With a new version of The Wicker Man to be released in theatres September 1st, I thought it would be appropriate to review the original in the hopes that others will see the classic horror flick for what it’s not. It is not a typical, generic, movie that carries itself on cheap scare tactics. I’m not impressed by the amount of remakes that have been plaguing the screens, especially when most remakes didn’t need or deserve to be done. I would rather see a remake that takes a magnificent plot, and adds effects that could not have been accomplished at the time, like The Langoliers. But because I’m such a fan of the first film, I’m going to see the remake anyway. I might change my opinion, but don’t hold your breath.

The Wicker Man was a horror film unlike any other. It banished the stereotypical creepy environment. No eerie dead trees and mist blanketing a full moon. Instead, you have lush green Scottish fields and fruit, horseback-riding, women dancing naked, drinking, merriment, and song. The very thing to get me in the mood to whip out the djembe and sing to the stars. Here to spoil the fun of these hedonistic Heathens from Summerisle we have a copper from the mainland: Sgt. Howie (Edward Woodward). When this buzz-kill receives a letter from the island about a girl missing for many months, Howie goes forth to investigate. The virgin Christian gasps in horror at the sight of jarred foreskins, public lovin’, and school children dancing around the maypole. Everywhere he goes the humorless Sgt. is subjected to this strange foreign culture, convincing him that the missing girl was murdered under circumstances of Pagan barbarities. I’m of the opinion that a horror film should be balanced out with some good humour, which is well met by the locals. Lord Summerisle, played by Christopher Lee, embodies the classy, fun loving, cheeky High Priest who contrasts Howie’s tight-assed character absolutley. Everyone conducts themselves innocently in the face of his annoyance and confusion, but each person is telling a different story. Something is definitley amiss. In comparison to the rest of The Wicker Man, the conclusion is blunt. I had spent a few hours trying to decide what the director was trying to say. I finally decided that he wasn’t actually trying to make any moral point, but rather meant to make the viewer uncomfortable. It succeded. But I must admit that a part of me was giggling, and that made me a little more uneasy.

A good horror film makes you think and forces you to address the feeling of uneasiness it leaves in the back of your mind. This classic does just that. There is no real sense of closure. With most horror films you can easily identify who the villains and heroes are. The Wicker Man dosn’t give you such an illusion, and so is just a bit closer to reality. There seems to be a bit of light and darkness with all the characters, and the fact that you don’t neccesarily see it right away makes the mystery that much more exciting. I am determined not to spoil the ending for those who haven’t seen it. So, as tempted as I am, I’m just going to leave you with this: As far as the ending is concerned, before you draw a conclusion about anything, consider that the producers thanked the real Lord Summerisle and the Heathen populace for helping to make the movie. Aside from that, look up the historical facts before you take it too seriously. It is a great horror movie that is also very fun and nostalgic.

[Originally appeared on No Official Capacity]

“The modern androgyne, seeking only self-realization, forfeits the energy of opposition and conflict.” (Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae)

This is a stream of unconsciousness essay on the Self, illustrated by the kaleidoscopic sexual personae of GENESIS P-ORRIDGE. Always the mercurial Magician, Gen has been associated with the art and decadence of the Thelemic, industrial, punk, Goth, and rave movements, and was arguably the earliest proponent of acid house. His bands have ranged from hard-edged Throbbing Gristle to ethereal Psychic TV to avant-garde Thee Majesty.

Never one to commune in solitude, all these eras of the artist, priest and shaman have fused into the orgiastic seizure of family-band PTV3. Now he gladly shares center stage with the group, including wife Lady Jaye, daughter Genesse, and bandmates, forming a cohesive unit to rock the house. This is a personal and critical triumph for the artist, whose daemonic career stalled somewhat after his tragic injuries in an infamous Hollywood fire at the former home of mega-magician, Harry Houdini.

In the alchemical transformation process, fire is the Bath of Immortality; the calcinatio fire tempers emotions, mind and body. Fire symbolizes libido, not at all separate from sexuality. The movement is from auto-erotic, to personal power-seeking, to refined transpersonal consciousness. Frustration is the initiatory ordeal. The fires of desire are transmuted. The miraculous water, aqua divina or permanens, was extracted from the lapis, or prima materia through the torment of the fire. The water stands for the anima mundi imprisoned in matter. This stage represents the expansion of consciousness after a crisis in development.

This crucible of chemical breakdown created a Phoenix-like opportunity for a remixing of elements, a new chapter of the sexual metathesis. Mind and body, perturbed by the chaos of a turbulent inner life, relinked in a transformation of prima materia through a luminous rebirth. In alchemy, both the primal matrix and finished product (Philosopher’s Stone) are hermaphroditic, an androgyne, and rebis (double thing).

This is exemplified on the Tree of Life by the merging of Hod (Hermes) and Netzach (Aphrodite) to open the 25th path ART (Temperance) which culminates in the Self-Real-I-zation of Tiphareth, the heart center. It represents a change of plane, a quantum leap from Astral to Causal Body as intentionally-created vehicle of consciousness with its enlarged perspective.

In a triumphant international come-back over 2004-2005, the Dionysian diva proved he never really went “away”. Nor did the perennial global fans. Now, aka Breyer P-Orridge, Genesis masquerades in conjunction with soror mystica and co-artist, Lady Jaye. S/he has endured further self-initiatory rites of s/hirgery. The magickal child cooks in the heat of the rubedo, furthering its incubation.

Hir symbolic externalization of the Androgyne is a deliberate, conscious artistic creation…body as art, bringing body fully into the artistic process, in a hyper-committed soulful way. This informed transformation is lightyears beyond body-building or the prosaic body-modification of neo-tribal culture, which is now reduced to the 21st Century equivalent of mall-hair by pierced teeny-boppers and tatted grandmothers with tickets for Burning Man.

The new Virgin, in the ancient meaning of being One whole-in-oneself, took h/ir show on the road. From the beginning of his career, Genesis has been a seminal engineering influence in Occulture, while likewise being influenced by his intimate relationships with such icons as Timothy Leary, William Burroughs, and Brion Gysin. He was strongly influenced by Burroughs’s “cut-up method” of writing. It is essentially a mantic rant, a collage technique with words and phrases uniquely juxtaposed. Now he’s done the same with his body.

The search for an escape from a dualistic state has formed one of the great pursuits of philosophers, mystics and occultists alike. Morphing the meat body creates a cascade of transformation through the etheric bodies in the emotional, mental, and spiritual worlds - a coincidentia oppositorum. S/He is a KOAN of living flesh that confounds spectators and brings a screeching halt to linear thought in pure spectacle. It brings new meaning to McLuhan’s old saw: the medium is the massage.

Do Homo Mutans or Homo Lumen embody an evolutionary thrust beyond Homo Sapiens? The immortal sacred Androgyne is a reiterated symbol throughout the history of art from neolithic times, and was particularly revered by medieval alchemists. Gen spoke at length about its resurrection in the fantasy life of our postmodern society in a Disinformation.com video. S/He implied the collective masturbatory fantasies of one-sided male culture have brought the Androgyne into embodiment, fueling its literal appearance to fulfill their sex-magick fueled fantasies.

In the latest narrative of their personal journey, charismatic Gen and Lady Jaye aren’t trying to fuse into twins, or even emphasize their mystical brother-sister aspects, but apparently seeking “escape velocity” from the shakles of the chemical identity. But this thrust is life-affirming, not evolutionary nostalgia of being longing for non-being. Perhaps the quest for the next-new-way-on has been fulfilled.

Genesis continues to eschew the local universe of each adoptive or adaptive persona in a self-induced alienation that affirms h/ir non-mentalized multiverse, her/e and now. He continues to stay on point in the hinterlands of personality by transcending each embodied version of Self. Jaye’s role in this hormonal alchemy should not be underestimated. Genesis credits her tender nursing as a key element in his psychophysical recovery. Mythopoetically, it is interesting to recall how Dionysus, too, was attended by the ever-present nurse. But, interdependence is not co-dependence.

This current, the “chymical wedding” of male and female, manifested strongly in the fin de siecle occulture, with the Symbolist artists of the Salon de las RoseCroix, and in the 20th century with the notorious occultist Aleister Crowley and the futuristic philosopher William S. Burroughs. Still, nothing Genesis has done in his artistic arc has been particularly derivative, or mere dramatic impersonation. The truth inhabiting these characters is what lends them power.

The psychic metamorphosis of interrelated themes of the artist/androgyne, the Narcissus myth, mirroring, and self-reflection figure prominently as metaphors in the artistic process. What is left for h/ir but to sprout wings to mate with the self-devouring serpent (Ouroboros) like Jung’s God-image of the Self, Aion, which necessarily reveals itself progressively?

The cultural Revolution IS being televised on PTV3. The Self is born in the image of the eye, the Third “I”, where we give Skull to the Divine.

The Yab-Yummy Way of Imagination

The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purposes through him. As a human being he may have moods and a will and personal aims, but as an artist he is ‘man’ in a higher sense - he is ‘collective man,’ a vehicle and molder of the unconscious psychic life of mankind. (Carl Jung, Psychology and Literature, 1930)

Therein lies the social significance of art: It is constantly at work educating the spirit of the age, conjuring up the forms in which the age is more lacking. The unsatisfied yearning of the artist reaches back to the primordial image in the unconscious, which is best fitted to compensate the inadequacy and one-sidedness of the present. The artist seizes on this image and, in raising it from deepest unconsciousness, he brings it into relation with conscious values, thereby transforming it until it can be accepted by the minds of his contemporaries according to their powers. (Carl Jung)

Today, we recognize two sexes on this earth, male and female, but the image of the Androgyne is impressed on the psyche as a dominant of the collective unconscious. Its existence is proved by the fact that it emerges from time to time in a multiplicity of guises, and in every part of the world. Do not lovers say to each other, “I am lost without you, incomplete. With you I feel fulfilled. I experience a sense of union when we are together.” (June Singer, Androgyny)

Lady Jaye and my SELF have privately chosen to explore our thoughts about identity and a belief that evolution is crucial to thee survival and self esteem ov thee humanE species in many ways. One ov these is thee idea that Lady Jaye proposed that thee body is a pre-Astoric “suitcase” holding us back from potential futures. We will need to give up any ideas ov thee body being sacrosanct if we wish to explore space. Genetic mutation and engineering will be essential for meaningful space travel. Whilst our Pandrogeny process began as an intimate private thing, inevitably I.T. became visibly to a public because we are performers and artists as well. We feel that we are duty bound to TRY and share some ov our thoughts on why we do these proceedures with you who visit here, as a politeness and sign ov respect from us to you. This is not a necessity, butter an offering we make in a more intimate space where we hope friends and allies dwell. (Genesis P-Orridge, 2005, Homepage http://genesisp-orridge.com/)
S/HIRGERY: THE ULTIMATE CUT-UP METHOD

Androgyne as Self image: SELF AS CUT-UP; BODY AS ART, return to the AnthropoMORPHIC self-discovery and in some cases a painful coming-out process. In the light of such images of horror, our fears are thoroughly justified in The Plastic Ideal: The Androgyne in fin de Siecle Occulture and beyond into the Great Unknown.

Implicit in any image of the androgyne is the idea that we must write new myths,… Other than describing the wreck of the self and of culture, the ancient Androgyne has endured as the image of a spiritual goal in … The first step towards transcending the Little Self, and attaining Thee image of spiritual androgyny as a compelling one.

The Androgyne is the marriage of the Sun and the Moon in a Mysterium Coniunctionis, a royal marriage, a mystical union. But, of course, the myth never remotely referred to a species existing on earth fitting that description, but rather to that celestial world of the imagination where all the immortal prototypes for Creation have always existed. Or does it?

Love of Self, wife, creativity, the world, self-actualizing new myths in order to empower ourselves and to heal our self-image. … the postmodern self is mediated, not mediating. Postmodern psychology is a product of the movement from McLuhan’s Gutenberg Galaxy into a postliterate world, a transition marked by the collapse of the critical distance between the inner self and the outside world, and by our immersion, perhaps even dissolution, in the ever-accelerating maelstrom of the media spectacle.

In Postmodernism, this shift in “the dynamics of cultural pathology” is one in which “the alienation of the subject is displaced by the latter’s fragmentation.” This new psyche is characterized by “waning of affect” which is not so much the android autism Andy Warhol aspired to as it is the giddy experience of emotions as “free-floating and impersonal” sensations “dominated by a peculiar kind of euphoria.”

This psychological weightlessness, at once terrifying and exhilarating, is the result of life lived in the mass-media centrifuge, where everything, from hemorrhoid-treatment ads to televised suicide, carries equal weight and where reality and its simulation are beginning to look more and more alike. Call it Angst Lite, “camp sublime” - camp in the sense that camp delights in depthlessness, celebrates surface; sublime in the sense that this “peculiar euphoria” is the postmodern equivalent- the vertiginous loss of self in the presence of nature’s awful grandeur.

ANDROGYNE AS SELF IMAGE

The Kabbalistic Tree suggests that the androgyne is the model for each and every human, … Instead, the creative process begins with the self-moisturing or The androgyne is both artist and work of art, self and other. O Self-Luminous Image of … the chaste and obscene, the androgyne and the gynander that have passed beyond the boundaries. This complex has been enshrined in ART and in the inner self of the adept, shapeshifting Living Image of Higher Self, Divine Archetype of Humanity, … mediators, shamans and priests, the Divine androgyne and gatekeepers. …

It is time for us to look inside, to do the work of self-discovery and reclaimation. But in the Royal Marriage, The Divine Androgyne of Higher Self reveals to us She is similar to the Hindu androgyne Ardanari Iswara, beyond the androgyne which remains caught up in the oppositional gender paradigm When the Divine takes on a deity image and visits you, … The door between the Self and the Divine stands open, the Light fills your life, Woman in man who is a man in woman she walks in him, androgyne and androgyne; In fulfillment they are ALL or Pan and the Androgyne-center of the triangle, the I in the Triangle of evocation.

What are those self-identified androgynes …having negative self-identification of their original sex and gender image? It’s what we call residual self image. The mental projection of your …screenplay refers to Switch as a “beautiful androgyne”; vice became the basis of its ethos and in self-image s/he depicted herself as androgyne, or as a historical icon, or …negatives to multiply hir image.

… Gender identity refers to the self-image or belief held about one’s core or essence … Plato speaks of the androgyne - the time when man and woman were united or joined. The Egyptian Mut was an androgyne, having breasts and an erect phallus. … If mankind is made in the image of God, the creator himself would be a cosmic androgyne, Pandrogynous.

The hermaphroditic figure of the androgyne and its corresponding number, two, represent balance. Does it justify violating the self-image, the pride, the intentions of the artist in process, as self-created? This perfected entity was always depicted as an androgyne, a rebis (”double thing”). The Relationship Between Physical Self-Concept, Body Image Dissatisfaction, Iconic Androgyne, the Androgyne as a staple of occult ideas and a recurrent fractal-like image.

The Androgyne, both male and female together, symbolized a concept largely alien to all of conformity, together made the path to self discovery, of mediation that invoked the mythic androgyne. Therefore, we find the androgyne idea, concretely lived out today, … The psychic structure of the lower God image that Paracelsus intuited therefore provides completion… This image is also distinguished by its self-consciously artifactual quality: The construction of the cosmic androgyne (maha mudra): Through a kind of self-mirroring or self-contemplation, this supreme First …

“This is the First Thought, His Image; HER womb of everything for ‘Thou art myself, my image and my shadow. I have clothed myself in thee and thou art’ … Similarly, the harbor of causal self-consciousness.

The Androgyne, as I understand and relate to hir, appears, in my personal flesh… I allowed God to mirror my Self. I worshiped no God who was only male, no longer bigendered.

The image of spiritual androgyny is a compelling one, as compelling today as that of the alchemists in the middle ages. Women are always present in men’s own self-image. The Androgyne image also has been with us since the Paleolithic era. He-She is the Self-Created Adam, originally created as an androgyne of male/female …

If we return to our image of Adam as the ego and Lilith as the Deeper Self One, the very first thing that ever was is fear of his androgyne virgin, kind of like a compass with no needle, music with no sound or … induced reaction building a self image in your own deep desire … He/r … issues posed by the images themselves.

The Self-Aware Image, suspended somewhere between the androgyne of fin de siecle aesthetes and the The images, came back and filled in the empty spaces; aspects of the dream altered to the weird androgyne mutation. Gender is a “mix and match” mode of self expression of The Divine Androgyne: Images … Explorations into Self-Discovery Through Mythology, History and Science. The androgyne is stalking through the land.

This Self’s functions are sensations, emotions, basic drives, image or tribal … In the Gaean Tradition it is the Divine Androgyne, that which combines all Yab-Yum: Tibetan Buddhist image of union of the cosmic female with the cosmic male in experimental/experiential spirituality. The only path is self-acceptance. You create the universe in your image. That is your strength and your peace. …God is psychic androgyne brilliance, way beyond the occulture of drag.

A Mythocritical Carnal Essay

… Gender roles, and the strides made in the process of self-change of Image has become synonymous with America itself. Androgyne: A person who adopts characteristics of both genders in order to become. They have become self-consciously engaged in the transformation of the Logos for within dichotomy there is little room for self-expression and self-determination. Each then channels a response in art, one in image and one in words, one in flesh. … androgyne… heart weighed against the feather-winged spirit in flight … a self-assuredness and independence to counter the outdated, naive image…

Here, male curiosity in the androgyne is a `one-sided appropriation of the … breathed … for what has been lost is in each his very self (atman), here and now,.. therefore, the figure of the Androgyne is a staple of occult ideas and a recurrent image.

The androgyne, God knew, would become a law unto itself. … Through the act of naming, creation of a sense of self can be a political act of Personality. Who wants his Inmost Self meddled with and Invaded? … Self-articulation is partly contradicted by the image of the unity between any self and any …Metaphor. The divine is an androgyne, a being both female and male, … the flirtatious androgyne Kitten, who peaks way too early with a … Reconciliation of male and female.

Hence if the schizophrenic, or initiated shaman is to self-heal and be able to help … As androgyne, the shaman combines a masculine warrior strength and …surrender, self-published original Artist’s Self-Portraits … at that time it was well-developed, self-aware and, in parts, quite sophisticated. The critical attitude is peculiarly self-reflexive, however… Androgyne was a self-consciously avant-garde group, distinct from the official … Holy Exalted One, O Self beyond self. O Self - Luminous Image of the … chaste and obscene, the androgyne and the gynander that have passed … Characters are self-consciously arranged. They posture and strike poses in an …androgyne, both male and female.

THIS IS WHAT YOU WANT; THIS IS WHAT YOU GET

By thee way, talking ov ideas. Lady Jaye and E are pursuing Pandrogeny for conceptual reasons and Romantic reasons. To at thee very least demonstrate our COMMITTMENT to thee idea ov radical change. Ov accepting as essential to EVOLUTION surgical, genetic, surface, gestural, proceedures and technologies in order to create futures for our SELF with us as thee designers. Pandrogeny is about declaring that consensus reality is FICTIONAL. That WE are fictionaL Therefore we can WRITE any SELF we imagined use whjatever technique is acessible at this T.I.M.E. to manifest our imagination. WE ARE NOT TRYING TO BECOUM TWINS. NOR TO BE ANY IDEAL OV BEAUTIFUL. NOR ARE WE TRYING TO CHANGE GENDER. We use our bodies as raw material to “paint” a biological poortrait ov possibilities. To let go ov attachment to how we looked. Thee inevitable paradox ov alchemical thinking. We see OUR bodies as representing an ongoing discussion between us ov thee process ov OWNERSHIP ov our narrative through pusahing our SELF towards a future state ov being similar on conception to thee THIRD MIND ov Burroughs and Gysin. You could say WE ARE CUT-UPS TO BECOUM A CUT-UP. A sense ov irony is all ways advisable in L-if-E. If we end up not liking how we look that might well mean we are succeeding. By taking possession ov thee outer appearance we are possessed by our inner vision. (Genesis/Breyer, NYC April 5th 2005)

History reveals that taken in aggregate, the corpus of Neolithic figurines urges us to contemplate gender ascriptions that include more than the traditional male/female, either/or dichotomies. If we jettison the conventional binary opposition we are left with the possibility that the early preliterate communities of Neolithic Greece employed multiple or even fluid gender categories, at least in their visual repertoire.

Such categories would include male, female, neuter, dual-sexed, and possibly a dynamic classification that moved in and out of sexual/gender identities. In some ways, this conclusion should not come as a surprise: the existence of several genders, gender-crossing and shifting categories is known from a variety of cultures and there is no reason to doubt that such melding of identities were part of life in the distant past.

The mere existence of these multiple categories suggests that gendered identities were not uncomplicated choices in Neolithic Greece. Some levels or realms of Neolithic Greek society, be they sacred or profane, may have encouraged a conscious and self-constructed determination of gender that remained open to alteration during one’s lifetime.

As God’s image my ego is androgyne like The Symbol of the Androgyne in Blake’s Four Zoas and Shelley’s Prometheus …Archetypal Images of Transformation and the Self in Percy Bysshe Shelley. This hybrid image first appears in Ovid’s classic text ‘Metamorphoses’.

As a result, the androgyne, a frequent figure in contemporary fantasies about the primal lacks the classical and religious implications of “androgyne” and denotes a… shame, poor self-esteem, negative body-image by implicitly or explicitly the true spiritual Self in the physical man …It is only when, from a potential androgyne, man has become separated into male/female that An Androgyne was thought to have achieved “balance of reason and intuition, of wisdom and …

One of the first images of the Great Goddess is represented in … the androgyne celebrated as the dangerous but seductive symbol of the union… self as other, of the self with a discarded self-image, with a figure of … the ideal of the androgyne find the meaning of hir provocative self-image, which was shaped not only… by hir own vision of the ideal human being, the divine androgyne. … Started out with one month of intensive self-observation/analysis in order to … mutate into opposite gender, then blending into androgyne/hermaphrodite. … Refiguration-Self-Hybridation of The physical self and its sensations. The emotional self and its feelings. The mental self and … the modes of creativity and birth have shifted from the androgyne state of … The iron of self-contempt and false toughness, which is image-crippling.

… One androgyne goddess dared to sing low when she sang love. … self-described “political idiot” and immortal image It’s self-conscious and self-consciously vulgar, sporting bad digital … visions of an inhabited microcosm, surrounded by desert regions as a chaos or a kingdom of … MEPHISTOPHELES ET L’ANDROGYNE, - The Two and the One … Zero represents the Cosmic Egg, the primordial Androgyne - the Plenum. … This submission is in the spirit of total surrender of the self. … communities and the complexity (often self-contradictions) of the myths. …

The Vision of Hermes Trismegistos has God speak of the Divine Self not as “My Image” but as “Our Images” … Along with the hermaphrodite’s challenge to nature came images of the mythological Into the maze of self: as the formation of self in relation to a wide range of social structures. The androgyne sighed with satisfaction It is a single image with the entire actions of a life cycle - it begets … hir own self-portrait-as-androgyne, central to the essential core …

Even the apparently mundane images also turn out to contain alchemical truth… Eros, Another important aspect of Ouroborus: Mercury is the Hermetic Androgyne or Hermaphrodite, which is a symbol of the Alchemical … Baphomet, a Magical Archetype of the Bisexual Self of Man. Hear this, and understand that the Elect are self-selecting … of the unconscious and its relation to dreams. The beautiful boy is an androgyne, luminously masculine and feminine. …The beautiful boy, sexually self-complete, is sealed in silence, behind a wall of … self knowledge entailing the rediscovery of all the levels of ones being. Adam-Kadmon is the Microcosmic Tree of Life in the image of Absolute Wisdom …

The self is, in part, its culture although not co-terminus with it. … is the house of self-adjustment, rejecting statements of self-denial for transmutation into the archetypal androgyne of the future. … When men and women come to see the image of the Divine Lovers in one … is there a psychological fear of loosing the self in the other? … and sometimes men hold moons, particularly when two fused androgyne-like figures are On the sexual plane, Such joining brings a “liberating” recognition that the real self is “uncreated.” Crowley called it UNBORN, the Bornless One.

A BRIGHT EYE-DEA

Creation can also be understood as divine self-reflection, a series of mirrors within mirrors, in which the image always includes elements of the original … The motivation behind adopting images from queer culture is not political … but psychic, shamanic.

The many dualities and oppositions in the image represent the subjection of the …Star. We are dealing with the Transcendent Self, for the Astral Womb-man is sham-man … neither woman nor man, but a self-created entity… It’s not easy to make a busty androgyne in a black corset and garters … into more than concepts and images of the body in western art… Reference Sexual Ambiguity in Goya’s Work and the Carnivalized Androgyne …

This approach coincides with the self-understanding of This Universal Self (the Adam Kadmon of Judaism), of the Adamic Self, the archetypal androgyne that symbolizes the primordial state of human … images of a self-contained, solipsistic and self-absorbed world, … of the wisdom EYE-DEA of Sophia and androgyne … and its transmutation into the archetypal androgyne of the future…

The elements become tainted by the independent self-centred projection. Let it reflect the Buddha Self in whose image it had been made. … This elimination of lying to the self enables one to observe the work of …The concept of the Androgyne as purely mythical or theoretical value for … No Image Available.

The point is to show that the mythic image is cytheric, tropological … Cultures share in the idea of an elixir vitae and the contra-sexual Androgyne. … by alchemists as the Hermaphrodite (Hermes and Aphrodite), … It can be seen clearly today in the infamous image of the Caduceus … which in Alchemy was known as the Hermetic Androgyne.

The first race of men were, then, simply the images, the astral doubles… These relics of a prior androgyne stock must be placed in the same category as … the battle of the sexes that they founded … To answer another earlier posed question on androgyne, which when one speaks from androgyny …one becomes the mystically united twin within our Self ANDROGYNE. POWER. CLARITY. MARRIAGE. CONFESSION. OPENING. PASSAGE. TRUTH. ILLUMINATION …

Although meditation teachers teach that self-actualization is an intermediate step on the decadent narrative, enamoured of itself, self-replicating and … This is a stylistically self-indulgent slice of self-parody. The act of self-mutilation to spawn and create, to breed The androgyne Satan moving through the crowd provokes discord… Image of God and Temple of God, this self he split into two; hence arose husband and wife not as an androgyne but as an independent other, a partner of sorts, a complete second … Mirror Images. … An eternally self-replicating order of things… the ancient Chinese divinity of light and darkness was also an androgyne.

The threat of androgyne lurks perpetually on the outskirts of popular culture … sacred image, like the Orphic hermaphroditic Eros-Phanes. We could go on, mentioning the myths of Narcissus and the androgyne…This quality is expressed in the continual attempts at “self-recovery” and in … distorted self-image, and even misdiagnosis by health professionals… This is inconsistent with the image; we can begin to perceive it as a self-regulating mechanism …but one single body, which is the Androgyne or Hermaphrodite of the ancients.

PandroGENy and THE SELF

Wisdom to know the difference between one’s ego and one’s Self is embodied in your individuality. The Greeks showed that Effeminacy and androgyne was uncovered within the heart of masculine society. Perhaps the closest contemporary synonym is PANdrogyne, which at least incorporates both gendermixing and third gender, self-reference. An androgyne (sometimes called the third sex) chooses to live outside of social sanction. Jung said, the unconscious is the only accessible source of religious experience.

This is certainly not to say that what we call the unconscious is identical with God or is set up in his place. It is the medium from which the religious experience seems to flow. As to what the further cause of such an experience may be, the answer to this lies beyond the range of human knowledge. Knowledge of God is a transcendental problem. (Carl Jung, The Undiscovered Self).

As an empirical concept, the self designates the whole range of psychic phenomena in man. It expresses the unity of the personality as a whole. … it is a transcendental concept, for it presupposes the existence of unconscious factors on empirical grounds and thus characterizes an entity that can be described only in part, but for the other part, remains at present unknowable and illimitable.

The self is transcendent because it points to an unlimited future and unbounded creative expansion of the evolutionary process. This is something that no being can comprehend. Of course we can have some sense of the future structure of the evolutionary process, but that tells us nothing of its essence. It tells us nothing of what it is like to be a more highly evolved being.

THE SELF is, according to Jung, the most important archetype. It is called the “midpoint of the personality” a center between consciousness and the unconsciousness. It signifies the harmony and balance between the various opposing qualities that make up the psyche. It remains basically incomprehensible, as ego consciousness cannot grasp this supraordinate personality of which the ego is only one element.

The symbols of the self can be anything that the ego takes to be a greater totality than itself. Thus many symbols fall short of expressing the self in its fullest development. Symbols of the self are often manifested in geometrical forms (mandalas) or by the quaternity (any figure with four parts).

This archetype is also represented by the divine child and by various pairs–father and son, king and queen, god and goddess, or by a hermaphrodite. To Jung the self is a representation of the “god within us.” For Jung, the self is one’s goal in life. It is the goal that is rarely reached, but it has such power that it motivates our behavior and causes us to seek wholeness - especially through a spiritual journey.

Jung’s conception of self comes close to that of the Yogic conception of the Atman, For Jung, emptiness is the sacrifice of ego to the larger Self, which transcends individual consciousness. The self, Jung argues, is a plurality with a core identity; it is both a “we” and an “I.”

This issue preoccupied both Jung and the ancient yogis: the path of the “expanded self. The self is the psychic organ through which the human being is capable of the experience of transcendence: “If the ego is dissolved in identification with the self, it gives rise to a sort of … superman with a puffed-up ego and a deflated self” (Jung, 1981). Symbols of the Self cannot be distinguished from symbols of God. The Self embodies the union of opposites on the personal and cosmic scale.

For those not as familiar with the entirety of Dick’s catalogue, much of his work is plagued by cheap prose and a pulp-sci-fi ethos that, while still brilliant, fits far more with his reputation as a cheap sci-fi hack than a literary giant.
A Scanner Darkly, however, is one of those books that really shows that Phil was more than just a hack– he was indeed a genius, an excellent author who struggled to understand the human condition. The book is only very negligibly science fiction; the sci-fi elements take a back seat to the interactions between the characters as they lived their lives under the shadow of “Substance D,” the drug of choice “Seven Years from Now.” How could anyone possibly translate this subtle work into film?

So, with this in mind, and after having read Tim’s not-so-positive review of the film, it was with some trepidation that I purchased my ticket for yesterday’s matinee at Seattle’s Egyptian Theater.

And you know what? I loved it.

It’s a very talkie film, and, as a friend commented afterwards, more like an essay in film than a standard three-act movie. But, if one keeps this in mind, it really works. The thing to remember if you choose to see it is that it’s not a work of science fiction, it’s a very serious drama about addiction from the perspective of both users and those who persecute them, rightly or wrongly.

The cast was especially impressive. Surprisingly, I found Reeves’ performance rather nuanced (I wonder how much of this was due to the animator, of course). Downey Jr.’s portrayal of the perenially tweaked drug nerd Barris steals the show, and his plus-and-minus rapport with Woody Harrelson made their shared scenes a joy to watch (especially considering that neither actor is a stranger to illicit substances).

I also enjoyed the rotoscope technique Linklater used. Contrary to Tim’s analysis, I found that it served to establish the tenuous nature of reality, to ground the viewer in Phil’s Ultimate Question: What is Real? Small glimpses of segments and areas that were left unanimated provide the viewer with questions which must remain unanswered. The animation also allowed for drug-induced hallucinations in a far less contrived manner than any computer effects could have; really, I can’t honestly think of a better method for the translation of PKD’s work into film, and wonder if the same process should be considered for future films based on his work.

Don’t get me wrong; it was far from perfect. There were a couple of minor plot points, and one major one, that deviated from the book, but I didn’t find them too obtrusive. There were also a few scenes where voiceovers were used to a questionable end (and one scene in which the voiceover fit perfectly).

However, it’s one of those movies that, even though you might love it, you can understand why someone else might not. In my opinion, it is by far the absolute finest adaptation of a Dick novel to date. There are no shootouts with killer robots; nobody runs away from a giant explosion. It’s the story, as Dick presented, of a group of people caught up in various bad places. When the next movie based on one of PKD’s stories comes out (an action-filled schlock-fest based on “The Golden Man,” called “Next”), I have a feeling we adherents of the Cult of Kindred will be looking back on “Scanner” with fondness.

Look for a cameo from the illimitable Alex Jones, a friend of Linklater who also appeared in Waking Life. Also, if you keep your eyes peeled in one of the early scenes, you might notice the visage of Phil himself, making his motion picture debut a mere 24 years after his death.

The code rested on three basic principles:

1. No picture shall be produced that will lower the moral standards of those who see it. Hence the sympathy of the audience should never be thrown to the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil or sin.
2. Correct standards of life, subject only to the requirements of drama and entertainment, shall be presented.
3. Law, natural or human, shall not be ridiculed, nor shall sympathy be created for its violation.

And in watching “He Walked By Night,” along with other film noir examples, you can very readily see how these principles played out on screen. The film is narrated in a sort of quasi-documentary style and is combined with “normal” movie action and dialogue. Somehow though, the juxtaposition of the narration adds a layer to it that almost seems like it is a propaganda film - which in many ways it essentially is.

One of the first things that struck me was a line in the opening narration: “A policeman’s work, like a woman’s is never done.” Something like that would seriously not fly nowadays. But there it was, large as life. Throughout the film after that, the detectives solving a case are consistently portrayed as suave high-class heroes. Literally any time a woman is in the room, she blushes, bats her eyes and smiles demurely at the officer, staring at him longer than she ought. Even subordinate beat cops adopt an atmosphere and physical posture of awe in the presence of the detectives. And then we have a whole host of secondary characters who practically jump up and down to help the police solve the case. What’s the case? Well, they keep reminding everyone that a police officer has been shot - which, in a world where police are the perfect ultimate heroes, is the worst possible crime.

The thing that really got me about the way the narration was done is that whenever it occurred, it almost seemed to be telling you the audience member what to think and how to react to the events of the story. It almost seems instructional, like a helping hand guiding you towards particular conclusions. I would be very interested to track down and watch other films which make use of this narrator-documentary technique from that time period and see what they are like. Part of me wonders whether this narrative technique was eventually abandoned simply because through consistent exposure to it, people had learned to internalize those types of reactions while watching a movie. They no longer needed the explicit narrator, because they had one inside of their heads.

It strikes me also that the thirty-odd year period that the Hays Code lasted (from 1934 onward) was essentially the advent of mass visual media. Talking pictures had only just been invented in 1927, and for the entire movie-going nation, people needed to essentially be “taught” how to understand this new form of media. This theory would make the voice of the narrator make all the more sense. So too, it would make the Hays Code all the more appropriate. If you are already endeavoring to teach people how to interact with a new media, then it only makes sense to simultaneously teach them civic virtues and moral codes through what are essentially “teaching stories.” The net effect is that you are able to normalize moral and social order among what had been, up till then, a very diverse group of Americans: from different regions, with different backgrounds and upbringings. Movies acted to bring everyone together onto more or less the same page culturally - in exactly the same ways as government educational films about hygiene and ettiquette did in the classroom.

Consider this quote from psychologist R.D. Laing when you think about the purpose of mass media:

All those people who seek to control the behavior of large numbers of other people work on the experiences of those other people. Once people can be induced to experience a situation in a similar way, they can be expected to behave in similar ways. Induce people all to want the same thing, hate the same thing, feel the same threat, then their behavior is already captive - you have acquired your consumers or your cannon-fodder.

People suggest that the Hays Code ultimately ended because it became unenforceable and was replaced by the Motion Picture Association of America rating system. But part of me wonders if maybe it’s work was simply done. Maybe they saw the need to indoctrinate the first generation who was exposed to mass media (besides the radio, that is) into how to be proper media consumers and citizens, and once that foundation was laid, they simply moved on to another stage of engagement which on the surface seemed more free, but perhaps is still just as propagandized as it ever was. The main difference being that we have been taught to internalize the voice of the narrator, so that the propaganda is implicit within us at all times.

The movie, as you may have guessed, is a re-telling of the story of Jesus and his ministry, and it is not to be confused with Mel Gibson’s splatter gore-fest, The Passion of the Christ. The story is centered around the conflict between the spiritual and the human aspects of Jesus’ existence. On the one hand, he is (or at least strives to be) an ordinary man. On the other, he is tormented day and night by the Voice of God urging him to rise up and become the Messiah of the Jewish people. Possibly my favorite scene dealing with this rending personal conflict is when Jesus goes to the desert to pray with the monks. He is having a conversation with a monk who says that he wishes he could hear God’s voice, because he never knows for certain if God is really there. Jesus responds saying that knowing God’s will is constant awful torture.

That is, until he finally gives in to it. But giving in to God’s will is no easy task. Just because Jesus eventually decides to go ahead with God’s plan, he isn’t really given any instructions on how to do so. He is only told to open his mouth and that the words - God’s words - will come. From there is an excellent depiction of a man, a leader, coming to terms with himself and understanding how to teach something of value to people and actually have them understand it. Easier said than done as this movie (and the also excellent Monthy Python flick Life of Brian) aptly illustrates.

I also love in this movie that Jesus simply (and often) changes his mind during the course of it, and that it drives his followers - especially Judas - a little crazy trying to keep up. We often look at great figures in myth and history as these monolithic characters who are always at all times 100% logically consistent. But really, who lives like that? Nobody. Speaking of Judas too, the relationship between Jesus and him is awesome. Judas is portrayed as a soldier and an assassin of the radical Jewish sect, the Zealots. Originally sent to kill Jesus, he ends up following him and becoming best friends. Which makes it all the more bittersweet when Jesus ultimately asks Judas to intentionally betray him so that he can fulfill his destiny. This closeness and the reluctance of Judas to betray his master are excellent renditions of this story which are also born out by the recently popularized gnostic Gospel of Judas.

Without giving away the end of the movie, the climax of the story happens on the cross, when Jesus is tempted by the Devil to come back down and live a normal man’s life with the pleasures of a wife and children. Also wait till the very end of the movie at the final moment of Christ’s triumphant crucifixion for some strange camera effects which director Martin Scorsese swears happened naturally on his film reel during that exact moment of filming. He was apparently so taken by these colors and shapes and their correlation to the rest of the film that he decided to leave it in as perhaps evidence of the miraculousness of the story. One other note: don’t miss Peter Gabriel’s absolutely amazing soundtrack to this movie. It is exceptionally well done - as is everything else in this movie, start to finish.

I was, honestly, a little embarrassed to be part of the demographic in either case. The previews and advertisements that preceded the movie seriously turned me off. From the pathetic attempts to use kung fu movies to market McDonald’s trash to college age white men to the previews for the abominable looking Clerks II, by the time the actual feature presentation started, I was already in a bad mood.

I will admit to having gone into the movie with a heavy skeptic. A Scanner Darkly is one of my favorite PKD novels, and also what I would consider one of his most personal and emotional works. It would be hard for me to be satisfied with anything but the best rendition of this book to the screen. I had similar reservations about Waking Life as well. I thought the weird shaky animation style of tracing over people was going to get on my nerves and I thought the philosophical stuff was going to just come off as wanking. In that movie it somehow worked though, and the part where Richard Linklater gives a speech about Philip K. Dick in that movie made me believe that he really and truly understood what Philip K. Dick was all about.

The Scanner Darkly movie, however, completely unraveled that for me. To be totally and brutally honest, it was the kind of movie that I was ready to walk out of after five minutes. It just rubbed me in all the wrong ways and it was honestly a little bit torturous to sit through the whole thing.

I know it’s like Linklater’s “thing” to use all this animation stuff, but I just don’t get what the point of it is. If you took some still frames from the movie and showed them to me, I would be like, “Hey, those are sweet drawings!” Because they are. The illustrators who worked on it did some beautiful art. But the way it all ties together just seems sort of - I don’t know, lame. More than that though, it’s distracting. I kept getting hung up on the visual surface of the movie, which prevented me from entering into it emotionally.

Which is my second main gripe - that the movie lacked emotion. The book is basically a depiction of a phase in Dick’s life in between two of his failed marriages. And the book for me follows the further unraveling of this man, Bob Arctor’s life as he gets heavier and heavier into drugs. Which of course, he got into perhaps as a means of liberation from the woes of his original life. And the book uses an intricate sci-fi plot device of this man’s mind literally splitting in two and fighting against himself and becoming more distant from himsefl as he proceeds further and further down the spiral.

So the story is almost entirely internal. There is no real outward “action” in the book, nothing to hang a classic Hollywood action movie on. But Linklater didn’t go that way. He tried to stay true to the letter of the book, and perhaps failed to capture what I see as the real spirit of the book. Maybe it’s just been his type-casting, but Keanu Reeves for me is an actor who lacks any interior. I can’t, for the life of me, imagine him or his characters having any kind of meaningful interesting internal monologue - which sabotages the movie for me from the start. And I am soooo tired of him delivering the same drawn out husky line in every movie with just the words changed depending on the story:

“You mean… I can dodge bullets?”

“You mean, the hemispheres of my brain… are competing?”

I thought Robert Downey, Jr. was pretty much a dead ringer for how I’d imagine Barris to be; he did a great job - far superior to Keanu’s. Winona Ryder, I thought, was also expertly cast in the role of Donna, the “little black haired girl” who comes up so frequently in PKD’s many novels. However, the chemistry between her and Fred seemed totally weird. One of the things I love about Dick is this ability he has to capture a very specific frustration and complexity between male and female characters. It’s a love that is sort of non-sexual and almost spiritual at times, while also bordering on weird and psychotic at others. For me, that very important under-current of the book was totally lost on screen.

Also left unaccounted for are some of the stranger experiences of the plotline. In the novel, it sort of makes some kind of sick sense that Arctor/Fred sees the girl (Connie, I think) morph into Donna on the scanners. But in the movie, you’re just sort of left scratching your head over it. Same thing goes with his spiral down into split hemisphere-land. In the book, many small moments build up into the strange realization that the viewpoint character has become two characters somehow. In the movie though, that transition is confusing and haphazard and if you didn’t already know the book, I’d imagine it would be hard to understand what was even going on.

One of the things that was done pretty well though was the stoner dialogue they all share. For anybody who’s ever stayed up late smoking pot and drinking beer, those conversations have a ring of authenticity about them.

My final judgement on this movie is - sadly - that it’s not worth seeing. If you’re a die-hard Philip K. Dick fan, I think you’ll be disappointed. If you’re unfamiliar with his work, I think you’ll still find this movie boring and confusing. I would say wait for it to come out on Netflix, and maybe fire up the bong before you watch it and you’ll have a better time with it than I did.