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As soon as I read that, I was all "what's the significance of the chess game? And frankly, I didn't buy it. Especially since we not only see them playing chess, but also eavesdrop on a bit of their conversation. That's right - Miranda accuses Ferdinand of cheating, and when he says he wouldn't do so "for the world", she says "if you were going after twenty kingdoms, I would allow it" or, maybe, "you ought to go after twenty kingdoms, and I would not mind.
It's clear that Shakespeare wanted to give the audience one last look at the happy couple being happy. The choice of chess, however, is not strictly speaking necessary, and therefore has to have some sort of significance. Nevermind the naysayers - sometimes 2. Chess is "the game of kings", and was so during Shakespeare's time.
Ferdinand is the Prince of Naples who will someday be king; Miranda will be queen. Interestingly, although it's the game of kings, the queen is the most powerful piece on the board. Thy bastard shall be king. I've not read the play, but I tracked down some commentaries to investigate the context, and it turns out that Queen Elinor is a bit like Lady Macbeth, urging her king in this case, her youngest son, King John to do what she wants.
She is falsely accusing Constance, the mother of Arthur, of adultery hence the term bastard and of being a whore a second meaning of "queen" in conjunction with "check" - as in checkmate , despite knowing that Constance is neither. And the phrase "Thy bastard shall be king" is not a command, but one of those "As if" sorts of constructions, at least in Shakespeare's time.
One of those "this is what you want and why you want it" moments, which actually tells you more about the speaker than about the subject of the sentence. But I digress. As a sidenote, for chess aficianados out there, the queen didn't actually become the most powerful piece on the board until the early 16th century, so Queen Elinor's lines are one of the many anachronisms found in Shakespeare's work.
In earlier times, the queen could only jump three spaces, and did not have the run of the board. In chess, in Shakespeare's time as now, the Queen has the run of the board - she may move as many spaces as she likes or as are possible in any direction - horizontal, vertical, or diagonal. The King, on the other hand, is far more confined and can move only one space at a time in any direction. In Shakespeare's time, as in T. Eliot's The Wasteland 's second part, "A Game of Chess", chess could be a metaphor for sex - you move here, I move there, etc.
Not that they were having sex - they were actually playing a board game. But a loaded one. In Shakespeare's time, chess was extremely popular - it had been a great favorite of Queen Elizabeth I's - and it was everywhere recognized that Naples was the center of the chess world. Howard Furness, editor of an edition of the play that can be found online at GoogleBooks in its entirety it's in the public domain , has nearly three full pages of notes between pages , devoted to information such as this and interpretations by Dr.
Samuel Johnson and others none of whom I agree with, actually. The object of the game of chess is to capture the opposing King. Miranda, the future queen, has already captured Ferdinand, the opposing future king, and has therefore already won the game. The "reveal" is akin to a play within a play, showing the same sort of "wrangling" unfolding, but writ small. At least one commentary I found in Some Textual Difficulties in Shakespeare by Charles David Stewart, suggests that the five-lines above are supposed to telegraph the couple's happiness to the audience - something that cannot be done if we are to believe that Ferdinand has won the game by cheating a suggestion of many over the years , or that Miranda has actually upbraided him for it in a serious manner.
Rather, Stewart proposes the following which comes down to a specific staging of the pieces on the board , which makes perfect sense to me: As a matter of fact, the trouble here is not one of this word or that, for they are all perfectly familiar, nor of a particular phrase nor yet any doubtful grammatical construction.
The Tempest is a very strange and complex work. Any real insight into the work begins with an understanding of the nature of the author of the work. Unless the nature of the author is understood the nature of the work cannot be understood. And the nature of the author can only be understood if the ultimate potentialities possible for man are understood.
The subject, although dealing with matters generally considered supernatural cannot be divorced from the natural processes of nature because it pertains to the study of potentialities that exist in nature.
This is the study of the transformations of certain creatures in the course of their lives - a phenomena known as metamorphosis. The immediate effect of metamorphosis is the transition from one level of environment to another. For example, the tadpole, strictly a water animal, metamorphoses into a frog, gaining the ability to live both in water and on land. The Larva, strictly a land animal, metamorphoses into a butterfly, leaving the land behind and gains the ability to function in the atmosphere beyond the earth.
In metamorphosis, the first form, and sometimes several of the early forms, may deviate so radically from the mature form as to obscure their membership in the same species or even genus: the early form masks the mature type and is consequently called a larva. Insects and crabs, worms, snails, mollusks, and echinoderms are the groups in which metamorphosis is most frequent. Among the vertebrates the frogs and salamanders are familiar examples of metamorphosis. The blind, crawling larva, weaves a cocoon about itself.
It stays in this cocoon as if dead for a period of time. During this period which is known as chrysalis, it is inanimate as if in a tomb, but at the end of this period the cocoon is broken open, and there emerges instead of a blind creeping larva, a radiantly beautiful butterfly which soars away into the air.
The life which animated the larva has effected its transition not only from one form to another, but also from one "level" of environment to another. It is a mistake to suppose that the potentiality of metamorphosis applies only to lower life forms.
Nature is conservative with Her stratagems and replays the card at a higher turn of the spiral. Pertinent information can be found in the Bible. The stages of metamorphosis and the details of the episodes in the life of the man Jesus in the Gospels are closely related.
Even the word matches. Where Jesus was transformed on the mount the original text used the word "metamorphoun", i. Consider the crucifixion in The Gospels. Instead of one man undergoing the crucifixion, there are three. Just as in the metamorphosis of the butterfly there are three stages.
Unregenerate man, ignorant and helpless, is the stage between the ovum and larva - the unrepentant thief. The man who is beginning to awake and seek the higher kingdom is the second stage from larva to pupa - the repentant thief. And the third stage from pupa to imago, the unfolded, enlightened soul - is Jesus himself. These three are shown crucified in the Gospel records, because it is these three who must die before the metamorphosed creature can emerge.
Following the crucifixion Jesus was enclosed in white cloth just as the larva is enclosed in the white material of the cocoon. Then he lay for a period of time within his cocoon of gauze as if dead, just the larva while in the process of metamorphosing into a butterfly.
At the end of the time it was not the same man who came forth, but one who had entered a higher kingdom in nature, that kingdom above the kingdom of man. After his metamorphosis Jesus had a brief contact with his old environment. Just as the butterfly perches on its branch waiting for its wings to dry. Then he ascended.
There ends our record of the man Jesus. This is incomprehensible from the viewpointof ordinary man. Why did Jesus not remain with his friends giving them the aid and teaching he had given them before?
Why should he, filled with love and compassion, have deserted his friends just when they needed him most? There is no explanation from our viewpoint.
But viewed as an example of metamorphosis there is a ready explanation. Just as a grain of wheat in becoming a plant goes out of the sphere of the life of germs; just as an acorn in becoming an oak goes out of the life of acorns; just as a caterpillar in becoming a chrysalis dies for caterpillars, and in becoming a butterfly goes completely out of the sphere of observation of caterpillars, in the same way the superman goes out of the sphere of observation of other people, goes out of their historical life.
Something strange happened two thousand years ago in that barren, sun baked land of Palestine. Something so extraordinary that two thousand years later the world is still trying to understand. A stage show was enacted. But this stage show was very different from what we normally associate with stage shows, for this one involved real people, and real events, in real nature, and even a real death of the protagonist. This stage show was designed to exhibit to the world the real possibilities of man.
And the crucifixion was carefully calculated to enable Jesus of Nazareth to make the transition to the next higher kingdom in nature. It had even been rehearsed. Jesus had attended schools in Persian, India and Egypt that gave the three phases of the teachings to man. As the book of Revelations says, he had already been crucified in the initiation ceremony in Egypt.
When the metamorphosis of Jesus occurred his physical body was translated into a body of light causing the material in which he was wrapped to collapse, and causing some would maintain his image to be imprinted on the shroud in which he was wrapped.
Thereafter he had complete control over his physical vehicle at a subatomic level, possessing the ability to dematerialize or materialize his physical form at will, as his appearance in the upper room with the locked doors shows. For the real superman the elements of time and space are surmounted. He has telepathic contact with all other supermen whenever or wherever they may be. This is a phenomena referred to in the Bible as "the communion of the saints".
He also has access to all knowledge and events that have taken place on the planet. The real superman is also immortal. In this best of all possible worlds perfection means permanence and imperfection mean impermanence.
Why was the life of Jesus used to publish to the world the possibilities of man becoming superman? At the time Jesus lived there existed in many countries two religions side by side. One dogmatic and ceremonial, the other mystical and esoteric. This other, hidden religion, was known as the religion of The Mysteries. Those only were admitted to it who had gone through special preparation called Initiations.
What is not so well known is the fact that the life of Jesus as recorded in the Gospels represents the same Mystery as that which was performed in Egypt on the Island of Philae, in Greece at Eleusis, and in other places. The only difference being that one was performed as a drama, and the other took place in real life, amid real nature. In the Mysteries special techniques were utilized to enable the temporary enhancement of the consciousness of ordinary men so a temporary contact could be effected with beings from the higher kingdom in nature.
Initiates of the Mysteries claimed that the gods were contacted during their celebrations. The greatest minds of antiquity were left with an experience that inspired them with awe for the remainder of their lives.
Of course scholars of today are too clever to believe such a tale as this. Therefore in their studies of the Mysteries they examine all the other records furnished by the Initiates, but this very one which is the key to the entire thing, they dismiss entirely. As the old proverb has it, "he who is clever is stupid". For if the Mysteries effected a contact with superman this would explain why in them man was shown the possibility of entering the higher kingdom in nature. At the time of Jesus, conditions in the world had become so degenerate that it was realized the Mysteries could not endure much longer.
The life of Jesus was used by the beings behind the Mysteries to publish their message to the world so that it might remain for all mankind to read. Of course, as usually happens with such things, the special information given in the Gospels about man's potentialities has been distorted into the farcical notions of modern Christianity.
Instead of the kingdom of heaven denoting the higher kingdom in nature, it is a paradise where people enjoy eternal bliss after one short life on earth presuming they do exactly what the people who have distorted the doctrine to gain control over their minds tell them to do. With the end of the Mysteries our formal contact with these higher entities came to an end.
But there are cases since where, very rarely, individuals have attained to the stage of metamorphosis, to the level of the threshold to the next higher kingdom in nature beyond mankind. Francis Bacon was one such man. He was a superman - a walking god on the threshold of becoming a true god. As Helena Blavatsky said, "The rare efflorescence of a generation of inquirers".
Superman is defined by his state of consciousness. As far as public record goes only one man in modern times understood the possibilities of human consciousness.
This man was George Gurdjieff. This is aionic consciousness, the consciousness of superman. This was the state of consciousness possessed by Francis Bacon. All other states of consciousness are embryonic, fragmentary, and illusory.
Real consciousness functions at a level unimaginable to embryo consciousness. The power of memory is maximized sinceall data is always available. Cerebral celerity is maximized. A higher order of consciousness exists inconceivable to embryo consciousness. Francis Bacon combined the powers of observation and memory of Thomas Wolfe Look Homeward Angel combined with the aionic consciousness. A miracle, indeed! And left the signs of his passage wherever he went.
Laneham lean ham. Primaudaye first to see day Greene and Peele green peel. Marlowe experimenting in catering to the public taste-more low. Montaigne Mountain. All according to his stated method in Argenis , demonstrating his mature expression form under the aegis of Pallas Athena shake speare whose speare of light when shaken caused the darkness of ignorance to fade away!
The small, seemingly pellucid play of The Tempest, presents an intractable cognition hurdle for the linear consciousness of Homo Sapiens. Products of aeonic consciousness, such as The Tempest , can only be perceived piecemeal by Homo Sapiens, like small-scale snapshots in lieu of full-scale holographic images.
Moreover, in addition to realizing our understanding of The Tempest is severely limited because The Tempest comprises an almost unbelievable array of different levels of meaning melded into one unified whole, one must also realize that understanding The Tempest requires a dual process involving the analysis of both symbol and "series and order". In a mind such as Bacon's the consciousness of the soul self, that in ordinary man exists sealed off from the waking consciousness and is experienced only in the symbolic content of dreams , has been merged with the waking consciousness.
The Tempest is expressed in the mode of thought customary to dreams. That is to say, in a basically symbolic mode of thought. Thus you can afford infinite attention to "series and order", but unless you understand the symbolism that allows you to follow the meaning of the elements that make up the "series and order" your time is wasted.
Presenting more background on symbolism before dealing with the "series and order" of the high-level mapping in this part of the study will be well worthwhile. In my essays at www. One glaring exception is the Masonic symbolism in The Tempest. In the future I hope to address this. As an aside, I will note here that in the Masonic temples the chequered floor denotes the essence of the reality behind the outward seeming of things. This corresponds with the chessboard in the unveiling in The Tempest.
Another Masonic parallel is the legend in the third degree of the building of the temple of Solomon. The Temple of Solomon is a model of the universe, and corresponds with the microcosmic model of The Tempest. In Masonic symbolism this denotes the union of man with the ultimate reality that occurs as a result of transforming oneself into a true model of the universe. Bacon also refashioned the rituals of the existing brotherhood to reflect the Mysteries.
This parallels the incorporation of the doctrine of the Mysteries, in The Tempest. In the present study in order to avoid being lost in the maze of meaning I have tried to apply a more focused approach by concentrating on Bacon's Discovery Device. Information presented in this part of the study will enable a significant step toward realizing the aim of understanding the subject of my focus. In the immortal pledge of Joe Isuzu, " You have my word on that!
Before proceeding onward down the road less traveled , a glance back at the road just traveled will be helpful. In previous parts of this study I followed Bacon's practice of utilizing allusion, and left hints pointing toward the denouement I will now make.
I began with the concept of "hide in plain sight", and ended that part with an allusion to "Through the Looking Glass". In I showed all action in the play leads to the one episode in the eighth scene on the isle where Prospero draws aside the curtain and discloses Ferdinand and Miranda playing at chess together. Now it is time to reveal what was hidden in plain sight:. Proof for this claim will be presented in this article.
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