The presence in both Christological miracle stories of the same process, transmutation, and the relationship of the events which these depict have to the two premier sacraments of the Christian traditions, baptism and Eucharist, fully supports the reality of contemplative practice of the kinds advocated by all three feeding miracle stories, and their complements, which dwell on the theology of identity, as essentially transformative in nature.
Since we are proceeding on the basis of several presuppositions, these should again if only briefly, be made patent, before we shall address the acoustic representation of both the categories radical to the Christian and biblical doctrine of consciousness, and the related forms or modes of intentionality. These presuppositions are not new to the argument, but their recapitulation will be beneficial. The first concerns the identity of The Son, sometimes referred to as 'the second person of the Trinity', and whom the gospel of John names the logos, usually translated simply as 'Word'. The prologue of that gospel reverts very noticeably to the P creation narrative, and the further three usages of the phrase 'the next day' (John 1.29, 35, 43), and the subsequent introduction to the first messianic miracle 'On the third day' reinforce this initial recursion to the same narrative, underscoring its correlation with the series of six messianic miracles of which Transformation Of Water Into Wine is the first. Furthermore, the metaphorical use of the leitmotifs light/darkness (1.4, 5, 7, 8, 9) throughout the introduction to the fourth gospel amply reinforces the ligature between its Christology and the story of beginning. The second great Christological miracle story in the gospel of John, and the last of the series as a whole, The Death Of Lazarus (11.1-44), also employs the same Christological markers which were delivered in the Day 1 and Day 4 rubrics, light/darkness and day : night respectively.
Various claims have been made concerning the meaning of John's identification of the Christ with 'the Word'. These generally focus on the phenomenon of mind, reason, and those affective aspects of consciousness which also have to do with meaning. Indeed 'meaning' itself is an adequate synonym for the word 'word' as used here in the gospel. This epithet reinforces the Johannine bond forged between a high Christology and the story of creation. Various acts as well as creation by word, are repeated throughout the seven days. The acts of God in the P narrative are as follows: dividing one entity from its other (ldb, Genesis 1.4, 7, and implicitly in v 9 with the gathering together into one place so that the land may appear); naming ()rq vv 5, 8, 10); making (h#&( vv 7, 16, 25); putting (Ntn v 17); creating ()rb vv 21, 27); and blessing (Krb vv 22, 28). These actions are spread over eight different occasions, and none is performed every time.
Notwithstanding which, each of the six rubrics denoting actual creative works begins with 'And God said ...' (Myihl) rm)yw Genesis 1.3, 6, 9, 11, 14, 20, 24, 26). That is, every one of the accounts of the first six days begins with this formula. It occurs twice in the rubrics of Days 3 and 6 (vv 9, 1, and 24, 26), since two creative acts take place on each of these two days. This formula thus reflects the innate structures of the text. (Similarly, naming is an action used uniformly of all three Days denoting (pure) transcendence, that is, of the first three Days only. This too complies with an important structural pattern of the narrative.) These facts sit just as well with the Markan theological idiom as with the prologue of John, since I am arguing that Mark's governing intentional preoccupations, those of knowing and the will-to-believe, dovetail with those of the gospel of John, belief and the desire-to-know. Knowing receives its canonical instantiation in the perceptual mode acoustic memory, and the will-to-believe in its analogue, the conceptual form of unity space : time.
We have commented already on the link between transcendence, being and identity. The other point central to the discussion of immanence and intentionality here at the outset, concerns axiology. The axiological strand throughout the creation story is almost as prevalent as the introductory formula 'And God said ...'. The clause 'And God saw (...) that it was good' occurs six times: bw+-yk Myhl) )ryw, Genesis 1.4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, by+ hnhw h#$( r#$) lk t) myhl) )ryw v 31; LXX kai\ ei)~den o( qeo/v o(/ti kalo/n vv 4, 10, 13, 18, and kai\ ei)~den o( qeo/v o(/ti kala/ vv 21, 25, and kai\ ei)~den o( qeo\v ta\ pan/ta, o(/sa e)poi/hse, kai\ i)do\ kala\ li/an v 31.) It is absent from the account of Day 2, and used of each of the two acts of both Day 3 and Day 6. Neither of the Greek equivalents to the term 'good' - a)gaqo\n and kalo\n - occurs in the Johannine logosode. This makes even more notable their initial occurrences in the gospel of John in the first messianic and Christological miracle, whose concomitant form of value is the good. In the immanent Christology, The Transformation Of Water Into Wine, we read:
... the steward of the feast called the bridegroom and said to him, "Every man serves the good wine (to\n kalo\n oi)~non) first; and when men have drunk freely, then the poor wine (to\n e)la/ssw); but you have kept the good wine (to\n kalo\n oi)~non) until now." (John 2.9c-11).The other equivalent is used in the introduction to this miracle narrative in order to emphasize the connection between the individual disciple Nathanael and the miracle itself. In John 21.2, we learn that Nathanael was from Cana, the location of the miracle, which further justifies the typological cameo given of him in relation to the episode:
Philip found Nathanael, and said to him, "We have found him of whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph." Nathanael said to him, "Can anything good (ti a)gaqo\n) come out of Nazareth?" Philip said to him, "Come and see." (John 1.45-46).The other point salient to this discussion of immanence and intentionality concerns the doctrine of imago Dei. It occurs in both creation narratives in very disparate terms. In the first, as the direct consequence of the will of the Creator, but in the J narrative, as the human couple assuming the Godlike knowledge of good and evil, in utter disobedience to the divine will. In the Johannine prologue the evangelist extends the filial relation of the Word and God to those who believe. The image and likeness of God is the result of God's adoption of those who receive the Word, '[t]he true light that enlightens every man [that]was coming into the world.' These are they who received, who believed in his name. They are said to have been given 'power to become children of God', having been 'born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.' (John 1.9-13). As in the P narrative, the compatibility of the human and divine is here viewed positively, and not as the occasion of negative judgement.
Thus belief assumes a vital role in John's soteriology. It functions in this contextual field indistinguishably from its axiological identity - the good. This is the case with all intentional modes: each is espoused by a specific form of value. What goodness is to belief in the gospel of John, truth is to knowing in the gospel of Mark. Belief and knowing are perfect examples of what we mean by 'intentionality'. Each one of the four conscious, simple, and non-hybrid forms of intentionality, establishes the essential and specific theological intent of one of the four gospels as grounded in a specific form of value. Belief is central to John's own understanding, and we find it highlighted in the last of the miracle narratives in relation to the resurrection:
Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me ( o( pisteu/wn ei)v e)me\), though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me ( o( zw~n kai\ pisteu/wn ei)v e)me\) shall never die. Do you believe this ((pisteu/eiv tou~to;)?" She said to him, "Yes, Lord; I believe (e)gw\ pepi/steuka) that you are the Christ, the Son of God, he who is coming into the world." (John 11.25-27).
ACOUSTIC SEMEIA AND BINARY STRUCTURES OF
MIND
The numerical details contained in the three Eucharistic miracles can best be explicated as serving the elaboration of the theology of semiotic forms. They point to arithmetical divisions patent within the perception of sounds and sights as well as the innate perception of the body itself, the very means of manifold sentience, by itself in the mode of touch. We have already discussed the latter, the semeihaptika in relation to the gospel of Luke. That is, we have considered the delivery of an incipient theory of embodied cognition/conation delivered in the twelve healing miracles in the gospel of Mark and linked to the theological idiom of Luke. We may legitimately think of this connection between the embodied self and the various psychic or conative (affective) and epistemic or cognitive (intellective) processes, as describable in terms of intentionality; the body in the mind/the mind in the body so to speak. The dodecadic pattern of twelve somatic-haptic signifiers meshes with the numerical details of both stories of loaves and fish. The pattern which may be superimposed upon the categoreal paradigm, transcendence : immanence, is simply that of the repeated ciphers 5-6-7, synonymously with the sequence Transcendental-Christological-Pneumatological.
That is, the haptic semiosis, whose axiological identity was clearly announced in both Christological miracle stories, namely the good (kalo/v and a)gaqo/v), functions as the mediator between the remaining values, truth and beauty, as expressed in the acoustic and optic sentient modes respectively. The repetition of the pentads, like that of the heptads, also clearly demarcates the P creation story and The Apocalypse. It distinguishes between their central theological subjects, transcendence and immanence, as between The Transcendent and The Holy Spirit, congruently with the three synonymous and formulaic titles, 'beginning and end', 'first and last', 'the Alpha and the Omega'. Thus the Transcendental and Pneumatological Eucharistic miracle stories stand juxtaposed as summed up by the arithmetical progression in which the hexad is the intervening cipher, as between 'heaven and earth'. This 'and' we should remember, is nothing if not ambivalent, a 'nest of ambiguity'.
Mark's gospel is programmatically concerned with knowing, and theological knowing. This theological knowing is of course knowledge of God; but it is also necessarily knowledge of 'soul', the psyche. This same psyche accounts for more than mere affectivity, the feeling or appetitive (conative) aspect of intentionality. It is vital to reckoning with cognition or knowing itself. Understanding or knowledge of the 'soul' as such, is inseparable from theological understanding, or knowledge of God. We have determined the intentionality native to the cast of Markan theology as the necessary outcomes of two constituent radicals of consciousness or mind, the aconscious conceptual radical space : time, and the conscious perceptual radical acoustic memory. These intentional modes are the will-to-believe and knowing respectively. 'Knowledge of God and of the soul' would be a fair summation of Mark's evident theological intent, that same 'soul' being the chief subject of meta-psychology, or philosophical psychology, which in this setting, is tantamount to Christology.
In this, he resorts to the systematic use of what would in time become, if it was not already extant in his own day, the acoustic semiosis. By which I mean of course the ways in which the dodecaphonic series reveals certain key factors of the variety of relations obtaining between the categoreal structures of consciousness, its own ultimately general morphology, and the resultant forms of intentionality. Resultant is a key word here, for The Feeding Of The Five Thousand outlines the semiotic content of acoustic memory in terms of the chromatic twelvefold scale, and the pentatonic system - hence its use of the pentads and the dodecad. The sevenfold scales themselves which are indispensable to the doctrine of intentionality, are clearly suggested not by the 'primordial' and Transcendental miracle story, which evokes the creation narrative and The Transcendent, but instead by the Pneumatological narrative, The Feeding Of The Four Thousand, which points to the end rather than the beginning of the canon, that is, to The Apocalypse and to The Holy Spirit.
But these narratives, like the two sentient modes, acoustic and optic, are equally foundational to the logos, that is to human communication. Just as it is not possible to think of words themselves in only one form, the phonetic or the graphic. Both are essential, and both gravitate about what is functionally as well as axiologically, their median or pivotal point: the body as manifold of sense-percipience, and as self-aware in terms of specifically haptic sense-percipience. Here, in discussing the binary structures of consciousness, we necessarily depend on the numerical data given in all three miracle narratives. It will be possible at a later point in this study, to distinguish between the deliveries of the two putatively similar narratives.
Their numerical details concur in respect of the importance of binary structures determining conscious and aconscious processes. The figures 4 and 7 the figures 5 and 2 are mutually interdependent and coherent. The 4th and 7th degrees of the sevenfold major scale are just those which are absent from the pentatonic. The two pentatonics suggested by the duplicate fives of the Transcendental Eucharistic miracle story, and the cipher two, enumerating the fish, total twelve entities in all. The same figure figure counts the baskets of remaining portions, both factors adverting to the dodecaphonic series as a totality. When we examine the sevenfold major scale, we find these two sets of ciphers indicating one and the same binary. The first set indicates this in the ascending major scale, the second, in the descending major scale. The 4th ascending is the 5th descending, and the 7th ascending is the 2nd descending. This too concerns a binary form, since the dodecaphonic series both ascends and descends; a scale - Latin 'scala' meaning 'ladder' - is used to perform the same.
In conjunction then, the two sets of numerals allude to the existence of pentatonic and heptatonic scales, and also to the circles of fourths and fifths. For their part, the Christological cipher of both the first and last messianic miracle narratives, the hexad, 6, clearly announces the analogous form of the two narratives, the hexameron and the six messianic miracles. In addition to which, it sits between the repeated cipher of the Transcendental, Eucharistic miracle, and the repeated cipher of the Pneuatmological, Eucharistic miracle, 5 and 7 respectively, in accordance with the categoreal paradigm, transcendence : immanence.
At the fourth and seventh degrees ascending, or the fifth and second degrees descending respectively, the same nexus in the octave is reached. These mark the only two moments in the major, diatonic scale where the interval of a semitone occurs. Hence they are markers of the junction between a triad of one kind of representative semeiacoustika and a tetrad of the other kind. Each sevenfold major scale is composed of three semeia representing either three perceptual radicals in conjunction with four representing conceptual radicals, or three representing conceptual radicals in conjunction with four representing perceptual radicals. This 3:4 pattern was visible in the constitution of both narrative cycles, creation and salvation or messianic series, as an iteration of the categoreal paradigm.
These triads of either sort articulate the determination of intentionality as either conceptual or perceptual. The triads are the first, second and third degrees in the ascending scale. They may be counted in terms of the descending scale, in which case they are 6th, 7th and 8th. But musical convention restricts the description of degrees of the scale to its ascending form, rather similarly to the way in which mathematics considers magnitude. (Numbers are generally considered as positive rather than negative integers, marking increasing magnitude.) We shall conform to that usage here, notwithstanding the observation already made that the figures of the Transcendental miracle story jibe with those of its counterpart. Musical theory also utilises a formal aspect of the dodecaphonic series which surely is compatible with the observation that the scale both ascends and descends, and this too involves numerical patterns to which the narratives refer. These are the circles of fifths and fourths. A fifth ascending is a fourth descending and vice versa, such that we may speak of the circle of fifths and the circle of fourths as being the same thing(s) viewed differently. The ciphers in the miracle stories which enumerate thousands who participated in the feedings - hence we suppose who see and/or hear the Word, in other words, who taste what is beautiful and/or true - are legitimately capable of this hermeneutic. Writing has played a seminal role in the development of music, particularly in the Christian cultures to which it was from earliest times, an important liturgical accessory. (See Howard Goodall, Big Bangs: 1 Notation.) This too justifies the integration of the two narratives of miraculous feedings with loaves and fishes, not despite, but in virtue of their evident disparity.
(Unless otherwise stated, the use of the term 'minor (scale)' refers to the natural minor, and not the harmonic nor the melodic minor scale.)
Axiom 1: Conceptual : Perceptual
Let the two sixfold whole-tones scales represent the entities taxonomised in the creation narrative, Genesis 1.1-2.4a and the messianic series, namely the conceptual forms and their perceptual equivalents.This axiom has already been put. The existence of two evenly structured sixfold serial forms of order within the dodecaphonic scale, the octave, consisting of both heptadic and pentatonic scales, first alerts us to the methodical capacities inherent in the acoustic semiosis. The six conceptual and six perceptual radicals of mind stand in one-to-one correspondence with one another, and therefore must occupy the same position within their sequences. Pitch is to be accounted for, since akin to the optic semiosis, the dodecaphonic scale is polarised - it begins and ends. Tones are either high or low relative to one another. The sequences determine and are determined by the chronological references in the texts of the miracle stories. The messianic series must be read outwards from its epicentre. The two central messianic miracles depict Transcendence, and must be associated with beginning or creation. The relation of acoustic memory to the conceptual form space : time supports the same; that is, the acoustic semiosis itself must adequately confirm its analogue. This will affect the hermeneutic of the cadence 7-8, that is, 7-1, since this also signifies a beginning.
The relatively lower of the two whole-tone scales, by just one semitone, is best fitted to represent the conceptual forms, and the higher, to represent the perceptual forms. This arrangement sorts the categories according to their analogous relations, and synonymously with the optic semiosis, which employs only six semeioptika. We shall provide the rationale for this in the discussion of the 4-3 cadence.
Axiom 2: Conscious Cognitive : Conative
Let the major scale represent cognitive modes of intentionality, and the minor scale represent conative modes in the conscious order.The relation sustained by major and 'relative (natural) minor' is clear and distinct. Both utilise the same seven acoustic semeia, which they order differently. We shall elaborate the reasons for this decision as we proceed; for the moment we note that this differential also concerns the distinction of forms of reason, that is, cognitive or epistemic modes, as either theoretical or practical. Theoretical cognitive or epistemic modes are knowing simpliciter and believing simpliciter. Practical cognitive of epistemic modes are knowledge-of-will and belief-in-desire. Theoretical conative modes are desire-to-know and will-to-believe. Practical conative modes are desire and will. Practical modes of intentionality, whether conative or cognitive, largely guide actions, hence their characterization as practical rather than theoretical. They are best suited to the discussion of the (meta-)psychology of behaviour.
Axiom 3: Aconscious Cognitive : Conative
Let the major scale represent conative modes of intentionality, and the minor scale scale represent cognitive modes of intentionality in the aconscious order.Will-to-believe and desire-to-know are both conative modes; both effect other modes supervenient upon them, belief and knowing respectively. Unlike their conscious counterparts however, they are not practical but theoretical, just as belief-in-desire and knowledge-of-will are not theoretical, but practical forms of knowing. We have already witnessed the manner in which the aconscious appears to reverse or controvert the conscious.
Axiom 4: Theoretical And Practical Modes Of Intentionality
It must follow axiomatically, consequently to axioms 2 and 3, that all theoretical modes of intentionality are represented by major scales and all practical modes of intentionality are uniformly represented by minor scales.Axiom 5: Relative major and minor in the conscious order
Let the relation of relative minor to relative major scale in the case of perceptual intentionality, represent that of desire to knowing in the same species respectively, and in the case of conceptual intentionality, that of will to belief in the same species respectively, in the conscious order.By species we mean here, the same radical as occasioning both modes of intentionality. Thus haptic memory is the occasion responsible for erotic desire just as it is for technological rationality ('knowing'), so we may aver that this form of desire and this form of knowing are of the same species. The minor and major scales being 'relative' means that the representation of these two particular forms of intentionality in these particular occasions employ the same radicals of consciousness, albeit in variant orders. The actual sequences are the same in terms of their octaves. That is, neither sequence disturbs the given serial pattern of the octave; but they begin on different degrees of the octave. So for example, the serial order representative of erotic desire is G minor, and the sequence representative of technological knowing is Bb major. G minor begins on G, Bb (B flat) begins on Bb. These two scales are 'relative' to one another. G minor = G-A-Bb-C-D-Eb-F-g; whereas Bb major = Bb-C-D-Eb-F-G-A-b flat.
Axiom 6: Relative major in minor in the aconscious order
Let the relation of relative major to relative minor scale in the case of perceptual intentionality, represent the relation of desire-to-know to knowedge-of-will in the same species respectively, and in the case of conceptual intentionality, the relation of will-to-believe to belief-in-desire in the same species respectively, in the aconscious order.This completes the previous axiom. In the aconscious order desire-to-know and knowledge-of-will are relative to one another in terms of their acoustic representation, as are will-to-believe and belief-in-desire. Axiom 3 applies here
Axiom 7: Conscious : Aconscious
Let conscious intentional modality be semiologically distinguished in terms of the principle of analogy such that transitions between analogous radicals of either kind, conceptual or perceptual, at the first level of categoreal difference, represent conscious forms of intentionality.The optic semeia and the notation adopted here makes this abundantly plain. Thus for example in the case of the gospel of Mark one and the same semeioptikon, green which was explicitly given in The Feeding Of The Five Thousand as noted, represents both the conceptual form space : time and the perceptual form acoustic memory. These are in one-to-one correspondence, that is, analogous to one another. Their musical notation is F and F# respectively. Thus where the cadence occurs from F# to F, in virtue of F, denoting a conceptual category, the transition ('transfiguration') must represent a conscious and conceptual form of intentionality. That is, it can only be either the mode belief simpliciter or will simpliciter. In the case of transition from F to F#, a transition in virtue of the latter which nominates a perceptual radical, (a 'transformation'), the intentional mode in question must be both conscious and perceptual; that is, it must be either knowing or desire.
Axiom 8: Conscious : Aconscious
Let aconscious intentional modality be distinguished in terms of the principle of analogy such that transitions between non-analogous radicals of either kind, conceptual or perceptual, at the first level of categoreal difference, represent aconscious forms of intentionalty.This completes the previous axiom. Thus in the case of the transition represented by E-F, semeiacoustika denoting the perceptual radical haptic imagination and the conceptual radical space : time respectively, and in the transition represented by F-E, the intentional modes in question must be both aconscious and conceptual in the first case, and aconscious and perceptual in the second. That is, they must be either will-to-believe or belief-in-desire in the first instance, and either desire-to-know or knowledge-of-will in the second. Note that the semeioptika, which are yellow for E and green for F, similarly to the notations of the notes, E and F, differ from one another. That is, they mark the absence of one-to-one correspondence between the transacting radicals, and hence aconscious modes of intentionality.
Note also that categoreal radicals which are the necessary and sufficient conditions for conscious modes of intentionality, are susceptible of aconscious intentionality modality and vice versa. All six conceptual modes of intentionality are occasions for all six conceptual radicals; and all six perceptual modes of intentionality are occasions for all six perceptual radicals. Canonical intentional modality, the fact that a given category is the defining occasion for a particular form of intentionality, is not a limiting factor vis-a-vis the conscious-aconscious divide. Thus in the example of the categories native to Markan theology-eschatology, acoustic memory which is the canonical instance of knowing, a conscious form of intentionality, may nevertheless be susceptible of the desire-to-know, knowledge-of-will, and the hybrid intentional mode which they form. Just so, the conceptual radical space : time is responsible for the aconscious mode will-to-believe, yet it may function in any of the three conscious conceptual intentional modes: namely, will (simpliciter), belief (simpliciter), or will-and-belief.
Axiom 9: The natures of God - transcendent 'and' immanent
Let harmonic intervals represent the occurrence of two intentional modes of the same polarity, conceptual or perceptual, according to God's transcendent nature, analogously to their semiotic relation conveyed as per relative minor and major tonalities; and let melodic intervals represent the occurrence of single intentional modes of the same polarity, according to God's immanent nature, analogously to their semiotic relation conveyed as per relative minor and major tonalities.Intervals are of two distinct kinds. Harmonic intervals are sounded simultaneously or in unison, whereas melodic intervals are sounded successively, that is, according to a temporal sequence. Musical notation makes this alterity quite plain: melodic intervals are written on the staff in vertical alignment, whereas harmonic intervals are written horizontally in relation to one another. Needless to say, I can hear one and the same interval either way; I can hear the major third consisting of C and E as either sounding together simultaneously, or one after the other in relatively quick succession, either in the form C-E, which is ascending, or in the descending form, E-C. We shall return to this difference of the occurrence of intervals as essential to variant aspects of actual time, and because it will immediately avail us in the logical and theological distinction of the disparities operative in the ciphers contained in the Pneumatological and Transcendental Eucharistic miracle stories. We should note here that where melodic intervals portray singular intentional modes in time, these necessarily involve more than one such mode at a given time. This topic reverts to the presence of cognitive modes supervening upon conative modes; knowing simpliciter upon desire-to-know, for example, or knowledge-of-will upon desire simpliciter. Process philosophy frames the same relation in terms of causal efficacy and presentational immediacy, though it does not pay sufficient heed to final (teleological) causation. (This is the result of bias in favour of immanence at the expense of transcendence, readily exposed by its elevation of the value beauty.) Desire-to-know and will simpliciter are of the latter type; desire simpliciter and will-to-believe are of the former type.
Not all seven tones of the major or minor scales may be sounded in unison, that is, simultaneously and without dissonance. Since harmony is a key factor in expounding the acoustic semiosis, this must be taken into account. On the other hand, the dispersion of ('white') light, its refraction into the six or so visible hues, is emblematic of the principle of unity. Identity is to transcendence what unity is to immanence, the defining criterion. Taken together then, the two semioses, acoustic and optic, are precisely mereological; they concern the dialectic of parts and wholes, and as such, intrinsically to language. This is already implicit in the two feeding miracle stories, Transcendental and Pneumatological. But for the Christological narrative, matters are otherwise. It does not appear to be framed in terms of mereological discourse.
Conversely to the evident dissonance of the seven tones of the scale sounding simultaneously, at least four of the five notes which make up the pentatonic can be sounded in unison, and heard as harmonic. This is largely attributable to the absence of intervals in the pentatonic, the 4th and 7th, of the major scale. Although the pentatonic and sevenfold scales are comparable as to the existence of a triad marking the first three degrees of the scale, the pentatonic contains no semitones. The intervals of a semitone are vital to understanding the role of the diatonic scales - major and minor - as representative of intentional processes. They indicate the two moments of transmutation, 'transformation' and 'transfiguration', between degrees which belong to the hexatonic scales, the two whole-tone scales representing the polarities, conceptual and perceptual.
This leaves the pentatonic system for special consideration where the same is concerned. The two processes of change or transmutation in the Christological miracle stories, like the remarks concerning the ascent and descent of the Son of man in the introduction to the first such narrative, and similar constructs throughout the gospel of John as well as in other texts, all allude to the relation between the two poles of consciousness as one of change. Thus they emphatically deny any notion of categoreal radicals as being in themselves, and of themselves, independently of relational qualities. They repudiate the essentialization of the categories as ultimate structural generalities of mind. We have noted repeatedly that change is characteristically associated with The Holy Spirit. These observations conduce to the hermeneutic which follows here, and in which the Pneumatological ciphers 7 and 4, like the diatonic scales to which they refer, should be read against the theology of immanence as this applies in the events described in the two Christologies of the series. Moreover, that series itself is both heptadic and tetradic as already discussed.
If the sevenfold scale thus represents durational temporality, change, becoming and so on, we can therefore think of intentionality generally according to intervals of the melodic kind. Hence we can think of processes such as knowing or belief et al as occurring within temporal duration. We shall see however, that something akin to the same representation of intentionality occurs in terms of harmonic intervals. The acoustic representation of intentionality is not exclusive to the occurrence of melodic as opposed to harmonic intervals, as is suggested by the common denominator, 'interval'. Harmonic intervals are operative within the pentatonic scale, as are melodic intervals. But the absence of the interval of a semitone in the pentatonic system is of decisive significance. We shall argue for the alterity between the two kinds of intervals as fitting the variant numerical details supplied by the two miracle narratives. The dual sevens of the Pneumatological Eucharistic miracle story, and the dual fives of the Transcendental Eucharistic miracle story readily suggest the apparent difference between heptadic (sevenfold) and pentatonic scales, and also the intimate pertinence to each of one kind of interval in particular: harmonic in the case of the pentatonic and melodic in the case of the sevenfold. Thus they appear to confirm very different construals of time relative to the structures of consciousness, and this must bear on the theology of the logos.
The triads consisting of the first three degrees of the (ascending) scale, contain the two junctures in the scale, where the 7th and 4th degrees resolve to degrees 1 (or 8) and 3 respectively. They are cadences. They articulate the only two decisive sequences which bespeak rest. I use this last word allusively to the story of Sabbath-Eucharist recalling what was said of either episode as being the fourth and last member of its 'immanent' or immanent subseries according to the recapitulation of the categoreal paradigm, as well of course as being the seventh. The resolution or rest, the points of settlement reached by these degrees are just the 1st and 3rd degrees, and not the 7th and 4th degrees of the scale themselves. These degrees, 1 and 3, in virtue of which the resolution transpires, are in harmony with one another. They form the interval of a major third. The 4th resolves down to the 3rd, and the 7th, it resolves up to the 8th (also describable as the 1st or tonic. (The first degree is called the 'tonic' because it determines the 'tonality' of the octave.) In other words, it is in virtue of the polarity of consciousness represented by these degrees of the scale, 3 and 1(or 8) that the process is either 'transfigurative', meaning a conceptual form of intentionality, or 'transformative', meaning a perceptual form.
The degrees 7 and 4 however, are in no wise any the less significant for that. We have already seen that their absence from the pentatonic scale is determinative of its peculiar nature. Taken together, as an interval, they announce the only instance in the major and minor sevenfold scale of a very remarkable interval, the tritone, once called diabolus in musica, because it was considered so dissonant. This is the interval of augmented fourth/diminished fifth. Its exceptional status is readily recognisable in that it appears to supplement if not suspend, the clear binary articulated by the two circles in opposing directions: those of fourths and fifths. More of which we need to consider later.
Here we can resume the first binary previously discussed, that divulged by the two whole-tone series. Such that we now find the triad 1-2-3 marking the intentional modality in question as either conceptual or perceptual, accordingly as the two Christological miracle narratives are centred upon the phenomenon of transmutation. The Transformation Of Water Into Wine clearly begins the exposition of perceptual consciousness in its depiction of haptic memory, and The Transfiguration complementarily harks back to the story of the 'six days', and so refers us to consciousness in its conceptual pole, beginning with Day 1, as with mind itself. Thus the resolutions or cadences 4-3 descending and 7-8 ascending must be read in conjunction with the presentation of consciousness qua intentionality of these two juxtaposed and radical kinds. But this does not mean that both cadences do not play their part in each kind.
We are now sufficiently well placed to give examples of the representation by semeiacoustika of all four conscious, simple forms of intentionality and their equivalent forms in the aconscious, which are compounds. The following template which co-ordinates the acoustic and optic semiotic forms is given as prefatory to this, and should be consulted in the exposition which follows.
The treble staff at the top of this diagram lists the semeiacoustika representative of the perceptual forms, beginning with the three non-normative radicals of virtual transcendence, and ending with the three normative radicals of actual immanence. The treble staff at the bottom lists the semeiacoustika representative of the conceptual forms, beginning with the three normative radicals of pure transcendence, and ending with the three non-normative radicals of virtual immanence. We see that whereas the semeiacoustika differentiate between analogous radicals, the semeioptika do not. There are in all twelve acoustic semeia, and only half this number of optic semeia. The semeioptika demonstrate the analogous and non-analogous relations sustained by conceptual-perceptual forms just as does the musical notation adopted here. There is no seventh semeia either acoustic or optic. Every one of the twelve radicals represented, may function according to the meanings inherent in the Sabbath-Eucharist. This concerns the conceptual forms as well as their perceptual analogues given the Sabbath-Eucharist relation, and we shall find a clear distinction established between the two ciphers of immanence, 4 and 7 in relation to not only the distinction between Sabbath and Eucharist respectively, but also in relation to the suite of connected matters which each in its turns entails. These are:
- Sabbath: Transfiguration - Sabbath - logos asarkos - death - (Thanatos) - identity;
- Eucharist: Transformation
Of Water Into Wine - Eucharist - logos
ensarkos - Eros - unity.
Mark
We have already affirmed the relevance to the idea of beginning of knowing. The Feeding Of The Five Thousand answers the description of the conceptual form space : time in the creation story. It involves the numerals 5 and 2 for this reason. Space, the subject of the Day 2 rubric, and space : time, the subject of the parallel rubric in the second half of the text, Day 5, together testify to Transcendence ('God, The Transcendent') and equally to the creative event of 'beginning'. The beginning of each sevenfold and pentatonic catena of acoustic semeia, in which the triad consists of markers denoting perceptual radicals, must then be assigned to the mode of knowing. This follows because acoustic memory itself occasions knowing in its canonical instance. Knowing originates in acoustic memory; the categoreal radical is the aetiological explicans of the intentional mode knowing, and both, along with the value truth consequent upon the latter, characterise the gospel of Mark. The analogous conceptual form, space : time is the provenance of the aconscious conceptual intentional mode, will-to-believe. Therefore this also must function vis-a-vis the notion of beginning. That is, its acoustic representation must conform analogically to that of knowing.
The cadences in each case are identical: that of 7-8. This portrays them as unique in just the sense that it utilises the octave. No other cadence is comparable in just this sense. Fifths and thirds, both major and minor, all occur within the octave. Only the cadence at the tonic-octave stands apart in this respect. The specific semeia in these two sevenfold catenae are those which begin in F# in the case of knowing, and F (natural) in the case of will-to-believe. The scales are as follows: F#-G#-A#-Cb-Db-Eb-F-f# for F# major, (F#major); and F-G-A-A#-C-D-E-f for F major, (F major.) The only other cadence announcing a 'transformation' from pole to pole, conceptual to perceptual in knowing, and a 'transfiguration' from perceptual to conceptual in will-to-believe, occur at the third degrees of the scales: namely, the degrees A# in F# major and A in F major. Thus F-F# and Cb-A# articulate the cadences at I and III in F# major respectively. They announce knowing and the desire-to-know respectively. Thus too E-F and A#-A, cadences at I and III respectively in F major, announce will-to-believe and belief respectively. The two modes knowing and will-to-believe so articulated, that is, in relation to acoustic memory and the conceptual form space : time, are canonical instances of the same modes. The intentional modes desire-to-know and belief in these particular instances are not.
We can see from the two series, the meanings of the Eucharist and Sabbath in the two sets of cadences. The absence of a seventh sign corresponding to the Eucharist in both semioses neither eliminates from consideration the Eucharist nor denigrates it. Instead the theology of semiotic forms concerns only the six radicals of either kind, perceptual or conceptual. This assists us in explaining the similar absence of a seventh conceptual form from the creation narrative. Each of the six conceptual radicals in turn, takes up the significance of the Sabbath event, just as each one of the six perceptual forms acts 'eucharistically', that is, in terms of knowing, and desiring, and knowing-and-desiring, in both conscious and aconscious orders of mind, and in terms of desire-to-know and knowledge-of-will and the hybrid formed by these, once again in both orders, conscious and aconscious. But no pervasive, that is, ultimately general, structure of the perceptual pole more so than acoustic memory functions in accordance with conscious cognitive intentionality - knowing. The justification for its characterisation as canonical for this intentional mode stems from this fact.
The Eucharist remains the frame of reference of the all Eucharistic miracles. They are all couched in terms of appetition and satisfaction subsequently to the J creation narrative, in which we found both desire and knowing not only explicitly incorporated, but central to what the narrative seeks to describe. The three Eucharistic miracles therefore lay the groundwork for the Eucharist. No Eucharistic theology can afford to neglect them. The singularity of the actual Eucharist, its separation from the Eucharistic miracles as different both in kind and status, promotes it as the actual occasion of which they themselves are aspects or modes, if not parts.
Here then, the theory of value operates pari passu with Eucharistic and Trinitarian theology, for it is clear that there can be no particular fourth form of value, just as their is no fourth transcendent identity. Because there is no specific fourth form of value, there is no fourth miracle event. Unique and identifiable values, the true, the good, and the beautiful are distinctly Trinitarian in their formal disposition. This means that the Eucharist stands in relation to them as a veritable summum bonum. It represents value in the generic. The Eucharist figures as the ground of the Eucharistic miracles; thus the sentient mode(s) which it betokens, osmic-gustic, lay the foundation for the unity of all three forms of sentience. The true, the good, and the beautiful are catalogued in the feeding miracle narratives. They are inventories of the intrinsic and actually immanent occasions of value, The Feeding Of The Five Thousand, The Transformation of Water Into Wine, and The Feeding Of The Four Thousand respectively. More than the members of any other taxa, forms of memory are susceptible of unity, and this qualifies the Eucharist as final, and verifies its classification as immanent. If unity is the hallmark, the ultimate measure of immanence, then the Eucharist must necessarily define value in generic terms.
The Eucharist completes the doctrine of intentionality, which we can only outline here, as the immediate task is to provide sufficient examples of the acoustic representation of intentionality. In order for it to rank as signifying value in the generic sense, it must appropriate the significations of all three modes of phenomenal sentience, acoustic memory, haptic memory and optic memory, as to both the cognitive and conative forms of intentionality which they generate, specifically in their canonical instances. The theological significance of the Eucharist lies in these instances of the same perceptual modes of intentionality. We have already observed how systematically Luke gives ample attention to the role of desire in the Eucharist; desire reciprocated on both parts, that of Christ, the paschal victim, and that of his disciples. For Whitehead, the pertinence of desire to 'God' is the same:
He [God] is the lure for feeling, the eternal urge of desire. His particular relevance to each creative act, as it arises from its own conditioned standpoint in the world, constitutes him the initial object of desire establishing him the initial phase of each subjective aim. (Process And Reality: Corrected Edition, p 344)The claim regarding the relevance of the canonical occasion of knowing for Eucharistic theology, has repercussions for theology itself, since the Eucharist qua an occasion of cognitive intentionality is certainly theology. That is to say, theology itself is to the Eucharist, or phrasing the matter more forensically, to osmic-gustic sentience in general, as is technological rationality to haptic memory, or philosophical psychology to acoustic memory. It follows then, that any Eucharistic theology must be incorporative of knowing in its canonical manifestation. If the Eucharist incorporates all three conscious, perceptual forms of memory, it must likewise subsume the cognitive and conative modes which they generate, and proportionately to their hierarchical grading. The canonical form of knowing, philosophical-psychology (meta-psychology), of the very kind pursued in these pages, as in the gospel of Mark itself, and the canonical form of desire, erotic desire, must then needs be resolutely paramount in any Eucharistic 'theology'. We shall pursue this topic in greater detail at a later stage, but it is necessary to note it here.
Luke
The intentional modes idiomatic to the gospel of Mark are both theoretical; both knowing and the will-to-believe are of this kind. Both Lukan modes, desire simpliciter, and belief-in-desire, are practical. Their acoustic representation must therefore be either that of the minor 3rd or the minor 5th. The allusions of the numerals themselves are significant here, and in this, other factors will support them. The pentads have already been linked with Transcendence and with The Transcendent, and the hexads with The Son. The contours of the same hexads are immediately triadic. We noted the occurrence of triplicities in the Christological feeding miracle from its inception: 'On the third day ...' (John 2.1). There is no reason to confuse this with the association made by the creation narrative between The Holy Spirit and Days 3 and 6, since the feeding miracles consist as a class which clearly uses the figures 4 and 7 as Pneumatological tokens. Moreover, there are two different cadences at two different forms of the third degree of the sevenfold scale: the minor and major scale. We can systematically and consistently use the 3rds as acoustic semeia representative of the two Christological modes, desire and belief. Thus they formulate the coherence of intentional modal idioms proper to the gospels of Luke and John.
We must register here that the sum total of cadences major and natural minor scales is four. They are thus perfectly fitted to the representation of the four modes of intentionality, whether simple and conscious, or compound and aconscious, which bespeak the specific theological perspectives proper to each of the gospels. That is, the cadences are morphologically consonant with the gospels as with the deliveries of a natural theology in Ezekiel and The Apocalypse, affiliating each with the four singular tipping points in the annual temporal compass. This squares with the essential and analogous relation of conceptual form space : time and perceptual radical acoustic memory.
Here once again, the theology of The Holy Spirit a propos of the doctrine of intentionality arises. The four hybrid forms of intentionality designate this identity. I have already commented on their appositeness to the role of graphic (optic) structures of the word as 'derivative' or 'plagal' in a sense, and the theological status of The Apocalypse relative to that of the taxonomical texts, Genesis 2.1-2.4a and the messianic series. Hybrid forms of intentionality rely upon existing and identifiable modes, which in either order, are just four in number. In this light then, we may also understand the highly 'intertextual' fibre of that book. The gospels are the premise upon it which rests. There is no fifth form of intentionality, no fifth wheel so to speak, and The Apocalypse does not deal with the biblical doctrines implemented in the stories of 'beginning and end' taxonomically, but typologically. It is no fifth gospel. I do not mean to derogate its purpose and status in asserting this. But clearly it performs otherwise than do the gospels themselves, even given its own clear and purposive integration of the messianic series and the story of creation in the series of seven seals.
The cadential patterns thus align the Pneumatological markers, 4 and 7, with both identities, The Transcendent and The Son. The 7-8 major cadence nominates The Transcendent, and the 4-3 major cadence nominates The Son. In making this observation, I stress that the enumeration refers to major scales. The cadences in the minor scale however, now concern us, since we are addressing the representation of desire simpliciter and analogous belief-in-desire.
These will be equally represented by the minor third. The triad I-II-III determines the polarity in question, and minor scales like major scales, always consist in the ratio of 3:4. The outer degrees of the tetrad are just those degrees of the major scale which resolve towards I and III. Thus VII yields to I and IV yields to III in the major scale. In the minor scale II yields to III and VI resolves to V. These are the equivalents of VII and IV of the major scale, thus they too are the outer members of the subgroup of four tones as opposed to that of three. (If we reckon these same cadences in terms of the relative major, then 2-3 is identical with 7-8, and 6-5 is identical to 4-3.) What concern us in this case, are the third degrees in the minor scales, upwards to which the 2nds resolve.
The canonical instance of desire is represented by the G minor scale; the resolution at the minor 3rd being that of A-A#. The scale consists of G-A-A#-C-D-Eb-F-g, (G minor). (The relative major begins with A# and uses these same tones in the same sequence.) So the cadence here marks the exchange from a conceptual pole to a perceptual pole, since we take A as token of the conceptual form mind : body, and A# as token of haptic memory. The corresponding or analogous mode in the aconscious is F# minor, such that the third is now not A#, but A: F#-G#-A-Cb-Db-D-E-f#, (F# minor). (The relative major begins with A and uses these same tones in the same sequence.) The second degree is announced by G#, the semeia for optic memory, and the third, by A (natural), the semeia for the conceptual form mind : body. In both cases, the acoustic semiosis representing the canonical instance of desire simpliciter, and that representing belief-in-desire, the cadence is measured as the transition from the second to the third degree of the scale, the difference between the intervals being a semitone. Identically to the previous case regarding the Markan modes knowing and will-to-believe, in which both were represented by the same cadence, here the two modes proper to Luke's particular theological orientation, also utilise one and the same cadence: the minor third.
Matthew
The remaining cadences are of both kinds, major and minor. These are the major third, and minor fifth. The gospels whose theological agendas conform typologically to practical and theoretical intentionality, John and Matthew respectively, correlate with the description of the same according to the axioms. They complete a coherent schema whereby the acoustic semiosis represents the transactional relations between the two poles of consciousness as part of the hermeneutic of the Christological miracle narratives. We shall first deal with the gospel of Matthew.
Once more the cadences are of the same kind, occurring at the fifth degree of the minor scale in both representations, conceptual and perceptual. The fifth again heralds transcendence, commensurately with its incidence in both narratives, creation and salvation. It very neatly recapitulates a primary if unspoken theme of the creation, that of will. Both modes, will simpliciter and knowledge-of-will evince the theological programme of Matthew. The pentadic formal outline of his gospel is generally viewed vis-a-vis Torah, and this too supports the assignation of the minor cadences at the fifth as the proper typification of his gospel in relation to the doctrine of intentionality.
The canonical instance of the expression of will simpliciter ensues from the pure conceptual form space, 'the heavens'. Matthew alone, not infrequently uses the periphrasis 'kingdom of heaven' (basilei/a tw~n ou)ranw~n) as noted, synonymously with the phrase 'kingdom of God'. (The thirty-two occurrences of this expression, and his use of the simpler synonym, 'the kingdom', can be found listed in the literature. For an introduction, see Jonathan T. Pennington, The Kingdom Of Heaven In The Gospel Of Matthew. Whether or not the seven 'Kingdom Parables' of Matthew 13 are part of the same proclivity I am unable to judge.) This certainly squares with the transcendental rather than immanentist, leaning of his gospel, and its notable compatibility with Judaic thought patterns. These facts likewise conduce to reading the acoustic semiotic of his gospel in particular, as proposed here.
In both conceptual and the perceptual modes, the cadence at 6-5 marks the two events, transfiguration to the conceptual from the perceptual, and transformation from the conceptual to the perceptual. The canonical instance of the conceptual mode engages E minor, in which the fifth degree will be Cb, the semeia articulating the conceptual form space. Thus the E minor scale consists of E-F#-G-A-Cb-C-D-e, (E minor). As in all other cases of the analogous mode of the alternative polarity, the other tonality, is only a semitone apart. Therefore the scale of F minor places C at the 5th degree: F-G-G#-A#-C-Db-Eb-f, (F minor).
John
The remaining cadence, the major third, corresponds semiologically to the gospel of John, where it articulates both belief simpliciter and desire-to-know. In the first case, in the canonical instance, the scale is that of Cb major (conventionally notated as B major): Cb-Db-Eb-E-F#-G#-A#-c flat, (Cb (B) major) ) In the second, the perceptual mode in its canonical occasion, the C major scale situates the third at E (natural): C-D-E-F-G-A-Cb-, (C major).
The four examples just given, are universally those representative of the specifically canonical instances of intentional modes, and as such, refer to the specific theological idioms of the canonical gospels. (The four instances of hybrid intentional modality refer to The Apocalypse.) The same 'canonical' intervals, tonic, major third, minor third and minor fifth, along with their semiological significations, occur throughout the two hexatonic ('whole-tone') scales according to the first level distinction between conceptual and perceptual categories and their corresponding intentional modes. We refer to the difference between the canonical and non-canonical occasions of a mode of intentionality as that between its essential and accidental properties. Modes in their canonical instances, for example, desire qua erotic desire, and knowing qua meta-psychological knowing, are just those which express the essential properties of the thing. Acquisitive desire, desire in the mode optic memory, as a displacement from the radical, haptic memory, definitionally regulative ('canonical') for desire, is a degraded form of the intentional mode desire. Technological cognition, likewise, is a non-canonical instantiation of the mode knowing, the instance of the mode in haptic memory rather than its rendition in the foundational form, acoustic memory. Neither this therefore, is its first order exemplification. These thus are said to be accidental rather than essential instances of the same. The discussion of canonicity in terms of accidental and essential properties is simply another way of explaining categoreal forms, conceptual and perceptual, as the sufficient and necessary conditions of specific modes of intentionality.
The canonical occasions in both series, in all four modes of the two orders, aconscious and conscious, conceptual and perceptual, can be arranged so as to represent harmonic intervals. Thus they are liable to consonance as signifying the transcendental rather than immanent incidence of these same four forms. That is, they can be arranged as harmonic intervals, in distinction from their possible occurrence as melodic intervals. The two chords so produced articulate the same series of degrees of the major scale sounded in unison, 1-3-5-7: F-A-C-E, ( F major 7th harmonic intervals) and Cb-Eb-F#-A#, (Cb (B) major 7th harmonic intervals). These harmonics however should be distinguished from those which pertain to the pentatonic. The pentatonic contains intervals 1-3-5; but not as in the major 7th, since this includes the possibility a semitonal relation from tonic to seventh if we extend the octave. (The way to combine as many intervals as possible without dissonance, using the pentatonic, is to form the minor/major seventh chord, for example G minor/major 7th which consists of G-A#-D-F, and E minor/major 7th which consists of E-G-Cb-D. Structural acoustika of this kind will figure prominently in the discussion of the 'primordial' (transcendent) nature of God in relation to the doctrine of intentionality.) Since conative, and therefore signified as 'practical' modes of intentionality, establish the foundation of these intervals sounded in unison, or simultaneously, this will suggest the viability of the ascription of desire to what process philosophy calls 'God's primordial nature'. In other words, the first harmonic triad is a minor triad, not a major triad; and this will infer the conscious perceptual mode of desire and the subsequent knowledge-of-will, an aconscious mode; or, the conscious conceptual, and aconscious mode, belief-in-desire, and the subsequent conscious mode will. (That process philosophical theology has omitted from its account the role of will equivalently to that of desire in 'God', tells for its bias in favour of immanence, and its neglect of an equally transcendental perspective.)
We should note here also, the recurrence of the second level distinction effected by the categoreal paradigm. This highlights the presence within the first level classification of six conceptual radicals, of the three forms of unity, which are virtually aconscious forms of memory. Actual forms of memory, actual perceptual radicals of consciousness, are normative for their kind as immanent. So then, we refer to these three aconscious conceptual categories as those of virtual immanence or 'immanence'. Conversely the presence of categories of virtual transcendence or 'transcendence', within the first level classification of six perceptual categories, that is, of the three forms of perceptual imagination, is part of the same second recapitulation of the paradigm transcendence : immanence. If the forms of unity, space : time, male : female, and mind : body (soma) and their corresponding modes of intentionality, execute functions in the aconscious akin to those of (actual) perceptual memory in the conscious, then so too, the forms of imagination mirror the operations of pure conceptual forms also within the aconscious.
The cadences logically preserve this second application of the categoreal paradigm which classes the pure conceptual forms and perceptual imagination over and against the forms of actual immanence (memory) and the forms of unity. For the representation by semeiacoustika of the corresponding intentional modes, follows suit. In the first case, that of transcendence and 'transcendence', the cadences resolve in virtue of the descending scale: major 4-3 marks both belief simpliciter and desire-to-know, and minor 6-5 represents both will simpliciter and knowledge-of-will. Together, these are forms of intentionality native to the theological perspectives of John and Matthew respectively. Both occur in the descending scale.
The two sets of cadences resolving from a lower to a higher pitch represent the intentional modes proper to the theological idioms of Mark and Luke. In the first case these are the 7-8 cadences in major scales, which herald conscious knowing simpliciter, and aconscious will-to-believe; in the second, they are the cadences in the minor scale 2-3, which announce conscious desire simpliciter, and aconscious belief-in-desire. All four instances are resolutions in favour of the upper semeiacoustikon.
Assigning major scales to theoretical modes of intentionality, and alternatively, minor scales to the practical modes, raises interesting questions regarding the various emotive tenors of each. This has been a longstanding point of comment and contention. Any difference between minor and major is popularly referred to as one of mood, so that the former is often spoken of as sounding 'sad', or some such term, whereas the latter is supposedly reckoned as 'open', or 'bright'. Emotional valence is part of the psychology of musical expression, and a variety of opinions argue both for and against its interpretation along such lines differentiating minor and major scales. (Collier and Hubbard for example argue against it, contending that irrespectively of the use of major or minor scales "... whether a given sequence of notes in a musical scale is perceived as happy or sad is determined primarily by the direction of pitch motion and by pitch height; for scales in both the major and minor modes of music ascending higher-pitch sequences were rated as happier than were descending lower-pitch sequences". Richard Parncutt on the other hand, opts for the negative emotional valence of the minor scales.) As interesting as these studies are for the theology of semiotic forms, the significant and essential difference between minor and major sevenfold scales, is the analogy they provide for the clear distinction between practical and theoretical modes of intentionality. Also, the relative major-minor differential provides an analogy for the relation obtaining between cognitive and conative intentional modes where the instantiation is identical. This in turn permits the concurrence of the same modes; the hybrid forms of intentionality, which identify the Pneumatological elements of consciousness.
MARK AND MANTRAYANA
The discussion of the representation of intentional modality in terms of the binary, theoretical and practical, raises the issue of acoustic semeia as themselves practical as well as theoretical. That is, as a contemplative means. The use of music in religious worship is well attested across a very wide spectrum of variant belief systems, theistic and otherwise. But in none of these other than those traditions which have arisen on the Indian subcontinent, has the use of sound in general, and mantra specifically, assumed a more potent and viable technique for development of 'mindfulness'. (For an introduction see Mantra: Sound Of The Infinite at Sutra Journal.) The two traditions which are foremost in the 'technological' application of mantra to meditative insight are those of Sanatana Dharma and Buddhism. In Buddhist heilsgeschichte, the third turning of the wheel is sometimes referred to as 'mantrayana', meaning the mantra vehicle, so important was the power of meditating upon sounds both perceived and conceptualised.
A clear association between practical intentionality and the development of a Christian 'deity yoga' employing the semeiacoustika thus emerges here. It would suggest the contemplative and worshipful use of semeiacoustika as therapeutic influences upon the kinds of processes subsumed under the definition 'practical intentionality'. This is not to proscribe theoretical intentionality from the same. Indeed, it is to recommend contemplation as a necessary aspect of theological understanding and method both. There are abundant precedents for such an approach to both theology as well as philosophy, inclusively of meditative praxis. (See for example Hadot, Pierre, Philosophy As A Way Of Life: Spiritual Exercises From Socrates To Foucault. For an opposing view, see Cooper, John, M., Ancient Philosophies As Ways Of Life: The Tanner Lectures On Human Values. He accuses Hadot of reading back into Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the classical Stoics, and 'even earlier Platonists of late antiquity, like Plotinus in the third century', the practice of 'devotional and spiritually purifying exercises of all sorts', and of having overemphasized 'the ways in which the ancient philosophies resembled religions.') There are other means than Buddhist practices of 'deity yoga' of implementing what is innate to the theology of semeiacoustika. But its recourse to practical notions of identity sorts perfectly with the uniquely transcendental weighting of acoustic semeia.
The difference between the exposition given here of theological-philosophical praxes involving 'mantra' and spiritual exercises in the western Christian tradition, should be obvious, as is the fact that they stem from the gospel itself, not in spite of it. I have already mentioned the three mysteries of body, speech and mind, employed in 'esoteric' Buddhist traditions. These are more readily congenial to the specifically Markan theological agenda as engaged, that is, as commending the semeiacoustika in terms of contemplative practice. The break with time-worn Christian and other traditions which are almost exclusively reliant upon the repetition of words, 'kyrie eleison', or 'Om mane padme hum', for example, could barely be more overt. Sound has an innately abstract quality, and it is just this which reflects its Trinitarian specification as 'Transcendent'; that is, as the incarnate revelation of "The Father". Neither tangible nor visual percepta approach it in this respect. It thus has a significance and meaning quite apart from any purely semantic word or phrase. Any of the twelve tones of the dodecaphonic series exists above and beyond the significations of a given word. Furthermore, various 'mantra' consisting initially of tones of the dodecaphonic series, are perceptible as analogously re-affirming the various meanings of the miracle narratives themselves. Acoustic semiotic sense-percipience can be unchanging, simultaneous and ongoing, or momentary, successive and passing, sub specie aeternitatis or sub specie durationis; just as intervals can be harmonic or melodic. But in either case, it does not call for the constant repetition of the same words or phrases over time.
In the first part of what follows, I shall address the latter: the revelatory capacity of the sevenfold scales in the exposition of the doctrine of intentionality vis-à-vis immanence; the way in which human and sub-human thought, cognitive and conative modes of awareness, or intentional processes, guarantee the realization of the three forms of value 'on earth'. In the second, I shall then further elaborate the pentatonic, that is, the existence of the same in 'God', or 'in heaven', the transcendental nature of God, the 'eternal' ordering of these same opportunities for the actualization of those same three forms of value, as is given by the harmonic intervals constituting the minor/major seventh. These four of tones or semeiacoustika, formulate the architectonic of the pentatonic system.
These remarks serve as requisite only in passing. For one thing, the elaboration of the acoustic semiotic series as upaya or skillful means, demands the detailed exposition of the fundamental dichotomies between pentatonic and hexatonic, hexatonic and heptatonic, and pentatonic and heptatonic. For another, the clearest integration of the phonetic and graphic forms of words which the phenomenon of language attests, means that any full-scale exposition employ mandala, that is, a visual representations coterminous with the acoustic semiosis. We have thus far used the essential components of mandala, colours and shapes, to convey some of the basic tenets of the theology of semiotic forms. But we have not presented these in any coherent format which combine the acoustic and optic semiotic forms subject to the theological tenets of the narratives. That remains a task in hand, as does the consideration of mudra, and its integration in the same enterprise. Mantra, mandala, and mudra are part of one whole and esoteric means of realization of transformation of the self; that is a means of meditative techne which ally themselves with religious traditions espousing samsaric eschatologies. But what should be clear from the several epigraphs at the beginning of this brief chapter, is the importance and usefulness of spiritual practice to any understanding of semeiacoustika.
What then does it mean to allege for example, the F# major and F major scales as 'Markan', or to say that E minor and F minor on the other hand somehow semiologically represent the 'Matthean' theological idiom? I shall give a cursory example to add flesh to the bones of such claims in order to rescue them from the appearance of mere mystical dogmata. And in doing so, I shall utilise the two most readily intelligible, because Christological, components of consciousness, one of which has already been fairly extensively explained. The latter is haptic memory, aetiologically responsible for the canonical occasion of desire; the other is mind, whose primary intentional function is believing.
Resuming the prior example of the F# major scale as signifying in its canonical occasion, the intentional mode knowing, we see that both of these two Christological radicals occurs since their semeiacoustika are A# (erotic desire) and Eb ('metaphysical' belief, necessarily focused upon the realization of the value goodness, uniquely exemplified by the conceptual form mind). In this particular instance A# denotes haptic memory, albeit not in its definitive, that is not in its canonical instance or occasion, as the minor third of the scale G minor, in which it signifies erotic desire, the defining moment of that particular intentional mode as generic. But it does signify something clearly related to the same, desire-to-know. The semiological difference is expressed as that between the minor third, representative of desire (simpliciter), and desire-to-know, whose acoustic signification is the major third. A# is the major third in the F# major scale, and the minor third in the G minor scale. (These two scales also share other semeiacoustika; namely Eb and F (natural).)
We should note here also, the occurrences of the other Christological category, mind simpliciter, and not soma, or mind : body. Its semeiacoustikon is Eb. But it is canonically expressed or instantiated as the major third, identically with desire-to-know, the aconscious and equally Christological form of desire, and the business of haptic imagination. Eb occurs as major third, a cadence, in the Cb major scale. Both scales, F# major and G minor, both serial forms of order, contain this same semeion. In F# it occurs as the sixth degree, and consequently lacks any cadential status, being preceded and succeeded by the interval of a whole tone. In the G minor scale it also occurs as the sixth degree, from which it functions in the resolution to the minor fifth, the degree marking the cadence. Thus it does not itself comprise the resolution of the cadence, although it is party to the same. I shall not expand on this topic here, since my purpose is to give only the briefest example. But the incidence of the semeion Eb, like that of A# is in both cases salient.
In conjunction with this example, let us then take also the signification of the canonical expression of will, since in some sense, this stands in almost complete juxtaposition with desire. Both intentional modes, desire and will, are practical forms of 'reason'. Both that is, guide action, and govern outcomes, in spite of their certain difference regarding the temporalities which they circumscribe, which is due to their polarization; the fact that will functions in terms of the conceptual pole, and desire in terms of the perceptual pole. In its conscious, and therefore normative order, will is intractably tied to future temporality; the equivalent instance of desire manifests determination relative to past temporality. Their aconscious orders invert these ligatures, so that will-to-believe exhibits correlation with the past, and desire-to-know with the future.
The canonical instance of will is provided by the transcendental category space. Its semeiacoustic representation is Cb. (If I designate these two radicals in their canonical instances, haptic memory-desire and space-will, as A# and Cb respectively, instead of the more common designations, Bb and B (natural) respectively, it is for the reason that these preserve clarity of exposition, conforming to the fundamental, that is, first level, differential of conceptual and perceptual components of consciousness.)
Now we see the occurrence of this particular category in the F# scale, at the fourth degree in which it is party to the cadence of the major third, though not the actual moment of resolution of that particular cadence. We should consider the close proximity of the fourth to the fifth degree, that is, the closeness of the tonalities F# major and E minor, in which latter the semeion Cb occurs in its canonical designation. So we may say that the conceptual form space, if not the intentional mode which it entails, somehow plays a role, and a considerable one at that, in the desire-to-know in the canonical exemplification of knowing, if not in desire-to-know itself. (The canonical occasion of desire-to-know is the major third E in the C major scale.) But remarkably Cb, (B natural), does not and cannot occur in G minor. The whole apparatus of that particular scale, representatively of (erotic and canonical) desire, depends on its non-occurrence, since what would otherwise have been the major third degree at Cb, must necessarily be flattened, to allow for the minor third. Thus we might say in the language of process philosophy that both the conceptual form space and its resultant intentional mode will, are 'negatively prehended'. In other words, will, expressly in its canonical moment, simply lies outside the purview of the kind of thing in question which is desire. It does not play any recognizable role in desire in the defining instance of that mode. Of course it does function in various ways in other species of desire. That is, the semeiacoustikon Cb does occur in other specific varieties of the minor scales representing occasions of desire.
Nevertheless Cb does occur, and quite decisively, in the Eb major scale. In this scale, that semeion, Eb announces the category mind in its canonical function of belief, given semiologically as the cadence resolving from fourth to major third at that same semeion, Eb. Cb articulates the tonic or first degree of this scale, very notably since that category, space, and its concomitant intentional mode, will, are readily associated with 'beginning' in the P narrative. Interestingly also, we note that the cadence involving Cb, invokes A#, at the 7th-8th cadence. In this particular case, the sign A# is not itself the moment of resolution constituting the cadence itself, but even so, is party to the resolution at the 8th degree, or tonic, Cb. So we see quite clearly that both components, the perceptual radical haptic memory (A#) and the conceptual radical space (Cb), are active in this scale, denoting canonical belief, belief in the good, as they were too in the F# major scale, denotative of canonical knowing, knowing the true.
This too is remarkable given the apparent fact that just what we mean by will and desire are at such loggerheads with one another; one is characteristically qualified by freedom, the other by constraint. Moreover, the latter semeion, Cb, referring to the conceptual form space, is the instance of a cadential resolution, albeit not in conformity with the canonical expression of the intentional mode will, which is semeiacoustically signified as the minor fifth at Cb, but at least with the albeit non-canonical occasion of will-to-believe. So then, the provenance of will, its categoreal origin, the conceptual form space, is somehow present, or 'positively prehended', in the canonical occasion of belief, just as is the reason, the 'logos', of desire, haptic memory, if not actual desire itself. Of these two categories, the more immediately relevant is the former, since it marks the actual cadence.
There is a further compact between these two highly contrastive entities, and their consequent intentional modes in the canonical form of belief itself, as is inferred by their association. For belief, the cadence or resolution of course, is in virtue of the conceptual rather than the perceptual category; that is, in virtue of the conceptual form space, rather than the perceptual form haptic memory, as just noted. For knowing however, it is the opposite. There the cadence occurs in favour of haptic memory. The F# scale marks the 4-3 cadence as Cb-A#, the cadence being in virtue of A#, designating haptic memory. This confirms what we first encountered in the J creation narrative, a relation of some sort between desire and knowing. Thus the role of the conceptual form space, if not its canonical entailment, veritable will (simpliciter) itself, although certainly will-to-believe, is to canonical belief, analogous as is the role of the perceptual form haptic memory, if not veritable erotic desire, its canonical entailment, although certainly the desire-to-know, to canonical knowing. These conclusions advert to the epistemological quandries surrounding the relation of belief and knowing.
Evidently, the only common factor shared by the radical categories, (conceptual) space and (perceptual) haptic memory, is that their consequent intentional modes in their canonical instances, will and desire respectively, are both practical and not theoretical. (Belief and knowing are both examples of theoretical forms of reason.) Both will and desire dominate our human agency. This common denominator is denoted in that both are signified by cadences in minor rather than major scales. Regarding their disparity, we see for example, that will is characteristically phylogenic in nature, and desire is ontogenic. Will, as the basis of common law and so jurisprudential rationality, just like language, relies on public consensus. In the Torah we see as much to an outstanding degree. Judaism itself can legitimately be characterized in such terms: namely, the phylogenic nature of existence, and the fundamental role of will in human consciousness. On the other hand however, desire stands as a function of the personal and uniquely constituted self. If we were to seek a world 'religion' which exemplifies its scope and value in any account of human and sub-human consciousness, it would be esoteric Buddhisms.
In terms of the same conundrum as formulating one of the basic antonimies of human consciousness, one of the most confounding of aporiai of philosophical psychology, their incongruity is equally illustrated in ostensibly opposed forms of Christian faith: those of Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism respectively. Like the difference between Judaism and Buddhism these too write large the same dilemma between the nature(s) of our existence as belonging to the whole, phylogeny, and yet equally, separably distinct from the same, in our individuality as this specifically given in ontogenic being. In tandem with the fundamental disparity maintained by conceptual and perceptual polarities which they instantiate without remainder, this factor further emphasises their alterity to on another.
I have chosen these two examples, those of (canonical) knowing, and (canonical) belief, for the way in which they posit the roles of both categories, space and haptic memory, and the variant ways in which they invoke if not exactly precisely employ the intentional modes which these then entail, those of will and desire. Both categories are contained within both intentional modes, knowing and belief. I cannot here say the same for the resultant modes of intentionality, will and desire, to which such containment might allude. It is certainly apparent however, that each varies according to the resolution of the cadence. In knowing it consists in virtue of haptic memory, if not exactly conscious desire; and in belief, in virtue of space, if not precisely conscious will. What we can say irrespectively of the 'instrumentality' of desire to knowing, and that of will to belief, however, is that in both instances, the normative and conscious intentional function has been converted into its aconscious copy. If desire as such is not actually integral to the function of knowing, then desire-to-know is, and of a particular species or occasion which is nevertheless related to (canonical) erotic desire itself; just so, if will per se is equally not actually integral to belief, then nevertheless, will-to-believe is indispensable to the same, and that of a particular species or occasion which is nevertheless immediately related to (canonical) will itself.
TRANSMUTATION
Cadences tell for the interpolar relation of analogous and non-analogous categories disclosed in the narratives of 'beginning and end', as being of ultimate structural significance for the constitution of mind or consciousness. Thus they further the meaning of both Christological miracle events to which transition is central. Cadences exist putatively or ideally in the pentatonic. There, they mark the potential for realization of value in God's transcendent nature. In the sevenfold scales they are signified as accomplished, and realized rather than merely potential, in keeping with the theology of immanence, evinced by the figures 4 and 7. The premier objective of this theology of immanence is exposition of the relation of the world to God. It concerns the unity of the three identities in God, as accomplished by human and other than human consciousnesses, manifest in the variety of modes of intentionality consequent upon the twelve categoreal constituents of the same. It is the realization of the three forms of value by living creatures in accordance with the identity of The Holy Spirit, the giver of life, and in accordance with the identity of The Son incarnate:In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. (John 1.4, 5).In such representations of the immanent nature of God, the two nodes or connecting points between polarities of mind are exhibited. The pentatonic scales also contain the triad of tones indicative of intentionality, and the same two nodes or moments at which the resolution of the cadence occurs, 3 and 1. But they do not contain the degrees 4 and 7. So then it is evident that the pentatonic represents the same values as potentials, or as we may say, sub specie aeterntiatis. There are no semitonal intervals in pentatonic scales; nonetheless, they consist of acoustic semeia which formulate both the major and minor triads as harmonic rather than melodic intervals, which at the very least, suggest the possibility of such cadences. They also formulate the minor/major seventh, representatively of the hybrid forms of intentionality; forms which combine both conative and cognitive epistemic processes. If we were to add the degrees IV and VII to their scales, we should clearly discover the same representation of intentional modality which is the denotative charge of the heptatonic scales and the theology of immanence. But these degrees are just those missing from the pentatonic, whose purpose as per the acoustic semiosis is the disclosure of the relation of God to the world. The sevenfold scales alone announce and reflect the actualization of value as accomplished in the world, 'on earth' rather than 'in heaven'.
Transference from conceptual pole to perceptual pole is conveyed in the immanent Christological narrative, The Transformation Of Water Into Wine. Transference from perceptual pole to conceptual pole is conveyed in the 'transcendental' Christology, The Transfiguration. This last episode in the miracle series defers notably and without demur, to the story of creation. There is no doubt as to its complementary relationship to the first narrative of the messianic series, nor concerning its implementation of the conceptual pole reciprocally with that of the perceptual pole. This of course is supported by the isomorphism of the two narrative cycles.
Operative in the two descriptions of change or transference between the two polarities is the reality of value. The two narratives confirm this in their equal use of the generic term 'good' (John 2.10 - kalo\n and Mark 9.5 kalo/n.) The generic meaning of the term refers to value generally, and hence it comports with the direct relationship between both Christological events, certainly both normative Christological events, haptic memory and the conceptual form mind, as these are deployed in the scaraments, Eucharist and baptism respectively. Thus the same word evokes the relationship between Eros and Thanatos that we uncovered in the relevant texts. That it also notably reverts to the formulaic iteration 'And God saw that it was good' in the P narrative goes without saying.
Since both miraculous episodes equally concern the Son, 'Son of man', specifically, we are justified in urging that the term 'good' be taken in its specific sense also; that is, in keeping with the deployment of all three forms of value the good, the true and the beautiful, in accord with an axiological theology of the Trinity. In just this respect, it refers exclusively to the Son, and those constituents of consciousness which are his exemplifications: haptic sentience, in both denominations, imagination and memory, and the two conceptual forms, mind and soma. Transactions between analogous radicals uniformly describable as conscious, always involve the same value. So erotic desire enlists the conceptual form soma in league with the perceptual form haptic memory. It is announced by the transition from the 2nd to the 3rd degrees of the G minor scale. Both exemplify one and the same axiological identity. Belief, another simple mode of intentionality, in the same axiological kind, belief premised on the conceptual form soma, is articulated as the transition from the 4th to the 3rd degrees of the F major scale - F-G-A-A#-C-D-E-f. Here too there is no difference of value between the two transacting polarities.
The same is necessarily true of the hybrid simple modes; that is, the modes desire-and-knowing and will-and-belief. This follows because the transition in either case, conjunct conative desire and cognitive knowing, or conjunct conative will and cognitive belief, occurs at the same juncture. It differs according to whether we refer to its conative mode or its cognitive mode. Nonetheless, these are capable of concurrence, that is of simultaneity. So for example, where there is non-determination as to the tonic, a harmonic interval may announce two modes at the same time. The chord G-A#-D-F consists of the minor G-A#-D and the major A#-D-F. These can obtain simultaneously, without discord. G funtions as the tonic in the conative mode, and F functions as the tonic (8th) in the cognitive mode. Nonetheless, they can combine in the G minor/major seventh chord G-A#-D-F. This is a simple, or conscious mode of intentionality, but it remains indistinct as to its definition vis-a-vis the conative or desiderative and cognitive or epistemic intentional modes, desire and knowing respectively which compose it.
An example of the co-existence of will-and-belief, similarly indeterminately, and in the same instance, involving the kindred relation of haptic memory to the conceptual form soma, is articulated as follows: D-F-A-C. The chord D-F-A, is the D minor chord, with the cadence from A#, the 6th degree to A, the 5th, representatively of will. (This particular case signifies that mode, conscious belief, as focused upon the body (soma), even though the latter is inextricably an aconscious categoreal radical. It is the occasion of a conscious form of intentionality operative within an aconscious category.) Nevertheless it can sound simultaneously with the F major chord, F-A-C, the second harmonic triad of the chord in which the cadence occurs once more from A# to A, but in which these function as from the 4th to the 3rd degrees of the major scale respectively. The full result then is D-F-A-C; once again is a minor/major seventh chord. A is common to both cadences. The four tones involved in each of these two combinations as a whole, the first a minor and the second a major chord, can nevertheless occur without dissonance simultaneously, as the minor/major seventh. In all, there are five members of these four acoustika constituing the pentatonic scale, consisting of this grouping D-F-A-C. What is missing from both arrangements of this scale is the tone G. Nonetheless, it is an essential part of both. In the D minor pentatonic scale the order of the components is D-F-G-A-C; whereas the F major pentatonic scale consists of the sequence F-G-A-C-D. As is the case for sevenfold scales, these two particular sequences (scales) are 'relative' to one another. F major is the relative major of D minor, and D minor is the relative minor of F major, whether we mean the pentatonic or heptatonic.
The same occurs with respect to the designation of potential, transcendental, perceptual consciousness in God. That is, minor/major seventh chords articulate hybrid perceptual intentionality. So that G-A#-D-F will represent the concurrence of both desire, here in its canonical occasion of the erotic, signified by the cadence of minor third at A#, and knowing, signified by one and the same semeion, A#, also the cadence of leading tone to tonic, 7-8. In the first instance the harmonic intervals is articulated as the cadence of minor third, in the second that of major tonic, the first degree of the scale. Just as these can obtain separately of one another, they may also consist simultaneously, sub specie aeternitatis. In just which case they signal hybrid modes of intentionality, attributable to the identity of The Holy Spirit. We should observe in this context, the clear affiliation of that identity in God, and the human couple, as was given in the P creation rubrics of Day 3 : Day 6. The anthropic category bears the clearest relevance to Pneumatological doctrine, and to the judgement of aesthetic value. For the record I repeat here that haptic memory as an incidence of cognitive intentionality, that is, as an instance of knowing, rather than desire, results in technological rationality. Inasmuch as it is not the canonical occasion of that particular mode, it represents a third order instance of what actual knowing is. The first order or canonical occasion of knowing is best describable as philosophical psychology, allowing for the full weight of the cognate 'psyche', meaning of course, the soul, in that term.
Major/minor seventh chords as distinct from the minor/major seventh chord, do not reveal hybrid forms of intentionality. So for example the major/minor seventh chord F-A-C-E represents two particular instances of intentional forms. F-A-C as noted, is the representation of the occasion of belief simpliciter focused upon the category soma, the psychophysical, the body. It signals a conceptual process. On the other hand A-C-E is the representation of a perceptual mode of intentionality, desire, since the minor 3rd occurs at the semeia C, signifying acoustic imagination. There can be no 'simultaneity' of belief and desire, since they are categoreally defined at the first level as conceptual and perceptual respectively. Moreover the two semeia involved, A and C, are not one and the same. The same applies to the collateral entities in each case; namely, will-to-believe, signified as F, and knowledge-of-will, signified as E. Moreover, this chord, the major/minor seventh incorporates a semitonal interval, E-F, even if it does so, beyond the compass of a single octave beginning with the tonic at F. The occurrence the semitone is formally proscribed in pentatonic scales. The representation of hybrid modes of intentionality as the responsibility of the minor/major seventh harmonic interval is consistent and distinct in this manner.
The same representations of the aconscious order transpire with equal consistency. I shall not detail them here, since they have been fully set out axiomatically. However, these hybrid modes, both conscious and aconscous, all of which are attributable to The Holy Spirit, pertain to the pentatonic. The hybrid intentional modes which they articulate, whether conscious or aconscious, will be dealt with in addressing the pentatonic, and its characteristic disclosure of the transcendental rather than immanent nature of God. This is of vital importance to understanding the miracle story, The Feeding Of The Five Thousand. But neither can its decipherment be reckoned without due attention to the Pneumatological feeding miracle story.
If conscious intentionality, whether it be of the conative or cognitive form, or of their hybridisation, is clearly marked by identity of value, then aconscious intentionality is just as clearly signified by axiological heterogeneity. Examples of this are as follows: the incorporation of beauty by the good, represented by the transition G#-A, which might be belief-in-desire (minor II-III), or will-to-believe (major VII-VIII (I)) or their hybrid; or yet the subsumption of the good by the true, as represented in the case of E-F, which likewise, can be in either of the two same modes, belief-in-desire, and/or will-to-believe, or the third established by their hybrid. The axioms cover all such possibilities.
The next task is to resume the manner in which these various processes are relevant to the chains of events incorporating the two sacraments, baptism and Eucharist, and thus the theologies of death and Eros. Certainly the phenomena of death and sexual love (orgasm), are patently connected with the fact of change, to say nothing of the similitude sustained by Eros and Thanatos themselves. But there is yet another dichotomy or binary which the theology of semiotic forms is obliged to assess, and to which we referred at the beginning of this section, in connection with the theology of value: the subject-object. This is also inevitably part of any discussion of intentionality, from the very core of which it follows. Intentionality wittingly or not, posits a relation between the 'object' so called of the intentional processes and the prehending person or 'subject'. In framing these enquiries within the contexts supplied by the three narrative cycles of 'beginning and end', we can not do better than to base matters upon the categoreal paradigm transposed into the dialectic of identity : unity.
This page was updated 23.04.2022.
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