CCD: The Mission?

"If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left." - Einstein.

The "scientific community" is so far unable to fathom the astonishing, mysterious, and catastrophic destruction of the honey-bee population over the last 12 months. U.S. beekeepers are reporting losses up to 70 to 90 percent of their bees in a phenomenon that has been termed Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). In May of this year US Congress held hearings and funded research to solve the problem. I read about this recently, and dimly recalled hearing about it late last year.

I'm sure plants can be pollinated artificially, but as it stand right now I don't know exactly how critical bees are to civilization's production line. Are they the ones that pollinate crops, fruits and vegetables, plants for livestock feed?

I think Jung would say that I need to ask of my dreams, "Why bees?". It's true that whoever the agents are, it is unlikely that they are bees. So why did they take the form of bees in their communiques?

http://www.honeybeequiet.com/?gclid=CIz46pj4go4CFQ4egQodgWfYOw

Bs and Cs

In the first season of Lost when they first find the cave with Adam and Eve skeletons, Charlie steps on a beehive. They all end up running away, and some of them have to strip off in an anti-bee strategy. When the bees have gone, Charlie retrieves Kate's top, and brings it to her.
"It was full of bees" she says.
"I'd have thought Cs actually" he says.
I am sure I watched this episode round about the time of the communiques. I think it is significant, for reasons that will become clearer.

Aggressive bees

I'm half way through Odyssey, and I much prefer Iliad, to my surprise. I was expecting to like Odyssey more because of the themes. It could be because I spent much more time with Iliad, some parts I read three or four times, so Odyssey might well grow on me.
Iliad has a lot of extended similes, which I love, in which some horrific visceral battle scene is compared to a tranquil, domestic event. This I find incredibly effective, as when Patroklus spears an enemy riding in a chariot through the cheek, and with his own strength flings the man out of the chariot. This is compared to a fisherman catching a salmon.
I found out the first simile of Iliad is a comparison of the Achean troops to bees, and funnily enough it directly follows a dream. Zeus sent king Agamamemnon a false dream to persuade him that victory is at hand, and to muster the troops for an ill-advised massive assault on the walls of Troy. There is a big debate over whether the assault is a good idea or not. Old man Nestor stands up to persuade the generals.
"My friends, chiefs and leaders of the Argives, if any other Achaean had told us such a dream, we would declare it quite false, dismiss it. But now the man who has a claim to be the greatest of Achaeans has witnessed it. So come, let's find a way to arm Achaea's sons."
So Nestor spoke. Then he began to make his way back, leaving the council meeting. The others stood up, all sceptre-bearing kings, following Nestor's lead, his people's shepherd. Troops came streaming out to them. Just as dense clouds of bees pour out in endless swarms from hollow rocks, in clusters flying to spring flowers, charging off in all directions, so from ships and huts the many clans rushed out to meet, group after group. Among the troops Rumour blazed, Zeus' messenger, igniting them. The assembly was in uproar.

I read a really funny review of it: "I believe this was originally passed down orally (much like herpes), so there’s lots of repeating lines to make it easier to recite. I can deal with that, but it gets tedious. The bloodshed and eviscerations and the hurting (OH MY!) make it sound like it’s just begging to be made into a big budget Hollywood movie. I cannot tell you how many people get killed by having a spear go through their nipple. There’s also lots of beheadings and eye sockets being gouged. It’s gory, but fun. Homer seemed to make up about 5 new and interesting ways to die in each battle...Bottom Line: It’s a good read with a disappointing ending. Most people will probably find it too dry to spend time on (most people are stupid). It will, however make people think you’re smart if they see you reading it. In the month or so it took me to read this, I carried it everywhere. People gave me looks like, “Ah, he must be cultured” and “What an intelligent young man” I also started dating since I started reading it. Coincidence? I THINK NOT.

Thresholds

In the ancient Near East and throughout the Aegean world, bees were seen as a bridge between the natural world and the underworld. As such, they were a natural theme in the decoration of tombs. There are even some tombs in the shape of beehives, I think there are some near Muscat. I'm fairly sure Muscat is in the Emirates, if I ever go back that way I will visit them.
Dreams are threshold events, so perhaps it's natural that some of mine have been visited by bees. This time they seem to be coming the other way. Perhaps they're from my own tomb, swarming out of the dark to prepare me. Or bringing me a message about something I need to do before I get there.

That's what the analysis is for, and it's almost time to start analysing. So far I've just been fishing, dredging up baskets and seeing if any bees are inside. I think I've been putting off a real procedural analysis, not necessarily because I don't believe it works, maybe because I do believe it. I've always felt that if you dredge up any treasures, they lose their shine once they break the surface - then they just become dull tangible objects. Crude lumps of matter the likes of which we shove around all day long. To truly appreciate them, to allow them their real essence, you have to leave them where they belong, down in the dark.

But that can't be right, because I know they sometimes surface of their own accord, infusing everyday objects with uncanny powers. If you occupy the threshold, you can see that happening.

Doing an analysis might not be so bad. After all, I'm doing it on the computer, which I think is also a threshold. Things appear on my screen and manifest themselves in my world, from where? I put things out there, but where and when is this communication really taking place, what distance is it crossing? Who am I really talking to right now? An absence.

In some way, what's happening here isn't really happening, not yet anyway. It could be the perfect venue for threshold occupants to show themselves and run wild.

Older than wine: Intoxicated with the Honey Goddess

Daydreams being in season, I let my mind wander unchecked lately. It's been stimulating and painful. I went back to the Pindus mountains, and the time I was roaming around that part of the world. I was aiming for the site of the Dodona oracle, which I reached. I remembered the effect this place had on me, but I can't describe it. It's not too easy to reach, in the middle of rocky wooded wilderness. A collection of ruined temples, theater and stadium, surrounded on all sides by mountains. Indescribable.

This was apparently the earliest oracle in Greece, mentioned by Homer in both Iliad and Odyssey. According to Herodotus, the oracle was a woman who interpreted the rustling of the wind in the oak trees as well as the sounds of copper vessels being struck.

Dodoni probably isn't as famous as Delphi, which I think was called the navel of the world. The Delphic oracle was a shrine to the god Apollo, but before Apollo took over, there was a more ancient deity. In his own hymn Apollo gets his gift of divination from three bee-maidens (Thriae). The Delphic priestess was called a bee.

Before the earth goddess Demeter came along, there was the more ancient mistress Potnia, called the "pure mother bee". Potnia is also Artemis, more ancient than the Olympians, goddess of the hunt, wilderness and wild animals, fertility and childbirth. The priestesses of Artemis were young girls described as 'Bees'. Artemis is also connected to Mellissa, the honey-goddess.

Before wine, the Cretans fermented honey. Because of these ancient roots the Classical Greek phrase for being drunk was "honey-intoxicated."

Back in the mountains, night is falling and it feels good. I think I'll stay for a while.

Communique#3

I was inside a house, at the very top. Somehow, thanks to some kind of glass partition, I could look out onto the roof. Large amounts of bees were nested there and I could get really close because of the glass. The bees were actually in the form of cats, but I knew they were the same entities from previous communiques. The fur colouring of the cats was bee-like; dark brown/black with bands of ginger.
I currently entertain two cats in my community with that kind of colouring, Bessie and Clara. Clara was definitely one of the cats in the dream.
Clara pitched up on our porch fairly soon after we bought the house. She started to make her home there, and occasionally we would feed her. I would throw her off the porch regularly, because I didn't want her to take up permanent residence (and she was ugly to my eyes). She would persistently come back nonetheless. She never made a sound. One day she had eight newborn black kittens, and it seems to me that all the time she was there, she knew she was pregnant, and that she needed to get a safe foothold to give birth. She probably did that underneath the house. We fed the mama and the kittens. Every day a dead squirrel would be on our doorstep as an offering - usually the squirrel was bigger than Clara. One day my fiancee was pulling out of the driveway, ran over and killed one of the kittens. Four more of the kittens mysteriously disappeared. After that, we took in the remaining three - Clara remained on the porch. Two of the kittens we managed to offload. The remaining kitten was the smallest of the group, and also the most aggressive and quickest. Nobody would want her. To this day, she lives on the back deck and I occasionally feed her. She is called "Partisan", and occasionally "Osama" because of her stealth and capture-avoidance skills. Clara lives in the house with us. She is still silent, and now I think she is beautiful (though a bit strange). She has some kind of ancient spirit in her.
The bee/cats were being gassed. I could see their eyes expand and warp into wierd shapes as they died from the gas. Their corpses were piling up against the glass.

The dance

When Theseus returned from the labyrinth thanks to Ariadne's golden thread, he did the dance of the storks to communicate to others the correct passage through the maze.
Sometimes I wonder if the real monster in that story was the infernally tricky labyrinth itself, created for King Minos by Daedalus to hold the Minotaur. Daedalus was a master engineer, he came up with that winged escape trick for him and his son Icarus. (I think he also came up with some kind of fake mechanical bull to enable Zeus, in bull form, to mount someone's wife - I'll have to look into that one, it's a bit hazy). When Icarus disobeyed his father and flew too close to the sun, the wax melted and his wings fell apart, so he fell and died.
I was speaking to my own father the other day, he was an engineer. This put us in opposition because I always rejected that kind of thing in favour of arts. I saw it as one of the Empire's methods of enslavement. I was telling my dad how I am planning to do a masters degree in engineering - Modelling and Simulation. This in itself is of course a form of trickery. I see myself as going behind enemy lines to work out their tricks.