Unspeakable Suns

« And the evening and the morning were the first day.”ⁱ

« And the evening and the morning were the second day.”ⁱⁱ

« And the evening and the morning were the third day.”ⁱⁱⁱ

However, the sun was not created until the fourth day of the Creation! During the first half of the six days of the Creation, there was no sun, yet there was light and darkness…

What were those « mornings » and « evenings » really like, when the sun was not yet created? Were they only metaphors? Symbols? Images?

One could speculate that these « mornings » (without sun) could be a colourful, metaphoric, way of describing the dawn of things, their principle, their idea, their essence.

And continuing on this train of thoughts, the « evenings » – which came before the « mornings », in the Book of Genesis – could then represent the knowledge that precedes principles, ideas, – the obscure knowledge that precedes the dawn of the understanding, the dawn of the essence of things.

The « evenings » would then confusingly embody all that announces things yet to be created, in advance, all that prepares them in secret, makes them possible and compatible with matter, life, reality.

The « evening knowledge » may represent the knowledge of things as they subsist, latent, in their own nature, immersed in a slowly emerging consciousness, that is still formless.

And when the « morning » comes, then appears the « morning knowledge », the knowledge of the primordial nature of beings, their true, luminous, essence.

A lion, an eagle or a squid, live their own unique life in the steppe, the sky or the sea. Who will tell the unique experience of this particular lion, this singular eagle, this specific squid? Who will bundle them with ‘sensors’ from birth to death, observe their entire life, grasp all their perceptions, understand the full range of their emotions, their fears, their pleasures, and acquire their grammar, their vocabulary?

Plato invented the idea of “the idea”. We may then imagine that there is such a thing as the “idea” of the tiger, its very essence, the “tiger-dom”. But even if we could grasp the essence of the generic tiger, what about the essence of a specific tiger?

To access the « morning knowledge » of the tiger, one would also have to be capable of abstraction, to penetrate its essence, to understanding the paradigm at work.

But, even more difficult maybe, one would also have to be a very zealous observer, endowed with empathy, sensitivity, and encyclopedic patience, to claim the « evening knowledge » of this or that particular tiger.

One should ideally strive to be able to grasp at the same time, not only the “tiger-dom” in general, but the unique “tiger-dom” of this or that particular tiger.

In a sense, a specific tiger may well represent its species. But from another perspective, an individual tiger remains deeply immersed in its own, opaque, singularity. It can never represent the sum total of the life experiences of its fellow tigers of past and future times. One tiger virtually sums up the species, one can admit, but is also overwhelmed on all sides by the innumerable lives of other, real tigers.

During the first days of the Genesis, and before the sun was even created, three evenings and three mornings benefited from a non-solar “light”, a “light” without photons, but not without enlightenment, – a non material “light”, but not without “ideas”…

During those first three days and nights, in the absence of the sun, we can infer that were crated many other (unspeakable) “suns” that were never before seen, and many other unheard-of and unspeakable “moons”.

iGn. 1, 5

iiGn. 1, 8

iiiGn. 1, 13

Bitter Angels of History

Publié par Philippe Quéau

Klee’s painting, Angelus novus, has a catchy title. It gives the painting an air of mystery. Angels, however, are so many, there are billions of them, on every pinhead, it is said. Every boson, every prion even, could have its own angel. In this immense crowd, how can we distinguish between « new » and « old » angels?

Are not angels, by nature, essentially timeless, pure spirits?

Klee’s angel is curiously static, even motionless. There is no sensation of movement, either backwards or forwards. No wind seems to be blowing.

His « wings » are raised as if for an invocation, not for a flight. And if he were to take off, it would be upwards rather than forward. His « fingers », or « feathers », are pointing upwards, like isosceles triangles. His eyes look sideways, fleeing the gaze of the painter and the spectator. His hair looks like pages of manuscripts, rolled by time. No wind disturbs them. The angel has a vaguely leonine face, a strong, sensual, U-shaped jaw, accompanied by a double chin, also U-shaped. His nose is like another tiny face, whose eyes would be his nostrils. His teeth are wide apart, sharp, almost sickly. It even seems that several are missing.

This ailing, stunted angel has only three fingers on his feet. He points them down, like a chicken hanging in a butcher shop.

Walter Benjamin made this comment, expressly metaphorical: “There is a painting by Klee entitled Angelus novus. It depicts an angel who seems to have the intention of moving away from what his gaze seems to be riveted to. His eyes are wide open, his mouth open, his wings spread. This is what the angel of History must necessarily look like. His face is turned towards the past. Where a sequence of events appears before us, he sees only one and only one catastrophe, which keeps piling up ruins upon ruins and throwing them at his feet. He would like to linger, awaken the dead and gather the defeated. But a storm blows from heaven, so strong that the angel can no longer close its wings. This storm is pushing him incessantly towards the future, to which he turns his back, while ruins pile up as far as heaven before him. This storm is what we call progress.”ⁱ

It seems to me that Benjamin has completely re-invented the Klee painting, for his own purposes. No storm, no accumulated progress, no past catastrophe, seem – in my opinion – to accompany the young angel of Klee.

Why, moreover, should History have only one ‘Angel’? And, if it were so, why should this Angel of History be ‘new’, when History is not?

Angelology is a very imperfect science, like History, it seems.

Isaiah said: “The angels of peace shall weep bitterly.”ⁱⁱ

In the Book of Daniel, we read that an archangel appeared and said: “The Prince of the Persians resisted me for twenty-one days.”ⁱⁱⁱ According to a classical interpretation, this archangel was Gabriel, and the « Prince of the Persians » was the angel in charge of guarding the Persian kingdom.

S. Jerome added that Daniel prayed for the liberation of his people. But the Angel-Prince of the Persian kingdom opposed his prayers, while the archangel Gabriel presented them to God.

S. Thomas Aquinas commented the commentary: “This resistance was possible because a prince of the demons wanted to drag the Jews brought to Persia into sin, which was an obstacle to Daniel’s prayer interceding for this people.”^iv

Isn’t this here a quite convincing indication, based on the Scriptures, that there are definitely several angels playing a role in History, and that, moreover, they are sometimes brought to fight each other, according to the interests of the moment?

According to several sources (Maimonides, the Kabbalah, the Zohar, the Soda Raza, the Maseketh Atziluth) angels belong to various orders and classes, such as the Principalities (hence the name « Prince » that we have just met for the angel of Persia), the Powers, the Virtues, the Dominations. Even better known are the Cherubim and Seraphim. Isaiah says in chapter 6 that he saw several Seraphim with six wings « crying out to one another ». Ezechiel speaks of Cherubim he had a vison of, and according to him, each of them had four faces and four wings.^v

The Kabbalists propose ten classes of Angels in the Zohar: the Erelim, the Ishim, the Beni Elohim, the Malakim, the Hashmalim, the Tarshishim, the Shinanim, the Cherubim, the Ophanim and the Seraphim.

Maimonides also proposes ten classes of angels, but he arranges them in a different order, and groups them into two large classes, the « permanent » and the « perishable ».

Judah ha-Levi (1085-1140), a 12th century Jewish theologian, distinguished between « eternal » angels and angels created at a given time.

Where, then, should we place Klee’s Angelus novus, that « new » angel whom Benjamin calls the « Angel of History »? Is he permanent or perishable? Eternal or momentary?

If Benjamin and Klee are right, we should believe that History is guarded just by one ‘new angel’, who therefore must be probably perishable and momentary.

But if they are wrong, History is guarded not by one, but by many angels, and they may be eternal, imperishable.

They then may also cry out to each other like seraphim with multiple wings, and in the confused battles of the angels furiously mixed up, over the centuries, progress might be hard to perceive.

There is one thing, however, that we can be assured of: the most beautiful, the most brilliant of these seraphim (though not the most powerful apparently), – these angels of « peace » keep crying out, bitterly.

iWalter Benjamin, Theses on the Philosophy of History. 1940

iiIs. 33, 7

iiiDan. 10,13

ivSumma Theologiae I, Q. 113 a.8

vEz. 10,14-22

The Lion and the Ashes

Publié par Philippe Quéau

« If a lion could speak we could not understand him », wrote Ludwig Wittgenstein in his Philosophical Investigations.

This remark is worthy of consideration… and of generalization. What if it were a tuna, — or a rattlesnake nest, or a flight of starlings? Or a pile of dust, a block of granite, a cluster of galaxies? Or a prion, a plasmid, a proton? An angel, a seraphim, — or even God?

If God would speak, now, could we understand Him, more than a virus?

Is there any serious chance, after all, that we could just figure out, or somewhat understand, in any way, what is not human?

To start with, do we even understand what it really means to be human?

Pessimism usually prevails in this sort of metaphysical questioning. Leonine grammar is probably simpler than the Greek or the Sanskrit ones.

But these are probably much simpler than a seraphic one.

What is the worldview of the lion ? The crushing of the jaws ? The raw smell of blood, the subtle scent of the steppe?

What about the unfulfilled dreams of the fly, or the vulture, over the corpses? What about the ontological worries of the photon, lost in (relativist) translations?

What about the angel’s sorrow? And what about cherubinic rejoicing?

Isn’t all this, irremediably, out of syntax, out of any human lexicon?

If a million future Champollions tried to decipher, during one million years, the roar of the feline, or to decrypt the vibrato of the lizard, would there be any hope of breaking new grounds? Could we not, one day, find some Rosetta Stone translating equivalences among all the living entities, here on earth, and beyond?

Perhaps one day, we will find such powerful, universal, paradigmatic Babelian stones. Who knows? Who can tell?

Let’s make it simple. We should start by simply trying to understand men and women when they speak, or when they keep silent.

If we could really understand their silence, then perhaps we would better understand things that we still do not understand in the universe, — and perhaps we would get an unhinged glimpse at its core, silent, meaning?

Human speech is continuously made of virtual palimpsests. But these are ignored, — and they stay buried, hidden, impotent, powerless.

Human words have dark or shiny reflections, shimmering with a latent, interior, fire, — sometimes striken by an unexpected, unhoped-for, light of meaning, yet vigorously smouldering under the ashes.

Breath and Word in Veda and Judaism

Publié par Philippe Quéau

The Vedic rite of sacrifice required the participation of four kinds of priests, with very different functions.

The Adhvaryu prepared the animals and the altar, lit the fire and performed the actual sacrifice. They took care of all the material and manual part of the operations, during which they were only allowed to whisper a few incantations proper to their sacrificial activity.

The Udgatṛi were responsible for singing the hymns of Sama Veda in the most melodious manner.

The Hotṛi, for their part, had to recite in a loud voice, without singing them, the ancient hymns of the Ṛg Veda while respecting the traditional rules of pronunciation and accentuation. They were supposed to know by heart all the texts of the Veda in order to adapt to all the circumstances of the sacrifices. At the end of the litanies, they uttered a kind of wild cry, called vausat.

Finally, remaining silent throughout, a Brahmin, a referent of the good progress of the sacrifice, guarantor of its effectiveness, supervised the various phases of the ceremony.

These four kinds of priests had, as one can see, a very different relationship to the word of the Veda. The first murmured (or mumbled) it, the second sang it, following a melody, mingled with music, the third proclaimed it, concluding with a shout. Finally, silence was observed by the Brahmin.

These different regimes of vocal expression can be interpreted as so many possible modalities of the relationship of the word to the divine. They accompany and give rhythm to the stages of the sacrifice and its progression.

The chant is a metaphor for the divine fire, the fire of Agni. « Songs fill you and increase you, as the great rivers fill the sea » says a Vedic formula addressed to Agni.

The recitation of Ṛg Veda is a self-weaving narrative. It can be done word for word (pada rhythm), or in a kind of melodic path (krama) according to eight possible varieties, such as the « braid » (jatā rhythm) or the « block » (ghana rhythm).

In the « braid » style, for example, a four-syllable expression abcd was pronounced in a long, repetitive and obsessive litany: ab/ba/abc/cba/bc/cb/bcd/dcb/bcd…

When the time came, the recitation finally « burst forth » like thunder. Acme of sacrifice.

The Vedic word appears in all its successive stages a will to connect, an energy of connection. Little by little set in motion, it is entirely oriented towards the construction of links with the Deity, the weaving of close correlations, vocal, musical, rhythmic, semantic.

It is impregnated with the mystery of Deity. It establishes and constitutes by itself a sacred link, in the various regimes of breath, and by their learned progression.

A hymn of Atharvaveda pushes the metaphor of breath and rhythm as far as possible. It makes us understand the nature of the act in progress, which resembles a sacred, mystical union: « More than one who sees has not seen the Word; more than one who hears has not heard it. To the latter, she opened her body as to her husband, a loving woman in rich finery.»

The Vedic Word is at the same time substance, vision, way.

A comparison with the divine Word and Breath in the biblical texts can be interesting.

In Gen 2:7, God breathes a « breath of life » (neshmah נשׁמה) so that man becomes a living being (nephesh נפשׁ ). In Gen 1:2, a « wind » from God blows (ruaḥ רוּח). The « wind » is violent and evokes notions of power, strength, active tension. The « breath » of life, on the other hand, can be compared to a breeze, a peaceful and gentle exhalation. Finally, God « speaks », he « says »: « Let there be light! ».

On the subject of the breath and wind of God, Philo of Alexandria comments: « This expression (he breathed) has an even deeper meaning. Indeed three things are required: what blows, what receives, what is blown. What blows is God; what receives is intelligence; what is blown is breath. What is done with these elements? A union of all three occurs. »

Philo poses the deep, intrinsic unity of breath, soul, spirit and speech.

Beyond languages, beyond cultures, from the Veda to the Bible, the analogy of breath transcends worlds. The murmur of the Adhvaryu, the song of Udgatṛi, the word of Hotṛi, and its very cry, form a union, analogous in principle to that of the divine exhalation (neshmah, נשׁמה), the living breath (nephesh, נפשׁ ), and the wind of God (ruaḥ, רוּח ).

In all matters, there are those who excel in seeing the differences. Others see especially the similarities. In the Veda and the Bible, the latter will be able to recognize the persistence of a paradigm of speech and breath in seemingly distant contexts.

The Aryan Veda and Semitic Judaism, beyond their multiple differences, share the intuition of the union of word and breath, – which is also a divine prerogative.

All Religions Belong to Us

Publié par Philippe Quéau

The « Hidden Jew » is an ancient figure. Joseph and Esther first hid their Jewishness. Esther’s name in Hebrew means « I will hide ». Esther belonged to the harem of King Ahasuerus. She revealed to him that she was a Jew and thus saved her people.

Closer in time, the Marrano Jews also « hid ». Shmuel Trigano affirms that they were « adventurers » and « pioneers who can be counted among the first modern men »ⁱ. They were the ferment of Jewish modernity, and thus they were the origin and foundation of modernity itself. Far from betraying their people, they saved them, as it were, by surreptitiously facilitating their acculturation, if we are to believe Trigano’s thesis.

It is a stimulating hypothesis, with broad perspectives. Marranism would not be an escape, a treason, a » decay « , but would in fact embody the courage and resilience of the Jews, and would pose a larger question, inherent in Judaism from its very origins:

« The Marran experience reveals the existence in Judaism of a potentiality of Marranism, a predisposition to Marranism, unrelated to the fact that it also represents a decay of Judaism. The ambivalence is greater: imposed by force, it also constitutes a high fact of the courage and perseverance of the Jews. The real question is this: is Marranism structurally inherent in Judaism, was it inscribed from the beginning in Judaism? (…) How could Jews have thought that they were becoming even more Jewish by becoming Christians (in fact this is what Jewish Christians have thought since Paul)? »ⁱⁱ

This question undoubtedly has a Judeo-Christian component, but its scope goes beyond the historical framework of Judeo-Christian relations. It goes much further back in time. Above all, it sheds light on a fundamental component of Judaism, its latent tendency towards universalism, as perhaps the Psalmist testifies. « But of Zion, it will be said, every man was born there » (Ps. 87:5).

Philo, a Jew and philosopher who lived in Alexandria and died about 50 A.D., offers an interesting figure to study in this regard.

Philo had no connection with Christianity, the birth of which he was a contemporary. Of Greek and Jewish culture, he was well acquainted with the Greek philosophers and had a perfect knowledge of the texts of Judaism, which he interpreted in an original way. He was also interested in the religions of the Magi, the Chaldeans and the Zoroastrians.

He sought higher syntheses, new ways, more adapted to the forms of » globalization » whose progress he observed in his time.

Philo was certainly not a hidden Jew. But what kind of Judaism was he representing? What kind of profound thought, of irrepressible aspiration, was he the bearer?

Philo, two thousand years ago, like the Spanish and Portuguese marranes five centuries ago, represented a paradoxical Judaism. They seem to be moving away from it somewhat, or temporarily , but only to return to it later, in a deeper way. They seem to betray it on the surface, but it is by the effect of a fidelity of their own, perhaps more essential to its true spirit. By taking some distance, by linking themselves to the world, they build bridges, establish links with nations, with non-Jews, and open up the possibility of other syntheses.

Ignored by the Synagogue, Philo professed opinions that might seem unorthodox. It was, moreover, the Christian philosophers and theologians of the first centuries who preserved Philo’s writings, and who found a posteriori in his thought enough to nourish their own reflections.

What was the real state of Judaism just before the destruction of the Second Temple? There were many varieties of Judaism at that time: Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, etc., not to mention the diasporas, more or less Hellenized.

There was undoubtedly a difference in perspective between the Jews of Jerusalem, who prayed every day in the Temple, not knowing that its end was imminent, and the Jews of the Diaspora, whose freedom of thought and belief, if we take Philo as a reference, was undoubtedly greater than in Jerusalem.

Let us judge by this text:

« God and Wisdom are the father and mother of the world, » Philo wrote in De Ebrietate, « but the spirit cannot bear such parents whose graces are far greater than those it can receive; therefore it will have as its father the right Logos and as its mother the education more appropriate to its weakness. »

Philo clarifies the scope of the metaphor: « The Logos is image and eldest son. Sophia is the spouse of God, whom God makes fruitful and who generates the world. »

It is not difficult to imagine the reaction of the Doctors of the Law to these remarks. It is also easy to understand why the Judeo-Christians found in Philo a valuable ally.

In a passage from his Cherubim (43-53), Philo evokes Sophia or Wisdom, the bride of God, and at the same time a Virgin, or Nature without defilement, and « Virginity » itself. Union with God makes the soul a virgin. The Logos is both father and husband of the soul.

This idea of a “virgin-mother-wife” is found almost everywhere in various traditions of antiquity, especially among the Orphics. The symbolic fusion between the wife and the daughter of God corresponds to the assimilation between Artemis and Athena among the latter. Korah, a virgin, daughter of Zeus and Demeter, unites with Zeus, and is the life-giving source of the world. She is the object of the mysteries of Eleusis. In the Osirid tradition, Osiris is the ‘principle’, Isis the ‘receptacle’ and Horus the ‘product’, which is translated philosophically by the triad: ‘Intelligible, matter, sensible’.

Was Philo an orthodox Jew? It is doubtful. Then who was he? One could say that he was, in anticipation, a sort of « Marrano » Jew, mutatis mutandis, converted by force of circumstance to spiritual globalization…

Schmuel Trigano writes in the conclusion of his work: « The double identity of the modern Jew could well be akin to the Marrano score. »

He generalized « Marranism » and made it a general model of the identity of modern man. « Marranism was the laboratory of Jewish modernity, even among those Jews who escaped Marranism. Let us go further: Marranism was the very model of all political modernity. »ⁱⁱⁱ

What does Marranism testify to? The deep ambivalence of a worldview based on messianic consciousness. « Messianic consciousness encourages the Jew to live the life of this world while waiting for the world to come and thus to develop a cantilevered attitude towards this world. »

This feeling of strangeness in the world is particularly acute for anyone with an acute awareness of the implications of the coming of the Messiah.

But, paradoxically, it is in no way specific to Judaism.

Buddhism views this world as an appearance. This has also been the feeling of the shamans since the dawn of time. The feeling of strangeness in the world is so universal, that it must be taken as a fundamental trait of the most original religious feeling .

Man’s heart is hidden. It is for itself a mystery, that the world and its wonders come close without ever reaching it.

The « Marrano » man, doubly torn between his interior and exterior, as a man and as a persecuted person, discovered that modernity, through the State, could strive to systematically break down the interior of the self. But he also learned over time the means to resist alienation, the necessary wiles, the ability to thwart the games of political power, over very long periods of time.

We must not forget this lesson. At a time when the most « democratic » nations are actively preparing the means of mass surveillance, intrusive to the last degree, at a time when the prodromes of new barbarities are rising on a planetary scale, we will need this ancient lesson of duplicity in order to survive.

In order to prepare a better, universal, wise, humane world, we must follow the lesson of Philo: navigate among religions and nations, thoughts and languages, not as if we belonged to them, but as if they belonged to us.

iShmuel Trigano. « Le Juif caché. Marranisme et modernité », Pardès, 2000

iiIbid.

iiiIbid.

Lonely trances and shared dreams

Publié par Philippe Quéau

All religions have their bearings, their symbols. Their numbers. One for an absolute monotheism, three for a Trinitarian monotheism. For religions of the divine immanence, a few million or even billions. For others still, intermediaries, it will be seven or twelve.

The poet, who is neither rabbi nor pope or imam, may rather choose four or six.

How can one be sure of seeing clearly in these floating, lofty domains?

« There are four worlds (apart from the natural world and the alienated world). Only one appears at a time. These worlds categorically exclude the normal world, and they exclude each other. Each of them has a clear, unique correspondence with a place in your body, which is taken to another energy level, and receives instantaneous replenishment, rejuvenation and warming. »ⁱ

The human body has several specific points, which are nodes of passage, zones of convergence. At these points special bridges are initiated, connecting to these four worlds.

This is not here a question of shakra. The poet is elsewhere, dilated, honest, entrenched. He does not orientalize, he does not indianize. He pays with his person, takes risks, and puts himself in danger.

Michaux took drugs like a taxi.

How can you visit the stars when the meter’s running?

How to do what has never been done, how to know what has never been learned, how to tell what can’t be told?

It’s not given to everyone.

But Michaux knew. He knew how to keep a cool head when the brain melts.

Michaux goes, far, high, and he always comes back, from his tours in the turbulent, from his jaunts in the dilated, the incompressible. Others would have perished, gone mad. But not him. He thickens his blood, marks his tracks, accumulates a whole memory, which he comes to put down on paper.

Laying it down? With the hurricane?

« There are still two other « beyond », equally exclusive, closed, where one only enters thanks to a kind of cyclone, and to arrive at a world that is itself a cyclone, but the centre of a cyclone, where it is liveable and where even it is Life par excellence. You get there by transport, by trance. »ⁱⁱ

The cyclone: a weather phenomenon whose characteristic is the whirlwind.

Life: an organic phenomenon whose image is the spiral, popularized by DNA and kundalini.

Trance: a psychological phenomenon whose trajectory is the parabola, or perhaps the ellipse. These mathematical figures are indeed figures of speech.

But what is trance itself the figure of?

Trance is probably a figure of tension towards transcendence; a tense pole, an extended life, a wisdom heard.

« The insignificance of the constructions of the mind appears. Contemplation without mixture. One no longer thinks about affiliations, designations, determinations, one does without them; the wind has passed over them, a psychic wind that undoes them before they are born, before determinations, categories are born. »ⁱⁱⁱ

It is sarcastic finding about the impotence of the mind. The mind is meaningless in its turns, detours and categories.

Weather report again: a « wind » passes over, undoing what has not yet been born. In exchange, without mixing, « contemplation ».

Undoing rather than doing, the poet’s lot on the hunt.

« Every man is a « yes » with many « no ». After the unheard-of and in some way unnatural acceptances, one must expect returns of « no », while something continues to act, which cannot be erased, nor can it go back, living on the sly of the Unforgettable. Ongoing evolution… »^iv

Man is a « yes » with « no », – and maybe with « maybe ». But surely he is something else again, which neither « yes » nor « no » can grasp, and « perhaps » even less so. It is that « something » that continues to act. That « something » that is stolen, that is forgotten, that is alive.

Pieces of black diamonds, placed on the white sheet of paper, vibrate in variations, with colours and shadows.

One can live through a trance alone. But many can think in shared dreams.

iHenri Michaux Les Grandes Épreuves de l’Esprit. Gallimard, Paris, 1986.

iiIbid.

iiiIbid.

ivIbid.

The True Insider

Publié par Philippe Quéau

We can rely on Michaux, he won’t give in. He’s resisting.

He has a plastic soul. The afterlife appears to him, disappears, then reappears, – he reports.

He knows a lot about the afterlife. Appeared, bearing, acute, powerful, acid, placid, allied, folded, ridden day and night, brushing against the abysses, eluding the peaks.

On returning, for a long time we look for an image, an echo. We never find it, to tell the truth. But tracks open up, in obscure verses, in tense words, in opaque silences, in heard allusions.

Decades go by. By ricochet, I perceive a faint voice perhaps, a resonance in a few lines of Michaux.

« For the girl from the mountain

secret, reserved

the apparition was a person,

a goddess? »

He then gives a straight answer to his own question:

« especially light,

only light

as light it remained ».ⁱ

The next verse makes another string sing.

« Simultaneously

as the soil on the slopes of an erupting volcano is torn away…

the general unclipping inside and around it took place.

singular entrenchment, unknown

incomparable

……….. »

The suspension points in the text are original. But why this unusual word: ‘unclipping’?

From some obsolete corset, does it evoke strapped breasts that are suddenly released? How to apply this word inside the soul?

The poet takes his risk. He tells what he may not have seen, but has guessed. He goes down narrow paths, he the celebrated poet, turning his back on the Paris of avenues, of lights. He even dares to use capital letters:

« In the young and pure face, the initiated gaze…

Mirror of Knowledge

contemplation of the True, ignored by others. »ⁱⁱ

The True! Knowledge! Mirror ! No wonder Sartre and sarcastic others ignored him royally, that Michaux.

Today, there’s so much inaudibility that everything is so unpredictable. That’s what we can no longer expect, – the predictable, the True! Knowledge!

Luckily Michaux still talks to us about the True, as a true Insider.

iHenri Michaux. Text dedicated to Lokenath Bhattacharya. Gallimard, Paris, 1986.

iiIbid.

Outside Neuroscience

Publié par Philippe Quéau

« The divine in the heart of man! Summon him, it exists. Abandon it, it disappears. »ⁱ

This is a very old idea. It’s found in Mencius(孟子), and also in Confucius (孔夫子).

In Chinese, the word for « divine » is 神, shen. This word can also mean “soul, spirit, mysterious, alive”, and is also used to designate God. « Heart » is 心, xīn. It is a “radical”. A “root” sign. An ancient “key” for the writing system. For unlearned eyes: 心 represents three tears around a blade. Or three showers in the mountain. Or three gushing drops.

The heart 心 is liquid. It melts into the divine 神. The divine 神 swims, frolics in the heart心.

By « summoning » 神, man has the power to make 神 « exist ». Man then stands at the border between heaven and earth, and he can bridge the gap – according to the wise man.

Yang Xiong, in a compact, incomparable style, explains:

« The question is about the divine 神.

– The heart – 心.

– What do you mean?

– Immersing itself in the sky, it becomes heaven. If it is immersed in the earth, it becomes earth. Heaven and earth are unfathomable, divine clarity, and yet the heart plunges into them as if it is going to probe them. »ⁱⁱ

What is « heart », then?

An explanation is given in Taixuan (« Great Mystery »), in a commentary on the tetragram « Feed ». « The heart hidden in the depths, beauty of the sacred root. Divination: the heart hidden in the depths, the divine is not elsewhere. »ⁱⁱⁱ

This sort of insight comes from quite ancient times.

Nowadays, neuroscience, which prides itself on asking the question of the origin of consciousness, talks about the “brain”. Never about the “heart”. And about the brain, neuroscience is interested in its « inside », never its « outside ».

« While working on the brain, I discovered that contemporary biology challenges us to develop a new approach to meaning that never breaks with matter and thus offers precisely no outside. »^iv

Catherine Malabou claims to be a materialistic philosopher, and proudly asserts herself as one of the few « professional philosophers » interested in neuroscience. Hence a slightly arrogant tone:

« The brain is the organ of the senses, since all cognitive operations originate in it. I aim at the impossibility of transgressing biological matter.”^v

The impossibility of “transgression” is total, absolute. It leads logically to “the impossibility to make a distinction between biological and spiritual life.”^vi

Then, for neuroscience, nowadays, the wisdom of the prophets, the dream of Jacob, the visions of Dante, the inspiration of the poets, the intuitions of the greatest scientists, are only biological artifacts, made possible by a few synapses assembled by chance, transmitting arbitrary sparks, emanating from neuronal cells, suitably arranged.

God, art, love, alpha and omega, all of these originate in « biological matter » according to the new catechism of neuroscience.

One day this new dogma may be refuted, by new findings from fundamental research.

For the time being, let us evoke, against « the impossibility of transgressing biological matter », another paradigm: the possibility of spiritually connecting our own brain, and potentially all brains, to the transcendental world, the one that people like Abraham, Moses, Confucius, Plato, have had the opportunity to take a glimpse of.

This hypothesis deserves to be studied in depth. It even has already a name: the « theory of transmission », proposed by William James^vii. The brain is not only an organ of thought production. It is also an organ of « transmission », through which we are all linked to the transcendental world. In transmission theory, ideas do not necessarily have to be produced, they already exist in the transcendental world. All that is needed to perceive them is an unusual lowering of the threshold of sensitivity of the brain, to let them pass and reach our consciousness.^viii

The materialist paradigm, hyper-dominant nowadays in neuroscience and in the philosophies that blindly follow this trend, is based on the assumption that the brain is hermetically sealed in on itself, and that nothing ever reaches it from « outside », except physical “sensations” of course. Never the slightest idea or intuition, never any dream or vision, coming from outside the brain, can interrupt the internal soliloquies fomented by its myriad synapses.

In reality, other paradigms than the materialist one are possible.

For example, the brain may indeed « produce » thoughts by itself, but it may also receive, bursting in from « outside », dreams and images, flashes of light, intuitions and revelations.

This, I believe, is what will (paradoxically) make AI the greatest metaphysical adventure of humanity. AI is like the caravels of Columbus. While really missing Indies, AI will allow us to discover some abstract paths to synthetic and improbable Americas, non-biological worlds, only accessible to the internal logic of searching paradigms…

By analogy, we may then start to give credit to our own over-sensitive brain, potentially able to explore the immense world that only the heart 心 can sense.

iYang Xiong , Fayan (« Master Words»). Chap. 5, « Questions about the divine ».

iiYang Xiong , Fayan (« Master Words»). Chap. 5, « Questions about the divine ».

iiiYang Xiong (53 BC – 18 AD).Taixuan, 太玄 (« Great Mystery »)

ivCatherine Malabou. Que faire de notre cerveau ? Bayard, Paris 2011, p.31

vIbid.p.31

viIbid.p.33

viiWilliam James. Human Immortality : Two Supposed Objections to the Doctrine. The Ingersoll Lecture, 1897

viiiIbid. « On the transmission-theory, they [the ideas] don’t have to be ‘produced,’ — they exist ready-made in the transcendental world, and all that is needed is an abnormal lowering of the brain-threshold to let them through. »

The “Seer” and the “Hearer”

Publié par Philippe Quéau

Philo of Alexandria lived two thousand years ago, at the center of a dense web of exchanges and ideas, in a city where Africa, Asia and Europe meet. He is the author of a scholarly, hybrid and, according to him, inspired work.

« Sometimes I would come to work as if I were empty, and suddenly I was full, ideas would fall invisible from the heavens, spread out inside me like a shower. Under this divine inspiration, I was so excited that I no longer recognized anything, neither the place where I was, nor those who were there, nor what I was saying or writing. But on the other hand I was in full awareness of the richness of interpretation, the joy of light, of very penetrating views, of the most manifest energy in everything that had to be done, and all this had as much effect on me as the clearest eye evidence would have had on my eyes. »ⁱ

You either see or you don’t. The seer sees.

In the old days in Israel, when people went to consult God, they said, « Come, let us go to the seer. For he who is called the prophet today was once called the seer. « (1 Sam 9:9).

The “seer”. הָרֹאֶה . Ha-ro’eh.

After his fight in the dark night, without seeing his opponent, Jacob wanted to hear the name of the one he was fighting, or at least the sound of his voice. The ear, allied with the eye. Hearing united with seeing. But no name was revealed to him except his own. It was his own name, his real name, that he then learned. Only then, presumably, he « saw » after he « heard ».

Through the wisdom contained in his name, he was finally able to « see ». See what?

« It is necessary to make you emigrate, in search of your father’s land, the land of the sacred word, the land of the father of those who practice virtue. This land is wisdom. »ⁱⁱ

Wisdom is a land, which is a light, – a light that sees, a light that sees itself, a light that sees us. It is splendour. The sun is a very weak metaphor for it.

Above all, like the sun, wisdom brings life.

Philo, the wise Alexandrian, wanted to « see », like the ancients:

« If the voice of mortals is addressed to the ear, the oracles tell us that the words of God are, like light, things ‘seen’. It is said, ‘All the People saw the voice’ (Ex. 20:15) instead of ‘heard the voice’. For indeed there was no shaking of the air due to the organs of the mouth and tongue; there was the splendour of virtue, identical to the source of reason. The same revelation is found in this other form: ‘You have seen that I have spoken to you from heaven’ (Ex. 20:18), instead of ‘you have heard’, always for the same reason. There are occasions when Moses distinguishes between what is heard and what is seen, hearing and sight. ‘You heard the sound of words, and saw no form but a voice’ (Deut. 4:12). »ⁱⁱⁱ

Seeing the voice! Seeing the word! Rather than « hearing it »…

The senses are not separate. They are together. The taste is tasted and the sight is illuminated. We admire the robe of the grand cru, we smell its bouquet before savouring it. The touch, the caresses, you can enjoy them with your eyes closed, and seeing the hand magnifies them, afterward, as a bonus.

Seeing ‘voices’, hearing their roar or their sweetness, tasting their gall or their honey, feeling their breath, their air.

But what about the divine Voice? Does it have a smell? A taste? Does it touch or graze?

If we are to believe Tradition, only the splendour of the Voice seemed to be revealed – and for the People, it was inaudible. It was only visible.

One may « see » the Voice. And when one has « seen » it, the most difficult thing remains: « hearing » it.

iPhilo, De migratione Abrahami, 35

iiDe migr. Abr., 28

iiiDe Migr. Abr., 47

Jacob and the Black Seraphim

Publié par Philippe Quéau

Just hours before he was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to his death in Drancy, Max Jacob wrote « The Spring ». Here is my tentative translation:

“In front of this golden dust of the sun, on the horizon of the plain, in front of this silver dust of the willows around the marshes, in front of this buzzing of different insects, cut by the jack dominated by the horror of an airplane, in front of this dust of sporadic flowers, the crow folds up its voluptuous velvet and silk wings, gathers, greets deeply and looking in its chest for the pelican cry which was that of the dying Christ. And I, letting my head roll in tears, crying with joy in my elbow, as a gnome and a crippled old man, I cry out: ‘My God, I am a pantheist and you are unspeakable’. »

The dust may be a testimony to the unity of the world. The voluptuousness of the velvet incites contemplation. The cry of the pelican and the cry of Christ are drowned in terror. It is war. Max Jacob, alias Leon David, alias Morven the Gaelic, converted to Christianity, and wearing the Jewish star, crippled and pantheistic, gave himself over to tears and joy.

In the Middle Ages the pelican was a symbol of Christian sacrifice. Many writers and poets have borrowed and exhausted this metaphor.

Lautréamont: « When the savage pelican resolves to give his breast to be devoured by his young, having as his witness only the one who knew how to create such love, in order to shame men, even though the sacrifice is great, this act is understandable » (Songs of Maldororor, 1869).

Léon Bloy: « Each one of us is saved by the redeeming pelican who can save even notaries! But he saves you very-particularly, because the heart of Jesus needed a painter and no painter came forward. By dint of love and faith, you have been judged worthy to glimpse the red pelican, the pelican that bleeds for his little ones » (Diary, 1906).

Wikipedia says, more technically: « The pelican is usually silent, but in nesting colonies, chicks will throw plaintive growls to ask for food. Adults may emit hoarse cries during courtship. »

The nailed Christ, hanging by his outstretched arms, his suffocating chest, close to asphyxiation, must not have shouted very loudly. Was his moan « plaintive » or « hoarse »?

Ornithology can hardly help here.

The poet’s images, their rhizomes, proliferate and interfere, generation after generation, like memories and prophecies.

Alfred de Musset:

« The most desperate are the most beautiful songs,

And I know some immortals who are pure sobs.

When the pelican, tired of a long journey,

In the fog of the evening returns to his reeds,

His hungry little ones run ashore,

As they watched him fall over the water in the distance…

Already, believing to seize and share their prey,

They run to their father with cries of joy,

Shaking their beaks on their hideous goiter.

He, taking slow steps over a high rock,

From its wing hanging down, sheltering its brood,

A melancholy fisherman, he looks up to the heavens.

Blood flows in long streams from his open chest;

In vain he has of the seas searched the depths;

The ocean was empty and the beach deserted;

For all food he brings his heart.

Dark and silent, lying on the stone,

Sharing his fatherly insides with his sons,

In his sublime love he cradles his pain;

And, watching his bloody teat flow,

On his feast of death he collapses and staggers,

Drunk with lust, tenderness and horror.

But sometimes, in the midst of the divine sacrifice,

Tired of dying in too much agony,

He’s afraid his children will leave him alive;

So he rises up, opens his wing to the wind,

And, hitting his heart with a wild cry,

He pushes into the night such a funeral farewell,

That the birds of the sea desert the shore,

And that the retarded traveler on the beach,

Feeling the passing of death, commends himself to God. »

(The muse)

The pelican offers his flesh for its brood in a kind of a Christic, final sacrifice and utters a « wild cry ».

Musset is a poet, and by anticipation, he foresees the sure end of poets, who are also some sort of pelicans:

« Poet, this is how the great poets do it…

They let those who live for a time cheer themselves up;

But the human feasts they serve at their feasts…

Most of them look like pelicans. »

The poet Jacob the Gaelic also had a foreboding of the end, which was near.

Those who seized him were not black seraphim.

Knowing Women

Publié par Philippe Quéau

Adam « knew » Eve, and she conceived Cain, then Abel and Seth. But the Bible never says that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob or Moses « knew » their wives, notes Philo of Alexandria. Why not? Was it out of prudishness?

Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses were wise men. But, according to Philo, the « woman » can be understood as an image that represents the senses, the sensations. For a wise man, « knowing the woman » may be interpreted, counter-intuitively, as the capacity to put sensations at a distance. Lovers of wisdom and those who seek true knowledge must “repudiate” their senses, not to succumb to their seductions. To truly « know », one must « know » the senses, not to be satisfied with them, but to question them, to put them at a distance.

Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses have their « virtues » for « wife ». Sarah, Abraham’s wife, is « princess and guide », Rebekah, Isaac’s wife, embodies « perseverance », according to Philo. Jacob’s wife, Leah, represents « the virtue of endurance » and Sipporah, Moses’ wife, is the image of « the virtue that ascends from earth to heaven ».

Let’s take the reasoning a little further. Can we then say that these wise men « knew » their « virtue »?

Can the metaphor of intimate, conjugal union be spun in this context? Philo considers this point and warns that he can only address himself to true initiates on this subject, because the mysteries in question are the « most sacred ».ⁱ

The union of a man and a woman obeys the laws of nature, and tends to the generation of children. But it is not in accordance with the order of things that the “virtue”, which can give rise to so many perfections, can be united to a human husband, a mere mortal. Then who can unite with Virtue, in order to impregnate her? – Only the Father of the universe, the uncreated God, says Philo, can give her His seed. Only God conceives and begets with Virtue. Virtue receives the divine seed of the Cause of all things, and begets a child that she presents to the one of her lovers who deserves it most.

Another analogy can be used, says Philo. Thus the most wise Isaac addressed his prayers to God, and Rebekah, who is « perseverance », was made pregnant by the one who received this prayer. On the other hand, Moses who had received Sipporah, « winged and sublime virtue », found that she had conceived from no mortal, without the need of any prior prayer.

Here we reach difficult terrain. These « mysteries », Philo insists again, can only be received by purified, initiated souls. They cannot be shared with the uninitiated. Philo himself was initiated into these higher mysteries by the teachings of Moses and Jeremiah, he reveals.

Philo quotes a verse from Jeremiah, to whom God spoke in these terms: « Did you not call me ‘father’ and ‘husband of your virginity’? ». In fact, nowhere in Jeremiah is this expression found literally. But in Jeremiah 3:4 there is something similar, though much less direct and much less metaphorical: « You cry out to me, ‘O my father, you are the guide of my youth’. «

Philo seems to have transformed the original expression of Jeremiah (« the guide of my youth ») into a more elevated formula (« the husband of my virginity »). For Philo, Jeremiah thus shows that « God is the incorporeal abode of Ideas, the Father of all things, inasmuch as He created them, and the Bridegroom of Wisdom, inseminating the seed of happiness in good and virgin land for the benefit of the human race ».ⁱⁱ

God can converse only with a good and virgin nature. Hence this reversal: « Men, with the intention of procreating, make a virgin a woman. But God, when He associates with a soul, because she was a woman, He makes her a virgin again. »ⁱⁱⁱ

iCherubim, 42

iiIbid.

iiiIbid.

Non-Death and Breath

Publié par Philippe Quéau

Who can tell us today the smell and taste of soma? The crackle of clarified butter, the rustle of honey in the flame, the brightness, the brilliance, the softness of the sung Vedic hymns? Who still remember the sounds of yesterday, the lights, the odors, the flavors, concentrated, multiplied, of the sacred rita?

In any religion, the most important thing is its living, immortal soul. The soul of Veda has crossed thousands of years. And it still inhabits some whispered, ancient words.

« Thou art the ocean, O poet, O omniscient soma… Thine are the five regions of the sky, in all their vastness! Thou hast risen above heaven and earth. Thine are the stars and the sun, O clarified soma!”ⁱ

As of today, scientists do not know if the soma was extracted from plants such as Cannabis sativa, Sarcostemma viminalis, Asclepias acida or from some variety of Ephedra, or even from mushrooms such as Amanita muscaria. The secret of soma is lost.

What is known is that the plant giving soma had powerful, hallucinogenic and « entheogenic » virtues.

Shamans all over the world, in Siberia, Mongolia, Africa, Central America, Amazonia, or elsewhere, still continue to use the psychotropic properties of their own pharmacopoeia today.

The « entheogenic » dives are almost indescribable. Often nothing can be told about them, except for some unimaginable, distant, repeated certainties. Metaphors multiply and stubbornly try, vainly, to tell the unspeakable. To poetry is given the recollection of past consciences so close to these worlds.

« The wave of honey has risen from the bosom of the ocean, together with the soma, it has reached immortal abode. It has conquered the secret name: ‘language of the gods’, ‘navel of the immortal’. »ⁱⁱ

One should believe it: these words say almost everything that can be said about what cannot be said. It is necessary to complete what they mean, by intuition, experience, or commentary.

For more than five thousand years, the Upaniṣad has been trying to do just that. They hide nuggets, diamonds, coals, gleams, lightning.

« He moves and does not move. He is far and he is near.

He is within all that is; of all that is, He is outside (…)

They enter into blind darkness, those who believe in the unknowing;

And into more darkness still, those who delight in knowledge.

Knowledge and non-knowledge – he who knows both at the same time,

he crosses death through non-knowledge, he reaches through knowledge the non-death.

They enter into blind darkness those who believe in the non-death;

and into more darkness still those who delight in the becoming (…)

Becoming and ceasing to be – the one who knows both,

he crosses death by the cessation of being, and by the becoming, he reaches non-death. » ⁱⁱⁱ

These words were thought, quoted and contemplated more than two thousand years before the birth of Heraclitus of Ephesus. They must be read and spoken again.

Now it the time to drink the soma again, in a novel way, and to stare at the clear flame, which fills the air with new odors. The wind will then stir up the flame.

It is time to praise again the Breath! Breath is master of the universe, the master of all things. Breath founds the world. Breath is clamor and thunder, lightning and rain!

Breath breathes, Breath breathes in, Breath breathes out, Breath moves away, Breath moves closer!

Words also breathe, pant, keep moving away and coming closer.

And then they open up to other escapes.

Breath caresses beings, like a father his child.

Breath is the father of all that breathes and all that does not breathe.

i Rg Veda 9.86.29

ii Rg Veda 4.58.1

iii Īśāvāsya upaniṣad, 5-14

The Evanescence of Wisdom

Publié par Philippe Quéau

Ancient ideas will still live on for a long time to come. For centuries, for millennia. But the daily traffic of billions of Internet users, what will remain of it in four thousand years?

People have always been eager to communicate their myths, to transmit their dreams, to share their intuitions. These ideas, these forces, are not those of empires and kingdoms. But they have made it possible to build worlds, to bring movements to life, capable of traversing the history of the centuries.

For a long time to come, ideas will still connect people, as they once did.

Megasthenes went to India in the 4th century B.C. to represent King Seleucus I Nicator, – successor of Alexander the Great. In the third book of his Indica, the Greek ambassador stated: “Really all that our ancients have said about nature is also said by philosophers foreign to Greece, either in India by the Brahmans or in Syria by those called the Jews.”ⁱ

Wasn’t that already a ‘globalization’ going on? The obvious recognition of a world wide community of concern? Far from suffering from distance, it was religious and philosophical ideas that traveled the farthest, across borders and languages, systems and prejudices, in these times of openness to all sides.

Eusebius also recalls Numenius of Apamea, who wrote: “After quoting Plato’s testimonies, it will be necessary to go back further and link them to the teachings of Pythagoras, and then appeal to the peoples of renown, conferring their initiations, their dogmas, the religious foundations which they accomplish in agreement with Plato, and all that the Brahmins, the Jews, the Magi and the Egyptians have established.”ⁱⁱ

It is a testimony that India, Persia, Mesopotamia, Israel, and Egypt, together with Greece, were then a fertile arc of thoughts and dreams, an immense, luminous, flow of genius at work.

Megasthenes and Numenius testified to the natural possibility of human minds to correspond, to provide each other with signals, ladders, guides and relays.

The 21st century therefore has no real lesson to teach in this matter. It has electrified and digitalized globalization, making it quasi-immediate, but at the same time quite superficial. We know « in real time » the stock market prices in Shanghai, Frankfurt and New York, as well as the number of corpses found after terrorist attacks and earthquakes. But we know less about the initiation of peoples, their way of evolution, their cultural foundations. Torrents of superfluous details abound. But where are the great visions, the profound prophecies staged?

Porphyry, a good analyst, is quite critical of the capacity of peoples in general. Some of them discover, some other just stray. « The oracle of Apollo has said: Chained with a bronze chain is the steep and arduous road that leads to the Gods; the Barbarians have discovered many paths, but the Greeks went astray; those who barely had it lost it; and the God gave the honor of discoveries to the Egyptians, the Phoenicians, the Chaldeans, the Assyrians, the Lydians, and the Hebrews.”ⁱⁱⁱ

Porphyry, a neo-Platonic philosopher of the 3rd century AD, recognized the intellectual and spiritual brotherhood of the peoples who lived in these lands, today called Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran. They shared a common march on the « steep and arduous road that leads to the Gods ».

But the Greeks got lost along the way.

Porphyry adds: « Furthermore, Apollo said in another oracle: To the Chaldeans alone is wisdom, and also to the Hebrews, who are holy worshippers of the God-King born of Himself.»^iv

Religion is not enough to successfully take the steep and arduous road that leads to the Gods. It must also be done with « wisdom ». The Chaldeans and the Hebrews were the custodians of it, then.

But today, where are the peoples who speak « wisely » in the name of the « God-King born of Himself »?

iQuoted by par Eusebius of Caesarea. Prep. Ev., Book XI

iiIbid.

iiiPorphyry. Philosophie tirée des Oracles (Livre I)

ivIbid.

One Day, Death Will Die

Publié par Philippe Quéau

Mocking, John Donne provokes Deathⁱ. He wants to humiliate, crush, annihilate her. He absolutely reverses the roles. He’s the one who’s holding the scythe now. In a few precise sentences, he reaps death and war, poison and disease. Death is nothing more than a slave subject to fate and chance, power and despair; she is chained, and there are far better sleepers than her, opiates or dreamers.

At the moment when death, the « poor death », believes it has conquered, only a short sleep separates us from eternity. Metaphysical pirouette. Great leap of the angel to the nose of nothingness.

The last line of the Sonnet reads « And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.”

This line reminds us of Paul’s formula: « O Death, where is thy victory? »ⁱⁱ.

Paul’s formula itself evokes that of the prophet Hosea when he pronounced curses against Ephraim and the idolaters of Judah: « And I will deliver them from the power of Sheol? And I will deliver them from death? O death, where is your pestilence? Sheol, where is your destruction? »ⁱⁱⁱ

There is, however, an important nuance between Paul and Hosea. Hosea called Death and the power of Sheol over guilty men. Paul announces the annihilation of Death itself.

In this Paul does not innovate. He refers to Isaiah, when Isaiah said: « Yahweh has put an end to death forever. »^iv

Isaiah, Hosea, Paul, Donne, through the centuries, share the same idea. One day, Death will die one day. No doubt, death will die.

Who better than a prophet, an apostle, a poet, can take a firm stand on this ultimate issue?

Death be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadfull ; for, thou art not soe,

For, those, whom thou think’st, thou dost overthrow,

Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill mee.

From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,

Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,

And soonest our best men with thee doe go,

Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.

Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,

And dost with poyson, warre, and sickness dwell,

And poppie, or charmes can make us sleep as well,

And better then thy stroake ; why swell’st thou then ?

One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,

And death shall be no more ; death, thou shalt die.

John Donne, Holy Sonnets, X

ii 1 Cor. 15.55

iii Hos. 13,14

iv Is. 25,8

The Pope – a Chinese Woman

Publié par Philippe Quéau

In his latest book, L’Avenir de Dieu (‘God’s Future’), Jean Delumeau writes that the aggiornamento of the Church will not really be realized until the day the pope is a Chinese woman, married to a black man.

The idea may seem pungent. One day perhaps, Delumeau’s prediction will come true. The Church will then have shown visible signs of its potential universality. But why stop there?

To achieve universality, it would be probably more effective to unite all the world faiths, to synthesize their dogmas, to resolve their millennial schisms, to dissolve the reasons of their incompatibilities, to exclude their exclusions, and for each one of them to recognize their own flaws and errors. More than anything else, it will be necessary for them to prove that universal religions are in a capacity to bring effective peace to the world, to guarantee justice, to put a veil of goodness and benevolence over humankind.

Without goodness, justice and equity, religion is nothing but farce, hypocrisy, talk of clouds.

A « Chinese woman » who became pope would embody a great symbolic leap, no doubt, but the road is long. We will have to walk longer than the time of one leap.

Why did YHVH Attack Moses, Seeking to Kill him?

Publié par Philippe Quéau

“The LORD met him, and sought to kill him. Then Zipporah took a flint, and cut off the foreskin of her son, and cast it at his feet; and she said: ‘Surely a bridegroom of blood art thou to me’. So He let him alone. Then she said: ‘A bridegroom of blood in regard of the circumcision’.”ⁱ

This text is off-putting, disjointed, enigmatic and raises many questions.

For example, is Zipporah addressing her son or her husband when she pronounces these words: « You are for me a bridegroom of blood »? Both interpretations are possible, and both have been defended by learned commentators.

According to some, Zipporah has just circumcised her son and she calls him « blood husband » because he is bleeding.

According to others, Moses neglected to circumcise his child, which is why God « attacked him » and « sought to kill him”. When Moses was close to death, Zipporah called him « blood husband, » because she had saved him with her son’s blood.

The first interpretation is preferred by the majority of commentators. But it poses a problem. One could ask whether Zipporah is operating a kind of symbolic incest. The mother calls her son twice: « blood husband » and « blood husband because of circumcision ». There would undoubtedly be there, for psychoanalysis, a form of symmetry with the true husband, Moses, who made Zipporah bleed « because of » her defloration.

Moses tore Zipporah’s hymen, as a husband of flesh. Zipporah cut off Eliezer’s foreskin, as a « husband of blood ». A symbolic parallel, heavy with analytical consequences, but also a saving act. Just after Zipporah cut off the foreskin, YHVH released Moses, and it is then that Zipporah clarified: « A husband of blood because of circumcision. »

But why would Zipporah feel the need to « touch » the feet of her son Eliezer with her foreskin?

The second interpretation is perhaps deeper. Zipporah saves her husband’s life by circumcising her son Eliezer in a hurry, while YHVH (or his angel) is about to kill Moses. Then she touches « his feet » with her foreskin. Whose feet? In the second interpretation, they are the « feet » of Moses, and it is to him that she addresses herself. But why the “feet”? Why touch the feet of Moses with his son’s foreskin?

In biblical Hebrew, “feet” are a metaphor often used to signify sex, as in Isaiah 7:20: « He shall shave the head and the hair of the feet ». Zipporah touched the sex of Moses with his son’s foreskin and said to him: « You are a blood husband to me », because it was also his blood that flowed, with the blood of his son. Circumcision is the figure of a new marriage, not with the son (which would be incest), but with Moses, and this in a symbolic sense, the sense of the Covenant, which is physically concluded in the blood of both spouses, as they are united by the blood of Eliezer.

In other words, Zipporah saved the life of Moses (who was uncircumcised) by simulating his circumcision. She touches the sex of Moses with the foreskin of her son, who has just been circumcised, and thus appeases the divine wrath, which was twofold: because the father and the son had not yet been circumcised.

At that very moment, YHVH « let him [Moses] alone ». This translation does not render the richness of the original Hebrew word. The verb used, rafah, has as its first meaning « to heal »; in a second sense, it means « to decline, to weaken, to desist, to release ». Healing is a weakening of the disease. It is worth noting this double meaning. YHVH « releases » Moses, « desists » from him, and thus He « heals » him. He « heals » Moses of his capital fault, and he also « heals » the child who is bleeding, and who might have died as a result of the operation, carried out with a stone in the middle of the desert, without much hygiene, and in an emergency.

There is yet another angle to this story.

Rachi comments: « He deserved to die because of this negligence. A Baraïta teaches us: Rabbi Yosef said: God forbid, Moses was not guilty of negligence. But he thought, « Shall I circumcise the child and set off? Will the child be in danger for three days? Shall I circumcise the child and wait three days? Yet the Holy One Blessed be He, who commanded me: Go, return to Egypt. Why then should he deserve death? Because he had first taken care of his bed at the stage instead of circumcising him without delay. The Talmud in the Nedarim Treaty (32a) says that the angel took the form of a snake, and swallowed him starting from the head to the hips, then rejected him and swallowed him again starting from the feet to the place in question. That’s how Zipporah understood that it was because of the circumcision. »

Rashi presents Moses in the throes of procrastination. Which of God’s commandments should be obeyed first: that of returning to Egypt, or that of circumcising his son? He falls into the fault when he does not immediately take care of the circumcision. But the Nedarim Treaty goes further. It evokes Moses swallowed by a snake. The snake starts at the head and stops at the hips (at the sex), then spits him out and starts again by swallowing him, starting by the feet.

Let’s try our own interpretation.

One can speculate that this « snake » metaphorically represents disease. Moses, uncircumcised, may have been the victim of a genital infection, which resulted in high fevers, with pain extending to the sex. Then, after a remission, the infection would start again from the « feet » (the sex). The kind of fellatio performed by the « snake » is a rather crude metaphor, but « biblical » after all. In any case, the Talmudists thought about it allusively, and felt that this was how Zipporah understood what she had to do.

But if Moses had a genital infection, why did Zipporah operate on her son’s sex rather than on Moses’?

As an unrepentant rationalist, I shall attempt a medical explanation.

Zipporah touched her husband’s sex with her son’s bloody foreskin. The son’s blood contained antibodies, which cured Moses’ genital infection.

Quite a rational solution. Yet it was a (rather irrational) angel who suggested it to Zipporah…

iEx. 4, 24-26

The solitary passer-by

Publié par Philippe Quéau

The poet sees the variations, and feels the permanence. The spirit lives by chance and necessity. The one and the other meet sometimes, unexpectedly. On a street corner, often, here or elsewhere. In Russia or India.

« Nothing in all Russian literature equals these lines by Nekrassov: ‘Walking at night in the dark streets, Lonely Friend’, » writes Vasily Rozanov in Solitaria.

Is this comment a simple exercise in admiration? Or is it an open door to a metaphysical world? Who is this « Lonely Friend »? Why do these lines transcend all the rest of Russian literature?

And would the following lines by Rabindranath Tagore also transcend all Indian literature?

« In this deserted street, you are the lonely passer-by.

O my only friend, my old beloved,

The doors of my home are open –

Don’t disappear like a dream.»ⁱ

These two texts are different, it goes without saying, but they emanate the same perfume, the same three words: street, solitary, friend.

These words are somewhat opposed. The street is public, and one passes through it, often rapidly, in anonymity or indifference. It is not unusual to meet friends there, by chance. It is rarer to see them disappear like a dream or an apparition.

The Russian poet, and the Indian one, do not describe a scene from real life. It is not really a dream, either. Rather a hallucination, a lightning strike, a revelation?

Who is the solitary passer-by, this Friend, this unique, « old beloved »?

Whoever is a bit of a poet probably will cross paths with her, one day.

iRabindranath Tagore. Gitanjali

Seeing God and Dying

Publié par Philippe Quéau

Maimonides often uses words in a double sense, – positive and negative, real and metaphorical, tool and weapon. In a passage dedicated to the different ways of ‘seeing’ God, he thus questioned the meaning of the verse: ‘And they saw God, and ate and drank’ (Ex. 24:11):

« It has been said: ‘And Moses hid his face, because he feared to look to God’ (Ex. 3:6), – where we must also consider what the literal meaning indicates; namely, that he was afraid to look at the shining light (of the burning bush), – not that the eyes could perceive the divinity [that it be exalted and exalted above all imperfection!]. Moses deserved praise for this, and the Most High poured out his goodness and favor upon him so much that in the following it could be said of him: ‘And he beholds the figure of God’ (Num. 12:8); for the doctors say that this was a reward for having first ‘hidden his face so as not to look toward God’ (Berakhot 7a). But as for « the chosen ones among the children of Israel » (Ex. 24:11), they acted hastily, giving free rein to their thoughts; they perceived (the divinity) but in an imperfect way. Therefore it is said of them: ‘And they saw the God of Israel, and under his feet, etc.’ (ibid. v. 10), and it was not enough to simply say, ‘And they saw the God of Israel’, for the whole sentence is intended only to criticize their vision, not to describe how they saw. Thus, all that was done was to criticize the form in which they had perceived (God) and which was tainted with corporeality, which was the necessary result of the haste they had put into it before they had perfected themselves. (…) When the ‘chosen among the children of Israel’ made false steps in their perception, their actions were also disturbed thereby, and they inclined towards bodily things by the vice of their perception; therefore the Scripture says: ‘And they saw God, and ate and drank’ (Ex. 24:11) ».ⁱ

Maimonides does not deny that the ‘chosen among the children of Israel’ saw God. But he asserts that this vision was tainted by ‘corporeality’, by the discreet metonymy that occurs in counterpoint. Would men who had just ‘seen God’ begin, without transition, to ‘eat and drink’?

Maimonides is not interested in what the ‘chosen among the children of Israel’ could ‘see’ or ‘not see’. He does not seek to criticize their claim to have ‘seen’. He is only interested in the fact that they ‘saw, ate and drank’ in the same movement, which implies a form of homogeneity, integration, analogy, between three very different actions. ‘Eating’ and ‘drinking’ cast a retrospective shadow over ‘seeing’ in this context. Maimonides does not deny the ‘seeing’, he merely devalues it, materializing it, trivializing it, laminating it.

There are other possible criticisms, much more radical.

In his commentary on the same verses, Rashi says: « They have looked and they have contemplated, and for this they have deserved mortal punishment. » He adds that the Holy One, Blessed be He, waited for the day of the dedication of the Tabernacle, and then a fire from the Lord burned them and devoured them at the end of the camp.

In an additional commentary to this commentary by Rashi (in the 1987 edition edited by E. Munk), we read: « They sought to be able to glimpse at least a quick glance at the Godhead, in a sort of hidden glimpse of the Godhead. »

Was it a deep contemplation or a quick glimpse? It doesn’t matter. The same punishment awaits those who have even cast a glance at this transcendental phenomenon: death by lightning strikes, – not on the spot [so as not to spoil the reception of the Torah, says Maimonides], but a little later, after the feast of the Tabernacle, and out of sight of the people, at the end of the camp. A true execution, coldly prepared, in the Mossad style, if I dare say so.

But, if it was a question for God to give a good lesson to his people, why not strike those guilty of ‘vision’ in front of everyone, to better strike the minds?

We need to go deeper into this question.

What was the greatest fault of the « chosen among the children of Israel »? To have « seen » the Divinity? Or to have « seen » it by stealth? Or to have « seen » it, – and then to have « eaten and drunk » it?

The answer varies according to the comments, as can be judged from Maimonides and Rashi.

We know that Moses himself, and several ‘chosen ones among the sons of Israel’ were able to ‘see’ God and not die on the spot. This is an important point. It is said in the Torah that one cannot see God without dying. So it is still possible, it seems, to see the Divinity and to survive, at least for a while.

If we put aside the case of Moses, we learn that the other « seers » were punished a little later. One can always imagine that those who had glimpsed the Divinity (supposing that they had indeed been able to look at it in secret, – which Maimonides denies, but which Rashi acknowledges), the ‘seers’ could have been saved, if they had prayed, or if they had meditated on their vision, wondering why they had only seen the « feet » of the Divinity.

Or should they have just avoided ‘eating and drinking’ right after they ‘saw’?

Or should they have repented instead, having given in to the understandable desire to take a look at such an extraordinary phenomenon as a « shining light »?

What can we learn from this? We learn that ‘seeing God’ does not necessarily imply ‘dying’, despite the warnings of the Torah.

It is ‘seeing God’, then ‘eating and drinking’, that implies dying.

iMaïmonides. Guide of the Perplexed. III. §5, pp.37-38. Ed. Verdier. 1979

The Elsewhere God

Publié par Philippe Quéau

There are some things it is better to keep quiet about. Whatever we may say, we risk approximation, error, provocation, offense, – or even, more bitingly, the silent smile of the wise men, if there are any.

The psalmist says, addressing Elohim:

לְךָ דֻמִיָּה תְהִלָּה lekha doumiâ tehilâ. » For you, silence is praise »ⁱ.

In order to think, it is better to remain silent: « Think in your heart, on your bed make silence.»ⁱⁱ

Silence must be kept, but one can still write. About the highest mysteries, writing is in the same time compass and bearing, mast and mainsail. A wind of inspiration will then come, maybe.

Maimonides himself did not hesitate to face, in writing, the ocean of mysteries. In writing, he even tried to define the essence of true wisdom, and thus that of God.

« The word ‘Hokhma in the Hebrew language has four meanings »ⁱⁱⁱ, he wrote. ‘Hokhma refers to the understanding of philosophical truths that have as their goal the perception of God. It can also be said of the possession of any art or industry. It applies to the acquisition of moral virtues. Finally, it is applied in the sense of finesse and cunning.

Vast spectrum of possible meanings, then. Or structural ambiguity?

« It may be that the word ‘Hokhma in the Hebrew language has (originally) the meaning of ‘finesse’ and ‘application of thought’, so that this finesse or sagacity will have as its object sometimes the acquisition of intellectual qualities, sometimes that of moral qualities, sometimes that of a practical art, sometimes malice and wickedness.”^iv

Who can be said to be « wise » then?

« He who is instructed in the whole Law, and who knows its true meaning, is called ‘hakham in two respects, because it embraces both intellectual and moral qualities.”

Maimonides then quotes on Aristotle^v and the ancient philosophers to define « four species of perfections ».

The first kind of ‘perfection’ is particularly prized by most men but is really of little value. It is material possession. Mountains of gold and silver are to be possessed, they offer only a passing enjoyment, and at the bottom of the imagination.

The second is the perfection of the body, the physical constitution, beauty, health. This is certainly not nothing, but has little impact on the health of the soul itself.

The third kind of perfection consists in moral qualities. This is a definite advantage from the point of view of the essence of the soul. But moral qualities are not an end in themselves. They serve only as a preparation for some other, higher purpose.

The fourth sort of perfection is true human perfection. It consists in being able to conceive ideas about the great metaphysical questions. This is the true end of man. « It is through it that he obtains immortality, »^vi Maimonides said.

Jeremiah had also expressed himself on this subject, in his own style: « Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, nor the strong man glory in his strength, nor the rich man glory in his riches; but whoever wishes to glory, let him find glory in this: to have understanding and to know me, for I am YHVH.”^vii

Wisdom is knowledge, – the knowledge of the Lord.

But how to get to know that specific knowledge?

Jeremiah has an answer:

« I am YHVH, who exercises goodness, justice and righteousness in the earth. Yes, this is what I delight in, says YHVH!” ^viii

This means that the essence of God is known by His actions, which should be taken as a model. There are three fundamental ones: חֶסֶד , hesed (goodness), מִשְׁפָּט , michpat (law), and ָּצְדָקָה , tsedaka (justice).

Maimonides comments: « He [Jeremiah] then adds another essential idea, saying – ‘on earth’ –, and this idea is the pillar of religion”^ix.

Since this idea comes at the very end of the Guide for the Perplexed, it can probably be thought to be its final conclusion.

That simple, conclusive, remark leaves open an immense field of new research. What would be the essence of God, not just on earth, but elsewhere?

And would the answer to that question, if we knew it, be possibly the pillar of another kind of religion?

i Ps. 65,2

ii Ps. 4,5

iiiMaïmonides. Guide of the Perplexed. III. §54, pp.629. Ed. Verdier. 1979.

ivIbid. p.630

vL’Éthique à Nicomaque. 1,8 et sq.

viMaïmonides. Guide of the Perplexed. III. §54, pp.633. Ed. Verdier. 1979.

vii Jer. 9, 22-23

viiiJér. 9,23

ixMaïmonide.Le Guide des égarés. 3ème partie. §54, pp.635. Ed. Verdier. 1979

Biblical Love

Publié par Philippe Quéau

« Ben Bag Bag said: Turn her over and over, for all is in her; search her, grow old and weary into her, and from her do not move, for there is nothing better for you than her.»ⁱ

In this short piece of advice, one can be struck by the deliberate ambiguity, the soft insinuation with which Ben Bag Bag introduces and cultivates the allusion – a metaphor for high-flying teaching.

The original meaning is clear. The figure « in which » to « wear out » is the Torah.

Already, the Song of Songs had accustomed us to the idea that erotic metaphors, even the most daring ones, could be applied to translate the highest and deepest spiritual realities.

Rambam (Maimonides) commented on Ben Bag Bag: « He says about the Torah: examine it in every sense and meditate on it, for everything is in it. And he adds, ‘Examine her’ (תחזי), for if you look at her with the eye of understanding, you will see the truth in her, as the Aramaic formula ‘and she lives’ is translated into Aramaic by וחזא. Then he says: ‘Grow old and use yourself into her’, that is to say, work into her until the end of old age and do not leave her for anything else. »

The Torah is like a woman, – a woman whom one loves for life, until old age, and « into whom » one must turn, return, wear out, and never leave.

Is such a metaphor permissible? To the wise, everything is possible. It is up to the commentator not to attempt the deeper intention. The metaphor of faithful, conjugal, lifelong, consecrated love is not a bad one. The associated images are transformed, then magnified, by their very slippage.

The same Pirqe Abot, michnah 4 of chapter 2, teaches: « He said: Fulfill His desire as if it were yours, so that He may fulfill your desire as if it were His own. Suspend your desire in front of His, then He will suspend the desire of others in front of yours. »

Rachi comments: » ‘Fulfill His desire as if it were your own,’ even when you fulfill your desire, do it in the name of Heaven. ‘That he may fulfill your desire as though it were His own’, so that from Heaven you may be given well and abundantly. ‘Suspend your desire in the face of his’: compare the harm of the commandment with his wages; ‘then he will suspend the desire of others’, who stand against you to harm you. »

Biblical Hebrew is a crude language, where things are said directly, without detours. For example, the verb ‘to love’ רׇחַם is used like this: « I will love thee, O Lord, my strength. » The same word, in its substantive form, means: « womb, sex, breast, entrails », and also, « vulture, filthy bird » (- this name was given because of the vulture’s love for its young).

The word ‘desire’, רָצוֹן ratson, also means « complacency, contentment, pleasure, favour, joy, pleasure, grace ». The arc of the senses here runs from the most material to the most spiritual.

These words are like Jacob’s ladder, which one can use to climb to the highest Heavens or descend to the bottom of the abyss.

iPirqe Avot. Michna 5,22.

The cut off soul

Publié par Philippe Quéau

Around the middle of the 13th century, Jalal-od-Dîn [« Splendour of Religion »] Rûmî fell in love with a wandering Sufi, Shams-od-Dîn [« Sun of Religion »]. One was from Balkh in Khorassan, the other from Tabriz, on the borders of Iran and Afghanistan.

Their first meeting took place at the bazaar. Shams-od-Din asked Jalal-od-Din point-blank: « Who is the greatest, Muhammad or Beyazid? »

Rûmî was surprised by the question. Was not Muhammad the Envoy of God, the seal of the Prophets? And Beyazid, a simple mystic, a saint among so many others?

In reply, Shams-od-Din asked how the Prophet Muhammad could have said to God: « I did not know You as I should have known You, » while Beyazid had said: « Glory be to me! How high is my dignity! »

Rûmî faints, on the spot.

An explanation is necessary, perhaps.

The Prophet Muhammad confessed that he did not « know » the Divinity as he should have, – while Beyazid assumed his mystical union with God. His « Glory be to me! » was not a proud, blasphemous, sacrilegious cry. It was the revelation that Beyazid’s ego had disintegrated, that he had melted like snow in the sun of love.

Shams-od-Din was meant to mean being a theophany, the tangible manifestation of the divine essence, the image of its mystery… He was the Beloved, and the Lover, and Love. « I am the secret of secrets, the light of lights; the saints themselves cannot understand my mystery. »

The love of the two Sufis lasted a little over a year. Suddenly Shams-od-Din disappeared. Rûmî did not find him despite his desperate searches all over the country. This loss was the dominant impulse for the rest of his life.

Rûmî founded the movement of the whirling dervishes. He wrote the Book of the Inside and the Menesvi.

One can taste in his ghazals the juice and the marrow of his loving and mystical thought.

“I am in love. Love for you, no shame on me.

Ever since the lion of sorrows you cause made me his prey,

Other than the prey of this lion, I am not.

At the bottom of this sea, what a shining pearl you are,

So that in the manner of the waves I know no rest.

On the lips of this ocean of you I abide, fixed in abode.

Drunk with your lips, though there be no embrace for me.

I base my substance upon the wine that you bring,

For of your wine no evil languor comes to me.

Your wine comes down for me from heaven.

I am not indebted to the pressed juice of the vine.

Your wine brings the mountain from its rest.

Do not shame me if I have lost all dignity. “

Why is the word « shame » used twice, at the beginning and at the end of the ghazal, but with two different meanings?

The Lover is drunk. His love is wide, burning like the sun of the universe. He feels almighty and alone. But shame overwhelms him. He’s overcome by doubt. The Beloved has disappeared, without warning, without explanation, without return. Why has he disappeared?

The bite embraces him. Suffering ravages him. His heart lacks faith. Irremediable weakness. The heart has become detached from the soul. Forever?

“Like the rose, I laugh with my whole body and not just my mouth,

For I am, me without me, with the king of the world, alone.

O torchbearer, from the heart to the dawn abductor,

Lead the soul to the heart, don’t take the heart alone!

Out of anger and envy, the soul does not make the heart a stranger,

That one, don’t leave her here, this one don’t invite him alone!

Send a royal message, make a general summons!

How long, Sultan, this one with you and that one alone?

Like last night if you don’t come tonight, if you close your lips,

A hundred cries will be made. Soul! We will not lament alone.”

Many voices are raised. Several subjects speak: the torchbearer, the heart, the soul, – and the king of the world. The torchbearer is at the service of the king of the world, – the Divinity. The heart is a rose and laughs. The soul is Rûmî.

The torchbearer has set the heart on fire, and led him to the king of the world. The soul alone groans. She suspects the torchbearer to have succumbed to anger and envy, and to have stolen the heart from the soul, to separate them, to isolate them.

Rûmî yells: « Do not make the soul a stranger to the heart! Don’t leave her here, while you invite the heart to go up alone to the king. »

He also prays to the Sultan of Heaven. « May the heart and soul not be left alone! »

For the soul, the fires are out. The wine has covered the flame.

“With this wine I extinguish myself,

And in this absence, I don’t know where I am.”

The soul has withdrawn.

“Love has separated me from my soul.

The soul, in love, has cut herself off.”

A Very Lousy Bargain With God

Publié par Philippe Quéau

The prophet Isaiah was sawed in half with a wood saw by order of Manasseh, king of Judah. It was Belkira, also a prophet in Jerusalem, who had accused him.

What was the accusation? Isaiah had called Jerusalem « Sodom, » and had foretold that it would be devastated along with the other cities of Judah.

He also prophesied that the sons of Judah and Benjamin would go into captivity, and that king Manasseh would be put in a cage with iron chains.

Belkira claimed that Isaiah hated Israel and Judah.

But the most serious accusation was that Isaiah had dared to say: « I see further than the prophet Moses ».

Moses had said: « No man shall see the LORD and live. »

Isaiah had contradicted him: « I have seen the LORD, and behold, I am alive. »

Isaiah had told his vision in detail to Hezekiah, king of Judah and father of Manasseh, and to several prophets, including Micah.

Let’s summarize it here. An angel took Isaiah up to the firmament and then to the first six heavens. Finally he reached the seventh heaven. There he saw « someone standing, whose glory was greater than all else, a great and marvelous glory ». The angel said to him: « This is the Lord of all the glory that you have seen ». Isaiah also saw another glorious being, similar to the first. He asked, « Who is this one? ». The angel answered, “Worship him, for this is the angel of the Holy Spirit, who has spoken in you and in the other righteous ones.”

That was just foreplay.

Isaiah continued.

“And my Lord, with the angel of the Spirit, came to me, and said: ‘Behold, thou hast been given to see the LORD; and for thy sake this power is given to the angel that is with thee.’ And I saw that my Lord worshipped, and the angel of the Spirit, and they both glorified the LORD together.”ⁱ

Isaiah also claimed to have seen the LORD, Yahweh-God, in the year of the death of King Uzziah (~740). « I saw the LORD sitting on a great and high throne (…) ». And he cried out in anguish: « Woe is me, I am lost! For I am a man of unclean lips, I dwell among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of Hosts.”ⁱⁱ

The price to pay for this vision was relatively small. A seraphim flew to Isaiah, and touched his mouth with an ember caught with pliers.

It was only later that he finally had to pay with his life for this vision of God: his body was sawed in half.

When Isaiah saw God, the Lord said to him, « Go and tell this people, ‘Listen, listen, and do not understand; look, look, and do not discern’. Make the heart of this people heavy, make their ears hard, swallow up their eyes. »ⁱⁱⁱ

Two lessons can be drawn from these texts.

Firstly, Isaiah sees God face to face in all his glory, but does not die, contrary to what Moses said.

Secondly, though all this divine glory is clearly revealed to Isaiah, it only entrusted him with a rather disappointing and illogical message to deliver on his return to earth.

God sends Isaiah back to his people with a warning that is inaudible, incomprehensible, and above all paradoxical, contradictory. He must tell the people to ‘listen’ to him, but at the same time make them hard of hearing, and incapable to understand.

He must tell them to ‘look’ and and make their eyes glaze over.

Isaiah did not call into question the rather lousy mission he had been given.

Why so much glory given to Isaiah, and at the same time so much severity for the people?

As a matter of strong contrast, let us recall what happened to Ezra.

Ezra also had a vision.

The angels Michael, Gabriel, Raphael and Uriel placed him on a « cloud of flames » and took him to the seventh heaven. But when he got there, unlike Isaiah, Ezra saw only « the back of the Lord, » noting, « I have not deserved to see anything else. »

In front of the Lord’s back, Ezra tried to intervene on behalf of men. He told him without delay and spontaneously: « Lord, spare sinners!”

Then began a rather long quarrel between God and Ezra.

Ezra said, « How righteous are you, how almighty are you, how merciful are you, and how worthy are you? «

He also asked what will happen on Judgment day.

The Lord answered, « The Moon will become blood on the last day, and the sun will flow in its blood. »

This prompted Ezra to reply, « In what has heaven sinned? «

The Lord replied, « This heaven looks down upon the wickedness of mankind. »

Ezra wanted to plead the cause of men once again.

He attacked on a sensitive point, the election.

Ezra: « By the life of the Lord! I am going to plead for good against you because of all the men who have no place among the chosen ones! »

The Lord: « But you will be chosen with my prophets! »

Ezra: « Sinners, who shaped them? »

The Lord: « It’s me. »

Ezra: “If I too, like sinners, was created by you, then it is better to lose myself than the whole world!»^iv

Here is a great prophet, Isaiah, who had the great privilege, denied even to Moses, of seeing the glory of God without dying, and who returns to earth with the mission to weigh down the hearts of his people, to make them deaf and blind.

And here is another prophet, Ezra, who could only see the « back of the Lord », but who did not hesitate to plead the cause of men on several occasions, and who said he was ready to renounce his election and to lose himself in exchange for the salvation of the world.

How should this be interpreted?

The Lord agreed to do men a favor, and said to Ezra: « Let sinners rest from their labors from the ninth hour of the Sabbath eve until the second day of the week; but on the other days let them be punished in return for their sins. »

From Friday afternoon until Monday midnight, three and a half days of grace.

One half of the week filled with grace. Half of the time then.

A good result for a prophet admitted to see only the « back of God ».

Think what Isaiah might have gotten if he had only tried to bargain with God.

Maybe, being captivated by his vision of God’s glory did not prepare him to engage God into a serious bargaining….

i The Ascension of Isaiah, 9, 27-40

ii Is. 6, 1-5

iii Is. 6,9-10

ivVision of Esdras, 87-89a

Veda Without Desire

Publié par Philippe Quéau

The poet is alone these days, and this world is filled with emptiness.

He still lives off past bonfires, yearning for ripe tongues, or future ones.

René Char, one day, invited « Aeschylus, Lao Tzu, the Presocratics, Teresa of Avila, Shakespeare, Saint-Just, Rimbaud, Hölderlin, Nietzsche, Van Gogh, Melville » to appear with him in on the cover of Fury and Mystery (1948). He also invited a few poets of centuries past, who had reached « incandescence and the unaltered ».

Given a choice, I would have added Homer, Tchouang-tseu, Zoroaster, Campanella, Donne, Hugo, Baudelaire, Jaurès, Gauguin, Bradbury.

Infinite, are the fine lines drawn in the memories.

Millions of billions of dream lines, multitudes of unique horizons. Each one has its own suave flavor, and each one reveals an awakening, setting one spirit ablaze with sparkle, another with blaze.

One day poets will be elected companions for every single moment.

They will weave the universe, and undress the Being:

« All the poems recited and all the songs without exception are portions of Vishnu, of the Great Being, clothed in a sonorous form.»ⁱ

René Daumal learned Sanskrit to translate the Veda and Upaniṣad into sincere and sounding words. Did he get the ‘incandescence’?

Hymn 69 of the Rig Veda was the first challenge to his fresh science:

« Arrow? No: against the bow is the thought that is posed.

A Calf being born? No, it is she who rushes to her mother’s udder;

Like a wide river she drags her course towards the headland…

In her own vows the liquid is launched.»ⁱⁱ

Daumal launched himself – like a liquid, during the rise of Nazism, into an ocean of metaphors, into the infinite Sanskrit sea, its cries, its hymns, all the breaths that emanate from its verses.

In the din of the times, he alone searched for the right words to sing the Bhagavad Gita, in a faithful, concise style:

« Roots up and branches down…

imperishable is called Açvattha.

The Metres are its leaves,

and whoever knows him knows Knowledge (the Veda).»ⁱⁱⁱ

Emile-Louis Burnouf had proposed in 1861 a more laminated, fluid version of this same passage:

« He is a perpetual fig tree, an Açwattha,

that grows up its roots, down its branches,

and whose leaves are poems:

he who knows it, knows the Veda. »

Who is the Açwattha, who is this « fig tree »? The fig tree is an image of the Blessed (Bhagavad).

Who is the Blessed One? Burnouf indicates that it is Krishna, the 10th incarnation of Vishnu.

In the Katha-Upaniṣad, we again find the image of the fig tree, – this time associated with the brahman :

« Roots above, branches below…

is this evergreen fig tree,

he’s the shining one, he’s the brahman,

he who is called immortal,

on him lean all the worlds,

no one gets past him.

This is that. »^iv

Who are these « Blessed » (Bhagavad ), of whom the fig tree is but an image?

The Taittirîya-Upaniṣad offers the following explanation.

Take a young man, good, quick, strong, educated in the Veda, and possessing the whole earth and all its riches. That is the only human bliss.

One hundred human bliss is only one Gandharva bliss.

One hundred bliss of Gandharva are one bliss of the gods born since creation.

The Upaniṣad thus continues the progression, with a multiplicative factor of 100 at each stage, evoking the bliss of the gods, then the bliss of Indra, then the bliss of Brihaspati, then the bliss of Prajāpati, and finally, the bliss of the brahman.

The gist of the Upaniṣad is in its conclusion:

The bliss of the brahman is similar to that of « the man who knows the Veda, unaffected by desire.»

iRené Daumal. Pour approcher l’art poétique Hindou, Cahiers du Sud, 1942

ii« Flèche ? Non : contre l’arc c’est la pensée qui est posée.

Veau qu’on délivre ? Non, c’est elle qui s’élance au pis de sa mère ;

Comme un large fleuve elle trait vers la pointe son cours

Dans ses propre vœux le liquide est lancé. »

iiiBhagavad Gîta 15, 1. Transl. René Daumal :

« Racines-en-haut et branches-en-bas,

impérissable on dit l’Açvattha.

Les Mètres sont ses feuilles,

et qui le connaît connaît le Savoir (le Véda). »

Emile-Louis Burnouf’ s translation (1861):

« Il est un figuier perpétuel, un açwattha,

qui pousse en haut ses racines, en bas ses rameaux,

et dont les feuilles sont des poèmes :

celui qui le connaît, connaît le Veda. »

ivKatha-Upanishad 2, 3

The true name of God (from Enlil and Ilu to El, Ilah and Allah)

Publié par Philippe Quéau

On the plain of words, a worn-out ziggurat casts its shadow – the world of ideas is deeper than memory. Who measures its angles? Who discerns its diagonals? Who calculates the effect of rain and dust on it? Who can see the hollow that time leaves in it?

Towards the end of the 3rd millennium B.C., in Sumer, a poem celebrated the sovereign God, the God of gods. Enlil, his name Sumerian name, is its oldest written name, ever.

« Enlil! His authority is far-reaching,

His word is sublime, holy!

What he decides is imprescriptible.

He assigns forever the destiny of beings.

His eyes scan the entire earth.

His radiance penetrates to the farthest reaches of the land.

When the venerable Enlil takes his place in majesty..,

On his sacred and sublime throne,

When he exercises his powers as Lord and King in perfection,

The other gods spontaneously prostrate themselves before him and obey his orders without question.

He is the great and powerful ruler who dominates Heaven and Earth,

Who knows everything and understands everything.»ⁱ

A millennium later, a prayer in the Akkadian language was composed for the supreme God. His Akkadian name was Marduk.

« Lord Marduk, O supreme God, of unsurpassed intelligence..,

When you go to war, the heavens falter,

When you raise your voice, the sea is disturbed.

When you brandish your sword, the gods turn around.

Not a single one can resist your furious shock.

Fearful Lord, in the Assembly of the Gods, there is none like you! »ⁱⁱ

The language of the Sumerians does not belong to any known language family. As for the language of the Akkadians, which included Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic peoples, it was Semitic.

Sumerians and Akkadians began to mix in Mesopotamia from the 4th millennium BC. Jean Bottéroⁱⁱⁱ notes that the Akkadians arrived in the north and centre of Mesopotamia, whereas the Sumerians were already present in the south.

The mixing of these peoples took place gradually. A common cultural capital was formed over time.

The Sumerians were « the most active and inventive, » according to Jean Bottéro. They were the ones who invented writing, around ~3000. Sumerian is therefore the oldest language ever written.

From the 2nd millennium BC, the Sumerians were « absorbed » by the Semites. Akkadian remains the only spoken language, but the Sumerian language, a language of culture, liturgy and scholarship, does not disappear and continues to be written.

There is an enormous amount of documentation about this period. More than 500,000 documents written in Sumerian make it possible to study the religious world of these peoples, their prayers, hymns, rituals and myths.

In this mass of documents, there is no dogmatic, normative text. There are no « holy writings », no « revealed text ».

Yet religion permeated life. The sacred penetrated daily life.

In this multitude of assembled peoples, no one claimed the monopoly of a cognitive election, the supremacy of knowledge.

These peoples, these myriads, of diverse origins, shared together a sense of the sacred, an intuition of mystery.

In Babylonia, beliefs were humble, and the high priests remained modest in their formulas:

« The thoughts of the gods are as far from us as the depths of heaven.

It is impossible for us to penetrate them,

No one can understand them! »^iv

To represent the idea of the divine in the Sumerian language, the cuneiform sign used was an eight-pointed star:

(pronunciation: dingir).

In Akkadian, this representation was simplified and stylized as follows:

(pronunciation: ilu).

This original Ilu later became El (God) among the Hebrews and Ilah (the Divinity) among the Arabs, who took the proper name of Allah, literally al Ilah: « the God ».

God, therefore, was written for the first time in Sumerian, Enlil, in four corner strokes, forming two crosses together, or a star.

Then the Akkadian, Semitic language, wrote it Ilu, in three cuneiform strokes, forming a cross or a star – with six branches.

i Source : A. Kalkenstein, Sumerischr Götterlieder

ii Source : E. Ebeling, Die Akkadische Gebetserie « Handerhebung »

iii Cf. J.Bottéro, Mésopotamie. L’écriture, la raison et les dieux. Folio. Paris, 1997

iv Source : W.G. Lambert. Babylonian Wisdom Literature. Cit. in J. Bottéro, Mésopotamie. L’écriture, la raison et les dieux. Folio. Paris, 1997

The True Meaning of Exile

Publié par Philippe Quéau

« Light, intelligence and wisdom ». These three words are used together several times in the Book of Daniel. The queen, wife of King Balthazar, son of Nebuchadnezzar, praises Daniel’s « extraordinary spirit » as follows: « There is a man in your kingdom in whom dwells the spirit of the holy gods. In the days of your father there was in him light and understanding and wisdom like that of the gods. « (Dan. 5:11).

Then Balthazar called him and said: « Are you Daniel, of the people of the deportation of Judah, brought from Judah by my father the king? I have heard that the spirit of the gods resides in you and that in you is light, intelligence and extraordinary wisdom. « (Dan. 5:13-14)

Daniel had already experienced a glorious hour in Babylon when he had explained the dreams of Nebuchadnezzar, and revealed their « secret », their « mystery ».

The Hebrew word for « secret » and « mystery » is רָז (raz). This word is of Persian origin, and it is only found in the Bible in the Book of Daniel alone. It is also found later in the Qumran texts. It may be used in various contextsⁱ.

Nebuchadnezzar had defeated the kingdom of Judah and destroyed the temple of Jerusalem in ~587. However Daniel brought him to resignation by revealing “the mystery”.

The mystery takes on its full value, its true meaning, only when it is brought to light, when it is « revealed », as in the verse: « It is he who reveals the deep and hidden things. »(Dan. 2:22).

The Hebrew verb used for « reveal » is גָלָה (galah) which means: « To discover, to appear, to reveal, to make known ». But in a derived sense, it means: « To emigrate, to be taken into captivity, to be exiled, to be banished. » In the niphal form, “To be uncovered, to be naked; to reveal oneself, to be announced.”

For example, « Have the gates of death been opened to you? « (Job 38:17), « There God revealed himself to him. « (Gen. 35:7), « The glory of God will be manifested. « (Is. 40:5).

It is the « revelation » that constitutes the deep substance of the secret, its inner fabric, much more than the secret itself, which is only the external appearance. A secret forever buried in the depths of time would be like a seed that would never germinate.

And, in Hebrew, “to reveal” evokes another series of meanings, revolving around emigration, exile, banishment. A penetration of the secret, an entry into the mystery, evokes a departure to a foreign land, or even a deportation, like an exile to Babylon…

A child of exile, a deportee from Judah, « reveals » his own « secret » to the king who « exiled » his people, – and by doing so, who « discovered » Judah, who made it « appear ».

Irony and depth of words, which say more than they are meant to say.

The word גָלָה (galah), which means « to reveal » and « to emigrate », also reaches a sublime form of mystery. By linking « revelation » and « emigration », it deepens a mystery whose meaning it does not reveal.

i« Then the mystery (רָז ) was revealed to Daniel in a night vision. « (Dan. 2:19)

« He who reveals depths and secrets (רָז ) knows what is in the darkness, and the light dwells with him. » (Dan. 2:22)

« The mystery (רָז ) that the king pursues, wise men, soothsayers, magicians and exorcists have not been able to discover it to the king. « (Dan. 2:27)

« But there is a God in heaven who reveals the mysteries (רָז ) and who has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what is to happen at the end of days. Your dream and the visions of your head on your bed, here they are. « (Dan. 2:28)

« This mystery (רָז ) has been revealed to me, and I have no more wisdom than anyone else, for the sole purpose of letting the king know its meaning. « (Dan. 2:30)

« And the king said to Daniel: « Truly your god is the God of gods, and the master of kings, the revelator of mysteries (רָז ), since you were able to reveal the mystery (רָז ). » (Dan. 2:47)

Provincial Minds for a Skimpy Planet

Publié par Philippe Quéau

Philo of Alexandria attempted a synthesis of the Greek, Jewish, Egyptian and Babylonian worlds. He navigated freely between these heterogeneous, trenchant, distinct, cultures, religions and philosophies. He took advantage of their strengths, their originality. He is one of the first to have succeeded in overcoming and transcending their idiosyncrasies. It was a premonitory effort, two thousand years ago, to think globally.

Philo was also a master of contradictions. In this, he can be a model for the troubled, contracted, stifling, reactionary periods we have entered.

On the one hand, Philo can be characterized as a neo-Platonic philosopher. He takes up and develops the concept of Logos as the « axis » of the world (ἔξίς). « It is a Logos, the Logos of the eternal God, who is the most resistant and solid support of the universe. « (De Plantat. 10).

Founding axis, ground of being, the Logos is at the same time principle of change, the divine word, an intelligible being, and the immemorial Wisdom. Neither begotten like men, nor un-begotten like God, the Logos is the « intermediate being » par excellence.

On the other hand, Philo affirms that God remains superior to any idea that might be formulated about Him. He declares that God is « better than virtue, better than science, better than good in itself » (De Opifico, m.8). Nothing is like God and God is like nothing (De Somn. I, 73). In this he takes up the point of view formulated by Deutero-Isaiah (Is 48:18-25, 46:5-9, 44,7).

God has nothing in common with the world, He has withdrawn totally from it, and yet His presence still penetrates it, and even fills it completely, in spite of this absence.

So, is God the Logos or a silent and absent God? Or both?

One could seek an answer by thinking over the variations of the nature of the created world, and over the various combinations of divine presence and absence.

Philo distinguishes two kinds of creation: the ideal man – which God « made » (ἐποίήσεν), and the earthly man – which God “fashioned” (ἒπλασεν). What is the difference? The ideal man is a pure creation, a divine, immaterial form. The earthly man is ‘fashioned’ plastically (it is the same etymological root) from matter (the raw mud).

The mud, the matter, are only intermediaries. Terrestrial man is therefore a mixture of presence and absence, of matter and intelligence. « The best part of the soul that is called intelligence and reason (νοῦς καί λόγος) is a breath (pneuma), a divine character imprint, an image of God. « (Quod. Det. Pot. Ins. 82-84)

Through these puns and ad hoc mixes of concepts, Philo postulates the existence of various degrees of creation. Not everything has been created by God ex nihilo, in one go: there are second or third creations, delegated to a gradation of intermediate beings.

On the one hand, God, and on the other hand, various levels of reality, such as the Logos, the ideal Man, the Adamic, earthly, Man.

Only the best beings are born both of God and through him. The other beings are born not of and through him, but through intermediaries who belong to a level of reality inferior to the divine reality.

Such a world, mixed, complex, a mixture of mud and soul, divine and earthly, is the most universal religious and philosophical idea possible in a time of transition.

This idea was widely spread in Philo’s time through mystery cults.

Mystery has always been part of the very essence of the religious phenomenon, in all traditions, in all cultures. In Egypt, Greece, Rome, Chaldea, mystery cults were observed in Egypt, Greece, Rome, Chaldea, which had sacred, hidden words. Initiation allowed progressive access to this secret knowledge, which was supposed to contain divine truths.

The mystery was spread everywhere, emphatic, putative.

For Philo, the Torah itself was a deep « mystery ». This is why he begged Moses to help and guide him, to initiate him: « O Hierophant, speak to me, guide me, and do not cease anointing until, leading us to the brilliance of the hidden words, you show us its invisible beauties. « (De Somn. II, 164).

The « hidden words » are the « shadow » of God (Leg Alleg. III, 96). They are His Logos. They come from an impalpable world, an intermediary between the sensible and the divine.

The Logos is also a means of approaching God, a vehicle of supplication. The Logos is the great Advocate, the Paraclete. He is the High Priest who prays for the whole world, of which he is clothed as of a garment (Vita Mos. 134).

The idea of an « intermediary » Logos, a divine Word and an intercessor of men before God, was already expressed, I would like to emphasize, in the RigVeda, in the plains of the Ganges more than two thousand years before the time of Moses. In the Veda, the Word, Vāc (वाच्), is the divine revelation, and it is also the Intermediary that changes our ears into eyes.

This ancient and timeless idea is also found in Egypt and Greece. « Hermes is the Logos whom the gods sent down to us from heaven (…) Hermes is an angel because we know the will of the gods according to the ideas given to us in the Logos, » explains Lucius Annaeus Cornutus in his Abstract of the Traditions of Greek Theology, written in the 1st century A.D.

Hermes was begotten by Zeus called Cornutus. Similarly, in Philo, the Logos is « the elder son of God », while the world is « the younger son of God ». In this respect Philo bases himself on the distinction made in the Egyptian myth of the two Horuses, the two sons of the supreme God Osiris, the elder Horus who symbolizes the world of ideas, the world of the intelligible, and the younger Horus who symbolically embodies the sensible world, the created world.

Plutarch writes in his De Isis et Osiris: « Osiris is the Logos of Heaven and Hades ». Under the name of Anubis, he is the Logos of things above. Under the name of Hermanoubis, he refers partly to the things above and partly to the things below. This Logos is also the mysterious « sacred word » that the Goddess Isis transmits to the Initiates.

Osiris, Hermes and the Logos belong to different traditions but point to a common intuition. Between the Most High and the Most Low there is an intermediate domain, the world of the Word, the Spirit, the Breath.

In the Vedas, this intermediate and divine realm is also that of sacrifice. Likewise, in Christianity, Jesus is both the Logos and the sacrificed God.

What can we conclude today from these resemblances, these analogies?

Obviously, the religious phenomenon is an essential, structuring component of the human spirit. But what is striking is that quite precise ideas, « technical », if I may say so, like that of a world « in between » God and man, have flourished in many forms, in all latitudes, and for several millennia.

One of the most promising avenues of « dialogue among cultures » would be to explore the similarities, analogies and resemblances between religions.

Since the resounding irruption of modernity on the world stage, a central disconnection has occurred between rationalists, sceptics and materialists on the one hand, and religious, mystical and idealist minds on the other.

This global, worldwide split is in itself a fundamental anthropological fact. Why is this? Because it threatens the anthropological idea itself. The idea of Man is being attacked in the heart, and as a result it is Man himself who is dying. Philosophers like Michel Foucault have even announced that this Man is already dead.

Man may not be quite dead yet, but he is dying, because he no longer understands who he is. He lies there, seriously wounded, almost decapitated by the axe of schizophrenia.

The modern era is indeed ultra-materialistic, and at the same time religious feeling remains deep in the human psyche.

Lay people, agnostics, indifferent people populate the real world today, and at the same time, religious, mystics and fundamentalists occupy seemingly irreconcilable ideal worlds.

Religious extremism, in its very excesses, nevertheless bears witness to a search for meaning, which cannot be reduced to the death drive or hatred of the other.

Is a meta-religion, a meta-philosophy, of worldwide scope and value, possible today? That is a vain wish, a crazy idea, a void dream, one might answer.

Yet, two thousand years ago, two Jews, Philo and Jesus, independently and separately testified to possible solutions, and built grandiose bridges between opposing abysses.

And, without knowing it, no doubt, they were thus reviving, in their own way, very old ideas that had already irrigated the minds of great predecessors several millennia before.

Today, two thousand years after these two seers, who carries this powerful heritage in the modern world?

No one. We have entered a time of narrowedness of mind, a very provincial time indeed, for a very skimpy planet.

Pe’or – a Very Modern Idol

Publié par Philippe Quéau

According to the Talmud of Jerusalem, a Jew, named Sabbathai of Ulama, one day entered the temple of Pe’or, then « fulfilled a need and wiped himself on Pe’or’s face. All who heard of it praised the man for this deed and said: « Never has anyone ever acted as well as he did.»ⁱ

What to think of this curious scene? The Talmud seems to regard it as a great deed, an act of courage showing the contempt of an Israelite for the idols of the Moabites. A Jew, defecates on the idol, wipes himself on the idol’s nose, and receives praise from his fellow believers.

In reality, no blasphemy, no transgression happened then: the cult of Pe’or consisted precisely in doing this sort of rite. Rashi explains it very well: « PE’OR. Named so because people undressed (פוערין ) in front of him and relieved themselves: that is what his cult consisted of. »

One may infer from that indication that the Talmud’s comment (« No one has ever acted as well as he did ») could not come in fact from other Jews, supposed to be gleefully approving of Sabbathaï desecrating the idol.

How could law-abiding Jews approve of a Jew who would have just strictly followed the rites of a pagan cult in the temple of Pe’or?

It is more likely that the praise for Sabbathai came rather from the Moabites themselves, being surprised (and maybe flattered) to see an Israelite following the rites of worship of Pe’or, and even adding a final touch of perfection, a remarkable pirouette.

The name Pe’or comes from the verbal root ָפָּעַר which in Hebrew means « to open one’s mouth wide ». The god Peor, a.k.a Ba’al Pe’or, (and better known in the West as Belphegor), was the « god of openness ». Whether this openness is that of the mouth or that of the anus is of secondary importance. It could just as well be a reference to the opening mouth of the Earth or of Hell.

In fact, Isaiah uses the word pe’or in an infernal, hellish, context: « Therefore the Sheol expands its throat and opens its mouth ( וּפָעֲרָה פִיהָ) inordinately.»ⁱⁱ

Another word, very close phonetically (פָּצַה), means « to split, to open wide », and in a metaphorical sense « to unchain, to deliver ». The Psalmist uses it in this way: « Deliver me, save me.»ⁱⁱⁱ

Ba’al Pé’or, god of « openness », is a god over whom one could defecate “religiously”. That was a metaphor for deliverance…

One may say, rather counter-intuitively, that Ba’al Pé’or also prefigured, beyond what could be considered the apparent nothingness of idols, and their laughable inanity, a more disturbing idea: that of a Godhead ultimately despised and humiliated, – by the defecation of human excrements.

A very modern idea.

iQuoted in Georges Sorel, in Le système historique de Renan, Paris, Ed. G. Jacques, 1906

ii Is. 5, 14

iii Ps. 144,7

Just Hit the Road לֶך

Publié par Philippe Quéau

There are many ideas running around, nowadays.

There is the idea that there are no more ideas, no more « great narratives« .

There is the idea that everything is rigged, that a conspiracy has been hatched by a few people against all.

There is the idea that progress is doomed.

There is the idea that the coming catastrophe is just ‘fake news’, or just part of an ideology.

There is the idea that anything can happen, and there is the idea that there is no hope, that the void is opening up, just ahead.

Every age harbours the new prophets that it deserves. Günther Anders has famously proclaimed the « obsolescence of man », – and that the absence of a future has already begun.

We must go way beyond that sort of ideas and that sort of prophecies.

Where to find the spirit, the courage, the vision, the inspiration?

Immense the total treasure of values, ideas, beliefs, faiths, symbols, paradigms, this ocean bequeathed by humanity to the generations of the day.

The oldest religions, the philosophies of the past, are not museums, fragmented dreams, now lost. Within them lies the memory of a common world, a dream of the future.

The Divine is in that which was born; the Divine is in that which is born; the Divine is in that which will be born.

A few chosen words from beyond the ages, and the spirit may be set ablaze. The soul may be filled with fulgurations, with assailing prescience.

Power is in the air, in the mother, the father, the son, the daughter.

It is in the Gods, and in all men. In all that is born, in all that will be born.

One thousand years before Moses’ times, the poets of the Rig Veda claimed:

“The God who does not grow old stands in the bush. Driven by the wind, He clings to the bushes with tongues of fire, with a thunder.”ⁱ

Sounds familiar?

Was then Moses in his own way a Vedic seer? Probably.

The greatest minds always meet at the very top. And when they do, the greatest of the greatest do come down from up there, they do go back down, among us, to continue to go further on.

“Go for yourself (לֶךְ–לְךָ lekh lekha), out of your country, out of your birthplace and your father’s house, to the land I will show you. I will make you a great nation. I will bless you, I will make your name glorious, and you will be blessed. I will bless those who bless you and curse those who reproach you, and through you will be blessed all the families of the earth.”ⁱⁱ

Rashi commented this famous text. When you’re always on the road, from one camp to another, you run three risks: you have fewer children, you have less money, you have less fame. That’s why Abram received three blessings: the promise of children, confidence in prosperity, and the assurance of fame.

The figure of Abram leaving Haran is a metaphor for what lies ahead. It is also a prophecy. We too must leave Haran.

The word haran originally means « the hollow ».

We too are in « the hollow », that is, a void of ideas, a lack of hope.

It is time, like Abram once did, to get out of this hollow, to hit the road, to seek new paths for new generations, yet to come.

The word haran can be interpreted in different ways. Philo wrote that haran means « the cavities of the soul and the sensations of the body ». It is these « cavities » that one must leave. “Adopt an alien mentality with regard to these realities, let none of them imprison you, stand above all. Look after yourself.”ⁱⁱⁱ

Philo adds: « But also leave the expired word, what we have called the dwelling of the father, so as not to be seduced by the beauties of words and terms, and find yourself finally separated from the authentic beauty that lies in the things that the words meant. (…) He who tends toward being rather than appearing will have to cling to these realities, and leave the dwelling of words.”^iv

Abram-Abraham has left Haran. On the way, he separated from his traveling companion, Lot: « Separate yourself from me! » he said to him^v.

Philo comments: « You must emigrate, in search of your father’s land, that of the sacred Logos, who is also in a sense the father of the ascetics; this land is Wisdom.”^vi

Philo, an Alexandrian Jew, wrote in Greek. He used the word Logos as an equivalent for “Wisdom”, – and he notes: « The Logos stands the highest, close besides God, and is called Samuel (‘who hears God’). »

‘Migration’ is indeed a very old human metaphor, with deep philosophical and mystical undertones.

One may still have to dig up one or two things about it.

“Go, for yourself (לֶךְ–לְךָ lekh lekha)”. Leave the ‘hollow’. Stand above all, that is. Look after the Logos.

The Logos. Or the ‘Word’, as they say.

A ‘migrant’ is always in quest of good metaphors for a world yet to come. Always in quest of true metaphors yet to be spoken.

‘Metaphor’. A Greek word, meaning: “displacement”.

Hence the stinging and deep irony of Philo’s metaphor:

“Leave the dwelling of words.”

Leave the words. Leave the metaphors. Just leave.

Just hit the road, Man.

Lekh לֶךְ

i R.V. I.58.2-4

iiGen. 12, 1-3

iiiPhilo. De Migratione Abrahami. 14,7

iv Ibid. 14,12

v Gen. 13,9

vi Ibid. 14,12

A post-modern poem.

Publié par Philippe Quéau

Dive into the abyss of the past.

Resonances to come, brief echoes of long times yet to go.

Receiving the beam of darkness that comes from a time ahead.

With the body, and the mind, bathing to the naked, dark photons.

To swallow raw bosons from all sides.

Darkness, no, run away from it. Search for its antonyms.

Lone shards, fledgling glimmers, glittering fragments, beaming debris.

Dead clarities. Evanescent nitescences.

Of all the suns still dead, make fire.

And live, in an eruptive hearth, in a sparkling dwarf, sweet omega.

The sudden rapture of Enoch

Publié par Philippe Quéau

It was very brutal, very sudden. « Enoch walked with God, and then he was no more, for God took him away. »ⁱ A real trick. The construction of the sentence is straightforward, without nuance. If we translate word for word: « Enoch walked with God (in the text: ‘to the Gods’: et-ha-Elohim, אֶת–הָאֱלֹהִים ), then, ‘nothing more of him, vé-éïnénou, וְאֵינֶנּוּ ‘, because God (Elohim) took him away (or: seized him), ki-laqaḥ oto Elohim כִּי–לָקַח אֹתוֹ אֱלֹהִים .»

The expression used to render the key moment of Enoch’s disappearance (‘nothing more of him’ – éïnénou) evokes a kind of nothingness, an ‘absence’ instantaneously substituting for the ‘presence’ of Enoch, for his walking in ‘presence of God’, during three centuries.

Rachi comments as follows: « Enoch was a righteous man, but weak in conscience and easy to turn to evil. So God hastened to take him out of this world before his time. That is why the text expresses itself differently when it speaks of his death, and says: AND HE WAS NO LONGER in this world to complete his years. »

Therefore, Rashi does not believe that Enoch was taken up to Heaven in the manner of Elijah, like in a ‘rapture’. According to Rashi it is only a metaphor, a vigorous one admittedly, but which only translates the death of a « just », who was also a little « weak ».

I find that Rashi’s commentary falls rather short of the text.

Why demean Enoch by calling him a « weak man and easy to incite to evil »? Enoch is a « just » man. This is no small thing. Moreover, « he walks with God ». This is not a sign of weakness. Secondly, why does Rashi say that God « hastened to take him out of this world before his time, » when Enoch had already been walking with God ( וַיִּתְהַלֵּךְ חֲנוֹךְ, אֶת–הָאֱלֹהִים ) for three hundred yearsⁱⁱ?

If we add the years that Enoch lived before giving birth to Methuselah, Enoch lived a total of three hundred and sixty five yearsⁱⁱⁱ…That is a long time before God decided to “hasten”...

A thousand years before Rashi, Philo of Alexandria had proposed a completely different interpretation. « Enoch was pleasing to God, and ‘they could not find him’ (Gen. 5:24). Where would one have looked to find this Good? What seas would one have crossed? On what islands, on what continents? Among the Barbarians, or among the Greeks? Aren’t there not even today initiates in the mysteries of philosophy who say that wisdom is without existence, since the wise man does not exist either? So it is said that ‘he could not be found’, that way of being which was pleasing to God, in the sense that while it exists well, it is hidden from view, and that it is hidden from us where it is, since it is also said that God took it away ».^iv

Philo goes from the figure of Enoch to that of Good. Where to find the Good? Where to find Wisdom? Just because we can’t find them, doesn’t mean they’ve suddenly disappeared, doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Philo sees in the text an incitement to take flight towards high ideas. Probably an influence of Pythagoras and Plato. A form of encounter, the spirit of Israel and that of Greece.

After Philo and Rashi, what can we still see in this passage of Genesis?

The name Enoch (חֲנוֹךְ ) gives a clue. It means « the initiate », « the one who is dedicated ». The word ḥanukah has the same root. Long before it meant the feast of the same name, which commemorates the victories of the Maccabees, this word had the generic meaning of « inauguration », of « dedication »: the dedication of the altar (Num. 7:11) or the inauguration of the temple (Ps. 30:1).

Enoch was a living « dedication ». He had « dedicated » himself to God. He was a “walking” sacrifice (like Isaac, walking to the place of his sacrifice).

Enoch had given his own life as a sacrifice. God was pleased with him, and God walked « with him ». Then, one day, suddenly, God took him away.

Why that day, precisely, and not before or after?

I think that Enoch was taken away on the day he was 365 years old. He had spent 65 years until he became the father of Methuselah, and 300 more years of walking in the presence of God. A life of 365 years, that is, a year of years.^v

A « year of years » is a good metaphor to signify the perfection of time accomplished, the sum of the life of a righteous man.

But why was Enoch ‘suddenly’ no longer seen?

When God takes hold of a soul, it is not done in a picosecond or a femtosecond or even as one might say, ‘immediately’.

It is done in a time without time, infinitely short in the beginning, and infinitely long, immediately afterwards.

i Gen. 5, 24

ii Gen. 5,22

iiiGen. 5, 21-23

iv Mutatione Nominum, 34-38

vGen. 5, 21-23

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	L’apocalypse occulté… dans Génocide
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	Lincol Martín dans The Star, the Stone, the Oil a…
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Non-Death and Breath

The Evanescence of Wisdom

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The solitary passer-by

Seeing God and Dying

The Elsewhere God

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