Revelation (2)–
Manuscripts of the Gods: The Bible and Ancient Cultural Thresholds
by James Whitlark, Ph.D.
Revelation and the I Ching
On reaching that city, the Book of Revelation joined countless prophecies, oral and
written, circulating there. Key terms in many of them were Ta Thung (Great
Togetherness) and Thai Phing (the Great Peace and Equality)–paradisal conditions
believed to exist in the distant past and apocalyptic future, like the edenlike Millenium
predicted by Revelation (Needham 113). In the Thai Phing Ching (compiled gradually
between 400 B.C.E and 220 C.E.), “As the sins of mankind’s evil generations increase
to a climax, world catastrophies, flood and pestilence sweep all away–or nearly all,
for a “holy remnant” (a “seed people,” ching min), saved by their Taoism,
win through to find a new heaven and a new earth of great peace and equality, under
the leadership of the Prince of Peace (Ta Thai—Phing Chün), of course Lao Tzu”
(Needham 116).
As the most influential Occidental book about the future, Revelation would elicit comparison with the most influential Oriental one, the I Ching. As well as both being famous works of prediction, they have other similarities as well. Traditions connect the origins of both to imprisonment, a liminal experience that has transported many writers far from ordinary order. In Revelation, John is on Patmos enduring “affliction” for the sake of his Christian testimony. Although this might only mean that he had visited the remote spot to preach, the more colorful tradition is that his vision found him while confined to a place of banishment. Such an interpretation may have some historical credibility. According to Tacitus and Pliny, Patmos, a small, rocky island, actually was a place of exile (Ford 383). As to the I Ching, “The present form of arrangement and judgements were believed to be done by King Wen while he was in captivity for seven years.…According to tradition, each hexagram appeared in order on the wall of the prison as a form of vision” (Lee 1976, 14).
Although both books have been applied to every subsequent epoch, each, in its evocation of futurity, seems to draw heavily on politics contemporary with its composition. At a period when Rome forbad Christianity, Revelation understandably associates images of that city (e.g., the place of seven mountains, 17.9), with the great enemy of the faith. The I Ching version purportedly by King Wen and his children, in rebellion against the Shang empire, naturally reflects their struggle (Huang 44). Hexagrams 17 and 46 mention his leaving prison and making sacrifices at West Mountain, a good omen according to both Hexagrams (Huang 104, 162). Hexagram 42 alludes to the ransom paid for his rescue while 29 concerns receiving wine and meat in prison (Huang 154; for his identity, see Kunst 57). Marriage of the Shang emperor’s daughter to King Wen forms the context of Hexagram 54 (huang 179). The I Ching repeatedly praises a minister who tried to reduce Shang tyranny. Despite Chinese conservatism that would make one expect revolution to be an ill omen, the I Ching interprets it as a favorable one, perhaps partly because the book celebrates the victory of King Wen’s family over the Shang (Huang 169).
Typical of their periods (and of our own), in both books, politics and religion merge. Comparable to Revelation, where the evil empire will fall because of its idolatries and blasphemies, Hexagram 44 of the I Ching attributes the “downfall of Shang” to sacrilege (Huang 158). Hexagrams 63 and 64 record campaigns against “Devil’s Land,” a Chinese phrase for any non—Chinese area. That terminology resembles how war between Christian and non—Christian is described in Revelation. Although Chinese dragons are almost always favorable religious images, the I Ching appears to contain two exceptions: the end of Hexagrams 1 and 2, where dragons being without heads or tearing each other to pieces serve as good omens. (In Hexagram 2, the line “Shang is vanquished” explicitly links the verses to the revolution and thus makes political interpretation of the dragons more likely).
Since the dragon traditionally stood for emperors, rejoicing over the decapitation or mutilation of those semi—divine creatures, like the favorable hexagram on revolution, may reflect the anti—imperial attitudes of King Wen’s family during the Revolution. (One of King Wen’s sons eventually succeeded to the sacred Dragon Throne). Certainly, Revelation associates a Satanic Dragon with the evil empire. Pious readers tend to treat scriptures as either timeless or concerned with the readers’ own near future, but as “far—from—equilibrium” patterns, holy texts bear the marks of their time.
In addition to contemporary allusions, both Revelation and the I Ching dip into the extensive traditions of their people. For instance, according to The New Jerusalem Bible, the description of a single figure in Revelation 1.13—16 has images in common with Daniel 7.13, 10.5, 7.9, Ezekiel 43.2, Exodus 28.4, 29.5, Zecharaiah 3.4, 1 Maccabees 10.89, and Isaiah 49.2. Ann Leonard Thompson also notes allusions in the same short passage to 1 Maccabees 11.58, Psalms 7.10, Job 38.31, Isaiah 34.6, 60.19, 44.6, and Deuteronomy 32.29 (Thompson 1990, 34). References in the I Ching extend back a thousand years before King Wen to an incident in the Xia dynasty (ca. 2200 B.C.E.) and continue up to three victories won in a single day by King Wen’s son Kang (Huang 12, 140). In other words, both works are polytemporal, drawing on a long history of chaotic conflicts and dramatic changes for ways to describe the future.
The allusiveness, however, does not describe external events in the way a modern historian would, but draws on tradition for iterating images. The very name of the legendary author of the I Ching is given as “Wen,” which means “writings,” as if the source of the work were literature itself. About Revelation, Northrop Frye generalizes:
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We suggest[] that the Bible deliberately blocks off the sense of the referential from itself: it is not a book pointing to a historical presence outside it, but a book that identifies itself with that presence. At the end the reader, also, is invited to identify himself with the book (Frye 1988, 71). |
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The impossibility, at least in John’s circumstances and from his point of view, of mediating [à la Lévi—Strauss] the contradiction between the rule of God and the rule of Caesar would help explain why we have so much repetition in the Apocalypse (Collins 1988, 74.). |
This is the contradiction on the political level, but, on a larger scale, it is an
acute form of the perennial desire to fit the Infinite into the finite (a process
with fractal results).
Although unlike most English translations, the I Ching contains some narrative, even
in the original, story only constitutes a fraction of the work. In Revelation, events
repeat in a manner that they would not in consistently linear narrative. All grass
burns at 8.7 while, without reference to its having been restored, the locusts destroy
it again at 9.4. At 19.10, John offers worship to an angel, who warns him that such
devotion belongs to God alone. At 22.8, John repeats the offense and is again instructed
in almost the same words, as if the mistake were happening for the first time. A
more startling iteration, the child born at 12.8 seems a second incarnation of Jesus–or
at least would have until the Fifth Ecumenical Council (553 C.E.) condemned belief
in reincarnation. By then the old oral predisposition toward recapitulation had significantly
lost ground to a literate ambiance, which tends to record history as a series of
unique events. Unlike oral narratives, which proliferate, giving many versions of
the heroes’ births and deaths, literate ones, such as the traditional novel, focus
on one beginning, one end–a pattern that may habituate minds away from reincarnation–though,
like most major changes of attitude, this one has had many causes.
Revelation reports a vision (past) but some of the writing allegedly takes place during that vision (present) while the vision is of the future. This situation partly explains the book’s shifting between tenses. Often, these vacillations come close to randomness as if to emphasize that, from the vantage of eternity, all temporal order is arbitrary. Typical of classical Chinese, the I Ching eschews tenses and frequently omits the verb altogether, with equally disorienting effect, especially since, like Revelation, it alludes to past patterns to predict their continuance or reappearance in the future.
Amid notions of time in Revelation is the old astrological cycle, represented by “a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars (Rev 12.1). Such ecclecticism is typical of its period, e.g., the synagogue of Beth Alpha where a mosaic “depicts the Greek sun god driving his chariot and four horses. On his crown and thoughout the center circle are sprinkled twenty—three stars and a crescent moon. The outer circle is divided into the twelve signs of the zodiac” (Ford 167). Diurnal cycles probably underlie other images, including the monster with seven heads at 13.1: “Drawn from an ancient seal, this is the seven—headed Egyptian dragon of chaos and darkness. At the end of every night the sun god had to vanquish the dragon of chaos. If he failed, day would not dawn” (Ford 168). The disorder was repeatedly renewed.
An image probably inspired by the “register of destinies” with which Mesopotamian kings planned the lives of their subjects, the heavenly Book of Life names those predestined to bliss “before the foundation of the world” (13:8). Superficially considered, this seems to imply that time is linear, running predictably from beginning to end. Nonetheless, even in this passage, the trajectory is before the beginning until after the end–a flow far—harder to graph mathematically. In 20.12, judgment is not by the Book of Life alone but by another book or “books” as well. “The relationship between a person’s deeds and his fate is thus textually indeterminate; a peculiar centrifugal countercurrent appears in the midst of the centripetal vortex” (Reed 157-58).
With similar obviousness, the I Ching is non—linear, editors’ arrangement of hexagrams being sometimes circular, sometimes not, describing the original concord of the cosmos, the fallen condition of our present world, or the predicted return of it to harmony (Wong 1992, xviii—xix.). Furthermore, a manuscript found at Mawangdui arranges hexagrams to show energy (chi) interpenetrating and linking them (Walter 184-85). Such an unusual organization evidences that “different text traditions existed in the pre—Han period, which were distinct not only in wording, but also in such a fundamental regard as arrangement” (Kunst 9). As to later organization, Richard Alan Kunst’s 1985 dissertation generalizes: “Joseph Needham’s apt description of the Wilhelm—Baynes layout as belonging to the ‘Department of Utter Confusion’ certainly applies equally well to the Chinese text itself as it has been typically rearranged since the Song dynasty” Kunst v). So many non—sequiturs exist even within the King Wen text that some scholars hypothesize these anomalies arose by ancient authors’ employing chance throws of yarrow sticks to (dis)organize their commentary (Kunst 28).
Above—mentioned references to the periods of John and King Wen
appear only intermittently in the two books’ tangle, yet those allusions provide
a weak center: the visions of imprisoned rebels. The emotional power of this precarious
focus grows from the emerging convention of writing as a solitary activity. According
to this notion, one composes while isolated, loses contact with external time, and
drifts into an internal temporality that may be so different from the external as
to seem timeless.
Concerning the non—linear manner in which the I Ching is read, Thomas Cleary remarks:
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Linear time, such as is represented by the succession of the four seasons, is used [in the I Ching] as a metaphor for the “time” of human development; but Taoist texts warn that this is only a metaphor, and that the “celestial time,” the relation of the individual’s present condition to higher potential, is not a linear progression on the same order as terrestrial time (Cleary 1986, 6-7). |
This understanding of “time” resembles the kairos in Revelation. While chronos
connotes a relatively orderly span of history, kairos signifies a more critical
moment as in the beatitude “Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words
of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time [kairos]
is at hand” (Revelation 1.3). Reaching Tun—huang long after the death of John, Revelation
would not mean the world would end during some predictable date during the lifetime
of its first (now dead) listeners. Instead, the audience would experience the text
as performance, its kairos–or in chaological terminology “cusp” (precarious
moment for decision)–perceived each occasion the text was proclaimed or translated
aloud. In this presentation, images of the prophecy would be released like the beings
that arise from the scrolls described within it. Like the I Ching (according to Cleary)
meant to “harmonize with the celestial,” Revelation promises to bring divine “grace”
(charis) and “peace” (eir—e n—e ) to those who hear and read (1.4).
This is the moment of reading as immanent magic.
Despite parallels between the King Wen version of the I Ching and Revelation, those two come from slightly different strata in the development of writing (though numerous revisions made the former closer to the latter). Harmony, balance, the perennial cycle of the seasons pervade the early I Ching. This restraint often belongs to works preserving an oral orientation. After literacy became more habitual, fascination with laboriously honed concepts (analogous to or even embodied in carefully revised writing) elicited a worry about contradictions (moral and otherwise).
Despite explicit reference to “hearers,” Revelation is the book of the Bible that most alludes to seals, scrolls and other appurtenances of writing. “Revelation is acutely conscious of being a written document; in it the visionary author is repeatedly told to “write” what he has seen and heard and additionally “books” and “scrolls” figure prominently in a number of the visions. Revelation insists on the sanctity of its exact wording, pronouncing a curse on anyone who tampers with its contents. It is true that other books in the Bible refer in an authoritative manner to “what is written,” but unlike Deuteronomy or Mathew, for example, which point to earlier divine commmandments or sacred texts, the Revelation of John insists on the sacred character of its own textuality. Those who read it aloud and those who listen to it being read are quite literally ‘blessed’ (1:3)” (Reed 141).Perhaps not coincidentally, it expresses zeal for revised life so intense that lukewarmness occasions nausea (3.16). This intensity was fed by martyrdoms, which were less likely to have occurred if the milieu had been that of an earlier era (e.g., that of the original I Ching’s balance and temporizing).
That version closely resembles oral poetry. Indeed, “the old words used traditionally to refer to the hexagram and line texts … together, meant ‘folk—song’ or ‘chant.’” (Kunst 63). Summarizing recent scholarship, Rudolf Ritsema and Stephen Karcher state: “The oldest part of the book is words, not diagrams and systems. It is made up of omens, images and magic spells from an oral shamanistic, divinatory tradition (Ritsema and Karcher 28).” Congruent with the tendency of oral works, it emphasizes a more moderate and cautious attitude than Revelation. For instance, “The last pair [of hexagrams] turns out to be Fulfillment—Unfulfillment, in that order.… Their placement at the end is doubtless a deliberate irony, a comment on the elusiveness of success or the unattainability of perfection”( Huang 32).
Later scholars, however, added to the I Ching passages exhorting an extreme correctness required by their own more regimented and linear eras. Interpolated between the Judgment (t’uan) and the line—by—line interpretation of each hexagram (yao—tz’ü) is the Confucian “writing” (hsiang), a commentary that expresses such sentiments as “the superior man makes himself strong and untiring,” “the superior man fosters his character/By thoroughness in all that he does,” “the superior man curbs evil and furthers good/And thereby obeys the benevolent will of heaven” (Wilhlem, 2, 21, 60). In contrast, the King Wen I Ching has the attitude, “Attention to detail may divert you from seeing things in proper perspective” (huang 175). Kerson and Rosemary Huang summarize, “After the Confucians and the Taoists got through with it, the intrinsic spirit of the I Ching became all but lost in a cloud of pseudo—analysis. Ironically, the original meaning was more apparent to people from other cultures who were not crippled by ‘knowing too much’” (Huang 39).
Under the impact of Confucian moralism, the import of words changed from magical to ethical. Take for instance the first “Judgment”: Yuan heng li zheng. Based on the research of Gao Heng and other Sinologists, the Huangs reconstruct its original meaning as: “Sign of the Great Sacrifice. Auspicious omen.” In contrast, influenced by Neo—Confucian commentaries, Richard Wilhelm renders that couplet, “The creative works sublime success,/ Furthering through perseverance” (Wilhelm 4). Read thus, what was probably an augury permitting a cultic sacrifice has become a little homily on patience.
Chinese use of the I Ching for fortune telling kept alive its magical significance despite ethical commentaries, though, over the centuries, the sheer impact of administrative literacy somewhat diminished reliance on the irrational (or superrational). An anti—chaotic, secularizing routinization began even before the I Ching. “The shaman’s influence was eclipsed by that of the bureaucrat. By analyzing oracle bone inscriptions of the second millennium B.C., Tung Tso—pin has shown that there was steadily diminishing reliance on diviners and a gradual disappearance of sacrifice to nature deities and mythic ancestors (Talu Tsachih, vol. 6, pp. 1—6). The ritual of spiritual communication became so stylized that the drugged wine once drunk by the shaman was spit out by his bureacratic successor.” (Porter 22).
Revelation condemns fortunetellers (22.15) but is itself a work
of prognostication. In Christianity, bibliomancy was at first widespread, so that
the book might also have been regularly consulted about problems in one’s career
or love life. Also, waves of millennialism intermittently made enthusiasts look in
Revelation for maps of the future. Christian establishments, however, have been more
reluctant to commit themselves to prognosticative readings of either kind, preferring
to dwell on the book’s perennial moral truths (like the Neo—Confucian interpretation
of the I Ching).
Not only as the last book in the Christian Bible but as one that has probably inspired
the most varied responses, Revelation is as good as any with which to close this
study of dynamic reader—response. Indeed, fundamental motifs shared by the I Ching
and Revelation (e.g., Catastrophes, the Great River, Sacrifice, the great Man, the
Maiden’s Marriage) are expressed in terms of iterating patterns from ancient literacy
(e.g., search for archetypes of change, crossing into secrecy and mystery, finding
a literary/human/divine model for character, sacrifice as communication with the
Beyond, and sacred conjunctions).
Search for Archetypes of Change
In 1955, Hassler Whitney demonstrated that if one maps a smooth surface onto a plane
(i.e., establishes a point—by—point correspondence between them) the results can
generally be classified in one of three ways: (1) “Fold”: the characteristic mapping
of the equator of a globe onto a plane; (2) “Cusp: the characteristic mapping of
a torus onto a plane; (3) other patterns that with the slightest perturbation resolve
into Folds and Cusps (Arnold 3-6). He was aware that there were some rare exceptions
to this tripartite division. Investigating these, René Thom concluded that,
in the four dimensions of time and space, there are eight kinds of mappings that
stay the same (i.e., remain “stable”) for qualitatively similar shapes. These are
called “singularities.” Their stability is defined thus: “when the function F
is altered by a sufficiently small amount, the altered function G =F+dF
still has the same form (topologically) as the initial function F.”
Thom termed “catastrophes” the seven of these that involve discontinuity
(e.g. the Fold and Cusp). His choice of name and decision to emphasize seven appears
as if he had in the back of his mind something like the seven—times—seven cataclysms
of Revelation. If he had come from traditional Chinese rather than Occidental culture,
he might have focused on all eight singularities and chosen a more—auspicious name,
drawn from the eight—times—eightfold structure of the I Ching (but in either case
he would be continuing a search for archetypes already common in scriptures).
0. Simple Minimum (V=X2): Thom charts this with a straight line and numbers it 0
because it lacks the discontinuity of his “catastrophes.” To him, it connotes “being”
and “endurance.” Those fundamental religious ideas pervade virtually any scripture.
As Revelation repeatedly preaches, Christians must remain united in their faith to
survive the coming catastrophes. This constancy is a necessary contrast to the mutability
that dominates that book.
In the I Ching, persistence is sufficiently important to be made the very first hexagram,
Ch’ien, the power of heaven, represented by entirely yang lines. Half
of it, a trigram also called “Ch’ien,” combines with other trigrams to form
possibly related images of continuity: Waiting (hsü); Treading the Tiger’s
Tail Without being Bitten (lü); Pervading (t’ai); Harmonizing with People (t’ung
jen); Great Possessing (ta yu); and Without Embroiling (wu wang).
Even if these do instance the dominance of the Ch’ien trigram (supposedly
the most hegemonic), the other ten hexagrams containing it are quite unrelated. Thus,
the binary combinations are rarely hierarchical or derivable from their parts through
any consistent rule.
1. Fold (V=x3): Thom defines this as “Destruction of an attractor, and capture by
an attractor of lesser potential’ (Thom 19). Examples of it include such trivia as
a rubber band being pulled (first attractor) until it breaks or is released (discontinuation
of that attractor), allowing a lesser attractor (the kinetic energy in the rubber)
to snap it backwards. The “catastrophe” is graphed with a fold in the chart. When
a line comes to that fold, it can be thought of as concluding its progress, so Thom
uses the singularity to denote a simple movement ended.
Equally a crossing of a plane to a fold, the trigram Ken symbolizes being stopped by a mountain (Ritsema and Karcher 75). Doubled, it forms the hexagram Ken, which predictably yields the fortune “stop” (Ritsema and Karcher 559). None of its other pairings, however, have the same root idea. In literature, the fold might be compared to the break between scenes. For narrative, the unstretched rubber is isomorphic to summary. The author stretches this for a while into a detailed scene. Then, the pace contracts to transitional summary until the next expansion. To neoclassicals (in tune with their contemporaries who were inventing classic science), those interruptions were overly chaotic; thus, there came the seventeenth— and eighteenth—century extention of unities previously sponsored by that early champion of literary linearity Aristotle. In contrast, Genesis 1—11 has folds spanning centuries. Even more chaotic, Revelation has breaks of unclear length between its scenes, themselves usually cataclysms, while the images of the I Ching are seldom connected to each other by any narrative sequence
René Thom describes his “catastrophes” as having both “destructive”
and “constructive” applications (Thom 177). This is useful for Revelation, since
the few benign moments within it involve changes as sudden and massive as the destructive
ones. For instance, the faithful of Philadelphia will be kept from the hour of trial
(3.10). This Rapture is to be a miraculous Fold in their history. Then, they will
be forever under a new (heavenly) attractor (i.e., Thom’s Simple Minimum).
2. Cusp (V=x4): This is “bifurcation of an attractor into two disconnected attractors”
(Thom 19). The cusp is a point of decision that can go in two directions. In this
sense, it is a pattern pervading much of Revelation. Even the Philadelphians are
warned that they may lose their crowns (3.11). Since Thom reads his patterns in either
direction, the Cusp may also mean a convergence. Thus, in trying to apply it to semantics,
he suggests that it involves a subject capturing or losing an object (205). Consequently,
it can stand for the various seizures or losses in Revelation, e.g., the two beasts
are captured (19.19—21); the Ephesians have lost love (2.1—7).
The trigram Radiance, Li, has as its ideogram light divided
into sun and moon. Like Thom’s Cusp, it signifies both dividing and gathering. Containing
it are such hexagrams of coming together or dividing as Harmonizing with People (t’ung
jen), Great Possessing (ta yu); Prospering (chin); Dwelling with
People (chia jen); and polarizing (k’uei).
3. swallowtail (V = x5): From this point onward, the patterns are particularly complex
and rare, this one with a graph that, being four—dimensional, cannot be seen all
at the same time. Phenomena it describes include “the emission of an actant that
perishes: spit, spark.… This morphology is at the base of the semantic form
expressed by the adverb ‘presque’ [almost] and the auxiliary ‘faillir’
[nearly or to fail to] in French (Thom 204).” It might be likened to the condition
of the Laodiceans, who are to be spat out, a visual image of their having fallen
short as well as of the distaste their inadequacy elicits.
The trigram K’an represents a Gorge into which one ventures and falls like a stream
disappearing into the void. In addition to the hexagram formed by its doubling, it
also is part of Not—Yet Fording (Wei Chi), which has in common with it the
notion of nearing.
4. butterfly (V = x6): According to Thom, “This singularity of the sixth order in
V is interpreted by exfoliation, the ‘swelling’ of a free—edged shock wave’ (Thom
19). The trigram Shake (Chen) denotes thunderlike vibration and arousing,
“from the concealing Earth” (Ritsema and Karcher 77). In Revelation, “… I
beheld when he had opened the … seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake…. And
the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain or
island were moved out of their places” (6.12—14).
5. Elliptical (V = x3 - 3xy2): Thom connects this odd—shaped pyramid with projections
that pierce or tie. The trigram Sun means to penetrate; the church of Smyrna
will be bound in prison (2.10).
6. Parabolic Umbilic (V = x2y + y4): Thom classifies this as a transition between
the elliptical and hyperbolic umbilic. One portion of it has a graph like “lips,”
another resembling a projection from that “mouth.” The ideogram for the trigram Tui
is a mouth and the vapor coming from it. A Voice threatens the church of Pergamum
with “the sword of my mouth (Rev. 2.16).
7. Hyperbolic Umbilic (V = x3 + y3): Among Thom’s applications of this is “collapse,”
which, perhaps, may be likened to the trigram K’un, in the sense that it is
the opposite of Ch’ien, persevering. Collapse pervades Revelation, e.g., “Babylon
the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold
of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird” (18.2).
Thom’s and the I Ching’s eight patterns are supposedly each, at root, a single, fundamental
archetype, as Jungian interpretations try to make the primary sections of Revelation.
Actually, in the two books and even in Thom’s applications of his singularities,
there are clusters of images. C. G. Jung originally gave the name “complexes” (i.e.,
clusters) to what he eventually called “archetypes.”
The flux of images, though, have at their origin not archetypes
but an aleatory bricolage. Consider Revelation, for instance. The Philadelphians
represent
perseverence in brotherly love. However universal that emotion, its application probably
derives from two sources unique to that city: their actual behavior and the etymology
of their city’s name. Also in Revelation, the Laodiceans will be spat out because
they have fallen short. This fate almost punningly reflects a peculiarity of that
city, its being notorious for tepid, brackish water. Furthermore, what the French
mathematician Thom calls “lips,” the Russian mathematician R. I. Arnol’d terms “sickle[s].”
If Thom had discovered transcultural patterns of change, even that would not provide
the foundation for a new structuralism.
When the I Ching trigrams (which perhaps resemble his “singularities’) are combined into hexagrams, the result is as unpredictable as when his “catastrophes” merge in the physical world. Similarly, identifying the basic configurations of persistence and change in Revelation tells little about their complex interrelationship. In no field do Thom’s graphs provide a way of reducing chaos to manageable elements, because, being open, “far—from—equilibrium” order reacts sensitively to a constant stream of new stimuli.
This mutability, however, should not make one despair of finding order in scriptural complexity. There are patterns, such as the Search for Archetypes of Change. Like all the other transcultural themes in scriptures, this one derives from the nature of writing. It is virtually synonymous with recording mutability, e.g., in the I Ching, the I of which, means change, patterns and writing. Literacy’s reliance on characters (alphabetic or ideogramatic) incessantly suggests to the writer the need to seek fundamental patterns–a need that becomes acute in L7 while the (problematic) discovery of such patterns is the precondition for L8.
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