Navel Gazing (Omphalomancy)

Reading Josh Gunn's blog today... about the cultural tendency to see signals of the end everywhere - the Virgin Mary on a PopTart, Jack Van Impe (Love him!), etc. Gunn identifies this interpretive tendency with the Greek term "pareidolia" as in "para" (around) and "eidos" (roughly, idea). I would have posted a comment there but couldn't for some reason.

I've been quite interested in approaching interpretation in this way - drawing form from chance or noise. Normally this goes by a number of names - divination, scrying, etc. One can divine the future seemingly from anything at hand, birds, chicken entrails, clouds, stars, waving grass. People have looked at pans of water, gazed into candle flames, tossed the Tarot. My grandmother used to read the day in the coffee grounds at the bottom of the cup. The names of many of these techniques have some form of the word manteis attached to the end (-mancy). Manteis literally means "prophet" or "seer." The word "mantis," as in the insect "praying mantis" is related to this word. The Greeks named the insect genus "mantis" because it appeared to be in the archetypal prayer position, a divine body pose. The "divinator" is literally one who is acting as the divine - as a god, or as an artist.

The "casting of lots" is another powerful component of divination. I grew up Mormon, and this was expressly forbidden (gambling and card playing). But I suspect the prohibition against the casting of lots goes deeper than the idea that one could lose one's shirt gambling. Insofar as monotheisms have evolved particular mechanisms of social control and dissemination, they have also evolved mechanisms for stability. Chance has its place at the top (usually administered by a pope or endowed prophet), but among the flock it is trouble, resulting in splinter groups, etc. Thus, the casting of lots is factored out of the religious discourse. It is a sign of witchery (from "wicca," to bend, as in wicker chair or wicked) or sorcery (a word with direct roots in the "casting of lots"). Remember Leviticus: "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." One culture's crucified prophet is another culture's sorcerer burning at the stake; the two are closely related. They are both probably on the edge of insanity, ecstasy, or some kind of sublime holy (wholly) state.

The casting of lots has something to do with idols as well, and their counterpart, the jealous God. Once one has divined an image from chaos (a sign in the coffee cup), it may or may not be assimilated into the discourse at hand (say, Christianity). If the sign functions as strengthening the social bonds of the faith or is useful for some contingent adaptation, it will be embraced. If not, it will be rejected as a false idol. Thus, divination could be seen as a kind of "mutant gene" phenomenon in an organic discourse like Islam or Christianity, where the bending of reality (in the form of artistic figurative representation) is outlawed (as in some Islamic sects), heavily policed (as in medieval art) or looked upon skeptically (Jesse Helms and the NEA). Evolutionary biologists tell us that nature is always "oscillating" and preparing to adapt. The change is part of an adaptation, part of a new species, or the change kills the organism (cancer).

The casting of lots is even "told out of" history. As Foucault suggests, history is not contiguous, but rather it is a series of episteme or abrupt shifts and mutations. We tell history back into shape retrospectively, but then these stories too suffer their mutations. By closely examining history (what Foucualt calls "genealogy") the present story by which we understand the world is destabilized. I am reminded of the surrealist Max Ernst and his method of floating a canvas in water to form random paint patterns before filling in the scene. This is the artist-as-sorcerer equation that is fundamental to the idea of divination. This is, in part, the sorcerer's art - to potentiate the present with the force of chance.

The Pure White Light

I was doing some reading in early Jewish philosophy yesterday from a compilation of Kate's (Frank, Leaman and Manekin's The Jewish Philosophy Reader, 2000). This was serendipitous reading at 3am. Much of Jewish philosophy, like Christian apologetics, is an attempt to rangle with ideas like free will and theodicy through a few touchstone problems, scriptural knots. In the Pentateuch these are generally the creation story, God's ordering of Abraham to kill Isaac, the story of Job, and God's hardening of the Pharoah's heart (and subsequently punishing him for a hard heart).

In any case, I'm reading a 1st C. figure named Philo, who is wrangling with the creation myth, activity and passivity, time creation, and the nature of this architect god. While most of the essay is pedantic in style, Philo does wax poetic when he begins to talk about the nature of humanity in relation to God-the-Creator. This is in Part XXIII of the essay "On the Creation of the World." I'm going to excerpt the striking passage here:

*******
XXIII. After all the rest, as I have said, Moses tells us that man was creator after the image of God and after His likeness (Gen. 1. 26.) . Right well does he say this, for nothing earth-born is more like God than man. Let no one represent the likeness as one to a bodily form; for neither is God in human form, nor is the human body God-like. No, it is in respect of the Mind, the sovereign element of the soul that the word 'image' is used; for after the pattern of a single Mind, even the Mind of the Universe as an archetype, the mind in each of those who successively came into being was moulded. It is in a fashion a god to him who carries and enshrines it as an object of reverence, for the human mind evidently occupies a position in men precisely answering to that which the great Ruler occupies in all the world. It is invisible while itself seeing all things, and while comprehending the substances of others, it is as to its own substance unperceived; and while it opens by arts and sciences roads branching in many directions, all of them great highways, it comes through land and sea investigating what either element contains. Again, when you soaring wing it has contemplated the atmosphere and all its phases, it is borne yet higher to the ether and the circuit of heaven, and is whilred round with the dances of planets and fixed stars, in accordance with the laws of perfect music, following that love of wisdom that guides its steps. And so, carrying its gaze beyond the confines of all substance discernible by sense, it comes to a point at which it reaches out after the intelligible world, and on descrying in that world sights of surpassing loveliness, even the patterns and the originals of the things of sense which it saw here, it is seized by a sober intoxication, like those filled with Corybantic frenzy, and is inspired, possessed by a longing far other than theirs and the nobler desire. Wafted by this to the topmost arch of the things perceptible to mind, it seems to be on its way to the Great King Himself; but, amid its longing to see Him, pure and untempered rays of concentrated light stream forth like a torrent, so that by its gleams the eye of the understanding is dazzled.
********

Quite lovely. Platonic through and through, with the doctrine of ideal forms and a movement very similar to the allegory of the cave. But much more poetic and seductive than Plato ever was - even some of Indra's pearls thrown in to hedge his bets. (Indra was the early Vedic supreme god who resembled a vast lattice of pearl beads. In each bead could be seen a reflection of every other bead).

This story of apotheosis particularly struck me after an incident that happened earlier in the day. I was digging post holes to put up a swinging chair in the yard when my neighbor pulled up in his old Jeep Cherokee. He startled me, but we got to making small talk. I told him I was a new professor at the university, and he said he was a retired Navy man. I told him about my research in media and war, and he mentioned how it ain't like it was. Then he tells me that he was involved in the Cuban Missile Crisis, and was flying an AWACS plane around the Florida Keys at the time the world was balanced like a needle on a thread. He had his hand on one of the buttons that would have launched a nuclear warheaded torpedo at the Russian subs. He was, of course, very careful to mention how close we were to a global nuclear holocaust that day. I looked at his hands and imagined them literally on THE BUTTON, waiting for orders. They were like the hands of any 70 year old. The only remarkable thing about him was his unsteadiness and seeming lack of confidence - like he had seen the pure and untempered rays of concentrated light, and it had dazzled his understanding.

He was visiting various houses in the neighborhood and asking folks to sign a petition under the name Citizens for a Quiet Oglethorpe County. There happens to be a house nearby that keeps 20 howling dobermans, and now he is ... we are ... going to take the owners to small claims court. I wanted to make an appeal to the dog owners: "This man, your neighbor, could have annihilated the world. But he didn't. The least you could do is give him a little peace and quiet."

The Wrong Bolton

There are precious few moments in life when one prefers Michael Bolton. Here's one...

John Bolton, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, has been named by Bush II to the position of U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., a very sensitive position these days insofar as this person assumes the role of ambassador to the world. In many ways, John Bolton is the administration's perfect candidate for this spot. He has shown nothing but brazen contempt for the U.N. and any attempt by countries other than "the one that matters" to decide anything. In short, John Bolton would have the U.N. razed to the ground. I imagine he's the kind of guy who sweves around crossing guards on the way to work as well. If there is one lesson the administration taught us in the recent Iraq invasion, it's that though reference to the authority of the U.N. is a convenient rhetorical appeal, might makes right in the end. The rest is, well, a speed bump.

Check out this video clip from GlobalSolutions.org. Imperial hubris on parade. Everything but the stiff-armed solute.

This is why, as I say, there are some times in life when we look to Michael Bolton for inspiration. Along with Michael, I would like to ask the world the musical question...

How can we be lovers if we can't be friends?
How can we start over when the fighting never ends?