Robert Crumb illustrates the Book of Genesis, and It Rules

 

The Book of Genesis Illustrated – R. Crumb (2010)

 

            I was gifted this amazing book by my brother.  As a life-long fan of Robert Crumb and the big-butt, thick-legged femeninas he obsessively drew and lusted over, I wondered how his obsessive drawing style would lend itself to the stories contained within the Bible’s Book of Genesis.  As with any genius artist, the results are more enjoyable than the actual source material.

            The Book of Genesis is, like the rest of the Bible, a composite.  The stories told within it are drawn from so many ancient sources that the words of Genesis constantly contradict or negate each other.  For example, Genesis tells two different stories about the origin of the world.  In one, god created everything all at once, and seeing it good, created man to rule it all.  In the other version, told right after, god creates the universe bit by bit, day by day, until finally creating man on the 6^th day, and resting on the 7^th.  This contradiction is never explained by the devout, who parrot the Bible as a holy book directly transcribed from the mind of god, infallible in all ways.  These people are idiots, seeking to turn everyone else into the mindless drones they themselves have become. (To read a review of Isaac Asimov’s Guide to the Bible, where he discusses the many source materials for the sections of the Bible, click here: https://rxttbooks.blogspot.com/2014/09/isaac-asimov-tackles-biggest-book-there.html )

            Robert Crumb is a very interesting person to undertake this difficult task.  He was born to a Catholic household, but never sought religion or spirituality after his youth.  In fact, as a devout teenager, his father admitted that the Catholicism he raised the Crumb family under was a lie, and that he was an atheist all along, just pretending at religion.  Robert Crumb’s involvement in the underground comic books of the 1960’s helped make him a seminal figure in the alternative media world.  Nothing in his work of that period showed a predilection toward Bible subjects.

            One of Crumb’s collaborations, the many issues of American Splendor he drew for Harvey Pekar, pointed the way to how his art could serve the needs of a narrative structure.  Harvey Pekar’s work consisted of vignettes, detached scenes of his everyday life.  Crumb drew these scenes in his inimitable crosshatch, but without any of the sensational or outrageous imagery commonly associated with ZAP or WEIRDO comics.  It is this method he employs for the book of Genesis.

            What a beautiful book it is.  Each page, each panel, is carefully structured and drawn, allowing for maximum storytelling.  Crumb draws everything, even the preternaturally dull sections of Genesis listing endless “begets.”  His art does not editorialize.  It does not seek to magnify or diminish the words of Genesis, merely to portray them in a straight-forward manner.  As a life-long fan of the Illustrated Classics comic book series, I felt right at home ingesting the first chapter of the Bible in comic book format.  Those Illustrated Classics were my first exposure to Moby Dick, Robinson Crusoe, Robin Hood, and many other works of literature.  I can imagine this great book serving the same purpose for anyone interested in actually reading the Bible, instead of analyzing it for divine proclamations.  I also see it as a great stepping stone for other comic book artists to explore the canon of classic literature.  Robert Crumb has always kept himself at the leading edge of sequential storytelling art.  We are better off for it.

(The Book of Genesis Illustrated can be purchased here: https://wwnorton.com/books/The-Book-of-Genesis-Illustrated-by-R-Crumb/ )

 

What Exactly Did the Ancient Mystics Experience, and Why?

The Cult of the Seer in the Ancient Middle East: A Contribution to Current Research on Hallucinations Drawn from Coptic and Other Texts – Violet MacDermot (1971)

            Sometimes I find myself drawn to read a reference work.  I really love reference materials, as they gather and explore a large amount of data into one cohesive book.  I have always enjoyed pouring information into my grey matter and seeing the connections made therein.  Having read quite a few books in the past two years dealing with the rise of worship, the human need for ritual, the neurophysiology of the human brain and how it affects what is called the mystical, and the development of mythology and the mythological basis for all of our religious belief systems, I figured that this book was indeed for me.  In this masterwork, Violet MacDermot has gathered together writings from the Egyptians, the Coptic Christians, the Gnostic Christians and the Hebrews, and seeks to understand the means by which these people enabled, experienced, and interpreted mystic visions/hallucinations.  It is an exhaustive book, and well worth going back to as a reference source.

            A book of this scope has many themes to explore.  One of the main ones is the change in mystical visions from the time of the Egyptian ascetics to the Hellenic/Greek times, to that of the early Hebrew mystics and then the Christian saints and martyr seers.  It explores the details of the ritual, religious life of an Egyptian believer, and then details how this differed from the life of the hermit mystic.  During and before the time of the Egyptian kingdoms, the role of ritual and religion was to help the individual understand their place in the larger scheme of things.  This included the general understanding that the divine was to be found in all things, both living and inanimate, and that to serve the greater community was the utmost goal.  The individual themselves is not of primal importance.  They are just a cog in the greater machine.  The gods depended upon the people’s rituals to ensure their endless cycles of birth, death, and rebirth.  Without strict regulations on rituals and religious services, the whole fabric of human society would have crumbled (in their eyes), and the legitimacy of their divine rulers (kings or pharaohs) would be devalued.  MacDermot provides countless examples translated from original source materials to show that the Egyptian devout felt their participation integral to the orderliness of the world around them.  The mystics at this time would do everything the opposite of what was expected from society.  They would remove themselves from the towns and cities, living alone in the deserts.  They would avoid the ritual prayers and ceremonies of the regular folk, and instead focus their whole energies into meditation, fasting, and the attempt to have the soul be rid completely of the trappings of the normal Egyptian world.  Because of this they found divinity in themselves, the full realization of it coming only very near death, as one lets go of this world and the soul moves onto the next.  Instead of ensuring proper mummification so that their body would be reunited with their soul in the afterlife, they sought a total wasting away, allowing their soul to unify with the divine and avoid the endless repetition of birth/death/rebirth.  This would prove to be very influential to the Hellenic, Hebrew, and Christian mystics who came after them.

            It seems that every new culture strives to erase the ideas of the past, or at least refute them.  The Greek philosophers did not agree with the Egyptian mystics.  They saw the world as a quite different place, and their mystical visions changed accordingly.  Many of them came to believe that the material world was one of pure degradation, always rotting, always in a state of decline, and that the spiritual world, the world of ideal forms and of the spirit, was one of perfection.  The Hellenic mystics would use many of the same techniques as the Egyptian mystics to bring about ecstatic visions.  Everything from fasting, to physical deprivation, to ritual dance, to chanting, to a secluded desert hermit life was utilized.  Their end goals were different though.  They did not come from a society that demanded everyone adhere to a specific set of ritual. Instead, they lived in a world where the philosophers told them that the divine/ideal was to be reached through pure thought, through philosophy, as it were.  They would meditate on the ideal, seeking to eliminate all thought of the base natural world from their minds.  Even though their aims were different, the visions described and experiences claimed were very similar to those of their predecessors in Egypt.  This continues on through the Hebrew and the early Christian mystical tradition.

            After the Egyptians and the Greeks, the mystics of the Hebrew and the early Christian faith were a bit different.  They did not see the world as divinity manifested (Egyptian) or as a shadow of the divine (Greeks), but instead they saw a strict duality of good versus evil.  Many tended to believe in the Manichean thought that the natural world is a wholly evil construct, one in which the body is purely a prison for the divine soul.  Because of this, any and all human activity was derided as either evil, or drawn from evil.  Of course, these activities were merely the residue of the earlier ages of religious thought.  Sex was evil, where before it was a personal experience of divinity.  Orgiastic feasts were evil, where before they allowed the community to share in the bounty that divinity had provided on the Earth.  To the mystic seers even the idea of organized religion was an evil, created on Earth to draw humans away from the truly divine, which could only be achieved by the total obliteration of the self, both physical and mental.  It really is insane how humanity creates its gods and means of worship, and then rails against it at a later time, only to then destroy and rail against the latest religious ideas.  

For modern Americans, a nice view from the balcony can be an ecstatic experience.

             If anything, books such as these that aggregate the religious literature over thousands of years and dozens of cultures go to show the deep schizophrenia that exists in the human mind when it is forced to believe something that is essentially a fairy tale explanation for the way the world appears to us.  Mystics to this day continue on with these self-mortification practices, starving themselves, ingesting hallucinogenic substances, enduring endless pain and discomfort, and separating themselves from the society at large, all to attempt to commune with a non-existent divinity.  So many people have died and suffered at the hands of those that believe their rituals are the true ones, and that any others must be stopped at any cost.  Currently there is a war going on in Islam, between different cults, each claiming they are the one true way to salvation and the divine.  The same thing goes on in Christianity, as the orthodox and the charismatic Pentecostals fight it out in the court of public opinion, as well as in our legislatures.  No one talks about this.  It is a hard subject to broach.  The more one learns about humanity’s religious history, the more one sees how it is all a very carefully constructed house of cards, ready to fall down at any moment, but taking up vast amounts of resources and time from millions of blindly faithful people that could be better served in the betterment of humanity at large.

            The best part of this book consists of the translations of source materials that Ms. MacDermot has gathered up.  It is quite amazing to see the literal plagiarism used to prop up the stories about saints and martyrs and mystics.  The people who wrote about the Christian martyrs used the writings about Hellenic mystics as source material, copying nearly every detail.  The Hellenic mystery cult writers did the same thing with the writings of the Egyptians.  So many things are accepted at face value because some learned wise man wrote it down thousands of years ago.  It is ridiculous.  Every new religion has to usurp the rituals and holidays of the ones that came before it, and by doing so, usually turn out to employ the exact same means that were deemed blasphemous or heretic.  The very early Christians followed the rules Jesus gave very strictly.  Jesus said to leave your family, to avoid sex, to not worship idols, to avoid working, to basically stop taking part in society and society’s rituals.  The Christian church however, created “sacraments” to ensure that the masses would still take care of their familial obligations, would still marry and have many children, would still pray to images of saints and martyrs, would still find employment to pay the 10% tithe required by the church, and would continue in their yearly rituals, disguised as Christian holidays (Easter = Ishtar, Christian Saint Feast days replacing those of previous religions, etc.).  In other words, the Church forced its followers to adhere to the very same things that their namesake, Jesus Christ, instructed them to avoid.  If that does not let you know it is all a crock of shit, then perhaps you should read this book and start the exploration for yourself.

(This book is out of print but can be purchased used here: AMAZON  )

Asimov explores the historical aspects of the New Testament like no one else

Isaac Asimov’s Guide to the Bible: New Testament – Isaac Asimov (1962)

            I read and reviewed the first volume of this great book, covering the Old Testament, and was amazed by the vast data contained within.  I had long been aware that the Bible as we know it is a collection of writings of many types, including poetic allegory, letters to various congregations, tribal history, collections of prayers, etc.  Reading about the Old Testament in volume one helped shine a light on the tribal history aspects of the Old Testament.  In it Asimov describes the meaning behind the many names and places found in the writings, as well as providing historical perspective which helped me to understand the political currents that underlie much of Jewish history.

            Having been raised in the church, and having attended countless hours of Sunday school, this Asimov book not only resonates with its information but it provides the answers to questions I would voice in my youth but whose answers the teachers never knew.  Countless books have been written exploring every minute aspect of the theology and spirituality.  Asimov, a non-practicing Jew by heritage and an atheist by decision, does not go into the mystical or miraculous stories presented in the New Testament, but instead focuses on what has been termed the “historical Jesus.”  Reading through the Gospels, researchers and historians have found two different stories being told.  One is the story of a historical person, called Jesus, who as a learned rabbi taught new lessons to the Jews and was crucified for what they perceived as heresy.  This is the figure that Asimov explores as he travels through the Middle East preaching and gaining followers.

            It is amazing to think that, of all the religions that humans have created to worship their gods, there have been very few that are considered “world” religions.  Most religions are exclusive by nature, and they serve a specific subset of humans.  Judaism is a religion whose god has made a covenant with them as the “chosen people.”  In fact, most religions before the age of Buddha were specifically tribal and the gods were seen to support one human group while fighting with the gods of other human groups for dominance.  Buddhism was the first religion that succeeded in being a world religion, a religion that anyone from any tribe or any ethnicity could join and belong to.  Christianity was the second great “world” religion, which was originally intended solely for other Jews, but which, either through the actions of Jesus himself, or his early disciples, spread to accept any and all “Gentiles.”  A gentile was any non-Jewish human, but in the times of Jesus was usually taken to mean either those Hellenic Jews that had adopted Greek customs or Greeks and Romans that had adopted Jewish customs.  Most gentiles were not circumcised as Jews were and this was a large point of contention among the early apostles.  The more orthodox among them saw circumcision as crucial to becoming a Christian, since it was the original sign of the covenant between Jews and God.  The apostles that won out however, taught that Jesus brought a new covenant, replacing all old ones, and that the covenant was for any and all who wished to join.

            There is a lot of historical speculation as to whether Buddhist teachings made it all the way to the Middle East by Jesus’ time, for there is a lot of circumstantial evidence that Jesus was aware of the Buddhist teachings, and shared them in his own teachings.  It would make a lot of sense if this was the case, but the fact is that a lot of Jesus’ teachings are mirrored in many other religions theology.  What seemed to be different with Christianity is that Jesus was seen as a redeemer of all humanity.  This has allowed Christianity to spread worldwide, first taking over the Roman Empire itself within 400 years of Jesus’ birth. 

            One of the coolest parts of Asimov’s book is that he is such a widely read human being. He brings details and knowledge from very disparate sources to bear on his work.  I cannot imagine how much he must have read to compile the information found within his Guide to the Bible.  I highly recommend this book for anyone who has a general knowledge of the Bible but wishes to understand the historical grounding for the tales found within.  Asimov does not discuss anything miraculous, nor does he explore the theology behind the writing.  He thinks that has been covered by countless people already.  What he does give you is like a behind-the-scenes exploration which illuminates and educates.  Asimov is highly readable and never lords his massive intelligence over the reader.  He comes off like someone who was so interested in a subject that he researched it profoundly and wants to share the aggregated knowledge the discovered.  To a nerd like me, it is pure gold.  I wish that churches would teach this book along with the actual Bible to better educate people about the kingdoms, times, and people described within.

(To read this book in PDF format, click here: https://archive.org/download/AsimovsGuideToTheBibleTheOldAndNewTestaments2Vols.IsaacAsimov/Asimov's%20Guide%20to%20the%20Bible_%20The%20Old%20and%20New%20Testaments%20(2%20Vols.)%20-%20Isaac%20Asimov.pdf)

(This book can be purchased here:  AMAZON  )

 

Philip K. Dick, a Mystic for our Modern Times.

The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick – Philip K. Dick (2011)

As a life-long science fiction reader, and avid follower of the nuttier, “fringe” sci-fi writers, I would hear the name of Philip K. Dick (PKD) spoken of in reverential tones.  He had died in 1982, soon after my family moved to the USA from Puerto Rico, and did not actually penetrate the mainstream culture until years later.  Because of that I did not get around to reading any of his works until I was in college, in the early 90’s.  At that time I had the good fortune of knowing other freaks who liked freaky books, and I began my dive into the world of Philip K. Dick.

It was easy to see why so many people idolized his work.  It was deeply inventive, highly cynical, and overflowing with insights and questions about topics which the standard sci-fi fare never bothered to analyze. PKD explored ideas about consciousness, what makes a person real, what makes thoughts real, what is the difference between thought and reality, and what can we truly know about the world around us when we have to filter it all through a very imperfect instrument (the human brain).  This was perfect for the Gen-X nihilists that found in PKD a sort of cultural prophet.  Here was a writer asking very deep and esoteric questions about the human experience without relying on the standard answers otherwise provided by religion, politics, and society at large.  He was a weirdo’s weirdo.  If Kurt Vonnegut was the caustic, depressed but funny grandfather of Gen X, then PKD was its warped, wasted, ranting uncle, disrupting all family gatherings with his inability to go along with the bullshit.

In-between February and March of 1974, PKD experienced a neurological/spiritual/pharmacological event that changed the course of his life from then until his death 8 years later. In one of the simpler re-tellings of this story, PKD went to his front door to answer a knock, encountered what would be described now as a “goth” girl standing there delivering something.  He fixated on her “Jesus fish” necklace and when he asked about it, she touched it and at that moment a pink laser light filled his whole sensory world.  This “light” spoke to PKD, shared inconceivably vast amounts of data in the forms of a sickeningly fast sequence of images flashed into his brain, and in every single respect scrambled him up pretty bad.  This experience, and several other similar ones that continued for the next 2 months or so, became the sole focus of his internal life until his death.

For a human being wired to instantly analyze and explore any new idea that came into his head, this event proved to be too much.  In the course of the next 8 years, PKD would repeatedly and exhaustively explore the event, the “knowledge” that was imbued in him, and the changes that this event brought to his mind in every way that a man like PKD could think of.  He analyzes it in letters to friends.  He discusses it from every possible angle.  He finds an answer, that answer is then negated, and another answer is found, eventually leading him to what is a maze of metaphysical thought.  PKD would sleep very little as he stayed up night after night, ingesting massive amounts of amphetamines in an attempt to stay awake and process what he experienced.  This led to over 8,000 mostly hand-written pages exploring the event of 2-3-1974.  (PKD always named the event 2-3-1974 as it happened between Feb-Mar of that year)

The human mind can explore a subject so deeply, that it becomes hard to tell if what is being thought is of any use.  It can quickly devolve into vicious logic circles.  For example, at one point PKD thinks that what happened must have been the “soul” of a former friend, a Reverend Pike, who came back to impart knowledge to PKD.  This is explored for possible correlations until PKD realizes that even though Reverend Pike knew Latin (some of the messages “beamed” into PKD were in Latin, a language that PKD never knew), he never knew ancient Greek, and some of the “messages” PKD received were in ancient Coptic Greek.  This led him to thinking that perhaps he had somehow connected with a re-incarnated Greek deity who had also happened to have incarnated as his friend Rev. Pike.  It goes on and on.  PKD, no matter how he turns the problem around in his head, cannot come to a satisfactory answer.

Thank goodness some of PKD’s loyal fans and editors got around to working on those 8,000+ pages.  The Exegesis contains around 900 pages and it is hard to imagine how much more recursive and self-referential the other 7,100 pages must be like.  PKD was a man who loved to learn for learning’s sake, and because of this his head was as full as any library.  He brought all of his prior studies and reading to bear in his attempt to explore the events of 2-3-1974.  A simpler man may have latched on to the first somewhat satisfactory answer and lived the rest of their life thinking an alien from Sirius came to visit him, or that he had somehow tapped into what esoteric mystics have described as the “Book of Life,” which contains all the information that the universe has ever, and will ever create.  Not PKD.  Every conclusion he arrives at can be turned on its head, since it is just his own assumption.  This makes for a very engrossing, frustrating, yet intellectually arousing philosophical work. It was never meant to be published or shared.  It was a personal exploration into his own mind.

Not many people have the ability or the temerity to fully explore the truly life-altering events of their life.  Most of us just move on, trying to forget the strange stuff, and shuddering when the memory comes back at odd times.  Others change their entire lives and blindly follow what they feel is the true interpretation of what happened to them without questioning any deeper.  Philip K. Dick was willing to exhaust himself to understand his own experience.  That takes a lot of guts and a maniacal devotion to truth, even knowing that the final Truth will never be reached.  This is a kick-ass book, and I recommend it to anyone who has read PKD’s works and wants a deep glimpse into the mind behind them.  It is not an easy read.  It is not a clear and logical read.  It is however, one of the very few mystical explorations we have into a metaphysical event from a thinker of our modern times.  In time, I could see this Exegesis being codified and worked into a visionary treatise, much like the Prophets of the Old Testament.  It may all have been a hallucination brought on by a stroke, a vision brought on by too many drugs, or a genuine inter-dimensional communication, but the fact that it happened, and PKD chose not to ignore it, is amazing indeed.

(This book can be downloaded (VERY large file) in PDF form here: Exegesis of Philip K. Dick )

(This book can be purchased here:  AMAZON  )