The School of Night: bad asses with mustaches

Step One: Become Sir Walter Raleigh

1. Mustache/Sparse facial hair ☑
2. One golden earring               ☑
3. Member of secret society      ☑
4. Black attire                            ☑ or as often as I can.
5. English                                   I will see what I can do.
6. Beheaded                                ?

The School of Night



"Archimedes had claimed to be able to move the world if he were given a fixed place for a fulcrum. The emblem and motto develop Archimedes’ idea in a way peculiar to the School of Night. Does the emblem mean that the world is equal to nothing? Or that it is supported by nothing? Or that so great is human thought that though it have but a feather’s weight in the physical realm, yet by the contrivance of a machine it can move the world? From what bird came the feather? The mind or imagination of man was likened to a bird in a metaphor standard to the great Renaissance humanists. The fulcrum is a sort of equals-sign; the length of the beam on either side can be compared to a numerical multiplier; the weights are the multiplicands. What does the equation mean?"

"The weightless thoughts of man can effectively control the massive universe itself, if correct principles of rational transformation–proper levers, pulleys, lenses, clocks, quadrants–can be found. The microcosm can not only reflect, but control, the macrocosm."

However out there, Fredrick Turner's piece was quite interesting. I picked the above quotations because I felt like they embodied the essence of what Turner was getting at. The power of the mind the the seemingly endless possibilities for thought. Now at this juncture I find it premature to draw any conclusions, but his essay has given me plenty to think about and I plan on using the above quotes as theoretical thread upon which to weave my thoughts.

As an aside I am beginning to realize that when it comes to William Shakespeare everything is not as it seems. Shakespeare is no doubt an iconic figure and generally regarded as being one of if not the greatest literary mind to have ever walked the face of our pale blue dot. However the more I research the icon the more I found to be missing. Just this week on PBS there was a program called "The Battle of Wills" which was all about the portraits of Shakespeare and how most of the portraits of him were painted posthumously. Leaving only a couple of portraits that could have been painted while he was alive. Which to me was preposterous that here we have the vision of a such an iconic figure and it may not even be him. It blew my mind. It is as if Shakespeare in the last four hundred years has become a mythic figure in and of himself like much like the characters he created. Shakespeare in my mind has become so mythic that at this point it wouldn't even matter if he had ever existed, because regardless of who he was as a man the body of work lives on. This is crazy talk, but I am just waiting to find out that William Shakespeare was some sort imaginary identity created by The School of Night as an outlet for them to publish their creative works. If that were true then they would have changed the world in greater ways than anyone could have imagined. I say that because the majority of the members of the school of night were geniuses in their own right.

The point being that you think you know something, but when you dig a little deeper you start to find that you know nothing at all. The patterns and connections with the Shakespearean texts may drive me insane.