Lunar Cards

"Water Card"

There is a wonderful history in what we call Playing Cards. Rooted in an ancient Judeo-Christian tradition the system of the cards gives us a window to a way of thinking about the world that is hidden from us today.

The Calendar

Everyone knows that the Moon has phases. That is called a Lunar cycle. The Lunar cycle as reckoned from new Moon to new Moon is 28 days which is a Lunar month. There are 13 Lunar months (or cycles) to one Lunar year. There are 13, 28 day months or 364 days in the Lunar year or one day less than the typical year we use; known as Gregorian year. The Gregorian (or solar) calendar year is 365 days.

Neither calendar is completely accurate. The solar cycle is actually 365 ¼ days. The Lunar calendar year is 364 days.

Here’s where it gets a little dodgy. In much of Christendom we use the 365 day Gregorian calendar but to compensate for the ¼ day we add a “leap year” every 4 years placing an extra day in February. In the 364 day Lunar calendar I study, the compensation is done each year by adding a “day out of time” usually at the Winter Solstice. Some say that in ancient meso-America an extended Summer Equinox was used to compensate the calender deficiency.

At this point in the discussion the information becomes very scarce. Experts on historic calendars start to argue with astronomers. Historians dispute astrologers. The farther you go back in time the worse the disagreements get.

But for our discussion we can agree on this. The advantage to the Lunar calendar is each of the 13 months is exactly 28 days, 4 weeks each with 7 days per week; 52 weeks per year. The length of the year is 364 days.

Card Theory

How does that relate to “common” every-day playing cards? With the cards: 13 cards in each suit, 364 divided by 13 = 28; 4 suits x 13 = 52 (the number of cards in the deck), 364 divided by 52 = 7; 7 x 4 suits = 28; therefore 13 x 28 = 364. Note all the relations between the cards and Lunar calendars.

Another relationship: if you count the jack, queen, and king numerically it would be 11, 12, and 13. If you then add all the numbers represented on all the cards it will total 364 or the number of days in the Lunar year.

Of course our ancient forefathers knew these relationships and more. They utilized this data in ways we barely understand. Certainly they knew other things in this relationship we don't understand.

It is only the Lunar calendar that is referenced to cards. The cards mirror the Lunar calendar; 13 months-13 cards per suit; 52 cards per deck-52 weeks per year; 4 seasons (or 4 quarters) 4 suits and 13 weeks per season. The Lunar driven cards are the touchstone to both our most important celestial relationship and the unconscious mind that is fueled by references to the Moon.

Water Card, 16"x 12", Oil on textured hardboard, 2012, DS Reif

The Sacred Art of Numbers

Numbers at Play

Numbers are a special group of symbols. They were created in the Beginning as all symbols were but numbers serve a unique function.

The meaning of many symbols has become encrypted with cultural and other protocols so they are obscured to all but the initiated. Number, however, do have a more universal quality about them that allows them to cross cultural and temporal barriers.

Numbers have a special place in our history and in our spirit. The Bible contributes and entire section, The Book of Numbers, to the subject of numbers. It is filled with a plethora of Holy formulas, relationship, and accountings all expressed in numbers.

The Hebrew tradition is greatly indebted to the study and application of numbers. The Hebrew alphabet is concurrently an expression of letters and numbers that are at times used in tandem and at other times used separately.

In one form or another numbers have been used as long as we can understand the history of people. But for our purposes perhaps the greatest philosopher of numbers was the Greek scholar Pythagoras. Likely born on the island of Samos near Ionia in about 570 B.C. (the exact date is not known) he lived and taught for about 70 years. He is considered the father of number theory.

Joscelyn Godwin writes, “Pythagoras...in his emphasis on Number...revealed the secret without which modern technology would have been impossible. It is applied mathematics, after all, that has led to the so-called conquest of Nature. But at the same time, and much more importantly, Pythagoras taught the metaphysical and sacred aspect of Number as reflecting the One and its emanations.”

It is the metaphysical aspects of numbers that are the basis for numerology and cartomancy which is the study of how numbers relate to humans and their condition. This study of numbers was know in Biblical times and before. The work of Pythagoras helped us to understand the cosmic aspects of numbers as they relate to heaven and nature.

Modern man rudely uses numbers only in their counting function or as a shorthand language to express concepts. David Fideler writes of Pythagoras, “What we do know is that a metaphysical philosophy of Number lay at the heart of his thought and teaching permeating...even the domains of psychology, ethics and political philosophy.” He continues, “Pythagorean understanding of Number is quite different from the predominately quantitative understanding of today. For the Pythagorean, Number is a living, qualitative reality which must be approached in an experiential manner. Whereas the typical modern usage of number is as a sign, to denote a specific quantity or amount, the Pythagorean usage is not, in a sense, even a usage at all: Number is not something to be used; rather, its nature is to be discovered.”

These days we have stripped numbers down to their barest utilitarian elements causing these symbols to be viewed as a token that stands in for something we are counting. This minimalist “counting function” pervades the thinking of nearly everyone and deprives people of the vastly larger carrying capacity that numbers have for storing data.

If we can understand that all thing come from the One which is the unity, while Two opens up duality and conflict but the possibility of knowledge then we can begin to comprehend a larger role for numbers particularly those from 1 to 10. The data stored in number symbols is enormous. However, it takes a mind open to metaphor and allegory to peek inside and view the secrets that numbers hold.

Quotations from:

“Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library”, David Fideler editor, 1987

More about symbols: Click Here

Illustration: "Numbers at Play", 4"x4", Ink on paper, A Ann Reif, 2013

 

Jordan Maxwell Lets It Fly

Jordan Maxwell

Last night, 18Jan13, on the Clyde Lewis radio show Ground Zero his guest was the venerable social critic Jordan Maxwell . The interview rambled around many areas of interest to Mr. Maxwell but it was his response to a caller that got my attention.

It was one of those wonderful moments in talk show history that doesn't happen often. The caller whose platform was somewhere between Rodney King and Steven Gaskin on the banks of the Harmonic Convergence had a question for Mr. Maxwell. It was a show hanging curve ball that floated over the corner of the plate and Mr. Maxwell could not help himself but to smack it out of the park.

Mr. Lewis has an intuitive sense about when to reign in his guests and when to let them wail. The caller wanted to know if there could be a time in America when everyone would just all get along and we could have a nice peaceful world. Mr. Maxwell's sulfuric response was curiously refreshing.

Paraphrasing here: he told the caller that America was finished. It was all over for any chance for fixing this country. Furthermore, he said that nowhere in human history was there and example where people voluntarily and peaceable got together and worked their differences out in a long term manner. Mr. Lewis just let it all happen.

I'm not quite on the same page as Mr. Maxwell but I do know what he is talking about. In the minds of most people America is a vision still alive with the purpose and intentions of the founders. Because of that great confusion results.

Sometimes I use a good rule of thumb history lesson that is not original to me. It may be apocryphal and I don't know who to attribute it to but it works pretty well. The gist of it is as follows.

We are now living in the Fourth American Republic. The First Republic under the Continental Congress and the Articles of Confederation was approximately from 1777-1789. The Second Republic was the Constitutional period from 1789-1868 until the American Civil War made it obsolete and then the passage of the 14th Amendment in 1868 changed the nature of the relations between the Central Government and the States thus beginning the National period or the Third Republic. This lasted until the aftermath of WWII again changed the workings of the government and with the passage of the National Security Act of 1947 gave birth to the Fourth Republic; the one we live in today. It consists of a shadow government, foreign entanglements, secret agreements, and a gaggle of other dark relations that are familiar to Mr. Maxwell and many talk show host as well as the thinking public.

The confusion exists because people, like Clyde Lewis' caller want to believe we live in some other period which unfortunately does not exist anymore nor will it return anytime soon. Call it the Shadow Government or the Fourth Republic or what ever you wish. The reality is we don't live in the freewheeling days of the Articles anymore. Those times form the archetype of America that people wish for.

Mr. Maxwell was right to give the listeners a piece of reality pie. Maybe it will cause some of the lotus eaters to awaken from their nap.

The Symbol as Superluminal Potentia

Circles

Symbols are ubiquitous. They are the dynamic relationship between the way we organize thoughts and Creation. If there is a seen and unseen world existing together the function of symbols is to inform us about our world and mediate the interface between the two worlds.

There would be no understanding of the unseen world of Creation without the use of symbols from the seen world. This principle is elucidated by Paul in Romans 1:20 but is admittedly an older if not universal rule of the ancients.

Concurrently there would be no understanding of the seen world without the same tools, albeit, applied in different ways. Symbols can stand alone only in potentia which permits them to move seamlessly between material and non-material forms.

Symbols are the lattice work of thought-forms which give us an understanding of the material world and a glimpse into the workings of the unseen world. The “symbol” in its unpolished form is without meaning unless it is attached to (or corresponds to) some aspect of Creation.

The “symbol” then has an extremely high harmonic potential that is designed to carry meaning back and forth between the non-material world, the visible world, and the human mind. It is a malleable instrument that can be shaded to obtain the proper level of resonance for the recipient. This scalable property is what accounts for the individual understanding of similar phenomena in different ways.

Yet in the same manner the “symbol” must be filtered (or defined) and ultimately be “collapsed” by each individual in order for that person to have a usable bit of information. The filtration process is supplied by culture, memory, and history.

While a new target phenomenon may be external to the individual it will be quickly wrapped with immediate resonating symbolism until such time has elapsed when a more useful or specific set of symbols can be acquired. Ultimately this process should lead to an adequate constellation of meaning to satisfy the individual and his needs while the essential dynamic nature of the symbol remains in tact awaiting a harmonic change.

In the example of a simple circle or O we know that it implies many sets of meaning. A zero indicating “nothing”, a circle meaning the “whole”, a void, a numerical place-hold, or a round thing that rolls like a automobile tire. A symbol can carry an enormous amount of data that can be accessed and refined by the human mind into a specific meaning set.

But the transferability of meaning is nearly fantastic in nature. Not only can a symbol carry great amounts of data but it can switch meaning sets instantaneously. The symbolic circle being utilized by an individual in Nebraska as a zero can at the same time be used as a disk by a person in Azerbaijan and then switched from one to another or modified instantaneously. This superluminal property of the symbol is in continuous use and must be seen as intrinsic to consciousness.

If we view the “symbol” as a superluminal potentia capable of carrying vast amounts of data over unknown distances then the controversy over symbols as cultural construction versus psychological phenomena is eased. For instance, if this universe began with a divine movement combined with the voice of God calling energy into existence, then we are understanding these actions with symbols embedded in our consciousness that came from the beginning or before and are still carrying information now. Therefore, the interval between then and now is nil as an instantaneous transfer of data continues through the dynamic symbol set understood as Creation.

This may not completely open the door to a resolution of parallelism but I think it does crack open a portal. It may not solve certain theological issues but may be valuable in areas from theurgy to quantum computing.

Symbols as Superluminal Potentia

David S Reif
On this day of Epiphany 2013

Illustration: "Circles", ink on paper, 4"x4", A. Ann Reif

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Hearing Christopher Michael Langan

Christopher Langan
 

Last night (12/28/12) on Coast toCoast AM  veteran radio host RobSimone  had an unusual guest on for the first hour. Mr. Simone's guest was Christopher Michael Langan who is a individual renown for creative thinking.

I could not make it through the whole interview. Even though it has been over a month since my heart surgery a vicious post operative case of the shingles has set my energy level back a couple weeks. But I did pay close attention to much of the interview.

Mr. Langan began talking about the persistent conflict between perception and cognition. That is the lag in time between when we seem to see something and the time that impression is turned into thoughts. Lately this is a topic popular with the quantum physics people but its roots are at least as old as the Greeks and the concept of hylomorphism.

What interested me is his approach. In explaining his views Mr. Langan did not shirk from the complexity of the material launching into the subject without hesitation. However, with so many people of a very high IQ, Mr. Langan was putting on the brakes in the background. At least I think I could hear him tap the brakes a little to slow his thinking down.

Trying to respect his audience and avoiding the trap of over-jargonizing the material, he was drawn into the dark forest of linguistics.  Attempting to pick his words very carefully I could sense his frustration with the imprecision of language. Shining his flashlight into the darkness of the forest, the beam darting first here then there as he tried to select some prominent features to elucidate his ideas all the while knowing that the gloom was closing in on him as soon as he moved the light.

I think he wanted slip into physics theory or mathematics to explain himself. It certainly would have been more comfortable for him. But he persisted and did a yeoman's job of explaining some of the problems of “entangled hierarchies” and other topics.

While he spoke an image entered my mind. I saw a miner with an old fashion pickax, hard hat, and a carbide lantern. He was working inside my head somewhere in my unconscious mind. Cracking away at the hard rock around him he sees some break in the floor. Excited, the miner swings his ax purposefully as the rock gives way to an increasingly large opening.

Something is reflecting the light from the lantern. As he works the opening gets bigger and he sees a marvelously bright reflective surface shining at him. Looking closely the miner sees a wonderful pure transparent crystal substance. As he brings his face closer to the crystalline material he sees it is liquid. It is a totally clear liquid.

He thinks it is still and calm but with further examination he finds it is moving, slowly, slowly moving. Touching this wondrous substance the miner notes that it is not gold, silver, platinum, or diamonds. It is water.

While the miner was prospecting deep inside my unconscious mind he found water; divine water, aqua vitae, flowing freely without containers or boundaries. He had discovered MEM a precious matter known to the Hebrews and the ancients before them: wisdom freely flowing and accessible to all people.

As Christopher Langen was noodling around inside his head methodically describing what he was seeing I think he enabled me to turn loose my little intra-cranial prospector. Ultimately somewhere in the forest of language Mr. Langen has come upon the same pool of water that flows in each of us.

Perennialism Today

 

The Ebullio of Meister Eckhart

Thinking outside the box?

When most people say we should think outside the box they don't really mean it. I believe they are saying, “Think about how we can make a bigger, better box.” Conventional opinion makers do not want the box to go away. It is the box that contains them and their comfortable world. Thinking a little bit at the edges of the box might help reinforce the box but they really don't want a different box. Employing people to examine the box will help find potential weaknesses in the box so it can be strengthened.

The box is the materialistic worldview. Few in authority really want to go to a place that contemplates anything except this cozy and predictable box. Even though there may be ominous signs of danger, growing evidence that the box is crumbling, abandoning the box is unthinkable.

 

Ancient Rivers

On the other hand when considering the perennial wisdom we speak of rivers not boxes. Great rivers of history, philosophy, and politics flowing into the valley of human consciousness. Twenty five years ago a handful of us working in the Institute for Perennial Studies asked the question; what went wrong some two centuries or so past, with the western world to bring us to the brink of nuclear destruction, social deterioration, and the corruption of our natural world? We went to the rivers for answers.

The ancient rivers of thought are always in motion. Not rushing mountain steams but turbid outflows, braided across a vast delta slowly cutting one channel into another, co-opting the flow of one then in turn being replaced by its neighbor. There seems to be no beginning or end to the flow but it is alive with probabilities.

Lately the study of the philosophia perennis is akin to panning for gold in those rivers. Looking for a glinting timeless nugget in the immense muck of human history. Sloshing back and forth through the murky goo of ideas your pan filled with mud, eyes riveted on the froth hoping for some color to show. Mining the past looking for answers, the tiny nugget of thought that will bring all the jumble of information together. Colliding one school of thought into another in an binge of eclecticism, searching for a “unified field theory” or the Philosopher's Stone we become particle physicists of history.

Although an interesting process we should not mistake the method for the answer. There really is little new under the sun. Our search for a perennial wisdom may find us using novel tools that are resident to our times but if our assumptions are correct about the nature of a perennial wisdom then finding it's message should not be so difficult.

Yet the elucidation of the obvious is sometimes challenging. If it is the amalgam of a materialist worldview and the allied cultural appendage of modernism that is our problem, then the antidote should become evident.

Beyond Schrodinger's Cat

I have fallen victim to some of these distractions and perceived paradoxes. Examining first this position then another trying to balance myself in the course of the last 25 years. Through all of that two things stand out. One is my new appreciation of quantum theory that may be the climax of materialist science. The second proposition is a line from “The Herald ofPerennialism” we wrote in 1987; that there is an eternal and “...deep relationship between God, people, and values”. This is the message of the perennialist but the basis of this message was not stated at the time. I want to fill in that gap.

Perennialism is a theistic system that believes in eternal renewal. The statement “God was here at the beginning, He is here now, and He will always be here” supplies a workable transcendent foundation. The perennial wisdom then is the struggle of people to apply this timeless truth onto the playing field of common reality.

A hazy outline of God has been seen forever. Throughout all of human culture there has been an attempt to understand the substance of a vision that the shamans would see. We tried to make sense of fuzzy pictures and uncertain outlines detected by sincere mystics. When we gave those abstractions names like Osiris, Avalokitasvara, or Quetzalcoatl we were seeing Lord Christ who in a thus far unique event briefly appeared to us in human form. The fact that we have called God by various names is neither disrespect nor evil it is only an incomplete interpretation of the nature the visions our shamans, scholars, and others were having of this complex trinitarian non-locality.

The role of perennialism is twofold. To understand the dynamic process of revelation God gives us and secondly support cultural activities that will influence the potential form of perennial restoration.

 

Illustration: "Trinity", 4"x6", gouche, D S Reif, 2010 

Modern Machiavelli

 

Writer and military historian Donald Gilmore has teamed up with Perennis editor David Reif to co-author an essay that appears on the American Thinker website. You can read that article, "The Modern Machiavelli" by clicking HERE.
The original essay was a bit longer and was edited to conform to space requirements. You can read the entire unedited version of the Machiavelli essay below. 

Machiavellianism Creates Shadow Puppets

The Modern Machiavelli

by Donald L. Gilmore and David Reif

                       

Few are likely to have a solid understanding of political affairs today without a thorough understanding of our debt to a prominent, fifteenth-century Italian political thinker, Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527). The revelations unveiled by this brilliant Florentine diplomat in his disquisitions on realpolitik in his book The Prince (1513) (Il Principe) caused a furor in his day because of its honest, accurate, and comprehensive treatment of the subject of politics and his analysis of political intrigue during the many centuries preceding him.

The term realpolitik, “the pursuit of national interests by leaders without regard for ethical or philosophical considerations” probably originated in Machiavelli’s analysis of the use of political power, but the term is a German one of later origin.

After the advent of Christianity and the creation of the Catholic Church, Christian morality had a strong influence on political thinking, and this continued for the next fifteen hundred years. This caused politics to be considered ostensibly as a moral as well as a worldly practice. However, with the rise of institutions society underwent changes. Political authority became increasingly secularized both within and outside religious practice. Old catechisms would give way as Church and State drifted towards their ultimate rendezvous with our modern world.

Machiavelli’s contribution in this arena, however, was to demonstrate, through an analysis of history, that behind a veneer of pretended morality, honesty, integrity, and Christian practices and virtues there dwelt another sphere of action, a dark world, dominated by greed, ruthlessness, hypocrisy, lies, intrigue, deception, and even murder. This vicious, manipulative world proposed by Machiavelli still exists, hidden behind a curtain of disguise and pretense. This ugly world, a product of the past but ongoing and virtually universal, is screened from view by the naïve delusions and beliefs shared by most people about life and politics and continues to affect worldly outcomes.

Machiavelli wrote The Prince at a time when the competition for power in Italy by a number of kingdoms was so intense that this adviser of “princes” wrote his book to clarify what it would take to bring peace and national unity to the area of what is today modern Italy. In order to achieve this goal, Machiavelli found it imperative to describe how powerful “princes” in Italy and elsewhere, those contemporary to him and in the past, had gained power and created stability in their kingdoms.

In addition, he incorporated into his work the lessons he had learned during a lifetime of observing historic events close at hand, through advising leaders on courses of action, and witnessing the successes and failures in the use of power in Europe.

His book did not provide a pretty picture--he is blunt--but it was largely an accurate one. Machiavelli, ultimately, was unseated from his diplomatic position through a reversal in fortune, and he wrote The Prince to ingratiate himself with those currently in power in order to obtain a new office. He failed in this endeavor, but his book, nonetheless, has cast a spell on powerful men ever since.

The following are some of Machiavelli’s important tenets to be practiced by “the Prince” or national leader to further his interests. They are as much in force today as ever, and the average citizen needs to know them so that he can peek behind the mask of state to see the truth behind the power. Otherwise, as Machiavelli suggested, we shall be like one of those “simpleminded men . . . so controlled by their present necessities that one who deceives [them] will always find another who will allow himself to be deceived.” The following are a few of Machiavelli’s discoveries:

Tenet One: The leader should always wear a mask. No leader should show his true self to his people. He must assume a persona, or mask, that hides his true self and his real intentions, the motives behind his actions, and his true goals. Showing his true colors will often work against his popular support and foil his efforts to achieve his objectives, which are often not those of the people.

Tenet Two: The prince must be prepared to act against charity, humanity, and religion. In order to maintain the state, Machiavelli said: [the leader] “is often obliged to act against his promises, against charity, against humanity, and against religion. And therefore, it is necessary that he [the leader] have a mind ready to turn itself according to the way the winds of Fortune and the changeability of affairs require him. As long as possible, he should not stray from the good, but he should know how to enter into evil when necessity commands . . . it is essential to understand this: that a prince [leader] cannot observe all those things by which men are considered good, for in order to maintain the state, he is often obliged to act against his promises, against charity, against humanity, and against religion.”

Tenet Three: The prince should always mask his acts and intentions concerning his basic morality. Machiavelli said: “A prince must be very careful never to let anything slip from his lips that is not full of the five qualities mentioned above: he should appear, upon seeing and hearing him, to be all mercy, all faithfulness, all integrity, all kindness, all religion. And there is nothing more necessary than to seem to possess this last quality . . . for everyone sees what you seem to be, few perceive what you are, and those few do not dare to contradict the opinion of the many who have the majesty of the state to defend them.”

Tenet Four: The prince should avoid being despised or hated. “What makes him [A prince] despised is being considered changeable, frivolous, effeminate, cowardly, irresolute, from these qualities a prince must guard himself as if from a reef, and he must strive to make everyone recognize in his actions greatness, spirit, dignity, and strength.”

Tenet Five: The prince should acquire esteem through the accomplishment of great undertakings and examples of his great talents, " . . . he should strive in all his deeds to give the impression of a great man of superior intelligence."

Tenet Six: The prince should avoid inconsistency. Machiavelli said: “For anyone who has appeared to be good for a time and intends, for his own purposes, to become bad must do so in appropriate stages and in such a way as to be governed by circumstances, so that before your altered nature deprives you of old supporters, it will have provided you with so many new ones that your authority will not be diminished; otherwise, finding yourself unmasked and without friends, you will be ruined.”

In today's terms this is about shaping the image of the politician or leader. It has become a big business in our society to create an image or “mask” for a person. George Bush the Second was shaped to look like a Texan by his handlers. Photographed on the ranch cutting brush with a chainsaw he looked the part. Never mind the Bush family were carpetbaggers from New England and George the II was an Ivy League blue-blood.

There are many individual examples of powerful American Presidents constructing a mask in order to conceal an identity. President Harry Truman was portrayed as a honest hard working small businessman who was a successful haberdasher. While the truth was that he had been involved in a string of unsuccessful ventures until he landed himself into the corrupt Kansas City political machine of Tom Pendergast where he prospered. Yet the image of a simple man-of-the-people persists until the present.

These days much of the work of the medieval Prince is done by the political parties and those who control them. In the modern republic the Prince is often a composite. A group of forces using the platform of a political party as an instrument of power becomes the embodiment of the Prince but without the responsibilities an actual monarch faces.

Thus hidden the principles of Machiavelli can be exercised with a minimum of scrutiny. A cut-out can be constructed by the strong men behind the scenes and manipulated. What ensues is a shadow puppet theater. A figure moves across the screen; bobbing and weaving about while the audience fills in the shadowy picture with their imagination.

The libretto for the performance is the observed public relations artifact provided from the shapers and marionette makers. These special technicians are employed by the powerful to provide the public with an entertaining substitute for democracy. Well meaning but naïve the public doesn't know what the powerful are doing, and why they are doing it, so we are very vulnerable to the propaganda: and most of us are.

Unfortunately, the Machiavellian method is not limited to politics. It has become a cultural icon infecting powerful institutions from business to religion; an engine of modernism. Driven by the dream of earthly power and personal utopia leaders become poseurs; willing marionettes skewered on the mandrel of fame.

5 of Spades--Loss, Sorrow, Grief

When all goes well the American government is a functioning democratic federal republic. However in the hands of the composite Prince who is a construction created by interest groups, foundations, global corporations, One World Marxists, mass religion charlatans, and just plain old fashioned plutocrats the American system becomes a sham.

In the modern world one is left to wonder if our cherished notions regarding public institutions have succumbed to the fiction writer and the invisible puppeteer. A parade of political shadows replacing principles. If the Machiavellian ethos (such as it is) has become the norm then we are back to the land of reptiles, eating one another in an endless struggle for control.

A companion piece about Machiavelli, "The Science of Power", by Theo Berigsen can be read here.       

Illustrations:

(Top) Classic Shadow Puppets of Bali

(Botton) Detail from a Bourbon Restoration era card, c 1820, lithograph by an unknown artist.