Trembling from the Hooves Upward

Three hand-folded envelopes, two with wax seals, one with a page of text peeking out.

If you’ve found your way to these words (or they to you), there’s some chance, however small, that you’ve come across the Corona Lectures that I wrote and released monthly during the pandemic. (And if you haven’t, or want a refresher, they are available here.) These are, even to me, strange artifacts of the time, which was less than five years ago. 

I bring them up, because one of the questions I pursued — or that repeatedly came up — was about meaning and language. I had at some point been seized by a fear that I couldn’t discern in my own writing whether it was meaningful or whether it just seemed meaningful because it looked like other things that had come before that were considered meaningful. In writing the lectures I went through various contortions to prevent myself from working in familiar forms so that I would be less likely to let my words and sentences lead me to perpetrate this literary sin.

 What I was worried about may only be a problem for artists and lovers. We want art and we want declarations of love to be honest representations of an inner experience that are as accurate as possible. Because when they too closely resemble previous expressions, we reasonably wonder whether the experience being relayed is a true one. Fair enough. But there is plenty of language that is meaningful because of its form, because of its resemblance to other meaningful language. Legal language pops to mind. Certain communications of belonging — the pledge of allegiance or an oath of citizenship. Prayers.

 And now we’re approaching what I wanted to talk about. It seems that language can have meaning because of something internal to it — you might use the word essence or essential. But it is also patently true that language can have meaning because of what we bring to it. Feelings of patriotism or faith, for example, which are triggered by reciting words that have been recited millions of times before.

 If you wanted to consult the Oracle at Delphi, you first had to travel to Delphi — no easy task. Once there, you would prepare yourself for your consultation, which included presenting gifts to the various priests and prophets you came across. On the appointed day, the seventh day of the month, you would travel the Sacred Way — a mountain path that led to the cave where the Pythia (who received the voice of the god) waited. There, the sacrificial goat would be set in front of the altar. Water would be sprinkled on the goat. If it trembled from the hooves upward, this was a good omen, and the consultation could proceed. If not, try again next month (if you can afford to stay around or come back). On an auspicious day, the goat would be burned on the alter and the smoke would be the signal that the oracle was open. Assuming all this, you as the supplicant would go into the cave and speak your question to the oracle, likely in an atmosphere of smoky darkness. The Pythia would receive the god’s reply and relay it to you, perhaps in rhyme, often in metaphor, many times as a paradox.

 If you went through all this, how could the words you hear not be meaningful?

 I am writing this post to introduce a new series of products available in my shop. I will discuss them with more particular detail in another post. Here I wanted to ponder some of my concerns as these products became what they are. 

I can’t ask you to travel hundreds of miles and risk the chance that a goat trembles in the wrong direction in order to facilitate your bringing to the words I offer you a sense of meaning and portent. Or, I can, but I’d be unlikely to get many takers. But what I hope I can do is ask you to pay a little money, wait for some amount of time, and then break the wax seal on an envelope. Inside, you’ll find a unique oracle or omen made of words I discovered within the text on one page of a printed book. I’m hopeful that this tiny ritual will be enough to encourage you to invest the words you receive with meaning and then contemplate how they relate to your life situation or the query you brought to them. 

So if what I’m writing about intrigues you, please check out the shop on my website here.