Logomachy Five: The Mocking Ape and Smiling God

This is part five of an ongoing interpretation of A. O. Spare's Logomachy of Zos. If you are just joining us, check out the earlier explorations as well. The full text of the Logomachy of Zos can be found here.

By A. O. Spare

This time around perhaps we should consider a few of the lighter maxims:

"Of whom do we ask forgiveness when we hate ourselves?"

"Never too old to learn, always too old to be taught."

"There is honesty of purpose in virility."

"I ask, what is conceivable when we cannot conceive even what we are conceiving?"

"The mocking Ape, the smiling God, both beckon and will endow."

This is going to be some free-form interpreting. Anyone care to comment on what the Ape of Thoth represents? The smiling God calls to mind images of the happy Buddha, how did he get so happy? Two roads to endowment call, what do you think the paths being offered are? Which would you take? (I think they can be tread together.)

Here is how my interpretation is gonna run for now, but this is more construction than anything else since the quotation leaves so much room for thought and creativity.

The Ape of Thoth is often thought of as human reason. It follows Thoth, the god of wisdom, around mimicking his divine wisdom with its weak play-acting. Here, however, the Ape isn't playacting but rather "mocking" divine wisdom. The smiling God, as I mentioned, I think of in terms of a smiling Buddha. Why does the Buddha smile? Because it has achieved releasement from the passions, desires and ties to the world and in so doing has arrived at the freedom of Nothingness.

We have two paths, both beckoning and both with something to give. One is the ongoing activity of human reason, the play of interpretations and constructs which admits nonetheless to its limitations and perspectival nature in a complete rejection and mockery of the very concept of a divine wisdom which would have access to some immortal absolute objective "Truth". We have the play of thought but no real absolute knowledge. In terms of this path, think about the saying "If a fool would but persist in his foolishness he would become wise." Reason can weave and weave, and eventually in the course of its very spinning its activity will become indiscernible from absolute stillness- just so long as all weaving is in mockery of Thoth.

Or you can opt for the path of the mystic and still thought direction. In a way you have the choice between excitatory and inhibitory gnosis, both of which can lead eventually to the achievement of Kia, the state of Neither-Neither.