Marking Nov 13

This year, the only one numbered

Thirteen, I raked last leaves one cold

And windy day, and shoveled snow

The next with no delay excepting

But a single night between—a

Night already lit by Christmas

Lights put out by those who practice

Early rites.

This morning on the thin snow left

I saw a few late leaves I shall

Remember as marking this unique

November—and silently left

Prints of a cat’s paws. Thirteen now

Wanes. That number for us has a

Certain weight. But when it’s over

All—it’s fate.

Missing Anchor

Today is an official holiday but lacking a traditional anchor. It doesn’t mark a great event or the turn of a season fixed by our planet’s motion around the sun. An essentially arbitrary calendar simply rolls over. In the context of this blog the change is more interesting, in a mild sort of sense, than usually, what with our fascination with “thirteen” (link). But, as holidays tend to do, today reminds me of our need for absolute markers in the continuous flux of time. Such days are meant for collective reflection on the transcending meaning of our existence. This New Years Day, however, is more of a reminder of another sort. It brings to mind just how far, as a collective, we’ve drifted into flux. Just as the day began, the Senate voted to avert an arbitrarily created disaster. Later today the House will vote to avert the same again. The Senate has celebrated its secular version of the Midnight Mass, the House will gather to observe a holy secular None.

Well, never mind. One of the demands of such times is a sage withdrawal from the reigning collective. Invisibly beneath its roar a new culture is being fashioned. And for those still in the work force, a day off is nice.

From Stone to Life

On my walk yesterday I decided that I’d pick up counting rabbits again. It takes a certain amount of attention—somewhat denied in a season when you keep the hood of the parka tight, the bill of the cap low. Mild, overcast weather. To get into the swing of things, I started counting rabbits made of stone, the cute things people put on their front stoops. It was a long walk, an hour and a half. As I neared the end of it I entered a cozy hidden little street called Roosevelt in Grosse Pointe. Here I found my tenth, eleventh, and finally my twelfth stone rabbit. Almost at the end of Roosevelt I peered through the gap between the side of a house and a tall hedge into the depths of a back yard. There in the back was another one. Big, grey. It looked very real to me, but its absolute stillness suggested a very successful sculpture. Birds were walking across the lawn. I was tempted to clap my hands to test this statue. But then a bird passed the rabbit—and the big old rabbit turned its head. My thirteenth rabbit was the live one! Mission accomplished, I wended my way home.

Darnay’s Disease?

Idly watching a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode last night, I was startled into full awakeness by hearing a major episode figure characterized as suffering from Darnay’s disease. Woah! I was sitting straight up. This occurs in Episode 131 no less, “Schizoid Man,” meaningful to a numerologically skewed sort of person like me. The year is 2365, and a certain Dr. Ira Graves—scientist, genius, warrior, cyberneticist—is dying of Darnay’s disease. He has no more than a week to live—but in that week he succeeds in transferring his consciousness to Lieutenant Commander Data, the android, who promptly becomes annoyingly arrogant, paranoid, and a skirt chaser. Wow, I thought. Darnay’s disease. I’ve been suffering from it all my life long, but something in my genetic makeup keeps me from succumbing to its usual prognosis.

The Eagle, Lion, and the Owl

The production of grand, lasting symbols is a process mirrored in the creation of great art. In practice it is grubby craftsmanship, messy, arduous, often obsessively mechanical. From this labor arises the new, but the labor itself is inspired by something lofty, already or always present, high above. Today I return to the Eagle—which irked me a while back in one of Dante’s cantos. The focus today is the American Bald Eagle in the Great Seal of the United States of America.

I must confess that heraldry had already gripped me as a child. Its mesmerizing quality merely strengthened later when I encountered phrases like “argent a lion azure with two bends gules athwart,” etc., and if the words “griffon sable” or “chevron between three swords erect” were present, so much the better. My last foray into this subject came in the context of the seal of Budapest, my place of birth. I researched the Roman eagle a few days ago frustrated by dearth of explanations and decent images. Then yesterday Peony, she who is the guarding spirit of the Tang Dynasty, wondered out loud: Was there a link between Minerva and the Eagle? This is the sort of challenge I cannot resist.

It turns out that the Great Seal, quite like the Seal of Budapest, was the work of a committee, a contentious labor extending over a long period. In our own case here three committees labored to generate the seal. The last finally yielded to the decisive action of a single person, that of Charles Thomson, the secretary of the Continental Congress. He introduced the eagle; it had not appeared in earlier designs. He specified that the bald eagle be used—that oddly-named bird which isn’t bald at all. Curiously, the motivating force behind this selection was exerted by the image of thirteen arrows held by the bird. But that image was probably suggested by a book of emblems supplied by Benjamin Franklin. It had the eagle, the arrows, and the olive branch. At that time the seal of the Dutch Republic also featured a bunch of arrows—the only European state with a representative form government. The Dutch seal, however, depicted a lion holding seven arrows, one for each subdivisions of the state. Neither Rome nor Minerva seemed to play a visible or obvious role in this labor of creation (or, perhaps, appropriation), although—as in all matters of art and spirit—they were there up in the sky. The source (as usually) is Wikipedia. The synthesis, as always, mine.

The eagle or the lion predominate as symbols of sovereignty, and the two combined produce the griffon. The owl belongs, as it were, to a higher order of reality and also to a more ancient dispensation, the ages of the Goddess.

Minerva, in Etruscan and later in Roman times, was the preeminent image of the Goddess and, being All to All, presided over all important things. She was the goddess of war, poetry, medicine, wisdom, commerce, crafts, and magic. She also invented music. The owl was her bird and hence Owl and Wisdom remain forever united.

Here I cannot resist pointing out that Brigid, the Celtic Tripple Goddess, was the Nordic manifestation of the southern Minerva. Her inclusive governance of all things worthy is indicated in this quote from Lady Augusta Gregory, quoted in turn by Wikipedia here: The goddess was, Lady Gregory wrote, “A woman of poetry, and poets worshipped her, for her sway was very great and very noble. And she was a woman of healing along with that, and a woman of smith’s work, and it was she first made the whistle for calling one to another through the night. And the one side of her face was ugly, but the other side was very comely. And the meaning of her name was Breo-saighit, a fiery arrow.” And she honors me by being my Muse and blesses me by being my wife.

* * *

In conclusion, in a whisper, as it were (thinking of a post here titled “Thirteen”), I would point out that the stars above the eagle, the arrows in its claw, the leaves of the olive branch, and the letters in E pluribus unum all number thirteen.
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Minerva photo credits: Marble Bas Relief of Minerva With Her Owl at the Library Of Congress John Adams Building (Washington, DC). Originally uploaded by takomabibelot

Thirteen

Numerology, particularly the meaning of the number 13 and its rotation (31), expansions (49, 94, 58, 85, 67, 76—numbers the digits of which you must add), and its multiples (26, 39, etc.) give me the same innocent pleasure as do meaningful coincidences, sometimes called serendipities. A genuinely original and insightful modern parapsychologist, J.E. Kennedy, has suggested that the ultimate purpose of the phenomena he studies may serve as reminders to us that something transcending the obvious may simply be there. I’m putting this in rather too simple a summary. My object is not to discuss the insight, which is more sophisticated. To learn more about Kennedy’s thoughts, I recommend perusal of his papers, accessible here. What I want to talk about, lightly, as it were, is the number 13 itself. Contrarian as it is—being viewed as unlucky—in my family it has been a portent of good fortune, in the last generation as in mine, and seemingly also in the next one down in time.

This is an innocent preoccupation because like everyone else I’m a complex being and fully possess the kind of rationality which can bluntly, brusquely, and dismissively say: “Give me any other number, and if I know enough details about your life, I could construct the same castles-in-air around that number too! In your life or anyone else’s.” Having put that in, just to stay on the safe ground of modern meaninglessness, let me enjoy my 13 for a moment.

I was born on July the 31st which is obviously very meaningful—after all my birth date, turned around, is 13! We’re presently residing in the 13th Congressional District of Michigan—to be sure I don’t know the numbers of the others where we’ve lived. But there’s a whole string of thirteens that mark our coming to America. The Certificate of Eligibility issued to us in Germany permitting our entry to the United States was dated January 13, 1949. The 49 is significant too. And in my case 113 (thus January 13) is doubly meaningful because my name, ARSEN, decoded numerologically is 5, and 113, magically, collapses into five. And 1949, if you drop the first nine but not the second, also results in 113. Get it? Good. Let us move on. We spent precisely 13 days at sea making the passage from Bremerhaven to New Orleans. Our eyes beheld the American coast on June 13 of 1951 (ignore the year). Then, years later, when Brigitte, Barbara, Monique, and I came to America together, by air this time, we landed in New York on January 13, 1961. Now, finally, to the intriguing image that illustrates this post. It is the shoulder patch, incorporating the coat of arms, of the 13th Infantry Regiment—the military unit in which I served my first several months in the Army. We were “First at Vicksburg,” one of the bloodiest and nastiest events in the history of the Civil War, alas. That number was not quite so lucky for the many who died there. But then a deeper lesson of numerology—hear me, Kabbalists, hear me moderns—is that reality is greater than can be inferred from number, unless that number is 1.