Archive for the ‘555. The Golden Thread’ Category

Karnak, Thebes, and the Hedjet


As May draws to a close, RT offers this photograph of a magnificent frieze at Karnak, the temple district of the ancient Egyptian city of Thebes. Karnak is the largest ancient religious site in the world, and RT is beginning to suspect that Thebes played a primary role in the evolution of ancient Mediterranean religion.

In part, RT’s interest in Thebes is based on its frequent appearance in Greek myth, in part on the fact that the ancient crown of Upper Egypt, the Hedjet, looks remarkably like the crown worn by Baal, the chief god of ancient Phoenicia. Though Thebes was not the capital of pre-dynastic Upper Egypt, it was the administrative center of Upper Egypt under the Pharaohs (and is located not far from Nekhen, which was the capital of p-d Upper Egypt.) How did the epochal unification of Egypt (c. 3000 BC) under Narmer (or Menes), king of UE, affect developing religious beliefs?

Unfortunately, RT can say little at the moment about the significance of the scene recorded in the frieze, other than that it is located in the precinct of Amun-Re. A date and translation of the inscription would help greatly; there’s more research ahead for RT.

Photograph: Panorama of a frieze at Karnak. Author/Source: Bialonde. WikiCmns; Public Domain.


Reading a Book

March 24, 2014 4 comments

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Reading a book is like visiting a city you’ve never been to before. The city must be glamorous in some way, if not overtly, than in the details of its construction and history, the beautiful building or courtyard that reveals itself via a quick glance aside from the street, and the story that glance implies of the building’s occupants. The city may be dirty, crime-ridden, a den of vice, but it must be intricate. It must be a navel of the world.

You are being born again. Forget whatever has come before; it’s been reduced to a reference chart, an album of old photographs. This is the best kind of culture shock; you chose it.

Reading a book is always true. You the child progress through the pages. You learn and you grow, you marvel and you despair. Situations arise that you can’t understand or even comprehend. The woman who tells you she runs the large school you attend may be your mother. The man wearing the jacket of a naval captain may be your father. He may be going to his death. He gives you a silver coin.

Reading a book is like falling in love. Serendipity. Somebody is waiting for you, someone who stops you in argument or conversation. Outside the chocolate shop, at the old library, in an empty room. Someone calls out from an open window, asking about the bicycle you’re riding or offering to take you where you’re going in their boat. They are the person you can’t believe is interested in you, so different, so crazy you wonder how they can exist at all. They are the one who brought you here.

You are dying. You have no family, no friends, no work. You have only this passion.


MapGerman map of Venice (1888). This image comes from the 4th edition of Meyers Konversationslexikon (1885–90). WikiCmns; Public Domain.


Anselm Feuerback–3 AM Madness Post

File:Anselm Feuerbach - Self-Portrait - Google Art Project.jpg

Surely one of the finest portraits painted during the 19th century! Anselm Feuerbach, superb colorist and classically inspired painter, deserves to be remembered among the greats.   RT

Painting: Self-Portrait, Anselm Feuerbach (1873). Alt Nationalgalerie, WikiCmns; Public Domain.


The Cradle of European Poetry, Part 1

February 19, 2014 3 comments

File:Spanish - Chess Piece of a Queen - Walters 71145 - Three Quarter.jpg

Manners: 3 a. The socially correct way of acting; etiquette. b. The prevailing customs, social conduct, and norms of a specific society…

Moral: 1. Of or concerned with the judgment of the goodness or badness of human action and character: 2. Teaching or exhibiting goodness or correctness of character and behavior…


So, this post is going to be a little complicated: RT is warning folks that there’s a lot of territory to cover. On the plus side, we’re going to be looking at how poetry arrived in western Europe and how poetry is connected to other, important aspects of behavior, such as 1) deciding on the right course of action and 2) minding our manners.

A. Europe in its Cradle

Dark ages are never fun. One civilization collapses and over a period of centuries another rises up from the ruins. Along with the usual payback, rapine, and despair, the conquerors mimic or forget the finer accomplishments of the former time. Something new is struggling to be born, and like any act of creation, it is attended by the most basic considerations: survival and the preservation of what has already been achieved. Nobody has time for poetry.

In the case of Europe, after the final collapse of the Roman Empire in 476, the single most important change was the incorporation of northern Europe into the cultural world established by Rome; the center of Europe was no longer Rome, but the Rhine River. But northern Europe immediately began exerting its cultural differences from the south, perhaps most importantly, in the struggle between the Arian aristocracy of the new Germanic kingdoms and the Catholic Church centered in Rome. By the 8th century, this conflict had been resolved in favor of Rome. And with the defeat of Muslim armies at the Battle of Tours in 732, Europe as a cultural entity was confirmed. Still, on the northern frontier, the Vikings began their long series of raids and invasions, engaging part of the new culture’s military strength until the 12th century.

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Great poetry, RT notes, did in fact continue to be written in vernacular languages: Beowulf, the Ulster Cycle and the Mabinogion, and the mythology of the Vikings. But these works were all the product of the dying pagan societies of pre-Christian Europe. So far, no great works written in Latin or its descendant languages had yet been created. No one had found a voice for Europe’s new feudal society, which began to emerge in the 9th century. In fact, the modern languages of Europe were still evolving out of Latin.

B. Reversal of Fortunes

Until the 11th century, Europe was tightly constrained by its powerful neighbors: the Vikings in the north, the Abbasid Caliphate in the south, and the Byzantine Empire in the east; indeed, few would argue that Constantinople and its magnificent cathedral, Hagia Sophia, constituted the center of Christian culture in those years.

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But power rarely lingers in one place for long: the conversion of the Sweden to Christianity by the 12th century, the collapse of the unified Caliphate of Cordoba in 1031, and the destruction of the Byzantine army by the Seljuk Turks at Manzikert (1071), started a process of cultural migration and absorption that prepared the ground in Europe for the Renaissance. And perhaps no clearer sign of the quickening of Europe could have been given than the Crusades.

C. The Crusades 

Persecution strengthens community. As long as a clear threat exists, any community will huddle together and work to make the danger pass. When the problem goes away, people start to argue with each other. Then they need diplomatic skills to heal the wounds.

But the clock is ticking away, and RT has a busy day tomorrow. The story of how Europe fell into disunion even as it acquired its poetic sensibilities will have to wait till later…

Photo, top: Queen, Spanish Chess Piece; 12th century, Walter Art Museum. WikiCmns; Public Domain. BroochAnglo-Saxon openwork silver disk brooch, from the Pentney Hoard. Author: Johnbod. WikiCmns; CC 3.0 Unported. Illustration: The Seljuk Turk Alp Arslan Humbling Romanus IV. 2nd quarter of the 15th century; Bibliothèque nationale de France, manuscrit Français 232, folio 323. Author: Boccace, De Casibus. WikiCmns; Public Domain.


The Cambridge Ancient History–The Pleasures of Reading History

December 21, 2013 4 comments












The Contest for Shel (Origin Cycle, Story 3)

August 22, 2013 3 comments

File:Cygnus columbianus (Audubon).jpg

This story is pretty much RT’s first dollar bill, framed. In his salad days, RT was deeply influenced by Robert Graves’s The Greek Myths, and the stories in this collection plus extended searches through dictionaries of symbols resulting in “The Contest.” Understanding the connections between symbols, RT opines, is one of the basic skills of poetry, and today he would consider this story to be an example of a prose-poem. As might be expected with such writing, the story came quickly, and RT typed it out the next morning on a floppy-disk computer at work. Of course, he immediately wanted to write other stories in the cycle, but they appeared only after much more reading and reflection. Inspiration, often in youth, gets things going; deep study (plus a healthy dash of persistence), gets them over the finish line.   RT




THE CONTEST FOR SHEL  (told by Neb the Poet)


The Poets say that the first of all things was the night, and the firstborn of night was Shel, daughter of the night.

Shel danced, and with the joy and beauty of that dance the stars came forth.  So Zochi the Dreamer and Aruna the Singer desired her.  They came to her and declared their love.

But Shel could not choose between the two suitors, and she told them that she would accept the love of whoever brought the finest gift to her.

Zochi and Aruna went away and considered what they would make.  When each had given long thought to his love, and put forth all his powers, each made a gift.

Aruna brought a harp of gold with seven strings.  The harp shone brightly, and Aruna played a lament that told of his loneliness without Shel.  But Zochi brought a silver swan, and the swan shone with a pale and lovely light.

Shel could not choose between the gifts, so she said that they would have to make a home for her.

Again Zochi and Aruna went away, and they made the earth.  The two spirits made oceans, rivers, streams, and lakes.  And beside the shore of an ocean Aruna made a golden city.

The city rose in three tiers from the water to the summit of a tall hill.  The lowest tier was built around the wharves, and in the wharves were sixty ships that would not run aground, or burn, or sink.  The second tier held perfumed and jeweled gardens.  In the gardens were trees of gold and silver and copper.  On the branches of the trees flowers of crystal and sapphire and ruby blossomed, and in the garden sang birds whose beaks were cunningly inlaid with golden and brazen wire.  In the highest tier Aruna built the Palace of Shel, and next to the palace he built a tall tower from which one might watch the stars of the lady.  And when Aruna finished the city, he went into the palace and played the golden harp.

But Zochi the Dreamer went north of the city, and there he made a forest of trees and animals that grow and die.  The trees of the forest were close together, and there was little light, so Zochi made a pond of clear water in the center of the forest.  And the Dreamer took the silver swan, and he placed it on the pond, so that its light filled the dark forest.  And when he was finished, the Dreamer wandered though the forest thinking of Shel.

Yet Shel still could not choose between Zochi the Dreamer and Aruna the Singer.

Zochi thought of the shining city that Aruna had made, and he guessed what the Singer would next make.  So Zochi took water of the pond, and he made a man and woman.  But the Dreamer wrought poorly, and the couple were ill-made.  They were ugly and crippled; and they were frail and mortal.  Yet despite their flaws, Zochi loved his children, and he brought them to Shel and Aruna.

Now Aruna rejoiced when he saw what Zochi had done.  Then the Singer took light of the golden harp, and he took its music, and he made from them a man.  The man Aruna made was beautiful and skillful of hand; and Shel was pleased with him, and because of him decided to accept the love of Aruna.

Shel went to the shining city, which she named Anados, and stayed with Aruna in the palace.  And the man Aruna had made lived in the city and was happy–for Shel did not tell Aruna or his child of her estrangement from En, or that suffering had come into the world.

But Zochi placed the man and woman he had made into a sleep of forgetting; and he wandered in his forest thinking of Shel. And the golden harp and the silver swan were hung in the sky as a memorial of the contest.  So were made the sun and moon.

Copyright © 2013, The Rag Tree.

RT’s Related Stories: 1) The First Words; 2) The Messenger.


Engraving; Cygnus Columbianus; James Audubon (Birds of America). WikiCmns; Public Domain.


The Messenger (Story 2, Origin Cycle)

August 18, 2013 1 comment

File:Winslow Homer - Leaping Trout (1889).jpg


Waking people up, as we all know, can be difficult. Often what they need is not less, but more, sleep. Unfortunately, to some extent, writers are in the business of rousing people. So when we rush that cup of coffee to those of our audience who have pulled the comforter over their head, the morning joe had better hit the spot. 

And as regards the story that follows, the second installment in RT’s incomplete cycle of creation stories, the term “morning joe” is appropriate. Even more so than the opening story of the cycle, “The First Words,” “The Messenger” has been a labor of love. How to encapsulate fundamental truths in a way that carries authority and delivers its message quickly? The great problem of all short story writers, of course. But when the stage is cosmic, the stakes go up. So here is a cup of extra-strong morning brew:

2.  THE MESSENGER  (told by Min the Poet)


Shel floated on the waves; En breathed in, out, in, out.

“Open your eyes,” she whispered.

“What are you thinking about?” Shel asked.

“Language,” En said.  “Now that we have it, why don’t we make something?”

“Because we just did,” Shel said.

“What do you mean?”

“Wait and see.”

It didn’t take long.  Over the course of a day Shel’s body swelled until the next morning she gave birth without pain.  She took the child, a girl, and gave it to En to hold.

The couple cared for the child, creating whatever food she needed.  They called her Shelen.

Splashing woke En up.  Something was splashing water into the boat.  Now on the left side, now on the right side, En looked over once, twice, then saw a flashing silver tail beat the water. Then a fish stuck his head up out of the water and said:  “I am Utara, the messenger of the uncreated world.”

En was too shocked to speak for a moment; then he recovered and said, “How can you exist?  We didn’t make you!”

“That doesn’t matter,” replied Utara, “I’m here because your daughter won’t be happy.  She needs a world to play in and explore.  You’ve forgotten about making the world, and the world is getting impatient.”

“Of course you’re right,” said En, realizing that Shelen had driven his desire to make the world clear out of his mind.  Then he raised himself up and said with an expansive gesture:  “Earth, be!”  Immediately large continents and islands rose up from the ocean.  En and Utara went to the new land and continued creation….

Ice and rock and tree bark, moon rabbits and talking spiders and feathered serpents, people big and tiny, brown and black and green and white, all these things En and Utara made.  They lost count of all the things that had made, and yet they did not slow down or grow tired.  Everything was fine until, until

a tree got sick and died, the earth shook and a crack opened up in it and swallowed everything near it, people made weapons and killed each other.  En looked at Utara and said:  “Why is this happening?”

“There are more purposes in you than you know,” Utara said.  “We need Shel’s help to do it right.”

En agreed, and to stop more suffering he unmade all the things that he and Utara had made.  They were back at the boat, and only Shel was there.  She was crying uncontrollably.

“She’s gone!” Shel said, “Our daughter just disappeared.  What happened?”  When En told her what he and Utara had done, Shel was furious.  “You killed her!  You killed our daughter!  Get out, get out, I don’t want to see you ever again.”

En said that they could start over again and make a new daughter, that they could make the world better than they had done the first time, but all the time Shel flailed at him, beat him about the shoulder and then En lashed out and struck Shel on the mouth.

It was over.  What they said to each other no longer mattered.  Utara said, “You shall not see each other for long ages, and the worlds you make shall be caught up in bitterness and suffering.  And yet there is hope of healing your Estrangement, for the world desires Reconciliation.”

When these things had happened Shel rose up into the sky, and En continued on his way in the boat.  God was broken and the Divine Purpose forgotten.  In this way suffering came into the world.

Copyright  © The Rag Tree, 2013

RT’s Related Posts: 1) The First Words; 2) The Contest for Shel

Painting: Leaping Trout (1889); Winslow Homer. WikiCmns; Public Domain.


The First Words (A Creation Story)

August 15, 2013 6 comments


A while back, while introducing the Golden Thread to readers, RT promised that he would be ransacking his archives and publish whatever lay hidden in notebooks, scribbled on stray pieces of paper, and generally put aside over the years. Following up on his promise, RT is posting one story dug up in the attic.

RT notes that the story in question is a creation story, and that for many years creation stories and other mythological materials were one of the preoccupations of his writing. Maybe RT will always be attracted to ancient stories, Gilgamesh, for instance, and other foundational writing.

What RT can tell you at this point is that the old stories he has run across and worked with are often the product of superb storytelling, a combination of economical writing and bold (if not inspired) imagination.

In fact, RT labored almost a decade to get this story to work, not time wasted either, as his efforts have spilled over into his poetry (not to mention his choice of Gilgamesh for translation). Creation stories are tied to a writer’s deepest imaginings and desire, but also to the cultural milieu he or she is working in. They are one sign of our deep hunger for knowledge and understanding.   RT

THE FIRST WORDS  (told by Neb the Poet)


In the beginning were the two children of night, Shel the daughter of the night, and En, the son of the night, who together make up God and the Divine Purpose.

Shel, who is called Desire, brought the waters and a boat; but En, who is called Intention, brought the sky, and the things that he himself had made, the first words.  The two spirits sailed in the boat over the waters.

En soon grew bored and tried to speak with Shel, but when he talked to her she would not answer, but only looked frightened at his speech and hid her face.

At Shel’s response En grew angry and scornful.  “Stupid woman,” he thought, “she cannot help me create the world.  I will show her my power.”

So En stood up and spread out his arms.  “Sun be,” he said.  “Moon be, Earth be.”

En waited, but nothing happened.  The boat continued to rock in the waves, the sky remained a perfect blue dome, and Shel, wrapped in her cloak of night, seemed unaware of what En had tried to do.

En felt he must try again.  So he pointed to the water and said, “Fish be, dolphins be, land be.”  Nothing changed.  No living thing stirred the ocean, no mountain or island rose into the air.

Now En was furious and he thought “This is her fault.  She thinks she can stop me, but I will make the world by myself.”  So the spirit stretched himself up on his tiptoes and shouted, “BE!”  Nothing happened.

En was so angry that he jumped up and down in frustration and blamed Shel and the Night and the elements.  But Shel just rolled her eyes and looked away over the ocean.

En eventually calmed down.  He huddled at the end of the boat opposite Shel and thought what he could try next.

While En was thinking Shel stood up and came to him, and her cloak was no longer dark, but many colored like the dawn.  She kissed En on the mouth.  En was confused, and did not know what to do, so he said:  “I”

But Shel put a finger to his mouth and said:  “We”

That did not stop En, who said:  “Will”

But Shel replied:  “Want”

He continued:  “Make”

And she said:  “To love”

So it went for a while.  En said words he knew, and each time he spoke a word Shel changed it, or added to it, or made a new word.  But En wanted to know what the words meant.  He said, “I didn’t make these words.  They can’t mean anything!”

“Silly!” Shel replied.  “You haven’t spoken any of them yet.  Try them.”  So En said “soil,” and before he could take another breath his hand was filled with dark, crumbly loam.  He threw the soil into the air and shouted: “roses!” and the soil changed into roses, falling back into the boat in a splash of red and orange.

Shel laughed and said, “Now you see.  But have you told me all your words?  Tell them to me, so that we can finish making language.”  So En took up where he left off, saying all the words he knew while Shel changed them, until he said “naked” and Shel said nothing, for their clothes had vanished.  And looking at each other they both thought that this was a word that needed no changing, and then they forgot what they had been doing.

Copyright © 2013, The Rag Tree

Image: Constellations; Chris Robert Santieau. WikiCmns; Public Domain.


Intelligence and Desire–“I’m Smart”

August 7, 2013 7 comments


πάντες ἄνθρωποι τοῦ εἰδέναι ὀρέγονται φύσει.

People in their deepest core desire knowledge.

–Aristotle, first line of the Metaphysics.









The great majority of us are smarter than we realize.     RT




The Great Equations–A Book Review

July 26, 2013 6 comments

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Some of RT’s worst memories of High School involve staring at blackboards filled with incomprehensible mathematical symbols and graphs, chief among which were logarithms. Such mysteries as the differential co-efficient of log tan were so perplexing that he even obtained a Texas Instruments calculator to help, but to little avail. He slogged through his math courses, squeaking by with a C- or so (usually for effort), a lesson reinforced by his sub-500 math SAT scores.

But RT is an ornery beast. In college, he was able to pursue further study of numbers, this time benefiting from a curriculum not designed to eliminate nonengineer- and nonmath professor-material such as himself from the class roster. Two pleasant memories remain with him from his college math instruction: 1) actually being able to understand (at least parts of) Isaac Newton’s Principia (with the help of excellent tutor notes); and 2) having math majors at other universities want to borrow and study his copy of Lobachevsky’s NonEuclidian Geometry.

His college math triumphs aside, RT will probably never make a significant contribution to mathematical theory, but his ongoing interest in math has convinced him of one thing: there are better ways to teach math (and especially advanced mathematics) than those that have been encountered by the hapless majority of High School students over the last several decades.


So, despite everything about the nature of this blog, it will come as small surprise that RT has wanted to post on mathematics. At this point in his life, RT has come to believe that there is a deep connection between language and mathematics, between word and number, a suspicion strengthened by his learning over the last year that many animals have the ability to count at a rudimentary level. Word and number are basic aspects of mind, and if we can relate the two aspects more precisely via a word/number system that includes characters that function as both a number and a word, then perhaps we will reach a new (and better) mastery of intellect, ourselves, and the world. Translating between number and word could be the ultimate human intellectual achievement.


The Great Equations, by Robert P. Crease, is a wonderful book. TGE is structured around discussion (and some mathematical derivation) of ten equations that have greatly advanced scientific knowledge and made a profound impact on society, the first of these being the Pythagorean Theorem and the last Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. RT admires the book’s approach to discussing these mathematical milestones: Crease includes lots of information about the mathematicians/physicists who developed the equations, concentrating on the story behind the development of each equation. He then goes on to explain why the equation was important to advancing scientific knowledge and how it affected human culture. And let it be said, 1) Crease is an excellent writer and 2) the math in the book is accessible to just about anyone who took High School geometry, algebra, and chemistry/science classes.

What is driving this collection of essays is Crease’s conviction that everyone, even the poets among us, must have some familiarity with math and science: he compares someone who doesn’t know what the Second Law of Thermodynamics is to someone who’s never read one of Shakespeare’s plays. Mathematics, in short, is one of the disciplines that must be studied if someone wants to call him- or herself cultured. He discusses the role of mathematics and physics in clarifying how our minds work, and he notes the many improvements in our lives made possible by advances in scientific theory–to name just a few, the radio, TV, and the Internet. And beyond this, he wants us to understand that mathematicians and scientists are people, just as emotionally invested in their work as anyone else, just as likely to fudge here and there to make a claim to creating an equation, just as vulnerable to emotional disorders, overwork, and personality conflicts. Scientists and poets are both creative, in his view.


Perhaps the most satisfying lesson RT takes away from The Great Equations is that many scientists expect their theories to be visualizable and describable, that is, to be explicable in terms of image and word. Just as the humanities at the moment seem unable to provide the breakthroughs in general understanding and method that will take us to the next level in human development, so too has science left us in a place where we struggle to understand its discoveries. We are waiting for a new insight that combines the ancient analyses of experience into numbers and words to help us appreciate the beauty of the Uncertainty Principle and to guide us away from ignorance, abject poverty, and war.


GraphPearson Type VII distribution log; User: MarkSweep; WikiCmns; Public Domain.