PrimatePoetics!

Burroughs as Mayaist

- Posted: 31.Jul.2007.

In 1965, Burroughs published his own version of TIME magazine in an edition of only 1000 copies. The text deals with the Mayan calendar, and with this as first post at TRIBE Some very knowledgable folks have left their thought about Burroughs, the Mayans and about what Burroughs actually knew. One link in particular is useful as it directs to Buroughs' Mayan Caper, first published in the Soft Machine. Based on this you could argue that the forword to Ah Pook is Here is an old draft. Here is an excerpt:

My basic training in time travel was completed and I was now ready to train specifically for the Mayan assignment —

I went to Mexico City and studied the Mayans with a team of archaeologists — The Mayans lived in what is now Yucatan, British Honduras, and Guatemala — I will not recapitulate what is known of their history, but some observations on the Mayan calendar are essential to understanding this report — The Mayan calendar starts from a mythical date 5 Ahua 8 Cumhu and rolls on to the end of the world, also a definite date depicted in the codices as a God pouring water on the earth — The Mayans had a solar, a lunar, and a ceremonial calendar rolling along like interlocking wheels from 5 Ahua 8 Cumhu to the end — The absolute power of the priests, who formed about 2 percent of the population, depended on their control of this calendar — The extent of this number monopoly can be deduced from the fact that the Mayan verbal language contains no number above ten — Modern Mayan-speaking Indians use Spanish numerals — Mayan agriculture was of the slash and burn type — They had no plows. Plows can not be used in the Mayan area because there is a strata of limestone six inches beneath the surface and the slash and burn method is used to this day — Now slash and burn agriculture is a matter of precise timing — The brush must be cut at a certain time so it will have time to dry and the burning operation carried out before the rains start — A few days’ miscalculation and the year’s crop is lost —

The Mayan writings have not been fully deciphered, but we know that most of the hieroglyphs refer to dates in the calendar, and these numerals have been translated — It is probable that the other undeciphered symbols refer to the ceremonial calendar — There are only three Mayan codices in existence, one in Dresden, one in Paris, one in Madrid, the others having been burned by Bishop Landa — Mayan is very much a living language and in the more remote villages nothing else is spoken — More routine work — I studied Mayan and listened to it on the tape recorder and mixed Mayan in with English — I made innumerable photomontages of Mayan codices and artifacts — the next step was to find a “vessel” — We sifted through many candidates before settling on a young Mayan worker recently arrived from Yucatan — This boy was about twenty, almost black, with the sloping forehead and curved nose of the ancient Mayans — (The physical type has undergone little alteration) — He was illiterate — He had a history of epilepsy — He was what mediums call a “sensitive” — For another three months I worked with the boy on the tape recorder mixing his speech with mine — (I was quite fluent in Mayan at this point — Unlike Aztec it is an easy language.) It was time now for “the transfer operation” — “I” was to be moved into the body of this young Mayan — The operation is illegal and few are competent to practice it — I was referred to an American doctor who had become a heavy metal addict and lost his certificate — “He is the best transfer artist in the industry” I was told “For a price.”

The Danaan play Chess [like demons]

- Posted: 20.Jan.2007.

Try searching for chess at sacred-texts.com and be overwhelmed by the number of things it find. However it is likely that most references to chess are translation errors (or deliberate choices) and where it says chess a whole range of Tafl games are meant.

One of the themes resurfacing is the chess-board as a way for celtic spirits to get something they want from humans but can't get:

A Game of Chess

Shortly afterwards he appears to King Eochy, as already related on the Hill of Tara. He tells the king that he has come to play a game of chess with him, and produces a chessboard of silver with pieces of gold studded with jewels. To be a skilful chess-player was a necessary accomplishment of kings and nobles in

Ireland, and Eochy enters into the game with zest. Midir allows him to win game after game, and in payment for his losses he performs by magic all kinds of tasks for Eochy, reclaiming land, clearing forests, and building causeways across bogs - here we have a touch of the popular conception of the Danaans as earth deities associated with agriculture and fertility. At last, having excited Eochy's cupidity and made him believe himself the better player, he proposes a final game, the stakes to be at the pleasure of the victor after the game is over. Eochy is now defeated.

"My stake is forfeit to thee," said Eochy.

"Had I wished it, it had been forfeit long ago", said Midir.

"What is it that thou desirest me to grant?" said Eochy.

"That I may hold Etain in my arms and obtain a kiss from her," said Midir.

The king was silent for a while; then he said: "One month from to-day thou shalt come, and the thing thou desirest shall be granted thee."

Those damn Danaan while this story is similar.

Only the Scots, according to Walter Scott, have the better end of the deal:

Several families of the Highlands of Scotland anciently laid claim to the distinction of an attendant spirit who performed the office of the Irish banshie. Amongst them, however, the functions of this attendant genius, whose form and appearance differed in different cases, were not limited to announcing the dissolution of those whose days were numbered. The Highlanders contrived to exact from them other points of service, sometimes as warding off dangers of battle; at others, as guarding and protecting the infant heir through the dangers of childhood; and sometimes as condescending to interfere even in the sports of the chieftain, and point out the fittest move to be made at chess, or the best card to be played at any other game.

Pic

Forest Voids

- Posted: 22.Feb.2009.

In Ruhla as soon as the trees begin to grow green in spring, the children assemble on a Sunday and go out into the woods, where they choose one of their playmates to be the Little Leaf Man.

They break branches from the trees and twine them about the child till only his shoes peep out from the leafy mantle. Holes are made in it for him to see through, and two of the children lead the Little Leaf Man that he may not stumble or fall.

Singing and dancing they take him from house to house, asking for gifts of food such as eggs, cream, sausages, and cakes.

Lastly, they sprinkle the Leaf Man with water and feast on the food they have collected.

Have a great weekend, but be careful of the children in the woods!

As left on MyMySpace page by Delightful Void Shelley she further comments:

The excerpt is from: The Golden Bough : A Study Of Magic and Religion by Sir James Frazer, Chapter 9 - The worship of Trees.

The dolls in the trees (spooky!) are from a real place in Mexico called: La Isla de las Munecas. The story here is that some 50 or 60 years ago, a child died by drowning off the shore of the island. The man who lived on the island, was feeling haunted by the spirit of the dead child and decided to scare it back. He began hanging dolls around and people helped him by sending more and more dolls, over the years, where they remain today. The area is now protected by the original landowner's sons.

The Great Book of Comparative Mythology

- Posted: 24.Aug.2009.

Nice Cover!

Joseph Cambell is the Richard Dawkins of comparative mythology and the 'Masks of God' (1960) is his classic helicopter view on the interlocking patterns of the world's mythologies. The problem with this book is that it starts with the ludicrous theories of the 1920/30ties (Freud and Jung) and backs it up with anthropology of the 1950ties, which has changed and learned much since. It is an interresting timepiece and the chapter on shamanism for instance is better balanced than much later writing on the subject but overall, from our perspective, this Capmbell argues from facts without nuance. And like in chaos theory, the overall picture build up from inconspicuous bits of nuance.

Comparative mythology is such an interesting idea (albeit very 18th century Prussian) and it does make sense at some level but in practise it assumes such a stasis in the life and history of so-called stone-age people that is demeaning to those people, especially because it is simply not true!

Blood Vomiting Game

- Posted: 23.Oct.2006.

Jowa also played one of the most famous games in Go history known as the Blood Vomiting Game. Gennan Inseki, a former rival of Jowa, knowing that he could not defeat Jowa himself, persuaded Intetsu Akaboshi, a rapidly improving pupil of Gennan, to play against him. The match started with Akaboshi having the advantage, as he unleashed the taisha variation that was developed secretly in the Inoue house. However as the four day long game progressed, Jowa slowly clawed his way into the lead by playing three famous moves known as the Ghost Moves, the three moves were supposedly brought to Jowa by ghosts, allowing him to grind Intetsu's lead away.

In the end, Jowa won, and as the stones were being cleared from the board, Akaboshi kneeled over the board and coughed up blood. Within a few weeks, he was dead.

VIA

The Anatomy of a Pygmie

- Posted: 25.Jun.2008.

Edward Tyler (1650-1708) is regarded as the founder of comparative anatomy. In 1698, he dissected a chimpanzee and the result was the book Orang-Outang, sive Homo Sylvestris: or, the Anatomy of a Pygmie Compared with that of a Monkey, an Ape, and a Man. The Pygmie was a core interest of Tyson as is shown by the title of another book: A Philological Essay Concerning the Pygmies of the Ancients. It transpires that in the dark past people often mismatched the little people with the apes.

"I take him to be wholly a Brute, tho' in the formation of the Body, and in the Sensitive or Brutal Soul, it may be, more resembling a Man, than any other Animal; so that in this Chain of the Creation, as an intermediate Link between an Ape and a Man, I would place our Pygmie."

Notes for a Diatribe on Masks

- Posted: 30.Jul.2009.

Unsure how to interpret this small manifesto from 'Encounters with Nature' by Paul Shepard and Florence R. Shepard but the first line is now scientific; apes do look at faces with the same intent and the same parts of their brain.

Notes for a Diatribe on Masks

Unlike many others animals, primates are preoccupied with faces. In faces the whole world of feelings, intentions, actions, and powers is revealed.

The powers are those that animate the cosmos.

The text for learning and reading the play of these powers is given concrete form in the species of animals.

Each animal enacts a power and is represented by a masklike face.

Individual humans have all these powers of species within.

But we can best see the inner play of these powers in the interplay of animals. They are our story.

We perform segments of this story (wearing masks). The dramatized myth is also the enacted metaphor of ritual.

The mask transforms the actor into power. In it he/she becomes. The mask is the concrete sign of the paradox of all transformation.

Its meaning is exhausted in its features – it does not disguise, except in cultures that reject malleable identity.

Dispersed powers, sacred significance in animals, mutability all are counter to monotheism.

Monotheism is an ideology that regards masks and animals as diabolical or toys, belief in appearance as “gullibility”, separating essence and idea from reality.

And play is never deep play.

Adult play is understood as idleness or recuperation/recreation from work and duty. There are no flutes, dances, plays, or playfulness in Greek philosophy and monotheism.

Make-believe play and improvised identity in children are tendencies inherited from archaic societies, learning to suspend disbelief, enabling us to understand that a person wearing the face of a frog is a frog power and spirit.

Kill Your King! [From the Golden Bough]

- Posted: 09.Jun.2007.

You cannot possible -read- the James Frazer's The Golden Bough but it is great fun to pick up once in a while and read bits of it at random. I wanted to scan my own cheapo Wordsworth Reference edition to go with it but this old edition looks much better. The Following bit from the foreword that cannot but be read with great interest by Borges and Robert Graves:

[O]n the crucial question of the practice of putting kings to death either at the end of a fixed period or whenever their health and strength began to fail, the body of evidence which points to the wide prevalence of such a custom has been considerably augmented in the interval. A striking instance of a limited monarchy of this sort is furnished by the powerful mediaeval kingdom of the Khazars in Southern Russia, where the kings were liable to be put to death either on the expiry of a set term or whenever some public calamity, such as drought, dearth, or defeat in war, seemed to indicate a failure of their natural powers. The evidence for the systematic killing of the Khazar kings, drawn from the accounts of old Arab travellers, has been collected by me elsewhere. Africa, again, has supplied several fresh examples of a similar practice of regicide. Among them the most notable perhaps is the custom formerly observed in Bunyoro of choosing every year from a particular clan a mock king, who was supposed to incarnate the late king, cohabited with his widows at his temple-tomb, and after reigning for a week was strangled. The custom presents a close parallel to the ancient Babylonian festival of the Sacaea, at which a mock king was dressed in the royal robes, allowed to enjoy the real king’s concubines, and after reigning for five days was stripped, scourged, and put to death. That festival in its turn has lately received fresh light from certain Assyrian inscriptions, which seem to confirm the interpretation which I formerly gave of the festival as a New Year celebration and the parent of the Jewish festival of Purim. Other recently discovered parallels to the priestly kings of Arficia are African priests and kings who used to be put to death at the end of seven or of two years, after being liable in the interval to be attacked and killed by a strong man, who thereupon succeeded to the priesthood or the kingdom.