Tuesdays with Memento Mori

In 1969 the Woodstock Festival became the liminal moment for an entire generation of youth.


Here is that farmer's field today, which in 1969 for a few days held over 500,000 people:

Memento Mori.

Quotations on Tea and the Moment

"He took his first sip of tea--always the best one." -Neal Stephenson, Diamond Age

"It was a rainy night. It was the myth of the rainy night. Dean was popeyed with awe. This madness would lead nowhere. I didn't know what was happening to me, and I suddenly realized it was only the tea that we were smoking; Dean had bought some in New York. It made me think that everything was about to arrive--the moment when you know all and everything is decided forever." -Kerouac, On The Road

Axis Monday I: The Inauguration

I'll keep it short since everybody else is talking about this, but it fits right in with the purpose of Axis Monday, so I unfortunately am required to address the inauguration.

This will be the first in a series of Monday posts which celebrate the Axis Mundi. It seemed a fittingly liminal place to start.

Behold the glory of the Capitol, the Axis Mundi of the nation, bedecked for its greatest recurring festival. Even more exciting than Sundance.

The dome pierces the sky; it is in every sense the axis mundi, the heart of the world.

For years the federal Height of Buildings Act prevented any D.C. building from trumping the Capitol's height; a few other federal buildings now rise higher (mostly Cathedrals and Basilicas) but no private building stands taller.

And tomorrow is the hierophany, the revelation of the sacred, at this very space.


Let's talk about the word inauguration for a moment.

From the Online Etymology Dictionary:

1569, from Fr. inauguration "installation, consecration," from L. inaugurationem (nom. inauguratio) "consecration, installment under good omens," from inaugurare "take omens from the flight of birds, consecrate or install when such omens are favorable," from in- "on, in" + augurare "to act as an augur, predict" (see augur).

Romans were big on foretelling the future through birds and other omens. Tomorrow is a day of many omens, a sacred day, which shall set the future for a long time to come.

Will the omens be favorable?

Obama has made them so.


President Obama's journey by train to the capital these past few days has also been wrought with symbolism: deliberate parallels to Lincoln, but also the simple motif of the grand journey. Mr. Obama cleverly saw that a symbolic gesture of this sort would inspire the country more than wasting a few days in the city. He undertook a quest fraught with liminality, and tomorrow becomes actualized.

When is THE liminal moment?
CNN knows:

I don't make this stuff up, folks.

When Obama takes the oath, he shall--for those few moments--pierce the boundary between the earthly world and the sacred realm. He shall be a conduit, for a mere moment, of everything this country believes in.

All such times are transitory. The oath shall pass; its power shall linger through his inaugural address, and then his power shall fade and he will again become a mere man.

No matter what else transpires, it will be the greatest moment of Barack Obama's life, and it shall henceforth always have a hold on him. A second inauguration, should he prove so fortunate, lacks these same trappings. This is the first. This is the one that counts. For him more than other recent presidents, because of the burden placed on him and the hopes of the people.

Come what may--the inevitable failures and disappointments, the utter impossibility of fulfilling his promise--for this one moment he shall be everything, he shall be Perfect.

And once the speech finishes and the balls begin, life will go on for him and for everyone, and the door to the sacred will seal once more.

Pittsburgh Mayor Changes Name to Support Team

Lest he curse the Steelers with bad luck in their upcoming game against the Ravens, Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl is temporarily changing his name. This prevents their opponents from having an unfair advantage.

It is unclear what he is temporarily changing his name to; Stephen J. Dubner of Freakonomics suggests Steelerstahl, which is even better because of its redundancy--'stahl' is German for steel.

Never say that names lack power.

Symbols in the Absolute Most Obvious Sense

[N.B. Per the name of this exploration, Axis Monday shall feature its lengthiest and most in-depth discussions on Mondays. Conveniently (and all unknowing) Demosthenes fulfilled this need for me with his labyrinthine Manifesto]




The most obvious symbols, in a very literal sense, are the letters of the alphabet. They are arbitrary drawings which our culture has imbued with meaning. This is no revelation to you, nor should it be. Naturally, we are so used to these symbols that they hold no great wonder for us anymore. See? Check it out:

XR

Totally uninteresting. Letters, nothing more. A morass of meaninglessness, a quagmire of the quotidian (I'm pretty pleased with that alliteration). Now reverse it.

Suddenly two letters, written in a somewhat stylized manner but still very clearly recognizable as letters, unlock a whole new world of meaning.

Every one of you knows that these two letters, written in this way, mean "prescription." I dare say most of you would make the same association (with less certainty) if I merely wrote

RX

Or more so for

Rx

?

I'm curious; let me know if I am wrong.

But I also bet that none of you could tell me why 'RX' means 'prescription.' Of course, this has no effect on your actual understanding of the symbol.

[For those interested: nobody seems to know exactly where RX acquired this connotation. In the absence of truth, I shall accept the most whimsical theory: that the symbol somehow looks like the Eye of Horus.
I enjoy such a spirit of imagination. Other theories involve Latin mumbo-jumbo and are much less interesting. All are dubious.]

Although the origins of the symbol are lost, it retains its meaning.

That covers the profane.

Onto the sacred.

Reverse the letters again. Superimpose them upon each other. And two mere letters, images which bring particular phonemes to mind, transmute into the most powerful image of Orthodox Christianity.

The Labarum!

In hoc signo vinces. En touto nika. In this sign you shall conquer.

Constantine the Great reputedly saw this sign in a dream before the Battle of Milvian Bridge in 312. And, so the story goes, he adopted that very sign as his personal standard. And won the battle against Maxentius, and became Emperor, and ended Roman oppression of Christianity. Years later, on his deathbed, he converted.

Thus, the first two letters of Christ's name became the de facto battle standard of the late Roman and Byzantine Empire, and a powerful religious symbol as well. The symbol has two names: the labarum (etymology unclear), and more simply the Chi-Rho (the two letters; basically, the XR).

We could talk about semantics and semiotics and how symbols acquire meaning, and perhaps we shall in the comments, but my point is simpler.

Some of the symbols we often see are abstract, e.g. the American flag or the crescent moon and star(s) emblazoned on many Islamic flags. Others are more literal: the other great Christian symbol, the cross. A stylized picture of a man, indicating a men's restroom. The elements that compose these symbols are fairly obvious to those who know them.

But the fusion of two letters, symbols in themselves but related in an indirect or forgotten way to the new symbol, can merge to form a greater whole. From a convenient scribble to save ten letters, to a triumphant sigil embodying one of Christianity's greatest epiphanies.