JOHN CARTER OF MARS

I first read the Mars books by Edgar Rice Burroughs in high school in the 60s. I'd been reading boys' books like Tom Swift Jr and the Hardy Boys, and the Tarzan books were stocked with those. When I found a trade paperback volume of three ERB's Mars novels I picked it up. It contained not the first but the middle three of the series, THUVIA MAID OF MARS, THE CHESSMEN OF MARS and THE MASTERMIND OF MARS - by which time Carter's offspring Carthoris and Tara, and new arrival to Mars Ulysses Paxton had taken up the action. I was carried away to ERB's Barsoom, with its dying civilizations, incomparable princesses and sword-swinging heroes. I was fortunate in that the 60s had a Burroughs boom that saw release of the whole series - and ERB's Venus, Moon Men and Pellucidar books - in affordable paperbacks, with art by greats like Frank Frazetta, Roy Krenkel and J. Allen St. John. Burroughs took the time to make his books plausible enough for their time; his Mars was as astronomers perceived it at the turn of the century: dead sea bottoms, canals and the possibility of humanoid life. He developed Barsoom with its own ecology, language, customs, mores and science, even set down the rules for the Martian version of chess, Jetan.

The movie was as true to ERB's spirit as could be expected today. It does lack some of the romance that Carter is mourning a recently dead wife and child, and as usual these days his motives had to be personal at first, war-weary and interested only in returning to Earth (Jasoom) and his cave of gold, but he does finally join Dejah Thoris and her cause. One change I did appreciate is that the women are not the "simpering wimps" of 1900s fantasy; Dejah Thoris is a scientist and warrior and we see women among the airship crews.

Also in keeping with today's filmgoers' interests there had to be a threat to Earth, so the Holy Therns are developed from coniving preists to interstellar parasites with high tech/mystical powers. I found that an interesting addition, though, and since they're still around at the end, provides a plot for sequels since the film discarded the original cliffhanger ending.

Carter arrives on Mars fully clothed instead of as stark naked as the book, and the Martians who were described as wearing only sword harnesses or ornaments are overdressed. There is a difference though between being told that without any explicit description and seeing men and women parade around naked on the screen. The same difference between being naked and seeing somebody else naked. I still think they should have worn less, though, if only because their armor and capes made them look more Roman than alien.

Still, most of the TARZAN films were departures from the original and I still enjoy them as well as the books. And the long-running Dell TARZAN comic books, which I'm now collecting in hardcover archives - a mashup of the Tarzan of the novels and the movies.

I was disappointed with the pilgrimage down the River Is, a sort of physical journey to Heaven, which in the book (it was actually in the second book, THE GODS OF MARS), the journey ended in a domain of plant-creatures who killed and fed on the pilgrims. ERB was known for mocking religious fundamentalists and the story was one of his best satires on people who live their lives in futile pursuit of eternal bliss instead of living to the fullest.

One weakness the film can't help is that since it was the seminal interplanetary adventure story, it has been copied and bypassed by later films from FLASH GORDON to STAR WARS and AVATAR. Still, I can only recommend JOHN CARTER (OF MARS as the closing credits have it) highly to Burroughs readers and non-readers alike.

The Summerlands and Beyond

"Behind the walls of the Pélori the Valar estab- lished their domain in that region which is called Valinor; and there were their houses, their gardens, and their towers. In that guarded land the Valar gathered great store of light and all the fairest things that were saved from the ruin; and many others yet fairer they made anew, and Valinor became more beautiful even than Middle-Earth in the Spring of Arda and it was blessed, for the Deathless dwelt there, and there naught faded nor withered, neither was there any stain upon flower or leaf in that land, nor any corruption or sickness in anything that lived; for the very stones and waters were hallowed." ~JRR Tolkien, THE SILMARILLION

"May it be a light for you in dark places, when all other lights go out." ~Galadriel

"I look forward to the day when your people join us beyond the rim. We will wait for you. ” ~ Lorien, BABYLON 5

"There is no conclusive evidence of life after death. But there is no evidence of any sort against it. Soon enough you will know. So why fret about it?" ~ Robert A Heinlein, THE NOTEBOOKS OF LAZARUS LONG

"Since life and death are each other's companions, why worry about them? All beings are one." (Chuang-Tzu)

A friend of mine passed last week. He was a young man, bright and intelligent, working for his Masters in Literature. We called him the God of Computers, because he could tell us how to solve any computer problem. During his recent hospital stay, he fixed the nurses' computers in exchange for Kit Kat bars. We used to gather to watch STARGATE on Friday nights. Since I lost my car, I wasn't able to visit him as much as I'd like to. I will miss him.

The Egyptians were about the first to have a complex afterlife system. Reaching the paradisal Fields of Aaru was quite a task: you had to be mummified, weighed against a feather of the goddess Ma'at, and pass a long journey to gates guarded by demons. The Norse had Valhalla, where warriors fight and hack each other to bits eternally, restored in time for the evening feasts. The Aztec paradise was also for warriors, and people who died of old age or disease went to dark Mictlan or the brighter Tlalocan. To the Greeks the Underworld was a land where souls lived as bodiless shades. The Celts had the Summerlands, a place of eternal peace and beauty where everyone except really bad souls lived and only certain great heroes ever returned to the Earth. Judaism named the underworld Sheol, a part of which was Gehenna, a place of fire that purified souls and destroyed evil.

Jesus talked in parables using the Jewish myth-system as a metaphor for spiritual anguish and cleansing, but he was taken literally, and Hell became an eternal torment - a horrible thing to ascribe to a loving God.

In Eastern religions there are several hells, also seen as places of atonement for bad karma. Karma is also worked off in reincarnations. Eastern beliefs, though, are more concerned with enlightment than places of rest or punishment. Samsara, the cycle of life, called in Vedanta "the state of becoming," is a path of learning that leads to moksha, "freedom from limitations."

Modern pagan systems like Wicca have melded the Celtic afterlife with reincarnation, viewing the Summerlands as a place of rest and reflection between lifetimes.

In THE LORD OF THE RINGS, Valinor is very like the Summerlands. It is reserved for the immortal Elves and can only be reached from the Grey Havens by the Straight Road. Frodo and his fellows are given special dispensation to live there after their adventures.

Most modern popular myths use traditional versions of the afterlife, but there are some new ideas.

Edgar Rice Burroughs, before Tarzan, wrote UNDER THE MOONS OF MARS. His hero John Carter basically dies on Earth and is transported bodily to Mars. Barsoom (the Martian name for their planet) was unlike anything NASA found, with dry sea bottoms under two moons, swordsmen, four-armed green warriors, airships and princesses. ERB meant it as fantasy, and he never said directly that Carter had died, but it did bring up the idea of being reborn on other worlds.

Michael Moorcock took this a quantum leap forward. His Eternal Champion exists in many dimensions of the "Multiverse." Elric of Melniboné, Dorian Hawkmoon, Corum Jhaelin Irsei, Jerry Cornelius, Erekosé and many more are all facets of one being. In such a system the death of one incarnation would not mean the end of the person.

My Christian Science chaplain once described death by saying that, while you seem dead to the rest of the world, to you nothing has changed; you just go on living. That suggests not only the Taoist belief that life and death are merely two aspects of one being, Yin and Yang, but also concepts from quantum physics like Schroedinger's Cat, where the cat is both dead and alive until observed. More on that in later blogs.

All I know is that if there is a Summerlands or a Valhalla, their computers are working now!

The Tao of Tarzan

"I have to say he is the finest man that I have ever known - trousers or no trousers." - Rawlins (TARZAN ESCAPES)

When Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote TARZAN OF THE APES in 1912 he had held a number of jobs. As a night watchman, he read fiction magazines on breaks and decided that he could write better than what he found in those. 25 books later, not to mention movies, radio, comic books and tv, ERB was able to retire to a ranch in Tarzana CA.

Tarzan had many mythic sources. The hero raised by animals is a common theme from Romulus and Remus nursed by a she-wolf, the Greek heroine Atalanta by bears and the Celtic Oisin by a deer. His story reflects the Arthurian legend of the young man who discovers his true noble heritage. Like any good hero he eventually became immortal.

In his adventures Tarzan overthrew a lot of false religions, idols and god-kings, yet his own spirituality was almost never mentioned. I said last week that Tarzan was a Zen hero. Reading through a few of the books I found some amazing parallels.

"To Tarzan ... contentment is the highest ultimate goal of achievement ... He saw the greed, the selfishness, the cowardice, and the cruelty of man; and, in view of man's vaunted mentality, he knew that these characteristics placed man upon a lower spiritual scale than the beasts, while barring him eternally from the goal of contentment." ~TARZAN AND THE CITY OF GOLD (1933).

Buddhism teaches that the only thing that bars us from happiness is attachment to things and feelings.

"Happiness does not come from having much, but from being attached to little." ~Cheng Yen

Samsara is a term for living in the world, attached to habits and materialism. It is the opposite of Nirvana, freedom and happiness.

"The initial stage is to reduce attachment towards life. The second stage is the elimination of desire and attachment to this samsara. Then in the third stage, self-cherishing is eliminated." ~The 14th Dalai Lama

ERB wrote adventure stories, not philosophy. Tarzan was not a Zen master. Tarzan did kill, but hey, he was raised by apes, not monks! Burroughs said, "Necessity required him to kill for food and in defense of his life, but the example of his savage associates never suggested that pleasure might be found in killing ... His viewpoint toward death was seemingly callous, but it was without cruelty."

Popular culture analyst Doc Hermes wrote, "This dual nature is one of the things I love best about the character. Tarzan is not a mere animal in a human form, he is a unique symbiosis of the human and the animal natures ... the balance between Lord Greystoke strolling through Hyde Park with Jane on a Sunday and Tarzan ripping raw meat from a freshly killed gazelle is an essential part of the appeal. Tarzan is yin and yang in a single body."

Writing about the traits that separated his hero from the apes ERB said "not the least of these were in a measure spiritual, and one that had doubtless been as strong as another in influencing Tarzan`s love of the jungle had been his appreciaton of the beauties of nature." ~ TARZAN THE TERRIBLE, 1921) Tarzan lives, not in a treehouse with an elephant elevator, but on a sprawling ranch in Africa with his wife Jane. But he "loves to roam remote fastnesses still unspoiled by the devasting hand of civilization." He has a "spiritual enjoyment of beauty that only the man-mind may attain."

Zen sayings and poems like Han shan's "A thousand clouds among a myriad streams And in their midst a person at his ease. By day he wanders through the dark green hills, At night goes home to sleep beneath the cliffs" might be talking about Tarzan.

In "The God of Tarzan" (JUNGLE TALES OF TARZAN, 1917), Tarzan reads about God and sets out to find this being who is supposedly more powerful than himself. Investigating what he hears from jungle people, he eliminates false gods like the Moon, idols and tribal shamans. Finally he understands that the still, small voice in his conscience that stops him from killing a helpless enemy is God, and God is stronger than Tarzan. You can read the story here:

http://www.literature.org/authors/burroughs-edgar-rice/jungle-tales-of-tarzan/chapter-04.html

That story was probably one of the earliest influences on my own spiritual thought.