Notes

New category of entries called "Notes," intended to capture rough sketches of scattered thoughts for possible later reference. Difference from (Re)Search posts will be the obvious lack of links to outside sources: simply pouring out some contents from my mind.

So I find myself circling around relationships in terms of the number one and the number eleven. 1 & 11. One is, obviously, the thing of itself, and eleven being two thing in themselves standing together in a relationship. Could be a human to a tree, or a fish to the sea, or a collection of bikes to a set of roads. Basically anything collected as 1 unit in relation to another collection becomes 11.

* 11 as the tarot card Justice.
* 1 as the tarot card The Magician.

Thinking within the tarot, I also bring in 2, which is what 1 + 1 come together to form, and get reference to The High Priestess.

Here I arrive at a model of duality: two things together become one thing, this one thing defined by the set of relationships between the two things—the ‘&’ in One and Other. Note that One as singularity, Other as singularity, with reference to the idea that a singularity is empty, yields that the whole of the manifestation is in the ‘&’, and that One all by itself is equal to nothing, or 1 = 0.

So we can bring in The Fool to this little tarot oriented structure, an interpretation of duality.

At the singularity that is formed at the meeting point of the empty polarities, there is a ‘balanced’ or ‘just’ relation: it is when the singularities are non-empty—already being influenced by the tugs of Other polarities—that the ‘just’ relationship between One and Other can become ‘unjust’ or ‘unbalanced’.

* Just & Unjust form a duality, as do Balanced & Unbalanced.

In the Rider-Waite deck of the tarot:
* The High Priestess holds The Law half concealed: 1 / 2; 1 whole, 2 parts; 1 in relation to 2; 2 = 1 + 1; 1 / 1 + 1; 1 and 1 and 1.
* There are the 2 pillars, One white and the Other black.
* A fourfold relationship between the pillars, the Priestess, and the Law.
* Connection between Law and Justice.

Note that ‘numerology’, as displayed throughout this post, seems as a three-fold mental tool, kind of like acrobatics, sleight of hand, and a filing system for the mind. The meaningful relations it creates are both illusory and real (much like any other meaning created by any other means), and, like all interpretation, are ultimately in the ‘I’ of the beholder.

* I as singularity is empty, I as Jungian Self is empty.
* I = 1 = 0.
* I = Interpretation.
* Interpretation dependent upon One and Other.
* O & O = I.

I need to reformulate some of my expressions. It seems better to express Martin’s “M = D + P” as M <=> D & P, and the same would hold for my “E = I + O.” This would make more sense out of Energy = Input + Output, mentioned in a previous post, which I now realize doesn’t quite hold with the notion of the Law of Conservation of Energy, as written about in said post—will have to amend that.

* I & O can also be thought about in terms of One & Other.
* Other is not-self (not One); i.e., O & ~O is equivalent to One & Other.
* O & ~O <=> M, where M = E.

For potential readers:
* <=> is parsed as 'if and only if'.
* ~ is parsed as 'not'.

Something Elsewhere

I wrote the following for an online community of which I'm a member, but I wanted to post it here too as it has everything to do with what this blog is about. Now, I know it might not make total sense because the context has been removed, but it relates some of the ideas I hold about our reality, the ways in which in interpret it, and how to examine such a mode of interpretation. Without further ado, here is the post:

Hurm...maybe don't give up the goat so quickly? I mean, maybe you didn't get it all right, but sure as shit ya' didn't get it all wrong either, and where some critiques might be valid, I bet dollars to donuts none of the detractors, ultimately, have it all right either.

See here’s some of the thing—and fer sure this is simply from how I got it reckoned, and maybe some of it’s right, but I’d be struck dead by whatever force you (reader) happen to believe in if it should contain no error. So yeah, well there is undeniably a distinction drawn in QBL between RHP and LHP, this is, as has at least been hinted by some of the folks above, not exclusive to QBL by any means, nor is it merely a strictly Western way of creating categories of our experiences.

In fact, I’d hazard that in almost any tradition there is something within the interpretive structure that defines distinction between ‘right’ and ‘left’. ‘Cause really, right and left are a basic tool we use to orient ourselves in the physical world, and this, being based on the interpretation of physical space, is fairly entrenched in the psyche of an experiencing being. Humans, being so damn complicated, are bound to create meaning out of such fundamental distinction, and so, make connections with all sorts of other meaningful structures within both their personal and social “reality tunnel(s).” Again, this is at least a means to orient oneself not only physically, but mentally/spiritually what-have-you—it creates a space within which we can attempt to know ourselves in virtue of our interpretation of the information that occupies this space.

To put it all a little differently, without a sense of left and right, well, we’d be cut off from a whole dimension of experiencing. So yeah, the basic dichotomy of ‘right’ and ‘left’ seem very real, and to some people who believe in some particular interpretive structure, the meaningful associations made with these orientations are also real—they are used to create categories which aid in identification, a means to understand.

But that all said, it’s not only important to recognize and acknowledge the reality of dichotomies, it’s also equally important to understand their deconstruction and unity. Thus, your attempt in the original post to weave a synthesis of polarities, and relate your understanding of the unity and/or “falsehood” of the particular dichotomy you define seems to me a means to deeper understanding and wisdom—it doesn’t matter so much here that perhaps the facts may or may not be right, it’s more the understanding of the need to undertake such a venture.