The Cosmic Puppets

Barb Mourningchild

When I first read The Cosmic Puppets a few years ago I thought it lacked the depth of PKD's later novels. Being his first novel I thought it natural that it would contain less intellectual diversions and hidden symbolism than his later works. I was wrong. It turned out to be a philosophical maze. The story depicts the history of Western dualist thought from its origins in ancient Zoroastrianism to the modern day dialectical theories. Dick created a story that reflects the religions and ideologies of our society, a story of our reality as it would be if these ideologies were taken literally and objectively.

Structurally, the story is hinged on the Zoroastrian myth of two archetypal beings, one good and the other evil. This myth expresses the dual nature of human perception and includes our persistent hope for a Savior who will abolish evil and make a heaven on earth. I believe Dick felt Zoroastrianism to be the origin of dualistic ideology because The Cosmic Puppets, being the effigy of dualism, is rooted in this myth.

We know that Dick meant for us to compare the story with the myth because he had the character of Dr. Meade give a brief summary of the myth when he described his interpretation and understanding of the situation in Millgate. According to Dr. Meade there are two opposing spirits: Ormazd is the spirit of light and good - the builder. Ahriman is the spirit of darkness and evil - the wrecker. Ormazd creates and Ahriman distorts. These two entities have agreed to spend thousands of years fighting each other for control of Creation.

At some point in their struggle Ahriman rent the sky and came to earth. The sky closed and he found himself trapped in the material universe until the end of time. Ormazd, arriving later, then cast Ahriman and his demons into a hell in the center of the earth. But it was too late. Creation was already corrupt and distorted by Ahriman and he remains within the material realm to continue his abominable work until the resurrection of the Final Body when all is made good once more. This myth, which is similar to the Christian Armageddon, is the basic plot of The Cosmic Puppets.

The Creation myth is allegorized at the beginning of the story where Mary, the daughter of Dr. Meade, creates animals out of clay. Then Peter Trilling comes along and distorts her creation. This is how the Zoroastrian myth starts, with the Creator creating and the Destroyer destroying.

There is a daughter in the myth, but this daughter doesn't match the character of Mary. Another female character in the myth, Spand-Armatis, is Ormazd's wife. She has the multi-faceted role of wife, mother, and daughter. Spand-Armatis, or Mary, represents the typical feminine attributes of nature or Mother Earth, the regenerative force.

Mary is versatile. In the end she becomes fluid and everlasting. Dick gave much to this character, making her encompass all facets of the female essence. He eliminated any negative connotations completely. He was kind to woman, giving her image respect.

The myth tells of the whore who lures Ahriman into the final battle with Ormazd. In their appropriation of the myth, the Jews and Christians gave the term a negative connotation. This led to woman being blamed for starting the battle between good and evil. Instead of questioning the existence of evil, they stopped short at the translation of the word "whore" and made Eve guilty of the fall of man. They did not go on to acknowledge the outcome of the cosmic battle which brought about the resurrection of the Final Body, the heaven on earth.

Dick, with the character of Mary, changes this image of woman, going beyond the biases of the predominant Western ideals. He saw that although the woman was called whore in the Zoroastrian myth, she was a positive force for humanity. Without her Ahriman never would have been defeated. He would have remained in the material realm and continued to distort everything. In realizing this, Dick removed the burden placed on woman by the Judeo-Christian ideology which blames her for the fall. Dick set woman free from original sin and put her in a more proper perspective.

Ted Barton, the protagonist in the story, is Gayomart, the Blessed Man, Christ. He is also something else. He is the natural man, the man who is not contaminated by the change that reified Millgate. He is man before the fall, the non-reified man who was not present when the change or reification took place. He is free from the original assumptions and biases of those who are distorted.

Dick expressed other philosophical and sociological ideas in this story. The main theme is the history of the dualistic concept. The Zoroastrian myth is used as the basic skeleton of the book and expresses the dualistic ideology of Western religions. The philosophical dualism, the dialectic theories, emerge with the interactions in the story. Just as our philosophical thought has expanded from its origins, the storyline changes to encompass and address the dualism of today.

There are many dualist and dialectic theories. Dick probably studied them all. I have chosen Hegel as my reference because he is the one with whom I am most familiar.

Hegel developed a method which he applied to the mind, whereby consciousness in realizing itself abolishes itself by creating its own negation, and as a result passes into a higher mode of unity with its opposite. Eventually the human spirit and the world spirit, out of the act of definite negation, will evolve to a state of absolute knowledge or pure truth.

The dialectic method by which an idea (thesis) is challenged by its opposite (antithesis), then reconciled into a new idea (synthesis) was applied by Hegel to both the human spirit and the world spirit. Hegel believed the human spirit and the world spirit have evolved together through a dialectical history of conflict and synthesis to become refined as an existence of absolute knowledge. In essence, this is the same as the Zoroastrian and Judeo-Christian beliefs in two opposing forces battling until a new and better world evolves.

The Cosmic Puppets symbolizes this process of dialectic history. It represents the struggle of consciousness as it tries to transcend the objective false reality and replace it with the ideal subjective reality. Ormazd is the thesis, Ahriman the antithesis, and the Millgate Ted Barton remembers the synthesis. The definite negation is all the action in Millgate which leads to the realization of the pure truth when Dr. Meade transforms into the symbol of absolute knowledge, Ormazd. When Dick describes this transformation, he mentions the husk of Meade's human form left behind. Meade has transformed into the God of Light. By having Ormazd taking Barton up with him, he takes our consciousness into this realm of pure thought where it dangles in the ultimate creative space.

At this point, held by his heel in space, Barton experiences Christ consciousness. He is become the Hanged Man of the tarot, the crucified Christ. He is made aware of the sacred energy that pulses through all existence. The unconscious is now made conscious. Dick has awakened both the human spirit and the world spirit to true consciousness. He has turned around society's values and brought equilibrium to the duality in reality. Out of the negation came the true reality, undistorted.

Dick depicts the conflict we experience between subjective and objective reality most clearly when Ted Barton first enters Millgate and finds his subjective memory is different from the Millgate he experienced in objective reality. The characters are continually faced with this dilemma, especially the Wanderers. They are outcasts from Ahriman's distortion and spend their lives trying to bring back the memory of their objective reality. They have a lot of trouble living in the distortion. They must close their eyes to blot it out and count their steps. The Wanderers represent the thought processes of our mind. They are lost, confused, and distorted. They search in a blind void for absolute knowledge, the true reality, but they can't remember it.

The philosophy of Marx is the next step in the history of dualist thought. A resemblance to Marxism in The Cosmic Puppets is apparent. Dick went beyond Marxism. Although Dick does not address the socio-economic class conflict as the dialectic force at work in our reality, he doesn't ignore the economic factor altogether. He uses it as part of the distortion.

The part of the real Millgate Barton misses most is the park. This has significance, as the park is a symbol of the Garden of Eden, the paradise before the fall. In the distorted Millgate the park is replaced by old, rotting and deserted stores, the symbols of the old structure of capitalism. To bring back the park was an important step in bringing back the true reality. It was the first step. Dick felt we should replace the old rotting capitalist structure with something natural. With this symbolic transformation he acknowledges the part capitalism plays in distorting reality, and the importance of replacing it. He knows that the larger conflict is between our idea of what reality should be and the objective reality we experience.

What Dick did with Zoroastrianism, Marx did with Hegel. He brought the myth into reality. Where Hegel used abstract and historical ideas to support his dialectic method, Marx applied the method to the reality of capitalist industrialization. He turned Hegel's ideological theory from abstract concepts of spirit and thought into the experienced reality of capitalism.

When Dick made the gods human and alive, he brought the Zoroastrian myth into the reality of the story. When the gods became real, the subjective united with the objective. The myth now existed. It was real. This is where Dick was exceptionally creative with his scenario. The gods exist on one level as omnipotent deities and on another level as humans.

The deity Ahriman is Peter Trilling, a small boy. He is afraid. He creates things that harm others. He has no self-realization. He is just there to distort. Although he seems harmless and vulnerable, he is very powerful. This character represents the existing social structure. He is the monster that nips at our heels while we are fighting to free ourselves from its domain. He is humanity not yet aware of absolute knowledge or true consciousness. The distortion he created is the false reality of false consciousness. The people of Millgate whose reality is this distortion are the bourgeois who perpetuate the illusion of false consciousness.

Dick shows two types of reified consciousness in the story. Dr. Meade, the rest of the distortions, Will Christopher, and the Wanderers are crude empiricists trying to live and adjust to the distortion. Peter is the abstract utopian. He, along with his golems, rats, spiders, and snakes represents the capitalists of Big Business, their politicians and their enforcers. Strangely enough, Mary, too, is an abstract utopian; only her power to master the motion of objects is not meaningless. This reveals a quality in the nature of abstract utopianism that others have missed.

Will Christopher represents both the will of the workers and the lumpen proletariat - Marx's "refuse of all classes," the unemployed, the displaced and dispossessed. Will used to have his own business before the change and is, then, one of the petty bourgeoisie who have lost their small businesses due to Big Business predation. He was also an electrician, a skilled worker, and represents all the unemployed workers. He then becomes one of the homeless, degenerating as he tries to live in the distorted society.

Will, although a drunken bum living in a cardboard box, knows that his world is distorted and that he is too. He has class consciousness. He lives within the false reality of false consciousness. Conscious of the distortion, he is unable to create the true reality. He develops the "Spell Remover," a device to bring back the true reality, then finds that it doesn't work either. With this example Dick is telling us that our technologies are useless in effecting the change.

Ted Barton had to work with Will Christopher before he could bring back a substantial part of the old, non-reified reality. Together they brought back the park. The symbol of the working force and the lumpen proletariat, Will Christopher must unite with true consciousness, Ted Barton, before he can turn back capitalism. Will had the desire to bring back Millgate; he just needed the true consciousness to help him do it.

Dr. Meade represents the intelligentsia. He knows about the change but does nothing to turn it back. He recognizes the contradiction and he tries to help the victims of the false reality, the Wanderers, but he does not want to change the social structure which created the Wanderers in the first place. He accepts the false reality because he lives comfortably within it.

Dick shows us that the intelligentsia are the most important agent of the change. He makes them the god of light. He places human destiny in their hands. There comes a point in the story where everything was failing. Even Ted Barton, the non-reified man, was losing control of reality. They were all being defeated. Their only hope was that Dr. Meade would realize who he really was; otherwise the battle was lost. But Meade did not want to become aware of his true identity because it meant his own demise. The intelligentsia do not want to realize their role in bringing about a new reality because they fear a loss of status. The catalyst that makes Meade realize that he must give up the false reality is the death of Mary - Mother Earth. When Ted Barton confronts him with his true identity he cannot deny it. When the intelligentsia are confronted with true consciousness, they will no longer be able to cling to the false reality.

When the true reality is realized and the old distortion abolished, things change to the way they would have been if the reification had not taken place. Will Christopher does not remember Ted at the end of the story. Consciousness, in eliminating Ahriman or evil, has no memory of it having existed. Evil is no longer conscious to us.

The Cosmic Puppets was written to show historical dialectics in action. In a sense our ideology is a definite negation of our civilization. Our reality contradicts the democratic ideals of freedom and equality. In essence Dick shows how philosophical ideologies fit in with our modern reality. The battle between good and evil occurs in human and abstract forms. Although socio-economic conflict theory is similar, Dick depicts the conflict as being between a distorted social structure and true consciousness. The battle is fought for control of the earth. When the battle is won, the earth will be rejuvenated and society reconstructed.