AtDTDA (37) p. 1060 =# Tree of Diana

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

 http://tinyurl.com/6hljrw

          He takes the Diamond, and then the Diamond takes him. 
          For it turns out to be a gateway to elsewhere, and Daniel's 
          life's tale an account of the incarnation of a god, not the 
          usual sort that ends up bringing aid and comfort to earthly 
          powers, but that favorite of writers, the incorruptible wiseguy 
          known to anthropologists as the Trickster, to working 
          alchemists as Hermes, to card-players everywhere as the 
          Joker. We don't learn this till the end of the story, by which 
          point, knowing Daniel as we've come to, we are free to take 
          it literally as a real transfiguration, or as a metaphor of spiritual 
          enlightenment, or as a description of Daniel's unusually 
          exalted state of mind as he prepares to cross, forever, the 
          stone junction between Above and Below -- by this point, all 
          of these possibilities have become equally true, for we have 
          been along on one of those indispensable literary journeys, 
          taken nearly as far as Daniel -- through it is for him to slip along 
          across the last borderline, into what Wittgenstein once supposed 
          cannot be spoken of, and upon which, as Eliphaz Levi advised 
          us -- after "To know, to will, to dare" as the last and greatest of 
          the rules of Magic -- we must keep silent.

          -- By Thomas Pynchon, 1997

          Michael Bailey:

          Dr Bronner - "man arose from dust, 
          not descended from angels"

          it's a sweet thought that the characteristics of matter 
          shape the characteristics of thought, since, d'oh, 
          the thinker is made out of matter...

          so of course matter is capable of life 
          as witness our own selves

Timothy Leary once said that "normal human awareness is a chemical process." 
According to Joe Rogan, the pineal gland pumps out DMT as we sleep. 

The Alex Gray paintings of energetic bodies—chakras, energy centers, 
auras folks often see while tripping and that "new age" flavored healers
work with in Pranic healing and Reiki— look way cool, quite amazing art.

http://tinyurl.com/5cg6ul

Now let us turn to Mucho Maas:

          ". . . .Remember that windowpane, down in Laguna that time? 
          God, I knew then, I knew. . . ."

          They had a look. "Uh-huh, me too. That you were never going to 
          die. Ha! No wonder the State panicked. How are they supposed 
          to control a population that knows it'll never die? When that was 
          always their last big chip, when they thought they had the power 
          of life and death. But acid gave us the X-ray vision to see through 
          that one, so of course they had to take it away from us."
          Vineland, p. 313/314

I understand that this concept is espoused in most varieties of Christianity.

          "Oh, goodo." Flipping her hair a couple times, furious, "No 
          nightmares any more? Fine. So your latest little friend, 
          whoever she is, she really made out. At that age, you know, 
          they need all the sleep they can get." 

          "There's no girl, Oed. Let me tell you. The bad dream that I used 
          to have all the time, about the car lot, remember that? I could 
          never even tell you about it. But I can now. It doesn't bother me 
          any more. It was only that sign in the lot, that's what scared me. 
          In the dream I'd be going about a normal day's business and 
          suddenly, with no warning, there'd be the sign. We were a 
          member of the National Automobile Dealers' Association. N.A.D.A. 
          Just this creaking metal sign that said nada, nada, against the blue 
          sky. I used to wake up hollering." 

          She remembered. Now he would never be spooked again, not as 
          long as he had the pills. She could not quite get it into her head 
          that the day she'd left him for San Narciso was the day she'd seen           
          Mucho for the last time. So much of him already had dissipated. 

          The Crying of Lot 49, p. 118 Perennial Classics Edition

One more meaning of "The Crying of Lot 49" is the sign in the lot 
screaming: nada, nothing, fugeddaboudit, ain't nothing here to look 
at, get lost.

Give up. Entropy rules anyway, or didn't you know?

The Big Lie.

You would think after 50 so times of reading the book I'd catch on that 
Oed's words and thoughts just might be a little off-track. In Oedipa's 
mind Mucho Maas, the man she married, just got erased by agents 
of "them" who knows, maybe the Tristero, maybe someone trying to 
hide Trystero. But, as the Count Drugula episode in Vineland 
demonstrates, Mucho came out a better man because of his joining 
up with the "Bridge."

And then there's Frank and El Espinero, and with them we see a 
demonstration of the aliveness of crystals—of rocks, minerals, 
chemicals, light-bulbs, cainines—all those aspects of nature that 
our secret integrationist knows are alive and:

          "Nature does not know extinction; all it knows is transformation. 
          Everything science has taught me, and continues to teach me, 
          strengths my belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence 
          after death."

          [You know who, you know where I found this—those that know, know.]

. . . .peak with Pynchon's fabulist skull of Iceland Spar. At "The Brass
Unicorn"* we have on display and sell hunks of calcite, none so 
rarified as OBA's mythical creation, but certainly weird enought to look 
through and to handle. Somthin's goin' on in all those skipping, phasey 
and occasionally rainbow patterned beams of light that protrude into 
your retina as you rotate the hunk of crystal in front of a light source, 
preferably the sun. I know, after this traversal through the Traverse family
sage I will go back, gladly. I know I have missed scads of references to
that whole sentient rockster shtick that TRP has been waving under our 
noses for, like, forever.

Follow the Bouncing ball:

          . . . .with a face on ev'ry mountainside,
          And a Soul in ev'ry stone . . . .

          Now everybody—

* Kathryn came up with the store's name in reference to alchemy.
Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc: 

http://www.whats-your-sign.com/elemental-alchemy-symbols.html

http://www.ancient-symbols.com/alchemy_symbols.html

http://www.levity.com/alchemy/animal.html