AtDtDA(34): A Discreet Scream of Recognition

[Dave Monroe]

   "Yashmeen at dinner that evening, with a discreet scream of
recognition, took note of the convent's prohibition against beans, a
Pythgorean dietary rule she remembered being also observed by the
T.W.I.T. ..." (AtD, Pt. IV, p. 957)


"the T.W.I.T."

219; True Worshippers of the Ineffable Tetractys, headquartered in
London, north of Hyde Park ...

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=T


"Pythagorean akousmata"

The Pythagorean society is associated with prohibitions such as not to
step over a crossbar, and not to eat beans....  The prohibition on
beans could be linked to favism, which is relatively widespread around
the Mediterranean.

The key here is that akousmata means "rules", so that the
superstitious taboos primarily applied to the akousmatikoi, and many
of the rules were probably invented after Pythagoras's death and
independent from the mathematikoi (arguably the real preservers of the
Pythagorean tradition). The mathematikoi placed greater emphasis on
inner understanding than did the akousmatikoi, even to the extent of
dispensing with certain rules and ritual practices. For the
mathematikoi, being a Pythagorean was a question of innate quality and
inner understanding.

There was also another way of dealing with the akousmata — by
allegorizing them ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagoras#Pythagoreans

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

232; Greek: "things heard"; holds a much more secretive connotation
like 'signs', or even perhaps 'passwords'. These were explained as a
set of rules of conduct used by the Pythagoreans. A few examples as
given by Aristotle's testimonies, like "abstain from beans as being
due either to the fact that they resemble the genitals in shape, or
because they resemble the gates of Hades." Also noted in this passage
was "not to touch a white cock" and "not to touch any sacred fish"
probably due to the earlier discussion on sacrifice.

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=A

In V. TRP mentions The White Goddess by Robert Graves. The Pythagorean
mystics, Graves writes, derived their bean aversion from the
Pelasgians of Samos (Greece) which puts them in close connection with
the Orphic and Druidic.

The flower of the bean is white like a spirit. Beans grow spirally "up
its prop" symbolizing resurrection or reincarnation. Ghosts contrived
to be reborn as humans by entering into beans and being eaten by women
(Pliny mentions this). Eating beans somehow ran the risk of
frustrating a dead parent's wish for progeny or rebirth. Beans were
also thrown behind one's back to ward of ghosts.

By contrast, Platonists excused their aversion on the grounds that
beans caused flatulence. "Life was breath, and to break wind after
eating beans was a proof that one had eaten a living soul -- in Greek
and Latin the same words, pneuma and anima," words that also meant
gust of wind, breath, soul, spirit. Can wind have a spiritual
significance in AtD?

Does this give a twist to the meaning of Chicago as "The Windy City"
at the beginning of the book -- Chicago as the "City of the Dead,"
especially as the cattle drives are pictured as being a gradual
reduction of choice and freedom that ends in the Cartesian grid of the
city and finally the killing-floor of the slaughterhouse?
Graves goes on to say that the bean belonged to the "White Goddess"
who he identified with the Roman goddess Cranaë, the 'harsh or stony
one,' a Greek surname of the Goddess Artemis. Artemis owned a
hill-temple near Delphi in which the office of priest was always held
by a boy for a five year term, and a cypress-grove, the Cranaeum, just
outside Corinth. Cranaë is etymologically related to the Gaelic
'cairn' -- a pile of stones erected on a mountain-top. Can Cyprian be
related to the cypress grove and to Artemis, the barren goddess?

A further note, on p. 17, Chick Counterfly recounts the schemes he and
his father worked in order to keep beans in the pot. They are
bean-eating worldly men vs. the other-worldly non-eaters of T.W.I.T.
and the Bogomils.

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_946-975#Page_956


"the hegumen, Father Ponko"

Hegumen, hegumenos, or ihumen (Greek: ἡγούμενος ; Macedonian,
Bulgarian and Russian: игумен, trans. igumen; Ukrainian: Ігумен
ihumen; Georgian: იღუმენი, iğumeni; Romanian: egumen; Serbian: Игуман
or Iguman) is the title for the head of a monastery of the Eastern
Orthodox Church or Eastern Catholic Churches, similar to the one of
abbot....

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

Legumen est herbarum, holerum familia, quarum plantae semina sua in
siliquis (saepe dehiscentibus) edunt....

http://la.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legumen


Father Ponko

?


"the Tetractys"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetractys
http://www.donaldtyson.com/tetract.html
http://www.cs.utk.edu/~mclennan/BA/PT/D-moretet.html