k-punk

K-PUNK GLOSSARY

(In order to give the lie to Mark's characterization of me as an endlessly deferring scholar (or 'prevarocrat', as he would no doubt prefer), I am posting earlier than I would like. I shudder at the thought of the errors I might have unwittingly committed!)

I am going to begin with a discussion of the Lemurian entities, since they have been most likely to cause confusion and bewilderment.

For a general Ccru glossary, look here.

I should also add that introductions to the syzygies are now being prepared by Ccru for publication on hyperstition.

As yet, discussion of the Lemurian demons or lemurs on k-punk has been confined to the five so-called 'syzygies', so I propose to limit my discussion to these entities for the moment.

The most economical explanation of these entities and the 'pandemonium' system to which they belong that can be found on the Net is Maria De'Rosario's article in the New England Educational Review, 'Apocalypse Been In Effect', from August 1998. The little-known journal has since folded, but De'Rosario's piece has been preserved online on the Ccru site. The article includes interview contributions from MVU's Polly Wolfe as well as me.

I will quote Ms De'Rosario now, if I may:

'The five entities each correspond to a "Barker-twinning" or "Syzygy", the pairings which make up 9 (1/8, 2/7, 3/6, 5/4, 9/0) and which together constitute the "Pentazygon" ("Five-twin"). The first three of these beings make up "the cycle of time", whilst the other two are – in some sense – "outside" sequential time. The cycle the system describes, Trent points out, is "multi-levelled"; it is also, for instance, also a story about the journey from land to sea and back again.

Katak (5/4) is "associated with the desert, with heat haze and shimmer. In many ways, its key features – claw marks, teeth – seem to recall werewolf legends. Its time is a time of cataclysm; its appearance always presages disaster. Sometimes imaged as an hydrophobic or rabid dog, Katak can partly be characterised by a horror of what will supercede it in the cycle, Mur Mur (1/8), the Dreaming demon of submersion.

Mur Mur, meanwhile, carries echoes of the legends of Sea Beasts and ancient serpents; its time is the Deep Time of the ocean bed. Like Katak, it too, is horrified by what will follow it in the cycle; in this case, Oddubb (2/7), the amphibious entity, associated with the crossing out of water and the acquisition of lungs. What Mur Mur fears is the division that Oddubb brings, the splitting of the undivided waters. Oddubb is defined by ambiguous and elusive movement. As its name suggests, it is a ‘double-agency’, a duplicitous creature. It has a horror of dryness, of the state of being fully landlocked that comes with Katak. Which brings us full circle."

The two entities that are "outside time" - Djynxx (3/6) - "a changeling figure, defined by a jinking (eratic or zig-zagging) movement, a sudden cutting in or out" – and Uttunul (9/0), the "flatline" entity, connoting "continuum, zero-intensity, void – eternity not as infinitely extended time, but as No-Time" – are in many ways the most fascinating and disturbing of the set, associated as they are, for Trent, with old mythologies of "child abduction" and Hell.'

All I am going to add at this stage - although I am more than happy to answer any queries should readers have them - are some notes on particular linguistic associations coming off the Lemurian names:

Katak - the English words 'attack' and 'kataklysm' almost certainly originated in this Lemurian incantation

Mur Mur - French 'mer', 'mermaid' etc all hail from this Lemurian term -- original source was undoubtedly phonic, from the sound of the sea

Oddubb - 'duplicity', 'doubling', cf also the incantations of Macbeth's witches - it is hard to imagine that Shakespeare wasn't remembering an invocation of Oddubb when he wrote the words of the Weird Sisters' spells.

Djnxx - 'jink' and obviously 'jinx' can be traced back to the name of this lemur; also the Moroccan Djinn/ genie

Uttunul - 'eternal', 'utter' (meaning both speech and the absolute), 'null' (empty), all have their ur-source in the name of this, the most Awesome and Dread-ful of the Lemurs. (k-punk readers will be interested to know that Lemurian scholars regard Part 1 of Spinoza's Ethics as the most rigorous philosophical description of Uttunul ever published. I would concur, but must counsel that those rumours which suggest Spinoza had a copy of the Lemurian Necronomicon and was merely glossing it are just that: rumours. My own view is that Spinoza's affinity with Lemurianism can be accounted for simply in terms of both systems' abstraction. Both Spinoza's philosophy and the Lemurian hypersystem are at such a degree of abstraction and are so machinically consistent that they were bound to converge. Sorry if this spoils a nice story!

For an exhaustive if somewhat compacted discussion of the Pandemonium system, see Ccru's commentary in the Digital Hyperstition issue of Abstract Culture.

I will update this glossary periodically and Mark assures me that a hyperlink will permanently be included on the k-punk sidebar.

Posted by linda trent at August 30, 2004 07:15 PM | TrackBack