Via Negativa

Thanks to everyone who joined the discussion in the comment thread to Via negativa and the road to hell. I was reminded once again why it’s a good idea to keep writing even when one isn’t feeling especially inspired, as was the case last Wednesday (and almost every other day last week – summertime humidity is setting in). Sometimes the best ideas do emerge from dialogue. And judging from people’s reactions, it’s gratifying to think that some of my wilder and woollier notions may not be entirely half-baked. There’s still a part of me that believes that an idea has to be obscure to be of any real value. But another, louder voice says, on the contrary, that ideas only gain value as they approach the vatic or poetic; anything else amounts simply to rearrangement of semantic furniture. Which, to the extent that it allows us to reconceptualize the symbolic spaces where we live and work, is no empty exercise either. And which does not begin to account for the power of mathematical ideas… (Aaagh, here I go again! Somebody hose me down!)

1. Eastern fence lizard

The male eastern fence lizard moves his body to show off bright blue skin on his throat and stomach. If the female is not ready to mate, she arches her back, raises herself off the ground, and jumps away sideways.

2. Blue-footed booby

The male begins by lifting up his enormous clown-feet one-by-one, and then stops in a distinctive pose, beak raised skyward, announcing his manhood with a loud whistle, pointing out his tail, and opening his wings. This is accompanied by a love-offering of sticks and twigs. Females join in the mating dance, following the same movements, but respond with a guttural honk.

3. Brook lamprey eel

The females would laboriously construct nesting hollows in the gravel bed of the stream. Moving one tiny piece of gravel a time in their suckers it would take hours but eventually the tiny creature would have made a depression about the size of a computer mouse. Exhausted she would fasten her sucker to the largest stone in the wall of her nest and wait.

Within half an hour the little nest would be a seething mass of lampreys! I never found out whether it was just males from other parts of the stream or whether there were other females there that had been too lazy to build a nest. Unlikely, I think, because sometimes one would even see two or more females collaborating on a nesting hollow that would be correspondingly larger.

The mating frenzy would go on for hours, in an orgiastic scenario which would have doubtlessly provided scope for any aspiring producer of piscine pornography. Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the frenzy was over. The exhausted lampreys would drift away and fasten themselves to rocks and just shimmer in the water like seaweed. The next day they would all be dead.

4. Scarlet-bodied wasp moth

As a caterpillar, the insect feeds on a non-toxic plant, climbing hempweed. Then, when it becomes a moth and is ready to mate, the male changes his eating habits. As darkness falls on his big night, he visits the poisonous dogfennel plant. Dogfennel is easy to spot in pastures, says [Prof. William] Conner, because the cows eat all the grass around it, but leave the tall toxic plant standing.

The male moth extracts toxins called “pyrrolizidine alkaloids” from the plant.

“He lands on the plant, regurgitates on the plant to dissolve the alkaloids and then reimbibes the toxin-rich liquid,” says Conner.

The small red and black moth stores the toxins in a special pouch. The pouch, located on his underbelly, is filled with fibers that have a cotton candy consistency.

Once he has ingested the toxin from the plant, the male is no longer tasty to his common predators, particularly spiders and bats. After gathering the poison, the moth goes in search of a female. When he finds his insect bride, they mate for nine hours. But, just before mating, the moth releases the toxin like a cloud of miniature confetti that sticks to the female. The toxin protects her while she is mating and while she lays her eggs. The female moth then passes the toxin to her eggs. The toxin deters egg-eating insects like ants and ladybugs from devouring her young.

5. Crane

Cranes form lifelong monogamous pair bonds.

The mating dance of the crane is spectacular. The birds walk stiffly around each other with quick steps, wings half spread, alternately leaping high in the air. During this, the cranes bow deeply and stretch. Next, the cranes pick up sticks or blades of grass; throw them in the air, and stab at them with their beak as they come down. Both sexes, mature and immature, take part in the dances.

When males and females call in unison, both point their bills to the sky and the male raises part of his wing over his back and joins the female. The two birds call back and forth for about 10 seconds. Scientists believe these calls reinforce the monogamous pair bond and also serve to defend their territory.

Other cults taught enthusiasm, the possession of a soul by a god. What seems to be original in Orphism is that it interpreted this sudden alteration, this rapture, as an excursion from the body, as a voyage in the other world, rather than as a visitation or a possession. Ecstasy is now seen as manifesting the true nature of the soul, which daily existence hides.
– Paul Ricouer, The Symbolism of Evil (Beacon Press, 1967)

I’ve been reminded recently of a number of notions of Buddhist “pessimism,” & I think the root of all of them is missing an assumption we make: that when you remove the suffering and confusion, what you are left with is bliss. There’s no need to cultivate it or go anywhere to find it. So the process of achieving paradise is an entirely negative one. Delight is the spiritual default.
– Dale

Judaism is not about chasing the next great aesthetic high. It’s not about just having feel-good experiences where the sky opens up and you feel all, like, connected and spiritual. I’ve had them, lots of them, some really big ones. They’re fun. But they are not the point. The point is staying focused and present and connected to God in all the small moments, the hard moments, the drudge moments.
– Jerusalem Syndrome (via Velveteen Rabbi)

The candle is not there to illuminate itself.
– Nawab Jan-Fishan Khan (quoted by Idries Shah in The Way of the Sufi, Dutton, 1970)