Picking Up My Cosmic Garments at the LOST and Found: Back in the Bardo, or "The Twenty-Eight Or So People You Meet in Heaven"

"The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason." -Benjamin Franklin

LOST, in part, was an exploration of the tensions between seemingly contradictory notions: reason and faith dominated the first two seasons, fate and free will the next few, good and evil in the last. These dualistic schemata, of course, have contributed to conflict in countless myths, legends, and works of literature in the Western canon, and Sunday night, LOST added to this in its weird, love-festy, after-party, fetishistic sort of way (I half-expected the last shot to fade to white with the word "FOUND" scrolling toward me). The sometimes heavy-handed, sometimes ambiguous symbolism of the show is one thing that kept me thinking about it and coming back to it week after week. The forced and unwarranted simplicity of the good versus evil storyline that characterized the final season, while it had come to the fore only recently, had been backgrounded since the pilot, when Locke sat down with Walt, holding one white and one black backgammon piece, and explained that "there are two players...one is light, one is dark." (What we thought was superficial racial harmony was in fact foreshadowing the great ideological struggle of the later seasons?) I had held out hope, as late as the next-to-last episode that the Jacob/Man in Black conflict was a ruse, a ploy designed to lull us into a false sense of complacency, after which it would be revealed that neither were truly good or evil, that they were each manipulating the survivors in their own way, a la Sirrus and Achenar at the end of Myst (Cuse and Lindelof have remarked how heavily this game influenced their story-telling). Not only was I wrong, but to add insult to injury, they essentially placed the mantra of reason in the mouth of the evilest character on the show: "There are very smart men among us," the Man in Black says, "who are very curious about how things work." What is the lesson here? That trying to reason through things is inferior to having faith? The Jack/Locke dynamic in the first two seasons was so excellent precisely because they interpreted the island oppositely, yet both were very easy to to identify with. Unfortunately, for me, this dynamic was completely ruined in the finale. On this level, the show succeeded for so long because the writers openly and honestly depicted the real-life tensions of nearly irreconcilable conceptions without consciously favoring one or the other or suggesting that one was more powerful or viable than the other. This changed with the finale, as faith alone triumphed, and one of the principal messages of the show seems to have been - to use the now trite and overused phrases of the show - that, by "let[ting] go" of reason, we can "move on" to faith. This is at best simple moralizing and at worst intellectual dishonesty. While I found the finale to be emotionally satisfying, I found it to be extremely unsatisfying on a cerebral level. Indeed, what we got was, in the words of one unforgiving critic, "a prom of the dead in a chapel of love where everybody is farting rainbows, where all the primary Oceanic 815 survivors are redeemed, where a loving 'Dad' opens a Spielbergian door of light to the greater beyond." As the old adage goes, "truth is stranger than fiction." Unfortunately, LOST gave us a comforting fiction. I'll take genuine truth, discovered through reason, any day.

"I cannot allow your ignorance, however great, to take precedence over my knowledge, however small." -William James

I fully expected, nay, predicted (the one I made that actually came true), that the series would not really answer the major questions that have so obsessed hardcore LOST fans for the last six years: What was the source of the island's power? What was the meaning behind the numbers? What was the smoke monster made of? What caused the castaways time traveling? And so on. These were questions that could only be answered intrinsically within the show's mythology, not extrinsically through some overwrought pseudo-scientific borrowing from quantum mechanics or string theory. Such an ending would be lost (no pun intended) on the average American television viewer. Despite my love of science fiction, I fully braced myself for the fact that this is not how questions would be answered. But, in one sense, the writers betrayed the entire mythology of the series by implying that these were the wrong questions to ask in the first place. In the end, the moral of the series is that the metaphysical is more important than the physical, the spiritual is more important than the material, and hoping for answers through faith is more important than achieving them through reason. This is unacceptable to me, not because I think faith is, of its own accord, unsatisfactory, but because it is an entirely subjective experience, that gives meaning only individually - thus, while it may "answer" personal questions about the nature of reality, it is not a suitable way of attaining the type of knowledge that, I feel, LOST claimed it was offering. It seems as though Jack's entire character arc consisted of relinquishing reason, being a "man of science," and becoming a "man of faith." It is certainly difficult to disagree with that interpretation if we remember of his conversation with Locke in the first season - in which Locke asks, "Why do you find it so hard to believe?" to which Jack replies, "Why do you find it so easy?!" - with Jack's conversation with the Man in Black in the last episode, in which he tells him that Locke was right about everything from the beginning and says he wishes he'd had a chance to tell him.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." -Arthur C. Clarke

Along with faith and reason, fate and free will, good and evil, we might add fantasy and science fiction to the list of strange dualities. These, too, are overlapping genres and creating false distinctions between them may be ill-conceived, but there are some significant differences that created difficulties in attempting to view LOST as true science fiction. For quite a while, LOST did a wonderful job at skillfully melding traditional science fiction tropes, epitomized by the Dharma Initiative, the effects of electromagnetism, and time travel, with typical elements of fantasy. However, LOST always maintained an air of intrinsic plausibility, a world which had a set of specific explanatory rules that did not defy logic in any metaphysical sort of way. In a crude way, one major distinction between science fiction and fantasy is that, in science fiction,"things" are "explained." That is, elements central to the story are not usually taken as given in a particular fictional universe: Transporters are "explained" in Star Trek; magic, in The Lord of the Rings, is not. This is not a hard and fast rule - midicholorians aside, the Force is never really explained in Star Wars, for example, yet it exists within a universe in which things, more or less, are presumed to have a technological explanation. (Star Wars is often called "space fantasy" for this very reason.) In the words of literary critic Gwyneth Jones, science in science fiction

[has] nothing in particular to say about the subject matter, which may be just about anything so long as the formal conventions of future dress are observed. It means only, finally, that whatever phenomenon or speculation is treated in the fiction, there is the claim that it is going to be studied at some point scientifically - that is objectively, rigorously; in a controlled environment. The business of the writer is to set up the equipment in the laboratory of the mind such that the 'what if' in question is at once isolated and provided with the exact nutrients it needs. (Jones, Deconstructing the Starships: Science, Fiction, and Reality, 1999: 4)

Adam Roberts clarifies this by writing that the "truth" of the science in science fiction is unimportant, so long as "the scientific method, the logical working through of a particular premise" is maintained (Roberts, Science Fiction: The New Critical Idiom, 2000: 10). For a time, LOST did exactly this. The Dharma initiative is nearly ludicrous in our reality, but within the fictional universe of LOST, it existed as a prime example of the inductive method at work, of cognition through objective reasoning. In the end, however, LOST seemed to eschew even the idea of cognitively plausible ending adhering to the self-contained rules of its universe, opting instead for a touchy-feely, huggy, "everybody-dies-and-goes-to-heaven" ending. To be sure, plenty of science fiction has attempted these quasi-religious resolutions. Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, with its enigmatic and equivocal star child, or Tarkovsky's Solaris, with its highly figurative house on an island, stand as primary examples. But Kubrick used this in a symbolic way, to signify the mental evolution of mankind as we reached out into the cosmos. Not so, LOST. "Everything that's ever happened to you has been real," Christian tells Jack in the final scene. The finale was literal, one-dimensional, and attempted to depict an irrational world devoid of any of the deeper symbolism that might have redeemed this convoluted, lazily-constructed resolution.

Perhaps mirroring the increasing binarism of the show, the chatter on the Internet seemed to revolved around the false dichotomy of "plot versus characters." While one variety of fan extolled the virtues of the multi-layered, complex characters, the other lauded the impressive scope and depth of its mythologically-driven, part science fiction, part fantasy, story arc. To me, these have always been false choices. The characters worked and were interesting because of the context of the island-story, while it was worth going down the rabbit hole of that twisted plot to begin with because of their intricate relationships. The writers have noted on several occasions that they originally envisioned this whole epic as a character-driven drama, and while I agree that that was what made the story compelling, I feel like attempting to separate them from the plot is pointless. Each is what made the other work, and the almost disrespectful lack of denouement in the finale left me wondering why they'd even created such an elaborate and compelling narrative architecture in the first place.

"The external world and the inner world are...only two sides of the same fabric, in which the threads and all forces and all events, of all forms of consciousness and their objects, are woven into an inseparable net of endless, mutually connected relations." -Lama Anagarika Govinda

What about the actual finale itself? At risk of sounding absurdly obvious, the finale was filled with mytho-logical and religious symbolism, most, though not all of it, Christian. Jack represented a Christ-figure, complete with wounds (or at least dripping blood) on his hands and feet, stab in the side, who eventually is reunited with his (the?) father (named Christian Shepherd, no less) in a happy little church where all of the people who've ever meant anything to Jack are all there waiting for him so they can all be ushered into the light. (Does this make Jacob like Holy Spirit? I thought he was supposed to represent, you know, Jacob.) The power of the island, while never explained, seemed to represent some sort of forbidden knowledge, a forbidden fruit which, if eaten, er, turns you into a smoke monster. The last season even came with its own holy grail, drinking from which gave one the powers of Jacob. Despite this very Christian interpretation, the reunion in the church in the final scene existed somewhere in the borderland between schmaltzy multi-denominational inclusiveness (note the cross, crescent, Star of David, Dharma wheel, Om, and Taijitu on the stained-glass window) and subjective "it-doesn't-matter-what-you-believe-in-as-long-as-you-have-faith." Even more galling was that the writers had been promising the theorists since season one that the overall twist was not that survivors were in purgatory, and lo and behold, the flash-sideways universe turned out to be a sort of purgatory where the castaways were required to atone for their past misdeeds (by reliving them properly?) before remembering their actual lives and being ushered into the next world. (OK, technically the writers were telling the truth, since the theory floating around was that the island was purgatory, which in fact turned out to be little more than a Hitchcockian MacGuffin). The purgatory theory actually works much better, not in the Abrahamic context, but the Dharmic one, in which the castaways are all part of the same jati of souls connected for eternity - and through multiple lives - and are returning to the bardo of Tibetan Buddhism, a liminal or transitional state between life and the next stage: luminosity of the true nature of the universe followed by karmic oneness with that nature. (This also provides another interesting LOST allusion, since the most famous English translation of the Bardo Thodol or The Tibetan Book of the Dead, was made by Ram Dass, nee Richard Alpert.) Of course, in the Buddhist tradition, since the castaways were all deeply flawed individuals, they would likely be reincarnated where they would all meet up again in seemingly coincidental ways made possible by some sort of cosmic synchronicity. But this is just one interpretation. The point is that the island reality, in the very words of Desmond Hume in the finale, "doesn't really matter." Unfortunately, it mattered to a lot of us...

"Is it not time that Christian mythology, instead of being wiped out, was understood symbolically for once?"
-Carl Jung

I'm having a hard time describing my feelings about why I so disliked the way things wrapped up without sounding anti-religious. I'm honestly not anti-religion, I simply cannot abide when people cannot explain something and they attribute it to God. This is more insulting to religion, as it relegates the concept of God to a mere epiphenomenal explanation of the increasing smaller details of existence. I think religion, in its symbolic and psychologically functional way, is extraordinarily important, but when literalism and dogmatism become the foundation for belief, it undermines everything that makes faith important in the first place. What made the ending of LOST so infuriating is that the writers had heretofore done such a great a job of demonstrating the tensions between faith and reason, while not really favoring one over the other. They simply acknowledged that these interpretations coexisted in an uneasy way, that the human condition necessitates reasonable men having to come to grips with the irrational, and men of faith having to deal with doubt. With the finale, the writers reneged on this approach, and said "faith trumps all." As one blogger wrote, "Do you want to believe in the supernatural or in science? That's the point they've always been trying to make. It doesn't matter if you believe in science or faith, or both, just believe in something. We can never know for sure why things are the way they are, we can only put them in the context of our own experiences and understand it the best we can." Maybe... Perhaps I'm being too hard on this show. I'm trying really hard not to let one episode ruin, what to me, was the second best show of the decade (behind Arrested Development). I really did like the bulk of the series, even if it did get clunky and unfulfilling in the final season. After some reflection, the flash-sideways, purgatory universe reminded me a bit more of the nexus from Star Trek: Generations, a place of great joy where we got free do-overs for those thing we'd done wrong in life. But as Kirk said of this purgatory, contradicting both Desmond and Christian, "None of this matters. Because it isn't real." Indeed. LOST promised us the cosmic importance of the power of myth; what it delivered was hackneyed bromides on the power of faith.

Sin and "Pure Intention": The Wills of Abelard and Heloise

Given the personal calamities that Abelard and Heloise endured, it is understandable that they attempted to explicate their thoughts and actions in the context of sin. Abelard subscribed to the “ethic of pure intention,” meaning that the will of the sinner determined the sin rather than by the act itself.[1] In his Scito te ipsum, Abelard asserted that “our actions must be judged good or bad solely through the spirit in which they are performed,” and this interpretation of sin relocated the importance of moral transgression from the perpetration of sin to mind of the sinner.[2] Throughout their correspondence, both Abelard and Heloise wrestled with the implications of their sinful actions, but more importantly, they contended with the implications of their will to commit these acts. Paradoxically, Heloise considered herself both “wholly guilty” though also “wholly innocent” because she conceded that she had physically sinned with Abelard but maintained that her intentions were pure.[3] Like Abelard, Heloise affirmed that “it is not the deed but the intention of the doer” that defined sin, and she averred that “justice” must take these purposes into account.[4] The seemingly contradictory position of simultaneous guilt and innocence mirrored Heloise’s own situation at convent of Paraclete, where she exhibited piety through her actions while inwardly experiencing only hypocrisy.[5] If sin was in the intention, as Heloise and Abelard believed, then Heloise’s anguish lay in the continual process of sinning through her “lewd visions” and “fantasies” of Abelard.[6] Again, the will was more important than the act: Heloise emphasized that “virtue belong[ed] not to the body but the soul,” and claimed that she could “win praise in the eyes of men but deserve[d] none before God, who searches our hearts and loins and sees in our darkness.”[7]

Although he upheld the distinction between will and action, Abelard believed that his castration allowed for greater exculpation for his sins. Superficially, with Abelard’s desire to sin forcibly mitigated, he seems to have been liberated from the “pure intention” that defined his lust. The castration was performed against his will, but the effect that it had on his soul was beneficial: “I do not incur blame, I escape it. I deserve death and gain life. I am summoned and reprieved; I persist in crime and am pardoned against my will…Truly, the Lord takes thought for me. I will go then and declare how much the Lord has done for my soul.”[8] Did castration remove the will to sin from Abelard, or did it remain? The fact that he “persisted in crime” suggests that the will to sin remained despite his physical state, but Abelard also argued that he “had been freed…by God’s mercy [from] the power to commit…[the] sin” of lust.[9] In this way, Abelard, like Heloise, retained a position of simultaneous guilt and innocence.

Unlike Heloise, Abelard’s penance occurred in one excruciating instance as opposed to the enduring penance of Heloise. Since she believed her sin to be interior, Heloise’s acts of contrition were interior as well, involving personal guilt and shame over her past offenses. She directly compared the brevity of Abelard’s punishment, which he “suffered in the body for a time,” with the protraction of her own, which she endured “throughout [her] life in contrition of the mind.”[10] Heloise implied that Abelard’s inability to sin did not necessarily immunize him from the will to do so: “How can it be called repentance for sin, however great the mortification of the flesh,” she asked, “if the mind still retains the will to sin and is on fire with old desires?”[11] Heloise recognized that, for both of them, the intention to sin remained despite their inability to commit the act. To explain this discrepancy, Abelard recast their relationship as “lust, not love,” which “brought [them] both to sin.”[12] This acknowledgment of lust accorded with Abelard’s notions of sinfulness as “pure intention” because both continued to sin—and pay for these sins—well after the acts were long past.

---

[1] Betty Radice, ed. and trans. The Letters of Abelard and Heloise (London: Penguin Classics, 2003), xxii.

[2] Quoted in Ibid., 263-64 n.10

[3] Letter 2, Heloise to Abelard, in The Letters of Abelard and Heloise, ed. and trans. Betty Radice (London: Penguin Classics, 2003), 53.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Radice, The Letters of Abelard and Heloise, xxx, and Letter 4, Heloise to Abelard, 69-70. Heloise referred to herself as a “hypocrite” multiple times throughout Letter 4 not only because of her desire for Abelard, but also because she felt that she committed to the convent for the wrong reasons.

[5] Letter 4, Heloise to Abelard, 68.

[7] Ibid., 69. See Psalm 7:10-17.

[8] Letter 5, Abelard to Heloise, 83.

[9] Peter Abelard, Historia Calamitatum, 36.

[10] Letter 4, Heloise to Abelard, 67.

[11] Ibid., 68.

[12] Letter 5, Abelard to Heloise, 86.

"Choice, Chance, and the Actions of Others": A Religio-Scientific Interpretation of Free Will

First, imagine the conceivable dimensions of space geometrically: a line connecting two points is the first dimension - it has length but no width or depth. If we add a line branching from this original line, we have created the second dimension - on a plane, these two lines taken as a whole have length and width but no depth. Visualizing the third dimension is the easiest since we live in this dimension, but if we think of this dimension not as a third line on another plane, but as a fold connecting the two original lines, it will help us to imagine dimensions higher than the fourth. So, imagine that we cannot simply draw another line along another plane to give it depth. Now, imagine the third dimension, instead, as a fold of one of the original lines to meet the other line (like a two dimensional ant on the surface of a two dimensional newspaper, or Mario in one of the wrap around screens) being able to seemingly blink from one section to another if we were to fold those two points together. Still, with me? If we imagine the fourth dimension, time or duration, as another geometric line, then the fifth dimension is a line branching from our fourth dimensional line of time. There are infinitely many branches, all of which exist and represent all of the possible future available to us in this universe, but they are inaccessible to us, since we are bound by three dimensions. Getting to any of these branches requires only "choice , chance, and the actions of others", although we can only travel down one of these branches at any given moment. This is another way of saying that free will is our access point to the fifth dimension. We'll return to this notion at the end to demonstrate the conceptual possibility of viewing free will outside the realm of our own three dimensional universe. The implications of these amorphous suppositions have roots in both scientific and religious disciplines, and I wish to explore these in their totality.

I was prompted into deeper thinking about these topics recently because of four things: firstly, the recent posting of my graduate writing sample discusses the concept of free will in the historical context of astrology, witchcraft, the thought of Patristic writers and other pre-modern Christian theologians, and the writings of Shakespeare; secondly, a recent post by my friend Jason on the "implications of omnipotence" and the incompatibility of free will and an omnipotent God; thirdly, my recent, and almost unintentionally relevant, reading of two books on the topic: Science and Creation: A Search for Understanding by theoretical physicist turned Anglican priest John Polkinghorne and Freedom of Choice Affirmed by agnostic humanist philosopher Corliss Lamont; and fourthly, the previous video, linked here and above, which, quite frankly, was mind-boggling to me the first time I watched it, but which illustrates how to visualize dimensions higher than the fourth. This has profound implications for what we may call free will or the freedom of choice. Since I've already posted 15,000 words or so on the first section, we'll jump right into the blog post, books, and end by reconceptualizing the contents of the video within the context of free will.

In the discourse of the modern day discussion of free will vs. determinism, one must begin with the Church Fathers and Christian theologians of the Middle Ages. And, if we begin with the most influential of them all, Augustine, we immediately run into contradictory interpretations of the phenomenon. On the one hand, Augustine seems to deny free will, giving all power over the past, present, and future to God. He states that the number of saved souls is fixed, has been since the beginning of time, and that all are predestined to go either to heaven or hell. But Augustine, perhaps counterintuitively from a contemporary perspective, differentiates between determinism and predestination. The former is an absolute fixity in the future of the universe, which he denies, whereas the second only refers to the ultimate fate of individual souls, whose choices, freely made, determine their final location. The Catholic Church, which holds the existence of free will to be compatible with its doctrine, regards the writings of Augustine as affirming free will, in that he asserts that "any can be saved if they wish." Indeed, the Calvinist view of hard determinism would be diametrically opposed to the Catholic doctrine of free will beginning in the 16th century. The difference is merely in the perspective - our lack of knowledge as to our ultimate fate renders free will a reality, while from God's perspective, it is already known and decided. While contradictory, this nevertheless represents Augustine's and the Church's position, as Augustine constantly refers to free will as the ability of any person to accept Christ and thus be saved through grace. He says as much in his theological treatise "On Free Choice of the Will". The pre-determinism found in his writings is usually contextualized with the contemporary heresy of Pelagianism that Augustine was combating - Pelagius taught that humans could be saved of their own accord and did not need the saving grace of Christ, which Augustine rejected.

If free will is equivalent to freedom of choice, then perhaps the question lies in cause and effect. Here, however, the verdict, both philosophical and scientific, is still out. One of the earliest and most influential conceptions of cause and effect, is Aristotle's "Unmoved Mover," an imagined originator of the universe, defined as the original cause through which all existence may be termed an effect. Though the idea may seem similar to the concept of "God", it must be noted that Aristotle's "Unmoved Mover" was not anthropomorphic and did not play an active role in creation as the Judeo-Christian God did. Thus, it was originally considered incompatible with the creator God until the the great Scholastic Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas did Aristotle one better, or five better as it were. Aristotle had contended that the universe was eternal and had proposed the idea of a hypothetical "Unmoved Mover" as a necessary attribute of any universe that did have a temporal beginning. Aquinas, who as a Christian believed in a finite universe with a definite temporal beginning, took the "Unmoved Mover" concept as a given and as his starting point for his Quinquae Viae, or the Five Ways. The Five Ways, originally conceived as a rational approach to proving the existence of God, also contains major implications for the conflict between free will and determinism. Polkinghorne simplifies them thusly: "1) The existence of change...conclude[s] that there must be a first originator of change; 2) the existence of causation...conclude[s] that there must be a first cause; 3) the existence of coming to be and ceasing to be...conclude[s] that the world's actual continuance requires an unchanging ground of its existence; 4) the existence of gradations and qualities...conclude[s] that there must be one whose perfection is the ground for all partial qualities; 5) the existence of purpose in this world...conclude[s] the necessity of an intelligence directing it." (I plan on posting more on this later). A "first cause" equivalent to God implies a certain top-down control in the matter if we accept Aquinas' version of a "first cause" rather than Aristotle's, though I think Polkinghorne is right when he points out that Aquinas was more concerned with a "logical hierarchy" than a "temporal priority." This continues to muddy the argument and even though the official Catholic position is one of free will, the greatest writings on the matter do not shed any particularly coherent light on the issue.

Science, however, is no clearer. Traditional Newtonian physics is fairly cut and dried. It is classically mechanistic: 1) a body at rest or in uniform motion stays in that state unless acted upon by an external force, 2) force equals mass times the acceleration of a given object (F=ma), and 3) for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. These are Newton's three laws of motion simplified, and these, in some ways, also seem to imply determinism. The late 18th century French physicist and astronomer Pierre-Simon Laplace used these physical laws to create his own thought experiment, oftentimes called "Laplace's demon", which posits that if a demon with unlimited calculating power were given the location and momentum of every atom in the universe, he could predict the entire future of that universe. Carried further, this suggests that, of course, no human (Hari Seldon aside) could ever have this knowledge considering our own intellectual limitations, but an infinitely superior being with such power could in fact have such knowledge. Laplace called this being a demon, but what is to stop us in our conceptual language from granting this ability to God? Again, is this not exactly the God described by the Calvinists? This is where the conflict between knowing the future and controlling the future comes into play, which Augustine and other Christians have explained simply as a difference in perception. But, we must push this idea even further. As it turns out, Newtonian physics only describes the universe in general macroscopic terms, and at very small sizes and very fast velocities, it does not describe reality accurately. The determinism of Laplace's demon is overturned by Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, which states that if one knows the location of a subatomic particle, one cannot know its precise momentum, and if one knows the momentum of a subatomic particle, its precise location is indeterminate. So much for a demon with a calculator knowing our future - he can never input both variables into his equation. Einstein famously mused, in regards to quantum mechanics, that "God does not play dice." By playing dice, though, quantum physics, at least in this respect, affirms a universe of free choice.

The truth of the matter remains murky, and even more recent scientific discoveries swing the pendulum back in the direction of determinism: certain electrons seem to be able to "communicate" with each other no matter the distance and in certain experiments involving these electrons, effects are quite capable of appearing before causes (according to some). Recent studies by neurobiologists and cognitive scientists in the realm of simple voluntary movement have shown that the brain is aware of the movements we are about to make before our conscious minds are. Chance is another conundrum. What we call chance, may not really be chance at all (though I don't suspect a coin flip in our universe will come up heads ninety-two times in a row) but "infinitely complex order." When odds are calculated in a coin flip, for example, one would say that the odds of a coin coming up heads is 1 in 2, all things being equal. In reality, all things are never equal, and variations in the weight of the coin, the strength and direction of the toss, which side it is on to begin with, how many times it bounces, etc. will have an effect on the outcome. Only the hypothetical continuation of the flip for all eternity will give a statistical average of 1 in 2. Chance is simply infinitely complex order, indistinguishable from what we may call chaos but which is not chaos. In other words, order and disorder are not mutually exclusive, but "disorder" is simply order so complex as to be unpredictable and thus equivalent to what we would call chance. Perhaps free will is this very form of "unpredictability", so complex at a universal scale, that only God Himself is capable of discerning the order from the disorder. The acausal connecting principle synchronicity, by this definition, could be defined as more than chance - it could be a pattern found in the apparent disorder of the universe, a glimpse at the infinite complexity of reality. In short, science is no clearer than religion is on this matter.

Justice is an entirely separate concern. If we ask the question "Do humans have free will?" and the answer is no, does this necessarily imply that the universe is unjust? Some critics point out, I believe with a fair amount of justification, the incompatibility of an omniscient and omnipotent God who nevertheless has endowed us with free will. If an all-knowing and all-powerful God, both established conditions for Christian belief, truly does exist, then His knowledge about the universe, the criticism goes, implies that your choice is really His choice (an effect that can trace itself all the way back to Aquinas' "First Cause" of Aristotle's "Unmoved Mover"), and this lack of control on our part is unjust. The traditional Christian rebuttal would be something to the effect of "God exists outside of time and space and thus His knowledge does not affect your will. All of eternity is a continual unified 'present' from God's perspective, whereas we are forced to perceive the universe temporally and spatially." Implicit in this argument is the fact that, as God exists outside of any conceptual framework we could ever attempt to comprehend, so too is His justice and judgment beyond our comprehension.

In closing, let us return to the thought experiment we began with. Beyond our perceivable three spatial dimensions and the fourth of time, superstring theory posits the existence of 10 dimensions (or 11 if time is included as a dimension rather than a "direction"). The fifth dimension, according to the geometric concept laid out in the opening paragraph, consists of branches extending out from the "line" of time. In the totality of the universe, the point from which we start "contains" all of three dimensional space starting with the big bang and the point where the line ends is the temporal and spatial end of the universe. But, since time is not fixed (at least from our three dimensional perspective), there are an infinite number of "branches" from this line that creates the fifth dimension (heat death, big crunch, etc.). A "folding" of this fifth dimensional line to meet another fifth dimensional line takes us into the sixth dimension, and this would be the equivalent of a warp or wormhole leading to another timeline within our own universe. Then, taking all these branches as a new geometric point (just as we did to the first three dimensions), we could term this "infinity", since every timeline that could possibly exist within our universe exists within this point. We can then draw a line from this infinity to entirely different infinities. How is this possible? Because the first "infinity point" contains only all possible timelines in our current universe and does not contain timelines from other universes (the "multiverse"), where the initial conditions following the big bang are different and create different physical laws (for example, another universe may have a light speed faster than ours or a boiling point of water higher than 100 Celsius or where gravity is stronger than the electro-magnetic force, etc.) Following the original premise, branches and folds produce the eighth and ninth dimensions, which, when collapsed into a point, creates the tenth dimension. No more lines can be drawn from here, since we have already exahausted "all possible timelines for all possible universes". Does this make sense? No, not really. . . just watch the video. It will be easier to understand it conceptually as opposed to reading an imperfect verbal description. So what's the point in describing all these dimensions? Because, according to this conceptualization of supersting theory's "higher dimensions," everything that exists beyond the fifth dimension is dependent upon "choice, chance, and the action of others" in order to exist. All of the possible future timelines (the fifth dimensional branches from our fourth dimensional "line" of time) require our active choice to occur. Or, put another way, the indeterminate nature of the future is simply another way of envisioning the necessity of choice. If we could picture an entity or being that exists in or beyond the 10th dimension, who would necessarily have access to the lower dimensions (as we have access to the second and first), does their knowledge of time, our future, all possible futures, and all possible other universes abrogate our own free will? At least in this respect, I'm not sure that knowledge equals control, even if creation is implied.

I find it telling that Corliss Lamont titled his book Freedom of Choice Affrimed rather than Confirmed. Confirmation presupposes objective knowledge about the subject, and this may prove impossible. This essay was not meant to prove free will valid or invalid, but to shed some light on a new way of thinking about the issue. However, I am certain I feel more confused after exploring this topic over the past week, than less. But when we open new doors we often find ourselves in rooms with completely new mental furniture. And this is never a bad thing.

Tout comprendre, c'est tout accepter. . .

These "Damnable Superstitions": Legal Double Standards and Cultural Reflections of Witchcraft and Judicial Astrology, ca. 1200-ca. 1600: Part 7

Cultural Reflections of Witchcraft and Judicial Astrology
in Elizabethan England

The demarcation between astrology and witchcraft not only in early modern intellectual circles but also in the culture as a whole poses a more difficult problem. The key to this answer may lie in these divergent definitions of astrology and their aforementioned subdivisions. In sixteenth century England, for example, natural astrology would distance itself from the judicial branch and come to be known as astronomy. While natural astrology was certainly accepted by most Elizabethans, the judicial branch lost momentum, in many ways because of Elizabeth’s fragile claim to the throne early in her reign and the uncertainty of England’s future following her death. Elizabeth I never married and produced no natural heir, and the act of monarchical succession was an uneasy topic among the noblemen who could bear the brunt of any future wars involving a struggle among potential successors. Divination had been proclaimed illegal in 1541, but King Edward VI, whose court included an astrologer, repealed this law shortly thereafter. This law was again implemented verbatim in 1550 under Mary, Queen of Scots, and reinforced in 1563, five years into Elizabeth’s reign.[1] Even in the first version, witchcraft is clearly paired with astrological prophecy because both could have serious repercussions for the ultimate future of the monarch if they were to proclaim a certain negative future:

Where dyvers and sundry persones, making theyre foundacon by Prophecies,…have dyvised desecated and practiced to make folke thinke that by theyre untrew gessys it might be knowne what good or evyll things shulde come happen or be done, by or to such persones as have and had noble personages of whome suche fals Prophesies hathe or shulde herafter be set fourthe, wherby in tymes paste many noble men have suffered,…That if any persone prynte or wryte, or ells speake sing or declare to any other persone of the King or of any other persone, after the firste daye of Julie next coomyng, any such false Prophecies…thene everye such offence shalbe deamed Felonye,…[2]

It is necessary to note that neither astrology nor witchcraft is mentioned directly. Prophecy is proclaimed illegal, which, given the circumstance of the practice, could encompass either. The word “Felonye” in sixteenth century English did not necessarily constitute a crime carrying the death penalty. Therefore, it is highly possible that offenses against this law were penalized differently depending on whether they were considered astrology or witchcraft or whether men or women committed them.

John Chamber, who thought so lowly of astrology that he put it in the same category with witchcraft as a “damnable superstition,” nevertheless preserved their traditional distinctions. While astrology was merely a form of false prophecy, it made no use of demons or devils and was thus not as abominable. Just as the opening of Elizabeth’s reign heralded laws against prophecy, so the last year of her reign renewed the discussion. In his A Defence of Iudicial Astrologie (1603), Sir Christopher Heydon observed

Astrologie, being an arte…hath no more fellowship with the deuill, then heauen with hell. But that witches cannot be imitated in their deuillish profession, without all these former impieties…and as many inquisitors, as haue written of them, doe al testify with one consent, out of their confessions. And therefore the word of God it selfe, Exod. 22, doeth absolutely decree, That a witch shall not be suffered to liue.[3]

Heydon managed to distance astrological prophecy from witchcraft and equate God’s functioning in the world, as had generations of defenders before him, with “the free moderation both of the course and power of the Starres vnto God.”[4] Chamber and Heydon may be seen as representatives of two sides of a very divided argument defined as realist versus occultist or science versus superstition. From the modern perspective, the irony is that astrology, an institution with a history as a science, was regarded as a “damnable superstition,” while witchcraft was considered a very valid and very dangerous reality. The great change occurring in sixteenth and early seventeenth century England was the swiftly shifting perception of judicial astrology. Just as natural astrology came to be closer to astronomy, judicial astrology came to be regarded as at best sheer nonsense and at worst comparable to witchcraft. This comparability had always been in the spirit of philosophical discourse rather than legality, but as judicial and natural astrology disconnected from one another and the blanket term astrologia, new niches of study, and thus legality, emerged.

Of course, it must be noted that Elizabeth’s court included an astrologer, and a successful and famous one at that. John Dee was not only a court astrologer for Elizabeth I but a polymath in general, whose library was the envy of many European scholars. To be sure, even with the growing skepticism of judicial astrology, the practice was relatively safe in England, provided that one was in the favor of the authorities. Dee most certainly was, having spent time in captivity at Hampton Court with Elizabeth, where he was known to have cast her horoscope positively. After her ascension to the throne, Dee even astrologically determined the most auspicious moment for her coronation to ensure a long and successful reign.[5] For obvious reasons, astrologers who cast horoscopes favorably tended to hold more sway and avoid illicit controversy.

Elizabeth’s successor James I, was less forgiving. In his own work, Daemonologie, he discerns between the two concepts of natural and judicial astrology making many explicit references to the Bible. Here, he defines the natural branch as “knowing thereby the powers of simples, and sickenesses, the course of the seasons and the weather, being ruled by their influence; which part depending vpon the former [Astronomie], although it be not of it selfe a parte of Mathematicques [astrology]: yet it is not vnlawful, being moderatlie vsed,”[6] but his treatment of judicial astrology is overtly unforgiving:

The second part is to truste so much to their influences, as thereby to fore-tell what common-weales shall florish or decay: what, persones shall be fortunate or vnfortunate: what side shall winne in anie battell: What man shall obteine victorie at singular combate: What way, and of what age shall men die: What horse shall winne at matche-running…This parte now is vtterlie vnlawful to be trusted in, or practized amongst christians, as leaning to no ground of natural reason: & it is this part which I called before the deuils schole…in the Prophet Ieremie it is plainelie forbidden, to beleeue or hearken vnto them that Prophecies & fore-speakes by the course of the Planets & Starres.[7]

James I insisted that because the Bible forbade it, its practice should be unlawful. He wrote this when he was the King of Scotland but reaffirmed it as King of England, passing laws prohibiting it. In only the second week of his reign in 1604, for example, the English Parliament made witchcraft a more harshly punishable offense—where it once carried the death penalty only in cases of murder, it was now punishable as a capital offense only if there was intent to harm or if the use of “evil spirits” was suspected.[8] This again was an extension of the crimen exeptum and did not bode well for English women of this period. Because of this double standard, the differentiation between the legality of astrology and the illegality of witchcraft was essentially arbitrary in terms of their intrinsic qualities, and even though certain forms of astrology were censured by various Western European medieval and early modern governments, the act of studying the influence of the stars on human affairs was generally tolerated for astrologers and denied for those accused of witchcraft.[9]

Despite astrology’s many denunciations from the Church Fathers and national secular authorities, the terminology and unconscious discourse of astrological belief persisted well into early modern times. One outstanding example of its perseverance within popular culture and the unstated but razor thin line between it and the unacceptable offense of witchcraft is demonstrated by the ubiquity of both in the plays of William Shakespeare. Shakespeare’s use of astrological rhetoric in his plays in many ways seems to subconsciously reflect its popularity at the time, but his own faith in it cannot be construed simply by its conspicuousness in his plays. Most uses, in fact, are particular to and exemplary of his characters although, as the Shakespearean scholar Johnstone Parr has cited, there are over two hundred astrological allusions in his plays and all are eventually fulfilled.[10] There are many cases in which characters resign themselves to astrological fatalism or use the stars as an excuse for their extraordinary woe, but in all circumstances their belief in astrology as a science is taken for granted by the audience and never questioned. Witchcraft, however, as seen most explicitly in the play Macbeth, remains a plot point unalterably prejudged as evil by an early modern audience familiar with it only as a crime against nature, society, and God.

Much of the common public awareness of witchcraft is evident in the depiction of witches in plays such as Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The witches in Macbeth are cast as hideous and villainous, in many ways as inhuman and unearthly as evil spirits, such as when Banquo comments that they are “So withered and so wild in their attire, / That [they] look not like th’inhabitants o’ th’earth / And yet are on’t” (1.3.40-42). Macbeth’s witches are surrounded by an aura of darkness and have an otherworldly quality to them. They describe themselves as “Weird sisters” (1.3.32), or women fused with fate and prone to sacrilegious acts or connected with the black arts, such as when Macbeth greets them “How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags” (4.1.48)? For dramatic purposes the witches are almost inaccessible as actual human beings, seen more as material instruments of gloom, agents of demons, or a means of forecasting one’s demise. Macbeth’s is predicted just so, and it may be that this serves as a lesson to those who endeavor to “tempt fate,” as it were, rather than leave the functioning of the world in God’s hands.

The leader of Macbeth’s witches is Hecate. She is based on the Greek mythological figure representing both witchcraft and the crossroads, or the potential direction of the future. Mythologically speaking, the relationship between witchcraft and the course of the future, an area obviously engaged by astrological horoscopy, was embodied in the same goddess. This tenuous link between astrological predetermination and the goddess of witchcraft is obvious in her own predilection to assert her power during the full moon. Those accused of being engaged in demonology and witchcraft commonly made reference to the moon as a source of power. Hecate’s association with the moon—in Aristotelian cosmology, the dividing line between the corruptible, changeable world and the immutable perfection of the heavens—links her both to the heavens, the realm of astrological phenomena, and the earth, where sinfulness and corruption prevail. She later chastises the witches in Macbeth for not consulting her before they interfered with his fate. Replying to the First Witch’s observation of her “angerly” disposition, Hecate states,

Have I not reason, bedlams as you are?
Saucy and overbold, how did you dare
To trade and traffic with Macbeth
In riddles and affairs of death,
And I, the mistress of your charms,
The close contriver of all harms,
Was never called to bear my part
Or show the glory of our art? (3.5.2-9)

Hecate specifically criticizes their foretelling of Macbeth’s doom, but this punition can hardly be taken seriously when it comes from the goddess of witchcraft and divination herself. In terms of witchcraft, the act of divination is described here as an “art,” and without the mythological figure behind it, it is without merit. The act of looking to another supernatural force, such as this pagan goddess, would have been deemed heretical by an early modern Christian audience were it not recognized as depicting the witches as the wholly evil antagonists within the story arc. The metaphysical and meta-dramatic wall that this fiction provided removed all external judgment from the equation among Shakespearean audiences. While witchcraft focused on baseness and materiality, the practice of astrology made use of the exteriority of the heavenly spheres of God, even within the dominion of performance art.

While this use of witches as dreadful characters is expected, the power of astrological predetermination is used in a more neutral way, suggesting neither misdeeds nor illegality. Several plays contain references to the power of the stars, perhaps most famously in Romeo and Juliet where the title couple receives the epigraph “star-crossed lovers.” A lesser-known quotation comes from The Winter’s Tale, when, upon the proclamation of her prison sentence, Hermione exclaims: “There’s some ill planet reigns: / I must be patient until the heavens look / With an aspect more favorable” (2.1.105-107). Here, the planets not only have influence over human affairs but are actually “reigning” over them. This is language we have seen more often used in the context of God’s power over history and individual events in a human life. King Lear offers one of the most unfavorable depictions of astrology in the entire Shakespearean canon. During his unraveling near the end of the play, after exhausting himself in allocation of fault for the sorry state of his former kingdom, Lear howls out bewailing his fate as if in submission to the universe: “It is the stars / The stars above us govern our conditions; / Else oneself mate and make could not beget/ Such different issues” (4.3.34-37). More subtly, but within the same stratum of reflection, Edmund rebukes astrology as a means of blaming one’s unfortunate state upon something other than oneself:

This is the excellent foppery of the world, that…
we make guilty of our disasters the sun,
the moon, and the stars: as if we were villains
on necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves,
and treachers, by spherical predominance; drunkards,
liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedience of
planetary influence; and all that we are evil in by a
divine thrusting on. An admirable evasion of
whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition on the
charge of a star. My father compounded with my
mother under the dragon’s tail and my nativity was
under Ursa Major, so that it follows that I am rough and
lecherous. Fut! I should have been that I am had the
maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my
bastardizing. (1.2.118-127)

Edmund clearly disregards his own supposed fate by actively seeking to change it. This act of free will was crucial to Protestants in general, and despite the seemingly fatalistic attitude of many Shakespearean characters, the influence of the stars was generally viewed not necessarily as a fixed act, but as an influence to be overcome—just as historical Christian thinkers from Augustine to Albertus had said. As Cassius declares in Julius Caesar, “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, / But in ourselves, that we are underlings” (1.2.140-141). England itself, by the time of the Stuart monarchy, was engaged in a tacit ideological battle—that of the Anglicans, for whom free will was of the utmost importance, and that of the emerging Puritans who, influenced by Calvinism, deferred to the power of God rather than free will. To accentuate the importance of this vital dialogue in pre-modern England, some scholars have suggested that Gloucester and his son Edmund represent the Elizabethan dichotomy of realist and occultist, like their real life counterparts John Chamber and Sir Christopher Heydon.[11] Gloucester symbolizes the pessimistic resignation inherent in those who take the predictions of astrology as the final word, and Edmund embodies the more brash and youthful exuberance of the succeeding generation, which feels that the world is its for the taking. It is no coincidence that Shakespeare constructs these characters as a father-son duo in which the father is incapable of “passing the torch” because Edmund is an illegitimate bastard son and because there exists no common ideological ground between them. A realist to the end, Edmund’s downfall can be construed as a reluctance to accept that which he cannot change, as is evident in his refusal to accept astrology, the absolute edifice of fixed unchangeability according to it critics.

Free will, and its link to astrology, is also addressed in Macbeth, where the concept of the witches’ foretelling of Macbeth’s future is related to prevailing over one’s own fate. The witches prophesy that Macbeth will become king of Scotland, and Macbeth does not question the veracity of the witches’ prophecies but instead ponders his own role in them and whether or not he must be active for these premonitions to come true:

[Aside] This supernatural soliciting
Cannot be ill, cannot be good. If ill,
Why hath it given me earnest of success
Commencing in a truth? I am Thane of Cawdor.
If good, why do I yield to that suggestion
Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair
And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,
Against the use of nature? (1.3.128-138)

Is direct action necessary to bring these prophecies to fruition, or are they somehow sewn into the fabric of time, unalterable, and thus as predictable as the rising and setting of the sun? The witches provide the ominous human link between the will of the universe and the path of Macbeth’s individual future. In Macbeth’s first encounter with the witches, no prediction is advanced at all, simply the statement “All hail Macbeth, that shalt be king hereafter” (1.3.50). We may ask whether this is a testimonial of fact or if it is meant to fuel the fire of Macbeth’s ambition. If it is fact, then the question of free will becomes moot because Macbeth’s fate is written in stone, but if Macbeth must take action to fulfill these prophecies, then in retrospect we can never truly know if the witches’ forecast came true or if Macbeth took his future entirely into his own hands. This is the paradox always present in studying the effects of prophecy in the context of both witchcraft and astrology.

Perhaps the most famous lines typifying astrological notions in early modernity are those of Ulysses in Troilus and Cressida, a play set amidst the backdrop of the Trojan War. Less related to the practicing of astrology or witchcraft than they are to the metaphysical concept of an interrelated cosmos where man and the universe are reflections of each other, these lines help to elucidate the special relationship between the microcosm and macrocosm:

The heavens themselves, the planets, and this center,
Observe degree, priority and place,
Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,
Office, and custom, all in line of order;
And therefore is the glorious planet Sol
In noble eminence, enthron’d and spher’d
Amidst the other, whose med’cinable eye
Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil,
And posts, like the commandments of a king,
Sans check, to good and bad. But when the planets
In evil mixture to discord wander,
What plagues and what portents, what mutiny,
What raging of the sea, shaking of the earth,
Commotion in the winds! Frights, changes, horrors,
Divert and crack, rend and deracinate,
The unity and married calm of states
Quite from this fixture! O, when degree is shak’d,
Which is the ladder to all high designs,
The enterprise is sick! How could communities,
Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities,
Peaceful commerce from dividable shores,
The primogenity and due of birth,
Prerogative of age, crowns, scepters, laurels,
But by degree, stand in authentic place?
Take but degree away, untune that string,
And hark what discord follows. (1.3.85-110)[12]

In the worldview of the Elizabethans, as well as Western society in general before the Scientific Revolution, everything from plants and animals, elements and humors, body parts and professions, had their particular place within the hierarchy of created things. A change in the status quo or the social stability of the Western world would cause uncontrollable havoc, Ulysses seems to say, and when applied to medieval and early modern views on witchcraft, we can see how the European patriarchy maintained their positions by continuing to denigrate women through a false mythology of devil worship and unnatural occult activities. It is as though even astrology, with its unstable claim to legitimacy, could be applied to the disparagement of women. The intimate relationship between man and the cosmos was a direct product of the fusing of ancient astrological notions and the Christian theological perspective, influenced by Platonism and Aristotelianism. While this standpoint could accommodate the practice of astrology, under certain circumstances, witchcraft had no such “natural place” in the hierarchy of being. This belief linked most astrological claims to the functioning of God in the material universe, and thus astrological rhetoric was employed in an uncontroversial way. Witchcraft never had such a luxury. Shakespeare’s utilization of astrology as a dramatic device employed both as an object of characters’ blame and praise could pass through the early modern audience without fear of backlash whereas his description of witches had to remain entirely wicked to be well received.

---

[1] Allen, Don Cameron, The Star-Crossed Renaissance: The Quarrel about Astrology and Its Influence in England, New York: Octagon Books, 1941, p. 102.

[2] Smith, Warren D, “The Elizabethan Rejection of Judicial Astrology and Shakespeare’s Practice,” Shakespeare Quarterly 9.2 (Spring, 1958), p. 162-163.

[3] Op. cit. A4r

[4] Ibid. A2v

[5] Bobrick, The Fated Sky: Astrology in History, p. 145.

[6] Op. cit. p. 14.

[7] Ibid. p. 14-15. In this passage, King James I makes reference to the prophet Jeremiah, which probably refers to Jeremiah 23:9-22, in which Jeremiah is troubled over the moral reproach of the current priests and prophets of Israel. Verses 10 and 11 state, “Their course is evil and their might is not right. Both prophet and priest are ungodly; even in my house I have found their wickedness, says the Lord.” Verse 16: “Thus says the Lord of hosts: ‘Do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you, filling you with vain hopes; they speak visions of their own minds [probably in reference to dream interpretation], not from the mouth of the Lord.’” Verse 21: “I did not send the prophets yet they ran; I did not speak to them, yet they prophesied.” It may also refer to Jeremiah 10:2-3, which states: “Learn not the way of the nations, nor be dismayed at the signs of the heavens because the nations are dismayed at them, for the customs of the peoples are false.” In any case, King James I rejected astrology on Biblical grounds because he viewed astrology as a form of false prophesy, or those who trusted their own faculties of reason over faith in revealed scripture which, as we have seen, could be utilized to denounce astrology.

[8] Barstow, Witchcraze, p. 39

[9] Smith, “The Elizabethan Rejection of Judicial Astrology and Shakespeare’s Practice,” p. 159.

[10] Bobrick, The Fated Sky: Astrology in History, p. 182.

[11] Allen, The Star Crossed Renaissance, p. 167 and 178.

[12] For clarification on this concept, insofar as it has modern psychological implications, see Gustav Jahoda’s work The Psychology of Superstition, Baltimore: Pelican Books, 1969, p. 120-125. He gives a wonderful explanation of the psychology of superstitious behavior in modern times and its ancestor in occult sciences and archetypal representations in the arts and sciences from the Middle Ages and pre-Scientific Revolution times, as well as a succinct Jungian analysis of the Elizabethan worldview.