Tag: books

The Tanah–The Preaching, Translator’s Introduction, and First Spell

[The following is the twenty-ninth of many posts–here is the first, here is the second, here is the third, here is the fourth, here is the fifth, here is the sixth, here is the seventh, here is the eighth, here is the ninth, here is the tenth, here is the eleventh, here is the twelfth, here is the thirteenth, here is the fourteenth, here is the fifteenth, here is the sixteenth, here is the seventeenth, here is the eighteenth, here is the nineteenth, here is the twentieth, here is the twenty-first, here is the twenty-second, here is the twenty-third, here is the twenty-fourth, here is the twenty-fifth, here is the twenty-sixth, here is the twenty-seventh, and here is the twenty-eighth–about a fictitious discovery of ancient manuscripts of a religious text of narratives and magic spells. Its purpose for my readers and me is to provide a cosmology and mythography on which I am basing much, if not most, of my fiction–short stories and novels. If anyone is interested in reading this fiction, he or she can use these blog posts as references to explain the nature of the magic and universe in my fiction.]

Translator’s Introduction

And now, after all of those mythical narratives and moral injunctions, we finally come to some spells. This book is called “The Preaching,” since it concerns itself as much with the danger of using spells for evil or selfish purposes as in the previous books; but in this book, the difference is in the wish to use magic itself to prevent the use of evil or self-serving magic.

What follows is a series of verses, each coupled with instructions on how to perform the spell. These include the materials to be used–usually the air, earth, fire, and water that correspond to the four Crims, or Weleb, Drofurb, Nevil, and Priff, to whom the magic practitioners prayed to resist the temptation to do evil with magic–as well as how to use the materials for these good purposes.

Once the materials are prepared and used properly, the verses are to be chanted repeatedly, many, many times, with increasing volume, speed, and emotional intensity. Something that cannot be rendered with justice in English is the original language’s deliberate repetitions of sounds–assonance, consonance, alliteration, and even some rhyming, as well as the pounding rhythmic cadences. In these sound repetitions was the believed power and effectiveness of the magic, for it was believed that the whole universe consisted of eternal undulations, and so through sympathetic magic, an imitation of those undulations–“the rhythms of everything”–one could influence what happens in the world.

Each magical incantation attempts to prevent the committing of each of the sins listed in Chapter One of The Laws, Book 2. So we will find verses meant to stop the use of magic in aid of fornication, cruelty to others, controlling others, starting wars, taking others’ land, gaining excessive wealth, stealing, selfishness, and treating others unfairly. The verses also have a visual presentation, as did those at the end of each chapter in Beginnings, though our rendering of them inevitably will fail to preserve that visual element perfectly.

Here is the first spell of the book; others will follow in later installments. Note the shape of the verses, which represents a symbol this ancient civilization used to represent unity in plurality.

[Collect rain in a large basin. On a windy day, set a fire with clumps of dirt surrounding it. Use some of the water to put out some of the fire. Let the wind blow out some of the fire. Any remaining fire is to be smothered in the clumps of dirt. Do all of the above while chanting the following verses, over and over, louder and louder, with more and more emotion.]

All
is
the
the Void is all

Rain
falls
into
the ocean is rain

The
many
make
the One, from which many come

Water
drowns
the
water, by fire, is made air

Commentary: This is an introductory, generalized spell meant to promote oneness in the community before dealing with the specific sins. For ‘rain,’ and ‘many,’ read the Pluries. For ‘the Void,’ ‘ocean,’ and ‘the One,’ read Cao. For ‘water,’ ‘fire,’ and ‘air,’ read Priff, Nevil, and Weleb, respectively.

As for the first, second, and fourth verses, they are meant to be read as “All is the Void; the Void is all,” “Rain falls into the ocean; the ocean is rain,” and “Water drowns the fire; water, by fire, is made air.” These four verses are all meant to represent the back-and-forth movement of everything, the undulations of the universe that unify all plurality. The remaining verses will appear in subsequent installments, as mentioned above.

The Tanah–The Laws, Book 2, Chapter 8

[The following is the twenty-eighth of many posts–here is the first, here is the second, here is the third, here is the fourth, here is the fifth, here is the sixth, here is the seventh, here is the eighth, here is the ninth, here is the tenth, here is the eleventh, here is the twelfth, here is the thirteenth, here is the fourteenth, here is the fifteenth, here is the sixteenth, here is the seventeenth, here is the eighteenth, here is the nineteenth, here is the twentieth, here is the twenty-first, here is the twenty-second, here is the twenty-third, here is the twenty-fourth, here is the twenty-fifth, here is the twenty-sixth, and here is the twenty-seventh–about a fictitious discovery of ancient manuscripts of a religious text of narratives and magic spells. Its purpose for my readers and me is to provide a cosmology and mythography on which I am basing much, if not most, of my fiction–short stories and novels. If anyone is interested in reading this fiction, he or she can use these blog posts as references to explain the nature of the magic and universe in my fiction.]

The basic principle underlying the avoidance of all sins, put in another way from that of the preceding chapter, can be summed up in this final law:

Magic should never be used in aid of treating other people unfairly.

The basis of fairness is found in what was discussed in the first chapter of Beginnings–the principle of Cao, a never-ending ocean that is the entire world. The waves of Cao make everything equal–the Unity of Action.

That equality, however, is not rigid and unchanging, like a straight line. All things in Cao are fluid and moving, and therefore fairness is also dynamic.

To ensure a fluid fairness, one must look where the crests of good fortune, and the troughs of ill fortune, are, then reverse them. After such a reversal, reverse them again, and again, and again.

So if those in the crests of good fortune have plenty, while those in the troughs of ill fortune have little, that plenty must be moved to those with little; then when those formerly lacking are sated with much, their abundance must be moved to those newly lacking.

The waves of good and ill fortune must be always moving to share the abundance with those who lack. The good and wise will always be vigilant in seeking out who has little, and therefore who needs to have crests move to new troughs. The wicked, however, refuse to do this sharing of crests.

The wicked will try to justify keeping the crests of wealth to themselves, imagining their fortune to be the natural way of things, when it most certainly is not! Thus, they will leave those in troughs of poverty to remain in a state of want. In this way, the wicked would have the waves of Cao freeze, with their own crests a permanent advantage, and the troughs of the poor a permanent disadvantage. The wicked will also use magic in aid of their greed.

Depriving the poor of food, drink, housing, medicine, or clothing is already wicked. Using magic to aid in this deprivation is far worse. Refusing to aid the vagrant foreigner entering one’s nation is already wicked. Using magic to worsen his plight is a far greater sin.

Trying to freeze the flow of the waves of Cao is as impossible as it is to stop the alternating of day and night, of halting the light of Dis and the darkness of Noct. The heat of Nevil’s fire, the heat and desire of Hador, must not be used to cause the coldness of Calt to deny the poor of warmth.

When the rich and powerful try to keep their crests of wealth to themselves, using magic to aid them in their greed, they can be assured that the Echo Effect, the law of sow and reap, will keep the waves of Cao moving, to bring a deep trough of sorrow to punish them for their sin!

When the fortunate try to keep the light of Dis, and the heat of Hador’s desire, to themselves, they can be assured that the Echo Effect will bring them Calt’s coldness and Noct’s darkness!

[The text breaks off here.]

The Tanah–The Laws, Book 2, Chapter 7

[The following is the twenty-seventh of many posts–here is the first, here is the second, here is the third, here is the fourth, here is the fifth, here is the sixth, here is the seventh, here is the eighth, here is the ninth, here is the tenth, here is the eleventh, here is the twelfth, here is the thirteenth, here is the fourteenth, here is the fifteenth, here is the sixteenth, here is the seventeenth, here is the eighteenth, here is the nineteenth, here is the twentieth, here is the twenty-first, here is the twenty-second, here is the twenty-third, here is the twenty-fourth, here is the twenty-fifth, and here is the twenty-sixth–about a fictitious discovery of ancient manuscripts of a religious text of narratives and magic spells. Its purpose for my readers and me is to provide a cosmology and mythography on which I am basing much, if not most, of my fiction–short stories and novels. If anyone is interested in reading this fiction, he or she can use these blog posts as references to explain the nature of the magic and universe in my fiction.]

The basic principle underlying the avoidance of all of the sins previously discussed is one that can sum them all up in one law.

Magic should never be used in aid of only oneself.

Use of magic with oneself as the one and only concern is what leads to all of the other sins. This is why the teaching of the Three Unities, as passed down to us from Rawmios, is so important. These unities of space, time, and action teach us our place in the world, as well as how to live well in it.

As for avoiding selfish purposes in using magic, one must focus on the unity of space, for it teaches us that we are not separate from each other, as our sense perception deludes us into believing. We are all one: everywhere is here. The suffering of one causes suffering for others, and the joy of one causes joy for others. When we can fully understand how the self is in the other, and the other is in the self, we will know the unity of space, we will have compassion for each other, and be selfless in our use of magic.

The selfish use of magic, though, leads to the Ten Errors, which deny the unity of all things. Selfishness leads to mad thinking, being dazed by images, the scurrilous use of language, all work and no rest, family fighting, murder, adultery, theft, lying, and greed.

Selfish uses of magic, as noted above, also lead to the sins warned against in the previous chapters.

Using magic in aid of all the forms of fornication makes a mockery of the unity of humanity. We are to be unified in spirit, not in body (except through marriage).

Using magic to be cruel to other people, or to animals, denies the unity connecting all of life. Kindness to each other, and to animals, restores and strengthens that unity.

Using magic to control others denies our unity with others and reinforces our illusion of separateness. Relinquishing control of others allows for the full freedom of everyone.

Using magic to start wars, or to take the land of other peoples, denies the unity of all of humanity. We must always be mindful of our common humanity, all around the world, and never regard one nation as greater than any other.

Using magic to gain excessive wealth, or to steal, denies the unity maintained between honest livelihoods and obtaining our necessities with the use of money, as elucidated among the Ten Errors. It also denies the unity of humanity between the rich and the poor, creating even greater division between men by making the rich overly luxurious and the poor wretched.

These abuses of magic, only for one’s own gain and at the expense of all other people, not only cause pain and suffering for many, but also ensure division between men, egoism, and isolation. The Echo Effect, moreover, will ensure that the pain, division, and isolation will come back to punish the sinner. Do not think they won’t come back to plague the guilty!

The Tanah–The Laws, Book 2, Chapter 5

[The following is the twenty-fifth of many posts–here is the first, here is the second, here is the third, here is the fourth, here is the fifth, here is the sixth, here is the seventh, here is the eighth, here is the ninth, here is the tenth, here is the eleventh, here is the twelfth, here is the thirteenth, here is the fourteenth, here is the fifteenth, here is the sixteenth, here is the seventeenth, here is the eighteenth, here is the nineteenth, here is the twentieth, here is the twenty-first, here is the twenty-second, here is the twenty-third, and here is the twenty-fourth–about a fictitious discovery of ancient manuscripts of a religious text of narratives and magic spells. Its purpose for my readers and me is to provide a cosmology and mythography on which I am basing much, if not most, of my fiction–short stories and novels. If anyone is interested in reading this fiction, he or she can use these blog posts as references to explain the nature of the magic and universe in my fiction.]

There is one particularly wicked way to control others, and to be cruel to others at the same time. This way is through the taking away of another people’s land by use of military force, and this brings us to a discussion of the next sin.

Magic should never be used in aid of starting wars.

Now, using magic in aid of defending one’s land against invading armies, or in aid of resistance against an occupying power, is a perfectly worthy aim. We elders do not recommend, however, that we Luminosians, currently under the yoke of the Zoyans, should use magic in resistance against them. Indeed, we should not resist the Zoyans at all, for it is the Echo Effect, the law of sow and reap, that justly put us in bondage to them as punishment for our having invaded the city of Zaga and oppressed and killed their people. The Echo Effect will one day free us of the Zoyans, once our penance is complete; we must have faith in the eventual arrival of the judgement of the Echo Effect.

It is indeed providential that the name of the people who oppress us, the Zoyans, should be so similar to the name of the people we Luminosians once oppressed, the Zagans. In this similarity of names, the Echo Effect seems to be teaching us something of the law of sow and reap. What we do to others will one day come back to us, like our voices echoing back to us.

We had succeeded in using magic in aid of liberating ourselves from the Tenebrosians, as related in “Migrations,” because our bondage to those people was not a reaping of any evil we had sown. Our invasion of the city of Zaga, however, had a success that would not last because it was evil. We therefore should not use magic in aid of liberating ourselves from the Zoyans; nor should we–once we are finally liberated from the Zoyans, through the Echo Effect–ever contemplate invading, making war with, and oppressing another people, especially not with the aid of magic.

War is political murder, and murder is one of the Ten Errors as related in “Beginnings.” One must never kill or harm another, except when absolutely necessary, as in self-defence or the defence of others.

No people has the right to take land away from another people. If one people has done so, in order to mitigate the punishment of the Echo Effect, they should restore the land they stole to its original inhabitants as soon as they realize the gravity of their sin; for if they do not do so, terrible will be their loss one day!

We Luminosians, enslaved by the Zoyans, are a lesson in history, not only to the children of our posterity, but also to the peoples of all nations of the earth. If ever you invade other lands and kill their people, you will one day have your land, stolen as it is, stolen from you, and you will be killed, too! The use of magic in aid of such sins only strengthens and intensifies the sin, resulting in a harsher punishment for you!

The Tanah–The Laws, Book 2, Chapter 4

[The following is the twenty-fourth of many posts–here is the first, here is the second, here is the third, here is the fourth, here is the fifth, here is the sixth, here is the seventh, here is the eighth, here is the ninth, here is the tenth, here is the eleventh, here is the twelfth, here is the thirteenth, here is the fourteenth, here is the fifteenth, here is the sixteenth, here is the seventeenth, here is the eighteenth, here is the nineteenth, here is the twentieth, here is the twenty-first, here is the twenty-second, and here is the twenty-third–about a fictitious discovery of ancient manuscripts of a religious text of narratives and magic spells. Its purpose for my readers and me is to provide a cosmology and mythography on which I am basing much, if not most, of my fiction–short stories and novels. If anyone is interested in reading this fiction, he or she can use these blog posts as references to explain the nature of the magic and universe in my fiction.]

There are many ways to be cruel to others, and to use magic in aid of being cruel to others; but there is one form of cruelty that deserves special attention, and so we will focus on that here.

Magic should never be used in aid of controlling others.

We have seen in Chapter Two how magic can be, and mustn’t be, used in aid of seducing others. We gave the example from the writing called “The Migrations” how a Luminosian boy used magic to seduce a girl living next to his home, and how after using her to satisfy his lust, he beat her to death when she, realizing after his magic’s power had worn off, was horrified at what he had done to her.

We repeat the same warnings again and again because they are never heeded, and we will continue to make the same warnings until they are finally heeded! Just before the writing of this chapter, another young Luminosian, among us slaves here in Zoya, used magic to help him seduce a Zoyan woman. He was discovered with her in bed, her slave, and then taken away to be put to death. Some never learn.

Seducing others is a form of controlling others. It must be stopped among us Luminosians if we are to have any hope of liberation from our Zoyan masters. They used magic to help them control and enslave us. We must not think, as some Luminosians do, that using magic to control the Zoyans and enslave them will be our revenge on them, as that boy did.

The law of sow and reap that is the Echo Effect does not come about through man’s attempts at manipulating it. The Echo Effect works of its own accord, as a direct consequence of man’s actions. The Zoyans will one day receive the Echo Effect from their own control and enslaving of us; we Luminosians, too, will receive the Echo Effect from our own control and enslaving of others!

There are those who rule a country who may use magic to control, seduce, enslave, and lie to others in order to strengthen their power. Upon the day of our liberation from Zoya, we Luminosians must resist the temptation, when founding a new nation for ourselves, to use magic to be tyrannical rulers. If we tyrannize others with the aid of magic, the Echo Effect will ensure that we one day will be tyrannized again, as we are now under the Zoyans.

Magic must never be used in aid of telling lies to others, to create false proof of lies. Heads of state may create such false events to bolster their power, or people in communities, families, places of work, or schools may do so to harm others. Such sinning must be condemned and stopped if our people are to survive, be free again, and grow. If we allow liars to use magic to make their falsehoods seem more vivid, and their illusions seem more true, then one day, the lies will come back to us all in the most convincing of illusions. The Echo Effect will make disproving those illusions impossible!

The Tanah–The Laws, Book 2, Chapter 3

[The following is the twenty-third of many posts–here is the first, here is the second, here is the third, here is the fourth, here is the fifth, here is the sixth, here is the seventh, here is the eighth, here is the ninth, here is the tenth, here is the eleventh, here is the twelfth, here is the thirteenth, here is the fourteenth, here is the fifteenth, here is the sixteenth, here is the seventeenth, here is the eighteenth, here is the nineteenth, here is the twentieth, here is the twenty-first, and here is the twenty-second–about a fictitious discovery of ancient manuscripts of a religious text of narratives and magic spells. Its purpose for my readers and me is to provide a cosmology and mythography on which I am basing much, if not most, of my fiction–short stories and novels. If anyone is interested in reading this fiction, he or she can use these blog posts as references to explain the nature of the magic and universe in my fiction.]

There is the sinful use of magic in aid of indecent pleasure, and there is also the sinful use of magic in aid of inflicting undeserved pain on others. This leads us to a discussion of the second sin on the list from the first chapter.

Magic should never be used in aid of cruelty to others.

Such cruelty is not to be limited to cruelty to one’s fellow man, but also cruelty to animals, the needless destruction of plant life, or that of any form of life in our world. Killing of any kind must have justification and be necessary.

Cruelty exists in many forms, and magic can and has been used in aid of these forms. They include beatings, intimidation of the weaker and smaller, torture, murder, sexual violation for the purpose of causing another pain, the spread of lies and slanders, and many others.

The Luminosians, on the taking of Zaga and in their rule of it, were guilty of all of these cruelties, as well as the use of magic in their aid.

When Zagans tried to resist the Luminosian theft of their land, we used magic to aid us in beating them. The magic spells we used gave us greater force in our fists and the clubs we used to hit them with.

Against Zagan resistance, we also used magic in aid of intimidation. Our magic spells made us appear larger, fiercer, and more frightening to the Zagans, making them recoil and retreat.

We Luminosians would capture Zagan resistors and subject them to torture. We would use magic spells to sharpen and intensify the pain we inflicted on them, to deter the rest of them from resisting us.

Other Zagans, who tried more aggressive forms of resistance, what we called ‘terror,’ were murdered by us. We Luminosians used magic spells to murder many more Zagans than ordinary weapons could, and our spells made the deaths far more painful and slow than ordinary weapons could. This sin of ours was the true terror.

While in the previous chapter, we discussed uses of magic in the aid of using women, girls, and even animals for the sake of filthy, lewd pleasures for oneself, there is also the use of magic for such filthy and lewd use of these objects of supposed love that is meant to inflict pain. This sin was often committed by Luminosians against Zagan women and girls, as part of our intimidation and subjugation of all Zagans.

We also used magic spells to help spread lies and slanders against Zagans, calling them ‘uncivilized,’ ‘barbarian,’ ‘animals,’ and the like, in order to justify our cruelty to them. The magic spells were used on our own people, so Luminosians would never doubt the lies about the Zagans. Only a few of us had the wisdom not to allow ourselves to fall under the spells of the wicked among us.

In time, all these evils came back to us in kind! The Zoyans use their own magic to aid them in beating, intimidating, torturing, murdering, raping, and slandering us. The Echo Effect returned our sins to us. Those sins will also be returned to the Zoyans one day, freeing us finally. When that day comes, we must remember never to use magic for evil again!

Analysis of ‘First Blood’

First Blood is a 1972 novel by David Morrell. It was adapted into a 1982 movie by Ted Kotcheff, the screenplay written by Michael Kozoll, William Sackheim, and Sylvester Stallone, the last of these three of course starring as Rambo. Brian Dennehy and Richard Crenna costarred.

The film went through development hell for ten years because of such difficulties as finding the right director and cast, and getting a suitable screenplay. Morrell had sold the film rights in 1972 to Columbia Pictures; the rights were then sold to Warner Bros., and finally Orion Pictures produced the film. Another reason a film adaptation didn’t appear in the early to mid-1970s was that the Vietnam War was still going on, and film studios were worried about moviegoers’ reactions to such sensitive subject matter as that of a Vietnam vet waging a one-man war against an American town.

A suitable adaptation was finally created, to a large extent from Stallone’s rewrites, when the novel’s violence was toned down, Rambo was made more sympathetic, and he would survive in the end, which–thanks to the box-office success of the film–allowed for sequels to be made.

In fact, Morrell wrote the novelizations for Rambo: First Blood Part II and Rambo III, having informed readers in the preface to Part II to disregard the death of Rambo in his original novel. Then came two other films, Rambo and Rambo: Last Blood; all of the sequels’ screenplays were co-written by Stallone, with Morrell having no involvement in any way with the writing of the last two…though he praised Stallone’s portrayal of Rambo in the fourth film, saying Stallone had returned the character to Morrell’s original intentions as angry, cold, burned out, and filled with self-disgust.

Here is a link to quotes from the first film, and here is a link to an audiobook of the novel.

While the two sequels from the 1980s, as I said above, novelized by Morrell (fittingly, as you’ll see why below), were little more than mindless action movie nonsense, and one can basically say the same about the other two sequels, in a sense it is fitting to see Rambo in actual war situations (in Vietnam in Part II, in Afghanistan in Rambo III, in Burma in Rambo, and in Mexico in Last Blood). I say this because I see the original novel and first movie as telling a story that, while set in an American town, is an allegory of the Vietnam War, with Rambo personifying US imperialism, and the local cops representing the Vietnamese army.

Accordingly and predictably, as far as the sequels are concerned, the Vietnamese and Soviets are portrayed negatively (except for pro-US Vietnamese spy Co Bao (played by Julia Nickson) in Part II, the Soviets are portrayed negatively in Rambo III, the Burmese government is portrayed so negatively (which should not be misconstrued that I’m advocating for the junta) in Rambo as to have had the film banned in the country, and in Last Blood, Mexicans are portrayed so badly that there have been accusations of this last sequel promoting racist and xenophobic attitudes towards the country (in a rather Trump-esque vein). This sort of propagandizing against and vilifying of any country or government going against US interests is typical of imperialism.

As for the first movie, the local police of the town of Hope, Washington (in the novel, the town is Madison, Kentucky) are also portrayed negatively, with sheriff Will Teasle (Dennehy) being prickly to Rambo right from the start. Deputy Sergeant Arthur “Art” Galt (played by Jack Starrett) is abusive to Rambo to the point of psychopathy; and the other police, when chasing Rambo in the forest and getting wounded by him, cry out to Will for help like children weeping for their daddy.

In contrast, the novel’s portrayal of Teasle is much more sympathetic and nuanced, with lots of backstory to tell us the kind of world the sheriff is from. His wife has left him, so he has to deal with the pain of that. Also, Teasle is a Korean War veteran, so in that, among other things, he parallels Rambo the Vietnam vet.

Also, in the novel, Teasle doesn’t arrest Rambo (who is called only “Rambo” or “the kid”; the “John” and “James” are inventions of the movies) until after he returns to the town several times. This is opposed to Dennehy’s Teasle, who is abrasive with Rambo just upon first seeing him and not liking how he looks. He arrests him immediately for vagrancy upon Rambo’s just beginning his first return to the town.

It’s important to contrast the tone of the film with that of the novel in light of my allegorizing them as representative of American involvement in Vietnam. The film is, as I’ve said, far more sympathetic to Rambo, and far less sympathetic to the local police and reserve army “weekend warriors,” while in the novel, there’s much more moral ambiguity between the two sides.

In the film, Rambo injures those coming after him, but he never kills them, except for Galt, and even he is killed only accidentally, in self-defence. In the novel, Rambo kills many cops, and most deliberately, including Galt, who isn’t the ACAB pig of the film, but rather a somewhat inept cop who often forgets to lock the door leading upstairs from where they keep the incarcerated downstairs.

This contrast can help us understand the film’s attitude, as opposed to that of the novel, concerning the Vietnam War allegory that I see in both. The film, in having us sympathize with PTSD-stricken Rambo, as against the obnoxious local cops, takes the pro-American attitude towards Vietnam. The novel, with its morally ambiguous attitude towards both sides, allegorically takes into account how wrong it was that the US went into Vietnam and did all the damage it did there.

When we see Teasle telling Rambo, with that American flag on his jacket, to get out of town and stay out, we can see Teasle’s intolerance towards Rambo as representative of the Vietnamese not wanting any more imperialists or colonialists in their country. After all, they had just finished driving out the French colonialists by the mid-1950s, and because of Western Cold War paranoia about the ‘Red menace,’ then, by the 1960s, they had to put up with Uncle Sam moving into their country.

So the cops’ arresting Rambo, then chasing him into the mountainside forest, are allegorical of US troops taken as POWs by the Vietnamese, who then would have chased any escaped POWs in the jungles of Vietnam. Certainly in Rambo’s PTSD-addled mind, his reliving of the trauma he suffered in Nam as he flees to the forest from the cops makes the whole story into the Vietnam War all over again, from his perspective.

Seen in this light, the notion of who really “drew first blood” has a chillingly ironic new meaning.

It’s assumed by most in the West that Vietnam started the war because the “commies” were out to take over the world and ‘enslave’ everybody, so the US had to stop the spread of communism (i.e., the ‘domino theory‘) and intervene. Actually, the US lied, through the bogus Gulf of Tonkin incident, to justify greater involvement in Vietnam. US imperialism and colonialism (i.e., the French) drew first blood, not Vietnam. Allegorically speaking, Rambo’s insistence on coming into town again and again (as in the novel)–defying Teasle’s insistence that he not do so (however more patient he is with Rambo in the novel, even allowing him to have something to eat in a local diner)–is what has metaphorically drawn first blood, too.

In the film, why should Teasle think that Rambo’s entering town with the American flag on his jacket, of all things, to be a sign that he’s looking for trouble? And looking the way he does, in combination with the flag (long hair, sloppy, and smelling bad), is what’s implied, of course, but allegorically speaking, it can represent a white man in Southeast Asia in a green army jacket, with that flag on it, implying a military uniform.

To make Rambo more sympathetic in the film, we see good-looking Stallone with combed hair and no beard or mustache…unlike the far shaggier and scruffier-looking Rambo of the novel. Also in the film, he is further humanized in its opening scene, in which he tries to visit a veteran friend from his team in Nam by going to the vet’s home, only to learn that he died of cancer from Agent Orange. Rambo is lonely, homeless, and suffering from PTSD. The Rambo of the novel has the same problems, but because of his tendency to kill, he’s far less sympathetic.

The issue of veterans’ PTSD, emphasized in the film, is of course a valid one, especially given how shabbily the US government has treated its veterans when they’re no longer of any use to the imperial war machine. Empire doesn’t just harm those outside the imperial core: it hurts those within it, too, and that’s why it’s valid to allegorize a vet’s war in an American town as a war in one of those Third World countries that the empire wants to subjugate and plunder.

These soldiers traumatize others and get traumatized themselves. Rambo’s loneliness represents the alienation and estrangement people feel in society and workers feel doing their work. Accordingly, while Col. Samuel Trautman (Crenna) in the film knows Rambo well (calling him “Johnny”), has personally trained him, and–as the final scene makes clear–is a father figure to him (once again reinforcing our sympathy for the US Army’s point of view), in the novel, Capt. Trautman merely headed the training facility where Rambo learned to be a soldier, he hardly knows Rambo at all, and he’s the one to put a bullet in Rambo’s head at the end of the novel.

My allegorizing of the story as one of Rambo fighting in the Vietnam War, instead of the local American cops, can be seen clearly in the novel, when shortly before Rambo’s breaking out of the police station and racing off to the forest on the mountain, he remembers a time in Nam when labouring as a POW, he gets sick, and he is given a chance to escape when the Vietnamese guards leave him to his own devices. Going through the jungle, he’s given food by local villagers, and he eventually rejoins members of the US Army.

Paralleling this Vietnam memory is Rambo’s escape from the police station, where instead of being sick, his vulnerability is from running outside completely naked (he’s just had a shower to clean away his body odour, and before he even has a chance to get dressed, he’s freaking out from a PTSD trigger from the cops’ attempt to shave his beard and give him a haircut). In the forest on the mountainside, Rambo gets clothes, food, and a rifle from an old man and a boy illegally making moonshine from a still; this help parallels the Vietnamese villagers having fed him.

Rambo is extremely averse to getting a haircut and a shave. In the novel, he’s kept in a cell that gives him claustrophobia. In the film, the sight of the straight razor gives him a PTSD flashback, making him relive the terror of a Vietnamese guard bringing a blade up to his chest and slashing it, triggering Rambo’s fight/flight response. Cutting his hair and shaving his beard, as the cops try to do in the novel, can be compared to the cutting of Samson‘s long hair, thus depriving him of his great strength. In the end, Samson kills all the Philistines, but also himself; in the novel, Rambo kills many of his enemies, and himself gets killed, too.

Having Rambo escape naked reinforces our sense of how tough he is. He can ignore public embarrassment, the discomfort of his unprotected nut-sack slapping against the seat of the motorbike as he races into the wind on it, and the possibility of scraping his skin on the ground if the bike crashes. Him naked among the trees on the mountainside also reinforces our sense of how feral he is.

Another point of contrast between the novel and the film is in who they emphasize as being the main victims of the Vietnam War. In my allegorical interpretation of the novel, Rambo’s shooting and killing of all of Teasle’s cops, as well as that of Orval Kellerman (played by John McLiam in the film) and his dogs, and on top of them, his setting of much of the town on fire suggests the American troops’ shooting and napalming of the Vietnamese and their villages. The film’s emphasis on Rambo’s PTSD, leading to him breaking down and crying at the end, as well as his never deliberately killing anyone, emphasizes how victimized the American vets felt.

Now, Rambo’s rant to Trautman at the end of the film, about how wrongly he and other vets were treated by antiwar protestors, them spitting on him and calling him “‘Baby-killer,’ and all kinds of vile crap,” is valid insofar as some troops really were innocent of such atrocities. Other troops, however, weren’t so innocent, as was the case with the My Lai massacre of 1968.

In any case, the antiwar protestors should have reserved most of their ire for the top military brass and American government. Recall that old antiwar song by Black Sabbath, which condemned the generals and politicians that plotted and started the Vietnam War, then had the poor–young men like Rambo–do all of their dirty work for them…and it was those very same poor who came home–if they weren’t killed–traumatized, unemployed, and often homeless, like Rambo; it wasn’t the generals or politicians who suffered thus.

I mentioned above how there are parallels between Rambo and Teasle in the novel, i.e., they’re both vets. Also, it’s not just Teasle et al hunting Rambo; it’s vice versa, too. Both men sustain nasty injuries in the mountainside woods, and it’s as if there’s a psychic link between the two, because later on in the novel, when Teasle is back in town, he’s had a vision in a dream that Rambo is coming back into Madison.

This time, Rambo’s going back into town to torch it all, linking this return to the other ones at the beginning, which prodded Teasle into arresting him and starting the whole conflict in the first place. This linking of going back into town, in terms of my allegory, shows how Rambo’s arrival has always been an invasion, even if he didn’t kill anybody at first. It’s like the imperialist establishment of South Vietnam (or South Korea, for that matter), a preparation for coming war and prompting the establishment of the Viet Cong.

The whole point in allegorizing the conflict in First Blood, with a US vet fighting a local American town to represent the US army fighting in Nam, is to show how imperialism’s ravaging of other countries eventually turns back on itself, causing the empire to eat itself up and ravage the imperial core. This is what we can see the Trump administration doing as I’ve been writing this post: first, they did the usual–continue to enable the Gaza genocide and Ukrainian war, and threaten Venezuela; now, they’re sending the National Guard into American cities like Washington DC, Chicago, Portland, and Los Angeles to terrorize American citizens, regardless of whether or not they’re illegal immigrants, in response to an “enemy within.” When we hurt people outside, we hurt people inside (e.g., Vietnam vets’ PTSD), because in the end we’re all one.

Before Rambo goes back into town, though, he still has to hide from those doing the manhunt for him, which by now has included the National Guard and civilians. He goes deep into a mining cave, in which at first he imagines it’s like being in a Catholic Church where he can go to confession; indeed, he contemplates how he wasn’t justified in killing those cops–he could have simply escaped, but he knows that his instinct to keep fighting is powered, at least in part, by his enjoyment of killing. In his bloodlust, we can see how he personifies US imperialism.

Deep in that black pit of a cave–which in the novel, at one point shorty after he’s come back out, is aptly compared to hell–Rambo comes to a filthy chamber with toxic fumes and a floor covered in shit. Bats fly out all over him, biting and scratching him (in the film, it’s rats). He is repelled back, but he soon realizes that it’s only through this awful chamber that he’ll be able to come back out to the surface. Only by going through the darkest hell can one come back out to the light: this heaven/hell dialectic, like any dialectical unity of opposites, is something I’ve discussed in a number of blog posts before.

So in this situation, Rambo is like Jesus harrowing hell before His resurrection…though Rambo’s return to the earth’s surface will make him anything but holy.

Nonetheless, the notion of Rambo emerging from the cave as a kind of resurrected, avenging Christ is apt when we consider, in the context of my allegory, how the missionary spread of Christianity (in places like Africa, for example) has been used to justify colonialism and imperialism. Recall Ann Coulter‘s incendiary words about Muslim-majority countries immediately after 9/11: “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.” The Western capitalist complaint about “Godless communists” would have also been used as a rationalization for fighting the Cold War in general and the Vietnam War in particular.

In any case, when Rambo comes out of that cave, he feels “good,” as it says in the novel, being the only apt word to describe how he feels. He’s full of resolve and energy, eager to fight his personal war on the town. This good feeling is comparable to experiencing the transformed, ‘spiritual body‘ of the resurrected Christ, ready to go out and fight as a Christian soldier against the ‘civilian’ pagans, or those whom Rambo fights, those without his military training and discipline.

In the film, he steals a military transport truck carrying an M60 machine gun. In the novel, he steals a police car and some dynamite. With these weapons, he’ll cause a mayhem to the town comparable to the napalm mayhem the US Army caused in Vietnam. He’ll blow up two gas stations, the police headquarters, and much of the town.

But of course, he can fight this personal war only for so long before he’ll be stopped. His inevitable, ultimate defeat is allegorical of the quagmire that the Vietnam War turned into, an unwinnable one that was beginning to be seen as such by the aftermath of the Tet Offensive in 1968, the year Morrell began writing his novel.

Trautman tries in the film’s and novel’s varying ways to convince Rambo to stop fighting and thus to save his life. Allegorically, this is like the US Army’s big brass realizing that they had to pull out of Vietnam before more of their men needlessly got killed.

In the novel, Teasle and Rambo shoot each other, and Teasle–in that connection I said he has with Rambo–feels a need to be near Rambo when he’s finally killed. The police chief, a former vet, and this Vietnam vet parallel each other in their shared forms of pain (sustained injuries in the mountainside forest, alienation and loneliness [recall Teasle’s wife having left him], etc.).

The ultimate connection, though, between Teasle and Rambo is, in terms of my allegory, a dialectical one, in the sense of Hegel‘s master/slave dialectic. One can be recognized as self-conscious only through the other recognizing him as such. Rambo and Teasle react to each other at the beginning of the story. They have a fight to the death; one becomes lord, and the other, bondsman (in my allegory, these would respectively be Rambo-as-US-imperialist and Teasle-as-Vietnamese-resistor). The contradiction between the two is resolved through the efforts of the local police to stop Rambo in the end, making him realize he cannot go any further. This resolution is allegorical of Vietnam fighting so hard for many years until finally liberating themselves from Uncle Sam.

On the surface, it might seem that it’s Teasle who is the lord, and Rambo the bondsman, since it’s through Rambo’s hard fighting that he ends up outdoing the cops for so long, and escaping them; but even if we take this interpretation, it just shows how dialectically interchangeable Rambo and Teasle are, each other’s yin and yang.

Finally, what is ironic about a franchise with a seemingly indestructible tough guy is how, in this first film, the one unequivocally good one, in its climactic and emotional final scene, Rambo cries like a baby, just like Teasle’s wounded cops in the forest. Trautman comforts Rambo like a father figure (as opposed to the novel, in which Orval–the old man with the hunting dogs–is Teasle’s father figure, yet another parallel between Rambo and Teasle). The big action hero is thus a rough, tough cream puff, a Herculean masculine ideal as impossible for men to live up to as is the Marian/Aphrodite ideal for women to attain.

A scene was filmed of Crenna’s Trautman being made by Stallone’s Rambo to shoot and kill him, a forced suicide; for obvious reasons, it was disliked and excluded from the film. As I said above, in the novel, Trautman blows Rambo’s head off; earlier in the novel, wounded Rambo intended to kill himself with some of that dynamite he had.

In any case, Rambo dying at the end may not be pleasing to moviegoers who’ve invested so much time sympathizing with him, but it is the fitting end to the story, because the whole point of First Blood is how Rambo’s projection of who ‘started the fight’ is ironically how he started it (if only allegorically so, according to my interpretation); also, the whole point of the story is how it ends, with Rambo-as-US-imperialism killing many others, then self-destructing.

As of the writing and publishing of this analysis, Americans have been witnessing that self-destruction of empire on their very soil. They ought to reflect on that, and not wish for any sequels to the fighting.

The Tanah–The Laws, Book 2, Chapter 2

[The following is the twenty-second of many posts–here is the first, here is the second, here is the third, here is the fourth, here is the fifth, here is the sixth, here is the seventh, here is the eighth, here is the ninth, here is the tenth, here is the eleventh, here is the twelfth, here is the thirteenth, here is the fourteenth, here is the fifteenth, here is the sixteenth, here is the seventeenth, here is the eighteenth, here is the nineteenth, here is the twentieth, and here is the twenty-first–about a fictitious discovery of ancient manuscripts of a religious text of narratives and magic spells. Its purpose for my readers and me is to provide a cosmology and mythography on which I am basing much, if not most, of my fiction–short stories and novels. If anyone is interested in reading this fiction, he or she can use these blog posts as references to explain the nature of the magic and universe in my fiction.]

Once we have listed the sinful uses of magic, as we have just done previously, we can give examples of them, as well as details as to what specifically makes these uses of magic so sinful. We shall start with the first sin on the list.

Magic should never be used in aid of lewdness, the enjoyment of erotic pleasure at others’ expense.

Sex is for procreation and the raising of a family, and is to be enjoyed in those confines. It is not to be enjoyed when corrupting or taking advantage of others, and therefore using magic for such corrupting or exploitive purposes is especially sinful.

Magic must never be used to seduce others to enjoy them when they, if not under the influence of magic, would never consent to it. Such a use is violation, ravishing. The Unity of Action is manifest in this sinful use of magic, since the love of the object of one’s passion quickly turns into hate upon seeing the object not wishing to be used thus. It is written, in “The Migrations,” how a young Luminosian burned in passion for a girl, his neighbour in Zaga, the place we Luminosians shamefully stole from the people who’d lived there before. The boy used magic to have her, and when the magic’s power wore off, she realized what he’d done and screamed. Then his love turned into hate, and he beat her to death.

Magic must never be used to seduce and take to bed any member of one’s family. Again, the Unity of Action turns love into hate here, for the proper love of family, in acting so shamefully, destroys that love and makes parents and children, brothers and sisters, uncles and nieces, and even distant cousins, hate each other.

Magic must never be used in aid of adultery, be it a married woman with another man, or a married man with another woman. Both are equally wrong. These again, through the Unity of Action, which makes all opposing things as one, turn love into hate: hate of the paramour who tempted the lust of the married one, and hatred of the spouse one was disloyal to, as well as the hatred of the betrayed spouse.

Magic must never be used in aid of engaging in lewd, filthy acts with animals. Such behaviour is bestial, disgusting, and perverse. It makes oneself as filthy as the animal one has violated and polluted. Again, love of animals is corrupted into hate of them, and hate of oneself for acting so shamefully.

All of these hateful uses of magic were indulged in by the Luminosians during our time of the theft of Zaga, these sinful uses as well as others far too foul and disgusting to be named. In our captivity by the Zoyans, the innocent have been punished as well as the guilty, for not even one Luminosian has ever been truly innocent. We never punished the guilty, not even the elders who gave such vociferous warning against their sin. Thus, the Echo Effect punished us all–man and child.

For these reasons, we Luminosians now in captivity must be strict in our punishment of any among us guilty of using magic in aid of lewdness and the corrupting or exploiting of objects of base passions. If the lewd one suffers the pain of disease, this will be punishment enough for him: give him no medical treatment. If no disease results, The following will be the punishments.

Adulterers will be divorced and shunned from society. Mild or moderate transgressions will be punished with incarceration for a year. Those who are filthy with animals or family members will have their genitals mutilated or cut off. Rapists will be publicly executed.

It is far better that one offender be punished than the entire community for his sins.

Commentary

Readers must remember that these are ancient texts, from about two millennia ago, and therefore they reflect the common prejudices and preconceptions of the time. Such prejudices include the, however only implied in the text, condemnation of homosexuality: “Sex is for procreation and the raising of a family, and is to be enjoyed in those confines”; also, “…these sinful uses as well as others far too foul and disgusting to be named” (i.e., ‘the love that dare not speak its name’). We scholars are only translating…not condoning…such prejudices.

Similarly, punishments are harsh, justified by a fear of collective punishment as a result of bad karma from The Echo Effect, as was believed to have happened to all of the Luminosians as a result of the occupation of Zaga and their lenience with sex offenders at the time. Again, we translators are only informing the reader of such draconian laws, not defending them.

Analysis of ‘Murder on the Orient Express’

Murder on the Orient Express is a murder mystery novel written by Agatha Christie and published in 1934. The novel’s original American name on publication that year was Murder in the Calais Coach, so as not to confuse it with Graham Greene‘s 1932 novel, Stamboul Train, which in the US was published as Orient Express.

HRF Keating included MOTOE in his list of the “100 Best Crime and Mystery Books.” Mystery Writers of America included the novel in The Top 100 Mystery Novels of All Time list in 1995. MOTOE was included in Entertainment Weekly‘s 2014 list of the Nine Great Christie Novels.

It has been adapted for radio, film, TV, the stage, comics, and video games. As for the two film adaptations, I’ll be focusing on the 1974 one as a comparison to the novel, and not the 2017 version, because first of all, I’ve seen the former version and not the latter, and second, the former is generally considered to be much better than the latter, in spite of the latter’s strong cast and good production values.

The 1974 adaptation’s ensemble cast includes Albert Finney (as Hercule Poirot), Martin Balsam, George Coulouris, Richard Widmark, Sean Connery, Lauren Bacall, Anthony Perkins, John Gielgud, Michael York, Jean-Pierre Cassell, Jacqueline Bisset, Wendy Hiller, Vanessa Redgrave, Rachel Roberts, Colin Blakely, Denis Quilley, and Ingrid Bergman (who won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her portrayal of Greta Ohlsson in 1974).

Here is a link to quotes from the 1974 adaptation.

Now, the crucial element of MOTOE, the motive for murder being the case of the kidnapping and killing of the little girl, Daisy Armstrong, was inspired by a real-life kidnapping and murder case, that of the son of Charles Lindbergh, back in 1932. There are a number of other parallels in Christie’s novel with the Lindbergh case, too: the parents were famous, the mother was pregnant, the child, a firstborn, was kidnapped for ransom directly from the crib, and the child was killed even after the ransom had been paid. The Lindbergh maid was suspected of complicity in the crime, and after a harsh police interrogation, she killed herself, just as in the novel.

Linked to the Armstrong case as prompting the murder of the suspect, who though responsible for the crime had escaped justice through corruption and legal technicalities (as well as his leaving the US), is the issue of whether or not vigilante justice is valid. In a world of corrupt courts and governments, where the wealthy can pay their way out of having to face justice for any crimes they commit, that very justice is still needful, and when the crime is so heinous–like the killing of a little girl–that it is unbearable, then even Poirot can see that vigilantism should be winked at.

Now, if you’ve never read the book or seen an adaptation of it, read no further to avoid spoilers. If you know the solution to the murder, though, read on.

The murder victim calls himself Samuel Ratchett, but his real name is Cassetti, and he’s an American gangster responsible for the kidnapping and murder of Daisy Armstrong. As is the case with any murder victim in a detective novel like MOTOE, he has an extremely unlikeable personality, so the reader is left wondering which of the suspects hates him just enough to want to murder him. As far as Poirot is concerned, he comes to dislike Ratchett right upon his first meeting with him, and thus refuses to be employed to protect him (Christie, pages 19-31).

As for the guilty in the average murder mystery, we may assume there to be one, maybe two, killer(s). In the case of MOTOE, though, all of the passengers on the train in the coach which includes the area including and between compartments four and sixteen, starting with that of Pierre Michel (Cassell) and ending with that of Edward Henry Masterman (Beddoes in the film–Gielgud) and Antonio Foscarelli (Quilley), that is, except for the Countess Helena Andrenyi (Bisset, though in the film, we see her and her husband, the Count Rudolph Andrenyi [York], hold the knife and stab together) and, of course, Poirot, are collectively guilty of the murder.

Ratchett is thus stabbed twelve times, with varying degrees of strength or weakness. Each stab is from one of the suspects, so there are twelve of them, making up a kind of vigilante jury…and a “trial by jury is a sound system” (page 134), according to Col. John Arbuthnot (Connery), which is something Poirot emphasizes later as being “composed of twelve people” (page 266).

So, their twelve-man jury is meant to give a kind of juridical legitimacy to their revenge, since the actual law has failed them. They aren’t merely murdering a man–they’re passing a death sentence onto him, as he had onto the sweet little three-year-old girl.

Note also that it isn’t just she who died. Recall the suicide maid accused of complicity in Ratchett’s crime. There are also Daisy’s father and mother: she, Sonia, gave birth prematurely to a still-born child and died herself as a result of the labour; he, Col. Armstrong, shot himself out of grief. So the revenge of the ‘jury’ wasn’t just for the death of the little girl, but for a total of five deaths, all just to sate Cassetti’s greed.

Let us now consider who the ‘jurors’ are, what their relationships are–by blood or not–with Daisy and the other four, and therefore what their exact motives are. Mrs. Caroline Hubbard (Bacall) is revealed to be the American actress Linda Arden, and the maternal grandmother of Daisy, and so also Sonia Armstrong’s mother. Mary Debenham (Redgrave), mistress of Arbuthnot, is an English governess and thus formerly that of Daisy; as for Arbuthnot, Col. Armstrong was his best friend. Princess Natalia Dragomiroff (Hiller) is Sonia Armstrong’s godmother. Hector MacQueen (Perkins) is Ratchett’s secretary and translator, a job he got to get close to Cassetti; MacQueen’s father was the Armstrongs’ lawyer, and MacQueen also had feelings for Sonia. Count Andrenyi takes the place of the Countess in the murder, she being Sonia’s sister. Foscarelli was the Armstrongs’ chauffeur.

There are still a few more. Greta Ohlsson (Bergman) is a Swedish missionary who was Daisy’s nurse. Masterman became Rathett’s valet to get close to him; he was Col. Armstrong’s batman in the war and his valet in New York. Hildegarde Schmidt (Roberts) is Princess Dragomiroff’s German maid; she was formerly the Armstrongs’ cook. Cyrus Hardman (Blakely) is an American former policeman who was in love with the French maid who killed herself after being falsely accused of aiding and abetting Cassetti. Michel is the Orient Express train conductor and father of the suicide maid.

When we see who these characters are, we can then understand that the five deaths are not just a statistic. These people deeply grieved over the losses of those they loved. And when they saw the corrupt court wink at Cassetti for the pain and suffering he caused them, just through his having paid off the authorities, can you even begin to imagine the rage that swelled in the hearts of that dozen or so people? There was no way that they would let Cassetti get away with what he did.

Now, Ohlsson in her religiosity would naturally have found it almost impossible to reconcile her Christian beliefs with her participation in a murder; she surely gave Ratchett one of the weakest of the stabs. In the novel, when reminded by Poirot of the Armstrong case, she gets all emotional, saying that the killing of the little girl “tries one’s faith.” (page 110) The commandment, ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ must have been ringing in her ears forever since she gave that stab; indeed, Bergman as Ohlsson quotes the commandment in the 1974 film.

Still, she may find some solace in that very same Bible she surely has with her all the time. She can read Ecclesiastes: “To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose after heaven.” (3:1) Then she can read a little past that: “a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to break down and a time to build.” (3:3) Yes, even in the Bible, it says there’s a time to kill.

There are times when the law fails us, when the government and the ruling classes whom these institutions work for (as opposed to working for the common people!) grow so rank in their filth and self-serving that the people must rise up and take the law into their own hands. The killers of Cassetti all come from different countries, classes, and backgrounds, ranging everywhere from a Russian princess to an Italian-American chauffeur/car salesman; such a diversity of walks of life shows the universality of their passion to seek justice through unavoidably violent means.

As Mrs. Hubbard explains towards the end of the novel, “It wasn’t only that he was responsible for my daughter’s death and her child’s, and that of the other child who might have been alive and happy now. It was more than that. There had been other children before Daisy–there might be others in the future. Society has condemned him; we were only carrying out the sentence.” (page 273)

Very often, when an act of vigilante justice is acted out against any of these rich, powerful people, as in the case with Luigi Mangione against the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, there will be those liberals out there who condemn Mangione’s violence, but stay silent over the repeated violence of the denial of health insurance claims, which leads to many deaths or bankruptcies. When confronted with the Gaza genocide, these liberals will pipe in, “But do you condemn Hamas?”

The fact that the twelve killers are of all different social classes, from royalty to the working class, can be see to symbolize people from across the political spectrum: left, centre, and right. Such people in our real world–being enraged at the injustices of the corrupt health insurance industry, government in bed with corporations, and Zionism’s ongoing atrocities against the Palestinians–may have differing diagnoses of these problems, but their anger is the same. The anger and presumed political attitudes of the twelve killers can be considered to be similar.

As for Ratchett/Cassetti, he–as a rich mafia man paying off the courts so he can escape punishment for his crimes–can be seen to personify predatory capitalism, a representation I’ve made in many other blog posts.

Poirot proffers up two possible solutions to this murder case on the train. The first, contrived by the actual killers obviously to shield themselves from suspicion, is that a man boarded the train at Vinkovci, disguised himself as a conductor, and killed Cassetti as part of a mafia feud, then left the train before it went off again and got caught in the snowdrift that has kept the train from moving during this entire investigation.

Evidence of this simple first solution includes the discovery of a conductor’s uniform, with a missing button, in a large suitcase among the belongings of the princess’s lady-in-waiting, Hildegarde Schmidt (page 194). Elsewhere, there has been Mrs. Hubbard’s vociferous complaining of a man being in her compartment around the time of the murder, a complaining given with particular loquacity in Bacall’s performance.

Yet Poirot is able to piece together what really happened through various slips of the tongue from the suspects and certain inconsistencies in how the events of the night of the murder were presented to him–the far more complex solution that incriminates the twelve suspects. Examples of such slips include Schmidt’s freely-given boast that all of her ladies have praised her cooking, implying that she was the Armstrongs’ cook. Inconsistencies include the understanding that it was Cassetti calling out, on the night of the murder, something in French, a language he couldn’t speak a word of, hence his employment of MacQueen as his translator.

Still, in the end, after contemplating how, as Finney’s Poirot puts it, “a repulsive murderer has himself been repulsively, and perhaps deservedly, murdered,” as well as considering Mrs. Hubbard’s long speech at the end of the novel, explaining the twelve killers’ reasons, which include how “Cassetti’s money had managed to get him off” (page 272), the first solution is preferred.

This judgement is made by Monsieur Bouc (Bianchi in the film–Balsam), who is a director of the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits, and Dr. Stavros Constantine (Coulouris) at the very end of the novel (page 274), leaving Poirot to retire from the case. As we can see, compassion for the twelve is far more fitting than for Cassetti. It is their crime, and not his, that should be winked at. Those in power should be the ones brought down when guilty of a crime, not the powerless.

Agatha Christie, Murder on the Orient Express, London, HarperCollins, 1934

The Tanah–The Laws, Book 2, Chapter 1

[The following is the twenty-first of many posts–here is the first, here is the second, here is the third, here is the fourth, here is the fifth, here is the sixth, here is the seventh, here is the eighth, here is the ninth, here is the tenth, here is the eleventh, here is the twelfth, here is the thirteenth, here is the fourteenth, here is the fifteenth, here is the sixteenth, here is the seventeenth, here is the eighteenth, here is the nineteenth, and here is the twentieth–about a fictitious discovery of ancient manuscripts of a religious text of narratives and magic spells. Its purpose for my readers and me is to provide a cosmology and mythography on which I am basing much, if not most, of my fiction–short stories and novels. If anyone is interested in reading this fiction, he or she can use these blog posts as references to explain the nature of the magic and universe in my fiction.]

The best uses of magic, coupled with the old teachings as a guide, have been outlined in writings from before. Now, we must focus on the worst uses of magic, why they must be avoided, what the sins are behind the intentions of this worst use of magic, and the inevitable consequences of such a use of it.

These evil uses of magic have been described in some detail in previous writings, but we must warn again of these evils, and repeat the warnings many times, for so many people never heed us. We must enumerate these evils one by one and give specific instances of them, how they arise, and what results from each of them, hoping that at least some fools will think twice before using these evil spells.

A studious review of the Echo Effect, with its laws of sow and reap, as well as of the Ten Errors, the very sins that lead to the use of the evil spells, should be enough to deter any from being tempted into using the evil spells.

Magic should never be used in aid of lewdness, the enjoyment of erotic pleasure at others’ expense.

Magic should never be used in aid of cruelty to others.

Magic should never be used in aid of controlling, manipulating, or exploiting other people.

Magic should never be used in aid of starting wars.

Magic should never be used in aid of taking the land of other peoples.

Magic should never be used in aid of gaining excesses of wealth.

Magic should never be used in aid of stealing from others.

Magic should never be used in aid of oneself, to the exclusion of others’ needs.

Magic should never be used in aid of treating other people unjustly.