Abraxas, Lord of
Light and Dark
Don't dis the 'symbols gone wild' video. ( Ron Thos. Smith
at work)
The god Abraxas
appears in this quote from Hermann Hesse's
novel, Damien:
- "The bird
fights its way out of the egg. The egg
is the world. Who would be born must
destroy a world. The bird flies to God.
That God's name is Abraxas"
If you pursue this symbol you may
find many roads radiating into nothingness. Although Greco-Roman
tokens, amulets and stones bear the symbol of Abraxas, the
origin cannot be clearly traced and may well be a symbol
similar to Hermetic symbols made up in the well intentioned
2nd century magus' work, the Corpus Hermeticum. Reviver of
Neo-Platonism, Marsilio Ficino, first translated a copy into
Latin in the late 15th century and believed it to be
genuine. Scholars have since pointed out the several bad and
historically inaccurate attempts at forging an ancient Greek
document. Many fortunate and valuable ideas in the work
relate the world order of a time before the Christian era.
It attempts to say that pagans anticipated and predicted the
coming of a messiah, but in the tradition of thrice-born
deities. Also named in the Hermetic opus was the lord of
light and dark.
Some Tarot experts have tried to tie this Pan like deity to
the Magician card, the Devil card and to a lord of the
universe in the Monist tradition. Never-the-less the chicken
and the egg symbol hardly need much explanation. Which came
first may cause debate amongst paleobiologists, but the
rooster headed Abraxas is more likely pure fiction even
though the symbol is a strong one with philosophical uses
even more profound than Hesse's.
One must understand that in this pre-Christian period,
Greek, Roman, even in the Holy land, it was believed that
anyone, king or beggar, could become a god. But, after the
Christian era began such ideas were deemed to be immoral
pagan nonsense. A god was JUST A SYMBOL. All the while
saying that, some clerics must have sensed the danger that
such an idea was harmful to their regime and that ANY symbol
would have the power to move people to extraordinary feats
of military might against them. The symbol that motivated
Genghis Kahn's massive mobile blood drive for instance was
nothing more than a pile of rocks located in Kahn's hometown
of Kharakharum, you can pronounce it, hara-haroom'. It
doesn't take much, the symbol doesn't need special effects,
the fable or the underlying belief is motive enough.
Desperate people who are worried about survival concoct
gods, demons and delusions enough to satisfy their making it
alright in their heads to hack hallelujah across continents.
My friend Ron, shown above, is one of the late boomer,
intuitives who uses no pencil, needs no story boarding,
conducts no extensive online research, and produces
symbolist vid-shoot performances that have all the numinous
Babylonian, Sumerian, snake-rock, whipster, chicken-head
Abraxas take-offs you'd ever want to see in one show, only
he will tell you that, yes, he is "fascinated by occult
symbolism", but admittedly knows little about it. Let's
hear it for the accidental Abraxas!
The new symbolism is as much based on fear as was in ancient
times, i.e. fear of being zapped by an omniscient god vs.
being melted in the classroom while squatting under a desk.
Either fear could cause stress disorders, breakdown, and
hallucinations. But, if a chicken head god could allay your
fears and save you, so be it. As someone I loved once said,
"What ever you think will work probably will. That thought
alone saved me from the DT's and helped me to be alcohol
free for 18 years.
The ancient soldier carried his Abraxas amulet into battle
to reinforce his bravery.
Modern 21st century symbols have
light and dark features and pack more symbolism than your
typical pedestrian road symbols. It's hard to imagine what
sort of places would post such dire warnings. The
exclamation has all the arm waving of Will Robinson's robot
but without the clothes dryer hoses and gyros going around
in its head. Radiation - we all know that one - means
death, the kind of death where you are unaware that you are
already dead. The red one - ionizing radiation - destroys
skin. Non ionizing - will make you sick or crazy. Biohazard
- again we all know that one, means anything from microbial
illness to a possible end time pandemic, you'll need a suit.
The yellow warning is the new computer version, in this
case, much more like the Lost in Space robot. Electricity -
laundry static to high tension voltage. Chemical weapons -
don't touch the core, don't open this can. Laser -
blindness. And, finally - optical radiation or any nebulous
form of non-lethal electronic radiation - anything from cell
phones to TV's, radar and microwaves which only kill you
after a few years.
The light and dark radiation of the cosmos is all around and
forms a lethal handshake with the forces that create us and
that destroy us. Without both we could never have come to
exist. We are the ultimate omelet of egg symbols, rooster
head Abraxas sees
the irony of creation and destruction, one a mirror side of
the other. Whether we indeed fly to him is unknown, but
operation of the symbol works for other myths and stories,
promises an after life somewhere in a domestic barnyard
world or in some other winged, peachy-sky world above the
clouds.
The irony of the good / although bad is the main feature of
symbols great and small. It is the dominant theme of human
mortality, a defining characteristic we all share and cannot
escape. The above symbols are not like the Death Tarot card
- they are not communicating the poetry of death, they
define death in the real world. It is the poetry of a symbol
that makes it work. The poetry of radiation, biohazard, and
leaking microwave energies, even cosmic radiation from
infinity and beyond have not found a suitable medium except
Sci-Fi and Horror, though some interesting attempts have
been make with Star Trek, various foreign and independent
films. There was even an attempt to write Sci-Fi in poetic
styles in Britain, and by U.S. poets inventing Scifiku,
Science fiction Haiku.
Snakes (love-hate horror objects) have semi luminous
qualities also, aside from daring danger to bite, they
symbolize the moon, shedding its shadow, the body consuming
itself, communication with the underworld and the dead, and
the milky way galaxy, a squirt of milk across the heavens
snaking like a river amongst the stars, birth and death on
the same lick of flaming liquid ejecta from Hera's breast.
The pantheon of immortals reads almost like a
sadomasochistic nightmare and just the sort of medium for
today's new imagery of computer glimpses into the inner
worlds of creative minds. What the modern critics once
called the "holy cows" of bucolic painters can now come home
to renew the space-like symbols of tomorrow. The space era
of the 20th century was loaded with the names of Greek and
Roman gods, air symbols, Gemini and Aquarius, not always
pronounced correctly, but an awakening newness that spread
interest like wildfire. (I wondered then if Gemini cricket
was going up too)
Star Trek may have overplayed that device and easily may
have worn out the meaning and power of those symbols for a
generation, but history, if observed and literature if not
thrown on the burning book pile, will keep them in a ready
state for another round of usefulness. These are some of the
most daunting authority figures the world has ever produced,
Jupiter, Juno, Mercury, Prometheus, Odysseus, Thor, Vishnu,
world makers and world shakers, life-giving life-taking,
they have piqued the imagination of generations and will no
doubt continue as long as symbols are renewed, and given
modern meaning.
We have been living in a world of conspicuous newness and
modernization for nearly 60 years and to the point that we
are now post modern because new is never quite new enough.
Once the "awe and mystery that stretches from the inner mind
to the outer limits" is gone or passé we seem to crave more
and better, newer, sharper images of newness until the very
idea of age and oldness is erased or hidden. Mankind has
usually ignored and built over the archaic until the old
become modern again, until old is IN. The Renaissance is
ongoing, Archeology is still digging, discovering how modern we always
were.
Like the dire electro-magnetic symbols
we have an approach-avoid reaction, curious but threatening,
they interest the student of life as well as the generations
that did not grow up with such threats. If you learned to
duck and cover, but at the same time admire your radium
wristwatch while quivering in the dark, you know the
ambiguity of newness and frightening authority hovering
above you which you have no control over. To throw these
symbols around as humor and spoof may ease much tension in
the world, but until there are rational people controlling
these technologies that threaten to wipe us out, there may
be a requirement for real literature and real poets to meet
these threats head on. Planet of the Apes and Thunderdome
(especially the Ape God and the Tell of Cap't. Walker)
almost get you there, but the poetry is more like A Boy and
his Dog.
ZOMO BOT VS
PEDESTRIAN
