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Podcast 17: And I’ll Form The Head!
This episode features a big stinking mess of connections without a whole lot of sense or needless interpretation. It is an exercise in pattern-matching and training oneself to “speak symbols.”
Topics covered include: John the Baptist, the Dance of the Seven Veils, Orpheus, Bran the Blessed, Perseus and Medusa, The Knights Templar, Norse myth, The Secret Book of John, the Santeria head saint ceremony, Gurdjieff, Radiohead, the Talking Heads, Voltron, the French Revolution, the Mystical Body of Christ, the movies Zardoz & Wizard of Oz, head-hunting and some other things which escape me. But that’s most of it.
This podcast makes heavy thematic reference to these other posts and podcasts - so you may want to read/listen to them first:
- It’s All In Your Head
- Voices In Our Heads
- Coney Island Cut-Out Consciousness
- Erasing Personal Identity
- Podcast 16: Breaking the Monopoly of Identity
- Podcast 15: How to Fake Your Own Death
- How You See You
- Playing Your Character
- Smash Your Cell Phone!
And while we’re matching patterns, here are a slew of images which will hopefully trigger some kind of symbolic response deep within your psyche. I recommend looking at these as you listen to the podcast… (Click on the thumbnail for larger images)
December 19th, 2006 at 1:36 pm
Idries Shah has a short chapter in his book on the Sufis called “The head of wisdom” well worth a read. The templars he says were accused of worshipping a head, sometimes called “Baphomet”, sufi terminology “el-fahmat” == head of knowledge.
The black head which appears in heraldry is a cursader substitute word for this kind of knowledge he says. Albertus Magnus spent 30 years making his marvelous brass head !
December 19th, 2006 at 4:01 pm
This is just off the top of my head, but I love the website. The post on Pinchbeck reminds me of something I jotted down a couple of days ago.
December 19th, 2006 at 5:04 pm
How about the Mayan game/competition that Joseph Campbell talks about in the Power of Myth where the captain of the winning team has his head cut off immediately after the game’s end? (its on pg 108 of the text version, and probably on the “sacrifice and bliss” DVD disc).
Over the years that scenario was always hard to imagine (would you really want to win under such circumstances?), but after seeing the Fountain, my perspective on the matter is shifted entirely. “Death is the road to awe,” indeed.
December 19th, 2006 at 5:41 pm
Hey yeah the Mayan head game is a great addition!
December 19th, 2006 at 6:29 pm
http://www.headless.org/english-new/experiments/the-bottom-line.htm
December 19th, 2006 at 6:31 pm
And:
Compare that to the story of the Hydra and how to defeat the Hydra, you have to cauterize the stumps where the heads are cut off with fire so that they don’t grow back double
December 19th, 2006 at 7:01 pm
Fantastic, great stuff
December 19th, 2006 at 10:41 pm
Also moving in the direction of heads and headlessness, I don’t know why I didn’t think of religious halos:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_%28religious_iconography%29
December 20th, 2006 at 7:48 pm
There’s a great essay by Georges Bataille about a painting by Breughels IIRC - the temptation of saint anthony
St ANthony’s head is dissolving into his halo
December 20th, 2006 at 8:03 pm
Shit!
December 27th, 2006 at 9:37 pm
[…] Last night I dreamt of a severed head floating in a container of liquid. The head was still lucid, still talking. To me. I don’t know what he was saying, but of the people gathered, it was my job to “finish off” this head. But I realized I didn’t have the heart for it - even if it was an abomination. I went to find someone else in my group to tell them I couldn’t do it. When I got back, somebody had started pouring alcoholic drinks (possibly including pink cosmos or martinis with olives) into the vat with the head to poison or suffocate it. Instead the head began to drink the liquid in order to keep itself from drowning. I didn’t understand where it was being expelled though. The only exit from the head was the neck, with a gaping hole in it - obviously. And yet the water line lowered regardless. But the head also shrank rapidly and became transparent. […]
January 16th, 2007 at 7:47 pm
[…] Saddam’s half-brother decaptitated in hanging. 37-year-old a suspect in the decapitation of 4-year-old daughter. Off with his head! Have you been following that thread? Dummies may like it by enthusiasm, by default. Ago, girl ago. Psychic hotline. Skype and Netflix unveil new online video services. Load up those Tubes and let’s go surfing in our Burkinis in Australia. What’s going to happen in Australia this year? Been hearing lots of strange news out of that place. Shoplifters of the world, unite and take over. Saturn vs. Earth in war as you’ve never seen it! […]