[Seven by Nine Squares home page] [Speculation on the History of The Seven by Nine Squares]

The Seven by Nine Squares

21
First she them led vp to the Castle wall,
That was so high, as foe might not it clime,
And all so faire, and fensible withall,
Not built from bricke, ne yet of stone and lime,
But of thing like to that Aegyptian slime,
Whereof king Nine whilome built Babell towre;
But O great pitty, that no lenger time
So goodly workemanship should not endure:
Soone it must turne to earth; no earthly thing is sure.

22
The frame thereof seemd partly circulare,
And part triangulare, O worke diuine;
Those two the first and last proportions are,
The one imperfect, mortall, feminine;
Th'other immortall, perfect, masculine,
And twixt them both a quadrate was the base
Proportioned equally by seuen and nine;
Nine was the circle set in heauens place,
All which compacted made a goodly diapase.

Edmund Spenser, The II. Booke of the Faerie Qveene, Cant. IX ("The house of Temperance, in which doth sober Alma dwell")

The Square Art

Memory can only be artificially improved, either by medicaments, or by the operation of the fantasy towards ideas in the round art, or through images of corporeal things in the square art.
Robert Fludd, Utriusque cosmi historia

The House of Nine Squares

The cosmology of Neoism is based on the house of nine squares. Kafka said, " Anything you can learn, you can learn without ever going outside, without ever leaving your room." This is early Neoist thinking. The Neoist is the eternal traveller in the house of nine squares, a house which can never be left since it has no doors and seems to reflect itself internally. When two or more Neoists meet, their mobile psychical homes form " Akademgorod", the promised land of Neoism.
Monty Cantsin, The Flaming Steam Iron, 1986

Id entity: The Seven by Nine Squares

Folded in a world mind, I have found similarities, and similar similarities, to boot. We are tuning in together, throwing long curves, creating timespace. We are the critical mass.

There is omnidirectional coherence. What leads follows. Since absence leaves space, I prefer to leave, that is, to play out the metaphor.

As for persona. I am Monty Cantsin. The identity of the square is, of course, nameless. Its grid is a heraldic device, its condition: memory, to leave traces, tracery.

Thus, no matter how much the squares are similar, they are never the same. Everything is not itself. The square attempts to experience itself only as a passage through which text is woven. An empty mirror of an empty mirror. The glass is fragmented accidentally and completely.

Monty Cantsin & David Cole in LISME #4, Brooklyn/NY, St. Paul/MN and Amsterdam, 1985, p. 24
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Speculation on the History of The Seven by Nine Squares