Silo and Salva, Madrid, January 1996

FROM A CONVERSATION BETWEEN SILO AND SALVATORE, MADRID, JANUARY 1996
Personal notes from Silo’s commentaries on the theme of “the calling of the Gods.”

In the first place Silo commented on different rites like the Day of the Dead in Mexico, where the world of the dead is connected with the world of the living. The most specific example is that of Carnaval, where the dead return to visit the living, in boats – “water carriages,” carrus navalis, from which we get Car-naval… with great mother-of-pearl shell, apparently an allegory for something that fell from the sky, from the stars, and was jealously guarded.

In Carnaval the dead and the living mix. But in the end the dead must return and sometimes it is is necessary to throw them out, because they don’t want to go. If in another moment some living human being wants to visit the dead, he must pay the entrance fee, and it remains to be seen whether he can pay the price. Even if his payment is accepted, there is no guarantee that his guide will bring him to the world he wants to visit.

The conversation continues on the theme of time. One thing is normal, spatial time, which we know, and another thing is time itself, vital time, the time of the gods. The gods move in a totally different time, the gods are not only free, they are arbitrary. They have neither laws nor predictability, their relationship with human beings is defined by something that is more aesthetic than moral. In other words, the gods relate with human beings because it pleases them.

The gods shun darkness. This point is important because what makes the difference between hell and other planes is hope. In hell, as Dante described it, all hope is lost (remember “the gates of Hell”).
In other words, despair is hell. At the same time, the ascent means hope.
The god of time has two faces, one showing human, spatial time, and the other showing time itself, the time of the gods. There are opportunities when it is possible to connect with the gods (with time itself).

There are moments when a human being can produce a great internal silence. This internal silence is tense, it is a listening expectancy, waiting for the answer that may come. Sometimes when this silence is deep, the answer is produced and it is possible to connect with another plane.
It could happen than many people or even all people might produce this internal silence, this expectancy, this call, without realizing that they are doing it. It could happen that they would be waiting for something non-specific, in a waiting without “object” or precise image.
The whole planet could be launched into this expectancy without knowing that it is calling; that is why we sometimes say “the gods are approaching.”

ON THE CIRCUITS OF THE BRAIN
One might ingenuously believe, as the “scholars” tell us, that art and religion can be explained by vital needs. For example, the cave paintings, the famous bison, can be explained by the hunters’ need to carry out certain rites that would assure them food.

But one cannot explain Mozart simply by the hunt. Religion and art can instead be explained by the human need to develop new cerebral circuits. One can verify how circuits are activated by means of a scanner that shows how the blood flows at one point or another in the brain depending on whether one is engaged one activity or another (including the activity generated by the emotions), but only art and religion activate new circuits.

THE SUBJECT OF THE GODS AND HOPE
It seems that in any act there is a special moment of waiting for its object, and now there is this kind of climate in a generalized form all around the planet. Maybe the Gods are presenting themselves because there is this special expectancy, this hope. As in the story of Pandora, the last thing that is lost is hope. But when hope is lost, when we encounter despair, we have a climate like that of hell. We are at the gates of hell. According to Dante, in the Divine Comedy, this phrase is inscribed over the gates of Hell: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”

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