In Stone Age man appears, very strong shoulders, with club in hand. He is believed by the people to be a son of some god…of a mortal woman who cucked her husband with a god. As child he already displays superhuman strength. When he grows he goes into the deepest wild to fight great cave lion. He emerges from cave with skin of lion on his back. Lion had been eating and working terror in the people, but now he wears this terror on his shoulders. He carries lion mane on head, lion pelt on back and a great club in the hand. This man comes to be worshiped by the people: his progeny become lines of kings, of Sparta and many other places. What was his act of foundation? He slaughtered monsters, he made the seaways known to man and tamed the rock-face. But don’t forget the lion-skin on his shoulders. This was lion of Nemea. Do you understand what Nemesis is? There is in nature a great purgative function. You know about monkeys who switch sex in certain times. In lake of some reptiles, when they overpopulate it and there is a surplus of refuse, there is trigger in nature: a monster is born to them. A lizard many times the size of a normal one is born, who deals out destruction and culls the lake. The Greeks believed in this great power and worshiped its justice. In Bible it appears as allegory of the Flood, which in fact refers to the irrepressible spirit of the Sea Peoples, and the divine justice they brought to cities whose life had grown pointless, and a great ugliness on the world. You bring lion cub into the house, but Aeschylus say, it will become a priest of doom when it reaches age: in nature there is irrepressible force. Its violence against the surfeit of populations is divine justice. Its destruction of the feeble designs of reason, the pointless words of man—this is beautiful. This what the power of Nemesis means: few are chosen to wield it, fewer realize they are chosen or know what to do with it. When Hercules puts on the power of Nemesis on his shoulders he becomes hero who makes the world tame and safe for cities of real men. But that was in his time, and ours is an age of surfeit. It is different function. The star of Nemesis is sure to return, and it must already be burning inside some of you. In the Bronze Age men had life and force, and I already see, far on the horizon of our world, but the glimmer is surely there—may it not be a mirage!—I see this spirit returning surely in our time. Piratical bands and brotherhoods will take to the seas, and not just to the seas. The enemies of Western man and the enemies of beauty are to learn just what was meant by a piratical race, a nest of pirates like the Chinese thought of the Dutch on first meeting them. I want to prepare you to receive this old spirit—old spirits are moving, from behind the reeds… the silhouette shimmers against a river in late summer, and I see already men who know how to honor such uncanny old friends.
May they inhabit us again and give us strength to purify this world of refuse!
