Like most people named Tychonievich (we're a rather small set), I have from time to time been known as Tycho, so this character is synchronistically interesting.
A secondary quasi-visual image associated with the sentence had something to do with nine-ness. As I tried to recall it after waking, it seemed sometimes like a table with three rows and three columns and sometimes like a long wooden rod with nine convex sections that looked as if they had been made with a lathe.
⁂
My feeling upon waking was that "Likeness in anything is likeness to him" was deep, and that I understood what it meant, but that feeling of understanding rapidly dissipated. My interpretation, as best I can reconstruct it, was that whenever any two things are similar or correspond in any way, that is a manifestation of God -- not that God created or arranged the similarity, but that similarity and correspondence as such are aspects of God. Now I'm no longer sure that makes any sense. Perhaps the idea is that any sort of coherence at all is a reminder that we live in a created cosmos?
I have no idea what the three-by-three table, or the nine-sectioned rod, means. Immediately after waking, I had a sense that the three rows of the table corresponded to before, during, and after something or other -- and the columns? It all evaporated too fast for me to get a handle on it.
⁂
Later in the morning, I realized that that picture of Tyco -- a short man with a big almost-bald head, wearing a suit and flying up into the sky -- reminded me of someone: Mr. Mxyztplk as he first appeared in Superman #30 in 1944. The story was even called "The Mysterious Mr. Mxyztplk," synching with "A Most Mysterious Disappearance":
Tyco's house, which is both a home and an observatory with a dome for a telescope, also reminds me of the similar home of Aline Carter in San Antonio, where the young Whitley Strieber attended an astronomy class.
8 comments:
Following a random hunch, I took Timelock by Kote Adler down from the shelf and opened up to a random page. Page 49 begins with these lines: “stack of tyco, in thousand tyco denominations. He wagered there were nearly fifty thousand tyco in total value.”
Tyco’s Mushroom Planet is 50,000 miles from Earth. I know Timelock has a (hallucinogenic) mushroom theme, so this may be a deliberate nod as much as a sync.
Willam,
Flying or Levitating?
They are not the same thing.
Levitation is one of the Siddhi Powers aka Übermensch
(No Ordinary Man, as Mr. Tyco says in the illustration)
Recall my previous comments about Levitation.
Tycho Brahe was a Danish Renaissance astronomer. A young Johannes Kepler worked with him for the last year of Tycho's life. While I was there, the University of Washington physics department had an online homework system named Tycho after him.
Debbie, in the novel Tyco is said to blow away in the wind, so technically neither flying nor levitating.
William,
Blow away in the wind?
Not familiar with the novel, but I did a bit of research on Tyco which suggested
he was a Trickster archetype, which would mean that
indeed Typo would possess the power to cross boundaries.
Now you see him, now you don't?
Tricksters are masters of illusion, no?
William,
I forgot to add : assuming Tyco is symbolic of the Trickster archetype,
I found it amusing that many of the images of Tyco I found on google images,
Tyco wears on his face, that 'crazy smile', including in the illustrations
you've posted.
Which if you recall my recent comments about the 'crazy smile' and its connection
to the 1960's Twilight Zone episode: 22.
If you've seen the episode you'll recall that the protagonist clutches a clown doll
throughout her ordeal and if you're familiar with Rod Serling's Twilight Zone, its
core theme was/is crossing boundaries.
My perspective of the meaning of the crazy smile is that the wearer (of the smile)
possess Knowledge of the Past, Present and Future, especially the future which
means having the ability to transcend the illusion.
The Trickster archetype forces us to look past the illusion, as I'm sure you
already know all of this.
Debbie, I assume your Google image search was for Mxyztplk, not Tycho. Certainly Mxy is a trickster figure in Superman, claiming to be a court jester from the Fifth Dimension and causing chaos for its own sake.
William,
Ahhhh... Thank you for clearing that up.
After finding out who the Trickster is in 2003,
I personally have always been intrigued by the Trickster as he has 'visited'
me several times in my lifetime.
Post a Comment