Morphology and Myth

In regards to evolution Jünger asks what a beautiful conception would be. This is, rather than adaptation in which the fish develops lungs as he transitions to land, a formation and metamorphosis. Intelligence can only understand the lung adaptation, but a divine plan would be much more subtle, shifting the power within the being much as in the reflection of light. For instance, the development of animals who breathe through the skin.

"Every animal is an end unto itself; it arises in perfect form

from the womb of nature and engenders perfect children."

This is how nature may be understood as the elemental, or as the rising of blood which fell from the heavens. A great order courses through all beings; Aphrodite is born of the blood and the oceans and the Nymphs carry her wealth into the forests. In the mythic there cannot even be an understanding of Goethe's primordial plant, the forests already exist in the beginning and give rise to the floor beneath. Even the subterranean receives its diffuse light, the ugly knot of roots rising up into beautiful blossoms. Thus Plato imagines the sea as the great hollow from which we spring forth - the wandering freedom of the soul with the undiminished, the death springs before which all life is made possible.

The animal cannot starve of its own being, only its territory can be diminished, its paths taken from him. The abundance is shifted into worn away stone, torn limbs, and paths crumbled away into dust. This is the territory in which other animals live, the highest, who must form an 'upper jaw equal to the horned brow.' He is not, who is taken, and he who is lost to nature must become the whole of it.

Our grotesque and tectonic architecture is born of this. It is freed from us. One may picture the first settlers starving before the greatest wealth and abundance, but otherwise one sees that this wealth was not enough for them. The body metamorphosed, bison meat could not nourish such a being, nor could the balsam any longer heal him, stop the blood from seeping out of his organs.

This is also where one may sense the creation of man. The figure of Marsyas who is not cut away from his being, his world. The origin cannot be a fall, such thinking is monstrous - instantaneous defeat of the creator presumes nothing other than a horrific end from the very beginning. The greatest evil would begin with a closure, the chasm which only deepens with the creation, consumes it or petrifies it. No, Marsyas has to be seen as a figure cut away into freedom, with the great pain that is flayed from him, his form perfected. This is how he carries the higher weight of nature, bears himself to the light above, as what has been given is too much for him. His inner being gives in wealth what his hide could no longer secure.

The pagan returns to the forest so that more may be cut away from him, he gives back all that he receives - his strength is in living as the plants who only spring up from wildfire, and the trees which cannot give birth without it. The Christian casts out nature, where neither being can endure. In its place the shepherd of the inner world. He approaches pride in the death of Pan, but not without laying to rest the Nymphs in the tunnels beneath the cathedral.

"We are not without standards. When they languished the night in the dungeons of the circus, their strength was consumed. Horrors had preceded them, persecutions, arrests, interrogations, tortures, desecrations. During the night the beasts had rattled the bars; their restlessness, their howling cut deeply into the perception. Even more terrifying was the hubbub of voices with which the crowd had begun to fill the ranks since dawn. It was cheerful, expectant. People argued over the seats; criers praised refreshments. Late came the Notabein, the knights and senators, and finally Caesar himself. Those who thought and felt differently were in enormous numbers.

Then the bars were put up; the handful of people were pushed out into the arena. The sun was blinding. But it was weaker than the inner light. Thus empires fall, the world changes."

The Christian may also be said to have proceeded from the underworld of Rome where it could no longer endure or be finalised. Where its plan had not been secured new eyes were needed, or perhaps a deepening of the senses within the darkness. The transitional path can only lead to where blind men go. The metamorphosis of laws is not a shift. The Romans succeeded in creating a harmony within the strongest laws, giving justice to the greatest defeat. Even the dance of death may go on too long. Fortuna tires of the underworld and seeks higher beings.

Thus we come to Zeus always when he has resigned. In Metis the birth of his own power, his wisdom over time, but also a return to the elemental - he becomes the eternal shapeshifter, the devourer of his own power. In this he may only succeed his father, or complete the metamorphosis in perfect death.

"For as from clouds your lighting, from him has come

What you call yours. And, look, the commands you speak

To him bear witness, and from Saturn's

Primitive peace every power developed."

https://youtu.be/uA9Xj2i-4hk