The first novel by Thomas Pynchon weaves a labyrinthine mystery centered on the letter V. No one can definitely pinpoint who or what V specifically represents, or even if it indicates a person, place or thing. Pynchon gives the sense and meaning of V multiple different expressions with varying degrees of explicit and implicit levels of significance. We don’t get a single explanation of exactly what V. represents. This changing, shapeshifting network of interconnected resonances and perspectives anticipates Deleuze and Guattari – V. doesn’t have an arborescent final form to lock into, rather the narrative development behaves in the fashion of a rhizome: a creative process with no hierarchy or central organizing principal.
We’ll examine the esoteric side of the mystery. In my Gravity’s Rainbow essay, I speculated
that the search for V reflected Pynchon’s quest to claim the post and function
as a Hierophant, that archetypal constellation that communicates the secrets of
the Temple. In other words, Pynchon’s
desire to be a great writer, a literary genius.
From the little I’ve read of his biography, it appears that, much like
Jack Kerouac, he had that passion and drive to begin claiming the destiny of a great writer at a young age. He was only 24 when V.
was first published.
This speculation arose before
I had read V. to confirm this bias for myself.
Having read it, I must modify this postulate. It appears that Pynchon aims to draw the
reader into this (alchemical) conspiracy.
Meaning, he wants to show the willing reader how to recognize those
communications, the secrets of the Temple, in order that they may find
spiritual instruction and inspiration wherever they may be, not necessarily, or
only from any kind of authority figure. How
to find infinity in every grain of sand.
How to recognize angelic communication in the events of everyday
life.
Evidence for the
Hierophantic aspect of V. comes swiftly with the very first mention of it in the
novel:
Underfoot, now and again,
came vibration in the sidewalk from an SP streetlights away, beating out a Hey
Rube with his night stick; overhead turning everybody’s face green and ugly,
shone mercury-vapor lamps, receding in
an asymmetric V to the east where it’s dark and there are no more bars.
-
V. p. 11
(perennial Edition 1990)
Note: SP = Shore Patrol.
Mercury represents the
archetype of communication, among other things, thus relates very much to the
Hierophant. Going further: most esoteric
data comes from points east relative to the American/European culture. It’s dark, i.e. strange and unknown … and
there are no bars – no restrictions for this kind of information.
A few pages later, a scene
gives a hint about learning to read these signs for ourselves, to begin
learning pattern recognition.
Beer had soaked down most of
the sawdust behind the bar: skirmishes and amateur footwork were scribbling it
into alien hieroglyphics. - V. p. 17
Learning to recognize
patterns seems a recurring theme in Pynchon’s books. All his novels have a
distinct didactic quality of an esoteric, or spiritual nature. One strata of Pynchon’s oeuvre appears intent
to communicate instructions for freeing oneself from the robot mind and
mechanical, reactive life; and what Nietzsche calls ressentiment. The feeling that you always play a victim at
the whims and mercy of external forces.
The program Pynchon follows aligns closely with the current presented by Aleister Crowley and
cohorts. Crowley, of course, anointed
Horus the reigning deity of these times.
Pynchon doesn’t wait long to invoke Horus in his writing, page 74 of his
first novel.
“’My God’ from
Goodfellow. They looked up to see, materialized
behind them. An emaciated figure in an evening dress whose head appears to be
that of a netted sparrow-hawk. The head
guffawed, retaining its fierce expression. Victoria bubbled over in a laugh.
‘It’s Hugh!’ she cried,
delighted.
‘Indeed,’ came a hollow voice
from inside somewhere.
‘Hugh Bongo-Shaftsbury,’ said
Goodfellow, ungracious.
‘Harmachis.’ Bongo-Shaftsbury
indicated the ceramic hawk’s head.
‘God of Heliopolis and chief
deity of Lower Egypt. Utterly genuine
this: a mask, you know, used in the ancient rituals’ He seated himself next to
Victoria. Goodfellow scowled.
‘Literally Horus on the
horizon, also represented as a lion with the head of a man. Like the Sphinx.”
The influence of James Joyce
on Pynchon seems well established, we may
recognize the puns in this dialogue … "My God" and "Hugh" = you. Diving deeper for an interpretation of
“Bongo-Shaftsbury”:
Bongo = B + on + go;
Shaftsbury connects with Crowley’s N.O.X. formula for the production of a male
lesbian. Since Pynchon’s construction
resembles more of a rhizome proliferation than a specific arborescent form, we
can’t stay absolutely certain of this interpretation and must allow the possibility
of others. For instance, take the
paradoxical phrase, “Utterly genuine this: a mask …” and/or Bongo-Shaftsbury =
BS = belief system and/or bullshit. It
remains unknown if Pynchon reveals sources and an ideology, or if he simply
hopes to pull the reader’s leg. This art
of the put on, or not, perfectly resonates with contemporary schools that
demand the student to think for themselves and draw their own conclusions.
Another occult, yet completely
out in the open way (like Poe’s The
Purloined Letter) V. aligns with
the Horus (93) current appears in the book’s title and thus in the header of
every other page in the book. A basic
introductory formula representing the work of the Golden Dawn/A.’.A.’. finds
itself in the 5 = 6 formula where 5, the pentagram, symbolizes WoMan while 6,
the hexagram, symbolizes God realization.
The equals sign symbolizes Will in that formula. This formula represents
the work of transformation. The title of Pynchon’s V. includes the letter V followed by a period as if V stood for
someone or something’s initial letter. V = the sign for the Roman numeral that
represents 5 in our common Arabic numeration.
The single period after V when added to 5 = 6. From the occult perspective, the title V. signifies
the 5 = 6 formula, plain and simple. This
trope, appearing wherever you open the book, seems like the ringing of a bell
or, in Gurdjieff/Ouspensky terms, sounding the initial “doh,” the first note of
the octave. As if to confirm this
hypothesis, in the very first paragraph of V. we get the phrase: “… and five or
six seamen apprentice were standing around giving encouragement.”
V. and Death
A cardinal point of the 93
current concerns surviving the death of the physical shell and the permanent
death of the ego/personality complex. Does consciousness have the capability to
survive death? The Book of the Law
answers in the affirmative as does Tibetan Buddhists and V. The following quote seems opaque yet it communicates profound
data about surviving death:
“The lady V., one of them for
so long, now found herself suddenly excommunicated; bounced unceremoniously
into the null-time of human love, without having recognized the exact moment as
any but when Melanie entered a side door to Le Nerf on Porcepic’s arm and time
– for awhile– ceased.
… If V. suspected her
fetishism at all to be part of any conspiracy leveled against the animate
world, any sudden establishment here of a Kingdom of Death, then this might
justify the opinion held in the Rusty Spoon that Stencil was seeking in her his
own identity. But such was her rapture
at Melanie’s having sought and found her own identity in her and in the
mirror’s soulless gleam that she continued unaware, off-balanced by love;
forgetting that even though the Distribution of Time here on pouf, bed and
mirrors had been abandoned, their love was in its way only another version of
tourism; for as tourists bring into the world as it has evolved part of
another, and eventually create a parallel society of their own in every city,
so the Kingdom of Death is served by fetish-constructions like V.’s, which
represent a kind of infiltration.” V. p.
409, 411
This is a fragment from a
larger section about a woman named Victoria who “was gradually being replaced
by V.” The Rusty Spoon is the name of a bar.
Stencil is the name of the character searching for V., so a stand-in for the author
if the theory holds that the search for V., in the broadest sense, represents a
search for the Hierophantic post. If
true, then Stencil seeking in V. his own identity, seems revealing for
Pynchon. I’ll leave the rest to the
reader’s detective skills. This passage
seems profound to me and resonates with everything I’ve learned on the subject.
V. ends with the death of
Sidney Stencil, the previously mentioned Stencil’s father and the one who wrote
of V. in his journal which set his son in motion for the search. There is no actual direct mention of human
death in the last paragraph, but you know that happened. V. begins
with the words “Christmas Eve," the day before the symbolic birth of Jesus
Christ, the leading advertisement for the death/rebirth, transformation into
godhead schtick. In this way, the end of V.
connects with the beginning in James Joyce, Finnegans Wake fashion, a technique Pynchon uses more than once in
his subsequent books. Pynchon telegraphs the circular nature of the book at the
start of the final paragraph:
“Draw a line from Malta to
Lampedusa. Call it a radius. Somewhere
in that circle, on the evening of the tenth, a waterspout appeared and lasted
fifteen minutes…”
You can also see something by
considering the phonetics and associative puns with Malta and Lampedusa,
another Joycean technique.
The first event in the book
is Benny Profane going into a bar called the Sailor’s Grave. It doesn’t take long for Pynchon to make a
corny pun about having one foot in the Grave. There
isn’t one, or two, but three women named Beatrice who work at the
Sailor’s Grave. Pynchon quickly takes up
the didactic hierophantic role and makes his qabala patently obvious:
“Beatrice,” said Beatrice. Beatrice
being another barmaid. Mrs. Buffo, owner of the Sailor’s Grave, whose first
name was also Beatrice, had a theory that just as small children call all
females mother, so sailors, in their way equally as helpless, should call all
barmaids Beatrice.”
Beatrice, of course, is the
name of the Guide who shows Dante the way into Paradisio, the beatific vision,
in the Divine Comedy – the classic
journey through the Underworld adventure.
The Beatrice, Great Mother
as Guide motif gets implied differently in the very last phrase of the book, a beautiful send-off. The final paragraph of V. has one of the most
elegant death scenes in the history of literature. A freak event in the ocean, a waterspout, lifts
the sailboat fifty feet in the air before slamming it back into the ocean which
“showed nothing at all of what came to lie beneath, that quiet June day.” The month of June derives its name from Juno,
the Roman Goddess of love and marriage. Coincidentally, Juno is the name of a
Guide, or as they say “caseworker” in the bardo classic Beetlejuice. In that film,
she incarnates as an unsentimental, crusty old battle axe, with short, matter-of-fact,
excellent course advice for anyone dead or alive.
There exist a set of postures
in the Golden Dawn called the INRI signs. In one reading, INRI, the letters
nailed above Christ at the Crucifixion, represents the cycle of I = Life, N =
Death, R = Resurrection, I = new Life.
See Masks of the Illuminati by
Robert Anton Wilson for an excellent analysis of that formula. The Golden Dawn sign in the series,
the one for “N = Death,” has the practitioner holding their arms up in the shape
of a V.
Sign of Apophis and Typhon
V. Represents Who or What???
This mystery at the core of
the book receives many different answers, inferences and conjectures throughout
the course of the novel. Candidates
include a few different women with names beginning with V., the capital of
Malta, Valetta, a jazz club called the
V-Note frequented by the Whole Sick Crew, and even a rat named Veronica. In one way, the book appears a
qabalistic study on the letter V from a multiplicity of different angles
including things that make the shape of a V:
“As spread thighs are to the
libertine, flights of migratory birds to the ornithologist, the working part of
his tool bit to the production machinist, so was the letter V to young
Stencil. He would dream perhaps once a
week that it had all been a dream, and that now he’s awaken to discover the
pursuit of V. was merely a scholarly quest after all, an adventure of the mind
in the tradition of The Golden Bough
or The White Goddess.”
– V. p. 61
That is the beginning of Chapter Three. Pynchon, again makes the qabalah
correspondence to Binah extremely obvious. This
technique is called iso-magnification – taking one area from The Tree of Life and highlighting and examining it. In V.,
Pynchon does this with the number 3, possibly partly in homage to
Dante Alighieri who used the symbolism of the Trinity extensively in The Divine Comedy.
Reading V. has the effect of considering hitherto unnoticed images that pop
up in the environment. For instance, the V for Victory
sign, reputedly given to Winston Churchill by Aleister Crowley to counteract
the magical symbolism of the Nazi swastika.
Indeed, one manifestation of V. in the book is a woman named Victoria.
The first day I began reading V. I
saw someone with a huge V on their oversize t-shirt at the gym. Later I discovered: “V.’s the country of
coincidence, ruled by a ministry of myth.” (p.450) This also happens to
accurately describe the Bardo, the Land of the Dead, the space of
choice-points.
That same day, I noticed that my gym trainer draws hearts, to delineate cardio exercises, that strongly
resembled a V. V as the heart. This bias gets confirmed on the first page (and
elsewhere) with an old street singer singing:
Every night is Christmas Eve
on old East Main
Sailors and their sweethearts
all agree …
A location vying for the
role of V., the previously mentioned capital of Malta, Valletta, fits that interpretation. Val can signifies the heart, being
short for Valentine. Chapter 16 is titled Valletta and begins: “Now there was a
sun-shower over Valletta, and even a rainbow."
16 denotes the key number for the path on the Tree of Life corresponding
with the Hierophant.
More obvious qabalah: Chapter 14 V. in Love. 14 = the path of
Venus, the Goddess of Love.
Some advanced qabalah: the
first character we meet, one of the main ones, is Benny Profane. Pynchon always has interesting names for his
characters and more often than not, packs the main ones with delicious qabalistic
delicacies. The book starts: "Christmas
Eve, 1955, Benny Profane …" then describes what he’s wearing, where he is and
what he’s going to do. Benny = Ben + e,
sounding it phonetically. Ben = 57, see
Chapter 57 in The Book of Lies for
how that connects with Christ – not necessarily Jesus, rather the post or place
of Christ shown as the Rosy Cross. The
letter e = The Star (tarot). Looked
through that lens, the word Eve acquires more significance – a letter v with an
e on each side. Profane = Pro + f + ane.
Pro = professional; f = a stand-in for v, both letters correspond to the Hebrew
letter vau which = The Hierophant (tarot); ane = 56 = Nuit which resonates with
both Beatrice and Juno, see above and also Chapter 56 in The Book of Lies: f + ane = 62 = Healing. In Chapter 62 from the always truthful Book of Lies, Crowley connects the
number with his ritual The Mass of the
Phoenix, making another connection with the death/rebirth cycle.
V. comprises two general areas of characters and stories set in different eras. The contemporary one, beginning in 1955, tells
of the adventures of a group of eccentric friends known as the Whole Sick Crew. The historical one starts sometime around the
turn of the XXth Century and goes as late as just after WWII though it also
jumps around in time. The book ends in
1919. Some of the characters from the
two time streams overlap. The Whole Sick
Crew recalls the Sufi blasphemy J.G. Bennett wrote about at the beginning of
Gurdjieff: Making A New World that basically says the powers-that-be made a
mistake with the Creation. Gurdjieff
elaborates this idea much more in All and Everything. Whole Sick Crew, in the esoteric sense, could indicate the crew that helps heal the
sickness of the whole. In other circles, this gets framed as alleviating the suffering of the Absolute. Gurdjieff called it The Work.
I have barely scratched the surface of the multiplicity of V. and its esoteric transmission.
I have barely scratched the surface of the multiplicity of V. and its esoteric transmission.
