Archetypal Archons

…I was hovering bodiless out in the middle of space, staring down at the earth, surrounded by a bunch of Older and Wiser invisible beings who talked to me in my head. I noticed that the earth was surrounded by these things that looked like enormous, greasy black snakes with heads huge and round like opium poppies. They seemed to be strangling the atmosphere of the little blue planet. “What are the snake things?” I asked. “Greed,” the… voices said. I noticed that nearly the whole planet was coiled around with these writhing snakes like fisted arms…” ((Wilson, Cintra. A Massive Swelling: Celebrity Re-Examined as a Grotesque Crippling Disease and Other Cultural Revelations. Penguin Books, 2001. 213-14.))