The expansion and contraction of predicates brings a mandala to the surface - Reading Claude Lévi-Strauss's 'Mythologiques' through deep semantics (92_ 'Mythologiques 3: The Origin of Table Manners' - 43)

This is the 92nd installment of an attempt to“creatively”misreadClaude Lévi-Strauss's“Mythologiques”.We will read Part 6, “Equilibrium,” of“Mythologiques 3: The Origin of Table Manners”.

You can read all the previous articles together from the link below.

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

Introduction

In this series of articles, I will read Claude Lévi-Strauss's“logic of myth”by likening it toa mandala-like structure of dual four-term relations (eight-term relations) such as those Kukai describes in his 'Unjigi', or rather, as the 'things' where pulsations that bring mandala-like patterns to the surface like ripples resonate.

Empirical distinctions become conceptual tools

Lévi-Strauss writes the following at the beginning of his massive work on the logic of myth.

Extracting ideas by using empirical, sensory distinctions (discrimination) as conceptual tools (in other words, superimposing discriminations to articulate meaning), and connecting these ideas ( linearly chaining one-to-one static pairs of signifiers and signifieds) is “how it is done.” As a tentative theory to model this “how,” if we consider the pulsation (expansion and contraction) that generates and annihilates a mandala-like meaning articulation system, it generally looks something like the following.

The algorithm of the logic of myth (how it moves, how it expands and contracts)

In other words, at the end of the narrative, myth aims to draw a stable mandala-like pattern by separating Δ1 to Δ4 in Figure 1, while connecting them without letting them drift too far apart or become overly separated.

Δ1 to Δ4 are empirical and sensory distinctions/discriminations for us humans. For example,

Δ1 Hot / Δ2 Not hot
|| ||
Δ4 Bad / Δ3 Not bad

This is what it means. Almost all of the “meaningful” experienced world for us human beings is woven together using four-term relations consisting of overlapping binary oppositions like this as the minimal constituent unit of meaning articulation.

Now, in the diagram above, I have tentatively connected “Δ1 Hot” and “Δ4 Bad” with an equals sign (meaning “hot is bad”), but the orientation of this Δ4 bad and Δ3 not bad could also be flipped.

＊

When we grow up and live our lives casually, we tend to think that “hot” exists as a self-evident fact in itself, and that “bad” also exists as a self-evident fact in itself.

Before the self-evident distinctions of daily life

Myth is an activity that thinks about the 'origin' of the empirical world, which is normally articulated (distinguished) as self-evident or taken for granted in daily life. activity.

For example,

1) 'Why are humans different from non-human animals?'
2) 'Why is the world divided into heaven and earth?'
3) 'Why do good and evil exist in this world?'
4) 'Why are life and death separated? (Why do people die?)'

Regarding these questions, in the modern era, the method of thinking about 'answers' through natural science has become prominent. In the case of 2), it could be explained by the fact that cosmic dust conveniently gathered to form this planet; 1) is the result of life attempting to adapt to its environment; and 4) could also be explained by the convenience of cellular and protein reproduction. It is also thought that 3) can be partially explained scientifically by examining human behavioral patterns and the workings of the nervous system.

**

Nevertheless, it is estimated that humanity has been continuously questioning the 'origin' of something before its eyes in some linguistic form for at least 10,000 to several thousand years, and perhaps from 40,000, 50,000, or 60,000 years ago.

Life/Death
Male/Female
Human/(Non-human) Animal
Heaven/Earth
Terrestrial World/Underwater (Underground) World
Light/Dark
Day/Night
Cold/Warm

Such distinctions, classifications, and binary oppositions must have been known empirically by humanity since ancient times (or rather, even by life forms before humanity). Moreover, strangely enough, while these opposing binary terms are diametrically different, they do not completely separate; they repeat the process of joining and separating, connecting into one, and splitting into two.

Why do these separations and combinations of binary oppositions, and their regular alternations, come to be separated, or maintain connections while being separated? When we try to think about the 'origin' (beginning) of this in language and discuss it with our peers, the origin (beginning) a narrative of 'myth' is generated. Here, the narrative of myth is naturally forced to perform the feat of reproducing, using language—which is inherently a tool for distinction—the state where the two poles, which are empirically and sensuously distinguished, are not yet separated.

Scientific Thought and Savage Thought

When attempting to explain why binary oppositions oppose each other, modern humanity attempts to answer with scientific thought. In other words, it converts the binary opposition in question into some kind of binary opposition that can be observed using observational techniques that yield reproducible results.

On the other hand, when ancient people, who did not possess modern observational techniques, were filled with the question of why the separation, combination, and regular alternation of binary oppositions exist at all, it seems they focused on the movement itself from which the oppositional relationship emerges, and tried to understand the beginning (origin) of this binary opposition..

The movement from which the oppositional relationship itself emerges

In other words, the meaningful world in which humanity lives empirically and sensuously is woven (meaningfully articulated) with a four-term relationship, which combines two binary oppositional relationships, as its minimum constituent unit.

Δ / Δ
|| ||
Δ / Δ

For example,

Human / Animal
|| ||
Wearing clothes / Not wearing clothes

'Savage thought' here focuses on the movement of '/' and '||' to think about the beginning (origin) of the Δ binary opposition and its superposition. This opening up from a state where Δ1 to Δ4 cannot be distinguished to a state where they can be clearly distinguished, while binding them so they do not scatter apart, yet balancing them so they do not stick together too much and become indistinguishable is the movement that creates the minimum constituent unit of meaning articulation (double binary relationship = four-term relationship) necessary for the world that is meaningful to us humans to be a meaningful world.

To explain this '/' and '||' movement, 'savage thought' appearing as myth introduces four mediators that connect while separating Δ1 to Δ4. In the diagram above, these are the four βs drawn between the four Δs. These four βs are the mediating terms that connect the Δs while separating them.

/
||
/

↓
β
β　　　　β
β

The "/" and "||" are two different aspects of the same movement;
that is, "/" corresponds to the "expansion" of expansion and contraction,
and "||" corresponds to the "contraction" of expansion and contraction.

Ambiguous mediating term

The ambiguous mediating term (which I will denote as β for now) in myths takes on forms such as a human who does not know how to use fire and pecks at the ground like a chicken, a jaguar that wears clothes and walks on two legs with a bow and arrow, a moon that transforms into a porcupine to seduce human women, or a human who separates their lower body from their upper body and dives into a river with only their upper body, luring and catching fish with the scent of flowing blood.

Needless to say, such things "do not exist" in our empirical sense. It is important for savage thought to dare to verbalize this fact that they "do not exist" in an empirical sense. Myths aim to capture and stabilize the movement of "/" that precedes the ability to distinguish whether something "exists / does not exist" . In other words, they are thinking about what lies "before" the ability to make such distinctions as whether something exists or does not exist. For this reason, they dare to speak of a state where two poles that should be empirically diametrically opposed, such as human/animal or prey/hunter, overlap into one and it is impossible to tell which is which. The myth of Ogetsu-hime, which involves serving vomit as food, is also an example of this. Things that show a movement of intense oscillation back and forth between empirically opposing poles, or things that exist in a way that is both and neither of two empirically opposing poles, are called ambiguous mediating terms (β relative to Δ in Figure 1).

Focus on the movement of ambiguous mediating terms moving away from and toward each other

Like kneading mochi, potter's clay, or pie dough, two of the four β terms seem to be excessively combined on the first axis, while simultaneously being excessively separated on the second axis orthogonal to that axis. These "axis that causes separation" and "axis that causes combination" swap at high speed.

• Any two β terms stretch and contract long toward the first and third quadrants

• Any two β terms stretch and contract long toward the second and fourth quadrants

• Two, three, or four arbitrary β terms gather at a single point in the center or spread out

In this way, vibrations (movements describing amplitude) that expand and contract the distance between β terms occur. Ambiguous mediating terms move. They move in a way that expands and contracts the distance between the ambiguous mediating terms themselves.

As a kind of resonance state of this vibration, the β terms are pulled out in four directions, and when the four β terms are separated at an equal distance without being attached or detached (drawing a square), this pulling movement and the force trying to return to the center balance.

Here, the speed of expansion and contraction slows down infinitely. Then, in the "between" of these β terms, between the four β terms balanced to draw a square, the four regions forming the "sides" of that β square begin to be expanded stably and repeatedly. Here, room opens up for four regions or objects, "that which is not that, distinguished from that which is not that" (Δ), to flicker so as to maintain their contours continuously. The Δ terms settle there.

Here, a world meaningful to us is generated, a "world" where we can say "Δ1 is Δ2," where the various Δ terms have already been separated and arranged in an orderly fashion as individual objects, and can be linguistically and stably distinguished. Any empirical world, and the myths that tell of the origins of the elements of that world, have this kind of logic.

The world that is meaningful to each of us is
articulated
as a combination of oppositional relationships

Our human consciousness tends to be captivated by the Δs that emerge as a result of this expansion and contraction, by their names, and by their subjective existence (Δ, "what it is"), but in reality, these subjective things are merely traces that only reveal their form after the movement that freely expands and contracts, the verb, the predicate.

It is not that subjective things are pre-installed at the starting point of the world, but when waves (predicates) that expand and contract in a squiggly manner overlap and resonate, bringing something like a mandala-like ripple to the surface, a certain part or region of that figure is temporarily assigned the role of a subject

If I were to force an expression using an image (a skillful means that can be distinguished by intent), it would look like the following.

First, something like this.

Next, it begins to take shape like this

and then it calms down.

It gathers further.

And gradually, resonance patterns emerge.

The pattern becomes something like this.

And it becomes this.

And, while it becomes something like this, this is not the finished form. It never stops, continuing to move and squirm.

There is a saying that for attaining mastery of things like this, meditation is faster, and I also think that is true, but nevertheless, I dare to speak of the myth of the separation and union of ambiguous mediators through language, and by mapping it onto the dimension of the linear arrangement of language, it is also important to enter into samadhi. As in the 'eight consciousnesses,' human discriminative mind is made up of layers and entanglements of various discriminations. Everywhere that is fixed, it is doing that to the attachment to delusions. For such fixations and their various manifestations, some can be resolved through imaginal meditation (blessing of the mind), some can be resolved through mytho-logical words (blessing of the word), and there are entanglements that are difficult to resolve without other skillful means (blessing of the body).

In any case, by reading 'Mythologiques,' the intention here is to approach it from language.

Just beneath the surface of our experiential world, by adjusting the frequency of beta and derailing it from the fleeting 'four' square of the here and now, the movement to regenerate the world as a different four-term relationship also never stops moving. The meaning-segmentation system, which feels as if it has arranged the given elements floating in the surface consciousness of the discriminative mind into a solid structure, is actually the expansion and contraction of pulsating waves (the period T[s] of periodically repeated vibrations expanding and contracting) viewed with narrowed eyes, squinting.

*

Attaining mastery of the logic of myth makes it possible to observe the way our experience of the world, including ourselves, as something meaningful is made possible by discrimination (funbetsu), or the way patterns of meaning-segmentation arise and cease in various aspects, and it also makes it possible to construct such ways of discrimination and meaning-segmentation quite consciously and freely.

Separating predicates and combining predicates
pull ambiguous mediators into the seat of the subject.

Let us read the myth 'M495 Menominee Red Head' from 'The Origin of Table Manners' by focusing on the movement of ambiguous mediators.In particular, let us read by focusing on the expansion and contraction of the distance between ambiguous mediators, where pairs of ambiguous mediators extend or shorten that distance.

Now, let us read this myth while keeping the following diagram at hand.

The binary opposition that appears at the beginning of this myth is 'husband and wife'.

Husband / Wife

When it comes to a married couple, ideally, one hopes for an equal partnership where they help and respect each other, and if food is scarce, they share it; but that is an ideal. An ideal is an ideal precisely because it is not reality. The couple in this myth is outrageous. The husband is able to obtain plenty of food (in modern terms, one might call him a high-income male), but the wife completely 'takes away' that food (in modern terms, perhaps it feels like the kind of thing that sparks a fire on X (formerly Twitter), such as 'the husband earns 30 million yen a year but is on a 30-yen-a-day allowance (two Umaibo sticks), while the wife eats lunches costing several tens of thousands of yen every day'). Because of this, the husband decides to 'separate' from this wife.

Now, let us evoke the wild thought buried in the depths of our hearts here.
If we 'discard' the 'subjects' such as 'a wife with bad conduct' or 'a husband who is treated terribly' like a snake shedding its skin (of course, our senses and emotions tend to become captives of these subjects, which is why using them makes it easy to gather views on inflammatory social media, but let us focus on the 'predicates' that the wife 'takes away' the prey the husband obtained, and that the two who were married 'separate'.

Due to the 'taking away' of the prey, the union between the husband and the prey turns into separation, and the relationship between the wife and the prey turns from separation into union.

<Husband> -Separation- <Prey> +Union+ <Wife>

And the fact that the couple is going to separate also means that (though it is unclear why they married in the first place) what was already married=united is now turning from union to separation.

Expansion and contraction!

Now, this myth unfolds a brilliant 'expansion and contraction' from here.
First, the husband 'hangs' the prey, the 'white-haired deer', 'in a tree'.
The wife tries to take the prey away as usual, but she 'cannot reach the prey hanging high up, even though it seems like she might'. Her jumping up and down is the very expansion and contraction of the distance between the white-haired deer prey and the wife. It is an 'interesting aspect of the predicate'.

While the wife is 'expanding and contracting' the distance to the prey along the vertical axis of up/down (usually the wife easily snatches the prey, so the distance between the wife and the prey is zero, but today is different), the husband immediately 'runs away' from the wife. The distance between the husband and wife 'stretches' in the horizontal direction of far/near.

However, the wife's pursuit of the husband begins immediately. The distance between the two, which had stretched once, 'contracts' again.

From here, a description of a game of tag, like the one found in the Japanese folktale 'Three Charms' (Sanmai no Ofuda), appears. Tag is a game that expands and contracts the distance between two parties, the one fleeing and the one chasing. The husband uses 'magical obstacles' to 'stretch' the distance between him and his wife long and far. The expansion and contraction of the distance between the husband and wife stretches long once, and the two separate.

However, the wife's pursuit continues. Eventually, the distance between the two will shrink again, and the husband will likely be caught by the wife.

At that time, the protagonist hunter met a 'man (the sun) who was grilling meat enthusiastically'.

The sun should normally be high in the sky, and it should not be an old man having a barbecue on the ground. But this is a myth.When the distance between the husband/wife, which should normally be tightly united, stretches to the maximum, to balance this, somewhere else, 'the distance between two parties that are normally far apart and separated (in this case, the sun and the hunter on the ground) shrinks to the minimum' occurs.

In the pulsation of the myth's beta-four terms, a balance is always at work where if one side separates, the other unites, and if one side unites, the other separates.

The almost sole commonality (similarities, points of resemblance) between the sun in the sky and the hunter on the ground, two parties that are clearly separated empirically, is that they 'grill meat'. At this one point, the sun and the hunter shrink the distance between them.

They begin to eat from both sides of a single string of meat.

Now, a very interesting description appears here.

The mountain hag, or rather, the wife, was closing in.

The sun orders the hunter to "pull and stretch the long intestine as much as possible, and since I will eat from the opposite side, you eat from this end".

Sun - (Intestine) - Hunter
↓
Sun = Eat > ( - s - t - r - e - t - c - h - e - d - intestine - ) = < Eat = Hunter
↓
Sun + (Kiss = Union) + Hunter

First, a movement appears to "pull as much as possible" the "intestine," which would presumably be bunched up. This is a "truly explicit" "stretching." Then, once it has been deliberately stretched, the two men proceed to eat from the extended ends.

While they are doing this, the terrifying mountain hag, or rather, the wife, approaches.

Just in the nick of time, the sun and the hunter finish eating the long, stretched-out intestine halfway each, and "the mouths of the two diners meet." It is a union.

If the sun and the hunter, who are usually separated, have contracted into an excessive union, then conversely, the place that is usually joined, namely between husband and wife, must stretch into an excessive separation.

The sunhas the protagonist straddle the hunted bear, gathers them up, and "ascends"to the heavens. On the ground, the wife, who has finally caught up, is left behind alone, and it is explicitly declared that she is "furious with jealousy".

Jealousy is wanting what one does not have, or "wishing to turn what is separated from oneself into a union with oneself, and stamping one's feet in frustration when it does not go well." Jealousy is also a fine "predicate of expansion and contraction".

Incidentally, this expansion and contraction due to jealousy is analyzed in depth in the book that serves as the sequel to 'Mythologiques', titled 'The Jealous Potter'. At this rate, I think I will be analyzing 'The Jealous Potter' in the continuation of this article in about three years, so look forward to it.

Expansion and contraction in the heavens, contracting over there and stretching over here

Now, the protagonist escapes from the terrifying wife, but it does not end with a 'happily ever after.' The hunter, brought to the celestial world by the sun, ends up performing expansion and contraction here as well.

First, the relationship between the sun's sisters and the hunter is interesting.

The sun brought the hunter to heaven intending him to be a "friend".
However, the sun's sisters disliked the human hunter and treated him cruelly when the sun was not looking. Even though he was invited as a guest, he was subjected to terrible treatment.

The hunter enters a state of "friend and enemy at the same time" with the celestial siblings, "violently going back and forth between the two poles of the enemy/ally binary opposition, tracing an amplitude.

*

In this state, at one point, the protagonist hunter meets a god (a supernatural protector) who asks him to "carry me on your back." To carry someone on one's back is a state of "excessive union where the distance between the one carrying and the one being carried is at its minimum".

In pairs of ambiguous mediators, the aspect of union where one rides on the other's back and will not leave appears in various myths. For example, M354, 'The Tukuna Hunter Monmaneki and His Wives,' which is the reference myth for 'Mythologiques 3: The Origin of Table Manners,' is helpful.

*

What is in a state of excessive conjunction in the first binary opposition can create a state of excessive disjunction in a second binary opposition. The protagonist hunter, burdened with a mysterious god, has, so to speak,gained a free power of disjunction—the power to stretch and pull apart the space between two entities.

In fact, the hunter, while carrying the god, defeats thelovers of the Sun's sister one after another, and separatesthe 'scalps' from their bodies. The 'scalps' collected in this way are presented to the Sun. The Sun then makes acloak out of these scalps and wears it.The Sun wearing a cloak means, in other words, blocking and reducing the radiated heat and light.

This Sun is one that descends to the ground to have a barbecue; in other words, in the space-time of this myth, the distinction between heaven and earth is not yet clearly established, and the ground is close to the celestial world ruled by the Sun, meaning it was a world too hot due to the Sun's heat. By this overly hot Sun wearing a cloak, something comes between the ground and the celestial world ruled by the Sun to block it. The ground and the celestial world ruled by the Sun are separated, yet the distance between heaven and earth does not stretch to the limit, balancing appropriately without being too attached or too detached.

Here,the pulsation of the expansion and contraction of heaven and earth is stabilized as a standing wave.

*

Also, the words the Sun's sister uses to insult the hunter are interesting. She says, 'What a disgusting creature full of entrails. I can see themwrithing and coiling in your belly.' This means that the intestines, which were stretched out long and eaten with the Sun earlier, have bunched up again, becomingin a non-stretched (contracted) state . By mentioning the hunter's'contracted state,' the Sun's sister attempts to separate him (to stretch the distance between him and her and pull him away).

Expansion and contraction on the ground: The separation and conjunction of the Sun's sister and the protagonist

Here, the Sun's sister, having had her ten lovers taken away, 'makes advances' to the protagonist hunter. The god riding on his back advises him to be wary of this temptation, but for some reason, the huntermarries the Sun's sister.

What was supposed to beexcessively separated due to hostility has suddenly flipped over and turned into conjunction.

This part iswhere one might think 'Why?' based on empirical common sense, but in short, the myth wants toturn disjunction into conjunction and conjunction into disjunction, while adjusting the distance so that the distance of disjunction does not stretch too far and the distance of conjunction does not contract too much.

*

Then, two children, a son and a daughter, are born between the hunter and the Sun's sister.

Protagonist / Sun's sister
||
Son / Daughter

A well-settled four-term relationship becomes visible, but here too, intenseexpansion and contraction occur.

First,the son is separated and pulled away from this family of four, and lives in heaven with his uncle, the Sun. Meanwhile, the three—the hunter, the Sun's sister, and the daughter between them—descend to the ground to live. The family of four is divided into one and three, between heaven and earth.

Heaven / Earth
|| ||
1 / 3

However, it is necessary to pay attention to the imbalance where these four are divided into one and three. In other words, a stable four-term relationship—that is, a world that is stably meaningful to humans—has not yet emerged here.

* *

First, trouble occurs in heaven.

The Sun trained his nephew to be his 'proxy.' In other words, he tried to make his nephew the same as the Sun. This attempt goes well at first, but it fails when the nephew deviates from the 'arc-drawing' travel course of the Sun.

In this way, the expansion and contraction of the distance between the celestial realm ruled by the sun and the earthly realm, ceased to be a constant width, instead stretching and shrinking, meaning it became something with a difference between summer and winter.

* * *

Next, trouble occurs on earth.

The sun's sisters glared at the women on earth who were jealous of them and spoke ill of them, causing them to collapse. It was not the desire of the sun, the ruler of the heavens, for humans to lose their lives by being glared at by stars.

The sun called back to heaven the three who had descended to earth: the sisters, their husband (the hunter who had eaten the intestine with the sun), and their daughter.

And they resurrected the humans who had become victims.

However, from this point on, the stars of the celestial realm ceased to transform into human form and descend to earth.

This is the stabilization of the range of expansion and contraction of heaven and earth.

Thus, a state where the distance of the delta four-term set periodically expands and contracts—in other words, the stability and certainty of this present world—came into being (originated). And they lived happily ever after.

Focusing on the expansion and contraction of the distance between ambiguous mediating terms

These ambiguous mediating terms exhibit a magnificent separation and union, a separation and union, showing movements of approaching (shortening the distance) and being far (lengthening the distance), but if you look closely, you can see that the terms themselves always appear at both ends of this expansion and contraction.

For example, it is like having the beta-sun that descended from heaven to earth at one end of a stretched intestine, and the beta-human who is trying to climb from earth to heaven at the other.

The ambiguous mediating terms form pairs on a straight line connecting the maximum and minimum values of the expanding and contracting movement. Furthermore, two pairs of these ambiguous mediating terms intersect, depicting the expansion and contraction among the four ambiguous mediating terms.

＊

β Androgynous being
β Big toe swollen to the size of a head
β Man transformed into a woman (half-man, half-woman)
β Person with a bifurcated head

In 'The Origin of Table Manners' (Mythologiques 3), Mr. Levi-Strauss lists the various ambiguous mediating terms that have appeared up to this point (p. 462), and points out that they all move while forming pairs and showing movements of lengthening and shortening the distance between them, aiming for the stabilization of amplitude so that they continue to draw a moderate amplitude of neither being too attached nor too separated, while avoiding both excessive separation (too far, fully stretched) and excessive union (too close, contracted).

Regarding the myth that can be taken as a variant of the myth mentioned above, Mr. Levi-Strauss writes the following.

There are various patterns for the set of four beta-terms. Even looking at the
wife's dandruff, prey's liver, scalp, and menstrual blood nouns and subjects in this quote, one only gets the feeling of 'What is this?'

However, once you understand that these terms are paired and that they trigger movements that are diametrically opposed, the vivid movement of the logic of myth suddenly becomes visible.

The "scalp (taken from an enemy)" and the "wife's dandruff" are in an oppositional relationship. Also, "
menstrual blood" and "prey's liver" are also in an oppositional relationship. And when you increase the level of abstraction, this opposition is, in short, the opposition between the movement toward union from separation and the movement toward separation from union.

Movement toward union from separation. Movement toward separation from union.

As the bearers of these two opposing movements, empirical givens that seem like nothing but riddles at first glance ("wife's dandruff", "prey's liver", "scalp", "menstrual blood) are being brought in.

+

Next time, let's read in detail about these oscillating four terms.

To be continued

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