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FRAGMENTATION OF BEING and the Path Beyond the Void by Kent D. Palmer
copyright 2004 All Rights Reserved. Not for Distribution.
How do we know that these layers of riddle are indeed significant? One way is to explore, along with Paul Friedrich, the diacritical structure of the Queens of Heaven in his book The Meaning Of Aphrodite. He sees the meaning of Aphrodite in her diacritical relations with all the other Queens of Heaven and so explores the core of the field of feminine archetypes that existed through the major Greek goddesses. From his study, a clear pattern appears modeled on the same proto-Indo-European structure that we have been exploring all along. Only here it is only women that make up the semiotic units. From this we notice that the archetypal images of women are more dispersed and fragmented than those of men. Women embody difference, whereas men embody identity. This turns out to be the corollary to the proposition that the Indo-European culture emphasizes outward female unity and inward male separation, rather than its healthier opposite. The field of diacritical meanings for women are more fragmented and dispersed as a result of the attempt to produce, through them, an outward unity in society. On the other hand, because of the inward separation of men, an attempt to forge a more unified field of diacritical meanings is evident. We see this in men's and women's clothes. Women express themselves through a myriad of different fashion statements, whereas men wear more of a uniform in the suit, or a shortened robe. This difference in dress was mirrored by the field of archetypes in ancient Greece where the difference between Zeus, Poseidon and Hades is very superficial, and where the other attendant gods are merely supporting to the universal male characteristics which is expressed in the character of the Homeric Hero. Besides name, how much difference is there between the many heroes that fell at Troy? The women goddesses have more intrinsic differences between themselves, which we will take from the analysis of Friedrich and show in the basic structure that we have been using all along, to delineate the basic features of the Indo-European worldview which structures the cosmos as well as the society.
This tableau allows us to see clearly the differences between the Queens of Heaven in terms of their responsiveness to the male. On the other hand, the men are described by a triangle of Zeus (Baal), Hades (Mot) and Poseidon (Yamm). These three are like the later Christian trinity which is posited to actually be a unity. The other male gods inhabit another similar structure and define themselves around this Indo-European trinity.
Both these structures raise a question. For the male tableau, the question is about the unity of the three brothers and whether there is any face of the gods beyond their differentiation, which is the same problem that appears for the Christians in a different guise. It is the "mystery" of the trinity. For the female tableau, Friedrich points out that what is missing is a female who is at once sexual and motherly. These two aspects do not seem to be conjoined except in terms of the possibility of incest, like that of Oedipus. Incest is the negative hole in the female tableau, whereas the mystery of the trinity is the positive hole in the male tableau. The mystery of the trinity is the dual of the possibility of incest, which is the only way that sexuality and maternity could be conjoined for the Greeks. This is despite the clear crossover between sexual and maternal physiological characteristics as discussed by Friedrich. He points out that we are lacking archetypes in our civilization, emanating from the Greeks, that show how we can have sexually active mothers. We are also lacking a solution to the mystery of the trinity. We can say that the inner unity of the three brothers is obviously their father, Kronos. This solution recalls the reconciliation between the dualistic Persian gods through the appearance of Zurvan, their father, who was seen as a parallel to Kronos. This says that Time is the core of the mystery. But even with this answer, the mystery continues to persist. Since it is a paradox, specifically created so it cannot be solved, this is to be expected.
TABLE 46 The Meaning of Aphrodite by Paul Friedrich page 102 (Chicago: U. Chicago, 1978)
Attribute
HERA
ATHENA
ARTEMIS
APHRODITE
1. Location
Argos
Athens
Delos; Greece and Asia minor
Cythera, Cyprus, Crete
2. Fruits & Flowers
Flowers in cult; pomegranate
Olive
Rose, poppy, lily, apple
3. Birds
(Cuckoo)
Owl, other birds on special occasions
(Quail)
Dove, swan, goose
4. Goldenness
2
3
1+
5.a Moon
2
3
1
-
5.b Sun
-
2
-
1+
6. Water
Minor
Minor
+
++
7. Origin from Zeus
-
++
+
+.-
8. Kinship
Wife, mother
Older sister
Unmarried younger sister
Wife, mother, mistress, errant female relative
9. Friendliness & Intimacy
Minor
+
-
++
10. Virginity
+,-
+
+
-
11. Attendant Nymphs and Maidens
-
-
+
+
12. Beauty
+
+
+
++
13. Intelligence
+
++
+
14. Nature vs. Culture
culture
nature
both
15. Mobility
+
+
16. Fertility
(+)
++
17. War
+
++
-
Metaphorically
18. Subjectivity
-
-
-
+
Paul Friedrich analyzes the four main female goddesses along 18 dimensions and attempts show the diacritical field of relations between them in order to show the unique position of Aphrodite within that field. What becomes clear with such a multi-dimensional analysis is that the goddesses do not form a system which is comprehensive, self consistent and complete as might be suspected with the neatness with which they fit into the overall Indo-European framework. It is the kind of structure with which we are not used to dealing which I call rough hewn. It is not unhewn, i.e. natural, nor is it completely hewn like the theoretical structures with which we are used to dealing. Instead, it is rough hewn, between these two extremes of nature and culture. Because of this, these structures have more meaning than either purely natural linguistic phenomena or unified structures. It is the very fact that the table has holes in it where certain goddesses do not register along a certain dimension that makes the meanings deeper than they would be otherwise. So for instance, Hera does not figure into the nature/culture dichotomy from Paul Friedrich's point of approach. These 18 dimensions, and these are only the ones he selected to study as most important, give depth to the relations of the goddesses to each other within the more uniform structure of the tableau. What we see is how the materials of local myth are fit into the more ancient Indo-European pattern. Probably it had to be made to fit in order to have legitimacy within an Indo-European culture. The Indo-European structures were like the vessel which was filled with semitic and other materials. Thus, the Indo-European structures became invisible because they played a purely formal structural role of organizing the meanings along the lines of the traditional form of the worldview. Our world is invisible because it is like the water to the fish and the air to the land animals. It dictates the overall relations between the goddesses, but leaves them to interact multidimensionally.
We can see the female goddesses as a field of receptivity for the male. That field is broken and fragmented when compared with the field of the male which is more unified. The very fragmentation of the field of the female goddesses has important aspects we should consider. First of all, it has been pointed out by Paul Friedrich that the field is missing the dimension of motherliness. None of these goddesses are accomplished mothers. This is what leads him to go on to explore the nature of Demeter who represents the dimension of the mother. She completes the structure, standing in the place of Varuna, the token of mystery. And sure enough, it is Demeter who organizes and institutes the mysteries of Eleusus. Demeter represents a completely different set of dimensions from those considered for the other goddesses. But having explored that dimension, Friedrich realizes that the mother is never sensual and that there is a blind spot in the field of the female in addition to its fragmentation. This is a fascinating finding. It tells us that the field of the female exhibits directly, by an active absence, a distortion that reminds us of the essence of manifestation. That absence is an intensification of the fragmentation of the overall field which is itself an intensification of its rough hewn quality. The fragmentation appears in the way the female archetypes are more diverse than the male. Each of the male archetypes are reflections of the overall male paragon. Dionysus and Apollo reflect the dark and light janus face of Zeus himself. Hermes, as messenger, is merely a sign of Zeus' power; that power evoked by the action through intermediaries. The position of Mithra as the maker of contracts is reduced to the agreements of those to whom the messages are delivered who must obey. Likewise, Hephaestus and Ares are merely opposite aspects of Zeus as well as the productive or the anti-productive, i.e. creator and destroyer. Zeus is merely reflected in his brothers who all have essentially the same character. Thus, all the male gods are merely reflections of the same self which is shown in its different aspects but remains essentially unified. On the other hand, the women goddesses are very different from each other and represent a true field of differences along multiple dimensions. The fact that they fit into the structure of the tableau at all is remarkable. Also it is remarkable that Hera does not hold the highest place in the hierarchy within the tableau. She represents marriage, and thus the contract, and so very well embodies the place of Mithra. There is, of course, no mystery about her; the jealous wife has a clear set of motives which dominate her character. The field of course imitates the roles of the women in the family to some extent. But this cannot explain the split between Hera and Demeter, the roles of wife and mother. It also cannot explain the split between them and Aphrodite or the fact that these three are mirrored by virgin goddesses on the other side of the line where Athena, Hestia and Artemis stand. They are all completely different, and this is astonishing because of the indistinct and indefinite nature of women in Athenian society where women where veiled, secluded and nameless. We see a hierarchy of difference in the women where they more fully fill out the tableau than their male counterparts, expressing the differences between the signs inherited from the Indo-European tradition more distinctly. Thus, we say that there is the rough hewn quality of their multi-dimensional natures. This is organized into a set of distinct differences which embody the Indo-European structures. Within this field, there is the advent of mystery in the position of Demeter in which the difference of death is treated as the edge of the structure where it stops at the defined point of unthinkability. This defines a crucial difference that is deeper than the difference embodied by the knot of paradox in the male trinity. And beyond that, there is the absence of the sensuous mother as an archetypal possibility blocked by the taboo of incest. This absent, denied possibility lurks within the field of differences to give it a dynamism totally lacking in the male field of differences in which there are merely reflections of the same around a central knot of paradox.
Of course, the knot of paradox on the male side is what we before have called the flaw. It is the essential structure of distortion in the Indo-European worldview. But the structure of the female field gives us some insight into the deeper forms of manifestation first seen in the theogony of Aristophanes. The kinds of difference we have outlined above mirrors the negative fourfold.
TABLE 47
NIGHT
The dispersion and difference between the female archetypes. The dispersion is the opposite of the sameness of the male which represents light. Irreconcilable difference is darkness from the point of view of the male.
COVERING
The impossibility of the sensuous mother as an absence within the field of meanings.
CHAOS
The multi-dimensional rough hewn dimensions of difference along which the goddesses are compared and contrasted.
The first riddle answers to this element of the negative fourfold. Chaos is repressed by anti-difference.
ABYSS
The edge of death (unthinkable) defined by Demeter and Kore (Persephone)
Of course, the male tableau represents the positive fourfold in the way it brings light through the self reflection of the same in relation to itself. Each god elucidates the other god in a systematic and reconcilable pattern where each minor god is a reflection of some aspect of the major god, and all the major gods merely repeat the characteristics of each other. They define the kernel of paradox by laying out a field of non-paradoxical differences that are a system which is mutually elucidating. The systematical nature of the relations between the male gods is the opposite of the chaos intrinsic to the female field. There is no hint of death except the positive presence of Hades whose assignment to that realm was arbitrary. Thus, the male tableau lacks any falling off by reaching a limit of what is thinkable. Instead, the abyss shows up as the positively delineated paradox within the systematic field of male self reflections. In the male field, there are no haunting absences except the elusive unity of the three brothers, which is clearly the father. The father haunts the brothers as their absent unity. This unity is not excluded, but is clearly pointed to in myth as the relation of the bothers to the earlier generation by rebellion is delineated. Kronos is shut out but by a positive action, not as something unmentionable. Finally, the light of sameness replaces the darkness of true difference. The male pattern is finely hewn and systematic, and this systematic character expels difference and replaces it with sameness which is one step away from identity. In fact, identity appears as the non-difference between the brothers. In the perfect duality between Ares and Hephaestus, between Apollo and Dionysus, between the light and dark sides of Zeus with his Janus faces.
So all depth is excluded from the male tableau and relegated to the female tableau. But the two tableaus represent the relations of the positive and negative fourfolds. The negative fourfold contains all the truly interesting elements which have been suppressed and excluded from the positive fourfold. For this reason, it is the women who are the interesting ones in the Greek mythology. They are the monsters. Their monstrosity comes from the embodiment of all those excluded characteristics which are symbolized in the male domain by Dionysus. Dionysus is the door within the male realm into the other world of women. Dionysus is the key player who links the positive and negative fourfolds. He is the flaw within the self-reflecting narcissistic realm of sameness through which everything which is excluded may burst at any moment. Because of this, Dionysus is the doorway of emergence where the other breaks into the realm of the same from time to time. So here we see in the relation of the two tableaus the reason for the phenomenon of emergence. Emergence occurs because of the repression of the positive fourfold which is broken occasionally, and all the repressed material floods into the realm of sameness causing havoc. This occurs with the advent of Dionysus.
Now once it is clear that the pattern of the female tableau is an embodiment of the negative fourfold, it is possible to attempt to move on to understand how the riddles express the dynamic between the two tableaus. We see that the riddles act along each of the dimensions of the negative fourfold. So for instance, in the first riddle, we see the man acting on the woman as a tablet of homogeneous difference. This makes woman completely hewn instead of rough hewn. This is in direct contradiction to the actual multi-dimensional chaotic nature of woman as rough hewn. The first riddle is how man can see woman as pure hyle to be formed as content, when in fact, she is multi-dimensionally rough hewn, and chaotic in contrast to the sameness of the male. It is the male who is hewn not the female. The male represents the positive fourfold suffused with light. That positive fourfold is the realm of manifestation which is the interpretation of Being. In the figure, we see a tetrahedron of Metaphor, Identity, Truth and Reality, the sub-components of Being. For these we can substitute the male tableau which has an action of the pen on the tablet of the female tableau. But to do that, it must project pure heterogeneity upon the female and this is the repression of repression. First, all the elements of the negative fourfold are repressed and excluded from the self similarity of the male. Then the chaotic multidimensional differences within the female realm are suppressed and turned into nihilistic pure heterogeneity thought of as pure difference as hyle to be formed by the male as he pleases. But also, we notice that the pen and the tablet are one version of the primal scene which also includes the well and the tree. So we see that the action of the male on the female repeats the action of the primal scene albeit in a one-dimensional and distorted way. Because of this, we almost never get past this riddle. The riddle of the action of the male on the female as form on content is given depth by the relation of this action to the primal scene made superficial as a phallic act of dominance over the receptive female. This act of dominance is the pure transcendence, and the female is meant to embody immanence as receptivity. Thus, the first riddle is the representation of transcendence as dominance and explains the relation between the two tableaus.
When we look at the male tableau, we see in its structure the positive fourfold, which embodies the structure of transcendence as dominance. First there is the mirroring of dualities. The duality of the positive and negative aspects of Zeus, of Hephaestus verses Ares, of Dionysus verses Apollo. All these nihilistic dualities are embodied within the male tableau. It is the projection of nihilistic opposites on the world that causes all the natural complexes to be destroyed. Production and anti-production both take materials and destroy their natural forms to make artificial forms. Both production and destruction are based on prior destruction. First things must be converted to raw materials by breaking down the natural complexes of which they are part. In war, this breaking down is the end product. In production, it is the preliminary processing for building up a new form. But when we look at war, we see that normally a new social order is imposed by the conqueror so that anti-production and production may be seen as two horns of the same process of breaking down natural complexes to produce material for reforming. Notice that in war the men are killed and the women and children are enslaved. The men are the forming structure of the society, but the females are seen as malleable as they become slaves. Here woman as tablet, as pure content to be reformed after the old natural form has been broken, is clearly seen in action. We never question the killing of men and the enslaving of women, but it is in this act that we see manifest this action of dominance and writing upon the female material in its most brutal form.
But the mirroring of dualities is not the only aspect of the male tableau. There too, we see the definition of paradox in the trinity of the brother gods. The paradoxicality appears in the relation of the primal scene to the act of transcendence as dominance. These two levels of interpretation are seen simultaneously. This is, in fact, a metaphorical usage of the primal scene which has been usurped as a basis for forming the scene of dominance along the lines of sexual difference. The tetrahedron of Truth, Identity, Reality and Metaphor is itself the representative of the flaw which embodies this paradoxicality. The paradox is seen as the figure on the ground of pure difference of the female tablet. All action is reserved for the male. The action is the writing on the female. That writing has within it a paradoxicality which is the distortion of the flaw. The dance of that paradoxicality on the field of the woman as pure difference is the action of transcendence which has been called by Henry, Ontological Monism; that is, the assumption of all those who interpret the world as only being founded on the positive fourfold. The light of the clearing in being has an inner darkness which is never seen. It is the light of Plato's cave, produced by fire light, that springs from the burning of that knot of paradoxicality and appears to light up the world with an eerie light from the sparks, light those from the forge of Hephaestus or from the bonfires of the encamped armies of Ares. Zeus himself has the light of lightening and not that of the sun. It is the light of static electrical discharge. It is seen against the darkened clouds. The darkened roiling clouds and the lightening are nihilistic opposites that are too light, too dark and together are the very symbol of nihilistic opposition. So too, the opposition between Dionysus and Apollo are nihilistic. The interaction of the paradoixcality of the flaw with its surroundings produces this weird light which in the absence of the sun, appears to illuminate fully. But it is a dark and distorting light that projects the distortion of the flaw on everything within the clearing of being.
The man appears active in spite of his embodiment of sameness and only self-mirroring. This is because the female is converted into merely the screen upon which the show of nihilistic opposites is projected. The woman is the darkness of the cave upon which the light from the fire of paradox is projected. In front of the bland background and the artificial light, the forms as shadows appear. They are illusions that can only appear in this artificial situation. They are the phantoms of ideation. Transcendence as dominance is the basis for the production of the illusion of ideation. It appears on the basis of Truth, Identity, Reality and Metaphor which are the four faces of the flaw contained within Being. The act of transcendence is based on the projection of identity as anti-difference. All differences are seen against this background. Anti-difference appears in the homogeneity of the content which as been turned into a resource -- a pure plenum of heterogeneity which is perfect content or the hyle. It also appears in the dominance of transcendence which excludes all other aspects of existence which conflict with its will to power. Identity appears in the leveled playing field of the tablet, the cleared space of the clearing in being, made clear by the conversion of natural complexes into raw material, that is by clear cutting. It also appears in the rigor and ruthlessness of the transcendental impulse of dominance. There is one order, the male order embodying the Indo-European spirit, which is bent on imposing its will or destroying everything in its path that resists. The action of the pen on the tablet, when it is brought completely within the in-time realm, is based first on the projection of anti-difference on the background of which all other differences appear. In this projection, two other opposite aspects of Being appear, i.e. Truth and Reality. The will to power of the projection of transcendence meets resistance. That resistance of the world is reality. The utter destruction which is wrought on that which resists produces chaos in the world. That chaos as a heightened and artificial state becomes the heightened sense of reality. Out of this forge of destruction appears the truth. The truth is what can withstand the destruction. Anti-difference produces the tautology which is so true it is meaninglessness. The tautology is the result of complete destruction of resistance. In that process of imposing anti-difference, we see glimpses of other truths, things that stand the test of time, things that appear within the manifestation process of imposing the dominance of transcendence. Finally, the metaphor appears when the very process of destruction of everything, for no reason, becomes the link between differences. Within the realm of differences that become visible through the projection of anti-difference, it is possible to say that A is B. This statement makes the act of transcendence itself the ground for the comparison. Achilles IS a lion in war. Achilles' destruction IS like a raging fire. Here the warrior and the lion and fire are connected to each other through the projection of Being, by the active articulation of the positive fourfold as the only world there is. The two forms in the world are mediated by the invisible transparent medium of the world itself. There is a fold in that ether, and on one side of the fold is Achilles, while on the other side of that fold is the Lion or the Fire. Looking thorough the image of Achilles, one sees simultaneously the Fire or Lion. The ability of the transparent world of the positive fourfold to fold through itself like that gives a special character to that kind of world. It allows the idea to exist because through the idea, one sees the instance, and through the instance, one sees the idea. This is the world of idealism, the clear pure world which is perfectly transparent, perfectly available being present-at-hand. When one sees that, the transparent layers move like the undulations of a jelly fish. Then one gets a glimpse of the world as process Being where time is mixed with Being. To mix metaphors, which is appropriate in this context, the whole of the clearing in being is a house of cards that might collapse, like any illusion, at any moment. That collapse is the advent of the catastrophe of Hyper Being. After the collapse, what is left is Wild Being. Wild Being is the pure reversibility between the images on either side of the transparent medium of ideation. Hyper Being is the realization that the two sides are actually the single side of a mobius strip, and that the opposition between the instance and the concept is contrived and artificially produced as nihilistic opposites.
So following this logic, the whole of riddle one, which is the pen and tablet, answers to only one of the aspects of the negative fourfold as seen in the articulation of the female tableau. It answers to the multidimensional rough hewn differences between the female archetypes which is suppressed and turned into a pure heterogeneity by the projection of anti-difference. That projection, as a purely destructive move at the root of both production and anti-production alike, gives rise to truth and reality as nihilistic opposites. Reality is the nature of the world under the onslaught of artificially intense destruction. The truth is what holds up under that onslaught, like the onslaught of Cartesian doubt of everything. In that process, the world appears as a clearing-in-being which has a medium that allows metaphors to appear like intaglio written across the transparent reversible media.
Riddle three represents the actual act of writing on the tablet of the female. Here the tablet is transformed into the agricultural image of the thrice-plowed field. Here the woman becomes identified with the earth as passive receptor of male seed. The male identifies himself with the plow, which is hard and always erect, pushing its way through the earth which resists. This is a close up of the action of the pen on the tablet which leaves traces. These traces have the nature of what Derrida calls DifferAnce--which is differing/deferring. Here the act of writing, which Derrida speaks of as more basic than speech, becomes apparent. The difference between the sexes differs the generation of the offspring. Here man is the always erect phallus, while woman is resistance and the receptacle for the seed. This resistance of the female appears as the myriad differences that appear after the projection of anti-difference. Riddle three, the plow and the furrowed field, shows us the underlying action of the action of transcendence as it interacts with the medium which is not pure and without resistance. Here the interaction between the two tableaus is a direct action of one on the other. When contact occurs, there is no more illusion that man is pure transcendence or that the female is pure heterogeneous difference. The man becomes a blade, and the woman resists the cutting of that blade. Each woman among the archetypes represents a different level of receptivity or degree of resistance. The least resistance is Aphrodite who actively responds without thought of reward. Hera, like a good wife, responds in order to get something in return. Demeter resists but ultimately strikes a deal when her children are used against her. She is the woman caught in a bad marriage by her concern for her children. She gets to see her daughter occasionally, when she comes back from the dead, or from the house of her husband to which she was sold by her husband. Of course, the virgin children offer complete resistance. But that takes different forms. There is the favorite of the father who is never sacrificed; there is the woman who runs away to the hills to save herself. Each virgin has a different strategy for maintaining her separation from men. Resistance takes many forms, and ultimately distinguishes the different kinds of women. That difference from the unity of the male is encountered as otherness and monstrosity.
Riddle four is the reaction of the female to the violence of the male. Here she appears as a monster with a gaze that kills, her only recourse. The raped victim, wife or slave, glares daggers and poison, the evil eye, at her attacker. In this, the interaction between the two tableaus appears as the monstrous difference of Night which is the opposite of the light of the positive fourfold which generates a counter spark, opposite the lightening bolt of Zeus that is directed back at the male tableau. The male tableau, which is in essence all sameness, turns into a mirror that reflects the evil eye of the female. But the result of this is the production of stone or reification where the outward violence of the male rapist is balanced by the inward hate and loathing of the female victim. The monstrosity of the female which is defined through the differences between the different reactions to male sexual aggression. These differences are exactly contrary to sameness of the male projection of the positive fourfold. This difference in kind among women is a darkness as compared to the light of will to power of the male. The darkness is lighted by the projection of the positive fourfold. Thus, the lighting of the darkness that is the difference in the kinds of woman is manifest by the different kinds of gaze that comes back at the man from the woman. There is the gaze of Aphrodite, which is open and wanton, where the man feels threatened because the woman becomes active and he becomes passive in the sexual relation. There is the gaze of Hera, which is calculating what this favor is worth to the dominant but manipulatable male. Three is the withering gaze of Demeter who was raped by both Zeus and Poseidon and whose child was raped by Hades with the consent of Zeus. She is caught in the triangle of the three brothers, in the net of paradox of the trinity who are different yet the same. There is the gaze of Athena who knows she is safe in the protection of her father whose favorite she is. It is haughty and distant. There is the gaze of Artemis who crosses the boundary from culture into nature in order to escape the dominance of the male. All these disturbing gazes combine to produce the gaze of the Gorgon Medusa. She was turned into a monster by violating the sanctuary of one of the virgin's goddesses having sex with Poseidon there and polluting it. For this, she became the transmitter of the combined hatred of all the goddesses combined with the active sexuality of Aphrodite. But where is the evil eye of the woman directed? It is directed at the self-sameness of the male culture of dominance. That sameness is like a mirror which to the extent it is anti-difference, pure tautology, pure reflectivity of thought thinking about thought, it cannot be touched and transformed by that dangerous gaze. In identity is safety from the withering gaze of the violated female. More generally, in identity there is the place from which dynamic clinging may be accomplished in which the rider becomes purely identified with the ridden. But that place of safety is also the vanishing point of subjectivity which is a no place where the one clinging disappears into that to which he clings. To the extent that the positive fourfold is pure transcendence, transparent ideation, the man is safe. As long as the male only sees the answering glitter of the negative fourfold reflected in the whole of the positive fourfold, then he is safe. But to the extent that he looks directly at that gaze, he is destroyed by its reification, and withering effects. Man is frozen when he looks directly at the difference between the females, because in that otherness he finds he can get no traction like that of one part of ideation against itself. The positive fourfold floats over the abyss of nothingness. The gaze of the Gorgon is the realization of that nothingness so well described by Sartre as the anti-thetical opposite of Process Being.
Riddle two represents the action of the component of the negative fourfold called "Covering." Here woman is seen as a box or jar. From her box pours a cornucopia of nihilistic opposite forms. She is Pandora. As the one in the box who never appears, she is the perfect analog of the essence of manifestation or pure immanence which lies below the arc of transcendence unnoticed. We saw how the arc of transcendence passed across to the tablet, and how the writing on the tablet encountered resistance and even returned the answering spark of the evil gaze that answers the lightening bolt of pure sexual violence. Well the seed was planted, and the child came to maturity in the receptacle which did not contribute except as nursemaid. Now the planted seed sprouts, and what comes forth is a myriad of nihilistic opposites like Athena and Dionysus. Here the interaction of the tableaus links as nihilistic opposite archetypes from each tableau in dynamic relation. Athena and Dionysus do not come into contact. They are utter opposites but between them is a subtle dance because Athena is the woman who is the image of a man, and Dionysus is the image of a man who is like a woman. He embodies, on the male side, all the negative aspects of the female tableau, while Athena embodies on the female side all the aspects of the male. The Athenians fought the Amazons but are led by the goddess who is most like an Amazon, so what was rejected for the mortal woman is idealized for the goddess who leads them into battle. So here again the two tableaus interact, this time in a dynamic that shows the connection between them very clearly. Each one has a drop of the other inside their tableau. These two drops of the other (like the yang in the yin and vice versa) perform a dance which shows that the two tableaus are a single system interconnected and interacting. The woman, as jar, represents the source permanently hidden from which all the nihilistic opposites that make up the male tableau appear as females give rise to males. So all the self difference within the sameness of the male tableau arises from the essence of manifestation within the female tableau. Thus, the positive fourfold may be seen as the essence of transcendence turned inside out. The sum total of the nihilistic opposites and their diacritical differences arise from the hidden woman. The whole structure of transcendence of domination which falls back upon the female comes from the female herself. In some way, the female is dominating herself by her own reproductive powers. What is hidden, the pure immanence of the sensuous woman absent from the field of goddesses, is the nihilistic opposite of the dominating male phallocratic culture that enslaves her. Woman splits herself into sensuous woman and mother to produce the field of different female responses and to create the dominant phallocentric culture. By spliting herself, all the nihilistic opposites in both tableaus are created, plus the nihilistic opposition between the tableaus themselves.
Ultimately, this is the paradox which becomes the center of the three brothers' triangle. The brothers fight each other over women, or make agreements for the disposal of women, but they come from women and must become distanced from them in order to mistreat them. The men must deny their origin in order to produce the will to power to dominate women. For the female tableau, this is the absent but always present heart of darkness from which all the nihilistic opposites arise. For the male tableau, this is the paradox of the trinity, as the act of rebellion that kills the father and shares the women between the brothers who usurp power. What the brothers hold between them is the paradox that the women they barter are their own source. The paradox is the metaphor gone wrong. The paradox is a metaphor that gives a picture of the whole flaw, where the flaw is reflecting on itself, and is looking at itself through the distortions of the flaw itself.
This brings us to riddle five where man arises from the earth and returns to the earth. Here men confront their fear of being encompassed by women as they where at birth and in their arms. In this riddle, the difference between all the nihilistic opposites vanish. Cancellation occurs, and what is left is the female as origin of her own repression. She gave rise to Uranus who then oppressed her. Man facing death or encompassing by the female is what occurs in this riddle. This is also the realm of Demeter and her mysteries. Death is the Abyss. We gaze over the rim where we see no reflection, and it scares us. At riddle five the entire set of nihilistic opposites have cancelled, and the reversibility between the male and the female is all that is left. When the essence of manifestation cancels with the entire positive fourfold, when the two tableaus as nihilistic opposites cancel, this is the stage where Wild Being appears.
In the riddles we have seen Pure Presence as the act of pure transcendence where anti-difference is projected upon the tablet by the pen. The leveling of the clearing-in-being made it possible for the male to write on the female body and introduce his own artificial differences based on primary destruction that is part of both production and anti-production. This projection of transcendence is known also as ideation. It is a process. It is not just the idea of an act, as in pure idealism, but an actual act of dominance. Thus, the actual act of projection is called Process Being. The next level in the structure of the riddles is the actual writing that encounters resistance. Here we encounter the differAnce of the trace. When all the differAnce of the resisting tablet are taken together, we get the gaze of Medusa as pure other. At this level, the essence of manifestation, pure immanence, appears. This is the riddle of the jar, or Pandora's box, which produces nihilistic opposites from the seed of the raping husband. But all the nihilistic opposites are false oppositions, and they eventually are seen to cancel in which case we enter into Wild Being of parthenogeneses arising from the female of the thing that comes to eventually oppress her. She only has her own failed motherhood to blame in some sense in that she produced a child that could turn against her. The riddles take us through the different meta-levels of Being in an explicit way, emphasizing the third meta-level by articulating it with three of the five riddles.
In this way, the two tableaus are seen to interact through the riddles. The negative fourfold is shown to assimilate with the positive fourfold, revealing its inner dynamic and origin. The meta-levels of Being are represented as the differences between the signifiers in the tableaus, as the quality of the differences between the hierarchically arranged signifiers. It also appears as the kinds of difference that appear within the positive fourfold as well as being manifest within the structure of the riddles in their genetic unfolding. Thus, we may say that these structures are shot through and through with the fragmentation of Being appearing as the differences between signifiers within each tableau, as the different aspects of the positive fourfold, as the genetic unfolding of the riddles in which the male and female tableaus interact. We can see that the fragmentation of Being is complete and utter internal self-difference. The fragmentation of being functions in the capacity of each moment of the negative fourfold. The fragmentation of Being acts as NIGHT, as COVERING, as CHAOS and as the ABYSS. Through the fragmentation of Being, non-being enters into the positive fourfold. The very path that Parmenides says was impossible suddenly appears as the only possible path. The fragmentation of Being provides all the discontinuities within Being that make it utterly empty, and it is because of that emptiness, as with everything else, that meaning pours into the world.
The fragmentation of Being is the inner structure of transcendence and ideation. As such, it provides us with a progressive tendency toward Chaos. First the deterministic becomes statistical, then fuzzy, and finally chaotic. Within the realm of the positive fourfold, Chaos is introduced as the infinite fine-grained differences that arise in opposition to the work of anti-difference. The arc of transcendence takes place on the background of the other. That other exhibits essential differences that are contrary to the internal reflection of the sameness of transcendence. Those essential differences within otherness appear as a darkness to the eerie light of transcendence. The fragmentation of Being embody the ancient differences between the signifiers in this background. In this capacity, the fragmentation of Being embodies the negative fourfold's principle of Night. The two tableaus of positive and negative fourfolds have a genetic interaction governed by the fragmentation of Being. Here the fragmentation of Being works to cover its own tracks in withdrawal. The differences established in the female tableau are progressively erased. So the principle of Covering appears as an aspect of the application of the fragmentation of Being. Finally, the fragmentation of Being, in terms of meta-level differences, are pure discontinuities and so themselves represent the definition of the abyss of the unthinkable, wherever they appear, as our minds refuse to think beyond them and show our human limitations. As pure discontinuity, the fragmentation of Being represents the principle of the Abyss. So in its manifestations, the fragmentation of Being embodies the negative fourfold. It is a new ontological principle which is rough hewn, neither completely captured by hewn concepts nor completely escaping us as the unhewn, non-conceptual might. It replaces the positive fourfold and the negative fourfold with a dynamic between these two which asks us to look at what is left when all the nihilistic opposites cancel. The positive fourfold (man, gods, heaven, earth) is shot through and through with the negative fourfold. The negative fourfold is no longer isolated, but inundates the clearing-in-being. As it does so, we go to deeper and deeper realizations of the meaning of the fragmentation of Being until we are left only with emptiness, the true meaning of Being, its antidote.
It is incredible to think that what we have done here is defined the structure of the flaw. The flaw has depth and folds back through itself like an Escher waterfall at different dimensional levels. By following the discontinuities within Being as pure transcendence, we unearthed the opposite of Being which is pure immanence which is seen in relation to Being as the negative fourfold. As the essence of manifestation, it is Night, Covering, Chaos and the Abyss in which no mirroring between elements occurs, no transcendence appears. It is like the concept of sexual pleasure for women without penetration. It strikes to the heart of the essence of the man. So too, does the denial of transcendence, the dwelling in pure immanence of the female principle as produced by the action of domination. Night, Covering, Chaos and the Abyss only appear from the side of transcendence and the male as the embodiment of otherness in the female. For the female who holds to non-action, non-reaction, there is no Night, no Covering, no Chaos and no Abyss. But as she is seized, she expresses her receptivity, and these principles arise as the opposite of the positive fourfold. The two fourfolds cancel each other, revealing another manifestation of the fragmentation of Being. Taken together, the negative fourfold expresses itself as all the different manifestations of the fragmentation of Being. And so in the end, we only have a deeper understanding of the flaw seen as a multi-dimensional infolding structure of paradoxicality which is shot through with discontinuities. All these meta-levels of Being end at the edge of the unthinkable, and thus express the fine line with emptiness, the opposite of the entire structure of the flaw. But as the opposite, the empty emptiness that negates Being, this too is but another level of cancellation. When the flaw, which is like the geode, and the structure of the interaction of the positive and negative fourfold which is the crystalline structure within the geode, cancel with the emptiness inside of the geode, then we are taken beyond the void. Here the mountains are again the mountains, and the rivers are again the rivers. On the banks of those rivers and on the slopes of those mountains, men and women are practicing Islam. In that they escape from the distortions in human relations inherent in the distortions of the Indo-European worldview. But not without first coming to terms with those distortions in themselves. Islam is only vibrant when confronting Kufr. Islam defines life beyond the flaw in its details, in the image of Quran walking, the Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, and his relations to his wives. This is the greatest example of inward male unity in the midst of outward female separation. The opposite of the Kafir lifestyle, diametrically opposed to it in every way. Ultimately Kufr, in its virulent Western form, is opposite Islam so that there are still opposites in what lies beyond the void and what lies this side of the void. The void is the barzak, interspace/barrier, between these two great ways of life. One is prophetically inspired, and the other comes from the accumulated degenerations of prophetic teachings. The way of Kufr only exists so that the prophetic way may be recognized, and non-nihilistic distinctions may be made in this world. We are all lost unless Allah saves us from ourselves.
The layers of riddles explore the interaction between the male archetypes and the female archetypes. It gives a depth to the tableaus which, by themselves, tell us very little because no dynamism between the male energies and female energies is specified. Our attention is naturally drawn to Demeter because she is in the position of power within the female tableau. She is the one trapped in the paradoxicality between the trinity of the three brothers. Quite naturally, one begins to wonder about the relation between her myths and the riddles. And as it turns out, there is a good mapping between her myths and the riddles which further elucidates them and makes it clear that these structures are not arbitrary. The first riddle shows up in the rape by Demeter by Zeus, and then Poseidon, and then the abduction of her daughter by Hades with Zeus' acknowledgment. The power of domination of the male over the female is expressed in each of these relationships. Rape-marriage and just rape, as well as abduction, are the three specific relations in which the male exerts domination over the female. Demeter experiences all three of these, either directly or indirectly. Thus, her relations with the brothers exhibit the basic dominance of the transcendent male represented by riddle one. After looking for her daughter, Demeter goes and sits by a Virgin well. She becomes the nursemaid for a family, and brings up their male child. This is very significant because that male child will someday grow up to dominate women the way Demeter has been wronged and dominated. Thus, she attempts to purify him of that thing which will cause him to dominate and destroy women. This is called making him immortal. Demeter becomes a source to that family of all the good things. Thus, the second riddle is expressed in the nursing of Demeter of the young boy, and the good things she brings to his family. The third riddle is fulfilled by Demeter lying with Iason in the thrice-plowed field. Here the sexual act was seen as the source of agricultural fertility. Iason is destroyed by Zeus with a thunderbolt for this transgression. Riddle four shows us the anger of the woman at her attacker. In the case of Demeter, there is the connection pointed out by Friedrich between Perseus and Persephone. But beyond that, we can see that the black cape of anger shared by Demeter and Thetis is a variation of the evil gaze of the angry and powerless. That black cape signifies the ultimate anger which is what makes Demeter so awesome. She can wither the earth and destroy humanity by withholding her gifts. In this case, the rock, or the moment of reification, is expressed in the pomegranate seeds that Persephone eats and which is what causes her to have to return to the underworld part of the year. The pomegranate is a fruit of Hera who signifies the marriage contract. This deal that is struck that allows the daughter to spend some time with the mother and some time with the husband makes it possible for Demeter to take off the cloak of utter destruction. Riddle five is the actual confrontation with death which occurs through the abduction of Persephone by Hades. To Hades belongs the Helmet of Invisibility which Perseus wears. The donning of that helmet is the symbol of the death of the hero. That is the return of the hero to the earth from which he arose. Demeter and Persephone define the interface of the feminine tableau with the reality of death. They confront the trinity of brothers in the form of death. The paradox of the male tableau revolves around the relations between Zeus, the master of nihilistic opposition, with the sea and death. The male experiences the white terror when he confronts the possibility of the immersion in the sea of the feminine and the void of death. In fact, these two experiences are conflated by the male. One alludes to his origin within the female, and the other to his end. The hierarchy of Indo-European signifiers ends in the unthinkableness of death within the feminine tableau. It ends with the paradox of the trinity of the brothers in the male tableau. But the trinity is composed of the male's experience of engulfment by the sea and engulfment by death. Between the origin and the end, there is the producer of nihilistic opposites, Zeus, lightening against the dark clouds. Man rules over others between his origin and end by the production of nihilistic opposites. He sows these in the unwilling female, and reaps the outpouring of nihilistic opposites from the woman. In this action of the male on the female, the two tableaus and their riddles are defined which have unexpected depth in the way they express the archetypal relations between male and female as crucial aspects of the Indo-European worldview. These aspects embody the fragmentation of Being in all its forms. It gives us a view of the deep structure of our worldview which would otherwise remain hidden.
The myths of Demeter repeat the elements of the riddles and show that those conundrums are not arbitrary. In fact, they are repeated at the limit of the feminine fourfold which are defined by Demeter and Kore (Persephone) and their confrontation with the Abyss of Death. For them, death is reversible because Demeter holds ransom the whole life of the world in order to rescue her daughter. But that only works partially, and a deal must ultimately be struck, giving Persephone to the underworld three months out of the year. This is enough of an accommodation to get Demeter to take off the dark cape of anger. In a phallocratic social structure, women compromise in order to live. But this is a special compromise because it means that Persephone enters and leaves the unthinkable realm of death each year with the seasons. It sets up a dynamic between life and death which makes possible the wisdom of the mysteries of Eleusis. Men fear dissolution, the white terror, but the woman moves in and out of the Abyss of death and thus sees things from both sides. There is a reversiblity between death and life which the woman embodies. The woman does not experience the white terror of the men. The woman experiences the process of giving birth to the man and the process of the exhaustion of the male in sex which he so fears, and the process of the death of children and herself in childbirth. For women, giving birth is a dangerous passage which can always claim their lives. So death and birth are intermingled in the woman in an intrinsic fashion. This chiasm of death and life makes her a liminal creature beyond the categories of life and death. It is similar to the concept of the sensuous mother which is absent from the field of female signifiers. That a woman can be both sensuous and motherly simultaneously was unthinkable for the Greeks. Here again is a liminal situation which woman embodies. The goddesses where both virginal and experienced, in some cases, where they took baths in sacred fountains in order to restore their virginity. This again is a fundamental liminal experience brought out later in the concept of the virgin birth. Likewise, the woman is both the same as man and the expression of otherness. Woman is liminal because she represents the other within the city and household. She has been formed as the opposite of transcendence by the narrowing of her world by men.
TABLE 48 KInds of liminality for woman
Virgin and Non-virgin
Sensuous Mother
Life and Death
Other and Same
Woman embodies all these kinds of liminal experiences, and this is why she plays an important role in the initiation beyond the city. Truly meeting the woman is to experience in her all these liminal categories that take us beyond simple dichotomies like nature and culture. The woman who is both virginal and non-virginal, a sensuous mother from whom we fear the curse of incest relations, who has gone into death and returned by her experience of childbirth, who is both the same and other -- these are possibilities for all women. It sets women outside the world of men as a monstrosity that must be tamed. It produces the object of dynamic clinging who can transform out of her liminal state into myriad forms. But ultimately, the liminal woman and the man who attempts to dynamically cling to her are a single system which gives us insight into the flaw which we ourselves live every day in our relations between men and woman. It is the most basic distinction in our world: the distinction between the sexes. It has become highly overloaded with meaning through the eons. We experience all those meanings as each sex looks at itself through the distorted mirror of the other sex. In the Indo-European tradition, this vision of the other, which is the same, is particularly distorted in special ways which we have named the flaw. It reifies both sexes in relation to the other. The virginal verses non-virginal separation verses immersion in the same other allows us different fundamental perspectives on ourselves. The sensuous mother allows us to experience our own origin as something which the incest taboo does not color. The confrontation with death in childbirth allows the woman to have some understanding of what lies beyond the world of men which men can never know. All these liminal aspects of woman are also aspects of man to the extent that they form a complementary whole where they are fated for each other. Within the mirror of liminality, one is really seeing human fate which binds the male and female together. This fate has taken a peculiar form in the Indo-European tradition that we must continually strive to understand. But the fate of the belonging together of the male and the female, even when they remain apart, is continually expressed through the liminality of the female which is used in many ways by the Indo-European tradition. Not the least of those uses is in the initiation beyond the city upon which all the city structures are based. We explore this use of liminality in the initiation and in the incest taboo which covers over all these types of liminality and is the most prominent expression of the flaw within our Indo-European culture.
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