Here is a recreation of a Thread from long ago. Instead of Posting everything in 1 Post, I’m going to Post each Post as it was originally Posted in a separate Post and I’ll start the 1st Post in this Post, which was a Post by Benjiman followed by 2 of my responses and then, followed by 2 of Ana’s responses.

ancient Greek raw foodism? posted by Benjiman:

I've been emailing a Greek raw foodist who told me she first became interested in raw foodism through a book on Greek mythology. I was surprised that this was where she first heard about it. When I asked her what the book said about raw foodism, she replied:

"Well, it said that eating raw facilitated one's communication with the eternal/immortal (for ancient Greeks that meant their gods who were immortal but you can stretch this phrase to fit your beliefs whatever they may be)."

I was wondering if anyone had more information on this.

Benjamin

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Peace and Love..........John

Here is my 1st Post…

I can hardly wait to see what we can dig up here. I'm constantly searching for pieces of the puzzle that fit together. This is what I found in Greek mythology, which I posted earlier:

The Greek poet Hesiod writes about Zeus talking to Prometheus, son of Iapetos, who had stolen FIRE from Zeus..."Son of Iapetos, there is none craftier than you, and you rejoice at tricking my wits and stealing the fire which will be a CURSE to you and to the generations that follow. The price for the stolen fire will be a "GIFT of EVIL" to charm the hearts of all men as they hug their own doom."

Zeus swore to be revenged, so he made a great "EVIL" for men...Pandora, which means the "GIFT" for all. The gods presented Pandora with a box into which each had put something harmful, and forbade her ever to open it. One day she lifted the lid and out flew plagues innumerable, sorrow and mischief.

Not only did Prometheus steal FIRE for men, but he also arranged that they should get the best part of any animal sacrifice and the gods the worst. As a result, only fat and bones were burned to the gods upon their alters. Men kept the good meat for themselves.

So what is the moral of this story? Is meat and FIRE the cause of plagues, sorrow and mischief? Does this story serve as a warning for all who read it?

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Peace and Love..........John

Here is my 2nd Post, which is one of my Posts from a different Thread about the movie Cast Away with Tom Hanks that I used in this Thread…

The Connection Between FIRE and Our Suffering

<<<His only seemingly happy moment on the island is when finally he starts a fire after working at it for like 2 days.>>>

I watched Tom Hanks for a bit over the weekend on Charlie Rose and when he described the FIRE as living and breathing, it made me think that FIRE itself is the DEVIL, it made me think of the connection between FIRE and our suffering, and it made me think of the old stories told by the ancients.

The ancient Sumerians, the creators of the first civilization, told a myth about its origins. It was, they said, a devil's bargain -- it offered the noblest ideals of humanity, but it also brought violence, greed and destruction. All this is civilization, the Sumerian God of Wisdom told humanity, and if you wish its benefits, you must take all its qualities and once taken, you cannot give them back. It is for you to use them with restraint and with wisdom.

Does the origin of civilization refer to the discovery of FIRE? Is it fire that we must use with restraint and with wisdom?

The first book of the Bible tells us that we had paradise when we ate raw food and that we fell from paradise when we ate the forbidden food [the apple is only a metaphor]. The last book in the Bible also tells us that the healing of the nations will come from The Tree of Life, same as book one.

In "The Essene Gospel of Peace", Jesus called the residue from cooked food in our bowels Beelzebub, which is another name for Satin or Lord of the Dung Hill. Jesus told us to fast to get rid of the demon inside of us and he told us not to kill our food with fire.

The Bible also talks about how the Israelites would take their waste matter [from cooked food] outside of the city and set it on fire. It was said that FIRE never stops burning, and they had a name for it - Gehenna, which is another name for hell.

So long ago, they tried to warn us about "the unwise use of FIRE." They used words such as the devil & Beelzebub, and Gehenna & hell to try and paint a picture so that we could understand the evils of polluting our food with FIRE.

What did Socrates mean when he said, "...that of all the subjects of human knowledge, the last and most difficult to be seen is the Idea of the Good...The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance...Bad men live to eat and drink; whereas good men eat and drink to live."?

What did Victor Hugo mean when he called this uneliminated waste matter in our colon the serpent that lives inside of us?

The Greek poet Hesiod writes about Zeus talking to Prometheus, son of Iapetos, who had stolen FIRE from Zeus..."Son of Iapetos, there is none craftier than you, and you rejoice at tricking my wits and stealing the fire which will be a CURSE to you and to the generations that follow. The price for the stolen fire will be a "GIFT of EVIL" to charm the hearts of all men as they hug their own doom."

Zeus swore to be revenged, so he made a great "EVIL" for men...Pandora, which means the "GIFT" for all. The gods presented Pandora with a box into which each had put something harmful, and forbade her ever to open it. One day she lifted the lid and out flew plagues innumerable, sorrow and mischief.

Not only did Prometheus steal FIRE for men, but he also arranged that they should get the best part of any animal sacrifice and the gods the worst. As a result, only fat and bones were burned to the gods upon their alters. Men kept the good meat for themselves.

So what is the moral of this story? Is meat and FIRE the cause of plagues, sorrow and mischief? Does this story serve as a warning for all who read it?

"Unfortunately, after the discovery of FIRE Homo sapiens' natural progression stopped, and what is worse, it is retrogressing at an incredible pace (just as it had for Homo erectus and Neanderthal before us -- both sub-species cooked their food). Most of the Homo sub-species and races that mastered fire are now extinct. Cooked food has genetically damaged the still surviving races of Homo sapien. Just imagine everyone as they would appear nude. The vast majority of humanity is debased, deformed, and unfit to continue forward." -"Nature's First Law", p.88"

The fact remains that all creatures on this planet have been successfully eating raw for over 500,000,000 years, and that is good enough evidence for me." -Dr. Doug Graham

Dr. Francis Pottenger did a ten year study using 900 cats and proved that the cats fed cooked food developed illnesses and ill behaviors.

Is there any doubt that FIRE destroys everything?

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Peace and Love..........John

Now here is Ana's 1st response:

Wow, John. Did you take my class? This is part of what I teach at university. Indeed, there are many references in history and mythology that deal with human compromise, traditionally known in the West (as well as Mesopotamia and Greece) as "The Fall", that is, when humans opted out of nature and into synthetic, or man-made, modes of living. Many myths attribute The Fall to the discovery of fire, because, indeed, this is man's first break with the nature environment. Ivrahim Ronin writes some good stuff about this. Another good read is Reay Tannahill's "Food in History".

With fire humans began over using the natural resources (chasing animals with fire, which enabled them to kill large numbers at once, whether or not they needed that many, AND burning up the entire forest in the process, etc.). Fire also enabled the development of pottery, which is eventually going to lead us to cooking our food...Early pottery was extremely poisonous and toxic, though, so this will take a long time to perfect. That is why much later, people freaked out over Chinese porcelain--it enabled people to cook without worry of lead or food poisoning...(En passant, one thing scholars today cannot figure out is how early humans made the mental leap to boil water; they would not have had anything to mimic in nature, and they would not have had the tools and utensils to do this until way down the road. The verdict is still out on that one. Nevertheless, it is fun to speculate about that one!)

Thus, Greek mythology associates the discovery of fire with the advent civilization itself, even though chronologically these two events are not simultaneous; rather, the Greeks had a penchant for going back to the "first cause"--much like what
you are attempting to do. They (and others) claimed that without fire none of
what actually ensued historically would have/could have occurred.

A funny thing about all of this, is that WE were taught that all of this was a boon for humankind, rather like we USED to be backward and now we are "advanced". But, if you read the literature, the people who were opting out of nature at the time viewed it as a reactionary/defensive move. They were embarassed/ashamed that they no longer cooperated with nature. That is why, when they made synthetic items for their survival (bowls, columns, temples, etc.), they made them LOOK like something out of nature (a shell, tree trunk, cave, respectively); they were hoping that the divine spirits and other humans wouldn't notice. It wasn't like today when we create something unnatural--like cloning and GE foods--and then parade it proudly across the land saying, "Look at how brilliant I am...". That was Sophocles whole point when he wrote, "Wonders are many in the world, and the wonder of all is man..." He was being ironic, but OUR culture uses his statment as proof that we are meant to be superior to the natural world. We ignore that he concluded his ode with "Yet, in his rashness he (man) scorns the ways that are good...let him keep from MY hearth and hand!"

BTW, Pythagorus (of the Theorum) was a great proponent of rawfoodism as a means of associating with the unseen forces; this eventually would make its way into Plato's ideas (Plato was a big fan of Pythagorus), and some say (I"m still out on this one) eventually to Jesus...

Just some thoughts which I am sure will drawn outraged responses from the offended.

Ana

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Peace and Love..........John

Here's another post by Ana that she made several days later:

John Hi
Here is an interesting raw food myth about the Origins of Death. It is from the Darasa, Gada (Africa) people. I don't have a date on it though.

"Formerly men had no fire but ate all their food raw. At that time they did not need to die for when they became old God made them young again. One day they decided to beg God for fire. They sent a messenger to God to convey their request. God replied to the messenger that he would give him fire if he was prepared to die. The man took the fire from God, but ever since then all men must die."

Ana

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Peace and Love..........John

Very interesting, John

Thank you for posting


Cynthia

Why then, john, do you still eat cooked foods?

This is wonderful, John! I'm going to copy and paste it and send it to some people who are greatly interested in the RFD, and print it out, too. Thanks.

TheStorm,---> huh?


Me--> ???

I DON'T EAT COOKED FOODS!!!

Since when, John?

Interesting turn of thread

...Jodi, the banana eating buddhist

“God sends meat and the devil sends cooks.” -Thomas Deloney

Really fascinating post, John. Thanks so much for this--like many people my age, I became obsessed with Greek mythology at age ten, and still refer to my Bullfinch's often. This is a unique take on what I thought I knew well; lots to consider. : )

Who are you referring to here(below), John? Is it yourself or some other person? Sometimes I have difficulty understanding that because your posts are generally 5 miles long and sometimes muddling. Below is an excerpt from your post in the "QUINOA" thread.



"Anyway, I've been eating cooked grains again at every meal, and I have been incredibly fatigued as a result for the past two days. I think it may have to do with my usage of grains instead of the fruits mentioned above. I will either balance the fruits with the grains, such as quinoa with oats, and wild rice with brown rice, or just use the fruits instead, I'm not sure as of yet. I bought an organic 10-sprouted grain/fruit bread, and I think that’s going well.

If you didn't read my earlier post, I will point out now that the only reason I am eating a little cooked food now is for control and stability, so that I am not caught in a trap of binge eating once again. "


[www.rawfoodsupport.com]

<<<Who are you referring to here(below), John? Is it yourself or some other person?>>>

NGU, I am VERY consistent in the way I document EVERYTHING! I always use links at the beginning and at the end of what I post, especially if it’s NOT from me, and if you look at the section you posted above, you will notice that I did NOT say that - that’s what Shiji posted on 08-25-02 at 20:12.

This is how the post that you are referring to looks like the way I posted it and take note of how it starts and how it ends with the same link - [wwwrawfoodsupport.com] Unfortunately the link is no longer active, so it’s not as obvious.

[wwwrawfoodsupport.com]
Grains, fruits, alkalinity, cultivation, and lethargy
Shiji (---.du.uplink.net)
Date: 08-25-02 20:12

Someone on this board once made a claim like "there are allot of alkaline grains." I didn't care much at the time, however recent research has shown this to be very false. Technically speaking according to factual botanical definition, buckwheat, quinoa, and amaranth are FRUITS and NOT grains but they are generally included with the grain group, and are far more alkaline then their actual grain counterparts, such as white/brown rice, wheat, barley, rye, and oats. Wild rice, though technically a grass (but not a rice) is the most alkaline true grain.

Sprouting may make true grains more alkaline, but still, sprouting the fruits-that-are-mistaken-as-grains will still rate you higher on alkalinity. Its interesting to note, that amaranth was prized by the Aztecs, quinoa by the Inca's, and wild rice by the Native Americans; all intelligent ancient cultures. Why are the widely cultivated crops always nutritionally inferior? Why can't we adopt these better choices?

Anyway, I've been eating cooked grains again at every meal, and I have been incredibly fatigued as a result for the past two days. I think it may have to do with my usage of grains instead of the fruits mentioned above. I will either balance the fruits with the grains, such as quinoa with oats, and wild rice with brown rice, or just use the fruits instead, I'm not sure as of yet. I bought an organic 10-sprouted grain/fruit bread, and I think that’s going well.

If you didn't read my earlier post, I will point out now that the only reason I am eating a little cooked food now is for control and stability, so that I am not caught in a trap of binge eating once again.
[www.rawfoodsupport.com]

Hey Storm,

Once again, we're on the same page. I posted the above post before I read your post and you nailed it, but that doesn't surprise me!

<<<...like many people my age, I became obsessed with Greek mythology at age ten, and still refer to my Bullfinch's often.>>>

Hey Tam,

I'm envious of your childhood - I got a late start.

ok,thanks for replying and clearing that up, John.

John Rose Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> “God sends meat and the devil sends cooks.”
> -Thomas Deloney

sure if you believe in fairy tales

...Jodi, the banana eating buddhist

When this Thread was originally posted, someone attacked my use of Myths and this was my response to them…

That's what I used to think until I studied Joseph Campbell. Although most people think that Myths are untrue, it turns out that Myths are stories that are found in every culture, and the reason that we find the same Myth in culture after culture, age after age, is because it embodies some great truth--virtually always about human nature. And because they have so much to teach us about human nature, Myths can be extremely useful for understanding ourselves. The Bible also contains many Myths, which in effect are very Profound Truths that are designed to teach us about human nature.

As I mentioned, I too was once like you...I thought that Myths were made up stories to explain things that are unexplainable, but now I understand that they are a way of explaining very Profound Truths that can teach us how to stop the suffering on this planet.

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As I’ve mentioned many times in the past, I’m trying to figure out how to help people eliminate the suffering in their lives, which is the whole idea behind Buddhism’s Eight-Fold Path - see below, and that’s why I created a file on Fairy Tales and here is my File Preview from that file…

…File Preview…
• The Uses of Enchantment
• The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales is a 1976 book by Austria-born American psychologist Bruno Bettelheim in which he analyzes fairy tales in terms of Freudian psychology.
• In the book, Bettelheim discusses the emotional and symbolic importance of fairy tales for children, including traditional tales at one time considered too dark, such as those collected and published by the Brothers Grimm. Bettelheim suggested that traditional fairy tales, with the darkness of abandonment, death, witches, and injuries, allowed children to grapple with their fears in remote, symbolic terms. If they could read and interpret these fairy tales in their own way, he believed, they would get a greater sense of meaning and purpose. Bettelheim thought that by engaging with these socially evolved stories, children would go through emotional growth that would better prepare them for their own futures.
• The book is divided into two main sections. The first, "A Pocketful of Magic," outlines Bettelheim's thoughts on the value of fairy tales for children. The second part, "In Fairy Land," presents psychoanalytical readings of several popular fairy tales, specifically:
"Hansel and Gretel"
"Little Red Riding Hood"
"Jack and the Beanstalk"
"Snow White"
"Goldilocks and the Three Bears"
"The Sleeping Beauty"
"Cinderella"
The "animal groom" cycle of fairy tales, including "Beauty and the Beast", "The Frog King" and "Bluebeard".
• The Uses of Enchantment has been cited as an influence in many subsequent works that utilise fairy tales in adult terms, including the 1986 Stephen Sondheim musical Into the Woods and the 2011 Catherine Hardwicke film Red Riding Hood.
• The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales
• Analyzing a wide range of traditional stories, from the tales of Sindbad to “The Three Little Pigs,” “Hansel and Gretel,” and “The Sleeping Beauty,” Bettelheim shows how the fantastical, sometimes cruel, but always deeply significant narrative strands of the classic fairy tales can aid in our greatest human task, that of finding meaning for one’s life.
• “Bettelheim argues convincingly that fairy tales provide a unique way for children to come to terms with the dilemmas of their inner lives.” —The Atlantic
• The great child psychologist gives us a moving revelation of the enormous and irreplaceable value of fairy tales - how they educate, support and liberate the emotions of children. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
• Fairy tales, unlike any other form of literature, direct the child to discover his identity and calling, and they also suggest what experiences are needed to develop his character further. Fairy tales intimate that a rewarding, good life is within one's reach despite adversity – but only if one does not shy away from the hazardous struggles without which one can never achieve true identity. These stories promise that if a child dares to engage in this fearsome and taxing search, benevolent powers will come to his aid, and he will succeed. The stories also warn that those who are too timorous and narrow minded to risk themselves in finding themselves must settle down to a humdrum existence-if an even worse fate does not befall them.
• But the paramount importance of fairy tales for the growing individual resides in something other than teachings about correct ways of behaving in this world-such wisdom is plentifully supplied in religion, myths, and fables. Fairy stories do not pretend to describe the world as it is, nor do they advise what one ought to do. If they did, the Hindu patient would be induced to follow an imposed pattern of behavior-which is not just bad therapy, but the opposite of therapy. The fairy tale is therapeutic because the patient finds his own solutions, through contemplating what the story seems to imply about him and his inner conflicts at this moment in his life. The content of the chosen tale usually has nothing to do with the patient's external life, but much to do with his inner problems, which seem incomprehensible and hence unsolvable. The fairy tale clearly does not refer to the outer world, although it may begin realistically enough and have everyday features woven into it. The unrealistic nature of these tales (which narrow-minded rationalists object to) is an important device, because it makes obvious that the fairy tales' concern is not useful information about the external world, but the inner processes taking place in an individual.
• In most cultures, there is no clear line separating myth from folk or fairy tale; all these together form the literature of preliterate societies. The Nordic languages have only one word for both: saga. German has retained the word Sage for myths, while fairy stories are called Märchen. It is unfortunate that both the English and French names for these stories emphasize the role of fairies in them-because in most, no fairies appear. Myths and fairy tales alike attain a definite form only when they are committed to writing and are no longer subject to continuous change. Before being written down, these stories were either condensed or vastly elaborated in the retelling over the centuries; some stories merged with others. All became modified by what the teller thought was of greatest interest to his listeners, by what his concerns of the moment or the special problems of his era were.
• Some fairy and folk stories evolved out of myths; others were incorporated into them. Both forms embodied the cumulative experience of a society as men wished to recall past wisdom for themselves and transmit it to future generations. These tales are the purveyors of deep insights that have sustained mankind through the long vicissitudes of its existence, a heritage that is not revealed in any other form as simply and directly, or as accessibly, to children.
• Myths and fairy tales have much in common. But in myths, much more than in fairy stories, the culture hero is presented to the listener as a figure he ought to emulate in his own life, as far as possible.
• A myth, like a fairy tale, may express an inner conflict in symbolic form and suggest how it may be solved-but this is not necessarily the myth's central concern. The myth presents its theme in a majestic way; it carries spiritual force; and the divine is present and is experienced in the form of superhuman heroes who make constant demands on mere mortals. Much as we, the mortals, may strive to be like these heroes, we will remain always and obviously inferior to them.
• The figures and events of fairy tales also personify and illustrate inner conflicts, but they suggest ever so subtly how these conflicts may be solved, and what the next steps in the development toward a higher humanity might be. The fairy tale is presented in a simple, homely way; no demands are made on the listener. This prevents even the smallest child from feeling compelled to act in specific ways, and he is never made to feel inferior. Far from making demands, the fairy tale reassures, gives hope for the future, and holds out the promise of a happy ending. That is why Lewis Carroll called it a "love-gift" -a term hardly applicable to a myth.*
• Obviously, not every story contained in a collection called "Fairy Tales" meets these criteria. Many of these stories are simply diversions, cautionary tales, or fables. If they are fables, they tell by means of words, actions, or events-fabulous though these may...
• SPIDERS are one of Americas most amazing natural resources!
• In the classic fairy tale, the "spider who sat down beside her" does not represent an actual spider at all, but is rather an allegory for the Soviet stranglehold over western Europe. At the same time, the term "Iron Curtain" was coined by Churchill not as a reference to the political situation but instead as an imaginative (if bleak) description of a wave of North Sea Fancy Spider's washing up near his beachfront home.
…End of File Preview…

I especially like the "spider who sat down beside her"!
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Buddhism’s Eight-Fold Path

The eight requirements to eliminate suffering by correcting false values and giving true knowledge of life’s meaning have been summed up as follows:

• 1. Right views (understanding): You must clearly see what is wrong.
• 2. Right purpose (aspiration): Decide to be cured.
• 3. Right speech: Speak so as to aim at being cured.
• 4. Right conduct: You must act.
• 5. Right vocation: Your livelihood must not conflict with your therapy.
• 6. Right effort: The therapy must go forward at the “staying speed,” the critical velocity that can be sustained.
• 7. Right awareness (mind control): You must feel it and think about it incessantly.
• 8. Right concentration (meditation): Learn how to contemplate with the deep mind.

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Peace and Love..........John

” The serpent is in man. It is the intestine. The belly is a heavy burden; it disturbs the equilibrium between the soul and the body. It is the mother of vices. The Colon is King.” -Victor Hugo

John Rose Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
As I mentioned, I too was once like you...

You've never been once like me because there is no me like me just as there is no you like you

...Jodi, the banana eating buddhist

When I wrote "As I mentioned, I too was once like you...", I was NOT referring to you - this is what I wrote to the person who thought about MYTHS the way I used to think about them. Usually I include a URL at the beginning and the end of an old Post but I didn't have a reference URL, which is why I separated what I wrote to the person who thought about MYTHS the way I used to think about them with a dotted line ...

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<<<You've never been once like me ...>>>

Jodi,

Once again, I was NOT referring to you and my comment only referred to how I used to think about MYTHS, which was the same way someone else thought about MYTHS and I understood why they attacked my use of MYTHS because I used to think the same way.

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Peace and Love..........John

RawPracticalist Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> ” The serpent is in man. It is the intestine.
> The belly is a heavy burden; it disturbs the
> equilibrium between the soul and the body. It is
> the mother of vices. The Colon is King.” -Victor
> Hugo


Have you added that to the quotes thread? That's great...

“The serpent is in man. It is the intestine. The belly is a heavy burden; it disturbs the equilibrium between the soul and the body. It is the mother of vices. The Colon is King.” -Victor Hugo

Hey RawPracticalist,

Where did you get this quote? I’m assuming this is in reference to my OP where I questioned, “What did Victor Hugo mean when he called this uneliminated waste matter in our colon the serpent that lives inside of us?”

I read this long ago and I can’t seem to find where I read it and I’ve been looking all over for it and thanks to you, I went looking again and found a very interesting Essay that uses a slightly different version that comes from Dr. John Harvey Kellogg. I’ll include that version below where I show the differences in each version in BOLD, as well as my File Preview on a new file I created based on this Essay called Scatology. I’ll also include a link to this Essay for those who will want to read the entire Essay, although, this was such an interesting Essay that there wasn’t much that I left out of my File Preview, except for the Footnotes.

Hey TSM,

Be sure to check out the Zuñi Urine Dance!

Here’s the other version of what Victor Hugo said…

"The serpent is in man. It is the intestine. The belly is a heavy burden; [. . .] it fills history; it is responsible for all crimes; it is the mother of vices; the colon is king."

Now here is the link to that Essay followed by my File Preview…

I was just reminded that this website does not allow the word s-h-i-t, which just goes to show how SICK our Society is because s-h-i-t, is a FORBIDDEN word!!!

[www.poopreport.com]

…File Preview…
• While searching for a quote by Victor Hugo, I came upon a very interesting Essay about a book by John G. Bourke called Scatalogic Rites of All Nations. The quote by Hugo was about the Serpent that lives within man and this Essay references to Kellogg quoting Hugo - "The serpent is in man. It is the intestine. The belly is a heavy burden; [. . .] it fills history; it is responsible for all crimes; it is the mother of vices; the colon is king."
• Definition of SCATOLOGY - the biologically oriented study of excrement
• Definition of COPROPHILOUS - growing or living on dung
• Definition of STERCORACEOUS: relating to, being, or containing feces
• Tlaçolteotl is Dead: The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Captain Bourke's Scatalogic Rites of All Nations
• Tlaçolteotl was the Aztec goddess of ordure and carnal pleasures, or, @#$%& and fertility -- the American equivalent of the little-known Roman goddess Cloacina. In this essay and in contemporary culture alike, Tlaçolteotl is absent. @#$%&, however, is not. But the joke is now one of the only open forms of discourse in which @#$%& appears. This essay follows the curious 100-year life of John G. Bourke's Scatalogic Rites of All Nations.
• At the time it was written, 1891, Scatalogic Rites was comprised of fifty-two chapters and 500 pages, and was accepted as an ethnographic catalog of rituals involving human waste. Several decades later, the tome was translated into German featuring an introduction by Sigmund Freud, who found the volume a forward step in countering the shame often involved in matters of defecation. In 1993, Scatalogic Rites was trimmed down to short excerpts of thirty chapters and 165 pages, and thus renamed The Portable Scatalog. Marketed as toilet humor, the edited version elides Bourke's introduction and conclusion -- the only places he reserves for serious reflection on the cultural importance of such a book.
• This essay contextualizes the original Scatalogic Rites in the age of neurasthenia, when Americans re-turned attention toward their bodies, and places like J.H. Kellogg's sanitariums thrived. The essay then juxtaposes the 1890s with contemporary culture, which produced The Portable Scatalog, to the end of asking and discussing why and how discourse of @#$%& has been restricted to the medium of the joke.
• Brief Caveat for PoopReport Fans
• The keen reader of "Tlaçolteotl", or even someone who has just read the abstract, will notice a degree of tension between the stance I take in this paper and the celebratory/self-effacing attitude that much of the content of PoopReport parlays. Those who read this essay to the end will notice that I even make the claim that the @#$%&-as-funny paradigm can even be construed as a symptom of a long-term cultural repression. While the last thing I want to do is reduce this type of forum to the level of a sneeze or lesion, I do hope that this will promote some sort of reflexive dialogue examining the topic of abjection itself.
• For the record, I am a fan of PoopReport and think that it is perhaps history's greatest public forums for all things @#$%&. Anyway, what if we carried this essay to its logical conclusion? What if we followed Kundera's advice and took dumps with the door open? What if humanity came to terms with this pseudo-naughty, prurient topic? My mind changes day-to-day on whether exploring @#$%& academically and socially is a worthy pursuit.
• If it is done to the end of seeing a less ass-phobic culture wherein one can @#$%& publicly, discuss bowel movements with strangers on an elevator, where homosexuality is not illegal or faux pas, or, like Bunhuel's film, we sat on toilets around a table and made @#$%& a social event, then I believe in it. If it only means that the @#$%&-demon in Dogma isn't funny anymore, then @#$%& it, keep @#$%& abject.
• Tlaçolteotl is Dead: The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Captain Bourke's Scatalogic Rites of All Nations
• The history of love, @#$%&, and the lizard also waits to be written." --Dominique Laporte1
• Introduction: Seeking the German Toilet and Finding the French
• Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek begins his book, The Plague of Fantasies, with a comparison of three cultures -- French, German, and Anglo-American -- in terms of their toilets. In the German toilet the hole is in the front with a platform in the back, "so that the @#$%& is first laid out for us to sniff at and inspect for traces of some illness."2 The hole and the platform of the French toilet are reversed, in order for the @#$%& to "disappear as soon as possible." In between these two cultural metaphors -- those of the German need to confront one's own waste and the French unwillingness to acknowledge its presence -- stands the Anglo-American toilet: "the basin is full of water, so that the @#$%& floats in it -- visible, but not to be inspected." For more than a century American culture has been vacillating back and forth within this dichotomy, never so neatly as to be decidedly on either side ("French" or "German", but it has always been interested in @#$%&...at a safe distance.
• One particular monument of American interest in @#$%& (one which was not surprisingly translated only into German) is John G. Bourke's Scatalogic Rites of All Nations.3 Bourke's work is an ethnographic exploration of historically and geographically varying rituals involving excrement. His study moves between basic practices of defecation and fecal worship -- practices which are distinct from middle-class American norms based on differences of technology and climate -- to cult-like festivals where @#$%& or urine are imbibed or offered as sacrifice. Accounts of the Trojans defecating in broad daylight are juxtaposed with obscure nineteenth century English games of offal connected only by their "otherness" in contrast to middle-class American customs.
• This type of survey makes sense in that it is a product of a time when society was becoming increasingly civilized and the "triumph of culture [. . .] promoted a spreading sense of moral impotence and spiritual sterility -- a feeling that life had become not only overcivilized but also curiously unreal."4 The last quarter of the nineteenth century was an era which produced afflictions such as neurasthenia, the disease of the "brainworker" who spent the day sitting in an office without exercise. This generation was steeped in Social Darwinist theories causing anxieties in the white middle class that perhaps they weren't "fit" enough to effectively perpetuate the existence of their race. White women, according to Theodore Roosevelt, were shirking their biological duties as females by not reproducing as much as non-white women and were therefore contributing to a type of "race suicide."5 In response to these maladies, Americans naturally made a turn towards the physical, the natural, and the bodily. Victorian notions of manhood and civility had to be reexamined. The subsequent results of this cultural illness sent Roosevelt out into the Badlands of North Dakota, drew tens of thousands to Buffalo Bill's reenactments of the "real" Wild West, began the bicycle craze of the 1880s and 1890s, and inspired John G. Bourke to investigate the dimensions of @#$%&.
• A little more than a hundred years later, Bourke's book, which Freud said contains "the major part of what is known of the role played by excretions in human life,"6 had been reduced and edited -- cleaned up -- from fifty-two chapters to short excerpts of thirty chapters; a reduction from 500 pages to 165. The editor of the new version, Louis P. Kaplan, rearranged many chapters, changed the citations so as to make it less "bulky," omitted Bourke's Introduction and Conclusion, and added his own Introduction. The result is The Portable Scatalog,7 which Kaplan offers up to the reader as either an object for "library study or rest room reading, [. . .] a classic of toilet humor."8 By making the book portable, more accessible, and more reader friendly, Kaplan essentially caters to the tastes of a culture with Victorian sensibilities about excrement. It is no longer a book which confronts and engages the neuroses of the era. The new, edited version is instead one which is sanitized and a gag. This may cause the reader to wonder what, then, is different about the American cultures on both ends of the hundred year span? What is considered dirty and why? How has treatment of, and reaction to, @#$%& changed? Are we contemporary Americans more mature as a populace and therefore more capable of dealing with the body than our forebears? A close contextual look at these two texts -- Bourke's original of 1891, Scatalogic Rites of All Nations, and the heavily edited version of 1994, The Portable Scatalog -- will assist in analyzing how @#$%& in general is looked at and studied.
• If we accept Freud's claim that the "wiser course would undoubtedly have been to admit [@#$%&'s] existence and to dignify it as much as nature will allow," then perhaps we as a culture have regressed while allowing ourselves to laugh from a distance at the Victorians' strange treatment of the body. Why was the dynamic at work in the treatment of @#$%& near the end of the nineteenth century characterized by repulsion and quasi-fetishism, and the dynamic of the contemporary era defined by disgust and laughter? I do not consider Captain Bourke and Louis Kaplan to be spokesmen for their respective era's tolerance for excremental matters. Perhaps a neuro-psychological survey of reactions to offal or a linguistic analysis of abject humor could give us more insights toward the end of answering these questions. After all, Bourke was an obscure Captain and amateur ethnographer, and Kaplan is not yet a well-known critic. As it is, however, Bourke's original and Kaplan's edited version of the Scatalogic Rites of All Nations are the two most promising templates for a comparative analysis of the role @#$%& plays, and the way in which it is studied, in two related cultures. The first section in this essay will consider the original Scatalogic Rites in its social context. The second section will do the same with the post-Bourkean life of the book. With the factual groundwork established, I will also develop a theoretical foundation through which the reader will hopefully be able to better understand society's and academia's relationship with scatology.
• Bourke's Original
• The initial peculiarity of Scatalogic Rites of All Nations is the misspelling of "Scatalogic." Why Bourke did this, or if it was unintended erratum, is a mystery. Nowhere does he address the issue or justify it in any way. As the title is the first "introduction" to the text, and quite important, it can best be explained as odd. And indeed for the neophyte of @#$%& studies, one has no other route other than to look up words such as "stercoraceous" and "offal," and perhaps even simpler words such as "ordure," "egestae," and "scatology."9 The 1934 publication of Scatalogic Rites by the American Anthropological Society notes its misspelling though leaves it as is. Unfortunately, Bourke wrote nothing of it in the introduction or the conclusion. In the 1994 edited version, Kaplan suggests that it is a play on "catalog" -- suggesting that the book is primarily a cataloging of excremental rituals. Kaplan theorizes that the spelling "symbolizes the tension in the book's composition between catalog and scatology, [. . .] switching back and before between shoveling excrement and collecting knowledge."10 Is it possible that "Scatalogic" was intended to refer to "catalog" and bookended with the letters "sic?" This theory, while entertaining, was doubtfully Bourke's intention, seeing as he was quite steadfast in remaining as scientific as possible. The most recent publication of Bourke's writings, his diaries of army life in the Southwest, is riddled with spelling mistakes and other errata (excusable, given that it was mostly written by the light of campfire). Nonetheless, one can also note the scientific rigidity he strives for. In fact, he offers somewhat of an apology for his straightforwardness in these diaries,
• This need is perhaps most apparent when he describes the urine dance of the Zuñis, which he witnessed firsthand in New Mexico after a rare invitation from the tribe. He begins with a "Patent Office Report"-style description of the surroundings and the dress of the Indian dancers, describing his own immediate location as well. Directly in front of him was a coal-oil lamp which projected an aura around his head. He writes, "I suppose that in the halo diffused by the feeble light, and in my 'stained-glass attitude,' I must have borne some resemblance to the pictures of saints hanging upon the walls of the old Mexican churches."16 At this point in the narrative, as if Bourke's fancied image of himself had reawakened him to the differences between the two cultures present, he continues his descriptions, but now with a more patronizing tone. He writes of how the dancers knelt in front of his table and "with an extravagant beating of breast began an outlandish but faithful mockery of a Mexican Catholic congregation at vespers, [which] kept the audience laughing with sore sides for some moments."17 Then after the "savages" addressed the Americans with a "funny gibberish of broken Spanish, English, and Zui," one carried out a pot of urine, "which the filthy brutes drank heartily."18 The dancers drank the "strange and abominable refreshment [and] smacked their lips."19 By this time, "the clowns were now upon their mettle, each trying to surpass his neighbors in feats of nastiness."20 The audacity of the performance continued to shock Bourke until he escaped from the room, which, "stuffed with one hundred Zuis, had become so foul and filthy as to be almost unbearable." It is difficult to imagine how, after fighting in the Civil War and then the Indian Wars for several decades, Bourke can still be disgusted by these acts. As the editor of the Diaries points out, although time with the Indians caused a deep respect for them to grow in Bourke, he, unlike Arabian Nights translator Richard Burton, "always retained his own cultural identity."22
• It is clear in these accounts that he has predetermined his audience and his agenda, for they are integral to the project as a whole. Bourke's agenda in writing this work is twofold, or, perhaps, comprised of a mission and its method. His mission is clearly to inform his readers of the archaic rituals that still survive today armed with the hope that society will once and for all be cleaned of such detritus. The Indians are, to Bourke the ethnographer, a relic of the past and can even be compared to Europe's ancestors in their scatological fascination. For example, Bourke writes that one of the first Roman deities was Cloacina, and "under her charge were the various cloacae, sewers, privies, etc., of the Eternal City."23 Later, in the year 831, a debate began in the Christian church over whether or not the host was subject to the same digestive process as all other food. The Stercoranistes,24 as the proponents of this particular anti-transubstantiationalist belief were called, were only around for a few centuries.25 Now, though, the Indians and other isolated peoples are the only cultures which still carry these traditions. Bourke writes, "Hebrews and Christians will discover a common ground of congratulation in the fact that believers in their systems are now absolutely free from any suggestion of this filth taint."26 For Bourke's modern civilization to employ such practices or thoughts would be a gross reversion to savagery.
• This sort of cleansing parallels the intent of his assignment in the Southwest, which was essentially a project of ethnic cleansing. But given his relatively humane approach to the Indians, Bourke had foreseen a time when they would be integrated into "normal society," rather than exterminated, and would therefore have to act like decent white Americans.27 His method for accomplishing the task of awakening his readers to the topic was by reminding them that in order to keep society progressing toward the Victorian ideal of neoclassical sterility, they must first confront @#$%& and its history. He writes in the Introduction:
The subject of Scatalogic or Stercoraceous Rites or practices, however repellent it may be under some of its aspects, is nonetheless deserving of the profoundest consideration -- if for no other reason that the former universal dissemination of such aberrations of the intellect, as well as of the religious impulses of the human race, and their present curtailment or restriction, the progress of humanity upward and onward may be best measured.28
• It is clear that Bourke sees @#$%& as something, in a quasi-Nietzschean sense, to be overcome. While the teleological matter of Scatalogic Rites was certainly aligned with the ethic of self-control and the hygienic impulse to distance oneself from those less unsullied, the methodological approach appealed to the antimodern inclination to seek that which is authentic, real, and bodily. He is both modern and antimodern. That is, although his method demanded a closer inspection of the topic of feces (antimodern), the ultimate goal was to be rid of it (modern).
• Bourke's emphasis on progress, more specifically his emphasis on the idea that civilization is rightly moving toward middle- and upper-class values, weds him immediately to Social Darwinist tendencies most often attributed to Herbert Spencer. However, Bourke was in many ways cut off from society for the majority of his life. He joined the Civil War by lying about his age when he was sixteen. Immediately afterward, he attended West Point. From his graduation onward, he spent his life between New Mexico, Arizona, South Dakota, and Texas as an aide-de-camp to General Crook, and then later as the Captain of various posts. So his exposure to typical intellectual culture was minimal at best. By the time he wrote Scatalogic Rites, however, he had written articles for several ethnographic journals, which were most likely permeated with Social Darwinist notions. As Richard Hofstadter notes, "in the three decades after the Civil War it was impossible to be active in any field of intellectual work without mastering Spencer."29 Thus we can assume that his weltanschauung was influenced to some degree, either directly or indirectly, by Spencer. Bourke's racism was tempered in comparison with many of his contemporaries, although the way in which his teleological approach manifests itself -- in distinctions between clean and dirty, civilized and uncivilized, good and bad -- quite explicitly demonstrates where his values lie.
• Another thread of thought in the late-nineteenth century, also partly influenced by Social Darwinist tendencies, is that of the aforementioned antimodernist movement. Many of the antimoderns, according to historian T.J. Jackson Lears, were afraid that sedentary, non-physical lifestyles could eventually lead to race suicide and therefore sought the "'authentic' experience" as a saving power.30 This trend was broad and multifaceted, but nearly all strategies for overcoming the neurasthenic fear involved an almost pagan redirection of attention toward that which is earthly or corporeal. Many different strategies were employed, but each one was intended to result in greater contact with nature and virility. Prominent figures such as George Evans, John Muir, and Joseph Knowles sought refuge in the woods. According to Evans, the wilderness will "give you good red blood; it will turn you from a weakling into a man."31 Likewise, another author wrote that "man can retain his strength only by returning to Mother Earth."32 The 1880s and 1890s also saw the modern day birth of bodybuilding in Eugene Sandow and Bernarr Macfadden, the peak of the bicycle craze which was popularized by its health benefits, and the beginning of physical education in schools pioneered by Dudley Sargeant.33 The topic of @#$%& and digestion, however, as has been called "the most neglected major theme of psychohistory," was by and large passed over -- most likely due to its popular reputation as vile and unsuitable for discussion.34 Bourke would have been virtually alone in his quest had it not been for sanitarium director and cereal man, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg.
• Central to Kellogg's detailed health regiment was his candid assertion that "food residues and wastes should be evacuated at least three times a day, or after every meal."35 Like the antimodern figures mentioned above, Kellogg was a vigorous proponent of exercise and attention to the body as the most effective remedy for neurasthenia. But unlike the others, Kellogg, spoke frankly of @#$%& and its importance. In his book, The Itinerary of a Breakfast, he enthusiastically writes of the bowels:
The intestinal movements are, moreover, directed with such evident purpose and precision as almost to suggest that the food tube is an independent and intelligent creature, possessing its own brain and will and ever performing its functions as a faithful body-servant.36
• Paul Eluard highlights the thrust of Kellogg's with his own: "Language speaks and asks: 'Why am I beautiful? Because my master bathes me.'"37 Eluard and Kellogg both treat their respective topics, language and the bowels, as subservient to their masters who clean them. Therefore, although Bourke might have disapproved of Kellogg's religious treatment of the act of defecation, their real connection lies in that they both maintained that @#$%& is important. For Kellogg, it is something to be controlled and conquered physically; for Bourke, socially. With this determination, they both wrote about excrement against the social constraints of proper dialogue.
• We now hark back to Zizek's metaphor of the toilets back into the context at this point. Eluard speaks for the French and their toilet by aligning beauty with cleansing without mention of what it is that needs to be cleansed. German representative Richard Wagner38 wrote in a letter to Franz Lizst:
Unhappy people, care for a sound digestion, and suddenly life appears totally different than you saw it when you were tormented by your abdomen! Truly, all our politics, diplomacy, ambition, weakness and science have no other foundation than our ruined abdomens.39
• Wagner sees every reason to inspect the @#$%& for sickness before flushing. Extending this line of thought would apparently leave Bourke as the American scientist who examines his subject through a basin full of water so as to look at it but not smell it before flushing. However, the overly simplistic metaphor breaks down when dealing in detail with Bourke's work. Perhaps the careful distance he seems to take when at the Zuñi urine dance fits the equation, but his wish for the impact of his book on society engages the subject much more closely. He ends the Scatalogic Rites with "the proper study of mankind is man," in reference to a quote by the Emperor Maximilian which states "I am man; nothing pertaining to man I deem foreign to myself."40 Ethnography is not a field which Bourke feels can ignore a topic so essential as @#$%&. He sees the field of scatology to be not only entirely relevant, but valuable as well. While he was undoubtedly a product of his time, Bourke was essentially alone (with the exception of Kellogg) in writing on a topic that would still be dealt with awkwardly more than one hundred years after his death.
• Post-Bourkean Life of Scatalogic Rites of All Nations: The New Book of Laughter and Forgetting
• The legacy of Scatalogic Rites that continued after the death of Captain Bourke is one marked by perfunctory attention and, in 1994, a queer resurrection. The lone exception to the fairly unnoticed presence in the century following its publication is the interest given to it by psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. The first printing of the book was done with private funds by the small but moderately successful Washington D.C. publishing house called W.H. Lowdermilk & co. Twenty-two years later, a Leipzig-based publishing house, Ethnologischer Verlag (Ethnological Press), printed the only foreign translation of Scatalogic Rites.41
• In the Foreword to the German translation, Freud reserves his praise, not for the content or the research itself, but for the very project of a serious scatological treatise. He does so with passionate echoes of Bourke's emphasis on the need to treat @#$%& as a viable and necessary topic of discourse. Freud begins with an anecdote from his years in medical school about his teacher who, while examining the corpse of a young girl, offered her "dirty knees as evidence of her virtue."42 Contrary to what one might assume from the empirical data, Freud learned from this that "bodily cleanliness is far more readily associated with vice than with virtue."43 In other words, Freud reverses the standard notion of purity and virtue by making the claim that it is more human, and therefore more virtuous, to be comfortable with one's own animal nature than it is to deny it. The civilized man is trying to be like "the 'more perfected angels' in the last scene of Goethe's Faust, who complain: Uns bleibt ein Erdenrest/ Zu tragen peinlich/ Und wr' er von Asbest,/ Er ist nicht reinlich."44 Translated, the angels say "Earth's remnants molest us/ To bear them is toil,/ Were they asbestos/ They still would soil."45 What results from this form of denial is repression on a personal level, and when works such as Bourke's are ignored, the result is a much more serious cultural repression. Freud is even more explicit in his approval of Bourke's project when he writes that "to make [the role of excretions in human life] more accessible...is not only a courageous but also a meritorious undertaking."46 But Freud's role in the American story of @#$%&, as moderated by -- or seen through the history of -- Bourke's work, does not stop with mere adulation of Scatalogic Rites, as we shall soon see.
• The next important moment in the life of Scatalogic Rites was its 1934 publication by the American Anthropological Society. Just as Lears points out that the 1890s was a time when Americans sought "'authentic' alternatives to the apparent unreality of modern existence," the 1930s too can be seen as a decade in which Americans needed a more solid grasp on the elusive "real" experience.47 The rise in popularity of movies, the proliferation of radios, the popularization of sports, and of course the stock market crash left American's in a similar predicament, between image and reality, as in the 1890s. In the 1930s, however, the predicament was based more on the explosion of mass culture than on personal ailments. Although it is difficult to gauge exactly why the American Anthropological Society decided to reprint Scatalogic Rites in 1934, it comes just three years before the government reacted to the growing popular urge to see how 'real folk' were living, when the Farm Securities Administration sent photographers to the south to chronicle poverty, of sharecroppers in particular.48 As the illusions of city life began to fade during the time of economic hardship in the 30s, Americans once again found spiritual refuge in turning to look at the "salt of the earth" lifestyle and a romanticization of its substantive, corporeal features. As one critic wrote of the photographer Walker Evans, "Evans's social role was to restore authenticity to the American vision."49 Sublimation of the "civilized man" no longer held sway as an ideal in the face of poverty and hunger.
• Despite the historical evidence of probative experimentation with, or mere cursory interest in, a Thoreauvian earthly lifestyle, where one's @#$%& doesn't just disappear, Americans have for the most part been quite uncomfortable with the subject of excrement. Excepting the permeation of Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalytic concepts of @#$%& and anality, and the American scholar Norman O. Brown, @#$%& has chiefly been confined to an existence in the realm of the joke. That is, whereas psychoanalysis has taken on the responsibility of determining the role of @#$%& in the personal sphere, only the joke has been able to perform a similar function in both the personal and the broader social/cultural sphere. Freud bridged this gap in his book The Joke and Its Relation to the Unconscious.
• Naturally, his theory of the social joke is derived from his theory of dreaming. In order to express unconscious urges, the dream must first get past the censorship (Zensur), whose job it is "to prevent anxiety and other distressing symptoms."50 To overcome the censoring agent, the dream often disguises itself as a joke. The function of the joke in waking life is then to serve as a diversionary element in order to deflect the pain caused by a repressed impulse -- in our case being the impulse to confront the issue of @#$%&. Restated, a joke about @#$%& acknowledges that it is a repressed subject, and the ensuing laughter is then an expression of pleasure that the unconscious does not have to directly confront it. This is in part why the excrement joke consistently draws more laughs than would, say, a joke about eating or breathing or sleeping.51 Sex jokes are in the same category as @#$%& jokes for the very same reason. Freud considers both types under the broader heading "tendentious joke." Both @#$%&- and sex jokes also fit under a sub-category of the obscene joke. While the tendentious joke is one with a purpose, and the obscene joke is one that "strips naked,"52 sex jokes and @#$%& jokes are consequently ones whose purpose it is to expose specific social mores. It is the ultimate irony that the most recent fate of Scatalogic Rites of All Nations, The Portable Scatalog, has all of the Freudian characteristics of a @#$%& joke.
• The back cover of The Portable Scatalog informs, or rather titillates, the potential reader with the promise that editor Louis Kaplan has "produce[d] a 'scatalog' portable enough to be carried with ease between the library and the toilet." The joke is, of course, that academia can be funny too. The mechanism of the humor works on two levels.53 First, by mentioning "scatalog" and highlighting it with quotation marks, it employs one of the methods of the joke in Freud's dream work. The basic universal technique of the unconscious joke is "the process of condensation with substitute-formation."54 The most easily translatable pun Freud gives for an example is an anonymous writer's conflation of "alcohol" and "holiday" to describe Christmas as an "alcoholiday."55 According to Kaplan's arguable conjecture, it was originally Bourke's idea to neologically misspell "scatalogic," but Kaplan makes this point even more apparent by shortening it further to "scatalog." The second operational level of this joke is that it "strips naked" the notion that society, specifically academia, is for the most part guarded from scatological matters. Therefore, by purchasing this book the reader will be able to display his or her intelligence by owning a book written by a nineteenth century scientist and simultaneously prove a deeper level of sophistication by being open to as foul a subject as @#$%&.
• Another type of condensation in The Portable Scatalog, of which Freud says nothing, is that of elision -- or, more harshly, censorship -- of the original. This is perhaps the most serious difference between Scatalogic Rites and the Scatalog, for it changes the entire mission intended by the original. The first and most obvious omission from Scatalogic Rites is of Bourke's Introduction and Conclusion -- the only spaces he reserves where he explains why he thinks his project is important and what effects it should have on society in general. He does of course impart judgment via his word choice in the text itself, as discussed above, but given the staunchly scientific attitude with which he directly approaches his subject matter, the Introduction and Conclusion are where he openly makes his most impassioned pleas for understanding. In the Introduction, he writes:
Repugnant, therefore, as the subject is under most points of view, the author has felt constrained to reproduce all that he has seen and read, hoping that, in the fuller consideration that all forms of primitive religion are now receiving, this, the most brutal, possibly, of all, may claim some share of examination and discussion.56
• He directly addresses the trepidation by which he fears Scatalogic Rites might be met and appeals for the reader to instead approach the text with a broader scope of understanding. Certainly this sort of earnestness has no place in The Portable Scatalog. Bourke's Introduction is replaced with an introduction written by Kaplan which perpetuates the Scatalog's status as a gag.
• Before the Introduction, the first section of text in the Scatalog is Freud's 1913 Foreword, which provides a short but genuine segment of admiration for Bourke's project. Most likely, the presence of Freud's Foreword was maintained due to his reputation being known to some degree in nearly all fields of study, as well as in mass culture. Next, in the Introduction, Kaplan refers to Freud as "the master of the anal stage," relegating him to novelty status.57 He goes on to ossify the book's role as a joke by continuous punning. In reference to the encounter with the Zuñi tribe, Kaplan writes that "Bourke never recovered from (nor fully digested) this traumatic experience."58 Furthermore, given the overall breadth of the elision -- and the fact that he doesn't mention cutting out the original Introduction and Conclusion -- it is safe to say that Kaplan unnecessarily notes that he simplified "Bourke's bulky citational apparatus."59 The original is also referred to by the editor as a "strange volume" and "a curious classic."60 The new version is, in essence, now what Kaplan aptly names, "a classic of toilet humor."61
• In Bourke's original and in Kaplan's Scatalog, the reader sees plainly written on the cover "Not for General Perusal." But of course it is. As mentioned above, Bourke's ethos concerning his work was that academics, the working class, and "savages" alike need to confront the matter of @#$%&. By including it in the original subtitle, Bourke was more than likely appealing to late-nineteenth century manners, and perhaps insuring it against Comstockery laws. Kaplan's inclusion of the warning -- meanwhile eliding the long section of the subtitle that comes directly before62 -- sends the same message as that of the black sleeve that Playboys are wrapped in, namely, "this is not something to be seen by those not mature enough to deal with it; please take a look."
• My intent is not to deny that today Scatalogic Rites of All Nations is an anachronism, nor is the criticism of Kaplan's project meant to say that such discussion should be void of any humor. But what results from cutting the original from fifty-two chapters down to excerpts of thirty,63 is a mutative deracination of the text replacing a sincere investigation into a relatively unresearched field of study. The difference also marks the shift in how @#$%& is studied. While scatology has always been a marginal area of research, it did at one point have a place in science. As it is now, what remains of Bourke's Scatalogic Rites belongs in the same category as works such as Now Here's a Man Who Knows his @#$%&, The Best American @#$%& Stories, The Porcelain God, and various other jokes and puns.64 In short, scatology exists today in the social space of the joke.
• The original purpose of Scatalogic Rites has been stripped from it. As for what is left of it, The Portable Scatalog itself becomes another chapter in Bourke's original cataloging of strange, "filthy savages" who have not yet resolved, in Freud's words, "the repression of coprophilic inclinations."65 The difference is that instead of being a book about those actually worshipping real, foul-smelling @#$%&, as Bourke's subjects did, The Portable Scatalog was written for a society who prefers to take away its odor and substance before offering it a polite and awkward titter. But were Bourke alive today, the latter audience would have earned its own spot in an updated version of Scatalogic Rites.
• In an effort to capture the spirit of Bourke we return to the quote at the beginning of the essay, "the history of love, @#$%&, and the lizard also waits to be written" -- a reference to the lizard "who is drowned in the urine of [an] afflicted party to cure lovesickness."66 The lizard is the prehistoric sacrifice offered by one who is ailing from nostalgia and loss. Society's own lovesickness in reference to @#$%& is therefore in the inability to confront its own corporeality. Whereas the neurasthenic society of the 1890s was at least capable of turning to the body in various ways, including the writing of Scatalogic Rites, contemporary society turns to the ritualistic sacrifice. Symbolically this is the sacrifice of Scatalogic Rites, and in actuality, the sacrifice of the ability to actually turn to the body. This return to the body has been replaced with a turn to the joke instead. And the joke, as we know from Freud, functions to deflect emotions such as those that might arise from a society of people who are even more physically separated than a hundred years ago. One might imagine America gathered around a toilet watching a piece of imitation @#$%& get flushed amidst a chorus of nervous laughter.
…End of File Preview…

Peace and Love..........John





Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/12/2013 09:09PM by John Rose.

You make the intestines king and the pineal gland the Demi-God and then the Earth does become like a Heaven. Everything becomes 100 times more beautiful to look at: the sky becomes mind blowingly amazing, the trees, the animals...everything is great. Avoid the low vibrations of mans doing as much as possible, and life becomes paradise on Earth.

I wish people could see the physical and spiritual world through my eyes...people would be completely blown away. But if you fill the stomach up too much, those beautiful sights fade and the world becomes less magic and the mind becomes more full of illusion because we accept the manmade physical aspects around us.

l would love to go on and on, but l better not.

I usually avoid reading ancient wisdom of the wise men because l prefer to get the wisdom directly from the cosmic powers.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/13/2013 12:46AM by The Sproutarian Man.

here I smile to you

Cynthia

John Rose Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
Is meat and
> FIRE the cause of plagues, sorrow and mischief?

According to one high level spiritual master it is. The dark vibrations of killing animals is said to cause all miseries on the Earth along with Earth quakes (a build up of intense energy vibrations).

And yes, fire is a curse because it kills and deantures everything like food and also allows us to build things for a system (also dead and denatured). With thgis comes increased appetite and a craving for materialism which brings into being money and greed and brings us into contracts so the few can control the many.

Fire is the devil because it creates our illusion that we live in...it is the creation of lies of our false reality we so much believe in.

Yes, evil is ignorance, and we are all swamped in ignorance to some extent because the illusions we live in is ignorance created by a false system.

Of course we will stop progessing when we have fire because we no longer know the truth because we forget who we are.

None of the system and materialism is a boon for mankind, it is only a distraction so we don't know our true powers.

Some of the characters in fairy tales are actually real. These writers didn't have great imaginations, they were enlightened. I know this for a fact as clear as the nose on my face. We can meet some of these characters - they are here. Oh yes my friends, they are here.

l'll get back to reading the rest of John's stuff later. Looking forward to reading some more.

THeSt0rm Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
I think l would rather have the brain of a cow actually.


> This is why some of the stuff at
> loveforlife.com.au kind of confuses me... when the
> website talks about having No systems
> whatsoever... when having 'no system' is still a
> system. How can that be?

Arthur (loveforlife.com) is a smart fellow and has many great ideas and generally knows what he is on about, but when it comes to spiritual stuff he falls completely flat on his face. I've rang him and he is telling me that all this mediation, aliens, cosmos, other planets is all garbage. He tells me that there is no light. He tells me that we are the only ones in the universe and that our lives are all a dream caused from our breath. He goes on and on about this for many hours, but l tell him nothing, l just listen to what he has to say.

Arthur is a mighty fine fellow l feel. He is into raw foods too and grows his food. One day l will stay with him and we will talk properly about spirituality. He has to see me face to face so he can see l am for real.

He asks me about the other planets...what rubbish he says, where are they? He asks me about the aliens....what rubbish he says, where are they? But l say nothing.

Arthur is going to get a big shock one day.

He wants to start a raw community of true blue freemen. Not very in the truth movement speak to him anymore because he has exposed all their lies. Good on him. So many frauds out there. He exposed Icke and many others, that's why they won't interview him. All the big truth movement guys stayed in his home, but he exposed the lot of them. Arthur wants the truth, but very few people ever do.

Arthur is a man on a mission, and sometimes he works 22 hours a day. And he writes alot...like you Storm, like John, and like me. And he talks and talks.



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 09/13/2013 07:54AM by The Sproutarian Man.