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HEPTAPARAPARSHINOKH
Now there's a word! If you manage to attain its signatum, save a spot for me under the banyan tree, and we can talk about it.
May 8, 2004 | Permalink
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Comments
I believe that's off of a Trey Gunn album, "Live Encounter."
Posted by: MBO at May 10, 2004 1:39:20 PM
I didn't know that.
I'm fairly sure that Robert Fripp penned a piece by that name for the crazy "League of Gentlemen" project.
Posted by: Paul Craddick at May 10, 2004 10:57:35 PM
You're right. The Gunn piece is called, "Hierarchtitiptitoploftical."
Posted by: MBO at May 11, 2004 3:45:51 AM
Heptaparaparshinokh is from G.I. Gurdjieff's "Beelzebub's Tales to his grandson", and appears in other Gurdjieff works. Fripp was a student of Gurdjieffiana at one point in his life, as were, and are, many other advanced artists.
The word, as I recall, stands for "The Law of Seven"...and related to the notion that "we eat and are eaten" as well as the "great chain of being", and "as above, so below".
It shows how successive essence classes are formed from, and are beholdened to, the essence classes below and above them.
As humans, we are the dynamic essence class in between animals and angels...for lack of better word. The classes below and above us are not dynamic, per se, but rather static. One reason we are so hard to define, I suppose.
A deep word, really, with much to offer.
Best
Dave
anonyMoses
Posted by: anonyMoses at Jun 14, 2004 12:23:55 AM
Dave,
Thanks for your comment.
Your take on the term's meaning is reminiscent of notions central to Neoplatonism - and in particular reminds me of E.F. Schumacher's treatment of the Chain of Being in A Guide for the Perplexed.
I think the notion is beautiful in many ways, though I wonder what arguments would lead one to it as a conclusion, rather than it simply expressing an intuition, hope, or longing - a heuristic of one kind or another.
Posted by: Paul Craddick at Jun 15, 2004 5:53:09 PM