James Kushman And The Bible

Thursday, December 9, 2010

Sacrifice

"There is a part of me that works much quicker than any other part. It knows before anything can be explained, and it understands when everything says no. It is with me and at times without me."

I rightly don't know what to say. I don't really care anymore. I'm so lost in oblivion and ready for something new, something to take hold--force myself down its throat. I want pain, I want suffering, anything but this endless sacrifice. I want to just give up-move away from everything and everyone--just get away.

But from what?

The more I think about dropping out this semester the more I think of what I'm dropping out of. This blog is titled sacrifice and for a very good reason. That is exactly what this semester has been-sacrifice. And it only seems fitting after the rapture of last semester that things would become dull, they would fizzle down to blank stares the usual groove of things. That is this time, this year, now is a time of learning, great learning, and to due that, to due it well is to sacrifice what everyone else has. To give up parties, and patience. To give up sex and girls. To give up nights of sleep and days in front of the T.V. To give up the gym and my physique. To give up the now now, so that I may show it then. To give up friends, and society.

But what is that last one thing which I will not give up?

What is that one last thing I won't let go of?

Dropping out really makes no sense because the one thing I really want to get away from is the only driving force inside of me. It is the gruel of my meager diet. The Devil and God are raging inside of me. That which pushes me on so much is the exact same thing which holds me back.

But who knows, maybe I'll come back maybe I won't. Depends on what's calling I suppose.

Great thanx to Jon Orsi for being there to talk to throughout classes and the semester (you're my favorite person to bounce ideas off of), Chase you've been great as a deskmate all mythlong. Seth, Alex, and Doug, I've enjoyed our discussions and bullshit after class. Rio, you're always a pleasure. Knox thank you so much for the Unicorn quotes. Za Zen I believe we have yet to finish Frye? Saving Bells, nice new haircut and you are always a breathe of relaxation in the classroom. Angel I'm sorry you couldn't be in class because of your flu, but I've enjoyed your blogs immensely. Ben, you're the film major all the Lit majors look to, and it's been a pleasure chatting with you all semester. Roberto I look forward to our weekly mandates. Mayan thank you for being the little spitfire you are and keeping me on my toes. Michelle, Josh, and Sari it was a blast being in a group with you! Dustin, you and I can do great things together. Good luck to the new Graduate Brittany, enjoy your time off, hopefully you'll still be around for a bit! Thanks to Leubner for his heavily insightful essay on Proust (pronounced with an "eww" not "ooo" as he has reminded me multiple times). And lastly thanks to Shaman Sexson who allows me to go where even I at times frighten myself. You have been like a father to me over the past few years, and it has been a raging and humbling experience.

I hope everyone has a wonderful break, that no one breaks anything, and that I see everyone at the crack of noon for finals.

Jesus and Unicorns- Final Paper

James “the Rat” Kushman

Jesus and Unicorns—Not As Odd As You Might Think

Fall 2010

Biblical Foundations of Literature

LIT 240

Mythologies

LIT 285D

12/1/10

“It is, of course, true that this instrument of the moral regeneration of man from slavery to freedom and to moral perfectibility, which has stood the test of a thousand years, may be turned into a double-edged weapon, so that it may lead some man not to humility and complete self-mastery, but, on the contrary, to the most satanic pride, that is to say, to slavery and not to freedom” (Dostoyevsky 29).

“Ophion and Eurynome ruled over Olympus till they were dethroned by Saturn and Rhea. Milton alludes to them in “Paradise Lost.” He says the heathens seem to have had some knowledge of the temptation and fall of man.

“And fabled how the serpent, whom they called

Ophion, with Eurynome, (the wide—

Encrouaching Eve perhaps,) had first the rule

Of high Olympus, thence by Saturn driven” (Bulfinch 5).

Jesus and Unicorns—Not As Odd As You Might Think

Unicorns in our age are defined as creatures formed with the body of a horse and a giant horn coming out of their head. While this imagining is entertaining, the question arises why have we never seen a Unicorn? A certain belief has arisen that the Unicorn is in fact the Rhinoceros, yet how he arrived in Canaan is still a question that has yet to be answered. Others, such as Christian denominations, will tell you that it is a type of wild ox and yet I have never seen this singular horned wild ox and have yet to find any sufficient evidence of it existing anywhere. The problem still exists that the Unicorn sprouts up in the Bible and according to the decree of the Catholic Church the Bible is inerrant. It seems we have two choices: believe that Unicorns exist, that in fact the bible is inerrant and that we indeed see through a glass so darkly that we can’t even perceive the difference between horses and unicorns; or the second, that unicorns do not exist, and in effect the inerrancy of the Bible is false. I propose a third solution: that Unicorns do and do not exist, that is, they do not exist descriptively, but metaphorically.

Metamorphosis in the Bible

The Biblical Unicorn does not represent the picturesque horse and horn but symbolizes the human being that has ascended, or is in a connection with God. The reason behind the use of the metaphor falls on the fact that it refers to a metamorphoses of the human being into one that sees with “one eye” through connection with God. This metamorphoses in the Old Testament is formed by a sacrifice to God, whereby, if the person has been cleansed into righteousness, enters a covenant, or connection with God. In the New Testament Jesus Christ takes on both the sacrifice and the connection in his death and offers to us this seat of connection, this oneness of sight with God, through a marriage with himself.

“I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these [things].”- Isaiah 45:7

“Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.”-John 8:12

“For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.”- 2 Corinthians 11:2

“The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thy eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thy eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness?”-Matthew 6:22-3

The Christian faith is founded on the belief that Jesus of Nazerath was the Messiah (or Christ) the Old Testament prophesied, and that through his new covenant, the marriage of ourselves to him, we are filled with the light of life. Matthew places great emphasis on the fact that the light is through a singularity of sight that leaves the anti-statement that darkness is to be seen through various sights, or two eyes, or through a duality. Thus the duality of the world is ascended through a union with Christ.

Through the repetitive parallelism of the Bible we see that light is likened to Christ, unity, and peace, while darkness is likened to antichrist (that is, without Christ, and not a singular entity manifested as the opposite of Jesus as common knowledge holds), duality, and evil. While Christians are famous for citing the turn the other cheek parable, The Book of Revelation, with its “double-edged sword” tends to give off the misguided idea that this is not a religion of peace. Yet, with a little more insight into the passages we can understand the “double-edged sword” not as its usual description, but as a metaphor, a symbol of God.

“And he had in his right hand seven stars: and out of his mouth went a sharp twoedged sword: and his countenance [was] as the sun shineth in his strength.”-Revelation 1:16

“And to the angel of the church in Pergamos write; These things saith he which hath the sharp sword with two edges;”- Revelation 2:12

“For the word of God [is] quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and [is] a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”- Hebrews 4:12

“And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God”- Revelations 19:15

“And he hath made my mouth like a sharp sword; in the shadow of his hand hath he hid me”-Isaiah 49:2

The Double-edged Sword

The Double-edged sword is actually a metaphor for the Hebrew letter Yod. Of the twenty-two Biblical Hebrew letters, Yod is the tenth (and can also be stretched in such a way as to be a part of every Biblical Hebrew letter). Its very shape is that of a double-edged sword ("cornishevangilist’s weblog”). It also happens to be the first letter of the Tetragrammaton, other known as the unspeakable name of God, YHVH (הוהי) . YHVH is translated into the King James Bible as “I AM THAT I AM”. Based on the conception that “I think therefore I am” which states that the state of consciousness is being, “I AM THAT I AM” is a pure consciousness, or one that is without the iniquities of forgetting. “I AM THAT I AM” has always been.

Yod can be understood as the beginning consciousness of God. In the letter to Hebrews Paul explains that the word of God (Yod), is sharper than any two-edged sword directly refuting the Primacy of the Act to the Primacy of the Word. He explains that the word is power, and not the sword. For instance, the power to understand these passages in the Bible lies not in the physical descriptive sword, but in the metaphor of it being the Word of God. Not in the act, but in the utterance. Revelation sites twice where the “two-edged” sword comes out of the mouth further arguing that it is in fact a metaphor for the word and not the physical description.

Isaiah’s prophecy listed above is even further more proof that the real “action” is the power of the word. With “And he hath made my mouth like a sharp sword” we see that the prophet aligns himself with a consciousness of God. I utter Yod. I prophecy through an alignment with the consciousness of God. He goes on to say that “in the shadow of his hand hath he hid me” referring to the Kabalistic mnemonic in which the Hebrew alphabet (and the depth of mysteries they entail) is placed into an artificial memory theater which is the hand. Thus Isaiah is saying that he has been turned into a vessel, a medium, a prophet through which the word of God is being spoken. For further evidence look into Psalms 119, under the tenth verse entitled Yodh (and be sure to enjoy that the Psalm has in fact twenty-two verses named after each of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet).

(If you notice YHVH is the root of all of these)

Power of Symbols

The Star of David, made up of two Pythagorean triangles (one facing down, the other up), is also a memory symbol. The image represents on a mystical level patriarchal structure where man is the effeminate, the fallen, the down triangle, and God is the masculine, the ascended man, the up triangle. The mnemonic also holds the entire Biblical Hebrew Alphabet within its structure, something no other alphabet does ("heaven awaits"). From what has been discussed earlier we know that the Power of God is in the word, yet how powerful must that symbol be which holds in it the entirety of God’s alphabet?

“I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, [and] the bright and morning star.”- Revelation 22:6

“We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts:”- 2 Peter 1:19

And again, Esaias saith, There shall be a root of Jesse, and he that shall rise to reign over the Gentiles; in him shall the Gentiles trust.”- Romans 15:12

“And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots”-Isaiah 11:1

“How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! [how] art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!”-Isaiah 14:12

“And one of the elders said to me, Weep not: behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof.”-Revelation 5:5

Once more, we see that the “Power of God” is held within words; though the problem of translation, as in the case of Isaiah’s and Esaias names not matching, has no answer from me, but that we let the quoted text weigh its worth. As for the word Lucifer, which in this day and age has come to represent the devil, I do have a lot to correct. The problem arises with the masterpiece work of John Milton’s Paradise Lost in which Satan and Lucifer are one and the same. While I do believe that Milton is working on an esoteric level that is correct, the misunderstandings that sprout from his work of art lead to a misunderstanding of what is actually being imagined.

Lucifer is actually Latin for “light-bringer” and is translated from the Biblical Hebrew as well as a Greek word with the understanding that they both meant the same thing. This only appears in the Latin Vulgate and not in the English King James Bible. Some Christians, in there unwillingness to deal with certain passages (Ezekiel 28:11-19) that effect their esoteric existence will argue that the Greek word written by Peter had no correlation whatsoever to the Lucifer that Isaiah speaks of. Yet, Isaiah is not speaking of the fall of the Babylon king but is in fact prophesying the life and death of the Christ (Isaiah 14:4-21). The correlation made with Ezekiel 28:11-19 in which both prophets are speaking of the descent of the light is hitting the nail quite on the head. And the connection of “thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire” from Ezekiel 28:14 connecting with this passage from Job is truly beautiful as well:

“Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them. And the Lord said unto Satan, ‘Whence comest thou?’ Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, ‘From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.”-Job 1:6-7

Ezekiel laments of the fall of mankind, and Isaiah the life and death of Christ; both have imagery very similar to each other, which when coupled with the similarities between the paths of man (in Ezekiel) and Satan (in Job) it is not hard to believe that people likened Isaiah’s prophesy to that of one describing the end of the King of Babylon, which it does in the next passages (Isaiah 14:22-27) but again the power is metaphorical and not descriptive of the physical as so many have come to believe. With the fact understood that Lucifer is in fact a reference to Christ, “the root of David” and the “morning star”, we can see that Christ himself is aligned with the same metaphor in which his power comes from Words. He is that from which all God’s words sprout.

Daniel’s Unicorn

The English translation Unicorn stems from the archaic word “Resh-Aleph-Yod-Mem” (Sederholm). Regarding the letter Aleph, Jorge Louis Borges writes in a short story of his

He hesitated, then with that level, impersonal voice we reserve for confiding something intimate, he said that to finish the poem he could not get along without the house because down in the cellar there was an Aleph. He explained that an Aleph is one of the points in space that contains all other points.

"It's in the cellar under the dining room," he went on, so overcome by his worries now that he forgot to be pompous. "It's mine -- mine. I discovered it when I was a child, all by myself. The cellar stairway is so steep that my aunt and uncle forbade my using it, but I'd heard someone say there was a world down there. I found out later they meant an old-fashioned globe of the world, but at the time I thought they were referring to the world itself. One day when no one was home I started down in secret, but I stumbled and fell. When I opened my eyes, I saw the Aleph."

"The Aleph?" I repeated.

"Yes, the only place on earth where all places are -- seen from every angle, each standing clear, without any confusion or blending. I kept the discovery to myself and went back every chance I got. As a child, I did not foresee that this privilege was granted me so that later I could write the poem. Zunino and Zungri will not strip me of what's mine -- no, and a thousand times no! Legal code in hand, Doctor Zunni will prove that my Aleph is inalienable."

I tried to reason with him. "But isn't the cellar very dark?" I said.

"Truth cannot penetrate a closed mind. If all places in the universe are in the Aleph, then all stars, all lamps, all sources of light are in it, too."- (Borges)

Borges goes on to explain that the Aleph is a state and not a place (Orsi). It is something of a metamorphosis based upon the metaphorical, not something you see with two eyes, but with one. A singularity in which everything falls apart and then back together again. This couples strongly with the letter Yod which we discussed earlier as a connection with God. The Unicorn would eventually be transcribed down to Resh-Yod-Yem, and eventually to only Re-em where the Poet Wallace Steven perhaps gained his idea in spelling ice cream with a dash in his poem the Emperor of Ice-cream.

The Unicorn is brought up in Isaiah in quite a turbulence of misunderstanding owing to the fact that the unicorn does not seem prevalent throughout the Bible (Knox). Scholars claim that the Unicorn, or re’em (not re-em, mind you) is a type of wild ox. In the Book of Daniel a one horned male goat just happens to crush a two horned ram:

“and I saw in a vision, and I was by the river of Ulai. Then I lifted up my eyes, and saw, and behold, there stood before the river a ram which had two horns, and the two horns were high: but one was higher than the other, and the higher came up last. I saw the ram pushing westward, and northward, and southward: so that no beasts might stand before him, neither was there any that could deliver out of his hand, but he did according to his will, and became great. And as I was considering, behold, a he-goat came from the west on the face of the whole earth, and touched not the ground: and the goat had a notable horn between his eyes. And he came to the ram that had two horns, which I had seen standing before the river, and ran unto him in the fury of his power. And I saw him come close unto the ramm, and he was moved with choler against him, and smote the ram, and broke his two horns: and there was no power in the ram to stand before him, but he cast him down to the ground, and stamped upon him: and there was none that could deliver the ram out of his hand.”-Daniel

(Notice that east is the only direction without pushing)

“Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him.”- Matthew 2:2

“Therefore the he-goat waxed very great, and when he was strong, the great horn was broken: and for it came up four notable ones toward the four winds of heaven.-Daniel 8

Daniel’s prophecy of the end of the old Covenant (2 horned ram, though by far not its only depth) through Christ’s new covenant (notably horned he-goat) and the sprouting of what is considered the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and, John is evident in the passages listed above. Christ, as well as his four apostles are described as “notable” or “had a notable horn between his eyes” further illuminating the connection between unicorns and a person who is connected, or ascended to God.

Mythological Parallelism

In this downgraded (which is truly an upgrade from our usual mode of understanding) perspective of the working of words on a metaphorical level, instead of a physically descriptive, we can see direct parallel’s in symbolism in Greek Mythology. Take for instance Ovid’s rendition of Achelous and Hercules in his epic poem of Metamorphoses:

“I’d lost as river-god; I’d lost as snake;

All that was left to try was my third shape;

So I became a savage bull and-changed-

Took up the fight again. Upon my left,

He threw his arms around my neck; and as

I ran full speed, he let himself be dragged;

And finally he forced my hard horns down

Into the ground; and in the swirling dust,

He laid me low. But that was not enough;

For as he clutched one horn-and it was tough-

He wrenched it off-he tore it from my brow;

I bear that mutilation still. The Naiads

Filled up that horn with fruits and fragrant flowers;

They made of it a sacred thing. And now

Abundance-gracious goddess-uses this,

The Cornucopia, as her motif.”

The river-god was done; and now a nymph

Dressed like Diana in a tucked-up tunic,

With long hair flowing over both her shoulders,

Came in, to serve us our dessert: the fruits

Of autumn, the exquisite fruits that we

Admired in the ample horn of plenty.

Firstlight has come; and when the mountain peaks

Are struck by rays of sun, the young men leave;

They do not wait until the stream finds peace,

The calm of an untroubled course: they part

Before the flood has beat its full retreat.

And Achelous sinks his rustic face

And head, which lacks one horn, beneath the waves.- Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Bk. IX, 290-1, (Mandelbaum 290-91)

Achelous, whom has the ability to change between snake, man, and, bull aligns itself with metaphors used in the Bible. When Achelous states “I’d lost as snake” we can see the similarity between Eve (effeminate, and not the physically descriptive man) and the serpent who bids her partake of the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The serpent represents a descent, or fall from God, to effeminacy (Eve), or that which is without God. Similarly we see the fall of Achelous saying “I’d lost as river-god” placing himself as one who was above the descent, or fall of man, as Adam and Eve were, to which he metamorphose into his third shape- that of a “savage bull” after the defeat of himself as river-god, as well as snake. Bull’s in Greek mythology (as well as numerous others) and the Bible are constantly symbolized as sacrifices. From what we have delved into earlier we can see that the Bull represents the middle ground between mankind and the highest power. An ascended human, or a unicorn as the bible refers to it, is a person that is in between, in the unity of the sacrifice between mankind and the highest power. In Daniel we see the one horned he-goat that crushes the two horned ram and through this creates a new connection with God. Hercules rips from Achelous a horn which is then held sacred and as a sign of abundance, similarly the notable horn of the he-goat breaks to give birth to the spreading of the gospels, or good news, through Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Northrop Frye in his Words With Power says that the teaching of the Bible is to live life more abundantly. The connection between the two is hard fought to disagree upon.

With Ovid’s line “Firstlight has come” we can see the parallelism between Ovid’s light and that of Mathew 6:22 saying “The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thy eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light”. The only mode of apparent difference is in the biblical “light” and Ovid’s “firstlight.” This is easily overcome with a verse from the apostle Paul in his second letter to the Corinthians:

“I knew a man in Chirst above fourteen years ago, whether in the body, I cannot tell, or whether out of the body, I cannot tell, God knoweth: such a one, caught up to the third heaven. And I knew such a man (whether in the body, our out of the body, I cannot tell, God knoweth), how that he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful a man to utter.”- 2 Corinthians 12:2-4

The Kingdom of Heaven is now, and it is through the ascent to God (through a connection with Christ) that we reach this light, or unicorn status, that is described as being in heaven. Paul shows us that there is multiple understandings, levels, or depths involved in heaven which leaves the statement that there is a firstlight, or first heaven. Ovid continues on using the same imagery of ascension as used variously throughout the Bible saying “and when the mountain peaks are struck by rays of sun” giving off the rudimentary aspect of ascension (via mountain) by light (rays of sun). Continuing on with this metaphor with the philosophical phrase of Heraclitus in mind that “ the road on the way up, and the road on the way down- are the one and the same” we can see Ovid’s depiction of the river as a road of descent or ascension depending upon whether or not it is the those of the “light”, the “singularity”, or that of the “duality”, the broken sight:

“They do not wait until the stream finds peace,

The calm of an untroubled course: they part

Before the flood has beat its full retreat.

And Achelous sinks his rustic face

And head, which lacks one horn, beneath the waves.”

In Conclusion

So does the union exist? Are the words of Ovid’s even translated correctly? Does the tale of Achelous fit into any story? Or was it just a fluke of the Greek mythology? And isn’t the Christian religion one founded on faith and not knowledge? All of these questions and yet so few answers. Someone once said “If I had all the money in the world, I’d study with the Wiseman seven hours a day”. But one thing fun I’ve noticed is that if you take an ear of corn ( a uni-corn as it were), and in stripping it of its skin; if you place the ear upon the backboard and trace it, upon looking at the tracing you see a double-edged sword. Upon further inspection you can actually see a Y and a D on either side of the piece of corn. They say that language is ascertained by children, not learned. It would seem that the Yod, the word of God is also ascertained, unbeknownst to those who seeing, don’t see, and those hearing, that don’t hear. I myself need no proofs–wait–I believe Marcel Proust says it best:

“And I begin again to ask myself what it could have been, this unremembered state which brought with it no logical proof, but the indisputable evidence, of its felicity, its reality, and in whose presence other states of consciousness melted and vanished. I decide to attempt to make it reappear. I retrace my thoughts to the moment at which I drank the first spoonful of tea. I rediscover the same state, illuminated by no fresh light. I ask my mind to make one further effort, to bring back once more the fleeting sensation. And so that nothing may interrupt it in its course I shut out every obstacle, every extraneous idea, I stop my ears and inhibit all attention against the sounds from the next room. And then, feeling that my mind is tiring itself without having any success to report, I compel it for a change to enjoy the distraction which I have just denied it, to think of other things, to rest and refresh itself before making a final effort. And then for the second time I clear an empty space in front of it; I place in position before my mind’s eye the still recent taste of that first mouthful, and I feel something start within me, something that leaves its resting-place and attempts to rise, something that has been embedded like an anchor at a great depth; I do not know yet what it is, but I can feel it mounting slowly; I can measure the resistance, I can hear the echo of great spaces traversed” (Proust 49)

Bibliography

Bulfinch, Thomas. Bulfinch's Mythology. 1st ed. Crawforsville, IN: R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company, 1968. Print.

"HEBREW LETTER YOD." CORNISHEVANGILIST'S WEBBLOG. wordpress.com, 07-09-2009. Web. 5 Dec 2010. <http://cornishevangelist.wordpress.com/hebrew-letter-yod/>.

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. The Brothers Karamazov. 14th. 1 vols. Great Britian: Hazell Watson & Viney Ltd, 1958. Print.

"Hebrew and the Star of David." heaven awaits. wordpress.com, Web. 5 Dec 2010. <http://heavenawaits.wordpress.com/hebrew-and-the-star-of-david/>.

Knox, Sarah. "The Slave and The Bible and, of course, Unicorns." Sarah Knox Bible as Literature. Blogger, 11 16 2010. Web. 5 Dec 2010. <http://sarah-knox.blogspot.com/2010/11/slave-and-bible.html>.

Leitch, Aaron. "Introduction to the Hebrew Alphabet." Aaron Lietch Homepage. Tripod, 07/2002. Web. 5 Dec 2010. <http://kheph777.tripod.com/art_alephbeth.html>.

Mandelbaum, Allen. The Metamorphoses of Ovid. 1st ed. Orlando, Florida: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1993. 290-91. Print.

Orsi, Jon. "Jon Orsi- On Books." Jon Orsi's Mythology Blog. Blogger, 11/15/2010. Web. 5 Dec 2010. <http://4allthingschange.blogspot.com/2010/11/jon-orsi-on-books.html>.

Sederholm, Val. "The Prophet and the Unicorn." I began to reflect. Blogger, 07/17/2010. Web. 5 Dec 2010. <http://valsederholm.blogspot.com/2010/07/prophet-and-unicorn.html>.

Author’s Note:

The inspiration I received in writing this essay lies its biggest thanks to the introduction in the New Norton Critical Edition of Hamlet entitled “Imagining Hamlet” written by the Editor Robert S. Moila. The two distinguished passages that rose from the page and aroused the passion that brings forth this short paper both deal with the problem of placing the biblical and classical elements arising in Hamlet, albeit life, into a single context.

“Such Christian imperatives everywhere complicate and contest the demands of classical revenge tragedy in Hamlet, generating its conflicted style, enduring ironies, and critical imaginings.”-xiv

This passage in turn leads to Moila’s declaration that

“Hamlet attempts to justify revenge in Christian terms, to argue that it is “perfect conscience” to kill Claudius and that he will be damned if he doesn’t rather than if he does. Horatio provides no reassuring answer. Two incompatible ethical systems, classical and Christian, here clash impossibly.”-xvii

While this essay has nothing to do with Hamlet, it does have to do with not making, but showing the connection that exists between the Bible and Greek Mythology.

Monday, November 15, 2010

Sometimes I have Six Impossible Thoughts Before Breakfast.

"Oh what a delicious breakfast that would be" says the Mad Hatter in Underland. One thing I couldn't help but notice in similarity between the bible and Alice in Wonderland was how often she was growing, and shrinking, and going through lots of clothes. When Alice is going to face the Jabberwocky (movie version) she starts reciting the impossible things she's done in order to help her fight the dragon. The first two are:

"A potion that makes you shrink."

"A cake that makes you grow."

And I couldn't help thinking about the lines upon the back of the bible which say "I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending...which is, and which was, and which is to come" spoken by Christ as a strong parallelism. In fact, If I took any cues from the unimaginative mind of Bobby I'd think it is all ridiculousness! How can one person be the biggest and the smallest thing ever? It makes no sense, or so says my judgment. And in a strictly factual world or mindset I could never make the connection between the impossible things Alice speaks of the Bible now could I?

"And he took bread, and gave thanks, and broke it, and gave unto them, saying, 'This is my body which is given for you, this do in remembrance of me'. Likewise also the cup after supper, saying, 'This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you."-Luke 22:19-20

Now sure on first look it may not have all the components of a very good parellilism but when we look deeper into the story, as well as into what this Covenant Jesus is creating for his Christians out of Jeaudism you can start to understand that they both tell a very similar message: Wake Up.

Throughout all of Paul's epistles he speaks of those who "sleep," that have not "awakened" to the Kingdom of Heaven. Someone in class raised a question with the answer that the Kingdom of Heaven is "here" and Sexson decided it was incorrect. The problem arises when using the word now that we give an animated home to something. But what the Bible teaches is that the Kingdom of Heaven is not a deveiling, it is not the apocalypse, we are not looking forward to the Kingdom of Heaven:

"And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, 'The kingdom of God cometh not with Observation. Neither shall they say, "Lo here", or "Lo there":for behold, the kingdom of God is within you."-Luke 17:20

So the Kingdom of Heaven is Now, within us, lying dormant waiting to be awakened for the ears that will hear and the eyes that will see. Christianity, or The Way, as it was first known, is a Way of life. But why don't the Jews believe that the Kingdom of Heaven has come and is now within us? I don't rightfully know. But what I've come to speculate is this.

Christianity teaches, through the Canon, that through the diminishing of the Old Covenant, all the symbolism of connection with Heaven, or the Kingdom of God, was replaced by him. No longer was sacrifice upon an altar needed to make a connection between God and Man, because Christ died (sacrifice middle) for our sins, as it goes, and destroyed the old Covenant.

"Thomas saith unto him, 'Lord, we know not whither thou goest: and how can we know the way?' Jesus saith unto him, ' I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me."-John 14:6

This is a rather straightforward statement. Christ replaces the sacrifice and reunites the connections of ascenscion with God; but he is only able to do this because he after he dies he is completely clean. He is an ever and always clean, pure connection of ascension to the Highest Being:

"Jesus saith unto her, "Touch me not: for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father, and to my God, and your God."-John 20:17

With Christ's ascension he represents God's sacrifice to us. Now all that remains of humans is it to reach for Christ. Often the reaching for Christ is considered a marriage, which in the deepest sense it is.

"For I am a jealous over you with godly jealousy, for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ." -2 Corinthians 11:2

And with the new marriage to Christ in the Christian faith humans become children of God.

"Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God: and every one that loveth him that begot loveth him also that is begotten of him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep his commandments."-1 John 5:1-2

"Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God"-1 John 3:1

"That is, they which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but the children of the promise are counted for the seed."- Romans 9:8

"For both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one: for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren, saying, 'I will declare thy name unto my brethren, in the midst of the church will I sing praise unto thee'. And again, 'I will put my trust in him'. And again, 'Behold I and the children which God hath given me'."-Hebrews 2:10-13

Thus the idea of us being born again as children of God, through a marriage with Christ. But how does this connect with Alice's Adventure in Wonderland?

At this the whole pack rose up into the air, and came flying down upon her; she gave a little scream, half of fright and half of anger, and tried to beat them off, and found herself lying on the bank, with her head in the lap of her sister, who was gently brushing away some dead leaves that had fluttered down from the tree upon her face.
"Wake up, Alice dear!" said her sister. "Why, what a long sleep you've had!"
     "Oh, I've had such a curious dream!" said Alice, and she told her sister, as well as she could remember them, all these strange Adventures of hers that you have just been reading about; and when she had finished, her sister kissed her, and said, "It was a curious dream, dear, certainly: but now run in to your tea; it's getting late." So Alice got up and ran off, thinking while she ran, as well she might, what a wonderful dream it had been."
       But her sister sat still just as she left her, leaning her head on her hand, watching the setting sun, and thinking of little Alice and all her wonderful Adventures, till she too began dreaming after a fashion, and this was her dream:-
       First, she dreamed of little Alice herself: once again the tiny hands were clasped upon her knee, and the bright eager eyes were looking up into hers-she could hear the very tones of her voice, and see that queer little toss of her head to keep back the wandering hair that would always get into her eyes-and still as she listened, or seemed to listen, the whole place around her became alive with the strange creatures of her little sister's dream.
        The long grass rustled at her feet as the White Rabbit hurried by-the frightened Mouse splashed his way through the neighbouring pool-she could hear the rattle of the teacups as the March Hare and his fiends shared their never-ending meal, and the shrill voice of the Queen ordering off her unfortunate guests to execution-once more the pig-baby was sneezing on the Duchess's knee, while plates and dishes crashed around it-once more the shriek of the Gryphon, the squeaking of the Lizard's slate-pencil, and the choking of the suppressed guinea-pigs, filled the air, mixed up with the distant sob of the miserable Mock Turtle.
       So she sat on, with closed eyes, and half believed herself in Wonderland, though she knew she had but to open them again, and all would change to dull reality-the grass would be only rustling in the wind, and the pool rippling to the waving of the reeds-the rattling teacups would change to tinkling sheep-bells, and the Queen's shrill cries to the voice of the shepherd-boy-and the sneeze of the baby, the shriek of the Gryphon, and all the other queer noises, would change (she knew) to the confused clamour of the busy farm0yard-while the lowing of the cattle in the distance would take the place of the Mock Turtle's heavy sobs.
       Lastly, she pictured to herself how this same little sister of hers would, in the after-time, be herself a grown woman; and how she would keep, through all her riper years, the simple and loving heart of her childhood; and how she would gather about her other little children, and make their eyes bright and eager with mange a strange tale, perhaps even with the dream of Wonderland of long ago; and how she would feel with all their simple sorrows, and find a pleasure in all their simple joys, remembering her own child-life, and the happy summer days.-Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between the two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always-
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.-T.S. Eliot's Little Gidding

"And suddenly there came a sound form heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance."- Acts 2:2-4

The crowned not of fire,

The King of Kings

Knotted to His Merciful gift,

The Holy Ghost- Given

If received

The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree
Are of equal duration."-Eliot's Little Gidding

Will the sunflower turn to us, will the clematis
Stray down, bend to us; tendril and spray
Clutch and Cling?

Chill
Fingers of yew be curled
Down on us?-T.S. Eliot's Burnt Norton

All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.-Eliot's Little Gidding.

I would not go so far as to Speculate that the rose is not a plant, or not only a plant, but instead an action, an ascendance of us, as in telling us to rise. I would not go so far.

Monday, November 8, 2010

Why I'll finish the bible this semester

Because I have two hundred pages left.
Because I gave up working out.
Because I gave up thirsty Thursdays and most of my weekends too.
Because I moved out of a party house.
Because I want too.
Because Sexson said we didn't need to read the Apocrypha.
Because Katie picked up shifts for me at work.
Because I felt the need to read the bible to gain an understanding of where literature springs.
Because I gave up nights of sleep.
Because I skipped classes to read.
Because I'm a Christian, and a Catholic, and a Protestant.
Because Sexson said it wasn't possible in a month (which it isn't...)
Because I was raising Zack.
Because it's full of stories.
Because we need to know why the children die.
Because I need veritas.
Because Leviticus is so boring and drawl and exciting.
Because And deserves to come first.
Because Eliot is immersed in the Bible.
Because Donna Horraway thinks we should get rid of it.
Because Hawkins thinks it's only a set of morals.
Because Polkinghorne understands it isn't.
Because A Catholic told me I was going to hell.
Because I've read it before and it needed to be read again.
Because my mother and father read it.
Because it's the Canon.
Because it's misunderstood, misread, misprisioned, and misvalued.
Because it's the most widely know unread book.
Because people sneak it into China.
Because it's a source of power, good and evil.
Because Nietzsche told me God was dead.
Because the spirit giveth life and the letter taketh away.
Because of Martyrs and Thomas Merton.
Because of Dante and Shakespeare and the Fiddler on the Roof.
Because I WANT I WANT I WANT, and I don't want to want after things anymore.
Because I don't want to turn again.
Because I want the whole view, cracked and sprinkled with cuts.
Because people won't read the bible.
Because proof is a word we describe our conventions to.
Because my name means the Rich King and Steward that Usurps the Heel.
Because my cup empties and refills and overfloweth.
Because I do not listen.
But mainly because I can say I read the bible in three months.
Because I didn't die in what should have been a short roll off a steep pass.
Because the world looks more beautiful now.
Because I respect that which I did not before.
Because my father received a job in the Virgin Islands.
Because of my brother.
Because of my friends.
Because beauty is diminishing in this windowed perception and it needs to bear flesh.

Friday, November 5, 2010

Note on Frye 144-16

Zack and I have spent that last month or so putting this together. Hope you find it somewhat helpful.

Ch. 5 1st Variation; The Mountain
I. Claims to understanding the Bible
A. Demands imaginative response equivalent to that of mythologies and literature
B. Divergences from "Historical facts" will and must arise.
C. "Myths to Live by"- concentration on the existentialism
   1. Speculative mythopoeia- explaining or rationalizing the book in mythical terms.
   2. Ex. 1- Gnostic writers with their catalogue of Demons and Angels
     a. The comparison is made between the new testament and Gnosticism because Gnostic's wish to change to the "speculative mythopoeia" whereas the Bible doesn't want to be held to the mode of thought.
3. Ex. 2- Similar is the Old testament compared to the "pseudegraphic" or false inscription writing.
D. Why the Gospels impressed themselves as above myth on the Western World.
1. Christian attitude was principled as "no more myths" in concern of the biblical interpretation's of scripture.
2. Christian story cannot equal myth (Christian, not Hebrew)
   a. We are still struggling with the verbal theory today
      i. The verbal theory Fry is speaking of is the preconceived understanding that the GOSPELS cannot be interpreted mythically.
   b. This pretentious truth leads to the violence involved in the transformation of stories into "fundamental life regulations".
     i. Ex. 1 Myth turned into ascendant ideology
E. The Changing Influences and Relations of Classical Mythology and the Bible.
   1. Begins with Biblical myths as True and Classical myths as False.
   a. Result-claimed Classical myths were Demonic parodies of Biblical ones.
or
   b. classical myths were confused memories after the fall (Adam and Eve, though perhaps The Tower of Babel)
   2. Soon a liberal view establishes itself in spite; Classical myth as a supportive "proof" or "counterpoint" of the bible (yet not a full truth)(Perhaps comparative to the Hebrews view of the Talmud?)
     a. For an example see 145 in Fry's Words with Power; Milton's poetic blend and Fry's analysis soon after.
     b. "The final phrase is an example of the tradition[al] ingratitude of Christian poets who level such tribute on Classical writers while officially denouncing their story."
F. Avoiding the "dogmatic" barriers of Christianity through the classical myths.
   1. (This is used purely literary or imaginatively)
   2. Ex. 1 Dante's use in Paradiso of Marsayas (Marsayas being flayed alive by Apollo) as a Christian view of the loss of flesh and Glaucos (eats seaweed and becomes a Sea-God) as a metaphor for a transubstantive procedure comparative to taking of the blood and the host in Christianity.
   3. This imaginative comparison becomes regular procedure in comparing the two sets of "myths".
   4. It helps to understand allusions between the two by simply looking them up.
G. Milton's Avenue: His Critical Attitude towards the use of Classical Myth in relation to the GOSPELS.
   1. Fry explains Milton's vision of why we can use classical myth as a support for the bible by taking the evasive passage of Paradise Regained in which Jesus is tempted by Satan to become a Greek philosopher.
   2. Jesus' refuses to have anything to do with any culture outside the Old Testament and through this, Milton in his faith assesses, that Jesus, by keeping himself in the purity of the Old Testament Culture, and excluding Greek philosophy, Christ is able to disassociate himself from Satan's illusory (or demonic parts of the world) and thus begin his redemption of everything that is not inseparably evil. Thus we are able to read Plato and Aristotle because they were withheld, but if they, in their demonic parts, had been allowed in Christ's mindset, Jesus would have suffered the temptation by the tainted culture and thus the redemption wound never have come about.

Notes For Frye. Pgs 147-69

II. Blending of Christian And Classical Motif

A. Spenser Blending of Christian Lent in the temple of Venus (It has Christian Saints)

1. He later replaces Eros inspired poems with supplemental poems to God.

B. Milton’s Poetic inspiration: responsibilities of a major poet.

1. Examples come from his Nativity Ode

2. Life of a poet is put in completely pagan terms.

a. live like Pythagoras

b. live like the Prophet Tiresias

i. before his eyes are darkened

he looks at things from two points of view
Whole soul is devoted to Jupiter (highest)

3. Among the false gods abolished by the birth of Christ in the Nativity Ode is the pagan “Genius,” the Spirit of Nature.

4. The Question of Genius.

a. Nativity ode considers him abolished, yet

b. In Arcades, Lycidas and Comus, the Genius is a real and good character

c. Paradoxically Milton is dealing with one character in Two lights

i. The Christian

ii. The mythical

C. A New Type of Secularization: The implied mythology.

1. Affected Period between Dryden and Johnson (1700’s)

2. Period becomes increasingly realistic and

3. mythology become implicit and less explicit in literature

D. Further Digression_ The Romantic Period Poetry

1. Prose fiction: mythological affinities are neglected by or ignored by critics

2. Poetry- Christian and Classical mythologies, at least, gains imaginative parity with each other.

E. The Popular View of Poetry

1. Poetry cannot reach highest levels of meaning by itself.

2. Allegory is the main tool which poets “cope” with this ineptitude

3. Contrasts of Romantic Times

a. Critical Theory: Allegory vs. Symbol

b. Symbol wins; begins the seperative sense of literature living in its own cosmos and orbit/verbal modes (descriptive, conception, rhetoric, metaphor, kergymatic)

c. Realistic Fiction: its development during Romanticism

i. accompanied by implied assumption of realism

ii. Literature needs to “bond” with non literary world to avoid being:

overly subjective
self-indulgent
ingrown
snobbish
elitist
all other endemic diseases assumed of literature and criticism

iii. Current View- Edmund Wilson’s Axel’s Castle

iv. Refuted by Oscar Wilde’s “The Decay of Lying”

F. Principles of Literature that follow; Condensation and Displacement

1. Displacement in a literary context;

a. The alteration of a mythical structure in the direction of greater plausibility

b. Ex. Exists in the Winter’s Tale where the statue that comes to life is exchanged for a girl who stood still for fifteen years in intervals

2. Condensation in a literary context;

a. (in Frye’s words)- the opposite movement (of displacement) where similarities and

associations of ordinary experience become metaphorical identities.

b. In our speculation- a convergence of the two perspectives of understanding into a metaphorical identity. We all have these different perspectives of the same metamorphosis so as to better give reality or explanation to ourselves- no difference exists in the transformation-merely what or how we see.

c. An ex. Exists in William Blake’s “Sick Rose” which condenses the metaphorical identities (1) of anyone seeing a jealous lover break the spirit of the person he thinks he loves and (2) a parasite destroying a flower.

d. An explicit allusion to Biblical or Classical mythology in an otherwise representative context is a condensing image.

e. This asserts our literary bedrock in the Bible and Classical Mythology

3. Principle displacement in its most extreme form:

a. The Socialist Realism movement promoted by Stalin in Russia.

b. An ideology (Principles in which you live your life) tried to make all literature into an allegory ((moral) of its own obsessions.

4. Principles of Condensation in its most extreme form:

a. Finnegans Wake by James Joyce- Ex- “ As the loin in our teargarten remembers the nenuphars of his Nile (shall Ariuz forget Arioun or Boghas the Baregams of the Maarmarazelles from Marmeniere?) it may be, tots wearsense full a naggin in twentyg have sigilposted

b. This is all spelled correctly- it is a condensing of stories by changing the words to represent more.

c. “The reader is compelled to find all its meaning within its interlocking structure.”

d. T.S. Eliot claims we never need do this again. (Sexson loves this book, try and convince him to restart his reading group)

III. Assumption that literature as a whole lies between Socialist Realism and Finnegans d Wake: The Cosmos of Human Phenomena.

A. (Some of these belong to the special category of the human that we call the world of the gods)

B. Western Worlds

1. Bible sits in the middle (SOCIALIST REALISM-BIBLE-FINNEGANS WAKE)

a. Used to show that the cosmos of myth and metaphor has an overall structure

b. And not as Postmodernism believes that it is simply a chaos of endlessly tantalizing echoes and resemblances.

C. The Next Logical Step; An area called literary cosmology.

1. Cosmology as associated with philosophy

a. reference to Whithead’s Process and Reality; subtitled “an essay on cosmology”

b. Philisophical systems usually conceal something much more simple and naïve behind them.

c. Bertrund Russel reaffirms Whitehead with his explicitly on the point.

i. formal systems is a philosophers way of an inner understanding of the self through

the outside world.

ii. In other words: every philosopher, every cosmologists seeks to explain his answers to how to perceive the world, but often cannot answer the simplest version of this through his system. BY SIMPLEST we do not mean the easiest to gain understanding of but the foundation of all things: in the words of T.S. Eliot in Dry Salvages:

d. “A condition of complete simplicity (costing no less than everything)

e. In the words of Bertrund Russell “Every philosopher, in addition to the formal system which he offers to the world, has another, much simpler, of which he may be quite unaware. If he is aware of it, he probably realizes that it won’t quite do; he therefore conceals it, and sets forth something more sophisticated, which he believes because it is like his crude system, but which he asks others to accept because he thinks he has made it such as cannot be disproved.”

2. The Definition of Cosmologies- it is constructed out of the metaphors that lift us up or bring us down, that oppose one hand to the other, look in or out, go forward or backward.

a. or in our words… attempt to show through a contradictory perception of what is “reality” the world unseen.

3. Example of Bafflingly vague metaphorical constructs that do not work:

a. Poe’s Eureka: Valery’s essay explains the cosmology of Eureka is a cyclical metaphor, though it is hard to see through its naïve systems in our day.

b. In olden days these metaphorical constructs would have been more easily projected in our cosmological environment.

c. Eureka is comparable to Plato’s Statesman or

d. Hindu myth of the days and night of Brahma

IV. Axis Mundi

A. The end of a mythos or narrative movement brings us to a

1. Thematic Stasis: or simultaneous apprehension of what we have been following up to that point.

2. In literary structures we generally use metaphors of vision to describe this simultaneity of response.

3. In addition, since there is no more narrative to keep us moving ahead, our perspective shifts to an up-down vertical pattern.

4. Out of these emerges the central metaphor of the axis mundi, a vertical line running from the top to the bottom of the Cosmos

B. Axis Mundi is related only to a verbal universe.

1. (During the days of Geocentricitism it had scientific standing)

2. Though it naturally uses illustrations suggesting climbing into the sky or descending into the depths of the earth or sea.

C. Axis Mundi to the Imagination.

1. Universe has always been presented in appearance as a middle world with a second above it and a third below it.

2. Images of Ascent are connected with the intensifying of consciousness

3. Images of Descent with the reinforcing of it by other forms of awareness, such as fantasy or dream.

4. Common Ascent Images- ladders, mountains, towers, and trees

5. Common Descent Images- Caves or dives into water.

V. Jacob’s Ladder (Gen 28)

A. Has infinite Symbolic Overtones

B. Jacob’s lies his head on a stone and has a dream inferring that whoever wrote the

passage also believed dreams happen in the brain.

C. Jacob has vision of Ladder

1. Stretching from earth to heaven w/

2. Angels ascending and descending it.

3. “How ‘dreadful’ is this place he shouts

a. Dread in the sense of awe, as in holy.

D. Jacob calls the place of his dream the House of God and The Gate of Heaven and

Vowed to build an altar there.

1. He also renamed Luz to Bethel which means House of God.

D. The Ladder.

1. Ladder from heaven rather than to it.

2. It was not a human construction but an image of the diving will to reach man.

3. And if angels are going both up and down it is really a spiral staircase.

4. finally, Jacob calls the place House of God,

a. But does not build a temple

b. Merely an altar

c. The altar is also an image of a connection between earth and heaven

d. But one that subordinates the human side of connection

VI. Demonic Parodies of “Jacob’s Ladder”

A. Mesopotamian temples centered in cities served as similar links between the world of the gods which is assumed to be in the sky, or above.

1. temples were ziggurats

2. different floors were connected by spiraling staircases

3. Ascent would be in a spiral

4. There were winding stairs in Solomon’s temple, even though it was only 3 stories high (I kings 6:8)

5. Temples in Babylon and Persia

a. 7 stories and 7 flights of steps.

b. Colored differently

c. Perhaps to symbolized the planets, and sun and moon.

d. Top was a chamber representing the place where the bride of the god awaits’ his descent

1. this aspect of symbolism Frye will return too later.

2. Bridal chamber indicates 2 groups of metaphor.

a. Ladder of cosmology: ladder of wisdom (our focus)

b. Other sexual: Ladder of Love (Frye in next chapter)

6. Egyptian Ascencion

a. God Osiris- Judge of the dead is at the top of a staircase

b. Indicates that in making a ladder (staircase) it is the last step which is the supremely important one.

c. (Greek word for ladder is Klimax)

d. In an Egyptian ritual where the raising of the ladder occupied a prominent place, the ladder is identified with the spine of a cosmological body.

B. Tower of Babel (Gen 11)

1. Man’s attempt to connect with God rather than God’s attempt to connect with man

2. Man attempts to create “his own gate of heaven” without having the subordinate link from God.

3. They do this through communication with each other instead of with God.

4. Trying to get to a place that isn’t.

5. Just now we are concerned only with the principle that every image of revelation in the Bible carries with it a demonic parody or counterpoint.

C. Arts representation of Babel and Bethel

1. Neither Babel nor Bethel are explicit spirals or winding structures, though Artists represent it so:

a. Brueghel’s painting of Babel

b. Blake’s of Jacob’s Dream

VII. Mountains: symbolize sense of connecting with a higher state of existence from the

Ordinary one.

A. The earth we live on seems connected with the sky by mountains.

B. It is clear mountains, towers, and spirals, are symbolic.

C. There appears to be a world wide practice of making pilgrimages up mountains usually on a spiral course:

1. I.e. Glastonbury Tor in England

2. Song of Degrees in Psalms

D. Jerusalem is symbolically the highest point in the world.

VIII. Other types of Axis Mundi Images

A. Tree of Life of Eden (Broken at the Fall)

B. We Owe Axis Mundi images to the fact that we can’t fly ( imagine if we could fly)

C. John Donne comments on restraint of angels walking on Jacob’s Ladder

D. 7-story tower in Persia

1. Explicitly Stairway to Heaven

2. Important element of Mithraism, Persian sun cult (a contemporary to Christianity

a. 7 degrees of Ascent after death

b. Stairway imagery is expanding in direction of a creation myth

IX. Creation Myth

A. It is not how the order of nature came into being, but

B. How we came to know (through sense) nature as it dawns on our imaginative conscious.

C. Traditional religion claims that creation is a product of the Word of God, the creation itself being a second Word of God, an infinite source of what is intelligible to man and can be responded to by him.

X. The creation myth of P (Genesis 1:1)

A. (Myth has acquired a strong Ideological content)

1. 7 days in the book

a. strong emphasis on hierarchy and on differentiation.

b. cosmos separated from chaos.

c. land from sea.

d. sky or firmament from waters above and below

e. man is supreme ruler of the animal and vegetable creation

f. Driving regulations still overshadowing him

B. P Account.

1. natura naturata- nature as a structure or system

2. (Nature of physics)

C. Significance of the Day of Rest (in part)

1. Creation becomes objective to God himself;

2. (in human terms) God withdraws from his creation sufficiently to enable man to

study it on his own and

3. To guarantee that while man and nature are finite the amount of knowledge and

wisdom available to man is inexhaustible.

D. The 2^nd withdrawal (caused by the fall) is something else again (Frye will get to this

later.

XI. hierarchal Universe in J’s Creation Myth

A. the hierarchal universe is reflected in the progression of events

1. First the 4 elements

a. light

b. water

c. air

d. earth

2. 2^nd; sequence of Created being

a. trees

b. birds and fish

c. land animals

3. 3^rd; Man as the lord of creation

4. 7^th day we glimpse God’s presence at the top

5. The vision seems to suggest authority and subordination

6. where the fulfillment of life consists in occupying one’s “natural place”

B. first theme: Hierarchal cosmology

1. Near Eastern or Classical Cultures would have produced a very similar ideology

XII. The set of images that form the metaphorical kernels of the vision

A. Frye notes that Jacob’s ladder and the Tower of Babel are not explicitly linked to creation myths, but the affinities emerge when we delve deeper.

B. British Colombian Indian Myth

1. An animal shoots an arrow into the moon and another shoots an arrow into its predecessor notch until the ladder completes itself from Earth to sky.

C. Frye is concerned with 2 points.

1. First, Ideal and Ironic aspects of the theme

a. outside and inside the bible

b. ironic ones are usually connected with folly or presumption of the underdogs

2. second, the image of the ladder is clearly being linked to a myth of an original connection between this and a higher world which is broken at some point.

a. Classical counterpoint of ironic verse is the revolt of the Titans, the sons of earth who piled mountains on top of each other to reach their enemy in the sky.

b. More present: Blake’s “The Gates of Paradise”

1. Caption I won’t! I won’t! as a young man climbs a ladder to the moon

2. Next caption shows him falling shouting “help! Help” like his prototype Icarus.

c. Christian aspect: Dante’s Divine Comedy.

1. Purgatory is the connecting link between earth and heaven

2. has the form of a mountain with seven main spiral turnings

3. ascent of Purgatory is followed by a second climb through the planetary spheres in the Paridiso

4. In the 7^th of the spheres, that of Saturn, we see Jacob’s Ladder again, symbolizing the remainder of Dante’s journey from the manifest spheres of the redeemed into the heart of eternal light.

5. possibility of Mithraic ascent influence.

6. Also has lots of Arrows and could not be influenced by the British Colombian myth.

7. Dante’s poem being Christian, Dante’s ascent is not directed by his own will, but by the divine grace manifested in Beatrice.

d. Milton’s emphasis on divine initiative

1. 3 bk. Of Paradise Lost: “Paradise of Fools”

a. exists on the smooth surface of the primmum mobile (circumference of universe, Zack has a picture on his blog)

b. those who arrive have tried to take the kingdom of heaven by force or fraud

c. (tower of Babel is referenced)(Archetype)

d. Follows a vision of stairs descending from heaven and earth, which, Milton tells us were “such as where on Jacob saw”

e. These stairs are let down from heaven and drawn up again at the pleasure of God:

f. Satan, on his journey to Eden, arrives at a lower stair, from which he descends to earth by way of the planets.

e. Dante and Milton’s tradition

1. Both gentleman are following the religious tradition that starts from Jacob’s Ladder

2. where there can be no connection between heaven and earth without divine will.

3. Mystics also use ladders and staircases

a. always remember that they are not climbing on their own power.

b. (I. E. John Hilton’s “Ladder of Perfection”

XIII. The Four leading spiralists of the 1940’s: Eliot, Yeats, Pound, Joyce

A. T.S. Eliot

1. Early Poems- Curious urgent emphasis on the highest step of a staircase. I. E.:

a. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

b. Portrait of a Lady

c. La Figlia che Piange

2. Ash- Wednesday

a. Eliot joins the Christian tradition of Ladders

b. Follows Dante’s Purgatorio: has a turning stair at the center of his Poem.

c. Four Quartet’s (Great Variety)

1. Imagery derived partially from Spanish mystic St. John of the Cross.

a. Ascent of Mount Carmel

b. one of the best known mystical climbs

2. Burnt Norton (1^st Quartet)

a. Fully developed vision of Axis Mundi

1. Its top among the circling stars

2. crossing the line of ordinary experience at “the

stillpoint of the turning world.”

3.Going below to a world associated with both

a. London’s Subway

b. Homer’s Hades

4. To a world of Death.

b. packed around the roots of this bedded axle tree is the

great variety of objects in the physical world

symbolized by the phrase “garlic and sapphires”

B. Yeats

1. “All ladders are planted in the ‘foul rag-and-bone shop’ of the human heart”

2. A Vision

a. his later poetry comes to revolve around a double spiral.

1. as in Heraclitus’ aphorisms

2. yin/yang duality

b. The image of the tower with a spiraling staircase is at the center of this.

c. Yeats even went to the length of buying one of the round towers that still survive in Ireland and living in it (awesome)

d. The double gyre extends to a vision in which human life from birth to death is supplemented by an after-life which is and

1. runs from birth to death again’

2. takes the form of a “dreaming back”

3. Imagine unwrapping an Egyptian mummy

4. Dante’s Purgatorial theme also has the image of moving from Death back to birth again as Dante is moving toward the place of his original birth as a child of an unfallen Adam.

C. James Joyce: Finnegan’s Wake

1. Joyce associates the fall of mankind with an Irish-Ballad of Finnegan who falls from a ladder, dies, and awakens at his own wake.

2. In Joyce’s telling, Finnegan is persuaded to go back to death by twelve mourners representing the cycle of the Zodiac.

3. Finnegan than modulates into the figure known chiefly by his initial’s HCE

a. who remains asleep and dreaming

b. his dreams become a cyclical shape that is the repetition of history as we know it.

4. Joyce’s awareness of ladder’s

a. Uses ladders and their conventions t show that human life is not linear

b. It is a sequence of cycles where we get “up” in the mourning and “fall” asleep at night.

D. Ezra Pound: The Cantos

1.1^st Canto: An adaptation of the Odyssey in which Ulysses summons the

spirit of Elpenor from Hades.

a. Elpenor also fell from a ladder on which he fell asleep.

2. Pound takes his main body of imagery from Heroclitus

a. The account of the staircases in Ecbatana and Babylon.

3. Pisan Cantos

a. “To build the city of Dioce whose terraces are the colour of stars.”

4. Failed attempt.

a. Pound mentions at the end of his canto the sense of failure he feels

in not being able to construct a “Paradiso terrestre” in comparison

of Dante’s.

E. Babel Theme

1. The confusion of language pervasive in Joyce.

2. Appears in Eliot’s The Waste Land, especially the end.

3. Various Parts in Pounds Cantos.

F. The Importance of Why these writers use the same Images (Axis Mundi)

1. Yeats: the confusion of modern times comes from the abandoning of

the old hierarchy ascending from man up to “the one”

2. Much the same as Eliot.

a. Eliot uses Christian references

b. Yeats uses Neoplatonic.

Here ends Ch.1 of Mtn. Variations

Section 2

XIV. Primacy of the Act: the closed cycle

A. (Pg. 34) In the beginning God did something, and words are descriptive servomechanisms telling us what he did. This imports into Western religion what post-structural critics call the “transcendental signified,” the view that what is true or real is something outside the words that the words are pointing to.” (Frye Disagrees with this viewpoint and uses the opening of John’s Gospel as his proof.

B. The Tower of Babel is a Demonic Parody that falls under Primacy of The Act.

C. The “Demonic” Tower represents Imperialism. And The King is a Parody of God

1. The Bible’s Tribal Culture constantly prophecies of the fall of surrounding Imperialist culture’s

2. They were never able to form one themselves because they keep fighting amongst themselves.

3. Ex of Parody; World Tree (Ezekiel 31)

4. Ex of Parody: World Mountain (Isaiah 14)

5. Ex. Of Parody: The Early Tribal Greek Culture attributes their defeat of Xerxes to the fact that the gods do not like big empires.

D. Rising Tower Turns to Falling Tower

1. Confusion of Tongues

2. Babel is cyclical symbol

3. it is an example of the rising and falling of great kingdoms that forms a kind of counterpoint to Biblical history.

E. Wheel of Fortune

1. Cyclical shape doesn’t take form tell the Book of Daniel

2. After Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy written in the 6^th century the cyclical symbolism of the fall of empires takes on the image of a wheel

3. Becomes the central image of tragedy in medieval and renaissance times.

F. 20^th Century poet awareness and use of image

1. James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake is a kind of parody of resurrection or restoration to the original state using cyclical imagery, though not the adder (after the initial fall)

2. Yeats to has a Cyclical movement revolving around history that places importance on the two states of “Primary” and “antithetical” and one Democratic or heroic; in the tradition of The Primacy of Act, the two alternate sequences are used to show that in between the two words their exists an act which the words can’t describe outside themselves.

G. The Closed Cycle: The Difficulties of Frye

1. The Tower of Babel (the closed cycle) is traditionally symbolized by the ouroboros

It supposed to be a symbolism of Eternity
But since the snake is eating its tail it’s not eternity but the world feeding back into itself; What Frye says as a spiral into nothingness.
While Frye has difficulties with the DNA Molecules and its Double Spiral, We believe that the Spiral descent into nothingness is part of the path of the double spiral; We have to go through a process of emptying out (metaphorically) of everything we have so as to exist at a point of nothingness where everything is completely, the world is as it really appears and it is from this point that the spiral of ascencion to the metaphorical mountain truly begins. “A condition of complete simplicity( costing not less than everything) and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well when the tongues of flame are enfolded into the crowned not of fire and the fire and the rose are one.”- T.S. Eliot’s Little Gidding

2. The basis of this letter is that we only repeat metaphorically; never actually.

3. An obvious example of this Demonic Parody is Humpty Dumpty

4. Biblical examples would be rebuilding Solomon’s Temple (It never reaches what it once was; Bronze replaces the Gold, signifying a fall)

XV. Primacy of The Word

A. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made. (John 1:1-3)

1. Frye believes that it seems obvious that these lines prove the primacy of the act mentality inaccurate, and that John is explicitly saying this.

2. Frye also speculates that John is trying to identify logos and mythos.

B. The “tower of words”: The real/metaphorical tower

1. Frye justifies that the real tower is of words arguing that

a. Jacob’s vision is of Angels descending and ascending

b. Angels are messengers of God

c. Messengers are normally verbal

2. Jesus as a Messenger

a. John writes a prophecy of Jesus cast in the form of a vision of Jacob’s ladder:

b. And he saith unto him, ‘Verily, verily, I say unto you, here-after ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.’ (John 1:51)

c. A Messenger of God may be a fellow-creature of man

d. It shall not be worshipped (Colossians 2:18; Revelation 22:9)

1. “Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind” (Colossians 2:18)

2. “Then saith he unto me, ‘See thou do it not: for I am thy fellow-servant, and of they brethren the prophets, and of them which keep the sayings of this book: worship God’.” (Revelation 22:9)

e. The messenger, as we saw, may be symbolically an epiphany or manifestation of God himself

f. When Jesus speaks of his Father as “him that sent me” (John 4:34 he is in effect referring to himself as an angel.

g. The descending angels are messengers of revelation (Galatians 3:19), who brought the Scripture to man.

h. Incarnation

1. The Incarnation Theology: the doctrine that the second person of the trinity (God in 3 natures) assumed human form in the person of Jesus Christ and is completely both God and man.

1. or Word in flesh (Frye speculates that the Incarnation of Jesus, since he is the messenger of God’s new covenant and messages are verbal, that The Word is taking flesh)

2. the symbolic apparatus of ladders and the like becomes entirely verbal (Old testament sacrifices for sins become obsolete)

3. Ladders, temples, mountains, world-trees, are now all images of a verbal revelation in which descent is the only projected metaphor. (The Assencion synonyms are still used to describe the same thing, but they no longer are symbolic of an act (such as sacrificing) but by the word (Verbal means)

4. Verbal revelation: What this is saying is that the old Testament Covenant of connection between God and Man is transformed in the New Testament Covenant from a SYMBOLIC LADDER (ALTARS) TO A PURELY VERBAL REVELATION (WHY CHRISTIANITY NEED ONLY ASK FOR FORGIVENESS AND REPENT). No longer is consciousness of God (connection) made by symbolic acts but by verbal means, or through our words.

XVI. Modern Poets Interest in the Verbal Images

A. The interest in spirals and ladders is not nostalgia for outmoded images

B. Images stand for the intensifying of consciousness through words

C. This brings about the realization that the Images represent the concern of concerns, or

D. The consciousness of consciousness.

XVII. The Same Figures Outside Poets

A. Hegel’s Phenomenology

1. “we are obviously climbing spirally as well as following an argument.”

2. Hegel also drops the word “ladder” into his Preface.

B. Wittgenstein’s Tractatus

1. We are told at the end that we have been climbing a ladder, and are urged to throw it away.

C. Donne

1. Gives us the spiral ascent form of the image in a context of words

2. “on a huge hill Cragg’d, and steep, Truth stands, and he that will Reach her, about must, and about must go; And what the hill’s suddenness resists, win so.”

3. The easiest way up a mountain is not straight up it. It’s spiraling up it.

XVIII. “SPIRIT”

A. mainly an ascending movement

B. the human response to the revealing of intelligibility in the natural and social orders.

XIX. Prayer

A. According to Paul the typical message to God is the prayer

B. It is formulated by the Spirit of out of ego-bound requests for special favors

1. “Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.” (Romans 8:26)

C. Frye explains the association between the conception of prayer with the articulate imaginative expression of literature,

1. this is due to the fact of how often literature takes shape independently of the conscious will

XX. The Reversal of Acts

A. the movement of descending Word and ascending Spirit is reversed in the first two chapter of Acts

B. Jesus ascending into the sky, then the Spirit descending on the Apostles

C. The ascension is a New Testament antitype of the objectifying of the creation on the seventh day (Sabbath); the withdrawal of the Word from the world it creates.

1. Antitype: The opposite of the type (symbol) in the Old Testament is the New Testament answer; the antitype (reality).

D. The descending Spirit brings the Gift of Tongues

1. Contrast with the demonic parody: the confusion of tongues at Babel

2. It also creates a community of response

E. This reversed movement comes in between the Incarnation and the final descent of a new heaven to a new earth

1. “And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, ‘Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.” (Revelation 21:2-3)

F. The Physical Images are Gone

1. But the ascending and descending movements are still there,

2. A double movement that fulfills an aphorism of Heraclitus; one quoted by two early Christian writers (Frye doesn’t say who yet)

3. “Immortals become mortals, mortals become immortals: they live in each other’s death and die in each other’s life.” –Des Fragments

Ch.3

XXI. Hierarchy of Being suggested by the P creation Myth

A. Rising up from the elements

B. Through the plant and animal forms of life to man, the lord of creation, and from man to God

C. Extension of the Ladder to the scale

1. Latin word for ladder is scala

2. extends the image ladder to mean the measure of degrees

3. Fundamental in scientific work

4. Fundamental in most arts, notably music

5. “Chain of Being”

a. The scale forms the basis of one of the persistent conceptions in the history of thought

b. Sir Thomas Browne in Religio Medici (1643)

1.. “there is in this Universe a Stair, or manifest Scale of creatures, rising not disorderly, or in confusion, but with a comely method and proportion.”

c. This is the famous “Chain of Being” version of the Axis Mundi image.

d. It is a cosmology that sees the whole of creation as a ladder stretching from God to the chaos at the bottom of God’s creation.

e. It’s concern

a. This chain of being is that it represents the primary ideological adapting of

the ladder metaphor to a rationalizing of authority.

XXII. the 3 elementary categories of thought forming parts of the “chain of Being”

A. First is the Cosmological chain

1. Polarized b y the Aristotelian conceptions of form and matter, and extends from God, who is pure form without material substance, to chaos, which is the nearest we can get to matter without form.

2. Material principles of the cosmos: 4 elements

a. Hot

b. Cold

c. Moist

d. Dry

3. Chaos, According to Milton, is a world in which these principle combine and recombine at random, so that when Satan is traversing chaos he does not know whether his next movement is a step or a fight or a swim

a. Frye asks us to notice that the conception of an order of nature resting on a basis of controlled randomness is still with us.

4. Above the Elements: The Hierarchy of Creatures

a. First angels

b. human beings

c. animals

d. plants

e. minerals

5. The proportion of form to matter determines the rank in the hierarchy

6. Man being exactly in the middle,

a. halfway between matter and spirit

b. he is a “microcosm”

c. an epitome of the “macrocosm”

d. or total creation

B. 2^nd Aspect; The parallel construct of the Ptolemaic universe

1. This gave the chain of being a quasi-scientific status

2. The universe in this construct extends from the prommim mobile (the circumference of an order of nature thought of as finite) down through the circle of fixed stars, through the sequence of seven planetary spheres, of which the lowest is the moon, then into the “sublunary” world of the four elements, in the order fire, air, water, earth

3. Since the Fall these elements have been subject to corruption and decay, but their separation was a major element in the creation out of chaos, and each element still seeks its natural place and tends to seek that place accounted for many of the phenomena that we now ascribe to gravitation

a. A solid object held in the air and let go will drop, because it is seeking the sphere of the solid earth.

C. 3^rd Aspect: Theological- based on the conception of man as a fallen being.

1. Physical and Philosophical views of axis mundi partly reinforced, as well as collided with this theological view.

2. This theological view contradicts the conception of the natural place to the extent of regarding man as a being who does not occupy the place he was originally assigned in nature

3. Takes the form of a sequence of four levels that involves the Biblical story more directly in the world picture. (See Table on 169)

a. Heaven, in the sense of the place of the presence of God, usually symbolized by the physical heaven or sky.

b. The earthly paradise, the natural and original home of man, represented in the Biblica lstory by the Garden of Eden, which has disappeared as a place but is to a degree recoverable as a state of mind.

c. The Physical environment we are born in, theologically a fallen world of alienation

d. The demonic world of death and hell and sin below nature.

James Kushman And The Bible

School of Athens

Thursday, December 9, 2010

Sacrifice

Tuesday, December 7, 2010