Metatron's Cube

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Metatron's Cube
[youtube:10v2stvl]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOqg5bPZ0HE[/youtube]10v2stvl]

Related:
Fibonacci's Fractals
[youtube:10v2stvl]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bE2EiI-UfsE[/youtube]10v2stvl]

[Wimpy]

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Thanks Wimpy, we need to do a show sometime...  

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Notes on Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino                        


The Structure of the novel

Calvino favored non-traditional, imaginative structures for his novels, and no two are precisely alike. Using The
Travels of Marco Polo as his point of departure, he created a model for Invisible Cities that alternates between
an ongoing dialogue (between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan) and short, jewel-like descriptions of imaginary
cities. The cities fall into eleven categories, and each category features five model cities; thus there are fifty-five
cities in all. The second through eighth chapters each have five cities that appear in a pattern whereby no two
categories are repeated, one category is removed, and one new one is added. This can be displayed graphically:

1. mem, mem, des, mem, des, sig, mem, des, sig, thi

2.                                                mem, des, sig, thi, tra

3.                                                         des, sig, thi, tra, eye

4.                                                                sig, thi, tra, eye, nam

5.                                                                      thi, tra, eye, nam, dea

6.                                                                            tra, eye, nam, dea, sky

7.                                                                                  eye, nam, dea, sky, con

8.                                                                                         nam, dea, sky, con, hid

9.                                                                                                  dea, sky, con, hid, sky, con, hid, con, hid, hid


                                                                                                                                                                     
As you can see, the first and ninth chapters are twice as long (ten cities each), and do not follow the rules of the
intermediate chapters. In order to set his pattern in motion (and wind it down at the end), Calvino had to create
first and final chapters that work, literally, as bookends, and which by necessity had to repeat cities of the
earliest and last categories.

Is the order of the city categories significant? It is seemingly arbitrary, but notice that the last category to appear
is "Hidden cities" which seems to be a lighthearted joke by Calvino. However, the dialogue between Polo and
Khan often mirrors the content of the cities in some fashion. The first half of the novel stresses the theme of
communication (esp. semiotics) which matches the many "Cities and signs." The end of the novel introduces
new themes concerning the moral and amoral nature of civilization, and this is most often scene in the "Hidden
cities."

Ultimately, what is important about Calvino's structure for the novel is that it is arbitrary and infinitely
repeatable. The back-and-forth alternation between the dialogue and the descriptions of the cities creates a
meta-dialogue, or a dialectic a la Hegel. Furthermore, the medium is the message, as Marshall McLuhan would
say.


Fibonacci's Sequence

The first chapter, and its inverse, the ninth chapter, summon to mind the Fibonacci sequence. Fibonacci was a
13th century Italian mathematician who died around the year 1250. Perhaps it is no coincidence that Marco Polo
was born c. 1254. Calvino's novel is set (rather loosely) in the 13th century, so it would be appropriate for him to
subtly invoke Fibonacci. The Fibonacci sequence is a series of numbers in which each number is the sum of the
two numbers that preceded it. Thus:

0 , 1 , 1 , 2 , 3 , 5 , 8 , 13 , 21 , 34 , 55 , etc . . .

Like the structure of Invisible Cities, the Fibonacci sequence can theoretically be carried out to infinity. More
importantly, it begins, seemingly from nowhere, with a repetition of one (as Invisible Cities begins with a
repetition of "Cities and desire").  Also, as the sequence progresses, any number divided by the number that
follows it will approximate the golden ratio more and more closely. If one is inclined to privilege the golden ratio
with mystical significance, then one could argue that Calvino invokes Fibonacci and the Hegelian Dialectic in
the structure of the novel, implying perhaps, that the understanding between Polo and Khan moves closer and
closer to perfection or true harmony with each passing cycle of dialogue/cities. The novel has no traditional
plot, and yet it seems to move towards a satisfying resolution in the end nonetheless.



Venice as Climax

While the book eschews a traditional Shakespearean plot arc, Calvino adds emphasis to the middle of the novel
via his introduction of Venice as a trope. Shakespeare placed the climax in the middle of a play (Act 3), and it
was the moment of greatest dramatic tension with regards to the play's central conflict. Invisible Cities has no
conflict, per se, but as it is a meditation on the nature of cities and the civilization from which they spring, the
exact middle of the novel serves a fulcrum or place of equilibrium. Here the conversation between Polo and
Khan begins to shift subtly from pure imagination to a real city, Venice. The second half of the novel
increasingly reminds the reader of real-world urban problems; sometimes to harrowing effect.

Calvino marks the beginning of this fulcrum with a very short piece of dialogue at the end of chapter five.

Marco Polo describes a bridge, stone by stone.
"But which is the stone that supports the bridge?" Kublai Khan asks.
"The bridge is not supported by one stone or another," Marco answers, "but by the line of the arch that they
form."
 Kublai Khan remains silent, reflecting. Then he adds: "Why do you speak to me of the stones? It is the arch that
matters to me."
 Polo answers: "Without stones there is no arch."        

By drawing the readers attention to the metaphor of the arch, Calvino not only justifies his fragmentary
structure for the novel, composed as it is from little "stones," but he also summons to mind the concept of the
keystone in the middle. This bit of dialogue, and the longer dialogue at the beginning of chapter six, marks the
middle of the novel. And it is at the beginning of chapter six that Kublai Khan confronts Marco Polo about the
subject of Venice.

"There is still one of which you never speak."
Marco Polo bowed his head.
"Venice," the Khan said.
Marco smiled. "What else do you believe I have been talking to you about?"
The emperor did not turn a hair. "And yet I have never heard you mention that name."
And Polo said: "Every time I describe a city I am saying something about Venice."

Like Polo and the Khan, the reader compares each city in the novel to his or her own Ur-city. And Polo illustrates
this point eloquently with the two cities that follow this dialogue and open chapter six, Esmeralda and Phyllis,
which are both cities of canals that closely resemble Venice.


The Theme of Desire and the Names of the Cities

All of the cities in Invisible Cities bear feminine names. This point is somewhat lost upon English readers since
our cities are neuter. However, for the traveler Marco Polo who misses his homeland and the comforts that
come with it, each city is female and the object of desire. The names are mostly exotic and occasionally hint at
the qualities of the city in some manner. So, for instance, the spider web city is Octavia. Invisible Cities is
fundamentally a dialogue between two men, and so the theme of desire in the novel is consistently a very male
desire in which woman are chased. This idea is explored quite literally in Cities and desire 5, Zobeide. This is the
city whose street plan is the result of the many dreaming men who chased an imaginary woman to the site of
Zobeide. But Calvino suggests that unbridled desire has resulted in "this ugly city, this trap."


The Green Theme and the Continuous Cities

It is difficult to read Invisible Cities today without seeing the theme of environmentalism. This theme is most
evident in cities such as Leonia, Trude, and Procopia. First published in 1972, Invisible Cities demonstrates that
Calvino was already concerned with urban sprawl, overcrowding, and throw-away culture.

Continuous cities 1, Leonia, is a frightening indictment of the modern consumerist culture. Its inhabitants throw
away everything they use daily. The refuse is hygienically whisked away by angelic garbage men, but it piles up
outside the city in ever larger mounds. Calvino imagines a cataclysm that will destroy the city under an
avalanche of its own garbage, but, pessimistically, another neighboring garbage city will simply plow the ruins
of Leonia over to claim the land for its own garbage dump. Extending this logic, one could see the entire world
as being composed of cities that are continuously pushing their rings of garbage farther and farther out until
they butt up against the encircling garbage ring of neighboring cities. As I write this, a recent waste-disposal
crisis in Naples has added emphasis to Calvino's critique.

Continuous cities 2, Trude, is a scathing attack on the sameness of our suburban world. Employing
anachronism artfully (as he does throughout the novel), Calvino presents a city that is identical to countless
other cities: "Only the name of the airport changes." The truth of Trude can only have been magnified since
Calvino wrote the novel, as the same chain retailers and "big box" stores increasingly swallow up and rub out
signs of regional identity.

Continuous cities 3, Procopia, is a riff on overpopulation. As our narrator returns to the city each year, he finds
the population has grown exponentially. Carried to its logical conclusion in the final paragraph, the city has
become so densely populated that one can no longer move at all. Calvino describes the faces of Procopia's
citizens as "round" and "flat," so it is easy to read this as a commentary on the Far East. Regardless, the comic
ending of his description of Procopia is no laughing matter: the real world cannot sustain the exponential
population growth that Calvino describes here so easily.


The Final Message

The ultimate city in the novel, Berenice (Hidden cities 5), expands more explicitly upon the Hegel-inspired
interplay of the just and unjust. Berenice, like an onion, contains layers within layers of alternating micro-cities,
oscillating between the just and unjust. Calvino's message is optimistic here: even in a world of evil there is the
germ of a better society that can be nurtured and grown from within. However, the opposite is true too, and an
ethical citizen must be ever vigilant and on the lookout for the seed of the unjust.

While the entire novel up until the final pages (blessedly) avoids preachy judgments and instead only hints slyly
at the positive and negative aspects of our cities, the final snippet of dialogue between Polo and Khan is more
direct. After contemplating the Great Khan's atlas that includes every imaginary city of fiction (Calvino reveals
the breadth of his own literary connoisseurship: Utopia, Brave New World), Polo pessimistically states that we
are already living in an unjust world, an "inferno." Of course inferno is more laden with meaning for the Italian
reader than the English one since Dante's Divine Comedy is the foundation of Italian literature. Whether or not
the reader appreciates the allusion, Polo suggests two methods for escaping the inferno (Virgil and Beatrice
being unavailable):

"The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The
second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what,
in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space."

Polo provides an apt argument for reading Invisible Cities: it is certainly not part of the inferno – and long may it
endure. The novel is astounding for the potency of its prose-poetic magic and for the universal and timeless
themes it contains.



All of the quotations are from William Weaver's excellent translation, © 1974 by Harcourt, Inc.

http://www.medhasnotes.com/invisiblecities.html

[ada]

masonic kabbalistic black magic..
Kabbalah: Archangel Metatron – Divine Ruler of Evil
http://blogcritics.org/culture/article/ ... -ruler-of/

[Wimpy]

Ada,

How so, exactly?  This is in the nature of all things, a language of the creator but, yes, misused by some.

[ada]

Ada,

How so, exactly?  This is in the nature of all things, a language of the creator but, yes, misused by some.

Nature of all things? Sorry no!
Kabbalah turns the world upside down.
This happen to be since solomon and hiram..

[Wimpy]

I'm certainly not here to defend the kabbalah but I am interested in your claim regarding how geometric facts and repeating Fibonacci's sequences of numbers found throughout nature are Kabbalah.  You are the one making the claim so back it up.  Are geometric realities and numbers, on their own, evil?

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

I'm certainly not here to defend the kabbalah but I am interested in your claim regarding how geometric facts and repeating Fibonacci's sequences of numbers found throughout nature are Kabbalah.  You are the one making the claim so back it up.  Are geometric realities and numbers, on their own, evil?

Hey Wimpy,

Looks like Metatron is mentioned in the Talmud. I wasn't aware of this when I saw the video above.  I think a name was given  to that
 layout much later(?).

--------

Metatron


Metatron 'as God's mediator with men' may have been the angel who prevented Abraham from sacrificing Isaac in the bible story.[1]

Metatron (Hebrew מטטרון) or Mattatron (a differentiation of Metatron)[2] is the name of an angel in Judaism and some branches[citation needed] of Christian mythology. There are no references to him in the Jewish Tanakh or Christian Scriptures (New and Old Testament). Although he is mentioned in a few brief passages in the Talmud, Metatron appears primarily in medieval Jewish mystical texts and other post-scriptural esoteric and occult sources. In Rabbinic tradition, he is the highest of the angels and serves as the celestial scribe.[3]

Origins

The Talmud relates that Elisha ben Abuyah (a rabbi and Jewish religious authority born in Jerusalem sometime before 70 BC), also called Acher, (אחר, "other", as he became an apostate), entered Paradise and saw Metatron sitting down (an action that in heaven is permitted only to God himself). Elishah ben Abuyah therefore looked to Metatron as a deity and said heretically, "There are indeed two powers in heaven!"[4] The rabbis explain that Metatron was allowed to sit because of his function as the Heavenly Scribe, writing down the deeds of Israel (Babylonian Talmud, Hagiga 15a).[5]

    ... the Talmud states, it was proved to Elisha that Metatron could not be a second deity by the fact that Metatron received 60 'strokes with fiery rods' to demonstrate that Metatron was not a god, but an angel, and could be punished.[citation needed]

In opposition to this apology, Metatron is identified with the term "lesser YHWH", which is the Lesser Tetragrammaton, in a Talmudic version as cited by the Karaite scholar Kirkisani. The word Metatron is numerically equivalent to El Shaddai (God) in Hebrew gematria; therefore, he is said to have a "Name like his Master." It should be noted, however, that Kirkisani may have misrepresented the Talmud in order to embarrass his Rabbanite opponents with evidence of dualism. On the other hand, extra-talmudic mystical texts (see below regarding Sefer Hekhalot) do speak of a "lesser YHWH," apparently deriving the concept from Exodus 23:21, which mentions an angel of whom God says "my name [understood as YHWH, the usual divine Proper Name] is in him."

The Babylonian Talmud mentions Metatron in two other places: Sanhedrin 38b and Avodah Zarah 3b. Yevamot 16b describes in the Amoraic period the duties of 'prince of the world' being transferred from Michael to Metatron.

Looks like the word is originally from Greek.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metatron

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metatron

[Wimpy]

Hey Wimpy,

Looks like Metatron is mentioned in the Talmud. I wasn't aware of this when I saw the video above. I think a name was given to that
layout much later(?).

Since Metranon is a name/word for a 'high ranked'  angel -a scribe- from the talmud-, I suspect the word has been co-opted for the geometric video (or whomever first used this word for the geometric phenomenon).  Unless the talmud discusses these fascinating geometric facts along with the word "Metatron" or associated with the angel of that name, then I will conclude no relationship to the talmud for this geometry.  Also, the definition of a scribe isn't quite that glamorous....Why, Bartelby was a Scrivener-of Herman Melville fame-  and it was a spectacularly boring occupation.

A Rose by any other name is still a Rose, meaning the video showed me the beauty and mystery of this geometric progression.

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

This kind of outlines how the "Star of David" Metatron Cube is formed from Primes (takes a large perspective...may need to zoom in a bit to see it). Babylonian Sexigismal numerics.... is Modern Israel.

(lasts about 15 minutes on the Isotropic Vector Matrix)

http://www.anatomieantique.com/

[ada]

Jacob (aka Israel, the rebel rabble-rouser) Wrestling with the Angel...

The Unity of God to which they refer is actually the oneness of the Pantheistic "en sof ," a mass without a "Chief Engineer{Blasphemy {ada]}." This is the "unity of nature" in which the Pagans believed. For every form of spirit invocation, and for the deification of man, that is Judaistic Talmudism, a religion of polytheism, or many gods. Slyly, the polytheists say what they mean. We do not understand them.

Take any of the modem heresies, the "new" religions our tired Christians like to think were just evolved; you will find them all in Talmudism and its collection of ancient Old Testament paganism. The Jewish Cabala with its non-existence of evil, its deification of man, is a source book for modem "isms," the sources of which are largely unknown in modem times.

Turn to the Jewish Encyclopedia article on "Pharisees" (Exhibit 264) and the statements that when the God of Intelligence, the "anthropomorphic" God, was eliminated from the Bible by the Pharisees, "these used ... the Angelogy and Demonology of the Pharisees ... with the help of the Ma'aseh Bereshit and Ma'aseh Mercabah [Pagan rites to see the Sun God, Mithra, or Metatron, and learn the past and future] not only to amplify the Biblical account, but to remove from the Bible anthropomorphisms and similarly obnoxious verbiage concerning the Deity by referring them to angelic and intermediary powers [for instance Genesis 1:26] ..."

Blasphemy Approved

Not content with consistent reviling or blasphemy of God's Word, this subterfuge is taught by the Talmud to permit blaspheming the Divine Name: "Blasphemy is an indictable offense only if it is mentally directed against God. If, however, one reviles the Divine Name, whilst mentally employing it to denote some other subject, he is not punished!" (Sanhedrin 65a-b, see Exhibit 70)

Jews the Messiah

The untutored Gentile has been led to believe that adherents of the Jewish religion are simply believers in the Old Testament who are still awaiting their promised Messiah. However, in Judaism that Messiah is already here, and it is the "Jewish people" themselves.

For example, the Jewish Talmud, Kethuboth, 111a, states:

    "The Messiah [is] without metaphor the Jewish people." (See Exhibit 147)

The Cabala and God
The Cabala is the bone and blood of Talmudic Judaism, which is itself pagan from start to finish. It uses the "whited sepulchre" of the Old Testament to cover its negation of every moral law in the Old Testament as it promotes practice of all the occult demonistic abominations excoriated by the Old Testament.

The Cabala has two aspects: theoretical and practical, or "theurgic" (wonderworking). The "God" of the Cabala is "the En Sof," the unknowing and unknowable sea of mind or matter out of which creation emerges. "The doctrine of the En Sof," says the Jewish Encyclopedia, "is the starting point of all cabalistic speculations. God is the infinite, unlimited being, to whom one neither can nor may attribute any attributes whatever." ("Cabala," page 472, Jewish Encyclopedia)

Maimonides, pillar of Talmudism in the Middle Ages, "contributed to the cabalistic doctrine of the En Sof by his teaching that no attributes could be ascribed to God unless it be of Pythagorean origin." (same Encyclopedia, page 465) Pythagoras was a pagan sorcerer who set up a dictatorship along Iron Curtain lines, and who attributed creative powers to letters and numbers, as does the Jewish Cabala. {Blasphemy: Jesus said: My Kingdome is NOT from this World {ada]}

The "Ten Intelligences" of pagan Aristotle, that is the Sun, Moon and seven planets each ruled by a Ruling Spirit who dominates affairs of the Universe in accordance with the complicated astrological time charts, are paralleled by the "Ten Sephirot" of the theoretical Cabala. Three triads, the male and female spawners and their offspring, plus the overall or En Sof, form a design representing every condition of life, every quality, from A to Z. Sex is the glorifying King and Queen. The soul supposedly transmigrates around, and back into the unknowing and unknowable source, the En Sof, into a condition of "Nirvana" know nothingness, like in Hinduism.

"Jewish mystics described the highest degree of love of man for God in sensuous forms in terms taken from marital life." (Jewish Encyclopedia, page 465) "Closely connected ... is the doctrine of the transmigration of the soul on which the Cabala lays great stress." (same reference, page 476)

There are "ten classes of angels with their chiefs presided over by Metatron who was changed into fire." (same reference, page 475) Metatron is the Ruler Spirit of this universe and Talmudic Judaism, and linked to the Sun God (called by another sect, "Mithra").

The Ten Sephirot, or intelligences of the Cabala, are designed as male and female procreative agencies: "Kether," or "Crown" or the "I am" emanates the "masculine or male potency," and from this "the feminine or passive potency .... The union of the masculine and feminine potencies{Genderless Gay Science aka Third Temple? {ada]} ... produced again," and so the male and female Sephirot spawn along: "Thus each triad is compounded of force, counter-force, and their connecting link: namely active and passive agents and combination." (Note: Incorporated as "progressive" in Karl Marx' dialectical materialism) "They were all combined in the Adam Kadmon (Primordial man)." (Jewish Encyclopedia, "Sefirot, Ten")  

Metatron
Metatron is the prince of this world, the "demiurge" in the Talmud and Cabala. He is the same as the Persian sun god Mithra, according to the Jewish Encyclopedia. (see "Metatron")

With god a formless "lump," without any attributes, someone has to be Ruler, and Metatron (Mithra) is it. The Talmud sometimes gives the En Sof an almost comic character with big feet, splashing with the big fish in the sea, and teaching dead children the Torah one-fourth of the day. But Metatron teaches them three-fourths! This last, in the Talmud Aboda Zara 3b, is cited by the Jewish Encyclopedia (under "Metatron"), and also his being "lord of all the heavenly hosts, of all treasures, of secrets. The Zohar defines his nature exactly by declaring that he is little lower than God." He is not only identified here with "Zoroastrian Mithra," the Sun God, but in articles about "Mercabah" he is seen as inflamed with incantations, dope, "and other means," as comparable to the "demiurge." Under "Mercabah" the Jewish Encyclopedia describes the spiritualistic Mithra rites of "Metatron" whose name letters add up to those of Shaddai (God). Non-Jews are unaware that using letters for numbers ("Gematria") is as prevalent today in Pharisaic Judaism as it was in the time of Christ.

Letters Create the World - Not God
Note in Exhibit 285 herein that through the Cabala "one may thus easily make himself master of creation" - a Luciferian idea. Also wild animals can be slain and "terror diffused through the world." Note in Exhibit 288 that letters of the alphabet, especially of the four-letter word for Jehova, the Tetragrammaton, have magic power, in fact that letters created the world! It is stated that this idea "seems to have originated in Chaldea" (Babylonia). That the rabbis worked the Cabala and created a third-grown calf and ate it, is cited as coming from the Talmud, Sanhedrin 67b. This is reproduced herein as Exhibit 78. Demonism is the subject also of Exhibit 77, Exhibit 79, Exhibit 80, which are from the Talmud. See also Exhibits 285-92 (285, 286, 287, 288, 289, 290, 291, 292) from the Jewish Encyclopedia.

Cabala Exalts the Jew
The Cabala, says the Jewish Encyclopedia, taught the top position of man,

"the true Jewish view of life, and one that appealed to Talmudic Judaism. The Jew as well as the man was recognized in the Cabala. Notwithstanding the strongly pantheistic coloring of its metaphysics, the Cabala never attempted to belittle the importance of historic Judaism, but, on the contrary, emphasized it ... the cabalists developed a Jewish Magic." (p. 478) "... Demonology, therefore, occupies an important part in the work of many cabalists ... many cabalists developed their theories on Casting of Lots, Necromancy, Exorcism. Astrology was legitimized and [page 37] bibliomancy found its justification in the assumption that the sacred Hebrew letters are not one. With that old pagan deification of man idea in which nature as a whole is god and man is the doer, merely signs for things but implements of divine powers by means of which nature may be subjugated." (page 479)

http://www.come-and-hear.com/dilling/chapt06.html

Titus 1:10-11;14
For there are many unruly and vain talkers and deceivers, specially they of the circumcision:
Whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole houses, teaching things which they ought not, for filthy lucre's sake.
14   Not giving heed to Jewish fables, and commandments of men, that turn from the truth.

Acts 7:42-43
Then God turned, and gave them up to worship the host of heaven; as it is written in the book of the prophets, O ye house of Israel, have ye offered to me slain beasts and sacrifices [by the space of] forty years in the wilderness?
Yea, ye took up the tabernacle of Moloch, and the star of your god Remphan, figures which ye made to worship them: and I will carry you away beyond Babylon.

1 Thessalonians 2:14-16
For ye, brethren, became followers of the churches of God which in Judaea are in Christ Jesus: for ye also have suffered like things of your own countrymen, even as they [have] of the Jews:
Who both killed the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and they please not God, and are contrary to all men:
Forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved, to fill up their sins alway: for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost

[ada]

3i7vbiq1]

[FrankDialogue]

Shegabo 'minister' confuse things even more:

[youtube:9xg61073]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YReC4j3XDaM[/youtube]9xg61073]