Coition, Doubling & Poiesis
This study of Western poiesis has examined the idealization and doubling of identity. Based on analysis of great texts, it has proposed that the drive of Western poiesis to idealize itself in imagery is rooted in the metamorphic impulse of Greek culture and in the hybrid (Hellenic – Hebraic), self-irritating nature of this culture. Further, I have found and sought to explain that this drive to idealize often is rooted or involved in erotic trauma and follows a distinctive tragic trajectory. The dream of idealized being, the early stages of image formation (doubling) is an idyllic or pastoral phase in the process. As the image is formalized, separates, possesses and confronts its source an apocalyptic stage ensues resulting in the death or madness of the individual or cultural body. Sometimes this is matched by disillusionment with the image: it is unattainable (Narcissus), it is dead, it is a delusion (Camelot, Kurtz), and its subsequent collapse or petrifaction. Idealism, by its nature contains its own collapse for, as etymology tells us, idol worship and the dream of an idyll inevitably is idle. Thus, the apocalyptic awareness of the doubling, attenuation and displacement of self into ideal elicits an elegiac phase where the death and or disillusion, the realm of lies and phantoms is mourned. In Western poiesis the elegiac phase often includes forging a new idyll meant to last forever, the testament or shrine of the dead that because it is an idyll (eidellion from eidolon) is a lie. Thus Marlow says to Kurtz’s fiancee, “the last word he spoke was… your name.” A culture of imagery is a culture of lies and of horror. Even Marlow who “hates and detests a lie” must lie to save the illusion because the darkness of false idols are so horrible. The process is self-perpetuating and irreversible as the economy, pop media and political discourse show.
I proposed further that the process of idealization is generated by Greek culture’s view of the world as radically metamorphic in substance to the extent that its image-work or magike tekne prominently includes unnatural and dream-like transformations of being and substance, composite and supernatural beasts: centaurs, satyrs, the Minotaur, harpies and the sphinx. These monsters, in turn often are matched by the gods frequent changes of form and identity and they have a semi-divine attributes. The divine is closely linked to the demonic and metamorphic. Because metamorphosis as conceived and presented in these culture’s works has strong unnatural aspects it is a frequent source of terror. The process of idealization itself, as the image separates from and possesses or becomes its generating body intrinsically includes terror, awe and, usually death.
The West’s pattern of idealization is rooted in Greek and Roman key words. Greek idein means “to see,” implicitly to see or image: to see a pattern of images. From here develops the term, magike tekne from the words which led (through Latin) to imago, imagine and its derivatives, to synonyms like phantom, apparition, semblance and shadow; and from the word for weaving (tex-textus) that shows how our texts, from the Greco-roman point of view are matters of image-weaving, the magic of a seer or spell-caster: someone who manipulates nature to degrade or idealize but, in any case, to create images, eidolon, idols that change identity. A core word, id, is the source of idein, idea and idealize that links the process of image-work to idolatry and identity. Id (“it” or “that one”) is the core of idem (“the same”) and thus identity and its apparent opposite, identical spring from one seed, like twins. The etymological bond between identitas and idemptitas reflects the process of idealization, of projection of an idyll or alternate self, a phantom that becomes the ‘image-ideal,’ the alter-ego, double, even the possessor or displacer of its source. As the displacement or clone of the generating body-individual the image-phantom thus has an essentially predatory and consuming function. At length, by some reality test, the process of disillusionment sketched above ensues in an apocalyptic collapse of the image or double into its source, yielding elegy. Often this process is mediated by the gods; it is a theurgic poiesis, essentially tragic, often rooted in erotic trauma, ultimately in coition often of a divine being and mortal: the blood-fire or blood-knot from which glorious fictions of heroic idealization, as in the stories of the House of Tantalus-Atreus grow. Often these stories, as in that of Kadmus (“the one from the east”), Zeus and Europa (which produced Ariadne, Phaedra and Minos), Cinyras, Myrhha, Adonis, Aphrodite and Artemis (the avenging boar, see Hippolytus and his Amazon mother) are imported from the Middle East and transformed. These patterns of imagery were represented in the “viewing place” (theatron) of Dionysus, god of transformations and communal rapture, in Athens during the spring Dionysia. It is a culture based on worship and attempted mastery of the demonic through art.
Coition, sexual intercourse is the id, “that one” from which doubling and idealization proceed. In the Greco-Roman substrate this produces a theurgic and tragic poeisis that springs from erotic trauma. The blood-knot, fire, star and flower which pervade the imagery of the Oresteia epitomize the process, its source in gender conflict and terror and its symbolism
Here I would briefly like to explore how this dynamic poiesis looks from the perspective of Kabala as articulated in Sefer Yetzirah, “the Book of Formation.”
The “Long Version” of the Book reviews the core point of close explication of the Hebrew Scriptures: that the letters each are composed of other letters and when pronounced themselves form words that add overtones of meaning to the plain text. Spelling out the words, and their constituent letters formed by pronunciation of the letters reveals their “filling” (milui) which has its own numeric value as does each letters itself. A key organizing principle for studying the harmonics of each word and letter is that the twenty-two consonants of the Hebrew alphabet comprise three primary or “mother” letters, seven ‘double letters’ that can be pronounced hard or soft depending on whether they have the dagesh vowel within them. The remaining twelve letters are called elementals which, like the doubles relate to the months, tribes of Israel, parts of the body and emotional qualities. The focus of this study prompts us to focus initially on the three mother letters, aleph – mem – shin the nature of their relationship and the hermeneutic perspective they add to considerations of poiesis. These letters derive from and exist in association with the ten sefirot (“qualities” or “sapphires”) that issue from the ineffable Creator. Together they constitute “thirty-two mystical paths of wisdom.”
Aleph, the first letter of the aleph-bet is associated with Keter (“crown”) the first visible form of the Creator. It is a conduit through which flow all virtues, qualities and meaning. It exists in a ‘triangular’ form with Mem which represents male wisdom and, water and compassion and shin which metaphorically, for interpretive purposes is understood as the internal fire of woman that molds the seed of wisdom into understanding. The integration of wisdom and understanding produces daat, “knowledge” metaphorically indicating their “son.” Notable here is the difference from the Greek concept of theurgy caused by an avatar or composite being. Instead there is a flow of energy from a divinity that is the source of all and cannot be idealized or represented but expresses itself in human actions and relationships founded in the letters in which meaning is inscribed like information in DNA. Also noteworthy is the lack of erotic trauma or confusion in the paradigm and the fact that it is not about idealization but fruition and fulfillment of identity: it is natural and complementary to science and, despite the complexity of letter-analysis, to reason. Wisdom, understanding and the knowledge derived from them all derive from the divine source that created all things.
Of particular interest to this study of the transformative and erotic aspects of poeisis is what Sefer Yetzirah says about the letter Lamed, the letter which, when pronounced yields the roots for the Hebrew words teach, study, learn, scholar and teacher. These meanings all relate closely to the harmonics of the three mother letters, Crown, Wisdom and Understanding and their issue, knowledge. The relationship of man to woman and of both to the source of all life is thus based in teaching and learning; man and woman have wisdom and understanding, have a complementary rather than antagonistic relationship grounded in the discriminate place of each in relation to each other, to knowledge and to God. The result is the fruition and elaboration of all other qualities rather than idealization, possession, displacement and their associated trauma. This fruition is linked to Lamed, the largest letter of the aleph-bet and to aspects of study which ultimately lead back to their source, recognition of a dynamic relationship with the Creator.
These relationships embed sexuality in marital bonds and learning. They are dynamic but also stable, not metamorphic in the Greco-Roman sense. Lamed is made “king over coition” and associated with the holy season (month of Tishrei) in both its male and female aspects. Thus, the letter associated with coition and the generative integration of wisdom with understanding, male with female is associated with the birth of mankind, male and female that occurred on Rosh Hashanah, literally, “the head of the year” which thus implies the bond to Keter, the only perceivable aspect of the Creator from which life, energy and the beginning of wisdom flows. So coition, the basis of the relationship of man and woman is associated with humanity, forgiveness and joy; the orientation toward the Creator occurs as much from below as from above and includes the integrity of national as well as family and individual life. Theurgy, if it is proper to use the term in regard to Judaism is imparted to and part of human nature and the genetic process. It also fundamentally involves naming and literacy as primary facts of Creation for both contain the secrets, or principles to be discovered of life, of good life.
Well-known homiletic commentaries on the letters that spell “man” and woman” underscore the quality of generative complementarity embedded in the Hebraic substrate of Western culture. The words each contain two of the three mother letters, aleph and shin. One transliterates them as ish (“man”) and isha (“woman”). The full Hebrew spelling for man is aleph-yud-shin; for woman, aleph-shin-hei. The reference of aleph (“one”) to the Creator and of shin to fire already has been noted. Yud and hei both are ‘weak’ consonants, often simply place holders for vowels, forming the plural or, in the case of hei a common singular ending for female nouns. Yud is the first letter of the Tetragrammaton; hei appears in it twice as its second and fourth letters giving it a four-square and balanced structure. The two hei’s are joined by a vav, a ‘bridge’ or hook that denotes the six sefirot of human qualities from kindness to foundation and link the head, heart and loins with the limbs. The six collectively are considered ‘male’ sefirot. So the Tetragrammaton indicates a pairing of two male and two female attribute groups like the nucleic acids that form a discrete segment of DNA. Putting together the weak consonants from the words for man and woman forms one of the names of G-d; extracting them from the words for man and woman leaves aleph-shin, the Hebrew word for “fire” (aish). This indicates that without orientation toward the Creator at the center of the generative bond human beings consume themselves with passions or fire, a conflagration seen often in Greek drama both literally as in the Women of Trachis by Sohpocles and figuratively as in Hippolytus, the Bacchae of Euripides and many others.
The integration of creativity / thought, life-giving breath and generative sexuality also is expressed by a hermeneutics of the body. This aspect of Kabala, of how G-d forms and informs creation identifies the head with the fire of creative thought, the loins with the mem of wisdom, an unconscious, sustaining source of knowledge, and the chest with breath and glory, the aleph that received and sustains life from the Creator. Again the emphasis is on integration and complementarity of essential qualities: breath mediates between creative fire and subconscious generative ‘waters,’ between conscious and unconscious activities and energies. Instead of a theurgic poeisis, Hebrew culture has a derekh or “way” to go through life that engages the Creator Whose influences come directly from ‘above’ while human influences are manifold, diffuse, interactive and ubiquitous spanning generations and establishing the unique historicity of Hebraic consciousness and its sense of responsibility in which free will or what is acquired exists in balance with what is inherited and absorbed from the human and natural environment.
This sensibility, this way of considering the place of humanity in the world and in relation to the divine contrasts starkly with theurgic poeisis, for example, with the rigid chastity – or phobia – of Hippolytus, the consequent intention of Aphrodite to destroy him by destroying his step-mother and father, with grief and guilt, and the plan of his virgin goddess to wreak vengeance of the mortal favorite of Aphrodite. The generative and gendered complementarity of the Hebraic way also contrasts radically with the monstrous and violent ancient Greek view of Aphrodite as presented by Hesiod or the less obviously fantastic, autoerotic derivation of her nature from Zeus and his genitive reflection, Dione who guards his “sacred oak.”
A final comment from Sefer Yetzirah emphasizes the central power of language, naming and articulation, all based on literacy and the knowledge encoded in Hebrew letters and its unashamed, natural association with coition and the genitals as the foundation of all sovereignty from that of a nation to individual intelligence. The mouth and “the speech of the lips” are associated with royalty and dominion (Malkhut). This energy / potential is the ‘recipient’ or articulator of all the energies in the other nine sefirot, the three supernal ones denoted by the mother letters and the six (kindness, strength, truth, endurance, honor, foundation) that stream from the limbs, breast and loins. The loins are the foundation (Yesod) of the infinite energies received and embodied in man. From them come children, the knowledge that is the conception of understanding ‘impregnated’ by wisdom which comes from the Creative Source. Thus the Source of life energies, including all forms of knowing inhere in the subconscious drive to generate children (which also is the first positive commandment to all mankind). This is the “foundation” or exoteric secret (sod) which gathers all the qualities when understood to flow from the ineffable Creator to be expressed, studied and articulated in letters and naming. Naming, history and its truth, including the logic rather than the magical transformation of nature is the basis of Hebraic art which is an art of learning in all disciplines understood to be linked essentially with generative sexuality and articulation of wisdom.
The relation between literacy, articulation of knowledge and complementarity of heart, mind and loins also is contained in the Hebrew words for circumcision. The common term for this act, essentially an act of literacy, awareness of the Creator and thus the logic of nature and history is brit, literally covenant. Genesis 17 specifies that this “everlasting covenant” (brit olam) is inextricable from the covenant of “everlasting possession” of the land and integral to changing the names of Avram and Sarai to Avraham and Sarah. The literal word for circumcision is milah which also means “word.” The text thus indicates the integration of articulation, purity in generation – sexuality with everlasting placement of Israel in its land as part of the structural logic or speech of creation. Words and naming correctly are part of a genetic, erotic, national, agricultural and architectural project that includes all disciplines and fundamentally concerns articulation of truth: realization of the letters and words of the aleph-bet. Thus when Moses protests his inability to speak adequately to Pharaoh he says, “I have uncircumcised lips”; fluency, truth, liberation from tyranny and the elaboration of history require a fluency that is related to genital purity and fertility in splendor, Yesod HaTiferet, the line of Jacob to Joseph, from the heart to the righteousness of the loins which is under the head (reish~rosh) of the twilight of history that precedes Sabbath and whose potential is inscribed for peace, integration of head, heart and loins via understanding of Jewish letters and texts. When this knowledge and integration is negated by, for example, the religion of Esau, in the absence of this literate fluency, we get war and shadow-war, a war of terror emerging from a culture of terror, an olam sheker in which nothing is reliable or true: “the horror.”
The model of the fruitful, creative logic that imbues Creation and integrates head, heart (soul) and loins is expressed in the structure of the Holy Temple, its laws and ritual as Sir Isaac Newton understood through decades of study. It encodes a comedic not tragic understanding of human life that it is essentially good, not mainly to be endured as the Greeks taught. Moreover it is a real-life drama with a purpose that is good; good but not ecstatic or magical. The return of the true king will bring a repair of the world but not change the order of nature. The parables about “the lion and the lamb” are just that, parables and metaphors connoting that the nations will learn how to accept rather than attack and persecute Israel and the Jews and will be glad to learn, rather than to deform and appropriate its teachings. Then there will be “peace to the far and to the near.” The ultimate “psalm of song” whose “foundation is in the holy mountain” will emerge from their ‘capacitors,’ the paired cherubim above the Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies. Yesod HaTiferet and the integration of the divine energies within and between human beings are the antithesis of the spectacular cultural shows and obsessive, ostensibly cathartic trauma of Hellenism, spectacles whose image-work is a dead end of refraction and virtual reality in a thrilling but hard cycle of idyll, apocalypse and elegy.
When the Hebraic substrate of the West and the world is understood and honored, the positive potential of the sefira of Malkhut, grace and beauty, will stream through the world. But Judaism understands that human actions are partly self-directed and can take many forms: the Creator is not a puppet master like the gods of Greece. Until the nations are willing to study and learn from the Lamed of Israel and its integration of eros with articulation, rational and intuitive learning, — horror will displace grace. That is the state we have been enduring for centuries, increasingly so: a culture of terror and its unstable virtual reality, a culture of lies. If humanity ever puts off the fascinations of image-weaving, doubling and the idealizations and shadow work of erotic trauma it will experience a sun of righteousness with healing in its wings. Perhaps it is time for the Hebraic approach to art and identity.
[1] Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (Norton, Kimbrough 3rd edition, 1988), 75-6
[2] Aryeh Kaplan, Sefer Yetzirah, the Book of Creation in Theory and Practice (Weiser 1993); Yetzirah literally denotes formation from a pre-existing substance. Beriah connotes creation from intangible.
[3] Ibid 271-2, chapter One of the “long version” explains the “ten Sephirot of Nothingness” and subsequent chapters explicate their relation to the harmonics of the letters of the aleph-bet. All Hebrew letters are consonants; some silent, place holders for vowel points; some which can be articulated depending on grammar.
[4] This month begins with Rosh Hashanah and extends through Sukkoth, the autumn harvest festival of joy.
[5] Sefer Yetzirah op cit 150, chapter 3:6 passim
[6] Genesis 1:28, echoed in 8:15-17, to Abraham 15:5, Jacob 28:3, again 35:11-12 when Jacob is given the title, Israel.
[7] Exodus 6:12; Sefer Yetzirah op cit 34-7
[8] Genesis 37:1 and elaborated the entry of Jacob’s descendants to the Promised Land as part of the covenants.
[9] I am drawing on Eliyahu the Vilna Gaon’s version of Sefer Yetzirah.
[10] Olam sheker means a world or era of lies; see note 1 on Heart of Darkness
[11] It now is known that Sir Isaac Newton’s breakthrough works in math were based on his intensive study of core Hebrew texts like the Mishne Torah, Sefer HaChinuch, of sages like Hillel and Shammai, Ibn Ezra, R. Isaac Abarbanel and many others: Judaism in the Theology of Sir Isaac Newton, M. Goldish (International Archives of the History of Ideas, Dordrecht: Klewer); http://www.templeinstitute.org/isaac_newton_holy_temple.htm links to museum texts
[12] Rambam (“Maimonides”), Hilchot Melachim 11-12, final two chapters of the last book of Mishne Torah (explication of the commandments); on the laws of the Holy Temple see Rambam Hilchot Beit HaBechira
[13] Psalm 87; Exodus 25:8-22 on the building of the ark and cherubim for the sanctuary or Kodesh (“holy”).