Lovers of Sophia

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by Jason Reza Jorjani


  malicious pranks is there, as it is in Hermes, but there is also the

  power of shape shifting between the animal and the divine, and his

  exposure to initiatory tortures that confer upon him salvific healing

  power.91 Insofar as the tortures are concerned, the Spirit Mercurius

  occasional y allows others to outwit him so as to play the divine

  jester or fool toward a greater end – like an animal playing dead.

  Unlike Zeus, who is always concerned to defend his apparently very

  fragile honor, the god Hermes is willing to be made a fool of, but he

  uses his foolishness as another device for his machinations. What is

  so significant about The Cosmic Joker in his guise as arch-comedian

  is that he dynamites the Hegelian dialectical progression from the

  overcoming of the irrational in Art through its final stage of comedy, onward to the autonomy of rational Man over Nature in modern

  Science.

  Carl Jung explicitly draws a connection between the Trickster

  archetype and the paranormal phenomena and psychic experiences

  studied by parapsychologists.92 He sees the malicious tricks played

  by poltergeists as manifestations of the Trickster. He notes how

  these often take place in the ambience of pre-adolescent children.

  The deceptively stupid and inconsistent character of some

  ‘communications’ from spirit mediums is also the Trickster at work.93

  Jung understands the Trickster archetype to be a dissociated or

  split-off personality, not belonging exclusively to any one individual or another, but a personification that is produced by the totality

  of individuals in a society. Consequently, it can be perceived by

  individuals as if it were something external – in a way that they

  91 Carl Jung, “On the Psychology of the Trickster Figure” in Paul Radin, The Trickster: A Study in American Indian Mythology (New York: Schocken Books, 1972), 195.

  92 Ibid., 195.

  93 Ibid., 196.

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  would not be able to recognize a dissociated aspect of their own

  personality.94 This projection is a collective analog of the personal

  shadow side of the psyche, and it expresses itself whenever accidental circumstances convey the impression of jinxes, or again, in

  poltergeist activity or spiritualist séances. It has been well noted that

  ‘channeled’ material often reflects the contents of the unconscious of all those present at a séance on any particular evening.95

  The more the shadow of the irrational is found to be at odds

  with the conscious ego and is repressed in the individual, the more

  impressively it may be able to manifest as an antagonistic force on a

  collective level.96 The Trickster figure gains even greater strength on account of the secret al ure that its primal vitality has for a repressed psyche. In primitive cultures this collective projection had a kind of autonomy and was even capable of possessing certain individuals.97

  Suppressing this relative autonomy, as the rationalistic ‘scientific’

  mind has, is not going to cause the Trickster to disappear. Jung

  believes that on the contrary there will be an even more violent and

  destructive return of the repressed on a collective level, especial y

  if conditions of socio-political uncertainty open an opportunity for

  its release from out of the unconscious.98 When it seems that fate

  is playing tricks on us, or things appear to be bewitched, then the

  Trickster is breaking through the crust of civilization and making

  his way back into our world.

  In his book on Flying Saucers, Carl Jung speculated that

  contemporary close encounters represent a reemergence of the

  Trickster from out of a collective unconscious rebelling against

  the overly mechanistic and materialist framework of modern

  science.99 There is increasing clamor for UFO “Disclosure” but, if

  Jung was right, just what would it be a disclosure of? In his study

  94 Ibid., 201.

  95 Ibid., 202.

  96 Ibid., 204.

  97 Ibid., 205.

  98 Ibid., 206.

  99 Carl Gustav Jung, Flying Saucers (New York: Princeton University Press, 1979).

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  lovers of sophia

  of the UFO phenomenon, Colonel Alexander, whose use of the

  term “phenomenology” opened this chapter, comes to a very

  similar conclusion as Jung. Dr. Alexander and other researchers

  set up a laboratory of sorts at the Skinwalker Ranch to study the

  Trickster and its relationship to close encounters.100 On the basis of a phenomenology of the occurrences that he and others witnessed

  on the ranch, he formulated the term “Precognitive Sentient

  Phenomena” (PSP) to refer to the form of intelligence behind close

  encounters and UFO phenomena. Here is how the Colonel explains

  his idea:

  The issue of The Trickster is well established in paranormal

  research. That means that whatever is generating the incidents does

  so in a manner that does not remain consistent over time. What

  is being proposed is a derivation of that idea. The precognitive

  sentient phenomena concept suggests that there is some external

  controlling agent that initiates these events that are observed and

  reported. It appears as though that agent not only determines al

  factors of the event, but is already (i.e. precognitively) aware of

  how the observers or researchers will respond to any given stimuli.

  The agent can be considered like the Trickster that is always in

  control of the observations. Every time researchers get close to an

  understanding of the situation, the parameters are altered or new

  variables are entered into the equation.

  The preface to John Alexander’s book is written by Dr. Jacques Vallée.

  In his decades of research on the close encounter phenomenon,

  Jacques Vallée has demonstrated that the UFO phenomenon of

  the 20th century is on a continuum with the airship sightings of the

  18th and 19th centuries, the Fairy aerial conveyances of the Medieval

  and Renaissance periods, and the chariots of the gods and heavenly

  armies of the Lord observed in antiquity.101 Vallée has also noted

  the inextricability of UFOs from psychic phenomena and from

  100 John B. Alexander, UFOs: Myths, Conspiracies, and Realities, 232–236.

  101 Jacques Vallée, Passport to Magonia (Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1993).

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  a theatrical display of absurdity characteristic of the Trickster

  archetype. He characterizes “the mechanism by which UFO events

  are generated” as a “phenomenon whose manifestations border on

  both the physical and the mental… a medium in which human

  dreams can be implemented...”102

  Vallée suggests that the human imagination may be behind close

  encounters, but in that event it is a far more powerful force than

  scientists in the grip of materialism believe it to be.103 UFOs may be collective hal ucinations of a kind, as Jung suspected, but if so they are what early psychical researchers called “veridical hal ucinations”

  or apparitions, and moreover telekinetic apparitions that leave

  physical traces.104 Vallée compares the quality of the disembodied

  voice ‘heard’ by those who experience a close encounter with the

&n
bsp; characteristics of psychic automatism studied by the Society for

  Psychical Research, and interestingly he cites the work of Frederick

  Myers in particular.105 This imaginative force may not be as entirely

  irrational as it seems; there may be purposeful patterns to discern

  beneath its outward aspect of patent absurdity.106

  Vallée finds that one of the clearest overlaps between fairy

  folklore and close encounter experiences is time distortion. People

  who dimly hear the distant music of the fairies making merry and

  try to trace it, are sometimes drawn into the fairy rings or magic

  circles of the Celts or the elf-dans of the Norse, which Vallée compares to the contemporary “crop circles”, imprinted on wheat

  fields and hil sides so that the fairies or elves can dance at night.107

  These perfectly circular imprints or clearings, measuring two to ten

  yards, have been reported for centuries.108 Mortals who dance with

  the ethereal beings in their circles, may even go away with them

  102 Ibid., 153, 159-160.

  103 Ibid., 49.

  104 Ibid., 67, 94.

  105 Ibid., 94.

  106 Ibid., 48-49.

  107 Ibid., 32, 38.

  108 Ibid., 38-39.

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  inside a round or conical object that stands on tripod-like legs inside the magic circle, for what they take to be a brief visit to the fairies’

  abodes. They return looking just as they were and thinking that they

  have only been away for a few hours, whereas in fact days, weeks,

  months or even years have elapsed from the perspective of ordinary

  folk, who have aged in the meantime.109

  One particularly extraordinary case involved a bride who, on her

  wedding day wandered off for a little while in pursuit of the strains

  of a strange, ethereal music. She soon found a knoll “where the elves

  were making merry” around a large, flattened circular or disc shaped

  “magical object” that the woman later described as a round table. This

  ‘table’ was standing on red pil ars. After drinking a cup of wine offered to her by the “wee folk” and dancing with them for a round, she

  hastened to return home to her own wedding festivities. Her family

  was not there to greet her. Everything and everyone had changed

  in the vil age. Final y, upon hearing the panicked bride hysterical y

  relate her story, a very old woman identified her as the wife-to-be

  of her grandfather’s brother, who disappeared without a trace on his

  wedding day a hundred years ago. Hearing this unfathomable truth,

  the miserable young woman dropped dead of shock on the spot.110

  On the basis of the significant time distortions implicit in the

  phenomenon, Vallée speculates that close encounters may represent

  some sort of window into the future – a window through which

  people who have freed themselves from linear time are accessing

  various epochs of our history as it approaches the singularity of their own present:

  …should we hypothesize that an advanced race… sometime in

  the future has been showing us three-dimensional space operas

  for… thousand[s of] years, in an attempt to guide our civilization?

  If so, they certainly do not deserve our congratulations! …Are

  the UFO’s ‘windows’ [into the future] rather than ‘objects’? 111

  109 Ibid., 29.

  110 Ibid., 108.

  111 Ibid., 153.

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  In other words, Precognitive Sentient Phenomena or – the Trickster,

  who may or may not be traveling through space but is certainly

  working backwards through time and history. Vallée even describes

  the Trickster’s creation as “a pure form of art.” It may be that: “Like Picasso and his art, the great UFO Master shapes our culture, but

  most of us remain unaware of it.”112

  112 Ibid., 160.

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  TRIAL GODDESS

  Joseph K. is “guilty” as charged by the mysterious ‘Law’

  that is brought to bear upon him. His crime is the failure

  to recognize and reconcile the strife between two aspects

  of his character – the possessive, conscious, rational

  self in pursuit of advantage, and the unconsciously reckless seeker

  of chaos and ecstatic transcendence of the ego. Fraulein Burstner,

  the Usher’s wife, and above all Leni, are in some way involved with

  the mysterious ‘Law’, and they invite Joseph K. to acknowledge the

  second of these two aspects. I will argue that these promiscuous

  women hold high unofficial positions in ‘the Court’ and that they are

  emanations of the Triune Goddess of Witchcraft, Artemis-Hecate,

  whose image Titorelli paints above the High Seat of the Judges of the

  Court. Mythic imagery of esoteric significance associated with this

  goddess, pervades The Trial.

  In his present life, Joseph K. fails to resolve the duality of his

  character into the spiritual harmony of a Trinity forged beyond

  judgments of ‘good’ and ‘evil’. He cannot overcome his rationalizing

  and possessive ego in order to understand the true nature of the Law

  presided over by the Goddess in Titorelli’s painting. He forgoes the

  help of the three witches of the Law on account of his inability to

  transcend his desire to possess these wild and untamable maidens.

  Drawing from references to the subject in Franz Kafka’s Blue Octavo Notebooks, I examine the possibility that reincarnation might allow Joseph K. a chance to learn from this shameful failure.

  In this connection, I suggest that the “definite acquittal”,

  “ostensible acquittal”, and “indefinite postponement” explained by

  Titorelli, can be interpreted as metaphors for the transmigration of

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  the soul. I reveal a connection between “indefinite postponement”

  and the imagery of the wise innocence of the children of the Court,

  and of the Court officials who have returned to the playfulness

  of childhood. Final y, in light of the above, I argue that the third

  interpretation of the parable “Before The Law”, the one accepted

  by K., is more or less correct. In other words, the deception of the

  exoteric aspect of the Law and its scriptures is a necessary deception

  – a means of preserving the manifestation of a world of diverse

  beings, by concealing the devastating Oneness of Being itself.

  1. Extant Interpretive Frameworks

  Interpretation of Franz Kafka’s masterwork, The Trial, has hitherto fallen into one of four basic categories: psychoanalytic, political,

  religious, and existential. So as to see more clearly how the reading

  to be developed here transgresses all of these superficial interpretive rubrics, it would be in order to briefly remind one of the broad strokes of these four positions. This should sharpen the contours of my own

  proposals, without compromising their clarity and directness by

  repeatedly interrupting my text to draw explicit contrasts with one or another of these interpretations.

  The psychoanalytic interpretation is perhaps the most superficial

  of al , and the one that can be most easily dismissed – especial y in

  light of Kafka’s own view of psychoanalysis. Within a decade of Kafka’s death, Hellmuth Kaiser came forward
as the first representative of

  this interpretation,1 which has since been developed by many others.

  According to this interpretation Kafka’s writings, including and

  perhaps especial y The Trial, are an attempt to rationalize his own psychological injuries. The conspiracy of the omnipresent court is

  ostensibly indicative of paranoid delusions and projections from out

  of a persecution complex, while the hierarchy of officials is taken to be an attempt at establishing mediate relationships to authority so

  as to temper the envy that would predominate in a direct encounter

  1 Walter Benjamin, “Franz Kafka: On the Tenth Anniversary of His Death,” in Illuminations (New York: Schocken Books, 1969), 127 .

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  lovers of sophia

  between persons with too great a social difference separating them.2

  Joseph’s relationships with the women that are supposedly reified

  as sexual objects and connections, are seen as expressive of his own

  neurotic feelings of guilt over his sexuality, motivated in part by an obsessive concern with ‘purity’.3 A perversely enduring infantile

  sexuality is allegedly crafted into a sophisticated critique of accepted erotic norms.4 As we shall see from entries in his notebooks, Kafka

  was a harsh critic of just such reductive psychobabble. He recognized

  that in its infinitely regressive manner of interpretation psychologism only pretends at ‘explaining’ anything.5

  Although they are also overly reductive, political interpretations

  of The Trial have a little more substance to them. These are often grounded in notes wherein Kafka makes fleeting references to

  anarchist figures such as Peter Kropotkin, Lily Braun, and Alexander

  Herzen.6 One note of particular significance is a sketch of a

  “Propertyless Workingmen’s Association”, which seems to have been

  a suggestion for a Zionist commune.7 In June of 1912 Kafka apparently

  attended an anarchist lecture on the class structure of America

  delivered by Frantisek Soukup.8 Michael Mares, who was a member

  of the anarchist klub mladych in Prague, claimed (perhaps falsely) that Kafka was also in attendance there from 1909-1912.9 With support

  from these suggestive ties to radical leftists, some critics have read The Trial as an argument that the Law is inherently hegemonic – that legal order as such is a machtergreifung or ethical y unwarranted “seizure 2 Theodor Adorno, “Notes on Kafka” in Prisms (MA: MIT Press, 1983), 250.

 

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