The Nomadic Alternative – Page 273

recover his reason (or humanity) and emerged from his bestial excursion cured, reoriented and renewed. His state is known as 'spirit possession'. The afflicted fail to externalize their misfortunes. They fail to name and fight the outside menace, and gradually, in the form of internalized self-hatred or a persecu-tion mania, the Beast Within takes over. In trance or near-trance, the victim feels occupied by some bestial force. This may be self-destructive, but the victim averts suicide by turning the flow of anger against other men. The malice-laden eye that flickered in the half-light is grafted onto the eye of man. Saul eyed David and David averted his gaze. The Evil Eye is fascinating; to fasci-nate is to immobilize with terror. In advanced cases of bestial possession, all human inhibitions go into abeyance. Count Dracula, the Werewolf, gored his victims and sucked their blood. Such are the mechanics of human war.

Those people most free from the anxiety of growing old are the perpetual wanderers, who do not allow themselves to be dragged down by possessions and who time each one of life's appointments correctly. The crucial event in their lives is the great youthful initiation, where a brush with the 'dark-robed lord of the dead' is rewarded by an intensity of physical passion. Eros and Thanatos are intertwined and interlinked at this time. The great battle with the Beast confirms two certainties. The heroes and heroines are men, not brutes. They also know their sex. They make their choice and problems of sexual identity cease to trouble them. Thereafter the curiosity and openness of youth wanes, as they calmly accept the course of life and synchronize themselves to the idea of death.

They are free from the tyranny of time, and with the cyclical progress of the seasons feel annually renewed. Early in life they achieve their sense of human 'wholeness'. Once this process is complete, the brain simply shuts off and is disinterested in the Idea of the New.

But Civilization is change institutionalized. And the reason