ATDTDA 748, 749

Tue Feb 19 11:57:23 CST 2008

Ya Sam,
Real good focussing, despite your lowering of expectations! 

An attempt at some answers that all can take issue with:
gifts of prophesy is in inverted commas because Yashmeen is now expressing doubt about such gifts?...As often, inverted commas
express an irony regarding the quoted words?

Even religious belief is political,--cf. today! (and always, I guess, is TRPs point)--- therefore enmeshed in History and its power struggles, betrayals and injustices. 

Yes, I would argue, Mathematics is a bad revelation!....not Pentecostal but apocalyptic in TRPs vision.

Yes, I think she did have a kind of projected--or prophetic---vision of the Chums.

The Buddha is often referred to as The Compassionate One.....and boddhisattvas as ones who give up trying for buddhahood
in order to be compassionate caregivers on this earth...Are they The Compassionate who are referred to?  Are the Chums intended?
see wikipedia on boddhisattva..."Two modern bodhisattvas for many are the 14th Dalai Lama and the Karmapa, both considered by many followers of Tibetan Buddhism to be an incarnation of that same bodhisattva Chenrezig, the Bodhisattva of Compassion."

----- Original Message ----
From: Ya Sam <takoitov at hotmail.com>
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Sent: Monday, February 18, 2008 2:20:53 PM
Subject: ATDTDA 748, 749

ATDTDA 748

“gifts of prophesy”, why in inverted commas?

“cannot separate it from the secular politics of present-day Europe ” Mixing the sacred and the profane, I guess.

ATDDTA 749

“the internal life of numbers came as a revelation to me”  is there Revelation (i. e. the Apocalypse) lurking here?

Crotona

Crotona , Croton, or Kroton , ancient city, S Italy, on the east coast of Bruttium (now Calabria ), a colony of Magna Graecia founded c.708 BC There Pythagoras established his school, which exerted a notable political and moral influence. The nearby temple of Hera Lacinia was the religious shrine of Magna Graecia . Crotona 's athletes won fame at the Olympic games. The height of the city's prosperity was reached after the army, led by the athlete Milo, destroyed the rival town of Sybaris (510 BC). Crotona then became involved in wars and soon declined. It was captured by the Romans in 277 BC; until modern times it was never more than a provincial town. It was called Cotrone from the Middle Ages until 1928, when its name was changed to Crotone .

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1E1-Crotona.html

Pythagorean apprentice
see
IT was an auspicious day for the student at Crotona when Pythagoras received him into his own dwelling and welcomed him as a disciple. The candidate could now look back upon his eight years of probationary discipline with gratitude, for he knew that they had prepared him for the study of Nature's hidden secrets and placed him on the Path leading to Adeptship. 
Pythagoras began his instructions by establishing certain universal principles, proceeding from them into particulars. The key to the whole Pythagorean system, irrespective of the particular science to which it is applied, is the general formula of unity in multiplicity, the idea of the One evolving and pervading the many. This is commonly known as the Doctrine of Emanations. Pythagoras called it the Science of Numbers. 
Pythagoras taught that this science -- the chief of all in occultism -- was revealed to men by "celestial deities," those godlike men who were the Divine Instructors of the Third Race. It was first taught to the Greeks by Orpheus, and for centuries made known only to the "chosen few" in the Mysteries. Just before the Mysteries began to degenerate, Pythagoras instituted this teaching in his School, thus preserving under the name of "philosophy" the ancient science which, as Plato truly says, is "the greatest good that was ever imparted to men." In his Life of Pythagoras, Iamblichus repeats the statement of Plato that the study of the science of Numbers tends to awaken that organ in the brain which the ancients described as the "eye of wisdom" -- the organ now known to physiology as the pineal gland. Speaking of the mathematical disciplines, Plato says in the Republic (Book VII), "the soul through these disciplines has an organ purified and enlightened, an
 organ better worth saving than ten thousand corporeal eyes, since truth becomes visible through this alone." 

http://www.blavatsky.net/magazine/theosophy/ww/additional/ancientlandmarks/PythagScienceOfNumbers.html

Professor McTaggart, mentioned on p. 239
Pynchon Wiki
http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_219-242#Page_239

“I am today perhaps more of a Nietzschean”
Have there been any famous female Nietzscheans? Couldn’t find. Help!

“the strictest vow of Silence”
Vow of Silence cartoons
http://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/v/vow_of_silence.asp

“a great skyborne town”, “a small band of serious young people”
The future vision of the Inconvenience?

Also:
Laputa is a fictional flying island or rock with an adamantine base, that can be maneuvered by its inhabitants in any direction using magnetic levitation. The population of the island mainly consists of educated people, who are fond of mathematics, astronomy, music and technology, but fail to make practical use of their knowledge (the rest are their servants). They had mastered magnetic levitation and discovered the two moons of Mars (something which would not be discovered in reality for another 150 years), but couldn't construct well-designed clothing or buildings - reason for this being that measurements are taken with instruments such as quadrants and a compass rather than with tapes. It is a male-dominated society; often, the wives of these men request to leave the island to visit the land below. However, these requests are almost never granted because the women never want to come back voluntarily.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laputa

The Compassionate
Can’t track the reference!

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