The time of the previous post, 3:10 (AM), suggests, in a
surreal manner that the spirit of the late David Bowie might
find amusing, a review of Log24 posts last year on 3/10 —
An Obit for Dooley and The Big Screw.
As for the time, 6:25, of this post, see Apocatastasis.
On June 25
in this journal–
A Word for AntiChristmas:“… T. S. Eliot tried to recompose,
in Four Quartets, the fragments he had grieved over in The Waste Land.” — “Beauty and Desecration,” |
Today’s word
(thanks to Michael Jackson)–
| From Log24 on Nov. 12, 2005:
“‘Tikkun Olam, the fixing of the world,’ she whispers. ‘I’ve been gathering up the broken vessels to make things whole again.'” — Miriam in Bee Season
“Tikkun Olam, the gathering of the divine fragments, is a religious activity…. How do we work for the repair of the world? If we live in a humpty dumpty world, how do we get it all put back together again?”
— A Sunday Sermon “… the
— Martha Cooley, The Archivist |
Apocatastasis Now
I give you the end of a golden string,
Only wind it into a ball:
It will lead you in at Heavens gate,
Built in Jerusalems wall.
— WILLIAM BLAKE
"In 'Apocatastasis Now: A Very Condensed Reading of William Blake's Jerusalem' (
— The Year's Work in English Studies, 2003: Vol. 82, No. 1, pp. 493-547
| Thriller |
|
From the website of Philip Pullman, president of The Blake Society:
"I must create a System…"
|
— “Beauty and Desecration,”
Roger Scruton
(link at aldaily.com today)
| “The formula reproduces exactly the essential features of the symbolic process of transformation. It shows the rotation of the mandala, the antithetical play of complementary (or compensatory) processes, then the apocatastasis, i.e., the restoration of an original state of wholeness….”
— Carl G. Jung in Aion
|
John Baez, Week 266
(June 20, 2008):
"The Renaissance thinkers liked to
organize the four elements using
a chain of analogies running
from light to heavy:
fire : air :: air : water :: water : earth
They also organized them
in a diamond, like this:"
This figure of Baez
is related to a saying
attributed to Heraclitus:
For related thoughts by Jung,
see Aion, which contains the
following diagram:
"The formula reproduces exactly the essential features of the symbolic process of transformation. It shows the rotation of the mandala, the antithetical play of complementary (or compensatory) processes, then the apocatastasis, i.e., the restoration of an original state of wholeness, which the alchemists expressed through the symbol of the uroboros, and finally the formula repeats the ancient alchemical tetrameria, which is implicit in the fourfold structure of unity."
— Carl Gustav Jung
That the words Maximus of Tyre (second century A.D.) attributed to Heraclitus imply a cycle of the elements (analogous to the rotation in Jung's diagram) is not a new concept. For further details, see "The Rotation of the Elements," a 1995 webpage by one "John Opsopaus."
Related material:
Log24 entries of June 9, 2008, and
"Quintessence: A Glass Bead Game,"
by Charles Cameron.
From Jung's Map of the Soul, by Murray Stein:
"… Jung thinks of the self as undergoing continual transformation during the course of a lifetime…. At the end of his late work Aion, Jung presents a diagram to illustrate the dynamic movements of the self…."
"The formula presents a symbol of the self, for the self is not just a stable quantity or constant form, but is also a dynamic process. In the same way, the ancients saw the imago Dei in man not as a mere imprint, as a sort of lifeless, stereotyped impression, but as an active force…. The four transformations represent a process of restoration or rejuvenation taking place, as it were, inside the self…."
"The formula reproduces exactly the essential features of the symbolic process of transformation. It shows the rotation of the mandala, the antithetical play of complementary (or compensatory) processes, then the apocatastasis, i.e., the restoration of an original state of wholeness, which the alchemists expressed through the symbol of the uroboros, and finally the formula repeats the ancient alchemical tetrameria, which is implicit in the fourfold structure of unity.
What the formula can only hint at, however, is the higher plane that is reached through the process of transformation and integration. The 'sublimation' or progress or qualitative change consists in an unfolding of totality into four parts four times, which means nothing less than its becoming conscious. When psychic contents are split up into four aspects, it means that they have been subjected to discrimination by the four orienting functions of consciousness. Only the production of these four aspects makes a total description possible. The process depicted by our formula changes the originally unconscious totality into a conscious one."
— Jung, Collected Works,
Vol. 9, Part 2, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self (1951)
Related material:
"Although 'wholeness' seems at first sight to be nothing but an abstract idea (like anima and animus), it is nevertheless empirical in so far as it is anticipated by the psyche in the form of spontaneous or autonomous symbols. These are the quaternity or mandala symbols, which occur not only in the dreams of modern people who have never heard of them, but are widely disseminated in the historical recods of many peoples and many epochs. Their significance as symbols of unity and totality is amply confirmed by history as well as by empirical psychology. What at first looks like an abstract idea stands in reality for something that exists and can be experienced, that demonstrates its a priori presence spontaneously. Wholeness is thus an objective factor that confronts the subject independently of him… Unity and totality stand at the highest point on the scale of objective values because their symbols can no longer be distinguished from the imago Dei. Hence all statements about the God-image apply also to the empirical symbols of totality."
— Jung, Aion, as quoted in
Carl Jung and Thomas Merton
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