Category: Other Page 97 of 182

During the Second and Third Quatrian Diasporas, surviving legends tell of fleeing Quatrians who were able to escape into the Hypogeum, and from there passed through complex networks of natural tunnels, emerging into caves spread across the globe.

So-called “prehistoric” cave art reflects the traces they left on the cultures which they were eventually absorbed into, and in some cases came to rule over.

One such remnant artefact can be found in the Cave of the Three Brothers (Δ) where a half-man, half-animal figure might be seen on the walls, who has been perhaps appropriately named ‘The Sorceror’ by modern historians.

For this figure is one which would have been a common sight to denizens of Abdazon or surrounding regions during the time it was the Anti-Node of Quatria and the capital of the House of Wealth. From humble beginnings, the village was famous already for its hospitality and accomodations, but as construction of the Grand Passage was completely Abdazon solidified its reputation as a hub for all manner of embodied and partially embodied Hypogean visitors. No matter where an entity might fall on the scale between human, therianthropic, theriomorphic, or “other,” Abdazonians did their very best to transform xenophile inclinations into a sublime art form by welcoming passersby both magical and mundane in accommodations cleverly suited to their needs.

As a result, many types of animals, beasts, gods, heroes, and magicians would pass through the Abdazon Gate, and visit Quatria for a time. Those who found acommodations, climate, and general living conditions agreeable often would stay and settle in the surrounding countryside. And this is the reason for the many interesting contributions made to the fossil records of animals such as the Dawn Horses, nuralagus, and the famous Hypotherium americanum and many others — thanks in no small part to pre-diaspora Quatrian fondness for animals, and a natural understanding of how to live together.

Later Quatrian diasporan High Holy Days, such as the celebration of the House of Sorrows, and the Welcoming of the Earth Destroyer at the Quatrian New Year can be aptly said to hold living half remembered remnants of these ancient beliefs and cultural practices when magicians still walked the Earth in human and more-than-human form.

Though the term calls to mind cryptocurrencies, a crypto-civilization is actually a highly advanced society whose existence has been hidden or suppressed by the dominant culture or ruling power. Oftentimes, a conqueror will throw down the sacred images, statues, and symbols of the people(s) it has vanquished, as in the practice known as iconoclasm. The political and priestly classes of the conquered peoples may be imprisoned, exiled, eradicated, or given token positions of authority in the new regime, thus breaking the power centers of the subjugated peoples, and interrupting the transmission of accurate history across generations.

In such scenarios, it is common for historical revisionism to likewise occur. Events which were once taught and understood to be history are ridiculed, and relegated to the domain of myth and legend, before being forgotten about altogether. Supporting historical artifacts and evidence that are not destroyed outright may be re-contextualized by the dominant power to tell an entirely different tale than their true origins and use.

This process of occultation has been applied again and again throughout history since antiquity, and even back into prehistory in the case of the mysterious Quatrian civilization. In actual fact, the ancient Quatrian crypto-civilization massively predates all other canonically-accepted human and proto-human cultures by millions of years according to some sources.

Interestingly, the ancient Quatrian crypto-civilization did indeed have certain commonalities with contemporary cryptocurrencies. For one, the civilization was composed of a web of autonomous colonies that were politically decentralized, and globally distributed (thanks to their mastery of reed boats). Their government was a type of resilient poesiarchy composed of bards and minstrels of various types who traveled from place to place, transmitting their oral histories, tales and legends, along with techno-cultural knowledge. Applying this back to the metaphors of modern cryptocurrencies: if we think of a dominant culture’s history as a consensus system running on a blockchain, then the crypto-civilization’s history and timeline could be thought of as either a suppressed sidechain or else an unauthorized fork from consensus reality.

The central premise of Quatrian myth seems to be that the nature of existence is music. That is, there are fundamental tonal components within the hyper-patterns of cosmic reality which shimmer and shift and ever recompose themselves into never-ending rhythms, melodies, harmonies, and discordant crescendos.

It seems to be the same secret of the psychonaut, temporarily attuned to nearby frequencies appearing as perceptible shapes in the darkness, spinning and weaving themselves together out of preality into almost-tangible moments, under the direction of some kind of will, whose locus is both mine and other, inward and outward. Pareidolia and paranormal. Event ladders unfolding in song across the eons, like the endless opening of bird’s wings taking to flight.

So it seems too to be the same secret scintillating behind what some call synchronicities: for there is no coincidence in music when the players are tuned and aligned, rhythms hitting on the same beats subconsciously. The same underlying notes and extremely deep powers heard together on another far more fundamental frequency. The Great River. Inward listening. The lost direction. The hypogeum and its inhabitants. Who hears, rejoice, the kingdom is yours.

I had a dream a couple years back after getting pretty deep into some Twitter stuff, that the platform was inhabited by evil spirits. I turned the dream into a short story, here. The short story in its written form doesn’t mention that somehow these cruel, violent entities were part of the dark forces which haunt that platform.

While we could take it as metaphorically true, a symbol sprung up from the subconscious to explain the nature of some of the darker experiences one might have on the platform. But I’ve just as often wondered whether it might also literally be true… If insubstantial evil spirits that feed on human cruelty and suffering live anywhere, Twitter might be a compelling host environment for them. I’m not really an expert on evil spirits or anything. It’s just something that’s stuck with me as an image ever since having that dream.

I’ve tried recently to wipe my Twitter history. It never works fully, even with multiple deletion services. The profile breaks, and somehow pieces from the past drudge back up, and pollute the purity of the present moment again. Forcing you to relive past moments of anger, foolishness, or needless victimization. I’m as guilty of anyone of saying dumb things on social media over the last 20 years. I’ve tried to at least clean up after myself, and am relentless at this point about deleting old, unused accounts. Sever ties with the things that don’t serve you anymore, and all that. I’ve never read or watched Marie Kondo, but I think her stuff is about that.

Blogging, anyway, feels to me still after all this time, like one of the purest forms of internet communication. If the evil spirits of Twitter are nothing more than our own tangled, undeletables, then blogging still feels to me different. Somehow better. This is my platform. You can read it if you want. If you don’t, I don’t care. I’m still gonna write it. I’m not gonna chase followers, or follow traffic. Evil spirits can leave their baggage at the door. I’m home here.

Was excited last night to find Cory Doctorow’s blog entitled Pluralistic. And even moreso this article with some intelligent points about conspiracy theory culture. I find it fairly rare to see anybody saying anything terribly new or worthwhile on these topics, so here are some good bits:

“I was taken by Ming 1’s discussion of the role that “enchantment” plays in conspiratorialism – the feeling of being in a magical and wondrous (if also anxious and terrible) place. He says this is why “debunkers” fail – they’re like people who spoil a magic trick.

Ming 1 and the hosts talk about replacing the enchantment of conspiratorialism with a counter-enchantment, grounded not in the conspiratorialist’s oversimplification and essentialism, but in the wonder of reality.

Ming 1 analogizes his “counter-enchantment” to the “double-wow” method of Penn and Teller: first they blow you away with a trick, and then they blow you away with the cleverness by which it was accomplished.”

I’m not so sure that once people go down the rabbit hole of conspiracy that they necessarily will be “wowed” by the “wonder of reality,” but I do tend to agree with this idea of counter-enchantment. And that debunking fails in large part because it doesn’t speak the underlying mythological language which draws people into conspiracy thinking in the first place. There are real needs – and as he says, material conditions – which drive people into conspiracy stuff in the first place. And recognizing that the “magic” in all of it is part of the draw is an important first step in unraveling the whole ball of yarn in the first place.

Being a writer means having to be honest with yourself about certain things at certain points. At least enough to get them down on paper during the act of writing. Those certain things and points may vary from writer to writer, of course. But there is always that root connection to some kind of ground truth, or honesty… or at least openness to realization (however temporary) that fuels the whole enterprise of being a writer.

One of those ground truths I’ve managed to ascertain in my time at the grindstone of two-bit writerdom is that not everybody likes my stuff. Shocker, I know.

I would go so far as to say most people won’t, for example, like my book, if they ever manage to somehow even see it in the first place. It is weird and obtuse and niche and very much an experiment and a personal project. Plus it’s written in a weird style about mythological things and other bullshit that only a few small group of weirdos seem to care about. It means a lot to me, personally, but other peoples’ mileage may vary. A lot.

Just as there are many different paths to Quatria, there are vastly more paths leading away from it. Which is just as well, probably. For the Lost Books of Quatria that can be written are not the true Lost Books of Quatria. Those are lost forever.

That all said (whatever that is), I tend to believe that creators who tap into the deeply personal, if they stick with it long enough and sincerely enough, they will break through to the universal. I’m in a bad position to objectively judge whether I’ve accomplished such a feat as that in the eyes of others. That’s up to them. I’ve done it for myself though, and maybe a handful of others (if I’m lucky, and they weren’t just being nice). The book for me has opened up a new way of being in this world AND in the otherworld at the same time. It’s transformed my definition of reality, and transcended my own experiences. I can’t tell in a way what it is or even what the overall shape is or will be or should be. I can only follow the way, and document my own passage to get back to that place, that lost land of legend. Quatria.