RadixJournal - Preface to Myth To Power

00:00:00.000 This book does not fit the conventional, familiar style of an academic text.

00:00:06.100 We do have a central thesis, the startling claim that there is an international symbolic system,

00:00:13.580 what we call REM, that has been passed down to us through initiates from the ancient world.

00:00:20.480 Nevertheless, our method of proving our case and organizing this book

00:00:24.840 simply could not follow the time-honored path of a chronological history or a tight interpretive

00:00:32.560 focus. Indeed, one could say, quite uncharitably, that myth to power is unwieldy, with too many

00:00:41.100 arrows pointing in too many directions, charting paths yet to be explored. No doubt it would be

00:00:48.780 summarily rejected by many self-respecting publishers. But both Mark Brahman and I have

00:00:56.160 always felt constricted by the conventions of academia. As we note in an early chapter,

00:01:03.180 mainstream academics, by the nature of their profession and due to little fault of their own,

00:01:08.800 inevitably engage in specialization and thus are prone to short-sightedness, sometimes blindness.

00:01:14.600 They cannot see the big picture. They see the trees, maybe the leaves, and not the forest.

00:01:22.220 And this is to say nothing of their requisite subservience to taboos, whether liberal or

00:01:27.960 otherwise. And the sacredness of Judaism and Christianity remain a taboo, even in our

00:01:35.240 putatively secular age. The original manuscript that Mark showed me more than five years ago was

00:01:43.140 immense, if infinitely fascinating and rewarding. And it was certainly a challenging task as an

00:01:50.420 editor, which was my first job on this project. I determined early on that a conventional book

00:01:57.340 was both impossible and undesirable. The better choice was to embrace the Nietzschean style.

00:02:05.360 By this, I'm not referring to the aphorisms or one-liners for which the philosopher is famous,

00:02:10.960 but the episodic quality one finds in his books. The writer and reader jump from peak to peak,

00:02:18.800 and the full landscape gradually comes into view. This does not mean that Myth to Power is a series

00:02:25.520 of one-offs or is an essay collection. To the contrary, it is interconnected like a web,

00:02:32.660 and the editing and rewriting process has reinforced these threads. The prose is clear,

00:02:39.340 at least we hope so. But the book as a whole has a labyrinthine or Escher-like quality,

00:02:46.840 with each chapter reflecting and deepening the other. We leap from the Bible to Hollywood,

00:02:53.720 to linguistics, to philosophy, to contemporary politics, to ancient history, and back around

00:02:59.000 again. All that said, the chapters have been arranged for a reason, and the book is meant

00:03:05.200 to be read from front to back.

00:03:07.940 Whether all the puzzle pieces

00:03:09.480 fit together to make a picture

00:03:11.100 is ultimately for the reader to decide.

00:03:14.620 Overall,

00:03:15.380 our effort is to create a lens,

00:03:17.620 a way of seeing, a method

00:03:19.440 that is REM theory.

00:03:22.300 This new optics

00:03:23.460 can be applied to almost anything

00:03:25.660 for almost everything

00:03:27.180 is culture.

00:03:29.900 Myth to Power launches

00:03:31.100 a thousand ships.

00:03:32.920 It is a foundational theory.

00:03:35.200 Here, it is applied to a host of different examples, biblical and popular, but it is begging to be refined, sharpened, and further developed and applied to many more.

00:03:45.260 I first encountered Mark Brahman some dozen years ago when I was editing a website and small publishing outfit called Radix Journal.

00:03:54.380 He submitted an interpretation of Steven Spielberg's film AI Artificial Intelligence, 2001, whose script originated with Stanley Kubrick.

00:04:05.200 Mark's background in cinema was readily apparent in this early essay,

00:04:11.080 as he respected this popular form as a total work of art,

00:04:16.020 one capable of communicating ideas, including subversive ones, and possessing layers.

00:04:21.900 He discovered beneath the sci-fi veneer a decidedly Jewish consciousness and perspective,

00:04:28.880 hinted at by the protagonist's first name, David.

00:04:31.860 Many of the ideas of this original essay

00:04:35.620 Recur throughout Myth to Power

00:04:37.340 Others have been refined and some discarded

00:04:40.180 But it was all right there

00:04:42.740 Mark and I met on a number of occasions after that

00:04:46.440 And struck up a friendship

00:04:47.520 Which would become a partnership

00:04:49.500 Both of us have a New England background

00:04:53.000 His more substantial than my own

00:04:54.820 And both of us, you could say, are frustrated directors

00:04:59.520 That is, we both took a particularly artistic path

00:05:03.140 into politics, academia, and commentary.

00:05:07.620 Mark first began analyzing symbols

00:05:09.720 in order to compose a Tolkien-esque epic.

00:05:13.480 At some point, these notes became so substantial

00:05:16.700 that they formed the basis of a critical analytic system,

00:05:20.580 a system that can be deployed by the artist of the future.

00:05:24.400 four years ago while editing was still in its early stages i began not just revising passages

00:05:32.460 but also adding new background material later i began offering my own contributions and

00:05:38.620 interpretations and at some point around three years ago i became the book's co-author our

00:05:45.160 writing having been blended to such a degree and admittedly i also felt that my notoriety would

00:05:52.820 help bring attention to these important ideas. Who wrote the words in this book? 50-50 is a good

00:05:59.960 guess, but again, as the manuscript was passed between us, what was his and what was mine became

00:06:05.440 blurred. That being said, Mark is the originator of the foundational ideas and thesis. We have

00:06:12.380 occasionally had minor disagreements, and I have deferred to him. Acolyte is not the right word

00:06:18.420 for a co-author, but credit should be given where credit is due. In hindsight, part of the process

00:06:25.600 was my being personally convinced of the solidity of the thesis. This only occurred in one manner,

00:06:33.980 through the repetition of proofs one after another after another. This was the math,

00:06:40.500 as we came to call it. There were readings that Mark submitted to me early on involving Yahweh's

00:06:47.020 or God's sexuality, for instance, that I found too shocking to be believed. And yet,

00:06:53.060 close examinations of the text revealed them to be true. My resistance was overcome.

00:06:59.540 When encountering the manuscript for the first time, I had the perspective of the uninitiated.

00:07:05.840 This, I believe, has served me well as the co-author of this book.

00:07:09.960 It put me in an empathetic position to the reader. On the other hand, because of the sheer

00:07:15.860 density of the myths and notable philosophical ideas discussed here. Readers may nevertheless

00:07:21.400 find occasional value in Google, ChatGPT, and similar search tools, much in the manner that

00:07:27.180 the first readers of Nietzsche, few in number, relied on their superior educations in literature,

00:07:33.020 classical languages, history, philosophy, and so forth. All this being said, a balance must be

00:07:39.940 struck. We desire an intelligent, Apollonian readership, which enjoys challenging itself.

00:07:48.320 These are the active readers and thinkers who are capable of making the best use of our ideas.

00:07:54.320 And we cannot, in one fell swoop, fully educate readers on the vast array of topics at play.

00:08:01.780 However much knowledge Nietzsche assumed of his audience, context alone often makes his

00:08:06.960 delusions intelligible. All writing should do this. It should encourage us to read and discover

00:08:12.720 more. In Myth to Power, we hope we got the balance right. Both Mark and I were children in the 1980s.

00:08:20.780 In this relatively less woke, if that is the right word, or at least safe era, it was common when one

00:08:28.440 was learning to swim for the instructor to push a student unawares into the pool, lake, or sea.

00:08:35.040 The child had to learn to tread water and get to the shore or side on his own,

00:08:40.880 engaging his natural instincts for survival.

00:08:44.680 A surprise attack like that might land the instructor in prison if done in 2026.

00:08:50.880 Throughout our collaboration, Mark's impulse was simply to toss the unsuspecting reader into the deep end.

00:08:58.940 Mine was to make sure he was equipped with inflatable floaties on both arms before taking the plunge.

00:09:05.240 Whether you take the hard or soft option, you will nevertheless enter uncharted waters.

00:09:13.720 As you can see, this book is composed of three major sections, within which there are a dozen to 24 numbered chapters.

00:09:22.980 The sections that compose Myth to Power are as follows.

00:09:27.580 Groundwork, Ancients and Moderns, and Cults and Culture.

00:09:33.380 In the first, Groundwork, we lay out basic concepts in our worldview.

00:09:38.740 That is, what you need to understand to understand everything going forward.

00:09:43.900 These sections are interlaced with readings from the Bible and popular culture

00:09:48.560 to give you a taste of what is interpretively possible.

00:09:52.040 the second section ancients and moderns offers key understandings of history and what we call

00:09:59.820 the proto-jewish past this stretches from the bronze age and pelasgians and the origins of

00:10:06.960 the greek myth body to so-called norse paganism and christianity the third section cults and

00:10:13.800 culture presents our definition of culture and civilization the dynamic often hostile between

00:10:21.040 them. Additionally, here, we discuss the millennia-old mystery cult phenomenon and its persistence in

00:10:28.320 our time. Myth to Power is the first in a series, which will be followed by two volumes already deep

00:10:36.040 in preparation. Both will be released over the coming two years. The first sequel is entitled

00:10:43.040 The Caduceus. Here, we address the whirl of politics and synthetic opposition. The next one,

00:10:50.100 The Death of Tragedy, offers an original theory on the origins of this quintessentially

00:10:56.520 bacchanal art. More are to come. Throughout these books, you will find parenthetical

00:11:03.740 documentation at the end of some sentences, for example, one section three. The Roman numeral

00:11:10.140 refers to the section number, the Arabic numeral to the chapter. This encourages the reader to

00:11:16.000 return to or move on to other chapters that explain or elaborate on key concepts. We will

00:11:23.020 maintain this practice as subsequent books are published. This allows us to continue developing

00:11:28.940 ideas or peel back more layers of the onion. In turn, in later books, the reader can easily return

00:11:35.840 to the source of the discussion. As I mentioned, Escher-esque. You will also find other examples

00:11:44.380 of parenthetical notations to the Bible. Here we use standard English translations as well as the

00:11:50.580 King James Version occasionally when its literary quality is warranted. Our motive is clarity and

00:11:57.180 direct word-for-word renderings. As you will learn, there is quite a bit contained in the narratives

00:12:03.120 of the Bible and more treasures in the words themselves, which we reproduce in the original

00:12:09.140 Hebrew as we unpack them. Proving the phenomenon of REM is not always straightforward, especially

00:12:16.380 in this first presentation of the thesis. Decrypting a single parable may require establishing the

00:12:23.340 meaning of several symbols, each of which may need verification through examples, linguistic analysis,

00:12:29.180 expert opinion, or other evidence. Yet fully proving every symbol or related theme as it

00:12:36.340 arises would lead to long digressions and risk obscuring the immediate task at hand.

00:12:42.100 For the sake of readability, this book therefore develops REM theory gradually, sometimes referring

00:12:48.600 to ideas before they have been fully explained, when no clear order of presentation is possible.

00:12:55.500 REM is everywhere, which means one starting point can be anywhere. Our method of proving

00:13:03.120 the existence of a symbolic language relies on, by necessity,

00:13:07.560 cooperation.

00:13:11.080 The title Myth to Power evokes both Joseph Campbell's

00:13:15.100 book and television series, The Power of Myth, and

00:13:19.080 Nietzsche's foundational concept of will to power.

00:13:23.520 Campbell proposed, in essence, that myths offer a map of the

00:13:26.940 unconscious, a bridge to the divine, and a guide towards

00:13:31.060 personal transformation and overcoming suffering. Our thesis is starkly different, and in many ways

00:13:38.880 a reversal of this Jungian way of thinking. In RIM theory, the most important and abiding myths

00:13:46.660 are consciously designed. They compose a collective unconscious to the degree that there is a cultural

00:13:54.940 inception of these stories among a people by a priestly class. The term collective consciousness

00:14:02.580 might be more accurate, though we do not recommend using it. That said, we would never want to throw

00:14:10.260 the baby out with the bathwater. Unquestionably, abiding myths contain psychological insights into

00:14:17.140 human nature. Indeed, they would not have become so widespread and remained powerful and relevant

00:14:23.040 otherwise. For instance, on some basic level, Saturn's consumption of his own children reveals

00:14:29.920 the tragedy of the narcissistic parent. He fears that his offspring will overtake him. He sees in

00:14:36.640 them an image of his own decline and death and seeks to annihilate them as a result. Such a dark

00:14:43.520 truth might be best presented through stories, that is, best glimpsed askance or hidden behind

00:14:49.740 a mask. The reader or audience could view this tragedy objectively in its most grotesque form

00:14:56.700 and perhaps overcome such urges in himself. Rim theory does not discount such understandings of

00:15:05.460 myth. What is missed, however, in such psychologizing exercises is that Saturn and

00:15:11.980 his Olympian children represent different eras, peoples, and ways of life. They depict

00:15:18.260 religio-political struggles and the displacement of one regime by another.

00:15:24.000 What is this story, in essence, if not a broad metaphor of regime change? Zeus displaces Kronos,

00:15:31.880 establishing the Olympian system on top of a prior Thonic cult, the age of the Pulasgian Kronos and

00:15:38.880 the religio-culture that came with it. Zeus is Kronos's son in the sense that his neo-celestial

00:15:46.300 system as a reaction to what preceded it. We find an analogous metaphor in the famous

00:15:53.320 twins from Genesis, Jacob and Esau. Yahweh tells their mother, Rebekah,

00:15:58.980 two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy body.

00:16:04.860 And the one people shall be stronger than the other people, and the elder shall serve the younger.

00:16:10.340 in other words Jacob and Esau are not just siblings but represent two separate races

00:16:19.140 additionally the moral of the story is not simply about jealousy or recklessness but about the

00:16:26.500 ancestor of Judah and thus Judaism itself overthrowing the hardy and ruddy Esau an

00:16:34.460 archetype and stealing his birthright. In sum, myth is a will to power. More precisely, it is a path

00:16:44.320 to power. Myth foresees victory, and what begins as a fable becomes fact. Rem, that is esoteric

00:16:52.920 messaging, was not developed in a position of martial or stately authority. In fact, the very

00:16:59.260 opposite was the case for centuries, and certainly during crucial moments in the compilation of the

00:17:04.240 Bible. Perhaps it is no understatement to say that one engages in esoteric art precisely because one

00:17:11.860 is not in power. Physical prowess and domination are the power of armies, or Esau. Cultural power,

00:17:20.580 the ability to dominate the psyche, is the realm of the initiate, artist, or in other words,

00:17:26.320 the weakling, Jacob. It is a testament to the power of culture that we have been trapped

00:17:32.940 in this Daedalian labyrinth for thousands of years,

00:17:37.180 going back to Sumer.

00:17:39.960 You hold in your hands a book that is a revelation,

00:17:43.800 maybe a revolution,

00:17:45.440 an overturning of how we think about myth, religion, culture,

00:17:49.460 the Abrahamic faiths, and world civilization.

00:17:52.080 It is a thread that, we hope,

00:17:55.920 leads mankind out of the maze.

00:17:59.520 Richard Spencer, Whitefish, Montana,

00:18:02.940 June, 2026.

RadixJournal - October 07, 2026

Preface to Myth To Power

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