Fragments/Journal - The Myth of Narcissus, Er, and the Enclosure of Nihilism

In the same way that the cult is inverted as law through Christianity, sense is inverted as symbol in Humanism.

The purpose of myth is to return the form of man to being, as the figure of One where sense and the ineffable remain undivided even when in conflict, as a force of the will of gods, and a timeless law which appears as eternal judgement through the simplicity of its escape into a moment of peace. That which seeks to express its word as law hardened within time is already lost to its own being, as a god extricated from his own dominion and subjected to the will of men - moralism and atheism inevitably follow. Men turn this god into an idol of their own misanthropy, a plaything for their amusement. And so natural force is subservient to the law of its own exile, man comes to exist within an order where dominion must oppose his very being; a weakened aether, a paradise which can only be maintained as a bridge between two underworlds, the dumping of the beautiful as the only remaining quality of beauty.

This can be seen most clearly in the myth of Narcissus. The myth has nothing to do with self-obsession, his staring into a reflective pool is merely an effect of his being, the deep wound of his image torn from his soul. His essence is an irrepressible drive of return, or the ennui of his spectral being divided from the astral plane. Narcissus is the opposite figure of Plato's Er, deathless figure of the waters of Lethe; thus he turns the whole of the world into a black pool. Echo is his guardian, his guide, the judgement of his peace. She is the exiled nymph, the punished nature spirit who can only return to her own being through an opposing black pool - thus she opens a portal to primordial darkness, a curse within nature's most beautiful reaches.

It is no mistake that Christianity follows this myth within its law of beautiful destruction. And at its death we rightfully begin to worship gods as the spirits of nature, such is our reverence for what has been lost to us, the very law of natural law turned as a black pool of meaning. Christianity mobilises the very gods it sought to destroy, returns them to a primordial force as they all become the Unknown God.