Matthew Wood

©copyright MMXXV Matthew Wood

things speak for themselves 

––––– Jean Gebser (1997, 17).  

Matthew Wood

MS (Herbal Medicine)

More than a dozen times I descended down the mountains into the old railroad hub of Cumberland, Maryland, where my friends Robert Schmidt and Ellen Black eked out a living investigating the roots of Western language and thought. Now both of them are, sadly, my “late friends.” 

A conversation with Bob was a delight. He spoke in the “scientific dialect,” like the professor on Gilligan’s Island. Once I asked him where that speech-pattern came from. “Oh, Euclid. It was his way of showing off.” 

Bob was not a show-off. That was just a habit of speech he had picked up studying mathematics and Greek. Despite his brilliance, he was unassuming and preferred to meet his friends where they were in their vocabulary and thought-world. He recognized me as someone whose dominant pattern of thought was unconventional. I called it the "intuitive method." After he died I learned his word for it: phasis. 

I only learned of Bob’s understanding of the old Greek terms phasis (FAW-sus) and logos (LAW-gus) through audio tapes he left behind after he had passed away. I never got a chance to talk to him about this during his lifetime; it was only after his death that I realized the shocking implications of his thought.  

One of the basic features of European languages is logic. This method expands on known knowledge (“if”), adds to it or challenges it, to generate new knowledge (“then”). This speech construct is technically known as the syllogism (“if. . . then. . .”).  The word comes from syn (with) and logos (logic). It is the foundation of scientific research (premise, test, conclusion), legal and political systems (rational argument), and even religion (right and wrong). It passes from these institutions into common speech and---since cognition is often formed by language---into the mental fabric of Western people. It is so entrenched that we don’t realize there is any other way to speak or think—the opposite of logical is illogical.  

There is another way of speech, however, and it is nearly universal in traditional, ancient, and indigenous cultures. Instead of premise. . . challenge. . . conclusion, the person simply states their experience, without embellishment or judgment. This is very important for survival: “I got sick from drinking that water.” Simple fact. This type of speech “allows the thing to speak for itself.”  

There is no established name for this type of speech today, but it was named by the ancient Greeks, who were there when the new form of speech was invented. People were so excited about logos and logical argumentation, that phasis forgotten for two thousand years. Classicist Jerry Stannard discovered and defined the word for a modern audience. He called it "explanatory speech" in his Pre-Socratic Methodology (1961), latter appearing in an article in The Philosophical Journal (1965). I have a pamphlet of the article extracted from the journal, entitled Method and Logic in Presocratic Explanation (1965). In 1967 Stannard became a professor of history at the University of Kansas, Lawrence. I presume that Bob got the idea of phasis from Stannard. Even if he figured it out on his own, he would have given Stannard credit preceding him in discovery. 

Until Stannard, the usual translation of phasis was "“stuff.” Bob pointed out that the word could be translated “appearance,” “report," and “phenomena.” In other words, the speaker is “reporting the appearance of the thing."  He also described phasis as “allowing things to speak for themselves."

In logic, knowledge is expanded by unfolding a sequential argument: premise, challenge, conclusion. With phasis, on the other hand, it is expanded by inference, analogy, and contrast. These largely depend on wordplays which require thought by association, intuition, and imagination, rather than logic. The comparison or contrast can provoke a new realization--the "aha moment." Here is an example from the ancient Greek “philosopher,” Heraclitus the Dark (c. 544-c. 483 BCE), especially noted this form of speech.

The road up is the same as the road down.  

This sentence states a fact which is self-evident, but if so, why did Heraclitus bother to make the observation? He is making a commentary on the rise and fall of empires, ideas, reputations, relationships, one’s own life, etc. It carries the mind into contemplation. There is no premise and no conclusion; no right or wrong. The listener makes of it according to his predisposition. The sentence operates on two levels: as a factual statement and as a suggestion of something else listeners will have to puzzle out for themselves. 

One implication of phasis it that it infers the existence of two worlds: the factual and the super-factual, if we may call it that. This is a very important consideration because logic is linear in time and space and ends with a conclusion that is inescapable and does not cause reflection but agreement or disagreement It therefore implies only one basic dimension and one possible answer. Arranging the above observation as a syllogism, we would say: 

If a road goes up, it must go down.  

Notice how this changes the emphasis completely. It is no longer an observation—it is an argument. It forces the listener to agree or disagree. It imposes a right answer and a wrong. It does not encourage free association but forces the listener to agree. The perspective is linear, material, and uniform in outcome. Instead of encouraging self-determination, freedom of thought, or depth of contemplation, the rational method forces the listener to accept outside authority. The only “logical” conclusion tells us that the road that goes up also has to go down. The individual is brought into conformity with authority and the group commanded by the authority. Everyone must “think like everyone else.” This makes the person a member of an “us versus them” group: we have to oppose anyone who disagrees with our conclusion. 

This is a “colonizing” form of speech, to use the modern term, because it demands the agreement of listeners. The opposite of rational and logical are irrational and illogical. This is, from beginning to end, the method of thought of Western cutlure. 

We can characterize the outlines of this kind of society. It would tend to have a fixed worldview that participants have to agree with or be branded "irrational," "outsiders," or "opponents." Powers of observation of the outside world would become increasingly inaccurate, so that people could be convinced to believe in things that are patently untrue. An imitation of the syllogism would convince people of things that are not true. People would be easily deceived or become deceivers themselves, as long as "it sounds logical." Society would be directed towards dictates rather than the pursuit of personal, philosophical, or spiritual solutions. The physical nature of the narrative will encourage exploitation of physical resources, encouraging the material basis of consumption and material fulfillment. At the same time, people will be socialized to be guilty about consumption, because the resources are limited. Education would pre-suppose a materialist, rational, cause-and-effect, “scientific” basis, discouraging the discussion of spiritual life or “God.” If there is a discussion of God it will result in answers that are "right" or "wrong." 

A linear, time and space bound world be considered the “real world” free of personal bias, when in fact it is based on conformity, coercion, and the colonization of cultures that do not conform to the agreed-upon conclusions and arguments. This is exactly the world we live in today, under the thumb of the dominant society. Any argument against colonization is itself innately colonial. Anyways, "our democratic institutions" are the best form of politics, medicine, science, etc.       

This colonizing view can be so all-encompassing that it becomes impossible for the dominant culture to appreciate any other way of thinking or speaking. How do we know this? Because there is no word for this kind of speech—even though it was the widespread and original form of communication before the rise of the syllogism. The tenets of logic are imposed unconsciously on people and societies, as if it were the only right way to think.   

The Romans didn’t have the syllogism until they came into contact with the Greeks. Julius Caesar said:

I came. I saw. I conquered. 

This is simply a statement of fact. Because of this manner of speech, the Romans, like the American Indians, are often viewed as “noble” and “upright.” The Romans concluded that Greek was the best language to lie in. The Indians said, “white man speaks with forked tongue.” Logic, as we will see, can be used to reveal or conceal truth.  

Even within the dominant culture phasis is widely used, but it is usually supplemental to rational discourse. The few people who still speak this way tend to be people living close to the land. I commented to a farmer one time, “That’s a nice mosquito net you have there.” He replied, “I found it in my pasture, so I wear it.” The austerity of his statement was shocking.  

Signatory Speech

Perhaps the reason that I thought and spoke according to the ancient, nearly extinct phasic method, as Bob noticed, was that I had learned how to think and speak on a remote Indian reservation which had been in treaty relationship with the Federal government for only 18-20 years. English was a barely used second language on the Big Cypress Reservation in the Everglades, where my father was the BIA teacher. The Seminole or Mikasuki children asked my parents, 

Do white people eat rabbits?

They thought this would explain why white people were so notoriously cunning and deceitful. This is an example of thought-by-association.      

Another person in the dominant society who was aware of thought-by-association was my first mentor, Dr. Francis Hole, of Madison, Wisconsin, who taught me (during Quaker Sunday school teacher when I was eleven). Here is an example of a phasis statement by Francis recorded at a Yearly Meeting about 2000: 

Green vegetation and the ground on which we step are bathed in sunlight—but not plant roots, not our own inner light: they work in blessed darkness.   

This multi-leveled statement uses inference, contrast, and analogy. The contrast is between the above ground and the below, the light and dark, green vegetation and roots. The analogy is between plant roots and “our own inner light.” The inference is found in the term “blessed darkness.” It is not explained but simply stated as a personal observation that darkness is blessed. The inference for this Quaker soil scientist was that darkness was blessed because it contained the roots of things, which were analogous to what Quakers spoke of as the "Inner Light." 

The fact that Francis used phasic speech to describe the existence of a hidden, non-linear, subjective world would be quite possible for a deeply reflective Quaker minister and scientist. Faced with terms like “dirt” and “soil,” Francis was keenly aware of the linguistic limitations of the dominant culture and was always searching for ways to stretch the mind beyond the flat surface of conventional experience. Because he was an empath from a young age, he was aware that there is more than one layer of reality. Educated at the George Friends School in Chester, Pennsylvania, he observed that the headmaster never spoke in silent meeting, but “emanated the verities of education.” 

I would have liked to discuss these sorts of things with Francis, but I only heard about them after he died. Fortunately for me, the dear soil scientist passed on to me through empathic awareness the primal experience that has guided my life: "Nature is Alive." This is an alternative world which can only be described in the signatory language. 

Experiencing Speech

Bob asked that people feel the effect that phasis and logos have upon the mind. Phasis allows the listener freedom of thought. One may miss the inference, analogy, and contrast altogether. Or even disagree with the statement or comparison being made. There is no “right answer.” 

If one chooses to engage the possibilities, they “stretch the mind,” as Bob says. Francis’ statement stretches the mind in numerous ways. It promotes the inner life it is describing because we have to step back and reflect upon the statement to understand what is being said. If it terminates in an "aha moment" the intention of the speaker has been fulfilled.  

Logos forces the listener to agree or disagree. It discourages contemplation because the conclusion is given for the listener or reader. As a result, and due to the linearity of the method, it encourages a materialistic point of view. Rather than stretching the mind to contemplation, Bob noted that logos made the mind tense (“if. . . “) and then relaxes it when the conclusion is reached. It therefore has a neurologically programming effect, causing people to feel relief when the statement concludes. It promotes addiction. If we disagree with the conclusion, we feel agitated.       

Originally, the word logos did not have the same meaning it has today. In the time of Heraclitus, it simply meant a word, or something said, but it also inferred the ability to weave words together “to reveal or conceal.” This meaning adhered to logos in Greek down until several centuries ago, according to Bob. In the opening line of the Gospel of John (“In the beginning was the Word”), logos still meant revealing/concealing. 

We see from the adoption of this word to what we call "logic" was hegemonic because it inferred that the only way to reveal or conceal through words was to use "logic." This new approach quickly came to dominate Western intellectual culture. Science is founded upon this approach: the experiment follows the premise-test-conclusion model. This is so dominant in modern Western (and now world) thinking, that no other method seems as capable for determining truth. Of course, it is a truth restricted to time and space and therefore, if there is more to existence, it is not a representation of the truth or the real at all.

Since anything that does not fit the syllogism can be dismissed as irrational, the speaker is granted a certain power. The syllogism programs the listener and therefore possesses a certain amount of “charisma,” if not addiction. These traits seem to excite the Western mind and they have been used to minimize other cultures, sub-cultures, and individuals who do not conform to the rational program. 

History of Phasis and Logos

Aristotle (384-322 BCE) says that Plato (c. 428-c. 348 BCE) was the first to consciously use the syllogism to acquire new information. For Plato, logos still meant the interweaving of words to reveal or conceal (Schmidt, 2003; Berrettoni, 2006), but he developed and used the syllogism.    

Plato did not value logos over phasis but considered both to be valid ways of deriving meaning from the world. In fact, he invented terms and methods to assist both kinds of speech. He introduced the term eidos (“idea”) to describe a permanent essence, principle, idea, or archetype that lay behind the observed, external world. For the Seminole children the rabbit was an idea: cunning=rabbits=white people.    

Another example comes from the life of Plato himself. We can see an analogy between cup, cave, and womb. They all reflect the same primal eidos, which might be called “cupness.” Diogenes the Dog offered the classical retort: “I have seen Plato’s cup and table but not his cupness and tableness.” Ironically, Diogenes perfectly illustrated Plato’s eidos because he was so fundamentally dog-like (living in the streets, barking at people), that he was known to everyone as “the Dog” (cynic). We see the dog archetype in his speech, thinking, and very existence--even if Diogenes did not. 

It is interesting to note that Diogenes’ argument is not based on logic but on phasis: it is merely a description of what he has seen. He claims only to see a cup and table. But the statement is ironic because he is drawing on a lifelong experience of cupness and tableness to construct his thought. In fact, his mind has been taken to the contemplative level by Plato’s approach: Diogenes does see the cupness and tableness, but he devalues these in favor of the cup and table; the outer sight above the inner.     

Plato’s introduction of the concept of the eidos, idea, or archetype provided a new tool for consciously working with inferences, analogies, and contrasts. It could be used to consciously create archetypes or intuitive themes that might otherwise be difficult to define. This led to the development of a whole language of archetypal thinking in Western culture that reached a peak during the Renaissance. During that time period astrology flourished and the tarot was invented--a language of archetypes.

The archetypal motifs associated with the planets were part of the speech of the era.  Sir Francis Bacon, therefore, still referred to his "Solar" queen, men of commerce as Jupiterian, and scholars as Saturnine.  The Sun was the ruler, the Moon was the people, the ruled, the constantly changing masses that needed a ruler. It made so much sense. Mercury represented the scribe, Venus the lover, Mars the warrior, Jupiter resources or money, and Saturn, barriers to all the above.    

The introduction of eidos represents a change in thinking and expression which is not found in the older writings. The archetype is not firmly outlined or described by Heraclitus, nor does it appear in the book of Genesis, which continuously uses wordplays to bring out hidden meanings (Robert Alter, 1992, Matthew Wood, 2021). However, the Platonic eidos eventually became well established. Paul (Romans 4) speaks of Abraham as the “type of faith.” This form of analysis was accepted in Biblical exegesis, and therefore in other walks of life, down to the late sixteen hundreds. Both the Rabbis and the Church Fathers pointed to the story of Adam naming all the creatures as a reference to the pre-existent archetypal forms of all creatures. Adam was able to see and name them because he was the complete archetype, the Anthropos, as it was called. Archetypal thinking is a characteristic of many of the important Renaissance philosophers of Nature, such as Marcilio Ficino, Paracelsus, and Jacob Boehme: they see an entire archetypal world shining through the physical world. Plato experienced that as the real world from which was derived the material world. 

After its invention, the syllogism came to dominate Greek culture, while the older method of speech was marginalized and then forgotten. In time, the Greeks came to dominate the Roman Empire intellectually and Greek norms eventually formed the basis of thought and speech in all the major European tongues. The awareness of phasis and logos was buried “several languages back,” under an avalanche of conquest, religious wars, ethnic cleansings, scientific conflicts, commercial exploitations, forced religious beliefs, cultural revolutions, political movements, state-sponsored education, and a declining interest in things internal and spiritual. 

The advancement of logic in Western culture is mentioned by the “clairvoyant scientist,” Rudolf Steiner (2014, 120): “There has hardly been a time when there has been so much lying as in the countries around the Mediterranean Sea” as there was in the classical period. “Lying, telling people things that are untrue, was a very striking and characteristic quality of the life out of which Greek and Roman culture emerged.” However, he says that logic is not inherently good or bad, it simply is a linguistic tool.

The second cultural current which fructifies Western culture is the Judeo-Christian. From the first pages to the last we see extensive use of phasis, although towards the end, when the Greek-educated Jewish gospel-writers take over, logos in dominant. 

In Genesis wordplays and inferences are widely used, but because they are pre-Platonic, they do not revolve around precise, identifiable archetypes. Abraham's faith in his God is continually tested, but he is not a “type of faith” until the Epistles of Paul, who had a good Greek education. Genesis simply gives a narrative, without pointing to deeper or inferred meanings.  

The storyteller of Genesis is aware of the existence of the syllogism. Abel is able to think-by-association. When Creator tells Adam and Eve to take off the fig leaves and put on animal skins, he is giving a message which Abel (the herder) grasps, but Cain (the farmer) does not. The inference here is that the vegetable/reptilian world of unconscious, involuntary response is not a basis for spiritual growth, unlike the warm-blooded animal part of us--animals dream, bond, love, and raise their children. When Cain's vegetable offering is rejected Creator switches from phasis to logos: "if you do right, will you not be accepted?" Not only did Cain fail the test but his descendant, Lamech, used the syllogism to justify murder: "If Cain was forgiven seven times, I will be forgiven seventy-one times." The Genesis storyteller just described man-made law, and religion (Wood 2021).    

Aristotle preferred the syllogism, and this increasingly became the gold standard for gaining knowledge in Western culture. Science has largely replaced religion today, but it is not widely recognized that science is a religion because it is based on supposed “self-evident truths.” In fact, they are suppositions. The word “paradigms" was introduced by Thomas Kuhn to represent these assumptions. In Revolutions in Science (1970) he shows that in all its different fields and conclusions science is always is based upon assumptions. 

One of the foundational paradigms of science is that imagination, intuition, and instinct are not reliable. Therefore, scientific facts are based on an editing of language and experience. The multilevel experience of life, through the use of these faculties, is ignored. Since there is no proof that the logical method is the only way to grasp the world, science is not based on ‘truth,’ but upon paradigms.  

In addition to Plato’s method, there are still other approaches to formalization of phasic thinking and speech. Such a device would be the parable. Semitic languages tend to be more explanatory, and Aramaic has a formalized method for making signatory comparisons: “it is the case with x the way it is with y.” Aramaic was the native tongue of Jesus, and this method is characteristic of his speech pattern. We have over thirty parables attributed to him with no more than two or three from any other known person of that era. Indeed, down to the present, this is a unique way to speak.      

When we look at the great range of recorded statements from speakers of the classical era in the Western world, we find only two who spoke almost entirely using the methods of inference, contrast, and analogy: Heraclitus and Jesus. It is obvious that both were conscious of their own speech patterns because they did not just use but preferred inferential speech. Heraclitus was nicknamed the Dark/Obscure/Occult, while Jesus is said by his first biographer, “Mark,” to “speak in parables to the blind.” 

Despite this similarity, Heraclitus and Jesus are culturally worlds apart and their use of phasis is quite different. The former is interested in the transitory nature of life, as the above example shows. Jesus, on the other hand, is endeavoring to describe an invisible, spiritual world that is unknown to the person he is speaking to.    

It was difficult to translate the original Aramaic phraseology into Greek easily, so the parables of Jesus were rendered “the kingdom of heaven is like . . . .” instead of a more correct literal form, “it is the case with the kingdom of heaven, the way it is with . . . .” Both translations come across as awkward in Greek and English.   

Here’s an example of two parables from Jesus which come down in the tradition side-by-side.

The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in the field, which a man found, and hid again. He went off in joy and sold all that he had, so that he could buy that field. 

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.

Each parable consists of an analogy, but in addition, the two parables contrast with each other. The emphasis in the first is on the treasure; in the second on the man who found the treasure. So, there is an analogy and a contrast. 

I used to be bothered by the way these parables were placed side-by-side in the Bible; then I realized that they were used this way intentionally for contrast or similarity—probably by Jesus himself, or possibly by an early Aramaic listener; certainly not by the Greek-educated gospel writers.   

For the sake of illustration, let us reduce these statements to syllogisms. One could say, “If a poor man found a treasure in a field, he would have to sell everything he owned to buy it so that he could legally possess the treasure. If there is a kingdom of heaven, then it is like the treasure in the field.” This approach is tedious, boring, and makes the kingdom of heaven into a possibility, whereas the original statement treats it as a reality that can only be imagined.            

Another phasic method that has been documented in both Jesus and Heraclitus is “antithetical parallelism.” This method is based on a contrast or analogy between two lines of poetry, or between the first and second clauses of a sentence.   

Jesus: 

He who is not with me is against me; and he who does not gather with me scatters.  

Heraclitus: 

What was scattered gathers, and what was gathered blows away.

Note that Jesus would have been better off using the syllogism here: "If a man is not with me, he is against me." However, he is so immersed in the phasic worldview that he doesn't think in such terms. That he could have is clear from another antithetical parallel. "If by the finger of God I cast out demons, then know that the kingdom of heaven is present." This is clearly intended to bring judgment on listeners. It is a syllogism using poetry, antithetical parallelism, and wordplays. 

In Heraclitus' expression we see his point is, again, the temporary nature of life.   

English is not completely devoid of phasic language. Our more archaic expressions for simple experiences and emotions are often phasic: handy, mousy, brainy, dogged, catty, horseplay, nightmare, grass roots, white-washed, seeing red, etc. They are all analogies from things in the world to social or personal experience. In these words, we feel another aspect of phasis: it gives us a more physical experience than logos. In some fields--engineering, for example--practitioners throughout the world speak in English, because it is suited to linear processes.  

Hardly anyone today looks into the structure of their speech or the inferences found in the roots of language. This means that they are speaking in an unconscious fashion, projecting the prejudices and assumptions of their linguistic culture upon their listeners.

It is, of course, considered disreputable today to trace or uncover subtle linguistic relationships. . . . Even though language points to such relationships and interconnections, present-day man carefully avoids them, so as to keep them from bothering his conscience. Yet despite this, the things speak for themselves (Jean Gebser, 1997, 17).  

“Things speak for themselves.” That is the definition of phasis. Because of the dominance of syllogism in modern thought it has been hard to even perceive the existence of this way of thinking and speaking. I once heard the alternative biologist Dr. Bruce Lipton speak when he had just resigned from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. When he attempted to introduce analogical thinking into discussions with his peers in the biological sciences, he was met by silence. Finally, a colleague said:

That’s not how we think. 

Colonizing Speech 

Because the Western culture thinks and speaks in an unconscious fashion, assuming that the dominant method is “scientific” and reflects “truth,” logic is pushed upon indigenous people and sub-cultures without appreciation that there are different speech-ways, and that these can be valid, different, and for some subjects, such as psychological and spiritual life, decidedly necessary and superior. Because the Western method is taught in an unconscious fashion, it does not admit of questioning and is passed along as an assumption of truth. This is the worst kind of colonization, because it is unconscious. 

Among themselves, indigenous people do have ways of referring to the problem. Wallace Black Elk, in Black Elk: The Sacred Ways of a Lakota (1991), recounted how he purposefully set out to learn how to think like a white person––not to pass for one, but to understand what they were like. What he found was that white people were good at giving material value to objects, while devaluing and suppressing spiritual value and personal experience. 

One way in which we see this is in contemporary progressive politics wokism, and social justice movements, where the speakers believe they are helping to preserve sub-cultures and indigenous peoples, but in fact are using colonizing speech, demanding agreement with their premises and conclusions. They are also assuming a materialistic, linear, literalistic paradigm which may not be intrinsic to the cultures they are pretending to protect.

For example, the concept of “ownership” is extended to spiritual topics, so that members of the dominant society are criticized for “cultural appropriation” if they adopt or have similar ideas. These colonizing speakers cannot see that the introduction of “ownership” to the spiritual world would be deeply offensive, if it were not in fact ridiculous, to people who have authentic spiritual experience. While it is true the ceremonies, ceremonial objects, and customs can be said to be “owned” by the culture that uses them, this can never be true of genuine spiritual experience.    

Charlie Thom, a Kurok medicine man in northern California, was visited by some young Native activists from Berkeley who brought to his attention the fact that he was using methods in his ceremonies not traditionally used by his people. They pointed out some that he had adopted ideas from other indigenous people (even white people) and others that he had introduced himself. The elderly man was busy setting up a sweat lodge at the moment, so he assigned several of his students to take careful notes, so that he could learn from the young people.   

It was impossible, after the event, to tell this story without laughing at the naïveté of the interlopers. In addition to supplying the community with a new joke, they provided a “medicine story” about applying superficial or materialistic standards to spiritual life. They were "colonized."      

Since Western society is divided into sharply delineated groups that adhere to specific syllogistic arguments—rights and wrongs—it is not possible for the contemporary colonizers, even if they are well-meaning, to see that authentic spiritual experiences do not belong to groups but to individuals. Notice that Black Elk only speaks for himself—“the sacred ways of a Lakota.”          

How Subcultures Deal with Colonizing Speech 

Today’s culture is dominated by dogmas that are treated as if they are entirely settled. There are no discussions about whether or not secular humanism, materialism, and rationalism are beliefs; they are taken-for-granted as the basis of education and intelligent conversation. Yet, they are nothing more than paradigms. Unexamined, they constitute a colonial system imposed on subcultures, indigenous societies, and individuals who think for themselves.    

What does a culture do when it is attacked by colonializing speech? We can take a lesson from some of the cultures that have been trapped in English by conquest of arms. The most obvious rebellion can be noted in Ebonics, or Afro-American speech. Here there is a constant re-creation of ordinary words in new ways, which make the language more capable of expressing social, cultural, and spiritual experiences that are not encompassed by standard English. This is often done by wordplays or non-standard word-usages that stretch the mind. Native Americans take care of this problem by the re-definition and inclusion of a few crucial terms taken over from the dominant culture: “medicine,” “medicine power,” “medicine wheel,” “vision quest,” “self-appointment,” etc. The later refers to individuals who appoint themselves experts in some field without having an empowering vision or life-experience.  

I am myself a part of a subculture: the metaphysical/New Age/astrological/shamanic white culture that has been damned by the dominant society, beginning in the latter half of the seventeenth century, treated as if we shouldn’t and don’t exist, made fun of when discovered (think Shirley MacLaine), and now persecuted by social justice warriors as if we are borrowing our beliefs from other cultures. Much of what we believe in is now labeled “appropriation,” “colonization,” or “conspiracy theory.” 

Some go so far as to demand that we have no right to believe in or practice Nature-, Earth-based religions, or spirituality because anything outside the dominant society's materialism and rationalism is not a part of Western culture but an “appropriation.” It does not matter if we have our own experiences, history, and standards that have been preserved and developed for hundreds of years. Astrology, tarot, and Renaissance “Nature Wisdom” would be example. And it certainly doesn’t matter to these critics if these are appropriated by everyone else. Nor does it matter to us. We know that the spirit world is real and those who experience it in all cultures have had similar experiences and understand that it is impossible to “own” or “appropriate” spiritual knowledge.    

Logic, Science, Proof, and Reality 

At the present time, we see science promoted as “the truth,” as if it rises beyond culture, when in fact it is inherently a culture in and of itself. It requires a method of speech and thought that takes us away from the literal physical world, from experience or empiricism, substituting an argument and conclusion, which is always conceptual in constitution.    

Experiment is founded on a premise, followed by a test of the premise, and then a conclusion. Empiricism or observation is also allowed in science, but it is considered an inferior method of knowing. The biologist has to study plants and animals in vivo, in life, to simply know about them. This sort of observation must be consistently undertaken and carefully documented. The observation of an anomalous event is dismissed as “anecdotal evidence.” There is little chance that the unusual or unique will be observed or respected when it has already been virtually dismissed. 

In modern science, a single experiment is not considered proof: it must be repeated until “experts” in the field feel it has been sufficiently proven. Numerous experiments are then analyzed statistically and if there is a high level of reliability in the results, the information is considered to have a high level of proof. However, at no time is absolute truth agreed upon because some doubt always remains. None of these experiments and studies are based on simple observations of Nature in situ but the natural world constrained and controlled by the outlines of the experiment. 

The Wright Brothers flew airplanes for five years in front of thousands of witnesses while “scientists” published scathing commentaries about how heavier-than-air flight was impossible and the brothers were imposters. The local Dayton newspaper, located five miles away from the field where they flew, followed the scientists even when friends and relatives told the editor they had personally seen the airplanes fly. Finally, it was a layperson, a non-scientist—President Theodore Roosevelt—who paid for one of the planes to be taken to West Point, where a line of army cadets could witness whether it flew or not (Milton 1994). 

As Max Planck said, "Science proceeds one funeral at a time." The inventors of heavier-than-air flight were bicycle mechanics. In the more dogmatic sciences, like medicine, it is customary to deny the importance or even the existence of paradigms, while in others it is accepted practice to consider the choice of what paradigms a field is based upon. 

Science is based upon arguments about the nature of proof. The presumption that everyday experience is real is labeled “naïve realism,” meaning that only naïve, unsophisticated, uneducated, or child-like people consider their direct experiences to be “real.” (Read: indigenous people and sub-cultures whose thinking is not based on logic.) The opposite perspective is labeled “critical idealism.” It is “critical” of “reality,” substituting for it a constructed model or ideal. Critical idealism is defined in the following manner: “the more precise our statistical models, though always speculative, the closer we are to grasping the real world” (McGaughey, 2016). This statement assumes that statistical models, “though always speculative,” are capable of drawing closer and closer to reality. This, of course, is an assumption and itself a speculation. This method of thinking defines itself as unable to arrive at reality.  

McGaughey’s argument is based on the syllogism. “If our statistical models are precise, and they are getting more precise, then they are closer to grasping reality.” It escapes me how someone could be closer or further from reality. The same information could have been arranged: “If our models of the world are based on speculation, then our model of the world can never be based upon reality.”  

Signatory Speech

Bob introduced the term phasis to denominate the explanatory or experiential method of speech, but as far as I know, there is no name for the second step, which is comparative or inferential. For this aspect of phasic communication, I use the term “signatory speech.” Both Heraclitus and Jesus used words translated as “sign” to describe the extra dimension to what they were saying. Heraclitus contrasts the sign with logos: 

The Lord whose oracle is at Delphi does not reveal or conceal, but only gives a sign.  

We see here the contrast made by Heraclitus between logos (reveal of conceal) and "signs" or analogies and contrasts. In ancient Greek the word for a sign, mark, token, wonder, miracle, or omen is semeion (say-MI-on). Unfortunately, the term “semiotics” has a different meaning today, so we can’t use this term. 

Jesus told people to look for "signs and wonders." The word for a sign in Hebrew would be oth (or ath in Aramaic); it also means “wonder” or “miracle." As the tradition comes down to us, his expression is associated with supernatural healing and prophetic fulfillment, but this statement would also apply to the interpretation of parables.           

Plato “formalized” a signatory approach by his introduction of the archetype, essence, or idea. This method of thinking because a dominant feature in Western culture down to the Renaissance. At that time Paracelsus avidly used the “doctrine of signatures” to understand plant properties; the shape of the leaf or branch was similar to the medicinal property. After the Renaissance, this form of thinking was dismissed as a superstition. Today it survives only among sub-cultures who use archetypal, astrological, mantic, or other series of symbols. Because this was not taught in formal education, those of us who use this method of thought today are sometimes labeled as cultural appropriators. It is assumed that any thought or speech-way outside the norm is non-Western and therefore a cultural borrowing, when in fact the approach is actually Platonic. Neither Heraclitus nor Jesus used the Platonic method—theirs was a more archaic or original form of signatory speech.    

One implication of the signatory method, in whatever form we are using it, is that it implies that the sensory world is a representation of a signatory world. This is actually a general characteristic of language itself. As Ralph Waldo Emerson explains in his first essay, Nature:

Every appearance in nature corresponds to some state of the mind, and that state of the mind can only be described by presenting that natural appearance as its picture. An enraged man is a lion, a cunning man is a fox, a firm man is a rock, a learned man is a torch. A lamb is innocence; a snake is subtle spite; flowers express to us the delicate affections. Light and darkness are our familiar expression for knowledge and ignorance, and heat for love. Visible distance behind and before us is respectively our image of memory and hope. . . .  Every natural facts is a symbol of some spiritual fact (Verslius, 1997, 101).  

Hebrew is a language in which the two levels of external and internal thinking are more apparent. The noun describes a material thing, but the principle of the thing is represented by the addition of the suffix “-ah” at the end of the word. For instance, tzadik means a “straight arrow” while tzadikah means the principle of straightness.  

The usual translations of tzadik and tzadikah are “righteous” and “righteousness” in English. This alters the underlying meaning, since right is the opposite of left, which is associated in Western languages with “sinister,” “wrong” or “bad.” The “syllogistic attitude,” if I may call it that, has made the translators incapable of hearing the difference. The true opposite of straight arrow is crooked arrow, which makes an entirely different statement. One of the Hebrew words for sin is “to miss the mark.” Here is another instance in which we can observe the mistranslation and moralization of ancient texts. 

The Hebrew nouns are all masculine and the ending -ah makes the word feminine. This indicates not only that there is a hidden spiritual world behind the material world but that it is feminine. This corresponds with the widespread personification of the hidden, archetypal world by a woman. In Greek this would be Sophia, in Egypt Neith, Queen of the Heavens, and in North America, Star Woman. Jeremiah fought against “Queen of the Heaven” cults in Judea, so this figure was widely known in Judea before the Babylonian captivity. Subsequently, the emphasis changed to “Hokhmah,” or “wisdom,” and appears in the Sapiential writings of the Hebrew Bible, which were influenced by Greek thought and speech.      

Plato introduced the concept of the “sensibles,” which are seen by the physical eye, and the “intelligibles,” seen by the mind. The latter can be conceived as the archetypes, gods, primal ideas of creation, molds from which the sensory world is struck, etc. The modern person would tend to think that the intelligibles are derived from the sensibles, but Plato held the opposite view. He taught that what we see, and even what we think, are “memories” of an intelligible world that exists prior to time and space. He considered the intelligible world to be the “real world” and the physical world to be a copy.    

The Mysteries of the Sign

The Aramaic and Hebrew words for sign include the inference of a wonder or miracle. In fact, a number of writers on the doctrine of signatures have commented that the signature possesses an inherent power: like an “energy” that we can sense exerting itself upon us. The alchemical doctor, Paracelsus (1493-1542), speaks of the signature as “a certain organic vital activity” present in the internal hidden identity of the creature, “expressed even in the exterior form of things” (Hartman, 1896, 51). The philosopher Robert Fludd (1574-1637), referred to “these vivific letters and characters” found in the Bible and the “book of Nature” (Waite, 1888, 205). 

As life-imparting, vital, active “characters,” the signatures actively nudge thoughts through the veil of physicality, so to speak, into the nonphysical world. The signature is therefore transformative. As for myself: when I perceive a signature of a plant I know I will be able to understand the medicinal application of that plant. I do not deduce the use of the plant; I experience it.         

The intuition is the faculty of the mind or awareness we use for observing signatures, signs, and the whole picture, but there is another part of us which responds to the energetic quality of the signature. This is the life force within us that is configured by our own pattern or archetype; we ourselves have an essence that is stamped on our vital energy and physicality, which shines forth in our own personal signs and signatures. They are “signs” sent forth or detected from an “unseen world,” even if it is physical.  

Carlos Castaneda’s teacher, Don Juan, called this part of ourselves the “energy body.” The further we go in seeking out the hidden energetic characters of the alphabets of Nature, the more we will develop consciousness in our energy body. This takes a lot more than observing signatures! Don Juan called the perceptive ability of the energy body “seeing,” but he said that technically it was a total body awareness that is only analogous to sight. In English “I see” means both to see with the eyes and with our mind. The ancient Greek word for seeing also meant knowing. Hebrew differentiates between "seeing" and merely "looking."

The body is on loan to us while we are alive from the great storehouse of energy in Nature, the Living Nature. When we experience life energy as a real and abiding power within ourselves (and all living creatures) we jump to the front of the line, as far as the cultivation of these skills and awarenesses is concerned.  

It is said that there is a Secret Language native to every brook, tree, and paw in the natural world and I hope that by this point the reader can appreciate this as a possibility. This hidden tongue has also been called the Language of Nature, the Language of the Birds and Beasts, the Starry Script, the Language of the Grail, and the Green Tongue. Both the name and the vocabulary are always shifting to remind us that this is not a fixed code but an always-changing set of euphemisms, wordplays, parables, analogies, etc., based on the idiosyncratic experience of the individual participant. The old euphemism for talking about sex, “the birds and bees,” is the last vestige we have in English, descending from a time when it was understood that the shamans spoke in a code that was based on hidden meanings. Simon Buxton describes a shamanic tradition surviving in contemporary England based on the use of bees to induce hallucination. He also wrote a book Visible Darkness, which Francis would have liked for its treatment of darkness.   

The Secret Language of the Shamans

We are now in a position to understand the mysterious matter of the Secret Language of the Shamans. The use of such a language is characteristic of shamanism “almost everywhere,” writes Mircea Eliade in the classic work defining the scholastic understanding of the subject, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy (1964, 96).  

In the course of his initiation the future shaman has to learn the secret language that he will use during his séances to communicate with the spirits and animal spirits.  He learns the secret language either from a teacher or by his own efforts, that is, directly from the “spirits.” 

Eliade does not exactly understand the nature of the speech, which is not set up to “communicate with spirits,” as if they were entities. Rather, it enables an interface between the spirit world, or spiritual dimension, or the spirits themselves, and human beings. In this regard it can induce an altered state, but it is not necessary to be in an altered state (“seance”) to communicate this way.

Ironically, one of the claims of modern progressives and social justice warriors is that members of the dominant culture using shamanic methods or ideas, or even having shamanic experiences, I suppose, are guilty of “cultural appropriation.” In fact, shamanism is available to anyone who can “speak the language.”        

Conclusion 

It is my hope that members of the dominant society can learn to recognize the validity of phasic speech and thought which was once, and still is, a determinant factor in the cultural life of indigenous people, sub-cultures, and ethnic groups. This is asking a great deal, since the dominant culture so far has been completely unaware that any such thing existed and left it nameless for 2400 years. At the same time, it would be beneficial for members of traditional and indigenous communities to learn that their form of speech and thought is valid and for certain purposes superior to the speech-ways of the dominant culture—and to point out where cultural biases are being pressed on them through language.

To conclude—and that means I am using a syllogism—as long as colonizing speech is utilized in an unconscious fashion by members of the dominant culture, even those who think they are fighting colonialism, racism, and cultural appropriation, the dominant culture will be colonizing and attacking indigenous and traditional cultures. To say the same thing in phasic language: white man speaks with forked tongue. In phasis there is no conclusion, just a beautiful "aha."   

Bio

My father was a teacher for the Bureau of Indian Affairs on the Big Cypress Seminole Indian Reservation in the Everglades, fifty miles by dirt road to the nearest town. Seminole (Mikasuki) was then the primary language. He was certainly part of the colonizing impact of the dominant society, but he was also very sensitive to the established traditions of the people. The Seminoles had only been in treaty-relationship with the Federal government for less than twenty-years, and some resisted treaty-relationship until the 1960s. They didn't like the rez: "too much Jesus."  

This is where my thinking and language skills developed and although I forgot Mikasuki, English for me has always felt like a second language and I had to learn a completely new vocabulary in order to communicate with others. When I was twenty I dropped out of college to study astrology, which I used more as a language of “energy patterns” than as a mantic technique. After a year, for the first time in my life, I could communicate my deeper thoughts. It took me another year to learn to translate astrological motifs into common English. After that I became a professional writer and speaker. Decades later I came to understand Robert Schmidt’s insights, which carried me to an even deeper appreciation for the existence of different speech-ways.  

I received my Masters of Science degree in 2003 from the Scottish School of Herbal Medicine, accredited by the University of Wales. I now teach through the matthewwoodinstituteofherbalism.com. Bob Schmidt’s works are available at the roberthschmidtastrology.com website.          

References

Robert Alter.  The Art of Biblical Narrative.  Basic Books, 1983.   

Pierangiolo Berrettoni.  A metamathematical model in Plato’s definition of logos, 2006.

Wallace Black Elk. Black Elk: The Sacred Ways of a Lakota. HarperOne, 1991.  

Jacob Boehme. The Signature of All Things.  Cambridge: James Clarke, 1969. 

Carlos Castaneda.  The Fire From Within.  New York: Pocket Books, 1985.  

William Coles.  Adam in Eden: or, Natures Paradise, The History of Plants, Fruits, Herbs and Flowers.  London:  Printed by J. Streater, for Nathaniel Brooke at the Angel in Cornhil, near the Royal Exchange, 1657.  

Mircea Eliade.  Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy.  Princeton, NJ: Bollingen Foundation/Princeton University, 1974. 

Jean Gebser. The Ever-Present Origin. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1997. 

Joachim Jeremias.  New Testament Theology.  London: SCM Press Ltd., 1971. 

Douglas R. McGaughey.  “What is Critical Idealism? Critical Idealism: A Brief Introduction,” at criticalidealism.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/What-is-Critical-Idealism-Oct-26-2016.pdf; accessed Dec. 26, 2016.

Richard Milton. Alternative Science: Challenging the Myths of the Scientific Establishment. Rochest, VT: Park Stree Press, 1994. 

Paracelsus (Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim).  Essential Theoretical Writings.  Edited and translated with a Commentary and Introduction by Andrew Weeks.  Leiden, Boston: Brill: 2008.

Robert Schmidt, The Same and the Other. A Phase Conference Lecture.  Cumberland, MD: Project Hindsight, 2003; available at roberthschmidtastrology.com.   

Jerry Stannard. “Method and Logic in Presocratic Explanation,” chapter 7 in Contributions to Logic and Methodology in Honor of J. M. Bochenski. Amersterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company, 1965.  

Rudolf Steiner. Initiate Consciousness: Truth and Error in Spiritual Research.  “American translation,” London: Anthroposophical Press, 1928.  I have usually used the modern translation available online at: wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA243/English/RSP1969/19240816p01.html (consulted, 20 Sept. 2019).  

Rudolf Steiner.  Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path; A Philosophy of Freedom, Centennial Edition.  Hudson, NY: The Anthroposophical Press, 1995. 

Arthur Versluis.  The Hermetic Book of Nature; An American Revolution in Consciousness.  St. Paul: Grail Publishing, 1997.

Arthur Edward Waite.  Lives of Alchemystical Philosophers. London: G. Redway, 1888.

Matthew Wood. Different Kinds of Science in Relationship to Western Herbal Medicine. Dissertation for Master of Science degree (Herbal Medicine), Scottish School of Herbal Medicine, University of Wales, submitted January 2006. 

Elemire Zolla.  Archetypes; the Persistence of Unifying Patterns.  New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1982.