Master and Commander

First - the name: Master & Commander. Does it refer only to the Captain ? Perhaps. Master can refer to the captain of any ship, military or otherwise, while Commander is clearly a military office. Also, I noticed this time of watching that Crowe was shown at all levels of the ship: on the quarterdeck by the wheel, on all parts of the upper deck, and the lower decks, gun decks and infirmary, in the captain's cabin at the stern, standing on the very prow of the ship as if riding a horse, down in the bowels of the ship checking the bilge and up on the topmost topgallant mast with his 2nd-in-command as if on a mountain summit. He is even shown hanging off the side of the ship in a storm. In other words, his consciousness was at all levels - heights, depths, front, back, right, left, middle - truly the "master" of his ship, his world. This also relates to the individual in the age of the Consciousness Soul ( 1413-3573 ) when our ego/individuality fully penetrates our physical being; it is the age both of morality and materialism – a penetration of both.

But my new thought was: could not the title of the film also refer to the two men, the two friends: the doctor and the captain - the doctor as the Master, and the captain as the Commander ? The twin pillars Jachin and Boaz of the Temple of Solomon are traditionally associated with Wisdom and Strength. Are not those the dominant characteristics of these two men ? And connected with this thought was another: is there not something of the Hibernian Mysteries hidden deep within what can seem on the surface to be a mere adventure movie ? In the Hibernian Mysteries candidates for initiation had to confront two pillars, one hard masculine resisting Sun pillar, the other the soft feminine pliable Moon pillar; touching these gave them very different impressions and led them in different directions on their paths - the path outward into the macrocosmic world of the elements; the other inwards into the microcosmic world of the soul.

At first sight, the Captain is like a great King and his friend the Doctor like the chief Minister and Counsellor. One might think of latter day equivalents of Arthur and Merlin,

or Harun al-Rashid and his Counsellor Jafar . The Captain, "Lucky" Jack Aubrey , an Englishman, is at home in the world of the elements, in the world of will and emotion. A Garibaldi-type of man with long blonde hair like a leonine hero, and a face that's full and rounded, he is not "a thinker" or a bookman but operates from instinct and intuition, sometimes even bordering on superstition; he has a primitive respect for the sailors' superstitious views of "the Jonah". He learns from nature, as from the stick insect. He is guided by spiritual not logical principles: duty, respect, strength, discipline yet is also warm-hearted. He loves his men and knows friendship but he puts The Cause (impersonal, collective) before these. His values are essentially pre-industrial, pre-5th epoch: noble, chivalrous, martial, respectful of tradition and hierarchy, and realistic within the naval context of the time: he is the very image of an "inspiring and inspired" Commander, a Master of War - one of the poles of English power; he is a Nelson , a Henry V. He *listens* to the periphery. He regards his ship and crew as "

England

". He is its King; the officers and midshipmen are its aristocrats; the crew are the population - an image of society that goes back to

Egypt

and Atlantis.

The doctor Stephen , who is Irish (most likely of Northern Irish Protestant middle class stock; he has hardly any Irish accent) is at home *within*, a man who probes within, both physically and psychologically. We see him mostly below decks, reading, studying, examining, thinking, working, playing music. He seems almost strange outside in the elements despite being a naturalist. Indeed, in a sense he is an outsider on the ship; somehow he doesn't quite belong to the community of the crew who nevertheless are in awe of his skills. This isolation can be seen also at the officers' table where he is somewhat apart from the jollity and nautical banter of the others. His hair is short and brown, and his face is sculptured and angular. He wears glasses and he *looks* keenly; he observes. He is even shot when he is trying to *observe* an albatross.

We see him observing a bird, a fish which he is dissecting, a stick insect, iguanas and a beetle - all the planes of animal life. He is a thinker, analytical and critical, devoid of superstition. He operates according to reason, logic, science and modern personal principles. Objective when it comes to Nature, he is subjective when it comes human relationships. He puts his personal relationship with Aubrey (and the promise made to him by Aubrey) before the collective Cause; he challenges Aubrey's morals and judgments according to his own more individual standard and moral imagination; he is a more "modern" man than the Captain, impatient of what he sees as the stupidity of war and corporal punishment. But he is also a Master, at home in his world of the microcosm. We see him operating on the head (brain), arm (limbs) and metabolism (he is shot in the lower abdomen by a man of war, a Marine officer; Marines wore red uniforms). He even has the self-mastery over pain and the technical and anatomical skill and knowledge to operate on himself using a mirror (silver - reflective Moon) with the same objectivity as he dissects a fish's innards. The Doctor is a Master of Baconian natural science - the other pole of English power.

What unites the two men, apart from their friendship and mutual respect for the other's abilities, is music. The Doctor plays the cello, a lower register instrument that usually plays a supporting role, while the Captain plays the violin, the lead instrument. They are able to play structured written classical pieces and also to improvise on more folkish tunes. When they play together, there is harmony and their differing thoughts and worldviews do not clash. They also sacrifice their own precious goals for each other: the Captain gives up chasing the French ship to save his friend's life, while the Doctor gives up his unique collection of newly discovered creatures to give precious information about the whereabouts of the French ship to his friend. What also unites the two men, though not deliberately, is the tactic of using the example of the stick insect as a decoy, a means of disguise, a deception to draw in and defeat the enemy. This tactic is effectively "given" to the Captain by the Doctor. Here we see the ahrimanic motif (deception + science) combine with the luciferic (military triumph).

The twin pillar relationship of the two men is the main pillar of the film; between their poles of wisdom (Master/Magister Doctor) and strength (Commander Captain) is the crew, with their multiplicity of feeling relationships. Between the two main characters and between them and the crew weaves the spirit of friendship, which, as there are no female roles in the film, provides the third element of love. The two men are the pillars between whom the crew pass in life and death. The crew, the population of the the "

England

" that is the ship, live for the most part, with strong remaining elements of a pre-4th epoch consciousness which is shown in their sailors' superstitions. These are shared by some of the officers, including Capt. Aubrey , who says to the Doctor, "Not everything is written in your books, Stephen ", and by the doomed midshipman, Hollam who commits suicide by drowning because he feels he is accursed. Midshipmen, as junior 'apprentice' officers, were normally of a higher social class (middle and upper class) than the rest of the crew. The lack of wind is blamed by the crew on Hollam and when he dies, it mysteriously returns. The eventual discovery of the French ship can also be ascribed to a mysterious event in that a giant albatross suddenly visits the ship at sea, the doctor is accidentally shot while observing it and then has to be taken to an island for treatment, where it is he who, after recovery, spies the French ship at anchor at the island. Such seeming 'coincidences' have life-or-death consequences ands even deeper causes.

The other pillar of the film is the opposite feeling of hate or enmity provided by the French enemy: two men and two ships - two binary relationships. The French enemy are nevertheless respected by the chivalrous English Captain for their naval and military skills. Aubrey even shows his peripheral instinctive mode of thought by speculating that there may be something between him and the French captain: "Did I kill a relative of his, his son perhaps?" After the English victory, the two captains even meet, though the French captain also succeeds in deception - by tricking Aubrey into thinking that he is dead and pretending to be his ship's *doctor* (!). Throughout the film, the French ship is shown as "the Other", dark, mist-wreathed, enigmatic, almost supernatural; the French crew themselves, when we finally see them, look swarthy. The very name of the French ship "Acheron" is redolent of the river of woe in Hades, and an old English sailor says that the phantom will take them all to hell. The French ship is painted a dark reddish and its sails are not exactly white.

The image of Hades points to the subtitle of the film: "The Far Side of the World" i.e. the other side of the Threshold on the Outer Path Crossing of the Northern Mysteries. The two captains, French and English, take their crews over this elemental threshold: first there is the fight in the fog, then the chase in the day time temperate climate, which finishes when the English manage - again by deception - to lose the French at night. Then comes the chase in rough seas and storm as they near Cape Horn and the ice and snow as they head south towards Antarctica to get round the Cape Horn storms. After they've headed north into the Pacific, they are "pacifically" becalmed in the tropical heat. Finally, the French are discovered hiding in an inlet in the Galapagos islands . All the elements are thus represented: earth, air, fire, and water, extreme heat and extreme cold. In the "Pacific" Ocean, they make war, and at the Galapagos Islands, later the scene of Darwin's triumph, the British triumph over the French - a Social Darwinist symbol of the survival of the fittest by means of adaptation to the environment (copying the stick insect). The Galapagos islands are shorthand symbolism in the film for the connection between Darwinian science and economics. The Acheron threatened British commercial interests - whaling and other commerce - in the Pacific region. The Galapagos islands point to Britain's 19th century global ascendancy, achieved after victory over France at Waterloo in 1815 following the 23 year-long war in which the film is set - at the lowest point in England's fortunes (April 1805), as Napoleon is preparing for invasion just a few months before Nelson's great victory at Trafalgar completely frustrated his plans. The Industrial Revolution, which was taking off in England at this time, was built on a capitalism that operated according to Darwinian principles of eat or be eaten, the inhuman law of the jungle, red in tooth and claw. This was to be the English idea of economics in harmony with Nature - as in war, so in "peace". Darwin provided the ideological and "scientific", seemingly objective, rationale for this form of economics and society, which could thus claim it was "natural", "organic", and nothing "artificial". It still is today the basic principle of Anglo-American free market economics.

This Baconian natural scientific thinking, which has underpinned the English approach to the world since the 17th century, is based on A binary dualism, ultimately Middle Eastern in origin but the British could relate to it owing to deep roots in their own native Anglo-Celtic cultural subconscious memory:

All that lies hidden behind the sense-world, as the sun behind the clouds, the hidden spirit, was known in [the Hibernian] Mysteries by the name of “Hu.” “Ceridwen” was the seeking soul. .... In the Druidic Mysteries... the neophyte was put into a condition resembling death; his senses could not function as organs of perception. A man whose only instrument of perception is the physical body or the physical brain has no consciousness in a condition where his senses cease to function. But in Initiation, the senses — feeling, hearing and so on — cease to function, and yet the neophyte is able to experience and observe. The principle which observes was called “Ceridwen” — the soul. And that which comes to meet the soul, as light and sound come to our outer eyes and ears, was called “Hu” — the spiritual world. The Initiate experienced the union between Ceridwen and Hu. Such experiences are described in the myths. When we are told to-day that the ancients paid homage to a God Hu and a Goddess Ceridwen, this is simply another way of describing Initiation. The true myths are always concerned with Initiation. It is empty chatter to say that these myths have an astronomical meaning, that Ceridwen is the moon and Hu the sun, and so on. These myths originated because their creators were conscious of an inner union between the aspiring soul and the spirit of the sun, not the physical sun. The Mysteries of Hu and Ceridwen, then, were those into which men were initiated in the regions of which we are speaking.

Rudolf Steiner Berlin , 6 May, 1909 (GA 57: European Mysteries and Their Initiates)

The Neolithic peoples of the Hibernian Mysteries, the Celtic ancient Britons of the 3rd Post-Atlantean epoch and the pagan Anglo-saxons and Vikings who came after them all had a feeling for the elemental world and the spiritual powers in Nature around them. This respect for the Powers of Nature put down deep roots which underlay the abstract intellectual consciousness that came from the Middle East after the Crusades and created the basis for Baconian natural science. In "Master and Commander - The Far Side of the World", are we not perhaps seeing again in a modern, very attenuated form, a retelling, or a distant echo, of the Hibernian Mysteries and the story of Ceridwen and Hu ?