Sunny & Cold - Mid-December. Barber Perfect was taking a Zug from Berlin where he had several `Holdings.' Pooler and I would meet up with him later in the week. We’d just been up the street in back of the Pantheon to the church of St-Étienne-du-Mont. Pooler and I had been arguing about this Alchemical Vitrail du cloître - this stained-glass window - in an interior cloister by the sacristy of the church. Saint Steven’s itself is a Gothic/Renaissance mix and one of the few which actually worked. The purity of the Gothic has not been overwhelmed by the amplificatio of the Renaissance. Odd for a church which wasn’t started until 1492 - by then the word Gothic and the attitude had been born and Gothic was a snide term for barbarian art forms. The Église rises on the rue de la Montagne Sainte-Geneviève - though it's more a small hill than any kind of mountain. The rue used to lead to the Monastery Ste-Genny which had been established there by Clovis the 1st Frog king. Genny had converted him to Christianity or `Kikidom' as Skippy calls the faith. Skippy once knew a French petit garçon named Christian - his family used the familiar nickname Kiki for boys named Christian. So Skippy calls Christians Kikis and their faith is Kikidom. The church of Ste. Genny took the place of the Monastery and there is an ornate shrine to Ste Geneviève tucked inside. Blaise Pascal is also buried within. Pascal lived at the time of Baruch Spinoza and he too was a Philosopher/Mathematician. Pascal was also a Physicist. When he was 16 Pascal wrote a ground breaking treatise on Projective Geometry. Later, he and Pierre de Fermat used to get Piss drunk at La Gueuze and argue about Probability Theories. Like many Philosopher-Math junkies, Pascal went bug-fucking nuts and in 1654 had this `Road to Damascus' Epiphany - most likely it was a small Temporal Lobe Seizure. He abandoned Science & went wiry & mystical. He was dead before 40. Spinoza made it to 44. T.S. Eliot called Pascal: "a man of the world among ascetics, and an ascetic among men of the world." Poets are allowed to think backwards at themselves - like a Crab Canon in Music. Pooler told me that Barber nearly killed Blaise Pascal once in a fist fight over the Nature of Pressure and Vacuums. Marat's entombed in Ste Genny's too - you can't help but wonder if his skin still itches in Hell. Or maybe he was already in his Hell when Charlotte Corday stabbed him to death in his bath. Jacobin muthafuka! Barber used to call Lucky that when Lucky got all educated & said he wanted to be a `Terror to the Jesuits!' "Get me ein Beer! You Jacobin Muthafuka!" he would scream. After Skippy got his 3rd University Degree he told Barber to get his own fuckin' beer. Barber smiled. Das ist gut. He said. Lucky had finally Matriculated to a bigger Alma Mater.
They built St-Étienne-du-Mont as a Pilgrimage Church. The cult of Ste-Geneviève had swollen to a Furor and they had swamped the poor Monastery with her simple Chapel. The Monastery with its Abbey Church fell victim to the Jacobin Mobs of the Revolution - or it could have been just drunk serfs looking to settle scores with the Second Estate. God knows there were Millions of Scores to settle. Skippy's favorite quote from the period is from Jean Meslier - the Catholic Priest who once dead was discovered to have authored a brilliant book on the Truth of Atheism - the quote begins his Last Will: "I should like to see, and this will be the last and most ardent of my wishes - I should like to see the Last King strangled with the Guts of the Last Priest."
When Kenny La Roche created the Spike Chosen Arrow we were Six middle-aged white guys who had a combined lived experience of 300 years - none of us with a real job - and who were willing to violate all manner of law & custom & good taste, and yet who all remained in states of grace ranging from Innocent to Pure. Well, except for The Captain. His state ranges over a larger Topology of Grace. The Captain is our own Personal Jesus and each of us, independently, have accepted him into our hearts. Well, except for Skippy. Skippy can’t help but note that every other mission - whether it’s a work-mission or an Installation - The Captain wounds poor Skippy in some way and that lately he’s been drawing blood. The last time The Captain, IwoJima, Slag & Skippy were on top of the Baptist - the Hill where we were Hanging the Head of John the Baptist - before we all split up to go traveling for the winter - it had taken less than 15 minutes before The Captain stabbed me and we had to duct-tape my hand to stop the bleeding. Skippy keeps babbling now about his Mystic Five Wounds - his Stigmata - and when we’re onsite we have to Shut Him Up to get any work done. So it was middle February and we were back at it. It had been another wimp of a winter and it was already Crusted Snow Supports a Man’s Weight Moon on the Ojibway Calendar. We left Slag’s truck at “the gate” & walked in without snowshoes. Slag took us into the woods early to erase the big signature of 4 Aryan Brotherhood types Gawk-Walkin' across the top of the snow in plain view. But Skippy was hinky; he was ill at ease. He’s got this theory that his Wounds have homing capacity & react to magnetic fields so that combined they create a Sixth Sense - a kind of Divining & Geomantric power. He thinks he’s Tapped In. Something wasn’t right. And even though we were conscious of the effects on orientation & memory that fallen leaves & snow-cover do to a wooded scene - we knew it was more than that. We’d left the treeline, where we usually skirted the woods on the walk to the Baptist, and nearly immediately found a hill with similar waypoints & landmarks: a clump of fallen trees at the base, the 3 large anchor trees for the Hill-Haul. But they weren’t exactly right and we fell to questioning our gestalts. But Slag was near certain . . . so we followed him up the hill. Only to find no Haut, no Bah, no Salome’s Platter, and worse - we could see that the hill was not high enough. The Baptist may be one of the highest points of the Cathedral and this wasn’t it.
Slag Bolos Bah!
To the north we could see a long ridge of hills connected at their peaks in a sinewy trail. We figured that the Baptist must certainly be close by so we set off Ridge-Walking. Twenty minutes later we knew we were lost; Slag sent The Captain ahead North to try a few more peaks while the rest of us turned back South the way we had come. It didn’t seem possible but maybe we had not entered the woods early but instead had entered late, already past the Baptist. Within ten minutes we could hear the Signal-Trilling of The Captain. He had found the site and was trilling over the woodland like some type of wildlife/fauna - he said it was a bird, but the rest of us thought it sounded more like a small mammal that had just gnawed off its foot to free itself from a trap. “All Wisdom & Virtue flow from the wounds,” he was screaming at the Raven when we joined him on top of the Baptist. Or screaming back. Slag ignored him and took a slow steady coiled kind of aim and then threw the Bolo over the target branch on Bah. Maybe it took a try or two. Skippy had a mighty throw and we nearly lost the Bolo & line when he threw them over the entire forest, missing the tree cleanly. The recoil pushed him down hard on the ground and you could feel the thud through your feet. The purpose of the mission was to get a line over a good branch on Bah so that we could climb it with the ascender rig - all in all a safer method than the spiked-shoes & climbing-strap way Slag had used to rig Haut with its halyard. Our other objective was to remeasure the site and figure out the mechanics of the Installation Mission as well as the Scarf Mission. It went well and we accomplished both quickly. In fact, we figured out a new and more pleasing method to accomplish the hang itself. We had been thinking that we would find a branch above the Scarf - probably on Bah - which we could use to lift the Châsse up off the ground high enough so that we could clip it on to the doubled wire of the scarf. But the only bough we could find which was strong enough and high enough above the scarf was marginal at best. It’s orientation to the scarf was 20º or more off and we had a real question as to its strength. The bough wasn’t very long either so that if we did use it the Châsse would be hung very close to Bah and then we would have to reposition it to a spot on the scarf where its hang would be more symmetrical to both Haut and Bah. The Scarf is what we call the wire which we will stretch between the 2 trees and then hang the Châsse off of it. Half of the fun of creating your own Cosmos is Naming everything. Names have great power. If you knew the names of all the Angels you would be Omnipotent & have balls the size of Boulders. In the Odin myth, no one ever mentions what Odin made out of Ymir's Genitalia. Ok, the Sky was made from his Skull, and all the Waters were once his Blood. So what did he do with the Giant's Balls? Or his Dick. That's the kind of detail which makes you suspicious when they leave it out.
Do not Listen to the Ravens!
But wait! Why not use a small drop cable to hang the Châsse? Attach a bite-loop - just like the ones we used on Gabriel’s drop - above the spot on the drop where we want the final hang and then lift the Châsse up to the bite-loop so that the end of the drop can easily be fixed to the Châsse in an elegant and frapped manner? Huh? Why not? No reason, so that’s what we plan to do. After that we went back to Paradesia so that Mark could show us the completed Châsse which he finished fabriking after He & Cinders came back from Georgia & the like. The tracery of the chords is more delicate than my drawings show. It’s going to be jewellike set between the trees on top of the Baptist. We have to install the scarf, finish drilling the Head, and then do some planning but we are within 6 weeks I’ll bet of Installation. That aims us towards the middle of April, after Easter, right before I leave on Pilgrimage to Compostela - the Field of Stars.
Click on the Irminsul/Swastica button and let's all go to the River with the Ahnenerbe, Himmler's Think Tank in charge of Recasting Ancient History. Which can be ever so much fun.
Le Châsse - fini.
Uncanny mutha is it not. That's Skippy's new favorite term: The Uncanny Valley. Masahiro Mori, a Jap Roboticist introed the term back in 1970 but the Jap stole it from Freud who used the term: Das Unheimliche - or the "un-home-ly." Ziggy was describing "where something can be familiar, yet foreign at the same time, resulting in a feeling of it being uncomfortably strange." Uncomfortable is the Key Term. The Uncanny, being both familiar and strange, creates Cognitive Dissonance in the mind because it is both attracted and repulsed at the same time. Ernst Jentsch wrestled with the concept in his 1906 essay: "On the Psychology of the Uncanny." Jentsch zeroed in on People & Objects when he defined Uncanny as: "doubts whether an apparently animate being is really alive; or conversely, whether a lifeless object might be, in fact, animate." Freud stretched the "Uncanny" from people & things to include ideas and concepts. Like Jung's theme of Synchronicity when there is a "seemingly" meaningful coincidence which raises our hackles. Guy de Maupassant's story "L'horla" presents a man who suddenly sees his own back in a Mirror and is plunged into anxiety until he realizes that it is his own back. Anxiety - in this instance - results from the inability to decide what is real and what is not. Jacques Laçan - when he wasn't Autofellating - described the "signal of anxiety" as "the signal of the real, as irreducible to any signifier." Semiotic Bastard. When everyday objects and people lose their meaning/moarings the Uncanny Valley is breached. Julia Kristeva called it "Abjection" - "where one reacts adversely to that which has been forcefully cast out of the Symbolic Order." To the Jap, Masahiro Mori, the Uncanny Valley was the hypothesis "that when robots and other facsimiles of humans look and act almost like actual humans, it causes a response of revulsion among human observers." The "valley" describes the "dip in a proposed graph of the positivity of human reaction as a function of the robot's lifelikeness."
As robots [and Dolls, and animated movies, etc] become more "lifelike" in both appearance and movement then human observers become more positive and empathic to them. Mirror Neurons fire wildly. But then, suddenly, when the item in question approaches the point where it becomes "too human" or near-indistinguishable from the "real" thing - the attraction quickly gives way to revulsion. Fear & Loathing, Hunter called it. The Topos/Area between "barely human" and "fully human" is called The Uncanny Valley. The Jap robot "Repliee Q2" to the right is an example. She is so damn near human that she is unnerving. The same thing happens in weird movies like The Polar Express and Beowulf. The animation is so damn near perfect that the mind which "knows" the images are not real is plunged into a Neckercube Psychology where it is "nearly" fooled enough to accept the images as real. We hate that. It's jarring. Little kids find the situation "gross." Dave Bryant - Fantasy & Sci-Fiction Artist - sums the Meme up: "The idea is that if one were to plot emotional response against similarity to human appearance and movement, the curve is not a sure, steady upward trend. Instead, there is a peak shortly before one reaches a completely human `look' . . . but then a deep chasm plunges below neutrality into a strongly negative response before rebounding to a second peak where resemblance to humanity is complete." The Chart/Graph below illustrates his point. The Uncanny Valley (UV) is reached when the observer notices something which is Off-Beat, Off-Kilter, Off-Balance - just enough to arrest the flow of Verisimilitude - what Coleridge referred to as our "willing suspension of disbelief" - that it seems suddenly "Eerie or Disquieting." Skippy likens that Disquieting to the Crooked Picture on the Wall Syndrome. Designers of both Robots and human Prosthetic devices have heeded the Uncanny Valley Hypothesis and like Navaho weavers leaving a Spirit-Break in an otherwise Perfect Rug, they create things which while remaining very lifelike will ultimately `give the game away' before the Uncanny Valley is broached. Robots & Dummies & Prosthetic Limbs should be "smart & stylish" but not "duplicate human appearance." There is a lesson here for all Creators & Designers. The lesson is cross-discipline. Even the gods should ponder long & deep the Uncanny Valley.
The Chart shows "Hypothesized" human emotional response plotted against the Anthropomorphism of a Robot. The UV is the sudden Negative Emotional Response that hits when the Bot reaches the "almost human" stage. Notice how the Bot's Motions serve to Amplify and Extend the Uncanny Valley. Skippy loves the Meme for its flexibility. Every really good Monster or Fantasy Figure has successfully tapped into the Uncanny Valley System - because that's what the UV is. It's a Cognitive Device, a Mental System - it's the Mind's Logic Inference Engine transforming Sense-input into appropriate response models which will enhance survival. Like the Human response to Beauty - the Mind senses Symmetry & translates that as health & reproductive success potential. Chicks with certain Bodily proportions & Facial features will always turn guys on - these are barometers of Reproductive Success. A Stiff-Dick is the Brain's way of Signalling DNA's recognition of a Suitable Vessel to spill itself into for the Future. Fear, Anxiety , and Disgust are the Mind's way of Signaling DNA's recognition of Mutation, Disease, disproportion, asymmetry, and the Artificial. A Lie - a lie too clever by half. If you want to see the UV in action and you're not afraid of Naked Women then click on the graph to the left. Beware, the Uncanny Valley is not for Amateurs & True Believers.
Anyway, St-Étienne's is a pleasing bit of sacred space and its well sited. It’s known for two things: the Rood Screen and the window of the Le Pressoir Mystique - the Mystic Wine-Press. Nearly all of the great churches of Paris once had a Rood Screen - they’re kind of like large stone gates but officially they are described as “a kind of tribune consisting of a transverse gallery that runs between the nave and the choir.” Since they are meant to be a screen but not a wall most of them are composed of extremely delicate stone tracery. The rood screen of St. Étienne-du-Mont is a “basket-handle arch and three arcades surmounted with ribs.” It looks very Italianate. Almost like smoke put thru a sieve. The purpose of a rood screen is to provide an elaborate and raised platform from which to read the Epistle in the mass. But unless they were done well they tended to blot out and obscure the altar and the ceremony. At the end of the Renaissance the people - the great unwashed - demanded to see the whole altar and all the priests and all the Sacrédotal and they said they needed to see the whole act, the whole mass, the whole alchemy of the matter. So much for the rebirth of wonder. Nearly all of the ornate screens were destroyed so the mob could grok the mystery. The ones which weren’t were nearly all smashed by the same mob during the revolutions and the counterrevolutions of the Terror. Icon smashers wandered from facade to facade and pulverized everything they could not understand. So it’s a fucking miracle that Saint Steven’s still has theirs. They keep it well scrubbed so it shines white and alabaster like the skin of the Keltic Girls. I think people take the Word easier from everything which is milky and white. But that’s just me.
"Of all the fluids, however, blood is the most ambiguous in symbolic content. For there are, after all, 2 kinds of blood. There is the blood which is caused to flow (with wounds and sacrifice). And there is blood which flows without cause, mysteriously and unbidden (menstrual blood and the blood of child bearing. One is `good.' The other is `bad.' . . . The notion that blood is graded in sanctity and healing properties to the place from which it is drawn turns up in the lore of many people. . . . Having given celestial blood to sustain life on earth, the gods required human blood to ensure their own continued existence. . . . `Take ye and drink,' said Jesus, offering wine to his disciples, `for this is my blood.'"
The second thing the church is known for is Gnostic. It's secret knowledge. Nobody except a handful know about it at all. Everyone comes for the creamy stone of the Rood Screen and then they leave all satiated by the warm filigree. Pooler said “par ici” and dragged me around the ambulatory to a room or hallway which functioned as an inside cloister. On one of the walls of this room was a series of small Vitraux, stained-glass windows about the size of a small man. They faced the rear of the altar if you can say that a table like that for the Opus, for the Work, has a designated front or back. Since they were inside the church and not on the exterior walls of the structure, they drew no natural light and were muted and darkened by the natural gloom of the Gothic. “Zounds!” cried Pooler, and since we were alone the cry passed unnoticed. “Christ’s Wounds!” Then he kissed his hands and bending, touched them to his feet. He kissed the palms of both hands again and then clapped them to his side. It all happened quickly and looked like a whole-body Mudra. Look at it he said. Grasp it. Put it into words. The window was called Le Pressoir Mystique - the Mystic Wine Press. It was 17th century and therefore right at the end of the age which its iconographic syntax so richly illustrated. What kind of times produce an Image like this? What kind of Mentalité wants to see its God bleed so fully? And Ok, I get it, Blood is muy Saliente. It's an Index even . . . but of what Indicator? Oddly enough it was Barber Perfect and not Pooler Jones who had first introduced me to the Window of the Mystic Wine Press in St. Steve's and that was decades before in the 60s. He wanted to show me where he had Killed a notorious Giordanista after the Nolan had been burned at the stake in Rome. Bruno's followers were known as Giordanistas and they were everywhere and nowhere in the early 1600's - like most with alternate worldviews than the Church. They were in hiding all over Europa but they had Meeting Places where they could Rendezvous with an ally and one of them was at the Vitraux of Le Pressoir-Mystique in St-Étienne-du-Mont deep in the Left Bank of Paris, the City of Light. "Why here?" I once asked Barber. "It's the Blood," he said. It's all about the Blood.
Click the Caduceus to the left to follow the gods to Thoth, Hermes, Mercury, & the Rising Chakras of the Chi.
Click the Gothic Tracery to dig into the Blood of the Mystic Press. Click on Bell, Book & Candle to follow Spinoza to his Kherem.
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