Puppet Magic:

The Ring of Gyges

10:31:32 AM ET

Commentary by Richard Wilhelm
on I Ching Hexagram 32:

"Duration is... not a state of rest, for mere standstill is regression. Duration is rather the self-contained and therefore self-renewing movement of an organized, firmly integrated whole, taking place in accordance with immutable laws and beginning anew at every ending."

Related material



Jung and the Imago Dei

Log24 on June 10, 2007: WHAT MAKES IAGO EVIL? some people ask. I never ask. --Joan Didion Iago states that he is not who he is. --Mark F. Frisch

"Not Being There,"
by Christopher Caldwell,
from next Sunday's
New York Times Magazine:

"The chance to try on fresh identities was the great boon that life online was supposed to afford us. Multiuser role-playing games and discussion groups would be venues for living out fantasies. Shielded by anonymity, everyone could now pass a 'second life' online as Thor the Motorcycle Sex God or the Sage of Wherever. Some warned, though, that there were other possibilities. The Stanford Internet expert Lawrence Lessig likened online anonymity to the ring of invisibility that surrounds the shepherd Gyges in one of Plato's dialogues. Under such circumstances, Plato feared, no one is 'of such an iron nature that he would stand fast in justice.' Time, along with a string of sock-puppet scandals, has proved Lessig and Plato right."

"The Boy Who Lived,"
by Christopher Hitchens,
from next Sunday's
New York Times Book Review:

On the conclusion of the Harry Potter series:   "The toys have been put firmly back in the box, the wand has been folded up, and the conjuror is discreetly accepting payment while the children clamor for fresh entertainments. (I recommend that they graduate to Philip Pullman, whose daemon scheme is finer than any patronus.)"

I, on the other hand,
recommend Tolkien...
or, for those who are
already familiar with
Tolkien, Plato-- to whom
"The Ring of Gyges" may
serve as an introduction.

"It's all in Plato, all in Plato:
bless me, what do they
teach them at these schools!"
-- C. S. Lewis

The Ring Saga continues:

"... the dreamer is wandering about in a dark cave, where a battle is going on between good and evil. But there is also a prince who knows everything. He gives the dreamer a ring set with a diamond....

Visual impression (waking dream):

The dreamer is falling into the abyss. At the bottom there is a bear whose eyes gleam alternately in four colours: red, yellow, green, and blue. Actually it has four eyes that change into four lights. The bear disappears and the dreamer goes through a long dark tunnel. Light is shimmering at the far end. A treasure is there, and on top of it the ring with the diamond. It is said that this ring will lead him on a long journey to the east."

Hermann Hesse, The Journey to the East (1932):

"'... Despair is the result of each earnest attempt to go through life with virtue, justice, and understanding and to fulfil their requirements. Children live on one side of despair, the awakened on the other side. Defendant H. is no longer a child and is not yet fully awakened. He is still in the midst of despair. He will overcome it and thereby go through his second novitiate. We welcome him anew into the League, the meaning of which he no longer claims to understand. We give back to him his lost ring, which the servant Leo has kept for him.'

The Speaker then brought the ring, kissed me on the cheek and placed the ring on my finger. Hardly had I looked at the ring, hardly had I felt its metallic coolness on my fingers, when a thousand things occurred to me, a thousand inconceivable acts of neglect. Above all, it occurred to me that the ring had four stones at equal distances apart, and that it was a rule of the League and part of the vow to turn the ring slowly on the finger at least once a day, and at each of the four stones to bring to mind one of the four basic precepts of the vow. I had not only lost the ring and had not once missed it, but during all those dreadful years I had also no longer repeated the four basic precepts or thought of them. Immediately, I tried to say them again inwardly. I had an idea what they were, they were still within me, they belonged to me as does a name which one will remember in a moment but at that particular moment cannot be recalled. No, it remained silent within me, I could not repeat the rules, I had forgotten the wording. I had forgotten the rules; for many years I had not repeated them, for many years I had not observed them and held them sacred-- and yet I had considered myself a loyal League brother.

The Speaker patted my arm kindly when he observed my dismay and deep shame."

Finite Geometry note:

 New Illustration
for the four-color
decomposition theorem:

Annals of Philosophy:

One Year Ago
in this journal --

Commentary by Richard Wilhelm
on I Ching Hexagram 32:



Duration

"Duration is... not a state of rest, for mere standstill is regression. Duration is rather the self-contained and therefore self-renewing movement of an organized, firmly integrated whole [click on link for an example], taking place in accordance with immutable laws and beginning anew at every ending."

Richard Wilhelm's grave:
Note the eight I Ching
trigrams surrounding
the globe.

Globe at the
Beijing 2008 Olympics
Opening Ceremony

The eight trigrams
were perhaps implied in
the opening's date, 8/8/8.

Happy 8/8/8:

Click on image for details.