Tablets of Destiny (From Chinese Astrology)

      "At the beginning of Chinese history stands a tablet which in somemysterious way is supposed to be connected with an explanation of theuniverse.  It has been reconstructed by later Chinese thinkers and ispictured in the hands of Fuh-Hi [1] asan arrangement of the kwa figuresin preserved in the Yih King.  Considering theseveral traces of Babylonian traditions in ancient Chinese literature andfolklore, would it not be justifiable to identify the tablet of Fuh-Hi with theancient Babylonian “Tablet of Destiny” mentioned in the Emmeduranki Text, a copy of which was discovered in the archives of Asurbanipal and was said to contain the “Mystery of Heaven andEarth?”

  Emmeduranki[2], king of Sippar, isthe seventh of the aboriginal kings, and he declares that he received thedivine tablet “from Anu[Bel, and Ea]."

Site of Sippar

    Chinesesages have their own interpretation of the phrase “the mystery of  heavenand earth.”  They would at once associate the words “heaven” and “earth”with the two opposing principles yangand yin, and the question is whether among the ancient Sumerians therewas not a similar tendency prevalent.  It seems not to be impossible that the Chinese tablet in thehands of Fuh-Hi is thesame as the “Tablet of Destiny” of the Sumerians, and when some Assyriologist hasinformed himself of the primitive Chinese conception of this mysterious tablet,he may be able to throw some additional light on the subject." [3]

One of the dragons from TheNine Dragons handscroll (九龙图／九龍圖),painted by the Song-Dynasty Chinese artist Chen Rong (陈容／陳容) in1244 CE. Ink and some red on paper.

[1]  Fuh-Hi (伏羲), the mythical founder of Chinese civilization, who livedfrom 2858 to 2738 B.C. The writers of Chinese historytell us that the Emperor Fuh-hi was living in the time of Noah.

 

Fuh-Hi and his sister and consort Nuwa.  Hanging scroll,8th century AD (Tang Dynasty).

[2]   En-men-dur-ana(also Emmeduranki) ofSippar was an ancient Sumerian king, whose name appears in the Sumerian King List as theseventh and penultimate pre-dynastic king of Sumer (before ca. 2900 BC). Hisname means "chief of thepowers of Dur-an-ki," while "Dur-an-ki" in turn means "the meeting-place of heaven andearth" (literally "bond of above and below").En-men-dur-ana's city Sippar was associated with the worship of the sun-god Utu, later called Shamash inthe Semitic language. Sumerian and Babylonian literature attributed thefounding of Sippar to Utu. A myth written in a Semitic language tells ofEmmeduranki subsequently being takento heaven by the gods Shamash and Adad, and taught the secretsof heaven and of earth. In particular, Emmeduranki was taught arts of divination, suchas how to inspect oil on water andhow to discern messages in theliver of animals and several other divine secrets. En-men-dur-ana was extremelysignificant to the Sumerians, as he was the ancestor from whom all priests of the sun God had tobe able to trace descent.

 

Sumerian "cosmology map" derived from Tablet ofDestiny.

[3]  At the Instituteof Fine Arts of New York University, I regularly sat in raptfascination in ProfessorDonald Hansen’s lectures concerning the history of ancient Middle Eastern Art and alsoin Professor Alexander Soper’sChinese Art classroom.  Frequently I wish Icould return to the Institute and its sounds, moods and, especially, its views.  (However, I do not miss the parades constantly going by – you wouldn’t believe how many – on Fifth Avenue.  I hate parades and they're all, with the notable exceptions of Steuben Day and Pulaski Day, untidy and unruly beyond belief.)  These esteemed scholars taught me much ofwhat was known then (and was still being discovered) about ancient trade routes and the remarkable influences geographicallyremote parts of the ancient world exerted on each other.  Could anything possibly be more interesting?  The first part of this messy,incoherent-seeming post is excerpted from Paul Carus’ excellent Chinese Astrology (LaSalle,Open Court Press, 1907).  Notes 1and 2 above were assembled from other sources. Someday, some way, I’d like to be able to make sense out of everythingthat has always confused me and confuses me now.

Confucius/Old World (Modern Lovers)

I.

Wu Daozi (680–740), Portrait of Confucius

        In 527 [BC] Cheng Tsai, the mother of Confucius, died and he had both his parents buried together in Fang, his father’s former house, under one tumulus.

        The Confucian Analects are not a systematic treatise on ethics, but have the appearance of mere anecdotes, being sayings of the master, mostly introduced by the simple words, “The Master said,” and sometimes mentioning the occasion on which certain sayings of his had been uttered.  Confucius was an extremely conservative man and his ideal lay in the past.  The great patterns of conduct were the sages of yore, and he selected from them as models of conduct the most famous rulers, such as Yao, Shun, the Duke of Chou, and King Wan.

Confucian Analects (Rongo Analects)

        Confucius is frequently represented as a rationalist, whose religion, if it may be called so, consisted purely of practical considerations of life.  But this is not quite true, for his belief in mysticism is fully demonstrated by his reverence for the Yih King, the canonical book of mystic lore of China, with reference to which he said in his advanced age:  “If some years could be added to my life, I would give fifty of them to the study of the Book of Changes, for then I would have avoided great errors.”

I Ching (Yih King): King Wen Arrangement

        Confucius is credibly believed to be the author of an appendix to the Yih King, the Book of Changes, called “The Ten Wings”, which proves that this ancient document was to him as enigmatical as it remained to all succeeding generations.

Confucius Meets Lao-Tze

        In order to study the archives of antiquity, Confucius went to the capital of the empire, the city of Lo, where the most famous thinker of the age, Lao Tan, better known under the title Lao Tze (i.e., “the old philosopher”) held the position of keeper of the archives.  The story has it that these two great representatives of a radically opposed conception of life met personally, but their interview was not satisfactory to either.  Lao-Tze insisted on simplicity of the heart and expected that manners and rituals would adjust themselves, while Confucius proposed to train mankind to genuine virtue and especially to filial piety by punctilious observance of the rules of propriety.  The interview is recorded by Ssu Ha Hsien, and had been retold with literary embellishments by the Taoist litterateur Chuang Tze.

Life and Works of Confucius, 1687

        Confucius taught the Golden Rule in these words:

"I so pu yu, mo shi yu jen."

“What ye will not have done to you, do ye not unto others.”

II.

Well the old world may be dead --

Our parents can't understand.

But I still love my parents

And I still love the old world.

Oh, I had a New York girlfriend

And she couldn't understand

How I could --

Still love my parents --

And still love the old world.

So I told her:

I Want To Keep My Place In The Old World --

Keep My Place In The Arcane.

'Cause I still love my parents,

And I Still Love The Old World

Strongly Influenced By (90th Birthday Tribute)

     A friend wrote to me yesterday morning to let me know that today marked the 90^th birthday of a high school teacher we both liked and admired.  Harry Goldgar was one of those pivotal teachers who, through direction and indirection, gave you access to a lot of useful information as well the tools to build on what he taught you as you progressed through the rest of your education and into life. 

     Our school, which I have mentioned here previously, was a small, very traditional boy’s boarding school in Connecticut.   Single-sex education having largely gone out of style, I don’t know whether places like this even exist any longer.  Certainly, our school today (from what I know about it through reading alumni mailings) seems completely unrecognizable to me.

     The just post-Summer of Love 1960s was a fascinating period to attend a rigorous, traditional New England boarding school.  Rigid disciplinary rules were still in place and strictly enforced at a time when such rules were being questioned and contested throughout the culture, which brought any number of things into high relief.  Attending a school like this was a lot like going into business early.  If you were lucky and sufficiently practical, you learned to survive (and possibly thrive) among your peers and to identify and navigate all sorts of competing power groups.  It was a mostly good experience for me because it gave me confidence and taught me self-reliance I never would have acquired if I had remained at home with my family.  Also, our school was much, much better than the public school where I had previously been enrolled, which was crude and rough in a Blackboard Jungle sort of way and provided a comparatively desultory education.  My boarding school, on the other hand, was superficially, at least (the surface always being potentially deceptive), tweedy, pipe smoking, genteel and scholarly.  Because I was at my most energetic and educable then, I got a lot out of it and made a couple of lifelong friends.

     For some time I had been planning to write something for this space called Strongly Influenced By.  The title came to me one day during one of my usual confusion spells when I was trying hard, without much luck, to find myself on the map.   In the way they do in desert island movies and reality TV survival shows, I first tried to discern and locate some life landmarks and then after I found a few, tried to remember why they were landmarks for me.

     The teacher I mentioned, Harry Goldgar, who now lives in New Orleans, was responsible for a fairly large number of important signposts in my life and I had a good time yesterday, in the middle of some highly weird hubbub, thinking about some of them:

Bildungsroman, Robert Musil, Alain-Fournier, Carl Gustav Jung, Guy Davenport, giving Greek names to charming cats, cats in general even though I was highly allergic to cats then, Editions Gallimard and Flammarion books lining rows of shelves, Proust, Gide, Faulkner, owning complete sets of anything, afternoon cups of tea and conversation, City Lights books, bookstore and logo, the 8^th Street Bookshop, Magister Ludi, maintaining good mental discipline and organization, a Master of Sacred Theology degree from the Sorbonne with the beautiful academic robes that went with it, I Ching, mixing modern and ancient things, combining appropriate respect and a healthy reverence for the past with skepticism and  healthy irreverence, taking time out and time off from all of the above, Edward Gorey, how to set type, lay out newspaper columns and pages and write headlines, my first (and last) séance. 

     Harry was much younger then but he was still one of our more senior, mature teachers and certainly, in his quiet and polite way, our most sophisticated.  At a time when youth was overvalued, he taught me (mainly by inference and subtle comments) to discern value, to be able to figure things out for myself and to have confidence in my final conclusions based on the fact that I had carefully considered, rejected and discarded many previous conclusions.

     When life feels far too slippery, it means everything to find the things that grip, that help you sort through to what might possibly make sense.

     So happy birthday today.  I’m terribly sorry to have been too out of touch.  I hope you’re well.  I’m better today than I was yesterday because of remembering and valuing these memories.