other_life

bioconfused
third and luka this is your place to shine
currently studying fuckloads of this kind of literature + stuff adjacent/contextual to it. want this thread to center on afro-asiatic, indo-iranian and indo-european esoterica bc of my own bullshit cultural bias but if u can link it other stuff ofc is fine
here's a spitball ab phonetic writing re:marx's ethnological notebooks

“3) Upper status [of barbarism]. Commences with the smelting of iron ore, use of iron tools, etc., ends with the invention of a phonetic alphabet, and the use of writing in literary composition.”

The history of religious literatures, and therefore the prehistory of the idea of logos, of exegesis/hermeneutics as a channel for gnosis, begins in this transitional period between 'barbarism' and 'civilisation'. Marx says “a phonetic alphabet”, without specifying which. This is because Marx did not live to see the discovery of some of the earliest phonetic inscriptions ('Proto-Sinaitic') at Serabit el-Khadim, in 1904, 21 years after his death. The inscriptions at Wadi el-Hol date even earlier (18th century BCE) and were discovered in 1999.
The use of writing as a creative pursuit or the creation of complex documents presupposes a much longer prehistory: pictorial representation in general (the stone engravings found at Blombos Cave on the Southern Cape coastline of Africa, c. 68,000 BCE), and later, elaborated symbol-systems for the keeping of transactional records, ornamentation of artworks and, probably, divination (tortoise shell inscriptions prefiguring the latter 'oracle bone script' were excavated in 2003 at Jiahu, Henan province, China, and radiocarbon date to the 7th millennium BCE).
Between the earliest symbolic/abstract art and the earliest intimation of more complex symbology, a period of 63,000 years elapses. Between the latter and the Wadi el-Hol inscriptions, a much shorter period of 5,000 years. We see there is an accelerated development here, and a great abstraction from more complex syllabic-pictorial hieratic scripts in the development of the phonetic alphabet (as well as in the transition from Sumerian pictorial writing to the abstraction of cuneiform).
The earliest phonetic inscriptions still owe a great debt to Egyptian hieroglyphics. They are identifiably pictorial, though the consonants they represent are abstracted from the beginnings of syllabic/word characters. The Phoenician script, and its later descendants, are so abstracted that you have to strain to see the connection.
This abstraction of forms to their simplest parts makes phonetic scripts highly contagious (witness its spread from northern Africa to northern Europe), where syllabic-pictorial hieratic scripts are contained. Phonetic scripts are universally adaptable, where syllabic-pictorial hieratic scripts require initiation to decipher (this is indeed what makes them hieratic). The lack of vowel-points in early abjads like these, whereas abugidas disambiguate for vowels by modifying the base consonants, also leant to ambiguous readings (necessitating the development of the Masorah for Hebrew and the modern Arabic script). This ambiguity is key for later exegesis/hermeneutics, as well as writing/language-based magics.
 
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other_life

bioconfused
one more tiny one
“...permanent addition of game through improved weapons, especially the bow and arrow; this came after the spear and war club; was the first deadly weapon for the hunt, appeared in late savagery...” - When do Morgan, Marx & Engels et. al. date these periods to, again? In any case, this development lays the foundation for later warfare. The earliest mass grave, to date, was unearthed in 2016, at modern West Turkana, Kenya, and dates back 10,000 years, around the period of civilisational emergence.
Slaughter at that scale of course presupposes an entire other host of developments beyond improved weapons for hunting, but it presupposes this simpler development, as well. Mass warfare figures heavily in the religious literatures we will be studying (the Torah and Mahabharata in particular), and also in the spread of these religious ideas. This warfare was conceived of as a microcosm of the violent formations and destructions of the universal world, cosmic cataclysms.
 

other_life

bioconfused
quietly speculating on the forms of these letters as channels for subtler energies
Phoenician script.jpg
their shape suggests momentum. the rush of horses, the rumble of chariots, the vast distances of seafaring
whereas these are containers of the very same energies
aramaic2.gif
their square shape almost suggests domesticity/civility. the end letters also remove some of the aforementioned ambiguity. "this is where a phrase ends, one word does not connect into the next"
 

other_life

bioconfused
writing phoenician script lends itself to, the same thing of writing lowercase latin letters, or whatever your native/first script is. the letters slur together, their ends can be joined together, they slant
writing square script you have to be more precise (or rather, they say you should be)
 

other_life

bioconfused
stalking some old threads. come play with me.
there was a good conversation between k-punk and two others im not familiar with ab spinoza but it's really only tangential since kabbalah and neoplatonism are mentioned a couple times
One of my favourite weird English language things is the shared etymology of 'glamour', 'grammar' and 'grimoire'. The connection between magic and the power of spoken and written words is deep and very ancient - think about putting a 'spell' on someone, or about what we mean when we call something 'en-chant-ing'.
I remember when I was a young teenager talking to my mum about the Tarot and she said 'oh sweetie, you can go down that route if you want but it's an awful waste of time'
Yeah I meant less schizophrenia as pathology and more as neurological symptom - high levels of dopamine are found in people exhibiting symptoms of schizophrenia, produced in the mesolimbic part of the brain, which also has to do with feelings of reward and motivation; I think alot of ritual and magical practise is about stimulating that place (this will happen, etc), thus the area of the brain stimulated is that area in both schizophrenia and magic, regardless of who's in control. Similarly with epileptic seizures and visions.
I don't think there's anything wrong with that - Deleuze, schizophrenia being a normative state in this system etc - I just think that that's what's going on, and it's not much deeper than that.
im finding it a bit frustrating that people are assiduously avoiding discussing their own practices and experiences.
(did luka ever get better at visualisation?)
there's also of course the 14 page thread on cyclonopedia http://www.dissensus.com/showthread.php?t=8246
 

other_life

bioconfused
luka why and how are phoenician and square aramaic so different. your entire practice is writing i'd think letter mysticism would appeal to you?
 

other_life

bioconfused
like dude i'm giving you so much to work with, not just letter mysticism, and your responses so far just seem kinda bummed out
 

other_life

bioconfused
“But when the most advanced Eastern tribes, at the commencement of the middle period of barbarism, had domesticated animals giving meat and milk, without a knowledge of the cereals, their condition [was] much superior to that of the American aborigenes with maize and plants, but without domesticated animals. With the domestication of animals appears differentiation of Shemite and Aryan families out from the mass of barbarians from which they started. That the discovery and cultivation of cereals by the Aryan family was later than the domestication of animals is proved by common terms for animals in the several dialects of Aryan language, and no common terms for cereals or cultivated plants... Horticulture preceded field culture, as the garden the field: the latter signifies boundaries, the former signifies directly an inclosed field [hortus: an inclosed place for plants, hence a garden; from the same root cohors (also cors, in some manuscripts chors): a yard, a place walled round, a court, (also cattle-yard); compare Greek koros, kortos; Latin hortus; German garten; English garden, yard; Italian corte; French cour; English court; Italian giardino; Spanish and French jardin]”

This entire passage feels relevant for the exegesis of the Torah. Its account of man starts not as partially tree-dwelling and subsisting on vegetation, but in a gan, an enclosed and intentionally cultivated garden. Man does not name the plants, but the animals, and any name we gave them, that would be its name (ie, recognised across cultures). The narrative of the entire Torah also has an implicit value-set running through it of nomadic-pastoralism over sedentary-agriculture and city-dwelling, which is later seemingly reconciled in its account of the settlement of eretz-K'na'an by the Israelites, their political constitution and the accounts in Sefer Shoftim. Probably evidence of later strata, dating to a time when nomadic-pastoralism by itself was seen as unfeasible. The sacrifice of the “choice” or ”first”/”head” of the flock is also a central metaphor in all books of the Tanakh.
 

other_life

bioconfused
pokin around rhizzone for cyclonopedia stuff. found this from 2013 on (i'm guessing?) the indigenous peoples of north america (in any instance: precolonial slavery/conquest and creation myths which valorise this practice. this feels kind of universal?)

"yes, quite (i see you pumping me for atrocity porn, don't think i don't), and even more so given the context of what came after. the knownish facts of the grasslands were that it was, prior to being organized in violent polities in the 1890s, a target for slave-capture across many different generations and ethnic groups both homogenous and heterogenous (in other words, both blood-meridianesqe raiding parties and actual communities oriented around acquiring slaves). many of the aforementioned violent polities were extant prior to this but were not nearly as militaristic. the actual known facts around this, both prior to and as a result of colonial intervention, are obscenely bloody in and of themselves. the various states prior to documentation (16th century? there isn't western documentation until the 19th i think, and nothing truly thorough until the 20th century) were, on the whole, likely derived from slavery-directed nomads supplanting previous inhabitants, which was a process that repeated over and over and over and over again.

the creation myths from supplanting peoples (that were later themselves supplanted) tend to represent this. a goddess closely linked with a founder-king that turns into a lake and drowns all of people that live underground, but who do not die until the founder king bests the underground ruler in single combat. a different myth of this founder king says that he set a magical fire that ringed around the underground people as they went above ground to gather grass one day. one group says that its own ancestors were burned to death in a house by their neighbors and that they fled to their current land after. another says that its ancestors won their lands by duping their neighbors, who were buried alive in a pit trap after being invited to a feast. those killed in these myths (who aren't viewed as ancestral) are usually people from underground, occasionally the forest, who were wanderers- usually phrased derisively, in ironic contrast to the just as nomadic founder-kings of many groups- with occasional magical characteristics who tended to be killed by a combination of magic and cleverness. when looked at in the light of the genocide, exocide, and filicide suffusing the lives of the people who passed these stories down the relentless commonalities between all these stories horrifies and disgusts. It's like the constant mentions of "unspeakable ancient abstracted horrors grown pervasive and virulent" in cyclonopedia but born out of actual lived human experience, not the urge to shock some professors in a room somewhere. "
 

other_life

bioconfused
more 2008 dissensus
Re numbers and the archeologist: I also noticed a mention of Wronski in the first chapter which is interesting. He is one of those crazy polymath figures who had a very unconventional use for mathemathics. In Difference and Repetition, Deleuze mentions him as one of the founders of differential calculus. The guy had come up with a system for synthesizing ideas from all fields of knowledge through calculus (+). He had made a machine for predicting the future and devised mathematical formulations for winning an election, etc. Deleuze follows Wronski in his book by showing that the synthesis of different or even mismatched ideas through a similar method as differential calculus can produce an esoteric or barbaric metaphysics of the universe. Deleuze claims that this metaphysics has huge ethical and political outcomes. As far as I know Wronski believed that a differential synthesis between ideas from different fields of knowledge has an esoteric effect which is stronger than occult. Interestingly, once he lost his position among mathematicians of his time, he found an avid follower, the French occultist Eliphas Levi. Deleuze followed Wronski's interpretation of calculus and numbers in Difference and Repetition and A Thousand Plateaus. The latter work shows how differential or rhizomatic synthesis between ideas create overtly occult fictions and systems (werewolves, vampires, demons, alchemy, or capitalism, nomad, oedipus, etc.) In any case, I agree with the Abdul Alhazred point, that was brilliant!
 

other_life

bioconfused
mister tea gets The Sync
Had quite a cool moment the other day. Readers of Cyclo may remember the curious cursive figure Negarestani calls the "Druj letterature" - a symbol apparently standing for Druj, the "dead mother of abominations" - where should it turn up but at the end of a line of Arabic script on a mediaeval icon of the Virgin and Child in Beirut's orthodox Cathedral of St. George?
 

other_life

bioconfused
cyclonopedia still claiming victims 9 years later
"Here’s the trick: do not bother trying to comprehend or understand the text. A desire for that level of control will only hinder your ability to experience it, use it, think it, and become it. To apply an analogy, I do not need to understand or comprehend my car in order for me to experience driving, to use the car to get to the grocery store, to think about the fact that I am sitting motionless while simultaneously moving rapidly through time and space, to become an extension of the car or vice versa. (In this way, Deleuze has really helped me formulate my general approach to all works of literature: I do not care to comprehend them or understand them in any way. I wish instead to experience them and use them and become them.)"
this approach is something i should keep in mind when setting out on this bigger study. everything is towards feeling the concepts for their practical end: sorcery against the spectacle, the rock to strike the clay feet of empire, theurgy to overcome capital. a forward escape through history.
mr tea also wrote three essays about it, i'll try to extract the best/most pertinent bits before i just link em
 

other_life

bioconfused
“But tillage must be older than the inclosed garden; 1) tilling of patches of open alluvial land, 2) enclosed space of gardens, 3) field by means of the plow drawn by animal power. Whether the culture of plants such as the pea, bean, turnip, parsnip, beet, squash and melon, one or more of them, preceded the cultivation of the cereals, we don't know. Some of these have common terms in Latin and Greek, but none of them common terms with Sanskrit.”
This whole passage calls for more research on my part. The transitions between 1) and 2), and between 2) and 3), have probably been dated, or at least have dates estimated, since Marx's time... What other developments were concomitant? It's interesting that Sanskrit, by Marx's estimation, has no common terms at all for plants with Latin and Greek, when commonalities in general between the three are so abundant. Did the ancestors of Sanskrit speakers domesticate animals before the Latins and Greeks?

“Horticulture in the Eastern Hemisphere seems to have originated more in the necessities of domestic animals than those of mankind... Through cereals and cultivated plants mankind obtained the first impression of the possibility of an abundance of food. With farinaceous food cannibalism disappears; it survived in war...”
The first clause seems odd in light of the fact that it's being borne out that over the course of our evolution into Homo sapiens sapiens, our diet was most likely predominantly vegetarian (although chimpanzees and bonobos, our closest evolutionary relatives, are not exclusively vegetarian, and a sort of ritual/war cannibalism has, very recently, been observed among both), and in any instance, we were often not hunters but hunted.
Anthropologists and evolutionary theorists today even trace much of our religious conceptions to this fact, in particular the practice and motif/mytheme of the sacrifice (and, in consequence, everything elaborated from it). The hypothesis is that one of the group would be left for the predator to allow everyone else to escape, and this is memorialised in the ritual sacrifice of herbivores on which we came to prey in the course of our evolution [ie, in Donna Hart, Man the Hunted (Basic Books, 2005)].
In any instance, the idea that horticulture was originally for the benefit of domesticated animals is not entirely untenable. It just calls for more research on my part. Food sources before anatomical modernity, and well into it, were no doubt scarce: most of us died. So the ability to cook farinaceous roots and meat was inarguably a massive improvement, the precondition for all later developments. Still take some issue with the 'cannibalism' clauses, though Leacock was writing in the seventies and eighties, before it was observed in chimpanzees and bonobos. But this cannibalism is still never for 'survival': it is always a show of territorial dominance.
 
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