Moon and space myths now quickly became more and more advanced, reflecting the actual goings-on in labs and silos of secrecy. No doubt these were fueled further in the 1960s by mass consumption of LSD in younger generations, with the epitomical trip (again, pardon the pun) being Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 sci-fi masterpiece 2001. This film not only takes us into outer space but also into inner space, and actualizes the dilemma that we today unfortunately exist in: what happens when computers start talking back and controlling us rather than the initial vice versa? The visual brilliance of this film led Kubrick, according to himself, into a quagmire of vanity mixed with dread.
In July of 1969, the entire world (or at least the parts with access to television) sat entranced at images of the first moon landing. The Russian vessel Luna 9 had transmitted photographs from the lunar surface already in 1966, and the United States followed suit with Lunar Orbiter 1. This was mainly to check out the surface: Where would be a good place to actually land? In December 1968, the American Apollo 8, a manned spacecraft, reached the moon’s orbit and then returned home. The crew read from the book of Genesis on their Christmas Eve television special—at the time the most watched television program ever.2 This very likely in anticipation of what was to come. On July 20, 1969, new television records were set. A fifth of the world’s population watched Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walk on the moon—allegedly walk on the moon, if we listen to Stanley Kubrick.
Lunar ecstasy for certain, but the modern myths didn’t end with Armstrong’s “giant leap for mankind.” When Stanley Kubrick died in 1999, he died with a secret he had leaked just a little. According to his own myth, he had been hired by NASA after the success of 2001 to fake the images being broadcast from the lunar landing. His visual acumen and dramaturgic brilliance apparently created a very convincing moon landing and moon walk. Whether this deception is actually true or not is as unlikely to surface as the truth about 9/11. But in Kubrick’s paranoid mind, there was a discrepancy between leaking and fearing assassination and keeping silent in deceit. “I perpetrated a huge fraud,” Kubrick revealed in a 1999 interview.3 And he then insisted the interviewer not show this material until at least fifteen years after Kubrick’s death.
Again, the moon had proven an instrumental part of human mythology and the (possible) illusion of progress. Again, the moon had been a reflective surface spurring on poetic visions of power, regardless if truthful or not. Caspar David Friedrich and other German romantic “Sturm und Drangers” used canvas and paint to catch the suggestive power of the moon, setting it into contexts in which the human being was always very small; smaller than awe-inspiring life and the cosmos itself. With technology, of rockets and television alike, the perspective has changed, making human ingenuity (read: hubris) larger than life—possibly even larger than actual truth.
The space race has become a phallic striving for triumph—not so much a quest for human ideals as a conquest of assets and resources. In many ways, the reflective surface of the moon has illuminated a technological lycanthropy in which space is the place and the television medium is still the message in itself. Massive exploitation will take place but the main thing for the common folks will be the various reality shows broadcast more or less live from outer space, with the moon as the first network and space-shuttle service station.
The moon doesn’t only teach us about our relationship to ourselves in space but also in time. The very same reflective surface we look at today shone its clear light on Novalis, Friedrich, Goethe, all the worshipers of moon goddesses, witches in dim groves, lovers in medieval sagas, covert conspirators who changed the world, on Dion Fortune (Moon Magic), Aleister Crowley (Moonchild), Kenneth Anger (Rabbit’s Moon), and on the songwriters of “Moon River,” “Blue Moon”, “Harvest Moon,” “Fly Me to the Moon,” “Bad Moon Rising,” and so on.
The few cosmic constants we have certainly put things in healthy perspective—if only we allow them to. If we don’t, and just take them for granted while drifting into artificialities and abstractions, their magic will wane and we will be ostracized from the ebb and flow of natural processes and cycles. That’s essentially the curse of the human being: not seeing her right place in the totality, and instead looking for causal shortcuts in petty power struggles. The wisdom of the moon is obvious: life is cyclical and regular. The early humans realized this as they learned how to survive by adapting to the cycles of the year or, in the case of women, to the cycles of the lunar month. The basic facts of life still revolve around lunar forces, whether basic (a human embryo is developed during nine lunar months) or cultural/religious:
In 325 CE the Council of Nicaea established that Easter would be held on the first Sunday after the first full moon occurring on or after the vernal equinox. From that point forward, the Easter date depended on the ecclesiastical approximation of March 21 for the vernal equinox. Easter is delayed by one week if the full moon is on Sunday, which decreases the chances of it falling on the same day as the Jewish Passover. The council’s ruling is contrary to the Quartodecimans, a group of Christians who celebrated Easter on the day of the full moon, 14 days into the month.4
These Judeo-Christian rites and celebrations are all remains of earlier pagan customs, which just goes to show that the awareness of the moon’s presence and potency was fully integrated in pre-Christian times. Today, it’s a different story, with the main reflective light coming from computer and television screens. Contemplating a full moon on a clear night brings out/up things from the hidden strata of the soul. An electronic screen can never compete, because it’s relying on the content someone else places on that screen. The longer the distance from the moon (in both time and space) that new generations experience, the less likely it is that the human contemplative ability will remain as such. If a capacity isn’t used and exercised, it will dwindle and die.
That said, the moon might then actually be a seemingly passive yet covertly very active counterforce to this contemporary negation of life. Women in general, artists, sensitives, and poets throughout history have been highly aware of the moon and its relevance, and have adapted to it in humility and inspiration. Again, the lycanthropic filter needs to be applied. “Moon madness” of varying degrees and cultural shapes signifies the inability to handle certain aspects of the human psyche: sensitivity, inspiration, nonutilitarian creativity, and so on. The response becomes compensating and “solar-phallic” (as Crowley would term it): aggressive, rapacious, and feral. For the insensitive, the moon becomes something pallid, useless, and terrifying in its mysteriousness, something you sleep away from in awaiting the return of the sun, which makes everything bright and simple again. It is interesting to note how the myth of the werewolf is also soaked in blood. This ferocity and bloodlust, essentially male in essence, in combination with a female shedding of blood presided over by lunar forces and relating to fertility, would make Sigmund Freud and later psychoanalysts nod their heads. Perhaps not in approval of the phenomenon itself but certainly as a validation of the theory that sex and aggression are two sides of the same coin.
Where much has been written about human development and dietary habits in times when vegetarians and carnivores coexisted, and somehow applying a simplified matriarchy-versus-patriarchy filter, I believe that much of the werewolf mythology in relation to the moon simply stems from early human sexual trauma. Even somewhat peaceful vegetarian-agrarian tribes could defend themselves better in the daytime against ferocious human enemies. But at night, with the serene moon acting as an existential twilight, it was easier to attack, loot, and rape. The survival instinct is not a static constant. It keeps on developing and is transmitted onward, partly in DNA and partly through mythology, to help future generations survive. The strong association between nighttime, the moon, blood, and sexual assault is not a consciously formulated fear or pleasure to take lightly. It’s ingrained deeply within us.
The idea that it is “sinful” to shed the blood that is “life”—retained in the course of the transition
from the vegetarian to the carnivore—and the belief that expiatory rites are required to avert the dangers connected with a practice that it was never really intended to abandon, since its results had proved so advantageous to the lupine pack, caused a consciousness of “sin” and a need for apotropaic ceremonies to attach itself even to the effusion of blood resulting from sexual intercourse with virgins. These the aggressive pack would, whenever occasion offered, kidnap and carry away from among the females of the weaker fruit-gathering tribes so as by this new practice of “exogamy” to avoid the otherwise inevitable, risky fight with the leader of the wolf-pack claiming for himself the females of the lupine clan.5
Georgs Méliès’s short but incredibly beautiful film A Trip to the Moon (1902) not only blew minds at the time but is still in many ways emblematic of the human perspective: we can conquer the “challenge” by technology and enthusiasm, but we look at the process as a causal adventure more than as an opportunity to truly learn about ourselves. Méliès adapted his story from H. G. Wells’s The First Men in the Moon (1901) and Jules Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon (1865), and turned it into a simple story of naive optimism. In the film, a group of scientists debate and discuss going to the moon. They build a rocket that successfully lifts off, travels in space and then hits the man in the moon right in the eye, which serves as an entry point into the moon proper. The crew suddenly find themselves in a cave filled with mushrooms (not unlike psilocybin’shrooms), and are taken by force to the moon court by guards more or less dressed up as devilish skeletons. When these guards are attacked, they go up in a cloud of smoke, as theatrical illusions of sorts. It all seems threatening enough, and the crew escapes the same way they came: in their rocket, through space and back to earth.
As science fiction progressed parallel to the technical developments that suddenly and actually could take us to the moon, the perspective became more dystopian and bleak rather than the opposite (Kubrick’s 2001 is a philosophical masterpiece also in this respect). The mythological aspects carry optimism; the real, a considerably darker hue. If we look at science fiction as the true seed and facilitator of actual space travel, this latter-day dystopian perspective should be regarded as a prophetic warning of sorts. If myth and fiction always precede real developments, where are all the optimistic sunshine stories of successful life in space nowadays? Méliès may have displayed a prophecy in more ways than one, albeit in a humorous way. Yes, we can go to the moon (and back) but perhaps it’s after all best instead to look at the moon as a symbol of desire and reflective surface rather than think we can “master” it and then have to face the skeletal cave dwellers of the unknown. Art not only reflects its zeitgeist but also amplifies what is reflected, for better or worse.
The artistic reflection and brilliance of the Renaissance painters and medieval alchemical engravers, integrating cosmic wisdom for the sake of illumination via symbols, is a peak in human culture that we’ll very likely never experience again. It is indeed very strange that although we have made such enormous progress in the fields of science and technology, it seems as most of it is designed to facilitate a nonreflective, “easier” lifestyle and the vain hopes of either a longer life or life in space. The outer perspective thus takes precedence. But history shows, as does mythology in general, that the inner route may be the wiser one. The mere aspect of light seen through the symbolic should make this clear. The stronger the light (as in solar), the stronger the shadow. This carries with it an inherent dualism that is certainly well-known to the human psyche but, unfortunately, seemingly difficult to cope with. A faint lunar light decreases the contrast and thereby opens up the mind to inner insights and deeper feelings than simply “fight or flight.”
A reality show is currently being prepared for the journey to Mars. Without a doubt, the ratings will soar when the vessel eventually takes off into space. Ridley Scott’s The Martian (starring Matt Damon) shows the real dilemma in an über-heroic way: What happens when things go wrong? What breaks down first—technology or the human psyche? The Martian is a demagogic example for simpletons of wishful thinking, or the same kind of naive optimism that Méliès displayed in regard to his moon. The mythological view has been abandoned for human hubris yet again, and nothing good will come of that. When things go wrong on that upcoming Martian vessel—and believe me, they will—the ratings of that reality show will undoubtedly soar even more. Incidentally, it was Ridley Scott’s amazingly dystopian Alien (1979) that was marketed with the slogan “In space no one can hear you scream”—a prophecy, no doubt, televised or not.
As always, we believe what we see, but we need light to see it. Preferably it should be reflected from an untainted lunar surface on a clear and starry night. That should be quite enough.
5
Pokémon Go Away
Originally published in the Norwegian magazine Kunstforum (No. 3, 2016).
IN OUR POST-POSTMODERN CULTURE, the definitions of what can be deemed “art” have become more and more flexible. Where gradually wider creative phenomena like fashion, design, and architecture have approached and entered the arena of accepted art, art’s essence (instigating magical change through aestheticized personal expression, thereby enhancing the experience of life) has become more and more pushed away by superficialities and mass-market adaptation—no doubt reflecting the overall contemporary culture as a whole.
This constitutes a problem, and not only on the level of terminology. The problem consists of a demoting of an essential sphere or phenomenon into a commodified area that mainly uses the rational mind to evaluate even aesthetic or emotional spheres. To use an example closer to the core question: art is art, but the art world is not art. The rational handling of and trading with something stemming from the soul doesn’t make the actual handling or trading soulful. But unfortunately this is what has happened, and it’s continuing to de-enchant and demythologize the world as we know it.
Art has been the main carrier of human mythologies, which is one reason why it can be called essential. Without substantial and relevant stories created for inspiration, teaching, reflection, and resonance humans would still just be base, instinct-driven animals. This mythologizing quality is essentially what sets us apart from other animals (not forgetting the complex and in this case almost paradoxical phenomenon of suicide). The meeting of human minds and stories is what defines the very concept of being human.
There is also the tricky but ingenious aspect of art as a more general human endeavor, which is something that has helped our contemporary confusion along. Creative skills have always been used for working in the now through organized crafts, which means creating memes that define the now. Fashion, design, architecture, and writing in general have been integrated as parts of active and creative history writing, and definitely with the potential to tell mythological stories in a mosaic kind of way. But it’s only recently that these crafts have attempted to invade a more substantial mythological arena. Why is this?
I would say that technology is to blame, followed closely by greed. A new definition or packaging of an old phenomenon helps sell it again. The onslaught of technology has drained human existence of genuine mythological force. The massive commercial potential in the smaller, faster, cheaper constructs/platforms, filled with smaller, faster, cheaper content, inevitably affects us all in negative ways. It’s hard to see the big picture on a small screen. I’m not in any way implying a conspiracy to dumb down human intelligence, but unfortunately this is the inevitable result of a process that reflects a species that has basically negated its libido and reshaped it into a frantic death drive.
In his excellent book Creative Mythology–The Masks of God, Joseph Campbell once listed four key functions of mythology:
The reconciliation of consciousness with the preconditions of its own existence. Handling the often sorrowful realization that human existence is temporal. The creation of an ideal, the “other,” the holy/religious
The formulating and rendering of a cosmological i
mage of the universe in keeping with the science of the time and of such a kind that, within its range, all things should be recognized as parts of a single great holy picture
The validation and maintaining of some specific social order, authorizing its moral code as a construct beyond criticism or human emendation
The psychological angle: shaping individuals to the aims and ideals of their various social groups
If we look at the contemporary scene with the help of this specific model, and integrate both what I would call “real” art and the more ephemeral creative crafts listed above, it’s not a pretty picture. The escapistic longing of people for definitive, holy, authoritarian, religious ideas has created a violent global instability, and the mythological expressions are simplified in extreme dualisms of good versus bad. The previously helpful cosmological image no longer looks at the inspiring as well as awe-inspiring grand-scale totality but at the ever-smaller particles—an escapist analysis of the intangibly minute only possible via technology. Social order is maintained by ever-stricter control, either blatantly dictatorial or via diametrical manipulations (freedom of expression more monitored than ever, freedom of movement scrutinized by surveillance, freedom of thought made ill at ease by the doublespeak of political correctness).
The fourth point is perhaps the most interesting one. Although our Western cultural sphere officially lauds equality and the nobility of mobility, the tools we use actually stratify more than ever before. Some decades ago, one used to say that access to computers was a class issue. Today, the opposite is true—the person who can afford to be out of reach of technology is at the top of the existential pyramid. Education via fiction, and this predominantly via technology, has created a greater class divide than ever before, as the need for noncritical human slaves/machine operators increases. And as technology itself is on its way to reshaping work life (more “free” time for humans means more possibilities/time to consume and be even more enslaved) we will rapidly approach the pivotal moment that science fiction writers have been obsessed with for centuries: the dreaded power switch when intelligent machines become sentient and thereby ruled by self-preservation rather than human authority.
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