Gegen den Tag

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

robin schriee:

          The novel's "Iceland Spar" episode serves to send us 
          reeling back into mythic time, the time of the creation 
          of Norse Myths, myths that develop into material objects, 
          War-Gods finding physical manifestation as V-2's and 
          other deadly objects. 

          Thomas Eckhardt:
          This may well be the case. I was thinking of double
          refraction as a structural metaphor with regard to the 
          doubles and mirror images in the novel. I have not 
          been able to follow the group reading but this has 
          certainly been discussed in detail on the list.

This ought to help. Try pages 128: "the Ymir-Adumla era", 
133: "Icelanders, however, had a long tradition of ghostliness. . . .",
pg. 143---The Vormance Expedition ties Norse legend into
Iceland Spar, the Kabbalah in all that doubling. The "Hanged Man"
card is considered the Odin card. Pynchon is fully engaged with
Occult concerns in Against the Day.

          Basic Tarot Meaning

          With Neptune (or Water) as its planet, the Hanged Man is 
          perhaps the most fascinating card in the deck. It reflects 
          the story of Odin who offered himself as a sacrifice in order 
          to gain knowledge. Hanging from the world tree, wounded 
          by a spear, given no bread or mead, he hung for nine days. 
          On the last day, he saw on the ground runes that had fallen 
          from the tree, understood their meaning, and, coming down, 
          scooped them up for his own. All knowledge is to be found 
          in these runes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odin

          robin :
          One can look at Math or Science or Technological needs 
          or the development of the Military-Industrial complex as 
          TRP's dominant metaphors. I see Magick as just as big, 
          if not bigger, metaphor of the complex functions within 
          TRPV's writing. But at the end of the day, all the brass 
          rings he's reaching for are all Literary.

          Thomas Eckhardt:
          I am not sure whether I can follow. The relationship 
          between the development of mathematics, science, 
          technology and the rise of the Military-Industrial-
          Complex on the one hand and the Magick the 
          Indians know on the other is certainly one if not the 
          dominant theme of Pynchon's writing. I would not 
          call mathematics, science, technology or magic 
          metaphors, though, as my area of expertise obliges 
          me to use the term "metaphor" in a narrower sense.

I have to admit that sometimes the posts I make lack connective tissue, 
and this is an apology. Using the term "metaphor" in a narrower sense 
I percieve "Heresy" as a central concern in Pynchon's writing and religion 
as a larger theme. Science as religion, math as religion, the heresy of a 
gnostically transmitted equation. Can that gnostic transmission, like 
Hamilton's, be ultimately the work of one of the Elder Gods, transposed 
into some other form, a form that can be conjured up by Ceremonial 
Magicians, like those also found in Gravity's Rainbow? Against
the Day, more than any other book by Pynchon, takes up the concerns 
of Spiritual Illumination, said illuminists running rampant during the time
in which "Against the Day" is set and nearly all the major players in that
realm of spiritual activity being cited by name and magical operation within
the pages of said tome. This is developing side-by-side with the rise
of the sciences and in particular the rise of "Intelligence" organizations, 
who did not have a problem consulting potential telepaths and probable 
psychics in gathering up information for major corporate concerns.

And yet, and yet. . . . 

Yesterday, at around noon, I finished "In Search of Lost Time", a good 
alternate title for Pynchon's latest. And sifting out that morass of pettiness 
and poetry will take more time than ploughing through the fields of 
Pynchon. But the shared concern, the reason why I back off on saying 
such things as "Against the Day's" concerns are primarly math or science 
or the occult is that the larger concern of both Proust and Pynchon 
[and Joyce] is the very nature of consciousness and the un-recapturable
nature of the past. And I've only just begun on that particular train of thought. . . .