April 27, 2023

MasSUSchusetts (Pt. 2C): More Maypole Mythos, Morton, and Puritan Nepo-Babies

1 hour 56 minutes

Welcome back to ParaPower Mapping and the fourth installment of "The Secret History of MasSUSchusetts". It's a surprise double header! This was initially going to be one episode, but I got so obsessed w/ mapping William Pynchon's fur-trading monopoly and decoding the Rosicrucian wordplay in Thomas Pynchon's short story "Under the Rose" that I had to split this episode into 2. But don't worry, if you're anxious for our MasSUSchusetts Pynchon special, it's waiting for you.

This episode includes:

more maypole mythos; the veggie god Attis and "Great Mother" Cybele; correspondence b/w Cybele & Demeter; Demeter & Persephone myth variants, origins of the Eleusinian Mysteries; agrarian cult connections b/w the Eleusinian Mysteries & Cult of Cybele; aspects of the Eleusinian Greater Mysteries, sacraments, sacred words, and the prototypical oath of secrecy punishable by death (possible origin point of future initiatic societies' militant approach); the "Galli", the eunuch priests of the Cult of Cybele; the sacred feast day "Dies sanguinis" (Day of Blood) and their ritual castration; the ritual sacrifice continuum from Bacchanalia/ Dionysia, Thesmophoria, Eleusinian Mysteries, & Cult of Cybele to the Minotaur and child sacrifice to Moloch in Phoenicia & Canaan...

...the conclusion of the Saga of Thomas Morton; a note on Morton's maypole rite's efficacy as sympathetic magick and the fact that the frequent starvation of the colonizers likely contributed to their decision to hold the maypole revel; John Winthrop Sr. & the Puritan authorities' possible framing & murder accusations against Morton & their burning of his house; his second exile; Puritan attempts at suppressing his text New English Canaan; colonial-era depictions of indigenous society; the Ninnimissinuok & Algonquian pantheon, including elemental & cardinal directional deities, the creator god Kytan, & the evil Hobbamock; the Ninnimissinuok etiology of the giant Maushop/ Moshup, who threw massive boulders into the bay by Martha's Vineyard & used tree trunks to cook whales on spits; tobacco offerings to the giant; Ninnimissinuok ingenuity, craftsmanship, agriculture, and economy; the colonizers' weird race-science-y beliefs that indigenous Americans originated in the Trojan diaspora or one of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel; Morton's belief in indigenous origins in the Trojan diaspora & attempts at syncretizing their spiritual beliefs into Greek & Latin myth; his argument that the frequent indigenous use of the word "Pan" indicated to past worship of the pagan god "Pan"; the Puritan desecration of Cheecatawback's mother's grave & other incidents of Pilgrim's backstabbing the Algonquian; Morton & Sir Ferdinando Gorges's legal quo warranto case against MA Bay Colony's royal charter; the resolution of Gorges's power struggle by his reception of a charter to territory in Maine; Morton's return to New England & death in Acomenticus...

...Puritan lit brat pack nepo-babies obsession w/ Morton; Jefferson & Adams family's interest in him; Nathaniel Hawthorne's numerous appropriations and other remixers of the Morton saga, including Longfellow, William Carlos Williams, the NYT, and the neo-pagan Thomas Morton Alliance; Robert Lowell's dramatization of Hawthorne's "Endecott & the Red Cross" and interest in Morton & Rosicrucian apocalyptic ideas; and finally Philip Roth's The Dying Animal and anti-protagonist sleazy professor David Kapesh's obsession w/ Morton and reappropriation of Morton as progenitor of the "cultural tsunami" that was the "sexual revolution" of Henry Miller & the 1960s.

Songs:

| Morris On — "Staines Morris" |

| Cocteau Twins — "Ivo" |

| Soft Machine — "Esther's Nose Job" |

...more