{"id":2457,"date":"2020-12-16T07:05:17","date_gmt":"2020-12-16T07:05:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=139804"},"modified":"2020-12-16T07:05:17","modified_gmt":"2020-12-16T07:05:17","slug":"from-cult-to-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2020\/12\/16\/from-cult-to-culture\/","title":{"rendered":"From Cult to Culture\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Cult to Culture <\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes, there are many to choose from<\/p>\n

Few, though, have the answer
To the question (for one)<\/p>\n

of those two things
In the center of the garden
Life and knowledge \u2014 or dogma
Indeed, which means the two trees
Are Physis<\/em> and Nomos<\/em>
Nature and convention, or law
Nature as growth and change
Or rigid rules
The letter of law, or the spirit
The physis, of course, takes the form
Of the physician
The other tree, the Nomos,
takes the form of
What comes from the Nomos:
The nomeus, the shepherd
Shepherd and healer<\/p>\n

United in Jesus?
But look at that statue of Mary
Down the street. In front of the church
Of the transfiguration
Now that the leaves
On those trees have all dried and fallen
Like tongues you can see her bare ankles<\/p>\n

Her feet, crushing a serpent! But why
Mary, o! That serpent is Jesus himself<\/p>\n

Don\u2019tcha know?
At least say those Gnostics,<\/p>\n

The Ophites \u2014
The fact of the matter\u2019s that Mary
Should be Ariadne, concerning the snake
Or Hygieia, better yet,<\/p>\n

Letting it drink from her cup<\/p>\n

Pourquoi? Well, first of all:<\/p>\n

The nomeus<\/p>\n

Just, look at those shepherds!<\/p>\n

The pharaohs<\/p>\n

And Zeus, Agamemnon
And David, Muhammad, and Moses<\/p>\n

(Though he\u2019s a special  case)<\/p>\n

The pharaoh\u2019s a shepherd \u2014 the flail!<\/p>\n

The crook
The church as well, the pastorate
Demands obedience
Exploits all those sheep
Providing security, yes \u2014 se cura,
The absence of care
But who cares?
Says the fascist \u2014 sfacim!
Tying all those shepherds\u2019 crooks
Into bundles, your fasces
No, nomeus stands at the root
Of the four-fold mega-crisis
(Ecocide, state violence, pandemic\u2026)
And negation of the Nomos is Physis
The physician,
Son of a god, restorer of sight
To the blind, who raised the dead
(Hippolytus), and was killed
For shattering the order for
Zeus himself can\u2019t alter the decisions<\/p>\n

of the Fates
Until, my friend, Asclepius<\/p>\n

Who raised the dead \u2014<\/p>\n

The true exception<\/p>\n

to the Nomos
and recall: the Fates are three:
Clotho spins the thread of life,
The legislature, spinning measures
Which Lachesis measures
And Atropos, as the decider, the executive,<\/p>\n

Cuts.<\/p>\n

What an odd coincidence!
The three that are one, the law
But not, alas, the true law, the healer
Physis\/Tree of life<\/p>\n

For, as for that tree, all kabbalists agree,
That\u2019s the true law
Moreover, Asclepius\u2019 daughter, Hygieia,
A healer as well
Called Salus by the Romans
Arrives like a jinn in our books of law,<\/p>\n

in our courts,<\/p>\n

In that maxim<\/p>\n

Salus populi\u2026
The public health (should be supreme)
And this, in fact, does function
As a legal exception \u2014 nullifies law
Now isn\u2019t that strange?
And where health is impeded
Not present<\/p>\n

Not health, perhaps,<\/p>\n

but health\u2019s preconditions (food, housing<\/p>\n

Water that\u2019s clean)
Where air is polluted,<\/p>\n

And homes aren\u2019t safe
That true law\u2019s in breach
A duty arises to fix the conditions
Of disease \u2014 these<\/p>\n

Must be replaced
With conditions of health
Clean water, and rest
Provide all this. Forgive all debts.
Conditions of health, not prisons<\/p>\n

Police violence \u2014 that term is redundant
Whoever impedes the conditions of ease
Is in breach of the duty
To stop the cataclysmic storm
The bulldozers of progress
Said Wild Bill Douglas, in his dissent<\/a><\/p>\n

Ravaging the globe
The storm that won\u2019t let<\/p>\n

The angel of history\u2019s wings close<\/p>\n

And allow to land and heal, make whole
What\u2019s been destroyed<\/p>\n

The storm that blows from paradise
As Benjamin says,
From those two trees,
And what can stop its crushing wind?
The emergency brake
The maxim again
Can shut the engines
Allowing the angel to land
And build the conditions of health
Of ease, of peace,
Allowing the planet to heal itself
Yup, that\u2019s the cult<\/p>\n

Relax, do no harm
It\u2019s free, no fee, to join
Just print this and recite it
From a loading dock some time
If you\u2019re up to the task
And wear a mask
Whether or not you\u2019re shy<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Cult to Culture\u00a0 Yes, there are many to choose from Few, though, have the answerTo the question (for one) of those two thingsIn the center of the\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":269,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2457"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/269"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2457"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2457\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2458,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2457\/revisions\/2458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}