Stars and Trumps

Living, as he has, in the lower southern hemisphere for most of his life the present author has a distinctly southern acquaintance with the night sky. At the southern reaches of the Australian continent the stars appear quite different to how they appear at other latitudes, and especially how they appear in the history-rich temperate zone latitudes of the northern hemisphere. During his recent extended travels, therefore, which have taken him through most of Hindoostan, along the Malacca Straits, across western China, around the Japanese islands and then through the east Indies, he has taken every opportunity to study the night sky from the unfamiliar vantage of northern climes. There were some excellent clear nights when he was in the Himalayas, and again in southern Goa, and in parts of Siam, and in the boat from Shanghai to Osaka, and most recently, in the more equitorial zone, on the long sandy beaches of Bali and Lombok. 

The first thing of interest to a southerner is the pole star: a fixture of the heavens lacking in the southern hemisphere but literally pivotal to the workings of the northern sky. Polar mythology is primary in all the great traditions. The pole star is axis mundi, and the way in which the constellations circle it - notably the Dipper, scooping up the waters of Ocean through the seasons - constitutes the essential motifs of Hindoo and Chinese spirituality especially. This fact was underlined for the present author in many temples and sacred places he visited. The symbolism of the pole star and the cosmology centred on the pole star is everywhere. In some Chinese temples it is perfectly explicit; star maps adorn the altars. Even more ubiquitous, seen throughout the whole of Asia, is the sacred symbol of the hyperborean swastika which depicts the Dipper circling the axial centre, as in this diagram:

You cannot see this from the southern hemisphere. The author was happy to see it with his own eyes. Yet the pole star itself, he discovers, is unspectacular. It is surprsingly dim, isn't it? It is hardly a blazing feature of the firmament. Its importance only becomes obvious through sustained stargazing throughout the revolving tides of the year. 

Some things in the northern skyscape, though, are immediately striking. The three bright stars of Orion draw attention, in the right circumstances, to the enduring importance of Sothis, Sirius, the 'Shining One', which is indeed a blazing feature of the firmament and often dominates the night. It is visible in the south too, of course - the brightest star in the heavens the world over - but in the south it is seen from a different (reversed) perspective. The long history of human fascination with Sothis is not difficult to understand. On one night in eastern India it shone like a diamond high above the Arabian Sea, its light reflecting upon the dark, sedate waters. In Lombok, late at night, it was particularly clear, shining with a steady, intense white-blue light under the black silhouettes of hills, cliff tops, forests and volcanos. There is the Sun, the Moon, and then there is Sothis, the so-called Dog Star, which has loomed large in human mythology and starlore since the beginnings of the human adventure. On one occasion on his travels the author saw it in a classical arrangement with the three stars of Orion pointing to its brilliant presence low in the sky during the depths of the night. This is the arrangement of stars that some suppose is alluded to in the Three Kings and Star of Bethlehem story in Christian mythology, as in the picture below. It is not so obvious when seen in southern climes. In the northern hemisphere, at certain times of the year, it is too plain to be overlooked.

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This star-gazing, in turn, has set the author to consideration (exactly the right word, to con + sider, sidereal = star) of one of the key cultural representations of stellar mythology in the western tradition, the Star trump in the tarot. The possibility that the story of the three kings describes a particular arrangement of stars, and that the 'Star in the East' that the kings pursue is Sothis, reminds him that the earliest representations of the Star trump in the tarot depict that mythologem. Thus:

The first question to be answered regarding this tarot card is: what star is it that is being depicted? The most likely answer, surely, is Sothis. Let us note, for start, that this card is one of three that form a set and a sequence, the 'celestial' trumps: The Star, the Moon, the Sun. These seem to be deliberately arranged in the traditional tarot sequence in order of increasing luminosity. The Sun is the brightest object in the sky. Before it comes the Moon, the second brightest. And before the Moon card is The Star, the third brightest object in the sky - in which case it would follow that the star in question is Sothis. 

The identification of the star on the trump with the Star of Bethlehem is made explicit again in some modern tarot designs, such as this:

But it also seems to be the relevant identification in other early designs that show a handsome youth who, in context, is most likely King David (the star being King David's star, Bethlehem indicating the House of David and the Davidic royal line). Thus:

The context of this iconography, of course, is Renaissance Italy and when we compare this crude sketch of a male figure with the classical David we see the resemblance, thus:

To reiterate: these early designs are concerned with the Star of Bethlehem, the Star of David - simple Christian symbolism. When Christians think of stars it is the star that presided over the birth of Christ that must come first to their minds. The earliest tarot designs have this basic Christian meaning. Arguably, the star in question is Sothis, third most luminous object in the sky, and the star to which the "three kings" of "Orion's belt" point.

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At a certain juncture in the development of tarot symbolism, however, this simple Christian symbolism became complicated with a different iconography and the three kings of the east, or King David, as the case may be, were replaced by a female figure. It seems that this first occurred in northern Italy in the late 1400s. This is the symbolism that became standard and which continues in the tarot to this day. It introduces a second question regarding this trump: who is the female figure on the card? 

Again, many of the early designs deviate quite markedly from the later ones. Here, for instance, is one of the early depictions of the 'Star':

This is not Christian symbolism: it is pagan allegory. The female figure is most likely Ourania, the ancient Greek muse of astronomy in her night-blue attire. The star, in that case, need not be a specific star but is merely generic although, again, Sothis must be regarded as the prime candidate simply because it is the brightest star in the sky. Sothis is THE star, per se. 

Whatever the case, a female figure, rather than kings and David, makes her appearance, and in tarot designs thereafter the star is associated with a woman. Most likely, too, another factor assisted this shift. In some early sets of trumps the Christian virtues, personified in the medieval manner, appear in place of some of the now familiar designs. In such cases, the virtue of Hope (as in the trinity Faith, Hope and Charity) appears in place of the Star. Thus the female figure who later appeared on the cards is an adaptation of Hope, and indeed this positive attribution has continued to be part of the divinatory meanings ascribed to the card by cartomancers. 

On the other hand, this same woman becomes naked in the course of the transformation of the card designs and she thus appears to be the same female figure who appears on the Temperance card, the World card and elsewhere in the iconography of the trumps. In this respect she seems to be a representation of Anima Mundi - the World Soul - of Christo-Neoplatonic cosmology who was routinely depicted as a naked woman in this way. The World card, the last in the sequence of trumps, in particular, seems to confirm this identification. As with all the tarot trumps, the Star card is, we can see, a convergence of many different streams of late medieval and Renaissance symbolism, both pagan and Christian, iconographical and moral.

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It will be noted that in all the various designs of the star trump considered thus far there is no appearance of the waters that feature in the later designs. Historically, this is a late element in the design. First there is the star - some early designs simply show a star with no other details, as in the so-called Rosenwold Sheet, an uncut printing of card designs. See below:

Secondly, the female figure appears with the star, replacing kings and male figures. But only later does this female figure become associated with water. In the design that became normative, of course, she is holding pitchers of water and pouring them out. Star. Woman. Waters. These are the components of what became the traditional design. 

How then do we explain the appearance of water in the Star card, and how is water associated with (a) the star and (b) the woman? This is the third of the three questions to which the trump design gives rise. What are the waters we see on the card? There are three questions to be answered: 

What star is it? 
Who is the woman? 
What are the waters? 

On the face of it, the appearance of the water in the symbolism of the card seems to reinforce the view that the star in question is Sothis. The connection coincides with the ancient Egyptian themes that many have detected in the tarot trumps. No doubt, claims that the tarot is of ancient Egyptian origin are unfounded in themselves, but certain iconographical themes in the traditional designs, albeit of Italian origin, do seem to perpetuate motifs that go back to ancient Egypt. The Egyptian association of Sothis with the cycles of the Nile - and the star with water - is an association that persists in Europe well beyond ancient times. One can make a good case that this is why water appears in the symbolism of the card. The cycles of Sothis are related to the flooding of the Nile and hence, by extension, to fertility and irrigation. What star is it? Sothis. The water symbolism of the card tells us so. No other star has such a long-standing and archetypal association with water.

In that case, as many commentators suppose, the woman depicted may be meant to signify some Egyptian deity related to Sothis, most usually nominated as the goddess Isis. This, at least, would satisfactorily answer our three questions. The star is Sothis. The woman is Isis. The waters are the waters of the Nile. What has happened in the evolution of the card, then, is that these Egyptian motifs have been collected together in conjunction with the other streams of ideas such as Hope and Ourania and the Neoplatonic World-Soul. The final element in the design, the bird in the tree - almost always identified as an ibis - is likely to have been imported as part of this Egyptification at much the same time. 

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There are, all the same, other questions to be answered and other considerations that might count against such neat identifications. The tarot designs are complex and their origins and history notoriously obscure. There is much scope for speculation. Nothing is ever simple. What are we to make of the posture of the woman on the card, for instance, and her act of pouring out the water? In some early designs she holds a single pitcher and pours the water into a river (or other body of water, the sea?) In what became the canonical design she is holding two pitchers or jugs and is pouring one onto land and one into the body of water. What symbolism is afoot here? And why is she positioned as she is? 

As historians of the tarot relate, the prototype for the two vessels of water would seem to be alchemical depictions of the mermaid Melusine of folklore, an allegorical figure representing the conjunctio oppositorum, the union of opposites. In alchemical iconography she is depicted expressing milk from one breast and blood from the other, as below:

This is probably French symbolism, although the legends of Melusine were known in Cyprus and may have come into Italy through certain Milanese-Cypriot connections. Some tarot designs, old and new, are clearly related to this iconography as the following two versions of the Star card show. Without drawing attention to vulgar colloquialisms, the breasts of the mermaid become the 'jugs' of the female figure on the card, a somewhat obvious adaptation: 

In any case, the mere fact of water in the design becomes further complicated with the importation of the idea of duality, two jugs (pitchers) - the two breasts of the female figure - and the idea, by extension, that the two vessels contain two different waters or waters for two different purposes. Blood and milk in the Melusine symbolism signifies the salty and the sweet respectively. It is a fair surmise, then, that the two vessels of water represent the two types of water, salty and fresh (or sweet). This distinction is then formalized in the tarot design by having the female figure pour one vessel into the body of water (the salt water of the sea) and one on land (the fresh water of the rivers). At the time that this further distinction was made the female figure was turned around to be facing the left rather than the right and she was given a distinctive posture. This again, as historians of the tarot have remarked, is not unprecedented. The female figure seems to have been adapted to the typical posture of personifications of the zodiacal sign Aquarius, the Water-bearer, in medieval astrological symbolism, thus:

The basis for this further collapsing together and blending of symbolisms is plain. The evolution of the figure on the card now identifies her as water-bearer and a figure of conjoined opposites represented by the two modes of water, salty and sweet. In this we see astrological and alchemical influences upon the design, co-mingling with all the others we have noted, until it arrives at its canonical form, thus:

   

In a Christian context, this final symbolism is rich in allusions. Let us note, for example, a passage from the Revelation of John, 10:1-2:  

And I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven... and he set his right foot upon the sea, and his left foot on the earth.  

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It occurs to the present author, all the same, that there are other possible interpretations of this symbolism. One further feature of the design requires an explanation, and it suggests that perhaps a quite different order of symbolism was in play during the development of the trump. In the early designs, as we saw above, there was often just a single star depicted upon the card. It was almost always eight-pointed. In the canonical design this eight-pointed star blazing in the centre of the card is accompanied by seven smaller stars. These, presumably, represent the seven planets, or alternatively, it is conceivable that they represent the seven sisters, the Pleiades, since that grouping of stars is in the same proximity as Sothis. But the seven stars appear quite late in the evolution of the design. As we see in the examples depicted above, when the Melusine motif of two jugs (breasts) - the conjunction of opposites - was introduced there were four stars, not seven, accompanying the central star. Here it is again:

The stages of development, then, were one star, then four, then seven. The question is: how many additional stars should there be and what do they represent? 

If there are seven stars then we have some reasonable answers to the second part of this question. The additional stars represent either the planets or perhaps the Pleiades. But what of the four stars? When four stars were added to the design, what did they represent in the mind of the designer? The additional stars seem to be added to the design at the same time that water became associated with the star, and at first there were four stars, not seven. What, then, do four stars represent? The seven stars of the canonical design, it will be noticed, tend to be arranged somewhat awkwardly and are crowded in the given space. Designs with four stars on the other hand have a natural symmetry: the large star is in the centre and the four stars are arranged neatly around it. Perhaps the four stars are simply decorative devices just as the seven stars are instances of Hermetic exuberance? But that is unlikely. Every detail of all the tarot trumps seem to be deliberate. The designs may be arcane and there may indeed be a confusion, a hotch-potch, of various types of symbolism, but no details seem to be unintelligent or merely aesthetic. 

There is, however, no natural correlative to the four stars. Seven planets or the seven sisters (Pleiades) are natural models, but there is no natural set of four stars except, perhaps, the great Southern Cross, but that is a feature of the southern skies, not the northern. Most likely, then, they represent the four directions and/or the four seasons. The large star that they surround, therefore, takes on the symbolism of the centre, the axis. We have a central star and around it four smaller stars representing north, south, east and west and/or winter, spring, summer and autumn. But if that is the case, then we must question whether the central star is Sothis for it does not naturally carry such four-square significances. The star that does is, rather, Polaris, the pole star. Sothis is the brightest star in the heavens, but it is not, for all of that, axial. The pole star is dim to the eyes but it is the star around which the whole cosmos turns. 

It seems to the present author, in any case, that certain elements in the design of this trump might be better explained if we take the star to be the pole star rather than Sothis, or perhaps what we have is an overlapping of two different orders of symbolism. There are two great stars in the northern heavens. Sothis is the brightest. Polaris is the most axial. They are significant in two different ways. Perhaps, then, both stars come together in the Star trump? Perhaps they are interchangeable? Many of the themes we have considered might conceivably apply to both of these stars. We said, for instance, that Sothis is naturally associated with water, and it is by virtue of its association with the waters of the Nile, but the Dipper that, as we saw, circles the pole star, is conceived mythologically as a water-scoop that dips down into the waters of Ocean and irrigates the heavenly meadows. Thus, although it is perhaps less obvious and less appreciated, we might just as well attribute the water symbolism of the card to the pole star as to Sothis. 

In this respect, let us note - as some commentators have in the past - the fact that the female figure in the later designs is in a peculiar posture of arms and legs that somewhat resembles the swastika. Let us see her again:

It is clear from other tarot trumps - consider the Emperor card or the Hanging Man, for example - that the arms and legs of the figures are often made to form symbolic shapes. The Emperor's legs makle the sign of the planet Jupiter, for instance, and the Hanging Man's crossed leg makes the alchemical glyph for sulphur. Such devices are well established in tarot symbolism. In the canonical design, the naked water-bearer on the Star trump is very deliberately depicted with her arms and legs in a peculiar arrangement, and that arrangement strongly suggests the four arms of the swastika. 

We can explain that peculiarity by assuming that the star above her is the pole star. Other symbolism follows. In the Soofi tradition of the Mahometans - to draw upon another order of symbols for the sake of elucidation for a moment - much is made of various Koranic references to the "two seas" and their meeting place. These "two seas" are the two modes of water, salty and sweet. Their meeting place is the so-called bazahk, a symbolic notion of that place, the "heart", where a being of the physical world (the salty waters) can encounter the spiritual (the sweet). Such ideas are crucial to Soofi spirituality and by extension feature in Mahometan alchemy as well. By further extension, these same alchemical ideas inform the occidental alchemical tradition too, and this is what we find in the symbolism of the Star card insofar as it is alchemical. What this amounts to is this: that the bazahk, the meeting place of the "two seas", the physical and spiritual realms, is in the heart, the centre of one's being, and so to reach that place is to return to the spiritual centre, the axis of one's Self. The pole star has exactly such significances in a cosmological sense. The axis is where the "two seas" meet. 

One can interpret the Star card of the tarot in these terms. There is much more that one can say. Again, the symbolism of the tarot is rich and multivalent. These considerations are, at least, a starting point. In the first instance the meaning of the card is Sothic. The star is Sirius. But other streams of symbolism converge in its iconography. In particular, the axial symbolism of the pole star very well accounts for many of the themes of this card. The star is not only Sirius, but Polaris as well. 

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

Nieuwenkamp in Bali

The earliest European artist to record the landscape and people of the beautiful tropical island of Bali in the Dutch East Indies was Wijnand Otto Jan Nieuwenkamp, who signed himself W. O. J. N. Self-taught, prolific, versatile, a compulsive traveller from an early age, he journeyed to Bali six times among travels to Egypt, British India, Malaya, Sumatra, Java as well as many tours throughout Europe, drawing, painting and writing with sympathetic eyes everywhere he went. He was an especially restless orientalist. It was his life's work to explore the lands of the east and use those experiences as the material for his art. His personal motto was: Vagando Acquiro - As I wander, I acquire. 

His relationship to Bali and the adjacent island of Lombok - unspoilt paradises in his time - was especially strong. Amongst other things, he was the first man to ever ride a bicycle on the islands. This made a lasting impression on the native people; he appears in Balinese temple art as the legendary bicycle rider as in the picture below from a temple in northern Bali:

Nieuwenkamp on his bicycle

The present writer has been travelling through the islands of the East Indies in recent times, and has covered much of the same territory Nieuwenkamp covered in the first half of the XXth century.  Needless to say, over a hundred years much has changed. Bali, and increasingly Lombok, are now tourist havens crowded with beach-goers, tour guides, touts, resorts, hotels, minibuses and bars. Nieuwenkamp's bicycle has been replaced by the incessant noise of a million motorbikes. It is still (just) possible, however, to wander away from the main towns and resorts and to find areas of simple village life that remain relatively unchanged. In particular, the author has taken day treks into the interior of Lombok and found areas that are more or less pristine, populated by villagers still living a more or less traditional life of poultry keeping and subsistence farming. This gives some idea of the type of world Nieuwenkamp must have encountered during his journeys. 

Below is a photograph the author took during one of his walks around Lombok:

Nieuwenkamp was essentially a graphic artist. Drawing and design are his primary arts. In the Netherlands he has left his mark as a designer of boats and as an architect. In the East Indies he turned to painting but in this continued the habits of a graphic artist, never succumbing to painterly techniques. He adapted the graphic skills he had honed in his early life to the new medium of painting while retaining a rhythmical sense of line and decoration. It is this, along with a marked flatness and stylization that gives his paintings a strong oriental sense. This is precisely what makes them so appealing. There is no wedge driven between the graphic and the painterly. 

As we know, the expressionism of his age retreated from graphic elements in painting, ostensibly to let painting be painting. But this ended up with a mess of blobs and smears of paint across the canvas as content and craft surrendered to emotion and the expressive properties of colour. In large measure, this is where European painting in the XXth century went astray, culminating in the talentless vomit of abstract expressionism. Readers of this current journal will note that the tastes of the present writer lie elsewhere, and Nieuwenkamp is a very fine example of exactly the elements in art that he most values. The famous catch-cry 'There are no lines in nature' heralded an aesthetic disaster, for it signalled the end of intellectual art, properly speaking, for the line is exactly the interface of man and nature and to reject it is to abdicate the first premise of human representation. Nieuwenkamp has a beautiful sense of line. Here are some examples:

And here, below, are some paintings - the same sense of line and graphic skills adapted to painting with flat areas of colour and a strong emphasis upon pattern and elements of decorative design. These elements, let us note, are entirely in keeping with the native arts of Bali and other such places. What we find in Nieuwenkamp, as in the work of the best of the orientalist artists, is a beautiful synergy of European observation and skill with an oriental sense of linear rhythm. Orientalist art is uninteresting when it is merely oriental subject matter captured in an unadapted European style. Far more interesting are synergistic meetings of east and west. This is what we find in Nieuwenkamp. 

The present writer, at least, adopts this as a general principle, as various posts to this journal testify. It is the synthesis of east and west, or rather the western appropriation and adaptation of oriental motifs (in art, culture, language and everything else, even spirituality) that he loves, the east seen through western eyes or, even better, reimagined through the orientalist vision.

Click on any of the pictures for enlarged views:

Regrettably, much of Nieuwenkamp's work remains unpublished and unseen. Although he was meticulous and exacting and had a habit of destroying work that did not meet his own standards, he was prolific and produced a very considerable body of drawings, paintings and travel writings. As the examples on this page show, he deserves to be appreciated by a much wider audience and towards this it is to be hoped that more of his work is made available to the public in future years. 

It is also regretable that his artistic legacy in Bali is now increasingly obscured by the crass commercialism of the tourist trade. There are small havens of art and culture on Bali and Lombok today - such as Ubud in central Bali - but in the larger centres, such as Dempasar, Legian, Mataram, there are few signs of a robust artistic culture. The native people maintain their temples and their religious traditions (a fascinating lost branch of early Hindooism), and one can hear gamalan and see statuary of the traditional gods and demons of the islands at gateways and portals, but the tasteless superficiality of the tourist trade is otherwise quite advanced. A sure sign of this is the graffiti throughout the towns. (Graffiti, this author finds, is always a telling symptom of cultural health.) It is the same Afro-American graffiti of urban America that one finds in all outposts of globalized degeneracy. The art stores sell bogus batiks and kitsch portraits of island girls. In the towns, at least, the lyrical beauty of Nieuwenkamp's Bali is very hard to find.

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black  

Reflections on the Middle Kingdom

The author somewhere in western China. 

The contemporary People’s Republic of China is a far cry from earlier versions of the same entity under the dismal shadow of the Maoists. It remains a single party state, of course, and the said party is officially called the Communist Party, but as one gentleman, a German who has been living in Luoyang for many years, explained to the present writer over dinner one night, “there are no communists left in the communist party.” Instead, the Middle Kingdom has reverted to age-old patterns of rulership and the Party’s authority rests more upon a general perception of the “Mandate of Heaven” than upon credentials conferred by the historic class-struggle of the masses. All the same, there is no escaping the fact that the good people of China have, over the last few generations, been through a Marxist hell and signs of it are everywhere if one cares to see them. 

This is a place where all religion was officially banned, where the institution of the family was crushed under the One Child Policy and under collectivist fantasies, and where the Cultural Revolution attempted to forcibly eradicate 4000 years of tradition - one of the greatest crimes of the modern era. The Cultural Revolution, in particular, has left the Middle Kingdom impoverished at various levels. The Chinese boast of their modernization, but it is especially shallow and uncreative for all of that. China is a casebook study of a society in which there is no longer, or not obviously, a deep well of tradition from which to draw, but also of the fact that tradition is, finally, irrepressible: the patterns of the past remain as strong as ever somewhere below the surface. 

In Xi’an, at the end of the silk road, where the author sojourned, the entrance to the ‘Revolutionary Park’ in the city centre is now adorned with a larger than lifesize statue of Donald Duck. Most of the old city has been bulldozed and replaced with row after row of ugly, functional apartment blocks – that hallmark of Marxist social engineering. Yet, within the city’s historic Mahometan quarter, and elsewhere, life continues on much as it always has and there is a strong sense that nothing substantial has changed, really, in hundreds of years. 

For their part, the Chinese people prefer to forget about the Maoist nightmare. Chairman Mao is acknowledged by lip-service as the founder of modern China or, more significantly, is adopted into the pantheon of Taoist deities as the man who defined the notion of the “people”. Slowly but surely the wounds inflicted by the Marxists are healing and the Middle Kingdom reverts back to something like its old self, albeit transformed by modernity, or the sino- version of it. There are many paths to modernity. China chose a particularly nasty one. The Party justifies it by the manifest evidence of contemporary prosperity and the growth of the middle class. But this is a lie. The miracle of the Taiwan economy is there to show that the transition to modernization did not require such appalling violence. Similarly, the fact of Hong Kong, and Singapore, exposes the lie that it was the “colonial running dogs” who had held the Chinese back and that “thought reform” and “class struggle” and “reindoctrination” were the only path forward. The real success of modern China is purely a function of the size of its market, not the wisdom of the Party elders or the historical mandate of Marxist ideology. Indeed, the emergence of a prosperous market-driven China owes virtually nothing to Maoism. On the contrary, Maoism retarded the country for long dark decades and it was only when the Marxists all retired to their miserable godless graves that the place was able to begin to fulfill its modern destiny. 

The wonder of it is that the Chinese people are not outraged by the cost they have paid. When one stands under the ludicrous grin of Donald Duck at the entrance to ‘Revolutionary Park’ one wants to ask: so this is what all the suffering of the Great Leap Forward was leaping forward to?!! The Party seems intent upon the Disneyification of China now. The country is certainly well-managed, but it is rather like the management of a well-run amusement park.

The real essence of the Chinese tradition is a quandary to the Chinese themselves. What has become if it? There is an air of amnesia across the land. An example of this is the food. During Maoist times family traditions were so disrupted that the age-old heritage of traditional recipes and family culinary secrets were fundamentally disturbed. For those dreary decades the whole country – clad in their silly Mao suits – was nurtured on Party canteen food. The Maoists, of course, were peasant farmers who loathed peasant farming. It is estimated that some 30 million or more Chinese died of starvation under the wise guidance of the Great Helmsman. There is no gainsaying it: Mao really was one of the great lunatics of all time. The extraordinary thing is that the army allowed him to inflict the damage he did. What remains now is a much diminished cuisine. In truth, real Chinese food can more readily be found in the Chinese diaspora than in the homeland. The present author knows this as a fact. As previous posts to these pages relate, he spent months exploring the communities of the Malacca Straits Chinese, especially in Phuket and the Prince of Wales Island. One finds a rich Chinese culinary heritage there, unbroken and proud. Food in China, whether in the western outposts of Xi’an and Luoyang, or the modern metropolis of Shanghai, is a tale of disappointment, by and large. These days chefs from China travel to centres of the diaspora to relearn Chinese cooking. If this is what has become of the kitchen, one can imagine what impact the mad hand of Maoism has had in other areas of life. 

The spiritual vacuum is most noticeable. The lineages of Taoism were stopped in 1951 but resumed again in 1987. This represents the hiatus that befell China in all walks. In much of China the sacred places of Taoism are now Disney-style theme park exhibitions where the Party has erected signs – belatedly – commanding that abstract entity “The People” to “Respect Our Heritage!” Traditional Taoist medicine and other traditional sciences are now being reconstructed according to Party requirements. Again, if one wants the real thing rather than the Party reconstruction one needs to go to Taiwan or Hong Kong or Singapore, or George Town, or even San Francisco.

Similarly, the great guiding wisdom of Confucius still exists as a bedrock of Chinese social customs, but Mao had a particular disregard for the Confucians and tried to wipe their influence from Chinese society altogether. Taoism and Confucianism are a matching set, a heaven-ordained synergy that, together with Chan Buddhism, form a complex that is the spiritual core of the Chinese tradition. (Perhaps more on this in a later post.) Today, Confucius has been rehabilitated as a great pioneering “educator” in the Party’s official secular history but his true place in Chinese ideas is largely unrecognized. There are signs of renewal though. There is a ‘New Confucianism’ movement and the contemporary scholar Jiang Qing (ironically the same name as Mao's wife!) has bravely proposed a political Confucianism to replace the withering experiment of Marxism. He believes – a view with which this present author is in sympathy – that Confucianism represents the best and purest and most authentic genius of China and that many of the Middle Kingdom’s social and political difficulties in these present and coming times would be best addressed by a new embrace of the Confucian tradition. The present author was privileged to visit several of the great extant Confucian temple complexes during his recent travels. The temple in Soochow was especially impressive. Such once-sacred places are now essentially schools and universities but it was noticeable that many Chinese visitors greeted the temples with solemn reverence and there is at least a functioning priesthood again. 

The Confucian temple in Soochow

All the same, the symptoms of secularization of the tradition are evident everywhere, not least in the quite remarkable spread of evangelical Christianity in China. How can the spread of Christianity be a symptom of seculaerization? Chinese Leftism, like Leftism everywhere, is essentially a species of self-harm. The thing that motivates a Leftist above all else is self hatred - usually dressed up as a concern for 'justice' for others. It is always a self/other pathology. In China, it was the Chinese tradition that the Maoists hated first and foremost. And it remains expressions of the Chinese tradition – let us note the conspicuous example of Falun Gong – that the Party continues to persecute first and foremost. Into the vacuum thus created moves exotic ideologies and especially, these days, Christianity. These are boom times for Christian missionaries in China, although one needs to note that – remarkably – Christianity grew and advanced during the Cultural Revolution too. Again, that “revolution” took aim at China’s own traditions – it was an extended exercise in self-harm - and in doing so it created the space for external ideologies to fill the void, rhetoric about “colonialism” notwithstanding. 

For the present writer this fact is a salient lesson. In the contemporary West, Leftists – “cultural Marxists" who are conducting their own “cultural revolution" through the sophisticated tactics of “soft totalitarianism” – are first and foremost out to do as much harm to the Judeo-Christian tradition as possible. They are perfectly happy to have Mahometanism and Lamaism and other exotic creeds infiltrate the occidental spiritual arena purely because it advances the vandalism of their agenda. (How else is one to explain 'Feminists for the Burqa' or 'Gays for Shariah'?) This is what occurred in China, mutates mutandis. Why, one must ask, did the Party, does the Party, so tolerate Christianity yet crushes a movement like Falun Gong? The answer to this question reveals much about the real nature of Leftism everywhere. 

Throughout his travels across China the present author encountered converts to Christianity at every turn. Islam too is advancing, or at least holding its own. Maoism deliberately damaged the native traditions of China. The Party remains watchful lest unwholesome vestiges of that tradition arise again. The sublime play that is religion has been replaced for most of the population with the inane trinkets of Disney consumerism. But there is – this writer can report – thirst in the ground. Sadly, the Chinese are turning to Protestant forms of the Christian religion as a cure. It is estimated that in a few decades time, at the current rate, China will boast one of the biggest Christian populations in the world. Sadly, because it is actually a side-effect of the Marxist vandalism of the Chinese tradition, undertaken in the demonstrably false belief that it was a necessary step on the path to modernity. It is just as sad – in the same manner - that people in the West are turning to Boodhism and Kung Foo because their own heritage has been systematically and tirelessly sullied by the vicious social engineers who now rule over the institutions of cultural production. This writer’s travels and experiences in China have served to underline this for him and to bring such politico-cultural issues to some new clarity.

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

The Garden Windows of Soochow

Relief sculpture from below a bridge illustrating the patterned windows as part of the heritage of Soochow city.

Soochow, or as some call it Souzhou, is known as the ‘Venice of the East’. An ancient city built on a series of canals, it is rightly famous as a showpiece of traditional Chinese culture. This is not to downplay the extraordinary damage it sustained during the Maoist’s so-called Cultural Revolution – damage that can be seen everywhere in China – but thankfully much of Soochow has remained intact. On his recent journeys throughout the Middle Kingdom, the present author made a largely unplanned detour to Soochow and was happy to be stranded in a city of waterways, boutique cafes and classical gardens. The latter – the gardens – are, they say, among the very best in China and represent the aesthetics and values of classical Chinese horticulture, albeit minus the guiding principles of feng sui which are among those elements that fell foul of the aforementioned ‘Revolution’. The gardens, that is to say, are largely secularized nowadays, and have been stripped of many traditional features. Nevertheless, in their essential design many of them go back several hundred years or in some cases nearly a thousand. 

The largest is the Garden of the Humble Administrator. It is the most famous but, as it happens, probably the least inspiring. Far better are some of the smaller gardens such as the Garden of the Master of Nets – the author took lodgings directly opposite this small garden and found it both beautiful and unique. Also worthwhile was the little-visited Garden of Couples – a lover’s garden – that is more compact and modest but appropriately intimate and romantic. Temples and other religious institutions were completely trashed during the Cultural Revolution – the most wanton outbreak of mass vandalism in history – but gardens largely emerged unscathed. Certainly, they were removed from private hands and placed under public control, and they were often turned into "fitness parks" for the ‘People’s Recreation’, but they generally remained as before. These days, some of the lost elements are being reconstituted. In the Garden of Couples, for instance, a public notice now explains to visitors – Chinese and foreign – that the ‘Book of Changes’ pavilion (a beautiful, quaint little building at the edge of a lotus pond) was used for a “type of Taoist fortunetelling once popular in the old days”. 

If you are looking for traditional China and want to learn about the Chinese tradition, the People's Republic is not the place to go. You would find more of the authentic Chinese tradition in San Francisco.  The Cultural Revolution was appallingly thorough. It is common to encounter Chinese with next to no knowledge of their cultural history. It is a country where religion was outlawed for an entire generation. The great Buddhist temple in Shanghai was turned into a plastics factory. Many Chinese have never even heard of Confucious. The Party, though, recently admitted for the first time that the Cultural Revolution was a "mistake" and have instituted a re-culturation program called "China Dream". It is only now that the Chinese people are slowly, slowly recovering something of what was lost. 

* * * 

One of the notable features of the gardens of Soochow, as well as the walls that define them, and buildings all along the canals of the city, are windows set with geometric, floral and other patterns. There are, literally, hundreds of different designs on display. They are everywhere, such that they form one of the conspicuous visual features of the whole landscape. 

Many posts ago, this present writer made mention of the similarities between the Chinese sense of geometric patterning and that of the Mohammedans. The garden windows of Soochow are, surely, another example. The writer, in fact, began his travels through the Middle Kingdom in the Mohammedan western provinces, following the silk road to Xi’an where one finds the oldest mosque in China. From there, he followed the Chinese Musoolmen tradition to Louyang, and then to other locations, and found to his own satisfaction that it extends all the way eastwards to Shanghai. There is no mosque in Soochow, but the city is near to Shanghai and there can be no doubt that Mohammedan influences, driven by trade, extended all the way from west to east, and could not have missed such a cultural centre. 

There is no need to prove “influences” and “contact” though. It is enough to observe that many of the patterns that adorn the garden windows throughout the classical gardens of Soochow, and much loved by the Chinaman, are identical to favoured patterns used extensively in the Mohammedan tradition. 

The author made some attempt to collect photographs of as many instances of these windows as possible, but there are simply too many. Most are rectangular, some are circular, some irregular. All are abstract and, thankfully, none are representational. Only a few designs are repeated. In most gardens every window has a unique pattern. They allow veiled views from one space into another. It will be noted that in a modern relief sculpture situated under a bridge on one of the main canals, the subject of which is the illustrious history of Soochow (see the picture at the top of this page), these geometric windows appear as if they are regarded as part of the city’s heritage. The appearance of these patterns on bus stops and the like is, of course, a modern affectation, but it does seem likely that the origins of many if not all of these designs extends back into the city’s past. This page (see below) features examples of the garden windows of Soochow. They are much to this author's taste.

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black