MARK   

2  THE SEMEIACOUSTIKA: AN INTRODUCTION

The science of Pure Mathematics, in its modern developments, may claim to be the most original creation of the human spirit. Another claimant for this position is music. (A.N. Whitehead, Science And The Modern World: Lowell Lectures, p 19, Macmillan, The Free Press, New York, 1925).

Hear this, all you peoples; give ear, all inhabitants of the world,
both low and high, rich and poor together.
My mouth shall speak wisdom; the meditation of my heart shall be understanding.
I will incline my ear to a proverb; I will solve my riddle to the music of the harp. (Psalm 49.1-4, NRSVA).

If science could get rid of consciousness, it would have disposed of the only stumbling block to its universal application. Brand Blanshard.

Before proceeding to examine in greater details the second of the three messianic miracles as concerning the doctrine of the logos, it will be best to say something about semiotic forms in general. This must apply to the previous introduction of the haptika, the discussion of the acoustika to be given here, and of course it will apply also in the case of ongoing discussion of the optika. It is this: the very nature of the things in question, which in a given sense, might be encapsulated in the term 'reality', is not as open as we might either desire or believe. Indeed these very two words, desiring and believing, suggest if anything, the complete opposite. The grasp of reality according to philosophical and religious reason is not as methodologically susceptible as we might wish or believe it to be, as more tried and truer methods subservient to simpler, more available and more immediately achievable cognitive ends. It does not dance to our tune in this way. The failures of logical positivism and analytic philosophy in the twentieth century are a testament to this. How much for example, have we already learned about mind and time, the two central concerns of this study, using reliable scientific and mathematical methods, in the current era, an era nothing if not deemable as 'scientific'? (See A History Of Time: Twentieth Century Time.)

Mind and time are just those two concerns which dominate the landscape of philosophical and religious enquiry. The same realities, and they can hardly be said to lack immediate relevance to us in living on a daily basis, remain as unyielding as ever to our understanding. In spite of the outstanding achievements of mathematical and scientific methods, they remain enigmas among enigmas. The reality of time and the reality of consciousness, and their relatedness, as well as the reality of transcendence, by which I mean of course 'God', if they are not to remain incomprehensible, must make the fullest and most faithful use of what we take to be the foundational elements of language itself, given the delivery of the messianic miracle narratives. Language itself sits at the core of the problem.

Those foundations are of course  the three semiotic series depicted in the three messianic miracles. The use of such apparently arcane and poetic languages as the messianic miracles and other texts recommend us, namely, semiotic forms, must seem at first glaringly 'unscientific', and even obfuscatory. Doubtless the hermeneutical analogy regarding the formal structure of the fourfold gospel vis-a-vis the annual cycle will strike some as such. But what we are seeking is neither as void of either poetry or beauty as perhaps some schools of philosophy, which take their cue from scientific thought, would have us believe. They have brought disenchantment and more, in their wake. I have already alluded to the fact that the episteme occasioned by the Pneumatological categories, symbolic masculine and optic imagination are those of pure and applied mathematics respectively. In spite of the relative muteness of the philosophy of mathematics on the issue of its axiological identity, beauty, and its tendentious claims to shed light on logic, mathematics is resolutely motivated by aesthetic consciousness. Its utter reliance on the graphic forms of language alone, the hallmark of its universal character, ought to be enough to alert us to its innately axiological temperament.

The concept of value so highly problematic for both disciplines, science and mathematics, is redolent of the reality of transcendence, particularly in the former case, as we shall contend. Thus the method of what we refer to as the theology of semiotic forms can never be superfluous to the needs of reasonable belief in the third millennium. They provide us with a means indispensable not merely to the hermeneutic of the miracle narratives in question, as they are to the larger meaning of the gospel as a whole, but also to a Christian theology of language itself. The theology of acoustic semiotic forms in particular, which superficially may resemble certain aspects of mathematical method, will prove not  just vital, but indispensable to the most wide ranging purposes of the gospel of Mark, as these concern both psychology and social 'sciences'. I shall argue that Mark is first and foremost, a psychologist and an anthropologist, given the underlying intentional rationale of his gospel, knowing and the will-to-believe,  whose provenances are the perceptual form acoustic memory, and the conceptual form space : time respectively.

Another but by no means ancillary benefit of semiotic method must be the bridge it forms to the samsaric systems of belief; those of Jainism, Hinduism, and Buddhism in particular. These routinely employ meditative approaches to the nature of reality, alluded to in the term 'mandala', included as part of the title of this site. Their use of mudra, mantra, and yantra or mandala, fully accords with the theologies of semiotic forms. There is every justification for understanding and utilising the members of the acoustic series in ways that correspond to the concept of 'mantra'. The acoustika themselves might just as well be called a mantrayana, a mantra vehicle. If theoretical reason is to be complemented by practical reason, by 'skillful means' or upaya according to Buddhist praxes, then we must not forgo that which the messianic miracle place at our disposal in any effort to gain greater understanding of the gospels, and an enlightenment of the kind ultimately envisaged in The Transfiguration. The interpretation of that very miracle story notably lends itself to establishing a rapport which is by nature mutual, with the traditions indicated here, as I have tried to show previously. These comments are issued as enjoining readiness to undertake that rapport.

The panoptic view of scriptural, that is biblical, metaphysics, proposed here, depends in the first place on the isomorphism between the stories of beginning and end. The latter of course refers to the messianic series, the six miracles and The Eucharist which complement the hexameron, the sixfold archaeological creative fiat, and the Sabbath. But it also embraces The Apocalypse. As difficult of interpretation and as emotionally disturbing as this conspicuously self-avowed 'end' of the written tradition is, it is incumbent on us to consider it. It comports at once with the essential formal features of that particular text, The Feeding Of The Four Thousand, which itself has to do with vision and all that this entails, special, that is written, revelation in particular. It also entails of course colour, and we find a plethora of visual and colour terms and visual motifs in the work. It is also charged throughout with references to vision itself. We have stressed as much as possible that its own intertextual and intratextual nature, conspicuous in its adaptation of the visions of Ezekiel chapters 1 and 10, as well as much of the material in Daniel, these being the two foremost apocalyptic works of the Hebrew canon, render it seemingly plagiaristic. The series of seven seals is recursive to the analogous correspondence between the two texts just mentioned; the stories of creation and salvation which cement the two canons.

The Apocalypse stands provisionally at least, tantamount to the relation transcendence : immanence. That is, it reiterates the meaning of the pivotal sign for relationality within the categoreal paradigm, which also highlights the relation of the canons as focused upon creation and salvation. It may also be equated with the final terms of the three Trinitarian formulae to which it refers in its concluding section: beginning and end, first and last, the Alpha and the Omega. These two models thus co-ordinate the two narratives which determine the focus of this site, although those narratives, the P creation series, and messianic series, remain its foremost concerns. This second pattern  fits with the authorial adoption by its author(s) of an alter ego, bearing the authorial power equal to the demands of the message itself, even if John's self-identification is not pseudonymous. The Apocalypse accepts without demur its own responsibility, its own claim to authority in just this respect. So strong indeed is the rapport between the analogous creation series and messianic series and The Apocalypse as a whole, that its most salient formal features, the series of four sevens, iterates the numerical details of the Pneumatological feeding miracle, The Feeding Of The Four Thousand. The heptad, a pre-eminent crux interpretum of the whole, can hardly be viewed without relation to the heptad of 'beginning', the P creation story. This is just one more of a raft of reasons warranting the identification of its eschatological programmes with those of the four gospels themselves. We have assumed that strategy, as a crux interpretum, as bold as it may seem. The alternative leaves the final work of the canon hopelessly divorced from the complex integration of scripture, and also leaves the latter itself without any actual resolution, of the kind as necessarily must be first inferred from the opening verses of Genesis.

The justification for viewing The Apocalypse as belonging to the necessarily scriptural canon of the New Testament, is its belonging to the theology of immanence which permeates, if it does not completely characterise, the theological outlook of the New Testament as a whole. Both numerical ciphers, 4 and 7, avow as much. We have argued on the basis of a Christology of the Word, for the consistent and interrelated significance of specific sentient modalities operative within each of the three textual cycles, creation, gospel, and Apocalypse, conformably to the organic syntax  of the sentient modes: acoustic-haptic-optic respectively. At the same time, we noted the shift from transcendence to immanence at equal and opposite ends of their co-ordination in this spectrum, peripheries which are adjoined and mediated by the pivotal function of the gospel, corresponding in some manner, to the pivotal function of haptic-somatic consciousness itself, consciousness which is specifically disposed equivocally with regard to the alterity of the same opposites, transcendence : immanence. Haptic-somatic consciousness, of which Luke is the great proponent, is equal in degree of immanence to optic-anthropic consciousness. Even if the latter remains unequivocally immanent in nature, there is an equivalence of degree between the two. The Christological focus of the gospels thus finds its equal in the Pneumatological accentuation of The Apocalypse; the one is as essential to the other, just as the gospel and the theology of creation are mutually requisite. Thus the reciprocity of orality and literacy, of the spoken and written word, have as their fulcrum the haptic-somatic organon.

This means of course, that the theology of semiotic forms can never dispense with the methodological use of hue, nor tones, just as it must also reckon with the feeling, that is, touched and touching, body, the soma both as object and subject. These will be used constantly in the following exposition. But we stipulate in advance of such praxis here, that their integration does not in any way depend on a mystical analogy between colour and sound, such as we find repeatedly in the history of western thought. The primary point of departure is the written tradition itself. Our brief is paramount: the texts themselves. It is not with any supposed correspondence between the abstracted contents of vision or of sound. The three textual centres studied here are the first and last points of reference in the theology of semiotic forms, not the visible hues of the spectrum nor the components of the western musical scales. This must be put plainly at the very outset, and we will revert to it wherever necessary. There is no intrinsic interest on the part of the theology of semiotic forms in the hues or the tones as entities in themselves. The categoreal entities which these semiotic forms represent and articulate are everything. In themselves, the phenomena of sentience are just that, phenomena. The departure of Christian metaphysics from any endeavour to establish some sort of meaningful correlation between the elemental and semiological contents of hearing and seeing independently of special revelation is absolute. It is immediately apparent in terms of the fact that the theology of semiotic forms accounts for the most fundamental formal aspect of the dodecaphonic series as the two whole tone scales. These articulate the analogously related categoreal entities outlined in the stories of Days and messianic miracles, as we are about to put. None of the other than Christian attempts deals at all with the radical binary-hexadic structure of the dodecaphonic series, which is immediately morphologically congruent with the two major depositions of Christian metaphysics; the two serial narratives of Genesis and the gospel(s).

The theology of semiotic forms follows from the two Christological messianic narratives which clearly enumerate the analogical relation between the conceptual and perceptual poles of consciousness, and these formulate structures which are both binary and hexadic in nature. Both The Transformation Of Water Into Wine and The Transfiguration advert notably to the hexad. None of the extant secular 'systems' of correspondence between the formal stuff of our visual and auditory experience even begins to address the fundamentally binary and sexpartite logic of the acoustic forms, and none is concerned with the phenomenon of tonality, with its diatonic and pentatonic structures. Moreover, none relates to a broader construal of the sense-percipient manifold and the subsequent experience of conceptual life. Hence none takes seriously the internal logical coherence of the acoustic semiosis. Just as surely, none is poised to address the existence of language within a framework that is either philosophical or theological. (For an introductory account of some of these systems concerning the analogy between colours and tones, hues and pitch, see Rhythmic Light: Color Scales?; a detailed account of Newton's forays is available at Colour Music: Music For Measure.) We must therefore emphatically enter the caveat lector disavowing any connection between the theology of semiotic forms put here, and such efforts to discuss on the presumptive basis of an analogy alone, the relation between acoustic and optic 'signs'.

THE FEEDING OF THE FIVE THOUSAND

The acoustika of course do not simply exist outside of human intervention. But so as to not overstate the case, we say intervention rather than simply invention. The division of the musical scale has been as much the work of humankind, as of nature itself. In this respect, the acoustika are similar, if not the same as the optika. For the latter too exist 'naturally'. Hues occur within nature. But their discernment, their appellation and enumeration, are the work of humankind. The fundamental musical scales which are the cultural legacy of the western world assume a variety of forms. However those which concern us most, are the diatonic and pentatonic scales. Here, I mean by 'western', the musical cultures of those worlds which have come decisively under the influence of Christian traditions. Those predominant forms which these scales assume are immediately recognisable in both stories of miracles of loaves, as the repeated ciphers, five and seven. Both diatonic scales, the major and minor, are the pre-eminent 'western' acoustic scales. They demonstrate the same basic formal feature: they are sevenfold. Both major and minor scales, the diatonic ('two tonal') scales, comprise seven identifiable tones. If we assign the fivefold structure to the acoustika, and sevenfold structure to the optika, it is due to the oppositional rapport which relates the two semioses, acoustic and optic, which is reflective of beginning and end. But we have not made this alignment exclusively, nor can we lose sight of the fact that its formulation, like those of all the Christological titles, incorporates two peripheral terms,  by means of the copula, their most salient feature. The optic semiotic series and the acoustic semiotic series both subscribe to the focal and central value of the haptic. They are both intelligible in terms of the two sixfold series which co-ordinate the two narrative cycles, creation and salvation. Thus the hexad best serves the necessary co-ordination of both acoustic and optic semiotic series. We can see this immediately and plainly as in the following introduction to the acoustic semiotic forms:

THE TWO SIXFOLD ISOMORPHIC ACOUSTIC SERIES

Using a piano keyboard, I have illustrated those very two series, the two whole tone series of semeiacoustika, which articulate the two distinct taxonomies of Genesis and the gospel: the six conceptual and six  perceptual components of consciousness respectively. This is for the benefit of anyone who is not conversant with musical notation. The photograph of the piano keyboard shows each of the two whole tone scales by means of the numbers one to six; the first series being in red, the second in black. I have used musical notation as well. The above illustrations show just what we mean by a 'scale': a series, a serial form of order, such as are both the series of just six Days of creation, and the series of six corresponding messianic miracles. The musical notation used above may vary. For example the first note has been notated as a C flat, when it might also have been written as a B natural. But the accidentals, flats and sharps, have been chosen, as have the Arabic numerals, in order to emphasise the one-to-one correspondences between the two elementary taxa, the two first order classes of components.

One point to emphasise here at the outset, is the arbitrary choice of the example, which takes the two whole tone series beginning with Cb (C flat) and C natural. This initial tone determines the relation of the succeeding intervals to itself, which is of importance in the diatonic (sevenfold major and minor) scales. The above choice is made on the basis that middle C, C natural in the example, is roughly the centre of the keyboard compass. The relational character of acoustika renders them more than adequate to posit the full gamut of relations obtaining between the categories. So that if C is taken as the tonic in the scale C major, D will be the second, E the third, F the fourth and so on. But this does not irrevocably apply. We may speak of these as accidental rather than essential qualities. Thirdness of degree does not belong exclusively to E for example, nor to Eb. (This is one of the more worthwhile observations made by Schopenhauer in volume II, chapter 29, On The Metaphysics Of Music, of The World As Will And Representation.) We might just as legitimately choose to begin the exposition with the tone F, of any other for that matter. What results is the same in every case: the basic series of relations obtaining between each of the twelve semeia.

The innately relational quality of acoustika is complemented by the assignation of the optika to specific radicals. In other words, just as there is no reason to assign a particular tone to a particular category, the obverse is true of optic signification. So whereas the two Transcendental radicals, the conceptual form space : time, and its perceptual equivalent acoustic memory, are represented by the same chromatic value, green, and this functions within all three temporal cycles, the solar cycle, the lunar cycle and the diurnal/nocturnal cycle, while these categories are pronounced by the tones F and F# respectively, the latter may function in any of the twelve loci indicatively of a specific intentional mode. There are as noted, twelve canonical modes of intentionality; six of the conceptual kind and six of the perceptual kind. These are put as above, in the two whole tone series respectively. Thus F# here designates the acoustikon for acoustic memory itself, whose aboriginal mode of intentionality is knowing. That is to say the instance of knowing produced by the perceptual radical acoustic memory is canonical. Acoustic memory acts definitively for knowing, just as haptic memory does for desire. The particular form of knowing for which acoustic memory is responsible, remains sovereign over all varieties of the mode, knowing. It is paradigmatic, or as we say canonical. But this same perceptual radical functions in other intentional modes. So for example, it occasions a form of desire. All six perceptual radicals are opportunities for all six perceptual modes of intentionality, irrespective of canonicity. The same applies to the six conceptual categories.

A first point vital to the theology of the acoustic semiosis concerning the first-level division of the categories, is that there is no effective 'tonality' operative in either whole tone scale. The diatonic scales, which establish tonality, include seven, and not six, members. But the dodecaphonic series, or the acoustika, are not immediately intelligible in terms of two heptadic series, even though we find seven events in the creation series, and the messianic series. Two sevenfold series would amount to a tally of fourteen and not twelve. Such a tally is not immediately formulated in the divisions of the octave, nor in any of the messianic miracle stories, whereas the number twelve is. In other words, the octave is divided into twelve and not fourteen distinct members. Or what is the same, a whole tone scale is not intelligible in terms of a diatonic scale, nor in terms of two of the same. The first of any step in the exposition of the acoustic semiotic forms, must except the seventh episodes, Sabbath and Eucharist both, as singular. Just as the Sabbath is not a day of creation, but 'the' day of rest, so too, the Eucharist is not a miracle, but the actual ritual meal commemorating the Last Supper. Each of these two events certainly does belong to its proper series, but no account of this belonging, nor indeed of the essential relation between their one-to-one correspondence congruently with that of the one-to-one correspondence of the six conceptual to the six perceptual radicals, can be given without first attending to the latter. Both semioses, the acoustic and the haptic, confirm this point: both manifest the Christological hexad, explicitly referred to in both Christological miracle stories, and this same sixfold structure, is central to our project as the theology of the logos, the Word, and the Christian theory of language itself.

The image, and the notation above, illustrate the two whole tone scales alike, and as stated, neither in itself expresses any immediate relation to the sevenfold scales. So that it is not immediately apparent how we should utilise these two hexadic Christological series, one of the most rudimentary structural features of the acoustic semiosis, a propos of either text which concerns us, the story of the seven Days or that of the seven messianic events. Nor is it at all apparent how the acoustic semiosis should inform the doctrine of intentionality which these same texts themselves propose. Whole tone scales each consist of just six members; and only two whole tone scales are possible, given the fact that the series in its entirety, is dodecaphonic. Given that the octave is divided and consists of twelve discrete semeia, or twelve 'fragments', the first essential aspect of the dodecaphonic series is the existence of these two whole-tone scales, which are ordered according to the same logical principle: the equal interval between succeeding members of the scale.

The western musical scales are founded on this twelvefold division of the octave. (I will, at a later point in the hermeneutic of the narratives, account for the divergence between 'western' and non-western musical cultures, in terms of the two stories of miraculous feedings with loaves and fish. Among other things, these narratives also propose the fundamental divergence between linguistic cultures describable as 'western', with its obvious implication 'Christian', and non-western language systems. This belongs to the hermeneutic regarding the divergence between cultures based on linguistic orality and those founded on linguistic visuality, and points in turn to a fundamental axiological disparity. It establishes the basis for a theology of religions, to be taken up in The Apocalypse.) The dodecaphonic scale is an indubitable legacy of Christian culture, and due to the close ties between the arts and religion, the Christian church has been responsible for its dissemination in the 'West'. 

Both whole tone series respect an axiomatic logical necessity. They each maintain the same interval, a whole tone, and not a semi-tone, between their components. A semitone is the smallest interval used in the division of the octave. It relates each member of the series to its immediately 'contiguous' neighbour. We virtually hear this 'tactile proximity' constantly in musical expression which engages the interval of a semitone, but never in musical expression which utilises the whole tone scale(s), nor in that of the pentatonic scales. The division of the octave into its two whole tone scales uses a whole tone, equal to two semitones, as the smallest dividing interval. This procedure determines the logical legitimacy of the analogy on which all further postulates rest. A serial form of order must be internally coherent, and this coherence is measured as the interval between each constituent member. It cannot vary, as one Day to the next of the six in the creation story cannot vary. The two whole tone scales consisting both of six members, juxtapose the six conceptual and six perceptual entities of Markan metaphysics. They evince acoustically the isomorphic and analogous relationships between the things denoted in the narrative cycles of  'beginning and end', the story of creation and the messianic series. Thus the existence of two serial forms of order in the acoustic semiosis, the two sixfold whole tone scales, conforms to the hexadic morphology of both narrative cycles, creation and salvation, in virtue of which their components are related analogously to each other, in a comprehensive one-to-one  correspondence. This morphology is innately Christological.

The diatonic scales on the other hand, the sevenfold major and sevenfold minor scales, comprise both intervals, the whole tone and the semi-tone, as the measure between contiguous members. But in both instances of the only two whole tone scales comprising the basic unit of musical expression, the octave, the interval between successive notes is everywhere the same interval, that of a whole tone, confirming the logical notion of a category. Moreover, the entities collected in each narrative cycle, the six 'beginning' entities, and the corresponding six 'end' entities, establish their own various relations with each other. Their primary formal feature is enunciated in the categoreal and first level differentiation between transcendence and immanence. The distinction between which remains, even though their disparity is ostensibly blurred by the recapitulation of the very same categoreal paradigm, transcendence : immanence, within each  of the first-level differentiated categories themselves. Thus there exist what we have called radicals of virtual immanence and those of virtual transcendence within the series of (actual) transcendent entities and (actual) immanent entities respectively. This is a second level distinction. It means that there is an end of sorts within the beginning, and a beginning of sorts within the end. But we discover this structure only when the two polarities are brought into immediate and total analogical reference to one another. It entails therefore, the final emergence of two structural paradigms, which necessitate one another: the fivefold serial form of order which is the pentatonic scale, and the sevenfold diatonic scale(s). These are alluded to by the numerical symbols in The Feeding Of The Five Thousand  and The Feeding of The Four Thousand respectively. We shall first note some of the logical outcomes of the two sixfold series inherent in the acoustic semiotic series, before examining those two forms in detail.

The two whole tone series are the acoustic semiological articulation of the six conceptual forms and six perceptual forms. Clarity is the reason for introducing the semeiacoustika in such Christological - hexadic - terms. The two series differ from each other according to the first level distinction between transcendence and immanence. The series numbered in red, and the first six notated tones, are acoustic signifiers of the conceptual components; the series numbered in black and the second series of notated tones are acoustic signifiers of the perceptual components. Within each of these series, however, a further division, the second level distinction to which we have just referred, according to the same categoreal paradigm, occurs. So the first three members and final three members of each sixfold series must denote that second level distinction. The former in the above illustration are marked by the Arabic numerals, the notes marked 1, 2, 3 in red, and notated by means of flats, Cb, Db and Eb. These are semeiacoustika identifying the pure conceptual forms, or forms of pure transcendence. These remain unaffected by the recurrence of the second categoreal division. Their status as transcendent is thus emphasised, the reason for utilising flats in their references, and they are established as the normative elements of the conceptual polarity. Those marked 4, 5 6 in red, and notated without accidentals (flats or sharps), F (natural), G (natural) and A (natural), are the semeiacoustika denoting the forms of unity. These are forms of virtual immanence.

The series of numbers in black, identifies the six semeiacoustika signifying the perceptual radicals, consisting of the three forms of memory, marked by the numerals 4, 5, 6 in black, and notated by means of sharps, F#, G# and A#, and the three corresponding forms of imagination, marked by the numerals 1, 2, 3 in black, and notated without using accidentals, F (natural), G (natural) and A (natural). Thus the actually immanent status of the three forms of memory utilise accidentals, sharps. This means that the first level distinction is at once apparent in the notation since the two accidentals flats (b) and sharps (#) serve to indicate the pure conceptual forms, and actual immanent forms as both normative. All six naturals refer to members of the second level categoreal distinction. Thus C, D, and E designate forms of virtual transcendence, and F, G, A indicate forms of virtual immanence. The radical disparity of transcendence and immanence is sounded in the division of pitch into lower (flats, b) and higher (sharps, #) halves. That is, the polarity radically innate to the acoustic semiosis, relative pitch, answers to the paradigm transcendence : immanence.

Forms of memory are normative, or actually immanent; forms of imagination are virtually transcendent, since they are non-normative, and aconscious. Thus the two normative triads are expressly notated with the use of accidentals: flats (b) for the true, (pure) transcendent categories, and sharps (#) for the actual immanent categories. They sit at furthest remove from one another in this presentation, representatively of the disparity between transcendence and immanence. They occupy the lowermost and uppermost reaches of the dodecaphonic series. They are mediated by the six acoustic semeia denoting non-normative categories. This fact of polarisation is logically pertinent. There is an extreme degree of divergence between the two normative triads, three pure (true) conceptual forms, and three (actual) forms of memory. They stand at furthest remove from one another, as defined here, in terms of the dodecadic structures of the semeiacoustika, in accordance with the categoreal paradigm and the Christological titles. (But in another instance of the dodecaphonic series, they might be arranged completely otherwise. There are in all twelve different possible ways of applying the semeiacoustika to the twelve categoreal radicals.)

This ordering follows the diurnal/nocturnal temporal references contained in the messianic miracle narratives and applies analogously to the creation series. The chiastic structure of the former places the two Pneumatologies, The Stilling Of The Storm  and The Feeding Of The Four Thousand as the second and fifth events. In each case, they are bordered by Transcendental episodes at the centre of the series, and Christological events at its peripheries. These latter four episodes, and furthermore their analogues in the series of Days, schematize the cardinal components of the temporal compass. They plot the uniquely four distinct reference points of its ambit in terms of the solar and lunar cycles to which the gospels correspond. This sequence is fully observant of the dyadic relationships between individual conceptual and perceptual radicals. In other words, it elaborates the one-to-one correspondences between the members of the two polarities. So for example the theological perspectives of the gospel of Mark are governed by the intentional mode will-to-believe, arising from the conceptual form space : time, and the intentional mode knowing, arising from the perceptual form acoustic memory. These are both designated by the same numeral, four, and notated in terms of the same name for the tone, F. Their respective semeiacoustika are F and F#. In the present exposition of the semeiacoustika, these signify the two categories native to Markan theology and their consequent forms of intentionality. Here then, we may introduce the complete fourfold acoustic articulation of the evangelical compass, referentially to their several analogous temporal templates. The following diagram was first given in Mind And Time: The Theology Of Semiotic Forms, 2 Mind In The Gospel And Genesis:
 

	LUKE - winter solstice	MARK - spring equinox	MATTHEW - autumn equinox	JOHN - summer solstice
conscious	desire (nocturnal)	knowing (nocturnal)	will (diurnal)	faith (diurnal)
aconscious	belief-in-desire (diurnal)	will-to-believe (diurnal)	knowledge-of-will (nocturnal)	desire-to-know (nocturnal)

Since it summarises all three temporal templates, diurnal, nocturnal and annual, some further comment on this diagram is necessary. As already put, the three templates a day, a year, and a month, are those which the format of the three narratives cycles reflect: respectively Genesis 1.1-2.4a, the messianic series, and The Apocalypse. Of these, the last two, both the year, approximately 365.24 days, one complete orbit of the earth around the sun, and the month, one complete orbit of the moon around the earth, approximately 29.53 days, readily divide into quarters. Their four processive durations, plotting the course of the year, are defined by the four uniquely dynamic relation of light to darkness: dark to dark, dark to light, light to light, and light to dark, reading the sequence as illustrated above.

Each solar and lunar cycle has two fundamental sections: the year is comprised of two equal halves. Two of its four seasons consist of increasing diurnal intervals, and the other two seasons consist of increasing nocturnal intervals. (Similarly, the lunar cycle is comprised by its waxing and waning which divide into two halves. Both of these halves can be further divided, yielding the first quarter and the last quarter, marking the beginning, but not the apex of each distinct half.) Thus we may speak of the four seasons of the year, including the two equinoxes with the two solstices. (Likewise the lunar cycle comprises four quarters analogously to those of the annual template.) Something of the same pattern is probably reflected in the sign of Jonah sayings (Matthew 12.40, 27.63), and in one of the very earliest kerygmatic formulae of the emerging church to which Paul refers in 1 Cor 15.3-5. Thus the 'three days and three nights' of the sign of Jonah logion conform to the six categoreal entities constituting the aconscious. Each one of these four aconscious radicals is proper to the specific and idiomatic soteriological-eschatological perspective of each of the four gospels as noted in the section listed 'aconscious' in the table above. The remaining two can be assigned to The Apocalypse.

This reckoning underscores the fact that there are only four conspicuous tipping points during one annual cycle. It highlights the occurrence of just four intervals, temporal durations, in the yearly cycle, during which the dynamic ratio between diurnal and nocturnal sections of a whole 'day' either begin or end one of the four seasons. (The division of the year into eight sections, with its addition of four 'cross quarter days' so-called, is a modern invention of New Age paganism.)

The day, consisting of its two halves, routinely and plainly announced in the Genesis narrative, is consonant with the twelvefold pattern of the annual template, as is suggested by the references in the last Johannine miracle stories, the functional equivalent to the last messianic miracle, Transfiguration, and the analogue to the Day 1 rubric:

Jesus answered, "Are there not twelve hours in the day" If any one walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. But if any one walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him.  (John 11.9-10).

The restriction of cardinal categories to the total of  four is at once confirmed by the semeiacoustika. Those three semeiacoustika which articulate pure conceptual forms are notated in terms of flats (b), and marked by the numerals 1, 2, 3 in red on the image of the keyboard given above. Those which articulate forms of actual immanence (memory) are notated in terms of sharps, and marked on that image by the numerals 4, 5, 6 in black. Thus the normative categories are all notated by accidentals. The six tones notated without accidentals uniformly designate the categories of the aconscious. They are marked 1, 2, 3 in black and 4, 5, 6 in red. Tones articulating aconscious conceptual categories are marked in red, whereas those articulating aconscious perceptual categories are marked in black. The numbers group the categories according to the second level application of the categoreal paradigm. Radicals of pure transcendence are denoted by the numbers 1, 2, 3 (red), and those of virtual transcendence by the same numbers 1, 2, 3 (black). The numbers 4, 5, 6 in black denote the semeiacoustika of categories of actual immanence, and the same numbers, 4, 5, 6 in red denote semeiacoustika which articulate categories of virtual immanence. Normative are thus readily distinguishable from non-normative categories by the use of accidentals for the former. The numbers and notations, C, D, E for example, are identical in each case. We observe that there are in the representation/articulation of each of the four taxa, two only peripheral members, one initial and one final, and that these are the semeia denoting the two  cardinal categories proper to the four gospels: Cb-C for the gospel of Matthew; Eb-E for John; F-F# for Mark, and A-A# for Luke:

 
We have chosen to illustrate the whole tone and other scales, using the octave C flat to C flat. But we must not forget that the cyclical nature of the acoustika means that such a choice is quite arbitrary, somewhat similar to the arbitrariness of a spoken word as a signifier. We shall further comment on this cyclicity of the semeiacoustika, it is one obvious characteristic distinguishing them from the optic semeia. The visible spectrum begins at one end, the red, and terminates at the other, the blue, with the colour indigo. But in treating the acoustic semiotic series, we might just as legitimately begin at A# as C flat, or any other tone. The same relational features occur within each octave. That is, the same structural patterns which disclose the variety of relations obtaining between the twelve semeia are manifestly identical within each twelvefold compass.  Had we in fact taken that option, it would have been notated relative to the succeeding sign, so as to represent the dyadic relationship between the conceptual form space, and the perceptual form acoustic imagination. In that event, the A# would have been referred to as B flat, and the succeeding note as B (natural). The innate relativity of the semeiacoustika is a topic which will further occupy us. The justification for our actual choice, as noted is the fact that 'middle' C on the keyboard is often taken as a point of reference. It is very easy to locate, and hence an ideal tone to mark the particular acoustic semeion relative to that which designates its normative correlative, C flat. We have assigned the latter to the conceptual category, space, the univocally transcendental category. That is to say, space is commensurate with beginning according to the creation taxonomy.

Each of the two notated whole tone series contains three members distinguished by either sharps or flats. They designate the normative members of their taxa. These have been notated using accidentals, either flats or sharps, so as to highlight the three normative members of each polarity. In the case of transcendence, Cb, Db and Eb, stand in relation to C (natural), D (natural) and E (natural), as denoting the one-to-one correspondence between the three pure conceptual forms - space (Cb), symbolic masculine (Db) and mind (Eb) relative to the three forms of imagination - acoustic imagination (C), optic imagination (D), and haptic imagination (E). In the second whole tone series, the same correspondence between the three normative categories and the three non-normative categories of immanence, is also signified by the one-to-one correspondences of F# (acoustic memory) to F (space : time), G# (optic memory) to G (symbolic feminine), and A# (haptic memory) to A (mind : body).

It should be emphasised that such notation does not conform to conventional musical notation, which depends upon the sevenfold scale, not sixfold whole-tone scales. (The notation used here and in the following exposition, emphasizes  the co-ordinating, morphological value of the Christological hexad relevantly to both semiotic series, the acoustic and optic. The same applies to the use of six rather than seven semeioptika.) So for example the sevenfold major scale which employs the first three tones beginning with flats, namely B major, (here 'Cb') would be notated exclusively in terms of sharps: C# (here Db)-D# (here Eb)- E natural (as here)- F# (as here)-G# (as here)-A# (as here)-b natural (here cb). Whereas the major sevenfold scale whose first three tones are F#-G#-A##, namely F# major, would be conventionally notated using all sharps: F#-G#-A#-B natural (here Cb)-C# (here Db)-D# (here Eb)-E# (here F natural)-f#.

We shall necessarily address such sevenfold series, but it is vital to emphasise the fourfold division of the semeia according to the morphological scheme of the Days and messianic miracles, and this is irreducibly Christological, that is to say, hexadic (and hence triadic, and Trinitarian), as is given in the two Christological miracle narratives themselves. In other words, this notation highlights the normative conceptual categories, as denoted by flats (b) relatively to their non-normative (aconscious) analogues by the equivalent naturals; and conversely uses sharps (#) for the three forms of actual immanence, while the analogues in each case are signified by the equivalent naturals. Thus all of the conscious, normative radicals are designated by accidentals (either flats or sharps), and all of the aconscious, non-normative categories by naturals. In just this way the first-level or normative polarisation of the categories is plainly visible, conformably to the congruent use of semeioptika.

That said however, we should not be confused by confining the hermeneutic of the acoustika purely to the ascending order of the scale. The important fact concerning cyclicity which the acoustika rather than the opitka disclose, is the symmetry of direction, the polarity of pitch. There is directedness towards the future, which is definitively exposed by the pure conceptual forms (pure transcendence), and their analogous forms of imagination (virtual transcendence); and directedness towards the past, expressed by the forms of memory (actual immanence) and their analogous forms of unity (virtual immanence). The space-time continuum is conventionally understood more or less always as the unremittingly unidirectional flow from past to present to future. But taken in their entirety, the six conceptual and six perceptual radicals do not propose an asymmetrical and unidirectional spectrum. Its polarisation consists equally and symmetrically, relatively to the future and the past both. This is iterated in the circle of fourths/fifths.

The conventional musical scale, even though it always consists of descending as well as ascending orders, is usually understood exclusively vis-a-vis the latter, but the cyclical and polar aspects of the semeiacoutika however resolutely militate against this. At one end, that of the descending scale, the spectrum moves towards increasing futures of the proximal, medial and distal; while at the other, the same progression from proximal to medial to distal pasts, is sounded as the ascending scale. The pure conceptual form space, here articulated by the acoustikon Cb, circumscribes the extreme future, the distal future, as the lowest of the twelve tones of the descending octave. Its correlative conative mode of intentionality, will proper, rather than will-to-believe, is canonical in virtue of this category. Whereas the pure perceptual form haptic memory, here sounded by the acoustikon A#, circumscribes the extreme or distal past, at the extreme end of the octave in the antithetical ascending dodecaphonic series. It is the canonical instance of the opposing conative intentionality, desire proper, not the desire-to-know.

The given arrangement of the conscious radicals of mind thus convergs towards a 'sabbatical'/Eucharistic present in which faith and knowing are representative of the proximal future and proximal past respectively. (The use of the word 'sabbatical' here anticipates a sacramental theology of baptism, more of which we shall later address.) The conscious faith of mind and the conscious knowing of acoustic memory prescribe the near or proximal future and proximal past respectively. These two temporal domains border presentational immediacy. Will and desire whose canonical instances are occasioned by the conceptual radical space and the perceptual radical haptic memory respectively, extend the furthest limits of the compass in both directions, future and past, symmetrically. The conscious forms of intentionality, both conative and cognitive, in their canonical instances are contrastively juxtaposed as articulated by the acoustic semiotic series.

THE SEMIOTIC SEQUENCES

The sequences of these two sixfold whole tone series, which we are about to discuss, are distinguishable from the recapitulaton of the Trinitarian identities proper to the texts which are their chief theological subjects, as these texts occur in the canon. The order: creation story-messianic series-Apocalypse, yields the progression Transcendence-Son-Holy Spirit. This sequence does not conform to that of either taxonomy, creation (Days: Son-Transcendence-Spirit) or salvation (messianic events: Son-Spirit-Transcendence). That said, the latter is the inverse of the order which we shall adopt, and it is explicit in the second (transcendental) half of the messianic series. The Trinitarian recapitulation in the canonical occurrence of those same three texts is certainly close to that of the categoreal paradigm, but for the fact that the gospels precede The Apocalypse. I have discussed this at length in Siting The Apocalypse and The Three Eucharistic Miracles: Perceiving The Word As Truth, Beauty, And Goodness. The two possible arrangements of how the canonical sequences of texts as denoting both the events and the  identities who are the focuses of those events, equivocate over the identities of The Son and The Holy Spirit. (Here we should recall that each of the synoptic gospels contains at least one apocalypse, and that Luke has two. See Daniel J. Castellano's The Synoptic Apocalypse.) They are as follows:

TRANSCENDENCE	THE SON	HOLY SPIRIT
FIRST	AND	LAST	THE SON - MESSIANIC SERIES
BEGINNING	AND	END	TRANSCENDENCE - GENESIS 1.1-2.4a
ALPHA	AND	OMEGA	HOLY SPIRIT - THE APOCALYPSE
GENESIS1.1-2.4a	MESSIANIC SERIES	THE APOCALYPSE

THE TRANSCENDENT	THE HOLY SPIRIT	THE SON
FIRST DAY 1	AND	LAST TRANSFORMATION WATER TO WINE	THE SON - MESSIANIC SERIES
BEGINNING  DAY 2	AND	END FEEDING 5,000	THE TRANSCENDENT - GENESIS 1.1-2.4a
ALPHA   DAY 3	AND	OMEGA FEEDING 4,000	HOLY SPIRIT - THE APOCALYPSE
GENESIS 1.1-24a	THE APOCALYPSE	MESSIANIC SERIES

The categoreal paradigm sites the identity of The Son as mediatory between Transcendence ('The Father') and The Holy Spirit, as these counterpose unequivocally the direct contrasts of transcendence and immanence respectively. Even so, we must not forget that both normative taxa, the pure conceptual forms, and the forms of actual immanence, contain elements which nominally seem to contradict any such unequivocal juxtaposition. The Day 3 rubric, concerning The Holy Spirit and the conceptual form, symbolic masculine, posits an immanent entity belonging to a taxon consisting of pure transcendental forms. Conversely, The Feeding Of The Five Thousand locates the perceptual radical acoustic memory, which exemplifies Transcendence, within the class of entities of actual immanence. The same is repeated in the non-normative order of the aconscious, although this already demonstrably contradicts the first level antithesis of transcendence 'and' immanence. It is for these reasons that the categoreal paradigm which accounts for The Son in terms of the ratio symbol, is anchored in the essential ambiguity of that central sign.

Certainly, the progression given in the first of the above tables, the actual canonical arrangement of the texts as 'beginning and end', 'first and last', 'the Alpha and the Omega', reflects the categoreal paradigm. But it conflicts with three important factors: 1) the sequence of the messianic series from its epicentre to its two peripheries; 2) the nocturnal/diurnal references supplied in this series itself, which allow for the analogical temporal (diurnal/nocturnal) reconstruction of the entire series, and for the extrapolation of the same to the Days rubrics; 3) the reference in John 21 to the completed messianic series in the guise of the numerical cipher '153'. A further consideration which follows from that chapter in the gospel of John is the arrangement of the Johannine miracle narratives themselves. These conform to the sequence given in the epilogue, once more reading from their centre outwards, and omitting The Healing At The Pool (John 5.1-18). The first and last of the Johnannine miracle stories are both Christologies. The two central events, The Feeding Of The Five Thousand and The Walking On The Water both attest The Transcendent, and conform to the same location of these texts in the messianic series in all of their synoptic versions. The Healing Of The Official's Son (4.43-54) and The Man Born Blind (9.1-41), the second and second last miracles respectively, are both Pneumatologies, and the first and last miracle narratives, Transformation Of Water Into Wine and Lazarus are both Christologies.

This order, Transcendent-Spirit-Son, is congruent with the temporal progression of the canonical instances of the conceptual modes of intentionality. Thus will (simpliciter), willing-and believing, and finally belief (simpliciter), are just those forms of intentionality whose canonical instances demarcate distal future-medial future-proximal future(-present) respectively. The aconscious order is identically organized in terms of temporal progression from distal past-medial past-proximal past(-present), the temporal domains delineated by the modes of intentionality: will-to-believe, will-to-believe+belief-in-desire, and belief-in-desire respectively. We again here cite the Johannine warrant for this sequence to be discussed in relation to the acoustic semiotic forms, Transcendental-Pneumatological-Christological. It is clearly articulated, as already noted, in both the chiasmos which shapes the messianic miracle series, and chapter 21 of the gospel of John which clearly refers to the same sequence by means of the numeral '153'. The three immanent messianic miracles, those on the left hand side in the following diagram, are serially first, fifth and third. Thus there is ample evidence for determining  the chronologically temporal values of the two categories as entireties, as serial wholes. The chiasmos can be read from the inside outwards; beginning with the two central transcendental episodes at its centre:

This determines the sequence for both taxa: pure conceptual forms, and forms of unity, as categorised in the creation story, pursuant to the indications given in the gospel narratives. The determination adduces the canonical instances of intentional modes in their transit from the temporal zones, distal-medial-proximal(-presentational) in both future to present and past to present. The chiasmos can and must be read also from the outside inwards. This yields the sequence: Christological-Pneumatological-Transcendental, the order of the messianic miracles themselves: the forms of memory and the forms of imagination comply with this order. Haptic memory, the canonical expression of desire simpliciter is identifiably Christological, and circumscribes the distal past; optic memory, the canonical occasion of the hybrid mode desiring-and-knowing, instantiates The Holy Spirit, and circumscribes the medial past; and acoustic memory, which identifies The Transcendent, and which is the canonical occasion of knowing, circumscribes the proximal past adjoining the present. This sequence equally orders the forms of imagination; haptic-optic-acoustic, as the canonical instances of desire-to-know, desire-to-know+knowledge-of-will, and knowledge-of-will, where these canonical expressions of the aconscious modes of intentionality identify The Son, The Spirit and The Transcendent respectively. In this way, the two series mirror one another, comparably to left-handedness and right-handedness. Only by accounting for both possibilities, that is, by accounting for both the conceptual and perceptual rubrics disclosed in both narrative cycles of Genesis and gospel, can the structural significance of the chiasmos itself be realized.

What is at issue is the encompassing synthesis of entities listed taxonomically. These are twelve in all, the subjects of the two series, Days and messianic events. Although they may seem to echo them, none of the episodes in The Apocalypse appear to invoke those of either narrative cycle explicitly, with the sole and remarkable exception of the seven seals. The various other sevenfold series in The Apocalypse contain nothing comparable to the logic of analogy maintained by the two sevenfold series of Genesis and the gospels, nor do they supplement the propositional content of those narratives. The twelve events of 'beginning and end', creation and salvation, comprehensively categorised in these cycles, are recapitulated in Mark's twelvefold cycle of healing miracles. Six of these reiterate the conceptual categories of the creation taxonomy, and the other six reiterate the perceptual categories of the messianic miracles. Moreover there are are references to the completed tally of categories in The Feeding Of The Five Thousand and in both Christological messianic miracle narratives: in the former as the 'twelve baskets', in the latter by means of the two hexads; six jars of water transformed into wine mentioned in the first messianic miracle narrative, and the 'six days' mentioned in the last. This dodecadic tally makes for the proper point of entry into the hermeneutic of the two series as one whole. We have thus far, already noted its clearest semiological outlines in the acoustika.

The location of The Apocalypse in the textual sequence adopted here, notably reflects the four modes of intentionality which identify The Holy Spirit. That is, the sequence in each of the four taxa conforms the hybrid Pneumatological modes of intentionality which uniformly integrate their contiguous cognitive and conative forms. This model of the textual syntax determines The Holy Spirit and The Apocalypse as signified by the copula 'and'. The conative forms, whether they circumscribe the distal past, desire simpliciter and will-to-believe, or the distal future, will simpliciter and desire-to-know, always occupy the initial phase of their taxa, and cognitive forms, the final phase. Taxa are thus teleologically informed and uniformly directed towards cognitive ends, as towards presentational immediacy. The same ends or final phases of each taxon, are those of proximal pasts or proximal futures adjoining presentational immediacy.

Thus the canonical instances of Christological and Transcendental modes of intentionality, be they forms of belief or forms of knowing, whether conscious or aconscious, are always the ends to which the taxa are aimed. Pneumatological modes of intentionality operate as the basis of this passage from initially conative to finally cognitive forms of intentionality in keeping with the theological presentation of The Holy Spirit in terms of movement. Pneumatological and therefore hybrid forms of intentionality function as means, thereby instrumentally mediating processes from remotest pasts and futures towards the hic et nunc.  The variant forms of the initial and final terms specify the Christological and Transcendental categories and their corresponding intentional modes. This pattern reiterates the essential taxonomic roles of the narratives, Genesis 1.1-2.4a and the gospels, and accords with the both semioses, optic and acoustic.

When we analysed the three texts in terms of their implicit temporalities, we found the three major astronomical and chronological cycles, the day, the month and the year, to answer to the format Transcendent-Spirit-Son, as manifest in the three texts, reproduced in the second table. The first and the last of which, the day and the year, provide us with bespoke chronological patterns corresponding to the twelvefold. John appears to refer to the diurnal/nocturnal cycle in the story of Lazarus:

Jesus answered, "Are there not twelve hours in the day? If any one walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. But if any one walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him." (John 11.9-10).

The twelvefold compass wherever, and however it is referred to, is vital in approaching the theology of semiotic forms because of its clear Christological association with the radical categorisation of mind or consciousness. Its primary instance in the acoustic semiosis warrants emphasis. There are two outstanding references to the figure twelve in The Apocalypse (Apocalypse 7.1-8, the account of the sixth seal, (cf. 14.1-5, The Song Of The 144,000), and the vision of the woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars' (12.1 emphasis added). The latter would seem more particularly to refer to the zodiac rather than to any computation of the years as consisting of twelve months, since the moon, already mentioned, does not easily fit any reckoning of the solar cycle, and the zodiac does.

Consideration of the inventory of twelve categories radical to consciousness as highly significant lends weight to the adoption of the pattern demonstrated in the second table above: that of Transcendental-Pneumatological-Christological, the temporal order of conceptual intentional modality, and its mirror image, Christological-Pneumatological-Transcendental, the temporal order of perceptual intentional modality, notwithstanding that this does not observe the categoreal paradigm insofar as it incorporates The Apocalypse as part of the co-ordination of the three texts. Thus the sequences of the three members comprising each of the four taxa using the template of the annual cycle, do not follow their identification in virtue of the categoreal paradigm, transcendence : immanence where this represents the sequence Transcendental-Christological-Pneumatological, as given in the first table above.

One of the main reasons for insisting on this encompassing synthesis, the interrelation of the three texts, is their clear coherence as Trinitarian theologies, and their resultant demonstration of the modes of sentience associated with The Transcendent, The Spirit and The Son: acoustic, optic and haptic modes respectively. Both semioses, acoustic and optic, as expounded here, are in accord with the two forms of this very sequence, whereby the Pneumatological signifiers always stand between the initial and final semeia. It is arguably more immediately intelligible in the acoustic semiosis, given that pitch is relative, and the phenomenon of ascending as well as descending scales. We are perhaps to prone to construe the semeioptika in the order beginning with red and ending with violet. We have already utiilsed the sequence Transcendental-Pneumatological-Christological of the conceptual forms, and its mirror sequence Christological-Pneumatological-Transcendental of the perceptual radicals, in the mandala representing the annual cycle, which clearly emphasises the structural consistency of the four gospels. Consequently we can further clarify the essential difference between the gospels themselves and The Apocalypse, where the former are represented by the four conjunctions of either distal or proximal modes of intentionality, and the latter is consistently represented by their instrumentality of passage from one of each of these to one of the other.

For example, the gospel of Luke which we have already discussed, sites itself within the annual compass as signal of the two intervals, one diurnal, and one nocturnal, constituting the winter solstice. The diurnal interval is the shortest of any, the nocturnal interval the longest of any. To the first corresponds the cognitive and aconscious intentionality of belief-in-desire, which delimits the proximal past, and to the second corresponds the conative and conscious intentionality of desire (simpliciter), which marks the distal past. These temporal domains are linked with those of the equinoxes, since the autumn equinox begins the process aimed towards the winter solstice, and the spring equinox begins that to which the winter solstice is aimed. These two domains, the annual, temporal analogues of the canonical instances of will-to-believe and knowing, configure the temporal zones proper to the semiological specificity of the gospel of Mark, our current concern. Thus the diurnal interval at the autumn equinox and the nocturnal interval at the spring equinox are the temporal analogues to the categoreal definition of those patterns of consciousness which are responsible for the two modes of intentionality governing the Markan theological agenda. These are will-to-believe, and knowing respectively. (In other words, just as desire is teleologically instrumental to knowing, so will-to-believe is teleologically instrumental to belief-in-desire.) The former is the analogue to the day at the autumn equinox, the latter is analogous to the night at the spring equinox. It does not matter that they belong to different equinoctial moments of the cycle, since the intervals are everywhere the same, and since also, the two equinoctial processes are simultaneous, albeit in opposing hemispheres.

This relates Luke and Mark in ways worthy of philosophical contemplation. But the point here is that the identification of both the four gospels as a whole, and comparatively, The Apocalypse, analogously to the annual cycle, lucidly demonstrates the fundamental differences between gospels and The Apocalypse. That is because the four cardinal spatiotemporal units, denoted by those initial and final phases, differ radically and logically from the intervals signified as their means of passage. The actual temporal durations of the former are notably limited. An equinox perdures for no more than twenty-four hours. Logically, the summer solstice may even be pinpointed at a given place, at that particular moment when the sun reaches its zenith during the midsummer day. Conversely, the winter solstice may likewise be specified as the 'point' in time when a given locus is furthest from the sun; which will then be a moment in time during the night. (Similarly, the phases of the moon at each of its four quarters perdures for only a fraction of the time marked by its passage from one quarter to the next. Whether we take the lunar or solar cycles, only four distinct 'beginnings and ends' are specifically identifiable. The four cardinal solar and lunar phases are morphologically consonant with one another. Of course the lunar cycle does not present the tetrad in terms of simultaneous antitheses; those of the two hemispheres in which  the two equinoxes occur concurrently, and the two solstices likewise. This is the advantage of the (luni-)solar paradigm. But in each case, lunar as well as solar, the entire cycle is firstly divisible into two essential halves consisting of either increasing/waxing or decreasing/waning light. The two halves of the annual compass stand as analogues to the conscious and aconscious respectively.)

The four intervals between the two equinoxes and two solstices clearly mark significantly longer durations than either those of the equinoxes or solstices themselves. These four intervals are semiologically signified by The Apocalypse in any integration of the three texts: Genesis 1.1-2.4a, The Apocalypse, and the messianic series. This effectively puts the disparity between the theological projects of the gospels and that of the Apocalypse. It also distinguishes Pneumatology as radically different in kind from theological doctrines regarding The Transcendent and The Son.

An opportune point here presents itself to shed further light, albeit in passing, on the form of The Apocalypse, and to make further distinctions concerning its four sevenfold series. The link between death, the sign of Jonah saying, and the aconscious has been noted previously, but not in connection with The Apocalypse. The combination of both diurnal and nocturnal temporal measures in Matthew's version of the sign of Jonah logion, which mentions 'three days and three nights', provides further hermeneutical opportunities for the four sevenfold series in The Apocalypse. The use of this saying in just such a formula is exclusive to the gospel of Matthew. Luke refers to the sign of Jonah, but without any mention of 'three days and three nights', and Mark mentions 'a sign from heaven' without any reference to either Jonah or the temporal phrase, although his gospel contains the three passion predictions which all include the formula 'after three days' (Mark 8.31, 9.31, 10.34). Notwithstanding that the three passion predictions mention only 'three days', they may also support the same approach to understanding the second, as well as the first, section of The Apocalypse, if how we read the latter specification 'three days' in the passion predictions is open to conjecture. The term may well mean exactly the same thing, 'three days and three nights'.

Then some of the scribes and Pharisees said to him, "Teacher, we wish to see a sign (shmei~on) from you." But he answered them, "An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign (shmei~on, et passim); but no sign shall be given it except for the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so will the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will arise at the judgement with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold something greater than Jonah is here. The queen of the South will arise at the judgement with this generation and condemn it; for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and behold, something greater than Solomon is here. (Matthew 12.38-42).

When the crowds were increasing, he began to say, "This generation is an evil generation; it seeks a sign (shmei~on, et passim), but no sign shall be given it except the sign of Jonah. For as Jonah became a sign to the men of Nineveh, so will the Son of man be to this generation. The queen of the South will arise at the judgement with the men of this generation and condemn them; for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and behold, something greater than Solomon is here. The men of Nineveh will arise at the judgement with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here." (Luke 11.29-32).

The Pharisees came and began to argue with him, seeking from him a sign from heaven (shmei~on a)po\ tou~ ou)ranou~), to test him. And he sighed deeply in his spirit, and said, "Why does this generation seek a sign (shmei~on et passim)? Truly, I say to you, no sign shall be given to this generation." And he left them, and getting into the boat again he departed to the other side. (Mark 8.11-13).

According to the second level categoreal distinction common to both taxonomies, conceptual forms (Days), and perceptual forms (messianic events), three of the former, those denoting virtual immanence, the three forms of unity, and three of the latter, those denoting virtual transcendence, the three forms of imagination, serve to distinguish the aconscious from the conscious. These are the secondary members of their respective narrative cycles. In this way the Matthean version of the saying certainly links the 'three days and three nights' of Jesus' entombment with the aconscious, and so links the aconscious with death in general. All three miracles of virtual transcendence portraying the aconscious, are thematically linked with mortality, and with dread, as is imagination itself. In the second part of the creation story, the theme of consumption also presupposes the same, and its link with reproduction depends upon this premise.

We have already alleged that each of the four sevenfold series of The Apocalypse reformulates eschatological concerns which are formally specific to the gospels, as well as signifying the processive transition of each of the four annual quarters from their initial to their final phases. Thus we urged that the first series, the seven messages to the churches, aligns itself with the spring equinox, and the passage towards the same from the winter solstice. Hence it should be read with respect to the gospel of Mark. The series of seven seals which follows, completes the first half of The Apocalypse in that it signifies the transition from the spring equinox to the summer solstice, conformably to the eschatological agenda proper to the governing theological concerns of the gospel of John. The summer solstice functions as the analogue to this gospel. The entire passage of time so indicated by these two first series, that of the tipping point immediately after the winter solstice, to the very culmination of the summer solstice, can be construed in terms of three days and three nights. These are the three Days of the creation series which detail the pure conceptual forms, Days 1, 2, and 3, and the three Eucharistic messianic miracles, which deal with the forms of memory. These six categories delineate the conscious order, represented by that particular half of the year in which light is dynamically increasing, and darkness, the relative length of the night, is decreasing.

That the temporal frame 'three days and three nights' can be applied equally to both orders, conscious and aconscious, reads the twelvefold categoreal schema congruously with the actual indications first announced in the creation story, namely that of six days, consisting of 'morning and evening'. This does not contradict the interpretation of the same dodecad vis-a-vis the annual cycle, nor will it contradict its interpretation relative to the diurnal/nocturnal cycle itself, such as we see in the messianic miracle narratives. As for the fact that the temporal reference in the sign of Jonah saying is applicable equally to the normative (conscious) and non-normative (aconscious) orders, we should not lose sight of the fact that these two processes viewed by means of the annual paradigm are simultaneous, given the division of the earth into its two hemispheres. The ramifications this has for metapsychological theory will be worth considering.

But the saying surely gives purchase to the singularity of the second half of The Apocalypse as a metapsychological rendering of the aconscious and the ramifications this must have for the theology of death. The remaining two series in The Apocalypse are noticeably remarkably similar. The series of trumpets and the series of bowls, inasmuch as they operate semiologically, recapitulate the remaining half of the yearly cycle. The quarter from the  end of the summer solstice to the autumn equinox, signified by the series of trumpets, refers to the gospel of Matthew which marks the culmination of the autumn equinox, and the series of bowls, marking the transition to the winter solstice, refers to that of Luke. Thus the Apocalypse as a whole, intends precisely the same signification of the annual cycle as do the gospels taken as a whole. Simultaneously, its pre-eminent focus upon the Pneumatological categories, of which the symbolic feminine is most certainly not the least insignificant, legitimates reading the four sevenfold series vis-a-vis the feminine cycle and hence, albeit secondarily, the lunar cycle. I add the rider 'secondarily', since the lunar cycle never exactly equals that of the female body. A (lunar) month is always in excess of 29 days, whereas the human menstrual cycle comprises an average of 28 days in adults. Both are slightly inexact of measurement in whole integers. It is necessary to realize the value of symbolism here, and the rationale for insisting that the 'symbolic feminine' is inclusive. Like the remaining forms of unity, the spatiotemporal and psychophysical, it is bipolar, consisting of both feminine and masculine. Thus the hermeneutic of the morphological contours of The Apocalypse, that its broadest outlines  frame a set of four heptads, must attend to the concept of the anthropic in terms of its irreducible sexual dimorphism. In other words, the meaning of these four sevenfold series concerns male and female of humankind in equal measure.

Related to this bipolarity, and serving to represent the twelve categories, is the strategy combining solar and lunar phases. Here we must note the three miracles of virtual transcendence associated analogously with the unequivocal instances of transcendence, the three conceptual forms, of which the symbolic masculine is one, however ostensibly anomalously. These three miracles can and do signify the nocturnal intervals marking the lunar passage from full moon to its last quarter. This seems to contradict the interpretation of all seven messianic events analogously to the full nocturnal/diurnal cycle of twenty-four hours, in which the three miracles of virtual transcendence answer to periods of increasing daylight. According to the reconstruction of the series analogously to that cycle, these events transpire within the diurnal rather than nocturnal half of the twenty-four hour cycle, or more specifically they indicate the three periods beginning with the early dawn until midday.

This evident contradiction seems less unaccountably strange when we recall that they depict the aconscious. (Equally odd at first sight, is the fact that the three forms of unity delineated in the second half of the creation narrative, and spoken of in terms of days, or an 'evening and morning, an [n]th day', represent the final quarter of the year culminating in the winter solstice, when the duration of night reaches its maximum, and the day its minimum.) But these two means of signification equitably distribute both orders, conscious and aconscious, in terms of both phases of the twenty-four hour cycle. Thus the six conscious radicals are determined according to the differential conceptual : perceptual analogously to that  of diurnal : nocturnal, and the six aconscious radicals likewise. There is no simple equation tout court between diurnal and the conscious, and nocturnal and the aconscious. Moreover, the Jonah saying 'three days and three nights', referring to the entombment of Jesus and thus obviously to the aconcious, links the latter irrevocably with the conscious, since it too is accounted for by means of the very same formula.

Such a reading also rescues from confusion the Johannine references to 'four days', and a day being a total of 'twelve hours' in the Christological miracle narrative, The Raising Of Lazarus. In speaking of a day as comprising twelve and not twenty-four hours, the text infers that a night is likewise to be calibrated. References to light and darkness in this Christology hark back to the creation story, pursuant to the Johannine logosode. If Lazarus' entombment consists of four such days, can these be construed in accordance with the four cardinal Days of the annual compass, or with the four days which make up the second half of the archaeological week, or yet again both? The last of the four Days making up the second half of the week of beginning is Sabbath, the day of rest, which surely suggests death and entombment. This meshes with John's appreciation of the P story of creation.

The 'three days and three nights' of the sign of Jonah logion never occurs in John's gospel. But if we accept the former interpretation of the 'four days'  of the Johannine Christology, that is, the eschatological hermeneutic that John effectively refers to the four cardinal days of the annual compass, its two equinoctial days and its two solstitial days, then the same summation of the twelvefold pattern results. This follows because the phrase may be read as a shorthand reference to the 'three days and three nights' of both orders, conscious and aconscious.  Consequently the three days signifying the pure conceptual forms of the conscious order, Days 1, 2 and 3, are sited analogously to the three nights, signifying the three forms of imagination, depicted in the three miracles of virtual transcendence which form the aconscious perceptual polarity; and the three nights which account for the perceptual forms of the conscious order, depicted in the three miracles of actual immanence, are sited analogously to the three days, 4, 5 and 6, signifying the aconscious conceptual pole. The references are thus highly, if notoriously, supple, and allow for more than one interpretation. The time-frame of Matthew's sign of Jonah saying, which is clearly linked with death,  just as it is with the various passion predictions, and that of the final Johannine miracle narrative, thus make common cause: the depiction of the twelve radicals of mind or consciousness according to the nocturnal/diurnal template. In which they immediately invoke the death of Christ, interweaving these two orders of mind, without conflating them since they have already been so clearly delineated in the two narrative cycles.

Again, it is necessary to stress that this does not remove from consideration the Sabbath-Eucharist, the seventh event in each series. If anything, the clear association between the formula 'three days and three nights' emphasises the importance of both episodes, given its explicit eschatological overtones. As noted, both are clearly vital to a theology of death and thus to eschatological hermeneutics. The Letter To The Hebrews appropriates and amplifies the connection initially forged between Sabbath rest and death in the P narrative, and of course the story of The Institution Of The Lord's Supper reinforces the last of the messianic episodes as indubitably bound to the same theological purpose. We shall directly pass to the way in which the semiotic forms, particularly the semeiacoustika, account for the significance of this compact, Sabbath-Eucharist. The key to understanding the relation of the seventh events a propos of the two sixfold series is the fact that the four taxa all plot the transition from conative to cognitive modes of intentionality. The Sabbatical-Eucharistic here-now, that is, the domain of 'presentational immediacy' to use the language of process philosophical theology, characteristically borders the proximal past(s) and proximal future(s). The latter are by definition respectively perceptual and conceptual in the conscious order, and respectively conceptual and perceptual in the aconscious according to their first level distinction.

SEVEN LOAVES AND SEVEN BASKETS,

FIVE LOAVES FOR FIVE THOUSAND

One of the most significant factors in all three miracle narratives  is the duplicated numerical signifiers. In the Pneumatological narrative, The Feeding Of The Four Thousand, the seven occurs twice, enumerating both the number of unbroken loaves as well as the number of baskets full of their fragments after the feeding. The Transcendental narrative, The Feeding Of The Five Thousand, similarly contains a duplicate figure, the two pentads, one counting the number of unbroken loaves and the other the number of thousands which they feed. The Christological miracle is the transformation of the same quantity of one substance, water, into another, wine,  measured as 'six stone jars'. Thus it too has a duplicate figure. We have already put that one of the referents of the figures counting the baskets of fragments, refers to the semiotic content of the two sentient modes. So that in each case, the acoustic semeia and the optic semeia, the twelve tones and the six-seven visible hues, the notion of fragmentation serves the same purpose. All visible entities manifest one or more of the six-seven chromatic hues. (I am leaving out of consideration, the achromatic semeioptika, black and white.) Similarly, the figure twelve in the other story, numbers the division of the octave. It consists of twelve distinct  serially ordered, discrete, acoustic signifiers.

We shall return as occasion demands, to both of these presuppositions concerning this one basic hermeneutic of the fractio panis in both occasions, and the repercussions they generate for doctrines of natural and special revelation. But in order to advance the argument, these postulates must remain axiomatic for the time being. They follow from the hermeneutic of the miracle narratives as given previously, and inasmuch, they comport fully with the hermeneutic of all twelve-fourteen narratives. These numerical signifiers, 12 and 7, like all the numbers central to the three Eucharistic miracle stories, have other referents. One obvious, cogent referent of the dodecad in the Transcendental miracle story is adverting to the total number of categoreal entities disclosed in the taxonomies of Genesis and the gospels. All three Eucharistic miracle narratives are self-referential in this sense. Like the word 'Word' (logos), they include themselves in their referential capacity. Clearly the two hexads of the Christologies make the same statement. They argue for the coherence of the two sixfold series as a whole. And just as clearly, the figure seven must point to the total number of episodes of either series, creation and messianic. That is, it reflects the seventh and final event of each series notwithstanding the fact that these are singular and unique in both series.

A clear example of both the polysemous range of the numerical references in the narratives, as of the hermeneutical integration of the two miracles of loaves and fish, Transcendental and Pneumatological, is exhibited by the sevenfold scales, major and minor (in at least one of its several forms). The 4th and the 7th in the ascending major scale, are identical to the 5th and the 2nd of the descending scale respectively. These are outstandingly significant moments in the scale, since they mark the transition from one polarity to its other by means of the semitone. Another incidence of the value of these numerical signifiers is that the sevenfold scale consists of 5 whole tones and 2 semitones. If we depict these scales in terms of the intervals, the distances between their components, rather than the actual component tones themselves, there are 5 of one sort, the whole tone, and 2 of the other, the semitone. That is, both numerals, 5 and 2 of the Transcendental Eucharistic miracle story which certainly revert to the creation story, whose Transcendental rubrics are those of Days 2 and 5, irrevocably posit the interdependence of the two miracles stories, Transcendental and Pneumatological. In doing so, they affirm the interdependence of beginning and end, the mutually inclusive nature of the narratives themselves. Moreover, they effect the involvement of the Christological narrative in the same. For it is this story alone which categoreally lists the two classes of events, conceptual and perceptual, distinguished at the first level, which comprise both the fivefold (pentatonic) and sevenfold scales. Thus we observe also the clear nexus between pentatonic and heptadic scales:

1_(tone)_2_(tone)_3-(semitone)-4_(tone)_5_(tone)_6_(tone)_7-(semitone)-8

The five intervals between all degrees of the scale except 3 to 4 and 7 to 8, are whole tones. The latter two intervals, 3-4 and 7-8, which are cadences, and of vital import to the theology of acoustic semiotic forms, are semitones. (I have highlighted the 4th and 7th degrees of the scale since they function as Pneumatological signifiers in both narratives just as 2 and 5  stand out as markers of transcendence.) The pentatonic, here denoted by the the five intervals 'tone', and sevenfold scales are inseparable from one another. The pentatonic assumes the likeness of the abstract or negative of the sevenfold scale. The five tones missing from the sevenfold scale(s), represent the intervals between the seven degrees of that scale, here represented by dashes with the interval name in brackets. These intervening steps of the twelvefold chromatic ascending scale missing from the sevenfold (major) scale constitute the pentatonic. What is therefore noteworthy is the recurrence of the same pattern. Hence one obvious hermeneutic of the repeated ciphers in the stories, 7 and 5, concerns the structuring of the diatonic sevenfold scales, both major and (natural) minor, vis-a-vis that of the pentatonic scales. They depend on each other for their meaning, just as 'beginning' infers 'end'.

Looking at the piano keyboard, or the image of it provided above, you see this. Each smallest interval, whether from white note to white note, or white note to black note, or black to white, is of equal measure, a semitone. The clearest example is the scale of C major. It is easily recognisable in the above image as all seven white notes of the keyboard, beginning with those numbered 1, 2, 3 in black, and ending with those numbered in red, 4, 5, 6, and including the succeeding white note, the seventh. In this scale, on a modern keyboard instrument, the pentatonic consists uniformly of all five black notes. In the image, they are numbered 2 and 3 in red, and 4, 5, and 6 in black. And so, remarkably the pentatonic and sevenfold scales - both major and natural minor - are perfectly integrated. The absence of one entails the presence of the other since the entire acoustic series consists of just twelve tones. We shall see that their distinction further relates to that of the two forms which intervals may take: harmonic and melodic.

Updated 11.08.2022.

Copyright MM Publications.

© All rights reserved, including international rights.