Scrivener, Maxwell, and Ouden

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, 1571 – 1610, The Supper at Emmaus, 1601.

"The light from the sky turned ordinary light black, and there were big, empty, grinning faces in the sky, like high cliffs that had always been there. Big faces that had always been present but never seen, except in the most intense flash of the insane lightning." Past Master, Chapter 7

I continue to work through another pass at Past Master. As I have said elsewhere, in my reading, Ouden is not a being but a failure of vision—the result of political and spiritual manipulation, the lie that allows utopia on Astrobe to reach critical mass. The passage above is one of Past Master’s most astonishing moments. The faces in the sky were always there, we are told, unseen until the right—or wrong—kind of light made them visible. There are several ways to approach this. Lafferty tells us we are in a place where people hallucinate, but I will take the other fork in the road—one I find far more compelling.

It reminds me of Wittgenstein’s seeing-aspects, discussed in Philosophical Investigations (Part II, Section XI), where he examines how perception is shaped by interpretation—illustrated by the famous duck-rabbit image, which can be seen as either a duck or a rabbit depending on how one sees it, revealing that perception is not mere passive reception but an active cognitive process. Just as the image does not change but the way of seeing it does, so too do the faces in the sky in Past Master—present but revealed under certain conditions. This would mean that the cliff revelation in Past Master is not of something new but of something seen differently, something that had been ignored, dismissed, or beyond ordinary apprehension.

But here the duck-rabbit analogy breaks down. In the case of Wittgenstein's drawing, there is no fact of the matter—it is neither really a duck nor really a rabbit, only an ambiguous figure whose meaning shifts with perception. In Past Master, as in the New Testament, there is a fact of the matter. The disciples on the road to Emmaus were not seeing an ambiguous figure that could be either Christ or not depending on their interpretation. This was no duck or rabbit. They were looking at Christ Himself and failed to recognize Him. The failure was not in the thing perceived but in the perceivers.

But their eyes were held, that they should not know him. Luke 24:16

Their inability to recognize Christ was not an optical failure but a moment of spiritual blindness, one permitted for a time so that they might come to full understanding. Only when He blessed and broke bread was their vision restored:

And their eyes were opened, and they knew him: and he vanished out of their sight. Luke 24:31

The same is true of the faces in the sky—whether or not they should be seen, and what they truly signify, is not a matter of arbitrary interpretation but of the right or wrong mode of perception. For Scrivener and Maxwell, it is a fantasy born of fear. The crisis in Past Master is a version of the crisis of Emmaus: when the truth appears, will we know it for what it is?

Are Scrivener and Maxwell capable of perceiving rightly at this moment in the novel? Scrivener and Maxwell, in their panic, are where Christ’s closest followers found themselves. This is spiritual pareidolia. It is not seeing the lightning of Psalm 18:12-14 for what it is. The disciples had Christ before them and failed to see; the foolish virgins waited for the bridegroom but were unprepared to recognize Him when He arrived. This is not to be preachy but to point out the meaning of Maxwell’s concern.

The faces of Ouden are not real, but they are real as a way of seeing. More importantly, they are not real in the same way that the King’s presence is real, which remains real even when hidden from those without the right preparation, the right expectation, the right kind of light. Maxwell’s cry—"Where is the face of our King? Would we know it if we saw it?"—is true spiritual terror, one of the rawest moments in the novel.

It is the failure of Emmaus. Not that there is nothing, nor that there is something terrible, but that when the truth appears, we may not know it at all.