Ineluctable Modalities Part 2

The Tarot Cards have a way of presenting us with reality, or with a higher dimensional spiritual truth, or truths in picture format. James Joyce has also presented us with a remarkably fascinating way of understanding what we interpret to be reality in his books Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. In Ulysses, we find Stephen walking along the seashore trying to figure out what is going on. He is having a monologue with himself where he says “Ineluctable modality of the visible: At least that if no more, thought through my eyes.” (Ulysses, p. 37) That is, what his eyes see, is what is, and we cannot escape what we see as being real. What we see is what is real. It is inevitable that what Stephen sees is what is, and there is nothing more. This is the conundrum he faces. He then closes his eyes  and ....

with his ears he hears himself walking along “his boots crush crackling wrack and shells.” It is through hearing that rhythm begins as Stephen notes. Now he opens his eyes again and is everything else all gone? “See now. There all the time without you: and ever shall be, world without end.”

The idea which Joyce is bringing home through Stephen’s self analysis is that God is not a transcendant one out there, but He is immanent everywhere and in everything. There is no process Stephen says, God is present. (Joseph Campbell, Mythic Worlds Modern Words, The Art of James Joyce, HarperCollins Publishers, 1993: 66)

The ineluctable modality of the visible is that which we cannot escape, and Stephen is trying to identify what it is that we can be sure of. [the Tarot Card 15, “The Devil” is a perfect pictorial counterpart to Stephen’s speech right here! What you see is not necessarily all you get or necessarily all that there really is whatsoever, it may very well be an illusion. The visible is not the final revelation of truth through our senses in other words.] This is the visible world. Is this all there is? As Stephen keeps his eyes open and observes what they see is only modalities.  Stephen further ponders the “signature of all things I am here to read.” This is, to be sure, Jakob Boehme’s signatures of all things, which Joyce is borrowing, yet the now inevitable question arises for the ponderer and mystic alike, “But who signed all these things? Who or what is the source responsible for all of this? Stephen sees everything as a life statement signed by something: a life has left it. The shells on the beach bear signature of a snail, or an oyster, or a clam. Stephen is here to find out who or what wrote these signatures. He is looking for the reality that is behind this ineluctable modality.” (Campbell, Ibid., p. 70)

As Stephen walks along the seashore, he sees all that the seas throws up around him, the “seaspawn and seawrack.” “That eternal sea is always throwing up forms, throwing up forms. The life impulse in us is always throwing forth the very next quarter-second of our being, but I get you a second late. The world of waking consciousness is the world of experiencing what has become. All we see are the seaspawn and seawrack that has been tossed up by a process that we do not contact.” (Campbell, p. 70)

“The nature of the universe, Marcus Antoninus has observed, delights not in anything so much as to alter all things, and present them under another form. This is her conceit to play one game and begin another. Matter is placed before her like a piece of wax and she shapes it to all forms and figures. Now she makes a bird, then out of a bird, a beast – now a flower, then a frog, and she is pleased with her own magical performance as men are with their own fantasies… according to the mystics the thumb marks of the Demiurge are apparent everywhere for him who has eyes to see and the might and strength of a Menelaus to apprehend and hold the slippery object of apperception. Their (the astral influences) signatures may be seen in the book of life belonging to every form, in the shape and size of features and limbs, in the lines of the hands. They are the forces by which the Universal Mind puts his mark upon everything and those who are able to read may find the true history of everything written upon the leaves of its soul.” (Stuart Gilbert, James Joyce’s Ulysses, A Study, Vintage Books, 1958: 118-119)

Joyce’s pragmatics of description are quite startling in Stephen’s monologue, when we read of the “snotgreen sea” the same color as our own snot for the very apt reason that “we are of the substance of the sea…snotgreen, the ocean is snotgreen; the green of the sea is associated with the mother; the mother is within you; the snot is the ocean that is you. You can’t get away. The fluid of vital substances, the life that is in the ocean; all this is in you, in Stephen, and it comes out there on the handkerchief!” (Campbell, p. 70). Stephen understands the limit of the “diaphane” as he puts it. After working through the situation of color in the world (there is none, it is merely light waves that hit our own eyes, hence it is all just in our own heads – hints for the Tarot Devil card are screaming at us right now!) Stephen seems to realize though that there are bodies out there. But how do we know there are bodies out there? Sight moves now to touch, as Stephen notes, “by knocking his sconce against them, sure.” However, as we move from the diaphanous to the adiaphane, we move into that which we cannot penetrate. This is the world within or beyond the world of conscious experience. A door shuts you off, though a gate lets you see through. This is Stephen’s next idea, that is, “this is transparency to transcendence. Can we turn things that are doors into gates, so that we can see through the phenomenal world into the transcendant dimension? So much for space.” (Campbell, p. 71).

So Stephen shuts his eyes in order to try and see. He is trying to work with his inner vision, his inner eye. Now he gets to the ineluctable modality of the audible, that is what he hears with his ears.  So he opens his eyes again, yet yells at himself, no! He is doing just fine. He has his walking stick he can tap tap around with it.  This wand is the sign of the what Campbell calls “the master magician,” (p. 72), which is what the Tarot pictorially signifies as well. Blind people tap with their sticks as Stephen is doing here. Stephen is the blind man here. He says “sounds solid: made by the mallet of Los demiurgos.” This is the creative power of God, and it is Blake’s idea of the Creator, los is sol spelled backward. Sol is the sunlight, hence Los demiurgos is that interior demonic principle that throws forth the forms of the world (again the Tarot Devil Card which I will explain in a bit).

With eyes wide open now, does all that disappear? “Your eyes are not the ones that create the world. God’s eyes create the world. In the Kabbalah, the Makroprosopos, the Great Face of God, is shown in profile because the other side is unknown and unknowable. The eye has no lid, because if God were to close his eye the world would dissolve. (The Emperor Card, #4 in Case Tarot cards is also shown in profile) And Stephen understands this as he acknowledges “See now. There all the time without you: and ever shall be, world without end.” (Campbell, p. 73). As Case has noted, “Sight is the sense function attributed by Qabalists to the letter Heh [the Hebrew letter associated with the Tarot Emperor card]. Vision, inspection, reconnaissance, watchfulness, care, vigilance, examination, calculation, analysis, induction, inquiry, investigation… all depend on the sense of sight.” (Paul Foster Case, Tarot: Key to the Wisdom of the Ages, BOTA, 1990, p. 65)

This is precisely the opposite of what the two figures are doing in the Devil Card of the Tarot. This card is one about appearances, false illusions, about ourselves, and the world, and just what and who the real enemy is, surprise, it’s not the devil! The two chained figures are not slaves and captured whatsoever. Their bondage is one of their own agreeing to it, not the nature of their reality. The bondage to the flesh, to the appearances of what we label reality, are not the way they seem, though we seem to rather wish to go along with the flow. But we are anything but stuck. Our immersion into the gross world of material is a condition of bondage to the outer sensorium, as Kevin Townley calls it. (The Cube of Space, p. 224) Case rightly notes that the eye represents the limitations of the visible, and the bondage of ignorance resulting from the acceptance of these limitations and appearances as being all there is. (Case, Tarot, p. 161) And what appears to be what is, is a world of separation. The overall connected, interdependent lives we live as a corporate being is lost sight of, according to Townley, (Meditations on the Cube of Space, Archer Books, 2003, p. 20) Lotterhand says it well when he notes that we “tend to think of limitation as adversity, but our actual needs are one thing and our fancied needs are something else.” (Jason Lotterhand, Thursday Night Tarot, Newcastle Publishing, 1989: 248). He further elucidates this Tarot key by noting it is a charicature of Key 6, “The Lovers,” who are associated with discrimination. If we don’t discriminate we have bondage….. bondage to thinking limitedly, such as thinking all we get is all we see.  “Most of what you consider terrible obstacles in yourself are illusions.” (Lotterhand, p. 249). The entire idea in this key, as in Stephen’s analyzing his own limitations and trying to get to the ground of reality is “if you grasp the fact that you share human frailty, you’re not likely to become too involved in the ego trip.” (Lotterhand, p. 249). And finally, one of the most important points to this key of the Tarot, just what the devil does this devil mean? If this key represents the frustration and dissatisfaction of our lives, then that’s hell. “There’s only One Reality. It’s the way we look at it that makes a heaven or a hell. Our attitude determines what you see.” (Lotterhand, p. 250). Both beauty and evil is in the eye of the beholder. If we want to think of something as evil, we call it that, and pretend it really is. The same with good, bad, ugly, etc. In this Tarot Key, “the Devil’s half cube represents a partly understood reality. It’s a half baked notion of what’s going on. The whole cube in keys 2, 4, and 7 (High Priestess, Emperor, and Chariot) represents what is really going on. The people in key 15 are chained to a miscalculation; they are slaves to an illusion… their chains can easily be lifted off themselves if they cared to free themselves! Their bondage is voluntary. They actually like this situation.” (Lotterhand, p. 251).

There is no thinking in this key, which is the entire point of Joyce’s works. Here we find mystery! Linguistic, social, political, economic mystery, and presented in such a way as to scare off those who don’t wish to learn it, and learn how to solve this mystery we call life. This is the notion of the Tarot keys, as they pictorially show us the mystery, and how it’s solved. “To get the chains off, you have to want to get them off. Freedom can only be attained by self-liberation.” (Lotterhand, p. 252). What Stephen does, as everyone does in Joyce’s works, is what we all must do, that is, “you have to study nature, especially your own nature, to find any peace in yourself at all. You can’t just forget about it, because sometime you’re going to find yourself face to face with nature…” (Lotterhand, p. 252). By jumping full force into this thing we find ourselves in, namely, life, we get experiences. We gain wisdom, and learn what to do and what not to do. We learn to understand others as well as ourselves. We act, interact, react, and use guides (whether earthly or heavenly) to help us. Joyce’s masterworks are guides, as are the Tarot Cards, as are the Scriptures of the world. Whether secular or religious, there is something we all can learn from everyone else’s accumulated wisdom through the ages. This particular combination of James Joyce ad Tarot has piqued my interest of late, and it’s a wonderful adventure!

Comments

[ugg outlet]

Your blog is so funny that I can not help to finish it front and back. It is of help during my boring work.

[cheap timberland boots]

the music you listen to all influence the way you think and feel about yourself and the world around you.

[nike dunks]

In all large businesses, and people began to look like before you like a thousand police, as the time, http://www.nikedunks-high.com/ but during that time to seize the opportunity, as the Buddhist goddess of God.

[dunk shoes]

Your blog is so funny that I can not help to finish it front and back. It is of help during my boring work.

[timberland roll top]

Thanks for sharing this nice post.I will keep your article in my idea.

[mulberry uk factory]

Good stuff as per usual, thanks. I do hope this kind of thing gets more exposure.

[Belstaff Clothing]

I like ANMJ on FB & just subscribed to the email feed! :)

[Timberland Boots]

If you wish to be the best man, you must suffer the bitterest of the bitter.

[AvaHARRELL32]

That is great that we are able to receive the business loans and this opens new opportunities.