VV (1) - More fun with the Qabalah

[The Great Quail]

I have just read this through before sending, and it is long and 
rambling, for which I apologize. But my coffee-maker broke down this 
morning, so any attempts to organize this into More Coherent Thought 
is doomed.

Thomas asks,

>Are there any references to the Qabbalah in V.?

Direct references? Not to the best of my knowledge; but I haven't 
read V. in years, and I am only halfway through now. There are a few 
things which certainly reflect the Qabalah, though -- but those are 
inherent in most of Pynchon. More in a bit....

>I remember that there are
>pointed Qabbalistic references in GR (I did not have the time to reread the
>book for GRGR).

There are numerous Qabalistic pointers in GR; even the numerology of 
the chapters have heavy Qabalistic significance. And of course 
frequent mentions of Kabbalists, Qlippoth, as well as a few 
references to Merkabah, a related Judaic mysticism.

Before I continue, I would like to mention that the Qabalah is a very 
open and encompassing system; it is notoriously easy to adapt other 
systems of thought into a Qabalistic framework, from Tarot and 
Astrology to Gnotic Christianity to the secret notebooks of Rosie 
O'Donnell and Madonna to Pynchon's fiction. It may be said that it is 
a useful hermetic exercise merely to seek out Qabalistic 
correspondences in the universe at large; which I tend to do, no 
doubt having read too much of the stuff in a very formative time of 
my life.

And now, a few small paragraphs to orient anyone who cares about this 
but fell asleep during Qabalah 101. (What? You all went to Miskatonic 
University, right?)

I feel there are two Qabalistic themes in nearly all the fiction of 
TRP: the sense of loss/desire to return, and the perils of false 
paths.

I. Ye Olde Sense of Loss

1. Qabalah 101:
Godhood flows down from the Ain Soph, the Incomprehensible, The 
Limitless, The Three Negative Veils of Being, whatever; it flows down 
the Tree of Life via the ten Emanations called Sephroth (11 if you 
count Daath, or the Abyss of Consciousness; sort of the imaginary 
number "i" of the Qabalah), from Kether to Malkuth. Each Sephirah 
"breaks down" the Essence further, like a prism splitting white light 
into colors; this creates a "fallen" state, but also allows the 
increasing levels of multiplicity and complexity needed to forge 
Creation. Finally the Godhood is shattered and "imprisoned" in 
Malkuth, which is essentially the universe as we see it. It is also 
the prison of Shekinah or the Gnostic Sophia, the female half of God, 
the Bride of the World, Mater Matter, She Who Will be Re-united at 
the Wedding of Tikkun, healing the whole universe and bringing about 
cosmic unity for all the wee lost sparks. (Fina has nothing on her.)

2. Pynchon note:
This sets up the idea of a "return," after a "fall from grace," or a 
broken symmetry. From this a-priori sense of loss comes the longing 
for a mystical/spiritual voyage back up the tree to undivided 
Godhood, where Mrs. Buffo will announce a cosmic suck-hour, we will 
all return to Lacan's undifferentiated womby unity, and all suffering 
and ignorance shall end. (Of course, to see the face of God is to 
suffer annihilation/absorption into God; so plan your Qabalistic 
return at a convenient time.)

3. Quoting GR:
"It's been a prevalent notion. Fallen sparks. Fragments of vessels 
broken at the Creation. And someday, somehow, before the end, a 
gathering back to home. A messenger from the Kingdom, arriving at the 
last moment."
     ("Gravity's Rainbow," V-148. Although in a typical Pynchonian 
move, the next lines indicate this is probably just a fairy tale; not 
to mention the satirical context of the entire section.)

4. V. Thoughts
The Animate experience a frustrated need for cosmic forbearance. 
Additionally, there is a search for V. the unattainable, the usually 
female, but sometimes geographical and even then still metaphorically 
female, Shekinah, Sophia, the mystic convergence of desire and 
fulfillment. And as I speculated in my last email, the V. could also 
be the falling half of the Seal of Solomon, the absent tongue of 
fire, the Pentecostal stain hallucinated(?) by desperate Hanne, so 
close to Inanimation herself, the missing link between Above and 
Below that is harmonized in the Sephirah Tiphareth -- the force of 
love and compassion and harmony, the mediating intelligence. 
Qabalistic, Mystic, Conflated symbolic V.

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

"His fervour for the written word was an interweaving of solemn
respect and gossipy irreverence. . . "
       --Gabriel García Márquez