Swedenborg’s Heaven and Hell are reached via the “imaginative
consciousness” or “cognitive imagination”. One facet is the Grand Man,
the Ultimate Human which makes up the body of the universe (comprised of all
the angels, who are transformed human souls).
Swedenborg’s “modernist” vision is radically different to the medievalism
of Dante’s seventh circle, and even more to the cosmic maelstrom of Milton’s
Old Testament-ish Paradise Lost. The one thing they have in common is
that there are vast gulfs between chaos and order, between self-obsession and
transcendence. However, Swedenborg was a Lutheran scientist and evidently felt
religion could only be safeguarded by placing it in the imagination (not
reality).
Even so, Swedenborgians believe that the imagination is more real than
any physical reality (because it is imagined, and any physical place has also
to be imagined to be real.) If you’ve been following what I’ve been saying
about lenses, neither the universe above, nor the bugs below, are physical
reality, they are perspective illusion (Traylor “Pets” Hyborian
Bridge 56).
What IS physical reality are the constellations of the stars, or
figurative myth (narrative content of the universe). So, anything that has a
physical reality in the universe is Man’s interpretation. The universe as
viewed through lenses (and algorithms) is not physical reality, it’s
perspective illusion. The bind is that only interpretation can be physical,
since it is what the human figure sees on the Earth as it rotates in the
cosmos.
So therefore any seemingly fantastical interpretation is based on
physical absolutes (the sky at night, sun, moon). Contrariwise, scientific
“facts” are not based on physical absolutes; they exist in a relative universe
of light (reflection, illusion).
Therefore, the figurative imagination as mapped onto the universe that we
see is a physical absolute. It’s not "convincing facts ready for the latest algorithmic model of the universe" (along with Katie Bouman's black hole, natch) but it is a physical
interpretation. Science is convincing, but is an illusion of perspective
reality. So what is truth? The invisible things, balance and proportion,
represented by the figure.
This is by way of a Platonic preamble to Indian Summer, the
Manara/Pratt graphic novel set in Hawthorne’s Puritan universe of the 18th
century. The Puritan reality puts lust at the forefront, in the sense that
lusts are practiced then hypocritically denied. The plot is summarized by Zack
Davisson of ComicsBulletein
A young man
tries to save the poor blonde girl, but comes too late and can only avenger
her. He takes her home to his family, a clan of outcasts that live outside the
main fortress settlement. The clan is overseen by a beautiful matriarch with a
scarlet letter branded into her face. Knowing that the Indians will come for
the brothers who slew their chief’s nephew to avenge the rape, the unwelcome
clan moves inside the fortress walls and into the domain of the righteous
Pilgrim Black. Like the sternest of preachers, Pilgrim Black is quick to
unleash shouts of hellfire and damnation, but only to cover up his own unholy
lusts. Before the Indian attack is over, many old secrets are uncovered, wrongs
revenged, and old debts paid. And the true story of the letter-branded woman
and her children is at last told.
The point I made
in Alternates 7 is that, while our societies are run logically, Puritan
settlements were bred in the bosom of nature where naked wood and naked sex are
as one. The irregularities of the buildings echo the irregularities of the
congregation. Hypocrisy is the way priests attempt to deal with the powerful
erotic forces of nature. The matriarchal Earth Mother figure of irresistible natural
and psychic power.
While
our societies have hygienic pornography, Puritan societies emit carnality and
attempt to cover it up with hypocrisy. In that sense they are real, if
dishonest, while ours are mere illusions. The Manara/Pratt book is a
masterpiece of sequences – another reality of an action-oriented society. If
you basically look at the pictures they speak for themselves – rough, raw and
vital.
Societies that
live in nature are physically active; societies that live outside nature are
physically inert. One way to put it is we sequence DNA – which is not physical
reality (Hyborian Bridge 56). We sequence algorithms – which are not
physical reality.
The reason for
this is an a-priori assumption which goes right back to The New
Atlantis (Drama1). That the head can interpret reality without the
need of the body. But, if the universe requires a figurative interpretation of
physical reality, that assumption is wrong.
What seems to
happen is that we are now in “The Idol of the Den” and not in physical reality
(which is figurative). That physical reality is what the human figure sees on
planet Earth which is spinning against the cosmos. The physical reality is sun,
moon and constellations; anything else is a perspective illusion.
The New
Atlantis does not
consider physical reality – that is, symmetry, balance, proportion – since it
is only a logical order. The end-result of that is “The Idol of the Den”, or
DNA-sequences and algorithmic sequences (electromagnetism and perspective illusion).
Science gives “facts”
but not physical truth, which is figurative. Physical truths apply to active
societies existing alongside nature, since everything in nature is figurative –
horse, pig, rat, donkey, chrysanthemum. If that sounds a bit oriental you’re
not wrong as I’ve been talking to Dr Zanyu Chen of Herbal Art!
The a-priori
assumptions of western science are not figurative, and therefore not of the
body (human, animal, plant) but of the head. We are prey to acolytes of
sorcerers and the time for physical action is nigh.