Axis Monday: The System of the World in a Cartoon

(The above cartoon is by Alex Gregory and first appeared in the New Yorker on 18 February 2002. You can order merchandise here)

According to the explanation on the linked website, the people are Hollywood types in a hot tub.

Allow me to explain this obfuscated cartoon for you. Yup, this essay will be a rather unartistic ekphrasis on wonder. Haven't had one of those from me in a while, despite the promise in the header.

Unsurprisingly, the cartoon's obfuscation comes from its imagery, which is so terribly simple that you dismiss it outright.


All the human elements of the picture, both the people and the objects of their design, are crowded into less than a quarter of the image. The rest is dominated by three objects: the palm tree, the distant mountain, and the endless sky.

The quick and simple lines of these three carefully chosen objects reveal the meaning of the cartoon's captions. Mr. Gregory cleverly tears down the dichotomous wall between the two seemingly far-flung demes of Hollywood Glamour and those Muslims who see the world through a purely religious lens.

The religious see the world in terms of archetypes and revelations of the Sacred. They understand that man and his material world is just a tiny corner of all that Is. Hence the wise relegation of earthly things to the corner of the cartoon.

But although Hollywood does not see the world in the same way, the stories film tells accept that view of the world as though it were true. Campbell explained how the ubiquitous quest narrative is composed of equally ubiquitous archetypes. Hollywood's most traditional--and successful--tales all are versions of this one story, the same story which is shared to some extent or another by all the truly religious of the world.

Thus, the human element of the cartoon is by far the least important. Consider each of the other three images in turn.

First we have the endless sky, which takes up well over half the cartoon. It is self-evident, and corroborated in the literature of every culture which has yet come up in the course of Axis Monday, that the sky is the Sacred Realm, and it is either the emanation of all holy things or that from which they emanate. The world of the Sacred cannot in any way be understood by man; hence the seeming blankness, the pure white, of the inimitable sky in the cartoon. It is only natural that Mr. Gregory's cartoon juxtaposes the incredible force and power of the sacred with the smallness of man.

But Mr. Gregory spoons out the irony in droves, because despite the words of these moguls, only one of them truly understands all the implications of what they say. Only the third figure (of course it is the third. There are three sacred objects, three profane humans, and one prophet, who is third in the line of humans) looks skyward, and because this character faces away from us, we know nothing of her. All we can presume is that she does not speak. She alone stares upwards at the endless sky and understands that she is miniscule in comparison. The others are absorbed in their material objects and their banter. The others look at each other. She looks at Heaven.

The second symbol, of course, is the Holy Mountain. The Mountain is that natural point, the horizon, where the sacred meets the profane. It is vastly distant and vastly high, as evident in the picture. Humans can perceive it but, by and large, they cannot reach it. It is that liminal threshold between the worlds. Once in an aeon a man may stand upon the Mountain (few mortals indeed summited Olympus, by far the most obvious example; even today few humans have seen the heights of Ararat, next week's signature topic). Moses spoke to God upon Sinai's height but he ventured there alone. Innumerable other examples available on request. All great religious acts occur on or in the shadow of the Mountain. Thus it is ineffably remote from the conspicuous consumers, who tell stories in accord with the Mountain even as they themselves deny its veracity and efficacy.

But it is, of course, the palm tree which brings the entire piece together.
So many small elements here:

The palm is the symbol of many of the countries of the Middle East, notably Arabia and its city Mecca where Islam was born.

None of the four people in the picture look at the palm. Not even the fourth woman: her level gaze makes clear that she has eyes only for her compatriots. None of them have room for it in their lives.


Most important of all, note that the palm reaches from level ground, past the line of the Holy Mountain into the Endless Sky. It alone, of all the objects in the picture, reaches both the Sacred and the Profane.

The Palm Tree is the AXIS MUNDI.

The Sky is purely sacred. The Holy Mountain is the unapproachable barrier between the worlds. But the AXIS MUNDI, here represented aptly by the palm tree, which through its connotations with Araby evokes the MASJID AL-HARAM, is the only force capable of connecting the worlds. It is the hierophany, the divine revelation of the sacred to the human world, the vibrant and living proof that something exists that is greater than humanity. The Axis Mundi is the very center of the System of the World.

Every religion person knows this, in not so many words. At some point in the history of every religion, a great event has happened which revealed the sacred to man. This hierophany unveils the Axis Mundi, eternal, unchanging, hitherto invisible. And two worlds, at that one holiest place, become one.

Here it is the palm. The "Islamic fundamentalists" of the caption understand implicitly that the world of the Sacred is vast compared to the Earth. The Hollywood folks think they understand this, and thus think the fundamentalists should like them. They think they must be kin.

But all of the figures in the cartoon, save the one who is clearly silent, turn their backs on all three indicators of the sacred: the Mountain. The Sky. The Axis.

It's a great punchline. These earthly moguls truly do not understand why the most extreme among the Islamic faithful do not like them. They think they know the sacred, but all they see are dancing shadows on a cave wall, even though Truth surrounds them.

Axis Monday II: Living on Babel

Via BLDGBLOG:

Because "it takes too long to come down to ground level each day to make it worthwhile," a crane operator on the Burj Dubai – the world's tallest building – is rumored to have "been up there for over a year," the Daily Telegraph reports.
His name is Babu Sassi, and he is "a fearless young man from Kerala" who has become "the cult hero of Dubai’s army of construction workers." He also lives several thousand feet above the ground.

Their December article covers a good deal of the symbolism behind this story and is worth a read. Most intriguingly it discusses the mythologization of the construction worker, and uses the true life example of this man living atop the Burj Dubai to hint how real people become transformed into heroes immortalized in folklore.

In this case, the axis mundi transmits that legendary status directly. The Burj Dubai is certainly the profoundest symbol of Dubai (along with its artificial islands, more on those in the future, perhaps), and in a lesser sense of the secular Middle East and the world.

The unique status of the building thus imparts mythological status directly to its sole (?) inhabitant. No one cares if somebody lives in an unfinished three story tenement, except for the Law. But if you live thousands of feet above the ground, literally dwell in the sky, higher above the natural ground than any other human being--it would be shocking if the situation did not impart mystical power to this figure.

The gods which swept Europe and the Middle East as they left nomadism behind as a general rule displaced and replaced terrestrial gods, the Gaias and Earth Mothers of the world (This hypothesis is somewhat controversial and I surely will address it in great detail in the future, but for now take it at face value). These new gods as a general rule came from and lived in the Sky. Mt. Olympus is both indicative and obvious. The gods lived atop the Sacred Mountain--the axis mundi of Greece.

Mr. Babu Sassi, this cult hero of blue-collar Dubai, reigns from his throne in the sky in just the same way.

Simple Flags

Consider the Swiss flag.

It is unusual in two respects. First of all, its simplicity; few flags except the maddeningly confusing and uninteresting tricolors are so unadorned. Second, it is square. Only two sovereign nations have square flags; the other is the Holy See.

You would think that the square, as a more perfect geometrical shape than the rectangle, would be predominant. Nations naturally wish to portray themselves as enduring (sometimes as immutable). The rectangle is not the shape that best portrays that. Note the perfect symmetry of the Swiss flag; rectangular flags lack such perfection.

I have found only one plausible answer to why nations do not use square flags, and even that is just a guess: square flags do not blow as well in the wind. Is this important for purely aesthetic reasons--the majesty of a waving flag--or for symbolic ones as well?

A barren flagpole in itself means nothing; however, a flagpole with a flag waving at the top of it becomes a localized Axis Mundi. Thus, a nation's waving flag asserts its control over the heavens. It lays official claim to the realm of the symbolic (and no nation shall long endure without vesting itself in symbolism, which builds loyalty).

I won't go into the symbolism of the Swiss flag (it should be obvious), but consider that the earliest known precursor to the current flag featured Jesus himself suffering on the cross. It is also worthy of note that although the dimensions of the current cross relative to itself are established by statute, the exact red hue is not so prescribed, so different flags vary.

It is extremely curious that the Swiss allow any variance in this matter. Flags are probably the single most visible symbol of a nation, both at home and abroad, and their symbolism or historical significance usually is very strong. The Swiss flag embodies not only its Christian roots but its origins as a federation of cantons; the flag is the nation's history. But you can fool around with the color a bit. A strange levity to grant; I will discuss it in more detail with regard to the American flag in a future post.

One group fooled around with the color a bit more than usual. The globally known and aptly named Red Cross:

The Red Cross has officially stated (when they refused to recognize the lengthily named Red Star of David as an official Emblem of Red Stuff International) that the flag is not deliberately Christian, but a direct inversion of the Swiss flag.

This seems somewhat controversial. Wouldn't the inversion of a flag's colors imply the inversion of the symbols that flag stands for? And Switzerland stands for peace. Of course, the Red Cross does not concern itself with peace but with war (or rather of helping people who suffer because of it). Likewise, Switzerland is a nation of peace with one of the highest rates of gun ownership in the world. Perhaps then the Red Cross (based in Switzerland) is onto something: the nation sponsors peace with militarization; the organization inverts it by accepting the reality of war and bringing peace into it.

Of course, even though the Red Cross denies that it has Christian roots, it still bears a cross on its flag, adopted from a country which itself bears a cross which in its earliest forms featured a dying Christ emblazoned. Symbolism, even buried and denied, never perishes. If it did, we would not have a Red Crescent (which could be argued to basically invert the flag of the Ottomans). Why not make a Red Star of David as a similar near-inversion of the flag of Israel (which does officially recognize the symbol)?

The Red Cross states that doing so would dilute the internationalism of their symbols, and that is certainly true. Perhaps the protests by certain nations, including Syria, against the Red Star had something to do with it. Why did they protest? Because nations know that symbols have power, and a symbol's meanings, whatever an organization may claim, never lose their original meaning. The Red Cross and the Red Crescent are both implicitly religious symbols and always will be. For that reason alone, the logical third member of the trio cannot join them, despite the very practical and beneficial nature of the organization in question. The sacred trumps the profane as nations fight wars solely over symbolism.

Never think those wars are not important.