The Black Goo
On the Plutonic Techno-Demon
I have procured a sample for examination.
The black goo, appearing in conjunction with the Thanatoid has thus far remained an inscrutable symbolic unknown. Pervasive in culture yet opaque to rational analysis. It possesses no clear meaning or immediately apparent archetypal parallels.
This piece aims to gather together multiple instantiations and interpretations and synthesize something coherent which may illuminate it and adjacent subjects.
In Reality and Religion
Before floating off into the dream world with its idiosyncrasies and phantasmagoria, we should ground ourselves by looking at more solid instantiations if only as a reminder to whoever needs it that archetypes are not metaphors.
I am presently writing these words in black ink with my fountain pen. I am drinking a protein shake with 8 drops of methylene blue — a nootropic coal tar derivative that I know several of you take as well. When this draft is complete, I’ll type these words on an LCD screen.
I just got back from the grocery store. I got there in my car which burns refined petroleum — gasoline. The road I drove on was made of aggregate materials mixed with bitumen. This is bitumen.
The use of bitumen by humans is nearly as ancient as technology itself. It was used in distant prehistory as an adhesive, allowing composite tools like stone-tipped spears to be contrived. This is one of the earliest known uses of adhesives.
Bitumen is a form of tar. Tar pits were said to litter the Biblical valley of Siddim, where the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were situated.
During the construction of the Tower of Babel, bricks are used instead of stones and “slime” instead of mortar (Genesis 11:3).
This slime is called “chemar/חֵמָר.” It refers to tar. This word appears only three times in the Bible:
Genesis 11:3 - Tar is used during the construction of the Tower of Babel.
Genesis 14:10 - The kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fall into the tar pits.
Exodus 2:3 - The mother of Moses uses tar and pitch to waterproof the ark/basket that carries her son through the Nile.
Tar is petroleum which literally means “rock oil” and is made in the depths of the Earth out of death and time. The paint on your walls, your PVC plumbing, this LCD screen, your plastics, the fertilizers and pesticides in your food and many of the pharmaceutical drugs your doctor prescribes are all made of petrochemicals.
The symbolic link between the black goo and technology is unmistakable.
Bitumen is used to water-seal (that is, chaos-seal) Noah’s Ark. The same thing occurs in Mesopotamian mythology, wherein the legendary king Utnapishtim survived the flood in like manner, building a boat and sealing it with bitumen. He was instructed to do this by the god, Enki, the god of fresh water, mischief, crafts, magic and fertility.
Enki is symbolically related to Ptah, Prometheus, the sign of Capricorn and Mercury.
Black goo — not ink, liquid crystal or bitumen, but black goo as a teleological object — is perhaps best understood as “elemental technology” in its raw state (the black cube or “black box” may be said to be artifactual technology. The refined or crystallized form). Such images are above all things, multifaceted, like the diamond above the maze.
Before the era of technics, the primeval tar still oozed from the innards of the earth to engulf and consume the unsuspecting surface dweller. Its chthonic origins as an ancient, abyssal devourer are in some subtle but powerful way, connected to everything that comes later.
Technology seethes with this plutonic fire. The hot breath of the tectonic demon. In dreams it reveals this ravening primality.