In my Snotty Saves the Day, from The History of Arcadia visionary fiction series, Arcadian physicist Devindra Vale points out that all the biological truths of human beings are found in fairy tales. Which naturally makes total sense. Story comes from the unconscious, which is a part of our biological make up. How then could it be otherwise?
But our own modern science has split itself off from the unconscious—although present conundrums presented by Quantum Physics appear to be leading it, inexorably, back. Back to what being human actually means. Back to what we knew as a people in the past. Back to the body. How can we see what’s coming in the future, and form it creatively, unless we know who we are and where we’ve been? As the Arcadian motto has it, “Looking Back to Look Forward.”
EAP contributors this issue took that motto seriously. The poets in particular went back to childhood—Sean Murphy and On This Day in History, James Croal Jackson’s Childhood Backyard, Chris Farago’s Recovery—while Marissa Bell Toffoli agreed poetically with essayist David D. Horowitz that it all starts in the body. See her poem A Holding Undone, and his lovely essay Sex, Salad and Psalms.
EAP’s resident philosopher Bruce E.R. Thompson sums up the beginning of Physics and, perhaps, where Physics may want to go, in his discourse on the history of Metaphysics. And Jim Meirose, our favorite Surrealist, spins out in Jan and Jon’s Final Anatomical Day.
Then there’s Tom Ball, and his Black’s Archipelago. Tom frequently drives me nuts, editorially, with his extended fantastic explorations of a possible future both insane and stunted by science—but I could not stop reading this one, even though it went on and on, nuttier in the next paragraph than the last, pulling together every bonkers and frightening aspect of present day culture into an inevitable portrait of an empire’s scientific technology gone mad.
My favorite piece this issue is by Tamra Lucid, from her work with the Standing Rock Water Protectors, where she considers the many happenings Beyond Physics that joined the Protectors in their struggle: Thinning the Veil: The Spiritual Aspect Among Standing Rock Water Protectors.
Speaking of Tamra, she and Ronnie Pontiac also contributed a wonderfully pertinent excerpt, The Golden Leaves, from their upcoming book on the history of Orphic hymns in the legend of Orpheus: The Magic of the Orphic Hymns: A New Translation for Modern Mystics by Tamra Lucid and Ronnie Pontiac (Inner Traditions: Aug 2023).
As I said in my own quote for this work: “A wonderful book for anyone interested in metaphysics and mythology. Not only a fascinating and easy to read history, but also an exhaustive work of scholarship—and in the translations of the poems that make up the second half of the book, a mindblowing work of creativity. A must for any visionary’s library.” It’s all true. Check it out.
Let’s all look back to look forward, and go beyond everything stopping us now.
Welcome back.