AI illustration by Paula Galindo.
By OZ FRITZ
Special guest blogger
This week: Chapters 21 “– 34, Going Aboard” through “The Cabin-Table”
Chapter 21 puts us right at the borderline of land and sea. Ishmael and Queequeg arrive just before 6 a.m. in the misty dawn to board the ship for departure. They meet resistance at this membrane from Elijah, a Prophet in Moby Dick as well as in the Bible. Two chapters earlier, Elijah had given them a vague and sinister warning about signing up to ship out with Captain Ahab. The Pequod receives onboard her final supplies before casting off on a three year excursion to hunt whales. “It was now clear sunrise.” The voyage begins on Christmas day.
Melville had an excellent education growing up in New York City in privileged circumstances. He was well-read and well-traveled. Moby Dick seems an early attempt to write the Great American novel while simultaneously expanding out to encompass the entire world. On another level, it reads as a profound treatise on the inner life – magic, spirituality and mysticism; framed as the classic model of a journey into Unknown territory encountering monsters, Leviathans and who knows what other challenges to their sanity sailing the seas of the Unconscious.
The Bible appears a transparent major influence in Moby Dick. We’ve already been through a sermon on Jonah and the Whale in a church modelled off a whaling vessel. The Biblical Ishmael is considered the ancestor of Arabs and a Muslim Prophet. His name means “God has hearkened.” Ishmael reputedly lived to the age of 137. 137 = “a receiving; the Qabalah.” Ishmael adds to 151. 151 = “TETRAGRAMMATON OF THE GODS is one TETRAGRAMMATON”, which seems another way of saying “God has hearkened.”
151 also = “The Fountain of Living Waters (Jeremiah xvii 13).” Of course, our adventure takes place in the watery world. The “Fountain of Living Waters” will turn up literally, in the eponymous chapter 41, “Moby Dick,” when Ishmael mentions the story of the Arethusa fountain in Syracuse, Sicily “whose waters were believed to have come from the Holy Land.” Arethusa is a nymph in Greek mythology who symbolizes “the untamable essence of the feminine nature.”
My understanding holds that Kabballah came into existence through esoteric Hebrew scholars and mystics searching to unlock or decode secrets found in the Bible. Melville seems to have known as much about the Bible as Aleister Crowley. It follows that Kabballah turns up in Moby Dick as part of the Biblical influence. The very first thing we read in the novel suggests this:
“Etymology
(Supplied by a Late Consumptive Usher to a Grammar School.)
[The pale Usher – threadbare in coat, heart, body and brain; I see him now. He was ever dusting his old lexicons and grammars, with a queer handkerchief, mockingly embellished with all the gay flags of all the known nations of the world. He loved to dust his old grammars; it somehow mildly reminded him of his mortality.]
Usher is derived from Ush meaning “to enter into.” In the Bible, ushers were doorkeepers serving the temple. Right from the get-go we’re told we’re in School. His coat, heart, body and brain suggest the four common neurocircuits. Reminded of his own mortality can suggest working on higher consciousness (via lexicons and grammars) to survive that mortality. However, he’s already dead. The initial communication in Moby Dick comes from a dead guy.
The “queer handkerchief” with all the flags perhaps foretells the international composition of the crew of the Pequod which gets delineated in chapter 40.
The first alternate language spelling of WHALE is given in Hebrew as the letters Tau and Nun final to give “Tan” from Job 7:12 “Am I a sea, or a whale, that thou settest watch over me?”
Tau = The Universe and Nun = Death in the Tarot.
In the next section, “Extracts” which consists of various quotes and accounts of whales throughout history, literature and mythology, the 11th quote is from Rabelais, a noted Cabalist and major influence on Aleister Crowley and James Joyce among others (the influence of The Whale in Finnegans Wake will be examined later). The 13th quote comes from Spenser’s The Fairie Queen, a classic of magick literature.
In this week’s chapters, after the Pequod sets sails, we encounter several new characters and learn more about others. Also, we have discussion about metaphysical aspects of life on the ocean and the endeavor of whale hunting. Chapter 23 briefly tells of Bulkington and his spiritual relationship to the sea where we are told the highest truth resides. Chapter 24 gives a vigorous defence of whaling by Ishmael who invokes various historical characters to support his argument. This continues into chapter 25 where we find some discussion of the magical act of anointing in relation to the coronation of kings and queens. Ishmael wonders if the act of anointing might apply to the inner as well as the outer.
Chapters 26 and 27, both titled “Knights and Squires” introduces us to the Pequod’s senior crew, Starbuck, Stubb and Flask in that order. The chapter title suggests the story of Don Quixote who imagined he was a knight errant. Cervantes, the author of said story, has his “stumped and paupered arm” clothed with “leaves of finest gold” by God at the end of chapter 26, Starbuck’s chapter. John Bunyan, author of the spiritual classic The Pilgrim’s Progress gets mentioned in the same breath. The Pilgrim’s Progress tells of journey into the Unknown in search of communion with God. I read it for the first time recently based on a favorable mention by Crowley combined with finding a copy for a buck at a thrift store. I highly recommend it if one is able to get past the overtly Christian trappings. It seems relevant to understanding one metaphor behind Moby Dick. Andrew Jackson, the 7th President of the United States gets mentioned heroically in the same breath as the other two, but I have no idea why?
Stubb appears next in the chain of command at the beginning of chapter 27. His many confrontations with death by getting close up to the monsters he hunts “converted the jaws of death into an easy chair.” Coincidentally, this also occurs with bardo training which confronts death in less dangerous situations. Just as Starbuck is an inveterate coffee drinker, Stubb likes to constantly smoke. Last, but not least, we meet Flask. These three, Starbuck, Stubb and Flask command the smaller boats that go after whales when spotted. They comprise the “Knights” in Melvilles medieval metaphor. Next come the “Squires,” the men who steer the smaller boats and help with the harpooning. They work in close conjunction with the Knights. Queequeg is Starbuck’s squire. Tashtego, a Native American, squires for Stubb. He’s compared to “the Prince of the Powers of Air” which seems an analogy straight out of the Cabala. Daggoo, a gigantic African native “was the Squire of little Flask who looked like a chess-man beside him.” Daggoo gets compared to Ahasuerus, an ancient Persian king who appears in the Bible.
Chapter 28 brings us to the book’s central human character, the enigmatic, mysterious, mythopoeic, strangely marked and scarred Captain Ahab. He tends to be regarded as the personification of obsession and evil like his Biblical counterpart, Ahab the King of Israel who “did evil in the sight of the Lord above all that were before him” (1 Kings 16:30), but he’s a much more complex character. A couple or so chapters later we’re told he has a conscience. In this chapter we find out that a certain whale chomped off his left leg. He didn’t replace it with a wooden peg leg, but with ivory carved from the jawbone of a sperm whale. In one sense, Ahab is part whale. Counter to his dour disposition, he’s observed, more than once, almost smiling.
Shakespeare seems up there with the Bible as a profound influence on The Whale. Chapter 31, “Queen Mab” gives a little tour of Stubb’s subconscious life when he describes a dream he had to Flask of Ahab kicking him with his ivory leg. No mention of Queen Mab in this short chapter but those familiar with Shakespeare and people who know how to google know that she is a fairy in Romeo and Juliet, a miniature creature who rides her chariot over sleeping humans helping them “give birth” to dreams.
Chapter 32 “Cetology” provides a literary taxonomy of whales. Ironically, the Sperm Whale was once known by the English as the Trumpa. Sperm whales, like Moby Dick are the largest whales. Their name is a misnomer having nothing to do with male reproductive cells, but rather named for a waxy substance called spermaceti used in ointments, textiles, cosmetics and industrial lubricants. At the chapter’s end, Melville declares that he’s leaving his cetological system unfinished. He justifies this then reveals the scope of what he’s trying to accomplish:
“For small erections may be finished by their architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me from completing anything. This whole book is but a draught – nay, but the draught of a draught. Oh, Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience.”
Next week: please read Chapters 35-42, "The Mast-Head" through "The Whiteness of the Whale."
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