Ockham's response to my former post is centered around the following quote:
webglider wrote:
Malevolent beings like the witches are given rhythms different than those of non-psychopathic humans.
Hello Webglider, is this quote from the Ouspensky book you mention? Is there more info? The rest of your comments seem very helpful.
Dear Ockham:
The quote is NOT from "The Psychology of Man's Possible Evolution". It is based on an understanding of Elizabethan cosmology.
In brief, the Elizabethans everything in the universe into realms. Each realm had its own hierarchy in which every element of the realm is ranked. Using the celestial realm as an example, and imagining a vertical column, God is at the top, and the Devil is at the bottom. In between are all the angels and other beings of this realm in order of rank. The same goes for the human realm, the animal realm, the fish real, the tree realm etc.
I am now going to arrange a sampling the realms horizontally in order of importance going from left to right: Then I will provide from memory the most and least important member of each realm under its proper category. If memory fails, I will use a question mark.
Celestial Human Animal Bird Fish Insect Tree Flower Mineral
GOD KING LION EAGLE WHALE BEE OAK ROSE GOLD
DEVIL ? MOLE ? ? ? ? ? LEAD
Although this chart is very incomplete, I can still use it to explain correspondences between the different realms. For example God in the celestial realm is equivalent to Gold in the mineral realm. Now, if the Devil gets out of its place in the celestial realm, IT WILL THROW EVERYTHING OUT OF ITS PLACE IN EVERY REALM AND CREATE CHAOS.
This concept is found everywhere in Shakespeare, and it is given expression in the speech given by Ulysses in "Troilus and Cressida".
As you read it, notice how all the other realms are thrown into Chaos when the planets deviate from their proper order: (Bear with me, I will answer Ockham's question soon. I'm just putting the answer into context.)
The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre,
Observe degree, priority, and place,
Infixture [fixity], course, proportion, season, form,
Office, and custom, in all line of order;
And therefore is the glorious planet Sol
In noble eminence enthron'd and spher'd
Amidst the other, whose med'cinable eye
Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil,
And posts, like the commandment of a king,
Sans check, to good and bad. But when the planets
In evil mixture to disorder wander,
What plagues and what portents, what mutiny,
What raging of the sea, shaking of earth,
Commotion in the winds! Frights, changes, horrors,
Divert and crack, rend and deracinate,
The unity and married calm of states
Quite from their fixture! O, when degree is shak'd,
Which is the ladder of all high designs,
The enterprise is sick! How could communities,
Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities,
Peaceful commerce from dividable shores,
The primogenity and due of birth,
Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels,
But by degree, stand in authentic place?
Take but degree away, untune that string,
And hark what discord follows! Each thing melts
In mere oppugnancy: the bounded waters
Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores,
And make a sop of all this solid globe;
Strength should be lord of imbecility,
And the rude son should strike his father dead;
Force should be right; or, rather, right and wrong,
Between whose endless jar justice resides,
Should lose their names, and so should justice too.
Then everything includes itself in power,
Power into will, will into appetite;
And appetite, an universal wolf,
So doubly seconded with will and power,
Must make perforce an universal prey,
And last eat up himself.
Notice how Shakespeare describes the decay of government:
"Then everything includes itself in power,
Power into will, will into appetite;
And appetite an universal wolf,
So doubly seconded with will and power,
Must make perforce an universal prey,
And last eat himself."
The above quote describes the complete breakdown of society which is the situation created by the witches in "Macbeth".
The basic structure in Shakespeare's verse is the iambic pentameter line. The line is composed by ten beats broken into five iambs, (equivalent to five measures of music).
The natural rhythm of each iamb is to have an unstressed beat followed by a stressed one.
IF THIS RHYTHM IS OFF, SOMETHING IS WRONG. The above speech, if examined closely, does not follow the natural rhythm. The beats are off. This makes sense for a speech that describes the collapse of a society into chaos.
Now let's turn to the witches.
Witches, by their allegiance to the Devil, are at the bottom of the celestial realm. Their job is to destroy the natural order. The following is an example of their rhythm:
FIRST WITCH:
When shall we three meet again?
In thunder, ligntning, or in rain?
SECOND WITCH:
When the hurly-burly's done,
When the battle's lost and won.
THIRD WITCH:
That will be ere the set of sun.
FIRST WITCH:
Where the place?
SECOND WITCH:
Upon the heath
THIRD WITCH:
There to meet with Macbeth.
The witches than call their servants, a cat and a frog and cast the following spell:
Fair is foul and foul is fair,
Hover through the fog and filthy air.
Notice the sing-songy rhythm that does not follow a particular pattern?
Language, like everything else in Elizabethan society, is a realm unto itself. The iambic pentameter line is given to those with nobility in them, even if they're evil. Caliban from The Tempest, the son of a witch, is given iambic pentameter verse to speak.
Commoners are given prose.
Witches seem to have no predictable rhythm because they, by definition, don't follow any natural patterns.
While I'm on the subject of witches, I'll point out that the rhetorical device that Shakespeare uses for the spell is that of "chiasmus". "Chiasmus is two corresponding pairs arranged in a parallel inverse order." (Shakespeare's Grammar/Rhetorical Devices: http://www.bardweb.net/grammar/02rhetoric.html).
What better way to show the inversion of the natural order than a rhetorical structure that reverses itself?
Now that we've touched a little on the language of witches, let's move to the major psychopath in the play: Macbeth.
Was Macbeth a psychopath before the influence of the witches? Was he of the right frequency to attract them?
Or did their frequency change his?
Macbeth is a hero who saved the kingdom in war. For this he is given a new title, Thane of Cawdor. This title places him fourth in line to the succession of the throne after the king, and the king's two sons. When Macbeth chooses to murder the king, he gives himself to the witches and his language begins to mirror theirs.
Yet Macbeth was once noble, and in his language, some of that nobility remains in the close relationship of the structure of his speech to the iambic pentameter line:
Here is an example of Macbeth Act III scene 2, giving expression to pure psychopathic images. Notice that he is willing to unleash chaos upon the kingdom in exchange for peace of mind.
"But let the frame of things disjoint, both the worlds
suffer,
Ere we will eat our meal in fear, and sleep
In the affliction of these terrible dreams
That shake us nightly,"
Macbeth is prepared to murder his subjects indiscriminantly, if murder will ease his mind from his worst fear - the fear of being caught One murder leads to another in a typical psychopathic boutof destruction which ends when he himself is killed.
But through all of that, even when his mind is filled with images of scorpions and beetles, his language is elevated because it is based on the iambic pentameter line. The beats are off, but the structure is there.
The play ends with a speech by Malcolm who is the rightful heir and therefore not a psychopath.
His lines adhere closely to the iambic pentameter standard. When there are a few extra beats, it's for emphasis not as a clue to disorder.
(I'll get back to this and post Malcolm's lines another time.)
