His Beard Streamed with Tears

Hero Worship

'Every Great Man is the missionary of Order'. (Carlyle)



Carlyle is not saying so much that religion begins in Hero Worship - that would be a mere reductionist euhemerism - unheroic in itself.


But Hero Worship is certainly present in most religions [more so than the worship of god - Buddhists may not worship a god, but they certainly hero-worship the Buddhas etc.] Carlyle is saying that religion should be hero-worship; hero-worship is healthy. The rejection of hero-worship ['No More Heroes Anymore' say the Punks], nihilism, absolute scepticism, are unhealthy. And of course, egalitarianism is just as unhealthy as it rejects the heroic as the hero is superior, elite.


It is out of this very disbelief in the heroic - The Last Man - that Nietzsche's Zarathustra arises. The Uebermensch is the Hero once more. Odin is the Hero as god - the heroic in its purest form. The Hero as Leader or King is the final form. It is followed by the anarchic levelling of the communism of the Last Men. Out of the ashes of this Ragnarok comes the Uebermensch - Odin, Beowulf et al.



***


Carlyle - and the value of the heroic



The way that Carlyle, after making Odin the most primal type of divine hero, then refers to Odin throughout the other lectures. As the hero concept evolves, it has the effect of suggesting that Odin may encompass this whole heroic spectrum. Odin is a divinity, a prophet, a poet, a man of letters and a king.


Odin is also a god of places - as Julian Cope, a true Odinist if there is one, says - we need to validate the locality. This is because Odin's spirit is in Ymir's Body - the Earth, the Trees, the Clouds ... everything: but local to us.


***


Carlyle, Nietzsche, Jung



Nietzsche rails against Carlyle with spiteful ad hominems, but as Bertram demonstrates, Nietzsche tended to do that against those who were closest to him.



"I liken common languid Times, with their unbelief, distress, perplexity, with their languid doubting characters and embarrassed circumstances, impotently crumbling-down into ever worse distress towards final ruin; all this I liken to dry dead fuel, waiting for the lightning out of Heaven that shall kindle it. The great man, with his free force direct out of God's own hand, is the lightning ..."


[Carlyle Hero Worship Everyman edition p. 250]



Compare this to Nietzsche;



"I love all those who are as heavy drops, falling singly from the dark cloud that hangs over the human: they herald the coming of the lightning, and as heralds they also perish.


Behold, I am a herald of the lightning and a heavy drop from the cloud: but this lightning is called Overhuman - "


[TSZ Prologue 4]



The above is from Parker's translation [Oxford 2005]. He notes that Nietzsche's use of 'lightning' "alludes to the god Dionysus, who was born after his mother Semele was consumed by a bolt of lightning, and perhaps also to the famous fragment of the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Heraclitus: 'A lightning bolt steers all things' ..."



Carlyle's image of the Great Man - the Hero - as a lightning bolt who can ignite the fuel of the Times is similar to Nietzsche's Overhuman as the lightning from the dark cloud.


And Carlyle's view of the 'fuel' to be ignited is like Jung's archetypes awaiting their revivification - in relation to Wotan!


Jung uses the image of the riverbed/water, rather than fuel/fire - but both fire and water have a Heraclitean connection.


The fuel is 'the Time' and the lightning the Great Man for Carlyle; just as the riverbed is the archetype which is filled by the water of the god.



The fuel, like riverbeds, can dry up and moulder without fire or water.



Here line up Dionysos - Heraclitus - Odin - Zarathsutra - Superhuman.



***


Artist-Hero



The artist as hero is important because he combines Beowulf and the Skald - he not only lives the myth but he writes about it too: ambiguously autobiographical - he is Self/Other - killer and victim.



***


The 18 Charms of Odin - Julian Cope


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56G8tuyez5s




***


Chant



'You ravaged the runes of my tunes.' (Bolan)



Disenchantment is the enemy. From here spins depression. Therefore one must re-enchant the world: chant its magical charms.



***


The safety of Nothingness



Calling everything into questioning - a questing.



But life is Something: it is fleeting and frail. Yet we want to protect it from the overmighty forces of Nothingness.



***


Man Myth



"Every man his own myth."


[Ferlinghetti 1967]



***


Wolf-haunted hills



Beowulf is Odinist even if he isn't mentioned. It's a Christian Odinism where Odin is no longer named, but is there behind every sword clash; just as Weland is mentioned as the maker of mail-shirts and so on.



***



Disabled by death



To the Anglo-Saxons of the Beowulf era the tale of Cain and Abel shocked as it told of a man killing his own kinsman.



***


Yggdrasil



Odin's victim rides the tree gallows just as Odin rides his steed.



***


Odinism



Odin always spoke in poetry - of the hard, riffing, alliterative, kenning kind.



One worships Odin by being a kenning poet.



***



His beard streamed with tears ...



To the Beowulf audience, tales were the vehicles for history, philosophy, theology and the rest. They are are not only tales then - they can also be sacred scriptures too.


Just as the Sword, Ship, Shield, Helm, Spear and Mail-Shirt are sacred too.


Just as Viking Metal Music is sacred.


The Spiritual is carried by the Material Vehicle.



***


I outlived storms of strife in my youth (Beowulf)



weapons, songs, stories - this is where we worship.



***


Conservative Metal Head



"I have actually been listening to quite a bit of heavy metal lately, and Metallica, I think, is genuinely talented. ‘Master of Puppets’ I think has got something genuinely both poetic – violently poetic – and musical. Every now and then something like that stands out and you can see that people have got no other repertoire and have a very narrow range of expression, but they’ve hit on something where they are saying something which is not just about themselves. Pop music is so concentrated on the self and the performer that it’s very rare that that happens, I think. It never happens with Oasis or The Verve. It did happen much more of course with the Beatles, and in the old American songbook, Hoagy Carmichael and Cole Porter and all that. That was a popular music which was about communication of often quite gentle feelings. So I’m not as prejudiced as I seem. I would like to be more prejudiced because it would prevent me from listening to this stuff.” [Roger Scruton 2009]


Source: http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=1058



***


Being is Will of Power



" The expression ... The Will to Power names what characterises the basic character of all beings ... it provides an answer to the question 'What is being?' Since antiquity that question has been the question of philosophy."


[Heidegger, Nietzsche, (lectures 1936-7) trans. Krell pp. 3-4]



***


Roots



A 'fact' is something 'made' [Latin facere, to make].


'Reality' is a 'thing' or 'things' [L. res, thing or fact - cf. Sanskrit rai, property].


'Truth' from Old English treowe, faithful - cf. Sanskrit daruna, hard - daru, wood cf. tree from OE treow, also derived from Sk. daru.



Back to the pre-modern roots before Slave Morality had devalued thinking.



***


Words



We have no right to the old words, the old cliches, the old concepts ... but we atill use them ... 'we' ... hah! This torrid way of telling lies to ourselves ... 'we' 'our'.


Nietzsche got to that place of deep questioning in his mid-forties, then was snuffed out as far as work was concerned ... we have to go on from where he left off - 'we' ...


As if 'I' wasn't bad enough [Guenon apparently avoided the personal pronoun not only in his work but in his conversation]. The very basics need to be looked at very closely before any farther things - Indeed, the reason that the far things are so wrong is due to the mess of the immediate -




***


Contagion



"the contagion of the world's slow stain."


[Shelley, Adonais]



***


Death to Consciousness



If emotions are derived from consciousness, from 'thought' - and if we are not our 'thoughts' - not our consciousness ... Stop there; we are not our consciousness - What! Is consciousness over-rated? Do we then step back and question the validity of all those who wish to 'expand consciousness' [in whatever 'direction']?


What we are is deeper than consciousness; more real than consciousness - consciousness is a disease, just as emotions are. One is only healthy when one is beyond consciousness, beyond thought, beyond emotions ...


Thought and emotion are not opposite: they entail one another. They must both be lessened. Thought is the leading factor; thoughts atmosphere, that of consciousness, must be reduced - starved of its oxygen. Then emotion too will dry up.


The 'historical sense' too is an aspect of thought - that constant looking back. Continually re-running the past; the source of remorse, regret, disappointment, hang-ups etc.


The ogre 'it was' - catch thought here; the demon thought which then engenders the emotion which came in its train ...



***


Which Way Time



Time is a construct, they say - but what about day and night? That is not time but change; but is it change ... any particular direction? Does day follow night, or night follow day? At most we can say that there is change ... flux - But why shouldn't time go backwards?



***


Pagan Christian



Just as Wotan became Christ in Western religiosity; so in Nietzsche does Dionysos become Zarathustra: from the paganistic to the monotheistic.



Carlyle says in 'Hero Worship' [Hero as poet: Dante]that the main difference between Paganism and Christianity is that the former divinises Nature, while the latter divinises the Moral Law.



***


Infinite Influence



"By virtue of infinite time, every end to be attained would necessarily have been reached long ago."


[Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena, II, 1:19]



Repeated by Nietzsche when formulating his Eternal Recurrence doctrine].



***



Preserve the Black Sun Tradition



That tradition will eventually re-surface after the very bottom of the abyss has been reached.


It needs its own jealous custodians meanwhile to nurture it, even in its darkest days.



***


Remember



"The Anglo-Saxon poet was the living memory of the tribe."


[Kevin Crossley-Holland, Pagan Dawn #123]



***



Dionysus



Victor and victim seek a common goal.


By virtue of my sensitising pain


My destroyers shall recreate me whole.


[Dionysus Zagreus, P. Constantine 2000]



***


More Truth



I am not interested in personality - I am only interested in the Truth ...


And there he condemned himself to oblivion.


For nothing is harder than the Truth - nothing more despised.


Indeed, a Truth-Seeker might as well search out everything hated and align himself with it - he is bound to have chanced upon the Truth thereby.



***


Dead God



There is no God but the Dead God



***









Stele 666



"The official motto of the Fraternitas Saturni [FS] is:


'Do what Thou wilt is the whole of the Law, there is no Law beyond do what Thou wilt. Love is the Law - Love under Will - Compassionless Love.'



"... Zarathustra preaches 'all great love is even above all pity, for it still wants to create the beloved' - love without pity. A 'pitiful' love is one in which the lover is annihilated by the beloved, love without pity is where the lover - or magician - creates his beloved out of his own self ...



"the FS addition of these two words [Mitleidlose Liebe] to the whole Thelemic formula put a whole new perspective on the philosophy. Rather than seeking self-annihilation beyond the threshold, the Saturnian Brother seeks to become his own god. Crowley never tired of calling those who endorsed ... this path of non-self-annihilation 'Black Brothers' (or 'Brothers of the Left-hand Path') ..."


[Fire and Ice, Flowers pp. 67-70]



***


Hate



"... the fundamental potentiality for hate ... in the interests of self-preservation, leads to the formation of gangs, societies, associations, groups, and, and in relation to nations, pacts, alliances or treaties."


[A History of Torture, Scott]



***



Thinkers



Schopenhauer says that we should only read when we have run out of thoughts. Why then do so many self-proclaimed thinkers spend their lives reading the thoughts of others?



***


Moment's Death



Rain-soaked forest,


dark-night,


dank.


Beneath moonlit,


prismed,


sky.


; ;


Rain


caressing the canvas


skin.



Sopping.


Unsealing


the wet,


pervading


all,


save the


unstoppable


blue.



The Moment of Death.


A Monument built to Moment.


How Time


spits


tears


onto the Grave, with its cursory


oblivion.



The past is all


Dead Moments,


scattered into Nothingness.


Shedding into the


imponderable


green.



****


Contradictions



"There is a contradiction in every word that Zarathustra utters."


[Nietzsche EH]




***


Silent Empire



"Let us honour the great empire of Silence once more!"


[Carlyle, Hero as Poet]



***


Optimist or Pessimist?



"The optimist is just as degenerate as the pessimist."


[Nietzsche, EH Fatality 4]



***


Moral Interpreter



Yes - morality is merely a human interpretation of phenomena. However, that is not to deny the possibility of a profound evil beyond all human interpretation - given that all language is human interpretation ... however ...



***



The Road of Excess



"Excess is the path to the overhuman."


[Nietzsche, Salome p. 116]



Lou Salome describes TSZ as Nietzsche's "mystical work". [ib. p. 91].



From a letter of Nietzsche to herself she makes the following interesting observations. Nietzsche wrote to her;



"What does knowledge matter? I treasure nothing except impulses, and I would dare say that we have them in common."



- To interject here - when he talks of having these 'impulses in common' - he could mean 'humans' as 'we' - another implication towards a 'private language' type of argument.



Nietzsche goes on;



"Look straight through the phase in which I lived during these past years - and look behind them! Do not let yourself be deceived about me. Surely you don't believe that 'the free spirit' is my ideal?!."



- Salome interprets this letter (written in between GS and TSZ) to mean that Nietzsche is turning away from the 'Free Spiritedness' of the Human-All-Too-Human era, with its emphasis on logic and 'knowledge' ('the phase - past years').



Moreover, that Salome must 'look behind' the works of this phase. Salome says this suggests that Nietzsche is returning to the outlook of his "first phase of philosophical development, before his positivistic 'free spiritedness', namely, to the metaphysics of Wagner's and Schopenhauer's aesthetics and their teachings about the superhuman genius."



One might say that this is the Dionysian, albeit in a higher stage of realisation having absorbed the Apolline - the Zarathustrian, the Wotanian.


Salome says that Nietzsche turned away from "negating criticism" and rather pursued "the psyche's impulses as a source for revelations."


"As tool and toy of inner dictates and hidden drives and into the profoundest depths .... into a labyrinthine wilderness, dark and impenetrable, which surrounds the intelligible world. In the labyrinth are no discernable paths and no masters and laws, but the will has room to assert itself with every type of creativity. Such a dangerous adventure seemed to assure Nietzsche of a direct path into the power of an inner life ..."


Nietzsche "newly adapts the motto 'Nothing is true, everything is permitted' (GM III 24) and praises the value of illusion - the deliberate fiction of the alogical and the 'untrue' - as the essentials of life-creating and will-supporting powers. He conceived a representation of the world built and created by us and which contains our psychic idiosyncrasies; and he began to feel that our knowledge ultimately is nothing more than a 'humanisation of things'."



Salome says that "the central kernal of the new philosophy of the future is crystallised" by "the mystery of a tremendous self-apotheosis" which states that "I, Nietzsche-Zarathustra, am the world; it exists because I am, it exists as I will it."


"In the aesthetics and ethics of Nietzsche's last philosophising, we find again the pervasive theme that a decline through excess is the necessary precondition for a highest and new creation."(Salome pp. 95-9)



"The first and only moral injunction engraved on the new tablet of values: Become hard!" [ib. p. 118]



***


Salome on Zarathustra



"The Zarathustra figure represents Nietzsche's own transformation."


[Salome p. 123]



"The twin representation by Nietzsche, through which he observed himself as his double, is embodied in his Zarathustra; they walk in the same shoes."


[ib. p. 124]



***


The Perspectivist Nietzsche



It is astonishing that Salome has the Perspectival understanding of Nietzsche's philosophy - but then she did study under him. Only in Perspectivism can we get at the complete Nietzsche.


Only Perspectivists do not feel the need to reject the Eternal Recurrence, the Uebermensch, the proto-fascist politics and the Contradictions in general.


The 'thereness' that Danto talks about in Nietzsche's concept of 'the world' - is also that of the 'Innocence of Becoming' - it is Salome's mysticsm in Nietzsche - Nietzsche can only be understood in this light: the Dionysian poet of the Labyrinth.



***



Bronzed Beast



With his Sun Eye


he transforms the


swarming street into a


classical frieze.


Movement trapped in a


cubist phrenzy,


transformed into


physique perfect,


pure limbs crisply drape


tonal bronze;


crisp glint of white light,


surrounded by browns,


black


blent


.


He is the king because he is the cause of this transformed kingdom.


He is the great enchanter,


King and Mage in


One.



***


Evil



My tongue,


its tongue insatiable,


has licked at every good and evil thing,


dived down into every depth


[Of the Poverty of the Richest Man, Nietzsche]



"I think of Nietzsche as a philosopher of evil. For him the attraction and value of evil, it seems to me, gave significance to what he intended when he spoke of power."


[Bataille On Nietzsche]



***


Bataille and Nietzsche



Bataille's 'On Nietzsche' somehow exemplifies the notion, found in Nietzsche, of the multiple self, the self as multiplicity - all fragmented and fractured - going out and coming back in again [Morrison's 'cellves'] like a kaleidoscope.


He attempts to write a book on Nietzsche in 1944, the centenary of Nietzsche's birth - but he is in occupied Paris, and the Americans are about to enter Paris - all around is chaos and confusion, death, bombs, dislocation.


How can he write under such conditions?


What emerges is a shattered reading of Nietzsche - shards of his works, and remarks on his ideas litter Bataille's book - all these embedded in a diary of those days - self observations, some observations of his surroundings - all pell-mell. But it works on a deep level: it gets beneath the superficial level of a scholarly work - it works like a poem; it is a poem in affect, if not in form.



***


Media



Create media, do not consume it.



***


Nothing



"Perfect blasphemy negates nothingness."


[Bataille p. 64]



***


Perspectives



"The human intellect cannot avoid seeing itself under its perspectival forms, and solely in these. We cannot look around our corner."


[Nietzsche GS 374]



Most basically; an interpretation - a personal interpretation.


religious systems, ideological systems, philosophical systems etc., are more sophisticated Perspectives (cf. de Bono's metasystems).


http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/ASC/METASYSTEM.html
METASYSTEM


a system acts according to its own nature and for the purpose defined by that nature. A child is playing: he attempts to poke scissors into the electric power points; he makes interesting ink-patterns on the carpet; he attempts to drink from the liquid detergent container. All of these activities arise directly from the nature of the system: child - exploration -environment. Fortunately there is another system which lies outside the child system. This outside or meta-system operates according to its own nature which is child care. Primitive tribes quickly establish a system of beliefs, taboos and laws. Without this meta-system everyone would act according to their own individual systems which might be based on immediate gratification, self-indulgence and impulse. The meta- system lies outside these individual systems and overrides them in favour of society and a longer time base. For example, an individual may only collect enough food for his immediate needs but the meta-system may require him to collect enough to store for the winter as well. To some extent, the success of societies has depended on the strength, and the nature, of the meta-systems they have set up. An individual goes to see a psychoanalyst and is told that his troubles arise from the way his mother treated him when he was young. This explanation or 'story' becomes a meta-system for the individual and can explain or guide his actions independently of his mood of the moment. Religion is the prime example of a meta-system that has served to override man's small view of himself and given him aims and values he might not otherwise have developed. The internal logic of the religious meta-system is based on its own nature,and not on the needs of man. Outside religions, strictly so called ideologies, philosophies and moral concepts have also served as meta-systems. (De Bono)



Do all metasystems begin with a particular personal interpretation? But then such do draw upon 'group perspectives' - out of these, individuals can create new personal perspectives.


Nietzsche's own Perspectivism draws upon the Presocratics/Schopenahuer, mainly. So the personal interpretation draws in Group perspectives which themselves began as Personal Perspectives and so on, ad infinitum.


Alongside we have a general Cultural Perspective which includes Group and personal Perspectives, all under a general Cultural Perspective - e.g. Western Culture - Eastern etc.


So the world displays a variety of Perspectives (culture clash - East vs. West - Polytheism vs. Monotheism). In human terms we see that the world is the sum total of a variety of Perspectives. From this we notice the tendency towards creation of a single World Perspective from some quarters; and conversely the tendency towards diversity etc.



"You must grasp that the value of life cannot be estimated ... judgements and valuations of life, whether for or against, cannot be true; their only value lies in the fact that they are symptoms; they can be considered only as symptoms - per se such judgements are nonsense." [Nietzsche]



Incompatible Perspectives? Isn't incompatibility the result of Perspectivism?


Take Nietzsche's Eternal Recurrence and Uebermensch. This may point to the meaning of this 'contradiction' in Nietzsche's work. Those who feel the need to dismiss either ER or the Superhuman to make things consistent, or to 'modify' one or the other to the same ends, are missing the point. The two grandly contradictory/incompatible Perspectives of ER/Suoerhuman proclaim loudly the need for contradiction at the very heart of life: it is a full-on rejection of the Law of Non-Contradiction. A massive contradiction is at the heart of Zarathustra's teaching, and so it should be.



"The wisest man would be the one richest in contradictions."


[Nietzsche WP 259]



"This philosophy of Nietzsche is just a maze of contradictions."


[Bataille]



"Nietzsche's perspectivism fast isolates and then dissolves the individual."


[Nietzsche and The Politics of the Soul, Thiele p. 37]



***


Heroic Perspectives



In GS Book 2 Nietzsche mentions perspective in relation to the arts, where playwrights in particular treat the hero figure.


Here we can be "taught the art of regarding oneself as hero, from a distance and as it were simplified and transfigured - the art of 'putting oneself on stage' before oneself. Only thus can we get over certain lowly details in ourselves. Without this art we would be nothing but foreground, and would live entirely under the spell of that perspective which makes the nearest and most vulgar appear tremendously big and as reality itself."



Our language is unsuited to Perspectivism. Clearly, language is the product of the Universalising norms, and to speak normally is to evoke the ghosts of The Good and of God. To use language perspectivally would mean to load everything with qualifiers, ironic quotes and to put phrases 'under erasure' - as is the PoMo practice.


This leads to 'difficult' expression ... bad communication.





***


Perspectivism



In Perspectivism - how can some values be privileged over others?




***


Lizard King-Doom



The rock god that the Lizard King was is Odinist - cf. Cope's 18 Charms of Odin - it could be The End: the Poetic Edda set to The End.



Morrison's Celebration of the Lizard - juxtapositions of horrific scenes and idyllic fantasy - juxtaposition of extremes: tied together by the image of the reptilian - the snake involved in horror and terror is also the Lizard King: he who can lead the gentle hill-dwellers in their Arcadian bliss where 'reptiles abound'.


Like Dionysos, the Lizard King affirms life in all its extremes - from blood-letting to peace-bliss.


The Lizard King, like the Electronic Poet, leads his people on a shamanic dance from the heights to the abyss and back again. As in Zarathustra, the abyss is plumbed again and again - down-going/up-going/over-going. In the Celebration of the Lizard the transitions are sudden - they shock.


The Electric Poet transforms his surroundings in his vision. His own journey is heroic enough, but he must perform transformations. His own transitions feed the transformations he thrusts upon 'reality'. In The New Creatures the unnamed Lizard King character presides over a splendid and barbaric court. The Electric Poet's audience become akin to the royal hunt - the electronic technology becomes the hunted - Snakeskin Jacket leads the throng. Brando was said to have been inspired by Brando's Snakeskin Jacket character in the Fugitive Kind (1960). The Hunt is bloody and spectacular - Altamont prefigured.


Ultimately though, the hero must be sacrificed - torn apart - in order to live eternally ... twenty-seven is too old to be an unsacrificed Lizard King.


Therefore the sacrifice must be enacted, performed. Miami becomes the Sacrifice of the Lizard King - the God is Dead. In this transformation, Snakeskin is reborn as the Bearded Bard of LA. Other Lizard Kings appear in the Land, pretenders to the crown. The Bard goes into self-exile and takes up the mantle of the old philosopher.


Old Philosophers live long and die ironically.



***


***


'Every Great Man is the missionary of Order'. (Carlyle)



Carlyle is not saying so much that religion begins in Hero Worship - that would be a mere reductionist euhemerism - unheroic in itself.


But Hero Worship is certainly present in most religions [more so than the worship of god - Buddhists may not worship a god, but they certainly hero-worship the Buddhas etc.] Carlyle is saying that religion should be hero-worship; hero-worship is healthy. The rejection of hero-worship ['No More Heroes Anymore' say the Punks], nihilism, absolute scepticism, are unhealthy. And of course, egalitarianism is just as unhealthy as it rejects the heroic as the hero is superior, elite.


It is out of this very disbelief in the heroic - The Last Man - that Nietzsche's Zarathustra arises. The Uebermensch is the Hero once more. Odin is the Hero as god - the heroic in its purest form. The Hero as Leader or King is the final form. It is followed by the anarchic levelling of the communism of the Last Men. Out of the ashes of this Ragnarok comes the Uebermensch - Odin, Beowulf et al.



***


Carlyle - and the value of the heroic



The way that Carlyle, after making Odin the most primal type of divine hero, then refers to Odin throughout the other lectures. As the hero concept evolves, it has the effect of suggesting that Odin may encompass this whole heroic spectrum. Odin is a divinity, a prophet, a poet, a man of letters and a king.


Odin is also a god of places - as Julian Cope, a true Odinist if there is one, says - we need to validate the locality. This is because Odin's spirit is in Ymir's Body - the Earth, the Trees, the Clouds ... everything: but local to us.


***



Carlyle, Nietzsche, Jung



Nietzsche rails against Carlyle with spiteful ad hominems, but as Bertram demonstrates, Nietzsche tended to do that against those who were closest to him.



"I liken common languid Times, with their unbelief, distress, perplexity, with their languid doubting characters and embarrassed circumstances, impotently crumbling-down into ever worse distress towards final ruin; all this I liken to dry dead fuel, waiting for the lightning out of Heaven that shall kindle it. The great man, with his free force direct out of God's own hand, is the lightning ..."


[Carlyle Hero Worship Everyman edition p. 250]



Compare this to Nietzsche;



"I love all those who are as heavy drops, falling singly from the dark cloud that hangs over the human: they herald the coming of the lightning, and as heralds they also perish.


Behold, I am a herald of the lightning and a heavy drop from the cloud: but this lightning is called Overhuman - "


[TSZ Prologue 4]



The above is from Parker's translation [Oxford 2005]. He notes that Nietzsche's use of 'lightning' "alludes to the god Dionysus, who was born after his mother Semele was consumed by a bolt of lightning, and perhaps also to the famous fragment of the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Heraclitus: 'A lightning bolt steers all things' ..."



Carlyle's image of the Great Man - the Hero - as a lightning bolt who can ignite the fuel of the Times is similar to Nietzsche's Overhuman as the lightning from the dark cloud.


And Carlyle's view of the 'fuel' to be ignited is like Jung's archetypes awaiting their revivification - in relation to Wotan!


Jung uses the image of the riverbed/water, rather than fuel/fire - but both fire and water have a Heraclitean connection.


The fuel is 'the Time' and the lightning the Great Man for Carlyle; just as the riverbed is the archetype which is filled by the water of the god.



The fuel, like riverbeds, can dry up and moulder without fire or water.



Here line up Dionysos - Heraclitus - Odin - Zarathsutra - Superhuman.



***


Artist-Hero



The artist as hero is important because he combines Beowulf and the Skald - he not only lives the myth but he writes about it too: ambiguously autobiographical - he is Self/Other - killer and victim.



***


The 18 Charms of Odin - Julian Cope


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56G8tuyez5s




***


Chant



'You ravaged the runes of my tunes.' (Bolan)



Disenchantment is the enemy. From here spins depression. Therefore one must re-enchant the world: chant its magical charms.



***


The safety of Nothingness



Calling everything into questioning - a questing.



But life is Something: it is fleeting and frail. Yet we want to protect it from the overmighty forces of Nothingness.



***


Man Myth



"Every man his own myth."


[Ferlinghetti 1967]



***


Wolf-haunted hills



Beowulf is Odinist even if he isn't mentioned. It's a Christian Odinism where Odin is no longer named, but is there behind every sword clash; just as Weland is mentioned as the maker of mail-shirts and so on.



***




Disabled by Death



To the Anglo-Saxons of the Beowulf era the tale of Cain and Abel shocked as it told of a man killing his own kinsman.



***


Yggdrasil



Odin's victim rides the tree gallows just as Odin rides his steed.



***


Odinism



Odin always spoke in poetry - of the hard, riffing, alliterative, kenning kind.



One worships Odin by being a kenning poet.



***



His beard streamed with tears ...



To the Beowulf audience, tales were the vehicles for history, philosophy, theology and the rest. They are are not only tales then - they can also be sacred scriptures too.


Just as the Sword, Ship, Shield, Helm, Spear and Mail-Shirt are sacred too.


Just as Viking Metal Music is sacred.


The Spiritual is carried by the Material Vehicle.



***


I outlived storms of strife in my youth (Beowulf)



weapons, songs, stories - this is where we worship.



***


Conservative Metal Head



"I have actually been listening to quite a bit of heavy metal lately, and Metallica, I think, is genuinely talented. ‘Master of Puppets’ I think has got something genuinely both poetic – violently poetic – and musical. Every now and then something like that stands out and you can see that people have got no other repertoire and have a very narrow range of expression, but they’ve hit on something where they are saying something which is not just about themselves. Pop music is so concentrated on the self and the performer that it’s very rare that that happens, I think. It never happens with Oasis or The Verve. It did happen much more of course with the Beatles, and in the old American songbook, Hoagy Carmichael and Cole Porter and all that. That was a popular music which was about communication of often quite gentle feelings. So I’m not as prejudiced as I seem. I would like to be more prejudiced because it would prevent me from listening to this stuff.” [Roger Scruton 2009]


Source: http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=1058



***


Being is Will of Power



" The expression ... The Will to Power names what characterises the basic character of all beings ... it provides an answer to the question 'What is being?' Since antiquity that question has been the question of philosophy."


[Heidegger, Nietzsche, (lectures 1936-7) trans. Krell pp. 3-4]



***


Roots



A 'fact' is something 'made' [Latin facere, to make].


'Reality' is a 'thing' or 'things' [L. res, thing or fact - cf. Sanskrit rai, property].


'Truth' from Old English treowe, faithful - cf. Sanskrit daruna, hard - daru, wood cf. tree from OE treow, also derived from Sk. daru.



Back to the pre-modern roots before Slave Morality had devalued thinking.



***



Words



We have no right to the old words, the old cliches, the old concepts ... but we atill use them ... 'we' ... hah! This torrid way of telling lies to ourselves ... 'we' 'our'.


Nietzsche got to that place of deep questioning in his mid-forties, then was snuffed out as far as work was concerned ... we have to go on from where he left off - 'we' ...


As if 'I' wasn't bad enough [Guenon apparently avoided the personal pronoun not only in his work but in his conversation]. The very basics need to be looked at very closely before any farther things - Indeed, the reason that the far things are so wrong is due to the mess of the immediate -




***



Contagion



"the contagion of the world's slow stain."


[Shelley, Adonais]



***



Death to Consciousness



If emotions are derived from consciousness, from 'thought' - and if we are not our 'thoughts' - not our consciousness ... Stop there; we are not our consciousness - What! Is consciousness over-rated? Do we then step back and question the validity of all those who wish to 'expand consciousness' [in whatever 'direction']?


What we are is deeper than consciousness; more real than consciousness - consciousness is a disease, just as emotions are. One is only healthy when one is beyond consciousness, beyond thought, beyond emotions ...


Thought and emotion are not opposite: they entail one another. They must both be lessened. Thought is the leading factor; thoughts atmosphere, that of consciousness, must be reduced - starved of its oxygen. Then emotion too will dry up.


The 'historical sense' too is an aspect of thought - that constant looking back. Continually re-running the past; the source of remorse, regret, disappointment, hang-ups etc.


The ogre 'it was' - catch thought here; the demon thought which then engenders the emotion which came in its train ...



***


Which Way Time



Time is a construct, they say - but what about day and night? That is not time but change; but is it change ... any particular direction? Does day follow night, or night follow day? At most we can say that there is change ... flux - But why shouldn't time go backwards?



***


Pagan Christian



Just as Wotan became Christ in Western religiosity; so in Nietzsche does Dionysos become Zarathustra: from the paganistic to the monotheistic.



Carlyle says in 'Hero Worship' [Hero as poet: Dante]that the main difference between Paganism and Christianity is that the former divinises Nature, while the latter divinises the Moral Law.



***



Infinite Influence



"By virtue of infinite time, every end to be attained would necessarily have been reached long ago."


[Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena, II, 1:19]



Repeated by Nietzsche when formulating his Eternal Recurrence doctrine].



***




Preserve the Black Sun Tradition



That tradition will eventually re-surface after the very bottom of the abyss has been reached.


It needs its own jealous custodians meanwhile to nurture it, even in its darkest days.



***


Remember



"The Anglo-Saxon poet was the living memory of the tribe."


[Kevin Crossley-Holland, Pagan Dawn #123]



***



Dionysus



Victor and victim seek a common goal.


By virtue of my sensitising pain


My destroyers shall recreate me whole.


[Dionysus Zagreus, P. Constantine 2000]



***



More Truth



I am not interested in personality - I am only interested in the Truth ...


And there he condemned himself to oblivion.


For nothing is harder than the Truth - nothing more despised.


Indeed, a Truth-Seeker might as well search out everything hated and align himself with it - he is bound to have chanced upon the Truth thereby.



***


Dead God



There is no God but the Dead God



***










Stele 666



"The official motto of the Fraternitas Saturni [FS] is:


'Do what Thou wilt is the whole of the Law, there is no Law beyond do what Thou wilt. Love is the Law - Love under Will - Compassionless Love.'



"... Zarathustra preaches 'all great love is even above all pity, for it still wants to create the beloved' - love without pity. A 'pitiful' love is one in which the lover is annihilated by the beloved, love without pity is where the lover - or magician - creates his beloved out of his own self ...



"the FS addition of these two words [Mitleidlose Liebe] to the whole Thelemic formula put a whole new perspective on the philosophy. Rather than seeking self-annihilation beyond the threshold, the Saturnian Brother seeks to become his own god. Crowley never tired of calling those who endorsed ... this path of non-self-annihilation 'Black Brothers' (or 'Brothers of the Left-hand Path') ..."


[Fire and Ice, Flowers pp. 67-70]



***



Hate



"... the fundamental potentiality for hate ... in the interests of self-preservation, leads to the formation of gangs, societies, associations, groups, and, and in relation to nations, pacts, alliances or treaties."


[A History of Torture, Scott]



***




Thinkers



Schopenhauer says that we should only read when we have run out of thoughts. Why then do so many self-proclaimed thinkers spend their lives reading the thoughts of others?



***


Moment's Death



Rain-soaked forest,


dark-night,


dank.


Beneath moonlit,


prismed,


sky.


; ;


Rain


caressing the canvas


skin.



Sopping.


Unsealing


the wet,


pervading


all,


save the


unstoppable


blue.



The Moment of Death.


A Monument built to Moment.


How Time


spits


tears


onto the Grave, with its cursory


oblivion.



The past is all


Dead Moments,


scattered into Nothingness.


Shedding into the


imponderable


green.



****



Contradictions



"There is a contradiction in every word that Zarathustra utters."


[Nietzsche EH]




***


Silent Empire



"Let us honour the great empire of Silence once more!"


[Carlyle, Hero as Poet]



***


Optimist or Pessimist?



"The optimist is just as degenerate as the pessimist."


[Nietzsche, EH Fatality 4]



***


Moral Interpreter



Yes - morality is merely a human interpretation of phenomena. However, that is not to deny the possibility of a profound evil beyond all human interpretation - given that all language is human interpretation ... however ...



***



The Road of Excess



"Excess is the path to the overhuman."


[Nietzsche, Salome p. 116]



Lou Salome describes TSZ as Nietzsche's "mystical work". [ib. p. 91].



From a letter of Nietzsche to herself she makes the following interesting observations. Nietzsche wrote to her;



"What does knowledge matter? I treasure nothing except impulses, and I would dare say that we have them in common."



- To interject here - when he talks of having these 'impulses in common' - he could mean 'humans' as 'we' - another implication towards a 'private language' type of argument.



Nietzsche goes on;



"Look straight through the phase in which I lived during these past years - and look behind them! Do not let yourself be deceived about me. Surely you don't believe that 'the free spirit' is my ideal?!."



- Salome interprets this letter (written in between GS and TSZ) to mean that Nietzsche is turning away from the 'Free Spiritedness' of the Human-All-Too-Human era, with its emphasis on logic and 'knowledge' ('the phase - past years').



Moreover, that Salome must 'look behind' the works of this phase. Salome says this suggests that Nietzsche is returning to the outlook of his "first phase of philosophical development, before his positivistic 'free spiritedness', namely, to the metaphysics of Wagner's and Schopenhauer's aesthetics and their teachings about the superhuman genius."



One might say that this is the Dionysian, albeit in a higher stage of realisation having absorbed the Apolline - the Zarathustrian, the Wotanian.


Salome says that Nietzsche turned away from "negating criticism" and rather pursued "the psyche's impulses as a source for revelations."


"As tool and toy of inner dictates and hidden drives and into the profoundest depths .... into a labyrinthine wilderness, dark and impenetrable, which surrounds the intelligible world. In the labyrinth are no discernable paths and no masters and laws, but the will has room to assert itself with every type of creativity. Such a dangerous adventure seemed to assure Nietzsche of a direct path into the power of an inner life ..."


Nietzsche "newly adapts the motto 'Nothing is true, everything is permitted' (GM III 24) and praises the value of illusion - the deliberate fiction of the alogical and the 'untrue' - as the essentials of life-creating and will-supporting powers. He conceived a representation of the world built and created by us and which contains our psychic idiosyncrasies; and he began to feel that our knowledge ultimately is nothing more than a 'humanisation of things'."



Salome says that "the central kernal of the new philosophy of the future is crystallised" by "the mystery of a tremendous self-apotheosis" which states that "I, Nietzsche-Zarathustra, am the world; it exists because I am, it exists as I will it."


"In the aesthetics and ethics of Nietzsche's last philosophising, we find again the pervasive theme that a decline through excess is the necessary precondition for a highest and new creation."(Salome pp. 95-9)



"The first and only moral injunction engraved on the new tablet of values: Become hard!" [ib. p. 118]



***


Salome on Zarathustra



"The Zarathustra figure represents Nietzsche's own transformation."


[Salome p. 123]



"The twin representation by Nietzsche, through which he observed himself as his double, is embodied in his Zarathustra; they walk in the same shoes."


[ib. p. 124]



***



The Perspectivist Nietzsche



It is astonishing that Salome has the Perspectival understanding of Nietzsche's philosophy - but then she did study under him. Only in Perspectivism can we get at the complete Nietzsche.


Only Perspectivists do not feel the need to reject the Eternal Recurrence, the Uebermensch, the proto-fascist politics and the Contradictions in general.


The 'thereness' that Danto talks about in Nietzsche's concept of 'the world' - is also that of the 'Innocence of Becoming' - it is Salome's mysticsm in Nietzsche - Nietzsche can only be understood in this light: the Dionysian poet of the Labyrinth.



***



Bronzed Beast



With his Sun Eye


he transforms the


swarming street into a


classical frieze.


Movement trapped in a


cubist phrenzy,


transformed into


physique perfect,


pure limbs crisply drape


tonal bronze;


crisp glint of white light,


surrounded by browns,


black


blent


.


He is the king because he is the cause of this transformed kingdom.


He is the great enchanter,


King and Mage in


One.



***


Evil



My tongue,


its tongue insatiable,


has licked at every good and evil thing,


dived down into every depth


[Of the Poverty of the Richest Man, Nietzsche]



"I think of Nietzsche as a philosopher of evil. For him the attraction and value of evil, it seems to me, gave significance to what he intended when he spoke of power."


[Bataille On Nietzsche]



***


Bataille and Nietzsche



Bataille's 'On Nietzsche' somehow exemplifies the notion, found in Nietzsche, of the multiple self, the self as multiplicity - all fragmented and fractured - going out and coming back in again [Morrison's 'cellves'] like a kaleidoscope.


He attempts to write a book on Nietzsche in 1944, the centenary of Nietzsche's birth - but he is in occupied Paris, and the Americans are about to enter Paris - all around is chaos and confusion, death, bombs, dislocation.


How can he write under such conditions?


What emerges is a shattered reading of Nietzsche - shards of his works, and remarks on his ideas litter Bataille's book - all these embedded in a diary of those days - self observations, some observations of his surroundings - all pell-mell. But it works on a deep level: it gets beneath the superficial level of a scholarly work - it works like a poem; it is a poem in affect, if not in form.



***


Media



Create media, do not consume it.



***



Nothing



"Perfect blasphemy negates nothingness."


[Bataille p. 64]



***


Perspectives



"The human intellect cannot avoid seeing itself under its perspectival forms, and solely in these. We cannot look around our corner."


[Nietzsche GS 374]



Most basically; an interpretation - a personal interpretation.


religious systems, ideological systems, philosophical systems etc., are more sophisticated Perspectives (cf. de Bono's metasystems).


http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/ASC/METASYSTEM.html
METASYSTEM


" ... a system acts according to its own nature and for the purpose defined by that nature. A child is playing: he attempts to poke scissors into the electric power points; he makes interesting ink-patterns on the carpet; he attempts to drink from the liquid detergent container. All of these activities arise directly from the nature of the system: child - exploration -environment. Fortunately there is another system which lies outside the child system. This outside or meta-system operates according to its own nature which is child care. Primitive tribes quickly establish a system of beliefs, taboos and laws. Without this meta-system everyone would act according to their own individual systems which might be based on immediate gratification, self-indulgence and impulse. The meta- system lies outside these individual systems and overrides them in favour of society and a longer time base. For example, an individual may only collect enough food for his immediate needs but the meta-system may require him to collect enough to store for the winter as well. To some extent, the success of societies has depended on the strength, and the nature, of the meta-systems they have set up. An individual goes to see a psychoanalyst and is told that his troubles arise from the way his mother treated him when he was young. This explanation or 'story' becomes a meta-system for the individual and can explain or guide his actions independently of his mood of the moment. Religion is the prime example of a meta-system that has served to override man's small view of himself and given him aims and values he might not otherwise have developed. The internal logic of the religious meta-system is based on its own nature,and not on the needs of man. Outside religions, strictly so called ideologies, philosophies and moral concepts have also served as meta-systems." (De Bono)



Do all metasystems begin with a particular personal interpretation? But then such do draw upon 'group perspectives' - out of these, individuals can create new personal perspectives.


Nietzsche's own Perspectivism draws upon the Presocratics/Schopenahuer, mainly. So the personal interpretation draws in Group perspectives which themselves began as Personal Perspectives and so on, ad infinitum.


Alongside we have a general Cultural Perspective which includes Group and personal Perspectives, all under a general Cultural Perspective - e.g. Western Culture - Eastern etc.


So the world displays a variety of Perspectives (culture clash - East vs. West - Polytheism vs. Monotheism). In human terms we see that the world is the sum total of a variety of Perspectives. From this we notice the tendency towards creation of a single World Perspective from some quarters; and conversely the tendency towards diversity etc.



"You must grasp that the value of life cannot be estimated ... judgements and valuations of life, whether for or against, cannot be true; their only value lies in the fact that they are symptoms; they can be considered only as symptoms - per se such judgements are nonsense." [Nietzsche]



Incompatible Perspectives? Isn't incompatibility the result of Perspectivism?


Take Nietzsche's Eternal Recurrence and Uebermensch. This may point to the meaning of this 'contradiction' in Nietzsche's work. Those who feel the need to dismiss either ER or the Superhuman to make things consistent, or to 'modify' one or the other to the same ends, are missing the point. The two grandly contradictory/incompatible Perspectives of ER/Suoerhuman proclaim loudly the need for contradiction at the very heart of life: it is a full-on rejection of the Law of Non-Contradiction. A massive contradiction is at the heart of Zarathustra's teaching, and so it should be.



"The wisest man would be the one richest in contradictions."


[Nietzsche WP 259]



"This philosophy of Nietzsche is just a maze of contradictions."


[Bataille]



"Nietzsche's perspectivism fast isolates and then dissolves the individual."


[Nietzsche and The Politics of the Soul, Thiele p. 37]



***



Heroic Perspectives



In GS Book 2 Nietzsche mentions perspective in relation to the arts, where playwrights in particular treat the hero figure.


Here we can be "taught the art of regarding oneself as hero, from a distance and as it were simplified and transfigured - the art of 'putting oneself on stage' before oneself. Only thus can we get over certain lowly details in ourselves. Without this art we would be nothing but foreground, and would live entirely under the spell of that perspective which makes the nearest and most vulgar appear tremendously big and as reality itself."



Our language is unsuited to Perspectivism. Clearly, language is the product of the Universalising norms, and to speak normally is to evoke the ghosts of The Good and of God. To use language perspectivally would mean to load everything with qualifiers, ironic quotes and to put phrases 'under erasure' - as is the PoMo practice.


This leads to 'difficult' expression ... bad communication.





***


Perspectivism



In Perspectivism - how can some values be privileged over others?




***


Lizard King-Doom



The rock god that the Lizard King was is Odinist - cf. Cope's 18 Charms of Odin - it could be The End: the Poetic Edda set to The End.



Morrison's Celebration of the Lizard - juxtapositions of horrific scenes and idyllic fantasy - juxtaposition of extremes: tied together by the image of the reptilian - the snake involved in horror and terror is also the Lizard King: he who can lead the gentle hill-dwellers in their Arcadian bliss where 'reptiles abound'.


Like Dionysos, the Lizard King affirms life in all its extremes - from blood-letting to peace-bliss.


The Lizard King, like the Electronic Poet, leads his people on a shamanic dance from the heights to the abyss and back again. As in Zarathustra, the abyss is plumbed again and again - down-going/up-going/over-going. In the Celebration of the Lizard the transitions are sudden - they shock.


The Electric Poet transforms his surroundings in his vision. His own journey is heroic enough, but he must perform transformations. His own transitions feed the transformations he thrusts upon 'reality'. In The New Creatures the unnamed Lizard King character presides over a splendid and barbaric court. The Electric Poet's audience become akin to the royal hunt - the electronic technology becomes the hunted - Snakeskin Jacket leads the throng. Brando was said to have been inspired by Brando's Snakeskin Jacket character in the Fugitive Kind (1960). The Hunt is bloody and spectacular - Altamont prefigured.


Ultimately though, the hero must be sacrificed - torn apart - in order to live eternally ... twenty-seven is too old to be an unsacrificed Lizard King.


Therefore the sacrifice must be enacted, performed. Miami becomes the Sacrifice of the Lizard King - the God is Dead. In this transformation, Snakeskin is reborn as the Bearded Bard of LA. Other Lizard Kings appear in the Land, pretenders to the crown. The Bard goes into self-exile and takes up the mantle of the old philosopher.


Old Philosophers live long and die ironically.



***