The Philosopher's Pupil and the eclipse

In my October 23 post "Jesus is my librarian," I describe what brought Iris Murdoch's novel The Philosopher's Pupil to my attention:

One of the other books on the shelf caught my eye, though: The Philosopher's Pupil, a book I bought right around the time I was outgrowing Iris Murdoch and never ended up reading. It made me think of the ending of a poem that features in the Eridanus videos:

Ascend, O moon

Into the sun

Eclipse's eye

Thy will be done.

Lo, Abraxas!

To thy pupil cometh sight,

For from thy shadow shineth light!

It's a little surprising, given that the author's name is Iris and all, that I'd never thought of the ocular sense of pupil in connection with Murdoch's book; I'd always assumed it referred to a philosopher's student and never considered any other possible meaning. Seeing the title printed on a black background, though, with that poem in the back of my mind, I made the connection. Now I suppose I'll have to read it to see if Murdoch does the same.

I've very nearly finished The Philosopher's Pupil, and, no, the "pupil" as part of the eye never comes up. The original synchronistic context, though, was of the dark "pupil" at the center of a solar eclipse. This is the "pupil" image from the Galahad Eridanus video:

This image has no relevance for the vast majority of Murdoch's novel, but right near the end it shows up:

Only the sun, blazing through the misty light, had changed or was changing. It was no longer round but was becoming shaped like a star with long jagged mobile points which kept flowing in and out, and each time they flowed they became of a dazzling burning intensity. The star was very near, too near. It went on flaming and burning, a vast catastrophic conflagration in the evening sky, emitting its long jets of flame. And as it burnt with dazzling pointed rays a dark circle began to grow in its center, making the star look like a sunflower. George thought, I'll look at the dark part, then I shall be all right. As he watched, the dark part was growing so that now it almost covered the central orb of the sun, leaving only the long burning petals of flame which were darting out on every side. The dark part was black, black, and the petals were a painful shimmering electric gold (pp. 556-557).

This hallucinatory episode, which also includes a flying saucer, ends with George losing consciousness. When he comes to, he asks, "Was there an eclipse of the sun?" and is told that there was not.

The parallels with Galahad Eridanus's "eclipse" -- which was also a hallucinatory vision rather than a literal astronomical event -- are quite close.

The sunflower angle is interesting, too, as that flower has been in the sync-stream recently, particularly in some of William Wright's recent posts. I had not previously made the connection that if a sunflower resembles a solar disc, it is an eclipsed solar disk, a dark circle surrounded by a fiery corona.

Note added 1:50 p.m.: Looking back at the "Jesus is my librarian" post, I see it had a photo of Murdoch's book on my shelf, very close to an English translation of Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal. Here is Odilon Redon's illustration for the latter book: