Fate

 

A great paradox exists in that instrumentalisation often increases our freedom and sense of power. The Calvinist and the Watchmaker - the gaze of death increases the force of our lives. This may be the law at the center of modernity, the dividing of its sea; rationalised death and beauty in contradiction. The clown and the virtuoso are the sacrifice before the Wheel of Fate. The labyrinth formed as Poseidon drives his horses off to another war against time.

A sense of this can be felt in the Carmina Burana: "Whatever Venus commands is a sweet duty." The Ave Formosissima transitions into a mechanical and triumphant death. One earns an equality with the gods through Fate - the ultimate paradox of the end.

There are often poles to any given territory, even dominion: the sea and the storm for Poseidon. The primordial, elemental, and mysterious gods resist such formalisation, symbols, and limits. They are difficult to place or even imagine, hence their being beyond sacrifice. Poseidon eliminates dominion in the form of his horses. The Behemoth flees from them.

And yet, even the most minor gods must have demonstrated such powers of non-dominion to earn their place. The God of Dice takes a seat at the table.

Venus persists beyond all territory, has no need of power in heaven, and even rules over the Ugly - they are her greatest warriors and worshipers. She transcends the power of the other gods,all remember how she was born of the greatest war. Nobility commands in silence; the subjugation of time to Beauty.

We are instrumentalisedby the waning will of the gods, and any certainty of form is eliminated even as great power is gained. One survives the ultimate gauntlet of violence, as if wandering through it as a Medusa figure - a queen, still amidst the finality of attrition. The sovereign must be impenetrable in being. Even as the Hero is forgotten, Hecuba is remembered.

The Fool is able to experience the whole, just as the King in his absence. Each remains in the center of the labyrinth as he wanders. And in his triumph over death man must turn the gods against Fate. This is the essence of his technical capacities and the culture which resists all Form. The Wheel outside of its center; the Fool attains immeasurable power.