For Women's History Month —
Thursday, March 24, 2016
Wednesday, April 30, 2025
High Concept: Rings and Stones
"… the Light of the Ring shone upon the Stone…."
— Charles Williams, Many Dimensions
And then there is Solomon's Cube . . .
"Before time began…." — Optimus Prime
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Friday, September 20, 2024
Ring and Stone
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The Ring and the Stone
From Many Dimensions, a novel "This Holy Thing has been kept in seclusion," Ibrahim answered, "through many centuries, and in all that time none of its keepers have approached or touched it. And since Giles Tumulty stole it men have grasped at it in their own wisdom. But this woman has put her will at its disposal, and between it and her the union may be achieved by which the other Hiddenness is made manifest." "What is the other Hiddenness?" Lord Arglay asked. The Hajji hesitated, then he turned his eyes back to Chloe and seemed to ask a question of her. What answer he saw on the forehead at which he gazed she could not guess, but he spoke then in a low and careful voice. "In the Crown of Suleiman the Wise-the Peace be upon him!-" he said, "there was a Stone, and this Stone was that which is the First Matter of Creation, holy and terrible. But on the hand of the King there was a Ring and in the Ring was another secret, more holy and terrible than the Stone. For within the Ring there was a point of that Light which is the Spirit of Creation, the Adornment of the Unity, the Knowledge of the Loveliness, the Divine Image in the mirror of the worlds just and true. This was the justice and the Wisdom of Suleiman, by which all souls were made manifest to him and all causes rightly determined. Also when within the Holy of Holies in the Temple that the King made he laid his crown upon the Ark and between the wings of the Cherubim, and held his hand over it, the Light of the Ring shone upon the Stone and all things had peace. But when the King erred, building altars to strange gods, he dared no longer let the Light fall upon the Stone; also he put aside the Ring and it is told that Asmodeus sat upon his throne seven years. But I think that perhaps the King himself had not all that time parted from his throne, how closely soever Asmodeus dwelt within his soul. And of the hiding place of the Ring I do not know, nor any of my house; if it is on earth it is very secret. But the Light of it is in the Stone and all the Types of the Stone-and the Power of it is in the soul and body of any who have sought the union with the Stone, so that whoever touches them in anger or hatred or evil desire is subjected to the Light and Power of the Adornment of the Unity. And this I think my nephew did, and this is the cause of his blasting and hurling out." He looked straight at Chloe. "But woe, woe, woe to you," he said, "if from this time forth for ever you forget that you gave your will to the Will of That which is behind the Stone." |
This post was suggested by a Friday the Thirteenth death.
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Tuesday, November 8, 2022
Wednesday, February 23, 2022
Friday, February 11, 2022
De Beer’s Consolidated Mine
The misleading image at right above is from the cover of
an edition of Charles Williams's classic 1931 novel
Many Dimensions published in 1993 by Wm. B. Eerdmans.
But seriously . . .
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Tuesday, February 16, 2021
Buffalo Logic
From a post of January 8, 2021 —
“Lord Arglay had a suspicion that the Stone would be
purely logical. Yes, he thought, but what, in that sense,
were the rules of its pure logic?”
—Many Dimensions (1931), by Charles Williams
A Midrash for Emma —
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Friday, January 8, 2021
Welcome to Zombieland
“Lord Arglay had a suspicion that the Stone would be
purely logical. Yes, he thought, but what, in that sense,
were the rules of its pure logic?”
—Many Dimensions (1931), by Charles Williams
“Don’t give a damn ’cause I done that already.” — Zombie Jamboree
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Wednesday, April 22, 2020
One with Everything
The title is of course from an old joke about mystic philosophies.
Related remarks by John Archibald Wheeler —
“Remarkable issues connected with the puzzle of existence
confront us today in Hermann Weyl’s domain of thought.
Four among them I bring before you here as especially interesting:
(1) What is the machinery of existence?
(2) What is deeper foundation of the quantum principle?
(3) What is the proper position to take about the existence of
the “continuum” of the natural numbers? And
(4) What can we do to understand time as an entity, not precise and
supplied free of charge from outside physics, but approximate and
yet to be derived from within a new and deeper time-free physics?
In brief, how come time?
What about the continuum?
How come the quantum?
What is existence?”
— John A. Wheeler, “Hermann Weyl and the Unity of Knowledge,”
American Scientist 74, no. 4 (1986): 366–75. Reprinted in
John A. Wheeler, At Home in the Universe
(American Institute of Physics, December 1, 1995).
The above bibliographic data is from . . .
Schrank, Jeffrey. Inventing Reality: Stories We Create To Explain Everything .
Gatekeeper Press. Kindle Edition, March 14, 2020.
For further scholarly details, see a version at JSTOR:
“…the article is adapted from the concluding address given at
the Hermann Weyl Centenary Congress, University of Kiel, 3 July 1985.”
— https://www.jstor.org/stable/27854250.
I prefer Charles Williams on “the Unity of Knowledge.”
See the 15 instances of the phrase “the Unity” in his 1931 novel Many Dimensions .
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Wednesday, January 29, 2020
On the Road
From Mosaic Logic, a post of September 3, 2017 —
“Lord Arglay had a suspicion that the Stone would be
purely logical. Yes, he thought, but what, in that sense,
were the rules of its pure logic?”
—Many Dimensions (1931), by Charles Williams
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Sunday, November 17, 2019
E-Elements Revisited
The German mathematician Wolf Barth in the above post is not the
same person as the Swiss artist Wolf Barth in today's previous post.
An untitled, undated, picture by the latter —
Compare and contrast with an "elements" picture of my own —
— and with . . .
“Lord Arglay had a suspicion that the Stone would be
purely logical. Yes, he thought, but what, in that sense,
were the rules of its pure logic?”
—Many Dimensions (1931), by Charles Williams
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Monday, November 11, 2019
Time and Chance
The misleading image at right above is from the cover of
an edition of Charles Williams's classic 1931 novel
Many Dimensions published in 1993 by Wm. B. Eerdmans.
Compare and constrast —
Cover of a book by Douglas Hofstadter
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Sunday, July 15, 2018
Jewish Oases
"… Lincoln Plaza Cinemas, the Juilliard String Quartet,
and the Strand Book Store remained oases
for cultural and intellectual stimulation."
— John S. Friedman in The Forward , Jan. 21, 2018
Read more:
https://forward.com/culture/392483/
how-fred-bass-dan-talbot-robert-mann
-shaped-new-york-culture/
From the Oasis in Steven Spielberg's "Ready Player One" (2018) —
I prefer, from a Log24 search for Flux Capacitor …
From "Raiders of the Lost Images" —
"The cube shape of the lost Mother Box,
also known as the Change Engine,
is shared by the Stone in a novel by
Charles Williams, Many Dimensions .
See the Solomon's Cube webpage."
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Saturday, May 19, 2018
Flux Capacitor
For Tom Hanks and Dan Brown —
From "Raiders of the Lost Images" —
"The cube shape of the lost Mother Box,
also known as the Change Engine,
is shared by the Stone in a novel by
Charles Williams, Many Dimensions .
See the Solomon's Cube webpage."
See as well a Google search for flux philosophy —
https://www.google.com/search?q=flux+philosophy.
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Tuesday, February 27, 2018
Raiders of the Lost Images
On the recent film "Justice League" —
From DC Extended Universe Wiki, "Mother Box" —
"However, during World War I, the British rediscovered
mankind's lost Mother Box. They conducted numerous studies
but were unable to date it due to its age. The Box was then
shelved in an archive, up until the night Superman died,
where it was then sent to Doctor Silas Stone, who
recognized it as a perpetual energy matrix. . . ." [Link added.]
The cube shape of the lost Mother Box, also known as the
Change Engine, is shared by the Stone in a novel by Charles Williams,
Many Dimensions . See the Solomon's Cube webpage.
See too the matrix of Claude Lévi-Strauss in posts tagged
Verwandlungslehre .
Some literary background:
Who speaks in primordial images speaks to us
as with a thousand trumpets, he grips and overpowers,
and at the same time he elevates that which he treats
out of the individual and transitory into the sphere of
the eternal. — C. G. JUNG
"In the conscious use of primordial images—
the archetypes of thought—
one modern novelist stands out as adept and
grand master: Charles Williams.
In The Place of the Lion he incarnates Plato’s
celestial archetypes with hair-raising plausibility.
In Many Dimensions he brings a flock of ordinary
mortals face to face with the stone bearing
the Tetragrammaton, the Divine Name, the sign of Four.
Whether we understand every line of a Williams novel
or not, we feel something deep inside us quicken
as Williams tells the tale.
Here, in The Greater Trumps , he has turned to
one of the prime mysteries of earth . . . ."
— William Lindsay Gresham, Preface (1950) to
Charles Williams's The Greater Trumps (1932)
For fans of what the recent series Westworld called "bulk apperception" —
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Sunday, September 3, 2017
Mosaic Logic
“Lord Arglay had a suspicion that the Stone would be
purely logical. Yes, he thought, but what, in that sense,
were the rules of its pure logic?”
—Many Dimensions (1931), by Charles Williams
While you're waiting …
Click the above illustration for
some remarks on mosaics.
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Sunday, August 13, 2017
Logos
In memoriam —
Zadeh is known for the unfortunate phrase "fuzzy logic."
Not-so-fuzzy related material —
“Lord Arglay had a suspicion that the Stone would be
purely logical. Yes, he thought, but what, in that sense,
were the rules of its pure logic?”
—Many Dimensions (1931), by Charles Williams
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Monday, June 12, 2017
Bubble
The "bubble" passage in the previous post suggests a review of
a post from December 21, 2006, with the following images —
Update of 11:01 PM ET the same day, June 12, 2017 —
Related material for the Church of Synchronology —
From a tech-article series that began on Halloween 2006 and
ended on the date of the above Geometry's Tombstones post —
Compare and contrast (from a post of Feb. 27, 2017) —
“Lord Arglay had a suspicion that the Stone would be
purely logical. Yes, he thought, but what, in that sense,
were the rules of its pure logic?”
—Many Dimensions (1931), by Charles Williams
See also "The Geometry of Logic:
Finite Geometry and the 16 Boolean Connectives"
by Steven H. Cullinane in 2007.
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Monday, February 27, 2017
Logic for Jews
Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker today reacts to the startling
outcomes of three recent contests: the presidential election,
the Super Bowl, and the Oscar for Best Picture —
"The implicit dread logic is plain."
Related material —
Transformers in this journal and …
“Lord Arglay had a suspicion that the Stone would be
purely logical. Yes, he thought, but what, in that sense,
were the rules of its pure logic?”
—Many Dimensions (1931), by Charles Williams
See also …
The above figure is from Ian Stewart's 1996 revision of a 1941 classic,
What Is Mathematics? , by Richard Courant and Herbert Robbins.
One wonders how the confused slave boy of Plato's Meno would react
to Stewart's remark that
"The number of copies required to double an
object's size depends on its dimension."
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Saturday, January 28, 2017
Cranking It Up
From "Core," a post of St. Lucia's Day, Dec. 13, 2016 —
In related news yesterday —
California yoga mogul’s mysterious death:
Trevor Tice’s drunken last hours detailed
"Police found Tice dead on the floor in his home office,
blood puddled around his head. They also found blood
on walls, furniture, on a sofa and on sheets in a nearby
bedroom, where there was a large bottle of Grey Goose
vodka under several blood-stained pillows on the floor."
See as well an image from "The Stone," a post of March 18, 2016 —
Some backstory —
“Lord Arglay had a suspicion that the Stone would be
purely logical. Yes, he thought, but what, in that sense,
were the rules of its pure logic?”
—Many Dimensions (1931), by Charles Williams
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Sunday, April 3, 2016
Logic
See also Stone Logical Dimensions …
“Lord Arglay had a suspicion that the Stone
would be purely logical. Yes, he thought,
but what, in that sense, were the rules of its pure logic?”
—Many Dimensions (1931), by Charles Williams
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Wednesday, September 16, 2015
The World as Myth
Three approaches to The World as Myth…
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From Heinlein's 1985 The Cat Who Walks Through Walls … The World as Myth is a subtle concept. It has sometimes been called multiperson solipsism, despite the internal illogic of that phrase. Yet illogic may be necessary, as the concept denies logic. For many centuries religion held sway as the explanation of the universe- or multiverse. The details of revealed religions differed wildly but were essentially the same: Somewhere up in the sky-or down in the earth-or in a volcano-any inaccessible place- there was an old man in a nightshirt who knew everything and was all powerful and created everything and rewarded and punished… and could be bribed. "Sometimes this Almighty was female but not often because human males are usually bigger, stronger, and more belligerent; God was created in Pop's image. "The Almighty-God idea came under attack because it explained nothing; it simply pushed all explanations one stage farther away. In the nineteenth century atheistic positivism started displacing the Almighty-God notion in that minority of the population that bathed regularly. "Atheism had a limited run, as it, too, explains nothing, being merely Godism turned upside down. Logical positivism was based on the physical science of the nineteenth century which, physicists of that century honestly believed, fully explained the universe as a piece of clockwork. "The physicists of the twentieth century made short work of that idea. Quantum mechanics and Schrodringer's cat tossed out the clockwork world of 1890 and replaced it with a fog of probability in which anything could happen. Of course the intellectual class did not notice this for many decades, as an intellectual is a highly educated man who can't do arithmetic with his shoes on, and is proud of his lack. Nevertheless, with the death of positivism, Godism and Creationism came back stronger than ever. "In the late twentieth century -correct me when I' m wrong, Hilda-Hilda and her family were driven off Earth by a devil, one they dubbed 'the Beast.' They fled in a vehicle you have met, Gay Deceiver, and in their search for safety they visited many dimensions, many universes… and Hilda made the greatest philosophical discovery of all time." "I'll bet you say that to all the girls!" "Quiet, dear. They visited, among more mundane places, the Land of Oz-" I sat up with a jerk. Not too much sleep last night and Dr. Harshaw's lecture was sleep-inducing. "Did you say 'Oz'?" "I tell you three times. Oz, Oz, Oz. They did indeed visit the fairyland dreamed up by L. Frank Baum. And the Wonderland invented by the Reverend Mr. Dodgson to please Alice. And other places known only to fiction. Hilda discovered what none of us had noticed before because we were inside it: The World is Myth. We create it ourselves-and we change it ourselves. A truly strong myth maker, such as Homer, such as Baum, such as the creator of Tarzan, creates substantial and lasting worlds … whereas the fiddlin', unimaginative liars and fabulists shape nothing new and their tedious dreams are forgotten. …. |
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Friday, November 6, 2009
Where Entertainment is God (continued)
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Wednesday, May 6, 2015
Narrative Metaphysics
(Continued from Dec. 13, 2014.)
David Lavery's enthusiasm today for the Marvel Comics
"Infinity Stones" suggests a review of The Foundation Stone
mentioned in the post Narrative Metaphysics of 12/13/2014.
See as well "Many Dimensions" in this journal.
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Thursday, February 26, 2015
Brit Award
"The Brit Awards are… the British equivalent
of the American Grammy Awards." — Wikipedia
Detail of an image from yesterday's 5:30 PM ET post:
Related material:
From a review: "Imagine 'Raiders of the Lost Ark'
set in 20th-century London, and then imagine it
written by a man steeped not in Hollywood movies
but in Dante and the things of the spirit, and you
might begin to get a picture of Charles Williams's
novel Many Dimensions ."
See also Solomon's Seal (July 26, 2012).
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Tuesday, December 4, 2012
December Days
For the Dec. 3rd-4th graduate conference
at the University of Cambridge on
"Occultism, Magic, and the History of Art"—
Four novels by Charles Williams—
See also the life, and Dec. 1st death, of a former Chief Justice of South Africa.
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Thursday, September 13, 2012
Backstory
Yesterday's online Los Angeles Times
on a film that inspired recent protests in Cairo—
The film… was shown on June 23
to an audience of less than 10
at a theater on Hollywood Boulevard,
a source familiar with the screening said….
The screening was at The Vine Theater,
which rents itself out for private screenings,
said one person involved in the theater.
An image from this journal on that same day, June 23—
Source: Rudolf Koch, The Book of Signs
For some background on the symbol, see Damnation Morning.
See also Don Henley's Hollywood hymn "Garden of Allah."
Update of 8 PM Sept. 13, 2012—
Other sources give the film's screening date not as June 23,
2012, but rather as June 30, 2012. (BBC News, LAWEEKLY blogs)
The following post from this journal on that date may or
may not have some religious relevance.
| Saturday, June 30, 2012
Filed under: Uncategorized — m759 @ 7:20 PM "… to snare the spirits of mankind in nets of magic" — The aim of the artist, according to Thomas Wolfe Related entertainment— High-minded— Many Dimensions . Not so high-minded— The Cosmic Cube . |
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Thursday, July 19, 2012
But Seriously…
For those who prefer fiction:
"Many Dimensions (1931) — An evil antiquarian illegally purchases
the fabled Stone of Suleiman (Williams uses this Muslim form
rather than the more familiar King Solomon) from its Islamic guardian
in Baghdad and returns to England to discover not only that the Stone
can multiply itself infinitely without diminishing the original, but that it
also allows its possessor to transcend the barriers of space and time."
— Wikipedia article on the author Charles Williams
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Saturday, June 30, 2012
Snares
"… to snare the spirits of mankind in nets of magic"
— The aim of the artist, according to Thomas Wolfe
Related entertainment—
High-minded— Many Dimensions .
Not so high-minded— The Cosmic Cube .
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Friday, June 8, 2012
Cartoon Graveyard
For some background, see "Cartoon Graveyard" and "Many Dimensions."
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Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Cuber
"Examples galore of this feeling must have arisen in the minds of the people who extended the Magic Cube concept to other polyhedra, other dimensions, other ways of slicing. And once you have made or acquired a new 'cube'… you will want to know how to export a known algorithm , broken up into its fundamental operators , from a familiar cube. What is the essence of each operator? One senses a deep invariant lying somehow 'down underneath' it all, something that one can’t quite verbalize but that one recognizes so clearly and unmistakably in each new example, even though that example might violate some feature one had thought necessary up to that very moment. In fact, sometimes that violation is what makes you sure you’re seeing the same thing , because it reveals slippabilities you hadn’t sensed up till that time….
… example: There is clearly only one sensible 4 × 4 × 4 Magic Cube. It is the answer; it simply has the right spirit ."
— Douglas R. Hofstadter, 1985, Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern (Kindle edition, locations 11557-11572)
See also Many Dimensions in this journal and Solomon's Cube.
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