Here is something to amuse, delight and horrify - the tail of:
_One Man's Search for a Cryptographic Mythology_.
I recently wrote a VNODE (4.4bsd) based encrypted file-system. Now
the day dawned when I decided it was high time to discard my rather
egocentric working name _Proffs_ (i.e Proff File System) and cast
about for a decent, respectable name. My first thought on this
matter was:
CERBERUS, n. The watch-dog of Hades, whose duty it was to guard
the entrance -- against whom or what does not
clearly appear; everybody, sooner or later, had to go there,
and nobody wanted to carry off the entrance. Cerberus is known
to have had three heads, and some of the poets have credited
him with as many as a hundred.
Only, what was the relation between KERBEROS and CERBERUS? Pups
from the same litter, or was the relationship a little more
incestuous? I had to find out. There was no way - n o w a y - I'd be
having my encrypted file system playing second fiddle to that evil
authentication beast.
KERBEROS; also spelled Cerberus. n. The watch dog of
Hades, whose duty it was to guard the entrance--against
whom or what does not clearly appear; . . . it is known
to have had three heads. . .
Mythology couldn't get any more incestuous than that.
450,000 bytes of Greek polytheism later, and I'm wondering if the
Gods of Olympus really had any high-paid guards to speak of except
the multi-headed mongrel from Hades. I'm feeling down. I'm cursing
the Ancients. I'm disrespectfully humming tunes `All and All it's
Just Another Greek in the Wall', and `Athena be my Lover' when I
discover:
JANUS: in Roman mythology, custodian of the universe, god of
beginnings. The guardian of gates and doors, he held
sacred the first hour of the day, first day of the month, and
first month of the year (which bears his name). He is represented
with two bearded faces set back to back.
Custodian of the universe. Guardian of gates and doors. Cooool.
Janus. January. I like it. Only while I'm liking it, I'm thinking
that I've heard the word Janus a lot before. I'm thinking it isn't
just me who has looked up from the middle of a Greek mythology
text, whilst in the throes of a name hunt with the words "Cooool"
on their tongue. No: the Gods just don't smile on me that way.
AltaVista confirms the truth of Heaven's bad attitude towards me.
17,423 references. _The Janus Mutual Trade Fund_, _The Janus
Project_, _Janus ADA95_, a dozen ISPs from Canada (what is it WITH
these Canadians?), _Janus' cool word list_ (turns out to be not so
cool), _The Janus Ensemble_, _Hotel Janus_, _Janus Theatre_,
_janus.com_, _janusfunds.com_, _Janus_ an Australian Police drama
series and of course, the sixth moon of Saturn - _Janus_. Janus is
out-of-the-picture. I'm not sure whether to feel smug or grim about
the rest of the world's lack of originality.
Guards. Guardians. The Greeks didn't have many with bite and I'm
loosing patience with the whole culture. Euphrosyne, Aglaia, and
Thalia do not grace me. What I need is something that evokes
passion within my cryptographic domain. And when you come down to
it, that means something which produces copious amounts of gore
and blood, at will, from those who would dare to pass its demesne
of protection.
The Erinyes, or Furies, were three goddesses who punished by
their secret stings the crimes of those who escaped or defied
public justice. The heads of the Furies were wreathed with
serpents, and their whole appearance was terrific and appalling.
Their names were Alecto, Tisiphone, and Megaera. They were
also called Eumenides.
Aye. Plenty of gore there. But somewhat lacking in cryptographic
analogy. Fantastic material for the group that doesn't meet at
number 41 every Saturday night though. They will appreciate what
the Erinyes were trying to achieve.
Somewhat heartened, my mind turns to the Erinyes' dress sense. "..heads
of the Furies were wreathed with serpents, and their whole appearance
was terrific and appalling". Terrific. Serpents.
Terrific \Ter*rif"ic\, a. [L. terrificus; fr. terrere: to frighten
+ facere: to make. See Terror, and Fact.] Causing
terror; adapted to excite great fear or dread; terrible; as, a
terrific form; a terrific sight.
Is it a symptom of society in decay that this word has come to mean:
Excellent \Ex"cel*lent\, a. [F. excellent, L. excellens, -entis,
p. pr. of excellere. See Excel.] 1. Excelling;
surpassing others in some good quality or the sum of qualities;
of great worth; eminent, in a good sense; superior, as an
excellent man, artist, citizen, husband, discourse, book, song,
etc.; excellent breeding, principles, aims, action.
Or as Milton would say:
To love . . . What I see excellent in good or fair.
On the other hand, David Hume (1711-1776):
The more exquisite any good is, of which a small specimen is
afforded us, the sharper is the evil, allied to it; and few
exceptions are found to this uniform law of nature. The most
sprightly wit borders on madness; the highest effusions of joy
produce the deepest melancholy; the most ravishing pleasures
are attended with the most cruel lassitude and disgust; the most
flattering hopes make way for the severest disappointments. And,
in general, no course of life has such safety (for happiness is
not to be dreamed of) as the temperate and moderate, which
maintains, as far as possible, a mediocrity, and a kind of
insensibility, in every thing.
Perhaps it is the sign of a brain in decay, rather than a society
that I dwell on it so, because Terrific hair serpents of course
lead unfailing into the arms of the Medusa. A guardian of fearsome
looks, but dubious motivations according to authorities like Clash
of the Titans (1981). A moot point, perhaps as Princeton's
history department no longer wants to talk to me. I'm cast adrift,
to rely on my Plasticine childhood memories and the mythological
swamp of the web.
NAME: Medusa
FAVORITE PASTIME: Turning men to stone
PLACE OF ORIGIN: Los Alamos Secret CIA Lab
SPECIAL GIFTS: Petrified Aggregate Projectist
FAVORITE MOVIE: Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers
GOALS IN LIFE: To be a nice person
FAVORITE BOOK: Madonna's biography
PET PEEVE: Bad hair days
Jesus. I've been sucked into comic book hell. Princeton, take me
back. I won't curse at the ancient Greek's sexual proclivities
anymore. I'm sure chaste marriages were very daunting to those yet
to have them. I was only joking. Lighten up will you?
But, alas, the history faculty however was still nursing its
wounds, and was not ready to forgive me. I'd have to find an
authoritative source somewhere else. Perhaps I could filter out the
comic book hell contaminants and come up with respected history Ivy,
even if it wasn't Princeton Ivy.
To decapitate - to castrate. The terror of the Medusa is thus
a terror of castration that is linked to the sight of something.
The hair upon the Medusa's head is frequently represented in
works of art in the form of snakes, and these once again are
derived from the castration complex. It is a remarkable fact
that however frightening they may be in themselves, they
nevertheless serve as a mitigation of the horror, for they
replace the penis, the absence of which is the cause of the
horror. This is a confirmation of the technical rule according
to which a multiplication of penis symbols signifies castration.
Sigmund Freud
The Medusa's Head
You had to hand it to Sigmund. He was nothing if not authoritative,
and after reading his inspiring words on the terrific serpent haired
woman, it became clear to me that _Proffs_ and the Gorgon had somewhat
unresolved metaphorical incompatibilities. I didn't want my software
giving anyone a castration complex.
I decided to put aside the denizens of Olympus from contest verbatim.
I'd read Fraud on Perversions a few years before and knew Medusa
was just a portent of what was to come. What I needed was another
polytheist culture entirely. Latin didn't help me. Nearly all the
Roman Gods had been vilely plagiarised from the Greeks, Latin names
or not. Freud knew this as well as I did. The Norse gods were of
little assistance to me. The only one worth paying school to was
Loki, the Norse god of mischief. Loki was a very cool fellow, which
was why his name has been appropriated as a moniker by virtually
every Bjorn, Sven, and Bob hacker to come out of Scandinavia in
the last 10 years. No, Loki was not for me.
The problem craved for a polytheist mythology outside the realm of
my, and more importantly Sigmund Freud's, Western European upbringing.
The answer to my question was by definition locked within a body of
history I didn't know an onion skin about. In order for the pilgrim
to reach the master he must first place his foot on the path, no
matter how gradual the slope up the mountain of enlightenment. Zen
Buddhism is good like that. Fabricating parables up as you go along
that is.
Zen master Gutei raised his finger whenever he was asked a
question about Zen. A young novice began to imitate
him in this way. When Gutei was told about the novice's imitation,
he sent for him and asked him if it were true. The novice admitted
it was so. Gutei asked him if he understood. In reply the novice
held up his index finger. Gutei promptly cut it off. The novice
ran from the room, howling in pain. As he reached the threshold,
Gutei called, "Boy!". When the novice returned, Gutei raised
his index finger. At that instant the novice was enlightened.
But wait. This Koan isn't fabricated. At least, not by me. And
unlike most Zen Koan's I think you will agree that it pleasantly
satisfies Schopenhauer's "life, without pain, has no meaning".
However, semantically I'm seeing a very unhealthy correlation to
forgetting one's encryption key and losing one's finger.
My mind is drawn to the memory of the real-life nightmare of laying
in the easy-chair of a Swanston St. hypnotherapist suite, gazing
intently into a bright, but distant red light, while chanting the
mantra "I am not cynical about hypnotherapy. I am not cynical about
hypnotherapy. I am not cynical about an Indian doctor with a 5th
floor office decorated coup'd'Edelstien. I'm not cynical about a
man who claims that his foremost clientele are rich middle aged women
who have put their jewellery somewhere "safe" and consequently
are unable to recall the location. I'm not cynical about a
hypnotist who extols the virtues of having a M.D. so his patients
can claim 2/3rds of the cost of these jewellery retrieval sessions
under Medicare. I'm not cynical that these middle aged women are
infact suffering from some form of Mesmer complex. And by all the
powers in Heaven, I have no pessimism about recalling my god-damned
pass-phrase!".
I never did remember the pass-phrase and you will notice Gutei
keeps very quiet about what he does with the novice's finger. In
this particular case, given the value of the data, I would have
traded placed with Gutei's novice, before you can say "Boy! Was I
enlightened".
I put my chin on my knee, and stare at the grain of my beige
plastic monitor case. Unless I could jump into another reality
it was the end of the line for _Proffs_ and _One Man's Search
for a Cryptographic Mythology_. Boy! Was I bummed.
One of the great sins of us programmers is procedural thinking.
And it was exactly this sort of folly I was engaging in. There were
around 6 billion other realities going about their business. I
grant you that 2 billion of these were no doubt indulging in the
confusion and diffusion of an avalanche of pseudo-random mental
images and sequences we associate with dreams, and probably another
2 billion busy expanding their minds with the powerful products of
hash or decaying into a compressive state of increasing entropy
and beer rounds. This still left a select 2 billion souls with
which to weave my work. If I approached them directly rather than
by analysing the information trails they left behind, I'd stand a
good chance of getting my feet onto the path of cryptographic
mythological enlightenment.
I have a Swedish friend who calls himself Elk on odd days and
Godflesh on even days. Don't ask why. As far as I know he's not
bisexual. Elk listened to my quest for cryptographic myth. He
had pondered, and uncovered a diamond in the rough. MARUTUKKU.
The third name is MARUTUKKU, Master of the arts of protection,
chained the Mad God at the Battle. Sealed the Ancient Ones in
their Caves, behind the Gates.
F a r o u t. Master of the arts of protection. Chained the Mad
God. Sealed the Ancient Ones in their Caves, behind the Gates.
Even the very word MARUTUKKU looks like it has been run through a
product cipher.
But I wasn't about to trust the work of a self-admitted Swedish
Sumeria freak who was obviously suffering from a bi-polar moniker
disorder. Was it mere coincidence that MARUTUKKU was an anagram
for KUKU MART and KUKU TRAM? I didn't want MARUTUKKU to end up as
another cog in the annals of Freudian analogy. What I
needed was the sort of Authoritative History that only Princeton's
history faculty could provide. The tablets of the Enuma Elish:
The Akkadian Creation Epic
Based on the translation of E. A. Speiser, with the additions
by A. K. Grayson, Ancient Near-Eastern Texts Relating to the
Old Testament, third edition, edited by James Pritchard (Princeton,
1969), pp. 60-72; 501-503, with minor modifications.
This work, the ancient Mesopotamian creation epic consisting of
seven tablets, tells of the struggle between cosmic order and
chaos. It is named after its opening words. It was recited on
the fourth day of the ancient Babylonian New Year's festival.
The text probably dates from the Old Babylonian period, i.e.,
the early part of the second millennium B.C.E.
[...]
The third name is MARUTUKKU Master of the arts of protection,
chained the Mad God at the Battle. Sealed the Ancient Ones in
their Caves, behind the Gates.
[...]
MARUTUKKU truly is the refuge of his land, city, and people.
Unto him shall the people give praise forever.
All praise the MARUTUKKU! My search had born a ripe and tasty
fruit indeed. The quest for a cryptographic mythology was
complete. Or was it? The words of Hume kept coming back to me
and I had a nagging feeling that there was some substance in
them.
If MARUTUKKU was my exquisite cryptographic good, of wit, effusive
joy, ravishing pleasure and flattering hope; then where was the
counter point? The figure to its ground - the sharper evil, the
madness, the melancholy, the most cruel lassitudes and disgusts
and the severest disappointments. Was Hume right? Because if he
was, there was only one organisation this string of hellish adjectives
could represent. The cryptographic devil with its 500,000 sq feet
of office space in Maryland. But surely there could be no reference
to such an organisation in the 4,000 year old Babylonian tablets.
The idea was preposterous. Wasn't it?
TABLET VII OF THE ENUMA ELISH:
ESIZKUR shall sit aloft in the house of prayer;
May the gods bring their presents before him, that from
him they may receive their assignments; none can without
him create artful works. Four black-headed ones are
among his creatures; aside from him no god knows the
answer as to their days.
It's a cold and wintry night, here in Melbourne. Despite this, the
gusts of wind and rain seem to be unusually chilling. What had I,
in my search for a cryptographic mythology, stumbled onto?
I look hard at the seven letters E-S-I-Z-K-U-R. A frown turns to
a smile and then a dead pan stare. I write down:
IRK ZEUS
--
Prof. Julian Assange |If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people
|together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks
proff(a)iq.org |and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless
proff(a)gnu.ai.mit.edu |immensity of the sea. -- Antoine de Saint Exupery
