Bat Chain Variations (A Metaphysical Reverie)
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Beyond offering “something completely different” to mark my 1,800th post on this blog, I thought I would add an informal supplement to my Diviner’s Manifesto explaining the reasons for my dissatisfaction with much of the over-hyped sideshow that passes for mystical enlightenment in the social-media age. (I honestly have no problem with this bonanza of psychic revelation if it is kept relatively private and not pushed on the world as “the one true way” in exchange for a fee; everyone’s path is — or should be — unique, but the current online “buzz” regarding divination promotes conformity and invites commercial abuse.) Here is a quote from a recent Facebook conversation regarding “ersatz spirituality” in modern cartomantic practice:
“I’m something of a ‘New Age survivor,’ having begun my esoteric studies and practice in 1972. Over the years I’ve seen a general decline in the depth and intensity of such activities as they become more socially-oriented with less mystical gravity and much more fluff. For me it’s not a parlor game but a way of life. It’s not so much that the inherent spirituality is bogus as that it has been hijacked by pop culture and tarnished by hucksters.”
On to the subject of today’s post.
In 1978, Don Van Vliet (aka Captain Beefheart) released Shiny Beast, an album of his trademark musical strangeness that began life in 1976 as a shelved project titled Bat Chain Puller. I’ve often felt like his spiritual heir, toiling in the service of rescuing modern metaphysics of the populist kind from inanity, so in writing this essay I was going to name it “Bat Poop Pondering” in keeping with the unusual dream and the subsequent meditation that inspired me. But I like to think I have more class than to put that in bold, oversized font on a post header.
Not long ago I had a dream that can only have been instigated by the fact that I recently signed up for a “spiritual” networking page on Facebook that turned out to be primarily a venue for a wide range of mystical service providers to lure in their unwitting victims . . . sorry, to engage with prospective clients. My mind boggled at what I found there. What on Earth is “cacao sound-bathing?” It evokes visions of marinating in an immersion tank of hot chocolate while assimilating gong tones piped in through acoustic transducers, which makes ritual drumming around a bonfire seem positively quaint by comparison.
But back to the bats (and the bat guano). In the dream we were sitting on our unscreened back deck in the dark (a dubious activity if we intend to keep our hemoglobin away from the insectoid bloodsuckers) and there were literally hundreds of bats zooming and gyrating in the air above us as they went about their nightly foraging at the edge of the woods. It was easily as impressive as a 4th of July fireworks display in Washington, DC (well, not quite that dazzling, but you get the picture). This can only have been an idle fantasy since bats are in severe decline in New Hampshire, and their nocturnal mosquito-eating is now carried on in the daylight by the phoebes.
So naturally, I awoke at 2:15 AM thinking about bat droppings. Years ago, a couple in our old hometown bought a lakeside home that had been boarded up for years. What they found in the attic was a mound of bat guano several feet high (it may have been exaggerated in the retelling, but my sources were reliable.) This got me thinking about how many metric tonnes of the stuff have been deposited on the planet’s landmasses over the millennia, now mostly overtaken by agriculture and concrete, and the fact that an increasingly warm and wet climate will safeguard the bats’ food chain for millennia to come. The Earth groans (as do my readers at this point)!
It was only a short leap to connect this odd idea with the purveyors of “woowoo” nonsense whom I usually find online busily unloading their own brand of offal upon an uncritical, starry-eyed audience. I used to think it was merely BS, but now I recognize that it’s totally batshit and highly infectious among the metaphysical illiterati. Other than to make a fast buck, what self-respecting mystic or psychic would want to be associated with this circus? There is an old rock song by the English band Slade (notable, by the way, for its surging, tribal drumbeat) titled Run Runaway that goes:
“See chameleon
Lying there in the sun
All things to everyone
Run run away
If you’re in the swing
(Money ain’t everything)
If you’re in the swing
Run run away”
Indeed!
Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on August 14, 2023.
