Schrödinger’s Color

Why are the primary mythological colors black, white and red? Perhaps because black and white can be considered at once different in kind from each other and different in kind from color itself, while red is the most profound color proper, at least inasmuch as it’s the color of blood and thus of life in general. Similarly the Earth is black, the stars white, and the planets often red. Color theory itself can be precisely if rather crudely based on such a trinity: “brightness” is a measure of the amount of black coupled to a color, “saturation” is a measure of the amount of white likewise coupled, and “hue” is a measure of the amount of the color itself.

Among the all-time great color theorists are England’s remarkably White/Apollonian Sir Isaac Newton and Austria’s famous, aforementioned, chiefly Red/Dionysian physicist Erwin Schrödinger. Schrödinger became nearly as well known for his Eastern philosophical advocacy of the unity of minds/consciousnesses — indeed the singularly prime existence of Mind, fairly considered identical to God — as he was for his physics. Color theory, as Schrödinger’s biographer Walter Moore emphasizes, “stands at the crux of the ancient mind–body problem.” The philosopher/physicist Rene Descartes’ great discovery, stemming from the work of Giordono Bruno and Galileo, was that mind and extension are incommensurate, extension being the essence of body (matter) according to Descartes. In turn Newton — conserving the notion of extension as physically fundamental — exiled (but did not kill) Descartes’ theory of mind. Newton and extension were St. George; Descartes and mind, the dragon. Noam Chomsky, from his Language and Thought:

As is well-known, the Cartesian program collapsed within a generation. It is commonly derided today as the belief that there is “a ghost in the machine.” But that conclusion mistakes what happened. It was the Cartesian theory of body that collapsed; the theory of mind, such as it was, remained unaffected. Newton demonstrated that the Cartesian theory of the material world was fatally inadequate, unable to account for the most elementary properties of motion….

Returning to Newton’s demolition of the common sense theory of body, the natural conclusion is that human thought and action are properties of organized matter, like “powers of attraction and repulsion,” electrical charge, and so on. The conclusion was drawn very soon, most forcefully by La Mettrie, a generation later by the eminent chemist Joseph Priestley, though neither attempted to deal with the properties of mind identified by the Cartesians, just as they have been put aside in the revival of “cognitive science” since the 1950s….

Here’s Schrödinger, from his Mind and Matter:

… The material world has only been constructed at the price of taking the self, that is, mind, out of it, removing it; mind is no part of it, obviously, therefore it can neither act on it nor be acted on by any of its parts. (This was stated in a very brief and clear sentence by Spinoza [“the greatest philosopher of the seventeenth century,” as Schrödinger refers to him; here’s the sentence Schrödinger refers to, from Spinoza’s Ethics, Pt III, Prop. 2: “Neither can the body determine the mind to think, nor the mind determine the body to motion or rest or anything else (if such there be).”] …)

It is very difficult for us to take stock of the fact that localization of the personality, of the conscious mind, inside the body is only symbolic, just an aid for practical use.

Descartes’ mind–body theory was Aristotelian. The Aristotelian is fundamentally complex, Red/Dionysian, involving as substance both “body” (matter) and “form” (soul, mind) and moreover being hierarchical, plenist, providential — in a word, organic, i.e. precisely a model of (or analogy or metaphor about) the cosmos: on principle the cosmos is (like) an organism. Modern physical theories are similarly complex insofar as they fundamentally involve dualities: e.g. position and momentum, space and time, particle and wave, real and imaginary number components. Yet mind remains exiled from physics, even from atomic theory, which is bounded by the notions of randomness and “observer-created reality” only inasmuch as these notions are involved in one or another interpretation of the theory’s 2 equivalent but not identical — indeed deeply contrasting — mathematical formalisms, these being Heisenberg’s matrix (alias quantum) mechanics and Schrödinger’s wave mechanics.

The 2 atomic formalisms are together a duality that resonates with the dualities each contain. Naturally the question suggests itself: Is one of these formalisms fundamentally better? And if so, which? Although Heisenberg’s formalism is based upon said dualities whereas Schrödinger’s is based on extension — or, more precisely, on mass and distance, together significant of difference alone — Heisenberg’s is conceptually merely mathematical (after the fashion of Platonic and Newtonian theory) whereas Schrödinger’s is conceptually a model of reality (and thus in a sense organic, after the fashion of Aristotelian theory). Yes, Schrödinger’s is the chiefly Red/Dionysian of the twins, Esau in contrast to Isaac. This recognition implies there is something really complex about difference. Which is to say, although extension is not commensurate with mind, distance-rarefied-into-the-notion-of-real-difference is commensurate with mind!

Sure enough, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz — the Red/Dionysian German philosopher, mathematician, contemporary and chief rival of Newton — used precisely this commensurability between real difference and mind to conserve Aristotle’s organic philosophy in the face of Newton’s so-called mathematical philosophy. Leibniz termed this conservation his “system of pre-established harmony.” We will do well to consider this system a theory of relativity, i.e. a theory of difference. Yet Schrödinger called Leibniz’s theory a “doctrine of Monads” and considered it “unappealing,” “fearful,” even “horrible.” Why? Because according to Leibniz reality that is limited only in terms of difference — i.e. which is a “multeity-in-unity,” to use Coleridge’s famous term — is an existential community that otherwise cannot be said to inhere any communication. In Leibniz’s words, the elements of reality are “windowless monads.” (A free translation of his remarkably concise Monadology is available online. And a version with a few glossings by me is available here on Gravity.org.) But why did Leibniz’s notion of harmony not accommodate a comforting if unmechanical communication between souls? Doesn’t the principle of harmony, i.e. the principle of relativity, imply that individuals are extremely related, i.e. that we fully admit action-despite-separation as well as the secondary case of action-by-contact (i.e. mechanical action)?

The answer, I think, is that Leibniz allowed himself to compromise the ancient principle of plenitude (see A. O. Lovejoy’s classic Great Chain of Being) only insofar as he postulated a plurality of real things, which plurality itself was in accord with the notion of plenitude. In other words, Leibniz understood difference as a corollary of plenitude rather than plenitude as a corollary of difference. He needed a model of reality, something more than mathematics, something symbolic. To him the notion of plenitude seemed closer to — i.e. more symbolic of — reality than did the mere, rather more mathematical notion of difference. He had to admit nothingness to allow his real things to be truly separate, truly free; but nothingness to him was merely divisive, not integral as well; to admit nothingness inside any single monad seemed to him not only a contradiction but also an unnecessary compromise of the principle of plenitude. In other words, Leibniz didn’t strongly consider nothingness as being concomitant of (i.e. on an equal footing with) the plenum (i.e. reality). The plenum to him was foremost, but ironically this meant he considered souls monads rather than pleiads.

Indeed the depth, antiquity and richness of the principle of plenitude — that is, of Black/Baroque commonality — is remarkable. Consider in this respect the word cornucopia. This word derives from the Latin words corn, “horn,” and copiae, “plenty,” as in the goddesses Ops/Rhea, Eur–Opa, Penel–Ope, Op–Helia (Ophelia, Ops–Helen) — where ops is typically taken to mean “power,” “face,” “eye,” and “snake” (altogether as in Medusa) but is also equivalent to the P-I-E opi, “back,” which root is the basis of the af- in the English after, the letters p and f being closely related, as in the title/name Aphrodite, i.e. Op-ro-dite, wherein the ro signifies redness, running, periodic movement. The P-I-E Ops — Kolyo — is beautiful to behold from the front, but her whole backside is writhing of snakes and worms … Likewise we have the Latin opera, meaning “a peasant’s day’s labor,” and operire, “to cover,” which words are closely related to the Old High German helan, “to conceal,” and to the Greek kalyptein, as in eclipse and apocalypse and the Black/Baroque names Kalypso, Kali, and Kolyo, the latter being the chief P-I-E goddess. The very title Latin comes from latere, “to hide.” Virgil says this title owes to the fact that Saturn/Kronos concealed himself from Jupiter/Zeus in that countryside. Another important cognate is the Latin optimus, equivalent to the Greek aristos, as in aristocrat; it refers to the land owned by aristocrats.

Now, if Leibniz had considered nothingness precisely equal (though not identical) to the plenum, he may have considered nothingness integral as well as divisive — i.e. intrinsic as well as extrinsic to any single unit of reality (i.e. any so-called monad). Likewise he may have recognized that nothingness can be interpreted as the stuff of (mere) physics and thus symbolic of reality (minds, souls) in general and that nothingness would thus be a monad’s window on the rest of existence. Such monads would better be called plenads. At once window and light, nothingness as such would be identical to the physical spectrum; in terms of orthodox theory it would be “radiation,” “particles having rest mass,” and “space.” This nothingness would admit real action-despite-separation, real influence; it would be, by the principle of relativity, real physical stuff, this in contrast but not in opposition to mind, i.e. commensurate with mind. Such structure would not be a creation of mind, not merely mathematical; it would, rather, be concomitant with mind (i.e. with the plenum); it would be the structure of experience, of existence, the absolute and discrete (rather than continuous) rock bottom of physics; and as such it would be precisely heuristic — signifying the extreme mysteriousness of existence.

Let me add that Newton — atomist, puritan, known for his prematurely white hair, sexually forever a virgin — postulated absolute space and absolute time as fundamental (mathematical) entities of physics and as “attributes” of God. He constructed his physics not according to the (holistic) organic analogy or metaphor — i.e. the organic principle — but merely according to mathematical description of observation. Such divorced mathematics could not be considered significant of God; at best (or worst) it could only be attributed to God. Likewise, and after the fashion of (White/Apollonian) Zoroastrianism and courtly love, Newton considered God a different kind of entity than are human minds/souls. Hence, too, he considered God chiefly in terms of apocalyptic prophecy. Nearly an expert regarding the Bible, Newton calculated that Jesus Christ the son of God (i.e. a sort of prime attribute, you might say, of God) would return in the year 2060; but he (heretically) concluded that God Himself is fundamentally singular rather than fundamentally a trinity. Newton was moreover the greatest alchemist of his day, a fact which further marks him a neo-Zoroastrian, a sort of Manichaean or Cathar. Carl Jung, who studied alchemy for decades, intimated the Zoroastrian nature of the discipline: “For the alchemist the one primarily in need of redemption is not man, but the deity who is lost and sleeping in matter. … [I]t is not man but matter that must be redeemed [i.e. apotheosized, spiritualized].” Another famous Swiss, Denis de Rougemont, writes likewise in his classic Love and the Western World: “The condemnation of the flesh, which is now viewed by some as characteristically Christian, is in fact of Manichaean and ‘heretical’ origin. … Catharist dualism issues in an eschatological monism.”

Leibniz by way of contrast, and following carefully the plenists Aristotle and Descartes, abhorred unrelated/unlike terms and especially the ancient notion of the vacuum, with which Newton’s absolute space soon came to be confused. Plenism, I should interject, clashes with atomism insofar as atomism involves extensive vacuum, extensive nothingness, i.e. space as a different kind of entity than matter. Occam’s Razor — “Do not needlessly multiply entities” — is, rather ironically, a concise expression of plenism. As I explained, Leibniz expounded a similarly refined — yet, I think, unnecessarily strong — version of the principle of plenitude according to which version nothingness in general (i.e. discontinuity, not only extensive vacuum) is not really (i.e. concomitantly, significantly, heuristically) intrinsic to any particular instance (soul) of reality. From this reasoning it follows, and Leibniz makes this point with utmost clarity, that the physical (matter, you might say) is not real, substantial, “primitive,” but “derivative”; it is secondary and generally continuous; i.e. it is not heuristic, not part and parcel of influence but purely mathematical. Accordingly, although we may suppose (i.e. hypothesize) that a soul in general is capable of exercising freedom (freedom generally being a most profound sort of nothingness, a most profound sort of discontinuity), and although such supposition is as fundamental as reality itself (i.e. it is natural), we may not reasonably say that such exercise can influence other souls; i.e. souls cannot be related to one another in terms of freedom; freedom, the experience of nothingness, does not correspond to extrinsic reality, extrinsic existence, others. Hence Leibniz’s souls are monads.

Schrödinger abhorred this sense of isolation yet he conserved Leibniz’s understanding of nothingness. He therefore considered physical structure derivative and continuous and he suggested that reality is fundamentally more unified than not. The rather simple unity posited by Schrödinger therefore corresponds to Newton’s absolute space–time and to Newton’s force of gravitational attraction and similarly to the old notion of the aether.

Coincidentally, Schrödinger was a deuteroanomalous trichromat: his perception of the color red was much greater than normal, a condition occurring in about 2 percent of the human population. Among his favorite stories was Poe’s Masque of the Red Death. And among his favorite paintings, Dürer’s Adoration of the Trinity, alias All-Saints. Schrödinger worked chiefly on color theory from 1918 to 1920, at the University of Vienna. Through 1925 he continued to publish papers on the subject — becoming recognized as the world authority.

Whereas Bohr, Sommerfeld, Heisenberg, Born and company arrived at their quantum/matrix-mechanical formulation of atomic theory — like Newton — via mere mathematical description of the empirical, especially of the newly discovered phenomenon of spectral lines, Schrödinger arrived at his equivalent yet contrary wave-mechanical formulation of atomic theory via the complex, mind–body, Cartesian, organic principles of good old color theory. Schrödinger’s extreme interest in color theory is all too often explained-away as a philosophical indulgence. But Schrödinger — following Einstein — intended to base his physics on principle, i.e. on philosophy, namely on a principle of reality (if not relativity). It seems he expected that both atomic theory and Einstein’s general relativity could be understood as generalizations of color theory. In this respect, the following outtake from Moore’s excellent biography of Schrödinger (which outtake bears in square brackets several of my comments) is extremely interesting:

Erwin based his analysis of color vision on the three-color theory of Thomas Young (1806), surely the most prescient work in all of psychoanalysis, which was rediscovered, developed, and extended by Hermann Helmholtz in the latter part of the nineteenth century. The Young–Helmholtz theory is based on the hypothesis (since proven) that the normal (trichromat) human retina contains three types of receptors, each with a particular spectral response curve; these may be called red, green, and blue receptors on the basis of their response curves. Any spectral color (light) F or any mixture of such colors can be matched by a linear combination of the three basic colors, R, G, B, so that one can write F = x₁R + x₂G + x₃B.

… The geometry of color space is not the ordinary Euclidean variety that we learn in high school. It is more general geometry, called affine geometry, of which the Euclidean variety is a special restricted case. Affine [cognate with the word affinity] geometry deals with those properties of figures which are unchanged when the original coordinates of the points, x, y, z, are transformed to new coordinates, x′, y′, z′, by a system of linear [my emphasis] equations [i.e. it deals with properties that are “invariant”] .

x′ = a₁₁x + a₁₂y + a₁₃z

y′ = a₂₁x + a₂₂y + a₂₃z

z′ = a₃₁x + a₃₂y + a₃₃z

This set of linear equations with constant coefficients a_ik defines an affine transformation, which plays the role in affine geometry that the concept of congruence has in Euclidean geometry. A general affine transformation corresponds to a displacement (e.g., translation, rotation, reflection in a plane) plus a dilation, i.e., an expansion or contraction of space in three mutually perpendicular directions. A dilation transforms each line into a parallel line. The importance of affine geometry is greatly enhanced owing to the fact that [its] more general transformations become linear in the limit of very small displacements. Thus any geometry that deals with infinitesimal displacements, i.e., differential geometry, is necessarily affine. [Importantly, the reverse is not true: a geometry which is affine is not necessarily differential. Schrödinger comments: “The color space owes its existence as well as its affine structure to the equality relation [i.e. transformation within any single dimension] quite without reference to the vectorial or point space which serves for its elucidation.” Which is to say, the concept of transformation is a principle whereas the number and kind of dimensions to which this principle applies is merely conventional. This is Einstein’s expression of the relativity principle.]

In affine geometry, the basic elements are points A, B, C, etc. [i.e. coincidences], segments AB, BC, etc. [i.e. lengths], and the idea of intermediacy, e.g. of B in a segment ABC. In affine geometry, lengths of segments can be [meaningfully] compared only if they are collinear or lie on parallel lines. …

Schrödinger pointed out that the empirical data of elementary color theory are derived exclusively from sensations of equality between color samples, which are best compared by presenting two adjacent color areas to the observer. It is possible to match one of the qualities of hue, brightness, or saturation, when the other two are kept the same. When one of these qualities is altered continuously, the observer does not perceive a change until a certain minimal difference has been presented; this is called the threshold of distinction. All colors that are at the same threshold of distinction from a given color are said to be at the same distance from it. Thus the difference in stimulus required to reach the threshold of distinction defines a unit length along any vector in color space. By proceeding with stepwise matches it is thus possible to compare lengths along collinear vectors by the number of thresholds required to cover the distance in question.

Elementary color theory is not so simple as it may seem. There is an infinity of different spectral distributions of energy (or of reflectances or transmittances) which can match any given color in the visible range. Helmholtz was the first really to understand this fact. The visual system performs a formidable job of reductions of physical data before it presents a color sensation to the mind. …

Advanced color theory is concerned with questions such as how to measure a difference of brightness between two colors that have different hues ... Instead of trying to match two closely neighboring colors exactly, Helmholtz introduced [my emphasis] a “principle of greatest similarity” [i.e. he imposed a constraint, a condition]; all those colors that appear equally most similar to a given color are said to be at the same distance ds [a phenomenologically quantum difference] from it. He wrote ds because the colors are very close together and the finite distance [difference] is approximated [my emphasis] by the differential. [Here we have the essence of ds as Einstein famously used it. In a major related contribution made recently, contemporary English physicist and cosmologist Julian Barbour, whose career is closely linked to Schrödinger’s, has shown that the concept of “greatest similarity” — which Helmholtz felt obliged to impose upon affine geometry — is inherent in (i.e. a property of) affine geometry in general; there is no need to impose it — unless, that is, you want it (i.e. the property of similarity between any 2 lines in the geometry) to be essentially quantum.] The differential [my emphasis] distance or line element is expressed as

ds² = a_ik dx_i dx_k                   [a_{ik =} a_ki]

(The usual convention of summation over repeated subscripts is followed, with the sums from i, k = 1 to 3.) [The condition a_{ik =} a_ki is the aforementioned commutation postulate (i.e. law) of multiplication. The absence of this postulate — which absence, I say, is corollary of the generally quantum essence of ds — is the essence of Heisenberg’s matrix (a.k.a. “quantum”) mechanics.] In advanced color theory, therefore, a metric has been introduced, and the geometry is no longer affine, but Riemannian. It is interesting that this is the same kind of geometry used by Einstein in his general theory of relativity, although his space is four-dimensional (space–time) whereas the color space is three-dimensional. [The ds² term is “generally,” i.e. in Riemannian geometry (which itself is clearly a mere subset of geometry), called the metric form and the a_ik term is called the metric tensor.]

The [meaningful] difference between any two colors X and Y can now be calculated as the integral of ds along the shortest path between them …, provided this integration can be carried out. The shortest path or geodesic, is the one that requires the least number of steps of greatest similarity …

On May 1, 1925, [Schrödinger] published another article on color in Die Naturwissenschaften, “On the Subjective Colors of the Stars and the Quality of Twilight Sensitivity.” …

At the very end of this paper he included a remark that must have made [his fellow Viennese] Mach turn over in his grave. “The remarkable difference of twilight colors for normal and anomalous trichromats … can, I believe, be explained by difference in the daylight system alone, while the rod color itself is ‘in reality’ the same for both — and apparently for all — types of eyes.”

You can see that it was largely by analogy with color theory that Schrödinger — and likely Einstein as well — considered the quantum of action a mere phenomenon, an illusion of sorts, whereas they considered reality essentially a continuum. This notion of reality as being essentially a continuum is an extreme which meets the ostensibly opposite notion of reality as being an extreme plurality of unrelated quanta. According to the Golden/Legal philosophy, on the other hand, reality is best considered an extreme plurality-in-unity, an extreme multeity-in-unity. As Leibniz pointed out, the (clearly White/Apollonian) notion of a set of unrelated quanta is philosophically meaningless; the members of any meaningful plurality must be fundamentally unique yet fundamentally related — and extremely so.

Surely Bohr and Heisenberg and company understood Leibniz’s indefatigable position here. But why did they assert that the quantum of action must be considered at once eternally fundamental and singular, a sort of unity? The answer involves measurement (or control) theory. Supposedly, measurement of an atom — and indeed measurement in general — is determinable (controllable) using essentially thermodynamical, classical abstractions. These abstractions (in the literal meaning of the word: “out-takes”) and the mathematics they are coupled to leave room for but a single “quantum” of action. (Again, I use the scare-quotes to indicate that the quantum of action is in truth a function and is thus a potential symbol of a multeity-in-unity.) Moreover these abstractions do not signify some underlying, merely postulated reality but are instead referential to phenonema only. It is a principle of Bohr and Heisenberg and company’s Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum theory that physics is complete in terms merely of measurement (control); physics is not symbolic of some principle of reality. Which is to say, reality may very well be a plurality of unique, real quanta, but no set of measurements can be best interpreted as signifying this; i.e. the notions of comprehension and control are ultimately identical.

This is not to say, however, that the entire set of possible measurements cannot be consistent with a principle of (real) relativity. Besides, theory, as Einstein said, first determines what can be observed (i.e. controlled, measured). So perhaps a new theory will provide a new basis for measurement.

Despite the continuing success of the Copenhagen Interpretation, there remains the possibility that we can start from a principle of relativity, symbolize that principle mathematically and thus determine physics from below, as it were. Nobody understands this fact better than does the aforenoted Julian Barbour. During the last decade or so, Barbour has been joined in this deepest respect by American physicist Lee Smolin, author of the popular Life of the Cosmos and Three Roads to Quantum Gravity. Here's Barbour from his own End of Time:

[Lee] proved very receptive to the ideas of Leibniz and Mach to which I introduced him, while he encouraged me to see what application they might have to the problem to which he had decided to devote himself — quantum gravity. We met several times in the next few years, and collaborated on an attempt to formulate Leibniz’s philosophical system, his ‘monadology’, in mathematical form. I think we made some real progress. … As far as I am aware, Leibnizian ideas offer the only genuine alternative to Cartesian–Newtonian materialism which is capable of expression in mathematical form. What especially attracts me to them is the importance, indeed primary status, given to structure and distinguishing attributes, and the insistence that the world does not consist of infinitely many essentially identical things — atoms moving in space — but is in reality a collection of infinitely many things, each constructed [if you will] according to a common principle yet all different from one another. Space and time emerge from the way in which these ultimate entities mirror each other. I feel sure that this idea has the potential to turn physics inside out — to make the interestingly structured appear probable rather than improbable.

To use Einstein’s terminology, the bottom-up formulation would be complete precisely insofar as it conserves the classical notion that there is a determinable (i.e. naturally structured) reality independent of control, i.e. independent of measurement. In a letter to M. Laserna dated 8 January 1955 Einstein commented in this extremely important respect:

It is basic for physics that one assumes a real world existing independently from any act of perception. But this we do not know. We take it only as a programme in our scientific endeavors. This programme is, of course, prescientific and our ordinary language is already based on it.

Einstein’s use of the word act here implies the classical physical parameter action and therefore the very closely related notions of control, free will, the uncertainty principle, and the Copenhagen Interpretation. In the context of quantum theory an “act of perception” is more a measurement (i.e. an act of control, an abstraction dependent on classical physical theory) than a mere perception. I like to say we can control only what we cannot understand and we can understand only what we cannot control. This, I think, is physicist John Bell’s distinction between controllable (“observable”) and “beable”; i.e. it is the distinction between a referent to macroscopic abstraction and a referent to reality. It also boils down to a distinction akin if not identical to Kant’s distinction between a thing and a thing-in-itself: a distinction, I say, between order and structure. All such distinctions adumbrate, at least, a fundamental difference between information and reality, where information — ultimately action — is determined according to the principle of separation (i.e. locality; that is, no action-at-a-distance) sacred to Einstein.

In the present light consider paragraph 739 in part 5 of Goethe’s Farbenlehre (Theory of Colors):

True observers of nature, however they may differ in opinion in other respects, will agree that all which presents itself as appearance, all that we meet as phenomenon, must either indicate an original division which is capable of union, or an original unity which admits of division, and that the phenomenon will present itself accordingly. To divide the united, to unite the divided, is the life of nature; this is the eternal systole and diastole, the eternal collapsion and expansion, the inspiration and expiration of the world in which we live and move.

And so Goethe, too, expressed the principle of relativity via color theory. Again, I think this principle is best symbolized (determined) not in terms of affine geometry and the corollary formalisms of Einstein’s general relativity and Schrödinger’s wave mechanics, but rather in terms of a single, best symbol of Black/Baroque reality, i.e. of the postulated/supposed real multeity-in-unity, the set of souls. Such symbol would be the mathematical basis of the Golden/Legal philosophy. This mathematics would be essentially quantum. (In other words it would not be whole-number mathematics.) And it would be the Holy Grail of physics. More importantly, it would be the Holy Grail of mythology.

Schrödinger seems to have discounted the extremely important role that color theory played in his formulation of atomic theory. His dissimulation in this respect can largely be understood insofar as his focus during the early 1920s shifted to the study of ideal gases. This field was the prime legacy of the White/Apollonian physicist Ludwig Boltzmann, who was also Viennese and was a prime scientific hero in Schrödinger’s mind. Boltzmann advocated the reality of physical atoms in and of themselves (and was an ardent supporter of Darwinism), this in contrast to the paradigm championed by that other Viennese — and Schrödinger’s only other scientific hero: the Red/Dionysian Ernst Mach. According to Mach, atoms are merely provisional, conceptual devices useful in treating of a more fundamental continuum of “energy.” Here’s Walter Moore on the deep contrast between Boltzmann and Mach:

In 1895, at a conference in Lübeck [Germany], an attempt was made to resolve these conflicting views of the fundamental structure of the world. The report in favor of energetics [i.e. Mach’s paradigm] was given by Georg Helm of Dresden; behind him stood Wilhelm Ostwald of Leipzig, the leader of physical chemistry, and behind both was ranged the powerful positivist philosophy of the absent Ernst Mach. The leading opponent of energetics was Boltzmann, seconded by the mathematician Felix Klein. Arnold Sommerfeld [eventually Heisenberg’s mentor at Munich, and famous for his recognition of the need for a “fine structure constant”] reported that the struggle between Boltzmann and Ostwald equalled outwardly and inwardly ‘the struggle of the bull with the supple matador. But this time the bull conquered the matador despite all his finesse. The arguments of Boltzmann drove through. All the young mathematicians stood on his side.’

Despite such successes, Boltzmann while on holiday at the Bay of Duino near Trieste, Italy, in 1906, and while his wife and daughter were swimming in the sea, hanged himself. Schrödinger was left broken hearted; he had expected to begin studying under this beloved master within a few months. …

In 1924 and 1925, Bose and Einstein achieved a fundamental understanding of the statistics appropriate to the particular (in contrast to wave) essence of light (which aspect of light later came to be called the photon). Einstein recognized that this statistics must apply not only to light (i.e. to radiation in general) but also to atoms (and molecules, etc). Thus a way had almost fully opened toward the notion that radiation and matter are fundamentally the same kind of thing. It was on this path — within earshot, as it were, of Bose and Einstein — that Louis de Broglie “all of a sudden” realized that he should postulate a fundamental particle–wave duality: photons, electrons, protons, atoms, molecules, what have you — they are all best described as essentially dual, at once particles and waves. Schrödinger was nearby on this same path and was more inclined than were his colleagues to think that the apparent need for this postulate — a need stemming from Boltzmann’s consideration of statistics as being fundamental, i.e. of randomness as being fundamental to analysis (if not being an element of reality itself) — was significant of a fundamental reconcilability between the rather quantum-biased yet simple White/Apollonian paradigm (advocated by Boltzmann) and the rather continuum-biased yet complex Red/Dionysian paradigm (advocated by Mach). Schrödinger got swept up in the excitement attaching to both the de Broglie postulate and the Machian continuum and thus sailed beyond the complex Red/Dionysian sea into open, White/Apollonian waters. Again, as Blake said, “Extremes meet.” Schrödinger went so far as to describe particles in general as merely a phenomenal sort of “whitecap” [Schaumkamm] atop a continuum reality best described as a wave only (in the naïve sense of, say, a water wave). To Schrödinger’s chagrin this tack failed (and famously so), lending further credence to the notion that the essence of all physical elements is fundamentally dual. Nevertheless, in terms of this failure Schrödinger expressed very well a notion that neither he nor Einstein would abandon and which in their professional circumstances they seemingly had no need to abandon: the notion that the (mathematical) determinations signifying a supposed reality should be continuum and pictorial (i.e. continuum models) — although supposedly no such symbol (structure) can ever perfectly determine (correspond to) reality and although control (measurement) may be fundamentally quantum.

I think this notion which both Schrödinger and Einstein carefully and almost unflaggingly if rather independently (they remained in relatively close communication if not outright collaboration with each other) adhered to was required only insofar as the set of whole numbers — coupled to the concept of zero and thus to the notion of a continuum — is considered the best basis for physical mathematics. We can fairly say that the concept of zero is akin to a special frame of reference and inasmuch is contrary to Einstein’s expression of the principle of relativity. As Schrödinger writes in his masterfully concise Space–Time Structure, “Zero is the only number with a charter, a sort of royal privilege.” (This fact is commonly stated as the law prohibiting division by zero.) The chief assertion of a transformation equation, Schrödinger likewise emphasizes, is always this: a certain number is zero. Schrödinger here implies that the notion of a “transformation equation” — indeed, the very notion of an equation in general — must be fundamental to physics; equations must be the only way to determine (i.e. express) the notion of invariance at bottom of Einstein’s expression of the principle of relativity and therefore at bottom of Einstein’s general relativity. This assumption is what justifies the special status of the concept of zero and in turn the concept of infinite divisibility, i.e. the continuum. But according to my understanding of the relativity principle, the notion of an equation is purely secondary; symbolism is singularly primary; physical invariance is a mere corollary of the supposed Black/Baroque reality, i.e. of multeity-in-unity, of the set of monads, and it should be determined via the single best symbol of that supposed reality. Consider in this respect the following from Arthur Fine’s reknowned Shaky Game:

I think the failure of [Einstein’s] space/time project did lead Einstein to take seriously the idea that the physics of the future may not be spatio-temporal at all.

In his review article of 1936, Einstein calls such a non space/time physics “purely algebraical” and, because the mathematical concepts for such a theory had yet to be invented, in 1936 he rejects the idea as “an attempt to breathe in empty space” (Einstein 1936, p. 319). Nearly twenty years later he is no more enthusiastic, and for exactly the same reason. “My opinion is that if the objective description through the field as an elementary concept is not possible, then one has to find a possibility to avoid the continuum (together with space and time) altogether. But I have not the slightest idea what kind of elementary concepts could be used in such a theory.” If we read these remarks in conjunction with his reply to Karl Menger in 1949 (“Adhering to the continuum originates with me not in a prejudice but arises out of the fact that I have been unable to think up anything organic to take its place.” [Schlipp 1949, p. 686]), then I think it clear that a non-spatio-temporal kind of realism (a “purely algebraical” realism) would be an acceptable alternative for Einstein to his own pet idea for a continuous field theory, even if one not so highly prized.

I think the Holy Grail I’ve adumbrated is this “purely algebraical” physics anticipated by Einstein. Paul Dirac, more strongly than Einstein, anticipated such physics. Among the laconic Dirac’s “pet ideas,” as his biographer Helge Kragh remarks, was the notion that the basis of mathematics in general is due for a change. But like Einstein, Dirac simply couldn’t conceive what this change should be. In 1979, a few years before his death, Dirac wrote regarding orthodox quantum theory: “I think it is very likely, or at any rate quite possible, that in the long run Einstein will turn out to be correct, even though for the time being physicists have to accept the Bohr probability interpretation, especially if they have examinations in front of them.” With respect to Schrödinger, Dirac in 1977 had written:

… of all the physicists that I met, I think Schrödinger was the one that I felt to be most closely similar to myself. I found myself getting into agreement with Schrödinger more rapidly than with anyone else. I believe the reason for this is that Schrödinger and I both had a very strong appreciation of mathematical beauty, and this appreciation of mathematical beauty dominates all our work. It was a sort of act of faith with us that any equations which describe fundamental laws of Nature must have great mathematical beauty in them. It was like a religion with us.

Yet, in 1965, several years after Schrödinger’s death, Dirac had written: “All references to Schrödinger wave functions must be cut out as dead wood.” Indeed Dirac emphasized this assertion in his last lecture, delivered in the early 1980s. The professionals recognize this assertion as something of a mystery. Why did Dirac favor Heisenberg’s matrix-mechanical formulation of atomic theory over Schrödinger’s wave-mechanical formulation thereof? The answer certainly involves the Hamiltonian. As the outstanding physicist Eugene Wigner — Dirac’s brother-in-law — said in 1963: “Dirac was a captive and is now a captive of the Hamiltonian formalism and he thinks extremely strongly in terms of the Hamiltonian formalism.” The Hamiltonian is an exceedinly beautiful (i.e. simple yet general) formulation of the so-called action principle, the notion that classical physical action (e.g. position x momentum, or energy x time, or spin) is always an extremum (i.e. fundamentally describable as a minimum or maximum). The action principle comes down to us via Aristotle, Hero of Alexandria, Fermat, Leibniz, Maupertuis, Euler, Lagrange, Gauss, Hamilton, Jacobi, Dirichlet, Helmholtz, Planck, Dirac, and others. “In this development,” writes Ernst Cassirer in his Determinism and Indeterminism in Modern Physics, “the question of the metaphysical basis for the principle of least action [i.e. the action principle] was more and more lost from view.” The notion that the essence of nature is extreme action — and the fact that the Heisenberg formalism is a codification of this notion in terms of non-commutativity, the so-called “quantum” of action (the very meat of quantum/matrix mechanics), and the Hamiltonian — suggests that the Heisenberg formulation is destined to be reduced to a function of action (i.e. to the quantum of action unpacked, as it were, unfolded) and that this function is destined to be recognized as the ultimate physical mathematics and the ultimate formulation of the Hamiltonian, i.e. the ultimate formulation of the action principle. Such function, and the interpretation(s) thereof, would be identical to physics in general.

Dirac appreciated the Hamiltonian as being not a constraint (i.e. forced upon something else more fundamental) but rather an essentially pure (i.e. self-referential) mathematics that happens to correspond to the classically controllable structure of experience. Similarly the Heisenberg formulation of atomic theory is a purely mathematical symbol that happens to correspond to what is controllable. The Schrödinger formulation, on the other hand, is not self-referential but symbolic of a supposed reality; it is pictorial, mimetic, a model, a metaphor — precisely as any geometrical description of fundamental physicality (including Einstein’s general theory of relativity) is a metaphor implying that physical space is best described as being a geography of sorts. Therefore the Schrödinger formalism seems to place mathematical beauty second to naïve realist postulation, short-circuiting Dirac’s program. In this sense the Schrödinger approach damns the Hamiltonian to the status of a constraint upon metaphysical indulgence. To be sure, the Hamiltonian is also applied as a mere constraint to the Heisenberg formulation, in terms of the diagonal matrix. But because the Heisenberg formulation is merely a mathematical formalism and not as well a model, and because it moreover corresponds to classical action, the way is at least open for this formulation to be simplified such that it becomes identical to the Hamiltonian — and likewise identical to Dirac’s equation of the electron, i.e. his inchoate equation of particles in general, including particles of space and time. Recognizing, again, that the quantum of action is in fact a function, we can therefore fairly say Dirac is suggesting or at least intuiting that both the Heisenberg formulation and the Hamiltonian are destined to be reduced via mathematical considerations — which may involve Einsteinian realism and a principle of relativity — to a function of action and that this function in and of itself will be physics.

Thus the mystery of the quantum of action (that is, of the very existence of atoms) could be reduced to the principle of relativity, i.e. to the mystery not only of one’s existence but also of the supposedly concomitant existence of an unlimited number of unique souls (others) which are nevertheless (extremely) related to each other. The existence of atoms in any single monad’s experience would be explained in terms of the postulated existence of an unlimited number of other, related monads. No mechanism could be invoked to explain this relatedness of monads. According to the principle of relativity, we need not — indeed cannot and should not — explain this relatedness; rather we postulate this relatedness, this greatest of all possible mysteries, as our only principle.

In regard to the core of quantum theory, Bohr famously commented: “If a man does not feel dizzy when he first learns of the quantum of action, he has not understood a word.” Einstein mockingly called the action-at-a-distance (or non-locality, or “entanglement”) which is a prime (and general) corollary of that theory “spooky” and “telepathy” and he argued that there is no need to interpret the equivalent pair of quantum theoretical mathematical formalisms (Heisenberg’s quantum mechanics, based on a mathematical matrix; and Schrödinger’s wave mechanics, based on a configuration space of mass points relative to an absolute, 3-dimensional space continuum) as complete (per the Copenhagen Interpretation) — if, that is, we can interpret them otherwise and thus conserve the principle of separation, i.e. the principle of local causality, i.e. the principle that action requires a space–time medium, i.e. the principle of action-by-contact, i.e. the notion that there is no action-at-a-distance. “I consider the renunciation of a spatio-temporal setting for real events to be idealistic-spiritualistic,” wrote Einstein to Schrödinger, derogatorily and in commiseration with Schrödinger. Yet it seems to be increasingly clear that the way forward involves recognizing the principle of relativity as precisely idealistic-spiritualistic. The noted dizziness and spookiness are heuristic.

Thus the heroic path before us is illumined. Going forward along that path, it is important and instructive to note a few things about the boyish German genius Werner Heisenberg, Schrödinger’s most poignant White/Apollonian counterpart. Heisenberg was something of a lifelong Boy Scout. In the Germany of Heisenberg’s youth the equivalent of the Boy Scouts was called the Neupfadfinder (New Path Finders). Consider the following from David Cassidy’s excellent biography of Heisenberg, Uncertainty:

For the Neupfadfinder [of which Heisenberg was a local leader], the coming third Reich was to be the culmination of centuries of German history, the final realization of the ideals of the first Reich, the Holy Roman Empire. Numerous petty princes and political parties would happily coexist within one apolitical empire, ruled by a single, trustworthy, God-appointed Führer. He would ensure the peace and well-being of the German people — especially, of course, of the cultured upper middle class — in the same way a [local] group Führer for his small Gemeinschaft [a group of about 10–15 people, typically men].

… As [Heisenberg’s Gemeinschaft] conceived it, the coming Third Reich bore a striking resemblance to the Christian concept of the coming kingdom of God …

The Holy Roman Empire was established over the course of some hundred years following the 843 CE Treaty of Verdun, which treaty split the Frankish kingdom of Charlemagne — the so-called Carolingian Empire, covering much of modern-day France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and northern Italy — into 3 parts to be shared by Charlemagne’s 3 surviving grandsons: Charles, Lothair and Louis.

 
The Holy Roman Empire (or, might we say, the Holy Carolingian Empire — as in Joyce’s H.C.E, Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker?) emerged from the eastern realm. The legacy of this eastern realm — in contrast to the western, which was to become France — was tribal German rather than Romanized Gaulish; hence it was much more federal, far less centralized, than the western. Typically the king of the eastern realm was elected; and over the decades and centuries he happened to become increasingly obligated to his electorate. In this sense the Holy Roman Empire was more akin to England than to France. Only when coronated by the pope, however, did the king become emperor. This profound, Rex–Deus-like complexity occasionally took the form of near conflict between king and pope. Generally the coronation was considered a transfer of God’s power from the Romans to a new empire — and akin to that from Troy to Rome and (or so I will theorize) from Crete to Troy, and from Canaan to Crete, and from Egypt to Canaan, and from Saturn’s otherwise lost Golden Age (represented in part by the legend of Atlantis) to Egypt, and from the previous Great (or Platonic) Year to the Golden Age.

The Investiture Controversy of the 10^th and 11^th centuries saw Pope Gregory VII assert the singular universality of the papal power and in turn he excommunicated and officially if not effectively deposed German King and Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV — a move welcomed by the German aristocracy and nearly fatal to the empire. Although severely and permanently weakened, the Holy Roman Empire largely recovered following Henry’s invasion of Rome; for the pope reacted to that invasion by calling in Norman allies from their presence in southern Italy, and although they saved the pope they also sacked Rome, provoking the Roman citizens to rise against the pope and force him and the Normans south, where the pope soon died. The Holy Roman Empire was not officially dissolved until 6 August 1806, when Francis II abdicated following military defeat at the hands of Napolean. Francis and his heirs nevertheless continued their political career as emperors of Austria, until 1918.

But what were Charlemagne’s roots? You guessed it: the Merovingian dynasty. That dynasty is named after its founder Merowig (c. 450 CE). Legend says Merowig was (fully) conceived when the already pregnant wife of his supposed father Clodio — the “Long-haired” or “Hairy,” and equivalent to Claudius, “lame,” as in Hamlet’s “evil,” Set-like uncle — encountered one of Poseidon’s sea monsters, a shape-shifting Quinotaur, while she swam in the North Sea. The monster ravished her and thus added his seed to the mix. Hence Merowig had 2 fathers. This story resonates with those involving Zeus/Poseidon and Europa (and Asterius, “Star Man”), Cetus and Andromeda (and Perseus), the sea monster and Hesione (and Hercules), the dragon and the princess (and George or Tristan or Sigurd …). The offspring of such encounter, in this case Merowig, is equivalent to the hero who slays the monster/father/king relative to the lover/mother — just as Kronos emasculates Ouranos at the behest of Gaia (or Chthon) and thus creates the universe, Aphrodite emerging from those severed, sea-borne genitals, which genitals are equivalent to her husband/son Hephaistos (alias Tristan/Noah/Perseus/Poseidon). Likewise said offspring is equivalent to the monster/father and the lover/mother, which implies the lover/mother, too, is equivalent to the monster/father. The hero/girl meeting the monster is the hero/girl identified with the monster — and with each other. Please don’t forget these seemingly pedestrian identifications — for if there is a single key that unlocks all mythology, they amount to it.

As for the particular identity of the Merovingian monster, the term Quinotaur is extremely mysterious. The prefix Quino- signifies 5-ness, 100-ness, dogishness/wolfishness (as in the Greek word kynós), smallness (as in the suffix -kin), change (as in kindle and kinetic and the Cynaen Rocks, alias the Planctae, this as in the planasthai, “wanderers,” i.e. the planets), blueness (as in the Greek word kýanos, “dark blue enamel, lapis lazuli,” and as in cyanide and also the Pleiades), kinship/kingliness (from the Proto-Germanic *kunjá “family, race,” and *kuningaz, “one descended from noble birth,” these being cognate with the Latin genus and the Sanskrit jánas, “kin,” as in Janus), and cynosure, which word means “center of attraction or attention” and formerly also meant “guiding star.” This last word stems from the Latin Cynosūra, “Ursa Minor,” from the Greek kynósura, “dog’s tail.” Ursa Minor — with its guiding star Polaris — is, I suggest, the adze of the famous Egyptian Opening of the Mouth ceremony (and likewise of the ceremonial cutting of the umbilical cord) and in this sense it represents Anubis and Upuat (“Opener of the Way”) and Fenrir and Hermes and Homer’s “wiley” — i.e. viley, vixeny, foxey — Ulyssses, as well as Finn of Irish lore and likewise Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn of American lore. The Chambers Etymological Dictionary states: “[Fox] is cognate with … Gothic faúhō. Outside the Germanic languages fox is cognate with Lithuanian paustìs, animal hair, the Russian and Polish puch woolly hair, tuft, fluff, and Sanskrit púccha-s tail … from Indo-European *puk-/pouk- (Pok.849).” Huck Finn, you see, is Tom Sawyer is Faustus is Puck, the latter from the Old Norse pūki, “devil.” Finn is Vin is Dionysus. The Pleiades — alias the Kometes, “Long-haired,” as in comets, and as in the Merovingians — correspond to this Little Dipper. In fact the Pleiades themselves are constellated in the form of a dipper or adze.

The number 5 is the number of Aprhodite/Venus and likewise the number symbolizing sacred knowledge. The number 100 is associated with the ascendant challenger, the White knight and his cohort or fellow centurians. Doggishness/wolfishness is associated with the absent father. We should be especially reminded here of the wise and learned centaur Chiron — “The Hand,” — as in the 5-ness of the hand and as in Roman emperor Constantine’s 5-pointed Chi–Rho symbol. Constantine considered the Chi–Rho symbolic of Christ and of the Sun. (Moreover, he thought that Christ — like Ares/Mars and like Odin/Woden — can determine victors in battle.) Chiron, who lives in a cave on Mount Pelion, is tutor to Diomedess, whom he renames Jason, “Healer”; and to Jason’s son by the sorceress Medea, Medeius, eventual ruler of the Medes; and to Hippolytus (the Latin Virbius), son of Theseus and Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons; and to the sea-god Achilles. Chiron’s father is Centaurus (alias Quinotaurus?), son of Ixion, son of Ares/Mars. Here we see a striking equivalency between Ares/Mars/Odin/Hermes, Ixion, Centaurus, Chiron, Jason, Medeius, Hippolytus (Virbius), Achilles and Merowig. Let’s follow this lead.

Thinking he is ravishing Hera, Chiron’s grandfather Ixion ravishes Nephele (note the Ne- prefix), whom Zeus supposedly created as a phantasmal Hera look-alike. Nephele then gives birth to all the centaurs — each being half horse or bull, half man, or more generally theriomorphs. The centaurs worship Dionysus. For the attempted rape of Hera, Zeus binds Ixion to a rolling wheel and damns him to Tarturus and the close company there of Sisyphus and Tantalus. Tantalus is father of Pelops, whom we will meet shortly. In all these connections we should furthermore be reminded of the centaur Nessus, who rapes Hercules’ 2nd wife Deianira and then effectively curses him to death at the hands of Deianira — although Zeus plucks Hercules from near death atop the funeral pyre and transports him to Olympus, as Zeus did with Pelops and eventually does with the Trojans Ganymede/Aquarius and Aeneas. Now, Neptune/Poseidon — who built Troy’s famed walls — was symbolized by the horse, as was Nephele/Hera. So, too, probably, was Hippolyta, the root hippo meaning “horse” and, as I will later explain, being identifiable with the name Poseidon and likewise with the Egyptian Hp/Hapi (the Greek Apis), a bull-god equivalent to the human-like god of the Nile, who goes by the same name but is pictured an androgynous old man with pendulous breasts. The actual bull representative of Hp was selected for being black yet bearing a white, crescent-like mark on its neck. Let me add that Odysseus/Ulysses in the wooden horse/bull is akin to the Quinotaur: he proto-mythologically impregnates Troy/Aphrodite, dying in the process (hence to “live” with Kalypso). The fleeing Aeneas — legendary father of the Romans — is the offspring of that meeting/sacrifice, equivalent to Poseidon, equivalent to Odysseus, equivalent to Merowig.

The black and white bull representative of Egypt’s Hp brings us back to the story of Europa, daughter of King Agenor of Tyre, Canaan. Son of Poseidon and Lybia — and (younger) twin brother of Belus (i.e. Bel, the fire god; alias Hephaistos, Set) — Agenor had proto-mythologically left his homeland of Egypt to settle in Canaan, where he married Telephassa/Argiope (“Distant White Light of Power”; i.e. Iseult; i.e. Gatsby’s green light across the bay, the light of the dock of Daisy’s “red-and-white” mansion). Robert Graves, from his Greek Myths:

Zeus, falling in love with Europe, sent Hermes to drive Agenor’s cattle down to the seashore at Tyre, where she and her companions used to walk. He himself joined the herd, disguised as a snow-white bull with great dewlaps and small, gem-like horns, between which ran a single black streak. Europe was struck by his beauty and, on finding him gentle as a lamb, mastered her fear and began to play with him, putting flowers in his mouth and hanging garlands from his horns; in the end, she climbed upon his shoulders, and let him amble down with her to the edge of the sea. Suddenly he swam away, while she looked back in terror at the receding shore; one of her hands clung to his right horn, the other still held a flower-basket.

Wading ashore near Cretan Gortyna, Zeus became an eagle and ravished Europe in a willow-thicket beside a spring; or, some say, under an evergreen plane-tree [with its 5-pointed leaves, the plane-tree was sacred to Helen/Aphrodite]. She bore him three sons: Minos, Rhadamanthys, and Sarpedon.

Agenor sent his [5] sons in search of their sister, forbidding them to return without her.

According to proto-mythology, the hero must venture from his original land/tribe to that of the woman he desires. There he must win her love, marry her, and remain to ascend to the kingship and to eventually self-sacrifice himself at the behest of his wife. Zeus’s contrary abduction of Europa signifies the reversal of this custom; especially it signifies the Great Reversal. As we will later see, Agenor and Telephassa/Argiope correspond to Evenor and Leucippa, the original Atlanteans, whose daughter Clito corresponds to Europa. Clito’s 5 sets of twin sons by Poseidon (initial among them Atlas and Gadirus) correspond to Europa’s 5 brothers (including Cadmus and Phoenix).

Meroweg, like Poseidon/Hp/Hapi/Apis and like Agenor and like Odysseus-in-the-horse and like Aeneas, signifies proto-mythology. The name Merowig smacks of earwig and Earwicker and the Welsh Evrawg, son of Bron and father of Peredur/Percival — Evrawg’s 7th son, as in the 7 planets, and as in Hephaistos, i.e. Hp. Similarly the name Agenor smacks of Plato’s original Atlantean Evenor, husband of Leucippe (“White Horse”). The prefix Ear-/Evra-/Eve-/Eur- is closely linked to the Latin aevum, “lifetime.” Furthermore Meroweg smacks of Mercury, the shape-shifting Latin equivalent of Hermes, Odin, Odysseus — and the closest planet to the Sun, never straying from her by more than 28 degrees of arc (which number 28 represents the college of Aphrodite’s nymphs, alias the Pleiades). The prefix mer means “sea”; and wig means “change, path, life, enliven,” stemming from the P-I-E *weik/wik, “set apart, strive against a foe,” and *wig, “bend, turn,” these being the basis, too, of the modern English weed and weak and the 7-day, 7-planet week — again, the planets in Greek being literally the planasthai, “wanderers.”

Regarding the Merowig–earwig connection, note that wizards, as Robert Graves points up, commonly claimed that their ears had been licked clean by serpents, “which were held to be incarnate spirits of oracular heroes and … were thus able to understand the language of birds and insects.” Athena, it is said, after blinding Teiresias, was moved by his suffering and therefore detached from her aegis — originally a bag akin to Ouranos’s severed genitalia, i.e. akin to an ark — the serpent Erichthonios (equivalent to Hephaistos, Hp, Poseidon) and ordered it to, “Cleanse Teiresias’s ears with your tongue that he may understand the language of prophetic birds.” Erichthonios is Eri–Chthonios, “heather of Gaia.” The bees on the heather are the serpents in the ear are (Red/Dionysian) Aphrodite–Hephaistos in the sea-borne genitals/ark. Erichthonios is the snake/fish-tailed son of Hephaistos and Gaia, equivalent to his father and to Kronos/Cronus/Saturn and to the charioteers Poseidon and Auriga and Pelops, as well as Ganymede/Aquarius, Aeneas, Mercury, and Merowig. Precisely 300 golden bees were found in the tomb of Merowig’s son Childeric I. Napolean selected these bees to replace the Bourbon fleur-de-lys as symbol of his French Empire.

Erichthonios was abandoned by Gaia and found by (White/Apollonian) Athena, who reared him under/in her own aegis, literally. He eventually became the initial king of Athens — and, perhaps what’s more, had a namesake/equivalent involved in the Trojan line of royalty, that line being the following: Dardanos (a Latin; most beloved mortal son of Zeus, by the missing, i.e. 7^th, Pleiad Electra, daughter of Atlas), Erichthonios, Tros (after whom Troy is named), Illus, Laomedon, and Ganymede. Because Dardonos’s father is Atlas, 1^st son of Clito and Poseidon, the Trojan royal line is directly connected to the royal line of Atlantis. … Likewise we have the Hebrew mother, Moses, and the Egyptian princess. In a mythological sense, therefore, Merowig is Moses and he is Noah (i.e. a representative of pre-Flood civilization, a.k.a. Atlantis). In fact the Merovingians claimed direct descent from both the Trojan royal line and Noah. The main, proto-mythological legend about the founding of Troy says this city-state was established by the 1/3 of Crete’s population who fled that island nation under pressure of famine and led by Prince Scamander. Recall, Zeus/Poseidon had abducted Europa from Canaan to Crete, where she married the local ruler Asterius, who adopted her 3 sons by Zeus/Poseidon: Rhadamanthys, Sarpedon, and Minos (who became the cuckolded step-father of the Minotaur and hence commissioner and resident of Daedalus’s labyrinth). Thus we have a strong connection running from Atlantis (i.e. the Golden Age) to Egypt (originally named Kehmet, the “Black,” in contrast to Deshret, the “Red” desert) to Canaan (alias Phoenicia, the “Red Land”) to Crete (home of the snow white bulls) to (Red) Troy to (Red) Italy to the (Red) Merovingians to (Red) Charlemagne.

Merowig’s grandson King Clovis I — alias alias Clodowech (as in Clito?) or Chlodwig, the modern French “Louis” and the modern German “Ludwig,” as in Loki and Lucifer and Leucippe — is considered the initial French king. He died in 511 and his 4 sons divided the kingdom among themselves. The eldest, Theuderic I, rightfully claimed the better part of the kingdom. With its capital at Reims, this north and eastern portion was called Austrasia. The remaining portion — with Orléans, Paris, and Soissons as its prime urbanities — was split between the other brothers and generally named Neustria. Soon, intermittent yet protracted conflict emerged between this pair of kingdoms, weakening the royalty in relation to the aristocracy. The climax came in 613 when old Queen Brunhilda of Austrasia proclaimed as king one of her great-grandsons and thus motivated her aristocracy to revolt against her. They allied themselves with her Neustrian nephew King Clotaire II and eventually delivered her to him. Clotaire had her tortured on the rack for 3 days and then, the chief legend goes, torn apart by 4 horses.

Brunhilda’s life became imbued with that of the mythical Brynhild — a virginal, Athena-like female warrior (“shieldmaiden”) and moreover a Valkyrie, the latter especially being goddesses and “servants” of Odin — and thus formed a basis of the Tristan and Iseult story, Wagner’s Brunhilde, and Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings. Brynhild, the myth says, was obliged to decide a conflict between a pair of kings. Although Odin preferred the elder king, Brynhild decided for the younger. Therefore Odin condemned her to mortality (as the nymphs Pallas and Electra were likewise cast down from heaven by Zeus) and to a coma behind a ring of fire impenetrable to all but the greatest man, who alone could wake her and marry her. That man turned out to be Sigurd, whose magical sword — his father’s, a gift from Odin — was named Gram (as in grain and barleycorn). Sigurd was foster son of Regin (note the Re- root), the smith (as in Hephaistos) of the Danish court. Regin had reforged and improved the previously broken Gram, armed Sigurd with it, and sent the young hero to recover the famed hoard of gold — including especially the magical, gold-making ring Andvarinaut — kept greedily by the smith’s own brother Fafnir, who had become an increasingly horrible dragon out of his cursed love for the gold and the ring at bottom of it. Originally the ring belonged to the dwarf Andvari, who lived as a fish in an underground lake. Loki had journeyed down to Andvari and threatened him such that Andvari surrendered the ring to Loki. But in so relenting, Andvari laid a curse on the ring: that it bring destruction to all who think they possess it.

The Andvarinaut and its curse resonate with the curse placed by Odin around and upon Brynhild. They also resonate with the curse placed by the mythical Greek figure Myrtilus — who is etymologically linked to the Myrmidon sea-god Achilles, myrtle meaning “ever green” — upon the house of Pelops and hence on Agamemnon and Menelaos. Myrtilus is a son of (Odin-like) Hermes — as Ixion is a son of Ares/Mars, and as Remus and Romulus are twin sons of Mars by the Vestal priestess (i.e. Pleiad) Rhea Silvia, a descendant of Troy’s Aeneas. Like Hephaistos and Poseidon, Myrtilus is a charioteer. And like his rival and successor Pelops, he is a lover of Hippodameia. Myrtilus was likely crowned (i.e. ringed) with green oak leaves, like Pelops’ grandfather Tmolus. The title Myrmidon is said to mean “ant person”: this as in Andvari; and as in the Latin prefix ante-, “before”; and the Greek antí, “against, instead”; and the Proto-Germanic *ai, “off,” present in Aides/Hades, i.e. the missing father, the “goat-deity”; and giant, i.e. Gaia-Ant; and the Greek ánthos, “flower,” from the Indo-European *ándhos, “bloom,” as in the name Antony and the title Adonis, both of which mean, among other things, “Lord,” and as in the aforementioned Erichthonios, “heather of Gaia.”

The ant people are the before people, the contrasting people, the people from before the Flood, from before the Great Reversal. They are people who in myth are typically represented as fish/snake-people, like Andvari and lame Noah and bow-legged, red-haired Odysseus and Erichthonios and Hephaistos and Enkidu, and like the 7 sage fish-men — master craftsmen — who, before the Flood, founded Gilgamesh’s Uruk and built its great walls (just as Poseidon built the walls of Troy). In the name Andvari the suffix -vari is cognate with the Latin varus, “bow-legged, bent,” the Old Icelandic ver, “fishing place,” and verja, “to defend,” the Albanian varr, “grave,” the Tocharian B warto, “garden, forest,” and the P-I-E wer/war, “to cover, close up, protect.” Contemporary English cognates include veer, variety, weir, weird, warm, thermal, terminus (i.e. boundary, as in herm and Hermes), and war. … The ant people are the ancestors. They are especially the ancestors from before the present Platonic (or Great) Age/Year, i.e. from before the last Zodiacal age of Leo (c. 10,800 BCE), which as I will soon explain is just beyond the celestial Pillars of Hercules. These ant people are the people of memory and of dream. They are Gaia’s people of the flowering heath, among whom are the Neanderthals.

The Norse fertility goddess Freya’s craving for the mysterious Brisingamen comes to mind, too. Note the Bri-/Bry- prefix. The Brisingamen was a golden necklace owned by the likewise mysterious Brisings or Bristlings, as in the aforenoted bristle–Pleiades connection and as in Achilles’ most notable lover, Briseis. The nymph Freya procured the necklace by sleeping successively with its 4 dwarf makers, a promiscuity that disgusted her partner Odin — Freya, a proto-mythological Valkyrie, being to Odin as Aphrodite is to Hephaistos as Penelope is to Odyssseus/Ulysses as Helen is to Menelaos as Daisy is to Gatsby. Andvari’s curse also recalls the love potion levied by Iseult’s sorceress mother upon Iseult and Tristan. And we should be especially mindful of the underwater herb of immortality which Gilgamesh — in reaction to the death of his hairy (indeed red-haired) rival/friend Enkidu — sought and briefly possessed until a serpent rose from a well and snatched it away, returning to the depths.

In this light consider F. Scott Fitzgerald, from the end of his Great Gatsby:

And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. … And one fine morning —

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Let’s take a harder look at the Pelops myth in connection with that of Sigurd, Loki, Andvari and company. The beautiful boy Pelops is dismembered by his father Tantalus and presented to the Greek gods as food — with only Demeter partaking, and Zeus in turn damning Tantalus and resurrecting Pelops to replace the goddess Hebe as his own cup-bearer, just like Zeus does later with the Trojan Ganymede, i.e. Aquarius. Similarly the Norse boy/god Ottr is a cannibalized youth at bottom of Andvari’s curse. Note the similarlity between the names Andvari, Atlantis, and Tantalus, and likewise between Ottr and Odin, Attis, Atlas, apple, Apollo, Aphrodite, Hp/Hapi, Apis — this last name meaning “bee” and being the original name — Apia, “Land of Bees” — of the Greek peninsula which the resurrected Pelops eventually conquers and renames the Peloponnese, “Pelops’ Island.” Andvari is also equivalent to Athena’s proto-mythological North African precursor Anath/Tanith/Neith, whose symbol was an open hand — as in Chiron, Chi–Rho, the 5 twins of Clito, the 5 brothers of Europa, and Helen/Aphrodite’s plane-tree. In other words, Andvari equals Andromeda. Andromeda is Persephone is Core — as in the Indo-European *kor-, “turn, bend,” hence the Middle Irish cor, “circle,” and the English crown — and hence, too, curse.

Loki’s journey to Andvari was required by Ottr’s father, the sorcerer/farmer Hreidmar (note the reid and mar roots), because Loki and Odin and Honir had mistook Ottr for a mere otter and had killed him and served him to Hreidmar as a victual in exchange for lodging. Discovering this awful fact, Hreidmar demanded an impossible sum of gold in return for the freedom of his guests-become-hostages. He let Loki search for that gold. Hence Loki’s journey to Andvari — i.e. to Atlantis, the flooded/sunken age, the Golden Age, the age when the waning king and not the waxing son was sacrificed and eaten, when the finity, the mortality of life and love were recognized, honored, and institutionalized, instead of rejected in favor of some impossible, White/Apollonian quest for immortality and likewise for the unnatural apotheosis of love. Loki gave the ring and gold to Hreidmar, who was consequently killed by his son Fafnir, brother of Ottr, this with the aid of their other brother Regin, who planned to retrieve this loot from Fafnir by way of the young hero Sigurd’s assassinating Fafnir. But Sigurd intuited Regin’s intention, killed him, and thus kept Andvarinaut — unaware, though, of the curse it carried. In turn Sigurd rescued Brynhild, and the pair fell instantly in love. After giving Andvarinaut to Brynhild, Sigurd was bewitched by the sorceress Grimhild, queen of the Niebelungs (note the Nie- prefix), such that he forgot Brynhild and married Grimhild’s daughter Kriemhild/Gudrun instead. Gudrun’s brother Gunnar therefore wanted to court Brynhild. (Both these names, by the way, mean “white” as well as “war, killing,” as in Guinevere, Gwyneth, Igraine, Athena.) But Brynhild was still imprisoned behind the ring of fire, and Gunnar couldn’t penetrate it. Sigurd, however, under a spell cast by Grimhild, shape-changed himself to look exactly like Gunnar, passed through the fire, took Andvarinaut from Brynhild, and gave it to Gudrun. Still under Grimhild’s power, Sigurd furthermore helped Gunnar court and win Brynhild. But upon seeing Andvarinaut on Gudrun’s finger, Brynhild fathomed Sigurd’s betrayal and plotted his murder. Hence Gunnar’s brother murdered Sigurd, while Brynhild killed Sigurd’s 3-year-old son and then herself. …

The Merovingian’s internecine strife continued despite the death of Brunhilda. Concomitantly their royal power became eclipsed by that of their house officials. Thus the majordomo — Latin for “major one of the house,” translated “Mayor of the Palace” in English — became the effective ruler. In Austrasia this title became hereditary following the majordomo Pippin (or Pepin) of Hertsal (Pippin the Middle, Pippin II). It was his forebear Pippin of Landen (Pippin the Elder), original Austrasian Mayor of the Palace, who, under the powerful influence of Bishop Arnulf of Metz, had led the aristocratic revolt against Brunhilda. (Pippin II was the son of Pippen the Elder’s daughter Begga and Arnulf’s son Ansegisel.) Likewise Pippin II’s son Charles Martel — instead of Merovingian King Theoderic IV — led the defeat of the Moors at Poitiers in 732. Martel fathered Pippin “the Short.” This Pippin III garnered support from the aristocracy for a change of dynasty. When the pope asked him for assistance against the Lombards, Pippin made the deal contingent upon the pope coronating him. Seemingly for legitimacy’s sake, Pippin first married a Merovingian princess. The pope then annoited him king. Hence in 751 the last Merovingian, Childeric III, was deposed and exiled to a monastery — with his long hair cut (indeed tonsured). In 768 Pippin III died, having named as heir both his male children by said Merovingian princess: the elder Charles and the younger Carloman. But in 771 Carloman died and Charles — who, like his father, took a Merovingian princess as wife — proceeded to achieve exceeding military and cultural successes: he expanded his father’s Austrasian kingdom; he promoted a liberal renaissance; and all the while he advocated the (Red/Dionysian) Roman (i.e. Western Orthodox) Christian Church in contrast to the (relatively White/Apollonian) Byzantine (i.e. Eastern Orthodox) Christian Church based in Constantinople, and also, of course, in contrast to certain heresies, most notably Arianism. Charles was sole king of the Franks until 814. It was during Christmas Day mass in the year 800, in Saint Peter’s Church in Rome, that Pope Leo III seemingly surprised Charles by placing the solar crown upon Charles’ head and coronating him Emperor of Rome. Hence we have Charles the Great, Charlemagne in French, Karl der Gross in German, Carolus Magnus in Latin (and thus the adjectival form Carolingian).

The circumstances of Charlemagne’s coronation — occuring on a primary Red/Dionysian holy day in a primary Red/Dionysian city and church and conducted by a Red/Dionysian leader with, as we will see, a Red/Dionysian name (Leo; as the name Charles/Karl/Carolus itself, like carne and Carnival, is Red/Dionysian) — are telling. The solar crown is akin to Andvari’s ring and to the wreath of oak worn by Tantalus’s father, the river god Tmolus, who is involved along with Dionysus and that great exponent of a marvelously advanced but now sunken continent, the drunken satyr Silenus, in the story of Gordian King Midas — he of the cursed golden touch. Likewise the crown represents the eclipse of the Sun by the Moon, i.e. the Meeting of the Sun and the Moon, the Female and the Male, the Priest and the Warrior, the pope and the king. The crown — as in the word corona and the title Cronus (or Kronos) — rendered Charlemagne Rhea–Cronus, Ops–Saturn, Aphrodite–Hephaistos, Sun–Mercury, Venus–Mercury, Sun–Moon, Rex–Deus; it sealed his fate as a dual, female–male persona who according to the cosmic order — and hence for the greatest good — naturally and preternaturally sacrifices himself in every moment, eventually to the point of death itself. Rhea is equivalent to the Egyptian Re (or Ra), who is proto-mythologically female, just at the German word Sonne is feminine while Mond is masculine. The coronation is an eclipse, a signification of complexity; it represents the mythological moment, the apex — as in apis, “bee,” Apia, “Land of the Bee” (renamed the Peloponnese), and Hp/Hapi. Later I will explain that the ancient Egyptians rather ironically considered the Nile delta the mythological high-point of their whole land. The king of Lower Egypt, which realm was called Shemau (as in Joyce’s Shem) and included the Nile delta, was titled bit, “bee” or “he of the bee,” usually translated into English as “King of Lower Egypt.” I theorize that the Egyptians considered this king equivalent to Ptah — their bound, Hephaistos-like god of creation — and that this Ptah is equivalent to Peter (and hence the pope), as the name itself suggests. The Egyptians imagined honey bees the tears of Re. Such tears correspond to the ululations and semi-crocodile tears shed by womenfolk over the sacrificed hero. In other words, these tears correspond to the Meeting of the Sun and the Moon. This meeting, this apex, this Haran, is the moment of both rising and falling, White and Red — the moment of triumph, of quantum gravity. This is the nature of every moment, really: eclipse, coronation. In this light, note that Myrtilus’s curse fell most heavily on the house of Pelops’ eldest son Atreus, father of Menelaos and Agamemnon. Atreus, legend says, was the first astronomer to correctly predict using mathematics an eclipse of the Sun by the Moon. …

As you may have guessed, I see the Atlantaean–Merovingian legacy passing from the Carolingians into the dawning Middle Ages via St. Anselm (1033–1109) and especially via the aristocratic St. Bernard (1090–1153) and hence to the synod at aptly named Troyes, now in northeastern France. In 1128 Bernard who in the Investiture Controversy sided with the pope, was invited from his Clairvaux to Troyes, only some 30 miles distant. He soon played a prime role there in establishing the synod’s new order we now know as the Knights Templar. Indeed, Bernard is said to have drawn up the very rules of the Knights Templar. These rules stem from St. Benedict’s rather desultory and expressive 12 acts of humility via St. Anselm’s contrastingly progressive and introspective 7 steps-toward-God and St. Bernard’s own Cistercian program of progress from body (Black) to soul (Red) to spirit (White), which religious program was echoed in the secular romantic literature expounded by Chrétien of Troyes, according to which the hero is obliged to leave the comradery and comfort of the court (Black) and endure a personal (if not lonely) and life-long quest (Red) toward unattainable, perfect love (White). Owing to St. Anselm, the Cistercian program emphasized the humanity of Christ and thus the importance of Mother Mary. This Red/Dionysian religious emphasis corresponds to the contemporaneous secular emphasis upon the quest — including all the romantic baroqueness thereof. The Cistercians believed they could — chiefly through exploration of the self — recognize a fundamental resonance or duality if not union of logic and feeling, precision and soul, external and internal, divisibility and individuality, exceptionality and universality, transcendence and immanence/relativity, White and Red. Such duality is represented in the seal of the Knights Templar and is akin to the famous dualities of orthodox physics. …

Of Heisenberg’s Gemeinschaft (Gruppe Heisenberg), only one member — not of course Heisenberg — is recalled as having joined the Nazi party. The Nazis consciously played upon old mythological themes, selecting, for instance, the swastika and the colors red, white and black for their symbol. Germany in the 1920s and 1930s was looking for a new Charlemagne, a new Rex–Deus. The Nazis understood this need but they didn’t believe in such complexity, in multeity-in-unity, relativity, a Golden Age and a return thereto. They were cursed simpletons who had lost faith. They didn't recognize that Nietzsche’s principle of eternal return should be applied to every moment, every scale, not only to the universe as whole — and that return in general is therefore merely quasi, fractal. The Nazi brass believed in an extremely simple return relative to which local ascendancy was virtually unchecked and therefore a matter almost entirely of will to power. Rather than submitting to Andvari’s ring by being crowned with it and thus eternally (in every moment) returning it to Andvari, the Nazis thought they could possess the ring without suffering the concomitant curse. The constitution of the Weimar Republic, established in Germany soon after World War I, was in fact a beautiful, Golden/Legal document, a paen to Andvari. If in conjunction the requisite German knight were to have emerged, he would have come from the proto-mythological likes of the Neupfadfinder, not from the Nazis. Again, Cassidy:

… the Bavarian Neupfadfinder often equated the white knight with St. George the dragon slayer. As a constant reminder of their calling, a portrait of St. George as white knight slaying the evil dragon … hung over the door of the Bavarian ski hut built by Gruppe Heisenberg in the early 1920s. It was still there when Niels Bohr visited the hut over a decade later.

Although the contemporaneous German youth movement, including the Neupfadfinders, was to a considerable degree determined to advocate the Golden/Legal philosophy, the movement was too simple, to reactionary, a “freedom movement” away from the demeaning effects of industrialization, of mass civilization, of the city, which effects altogether seemed to suggest that the heroic (middle) ground lay outside the bourgeoisie. This was the flip side of communism. With over-intellectual youth (and in large part their mentors) actually taking to the hills, with communism pressing all around, and with France (i.e. Neustria, you might say) and England and the USA — but especially France — bringing to bear against Germany (i.e. Austrasia) the Allied victory of World War I, the Gunnar-like Hitler was selected White Knight of Germany. Amid economic depression and hyperinflation, the Nazis came to power democratically. In the crowded political field of 1930, only 11 years after their founding, the Nazis received a full 18 percent of the vote — 2nd place. In 1932 a pair of national elections were held, the Nazis winning 1^st place in both, with 37 and 33 percent of the vote. Finally, in 1933 the Nazis received 44 percent of the vote, as much as their 3 closest rivals combined. The Nazis were therefore invited to form the government.

But I’ve digressed too far from Schrödinger, who spent the years of World War II in Dublin, Ireland, at the new Dublin Institute for Advanced Study. If we look back at his early life in Vienna, we see Erwin snubbed by the aristocratic family of his initial love, Felicie Krauss. He was 25, she 17. Reared a nominal Protestant in extremely cosmopolitan Vienna, Schrödinger eventually married a Catholic girl from Salzburg: Annemarie Bertel. She was a teenager (in pigtails) when he met her. She seemed to him a peasant, but her father was a man of some considerable substance in Salzburg. Unlike Felicie, Anny was homely and masculine; yet she was intelligent and wise. Her birthday was New Year’s Eve (Sylvesterabend).

In 1930 Erwin and Anny attended a carnival-time (alias Shrovetide or Faschingzeit, this latter title being a close cognate of fascist) ball in Berlin dressed as the pharaohs Akhenaten and Nefertiti. The ancient Egyptians equated the husband–wife duo of Akhenaten and Nefertiti (note the Ne- prefix) with that of Shu and Tefnut, the first sexually differentiated offspring of the androgynous god of creation. As you may know, Akhenaten (c. 1350 BCE) is famous for promoting the worship of Re over the other prime Egyptian gods, especially over the masculine Amen (alias Amon; equivalent to Zeus and to Jupiter). Inasmuch, Akhenaten is commonly — although erroneously — considered a monotheist, indeed the initial monotheist. According to a popular line of reasoning, his Sun worship is the basis of Judaism. Akhenaten is also famous for promoting androgynous and otherwise rather mimetic art forms. Upon Akhenaten’s death Nefertiti, his chief wife, became the first female pharaoh. The exquisite ancient bust of her resides in Berlin’s Egyptian Museum.

  

Akhenaten, c. 1350 BCE, at left looking a lot like Hp/Hapi — and rather Asian.

Nefertiti. The Egyptian Museum, Berlin.

The Sun-disc itself the Egyptians called not Re but Aten (alias Aton, Itn) — as in the Greek god Adonis and the Norse Ottr. The Sun in its full, warm, life-giving complexity is proto-mythologically female; as a mere disc, however, it is proto-mythologically equivalent to the masculine Moon. Re is Rhea/Ops, wife of Cronus/Saturn, mother of Zeus/Jupiter. She is “the face”: Europa, Penelope, Ophelia, Helen, Hel, Helios, Demeter, Core, Persephone. She is “the coverer”: Kolyo, Kali, Kalypso, Callisto, Calliope — as in eclipse and apocalypse. She is “the face covered,” “the veiled one,” the Sun eclipsed by the Moon, the Sun at once in mourning for and hidden behind the ever dying and rejuvenating, proto-mythologically masculine Moon (Amen/Zeus/Jupiter, the male hero in general).

The name Demeter, I should point out, is cognate with the Cretan deai, “barley” — which word is linked to Hercules’ Deianira and to the English day and barleycorn, the latter being 1/360 of a meter and generally representing smallness yet genuineness and potential (as in seed, grain, and Quino). Demeter is likewise closely related to the Greek dêmos, “common people, district,” which Greek word was originally dâmos, as in dame and dom and the Old Irish dām, this latter meaning “a following, crowd.” These all stem from the Indo European *dâmos, meaning “division of the people, root”; and more generally from the root *dâ/də, “divide,” which root is present too in names/titles like Diana, Aphrodite, Odysseus, Odin, and Dien — as in Dienstag, i.e. Tuesday, Tiwes’ Day, Mars’ Day, Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday, Full Moon Tuesday, Full Moon Day, Full Monday.

The Meeting of the Sun and the Moon — perfect also in terms of the weirdly identical apparent areas of the face of the Sun and the face of the Moon as seen from Earth — is a most profound androgyny, a feminization of the male, literally a coronation representing the male’s cyclic transition from White to Red to Black, i.e. representing culture itself. Such coronation corresponds to a returning of the Andvarinaut to Andvari, a literal submission — Andvari and his ring symbolizing not only a Golden Age, not only the previous Great Year, not only dream and the dream-time but ultimately the extreme mystery of existence, the Golden principle of relativity.

Akhenaten and Nefertiti, Erwin and Annie: they are Charlemagne, Merowig, Rex Deus, Aaron and Moses. Their likes were the true heirs of the German kingdom. Erwin was the true Fürher from Austrasia/Austria.  

Erwin, I should add, was always especially attracted to teenage girls, and he engaged in several affairs with such during his middle age. In his copy of Thornton Wilder’s Bridge of San Luis Rey the following passage was underlined: “Now he discovered that secret from which one never quite recovers, that even in the most perfect love one person loves less profoundly than the other. There may be two equally good, equally gifted, equally beautiful, but there may never be two that love one another equally well.” Schrödinger had probably read this book during the spring of 1933, when he was deeply in love with Hilde March. He was also very fond of Somerset Maugham’s Summing Up, near the end of which memoir Maugham offers the following observation similar to Wilder's: “[W]hen La Rochefoucauld discovered that between two lovers there is one who loves and one who lets himself be loved he put in an epigram the discord that must ever prevent men from achieving in love perfect happiness.” Earlier in that book Maugham notes:

When novelists began to disclose the diversity that they had found in themselves or seen in others, they were accused of maligning the human race. So far as I know the first novelist who did this with deliberate intention was Stendhal in Le Rouge et le Noir. Contemporary criticism was outraged. Even Sainte-Beuve, who needed only to look into his own heart to discover what contrary qualities could exist side by side in some kind of harmony, took him to task. Julian Sorel is one of the most interesting characters that a novelist has ever created.

Eventually Erwin separated from Anny, but he did come back to her in the end. “Joy and sorrow has bound us so closely together in the past 41 years,” Anny wrote while they were still living apart, “that we don’t want to be separated during the few remaining years of our lives.” During the month or so before his death Erwin was wont to say to her, “Oh since I have you again, everything is good again.” His last words were, “Anniken, stay with me — so that I don’t crash.”