Safka's Dylan

While most of the luminaries of the the '60s and '70s pop music scene were represented in my parents' record collection, conspicuous by his absence was the inimitable Bob Dylan, for whom they both professed (and still profess!) an especial dislike. (My father liked to tell a story about how his college roommate had put up a big poster of Dylan on his side of the room, and how he had retaliated by putting up an even bigger poster of the Ideal Beef Steer on his, which I guess showed him!) Like acorns that have to be boiled and drained and reboiled before they begin to approach edibility, Dylan songs were deemed to be fit for human consumption only after they had been processed and reconstituted by the likes of Peter, Paul, and Mary -- and that was the only way I ever heard them throughout my childhood. (I remember the frisson of discovering a tune called "It's a-hard, and it's hard" in one of my banjo books and realizing it might be the mysterious and much-maligned "Eets-a harrd" song of Dylan's, but it turned out to be some unrelated Woody Guthrie thing.)

So naturally, as soon as I was old enough to start acquiring my own music collection, I began cultivating a taste for Dylan -- perhaps the only teenager in history to choose that particular way of rebelling against his Boomer parents! -- and a concomitant disdain for easy-listening covers, which increasingly struck me as vaguely gauche, like fruit-flavored beer. No Byrds, no Peters, no Pauls, and no Marys, thank you, and may God forgive Ritchie Blackmore!

The first crack in my zero tolerance for Dylan covers appeared in 2004 when I discovered a reworking of the Dylan fragment "Wagon Wheel" by the old-timey LARP group Old Crow Medicine Show -- which happened to be playing on the radio as I was packing my suitcases at the start of my Wanderjahre, and which became a sort of private theme song for a good long time.

But for a long time that remained an isolated exception, made for sentimental reasons, to an otherwise ironclad preference for the Man Himself.

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It wasn't until years later that I became aware of the existence of one Melanie Safka, who was apparently known as plain Melanie back in the day. I first encountered her through her version of “Ruby Tuesday,” which I love and hate at the same time, that voice almost — almost — being enough to persuade me to forgive the nonchalant vandalization of Keef’s perfect lyrics. Such other pieces of hers as I happened upon left me similarly ambivalent. "Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)" for example, is undeniably a work of talent but can, I think, only be fully appreciated by a genuine member of the Woodschlock generation -- which I, for all my anachronistic listening habits, am not.

The first Safka piece that really got my attention and won her my full respect was her heartbreaking rendition of James Taylor's "Carolina in My Mind" (ain't it just like a friend of mine to knife me in the gut?).

After hearing that, I was willing to take a deep breath and give her Dylan remakes a try -- and, well, all is forgiven. She demonstrates an undeniable right to reinterpret the master, making each song her own and creating pieces that are as beautiful in their way as the originals are in theirs. (I had originally written "perfect" instead of "beautiful," but of course that would be a singularly inappropriate adjective to apply to the rough-edged, organic, imperfect genius of either Safka or Dylan.)

The Frito Bandito: Where is he now?

Years ago I had a Guatemalan colleague who found the Frito Bandito — you know, the cartoon character who used to advertise Fritos corn chips in the bad old days, and who has long since been retired as offensive to Hispanics and banditti — hilarious. “Ay, ay, ay, ay,” he used to sing, and then — translating the name — “I am the Fried Robber!”

Ever wonder what happened to the old Fried Robber after he was hounded out of the banditry business by the National Mexican American Anti-Defamation Committee? Well, I’m happy to report that he has cleaned up his act, learned an honest trade, and set up shop in Taiwan, where he is now known as the . . .

The Lover's Wheel of Oswald Wirth, and four alternatives

In a previous post (qv) I have mentioned Oswald Wirth's schema in which the 22 Major Arcana of the Tarot are arranged at regular intervals around the circumference of a wheel, and each card is considered to have a special relationship with those horizontally and vertically opposite it on the wheel.

Since the oppositions being considered are rectilinear rather than diametric, which cards are opposite which depends entirely on which card is placed at 12 o'clock. Wirth puts the 6th trump, called the Lover, in that position, so I have found it convenient to dub his schema the Lover's Wheel. When the 6th trump is at 12 o'clock, the 17th (the Star) is at 6 o'clock. Obviously, rotating everything 180 degrees, so that the Star was at 12 o'clock, would yield the same set of oppositions, so putting the (n + 11)th trump at 12 o'clock is equivalent to putting the nth trump there. That means there are 11 distinct ways of arranging the trumps around the wheel, of which Wirth's Lover's Wheel is just one possibility.

In practice, though, most of those possible arrangements are too arbitrary to be worth considering. We might naturally expect the first (or perhaps the last) trump to be located at 12 o'clock (or at 6 o'clock, which is functionally equivalent). Nine o'clock (or 3 o'clock) would also be a natural place to put the first or last trump -- but because 22 is not divisible by 4, a wheel that has a trump at 12 o'clock will not have one at exactly 9 o'clock; instead, one is at (to make our clock-face terminology a bit more precise than is customary) 8:27, and another is at 9:33. All in all, I think there are three tolerably natural arrangements:

1. first trump at 12 o'clock
2. last trump at 12 o'clock
3. first and last trumps at 9:33 and 8:27

Of course, any of these three arrangements can be rotated 90, 180, or 270 degrees, or mirrored, without affecting the card-to-card relationships.

Things are further complicated by uncertainty as to which trump should count as the first. Because the Fool is traditionally unnumbered (often numbered 0 in modern decks, generally treated by Wirth as if numbered 22), it can be considered either the first trump (in which case the World is the last) or the last trump (in which case the Magician is first).

Taking all this into consideration, the bottom line is that there are only five plausible candidates for the 12 o'clock position: the Lover (Wirth's choice), the Fool (my own hunch after seeing Wirth's version), the Magician, the Pope (seen in a "coʀʀecᴛed veʀsioɴ" of Wirth modified by an unknown hand), and the World. (Again, I am only saying "12 o'clock" for the sake of simplicity; 3, 6, or 9 o'clock would be functionally equivalent.)

The way to evaluate the relative merits of these five schemata is to look at the card-to-card relationships each creates and decide which seem the most meaningful. That means looking at 105 different links (21 for each wheel, with no overlap). My original plan was to discuss all 105 of these in this post, but it was starting to turn into one of those dissertation-length mega-posts that I'm not supposed to be writing anymore, so I'll stop this post here and discuss the individual wheels in detail in future posts.

Then Cometh the End

A rare allegorical picture by Kat Valentine (née Crystal Tychonievich), who usually does portraits. It depicts the Last Judgment.

Then Cometh the End

I found this a very striking composition, even though I do not yet understand the allegory itself in any detail. I was also struck by the synchronicity of her choice to include an enormous swan in a picture of the Last Judgment -- something which Oswald Wirth also does in his chapter on "Le Jugement" in Le tarot des imagiers du moyen-âge, which I read a few days before seeing the above picture for the first time. His version of that trump is quite conventional, based closely on the Tarot de Marseille, but he also includes a small picture of the same scene, but with a huge swan replacing the angel.

Wirth offers no real explanation of this picture, except to note that Cygnus is the constellation that most closely corresponds to the 20th trump ("we should picture the swan of Leda as being the Pagan equivalent of the Dove of the Holy Ghost"). He connects every one of the trumps with a constellation, though, but in no other case does he offer an alternative version of the card in which its astrological alter ego is inserted into the scene.

Besides the general similarity -- a swan at the Last Judgment -- note that Kat's swan is in an underground cavern, while Wirth's appears to be diving down into an open grave. Note also the unusual dimensions of Kat's picture, which almost make it look like a Tarot card itself.

Tchaikovsky's Hymn of the Cherubim

After a couple of months of listening to basically nothing but Mozart's Magic Flute, I've recently had another, entirely different piece of music brought to my attention by the strange workings of serendipity: Tchaikovsky's setting of the Cherubikon from the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom (Op. 41: No. 6).

I'd always known Tchaikovsky only for his ballets and the 1812 Overture, and I find it astonishing to think that something as sublime and otherworldly as this could be by the same person. Apparently he had hidden depths!

Notes on John 3:31-36

This section could conceivably be a continuation of the quote from John the Baptist which begins in v. 27, but I think this is highly unlikely. The only real evidence in favor of that reading is the reference to the "wrath of God" in v.36 (on which more below). Leaving aside that one line, everything in this passage echoes what has been said earlier in the same chapter by Jesus and by the author, and none of it sounds natural in the mouth of John the Baptist. I take it that this is the author writing in his own voice again, as in vv. 13-21.

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[31] He that cometh from above is above all: he that is of the earth is earthly, and speaketh of the earth: he that cometh from heaven is above all.

The Greek word (ἄνωθεν) that is translated as "from above" here is the same one that is rendered "again" in v. 3: "Except a man be born again [or 'born from above'], he cannot see the kingdom of God." (A similar sort of polysemy exists in English, as when we speak of doing something "all over again," "from the top.") The two different translations seem right in their respective contexts, since Nicodemus's reply ("Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb?") clearly has reference to being born again, whereas v. 31 is about "he that cometh from heaven." Nevertheless, v. 31 is almost certainly intended to allude both to "he that came down from heaven" (v. 13) and to the importance of being "born again" (v. 3).

A strictly literal translation would be "he that is from the earth, is from the earth, and speaketh from the earth" ("ἐκ τῆς γῆς," repeated three times), and the immediate context suggests that Jesus is being contrasted with John. As great as John is, he is still "from the earth" and speaks from that perspective.

Matthew quotes Jesus as saying, "Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist: notwithstanding he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he" (Matthew 11:11). While I use Matthew with caution, considering it the least reliable of the Gospels, I consider this to be an authentic saying, on the grounds that Matthew would never have put such problematic (from the Matthean perspective) words in Jesus' mouth. While Matthew and Luke deny that Jesus had a biological father, their fanciful nativity stories would still include Jesus "among them that are born of women" -- and thus, according to Matthew 11:11, not greater than John the Baptist.

The Fourth Gospel shows us the correct interpretation of Matthew 11:11. Jesus was "from heaven" not because there was anything unusual about the circumstances of his biological birth -- he was a son of man, born of a woman -- but because he had been born again, born from above, born of the spirit, born of God. Though John was the one who recognized this transformation in Jesus -- seeing the Spirit of God descend on him and stay -- he was apparently not "born again" himself. John represents the highest peaks of holiness attainable without being born again. In a way, we might think of him as Jesus' "Virgil" -- his role being analogous to the one given to that poet in Dante's Comedy. (In fact, if we substitute Virgil's name for John's in Matthew 11:11, doesn't it ring just as true? It is perhaps what Jesus would have said had he been born a Roman rather than a Jew.)

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[32] And what he hath seen and heard, that he testifieth; and no man receiveth his testimony. [33] He that hath received his testimony hath set to his seal that God is true.

This echoes what Jesus says to Nicodemus: "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen; and ye receive not our witness" (v. 11). "Testimony" and "witness" translate the same Greek word (μαρτυρίαν). This is further evidence that this passage is the author writing in his own voice; John the Baptist was not privy to Jesus' conversation with Nicodemus and could not have quoted it.

Immediately after "no man receiveth his testimony" comes a statement about "he that hath received his testimony"! How to resolve this obvious contradiction?

The most natural interpretation is to read v. 32 as a bit of commonplace hyperbole, actually meaning something like "very few receive his testimony." Greek reference works (qv) seem not to countenance such a reading, though. We are told that οὐδείς (translated as "no man," but more literally "no one and nothing") "'shuts the door' objectively and leaves no exceptions," that it "categorically excludes, declaring as a fact that no valid example exists." A negation that was qualified in any way would use μηδείς rather than οὐδείς. In other words, v. 32 means "no one at all receives his testimony" -- not the sort of expression that would be used hyperbolically.

Could v. 33 be counterfactual ("Anyone who received his testimony would be setting to his seal...")? I don't think so, since it is in the indicative mood. What then can it mean?

"Set to his seal that God is true" means "confirmed that God is truthful or trustworthy." So perhaps the meaning is that Jesus' claims are so extraordinary that no one at all takes Jesus' word for it that they are true. Whoever seems to be "receiving his testimony" -- i.e., believing what he says because he says it -- actually believes not because of Jesus' testimony but because God has confirmed the truth to them directly. "He that believeth on me, believeth not on me, but on him that sent me." (John 12:44; cf. Matthew 10:40, Mark 9:37, and Luke 9:48, all of which have "receive" in place of "believe on").

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[34] For he whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God: for God giveth not the Spirit by measure unto him. [35] The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his hand.

"My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me" (John 7:16). The idea of Jesus having been "sent" by God is characteristic of the Fourth Gospel, occurring only in a few isolated passages of the Synoptics.

For "not . . . by measure" read "without measure." Others have been inspired, but only Jesus was fully inspired, to the extent that his words were the words of God.

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[36] He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.

The first clause is simply a restatement of v. 16. The final part, about "the wrath of God" seems out of place. It is the only occurrence of the word "wrath" (ὀργὴ) in the Fourth Gospel, and one of only five occurrences in the Gospels as a whole. Mark 3:5 has Jesus look around with anger at those who would criticize him for healing a man on the Sabbath, and Luke 21:23 has Jesus speak of "great distress in the land, and wrath upon this people" as part of an apocalyptic prophecy. The other two instances quote John the Baptist execrating the Pharisees and Sadducees who had come to be baptized: "O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?" (Matthew and Luke 3:7).

All in all, this does seem to be language more typical of John the Baptist than of the author of the Fourth Gospel, and some commentators do read all of vv. 27-36 as a quotation from John. For the reasons given above, I stand by my opinion that vv. 31-36 are the author's own words and not John's, but the context does render probable an allusion to John and his distinctive way of speaking. Perhaps we should imagine quotation marks around the last clause. He that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but -- as John, speaking "from the earth," would put it -- "the wrath of God abideth on him." This is the sort of thing I often do in my own writing -- quoting or alluding to someone made salient by context even when it means using phraseology with which I would normally have reservations -- so I can easily imagine the evangelist doing the same thing.

Notes on John 3:22-30

[22] After these things came Jesus and his disciples into the land of Judaea; and there he tarried with them, and baptized.

"These things" apparently refers to Jesus' interaction with Nicodemus, which seems to have taken place in Jerusalem. At any rate, Jesus was in Jerusalem just prior to the Nicodemus incident, and there is not mention of a scene change. Jerusalem is also where we would expect to find "a ruler of the Jews."

Jerusalem, of course, is in Judaea, so I assume what is meant is that they went into "upstate" Judaea, so to speak -- into the surrounding land, as opposed to the city of Jerusalem.

Although this verse describes Jesus as baptizing, John 4:2 clarifies that "Jesus himself baptized not, but his disciples." Jesus baptized in the same sense that Nelson defeated the French at Trafalgar: by directing the activities of those under him.

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[23] And John also was baptizing in Aenon near to Salim, because there was much water there: and they came, and were baptized.

The places named appear nowhere else in the Bible and cannot be identified with any confidence, though of course that doesn't stop them from appearing on maps of "the Holy Land in the Time of Christ"! All we know is that "there was much water there" and -- based on John's disciples' speaking in v. 26 of "beyond Jordan" as somewhere else  -- that it was a Cisjordanian location. We might possibly assume, given that the whole length of a river has "much water," that it was some distance from the Jordan and that the "much water" had some other source. Indeed, Aenon may be derived from a Semitic word meaning "spring."

The implied need for "much water" in order to baptize has been cited as evidence that John baptized by immersion. I formerly took it for granted that this was indeed the original method of baptism, but as I explain in my notes on John 1, John 1:25 implies that the baptism of John was the sort of thing that the Messiah, Elijah, and the prophet like unto Moses were expected to do -- and the Old Testament connects all three of these figures with sprinkling rather than immersion.

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[24] For John was not yet cast into prison.

Both Mark (1:14) and Matthew (4:12-17) state that Jesus did not begin preaching until after John was cast into prison. Luke's chronology is unclear on this point. The Fourth Gospel alone has John and Jesus both preaching and baptizing at the same time, independently of one another and almost as if in competition. Which chronology is more likely to be correct?

It is a widely accepted principle of biblical criticism that, ceteris paribus, the more embarrassing an incident would be for those who recorded it, the more likely the record is to be true -- since, when people massage the facts, it is generally in order to make them more favorable and less embarrassing. By that standard, the Johannine account seems more likely to be true than the Synoptic version. It is certainly potentially embarrassing that John the Baptist, who was widely regarded as an exceptionally great and holy man, and who certainly knew of Jesus, never actually became one of his disciples. Mark (and Matthew, who relies on Mark) solve this by saying that Jesus didn't start preaching until after John was imprisoned, and that John thus never had the opportunity of becoming his disciple. The Fourth Gospel admits what was probably the truth: that John, despite having earlier hailed Jesus as the "Lamb of God," continued his own prophetic and baptismal ministry without deferring to Jesus' superior authority or becoming one of his followers.

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[25] Then there arose a question between some of John's disciples and the Jews about purifying.

The two parties to this dispute were "John's disciples" and "the Jews." Since John's disciples surely were Jews in the religious sense, I think we must read the latter designation as "Judaeans" (or "a Judaean"; the Greek is ambiguous). When we first meet the Baptist in John 1, he is baptizing "beyond Jordan" -- i.e., in Perea or the Decapolis -- rather than in Judaea, so it seems likely that he and most of his disciples hailed from those parts and were not citizens of Judaea.

The fact that John's disciples encountered Judaeans suggests that perhaps Aenon and Salim were located in Judaea. (Bible maps generally place them in Samaria or in the Cisjordanian Decapolis.) On the other hand, these "Jews" may have been a delegation of Pharisees sent from Jerusalem, like the similar delegation described in John 1.

I suppose that the question "about purifying" had to do with the baptism of John and its relationship to Jewish ritual cleansing.

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[26] And they came unto John, and said unto him, Rabbi, he that was with thee beyond Jordan, to whom thou barest witness, behold, the same baptizeth, and all men come to him. [27] John answered and said, A man can receive nothing, except it be given him from heaven.

"They" means John's disciples (they call him Rabbi), perhaps accompanied by the Judaean(s) with whom they had been arguing.

The meaning of John's reply -- "A man can receive nothing, except it be given him from heaven" -- is not clear (or perhaps it seems unclear to me simply because I disagree with it). The most natural reading is that everything that is done, is done, or at least countenanced, by God. If Jesus is baptizing, then God must approve of his baptizing. If all men come to him, he must deserve to have all men come to him. It would appear to be a similar sentiment to that expressed by Paul: "For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God" (Romans 13:1). Or perhaps more like that of the Pharisee Gamaliel: "Refrain from these men, and let them alone: for if this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to nought: But if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it" (Acts 5:38-39).

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[28] Ye yourselves bear me witness, that I said, I am not the Christ, but that I am sent before him.

When the Pharisees had implied that baptism was the prerogative of the Messiah, Elijah, and the prophet like unto Moses, John denied being any of the three. The implication was that other, greater baptists would come after him. It is therefore no cause for alarm when another baptist does in fact appear and draws greater crowds of followers even than John.

John had already said that Jesus was the "Lamb of God" and one "who coming after me is preferred before me, whose shoe's latchet I am not worthy to unloose"; here he implies more: that Jesus may be the Messiah himself.

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[29] He that hath the bride is the bridegroom: but the friend of the bridegroom, which standeth and heareth him, rejoiceth greatly because of the bridegroom's voice: this my joy therefore is fulfilled. [30] He must increase, but I must decrease.

What is the meaning of the bridegroom metaphor used here? Bruce Charlton, who believes that the wedding at Cana described in John 2 was Jesus' own, takes John's statement fairly literally, as a reference to the fact that Jesus had recently gotten married. I don't personally find this a very plausible reading. Confronted with the fact that "all men" are coming to Jesus to be baptized, why would John respond by saying, in effect, "Well, you see, he's just gotten married; I haven't"? Jesus is the Messiah because he's married? Lots of people are married.

If the bridegroom metaphor has any specific meaning -- if it is anything more than just a general reference to rejoicing in another's success -- then I think Jesus' "having the bride" must refer to the fact that the people are flocking to him. (In the Old Testament, the Israelite nation is often described as the bride of the Lord, and any backsliding into polytheism is compared to marital infidelity.) "He that hath the bride is the bridegroom" seems to mean that whoever in fact has the woman thereby has the right to have her -- a restatement of John's belief that "a man can receive nothing, except it be given him from heaven." From the fact that people are following Jesus we can conclude that they should be.

If this is in fact what John is saying, it seems obviously wrong to me. People (sufficiently large numbers of Frenchmen excluded) can be wrong and have often flocked to false teachers. I would like to think, then, that John must have meant something else, but I can't think what.