Anna Nicole Smith & The Other Goddess Worship

So, I’m coming very late, as far as the “blogging”-world goes, to commenting (and there have been some powerful comments) on the death of Anna Nicole Smith , her lifeless cheek even now being readied for a scraping as various parties fight over the DNA of her daughter and the fate of her fortunes:

Circuit Judge Larry Seidlin said he wanted to make sure all samples were taken before Smith was buried, so her body wouldn’t have to be exhumed.

“When we bury her, I want it to be forever,” he said in the second day of an emergency hearing. [emphasis added]

But what this all feels like to me, is the mere cover for something else, something much more ancient.

Here in the U.S., there are those who tend to believe that we have somehow evolved beyond certain so-called “primitive” rituals. Whether these individuals think of this nation of ours as a “christian” one or a “secular-humanist one,” they find agreement of thought in this regard. Nevermind that the “secular-humanist” and “christian” maps of our country appear as false idols given us to choose from while other, deeper, perspectives get pushed off the table. There are simply certain rites that we no longer take part in, it is agreed. We’ve conquered these things and never need to bother thinking of them. One such ritual is human blood sacrifice.

Certainly, we hear tales, some with more or less evidence, for human sacrifice at, say, Bohemian Grove or in some secret enclave where dark magicians can meet shielded from profane eyes . But the kind of human sacrifice I see in the case of Anna Nicole Smith is that old Golden Bough kind, the kind James Shelby Downard reacquaints us with in his theories about JFK (see King-Kill/33°).

From Ch.59 of the Golden Bough:

The honour of living for a short time in the character of a god and dying a violent death in the same capacity was not restricted to men in Mexico; women were allowed, or rather compelled, to enjoy the glory and to share the doom as representatives of goddesses. Thus at a great festival in September, which was preceded by a strict fast of seven days, they sanctified a young slave girl of twelve or thirteen years, the prettiest they could find, to represent the Maize Goddess Chicomecohuatl. They invested her with the ornaments of the goddess, putting a mitre on her head and maize-cobs round her neck and in her hands, and fastening a green feather upright on the crown of her head to imitate an ear of maize. This they did, we are told, in order to signify that the maize was almost ripe at the time of the festival, but because it was still tender they chose a girl of tender years to play the part of the Maize Goddess.

Now, there’s not a total one-to-one correspondence. Some things in the passage are particular to the specific culture to which the ritual in Frazer’s passage belongs. And in a post-agricultural society, the role of sacrificial goddess (or god) representation doesn’t necessarily connect to ensuring a bountiful harvest of non-symbolic crops. However, in our hyper-mediated, Spectacular Society, I might suggest that the harvest to be ensured is a yield of energy from the masses, channeled in an unthreatening form, coupled with economic prosperity–not for the ruled but for the ranks of priests and rulers.

What really strikes me in that special Phil Dickian way about the old Aztec sacrifice and the parallel rite in our culture is in the selection of the goddess. She’s a “young, slave girl”–one to whom this honor really would be the best she could ever hope to get in life, however short-lived.  It’s a prize she’d probably be indoctrinated to desire from a very, very early age. And while Vickie Lynn Marshall (the future Anna Nicole Smith) may not have been the stereotypical slave in chains and ankle restraints, you can argue that she was a an economic one.

Born poor in Texas, her biological father left when she was three, and her mother (who went on to re-marry quite a few times) raised her with the help of an aunt. She dropped out of high school as a sophmore, having failed her freshman year and “never progressing past an 8th-grade education.” It’s no wonder that a pretty girl of the underclass might find herself imprinting on the dream of being the next Marilyn Monroe, not knowing that the reality behind that dream was that of the next in a long, line of slave girls of “tender years” chosen to “play the part of the goddess.” Certainly it would look to beat life working at Jim’s Krispy Fried Chicken and bring far more positive glamour and feeling of agency, however fleeting, than the role of nightclub stripper. So just as the orphan Norma Jeane Mortensen was chosen to become Marilyn Monroe, Vicki Lynn Marshall was symbolically chosen (by the Pan-esque Hugh Hefner no less) to become Anna Nicole.

But no matter how beloved a temple goddess may be, she will only ever be a representation for the masses and even then, only for a season. And when her youth and tenderness threaten to leave her, then the sacrifice comes.

Again from Ch.59 of the Golden Bough:

…The multitude being assembled, the priests solemnly incensed the girl who personated the goddess; then they threw her on her back on the heap of corn and seeds, cut off her head, caught the gushing blood in a tub, and sprinkled the blood on the wooden image of the goddess, the walls of the chamber, and the offerings of corn, peppers, pumpkins, seeds, and vegetables which cumbered the floor. [emphasis added.]

Though it may seem a remote similarity, the description of the tub that catches the blood of the sacrificial goddess, makes for a connection with both the bathtub in which Marilyn Monroe died and also the report that the night of her death, suffering from an intense fever, Anna Nicole Smith needed to take an ice bath. Other than reports that she was found in her hotel room, I wonder if she in fact died in that tub.

Again, from Ch. 59:

After that, they flayed the headless trunk, and one of the priests made shift to squeeze himself into the bloody skin. Having done so they clad him in all the robes which the girl had worn; they put the mitre on his head, the necklace of golden maize-cobs about his neck, the maize-cobs of feathers and gold in his hands; and thus arrayed they led him forth in public, all of them dancing to the tuck of drum, while he acted as fugleman, skipping and posturing at the head of the procession as briskly as he could be expected to do, incommoded as he was by the tight and clammy skin of the girl and by her clothes, which must have been much too small for a grown man…… Lastly, the concluding act of the sacred drama, in which the body of the dead Maize Goddess was flayed and her skin worn, together with all her sacred insignia, by a man who danced before the people in this grim attire, seems to be best explained on the hypothesis that it was intended to ensure that the divine death should be immediately followed by the divine resurrection. If that was so, we may infer with some degree of probability that the practice of killing a human representative of a deity has commonly, perhaps always, been regarded merely as a means of perpetuating the divine energies in the fulness of youthful vigour, untainted by the weakness and frailty of age, from which they must have suffered if the deity had been allowed to die a natural death.[emphasis added]

Anna was 39 and for all the surgery and Trimspa in the world, she was aging. The bloom was off the flower. She was no longer young. Similarly, Marilyn Monroe, 36 at her death, though still beautiful, was well past the “tender age” at which slave girls are chosen to play the goddess. (And we can also compare Vera Jayne Palmer aka Jayne Mansfield, dead at 34, in a car crash that, by certain accounts, left her decapitated or scalped.)

Whether or not any evidence of foul play ever appears in the death of Anna Nicole Smith, our Spectacular Age doesn’t necessarily require the presence of a physical priest-butcher at the scene to wear the skins of the dead woman, once-goddess, though if one presents himself, it wouldn’t appear surprising. No, these days, with the powers of high-tech electronic-trance induction and dark hypnosis afforded to the unseen priests of the methods of control, you only need the sacrificial goddess imprint to hit its mark and the girl who believes she’s chosen her role freely will take care of the rest, dutifully playing the part to the final bloody curtain.

`”When we bury her, I want it to be forever.”

And it will be, Judge Larry Seidlen. But the goddess will live on without her, in all her multi-forms because her role will continue to be offered; and beautiful, young girls of lowly status will continue to accept it ( and to their detriment, lest they learn to play priestesses). And the priests and rulers will maintain their prosperity, to our detriment, so long as we remain hungry for the spectacular sacrifices they offer for our consumption. And our hunger will remain so long as we stay unaware of the nature of the rites behind the merely superficial ones we think we’re witnessing and  unaware of who it is who is feeding what to whom.  That requires us regaining our memory of certain things that have never been gone, but most definitely have been forgotten.

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