think it is apparent that Chrollo is absent today, so I’ll be running the thread instead. IIRC from last time, he concluded with his wish of towards the creation of a whole new way of being. And so on that note I have a few aspects of Snow Crash that I wanted to discuss. I can direct us back to them if I have to, but this story tree has enough branches that I think it might be best if I run through it once first as it is told before we start trying to pick it apart.
Obviously the most interesting aspect of this is the Asherah virus, but it is quite the oddity. This virus is spread via both biological and linguistic mediums. This makes it a little tricky to keep a handle on. Especially because it emerges in sumerian culture where a significant separation of religion, magic, medicine & aesthetics is impossible without falling victim to some serious distortions in perception*. P.211 So please try to keep in mind that the virus is our focus here as we go through it. I promise I am trying to both minimize time jumps and keep it as bare bones as possible. If im saying it, i think its important, okay?
First the sciencentric tone of the narrative is worth addressing. They acknowledge attempting to bring the more mystical elements down into a more scientific and “possible” way of being understood. Though Juanita calls the most attention to this with her defense of catholicism and the religious in general. Saying something akin to it having a reputation amongst the educated as being for the ignorant because what most experience in church is a surface level practice of pontification, rather than a discussion of the doctrine and beliefs.
And so the story begins…
Hiro protagonist, the protagonist resides in a hyper capitalized world while being employed as a pizza delivery boy for the mafia. Not all that strange, as this narrative has entered into an almost maximus state of governmental atrophy. Inducing a situation where every franchise operation has to either hire out a private security force or maintain their own, as is the case for all the most powerful NGOs. Hiro, who might describe himself as the kind of guy whose presence has the weight of a million bucks bagged in nickles is promptly liquidated from his position in the mafia's elite pizza delivery core after dumping his car in a pool cutting through a yard in an attempt to drop off the merchandise in 30 minutes or less. Forcing him back into the life of a freelance hacker, which as one of the main developers of the metaverse (which exists almost exclusively as a replacement for the previously flat internet), he is uniquely overqualified for.
It is in the metaverse that we encounter the first, or maybe the last, iteration of the Asherah virus. Here it manifests as a cyber drug that is only capable of frying a hacker’s brain, visually dosing them with symbolic representations of machine code resulting in their organics circuiting. This popper as VR info bomb, as well as its material equivalent, is distributed by the Reverend Wayne’s Pearly Gates Pentacostal Church franchise. Though the origins of the virus date about as far back as you can go. Emerging as a metavirus that either bubbles out of the sea of biological information in a complex system, or arrives from space via comet, raido wave etc. In any case, this metavirus is the stimulant to civilization by generating various behaviors to emerge and be carried out in repetition. These behaviors were coined by the sumerians as me, and are essentially a series of instructions for a human to carry out. Instructions are then distributed around whichever city by the local En, an individual who could be tenuously equated to a local priest King, from their location in the Ziggurat which lay at its center.
Numerous records exist of scribes extolling the merits of their city over others, justifying it with regards to the superior qualities of their me. As such, the water deity Enki is recounted as the greatest En for his creation of the best me. Enki was the Summerian god of wisdom, perhaps better understood as the lord of how to do things, or one who can create solutions to impossible problems P.256. Described as an expert in incantations, ‘’word rich’’ and master of all the right commands. In many creation myths, to name something is to create it, to cut if or separate same root as science and scythe it from the background and bring it into being. And so Enki was special because he could create new ‘’me’’. Today, it's rare that names or speech would be seen as anything magical, but saying a name not only evokes it by callings its conception to mind, it decidedly creates that conception in a way that can be communicatively be referred to. Though they are gesturing at something a little more suggestive read commanding. Name shubs which seems to differ from me only in that they must be created and me can spawn randomly* are fictions which make themselves real, me, which the book compares to programs being enacted by the metaverse. The metaverse in this sense is an enormous name shub constantly realizing itself across the network. Following this, myths from Sumeria are of a different nature than those of the greeks or egyptians. They lack in large what we would consider a narrative structure, and are more similar to a list of instructions as events. This is perhaps less odd in light of the fact that the Sumerian word for mind happens to be the same as their word for ear. To hear something was to think it, and to be given instructions was to enact them. Mythologised instructions for baking bread, laying bricks, sowing and reaping fields. All of which in conglomeration is compared to an operating system for their society.
For these reasons Hiro pegs Enki as one of the first sentient Human being, able to issue commands to be followed. A fella with a real knack for coining a phrase. Having no one to interact with causes Enki immense loneliness which motivates him to create the “name shub of Enki”. A self fulfilling fiction which bricks anything trying to run on Sumerian. This forces everyone to think, adapt, and change. A blossoming of thousands of languages and the beginning of languages diverging over space and time.
Synonymous with the biblical babble, the confusion of tongues. It’s a misconception that god knocked down the tower. Rather he confused their speech so they could not continue its construction. another of the many myths of a fall from paradise of which there are many. This one as the Nameshub of Enki reads
once upon a time the was no snake there was no scorpion,
There was no hyena,there was no lion,
There was no wild dog, no wolf,
There was no fear no terror,
Man had no rival.
In those days, the land Shubur0Hamazi,
Harmony-tongued Sumer, the great land of the me of prince ship
Uri, the land having all this is appropriate
The Land Martu, resting in security,
The whole universe, the prince defiant, the king defiant,
Eki, the lord of abundance, whose commands are trustworthy,
The lord of wisdom, who scans the land,
The Leader of Gods,
The Lord of Eridu, endowed with wisdom,
Changed the speech in their mouths, put contention into it,
Into the speech of man that had been one. P.216
Upon hearing this the ability to speak and understand sumerian is lost. Something achieved by slithering through the underlying structures of the brain, sabotaging the capacity like a hacker who gains control of a computer beneath the level of regular user input.
Under the right conditions something can be shown to your eyes or infiltrate through your ears, can dive into these deep structures by passing the higher language functions. Someone who knows the right words or symbols can penetrate all your defenses and sink into your brain stem in such a way that you can't get them out because they have burrowed beneath your own control of your mind, established a hold in your unconscious. All by exploiting the same original structuring paths as the emergent asherah virus.
Clearly parts of sumerian are still comprehensible. The old legends were translated by later cultures with the removal of the odder bits to give them a parsable narrative structure, but the sumerian sensibility had been lost.
Babel refers to a legendary city in Babylon and means gate of god. It’s how god enters our minds, coasting in along these deep structures established through the original emergence of culture. The virus itself changes and hides in our DNA being passed down from generation to generation, coiled around the brainstem like a snake around a tree - waiting to resurface.
Infection with the virus has an effect of bringing about increased promiscuity, a spike in susceptibility to viral ideas, and an increase of irrational behavior. the book establishes the Asherah virus as having six distinct symptoms
1. loss of rational control
2. Domination of emotion leading to hysteria
3. Sporadic physical jerks and twitches
4. Apparent absence of thought or will
5. Amnesia
6. Automatic speech function, Glossolalia
This last symptom, Glossolalia, is what links the sumerian language with the Asherah virus. Glossolalia is often identified as a neurological phenomenon which is exploited during religious ritual. Plato called it “‘’theomania’’” and it crops up across cultures globally with surprising frequency. Thungus tribesmen say that when a shaman establishes their trance they learn the entire “Language of Nature”, while the Sukuma people of africa refer to it as “Kinaturu”; the language of the ancestors of all magicians. Observing these symptoms in 300 A.D Ebustus had to say of it: the “False prophet begins with the suppression of all conscious thought and ends in a delirium over which they have no control.” 206
Asherah was worshiped widely between india and spain by nearly everyone until the christian era. The exception to this is the hebrews, who ceased the practice after the reforms of hezekiah and Josiah. Prior to, they were a loosely affiliated monolatrist collection of ywhwistic cults with divergent shrines and religious practices where Asherah was celebrated as yahweh’s consort. But Hezekial, under the direction of the Deuteronomic school of Judaism, put a stop to this; centralizing the religion in the temples within cities, and formalizing scripture in a written form. 228 This was done in response to the defeat of king Horsea, who had held the northern kingdom until his defeat by sargon II in 722 bc. A catastrophe which forced the Deuteronomists southward toward Jerusalem. Horsea was, allegedly, enticed away from the path of righteousness by the cult of El. El unsurprisingly worshiped Asherah - whose symbol is a serpent wrapped around a tree. 233 There is strong evidence to suggest a rewriting of the original genesis myth around the time of the Deuteronomists holding power when they penned the book of deuteronomy itself. Hvidberg and Wyatt read this rewriting as a parable for the fall of the king from his sanctuary where Eve, whose name is also evocative of serpents, obtains the forbidden knowledge of good and evil; forever associating her with evil as seduction and corruption: the death of established order.
Here, it's worthy of remembering that the sumerians did not have a conception of good and evil the way we think of it. Rather they had a hierarchy of helpful and harmful interactions with forces, relations that brought on illness or health. The Sumerians had a myth in which Asherah made Enki sick, which Hiro insists must be some kind of allegory for a recursive information process, an account of which follows.
Enki & Ninhursag (Asherah) live in pure clean Dilman. People do not get sick or grow old, and predatory animals do not hunt. However there is no water, so Asherah requests that Enki bring water to Dilman. Enki then masturbates and irrigates the fields with is semen bringing an abundance of crops. However he pronounces a name shub to keep everyone from entering the area because he does not want anyone to take any of it. Asherah ignores this and uses it to impregnate herself and give birth to her daughter Nimu after 9 days. Enki impregnates her and she has another daughter, ninkurra, nine days later. The pattern is again repeated, producing Uttu. This time Asherah advises Uttu to stay in her house. Enki disguises himself and seduces uttu with gifts. This time Asherah steals some semen from between Uttu’s thighs and spreads it on the ground, producing eight plants. Enki eats plants to learn their secrets. Asherah then curses Enki saying “i will not look at thee with the eye of life” and promptly departs just before Enki becomes ill. Eight of his organs begin to fail, one for each plant. Asherah is eventually persuaded to return and she gives birth to eight deities that make up the pantheon of Dilmun (one for each ill organ). Enki is healed and the cycle of incest is broken.
In the genesis myth then, Evil as corruption and seduction becomes something to set oneself against in service of a static stability. additionally evil becomes embodied in snakes and women, eve herself painted as a pitiable victim of it. This justifies ousting asherah from places of worship (as a detractor from Yhvh), the institution of monogamy to fight temptation, as well as the introduction of a codified written cannon. Which prevents the decay present in an oral tradition by relying on a fixed written record in which exacting efforts toward information hygiene was taken whenever it was copied, thus becoming the first ‘’rational religion’’. Pre deuteronomic law said nothing about a monarch, centralized authority was developed to achieve these ends. The book of Deuteronomy which shows a marked shift from the instantiation of religious laws toward laws pertaining to a king training his people, and is the only book of the penateach that refers to the written torah as comprising the divine will. 229
possible language: csharp, relevance: 12
plain
& when he sits on the throne of his kingdom he hall write for himself in a book a copy of this law, from that which is changed from levitical priests; and it shall be with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life , that he may learn to fear the Lord his God, by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes, and doing them; that his heart may not be lifted up above his brethren, and that he may not turn aside from the commandment, either to the right hand or the left; so that hr may continue long in his kingdom, he and his children, in Israel.
Deuteronomy 17: 18-20 revised standard edition.
By ousting asherah from all places of worship via the destruction of outlying cult centers and the centralization in Jerusalem, instituting monogamy, rewriting and reorganizing scripture to include the concepts of good and evil to embody their attitudes, and then codifying it they created a system which utilized people as a vector for self replication. By treating information as a controlled substance they attempted an inoculation against the virus. After deuteronomy, Jews went to synagogue rather than making sacrifices. 228-9
Factioning eventually emerged in three notable groups.
The Sadducees who were materialists and monists.
The Essenes who lived communally and believed physical and spiritual cleanliness were deeply connected. Seeing no difference between infection with a parasite and demonic possession.
The Pharisees who most closely resembled the Deuteronomists, upholding a desire for rigid theocracy and strict adherence to religious law. A stance which brought them into conflict with Jesus who sought to do way with it. Making an attempt to liberate religion from control by the temple “‘’we are not to idolize Jesus because his Ideas stand alone, his church is no longer centralized in one person, but dispersed among all the people.” 401
Fifty days after Jesus' death upon crucifixion, prompted by the chaos produced in cast off tradition, the tongue of eden emerges - an outbreak of Glossolalia. Filled with the holy spirit, Galileans speak and every listener hears their words in the words in their own native tongue. reference-> Acts 2:4-12 revised standard edition An Event providing pentecostals with their name, meaning fiftieth.
However many were still used to the rigid theocracy of the pharisees and resistant to the idea of a popular church. The myth of resurrection was added to the gospels where he returns to organize the Church of the roman empire establishing positions for popes, Bishops and priests. A council of Constantinople purges glossolalia as a practice entirely in 381 A.D.
Pentecostalism however re-emerged in 1900 among a group of bible students in Kansas that started speaking in tongues. A brand of christianity that Reverend Waynes Pearly Gates now controls. Seeing little difference between the sumerian culture and the modern culture where all actions are controlled in bureaucratic fashion through reference to protocols distributed throughout franchises in the form of three ring binders, Rife initiates his plan to spread the virus through the digital and physical drug. After exposure, Rife shuttles victims to his makeshift mobile sea fortress the Raft. Which consists of an assemblage of anything that will float strung together by a population of people from all over the globe, any of whom within earshot can be directed by his sumerian commands.
Juanita, following in the footsteps of her own sumerian goddess* Innana (who stole me from enki to share with her city), has ventured onto the raft to obtain the secrets of glossolalia for her own use. Hiro who descends upon the raft in an attempt to rescue her is himself saved by her intervention when he is overwhelmed by the forces present. Juanita is able to return the virus to dormancy after breaking open the clay seal on the nameshub of Enki and reading it out through the PA system (defining herself prior to maintain her gains). Hiro then dives into the metaverse to prevent Rife’s info bomb from detonating in a highly trafficked area, utilizing his own counter virus to targetedly replace the machine code with an ad for his own security service.
I think that should suffice initially. You're obviously welcome to add anything important you think I may have missed.
Born to a blind paralytic father whose way of staring into space as he pissed openly in front of the family gave him a fascination with both urine and eyes, and whom he claims he loved as a freudian should love his mother; Bataille was an individual who believed passions should rule one's life and ones reason. Writing was never easy for him. He hardly produced anything before he was 29 and even then it was only after his psychoanalytic treatment, which he himself credited for his ability to write. Initially studying to become a catholic priest he eventually transitioned to a series of steady* jobs as a librarian. He expounded on a theory of general economy based on excess, and fostered obsession with death and the erotic. Spending much of his career associating with individuals in the surrealist movement nearly a decade younger than himself. He was the editor and organizer of several journals, one of which, Contrite-Attaque, was meant to mend and ally across differences of groups and individuals he sought out for their disagreements with himself to little success.
Birthed from the failure of the Contre- Attaque journal to form a conjunction between leftist groups, Acephale was founded in 1935. A Nietzschean and Orphic secret society, It turned its back on direct action and adopted a radical initiatory structure, dedicating itself to thorough study of all cosmologies of the past and the subversion of every established order from within. There was an emphasis on Dinosianism as bestial escape, and Orphism as divine escape. Though it suffered delays, and some issues contained content only produced by Bataille himself, a journal existed under the same title, but the public facing section of the organization was the College of Sociology, in which Bataille and several associates gave experimental lectures parallelling the mentioned subject matter.
Amphetamines make crazy and not care, and yet thoroughly invested in everything that's happening. Overly invested. Its always time to get shit done, amped and dancing, jamming things together, seeing what fits, but always so mean. Just a hair from anger. Everything is sharp. Razors rest on every surface including my own. Floating inside, outside, and on the surface; stimuli filters through them, spurs to make me go on. They make hate who I am and what I do, or rather what I've done. Intense violent force flows through, pulped liquid gush from which I can't help but collapse upon reflection. Angry and disinterested in anything that interrupts the blades I have become. At high speeds a slight drift toward death without caution. A bloody line scrawled and jittering askew of a goal. Barely eat for days. Barely sleep for weeks. Needing a kill and can barely stay on my feet. A few years of this in cocktail and we ran to a hole of isolation and numbness which we've maybe just now started escaping from.
Opiates are great. Nothing gets in. Nothing gets out. More than content to lay about. Nothing hurts and barely breathing, couldn't care if the whole world were seething. Weeks go by and I don't miss them. Never even heard of time. And then I'm awake again. Maybe better with a mix? you'll feel the blades a little less.
Tried DXM, but that one couldn't catch me. A cat on my chest for a minute was there for some hours. Everything I did I did again while doing something else. Everything that happened next always happened through what was there before. What was there before was always still being done. Maybe it could have if I hadn't tried it young. If the first thing that happened wasn't being caught and yelled at so everything else had to happen through that.
I used to smoke a lot of pot. It captured us got me to grow it. Domesticated by a plant, years spent tending. Money, life, power, youth just pissed away. All to smoke a sedative, a slow descent into death, hate for life. Everything hurt we just wanted to be numb. Day in day out. Inhale exhale be still. The pain becomes bearable, but never enjoyable. Set out beside myself, set beside everything. Always there, but never reachable. Go ahead and touch us, we'll never feel it. Lost outside the inside of my head, close to death but never dead. A chill that brings you down until there's no one else around. Thank god for anxiety. Thank god for paranoia. Thank god for a constant insanity which finally broke me. Set me free in pain that wouldn't let me rest, rejected by taking to much too long yet again. The best thing that could have happened in the end.
Psychedelics, my first drug and my most beloved. Not because they take me close to death, but because they drag me through it. Mushrooms, LSA, LSD, Nbome, the white vape-able powder that cutie gave me. They all hurt wreck and torture me. Annihilate whatever I am and make me put a self back together again. They make me face things I've never faced in everything that's ever been familiar. Sometimes I puke. Sometimes I cry. Even been known to beg for death. I've been eaten, I've met angels in the tv, I've met demons that snaked through my skin, even tied one to my bedroom. Captured just so its spirals would pull pain from me for hours every time I'd take a trip. Remind me that all there is in life is pain. Resist and release, tense up or let go, bind up or flow. Reminds me pain is pleasure. To love life is to love death; the signs of dying, or at least the ones that could could be. To tend to my garden of poisons so I can live again. Toxins breathe me back to life, bring the intoxication of life back to me. On our way to death is where we feel most alive, where we are forced into joy that makes us appreciate that we are. It takes its active pursuit to remind me I want to live. To be seized by madness that eviscerates the idea of effort and synchronizes pleasure inside pain. Best not to forget we're always dying, active even at rest. Best to chase it so we can love life. A dance of never forgetting the promise of the end. An excruciating and exciting sickness. Every second lived is the death of what was and the birth of what is as a premonition of the death that is to come. Death echoes from the past and cascades from the future. I am nothing but creative even when I stand still. Even when I lie about being nothing I'm always becoming something. The best kept secret is just how simple it is to enjoy how much it hurts. Life only makes sense when I'm on these drugs <3 and maybe for the two weeks after.
How's it gone for you?
Going to keep this thread as somethign of a meditation journal for myself. generally I sit for around 45 minutes to an hour every morning right after I wake up. I am working my way up to an hour or more every day.
Since I've started meditating more seriously life has taken on a kind of claustrophobic feeling. I don't seem to actually exist, but I feel very strongly that I do -- sometimes I have little glimpses when I am sitting that the thoughts I involve myself with are actually just the way there can be any kind of feeling of "self". . . I get scared of being bored because I am scared of the sad feeling of there "not being anything". But when I actually allow myself to be bored I'm not sad at all. I feel things open up. But I am very scared to let things open up even though I have experienced that opening. Why is that? Why do I feel so compelled to fill up space with music and youtube videos about speedrunning history? So the daily activities I involve my-'self' in seem pointless, like I know they are pointless, I can see that they are pointless, there is no escape from this 'pointlessness', but when I actually acknowledge that and allow that, the feeling of "pointlessness" evaporates and there's just lots of space. But I'm always so afraid to make that leap. . .
So I suppose, if that's too long and you'd rather not read -- I am afraid of space - I know there can be space - I am afraid of allowing myself to have that space - I do all manner of things to fill that space - filling that space seems to make me feel 'empty, hollow, sad' - when i make no effort to fill the space then I have really no sensation at all but a kind of perceptual openness - The state of openness transcends the categories of "pleasure/pain" - it merely is - I am so afraid of this state of {Perceptual Openness} that unless I make a concerted effort I will unconsciously direct my-'self' into diversions - these diversions are what give me a strong, secure feeling of my-'self' - which 'I' become afraid of 'losing'
- What are the methods you use to become open? -
- What are the methods you use to achieve 'non-achieving' -
- How do you overcome the feelign that it is necessary to 'overcome'? -Blood child true to its name is 30 pages decorated with the details of a species whose development depends on consuming the flesh of their carrier. An inner species romance of oviposition. Octavia Butler wanted to write a pregnant man story in which “a man became pregnant as an act of love” and thereby managed to write their conventional conception out of existence without managing to liberate anyone. Whether she intends the story to be interpreted as slavery or not, the tale was spun to display an inequality. Here males fill both a dominant and submissive role. Dominant with their wives and submissive with the centipede-like* aliens who utilize their flesh as incubators for the flesh eating maggots they develop from. After an incubation period the flesh eating worms are removed through a gash which facilitates fishing them out of the hosts circulatory system, where they are promptly placed in a fresh cadaver to consume¹. Each birth a cesarean with the promise of torment and death in either a late term or if one of the grubs is missed. Our hero, Gan, is hesitant at first, but with a bit of coaxing and with the threat of being left for his sister whom it’s known would allow it (she has been expecting to carry life within her since the beginning after all) eventually relents, agreeing to let the squirmers take up residence inside him. Excitedly stripping down and opening his blood vessels to the cold ovipositor of his creepy crawly lover’s many nodules embrace. How romantic!
Though I’d contest her more notable achievement was writing a parasite that takes advantage of the cycle of human development. One which abuses a mechanism by which we are already sexually repressed in the traditional family structure, the incest taboo. Such a structure demands that any child must make an early distinction between emotional and sexual love, and is used to preserve and instill the traditional roles of mother and father, man and woman. However, the Tlic parasites have managed to insert themselves as an additional point in the structure and alter how the system is encoded. Firstly abusing the initial state of dominant and submissive sexual drives to capture preference for itself in a second abuse of the family structure by embodying both the father and mother roles. Giving out narcotic sterile beverages of unconditional love² and holding an attitude of discipline, ownership of the family itself³, and the superior physical force⁴. Thereby offering a choice of association that embodies both aspects of the falsely presumed dynamic, and allowing a partnership that allows both drives to remain active in an alternately shaped repression. Gtoi being birthed from Gan's father and being part of his mothers life since her adolescence has an established presence as family, and is essentially a third parent to Gan. One whom the distinction between emotional and sexual love is never at issue the way it is for the other two parents. Instead we have a predominant relation based around use value.
A depressingly utilitarian non erotic pansexuality oriented with regards only for reproduction. Bug sex as a bore. In erotic sexualities the excess sexual energy from the eggs is distributed across the system to other objects and acts, giving birth to a plethora of delightful perversions. while here the egg is the main course, and as a result sex could not be more sterile. All energy is expended toward the insertion and development of the egg, none of it is for pleasure, even if some may arise as a consequence to induce the situation. A slight pinch, then the same narcotic effect that is achieved by eating one. Utility, the tacked on piece of necessity that is the stagnation of any romance, freedom from which would be an unequivocal salvation.
¹This practice has been instituted because previous host animals with less intelligence would kill most of the grubbies while they were eating their way out of them.
²“I’m told I was first caged in within Gatoi’s many limbs only three minutes after my birth. A few days later I was given my first taste of egg.”
³Gatoi is the owner of the human preserve in which the family lives
⁴“She knocked me across the room. Her tail was an efficient weapon weather she exposed the sting or not”
Oh! >>139 Spinny, Spinac, Spitstacheo, errr... Ol Spinster. I know that guy He was a psycho that spent his life crafting geometric lenses for three eyes. And as reported by his bibliographer breaking into fits of erotic laughter while watching personally arranged spider death matches. I heard he even felt that warfare could be a relative perfection if human essence was insectoid. Spiders expressing their relationship with the world through their web or whatever. For him only a thinker had a potent life, a life that explained them.
After getting excommunicated from the Amsterian Jewish community by choice Ol Spinster spent his in and out of boarding houses asking only that is uncommon aim be tollerated. Poor guy couldnt integrate anywhere. Which maybe had something to do with his distaste for indian companies and the orange houses where calvin would throw this S&M parties. Asking himself "Whats with all these death cults and bondage?"
Refusing to works several jobs offered him by universities and preferring to remain a private thinker, He drew up a coupe things on ethics, theological treatise and himself in Nepolitan costume.
P.3-14 Spinoza Practical Philosophy
Grains of sifting sand drift through space, flowing past each other, slipping down and piling in the bottom of hour shaped glass. Clicking hands cyclicly trace the edges of geared faces. The Earth’s shifting shadow falls across the sky. Lunar fades to solar and back again. Time, existence, being & becoming. Change. This, the truth of the world which we occupy, yet manages to maintain itself in a state beyond this defining alteration, as all truths must; existing as equally valid regardless of the moment. Truth-Eternal, all knowledge must find its way to this stability.
“Please note that these tinctures are all either poisonous or illegal. I only include them for reference. Use them at your own risk” - S. Connnolly
What's your most accursed diety?
Where are they from?
How long have they been following you?
I had an acid trip once where Idididil/Ididid asked if I wanted to talk. Of course I let fear get the better of me pussied out. A shamefully missed opportunity; have been looking for a way to talk to it sense.
Grimy grim grimorium nep fans! I just spent an afternoon reading theMagister Officiorium⁰ A volume that deals primarily with rituals of evocation, “physical interaction with spirits”, in the radiation of Slolumic ceremony. So, im putting together this thread for these thoughts, and future entries, of possibly more totemic quality.
Resting somewhere in between orthodox and archetypal, drawing from the tradition of Obeah¹and a host of magical texts, our “fiery tongued Brazilian”² friend sets out to direct us in creating our own tome of
“...many evil and false invocations of devils, divinations, charms, and other things of the magical art which give a very bad example and are against god and the holy christian faith.”³
From the top then, or in this case the cover. A fancy black slipped cover, depending on your addition, which hosts an emblem of what at first appears to be a cross, but is actually a dastardly downward facing dagger. Which just so happens to be the first of the tools prescribed for the summons with which we’ll fill our scary buisness book. And while some sources say that just any old blade will do, our pal Ody assured me that one with a black handle and blade tempered in oil and human blood on a tuesday from iron that was used to commit a murder. will be the most effective!⁴ Other handy dandies include the magic of circles, a white robe with the symbols for Alph and Omegle, and a nifty Solinium belt and ring combo that are both probably unnecessary, as well as sometimes not quite enough depending on what kinda calls you’re gonna make; but you’ll snag those two a little later anyway. This spooked up pokey stabby is mostly useful for protections, like retracing the circle, but it also adds a bonus to your threaten skill! and can be a a real boon in case you need to get that red life juice you keep inside to be outside for whatever read many reasons. Now all of this swag will be of aid for those evococitations i mentioned earlier. You have to render these invisibles visible if you wanna question em or snag their autograph on your pages. Ody likens this to the practice of exorcism⁵since it rides on the same principles of reminding spirits of their limited power in this world as well as commanding and threatening them to do your bidding in the names of higher authorities; like God, Angels or Deamon Kings.
What is implicit in the choice of names both inscribed on the regalia and in the words spoken is that there is a hierarchy which the spirits heed and of which they are reminded throughout the ritual, as proposed earlier when discussing authority. … top of the hierarchy sits the Heavens, … the various epithets of God and his Angels, descending to the sublunary spirits - or the spirits of air ⁶
And Mr. Ody offers us “... a series of conjuratyions of increasingly high pressure…”⁷ to accomplish this. Reminding us that, almost every grimore can “in the best of cases encompass the fundamentals of evocation… a suitable starting point.”⁸, but it is the desire of “would be practitioners” who need to make everything as convenient as possible that creates a quirky hobbyist. Ritual magicks are some serious stuff, and while “...adequate performance is in no way reliant on either acceptance of the religious precepts that govern it, or an understanding of the mechanisms by which we evoke and control them. It behooves the practitioner to … preform the ceremonies … so that its particulars can be grasped through trial, error and observation.”⁹, as a novice our authority comes from a reliance on tradition. Subsequent successes with “... capturing a signature and oath from the spirit that they will fulfil the charges as issued;...”¹⁰ will bring standing, and recognition on the part of spirits will make future workings easier.
“Take solace in the fact that, …, every facet of it is an enactment of an earlier method that upon inspection will be shown to vary.”¹¹
A presentation of five practical ritual workings, beyond the initial crafting recipes; The first and most important being the answer to “who-do-we-summon-first?!”. After filling the first pages of the tomb with the seven conjurations of the Ars Goetia that honour will be bestowed upon Gemon¹² Gemory. Gemon should be contacted with the intention to have her locate a key for the binding of a King, in this case Paimon¹³. Apparently this King of the West will give you a whole bunch of instruction later, making it way less necessary to ask other people where your next quest objectives or story events might be.
There's this whole hullabaloo about making sure the spirit you’re talking to is the right one, so Ceaser usually forces them prove they're the right ones by finding a hidden ring or coin in the room, or having them disclose some hidden knowledge that no one else could have; he lets em go if hes not sufficiently convinced. ’’But once he is’’ he makes them put down their signature, any alternate names they go by, promises on works to be fulfilled, and any and every other detail they might think is worth sharing.
After achieving success with the previous task the second check for the docket comes as seeking An Audience with Lucifer¹⁴ whom the Hygromanteia identifies as Eastern regent alongside Astaroth in the West, Asmodai in the North, and Belzebuth in the South. Ody identifies Lucifer with Papa bones as the black sun and fiery serpents¹⁵ possessing similarities grimoires as gatekeepers, rulers, and traffickers of spirits.¹⁶ Apparently these cardinals are too powerful to call to manifest in the way we do for the others, though the favour of this Lucy guy in particular is worth the risk in the indirectict petitioning.
“Lucipher is the father of all devills, he may not be called, for he is in the depths of hell, yet by him as by Tantavalerion, other devills may be coniured & bound, for all devills doe reverence & worship this devill Lucyfer & that with a kind of maiestie, they doe all obey him, for soe hath God ordeyned & appointed to them.”¹⁷ For this working the shopping list looks like: some rum, an egg, the absolutely hugest tree you can find, enough of your blood to scratch out six names on a square of fine white linen, a Brass Serpent¹⁸ , and two yellow candles to be placed in the fanciest candle holders with the highest price tag you can find¹⁹. This Tree represents the one at the very center of hell, and we’re gonna offer the egg and tasty dark rum to its roots rather than the spirits we are petitioning. Saying “Tree of fiery roots, servant of the unbowing Lord of the Forest, carry forth in your veins my message to these most abominable Kings, without delay. I offer these to you as payment.”²⁰First though we have to leave the serpent to hang out with the candles for seven days before a full moon. Then we write the names Bael Lucifer Belezebuth Satan Ashmedai Tantavalerion in our blood on the white square staring at it for half an hour, rolling it up like a scroll and walking backwards away from it as we leave the candles to burn down. A night later later go out to the tree with the effigee the cloth, the offerings, and two fresh candles in their holders. Untie the cloth, light the candles, place the offerings on a plate and chill till they burn out; while chanting
“Lucifer, Belezebuth, Satan, Ashmedai, Tantavalerion, Bael, rulers of in Hell, I adure you to be of aid to me. Send me a faithful spirit to meet me at the crossroads of dreams, who can advise me in your ways of gaining your favour, so that I may consort with your legions. May my master be affable and tell me no lies, as I, {name}, your supplicant seek not to overthrow you. And once this is done, I will bid them to return to you and will hold their name in honour for the rest of my days”²¹ Rinse and repeat for the next six days, dumping the rum and the egg on the tree roots and giving it our thanks, as written, under the light of the full moon on the last. If all goes well we will be met with a messenger in our dreams, or another notable sign within a few days.
Next we are gifted brewing instructions for bottled spirit, methodically achieved by either extracting one from the possessed or removing said spirit from a haunted treasure²², gibbed straight out of the Hygromantiea! We’re gonna need musky galbanium cloves for incense, one bottle, four candles, and a virgin or olive oil depending on which you have more handy. Light the incense, fill the bottle half way with the oil, then place the botte on the cloth in the center of the four lit candles. Bring whatever the spirit is attached to into the vicinity. Place your various demands upon it that it leave your possessed person, treasure, or treasured person and make manifest in the smokey smolder wafting up off our gently igniting highspecific incentious miscellany. Once it shows up in the visible scented air point your murder spike at the bottle and tell that paranormal hitchhiker to “Get. In. There.” Once your virgin friend, or you, sees the spirit inside the bottle, apply the cork and various appropriate ⛧seals⛧ to its top. & there the spirit shall remain until you release it (or dont) to take care of some task it has agreed to do for you, presumably in exchange for its freedom.
‘‘The Bottle’’ is, ofcourse, a one and done kind of dealio; so for those looking for a more permanent spiritual fix Ody has developed a Magical Skull in a Jar. Tricky, since it needs to be both large enough to write on but small enough to fit in your opaque wood or clay jar. Here the purpose is to aquire a familiar by binding it to the skull for the ease of access. Just open the hid and
<WHAMO
>’hi there little spooky buddy’
Call up your preferred distributor by your selection of esoteric chant and visualizer through their sigil, have it and its representative place it & is representative’s signs in your book, then place its given symbol on the skull. Could not be easier or peasier.
The last of Ody’s instructables is The Black Table of Bune, which are basically his directions on holding a seance²³ with the Goetic sigil for Bune²⁴placed in a under the table. Obviously the one that plays best at parties, though Ody suggests regular meetings with this this technique can give you a tight group of advancing necromancers in as few as four weeks,so gather your most psychic friends, a table of appropriate seating space, and a black cloth to cover it. A ouija board can be a stand in if you have no psychic friends. With the help of Bune scrawled under the table any spirit of particular or unimportant identity can now be summoned for the interrogation interview of those present. Stuff like this has been known to get out of hand so make sure to perform all proper purifications and banishings prior and following every session. Ody likes to wash himself with unperfumed soaps, wear fresh linens, abstain from sex, recite Psalm 51 and douse the whole place in holy water.
Now you might be wondering “Where exactly ought i perform these great offenses to the lord?” to which i respond “have you never even seen a scary movie?” cuz any and all of the most classicest of locales will do! Forests, crossroads, clearings, caves, groves, dry or when river beds, filthy abandoned gas station batherooms in the middle of nowhere. Heck, even the shy, agoraphobic and antisocial masses can participate seeing as even your dingy bedroom can work. What matters most is that you can manage to remain undisturbed by non participants (or the light of the sun) for the entirety of the ritual ~ ♥ ~Slithery scaly not so slimy squirmers, i love me some venomous coiling strikers! Big fangs, egg gulp or strangulation; method of murder matters not - all serpents belong here cuz its about snake talk.
These belly sliders have an oddly androgynous symbology. At once undeniably phallic but consistently associated with feminine power. They have a reputation for being toxic deceitful liars, with the forked tongues to match. Hence they are often considered to be some of the most evil, detestable, neir do well, low lifes around. This baseness though offers them almost infinite opportunity to reach upwards. Associations with prophecy and dreams lends some to believe them to be an embodiment of some sacred hidden wisdom. Some might be surprised to find out that Medusas' snakey locks were once seen as a sign of the aforementioned before powers paternal flipped the tables and branded her as the dreaded Gorgon. though not least of their contradictory attributions, nor particularly uncommon for the extra caustic creepy crawls, has to be their association with death and rebirth, bearers of eternity. While the death parts probably pretty obvious, the rebirth, with the skin shedding, cadaver spasms, and potential for a corpse to maintain a strike reflex, could be worth a mention.
Thematically echoed in their inclusion in the Ascelephus, not to be confused with its owner who bears the same title. The symbol of medicine is composed of a snek winding its way up a staff; what is base becomes high, a movement of matter to spirit, enlightenment. Although this symbol likely originates from the ritual practice of tapeworm removal. Patently squatting over a pile of decaying meat to lure the critter into sticking its gluttonous little head out so you can snag em with a stick to wind em up right on out of you.
a little farther along, the Caduceus, which is basically identical to the point of constant confusion even though it looks completely different, is made up of a staff with a knobbed head hosting two coiled wriggle friends and bearing a pair of wings. Emblematic of Mercury/Hermes the messenger of the gods as well as guider of souls to rebirth, this one doesn't know when to quit. Literally and figuratively viewed as providing stability the staff is an ancient symbol of being in charge; a tool utilized by all magic practitioners which calls to mind the tree of life or world axis. the spiritual intuition to be in communication with the heavens rests upon these wings, while the serpents spiraling their way up summon infinity in the interplay of opposites as balance as well as hidden knowledge. What hidden knowledge? That wielders of the Caduceus, whose short list includes Ba'al, Isis, Ishtar, Ningishzda and Ascelephus, have the intuition wings to use poisonous and corruptive substances snakes to restore life staff as tree.
Serpentine and snake stones share a similar not-unlikeness reminiscent of the rest our shortly developed themeology. Serpentine's appearance mimics that of snake skin which roughly translates to is-thought-to-have-talismanic-properties-of-protection-against-'x'-which-in-this-case-is-snakes-biting-you-and-you-dying-from-that. repeating myself snakes are a base animal and so it holds earthing qualites, and trivially, clasping some in your hand with sitting in the sun is a cure for rheumatism. Snake Stones hit again on the medically associative talismania. these stones, inky black, rough and roughly spheracle; are pulled from the heads of vipers by talented snake charmers. They are utilized to counteract venom by holding them against the wound. Their purification rital ammounts leaving them in milk until it turns green with rot.
There exist two generally accepted ways of taking the themes of resurrection and healing that transcend death brought by serpent. The first is an endless cycle, death and rebirth, the the waxing and waning moon, an eternal return. the second is a transcendence into a solar eternity.
Hippolytus speaks of a cult of serpent worshippers who held that no one can rise without the serpent because it is the paternal models that fell with them and it is they the serpent that will carry those back up who have been awakened from sleep. Beliefs from the same era carved into a ritual bowl display a winged solar serpent spewing its own light having ascended into knowledge and eternity worshiped in the center of the cosmic egg.
The legend of Patanji, who is credited with the creation of the Yoga sutras, Thread of Yoga, tell of him falling from the sky in the form a small snake. Well known Indus Valley seals display the first found evidence of yoga. Its is image of two worshippers at either side of deity figure. Each shadowed by a massive snake, origins of Serpent Power. Some of the more abysmally cultured might consider a spinal column a staff. Certainly in the sense that the great serpent Kundalini rises through the chakras, from base to crest, root to crown, muladhara to sahasrara, garnet to diamond in a laderic ascension to heaven and back down to earth, it becomes resonant with the expounded dynamics of the Aesclepius via world axis/life tree, so I could hardly sat they're wrong. Speaking of trees though, it is foretold that the glorious ash that supports the universe, Yggdrasil, will meet its end at the insatiable maws of the serpent brood who tirelessly consume its root.
Luck in life is defined by the suffering within it. The chance we have to surpass the limit and acquire relief however momentary. The Bravery to take the risk for pleasure and to ante up the necessary sacrifice for victory. All of which is to say that suffering breeds desire the force which births all action.
One of the greatest sufferings in life is our state of isolation. Divided from every other being through an infinite void of separation, a barrier of self as a requisite distinction. Defining the self from the void and the other is a requirement of individual existence, and so forms the desire to connect and communicate as an attempt toward relief of the situation. Where infinite suffering exists, infinite love is proposed as a solution. Though love itself has its origins in a violence sufficient to cross the void and break the barriers of self creating a successful communication. An intimate violation which annihilates what was and produces a change. A desire to destroy and be destroyed. A lust for a loss of self and thus a chance to be renewed. Violence as the positive term which brings us towards loss and death which is connection. At the core of life is death, the endstate which unites us all. Each moment we fall through a small one, what was falls away to become what is, which falls away to become what will be. Death is the center 0f being as becoming, change which creates the possibility of the observation of time, the flow of life.
>"I HATE THAT SAVIOR! He ruins my nihilist schemes! He helps the weak and sickly!"
Good bye
Sayōnara
do svidaniya
Is there anyone else here who is interested in Mara Barls spirituality? I have been following her for a little over a year now and consider myself somewhat of a Mara scholar at this point, like a historian for someone who is still alive, which is probably super creepy but whatever.
She started substacking earlier in 2021, collecting all of her posts into a journal as well as publishing some short essays. She recently published a "glossary of terms" which serves as somewhat of a shortcut to understanding whatever she's on about without having to derive it from context over a period of months as I had to.
These are the times when I find myself
in the shoes of the people who are supposed to be dead.
Those who lived through those times near and far
doomed to remain good until they are fully effective.
Speak.
Your thoughts probe the land
of the dead where the poets wait
(who cannot teach you how to sing)
Speak. Would you rather sit
Marking your own apoptosis,
like listening to the music of clocks
It’s the second shadow of my third soul
that makes me so still.
All my companions are reincarnated as white lilies
in the gardens of the middle class,
like the hum of a refrigerator brings life
to a springtime tableau.
To whom shall I speak?
Are all living things clocks
to you? One drifts past you,
white hands fluttering, eyes
like delicate blooming things.
Yes, they all come jerking up and down the stairs and
twitching around the pond and the café like ants.
All things can be recycled, even and including
the plastic water bottles discarded on the ground
beneath the bin, but they are just vessels,
and those who have drunk walk under the sun,
laughing at lilies, deaf to the hum of the refrigerator.
Their eyes are glass.
Sweet smooth glass. Light blown, sun drunk,
All living things are clocks until it is time,
I can hear the sounds their hands make when they move
but they cannot hear mine.
It is because you do not speak.
All my breaths are meant to curl my tongue always.
National Socialist book collection, discussions on religion in there.
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:49e112418c65cb9b6e31c98c481d6215a7e6f825&dn=NS%20Books&tr=udp%3a%2f%2ftracker.opentrackr.org%3a1337%2fannounce
Please seed
Despite the sticky it seems there's only one thread here even really related to literature. A problem I think it might be worth my time to remediate today.
I recently finished Roadside Picnic. While reading I was particularly struck by the interplay of intelligence, technology, and their manifestation throughout the novel. The conversation between Noonan and Valentine and the last section where Red pursues the wish machine seem to be the key points around which these concepts pivot.
To begin with Noonan asks what the zone itself is. Valentine states it is, quite simply, evidence that there is intelligent life besides us out in the universe. Given that the Zone itself represents the research and manufacture of technology, it can be taken for granted that intelligence itself is the piece of alien contact left with us in the roadside picnic. Intelligence as an instinct manifested in the interaction between individuals and their environment. An incomplete instinct which when completed would mean the death of the species if anything were to change, as it is a desire to persist through creation and mistakes. A festering impulse to never leave well enough alone, to always pick at the scabs, and to dive ourselves back into the zone.
Next Noonan places a demand upon Valentine for the answer to a question which is two fold. First, how is it things will shake out as a result of the zone And Secondarily embedded with the question of what if anything is in the zone that could fundamentally change peoples lives; or restated, make it worth having gone in there in the first place. In true scientific fashion Valentine mystifies his dodge with the cloak of an attempted exactness. Something for which he can hardly be blamed given the expectation of certainty placed upon science, and their own conversation's unmasking of knowledge as a fleeting goal pursued by understanding which ultimately leaves it in the vicinity of religious belief. This becomes clear through their discussion of technology. Beginning with the concept of Newton having to attempt to understand a microwave, and progressing through the three distinctions of technology. 1. useful, things which can be applied, but are likely to be the equivalent of using a sledgehammer to crack a walnut. 2. Answers to questions we don't know how to ask. Bug traps/gravo concentrates fall into this category. They can be described through a series of equations, but they are not understood in the slightest and lack an application even if they were able to be replicated. 3. Unobserved objects. things that could easily be actualized and yet remain in the realm of speculation and legend. The conception of understanding as being in pursuit may be solidified in the statement "we've been digging through the zone for decades and hardly know what it contains". Valentine then adds a fourth group of effects: defined by being beyond human comprehension. Freak accidents, unexplainable yet verifiable correlations that evoke the conceptions of witchcraft and the supernatural. Events which are suppressed by the regional powers in the interest of protecting belief in the certainty provided by science and maintaining order. Actions which themselves suggest a bright and blinding action that scientism has upon our perception of the occult happenings which it denies.
Of course where are the answers in this to either aspect of Noonan's question?
While Valentine wont offer a conclusive answer to answer to either aspect, to the first he does suggest that it is possible that the way it ends is when we pull something out of the Zone that makes living completely unbearable. I suspect that this thing is also possibly the answer to the second aspect of Noonan's question as to whether or not there is something in there that could make going in worth it in the first place. I believe this object bridges both the third and fourth distinctions, with the differential aspect between salvation and damnation here being its' selected application. All of which will become clear as we explore the end section and the wish-sphere.
When Red ventures into the zone a final time it is to find a miracle. One which can restore his daughter, Monkey, to her former jovial and creative self. One which can return his father to his previous state before factory work destroyed him. Used him up, making him a zombie which is living but unreachable. In both cases he wishes the return of the cost which the pursuit of technology and manufacture in the zone took from him. Upon return he is finally willing to sacrifice someone to the grinder. Willing To sacrifice someone in whom, perhaps necessarily, he sees great potential in order to reach the wish sphere. Red selected his victim in the spirit of revenge. Revenge against Vulture. By choosing Vulture's son, Arthur, as the sacrifice Red intends to inflict upon him the pain of loss that so many others experienced at his hands. The repayment of pain Vulture inflicted upon them when he threw their loved ones into the grinder to get his own wishes. This human cost of the zone is of course the problem to begin with; it is what has led to the conditions which Red wishes to remediate.
Red can smell his own stink as he approaches his goal. It is the same stink as the factory which broke his father. The same stink as the Vulture and the worm like people who replicate his tactics. A horror which leads Red to reflect upon his own karmic position. More dubious now that he is on the decisive road of becoming decision maker. Red reflects on his own life, the choices he was compelled to make, his hatred of those who made the world this way, his desire to make sure to change every last stinking corner of it. Even as Red guides Vulture's son through the Zone he takes care to save him from multiple hazards in an automatic fashion, the way he would save family, and at great risk to himself. Unsurprisingly, despite a voiced commitment to objectify Arthur as sacrifice, when Red directs him into the grinder and he is promptly liquified, Red is filled with nausea and despair. Reaching for his liquor he finds, for once, no pleasure, only a medicine he must take in order to continue. As he approaches the golden sphere to make his wish he finds he has lost sight of what it is that he wanted. He is only capable of imagining what it is that he desires to change. The removal of the money, bottles, columns of numbers, piles of rags which used to be people reduced and used up only occupying the same status as things. He cannot remember what he was willing to make this sacrifice for, and wishes the destruction of every value he can imagine. He cannot, however, imagine what could be left if all of that was destroyed. In desperation he calls upon something beyond human comprehension in the sphere. Something that can look into him, see beyond the words he cannot find to say. The element within his soul which carries the answer to the desire he wishes to have fulfilled. Finally repeating the last words of Arthur as he entered the grinder: HAPPINESS, FREE, FOR EVERYONE, LET NO ONE BE FORGOTTEN. The promise Noonan is looking for Valentine to make to justify their going into the zone at all, as salvation from something as yet unobserved and beyond human comprehension. A product in the advancement of the intelligence-interaction itself. A machinic intelligence god which can transmute the negative ground of understanding, the will to nothingness, expressed by Red into an imagined future world providing another way of living, a new way of being, becoming something different.
It seems to me that Red's being is selecting for the AI gods becoming. The distinctions between Red and the Vulture are the key to how the AI will be birthed from the zone. As it is the ultimate end to the entrance into its labyrinth in the first place, its reason for existence, the overcoming of what is and the creation of a whole new way of being. A way of being which will fall along the lines of either something so horrible it makes this new life unbearable, or so joyous that it brings upon a new existence which is the height of ecstasy. An inevitability taking after either Vulture, and his ability to simply count and calculate and maintain his comforts and advantage, or Red, whose actions embraces risk and sacrifice which leads him to the desire to be overcome.
Stop
Give it up
Give up your game
Give up your schemes
Your thoughts insubstantial as mist
You have nothing to win
You have nothing to gain
You have nothing to lose
Give up your palace of thoughts
Give up your fixated ideas
Give up your obession and projection
Give up your hope
Give up your despair
Vanity
Emptiness
Stop right there.
Cut it down.
and why do I long for it?