They did this rather well in Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull. That uncle Whatshisface did a good job portraying eldritch madness.
If I had a quarter for each time someone has explained eldritch/other-worldly concepts to me via an analogy using ants I'd have a dollar, which isn't a lot but it's strange that it's happened 4 times
Thankfully for that ant, ants are stupid.
Sounds like mushrooms.
This was what doing acid was like for me. I was already a pretty existential person but things like knowing your just a brain recieving electrical signals and interpreting them as reality didn't really click until I did acid and changed that perception.
It was like I looked behind the curtain, saw the source code of reality, could perceive the true fractal nature of the universe.
And after I did it once my brain perceived things fundamentally differently, but I couldn't really explain it I couldn't get other people to try and it really felt like I was the only person on earth that really understood this truth.
Good shit.
Some people don't need to trip for this.
A wise man stood at the edge of a river in the town he'd lived all his life. Day after day monks gathered along the bank meditating, praying, citing ancient incantations and performing sacred rituals. The wise man asked the monks why they were dedicating their their entire lives repeating these things day after day. On of the elder monks says, "we learning how to walk on water to cross the mighty river." The wise man says, "but the fairy is only a nickel."
Acid didn’t do this to me, and I’ve done a bunch… but everyone has a different experience.
I’ve been in a fair few K-Holes though, and one single experience where lines were laid out for a hotel room of myself and closest friends… it felt like too much powder to fit in my nose, but I did it anyway. By the time I laid down on one of the beds, my body?mind?spirit? Was being pulled downwards faster and faster, more quickly than any K-Hole I had ever experience. I have no way to explain the next hour; it would have been the most horrifying thing I could ever experience but I lost all concept of what horror could feel like. Time was visible and invisible and nonexistent. I knew in my brain that this wouldn’t be happening to me forever, but forever didn’t mean anything. I could look around and see all of my friends, but friends didn’t exist and I didn’t exist. I could move around but there was no point—physical reality wasn’t real anymore.
It was neat. I’ll never do it again.
I mean, Lovecraft just went with OG Abrhamic stuff.
When they talk about angels in the Bible, they weren't talking about beautiful elves from Lotr with wings.
They were something that interacting with would break your mind. Because the people claiming to see them had broken minds already, that's why they were "seeing" them in the first place.
Which makes sense because what started the Abrhamic religions was a schizophrenic hearing voices to murder his family to appease the voice(s) in their head.
It's been whitewashed over the centuries, but that's all it is. The followers of a schizophrenic carrying on his delusions that began with murdering his brother. And they're still being told if they ever experience those symptoms, they should fucking listen instead of getting mental health treatment.
Also see the Oracle (s) of Pythia/Delphi.
Go into cave
Breathe fumes
Hallucinate
Tell local King he'll be victorious in upcoming battle
And ergotism. Don't forget ergotism.
I'm sure it happened some before, but the earliest known case was like, a thousand years or so after.
The danger of the Abrahamic religions is people who did experience hallucinations from things like ergot poisoning saw the similarities to the schizophrenic hallucinations their religions are based on.
So instead of their first thought being "clearly I'm seeing/hearing things that aren't there like a dream" it was "God has chosen me and is commanding me to do ____".
Like, under no circumstances is a higher power providing instructions, guidance, advice, anything.
And it's incredibly dangerous when people believe it's possible. Because if they experience hallucinations for any reason, there's a chance they treat it like a command.
It’s always ergotism.
Madness?!
.
.
.
This is SPARTA!
THIS IS MADNESS!
No!
But I'm still going to vote for him. Why settle for a lesser evil?
Nice post, it remembers me a quote from the cosmic horror movie Black Mountain Side (2014)
"Deer God: When an animal looks up at the night sky, what does it see? Thousands and thousands of tiny points. Then a man looks up at the same points and sees millions of stars; galaxies, within which are billions of planets. Do you want to know what I see? Were you there when I created the stars?"
Worth the watch? I see it doesn’t have great reviews but that’s not uncommon with Cosmic Horror since it tends not to have much in the way of resolution or typical story beats
TheThen the ant realizes these humming monoliths are used to play hentai games and be a sex pest on insta, and then the ant goes even more mad trying to learn what loss is.Basically Flat Lands
Singular, one word, but a good observation.
