{"id":1156,"date":"2009-05-17T01:40:00","date_gmt":"2009-05-17T01:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1156"},"modified":"2009-05-17T01:40:00","modified_gmt":"2009-05-17T01:40:00","slug":"a-hymn-to-extrication-and-destruction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1156","title":{"rendered":"A Hymn to Extrication and Destruction"},"content":{"rendered":"

In my role as a volunteer fireman in this little hamlet, I went to a “vehicle extrication<\/a>” class today in a nearby town. That meant learning to use the “Jaws of Life” (firemen just say “splitter”) and other hydraulic tools for ripping apart vehicles <\/a>in order to remove injured occupants.<\/p>\n

In that larger department’s classroom, the instructor had written on the board:<\/p>\n

Welcome to Vehicle Extrication
Cut It. Split it. Ram it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And all I could think of was Aleister Crowley<\/a>‘s “Hymn to Pan<\/a>.” (YouTube version here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Through solstice stubborn to equinox.
I rave; and I rape and I rip and I rend
Everlasting, world without end,
Mannikin, maiden, maenad, man,
In the might of Pan.
Io Pan! Io Pan Pan! Pan! Io Pan<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’ll bet Uncle Aleister would have liked to see us ripping the roofs and doors off of motorcars.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In my role as a volunteer fireman in this little hamlet, I went to a “vehicle extrication” class today in a nearby town. That meant learning to use the “Jaws of Life” (firemen just say “splitter”) and other hydraulic tools for ripping apart vehicles in order to remove injured occupants. In that larger department’s classroom, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[72],"class_list":["post-1156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-magick"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-iE","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1193,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1193","url_meta":{"origin":1156,"position":0},"title":"Just Another Saturday","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 17, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Wake up, feed the dogs, make coffee. Take Fisher, the newly adopted (last May) Chessie, for a walk. (Shelby, the ninja-collie, goes to visit her Rottweiler friend Bruno on her own.)Start working on laying out an article for Pomegranate 11.1 in Adobe InDesign.M. gets up. We eat breakfast. I cut\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Colorado\"","block_context":{"text":"Colorado","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=colorado"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1108,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1108","url_meta":{"origin":1156,"position":1},"title":"A Surrealist Hymn to Aphrodite","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 8, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Blogger like to write about the weird search terms that bring in readers.Similarly Sannion turned the subject lines of messages caught in his email spam filter into what amounts to a hymn to Aphrodite Pandemos -- through the Surrealist technique of random assemblage.","rel":"","context":"In \"Aphrodite\"","block_context":{"text":"Aphrodite","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=aphrodite"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2841,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2841","url_meta":{"origin":1156,"position":2},"title":"Pour Me Another","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 2, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0 Researchers create old brews. Really old brews. The truest alcohol enthusiasts will try almost anything to conjure the libations of old. They\u2019ll slaughter goats to fashion fresh wineskins, so the vintage takes on an authentically gamey taste. They\u2019ll brew beer in dung-tempered pottery or boil it by dropping in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/media.smithsonianmag.com\/images\/beer-ingredients-631.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":146,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=146","url_meta":{"origin":1156,"position":3},"title":"'A hint of paganism' Sydney\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 19, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"'A hint of paganism' Sydney Carter, who wrote the hymn \"Lord of the Dance\" to a tune (\"'Tis a Gift to be Simple\") originally created by the Shakers, a movement of 19th-century American religious communalists, has died. Says the Daily Telegraph in Britain, \"But the optimistic lines \"I danced in\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13","url_meta":{"origin":1156,"position":4},"title":"Paganism: A Reader","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 13, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"What I hope was the last paper work for Graham Harvey's and my new anthology, Paganism: A Reader went into the campus mailbag today on its way to Routledge, the publisher. The book is a collection of mostly primary sources, so in that way it's somewhat different from Graham's earlier\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Paganism\"","block_context":{"text":"Paganism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=paganism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":98,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=98","url_meta":{"origin":1156,"position":5},"title":"Inventing Jane Harrison","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 15, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"I have received Mary Beard's The Invention of Jane Harrison--there goes the evening. (And all hail the interlibrary loan staff for producing it so quickly.) Ronald Hutton writes of Harrison in his book The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft: \"Savagery and barbarism both frightened and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"books\"","block_context":{"text":"books","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=books"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1156\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}