MO's Visions on ths Shuttle.TS

[Terrance]

If Yeats walked among school children in America and counted
down, 10, 9, 8
 by the time he got to seven, every child
will be shouting the count down. 

Though their parents were not yet born when JFK declared,
"we choose to go to the moon
" and although they have never
seen a Fritz Lang Film, and while they have no idea what
Kabbalist means or who Thomas Pynchon is, they count down to
zero and yell,  "Blastoff."  If it were a Catholic school
and Yeats put on a sober mask and crossed himself and began
to pray, say "Hail Mary full of grace
," by the time he got
to "the Lord" all the children would  be reciting the
prayer. But, even if Yeats didn't let on, there would
probably not be nearly the enthusiasm for the ever
perplexing "Blastoff of Mary."


Edelman's account of the "Tree of Life" (GR.753) is drawn
from the Zohar.  According to Scholem (TRP's source), it is
the most important Kabbalist text. 


At the Creation
God sent out a pulse of energy into
the void. It presently branched and sorted into ten distinct
spheres or aspects, corresponding to the numbers 1-10.
These are known as the Sephiroth. To return to God, the soul
must negotiate each of the Sephiroth, from ten back to one.
Armed with magic and faith, Kabbalists have set out to
conquer 
the Sephiroth. Many Kabbalist secrets have to do with making
the trip successfully (GR.753) .


The tenth Sefirah in the book Zohar is the Shekinah (
GR.478,
GR.682). Again, according to Scholom, the Shekinah is the
"Divine presence in the shape of a woman, an image of
splendor in-exile." She is also referred to as queen
daughter and bride of God or "Israel."	Being the Godhead's
manifestation in the world it is in her that the
theosophical journey towards God must start, the tikkun or
work of restitution that will put an end to her exile and
lead to the redemption of Creation.

Redemption of creation  10, 9, 8, 7, 6



In the Zohar her image acquires destructive traits. Both her
benign and evil aspects depend, according to this tradition,
on the predominance of the divine emanations of love and
severity. When there is more love flowing through the right
hand side of the Sefirotic tree, she develops into a loving
Mother, but when the flow of severity in the left is
stronger, she becomes punitive.



In Kabbalah of Isaac Luria she becomes Lilith, the
"strangler of infants" 
(GR.649). She who was a "Babylonian wind goddess" becomes
the wife of "Samuel" (GR 748), who is also known as Satan or
the "Angel of Death" (GR 93, 151, 164, 214, 328, 746, 760).

Greta's impersonates the "Shekhina " (GR 478). And, as
Stefania Procalowski tells Slothrop, Margherita begot Bianca
in parthenogenesis (GR 462). This is the form of procreation
attributed to the Shekhinah. She claims to be "Israel,"
"queen daughter, bride and mother of god", but later she
belies her claim by murdering children and impersonating
Lilith. 

In GR, the Shekhina has many avatars, and she merges with
other mythical figures, just like V in the novel V. (i.e. 
White Goddess and Golen Bough). Katje personifies both the
Bridal and Demonic aspects of the Shekhinah. She appears  by
the windmill known as the "Angel", and when she is in bed
with Slothrop, her skin, which is "whiter than the white
garment" she wears, suddenly undergoes  "a terrible
beastlike change" (GR 196). She embodies Pudding's  "shining
mother and last love ..."(GR 232), and she is Blicero's
"Golden Bitch" (GR 658), Enzian's Kalahari "White Woman" (GR
658).  

Slothrop's  vision of America is of an "Amazon bitch",   a
parody of the Shekhinah, and she appears as the vindictive
Mother, even Slothrop's own,  Lilith (GR.478, GR. 682). Her
figure also merges with Tannhauser's "submontane Venus"
(GR.88, GR. 299) and the wife of "Utgarthaloki" (GR 712),
and  with the mythical "white woman" of Norse sagas, female
spirits who beg mortals to redeem them in vain. This is
explicitly the case of Slothrop's "white woman" (GR 374, GR.
377, GR.439),  Enzian's Kalahari (GR.658) and Bianca, whom,
as I suggested previously, is Lost by Slothrop and the
reader--mock Orpheus.  Bianca is a special case, she does
not play a role, she does not exist as mythical figment, and
she is sacrificed for the  feminine representations of
desire, a fate she shares with Tannhauser's Elizabeth   (GR
364, 393, 532-33). 

In GR and in V. the perverted religions do not bring
salvation but instead pave the way to hell or destruction or
annihilation and make the quester blind to the intrinsic
value of a Fallen Man and a Fallen Creation.  Finding a way
back, Kabbalah or Gnostic or Mystical or Magical  is not
possible. It is a matter of,  "because I do not hope to
turn",  and "turning" in some gyre of Yeats, but it is also 
a mock Orpheus that has not simply Lost the way, but Lost
itself--HER (the prodiigal daughter. So all the  charismatic
ways of attempting to retrieve a lost plenitude and to
redeem Man and the Creation from the centrifugal processes
underlying all physical and psychical phenomena fail,
because even myths and mysticism are themselves subject to 
MO's rationalization and secularization. The Merkabah is
supplanted with the Rocket. The Rocket's blastoff has
replaced Mary's Blastoff:  "an entire system won, away from
the feminine darkness held against the entropies of lovable
but scatterbrained Mother Nature" (GR. 324) . 

And I who have been Virgin and Aphrodite,
The mourning Isis and the Queen of corn
Wait for the last mummer, dread Persephone
To dance my dust at last into the tomb. 

		Kathleen Raine