BE Chap 14. misc.

[Joseph Tracy]

Can Gematria lie, be applied to aerodynamics, predict markets, be agreed on as to meaning? Is it subject to standard fraud investigators methods?  

I am usually kind of on the pro mystic side of these discussions, agnostic about definitive claims on true knowledge of the workings of the universe, but sympathetic to the idea there is meaning, a difference between life enhancing and foolishly dangerous, the possibility if not an inner conviction that evolution has a moral dimension. My body of experience includes much that defies a strictly materialist interpretation.  Nevertheless certain systems that claim to embody cosmic codes are are so un definitive, so vague as to appear useless in any practical way. If all I gave you was the gematria for, say, a passage in the bible, or the name of an organization, I am highly dubious the interpretaion would bear any resemblance to the original text. Same with astrology, i-ching etc. Maybe there is a way for a disciplined adept to use these systems effectively but do tarot readings really define or illuminate something that is not essentially intuitive. 

When I listen to people who are invested in these systems regularly they all sound too much alike to me, a kind of vague sentimental positivism.  
   These things appear in Pynchon’s writing as confirmations of what can be seen by other more direct thought process but because of the symbolic images they have extra portent. They function more like color or atmosphere than to independently convey reliable meaning. They  are a vocabulary of symbols  which have use in context, but which lose definition in random arrangements.  

   palm reading on the other hand….

Maybe nothing is random, maybe there is a semantics embedded in every movement of every particle; I am not entirely sure this is not so, but it leads to a  question of which decoder ring do i choose today?