When I am lost like this, I turn to my touchstone, my north, my orion, my hope.
I am north, Arkhangel'sk, the gate to the north, Svalbard, I have made her mine own.



"Ask where's the North? At York, 'tis on the Tweed;
In Scotland, at the Orcades; and there,
At Greenland, Zembla, or the Lord knows where." -Pope, An Essay on Man

"Zembla, a distant northern land." -Nabokov, Pale Fire

"The sun's a thief, and with his great attraction
Robs the vast sea; the moon's an arrant thief,
And her pale fire she snatches from the sun;
The sea's a thief whose liquid surge resolves
The moon into salt tears." -Shakespeare, Timon of Athens

'The manuscript fell into the hands of a person who
is known to have a deranged mind' -Nabokov, Pale Fire

"Oh had I rather unadmired remained
In some lone isle, or distant Northern land." -Pope, Rape of the Lock

'That crystal land'
'my dear country'
'Stilettos of a frozen stillicide'
'that the poet and his commentator first met on a winter day' -Nabokov, Pale Fire

"All I have with me is a tiny vest pocket edition of Timon of Athens-in Zemblan!" -Nabokov, Pale Fire

'I felt sure at last that he would recreate in a poem the dazzling Zembla burning in my brain'
'he was reassembling my Zembla!'
'how stupidly I believed that Shade was composing a poem, a kind of romaunt about the King of Zembla-
Oh, but I cannot express the agony!'
'everything connected with the magnificent Zemblan theme with which I kept furnishing him' -Nabokov, Pale Fire

"There motley Images her fancy strike,
Figures ill-pair'd, and Similes unlike.
She sees a mob of metaphors advance,...
Here gay Description AEgypt glads with showers;
Or gives Zembla fruits, to Barca flowers;
Glitt'ring with ice here hoary hills are seen,
There painted valleys of eternal green,
On cold December fragrant chaplets blow,
And heavy harvests nod beneath the snow." -Pope, The Dunciad

"... and now I plough
Old Zembla's fields where my gray stubble grows." Nabokov, Pale Fire

"So this is all treacherous old Shade could say about Zembla-my Zembla?" Nabokov,Pale Fire

"When I was traveling north to Bolvangar with the gyptians, the child Lyra told me about something that happened in the college she used to live in, back in Oxford. Lord Asriel had shown the other scholars the severed head of a man called Stanislaus Grumman, and that kinda persuaded them to give him some money to come north and find out what had happened.

"Now, the child was so sure of what she'd seen that I didn't like to question her too much. But what she said made a kind of memory come to my mind, except that I couldn't reach it clearly. I knew something about this Dr. Grumman. And it was only on the flight here from Svalbard that I remembered what it was. It was an old hunter from Tungusk who told me. It seems that Grumman knew the whereabouts of some kind of object that gives protection to whoever holds it. I don't want to belittle the magic that you witches can command, but this thing, whatever it is, has a kind of power that outclasses anything I've ever heard of.

"And I thought I might postpone my retirement to Texas because of my concern for that child, and search for Dr. Grumman. You see, I don't think he's dead. I think Lord Asriel was fooling those scholars.

"So I'm going to Nova Zembla, where I last heard of him alive, and I'm going to search for him. I cain't see the future, but I can see the present clear enough. And I'm with you in this war, for what my bullets are worth. But that's the task I'm going to take on, ma'am," he concluded, turning back to Serafina Pekkala. "I'm going to seek out Stanislaus Grumman and find out what he knows, and if I can find that object he knows of, I'll take it to Lyra." -Pullman, The Subtle Knife

1. [Rot]Front - The Robots (Kraftwerk Cover)


2. The Sick Lipstick - Teenage Robots


3. Mr. Bungle - None Of Them Knew They Were Robots


4. Jimmy Eat World - Robot Factory


5. They Might Be Giants - Robot Parade


6. Daemontia - Robot Love


7. Robotiko Rejekto - Cyper Space


8. t.A.T.u. - Robot


9. Kompressor - Red Robot Theme Song


10. Tommi Stumpff - Robots Kill The Japanese


11. Bruce Haack - School for Robots


12. Beborn Beton - Lost Little Robot


13. Future Bible Heroes - The Lonely Robot


14. From Bubblegum To Sky - My Thousand Years With Robots


15. Cosmo Vitelli - Robot Soul


16. The Flaming Lips - One More Robot (Sympathy 3000-21)


17. Balanescu Quartet - The Robots (Kraftwerk Cover)


18. Calla - Truth About Robots

After joking in someone else's journal about a character in a short film using "irregardless" and defining it as being "without lack of regard," I decided to look up irregardless and try to figure out why people use it. I am fairly sure I used it as a child, but it is hard to say. I'll be on the lookout. A friend of mine here at the college said he had never even heard it being used, but then again, he lives in Del Mar, so we can understand why. Anyway, lets's get this show on the road. The American Heritage Dictionary spoke thus about irregardless:

"Irregardless is a word that many mistakenly believe to be correct usage in formal style, when in fact it is used chiefly in nonstandard speech or casual writing. Coined in the United States in the early 20th century, it has met with a blizzard of condemnation for being an improper yoking of irrespective and regardless and for the logical absurdity of combining the negative ir– prefix and –less suffix in a single term. Although one might reasonably argue that it is no different from words with redundant affixes like debone and unravel, it has been considered a blunder for decades and will probably continue to be so."

But this didn't help; how was unravel as redundant as irregardless? As far as I understood, unravel meant to unwind, to undo a knitted thing, to undo something that was ordered and stiched. I don't use the word "ravel," but it seems to be to... well... To not ravel? Now I am beginning to see the problem. Actually, what the heck could "ravel" or "unravel" mean, and why don't we use it? Again, to the dictionary.

The seemingly contradictory senses of this word (ravel and unravel are both synonyms and antonyms) are reconciled by its roots in weaving and sewing: as threads become unwoven, they get tangled.

Are you started to begin to see complex infinite forms, or is it just me? Dizzying, eh? Sometimes I forget the astounding mysteries my dictionary holds in store.

ravel\Rav"el\, v. i.
1. To become untwisted or unwoven; to be disentangled; to be relieved of intricacy.
2. To fall into perplexity and confusion. [Obs.]
Till, by their own perplexities involved, They ravel more, still less resolved. --Milton.
3. To make investigation or search, as by picking out the threads of a woven pattern. [Obs.]
The humor of raveling into all these mystical or entangled matters. --Sir W. Temple.
Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.

All Hallows Eve; Halloween; Samhain; Day of the Dead; All Souls Day; October 31. Whatever it is. I hope it is good for you.



I've been reading Mindware and Mindmatters. I have so much to learn about the Philosophy of Mind, Cognitive Science and AI before I go to NSI in January. Yes, it looks like that is where I'll be. I hope La Jolla isn't too hot- I hate the heat. I study and read and write as much as I can, and it doesn't seem to make a dent. Learning is like quicksand, the more you read the more you realise how little you know.


I don't know if I mentioned this before, but when I attended the first contact improvisation class, we did this excercise where you touch your partner only with the tip of the index finger on one hand. One person leads and the other follows, and you dance. Twirling, rolling on the floor etc ensued. It was very fun because we weren't in full physical contact, which I would have hated, and yet we were able to really 'play.' After about 10 minutes of occasionally switching whom was leading and whom was following, we were pretty good at reading one another. At the beginning of the class, my partner had actually walked directly over to me and said, "I want to work with you." So, I was feeling pretty good about our interactions. Then the professor started saying 'switch' over and over so that the person that as 'leading' was constantly changing about every 10 seconds. About 2 minutes after the last switch, my partner started to get very aggressive in leading- we were getting very energetic about the dance. We were rolling on the ground and spinning and twirling and just flying across the studio space, and at one point my partner said to me, "You're leading, right?" And of course I had just been following her lead the entire time, it never occured to me that we lost track of who was leading during the rapid 'switch' aspect. Who was leading all that time? Ouija Dancing- dancing with the dead.

Thank you, bride, for 緣份: is a noun that refers to a predestined relationship between two people. It's an attraction of souls.

The familiar word, carnival, has an interesting Latin etymology meaning “putting away the flesh,” or “farewell to the flesh.” It seems to have originated in connection with the custom of Lent (from the Old English, lang, or the “lengthening” days of spring), the forty-day period of renunciation of fleshly indulgence just prior to Easter. However, the period before Lent, culminating in Mardi Gras (or “fat Tuesday”), is now known as “carnival” in many countries—a period of excessive fleshly indulgence, rather than renunciation.

Funny angelology stuff in someone else's journal:

a transcription of Dee’s tabula bonorum angelorum invocationes from Sloane MS. 3191, and in the section nomina sedecim bonorum angelorum qui in metallorum inventione, collectione, usu et virtute &c., There are also angels in this libellum called “Taco,” “Diary” and “Oopz”—so sometimes I find it a bit hard to take seriously, really. o uos quatuor angeli lucis, fideles, dei nostri creatoris ministri, o uos, brap, taco, diari et oopz

Woman once a bird by Joel-Peter Witkin (at left). I think I've seen a few of this man's prints, but I never knew his name. Thank you for the reminder from a former bennington student and 'college chum' of mine, couriernew.

jgambrell pointed me to an op-ed piece by Philip Pullman in today's nyt:








Why I Don't Believe in Ghosts
By PHILIP PULLMAN</b>
Published: October 31, 2003

OXFORD, England

Tonight is Halloween, All Hallows' Eve, a time of ghosts and spirits walking by night . . . which leads me naturally to think about literary realism, and about politics. How can you write in a truthful and realistic way about something that doesn't exist?

I don't take much notice of critics, except when they praise me extravagantly. But one of the remarks they sometimes make about my work does coincide with a mild puzzlement I feel about it myself: in common with some other writers whose work is read by children, I am chided for writing fantasy, because fantasy is a lesser form than realism, and everyone knows that there are no such things as elves or hobbits or, for that matter, ghosts and disembodied spirits, so nothing interesting or truthful can be said about them.
( Read the full article text )

I never wondered about the etymology of "Platonic" until I saw naturalborn's comment and I couldn't figure out if it was a reference to platonic forms or platonic love. How weird.

Plato did not invent the term or the concept that bears his name, but he did see sexual desire as the germ for higher loves. Marsilio Ficino, a Renaissance follower of Plato, used the terms amor socraticus and amor platonicus interchangeably for a love between two humans that was preparatory for the love of God. From Ficino's usage, Platonic (already present in English as an adjective to describe what related to Plato and first recorded in 1533) came to be used for a spiritual love between persons of opposite sexes. In our own century Platonic has been used of relationships between members of the same sex. Though the concept is an elevated one, the term has perhaps more often been applied in ways that led Samuel Richardson to have one of his characters in Pamela say, "I am convinced, and always was, that Platonic love is Platonic nonsense."

Both images are of Cader Idris, a mountain in Snowdonia, Wales. The english translation is "The Seat of Arthur." The Grey King, also known as the Brenin Llwyd or Monarch of the Mist is said to inhabit the peak, manifest as whispy clouds seen from below. It is said that if one sleeps overnight on the mountain, he will come down either a madman or a poet. I've only been there once.

A great many sundry events have transpired since I’ve last committed anything to this place. My Descartes paper still isn’t done, and I feel guilty and insufficient. Hume rocks my socks though and we had a discussion in my class about "could Hume love Kiad? Is Kiad’s crush on hume real even though it only exists in her mind?" Yeah. We even discussed whether or not porn was real enough for hume to get him off. We got a little off track.

My complexity class is difficult. The Taylor book, The Moment of Complexity (probably much to whatifoundthere’s chagrin) is completely bunk and I hate it. Unfortunately, my professor is extensively quoted throughout, so I feel rather guilty making fun of choice quotes like this:

What Darwin needed to complete his theory was Smith’s account of the division of labor. Darwin, Depew and Weber point out, 'rids the organic world of Aristotelian essences altogether by generalizing the individualist ontology of political economy.'

( Read reviews for a few selected Swarm Intelligence books )

ART met her sister NATURE late,
And seeing her at ease,
Inviting her to take a seat
At her Androides;

Dame NATURE went—was pleas’d at first,
And warmly praised her sister;
Then laughing, till she nearly burst,
In seeming rapture kiss’d her.

But as the wond’rous figures work’d
She look’d a little serious,
Whilst envy in her bosom lurk’d—
Her brow became imperious.

“How’s this!” to ART she loudly said,
“How’s this! ungrateful creature!
Profanely thou hast dar’d to tread
Thus in the walks of NATURE.

“I prithee, base, usurping wench,
No more these freedoms take;
If thus my province thou intrench
Thou’lt men and women make.”

Anonymous poem published in the Bath Herald, Saturday, 28 January 1797, on the occasion of “Mr. Haddock’s Exhibition of Androides.”



In the study of automatons, I found a clockwork monk that was designed as a votive for a young prince that nearly died and was saved when he touched the Monk’s still-sweet-smelling remains. System theory has been helping me understand what it is specifically that makes me love mathematics so.

On suspicion of demonic possession, the Spanish Inquisition briefly imprisoned Pierre Jacquet-Droz and his automaton son that wrote the following phrase, "I don't think, therefore I am not?", parodying "Cogito, ergo sum (I think, therefore I am)" by Rene Descartes.

“The Turing Machine, a simple mathematical model of a computer. Despite its simplicity, the Turing machine models the cimputing capability of a general purpose computer. The Turing machine is studied both foe the class of language it defines (called the recursively enumerable sets) and the class of integer fuctions it computes (called the partial recursive functions). A variety of other models of computation are introduced and shown to be equivalent to the Turing machine in computing power.” (Introduction to automata theory, languages and computation, Hopcroft, Ullman; 1979, p. 146)
( Read more... )
Today is the third day of Pesach I believe. It seems like a lifetime ago that I observed such a day, it is now a strange sort of event that seems to be something I did not experience myself but only read about.

Unfortunately, I don’t yet understand how Plato’s dialogue Theætetus offers the discovery that the square root of 2 is irrational.

I recently read Seigel's Bohemian Paris, and as I read it, I alternately wished I was Bohemian and another part of me raged that the entire "Life as Art" idea is a cop out and I just wanted to yell "poser" in my best seventh grader whine. What is ‘hip’ anyway, and what is art, and what did it matter. In so many ways, it was all devastatingly romantic to starve and be artistic and intellectual and Dadaist. In other ways, the inner capitalist in me wanted to scream, "Get a real job!" I was terribly disappointed in myself.

Then I read Norbert Wiener’s God & Golem, Inc. last night, and I wish I could articulate the revelations I had. Yes, I have been familiar with the "cyborg’s right to life" movement, and the age of spiritual machines etc. But to hear it from Wiener’s perspective from 1948 through 1964 was very exciting for me. He was speaking from a time when it was discovered that just as God created the Devil, and could actually lose to his own creation, so had man in making of the machine. Perhaps a simplistic realisation, but for me, it was still exciting. I remember at pop!tech when a speaker was discussing "at what point is a person no longer human, but more machine than human?" I was especially interested in the distinctions at that time.

I grew so terribly interested in Wiener that I just checked out one of his autobiographies, Ex-Prodigy: My Childhood and Youth. In the first chapter (Which is as far as I’ve gotten) he discusses how he finished high school when he was 12 and received his Ph.D. when he was 19 from Harvard. He is most interested in the moral difficulties that any prodigy has in integration into society, and fulfilment of expectations of society, and how easy it is for a prodigy to assume failure for himself after society has moved their ever-fickle interest onto the next prodigy. While I was never a genius in that sense, I was always rather smart and I always had high expectations for myself, and in a lot of ways, I’ve let myself down. My rising wasn’t as dramatic by any means to Dr.Wiener’s, but I do sympathise deeply

In addition, I have been keeping a post-it in Foucault’s Pendulum for two days for this quote:

And Diotallevi kept interjecting, sententiously: "Historia magistra vitae." To which Belbo responded: "Come on, cabalists don’t believe in history." And Diotallevi invariably answered: "That’s just the point. Everything is repeated, in a circle. History is a master because it teaches us that it doesn’t exist. It’s the permutations that matter."

And then, From "What is Cybernetics" by G.T. Guilbaud:

The word is derived from the Greek kybernētikē, which means, literally, the art of steersmanship. It belongs to a big family of words for the arts, crafts and sciences (all embraced by the single Greek term technai) which incliude medicine, education, poetry, mathematics, and mechanics. The word occurs fairly often in Plato, both in this literal sense and in the metaphorical sense of the art of guiding men in society, i.e. the art of government.
From this root were derived such Latin words as gubernaculum, a helm, and gubernator, a helmsman. These too, frequently carried the metaphorical meaning, a polotical helmsman steering the ship of state, which in some cases, indeed, became the predominant significance of the word.

I recently stumbled upon this reference in my History of Mathematics textbook and hunted it out of Jstor and typed it in for your express enjoyment.

...For the many campus customs at Yale in those times none appears to have been entered into with so much gusto and zest as the annual farcical pageant >of the Burial of Euclid, with which the sophomore class was wont to celebrate its mathematical emancipation.

There are many records of this ceremonial in the Yale archives, and though in its details it naturally varied with the genius of the class, it maintained its identity in form over a period of generations. The sophomore class having been summoned to gloat over Euclid's death, assembled in some college hall which was bedecked suitable to the occasion.The scene was dominated by a large and lurid cartoon which bristled in detail with fire and fury, and depicted how in the presence of Jupiter demon stokers were assisting at the consumption of Euclid's remains in a sea of blazing tar. A Dismal forest with embattled demons dilled the remoted parts of the scene, while in the foreground a student visibly filled with despair lent company to a weeping crocodile. Under this aspect Euclid's volume was perforated with a glowing poker, each man of the class thrusting the iron through in turn to signify that he had gone through Euclid. Following this the book was held for a moment ove each man to betoken that he had understood Euclid, and finaly each man passed the pages under goot that he might say thereafter that he had gone over Euclid.

These preliminaries accomplished, the funeral cortege was formed, and proceeded lugubriously, with grotesque garb and blazing torchlights to the chosen place of interment. At times Euclid himself was impersonated, dressed in classic raiment and pressinghis beloved volume to his breast, and at others the book alone was borne suitably shrouded at the head of the procession. At the pyre the celebration waxed in boisterousness and assumed more the aspects of revelry. There was elaborate mock lamentation, a funeral oration was held, and dirges more or less derisive were sung.

"No more we gaze upon that board
Where oft our knowledge failed,
As we its mystic lines ignored,
On cruel points impaled."
      *   *   *   *
"We're free! Hurrah! We've got him fast
Old Euk is nicely caged at last."
      *   *   *   *
"Black curls the smoke above the pile
and snaps the crackling fire:
The joyful shouts of Merry Sophs
With wails and groans conspire.
May yells more fiendish greet thy ears,
And flames yet hotter glow;
May fiercer torments rack thy soul
In Pluto's realms below."

R. E. Langer. "Josiah Willard Gibbs." American Mathematical Monthly, 46:75-84, 1939.
For more information about Euclid and why anyone would begrudge him his "Elements," click here for an online edition of Euclid's Elements with Sir Thomas L. Heath's translation with diagrams done as Java applets.

in case anyone hasn't seen them yet
I redid my Japan photos
http://kiad.net/livejournal/2002/12/Japan/

It is the close of the sixteenth century; Giordano Bruno travels from city to city all over Europe, hunted by the Inquisition for his heretical system of memory and signification. In less than one year, the inquisition will burn him alive for his Ideas.


"You, Egypt, brought forth as sacred the hidden signs,
Famed before in song and story, of gods and people;
With them, with nature as our guide, what we perceive can be more scrupulously noted
Than by our shifting sense, experiences, and ordering of these same things.
Through these very sins the ancient mysteries remain in plain view,
While Nature unfolds herself in her numbers; through signs, oracles of the gods have come before mens’ eyes.
Therefore, when a thing stands signified by its own figure
A chariot is admitted for a chariot, a fire for a fire,
But when an image not invisible in itself is signed,
Let a better sense, a better skill step forth."

Alchemy is the most divine art, given to mankind by God as the ability to create gold from lead, as God created the world by naming it. God has ordained that only the most pure of heart, mind, body and soul can complete this work. We call this divine work the “idea.” The idea is God; the idea is a divine act of mind and of divine will commanded. It is a holy work that alchemists do, but in our time, when old widows are burned at the stake as witches for their petty neighbours, they must work in secret unless they are friendly with the crown.

Therefore, a work of signification is useful. When using images or words, one must keep in mind the audience. Images do not receive their names from the explanations of the things they signify, but rather from the condition of those things that do the signifying. When communicating Alchemy to the wider audience, the imagery and wording chosen will make two separate impressions. One will see a series illustrating the evolution of a strange marriage, filled with hermaphrodites and wild animals. The Alchemist, however, will see the metallic elements joined and the divine work completed.

When contemplating the creation of an alchemical allegory in order to hide its true meaning, one begins to have the trace [vestigium] of the idea of the chemical marriage. A trace is given to us only a subtle form, only the hint of an idea. The trace is something that hints at us that there is some form of substance, but will not allow it to be made manifest. The trace the way we see God, we see nature and contemplate god through its traces. We cannot truly understand God, but we can begin to contemplate him as we contemplate his trace through nature.

When one is given the divine will of god to begin to commit to the chemical marriage in his name, he has been communicated the divine will of God, and must accept the Idea.
The theory of the documentation of the chemical marriage begins to be understood, now. How could one possibly corrupt the divine will of God to paper, or through furtive discussion in alleyways? They only way we have found to communicate the divine alchemical ideals to one another is through the creation of a species, a shadow [umbra] of the Idea. The shadow is all art, being only a shadow of the trace. It is only the most crude manifestation of the form or the Idea. For this reason, we must always contemplate all early acts as mere shadow of the inspired divine. This world we live in, outside heaven, is the artificial world, where men strive to understand earth and heaven through rationalisation. The rational world is an artificial world, only a construct, a shadow of the idea, a mutant of the form. Therefore, when creating a way of communicating on this earthly plane, one must accept it will be a shadow of the Idea, and not as the Idea itself.

I believe that ideas, concepts and objects are all symbols, and if they can be remembered, they can be understood. One cannot understand anything when still contemplating oneself. Signs are understood by composition, combination, plurality of terms, by means of discourse and reflection. So those different words, that when seen by the grammarian’s eye are synonymous, for us signify one thing at one time and another at another. For example, "Luna," "Sol" and "Mercury" are not the same things as "our Silver," "our Gold" and "our Mercury." The chemical marriage, however, could not and should not be represented differently. The Analogy of the Idea of the chemical marriage is required in understanding- these are not mere Indications of a Sign or a Shadow, but are a way of understanding the Divine embodied in chemical change that must be first established in the mind before it will occur within the Philosopher’s Egg.

There are three principles that must be understood in order to contemplate Signification. This trinity is a natural system seen everywhere in nature, and so we follow nature’s form.

The first is the concept of the initial composition of all things as being God, nature, or art. Nothing can be more than one of these. The divine, the natural and the artificial can be applied to all things. The Trace is always a natural thing, a distillation of the Divine into something Natural. It becomes a trace of the Idea. The Shadow, or the rational world is the place of the Shadow of Ideas. The only purity is the Idea, which man cannot wholly contemplate without revelations. The Shadows are divided into primary, secondary etc. These Ideas are the cause of things before the things exist, the vestiges of the idea are the things themselves or what vestiges are in things, the shadows of the things are from the things themselves, or exist after the things which are said to exist. Beings are distinguished into those which are things, and into those things which are their signs or indications. The Image of a thing is separate and different from its substance.

One must also not forget the inherent limitations of the senses. In order to understand the divine Idea, one should use the sense of sight, as it is the most spiritual. I will explain more about this later. Touch conceives only those things that linger, surrendering themselves to our skin. We can only perceive the sense of smell from the body of things conspicuously placed near us, in time or distance. We can hear those things from near through distance places within our time, but the quality of hearing is such that it is only in the now.

Only sight comprehends the most remotes things and associates them with other things apprehended by that sense, and also retain them more effectively than by the other senses. Therefore, it is wise to signify the objects of all the appetites and the cognitive facilities in the same way that we describe and reveal all things by means of visible letters and shapes, the Mark.

Alchemical symbols follow historical fact or precedent. The most common method of communicating the chemical marriage is the “marriage” Signification. Based on these Signs from the historical precedent, we infer "Sol" with copper, "Luna" with silver and the character Hermes or “Mercury” with the metallic element, mercury. When something is composed sensibly, this nonsensical division arises. Certain allusion we intuit to which allusion is made; denotations of the roles of the various characters are signified in other ways via Shadow. From the tool, we perceive the skill, as for example the astrologer by the astrolabe or sphere in his hand.

When the chemical marriage is committed to a painting, to a concrete image, it becomes a sign [nota]. When a Form or an Idea is committed as a Shadow into the shape of a Sign, it does not receive its name from the explanation of the things it signifies, but rather from the condition of those things that do the signifying. The only reason a man would have to commit an Idea to a Shadow is to communicate it, and in this commitment, perhaps he would allow other men that have not received the Idea from God, to contemplate his great work. The Sign therefore has many meanings beyond the primary Idea; it denotes everything which in any way displays or indicates another thing either its primary, secondary proximate or remote, immediate or mediate reason or meaning. The alchemical painting becomes a way to communicate a trace of the Idea through a shadow.

The painting therefore is a Sign, signifying the elements of the Idea of the chemical marriage. It signifies through a fixed drawing of lines committed to paper, or the stroke of a brush- this is called the Character. The Character denotes a signification through the fixed lines, or a setting of points in order to intentionally point at one thing. However, the art of the Alchemist must be hidden, as not all men are worthy of the Idea. Therefore, the Sign’s primary, and secondary meanings shall have a Character that signifies on levels other than the intended primary. When considering the imagery of the chemical marriage, there are many different forms of imagery that are generally used to communicate the Idea, while leading the uninitiated to believe this is a story involving the actual players depicted. In the rosarium philosophorum (Rosary of the Philosophers), we see a story that to those only able to see the Shadow, therefore the secondary Sign, and therefore, a completely different character of a king and a queen marrying and indulging on sexual acts that modern scholarship doesn’t appreciate being educated about. The man in possession of the Idea, however, sees beyond the Shadow and to the primary Sign as the chemical marriage of Mercury being added as a solvent for gold and silver; thereby creating the Elixir of Life, as God has granted, and with the second part of the process, the Philosopher’s Stone, the realisation of the Idea of the Form.

The Mark [signum] of the chemical marriage is then understood as a part of its genus, the common attribute portrayed that has signification, either as an Idea or Trace or Shadow or otherwise. The person that understands the secondary or proximate Sign of the Character would then have a different interpretation of the Mark of the image. Someone recognising the primary Sign would understand the Mark as the recipe of the chemical marriage; the Mark understood by one with only a proximate Sign would see the chemical marriage as a record of actual people and events.

The Seal [sigillum] is the diminutive of Mark, and signifies the more notable part of the sign or the sign as it is generally accepted, as for example, when we signify a person or his action by his head alone or only by his hand. In the chemical marriage, a Seal is from the primary Sign could be a specific act, such as the act of copulation signifying the combining of mercury and gold together. In the Seal of copulation, the Seal signifies the diminutive of just the practise of alchemy, but distils something specific from the whole enterprise. The Seal is a specificity of the essence of images, and the power they have to effect change. Change and movement are a sign of life, and nothing in the world, least of all the world itself is inanimate.

The Indication [indicium], like Mark and Seal, of the chemical marriage is extant in the image’s existence and elicits internal or external contemplation of what it signifies. Just as one who points does not pre se signify the thing that is being indicated, but rather he invites or summons it to his inner or outer contemplation. The Indication of the chemical marriage is the understanding of the Sign via the Shadow, a fable of sexuality, death and resurrection for one man is the Philosopher’s Stone for another.

Different from all preceding terms, Figure [figura] are composed of Ideas, Traces and Shadows, as much related to the intrinsic as to the extrinsic aspect of things; “Figure” however pertains only to the extrinsic. The Figure of the alchemical imagery exists only of the initial impression, of the basic form without any inner contemplation of the deeper meaning; the Figure of a thing is only the superficial. Those that only see the secondary or tertiary meanings of the Sign related would only be sensing a Figure, and not the deeper meaning.

With the chemical marriage, the Analogy [similitudo] is well utilised. When a person is signified in letters and characters as well as in marks, indications and signs, less will be signified than with a simile or a likeness, as in a painting or a statue or its appearance as received by the senses and presented in the imagination. The analogy is a translation from one’s Idea into a kind of Shadow Sign. The quality of the Analogy is determined by the kind of Signification used. While in some cases, as in a philosophy, the message is best served with letters and characters in order to relate the message as fully as possible. With the alchemical Analogy, the exact likeness of the work is not related with intention, and images are made so that they can be synthesised and understood only by the initiated. The analogy presents the solemn and serious Godly work that Alchemists do, and clearly state the method of the science, while those that can see only the Figure will see only gross copulation and death.

The Proportion [proportio] is father from the Idea than the trace, and is the understanding of Proportion between more than two terminal points. Where a simple connection of Sign and the Trace, Idea or Shadow would be a connection between two terminal points, the Proportion is the connection between three or more. Just as Aleph is for the Hebrews, so is Alpha to the Greeks. Here we have four terminal points of Proportion, 1. Aleph, 2. Hebrew, 3. Alpha, 4. Greeks. Just as Sol is to Luna, so too is Luna to Mercury, which is three terminal points, Sol, Luna, Mercury. This is the understanding of the Proportion of an Idea’s being.

The Image [imago] embraces a greater energy, emphasis and universality, for there is more being for Image than for Analogy. Image tends more to unequivocally than does Analogy, and it is the same for things not only when they are in the same genus, but also when they are outside their own genus. Just as one artifice is said to be similar to a certain artifice, nonetheless it is not called an Analogy in relation to its Image or in its Image unless it is in a very close genus or the same species. The Image of the King swimming in the ocean for his bath is not an Image, but an Analogy. An Image is a visual representation that is almost an exact likeness

Yearning, longing
distance
to infinity
overcome by these memories of future.