Our Bloody World -- Book of the Damned (Part Three)

(Note: The quotes in this post are from the Project Gutenberg version of the Book of the Damned. Below is a link to this book, which is downloadable for free.

Book of the Damned)

In the first quarter of the twentieth century, when Charles Fort wrote the Book of the Damned, the biggest catalyst for scientific and philosophical ideas has seemed to be Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity. In fact, Einstein is still influencing us all, even today! But Charles Fort's philosophy seems to be based about a hundred years back, in Hegel's theory. And the real modern catalyst for Fort's philosophy seems actually to have been the invention of the airplane.

Fort says, "I think that the stronghold of Inclusionism is in aeronautics. I think that the stronghold of the Old Dominant, when it was new, was in the invention of the telescope."

It's interesting to see that, rather than seeing people's ideas being the catalyst for other peoples' ideas, Fort sees inventions, mechanisms, as being the catalyst for other people's ideas.

Now, Fort's chief focus for anomalous is matter that falls from the sky. Near the end of his book, Fort confirms this for us:

"Throughout this book, the datum that we are most impressed with: -- Successive falls."

The study of matter falling from the sky took up about the first third of Fort's book. But, even once Fort has moved on from that topic, he continues to return to it.

Fort feels indebted to aviation for opening up the skies to him. But the skies are full of monsters for Fort. And, in the last third of his book, Fort is constantly giving warnings to aviators to be careful when they go too high up into the skies.

These warnings are largely based on Fort's expression that there are regions in the sky that contain water, ice, and even some kind of gelatinous material. So, making reference to the watery areas in the sky -- areas like actual lakes in the sky -- Fort warns aviators to wear bathing suits.

When making reference to the gelatinous areas of the sky, Fort warns aviators about flying into these areas:

"The shaky, protoplasmic seas of the Genesistrine -- against which we warn our aviators, or they may find themselves suffocating in a reservoir of life, or stuck like currants in a blanc mange."

Fort also mentions areas in the sky where gravity is inert and material collects, decays, and dried out. He assumes that there are areas in the sky where blood has collected and dried. He claims that, in the future (his future), aviators will go up into the sky and map these vast Deserts of Blood, where the blood has decayed and dried to the point of being like sand.

All in all, the sky sounds like a terribly dangerous place to Charles Fort. And I think there's a reason behind this. When aviators started tearing open the sky, they began tearing open -- symbolically -- a portion of the human psyche, a portion of the human unconscious. I think for Fort this had a very strong impact when it was realized that aviators could pierce through, or "tear open," in a sense, the daytime sky.

During the daytime, the sky is blue, and the sun makes everything light. During the night, it's like the sky is gone, revealing a vast, dark universe. In this sense, one could think of the daytime sky as consciousness, and of the nighttime sky as the unconscious.

But it became obvious, as aviators began to float higher and higher into the air, that the daytime sky could be pierced, eventually, and that the daytime sky, the symbol of our consciousness, would be pierced through, leaving even our conscious life open to the vast, dark expanse of our night sky, our unconscious.

I'm sure people are still working through the problems of this. Our concern with the ozone layer is a very valid and serious physical concern. But it can also be equated with our conception of the effects of aviation, and how it has permanently torn a hole in our daytime sky, our conscious sky, leaving us constantly open to intrusions from the night sky, the unconscious.

Now I'm sure that Fort also thought of the earth, the ground, as an element of the unconscious. So, as Fort saw that, if travel out of the earth's atmostphere became possible, then the equating of the daytime sky with the nighttime sky would be a possibility. And the night sky has already, for millennia, been equated with the earth. So, now, the day sky would also be equated with the earth.

Because of this, I believe that Fort began to work out the theory he did work out, based on elements from the earth or the water (another symbol for the unconscious) falling to the earth from the sky. But Fort worked this theory out based on genuine data related to various newspapers and journals about their experiences with anomalous phenomena.

It seemed, about halfway through the book, that Fort would start to call up more data on objects actually arising from the earth. He started listing data of material found in the ground. But as this material took on less of a purely natural element, and became more like human artifacts, the material then took on a human, living character. It seemed as if we may even start to encounter data showing real, living, intelligent beings.

But as soon as Fort reached this point, he seemed to get afraid. All the data he began to express first went back up into the sky. The areas he'd seen up in the sky, which had, up to that time, been mainly gelatinous, first became watery. They then became ice. Then they seemed to fragment.

Keep in mind -- all of these things happen -- as if it were all a story. But it really is a story of data -- collected data, that Fort relates to us in a method I term as narrative-manipulation. He takes this genuine data and uses the imagery of the data to form a story of his own. He himself almost admits this, saying that he fashions his notions to the data.

But once these icy patches in the sky fragment, all the phenomena Fort relates to us suddenly blast far out into space -- all the way to the sun, in fact, i.e. -- to our real center of conscious -- the main symbol of our consciousness. From this far away point, the data begins coming back to us.

But when the data disappears and shows up near the sun, it takes on the appearance of planets. These planets aren't in any orbit. They all begin floating back toward the earth. And, when the data has reached the earth again, it takes on a personality much like that of the Devil. It's a planet known as Melanicus, which is some kind of Devil-Vampire-Bat, floating between the earth and the moon and watching over us, probably with some kind of evil intent.

I thought that at this point, Fort would definitely begin to show us data of actual visitors to our planet. In fact, through the last third of the book, Fort talks over and over again about visitors to this planet. In one instance, he even wonders "whether sometimes there are visitors to this earth who might be pursued and captured and questioned."

But as soon as Fort mentions that we could capture these visitors, the visitors seem to become huge dragons. Fort returns to his favorite subject, the rains of bloods, and conjectures:

"It may be that an interplanetary dragon had been slain somewhere, or that this red fluid, in which were many corpuscles, came from something not altogether pleasant to contemplate, about the size of the Catskill Mountains perhaps."

And, from this sudden realization that these "visitors" who might be "captured and questioned" could possibly be "something not altogether pleasant to contemplate," Fort goes from thinking of it being at all possible for us to capture our visitors, to thinking of ourselves as the ones who are to be captured:

"Our greasy, slimy brains. That they may be of some use after all: that other modes of existence place a high value upon them as lubricants; that we're hunted for them."

Fort revisits this possibility when he discusses unidentified objects in the sky (a long time before the term Unidentified Flying Object, or UFO, went public). One UFO looked like a hot-air baloon with fishing nets attached. Fort says:

"I think that we're fished for. It may be that we're highly esteemed by super-epicures somewhere. It makes me more cheerful when I think we may be of some use after all."

Now this last statement of Fort's is very interesting. "It makes me more cheerful when I think we may be of some use after all."

This could be considered a sarcastic remark. But Carl Jung has often pointed out the passage in the Upanishads where the singer rejoices, "I eat food! I eat food! I am food! I am food!" Fort expresses the same sort of happiness. There is a greater cosmic principle to Fort's searchings. If he ends up being food for aliens, this is fine with him, just like it was fine for the singer of the Upanishads, because it was for some greater cosmic principle.

This is, interestingly, at odds with some of the ideas of modern investigators into these anomalous phenomena. Some of them, such as Laura Knight-Jadczyk, seem to believe that, indeed, the aliens do want to harvest and eat us. But this is bad for Knight-Jadczyk, whereas it seems to be okay for Fort and the Upanishads.

I'm pretty much a baby, but I don't seem to have any soft spots on my skull. My skull is actually really thick. So I'm pretty sure that's why I didn't see all of this until I'd gotten most of the way through the Book of the Damned. But it suddenly began to dawn on me that Fort's encounter with the unconscious was a much larger encounter than a personal encounter. It was a cosmic encounter with the unconscious.

In fact -- Fort's first encounter with something like a living, intelligent element in his unconscious was *almost* with fairies and giants, but it was *really* with poltergeists, which he rejected pretty much right out of hand. Fort's unconscious maintained its intelligence. However, it went all the way to the sun before coming back.

When Fort's unconscious came back, it was as huge as a small planet. But it was still intelligent -- in the form of Melanicus.

And, really, the final third of Fort's book begins with phenomena that Fort describes as eclipses. But, Fort claims, these eclipses were not predicted by astronomers. They were spontaneous. Fort asserts that these eclipses were caused by these smaller planets, or these super-constructions (Fort's term for what we would think of as gigantic spaceships) coming into close contact with the earth.

Fort asserts that these bodies can actually get pretty close to the earth, because the same band of gravity-inert space surrounding the earth can actually neutralize the planet getting close to us, so that the two planets aren't drawn completely together. However, certain parts of the two planets occasionally still manage to get sucked down from one to the other planet. This would account for some of the dirt-rains, fish-rains, etc., that follow these strange eclipses.

Since these eclipses, or planetary encounters, are often accompanied by earthquakes, Fort calls his theories surrounding this idea "Advanced-Seismology." He gives four major characteristics of Advanced-Seismology:

"Our data: -- We take them from four classes of phenomena that have preceded or accompanied earthquakes: -- Unusual clouds, darkness profound, luminous apearances in the sky, and falls of substances and objects commonly called meteoritic or not. -- Every one of them is datum of a quaked body passing close to this earth or suspended over it."

Fort also mentions luminous objects moving along with earthquakes, implying that the luminous objects were affecting the gravity of the earth somehow, so that it seems the luminous objects were like planets.

Fort then mentions howls, like wolf-howls, that have accompanied some of these strange earthquakes. Fort relates this wolf-howl sound to the attraction of the planets. But he does so in a way that imputes feeling, if not actual intelligence, to the planets themselves:

"The loves of the worlds. The call they feel for one another. They try to move closer and closer and howl when they get there. The howls of the planets. I have discovered a new unintelligibility."

What's most interesting to me about all of this is that the sky is directly equated with the earth. The daytime sky is eclipsed, or turned into a night sky, by another planet, which passes so close to our own earth that it actually in our atmosphere -- in our daytime sky, in other words. But this other planet draws our earth up to it, while we draw its earth down to us. Our earth and the sky's earth are both opening.

Later on in the book, Fort asserts that we have a mirror world up in the sky. He claims that our earth's spring, in our northern hemisphere, is that mirror earth's autumn, in the hemisphere matched up with our northern hemisphere. So we occasionally get unseasonal falls of leafs, or actual rains of leafs, from that planet, when the planet passes close enough for our gravity to affect it.

When matter is exchanged between the two planets, Fort calls is celestio-metathesis. The celestio metathesis is usually of Fort's normal variety: mud-rains, fish-rains, frog-rains, and leaf-rains. But sometimes it is much scarier than that. Fort actually gives the testimony of a Humboldt, who, during the apparently anomalous earthquake of Riobamba, saw that "bodies were torn upward from graves;" and that "the vertical motion was so strong that bodies were tossed several hundred feet in the air."

Here you have dead human elements, buried in the unconscious, actually being pulled up into the mirror-earth of the unconscious in the sky. It's pretty scary stuff. Even scarier than this, though, is Fort's next piece of data, about an earthquake in Lisbon, where an entire quay, "we are told," went down into the water. But Fort claims it was actually sucked up into the sky -- up into the planet that was passing through our atmosphere at the time.

"The quay and all the people on it disappeared. If it and they went down -- not a single corpse, not a shred of clothing, not a plank of the quay, not so much as a splinter of it ever floated to the surface."

Fort then spends a little time theorizing about all these data. And right after that, he mentions the quote I included above, about Inclusionism being inspired by aeronautics. He then makes the question regarding our own ability to capture visitors. But those visitors, as we've seen, soon turn into gigantic dragons and beings who, besides owning us, hunt us, eat us, and use our "greasy brains" as a kind of lubricant.

But once these visitors have become this quantifiably a threat to us, they seem to shrink, in Fort's narrative-manipulation of the genuine data, from the gigantic, earthquake-causing planets to objects we would more normally, nowadays, consider to be UFOs.

Nevertheless, throughout this section of the book, Fort remains focused on this idea of a cosmic perspective regarding humanity, our own scientific positions, and the roles our own scientific positions, as instances of human thought, play in creating a larger universal awareness.

This all begins with Fort's discussion of the New Dominant. Fort has explained, throughout the book, that every era of thought is controlled by a Dominant. The Dominant is the system, or the organizing factor. Fort states that the Old Dominant was a system of exclusion. The system was organized in a certain way, and any phenomena that did not fit into that system were excluded from that sytem.

The New Dominant, however, is a system of Inclusion. The New Dominant, Fort says, "is calling for recognition of multiplicities of external things." In the era of the New Dominant, Fort claims, people will always be keeping an eye out for anomalous phenomena. They will then find ways to adapt their notions to the phenomena.

The New Dominant, the system of Inclusion, is more expansive than the Old Dominant, the system of Exclusion.

And, it seems to me, the Old Dominant, as a ground for investigation, would be the system on which Carl Jung based his psychology. In Carl Jung's system, various elements of the personality, conscious and unconscious, were integrated into the overall personality. In this way, a person would find enough organized, focused psychic energy to "individuate" as a person, integrating actively, as an individual, into society.

Fort seems to agree with this to some degree. But it seems like Fort's goal is a struggle for wholeness apart from society, as far as this can be achieved:

"Altogether, the point in Positivism here is that by Dominants and their correlates, quasi-existence strives for the positive state, aggregating around a nucleus, or dominant, systematized members of a religion, a science, a society -- but that 'individuals' who do not surrender and submerge may of themselves highly approximate the positiveness -- the fixed, the real, the absolute."

In this sense, I'd believe that Fort is so struck by these images which he then imagines to be evidence of worlds, even mirror-worlds, gravitating toward us because what he's really attempting to block out isn't, for instance, the unconscious of his shadow (the bad parts of himself he might not want to accept), but -- the collective unconscious.

All of us are connected to the collective unconscious -- whether we're "connected" by our genetic similarities to one another or by some underlying element of our spirits that is common to us all -- or by some kind of compromise between the two. In fact, a lot of people have claimed that UFO sightings have been the result of collective hallucinations: in other words, that everybody, for some reason, had some element of the collective unconscious engaged before their conscious sight in such a way that they had a vision that looked to them like a UFO.

There are elements of anomalous phenomena that are not so closely connected to the collective unconscious: namely, phenomena like telepathy, astral projection, and, possibly, psychokinesis. But UFOs, when (or if) they aren't actually genuine extraterrestrial vehicles, are very closely connected to the collective unconscious. So are all of the data that Fort includes in his book.

It's my argument -- could be totally wrong, that Fort knew about Freud and Jung -- I think he'd done some studying of them. He most certainly knew the works of Herbert Spencer, and of William James and the Society for Psychical Research. So, likely, Fort, when he began processing his data, and thinking of himself as something of an alchemist, and, therefore, something of a Jungian, probably began to process this data as a sort of method of individual development.

But it must have become plain that these elements of the unconscious couldn't be fit into personalities such as the anima (the female-figure in the male psyche) or the shadow (the dark side of our personality, which I'd originally equated with Fort's Melanicus). When Fort tried to fit these elements into, for instance the image of the shadow, the shadow became Melanicus, a huge planet, which then caused all kinds of earthquakes, then began sucking up dead bodies, and even live bodies!

But then Fort began to try and fit these images into an anima figure. The anima figure became a gigantic dragon (dragons are typical primitive symbols for the anima in Jungian psychology). But this dragon became something as big as the Catskill Mountains -- and was apparently so horrifying that Fort couldn't even describe it!

It becomes clear that these elements of the unconscious cannot be constrained in "individual" bodies -- unless the individual body is as huge as a planet. Therefore, these elements must actually be manifestations of the collective unconscious.

This would probably be why Fort is so interested in the idea of these alien visitors coming to earth and visiting with secret societies, "secret agents, emissaries," and "certain esoteric ones." The secret society -- in other words, the society of secrecy, is just another way of saying "collective unconscious." I'm not saying that there aren't secret societies. Secret societies may be another piece of genuine data. But for Fort, the secret societies seem to be a symbol for the collective unconscious.

But then Fort imagines or encounters the theory that perhaps the "visitors" are here, for instance, to eat us or use our brains for grease. Not to eat "him," but to eat "us." "We," as a collective, are their "property." So Fort has been able to transfer this element of the collective unconscious into something that has collective applications. Once he has done this, these elements become less gargantuan.

The first UFO to appear is simply a "super-dragnet" Fort imagines floating through the sky, fishing for humans, but accidentally catching birds or sky-high fish. The next one is one which appeared, to the people who gave testimony, as something like a hot air balloon with a dragnet attached to it.

These are kind of silly, kind of menacing objects. But they fit into our earth. They don't cause an apocalypse. Because their function has been quantified correctly: they aren't phenomena of the individual unconscious. They are phenomena of the collective unconscious.

Fort soldifies this point of view by developing his theory with two quotes that make the goal of this process one of collective individuation, so to speak, rather than individual individuation:

"All things -- in our intermediate state -- are phantoms in a super-mind in a dreaming-state -- but striving to awaken to realness."

And:

"In a dreaming mind awakening is accelerated -- if phantoms in that mind know that they're only phantoms in a dream."

Again Fort moves through a discussion of visitors to this earth, and their communications with "certain esoteric ones" on this earth, before he gets into an extended discussion of what we would nowadays think of as UFOs.

Interestingly, at the very beginning of his discussion on UFOs, Fort gives two statements regarding the individual versus the collective, in terms of the positive versus the system or versus the Absolute, of which everything is a part.

In the first statement, Fort says that individual success depends on his ability to surrender, to a degree, to the collective. In the next statement, Fort says that a stoutly, resolutely individual person, isolated from the collective, will suffer -- but that this suffering and isolation are, in a way, a kind of success of their own:

"Success, as it is called -- though there is only success-failure in Intermediateness -- will, in Intermediateness, be yours proportionately as you are in adjustment with its own state, or some positivism, mixed with compromise and retreat."

And:

"Intermediatism, then, is recognition that our state is only a quasi-state: it is no bar to one who desires to be positive: it is recognition that he cannot be positive and remain in a state that is positive-negative. Or that a great positivist -- isolated -- with no system to support him -- will be crucified, or will starve to death, or will be put in jail and beaten to death -- that these are the birth-pangs of translation to the Positive Absolute."

My favorite writer, George Bernard Shaw, might say the same thing about Saint Joan.

After the dragnet UFOs, Fort's next in-depth UFO subject are triangular shadows which appear on clouds. These shadows were seen, by the people who gave the testimony, to travel in pairs, and to remain in rather fixed positions on the clouds they traveled with, regardless of the speed of the clouds or the position of the sun. The shadows also retained their distinctive shapes.

Fort asserts that these shadows are actually created by a UFO trailing two triangular appendages along with it. The UFO traveled relatively to the clouds, but the triangular appendages intercepted light and thus threw shadows onto the clouds. The light apprehended actually came from -- the UFO itself. But this central vehicle, as well as the actual appendages themselves couldn't be seen.

Why? Because the light from these objects wasn't reaching the earth. The light from this UFO "extended down only about to the clouds."

Fort asserts that some types of light act as a force. As the atmosphere gets denser, in lower altitudes, the light cannot get through it. The object would be seen from higher altitudes, but not at lower altitudes. Fort says, "Altogether, it may be conceivable that there are phenomena of force that are interpretable as light as far down as the clouds, but not in denser strata of air, or just the opposite of familiar interpretations."

But before Fort makes these conjectures, he equates this UFO with Melanicus, the vampire-devil planet that preceded the near-apocalyptic earthquakes brought on by whole planets entering our atmosphere. Now, Melanicus is not as huge as the moon. Melanicus is able to fit in our atmosphere, without causing catastrophies. But Melanicus can't be seen from ground level.

Nevertheless, Melanicus has approached the sphere of the earth, has entered the earth's consciousness -- even if only as a poltergeist-like, invisible being. Fort has constructed a reverse-theory of light to accommodate Melanicus' appearance. But now Melanicus -- or these elements of the collective unconscious which had been equated with imaginal planets like Melanicus -- will traverse, like the rains of matter, through Fort's imaginary, but conscious, realms of thought.

And here the UFOs take on the appearances of glowing wheels. They can only survive in earth's thin atmosphere for a short time. They've come from a much denser atmosphere -- i.e. the gelatinous areas that float around the earth. Sometimes these gelatinous areas, to Fort, are like dimensional portals. So ships that come through these gelatinous areas and end up in the earth's atmosphere are coming, not from some space in our sky, but from some other dimension.

But, like deep-sea fish brought up to the air, these ships, more accustomed to denser atmospthere, will disintegrate or explode if they're in our air for too long. So they generally dive into water for relief. Once their bodies have re-attained stability, they can fly up into the air again.

Up until this point, Fort has always remarked that conventional scientists were like deep-sea fish, because things from above always hit deep-sea fish on the head, but they never question whether there is another world from which all these things come from. But now these glowing wheels are the deep sea fish -- for a completely different reason. But the metaphor has completely passed from conventional scientists -- i.e. humans in a system -- i.e. the collective -- and into a symbole for the collective unconscious: the glowing wheels.

Fort assumes that these glowing wheels have generally fallen out of their natural atmosphere and into ours by accident, "because of miscalculations, or because of stresses of various kinds." Earlier on, Fort claimed that a lot of the rains of different matter from these gelatinous areas were caused by atmospheric disturbances. So it wouldn't be surprising if atmospheric disturbances also brought down vehicles, too.

Fort has a number of very beautifully described instances of ships encountering these glowing wheels as they travel just below the surface of the water. And he has some rather harrowing descriptions of these ships plunging into the water. But, as far as I remember, the count of these vehicles actually ascending back out of the water and back up into the sky is rather slim.

Fort also relates how the wheels, after descending a certain distance under the water, disappear. Fort says that this is because the light can only penetrate through a certain amount of density. So it's like the lights in the sky: after a certain amount of density, the objects just become invisible.

Later on, Fort describes whole strings of lights in the sky. Among these groupings of lights, Fort describes the following:

"Three luminous objects, of different sizes, the longest having an apparent area of about six suns. When first sighted, they were not very high. They were below clouds of an estimated height of about one mile. -- Different sizes, and of different susceptibilities to all forces of this earth and of the air."

From this I would guess that there is a whole constellation of these elements, surviving at all different atmospheric and marine levels of the earth. However, these objects never appear visible. The objects come to rest in an area of the atmosphere or marine body which is equal with the level of density that conceals the force of their light.

In other words, the various elements of the collective unconscious find their equilibrium points in the atmosphere -- which would stand functionally for the global consciousness. Collective unconscious and global conscious.

However, after describing the wheels, and before describing the strings of lights, Fort describes an encounter with one glowing wheel that has a stragely mandala-like shape.

Normally, in Jungian psychology, a mandala can be thought of as a circle divided into four quadrants. Each quadrant is a type of personality. The way the types of personality are arranged in the mandala show what kind of psychological development issues a personality might be dealing with. Normally the two bottom quadrants symbolize the unconscious elements of the personality, while the two top quadrants symbolize the conscious elements of the personality. And usually each of the four quadrants gets and equal amount of space.

But in the mandala described by the glowing wheel in Fort's data, three of the sections are all shoved to one small edge of the circle, while the fourth section takes up more than three-quarters of the space. In addition, this huge section has a hook-like shape sticking out of it, even piercing through one of the three small sections.

This mandala would express, I believe, the power of this one unconscious element. It's so strong it pierces through the central element of consciousness, and even extends outside of the circle of the mandala. This would be, I would guess, the extreme strength of the collective unconscious.

However, this mandala then develops, through Fort's narrative-manipulation of the data, into an animal like a stringray floating through the sky. But it's not just one animal. It's a whole bunch of these stingray-like animals, which Fort actually describes as round and dark brown. But he also says they have tails. He lists some strange phenomena worth noting:

"Occasionally one fell to the ground. When the place of a fall was examined, there was found a film, which soon dried and vanished. Often, when approaching the sun, three bodies seemed to link together, or were then seen to be linked together, in groups not exceeding eight, and, under the sun, they were seen to have tails three or four fathoms long. Away from the sun the tails were invisible. Whatever their substance may have been, it is described as gelatinous."

Fort later says that "The datum is important to us, here, as an indication of disruption in this earth's atmosphere -- dangers in entering this earth's atmosphere."

Fort is frightened at how his glowing wheels had developed into a rather strong, tailed mandala figure, and then, straightaway, into a whole cluster of apparently living beings, something like copper-colored stingrays.

He quickly turns away, back into the fall of matter from the sky. But, just as quickly, he returns to instances of these animal-like floating beings, with a description from North Wales of "a disk from which projected an orange colored body that looked like 'an elongated flatfish.'"

This description is part of a huge paragraph full of UFO sightings of all kinds. It's pretty magnificent -- there are so many different kinds of UFOs sighted. But I think what's happened here is that, as the collective unconscious becomes more and more able to find its various functions, it is also allowed to individualize -- so that different people can function from different perspectives of the collective unconscios -- or so that one person can function by using different perspectives of the collective unconscious.

As this section ends, Fort theorizes: "It is one of the most deep-rooted of positivist illusions -- that people are persons. ... So we personify no more -- but we super-personify. ... Autocracy of Successive Dominants -- which are not final -- but which approximate higher to individuality or self-ness, than do the human tropisms that irresponsibly correlate to them."

This statement of higher approximation to individuality is followed by Fort's long discussion of torpedo-shaped or cigar-shaped UFOs. It's interesting to note, in conjunction with this seemingly increased development of the different aspects of the collective unconscious, and the progress it's made on making the collective unconscious less of an earth-shattering entity and more of a part of "individuality or self-ness," that these UFOs are often seen by the witnesses to be about six feet long -- or around the size of a human being. This isn't always the case. But it's often so.

This moves into the discussion of the strings of lights in the sky. The discussion of the strings of lights in the sky eventually merge, passing back and forth between rather calm, placid, almost cold imagery, and very hot, explosive imagery. But this whole section ends with a very frightening tale of a railroad operator seeing a UFO in 1896. The interplay, up until this time, between the cold imagery and hot imagery often stirred up feelings of conflict. But this final story is starkly terrifying.

The operator saw, "in the darkness of a heavy rain, a light that appeared to be round, and of a dull rose color." The object "seemed to be about a foot in diameter."

The operator thought the object was "ball-lightning." However:

"His awareness of 'something else' is expressed in other parts of his letters, when he says that he has something to tell that is 'so strange that I should never have mentioned it, even to my friends, had it not been corroborated... so unreal that I hestiated to speak of it, fearing that it was some freak of the imagination."

What this "something else" was is never discussed. But it was obviously distressing to Fort, who basically ends chapter 26 with this story and begins chapter 27 with this quote:

"Our slippery brains.

Showers of blood.

Showers of blood.

Showers of blood."

Fort doesn't get very far in this chapter, in terms of data, beyond showers of blood and more evidence for dragons exploded in space by comets, and their flesh raining down on this planet, or deserts of blood that aviators will someday map.

But Fort does manage to summarize his Super-Geography well in this passage:

"Gelatinous regions, sulphurous regions, frigid and tropical regions: a region that has been the Source of Life relatively to this earth: regions wherein there is density so great that things from there, entering this earth's thin atmosphere, explode."

He also engages on his most ambitious statement on the collective unconscious. In this statement, the very solar system we live in is conscious. The collective unconscious is a universal consciousness. The solar system is just as much a part of our psychic functioning as are our individual conscious and our individual unconscious.

"Rains of blood that vein albuminous seas, or an egg-like composition in the incubation of which this earth is a local center of development -- that there are super-arteries of blood in the Genesistrine: that sunsets are consciousness of them: that they flush the skies with northern lights sometimes: super-embryonic reservoirs from which life-forms emanate --

"Or that our whole solar system is a living thing: that showers of blood upon this earth are its internal hemorrages --"

The final chapter of this book is devoted entirely, except the final paragraph, to a discussion of tracks found in the snow in Devonshire. These tracks were explained away as a number of things -- including a kangaroo that had apparently escaped from a zoo. Some people said the tracks were from a demon.

Fort gave no answer for this. It wouldn't be expected that he would. The aliens have appeared back on his earth. And -- again -- they are invisible. The tracks are "cup-mark" shaped -- which Fort often mentions, not as footprints, but as a method of communication: electric beams shot into rocks, even though these marks appear in the snow. So there's a chance that this chapter is supposed to be a subtle reminder of communications from these regions, as opposed to an actual presence -- which may be what Fort is advocating.

Satanic Nun and Shadowy Guardian -- The Mistress (Part Two)

It struck me as odd, as I read critical works from 1908 and 1932, that the measure of merit for poets was still considered to be the development of courtly speech. I was curious whether the Cambridge History meant that only the merit of Edmund Spenser and the poets of his time was considered, in 1932, to be the development of courtly speech. And I was curious whether T.H. Ward, in his Lives of the English Poets, meant that the development of courtly speech was only the measure of merit for Cowley and the poets of his time. Or did they mean that this was the measure of poets, even in 1908 and 1932?

What the statement really struck me as was an echo of old traditions. Of course, Spenser was judged not to be as successful as he could have been in his poetry, even according to Sir Philip Sidney, because his "rustick" style didn't develop the courtly language well enough.

And, of course, Samuel Johnson said that one of Abraham Cowley's main poetic failings was not developing courtly speech. Johnson often stated that Cowley had no sense of proportion or measure in his poetical metaphors, and that he would as easily compare a noble thing with a base thing as he would compare a noble thing with a noble thing.

The scholars, in following Johnson, I think, have come to assume that all of Cowley's good poetry is terrible, and that all of his bland poetry is good. This is why, in my opinion, scholars of Cowley have come to know Cowley's "Mistress" cycle as a "cold" series of love poems rather than as an explosively hot series of love poems.

The Johnsonian tradition of judging the quality of a poem by how well it maintains morality and proportion has led the scholars to choose as the best of Cowley's poems those that best illustrate his moralizing or proportionalizing tendencies. But in this, Cowley is at his worst and most boring.

It is -- to go back to the theorist who has excited me the most lately -- a lot like what Camille Paglia says about both Coleridge and Spenser. Paglia shows that Spenser had originally given a whole set of stanzas over to basically worshipping a hermaphrodite queen. But Spenser, on his moral side, was frightened by the immoral implications of these stanzas. So he took them out.

Paglia also discusses the very pagan imagery in Coleridge's poem Christabel, which is basically a lesbian vampire romance. But Coleridge couldn't, on his moral side, stand the fact that he'd written a lesbian vampire romance. So he wrote a second part to the poem, moralizing out the frightening aspects of the feminine world he'd created, and, in effect, created a very boring second part to his poem.

If you look at the poems T.H. Ward has collected in the section of his Lives devoted to Cowley's poetry, you will see that Ward was justified, because of his critical beliefs, in choosing what poems he chose, but that he chose poems which, because of their moralizing nature, ended on images of coldness, loneliness, and despair.

In the poems Ward collects, there is a definite movement, through each poem, from the discovery of love, to the encounter with an overly-moralizing father figure. Cowley, consistent with some of his reactions in the "Mistress" cycle, bounces away from this moralizing father figure, and ends up, quite often! -- alone in a quiet universe of distant stars and cold fires.

In the same sense I believe that John Milton, though he seems to me to have been profoundly influenced by Abraham Cowley, has, at least in the metaphors he has taken directly from Cowley, to remove the amoral or immoral aspect of a lot of them. But in doing so, he also manages to send those metaphors into heatless, often even lightless, regions.

In "Il Penseroso" Milton describes the light of Melancholy, the moral champion of the poem. This light shines so brightly that nobody can see it, and that the uneducated take it to be complete darkness. And, again, in Paradise Lost, hell is a land of visible darkness and fires without heat.

I think Milton tried to avoid giving credit to Cowley's influence partly because, as Johnson says, Milton just doesn't like giving anybody credit for anything; but also partly because Milton was afraid (even in his hell) of producing metaphorical images so markedly immoral.

Given all this, what I was expecting to see in the second half of Cowley's "Mistress" cycle was the same kind of development, a kind of permanent turning-away from love and an envelopment in the cold, icy world of morality.

But I found something a lot different. In the second half of this poem cycle, Cowley finally gives over to his anima. He allows his anima to be a woman, though he himself still seems to take pleasure in being a woman as well. So the poems are often still filled with lesbian imagery.

This woman, Cowley's anima, is charged with even more powers of witchcraft than she had been charged with in the first half of the poem. Cowley quite often rages against his anima. He quite often calls her a whore. But he accepts her -- his own personal witch-whore.

The queen's animus is pretty much gone in the second half, though Cowley occasionally refers to him in some of the poems. But now another male figure arises: The Shadow.

In the first half of the poem, the real problem was Cowley being able to accept his anima as being feminine, not masculine. But once he has gotten over the fact of having a feminine anima, he now has to deal with one of the elements of his psychic life which has caused him to put up a defense against allowing the feminine anima into his life: his own masculine shadow.

In Jungian terms, the shadow is the dark side of the self. Usually, when we are conscious, there are parts of us, which, if we realized they were parts of us, and that we even act using these parts of our personality, would disgust us. We would think of them as morally bad. So we hide them from ourselves. They become unconscious. This evil-twin side of ourselves takes on a "shadowy" character.

Cowley's first problem was to accept the feminine side of himself. And the queen's animus, for some reason or another, was able to step in and cooperate with Cowley's own anima in order to make that happen. But how on earth that kind of Mystical Participation ever took place -- in the words of Tootsie Roll, "The world may never know."

In my opinion, the psychological history of Cowley may be something like this: Cowley was born after his father had died. He never got to know his father. And he had his mother all to himself. But the mother may have been a bit emotionally removed from Cowley, though at the same time intending to bring Cowley up so that he could be very successful in life.

Cowley felt like he had his mother all to himself. So on some level, he may not have seen that he, too was actually subject to the Oedipus complex: the desire of a boy to kill his father and have sex with his mother.

He also didn't have to face, in the real world, the natural process of the father "blocking" the son from this desired father-murder and mother-love. There was no father. The Oedipus complex was never "blocked" in real life. So it didn't really have to be faced. It could become the shadow side of Cowley.

However, in external life Cowley actually had to deal with a spiritual Oedipus complex, which was terribly blocked. The father in this complex was inside Cowley's mother. Cowley's mother had a husband-image inside herself, to which she probably, in my opinion, devoted too much reverence and love.

This inner husband-image of Cowley's mother was a far harsher father than a physical father could have been. Not because he more effectively blocked Cowley from his mother in the role of a lover, but because while he blocked Cowley, he didn't provide the additional thing that a physical father would have provided: the channeling of Cowley's sexual energy into the role of a son who will, in the course of time, become a man who will mate with a woman other than his own mother and, in turn, become a father.

So Cowley didn't have to face the Oedipus in himself. And, in fact, the Oedipus within himself was so removed from the activity of his family life, that it seemed to have starved itself to death, to have disappeared altogether. But the Oedipus did, of course, not die. It continued to live. As did Oedipus' father -- the father with which the Oedipus figure within Cowley wished to do battle -- the Laius.

As to who the shadow actually is in this poem cycle, I unfortunately cannot say, at least not at this point. Is it Oedipus? Is it Laius? Is it a combination of both -- both locked away and hence fused together, as many images of psychic opposites are when they are shoved into the unconscious?

At present I'm not totally sure. But the shadow does appear. And so, as Cowley comes to terms with his anima, and that part of his conflict ends (somewhat), and as the "Mistress" cycle ends, a new conflict in Cowley's own psychic life is shown to arise -- the conflict between Cowley and his shadow.

But, I hope, as Cowley's conflict with his anima was a conflict leading to integration, so will be Cowley's conflict with his shadow. However, this conflict and possible integration do not play out in the "Mistress" cycle, as far as I can see.

Below I am going to give a brief summary of each poem in the second half of the cycle. These summaries are along this very particular theme. But the poems of the cycle have a lot of other themes and merits. So this is not a full exploration of the poem cycle.

Also, the passages I quote below are from the collected works of Abraham Cowley. This collection can be found on Google Books.

ECHO -- In the previous poem, Cowley has re-stated that he is devoted to the task of bringing his anima back into his life, as she is.

In this poem, Cowley is in a deep, dark cave. He encounters a nymph there, who is compliant to all his wishes. But she is pale, thin, and blind. She's in a condition, in other words, of underdevelopment.

This matches with what Carl Jung says about the anima, as it begins to be integrated into psychic life. The anima starts out in an underdeveloped, almost larval state, as if it needs to be fed and given strength.

THE RICH RIVAL -- In this poem, Cowley addresses his father figure. Obviously he never felt good enough, through his life, to match his dead father. So he berates his father in his poem, saying that he, too, is good enough to have a female love.

AGAINST HOPE -- Cowley says that hope defeats itself in one of three ways, all the time. Either it is totally disappointed, whereby it becomes despair; or, it vanishes once a hope is fulfilled; or, it becomes disillusionment, when the thing hoped for and attained is found not to be so great after all.

This is Cowley's fantasy about women. He has become so tired of trying to "woo" his mother, and receiving nothing but coldness, that he's afraid to woo any other women. Thus he fantasizes that he never has to. He can just hope for a woman to love him. His hope will keep him constantly distanced from any woman who might inflict the same kind of pain on him that his mother did.

The poem has the lines:

"Leading them still insensibly on,
By the strange witchcraft of 'Anon!'"

I believe that this means "the strange witchcraft of a nun." A nun is a woman in a church full of women with only one physical man in her life: an abstinant priest, and only one man in her heart: the unreachable God. Yet Cowley believes that all women have the same power of magical spells that his mother seems to have. So they all must be witches. His mother is a nun and a witch. And, thus, she practices "the strange witchcraft of a nun."

FOR HOPE -- One would think this poem would have the opposite theme of its predecessor. But it doesn't. Cowley still looks at hope as the distancer. It keeps attainment away, and thus allows Cowley to avoid emotional pain.

Interestingly, in the second line, Cowley calls hope "cheap," the kind of (un)fortuitous usage of words Johnson keeps us on the lookout for. Hope is, really, cheap in Cowley's mind. Distancing from pain isn't worth it.

Again, Cowley tries to justify distancing himself from his love objects by saying that "fruition" (which could also mean the sex act leading to pregnancy, pregnancy itself, or birth) is not as good as hope, since every time a man attains something he's hoped for, he heads out, hoping for something else.

Hope is also described as "manna," which I believe is, for Cowley a word condensing "man" and "mama," in other words, father and mother. Cowley's mother, who should give him that first, syncretistically perceived food of her breast, the "manna," has withheld her own nourishing mother-love, as well as the role she, as bearer of her own animus, would play in nourishing Cowley with father-love.

LOVE'S INGRATITUDE -- Cowley first complains that his anima has filled up his heart again. But he then goes on, as he often does, to change his sex. He becomes not only a woman, but his anima's own mother. In this way he has the ability to nourish his anima back to strength.

"At mine own breast with care I fed thee still,
Letting thee suck thy fill;
Abs daintily I nourished thee
With idle thoughts and poetry! (Very Blakean lines)
What ill returns dost thou allow! --
I fed thee then, and thou dost starve me now!"

One of Cowley's complaints becomes that he had no idea his poetical fancy would lead him into the emotional turmoil of psychological transformation. But "idle thoughts and poetry" though they may seem to be to Cowley, these feedings Cowley has given his animus have all been Rationality, nothing that would help his anima survive. And so she can't possibly feed him in return.

Cowley needs to learn how to feed his anima correctly.

At the end of the poem, Cowley once again consents to let his anima have her place in his psychic life.

THE FRAILTY -- Cowley complains about having to deal with femininity and sexuality, calling it "sordid and low," but understanding that he just has to do it.

COLDNESS -- This poem explains how Cowley's mother was cold and frigid to him as he was young. Not having a father to block his Oedipal passions, he at least had a frigid mother. But, not having a father to teach him how to channel his passions, whenever a loving woman confronts him, he is overwhelmed by the violent tide of his emotions. Thus he fantasizes that he will always love a woman that will keep his rivers frozen.

Nevertheless, Cowley has progressed enough in his work with his anima to realize that he can control himself: a part of his river is actually a diamond, which cannot melt like ice into water, and which will always retain its integrity. Cowley has found the diamond center of his Self. The imperishable. This will give him strength through the rest of his journey.

ENJOYMENT -- Transsexual lesbian landforms, in my opinion. Cowley calls England Albion, a man's name, as far as I know. He then calls Albion a woman. He says the shore of the woman Albion is a white breast. Shores were defined as feminine in the poem "The Return," so Albion's shore is feminine. A masculine woman.

But in this poem, Cowley plays the Ocean, which he names as a man. But Cowley has constantly described "inconstant waves" as feminine. So the Ocean is a feminine man.

The Ocean and the Shore make passionate love with one another. So this is another one of Cowley's lesbian fantasies, strangely transsexualized, and transferred into the image of landforms instead of people.

However, Cowley says that, because of his love for his anima (the feminine Albion), even the "proudest planet" (Mars, I'd guess) could not move his love. Thus Cowley has given over his love for his father-figure and become true to his anima-love instead.

The poem is really full of emotional eroticism, kind of odd. And it has the very interesting line: "I'll kiss thee through, I'll kiss thy very soul."

SLEEP -- Again, Cowley complains that he cannot control the flood of emotions when his loving desires melt from an icy condition. His "flame's so pure that it sends up no smoke." I think this means to say his anima is no longer hidden from him, no longer obscured by smoke or clouds. But the fire, like the sun, is a masculine image. So this kind of confuses me.

Cowley invokes Sleep. He never invoked the Muses, Cupid, or Venus -- but he does "invoke" Sleep, literally. So that should point to what this poem cycle really is.

Cowley calls Sleep (not Death) the great equalizer, and asks him, for the night, to equalize him with his anima -- in other words to make him a woman. He wishes to have lesbian sex with his anima, as he still feels that's the only way she'll accept him, until Love (Cupid) shows Cowley his favor. In other words, Cowley has the anima in him, but is still dealing with the animus-based rejection of his mother. And he's trying to find a male figure in himself who will help him get his anima's approval.

BEAUTY -- Cowley despairs of being loved by his anima, so he calls female love ("beauty") beastly.

Cowley then tries to re-decorate the Bower. But the anima has control over it. So he tries to re-light it, at least, with masculine, Apollonian light, so that he can at least see the feminine Bower in a masculine way.

Cowley thinks of love as being nothing more than anima projection onto a female body:

"Pretending to dwell richly in the eye,
When thou, alas!, dost in the fancy lie."

Cowley also calls the anima a devil and a murderer.

THE PARTING -- This, I believe, is a poem in memory of "The Welcome" and "The Heart Fled Again." Cowley now recognizes that he does need to find a male figure which would have been his father-figure to be a counterpoint for his animus.

Cowley sees himself as parting from his father in the guise of his anima. But he sees himself as a male Sun as well. Cowley imagines that this male figure can help him and his anima create a fully integrated personality in Cowley:

"Thou truly who, in many a propriety,
So truly art the sun to me,
Add one more likeness, which I'm sure you can,
And let me and my sun beget a man."

MY PICTURE -- Another poem from the viewpoint of Cowley's father. (Maybe this and the father of "The Parting" are actually the Queen's animus?)

In this poem, the father gives Cowley a picture of himself. The father says that as Cowley concentrates on the picture, the picture and the father will change places:

"This will the substance, I the shadow be."

Interestingly, the Queen's animus again acts to lessen the fear in Cowley by saying he will be the shadow, while Cowley's shadow will be the benevolent father.

"Ah! be not frighted if you see
The new-soul'd picture gaze on thee."

I love these lines. They remind me of the picture of the dead boy that winks at the other boy in Stephen King's It.

But what's also interesting is the word "soul'd." Cowley often indicates that his anima is a prostitute by saying she's "sold." Here a soul is "soul'd." So Cowley's anima is a prostitute because Cowley still has a hard time discriminating between being "sold" and "soul'd."

There's a little jab at Cowley's inability to integrate his personality in the following stanza:

"But thou who (if I know thee right)
I'th' substance dost not much delight,
Wilt rather send again for me,
Who then shall but thy picture's picture be."

THE CONCEALMENT -- Cowley's passions are still too strong for him, and he fantasizes again of the rejecting mother.

However, Cowley also makes himself a sacrifice to his anima. When his anima opens Cowley up, she finds he's breathed out his heart. Of course he has! She's his heart!

But Cowley believes his anima, who he still sees as a rejecting mother, will take pity on Cowley, and that she:

"Shall grace my funerals with this truth;
' 'Twas only Love destroy'd the gentle youth!'"

Again, Cowley sees not the anima as the missing ingredient now -- she just engaged in a big ritual sex-murder fantasy with him. Cowley now sees the missing ingredient to be the Love (Cupid). Love in Cowley's mother's heart destoy'd the youth Cowley. Now Cowley needs to find a new Love to share love with his anima. This would be the shadow, I'd guess.

THE MONOPOLY -- Cupid has his very forge in Cowley's heart. Cowley stops calling Love Love and starts calling him Cupid. Love, in my opinion, now starts showing up in these poems as -- Venus: the anima. But Cupid, here, finally has his name spoken.

"Ah cruel God! and why gave you to me
This cursed monopoly?"

Monopoly is, I think, here, a synthesis of "man," "mom," "monarchy," and "polis."

Cowley complains that if he were Cupid, he'd really sink his dart into a girl. But his Cupid doesn't allow him to do anything except get girls faintly interested in a woman and then run off. Cupid doesn't kill women, like he did Cowley, i.e. in the previous poem:

"Curse on thy goodness, whom we find
Civil to none but womankind!"

Cowley still thinks of the animus in his mother as rejecting. And Cowley thinks the only way to find real love is to be a woman. Hence all the lesbian fantasies (which are hot anway, so thank goodness for them):

"Thy broken arrows 'twixt tha sex and ours
So unjustly are distributed
They take thy feathers, we the head."

THE DISTANCE -- This poem is a reference to the Queen, who Cowley may have thought of as a mother. But it's also a reference to Cowley's process of transformation. Distance would seem to refer to the father again. But I don't think it does in this case.

THE INCREASE -- This is an encouraging poem, in contrast to the previous one, where Cowley seemed exhausted and in despair. Now he says he's willing to continue his process of transformation

"A real cause at first did move;
But mine own fancy now drives on my love
With shadows from itself that flow."

I'd assume the shadow is another reference to the shadow, the Jungian shadow, which is the next part that Cowley is trying to integrate into his personality.

"All violent motions short do prove;
But by the length 'tis plain to see
That Love's a motion natural to me."

I can't say for sure whether this is Love as Cupid or Venus or both. I'm guessing it's Venus, since Cowley's anima is now integrating with him, so that her motions are becoming natural to Cowley.

LOVE'S VISIBILITY -- Love, here as Cupid, is accepted like the anima as nymph had done in the cave. Cowley complains he has tried to hide his Cupid, in this case his shadow, from the outside world. But while his shadow has remained unconscious to him, the people around him have seen it -- often making Cowley look like a fool!

"Love's of a strangely open, simple kind,
Can no arts or disguises find,
But thinks none sees it cause itself is blind."

LOOKING ON, AND DISCOURSING WITH, HIS MISTRESS -- Cowley despairs that he'll never find the animus which will allow him to manage the passions of his anima, and that he will have to keep his passions frozen.

"They then sit down and weep in vain,
And there in darkness and despair remain."

RESOLVED TO LOVE -- I'd assumed this poem would be like the "Resolved To Be Beloved" poem in the first half, and mention the compass needle and big North Pole. But it was more like the conversation with the old man in "The Soul," which I have concluding the first half of the cycle.

In this poem however, it's not the transmigration of souls that baffles the wise men, but the emotional power of love. The wise men don't understand love's pain. But the wisest man (Solomon, I'm guessing?) did. So Cowley feels okay.

MY FATE -- Now the compass needle and pole appear!

"Go bid the needle his fair North forsake."

Cowley has forsaken the quest for an animus that would replace the rejecting mother. He has accepted the anima as she is. But he is still searching for her counterpart, the shadow.

Nevertheless, Cowley has accepted his anima as one of his guiding powers on his quest, even so that his superstition regarding father figures no longer frightens him so much, as shown here:

"You, who men's fortunes in their faces read,
To find out mine, look not, alas!, on me;
But mark her face, and all the features heed;
For only there is writ my destiny."

And here:

"If thou find there kind and propitious rays,
What Mars and Saturn threaten I'll not fear."

Mars is the god of war (and the husband of Venus?). Saturn is the father who ate his children.

THE HEART BREAKING -- This may sound like romance. But I think it's demon possession. Cowley is not feeling the passions of Venus here, but the passions of his personal Cupid, his shadow.

So far, the shadows have flowed through Cowley. In a later poem, we'll see that Cowley calls his shadows Legion -- the thousands of Devils that possess a man. Cowley here in fact says that many Loves (in this case, many Cupids) rule him, changing his inner life from a British Monarchy to a Greek Tyranny. This makes sense. Cupid's "forge" does sound a bit Hephaestian.

THE USURPATION -- On a number of occasions in the first half of the poem, Cowley's anima overwhelmed him. Now it seems that the shadow is overwhelming Cowley. I don't know if Cowley thinks this is actually his anima doing this to him, though. But I'm pretty sure it's the shadow, not the anima. But since the effect, a feeling of enslavement, seems to follow on Cowley's having accepted the anima, Cowley must blame this all on the anima, for now, not quite able to see the shadow.

"I was mine own, and free,
Till I had giv'n myself to thee;
But thou hast kept me slave and prisoner since."

Cowley sees the shadow as a dragon, which he must slay in order to rescue the anima, as seen here:

"Thy presence, like the crowned basilisk's breath,
All other serpents puts to death."

And here:

"Alas, alas! I hope in vain
My conquered soul from out thine hands to gain."

MAIDENHEAD -- Cowley complains that before he'd accepted his anima, she'd been frozen, like a hymen protecting her chastity and Cowley's burning desires. But now Cowley had let his anima live more freely, she's brought forth shadow dragons to attack her!

"Yet barren quite, didst thou not bring
Monsters and serpents forth thyself to sting!"

Cowley still equates his shadow with his anima, and thus transforms his anima into a kind of hermaphroditic uroboros.

But Cowley sees that his nun-witch anima is actually prisoner to the shadow:

"Thou that bewitchest men whilst thou dost dwell
Like a close conjurer in his cell."

Here's an interesting quote, where Cowley complains that he had to give up his father figure to gain his anima, but that he now has to deal with a Confused Mass of shadow figures. The thing lost is Cowley's father, whom Cowley's mother couldn't keep alive.

"Thou thing of subtle, slippery kind,
Which women lose, and yet no man can find!"

Cowley, however, will fight to find his shadow.

"Although I think thou never found wilt be,
Yet I'm resolved to search for thee."

Here the shadow takes on a human form, as guardian (Laius, in this strange kind of Laius-Oedipus configuration). The image reminds me of the Vermeer painting where the woman is sleeping while the shadowy man stands in the doorway.

"Say what thou wilt, chastity is no more
Thee, than a porter in his door."

IMPOSSIBILITIES -- Cowley feels certain he will win this fight and integrate his personality. But he still seems a little ambivalent about the passions his anima inspires in him, and he still seems to wish for distance.

"True lovers are by Fortune oft envied;
Oft earth and hell against them strive;
But Providence engages on their side,
And a good end at last does give;
At last, jusf men and lovers always thrive."

And here:

"Such seas betwixt us easily conquer'd are;
But, gentle maid! do not deny
To let thy beams shine on me from afar."

SILENCE -- Cowley feels that by accepting his anima, he has allowed her vaginal opening to allow demons, or shadows, to flow or be born into his life.

Cowley considers closing up this vagina, so that no more demons can be born. But he resolves not to do so. In fact, he believes that:

"It will ne'er heal; my love will never die,
Though it should speechless lie."

A fact Cowley already knows all too well.

THE DISSEMBLER -- Cowley calls Cupid, his shadow, the Devil:

"But now I feel thy mighty evil:
Alas! there's no fooling with the devil."

Cowley reflects on this whole transformative process being the result of his having challenged Cupid with Medean curses at the beginning of the "Mistress" cycle. It was all just a joke, just fancy, he says. But, boy, is he ever paying for it now!

Cowley feels like all this work has dulled and dampened his poetic life. Characteristic of depression. But his art has become something more than he'd intended:

"The play at last a truth does grow."

THE INCONSTANT -- The shadow is presented as Cupid, and Cupid as Legion:

"Love, thou'rt a devil, if I may call thee one;
For sure in me thy name is Legion."

Cowley compares himself to a honeybee returning home with no honey. He's still a drone for the Queen.

Cowley also reflects on his mother's rejection blasting his passions to tinders. Now, any small passion will burst into flames of excitement for Cowley. And this is obviously what he's trying to cure in himself.

THE CONSTANT -- Cowley remains committed to keeping his anima alive, as she is.

HER NAME -- This poem says "Her Name." But I think it's really about the shadow. Nevertheless, I'm confused by it. So I won't guess. Here are two interesting lines:

"With more than Jewish reverence as yet
Do I the sacred name reveal."

But, if memory serves me right, the Jewish reverence doesn't conceal the name of Lilith. It conceals the name of God, the male. In other words Cowley's shadow. But this time Cowleys shadow is God, not the Devil. Perhaps Cowley has managed to identify the shadow negatively and thus separate him in his mind from the anima. But now that he can also identify the shadow positively, he has a hard time, all over again, separating the shadow from the anima.

WEEPING -- Cowley addresses a "charming maid," who is weeping. The maid is probably the anima, less enslaved to the shadow, but still in a subdued position. However, Cowley warns the maid off fro weeping, lest Sorrow think she's so beautful doing so that she comes and possesses the maid.

Cowley seems to be identifying the shadow with a woman, as he'd previously identified the anima with a man. I think this makes sense of the "sunshine and rain together." The maid is bright. Her crying is wet. It's like the sun shining behind the clouds. Previously that signified the anima possessing Cowley's masculine conception of her. Now I think the reality of the shadow is attempting to shine out from the anima.

DISCRETION -- Cowley commits himself to his anima.

THE WAITING MAID -- Cowley seems to be attempting to separate the positive side of his shadow from his anima. Legion has become a choir of angels. But they still seem to be embodied in the anima. The anima, still bound to the shadow, is seen as a maid. But she wants to be a mistress. Cowley wishes to comply, and he's trying to figure out how to do so.

"The minist'ring angels none can see;
'Tis not their beauty or face,
For which by men they worshipp'd be;
But their high office, and their place;
Thou art my Goddess, my Saint she;
I pray to her, only to pray to thee."

COUNSEL -- Cowley has healed to the degree that his passions are no longer small kindling. They have the ability to be strong, and thus, I would assume, constant.

Interestingly, the previous "Counsel" was a poem on assuaging grief through the tongue. In this case, "Counsel" is denied. Cowley is not in grief. He is determined in his passions. And counsel against his passion will only make him more passionate.

THE CURE -- Cowley makes himself, apparently, the sacrifice of a male witch: a doctor. Cowley wishes to be cured of his love, but not by healing up and closing his anima's vagina, as in "Silence," but by being tortured and gouged all over again!

THE SEPARATION -- Cowley wishes to separate his shadow from his anima. But his anima, as his beloved, is still identified with his mother. Cowley's mother's animus was very strong. Cowley still seems to be dealing with trying to reclaim some of his shadow from whatever portion of it (probably the Laius portion in Cowley's strange Laius-Oedipus configuration) he's lost.

But Cowley thinks this separation means a separation from the anima. If he separates the anima from what's in the anima, he'll lose what the anima loves. Is this the only part of Cowley that the anima loves? And if it leaves, will the anima stop loving Cowley? Is it only able to love Cowley while the love is internalized in this way?

These are the questions Cowley ponders. He ends by imagining this aspect of his shadow hovering around his (actually his anima's) grave. This is what Cowley fears: a return of silence to the anima.

THE TREE -- A Satanic reversal of the crucifixion of Christ. Cowley goes back to the bower, which the anima possesses. He carves the sacred name of his shadow in the tree. The poisonous passion of the shadow's name actually manages to burn down the tree! Cowley says, "Love, I see now, a kind of witchcraft is."

The shadow has managed to free itself of the anima. Identification with the anima would now only kill the anima. In other words, Cowley feared that if the shadow was completely individuated from the anima, the anima would be silent and dead. Instead, Cupid shows Cowley that unless he is free of the anima, he can't integrate into Cowley's personality alongside the anima.

HER UNBELIEF -- Cowley says his mistress is blind to his shows of love. He offers her smoky sacrifices, as if to a deity. But she won't take them.

I'd guess the smoky sacrifices -- the smoke itself -- is the shadow, which Cowley is now trying to put back inside of the anima. But she won't take it! So Cowley is conflicted.

I think Cowley's real conflict here is a fear. His previous encounters with the negative side of the shadow were scary enough. Now the positive shadow wants to emerge. But this is what thwarted Cowley's relationship with his mother in the first place. This seems a lot scarier than beating up dragons. Wouldn't it be nicer to keep the shadow inside the anima?

THE GAZERS -- Cowley tells the mistress to stop being a statue. I think the statue portion of the anima comes from the positive shadow remaining in the anima for too long.

The poem is mainly, though, about physical love between a man and a woman. Cowley is trying to beckon his mistress away, so they can make love, as a man and a woman. That's a pretty big step, for Cowley. He says that love dead as an infant is better than love living in constant childhood. Which means he wants to grow up.

Cowley actually, then is performing a magic spell to remove the shadow from the anima altogether. The anima is no longer a statue. She is a woman.

THE INCURABLE -- The poem "The Cure" was to a male witch, a doctor, whom Cowley charged with giving him a sex-change. Cowley was hoping that masculine, conscious Reason could make a substitute for femininity. In this way, Cowley wouldn't have had to face his task, which was to separated the positive side of his shadow from his anima.

But Cowley now realizes his error. He knows that to act only with the reason of the wise-men (who constantly show up befuddled throughout the "Mistress" cycle!) is to act blindly. So Cowley must face his fears and allow his shadow and anima to live side by side, not merged.

HONOUR -- So who does Cowley meet in this poem? His shadow -- as Honor! Butr Honor doesn't wish to leave the anima. And it appears the anima (as Io?) has to fight to rid herself of the shadow. The anima might actually be the burning town into which the victorius fighter (Io?) enters.

I'm not sure if Io is the Io I'm thinking of, or if I've even identified the Io in my head correctly. I'm thinking of the woman cursed by Hera for loving Zeus, who was then chased to the ends of the earth by a gadfly that drove her crazy.

The fact is, if this is the correct Io, my theory would be that Cowley, having finally decided to dis-identify his positive shadow from his anima, cannot do so as a man. He seems to need to wear the guise of a woman to do things for the first time a lot of times. So Cowley takes on the guise of Io, a woman persecuted by the mother-god with a gadfly.

If the mother-god is Cowley's mother, and the gadfly the shadow, it would be easy to see how the anima could identify with Io. Then Cowley would fight for the anima as the anima (fighting for lesbian love). And he would fight to take the shadow out of the anima's castle.

This is interesting. First, the shadow is seen as a serpent. That's the negative side. Cowley has to remove that from the anima. Now the positive shadow is a male warrior, Honor. It's a development of the shadow's own personality. Also, where the negative shadow had been keeping the anima prisoner, the anima, as city walls, is now holding the positive shadow against her will.

THE INNOCENT ILL -- The positive shadow, as Saint, is now out of the anima. But this seems to disgust Cowley with the anima again, and he says how she holds a brothel in the hearts of all men!

DIALOGUE -- I think this answers Cowley's disgust. Without Honor habored inside the anima, Cowley is unsure of the anima's honor. In this "romantic" dialogue, the anima asks Cowley:

"What have we done? What cruel passion mov'd thee,
Thus to ruin her that lov'd thee?"

Cowley's anima answers her own question -- she isn't ruin'd. She has no Honor, but she is still honorable:

"Curse on thine arts! methinks I hate thee now.
And yet I'm sure I love thee, too."

Interestingly, Cowley has, right here, chosen to create a dialogue between himself and his mistress. The fact of this is, I feel, clear evidence that Cowley has been attempting at, and has finally attained, the liberation of his anima.

VERSES LOST UPON A WAGER -- Cowley "moralizes" on his struggle, which has now, for the present, seemed to have concluded. He says that reason is no guide in the feminine world of the anima, and that poetry is no guide either:

"If Nature gave me power to write in verse,
She gave it me thy praises to rehearse."

BATHING IN A RIVER -- Cowley's strange marriage poem to the anima. She shines like the light of the moon and attracts fish. She would apparently be ithyphallic. But I think what's really happening is that the anima is the only light. The fish are the shadow. Now that they are separate from the anima they need to integrate into the shadow again, and then integrate into Cowley's own personality.

LOVE GIVEN OVER -- I believe Cowley is done for now. I think he hopes he's done for good. The thought of having to integrate a whole other psychic element into his personality seems like way too much! And he fantasizes that he won't have to do it again:

"But death and love are never found
To give a second wound."

Oh, they don't, do they? Well, let's give Cowley the rest he deserves. His efforts have gotten him quite far.