Theophanic Hibernation

Grafton (1992) cover of P. K. Dick's Valis. Image Source: Esoteric Online.

Welcome to Epiphany. It is a celebration of a Theophany, a day when god appears to man. In the Christian tradition, Epiphany marks the Theophany of the Christ child as a god who appeared in human form and was baptised. Today follows yesterday's Twelfth Day of Christmas; it is also Orthodox Christmas Eve in the Julian Calendar.

Theophanies are mysterious, tricky events that have been recorded in religious texts and myths throughout human history. They pop up a lot in Greek myths. If you want to read a modern account of an 'actual' Theophany, consider reading (if you haven't already), Philip K. Dick's semi-autobiographical novel, Valis (1981), published just before he died.  In Valis, Dick claimed to depict his encounter with god on 3 February 1974. It can be pretty hard going, but it is fascinating: he describes a human grasp of the Gnostic divine mainly in temporal terms, a "loss of forgetfulness," a recovery of our hidden memory of life across the ages. To see god is to see time as it really is, the point at which time turns into space. Dick thought it meant living in 'orthagonal time,' and consciously existing in past and present lives simultaneously: "We are not 3D subjects trapped in linear time; we are 4D objects composed of hypertime." Where it goes from there, well, you have to read it to find out.  It presents an ancient subject, revealed in modern terms. Dick was absolutely fearless when it came to facing and conveying the mad twists and turns of the human mind grasping the ungraspable; there are some excerpts online here from the appendix.

Dick's famous, cryptic journal, Exegesis, which was a theophanic basis for Valis, is being published in two parts in 2011 and 2012, at well over 2,000 pages. Volume I, which was published on 7 November 2011, is available here.  Wiki: "Editor Jonathan Lethem described the ... [new Exegesis] publications as 'absolutely stultifying, brilliant, repetitive, and contradictory. It just might contain the secret of the universe.'"  Some sample Exegesis pages are online here.

On that note, the blog will be hibernating until Candlemas, aka Groundhog Day.