VV (1) - More fun with the Qabalah, 2 of 2

[The Great Quail]

(....continued)

II. "I am your father, Luke."

1. Qabalah 101:
The Tree of Life has a negative reflection called the Qliphothic 
Tree; each Sephirah has a negative Qliphoth which represents its 
averse nature, a trap to fool those not prepared to deal with the 
energies therein.

As trusty ol' Dion Fortune of the Golden Dawn says,

"The Qliphoth are aptly termed the evil and averse Sephiroth, for 
they are not independent principles or factors in the cosmic scheme, 
but the unbalanced and destructive aspect of the Holy Stations 
themselves....Woever uses the Tree as a magical system must perforce 
know the Spheres of the Qliphoth, because he has no option but to 
deal with them."
      (Dion Fortune, "The Mystical Qabalah," XXVI.6)

and

"There is a point in every magical operation when the negative aspect 
of the force comes up to be dealt with, and unless dealt with will 
lure the experimenter into the pit which he has digged. It is a sound 
maxim not to invoke any force unless you are equipped to deal with 
its averse effects."
      (Dion Fortune, "The Mystical Qabalah," XXVI.4)

2. Pynchon Note:
This sets up the idea of those lost on the path to (perceived?) 
enlightenment, those who surrender to the Dark Side of the Force and 
lose part, or all,  of their souls; perhaps these are seen in various 
and differing incarnations as the Qlippoth Shells of GR (V-176, 661 & 
746), the Thanatoids of Vineland, or the Inanimate of V. Certainly it 
is part of becoming Them.

3. Quoting GR:
"--a process by which living souls unwillingly become the demons 
known to the main sequence of Western magic as the Qlippoth, Shells 
of the Dead...."
      ("Gravity's Rainbow," V-176. Note that Pynchon refers to those 
seduced by the Qliphoth as "Qlippoth" themselves, a common appellate 
in more "debased" forms of Qabalism, where the system is seen as a 
magical set of operations rather than a spiritual/philosophical 
system of organizing the universe.)

4. V. Thoughts
The Inanimate servants who thingify and become thingified; are they 
not echoes of the Qlippoth? (Man, I *like* that..."thingify." A great 
word.)

>But the Qabbalah is certainly not endorsed by the narrator as
>a valid scheme of universal order in GR, is it?

Which narrator? If you mean "Pynchon, the narrator inasmuch we 
perceive any real author/narrator this crazy fucked-up book might 
have," then I'd have to say he offers no real valid scheme of 
universal order; just an appeal to love as a counterforce to the 
soul-killing world we are born into. (As Lenny Cohen would sing, 
"Love is the only engine for survival.")

>More likely it is one of
>those systems of thought and belief humans erected against chaos

I agree; I think Pynchon is very clever in his limited use of the 
Qabalah as well as all other systems of thought and organization -- 
they are never totalizing, and co-exist with elements that oppose, 
parody, satirize, or refute them, including the notion that all such 
systems are sense-making fantasies projected against the dark.

>What has always struck me as a decidedly
>qabbalistic image is the ending of that one particular really, really
>wonderful and incredibly sad passage in Vineland which happens to come just
>after the symbolic betrayal of the hopes of the 60s by means of the
>camera/gun: "(...) the spilled, the broken world" (267).

Yes, certainly! Especially given the relationship between Word and 
world. ("I do not like that other world.")

>What I am trying to say is perhaps, text fetishist that I can be, that to
>look at V. in terms of Qabbalah to me seems different from looking at GR or
>Vineland from this perspective - assuming that there are indeed no or no
>significant explicit references to Judaic mythology in the text of V., which
>I am far from being sure of.

I certainly see you point; and as I have said, I tend to look for 
Qabalistic correspondences in many places. (The back of my Cheerio 
box is telling me some very unusual things, by the way.) I think in 
the long run, Qabalah is just as a useful framework for viewing V. as 
it may be for viewing anything else, from a cookie recipe to GR to 
the Big Bang Theory. But Qabalah as a perspective on V. gains some 
validity and legitimization by a few factors:

1. There are certainly *echoes* of Qabalistic thought in V., as there 
are in any book its size and scope with a clear spiritual dimension. 
(And of course, your next point also works to attenuate this as a 
factor here; as do "projection fantasies" of my own. I am sure a 
Christian and a Buddhist could make the same claims with respect to 
their own systems.) However --

2. There are *definite* Qabalistic references in GR, not to mention 
some more echoes in Lot 49. This points to the fact that Pynchon 
became, at some point, aware of the Qabalah. It is a very easy 
assumption to make it was at least part of his mental background as 
he wrote V.

Nevertheless, I do favor the text as well (which is why I have called 
this "skylarking" from the outset) and I will pay closer attention to 
V. in terms of Questing for Qabalistic Ques.

>The first would be archetypal criticism assuming
>that Greek/Christian/Hermetic/Judaic myth can determine the text without the
>author's conscious knowledge (a kind of memory of the genre - I fear that I
>am being rather Fryesque here again, but methinks he is right),

Methinks so too; see #1 above. 

>As for the splintered vessels of creation as "a common Pynchonian/Qabbalistic
>theme", could you point me to some more instances?

I hope this half-assed essay helped on this point. I *know* there are 
similar sentiments in Lot 49 and M&D, I just am too lazy to flip 
through the books to find them.

>P.S. Sorry to be so analytical, and thanks a whole lot to you and David for
>your great posts - and not only for keeping up the discussion of V. in times
>like these, in a world like this...

No need to apologize! This is more fun and useful than bickering....

"But it was a neat theory, and he was in love with it."

--Quail

Now Playing: Tagerine Dream's "Atem," which makes for an appropriate 
soundtrack....

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Great Quail, Keeper of the Libyrinth:
http://www.TheModernWord.com

"Countlessness of livestories have netherfallen by this plage, flick 
as flowflakes, litters from aloft, like a waast wizzard all of 
whirlworlds. Now are all tombed to the mound, isges to isges, erde 
from erde . . . (Stoop) if you are abcedminded, to this claybook, 
what curious of signs (please stoop) in this allaphbed! Can you rede 
(since We and Thou had it out already) its world? . . . Speak to us 
of Emailia!"
          --James Joyce, Finnegans Wake