North
The Rise & Fall of the Polar Cosmos
From H.P. Lovecraft to Philip Pullman, popular culture has long been lured by the magnetism of the north. Why does it command such fascination? How far into the past does its appeal extend?
Ranging from the Stone Age to the Space Age, this book’s bold vision of cosmology maps how the pole star became associated with political power, religious rapture, and social hierarchies. And when the Copernican Revolution shattered the idea of Earth as the centre of everything, shards of this polar cosmos fell down, seeding strange fantasies, haunting our modern world with remnants of celestial dreams…
A big visionary sweep executed with erudition and imaginative insight.
Patrick Harpur, author of Daimonic Reality
Gorgeous and profound.
Barry Patterson, author of The Art of Conversation with the Genus Loci
North is a flawed beauty; a remarkable piece of scholarship that is not without problems. Intellectually wide-ranging and blind, expansive and deeply personal, impassioned and logical, embodied in place, and detached across time, it is a book of contradictions … The scope here is truly impressive. … There is no denying that he is a fantastic wordsmith …
Time & Mind: The Journal of Archaeology, Consciousness and Culture
North: The Rise and Fall of the Polar Cosmos is an audacious new trip through history and prehistory from Gyrus, creator of Towards 2012 and Dreamflesh Journal.
Buy from Strange Attractor Press
Cover art by signalstarr
Further reading
For a general summary of North‘s story, see The Hidden History of Cosmos & Community.
There’s also an outline of the book, chapter-by-chapter.
If you’re interested in following my intellectual trail through books, articles and films, check out Further research.
After the book was published, I started a series of self-critique posts presenting alternate views on big issues running through the book: Counterpoints to North.
Much material never made it into the book, and I published posts and essays to give the outtakes a life. Here’s some highlights which develop some tangents and go into more depth:
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Power & Hunting in True Detective
The first season of Nic Pizzolatto’s True Detective spawned a frenzy of interpretation and plot dissection. Its narrative twists and melange of philosophical snippets and cosmic horror ambience created a fertile ground for such heady engagement. In this essay I want to draw out some interpretive strands informed by my research into the social history of cosmology. I’m less concerned here with what Pizzolatto may have explicitly intended in his writing, and more concerned with following some of the veins he tapped, deeper underground. His finely-orchestrated script was ultimately character-focused, and the plentiful and suggestive mythical triggers were subservient to Marty’s and Rust’s journeys. But his awareness of the grounding for his triggers was keen enough to generate a work peculiarly rich in socio-cosmic gems — which should be mined.
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Vertiginous and twisted: Vertigo as a perversion of the Sufi quest for the polar feminine
Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) is a giddy Rorschach blot of images and themes. Held together by impeccable artistry, the strangeness of its construction creates an enticing labyrinth of suggestive meanings. There’s enough circular doubling back and cul-de-sacs to frustrate any singular reading. But the film can generously accommodate many fantastical perspectives.
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The Wild, Wild North
In Sean Penn’s 2007 film Into The Wild, we follow the true story of Christopher McCandless’s escape from the suffocating dysfunctionality of normality in Atlanta, Georgia. After graduating, he gives his savings away to Oxfam, and takes to the road in a passionate, but ultimately fatally naive quest for freedom.
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Masks of the Maya: Cosmology, the Zapatistas, and indigenous Maya power
On the complexities of the Zapatistas’ relationship to Classic Maya kingship and cosmology: Subcomandante Marcos, the Heart of the Sky, shamanic theatrics and radical democracy.
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On Ray Brassier and Prometheanism
An exploration of philosopher Ray Brassier’s nihilist advocacy of technological Prometheanism, looking at his vision’s cosmological and mythical underpinnings, the forager cosmos as a ‘third term’ defusing the clash between religion and science, and the dilemma of which goal — ‘meaning’ or ‘progress’ — we should be ready to suffer for.
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Farewell to the ‘childhood of man’
It was a packed, energised gathering of the Radical Anthropology Group this evening, in a stuffy room in the UCL Department of Anthropology near Euston in London. Host Chris Knight introduced it as the most exciting event in the group’s near-40-year history. Co-presented by anthropologist David Graeber, noted for his involvement in the Occupy Movement and his timely bestseller Debt, and archaeologist David Wengrow, the talk promised to put some perhaps final nails in the coffin of an idea that has infused thinking about prehistory for centuries: the idea that humans started out naive, in simple societies, and gained sophistication as societies grew bigger and more complex.
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The Original Political Society
An in-depth write-up of anthropologist Marshall Sahlins’ inaugural lecture for the Centre for Ethnographic Theory at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, April 2016, discussing his theory that the image of the State has its origins in pre-State societies — in their vision of hierarchy between human people and ‘metapersons’ known as spirits or gods.
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Eliade’s Aboriginal cosmic axis
In this essay I’d like to discuss the thesis championed by Romanian historian of religion, Mircea Eliade: that one of the most primal and universal elements of human cosmology is the axis mundi, the idea of a cosmic axis around which everything — both literally and metaphorically — revolves. This axis is seen as the umbilical cord which connects our mundane material realm to the higher strata of sacred power.
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And here’s the rest of the posts from the now-retired website for the book:
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Follow the drinking gourd
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The Cave and the Sky
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The Cosmic Mountain
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Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Cthulhucene
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Empire and Eskimos
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How our pact with fire made us what we are
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Language and the Palaeo diet
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Meditating on fire and sky
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The cult of the Cave Bear
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The Daemoniacal Father of Christmas
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The Elf on the Shelf
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The Idea of North
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The other half
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The Things
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Wanderers
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A Rough Ride to the Future - James Lovelock
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Aningaaq - Jonas Cuarón
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Star.Ships: A Prehistory of the Spirits - Gordon White
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The Cheese and the Worms - Carlo Ginzburg
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The Forbidden Universe - Lynn Picknett & Clive Prince
