fr_defenestrato (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
fr_defenestrato) wrote2007-07-05 02:44 pm
fr_defenestrato) wrote2007-07-05 02:44 pm
Entry tags:
Being and Miscellaneousnesslessnesslessness
My modem at home is shot. I am Internet-free except at work.
I did nothing celebratory since Tuesday. Apart from being in a general funk, why the fuck do I want to celebrate I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's independence? Instead I woke up yesterday, overcaffeinated myself, and hit the home office like a mauve tornado. Sorted and filed all paperwork from the last six months, including de-repertoired Cheese Lord music. Hauled stuff out of the closet and out from under the futon to reorganize (well, really, ORGANIZE) bedding and out-of-season clothes and miscellaneous textiles. Ironed or folded a ton of clean laundry; laundered more anew. Washed dishes and scrubbed the dish drainer. Designed a CD label for the CD of the Cheese Lords at the National Gallery of Art last November.
Just before sleep last night I finished reading Baudolino by Umberto Eco. This morning on my commute I started reading The Essential Kabbalah by Daniel C. Matt. The introductory chapter was a revelation to me in any number of ways (anybody who knows more about this stuff feel free to correct any inaccuracies) (also, if I write matter-of-factly below, it should not be taken as indicative of any belief in deity or divinity):
As early as the late 16th century Kabbalists foresaw with startling clarity the notion of "singularity," from which the big bang emanated. In wrestling with the questions of origins—of G-d and everything else—the scholar Isaac Luria posited that "the first divine act was not emanation but withdrawal." The pre-deity 'Ein Sof' (infinity, of space, time, not-being) "withdrew its presence 'from itself to itself,' withdrawing in all directions away from one point at the center of its infinity, thereby creating a vacuum," which prompted the creation of all things. Kind of the opposite of how we typically envision a singularity, but hey: infinitely dense, infinitely sparse: who can say?
Ein Sof had to have been on Frank Zappa's mind when he composed and recorded One Size Fits All, bearing as it does the song "Sofa No. 2": "I am the heaven, I am the water... Ich bin alle Tage und Nächte (I am all days and all nights)... Ich bin hier / Und du bist mein Sofa (I am here and you are my sofa)."
In other news from '70s rock: "Here are we, one magical movement from Kether to Malkuth," a line from Bowie's "Station to Station," cites the two polar opposite "sefirot" (of a total of ten of these "metaphysical potencies through which creation unfolds"). The sefirot form a diagram of interrelationships that is the basis of most or much kabbalistic thought. At the top of the conventional arrangement, which represents a body, Keter, "crown" is also Ayin, "nothingness," and is the remotest manifestation of deity, wholly unknowable to man; Malkhut, "kingdom," is at the bottom, and is also known as Shekhinah, "presence," the female emanence or manifestation of the divine, from whom all humankind proceeds and which serves as our entry point to all study of divine nature.
In a couple of chapters late in Baudolino, the titular protagonist meets a woman (rather, what he thinks is a woman but is actually a satyr) named Hypatia, who claims to be the descendant of an original Saint Hypatia, who was martyred. Having escaped the same fate and fled east to the periphery of the land of Prester John, her tribe (all named Hypatia) has lived for centuries without the benefit of more than a tiny kernel of the original Hypatia's teachings, and so have devoted themselves to meditation on the nature of the divine to rediscover that wisdom. What they came up with in all that time, in a nutshell, is that "the deity" or whatever preceded the deity was a singularity unto itself, a perfect, infinite "all-being" or "not-being"—in other words, Ein Sof. However, the emanation of "God," the deity from which earthly creation proceeded, was an accident, out of the control of the infinite, and was one of a series of tiny slivers that fell from the perfect first being. The role of all earthly creatures, Hypatia teaches Baudolino, is to behave only in righteous ways, thereby to help heal or re-unify the splintered ur-deity.
This, as it turns out, is pure Kabbalah. From Matt's introduction: "Into the vacuum Ein Sof emanated a ray of light, channeled through vessels... as the emanation proceeded, some of the vessels could not withstand the power of the light, and they shattered. Most of the light returned to its infinite source, but the rest fell as sparks, along with the shards of the vessels. Eventually these sparks became trapped in material existence. The human task is to liberate, or raise, these sparks, to restore them to divinity. This process of tiqqun (repair or mending) is accomplished through living a life of holiness. All human actions either promote or impede tiqqun, thus hastening or delaying the arrival of the Messiah."
So there it is: I bought these two books at the same time, at the Brown Elephant in Chicago during my visit in April of this year. I bought them for completely unrelated reasons: Baudolino because I hadn't read any Eco since The Name of the Rose and was trying to shame myself into tackling another of his novels; The Essential Kabbalah because Jewish mystical thought has intrigued me since I started reading Harold Bloom, whose endorsement of Matt's book appears on its back cover. They ostensibly have nothing of substance to do with each other. But just check out that philosophical convergence!
One more note: that last bit about healing the divine and ushering in the Messianic age really underscored for me the profound, the fundamental rift between Judaism and Christianity. For the world's Christians (fed as they are a diet of Apocalypse and prophecy, if not modern visions from televangelists), Christ's return is meant to be the "Ha! Gotcha! Told ya so!" where they go to heaven and everybody else goes to hell, and will occur at the end of a crescendo of horrors upon the earth (the likes of which, it must be said, are extraordinarily current, what with all manner of meteorological fuckedupedness)... They have this vision of Christ coming through the clouds right when the Antichrist is about to execute some heinous global plot against humankind (much as a Batman villain would). By contrast, the Jews (at least the Kabbalists, but I think this is a more widespread principle) believe that they need to hasten the Messiah by being good people; that, as Kafka observed, "the Messiah will come only when he is no longer necessary."
I did nothing celebratory since Tuesday. Apart from being in a general funk, why the fuck do I want to celebrate I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's independence? Instead I woke up yesterday, overcaffeinated myself, and hit the home office like a mauve tornado. Sorted and filed all paperwork from the last six months, including de-repertoired Cheese Lord music. Hauled stuff out of the closet and out from under the futon to reorganize (well, really, ORGANIZE) bedding and out-of-season clothes and miscellaneous textiles. Ironed or folded a ton of clean laundry; laundered more anew. Washed dishes and scrubbed the dish drainer. Designed a CD label for the CD of the Cheese Lords at the National Gallery of Art last November.
Just before sleep last night I finished reading Baudolino by Umberto Eco. This morning on my commute I started reading The Essential Kabbalah by Daniel C. Matt. The introductory chapter was a revelation to me in any number of ways (anybody who knows more about this stuff feel free to correct any inaccuracies) (also, if I write matter-of-factly below, it should not be taken as indicative of any belief in deity or divinity):
As early as the late 16th century Kabbalists foresaw with startling clarity the notion of "singularity," from which the big bang emanated. In wrestling with the questions of origins—of G-d and everything else—the scholar Isaac Luria posited that "the first divine act was not emanation but withdrawal." The pre-deity 'Ein Sof' (infinity, of space, time, not-being) "withdrew its presence 'from itself to itself,' withdrawing in all directions away from one point at the center of its infinity, thereby creating a vacuum," which prompted the creation of all things. Kind of the opposite of how we typically envision a singularity, but hey: infinitely dense, infinitely sparse: who can say?
Ein Sof had to have been on Frank Zappa's mind when he composed and recorded One Size Fits All, bearing as it does the song "Sofa No. 2": "I am the heaven, I am the water... Ich bin alle Tage und Nächte (I am all days and all nights)... Ich bin hier / Und du bist mein Sofa (I am here and you are my sofa)."
In other news from '70s rock: "Here are we, one magical movement from Kether to Malkuth," a line from Bowie's "Station to Station," cites the two polar opposite "sefirot" (of a total of ten of these "metaphysical potencies through which creation unfolds"). The sefirot form a diagram of interrelationships that is the basis of most or much kabbalistic thought. At the top of the conventional arrangement, which represents a body, Keter, "crown" is also Ayin, "nothingness," and is the remotest manifestation of deity, wholly unknowable to man; Malkhut, "kingdom," is at the bottom, and is also known as Shekhinah, "presence," the female emanence or manifestation of the divine, from whom all humankind proceeds and which serves as our entry point to all study of divine nature.
In a couple of chapters late in Baudolino, the titular protagonist meets a woman (rather, what he thinks is a woman but is actually a satyr) named Hypatia, who claims to be the descendant of an original Saint Hypatia, who was martyred. Having escaped the same fate and fled east to the periphery of the land of Prester John, her tribe (all named Hypatia) has lived for centuries without the benefit of more than a tiny kernel of the original Hypatia's teachings, and so have devoted themselves to meditation on the nature of the divine to rediscover that wisdom. What they came up with in all that time, in a nutshell, is that "the deity" or whatever preceded the deity was a singularity unto itself, a perfect, infinite "all-being" or "not-being"—in other words, Ein Sof. However, the emanation of "God," the deity from which earthly creation proceeded, was an accident, out of the control of the infinite, and was one of a series of tiny slivers that fell from the perfect first being. The role of all earthly creatures, Hypatia teaches Baudolino, is to behave only in righteous ways, thereby to help heal or re-unify the splintered ur-deity.
This, as it turns out, is pure Kabbalah. From Matt's introduction: "Into the vacuum Ein Sof emanated a ray of light, channeled through vessels... as the emanation proceeded, some of the vessels could not withstand the power of the light, and they shattered. Most of the light returned to its infinite source, but the rest fell as sparks, along with the shards of the vessels. Eventually these sparks became trapped in material existence. The human task is to liberate, or raise, these sparks, to restore them to divinity. This process of tiqqun (repair or mending) is accomplished through living a life of holiness. All human actions either promote or impede tiqqun, thus hastening or delaying the arrival of the Messiah."
So there it is: I bought these two books at the same time, at the Brown Elephant in Chicago during my visit in April of this year. I bought them for completely unrelated reasons: Baudolino because I hadn't read any Eco since The Name of the Rose and was trying to shame myself into tackling another of his novels; The Essential Kabbalah because Jewish mystical thought has intrigued me since I started reading Harold Bloom, whose endorsement of Matt's book appears on its back cover. They ostensibly have nothing of substance to do with each other. But just check out that philosophical convergence!
One more note: that last bit about healing the divine and ushering in the Messianic age really underscored for me the profound, the fundamental rift between Judaism and Christianity. For the world's Christians (fed as they are a diet of Apocalypse and prophecy, if not modern visions from televangelists), Christ's return is meant to be the "Ha! Gotcha! Told ya so!" where they go to heaven and everybody else goes to hell, and will occur at the end of a crescendo of horrors upon the earth (the likes of which, it must be said, are extraordinarily current, what with all manner of meteorological fuckedupedness)... They have this vision of Christ coming through the clouds right when the Antichrist is about to execute some heinous global plot against humankind (much as a Batman villain would). By contrast, the Jews (at least the Kabbalists, but I think this is a more widespread principle) believe that they need to hasten the Messiah by being good people; that, as Kafka observed, "the Messiah will come only when he is no longer necessary."