Same Code, New Skin

More about Same Code, New Skin

I first came across the Metternich Stone in Pygmy Kitabu by Jean-Pierre Hallet, where he puts forward his provocative idea that all Caucasians ultimately evolved from pygmy origins. Whether taken literally or not, it framed the stone for me as something alive with transformation—biological, symbolic, and mythic.

On the front of the stela, Horus stands poised on crocodiles, gripping serpents and dangerous creatures in both hands. It’s an image of control over chaos, of a child mastering forces that would normally devour a man. Above his head sits Bes, whom Hallet interprets as a pygmy figure wearing a beard mask—half guardian, half performer, something ancient and bodily rather than abstract.

Along the left side, the hieroglyphic sequence begins again with Bes and trails into a procession of reptilian deities, as if evolution itself were being told sideways in symbols—scaled, shifting, pre-human. The whole surface reads like a compressed cosmology: danger, protection, metamorphosis.

On the reverse, the tone shifts into something more procedural, almost medicinal. A sequence known as the “seven cures” for scorpion stings unfolds from right to left. At the edge of it, an old man becomes young again. Not metaphorically—visually. Age reverses. Time folds. The body resets. The promise is explicit: poison can be undone, decay reversed.

That same strange visual logic echoes later in Moonchild by Aleister Crowley. There, the image of a figure riding over crocodilian forces reappears, transformed into a psychic weapon. Crowley casts himself as a kind of conquering horror—a thought-form that sweeps in to dismantle the workings of rival magicians, the “necromancers” he opposed. The ancient symbol becomes modern psychological warfare.

What struck me is the continuity. The Metternich Stone isn’t just an artifact; it’s a machine of images that keeps resurfacing. A child mastering beasts. A dwarf-god watching overhead. Reptilian sequences hinting at origins. And always the same underlying promise: transformation is possible—but it comes through confrontation with something venomous, something that must be handled, not avoided.