American Demons

Anarchy from Above

At the beginning of the 15th century, three popes ruling at the same time caricatured the Christian worldview. Anarchy from above eliminates safeguards and stabilizers of rule. It destroys the foundation of medieval society. The knightly loyalty loses its grandiose dimension. The clod loses its binding power for the serfs. The patrician loses its locking and locking functions. In his "History of Modern Times" Egon Friedell quotes Petrarch's description at the Pope's court in Avignon: "Everything good perished there... the more tainted a life is, the more highly it is valued, and fame grows with crime."

Heroic Age of Philistinism

Friedell describes the power of the Hanseatic League (in its medieval) heyday as a "sovereign commercial dictatorship". The scholar diagnoses an "intelligent professional amateurism" that resulted from a narrow perspective; from a "tenacious sticking to the compact matter of existence". Friedell recognizes an epochal mark in the cultic respect for tools; in the "devotion before the object of work" in the "heroic age of Philistinism".

Mounted Prairie Monarchs

In 1607, Henry Hudson (c. 1565 - 1611) passed the Land of Desolation (Greenland) with the aim of slipping over the pole. Half-frozen and almost starving, he abandoned the voyage off Spitsbergen. The next year, Hudson sailed into the natural harbor of the future Nieuw Amsterdam and visited the island of Manhattan at the mouth of a river (the Hudson River), which he believed to flow into the Pacific Ocean. In 1611, his last expedition ended in an Atlantic basin that reached so far inland (Labrador) that the sailors thought they were back in the Pacific Ocean (Mare Magnum). Due to a supply shortage after eight months of ice entrapment off the Canadian coast, sailors who were annoyed by Henry Hudson's hysterical perseverance as explorers dared to mutiny when the ship sailed again. They forced the captain, his son and all the sick people into a boat. A volunteer joined. The exposed people floated on the ice-filled surface for two days and then ended up, hypothermic but not at all frozen, on the doorsteps of people who called themselves Sakâw-iginiw-ok and who loved to inhale intoxicating fumes in sweat lodges. Among them were light-skinned descendants of Europeans. The genetic enema had been given to the locals in the Frobisher era.

Martin Frobisher (around 1535 - 1594) was another one of those sixteenth children of poor people who had to see where he was at an early age. He signed on with a soul seller as soon as he could walk and soon became a passionate privateer - first in the fight against the English crown, then vehemently in its service. Frobisher began his career as a brigand on the Channel Islands. He saw the horrors of Portuguese dungeons, sailed as second-in-command under Francis Drake, married beyond his means, almost single-handedly defeated the Spanish in a naval battle, received a knighthood and lost an eye in battle as Walter Raleigh's right-hand man.

Frobisher's importance did not depend on success. He failed in all his highly anticipated and consequently popular explorations of the Northwest Passage to the Oriental markets. Hudson ordered quarantine for those who fell ill. To deprive them of their torment, they were soon killed. The Sakâw-iginiw-ok recognized Hudson and his son as dignitaries from the spirit sphere and the volunteer as a servant. They accommodated the guests accordingly.

Hudson and his son admired Stone Age rock paintings; studies of hunting scenes in the Upper Palaeolithic. They dabbled as landscape and portrait painters and experimented with popular drugs. The Adlatus assimilated into the care of a shaman. He survived his rebirth before losing his bearings in a social labyrinth. His feeling was violent, his expression poor. He should end up on the gallows as a shell brother.