3 Hypertext References
->ancient_india ->balkantanz ->carmina_burana ->dance_traditions
->devanagari_script ->egyptpyra ->erkundung_symbolik ->extra_verb_phil
->goldwachs ->greek_music_mode ->guarani ->gypsydance
->incalegacy ->inca_video ->inca_sacsayhuaman
->kataessence ->knotsystem ->kratylos
->metamusic ->musicbrain
->oeko_sphere ->ontologie_symbolwirklichkeit
->prehistlang ->pyracommunity ->reltanz
->samosata ->shinto_kata ->sloterdijk_sphaere
->spheres ->sphere_influence ->spheres_nesting
->tanzritual_apokryphen ->tiroltanz
4 Abbreviations
AG The
Abbreviation AG is used as short for "the present author".
[AG: ... ] This is used for a
comment within a quotation.
[[ ... ]] This is used when AG makes
a longer comment or footnote, because within an .htm text footnotes are
cumbersome and result in excessive clicking. In the www-lingo, there is a very
common misuse called "click baiting". For serious contributors, this
should be avoided.
5 The Extra-Verbal World
The Extra-Verbal World of the
Performative and Dance-Traditions
This is the world of Extra-verbal Analysis.
5.1
Vorwort zu Die
Non-Verbale Welt der Performativen Tanz-Traditionen
Dies
ist das Vorwort für das Projekt der Extra-Verbalen Traditionen. In diesem Teil
ist das Verbale eigentlich nur Begleit-Text, weil es sich wesentlich um
Extra-verbales Material handelt. Hier ist das Haupt-Thema das Multi-Mediale,
die Videos. Ein Video sagt mehr als 10.000 Worte, um einmal das alte Sprichwort
etwas zu erweitern. Hier haben wir eine Untersuchung, ausgehend von den
Arbeiten von Pater Thomas Immoos, an der
Sophia-Universität Tokyo, und Pater Cyrill von Korvin-Krasinski OSB vom
Kloster Maria Laach. "Trina
Mundi Machina". Weiterhin basiert es auf der Erweiterung des Werks
von Thomas Immoos, die Festschrift "Gold im Wachs".
Diese Untersuchung bearbeitet, ausgehend von den japanischen Traditionen und anderen Kulturen vor allem die Elemente, die sich einer Verbalisierung entziehen. Diese nenne ich die Extra-Verbalen Aspekte einer Tradition. Hier geht es vor allem um die Bedeutung des Tanzes in religiösen Settings. Die Arbeiten von Pater Immoos allgemein im Kulturwissenschaftlichen Bereich und zu dem Noh-Theater insbesondere dienen als Ausgangspunkt. Dies wird weiter vertieft auf kulturelle Vergleiche mit den antiken Tanz-Traditionen und von anderen Kulturen. Um diese Elemente zu erfassen, basiert diese Arbeit wesentlich auf neueren Video-Aufnahmen, die die performativen und extra-verbalen Aspekte besonders deutlich machen, und daher ist dieses Projekt wesentlich multi-medial. Die meta-morphologische Methode wurde von mir in meiner Dissertation entwickelt. Es muss allerdings betont werden, dass diese Methode nichts gemeinsam hat mit der Kulturmorphologie von Frobenius:
"Design Und Zeit: Kultur Im Spannungsfeld von Entropie, Transmission und Gestaltung"
http://elpub.bib.uni-wuppertal.de/edocs/dokumente/fb05/diss1999/goppold/
http://www.noologie.de/desn.htm
http://www.noologie.de/desn23.htm
Dort wurden die Themen der extra-verbalen
kulturellen Tradition schon allgemein und theoretisch behandelt.
http://www.noologie.de/desn09.htm
http://www.noologie.de/desn16.htm
http://www.noologie.de/desn17.htm
http://www.noologie.de/desn23.htm
http://www.noologie.de/desn24.htm
http://www.noologie.de/desn24.htm#Heading129
http://www.noologie.de/desn24.htm#Heading130
5.1.1 The Movement Gestalt and the Meta-Morphologie:
The Theory of Meta-Morphology has
its own terminology, in the word Movement Gestalt or Movement Pattern. This is
also the Essence of the Japanese word Kata. A Movement Gestalt or Movement
Pattern, is a set of performative events that occur in the dance traditions,
also in the craft arts and the healing arts. A Movement Gestalt is a term used
specifically for the internal body-soul-spirit aspect or the feeling and soul
aspect of the movement as is used in the philosophical terminology of Korvin-Krasinski. There it is the
Tri-Unity of the Body-Soul-Spirit ensemble which is the divine aspect of the human
manifestation. A Movement Gestalt is named so
because it is very much the opposite of the rote work patterns that have been
devised when machine industry took over under the name of Taylorism. Taylorism
means work patterns that are dis-embodied and that force the human to work like
an automaton. It has therefore an extreme soul-killing aspect. The embodied
Soul aspect of the Movement Gestalt is therefore much wider and deeper than the
term Ergonomics which is also machine oriented. In the Zen tradition, the
spiritual aspect is emphasised in the bodily movements when raking the stones
in a stone garden. The product is the visual beauty of a stone garden. But the
spiritual aspect is that which the Zen practicioner experiences in the
connection of body, soul and spirit.
[I have referenced this with the
Gold in Wax metaphor. The wax is the body movement, the Gold is the spiritual
experience. And they happen simultaneously, and they are complementary. I will
enlarge on this later.]
This is what the people in the West
have difficulty to appeciate. Because the people of the West (the Abrahamitics)
have dis-embodied the movements. A glaring example is the military punisment,
when a novice is forced to clean the floor of the dorm with a tooth-brush. This
is brutality in its most pernicious form. And this is the exact opposite of the
Zen form of cleaning the floor of the dorm. Which is mainly a spiritual
exercise. Peter Sloterdijk in his book DMDL has unfortunately also omitted
these body, soul and spirit connections. Therefore he also cannot understand
this Essence of the Movement Traditions of Hu-mankind and he has no connection
to the spiritual side of all these traditions. Especially when he says that
religions are "Übungs-Systeme" or "Practice Patterns". This
is unfortunately the treatment by a Western Philosophy-Prophessor who writes
only Prophessor- Philosophy for Western Philosophy-Prophessores.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinesiology
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_management
http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/Taylorism.html
5.2
Die Arbeitsweise der Metamorphologie
In dem Buch "Gold im Wachs" wird in der Einleitung, S. 31, von Ernst Chr. Suttner, das Prinzip von "Wachs und Gold" beschrieben, genannt Qene, eine Denktechnik, die in Äthiopien verwendet wird, eine Kommunikationsmodalität des direkten und indirekten (komplementären) Ausdrucks. Die interessanteste Anwendung ist, wenn man gleichzeitig Direkt und Indirekt sprechen will. Für Westler ist das aber unverständlich. Diese Technik hat wesentliche Gemeinsamkeiten mit der Gestalt-Modalität, die in "Design und Zeit" anhand der Morphologie der Gestalt-Kipp-Bilder (Siehe: Die Boring Frauen weiter unten) ausgarbeitet wird. Es geht hier im komplementär-polare Darstellungen, auch Neuronale Spannungsfelder genannt. Es ist ein wesentliches Merkmal des religiösen Diskurses, dass alles, was mit Bildern, verbalen Konzepten und Ideen zu beschreiben ist, nicht an die transzendente Realität heranreichen kann, wenn man von dem Göttlichen sprechen will. Es ist ähnlich ausgedrückt in der Griechisch-Orthdoxen Methode der Ikone, eine Darstellung des Transzendenten mit bildlichen Symbolen. Denn die Ikonographie, mit dem Goldgrund und den stilisierten Darstellungen, die immer demselben Schema folgen, macht eine Verwechselung von (Ab-) Bild und dem (Ur-) Bild, also dem Symbol (Platonisch: Eidos, Eidolos, Idea, Eikonos) weniger wahrscheinlich. Das steht auch im Gegensatz zu den besonders üppigen Darstellungen in der Römisch-Katholischen Kirche, etwa bei Michelangelo in der Sixtinischen Kapelle, und vor allem in den Kirchenmalereien des Barock. Dies wird in "Gold im Wachs" auf S. 43, von Kaspar Hürlimann, "Philosophische Erkundungen der Symbolik" genauer ausgearbeitet. Das Symbol ist wie die Ikone etwas, das auf etwas Transzendentes hinweist, aber nie mit dem Transzendenten verwechselt werden darf. Diese Verwechselung ist besonders problematisch, wenn sie sich im Volksglauben festgesetzt hat. Deswegen ist auch das Bilderverbot so wichtig und relevant, der Juden und der Moslems, "Du darfst Dir kein Bild von mir machen". Es darf sich kein Mensch ein Bild von dem Transzendenten machen. Denn das wäre sicher ein ganz sicheres Rezept für das Un-Verständnis, des Heiligen, des Transzendenten. In seinem Schluss-Satz unterscheidet Hürlimann auch klar zwischen dem Freud'schen (Un-) Verständnis und dem von C.G. Jung. S. 58: "Jung unterscheidet klar zwischen Allegorie und Symbol". Zu Platon, siehe auch:
http://www.noologie.de/plato.htm
5.2.1.1
Die
Boring Frauen / The Boring Women
Die Boring Frauen: Gestalt-Bild zur Demonstration neuronaler Attraktoren
The Boring Women: Gestalt-Picture
for the Demonstration of Neuronal Attraktors
Die
Arbeitsweise der Metamorphologie der Religionen basiert auf den Prinzipien des
Symbols (nach Goethe: Goethes Symbolbegriff, "Gold im Wachs",
S. 331),
oder der Ikone, oder des Qene, aber mit einer anderen Herangehensweise. Es geht
hier darum, ein Spannungsfeld zwischen polar-oppositionalen Sichtweisen zu
entwickeln, und aufrecht zu erhalten. Dies ist der Kontrast zwischen der Welt
als Kausalität der physikalisch / materialistischen Sichtweise und der Welt als
Bestimmung oder Geist (im Sinne der Hegel'schen Philosophie), bzw. der Welt als
ein Spielfeld von Archetypen im Sinne von C.G. Jung. Thomas Immoos
basierte seine Arbeiten wesentlich auf den Prinzipien der Philosophie von C.G.
Jung. Oder man kann es auch als die Welt der höheren Bestimmungen darstellen,
die sich in der Materie auswirken. Dies ist insb. die Welt der Theologie bzw.
der Heilsgeschichte.
Dies lässt sich am besten in dem Kontrast zwischen der historisierenden
Interpretation der Religionen darstellen, die die Geschichte ihrer
Kultur-Heroen (Christus, Mohammed) als historische Begebenheiten darstellen,
und im Kontrast dazu die Soteriologische Interpretation, nach C.G. Jung,
dass das kollektive Un-bewusste oder auch das Über-Bewusste die entscheidende
Triebkraft in der Entwicklung von geistigen Systemen ist, die sich dann in
der Darstellung der jeweiligen Kultur-Heroen manifestiert.
6 A Theory of The Mind in 10 words or less
This is the shortest theory of the
mind which we will ever get:
There is no such thing as the mind.
Period.
This is just an example of misplaced
concreteness, as Whitehead had reminded us of. There is a brain, which does
some minding. So, mind is a word for a process. [The English have preserved
some of that wisdom when they say: Mind your own business"]
But as we westerners are not
accustomed to thinking in processes but only in things, we are led onto an
"Holzweg", as Heidegger would say. Where do we find a
"Lichtung"? To come around the difficulty, we now find a new word,
for that which the brain does, when it is minding. We just call it the mInd.
This has its own logic, because we are forever re-mInded, that he who does the mInding,
is I. No one else can mInd, but the I. Therefore we write it with the capital
letter "I". There is no one else who can do the mInding for you.
Schopenhauer had re-mInded us of that in one of his "Parerga kai Paralipomena", or in German: Parerga und[40] Paralipomena.[41] There he makes a very complete exegesis of "Selbstdenken". It
is highly recommended for every student of Philosophy to read this work. This
is always good to remInd us that reading a book and memorizing it, is no
substitute for thinking oneself. Or that I mInd my own mInd, and not let me
become polluted by some strange thoughts of some strange philosophers.
http://aboq.org/schopenhauer/parerga2/selbstdenken.htm
[[Interjection: The same way,
present day political correctness does pretty much the same. By the terminology
of Neurolinguistics, this is called "reframing", of which we just had
a good example in the German ARD media.
]]
There is one philosopher who
depended only on his own way of thinking, Herbert Spencer. He had never read
any other philosophy than his own.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Spencer
As a close second comes in Hegel
(1986, p. 72-73):[1]
"... der ernsthafte
Eifer um Wahrheit und Wissenschaft ... nämlich mit dem Vorsatze, in der
Wissenschaft auf die Autorität sich den Gedanken anderer nicht zu ergeben,
sondern alles selbst zu prüfen und nur der eigenen Überzeugung zu folgen, oder
besser noch, alles selbst zu produzieren und nur die eigne Tat für das Wahre zu
halten."
But there is also reason to
criticise the "Geist" of German Idealism. There is no such
thing as a "Geist". It belongs in the category of ghosts.
[The English understand this better
when they say: "The Holy Ghost". This is just what it means without
any irony.]
Therefore German Idealism may be
called a sort of mass psychosis. And it is therefore very dangerous to
study it, and it should be strictly forbidden in all philosophical seminars to
think such a thing. He who does this against the rules must be immediately set
on quarantine until his mInd has sufficiently cooled off, so that he can
partake again in the philosophical discourse.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disease_Isolation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarantine
6.1.1
Mind
your own MInd. Philosophy, Please Crack the Nut
Now we get a little closer to the
nut that we want to crack, which is called Philosophy. How do we go about
mInding our own mInds? This is a very difficult nut to crack and philosophy is
is a tough nut to crack. We may say it this any way or another. 2300 years of
wrong thinking, cannot be exorcised in one Hour of Thinking. One needs at least
a half-life-time to crack that nut. Now that I have studied Philosophy for
about 40 years. I am about to to crack the nut which is called Philosophy. You
can see this unfolding, because it needs some time to crack a nut. I do a
little a lot of Double-thinking. Double- thinking means, that while you are
thinking, you are also the same time doing some reflecting on your thinking,
and then some Imagining. I am meanwhile pretty good at this. Double-thinking
means: You are thinking something, and the same time you are thinking the
complementary opposite of what you are just thinking. This is an Indian Rope
Sorcerer Trick. It is also called Associative Thinking. And as Oswald Spengler
had said it: To think Morphology, one has to be born to it. One cannot learn
this skill.
How do we explain that??? It is at the same time Thinking, and also
the same time Associating. This is also called the Associative mInd. One has
tho have a native in-born ability to think Linear and Associative at the same
time. It is called thinking in two tracks at the same time. Or reprogramming
the Dream-Time half of the brain to think in Complementarities. It is just
that: Thinking in Complementarities. Because present-day "civilized"
humanity has altogether forgot about this ability. He who has the Ability the
hear and listen, to the silent voices of the Desert, he or she shall be
redeemed. The rest of all those what Nietzsche called "Die letzten
Menschen" may safely forget about this. Because this is none of their
business. As I said above, the "Übermensch" is the most mis-understood
of the whole of Nietzsche's philosophy. This is not some kind of Super Human,
but someone who had overcome the fear of mortality. Nietzsche had the
philosophy of the Eternal Return, the "Übermensch" was sure to
eternally return also. I don't believe this part of Nietzsche's philosophy, my
motto is: Die unendliche Wiederkehr des Ewig Ungleichen. I have written more
about this in my Wagner text:
http://www.noologie.de/wagner.htm
There I refer to the ancient
cosmology of a musical and rhythmic cosmos. The ancients lived by this for many
thousands of years. They also believed in the eternal return of things. The
most advanced and the most tragic of these people were the Inca's. This is
spelled out in greater detail in another chapter. Their tragedy was that they
believed too much in the machinery of the heavens. What they could not come up
with was the inherent instability of the cosmos. Because the planetary and star
and galaxy gravitational fields interact in a chaotic manner. I have also
written about that in my Wagner text. Sometimes a planet just jumps out from
its usual gyrations, and enters a totally new orbit or being catapulted
altogether out of the Solar System. What is worse, it may also go on collision
course with another planet, like the Earth.
This the one side of the coin. The
other side of the "Übermensch" is very easy to describe. He may be
spiritual, or he always is... but he can never be religious. Nietzsche had
elucidated this in his Antichrist to the greatest detail. And Sloterdijk had
mis-understood it completely in "Zorn und Zeit". It is not that there
was a wrong addressing of Christianity itself, but of organized religion and
clergy in general. Spirituality is one thing, Religion is another thing
altogether. Religions are there because of the fear, which I otherwise call the
Phobos Complex. Yes, one can be spiritual and religious at the same time, but
you should take care to keep them separate because they are two different modes
of imagining and thinking.
Oh
Mensch! Gieb Acht!
Was
spricht die tiefe Mitternacht?
»Ich schlief, ich schlief –,
»Aus tiefem Traum bin ich erwacht: –
»Die Welt ist tief, tiefer als der Tag gedacht.
7 What is
Extra-Verbal Philosophy?
The concept of Extra-Verbal
Philosophy may sound absurd at first glance. What is Philosophy else than
juggling with a whole lot of words and concepts? Now the solution is simple:
There are a few versions in existence or anyhow, possible.
7.1
The Systematics of Mental Imagery
More generally speaking, we can
define as "a kind of" philosophy the systematics of mental imagery of
any kind. For example, theology is the systematics of mental imagery about one
god, or about several gods, just depending which denomination one belongs to.
The science of Comparative Religious Studies has as its subject a few or many
theologies, and it makes a systematic comparisons between these. It is of
course quite unnecessary that any of these subjects have any correspondence in
the tangible or materialistic world of physical matter. I am careful to avoid
the "idea" of a "Real World" since there exists just one
widespread definition of "Real" in the western European-US culture
sphere, which is that of physics. And on the definition of physics depend all
the other "materialistic" sciences, like chemistry, geology,
metallurgy, and so on. Of course we can see some "grey" boundaries of
these definitions when we get into biology, art, and psychology. The science of
mathematics is a curious case, since there is actually no materialistic realm
where mathematics resides. Of course, one can apply mathematics in physics, but
the mathematics itself is not physical. So where does mathematics reside? The
Platonic philosophers (see Popper's Three Worlds) state that there is a
"world of Ideas". But this "world" is not so easy to force
into the framework of materialism and it is also not so universally accepted
that this is nothing-other-than in the materialistic neurons of our brains. So,
we also come full circle with Mental Imagery, because it belongs to the
same kind or class as mathematics. What is meant here that Mental Imagery is
just a more general and more correct word for "idea". Since the
"idea" is so much abused by idealistic philosophy of the Platonic
kind, one better avoids this concept altogether. Mental Imagery is that which
is produced by the brain when it is mInding, as I explain elsewhere. And I have
no urge to explain all this away in materialistic terms.
7.1.1
The Philosophy of Representations of Behavior
What the conventional philosophy
mostly forgets is that mInding is not so much about representations of the
world. Rather it produces models or representations of behavior,
of the ensemble of certain elements in the "world" and then we just
coin a colloquial expression when we say this is "the world". Because
the human brain, or more generally speaking, "Intelligence" is about
survival and reproduction of an organism in the Biosphere. And because humanity
or Homo Sapiens considers him/herself the most intelligent organism in the
Biosphere, it makes a collective assumption, [but it is more of an usurpation],
that what its more intelligent members (the scientists, engineers, and
philosophers) think of their "world behavior model" is in fact the
world. But it would be more correct to say that these are only working
hypotheses of the "something" that we call the world. And the humans
derive their proudness of "understanding the world" by their success
of manipulating it. So, intelligence has a "world behavior model" and
it can fabricate its own behavior strategies in accordance to what it thinks
would yield successful results. Which is in the Darwinian formulation the fact
that it is surviving and reproducing successfully. This is also called the
pragmatic model of the world, and is exhaustively treated by Jordan Peterson in
his book "Maps of Meaning".
http://www.noologie.de/embodied.htm#peterson1
http://www.noologie.de/embodied.htm#maps_meaning
http://www.noologie.de/embodied.htm#peterson_discuss
7.1.2
The Human Oecosphere
The Biosphere (Vernadsky) is the
collectivity of all the organisms that are in the nearer-closer or farther-away
"environments" of humanity. One could also call this the human
oecosphere. Humans have always influenced their oecosphere in more or less
direct ways. The usage of fire is one of the most ancient human ways to do
that. Even the most "primitive" humans have used fire to condition
their oecosphere to suit their needs. One example are the North-East American
"Amer-Indians" who had cleared their formerly primeval woodlands by
burning the underbrush of their woodlands so that their hunting would be
facilitated and specific plants could grow there. This is not agriculture as
yet, but these humans knew what plants and animals would help them in their
survival.
Similar uses of fire are documented
of the Australian Aboriginals on the northern and eastern coastlands of
Australia, who had regularly set fire to the woods there. This was documented
by early European explorers of the continent, when they noticed that there were
almost continually huge clouds of smoke arising from these areas. It is to be
noted that Eucalyptus trees are the most combustible of trees, since they
produce rich amounts of highly flammable essential oils that can burn up on
every lightning strike. This is also a natural process since wild fires (caused
by lightning strikes) break out frequently in such Eucalyptus forests. The
Australian Aboriginals made wide use of such fires to improve their own hunting
and foraging. As such, the oecosphere of humans was always culturally
re- or in-formed. The human oecosphere is therefore (more or less) a cultural
construct.
7.1.3
Peter Sloterdijk's "Sphären"
This is about a different (and more
anthropological) interpretation of Peter Sloterdijk's "Sphären"
trilogy.
7.1.3.1 The
Multi-Spherical Arrangement of Human Existence
So our "world" is a more
or less a multi-spherical and more or less concentric conglomerate of inanimate
"things" and organisms that surround "Us", the humans. And
the centricity of this derives from the fact that I (as a generic term for
every human being or of a local human society) is automatically placing
my-our-self in the center of all my/our projections, and later when we are more
mature, we enlarge my/our "ideas" from the ego-centric view of the
infant and small child to the more collective "idea" of the
"We" or "Us". So every human being starts its existence in
its primary biological environment, which we colloquially call "mom"
or the womb of mother. And as Sloterijk duly notes in "Blasen", the
primary biological environment is a bubble of sorts, which is the gestational
or amniotic sac. The "Spheres" of influence are of course what I am
able to influence, but then there are the influences of the "Rulers"
of these "Spheres" who or what have an influence on "ME".
This is mainly the subject of Sloterijk's work. There are "Rulers" of
some "Spheres", and they influence "ME" or "US".
The Spheres of Influence are the main subject of the political discussion. We
are all influenced by these "Rulers of the Spheres" in the diction of
Sloterdijk, and there are also many conspiracy theories which seek to enlarge
on this "idea".
7.1.3.2
A Short Excursion into Mythology
This is a short excursion into
mythology: The ancient Greek (or other) mythological-story leads us into more
deeper abysses (a-byssos) of meaning, when we hear about the Matrix, the
Demeter or De-Meter which is "Mater" and then Materia and the
Hystera, or the Void, or the Chaos, and then the Chthon, Chaeia, and lastly
Gaia and Rhea. I will say more about these mythological connection in a later
chapter. This is all written in the Kosmo-Gonia of Chaes-Aoidos, or Hes-Aoidos
or Hesiodos as his friends used to call him.
Then we leave the motherly womb by
being birthed
[I write this with intention.
Between being "born" and being "birthed" there is quite a semantic
difference. Being "birthed" is as much as an act of personal
decision, and not so passive as the word indicates. We chose to being
"birthed" at some prior instant, before our personal life-time began.
This is also Heidegger Territory.]
So we enter the social environment
(or the next Bubble or Sphaira), at first starting with the person
"mom", and then "possibly" pop, then the larger family,
then the tribe, and then... and so on. These social environments can be called
"Spheres of interest" in the diction of Sloterdijk.
This is essentially the argument
that Sloterdijk makes in his "Sphären", condensed to about 100 words
or less. Sloterdijk produces quite a lot of side stories around this
existential "Sphairology" which I find quite distracting. It should
be the task of a serious philosopher to give us first the bare bones of his
system (or the Architectonic in the Kantian sense). And then he can maybe lead
us onto some meandering paths of interesting stories around this base
structure. Unfortunately, Sloterdijk does this the other way round, and lets
us, the readers, second-guess what his base structure "may be",
because he doesn't tell us this explicitly. And so he presents us with all
those quite interesting stories in so many exhausting (or exhaustive) chapters
in his Three-Vol- "Sphären". And in my view these are so many more or
less irrelevant side stories instead of just presenting us at first with the
bio-logical base structure of this existential "Sphairology". This
would be my philosophical criticism of his "Sphären" Trilogy.
7.1.4
The Nesting of Spheres of Interest
It is a nesting of spheres of
interest, meaning "things that are interesting for ME and then Us"...
in terms of survival, edibility (meaning things to eat), and extending to
"things" to reproduce with, like mates. And of course then there are
"things" that are to be avoided, like enemies, taxes, thunderstorms,
tornados, snow storms, freezing cold, volcano eruptions, and ultimately the Big
Flood of Noah, or the collision of the planet Earth with some mighty asteroid.
7.1.5
Spheres of Influences
Since Sloterdijk is mainly
interested in political "spheres", then the larger spheres are the
political and societal bodies, meaning states and empires. And then the leading
and decision making powers of these "spheres" come into focus. It is
what sort of influences these leaders can have on "me" or
"us". Then we come to Sloterdijk's concept of the Atmo-Sphere
(Sphären III), the weather, the climate, and then the Cosmo-Sphere, meaning
sun-flares, planetary constellations like in Astrology, but also
inter-planetary and inter-stellar catastrophes. A huge Super-Nova in the closer
vicinity of our Solar system would be a catastrophic influence on the biosphere
of the planet Earth. So in this literal sense, the human is the measure of all
"things" of human interest or survival value, like Protagoras had
stated it. And I should remind it, that these spheres are mostly fabricated out
of our own cognitive system(s) or with our technical instruments. There is a
nice Buddhist saying which exemplifies this: You should take the Path of the
Middle. And the Middle is exactly the region in-between what you can see on
your right, and what you can see on your left. Or one can also say
"above" and "below". Therefore the Middle is always
dependent on the power of your own perception and dis-crimination. You can also
substitute "see" with "wish", "imagine", or
"avoid" and "flee".
https://www.ancient.eu/article/61/protagoras-of-abdera-of-all-things-man-is-the-meas/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protagoras
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/byssus
byssus (usually uncountable, plural byssi or byssuses)
An exceptionally fine and valuable fibre or cloth of ancient times. Originally used for
fine flax and linens, the word was later extended to fine cottons, silks, and
sea silk.
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/byssus
Word forms: plural 'byssuses or 'byssi ('b?sa? )
1. a fine fabric, esp. a linen cloth, used by the
ancients, as in Egypt for mummy wrapping
7.1.6
The Mythology of the Fatherless Sons
As I always like to do a little
psychological meandering, it came to my attention in the biography of
Sloterdijk, that he grew up without a father. Perhaps this had some psychological
impact on his world-views, especially the importance of the first
"Sphere" which is the womb. And then his interest in the placenta,
and gyn-ecology in general. See "Blasen" p. 388: "gynäkologische
Inquisition". When Mother is the center of one's life, and when there is
only a father-surrogate around, the grand-father... This reminds us somewhat of
the "Holy Mother"-centered mythology of the Christ himself. Because
in psychological terms the whole story about Father-God-in-Heaven is more or
less a narcissistic compensation and somewhat suprematized [see: Peter
Sloterdijk, Gottes Eifer] story of some lonely boy who had never known a true
father. And even that is not a very original story since the same theme occurs
in the Isis and Horus myth of ancient Egypt. And in present-day psychological
literature, we find "die vaterlose Gesellschaft" as a modern
equivalent. This is especially a German trauma, because so many fathers died in
all those wars. And Sloterdijk's own father fate was pretty much similar, because
in post-war Germany there was a serious shortage of men in the nubile age. And
many German women paired up in some rather makeshift liaisons with some men
that were just available. We can consult Schopenhauer's "Metaphysik der
Geschlechtsliebe" for explanations why the German women had such an urge
to pair up with often quite unsuitable men. There was also a phenomenon called
"the Fräulein-Wunder" by the American "Besatzer" who are
always masters of euphemism, and they didn't bother at all why there were so
many young women who had no male (psychical, emotional and material) support
left over and then they found... And then we can also delve into the
mythologies of "Fatherless Sons" like Wagner's Siegfried and the
Parzival Mythology:
https://quinque-bibliothek.de/parzival-der-sohn-der-witwe/
Parzivals Vater ist
Gahmuret, der unstete Ritter, der vor seiner Geburt im Kampf fiel, und seine
Mutter ist dessen gramgebeugte Witwe Herzeloyde. Das Vaterhafte, also die
Elemente Feuer und Luft, lernt Parzival in seinen frühesten Kindertagen deshalb
nicht kennen. Das Fehlen der väterlichen Projektionsfläche stellt ein uraltes
Mythologem dar, das sich grundsätzlich an den Anfang eines Heldenweges stellt.
Wie der ägyptische Horus oder der freimaurerische Hiram, ist auch Parzival der
Sohn einer Witwe. Das Männliche, das Elektrische, soll im Helden in einem
derart hohen Maße angelegt sein, dass es auf der niedrigsten Vaterstufe – der
biologischen – keiner konkreten Unterweisung mehr bedarf. Auch ein schwacher,
selten anwesender, erfolgloser oder kranker Vater transportiert noch ein
Quäntchen dieser Beweggründe im Erdenleben eines Menschen. Erst die
verschiedenen Lehrer, denen Parzival später begegnet, werden ihm brauchbare
Vateressenzen verabreichen.
7.1.7
Noah's Ark, a Sphere of Interest
Irving Finkel is a great
orientalist who has read and understood the original story in the cuneiform
tablet how the god Enki prescribed the building of the "boat" that was
the source of the biblical story of the Ark of Noah. Utnapisthim was the
original builder and Noah was a biblical plagiarism. This was a version of the
Mesopotamian circular boat "Kipartu" or "Coracle". But all
the documented coracles have a maximum of 6 meters diameter. The diameter of
the Ark of Noah thing would be about 67 meters. There is a problem that Finkel
had never explained for the engineers, that a Noah's Ark with about 3600 sqm is
impossible to build with some 3-10 people at hand. One needs a few 100 people
to fell all the trees and pull them together to construct it, and then where do
you put all these few 100 people to save them from the flood? And the problems
of engineering stability of this vessel are also not addressed. Because the bigger
something gets, the more it tends to collapse under its own weight. The
construction would look like a flattened half-sphere. And with about 67 meters
diameter and the walls 7 meters high (min 17:54 in the video) it is about the
maximum one can build with the available materials of wood and reed and palm
rope (pith). The wooden ribs that stabilize the walls of such a boat must truly
have been enormous. For comparison, the HMS Victory of Nelson was about 57
meters in length and its side stabilizing ribs would be quite a bit shorter
since the beam was about 16 meters. There is also not very much room to stuff
in more than about 100 larger animals. Since the boat needed to float by itself
only when the waters rose, its stability while still on dry land would be
helped with lots of external support beams or more cheaply, with a mound of
stones and/or earth. See the video: Irving Finkel | The Ark Before Noah:
A Great Adventure. There he even shows how a crew of Indians built a scale
model of the thing for a documentary movie about the Ark of Noah.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_fkpZSnz2I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzB0v8bFidI
https://www.calculatorsoup.com/calculators/geometry-plane/circle.php
7.2
Where is the Primordial Egg?
The egg is given only a very short
chapter in Sloterdijk's Blasen, p. 328-335. It should have a more prominent
position. Because almost every other mythology tells us that the Universe came
out of an egg. Like the Eros Protogonos, who came out of a Silver Egg
in the womb of the Goddess of Night, the Nyx. See the discussion of Goethe's
Faust and Mephistopheles, whom I rather like to call Mae-Phaisto-Philaes.
http://www.noologie.de/desn08.htm#Heading23
Mit der Einführung des
Mephistopheles bringt Goethe auch die archaische Göttergeneration zur
Wieder-Auferstehung , die in der Hesiodschen Theogonie [121] (119-132) als erste aus dem Chaos entstanden
ist.
Ich bin ein Teil des Teils, der anfangs alles war, / Ein Teil der Finsternis,
die sich das Licht gebar, / Das stolze Licht, das nun der Mutter Nacht / Den
alten Rang, den Raum ihr streitig macht (1348-1352) / Des Chaos wunderlicher
Sohn (1384)
In der Szene der "Klassischen
Walpurgisnacht" verwandelt (Metamorphose) sich Mephistopheles in eine der
Ur-Meergöttinnen der Phorkyaden (7984-8033).
(Meph.) Da steh' ich schon, / Des Chaos vielgeliebter Sohn! / (Phorkyaden) Des
Chaos Töchter sind wir unbestritten / (Meph.) Man schilt mich nun, o Schmach,
Hermaphroditen. (8027-8029)
7.2.1
Mephistopheles als
Agent der Metamorphose
Diese
Stelle, der herm-aphroditaes als "Des Chaos vielgeliebter
Sohn" ist ein weiterer Schlüssel zu seiner Identität, denn in den
Orphischen Hymen ist er auch als der Protogonos,[122] der Erikepaios, der Phanes
(phaino) , and der Priapus[123] bekannt, (Orpheus 1992: 29). Der Wort-Teil -pheles, kann
sowohl in -philaes (Freund) anklingen, als auchphaeraes,
(Träger -> phos-phaeraes = Lucifer)[124], als auch phalaes ~ phallos,
also das männliche Zeugungsorgan, verweisend auf den Priapos.[125] Nach Graves (1988: 30) ist er auch der Eros,[126] der aus einem silbernen Ei geschlüpft ist, das von
Nyx (der Nacht) in den Schoß der Dunkelheit gelegt worden war, und er setzte
das Universum in Bewegung. Eros war doppel-geschlechtlich [127] und hatte goldene Flügel, er hatte vier Köpfe, mit
denen er manchmal wie ein Bulle oder ein Löwe brüllte, manchmal wie eine
Schlange zischte, und manchmal wie ein Widder blökte. Wir finden hier also
einige wesentliche Facetten dieser enigmatischen Gestalt, die uns in der
christlichen Sichtweise als derTeufel (von Diabolos[128]) bekannt ist, und die "im Anfang alles war"
(1348). Die folgende Darstellung ist, wenn man daraus die christlichen moralin-sauren
Anteile neutralisiert, eine Re-formulierung des Anaximandros-Fragments: [129]
Und das mit Recht; denn alles, was entsteht, / Ist wert, daß es zugrunde geht;
/ Drum besser wär's, daß nichts entstünde. / So ist denn alles, was ihr Sünde,
/ Zerstörung, kurz das Böse nennt, / Mein eigentliches Element.
(1335-1344)
Die fehlende Integration der essentiellen Kräfte des Vergehens, des Abbaus,
oder in heutiger Sprechweise, der Entsorgung, im abrahamitischen
Schöpfermythos ist, wie Bazon Brock darstellt, ein entscheidender Defekt der
westlichen Zivilisationen, deren kulturelle Leitthemata noch immer auf diesem
Schöpfermythos beruhen:
Brock (AGEU, 185): Der Mythos des schöpferischen
Hervorbringens ergibt aber ohne sein Pendant, die Fähigkeit etwas aus
der Welt zu bringen, die Konsequenz, daß die Welt langsam vollgestellt wird mit
all dem, was in ihr vorher nicht existent war. Das heißt, daß der Schöpfer oder
das Kollektiv der schöpferischen Menschen die Welt gerade dadurch zerstören,
daß sie ununterbrochen und immer schneller die Welt mit den Produkten ihrer
Schöpfungsfähigkeit verstellen.
Also weit davon entfernt, in der Gestalt des Mephistopheles das Ur-Böse zu
sehen, könnte man ihn sinnvoller als den Schutzpatron der
Ökologen ansehen.[130]
In (1353-1377) stellt sich Mephistopheles als die archaische Kraft des Chaos
dar, des Werdens und Vergehens, der Dynamis, der Veränderung, und der Bewegung:
"Mit Wellen, Stürmen, Schütteln, Brand", die in der heutigen
Wissenschaft das Thema der Thermodynamik und Chaostheorie ist. Mephistopheles
wird von Goethe im Faust als Agent derMetamorphose dargestellt. Die
Wandlung der Formen ist ein Prozess, der selten harmonisch und ohne Störungen
verläuft, meist aber mit Brüchen und Kämpfen, und Zerstörung alter Formen
verbunden ist. Dies verbindet den Faust-Stoff mit heutigen wissenschaftlichen Fassungen
wie der Katastrophentheorie von R. Thom. [131] Es sei daran erinnert, daß das griechische Wort tropae ursprüglich
"Umkehr, Rückkehr, Wendung, Veränderung" bedeutete, und der
Begriff en-tropia bedeutete also "Kraft, Potential zur
Veränderung".[132] Der aktuelle physikalische Gebrauch ist aber eher das
Gegenteil davon, da Entropie die Tendenz zum thermodynamischen
Gleichgewicht, also dem Wärmetod, damit den unvermeidlichen Verlust des "Potentials
zur Veränderung" bezeichnet. Eine ähnliche "Umwertung der
Worte" wurde auch schon bei der Differenz der Begriffe der energie undenergeia festgestellt. [133] Der Pakt mit Faust, und das folgende Drama entfaltet
die Entfesselung dieser archaischen Kräfte, und ihr letztliches
Sich-Selbst-Brechen im Tode. Das Wort Mephistopheles wirkt aus
seiner Klang-Multivalenz heraus als ein unaufgelöstes semantisches
Spannungsfeld, ein ursprünglicher (primordialer, archae) Attraktor,
wie bei Thom beschrieben. [134]
7.2.2
The Brave New Age of Extra-Verbal Philosophy
So, any mental imagery can be put
into a systematics. And this doesn't need to be verbal at all. It can be
pictorial, like Sloterdijk demonstrates in his "Sphären". There he
does a little double-thinking trick. While he is telling us a story in
words, he also tells us a story in images. Any Art historian worth his salary
must be versed to "think in imagery". And that is what Sloterdijk is
doing besides all his verbiage, because he is first and foremost an Art
Historian. So there is a double story in the "Sphären". And what he
does with the images, is some "Meta-Morphology" as I call it. There
is (or was) an art tradition called Anamorphosis, and mathematically this
concept is further developed in Topology.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anamorphosis
Examples of perspectival anamorphosis date to the early Renaissance (fifteenth century). The first
examples were largely related to religious themes.[3]
With mirror anamorphosis, a conical or
cylindrical mirror is placed on the drawing or
painting to transform a flat distorted image into an apparently undistorted
picture. The deformed image is created by using the laws of the angles of the incidence
of reflection. This reduces the length of the flat drawing's curves when the
image is viewed in a curved mirror, so that the distortions resolve into a
recognizable picture. Unlike perspective anamorphosis, catoptric images can be
viewed from many angles.[3]:131 The technique was originally
developed in China during the Ming Dynasty. The first European manual on
mirror anamorphosis was published around 1630 by the mathematician Vaulezard.[3]:147, 161
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anamorphism
So the mathematical and scientific
examples of "Meta-Morphology" abound everywhere, except of course in
the philosophical circles of the Intelligenzia. Because who-so-ever has the
slightest inkling of mathematical thinking would never study philosophy and
vice versa. A rare exception of that overall pattern of human intelligence and
mental specialization was Alfred North Whitehead. He was an excellent
mathematician who had produced the "Principia Mathematica" together
with Bertrand Russell. And he was also an excellent philosopher. We should also
mention the Vienna school (or circle) of philosophy which also excelled in
mathematics and philosophy. But since they were mostly Jewish or homosexual,
their fates became somewhat twisted during the Nazi era. I could only compare
the Vienna circle with some fortunate places and times like the school of
Toledo shortly after the Moorish times. This was an occasion when there was a
quite diverse assortment of scholars: Jewish, Muslim, more or less Christian
like Nestorian, Arian, and even some Chaldeans from Bhagdad, and some other
scholars of other denominations. They apparently were fruitfully working
together without any religious and ideological barriers. I like to call such a
setting the pre-condition for the forming of "Superior Intelligence".
This is just a name, but I will expound in the following chapters more what
this could mean in practice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Toledo,_Spain#Medieval_Toledo_after_the_Reconquest
Traditionally Toledo was a center of
multilingual culture and had prior importance as a center of learning and
translation, beginning in its era under Muslim rule. Numerous classical works
of ancient philosophers and scientists that had been translated into Arabic
during the Islamic
Golden Age "back east" were well
known in al-Andalus (Islamic-era Spain) ...
7.2.3
The Fates of Superior Intelligence
Maybe at some other times the
Superior Intelligence flourished also in the scholarly schools of Bhagdad, or
Alexandria, or the Nagarjuna Buddhist schools in India, and then some other
far-away and quickly destroyed blooms of Superior human intelligence. Superior
Intelligence has one deadly enemy: The Inferior Intelligence. And when those
beasts of Inferior Intelligence smell something even like the scent of Superior
Intelligence, they become very very murderous beasts indeed. One can also say:
All hell breaks loose, in a literal sense.
7.2.3.1
The Fates of the Hell-Architects
See also Sloterdijk, "Sphären
II, Globen" P. 593-611. There he also gives us some valuable insight into
the work of the first and foremost European Roman Christian Hell-Architects:
Augustinus and Dante. This is expounded on pp. 597-599. I like Peter
Sloterdijk's work most when he is concerned with the Suprematization of Evil.
Because the Suprematization of Goodness or Godness has been the subject of so
many theological master-pieces. But the Suprematization of Evil is not for the
faint-hearted, I would say. And the silly stories of the good Marquis de Sade
or even worse, of Aleister Crowley, are pretty boring, if not simply idiotic.
The Empire of Evil has nothing to do with Sexuality, nor with the Perversion of
Sexuality. It is Intellectualism of the most Superior Kind. And we can
vindicate Nietzsche quite nicely: The Superior Intelligence is not good at all.
And it is not bad either. It is "Beyond Good and Evil". And then we
have another revelation of the good Rudolf Steiner: The Superior Intelligence
is also the Coincidence of Ahura Mazda and Ahriman which is "a kind
of" Apo-Kalypsis of the Steiner fashion. Because in this Apo-Kalypsis,
these oppositional twin souls are finally re-united again. There is no
Difference between Superior Intelligence and Superior Goodness and Superior
Evil. Then we also come to Carl Orff with his quite similar theme of the
"final re- and ab-solution" of the Good Lucifer. He is also re-united
with the Good God. So everything has a happy ending, but not quite as it is
spelled out in the Hollywood movies.
7.2.3.2
The Deepest Hell is born out of the Deepest Love
And now we might find the
Suprematization of Evil among the most Holy Organizations of Wo-/Man-kind.
Because it is quite correct to the point when Sloterdijk says that the Deepest
Hell is born out of the Deepest and Purest Love: "Fecemi La Divina
Potestate, La Somma Sapienza e'l Primo Amore". I will not give away the
translation because some things should never be translated at all. La Somma
Sapienza is of course the Hagia Sophia, but in Latinized / Romanized form so
that it has become totally perverted. Therefore, some things cannot even be understood
any more in our present- day En-Darken-ment. Like Dante's poetry, and also the
poetry of Giordano Bruno. Unfortunately I have not found any reference on
Giordano Bruno in this chapter. It would have fitted perfectly there. But so it
is my task to fit it in. It is very fitting. Hell to whom Hell deserves, Fire,
Smoke, and Ashes, to whom deserves Fire and Brimstone. I like the
Suprematization of Evil so much better than the Suprematization of Goodness.
And this is only logical. There cannot be anything more good than God the
Almighty. But Badness or Evil can be suprematized endlessly. We may also turn
to some Science Fiction masterpiece by Rowan Atkinson (of all there is in the
world of Shakespearan literature). Rowan Atkinson is perfectly impersonating
Dr. Who, and he is perfectly impersonating Toby the Devil.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Do-wDPoC6GM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrwIs10XvKA
Dante (1265-1321):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante_Alighieri
Giordano Bruno (1548-Feb 17, 1600):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno
And the Suprematization of Evil is
surely one of Sloterdijk's unsurpassed masterpieces. I have found the same
argument in "Gottes Eifer" where he expresses it more clearly and
with less heavy metaphors. Anyhow, I consider "Gottes Eifer" as one
of his most stringent and logical works. I have never been able to find a
single exessive metaphor in the whole of this book. ;-) ;-) ;-)
7.2.4
The Law of Inferior Intelligence is ... Gravitation
Such was and ever will be the Law
of Intelligence. Superior Intelligence has no chance of survival, since the Law
of the Beast (666) states the opposite. This is also called the Law of Ideology
and Morality and Ethics and Law&Order. And it is always quite the same,
whether it may be called Roman Pragmatism or the Plutokratic rule, Roman
Katholik'ism, Islam(ist)ic Sunni Orthodoxy, or Nazi'ism or Communism, or
McCarthy'ism. Or even present-day Political Correctness. It is the law of the
greater and heavier masses, that acts like the Gravitation. It always seeks to
swallow it all up in its maw or Abyssos. We can therefore turn the Law of
Gravitation by Newton on its head and state that the Law of Gravitation is the
polar opposite of the Law of En-Lighten-ment. Because in this special sense we
don't talk about Light, like the Sun, but Light like a Balloon. So we can also
take up a favorite metaphor of Peter Sloterdijk in his "Spheres". I
don't know if Sloterdijk had ever thought of En-Lighten-ment in the sense of a
Light Balloon, but surely I can think that. And there is another quite curious
fact of Natural Law. When the Gravitation is strong enough, like in a Black
Hole, it will even swallow up all Light (in the sense of Photons). Hertha v.
Dechend had a very nice expression for that law. She had said: The Universe is
"diabolocentric" (P. 180-181, German edition). Interestingly the
Greek word dia-bolos means to throw apart. This is the contrary meaning
of Gravitation, which means: To pull together.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamlet%27s_Mill
https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/hamlets_mill/hamletmill.htm
https://www.physik.uni-frankfurt.de/Dechend/
https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/hamlets_mill/hamletmill_index.htm
Newton, Isaac, vi, 61, 342; as
magician, 9; and gravitation, 64-65; Age of, 68
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna_Circle
The Vienna Circle (German: Wiener Kreis) of Logical Empiricism was a group of philosophers and scientists drawn from the natural and social sciences, logic and mathematics who met regularly from 1924 to 1936
at the University of Vienna, chaired by Moritz Schlick.
The Vienna Circle's influence on 20th-century philosophy, especially philosophy of science and analytic philosophy, is immense up to the present day.
Among the members of the inner circle were Moritz Schlick, Hans Hahn, Philipp Frank, Otto Neurath, Rudolf Carnap, Herbert Feigl, Richard von Mises, Karl Menger, Kurt Gödel, Friedrich Waismann, Felix Kaufmann, Viktor Kraft and Edgar Zilsel. In addition, the Vienna Circle was
occasionally visited by Alfred Tarski, Hans Reichenbach, Carl Gustav Hempel, Willard Van Orman Quine, Ernest Nagel, Alfred Jules Ayer, Oskar Morgenstern[1] and Frank P. Ramsey.[2] Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper were in close contact to the Vienna
Circle, but never participated in the meetings of the Schlick Circle.[3][4]
The philosophical position of the Vienna Circle
was called logical empiricism (German: logischer Empirismus),
logical positivism or neopositivism. It was influenced by Ernst Mach, David Hilbert, French conventionalism (Henri Poincaré and Pierre Duhem), Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Albert Einstein. The Vienna Circle was pluralistic
and committed to the ideals of the Enlightenment. It was unified by the aim of
making philosophy scientific with the help of modern logic. Main topics were foundational
debates in the natural and social sciences, logic and mathematics; the
modernization of empiricism by modern logic; the search for an
empiricist criterion of meaning; the critique of metaphysics and the unification of the sciences
in the unity of science.[5]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principia_Mathematica
The Principia Mathematica (often
abbreviated PM) is a three-volume work on the foundations of
mathematics written by Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell and published in 1910, 1912, and
1913. In 1925–27, it appeared in a second edition with an important Introduction
to the Second Edition, an Appendix A that replaced ✸9
and all-new Appendix B and Appendix C. PM is not to be
confused with Russell's 1903 The Principles of
Mathematics. PM was originally conceived
as a sequel volume to Russell's 1903 Principles, but as PM
states, this became an unworkable suggestion for practical and philosophical
reasons: "The present work was originally intended by us to be comprised
in a second volume of Principles of Mathematics... But as we advanced,
it became increasingly evident that the subject is a very much larger one than
we had supposed; moreover on many fundamental questions which had been left
obscure and doubtful in the former work, we have now arrived at what we believe
to be satisfactory solutions."
And the movie industry has brought
all this into every child's play-station. The children of nowadays are totally
proficient in non-verbal "Meta-Morphology". They don't need to be
taught about this in the schools, by teachers who have no idea of these skills,
since they themselves are more or less fossils of a bygone age, when humanity
was used only to juggle around with words and concepts. In this perspective,
the days of verbal philosophy are gone, with the winds of change, as we could
say.
So we can
look forward into a Brave New Age of Extra-Verbal Philosophy. And
this is the Meta-Morphology of any and every mental imagery that is possible.
8 The
Meta-Morphology of Music
We have one more good example of
non-verbal "Meta-Morphology": It is called music. This was elucidated
in my article on the mythology of Wagner and some deeper roots of that.
http://www.noologie.de/wagner.htm
http://www.noologie.de/wagner.pdf
This has also been mentioned by Claude Levi-Strauss in "Myth and
Meaning", in the chapter "Myth and Music".
http://historiaocharkeologi.com/kanada/myth_and_meaning.pdf
It is quite simple. Verbal Language
and Music are incommensurable. Music cannot be translated into verbal language.
As countless music theorists and music critics have tried and failed again and
again through the ages, especially in modern times. And music can be
"understood" in a way just by hearing it. And it also needs no formal
notation, like written music. It is a "matter" of the somatic memory
of humanity, and certain gifted people can hear some music and reproduce it
faithfully on an instrument. But almost everyone can hear and reproduce a
rhythm quite instantaneously. The origin of written music is quite the same as
the origin of mathematics, since both co-existed in the combined
Musico-Cosmology-Mathematics of ancient Sumer, Babylon, Persia, and ancient
India. I have written more about this in my article on Wagner. In a more
general terminology, this proto-science was also called Chaldaean. And Platon
makes some reference to that in his Timaios. The work of Ernest McClain is
quite outstanding in this field because it gives a numerical "key" to
that ancient kind of Mental Imagery. There are very few present-day writers who
have the knowledge and especially the mental capacity to synthesize these quite
disjunct fields of present-day musicology, mathematics and astronomy. And so
this synthesis is always regarded as quite speculative in the views of those
sciences. The good thing about music is that it was created and transmitted
throughout the ages by hearing and learning-by-doing, for at least the whole
period of Paleo-humanity which covers at least 1 million years. I know of the
Paleo-history of musical instruments of the most astonishing sorts. For example
the curious fact that there exist enormous lithophones every-where on planet
Earth. And this is nothing esoteric. About every unbroken large rock formation
also has its resonant sonic characteristic. This kind of lithophonics is quite
similar to the bronze church bells in terms of resonance frequencies. One needs
just a quite large enough stick to hit it with and it produces a sound. So one
can make music with those huge stones. The Menhirs of Asterix and Obelix fame
were also musical instruments of sorts. This is just something that not very
many people know about in our modern times. There are so many esoteric stories
about these Menhirs, but the simplest explanation has eluded most of the
esoterics fans. They are most likely musical instruments. Only Marius Schneider
had written a little bit here and there. See my article about Wagner and the
mythology behind his works.
How to play an ancient rock gong
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rq0DjwSZzkc
Stone Age musical tools to make debute at French Orchestra anniversary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEtFewAtzsU
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithophone
This is how the Vietnamese
Lithophone sounds:
Caveman xylophone played once again:
https://www.bangkokpost.com/print/402040/
There is an interesting article in
Aeon where we can find some more "food for thought". The discussion
is mainly on the subject of "Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
(1979) by Douglas Hofstadter". But there is some sideline discussion why
this is also about a musical philosophy, since the visual examples given are
drawn from the science of fractals. And fractals are just another way of doing non-verbal
philosophy or better Meta-Morphology.
https://aeon.co/essays/what-the-music-of-bach-can-teach-us-about-consciousness
Music is full of recursion, though. Schenkerian
analysis – one of the dominant theoretical frameworks for tonal music (since
before GEB was published) – deals with
hierarchical harmonic structures that follow similar principles from the
deepest levels to the surface. Other musical parameters, such as rhythm,
exhibit recursion too. It would be easy to come up with any number of better
examples than key changes in a random gigue. On the other hand, as GEB takes pains to demonstrate,
recursion is everywhere: in plants, computer code, quantum particles, human
languages. So whence the ‘B’?
More than anything, Bach’s name in the title
represents a missed opportunity: his music could, in fact, beautifully serve
the role that Hofstadter wanted to assign it. Beyond its relevance to
recursion, it can help us think about the book’s biggest underlying subject
matter, that of meaning – though it might lead us to a very different
perspective from the one Hofstadter intended.
Isomorphism,
another important theme of the book, means similarity of form – the kind you
could observe by, say, mapping the human anatomy onto another animal. Take the
opening Kyrie from Palestrina’s Missa Brevis and the exposition of Bach’s Fugue
in D Major from The Well-Tempered Clavier II:
[AG: See or better hear the article
for the demonstration]
On
the surface, the similarities are obvious. Both works have four voices. Both
employ imitative counterpoint: each voice, temporally staggered, begins with
the same theme. Even the registral distances between the theme entries are
similar.
A
much less obvious correspondence takes place between the very beginning of
Bach’s fugue and the tailend of Palestrina’s Kyrie. From a superficial,
isomorphic point of view, these two moments couldn’t be less alike. The first
one, an opening statement, introduces the theme: a single line with no harmony.
The second, a concluding cadence, has all four voices at play – and for the
first and only time, just seconds before the music ends, we no longer hear
Palestrina’s theme in any of them.
As
it happens, though, this latter progression of harmonies is embedded in Bach’s
single melody:
[AG: See or better hear the article
for the demonstration]
A
major characteristic of the earlier Renaissance music is that the thinking
behind it is primarily linear: the elegance of the individual melodic lines
matters most, while the resulting harmonic progressions are less significant. A
couple of hundred years lapsed between these two highpoints of counterpoint,
during which our culture turned its collective attention from the horizontal
dimension (melodies) to the vertical (harmonies). In the interim period, music
was largely homophonic – consisting of one primary melodic line and
accompaniment – and gradually, a syntax emerged to govern the accompanying
chords. The resulting idiom is known as functional tonality, which dominated
Western music until the beginning of the previous century. Styles as dissimilar
as those of Bach and Mahler follow the same fundamental principles.
A
cadence is, by definition, a conclusive moment: a phrase ending in which the
harmonies exhibit a heightened sense of direction. In a cadence, the chords’
‘gravitational pull’ leads back to the stasis of the central chord (known as
the tonic). In the early Baroque period, the new harmonic syntax came about
from an effort to sustain this feeling of harmonic drive throughout the music,
with a set of principles that dictate which chords can be followed or preceded
by which other chords.
Bach
never wrote about music theory or compositional technique, but he was aware of
this development; we know this from (among others) one particularly devoted
student, Johann Kirnberger, a noted German composer and theorist in his own
right. Whereas in previous times the study of counterpoint started out with
composing a single line, proceeding to two-, then three- and four-part writing,
this practice was almost entirely reversed with the advent of 18th-century
polyphony. Kirnberger, following in the footsteps of his great teacher, writes:
It
is best to begin with four-part counterpoint because it is hardly possible to
write in two or three parts perfectly until four-part writing has been mastered.
For since the complete harmony is in four parts, something must always be
missing in two- and three-part works. [emphasis mine]
Or,
as the Danish musicologist Knud Jeppesen puts it in his seminal work
Counterpoint (1931): ‘Kirnberger no longer begins with the line, as did his
predecessors, but with the chord; and yet, he wants polyphony.’
As a
result, Bach’s music has a very complex – and recursive – relationship to its
predecessors: one type of polyphony gave rise to a novel way of treating chords,
and from the resulting harmonic grammar, a wholly new way of writing melodies
emerged. And yet the resulting counterpoint seems, on its surface, deceptively
similar to the older kind. Just as you can see a fern’s shape in a single
individual leaf, you can hear counterpoint in just one line of Bach.
8.1.1
Music and the Brain
Music has a crucial difference from
verbal thinking, because the verbal mInd is located in the rational processor
of the brain. Music is, so to say a philosophy of the soul. So it should reside
in the dream-time processor or the emotional processor. In Antiquity and in
far-far away cultures the people understood this quite well. There was no Elvis
Presley, nor a Michael Jackson, nor a Madonna, nor anything like our
present-day pop culture heroes. No one would have thought of such an insanity.
There the music was embedded in a system of Imagination-Perception, which is
not Reality as we know of it today, but it was also a Sort- Of- Dreamtime. And
it was a communal affair, where everyone was partaking in the Ritual in some
way or another. A good example for this are the Gamelan Orchestras in the
Indonesian archipelago region, like Bali. And the people would gather there
very often, maybe every couple of days, and play. Even the smaller children partook
in the event, and so the Music had percolated into their very veins and brains.
This is also known as the somatic memory, which is not verbal but tuned to the
rhythms of the body, of the community, and the spiritual world, and the stars
of the cosmos, which is the same. Everyone there was a sort of master musician.
The Gamelan rhythms are among the most complicated since they are polyrhythmic
to the extreme. And by the magic of the music, they did some other very
important communal events, like building immense waterworks and rice terraces
and even tunneling through whole mountains to get at the water. And it was
possible because the music and rhythm gave them the community spirit, and they
needed no supervisors at all. Because of their music, they could as well
coordinate all communal business. Then we come to the ritual festivities of the
seasons, the planting and harvesting, and then some more. But there was also
war, and even the Bali people had been fierce warriors. There is this story
when a whole clan with all their warriors and wives who went to the beach one
day, when some Dutch force landed. And when the Balinesians realized that they
had no chance against the Dutch muskets, they committed wholesale suicide right
there on the beach. This is a pretty tall story about the Balinesians who were
thought of as quite peaceful people by many western anthropologists. As we can
see in the video of the Ketjak, there is one communal elder who gives the
signal to start all the movements. He is distinguished by his Brahmin Marks on
the Forehead. But he is not a conductor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamelan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balinese_dance
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kris
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCUdEnGvYFk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkxuPxdsZ58&list=PLC26FD39F9B2DD700
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSCx3MxRjUE&list=PLC26FD39F9B2DD700&index=5
This is the story of the mass
suicide of a Balinese group:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Bali
- Northern_Bali_campaigns_(1846-49)
A series of three military expeditions occurred
between 1846 and 1849; the first two were initially countered successfully
by Jelantik. The
"kingdoms of Buleleng and Bangli waged
continuous disputes, and in 1849 Bangli assisted the Dutch in their military
expedition against Buleleng",[36] permitted
the Dutch to take control of the northern Bali kingdoms of Buleleng and Jembrana.[37] The
king of Buleleng and his retinue killed themselves in a mass ritual suicide,
called a puputan,
which was also a hallmark of the subsequent Dutch military interventions.[34]
Hans Hägerdal, War and culture:
Balinese and Sasak views on warfare in traditional historiography
South East Asia Research
Vol. 12, No. 1, Special Issue:
Warfare In Early Modern South East Asia (March 2004), Pp. 81-118
https://www.jstor.org/stable/23750288?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
The next tall story about the
"romantic" tribal life was by Margret Mead: "Coming of Age in
Samoa". This was about as fabulous a story as that of the good Carlos
Castaneda who had earned his master's degree in anthropology with "The Teachings of Don Juan". This was
probably the greatest hoax in all the history of anthropology. Of course, Margret Mead didn't intend it as a hoax, she just literally believed the
imaginative stories of her informers, the young Samoan girls. These stories
were of about the same class of romance literature as the Troubadour literature
of medieval Europe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coming_of_Age_in_Samoa
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubadour
Here is some material about Carlos
Castaneda's work.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Castaneda
Starting with The Teachings of Don
Juan in 1968, Castaneda wrote a series
of books that describe his training in shamanism, particularly with a group whose
lineage descended from the Toltecs. The books, narrated in the first person, relate his experiences under the
tutelage of a man that Castaneda claimed was a Yaqui "Man of Knowledge" named don Juan Matus. His 12 books have sold more than
28 million copies in 17 languages. Critics have suggested that they are works
of fiction; supporters claim the books are either true or at least valuable
works of philosophy.
And so we may state that the more
ancient (paleo-) societies were heavily influenced by their cosmology and also
their musicology, which was pretty much the same. This is what is also called
Ritual Cosmology, that is the Inner Unison of the revolving of the stars and
the sky with our inner reality. I am doing something like this in the present
article. It is the (not-so) science of dance and music as it is reflected in
the spiritual cosmology. In a later passage I will reference to the cosmology
of the Incas, which may be the best example of this, before the Spaniards
exterminated them. So poor Westerners, you have completely forgotten all of
this and you have lost your souls. And there is no Church to give it to you.
You must do your own work to gain your own soul. Even if this work consists of
Music, Singing and Dancing. The soul is the anima, and anima means animated,
like in Breathing. Animus is the Breath, or Ruach in Hebrew. The Spiritus is
also the Breath, like in As-Spiration and In-Spiration.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQFlbqnvUqU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abQY9W7fCl8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUMIpXxwvmA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJF1YJftZD8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abQY9W7fCl8&list=RDabQY9W7fCl8&index=1
8.1.2
The Egyptian Pyramid Building in Wagner Opera Style
Here is a little informed
speculation on some alternative ways the ancient Egyptians could have built
their pyramids. In the very long deep history of Egypt, spanning at least 3000
years, but possibly 5000 years, such a scenario could have played out, even
though there will probably never be any archeological evidence for this. So we
may speculate that something like a Gamelan orchestra or similar was also going
on in ancient Egypt. Even if this was an undertaking a few orders of magnitude
heavier than what the ancient Indonesians and Balinesians did, their villages
in the whole area would not have exceeded 1000 able men. This would not have
been enough man-power to build a pyramid. So the Egyptians had to manage a huge
work force of about 10.000 - 30.000 men, for this you need supervisors or
higher management, a few echelons deep, like when you subdivide an army into
platoons, or the Roman army into 8 men Contubernia, then higher up to Centuria,
up to the Legion. Since for a task like this you need supervisors just like you
need the echelons of officers in the army. And it is not only the commanding
but more importantly it is the organization of the infrastructure or logistics
as they call it in the military. So you have to have supervisors for all those
supervisors... and it adds up to a hierarchy of supervisors. But the workers at
the base were not slaves. They were well fed and supported with some amenities
of life, as the archeologists discovered when they dug out some of those
workers' camps. So what kind of work force was this? I now come to the
community spirit of the ancient Egyptians. The spirit was pretty much the same
as I mentioned above in the Gamelan communities. These workers had the same
community spirit. So they also did a lot of singing. Because every work gang,
on every sailing ship had their work songs, to unite them in the community
spirit. And you can be pretty sure that for every work gang of about 300 men,
there might have been an orchestra, with heavy drums, cymbals and something of
that kind, that supported the troops with enough entertainment. Because it says
in the Bible: Man doesn't live by bread alone. (Matth 4:4).
https://biblehub.com/matthew/4-4.htm
There always must be some
entertainment. We can be pretty sure that the ancient Egyptians knew that very
well. And so you can just imagine the whole Pyramid Building Theater like a
gigantic opera by Wagner, except that the workers did the singing themselves. I
know this, because the same techniques were employed by the Ottoman armies.
They had huge drums, about 1.5 meter in diameter, carried on camels, cymbals
and other Gong-like instruments similar to the Gamelan orchestra, to give some
entertainment, while the army was busy doing their job of warfare. I also have
some recordings of Janissary music so I know pretty well what that sounded
like. And to give you some more food for thought. The genius of Verdi had done
a chorus in Nabucco - Hebrew Slaves Chorus. This
was a pretty sad theme. But you can translate this into Wagner, and then you
get something in the same vein, but to the opposite effect. It is a pure
narcoticum. Wagner knew very well what it takes to awake sleepy warriors to do
their business. So we get the same effect when we look at the Ottoman armies. And then back to the ancient Egyptians. So I have done
some Neurolinguistic Reframing of what the work at those Pyramids was like. I
like this much better than those poor wretched slaves toiling under whip
lashes, as we see it in all those movies. See also:
http://www.noologie.de/wagner1.htm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2F4G5H_TTvU
Wagner Walkürenritt.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGU1P6lBW6Q
8.1.3
Carmina Burana by Carl Orff
Equally good for this purpose are
the Carmina Burana by Carl Orff. Because the Carmina Burana are, when we
translate this from Latin... These are the work songs of the peasants, or
agriculturists, as they go about their communal business of ploughing, sowing,
and harvesting. This was all communal business before the days of Private
Property. In those olden days, the land was the Commons. And it belonged to
no-one in particular, but it belonged to the community. Same procedure as in
Bali of the olden times. No-one in his right mInd would have thought about such
an insanity as Private Property. So the Carmina Burana are one of the best
acoustic depictions, what the business of work songs was, in those olden days.
And so we can back-track this to Ancient Egypt, because the business of singing
in Chorus was always the same. And those people didn't have to train this art.
It came natural to them. They imbibed this with the Mother's Milk, so to say.
This was the Somatic Memory of the Olden Times. Now completely forgotten on the
waste heap of forgotten memories of hu-mankind. I have just a few bits and
pieces in my own mInd. To preserve what can be perserved.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXFSK0ogeg4&list=RDXRU1AJsXN1g&start_radio=1
8.1.4
The Pyramid and the Community Spirit of Egypt
Now we get to something even more
esoteric. Because in the pyramid, the community spirit of the whole of Egypt
was represented. They didn't build it for the person of the Pharao, but the
Pharao was just the carrier of the community spirit of the whole of Egypt, and
it was his task to bring that community spirit to the stars, or the gods,
because at those times, the stars and the gods were the same. You just have to
read a little bit of Hertha v. Dechend to get on the right track. So all the
Egyptians partook equally in the ritual of ascending to their version of Heaven
which was as different as possible from the Christian Heaven. This is what the
study of Archaeo-Astronomy is for, and why it is so valuable. The ancient
Heaven was identical with the stars, but the stars were spirits that are
luminous. It is so much a pity that present- day humanity has no idea
whatsoever that means. The Sky and the Stars are the spiritual Heavens of
ancient Humanity. And you did your best to ascend to it. Because it gave you
immortality in the literal sense. So those people didn't fear death, because
they knew the tricks how to do this business of ascending. So now we are ready
to read the whole mythology of the Egyptians and the Inca's in a totally new,
and a totally ancient way again.
This is what I have said at another
place in this work:
Peri Pe{/i}ras{i/eo}s: The Journey into, and Beyond, the Boundaries of the Time: Please allow
me to introduce myself, I am a man of mnaemae and phrenae, Mnaemo is my name,
and peirasis is my game.
http://www.noologie.de/noo205.htm#Heading134
8.1.5
Death-Consciousness
Back to Reality, or what we call Death-Consciousness. The Ancient Greeks
knew this. They said: A Hero'es Death comes better sooner, than later because
he can now ascend to the Gods. When he is a fresh fruit like on the orchard
tree (of knowledge, of course). A fresh fruit is better for the Nuriture of the
Gods, than a rotten Apple. My most cherished hero ist Achilleus.
http://www.noologie.de/wagner1.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_the_Great
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Alexander_the_Great
The death of
Alexander the Great and subsequent related events have been the subjects of
debates. According to a Babylonian astronomical diary, Alexander died between
the evening of June 10 and the evening of June 11, 323 BC,[1] at the age of
thirty-two. This happened in the palace of Nebuchadnezzar II in Babylon.
Macedonians and
local residents wept at the news of the death, while Achaemenid subjects shaved
their heads.[2] The mother of Darius III, Sisygambis, having learned of
Alexander's death, refused sustenance and died a few days later.[3] Historians
vary in their assessments of primary sources about Alexander's death, which
results in different views.
8.1.6
The
Love of Death and the Anti-Hero
My favorite Anti-Hero is the Siegfried von des Wagner's Gnaden. I don't
know what Wagner had in mind when he concocted the personae of Siegfried and
Wotan. One could keep a whole team of Psycho-Analysts busy just figuring out
why Wagner had made these characters so stupid. I have written a little bit
about this in my work on the Mythologies in the Ring. It all doesn't fit
together, as I had hinted at in the article. First, because Siegfried was a
Wälsung, being the son of Siegmund and Sieglinde who were the first Wälsungen.
Now Wälsung means wolf-son or wolf-man. And if I may say so, wolves are very
intelligent animals, much more intelligent than dogs. They must be, because
they have no-one who gives them their daily meal. They have to do the business
of hunting for their food themselves. And that just makes everyone intelligent.
They are also immensely cooperative in the pack. And they have a very strict
hierarchy, but they also have elaborate appeasing rituals. These are much more
elaborate than those of the Baboons, who just groom each other, which is also
an appeasing ritual. Also the wolves' methods of care for their young are very
elaborate. So they must be very high on the intelligence scale. I know quite a
bit about wolf psychology, because I have studied this also. But here is just
not the context to enlarge on this. Coming back to Siegfried. He was quite
intelligent when he hammered together this broken sword Nothung, also when he
killed Mime his adoption not-so father. He was also quite intelligent when he
slew the dragon. But when he came to the court of the Gibichungen he had lost
all his intelligence. It just doesn't compute, I would say so since I am very
aware of the Logics behind Wagner's scheming. Perhaps Wagner had something very
sinister on his mind. Maybe he wanted to take his revenge on the Germans who
had treated him so badly during the failed revolution of 1848. If that was on his
mind, he succeeded perfectly. Because of Kaiser Willi & Co., WWI, and then
Hitler & Co., WWII. And then, and you will surely believe me: The madame
Merkel goes every year to the Walhalla Bayreuth Opern Festspiel-Haus, to get a
very heavy dose of Illusion. This just proves the point. After two Untergänge
of Germany this was not enough Untergang. We are now in for Untergang #3. This
is quite a feat indeed. The black magick of Wagner still does its work and has
poisoned and corrupted the whole last 7-10 generations of Germans down to the
roots. Congratulation, Wagner. You succeeded in your revenge! Now a little
aside to Wotan. He was presumably the God of Wisdom who drank from the spring
of Ymir at the roots of the tree Yggdrasil, which is the tree of life. He gave
an eye for the wisdom. It is quite out of thinking range that the real god
Wotan was so stupid in Reality as he was depicted in the Ring. Something
doesn't compute here either. When I have enough time, sometime I will make my
own Psycho-Anal(ysis) in the Freudian manner. Or better even in my own manner.
Wagner's Ring is very good material when you want to get to some very deep and
dirty matters of the Unconscious. Especially about the sexual relations of all
those characters in the Ring, who should all go a few years or so to the
Sexual-Trauma Therapist. There is not ONE functioning sexual relationship in
the whole of the Ring.
http://www.noologie.de/wagner1.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_and_Revolution
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siegfried_(opera)
Here is some more on Wolf Intelligence:
Die Kooperation von Mensch- und Wolfs-Gemeinschaften, in den Ur-Ur-Zeiten des Pleistozänen Schlar-Affenlandes.
http://www.noologie.de/neuro08.htm
9 The Essence of
the Spiritual Movement Gestalt or Kata
The Essence of the spritual
Movement Gestalt or Kata, is the same principle as the "Wax in Gold"
Technique. Because the Movement Gestalt is the Wax, and the Spiritual
Experience is the Gold. By this, we have overcome this otherwise rather
misunderstanding idea that the Wax should be inferior to the Gold, before ist
is melted out before casting the Gold. Here both are complementary in the
Spritual Practice, because the Wax represents the Body, and the Gold represents
the Spiritual Experience. I am careful not to use the German Term of
"Geist" or "Mind" in the Hegelian sense, because this is
the most fundamental mis-understanding of the Dualistic Abrahamic religions. I
will refer to this later in the Chapter on Korvin-Krasinski.
9.1
Die Mythische Tradition der Heilsbringer- und
Kultur-Heroen
Im
Christentum und Islam wird die Heilsgeschichte als historisches Faktum
interpretiert. Etwas weniger im Judentum, aber auch dort werden die Geschichten
von Moses und dem Exodus, sowie die Könige David und Saul und Salomon und ihre
Taten und Schicksale als historische Fakten interpretiert. Während dort also
die Heilsgeschichte auf bestimmte Personen und Ereignisse projiziert wird
(Salomon, Christus, Mohammed, Messias), findet die Metamorphologie
mythologische Strömungen der entsprechenden Zeitalter, die in einer Kulturellen
Zone (bei Frobenius auch Kulturkreis genannt, also mehr als eine ethnische
Bevölkerungsgruppe) verbreitet waren, und die geeigneterweise in dem
Heilsbringer (Griechisch: Soter) personifiziert wurden. Wie schon gesagt, nach
der Methode der morphologischen Spannungsfelder werden beide Versionen als gleichwertig,
nicht oppositional, sondern komplementär behandelt. Wie oben schon einmal
gesagt, ist diese Sichtweise berechtigt, weil die Strömungen des kollektiven
Un(-ter)bewussten die Geschichte entscheidend beeinflussten. Z.b. die
Vergötterung von Alexander, oder auch die Mythen der Inka, die aufgrund ihrer
Mythologie ihren Untergang genau voraus gesagt hatten, und gegen diese Macht
des Schicksals konnten sie sich nicht auflehnen. Das ist die Macht des Mythos,
als bestes Beispiel in der Menschheits-Geschichte. Die vergleichende Mythologie
(oder im vorliegenden Kontext: Die Morphologie der Mythologie) betrachtet die
Mythologie sowie die Religionen "Sub Specie AEternitatis", also von
einem übergeordneten Standpunkt. In dieser Sichtweise ist auch keine Mythologie
"besser" oder "entwickelter" als eine andere, sondern sie
entsteht aus den Gegebenheiten der entsprechenden Zeitalter und der
entsprechenden Kulturellen Zone. Deshalb ähneln sich viele Mythologien weltweit
und auf allen Kontinenten, immer wieder frappierend. Hier gibt es einige
Beispiele dazu:
Finding
the Mountain of Moses: The Real Mount Sinai in Saudi Arabia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjrxHqNy5CQ
Vor
allem die weltweiten Kulturvergleiche von Hertha v. Dechend (Hamlet's Mill).
https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/hamlets_mill/hamletmill.htm
Die Mythischen Motive
wiederholen sich, nur von einer etwas anderen Perspektive gesehen. Dazu
hat auch Joseph Campbell, im Gefolge von C.G. Jung, viel geschrieben. Wie schon
erwähnt, ist die Arbeit von Thomas Immoos ebenfalls von C.G. Jung beeinflusst,
so dass sich hier auch viele Parallelen finden lassen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Campbell
https://www.jcf.org/about-joseph-campbell/
http://mythosandlogos.com/Campbell.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Faces
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Zimmer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soter
Soter derives from the Greek epithet (soter), meaning
a saviour, a deliverer; initial capitalised SOTER...
Soter has been used as:
as a title of gods: Poseidon Soter, Zeus Soter,
Dionysus Soter, Apollo Soter, Athena Soteria, Asclepius Soteri, and Hecate
Soteria.
as the name of a distinct mythical figure, Soter
(daimon)
any heroized or deified leaders of Hellenistic
dynasties...
Die
mythische Tradition der Heilsbringer- und Kultur-Heroen ist uralt und weltweit
verbreitet, sie findet sich im Alten Ägypten unter den Namen Isis, Osiris, und
deren Sohn Horus. Von dort ist uns das Thema der (Jung-) Frau mit dem Kinde als
Isis und Horus bekannt. Und bei den Pharaonen war es sowieso "Business as
Usual", dass sie die Söhne eines Gottes waren. Das soll nicht bedeuten,
dass die Christen das von Ägypten "abgekupfert" haben. Sondern dass
gewisse mythologische Themen universell verbreitet sind. Ebenso weltweit
verbreitet sind die Mythologien der Auf-Opferungen der Heilsbringer bzw. der
Kultur-Heroen, für das bessere Wohl der Menschheit. Manchmal taten das die
Kultur-Heroen freiwillig und opferten sich, oder sie wurden geopfert, wie es
etwa bei dem 1-Jahres-König vorkam, der für Ein Jahr der König war, und dann am
Ende dieses Jahres rituell geopfert wurde. Der Mithras-Kult der Antike ist
ebenfalls ein gutes Beispiel in dem Umkreis. Und noch früher, gab es die Mythen
des Dionysos und des Orpheus. Ebenso gibt es die Heilsbringer in reicher Anzahl
in Indien, wo sie als Avatare bezeichnet werden. Eben als die Inkarnation
eines Welten-Zeit-Gottes. Der Tod Krishna's (das klingt schon so ähnlich
wie Christos) bezeichnet den Beginn des heute herrschenden Weltalters, des Kali
Yuga.
Zu
Dionysos:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dionysus
9.1.1
Der Mithras-Kult:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithraism
Mithraism,
also known as the Mithraic mysteries, was a mystery religion centered on the god Mithras
that was practiced in the Roman Empire from about the 1st to the 4th
century CE. The religion was inspired by Iranian worship of the god Mithra, though the Greek Mithras
was linked to a new and distinctive imagery, and the level of continuity
between Persian and Greco-Roman practice is debated.[1] The mysteries were popular among
the Roman military.[2]
Worshippers
of Mithras had a complex system of seven grades of initiation and communal ritual meals.
Initiates called themselves syndexioi, those "united by the
handshake".[3] They met in underground temples, now called mithraea
(singular mithraeum), which survive in large numbers.
The cult appears to have had its centre in Rome,[4] and was popular throughout the western half of the empire, as far south as Roman Africa and Numidia, as far north as Roman Britain,[5] and to a lesser extent in Roman Syria in the east.[4]
Mithraism
is viewed as a rival of early Christianity.[6] In the 4th century, Mithraists
faced persecution from Roman Christians and the religion was subsequently
suppressed and eliminated in the empire by the end of the century.[7]
Numerous
archaeological finds, including meeting places, monuments and artifacts, have
contributed to modern knowledge about Mithraism throughout the Roman Empire.[8] The iconic scenes of Mithras show him being born from
a rock, slaughtering a bull, and sharing a banquet with the god Sol (the Sun). About 420 sites have
yielded materials related to the cult. Among the items found are about 1000
inscriptions, 700 examples of the bull-killing scene (tauroctony), and about 400 other monuments.[9] It has been estimated that there
would have been at least 680 mithraea in Rome.[10] No written narratives or theology
from the religion survive; limited information can be derived from the
inscriptions and brief or passing references in Greek and Latin literature. Interpretation of the physical
evidence remains problematic and contested.[11]
9.1.2
The
1-Year King:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_king
He came into being in the spring, reigned during the
summer, and ritually died at harvest time, only to be reborn at the winter solstice to wax and
rule again. The spirit of vegetation was therefore a "dying and reviving god". Osiris, Adonis, Dionysus, Attis and many
other familiar figures from Greek mythology and classical antiquity were re-interpreted in
this mold. The sacred king, the human embodiment of the dying and reviving
vegetation god, was supposed to have originally been an individual chosen to
rule for a time, but whose fate was to suffer as a sacrifice, to be offered
back to the earth so that a new king could rule for a time in his stead.
9.1.3 The Dying and Rising Deity:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dying-and-rising_deity
A dying-and-rising, death-rebirth,
or resurrection deity is a religious motif in which a god or goddess dies
and is resurrected.[1][2][3][4] "Death or
departure of the gods" is motif A192 in Stith Thompson's Motif-Index
of Folk-Literature (1932), while "resurrection of
gods" is motif A193.[5]
Examples of gods who die and later return to
life are most often cited from the religions
of the Ancient Near East, and traditions influenced by them
include Biblical and Greco-Roman
mythology and by extension Christianity. The concept of a dying-and-rising
god was first proposed in comparative
mythology by James Frazer's seminal The Golden Bough (1890). Frazer associated the
motif with fertility rites surrounding the yearly cycle of
vegetation. Frazer cited the examples of Osiris, Tammuz, Adonis and Attis, Dionysus and Jesus
Christ.[6]
Frazer's interpretation of the category has been critically discussed in 20th-century scholarship,[7] to the conclusion that many examples from the world's mythologies included under "dying and rising" should only be considered "dying" but not "rising", and that the genuine dying-and-rising god is a characteristic feature of Ancient Near Eastern mythologies and the derived mystery cults of Late Antiquity.[8]
9.1.4
Die
Figur of Jesus Christus in der vergleichenden Mythologie
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_in_comparative_mythology
The study of Jesus in comparative
mythology is the examination of the narratives of the life of Jesus in the Christian gospels, traditions and theology, as they relate to Christianity and other religions. Although
virtually all New Testament scholars and historians of the ancient Near East agree that Jesus
existed as a historical figure,[1][2][3][4][nb 1][nb 2][nb 3][nb 4][nb 5] most secular historians also
agree that the gospels contain large quantities of ahistorical legendary details mixed in with
historical information about Jesus's life.[10] The Synoptic Gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke are heavily shaped by Jewish
tradition, with the Gospel of Matthew deliberately portraying Jesus as a
"new Moses".[11] Although it is highly unlikely
that the authors of the Synoptic Gospels directly based any of their stories on
pagan mythology,[12] it is possible that they may
have subtly shaped their accounts of Jesus's
healing miracles to resemble familiar Greek stories about
miracles associated with Asclepius, the god of healing and medicine.[13][14] The birth narratives of Matthew and Luke are
usually seen by secular historians as legends designed to fulfill Jewish
expectations about the Messiah.[15]
The Gospel of John bears indirect influences
from Platonism, via earlier Jewish
deuterocanonical texts, and may also have been influenced in less obvious ways
by the cult of Dionysus, the Greek god of wine, though this
possibility is still disputed.[16] Later Christian
traditions about Jesus were probably influenced by Greco-Roman
religion and mythology. Much of Jesus's
traditional iconography is apparently derived from Mediterranean
deities such as Hermes, Asclepius, Serapis, and Zeus and his traditional birthdate on 25 December, which was not declared as such
until the fifth century, was at one point named a holiday in honor of the Roman
sun god Sol Invictus. At around the same time
Christianity was expanding in the second and third centuries, the Mithraic Cult was also flourishing. Though
the relationship between the two religions is still under dispute, Christian
apologists at the time noted similarities between
them, which some scholars have taken as evidence of borrowing, but which are
more likely a result of shared cultural environment. More general comparisons
have also been made between the stories about Jesus's birth and resurrection
and stories of other divine or heroic figures from across the Mediterranean
world, including supposed "dying-and-rising
gods" such as Tammuz, Adonis, Attis, and Osiris, while the concept of
"dying-and-rising gods" has received criticism.
Es gibt in The Daily Beast eine Diskussion über:
"Jesus
v. Apollonius: The Ancient Debate Over the Real Son of God".
Diese beleuchtet auch den Umstand, dass Göttliche Personen in der Spät-Antike in reichlicher Anzahl vorkamen. Auch in späteren Zeiten wurde den Königen zumindestens eine Wunderkraft zugetraut. Auch wenn sie nur noch Könige von Gottes Gnaden waren.
The
answer as to how many claimed to be the real son of God: more than you would
think.
Die Autorin beruft sich darin spezifisch auf die Arbeiten von Richard August Reitzenstein:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_August_Reitzenstein
10
Die Mystische Religion und der Tanz
Auf den ersten Anschein haben das Christentum und das Japanische Shinto wenig, oder auch gar nichts gemein. Shinto wird allgemein verstanden als ein animistisches polytheistisches Kult- und Ritual-System, während die Abrahamitischen Religionen, also eingeschlossen das Christentum, hauptsächlich auf dem geschriebenen Wort als die Offenbarung eines monotheistischen Gottes beruhen. Die monotheistische Heilslehre beruht wesentlich auf der Annahme, dass der Monotheistische Gott am Ende aller Zeiten (im Eschaton) die Gerechten in sein Ewiges Himmelreich führt, und dass sie in einer Region der Glückseligkeit, dem Himmel, ausserhalb der Zeiten, wie die Engel, Gott beiwohnen können. Und Halleluja singen können. Allerdings gibt es in allen Abrahamitischen Religionen auch die mystischen Strömungen, die aber von den offiziellen Kirchen / dem institutionalisierten Klerus, eher negiert und unterdrückt werden oder wurden. Siehe hier die Sufis im Islam, viele jüdische mystische Strömungen, wie die Chassidim, Baal Shem Tov, und im Christentum diverse Vertreter der Unio Mystica, wie Meister Eckart und Jakob Böhme. Das "Problem" der Mystiker im Verhältnis zu den institutionellen Kirchen ist, dass die Mystiker etwas versuchen, was dem offiziellen Kanon widerspricht: Das Seelenheil wird nach offizieller Darstellung nur durch Gott selber und in seinem End-Zeit-Gericht (dem Eschaton) zugemessen. (Siehe dazu Augustinus und Martin Luther). Wenn ein Mensch sich selber aus eigenem Bemühen (Siehe Goethe, Faust: Wer immer strebend sich bemüht, den können wir erlösen) eine Gottes-Erfahrung verschaffen will, ist das schon sehr nahe an der Häresie.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faust._Der_Trag%C3%B6die_zweiter_Teil
https://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/der-tragodie-zweiter-teil-3645/63
Gerettet ist das edle Glied [AG: Goethe meinte sicher das männliche]
Der Geisterwelt vom Bösen,
Wer immer strebend sich bemüht,
Den können wir erlösen.
Und hat an ihm die Liebe gar
Von oben teilgenommen,
Begegnet ihm die selige Schar
Mit herzlichem Willkommen.
https://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/der-tragodie-zweiter-teil-3645/64
Chorus mysticus
Alles Vergängliche
Ist nur ein Gleichnis;
Das Unzulängliche,
Hier wird's Ereignis;
Das Unbeschreibliche,
Hier ist's getan;
Das Ewig-Weibliche
Zieht uns hinan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baal_Shem_Tov
Die mystischen Traditionen suchen ein Erlebnis der Transzendenz in ihrer Lebenszeit.
http://www.bibel-glaube.de/handbuch_orientierung/Mystizismus.html
Mystik kommt vom griechischen "myein" = "die Augen schließen und verstummen".
Allgemeiner gesprochen, heisst das die externen Sinne verschliessen, und nicht die verbale Sprache gebrauchen. Die mystischen Adepten stimmen darin überein, dass im Singen und Tanzen der Kontakt mit dem Göttlichen leichter gelingt. Der Tanz ist insofern wesentlich ein inneres Erlebnis, denn es beruht auf dem Erfahren der kinesthetischen Wahrnehmung, welches ein Proprio-Sinn, also ein Innen-Sinn ist. Daher ist Tanz eine Form der Inneren Wahrnehmung, die von den Mystikern ritueller und performativer Systeme gerne genutzt wird. Ein gutes Beispiel sind hier die Whirling Derwishes der Mevlana-Tradition. Im folgenden gibt es noch einige Materialien zu verschiedenen performativen Traditionen in der Mystik.
http://home.wlu.edu/~lubint/touchstone/2000/Dervish-Fischer.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sufi_whirling
Whirling
Dervishes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ywa6glFr6io
2
HOURS Sufi Meditation Music, Whirling Dervishes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5xUKTBP258
Whirling
Dervish Sema @ Melvana Rumi Festival Konya (HD full session) - December 2015
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mb2XGnxsu8k
Bei G.I. Gurdjieff gibt es eine Bewegungstechnik, die von den Sufis
abgeleitet ist.
G.I.
Gurdjieff - movements in the monastery:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qftYyjV9tsk
danze gurdjieff 01
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKPwZqUUrQo
Sacred
Dance - Gurdjieff
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRFJIzjAV5A
Gurdjieff
Movements Demonstration Munich 2015 With Amiyo Devienne & International
group of friends
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJhQc6GWV-I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2pceHGeSqM
https://www.gurdjieff.org/hoyt1.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centers_(Fourth_Way)
Rudolf Steiner Eurythmics
Eurythmy
Performance - Verse, taken from the Sanskrit by Rudolf Steiner
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ah-GckVWjjc
Rudolf Steiner - Eurythmy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPs3YGcUMRY
Eurythmy
Performance of Beethoven - Pathetique
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upT5it63f-I
Eurythmy
Playlist
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upT5it63f-I&list=RDupT5it63f-I&index=1
10.1.1
Die Bibel AT und NT
über den Tanz
Hierzu ist der Artikel von Hans Jörg Auf Der Maur in "Gold im Wachs" wesentlich. S. 109: "Die Gnade tanzt. Das Tanzritual der apokryphen Johannesakten und seine Bedeutung". Dies ist vielleicht eines der seltensten Zeugnisse von Früh-Christlicher Tanz-Tradition, in der Jesus Christus als Vortänzer gewürdigt wird. Diese wird zurückgeführt auf gewisse Gnostische Strömungen "die sich besonders der johanneischen Tradition verpflichtet wusste" (S. 110). Siehe dazu noch die besonders "sensible" Stelle auf S. 132: "Vor allem aber dürfte es die zunehmend leibfeindliche Tendenz gewesen sein, die zur Unterbewertung und langsamen Elimierung von Bewegung und Tanz aus der Liturgie der Kirche führte. So zeichnet denn auch die neuere Forschung ein mehrheitlich negatives Bild vom Verhältnis der alten Kirche zu Musik und Tanz." Es folgen noch ein paar Materialien zu Tanz im AT und NT:
10.1.2
Jesus Christ as Lord of the Dance:
What
does the Bible say about…dancing?
https://medium.com/@belover/why-does-christianity-say-you-cant-dance-jesus-dances-a-lot-917f7b13d3ad
How
would we imagine Jesus dancing? As she notes, “when men danced they continually
leaped up and down, while women danced in circles.” Jesus is leaping, as the
women dance in circles around him!
The
son arriving home in Luke 15:25 is greeted by ‘music and dancing’. This would
be read, theologically, as Jesus returning to the spirit world. Dancing is what
he does in any state of being.
The
Jews dance all the time.
“Dance
lives at the heart of the Hebrew Scriptures; there is scarcely a chapter that
does not have at least an indirect relationship to dance,” notes Hal Taussig in
New Categories for Dancing the Old Testament.
The
Israelites dance at moments of divine revelation, and it’s typically women who
start the party: Miriam in Exodus 15:20, Jephthah’s daughter in Judges 11:34,
the women who dance after Goliath is defeated (1 Sam. 18:6; cf. 1 Sam 29:5; Jer
31:4).
The
Psalms are essentially dances. There are explicit dance directions, as in Psalm
118:27: “With boughs in hand, join in the festal procession up to the horns of
the altar.”
10.1.3 What Does The Bible Say About Dancing
http://www.aaronmatthew.com/blog/standards-what-is-biblical/what-does-the-bible-say-about-dancing/
The Bible doesn’t have any prohibitions against
dancing. I supposed we could stop there and be done with it, but let’s see what
the Bible says about dancing.
Dancing was always mentioned as part of
celebration. In Jeremiah God makes reference to the women rejoicing in dance.
Jeremiah 31:4
Again I will build you, and you shall be built, O virgin Israel! Again
you shall adorn yourself with tambourines and shall go forth in the dance of
the merrymakers.
Jeremiah 31:13
Then
shall the young women rejoice in the dance, and the young men and the old shall
be merry. I will turn their mourning into joy; I will comfort them, and give
them gladness for sorrow.
In Samuel the women rejoiced when David
returned from battle.
1
Samuel 18:6-7
6 As
they were coming home, when David returned from striking down the Philistine,
the women came out of all the cities of Israel, singing and dancing, to meet
King Saul, with tambourines, with songs of joy, and with musical instruments. 7
And the women sang to one another as they celebrated
Jesus also makes reference to dancing in the
story of the prodigal son. When e son returned there was music and dancing in
celebration.
Luke
15:25
Now
his older son was in the field, and as he came and drew near to the house, he
heard music and dancing.
If there was no dancing it was because
blessings had been taken away, or it was a time of mourning and sorrow. Dancing
wasn’t just unto God, it was done to celebrate marriages, festivals, and life.
Lamentations 5:15
The
joy of our hearts has ceased; our dancing has been turned to mourning.
Dancing much like anything else is about what’s
in your heart, since sin is in the heart, not the dance. If your heart is
filled with lust and sin, and your goal is to be sexual and fornicate, then yes
the dancing would be sin. Of course by the same token food can also be a sin if
your heart is filled with over indulgence, since gluttony is a sin.
11 Rituelle Aspekte von Religion
und Tanz
11.1.1
Der Rituelle Aspekt
des Shinto: Kata - Religion
und Tanz
Die morphologische Arbeitsweise sucht einige wesentliche Parallelen zum Shinto aufzuweisen. Shinto hat zwar eine Plethora von Göttern und Natur-Geistern, die Kami, die den dortigen Praktikern als Merksätze (=Mnemo-Techniken) zugrunde liegen, aber das ist nur der kognitive Aspekt dieser Tradition. Ihr Inneres Sein, also auf griechisch, die Ousia, kann damit nicht erfasst werden. In der kultur-morphologischen Sichtweise ist die oder das Kata, eine Tanz-Form, oder auch eine Kinemorphae. Die Kinemorphae heisst: Ein Lebendiges Tanz-Bild. Das lässt sich in der Westlichen Denkungsweise nur noch mit Goethe (Faust) veranschaulichen. Es ist eine sehr stylisierte Form des Tanzes, die nur noch ein paar Adepten beherrschen, und noch nach so und so vielen Jahren, des intensiven Übens. Siehe dazu auch noch: Lucianus Samosata: Peri Orcheos, De Saltatione. Das konnten die Leute im alt-römischen und alt-griechischen Altertum noch. Heute können es nur noch die Japaner, mit der Kata. Der/die/das Kata, ist das letzte Überbleibsel, einer vor ca. 2000 Jahren noch ziemlich lebendigen Tradition. Heute gibt es das nur noch in Japan. Dem Noh-Theater. Pater Thomas Immoos hat das in seinen vielen Büchern, die kognitiven Aspekte ausreichend behandelt, so dass das hier nicht weiter zu Wiederholen braucht. Hier soll also vor allem der Rituelle Performative Aspekt des Shinto ausgearbeitet werden. Das japanische Shinto ist einzigartig für eine hochentwickelte technische Zivilisation, wo archaische Kulte noch (relativ) prominent in der Kultur vorhanden sind, und gepflegt werden. Der Rituelle Kern des Shinto ist die (oder das) Kata. Es handelt sich hierbei um performative Künste, die von ihren Adepten gepflegt werden, und die insbeondere mit Tanz und Gesang verbunden sind.
11.1.2
Noch weitere
Tanz-Traditionen auf und aus der Welt
Es ist im Kontrast dazu, dass bei den institutionalisierten Abrahamitischen Religionen der Tanz eher marginalisiert wird, denn es gehört sich nicht für einen guten Christen, Moslem, oder Juden, dass er beim Gottesdienst tanzt. Dies ist insbesondere wegen der sexuellen Aspekte des Tanzes. Allerdings tanzen die jüdischen Mystiker besonders gerne, und die Sufis auch. Letztere aber meistens nur die Männer, und die Frauen sind da eher marginalisiert, und auf keinen Fall darf es gemischte Tanz-Gruppen geben. Das ist leider ein Grundproblem des Islam, das kaum überwindbar ist.
Sogar der Sokrates bei Xenophon, wird lobend erwähnt, als jemand, der den Tanz zu seiner spirituellen Ausdrucksform gewählt hat. Was dem Platon natürlich nicht gefallen hat, und deshalb ist der Sokrates bei Xenophon, auch ein ganz anderer als der Sokrates bei Platon. Es wird auch nicht berichtet, dass Jesus Christus je getanzt haben soll, ausser bei der Hochzeit von Kanaan, wo ja jeder getanzt hat. Als ein guter Jude, hat Jesus Christus wohl sicher mitgetanzt. Wozu hätte man sonst den Wein gebraucht? Das ist natürlich den Biographen von Jesus Christus (den Evangelisten) nicht erwähnenswert, besonders nicht dem Paulus, der auch nicht viel vom Tanzen hielt. Die frühe Christenheit hat den Tanz abhorresziert, weil dieser (siehe Lucianus Samosata: De Saltatione/ Peri Orcheos), ein besonders schlimmer Ausdruck der spät-römischen Dekadenz war. Im heterodoxen Christentum gibt es aber die afro-inspirierten Pentecostal Strömungen, die wesentliche Elemente der afrikanischen Tanz-Kultur übernommen haben. Diese sind in Brasilien besonders die Elemente der Umbanda, und der Kondomble-Bewegung. Die dortigen Orixas sind äquivalent zu den japanischen Shinto-Kami. Also die Natur-Geister, die synkretisch in christliche Formen übernommen worden sind. Die alten Geister sind also gar nicht so leicht auszutreiben. In Europa sind als letzte Reste davon die Karnevals-Rituale erhalten, die ebenfalls die Natur-Geister enthalten. Im antiken Rom waren es die Saturnalien, die bezeichnenderweise, in der letzten Dezember-Woche stattfanden, mit dem Höhepunkt am 24. Dezember, was die Christen dann als Weihnachtsfest umgewidmet hatten.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturnalien
https://www.historytoday.com/archive/did-romans-invent-christmas
By the time Lucian described the festivities, it was a
seven-day event. Changes to the Roman calendar moved the climax of Saturnalia
to December 25th, around the time of the date of the winter solstice.
https://www.gotquestions.org/Christmas-Saturnalia.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturnalia
11.1.3
Ein Aufsatz aus Aeon
zu Shinto
https://aeon.co/essays/shinto-shows-the-debt-to-animism-of-organised-religions-today
To connect Shinto
to any form of ‘universal religion’ would appear to be a fool’s errand. After
all, as any guidebook to Japan will tell you, Shinto is the traditional
religion of Japan and only Japan, apart from a scattering of Shinto shrines in
countries with large Japanese immigrant or expatriate populations.
At the same time,
Shinto is considered to be, at least in its origins, one expression of animism,
the world’s oldest religion. Thus, we are left with Shinto as both a religion
unique to Japan and an expression of the world’s oldest faith.
The word animism is
derived from anima in Latin, which literally means ‘breath’, with an extended
meaning of ‘spirit’ or ‘soul’. Animism recognises the potential of all objects
– animals, plants, rocks, rivers, weather-related phenomena, deceased human
beings, even words – to be animated and alive, possessing distinctive spirits.
As such, animism is considered to contain the oldest spiritual and supernatural
perspectives in the world, dating back to the Palaeolithic Age when humans were
still hunter-gatherers.
11.1.4
Materialien zu Kata,
Tanz: Dynamic Cultural Transmission
18.3.5.
Afroamerican spirit practices: Macumba, Condomblé, Umbanda, Santeria
http://www.noologie.de/desn24.htm#Heading129
The Kata Tradition
http://www.noologie.de/desn24.htm#Index1705
http://www.noologie.de/desn24.htm#Index1719
Ein Zitat daraus:
Forming a
well-defined kata, or a structured pattern of interaction, is one way in which
open systems go about maintaining their homeostatic equilibrium, stability,
cohesion and viability in the midst of continuous changes they are subjected to
both internally and externally. The propensity of a system to form katas can be
formulated as a principle of evolutionary change which applies to the evolution
of natural as well as human systems. What we propose to do in this paper is to
show that kata, in the sense of a topological image or a geometric feature of a
system, is one of those concepts which many thinkers in the tradition of both
Eastern and Western thought have sought...
Koizumi
(1997, abstract)
http://www.noologie.de/desn19.htm
http://www.noologie.de/desn24.htm
http://www.noologie.de/desn24.htm#Heading129
http://www.noologie.de/desn24.htm#Heading130
11.1.5
Kata im Shinto
Gehen wir nun weiter zu der Kata im Shinto. Das Prinzip des/der Kata liegt allen diesen Kunstformen zugrunde: Noh-Theater, Tee-Zeremonie, Ikebana, und alle Martial Arts, Kendo, Iaido, und die neueren Formen wie Judo, Karate, Aikido, und Tae-Kwon Do. Die letzteren sind aber relativ neue Erfindungen, die von ihren Proponenten im 19. und 20. Jh. an alte Muster angelehnt sind, die aber wesentlich nur den Namen mit den älteren Formen gemeinsam haben. Es fehlt ihnen völlig die spirituelle Dimension. Diese finden wir vor allem im Noh-Theater. Siehe dazu die Werke von Thomas Immoos und die Schrift des Zeami. Denn hier hat der Tanz noch eine ganz wesentliche Funktion, der In-Carnation des Göttlichen in der Bewegungs-Gestalt (=Kata). Eine Bewegungs-Gestalt heisst in der Noologie auch Kinemorphae. Dies ist der Schlüsselbegriff. Diese/s ist völlig extra-verbal, kann also nicht mit irgendwelchen westlichen Begriffer der "Oralen Tradition" erfasst werden. Es ist daher völlig unmöglich, und auch völlig un-sinnig, eine verbale Beschreibung davon zu geben. Sogar eine Tanz-Notation, wie das Laban-System, ist hier nicht anwendbar. Es geht um Variationen im Bereich von Millisekunden, und das ist eigentlich für westliche Menschen gar nicht vorstellbar. Der Tanz des Noh kann nur von Innen durchgeführt werden. Der kundige Zuschauer empfindet diese inneren Bewegungen mit dem Tänzer, per empathischer Übertragung (Ich nenne dies auch: Die Neuronale Resonanz), und nimmt damit auch an dem Göttlichen Schauspiel teil. Was im Shinto gepflegt wird, ist morphologisch gleichwertig mit den ekstatischen Tänzen der Sufis und der mystischen Juden, aber im Shinto ist das nicht ekstatisch, sondern extrem kontrolliert und einstudiert. Und diese Form (Kata) kann nur in 20-30 Jahren permanenter Übung perfektioniert werden. Die Einweisung in diese Kunst beginnt schon im frühen Alter von ca. 10 Jahren, in einem Meister-Schüler-System, meistens innerhalb der Familien-Tradition. Die Schrift des Zeami behandelt diese Tradition eingehend. (Siehe: Das Gold im Wachs: Frank Hoff: "Sehen und Gesehen-werden" im Nö, S. 187, sowie "Zeami und das Yushuki", S. 239). Überhaupt ist "Das Gold im Wachs" eine der umfassendsten informierenden Schriften, ausser denen von Thomas Immoos selber, über diese Tradition.
Es gibt auf dem Youtube viele gute Video-Beispiele von Noh-Zeremonien:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAwnKZApUDg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVGrq8TdzOc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsa2GpIWKKQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etkN604N7UU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T71ZAznVeLo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blOzH842IYg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYNFzDN4SJ8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lu5Vn1vQ5i4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5j87foiwY0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67-bgSFJiKc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2Oi3C4G1WI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9QHX0LTL0w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0pkPw0aOxY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRN_nZRkUmk
Hier sind ein paar Doku-Videos zu Kata. Auch einige sehr wertvolle alte:
Aikido
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMz20Z16HFU
Fighting
Spirit of Old Japan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaVM_fOhX9A
Omote
Kenjutsu kata of Katori Shinto Ryu
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjvtPDGkumM
Kenjutsu
Paired Kata Demonstration - Katori Shinto Ryu Kenjutsu Iaijutsu
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dhh3X7MrI8
Itsutsu
No Tachi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aeWU8CYl5M
Real
Samurai at Tenshin Shoden Katori Shinto Ryu
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nU0GgK3mTi8
1950
Budo Demo - Negishi Ryu - Katori Shinto Ryu - Takenouchi Ryu, Shinkage Ryu
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gZCrOCmzXc
Kendo
in High Speed Camera(Slow Motion)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4SHWXQBVL4
Katori
Shinto Ryu Kenjutsu Iaijutsu Kata Solo Demonstration (Side View)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxkClE3tpF4
Playlist
Shinto Kata:
Sugino
Sensei 10th Dan Master of Katori Shinto Ryu.flv
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MtWtPEbTb0&list=PL0yC0LUcVoFw-qVp9z6obQqkHpRbx1JI2
11.1.6
Die Noh-Masken
Eine weitere wesentliche Komponente des Noh sind die Masken. Sie fungieren ähnlich wie die Masken des antiken Römischen und Griechischen Theaters. Die Noh-Masken haben nur sehr schmale Augenschlitze, so dass der Tänzer kaum etwas sieht, und sich voll auf seine innere Erfahrung konzentrieren kann, und auch nichts anderes erfahren muss. Das folgende Video ist aus National Geographic. (Und das wird sicher im Zuge der neuen EU-Copyright-Gesetze aus dem Youtube verschwinden).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsa2GpIWKKQ
National
Geographic, Published on Sep 30, 2018
Noh
theater, or Nohgaku (??), is one of the world’s most ancient stage traditions
still being actively performed today. Known for its use of elaborate masks
known as nohmen, Noh performances weave together supernatural elements and
Buddhist philosophies along with music and dance.
Das folgende Video ist die wohl beste Darstellung von Noh-Masken. Das Beispiel zeigt auch, warum ein gutes Video besser ist als 10.000 Worte. Das konnte Thomas Immoos zu seiner Zeit leider nicht. Es erspart einem auch eine lange und teure Reise nach Japan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsMnyrxqe6w
Japanese
noh theatre has over 650 years of continuous performance history, making it the
oldest theatre form with this status in the world. Noh is the embodiment of
seven centuries of Japanese culture and society, embedded it its history, art,
music, dance, storytelling, and social values. Each of its components, from
ancient texts to contemporary performers, represents generations of development
and refinement. Artisans and musicians bring the weight of their traditions to
performances today that contain spectacular theatricality. If the statement
"what's old is new" holds true in any way, then noh is one of the
newest things on stage today. One of the most distinctive aspects of noh are
the masks that performers wear. In many ways, the masks are what give noh its
unique, mysterious feel. This documentary takes you deep into the world of noh
masks: from the trees they are made from, through their carving and painting;
from their selection prior to a performance, to their handling after a
performance; and from the hands of collectors to the newest creations, all
while revealing the tremendous variety of masks and characters of noh. This
film serves as a great introduction into noh with its overview of noh history
and form, its performance footage, and its insightful backstage footage.
11.1.7
Literature
about Shinto Noh
Japan - archaische Moderne, Immoos,
Thomas
1990. - 190 S.
Abk: Arch-Modern
Das Tanzritual der Yamabushi,
Immoos, Thomas ; Lepsius, Gitta
1968. - 95 S.
Abk: Yamabushi
Ein bunter Teppich: die Religionen Japans, Immoos, Thomas
1990. - 220 S.
Abk: Teppich
Schattentheater, Mayer, Fred; Immoos, Thomas 1981
Das Gold im Wachs: Festschrift für Thomas Immoos zum 70. Geburtstag
Gössmann, Elisabeth; Immoos, Thomas
1988. - 555 S.
Abk: Gold-Wachs
12
Weitere Zen und Shinto Materialien
12.1.1 Zen
Monastery and Zen Garden
In a Japanese Zen monastry 1960 禅 (4)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oY3llZ6m4M
ZEN
- Behind the curtain - 24h a day
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uC5fbbR30VA
Living
in a Japanese Zen Monastery: A Documentary (part 1)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FwGd8dSBp4
The Practical meditational Essence
of raking a Zen Stone Garden is the
Essence of the spritual Movement
Gestalt
ASMR Japanese Zen garden
禅の庭
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kff7GsbagQo
Zen Garden
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfJHmDhLVRc
Music
Zen Garden
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CH6WkQcRBZA&list=RDCH6WkQcRBZA&index=1
Zen garden big blade raking
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ystPAdxi4Rk&pbjreload=10
Daitoku-ji and Zen Gardens in Kyoto, Japan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVA1WhMDhdY
Zen Garden at Nanzenji Temple, Kyoto City
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sm-5wWG21Is
How
To Make a Zen Rock Circle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiRrP8D1MUw&list=PL4253B9567EF7E0A4
Penrith
Regional Gallery - Kare Sansui - Japanese raked garden
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BFxsEOAQyg&list=PLGPBigd20rGZEYDxpfn4IcNTl5WRDBbq0
Japanese Zen Garden raking
禅の庭
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wN_DFEPSBSM&list=PLejVpIKKHb9WlFJIqqVqXzIFWmWFdcErK&index=1
12.1.2
Eine extra-verbale
Kunst: Das Schmieden eines Katana
Zu den bekanntesten extra-verbalen Künsten Japans gehört das Schmieden eines Katana-Schwertes. Auch hierfür braucht es ca. 10 Jahre, bevor ein Schüler sein erstes Schwert schmieden darf. Und dann noch ca. 10 Jahre, bevor er darin die Meisterschaft erlangt. Man kann etwas davon erahnen, wenn man auf den Klang des Hammers auf dem Amboss achtet, mit dem der Meister den Takt der Hammerschläge seiner Schüler bestimmt.
本刀奉納鍛錬 Katana Smithing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeoLXgq3UWA
The
secret world of the japanese swordsmith
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxwWf-MfZVk
Documentary
from 1997 ©1997 Troivision Co., Ltd/Warabe No Mori Co., Ltd. kobayashi dldg,
4-7 Yotsuya Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo Japan The Japanese sword is the soul of the
Samurai. The crafting of this work of art - which embodies beauty, strength and
tradition - has been shrouded in secrecy for more than thousand years. Because
of the highly advanced techniques and numerous years of dedicated effort
required in crafting Japanese swords, the skill has always been a closely kept
and jealously guarded secret. Yohindo Yoshihara is a consummate Japanese
swordsmith and a very high regarded Mukansa craftman in Japan. He is also the
best-known Japanes swordsmith outside of Japan. His masterpieces have been
purchased for exhibit by the Metropolitan Museum of art in New York City and
the Museum of fine Arts in Boston. He has numerous fans worldwide, including
His Royal highness, king Gustav of Sweden. This video has been produced to
appeal to all aficionados of Japanese sword around the world and is a treasure
trove of sercrets to Yohindo Yoshihara's truly outstanding Japanese sword
craftsmanship.
Forging
a Katana (Japanese Samurai Sword)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VE_4zHNcieM
Making
of a katana
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmRCCy7Bta8
日本刀鍛錬 katana making(1)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5I6MMbvAWYI
素延べと火造り,Katana making(2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rssAK31eM6I
ヤスリ掛け Katana making(3）
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xReU9sFJsk
土置き Katana making(4)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZ6gwcz_Flk
Polissage
de la lame du katana
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf1nHmffqdg
12.1.3
Just
Another Un-Speakable Tradition: Self-Mummification
Mummies
That Made Themselves Documentary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKkVo02LD2A
This is also the theme of "Gold im Wachs" S. 427. Hubert Cieslik: Kirishitan und Yamabushi.
There
it is described somewhat differently. Because the Yamabushi were Shinto Anachoretes
and
they didn't really like the Buddhists. But as time progressed, they became
Shingon Buddhists.
And
the Techniques described in the video are exactly the same as in the article by
Hubert Cieslik.
And
the Self-Mummification Technique was also well known in Archaic Russia and
Mongolia and Tibet.
But
most of these were burned by the Stalinists. The same Procedure in Tibet, where
the Maoists burned
all
these holy relics.
Selbst-Mumifizierung
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=selbst+mummifizierung+
Die Mumien Diät [Doku über Japan]
The
same as above, but translated in German Language.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbfnS7OjI_w
162-jähriger buddhistischer Mönch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LZclMx8f6A
Das Mysterium der sibirischen Mumie (360° - GEO
Reportage)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXk26Rs6ev8
Das Mysterium der sibirischen Mumie von Moench
Chambo Lamas Itigilow
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hATobtTJX0s&pbjreload=10
Ritus Sokushinbutsu
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlnnQh7g9SI
ZDF Expedition Sagenhafte Völker Mumienkult in
Tibet Das Geheimnis der Mönche 2004
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3JSQZK22H8
Doku 2014 Die Welt der Mumien [Dokumentation
Deutsch 2014]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJ3j95GIaDc
Les
Corps Imputrescibles Ou Le Miracle Des Corps Intacts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUOEGqObnHs
Menschen, die mit Verstorbenen leben
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmjlMOA2lC0
The
Torajan People
4
Torajan death rituals that are out of the world | D/CODE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3y8x1wmSikw
Here,
Living With Dead Bodies for Weeks—Or Years—Is Tradition | National Geographic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCKDsjLt_qU&list=PLvH7mx3IqzcdH1GX6BPx7TZsCOO2bhKf7
13 More Ethnographic Material on Dances and Dance Traditions
I
have in the Noology Archive all the videos of the Dance Traditions that
I reference here. The Dance Traditions are extra-verbal, and No Verbal
Description can tell us about: That, Which is Un-Describable in words and Only
in Dance. There is a lot of Verbal Material in the Derra-De-Moroda Dance
Library at the University of Salzburg. I have read extensively in this Library,
but reading so many books, doesn't help you understand the dances. In this
case, One Video can convey a Message, that 10.000 words can never
convey. This is the power of Modern Multi Media Technology. All the videos
referenced here, are also in the Noology Video Archive.
This is the Extra Verbal Cultural Heritage of Mankind.
This Material is for Academic Study only.
13.1
Lucianus
Samosata: De Saltatione/ Peri Orcheos
https://lucianofsamosata.info/
Lucianus Samosata hat eine genaue kultur-historische Beschreibung des Tanzes in der antiken Welt gegeben, die der Form der Shinto-Kata am nächsten kommt. Es ist schon fast ein Wunder, dass dieser Text die christlichen Ex-Purgationen überlebt hat.
https://lucianofsamosata.info/OfPantomime.html
Hier sind einige Zitate aus diesem Werk:
7)
Ly.
Thank you, Crato; just what I wanted. As to ‘foolishness,’ that remains to be
seen. Now, to begin with, you seem to be quite ignorant of the antiquity of the
pantomimic art. It is not a new thing; it does not date from today or
yesterday; not, that is to say, from our grandfathers’ times, nor from their
grandfathers’ times. The best antiquarians, let me tell you, trace dancing back
to the creation of the universe; it is coeval with that Eros who was the
beginning of all things. In the dance of the heavenly bodies, in the complex
involutions whereby the planets are brought into harmonious intercourse with
the fixed stars, you have an example of that art in its infancy, which, by
gradual development, by continual improvements and additions, seems at length
to have reached its climax in the subtle harmonious versatility of modern
Pantomime.
Siehe auch, bei Goethe's Faust:
http://www.noologie.de/faust.htm#_Toc515835300
http://www.noologie.de/faust.htm#_Toc515835305
http://www.noologie.de/faust.htm#_Toc515835312
Und bei Wagner, und Marius Schneider:
http://www.noologie.de/wagner1.htm#_Toc894938
http://www.noologie.de/wagner1.htm#_Toc894940
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joscelyn_Godwin
9)
I
could mention a number of other heroes who went through a similar course of
training, and made a serious study of dancing: but I will confine myself to the
case of Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles, and a most eminent dancer. He it was
who invented that beautiful dance called after him the Pyrrhic; a circumstance
which may be supposed to have afforded more gratification to his father than
his comeliness, or his prowess in other respects. Thus Troy, impregnable till
then, falls a victim to the dancer’s skill, and is levelled with the dust.
10)
The
Lacedaemonians [Spartans], who are reputed the bravest of the Greeks, ever
since they learnt from Castor and Pollux the Caryatic (a form of dance which is
taught in the Lacedaemonian town of Caryae), will do nothing without the
accompaniment of the Muses: on the field of battle their feet keep time to the
flute’s measured notes, and those notes are the signal for their onset. Music and
rhythm ever led them on to victory. To this day you may see their young men
dividing their attention between dance and drill; when wrestling and boxing are
over, their exercise concludes with the dance. A flute-player sits in their
midst, beating time with his foot, while they file past and perform their
various movements in rhythmic sequence, the military evolutions being followed
by dances, such as Dionysus and Aphrodite love.
Siehe auch die passenden Themen bei Wagner & Co.:
http://www.noologie.de/wagner1.htm#_Toc894936
http://www.noologie.de/wagner1.htm#_Toc894938
http://www.noologie.de/wagner1.htm#_Toc894989
http://www.noologie.de/wagner1.htm#_Toc894991
http://www.noologie.de/wagner1.htm#_Toc894999
http://www.noologie.de/Hesiodos.htm
13)
You
have read your Homer; so that I need say nothing of the Shield of Achilles,
with its choral dance, modelled on that which Daedalus designed for Ariadne;
nor of the two dancers (‘tumblers,’ he calls them) there represented as leading
the dance; nor again of the ‘whirling dance of youth,’ so beautifully wrought
thereon by Hephaestus. As to the Phaeacians, living as they did in the lap of
luxury, nothing is more natural than that they should have rejoiced in the
dance. Odysseus, we find, is particularly struck with this: he gazes with
admiration on the ‘twinkling of their feet.'
Siehe auch die passenden Themen zu Odysseus:
http://www.noologie.de/diadenk.htm#_Toc512641930
https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/hamlets_mill/hamletmill_index.htm
Ogygia,
205, 209, 239, 295, 299, 418-419
Odysseus, 90, 98, 315,
447; voyage to Hades, 198-199, 200, 273; oar of, 270-271, 302. See also Ulysses
Odyssey, 116, 198, 354,
356; mill in, 90; whirlpool in, 204
Ulysses, 197, 336-337;
and the whirlpool, 204
Umbilicus Maris, 238
16)
In
Delos, not even sacrifice could be offered without dance and musical
accompaniment. Choirs of boys gathered and performed their dance to the sound
of flute and lyre, and the best of them were chosen to act characters; the
songs written for these occasions were known as chorales; and the ancient lyric
poetry abounded in such compositions.
17)
But
I need not confine myself to the Greeks. The Indians, when they rise to offer
their morning salutation to the Sun, do not consider it enough to kiss their
hands after the Greek fashion; turning to the East, they silently greet the God
with movements that are designed to represent his own course through the
heavens; and with this substitute for our prayers and sacrifices and choral
celebrations they seek his favour at the beginning of every day and at its
close.
18)
The
Ethiopians go further, and dance even while they fight; the shaft an Ethiopian
draws from that arrow-crown that serves him in place of a quiver will never be
discharged before he has intimidated his enemy with the threatening gestures of
the war-dance.
21)
Our
attention is next claimed by the Roman dance of the Salii, a priesthood drawn
from the noblest families; the dance is performed in honour of Mars, the most
warlike of the Gods, and is of a particularly solemn and sacred character.
According to a Bithynian legend, which agrees well with this Italian
institution, Priapus, a war-like divinity (probably one of the Titans, or of
the Idaean Dactyls, whose profession it was to teach the use of arms), was
entrusted by Hera with the care of her son Ares, who even in childhood was
remarkable for his courage and ferocity. Priapus would not put weapons into his
hands till he had turned him out a perfect dancer; and he was rewarded by Hera
with a tenth part of all Ares’s spoils.
25)
Socrates
— that wisest of men, if we may accept the judgement of the Pythian oracle —
not only approved of dancing, but made a careful study of it; and, in his zeal
for grace and elegance, for harmonious movement and carriage of the body,
thought it no shame, reverend sage that he was, to rank this among the most
important branches of learning. And well might he have an enthusiasm for
dancing, who scrupled not to study the humblest arts; who frequented the
schools of the flute-girls, and could stoop to learn wisdom from the mouth of
an Aspasia. Yet in his days the art was in its infancy, its beauties
undeveloped. Had Socrates seen the artists who have made modern Pantomime what
it is, he would assuredly have given it his exclusive attention, and assigned
it the first place in the education of youth.
https://aeon.co/essays/the-ancient-greek-rebel-leader-who-saw-socrates-solo-dancing
Ein Zitat daraus:
Xenophon
also wrote down his remembrances of a local philosopher named Socrates. Those
who know Socrates mainly through the writings of Plato – Xenophon’s near-exact
contemporary – will find Xenophon’s Socrates something of a surprise. Plato’s
Socrates claims to know nothing, and flamboyantly refutes the knowledge claims
of others. In the pages of Xenophon’s Memorabilia, however, Socrates actually
answers philosophical questions, dispenses practical life advice, provides
arguments proving the existence of benevolent gods, converses as if
peer-to-peer with a courtesan, and even proposes a domestic economy scheme
whereby indigent female relatives can become productive through the
establishment of a textile business at home.
For
instance, what could be more enchanting than a Socrates who solo-dances for joy
and exercise, so unlike the Socrates we know from Plato? In Xenophon’s
Symposium, Socrates asks the Phoenician dance-master to show him some dance
moves. Everyone laughs: what will you do with dance moves, Socrates? He
replies: ‘I’ll dance, by God!’ A friend of Socrates then tells the group that
he had stopped by his house early in the morning, and found him dancing alone.
When questioned about it, Socrates happily confesses to solo-dancing often.
It’s great exercise, it moves the body in symmetry, it can be done indoors or
outdoors with no equipment, and it freshens the appetite.
30)
In
old days, dancer and singer were one: but the violent exercise caused shortness
of breath; the song suffered for it, and it was found advisable to have the
singing done independently.
36)
But
above all Mnemosyne, and her daughter Polyhymnia, must be propitiated by an art
that would remember all things. Like Calchas in Homer, the pantomime must know
all ‘that is, that was, that shall be’; nothing must escape his ever ready
memory. Faithfully to represent his subject, adequately to express his own
conceptions, to make plain all that might be obscure;— these are the first
essentials for the pantomime, to whom no higher compliment could be paid than
Thucydides’s tribute to Pericles, who, he says, ‘could not only conceive a wise
policy, but render it intelligible to his hearers’; the intelligibility, in the
present case, depending on clearness of gesticulation.
Siehe Zitate dazu:
Die Theogonie des Hesiodos
http://www.noologie.de/wagner1.htm#_Toc894936
Hesiodos, Theogony
http://www.noologie.de/wagner1.htm#_Toc894980
Die Theogonie des Hesiodos
http://www.noologie.de/wagner1.htm#_Toc895034
72)
Consider
then the universality of this art: it sharpens the wits, it exercises the body,
it delights the spectator, it instructs him in the history of bygone days,
while eye and ear are held beneath the spell of flute and cymbal and of
graceful dance. Would you revel in sweet song? Nowhere can you procure that
enjoyment in greater variety and perfection. Would you listen to the clear
melody of flute and pipe? Again the pantomime supplies you. I say nothing of
the excellent moral influence of public opinion, as exercised in the theatre,
where you will find the evil-doer greeted with execration, and his victim with
sympathetic tears.
81)
The
fact is, the pantomime must be completely armed at every point. His work must
be one harmonious whole, perfect in balance and proportion, self-consistent,
proof against the most minute criticism; there must be no flaws, everything
must be of the best; brilliant conception, profound learning, above all human
sympathy. When every one of the spectators identifies himself with the scene
enacted, when each sees in the pantomime as in a mirror the reflection of his
own conduct and feelings, then, and not till then, is his success complete. But
let him reach that point, and the enthusiasm of the spectators becomes
uncontrollable, every man pouring out his whole soul in admiration of the
portraiture that reveals him to himself. Such a spectacle is no less than a
fulfilment of the oracular injunction KNOW THYSELF; men depart from it with
increased knowledge; they have learnt something that is to be sought after,
something that should be eschewed.
AG:
Diese Darstellung kommt der des Zeami am nächsten, und beweist, dass die Antike eine ähnliche Kunst wie das Noh-Theater kannte und intensiv praktizierte.
13.2 Kriegstänze
Krieg führen ohne Tanzen macht einfach keinen Spass. ;-)
So dachten es sich wohl unsere Alt-Vorderen, und all die Antiken Leute, und auch die Wilden Fremden Völker unseres Erdkreises. Ausser natürlich den modernen Europäern und Amerikanern. Ich glaube, da kann sich unsere deutsche Bundesweh(r) noch eine Scheibe abschneiden.
War Dance:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqfKM2nvAGI
Original maori
haka dance
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI851yJUQQw
Bontoc War Dance
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yCaPf1azVE
Spirit of
the Warrior | The Kawayan Team | TEDxOhioStateUniversity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUpKfvDlinI
Mandadawak
- Ritual Dance/War Dance/Manalisig/Philippines Traditional Cultural
Dance/Carassauga 2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8I3AfnrweiQ
Leyte Dance
Theatre - War Dance - Bayanihan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FiIbWmkTPk
Leyte Dance
Theatre's - Ka Singkil Version
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNieRlbBXLM
Wardance
UPNM 2016 -XCountry Pahlawan 2016
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUZFmffsDI8
Deadliest
Warriors In The World: Royal Tongan Marines Battle Cry - Sipi Tau (Kailao)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ynl8_slWrs
Dwaas [K.O.S] - War Dance
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usCxgqQcx-8
Sumi Naga War Dance
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wF9mSDEGiJU
Shawnee Sioux War Dance
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkgD_9yW6yI
Original
Ohafia - War Dance Vol1 - 2015 Latest Nigerian Highlife Music
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVrZtT5q19A
Original
Ohafia - War Dance Vol2 - 2015 Latest Nigerian Highlife Music
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75dksZNvGJA
Professional Zulu
Dancing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxhhF_nHxIs
Indlondlo Zulu
Dancers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iB37tnlKllc
The Great
History of Igbo Ikpirikpi Ogu dance (Ohaofia War Dance) 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lg_dSLOKywk
Greek War
Dance, Bloody & Violent (Pyrrhic Dance)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYelSpTWVUw
Ancient
Armenian War Dance - ՅԱՐԽՈՒՇՏԱ (Yarkhousta)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dIreVbZtt0
Warriors of
AniKituhwa War Dance
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CqCSwrd0Sc
Indigenous
dance group explains the heritage of the Aboriginal war dance
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2BxJYJrg2A
Eine ganz lange Liste...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usCxgqQcx-8&list=RDusCxgqQcx-8&start_radio=1&t=95
Noch eine ganz lange Liste...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNieRlbBXLM&list=RDJNieRlbBXLM&start_radio=1&t=140
13.3 Die Tiroler Tanz-Tradition
https://www.dancilla.com/wiki/index.php/Tiroler_Volkstanzbuch
https://www.dancilla.com/wiki/index.php/Galizische_Kreuzpolka
http://www.wimbergbuam.at/index.php?id=131
Steirische Harmonika - Wendelstoana Schuhplattler
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbGOi2R4uAw
Tyrolean
folk dance in Lana
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8iN2iJW6uE
Little Big
Shots | Team Perform The Schuhplattler, a Tyrolean Folk Dance
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWaH5r5nUGQ
Pramtaler Plattler
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY-ry_b5I0I
Steirische Harmonika - Wendelstoana Schuhplattler
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbGOi2R4uAw
Pramtaler Plattler
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSbYSNzyiOg&list=RDEY-ry_b5I0I&index=2
Pramtaler Plattler Mix
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY-ry_b5I0I&list=RDEY-ry_b5I0I&start_radio=1&t=0
13.4 Harpa Guarani the Tyrolean Jesuites Schuhplattler & Polkas
Die Harfen-Tradition der Guarani in Paraguay war von den Tiroler Jesuiten mit ihren Reducciones dort eingeführt worden. Auch in Brasilien, aber dort wurden die Reducciones von den Gross-Grund-Besitzern zerstört und die Guarani versklavt. Dazu gab es auch einmal einen populären Film. The Mission. Es gibt dazu sogar eine Sci-Fi-Fortsetzung, Die Missionaria Protectiva, aus "Dune", von Frank Herbert, der Bene Gesserit, oder der Bene Jesuit'Frauen.
The Mission
(1986) - 'Falls' scene - Part 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZPnjaU8tg4
The Mission
(1986) - 'Falls' scene - Part 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7_0bIUVnq8
The Mission
(1986) Original Soundtrack From The Motion Picture - Full OST
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvwXPLN4JcI
The
Mission, One of the best scenes of the movie with the main theme composed by
Ennio Morricone
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ui91q7Y9xPk
Reducciones
Jesuíticas Guaraníes, documental
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkxSdFpNqPI
los jesuitas en
Argentina
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WYlo4Hgb-M
La expulsión de
los Jesuitas de España
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZM4ocCbsEpc
La expulsión de
los jesuitas de la Nueva España.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDPl05_QVmI
Reducciones
Jesuíticas del Paraguay por Jorge Rubiani
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGDdLu3TAAM
Las Reducciones
Jesuíticas de América del Sur Cap. 4: "Los Jesuitas y las
Reducciones"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8-uunDrkjM
Los Jesuitas en
América, documental
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hshZnSa61k
La dictadura de
los jesuitas en las Reducciones del Paraguay - Jorge Guerra
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grQ30b8bpFo
Reducciones
jesuíticas, documental
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnxBcDV6IvQ
Las Reducciones
Jesuíticas de Chiquitos en Bolivia, documental
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzGSpYQ-414
La Historia De
Los Jesuitas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lq2C4Aja7lI
Música Barroca de
las Reducciones-4: La contribución de los Laicos a la Evangelización
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxKlQfNXQkM
Espectáculo de
luces y sonidos en las reducciones Jesuiticas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P96wPZHGL_k
La expulsión de
los Jesuitas de América: Córdoba (Capítulo IV)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cwrld0D4TVo
Reducciones
Jesuíticas De Paraguay
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9AU0HxhCTA
Las Reducciones
Jesuíticas de América del Sur Cap. 1: "Una Catástrofe Demográfica"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxaFcU4DbA8
Las Reducciones
Jesuíticas de América del Sur Cap. 2:
"Del Feudo
Europeo a la Encomienda Americana"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vB2fIBTKGDk
Las Reducciones
Jesuíticas de América del Sur Cap. 3: "Doctrineros sin Doctrina"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlLHseH4L2k
Der Jesuitenstaat Paraguay & Die Jesuiten in der
europäischen Gesellschaft: Die Lehre der Jesuiten
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8qZsDtgyaM
Die jesuitischen Reduktionen von Paraguay - Versklavung der
Guaranis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-E09vZXnrE
Paraguay
and Jesuit Missions
The
Brazilian Slave Traders from Sao Paolo exterminated the Guaranis, and the
Jesuites of
Paraguay
were expelled out of the Americas. Minute 4:00
This is the
sad history of the Guaranis. As was once a sense of God's Paradise here on
Earth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZHKYT6HXVc
Mirador
Adventures: Jesuit Mission Ruins (Paraguay, 2010)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4ZJm6o9YOk
La
Santísima Trinidad del Paraná | Paraguay
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJvWY4hPmwI
Te Deum - Himmel auf Erden - Die Gründung der Jesuiten
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCjXF4kHUbM
This Is The
Playlist, of...
The
Mission, One of the best scenes of the movie with the main theme composed by
Ennio Morricone
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ui91q7Y9xPk&list=RDUi91q7Y9xPk&start_radio=1&t=111
https://www.dancilla.com/wiki/index.php/Tiroler_Volkstanzbuch
https://www.amazon.de/Holzhackertanz/dp/B01MQWY2DL
Traditional
Native Guarani Dance of Paraguay
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcSN4e01XyY
Tyrolean
Harpa Guarani of the Tyrolean Jesuites Schuhplattler & Polkas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-H1YJcba7E
Harpa paraguaya
guaranía
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-6Y0PLyaq8
Beto Herdez
Chamame Guarani Arpa
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArsZIbKHQ8Y
Selección de
Música Paraguaya - Orq. Filarmónica Sonidos de la Tierra con Arpas Paraguayas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVOXFgQTqK4
Polkas Paraguayas
Instrumental (Danzas Paraguayas)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYELVxaxloQ
Luis Bordon E Sua
Harpa Paraguaia - Lp.Noches Del Paraguay
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRlj0BGjbgk
Luis Bordón -
Arpa Paraguaya
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUB55pytNaQ
Selección de
Música Paraguaya - Orq. Filarmónica Sonidos de la Tierra con Arpas Paraguayas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVOXFgQTqK4
Luis
Bordon E Sua Harpa Paraguaia - Lp. Noches Del
Paraguay
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRlj0BGjbgk
Arpas Paraguayas
[Deluxe] 320 Kbps!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiCd5qPYrJA
Recuerdos de
Ypacaray, por Perla
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtsMhnnD26U
Polca Paraguay
Gospel em Guaraní
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poFQbbLn7og
Musica
Instrumental En Arpa - Grandes Exitos Latinos (1 De 2).Selección De Cecil
González.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSxcVJ8C3_w
The
Paraguayan Harp And Ensemble – El Arpa Paraguaya Vol.1 (1972)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwJlqxsE4fQ
Concierto de
Aranjuez - II. Adagio - Pablo
Sáinz Villegas - LIVE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzEFQW9CXGc
Recuerdos del
Ypacarai - Arpa Paraguaya
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpA2JfSKMdI
アルパCarreta guy / Musica Paraguaya /Rieko kamiyama 「カレ－タ・グイ」
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIkKB1w_9hc
El Tren Lechero -
Nicolas Carter on Paraguayan harp
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rYxrIp6Ors
Nicolas Carter (harp), Jorge Gonzalez (guitar), Eliezer
Freitas Santos (percussion), Dan Arlig (bass).
Composed by Feliz Perez Cardozo. Produced by Baby Blue
Arts. www.nicolascarter.com.
Cascada - arpa
paraguaya (polka paraguaya)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TlToHWg3PA
Isla Saka - arpa
paraguaya (polka paraguaya)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJLKB-VrQAg
Arpa Y Guitarras
- Hermanos Cruz Trio - El Pajaro Campana
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thvJb0Kr3Tc
Música Relaxante
Harpa e Natureza - Sinta-se no Paraíso - Acalmar e Meditar
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQajzysHhKM
13.5 Die Balkan-/Griechenland- Tanz-Tradition
In Europa ist die alte Tanz-Tradition bis vor kurzer Zeit vor allem auf dem Balkan und in Griechenland verbreitet geblieben. In diesem Falle natürlich nicht mehr spirituell (ausser bei den Balkan-Sufis), sondern nur noch folkloristisch und sozial.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_dances
Greek
dance (horos)
is a very old tradition, being referred to by authors such as Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch and Lucian.[1] There are different styles and
interpretations from all of the islands and surrounding mainland areas. Each
region formed its own choreography and style to fit in with their own ways. For
example, island dances have
more of a different smooth flow to them, while Pontic dancing
closer to Black
Sea, is very sharp. There are over 10,000 traditional dances that
come from all regions of Greece. There are also pan-Hellenic dances, which have
been adopted throughout the Greek world. These include the syrtos, kalamatianos, pyrrhichios, hasapiko and sirtaki.
Traditional
Greek dancing has a primarily social function. It brings the community together
at key points of the year, such as Easter, the grape harvest or patronal
festivals; and at key points in the lives of individuals and families, such as
weddings. For this reason, tradition frequently dictates a strict order in the
arrangement of the dancers, for example, by age. Visitors tempted to join in a
celebration should be careful not to violate these arrangements, in which the
prestige of the individual villagers may be embodied.[2]
Mix - Zorba
The Greek Dance By the Greek Orchestra Emmetron Music HD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbmbSjeUrxc&list=RDCbmbSjeUrxc&start_radio=1
Zorba The
Greek Dance By the Greek Orchestra Emmetron Music HD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbmbSjeUrxc
Charis
Alexiou - Evdokia's Zeimbekiko 2007 "Athens" Live Greek Music Video
HQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GyoQ0LBvng
Greek Folk
Songs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkutSAlNUdw
"Ανωγιανός Πηδηχτός/Πυρρίχιος" - Κουρήτες - Μαρτσάκης Σκορδαλός
(Cretan -
Martsakis Skordalos)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBE0R-pa4J4
"Σαν θες να μάθεις" - Κουρήτες - Πεντοζάλι - Μαρτσάκης Σκορδαλός
(Pentozali
Martsakis)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYZMrFWnMes
Katevas -
Greek Folk Dances (Macedonia)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAz91lvI-JQ
Golden
Collection - Sirtaki and Bouzouki
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMRcO5H5TzQ
Zorbas
Dance (Sirtaki) - Greek wedding Volos - ΦΕΡΑΙ PALACE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_kele6tedo
Greek
Relaxing Music: Bouzouki Instrumental - Hypnotic Tones.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVAzB8Uj0KM
Ικαριώτικος Λαγκάδα 2015 Ikariotikos Lagada
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edwvUO9GquM
ΓΙΑΝΝΗΣ ΜΑΡΚΟΠΟΥΛΟΣ - Χορός κάτω από την Ακρόπολη
(Επιχείρηση Απόλλων, 1968)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzqS_RoRyeA
Greek
Traditional Dances From All Over The Greece (UNESCO Piraeus And Islands)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9zxWuczQgs
13.6 Gypsy Dances
The Gypsy
Tradition reaches about 1000 Years back.
Because the
Gypsies made most of their living with Music,
they have
preserved some of the Oldest Music Traditions of the World.
Jazz
Manouche/ Gypsy Jazz 1 - A two hour long compilation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATg3Z-qAJZ0
Jazz
Manouche/ Gypsy Jazz 1 - A two hour long compilation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATg3Z-qAJZ0&list=RDATg3Z-qAJZ0&start_radio=1&t=154
And Please
Listen to The St. Maries de La Mer. !!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xwKaguAuHQ
les saintes
maries de la mer.wmv
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKIoh8hMXKE&list=RDYKIoh8hMXKE&start_radio=1&t=0
13.7 Kinästhetik: Proprio-Sinn und Innen-Sinn /
-Wahrnehmung
Die meisten Autoren erwähnen den Innen-Sinn der Kinästhetik nicht. Es ist aber leicht selber zu erfahren, wenn man die Augen schliesst, und ein paar Bewegungen macht, wie gut oder schlecht man sich dann koordinieren kann. Das ist auch ein beliebter Test von Neurologen, wenn sie testen wollen, wie gut ein Patient sein Gleichgewicht halten kann, wenn er nichts sieht. Beim Tanz geht es darum, bei Bewegungen das innere Gefühl wahr-zu -nehmen, wenn die Beine und Arme den Schwerpunkt wesentlich verlagern. Ein gutes Beispiel für diese ballistische Dynamik ist bei Kleist's Marionetten-Theater zu finden.
http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/uber-das-marionettentheater-593/1
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9Cber_das_Marionettentheater
Hier ist auch etwas zur Kinästhetik in der Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprioception
Proprioception
(/ˌproʊprioʊˈsɛpʃən,
-priə-/[1][2] PROH-pree-o-SEP-shən),
is the sense of the relative position of one's own parts of the body and
strength of effort being employed in movement.[3]
It is sometimes described as the "sixth sense".[4]
In humans,
it is provided by proprioceptors in skeletal striated muscles (muscle spindles) and tendons (Golgi tendon organ)
and the fibrous membrane in joint capsules. It is distinguished from exteroception, by which one perceives the outside world, and
interoception, by which
one perceives pain, hunger, etc., and the movement of internal organs.
The brain integrates information from proprioception and from
the vestibular system
into its overall sense of body position, movement, and acceleration. The word kinesthesia
or kinæsthesia (kinesthetic sense) strictly means
movement sense, but has been used inconsistently to refer either to
proprioception alone or to the brain's integration of proprioceptive and
vestibular inputs.
Field
sobriety testing
Proprioception
is tested by American police officers
using the field sobriety test
to check for alcohol
intoxication. The subject is required to touch his or her nose with
eyes closed; people with normal proprioception may make an error of no more
than 20 millimeters, while people suffering from impaired
proprioception (a symptom of moderate to severe alcohol intoxication) fail this
test due to difficulty locating their limbs in space relative to their noses.
Diagnosis
There are
several relatively specific tests of the subject's ability to proprioceive.
These tests are used in the diagnosis of neurological
disorders. They include the visual and tactile placing reflexes.[32]
Training
Proprioception
is what allows someone to learn to walk in complete darkness without losing
balance. During the learning of any new skill, sport, or art, it is usually
necessary to become familiar with some proprioceptive tasks specific to that
activity. Without the appropriate integration of proprioceptive input, an
artist would not be able to brush paint onto a canvas
without looking at the hand as it moved the brush over the canvas; it would be
impossible to drive an automobile because a
motorist would not be able to steer or use the pedals while looking at the road
ahead; a person could not touch type or
perform ballet; and people would not even be able to walk without watching
where they put their feet.
Oliver Sacks reported the case of a young
woman who lost her proprioception due to a viral infection of her spinal cord.[33] At first she could not move
properly at all or even control her tone of voice (as voice modulation is
primarily proprioceptive). Later she relearned by using her sight (watching her
feet) and inner ear only for movement while using
hearing to judge voice modulation. She eventually acquired a stiff and slow
movement and nearly normal speech, which is believed to be the best possible in
the absence of this sense. She could not judge effort involved in picking up
objects and would grip them painfully to be sure she did not drop them.
https://aeon.co/ideas/sure-it-can-backflip-but-can-a-robot-hold-down-a-desk-job
Im Aeon gibt es einen interessanten Artikel, der sich auch mit der Laban-Notation befasst.
In dance, my
other professional home, the quirks of human behaviour are something to be
celebrated, explored and even exploited. Dance resists and actively thwarts
such easy categorisation. The idea of ‘stillness’ is not present in the
Laban/Bartenieff movement system, a taxonomy that formalises a set of
interrelated, overlapping features of movement, connected through dualities
that make rigid categorisation of bodily action impossible. This system
describes the process by which dancers and choreographers create their
innovative designs of human movement through the lens of Laban movement
analysis. This embodied form of qualitative analysis describes the idea of
‘active stillness’, which acknowledges the amount of motor activity involved in
holding any particular posture. Under the academic lens of dance, all of the
above polarities break down: humans are never still, requiring constant breath
via the motion of the diaphragm, which reverberates into every part of the
body, especially the ribcage, heartbeats and postural adjustment;
while robots
can achieve a backflip, they cannot catch objects in varied environments,
shifting a conventional idea of what is ‘hard’ and ‘easy’...
http://www.aquinasonline.com/Topics/intsense.html
Our
internal experience shows immediately that sense cognition is not limited to
the mere sensation of colors, sounds, odors, etc. For instance, I am aware that
I possess an internal image of the Golden Gate Bridge, even if I am not there,
and I remember things that happened yesterday.
The animal
should apprehend a thing not only at the actual time of sensation, but also
when it is absent. Otherwise, since animal motion and action follow
apprehension, an animal would not be moved to seek something absent....( ST I,
78, 4.)
To explain
experiences of this kind, we must refer to the internal senses. The internal
senses include:
Common
Sense
Imagination
Estimative
Sense (Cogitative Sense in humans)
Memorative
Sense
https://www.amazon.com/Psychology-Interior-Senses-Aloysius-Gaffney/dp/1436703247
The
Psychology Of The Interior Senses Hardcover - June 13, 2008
by Mark
Aloysius Gaffney (Author)
http://bartholomew.stanford.edu/onsensesavicenna/intro.html
Interior Senses bei Avicenna
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/d/did/did2222.0000.167/--senses?rgn=main;view=fulltext
This
unsigned article, which is specifically referred to in the article Man (Natural
History), is a medley of various eighteenth-century writings on this problem.
The author has borrowed from Locke, Condillac, Voltaire, and especially from
the works of Father Buffier, all without any, or without proper
acknowledgements. The reference made to Father Buffier in the course of the
article is ambiguous for it does not make clear that the entire central part of
the article is lifted textually out of the Jesuit Father's Traité des Premières
Verités. [1] The extensive use of this particular
source has given rise to the surmise that this particular article, as well as
the article "Sensations," which contains very similar propositions,
was actually written by the Abbé Yvon but only included in the Encyclopédie
after the Abbé officially ceased his collaboration. [2] [Translator note]
http://individual.utoronto.ca/dlblack/articles/ImagPartRweb.pdf
Imagination,
Particular Reason, and Memory
The Role of
the Internal Senses in Human Cognition
Deborah L.
Black, University Of Toronto, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, February 19, 2010
Dies ist eine sehr gelehrte Abhandlung über den Proprio-Sinn / Innen-Sinn / -Wahrnehmung.
Auch hier taucht die Kinästhetik nicht auf.
13.8 Ethiopia / Qene
Es gibt zwar keine brauchbaren Video-Aufnahmen von Qene, die zeigen, was das Besondere an Qene ist, aber dafür einige schöne Videos zu Lalibela und der Geschichte Äthiopiens. Denn das Christentum in Äthiopien hat sich seine eigenen Qualitäten bewahrt, die sonst auf der Welt kaum mehr zu finden sind. Äthiopien war eines der frühesten christianisierten Länder, und da dort der Islam das Christentum nicht verdrängen konnte, ist es dort in seiner Tradition noch besonders lebendig und fruchtbar. Leider im Gegensatz zu Ägypten, wo die Kopten eine ähnliche Tradition haben, die aber sehr unter Bedrängnis geraten ist. Von Irak und Syrien ganz zu schweigen.
Ethiopia Land of Extremes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PmbfbpghlA
Äthiopien –
Films at the German Federal Archive
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfWU6w6rqys
Äthiopiens steiniges Paradies (Doku)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYvtcEU3DKw
Südliches Äthiopien (Deutsche Version)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbkXcMSv0EE
Äthiopien - Zauber des Anfangs - Terra X (Doku)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j27gfSdmm8I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yk9c5nnVQO4
Aethiopien erste Christen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNLnwNvgm6w
Die verschollene Bundeslade
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gtphis8nClQ
Entdeckungsreisen ans Ende der Welt: Äthiopien Das Omo Tal
Doku (2007)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnGaBJcGWos
Äthiopien - Im Hochland des Blauen Nils Doku (2015)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7t6fGR8DekI
Äthiopien Land der Extreme
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vE--zAm4mu4
Äthiopien Süden: Ethnien und Naturparks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Lh3dQBM0Ag
HD Doku "Kampf um den Affenthron 2017" Doku HD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSGd44dTFKQ
Äthiopien, Ägypten und der Kampf ums Wasser | Global 3000
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKJs_BgrZx0
Museum der Völker Äthiopien
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EM05RDSKoac
WORLD INSIGHT Reisen - Äthiopien - Der Norden
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GqYlUepap8
Äthiopien, Lalibela
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLPqq4wKpZQ
Ethiopia’s
Chapel in the Sky
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJCy64adY3Y
Rock-Hewn
Churches of Lalibela, Ethiopia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBq_zOzhTqw
Ethiopia's
monolithic churches, religious sites and Orthodox Christians
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilVq0iz-xTE
Is Lalibela
The Christ? Ethiopian Christmas 7th January. Priest Isaac
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hX9Vfo3TG6w
Rock-Hewn
Churches of Lalibela, Ethiopia in HD (CNN)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-HwLFuFc-0
Qene oder was die daraus machen...
DJ
RophnanYesew Qene Lyrics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zNfyYj5hZU
Ye kidane Meheret negs Qene
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pPHw5dY6Wo
Eritrean Orthodox Tewahdo ቅኔ
ብመጋቤ ምስጢር
መርጌታ ፊልሞን ኢዮብ
@ Ethiopia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WOdzw5TrU8
Ethiopian
Orthodox Church school sample Songs,prayers, liturgy, music, prayers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2V2kmpecsI
14 Theodor Strehlow and the Australian Aborigine Songline tradtition
I am one of the very few people who has a copy of
Theodor Strehlow's books. Also the book of Wighard Strehlow, who was a somewhat
distant Grand-Cousin of Theodor Strehlow. Unfortunately, Wighard Strehlow
didn't understand very much of that. At least he wanted to conserve for
posterity, the work of Theodor Strehlow and his father, Carl Strehlow. Unfortunately, the last remnant members of the Aranda Aborigine
Community, who don't understand practically NOTHING of the traditions of their
ancestors -- they have forbidden that any white man could read these books.
Theirs is now a Secret- Sacred- Tradition. And these Aborigine people are so
racist, like the Britisher white men, who wanted to eradicate them, and did so,
to a great extent. So that they forbade any use of the scholarly material that
Theodor Strehlow had collected. This is now off-limits to any Western scholarship.
I had also seen the videos that Theodor Strehlow had taken of their traditions.
At least I have it in my memory. These videos are somewhere in the archives of
the German Television, of a time, when they had some real scholars there. Which
is a long gone era. I am probably the last un-initiated person who has seen
these. For a westerner, these rituals are utterly incomprehensible, because
there was no comment available in the videos, to which section of the Dream
Time they referred to. Sadly, there is no interlinear Aranda language
translation available that accompanies these videos. Some of that is in Theodor
Strehlow's book. Just to describe some of that in words: These rituals involved
their own blood which they smeared on their bodies, and then glued some
Feathers onto it. So they looked like Emus or other totemic animal. A really
gruesome ritual. And I am telling only the less gruesome details here.
Aboriginal ritual and culture is nothing for the faint-hearted. That you can
believe me. And I know ALL of the Western Mythological Traditions that Theodor
Strehlow was trying to compare the Aranda material with. Without this
knowledge, it is impossible to understand what Theodor Strehlow wanted to say.
Therefore, most scholars of Cultural Anthropology could not understand that,
because they didn't have the combined knowledge. I understood this ALL through
Hertha v. Dechend and Joseph Campbell and reading all the original mythologies.
https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/hamlets_mill/hamletmill.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strehlow_Research_Centre
https://www.magnt.net.au/strehlow-research-centre
Strehlow, T.: Aranda Traditions, Melbourne Univ. Press, Melbourne (1947)
Strehlow,
T.: Songs of central Australia, Angus and Robertson, Syndey (1971)
Strehlow, Wighard.: Wüstentanz : Australien spirituell erleben durch Mythen, Sagen, Märchen und
Gesänge, Strehlow, Allensbach am Bodensee (1996)
The next is
an extrakt from "Design und Zeit".
http://www.noologie.de/desn.htm
Literature: Strehlow (1947),
(1964), (1971), (1996). The performative transmission of the Australian
Aboriginal culture represents a possible example case for a dynamic polar
opposite to the dominant static transmission systems of Western Europe. Of
special interest for the present study is the fate of an anthropologist of
German descent, Theodor Strehlow (1908-1978), who studied the cultural
transmissions of the Aranda and Loritja tribes of Central Australia. He was the
youngest son of Carl Strehlow, a missionary in the Australian Aranda territory
at Hermannsburg, who worked and lived there from 1894. Carl Strehlow was one of
the first white people in Australia who didn't just consider the Aborigines as
fair game for extermination hunts. He gave them shelter and protection from the
man-hunters, tried to convert them to become good Christians, and all the while
studied their lifestyles which he documented in several books. After Carl's
death in 1922, Theodor continued the ethnographical work of his father. Strehlow (1996:
20-21).
Theodor
Strehlow is one of those exceedingly rare cases of an anthropologist who could
view the culture that he studied, from the inside, with the eyes of a native
(the emic view), since he had grown up among the Aranda children, but he could
also see their culture from the viewpoint of the scientist (the etic view). He
was one of those rare cross-cultural individuals whose cognitive system enabled
them to entertain otherwise mutually incompatible worldviews. He was able to
perform a cognitive Gestalt flip of perception between the extremely disparate
perceptions of reality as those of the whites and the Aborigines. [560] Because
of this intimate insight, T. Strehlow's work offers some aspects that can
hardly be found in any other studies on Australian Aboriginal culture . The
essential factor that makes his work important in the present context is his
primary socialization into Aranda culture (see Chatwin, below). The elements of
primary socialization, those cultural materials and factors of somatic
conditioning that are "imbibed with the mother's milk" tend to remain
hidden from view and from conscious observation, for any outside observer who
comes from a western civilization to an indigenous setting as different as the
Aranda life is. [561] Such factors must be counted
among prime candidates for "unobservables" as Staal calls them. [562] They
can be so unobservable that Strehlow himself wasn't aware that he could notice
something that no-one else from the white culture was able to discern. Of
course the Aborigines knew that he could perceive (even though he wasn't able
to let this percolate through to his rational verbal language thoughts) and
therefore they let him partake in rituals that neither before him nor after him
any Western person had been allowed to see and hear. Moreover, they allowed him
to film and tape that material. And today this material lies at the Strehlow
Research center. From the personal accounts (Chatwin,
W. Strehlow), one gets the impression that T. Strehlow was a man who lived
"between two worlds" and belonged to neither.
Bruce
Chatwin (1988: 76-79) gives a vivid description of T. Strehlow and his
work: This is a quote from Chatwin. [Start quote]
(76): Strehlow, by all accounts, was an awkward cuss himself.
(77): His
father, Karl Strehlow, had been pastor in charge of the Lutheran Mission at
Hermannsburg, to the west of Alice Springs. He was one of a handful of 'good Germans'
who, by providing a secure land-base, did more than anyone to save the Central
Australian Aboriginals from extinction by people of British stock. This did not
make them popular. During the First World War, a press campaign broke out
against this 'Teuton spies'-nest' and the 'evil effects of Germanizing the
natives'.
As a
baby, Ted Strehlow had an Aranda wet-nurse and grew up speaking Aranda
fluently. [Emphasis,
A.G.]. Later, as a university graduate, he returned to 'his people' and, for
over thirty years, patiently recorded in notebooks, on tape and on film the
songs and ceremonies of the passing order. His black friends asked him to do
this so their songs should not die with them entirely.
It was not
surprising, given his background, that Strehlow became an embattled
personality: an autodidact who craved both solitude and recognition, a German
'idealist' out of step with the ideals of Australia.
Aranda Traditions , his earlier book, was years ahead of its time
in its thesis that the intellect of the 'primitive' was in no way inferior to
that of modern man. The message, though largely lost on Anglo-Saxon readers,
was taken up by Claude Levi-Strauss, who incorporated Strehlow's insights
into The Savage Mind.
Then, in late middle age, Strehlow staked everything on a grand idea.
He wanted to show how every aspect
of Aboriginal song had its counterpart in Hebrew, Ancient Greek, Old Norse or
Old English: the literatures we acknowledge as our own. Having grasped the
connection of song and land, he wished to strike at the roots of song itself:
to find in song a key to unravelling the mystery of the human condition. It was
an impossible untertaking. He got no thanks for his trouble.
When the Songs came
out in 1971, a carping review in the Times Literary Supplement suggested
the author should have refrained from airing his 'grand poetic theory'. The
review upset Strehlow terribly. More upsetting were the attacks of the
'activists' who accused him of stealing the songs, with a view to publication,
from innocent and unsuspecting Elders.
Strehlow
died at his desk in 1978, a broken man.
(78-79):
Strehlow once compared the study of Aboriginal myths to entering a 'labyrinth
of countless corridors and passages', all of which were mysteriously connected
in ways of baffling complexity. Reading the Songs, I got the
impression of a man who had entered this secret world by the back door; who had
had the vision of a mental construction more marvellous and intricate than
anything on earth, a construction to make Man's material achievements seem like
so much dross - yet which somehow evaded description.
What makes Aboriginal song so hard to appreciate is the endless accumulation of
detail...
I read on.
Strehlow's transliterations from the Aranda were enough to make one cross-eyed.
When I could read no more, I shut the book. My eyelids felt like glasspaper. I
finished the bottle of wine and went down to the bar for a brandy.
[Chatwin
Quote end.]
The
ecological setting of Central Australia forced the Aborigines into a nomadic
lifestyle, since the rainfall is extremely sporadic, there is no predictable
rain season, but irregular thunderstorms that appear very locally and at long
time intervals (around ten years). So the people had to be constantly on the
move to places where there were foodstuffs, animals, and water. There were no
pack animals that could carry any belongings, and so the people could carry
with them only very few material possessions. Whatever cultural material they
wanted to preserve, they had to keep entirely in their minds and
memories.
Even though
Aboriginal culture was almost erased by the whites, some material remains, but
how much needs to be determined. Of special importance seem to be the data
collected in the Strehlow Research centre, the films of the last Aranda rituals
that the elders performed for Strehlow before they died without successors to
carry on their tradition. The Aboriginal Aranda tradition may present the last,
largest, and purest case of a purely performative transmission that has been
preserved up until our days. The Aranda had to concentrate all their knowledge
in a non-material transmission form of dance and songs. Chatwin (1988:
119-120) indicates that it is not the words of the songlines which convey the
information but the melody, or the rhythm, or both. This gives a hint that
there may be an important element in aboriginal transmission that is
extra-verbal.
15 Arts and Crafts Traditions, Healing Traditions, The Extra-Verbal Aspect
All the
Arts and Crafts Traditions have a Material Aspect, but also an Immaterial one.
This is the skill, which is imparted from the master to the student. This can
only by transmitted by Learning by Doing. And therefore it is not sufficient to
give a Verbal Description of these Techniques. Even if there are diagrams and
pictures included. As much as a dentist or a medical doctor cannot learn by a
book. In the WWII, the US Army trained its medic soldiers by books alone. But
they had all the wounded soldiers to train on. One can be sure that the first
100 or so wounded soldiers were not so lucky when treated by the in-experienced
medical teams. (See also: The M.A.S.H. Series in US Television). Therefore, the
Immaterial Side of these Traditions need to be considered as well. A list of
the respective videos can be found in the Noology Video Archive:
http://www.noologie.de/video.txt
See:
doku-craft-handwerk-art
The
Following is an Extrakt from "Design und Zeit":
15.1 The Craft Traditions
Bernard (1985), Bücher (1924), Leroi-gourhan (1984). The arts and crafts of humanity
always involve kinemorphics. Doing manual work implies the very complex and
coordinated movement of the body. The kinetic interplay of work piece, tools,
and body movement unfolds in sets of kinemorphic patterns typical for each
combination. Therefore the arts and crafts traditions had built up a vast and
rich cultural transmission repertoire of body motions and experiences that are
totally inadequate to cover when the crafts are only considered under the
utilitarian viewpoint that they are necessary to fabricate certain material
objects. According to Morris, the highest levels of craftsmanship and
precision, as well as extreme esthetic value of the objects created in this
tradition, had reached, and passed its culmination in former ages, and in far
away cultures. Morris (1986: 45-78, 79-110). Today,
the craft traditions of civilizations are becoming extinct, together with much
indigenous cultural diversity, and the natural species diversity . The
exception that proves the case is the tradition of the French Guild
"Companions du Devoir", that is keeping the European heritage of the
manual work alive, as described by its current leader, Bernard (1985:
14): "Its goal is 'the professional, moral, and spiritual perfection of
its members' through manual work and the simultaneous nurturing of
conscience". Another exception is Japan which holds its master craftsmen
as "living national treasures".
These
Youtube Video keywords give some examples:
Handwerk-Traditionen /// Aussterbende
Arts and Crafts Traditions
Gold
Smithing
Lost Gold
in Wax Technique
Gold in Wax
Technique Peru Colombia
Lost Wax
Casting Techniques, Bronze
African
Iron Smelting
African
Iron and Bronze Smithing Benin
Katana
Smithing Japan
A long
playlist of Arts and Crafts Videos can be found here:
Der Letzte seines Standes - Der Kalkbrenner vom Kochelsee | Doku
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYQRev6q68w&list=PL-nn1kUPuL5wc8HlEh6UftA52ohnVKBES
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYQRev6q68w
Japanese
Woodworking and joining
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNT7BjPPnzc&list=PLki5vlcEIRg2Fg9X6_1Qb8gxAIMmA5HU4
Javanese
Kriss smithing
Kris Sword
- Weapon of South-East Asia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zy4Rdk_8vYI
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kris
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javanese_culture
https://www.pinterest.de/pin/354799276864395626/
Meteorite Iron
Campo del Cielo:
Etching an Iron Meteorite
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IE39xKpLJqA
King Tut's
Dagger Made of Gold and Iron from Meteorite
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHBr_APHPtQ
Iron
Meteorites contain veins and arteries some will contain chelated DNA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSMD1L1lzdg
Time Lapse
Acid Etch of Campo Del Cielo Meteorite Revealing Widmanstatten Patterns
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ij3vab5cdYs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteoric_iron
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_meteorite
15.2 The Riace Bronces
One of the
most astonishing accomplishments of Antiquity, between the Antikythera
Mechanism, and the Pantheon in Rome, which are not reproducible today
[Yes, today
we can build bigger arches with steel-reinforced (rebar) concrete, but the
Romans used only their own type of concrete which was in some ways better than
modern concrete. Because modern steel-concrete rusts away after just 50 years
or so, and in 200 years, nothing will remain of those structures. Whereas the
Roman buildings can outlast 2000 years with no problem at all.]
Now one
more technology that cannot be reproduced with all our present-day technology,
are The Riace Bronces:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riace_bronzes
http://www.noologie.de/soter-pic/Reggio_calabria_museo_nazionale_bronzi_di_riace.jpg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcvxM_ydaKA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8j04HYs1qnE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYeDZ1wjTtM
15.3 Die Goldschmiede-Techniken von Gold in Wachs
Die extrem filigranen Formen der "Gold im Wachs" Techniken sind mit normalen Goldschmiede-Techniken wie Treiben und Auflöten von Teilen überhaupt nicht machbar. Das hat eine Menge Kunsthistoriker in die Irre geführt. Denn man kann die winzigsten Teilchen auf einem Schmuck- oder Ritual-Stück vorher in Wachs modellieren, und dann giessen. Das beherrschten die kolumbianischen und peruanischen Goldschmiede perfekt. Sie hatten dazu auch noch viele verschiedene Variationen von Wachs, die sie von verschiedenen Bienen und anderen Wachs-Insekten bekommen hatten. Soviel ich weiss, weiss niemand heute mehr etwas von den Bienen- Apis- Kulturen der Ur-Amerikaner. Siehe dazu auch noch das entsprechende Kapitel bei Vergilius.
https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/poem-week-bees-virgils-georgics-book-iv/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgil
Ganz besonders interessant ist die Nachbildung einer Bienenwabe in Gold, mit der "Gold im Wachs" Technik, die dem Daedalus zugeschrieben wurde. Dabei ist das die einfachste Technik, die Mann sich denken kann. Man nimmt einfach eine richtige Bienenwabe, und holt alles heraus, was nicht Wachs ist, und dann macht man eine Gussform aus geschlämmtem Lehm daraus. Presto! Einfacher geht es wirklich nicht. Das hatten nur die neuzeitlichen Kunsthistoriker gar nicht im Sinn, denn die dachten, wenn es nicht kompliziert geht, dann geht es gar nicht.
https://uwaterloo.ca/earth-sciences-museum/resources/mining-canada/age-old-techniques-goldsmith
When Michael Ayrton, the painter, and the goldsmith, John Donald,
succeeded in reproducing the legendary golden honey-comb of Dedalus, they were
asserting a truth about the past which was new to many people. Most of us are
inclined, when we come face to face with one of those great examples of the art
of the goldsmith, wrought in ancient times, to wonder how such things could
possible have been accomplished by primitive smiths, using primitive tools and
labouring in primitive workshops. Those who challenged Michael Ayrton’s
statement in his biography of Dedalus, that a golden honeycomb ‘was a far less
miraculous achievement to a metal worker than to an historian’, were guilty of
just this sort of misapprehension. They were completely underestimating the
inherited skills, resourcefulness and technological know-how, of the ancient
craftsmen, in particular, the goldsmiths....
The legendary ingenuity with which Dedalus is credited
was by no means unique. The golden splendours which are among the chief
attractions of the museums of the world today suggest that skill and ingenuity
were commonplace in the palace workshops which half a dozen civilizations supported.
Of course, not all the craftsmanship of the past was impeccable.
http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/goldsmithing.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beekeeping
https://www.jstor.org/stable/641360
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldsmith
The Art of
Goldsmithing: From Ancient Greece to Modern Masters
The Ancient
Lost Wax Method - L'École des Arts Joailliers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJczuAu_Ptg
Lost
Kingdoms of South America (2013) Ep3 Lands of Gold
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sovvzUAVoA&t=1067s
Minute
24:55
Lost Wax
Gold Jewellery Vacuum Casting Process Machine.mp4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1D1H4-epUU
How to
craft gold like ancient Colombians
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2Tz76UkTkY
Lost Wax
Metal Casting Dhokra
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33eaqnm_eKk
Bronze Casting
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZHLmG8DRbY
Schwabach bei Nürnberg die Goldschlägerstadt
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUHF-D4ANVw
Cleveland
Institute of Art: The Masters Series - John Paul Miller
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0z8m1fP0Zs
15.4
Images
of Goldsmithing
http://www.noologie.de/soter-pic/330px-Christus_saint_eloi_orfvre.jpg
http://www.noologie.de/soter-pic/330px-Goldschmiedewerkstatt.jpg
http://www.noologie.de/soter-pic/450px-Goldworker_in_Baghdad.jpg
http://www.noologie.de/soter-pic/Beruf_^_Handwerk_^_Goldschmied.jpg
http://www.noologie.de/soter-pic/Gold_and_Silver_Smith_Lucknow_India_1890.jpg
http://www.noologie.de/soter-pic/goudsmid_in_de_Karolanden.jpg
http://www.noologie.de/soter-pic/Goudsmid_Pa_Soerau_gereedschap_Karolanden.jpg
http://www.noologie.de/soter-pic/goudsmidwinkel_Atjeh_TMnr_10014478.jpg
http://www.noologie.de/soter-pic/Mendel_II_095_v.jpg
16 The Inca Legacy: Bill Sullivan
We reference here the book by Bill Sullivan:
The Secret of the Incas: Myth,
Astronomy and the War Against Time
https://www.amazon.com/Secret-Incas-Myth-Astronomy-Against/dp/0517888513
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/108246.The_Secret_of_the_Incas
http://www.robertschoch.net/Secret%20of%20the%20Incas.htm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRSTy9ir6zs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kkdj39R3bAs
Since the Inca Culture went extinct
so thoroughly with the friendly help of Francisco Pizarro and his
conquistadores, there remains only scant material about what the Inca world
view or better their cosmological or archaeo-astronomical view was like. The
most significant loss is the secret of the quipus, their knotted rope system of
accounting. This is truly an extra-verbal memory system, because it is more
mathematical than verbal. The quipu could be read and recited verbally as one
can read aloud a mathematical formula. But if you don't understand the
mathematics behind the formula, reading it out loud will not help you at all. This
is what I call the Essence of Extra-Verbal. This knowledge was completely lost,
because the Spaniards thought that this was black magic (since they didn't
understand anything of mathematics, especially the catholic inquisition priests
who accompanied them), and they destroyed all quipus they could find, and their
Quipu-Experts altogether with them. They were given the most brutal and
horrendous treatment that the torture experts of the inquisition could come up
with. Some of the gruesome details of this treatment can be seen in the video.
Fortunately, there were a few Jesuite Patres who were sympathetic to the Inca
knowledge, and they recorded some of their myths and lore, which sits today in
some Vatican Archives, to be rediscovered. [Interjection: The Jesuites were
also the best astronomers of Christianity, as is evidenced by the Jesuite
Patres who were at the court of the Emperor of China, where they helped the
Emperors out with figuring their sort of astrology/astronomy.]
The sad Inca story is told in detail
by Bill Sullivan in his book, and fortunately, there is a youtube video, where
he reveals the most important findings that he had made in his many years of
studies of the Inca Mythology. The incomparable advantage that the Inca had
above all the other great civilizations of mankind, was their view of the sky,
which was, because of the altitude, and the clear skies over the Atacama Desert
... which was unparalleled by anything other civilizations could enjoy.
Therefore they were the best and most advanced of all astronomers, of mankind.
Until the Westerners invented the telescope. And today the Atacama Desert is
the preferred place where to put the largest telescopes that science and
technology can come up with. What was of particular importance to the Inca were
the presence of dark clouds in the milky way, which they could see with their
eyes as well as the bright stars. They could see the Total Darkness, an ability
which our civilization has never had and never will. We may safely assume that
these dark clouds are the dark matter, of which present day physics can still
not make any sense of.
16.1.1
Cardinal
Bellarmino and The telescope of Galileo
Now we make a little detour to the
Western history of Astronomy. We all know that Galileo invented the telescope,
which is just another historical machination. There were many inventors of the
telescope, but he just succeeded to make one that was better than the others.
Prior to his innovation, all the other inventors used spheroid glass grinding.
And Galileo was able to do a better approximation to ellipsoid glass grinding.
I leave the further discussion to the historians of science. What is of
importance here is, that Galileo showed his invention to the cardinal
Bellarmino to demonstrate to him what he had just discovered: The moons of
Saturn:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galilean_moons
But Bellarmino refused to look
through the telescope. The common interpretation is that Bellarmino was
"somewhat behind the times". But we can interpret this in another
way. Bellarmino was up to date in all scientific affairs. He was a Jesuite, and
those folks knew everything under the sky what there was to know.
[Interjection: I am the dean of this
college, and what I don't know, isn't knowledge, a famous quip.]
And they were the best astronomers
of their time. So Bellarmino knew very well, that a telescope can magnify only
that which is bright and shines. Like the stars. What a telescope can never do,
is magnify the darkness. And darkness is exactly what sits at the center of the
galaxy. The Inca and their predecessors knew this all very well, a few hundred
or even a few thousand years before Galileo. One can call this phenomenon
inversely as Instrumental Blindness. The more powerful your instruments get,
the more they blank out the most important issues. Which is the blight that has
befallen present day science. Especially astronomy and theoretical physics and
psychology.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bellarmin
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1989JHA....20....1W
http://solarviews.com/eng/galdisc.htm
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/307/galileos-observations-of-the-moon-jupiter-venus-and-the-sun/
As another little sideline, is how
the Catholic priest Georges Lemaître initially formulated the Big Bang theory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Big_Bang_theory
In 1927, the Belgian Catholic priest Georges
Lemaître proposed an expanding model for the universe to explain the observed
redshifts of spiral nebulae, and calculated the Hubble law. He based histheory on
the work of Einstein and De Sitter, and independently derived Friedmann's
equations for an expanding universe.
16.1.2
This
is from the Videos by Bill Sullivan:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRSTy9ir6zs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kkdj39R3bAs
On 15th November
1532, when the Spanish Conquistadors climbed high into the Andes on a mission
to conquer the Inca people, 170 Spaniards met a force of 40,000 Incas. In the
first of this two-part series, Dr William Sullivan examines why Andean
civilisation could possibly have been conquered as a result of this battle and
why a clash of cultural beliefs could have caused the downfall of the largest
nation state to have ever existed in the western hemisphere. In one of the
strangest events in all recorded history, Spaniards after adventure, fortune
and power, to their own amazement seized this seemingly infallible empire. What
the Spaniards never knew, however, and what history does not record, was that
the Andean people had been aware of the imminence of this event for some 100
years through a complex and systematic charting of the stars. The Inca Empire
at its peak was the largest kingdom on Earth.
AG: This is not entirely true.
Because it consisted only of a small strip of arable land along the Pacific
coast, which was practically insignificant compared to the Chinese Empire, or
compared to the Roman Empire, or the Persian Empire. But for the difficult
terrain, it was an enormous accomplishment what they did, and all this without
wheels and draft animals. They even had some wheels, a fact that practically
no-one knows today. But these wheels were fitted only to childrens' toys. It is
very easy to understand why the Inca's didn't see a reason to develop the wheel
as transport. Because of the very mountainous terrain, there was practically no
space for roads. And whatever land they had, which are the river floodplains,
was direly needed for agriculture. This contrasts sharply with the vast river
floodplains of Eurasia, especially Mesopotamia, the Indus area, and the Yangtse
and Yellow River. Then there was also the much smaller and more spread out
population in total compared to Egypt, Mesopotamia, and China. It was
distributed across so many very difficult mountain ranges. Last but not least
was the lack of draft animals, and the lack of metals (Bronze) for the axles
and other moving parts. Particularly problematic is the bio-mechanics of Llama
feet. They are really not hooves like those of cows and horses, but very soft
and spongy. Very well suited to climb steep mountains, but not at all suited to
carry anything heavier than their own bodies. So it is not just their small
body stature which limts their use for load carrying purposes, but the
bio-mechanics of their feet. See also the books by Jared Diamond who gives a
good account of what these difficulties were: Guns, Germs and Steel.
Back to the quote
from Bill Sullivan:
"The Incas
were master builders, fearsome warriors and practitioners of human sacrifice.
Yet this mighty state was conquered by a small band of Spanish adventurers.
7000 men were killed and 10,000 injured. But how could the Incas let this
happen? The Secret Of The Incas tells the story of one man’s search to unlock
one of the world’s great mysteries. Anthropologist Bill Sullivan found the
answer in the myths handed down from generation to generation of Incas and
finally to Jesuit priests. The Incas were fine astrologists and believed events
in the stars paralleled events on earth, only 100 years hence. During the reign
of the first Inca, they foretold the end of Inca civilisation in 1532 – the
year the Spanish invaded. The Incas’ tragic secret was that they believed they
were doomed – and that resistance was futile."
"In the
final of this two part series, Bill Sullivan discovers that the ancient Inca myths
have been translated into physical representations created in the natural
landscape, demonstrating how potent and integrated Inca culture was. The Inca
empire began as early as 1200 AD in the city of Cuzco, but it was not until
1438 that it began to expand across modern day Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru, and some
of Argentina. At its height, the Empire was the largest nation on Earth and
remains the largest nation state to have existed in the western hemisphere. The
culture was sophisticated and advanced, with an organised taxation system. It
was also incredibly rich and powerful."
AG: And we have to say that Bill
Sullivan is a little bit leaning to the romantic side of the Inca legacy. We
must do some comparison with ancient Eurasian cultures. Because the Inca empire
was so much smaller in terms of actual population size and density, the
apparent richness is quite deceiving. There was a very small class of
Overlords, the Inca themselves, who were at the tip and the top of the Pyramid.
Perhaps the best comparison of cultures is with ancient Egypt. Both were a
small strip of arable land, surrounded by hostile desert. The Inca had their
vast Atacama Desert and the Andean mountains which were quite inhospitable to
human settlement. And the Incas and their many predecessors had had a much
harder fate than the Egyptians, since the latter had their constant source of
fertility, the Nile. But the South American situation was entirely different.
Because of the erratic climate patterns there, it occurred quite often that
whole civilizations were wiped out because of long drought periods. And the
Inca had just had a lucky strike, when they were flourishing during a more
rainy period. But even they would have been wiped out by a longer period of
drought, even without the Spanish Conquistadores. The Inca Empire was literally
built on Quicksand. So it is very difficult to compare the Inca with the
Eurasian civilizations. And it is probably quite an exaggeration of the
gold-crazed Spanish Conquistadores, that they depicted the Inca Empire much
larger and richer than it really was. There was just more concentration of
wealth and power in Cuzco, much more so than in Eurasia. And their class
structure was also different. The Inca ruling class was significantly smaller
than those of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and China. The Inca really were quite short
of manpower and wealth. Their only advantage was that their mountainous terrain
was rich in Gold, Silver, Copper, and other ores. The Cerro Rico de Potosi is
just the best known of so many rich metal deposits which have since then been
exploited by the Westerners.
[In the cult of the Pachamama of the
ancient Incas it was more or less forbidden to disturb the earth by digging
deeply into it. Even today in the Cerro Rico, the native miners do elaborate
rituals to pacify the earth spirits. Since the rapid rivers of the Andes
carried so much mineral-wealthy material, it was much easier to go to the river
bank and wash out all the gold, the silver, and even platinum. No-one knows how
the Amerinds discovered platinum. But they certainly had this metal. The main
problem with this metal is its extremely high melting point of 1,768 °C. No Western scientist has any idea how
the pre-conquistador Amerinds could produce such high temperatures with their
"primitive" methods. We can only speculate that they used wind
tunnels, since wind is a commodity that is in ample supply in the Andes. So
when you build a wind tunnel with very basic materials (remember the famous
Inca rope bridges, like the bridge of San Louis Rey), you can get any
temperature that you want. You just have to get enough charcoal to keep the
fire going.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bridge_of_San_Luis_Rey
When asked if
his characters were historical or imagined, Wilder replied, "The Perichole
and the Viceroy are real people, under the names they had in history [a street
singer named Micaela
Villegas and her lover Manuel de Amat y Junyent, who was Viceroy of
Peru at the time]. Most of the events were invented by me, including the fall
of the bridge."[2] He based the Marquesa's habit of writing letters to her daughter on his
knowledge of the great French letter-writer Madame de Sévigné.[2]
The bridge
itself (in both Wilder's story and Mérimée's play) is based on the great Inca
road suspension
bridge across theApurímac
River, erected around 1350, still in use in 1864, and dilapidated but still
hanging in 1890.[citation needed] When asked by the explorer Victor Wolfgang von Hagen whether he had ever seen a reproduction of E. G.
Squier's woodcut illustration of the bridge as it was in 1864, Wilder replied:
"It is best, von Hagen, that I make no comment or point of it."[3] In fact, in a letter to Yale professor Chauncey Tinker, Wilder wrote
that he had invented the bridge altogether.[4] The name of the bridge is drawn from the Mission San Luis Rey de Francia in San Diego County, California.[5]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platinum
And the Spaniards were quite
surprised, since they had had no idea what this metal was. Therefore they
called it the little plata, or Platina. And the gold and other mines of today
are polluting entire contry sides, and they poison the rivers. So that the
farmers there are poisoning themselves and their children with the poisonous
effluents of the mines.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerro_Rico
16.1.3
Sacsayhuaman
and the Engineering of Sand-Castle-building
There are a few more corrections to
be made to the account of Bill Sullivan. He is not an engineer, and this shows.
First, the immense monolithic block buildings that were at the foundations of
the Inca architecture, like the fortress at Sacsayhuaman, could not have been
built by the Inca's. The Inca's had only 90 years of power before they were
wiped out by the Spaniards. To build a fortress like Sacsayhuaman, it would
take at least 100 years, or more, maybe 400 years give or take a few 100 more.
And this without power tools, machinery, and whatsoever. One needs to be an
engineer to appreciate all this. There is a little side note on the business of
sand- engineering, which is better placed in an endnote. [2]
When wants to undertake a project
like building a fortress like Sacsayhuaman, one should calculate about 500
years to do this. Especially when you have no suitable machinery, which are
even today not so easy to get. Even if there exists today such a machine that
can carry much more than 500 tons, the road would crumble under its weight. A
normal battle tank weighs in at about 50-60 tons. So you get a pretty good
estimate what it means to build a machine that can carry 10 times as much. I
have to remind you. This hits the barrier of Metal strength or rather fatigue.
Here is another little side note: [3]
The Inca's could never have
accomplished a project of the magnitude of Sacsayhuaman. You can see this in
those ruins in Peru and Chile, there are massive foundations of Megaliths, and
on top of those is a quite more primitive masonry of Inca construction.
Sacsayhuaman is a fortress built against eternity itself. The human spirit
wanted to triumph over the laws of the Universe and the Cosmos. They tried,
very much, and they were quite succesful, in a way. Because at some times, and
at another solstices, and in another round of the Precession of the Equinoxes
these mighty empires waxed and waned. And that was a long, long time before the
Inca came. The Andean People had seen many empires come and go. Because they
were used to think the temporality of the Precession of the Equinoxes. And this
is very forbidden territory for Western Archeologists and Pre-Historians, that
they should never think of Atlantean Times. Because that is exactly what they
were. And this is completely Politically Incorrect. Because to build a fortress
like Sacsayhuaman, one must have Super-Human Powers. And even the Spaniards
could not destroy that thing. They tried. But to tear down Granite Blocks of
more than a 100 tons, even the most determined Spaniards, could not do that.
And today, there remain just the foundations of the once mighty Fortress of
Sacsayhuaman. And they are so heavy, and they are more endurable than the
Pyramids of Egypt. They remain the most important witnesses of the eternal
struggle of the humans, against ETERNITY. And I know now what it means to
struggle against ETERNITY. It is no easy thing as you will believe me. But the
human Spirit is stronger than Eternity. I will sometime somehow prove this,
that the HUMAN SPIRIT IS STRONGER THAN ETERNITY. God helps me or better not.
Because God helps me only when I can do this alone.
16.1.4
The
Engineering of Building the Fortress Sacsayhuaman
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacsayhuam%C3%A1n
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/sacsayhuaman
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheus_(Orff)
https://www.zeit.de/1968/13/urworte-orffisch/seite-2
https://www.klassika.info/Komponisten/Orff/Oratorium/1967_01/index.html
https://www.orff.de/werk/theatrum-mundi/prometheus/
Here is another side note: On trucks
and load carrying and moving:[4]
16.2 Design und Zeit: Knotensysteme
Hier sind ein paar Zitate aus meiner Dissertation: Design und Zeit:
http://www.noologie.de/ag-dis.pdf
Nicht (so gut) druckbare Systeme gibt (oder gab) es vor
allem im indigenen Bereich: wie die Inka-Quipus, die mit Knotensystemen in
vielfarbigen Schnüren hergestellt werden, oder die Südsee-Navigatoren-Karten,
die aus Stöckchen und Muscheln bestehen. Weiterhin sind sehr verbreitete
materielle Transmissionssysteme mit Webtechnik verbunden, sowie mit Flechtwerk
(Körben, Wandschirmen, etc.). Diese Transmissionssysteme sind entweder meist
schon verschwunden, oder im Zuge der Tourismus- Souvenir-Industrie in ihren
Formen und Detailreichtum stark degeneriert. Ein wesentlicher, von der Schrift
nicht nachzuahmender Aspekt dieser Systeme, die mit Knoten, Web- und
Flechtarbeit zu tun haben, ist, daß es für den Produzenten eine wesentlich
andere körperliche Beteiligung bedeutet, ein solches Werk herzustellen. Bei den
Knotensystemen, wie den Quipus, gilt das ebenfalls für den Rezipienten. Die
körperliche Präsenz und manuelle Performanz hat vor allem eine Auswirkung auf
die Aufmerksamkeit und das Gedächtnis. Wie die in vielen Religionen verbreitete
Benutzung des Rosenkranzes zeigt, hat das manuelle Bewegen von solchen
Strukturen eine besondere neuronale Wirkung, die u.a. unter dem Begriff
"Meditation" bekannt ist. Den Kontrast dazu, wie leicht es ist, etwas
zu vergessen, das man nur mit den Augen wahrgenommen hat, kann man selber jeden
Tag erleben. Die Schrift ist zwar sehr praktisch zum schnellen Schreiben und
Lesen, aber nicht gerade optimal für das Behalten von Texten. Das hat Plato
schon in seinem "Phaidros" bemängelt: "Denn sie [die Schrift]
wird Vergessenheit in den Seelen derer schaffen, die sie lernen... Also nicht
für das Gedächtnis, sondern für das Wieder-Erinnern hast du ein Elixier
erfunden." (247c).[298]
16.2.1 Applications of knots for record keeping
A popular method of folk wisdom to
remember something is to tie a knot into one's handkerchief, or something
similar. This is no joke, but very ancient mnemotechnic knowledge. A wide
application of knots is for record keeping. Ascher (1981),
Haarmann (1990: 56-60), Haarmann (1997: 677), Ifrah (1991: 16,
33, 47, 114, 121-128), Scharlau (1986: 80-93), Boone (1994: 198-199,
234-239, 241, 259, 284, 295, 299), (Encarta: Inca). This has been found on all continents, for example a wide use in China.
(Scharlau 1986: 81), (Ifrah 1991). Most remarkable is its use in the
Inca quipu system, since here is a case of a civilization which didn't use
writing[476] but used this notation system as main tool for the administration
of a very large territory measuring 4000 km in its longest extent, with the
additional difficulty of mountainous terrain, and no horses or other animals
for quick transportation available. The solution for a fast long range
communication and transportation system to exclusive imperial use, was the
relay courier system. A human long range runner cannot carry a heavy load, and
therefore a very lightweight but durable CMM was needed. It is generally
assumed that only specific types of numerical data were encoded with an
intricate system of colored knots in a many-stranded rope. Scharlau (1986:
87-89), citing Ascher (1981). An investigation of a quipu containing
astronomical information is in Zuidema (1986: 341-351). Some accounts
indicate that it was possible to encode complete narratives into the quipu. Menninger (1957/58:
II,62): "Bericht von Garcilasso de la Vega, der Sohn einer Inkaprinzessin
und eines Spaniers." Scharlau (1986:
263<79>). See also the discussion in Scharlau (1986: 80-93).
16.2.2 Color as Coding Dimension
The studies on
indigenous use of color in CMM, Silverman (1991), Barthel (1971),
of quipus and Andean weaving patterns, quillcas,
indicate that the informational dimension of color was utilized in more depth
and detail than in the European CMT. European {writing / printing} is largely
color insensitive (black / white) because of technology. Since color printing
is more expensive than black and white, this informational dimension tends to
be used less in the western CMT after the printing revolution.
Illich (1988: 50) notes that color was widely used in earlier European
manuscripts[486] and even more so in Arabic writing. A notable
case of extenxive color use in Western CMT is of course art, and the craft of
map making. Tufte (1990), (1992) gives ample information on the
informational usage of color, especially where it can convey information
"at a glance" extremely quickly, through judicious usage of the eye's
vast capacity of color processing, that is entirely cut out in the black/white
alphabetic technology. With modern multimedia computer technology, color begins
to be used on a wider scale, but there is little knowledge how to apply it
wisely. Tufte (1990: 82, 88) describes some of the garish misuse of color
by aesthetically untrained software designers who have suddenly the color
palettes of computer video available, but don't quite know how to use them.
16.2.3 Quipu Mnemotechnics
When the European and
South American cultures clashed in the conquista, there arose many issues of cultural
domination. Besides the brute dominance factor of "guns, germs and
steel" (Diamond 1997: 67-82), an important question is whether the
Inca quipu system could be shown to have qualities that the European writing
system lacked. This (so far hypothetical) factor is here called the Qipucamayoc Mnemotechnics.
The further question to ask is, if the prior discussions in the anthropological
literature of the quipu may have systematically omitted relevant
material.[487] The prior interpretations focus on the aspect
that quipu may be limited in its semantic expressibility
because it cannot encode language. Scharlau (1986:
89): "... Grenzen. All das was nicht in irgendeiner Weise quantifizierbar
ist, kann offenbar nicht dadurch festgehalten werden." This may contain a misconception that could have been
created as consequence of the specific attention that the Spaniards (as
the not-so-objective-and-impartial documentors of the last
remaining traces of quipu mnemotechnics) concentrated on the numeric
statistical value of the quipu as devices to extract tribute
and taxes from the population. It is easy to understand that the Spaniards,
after destroying all the quipus they could locate (and also killing all
the quipucamayoc they found as well), (Scharlau 1986:
84), then belatedly noticed that after they had carried off all the booty and
loot from their conquista, that the administration of their newly acquired
territories suffered terribly from lack of statistical information, and then
they were told by the natives that this had worked perfectly well with the
quipu system that the conquistadores had just destroyed so diligently. So the
Spaniards tried to preserve the last bits of the knowledge that was encoded in
them for the purpose of extorting the tributes like the Inca rulers had done so
expertly before them. Engl (1991: 156, 203-204, 359-370, 400-406),
Scharlau (1986: 89-90).
We will now ask the
converse question: what could have been the special advantage of the quipu
mnemotechnics, which the quipucamayoc used, and could this
have been something beyond the expressive range of alphabetic writing? Scharlau
makes reference to Guaman Poma de Ayala, who attempts to describe in his work
the old quipu-order with the new medium of alphabetic writing (1986: 92). Of
course[.386], Guaman as a member of the conquered society was
obviously not able to stand up and declare that the categorical ordering
system developed by the quipucamayoc that was
embodied in their mental operation modes, (or their CMA in the
present context), was superior to anything that the Spaniards
could use, and was unparalleled in all symbolic productions of humanity, until
the 20th century, when structural formal grammars were invented and employed in
computer software technology. The strands of the quipu could be used for
categorical ordering systems that are described with technical formal
grammars. See Bauer (1971,II: 100-144),
Brauer (1968: 108-115). It can only be inferred indirectly that the quipu may
have been the ideal medium for a structural categorical notation and
(perhaps) it could have been developed further in this direction towards
a superior structural categorical mentality, had the Spaniards not
cut the whole culture short[.387]. Scharlau (1986: 84).
Since the Spaniards had
so diligently destroyed all the data material and all the memory carriers of
the Inca society, there is probably no way to get positive evidence for such a
hypothesis[.388]. All that is possible here, is to present an indirect
analogy in form of a structural grammar system of ritual as is described in
detail by Staal (1982), (1986), (1989), in his description of the science
of ritual.
17 Wittgenstein und die Dinge, die extra-verbal sind
Die Philosophie sieht es als ihre Aufgabe, alle Dinge der Welt verbal zu beschreiben und zu erklären. Und wenn sie nicht zu erklären sind, so sollte die Philosophie sie wenigstens systematisieren. Es besteht also ein Anspruch, dass die Dinge dieser Welt kommensurabel sind mit der Ausdrucksfähigkeit der verbalen Sprache. Dies ist in seinem Kern ein Logozentrismus, in der Form: "En archae en ho logos". Im Anfang war das Wort. Zitat aus Joh. 1.1. Damit ist natürlich Gottes Wort gemeint, und nicht des Menschen Wort. Die in unserem vorliegenden Ansatz formulierte Meinung ist: Es gibt viele Dinge in dieser Welt, die nicht mit einem oder vielen Worten ausgedrückt werden können. Dazu ist hier ein Zitat zu Wittgensteins berühmten Ausspruch, aus meiner Dissertation:
Design Und Zeit: Kultur Im Spannungsfeld Von Entropie, Transmission, und Gestaltung
http://www.noologie.de/desn23.htm
17.
Criticism and defects of writing and language
If
alphabetically reinforced logocentrism has indeed influenced the thinking of
the elites of our Western cultures in such a subtle and profound way as to have
erected an invisible conceptual barrier and a filter for our experience around
us, then it seems useless to try to use this very same medium of the alphabet
for a demonstration of its own weaknesses and drawbacks, the accounting of all
those instances where verbal description is not the ideal, nor a suitable form
of cultural expression or transmission. For demonstration, we may borrow the
famous aphorism 7 of Wittgenstein's tractatus: (Wittgenstein 1969: 83)
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen [521].
There is an obvious answer:
Wovon Du nicht sprechen kannst, das mußt Du tanzen, singen, musizieren,
töpfern, schreinern,
schmieden, weben, spinnen, malen, streicheln und massieren [522].
(A.G.)
17.1.1 The Logos Cultural Complex
(Encarta:
Logos): "Logos" (Greek: "word," "reason,"
"ratio"), in ancient and especially in medieval philosophy and
theology, the divine reason that acts as the ordering principle of the
universe.
The
6th-century BC Greek philosopher Heraclitus was the first to use the term Logos
in a metaphysical sense. He asserted that the world is governed by a firelike
Logos, a divine force that produces the order and pattern discernible in the
flux of nature. He believed that this force is similar to human reason and that
his own thought partook of the divine Logos.
The
1st-century AD Jewish-Hellenistic philosopher Philo Judaeus employed the term
Logos in his effort to synthesize Jewish tradition and Platonism. According to
Philo, the Logos is a mediating principle between God and the world and can be
understood as God's Word or the Divine Wisdom, which is immanent in the world.
At the
beginning of the Gospel of John, Jesus Christ is identified with the Logos made
incarnate, the Greek word logos being translated as “word” in the English
Bible: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word
was God. ... And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us ...” (John 1:1-3,
14). John's conception of Christ was probably influenced by Old Testament
passages as well as by Greek philosophy, but early Christian theologians
developed the conception of Christ as the Logos in explicitly Platonic and
Neoplatonic terms (see NEOPLATONISM). The Logos, for instance, was identified
with the will of God, or with the Ideas (or Platonic Forms) that are in the
mind of God. Christ's incarnation was accordingly understood as the incarnation
of these divine attributes."
The above
quotation from the encyclopedia gives a short genealogy of the logos
cultural complex in western thought. Its significance as one of the core tenets
of western Christian religion and therefore the western cultural fabric is
illustrated with the quotation from John 1:1. The standard bible translations,
that translate logos as "the word", commit, strictly speaking,
a translation error. In the original Greek version, the logos forms a complex
of meaning that is much wider than just "a word". [518]
This is evident by the Heraklit use of the term and by tracing the greek
etymology of logos. The logos was harnessed to the aims of the
religions of the book and bound to the word as it was preserved in writing.
Goethe takes up this issue in his Faust. The following is an article from aeon
about extra-verbal knowledge.
https://aeon.co/essays/what-is-truth-on-ramsey-wittgenstein-and-the-vienna-circle
We must avoid
the ‘absurd position’ of the child in the following dialogue: ‘Say breakfast.’
‘Can’t.’ ‘What can’t you say?’ ‘Can’t say breakfast.’ Most famously, Ramsey
quipped: ‘But what we can’t say we can’t say, and we can’t whistle it either.’
Ramsey had two
objections to Wittgenstein’s view that philosophy is nonsense and should be
abandoned. First, Wittgenstein cannot argue for a particular view of the
nature of meaning, a consequence of which is that the very argument for that
view is meaningless. We do in fact understand Wittgenstein’s philosophical
argument. It is not a ladder that, once climbed, needs to be kicked away, as
Wittgenstein advised in the Tractatus. Second, this kind of philosophy is
impoverished. If, as Wittgenstein holds, philosophy’s task is to take the
propositions of science and ordinary life and ‘exhibit them in a logical system
with primitive terms and definitions’, philosophy really is of not much use at
all. In a note from 1929 he said:
The
standardisation of the colours of beer is not philosophy, but in a sense it is
an improvement in notation, and a clarification of thought.
We cannot
really picture the world as disconnected selves; the selves we know are in the
world. What we can’t do we can’t do and it’s no good trying. Philosophy comes
from not understanding the logic of our language; but the logic of our language
is not what Wittgenstein thought. The pictures we make to ourselves are not
pictures of facts.
If a
proposition is a picture of the world, disconnected from any reference to the
self whose picture it is, then we are totally vulnerable to skepticism or solipsism.
How are we to bridge the gap between ourselves and that world? How can we even
make claims about that world? Wittgenstein’s primary world ‘contains no
thought’. If we want to understand the world, we must not neglect the
‘subjective side’. Ramsey thought that Carnap made the same ‘mistake’:
17.1.2
Logos, Nous und
Ratio bei Heidegger
Die Wahl der Begriffe Noos und Logos basiert auf der Überlieferung der Schrift des Parmenides (Frag. VI), und der Interpretation, die Heidegger dazu gegeben hat. Hier sind die wichtigen Zitate:
Heidegger, WHD, 105:
"chrae to légein te noein t' eon emmenai.
Nötig ist zu sagen und zu denken, dass das Seiende ist."
Heidegger, WHD, 128:
"Das Gefüge von légein und noeín ist der Grundzug des Denkens, das sich hier ins Wesen regt. Das Denken ist demnach kein Greifen, weder ein Zugriff auf das Vorliegende, noch ein Angriff dagegen... Das Denken ist kein Be-greifen. In der hohen Frühe seiner Wesens-entfaltung kennt das Denken noch nicht den Begriff."
Heidegger: WHD, 127:
Die Verkoppelung von légein und noeín als Aussagen und als Vernunft schlägt sich in dem nieder, was die Römer die ratio nennen. Das Denken erscheint als das Rationale. [AG: Der Logos ist die Ratio]. Ratio stammt vom Zeitwort reor. Reor besagt: etwas für etwas nehmen: noeín; dies ist zugleich: etwas als etwas darlegen: légein. Die Ratio wird zur Vernunft. Über sie handelt die Logik. ...
[AG: Es wäre hier besser zu sagen, der Verstand.]
In der ratio verschwindet jedoch das ursprüngliche Wesen von légein und noeín. Mit dem Aufkommen der Herrschaft der ratio kehren sich alle Verhältnisse um. Denn jetzt erklären die mittelalterliche und die neuzeitliche Philosophie das griechische Wesen von légein und noeín, von logos und nous aus ihrem Begriff der ratio her. Diese Erklärung klärt jedoch nicht mehr auf, sondern sie verdunkelt. Die Aufklärung verfinstert die Wesensherkunft des Denkens. Sie sperrt überhaupt jeden Weg in das Denken der Griechen ab. ...
[Die] Frage: Was heisst Denken? ...
Von dieser verborgenen Frage entfernt sich die Philosophie am meisten, wenn sie auf den Gedanken gebracht wird, das Denken müsse mit dem Zweifeln beginnen.
"Das Denken müsse mit dem Zweifeln beginnen" bezieht sich auf Descartes (cogito ergo sum), und so sind es m.E. diese beiden, Augustinus und Descartes, die grossen Denker, die das abendländische Denken auf seine Ab- und Holz-Wege gebracht haben. Siehe dazu:
http://www.noologie.de/noo203.htm#fn164
http://www.noologie.de/noo203.htm#Heading54
http://www.noologie.de/noo203.htm#Index2440
Siehe auch: Heidegger, WHD, p. 16:
"Bei der Uneinigkeit der Philosophie darüber, was das Vorstellen im Wesen sei, gibt es offenbar nur einen Ausweg ins Freie. Man verlässt das Feld der philosophischen Spekulationen und untersucht erst einmal sorgfältig und wissenschaftlich, wie es mit den Vorstellungen, die bei den Lebewesen, vor allem den Menschen und Tieren, vorkommen, überhaupt steht. ... Darum kann es nicht verwundern, wenn innerhalb der Psychologie in keiner Weise zur Klarheit kommt, wohin die Vorstellungen eingeordnet werden: nämlich der Organismus des Lebendigen, das Bewusstsein, die Seele, das Unbewusste und all die Tiefen und Schichten, in die der Bereich der Psychologie gegliedert wird."
Die Phänomenologie bei Husserl. Siehe Kunzmann 1991, 192:
"Hinter der Phänomenologie steht die Forderung, sich in der Philosophie aller vorschnellen Weltdeutung zu enthalten und sich vorurteilsfrei an die Analyse dessen zu halten, was dem Bewusstsein erscheint. ...
[Die Phänomenologie sollte sich] auf die intuitive anschaul. Selbstgegebenheit der Phänomene des Bewusstseins gründen. ...
die durchgängige Korrelation zwischen den Vollzügen des Bewusstseins (.z.B. wahrnehmen, erinnern, lieben), die sich auf einen Gegenstand beziehen (Akte des Vermeinens: Noësis, Pl. Noësen) und den Gegenstand, wie er in diesen Vollzügen erscheint (das Vermeinte: Noëma, Pl. Noëmata). ...
Noëma ist nicht der Gegenstand in seiner Wirklichkeit an sich, sondern der in der sinngebenden Funktion der Bewusstseinsvollzüge intentional enthaltene. ...
Die phänomenolog. Einstellung dagegen enthält sich jegl. Urteils über Sein oder Nichtsein der Gegenstände und ermöglicht so die vorurteilsfreie Betrachtung des reinen Bewusstseins. d.h. dessen, was als Phänomene in der Korrelation von Noësis und Noëma gegeben ist."
17.1.3
Extrakt aus der
Dissertation: Design und Zeit
http://www.noologie.de/desn23.htm#Index1491
Some more
comments serve to illuminate fundamental limitations of verbal language and
writing and in the cultural transmission:
Staal (1986: 251): Oral transmissions over large stretches of time and
space compromise first of all language, which is at the same time the most
complex system that is being transmitted, and the medium through which many
other transmissions are orally transmitted - including folklore, jokes,
stories, laws, myths and epics. Many, but not all: for other features of human
knowledge and activity, including music, art design, ritual, technology and
science, are transmitted not only without writing but also without language.
Examples include not only cutting, digging, aiming or planting, but also at
least some of the features of musical scales and melodies, visual patterns,
motifs and shapes, dances, stellar constellations, cooking, the construction of
ploughs, weapons and altars, and the elements of arithmetic and geometry.
Boone
(1994: 10):
The notion that
spoken language is the only system that allows humans to convey any and all
thought fails to consider the full range of human experience. Certainly speech
may be the most efficient manner of communicating many things, but it is
noticeably deficient in conveying ideas of a musical, mathematical, or visual
nature, for example. It is nearly impossible to communicate sound through
words; instead, one uses a musical notation that has now beome standard in
'Western cultures'... Dance, too, cannot adequately be described verbally;
instead, the subtle details of choreography can be recorded through one of
several dance notations (Owen 1986). The notational systems of mathematics and
science were also developed precisely because ordinary language could not
"express the full import of scientific relationships" as Stillman
Drake has explained... Since "structure is generally more efficiently
depicted than described," complex structural diagams and even
three-dimensional models function instead of words and sentences to convey
information. Such diagrams "led to the very complex three-dimensional
models required in the solution of the double-helix structure of DNA"... (Drake
1986: 153). As Drake (1986: 147) has
summarized: "The pictures we form in science may be ordinary grammatical
statements or they may be special notation systems or they may be quite
literally pictures drawn to represent structural relations among external
objects, actual or hypothetical. Structural relations are frequently
perceptible at a glance when they would be very cumbersome to describe in
words, and might not be as efficiently conveyed by equational or other
mathematical notations. Pictorial notations are often valuable in physics, as
for instance in crystallography. They are still more useful in chemistry, which
in its beginnings in modern form was faced with problems different in kind from
those of early modern physics - problems of structure and combination rather
than of motion and force".
Birdwhistell (1970: 188):
For the
cinesicist, silence is just as golden as are those periods in which the
linguistic system is positively operative.
Isadora Duncan, in Staal (1989: 116):
If I could tell
you what it meant there would be no point in dancing it.
@:PARADOX_QUEST
Haarmann (1997: 680): As alphabetic
writing has, since antiquity, dominated literacy in all parts of civilized
Europe, it has exerted a profound impact on European people's mentality, their
reasoning about culture and their world view.
@:BOONE
Boone (1994: 3): Most of the scholars
who think and write about writing consider writing to be alphabetic writing,
normally referring to one of the modern alphabetic scripts; this tends to rest
as a basic assumption from which their arguments grow. My intent is to confront
this common definition of 'writing' and our notions of what constitute writing
systems, to explode these assumptions. We have to think more broadly about
visual and tactile systems of recording information, to reach a broader
definition of writing.
Boone
(1994: 4):
Jacques Derrida
in Of Grammatology has argued this position on a much wider and more
theoretical level. Acknowledging the fundamental ethnocentrism, the logocentrism,
that has controlled the concept of writing, he argues for the invalidity of the
traditional definition of writing as a utensil to express speech, noting that
"writing no longer relates to language as an exterior or frontier".
Instead, he explains that "the concept of writing exceeds and comprehends
that of language"; it embraces language but goes beyond it (Derrida 1976:
3, 6-9, 30-52)... Here my intent is... the reformation of a definition of
writing that allows us to consider both verbal and nonverbal systems of graphic
communication.
Boone (1994: 3): ... there is that
tendency to think of writing as visible speech and an evolutionary goal... In
indigenous America, visible speech was not often the goal...
Boone
(1994: 4-5):
We are all
aware of the commonly held belief among those scholars and particularly
linguists who focus on Europe and Asia that Pre-Columbian cultures did not yet
develop 'true writing'. We have heard terms such as illiterate, nonliterate,
and preliterate applied to these peoples. Clearly the term 'illiterate', with
its meaning of 'uneducated', is simply a pejorative misuse of the word...
We see this in
most studies of writing -- from Isaac Taylor ... Leonard Bloomfield... Isaac
Gelb... David Diringer... John DeFrancis... These all expound the common view
of writing as written language, and they fashion various evolutionary models
for the 'development' of writing that culminates in alphabetic script .
Just as people
and nations fashion their histories to eventuate in themselves, writing
specialists have constructed the history of writing to result in modern
alphabetic systems. In these histories, indigenous American systems [515]
lie either at the beginning of or outside the developmental sequence.
Boone
(1994: 5):
Almost all the
scholars who have looked seriously at writing systems in their general sense
have defined writing as spoken language that is recorded or referenced
phonetically by visible marks. Since many of these scholars are linguistis, it
would seem natural for them to tie writing to speech... [as do] Archibald Hill,
Walter Ong, and anthropologist Jack Goody... historians like Michael Camille
and M.T. Clanchy... The Chinese-language specialist John DeFrancis has perhaps
been the most adamant on this point. His "central thesis is that all full
systems of communication are based on speech. Further, no full system is
possible unless so grounded," and he dismisses all nonspeech writing as
"Partial/ Limited/ Pseudo/ Non-Writing" (DeFrancis 1989: 7,42)...
Boone
(1994: 9):
What is most
alarming about these statements and view is that they are based on harmfully
narrow views of what are thought and knowledge and what
constitutes the expression of these thoughts and this knowledge, and they
summarily dismiss the indigenous Western Hemisphere. It is time that we realize
that such views are part of a European/Mediterranean bias that has shaped
countless conceptions -- such as 'civilization', 'art', and the 'city' -- that
were defined according to Old World standards and therefore excluded the
non-Western and non-Asian cultures. An expanded epistemological view would, and
should, allow all notational systems to be encompassed. If [these] phenomena
are to be considered objectively, a broader view is required. It is easy to see
the fallacy of the assumptions on which most definitions of writing are based.
@:BEDNARIK
Bednarik (1994: 141): The term
'prehistoric' refers generally to an ethnocentric whim dividing human history
by the advent of writing. This division is offensive to the peoples being
studied by the prehistorians; it is based on the application of an alien
cultural concept to their cultures and denotes the ethnocentricity of that
approach. It involves an implicit but unsupportable assumption that oral
transmission of traditional knowledge is less reliable than its written
transmission and its interpretation by 'specialists'. Not only is this a non-refutable
proposition, but there are valid arguments in favor of the opposite view, and
indigenous peoples throughout the world are entitled to disagree with
Eurocentric models in 'science'. The Aboriginal people of Australia, for
instance, vigorously oppose the ideology implicit in the term 'prehistoric'. It
is used here merely to the subjective study of early cultures by members of an
alien society who are engaged in creating that society's constructs about early
cultures.
Bednarik
(1994: 141-142):
Science itself
exists within an anthropocentric and thus subjective frame of reference. It
does not explore reality; usually it augments and reinforces
anthropocentricity... art itself is the only humanly accessible phenomenon in
the real world that humans can study scientifically. I define art as a medium
or vehicle externalizing concepts of reality conveying awareness of perceived
reality to the sensory erception of the beholder ... Art, therefore, creates
and maintains the common reality of humans.
Bednarik
(1994: 143-144):
The ultimate
purpose of 'prehistoric' art studies is to explore the processes that have in
some way contributed to the formation of human concepts, and if we were to find
means of illuminating the origins of anthropocentricity (the interpretation of
reality in terms of the material stimuli experienced by humans) we would be
likely also to acquire a new understanding of the limitations it imposes on the
human intellect. Such insights may free that intellect from the restrictions
imposed by its epistemological limits, in the distant future. The deficiencies
of a conceptual model of reality cannot be perceived from within such a model,
by the uncritical recourse to the biological intelligence that is its own
product ... In an anthropocentric system of reality, ideas or mental constructs
must adhere to the system's inherent order not only to be acceptable, but even
to be able to be conceived... The processes that led to human models of reality
are attributable to the frames of reference created by the early cognitive
evolution of hominids.
Dechend
(1997: 9):
Raising the
question about the nature of those clues and traces which might enable us to
reconstruct at least some thoughts of early homines sapientes sapientes, we
have to state first, that next to no phenomenon should be accepted as
"suggesting itself", and "obvious", no instrument, no
technique, no rite, no game, no dance. The more fundamental, and the more
apparently self-suggesting a technique, the more ingenious the brain that
hatched it.
Cosmides (Cited in Pinker 1995: 413): Like fish unaware of
the existence of water, anthropologists swim from culture to culture
interpreting through universal human metaculture. Metaculture informs every
thought... Similarly biologists and artificial intelligence researchers are
"anthropologists" who travel to places where minds are far stranger
than anywhere any ethnographer has ever gone.
Strecker (1988: 38-39): Anthropologists
can indeed learn a lot from the surrealists. Generally speaking they both try
to reach the same goal. They both ask the question, 'Who are we?' and embark on
a journey to find the answer in terms of 'who we are not'. They differ in that
the anthropologist (as ethnographer) journeys in space and his procedure is
empirical, while the surrealist travels in the mind and proceeds by ways of the
imagination. But both are similarly concerned with overcoming their immediate
cultural and social conditions, to see them for what they ultimately are,
'arbitrary systems of control', as the anthropologists might say, or in the
more polemical voice of the surrealist, a 'second-rate reality that has been
fashioned by centuries of worshipping money, races, fatherlands, gods, and, I
might add, art. (Magritte) ... In fact they make transparent the input of that
which anthropologists in the field are usually condemned to encounter as output
only.
18
The
Morphology and Meta-Morphology of Pre-historic Languages
I will explain now some more about the Morphology
and Meta-Morphology of Pre-historic languages and specifically of the Ancient
(Archaic) Greek language. By this I mean the language(s) that were in existence
in the lands of Grecia Major, around 800-900 BCE, in the works of Homer, and
around 600 BCE in the works of Hesiodos. And there is quite some subtle
difference from the standard Koinae of Classical Greek of the Hellenistic Aera,
which was formed at the Library of Alexandria. There was the first school of
linguistic studies, and also about the standardization of the Greek language
and this became the Koinae.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hesiod
Hesiod (/ˈhiːsiəd, ˈhɛsiəd/;[1] Greek: ἩσίοδοςHēsíodos) was a Greek poet generally thought by scholars to have been
active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer.[2][3] He is generally
regarded as the first written poet in the Western tradition to regard himself
as an individual persona with an active role to play in his subject.[4]Ancient authors credited
Hesiod and Homer with establishing Greek religious customs.[5] Modern scholars
refer to him as a major source on Greek
mythology, farming techniques, early economicthought (he is sometimes considered history's first
economist),[6] archaic
Greek astronomy and ancient time-keeping.
...
It is probable
that Hesiod wrote his poems down, or dictated them, rather than passed them on
orally, as rhapsodes did—otherwise
the pronounced personality that now emerges from the poems would surely have
been diluted through oral transmission from one rhapsode to another. Pausanias asserted that Boeotians showed
him an old tablet made of lead on which the Workswere engraved.[16] If
he did write or dictate, it was perhaps as an aid to memory or because he
lacked confidence in his ability to produce poems extempore, as trained
rhapsodes could do. It certainly wasn't in a quest for immortal fame since
poets in his era had probably no such notions for themselves. However, some
scholars suspect the presence of large-scale changes in the text and attribute
this to oral transmission.[17] Possibly
he composed his verses during idle times on the farm, in the spring before the
May harvest or the dead of winter.[12]
The personality
behind the poems is unsuited to the kind of "aristocratic withdrawal"
typical of a rhapsode but is instead "argumentative, suspicious,
ironically humorous, frugal, fond of proverbs, wary of women."[18] He
was in fact a misogynist of the same calibre as the later poet Semonides.[19] He
resembles Solon in
his preoccupation with issues of good versus evil and "how a just and
all-powerful god can allow the unjust to flourish in this life". He
recalls Aristophanes in
his rejection of the idealised hero of epic literature in favour of an
idealised view of the farmer.[20] Yet
the fact that he could eulogise kings in Theogony (80 ff.,
430, 434) and denounce them as corrupt in Works and Days suggests
that he could resemble whichever audience he composed for.[21]
...
Hesiod
certainly predates the lyric and elegiac poets
whose work has come down to the modern era.[citation needed] Imitations of his
work have been observed
in Alcaeus, Epimenides, Mimnermus, Semonides, Tyrtaeus and Archilochus,
from which it has been inferred that the latest possible date for him is about
650 BC.
An upper limit
of 750 BC is indicated by a number of considerations, such as the probability
that his work was written down, the fact that he mentions a sanctuary at Delphi that
was of little national significance before c. 750 BC (Theogony 499),
and that he lists rivers that flow into the Euxine, a region
explored and developed by Greek colonists beginning in the 8th century BC. (Theogony 337–45).[24]
Hesiod mentions
a poetry contest at Chalcis in Euboea where
the sons of one Amphidamasawarded
him a tripod (Works and Days 654–662). Plutarch identified
this Amphidamas with the hero of the Lelantine War between
Chalcis and Eretria and
he concluded that the passage must be an interpolation into Hesiod's original
work, assuming that the Lelantine War was too late for Hesiod. Modern scholars
have accepted his identification of Amphidamas but disagreed with his
conclusion. The date of the war is not known precisely but estimates placing it
around 730–705 BC, fit the estimated chronology for Hesiod. In that case, the
tripod that Hesiod won might have been awarded for his rendition of Theogony,
a poem that seems to presuppose the kind of aristocratic audience he would have
met at Chalcis.[25]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koine_Greek
Koine Greek (UK: /ˈkɔɪniː/,[1] US: /kɔɪˈneɪ, ˈkɔɪneɪ, kiːˈniː/),[2][3] also
known as Alexandrian dialect, common Attic, Hellenistic or Biblical
Greek, was the common supra-regional form of Greek spoken
and written during the Hellenistic period, the Roman Empire,
and the early Byzantine
Empire, or late antiquity.[citation needed] It evolved from the
spread of Greek following the conquests of Alexander the Great in the fourth century BC,
and served as the lingua
franca of much of the Mediterranean region and the Middle East
during the following centuries. It was based mainly on Attic and
related Ionicspeech
forms, with various admixtures brought about through dialect levelling with
other varieties.[4]
Koine Greek
included styles ranging from more conservative literary forms to the spoken
vernaculars of the time.[5] As
the dominant language of the Byzantine Empire, it developed further into Medieval Greek,
which then turned into Modern
Greek.[6]
Literary Koine
was the medium of much of post-classical Greek literary and scholarly writing,
such as the works of Plutarchand Polybius.[4] Koine
is also the language of the Christian New Testament,
of the Septuagint (the
3rd-century BC Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible),
and of most early Christian theological writing by the Church Fathers.
In this context, Koine Greek is also known as "Biblical", "New
Testament", "ecclesiastical" or "patristic" Greek.[7] The
Roman Emperor Marcus
Aurelius also wrote his private thoughts in Koine Greek in a
work that is now known as The Meditations.[8] It
continues to be used as the liturgical language of services in the Greek Orthodox Church.[9]
...
The
English-language name Koine derives from the Koine Greek
term ἡ κοινὴ διάλεκτος he koinè diálektos,
"the common dialect". The Greek word koinē (κοινή) itself means "common".
The word is pronounced /kɔɪˈneɪ/, /ˈkɔɪneɪ/ or /kiːˈniː/ in
US English and /ˈkɔɪniː/ in UK
English. The pronunciation of the word in Koine itself gradually changed
from [koinéː] (close to the Classical Attic pronunciation [koinɛ́ː])
to [kyˈni] (close to the Modern
Greek [ciˈni]). In Greek, the language
has been referred to as Ελληνιστική Κοινή, "Hellenistic Koiné", in
the sense of "Hellenistic supraregional language").[citation needed]
Ancient
scholars used the term koine in several different senses.
Scholars such as Apollonius
Dyscolus (second century AD) and Aelius Herodianus (second century AD)
maintained the term Koine to refer to the Proto-Greek
language, while others used it to refer to any vernacular form of
Greek speech which differed somewhat from the literary language.[10]
When Koine
Greek became a language of literature by the first century BC, some people
distinguished two forms: written as the literary post-classical form (which
should not be confused with Atticism), and vernacular as the
day-to-day vernacular.[10] Others
chose to refer to Koine as "the dialect of Alexandria" or "Alexandrian
dialect" (ἡ Ἀλεξανδρέων διάλεκτος), or even the universal dialect of
its time.[citation needed] Modern classicists have often used the
former sense.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ancient_Greek_tribes
Before the standardization in the Koinae there existed
many Greek dialects, and we don't know very much how they differed from each other.
We have some accounts of the different music modes, the Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, etc. ...
And so we can assume that there were also different
language modes among the many tribes that made up the population of ancient and
pre-historic Greece. Greece was a hodgepodge of quite a few different tribes,
who were at some time called the Aryans, Dorians, Ionians, Pelasgians,
Cadmeans, and then many many more. The wikipedia makes a very long list of
them. And one can safely assume that there were as many differnt dialects as
there were tribes.
[[AG: Here is a little humoristic interjection about
the tribal language structure of Germany, before it became the Deutsches
Kaiser-Reich and had some language standardization. The tribal language
structure was very rich in Germany of the olden times. There was (Ost-) Frisian
(of the Otto-Waalkes fame), Hamburgensian, Saxonian (the worst German dialect
that I know of), Prussian, Frankian (Frännnggiszzzch, it is the soft
"zzzsch" and not the hard one. This is the usual pronounciation,
around Nuremberg and Bayreuth and Hof), Allemanian (around the area of the
South-West, Badde Badde or so), Schwäbbbisch, the dialect of the Schwobbe, and
then Stuttgarterian, a sub-dialect of Schwäbbbisch, which the poor Hägggele
could never get rid of, even when he was a professor of philosophy in Berlin.
Then there was: Lower Bavarian and Upper Bavarian, Tyrolean, South Tyrolean,
Hutterer'ian, Mennonitian, Amishian, and then some more. Amishian is the most
un-understandable dialect since it hasn't changed at all in about 200 years or
so.
My favorite joke about this goes like this: A Northern
Bavarian goes to the München Hauptbahnhof, and he wants to buy a ticket to the
city of Hof. Asks the cleark: Bloss Hi'? Sackra says the Northern Bavarian,
wohi' soll i' denn blos'n? I don't know who came up with this joke and it may
very well have been the Herr Karl Valentin
"höchstpersönlichenselbst".
Schwabenwitze
Top 10:
Was
bekommt man in Schwaben, wenn man eine Schorle bestellt? Ein Glas halb
Sprudelwasser und halb Leitungswasser.
Wieso
kann ein Schwabe eine Speisekarte in jeder Sprache der Welt lesen? Weil er nur
die Preise liest.
Wie
nennt man bei den Schwaben einen attraktiven und sympathischen Mann? Tourist.
Anpfiff
eines Fußballspiels im Schwabenland: Der Schiedsrichter wirft die Münze in die
Luft. Es gab 15 Verletzte.
Was
heißt Orgasmus auf Schwäbisch? Sodele.
Was
ist das Schönste am Hauptbahnhof in Stuttgart? Der Schnellzug nach Baden.
Wieso
tragen schwäbische Frauen keinen Tanga? Weil Sie die Tangas später nicht mehr
als Putzlappen nutzen können.
Wer
hat letztens den schwäbischen Schönheits-Wettbewerb gewonnen? Weder Keine noch
Keiner.
Was
verbindet Baden mit Württemberg? Der Bindestrich.
Schwäbisch
ist die natürlichste Art der Verhütung.
Wieso
bauen die Schwaben eine Schule auf dem Berg? Damit sie auch mal auf eine höhere
Schule gehen können.
Mehr
Witze auf https://www.deinemutterwitze.com/
]]
18.1 Ancient Greek Music Modes
Now we do a little detour in the ancient Greek music
modes because they also illustrate the different modes of ancient Greek
dialects.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_of_ancient_Greece
The music
of ancient
Greece was almost universally present in ancient Greek
society, from marriages, funerals, and religious ceremonies to theatre, folk music, and the ballad-like reciting of
epic poetry. It thus played an integral role in the lives of ancient Greeks. There
are significant fragments of actual Greek musical notation[1][2] as
well as many literary references to ancient Greek music, such that some things
can be known—or reasonably surmised—about what the music sounded like, the
general role of music in society, the economics of music, the importance of a
professional caste of musicians, etc. Even archaeological remains
reveal an abundance of depictions on ceramics, for example, of music being performed.
The word music comes
from the Muses, the
daughters of Zeus and patron
goddesses of creative and intellectual endeavours.
Concerning the
origin of music and musical instruments: the history of music in ancient Greece
is so closely interwoven with Greek mythology and legend that it is often
difficult to surmise what is historically true and what is myth. The music and
music theory of ancient Greece laid the foundation for western music and
western music theory, as it would go on to influence the ancient Romans, the
early christian church and the medieval composers.[3] Specifically
the teachings of
the Pythagoreans, Ptolemy, Philodemus, Aristoxenus, Aristides, and Plato compile most of our
understanding of ancient Greek music theory, musical systems, and musical
ethos.
The study of
music in ancient Greece was included in the curriculum of great
philosophers, Pythagoras in
particular believed that music was delegated to the same mathematical laws of
harmony as the mechanics of the cosmos, evolving into an idea known as
the music of the spheres.[4] The
Pythagoreans focused on the mathematics and the acoustical science of sound and
music. They developed tuning systems and harmonic principles that focused on
simple integers and ratios, laying a foundation for acoustic science; however,
this was not the only school of thought in ancient Greece.[5]Aristoxenus,
who wrote a number of musicological treatises, for example, studied music with
a more empirical tendency. Aristoxenus believed that intervals should be judged
by ear instead of mathematical ratios[6],
though Aristoxenus was influenced by Pythagoras and used mathematic terminology
and measurements in his research.
...
Playing what
"sounded good" violated the established ethos of modes that the
Greeks had developed by the time of Plato: a complex system of relating certain
emotional and spiritual characteristics to certain modes (scales).
The names for the various modes derived from the names of Greek tribes and
peoples, the temperament and emotions of which were said to be characterized by
the unique sound of each mode. Thus, Dorian modes were "harsh",
Phrygian modes "sensual", and so forth. In his Republic,[44] Plato
talks about the proper use of various modes, the Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, etc.
It is difficult for the modern listener to relate to that concept of ethosin
music except by comparing our own perceptions that a minor scale is used for
melancholy and a major scale for virtually everything else, from happy to
heroic music. (Today, one might look at the system of scales known as ragas in India for a better
comparison,[original research?] a system that
prescribes certain scales for the morning, others for the evening, and so on.)
The sounds of
scales vary depending on the placement of tones. Modern
Western scales use the placement of whole tones, such as C to D on a modern
piano keyboard, and half tones, such as C to C-sharp, but not quarter-tones
("in the cracks" on a modern keyboard) at all. This limit on tone
types creates relatively few kinds of scales in modern Western music compared
to that of the Greeks, who used the placement of whole-tones, half-tones, and
even quarter-tones (or still smaller intervals) to develop a large repertoire
of scales, each with a unique ethos. The Greek concepts of scales
(including the names) found its way into later Roman music and then the
European Middle Ages to the extent that one can find references to, for
example, a "Lydian church
mode", although name is simply a historical reference with no
relationship to the original Greek sound or ethos.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorian_mode
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrygian_mode
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lydian_mode
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_system_of_ancient_Greece
The musical
system of ancient Greece evolved over a period of more than 500 years
from simple scales of tetrachords, or
divisions of the perfect
fourth, to The Perfect Immutable System, encompassing a
span of fifteen pitch keys (see tonoibelow) (Chalmers 1993,
chapt. 6, p. 99)
Any discussion
of ancient Greek music, theoretical, philosophical or aesthetic, is fraught
with two problems: there are few examples of written music, and there are many,
sometimes fragmentary, theoretical and philosophical accounts. This article
provides an overview that includes examples of different kinds of
classification while also trying to show the broader form evolving from the
simple tetrachord to the system as a whole.
Getting back the the ancient Greek tribes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ancient_Greek_tribes
The ancient Greek tribes (Ancient Greek: Ἑλλήνων ἔθνη) [AG: Hellenon ethnae] were
groups of Greek-speaking populations living in Greece, Cyprus, and the various Greek colonies.
They were primarily divided by geographic, dialectal, political,
and cultural criteria,
as well as distinct traditions in mythology and religion. Some groups were of mixed origin, forming a syncretic culture through absorption and assimilation
of previous and neighboring populations into the Greek language and customs.
Greek word for tribe was Phylē (sing.)
and Phylai (pl.),
the tribe was further subdivided in Demes (sing. Demos, pl. Demoi) roughly matching to
a clan.
With
the dominion of land passing on from one tribe to the other, cultural exchange
through art and trade, and frequent alliances toward common goals, the ethnic
character of the different tribes had become primarily political by the dawn of
the Hellenistic period. The Roman conquest of Greece, the subsequent division of the Roman
Empire into Greek East and Latin West, as well as the advent of Christianity, molded the common ethnic and political Greek
identity once and for all to the subjects of the Greek
world by the 3rd century AD.
18.2
The Morphology and Meta-Morphosis of Ancient
Indo-Aryan language
I refer to this chapter from my dissertation
"Design und Zeit". This is an extract from the text.
http://www.noologie.de/desn24.htm
I am here doing something like the Morphology and
Meta-Morphosis of Ancient languages. And this ist entirely outside of
conventional linguistics and philology. I have to explain why I have a strong
reason for doing so. To explain this, I will give a little background
information about the science of the Indo-European or Indo-Aryan language structure.
The heyday of this science was the 19th century. The Britisher's had occupied
India as their crown colony, and they were making a lot of money from that
colony. And it was really a lot, since most of the wealth of the British Empire
came from India. See the Kohinoor Diamond which is the most precious crown
jewel of the British queen and kings. Kohinoor means Mountain of Light...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koh-i-Noor
The Koh-i-Noor (/ˌkoʊɪˈnʊər/),[8] also
spelt Kohinoor and Koh-i-Nur, is one of the largest cut diamonds in the world,
weighing 105.6 carats (21.12 g),[a] and
part of the British
Crown Jewels.
Probably mined in Kollur Mine, India,
there is no record of its original weight, but the earliest well-attested weight
is 186 old carats (191 metric carats or
38.2 g). Koh-i-Noor is Hindi-Urdu and Persian for "Mountain of Light";[9] it
has been known by this name since the 18th century. It changed hands between
various factions in south and west Asia, until being ceded to Queen Victoria after the British
annexation of the Punjab in
1849.
Originally, the stone was of a similar cut to
other Mughal era diamonds
like Darya-i-Noor which
are now in the Iranian
Crown Jewels. In 1851, it went on display at the Great Exhibition in London, but the
lacklustre cut failed to impress viewers. Prince
Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, ordered it to be re-cut as an
oval brilliant by Coster Diamonds. By
modern standards, the culet is
unusually broad, giving the impression of a black hole when the stone is viewed
head-on; it is nevertheless regarded by gemmologists as "full of life".[10]
Because its history involves a great deal of
fighting between men, the Koh-i-Noor acquired a reputation within the British
royal family for bringing bad luck to any man who wears it.
Since arriving in the UK, it has only been worn by female members of the
family.[11] Victoria
wore the stone in a brooch and a circlet. After she died in 1901, it was set in
the Crown of
Queen Alexandra, wife of Edward VII. It was transferred to the Crown of
Queen Mary in 1911, and finally to the crown of Queen
Elizabeth in 1937 for her coronation as Queen consort.
Today, the diamond is on public display in
the Jewel House at the Tower of London, where it is seen by millions
of visitors each year. The governments of India and Pakistan have both claimed
ownership of the Koh-i-Noor and demanded its return since the two countries
gained independence from the UK in 1947. The British government insists the gem
was obtained legally under the terms of the Last Treaty of Lahore and
has rejected the claims.
But besides extracting wealth from India... the
Britisher's also did some studies of Indian lore and mythologies, and some of
them also studied Sanskrit, the ancient language of (North) India. North India
was under strong Aryan influence, perhaps because of an Aryan people that had
migrated there, but the historical science is divided on this issue. Some
believe it was a hostile ivasion and the Vedas give us a lot of fierce battles,
between presumably the Aryans and the Dravidians, the Autochthonic people of
India. Other Pre-Historians believe it was peaceful diffusion. Which I don't
believe at all. War is war, as I have spelled that out deeply enough. Since
practically nothing at all is there in terms of available records, there will
never be a history of Aryan India. And the historians may try as they will. It
is all in vain. What is undeniable is that the Ancient Persians, who were the
Achaemenids, called themselves the Aryans. And they were of the same ethnic or
even racial stock as the Indian Vedic Brahmins. This was explicated in the
works of Otto Günther von Wesendonck. (I don't know whether he was a relative
of the Herr Wesendonk of Wagner fame). The mythologies of the Ancient Indians
and the Persians were quite similar, and their languages also. The problem was
only that the Islamic invasion of Persia had tended to plough under all that
ancient lore. One thing stands out particularly: The use of the magic potion
Soma (Skrt) or Haoma (Persian). This is very well known in the Vedas, but it
was also konwn in ancient Persia. The Indian South had quite a different style,
because of the Dravidian autochthonic population which the Aryans could not
displace. But this is another story.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_G%C3%BCnther_von_Wesendonk
1908 trat er in den auswärtigen Dienst ein. Im April 1914
sperrte die Regierung von Woodrow Wilson Har Dayal wegen Verbreitens von anarchistischer
Literatur ein; Dayal floh nach Berlin und wurde von Wesendonk für Das
Indische Unabhängigkeitskomitee, dem Mangal Singh Prabhakar Bahadur
(1874–1892), der Maharaja von Alwar in
Berlin vorsaß, angeworben. Im Ersten Weltkrieg war Wesendonk Orientalist bei
der Nachrichtenstelle für den Orient, welche von Max von Oppenheim geleitet
wurde. Am Schauplatz des Great Game im
Grenzgebiet des Zarenreiches mit Britisch-Indien propagierte
Otto Günther von Wesendonk den Aufstand gegen
die britische Kolonialmacht.[1]
Im Ersten Weltkrieg strebte auch Transkaukasien mit Krieg aus dem osmanischen Reich nach Unabhängigkeit. Wesendonk war 1918 am Generalkonsulat des Deutschen Reichs in Tiflis akkreditiert. Am 28. April 1918, drei Tage nach dem Fall von Kars, bekundete Mehmet Vehib Kaçı gegenüber der separatistischen Regierung in Tiflis, dass seine Regierung die Transkaukasische Republik anerkennt. Der Außenminister der Demokratischen Republik Georgien, der Menschewik Akaky Chkhenkelis (1874–1959), fragte nach einer Delegation der osmanischen Regierung zu Friedensverhandlungen. Die osmanische Regierung von Halil Kut entsandte den Justizminister nach Batumi wo am 11. Mai 1918 die Konferenz begann.[2] Neben Friedrich-Werner Graf von der Schulenburg, früherer stellvertretender Konsul in Tiflis nahm auch Otto Günther von Wesendonk als Berater für kaukasische Fragen als Beobachter an dieser Friedenskonferenz teil.[3]
Er war seit 1904 Mitglied des Corps Borussia Bonn.[4]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Singh
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomb_of_Darius_the_Great
The important quote is this:
I am Darius the great king, king of kings, king of
countries containing all kinds of men, king in this great earth far and wide,
son of Hystaspes, an Achaemenid, a Persian, son of a Persian, an Aryan, having
Aryan lineage.
The tomb of Darius the Great (Darius
I) is one of the four tombs of Achaemenid kings at the historical site
of Naqsh-e Rustam located about 12 km northwest of Persepolis, Iran. They are all at a considerable height
above the ground.
The full inscription is:
A great god is Ahuramazda, who created this earth, who
created yonder sky, who created man, who created happiness for man, who made
Darius king, one king of many, one lord of many.
I am Darius the great king, king of kings, king of
countries containing all kinds of men, king in this great earth far and wide,
son of Hystaspes, an Achaemenid, a Persian, son of a Persian, an Aryan, having
Aryan lineage.
King Darius says: By the favor of Ahuramazda these are
the countries which I seized outside of Persia; I ruled over them; they bore
tribute to me; they did what was said to them by me; they held my law firmly;
Media, Elam, Parthia, Aria, Bactria, Sogdia, Chorasmia, Drangiana, Arachosia,
Sattagydia, Gandara [Gadâra], India [Hiduš], the haoma-drinking Scythians, the
Scythians with pointed caps, Babylonia, Assyria, Arabia, Egypt, Armenia,
Cappadocia, Lydia, the Greeks (Yauna), the Scythians across the sea (Sakâ),
Thrace, the petasos-wearing Greeks [Yaunâ], the Libyans, the Nubians, the men
of Maka and the Carians.
King Darius says: Ahuramazda, when he saw this earth
in commotion, thereafter bestowed it upon me, made me king; I am king. By the
favor of Ahuramazda I put it down in its place; what I said to them, that they
did, as was my desire.
If now you shall think that "How many are the
countries which King Darius held?" look at the sculptures [of those] who
bear the throne, then shall you know, then shall it become known to you: the
spear of a Persian man has gone forth far; then shall it become known to you: a
Persian man has delivered battle far indeed from Persia.
Darius the King says: This which has been done, all
that by the will of Ahuramazda I did. Ahuramazda bore me aid, until I did the
work. May Ahuramazda protect me from harm, and my royal house, and this land:
this I pray of Ahuramazda, this may Ahuramazda give to me!
O man, that which is the command of Ahuramazda, let
this not seem repugnant to you; do not leave the right path; do not rise in
rebellion!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanskrit
Sanskrit (/ˈsʌnskrɪt/; Sanskrit: romanized: saṃskṛtam, IPA: [ˈsɐ̃skr̩tɐm] (listen)) is a
language of ancient India with
a 3,500 year history.[5][6][7] It is the primary liturgical language of Hinduism and the predominant language of
most works of Hindu philosophy as
well as some of the principal texts of Buddhism and Jainism. Sanskrit, in its variants and numerous
dialects, was the lingua franca of ancient and medieval India.[8][9][10] In the early 1st millennium CE, along
with Buddhismand Hinduism, Sanskrit migrated to Southeast Asia,[11] parts
of East Asia[12] and Central Asia,[13] emerging
as a language of high culture and
of local ruling elites in these regions.[14][15]
Sanskrit is an Old
Indo-Aryan language.[5] As
one of the oldest documented members of the Indo-European family of languages,[16][note 1][note 2] Sanskrit holds a prominent
position in Indo-European
studies.[19] It
is related to Greek and Latin,[5] as
well as Hittite, Luwian, Old Avestan and many other extinct
languages with historical significance to Europe, West Asia, Central Asia, and
South Asia. It traces its linguistic ancestry to the Proto-Indo-Aryan
language, Proto-Indo-Iranian and
the Proto-Indo-European languages.[20]
Sanskrit is traceable to the 2nd millennium BCE in
a form known as Vedic Sanskrit, with
the Rigveda as the earliest known
composition. A more refined and standardized grammatical form called Classical Sanskrit emerged
in the mid-1st millennium BCE with the Aṣṭādhyāyī treatise
of Pāṇini.[5] Sanskrit,
though not necessarily Classical Sanskrit, is the root language of many Prakrit
languages.[21] Examples
include numerous, modern, North Indian, subcontinental daughter languages such
as Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Punjabi and Nepali.[22][23][24]
The body of Sanskrit
literature encompasses a rich tradition of philosophical and religious texts, as well as poetry, music, drama, scientific,
technical and other texts. In the
ancient era, Sanskrit compositions were orally transmitted by methods of
memorisation of exceptional complexity, rigour and fidelity.[25][26] The earliest known inscriptions in
Sanskrit are from the 1st-century BCE, such as the few discovered in Ayodhya and Ghosundi-Hathibada
(Chittorgarh).[27][note 3] Sanskrit texts dated to the 1st
millennium CE were written in the Brahmi script, the Nāgarī
script, the historic South Indian scripts and their derivative
scripts.[31][32][33] Sanskrit is one of the 22 languages
listed in the Eighth
Schedule of the Constitution of India. It continues to be widely
used as a ceremonial and ritual language in Hinduism and some Buddhist
practices such as hymns and chants.
18.3
Devanagari script
Now as one may say it, the writing of India is not so
very ancient. I have not found the proper reference for this, because the
wikipedia makes no difference between the Sanskrit language and the Sanskrit
writing. The writing system was quite a late comer, and the writing is called Devanagari
(see Haarmann 1992a, p. 537 - 530 which I have referenced in my dissertation).
Haarmann gives some data on this script.
"Universalgeschichte der Schrift", Campus, Frankfurt (1992a).
https://d-nb.info/955541220/04
https://zeitfuerdich.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/universalgeschichte-der-schrift-zusammenfassung.pdf
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harald_Haarmann
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harald_Haarmann
http://www.noologie.de/bib.htm#Heading328
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devanagari
Devanagari (/ˌdeɪvəˈnɑːɡəri/ DAY-və-NAH-gər-ee; Devanāgarī, Sanskrit
pronunciation: [deːʋɐˈnaːɡɐɽiː]),
also called Nagari ,[4] is
a left-to-
right abugida (alphasyllabary),[5] based
on the ancient Brāhmī script,[1]used
in the Indian
subcontinent. It was developed in ancient India from the 1st to the
4th century CE,[1] and
was in regular use by the 7th century CE.[4][6] The Devanagari script, composed of 47
primary characters including 14 vowels and 33 consonants, is one of the
most adopted
writing systems in the world,[7] being
used for over 120 languages.[8] The
ancient Nagari script for Sanskrit had two additional consonantal characters.[9]
The orthography of this script reflects the
pronunciation of the language.[8] Unlike
the Latin alphabet, the script has no concept of letter case.[10] It
is written from left to right, has a strong preference for symmetrical rounded
shapes within squared outlines, and is recognisable by a horizontal line that
runs along the top of full letters.[5] In
a cursory look, the Devanagari script appears different from other Indic scripts such as Bengali, Odia, or Gurmukhi, but a closer examination reveals they
are very similar except for angles and structural emphasis.[5]
Among the languages using it – as either their
only script or one of their scripts –
are Sanskrit, Hindi,[11] Nepali, Pali, Prakrit, Apabhramsha, Awadhi, Bhojpuri, Braj Bhasha, Chhattisgarhi, Haryanvi, Magahi, Nagpuri, Rajasthani, Bhili, Dogri, Marathi, Maithili, Kashmiri, Konkani, Sindhi, Bodo, Nepalbhasa, Mundari and Santali.[8] The
Devanagari script is closely related to the Nandinagari script commonly found in
numerous ancient manuscripts of South India,[12][13] and it is distantly related to a
number of southeast Asian scripts.[8]
18.4 The Oral Tradition of Ancient India
And there had been a purely oral tradition in India
going on for so many millennia, one Brahmin passing on his knowledge of the
Vedas and Puranas, and the Maha Bharata and some more, to the next generation
of Brahmin's. And the Brahmins were very good at memorizing, they knew that
whole mass of spiritual literature in and from their mInds and their memory
(which was not literature, because it was memorized only). So the ancient Vedic
Brahmin's were grand Masters of Memorization or the Ars Memoriae, which we come
to know more about in the chapter on Giordano Bruno. So, the Britisher's
discovered this treasure trove of spiritual wealth. And this was much better in
comparison with the Spaniards who did their best to exterminate the cultural
memory of the Indians they had conquered. And thus began the study of the
Indo-Aryan language structure. There were also some Germans involved like Max
Müller who did his main work in Great Britain. For obvious reasons. There he
was closer to the original sources, and most importantly closer to the source
of money, since in Germany at that time there was not so much money around,
before the founding of the German Reich after 1871.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Empire
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_M%C3%BCller
Friedrich Max
Müller (German: [ˈfʁiːdʁɪç ˈmaks
ˈmʏlɐ];[1][2] 6
December 1823 – 28 October 1900), generally known as Max Müller, was
a German-born philologist and Orientalist,
who lived and studied in Britain for most of his life. He was one of the
founders of the western academic field of Indian studies and
the discipline of comparative religion.[3] Müller
wrote both scholarly and popular works on the subject of Indology.
The Sacred Books of the East, a 50-volume set of
English translations, was prepared
under his direction. He also promoted the idea of a Turanian family of languages.
In 1844, prior
to commencing his academic career at Oxford, Müller studied in Berlin with Friedrich Schelling. He began to translate the Upanishads for
Schelling, and continued to research Sanskrit under Franz Bopp, the
first systematic scholar of the Indo-European languages (IE). Schelling led
Müller to relate the history of language to the history of religion. At this
time, Müller published his first book, a German translation of the Hitopadesa,
a collection of Indian fables.[11]
In 1845 Müller
moved to Paris to study Sanskrit under Eugène Burnouf.
Burnouf encouraged him to publish the complete Rigveda, making
use of the manuscripts available in England. He moved to England in 1846 to
study Sanskrit texts
in the collection of the East India Company. He supported himself at first
with creative writing, his novel German Love being popular in
its day.
Müller's
connections with the East India Company and with Sanskritists based at Oxford University led
to a career in Britain, where he eventually became the leading intellectual
commentator on the culture
of India. At the time, Britain controlled this territory as part of
its Empire. This led to complex exchanges between Indian and British
intellectual culture, especially through Müller's links with the Brahmo Samaj.
Müller's
Sanskrit studies came at a time when scholars had started to see language
development in relation to cultural development. The recent discovery of the
Indo-European language group had started to lead to much speculation about the
relationship between Greco-Roman cultures and those of more ancient
peoples. In particular the Vedic culture
of India was
thought to have been the ancestor of European Classical cultures. Scholars
sought to compare the genetically related European and Asian languages to
reconstruct the earliest form of the root-language. The Vedic language, Sanskrit, was
thought to be the oldest of the IE languages.
Müller devoted
himself to the study of this language, becoming one of the major Sanskrit
scholars of his day. He believed that the earliest documents of Vedic culture
should be studied to provide the key to the development of pagan European
religions, and of religious belief in general. To this end, Müller sought to
understand the most ancient of Vedic scriptures, the Rig-Veda. Müller
was greatly impressed by Ramakrishna Paramhansa, his contemporary and
proponent of Vedantic philosophy,
and wrote several essays and books about him.[12]
And so we will continue with our story of the
discorvery of the Indo-Aryan or Indo-European, or Indo-Germanic languages. For
a while, the field was called Indo-Germanic, since so many researchers outside
of Great Britain were Germans. Like Heinrich Zimmer.
https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195399318/obo-9780195399318-0147.xml
“Indology” is the generic title of a group of
disciplines concerned with the study of India. The terms “Indologist” and
“orientalist” are frequently used interchangeably within English-speaking
countries. In Germany, “Indology” (Indologie) has been used to identify a
subfield of “oriental sciences” (Orientalistik); specifically, that part of it
concerned with the study of ancient India. There exists a new branch of Indology
titled “modern Indology,” which has lately experienced an upswing in its
fortunes, but wherever “Indology” is used without a qualifier, the reference is
to ancient India. As a rule, German professors have tended to be dismissive of
the idea of modern Indian studies, claiming a special expertise in ancient
India (see Deutsche Indologie: Vom Niedergang eines Fachbereichs by Oliver
Schulz, cited under Current State and Future Prospects). In this article, the
expression “German Indology” is used to distinguish the history, development,
and practice of this discipline from South Asian studies in other countries.
This distinction is justified both in terms of linguistic usage (German
scholars have used the term deutsche Indologie to characterize their specific
approach to Indian studies) and historical application (German Indology has a
distinct history and traditions, and unique concerns that set it apart from
other forms of research into India). For the purposes of this article and in
general, the expression “German” in “German Indology” does not refer to
national origins; many “German” Indologists came from outside Germany’s borders
(e.g., the Austrians Moriz Winternitz and Erich Frauwallner or the
Norwegian-born, though lifelong citizen of Germany, Christian Lassen), or they
established institutions of “German” Indology outside its borders by exporting
German ideas and values (e.g., the Americans William D. Whitney and E. Washburn
Hopkins; both studied under Albrecht Weber in Berlin). This article focuses on
the institution, self-understanding, and historical context of German Indology.
It is neither intended as a compilation of German achievements in various
subfields of Hinduism nor can it hope to properly assess these achievements in
the context of their respective subfields. The reader interested in the
specific contributions of German Indology should rather consult the relevant
OBO articles (e.g., “Atharva Veda” for German scholarship on the Veda). This
article focuses more narrowly on the history of the discipline and critical
scholarly treatments of it. Its primary focus is the 19th century, when
enduring principles and prejudices of the discipline were first formulated, but
it also examines the continuing currency of these principles and prejudices in
20th-century scholarship. Literature on German Indology after 1945 can be found
under the section Current State and Future Prospects. Critical engagements with
the discipline are discussed under Orientalism Debate and German Responses to
National Socialist Indology.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indology
One of the
defining features of Indology is the application of scholarly methodologies
developed in European Classical
Studies or "Classics" to the languages, literatures
and cultures of South Asia.
In the wake of
eighteenth century pioneers like William Jones, Henry Thomas Colebrooke or August Wilhelm Schlegel, Indology as an academic
subject emerged in the nineteenth century, in the context of British India,
together with Asian
studies in general affected by the romantic Orientalism of
the time. The Asiatic Society was founded in Calcutta in
1784, Société Asiatique founded in 1822, the Royal Asiatic Society in 1824, the American Oriental Society in 1842, and the
German Oriental Society (Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft) in 1845, the
Japanese Association of Indian and Buddhist Studies[11] in
1949.
Sanskrit
literature included many pre-modern dictionaries, especially the Nāmaliṅgānuśāsana of Amarasiṃha,
but a milestone in the Indological study of Sanskrit literature was publication of the St.
Petersburg Sanskrit-Wörterbuch during the 1850s to 1870s.
Translations of major Hindu texts in the Sacred Books of the East began in 1879. Otto von Böhtlingk's edition of Pāṇini's grammar
appeared in 1887. Max
Müller's edition of the Rigveda appeared
in 1849–75. Albrecht
Weber commenced publishing his pathbreaking journal Indologische
Studien in 1849, and in 1897 Sergey Oldenburg launched
a systematic edition of key Sanskrit texts, "Bibliotheca Buddhica".
More work on Indology is detailed here in the
wikipedia.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Roth_(Indologe)
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Thibaut
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Jacobi
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Thieme
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Max_M%C3%BCller
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Lassen
http://zydenbos.userweb.mwn.de/index-eng.html
https://www.amazon.de/Nay-Science-History-German-Indology/dp/0199931364
18.5 The Semantic Webworks of the the Indo-Aryan or Indo-European Language
Group
I have written a long chapter on the semantic webworks
of the the Indo-Aryan or Indo-European language group. This would be too much
for the present text. So I just give the link to it and some explanation. It
has to do with deep sub-structures of language as it was employed in the work
of the Aoidoi, Rishis and Vates, the singers and seers of pre-historic
antiquity. Before writing was invented, people had to keep all the material
that was worth preserving in their very memories. As I said at some other
place, the Australian Aborigines were the last people of humanity who depended
solely and exclusively on their memories to preserve and carry on that valuable
material of culture, which I also called in my dissertation the Cultural Memory
System, the CMS. Design
Und Zeit: Kultur Im Spannungsfeld Von Entropie, Transmission, Und Gestaltung. Here are some chapters where I do a little deep diving into the Cultural
Memory System.
http://www.noologie.de/ag-dis.pdf
http://www.noologie.de/desn18.htm
http://www.noologie.de/desn19.htm
http://www.noologie.de/desn24.htm
And this was the same in the ancient Greek culture
before writing. And the prime example of pre-writing memory systems are the
works of Homer. I interpret them in quite a different way than conventional
(linguisitic and philological) language work. I call this the Aoide memory system.
And in the following passage is a reconstruction of exactly that: The Aoide
memory system.
Of Phonosemantics and Fuzzy Categorization
http://www.noologie.de/diadenk.htm#_Toc512641901
I have also done some more work on: The Morphology and
Meta-Morphology of Ancient Greek language.
In the chapter about: Homer and the Amazones, the
Women Warriors.
It is very difficult to tear out a chapter like that
and transport it into a quite different context. So I must leave it as it is.
The following chapter is just an introduction to the pretty large work done in:
http://www.noologie.de/diadenk.htm#_Toc512641901
"Of Phonosemantics and Fuzzy Categorization"
18.6
Extract
from "Design und Zeit" 18.2. The Aoide-Hypothesis:
The Information technologies of advanced oral tradition.
I have
written something about the Meta-Morphology of the pre-historic Aoide thought
system in my dissertation. This chapter is a copy of the work from:
http://www.noologie.de/desn24.htm
18.6.1 Neuro-xyz, epics, trance, and neuronal patterns in the brain hemispheres
An
important aspect of the methods and arts (CMA) that the Cultural Memory Bearers
(CMBs) of the oral traditions used, is the issue of epic trance .
In present neuro-science research, this is formulated as a question of
self-stabilizing neuronal homeostatic patterns that are evoked by reciting and
listening to metered poetry. It has been treated in a paper by Turner and
Pöppel. [535] In their paper, Turner and
Pöppel make a strong case for the effects of metered poetry on the development
of a wholesome, whole-brained usage of the mind. Metered poetry has the
capability of inducing the brain to a mode of functioning that, according to
their hypothesis, is actually of a higher quality than the free-form prosaic
mode of thinking that has become the norm in script based civilization . We
thus have an indication that the epic poetry induces mental states and modes of
functioning that are today loosely called "trance". This is often
associated with the more prophetic aspects of aoidoi. In the indian
Vedic tradition, we find the rishis, whose task was predominantly
that of seers and prophets. It also gives us an opportunity to reconsider the
tradeoffs humanity has bought into by adopting writing, occasion for a
reconsideration of the inherent drawbacks of this powerful civilatory
instrument. Platon also issues a stern warning about the use of script in
Phaidros (274c - 276e[536]).
Pöppel and
Turner write:
(p.75): Human society itself can be profoundly changed by the
development of new ways of using the brain. Illustrative are the enormous
socio-cultural consequences of the invention of the written word. In a sense,
reading is a sort of new synthetic instinct, input that is reflexively
transformed in to a program, crystallized into neural hardware, and
incorporated as cultural loop into the human vervous circuit. This "new
instinct" in turn profoundly changes the environment within which young
human brains are programmed... our technology [functions] as a sort of supplementary
nervous system.
(p.76-77): The
fundamental unit of metered poetry is what we shall call the line ...
it is recognizable metrically and nearly always takes from two to four seconds
to recite... The line is nearly always a rhythmic, semantic, and syntactical
unit as well - a sentence, a colon, a clause, a phrase, or a completed group of
these. Thus, other linguistic rhythms are accomodated to the basic acoustical
rhythm, producing that pleasing sensation of appropriateness and inevitability,
which is part of the delight of verse and aid to the memory.
The
second universal characteristic of human verse meter is that certain marked
elements of the line or group of lines remain constant throughout the poem and
thus indicate the repetition of a pattern. The 3-second cycle is not marked
merely by a pause, but by distinct resemblances between the material in each
cycle. Repetition is added to frequency to emphasize the rhythm. These constant
elements may take many forms, the simplest of which is the number of syllables
per line... Still other patterns are arranged around alliteration, consonance,
assonance, and end rhyme. Often, many of these devices are used together, some
prescribed by the conventions of a particular poetic form and others left to
the discretion and inspiration of the individual poet.
The
third universal characteristic of metrical poetry is variation. Variation is a temporary
suspension of the metrical pattern at work in a given poem, a surprising,
unexpected, and refreshing twist to that pattern... Meter is important in that
it conveys meaning, much as melody does in a song. Metrical patterns are
elements of an analogical structure, which is comprehended by the right
cerebral hemisphere, while poetry as language is presumably processed by the
left temporal lobe. If this hypothesis is correct, meter is partially a
method of introducing right brain processes into the left brain activity of
understanding language. In other words, it is a way of connecting our
much more culture-bound linguistic capacities with relatively more primitive
spatial recognition pattern recognition faculties, which we share with the
higher animals.
(p.81-82):
Here it might be useful to turn our attention to the subjective reports of poets
and readers of poetry as an aid to our hypothesizing. These reports may help to
confirm conclusions at which we have tentatively arrived...
The imagery
of the poem can become so intense that it is almost like a real sensory
experience. Personal memories... are strongly evoked; there is often an
emotional re-experience of close personal ties with family, friends, lovers,
and the dead. There is an intense realization of the world and of human life,
together with a strong sense of the reconciliation of opposites - joy and
sorrow, life and death, good and evil, human and divine, reality and illusion,
whole and part, comic and tragic, time and timelessness... There is a sense of
power combined with effortlessness. The poet or reader rises above the word, so
to speak, on the "viewless wings of poetry" and sees it all in its
fullness and completeness, but without loss of the clarity of its details.
There is an awareness of one's own physical nature, of one's birth and death,
and of a curious transcendence of both, and, often, a strong feeling of
universal and particular love and communal solidarity.
To reinforce their hypothesis the authors turn to new and speculative fields of
scientific inquiry, which are variously termed "neurobiology",
"biocybernetics", and "psychobiology". Quoting an Essay by
Barbara Lex (1979), "The Neurobiology of Ritual Trance", they
state:
(p.82): ... various
techniques of the alteration of mental states... are designed to add to the
linear, analytic, and verbal resources of the left brain the more intuitive and
holistic understanding of the right brain; to tune the central nervous system
and alleviate accumulated stress; and bring to the aid of social solidarity and
cultural values the powerful somatic and emotional forces mediated by the
sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems and the ergotropic and
trophotropic resources they control.
(p.83):
The linguistic capacities of the left hemisphere, which provide a temporal
order for spatial information, are forced into an interaction with the rhythmic
and musical capacities of the right hemisphere, which provides a spatial order
for temporal information.
(p.
84-85): The traditional concern of verse with the deepest human values - truth,
goodness, and beauty - is clearly associated with its involvement with the
brain's own motivational system. Poetry seems to be a device the brain can use
in reflexively calibrating itself, turning its "hardware" into
"software", and vice versa... As a quintessentially cultural activity,
poetry has been central to social learning and the synchronization of social
activities. Poetry enforces cooperation between left brain temporal
organization and right brain spatial organization and helps to bring about that
integrated stereoscopic view that we call true understanding. Poetry is, par
excellence, kalogenic - productive of beauty, of elegant, coherent, and
predictively powerful models of the world.
We also find the forces that will work to
suppress poetry:
(p.87):
A bureaucratic social system, requiring specialists rather than generalists,
might well find it in its interest to discourage reinforcement techniques like
metered verse because such techniques put the whole brain to use and encourage
world views that might transcend the limited values of the system.
They quote from Sidney:
(p.90):
"It may well be that the rise of utilitarian education for the working and
middle classes, together with a loss of traditional folk poetry, had a good
deal to to with the success of political and economic tyranny in our times. The
masses, starved of the beautiful and complex rhythms of poetry, were only too
susceptible to the brutal and simplistic rhythms of the totalitarian slogan or
advertising jingle. An education in verse will tend to produce citizens capable
of using their full brains coherently - able to unite rational thought and
calculation with values and commitment"
If we apply these views to the societal role of
the CMBs of Epic Tradition, we get this surprising picture: The Aoidoi of the
past Oral Age may have served a much more important function than the history
writers had allotted to them. As hypothetically this could be summed up thusly:
They were the guardians of the sacred chants and poems whose purpose was much
more than entertaining, or keeping a mythological record of the past, a sort of
proto-history. They were the masters of the forgotten arts of attuning the soul
with the body, of projecting the past and the future, and healing the cracks
and fissures of human society. When civilization arose and humans adopted
writing, the use of poetry as cultural memory medium was quickly discarded and
relegated to purely entertainment purposes. The important cathartic role played
by theater, and especially tragedy, in ancient greek society is one of the last
vestiges of this once vigorous tradition. Once the art of the Aoidoi was
forgotten, humanity was on full course into the Iron Age, the Kali Yuga, the
Age of "Blood, Sweat and Tears".
18.6.2 Participatory events: dancing and
drumming
While the
epic tradition rested on a fairly select group of people, all traditional
cultures had many occasions for participatory events where the larger part of
the population was involved: festivals, dancing and drumming. Tribal african
culture has developed the art of dance and rhythm to a high level. A particular
case are the polyrhythmic traditions of this globe. These are particularly
effective in attuning the brain halves. In such communal rhythmic events, it
was not only the single person or a small group who experienced the wholesome
effect of rhythm but the total community. Even though contemporary
civilizations still have preserved remainders of this cultural heritage, it has
become confined to specialist performers, with a passive audience whose role is
now to applaud, or to let the movements of their bodies be dictated by beat of
the metronomic machinery that generates the sound.
18.6.3
Mary
LeCron Foster:
The reconstruction of the evolution of human spoken language
Mary LeCron
Foster (1996): Abstract
Language is an
analogical system for classification on multiple levels. Language systems build
upon semantic analogies and analogies in phonological, morphological, and
syntactic distributions (positional analogies). New meanings are created through
the process of metaphorical extension. The direction of language change is
determined in large part by this process and by analogical systematization _
hierarchical congruence of classes.
The
regularities of sound-change reconstructed by the comparative method provide
the most reliable diagnoses of remote linguistic relations; but these are
limited to 'families', or, in a few cases, 'stocks' made up of interrelated
families. Broader groupings, 'phyla' or 'super-stocks', are suggested on the
basis of typological relations, rather than on firmly established
sound-correspondences. The basis for going even further and attempting to
reconstruct a single prototype for all the world's spoken languages is not
agreed upon; but the reconstruction should reflect systematic correspondences
in sound and meaning throughout, whether insights were initially gained from
typological studies of phonology and/or from internal reconstructions.
Hypotheses must show system. While individual meanings underlying reconstructed
forms need not be identical, differences should be minimized. Once
correspondences are firmly established, culturally influenced semantic
variations are useful in assessing degrees of interrelationship among
languages.
Pursuing the
monogenetic reconstruction through this bare-bones phonemic approach, refined
by a series of simplifications, leads to the startling hypothesis that the
sounds of which the VC and CVC roots are composed were originally themselves
meaning-bearers. These phememes, as they are termed, were minimal units of
sound whose meaning derived from the shaping and movement of the articulatory
tract. In other words, the phonemes of language, as well as the combinations
into which they unite within the word were originally not arbitrary signs, but
abstract, highly motivated analogical symbols.
In the earliest
stage of primordial language, single phememes expressed notions o space and
motion. Across the evolution of the genus Homo these were differentiated and
new phememes created, hypothetically in stages, until the phememic inventory
was completed during the Upper Palaeolithic. In the Neolithic period, it is
hypothesized, syllabic concatenation with morphophonemic merging increasingly
obscured the analogical significance of phememes, which gradually became what
we now know as phonemes. Nevertheless, in the roots of most modern languages a
number of the primordial phememes are still recognizable [Eds].
18.6.4 The AOIDE model
The
following sketch will present an epic language processing model called the
AOIDE. This is the working name for a hypothetical information model of
neuronal structures and mental functioning of the professional Cultural Memory
Bearers of the ancient oral epic traditions world wide whose thinking modes
were, according to the hypothesis, quite different from modern civilized
western prosa thinking. The base of the hypothesis are data we have available
on the greek Aoidoi, (like Homer), the african Griots,
the norse Skalden, the welsh Bards, the Australian
Aboriginal Songline tradition, the Guslars of the Balkans (Milman
Parry), the Gesar Epos of Central Asia, and the indian Rishis and
what can be inferred from these data. In the following the word aoidewill
be used for the generic class of all Cultural Memory Bearers of all epic
traditions world wide.
AOIDE[537] is
called the model of {cultural memory / information / language / epic / sonic /
mythic / lucid trance / divination / prophesy} mental technology (mentation)
derived from data on various oral traditions around this planet.
The working
hypothesis on which AOIDE is based, are the
Onoma-Semaiophonic
Principles: The Nexus Sounds, Links, and Fields of oral epic song
technology .
The
following text will try to elaborate this model. Apart from the author's
original ideas, this is based on the oral memory technology researches of
Hertha v. Dechend's "Hamlet's Mill" (1993), with her concept of the
oral epic computation and data transmission technology, of the comparative
trans-global epic studies of Theodor Strehlow (1971), [538] the
detailed work on Aoide and the alphabet of Barry Powell (1991), the global
musical cosmogony of Marius Schneider (1951-xxxx), and the phememe hypothesis
of Mary LeCron Foster (1996). [539] As
will be made more explicit in the ensuing discussion, aoide
mentation [540] has a connection with {entering
/ entertaining} {different / alternate} modes of mental functioning than the
normal waking state. One popular name for such states is the blanket term
"trance" . It must remain for a later and larger project work to
define that more closely, and using the results from applying the tools.
18.6.5 The Theory:
Onoma-Semaiophonic Principles -
18.6.5.1 Nexus Sounds, Links, and Fields
Let us design a construction principle for a
structural edifice of sounds and meaning .
1) onoma-semaiophonic
The key term onoma-semaio-phonic[541] is
the working principle of the method applied. It assumes a hypothetical[542] interrelation
and connectivity of semantic/phonetic elements of an archaic language like the
aoide language is assumed to have been. The German term for onoma-semaiophonic is Sinn-Klang,
in English Sing-Lang, and Aboriginal Australian: Song-Line. It
has to be stated that this is not an etymological concept .
2) nexus sounds as attractors
Let us now call the sound meaning of the stoichea as used by
Platon in his linguistic discussions in Phaidros, Kratylos, and Timaios
the nexus sounds [543] of
the aoide language .[544] The
greek version is given only as paradigmatic example, and the principle holds
equally for any language in which the aoide sings [545]. The
nexus is not a linguistic or etymological concept. The nexus was
used in a slightly different {meaning / intention} by Whitehead in
"Process and Reality" (1969: 22-25) [546] and
the general principle is transferred to this context. If we want to use a
physical metaphor, we can use the attractor principle of chaos
theory, or maybe an electrostatic / electromagnetic / gravitational attraction
force field. Behind this lies a neurological attractor model, but at present
this cannot be worked out.
(See the note on William Calvin, further
down).
3) the onoma-semaiophonic nexus and the morphogram
This is conventionally called a word.[547] An onoma-semaiophonic nexus (or
short: nexus) is the form ( morphae) of several
con- nexted nexus sounds . We have to
differentiate between the sound form as it can be put into grammata(written
signs), the morphogram, and its sounding form, the phonae-morphae,
or stoichaea , or in German, Klang-Form.
4) the onoma-semaiophonic link
Let us assume a sound connection between different but similar nexus,
i.e. that nexus bearing a similar sound will have a
connecting similar (and also antagonistic) meaning field, forming an onoma-semaiophonic link.
5) Semaiophonic fields
are called networks of nexus that are connected
by semaiophonic links.
6) Semaiophonic structures, notation
It is almost impossible to describe semaiophonic structures in
linear alphabetic textual manner. We can use the hypertext metaphor of links
extending to the related sounds. We assume that a there is a kind of sonic
hyper link between similarly sounding words. This gives many-dimensional
structures, quite unlike the linear textual sequence.
7) Semaiophonic core structure ,
the Klang-Sinn
The most important question is how sound and meaning ( Klang and Sinn)
are connected .[548] This is is a difficult theme
that can only be sketched in one paragraph for the present context: The neural
representation of the machinery to {produce / recognize} a nexus sound with the
human voice apparatus needs some neuro-xyz structure that are tentatively (and
hypothetically) identified by Calvin with certain hexagonal structures on the
cortex. Although producing and recognizing structures need (and can) not be
identical, there must be a correspondence between them. Then, the structures
necessary for vowel formation must by needs be different from those for
consonants, since they involve a totally different muscular activity. And since
there is no homunculus somewhere in deeper recesses of the brain to attribute
meaning to these sound structures, the meaning we (in our consciousness)
attribute to the words, must also be embedded in these structures, or be at
least morphologically connected, and be of the same morphae (form).
8) Modeling semaiophonic structures in a molecular model
These onoma-semaiophonic networks can then be assembled in a
molecular model similar to the way the atomic constituents of molecules are
presently visualized in appropriate chemical models. The matter of technical
workability is not concerned with the question whether the model as such makes
sense according to current philological or linguistic theories. In the present
case, it is important to present a research tool first, and try it out and test
it, get experimental results, and not try to prove the consequences and results
of the application of the tools, beforehand. Following Whitehead, we need
"a new tool as a way for new insights". In the Popperian manner the
tool gives ways to experiment with falsifiable hypotheses.
18.6.6 Relation of
molecular models in Platon's works
A molecular
model of semaiophonic structures is suggestive for the following reason: the
sound connections in the model extend from the nex us in
semaiophonic space like atomic binding forces. As we see with a glance to
Plat on's Timaios, the ancient cosmology is replete with allusions
to a sound combination structure that we can easily match up to modern
molecular chemistry models. The geometric connections of the basic geometrical
forms, are quite recognizable in the onoma-semaiophonic mapping. Plat on
speaks explicitly of the geometric figures (like Tetraeder) as the basic
"elements" of his musico-logical cosmos [549].
These geometries reappear faithfully in the modern molecular models as the
space structures of the electron clouds which form the chemical bonds. The view
of Plat on's Timaios can be interpreted as the chemical bonds minus
(or abstracted from) the atoms . More enigmatic passages in Plat on's
works indicate that there are "trap doors" which may lead us into an
unknown dimension of epic language.
18.7
Platon's
Kratylos Hypothesis and the
Semaiophonic Aoide Thought Structures
This is an
excerpt of a conference paper presented at: "Semiotics of the Media",
Kassel (Goppold 1995b)
The main semiotic thesis of Plat on in Kratylos is formed by the
connection: " onoma homoion to pragmati " (the word
resembles the thing) and " stoicheia homoia tois pragmasin "
(the sounds, ie the stoicheia, be similar to the things also). The paper
presents arguments for the interpretation that it is of prime importance to
differentiate between Plat on's usage of sound ( phonae, stoicheia)
and letter ( gramma), and that the "things" he means
should not be taken as objective-out-there-things, but as phenomenal
"things" to be interpreted in terms of the modern neuronal
presentation of what is happening as brain processes while these things arise
in our imagination ( phainomenon). Even though Plat on
could not think in these terms, we may get a better understanding of what he
was hinting at.
18.7.1 The Kratylos
Question
nomina sunt omina
(Proverb)
In his
famous chapter in Phaidros (274c-275), Plat on talks explicitly
about the problems of the alphabet. In another work, Kratylos, he deals with
certain aspects of the connection of sound and meaning in ancient Greek
language. This material will be taken as starting point for the enquiry. It is
always good to start with Plat on. Whitehead had stated: "The
safest general characterization of western philosophical tradition is that it
consists of a sequence of footnotes to Plato" (Whitehead 1969: 53). If
Plat on had found something important enough to be worth devoting a
whole lengthy work, then we might well ask if there is some meaning to be found
in what he tells us.
18.7.2 Onoma homoion to
pragmati
In Kratylos, Platon talks about the connection
of words and namings, meaning, and sounds. This would today be considered a
discussion of semiotics. He opposes two views:
1) The names of things and people are products of social convention only
(the signe arbitraire doctrine), with Prodikos (384b) and
Protagoras as proponents. The famous statement of Protagoras is cited
(386a):
panton
chraematon metron einai anthropon.
The
human is the measure of all things.
2) The view of Kratylos is summed up in
"onoma homoion to pragmati" (434a), "the name is similar to the
thing". This may be called the Kratylos Question , the
core of the argument of the dialogue:
Oukoun eiper estai to onoma
homoion to pragmati, anankaion pephykenai ta stoicheia homoia tois
pragmasin.
If now the word resembles the thing then by necessity must the sounds (the
stoicheia) be similar to the things also.[550]
Kratylos is Platon's discussion of the subject
of fittingness or adequacy of words or symbols to the things symbolized. The
key questions are:
1) Are all words arbitrary? (the signe
arbitraire doctrine).
2) Are there some words
more fitting than others?
If we assume 2), then we might continue to ask what they may be more fitting
to:
2a) the (objective) thing or
2b) the neuronal (re)presentation the thinker has of a thing.
If we
assume 1), we might ask why they are arbitrary. Objective realism, or
materialism states that there are totally objective things "out
there". We now have to concede the fact that humanity has created
literally all possible sound combinations to denote, for example, the
"horseness" of the horse in tens of thousands of languages and
dialects. Therefore one might be hard put to explain why one word would be more
fitting than thousands of others. Now if all words are arbitrary, there is no
great sense in searching for better fitting ones.
18.7.3 The Structure of
the Kratylos Text
The
structure of the semi-monologue in Kratylos is peculiar. As in most other works
by Platon, we find Sokrates doing most of the argument. He talks about 90 % of
the time and his partners Hermogenes and Kratylos can only interject a few
statements like: "Yes indeed", "Sure", "I see",
"Why?", "I believe that", "of course", and so on.
Therefore, we cannot call this kind of conversation a true dialogue.
Unfortunately, the people who are most knowledgeable about the subject,
position 1) Prodikos (384b) and Protagoras (386a) are not there, Hermogenes
professes being largely ignorant and acts only as dummy or sparring partner for
Sokrates in 75 % of the text. And Kratylos, the proponent of position 2), has
hardly the opportunity to say two coherent sentences about his view on the
matter when he finally gets the word in the last 25 % of the text, starting at
428d, to 440.
Sokrates
himself professes, as usual, to be completely ignorant, because he has only
heard the "one-Drachme" talk of Prodikos, and not the one for 50
Drachmes (384c). After professing his ignorance, he anyhow goes on developing
all sorts of interesting but not very convincing etymologies [551] to
support position 2), but finally comes to a position that true understanding is
better attained through the things themselves (439b). How this is to be done,
he apparently doesn't have the time left to expound, since the text ends two
pages later.
18.7.4 Did Platon make a
Joke?
So the
whole work could be interpreted as some kind of tongue-in-cheek practical
semiotic joke that Platon made to befuddle his students in the academy and us
across the millennia. Or it can be assumed that Platon didn't have the right
conceptual tools to make a Semiotic Analysis. This seems to be a modern
interpretation which is also proposed by Eco (1993: 25). But there are two
questions remaining: First: Platon is known to be one of the most outstanding
geniuses of mankind. But humor was not one of his strong points. Second: Why
did he go through such an effort to make it known to posterity, that he didn't
know very much to say about the matter? If we assume that Platon saw enough
relevance in the subject to write about it, or have someone else write down his
talks about it, then there are again two possibilities: 1) He knew more about
it than he wanted to write, the unwritten teachings being in the background. 2)
He was guessing himself, but wanted to preserve something that even he, one of
the most knowledgeable men of his time, had only a dim recollection of, so that
it became not totally lost to posterity. In this treatment, we will lean
towards version 2), and give our reasons why.
18.7.5
The
terms used by Platon
In Platon's
time, Greek was not yet a standardized language. Every greek region had their
own dialect. The Ionian was different from the Athenian, that again different
from Spartan, and the Italian greek dialects were different still. Platon makes
reference to these differences in Kratylos. Classical greek, as it is known
today, is the koinae, the standardized language of the
post-alexandrian oikumene, a product of the work of scholars whose main base
was the Alexandria library (which served also as research, studying, and
teaching center).
It is usually
straightforward to find equivalents between classical greek and modern
languages for words of common culture use like: house, ship, knife, loom,
horse, sheep, river, tree, mountain, etc., because they denote easily
identifiable tangible, physical objects that are common in western,
indo-european cultures . Philosophical texts though, present a particular
problem for translation because of the extreme variance of semantic fields of
key terms used as compared with modern european languages. Kratylos is even
more problematic because Platon uses his words in a technical sense, and uses
them while he talks about them, without having a proper meta language at his
avail. We should note that ususally our modern meta languages derive most of
their words from greek roots.
Here are
some of the keywords used by Platon:
onoma - name, denomination,
appellation, designation,word, expression.
chraema - this semantic field denotes
things of practical relevance and objects of human environment:
thing,
action, usage, money, belongings, happenings.
There are
many similar-sounding, similar-meaning words in the field: chreia, chreos,
chreoo, chrae,
chraezoo,
chraestos, chraestes, chraeo.
chraema was the term used by Protagoras. If
the very global meaning of "thing" is substituted for the more
specific sense of "objects of human environment" then we get the most
obvious and commonsense statement of "the human is the measure of all
objects of the human environment". No one in his right mind would want to
argue against this. Otherwise what would they be there for? Today, one would
call that statement a core requirement of ergonomics. And as
ergonomics consultant, Protagoras might still make good money today.
pragma - things done, business,
negotiation.
This term is used by Kratylos. There is very
slight variance to chraema, but it might be significant. The
semantic field of pragma is a little more oriented towards process, dealings,
and doings.
The word praxis belongs to
this field.
Platon uses
this term in the majority of places that are translated as
"thing".
onta, einai - being
things.
With the
"to ti aen einai" the thingness of things starts to appear in
Aristoteles. Platon uses this term sparingly (385b) and he does not seem to
differentiate very much between all the three terms.
18.7.6 Pythagorean
Cosmology and the Alphabet
18.7.6.1 The Stoicheia as
used in Kratylos and Timaios
In most
translations of Platon's works, stoicheia and grammata are
treated as synonyms: meaning letters of the alphabet. But for Platon, there is
a quite marked distinction: when he talks about stoichea, he talks
about spoken sounds, and when he says grammata, he means the written letter.
The translation of Kratylos has to be treated with special care to yield any
useful information of what Platon was talking about. The semantic field of
stoichea is:
stoicheoma: element, fundamental building block, first
principle
stoicheoo: to teach the basics
stoicheomata: the 12 signs of the zodiac
stoicheon: letter of the alphabet
stoichos: the rod or stylus of a sundial that casts the shadow by
which the time is
indicated on the sundial
It is easy
to see that the term is heavy with connotations from ancient cosmology. This
subject has been treated in another of Platon's dialogues: Timaios. The first
meaning of stoicheoma denotes the idea of a first principle of
the cosmos. This is also called the archae. The zodiacal signs
can be clarified in connection with the sundial. The sundial was introduced in
Greece by Anaximander. He is also connected with the original formulation of
the ancient greek theory of the four elements and the apeiron (Hölscher
1989: 172). The following passage from Timaios gives us the connection between
cosmological primitive elements and letters-of-alphabet:
Now we must go
back to a second, and new, beginning (archae) which adequately befits our
purpose, just like we did with the earlier subject. We must consider the true
nature of the fire, the water, the air, and the earth for themselves,
before heaven was created, and we have to consider their states before its
creation. Because up to now no one has enlightened (illuminated) on their
origin. Instead, as if we knew what really is the true nature of the fire,
the water and the others, we talk about them as the origins (archai), in
the way that we equate them with the letters (the stoichea or
original components) of the cosmos. But it is not adequate that the amateur may
even compare them with the form of the syllables.[552]
The four
elements as Timaios describes them in the quotation, are also called stoichea.
Anaximander had brought the sundial from Babylon. The dial is partitioned
in 12 sections, like any modern clock is, corresponding to the 12 hours of the
day. The 12-scheme of the hours corresponds to the 12-scheme of the months of
the year and the 12 zodiacal signs wich are all of babylonian (or
chaldean) origin. In the world of antiquity, if one wanted to learn about
astronomy/astrology, one went to Babylon, because here were the first and
foremost experts of all the oikumene on that subject. Timaios, who is the
fictional narrator in that monologue, has been introduced to the group in 27a
as the one who is the most expert of them on Astronomy/Astrology. Obviously
Timaios must have been in Babylon to learn the basics (or stoicheoma)
of the story he is telling in Platon's "Timaios", just like
Anaximandros before him.
We now have
one detail left to clarify: Why and how might the word stoichea have acquired
the meaning of letter-of-alphabet which is usually denoted by the word grammata?
Let us create a mental image of a sundial: We see a rod, or stylus, the sun
shines, and the stylus casts a shadow. Then we call into memory another
memorable fable of Platon, the cave parable. There, Platon talks
about a big cave where miserable humans are chained fast to their seats so they
cannot move and only watch the shadows dancing on the cave walls, forever
entertaining themselves guessing what these shadows mean and what they stand
for. The connection to the stoichea becomes immediately clear. The symbols of
the alphabet are viewed as the shaped holes through which the pure light
of the divine logos shines. The shadows that are cast on the dial of the
sundial or the cave walls are the meanings of those symbols as we perceive them
from our lowly perspective. Platon talks in Phaidros, 276a of the grammata as
the shadow pictures of the living, animated logos. He uses a very subtle
word-play here, the opposition of eidotos (true knowledge)
and eidolon (shadow image).
Ton tou eidotos logon legeis, zonta kai enpsychon, ou ho
gegrammenos eidolon an ti legoito dikaios
You mean the living, ensouled speech, the logos, of the truly
knowledgeable, of which the written version can only be looked at as shadow
image.
(Platon, Werke, Vol. V, 276a)
We also find
a statement in the same vein in Platon's revealing (and ominous) seventh
letter. With all these indications and examples from different works, it is
sure worth trying to find an explanation for Platon's interesting
speculation.
18.7.7 The Kratylos
examples are taken from greek epic tradition
When we
look at the examples Sokrates gives for the similiarity of name and thing, we
quickly see that Platon was careful to choose mostly words that have no
physical referent. He derives his terms mostly from mythology and other greek
terms of the ethical domain. He starts out with Homer as one of those people
who are daemiourgon onomaton, the master in the art of
forming words (390e). This is is highly significant because we
find a direct correspondence to the daemiourgos of the
Timaios, who is creating the world.[553] Then
he goes through an assorted list of greek gods and heroes. He follows the
genealogy list as given by Hesiodos, and in 409, he comes to the planets and
stars, the four elements, and the four seasons. In 411 he talks about abstract
and ethical terms like virtue, righteousness, etc. This gives an indication
that Platon did not have the intention to show us the relations of names for
physical objects but rather, to the thought and association structure contained
in the greek epics, cosmologies, and mythologies. And here, it makes much more
sense to speculate about a connection between the thing and the name, and the
sounds of the names: This archaic thought structure was preserved and
transmitted by the ancient aoidoi, as the poets, singers, and bards of greek
antiquity were called.
So there is
no problem to relate them to the phenomena perceived. The greek gods and
mysteries literally "lived" in the rhymes and metres of ancient greek
epical poetry, and it would be impossible to extract them from there. Another
indication for this is Platon's use of pragma to denote the
"things". He doesn't talk about a thingness-in-itself as Kant may
have postulated, but about a going-on. That is for example the reciting of an
epic text. While the text was recited, the mental imagery unfolded in the inner
vision of the aoide and his audience. So the examples Platon refers to, his pragmata,
were for the ancient greek audience of epics a true process, of the nervous
system, and not concepts. In this respect, we can perceive an auto-poieitic element,
as the sounds themselves create their meaning by rhythm, meter, and
association. The rhythm and meter component cannot be treated here, so another
work will be referred to which does an extensive discussion on that subject: J.
Latacz (1979-1991).