The Beta Pulsation of Four Dis-communications in the Origin Myths of Meteorites and Comets - Reading Claude Lévi-Strauss's 'Mythologiques' through Deep Semantics (40_ 'Mythologiques 2: From Honey to Ashes' - 14)

This is the 40th attempt at a "creatively" misreading of Claude Lévi-Strauss's 'Mythologiques'.

You can read all the previous articles here ↓.

Even if you haven't read the previous articles, you can enjoy (?) this one on its own.

In this series of articles, I am thinking about the following while "creatively misreading" Lévi-Strauss's myth logic. Namely, that mythical thought (the savage mind) is about saying that the opposition between Δ1 and Δ2 and the opposition between Δ3 and Δ4 combine as "different but the same" things, by precipitating four β terms from β1 to β4 as "ambiguous terms that are both and neither" of the two Δs between any two Δs, and connecting these four βs and four Δs on the syntagmatic axis to draw an eight-petaled shape as shown in Figure 1—or in other words, rephrasing them.

This time, just like the article before last, it is a story about words that are "half-shifted" from standard linguistic communication, words that seem to communicate but don't, words that communicate but aren't understood, and words that aren't understood but communicate.

The Origin of Meteorites and the Four Super-words

Let's look at Myth M298, "The Origin of Comets and Meteorites," contained in 'Mythologiques 2: From Honey to Ashes'.

The tripartite relationship between the mythical husband, wife, and the son from the previous marriage. The son from the previous marriage
"is" the son of the current couple, and at the same time, "is not" the son of the current couple. The son from the previous marriage is in an ambiguous intermediate state where he cannot be said to be the son of the current couple, nor can he be said not to be.

The husband, the father of the son, thinks the son's ambiguity makes the household unstable, so he tries to get him married, drive him out, and settle him somewhere.

However, this is where the reversal typical of myths begins to move.

First, what is interesting is the part where it was not the son who actually left the house, but the husband/father. Instead of separating the son while leaving the couple, the husband/father separates, leaving the son from the previous marriage and the wife behind.

The family separates into two in terms of distance.

This separation is emphasized by the passage where the father/husband travels "far away."

And then, once he has separated sufficiently from the house, from the family, from the stepmother and the son from the previous marriage, the father/husband is captured by terrifying people and "has his internal organs removed." The "one" body of the mythical father/husband separates into two: the "removed internal organs" and the "remaining part from which the organs were taken."

"Removed internal organs" / "Remaining part from which the organs were taken"

The first separation is the spatial separation of the family. The second separation is the separation of the husband/father's body itself.

Here, two binary oppositions, a relationship of four terms in total, are demarcated.

And next, an interesting point.
The man whose internal organs were removed (father/husband) is, surprisingly, still alive and well, and is able to escape from the terrifying group.

One might wonder how he could still be alive and able to escape after having his internal organs removed, but this is precisely what myth is.The 'man whose internal organs were removed' is one term of the four-term relationship that has been painstakingly delineated, and it would be problematic if he did not now move back and forth, up and down, oscillating like an amplitude.

The man and his removed and cooked internal organs have entered abeta-vibration state of one-as-two and two-as-one.

One is two, two is one.
Union is separation, separation is union.

In this part of the myth, the protagonist, his second wife, and his son by his first wife form aprecarious union harboring a tendency toward separation. From the protagonist's perspective, the second wife and the son by his first wife appear to be potentially in conflict and capable of fighting (though, as we will see shortly, this is not actually the case), and he plots the son's marriage to separate them. However, in reality, he himselfseparates far from the second wife and the son, and in the end, his own body and its internal organs aremade to separate. He was supposed to be stably united (with the second wife), but instead, he separates far away.

However, the husband/father, despite having his internal organs stolen, manages to escape and returns to the house where the second wife and the son by his first wife are waiting.

- Thinking there is a union here, there is a separation there.

- Thinking there is a separation here, there is a union there.

There is a sudden conversion from union to separation.

Now, the continuation of this myth is also interesting.

Things are getting complicated. First, let's focus on the part where the second wife actually loved her stepson. The man was worried that the second wife and the son would have a falling out (excessive separation), but the reality was


the exact opposite (excessive union).

And then the wife begins preparing the poison. The one being separated from the three-person family home is not the son by the first wife, but the husband/father himself.

What should separate unites.
What should unite separates.

I thought it was A, but it was non-A.
The oppositional relationship is reversed. It was reversed.
The two opposing poles spin and swap places.

The binary oppositional relationship is not something fixed and immobile, but is in a state of rotation (vibration drawing an amplitude) where one cannot distinguish which of the two opposing poles is which!

a) Ignored message - even if told, it is not conveyed

What appears here isfailed linguistic communication, adiscrepancy in communication through 'words'. The man asks the spirit messenger to deliver amessage to his wife, but the wifedoes not follow this message.

• Even though it should have been conveyed properly, it was not conveyed.

• Do not do as you are told.

In human society, this is a very common form of speech, a form of speech where communication fails.

And the husband, instead of a medicinal potion to heal his wounds, is conversely, diametrically, oppositely, given alcohol that opens his wounds.

b) Communicating without saying a word

What is interesting is that the wife did not try to make him eat the 'poisoned, unpalatable stew' she had gone to the trouble of making. Perhaps, at the moment the 'familiar spirit' that had transformed into a child appeared, she realized that her plan for poisoning had been exposed to her husband.

Even if he did not say directly and literally, 'Hey, you're trying to poison me!', having the 'familiar spirit' deliver a different message conveys the message that 'I know you tried to poison me.'

Conveying a certain message without mentioning it directly.

While the message 'Make a medicinal potion for him' is a message that was spoken but not communicated, withdrawing the 'poisoned, unpalatable stew' is a message that was not spoken but was communicated.

• A message that was spoken but not communicated

• A message that was not spoken but was communicated

They become perfectly reversed, exciting the double four-term relationship of speaking directly/not speaking directly and communicating/not communicating into a non-stationary, oscillating state.

Now, for the continuation.

The husband/father has a 'hollow' inside him. The husband/father, with his internal organs removed, is, so to speak, a hollow
container.

In contrast, the wife hides in a tree hollow. The wife becomes the contents of the container.

Inside/Outside
Contents/Container

A tree hollow or a hollow tree is also a place where honey is hidden, and it is a beta-term that mediates between the inside and outside that often appears in myths.

By hiding in the tree hollow and holding her breath, the wife stops the beta-oscillation state, which has excessive union and excessive separation as its two poles, and is pinned to one pole of the empirical delta binary opposition of inside/outside. The wife has escaped from the mythic beta-term into an element of the empirical and sensory world.

Next is the husband's turn. And there, once again, appears
hyper-communicative speech.

c) Lies - Come out because I won't do anything

The husband "shouts", "Come out because I won't do anything!"

It feels like, "No, no, you must be joking."

Who would believe the "I won't do anything!" statement of someone who is furious?

No matter how you think about it, the husband has no intention of "doing nothing," and if the wife actually came out, it would be a disaster. This "because I won't do anything" means the exact opposite of the literal meaning of the words.

Paired with this, another hyper-communicative phrase appears. Let's look at what follows.

First, the words of the plants.

The words of the plants are also divided into two.

1) They can speak but do not speak
2) They cannot speak but try to speak (and are ultimately not heard)

In any case, information transmission has failed.

d) Not saying / Cannot say

The cultivated plants either remain silent or mumble, unable to speak even if they try. The latter tubers are apparently trying to convey the fact that "your wife is in the hollow of the tree," but the words that should express this do not come out clearly.

Here, 1) is pulled up and thrown away.

These are likely the mythical non-cultivated crops, crops from "a field where crops grow immediately and can be harvested freely as much as one wants." The man pulled them all up and destroyed them completely.

And only the root tubers remain.

Root tubers are likely valuable cultivated crops that are actually being eaten. In other words, binary oppositions overlap as follows.

Real cultivated crops / Non-real cultivated crops
|| ||
Cannot speak but try to speak / Can speak but do not speak
|| ||
Root tubers / Masses of crops that can be harvested freely as much as one wants
|| ||
Actually exist / Do not exist in reality

Here, the term "actually existing cultivated crops" is separated out as one pole of the binary opposition relationship = precipitated. It succeeds in separating out the things that constitute the real world. This myth is an origin myth of cultivated crops and also an origin myth of the world in which humans are able to live.

*

By the way, to clearly separate the world where humans can live from the world where they cannot, and to keep this separation fixed, this dichotomy of crops alone is insufficient.

A binary opposition is two terms out of a four-term relationship.

Now, if the separation between 'real cultivated crops' and 'non-real cultivated crops' is established, another binary opposition must also be clearly separated and established at the same time. Here, the pair of the 'comet,' into which the eviscerated husband transformed, and its counterpart, the 'meteorite,' are brought in.

Meteorite / Comet

Meteorites and comets look very similar when viewed from the ground, but their movements are diametrically opposed.

Meteorites fall to the ground.
Comets do not fall to the ground.

The eviscerated husband/father is separated into the binary of meteorite and comet, disappearing from the position of an ambiguous, intermediate mediator.

*

The two terms 'real cultivated crops' and 'eviscerated husband,' which seem completely unrelated when viewed in isolation, are superimposed and combined into a pair of two types of hyper-communicative words.

In other words, the husband's 'I'm not doing anything, so come out!' is a word where the 'signifier' is solid, but the 'signified' is unclear. Conversely, the tuber's 'mumble' has an unclear 'signifier,' but the 'signified' is clear.

The husband's words and the tuber's words are perfectly and diametrically opposed.

'Real cultivated crops' / 'Eviscerated husband'
||
'Signifier' is solid / 'Signifier' is unclear
||
'Signified' is unclear / 'Signified' is clear

Words in such ambiguous and intermediate binary oppositions, which seem to communicate but do not, switch at high speed from one to the other, creating a vibrational state of replacement and transformation from beta term to beta term as shown in the figure below, and the beta terms move around from combination to separation, from separation to combination, and from another combination to separation, forming a ring and circulating.

Let us observe how this chain of replacement and transformation from term to term in this myth connects the eight-term relationship, as an overlapping of binary opposition relationships, without being too close or too far. state.

Through the telling of this myth, it seems that the separation between a world where 'cultivated tubers,' that is, something like a staple food, clearly exist, and a world where they do not, is being told. In other words, it appears to be telling of a transition from Δ1: a state where things are unarticulated, to Δ2: a state where things are clearly articulated.

Here, it is the logic of myth not to open a direct route between the two terms from Δ1 to Δ2, but to go through β1→Δ3→β2. At this time, Δ3 is in an oppositional relationship with Δ4, and β1-β2 are also in a state of resonance with the other two β terms (β3 and β4) where it is impossible to tell which is which.

In the case of this myth, because husbands and wives or parents and children are excessively separated or excessively combined, it seems that almost everything throughout the story is telling of Δ1: unarticulated, but what sharply opposes the 'cultivated tuber' that is finally cut out is, in this case, the 'tree hollow.' The tuber and the tree hollow seem to be working together to separate the 'β2 second wife' who is in a β-vibrational state from the 'β1 husband.' Let us place this tree hollow as Δ1, which opposes Δ2.

Thanks to this Δ1 tree hollow, the β1 husband leaves the β-vibrational state and transforms into the Δ3 comet that rests in the sky. The husband, having become the Δ3 comet, remains connected to the β2 second wife as a husband and wife (though quite precariously), while being separated far between the ground and the sky. In other words, a moderate relationship of neither too close nor too far is established between the two terms.

This β2 stepmother seems to continue living with her β3 stepson in a segmented world where Δ2 tubers are cultivated. In this respect, β2 and β3, while separated via Δ2, continue to remain connected.

It is the 'Δ4 meteorite' that rains down upon this β3 son as if to say, 'Do not forget me,' and this meteorite is none other than β4, the father's internal organs.

＊

Once the β terms have successfully completed a cycle and drawn a circle in this way, the man transforms into the hyper-Δ term 'comet' (Δ3 in the case above) and flies off into the sky, clearly separating far, far away from his wife, from his son, and from the world where humans live who eat root tubers.

And as he succeeds in separating, the comet man's body also continues to separate from the hot blood dripping from it, which is the meteorite (Δ4). And the meteorite that separates from this meteorite man's body falls from time to time onto the ground, the earthly world where the stepmother and stepson live by cultivating root tubers.

From heaven to earth, it maintains a one-way passage, a connection. The four terms in the four-term relationship that have finally separated are clearly distinct from one another, yet they cannot forget that they are a set of four. To remind us that they are separated but connected, and that the distinction never disappears, the meteorite husband in the sky continues to drop meteorites onto the ground.

The nature of opposing words

Myth attempts to remind us humans that the relationship between empirically and sensually opposing binary terms is combined in various ways, and that all existence began by being delimited as one term of a binary relationship.

In our daily lives, we bring in pre-made binary oppositions from somewhere, choose one of the two poles, and assign an arbitrary term x to it, thereby attempting to determine the 'meaning' of term x.

Q: Is 'he' an enemy or an ally?
A: 'He' is an ally.

Q: Is that word of his love or hate?
A: That word of his is love.

When we think about things like this, we try to determine what x 'is'—the meaning of x—by superimposing an arbitrary x (in the examples above, 'he' or 'his words') onto one of the poles of a binary opposition a/non-a (in the examples above, enemy/ally, love/hate) and placing x and a, or x and non-a, in a relationship of being different yet the same.

＊

However, when you think about it, considering the transformation of x itself, the possibility of transformation, the fluctuations, the amplitude, and the indeterminacy of its value, it seems like quite a bold move to tie it to one side of a binary opposition and say, 'I understand!' Perhaps this was the optimal solution for humans, or rather for organisms that evolved under the conditions of Earth, to separate and yet connect self/other and inside/outside through their nervous systems.

＊　＊

Myth reminds us of the operation of sorting an arbitrary x into a/non-a, which we do without even realizing it.

Myths pull in all sorts of binary oppositions to demonstrate the 'in-between' of binary oppositions that can be said to be neither divided nor undivided.

Whether it be monkeys and crabs,
rabbits and crocodiles,
or jaguars and humans.

Or, it is not just animals, plants, or artifacts that can be empirically brought in, butmore abstract binary oppositionsare also brought into play.

That is, in other words, an opposition in the nature of language, or an opposition in the nature of communication.

For example, there is the opposition between'literal meaning' and 'figurative meaning'in language.

It might be better to paraphrase the former as denotation and the latter as connotation.

'Literal meaning' / 'Figurative meaning'

Denotation / Connotation

There is also the opposition of'language that succeeds in communication' and 'language that fails in communication'.

In the myth of the 'husband left out in the rain' discussed in the article before last, there appear four types ofmisunderstood words, undetected lies, detected lies, and misheard words, which arewords that appear to be language that normally establishes communication but in fact are not, language that fails in communication.

Or, there are others, such as,

Whistling (mocking?) / Polite language

Insulting ostentatiously / Insulting indirectly

and other such oppositions.

* * *

And these binary oppositions, while sandwiching an ambiguous mediating term that is neither and both of the opposing poles, separate and combine arelationship consisting of eight termswith the binary opposition relationship between these ambiguous mediating terms as the pivot.

Combining and circulating four binary opposition relationships

On page 363 of 'Mythologiques 2: From Honey to Ashes', it is written as follows:

Let us focus on the 'circulation' among the four types of language.

1. Noise

2. Abusive language

3. Polite language

4. Whistled language

Depending on the myth, 2 and 4 may be in opposition, or 2 and 3 may be in opposition.The important point is that, whatever they may be, any binary opposition is simply two terms within a four-term relationship,,and the four terms in a four-term relationship can be substituted for one another as being different yet the same, and this substitution can circulate.

• No term exists in isolation, simply rolling along by itself,but is one pole of a binary opposition.

• A binary opposition does not function solely as a pair of two terms, but is a combination of two terms within a four-term relationship. For example, if we can articulate a binary opposition such ashot/not hot, what do we do with that? It is a matter ofcontinuing to hold it in one's hand/letting go of it. The first binary opposition calls upon the second, and they overlap.

• Furthermore, a four-term relationship is not a rigidly fixed arrangement of four terms. It exists within the movement where the four terms substitute for one another, or are transformed into one another. Within this movement, the figure of an ambiguous, intermediate term that is both and neither of the opposing poles becomes visible. If we were to diagram this, it would become anoscillating state of an eight-term relationshipconsisting of a second four-term relationship that overlaps with the first, shifted by 45 degrees.

• This oscillating and circulating eight-term relationship is, in Mr. Lévi-Strauss's words,'structure', and in Buddhist terms, it is the 'mind'.

A certain 'term'—a certain 'term' that exists in our daily lives as if it were a matter of course—also does not exist in isolation, rolling along independently of others; rather, through the oscillation of a double four-term relationship, it emerges as one of the patterns drawn by the ripples of that oscillation.

Origin Myth / The Beginning of a Certain Term

For example, the 'cultivated crops' that frequently appear in the 'origin myths of the human world' are also such terms. Following the above quote, Mr. Lévi-Strauss writes as follows.

In the origin myths of cultivated crops, a dis-communication appears that is slightly shifted from normal, smooth linguistic communication.

Both 'honey' and 'cultivated plants' are one pole of the following binary opposition.

Honey / Non-honey
Cultivated crops / Non-cultivated crops

Here, regarding what specifically empirically articulated matters to assign to the poles of non-honey and non-cultivated crops, focusing on the point that real honey is extremely precious and hard to obtain, we can set non-real honey as 'a large amount of honey that can be obtained freely and without limit' and set non-cultivated crops as 'a field where crops grow immediately and can be harvested freely' or 'a sacred tree that bears a large amount of fruit that can be harvested freely'.

One might feel something close to this mythical thinking in the biblical phrase 'flowing with milk and honey'.

*

Now, what is interesting about the myth-logic of the savage mind is that this binary opposition of real honey/non-real honey and real cultivated crops/non-real cultivated crops is also a manifested relationship of two terms within a certain four-term relationship, and it is a point that one cannot be satisfied without explaining that this four-term relationship is mediated by another four-term relationship shifted by forty-five degrees, neither attached nor detached.

Neither attached nor detached, not completely separated and unrelated, nor excessively combined into one. When we try to speak of the subtle state in which our world is separating from yet connecting to things that are not our world, through the way eight terms in a minimal configuration circulate, pairs of dis-communication words often appear.

continued
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