The Magic Shop Take Two

 

The Magic Shop:  Take Two

Casting the ERB Glamour

by

R.E. Prindle

for George T. McWhorter

 

Do you believe in the magic of a young girl’s heart…

Do you believe in magic?

--John Sebastian

 

So there I was sitting in front of my word processor with a beer in hand waiting for inspiration.  Godot was right on time compared to inspiration.  I’ve sat that way for weeks at a stretch with nothing in sight.  Still, a writer is nothing without patience.

So, it wasn’t exactly inspiration that came my way but after staring out the window for only a second or two watching a squirrel trying to bury a nut while I took a couple pulls from my beer I turned back to my word processor and darned if there wasn’t something typed on that previously blank sheet of paper.  It wasn’t inspiration, just the single word LOUISVILLE exactly centered.

Well, I knew there were a bunch of Louies over in France.  For some reason they had a rule that they had to name their sovereigns Louis hence they all had numbers in Roman numerals like the Super Bowl although if I remember rightly for the kings they didn’t go that high.  I guess the Super Bowl has had more time to add up the numbers.  As a mnemonic trick they dropped the numbers sometimes giving them nicknames like Louis the Inept, Louis the Cheap, Louis the Crapshooter and so on.  So I thought there was maybe a Louis cemetery over in France around which they built a town called Louisville from the graves.  I was ready to leave right away.  Just to make sure I got out my atlas to look it up in the back where they list all the towns in the world.

Know what?  Louisville wasn’t even in France at all although it sounds just like it should be.  Know something else?  Louisville is right here in the United States.  Kentucky to be exact.  The way its situated on the map you might even think it was the gateway to the South.

I was musing over that puzzler when I looked  back at the sheet in the WP and the word Louisville had been disappeared being replaced by the word GO.  I pulled another pull on my beer looking away with my jaw dropped and tongue sticking out pondering mightily.  I looked back and the GO had disappeared replaced by the word NOW.  That was sort of a species of inspiration, I thought, while certainly an invitation to further procrastination.  No more procrastination for me. I took it.  One might say I leaped at it.

My first thought to get there was to shinny up a superstring and bend it to my will sliding down the apex into Louisville.  It was a good idea and would have been a cheap way to go but superstrings are hard to find when you want one in this universe.  Ever tried to signal taxi when you wanted one?  Superstrings are even harder.

That failing, my next thought was a good worm hole that might shorten the distance to like, a walk across the street.  If you think superstrings are hard to find, try worm holes.

I had to settle for a commercial airline and the loss of a few hundred dollars and a further loss of self-respect and dignity getting through what they’re pleased to call security at the airport but that 737-800 dropped me right down at the Louisville International Airport in the heartland, fly-over America, and there I was right where I was supposed to be, where fate wanted me, although I had had no further communications from the Great Beyond and didn’t know what to do next.

I approached an official looking sort and stumblingly began, ‘You, uh, Louisville…’  He interrupted quickly saying:  ‘Yes, the University of Louisville.  Right down on Third Street.  Keep your eyes open, you can’t miss it.’

I thought I had read some rule somewhere that said no body can remain inert for very long and as I had received no further communications I thought this might be the one so I found my way down to this University of Louisville which was right where this official type said it should be.

By this time a sense of eeriness is building in me, what the Irish call the Glamour, so I began to develop this irreal feeling.  As I usually do when I’m mystified I put my hands in my pockets to show my defenselessness to Fate and looked around.  Being a writer I like books and I knew from experience that libraries are full of books or at least ought and used to be.  Nowadays though, things changing so fast as they  do, you can’t never tell.  It was cold outside there in the Gateway to the South so I decided not to procrastinate further.  I went inside.

I was right.  Things were changing.  No books In sight.  The first thing I saw was some kind of automat but it didn’t have any pie slots.  I wanted pie.  I had to go without because while I was walking around this thing I spotted six doors, free standing in the middle of a large area looking something like this automat I mentioned.  By now the glamour was all over me.  I was beginning to think…I don’t know…let’s be fair and balanced and you decide.

I walked over to these strange six doors that looked like avenues to destiny and bingo! Door number three popped open.  I walked over to investigate this seeming invitation to partake in an adventure stepping through into what was this little tiny cubicle.  I turned to step back out when, as so often happens to the unwary, the door closed on me trapping me inside.  I was beginning to think I was a character in a Tarzan novel.   I scratched my chin which I often found productive of results.  As I did so the floor began to fall away from me taking me down with it.  I was apparently being lowered into the infernal regions.  I wasn’t far from wrong.

After a little while the floor came back up to me and it was like I was standing on solid ground again but I didn’t trust it.  Just then the door popped back open, a demon of some sort rushed in so I hopped out.  I don’t think that was a mistake but at the same time it wasn’t a wise move.

Immediately facing me were six horses. Why, of course, I though they were the flesh eating mares of Greek mythology come to life.  Who wouldn’t think that?  I fumbled in my pocket for a weapon but as the airline had confiscated my letter opener as a dangerous weapon of hi-jackers I had only my trusty plastic ball point, no less formidable, however, as a weapon.  It was pointed,  It was a good gell writer that had cost me a dollar twenty-five at the dozen rate, you see, as a writer I need a stash of pens, so I was using it to devastating effect slashing away at the rearing noses of those man eating mares when this centurion or something who later turned out to be an old codger calling himself, Janitor, asked me what I was doing

‘Think I’m doing?  What, are you blind?’  I cried, ‘I’m defending myself against these man-eating mares.’

‘Why, you fool.’  He replied with unnecessary acerbity and widely distended nostril resembling those of the mares, ‘Those ain’t man-eating mares, those are fifteenth century Ming Dynasty ceramic horses.  Those were given us by the Barren Estate and now you’ve ruined one of them, those ink stains will never come off.’

‘Sure they will.’  I said defiantly.  Then as a diversionary tactic I questioned his century, asserting that they were most certainly sixteenth century hoping he might be wrong, or that failing, perhaps he didn’t know anymore about the matter than I did.

I did look at these man eating mares more closely.  When I looked back at the Centurion I realized that he was some sort of a shape changer and he was not an old codger who looked just like a janitor he was one.  When I looked back at the mares I saw that he had changed them to these life sized Ming Dynasty, of whatever century, ceramic horses.  My defensive maneuvers had indeed been converted into ink stains.  I was steady as a rock though.  I reached up with my sleeve to polish the nose.  A lot of the ink came off too.  While I was doing this, I looked to the right, which is the direction of truth, when I was almost blinded by the sight.

There standing in the doorway of a room over which the legend ‘Department Of Rare Books’ had appeared was the most dazzling apparition I had ever seen.  It was the Princess Delinda. She must have been the sister of Ozma she was so beautiful.

So, there were books in this library.  But they were rare there or they wouldn’t have claimed to be.  Books took second place in my thoughts now that the Princess Delinda was before me.

She spoke.  She said:  ‘The Wizard has been expecting you.’

‘The Wizard?’

‘Yes. Follow me.’

That was easy to do.  I wasn’t going to refuse that invitation so I fell in behind.  She led me to a cubicle not much larger than the one I had descended in to confront the man-eating horses.  I wasn’t about to be caught in the same trap twice in a row so rather than going in I waited for this Wizard type to come out.  He did.

As Wizards go he was representative of the type.  Shortish and roundish although not so much as his counterpart in OZ.  He was apparently in charge of the same sort of apparatus as that wizard however because from that little cubicle I found he directed the worldwide operations of a clandestine group called the Burroughs Bibliophiles.  Whether they were related the Rosicrucian’s, Theosophists or groups of that stripe I never did find out.

The Princess Delinda cast a sweet glance at me disappearing into another cubicle as she did so.  This left me facing this crusty old buzzard alone.  As he had been expecting me this Wizard as he called himself had refreshments already made.  I don’t know what it was exactly, he gave it a strange name, but it was liquid.

‘I have the ingredients shipped in from the mysterious East.’  He smiled no less mysteriously.

I looked at the can the stuff had come from and it said New York City which was mysterious and East enough for me so I nodded my head knowingly.  ‘It’s good.’  I intoned.

‘You finally came.’  He said.  ‘You can call me George T. when you get tired of calling me Wizard.’  He politely remarked.  ‘So, you know something about Edgar Rice Burroughs?’  The Wizard George T. smiled.

‘What luck!’  I thought to myself, I stumbled into the right Secret Society. I do know something about Edgar Rice Burroughs.’  ‘Yes, I do.’  I hastily replied trying to insinuate myself into his good graces.  ‘Yes, I came here looking for inspiration where I was advised I could find it.  I thought that was as good an answer as any and besides I had been looking for inspiration for several weeks.  I thought he might be flattered because I thought I could find some here in Louisville, unlikely place but, you know, strange things happen.

‘Well, you came to the right place.’  George T. smiled.  ‘We have the largest collection of Edgar Rice Burroughs material anywhere on the planet, in the solar system, in this universe or any of the millions of parallel universes in existence.  Does that surprise you?’

Well, I had several parallel universes inside me filled with multiple personalities so that I already was living several lives simultaneously,  ‘Not me.’  I snorted with just a touch of arrogance.  ‘I’ve been everywhere, man, I’ve been everywhere.  I’ve been places in parallel universes you can’t even imagine.’  I gave him such a knowing leer he fairly melted beneath it or at least he appeared glazed.

Apparently used to such extravagances he gave me a pleasant smile while I looked around for another glimpse of the Princess Delinda.  ‘Step in.’  He said indicating his cubicle.  I hesitated, began to think up some explanation about descending floors but then in a fit of bravado I threw caution to the winds deciding to just take my chances, cast my fate to the winds.  Adventures to the adventurous I thought.  I came off astute because nothing happened.

We chatted for a while.  Talked over Edgar Rice Burroughs pretty thoroughly.  I thought I knew somewhat about Burroughs having been a Tarzan fan in youth and actually I had read up on Burroughs just recently but George T. was something to behold.  He holds out this book and says to me:  ‘I wrote this.’  It was a thick book.  As a writer I’m not jealous of other people’s success so I admired his volume wholeheartedly, if not even fulsomely, to show my good will.

‘Say, you know, George T.’  I said to show I knew what writing was all about.  ‘I’ve written a little myself.  To be on the level with you I’ve even written a few essays on Burroughs.  I’ve even had a couple published by the Burroughs Bulletin.’

When I said this the Wizard looked a little puzzled.  He reached behind him picking up a manuscript pushing it toward me.  I must have slipped through some sort of space warp.  Damned if it wasn’t one of mine.  May have been that stuff he gave me to drink.

‘Perhaps you wrote this in another incarnation.’  He smiled.

I had, sort of.  I had written it under the name of Dugald Warbaby.  Let me say right now that name is not pronounced Doo-gald as everybody does.  It’s pronounce Dug-ald.  Consider Ronald, Donald, Gerald, Fernald, Harald and many others.  Same ending, ald, but you don’t say Row-nald, Doo-nald or Gee-rald.  You say Ron-ald, Don-ald and Jer-ald.  Simple.  Same principle with Dugald.  Dug not Doo.  Still I’ve had people want to argue with me about it.  Don’t.  It is Dug-ald.  Call me Doug when I’m in that incarnation.

Now that George T. had called Doug up I slipped into that facet of my personality.  Doug speaks with a back country accent so I changed from my normal movie style bland pronunciation into the hick accent which some of my hillbilly ancestors used.  I mean, I grew up with this stuff.  I can cornpone it with the best or them or, at least, Warbaby can.  It embarrasses me to talk that way, although this was Kentucky not that far from Bowling Green from which my people came.

Anyway, George T. had somehow acquired copies of my essays.  He knew about all of us.  The Prindles, Warbaby and Dr. Anton  because we’d all written essays, sometimes in collaboration.  But, I could explain this and I did.

The Wizard led me into it.  ‘The range of knowledge you display is quite remarkable.’  He said, looking at me sharply now as Warbaby answered with that remarkable accent. ‘You must have a remarkable memory.’

‘My natural memory has always been good.’  I replied through Warbaby’s nose.  ‘But I have had to resort to an artificial memory system to manage information as my learning has expanded.’

‘How’s that?’  The Wizard asked with heightened interest.

I decided to fan my entire deck out before him.  If he really wanted to know this I was really going to tell him.

‘Well, my volume of memory information has to be organized for recall.  I once knew a man who said he didn’t want any new memories because he liked the ones he had.  He didn’t want to lose them by which I suppose he meant their immediacy.  Memories certainly lose their prominence as others are added.  I laughed at him at the time but as I soon learned without a system to manage them and method of recall there isn’t room in the mind for infinite information.  New memories do shove old ones aside.

My first attempt to overcome this effect was compartmentalization which was effective but not thorough.  I read Homer’s Iliad on a fairly regular basis in an attempt to penetrate his meaning.  I am fascinated in his personification of Zeus as the Mind of Infinite Power.  A handy mind to have.

I had been working on a system that displaced information from the inside of the mind, so to speak, to a putative external apparatus when I read this book by Frances Yates called ‘The Art Of Memory.’

I don’t know whether I would have stumbled on the solution on my own, I like to think I would, being of the vain sort, but Yates ran thorugh memory systems from the time of Simonedes who is supposed to have invented the concept c. something BC but anyone who had read Homer must be astonished by the volume of material he has organized so consummately well.  Perhaps I derived my system from Homer and his Mind of almost absolute power.  His is certainly as astonishing in its power as any I have encountered.

Anyway the story of Simonedes, a professional poet and praise singer, is that he was employed by a Roman grandee to sing his praises at a banquet.  As was the custom Simonides cast the praise within the context of the gods, in this case Castor and Polydeukes, the Gemini.  After his presentation at the banquet his employer would only give him half pay as the man said that because he had paid for a full eulogy half had been given to the Gemini.

Well, Simonides took his place at the table of fifty-four, suffering in silence as, indeed, he had little choice.  Mid-dinner the steward advised him that there were two gentlemen without the building who wished his attendance.  Not unwillingly Simonides left the banquet to meet the gentlemen outside who were in fact the Gemini in human disguise.

While Simonides was outside talking to the Gemini the roof of the building collapsed killing and crushing beyond recognition all the diners.  Simonides was able to recall each diner because in his memory system he had attached a name to each chair.  Hence Simonedes is imagined to be the inventor of the memory system but I am sure such systems existed before Simonides.

Unfortunately, memory systems with items attached to objects burdens the memory with an irrelevant scene.  I thought futilely.  However I had been working with the Astrological religion which is built around the Zodiac and the Constellations.

This seemed perfect as I could construct an imaginary Zodiac a foot or two from my head, surrounding it.  Thus, I could displace memories outside my skull, as it were, freeing up cerebral space for new memory formation and projection onto the Zodiac.  An illusion perhaps, but effective.  The heavens thus formed a gigantic cap for me.

Now, a circle has three hundred sixty degrees of which each sign occupies thirty degrees.  Each sign is further divided into three decans for greater convenience.  Each degree within a decan is further divided into sixty minutes, each minute, sixty seconds.  Each decan can be divided horizontally into latitudes of ten or as many as you like.  Therefore as you can see one already has almost infinite memory but the seven layers of heaven and all the constellations are left over.

Now, to manage this memory one man alone is not adequate so I projected five identities, Dugald Warbaby, R.E. and Ronald E., the Prindles or Gemini, and Dr. Anton Polarion.  Anton, a wonderful person in his own right, is the psychologist of the group, psychology being of the essence of the intellect.  R.E. Prindle handles the literary aspects, Ronald E. the scientific side while Warbaby as his name implies is a rough and tumble sort of coordinator in charge of cross referencing.  I am, of course, if not a Mind of Absolute Power, the facilitator who keeps everything in order while creating capacity.

All five men face the 360/1 degree divisor and unfier, True North, if you will.  Ouroboros and all that.

When reading there is constant comparison and cross referencing which is the most difficult part.

‘That’s interesting but it almost sounds, how shall I say…’

‘Crazy or looney?  Not if you really understand psychology.  Actually the whole Judaeo-Christian religion is founded on just such a projection which is what taking it to the Lord in prayer means.  If you read St. Augustine’s Confessions properly one would have to say the guy was insane.  The whole book is a conversation with his imagined god who he believes is talking back to him.  Now, that’s crazy.  I don’t have to believe in the persons of my memory system to make work and work it does.

If I may give an example of a man with a brilliant memory who because mankind is unable to accept the full range of its possibilities, has been rendered odious and taboo, I will illustrate my point by a feat performed by the infamous Adolf Hitler.  From my own point of view it is ridiculous to exclude any person or aspect of human nature from examination or consideration.  There is no one worse than a child molester in my estimation yet we study the type to understand it.  I find it very difficult to imagine Hitler any more odious  than that or, say, the Catholic inquisition which brings us to the point of my illustration.

Himmler, a Catholic and founder of the Order of the SS had compiled a map showing the area from which the SS were primarily recruited and the area of the SA.  Hitler was shown the map by Himmler.  I’ve seen a similar map before, Hitler remarked.  Himmler replied that it was impossible as the map had just been completed.

Not the content, Hitler replied, Ah, I have it now.  In gymnasium I saw this line as showing the divisions between the Lutherans and Catholics.

So, that by remembering the contours of the earlier map, being able to compare the content of both in his mind, and being able to identify the reason for the composition of the SS and SA.  In fact, the SS was primarily recruited from Catholics while the SA were primarily Lutherans.  Further conclusions can also be drawn through analysis depending on which facts having been catalogued in a memory system can be recalled and cross referenced.

While quite brilliant intellectually Hitler was lacking an integrated personality thus in control of the waters of the subconscious which led him to commit unconscionable errors for irrational reasons.  In other words, his acts couldn’t produce the results he desired.

His main objective was to defeat Communism, in which he was indirectly successful.  At the time the Communists were within a hair of success.  Popular Front governments which were Communist in fact existed everywhere including the Roosevelt administration of the United States.  Italy and Spain were the sole exceptions.  During the war the resistance in the United States was able to organize itself against Roosevelt and the Reds surfacing after the war as the dominant political influence in the US.  They then spread their anti-Communist or pro-American influence, as you will, around the world not controlled by the Communists.  They thus inherited the anti-Communist attitude of Hitler which was recognized by the Reds who immediately labeled the United States as Fascist.  A little distorted projection, but one having some merit as being opposed to their interests.  Thus Hitler aborted what was a seeming victory for the Reds.  Reagan’s defeat of Communism forty years later was actually a consequence of Hitler’s beginning.  Of course, one is forbidden in academic circles and, indeed, in society in general from any such objective analysis of Hitler’s influence.  You will forget immediately that I brought it up.  The world suffers a lack of integrity as a result.

But, as far as considering Hitler outside the pale of humanity, I don’t.  As John Donne said:  Send not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.

Look at this caricature of society around us created by quite common place minds and tell me which is more evil.’

The Wizard eyed me intently.  I had broached a forbidden topic and discussed it in a forbidden manner.  My fate hung in the balance.  As a free American and the son of the Greatest Generation which had taken arms to defend Liberty from tyrants I waited breathlessly.  Well, there was a star spangled banner waving somewhere over the land of the free and the home of the brave. The Wizard, George T. eyed me intently then said airily:  ‘I can’t follow non sequiturs.’  Dismissing the issue.

I breathed more easily.  The old duck must have all his marbles in the right place.

‘You mentioned Homer.’  He continued.  ‘We have a writer who believes that Homer and Burroughs are quite related in manner.  He thinks Burroughs based his style on Homer.’

I paused for a moment.  I hadn’t taken my thought quite in that direction although a relationship had occurred to me.  I mused for a moment then said.  ‘Well, I don’t think it’s impossible but I’d have to consider his arguments.  I think Burroughs does organize like Homer.’

The Wizard’s face broke into a broad smile:  ‘Why don’t I show you the collection?  He said.

I tried not to show relief but enthusiasm.  I must have passed some kind of test.

When George T.  began to show the collection he remarked that he found my essays interesting.  ‘My essays interesting,’  I thought,  how could he know about them?’

Then the Glamour began to dissolve.  I couldn’t imagine how I could have been so befuddled.  It was like a dream cap had fallen over my head now being removed.

Of course, this was the Burroughs collection at the University of Louisville in Louisville, Kentucky.  I wrote essays for the Burroughs bulletin which this chubby guy accepted and published.  This guy wasn’t any wizard, this guy was George T. McWhorter.  He was a librarian for gosh sakes.  But, still, not only had he gathered together the most phenomenal collection of Burroughs stuff but he had found a way to perpetuate his interest by incorporating it into the rare book collection of a university.

He had single handedly organized the Burroughs corpus into an ongoing entity.  But, now, get this.  I don’t only write about Burroughs but I incorporate literary relationships with H.G. Wells, Aldous Huxley and others.  Listen, he had me covered in every direction I went.  No one, for instance, had associated Burroughs with Wells but he had all the first editions of Wells.  Absolutely no one but me had associated Huxley with both Wells and Burroughs yet there were Huxley’s first editions too.

I was astounded.  This was too spooky, too eerie.  George had shown me item after item and he was going back for more.  Henry Herbert Knibbs wasn’t too out of line for Burroughs Bibliophiles but George just stood there grinning with this stuff in his hands.

I mean, I knew, or thought I did, that he couldn’t have made the associations that I had but I had been anticipated at every hard won thought.  Nonsense, I said to myself and just as I had failed to recognize where I was or who George was, this can’t be true.

I still don’t think it was but there you have it, I’m telling it just like it could have happened.

Thank god it was getting late so I had a reason to excuse myself and get out of there.  George pressed a couple welome copies of old Burroughs Bulletins on me as a friendly gesture smiling that enigmatic smile of his.  As I backed toward the door I tripped over a bookend he’d placed in my way as another test of some kind, I guess.

I didn’t miss a beat though.  I just picked it up, put it on the table and said:  Geez, George, you oughta be more careful.

The glamour of ERB was off.  I realized how foolish I had been in thinking I was anywhere but in the basement of a college library when after saying goodbye again, checking the floor for any other obstacles he may have placed there George gave me a smile and said:  You did the right thing in answering the CALL.

I was still apprehensive as I approached those ceramic Ming horses that, how can I explain it, I thought were flesh eating mares.  As I looked around now I saw that the basement was filled with donations from avid collectors, well to do or not, who hoped to buy a little bit of immortality in University collections rather than returning the stuff to circulation to be hidden away in private collections before surfacing again decades later.

Some of this stuff looked like it had sitting there decades waiting to be catalogued then stuffed away in storage to be unseen for more decades.

I thought the glamour was off but then that most beautiful Princess Delinda swept by, trailing, I swear, clouds of stardust.  She didn’t even give me a glance.  Ah well, neither did Ozma when I visited that Wizard.

Door three popped open which I now realized was only an elevator. I went up to floor one, whisked through the metal detectors as uniformed guards with automatic weapons glared at me.   Maybe Orwell was right but it wasn’t because we had to fear Big Brother it was because of all the obnoxious little brothers.

Well, it’s their job to glare but it’s not the America I grew up in.

When I stepped out into the chill Louisville winter my brain cleared a bit further.  I remembered that George had said that it was good that I had answered the CALL.  What could he know about that?  Besides I was now sure that I had hallucinated the words LOUISVILLE, GO, and NOW on that blank piece of paper.  Or had I?

Was that guy just George T. McWhorter, the simple librarian of the Department of Rare Books or was that the Wizard George T., controlling world wide operations from his little cubicle?  I’m a rational guy and I knew the answer, or, did I?  Maybe I was a man of destiny after all.  Maybe, just maybe, I was Starbegotten too.

Oh well, not to worry, I was leaving Kentucky and going back home.

Global Warming And Immigration

Global Warming And Immigration

by

R.E. Prindle

 

A fear of global warming and an affection for unlimited immigration are two positions in what ought to be called the demented Holocaustian religion of the West.  The two positions are contradictory.  At the same time that the Holocaustians, or Liberals to shorten the name, want to increase immigration to catastrophic levels the land area of the US is decreasing as the sea rises to cover it.

The rising waters will force an internal migration that will shift tens of millions of people from soon to be inundated locations while the remaining land surface will be unable to support the huge population. Tens of millions will die.  This is especially troubling as the Eastern Seaboard which will be most severely affected by the rising waters is the most heavily populated.  Cities such as New York, Boston, DC itself will be uninhabitable while vast stretches of arable land will disappear beneath the waters.

Major population centers such as the Houston/Corpus Christi and the whole Texas/Louisiana coast will disappear including New Orleans.  Southern Louisiana is already disappearing.  Florida especially is threatened.  The whole peninsula is barely above water.  Already areas are being flooded.  Perhaps the whole peninsula will be inundated.   Where will these tens of millions of internal migrants relocate as they compete for space with the tens upon tens of millions of external migrants being brought into the country by the Liberals?

While the Liberals quake in fear of global warming they continue to call for an ever-increasing population on an ever shrinking land surface.  Are they actually thinking about the future or are they reactionaries living in a dreamy past in which ‘immigrants built this country?’  While immigration may have been beneficial in 1900, mainly to the immigrants themselves, it has no place in today’s overcrowded US.  We abolished slavery, now let’s abolish immigration.

As the waters continue rising the resources of the US disappear.  The ability for the country to subsist with the present day population can’t be maintained.  The West of the US is a dry area from California to Washington and from Oregon to the borders of Missouri.  The West cannot accommodate millions of immigrants.  Already our quality of life is declining.   Rivers have been dammed, water has been sucked out of the earth making devastating forest fires inevitable.  The last twenty years have seen the devastation increasing yearly.  Less land surface and more people isn’t going to help.

One can only hope that our President can put an end to senseless immigration.  One applauds his decision to recognize the futility of ‘fighting’ global warming by pulling out of the Paris Accords.  Now, let us hope that he has the equal courage to stop immigration in its tracks.  None, not one, is the solution.  To create incalculable misery down the road for hundreds of millions is not the ‘humanitarian’ result immigrationists should be shooting for.  Sometimes humane intentions produce inhumane results.  Use your clout, Mr. President, brush the objectors aside.  They’re losers.

The Remarkable Case Of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Eyes

The Remarkable Case Of

Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Eyes

by

Dr. Anton Polarion

Concern for man himself and his fate must always form the chief interest…in order that the creations of our mind should be a blessing and not a curse for mankind.

--Albert Einstein

 

In 1953 a sci-fi novel was published by Arthur C. Clarke which he entitled ‘Childhood’s End.’  I read it only a couple years ago and while I don’t believe I got his point the story has haunted my imagination since then.  In the novel he depicts a situation in which the first phase of evolution has flowered, and a second phase is about to begin out of the blown flower or the seed of the first.

Just after the end of WWII Clarke may well have believed than an old order of evolution had matured and a new one was beginning.  His symbolism notwithstanding it is clear the evolution was not beginning a new phase, unless he knew something he wasn’t telling, but it is possible to view the post-war period as a culminating point in the historical continuum.

Writers are frequently more sensitive to such shifts than other people.  Assuming that the historical continuum had at least transited its first phase, as I do, and was in fact beginning a new phase, which I only postulate, then it is possible to review the historical evolution of mankind and its various sub-special components as completed units.  I intend to place Edgar Rice Burroughs in his place in that historical continuum.

Now let us by a feat of Wells/Einsteinian legerdemain roll the paper into a cylinder and step across the seam into that earlier phase of the historical continuum.

For tens of thousands of years the flow of the historical continuum appeared to be nearly as even and uninterrupted as the flow of the mighty Congo from the immense distance of Stanley Falls to the Stanley Pool.

Change there was but so slow as to cause barely a ripple until the accumulated changes resulted in the disruption of human consciousness that occurred in the Victorian Period.

Since then the historical continuum has been as turbulent as the series of rapids on the Congo below Stanley Pool.

THEN I SAW THE CONGO, CREEPING THROUGH THE BLACK,

CUTTING THROUGH THE FOREST WITH A GOLDEN TRACK.

Then along that riverbank

A thousand miles

Tattooed cannibals danced in file.

--Vachel Lindsay,  The Congo

The French Revolution was important but that was mainly a political transition from the late feudal to the early modern.  What we’re really concerned with is the challenge it gave to the psychology of man, that time when the Congo and the Jungle became a symbol of Man’s conscious and unconscious mind and his conscious mind cut through the darkness like a golden track.  To put a convenient date on the psychological transition let’s put it at 1859  when Darwin’s

Origin of Species’ was published; nothing challenged the ancient mentality of Mankind more.  It was then that the Congo crept North of the Equator to flow through the Euroamerican mind.

Darwin’s theories rent the mind of most men in two.  Some like Edgar Rice Burroughs understood instantly but most resisted for decades while a hundred fifty years later the howl of disbelief can still be heard.  The Semitic vision of the origin of man and the world as portrayed in Genesis became impossible for any reflective Westerner to believe.  The hold of the ancient Semitic system of belief was so strong that exoteric scholars could not express their evolutionary views openly for fear of losing their jobs while having their lives ruined in what might risibly be termed ‘premature McCarthyism.’

Then I heard the boom of the blood-lust song

And a thigh bone beating on a tin-pan gong.

--Vachel Lindsay -The Congo

Nevertheless the brief period from 1859 to 1914 was one of the most exciting and productive periods of history.   The past had been or was being made intelligible to Western Man’s inquiring mind.  As unpleasant as the fact may be to some people, modern understanding is solely the product of the mind of Western Man or Homo Sapiens III.  Neither the African of HIS nor the sterile Semites nor the various sterile Mongolid races contributed one iota of understanding in this period, very little since and that only under the influence of the West.

While the Semitic Freud was delving into personal psychology his great rival, CG Jung, was exploring the development of human consciousness  to open a psychological understanding of the mind of mankind in which the individual might be included and explained.  In other words, he was placing the individual in the historical continuum.  An esotericist of some note, it is to Jung and the school he founded that we are indebted for our understanding of all the phases of consciousness, their development and evolution.

At the same time that our increasing awareness allowed us to see clearly into the past for the first time, the pace of change was becoming so rapid that it was possible to project current trends into the near future.  In conjunction with the rapid increase in scientific discoveries a futuristic or science fiction became possible.

In the popular mind the foundations for futuristic fiction were laid by the vastly underrated H.G. Wells.

Understanding the past, projections into the future and tremendous technological achievement, lent this period such great self-confidence that it was thought that anything was possible to the mind of man.  The attitude was abruptly brought to an end in 1912; not by the First World War but rather by the unthinkable fact that Man’s mind had erred in thinking that it could build an unsinkable ship.  When that great ship, the Titanic went down it took the pride of Western, which is to say human mind down with it.

The period of 1859 to 1914 was also one in which the absolute superiority of the ‘White race’ seemed not only apparent but real in fluorescent colors.  In fact, White, or HSIII, superiority was acknowledged by all the people of the Earth, who were overawed by Western achievements. It was only after 1914 when the confidence of HSIII was shaken that the counter-attack became possible and success plausible.  Even then this was an internal schism between the right people of the West and the wrong people of the Reds.

I have studied the notion of evolution of Dugald Warbaby in his essays ‘Tarzan Over Africa’ and ‘Tarzan Meets Mohammed.’  Based on his notion I would like to explain how the various sub-species are to be characterized during this first historical continuum.

The character of a sub-species is fixed from the moment of its mutation.  Everything that it will ever be able to do it can envision at its inception; there is no evolution of ability within a sub-species its abilities unfold to its limits as its development progresses.

In you believe in Darwin’s concept of natural selection then you must believe that the various sub-species segregated themselves from the other sub-species on the basis of likeness.  Further, following Darwin’s theory of natural selection so did various races form within a sub-species.  Each race within a sub-species will by natural selection exclude all others who are not true to type until the race is uniform in appearance and psychology.

To use the African model:  If one race is flat nosed and thick lipped then those characteristics will be valued.  Any who do not conform to the ideal will be ejected from the race or killed.

If nearby thin lipped people with a bridged nose exist those two peoples will come into conflict with each other.  The ensuing war between the physical and psychological types will be to the knife.  In a word:  genocide.  Undisturbed by outside forces the battle will continue until either one race is exterminated or one or the other moves from the vicinity.  This is what natural selection means. This is the history of Man.  The notion of natural selection was also put into the words:  survival of the fittest.

Thus HSI claimed sub-Saharan Africa for itself expelling the mutated HSII and possibly the Semites if they mutated at the same time .  HSII migrated from the Mediterranean Basin and on into Western Europe.  The Semites separated from HSI and HSII or were driven away migrating into the Arabian Peninsula, a backwater.  HSIII when it mutated was either expelled from HSII or separated themselves to occupy the area near the Caspian Sea.

The English geneticist Bryan Sykes believes that the various Mongolid races mutated from HSIII a mere ten thousand years ago although this seems unlikely.  The Mongolids like the Semites are also a sterile offshoot.  They migrated across the steppes to the Eastern seaboard of Asia.  Thus, following Darwin’s theory of natural selection when the traceable historical continuum becomes apparent one has HSI in Africa, HSII in Western Europe and HSIII in the Caspian area of Central Asia, the Semites occupying  Arabia and the Mongolids in Eastern Asia.

The first confrontation between the sub-species in historical times came when a people of HS III derivation migrated to Mesopotamia.  There they created a civilization which may have been influenced by an HSII population already in possession.  Either HSIII alone or together with HSII, this people created the Sumerian Civilization.

 

From Sumer To The World Trade Center

 

In the present struggle in Eastern Europe the element of religious antagonism is the most important factor in the problem.  The question originally one of race and government has become to a great extent one of religion.  …Muslims…use the Sheriat, or law embracing or based upon the Cor-an and its commentaries, and this is declared by many persons in Western Europe to be utterly inapplicable to Christian subjects.  Here, then, is the real difficulty; is Mohammedanism so plastic as to be adapted to the reforms which it is universally admitted…are required, or must it be eliminated altogether from Europe?  If an affirmative answer be given to the latter proposition…there is no solution of the difficulty but a religious war, and such a war as the world has never yet seen.

--Mohammed and Mohammedanism. 

Anonymous reviewer in the

Quarterly Review, January 1877

The answer has proven to be that Moslemism is not so plastic as to be adjusted to rational or Western psychology.  Moslemism is an expression of the Semitic psychology.  That psychology is particular to the Semitic sub-species.  In the Darwinian sense it is part and parcel of natural selection.  HSIII and the Semites are psychologically incompatible.  That cannot be changed.

Now, the Semites could never have created a civilization on their own but the glitter of the HSIII Sumerian civilization drew them from their desert haunts much as the glitter of Western civilization has drawn the Semites from their desert oil fields today.  Bear in mind that the Semitic character was set a hundred thousand years before Sumer and that no matter how circumstances may change their character cannot.  Its stern limits are set by genetic evolution.

It is to be assumed that just as the Semites first infiltrated Western civilization then attacked and destroyed the symbol of Western supremacy, the World Trade Center in the Western capital of New York City, that they committed a similar outrage against Sumer five thousand years ago.  Character, methods and tactics in a sub-species do not change; as it is it was and ever shall be.

If one analyzes Semitic methods and ethos which will have remained unchanged for the five thousand years of recorded history it will be readily seen what transpired in Sumer and why the Sumerian civilization was obliterated.

The main body of Semites undoubtedly blamed a militant minority for whatever crime was perpetrated against the Sumerians.  The Semitic story of Cain and Abel may point the way to the nature of the dispute, just as the Sumerian story of Gilgamesh and Enkidu may present the Sumerian version of the quarrel.  Believing they were dealing with an honorable people, rather than driving the Semites away, the Sumerians believed that the Semites were sincere and that they could get along with them.  Thus, while palavering endlessly the Semites continued to infiltrate Sumer until they had sufficient numbers within and sufficient military power without to displace the Sumerians in their own land.  ‘Ye shall live in houses that ye never built.’  As the Bible says.

Not having inherent scientific ability the Semites gradually replaced the scientific basis of Sumerian society with their own brand of fanatical ignorant religion. 

Thus, the Semites appropriated Mesopotamia and Syria occupying the coasts of the Mediterranean while retaining Arabia.  The deadly pall of Semitic ignorance settled over the Near East, or Western Asia, however you look at it.  Contemporary Egyptians styled them ‘vile Asiatics.’

Over the centuries the Semites came into direct conflict with the Egyptians who, if I am right in the origins of the Libyans of Lower Egypt, were an HS II people.  As empires grew larger and came into direct contact the Semitic empire of Assyria was able to conquer the HSIIs of Egypt in the seventh century BC.  Thus, in the Darwinian struggle for supremacy the Egyptians were eliminated as a people. They have never recovered being now a remnant after a genocidal persecution of centuries.  Their place has been taken by Semites.

As in Sumer the Semitic character immediately began to attack the scientific religious culture of Egypt in an attempt to destroy it while superimposing their own fanatical religious culture, the culture of ignorance.

The HSIII Persians ousted the Semitic Assyrians being in turn ousted by the HSIII Greeks who were replaced by the HSIII or possibly HSII Romans.

Now, following their sub-special manner a group or race of Semites, known in history as Jews, who had been displaced in an intra-sub-special conflict with the Assyrians in 586 BC, had been infiltrating the various kingdoms of the Mediterranean from Gaul to Egypt and Libya much as their ancestors had infiltrated Sumer.  They followed the intolerant Semitic impulse by combating the religion of their host countries.  They aggressively over turned altars and insulted the religion of these nations.

Unwilling and unable to assimilate themselves, as in the prototype of Sumer, they sought first to infiltrate and then to conquer.  In the Roman case, much as in the Semitic attack on the World Trade Center, they made their move prematurely and had insufficiently infiltrated the enemy territory while having no military force without to complete conquest.  In the resulting wars known to history as the Jewish Wars the Romans all but exterminated the Palestinian Jews while the Jews within the empire stood by helplessly.

In the ensuing syncretistic Semito-Christian religion the Semites acquired a disproportionate influence over the Greek scientific thought completely suppressing it.  In keeping with the Semitic Sumerian tradition the Semito-Christians attacked all science and learning in an attempt to stultify the Greek or scientific  influence in their attempt to impose the ignorance which was in keeping with their native intellect.  The result in the West was what is know as the Dark Ages.

Then, in the seventh century AD an Arabian Semite by the name of Mohammed re-evaluated the situation to come up with a new and more determined attempt to impose Semitism on the world.

After Sumer, in the Jewish attempt of the conquest of HSII and HSIII, the Jews were so cranked out that in their pride they excluded all from their religion but their own small race of Semites.  This created a situation which in a direct confrontation with the majority must always lose.  Mohammed realized the error of exclusiveness rewriting the rules so that even forcible proselytization to his new Semitic religion was preferred.

Thus, by enrolling potentially unlimited auxiliaries under a religious banner he was able to augment the numbers of Semites so that there was a chance of conquering the world under the banner of ignorance.

Mohammed also undoubtedly realized that even though the Semites had gained a preponderant influence in the Semito-Christian religion that eventually the majority would reject the foreign Semitic influence.  It was necessary then to impose Semitism on the majority by physical force.  He thus organized the Semites into a military force capable of attacking the world.

The Arabs quickly overran North Africa while their converts the Moors entered Spain quickly conquering that nation.  Without a pause they swept through the Pyrenees to penetrate deep into Europe where they stopped nearly at the gates of Paris from which they were driven back into Spain.  The Spaniards then began the Reconquista which took them nearly a millennium to accomplish. Thus Europe barely escaped being impaled on the lance of ignorance.

Although it is generally believed that at the beginning of the Arab conquest a brilliant scientific civilization was created this notion is completely false.  The Moslems rode over an existing HSIII Greek scientific culture which they immediately assaulted in much the same manner as that of the Semito-Christians.  It took them about three hundred years to suppress the Greek scientific culture until today there is not one shred of scientific learning in Moslem lands.  Instead they dynamite anything that challenges the ignorant bigoted Moslem view of religion.

From that first impulse to the present day the Semites have never ceased their worldwide attack on both the West and the East.  What the Assyrians failed to do in Egypt, Mohammed’s fanatical Moslems have accomplished.  With ceaseless tireless energy and will Moslems have sought to impose their ignorance on the world.

The situation in 1877 when the Russians, Poles and Austrians were driving the Moslems out of Central and Eastern Europe was essentially that of today.  Whether you like it or not Milosevic was continuing and winning the war referred to by the prefacing quote in 1877.  The reviewer in the Quarterly Review realized that one must drive the Moslems out or accept the stultification of the HSIII species.  That is what Milosevic was doing.

There was some surcease for the West when the Slavs and Austrians succeeded in driving the Moslem power back into Asia at the end of the nineteenth century.  However Moslems remained successfully active in Africa, India and the Far East.

It was only Western Science that provided the means to temporarily crush the Moslems and put them in their place.  That is where matters stood when the first historical continuum ended in 1945.

Regaining courage and strength from their oil reserves the Semites once again following in their five thousand years practice began to infiltrate every country in the world while consolidating themselves in their core areas.

Whether the attack on the West in New York was premature or not remains to be seen in the response the West makes.  If it follows the Sumerian model of toleration then it must lose this five thousand year battle with the forces of ignorance.  If it follows the Roman model and destroys Mecca and Medina as the Romans were compelled to destroy Jerusalem, while either exterminating or confining the Moslems then civilization will survive at whatever cost.  The Hitlerian solution is so extreme as to cause revulsion.  However if we are truly a scientific people both in physics and psychology we do have the means although we probably lack the will to conquer.  Perhaps that was the Sumerian problem, too much prosperity and comfort to imperil.  Like them we will probably be too supine to assert our superiority.  We should be able to manage pretty well if we assume the will the defeat the enemy.  This battle will be fought as a test of wills.  This is a colder war than the war with Communism.

This same sort of analysis can be applied to every sub-species on the planet; the potentialities and possibilities of each has become an established fact, their future actions can be forecast from their past history.  I do not intend to go into each, but it should be clear that the former Chinese leader, Mao Ze Dong, was true to the Chinese sub-special type.  No matter what the Chinese may say, Mao bared the Chinese soul.

 

Edgar Rice Burroughs Strides Into The Scene

 

The life of Edgar Rice Burroughs straddled the great 1914 division of this both terminal and seminal period from 1859 to 1945.  His youth was lived in the shadow of the Little Big Horn where Custer died for our sins in 1876 the year after Burroughs was born.  The Plains Indians were still being overrun in his youth while he himself participated  in the last Indian battles against the Apaches in the Southwest.  Even as the Indians were being defeated he saw the success of man’s attempt to fly, the introduction of the telephone and movies.  Henry Ford introduced the Model T making a mass market auto industry a reality almost at the same time Burroughs sat down to begin his Tarzan stories.  And then the Titanic sank.

Burroughs was a pulp fiction writer.  I think it can be argued that the pulp fiction magazine originated with the Strand Magazine in England.  Pulp fiction called for a different approach than literary fiction.  Literary fiction is designed to appeal to refined, informed or cultured tastes while pulp fiction was designed as popular entertainment for the widest possible audience.

Thus, Literary authors have tended to look down on popular writers.  However one result of universal literacy was that ‘common’ tastes prevailed over fine literature.  Today almost no one can tell you who the American literary author William Dean Howells was or have even heard of him, yet you may be certain that he and his contemporaries thought his literary immortality was secured.

Ernest Poole won the first Pulitzer Prize for literature yet I doubt that even one person in a million could identify him.  Booth Tarkington won two Pulitzer prizes which no one else has ever done yet the mention of his name draws blank stares.  He wrote good stuff too which one hopes won’t be forgotten.  ‘Seventeen’ was a real charmer.

Strangely, the great popular fiction writers are known not so much for themselves as for their creations.  Thus, everyone knows Sherlock Holmes, but many would be stumped by the name Arthur Conan Doyle.  You almost have to be a specialist to know who Bram Stoker was yet Dracula is a piece of furniture in everyone’s mind.  Not one in an infinite number can identify Gaston LeRoux but all know the Phantom Of The Opera, his creation.  Edgar Rice Burroughs’ name is fairly well known but not everyone can connect him to his universally known creation, Tarzan.  Not even in his home town, Tarzana.

Burroughs came at the tail end of that crop of popular writers who have been the staple of twentieth century literature.  He was too young to be a part of the Kipling, Wells, Haggard and Doyle scene although circumstances did make him a friend of the OZ creator, L. Frank Baum.

Even thought H.G. Wells was only six years his senior Well’s writing career began in the 1890s.  He had been famous nearly twenty years before Burroughs put pen to paper.  And yet Burroughs writing connects him to this pre-1914 literary scene as a sort of younger sibling; he belongs to this tradition.  Nor is his creation, Tarzan, inferior in reputation to any other literary creation of the time with the exception of the archetype of the twentieth century, Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Even then, many, if not most people don’t realize that there is not only one Tarzan novel but a series of them.

Edgar Rice Burroughs’ eyes had seen most of the seminal events of this productive pre-1914 period when he sat down to write.  He was able to reflect on them all.  Unlike his near contemporaries he did not create the era so much as recapitulate it.  From 1914 to 1945 was pretty much a playing out of these earlier developments.

Darwin’s theory of evolution had created a defined racial hierarchy at the bottom of which was the Negro and at the top of which was the EuroAmerican White.  In between were the Semites and Mongolids.  This notion is reflected in Burroughs’ writing.

While it was believed that this was the order of evolution there was no scientific basis for proving what was apparent to the eyes.

The great disrupting discoveries in physics and psychology had already been made and were becoming popularized.  Havelock Ellis, Krafft-Ebing and others were leading a sexual revolution; the Feminist Movement was in full tilt while in a few years the unthinkable would occur when Communism seized power in Russia in 1917 which made the post 1914 world so different while people were slow to understand the magnitude of the change.  And then there was the introduction of the income tax which disturbed ERB so much in ‘Tarzan And The Ant Men.’

Amazingly Burroughs eyes were so acute he was able to understand and incorporate all these developments in the Tarzan novels without ever mentioning any by name.  In his dedication to ‘entertainment’ he was able to write around, below, above and through these developments without letting any of them obtrude didactically into his stories.  Therein lies, I think, the secret of his success.  While H.G. Wells became a didactic preacher for his causes at the end of his career thereby dating himself; Burroughs sublimated his opinions while yet always coming down on the right side of the question.  He cannot be considered a reactionary or even a conservative; he always understood the nature of the question and saw the correct viewpoint.  Thus, he remains ‘modern’ or current.

Burroughs has been accused of ‘racism’ for his views on evolution but the accusation misses the point.  Bear in mind the consequences of evolution and natural selection.  To speculate on the nature of evolution and apply the results is not ‘racism.’  After all, not only did Burroughs have no trouble with evolution but he seems to have a well thought out notion of it which differs little from Darwin’s natural selection and seems to be closer to the more accurate scientific genetic explanation.  One might call ERB a speculative evolutionist.

This is a remarkable achievement as in 1912 when he began to write, no academic could openly reject religion in favor of evolution without being expelled from the academic community.  Even though they knew better they still proclaimed that evolutionary beliefs did not challenge religious opinions.

Burroughs, courageously one might say, disregards all religious considerations, writing about evolution as though it were an accepted and undeniable fact.  Tarzan experiences every phase of evolution in his development. He was reared as a beast, consorted with the Africans, then considered the lowest form of humanity, and went directly to being a civilized EuroAmerican and then backtracked to become the chief of the Black Waziri then becoming the Great White Potentate of all Africa.

The significant point here is that Burroughs apparently considers the Negro as a distinct species.  Rokoff, the Russian villain in ‘Son of Tarzan’, tells Jane that as her husband was born a beast so Jack, his son,  will be placed amongst an African tribe to be reared in the evolutionary stage of the Negro,  that is, between the apes and homo sapiens.

Blacks are also differentiated culturally by Burroughs; he does not deal in rude stereotypes.  He is aware of cultural differences between African tribes.  His proud Waziri are the crème de la crème of the African tribes in every respect, especially in never having submitted to Arab slavers.  American Blacks such as Robert Jones of ‘At The Earth’s Core; who have been subjected to different cultural influences in the United States are portrayed entirely differently from the various African Blacks.  ERB has a keen eye for distinctions, in dialect and speech most especially.

He himself was an avid reader.  This is no more apparent than in his treatment of his Arab characters.  He never traveled outside the United States so his knowledge of Moslemism and Arabs had to be acquired completely from books.  As Warbaby pointed out in ‘Tarzan Meets Mohammed’ Burroughs was a keen student of Moslem culture.  He perceived the complete lack of Science in Moslem thought nearly predicting 9/11.

It is very true that he has no great liking for his Arab characters.  They are uniformly disreputable and bad.

Yet they are not stock characters.  There is a great deal of individuality about them.  Personally I found Amor Ben Khatour, the abductor of Miriem in ‘Son of Tarzan’ a terrifying and realistic character.  I thought the sub-plot between Meriem’s father and Khatour well handled.

That the Arabs are all villains may be attributed less to ‘racism’ than the fact of their occupation.  They are all slave traders.  The Arabs living in Africa were associated with the slave trade.  Being a slave trader in Arab society was something like being a dope dealer in ours.  Just because someone want to buy the product doesn’t mean they want to be associated with the dealers.  The dealer is usually a disreputable person whether in drugs or slaves.  Anyone who has read his Burton and Stanley can form a pretty accurate idea of a slaver’s character.

How then could Burroughs depict his Arabs as any less than brutal, mean, disreputable men.  This is what a slaver is; this is what Burroughs understood; there is no racism involved.  He doesn’t descend into name calling.  Rather Burroughs grapples honestly and accurately with some fairly difficult problems.

Burroughs was cleverly synthesizing the ideas and learning of the 1859-1914 period in a way in which those of us of the post-1945 generation who were at ‘Childhood’s End; could use his opinions and attitudes to build a base of opinion on which to extend our own attitudes into the future as a basis of our own lives.

As evidence that Burroughs succeeded is the fact that his character named Tarzan who no longer has a home in a geographical location called Africa still exists as the Lord of the Jungle in a psychological projection of our subconscious called Africa.

 

NOW I SEE THE CONGO, CREEPING THROUGH THE BLACK,

CUTTING THROUGH THE FOREST WITH A GOLDEN TRACK.

 

Yes, that terrifying Congo, that symbol of the Heart of Darkness, the savage untutored wildness creeping through the jungle of our nocturnal fears, the psychological malaise that affects us all.  How to find that golden track of consciousness that will relieve us of our uncertainties and make the world safe for us, that is the question.

Perhaps Burroughs’ greatest success was that he created a character to represent our conscious minds while reducing the world of subconscious terrors of this  jungle of Africa called Life to a manageable form.  In this mental Africa by the force of character we can all feel less threatened and more at home as we cruise down our personal Congo in our very own ‘Lady Alice.’

Long live Tarzan and God Bless Edgar Rice Burroughs.