Stiernhielm Pythagorizans and the unveiling of Isis

Seki Astra. 3 To increase his status, Stiernhielm planned to produce a special ANA work, Mysterium Etymologium Regni cancellario Axel Oxenstierna revelatum STIERNHIELM PYTHAGORIZANS AND et consecratum (1644). Brilliance in crafting epigrams and sonnets had THE UNVEILING OF ISIS prepared him for more direct favours at court. His useful system of hydrostatic measurements in metallurgy, Archimedus Reformatus (Stocko holm, 1643), won approval from the Chancellor; in blue vellum Susanna Akerman covers it contains a poem on a silk worm whose life of hard labor in weaving a world is brightened by the rising sun. A contemporary reader has made a note in ink beside the sun, “S. R. M.” meaning Section 1. Introduction the brightly shining, but adolescent, Queen.’ In 1653, Georg Stiernhielm, the poet, was sent from Sweden to Wasula in Ingria to work on the border dispute with Russia. At about this time he had started to polish his ideas for a system of language.' Section 2. A System of Mustc—the Vibrating Numbers in Motion Stiernhielm, or Jóran Lilia as his name then was, published a thesis, De Jure raptu et bigamia commentatio (Dorpat, 1636), that, its theme not- In his Archimedean treatise, Stiernhielm briefly spoke of the World withstanding, was not intended as a provocation.* Soul and the Pythagorean view of the cosmos as built by divine Stiernhielm (1598-1672) brought to Dorpat a vast learning which number. He extolled the harmony produced in “God's singular build- 1610 and 1615, ing” through proportion, order, and measure. Profoundly influenced where he first enrolled with the Hebraist and Aristotelian Johannes by spiritual poetry, he cited Xenocrates’ view of the soul, “the num- Rudbeckius. From 1615 until 1623, Stiernhielm studied government ber that gains motion from itself.” he had culled from lectures at Uppsala between at Greifswald. In 1625, he travelled to France and beyond, a pen- Some years later, Stiernhielm revealed more exactly what this grination for which his ties in high places had opened the doors. In phrase meant for him. In the Pythagorean system of music, har- 1631, Stiernhielm worked as a local judge at Wasula in Livonia, and monic numbers are generated from the prime intervals in the three handled difficult cases of sorcery, slander, and malice. To soothe his perfect musical concords: diapason, diapente, and diatessaron, viz., mind he exercised the art of iambic-alexandrinic verse. In 1643 he the modern octave, fifth, and fourth. Each major tone emerges as published an Heroisch Fägnesong signed with his astro-poetical pseuthe difference (8/9) between a 5th and 4th. On a monal cord, these donym “Stellata de Casside.”? Seeking to break away from his earlier legal career, Stiernhielm tones are generated at exact spatial intervals. An impulse thus measurably rebounds: now left for Holland where he refined his maccaronian lyrics by absorbing the dramatic poetry ofJacob Cats and broadened the basis of his thesis concerning a possible direct linguistic kinship of Gothic, the old Scandinavian tongue, and Aramaic.* ' Per Wieselgren, “Súernhielms Wasula-arkiv”, Svio-Estonica 19, pp. 3-33 och “Juridiska Stiernhielmiana”, Suto-Estonica 20, pp. 39-83. ? Svensk Biografisk Uppstagsbok, “Stiernhielm, Georg”. Birger Swartling, Georg Stiernhielm — hans lw och verksamhet (Uppsala, 1909), pp. 34-35, citing Fr. Bienemann, “Ein Tumult in Dorpat A:o 1641," Baltische Monatsschrifi, 1900. * Sten Lindroth, “Stiernhielms studier i Uppsala,” Lychnos (1954-55), pp. 291-5. Swartling, Georg Stiernhielm, pp. 22-3. * Ibid., pp. 48 and 110. “Jôran Stiernhielm i Holland” Historisk Tidskrift (1906). 5 Archimedes Reformatus— Serinissimae Reginae Christinae Consecratus (Stockholm, 1653), marginal note in the copy at Kungliga Tekniska Hôgskolan, Stockholm. € Numerus Harmonio Platonico facilis et artificiosa genesi. .. Claves musicat (2 pages) Ms. Fd. 13, Quoted by permission of Kungliga Biblioteket, Stockholm. The poem Harpa Mathematica is listed in Svio-Estonica 19, see note | above.

G2 intende 4 3 4 Diatessaron remitte 3 4 3 5 Stiernhielm’s development is controlled by the progression of numbers taught in Zimaeus 36a (1, 2, 3, 4, 9, 8, 27), Le., with the 9 before the 8, indicating primacy of place for what has been called the Diapason C3 G4# Mp. Diapente Mp. Dp. intende 3 2 3 remitte 2 3 2 “supertrinity of the Egyptian ennead": 3° 3° 3 = 27. The “human number” reached, 729, is explained in the Republic 587e, where Plato asserts that the just man “lives 729 times more pleasantly than the Tyrant.” This image of the “just” tuning of the soul derives from Or, as Stiernhielm comments with reference to Plutarch’s treatise on Plato's tonal theory of numbers which is generated on a circular 12- music, “this follows from the Pythagorean and Platonic principles of tone scale. On such a circular scale, there are six rotations through the Monad and the Dyad.” calling attention to the esoteric intereach tonal fifth, from a C to the next C. The number of rotations play between oblong and square numbers. While Süernhielm's explanathrough all possible fifths, spanning all the possible tones on the tory poem Farpa Mathematica sive Lyra Proportionalis seems to be lost, scale, therefore is 729. This number thus signifies all the tones of a the contextual background of renaissance musical theory seems to well-tempered scale and is the formal number of the emanation from confirm the interpretation that his views possibly stem from Giuseflo the One: the World Soul. Stiernhielm's use of the Phrygian scale Zarlino's lectures on the enharmonic scale, the Institution! Harmonice DAEB FGCD is consequential because in the Republic this scale is (Venice. 1558). Zarlino states: offered as a tuning appropriate to the Guardians. Now, from the above equation Stiernhielm goes a step further: Human music... is that which mingles the incorporeal energy of reason with the body, it is nothing other than a certain adaption or temperament as of low and high voices making a kind of consonance... Cubicus quadrati even so in music one cannot hear the space between the high and the Seminis low voice when they sing; one can conceive of it but not hear it... this harmony can again be recognized in the division of the soul: the intellect, the senses, and the habitual autonomous functions. According to Ptolemy, these correspond to the ratios of three consonances: the octave, fifth, and fourth.... For these things will temper cach other in the same way as a consonace will make high and low notes agree.’ q est Symphonia Natura Spiritus 3 27 Homo Forma Cubus 729 Anima Platonis A stable harmonic structure is finally reached, called: Within the framework of human music (exemplified by the Phrygian Corpus Naalis quadrata scale DAEB FCGD), Stiernhielm assigns material principles (further Corpus Naalis explained below) to the intervals generated by the monal cord, thus: 27. Vita Semen Forma Harmone 2 27 Spiritus Cubica Hine dici pr. Hominis radix 2 729 Homo The construction of the image of a 729 cubit volume (9 39 Erit Nrq hominis 729 6 Cubi-Quadratus 9 - 9) to represent human proportion, or tuning, makes use of “seeds” as effective principles of nature. The idea of “vital kernals” acting as an informing substance, or a formative pattern, grows out of ncoStoic or Paracelsian thought, here probably the former, The elements 7 Giuseffo Zarlino, “On Musica Humana” pp. 134-5 in Jocelyn Godwin, Music, Mysticism and Magic—-A Sourcebook (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987). See also Ernest G. McClain, The Pythagorean Plato— Prelude to the Song Itself (York Beach, Main: Weiser, 1978). in the first stage of reaching a full human proportion, as a sort of “Symphonia Natura,” joins with the “Corpus Naturalis quadrata” 9). Given its seminal status, the final cubic form is perhaps

meant as a sort of (monozygotic) encoding for human genetic material. ‘These notes, from Uppsala, are dated 15 November 1653, and one can infer that Stiernhielm’s understanding had grown out of discussions with the Italian court musicians, such as the Queen’s personal aide Alessandro Cecconi.* Earlier, there had been several continental theorists at court writing on Greek musical theory: Marcus Meibom on the Pyrrhic dance and Gabriel Naudé who, through Marin Mersenne, had participated in the philosophic debate on musical harmonies engendered by Johannes Kepler’s Harmonices mundi (1619). STIERNHIELM PYTHAGORIZANS AND ‘THE UNVEILING OF ISIS unum posse 7 perpetuere solere essentia bonum agere verum habere cssendi modi debere decernere dare Mens substantia Lux th lucere, celere, spirare, movere Materia = quieta, recepienda, humida, frigida The action of mind is linked to Lux in terms of movement, as with Section 3. Pythagorean Linguistics His own system was worked out in fragments. His first sketch bears the title: Fistula panos, Septem compacta ciculus—Lyra Apollinis Harmonia date, in Nuptiis cum Cadmo; hic est Symphonia Natura. Here, he spells out the principles for the mixture of elements, the creation out of a primordial chaos, the “hylé” of the Greeks. He finds that these principles were imparted to Pyhagoras by the northern philosopher Orpheus. Later, they reached Empedocles, Democritos, Chrysippos, and Zeno, whose Stoic doctrine abstracts the creation schemes Plato and Aristotle. Stiernhielm planned to give a table of conceptual principles involved in the Pythagorean progression: monas, dyas, trius. He showed that this triad was equivalent to the trinity Deus, Materia, Lux found in most mythologies. For example in the Persian triad: Mithra, Ariman, Oromaz. These principles could even be represented as a quaternion (Cornu Panos) generated in the form of a pyramid, emanating from a primeveal source.” Stiernhielm tried to capture a notion the taking of breath, or poetic inspiration (spirare). Stiernhielm refers to the notion of light in Zabarella’s “De Mente Agente,” a commentary on the last pages of Plato’s sixth book of the Republic. In his various systems, Stiernhielm strove to incorporate ideas on the creation of matter and light from Zabarella, Lipsius, and Jean D’Espagnet. He also tried to reach a popular audience through an illustrated catalogue depicting a system of theosophy (similar to that of Robert Fludd) entitled Schema Demonstrativa Philosophiae primae (Stockholm, 1650). The manual is very interesting because it gives a pictorial framework for the philosophical elements that he later worked out. It is composed of fourteen images depicting the stages of creation through a confluence of linguistic principles and the heat of the sun. They were proof-printed in a limited edition. Almost nothing is known, however, of how they were received by the readership. Suernhielm’s later fragments contain the titles: Monile Minerva, vera & genuina Naturae Principia, rerumque Genesim ES ordinem exhibuens (1651); Umbra Sapientiae divinae & humanae (1652); the Arachnae Minerva Arctoae of the potential movement in things, arranged according to essence, (1653); and the more distinct and enigmatic Peplum Minerva Arctoae essential modes, and substance: (1653) (i.e., “the cloak of Minerva unveiled”).' As Johan Nordstrém points out, the background of these pursuits is set out in Plutarch’s collection of Egyptian myths, Of [sis and Osiris. Stiernhielm had become particularly captivated by the report of the inscription on the walls of the Temple of Isis at Memphis: “I know all that there is, all that have been, and all that will be; but as of 9 In 1653, Cecconi was sent to Florence with a commission to copy interesting manuscripts. See Susanna Akerman, Queen Christina of Sweden and Her Circle: The Transformation of a Seventeenth-Century Philosophical Libertine (Leiden: Brill, 1991), p. 97. 9 “Dua Opposita contraria,” Ms. Fd. 4:5, f. 46v, 22v. Quoted by permission of Kungliga Biblioteket, Stockholm. ‘ For other tides and versions, e.g., Peplum Minervae in quo sub specie intextu telae Arachnae adumbratur Philosophia et Theologia hoc est Sapientia vetus et nova (Januari 1652), see Swartling, Georg Stiernhielm pp. x-xi and Johan Nordstrém, Georg Stiernhielm, (Stockholm: Bonniers, 1924), 2:2, pp. 205-15.

9 yet, no one has torn off (detexit) my cloak (peplum).”'' To tear aside court academy between 1649 and 1651. While there is no formal rethis cloak, to unveil the goddess of Isis, was Suernhielm’s burning cord that he met with Descartes there, Stiernhielm is on the list of desire and what better object for vain devotion was there than the participants in the first Academy at court in the winter of 1649-50. Swedish Queen, who was moved so easily by incantauons to Minerva? Such discussions were increasingly important to Stiernhielm after his Sensing Queen Christina's resistance to royal marriage, Stiernhielm saw, however, that he should abandon the utles referring to a wedding disappointment in the winter of 1650 with the turgid, neo-Stoic, Cartesian system which he scorned as “philosophare sine mente,” of Lux and Matter and instead concentrate on the formative power (i.e., “philosophical without mind”). Similarly, Stiernhielm regarded of Mind. But, Stiernhielm, apparently, did not have the ability to Aristotle’s system as an arrid philosophizing “sine mente et luce.”'® win the Queen’s support. In the spring of 1654, just before the Needed in all systems, Stiernhielm thought, is an animating fever, departure of the Queen, he wrote the bitter and sarcastic epigram: a vibrant soul, and he chose to call it “Lux.” Central to its pro- Femina nulla sapit nec crat nisi ficta Minerve Textrix non Rectrix, si qua Minerva fuit. duction is the spoken word, language bent over itself and then pronounced. This relationship is made precisely clear in his arrangement of a wheel in his Philosophia Muta—philosophia barbara indocta, (‘No woman is wise and Minerva was only a fiction. If there was any Minerva, she was a weaver, not a sovereign’)." Section 4. Lux and Psychosophia: The Pythagorean System through which the fallen angel Lucifer reigns over a mute and sterile world. Section 5. Idiotam Dialogo de Mente: Maa, Naa, Rao, and Aia The fragmented manuscript for the Monile Minerva shows that Stiern- In spite of his resistance to Cartesian ideas, Stiernhielm's scientific hielm also sought to deepen his ideas from Robert Fludd through focus is perhaps best revealed by his own comment on a letter of readings of Ficino's annotations to Plotinus’ Einneads, book five, espe- Descartes to Marin Mersenne dated 30 July 1640 in which Descartes cially chapter nine, and to the Hermetic Pimander."* The necklace examins chemical process. Descartes begins by stating his view of of the title, the chain of Minerva or the “hormon” of the Greeks, was presented as a thick three layered bronze necklace in old norththe soul as seated in the pineal gland and then describes how matern style. The necklace presents an unusual number of eighteen hyvoid filled with indivisible atoms differentiated only by their shapes. ter operates in the plenum. Descartes doubts that there could be a postases between man and God, running crisscross from Lux, Mind, Instead, he explains that chemists need only two principles: Sulphur and Matrix (5 plus 12 links).'* Stiernhielm finally wrote a dialogue, is a sort of oil (flammable) with a microstructure that branches out Gnothi seaiton vocum Pythian, Umbra Sapienta Divinae et Humanae. The with a clinging texture; Mercury is a sort of water (inflammable) different turns taken by Simplicius and Astraeus in the dialogue with a slippery or gliding texture. These two forms of cohesion could expresses the system in an accessible courtly form." easily be explained by his own undifferentiated theory of matter. Stiernhielm probably developed his ideas further at the Stockholm The only remainder of the process is Salt, the “terra damnata” or “caput mortuum” of the alchemists. Stiernhielm comments that: !! Nordström, Georg Stiemhielm, 2:2. '2 Per Wieselgren, Stiernhielms bref och smárre skrifter (Stockholm, 1924), p. 616. Plotinus, The Enneads, trans. Stephen Mackenna, 3:9 on intellectual principles, “the principle whose beauty is selfspringing.” 1* Reprinted in Nordstróm, Georg Stiernhielm, original Ms. Fd. 5 in Kungliga Biblioteket, Stockholm. " Nordstrom, Georg Stiemhielm, original in Uppsala UB. Stiernhelm is thinking of Astraeus in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. ! Ms. Fd. 4, KB, Stockholm: “Plato interdum sine luce: sed multa mente; Aristoteles sine Luce & Mente philosophantur.” Quoted by permission of Kungliga Biblioteket Stockholm. Stiernhielm’s source is Justus Lipsius, Manducatio ad Philophiam Stoicam, sce Johan Nordström, Georg Stemhielm, p. 142.

What science applies to the principles of Chemistry? Look up Descartes’ letter to Mersenne... where there are these words: “je ne concoy point ces parties indivisbles, ni autrement differentes entre’elle, que par la diversit, de leur Figures.” He even says that chemists understand sulphur as oil; mercury as water. It seems to me that there is nothing on earth except created shapes, species that are made by the composition of one Naa (natural) body." Naa is the shorthand term Stiernhielm uses in his philosophy to designate the corpusclar nature of created matter. He thought of Naa (Natura) as a primary substratum and that Naa would suffice to constitute all the clements, all the genera and species of hving matter, and, thus, all there is. Stiernhielm’s “created shapes” were probably the Pythagorean solids presented in Plato’s Timaeus taken to represent the elements; the same ones as those (cube, icosahedron, sphere) that Stiernhielm had David Kloker Ehrenstrahl paint into his portrait in 1663. Like Descartes, Stiernhielm argued against the existence of a vacuum, against the neo-Epicurean atomist Pierre Gassendi.'” There is no evidence that Descartes ever saw Stiernhielm’s Specimen Demonstrationum but his friend, the Ambassador of France, Pierre Chanut, later that year told Isaac Vossius that Stiernhielm's system was not thought through." To Stiernhielm, Nature is not, as with Aristotle, produced through form (specie) and matter but rather, as with the Stoics, it is produced by a cause (causa) and a unified, inert, and chaotic matter abbreviated as Maa. The cause is light (lux) and mind (mens). When light vivifies the female component Maa, then her daughter Naa, a corporeal informed substance, is generated. This Naa is always beautiful (multa pulchra) and is the unmixed substrate of all natural genera, the Aia (anima).” STIERNHIELM PYTHAGORIZANS AND THE UNVEILING OF ISIS 11 Suernhielm found reference both to the corporcal Naa and to the genera “Ata Mundi” in the /diotam dialogo de mente by Nicholas of Cusa.?' All three—Maa, Naa, and Aia—are conceived as female principles and to them are added the neutral Rao (ratio), a linguistic root representing order, number, and measurement. This gendered terminology is from the Pimander and in Ficino’s edition the scheme is said to be Pythagorean. Stiernhielm’s focus upon matter, occurred early. In the new city of Gothenburg, on 8 February, 1635, Stiernhielm copied down three queries taken from Johan Alsted’s physics: 1. Is Maa feigned as a unity by the imagination? 2, Is Maa an entity at all active? 3. What is the difference between the Aristotelian and the Mosaic Maa? No direct answers are given, but Stiernhielm copied down that Maa is a sensitive, but passive principle. Significantly, he added the Jesuit Piccolomini’s enigmatic view that “Maa ornavi cupit ad forma tanquam foemina a viro.”® | Contemporary research on the linguistic roots (radixes) of these concepts led to a conjecture that they are Greek versions of earlier Phoenician concepts; Maa may be the Phoenician “Moth”, just as Chaos may be their “Chaut.” This hypothesis was, at least, Stiernhielm’s view in 1656 when he set to work on Edmund Dickinson’s recent investigation Delphi Phoenicizantes (Oxford, 1655).% Because of the Hermetic assumption of an original insight into the acts of creation, the Pythagorean scheme of Maa, Naa, and Rao was thought to be a fit prelude to chemistry, as can be seen in Stiernhielm’s metallurgic fragment on how Art imitates Nature: Ars Naa Aemula. In artficialibus Maa, exempl: graa ferrum est, lux ignis, Mens faber, ferrum passio. Naa forte et Rao conventionis.TM Graa (gravida, gravitas?) is here a new linguistic invention, used to 1 “De Principiis Chymici quid sit scientia? vide Cartes in epist 40 ad Mersenne Tom 2, p. 235. ubi his verbis: éje ne concoy point ces parties indivisibles, ni utrement differentes entre’elle, que par la diversit, de leur Figures’ dicit ibidem Chymicos intellegere sub Sulphure, Oleum; sub mercurium Aquam. Mihi sunt nihil visi Terrae abusque creationes figmenta; species facta ad compositorum von (sic) unius Naa corporum.” Stiemhielm Ms. Fd. 9. f. 31. Quoted by permission of Kungliga Bibloteket, Stockholm. 8 Pierre Gassendi was invited to Stockholm by Pierre Bourdelot and Isaac Vossius, Akerman, Queen Christina, pp. 73H. both intrested in the atomism of Lucretius, see Pierre Chanut’s comment in Isaac Vossius’ Concept book 8, VI F28. Quoted by permission of Amsterdam UB. Copy in Nordström’s Nachlass box 11. Uppsala UB. 2 Ms. Fd. 5. Quoted by permission of Kungliga Biblioteket, Stockholm. designate the addition needed to purify the gray, inert, but loaded, *1 Nicholas Cusanus, /diotam Dialogo de Mente, i.c., The Layman’s Dialogue on the Mind. 2 Ms. Fd. 3, pp. 252-3. Quoted by permission of Kungliga Biblioteket, Stockholm. “An Maa una sit ens imaginarum. 2. An Maa sit ens acta. 3. Quodam sit differentia inter maam aristoteliam et Mosaicam.” ® Edmund Dickinson, Delphi Phoenicizantes (Oxford, 1655), pp. 16 and 66-7. 2 Stiernhielm Ms. Fd. 9, f 28. Quoted by permission of Kungliga Biblioteket, Stockholm.

character of one species of matter, iron ore, at a time before it is processed. Stiernhielm even thought that the orderly and informing Rao (ratio) could be linguistically connected to the Greek “Rhea,” mother of the gods, and to the Swedish “Rad, rada till,” Le., “giv- STIERNHIELM PYTHAGORIZANS AND THE UNVEILING OF ISIS a “philosophia nova: mysteriis Zoroastris, numeri Pythagorae.” It was perhaps related to the Gorpus Naalis quadrata: Corpus Naalis ing councel.”? In the papers which he wrote from Wasula in 1656, Stiernhielm struggles to find the correct terminology for his scheme of parturition; he sees Naa as forced, pressed, or promulgated out of Maa, “Naa (mentis filiae) est qua in Maa impata (decreta). But, radix Maa is evil; or as Ficino unfortunately says, “All evil reaches us through the female. At the altar (in the Eucharist) flesh is engendered from the body of Maa. Thus Naa (corpori) is bred by Maa, 13 27. Vita 2 729 Homo Harmone In this figure, creative principles, musical harmonies, and numerical relations together form a world of solid fact, a world still replete with mystery and hidden correspondences, that first when grasped by an active intellect can reveal themselves as entirely proportionand they have contrary qualities.” Or in the Florentine’s own words, ate. Measured polyphony of voice and music was as vital to Stiern- “Omne malis a Foemina nobis accidit. Ara scilicet corpori mancipata a Maa corporis. A contrarietur qualitatem elementalium.”” hielm’s system as the paper and ink on which he wrote because, to On this scant evidence, Stiernhielm affirms that there are three kinds of soul, “Triplex est Aia: Ex Mente, rationalis; ex Luce vitalis sive Aialis. Ex Maa mortalis rado-que brutalis.” He repeatedly writes of Maa as a destructive gravity, a gravity brutal to the mind and the Pythagoreans, a spoken word is closer to thought than one written and reveals more directly the presence of mind and the reality of soul. One dimension is thus critically lacking, the dimension of the vibrant voice. Poetic consonance of rhythm and rhyme is, however, a direct conalien to measure: “Maa corruptelem & ultimo destructionum mortium & non esse in fort. Brutalius est a Mente, idoque Rao, ordine, numero, mensura etc. alieno.”# sequence of rhetoric because pure specch is based on writing, not Stiernhielm's system is both saliently gendered and conspicuosly sexed, although it is not at all as bluntly erotic as is his celebrated to create a fully new poetic universe. This was precisely Stiernhielm's shorter enigmas and sonnets.”” To understand the world of these Baroque thinkers, critics often concentrate on their self-assertive maleness, as in Stiernhielm’s Hercules or the other verse. Yet, the Hermetic ground of his philosophic treasures is bettter clanfied by interrogatan original dispensation; to construc new ideas, and thereby abaning the female attributes of his thought. Jungian concepts of the mother as revealed in Stiernhielm's ideas on “Radix Maa.” repressed mother/father imago may well explain the threatening release of the chaotic Maa and her low-key murmuring in the backwhile the form of a word could not perfectly resemble the form of ground of creation. In 1656, he had promised Biörnclou to produce a thing (423a), it is still possible, through another, non-sensible, sort on original thought. While Latin and Dutch verse can be reshaped into a Swedish poem, such a transformation does not show any desire point. To him, words normally appeared only as transformations of don tradition, actually seemed foreign. Yet, in this process of imitation and recycled use, thought and speech succeed in making reference back to the original soul; actually, even back to the image of the Following Plato’s doctrine in the Cratylus, Stiernhielm assumed that of, resemblance to take the right name as an image of the thing (439a). We learn through the medium of names; yet knowledge of things is not derived from mere names, but from the image (eikon) 5 Ms. Fd. 9, f. 33. 2 Ms. Fd. 9, 1. 15. ? Ms. Fd. 9, £ 16 2 Ibid. # In 1668, his “Enigma for the Ladies,” a sexual pun on the viola da gamba, was printed on an advertisment for the Hercules, see Per Wieselgren, Smo-Estonica, , No. 19, pp. 3-33. % 27 May 1668, Fd. 9, £ 20, Quoted by permisssion of Kungliga Biblioteket Stockholm. Stiernhielm to Matthias Biérnclou 26 Februari 1656 in Per Wieselgren, Stiernhielms bref.

SUSANNA AKERMAN these words express. Nevertheless, things are formed from simple elements that words can express through their image-function. Perfect words hence ought to be formed through the corresponding primi- STIERNHIELM PYIHAGORIZANS AND THE UNVEILING OF ISIS 15 lucis Maa as a whole: “Et hoc iterum ex mysteri o indolis literae M. quae obscuram quidem et opacam revera in se habet et aliis insinuat"® tive elements of sound. According to Plato, the Greek vowel “iota” denotes a thinness that can penetrate through everything; it occurs correctly in “ienai,” to speed, and “iesthai,” to dash. Equally, the tremulant “rho” is found correctly in the Greek “rein,” streaming, and “ierthai,” to tremble.” Similarly investigating the polysemy of names and things, Stiernhielm maintains that each word derives from a stem which, read in other contexts, can explain the use of the derived group as a whole. Each root, “maa” for instance, emerges as having roles in multiple discourses (classified through various verbal accusatives) and occurs in sequences universally spun through the European languages and which Stiernhiclm believed had run from Scandinavian to Phrygian Greek (here underlined). Thus, Radix Maa forms a conceptual cluster variously grouped: verba potentia: Mars, man, maritus, marsk, makt, mao, mangd; verba motus: maka, moleo, machina, magus, malus; verba generationis: má, mao, moo, mamma, magd (mó), minne: verba lucis: m’6rna (illuscere), mairo, morn, morgon, mana. A number of factors come into play in this form of grammar— biology, social relations of power, gender, and probably the unconscious—to form the qualities of different perceptual and emotional experiences superimposed on a pure semiotic flux. This “maotic” flux remains unrepressed into stable patterns, tapping its resonances into the passionate Epicurean dimension of humour, sex, song, poetry and laughter. Radix Maa is seen as an essence of raw matter unimposed on by form. As Sven Delblanc has noted, it points to a sort of prelinguistic flux of movements, gestures, sounds, and rhythms in which these semiotic maternal dreams can run unscathed from morality, religion and the patriarchical Law. Unable to cope with this Section 6. Dua Opposita Contraria: Lux and Arachn e Stiernhielm's central problem, no doubt, was how to understand Lux and its emanation from the World Soul; consider another fragment from 1656, one printed by Nordström: The Soul of the World seems to me to be composed of mind and light & insofar as it animates the world. through a Material Spirit which mediates. «+. I define it thus: The Soul of the World is the Mind's Light governing the World vitally and reigning. Or, it is the Mind's Light ascending in Mundane bodies. Or, as an act of Light and Mind, etc. This is what the Stoics call fire; fecund seminal reasons.” Here, Stiernhielm substitutes entirely a plainer Stoic scheme for the earlier Hermetic terminology. Of particular interest is the expression: “Anima Mundi est Lux Mente gubern ata Mundum vivificans & regens.” (The Soul of the World is the Mind’s Light governing the World vitally & reigning). In the mind's government and reign, in its action seen as “gubernata” and “regens,” light is produced. The production of light is taken in a special way. Lux is seen as an internal mental attribute but it is also actively at work in the world. If the mind, now termed Minerva, manages to govern and attain a reign, she completes a system as well as sustaining it. An inquiry into the operations of the mind therefore is both subjective psych ology and objective ontology. Or, perhaps Stiernhielm’s attempts can fruitfully be termed a sort of pre-modern descriptive phenomenology, in short a psychosophia. In much of Baroque philosophy, a centra lly located idea of “God's dominance and reign” had become a distinctly theosophic formula for expressing not only (a) the ordered character of nature, (b) the female ecstasy, Stiernhiclm repressed it into a sort of black death, the evil Maa. He even passed judgment on the darkness of the verba Radio tage Georg Stiernhielm, pp. 78-9. Intervi ew with Sven Delblane on Swedish * Nordström, Georg Stiernhielm, p. # Sven Delblanc has briefly noted that Radix Ma plays a unexplained unconscious role in Suernhielm’s system. There is a separate manuscript Radix Ma sive Specimen istius vocts Etymologicum (begun in 1649). On the Cratylus, sec Swartling, Georg Stiernhielm, pp. xii and 79-80, n. 4. 142. “Anima Mundi mihi videtur Composi ta esse ex mente et Luce & quatenus Mundum animat.... Eam sic definio: Anima mundi est Lux Mente gubernata Mundu m vivificans & regens. vel: est Lux Mente accensa in corpora Mundano. vel: actus Lucis, et Mentis: etc. vocant Stoici, ratione Seminale foecundum.” Ea est quem iene

perfection of the natural system, Le., its completeness, (c) the applicamer solstice, 21 June. this cloth (peplum) was carried from the bility of scientific principles to nature (its movement according to Parthenon (the virgin temple) through the city to the agorá—-a pan- 16 laws), but also (d) a special analog to human/male creativity.” 17 athenian procession in memory of the eartıborn (motherless) genesis But if, as Stiernhielm further postulated in his main treatise, the of its citizens-—to manifest in Ovid’s words, “what reward she may Hebrew spirant “aleph” spins the world in the way the classical spiderexpect for her mad daring.” Stiernhiclm knew the violent background woman Arachne was to spin it continuously by her polarity Minervato the myth because the Queen’s scholar at court, Nicolas Heinsius, Ratio, then aleph-logos is the sole key by which all things are tuned. published at the Elzevier press a new complete edition of the Meta- According to a grim Greek myth, Arachne, the most skillful weaver morphoses in 1652,% of Lydia, challenged Minerva/Athena to a weaving contest. While The myth of Arachne (present also in Velasquez” baroque paint- Minerva wove into her web stories of those who had aroused the ing of 1659) represents some central elements of a world exclusively anger of the gods (mostly of acts wreaking punishment on younger structured around the male principle: masculine aggression thinly women for challenging household authority), Arachne chose to weave disguised as seduction and fertility. In the scribbling of Stiernhielm. the errors of the gods, errors, Ovid writes, such as the rape of on the other hand, Arachne and Minerva are seen as a “syzigia,” Europe, and: a pair, a conjunction: a duality. Le., connected. These creative con- She wrought Asterie held by the struggling cagle, she wrought Leda beneath the wings of the Swan. She added how. in satyr’s image hidtraries have deep historical roots. In the cosmology developed at Hermiopolis in Egypt based on the double-helix path of Sirius, the den, Jove filled lovely Antiope with twin offspring, how in a golden “syzigies” were specifically the twin years of good and bad (seven shower he tricked Danaé; Aegina as a fame; Mnemosyne as a shepplus seven years) by which the world constantly renews itself. The herd: Deo’s daughter as a spotted snake.... Here is Phocbus as a syzigies manifest the strife of contraries, they are antithetical phecountry man... how as a shepard he tricked Macareus’ daughter, Isse; how Bacchus deceived Erigone with a false bunch of grapes; how Saturn in a horse’s shape hegot the centaur, Chiron. The edge of the nomena, but join in a spiral force to uphold the cosmos. Thus there is polarity, space, and time; all formed by a spontaneous generation web with its narrow border is filled with flowers and clinging ivy interthrough God's vibrant word and henceforth also structured in lintwined.? guistic terms.” This ancient Hermetic scheme of opposites was transmitted by Neither Minerva, nor Envy, Ovid says, could find any fault in these images of rape and seduction. But Minerva was enraged by the excellence of Arachne's fabric and tore it to pieces. Struck by grief, Arachne hanged herself in a rope. Nonetheless, she was saved by Minerva, who transformed Arachne into an ever spinning spider. She was also told a horrid tale: “Live on, indeed wicked girl, but hang thou stil; and let this doom of punishment (that thou mayst fear for future times as well) be declared upon thy race, even to Nicholas of Cusa, who postulated that every opposition displays a tendency to union, an identity of contraries that attract and repell, to make a clear unity out of a confused plurality. Similarly, Giordano Bruno held that every power must evolve an opposite in order to be clearly manifested: this opposition, however, ulamately brings reunion. The process of arriving at a unity through the opposition of contraries required novel notions such as “coincidence of opposites” and “unsummable complementarics.”* remotest posterity.” Eternally spinning patterns for the sails of the ships of the Argonauts, Arachne's story is chiseled on the frame of 3 the Parthenon. Images of this doubtful nature were also woven into the mantle spread around the statue of Athena/Minerva. Each year, at the sum- " Metamorphoses VI, 84. For a feminist analysis of the myth of Arachne, see “Spinning: Cosmic tapestries,” in Mary Daly, Gyn/ Ecology —the Metaethics of Radical Feminism (New York: Beacon Press, 1978), pp. 396 7. # Is the opposition Arachnac/Minerva meant to be taken as Mythos vs. Logos, as with Dionysius/Apollo, of a chaotic content opposed to logical form? Is it more sensual? Is it the pleasure vs. reality principle? Y Ms. Fd 5. Quoted by permission of Kungliga Biblioteket, Stockholm. 9 Ovid, Metamorphoses VI, 103-130. Y My focus on the “syzigia” derives from a note by Nordstrém, box 6, Uppsala UB. Cf. Umberto Eco, Le Poetichi di Joyce (Milano, I96N. Eco sees the oppositions in Finnesans Wake as dependent on a reading of Cusanus and Bruno.

But, Stiernhielm speaks in a system of male/female/ mother/father/ daughter-relations regulated by the unconscious. The rhythm and sound patterns are only “ironically” liberated from the unconscious and his fictional idea of Arachne/Minerva floats in this system. Modern psycholinguists note that the sound of poetry can reflect primary emotional impulses and that the beaten pathways usually take shape as a conscious logic in symbolic form. Would it seem inevitable that, like a nefarious fate, Stiernhielm’s desire {or lack of desire) for the mother was going to be punished by the Oedipal Minerva? Only after having repressed that conflict, can Stiernhielm assume the position of the father and, as one can easily sec, his polarity is not structured as a benign female/male division, but as a polarity between two differing, and ideal, female heroines doomed to eternal strife. The spider's web, on the other hand, converges as a spiral net towards a central point—a centrum securitatis—the spider sitting in this web. To conclude, the masculine Aleph (the divine word) is indeed the center of Stiernhielm’s universe, not Arachne. WN REST SOARES ot TR ATI ASADR N, POST al