Recently after receiving an animated gif as a multi-media message over my by-now lo-tech cell phone, saying in sparkling letters and tiny fireworks, HAPPY NEW YEAR, I returned the favor spontaneously, but through email with the Irronism, HARPY NOOSPHERE! which does in a happy accident sort of fashion call to mind my recent readings of Peter Sloterdijk's Spherology text Bubbles, but it also ended up making me think about other farther flung associations. The spontaneity and irronic distortion of HAPPY NEW YEAR into HARPY NOOSPHERE recalls the oddly long-lasting, at least in Northern Europe, Molybdomantic tradition called in Finland, uudenvuodentina which consists of melting tin or lead alloy figurines, or most commonly, ornamental horse-shoes, and then flinging the molten blob into a tub of cold water, and then subsequently interpreting the image by means of reading its shadow silhouette as a sort of divination. The practice unites accident, oracularity / hermeneutics, and materiality, and this is carried out as a New Year's tradition!
Uudenvuodenkenkien valaminen
Uudenvuodenaattona tai -yönä alkavan vuoden tapahtumia ennustetaan uudenvuodenkenkien valamisella.[16] Tinan valaminen tuli Suomeen Ruotsista ja Keski-Euroopasta. Se oli aluksi säätyläisten perinne, mutta levisi 1800-luvulla kansan keskuuteen, aluksi Länsi-Suomessa. Tinanvalamisen on sanottu vanhoista ennustustavoista kenties parhaiten nykyiseen elämänmenoon sopeutuneeksi[17]. Uudenvuodenkenkiä sanotaan uudenvuodentinoiksi, vaikka useimmissa nykyisin myytävissä uudenvuodentinoissa on todellisuudessa tinaa vain muutama prosentti, loput lyijyä, joka on ihmiselle myrkyllinen raskasmetalli[18]. Uudenvuodenkengät ostetaan yleensä kaupasta, hevosenkengän muotoisena kappaleena. Kenkä sulatetaan kauhassa joko takan tulessa tai kaupunkiolosuhteissa useimmin liedellä. Sulanut metalli kumotaan kauhasta vedellä täytettyyn ämpäriin. Jäähtyessään vedessä metalli jähmettyy sattumanvaraisesti erimuotoisiksi kappaleiksi. Jähmettynyttä kappaletta katsotaan ja yritetään keksiä, mitä se kuvaisi.[19] Jähmettynyttä kappaletta voi katsoa myös kynttilän tai lampun valossa, jolloin sen varjon muodosta arvaillaan tulevaisuutta. Jos esimerkiksi jähmettymään on tullut koristeellista pitsimäistä osaa, sen kuvitellaan merkitsevän rahan tuloa alkavana vuonna. Tyypillisiä kuvia ovat laivat (voivat merkitä myös matkustusta), henkilöt (tulevat puolisot), talot, eläimet (esimerkiksi tuleva kotieläin) ja niin edelleen.[20] Uudenvuodentinat ovat ongelmajätettä niiden sisältämän lyijyn takia, ja ellei niitä aiota käyttää uudelleen seuraavana vuonna, ne tulee toimittaa ongelmajätekeräykseen.[21][22] Jotkut jättävät tinojen valamisen pois juhlinnasta luonnon säästämiseksi.[15] Uutta vuotta voidaan ennustaa myös nostelemalla kahvikuppeja, joiden alle on asetettu ennusmerkkejä.[23]
What was odd is that before I uttered HARPY NOOSPERE, or read about any form of molybdomancy, I had taken down Paul Virilio's _The Aesthetics of Disappearance_ from the shelf, and was engaged in thinking about this work with reference to another of Virilio's works, _The Accident of Art_.. I had remembered his discussion of speed and images, his "picnolepsy"—the epileptic state of consciousness produced by speed, or rather, the consciousness invented by the subject through its very absence: the gaps, glitches, and speed bumps lacing through and defining it. In the A of D, there is also a great deal of material concerning 'the accident' as well, and you can probably already tell where I am going to take picnolepsy.. Picnolepsy is a direct antecedent to Irronism. Virilio is remapping, or updating the theory of the grotesque, but that's not what's of primary interest. What is of interest is that the ancient practices of divination are themselves, picnoleptic procedures.. Okay that's one road to keep walking down, but before we start our schitzo's stroll down that lane. There's the curious notion of the coincidental irronic contextualization, as provided by something like this:
This is Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin's Soap Bubbles ca. 1733–34. Another Chardin, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin is also known for his popularization of the term Noosphere, which according to various sources may have been coined by Vladimir Vernadsky, and later used by Édouard Le Roy.
The concept is interesting not only as an illustration of this image, but vice versa, The Noosphere, as a historical concept is directly related to the view that evolution is creative, a construction. Now here is where my Irronic antennae perked up, If the Noosphere proceeds creatively, then Interpretation of the material gap
is part of its basic foundation, and divinatory practices represent a discrete model of that hermeneutic engine, like a spark of transference in the brush and rotor structure of an electric motor.. Here is a page from The A of D by Paul Virilio:
So, at some point I let the trail get cold on my original inspiration for this post, but the last little crumb
I left myself was this: Notes: Iris, Mobilis in Mobili, Harpy, which I took up like a sparkler or an exploded tin shoe, but which I did not finish. So let's see if I can remember any of the paths:
something interesting about the concept of modernity being associated with speed, when swiftness, or fleetness has always had a role in various mythologems, but not just that, the tina themselves as remnants of a classical picnoleptic tradition, in which swift and natural forces are unleashed and their record or remainder as cataclysm become an object of meditation or divination. The wonderful thing is, you can imagine there might be very old tina, or one's that had great personal meaning, or there might not be.
For some reason, this word mythologem comes to have resonances with the tinas as well,
I imagine a mythologem not only as a complex or matrix of ideas, but as a sound manifold.
Here is what I mean. Look at the similarity between:
Iris -messenger of the gods
Eris - goddess of strife and discord
Eros - god of love
Ares - god of war
Like a sonic gem we turn in the hand of our ear, but is this nothing more than a picnoleptic gap, an accident of biostructuralism, or are the resonances constructed. Is there a poetic, or constructed intention, let alone meaning. In one sense, the relevance to the grotesque is immediate. Different combinations of a single substance bring change, enact movement, the poetic urn as the material gap, but also as the oracular fulcrum,
and meaning then like a picnoleptic pressure, or closer, a decision made under duress.. It made me hear the term Oris, or Orison, and led me to the Iguvine Tablets where you can find things like:
picnoleptic duress in the face of the infinite series? yes! Harpy Noosphere. In a singularity, every molecular moment leads irrevocably to a specific lineage of other molecular moments, combinationalism and computationalism become construction, become accident, but also, as in the mythologem, as in the grotesque, polyvalence, Iris as the personification of the rainbow, layers, or lyres, or leers, and lores, etc..
Eiros.
Just as the tina is snatched from the cold water, our happy is harpy!
In Greek mythology, a harpy ("snatcher", from Latin: harpeia, originating in Greek: ἅρπυια, harpūia) was one of the winged spirits best known for constantly stealing all food from Phineas. The literal meaning of the word seems to be "that which snatches" as it comes from the ancient Greek word harpazein (ἁρπάζειν), which means "to snatch".
Here I am snatching Tina from the Finneas..
This Phineas was said to be a son of Poseidon, or of Phoenix, and had the gift of prophecy. Zeus, angry that Phineas revealed too much of the plans of the gods, punished him by blinding him and setting him on an island with a buffet of food. However, he could eat none of it because the harpies (vicious winged women) stole the food out of his hands right before he could eat.[1] This continued until the arrival of Jason and the Argonauts. They sent the winged heroes the Boreads after the harpies. They succeeded in driving the monsters away but did not kill them, as a request from Iris: Goddess of Rainbows who promised that Phineas would not be bothered by the harpies again. It is said that the Boreads were turned back by Iris at the Strophades.[2]
Iris preserving the agents of strife and Eris, and strife preserving the mysteries of the gods.
Here is a classical version of politicality connected to conceptual blindness, or ignorance.
Power is maintained by stupidity, but is not that same mythologem as blinder a stupidity which generates some version of a space for creativity?
What is the secret plan of the gods? Is it that there is no plan? That all is construction and accident made one in the singularity of trauma and accident, or better, a wtf, whatever, joy,
genius-idiousy, an Eiros.. the happy noise-sphere?
Irronism or Eironism is like Phineas wandering into the Naos, and shouting at Jove,
YOU ARE NOISE! A NAUSEA! A BUILDING!
Hit was noiset anon þat a noumbur hoge Of Grekes were gedret.
It was noised abroad that Mr. Valiant-for-truth was taken with a Summons.
He hard þe gret nois was þare Abute þis calf.
Imagine that golden calf melted
and cast into a great casque of wine
what marvelous PAW-TINA! and here *(hear then)
the noise of the engina
WUODEN VUODEN! yamgalam vudsporkduvongduginagangbugug
