Scarcely had she swallowed them, when, with extreme delight
Illustrating the obscure… necessarily & purposefully difficult… crossing over style of recent philosophy, this blog entry is dealing with Thoth, ancient Egyptian god,obsession of Crowley and myself being a bibliophile (snicker*), general occult idol as inventor of magic, and subject of Plato’s attention w/r/t Thoth’s role as the mythical inventor of writing, which herein Plato’s Pharmacy is thoroughly deconstructed will answer this…Who was this mythical being? The movement of the act of writing, which seeks to replace speech by producing something (an object? a symbol) new and different (the written word) that somehow retains the shape, or aura, of that which it seeks to replace (the spoken word), and generally reminds one of three card monte, where you are the mark–relating both science and magic as the defining activities of this Trickster god, who is ultimately concerned with healing.The system of these traits brings into play an original kind of logic: the figure of Thoth is opposed to its other (father, sun, life, speech, origin or orient, etc.), but as that which at once supplements and supplants it. Thoth extends or opposes by repeating or replacing. By the same token, the figure of Thoth takes shape and takes its shape from the very thing it resists and substitutes for. But it thereby opposes itself, passes into its other, and this messenger-god is truly a god of the absolute passage between opposites. If he had any identity–but he is precisely the god of nonidentity–he would be that coincidentia oppositorum to which we will soon have recourse again. In distinguishing himself from his opposite, Thoth also imitates it, becomes its sign and representative, obeys it and conforms to it, replaces it, by violence if need be. He is thus [interesting almost typo here of theus for thus] the father’s other, the father, and the subversive movement of replacement. The god of writing is thus at once his father, his son, and himself. He cannot be assigned a fixed spot in the play of differences. Sly, slippery, and masked, and intriguer and a card, like Hermes, he is neither king nor jack, but rather a sort of joker, a floating signifier, a wild card, one who puts play into play.The god of resurrection is less interested in life or death than in death as a repetition of life and life as a rehearsal of death, in the awakening of life and in the recommencement of death. This is what numbers, of which he is also the inventor and patron, mean. Thoth repeats everything in the addition of the supplement: in adding to and doubling as the sun, he is other than the sun and the same as it; other than the good and the same, etc. Always taking a place not his own, a place one could call that of the dead or the dummy, he has neither a proper place nor a proper name. His propriety or property is impropriety or inappropriateness, the floating indetermination that allows for substitution and play. Play, of which he is also the inventor, as Plato himself reminds us. It is to him that we owe the games of dice and draughts. He would be the mediating movement of dialectics if he did not also mimic it, indefinitely preventing it, through this ironic doubling, from reaching some final fulfillment or eschatological reappropriation. Thoth is never present. Nowhere does he appear in person. No being-there can properly be his own.Every act of his is marked by this unstable ambivalence. This god of calculation, arithmetic, and rational science also presides over the occult sciences, astrology and alchemy. He is the god of magic formulas that calm the sea, of secret accounts, of hidden texts: an archetype of Hermes, god of cryptography no less of every other -graphy.
Science and magic, the passage between life and death, the supplement to evil and to lack: the priviledged domain of Thoth had, finally, to be medicine. All his powers are summed up and find employment there. The god of writing, who knows how to put an end to life, can also heal the sick. And even the dead. The steles of Horus on the Crocodiles tell of how the king of the gods sends Thoth down to heal Harsiesis, who has been bitten by a snake in his mother’s absence. The god of writing is thus also a god of medicine. Of “medicine”: both a science and an occult drug. Of the remedy and the poison. The god of writing is the god of the pharmakon. And it is writing as a pharmakon that he presents to the king in the Phaedrus, with a humility as unsettling as a dare.–Jacques Derrida, Plato’s Pharmacy
Scarcely had she swallowed them, when, with extreme delight
Illustrating the obscure… necessarily & purposefully difficult… crossing over style of recent philosophy, this blog entry is dealing with Thoth, ancient Egyptian god,obsession of Crowley and myself being a bibliophile (snicker*), general occult idol as inventor of magic, and subject of Plato’s attention w/r/t Thoth’s role as the mythical inventor of writing, which herein Plato’s Pharmacy is thoroughly deconstructed will answer this…Who was this mythical being? The movement of the act of writing, which seeks to replace speech by producing something (an object? a symbol) new and different (the written word) that somehow retains the shape, or aura, of that which it seeks to replace (the spoken word), and generally reminds one of three card monte, where you are the mark–relating both science and magic as the defining activities of this Trickster god, who is ultimately concerned with healing.The system of these traits brings into play an original kind of logic: the figure of Thoth is opposed to its other (father, sun, life, speech, origin or orient, etc.), but as that which at once supplements and supplants it. Thoth extends or opposes by repeating or replacing. By the same token, the figure of Thoth takes shape and takes its shape from the very thing it resists and substitutes for. But it thereby opposes itself, passes into its other, and this messenger-god is truly a god of the absolute passage between opposites. If he had any identity–but he is precisely the god of nonidentity–he would be that coincidentia oppositorum to which we will soon have recourse again. In distinguishing himself from his opposite, Thoth also imitates it, becomes its sign and representative, obeys it and conforms to it, replaces it, by violence if need be. He is thus [interesting almost typo here of theus for thus] the father’s other, the father, and the subversive movement of replacement. The god of writing is thus at once his father, his son, and himself. He cannot be assigned a fixed spot in the play of differences. Sly, slippery, and masked, and intriguer and a card, like Hermes, he is neither king nor jack, but rather a sort of joker, a floating signifier, a wild card, one who puts play into play.The god of resurrection is less interested in life or death than in death as a repetition of life and life as a rehearsal of death, in the awakening of life and in the recommencement of death. This is what numbers, of which he is also the inventor and patron, mean. Thoth repeats everything in the addition of the supplement: in adding to and doubling as the sun, he is other than the sun and the same as it; other than the good and the same, etc. Always taking a place not his own, a place one could call that of the dead or the dummy, he has neither a proper place nor a proper name. His propriety or property is impropriety or inappropriateness, the floating indetermination that allows for substitution and play. Play, of which he is also the inventor, as Plato himself reminds us. It is to him that we owe the games of dice and draughts. He would be the mediating movement of dialectics if he did not also mimic it, indefinitely preventing it, through this ironic doubling, from reaching some final fulfillment or eschatological reappropriation. Thoth is never present. Nowhere does he appear in person. No being-there can properly be his own.Every act of his is marked by this unstable ambivalence. This god of calculation, arithmetic, and rational science also presides over the occult sciences, astrology and alchemy. He is the god of magic formulas that calm the sea, of secret accounts, of hidden texts: an archetype of Hermes, god of cryptography no less of every other -graphy.
Science and magic, the passage between life and death, the supplement to evil and to lack: the priviledged domain of Thoth had, finally, to be medicine. All his powers are summed up and find employment there. The god of writing, who knows how to put an end to life, can also heal the sick. And even the dead. The steles of Horus on the Crocodiles tell of how the king of the gods sends Thoth down to heal Harsiesis, who has been bitten by a snake in his mother’s absence. The god of writing is thus also a god of medicine. Of “medicine”: both a science and an occult drug. Of the remedy and the poison. The god of writing is the god of the pharmakon. And it is writing as a pharmakon that he presents to the king in the Phaedrus, with a humility as unsettling as a dare.–Jacques Derrida, Plato’s Pharmacy