Ahab & Merleau-Ponty....Graves....

[Dave Monroe]

Okay ...

--- jbor <jbor at bigpond.com> wrote:
> 
> I wondered about who that "R.C." might be too.
> Recall that "RC and Moonpie" are the alternative
> lifestylers who are the primary producers for
> Zoyd's yabbie marketing operation in _Vineland_, and
> that R.C.'s wife's name here is "Phoebe" (325.1),
> which means "bright moon" and was also the name of
> the Titaness who was (with Atlas) "set over" the
> moon by Eurynome, the "Goddess of All Things", in
> the Pelasgian creation myth (Graves, 35), but
> I'm not sure that the two "R.C."s are necessarily
> connected in any way ...

Very good.  Of course, I wondered as well, but my
research (such as it is) did not yield "a local
land-surveyor employ'd upon the Tangent Enigma" (p.
321) with those initials.  But note also, not only ...

R.C. = Roman Catholic

But also ...

R.C. = Rosy Cross = Rosencreutz = Rosicrucian

>From Frances Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (New
York: Routledge, 2002 [1972]), Ch. 3, "John Dee and
the Rise of 'Christian Rosencreutz,'" pp.42-57 ...

   "The word 'Rosicrucian' is derived from the name
'Christian Rosencreutz' or 'Rose Cross'.  The
so-called 'Rosicrucian manifestos' are two short
pamphlets or tracts, first published at Cassel in 1614
and 1615, the long titles of which can be abbreviated
as the Fama and the Confessio.  The hero of the
manifestos is a certain 'Father C.R.C.' or 'Christian
Rosencreutz' who is said to have been the founder of
an Order or Fraternity, now revived, and which the
manifestos invite others to join.  These manifestos
aroused immense excitement, and a third publication,
in 1616, increased the mystery.  This was a strange
alchemical romance, the German title of which
translates as The Chemical Wedding of Christian
Rosencreutz.  The hero of The Chemical Wedding seems
also connected with some Order hich uses a red cross
and red roses as symbols.
   "The author of The Chemical Wedding was certainly
Johann Valentin Andreae...." (p. 42)

"... there can be no doubt that we should see the
movement ... ultimately stemming from John Dee." (pp.
55-6)

"... the Rosicrucian publications belong to the
movements around the Elector Palatine [Frederick, of
Bohemia] ..." (p. 56)

"As a Garter Knight, Frederick ..." (p. 56)

   "The strange mystical atmosphere in which Frederick
and his wife [the Princess Elizabeth] were invested
..." (p. 56)

Ch. 5, "The Chemical Wedding of Christian
Rosencreutz," pp. 82-96 ...

   "But what was the origin of the name?  Why
'Christian Rosencreutz'? ....  The rose is an
alchemical symbol; many alchemical treatises have the
title Rosarium, or rose garden.  It is a symbol of the
Virgin, and more generally, a mystical religious
symbol, whether in Dante's vision or in Jean de
Meung's Roman de la rose....  Luther used a rose in
his emblem; Johann Valentin Andreae's arms were a St.
Andrew's cross with roses.
   "Symbols are ambivalent by their very nature and
all these suggestions can be taken into account and
left in the picture.  But let us think back to the
time when Johann Valentin Andreae was a young student
at Tubingen, when he wrote the first version of his
Chemical Wedding under the thrilling influence of the
investiture of the Duke of Wurtemburg with the Order
of the Garter ....  Was that vision ... the origin of
Christian Rosencreutz, the noble German who belongs to
an Order of which the symbols are a red cross and
rose, symbols of St George of England and of the Order
of the Garter?" (p. 92)

"... a parallel to ... the episode of the Red Cross
knight in Spenser's Faerie Queene." (p. 93)

"... the old hypothesis of an alchemical origin, from
Ros, dew, and Crux, light ....  I would think that
both these suggestions might stand together, that
there was both an exoteric chivalrous application of
'Rose Cross', and an esoteric alchemical meaning, Ros
Crux." (p. 96)

Phoebe ...

"Banished from his rightful title as the son of Queen
Elizabeth, heir to the throne of England, doomed to
live in the shadows, [Francis Bacon] created his own
shadow kingdom. When he proclaimed that he had taken
all knowledge for his province, he also proclaimed, in
his enigmatic way, a new title for himself. This is
clearly shown in the symbolic title page of the De
Augmentis:
   "The visible world is the world of the sun, but the
intellectual world, of which Bacon has proclaimed
himself ruler, is shadowed, and is the world of the
moon. Bacon became the Moon Man, the man of the
shadows.  In the frontispiece to Thomas Sprat's
History of the Royal Society there is a group of three
people: William Brouncker, the first president on the
right, A bust of Charles II, the royal founder in the
middle, and to the left, beneath the wing of a
prominent angel, holding a trumpet, is Francis Bacon,
and he is ENTIRELY IN THE SHADOW.

http://www.sirbacon.org/graphics/baconboys.gif

   "It should be noted also that Bacon was of the
lineage of Selena. For itmust be remembered, that in
the cult that sprang up around Elizabeth, she was
commonly referred to as Selena, Diana, or various
other titles signifying the moon.
    
[cf. Frances Yates, Astraea: The Imperial Theme
in the Sixteenth Century (London: Routledge, 1975)]

"Bacon apparently had his Coat of arms changed
according to a new design he made himself.[...] with
two large figures of Castor and Pollux, one on either
side, with the same motto, and the same boar at the
top, but on the side of the boar is a crescent MOON.
    "The name of Diana was particularly significant to
Bacon. Giordano Bruno had spent two years in England,
meeting and mingling with the Sidney circle of which
Bacon was a member (under the mask of Spenser). Bruno
[...] chose for the image of his doctrine the great
chaste huntress DIANA. Under the mask of Spenser Bacon
weaves the same Diana into his Fairy Queen. In the
preface he explains that he gives her the name Of
Gloriana, but SHADOWS her as Bel-Phoebe, and again As
Raleigh's Cynthia, 'Phoebe and Cynthia,' he says,
'being both names for Diana.' In Henry IV, Act I,
Scene 2, Falstaff says, 'let us be Diana's foresters,
GENTLEMEN OF THE SHADE, minions of the moon; and let
men say we be men of good government, being governed,
as the sea is, by our noble and chaste mistress the
moon, under whose countenance we steal.' And the
prince acquiesces, saying, 'us that are the moon's
men.' ... 
   "The character of Diana as a goddess was rather
complex....

[...]

   "Who were these shadow men who were associated with
Bacon in his secret efforts? In 'Shakespeare's Other
Side of Midnight' I have given evidence to support the
claim that Bacon was associated under his masks of
Edmund Spenser and Christopher Marlowe with John Dee,
Philip Sidney and his Areopagus Group, and with Sir
Walter Raleigh and and his group, and that all three
were associated with the Rosicrucian phenomenon.
Raleigh's group very definitely meets the label Of
Shadow Men.[...] School of Night [...]. A [...] poem
by a member of this group, George Chapman, is titled
'Shadow of Night'. The Shadow Men, i.e. those who are
hidden is the same idea as the Invisible Men of the
Rosicrucians.

[...]

"A careful reading of the Fama shows it had two main
thrusts: the reformation of religion, and the
reformation of knowledge.  The reformation of religion
expressed in the document is Militant Protestantism.
The reformation of knowledge is The Advancement
of Learning. The authors of the document were people
who were crusading in secret to oppose tyranny over
the human mind, and in both the Fama, and the
Confession, can clearly be seen the ideas of Bacon and
Dee.    

[...]

   "It is almost certain Francis Bacon was the hidden
mind behind the Rosicrucian phenomena. The Fairy Queen
which Francis wrote under his Spenser Mask combines
for the first time those unique features of chivalry,
red cross, and advancement of learning which are the
hallmark of the Rosicrucians. The first Book of the
Fairy Queen narrates the adventures of the Red Cross
Knight....

[...]

   "Bacon is always the invisible man working behind
the scenes.  But there is evidence that after he
returned from France in 1579 he was associated with
John Dee, Thomas Philippes, and Philip Sidney.
All of these men had one thing in common. They either
worked for, or were associated with Francis Walsingham
who ran the Elizabethan Secret Service....
   "If the Rosicrucians were a branch of the
Elizabethan Secret Service, what form did this take?
[...] The players traveled widely on the continent and
could go everywhere unsuspected. There is evidence
that the players were among the original Rosicrucians.
Ben Jonson, one of the men with insider knowledge
about the whole phenomenon says outright that the
players were Rosicrucians. In one of his masques (The
Fortunate Isles, 1625) Jonson presents a man who is
seeking the Rosicrucians [...] another character
identifies them for him, he says in the manner of one
saying something everyone should know, they are, 'the
players, you fool!'  Johann Valentin Andreae in his
Christian Mythology says of the Rosicrucians that it
is, 'an admirable Fraternity which plays comedies
throughout Europe.'  Frances Yates suggests that
detailed research into the literature of the
Rosicrucian furore in Germany might 'reveal a
connection between the activities of English actors
and the spread of 'Rosicrucian' ideas."

http://www.sirbacon.org/moon.html

And this is where my head really begins to hurt, so ...

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