Turning to the octave

On this journal’s one-year anniversary, my detour into the polarization of the passions has brought me back around to my original impetus for journaling

Neonian Baptistry, Ravenna, 5th century

I’ve figured out the shape of U.S. history.

It’s pretty exciting! The past month my mind, soul, and heart have been on fire with activity. In the process of writing “The dialectic of Western politics is patterned after the corruptive polarity of desire and anger, and it’s killing us,” I discovered that the pattern of polarization in its various iterations determines the chapter breaks of U.S. history, and that the sequence of political party systems in the United States is proceeding according to a specific spiritual pattern that I’ve learned from the Church and the Bible — namely, the octave; we’re currently transitioning from the sixth party system to the seventh, the sabbath. I’ve since read a couple of books on the history of party politics, and my perception has been confirmed and brought into sharper focus.

So now I should start writing about that, right?

It has been one year since I first published “The Cosmic Chiasmus” on the Symbolic World. This Substack journal was launched simultaneously in attempt to benefit from any attention that article accrued. I wasn’t sure what all I’d be writing about here when I began. I wrote one post which specifically followed up on issues raised by “The Cosmic Chiasmus,” and a few others also that were related topically. I came to prefer the topic of thymos and epithymia, however, (the polarization of the passions, that is) because I interpreted it as marginal to symbolic thinking and thus something I could work on apart from my work on the Symbolic World (all of which I explain in this SW article). That path culminated in last month’s political treatise, which again has led me back to how “The Cosmic Chiasmus” ended. Readers who actually reached the finish line of that mammoth piece know that it demands a sequel. The fivefold structure I describe there must have added to it the pattern of threefold ascent so as to make an octave. The chiastic pentad is a stable structure, to be found in creation no matter how badly corrupted. The triadic ascent, centered on the sabbath, signifies the changeability necessary for theosis to take place. If the pentad is the image of God, the triad is the likeness. In Pageauvian terms, it’s as if with “The Cosmic Chiasmus” I’ve written all about space symbolism but have yet to describe time symbolism — and the octave is the “metaspace” that combines them in one: image and likeness both.

The octave shape, found in Scripture and put to plentiful liturgical use both in Temple and in Church, also has its secular uses. The Judeo-Christian tradition certainly doesn’t hold a monopoly on the heptatonic musical scale, a seven-note sequence that repeats on octave intervals. Both Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, 24 books each, I perceive as triads of octaves. Patterns found in nature such as the lunar cycle or the shape of our teeth have a basis in octave units. The history of the United States of America may very well be proceeding according to this pattern. It in fact may very well be dovetailing Russian history with this shape, if in an accelerated time frame.

All of which is to say, my long detour into the polarization of the passions, institutionalized in American politics, has led me back to where I began, the need to set forth what the octave is and how it works. Since the time I perceived the shape of U.S. history, I’ve wondered where to go next with my writing. To figure that out, I was waiting for last weekend, when I was set to attend the Lord of Spirits Conference in Ligonier, Pennsylvania, not far from my home. I’ve done that now — it was amazing — and have in fact emerged with the clarity I sought. I shall turn now to writing the sequel to “The Cosmic Chiasmus.” I’ve previously planned it to be a series of eight articles that could be published on The Symbolic World. Since that plan was hatched, however, I’ve become the chief editor of said website, and I simply can’t turn it into a personal blog. If I want to erect a tent for my ideas, I can’t pitch it within Jonathan Pageau’s own big top. Circuses don’t work that way. So then I thought I would withhold it from the website and write it as a book instead (in other words, pitch a tent next to Jonathan’s). I had previously envisioned it only within an electronic space, but my friend Colin Miller over at Sylvan Bookworks convinced me that this kind of thing could work as a book perhaps even better. I would write my eight chapters on the octave and package them as Part Two alongside “The Cosmic Chiasmus” in a book.

But I haven’t yet written the book. Such a project would be at odds with my maintenance of this journal — unless, that is, I use the discipline of this journal to help me write the book. That is what I am now aiming to do. As the editor in charge of the Symbolic World blog, I’m a little vexed that what started out as a series of content for that website has turned into a series of content for an author’s personal Substack (with much fewer readers). As an author who hopes to publish a book, I’m a little vexed that I aim to give it away before I even contact a publisher! Well, either I whip up enough demand through the power of what I write, or I self-publish a print-on-demand title, I guess. The important thing is to get the book written. My readership isn’t all that numerous here, and I generally don’t do publicity; maybe when the text is ready, a publisher with marketing skills will yet see potential in the project.

Or, perhaps, like others, I collect money through subscription fees while I write a book. And then maybe that would help me with publication. Now one year into writing this journal, I’m going to turn subscriptions on, but I don’t plan on hiding any posts behind the paywall. Those who want to support me — and I have received pledges to do so, which has been heartening — can. But anything I aspire to write amounts to preaching the Gospel, and when I read the Book of Acts, I just can’t imagine any of the early Christians charging subscription fees for their content. For now I’m perfectly pleased to keep giving away my labor. I live off charity as it is, so I ought to give as I’ve received. But if any subscribers are moved to give me $8 a month or $80 a year (or more), they can do so.

The more financial attention I receive, the more I’ll be impelled to work on writing. I’m committed to writing here at least once a month, but I should be able to do better than that. Indeed, reacquiring the weekly routine that I used to have is an ideal I am reaching for. For the book, I plan on writing eight chapters on the octave pattern in Scripture, liturgics, and the world, but that won’t take the shape of eight posts here. Rather, I’ll tackle the topics in pieces, and that will multiply the number of posts, perhaps endlessly as I produce material that won’t make it into the book.

Maybe someday I’ll even tell you all about the shape of U.S. history! In fact, I think I should do that next while the ideas are fresh in my mind, even if I haven’t provided the Scriptural and liturgical basis for the pattern yet. It won’t be how the book starts, but it will be how I begin in my next journal entry. For now here are three introductory paragraphs to the whole of what I’m planning:

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The Octave Series, Part 1: Parables on the Kingdom of Heaven

Introduction

At the end of “The Cosmic Chiasmus” we saw there was to the “The Cosmic Chiasmus” ... an end. The fivefold structure is finite; it’s deliberately built around the stages of beginning, middle, and end. To the cosmos is bequeathed, quite generously, a stable identity, and this chiastic shape is the image of that stability and of that identity. It’s also an image of objective reality that we look at as if not part of it. Though the story, by definition, stops here, the story however does not stop here. Thank God it doesn’t stop here! To live in a cosmos free from change would be a sentence of existential loneliness cut off from any communion with our otherworldly Creator. It would mean being locked into this objective perspective that separates us from the creation that comprises our own being, as if we were the God who created it when in all honesty we’re not. 

At the end of “The Cosmic Chiasmus,” we saw how the fivefold structure is naturally circumscribed by a sixth element. There’s more to that story. The penumbral glow of a seventh element circumscribes the sixth — beyond which looms a mystery we symbolically call “the eighth”. This threefold pattern signifies a change that is wrought upon the cosmos. It marks the meeting of creation with its Creator, of the circumscribed with the uncircumscribable. Theosis for creation is a process of becoming something that you’re not. It’s not chiastic or circular. This is not a return to what was but a coming into what never was before — a linear ascent, the rising action of the entire cosmic lump.

And the ascending doesn’t end. The eighth day has no evening. Since we can’t see the end, it’s not a story we can behave objectively towards, but a story we must enter and participate in subjectively. In the process, our original fivefold identity is not lost or damaged. The stability is not destroyed by the change but actually the opposite. Remember, our objective perspective of ourselves was dissociating us from what we are and threatening our existence. The addition of God’s objective perspective from beyond what we are both effects a vertical change in us and mercifully preserves our stability. In Christ, while ever remaining what we are, we yet also become something we have never been. The fivefold story never ends. The fivefold story, the one that along its own natural axis ends... according to a threefold ascent, never ends.