Monthly Archives: December 2011

Entropy – Thomas Pynchon

I randomly stumbled on a .pdf link with a short story titled Entropy written by Thomas Pynchon, one of his early works. I usually avoid reading on a screen but it was just about 20 pages and I was curious since entropy is something that surfaces often lately (see the recent blog themes on cosmology and such).

Well, it’s an amazing, lovely short story. Something of its style makes me think of David Foster Wallace more than other stuff I read by Pynchon. Looking up the publishing date it seems that he was merely 23 at latest when he wrote it. See, this is the kind of talent that doesn’t require to be nourished or care to develop. It’s all right there in plain sight. An infuriating (because of envy) ease with words. The complex, measured and rich style, but it all comes off as… effortless.

Then, looking for other info about that story I found out this other page. It seems Pynchon doesn’t like at all this story and decided to use it to show aspiring writers what NOT to do:

He criticizes himself quite harshly, asserting that the work seems to have stemmed from the desire to “commit on paper a variety of abuses, such as overwriting.” He claims that the work is an example of a young writer’s mistake of forcing a theme onto the characters rather than having the former develop through the latter, that his concentration on the concept led him to “shortchange the humans in the story.” He offers budding writers the following words of wisdom: “Get too conceptual, too cute and remote, and your characters die on the page.”

In fact, much of what Pynchon has to say in his Introduction concerning this particular story is in the form of advice to those of us who plan on writing short stories in the future. As though the publication of “Entropy” were a sort of public service to those in danger of writing similar-grade fiction, Pynchon tells us what he does about this story “only on the chance that others may. . . profit from my error.”

Yes, Pynchon is SO pretentious that he can ridicule a wonderful short story he himself wrote. Because, obviously, his worst thing is still better than every other writer (one assumes).

I’m bringing all this up because it’s related to my recent review of Gene Wolfe’s work. I consider Pynchon another blatant example of “esoteric” writing. His skill manipulating and articulating words is unbelievable, but what he writes is very hard to follow, dense, convoluted. More often than not you read, but you can’t understand what it is about. Pynchon’s writing is like a warp tunnel in the fabric of reality, or in that “artificial” reality that we represent (the subjective), and live. Everything is always set in an inextricable tangle of obscure cultural references. I always wonder what kind of magical device Pynchon uses to pack so much subtext. One thing is to weave together things you know, another is to appear omniscient. You open the door a crack and a whirlpool invests you, leaving you dizzy.

The interesting part in this is in the idealistic idea of literature: a thing living on its own. Literature as a golem. An artificial creation that contains its own, autonomous world. Pynchon idealizes all this because his writing is so skillful to appear more than real. A thing on its own, with its own rules. And then the obvious risk that Pynchon explained in that quote, and that I mentioned in Wolfe’s case. The risk that the story becomes completely detached and cold: “too conceptual, too cute and remote, and your characters die on the page.” I was reminded of a discussion on Bakker’s blog about the “spandrel” (in that case in the context of biology). And these worlds made of words, like impossible bridges spanning the sky, seemingly without a support, if not the strength of their own spandrels. They don’t crumble merely because you believe. At the very least they provoke a sense of awe.

In this short story Pynchon does something with the structure that is typical of DF Wallace style too, the literary world contained in two rooms and whoever enters them. Then in dialogue and context he develops a theme (entropy, here) that starts as the object of attention, and then becomes the whole frame of the story. Pynchon calls this “forcing a theme onto the characters”, but the construction is so perfect that I can only watch in awe.

The thing is that this kind of very pretentious intent works great in a short story of 20 pages. Aimed and delivered. Its “esoteric” aspect is not as irritating as in Wolfe’s case (or other books by Pynchon) because the thing is “contained”. You read it in one go, and can grasp it. As if you can hold this, still very complex and dense, story on your palm. So you can observe it attentively, turn it around. You can wholly contain it and consider it. While instead with sky-spanning literary bridges you can’t do this, because you have to stay suspended like that for far too long and the signal is so strong that it becomes just noise. But in this short story it is a thing of beauty.

This kind of pretentiousness can definitely be tolerated in a miniature work where everything is gracefully placed in a perfect system. I really don’t care if the characters succumb to plot, as long they give even the illusion to extend off the page, suggesting more. It’s a brilliant, masterfully written short story, whatever Pynchon may say. I don’t think he could write it any better today.

The Claw of the Conciliator – Gene Wolfe

“There is no magic. There is only knowledge, more or less hidden.”
(…)
“That is the wisest of all the books of men,” the Cumaean said. “Though there are few who can gain any benefit from reading it.”

The Claw of the Conciliator is the second book in the New Sun tetralogy. Or second of twelve if one considers the “Solar Cycle” as a whole. Since it takes me so long to finish a book, and since I don’t write about all books I read, I prefer to stick to the smaller unit available and comment as I move through. But, since I keep getting interested in other writers and series, it happens that quite some time passes before I return to something I begun (and these loops keep getting larger). So, looking at my blog, it’s been more than three years since I read the first part, The Shadow of the Torturer.

Most of what I have to say about this book is part of a general thought about Gene Wolfe. More than once in forum discussions I have defined him “esoteric”, in the original definition of the term. I tend to lump all writers in two groups: esoteric and generous. The difference is about the “intent” of the writer. Esoteric writers write books that are only accessible for a selected minority of like-minded, or sharing a certain status or cultural education, whereas generous writers are those that desperately try to make “communication” happen, whatever it takes. Generous books could retain all the complexity and ambition while taking time to teach the reader how to approach and extricate the work they are reading. They usually reward patience, but ultimately they reward it by letting you reach in and grasp their core. It’s not a matter of complexity, but of offering ways to access it. Esoteric works instead are “hidden knowledge”, they have high walls surrounding themselves and only those who have the password or know the secret sign are let through. Otherwise you’re left outside desperately trying to see through the wall and sometime feeling like you’re seeing some vague shape of what’s beyond. But you’re wrong.

Wolfe embodies this esoterism to its full symbolic value, to the point that what I described here with a rather negative connotation, becomes a positive one. This because, like the best works, the reader (and his re-action) is part of it. One thing that this work is doing is putting the reader out of balance and warp the space around him. It’s a dislocating effect, but not of the kind that prepares entering another world. Here the dislocation is the point, the message. Time, especially, collapses on itself, as if at the end of the world, before the New Sun arises, everything appears simultaneously.

This is relevant, specifically, to this book I was reading. It’s a kind of book that I loved and at the same time I wanted to hurl at the wall. Frustrating at the point of rage, but also possessing some brilliance that is right out of the corner of your eye, but that you absolutely know is not the kind that /just/ deceives. Imagine a calm sea in the night, the New Sun series is wholly contained below the surface. You see nothing. That’s my reaction starting to read it again from the first pages. On the surface there are characters, things happen, then you finish a chapter, begin another and there’s a new episode that seems to be only vaguely related to the one you just read. One uses to review books through certain patterns, so we examine characters, plot, pacing. But doing the same with the New Sun would end up in disaster. From my point of view and direct reaction while reading, this book has no sense of “plot”, or cause and effect. If one complains about arbitrary interventions (deus ex machina) here he could find them more than once within a single chapter, almost the sole force driving the plot. Characters do things seemingly without motivations, say things that make no sense, hypnotically dazed as in a movie by Werner Herzog. The scenes change from chapter to chapter as if part of unrelated episodes. This would really be a disaster, if it wasn’t that the problem is not in the material, but in the categories used on it.

Similarly, Severian is not the prime example of a character you can sympathize/empathize with. Quite the contrary. In fact I was thinking he may be the most horrifying character I’ve ever encountered. Early in the book there’s an episode where he has to perform a public execution. The horrifying part is not the execution per se and its gruesome description (“To be candid, it was not until I saw the up-jetting fountain of blood and heard the thud of the head striking the platform that I knew I had carried it off.“), but the reaction Severian has (“I wanted to laugh and caper.“). He GLOATS and parades grotesquely on the scaffold, showing proudly the severed head as he feels so happy that he was able to perform a tricky move with his sword. He continues to gloat even when it is revealed that the woman he just executed was innocent, victim of a machination. This gave me a profound feeling of amorality, of cold, alien detachment. Something entirely inhuman. It is horrifying but it also adheres to Severian the character, with his pragmatic, weightless mind that feels so alien to me. What is done is done, and very professionally from his perspective, everything else is simply not affecting him. He doesn’t even consider any other perspective. Which brings to a sort of salvation. His mind is so bent inward that he’s neither “good” nor “bad”. He seems unaware and unable to have a real, human existence because he has no experience of anything else. And so he’s also without guilt since he’s utterly naive and unable to make a choice (making him the embodiment of a pawn).

Wolfe demands a different approach from the reader and different ways to carve “meaning” from it. The most important rule is the “dream” (and Neil Gaiman featuring on all covers and introductions isn’t casual). What is narrated in this series has the “dreamlike” quality. That’s why everything you “see” (surface of the water) is “not the point” and apparently doesn’t seem to make sense in a strict, logical way. Every image or character is symbolic, and its symbolic weight has priority on superficial appearance. As in dreams scenes change with a loose sense of connection and everything goes to build this eerie, magical and ephemeral atmosphere (and as in dreams “time” collapses on itself). Words carry not meaning, but fascination and hidden construction. Giving a sense of dizziness and, as said, dislocation. Not toward a different “environment”, but toward a different “fabric” of reality. That in this case is the fabric of the dreams, and the world built through this symbolic projection of hidden and obscure powers and mythological beings. Lovecraft’s monsters made into pure ideas.

The problem, if a “problem” exists, is in the consequences. Reading page by page that’s the way I was feeling. Understanding clearly that there was “more” to what I was reading, that Wolfe was describing factually an episode but “doing” something else, hidden. Neither showing, nor telling. He hinted and teased, keep luring you. Deceiving. The problem of the esoteric work is when you hit the wall, again and again. Feeling that there’s more to it but without ways to get through. So I’m very critical about “how” Wolfe does things, because I feel he WANTS to keep me away, he WANTS to bait me in this malicious game and its hidden, obscure rules. It’s like in the myth of Theseus and the minotaur (a myth he specifically uses in this book), with Theseus going in the labyrinth from where no one returned alive to kill the minotaur. You are Theseus, Wolfe is the minotaur. The problem is that in the myth Theseus is told how to get out of the labyrinth (he’s given a ball of thread), while you, the reader, are left to the Wolfe/minotaur’s mercy.

I am in the presence of a practitioner whose moves I cannot follow; I see only the same illusions that are seen by those outside the guild [of writers]. I know the cards are up the sleeves somewhere, but there are clearly extra arms to this person.

Even in forum discussions one tries to get help figuring out this and that, but in most if not all cases it seems like one only gets evasive explanations that stack together in some kind of misshapen structure, but that do not seem anchored anywhere. It’s always a game of smoke and mirrors (mirrors that play a symbolic part in the books). And it’s frustrating because at some point you begin squinting so much that you get the illusion of seeing something, with the omnipresent doubt that you’re only imagining it. Being so ephemeral and deliberately obfuscated, it encourages speculation, but one has to know that it only goes to feed the minotaur.

This is my opinion of the book. If I decided to read the whole cycle of 12 books (eventually) is not because I expected a fun, enjoyable adventure. It is instead because I’m interested in that “underworld” of meaning, hidden just below the surface. My problem with it is that Wolfe builds walls that I can’t get through no matter how hard I could try, and this leads to a frustrating experience. He isn’t interested to let me in as much as in throwing puzzles and riddles at me to solve, without giving me nearly enough pieces so that the solution is even possible. The whole paradigm is a paradox. It carries over to the prose style as he uses often a pattern of inversion. Things that are or behave inversely than how they appear. You are left solving a malicious, impossible puzzle that reassembles itself whenever you get close to something. And this would be indeed a “problem” if it wasn’t also part of the point.

The Book of the New Sun is too complex a work to evaluate on one reading. It will undoubtedly be considered a landmark in the field, one that perhaps marks the turning point of science fiction from content to style, from matter to manner.

I wonder if going from “content” to “style” is a worthwhile mission. Wolfe indeed has a dense, ornate and convoluted, I’d say elegant prose style that is often dull and hard to follow. It’s also not banal, so it keeps the attention on what he’s doing and how. It requires certainly a constant attention, similar to some eastern non commercial movies, where the pivotal moment can be one where no characters speak, not highlighted in dramatic music at max volume. You let go your attention in a moment that appeared as a mere transition nested between two more important scenes, and you miss everything.

The “underworld” is certainly intriguing. It’s a big tangle of erudition, Wolfe taking all sort of mythic, religious and scientific notions from all known cultures, then removing their context and merging and transforming them till they become unrecognizable. A “decontextualized apocrypha”. But doing this he also realizes the transformation of culture through the ages, how the original meaning is lost forever, prompting something new. Many of these ideas touch cosmological arguments that I’ve hinted here and there on the blog (before I started to read this, it’s just stuff that intrigues me). There’s more than one reference to the Kabbalah and it’s interesting to track what Wolfe is doing with it since it’s what gives the larger framework. But he also leaves me with the impression that it’s all an elaborate labyrinth of misdirection. With mostly dead ends. For example when I read Erikson I can see the themes surfacing, reflecting on different perspectives, returning from different angles. But Wolfe is so busy hiding all meaning that he can’t also offer a discourse. He leaves things uncommented, simply stated or hinted, but never faced or directly experienced.

The gulf between plot and story, between the apparent and the real, alerts the reader to the fact that Wolfe is playing a complex and contrived textual game.

It’s a floating cathedral of meaning. It’s built on a artifice, risking of remaining detached and, so, irrelevant. But it’s from there that it also draws its undeniable qualities. The reader is a deliberate part of this game. The “purpose” of the series is not directly in the hidden message that keeps frustrating and irritating me, but in its effect on the reader. It’s strictly in the bleeding to death in front of the minotaur:

Rather, by effectively concealing his narratological sleight of hand and constructing a puzzle for his reader, Wolfe attempts to alert that reader to the level of perception required. Hence, The Book of the New Sun does not invite the reader to marvel at how clever Wolfe can be, but to marvel at his or her own intelligence in perceiving one facet of the elaborate textual game the author plays. In this sense, Wolfe’s tetralogy is a masterwork in that it can be read as a paraliterary fantasy but demands to be read as a comment upon, and a reaction to, such narratives. In effect, it is a coolly intellectual denunciation of passive reading practices, a clarion call to readers dulled by formula fiction.

It is only by observing how s/he has been deceived and cajoled that the reader comes to appreciate more fully Wolfe’s vision of humanity as a helplessly subjective species attendant to the whim of manipulatory forces. This observation is encouraged by the self-conscious stress on deception, artifice and artificiality that permeates the text and which emblematises Wolfe’s textual game with the reader.

From his other fiction, it apparent that Wolfe perceives the world as an ambiguous round of perceptions and misperceptions in which the individual struggles, and ultimately fails, to apprehend the precise nature of existence.

You try to understand, and the moment you feel like you can do it, taking up the challenge, is the moment you give the minotaur the vantage point to slay you.

What I continue to criticize, in opposition to that quote, is the fact that this game IS indeed indulgent, self-focused and self-serving. Sophistication bordering on narcissism. It is not a case that those who are passionate the most about this series are those that ascribe to it “literary” value, putting it one step above all other works of fantasy and Sci-fi (and so reiterating the same pattern). This “pretense” is for me very visible in the books and its style, not just its readers. And in the way it actively selects its readers, while rising barricades to those not “erudite” enough. The cold disregard. It’s not as much as being “sincere” and faithful to itself (“I thought them [the complex jargon] the best ones for the story I was trying to tell.”), as it is a deliberate will to create its elitist, esoteric group of like-minded who can properly perceive the subtext and savor the complex fabric. It’s the practice of literary snobbery and sophistication, secluded and removed. It doesn’t work by making the reader “feel” that complex experience, but actually failing at triggering ANY emotion, as long one is rejected and can only glide hopelessly on the surface. More often than not that’s the reader’s experience, and it will only be enjoyed by that selected elite that can ridicule that reader that tried to get in and failed miserably. Wolfe transforms the patient reader in one that can and should be taunted and laughed at.

So while there’s certainly a great value in this work. It is surely also very pretentious and written to gratify a certain public. A narrow public carefully selected to appreciate the sophistication, and that Wolfe had precisely on his mind when he wrote these books.

(if you’re interested, there’s a lengthy forum discussion that precedes this I’ve written here)
(and this is instead the insightful review that I quoted in mine)

The Aether, and other absurd ideas

These days I’m reading Gene Wolfe, who’s so esoteric that I could as well define him an “occultist”. Without any relation to this, though, I found a very old book in my house on my father’s book shelves. Four volumes and a total of 1600 pages.

It’s pretty much the same thing (as Wolfe).

Looking up the writer (a she), I found out a huge collection of her works, available online, directly linked on the wikipedia. Talking here about Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. The other bigger works of her is aptly defined (and titled: The Secret Doctrine):

Blavatsky’s masterwork on theosophy, covering cosmic, planetary, and human evolution, as well as science, religion, and mythology.

A bit like Gene Wolfe’s Solar Cycle, only that she intended to write it not as fiction.

The interesting part is that she’s an occultist that engages upfront with “science” and gives it her own interpretation by embracing, instead of ignoring, scientific progress. So, instead of separating the disciplines, she tries to unify them, find things in common, leading to a model that should be coherent on the whole.

Being these texts about 120-130 years old and filled with very bold and definite claims (and predictions), it’s interesting to read them today to see how (if) they hold up. Her fundamental idea is that ancient texts and cultures had a near perfect knowledge of the world, and science is only re-discovering what occultists already knew for a very long time. Eventually they’ll meet at the end. So, as an occultist, she knows the “truth”, and in this book she examines all kinds of scientific theories of her time, pointing out how they all seem to move in a specific direction.

For example on the wikipedia it’s written that she claimed the “atom was divisible”, and today we can confirm this as a “truth”. Science agrees. So it’s interesting to analyze how many of her occultist ideas were actually confirmed and if her “insight” actually had some worth (or if her predictions were merely fortuitous). The real problem is that I’m not a scientist and so not competent enough to say what worked and what didn’t.

Take this for example (a section titled “Life, force, or gravity” almost like a Bakker’s wip):

The imponderable fluids have had their day; “mechanical Forces” are less talked about; Science has put on a new face for this last quarter of a century; but gravitation has remained, owing its life to new combinations after the old ones had nearly killed it. It may answer scientific hypotheses very well, but the question is whether it answers as well to truth, and represents a fact in nature. Attraction by itself is not sufficient to explain merely planetary motion; how can it presume to explain the rotatory motion in the infinitudes of Space? Attraction alone will never fill all the gaps, unless a special impulse is admitted for every sidereal body, and the rotation of every planet with its satellites is shown to be due to some one cause combined with attraction. And even then, says an astronomer (“Philosophie Naturelle,” art. 142), Science would have to name that cause.

Occultism has named it for ages, and so have all the ancient philosophers; but then all such beliefs are now proclaimed exploded superstitions. The “extra cosmic” God has killed every possibility of belief in intra cosmic intelligent Forces, yet who, or what is the original pusher in that motion? “When we have learned the cause, unique et speciale, that pushes, we will be ready to combine it with the one which attracts,” says Francoeur (“Astronomie,” p. 342). And again — “Attraction between the celestial bodies is only repulsion: it is the Sun that drives them incessantly onward; for otherwise, their motion would stop.”

I don’t know exactly what science believes today, but the idea of “God” shared by Kabbalists and occultists is rather close to the idea of “nature” that is given by science. God is not manipulating the world, but the complex rules that drive it (the world) were set in motion at the very beginning. So the god doesn’t intervene, as his creation is already as perfect as it can be, moving along its purpose. It’s a matter of semantic, since science tells us exactly the same. That the world follows a complex (and fixed) system of rules to be discovered.

And especially, there are scientific ideas that “reverse engineer” the approach to science, leading back right to occultism. For example: the anthropic principle. Which is built on certain “obligatory” deductions that just can’t be escaped.

One way to cling to non-magic/spiritual scientific belief and explain at the same time the anthropic principle is suggested by Sean M. Carroll, the cosmologist I found out via Fringe. So a scientist of today who knows well at what point science is, and so tries to explore new theories built on modern knowledge. He theorizes that the reason why entropy builds constantly in our universe, from the Big Bang to its future collapse, so from an absolute minimum to a maximum, is only possible because this universe is part of a much bigger multiverse, where a number of self-contained universes develop at the same “time”.

The example he uses to simplify this idea is extremely straightforward. Think of an egg. This egg is an organized system, very low on entropy. The moment we make this egg fall on the ground and shatter its entropy increases. To the point that the process can’t be inverted (you can’t rebuild the egg once it broke, it’s way too complex, an effort too great). So this egg-system is one starting from very low entropy, and moving toward high entropy. But the egg also exist as part of our universe, that itself is going through the same process, from low entropy (Big Bang) to high entropy (final collapse). Repeat the pattern and you can easily theorize that our whole universe ALSO is only a smaller system contained in a bigger one. And so we could explain that our system/universe entropy is only absolute to itself, but relative in the grander scheme of things.

This then also explains the anthropic principle, as it theorizes that we are only one of infinite possible observers. Essentially, the only way science has to deny god on this level is about: “in a sufficiently large universe, some worlds might evolve conscious life regardless of adverse conditions”. And having a multiverse of universes is the working possibility to have this necessity of context larger than our own finite universe.

My point is that no matter the scientific progress, occultism is merely flowing into the gaps, and linger there. It’s as if scientific progress moves onward, but never gets closer to a definite truth. More often than not the fundamental questions only shift their context, but those questions are never answered.

So its interesting to read these old occultist text not for truth, but because while some parts appear as ridiculous in light of modern progress, some other parts come back and are as actual as ever. Giving the illusion that science and occultism are describing the same object seen from two specular perspectives:

And this would be indeed occultism’s triumph over science:

Occultism, which knows of the existence and presence in Nature of the One eternal element at the first differentiation of which the roots of the tree of life are periodically struck, needs no scientific proofs. It says: — Ancient Wisdom has solved the problem ages ago. Aye; earnest, as well as mocking reader, Science is slowly but as surely approaching our domains of the Occult.

And, especially:

There can be no possible conflict between the teachings of occult and so-called exact Science, where the conclusions of the latter are grounded on a substratum of unassailable fact. It is only when its more ardent exponents, over-stepping the limits of observed phenomena in order to penetrate into the arcana of Being, attempt to wrench the formation of Kosmos and its living Forces from Spirit, and attribute all to blind matter, that the Occultists claim the right to dispute and call in question their theories. Science cannot, owing to the very nature of things, unveil the mystery of the universe around us. Science can, it is true, collect, classify, and generalize upon phenomena; but the occultist, arguing from admitted metaphysical data, declares that the daring explorer, who would probe the inmost secrets of Nature, must transcend the narrow limitations of sense, and transfer his consciousness into the region of noumena and the sphere of primal causes. To effect this, he must develop faculties which are absolutely dormant

Well said, but still not granted or proven. One way or the other. We know our limits and little else.

Another intresting idea I read is about the “Aether”. In occultism given for granted as a substance that is everywhere. Now this is an outlandish idea that today appears as completely ridiculous, yet, when we push science to its newfound limits, it seems to return. See quantum foam:

The foam is supposed to be the foundations of the fabric of the universe

Quantum mechanics can be used to describe spacetime as being “bitty” at extremely small scales

Instead of being “smooth”, the vacuum is described as looking like “quantum foam”. It has been suggested that this seething mass of virtual particles may be the equivalent in modern physics of a particulate aether.

It turns out that such matter exists. About the time relativity was becoming accepted, studies of radioactivity began showing that the empty vacuum of space had spectroscopic structure similar to that of ordinary quantum solids and fluids. Subsequent studies with large particle accelerators have now led us to understand that space is more like a piece of window glass than ideal Newtonian emptiness. It is filled with ‘stuff’ that is normally transparent but can be made visible by hitting it sufficiently hard to knock out a part. The modern concept of the vacuum of space, confirmed every day by experiment, is a relativistic ether. But we do not call it this because it is taboo.

And so sometimes it does feel like science is a very large detour leading to the same point. Strict scientific language seems to obfuscate and distract from the truth, as if the model was inverted and occultist language was not esoteric, but revelatory. Though occultist ideas require quite a bit of work to adapt to scientific knowledge. The occultist perspective:

What several rather mystical Scientists taught was that light, heat, magnetism, electricity and gravity, etc., were not the final causes of the visible phenomena, including planetary motion, but themselves the Secondary effects of other Causes, for which Science in our day cares very little, but in which Occultism believes, for the Occultists have exhibited proofs of the validity of their claims in every age. And in what age were there no Occultists and no Adepts?

Sir Isaac Newton held to the Pythagorean corpuscular theory, and was also inclined to admit its consequences; which made the Count de Maistre hope, at one time, that Newton would ultimately lead Science back to the recognition of the fact that Forces and the Celestial bodies were propelled and guided by Intelligences (Soirees, vol. ii.). But de Maistre counted without his host. The innermost thoughts and ideas of Newton were perverted, and of his great mathematical learning only the mere physical husk was turned to account.

[…]

This “mystery,” or the origin of the life essence, Occultism locates in the same centre as the nucleus of prima materia (for they are one) of our Solar system.

“The Sun is the heart of the Solar World (System) and its brain is hidden behind the (visible) Sun. From thence, sensation is radiated into every nerve-centre of the great body, and the waves of the life-essence flow into each artery and vein. . . . The planets are its limbs and pulses. . . .” (Commentary.)

It was stated elsewhere (in the Theosophist) that Occult philosophy denies that the Sun is a globe in combustion, but defines it simply as a world, a glowing sphere, the real Sun being hidden behind, and the visible being only its reflection, its shell. The Nasmyth willow leaves, mistaken by Sir J. Herschell for “Solar inhabitants,” are the reservoirs of solar vital energy, “the vital electricity that feeds the whole system. . . . . The Sun in abscondito being thus the storehouse of our little Kosmos, self-generating its vital fluid, and ever receiving as much as it gives out,” and the visible Sun only a window cut into the real Solar palace and presence, which reflects, however, faithfully the interior work.

This, Science will not deny, since Astronomy knows of the fixed cycle of eleven years when the number of solar spots increases,* which is due to the contraction of the Solar heart. The universe (our world in this case) breathes, just as man and every living creature, plant, and even mineral does upon the earth; and as our globe itself breathes every twenty-four hours.

If ever this theory of the Sun-Force being the primal cause of all life on earth and motion in heaven is accepted, and if that other far bolder one of Herschell — about certain organisms in the Sun — is accepted even as a provisional hypothesis, then will our teachings be vindicated, and esoteric allegory shown to have anticipated Modern Science by millions of years, probably, for these are the Archaic teachings.

[…]

The whole range of physical phenomena proceed from the Primary of Ether — Akasa, as dual-natured Akasa proceeds from undifferentiated Chaos, so-called, the latter being the primary aspect of Mulaprakriti, the root-matter and the first abstract Idea one can form of Parabrahmam. Modern Science may divide its hypothetically conceived ether in as many ways as it likes; the real AEther of Space will remain as it is throughout.

And so this pervasive “substance” that in quantum theory composes the fabric of the universe, is more or less similarly described in occultism. “Bitty”. Described through allegory as “organisms” that keep the universe moving and that make life possible.

Put away semantic differences, and they are pretty much descriptions of the same “object”. One factual, the other anthropomorphic.

(I was thinking of the image of connected panels that show the illusion of a sky. You look up and see the sky as if it was a real one. But if you dislocate one of the panels from its original position, then you’d suddenly perceive a “hole” (I was thinking about this because I was watching the anime Rahxephon, using similar imagery, but even Portal the game does something similar). Something like this “quantum foam”, that is transparent and intangible (ideally), but as the fabric of the universe, it shows only if dislocated. Showing the “illusion” below and appearing as “bitty”. So… digital?)