Innie or Outie?

Today’s topic centers on the Greek concept of the omphalos – centers on it, that is, because in addition to its translation as the anatomic term for “navel” (i.e., “belly-button”), the word also conveys the sense of a center, point of focus, or origin[1]. Anything lying at the center of a circle might be described as an omphalos; or, more properly, a circle might be thought of as the set of points equidistant from the omphalos. Most often, this usage applied to the boss that protruded from the center of a circular shield (cheaper on eBay).

This notion of centrality was not merely spatial, but spiritual and figurative in other ways. In addition to its location near the body’s center of gravity and center of spatial volume, the navel was accorded special significance due to its physiological function as the umbilical nexus through which the embryonic human takes in substance (er…matter) from its mother. It was thus regarded more transcendently as the source and center of one’s physical being – the cause or defining mechanism of one’s presence in space and time[2]. Likewise, the omphalos of a shield was not only the point of attachment for a handle, but could also play a crucial role in construction of the shield, as it provided a way to hold the unfinished object while working on its surface. Something with an omphalos was considered to exist by virtue of having a past, of which the omphalos was a vestige.

More abstractly, the pre-Socratic Greek philosophers described the state of “being” (the general fact of existence, in the later metaphysical sense, as opposed to an actual creature) using imagery of a circle or a sphere. Figuratively used, the image expressed the principle that no “quality of being” had greater or lesser reality, but that all existence shared a uniform degree of reality, emerging from and standing in equal relation to a unifying, original principle – the omphalos.

To the Greeks, though, this reference to an origin was not just theoretical – not merely an intellectual construct, positing a unifying reference point in the space-time continuum, the way we think abstractly, for instance, about the (0,0) origin of a Cartesian plane. It also offered a practical reference, complete with a geographical location and paid staff, for evaluating daily life with respect to immutable, if rather inscrutable, principles of what was true, right, and good. Such truth, of course, was to be found at the venue that housed the Mother of All Omphali: Delphi. Not only was Delphi located at the junction of seismic fissures that offered access both to the innermost substance of Mother Earth and to the timeless truths that issued forth as vapors from within, it was considered the birthplace of moral consciousness – the place where Apollo drove some unspecified aspect of human nature, evidently embodied in a Huge Python, deep into the Mother Earth, making it safe for humans to rely on reason and moral sensibility. Thus, the center of Delphi’s most sacred shrine, the Temple of Apollo, was marked with an obelisk[3] that was also called an omphalos[4].

I’ll conclude with a corollary to the Delphic omphalos tradition that both presents an enigma and provokes further thought. Aside from Apollo’s activities there, the location of Delphi as the center of the cosmos was originally determined by a Jovian geometry experiment. Zeus released two eagles, one from each end of the cosmos, and told them to fly toward each other. They met at Delphi, and Zeus pronounced it the center. But whereas the omphalos is the center that defines the whole, as in a circle, the cosmic perspective sees the extremes as the boundaries that provide a context for the center – meaning that no single, central principle can define the cosmos: there must be at least two points or principles, distinct from each other, like the eagles[6]. Once it has two defining points rather than just one at the center, the circle of being is no longer a circle. It has become something else, as we shall see in our next installment.

---

1. Or, as the celebrated lesbian poet Olga Broumas might prefer it, an o-rigin.
2. Human beings seem inherently receptive to this idea. Even Harry Potter, when he learns to pass from one realm to another by means of a portkey, feels a sensation described as a tug or jerk just behind his navel.
3. Most scholarly commentators describe this artifact as “beehive shaped”, and indeed (as the caption to the linked photo points out), it was crafted as a replacement to resemble the original stone – a meteorite – draped with the mesh used to cover beehives. As a Gentile Jew living in the Beehive State, I must confess some fascination with the Cartesian coordinate system that governs street addresses, emanating, as it does, from an origin located near the Beehive House at Temple Square.
4. One might wonder whether this designation reflects some anatomical – not to mention symbolic – confusion on the part of the Greeks. As the caption states, the stone marked the point “where Apollo first established his oracle by driving the serpent monster Python into the Earth (=Gaia).” So…the big, scary snake entered the Earth Mother through the bellybutton? And after that, eternal truths issued from the depths at this same point? It seems the snake might have been better advised to start its spelunkean adventures elsewhere – nearby, perhaps – after which the Earth might have brought forth some incarnation whose own umbilicus linked it directly to the originating wisdom of the Mother. Surely, though, I’m being too schematic, as if such mystical things might be proven by algebra. Still, if you ever have house guests from Greece, it might be prudent to instruct them not to drink from the toilet⁵.
⁵ Which reminds me of a story involving the Aegean Sea – one I will not publish on any blog, no matter how obscure.
6. Remind me, if I forget, to talk about Nemerov’s gulls.

The Circle of Fifths

Today, I'll introduce the first in a number of background topics you may wish to familiarize yourself with as you explore Ulysses. Sources for these topics range from the impressionistic to the frighteningly technical, so I'll try to include some links that land somewhere in the middle (mainly as a futile gesture of resistance against Wikipedia). In addition, the list of topics could easily be infinitely long, so I'll be hoping to offer only a rather selective version, in rather a sporadic and haphazard manner. Or less. Take these as far as you like - which may legitimately be exactly nowhere.

Topic One: The Circle of Fifths as the basis of key signatures in diatonic music.

I'm guessing that C and m, having been properly taught as musicians, are solid on this, but I have no reason to suspect (or doubt) the same of Calvin, MCP, and kph2. The basic idea is that starting with the natural key of C Major/a minor (no sharps or flats in the scale/key signature), you can use the interval called a musical fifth to derive two "key" structures in Western music:

• the sequence by which first one, then two, then three (etc.) sharps or flats are added to the key signature (upward fifths - F, C, G, D, A, ... for sharps; downward - B, E, A, D, G, ... for flats) in generating the entire set of musical key signatures, up to six flats or six sharps;
• the sequence of tonic notes that define the "key" (and start the musical scale) corresponding to each successive key signature, starting with the key corresponding to zero sharps or flats, and building up to the keys corresponding to six sharps or six flats.

For example,

• the key of C Major, named for the tonic or "starting" note of its scale, has no sharps or flats;
• add the first sharp, which goes on the note F, and now you are in the key of G Major, whose tonic note (G) is a fifth up from the tonic note (C) of C Major;
• add the second sharp, which goes on the note C, a fifth up from the first sharp on F, and now you are in the key of D Major, whose tonic (D) is a fifth up from the tonic (G) of G Major;
• and so on.

Note that the, um, note that lands on the fifth (i.e., the fifth note in the scale, starting from the tonic) in a given key is referred to as the "dominant"*, and is also the note that defines the key (and is the tonic) for the next key signature in the sequence. In C Major, the dominant is G; add a sharp and G becomes the G Major tonic, with D as its dominant; another sharp, and D is the tonic, with A as its dominant.**

*Okay - but, like, what does music theory have to do with Ulysses, anyway?

**Readers eager for evidence of the deity's existence will be struck by the convenience with which a stringed instrument, when tuned to an interval so musically significant as the fifth, may be played by a creature with four articulated (dactylic) digits opposing its thumb. Players of the stringed bass, which is typically tuned in fourths, secretly imagine that they are among the elect, as theirs is the instrument that offers exactly one chromatic step for each of the four available fingers in the interval between adjacent strings. They fail, however, to offer a coherent theoretical framework for diatonic music based on fourths. Cellists, by contrast, treat with skepticism any messianic claims coming from persons whose left hands bear fewer than seven fingers, not including the thumb.

The Martello Tower at Sandycove

Inside

Snotgreen?