My OperaLemurians Attack!
Friday, October 17, 2008 2:42:28 PM
Last time ye’ll recollect Cap’n Ben be tellin’ ye o’ the Shastan Lemurians but there be Lemurians all about what ye don’t know of and o’ course that be how they like it. Do ye see, it be part o’ their secret campaign ter incinerate themselves inter society all quiet as ye please, dormouse-like ‘n’ stealthy, a campaign what begun years and years ago. Yer in all probability quite ignorant o’ the fact that they funded Edgar Rice Burroughs when he were just a midshipman, keepin’ him afloat until his Tarzan books could make him wealthy and respectable, but afore that he wrote a brace o’ fine subterranean adventure Penny Dreadfuls at the behest o’ the Lemurians: Pellucidar and At The Earth’s Core. The Lemurians were hopin’ ter portray th’ underground hollow Earth as the paradise ye’ve already encountered in the last damp bloggy post, the better their public image ter burnish and it weren’t such a bad effort at that.
But it were Hollywood what give them a real entry into the world we live in today. In MCMLVI Universal Studios ground out a Magic Lantern show entirely subsidized by gold coin from under the mountain, all aimin’ ter seduce the wee tots (”Give me the boy ‘n’ I’ll give ye the pirate”) what do fall under the spell o’ such things with quite amazin’ ease. Oh aye, they changed a few things the better ter mask their origins, but do ye really b’lieve Sumerian to be a credible substitute fer Lemurian? Well, anyroad, they did, and over there to Starboard ye can see one right from the lantern.
For it be The Mole People, and a right upended, benighted blight on the lantern world it be though faith, I’ve a certain fondness fer the thing e’en aside from the shameless Lemurian propagander what underlie th’ entire thing. I’ll not bore ye wi’ the tellin’ o’ the tale for ye can read the whole account here. What ye can take away be the picture of the “Sumerians” underground wi’ their race o’ moley slave people destined to revolt just in time fer the mountain ter blow up in everybody’s faces and end the show: convenient as Hell.
Nay lads, what I really want ter talk on is the beginning o’ the show. ‘Tis there that ye’ll find the most amazin’ bit o’ jaw-droppin’ scientography what e’er come out o’ the mouth o’ any ologist only it weren’t just any ologist what be speakin’; strewth, an’ they bribed a bloke (them gold coins again, an’ how they do speak loud!) called Frank Baxter ter tell the story o’ Lemuria, only o’ course he never used that partickilar term. Ye’ll be right astonished ter learn that Master Baxter do have his own star in the Hollywood walk, so grateful were the Lemurians fer his service in this, the greatest o’ all Lemurian broadsides inter the heart o’ modern culture, nor were he ignored by the good folk what handed out Emmy awards neither; ye can bet after ye see th’ introduction to The Mole People that there were some Lemurian gold involved there, too.
Now, there be very little benefit in tryin’ to describe this hortatory oratory so ye just better gaze upon the written word:
Ladies and gentlemen, it's amazing how much we know about the surface of our globe. ln the last 100 years, men have progressively studied this. Explorations have reached the North, the South Pole. There are really relatively only a few square miles left of the surface of our globe that are not known. During the same years, men have reached out into the stars three times further in your lifetime and mine, three times further into space than men have ever been able to go before.
Amazing knowledge we have of that and of this. [Points to globe]
What's inside this globe? What is there beneath our feet as we stand on the earth? No one knows, of course. And science ponders about it and all men are curious but no one knows. Primitive man going into caves, reaching back and back, and down and down wondered what lay beyond, and in terror he fled out. And he remembered strange sighs and noises.
Now you go back to Mesopotamia and the beginning of Western civilization and you have the great hero Gilgamesh going down into the underworld. And so, too, with the Greeks. All down through time, religions of the past have postulated the existence of this inner habitable world. All through the Middle Ages, people believed in something under the surface.
Dante, the great Dante, saw great cone-like cavities stretching down to the very center of the earth. There's nothing new about this; lt's as old as man this belief that under the surface there may be areas inhabitable by man. And in our time and in the last 100 years, there've been a number of theories, very curious and strange theories, about what goes on in the center of our planet.
This is a very famous and interesting and odd one: a soldier... rather, a minor hero of the War of 1812 was a man named John Cleeves Symmes. And he had a sudden idea that inside our world like onion layers, there were globes within globes, five of them, some of them inhabited and that if you were to travel up through the icy wastes of our world the northwest edge of Siberia, you could go down through a hole, and go successively to these various spheres. Unfortunately, he was thoroughly obsessed with this, went around lecturing, and in fatigue, died before he could make this experiment.
Now, here's another theory much closer to us: this is 1870, about. A young American physician named Cyrus Reed Teed had a revelation: we are not living on the outside of the globe, said Teed, but on the inside; that when we think we're looking out at the sun, we're really looking in at the sun.
Strange, strange, the questing mind of man that tries to find answers to things that he can't understand.
This was a theory by Karl Neupert, in Germany, in the 1920s: he, again, imagined that we're living on the inside, rather than the outside of the globe. [Points] And here's a real sun and a real moon and then a rather shadowy and formless mass of electric potentiality with little bright sparks in it. And they give us the sense of our stars.
So in this picture you're about to see, you'll see the culmination of a long series of such desires to look into the earth. One might well believe, philosophically, that some ancient culture engulfed by a great and tremendous upheaval of nature might linger on in some pocket of earth. This is science fiction, of course. It's a fiction! lt's a fable beyond fiction, for l think if you'll study this picture and think about it when it's over, you'll realize that this is something more than just a story told; it's a fable with a meaning and a significance for you and for me in the 20th century.
Thank you and goodbye.
Oh and I do agree: "Strange, strange, the questing mind of man that tries to find answers to things that he can't understand." That be the catchphrase in Benland nowadays nor can ye find a better, I'll wager. Kind o' sticks in yer mind, don't ye think it so? Yar!
And the lesson ye can all take from this is that this election year ye must look at yer choices and choose them what will do the most for or against the Lemurians, dependin' on yer persuasion; the subterranean lobby be powerful influential, but be it a force for good or ill? Strange, strange...
But it were Hollywood what give them a real entry into the world we live in today. In MCMLVI Universal Studios ground out a Magic Lantern show entirely subsidized by gold coin from under the mountain, all aimin’ ter seduce the wee tots (”Give me the boy ‘n’ I’ll give ye the pirate”) what do fall under the spell o’ such things with quite amazin’ ease. Oh aye, they changed a few things the better ter mask their origins, but do ye really b’lieve Sumerian to be a credible substitute fer Lemurian? Well, anyroad, they did, and over there to Starboard ye can see one right from the lantern.
For it be The Mole People, and a right upended, benighted blight on the lantern world it be though faith, I’ve a certain fondness fer the thing e’en aside from the shameless Lemurian propagander what underlie th’ entire thing. I’ll not bore ye wi’ the tellin’ o’ the tale for ye can read the whole account here. What ye can take away be the picture of the “Sumerians” underground wi’ their race o’ moley slave people destined to revolt just in time fer the mountain ter blow up in everybody’s faces and end the show: convenient as Hell.
Nay lads, what I really want ter talk on is the beginning o’ the show. ‘Tis there that ye’ll find the most amazin’ bit o’ jaw-droppin’ scientography what e’er come out o’ the mouth o’ any ologist only it weren’t just any ologist what be speakin’; strewth, an’ they bribed a bloke (them gold coins again, an’ how they do speak loud!) called Frank Baxter ter tell the story o’ Lemuria, only o’ course he never used that partickilar term. Ye’ll be right astonished ter learn that Master Baxter do have his own star in the Hollywood walk, so grateful were the Lemurians fer his service in this, the greatest o’ all Lemurian broadsides inter the heart o’ modern culture, nor were he ignored by the good folk what handed out Emmy awards neither; ye can bet after ye see th’ introduction to The Mole People that there were some Lemurian gold involved there, too. Now, there be very little benefit in tryin’ to describe this hortatory oratory so ye just better gaze upon the written word:Ladies and gentlemen, it's amazing how much we know about the surface of our globe. ln the last 100 years, men have progressively studied this. Explorations have reached the North, the South Pole. There are really relatively only a few square miles left of the surface of our globe that are not known. During the same years, men have reached out into the stars three times further in your lifetime and mine, three times further into space than men have ever been able to go before.
Amazing knowledge we have of that and of this. [Points to globe]
What's inside this globe? What is there beneath our feet as we stand on the earth? No one knows, of course. And science ponders about it and all men are curious but no one knows. Primitive man going into caves, reaching back and back, and down and down wondered what lay beyond, and in terror he fled out. And he remembered strange sighs and noises.
Now you go back to Mesopotamia and the beginning of Western civilization and you have the great hero Gilgamesh going down into the underworld. And so, too, with the Greeks. All down through time, religions of the past have postulated the existence of this inner habitable world. All through the Middle Ages, people believed in something under the surface.
Dante, the great Dante, saw great cone-like cavities stretching down to the very center of the earth. There's nothing new about this; lt's as old as man this belief that under the surface there may be areas inhabitable by man. And in our time and in the last 100 years, there've been a number of theories, very curious and strange theories, about what goes on in the center of our planet.
This is a very famous and interesting and odd one: a soldier... rather, a minor hero of the War of 1812 was a man named John Cleeves Symmes. And he had a sudden idea that inside our world like onion layers, there were globes within globes, five of them, some of them inhabited and that if you were to travel up through the icy wastes of our world the northwest edge of Siberia, you could go down through a hole, and go successively to these various spheres. Unfortunately, he was thoroughly obsessed with this, went around lecturing, and in fatigue, died before he could make this experiment.
Now, here's another theory much closer to us: this is 1870, about. A young American physician named Cyrus Reed Teed had a revelation: we are not living on the outside of the globe, said Teed, but on the inside; that when we think we're looking out at the sun, we're really looking in at the sun.
Strange, strange, the questing mind of man that tries to find answers to things that he can't understand.
This was a theory by Karl Neupert, in Germany, in the 1920s: he, again, imagined that we're living on the inside, rather than the outside of the globe. [Points] And here's a real sun and a real moon and then a rather shadowy and formless mass of electric potentiality with little bright sparks in it. And they give us the sense of our stars.
So in this picture you're about to see, you'll see the culmination of a long series of such desires to look into the earth. One might well believe, philosophically, that some ancient culture engulfed by a great and tremendous upheaval of nature might linger on in some pocket of earth. This is science fiction, of course. It's a fiction! lt's a fable beyond fiction, for l think if you'll study this picture and think about it when it's over, you'll realize that this is something more than just a story told; it's a fable with a meaning and a significance for you and for me in the 20th century.
Thank you and goodbye.
Oh and I do agree: "Strange, strange, the questing mind of man that tries to find answers to things that he can't understand." That be the catchphrase in Benland nowadays nor can ye find a better, I'll wager. Kind o' sticks in yer mind, don't ye think it so? Yar!
And the lesson ye can all take from this is that this election year ye must look at yer choices and choose them what will do the most for or against the Lemurians, dependin' on yer persuasion; the subterranean lobby be powerful influential, but be it a force for good or ill? Strange, strange...
