Exegesis V07 Issue 013

Exegesis Volume 07 Issue #013

In This Issue:

From: "JG or DF"
Subject: [e] Re: exegesis Digest V7 #12

Exegesis Digest Wed, 30 Jan 2002

From: "JG or DF"
Subject: [e] Re: exegesis Digest V7 #12
Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2002 16:27:08 +1300

Virgo Moon, so suitable for wafting a critique into the electronic ether.. And applying square to Sagittarian Pluto, no less, just the time to tweak the interface of cultural ethnicity...

The discourse between Lorenzo & Roger has seemed like a couple of jackdaws squawking at each other in different dialects. The subject is mythistory, once the aptly-chosen title of a nifty little book by the American historian William H McNeill, professor at the University of Chicago.

The issue is the reality of Homer. Did he exist? We'll never know. Did he write the Odyssey? Same answer. Can that book be deconstructed to reveal different authors? Depends who you ask.

Roger seems to believe that the literary work exhibits the style of an individual that correlates with certain astrological features he has cited. Such advocacy suffers from the assumption that subjective correlations will be shared by others. Lorenzo seems to believe that the unreality of the single author named Homer has been established as fact. Assertion of the `fact' suffers from the assumption that proof need not be provided to demonstrate that it is a fact rather than subjective belief.

One might observe that any literary deconstruction, performed in the ivory towers of acadaemia, that suggests a multiplicity of authorship, is mere intellectual artifice. It rests upon grounds no more substantial than those occupied by the interpreting astrologer. All it has going for it, when it opposes the view of any individual astrologer, is the weight of any consensus that it may have obtained. Generally, any such consensus will not have been measured; therefore it can rightly be dismissed as hearsay by anyone not inclined to be impressed by it. Bystanders may be impressed by the suggestion that a considerable consensus exists, but any such assertion may be empty of substantial content, merely an idle boast issued for reasons of ideology or academic turf-protection.

The psychologist James Hillman, in his book "The Soul's Code", illustrates b y reference to various people his thesis that we carry an innate pattern that informs and characterises our lives toward a personal destiny. He likens this pattern to a seed, much as the French-turned-American astrologer Dane Rudhyar did in his first book in 1936, but Hillman manages to avoid any substantial reference to astrology. Perhaps his turf needs protecting. Nevertheless his `acorn theory', as he calls it, explains how biography and literature illustrate the inner pattern of destiny.

Anonymous readers of this list perhaps assumed no issue of substance lay masked by the sparring of Roger and Lorenzo. Wrong.