The Occult Life of Stamps (is RE: ATDTDA 719)

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

          Rilke:
          It is certain, alas,
          that we are strangers
          to the alleys of the
          City of Sorrow, where
          in the falsified silence
          born of continual clatter,
          the mold of emptiness ejects
          a strutting figure: the gilded din,
          the exploding memorial.
          O, with what finality
          would an angel trample to dust
          their marketplace of consolation,
          bounded by the church with its
          off-the-rack indulgences: as
          tidy, dull and shut tight
          as a post office on Sunday.

          Me:
          The Golden Dawn is name-checked in there somewhere, 
          that's enough right there, there's your Enochian references 
          right there, now take it away Mr. Firstnighter!!!
 
          Kai:
          No, it's not enough, since the book contains even more 
          (Rilkean) Angels than GR ... An actual Enochian reference 
          is required here. 

Let me reframe/reformat the source for Kai's pull-quote:

". . . . Just to get this out of the way, Blavatsky is in Against the Day, 
Arthur Edward Waite is in Against the Day and out in the open, this time 
[he's in Gravity's Rainbow, but to know that you have to know him by 
his works, anyway GR is clogged with kabbalistic references. . . .
. . . . The Golden Dawn is name-checked in there somewhere, 
that's enough right there, there's your Enochian references right there. . . ."

If you're looking for a hunk of the book that's in Enochian language, if 
you want to parse that fine, then I'll have to go back to the drawing board. 
But if we loosen up enough to follow Pynchon's poetical spoor---the 
principle of construction for Pynchon, if you want cause and effect all 
lined up neatly, well you can forget about that---the people involved
are named, the results are cited but the inner works stay hidden. If you 
accept the usual modes of inference in Pynchon, the presence of the 
Golden Dawn, the presence of A.E.Waite, the obviousness of what Nicholas 
Nookshaft and his T.W.I.T.s are up to and the presence of all this 
Angelic activity with all this Kabbalistic activity points directly to calling 
down  [better still, opening oneself to] Angelic forces. Like you said, 
"the book contains even more (Rilkean) Angels than GR", but that's 
a distinction---Rilkian/Enochian---that does not really exist. I doubt that 
Rilke was familiar with Dee, Enochian Language, usw. But what Rilke 
wrote concerning Angelic presence and intervention rings true.
 
          Me:
          And I do believe that the Grace the Chums are flying into is 
          Christian Grace, is Buddhist Grace, is Goddesses Grace--- 
          hey folks, slack is slack: All Hail Bob!!!---but yeah, way up 
          there beyond the limitless light.

          Kai:
          I do believe that the "grace" the novel is ending with is an 
          expression of Pynchon's gratefulness to have been able 
          to come full circle with his art. This does not necessarily 
          carry a religious meaning. 
 
For me, the intensity of spiritual/religious expression increases towards 
the end of Against the Day, that's the general direction the Chums are 
headed for---Towards the light, towards enlightenment. 
 
          PS: "I don't mean to be paradoxical but I thought of The 
          Creature of Light at that time as The Shadow, I guess 
          because It had been cast by  A Brighter Light --- it was 
          A Mechanism or Device, It was not a living thing, as we, 
          the watchers, were." (Harold Brodkey: Angel)

Interesting quote, I've been seeing/hearing other thoughts very much like 
that since my occupational environment shifted this last December. The 
notion here is of a light so great, that other lights seem to be  shadows in 
comparison. As Master Choa [ http://www.aiis.com.au/about%20us.html ]
would say, we are all bits of that first light, born from the original light. 
I'll hunt Brodkey's book down now that I have a library card for Fresno 
State's "Madden Library". I'd ask "is that a Rilkian or Enochian Angel"
but why beat a dead shadow? Why be snarky? It's clear that we are on 
different paths towards the same goal. 

Namaste, Kai.

          They stand at the mountain's foot.
          Weeping, she embraces him.

          Alone, he starts his climb
          up the peak of Primal Pain.
          Not once do his footsteps echo
          from this soundless path of fate.
          Were the endlessly dead
          to awaken some symbol,
          within us, to indicate
          themselves, they might
          point to the catkins
          dangling from the leafless
          branches of the Hazel trees.
          Or speak in drops of rain
          falling to dark earth
          in early spring.

          Then we,
          who have known joy
          only as it escapes us,
          rising to the sky,
          would receive the
          overwhelming benediction
          of happiness descending.

http://www.hunterarchive.com/fileS/Poetry/Elegies/elegy10.html