Luna
I.
Песня з/к-испытателя
Посвящается памяти Автоматической Межпланетной Станции Е-8-5М № 413 «Луна-24»
Я – зэк-испытатель,
Астральный наблюдатель,
Матфизпроповедатель –
А док, который во мне сидит,
Считает что он исследователь!
Я в прошлом спою:
Мой грант-рапорт пошёл, –
Я сделал с ним что хотел, –
Но брэгманский этап тот, мол, –
Изрядно мне надоел!
Я связь души с телом в зоне прожёг –
Сфризила их полу-кома,
Но сердце мозгу кровью поёт:
Пора уходить из дурдома!
*
Китайского мифа зонд несёт
Кванты дыр лунного света
Как измерить запутанность их
С тенями смыслов мета-?
(в электричке с Гданьска в Гдыню, on the day of penumbral full moon eclipse 嫦娥五号 landing, 1.XII.2020; feat. the melodies of Vladimir S. Vysockiĭ’s* song, «Песня самолёта-истребителя» (1968; cf. also the 1974 version recorded with the «Melodiya» orchestra, conducted by Georgiĭ A. Garayan, and released on the Сыновья уходят в бой album))
II.
䷵**
**
«羿請无死之藥于西王母嫦娥窃之以奔月將往枚筮之于有黄有黄占之曰吉
翩翩歸妹
獨將西行
逢天晦芒
毋恐毋惊
後且大昌
嫦娥遂托身于月是為蟾蠩»
— 干寶 [Gàn Bǎo], ≲336, 搜神記 [Sōu shén jì]
Russ. transl.: «Стрелок И испросил у Повелительницы Запада Си-ванму пилюлю бессмертия. Хэн-Э похитила пилюлю и бежала с ней на луну. Перед тем как взяться за дело, она гадала о его успехе у Ю-Хуана. Ю-Хуан возгласил после произведённого гадания: Удача придёт,
Когда ты, сестрица, узнаешь полёт.
Дорога на Запад твоя пролегла —
Откроется Неба безбрежная мгла.
Про робость забудь и про страхи забудь,
Чтоб вечная благость к тебе снизошла.
Хэн-Э после этого оставила свой след на Луне — это и есть Чаньчу — Лунная Жаба.»
(Меньшиков Л.Н., in: [1])
Engl. transl.: «Yi requested the medicine of immortality from the Western Queen Mother. Chang E stole it to flee to the moon. When she was about to go, she had the stalks divined by milfoil by You Huang. You Huang prognosticated them and said: Auspicious.
So soaring the returning maiden,
alone about to travel westward.
Meeting heaven’s dark void;
do not fear, do not tremble.
Afterwards there will be great prosperity.
Chang E subsequently consigned her body to the moon, and this became the frog.»
(Shaugnessy E.L., in: [2])
[1] Гань Бао, 1994, Записки о поисках духов (Соу шэнь цзи), Центр «Петербургское востоковедение», Санкт-Петербург.
[2] Shaughnessy E.L., 2014, Unearthing the Changes: recently discovered manuscripts of the Yi Jing (I Ching) and related texts, Columbia University Press, New York.
III.
A commentary on 归妹 [Guī mèi] divination
dedicated to the memory of professor Krzysztof M. Gawlikowski (1940–2021)
[As of Summer 2022, this text is a subject of irregular small updates. The most current version is here.]
The hexagram ䷵ of 易經 [Yì jīng] ('Book of changes') is known as 归妹 [Guī mèi] ('Returning/Converting/Marrying maiden'), and as such it is contained in 歸藏 [Guī cáng] ('Returning to be stored'), which is one of three more ancient divination texts from which Yì jīng has been compiled (other two texts are 連山 [Lián shān] ('Linked mountains') and 周易 [Zhōu yì] ('Changes of Zhōu'), the latter also based on Guī cáng). The discovery of ancient tombs containing bamboo-strip manuscripts in 1993, in 王家台 [Wángjiātái] village in 湖北 [Húběi] province, has lead to dating and deciphering of the ~250BC (the oldest currently known) versions of parts of Guī cáng. It included two fragments of Guī mèi divination: №307 «归妹曰昔者恒我窃毋死之 [药]» ('Guī mèi says: In the past Héng Ě stole the [medicine] of immortality') and №201 «奔月而攴占» ('and fled to the moon and had the stalks prognosticated').
According to Shaughnessy (op. cit., p.155),
«It is clear that the Heng E 恒我 of Wangjiatai fragment no. 307 is identical with the mythological figure more commonly (though not invariably) known from the Han dynasty on as Chang E 常娥 (the “Heng,” 恒 or 姮, having been changed to “Chang,” 常 or 嫦, to avoid a taboo on the name of Liu Heng 劉恒, Han Wendi 漢文帝 [r. 179–157 B.C.])».
This type of change is featured in the cited above fragment from 搜神記 [Sōu shén jì] ('Records of searching for the spirits') by 干寶 [Gàn Bǎo]. However, as noted by Shaughnessy to be a strange fact, a fragment found in earlier text of Han dynasty's period, 靈憲 [Líng xiàn] ('Sublime/Spiritual/Mystical model/constitution/laws') by 張衡 [Zhāng Héng] (who lived between 78 and 139 AD), while almost identical with Gàn Bǎo's version, does not respect this taboo, writing 恒娥 [Héng É].
There are two important additional pieces of information, which are not discussed by Shaugnessy: 1) the difference between 恒我 (~250BC) and 恒娥 (~120AD) is that the former does not contain a female radical (女); 2) as opposed to both 恒娥 and 嫦娥 (which, in consequence, act as a name of a female), the oldest (and thus most original, at least as for now) version, 恒我, has its own meaning: 恒 [héng] (which is considered in the current text as completely exchangeable with its orthographic version, 恆) means 'constant/persistent/perserverant/lasting/eternal', while 我 [wǒ/ě] means 'I/me/my'. Taken together, this gives a tentative interpretation of the original meaning of 恒我 as a (gender neutral) 'eternal me'/'eternal self', which got lost over the course of 600 years, due to the transition 恒我 –> 恒娥 –> 嫦娥 (the final version has two female radicals, while the original one has none). Combining this with the rest of Guī mèi fragment, we obtain the preamble of divination: 'In the past, the eternal self has stolen the medicine of immortality and fled to the moon', which can be interpreted as a diagnosis (frame of reference, course of events) to which the central five lines of divination refer to.
However, this tentative interpretation has to be subjected to a further scrutiny, since the meaning of 恆 [héng] is a complex historical and philosophical issue, which includes the tension between confucian and dàoist perspectives on this term. On one side,
«Early Confucian texts expanded the meaning of constancy, gave prominence to permanent [常] and “long-duration,” [久] and furthermore produced the idea of constancy in relation to substances. This provided another step towards the metaphysical change of constancy that included more possibilities. The permanence [常] of constancy [恆] corresponds to the idea of time. After the xin [心] radical was added to the pictograph of crescent moon [亙]; it expressed the willpower of people and their action to be concentrated into the meaning of “long duration” and “unchanging.” As a result, the ideas of perseverance [恆心] and “preserving” [有恆] emerged» [3].
On the other side,
«in the book of the Laozi [老子], the word “heng” 恒, a key word in understanding Laozi's concept of temporality of dao 道, was missing during the past 2000 years. In most editions of the text, a synonym, “chang” 常, was substituted, which may refer to a totally different understanding of the temporality of dao. Second, based on an etymological study of the origins of the Chinese word “heng” and its philosophical use in the Laozi, I shall claim that heng explores the temporality of Laozi's dao as heng dao. Unlike chang, which asks more for constant extension, and invariable and non-changeable movement, heng in Laozi's heng dao focuses more on “living longer” 長生 of the myriad creatures, and on the concept of “never dying” 不死 of dao as the natural force of giving birth. (...) In the ordinary Chinese language the word heng and the word chang are always treated as synonyms. However, when we study the origins of these two words, we find that they are different. Etymologically speaking, the original meaning of “heng” may be traced to two other ancient Chinese characters: geng 亙 and gen 亙. Geng means “to wax flail” and “to navigate.” (...) The primordial image evoked by these variant characters may be the moving of the moon across the sky, or the path of a boat on a river. Gen means “to flow through” and “to spread everywhere.” (...) These two meanings of the ancient word heng are dearly related, directly or indirectly, to the movement of water: a boat moves on an earthly river or the moon moves across the celestial “river.” Thus understood, the original meaning of heng does not seem to have much to do with chang [常], if chang means only “constancy.” Heng as movement on water suggests a range of differentiated and even conflicting dements such as a new moon and a full moon, or fast eddies and tranquil pools, shallow and deep water, movement forward and backward, up and down, slow and rapid, and so on. Given this original meaning of heng and the complicity of the world that the Laozi seeks to characterize, it is not surprising to see why Laozi favors heng over chang in expressing dao» [4].
Furthermore,
«On the first level, heng refers to the process of mutually oppositional and complementary interactions between `being-a-thing’ (you 有) and `not-being-the-thing’ (wu 無), `difficult’ (nan 難) and `easy’ (yi 易), as well as between yin and yang (chapter 42), `male’ (xiong 雄) and `female’ (ci 雌) (chapter 28), `good fortune’ (fu 福) and `bad luck’ (huo 禍) (chapter 58), etc. in all things of the world. (...) For the Laozi, that these mutually oppositional and mutually complementary interactions are possible only because of a deeper level of `interaction’ between the two opposite aspects on one side and their `gushing forth’ (沖 chong) on the other. `Interaction’ at this deeper level may not be `interaction’ in the ordinary sense of the word because it is a primordial pre- or non-substantive relation. That is to say, when we use the word `interaction’ or `relation’, we often presuppose the existence of two separated entities or qualities that participate in the interaction, but if we reverse our usual way of thinking and take the `interaction’ as pre-substantive rather than substantive, we discover that those supposedly substantive entities or qualities should be understood not as the causes of the `substantive interactions’ but the result of the `pre-substantive interactions’, which the Laozi calls `gushing forth’. Thus understood, the `pre-substantive interaction’ or the primordial `gushing forth’ is the existential condition of both the existence of the opposite aspects and the `substantive interaction’ between them» [5].
Taking into account this dialectics between confucian 'constancy'/'permanence' of 常 [cháng] and dàoist 'flow'/'gushing forth' of 恆 [héng], more exact re-reading of the preamble of the divination would be: 'In the past, the everlastingly-changing self has stolen the medicine of immortality and fled to the moon'.
Zhāng Héng's Líng xiàn, known only in fragments, is an interesting text on its own. Apart from being said to provide a calculation of a value of π as 730/232 = 3.146552... (as attributed by 開元占經 [Kāiyuán Zhānjīng] treatise on astrology, compiled from 714 to 724 AD [6]), it also contains a fragment «月者陰精之宗積而成獸象蜍兔» [7] ('The moon has the fundamental essence of yīn type. It accumulates into an animal that looks like a toad, or a hare', cf. also [8]). This gives a consistent semiotic context for the guī mèi divination: moon is an object with 陰 [yīn] type of essence (精 [jīng]), the accumulative form/body of this type of essence is a toad, the self became immortal (due to the act of stealing, and apparently intaking, of medicine), however at the price of consigning its own form/body to the moon’s type of essence, i.e., bounding its (formerly) everlastingly flowing dynamics to receptiveness of yīn, and obtaining the fixed form/body of a toad.
Hence, in principle (resp., only counterfactually – if considered within the frames of divination being actually performed), the self does not have to be immortal (resp., could have been nonimmortal), and thus can be (resp., could have been) nonsubordinated to moon. This leads to an interesting conclusion, that the default state of self is a conjunction of everlasting flow and mortality. This state can be changed by means of an immoral act (stealing), which has its necessary price/payoff (falling under the spell/control of the moon). The difference between dàoist 'everlasting flow' of 恆 [héng] and confucian 'constancy' of 常 [cháng] makes a substantial change in the above intepretation: shifting from héng to cháng would amount to allowing the conjunction of constancy/eternality/permanence and mortality, instead of the conjunction of everlasting flow and mortality. In both cases, the resolution of the moon-bound state amounts to remortalisation via the complementary essence of the 陽 [yáng] type. It is quite interesting to see that, while the tension between héng and cháng modes of temporality can be seen as reflecting the duality between lunar and solar temporalities (with 恆 traced back to combination of 'heart' 心 [xīn] (transforming into a radical 忄) and 亙 [gèn/gèng], the latter arising from 'moon' 月 [yuè]), in both cases the consignment of temporal self to moon’s yīn immortality is independent from the (interpretational choice of the) mode of temporality. In dàoist view, which is a preferred reading due to the results of archeological findings, the immortalisation via bounding to yīn can be seen as conflicting with the everlasting changeability of self. So, while the dàoist temporality can be seen as having somewhat lunar flavour at the meta-level (as opposed to the confucian constancy), at the elementary level it recognises the permanent subordination to moon’s yīn as an abnormal mode of self. In particular, the restoration of 'everlasting flow' of self (return of a maiden) can happen due to the increase of yáng.
It is interesting to see that the transition 恆我 –> 恆娥 –> 嫦娥 reflects, on its own, the process of transition of a neutral self into the female (hence, moon-obeying) character, combined with replacement of everlasting flow with an eternal constancy, which (nomen est omen) obscures the fine-grained meaning behind the divination (turning its form into a frog), while immortalising it in the easily comprehensible tale. From this perspective, the archeological and semiotic research, reconstructing the most probable original text and its meanings, amounts to return from moon’s bonding (together with remortalisation of a fixed myth into a discourse/flow of ideas) by means of increasing the yáng type of essence. The returning maiden travels westward.
[3] 王中江 [Wáng Zhōng Jiāng], 2016, 终极根源概念及其谱系:上博简 《恒先》 的 “恒” 探微 [Zhōngjí gēnyuán gàiniàn jí qí pǔxì: Shàng bó jiǎn 《héng xiān》 de “héng” tàn wēi], 哲学研究 [Zhéxué yánjiū] 1, 35–44 (Engl. transl.: 2019, The concept and genealogy of the ultimate origin: an exploration of constancy in the hengxian 《恒先》 text of the Shanghai museum collection, Journal of Chinese Philosophy 46, 3–32).
[4] 王庆节 [Wáng Qìng Jié], 2001, Heng 恒 and Temporality of Dao: Laozi 老子 and Heidegger, Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 1, 55–71.
[5] 王庆节 [Wáng Qìng Jié], 2000, Heng Dao and appropriation of nature—a hermeneutical interpretation of Laozi, Asian Philosophy 10, 149–163.
[6] 蓝丽蓉 [Lán Lì Róng], 2016, Pi in Chinese mathematics, in: Selin E. (ed.), Encyclopaedia of the history of science, technology, and medicine in non-western cultures (3rd ed.), Springer, Berlin, pp.3533–3534.
[7] 劉昭 [Liú zhāo], 1965, 後漢書：天文志 [Hòu hànshū: Tiānwén zhì], 中华书局 [Zhōnghuá shūjú], 北京 [Běijīng] (as quoted in: 赵晋超 [Zhào Jìn Chāo], 2019, Integration and transformation: a study of the sun and the moon depicted in the imagery of Fuxi and Nüwa, Asian Studies 7, 13–45).
[8] Vampelj Suhadolnik N., 2011, Han mural tombs: reflection of correlative cosmology through mural paintings, Asian and African Studies 15, 19–48.
(Wzgórze Św. Maksymiliana/Falenica, 5.I.2021/26.VI.2022)