(circa 1993)
A GNOSTI-ALLEGORICAL CAVEAT #1:
The Philosopher Stone’s Self-Deconstruction
…or: Why People Comb Their Hair on Sundays…
Long, long ago in a galaxy not so far, far away, a quiet little community of planets silently came to be.
Nine in all – not counting, that is, the many smaller stones and such in their vincinity – this homespun habitus of otherwise well-rounded spheres found themselves to be what each was through the feeling of warmth they shared in being accompanied by a common, perhaps eve a bit unimpressive, star. It was, however, impressive enough to draw their attention away from the vastness of universe which caved out all around them. Thus it was that the star proved to be a source of solace, and so they came to call it “Sun”.
Within the nominal light of this solarized perspective, Sun soon appeared to be grander than the universe itself. The twinkling of other stars were revealed to be no more than mere speckles in comparison, and the sprinkle of radiance their distant fires offered occurred as but a glimmer and shimmer which Sun’s blazing aurora seemingly disintegrated, …as if through the caprice of some powerful whim of its will.
From the shaded perspective of their dark side, however, the planets were always free to remember that such was not the case: for within the yet still all-embracing darkness, an infinity of other stars was forever to be seen splitting their cold flames at each other, or nothing in particular.
But in the more ideally apparent light of Sun’s locally awesome majesty, the planets came to feel compelled by an as yet unthought-out idea to pay homage to it as the star most clearly in their midst, …and almost as if it were their very nature they each sought to secure a place from which to be held by Sun’s generous glare, ingratiating themselves in its sheer magnanimousity.
So as not to interfere with each other’s gaze, the planets came to order themselves into a system upon which each could behold in Sun’s gravity a law that would apply to them, as if such might already have been foreordained. The ordinance of sunlight, however, was not one that came to apply equally, especially for those outermost planets that would now forever receive a much smaller share of Sun’s glowing warmth.
Coincidentally, it was observed that those more distant planets showed themselves to be less capable of reflecting Sun’s light – a capacity which, at least in the brighter planets’ view, afforded the privilege of being considered as more like stars – and thuswise a reason for the disparity became obvious to all.
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So as to remain clear on what justified their various solar positions, the planets ordained themselves with names which might further enlighten their newly observed capacity to reflect. For instance, the third planet from Sun was named for the reason that it viewed itself as reflecting the solar separation of “Venus” and “Mars”, the lover and the warrior.
The latter had fought for better position, but the former, and brighter, one had successfully seduced this third planet into a path which would dis-course that attempt. That is, “Earth” [see below] had come to maintain itself in and as a temperate location such that, at least in its view, it constituted the rational ground upon which the system depended.
After all, the otherwise passionate tendencies amongst planets needed mediation lest their passions became enflamed, and Sun itself had not as yet deigned to give any guidelines in this regard. The prospect of Jupiter or any of the larger but more distant planets coming to be dissatisfied with its share was one which gave Earth the rationale of a reason to call out to Sun for guidance. For it was secretly only too aware that it would not be able to maintain its temperance, and hence the very system, if its ground were ever really challenged.
In contrast, as that which was the least luminary in the system, “Pluto”, the most luminal reflector of sunlight, enjoyed a rather cold, isolate, and generally unapparent position. But despite the dim view others had of it, Pluto continued to affirm its being held by Sun – even if it contributed little to the system beyond that of simply staying in its orbit.
In light of this laconic attitude about its role, however, the system in turn contributed little to Pluto beyond that of access to a minimal amount of sunlight. It was in this same respect not surprising that the many smaller stones and such in the vincinity were rarely even acknowledged as having the power of being name-able. Rather, such were collectively lucky to be considered as but even sheer mass, as they tended not to be considered at all.
As time went on, the solar system occurred as something so familiar to the planets and others that, whatever their place in it, they thought it to be the way things had always been, and would always be. Although, relative to their “capacity” for genuine reflection, they sometimes felt indignant or guilty about the systematic persistence of inequity, the originarily unthought-out feelings according to which the system itself first developed were never really put into question.
Indeed, they never stopped to think about that at all…
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Unnoticed by these planets, and unbeknownst even to Sun itself, there also existed a mere morsel of planetary matter which, for some apparently irrational, even daimonic reason, had become dislodged from the unthinking routine of solar observation. Even whilst put at a halt by the sudden presence of dark and novel thoughts, it could not help but recognize that, indeed, Sun was the closest star.
If only for this reason, though perhaps also for warmth and companionship, the solitary rock again moved itself toward the community of planets, …but in doing so, soon found itself becoming affected by the systematic gravity of Sun’s law of light.
Now while the law of sunlight was not in itself new to this solitary rock, the capacity to think about it was. The stronger the force of sunlight’s compulsion became, the more it felt a curiously unnatural need to resist.
“Why not save myself a lot of trouble?” pondered the rock, “Why not simply go with the flow? …Then again, why ‘save’ trouble?”
It was not long before the rock became disturbed, not strictly with Sun in particular, but with its own apparent inability to assert itself against the established system of solar enlightenment. Indeed, the more it came to think about this, the more the rock came to burn that which it was.
Unlike the community within which it had again directed itself, the once unassuming little rock was now confronting the entire system with its capacity to think in the dark, to think an idea that it had felt when once “freed” from the encirclement of its own orbit. This was indeed a dark idea, and the rock soon became anxious over the realization that it was without any bright words by which it might simply say what the idea was.
It could merely attempt the caprice of willing this idea into its own light. To be free even to say its idea, the rock itself had to shine forth as a solitary example of what it itself felt itself to be: in particular, dis-turbed, as somehow apart-from the turbulence of an ordered existence. Thus it came to riddle itself into a vision of that moment it had once felt.
To the planets, the monstrously sudden appearance of such an unruly stone as this one was a terribly un-common event. Most terrifying of all – given that their whole way of reflecting was such that they had wholly forgotten how to think about anything not consistent with the unthought-out idea underlying Sun’s hold on them – was that the burning rock’s unaccounted-for presence seemed not only strange and unreasonable, but somehow necessarily unreal as well.
It was too uncommon to be considered as merely an exception to that which they had believed-into-being the natural order. Not only was its presence unfamiliar, but so too was its very image, and the planets found themselves incapable of clearly imagining that which they nonetheless saw.
For, in deed, the rock was increasingly showing itself in a manner similar to that speckled background of stars which served as its static frame. And if that were not already enough, unlike any star, the rock was ecstatic with an unnaturally rebellious way trailing it in a blaze. The planets had to conclude that the burning stone was not a star, but rather a demonic no-thing of darkness which shone forth inspite of both itself and the resplendent goodness of sunlight.
Hence its apparent unreality, for the planets had no idea as to how the dark could create light, …especially given their most common-felt assumption that only the inverse, the goodness of light, could possibly be true. All they really knew was that, without sunlight, they too would be unnamed-able pieces of darkness. Such was their deepest fear, …so deep, in fact, that they anxiously left it as unthought-out.
As the flame of its idea voraciously grew, the planets came to name this brazen-haired stone “Comet”. Conversely, while Comet did indeed see them at least as well as they it, the planets had not struck it in anything like a similar way. It could no longer rely on any proper names by which to call them out, since there seemed to be no essential differences between tem that would make this possible. Each appeared to be just as Venus-ish, Earth-ish, Mars-ish, or for that matter eve Pluto-ish as any other. Each appeared to be no thing other than a common stone.
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{{okay, tired of typing, second half to come… where Comet takes off on a grand adventure!!!}}