CYCLE NINE

1. SUPERHEATHEN SPORTS. Like the principal Heathen and Christian sports, it would seem that the principal 'Superheathen', and therefore fundamentalist, types of sport can also be evaluated in tripartite terms, beginning with Basketball, arguably the most 'superheathen' or 'superfeminine' of all sports, and progressing via Baseball to Gridiron, or American so-called Football. For just as one proceeds, in the Heathen context, from the Father to the Son via the Mother, as from Rugby League to Rugby Union via Association Football, so, it seems to me, can one plot a progression from Jehovah to Allah via Satan where the 'Superheathen' context is concerned, with Basketball paralleling Jehovah on account of the superfeminine idealism, necessarily vacuous, of its 'baskets'; Baseball paralleling Satan on account of the submasculine naturalism of its club-wielding aggressiveness; and Gridiron paralleling Allah on account of the submasculine fundamentalism of its chest-affirming powerfulness and/or heart-wrenching soulfulness. Certainly I would see in Basketball a sporting analogue with the Blues; in Baseball a like-analogue with Jazz; and in Gridiron a like-analogue with Soul, this latter the fundamentalist pole to Jazz which, on account of its naturalistic constitution, stands in a 'fallen' relationship to the Blues. Hence it could be argued that Baseball stands in a like-'fallen' relationship to Basketball, while Gridiron is simply the strength-affirming antithesis of Baseball, like Count Dracula to sunlight. Now, of course, these 'Superheathen' sports, with their fundamentalist bias, are no less American ... than the Heathen sports are British, and the Christian ones Irish. For it does indeed seem that American 'culture' is largely 'Superheathen' (and thus a cross between superfeminine and submasculine elements) where British 'culture' is Heathen (reflecting a cross between feminine and masculine elements), and Irish culture, by contrast, Christian (suggestive of a distinction between subfeminine and supermasculine elements). Basketball, Baseball, and Gridiron are all quintessentially American sports, no less American, in fact, than Rugby League, Association Football, and Rugby Union are British, or Camogie, Gaelic Football, and Hurling ... Irish.

2. APPROACHES TO PRIMAL BEING. With regard to what could be termed the fundamentalism of cosmic mysticism, or the scientific idealism of traditional Creator-based religion, there are, it seems to me, four basic approaches or, rather, one basic (and literal) approach and three 'bovaryized' approaches to it, in which the primal being of the Clear Light of the Void (Space) is worshipped from a variety of devolutionary removes from the original source.

3. BASIC APPROACH TO PRIMAL BEING. Let us take the basic approach first, which is that of Hinduism/Buddhism and other such oriental religions whose focus of divinity is the Clear Light of the Void, and whose approach to this primal being is direct, which is to say, through the Light and the simulation and/or utilization of light, whether optical, chemical, or electrical, to attain to a condition of identification with it. One could generalize all this light-based mysticism under Buddhism and contend, as I shall, that attainment to the Clear Light involves the utilization of Buddhist techniques to bring the self or, rather, antiself to a state of union with the Ground of all (primal) Being, or, in other words, to a condition of mental vacuity which will act as a platform from which the primal power of the Clear Light can be launched - like, I have to add, a Superdevil from Superhell, the superfeminine Superhell of the spatial vacuum whose negative glory is the source of the superillusory Clear Light. Now, obviously, only a Superfool would want such a condition, and I make no apology for exposing the folly of 'being into' the Clear Light, which, alas, is the root not only of Buddhism and Hinduism, but, by devolutionary extrapolation, of Judaism, Mohammedanism, and even Christianity or, more correctly, pseudo-Christianity as well, as I shall presently show.