Hot Catgirls and Cold Dead Philosophers R Us

By Mr. VI

OK, so it's confession time – who finds cat-girls hot? The fusion of animal and human, the exaggerated feline attitudes? Of course, here at Modern Mythology we don't really give a fig about gender, sex or species – except as interesting things to examine and play with, so please feel free to mentally ascribe your felinoid paramour any characteristics you damn well like, yes?

Perhaps in the spirit of overkill, we'd like to bring a dead Greek guy into the sexual equation – because let's be honest, a little necrophilia always spices things up. After all, copulating with corpses seems to sell well – just look at the amount of vampire-based Pornonormal Romance in your local bookshop.

Our ancient nec(e)rotic newcomer goes by the name of Xenophanes (Ξενοφάνης) which, roughly translated, means 'Of Foreign Appearance'. He's a playwright, philosopher and general interesting fellow known only by fragments.

Now, we don't know about you, but a guy with a name like that seems to us to be ripe for engaging in some heretical thought. It's like his mum named him 'X. The Edgy' on purpose, and he spent a great deal of time living up to it.

After all, he has a go at Homer and Hesiod, plus criticising the notion of a pantheon of anthropomorphic gods – sort of the equivalent of knocking Shakespeare, Keats, and the theory of General Relativity all at once.

Occupy Wall Street Update

Things are still unfolding so rather than give a full continued analysis now (I gave a perspective earlier here, which was picked up on Disinfo), I'd like to share a couple videos I've come across in the past few days.


There are many, many more examples of footage like this on YouTube if you look around. Girls getting penned up and maced, a guy getting stomped and dragged off.



Here's my thing: it seems to me that these protests are, relatively speaking few people, and that if they were left alone they could get their message out but it would likely fizzle away without too much incident. But the more the NYPD ratchets up the pressure, the more likely that something is going to snap. Do they not realize how close we are to a flashpoint in many areas in this country? Or do they know it and want that so the "story" can be about violent mobs?

Also, check out this commentary from the Guardian:

Why are people occupying Wall Street? Why has the occupation –despite the latest police crackdown – sent out sparks across America, within days, inspiring hundreds of people to send pizzas, money, equipment and, now, to start their own movements called OccupyChicago, OccupyFlorida, in OccupyDenver or OccupyLA?
There are obvious reasons. We are watching the beginnings of the defiant self-assertion of a new generation of Americans, a generation who are looking forward to finishing their education with no jobs, no future, but still saddled with enormous and unforgivable debt. Most, I found, were of working-class or otherwise modest backgrounds, kids who did exactly what they were told they should: studied, got into college, and are now not just being punished for it, but humiliated – faced with a life of being treated as deadbeats, moral reprobates.
Is it really surprising they would like to have a word with the financial magnates who stole their future?
Just as in Europe, we are seeing the results of colossal social failure. The occupiers are the very sort of people, brimming with ideas, whose energies a healthy society would be marshaling to improve life for everyone. Instead, they are using it to envision ways to bring the whole system down.
But the ultimate failure here is of imagination. What we are witnessing can also be seen as a demand to finally have a conversation we were all supposed to have back in 2008. There was a moment, after the near-collapse of the world's financial architecture, when anything seemed possible.

The 250 Year Old Bagua Master

The other day I quite randomly came upon the story of Li Ching-Yuen, the bagua master that reportedly lived around 250 years. This from Wikipedia, or the NY Times Obituary:

He began gathering herbs in the mountain ranges at the age of ten, and also began learning of longevity methods, surviving on a diet of herbs and rice wine. He lived this way for the first 100 years of his life. In 1749, when he was 71 years old, he moved to Kai Xian to join the Chinese army as a teacher of the martial arts and as a tactical advisor.
One of his disciples, the Taiji Quan Master Da Liu told of Master Li's story: at 130 years old Master Li encountered an older hermit, over 500 years old, in the mountains who taught him Baguazhang and a set of Qigong with breathing instructions, movements training coordinated with specific sounds, and dietary recommendations. Da Liu reports that his master said that his longevity "is due to the fact that I performed the exercises every day - regularly, correctly, and with sincerity - for 120 years."^[2]

Occupy Wall Street: Civil War or Smokescreen?

By James Curcio

Wishful thinking

As many of you know by now, #occupywallstreet is going strong. Or, at least, a couple hundred more people are living on the NYC streets for the time being.


An Ampedstatus headline reports, "Full-Blown Civil War Erupts On Wall Street: As Reality Finally Hits The Financial Elite, They Start Turning On Each Other",

"Finally, after trillions in fraudulent activity, trillions in bailouts, trillions in printed money, billions in political bribing and billions in bonuses, the criminal cartel members on Wall Street are beginning to get what they deserve. As the Eurozone is coming apart at the seams and as the US economy grinds to a halt, the financial elite are starting to turn on each other. The lawsuits are piling up fast. Here’s an extensive roundup:
As I reported last week:"Goliath On The Ropes, Big Banks Getting Hit Hard, It’s A “Bloodbath” As Wall Street’s Crimes Blow Up In Their Face"

Time to put your Big Bank shorts on! Get ready for a run… The chickens are coming home to roost… The Global Banking Cartel’s crimes are being exposed left & right… Prepare for Shock & Awe…"

Full blown civil war? Really. How about full blown posturing? Some of the content in that post is interesting, but aside from the link-baiting in the title, little of it seems to have to do with the protests themselves, let alone any sort of civil war, between the banks or anyone else. That is not a phrase to use lightly. Let's take a look at a reasonable opinion from the other side of the revolutionary think-tank...

Anarchists and radical organizers have a bit of collective amnesia with regards to the “Battle of Seattle.” The kids in black bandanas were only a very small part of the coalition that shut down the city in October, 1999. Their acts of childish violence against a Starbucks may have become the lasting public image of the event, but they were hardly representative. The bulk of that anti-globalization protest was composed of labor unions, environmentalists, and other organized progressives. All of those groups have deep traditions based in the community organizing traditions of Saul Alinsky and Cesar Chavez. The real work of organizing bears little resemblance to the attention-grabbing “culture jammers.” The real work involves “talking to one person, then talking to another person, then talking to another.” Organizing is slow, difficult, often thankless, but deeply meaningful work. There are “rules,” you see, even for radicals.

Some of these points should be well taken, both by the enthusiastic, fresh-faced youth and by the older jaded activists that lived through the high-water mark of the 60s that Hunter S Thompson refers to in Fear and Loathing:

Rather than seeing one event, we are seeing our own wishes and fears projected on top of whatever this event may be. This, of course, is the frame of reference regarding the ubiquity of our narrative which is our bread and butter here on Modern Mythology. So let me propose the idea that our reaction to the 'non'-event of the Wall Street protest is a function of ourselves, a mirror. It is ideology itself that seems to drive the almost performance-art aspect of protests. Here's a clip from earlier today, showing a throng of cops and protesters, and the actions leading up to an arrest-

Last Rites Laurie Lipton

Interview with Laurie Lipton for The Immanence of Myth (Weaponized.)

[Check out some of the books, albums, and soon movies produced by Mythos Media and our various media partners.]

The Immanence of Myth - Officially Released!

For Immediate Release: London, 12th of September 2011

Weaponized is proud to announce the publication of ‘The Immanence of Myth’, an anthology arranged by James Curcio of Mythos Media. This anthology includes conversations, art and articles with those in the creative process, from up-and-comers and long-time underground myth-makers to celebrated artists such as Laurie Lipton and David Mack.

It is available in print now through major retailers, and will be available in Kindle and other eBook formats autumn 2011. The Immanence of Myth will be core curriculum in "The Apocalyptic Imaginary," a 200 level comp lit course at Binghamton university, the first in what will hopefully be many classes to explore the interdisciplinary approach outlined within its pages.

About ‘The Immanence of Myth’:
Thinkers such as Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung, Mircea Eliade, Karl Kerenyi, and many others have helped to popularize an awareness of the psychological significance of archaic myth inside, as well as outside, the ivory tower of academia. However, the vast majority of their work has been focused on understanding and legitimizing the myths of the past.

The Immanence of Myth uses a deep but also conversational, honest and even subversive approach towards looking at the issue of mythology in our lives today, especially as the book moves towards personal mythology and conversations with current mythic artists.

Synchronicity, Myth, and the New World Order: Part 2

By Charles Eisenstein 


The Matrix of Synchronicity

The aforementioned shortcomings in the New World Order (NWO) hypothesis are not cause to dismiss it entirely, for the nature of the flaws points to some deep truths. The conspiracists are onto something, something that is actually even more radical – and far more hopeful – than they imagine. So let us consider a riddle: If there is no conspiracy in the normal sense, then how to explain the evidence pointing to one? Let us not throw out the baby with the bathwater. When you look into the Kennedy assassination, or the history of suppression of unconventional energy technologies, or the cancer industry and the criminalization of alternative therapies, or any number of other issues, it sure can look like a conspiracy. If there isn't one, then we must discover some third explanation that doesn't turn a blind eye to some very incongruous events.

You may not think there is any such evidence. You may think that the well-documented human capacity to make meaning and perceive patterns where none exist is sufficient to explain the conspiracists' conclusions. After having read a fair amount of the literature with an open mind, I find that explanation too quickly dismissive. Even discounting the considerable selection bias that filters the evidence presented in conspiracy books, many of the coincidences remain striking. Moreover, there is something uncanny about the facility with which certain events lend themselves to conspiracy hypotheses. It is as if they are begging for it; for example, Jack Ruby killing Lee Harvey Oswald before he could talk in court about his motive for assassinating President Kennedy. It looks like a conspiracy. It smells like a conspiracy. But is it a conspiracy?

The Flooding

From Thee Uncondemning Monk: 

Well do we have a story for you (most of the juicy bits are being held back until we know how this plays out and will be continued on St. Stephen's blog Shitty Bear's Corner).

As many of you may know, we here in Johnson City, NY to be exact, the dwelling place of St. Stephen (ov Thee Uncondemning Monk) has been hit by a Flood. To get you started on this devastating event see this New York Times article, Flooding Persisting in Southern Tier... or here, from our local Press & Sun Bulletin, Broome County could take years to recover from flood damage looking out our back door

As of now we do not know when the power will return, we heard it could be another five days (as the substations are all out). St. Stephen would like to say that, as of this moment, he is alright, the three family building has power via the generator (we will keep it running until we either have to return it, run out of money, or ideally, the power comes back on). And that there are many peoples that could use your help. We are doing all we to ensure that St. Stephen does not have to not have to abandon his apartment (but stuff is stuff, we will survive and do what needs to be done to keep ours safe).

UPDATE: "Our Building Might Be Condemned. This is how it looks," says St. Stephen.St. Stephen has recently spoken to NYSEG (electric and gas) and this was their opinion. We will know for sure as soon as code get here, but it does not look good at all. Updates to follow, as we are able.

All things considered, please consider donating to Thee Uncondemning Monk. Or visit our store... perhaps we should make up some flood shirts... got to keep going some how, and as we said, besides the little family we have and some members of TOPI (One True TOPI Tribe), no one (State or Fed Government) has been quick to respond; we are told FEMA will be coming... but we can't wait... we need to move now...

9/11 to High Tide

I'm told our parents celebrated 9/11 like it was some kind of holiday. Fly a plane into a building, years later they'll be having Macy's sales around it. I imagine that if scientists announced that a meteor was hurtling towards the Earth, a whole industry would spring out of it. Pharmeceutical profits would skyrocket. Meteor pills would be all the rage. And the parties. Holy fuck, the parties.

That's now how it happened though. High tide just came on coming, a little each year. We worked our way around it. When the subways flooded, we made barges. Marketplaces moved from street level to the second floor. We banded into groups. I've farmed on rooftops, built windmills out of metal scrap. Not everyone, of course. The transitional generation got it the worst. Unprepared and generally worthless, a lot of them withered away to nothing in the darkness over skinned knees and bruised prides.

I guess we were lucky to be born amongst the garbage and scrap cities. We banded together. We improvised, or we died. I was seven when the news media started reporting the 404 Attacks. Eight when the ever encroaching sea was half-jokingly called High Tide. Fifteen when I decided to be a joiner, changed my name to a number (79, if you're wondering), and started pranking corporations.

And I was twenty one when I met my first demigod. That will take a little explanation though, huh? It started when I met a runaway along the side of the road. The rest I'll piece together from what she told me, and what little imagination I have. Grant this old man some poetic license and come along with me, I've got one bottle of old Scotch left, ...

Synchronicity, Myth, and the New World Order: Part 1

By Charles Eisenstein 

Looking out upon the horrid ruin we seem to have made of the planet, in spite of the kind hearts and good intentions of the vast majority of human beings, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that some nefarious force has hijacked civilization, driving it towards ends that serve almost no one.

If we are headed for a future that no one would consciously choose, it stands to reason, some say, that we are not choosing; that something else, unfriendly to human welfare, is choosing for us.

Deeper study of certain pivotal events in history strengthens this conclusion. The official explanations of the Kennedy assassination or 9/11 are riddled with contradictions that are difficult to explain. Ominous coincidences pile up and make patterns, pointing toward a conscious agency orchestrating these events toward sinister goals. Diving deeper, one discovers patterns of patterns that ultimately coalesce into an alternate history of the world.

The alternate history explains world events as resulting from the machinations of a powerful, dark cabal of secret organizations comprising the global elite: the banks, wealthy families like the Rockefellers and Rothschilds, non-official organizations like the Bilderburg Council, organized crime, shadowy agencies within the government, secret societies like Skull and Bones and the Freemasons, and so on. Behind them all is a group even more secret, comprising the true rulers of earth, who count even prime ministers and presidents among their puppets. Some theorist say that these Illuminati who hold the reins of power are human beings; others say that they have extraterrestrial allies, or that this group is controlled by, or consists of, ETs. Their goal, it is said, is to impose a New World Order (NWO) in which their dominion is complete.

In addition, the dark cabal that rules the earth is purported to have powerful secret technologies at its disposal. Weather control, mind control, energy weapons, artificially created diseases like Lyme and Swine Flu, and other near-magical technologies enable them to destroy any opposition and control us in ways we barely suspect. Always they are seeking to impose new forms of tyranny, to extend their dominion over mind and matter.

Flight from Narrative: a Hegira from Hegemony

By Amok

What type of sentence will an absolute mind construct? I considered that even in the human languages there is no proposition that does not imply the entire universe... I considered that in the language of a god every word would enunciate that infinite concatenation of facts, and not in an implicit but in an explicit manner, and not progressively but instantaneously. In time, the notion of a divine sentence seemed puerile or blasphemous. A god, I reflected, ought to utter only a single word and in that word absolute fullness. No word uttered by him can be inferior to the universe or less than the sum total of time.

Nachiketas: Tell me what you see beyond right and wrong, beyond what is done or not done, beyond past and future.
Death: I will tell you the Word that all the Vedas glorify, all self-sacrifice expresses, all sacred studies and holy life seek. (The Upanishads)

*****

Obsessing and wrangling in the wake of the idea that narratives should or shouldn't be studied and picked at and predictably obfuscated with alert counter-measures by quasineuroscientific initiatives, my own thoughts (driven and deeply structured by the traumatic engrams of archetypal Master Narratives) have been coiled around the idea of narrative death -- the directive of Thanatos, an Ouroboric plague of a feedback loop and how the modern alien can retaliate against the mad amalgams of narrating machines, the ideological state apparatus at large. Is escape even possible? A release? Or a mad Goetia of verbose, auto-didactic assholes?

Icon & Image – Charles Gatewood's Photographic Techniques for Myth-Making

by David Metcalfe

“William Burroughs, Paris, 1959. Burroughs is wearing what he called his “Rothschild suit”. One of a number of images taken of Burroughs by Brion Gysin in the streets of Paris. Gysin told writer Terry Wilson that the series was an ironic magical operation intended to procure Burroughs’ entry into the French Academy. ”

- from Naked Lunch at 50 - text by Oliver Harris

To create an icon you need an image. To create an effective image you need a really good photographer.

William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin are two of the 20th century's most profound exponents of the more esoteric angles of artistic creation. Open experimenters in the techniques of myth making and magic, they knew how to capitalize on a well crafted photo.

Will The Real xxx Please Stand Up?

OK. I'm going to break the fourth wall here for a moment (as if there was one) and ask a question.

Why is it that so many readers - at least ten just today alone - have thought posts written on ModernMythology were written by me, when the "By" line at the beginning and end of the article was not my name?

I'm actually asking.

Several of those people were also surprised to discover that there are in fact over a dozen contributors to this site; while I do write about 25-50% of the content on here depending on the month, I'm a voice in a chorus. Despite the description on the sidebar or in any of the sub-pages of the site that are quite clear in that, still the idea persists, so I wonder what we could do to be more clear about the collaborative nature of this project?

Or is the truth actually that none of you pay very much attention when you're browsing on the internet?

Also, one is completely insistent that I am Rusty Shackleford. I really am not. But I'm amused someone thinks that.

[Check out some of the books, albums, and soon movies produced by Mythos Media and our various media partners.]

A Mythic Primer of Transmedia

By James Curcio

There's a lot of talk about transmedia lately.

Haven't heard it? Well, there has been. Trust us.

And heaven knows there are a lot of transmedia evangelists out there. So I just want to talk over some of the possibilities presented by transmedia storytelling as a concept, without pretending that this is the final word on anything.

Most of us (er, them) are motivated by deep excitement. And of course, many corporations are also excited by it as a new way of perceiving the "life cycle of their brands," and "customer engagement," and other terms that sound really creepy in the "bad touch" kind of way. But we see all of the possibilities for new ways of engaging with content. Some of us see exciting creative possibilities and some see dollar signs. (I prefer to see both, when possible.)

On screen these instructions show
viewers how they can play along.

Engagement. Right there, some people get lost. "You mean there is more than one way to engage with content?"

Yes, there is.  It is not just that you are engaged, but also how.
 When you read a book, you're engaging with that story in a very different way then when it is shown to you in a comic, and when you watch a movie. Your brain is being engaged in different ways to create the narrative.

With a comic book, you are imagining the continuity of time, you are building mental movies out of the storyboard of the comic. The artist provides static visual cues. With a book, you are given the conceptual cues, but all of the sense experience has to be engaged. As such, it is both a deeply rewarding form of taking in media, because so much of the creative process is left up to you, and a very difficult one in terms of generating engagement, because it isn't a passive process. ("Why People Don't Read.")

With a novel, there is a high entrance price, a potentially high payoff. Movies are a passive process where visual, temporal, auditory cues are provided. Boredom is a potential enemy in all cases, but since there's a larger investment in reading a book, it seems to follow that if you get more than halfway through a book, you've already invested so much in creating that experience that you will insist on seeing it through to the end. It's very easy to switch channels on the TV, or surf away through YouTube or Netflix. Commitment seems to be so low on a platform like YouTube that it can be hard to keep attention for as "much" as two minutes.

Regardless of format, all of these are blueprints for an experience.

Of course, there's a dark potential in transmedia that the conspiracy theorists have also latched onto, producing a sort of paranoid PR-wing to the transmedia movement. I can't say if this paranoia is well placed or not, because it is based around things that haven't happened yet. (Maybe.) Can't see the ominous implication of transmedia? The fears engaged here are what drive the plot of the movie, "The Game."

The Ravens' Head: The Press Release

By Mr. VI

I acknowledge that I've been quiet here lately - that will change soon - however, the reason for this near-silence can now be revealed. I'm working on a book for the publishers of Immanence of Myth called THE RAVENS' HEAD.

Over the course of the coming months, I'll be giving you an insider's view of the mythic themes explored in the book - some of which are are already beloved by readers and contributors to this blog, so I invite you to come along for the ride!

Be Seeing You

- VI
_______________________


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - LONDON 5TH SEPTEMBER 2011

Weaponized is proud to announce the publication of ‘The Ravens Head’ a powerful new book by author Craig VI Slee.

Once upon a time, the first story was told – somewhere deep within the fields of memory, a vision was transmitted from one person to another. Once upon a time, a tale touched you and changed your world. It transported you somewhere else and left its fingerprints upon your life, and then when others saw the marks, you told of how they came to be. Over time, you wrapped yourself in stories, tattooing them upon the skin of your existence to make sense of all that happened. When others offered you stories, you took them gladly and spliced them with your own, until you could no longer discover where yours ended and theirs began.

Who exactly is it that tells your tale, guides the monologue and direct your actions? How much of your world is actually your own, and how much of it is painted scenery put there in the years before you were born? What is actually wallpaper over Plato’s cave walls, put there to soothe humankind and conceal the bare, unyielding rock?

What happens when you boil it all down and you are left with ash, ground down to the bone and struggling under the weight of loss and incomprehension?

Welcome then, to The Ravens’ Head.