This is from a reflection in the middle of
Nature's God, 
a
historical novel by Robert Anton Wilson:
"Historians agree that, when not combing the lice out of
his beard or getting drunk, your average Viking preferred to spend his
time cracking skulls with axes.
Incidentally, we know the Vikings spent a lot of time combing lice
out of their beards because archaeologists have made careful scientific
catalogs of the Danish and Norse artifacts found around Dublin Bay, and
lice combs outnumber swords and all other implements of war about a
hundred to one. As Sherlock Holmes would tell you, “Observing
thousands of lice combs, one deduces the existence of many, many
lice.” When the Irish said, “Here come those lousy Vikings again,”
they were probably being literal.
I know the movie people left the lice out of that epic adventure, The Vikings, starring Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis, but Hollywood has a tendency to glamorize things. "
Nature's God
Volume Three of the Historical Illuminatus Chronicles
The Wilderness Diary of Sigismundo Celine
Ohio 1776-78
A universe without a monacrh or a parliament
Intellectual passions are more
bewitching than love affairs, which is why they last longer. A man can
adore a woman until she changes or grows surly, but he can be madly
infatuated with a Theory all his life.
When the Pope sits on the chamber pot
to shit, does he believe in his own infallibility? Does not every
imposter occasionally recognize his own hairy, homely humanity? Perhaps
not; worn long enough, sometimes the Mask of Authority becomes the man.
Even looking in a mirror, he will see the sacred Mask and not his own
ordinary human face.
N. B. It is not only the mighty who
wear Masks. To be born in Napoli is to form a Neapolitan Mask before age
six, I estimate. Similarly, those who grew up in Paris and London never
cease to wear the Masks of the Parisian and the Londoner.
The study of psychology should be a history of the metamorphoses of men and women into their habitual Masks.
The Catholic wears a Catholic Mask at
all times; just look at the Neapolitan whores with crucifixes around
their necks. The Protestant also cannot remove the Protestant Mask. Etc.
Most comic of all; the Rationalist tries to wear the Mask of Reason
even when everybody else can see he is in the grip of a furious passion.
There is no complete theory of anything.
The damnable habit of giving children examinations in which every
question has a "true" or "false" answer has conditioned us to think
everything in the universe is "true" or "false." In experience, most
things emerge out of Chaos, confuse and muddle us for a while, and
vanish into uncertainty again before we know what they were or if
they're coming back. The world is a phalanx of maybes in which a handful
of trues and falses can occasionally be found.
We create our Masks, as God allegedly made the world, out of nothing. In both cases, the nothingness sometimes shows through.
It is quite easy to make friends with
the wolves, contrary to popular lore. Respect their territory, and they
will respect yours. It is impossible to negotiate similarly with the
fleas: that appears to be a fight to the death.
Today, suddenly, I encountered a quite
large brownish bear in the woods. I was careful not to do anything
threatening (I had my rifle, but did not want to be forced to shoot so
noble a beast). Some ancient instinct told me not to run away. I
pretended to ignore the huge animal, as if I had more important affairs
on my mind. Then I saw out of the corner of my eye that the bear was
doing exactly the same pantomime: he was using identical body signals -
the same body "language," I might even say - to signify that I was not
of any concern to a bear of his royal stature. We moved off, in opposite
directions, all the time signaling that we were too busy to be bothered
with lesser creatures. I would call this a case of Mask as body
language.
Only later did I realize that I have
seen dogs use that body language when they do not wish to fight. The
implications of this simple experience are so staggering that I can
scarcely formulate my own thoughts clearly. What it seems to suggest is
that if dogs, bears, humans, and some other creatures have a common
preverbal "language," then we also have a common ancestor.
The thought of the unity of life will
not leave me. The wolves have a "king," just like the Neapolitans or
French, etc., and His Lupine Majesty wears the Mask of authority in all
that he does. I communicate well enough with the wolves that they come
around more and more often to beg food. I communicated very eloquently
with that bear, and he with me. All those statues I saw in North Africa
of men or gods with animal heads suggest that some people have had this
insight long before me - the human in the animal, the animal in the
human. Buffon toys with this thought in this Natural History,
and speaks of the possible evolution of life from a common source, but
then he dismisses the idea as improbable. Did his great analytic mind
really reject such a stupendous concept so myopically or did he just
remember two unscientific facts: (a) the Inquisitors would read his
words later and (b) he was not fireproof?
There
is no governor anywhere and we are all relatives. Whenever I smoke the
medicine herbs with Miskasquamic I can communicate with trees and that
is not "hallucination." Animal and vegetable are cousins! Take off the
Mask of humanity, as St. Francis did, and even rodents and roses talk to
you, and you to them, in a language older than words.
Am I on the edge of a great discovery
or am I going cracked from living alone too long? At times like this it
is best to forget philosophy for a while and turn my mind back to music.
Logic claims to know - it is the bastard son of priestcraft - but art, thank God, only aspires to share an experience.
Melody, harmony, counterpoint: I do
not regret the years I spent learning these disciplines, but they are
fundamentally irrelevant. If music ceases to be wonderful nonsense, it
will not console the tormented heart.
The function of law and theology are
the same: to keep the poor from taking back by violence what the rich
have stolen by cunning.
The longer one is alone, the easier it
is to hear the song of the earth. Yes, yes, yes: I am not going
cracked, I am merely leaving human Masks behind. The wilderness is where
truth is naked and hypocrisy has not been invented.
