Tuesday, February 8, 2022

CONFERENCE OF THE NATURE GODS (revisited)


A lot goes on in Bangkok, the City of Angels. I was there eight years ago and met a reincarnated god named Pangu.

Not many today know about Pangu, unless they are familiar with Chinese mythology. This is the legend of Pangu, according to Wikipedia:

In the beginning there was nothing in the universe except a formless chaos. However this chaos coalesced into a cosmic egg for about 18,000 years. Within it, the perfectly opposed principles of Yin and Yang became balanced and Pangu emerged (or woke up) from the egg. Pangu is usually depicted as a primitive, hairy giant with horns on his head and clad in furs. Pangu set about the task of creating the world: he separated Yin from Yang with a swing of his giant axe, creating the Earth (murky Yin) and the Sky (clear Yang). To keep them separated, Pangu stood between them and pushed up the Sky. This task took 18,000 years; with each day the sky grew ten feet (3 meters) higher, the Earth ten feet wider, and Pangu ten feet taller.

After the 18,000 years had elapsed, Pangu was laid to rest. His breath became the wind; his voice the thunder; left eye the sun and right eye the moon; his body became the mountains and extremes of the world; his blood formed rivers; his muscles the fertile lands; his facial hair the stars and milky way; his fur the bushes and forests; his bones the valuable minerals; his bone marrows sacred diamonds; his sweat fell as rain; and the fleas on his fur carried by the wind became the fish and animals throughout the land.



In other words, the planet we inhabit is the transmogrified body of Pangu – literally and metaphorically. Few remember this, however, and humans have long believed that the Earth is theirs to do with as they like – and that is why they keep building sprawling cities and civilizations upon her surface, poisoning and destroying in the process all that is natural and life-sustaining.

This really pisses Pangu off. Indeed, he’s pissed off enough to personally intervene and see what’s to be done about the terrible mess humans have wrought upon the planet.

Pangu with his chaos generator

So, how did my encounter with Pangu come about? Like attracts like, they say. I have always identified strongly with the Arcadian nature god Pan. It was only natural that Pan would someday meet up with Pangu - whether in Pangaea, Pago Pago (also spelt Pango Pango), Pangkor Island or Pangkok.

This time around, Pangu is cleverly disguised as a Punk God named Aobo, born 19 October 1972 in Xingguo, China. He grew up in a place called Longtan, which means Dragon’s Pool. In fact, his human name Aobo can be translated as “Dragon’s Domain” – where dragons spawn and contemplate eternity.


From the realm of myth he stepped into the role of punk shaman. In the early 1990s Aobo bought a $50 guitar and began writing songs – angry, explosive, deeply emotive songs, with lyrics that would send a shiver up the spine of every cold-blooded autocrat, plutocrat, bureaucrat and technocrat in China.


Just as Jim Morrison of The Doors mesmerized an entire generation with the emotional intensity of his performances, Aobo had a radioactive effect on Chinese youngsters everywhere he performed with his band, PUNKGOD.


His raw, primal voice howling the pain of countless generations who have suffered tyranny’s oppression, Aobo sang about freedom – a word blocked on Chinese search engines – and taking action to reclaim the land from institutionalized greed’s ravages. He sang about the hurt in his heart when he heard a loud slap in the night – and realized the sound was from next door. A 17-year-old girl had returned home at 11:30pm to find an angry mother ready to hit her – for doing what nature intended her to do.


Songs charged with feeling, passionate feeling. Songs that evoked in the listener a sense of outrage that life on earth has been so viciously violated and perverted into Civilization As We Know It. More specifically, Aobo’s PUNKGOD project inspired a new wave of alternative bands and pioneered a revolutionary pantheistic consciousness that would ultimately supersede and neutralize traditional power hierarchies.


The overthrow of brute force and state-sponsored violence by people power appears frightening to those who cling to the status quo, but to the rest of us it only means an end to Sauron’s influence and Saruman @ Sharkey’s misrule (and who hasn’t seen the movies or read Tolkien’s books?)

The Chinese government grew nervous at the swiftly spreading PUNKGOD phenomenon and began to harass Aobo. Police would disrupt his concerts and once even attempted to arrest him on stage. As the story goes, Aobo took the police officer aside and spoke with him for a few minutes. That was enough to reactivate the human component in the policeman. He bowed curtly to Aobo and withdrew his men.


Turning robots into humans is considered a threat to national security in China – for that matter in every country where the vampires of industrialization and globalization have feasted. Friends in the force informed him the government was preparing the grounds for Aobo’s arrest and detention as an inciter of hatred towards authority, a dangerous advocate of lawlessness. So he quietly left the country and found political sanctuary in Sweden. After a while he gave up trying to master Swedish and opted to operate from an Asian base instead.

All Aobo desires is that humans will awake from their artificially induced cultural trance and reclaim their glorious destinies as freely evolving beings who know how to have fun and who deeply appreciate nature and everything natural. How dangerous is that?

Dining room studio: Aobo working on his new album

Pangu died in order that the world may live. Now he wants to enjoy the human experience to the max on his own resurrected mythic body - the Earth, the Solar System, the Galaxy, the Whole Universe in fact!


I conducted a brief interview with Aobo through a translator and this is what transpired:

Q: Are you Pangu himself – or just borrowing the name?

A: The politically correct answer is that I am merely an agent of Pangu. But those who know and speak the truth have no need for political correctness.

Q: Now that you’re back in conscious form, do you have any plans you can reveal?

A: It’s very simple. Originally, all that existed was Chaos. I emerged from that Primordial Chaos and became the world of forms; and when humans began to dominate the earth, we had a compulsion to impose our limited concepts of order upon nature, that’s how civilization started. Civilization has thus far been antagonistic to nature; it has grown more and more destructive. There is even talk of introducing a New World Order on this planet. I came back to remind people that Chaos is nothing to fear; it is our original, pure state of innocence, simplicity and spontaneity. It is the wellspring of all Life. Embrace Chaos and the New World Order will fail. Nature – or the Tao – will be reinstated and the Earth will be restored to pristine health and beauty, and all living beings will regain their freedom.











Now listen to some "jungle pig" music by PUNKGOD!

[First posted 14 February 2011, reposted 8 May 2014 & 3 May 2019]