Horus vs Set, the gator hunt

[Ian Livingston]

Joseph wrote:

>I am not intending to narrow these mythic patterns and characters to  exact parallels to the characters and patterns of V. but to get at >some of the ways Pynchon seems to be using them.... Part of my point as I developed my observation of parallels was that the sides >aren't clear, that this  Set vs Horus war takes place on many levels and on the deepest level is not a thing to be resolved and won but >describes what it is to be  conscious and a participant in social/political survival strategies.

I am in 100% agreement with this statement. I pulled out Jung's
Psychology and Alchemy last night and came across another interesting
little tidbit that seems appropriate to this discussion:

"The problem of opposites called up by the shadow plays a
great--indeed, the decisive--role in alchemy, since it leads in the
ultimate phase of the work to the union of opposites in the archetypal
form of the hierosgamos or  'chymical wedding.' Here the supreme
opposites, male and female (as in the Chinese yang and yin), are
melted into a unity purified of all opposition and therefore
incorruptible. The prerequisite for this, of course, is that the
artifex should not identify himself with the figures in the work but
should leave them in their objective, impersonal state" (37).

The point I take from this is that the reader, neither the author nor
the character, is the artifex, i.e., the alchemist. If we take the
characters personally, as representative of specifically this or that
in the world (e.g., the old king is modernism and the new king is
pomo, etc.), then we spoil the work. The tensions inferred in polemics
detract from the unifying middle ground in which the changes in the
world, as in the self, do their stuff. Someone said a while back that
the excluded middle was not a tool in Pynchon's box until CoL49, but I
strongly disagree. It seems to me that V. is all about showing how
divergences are never truly separated. He uses parody (with appalling
skill for such a young man) to establish that the forms of modernism
are often blank parodies themselves, and he provides models for
artistic representation that allow for a depth of reading not present
in Joyce, Dick, or Fitzgerald--though maybe in Faulkner. There is much
more going on here than simply alluding to a dizzying array of world
literature, mythology, comparative religion, sociology,
psychology....and so on, the dark side of the mind of P. is working
into his opus something relatively new, or maybe renewed. Alice often
points to the Romantic element in P. It is there, but with the
emphasis not so much on individualism as it is on complexity. Chaos
appears anarchic and form appears orderly, but in fact, neither of
these appearances is independently true. Chaos utterly permeates form
("form is emptiness and emptiness is form" as the Heart Sutra states
in Buddhist literature), and form emerges from chaos. I think this is
very much to the point of what Jung found in his work with alchemy,
and that it is also present in Faust, which both he and P. draw
extensively from. And in all cases, we are to take the represented
structures offered objectively, observing the elements and characters
without attaching too much to them. The real work takes place in our
own unconscious minds, both subjectively and inter-subjectively.

Of course, I qualify all that with a certainty that we can only
uncover the unities in a work by observing the parts. Else there would
be no role for academic analysis.

And I have to correct a typo in my quote from Graves: That's supposed
to be "Grant Anup's children this: / to howl with you, Queen Isis,...



On Fri, Aug 20, 2010 at 8:22 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>
> On Aug 20, 2010, at 2:25 PM, Ian Livingston wrote:
>
>> Another Horus link here from Graves's White Goddess:
>>
>> The Jackal's Address to Isis
>>
>> Brant Anup's children this:
>> to howl with you, Queen Isis,
>> Over the scattered limbs of wronged Osiris.
>> What harder fate than to be woman?
>> She makes and she unmakes her man.
>> In Jackal-land it is no secret
>> Who tempted red-haired, ass-eared Set
>> To such bloody extreme; who most
>> Must therefore mourn and fret
>> To pacify the unquiet ghost.
>> And when Horus your son
>> Avenges this divulsion
>> Sceptre in fist, sandal on feet,
>> We shall return across the sana
>>>
>>> From loyal Jackal-land
>>
>> To gorge five nights and days on ass's meat.
>>
>>                     -White Goddess,317
>>
>> I know I can be a little slow in the uptake, but as I read this, it
>> seemed pretty clear to me that Stencil is Horus (staying in B-S the
>> younger's apt, he imagines B-S the elder wearing a Harmakis-head) as
>> much as he is anything else, following the goddess' lead to reassemble
>> his father and thus, maybe, avenge (or integrate) him in some way.
>
>  I am not intending to narrow these mythic patterns and characters to  exact
> parallels to the characters and patterns of V. but to get at some of the
> ways Pynchon seems to be using them.  I like what you are saying about
> Stencil as Horus like. Part of my point as I developed my observation of
> parallels was that the sides aren't clear, that this  Set vs Horus war takes
> place on many levels and on the deepest level is not a thing to be resolved
> and won but describes what it is to be  conscious and a participant in
> social/political survival strategies.
>
> Both Stencil and Profane have strained relations with  women and the
> feminine, and both need feminine intervention to heal themselves.
>>
>> Graves's commentary on the beheading myth in Celtic/English lore here goes
>> on:
>>
>> "A Canaanite version of the same story appears in iconotropic form in
>> the patently unhistorical Book of Judith, composed in Maccabean times.
>> The Jews seem always to have based their religious anecdotes on an
>> existing legend, or icon, never to have written fiction in the modern
>> sense.... The Queen ties her royal husband's hair to the bedpost to
>> immobilize him, and beheads him with a sword...; an attendant brings
>> it to the lover whom she has chosen to be the new king...; after
>> mourning to appease the ghost of the old king, the Corn-Tammuz, who
>> has died at the barley-harvest..., she purifies herself in running
>> water and dresses as a bride...." Etc.
>>
>> This links notably with Jung's alchemical studies that discuss a
>> variety of ways in which the old king is slain and the queen unites
>> with the new king. Or, to quote Ian Anderson, "How do you feel when
>> the old man's gone / do you want to be him?" Other commentaries in
>> this reading have already covered similar ground, and likely tie in to
>> all this handily.
>>
>> On Sat, Aug 14, 2010 at 6:48 AM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>>>
>>> The first visit in V to Egypt focuses on a rivalry for the affection of
>>> Victoria Wren in which Hugh Bongo Shaftsbury appears as Horus the
>>> hawk-headed god of Lower Egypt. Horus is the God of Protection, of the
>>> Sky,
>>> Of War( don't worry about those predators, those drones, those
>>> mercenaries,
>>> those bankers; they are only here for your protection. Horus is
>>> identified
>>> with the pharoah and civilization and exists in opposition to Set . Set
>>> (also spelled Seth, Sheth, Sutekh, Setan or Seteh) is an ancient god, who
>>> was originally the god of the desert, storms, darkness, and chaos. In
>>> Ancient Greek, the god's name is given as Σήθ (Seth).(Wik) This is also
>>> the
>>> name of Adam and Eve's 3rd named son, who is identified with  a gnostic
>>> tradition which has animal human deities.
>>>
>>> Set is identified with upper Egypt and Horus with lower Egypt but it
>>> seems
>>> like a battle between empire and the wilder hunter-gatherers and pastoral
>>> tribes. In one story Horus is badly beaten and appears dead and is
>>> revived
>>> by the god of writing; papyrus was abundant in Lower Egypt.  In a
>>> directly
>>> relevant Horus myth,  Horus fights with and conquers a crocodile who
>>> represents an aspect of Set.
>>>
>>>  Pynchon appears to this reader to be overlapping images of this age old
>>> battle all through his writing history. Already in V there is a density
>>> to
>>> this theme that shows colonialism, conquest and missionary conversion as
>>> much as an inner force as an outward one. It also shows the difficulty of
>>> controlling a myth. The rats see the socialist tendencies of the gospels,
>>> Fairing's doings show the inherent problems of devouring your "flock",
>>> The
>>> rats argue, the alligator turns to face whoever it is:  horus,  Benny,
>>> the
>>> marines, Ceasar,  the gestapo, the Israel commandoes, the hired killer.
>>> Profane tells the gator he is sorry.
>>>
>>>  "  "I'm sorry," he told the alligator. He was always saying he was
>>> sorry.
>>> It was a schlemihl's stock line. He raised the repeater to his shoulder,
>>> flicked off the safety. "Sorry," he said again. Father Fairing talked to
>>> rats. Profane talked to alligators. He fired. The alligator jerked, did a
>>> backflip, thrashed briefly, was still. Blood began to seep out
>>> amoeba-like
>>> to form shifting patterns with the weak glow of the water. Abruptly, the
>>> flashlight went out.  "
>>>
>>> What is primarily  sacrificed in heroism is the feminine. Boot camp
>>> includes
>>> every permutation of degrading mothers and other "pussies". In these 2
>>> chapters Benny's compliance is contrasted with Rachel's challenge to
>>> Schoenmaker.
>>>
>>> Esther says no, meaning yes, Veronica wants to become a nun.  I myself
>>> aspire to be a peasant with my own land, growing my own food, who is
>>> willing
>>> to have his head lopped of for the pleasure of saying fuck you to the
>>> emperor. Obama, George, Bill, Mr Goldman, if one of your ears is out
>>> there,
>>> I just want to say fuck you, fuck your drones, fuck your golf game , and
>>> fuck your fucking dog too.
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> "liber enim librum aperit."
>
>



-- 
"liber enim librum aperit."