The Dionysus Statistic

Croesus knew the stories about King Midas and how he bathed for a long time in the river Pactolus to wash off his 'power' of turning everything to gold. As a thinking person, he must have realized that where there was smoke there may be fire, and, investigating, he found that the river in question was full of electrum, the volcanic alloy of silver and gold. And more than that too, evidently, he also was a believer in innovation and technology - such as it was back then - and utilized new ideas about separating gold from silver and other metals in the naturally-occurring alloys in order to make a very well-respected currency. This coin, called the stater, or standard, was actually made of less gold than other similar coins, but of a much higher purity.

A touch of gold, but only a touch,
and not too much!

It cost about 1/2 an ounce of gold per month to pay the salary of a soldier, and Croesus was able to preserve his power and position because of his ability to earn seigneurage on the money that he minted, and thus pay for a lot of soldiers.

Eventually though, his wealth attracted the attention of the lunatic Cyrus 'the Great'(!), who tried to kill him, and by some accounts did kill him.

I think there are a couple of points still relevant to the modern era that may be taken from the Croesus/Midas/Dionysus fables or folkloric histories:

One, that it pays to go where there is a lot of electrum flowing, if you seek to have gold.

And secondly, it probably also pays to keep your wealth as quiet as is practical to do; and this is not a rare idea of course.

What we are confronted with today, is a somewhat new environment in which a lunatic form of government, has succeeded in drawing off massive amounts of currency from the normal internal domestic flows of money and trade, and so it is not so easy to locate any 'river Pactolus' of the modern time...

Turkey, famous for roses,
gold, and King Midas - who was also a rose grower

The god Dionysus, being, as he is hard to grab hold of and stick into a laboratory in order to discover if he exists or is just a figment of someone's imagination - is not necessarily the agency of miraculous incident that one ought to focus on primarily to find out what 'Midas' will be created next, and therefore into whose bathing stream we ought to wade.

The more complex, the more 'attention deficit,' the more hyperactive, the more buzzing, the world gets, seemingly, the more accidents happen - and the more too, humans seem to be in the pathways of hurricanes and things like that.

On the one hand, given the tsunamis, the hurricanes, the floods, the earthquakes, the storms, the fires, and the acts of terrorism and/or revolt, it is notable that virtually no important person has ever been killed in one of them - no one, say, like any particularly important country's leader, or a major banker or industrialist or financier, or some judges or leading counsel.

Dionysus in ecstasy,
a moment from handing out a miracle or two

But, being a thinking and a logical person, I would venture to suggest that it is only a matter of time. And then I think, there is a certain kind of human psychology about political leaders and despots and tyrants and things, that it would pay to understand about, because there is nothing so humorous - or profitable - as to watch when a book-maker (turf accountant/ odds quote-r) looks around with that expression of: 'I didn't organize that! What just happened!'

The Croesus Mindset

There is so much interpretation and re-interpretation of history nowadays, that it is virtually a waste of time doing things like suggesting: 'the TRUTH about so-and-so REALLY was...'

And besides, how is it possible to encapsulate someone's whole life into a few short phrases or sentences or even a book?

Better to look at a lesson from history, or a particular complex idea expressed by way of some particular incident out of history.

And so in this piece I'd like to just look at one or two simple things we know about the legendarily wealthy King Croesus of Lydia (Turkey, today). We know he got gold from the river Pactolus, in which by myth or legend before him, King Midas washed in order to rid himself of the problematic blessing from the god Dionysus, which was namely that everything he touched would turn into gold.

The gold coin of King Croesus -
what are those symbols?!

We know he used innovations of the time, to do with separating silver from gold by heating the mixtures with plain salt - and issued fairly pure gold coins.

And we know that he instituted a treasury inside the Delphic Oracle of the Pythia.

What is less commonly known is that although the main Oracular centers took in gifts, they also distributed them out as well...

In Dodona, where the sacred Oak grove was, that also issued oracular pronouncements, 'mysterious gifts wrapped in straw would arrive from the Hyperboreans." Now the Hyperboreans lived in a place virtually no one had ever been to, way up North where it was both snowy as well as permanently in sunlight, full of pleasant corn fields and where no one got old, et cetera, et etera.

Croesus was a master of trading and he instituted and supported trade centers in his main home cities of Sardis and Ephesus.

In Winter, the god Apollo left the Delphic Oracle and holidayed in Hyperborea, with the gifts left behind, those mysterious ones wrapped tightly in straw, left to pacify the Delpheans in his absence.

And what is this all about?

...My point is to do with Midas, though. And not so much to do with what Croesus did after he got his main wealth.

Who is this Midas, really, and what is the myth about him based on - is it psychological, or magical and unreal; a fantasy of the human social mind?

Croesus, the Richest King Part 1

So... Following on from the last item here...

The basic idea is that behind virtually every obvious, open, public symbol of some important cultural - especially cultural - belief, is the form of the idea or belief that makes actual sense and functions in reality.

Why this is so is sometimes due to a malicious intent by groups of people, or a leader or ruler of people, to hide his own shortcomings and to mask the ways of unseating him.

In our present times, it is possible to think of it as somewhat similar to a program virus - something not for the benefit of the recipient at all. It is possible to think about social and political and even economic processes and 'topography' in terms of computer programs as a useful schema for our understanding of the human systems in which we abide.

Some of the things that one might suppose should be rather innocuous, are very sinister and have malicious meanings and objectives.

I am reminded of the recent two movie set about the 300 Spartans at Thermoplyae. In these we have a female admiral by name 'Artermisia' playing a role in support of Cyrus the Great, and then we have the Spartans themselves fighting what would appear on the surface to be a brave, also foolhardy and ultimately mortally-fated albeit heroic and strategically successful battle against Cyrus.

And thus, the entire modern generation of young minds see what they see and take away the lessons and ideas shallowly underlying the story structure as it has been presented in these entertainments.

Demonstrating of course, the validity of Plato and Aristotle's views about the insidious nature of entertainment when used as propaganda.

You see, Cyrus is at all times the ruler in spite of the Spartans' efforts. And you will even see this idea in things like Wikipedia. And so, yes, if you are prepared to lose your own life, then you may be heroic... The ultimate in senseless madness and foolish ideological fervor.

But this is not history and nor yet is it the 'truth behind the facade' - as I have been generalistically indicating about, that is available to those who search more deeply.

A modern day Australian
rider and archer...

Croesus, the world's richest man, endowed the Delphic Pythia (an oracle) with gold and treasure, because he was impressed at how astute and accurate and correct her oracular answers were to his questions. And much later on, some history records that he was murdered by the same Cyrus as mentioned above - who wished, apparently, to see whether the god Apollo or perhaps Dionysus, would come down to save his friend and favoured 'world's richest man' as he was about to be engulfed in flames.

Now the Pythia (there were several) were extremely beautiful women; this is attested without challenge in all records and accounts. If you go by the usual accounts, although the world's richest man was silly enough to give stacks of money over to this oracle because he thought she was always correct, she never was able to warn him about Cyrus, only the world's most brutal and lunatic and rampaging everywhere, tyrant. A minor oversight.

The usual accounts also opine that the Pythia were women with the lower bodies of serpents.

I would say, though, that the word they are looking for is, 'fumes,' or perhaps 'whisps,' but not serpent. Her lower body lay hidden in mists or whisps of gas or smoke.

Artemisia - although there was a Greek lady with that name who sailed military ships - also has the meaning of 'a female archer.'

A certain 'Toumyris' (Tamara - 'daughter of The Dark'), a Queen of the Massegetai Scythians, defeated Cyrus in battle, and cut off his head, dipping it in the blood of her own warriors, with the words: 'I told you that I would quench your thirst for blood, you asshole.'

And that, is what actually happened to Cyrus. The Scythians - or 'the Archers' - (the Artemisians) completely routed Cyrus. And they were lead by Tamara, the Archer Queen.

What really happened at Thermopylae is something that can wait for another day. Suffice to say at this point though, that it bears no resemblance to the modern movie with its magical CGI.

But if you are interested in wealth, then it is Croesus, and not Cyrus, that you would be best advised to inquire about. But as you can see also, many accounts use sophistry in focussing on the false attributes of Cyrus, and fabricate the destiny of Croesus in comparison, in order to lead you off the trail.



 

Secrets Of The East

There was many a day as a very young child, that I clambered over and under and around the cannon out front of the Eastern and Oriental Hotel in Penang. There are plenty of cannon still dotted around various locations in Penang, none of which have ever been used in earnest. Fort Cornwallis, not too far from the E & O Hotel, is one of the most well-known cannon emplacements on the island.

Eastern and Oriental Hotel,
aw still a great place!

Penang is an unusual place because technically, it was never any regional Sultan's actual island, and there are genuine cultural ties back in history to China and also to India via fleets from those places in days of the very ancient past.

Up in the hills, almost mountains, in fact, there are religious centers of major significance both to traditional Hindu people and also to Taoist - or at least Shangdi-style Chinese.

Today, when one is apt to hear a wide complaint that the world is becoming flattened, and deliberately flattened too, by out-of-control bureaucracies and mindless, juvenile in the historical sense, mono-cultural materialism, reminding myself of some of the ancient places in Penang is instructive.

The Chinese Temple of Supreme Bliss - but locally and colloquially also known as the 'Snake Temple' (because part of its name contains the word for 'snake') - is something that probably not even that many present-day Penang locals know accurately about. But here is a very fine example of what distinguishes the potential for social and cultural depth that human society possesses - and what the purposes of such depth is.

The Temple of Supreme Bliss -
the superficial temple...

THE actual Snake Temple though, 'She Miao,' is a much smaller, different place nearby, which is specifically and literally a temple to well, not a snake deity, but to something to do with ancient mysterious, seething, gaseous and ever-expanding energies, sometimes deadly, sometimes beneficial. Like all temples, this one goes through its materially up and down phases - and to a large extent, over many years, it has functioned as a kind of a small, open-to-the-public, reptile zoo of sorts, and this has been the means for its commercial basis of survival.

At the moment, it is seeing an 'up' moment, where everything has been extensively refurbished and up-graded; it looks good, especially in the evenings, but not forgetting though, that even in the day-time, the insides are kept rather dark because there are snakes hanging out in the rafters there!

'Something' is burned in the place that keeps the snakes, most of which are particularly deadly, somnolent.

Anyway, strange to tell, the snake image has a fundamental place in the Chinese version of the Adam and Eve story...

And, when the leaders of the ancient world, had lost their way, and become devoid of a moral standard that Heaven could abide, the God of Heaven... ...destroyed them.

Big Data, Small Establishment

I'm sorry that I use so many old fashioned English phrases and styles of speaking. I'm sure there's probably some more modern way of saying 'the numbers of agents employed in the field/behind the desk' - but 'establishment' is the only way I know how to say that in a short form.

Ed Snowden's point that one ought to accept that the NSA has equipment that makes at least 1 trillion guesses a second - say, about your password, for instance - is a good, a very good lesson on 'big data.' There is an irresistible attraction for government to fall in love with the next new thing, and certainly the next big thing, 'big data' being one of its absolute current favourites. Chemical lasers another one,  but that's for another day.

Charlie Hebdo, really?!

What can you do with a machine that makes 1 trillion guesses a second? Well, to really make use of the potential value, one needs another program, or system, at least, that channels questions and answers, like a kind of tree diagram or chart, towards a final strategic goal.

Without such a program or system, the process volume and speeds are just noise.

Of course, it is very tempting to look down upon the modern world of little people from this 'big data' perspective.

For one thing, it does reflect in a realistic way to political leaders, the modern world as it is - lots of people, no individuals, no individual power that can impact on the whole mass... Yep. Big Data is the thing.

Every now and then you get a few anomalous instances in which one or a few people get hold of some really super critical information or knowledge, and then, all you have to do, is eliminate them as active agents of information being spread.

Journalist Don Hale, on his
bike, from where is briefed by MI6,
on what he can say, and what his failure to co-operate,
will cost him.

One has to look at journalists such as Don Hale, or even Julian Assange for that matter, as being hyper-problematic for anyone in power who genuinely has guilty secrets that could not be forgiven by the public at large. I think we tend not to understand though, on account of so much tragic 'drama' in films and news, what a genuinely twisted and long-reaching, guilty secret really is anymore.

They are not anywhere near as simple as, 'oh, here are some pedophiles in government and in the police and the judiciary.' No no no. The media can give the impression that this is what constitutes such vile secrets.

Oh no no no. It's the psychopathic malice, the long-term planning, the cunning, the complex linked chains of ulterior motives. Not just the extent of it in high places and how it has corrupted career police. It's the volcano of degradation and the complexity of the evil that it would expose... It's who and what the primary school teachers are, as much as that these are the places where children are; the latter is merely the obvious.

You know, when an entire senior police force goes headlong into campaigns of deliberate distortion that obliterate people's rights and even their lives, for the sakes of people outside of their own, there is much sin involved. And I'm grateful for Richard Dawkins interpretation, from the scientist's point of view, as to what 'sin' is - I caught a bit of his recent documentary screened on FOX(lol). But he's way out of his depth here. 

Mini Cooper has a new,
preposterous and impractical Augmented Reality
'extra' - beautiful images though. Big organisations are
always deluded by their own arrogance.

Big Data - is the Achilles Heel of modern Western and of course, newly developed other governments. They all think it is the holy grail.

You see, you got to understand about Assange, for example... His background, is basically the same as Diana Spencer's.

The reason he knows stuff is because, well, he knows stuff! Not because he got it from some internet set-up! No. Felix Dennis set him up with the idea, because Felix, is (was) the computer nerd in the first place long before Assange was in short pants. And gave him the money too because he was already a zillionaire in the first place.

It just all turned out to be a gift that keeps on giving, that's all. Wikileaks is a great idea that works for a number of reasons, some of which are really silly, so silly not even 1 trillion guesses would alight upon the correct set. Not that you would know, anyway.

Bank this though - Big Data leads to fewer people on the establishment; and fewer CIA personnel certainly. Frankly, that's not a good thing.