#title 'The Sleeping Beauty': the Moonclock (Seminar)
#author Chris Knight
#date 8th of October 2024
#lang en
#pubdate 2026-03-23T05:09:15
#topics anthropology
#source <[[https://vimeo.com/1017906124][https://vimeo.com/1017906124]]> & <[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dtl8RXZGYA][www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dtl8RXZGYA]]>

[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dtl8RXZGYA]]

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Good evening, everybody. We are carrying on from where we left off last week, which was we were speaking about the sex strike theory of human origins, and we came out with a structuralist breakdown of the structures of myth, magic and folklore, or signaling on ritual power on compared to ritual power of.

So I'm just flashing that up on the screen here, as a kind of introductory framework that Chris is going to be... actually it's all much simpler than this... and he's going to be telling us through the lens of this amazing ancient fairytale sleeping beauty, a true natural history of patriarchy.

So I just want you to think much more simply, we're dealing with the moon and by the time when women's menstrual cycles were connected with each other using the moon as a clock, and those women who were not, pregnant, breastfeeding, those who were going through cycles, every time they lead the blood would signal my body is sacred and I'm moving away into another world of seclusion.

So women would've gone into maybe a hut, maybe quite a big house, secluded from this world as if in another world, as if maybe one of the stars in the night sky.

So just to make it much simpler. This means you are in seclusion.

These are different aspects of being in seclusion, different ways of looking at the fact or freelancing in words.

The fact that you are out in this world and here you're backing the world.

Again, you've come out from seclusion, but you are kind of dead to the world, just a temporary death here and there's all sorts of features. Let's go with that, and then as you come out, these features, but that's what you can avoid thinking of these as separate things.

So just one thing looked at from different points of view and all the world's best magical fairy tales are about this world, the other world, and the movement between the two.

Life, death, really between the two.

Wonderfully and marvellously I have here, a moon clock, and in the room is the artist who I spent four years inventing, designing, eventually producing copies of this magical block.

Lex would speak about all this quite a bit better than I would, but she's shaking her head.

I'll be really quick about this, this is a way of, well, one, one use of this would be to present this as a such rather expensive present for your daughter or any other young woman who is having her first period in order to celebrate the blessing of fertility, the blessing of a period, as opposed to what's normally still up to be something quite embarrassing and uncomfortable and of course, the patriarchy treats that phase of bleeding as not just a curse, but the curse and the idea that Lexi got is that we try to change it that all round, using this clock more technically.

The clock is just a wave on the wall and being able to track really, really simply how close your cycle is to the wind, our business, what to expect as you go through those changes.

Moon on right now.

today's, session on myth, magic and folk.

We're dealing with a fairytale.

and I'm gonna read it out and I think you will really quickly hear it's beam clock.

The whole story is about clocks, sun versus moon.

I've got the version, and here it's not called, the Seeking Beauty.

It's called Little Rose, little Roses with Thoughts.

<quote>
A long time ago there were a king and a queen who said every day, ah, if only we had a child, but they never had one.

But it happened at once when the queen was bathing a frog ripped outta the water onto the land, and the frog said to her, your wish shall be fulfilled before a year has gone by.

You shall have a daughter.
</quote>

I'll just stop there to discuss.

Suggests that, the king doesn't seem to be very good at fidelity.

been living with his wife has been quite a while, and be healthy when they're pregnant.

So, in order to get pregnant, had to be approached very intimately by a wet frog jumping out of a pool.

<quote>
What the frog had said came true and the queen had a little girl who was so pretty that the king could not contain himself with joy and ordered a great feast.

He invited not only as kindred friends and acquaintances, but also the wise women in order that they might be kind and well disposed towards the child.

There were 13 of them in the kingdom, but as the king only had 12 golden plates for them to eat out of, one of them had to be left at home.

I hope you're all thinking it looks like you're thinking very hard about it.

It's great. The feast was held with all manner of splendor and when it came to an end, the wise women bestowed their magic gifts upon the baby.

One gave virtue another beauty, a third riches, and so on with everything in the world that one can wish for.

When 11 of them had made their promises, suddenly the 13th came in.

She wished to avenge herself for not having been invited and without greeting or even looking at anyone, she cried with the last voice.

The king's daughter shall in her 15th year, pick herself with a spindle and fall down dead and without saying a word more, she turned around and left the room.

They were all shocked. But the 12th, whose good wish still remained unspoken, came forward and actually could not undo the evil sentence, but only soften it.

She said, it shall not be death.

But a deep sleep of a hundred years into which the princess shall fall.

The king who would fame keep his dear child from the misfortune, gave orders that every spindle in the whole kingdom should be burnt.

Meanwhile, the gifts of the wise women were plen fulfilled on the young girl as she was so beautiful, modest, good natured and wise, that everyone who saw Herles bad and love her.

It happened on that on the very day when she was 15 years old, the king and queen were not at home and the maiden was left in the palace right alone.

So she went round into all sorts of places, looked into rooms and bed chambers just as she liked and at last she came to an old tower.

She climbed up the narrow winding staircase and reached a little door.

The rusty key was in the lock and when she turned it, the door spr open, and there in a little room sat an old woman with a spindle spinning, spinning, spinning ly spinning her flax.

Good day old mother said, the king's daughter, what are you doing? There I am spinning, said the old woman, and nodded her head.

What sort of thing is that that rattled around? So Merily said the girl and she took the swindle 'cause she wanted to spindle too.

But scarcely had, she touched the swindle when the magic decree was fulfilled and she pricked her finger with it and in the very moment when she felt the prick, she fell down upon the bed that stood there and lay in a deep sleep and this sleep extended over the whole palace.

The king and queen who had just come home and had entered the great hall, began to go to sleep and the whole of the court with them, the horse of two went to sleep in the stable, the dogs in the yard, the pitted on the roof, the flies on the wall, even the fire that was flaming on the house became quiet and slept.

The roast meat left off f fiddling and the cook was just going to pull the hair of the scullery boy 'cause he had forgotten something, let him go, and went into a deep sleep and the wind fell and on the trees before the castle, not a leaf moved, but around the castle, they began to grow a hedge of thorns, which every year became higher and it last grew close up around the castle and all over it so that there was nothing of it to be seen.

Not even the flag on the roof, but the story of the beautiful sleeping bra rose.

But so the princess was named, went about the country so that from time to time, king's sons came and tried to get through the thorny hedge into the castle, but they found it impossible and the thorns held fast together as if their had hands and the Es were caught in them, could not get looser again and died a miserable death.

After long, long years, a king's son came again to that country and heard an old man talking about the thorn hedge and that a castle was said to stand behind it, in which a wonderfully beautiful princess had been asleep for a hundred years and that the king and queen and the whole court were asleep.

Likewise, he had heard too, from his grandfather that many king's sons had already come and had tried to get through the thorny hedge, but they had remained sticking fast in it and had died a pitiful death.

Then the youth said, I'm not afraid I will go and see the beautiful bra rose.

The good old man might dissuade him as he would, but he did not listen to his words.

But by this time, the hundred years had just passed and the day had come when Briar rose was to awake again.

When the King's sun came near to the thorn head, she was nothing but large and beautiful flowers, which parted from each other of their own accord and let him pass un her.

Then they closed the game behind him like a hedge in the castle yard.

He saw the horses and spotted hounds lying asleep on the roof, sat the pigeons with their heads under their wings and when he entered the house, the flies were asleep on the wall.

The cook in the kitchen was still holding out his hand to sees the boy and the maid was sitting by the black hen, which he was just going to pluck.

He went on father. And in the great ball, he saw the whole of the court lying asleep and up by the throne, lay the king and queen.

Then he went on still father and all was so quiet that her breast could be heard and at last he came to the tire and opened the door into the little room where her ra rose was sleeping.

There she laid so beautiful that he could not turn his eyes away and he stooped down and gave her a kiss and as soon as he kissed her RA rose opened her eyes and awoke and looked at him quite sweetly.

Then they went down together and the king awoke and the queen and the whole court and looked at each other in great astonishment and the horse in the courtyard stood up and shook themselves.

The hounds jumped up and whacked their tails.

The pigeons upon the roof pulled out their heads from under their wings looked around the flew into the open country, the flies on the wall crept again.

The fire in the kitchen burned up and flickered and cooked the meat.

The joint began to turn and sizzle again and the cook gave the boys such a box of the ear that he screamed and the maid finished ducking the foul and then the marriage of the king's son with grow rose was celebrated with all surrender, and they all live happily after.
</quote>

Right. I'm gonna need a little bit of help from you.

If you had to click on a motif in that story, surprising you, perhaps you have, perhaps most of you have kind of heard the story at some time and maybe forgotten most of it.

What would be the motif, the image that kind is left? What remains after much of the details not forgotten? Somebody tell me, please. Yes, Laura.

Exactly. As soon as he kiss her, she wakes up. Yeah and when I was starting this study, I remember I came across, across, a book on these kind of things.

These stories. It was called Woman Hating.

It was by Andrea the Walkie.

And, she worked out the meaning of the story and the meaning she said is this, if you're a woman and you want to get ahead what you gotta do, you're gonna lie on your back.

Totally still stretch for a hundred years.

Wait for a young man to kiss you and if you are the young man, no, you've gotta be active, not passive.

You've gotta pick up your sword and stride out and pat your way through the hydro thorns and conquer your girl and that's the meaning of the story again.

I get it. and I also think that with mythology, every detail counts and perhaps I should say that I got this from the, the greatest anthropologist of mythology ever in this road.

So, in the sixties and seventies, Lord Neros, I mean, I remember over here in England with Sussex University, we just thought across the channel is this unbelievable genius who's working like Einstein.

He's applying the principles of mathematics and physics no longer just to objects to things for planets and light and the universe.

He's actually applying this method called science, to the things that have been most to us, the history, the literature to poetry, to culture and he sort did it all out.

But he started writing this incredible massive work of meteorology, science and mythology for huge volumes, studying, a thousand myths from north, and South America.

And, perhaps unlike Andrew Dakin, he warned us, don't worry about meaning too much.

cause the meaning of a story is whatever it means to can mean one thing.

It can mean another means can vary.

He said, what's critical is that every detail in the story is noticed and let's look, let's look at the patterns.

Let's see whether we can discern consistency in one version of a myth and the next and the next and the next and so he said, when you, when you're looking, looking at a miss, take one version, look at another and it's is lovely analogy, but imagine you are, it's like, it's like looking through some slides.

You've got a slide and you've got a few lines on it and you can't quite look at not enough slides.

So you, you take another slide and that's great, but the other slides adds a few more lines and you like another, another another and when you've got enough of them, you're looking through all of them, somehow you can start to see, oh my God, this is a fantastic pattern I'm looking at now.

But that only comes clear when you have looked at enough versions and he came to an absolutely astonishing inclusion that all the world's myths are variations on one another and at the end of the day, embracing the entire planet in a wave of mythology right around planet Earth and when he looks, looks through them all getting to deeper and deeper and deeper to the common pattern as I put it there, is the, the, the chapter of the last volume of mythology.

One, miss all. I mean, we have to, you have to be careful.

You have to say magical fair tale.

You can't just say any old story about something, some legend, something that's happening in your local area, something new memory.

Grandmother said. We're talking about magic.

If you're looking at magical, like fairytales, magical miss is what he's interested in.

Ultimately, they're one, one single miss, uniting, all, all humanity.

I was absolutely doubtful, perhaps a bit skeptical.

I read and read Andra and Raven.

One of the things that completely, totally utterly convinced me was that his starting myth was a myth called, the bird Me and that was a mess from the Barra people in, Brazil, no, of San of Brazil and he ends up with a, a, a miss the bird master up in northwest coast of America near the Cath River and you could just see the two myths, the kind of one's just like up what the, the final myth he ends up with is called Two Moons.

It's the, it's about the rivalry of a struggle between an old hag of the moon and a and a young daughter, girl of a moon and they, and they, they fight.

The fact is clearly that that full moon wind over dark moon, then dark moon, wind over full moon, we're talking about simplicity.

and he, he, he couldn't have done that.

He couldn't have shown this if he'd worried too much about what the myth mean to people.

He's, he is almost approaching it as a physicist would just never pattern about what it means to you.

Just think of the pattern, think of the structure, and you can only really, discern the pattern or the structure if, if you let every detail speak.

So I suppose I'm asking you whether the story that and Gordon comes up with explains, okay, spindle the tower, why is all witch, everyone falling asleep? The hedger thorns.

I mean, I mean you can simply say who cares about that? It's just patriarchal sex ideology and that's what, and Andy Baughman by the way, did advocate like a flame torch, a blow torch.

Just get rid of all these stories we want.

We want progressive stories. I remember thinking, hmm, I know really nice story, which we could use instead of fair tale.

What about John and Mary go to the supermarket and they're very kind towards their mother.

cause they do all the shopping, they carry their heavy bags and they come home and everyone, everybody and I just saw that was really out the stories to my kids, including living here.

Come on. You know, they know kids knees, um need death and life suffering as well as joy.

I mean all the things, I mean these stories, all human life is in those stories and I remember thinking, just trying to get rid of them and have politically correct and platitudes, probably you would be a terrible, terrible and I really beat it, a terrible loss.

So now let's look at the detail. Yes. What, no, I mean, Which as an other, other woman and, and Right, that's 13 wise woman being exploit the number of ways.

Yeah. So this is not just coincidence. It's a very Conscious Thank you so much.

The contrast within 12 and 13.

It's not accidental or some genuine meaning.

But what I wanted to do before we, just before we get there, Laura, you said that for you, the, the sort of the, the motif within the midst, which stands out above all others, is you lent over and kissed her and she woke up and the all lived happily a ever after.

Is there another or is there an alternative which someone can come up with s Well, it's the alternative. Laura was saying the reason that's so powerful is because it's the story that Disney's picked up anyway.

So the catch up. They want us To Yes, exactly. Yeah, sorry.

It's also the element that makes feminist very angry.

But we, yeah. so I think it's like, it's very true.

But the other thing is that the funny thing about these fairytales is it's when they get together and live happily ever after that it ends and it's boring.

Like, that's the end. Does anybody have another idea about the moment? I want it makes the story.

I want to know an element in the story motif from the story, which some of you might defines the sleeping beauty defines this story.

cause actually they all end up living happily after, after they all end up with a young man kissing his bride and blah blah.

I mean this story, please come on please.

Just which motif, which is a bit you never forget, which is a bit you never forget.

I'm not gonna give up. I'm gonna keep asking. Yes. Yeah.

Sorry. I, I, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm getting old.

I'm a bit deaf. Sorry Rick.

Right. Somebody at the back row has suggested it's only suggestion that she prick her finger.

That's it. Okay. Now what happens if you prick your finger? What happens to your finger? You bleed. It bleeds.

Okay, right now, okay, we know what, we know what the kiss it means.

We all have happen ever after and the whole story just collapsed. That's the end of it.

The magic ends at that point, magic ends with marriage actually now.

Okay. No, it really does. And it does with all the stories.

I, I would emphasize. Now what might that mean? What what Signified by a young girl.

She comes of age about 15 in this story sits her 15th birthday, she picks her finger.

What might it mean? These stories are about things which matter, about what it means to be human universally.

What might she comes of age, she puts her finger.

What might that be reference to? Yes.

Don't fight over it. You're allowed to.

Yeah, I know you can say that, that voice, but sure.

Right. It's difficult to talk about menstruation, isn't it? I mean, it's a huge taboo. I mean, even I find it difficult.

Well, I've got used to it, but it is, it is difficult.

It's a massive taboo. And even mythology kind of uses euphemism.

So instead of saying where the blood came from in sort of anatomical detail, she picked her finger and she bled.

So with, we're suggesting that that might be a reference to a girl's first menstruation.

The girl's first menstruation. Yeah.

Now another thing Chloe taught us, and I, again, I've never forgotten this.

These myths know what they're talking about.

They're crystallized collective intelligence.

Actually they're science owned over the generations and we can, we can kind of test to ourselves whether that suggestion we've got that the quick finger refers to menstruation by asking a very simple question.

We wouldn't expect the story to be about menstruation.

She picks a finger and then wander off it.

Also, there are disc completely disconnected things we would, we would expect, wouldn't we? If that's what that means.

If that central part of the myth means she menstruates, we would expect the whole story to sort of confirm.

Yeah, that's what this myth is essentially about.

Might use metaphors, it might use symbolic language.

but that's what it's about. So shall we try it out? Let's just say supposing it's about girls first.

Next, what do we do about the early part of the miss? I mean, I did mention it, about the fact that the king seems to be not very good at getting his wife back up.

Gimme quick frog. can you see that it's sort of about fertility coming from somewhere, but apparently not from a man or certainly not from a king.

Would you agree with me? Yes.

King's timing, probably the king's timing is cata categorically off.

So that's brilliant. Thank you so much.

So, okay, so now what about timing? We have, we have a conflict, don't we? Between 12 and 13 in this sense, the king with his perhaps rather poor timing, has got 12 golden plates.

Now, the wise women that you have to invite to celebrate, the birth of a girl, there are 13 of them.

12 verses 13. Can I just ask a very simple question.

You're not quite told here what metal, if it is metal, the 13 plates are made on, but we know that the 12 golden plates are gold.

What were the other, the 13 plates? What metal might they be made of? Just, it just comes to mind immediately.

I think that contrast it silver. Okay and if they're silver plates, what have we got? 12 golden ones, 13 silver ones. What are we dealing with? What do you mean, right? I mean, what are we, what is what, what do we have 28 days? We, months. Months. That's right.

If, if you think about it, if you say what, what 12 golden things do we have in a year? 12 months.

But why would there be golden months in opposition to 13 silver months? Right? Okay. Now, 13 silver months, 13 minutes, right? What would be this? The king, remember he's a king.

It it, somebody's arrived. He's a king.

Displacing one of the wise women in charge of all this stuff.

Not very good at fertility. And he is the queen.

There must be 12 golden plates and now we know that it's all about time, as you said, it gets the timing wrong.

What's the conflict? What's the argument in the story? Who's in conflict with who and about what? Well, it's so, so yeah, it's not complicated, but you have 12 manmade months, don't we? In a year, months designed to coincide with a solar thing called a year.

cause obviously a year, like a day, it leak to the sun.

Moons don't coincide pull easily.

It can't fit you can't fit 13 moons, like 13 lunar months at all comfortably into a, into a year.

You are always gonna get the 13th moon part of it sticking out beyond the year.

You can't, you just can't make those things work and so we have a conflict. Do you understand this? Do you agree with me? It's about who, who controls the time? Is it this king who's got 12 garden plates? Or is it those 13 wise women with their 13 silver moons? So like do there's a man control time with his solar categories, which are, I mean, I how do you, how do you work out what these solo months are? 30 days of? September, April. June and November.

All the rest have 31 accepting.

I mean, it's incredibly complex and of course the history of Christianity has been all about which kind of, which kind of calendar do you use? And the Orthodox Church to this day disagrees with the, I mean, we have Julian Canada, like Civil wars, if you burst act about all this stuff and the reason it is, is 'cause it's arbitrary.

You know, it's, it's just arbitrary how you chop up the Inso cannabis.

Whereas the moon, that's a real thing up there, just like the sun is and Lunar Canadas are like real, they've always been there and they're part of our nature, part of our history.

and, and of course they, they're more connected with William than, than them. So Just worth pointing out the, the, the Gregorian ca calendar is the, can you just explain that fact that is the so calendar that took over from William Calendar. Well, the Julian calendar, the Gregorian calendar, all these patriarchal calendars took over clearly.

I mean, when you think about it, I mean, hunter gatherers going back a few thousand years, I mean, they would not have had solar calendar.

There's no way. I mean, I could make a few points about Stonehenge.

Stonehenge would actually built to sort of manage this different transition between the traditional way of organizing time through months and this novel system of doing it through through the sun, through manmade, chopping it up using the sun as your, so we have it, we donated the car attempt to, to attempt to reconcile the Sun of the Moon in terms of the measurement of time and it's another whole lecture, and I'm not the expert on it, but one of our former, colleagues at Atlanta Sims, of course there's a huge expert on stone hit.

But I all, I'm all I need here is that you understand we have a conflict going on between two ways of measuring time and, and the ancient way and this newfangled way.

It's like, it's like the Christians have arrived.

We have a king who insists that time shall henceforth be measured using using the sub.

Yeah. we also have another, conflict, don't we? Over, whether menstruation, if we think that this feeding figure is, that is a blessing, a curse.

that's 13th ferry delivers a terrible curse.

When that girl comes of age, she would bleed and fall down dead the other fairies in giving blessings, one after another, one after another, one after another.

All that everything a young woman could possibly wish for, or perhaps more importantly, everything a young man could wish for in the perfect bride.

She sings like a igniting girl.

She dar so beautifully, she well down his socks, this explicitly all these little things,  and then it's the 13th.

The 13th, I'm trying to think about it now. 13th.

blessing curse, blessing curse.

Well, it turns out to be a curse.

What's that telling us that it's such a curse, right? Okay. Just think about it, that 13th Ferry has been excluded in the seventh.

Her, which might have been a blessing, has been refused.

What happens to all of us, any of us who've got a wonderful loving gift available, a real beautiful graphic and rejected can see the love might turn eighth or blessing might turn to a curse.

Yeah. So the 13th Ferry has had her blessing rejected and when you think about it, at the very start of the story, we have this little intimation of what's to come because the king and queen have wanting a baby.

And, it won't come.

It won't come, it won't come the king's no good fertility, okay? In these stories. Fertility, these are traditional ancient stories.

The, the, the, the fertility is the ultimate blessing.

Way, way, way above all those other blessings.

but not necessarily the kind of thing a young man would dream of in, in, in his, in his bribe.

In other words, menstruation.

It's the most powerful supreme of all the blessings rejected.

It turned into a curse.

She will die and the death will be forever.

Now, that's the 12th. Let's see. It's the 12th failure.

That's right. The 11th failure just given her blessing.

The 12th fer hasn't yet, been able to give her her blessing.

It's worth saying it's like a fantastic moment of drama of the whole story.

The drama in the story is prick the finger, but it is when that witch comes storming in, Okay? Yes, The castle. So she interrupts the 30, the 11th.

Anyone who has been before the pantomime, anyone who exactly you go a five year the pantomime.

This is the moment when you might first start crying, bang there.

Huge crash of Sandra nightly, all the stake nightly in comes a wicked, wicked witch and gives her, gives Exactly. Exactly.

Absolutely right. So, the third, the 12th fer, she said that explicitly she hasn't got the power Mm-Hmm.

To lift that curse the power, because the 13th ferry is the most powerful.

She's the last of the ferries with the supreme and ultimate blessing of menstruation.

Okay? The objective that turns into a curse, right? Now, the question is, is it possible for somebody, even a king to prevent a young girl from coming of age and bleed? Because, because I mean, what she, this, this tell stage, she says she won't die.

She will just die for a hundred years. Okay? Just, okay, well, you might think it should all be certified by that.

No, no, no, no, no, no, they're nothing. No, no, no.

They're all still weeping and crying because she'll die for a hundred years, because the, the 12th can't do anything about it.

and the king is determined, right? My daughter, essentially you're saying, my daughter shall not bleed to make sure she does not bleed.

It decrees that all the sharp influence in the kingdom will be destroyed.

So the order see, that is, is lackies will make a hugely bonfire, searching out all the knives sharp object saws, and especially all the spining wheels in the whole kingdom, and make a huge big bonfire them and essentially he's saying, my daughter, when she comes of age, she shall not leave and you does anyone hearing this story, this story being, of course, what used to be called perhaps should be called an old wives.

T So the tale kept alive by the kind of people were burn stake in witch trials of this.

the question arises, and anyone would've heard this, can a man, even a king act against nature in that way and prevent the inevitable from happening and prevent a young girl from, but he makes a big effort.

You know, getting rid of all these, every last sharp incident, every pointed thing, every I know nail and, and swindles.

But of course, there's one left.

So the girl comes of age, she's left alone in the castle.

She's wandering around and just think of, think of the metaphor, here she is.

A girl coming of age, coming aware of her body, looking into all the openings in the parcel.

She finds a door half open.

Ah, she goes up and up and up and up and up and up as bottle circle, open the Lord.

Who does she meet? Well, you could say if she meets the wicked, wicked, wicked, wicked witch, which of course she does.

But this wicked, wicked, wicked, wicked witch was the same tith ferry, but originally wanted to give her the blessing of fertility menstruation.

and, somehow hit her bra.

Rose is drawn towards it as a young, any young girl would be drawn towards this, this, this destiny, if you like.

She reaches out the one, there's one spindle left in the kingdom, this sharp point.

She reaches out and touches. It bleeds and then what happens? She falls down to this, a death, perhaps a every death, but hunter is quite long time and perhaps I should just ask you what  from ethnography at this point, instead of just telling us stuff, I'm sure you've got an enormous amount of knowledge between all what happens in traditional cultures when a girl does have professional administration that's generality, just people does not give a bit embarrassed to people say or do it somewhere else.

What happens? Obviously d things different, different culture, very different.

It's a special, especially goes into a special hut.

whether sometimes a hut is very special in a, in a positive sense, except it's a, it's a, some hunt gathers and Babu, for example, go into a Lima house.

It's a store house, a hu it's the biggest one they ever make.

A whole gaggle of women, like 10 or 12 women get, get into this hu and they sing songs, rejoicing at the fact that this girl has, has been blessed by the moon.

in the Kasha, valley, the Kasha people, the in, in, in, in, in Hindu Kush, Hindu Kush, thank you.

They have the biggest, the biggest, almost like a church in the, in the village is actually a women's house is where women go for intimate, experiences when they're menstruating, feeling births, needing to share secrets about their, their older one another's body and there's no, there's no equivalent for the men, but it's, if you like, in that, in that particular area, it's a lovely, lovely football about it.

obviously I can't go into all those details, but I mean, what's happening here is that she, all around the world, when a girl has her first period, it's not just a private seat, it affects the whole community and the whole community had to go into, another state, and in particular, into a stage of, we call it seclusion, but it, it is just actually connected with this.

Actually, we didn't have today gendered species.

the genders are segregated.

The women are together and they are setting a sort of boundary between themselves and young men who might be interested in sex.

It's like no sex.

Young men can't even look at the girl she's secluded.

She's just far removed from ordinary society as the stars in heaven are from, earth.

And, in the story it's depicted as everything stops.

So the cooking fires go out. Mm-Hmm.

all the activities, all the the, the gardeners, you, the various flunkies and everybody in the, I mean, even the cook, just about to to pull the hair, the scurry boy, everything's throw freezes.

And, when I, I'm gonna tell you why I think this in a moment, what the evidence is.

But when I think of everything suddenly stop stopping in a society, the metaphor I use, is it a metaphor? Is it something more kind of literal? It's everyone's on strike.

It's kind of a sex strike, but it's definitely, everything stops.

And, in the story, everything stops and I just want to ask another question about what happens.

Supposing I'm right and this is strike action.

All the women go on strike as a result of one of their member leaving.

What do you do? Imagine some of you being on strike.

I've been on so many strikes, I've lost count, but I'm I mean, what do you do to make sure that your strike is solid works? So people, people that respect it.

What do you, what do you construct in order to protect your strike and prevent people from being scabs? Yeah, picket the picket line, right? Where in the story is the picket? Do we find a picket line? Thank you. Do not cross a picket line.

Never cross a picket line. Okay? So what happens to those young male? We just don't get it.

They've just arrived. They, they fancy themselves.

They've heard a story about the most beautiful maiden in all of the world.

They get off their horse, they've heard, they've heard all these stories about this skull in this deepest, deepest, darkest forest.

They've been at the pub having a, the story.

They've got this sword and they start to hack away their way through.

God. Not a good idea.

You are, especially, I would say, a menstrual picker mine.

When Kim gives the story back rightly. Yeah.

Image. You're just, you, you're just turning up.

So the first lot, they're coming in like it's 10 years, 12 years, and they're trying to hack their ways through and these, these vigorous briar roses gray, and so they get kind of trapped in the thorns and, and they've been hanging up there as skeletons by 50 years or so.

They've been hanging up there as skeletons and the crows have been going to peck out their eyes and the 60 years down the line, 70 years down the line, and you've just got all these skeletons and people who've been turning up to try to get through that fence.

What are those guys getting wrong? Yeah, well, they're getting their timing wrong is what you said.

The timing, right? So Right. Just they're getting the timing wrong and this whole hedger thorns is covered with a skeleton, with little bits of Flesh dry. So, but by the time you're 80 and 90 or 95, 98, 96 years, the, the most recent corpses are still quite fresh sitting up there in the Yeah, really like doing it.

Really like let it Exactly worked.

Nice, nice way to put it. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah.

So now raw flesh. Now What happens now? okay, let's, nearly at the end now, it's made very clear in the story that the young man who steps through the head of thorns, he's nobody's special.

Yeah, he's a king's son.

But did you notice they were all king's sons? Every one of those young men who didn't know what a picket line was, was a cadence son.

Okay? So it is nothing about this man being especially clever, having a very sharp sword, be good at hacking through thorns.

What is the reason why he is successful when all the others have failed? Remembering that it's about what we've been talking about all the time.

He gets your timing right. He burns up on time.

It's when the hundred years are up.

He doesn't need his sword. He doesn't need violence.

He arrives there and we're told in the story, the thorns part, they turn into flowers.

Think of that thorn little bras, the thorns turning into flowers.

We don't need Freud to interpret the imagery there, I don't think and he is welcome. He steps through, he steps through, he steps through, and he discovers, little bras fast.

his, and he leans over and he kisses her on the lip and just as we had a synchronized bleeding, a synchronized movement to the other world that any strike to be successful has to be, look at going on strike over here, and someone else is going on strike over there.

A successful strike will be a general striving.

You need to synchronize. You need a clock and for these women, clearly the clock has got something to do with menstruation, something to do with 13 as opposed to 12.

Therefore, something to do with the moon.

So he doesn't need violence.

He's welcomed, he leans over, he kisses her, she wakes up, and as she wakes up for the date, everyone else wakes up as well and they, and they get married and they all live happily ever after.

What do you hear in that story as the message? I can tell you what I hear. It's an old wives tale.

It's one of these precious stories preserved over generations by old wives, wise women, through all the persecutions of the arrival of the Christians to all the witch funds, all the efforts of men to, to make women feel that their own bodies are something to be ashamed of, especially when they bleed.

What I hear is the voice of that 13th wise women when she's saying something like this, you men, you think you could control time.

We'll teach you a thing about thing or two, about time.

We'll trap you in time for a hundred years and when we feel ready, well, that's, that's part of the talk, but I wanted, and, and it is finished.

So that's it. but I just wanted to say that what Levi search discovered is that all the world's myths are variations on a ultimate theme and I'll just say what the theme is because sometimes it's not very clearly ne TROs.

There's an ultimate syntax that means a, a grammar of world mythology and it's about movement between life and death.

When Nero finishes is the, the final volume of throne myth ability, he calls it the naked man.

he calls it, to be or not to be.

It's kind of okay.

But more specifically, his final myths of two moons means that it's about distinction between life and death and all those myths around the world in different ways.

When they talk about the origin of death, they have this message, which is that death emerged, permanent death emerged at a certain point in time.

so originally save the myths.

we would die and then come alive again, and you died and then come alive again and then Mr. Strive this by saying there was a rope or a ladder or a bean stalk linking heaven and earth and as you died, you'd climb up the bean stalk and climb up with the ladder or rope.

And, you'd, you'd be in the land of the dead for a while, and after a while, okay, you'd come back down again, a great rejoicing, and then you go up again and then the disaster occurred.

We got the message wrong from the moon.

We, we stopped listening to the moon.

We got message all wrong as a result of the witch, the moon got a bit crossed and said, we said, all right, you want to die and stay dead, okay? You die and stay dead.

So the reason why death today, it is a tragedy.

I I'm getting on a bit.

I feel the reason why nowadays we die and stay dead is because we lost touch with the moon.

None of the world's religions are happy about that.

Every one of the world's religions is trying to sort of make the best out of a rather bad situation, and try to make arguments about, life after death.

So, I mean, I, I mean, you've gone a long time about the world, different religion, including Christianity, of course, with a, with Jesus who dies and comes alive again.

Incredible, marvelous.

See, we called it as truth alive again.

but okay, I'm just gonna now describing as subsequently as I can, this ultimate myth that Libby just has discovered.

It's his, it's his, his discovery.

But, telescope, and it works like this.

We're all alive in this room.

Of course, we are getting a bit dark here we are and in this world, got a set of normal things happen.

Normal is not the right word, but things of this world happen.

Like we eat, we sleep, we have sex, we cook, we do all the day.

We can see what the games, I mean, all the normal things that mean we're alive, happen, happened and then in the stories, some, I mean, in this story, it's it's little bri's prick thing where in the other stories you can have a little red cap, a little red writing curve, all sort of little indications that something happens usually with a, a flow of blood, sometimes a bit metaphorical.

But what this flood blood does, it takes us from the land of the living, into the other world, the land of the dead.

Okay? So we're alive, the flood blood, it transport us all into the other world, the land of the dead, where those in that other world are as far removed from this world as the stars in the night sky are, are from here.

That's heaven is very distant from Earth.

So anyway, we're alive nowadays, and there's nothing magic about that.

We've just died. Now comes a magic bit.

We come back from all good. That's it.

Now, the good thing about this theory is that it's testable.

You've only gotta find one magical fairytale anywhere which muddles up those two things that come out have on the screen earlier on an aspect of on if you mix that up in a story with another aspect or something where off, if you mix up the off with the on, you lose the signal.

So we don't expect, what's also perhaps interesting is that being, nevermind fairytales, even in horror films, even in, I mean really successful box office films where there's an element of tingling magic, which so often there is, we'll find that the, the, the, the syntax is respected.

so I mean, because it's just, it's just, it's how things work.

But, we've over years and years and years down through the generations, we kind of know how magic works.

I mean, unless you really have been very much impoverished of any literature approach to your fairytales and so even people who are not coming from as anthropology, not coming from fairytales who just want to make a, a box of his film, um you'll find that in general they know what they're doing and the stories which work will respect this magic, this move.

*** Audience questions

Have you ever tried to write a story?

No. The reason is because I didn't think we needed one more story. I thought we needed to do it in practice. So I've spent my life trying to organize the strike the human evolution, get back in touch with me in, in real life, so that the story wasn't just a story.

I didn't, I didn't succeed. I had a damn good effort in it, but quite far actually. But, I'm hoping that This might help. The moon clock might, You might finish the works, But more importantly, you are saying this, that we shouldn't take this seriously because they are scientific and they're a legacy of something that really did happen.

You're not interested in creating new stories. You're interested in finding out what happened in our human evolution.

Yes, I have. I've been, but obviously legacy you are quite right. It would be lovely to actually write a sort of, I mean, what would be brilliant would it be if, if today as an accompaniment of your clock, we could do drama theatrical stories as long as it was out the street, as long as it was not in some little secluded space, as long as it was having an effect on the cataclysmic effects of patriarchy.

I mean, actually even tonight I have a horrible feeling that, that, um some, Nazis are, are gonna be bombing, nucleus.

Well, You've got patriarchy all over the... there's something about the specificity of the lunar, the cyclical ritual cycles all over the world belonging to all religions all over the world.

Are quite particular and specific and they can play and create story, drama, ritual in their own way, but still be synchronized in time with that moon, that that clock in and still have the symbolic connections.

It was like when we had Ram done earlier this year, wasn't it? When it was the beginning of it.

Remember it was so exciting.

It was just everyone was looking for the new moon because it starts with a new moon and it always, as Camilla has pointed out so many times, it's like if a system of ideology and ritual narrative isn't based on the moon, it's not religion, all the world's religions, their clock is ultimately the moon.

Even Christianity, Christianity have tried desperately to get away from the moon.

I remember getting really a bit fed up with Tony Blair and he said, oh, it's a waste of money.

We have Easter moving all over the place.

We wanna be business it is being tangled up by Lord.

Just, just set a proper date for the Easter, just like we have for Christmas.

And, IIIA fear that you would get away.

It was literally, and he didn't.

but we want to get closer to the lunar, not, not still further, not and yeah, You were saying last week that the, the significance, the practical significance, the practical significance of, of the lunar cycle Yeah.

involved the practicalities of hunting. Yes.

and that it's important practically to be synchronized societies activity.

Yes. I mean, So you can hunt.

Thank you. Now, so that's, that suggests that the moon goes along with, a society to depends on hunting.

Mm-Hmm. in the tropics there's very little here, there's very little solar.

Solar, that's right.

Quite right now. and the real tropics, So this is that for hunting cultures, a lunar cosmology fits to the actual economy and subsistence Yeah and the annual tropics, there's not much annual Cultural, nontropical society.

Yeah. suddenly your, your your year becomes, yeah.

Critical seasonality begins increasingly to take over in importance as against Luna periodicity. Yes.

Yeah. So, but the shift from, from hunting to worrying about the mirror and what happened from the pretty recent Yes. Oh yes, that's right. Few Thousand years. So these mints, do you think they go back beyond that? Oh, absolutely. Some, but except, okay, very interesting.

But some people ask me to think about what might have been the world's first myth and actually cla Levy TROs himself asked that question, and he comes up with the answer.

It's probably a story called The Origin of the Spots on the Moon.

and, and, and other people, moon, I, I won't go into that now, but I, I'd simply say that for me, it's not such a good idea to just focus on the head, on the mind.

We need to focus, we need to link mind and body, which doesn't not do, by the way.

So for me, the original miss would've been, acted out, would've been a ritual.

So going into seclusion at New Moon and forbidding say, hunting and also, and cooking and, and, and, and, and fertile sex and all that stuff that would've been like doing it would've been a ritual and the reason why that would've been very, very effective, I mean, if you want to get men to go hunting, you don't want to have sex just before the hunt.

You want to make, make the men feel like, okay, the, the women really want us.

They they've, they're keen on sex, but they're gonna be really disappointed if we don't come back.

I'm talking about Africa now with, with a zebra.

But if we do come up with a zebra around full moon, um we should all be able to feast and enjoy the pleasures of the flesh, both eating the mi, the cooked meat and all, and having having a good time, with each other.

but there's a reason why it would make an enormous amount of sense to organize so that the climax of your hunting expedition would occur at the time of month when the day is longest.

You don't want to be chasing after an animal, and you maybe wounded it, and you need to, you need to follow it after sunset and then find that the sun sets and, and it pitch dark where the lion's gonna eating you.

You want to, you want to have the climates of the hunt at the time, just before full moon, but as the sun goes down, the moon rises and you can just carry on until you've got until you've got the animal and then of course, you'll be able all the rest of the night to party and have, have, have fun.

And, and all over the world, the boys, boys and girls come out to play shine with a full moon is a time for honeymoons, for love making, for partying, and Dark Moon is a time for seclusion.

Getting, keeping the dark, keeping with your kin, not your, not your lovers with your and keeping safety in numbers.

So it make an enormous amount of sense given the lion, but not just the lion, but especially the lion because are the night vision with hunting, it made a lot of sense to keep that clock once you, once the animals have been hunted to extinction, which in most parts of the world happen I don't time bit, maybe 20,000 years ago, 11,000 years ago, then of course everything starts to fall apart.

And, we can't really go into that.

But you are right to say that with agriculture, seasonality takes over, therefore the sun takes over at the expense of the moon and once the, once the clock that makes the world go round is no longer held in women's bodies, women also lose, therefore the power.

I can see somebody called Christine Binny at the very back end up, yeah. Can we, well, Christine go and then I wanna go to the Zoom people.

We need you do loud enough to, to that we can tell the Zoom people And what, what was it that was sharp on this? If it was metal, then it could you, could you hurt yourself on a bit sharp bronze, or would it have to be iron and, or else? It might be, but I'm not sure if it would be a, so I'm just thinking about the different material. Oh Yeah, I'm sorry.

Yeah, Yeah. How that might down what sort of time it started. Mm-Hmm.

Yes. One, so can I say this point to the Zoom people.

so the contribution Christine here is the idea that, somebody would prick their finger to bleed on the end of the spindle might be affected by the type of material it was made of.

So something like bronze in the beginning, maybe not, going to do it, but something like iron and Iron Age implement might indeed.

So it could be telling us about the timeframe for this.

I mean, yes, I mean, yeah, I mean sometimes in the stories you have a miller, ? Well, yeah, It's quite outta place.

40 windmill. So those technical Details in this stories, so they're all going to hunt in the forest, aren't they? They're pretty much hunting those Es. Yes, but what we still get in, when you have got Miller or something, which is indicating agriculture, you still get where the magic happens if it changes, the magic is in a deep, dark forest.

Okay. You just find that you never find the magic happening in a sort of brilliantly lit palace of lawns and stuff.

I mean, it just, there isn't magic there.

I mean, it might be part of the story.

So yes, Christine, those technical details can very helpful of course those details because they can, they can tell you where that particular version of this ultimate with, um gain clarity, but they certainly don't tell you much about where the stories come from in terms of that basic, what time resistant syntax, ancient grammar, on Zoom d Dan, do you wanna say something on your question? I dunno if you wanna talk over our system or, or do you just want me to read out? okay. Dan says, Mike's not working.

Dan has asked a question about the pros and cons of commodification of this ultimate miss in mainstream commercial cinema, Disney and Star Wars, whatever.

Yeah. And there've been a few people, putting in the points here. The commodification always goes in one direction.

So I mean, Wal, Wal Disney when sometimes when I'm here giving, I've done this every year for about, what, 30 years or something, and I ask them, but usually we don't have Zoom.

So we do a kind of workshop and people have to yeah, yes, works, remember as much as they can about the story and quite often people think there are three faries in the story.

and that's because the Disney Version was gonna pay for so many animated to make enough save The cost cutting. It costs a lot to produce 30 in animated ferries, but three will do and so, I mean, obviously all these different commod commodified versions, commercial versions are losing the plot, losing the detail and it ends up being pretty much pap.

but I mean, but perhaps, possibly better than nothing. Whereas, And that Sophie, Barnes here has, has read, has put out this thing about the emphasis on the kissing, the episode that Laura's mentioning that, that the, the kiss breaks the spell, this breaks the spell and that's the most important thing and that's, and the guy's got this big sword as well.

It's all very patriarchal eyes, very toxic masculinity, really.

the another thing to say in the, the one with Angelina Jolly, the, what's it Mal something? What's the name of that? everything was botched because it, because everybody was running around whilst this princess was sleeping on a special bed.

So there wasn't a strike and it is like, there was supposed to be this female coalition of Maleficent with the bed, but actually everybody was running around and they weren't on a strike and so they completely lost it in, in that, was a very stupid Striking there. I mean, to mention the fly starts walking The fly starts To walk things.

It's, It's not just human activity.

Exactly. Everything cosmic the fly is everything.

Exactly. The horses, the dogs, the everything.

It's fantastic. It's beautiful.

You said it's not just that, it's because a couple of times you said the women, but it's not that it's just the women, it's men and women. I'm children Themselves, the whole, but it is the kinship and it's the people Outside, the men from outside who can't get in and everybody Else. Yes, a lot of sex. The, the menstrual spell brings blood together.

So your blood meaning your king, your your brothers, your sisters, your all that, they come together and they're secluded in the deep dark forest and excluded are the non-blood, the non-kin, um the one the boys Trying to come and get us. Yeah, I mean, I won't say much about almost nothing, but I mean, the next story to read by the way, is Little Red Riding Group, which very, very similar, but I mean, we won't go into it now Also so white with, I mean, there is quite a bit of stuff in Snow White, but it's similar but different.

there was another very nice contribution online from Charles Monroe and Manchego talking about Fra Hola, these tale of Fra Hollow.

Do, do you, do you wanna say anything about this Charles Monroe, the blood and transfer motif that includes the mentions of young girls needing to be diligent and shake their mistresses bed to cause feathers to fall like snow? What about that element he's asking? well, I'm not, that is a more collective, don't I'm Not even gonna be, Oh dear, Tempted on the spot, interpret all these myths that I have never heard of before, I'm afraid.

But it, it's got a much more sort of collective aspect of the, but it is a very old story. Yeah, Yeah. But I, I must say I'm, I'm, go on then. Yes, sir.

Go ahead, Neil. Neil. Yeah.

Yeah. how old? we've got age 12-year-old parents olds in different shows wearing 30 to 35,000 years old. 30.

Well, you get, Where are we talking about that? I think you, that that's coming a bit more recent, but I'm not sure, which would not be quite 30, 35.

It would be more like 15, 20, 25.

We've got Venus of Losal has, which is about 25, has the lunar aspect Sometimes protein lines or That is famous on Venus of blood cell.

That's right. The famous Venus of las cell is a, a a slutted up this big, I believe, and it's a picture of a rather lovely woman, which she was codling widow.

She would've had crawl and she was holding a horn in one hand and on the horn with 13 notches, notches, I mean, pretty clearly and that, and the horn is in this i, this crescent moon shape and if you compare it to African rock art of 10, possibly 10,000 years, they almost have exactly the same, the same.

So you can go to Zimbabwe and rock card, and it's separated by thousands of miles, thousands of years.

Fat photo woman. It's a fat fertile woman holding the crescent and really representing experience of, and we, we know more in the African context, connecting to ethnography of under gatherers.

It's, it's a, a woman experiencing initiation, Richard, But also there's a very persistent and, and c and, and never ending sort of, sort of sensitive of absolutely awe of this.

There's a wonderful book called The Roots of Civilization by Alexander Marshack.

So Marsh, who was employed by the Americans to do the sort of publicity for the, for the moons and, the moon.

But, and he wrote a book called the countless, paraic and, and older and Systems of Notches, and proved that they would leave the cannabis and, and showed how these lunar calendar where we had these lunar calendar going, right like quite big, looked adopted and getting quite big and they're getting quite small and, and link wisdom where, images of what you call flow, like wave line flows.

So you have the flow, you have the moon now and again, you get pictures of a, of a, of a female.

What you never get in all of is what, what the scientist think is the most important thing, which is a man, the mighty hunter conquering the conquering the savanna is, is stepping on some poor animal.

Whenever you get animals, the animals are, are powerful in bleeding and you get the poor little human sort of like daunted by this magical potency of the blood and yet, and yet Marsh Acts marvelous book is just now, it is kind of nowhere, despite the fact that it's a beautiful, and he was a very, very conscientious, clever photographer and recorder of all the details of his lunar calendars and these lunar calendars entered in the origin of writing the first notation systems made permanent, where Illumina calendars absolutely no doubt about it, the roots Of there, there is evidence in Africa of bones notched calendars that would've probably been covering the, Just like Walt Disney gets rid of the 13 charities and wants only three, all the sort of, so-called scientists who like the idea of men inventing everything.

just, it just, it is not, these are inconvenient truths.

These, these, these items of evidence about the Individuals weren't hearing so much about hearing aspect, but hebrewism Yeah.

Slightly hidden aspect. Carly, Yeah, Carly's a great moon guy.

Different times of the moon, colloquially I call. Yes.

Carly car also, he circles therefore time, it also needs black.

It's the root of our world coal. Oh, really? Oh really? Carly and Cole Three time and into and circularity, I think.

So it's Neil's suggestion here that the symbolism of time and the moon is definitely very present in Hinduism.

Carly, these are very patriarchal religions, but nevertheless, they still maintain some of that symbolism.

One of the points I want to make with is that you, even in the mythology, when you get, um you get increasing patriarchy, the, the, the, the, the, the figures in the story who are powerful, what you notice is they still have to bleed.

Yes. Of course she's Like, Jesus, Jesus has to bleed to be powerful.

For example, Christine. Christine, What was it, or, or, or was it, what was the nature of this feeling? Oh, nobody knows it word, Was it match or Correct, But I think of the imagery of the briar or, or, or the, Well, couldn't, Couldn't the imagery, couldn't it be a, or a stitch in breaking behind rather? Well, that is about theory.

When we, when I give this talk and I ask, what does the prick figure mean? I always get two answers about 21 or so people, or PS 29.7, people say it means ation, and there's always somebody else says, no, it's somebody having sex with a girl who's a virgin and breaking the hymen and she bleeds and there's just no evidence for that.

Is it because well, Who is she with? What space is she with? In what space? Where does that happen Back? And a young man just getting into that attic when there's only an old lady and a young woman and the, and the, and the, and the young man are miles away.

I mean, it just doesn't make any sense to as that.

But I mean, it's, it's interesting to have two theories and then one's right, one's wrong and it's pretty, pretty evident.

Which one? Okay. Yeah, good try. Yeah, good. Try Any more, any more Questions? Well, part of the just things is just such really stress, the fairytales, even when they are, I mean, not even, even to say they're a bit patriarchal is a bit of an ec, but some of 'em are extremely patriarchal, but they're still, they, they've got treasured within them.

You can still recover absolute magic from these stories.

And, I think they, they really need to be listened to.

At the end of the day, we're listening to those wise women and they've got a lot to tell us.

Yeah. 'cause at the beginning you said don't, don't assume they have meaning.

So then of course you have inserted meaning.

But the difference is what you're saying is like, don't assume a superficial top level of meaning.

So if these stories would to be smuggled through patriarchy with that warning intact, which is don't mess with nature, don't mess with wind power, menstruation is inevitable, and be kind, hold that space, then they have to have a sort of patriarchal cover in order to, That's a really important point.

Keep through. Exactly.

In order to get through the censorship in, in Europe, it would be the censorship of the half.

A woman wouldn't survive in the story if she wasn't a witch and witched witch is wicked wick so, so wicked. No, right.

Keep wicked. She can, she can she she, she get through the censorship.

So the stories have to get a sort of superficial patriarchal cover in order for the real witchy woman and the magic to to come keep Being told To come through.

But on the question of meaning, it's just if you start finding meaning too quickly before you've respected the stories, intellectual coherence, you end up doing what Freud does.

Anything round is a v or anything longish like don ownership with a penis and it's just, it does get very reductive, but you don't need, or you don't see all the details or tell the guy really the guy, I agree with you Neil and then the same with JI mean, if you keep seeing these same, same old archetypes, then wherever you look, I mean, it just, it locks out all the beauty and detail of the story.

So let sort say don't look for meaning, look for structure.

Obviously, in my view, once you've worked out the structure, once you've seen where you'll come from, once you've felt this, like one myth only, of course it's got meanings more meaningful than anything really is where do we all come from and how do we, and where might we supposedly find somewhere of preserving life on earth? Where, where, what might we need to go back to? I mean, on some higher level of course, but it's massively meaningful.

but Leer was sort of warning us, you look at the intellectual sophistication of his stories first, and the beauty let you look.

When you look at the stories, it's like looking at a, at a snowflake, beautiful crystalline patterns.

Every snowflake's slightly different, but any snowflake with a snowflake, it is water frozen.

It's not copper. Sulfate's up water.

You know, the, the, the variations are important, but they're, they're mathematically unified the variations of a theme is, is the simplest way of putting it and it's not that they couldn't, that people can't create stories that don't fit with that syntax.

It's just that they might not survive time because they simply We're always getting stories, which are rubbish.

And, and they might make a bit of money for us time, they won't survive.

But they won't, they don't, they Won't last. Yeah.

I mean, Jurassic Park works works beautifully. It's Written on the Same, I mean, because, all the power comes in these dinosaurs, you got a huge lot of rain and darkness. It's Wet, It's dark, rumbling loud on all the things that magic and secluded in Jurassic Park. The first Man gets, even when he's s<verbatim>******</verbatim>g Everything, everything works and if, if we had all, they're all female and if, and they're all female and if you just had little cotton wool clouds and blue skies and all that stuff, I mean, it just, I mean, the story wouldn't work.

So the people who make these box of hits sort of get it.

They sort of know it, but it, you're right to say that when they get it wrong, okay, that's possible as well.

But I'm arguing that over time, those, those those mistakes, they, they don't need need to anything memorable.

You just feel instinctively, oh, that's a bit weird.

What, what, why have we got these cotton more clouds in the blue sky when we're supposed to be having But most of these films and dramas are based in an alternation between those dark wet periods and then the bright sunshine and I mean, they, they keep that kind of oscillation.

We had a, a an activist, a memory of Rag who wrote a little pamphlets for us about, Jason, Jason Wilcox who wrote about horror films.

Horror films, and just showed that horror films in particular, because horror films is all about blood.

Of course. Yeah.

and he was pointing out that because, and actually Livia was what I remember Livia telling us about this Livia was, he was, was explaining that when, when you girls were like 13, 14, 15, you needed to watch the Chainsaw Massacre because this culture doesn't allow bloodshed collectively any other outlet.

So you watch the Chainsaw Massacre, you're feel holding each other back there and so that's, that's a sort of need for the blood.

It's a kind of men Which comes outta that in that horrific way.

cause patriarchy is capable of dealing with it in the, in the way, enrich it, But it's capable slogging it anymore.

any more thoughts anymore? I really about may it for the end tonight.

did you witness you one? Is there some Oh no, that was just me actually.

It's about You're talking about it.

No, I thought it was Manchego was waving.

Oh, manchego was waving. Are you waving? Did you wanna say something? Manga? Not particularly.

He is probably, he, he is put a lot of thoughts down here coming from the Old Testament, I suppose. I suppose Lex, I can't, I can't persuade you to do say anything about your clock can, oh, Is it on offer here for anybody who wants to buy it? Can you, is this belonging to the box or that This one.

That one. So is this belonging here or? Yeah, well, no, I think one of those is, yeah, One of them. Can you tell me which ones? Yeah, that's one I can say a little bit.

Why don't you come here so that the people on camera can here say Something about moon fox.

So the general idea was trying to turn stories into actual, I just gonna show you how it roughly works.

so No, just for the camera.

Okay. So, so the camera comes in So it turns like this.

So you can you lift it upwards for the camera? That's good. That's good.

Okay. Well, so this follows the min cycle, and then this follows the SRU cycle.

So we set it the current win phase, and it is first afternoon and around here Nearly the first quarter.

That's right. Yeah. Nearly the first couple, one or two days.

So, so if you get your period today, you set it like this, and then every day you turn at one cook And it's Anticlockwise.

Anticlockwise, huh? Oh, yeah, yeah. and then there's actually little, poly sticks, Right? As you go through the cycle, you'll move changes that you may want to write all the details in the diary, but there's another way of doing it.

Call it six. So you can choose which one represents one, but as you go, you can add in these six and over time you'll learn your body and the patterns that occur within the cycle and as the, as it comes back around, again, quite likely these patterns will repeat and you have a forecast for your body, Tell the future. And there's, there's actually a lot of, there's, so I, it's engraved and I painted, in here, but the drawing has a lot of speaking beauty, connotations.

Like there's two girls with their picking their finger.

Mm-Hmm. And then there's the kind of tying itself here, the spin wheel is her head, Put close to the camera. So Yeah, just so that Z on Z that's much better for them. Yeah. Hold it There. And, and it's all, and they're all within this one body, this one blood in A sense, One dragon In a sense, the imagery on the clock is this is, this is our story of how we became human.

It's the story of the moon, the sun, the sex drag and always It's much more.

Yeah. there's, this is an addition of a thousand clocks.

Oh, there's 29. 29. Yeah. So it's 25.

So, yeah, they're, If people want to acquire it, how can they try to get it online, get It on on the website, which is the main clock.co uk moon Clock cove uk.

Should I put that on online? The moon? Sorry, yeah.

For the Instagram. yeah, Moon clock in one word. Ugh.

The moon clock, The oh THE moon clock, THE moon clock will have Is 50 here, for a special price, but usually it's 50 and it's also Oh, so, so Lex is selling over the here hundred 50 pounds and online it's much more expensive.

Yeah. And also they are also gonna be in freeze tomorrow.

freeze are fair and also they're in Hampton Art Center right now.

If you wanna see them there. They have, they're slightly different addition.

So they have different design on the front and they're a lot more sense.

Yeah. So I have some, if anyone wants to buy one today and they're, they can also be used by men and you can track Any human being, any Human being Because we all evolved under the sway of the moon Music using it.

Yes, thank You. You don't have to have a menstrual cycle.

I'm expecting a main clock to arrive and I don't.

Okay. Well done. Thank you.