Post by vivianSomebody transcribed Burrough's Book of the Dead recording that was
featured in the beginning of this year's season opener.
Any chance this could be done again? (I misplaced the original
posting.) Or could, alternately, I be pointed to where it can be found
on-line?
I'm about to rewatch the entire season and see what correspondences I
can find.
TIA.
viv
This is the complete version...
Excerpt from "The Western Lands" by William Burroughs
The ancient Egyptians postulated seven souls, Top soul, and the first to
leave at the moment of death, is Ren, the Secret Name. This corresponds to
my Director, He directs the film of your life from conception to death. The
Secret Name is the title of your film. When you die, that's where Ren came
in.
Second soul, and second one off the sinking ship, is Sekem: Energy, Power,
Light The Director gives the orders, Sekem presses the right buttons.
Number three is Khu, the Guardian Angel. He, she, or it is third man out .
. . depicted as flying away across a full moon, a bird with luminous wings
and head of light. Sort of thing you might see on a screen in an Indian
restaurant in Panama. The Khu is responsible for the subject and can be
injured in his defense- but not permanently, since the first three souls
are eternal. They go beck to Heaven for another vessel.
The four remaining souls must take their chances with the subject in the
Land of the Dead. Number four is Ba, the heart, often treacherous. This is
a hawk's body with your face on it, shrunk down to the size of a fist. Many
a hero has been brought down, like Samson, by a perfidious Ba.
Number five is Ka, the Double, most closely associated with the subject.
The Ka, which usually reaches adolescence at the time of bodily death, is
the only reliable guide through the Land of the Dead to the western Lands.
Number six is Khaibit, the Shadow, Memory, your whole past conditioning
from this and other lives.
Number seven is Sekhu, the Remains.
I first encountered this concept in Norman Mailer's, Ancient Evenings, and
saw that it corresponded precisely with my own mythology, developed over a
period of many years, since birth in fact.
Ren, the Director, the Secret Name, is your life story, your destiny-in one
word or one sentence, what was your life about? Nixon: Watergate. Billy the
Kid: Quien es?
And what is the Ren of the Director?
Actors frantically packing in thousands of furnished rooms and theatrical
hotels: "Don't bother with all that junk, John. The Director is on stage!
And you know what that means in show biz: every man for himself."
Sekem corresponds to my Technician: ,Lights. Action. Camera. ' "Look, boss,
we don't got enough Sek to fry an elderly woman in a fleabag hotel fire.
And yoa want s hurricane?" "Well, Joe, we'll just have to start faking it"
"Fucking moguls don't even know what buttons to push or what happens when
you push them. Sure; start faking it and leave the details to Joe."
Look, from a real disaster you get a pig of Sek: sacrifice, tears,
heartbreak, heroism and violent death. Always remember, one case of VD
yields more Sek than a cancer ward. And you get the lowest acts of which
humans are capable-remember the Italian steward who put on women's clothes
and so filched a seat in a lifeboat? "A cur in human shape, certainly he
was born and saved to set a new standard by which to judge infamy and
shame." With a Sek surplus you can underwrite the next one, but if the
first one's a fake you can't underwrite a shithouse. Sekem is second man
out: 'No power left in this set" He drinks a bicarbonate of soda and
disappears in a belch.
Lots of people don't have a Khu these days. No Khu would work for them.
Mafioso Don: "Get offa me, Khu crumb! Worka for a living!"
Ba, the Heart: that's sex. Always treacherous. Suck all the Sek out of a
man. Many Bas, have poison juices.
The Ka is about the only soul a man can trust. If you don't make it, he
don't make it. But it is very difficult to contact your real Ka.
Sekhu is the physical body, and the planet is mostly populated with walking
Sekhus, just enough Sek to keep them moving.
The Venusian invasion is a takeover of the souls. Ren is degraded by
Hollywood down to John Wayne levels. Sekem works for the Company. The Khus
are all transparent fakes. The Bas is rotten with AIDS. The Ka is
paralyzed. Khaibit sits on yon like a nagging wife. Sekhu is poisoned with
radiation and contaminants and cancer.
There is intrigue among the souls, and treachery. No worse fate can befall
a man than to be surrounded by traitor souls. And what about Mr. Eight-
Ball, who has these souls? They don't exist without him, and he gets the
dirty end of every stick.
Eights of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your dirty rotten
vampires: A hundred years ago there were rat-killing .dogs known as
"Fancies." A man bet on his "Fancy," how many rata he would kill. The rats
were confined in a circular arena too high for a rat to jump over. But they
formed pyramids, so that the top rats could escape. Sekhu is bottom rat in
the pyramid. Like the vital bottom integer in a serial, when that goes, the
whole serial universe gone up in smoke. It never existed.
Angelic boys who walk on water, sweet inhuman voices from a distant star.
The Khu, sweet -bird of night, with luminous wings and a head of light,
flies across the full moon . . . a born-again redneck raise's his shotgun.
. . .
"Stinkin' Khu!"
The Egyptians recognized many degrees of immortality. The Ren and the Sekem
and the Khu are relatively immortal, but still subject to injury. The other
souls who survive physical death are much more precariously situated.
Can any soul survive the searing fireball of an atomic blast? If humans and
animal souls are seen as electromagnetic force fields, such fields could be
totally disrupted by a nuclear explosion. The mummy's 'nightmare:
disintegration of souls, and this is precisely the ultrasecret and
supersensitive function of the atom bomb: a Soul Killer, to alleviate an
escalating soul glut.