Godel, Escher, Kabbalah

Why is it that we claim alchemy is hocus-pocus, or myths of the ancient world are fairy tales, but contemporary science and mathematics are legit? Is there an actual difference between Kabbalah Gematria and number theory? What about Temurah and biology? Or the alchemical search for the Philosopher's Stone and M-Theory? Hermeticism and psychology? Is there a difference? Or are science and mathematics just continuations of very old traditions?

Recently I was reading a few books on the Kabbalah tradition known as Gematria. This practice involves taking Hebrew letters and deriving their numeric values (since every Hebrew letter is associated with a number, like Egyptian hieroglyphs and Greek letters), and with those values comparing them to other words or phrases with the same numeric value. For instance, the following words or phrases all have the same numeric value of 666:

"Let there be light"
"Transmission"
"The heart, the soul, the mind"
"Jehova God that created the heavens"
"The head of the corner" (as in "cornerstone")
"Sarapis"
"I am God on Earth"
"From God"

Since 6 x 6 x 6 equals 216, the following have a numeric value of 216 (or 216 x 10^x):

"The stone which the builders rejected" (a common term for the "philosopher's stone")
"Strong"
"Lion" (as in the Lion of the Tribe of Judah)

Then, of course, we could rearrange the numbers and look for words or phrases with those numeric values, or rearrange the letters in the words or phrases and come up with new connections, which is a tradition called Temurah. We could double numeric values or half them, and derive new meanings. Thus 432 (216 x 2) would have a certain connection to words or phrases with 216 or 108 values. These studies are suppose to bring its adepts closer to God, understanding God's creation, and find the name of God. Some Kabbalah studies actually assert that rearranging the Torah will give the name of God and the key to the cosmos... something like that.

Is there any actual significance here? Is there any actual meaning behind these traditions? Of course, numbers and letters have no natural meaning, but only the power we give them from our own minds. But let's look at these in connection with practices used today in science: biology.

DNA, the genetic constitution and blueprint of every feature of an organism's physiology, is quite similar to Temurah. DNA is essentially strands of proteins, amino acids, and nucleotides arranged in certain combinations. What makes DNA unique as compared to other protein strands is that when an enzyme translates a DNA strand, the translation is identical to the original. There are four nucleotides: A, T, G, and C. A's translate into T's, and G's into C's, and vice versa. Geneticists play with these four nucleotides, their combinations and translations to manipulate physio-biological traits in, say, a grape plant so that it will be seedless. They compare and relate these manipulated mutations and stands in a number of ways. But is there a difference between reordering 22 Hebrew letters and their numeric values with rearranging ATCG? Not really. The only difference is ATCG will give us results we can observe, while rearranging the Torah is little more than rearranging the Torah.

Is another example in order? I believe so. What about M-Theory? M-Theory is rather complex, but the gist of it is: everything (matter, energy, and empty space) is made up of vibrating strands of energy (string theory), which all act in a certain harmony to yield a potato, or mitosis of cells, or dark matter, et cetera. M-Theory is an attempt to produce a Unified Field Theory, which is essentially a way to link the very large (galactic movement) with the very small (particle physics), as well as link the four forces of weak and strong nuclear, electromagnetism, and gravity. The first three have already been been proven to be linked, but gravity still proves to be problematic. More or less, the whole thing is a search to link all things together.

The Unified Field Theory isn't a new idea, not really, as the Philosopher's Stone is more or less the same thing. Hermeticists believe all things are linked through a number of levels of states, which all are based upon the proceeding level. So, the world of Plants rests below Animals, Animals below Humans, Humans below Gods. Their links are rather enigmatic and paradoxical, so I will avoid not doing the whole study justice by trying to explain something I don't entirely understand.

So what about the Philosopher's Stone? Consider it a sort of Higgs Bosom in alchemical traditions. The Higgs Boson is a theoretical particle that is thought to give matter mass (as opposed to remaining a state of energy, as in E=MC^2). The Philosopher's Stone is believed to be the most basic piece of matter, while also being the highest and most perfect. It has the ability to perfect other substances, such as perfecting a base metal, such as lead, into a perfect metal, such as silver or gold. It is produced by killing and reviving a substance, such a sprig of pine, absorbing its oils and producing a salt, then burning it to a white ash, mixing it with its own oil, and some other secret operations to produce the "stone which the builders rejected." It's a lot of mystic allegory with some actual science, but we can begin to see how science is really an extension of ancient traditions.

Hermeticists have had the idea of Relativity long before Einstein, and the Egyptians had psychology and psychoanalytics long before Freud or Jung. Kabbalah has been playing number theory games for centuries, such as root numbers or perfect numbers. Could we not consider science and mathematics as a continuation and extension of some old traditions?

The funny thing is that most alchemists and Hermeticists feel that science is doing their jobs for them, leaving the meaning to be understood to be done by alchemists. Strange how that works.

I Regret Something, Someone, Somewhere

I sometimes get stuck on a thought or concept that I can't let go of. A recent one that has concerned me is regrets. My two favorite quotes on regret are "Fuck it all and fucking no regrets," from Metallica, and "I once thought it mattered to regret / things that I have done and haven't / sometimes you've got to be wrong and learn from mistakes," from Dream Theater. They're pretty cliche when I think about it, as both pretty much say, "I regret nothing."

The usual argument that concerns regret goes a little something like: If regret something, you have to realize that those mistakes or missed opportunities make you who you are, and you wouldn't be who you are and where you are today if it wasn't for those choices you have made. It's a nice piece of logic, but there are two things that are missing, gaps in the logic that make such rhetoric difficult to justify. The first is that it assumes you are 100% happy with your current position in life. The second assumes (by inference) that you can actually change the choice you have made.

Let's start with the first. Is anyone happy with their current state in life? Unless you are Pollyanna or a complete euphoric, there are some thorns in your ass in life. Since regrets concern missed opportunities or mistakes, we are dealing with choices. The problem with today's society and why so many of us are depressed is that we put too much importance on happiness. It is as if we made all the right choices, met all the right people, married the right person, went to the right school, got the right job, then we'd be happy in life. Some of us are content in life, as in we won't complain much, but no one is 100% happy. Therefore, we can all admit we don't like some choices we have made.

The second fault in the above statement is that it infers that we can actually change the past, or, at the very least, that if we could change the past we would. Well, the problem with that is that we cannot change the past, period, the end. Changing the past is simply a complete violation of the laws of nature, so forget hypotheticals, because it cannot happen. So, if we all have choices we don't like, and we cannot change them, then what is so wrong with having regrets?

If I may use a personal example, I regret ever starting to smoke cigarettes. It is a filthy habit that I cannot seem to kick. I did quit for a couple of months about a year ago. Subsequently I gained about 35 pounds, and I could not seem to think the way I usually do. The latter concerned me more, because that's what I love to do: research, accumulate and synthesize information, and formulate hypotheses and conjectures; it's about the only thing I'm good at. Needless to say, I started smoking again, and I have little desire to kick the habit again. But I regret ever starting at all. So I must ask: what is wrong with regret?

I regret turning down my invitation to attend the SC Governor's School of the Arts 2-year program. I regret not making love to certain girls. I regret certain things I've said that have burned personal bridges. I regret loosing touch with an old friend from high school. But there is nothing I can do to change any of this, nor can any of us change anything we've ever done. As long as we don't regret our entire lives, what exactly is wrong with having regrets? It can be a paralyzing thing, and it can be a motivator, just like certain mind altering drugs or facing your fears.

To me, it seems that regret is absolutely an okay thing to have, if not completely healthy and appropriate. It seems that somewhere someone came up with the aforementioned argument and it has become a cliche; a stale cliche at that.

"This is the regret that you. This is the regret that you make and the something you take and the blah, blah, blah, something, something. Give me a cigarette. Mistakes like this you don't make. Some you make and okay. Not okay, something, you make other ones. Know that you should do better. The goddamn regret. The goddamn regret. Oh, and I'll die, and I'll tell you what, the biggest regret of my life is I let my love go. What did I do? And I'm ashamed. A million years ago, the fucking regret and guilt, these things, don't ever let anyone ever say to you you shouldn't regret. Don't do that. Don't! You regret what you fucking want! Use that. Use that. Use that regret for anything, any way you want. You can use it, okay?"
~Earl, Magnolia

The Sacred and The Fun

Recently I took part in a discussion with some fellow Putty Club members on one of the member's PhD dissertation, David Thompson, which was on, in simplistic terms, on what makes a place fun. He explained to us that fun is essentially a mechanism by which we deal with uncertainties. He also elaborated on play being "the is that isn't an is," or "the bite that isn't a bite." Put another way, by example, play is like a toy gun, which is a gun that isn't a gun. This was over a month ago, so I have had some time to contemplate these ideas. So let me try and simplify these, and hopefully do Dr. David's dissertation some justice, and work these ideas into some stuff I have been working on.

Fun as a mechanism against uncertainty: We live in uncertain times, that's for sure. Most people I know who have recently graduated from college are not working in their fields of study. A fashion design major working as a social worker; an architecture major working as a pizza chef; an electrical engineer working security; a nutritional scientist working as a bartender - these are all real examples of people I know. And it's not just the job market, it's the economy, housing, the future of internet, whether the US will swing socialist or fascist, et cetera. And how do we deal with these things? By various mechanisms that allow us to escape or cope with these uncertain times. These mechanisms may be drugs, nihilism, reborn Christian, protesting, or just straight-up fun.

David illustrated to us that the Arab Springs, OWS, the Tea Party, and Zombie Walks are all the same thing, the same movement. They are expressions of discontent with the current status quo, and Zombie Walks are a fun expression of discontent with uncertainties.

The is that isn't an is: If something is what it isn't, isn't that a metaphor? I've discussed play and fun with another fellow of Putty Club, Scott Sworts, and we both agree that play is a metaphor. Because John Doe runs fast, John is the wind. John Doe clearly isn't the wind, but he is the is that isn't the is. That's what metaphors are. Metaphors are expressions of complex ideas that have no concrete foundation for the idea in reality, and these abstract concepts are expressed in concrete notions that do exist, but they are what they are not. Lakoff discusses metaphors as such. To use a Lakoff example, love is a complex concept that is difficult to express, so it is expressed in concrete terms. We treat love as a container that we can be in and out of. "I am in love," "She has fallen out of love with Jim," et cetera. We also express love as physical chemistry: "They have chemistry," "He sparked when he met her," "There is friction between them," you get the point. It is the is that isn't an is. Zombie Walks are the dead that aren't dead. In a way, zombies are the dead that aren't dead.

These concepts parallel to what I have been working with: the sacred. I have yet to actual expel upon what I mean by the "sacred" in previous posts, so I will try to detail it here (apologies for previous vagueness). The sacred can be defined as an idea of authenticity, which is invoked due to a desire for authenticity. Why is the sacred concerned with authenticity? Because profane reality, profane time and space, is inauthentic; it is just copies of copies of copies of... To use a quasi-fallacious example, take a signature, which is supposed to be a demarcation of authenticity. How do we know a signature is authentic? We compare to other signatures. The signature is little more than a copy of a copy of a copy...

While that example may be considered a straw-man fallacy out of context, I will use Thomas Mann to clarify. In Joseph and His Brothers, Mann begins the tome with "Deep is the well of the past, should we not call it bottomless?" We can never be certain about the truth of the past. Ancient history might as well be considered speculative conjectures outside of written accounts. Even with written accounts we can never be certain of whether or not these accounts are given truthfully; is not history written by the victors? And is not ancient history written mythically as legends? So everything, even history, is uncertain and lacking objective authenticity.

When the sacred is invoked, usually in rituals and ceremonies (i.e. prayer, Mass, magic, pageants) are various forms of retelling or recreating the beginning; the beginning of time and creation. This is the most authentic point in reality, according to Eliade, as creation is fresh and uncorrupted. Creation is the point of origin, and the origin is the point from which all other things emanate; like the center of a circle, whereby the circumference may be drawn. Even in contemporary science we are confronted with myths on creation: equations, computer simulations, quantum probabilities, and theories that tell us how it all went down at the beginning. Our scientific knowledge of the beginning is just as inauthentic as Genesis when the face of God moved across the waters. This is why the sacred is invoked, so that the desire for the authentic might be expressed, thus created a break from profane, unauthentic reality.

By recreating or retelling myths of creation in some form or another we invoke the sacred. The opening of Masonic lodges is a recreation of the the beginning, as is Catholic Mass, or the preparation for an alchemical operation, or a baptism. These are all done with metaphors and as metaphors, because all a myth is, according to Roland Barthes, is a meta-language of truths that overlay the falsities of the spoken word. A myth is the falsehood that isn't false. On a very literal level the myth may be contradictory or flat-out false, but metaphorically they express truths, truths that are ideas of authenticity.

Myths are filled with ideologies, because ideologies are always something that tries to expel uncertainties. But, as Amparo in Foucault's Pendulum says, "It's an ideal principle, which can be verified only under ideal conditions. Which means never. But it's still true." Ideologies are just inauthentic as anything else, as are myths, and the sacred. What differentiates them is that they are a desire for something authentic.

But why is the sacred so special that it claims authenticity? How is religious institution any different from profane, cultural institution? Religion is a cultural institution, but it lays claim to unquestionable truths and authentic perceptions (this doesn't mean it is any more authentic than conspiracy theories, which is why it is a desire for the authentic, without actually being authentic). You can challenge and question the US Constitution because it is a profane cultural myth. You cannot question the Bible, a religious myth. It is possible to be a homosexual American. It isn't (supposed) to be possible to be a homosexual Christian. This is because you aren't supposed to change the Bible, but you can change the US law. Culture is simply a safeguard against whimsical changes that threaten customs, norms, and traditions.

Why is the invoking of the sacred a mechanism for dealing with reality? Well, just look at America after 9-11. Americans turned to God and church for consolation. Who turned to fun after 9-11? Were zombies the primary form of coping with uncertain times of terrorist threats? No. We sought the authentic by turning to God, Church, and mix it Country.

What ultimately differentiates the mechanism of invoking the sacred from the mechanism of fun is the sacred is an expression of authenticity against profane reality, while fun is an expression of dealing with uncertainties.  Fun and play challenge and express discontent toward uncertainties. The sacred expresses an idea of authenticity. They're not the same thing, but they parallel as mechanisms for coping with reality.

Spooky

I have discussed elsewhere before the subject of magic and spiritual rituals as being "all in our heads." I will reiterate this idea: no things have a natural or inherited magical aspects, and those aspects are given to these things by our association with it. So, for instance, a pentagram is just five lines (literally means "five lines"), and it has no inherent or magical properties, except those we place upon it. The Pyramids of Giza are meaningless shapes, and the only power they have is the power we give them. These things naturally mean nothing. All the power and all the meaning in the world spawns from our own minds. In other words, we possess all the power and meaning we give the ordinary things that surround us.

I have spent a considerable amount of time lately contemplating what makes a place sacred. Is it ritual? Is it geometry? Is it a historical event, such as the burial place of Jesus Christ? Clearly we make places sacred, but how we make them sacred is variable. These places and things are only sacred by our own making. This is how Eliade delineates between the sacred and the profane. He illustrates that a rock is just a rock (profane), but can be made sacred by ritualized time and space (i.e. breaking from ordinary, profane time and space into an idea of authentic reality). So the rock in the Dome of the Rock is just a rock; nothing more. It is by myth and ritual that it becomes something more than just any old rock.

Recently I have revisited H.P. Lovecraft and I realized I was dealing with in Lovecraft the exact opposite of what I was contemplating with the sacred. Lovecraft take ordinary things, like his infamous New England settings, and turns them into terrifying, unholy, settings of unknown horrors. How does he do this? By taking ordinary things and transforming them through the meanings and association we possess in our heads.

Now, for Lovecraft, he focuses on New England, because that is where he lived, but this transformation into horrors and nightmares can be executed in any setting. Think of it as how Dante makes us think of who we might know and where they might be in Heaven, Purgatory, or Hell. In Dante's Divine Comedy, he places contemporaries of his in different layers of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven; people who were well known, simple people he knew, mythic characters (such as Odysseus), and historical figures (such as Plato and Virgil). He does this so we might also think who we know and their placements in the afterlife. Just as Dante using primarily folks from Florence, his home town, Lovecraft uses New England. In a way, Lovecraft is encouraging us to think of where we live and how those places might hold occult, shadowy horrors. I for one can imagine horrors that lie hidden in small, country towns on desolate roads I have traveled in South Carolina.

I had not read much Lovecraft when I first moved to New England, and even then, New England towns seemed simply old, quaint, and charming. After living in New England for over a year I read more Lovecraft and suddenly found these towns I would take a train through to hold some dark secret. Obviously Lovecraft had an influence on me.

Like the sacred, Lovecraft uses certain realistic devices to create terrifying elements, often obscure and unknown traits, descriptions of foul odors, looming shadows, indescribable (often higher dimensional) geometries, mysterious sounds, and vague descriptions of cryptozoological creatures. What makes most of his creatures scary is not that they have many eyes, or no eyes, blobs, tentacles, slimy, bad smelling horrors. What makes them terrifying is that they are often creatures of some advanced race of earth spawned organisms, elder deities, or from outer space, and that they have the potential to destroy the human race, but don't care to. They use the humans when they see fit, often because some humans want their help, but generally they want nothing to do with us.

Why is that scary? Nothing is more terrifying than entities that don't want anything to do with humans. They're non-anthropomorphic, and we are anthropocentric. We can identify with Satan because he's trying to take us down with him. We can identify with evil gods, because they want to destroy humanity. But something that can destroy us, but is completely ambivalent toward us, that's even scarier simply because we cannot relate to them.

Lovecraft's universe is ultimately festering with human-ambivalent creatures, multi-dimensional places, dark planets, and wicked deities, and their interacting with ordinary places and things like quaint New England. He proposes a universe, not of wonder, but of unknown horrors beyond comprehension. Often protagonists in his stories are not trying to save the world from evil, but struggling to save their own sanity, and they often lose.

This post is not really meant to explain anything, but, rather, to explore the mental transformation of the ordinary into something sacred or unholy. Ultimately, the only difference between the sacred and unholy is with the unholy we who experience it are overwhelmed with paranoia.

Questioning Atheism

I have a problem with Christians primarily for one reason: their unquestioning faith in whatever is verbally fed to them by their church. Faith, I think, is a good thing at times. Faith is not necessarily synonymous with "belief." Belief, as I have defined it for myself, is "asserting as truth without any significant evidence, proof, or logic to verify as truth." Faith, on the other hand, is simply a desire for something to become truth. For instance, I have faith that if I do well, work hard, and really try, I can make something of my life that I will be proud of. Someone else may have faith that their child will grow up to be brilliant and successful. Someone else may have faith that they will not get fired from a job.

So faith isn't necessarily a bad thing. Now, unquestioning faith, that is something else entirely. It can be dangerous, and is usually a sign the utmost ignorance, or, at least, someone who doesn't use their brain. What stems from my disgust towards many (not all) Christians, is that they never question their doctrine or scripture. How can one understand anything if they don't question it? For instance, God created the world in six days, then rested on the seventh. But God is, according to doctrine, omnipotent, that is all-powerful and can do anything. So why did God rest on the seventh day? Did he get tired or something? That may be blasphemy to most Christians, but as a mystic I find it a very important question to ask if anyone is to understand the uniquely Abrahamic idea of the God on Most High.

Or again in Genesis, "the face of God moved above the waters," and then God separated everything. The waters are the primordial waters of chaos, which holds all things in perfect state of war, conflict, and contradictions. That means that God could not have been the only thing, but existed simultaneously with chaos and matter. It also means God did not created anything. Chaos is only potential to become other things, so God separated the conflicting elements of chaos into an ordered state of water and chaos, light and dark, land and sea, night and day, animate and inanimate, et cetera. So why is God called the Creator, if He didn't create, but ordered? Can anything be created ex nobo? Or is all creation a form of ordering?

These questions and more are the foundations of many of the Western world's philosophies, and they get at an idea and desire of authenticity that is greater than the profane world we live in every day. If we ignore these questions we are just as lost as someone who never picked up a sacred text in their life.

To clarify my point here, I think most Christians, and many other devoutly religious people, have simply missed the point (again, this doesn't not mean all of them). But if Christians missed the point, then clearly atheists didn't know there was a point to begin with.

Atheists, really, are just as bad as Christians. Christians will skip over things in the Bible that don't fit their agenda, and Atheists will skip over things in the Bible that don't fit their agenda either. Atheists love to pull the comment: you don't need the Bible to have morality. And you know what, they're right; you don't need the Bible to find morality, at least not anymore. But ask any Atheist if there is anything moral in the Bible and most of them will pull out all the horrible things the Bible recommends to do, such as if a man rapes a woman, then they have to marry. They are clearly skipping over the moral parts of the Bible to fit their own agenda. (Again, not all atheists do this).

What astounds me the most about Atheists is their rejection of a desire for the authentic, the subliminal experience. There are always going to be a few moments in our lives where we simply don't have words, and we sense something much larger than ourselves. We may call this "something larger than ourselves" Deity, the Universe, the All, Nature, or whatever. We may experience this in viewing Venus, watching the sun set, seeing a child born, solving a math problem, growing a sugar crystal, or watching a snake eat a rat. It is a sense of wonder; it is ineffable; in it we feel small and lost in complexity and contradiction. We try to understand these experiences, and this is our desire for the authentic. Atheists may get excited about it, but then they like to pass it off to science to figure it out, whatever it is that needs to be figured out. That, or they find it silly to think there might be something higher than us just by watching water freeze.

I ultimately find it tragic that one side fights over a point that they missed, and the other fights over a point they didn't know was there. And I see this everyday, and both sides are only persecuting themselves. Christians say, "I won't apologize for being Christian!" "Those immoral, liberal atheists are trying to destroy our religion!" Then Atheists say, "The Christians are trying to destroy us!" "I won't apologize for being an Atheist!" Right, and while you're both putting yourselves up on your crosses, you self-fulfill your own persecution.

I just wish Christians would try to question and understand their own doctrines, and Atheists try to understand Christianity and Christians as two separate things. But above all, if I may quote Rodney King, "I wish we could all just get along."