Father, Son and and Holy Atropos GR.643

[Terrance]

In Milton's Lycidas come the blind Fury (not Furies, but
Fates) with the abhorred shears, and  "slit the thin spun
life, But not the praise.  Milton was more fond of Latin
than Greek so someone critics think he confused them, he was
only a 
boy when he wrote the poem, though I think it's more likely
that critics are the confused ones here, Pynchon may be
accused of confusing Greek and Egyptian myth, I guess, but I
wouldn't bet the tapestry on it. The life in this poem is a
poet cut down in his prime (single syllables). 

Three there are conjoined Fates,
robed in white, 
whom Erebus begot on Night. 

By name Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos. Of these Atropos is
the smallest in stature, but the most terrible. This myth
seems to be based on the custom of weaving family and clan
marks into a newly-born child's swaddling bands, and so
allotting him his place in society. 

text, from the Latin texere, "to weave," also perhaps
related to the Greek
tekton ("builder, carpenter"), techne ("art, craft, skill"),
cf. that Remedios
Varo painting in The Crying of Lot 49, very good ...Bordando
el Manto Terrestre / Embroidering Earths Mantle  [1961]

http://aries17.uwaterloo.ca/~dmg/remedios/picture11.html



The three Danaids, also known as the Telchines, (GK
grammarians, thelgein) or "enchanters", who named the three
chief cities or Rhodes, were the Tripple Moon goddess Danae
(worshpped by the matriarchal Greeks, who were persecuted
and wiped out by the invading patriarchal Hellens. 

The Moerae (a portion or phase, the trinity of the
moon--New, Full, Old) , or the Fates, the triple moon
goddess (white robed, the thread is sacred to her as Isis).
When Zeus (the big bully) becomes leader of the Fates,
assuming the prerogative of measuring Man's life, Lachesis
disappears, but Plato, Aeschylus, and Herodotus doe not take
his claim to be their father seriously.    


Pynchon seems to like Greek plays. He sure gets a lot out of
Oedipus. Poor Oediapa  was born with a MOIRA determined by
Apollo: he will kill his father and marry his mother. 

MOIRA -- the pattern of life- "a sort of jigsaw puzzle that
the hero's life would fill in-with the added complexity that
the individual never knew what the picture would be
when it was finished nor when it was completed." 

Moira, the portion at the apportionment of the world,
becomes, by a kind of amalgamation of Eileithyiai and
Erinyes, a group of three very powerful goddesses: Klotho,
the Spinning, Lachesis, the Lot-casting, and our dear
Atropos, the Unturnable, in Hesiod they are Daughters of
Night and Daughters of Zeus and Themis. Fates, Fata, Fatum,
spoken or decreed.  They were allotters of a new born
child's portion in life. 

 Pensiero cuts hair, he takes hours, often days to cut each
one a different length. 

"God is who knows their number." GR.643

Bob Dylan said that,  "Then onward in my journey I come to
understand / That every hair is numbered like every grain of
sand." 


But he ripped it off from Matthew.

 "Go not into the way of the Gentiles and in any city of the
Samaritans enter ye not: But go rathert to the lost sheep of
the house of Israel...And into whatsoever city of town ye
shall enter, enquire  who in it is worth...and whosoever
shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when you depart
out of that city, shake off the dust of your feet. Verily I
say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for the land of
Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that
city. Behold I send you forth as sheep in the midst of
wolves....it is not ye that speak but the spirit...But the
very hairs of your head are numbered...."  Matthew 10:1-42

In the time of my confession, in the hour of my deepest need
            When the pool of tears beneath my feet flood
every newborn
            seed
            There's a dyin' voice within me reaching out
somewhere,
            Toiling in the danger and in the morals of
despair.

            Don't have the inclination to look back on any
mistake,
            Like Cain, I now behold this chain of events
that I must break.
            In the fury of the moment I can see the Master's
hand
            In every leaf that trembles, in every grain of
sand.

            Oh, the flowers of indulgence and the weeds of
yesteryear,
            Like criminals, they have choked the breath of
conscience and
            good cheer.
            The sun beat down upon the steps of time to
light the way
            To ease the pain of idleness and the memory of
decay.

            I gaze into the doorway of temptation's angry
flame
            And every time I pass that way I always hear my
name.
            Then onward in my journey I come to understand
            That every hair is numbered like every grain of
sand.

            I have gone from rags to riches in the sorrow of
the night
            In the violence of a summer's dream, in the
chill of a wintry light,
            In the bitter dance of loneliness fading into
space,
            In the broken mirror of innocence on each
forgotten face.

            I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of
the sea
            Sometimes I turn, there's someone there, other
times it's only me.
            I am hanging in the balance of the reality of
man
            Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of
sand.

					---Dylan