O under Yggdrasil

[eponine13]

I can't find a topic dedicated to solely this, so I've made my own lol.

I have read posts in other topics that say that the O at the bottom and the black dot at the top represent heaven and hell, and that the O at the bottom supposedly links Pelafina to Yggdrasil, in that the signature in her letter on page 642 is Mmmy, and that this O is the missing letter...

Just wondering if anyone else has any ideas on what this is supposed to mean.

[Nash]

Just wondering if anyone else has any ideas on what this is supposed to mean.

According to Claro (the French translator), it could be a cigarette burn.

The film would run through the projector on a reel and when it was nearing the end of the reel, a small symbol or cigarette burn would appear in the top right of the screen.

[fearful_syzygy]

[O]
June 19, 1994

Prometheus, thief of light, giver of light, bound by the gods, must have been a book.

[O]
November 11, 1994

Defend a stray's hun? Never used the word. Never will.

[skyl1ght]

"it's roots must hold the sky"



many images that i have found to represent yggdrasil are shown like this. this seems to me to represent infinity in the form of a cycle. circles also represent cycles. i think the circle (o) at the end could by a visual representation of infinity, such as the sideways 8 represents infinity. the sideways 8 and the circle (o) are similar in that they both are loops, and cycles, and in this being infinite. to support that the circle represents infinity is the focus of the poem itself: yggdrasil. as i recall the circle is located right beneath this poem, thus being connected to it. in mythology yggdrasil links all the worlds, yggdrasil itself seems to be the infinite, emcompassing all the worlds and binding them together in the large cyclic net. the cycle part is what makes it infinite and also what makes it a circle. so the circle (infinate) represents yggdrasil.
infinty is unknowable, because it is never ending, there is always more. some say the house is unknowable and infinite. another theory is that the house is god. god is soemtimes thought as infinate, and also being unknowable. ygggdrasil is said to be the holy place of the gods. maybe the house is yggdrasil. the house of god.
the placement of the yggdrasil poem and circle at the very end of the book suggests to me that it is of high importance. to me it could suggest, as i said, that the house is godly, and perhaps infinite. perhaps its placement at the end of the book, and the theme involving the cylce could suggest that the book itself is a cycle and infinite. so far it seems so, as everyone is still discussing its (still unknown) meaning and rereading it over and over (meaningless, just not an answer that is understandable (knowable), ...maybe there is infinate meaning?) maybe that is what: "this is not for you" means... the answer, the truth, is not for you to know (unknowable). i don't believe this means to imply that it is pointless to seach for an answer, just that the goal should be less of finding and reaching the end, and more of the path and exploring and the knowledge itself that we gain.
sorry for getting WAY off topic.

[OriginalIdea]

Actually I think it was dead-on.

Well, put.

I've always been thinking the complexity of the novel, that one of its many points is to be an example of human thought. Of the constant construction and reconstruction of ideas and connections and interconnections and the incredible web that comes from the connections we all try to make, mixed with all the connections that actually exist.

Whenever we ask ourselves of something in the past "I wonder why I ever did that" (whatever it might have been) we spend time analyzing why we would have done 'that' and all the different evidence to support our conclusion. There are some things that we can look back on and know 'Yeah, I did that because _____' and move on. But other things, we spend years, or the rest of our lives trying to figure out the real answer. The problem with our memory, though, is that as we go along, the memories degrade; and so we actually get further and further from ever determining that conclusion. Forever remembering different instances which might lend explanation to our own actions. The only way I see this differing from the book, is that the book won't degrade; we have it right in front of us. The way I see it being exactly like the book, is that not all of us read it a second time.

[modiFIed]

maybe it points to the fact that there is no defined meaning to the book, that it is, in a way, infinite and unknowable. maybe that is the source of the passion for the book. people are often drawn to the infinite and sometimes determined to find that there IS an end and there IS an answer, like on this board with everyone striving for a meaning. but infinite implies no end, no answer, unknowable ( i don't mean NO answer at all, as in meaningless, just not an answer that is understandable (knowable), ...maybe there is infinate meaning?)

Ha! CF this from me in that thorny Narratology thread.

What I'm talking about is that the reader's experience of the text as a whole leaves him with nothing in terms of shared meaning (such as a successfully resolved mystery or happy-ending romance would: "all's well that ends well" resolutions tend to uphold and underpin the basic (mis?)understanding that our world is ordered, logical and has a reason for working the way it does--"the invisible hand, having writ, moves on..."etc.) So with HOL and like texts the reader must engage in constructing meaning from various layered, unreliable, perhaps even patently untrue narratives (cf: constructing the Bible from various scripture/interpreting the Torah with marginalia/collecting the unwritten sayings of Confucious/re-experiencing the journey to enlightenment of the Bhodisatva) which point to no general conclusion: the reader must conclude something entirely personal. From Karen and Navidson's experience (real/not real?) filtered through Zampano (real/invented?) filtered through Johnny (honest/liar?) as presented by the Editors (?????), the reader is left with nothing --nothing's all--and by habit ("there must be meaning") attempts to construct meaning.


Thus the many pilgrims who stumble onto this board and beseech you with the question: why is in blue?

And the answer is: ( your meaning here )

Not to Spam my comments around or anything - I just like the synchronicity.

Edit: and to OI - there are fascinating psychological studies out there on the malleability of memory. It looks like the further we get from a memory--specifically memories where we do things we are not proud of--the more we tend to actually ModiFY the memory to render our actions honerable. This is how two people arguing over how something went down between them in the past ("No - I pulled him out of the lake - you were just standing there like a twit") are, in terms of how they've tweaked their own memories - both right.

Memory is shown time and again to be completely unreliable. We re-invent our own histories to please our psyche.

[OriginalIdea]

modiFIed; Right, exactly. There have been those who've come into this forum doing the very same thing with the novel. Notice the many many 'I don't have the book in front of me's that have come through. These aren't, necessarily, unreliable, but it does mean that the memory of the book is likely distorted somewhat.

Within the book, we have a number of different people referring back to something that happened before, and not always getting it right. ", is that right?, or am I getting confused?" (p 27) to give one minor example.

What made me think this book represented consciousness so clearly, in this fashion, was created by a multitude of different examples within the book, from a number of different clues having to do with other puzzles. But the thing I'm thinking is that this idea of the book representing consciousness isn't the 'end all be all of explanations' it's just one of them. When you're given a series of riddles to find the answer to, you turn to the past experience of several of the riddles you're given to help you answer one in the future. Hell, you might even use the answers from the riddles as the clues to one of the next ones; but in this inter-relation of topics, thoughts, examples, points, ideas, results, events, etc. etc. etc. is just my point exactly.

One of my favourite things to concentrate on his human behaviour itself; why we do the things we do, think the things we think, etc. But to know the answers to some of these kinds of questions (or, instead, to even come close to understanding them) I have to know how we think, and this is one of the things I've been thinking about; the idea that what we base our decisions on is based not only on our conscious actions and what we can remember, but also what we can't remember and the things that we don't realize we remember, and the connections between memories that we haven't made yet (connections, not memories).

But inside that, as I was talking with Merouda about just last night, isn't that I'm trying to actually find ONE answer. This is but one example of the complexities of possibility and within that, we can have one hell of a time (and a good one, mind) perusing through this book until it drives us crazy.

(Forgive if I have actually successfully conveyed this idea, I'm actually running late for work and just in a hurry. Probably shouldn't have come here, but I just love discussing these things with all of you.)

[fearful_syzygy]

That O under Yggdrasil is quite big, isn't it?

Don't suppose it might be a sly reference to Omega? 'O mega' means, literally, 'big O', you see (as opposed to 'omikron' which means 'little o').

[modiFIed]

While we're on it -

Note we have

ygg
d
r
a
s
i
l

Why the separation of the ygg from the rest?

Behold mortals - the drasil tree.

Similar but not the same. How HOL.

[fearful_syzygy]

Yes but...

[modiFIed]

Been covered? I did a quick search but didn't find anything beyond some etymologies.

Maybe it's nothing...personally I hate brownies.

[fearful_syzygy]

No, I'm just not sure what your point is. That Santharia had something to do with of Leaves? Surely the name of that race of treemen is derived from the word Yggdrasil rather than the other way around?

[modiFIed]

I just like the endless corollaries.

But you're right...it's backformation. Chiken before the ygg and all.

I still hate brownies though.

[fearful_syzygy]

I still hate brownies though.

What about muffins?

[modiFIed]

As I think I've said before - did a muffin write Lord Jim? Did a muffin discover penecillin?

A fig for thee, muffin.

[skyl1ght]

yeah, i wonder why ygg and drasil are seperated like that, ygg being horizontal and drasil being vertical.....

http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~cherryn....cgi/Odin.html

from above link:

Odin sacrificed himself for knowledge by hanging on the world tree, Yggdrasil, which means Ygg's horse. Ygg is a name for Odin and horse is a metaphor for the gallows.

http://encyclopedia.laborlawtalk.com/Yggdrasil
from above link:

The most commonly accepted etymology of the name is ygg "terrible" + drasil "steed".

http://www.whitedragon.org.uk/articles/ygg.htm
from above link:

Yggdrasil is commonly described as an ash tree. This is unlikely as, in the mythology, it is always referred to as an evergreen. A more likely candidate is the evergreen yew tree. Nigel Pennick suggests that an old name for the yew, needle ash, is the source of this confusion. There may also be a clue in the name Yggdrasil. Schroder interprets this as yew pillar (yggia from igwja = yew, and drasil from dher = support). To the Celts the yew was the tree of death and resurrection which ties in with the Hebrew Tree of Life and the general theme of these trees.

....not an ash tree??

from the last link:

Several symbols are used in magick to indicate Yggdrasil. The Celtic Triskele of three loops is also found in the Northern Tradition. It shows the view looking down from above the tree so that the three roots are clearly seen and it also shows the three levels. The rune Algiz is the most widely used symbol. This is also called a goosefoot, a very ancient representation of the goddess, tracing the line between her closed legs topped with the v-shape of her vulva. This and the fact that the Norns are guardians of the tree leads to the theory that Yggdrasil, the universe, if it has a gender, is probably female. Modern science also supports this idea as it teaches that sex is determined by two genes, the X and the Y chromosomes. A woman’s sex chromosome is XX, a man’s XY. At conception every foetus is female - XX. For a boy to develop one X gene must mutate to a Y gene.

kinda reminds me of the house as womb theory...


not sure exactly what it all means... but i'm guessing that the seperation of the ygg and drasil is probabaly not without reason behind it...?

[Raminagrobis]

Couldn't it just be a visual thing, to make the word look a bit like a tree? Or is that too obvious?

[Ellimist]

Couldn't it just be a visual thing, to make the word look a bit like a tree? Or is that too obvious?

I had not thought of that before.

that does tie in the with idea of the black circle being the sky and the open circle (O) being the ground. The roots (leaves?) are closer to the sky than the "sil" is to the ground, see the space?