"...it's not the training to be mean but the training to be kind that is used to keep us leashed best." ~ Black Dog Red

"In case you haven't recognized the trend: it proceeds action, dissent, speech." ~ davidly, on how wars get done

"...What sort of meager, unerotic existence must a man live to find himself moved to such ecstatic heights by the mundane sniping of a congressional budget fight. The fate of human existence does not hang in the balance. The gods are not arrayed on either side. Poseiden, earth-shaker, has regrettably set his sights on the poor fishermen of northern Japan and not on Washington, D.C. where his ire might do some good--I can think of no better spot for a little wetland reclamation project, if you know what I mean. The fight is neither revolution nor apocalypse; it is hardly even a fight. A lot of apparatchiks are moving a lot of phony numbers with more zeros than a century of soccer scores around, weaving a brittle chrysalis around a gross worm that, some time hence, will emerge, untransformed, still a worm." ~ IOZ

May 2, 2011

In Praise of Hassan-i-Sabbah

So.

The man on a black horse above a background of flames (top right of the blog, mine avi) is from a portrait entitled Hassan-i-Sabbah. I've been using it for several years now, as an homage to a man whose legend and reality have long fascinated me. I instinctively enjoy the idea of a lecherous old bastard genius who, from mountaintop gardens in Syria, Lebanon and Iran, directs a campaign of terror waged upon invading crusaders, viziers, poombahs and potentates.

Hell, I sympathize. Especially with an antinomian cult from which comes the annunciation of the final revelation, the end of all law, the completion of all prophecy and a sacred and holy chaos.

So, I think it only fitting that today it be announced that from hereforward and forever always, the First of May shall be Hassan-i-Sabbah Day.

Oh, for a thousand thousand Alamuts...

2 comments:

senecal said...

I prefer the traditional May Day, celebration of brotherhood not hatred.

Jack Crow said...

May Day has a hundred overlays. It was a pagan fertility fuckfest long before it was appropriated to celebrate brotherhood for European males.