Mystic Writing
anaretic degree: the sun at 29 degrees Aquarius, writing, repetition, fate, Hanne Darboven
*Last call for the cosmically practical 8-week writing course which begins February 26th. Come as you are, at any stage in a project. The planets will be our guides. 6 seats left. This post is a kind of preview, in a sense.
“Mysticism is the anti-Babel. It is the search for a common language, after language has been shattered. It is the invention of a ‘language of angels’ because that of man has been disseminated.” —Michel de Certeau, “Mystic Speech”
As I write this, our sun is at the final (29th) degree of Aquarius. It will enter Pisces late tonight. The anaretic degree—the final/29th degree of any sign—is a critical degree, one associated with fate, tests, limits, ends. Charged, on edge, a precipice shot through with passion,—-,beyond which the impossible might happen.
What does speech or writing sound/look like—-at this critical degree? What does the ‘kill point’ of a region do to our words and our words, to it? Where and what is your 29th degree? The sun, its fuel.
I’ve been writing a workbook to accompany the writing intensive that I’m hosting, which relates the energies of the planets and alchemy to discussions of contemporary and classical art. In it, I included the artist Hanne Darboven, who considered her work to be a form of writing.
Kitten kitten kitten, screen screen screen, scribble scribble scribble—-what Derrida called the archive drive, archive fever….
Anareta’s intensity, where a sign dies. Last call! and rattle! before ingress into the next. Perhaps there’s a look back at what’s happened. All of Aquarius has been traveled. The griever, the dweller in the past, like those in the griiiiiiips of what Freud called the death drive—-repeats, repeats…..
In the endless repetitive marks of Hanne Darboven: a mystical cancelation—maddening—a habit which might result in a kind of freedom—unhooking the mark, number, letter, and releasing it into another reality.