SEPTEMBER 25 — NORMAN O. BROWN
American philosopher, cultural and political critic.
“… In the unconscious, cerebral is genital. The word cerebral is from the same root as Ceres, goddess of cereals, of growth and fertility; the same root as cresco, to grow, and creo, to create. Onians, archaeologist of languate, who uncovers lost worlds of meaning, buried meanings, has dug up a prehistoric image of the body, according to which head and genital intercommunicate via the spinal column: the gray matter of the brain, the spinal marrow and the seminal fluid are all one identical substance, on tap in the genital and stored in the head. The soul-substance is the seminal substance: the genius is the genital in the head.”
–Norman O. Brown, Love’s Body
SEPTEMBER 25, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
NATIVE AMERICAN DAY.
Old China: SALUTE THE SUN DAY.
Chemehuevis, California: FEAST OF NARIWIINYAPAH: God of Immortal Water.
Asia Minor: FEAST OF NAMMU, Sumerian Goddess of the Primeval Sea.
ALSO ON SEPTEMBER 25 IN HISTORY…
1513 — Spanish explorer Vasco Nuñez de Balboa “discovers” the Pacific Ocean.
1881 — Revolutionary, writer Lu Xun born, Shaohsing, Chekiang, China,
1913 — Radical psychoanalytic critic Norman O. Brown born, El Oro, Mexico.
1932 — Anarchist Catalonia becomes “autonomous” region of Spain.
1957 — Eisenhower orders army to escort 9 Black children to Little Rock school.
I am thrilled to see you count N. O. Brown among your Jubilee Saints! He was my mentor, emancipator, and now thanks to Autonomedia, saint.
“Dionysus is all fire, not Apollonian light but Dionysian fire, not purified by Buddhistic extinction of desire, but Thunder of Thought and flames of fierce desire.”
-Norman O. Brown, Wesleyan University celebration of John Cage at 75 – February 1988