"Erlösung dem Erlöser!"
Which is very strange, because it means:
"The Redeemer redeemed!"
In other words, Christ has saved himself. There's a technical term for this: Salvator salvandus. The "saved savior."
"The fact that in the discharge of his task the eternal messenger must himself assume the lot of incarnation and cosmic exile, and the further fact that, at least in the Iranian variety of the myth, he is in a sense identical with those he calls -- the once lost parts of the divine self -- give rise to the moving idea of the "saved savior" (salvator salvandus)."
My source is reputable: The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Macmillan Publishing Company, New York, 1967; in the article on "Gnosticism." I am trying to see how this applies to Fat. What is this "pity's highest power"? In what way does pity have the power to heal a wound? And can Fat feel pity for himself and so heal his own wound? Would this, then, make Horselover Fat the Savior himself, the savior saved? That seems to be the idea which Wagner expresses. The savior saved idea is Gnostic in origin. How did it get into Parsifal?
Maybe Fat was searching for himself when he set out in search of the Savior. To heal the wound made by first the death of Gloria and then the death of Sherri. But what in our modern world is the analog for Klingsor's huge stone castle?
That which Fat calls the Empire? The Black Iron Prison?
Is the Empire "which never ended" an illusion?
The words which Parsifal speaks which cause the huge stone castle -- and Klingsor himself -- to disappear are:
"Mit diesem Zeichen bann' Ich deinen Zauber."
"With this sign I abolish your magic."
The sign, of course, is the sign of the Cross. Fat's Savior is Fat himself, as I already figured out; Zebra is all the selves along the linear time-axis, laminated into one supra- or trans-temporal self which cannot die, and which has come back to save Fat. But I don't dare tell Fat that he is searching for himself. He is not ready to entertain such a notion, because like the rest of us he seeks an external savior.
"Pity's highest power" is just bullshit. Pity has no power. Fat felt vast pity for Gloria and vast pity for Sherri and it didn't do a damn bit of good in either case. Something was lacking. Everyone knows this, everyone who has gazed down helplessly at a sick or dying human or a sick or dying animal, felt terrible pity, overpowering pity, and realized that this pity, however great it might be, is totally useless.
Something else healed the wound.
For me and David and Kevin this was a serious matter, this wound in Fat which would not heal, but which had to be healed and would be healed -- if Fat found the Savior. Did some magic scene lie in the future where Fat would come to his senses, recognize that he was the Savior, and thereby automatically be healed? Don't bet on it. I wouldn't.
Parsifal is one of those corkscrew artifacts of culture in which you get the subjective sense that you've learned something from it, something valuable or even priceless; but on closer inspection you suddenly begin to scratch your head and say, "Wait a minute. This makes no sense." I can see Richard Wagner standing at the gates of heaven. "You have to let me in," he says. "I wrote Parsifal. It has to do with the Grail, Christ, suffering, pity and healing. Right?" And they answered, "Well, we read it and it makes no sense." SLAM. Wagner is right and so are they. It's another Chinese finger-trap.
Or perhaps I'm missing the point. What we have here isa Zen paradox. That which makes no sense makes the most sense. I am being caught in a sin of the highest magnitude: using Aristotelian two-value logic: "A thing is either A or not-A." (The Law of the Excluded Middle.) Everybody knows that Aristotelian two-value logic is fucked. What I am saying is that --
If Kevin were here he'd say, "Deedle-deedle queep," which is what he says to Fat when Fat reads aloud from his exegesis. Kevin has no use for the Profound. He's right. All I am doing is going, "Deedle-deedle queep" over and over again in my attempts to understand how Horselover Fat is going to heal -- save -- Horselover Fat. Because Fat cannot be saved. Healing Sherri was going to make up for losing Gloria; but Sherri died. The death of Gloria caused Fat to take forty-nine tablets of poison and now we are hoping that upon Sherri's death he will go forth, find the Savior (what Savior?) and be healed -- healed of a wound that prior to Sherri's death was virtually terminal for him. Now there is no Horselover Fat; only the wound remains.
Horselover Fat is dead. Dragged down into the grave by two malignant women. Dragged down because he is a fool. That's another nonsense part in Parsifal, the idea that being stupid is salvific. Why? In Parsifal suffering gave the timid fool "purest knowledge's might." How? Why? Please explain.
Please show me how Gloria's suffering and Sherri's suffering contributed anything good to Fat, to anyone, to anything. It's a lie. It's an evil lie. Suffering is to be abolished. Well, admittedly, Parsifal did that by healing the wound; Amfortas's agony ceased.
What we really need is a doctor, not a spear. Let me give you entry #45 from Fat's tractate.
#45. In seeing Christ in a vision I correctly said to him, "We need medical attention." In the vision there was an insane creator who destroyed what he created, without purpose; which is to say, irrationally. This is the deranged streak in the Mind; Christ is our only hope, since we cannot now call on Asklepios. Asklepios came before Christ and raised a man from the dead; for this act, Zeus had a Kyklopes slay him with a thunderbolt. Christ also was killed for what he had done: raising a man from the dead. Elijah brought a boy back to life and disappeared soon thereafter in a whirlwind. "The Empire never ended."
Entry #46. The physician has come to us a number of times under a number of names. But we are not yet healed. The Empire identified him and ejected him. This time he will kill the Empire by phagocytosis.
In many ways Fat's exegesis makes more sense than Parsifal. Fat conceives of the universe as a living organism into which a toxic particle has come. The toxic particle, made of heavy metal, has embedded itself in the universe-organism and is poisoning it. The universe-organism dispatches a phagocyte. The phagocyte is Christ. It surrounds the toxic metal particle -- the Black Iron Prison -- and begins to destroy it.
Entry #41. The Empire is the institution, the codification, of derangement; it is insane and imposes its insanity on us by violence, since its nature is a violent one.
Entry #42. To fight the Empire is to be infected by its derangement. This is a paradox; whoever defeats a segment of the Empire becomes the Empire; it proliferates like a virus, imposing its form on its enemies. Thereby it becomes its enemies.
Entry #43. Against the Empire is posed the living information, the plasmate or physician, which we know as the Holy Spirit or Christ discorporate. These are the two principles, the dark (the Empire) and the light (the plasmate). In the end, Mind will give victory to the latter. Each of us will die or survive according to which he aligns himself and his efforts. Each of us contains a component of each. Eventually one or the other component will triumph in each human. Zoroaster knew this, because the Wise Mind informed him. He was the first savior. * ( * Fat has left out Buddha, perhaps became he doesn't understand who and what the Buddha is. ) Four have lived in all. A fifth is about to be born, who will differ from the others: he will rule and he will judge us.