The Poet

Readers familiar with this magazine know the origins of the name. If you are new to the magazine, check out what I've included below. However, I have also discovered that there was an actual man named Pan Ku. He was a historian and poet who lived from 32-92 a.d. in China. He was a member of the upper class but never seems to have risen to a level of prominence that might have been expected. He was known as a man of great intellect and a scholar. As a historian, he was noted for his work, History of the Former Han Dynasty. Most important for us is his poetry, but especially his work Fu on the Two Capitals. According to Ernest R. Hughes, a Fu was a combination of essay and poetry. In this work, Pan Ku describes in detail the two capitals of the Han Dynasty, the Western Capital and, after a shift in power and location, the Eastern Capital. The work is much more than mere description, however. Hughes states that Pan Ku meant to give legitimacy to the new capital (and regime) by showing how it was an improvement over the old one; however, there were some elements which were not improvements, and Pan Ku seems to use both irony and some satire in his descriptions. Without being able to read Chinese, I must accept the criticisms of Pan Ku's work and intentions. It sounds like it is much akin to both Virgil's Aeneid and Dante's Divine Comedy. We do know that the politics of the times played a large part in Pan Ku's status within the empire. He ended up in prison where Hughes tells us he died before his family could get him out. In his criticism of the Fu, Hughes says something that I found quite interesting as it is the answer to a question that I had raised about the nature of a literary/arts magazine, and P'an Ku specifically.

There was in the Later Han period the clearest consciousness among scholars that, as the ancient Book of Odes revealed the ethos of that less developed society, so the poetical writings of every age, and more particularly their own, were a touchstone of its real ethos in all its heights and depths. In a word--and using a Han image of speech--literature, that is imaginative literature, is the mirror of its age. (84)

The poets and artists who contribute to P'an Ku have much in common with the original poet. They, too, are creating a record of their time. Some times they praise it, and sometimes they criticize it. They are holding up a mirror to our time, which will become a cultural history for future times. If anyone reading this comes across anything else about the work of our namesake, please share it with me. Pan Ku, we salute you.

Hughes, Ernest R. Two Chinese Poets: Vignettes of Han Life and Thought. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1960.

The Diety

The following explanations have come from various websites. Their sources used to be indicated so that you could explore them yourself and to give their research credit. Eventually, none of the links still worked. The information remains.

First there was the Great Cosmic Egg. Inside the egg was chaos. Floating in the chaos was P'an Ku, the undeveloped divine embryo. Huai-nan Tzu, China 100 BC

P'an Ku is a great titan who appears in Chinese myth several centuries after the earliest records of Nu-kua. He was born when sky and earth were separated at creation: P'an means coiled and Ku means antiquity. On his death his body parts gave rise to the different parts and inhabitants of the universe: his body lice became humans. The myth of a great god or titan whose body parts give rise to the 'ten thousand things' is archetypal and found in many cultures world wide. Birrell (1993) believes this myth originated in southwest Asia among a non-Chinese people.

According to Chinese tradition, the Chinese people originated in the Huang He (Hwang Ho or Yellow River) valley. The legends tell of a creator, P'an Ku, who was succeeded by a series of heavenly, terrestrial, and human sovereigns. Archaeological evidence is scant, although remains of Homo erectus, found near Beijing, have been dated back 460,000 years. Rice was grown in eastern China circa 5500 bc, and about five centuries later an agricultural society developed in the Huang He valley. There is strong evidence of two so-called pottery cultures, the Yang-shao culture (circa 3950- circa 1700 bc), and the Lung-shan culture (circa 2000- circa 1850 bc).

Dr. Robert Crowley

P'an Ku created the universe out of the primordial chaos. P'an Ku was the offspring of yin and yang, the dual powers of nature. He assisted in his great labors by the unicorn, the phoenix, the tortoise, and the dragon. P'an Ku spent 18,000 years creating the sun, the moon, the stars, the heavens, and the earth. He put all things in the lower world in order, but neglected to set the sun and moon on proper courses through the sky. So, the sun and moon went down into the Han Sea and left the world in darkness. The Terrestrial Emperor sent an officer, Terrestrial Time, to order the Sun and Moon to move through the heavens and create day and night. They refused. The situation required the divine intervention of Buddha. At Buddha's direction, P'an Ku wrote the character for "sun" on his left hand and the character for "moon" on his right. He went to the Han Sea. He raised his right hand and called the Moon, then raised his left hand and called the Sun. He repeated a charm seven times. The Sun and Moon rose into the sky, and divided day and night.

But...Chaos is also an enormous chicken's egg. Inside it P'an-Ku is born & grows for 18,000 years--at last the egg opens up, splits into sky & earth, yang & yin. Now P'an-Ku grows into a column that holds up the universe--or else he becomes the universe (breath-->wind, eyes-->sun & moon, blood & humors-->rivers & seas, hair & lashes-->stars & planets, sperm-->pearls, marrow-->jade, his fleas-->human beings, etc.)

Or else he becomes the man/monster Yellow Emperor. Or else he becomes Lao Tzu, prophet of Tao. In fact, poor old Hun Tun is the Tao itself. "Nature's music has no existence outside things. The various apertures, pipes, flutes, all living beings together make up nature. The "I" cannot produce things & things cannot produce the "I," which is self-existent. Things are what they are spontaneously, not caused by something else. Everything is natural & does not know why it is so. The 10,000 things have 10,000 different states, all in motion as if there were a True Lord to move them--but if we search for evidence of this Lord we fail to find any." (Kuo Hsiang)

Every realized consciousness is an "emperor" whose sole form of rule is to do nothing to disturb the spontaneity of nature, the Tao. The "sage" is not Chaos itself, but rather a loyal child of Chaos--one of P'an-Ku's fleas, a fragment of flesh of Tiamat's monstrous son. "Heaven and Earth," says Chuang Tzu, "were born at the same time I was, & the 10,000 things are one with me."

Ontological Anarchism tends to disagree only with the Taoists' total quietism. In our world Chaos has been overthrown by younger gods, moralists, phallocrats, banker-priests, fit lords for serfs. If rebellion proves impossible then at least a kind of clandestine spiritual jihad might be launched. Let it follow the war-banners of the anarchist black dragon, Tiamat, Hun Tun.

Chaos never died