Life Imitates Art

Fertility Cults And Culture-Directed Breeding

Pygmalion and Galatea No 1 (2014) by Elisabeth Caren

This is the first chapter from REM, Volume I: The Birth of Tragedy, by Mark Brahmin, to be published in January 2023. Leading up to its publication, excerpts from the book will appear here on the Radix Journal Substack.

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This is a study of world mythology, with special attention paid to the mythology of the Hebrew Bible, which, as articulated through Christianity, has defined the Western world for some two millennia. The subject is made even more vast in light of my contention that propaganda, myth, religion, culture, media, and art are essentially synonymous or, at the very least, of a similar origin and kind, and mutually self-reinforcing. Whatever impresses one deeply—whatever one venerates or places above oneself—will impact the individual psychologically and morally. It will ultimately, shape the future genetically. Each of these media invariably posits models of moral conduct and desired mating types, whether implicitly or explicitly.

We are familiar with the term “fertility god,” whether that be the be goddess Venus of the Greeks or the so-called "Venus of Willendorf,” she of the bounteous breasts and tummy, who was carved in limestone in the late Paleolithic period. Every god, in his or her way, promotes fertility, but that is only half the story. For every god promotes a type of breeding, directed towards a type of man. In art, it is no different. Here we find types of men, whether physically or morally defined, whether depicted or implied, who are venerated. In art, likewise, we can understand every story that gains currency and is remembered is a “cult” of some kind, whether temples appear in its honor or it is viewed in a movie theater. This is especially true of those characters who are fondly remembered and return in story after story in different manifestations, whether it be Hercules or Superman.

Jews have taken this for granted since the ancient period, never losing this wisdom. An excellent example can be found in the parable that describes Jacob’s acquiring of Laban’s flock of sheep in Genesis 30. The story is simple, yet profound in its implications. Jacob, working for his father-in-law, Laban, makes a deal with him to receive all of the less desirable spotted, speckled, or black sheep of the herd. To turn the entire flock speckled, so that he might claim all as his own, Jacob creates white stripes on the branches of trees by peeling back the bark and exposing the inner wood. “So when the flocks were in heat and came to drink, they mated in front of the branches. And they bore young that were streaked or speckled or spotted” (30:38-39). By this method, Jacob encouraged a certain type of mating among the sheep; offspring were born speckled and darkened; and he acquired the herd.

The sheep, consistent with the archetypal Christian metaphor, represent humans. Jacob’s scheme might not pass muster in terms of what we now know about genetics, but the parable is ultimately one of the power of cultural determinism. In other words, culture, media, art, and propaganda ultimately direct race formation. Viewing the striped trees has informed the flock’s mating selection. Hence the parable, esoterically, demonstrates an unequivocal understanding of what we will call REM or Racial Esoteric Moralization. Here, a medium is used to direct human breeding. The covetous sacralization of the Hebrew Bible has made certain that this knowledge and these techniques, contained in parables such as this, would be passed on generationally.

The myth of Pygmalion—which recurs memorably in Ovid, George Bernard Shaw's play of that name (1913), and the musical My Fair Lady (1956)—evokes a similar impulse. In the original telling, the artist, Pygmalion, falls in love with an ivory statue of a beautiful woman he has labored over. She is truer and more human to him than the flesh-and-blood women around him, who have become shallow, hallow, and false in comparison. The artist aspires that art become life, a wish granted him by Aphrodite. Life imitates art. Those artists who seek merely to depict life "as it is" are blind to their profession's sacred function. An ideal can become real, and the artist's task is to bring this about through his craft.

The Pygmalion myth is poignant on another level as well. Propaganda, religion, myth, and art have their most profound effect on women, who emerge as “choosers” in the mating game. Thus, myths, religions, cultures, media, and art represent a mating song. The goal is to position a certain type of man as chooser, to the extent this can be achieved. This is not to deny that parenting by individuals and the influence of family and local community often provide strong countervailing influences. In the end, however, these are primarily retarding, vestigial effects, stemming from a wary older generation. In a mass-media society, such familial influences simply slow an inevitable process and are of waning significance as time passes.

Myth, religion, propaganda, and even “mere” art are race-forming tools. And, to be clear, this is distinct from the thesis that all of the above emanate from a race. To the contrary, a few artists or myth-makers, as well as their acolytes and their patrons, form race, as if gods, through their works. Nietzsche expounded similarly, but much less specifically, when he posited some men are the “seed- bearers” of a people or even of “new states” and “communities.”¹

Let us take, for instance, the European-derived Christian of today or his invariably secular, liberal descendant. Without a doubt, both are formed of the mollifying and egalitarian parables of apostolic scribes and are, importantly, distinct from the earlier race whence they are derived, much as Jews are distinct from the races whence they derived long before they were known as "Jews." This formation through Christianity, whether a given White man still calls himself "Christian" or not, seems to account, for instance, for this same man’s passivity in the face of displacement, multiculturalism, and general decline. After all, what is multiculturalism, especially coupled with a tolerance of Zionism, if not an esoteric Christianity finally revealed and made explicit?

Thus, the notion that Christianity is merely a shroud the Aryan wears is a false one. Christianity has formed the Christian by many successive generations; it has selected him, often from among men who refused it. This remains true even if the genes of some crypto- atheists and crypto-pagans persisted, as clearly they have. Indeed, one discovers in the study of JEM, or Jewish Esoteric Moralization,² that Jews share this opinion. The Christian is no longer the Roman. The Christian who doubts this—doubts the intrinsic effect and meaning of his own religion, believing himself unchanged by a god he insists is his creator—believes himself to be no more "moral" than the pagan. Likewise, he believes Christendom to be no more "moral" than pagan Rome. One must ask then—why is he a Christian? Because his “benevolent” god damns to hell those who do not believe in his son's most incredible truth?