The Encyclopedia's Scope. The Book of Hopi to Reconstruct a Ritual Year
Presented on: Thursday, October 9, 1980
Presented by: Roger Weir
Symbolism
Presentation 2 of 12
The Encyclopedia's Scope.
The Book of Hopi to Reconstruct a Ritual Year.
Presented by Roger Weir
Thursday, October 9, 1980
Transcript:
The date is October 9th, 1980. This is the second lecture is a series by Roger Weir on the subject of symbolism. And tonight's lecture is The Encyclopedia's Scope, The Book of Hopi to Reconstruct a Ritual Year.
Is it eight o'clock? Have we **inaudible word** I have uh, passed out in this basket small pieces of handmade paper. And I have written on them the names of the ceremonies in the third part of The Book of Hopi. And uh, I have six more to hand out. We can draw more **inaudible word**. What this will do is it will give you, um, some sort of basic insight into a very complex world. It's difficult to approach with our mentality and our minds. And, uh, I struggled for many years to try to devise a way because it was entrusted to me to devise a way of getting at some of these experiences. And uh, it took a long time to be able to mature a process by which American Indian symbolism could be approached.
So, these pieces of paper that I have here contain names of ceremonies. And most of them will have two names. Some of them, which are more complex will have three names. And there are two **inaudible word**. So, we are going to need four more people to come in to complete this particular cycle.
The name of the ceremony that you have...during the break just come up and let me have a record of whatever name of the ceremony that you have chosen. And **inaudible word** we and just after the break, I will read off the names so that you will have some idea. There will always be another person besides yourself reading and investigating and experiencing and thinking about that ceremony that you are focusing.
The reason for choosing this particular method of approach. Um, in a vast cycle of experience that is somewhat Hermetically sealed. That is sealed by comprehension. And we are all outsiders to that cycle of comprehension. None of us grew up with it. None of us experienced it basically **inaudible few words** of maturation. And none of us have the kind of, um, creativity and receptivity with which to compliment the **inaudible word** experience in that realm. So, we have to settle for something else. There is no other way to do it.
It's an old Greek idea. The idea of **inaudible word or two**. That is in particular **inaudible word** of experience that is complete and allows us to penetrate through the basic insight of the central purpose. Along with this arc of experience would generate itself, we can **inaudible few words** of what the whole might be. If we had time enough **inaudible word** to explore the entire cycle.
To put it in simpler language, you are going to have one experience to focus on, the one that's written here on your sheet of paper, for the rest of the duration of this particular course of investigation. At the end of this course of investigation we'll bring back in your experiences and put them together. And we will form a picture of the whole based on whatever **inaudible word** that we can bring to it within the duration.
And we could have an expert come in **inaudible word or two** but what they could say would be beyond our comprehension. That is, it would be so sophisticated that we would only get what's important. But given our companionability and our level of involvement, whatever it is that any of us could get out, in terms of six or seven or eight weeks of **inaudible word** sharing the **inaudible word** course of events that we have here. **inaudible word** be intelligible to everyone. It will be valuable in that it will be recognizable. It will be information. It'll be an insight on a level and in a form that we can all understand.
My part in this process is to keep two things viable. One the breadth of experience in its fullness. And the other a central purposeness that expands and around it the full cycle of experiences together. And I will try to as the, I think that the true word is Master of Ceremonies, try to coordinate the ceremonial mastering.
This is the most difficult world. Oddly enough it's more difficult that Mr. Hall's grand encyclopedia. Because as we will actually experience in Mr. Hall's encyclopedia, its level of intelligibility is readily available to us. The beautiful discursive language on the secret traditions of the west. **inaudible word** for us. The higher-level reading than The Los Angeles Times then we can get there.
The same thing with the other **inaudible word** book about the American Indians are very different from us in terms of our psychic appearances and capacity. And, uh, that this is not **inaudible few words** way over here **inaudible word** of values, and we are here. It is rather the case that in the cycle of human experience there's a gap between the two of us. Our sensibilities are remarkably similar and become more and more similar all the time. **inaudible word or two** live in the same graphical area as they do. And the human spirit is affected by these things. **inaudible few words**.
I like to usually start off, and so I'll just retrack and start off and **inaudible few words**...piece of paper with and Indian ceremony name on it. I'll explain more later.
To help us get started and because the subject matter is not really ostensibly what you might think it is. And because the tendency to objectify information to make it a point of information which one then somehow understands and files away. This, uh, approach is not the approach that has **inaudible word** years here and none of the material that we're looking at really viable with that methodology. It simply would become more and more mysterious as it **inaudible word**.
We are using instead a different methodology and I; I try every time to bring in five or six different ways to express that. One way is the poem by Pablo Neruda where he talks about goodbyes and about human life. And this is what he wrote. This is a translation, he writes then,
I spread by myself. No question. I turned over whole lives **inaudible word or two**. Kings skin. Lamb. **inaudible word**. It was something I had to do. Not by law or whim, more of a chain reaction. Each new journey in change made I took pleasure in place, in all places. And newly arrived I promptly said goodbye with still newborn tenderness. As if the bread where still open and suddenly free from the world at the table. So, I left behind all languages. Repeated goodbyes like an old door. Changed service. **inaudible word or two**. Left everywhere for somewhere new. I went on being and being always half undone with joy. A bride groom among sadnesses. Never knowing how or when ready to return. Never **inaudible word**. As we all know that he who returns, never left. So, I traced and retraced my life, changing clothes and planets growing used to the company. To the great world of exile is very solitary.
A **inaudible word** poem. And this poem is about what we're about. That is that there is a great **inaudible word** of experience. And somehow, we are told over and over again, and **inaudible few words** a vocalized man is **inaudible few words**. We suspect that all of this stuff makes sense. That there is a purposefulness know in the process of learning that human beings like ourselves can discover some limping of images or ideas or experiences which will give us what we would like to traditionally recognize as a path of life towards a purpose. Towards a goal. And the more that we come into experience in this life the more that we realize that the broad cycles of events begins to allude us if we simply carry ourselves on the outer edge. That we become enmeshed in **inaudible word** with the various changing of ideas, the very processes. Becoming someone different every few years. Until we **inaudible word** and penetrate, one way or another, inside and outside our realm of experience. And we find ourselves very often stymied in this particular process.
And so, we would like to from time to time have just some way in which to step aside from the standard threshold of life and experience. Somewhere or some being where we could look back and view the entirety of this process **inaudible few words** to us so we try all sorts of techniques. And one of the classic techniques, of course, the old Chinese understanding that man is mediator between Heaven and Earth and that whatever process we find ourselves in is somehow understood to be a deviant realm between a this and a that, a Heaven and an Earth. That whatever it is that we **inaudible word** or occupy is rather and in between. And out of it comes, of course, a **inaudible word** understanding **inaudible word** symbolizing **inaudible word or two**.
Now the problem is, does this symbol, does it represent the actual experience of perceiving. Does it represent only some illusionary level of language? Which we are comfortable with simply because our minds are attuned, they're affined to language realm. The problem is that how will we ever get to the capacity to symbolize? And again, and again as you're reading in Manly's great book or **inaudible word** a question will come out. How did we get here? How did we arrive here?
And last week I put a **inaudible two words** on the board that when you get to this process of **inaudible word or two** it's an inevitable thing. It always comes up. And it's convenient to have just some way in which the layer out, um, the mind and it's thinking about these things.
Nature has always been considered a primordial level. Dante wrote that great poetry always has a natural base no matter how allegorical or metaphorical it may become in the genius of the poet, it always has nature as a base. And nature can be understood in just the most mundane way. It is a thing, the **inaudible word**, the object that we've run into and use **inaudible word or two**. The tables, the chairs, the cars, the children, the work, the **inaudible word or two**.
All of which can be included. But to make it more usable as a concept to entertain the structuring of a world view. It's more useful to think that nature is that which the plant world or the animal world, or the mineral world. These natural phenomenon like trees and birds and so forth rather than a manmade world.
On some sort of corollary level, nature then is a realm of senses. Our five senses or six senses, if you like, are developed to operate in and compliment to the natural realm. We smell, we see, we hear, we taste things and so forth.
Out of nature, our first discernable movement away from nature or mimicking nature, imitating nature is to create a realm of ritual experience. And this is not always something which happens to primitive people way back when. Or isn't necessarily primitive. But ritual is very close to nature. And many times, uh, for instance if you have seen uh, say a mime by a Samuel Becket or somebody like this. That is a ritual performance. It is very close to nature. And it **inaudible word** the perception and its mode of presenting itself is almost natural but has a ritual aspect in that it could be repeated again and again, over and over again with exactness. So that the asymmetry of nature, there is kind of a balance of nature that's sort of freeform. It's a little bit asymmetrical **inaudible word or two** to nature.
In ritual it tends to be lost and ritual tends to want to become complete and effected down to the minutia. So that in most sophisticated ritual there is a conscious attempt to add something to the ritual, which we'll leave it open-ended. Better that it will not put the last brick in the wall. For instance, one ritual form, which you may run across in the reading in this particular episode of your life is the Navajo rug. And in the Navajo rug, the pattern, the color, the form are repeated and have and intelligibility which is exact. **inaudible few words** every real fine **inaudible word** rug something called a spirit trail that is **inaudible word**. That is not a part of the design. That runs off the edge of the rug. It is just another way of expressing something that you might **inaudible few words** drawings and circles doesn't quite close the gap with his paintbrush. He created, of course, the **inaudible word** for the same reasons.
And **inaudible word** Zen painter and the Navajo Weaver are both ritual artists. Very great ritual artists. They leave, consciously, something which they understand as there in nature and should be preserved in ritual. And that ritual can leave out if not done well.
So too, very **inaudible word** became **inaudible word** and ritual. And as ritual grows out from nature, becomes manifested from nature, feelings also does the same. Well, we tend to think that ritual is purely a human phenomenon, but of course there are birds who build nests in exactly the same way every time. And as we look at more and more at life, uh, there are any creatures who demonstrate the capacity to use ritual. And they also have feeling. Uh, you can't go up around animals and not understand that they have feelings. They are not as Descartes once supposed, simply mechanically feeling if they are hurt or if they're happy. They feel. It's a **inaudible word**, which is common to all. It links us together.
The next development becomes a very difficult thing because at this point, we are uncertain at this particular stage of investigation as to how **inaudible word** species of creatures participates in this realm. It may be that **inaudible word** or other animals have achieved something in this realm. And this is the realm in which feeling articulate itself into **inaudible word** to then language.
A great American philosopher, uh, one of the few people to really carry on **inaudible word or two** work and ideas, wrote that he was scouting a possibility that reason was an articulation of feeling, and that logic was the ability to have a comprehensiveness of approach to reality. And only when one wasn't mature and able to feel thoroughly in a relationship could **inaudible word** clearly distinguish all of the components and come up with gestalt that was somewhat accurate.
This realm is the realm of language and myth. And it is through the **inaudible word** through the language myth that we finally have the development of symbols. And symbols are sort of an interiorization. While nature and ritual in mythic or language form tend to be a full realm **inaudible word** on this wheel of experience in life, symbol tends to **inaudible word or two** towards an insight. That is perception, the laws of perception, which work in nature and **inaudible word** repeat themselves, very similarly in feeling. One addresses an experience of music very much the way in which one would walk through the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Very similar. And one goes to say a play. A play of Tennessee Williams or **inaudible word** or somebody. Very much in the same sort of a way. You're open to that experience is extensive.
But with symbolism there's a reversing. There's a taking of the **inaudible word** of the whole and trying to interiorize it and bring it in. And what symbols do then is they capture an insight and focus the purpose of language. And the purpose of **inaudible word** and of language is to make something distinct and emerge. That out of the whole **inaudible word** of experience, out of the entirety of the realm of nature. Out of the entirely of the realm of what one might do habitually, language tends to force form into the open and become the **inaudible word**. And symbolism tends to have an insight that **inaudible word** is represented that distinctiveness. but later on, representing something entirely new. Symbol sets meaning **inaudible word or two**.
Now, we can have **inaudible word** on the cover of the paper version. It's lovely to go to the **inaudible word** of emblematic design **inaudible word or two**. And you can say well if symbols are purely interior, how do, how do we get this? This is an expression back out from. Someone who has seen this and understood this. Who has **inaudible word** in the interior realm through symbolism the essence. In fact, if we can borrow an alchemical term. We can take these four realms of essential **inaudible word**, some transcendent realm, some quintessential **inaudible word** which participates in the making of symbolic activity and fixes in an inner suspension the meaning clearly forever, that was manifested. We hold within our mind of imagination as if it were an orphic egg through the symbol and through symbolism, the embryonic form of meaning to unfold.
And of course, uh, this, uh, this kind of, uh, uh, statement of it is extremely difficult to express in discursive language. But, uh, I've tried for a few minutes, but I'll let you read two quotations from Ernst Cassirer's Language and Myth and see if this helps generate the sense of what is being given out.
This is from his little book, Language and Myth. We'll have copies later on. It's not really essential to buy something like this. It's very difficult, but occasionally, uh, you need to hear it put together philosophically. He said, he writes,
The realist always assumes as they're solid basis, for all such explanations, the so-called given. Which is thought that have some definite form, some inherent structure of its own. They accept this reality as an integrated whole of causes and effects. Thing and attributes. States and processes. Of objects at rest and at motion. And the only question for them is which of these elements a particular mental product, such as myth, language or art originally embodied. If for instance, the phenomenon in question is language the natural line of inquiry must be whether names for things preceded names for conditions or actions, or vice versa. Whether in other words nouns or verb where the first roots of speech. That this problem itself appears further as soon as we realized that the distinction, which here are taken for granted, the analysis of reality in terms of things and processes, permanent and transitory aspects, objects, and actions, do not precede language as a substratum of giving back. But that language itself is what initiates such articulation and develops it in their own sphere. And then it turns out that language could not begin with any phase of noun concept or verb concept. But is the very agency that produces the distinction between these forms, and this introduces a great spiritual crisis in which the permanent is opposed to the transient. And being it made the contrary **inaudible word** becoming. So, the linguistic fundamental concepts must be realized that something prior to these distinctions. Forms which lie between the fear of non-conception and that avert conception. Between thinghood and eventuality. And a state of indifference, a particular peculiar balance of feeling.
That is to say that language creates. Once we get to the spear of language, once we get to the mythic, polarities that never existed come into being. Static things can be pointed to and made different from processes, which are not static at all. Quality of eminence become opposed and set apart from quantities of multiplication. Language is a level transfused. The structures that were understandable in nature and understandable in ritual, and suddenly produces a new dimension. A dimension in which polarities seem to emerge and become evident. This unfortunately has a tendency to be carried over into the symbolic thought. So that when we interiorize language, when we start to actually symbolize the world, we tend to carry the polarizing of reality from the level of language into our inner conception effect. And it produces a, any well-known **inaudible word**.
One more quotation from the Cassirer. This is from the chapter called The Power of Metaphor. Incidentally, this is why I always begin with poetry. Poetry is a real Hermetic solvent. It dissolves all polarities because it attacks that level at which they arrive. The level of language. It attacks it in the sense that it engages you to construe language in a metaphorical mode before getting down to nitpicking.
Cassirer writes here that,
Language and myth are subject to the same, or at least closely analogous laws of evolution that can be seen and understood only in so far as we can uncover the common root from which both of them spring. The resemblances in their result, in the forms which they produce point to the final community of function. Of the principle whereby they operate. In order to recognize this function and represent it in its abstract nakedness, we have to pursue the ways of myth and language. Not in their progress, but in regress back to the point from which those two divergent lines eminent. And this common **inaudible word** really seems to be demonstratable. For no matter how widely the contents of myth and language may differ, yet the same form of mental conception is operating in both. It is the form, which one may denote as metaphorical thinking. The nature and meaning of metaphor is what we must start with if we want to find, on the one hand, the unity of the verbal and the mythical world. And on the other hand, there differences.
That is to say, and I hate to burden you with heavy professional style philosophy, but it needs to be said in those words. **inaudible few words**. That before we step off and consider it, what is symbolical. Before we do that, we have to, because I **inaudible few words** we have to step back and take a look at the realm of experience that has come before we can **inaudible word or two**. In other words, we have to go back in some way, in which we can at least for a while engage ourselves ritually in our experience. We have to go back and take a look at the level of meaning, which manifests, which has all the properties of even reaching enlightenment if you'd like. There's all facilities to do it. You can achieve any level of transcendence without speaking one word. That's well known. We don't need language. But we're involved, besides, in a style of living where we have to. Perhaps we feel we have to use language. And we feel we want them to step forward into symbolism but before we do that we have to step back and **inaudible word or two**.
Now this is why the choice of the text, and this is why the choice of methodology I'm using. that we're going to continue to treat the **inaudible word** ritually rather than symbolically. At least for about four or five weeks. Then after that, when we've had a little runway of experience then we can try to fly. And we can try to interiorize it and try to take our intuition into some leap of understanding to see well, what does it all mean then? If that is, if all this is, so what are we to say about ourselves then? Whatever are **inaudible word**.
So, we're using The Book of Hopi. We're using Moby Dick. We're using The Tao Te Ching. And we're using Manly Halls great Encyclopedia to develop cycle of ritual understanding.
Let me pause there for just a second. Um, this is, uh, it's not quite time for a break. And I, I have something else for **inaudible word**. But let's just stop there for a second and let that just settle for a minute.
The I-Ching says that Heaven suspends its emblem. And what that means is that a certain brink of understanding, you have to let things lie for a moment or two. Because in the final resolve that's where they are anyway. Okay.
One way of making this cycle is if ritual spreads. Let's use Manly's great book Encyclopedia. Now there are three different ways that you've been investigate this. One is that you can read at your own speed and in your own way. You can read any chapters that you like in any order that you like. That's one way.
The second way, and I mentioned before that you can start with the chapter on the human body. Which is a very good central, symbolic way of, of, um, beginning. It's a good arc in this circle to start with. If you're starting with the, The Human Body and Symbolism, with this chapter. If that's what you start with last week. And the chapter to move on for you is the one about, um, Isis. And, uh, I think it would be better to read both Isis and the one about The Dembine Tablet. Um, those two.
**inaudible few words from the room**
Isis and then there's one, a chapter in here on The Dembine Tablet. D-E-M-B-I-N-E. The Dembine Tablet. I should have it marked in here. I, I don't. It's a, it's a history of the Dembine Tablet. And Mr. Hall incidentally has a reprint, a facsimile reprint of the **inaudible word** tablet. Both in the book here and in a separate publication. This, uh, this tablet which had to have been the um, the central focus of Plato's initiation in Egypt. That is to say it was the altar upon which his initiation ritual was, was centered. And, uh, if you're not understanding that this is just let it pass as just another statement that the Dembine tablet was somehow, um, a focus for a very complex ritual, which, uh, Plato was said to have involved himself in.
Now the chapter that **inaudible several word** if you're reading Human Body. So go to those two chapters. If you're reading Alchemy. If you've gone into these chapters, Alchemy, and Its **inaudible word** and the following two chapters on alchemy. If you've been reading those, Theory and Practice as Alchemy Parts One and Two, then next read two sections. One on Hermes Trismegistus and the other one on Pythagoras, which is about two or three chapters later. I'm sure it's... not Pythagorean mathematics, but the life and philosophy of Pythagoras. Okay.
What the sequences are doing if you start on the human body. And you can see that Mr. Hall wrote on that. And next move on to Isis. Isis is a **inaudible word** cycle. The Goddess, one the best that there is in terms of philosophic comprehension. And that chapter on Isis and The Dembine Tablet will tend to give you some sense of some parallels with what you already read in The Human Body. If you read the section on alchemy, that is a chapter on Hermes and Pythagoras will start to form some parallels here. Or at least begin to link up some ideas. If you're reading on their own, that whole process is in suspension and there's no way to say where that's at then. And it's fine, wherever you're going its fine.
All of these chapters, the entirety of this book. The entire **inaudible word** of this book revolves around a central focusing, a notion of human achievement and divine transcendence, which is common to all of **inaudible word**. And it really does not matter what sequence that you read them. Okay.
I do not want to burden you with, uh, talking about, um, the human body or about alchemy or about Isis or about Hermes Trismegistus. I don't want to encourage you to think that if you only had all the details of any one of those chapters, that you would have the answers. Set aside the notion of an answer with a capital A, just to set that aside. Just continue experiencing and remember that along with all these processes, one of the basic ones it caught and start to assemble what am I doing? Where am I at? If you need a coordinate, a nice little pocket coordinate that the next question is always is able to carry **inaudible word** symbolized by the infinity, then anything that you're doing in life is expanding a field of inquiry. And in this field of inquiry, we don't know what's valuable yet. And there is no telling that even if you were able to somehow to pick certain element away. A certain fact or arrange certain data into some kind of conception, or into some kind of a frame of reference **inaudible word** very satisfactory. There's no telling if that would last only for a year or for five years, or maybe it's going to be adequate for the weekend. And what you're going to have to do eventually is learn how to dissolve those conceptions back into the general **inaudible word or two**. Back into the field of inquiry. And let a new solution come out.
The Hermetic process is that you can, in your questing, always go back to the universal flow of things for a while and some new form will come out and go that way for a while.
END OF SIDE ONE
And **inaudible word** Li Po, a great Chinese alchemist, Taoist poet wrote once, he said I'm like a certain bird called the **inaudible word** having grown weary of flying South will now fly north.
That kind of mobility and agility, um, aside from saving you a lot of doctors' bills and so forth, simply allows you to be mobile and to maneuver and operate. It also keeps you from presupposing that you should take this conception, which fits together so beautifully and start stamping out and saying, well this much of that is **inaudible word** that the rest of it and **inaudible word**. Well this much of **inaudible word** I'm going to take a look at, and the rest of it who cares. Because nature has a way just about the time that you with great pride start stamping with that cookie cutter you made, the bill that you want to **inaudible word** already flew away. And you have to go back and retrieve it. And that's difficult, sometimes that kind of thing.
A compliment to this then. This is a way in which we are approaching Mr. Hall's big book. You continue reading. I'll sequence it out for you in several different ways. Or you can read yourself.
And maybe next week or maybe the week after I'll try and catch up and brush up on some of the imagery for you so that you can see that he's done a tremendous job. He has **inaudible word** more books that probably all of us read together in several years. And there's very little that can be added to it. Just take the sequences and see what you can do.
Now a compliment to this is the way in which The Tao Te Ching is arranged. And this, this requires an insight into the nature of the way in which the Chinese express life.
Do you want to have a break and then I'll do that or and do you want that and then take about five minutes after that?
**Inaudible comment from the room**
If a Chinese person of traditional learning. And there are some alternatives. If you would ask him, can I learn this? He would say something traditional, like stateliness within, kingliness without. And you say, well that's not going to take me very far. It doesn't have very many distinctions for me to work with it. It doesn't have very many points of reference. So, he might say something like man is a bridge between Heaven and Earth. And all the while you might think he's talking in homily. But he's actually giving you the Royal Road because that's about all you need in Chinese thought.
Another way, you might **inaudible word or two** presented with this kind of symbolism in one form or another. Now I put it up here in terms of the **inaudible word**. It might be in a Chinese landscape painting. And you might not be able to see it. But this is what is presented. Or it might be a poem. Or it might be in some beautiful calligraphy. Many forms.
A way to look at this, a Chinese way to look at this, is that one is Yang, and one is Yin. It's not positive and negative. It's not male and female. It's not a polarity. It is rather, if you are going to use further discursive language, creative and receptive. And another way in which you can express creative is that something is **inaudible few words**. Something. And a way to express receptivity, symbolically, is that um, it's open. Ready to do. Ready to be done. Ready to receive. It's simply receptive. Not negative but receptive. And that there is a complementarity operating between creative and receptive. Symbolized by the Tai Chi. And that both men and women are creative. And very often both men, women are receptive. And that what is creative and receptive in situations and in persons or sayings is very illusive. If it is in a process of complementation and the mind by its very nature trying to be a, really, uh a yang creative phenomenon always produces a **inaudible word** towards that conceptual yang creative side. And we then as beings try to protect that, try to encourage the feeling to be receptive. And to **inaudible word** our intuition to be receptive. And so we are constantly playing ourselves out. Part of ourselves try to fulfil one function instead of participating in both. That is, there is a way in which the mind can be creative and receptive at the same time. There is a way in which **inaudible word** can be creative and receptive at the same time. And one way is not to step into those two types shoes of the idea of polarity. And to accept that and think that that is so. The Chinese do not do that.
So, when you are looking at The Tao Te Ching, think of it as fitting into this book somewhat like this, as insight coming into it, uh, from the side like a, uh **inaudible word or two**, which keeps the arch of this conception in control in us. That is that there is a complementation going on constantly and it is not likely way to be portioned out by the mind and be static this and that.
Let's leave it at that and take a break. And then we'll come back to a little bit more.
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