V's and Quincunxes: Pynchon, Browne, Galton, etc.

[Terrance]

David Simpson wrote:
> 
> Not sure if this is the proper place to insert some different stuff into the V. discussion

snip

 In this respect, "The Garden of Cyrus" is a  typical, if
extreme, contribution to the literature of Natural Theology
and to the tradition  of cosmic piety (the belief that
universal order is the hallmark of a benevolent Creator).
Of  course, as P-listers are fully aware, such a belief is
the exact opposite of the Gnostic (and > more Stencilian,
and Pynchonian) view.  To the Gnostic eye, such revelations
of order and  system are more terrifying than edifying for
they betoken the presence not of a divine
> Savior-Creator but of the sinister Archons, the ruler-creators of the cosmic Jail.



Gnostics believed in a spiritual form of light, a
preternatural Light, existing beyond the dualism of light
and darkness, a light that has and casts no shadow, in fact
it has no form, and it is immutable.  Because of a
cosmological drama, explained differently by various sects,
the preternatural light became imprisoned, and for Gnostics,
redemption is tantamount to collecting, salvaging, and
carrying to heaven the sparks of this divine light. In GR
Pynchon inverts the myth. Remember, the world in Pynchon's
fiction is often inverted, so in GR the  divine light of the
Gnostics ("the pure light of the Zero" , "the light of
"revelation", "the light of illumination") which emanates
from the "Center" or the "the zero" is Not a Pleromatic
light but a terrifying and destructive radiance, identified
with the brightness of the Rocket.  This is the light
shining from "the Presence feared and wanted." This is the
light that is  "definitely not human" but of perfect
whiteness and void of heat just like  the "Poisonous Angel",
this is the light in "all its bleaching and terror" that is
totally indifferent to humanity. 


That Pynchon, he does like those books that Father Fagoe
said we could only read as tales. 


http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09495a.htm


 III Maccabees 

 The Greek book called The Third Book of Maccabees itself
has nothing to do with the Maccabean period. Its content is 
a legend, a miraculous story of deliverance, which is also
independently told--in another historical context--by
 Josephus (Against Apion II, 5). In III Maccabees the story
takes place during the reign of Ptolemy IV Philopator 
(reigned 221-203 BCE). The central episode of the book is
the oppression of Egyptian Jews, culminating with an 
anti-Jewish decree by the King. The Jews who were registered
for execution were brought into the hippodrome outside
 of Alexandria; the King had ordered 500 elephants to be
drugged with incense and wine for the purpose of crushing
the  Jews, but by God's intercession "the beasts turned
round against the armed hosts [of the king] and began to
tread them  under foot and destroy them." The Jews fixed
annual
celebrations of this deliverance. The book was probably
written at  the end of the 1st century BCE by an Alexandrian
Jew in a period of high anti-Jewish tension.


Next, The Kirghiz Light and The Kalahari Light:  The old
aqyn and the  "bodhisattva" Mondaugen.