Blavatsky and Gnosticism - some random thoughts

Sometimes I'm amazed that anyone dares to speak authoritatively about anything at all.  The history of thought is so vast that it seems to me impossible to actually know anything about anything.  Maybe that's why I'm going to be a librarian - because I'm a generalist with a broad and shallow knowledge about lots of things and a deep knowledge about nothing.

Which brings me to Madame Blavatsky.  The first I ever heard of her was when I bumped into Aengus in the religion section of Hodges Figgis at Christmas.  I was browsing the shelves, not really knowing what I was looking for, but he went straight for the shiny white multi-volume tome that is Madame Blavatsky's Master work.  It extends, according to http://www.blavatsky.net/,  3 feet on a bookshelf.  I made a mental note never to undertake any exploration of her work.  To just forget she ever existed.

The problem is that Aengus has this habit of planting seeds of enquiry in my mind.  He sort of mentions things in the course of conversation that I don't know anything about and next thing I'm plundering the UCD catalogue, trying to find a book that will get me up to speed.  It was when I went to retrieve Rudolf Steiner's Theosophy that I next came across the terrifying sight of Blavatsky's magnum opus on the shelf.  I studiously ignored it and took down Steiner's slim volume instead.

But I've found myself going to visit Blavatsky about once a week since Christmas.  She's shelved right down the back of the philosophy section in an awkward spot which only skinny vegetarians can access.  So I've been to visit her, but I could never bring myself to attempt a reading. 

Until today. 

I'm supposed to be writing a business report, so it seemed like the perfect opportunity to embark on the exploration of three feet of irrelevant text.  I squeezed my way down the theosophy aisle and regarded the work with awe.  Next to it, on the shelf, was an enticing looking volume (slim at 228 pages) called "The Allure of Gnosticism: the gnostic experience in Jungian psychology and contemporary culture".  I had to have that too, not least because Aengus was talking about gnosticism on the phone yesterday and I am trying, like Mark Patrick Headtheball, to allow myself to be swept along by such synchronous events.        

So with Gnosticism tucked under one arm, I plucked up the courage and took Isis Unveiled vol. 1 from the shelf and sat on the floor right there and read the 45-page introduction.  First thoughts:  this is really readable.  I expected it to be written in obscure archaeisms, but it is geared towards the neophyte and much of the introduction is a gloss of terms which I've had only a fuzzy understanding of until now.

Points of most interest and vague thoughts so far: a brief discussion of numerology, in particular numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 and 10 which, I noticed, correspond in meaning to the first four cards of the major arcana in Tarot; the magician being the magic one created out of nothing; the dualism of two, the creativity of three and the stability of four.  Ten meanwhile being the culmination of the cycle and reducible once more to the beginning, i.e. one.  Very excited by the making of these connections.  I know, I know, I'm just a bit slow sometimes.

Having finished the intro. to that, I turned to my book about Gnosticism and read that introduction.  Again, very interesting.  Robert A. Segal summarises the essential difference between existentialism and Gnosticism.  For both, "the central tenet ... is the radical alienation of human beings from the world.  Human beings find themselves trapped  in a world that is at odds with their true nature." (p. 5)  The difference between the two being that the alienation from one's true self is surmountable in Gnosticism, while in existentialism it is not (p.6).

Now - bear with me a second, this is going somewhere - when I plugged this thought into my matrix I had to immediately run home and dig out this old poetry book that I love, 'One Hundred Modern Poems, edited by Selden Rodman'.  I got it when I was a teenager and it was one of those volumes that spoke to me.  The reason, I now realise, that it spoke to me was because I used to be an existentialist.  The following, by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, was my favourite poem of the collection.  It never failed to stir up a welcome teenage angst.

Twilight of the Outward Life
by Hugo von Hofsmannsthal (translated by Peter Viereck)

And children still grow up with longing eyes
That know of nothing, still grow tall and perish,
And no new traveller treads a better way;

And fruits grow ripe and delicate to cherish
And still shall fall like dead birds from the skies,
And where they fell grow rotten in a day.

And still we feel cool winds on limbs still glowing,
That shudder westward; and we turn to say
Words, and we hear words; and cool winds are blowing

Our wilted hands through autumns of unclutching.
What use is all our tampering and touching?
Why laughter, that must soon turn pale and cry?

Who quarantined our lives in separate homes?
Our souls are trapped in lofts without a skylight;
We argue with a padlock till we die,

In games we never meant to play for keeps.
And yet how much we say in saying 'twilight,'
A word from which man's grief and wisdom seeps

Like heavy honey out of swollen combs.

I think this poem beautifully illustrates that teenage existentialist fug.  In my volume, the corner of this page is turned down and I have underlined in pencil the last two verses.  I still love the poem, but now I see it from a different viewpoint.  It no longer describes me - it describes a person I once was.  I'm going to need a new poem to describe my Gnostic state and I think Yeats might have the answer but if anyone (of my millions of readers!) has a suggestion of a great Gnostic poem, I would love to hear it.

Blick blick blick blick

Blubbedy blubbedy blick blick blick

Blubbedy Blubbedy Bliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiick

Bliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii ........................ck

This is not the sound of weeping concrete.  Oh no, dear friend, this is the sound my brain makes when confronted with social scientific empiricism.

Then.  Shutdown.


The steely hand of rationality is the metaphorical keyboard plunged mercilessly through the screen of my la-de-da-da-de-da-day approach to things.  I don't even mind that I've mixed my metaphors anymore.  I've gone away and I might not come back.

 

The problem, you see, is that you can't argue against it.  There's nothing wrong with empirical truths - that's what makes them so dull.  They are, by their very nature, correct.  Objective truth - what a bore.  But, as Ken Wilber has so lengthily stated, they are true but partial.  True but partial, people.  They only describe a bit of the picture - and, to my mind, the most boring bit of it, the bit that doesn't need description because it's so goddamn obvious.

And that is why I hate Library and Information Studies.  Because as an academic subject, it makes my brain go BLIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIICKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK KK KKKK KKKKK

KK KUTHUNK.



BALLA-BALLA-BALLA-BALLA-BALLA-BALLA

BALLA-BALLA-BALLA-BALLA

No, it is not the sound of concrete laughing.  This is the sound that Icelandic children make on Ball Day every year.  The 6th of March. 

First, they fashion wands out of paper ....



... then they get up extra early in the morning, sneak into their parents' bedrooms ....



... and start screaming BALLABALLABALLABALLABALLABALLABALLA



... and spanking their parents on the ass with their paper wands.



No, it's not the latest Lars Von Trier film.

This is an Icelandic custom. 

The parents get out of bed and reward the little terrors with delicious homemade balls that are not unlike the chocolate éclairs we know and love so well.  Yum!

And that is the difference between Blick and Balla.
Blick makes me sick and Balla's delicious.

Reality Check

I’m not the sort of person who can afford to reject a phone call.

I mean, I’m approaching 30 and I live alone in a turret.  I don’t get to have many conversations outside of my own head.  There’s the spider in the bathroom, I suppose, but she’s more of an acquaintance really.  

And my mum rings me.  At 8 o’clock on a Sunday evening to be precise.  But when I answer the phone to her, she always sounds vaguely peeved.  As if I’ve interrupted her in the middle of watching The X Factor final or something.  Once, I reminded her gently that it was she who had rung me, but this only  caused her to sniff loudly. 

Doc used to ring me, but now she’s gone off to find herself and she’s prancing around India or Nepal or somewhere.   I know, I know!   One minute she’s single-handedly propping up the Irish health service, next thing she’s hung up her scalpel and scrubs and is off to see the world.  Who will save me now that Doc has gone?

That only leaves Aengus.

Aengus rings me at the most anti-social times:  8 o’clock on a Saturday morning, for example; or 7 a.m. on a Sunday.  This has been going on for years.  And every time he rings, I answer the phone in my groggy morning voice, sounding deeply pissed off that I’ve been wrenched so mercilessly from sleep.  But he doesn’t get it.  No apologies.   Oh no.  Aengus enjoys catching me off kilter.   He knows I won’t hang up.  He knows how desperate I am for human contact.  He knows I probably haven’t had a conversation in the past 77 hours. 

So when he rang at 10 am on Tuesday morning, I thought he had finally gotten it.  I thought the years of "What the fuck do you want?" had finally paid off.  That he had learned to ring at a respectable hour. 

“What are you doing?” he asked.

It sounded innocent enough.  I thought he might really want to know.

“Having breakfast,” I said.

“WHAT?  Just now?  Just having breakfast now?”

“Um, yes.  But I’ve been up for aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaages [a lie].  I did half an hour’s yoga before breakfast.”

“Oh dear, Cow, haven’t you heard of the reality principle?”

I hadn’t.

“No wonder your life is so out of control.  You’re eating breakfast at 10 on a Tuesday, Cow.  That’s not right.  Don’t you have something better to be doing?”

“I do, Aengus, I do.  But I don’t want to do it.  I’ve decided … [nervous giggle] that I don’t want to be a librarian after all.  I’m signing out.”

“Signing out of what?”

“Of life.  Of the daily grind.  I’m not going to be a responsible adult anymore.  It hasn’t served me well.”

“Cow, I don’t think you’ve ever been a responsible adult.”

“Well, perhaps not.  But now I’m making it official.  I’m not going to bother with any of that boring stuff anymore.”

“What have you been reading, Cow?”

“What do you mean?”

“Come on, out with it.  You’ve been reading something funny.  Own up.”

“Well, Rudolf Steiner if you must know.”

“Which one?”

“Um, Theosophy …”

“And?”

“And, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds.”

“I KNEW IT.”

“And from now on, I’m looking out for auras, not learning how to catalogue.”

“You fool.  Steiner believes in the reality principle too.”

“No, he does not.  Steiner believes that stones have blue auras.  That couches have auras.  And that Autumn is a pale moon rising.”

“Yes, he does.  But he also says you have to show up for life.  You have to.  It’s in the rules.”

“But I don’t wanna.”

“Now, Cow, stop whining and go and do some work.”

“Mean.  Mean, mean, mean.”

“And I better not catch you lying in again.  I’ll be ringing you first thing in the morning from now on.  You need supervision, young lady.”

Mad Cow

I caught a whiff of apocalypse today. 

A snatch of it.  Then nothing.

I was reading Rudolf Steiner when it happened.  You have to be careful to hide his books in your bag.  They'll think you're mad if they catch you at it.

If somebody asks what you're reading, lie.

If somebody asks what you're thinking, don't tell them you're searching for a glimpse of their aura.

I went around the place chanting to myself, "The trees are a rising sun.  The grass is a rising sun."  Then breaking into the chorus, "I see a pale moon rising."

This is what Steiner prescribes if you want to progress on 'the path' - a diet of rising sun and moon rising.   

I saw a smidgen of it in my porridge this morning but when I tried to catch it with the corner of a spoon, it cocked a snoot and ran away yelling "spoons don't have corners, you'll never catch me".  And I had to admit it was right. 

There was a whiff of it somewhere at lunchtime, an inhale and then it was gone.

Spring came for a while and then it too went away.  I've packed away my blankets and I'm cold again.

What is a muffin anyway?

Doc rang me the other night for a bit of a chat and asked what I was up to. 
"Baking muffins", I replied, at which she sighed loudly as though there were no nobler pursuit than that. 

Doc works too hard; she thinks that eating dinner is a luxury, so the thought of having time to bake muffins is almost too much for her to bear. 

"Muffins", I explained down the phone, "are disgusting and always have been.  There's nothing worse than them that falls within the category of cake."

"True," said Doc. "I don't know when the good old bun was relegated to the scrapheap.  But, Cow, if you hate them so much, why are you making them?"

"I need some sugar and that's all I had ingredients for."

"Why didn't you go to the shop and get a Dairy Milk like a normal person?"

"I can't go out there", I said, "it's too frightening."

"I see, it's like that, is it?"

"The thing is, Doc, that I didn't really have the ingredients for muffins.  I'm substituting everything in the recipe for something similar but different."

"Like what?"

"Well, I've swapped plain white flour for strong brown flour, for example."

"Hmm", said Doc, "what else?"

"I've used honey instead of sugar."

"What else?"

"I don't want to tell you the rest.  I don't think you'll understand."

"I'm in no position to judge you, Cow, I had a banana and crisp sandwich for dinner."

"Okay, I'll tell you, but promise you won't freak out."

"I won't, come on."

"Well, instead of butter ...

"... oh no, I can't tell you, you won't understand, I know you won't."

"Oh God, how bad is it?"

"It's bad, Doc, it's bad.  I used ....

"...olive oil."

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

"I know, Doc, I know, I couldn't help it, I had to have muffins.  I needed them and I didn't have any butter in the house.  It's a hangover from the Celtic Tiger, Doc, it's not my fault.  It's not my fault that olive oil became the household staple instead of Kerrygold."

"This is worse than I thought, Cow.  Have you put them in the oven yet?"

"Not yet, I still have to put in the egg and soya milk and the two other ingredients.  I have the oven set to 180."

"I am going to pretend you didn't just say soya milk.  What are the two other ingredients?"

"Well, there was supposed to be oats in there, but I didn't have any so I thought I'd just put in a few - just a few mind - a few Quinoa flakes."

"I'm going to be sick.  You have to stop, Cow, before you hurt yourself."

"And then I was just going to use Bicarbonate of Soda instead of Baking Powder and stick it in the oven and --"

"I don't believe you.  You wouldn't dare.  You're brave, Cow, but you're not that brave.  How could you possibly do such a thing?  It's a rookie mistake.  Don't do it, Cow."

"It's too late, Doc, it's gone into the mixture.  There's no going back now."

"I'll be down in 10 minutes, Cow, just hold on tight. I have a defibrillator in the back of my car.  Just hold --"

"No, don't come down here, Doc, I need to be alone with my muffins."

"Those are not muffins, those are nuffins.  Nuffins.  How can you call a muffin a muffin when nothing that's in it is in a muffin?"

"That's a very profound question, Doc, I'll think about that while the muffins are in the oven."

"Hold tight, Cow, I'm coming."

So while Doc was speeding over ...

... I decided to think about the nature of a muffin.

What, I wondered, is a muffin anyway?  And the first place I looked for an answer was my trusty dictionary.

muffin 1. Brit. a circular flat cake made from yeast dough, eaten toasted and buttered. 2. N.Amer. a small spongy cake made with eggs and baking powder.

Shit, I thought.  If only I'd used baking powder like Doc said I should, I would have muffin instead of nuffin in the oven right now.  Still, it's always good to get a second opinion on these matters.  I wonder what Foucault would have to say about this. 

"I think you should have gone to the shop and bought a Mars Bar", he said.  "But if you're asking what a muffin is, I'd have to say that the concept of a muffin hasn't always existed.  It's a concept that we, the eaters, have constructed.  What we now perceive of as a muffin could disappear in the future and be replaced by a different concept of muffin."

"Are you saying that what I have in the oven could be a muffin, even though I used Bicarbonate of Soda instead of Baking Powder?"

"I guess so.  The word muffin conjures up a set of beliefs about its production, circulation, classification and consumption.  Now, what do you think of when you think about muffin?"

"I think of an over-sized, dry bun to be consumed with a cup of tea."

"And what's going to come out of your oven?"

"An over-sized, dry bun to be consumed with a cup of tea."

"There you have it then."

"Thanks, Michel, that was very helpful."

The doorbell rang then.  It was Doc.

"You won't need that yoke after all", I said, pointing to the defibrillator. "It turns out that I have muffins in the ovens.  Not nuffins like you said."

A moral dilemma

I am looking up a word in the Oxford English Dictionary when I see, out of the corner of my eye, a spider, rodent-sized, skittering across the tiles towards me and I leap on top of the table.  Dense-legged, bulbous-bodied, Antipodean, she casts thick shadows on the floor and she’s coming at a sprint.  Doubtless she’s some refugee from tropic climes who, nesting in a box of fragrant spices packed in some hot-aired foreign wharf, was shipped around the world to berth in blustery Dublin Bay and stretched her legs upon the gang plank, then stowed away beneath a sailor’s ironed cuff and jaunted with him to the early bar, got all het up on liquor fumes and ran away.  She hasn’t eaten in many days, a pendulum of poison sways udderlike beneath her heavy frame and I sense she wants to deposit this load into the nearest living flesh that she can see.  Which is me.  I pray she can’t negotiate the table’s varnished legs and cast about for some reprieve.  She stops dead in her tracks, a foot away, crouched, poised to strike.  I wonder how high she can jump.  

I would say it was even bigger than this in the flesh.  And it had beady little eyes.

    

This flat is a haven for spiders.  They Tarzan through the living room on delicate silken fronds, weave silvery webs between legs of chairs and nurse sacs of eggs in gloomy corners and I never so much as grumble or aim the hoover in their direction.  I tolerate their skittish presence in each undusted cranny of the room, wiping the threads from my face each time I nose through invisible webs in my search for a book.  All this by way of explanation that I am no arachnophobe, but that, cripes, this monster perched beneath me as I quaver on the coffee table is in an altogether different league.  I cannot contemplate cohabitation with this killer, so, slowly, gingerly - God forbid I should antagonise it - I crouch and slide the dictionary towards me.  Hoist it in an overheaded grip, and think to myself, thank heavens I’ve lugged this tome from flat to flat instead of modernising with a CD-Rom.    I must have sensed this day would come, its hulking mass a murder weapon in the making.  And then I lean over the lip of the table and …

I know it's lame, but I love my dictionary so I had to get a picture of the exact one.  It's very weighty and very informative - perfect for killing spiders. 

But, wait.  My internal moral compass starts to blare.  You cannot kill this beastie just because you are afraid.  You lentil-eating hypocrite, you leather-shunning fraud.  You should trap her gently in a cup, release her in the countryside, feed her with pickles and find her a mate.  The spider senses my internal disarray and makes a dash for it.  I panic, drop the book and feel the dull, vaguely satisfying thud as spider splats upon the floor beneath 10,000 empty words. 

I can’t say I shed a tear as I deposited the mangled, leggy corpse into the bin.  But I did take a moment to reflect, albeit with a wry little grin, that according to all I profess to believe in, the crime I’ve committed is equal to eating a burger.  Or is it?  Does a spider equal a cow?  Is a dog or a pig more worthy?  Why will we munch on the breast of a chicken but curdle our lips at the thought of its foot in our mouths?  Why are pigs safe in Israel and cows worshipped in India and horses fair game for eating in France?  Why won’t we sample a tableau of grubs, but relish the mouldy, the smelly, the rank when it comes to a cheese?  And when did eating a meal become more complex than an algorithm?