SaH0047 The following essay, originally written in 2016, comments on a book by a Lutheran Pastor about heretical influences in contemporary American society. The author is Peter Burfeind. The title of the work is Gnostic America: A Reading of Contemporary American Culture according to Christianity’s Oldest Heresy (Pax Domini Press, 2014). Please have this book at hand for the full story.
These comments are not a close reading. They situate Burfeind’s text with category-based models. These models were proposed and developed in How to Define the Word “Religion”, plus Primers 1 through 10. They were refined in the Course on Implicit and Explicit Abstraction. They portray relational and logical structures.
Also, my discussion presumes the first singularity. Gnosticism was cultivated in an early ancient civilization. As such, I expect its origin myth to be a fairy tale about the first singularity. The first singularity is discussed in the Crystallizations of the Fall series plus An Archaeology of the Fall, available at www.smashwords.com and other e-book venues.
In short, these comments apply a suite of postmodern scholastic hypotheses to Burfeind’s excellent text. They are different from, yet complementary to, Burfeind’s passionate argument.
SaH0048 This exposition constitutes a strand in the Razie Mah’s online course: Semiotics and History.
The various strands are listed in Razie Mah’s blog for February 3, 2026
‘Words that belong together’ are denoted by single quotes or italics.
0001 Peter Burfeind wrote Gnostic America: A Reading of Contemporary American Culture according to Christianity’s Oldest Heresy (Pax Domini Press, 2014).
This book is composed of four parts. The first part covers the fundamentals of Gnosticism as a Christian heresy. The second and third parts explore cultural manifestations. The fourth part applies these fundamentals and explorations to contemporary American Neo-Evangelical Christian churches.
0002 Burfeind argues that two Gnostic movements contend for sovereign power, progressives and Neo-Evangelical Christians.
To me, big government (il)liberals (BG(il)Ls) beat these Christians to the punch. The federal government has established a religion. It is not Christian. BG(il)Ls run Gnostic bureaucracies where authorities deny that they are religious at all. BG(il)Ls are the self-anointed angels (or more accurately, daemons) of a New Age dawning in America.
Christians who self-describe themselves as “spiritual, but not religious” accommodate BGL’s increasing sovereign power and aggression.
0003 Burfeind is not alone in this awareness. Over 60 years ago, Eric Voegelin expressed similar ideas in his short but significant book, The New Science of Politics.
This raises a question. What is the meaning, the presence and the message underlying the word “Gnosticism”?
With this question in mind, I turn my attention to Burfeind’s text.
Students should read chapter 1 of Burfeind’s text before proceeding.
0004 From Burfeind’s introduction, I know that Gnosticism is a very old heresy.
How old?
From chapter 1, I suspect that Gnosticism predated Christianity. Indeed, the death and the resurrection of Jesusrebuked Gnostic intuition. Why would Jesus retain the evil material shell of His body?
Jesus highlights all the ways that the Mosaic tradition offended Gnostic sensibilities. Both Christians and Jews are enamored of the material world. Gnostics, not so much.
0005 The Judeo-Christians believe in one God. So do the Gnostics. But, the one God of the Judeo-Christians is not the same as the Gnostic Source. The Source is a Monad, a complex singularity capable of putting everything into perspective. The Monad is the source of meaning.
0006 The Monad plays a key role in the Gnostic origin myth. The myth begins with the Source, beyond spoken language and in eternal time. From the Monad, male and female pairs emanated, each according to its aeon. The totality of theaeons is called the “pleroma”.
For the last era, our own, the female of the pair acted without her male consort. He was missing in action, so to speak. Sophia became pregnant with Yaltabaoth, half lion and half snake. She thought to herself, “This is not me.” So she took action, ripping the monster from her womb and hiding him in a cloud.
0007 Born yet aborted, living in a fog, Yaltabaoth decided to build his own world. He decided to create. What else was this demiurge supposed to do? He constructed his own world, which is our universe. He assigned archons (powers and governors) to rule his cosmos.
He was proud of his accomplishments.
Here I make an admission, there is more than one way to spell Yaltabaoth. That exercise is left to the reader.
Okay, back to the story.
0008 What else does this builder god do?
He manufactures our physical bodies. He steals a spark from the Monad (a soul) and pulls it into his world. As the soul descends, Yaltabaoth adds matter. At birth, each person is a spark wrapped in a mortal cloak. The spark is not material. The body is material. The two will war with one another.
0009 Therefore, Sophia pities us and offers this myth. The Self has a mission: Return to the Source. Sophia offers secret knowledge, gnosis, opening a path out of Yaltabaoth’s apparently all-encompassing cloud.
In fact, this myth, which joins cosmic and personal origins, contains a secret. It describes a location where you can find your Self.
0010 Clearly, this origin myth provides meaning. This meaning coincides with the model of social construction in Razie Mah’s How to Define the Word “Religion”. This model is further detailed in A Primer on the Category-Based Nested Form and A Primer on Sensible and Social Construction.
0011 The model is an interscope, a nested form of category-based nested forms. The interscope offers nine slots. Features in the above myth associate with different slots.
Here is the open interscope, before any associations.
0012 My intent is to associate elements of the Gnostic origin myth with slots in the interscope of social construction.
0013 My first association concerns the Monad. The Source has the potential to put the situation into perspective, so it goes into slot 1c. The pleroma automatically becomes the normal context of the perspective level (slot 3c). The pleroma3c brings the possibilities inherent in the Monad1c into relation with the actuality of Sophia2c.
0014 So what is the secret about Sophia?
Sophia is Personified Wisdom. It is not much of a secret. After all, philosophy is rooted in love (philos) and Wisdom (sophia).
0015 If Sophia2c is the mother of the builder god, Yaltabaoth, then I should put the builder god into slot 2b. Yaltabaoth2b situates our universe within the normal context of blind rationality (slot 3b).
Or should I say, “mindless rationality”?
The builder god lives in a cloud, isolated, without awareness of even his own mother. Sure, he snatches sparks from the Monad. He does this blindly. Who knows what spark goes into what body? Yaltabaoth operates in a fog. His archons are like bureaucrats, always following their rulebooks. His social norms? They constitute the Establishment.
The Establishment is the social arm of Yaltabaoth’s evil material world of blind chance and mindless necessity. For teenage Gnostics, that includes all parents. For big-government Gnostics, this includes everything associated with the American Founding.
0016 So, why does the builder god need a spark from the Source in order to animate the human body?
Yaltabaoth is so clueless. He does not realize that the spark comes from the Monad. It is just another thing at his disposal. Obviously, there is no better way to animate humans. He snatches an unwitting soul from its contemplation of Sophia and uses it to bring breath to a breathless body. Inspire. Hold it. Expire. I can feel it.
0017 Here, let me put my associations into the open interscope.
0465 A type 1 Gnostic, who has been indoctrinated to be your Self, has an ego that says, “I am inadequate.” Otherwise, why would I need a Self-help book, or a drink, or a hit? Why would Sophia call to me?
Sophia says, “Escape. Return to the Monad.”
0466 A type 2 Gnostic, who may be so far into the conflict that the Self has won, projects her fallen ego onto others. She demeans others as puppets of a rigid, doctrinaire, paranoid, traditional, Yaltabaoth-worshipping superego.
The ego of the Self-anointed is no longer responsible for the Self. The Self may use her body for whatever purposes suits her proclivities.
0467 What do I mean by “her”?
I am “she” when my Self is my normal context. My Self is an image of Sophia.
If everything is determined by culture, why can’t I declare my own culture?
My Self-wish transforms into a program for development.
My ego is like my ex-. My superego is like his paranoid delusions. My idreal is like a golden ring, serving as a gilded cage.
0468 A type 2 Gnostic sees others as marionettes of Yaltabaoth and the Establishment. She stands beyond freedom and responsibility. She serves another master. She works for an institution. She supports a cause. She stands righteous among the Self-anointed.
She knows about Freud. She adores Jung. She is a Marxist. She is a big government liberal, demanding sovereign power. Does that make her il-liberal? Not in a world where “liberal” means “anything goes”.
Sovereign power constellates Personified Wisdom.
The type 2 Gnostic strives to grasp sovereign power. She will master social evil. Her Self-wish is to control the builder gods and the Establishment, forcing them to work for her organizational objectives. Her Self-wish is to regulate and educate the pathetic ego-driven masses.
She is a post-religious social activist.
0469 A type 2 Gnostic will contextualize himself as a member of a New Age, the next emanation of the pleroma.
0470 What do I mean by “him”?
Is “he” the missing ingredient?
By “him”, I suppose, I mean Sophia-Self gives birth to… or rather, gives abortion to… the next Yaltabaoth. She will put him into a cloud. He will create the next age, even if he is a she, whatever that means.
0471 The next age comes in like a lion, then out like a snake.
Or, should it be, in like an ego, then out like a Self?
0472 Gnosticism is a religion of secret knowledge.
The Gnostic origin myth, itself, opens like lockbox, when the key is fashioned in truth.
0478 Ah, then, here we have it: What is truth?
On one hand, the words of the Gnostic are never to be taken literally. They are symbols evoking fantasies that inform the Self. The Self reads word-gestures. The Self relies on touch.
Sophia interpellates the Self through desire.
On the other hand, the possibilities inherent in the truth support the perspective-level actuality of the Holy Spirit.
The Father virtually situates the Son[redeeming] me.
0478 I can put my hands together, with this conclusion:
The origin stories of Gnosticism and the Bible both point to a transition from the Lebenswelt that we evolved in to our current Lebenswelt.
The Gnostic origin story mythically re-creates a repetition disorder characteristic of unconstrained social complexity.
The Biblical origin story mythically portrays the transition as an actual historic event, serving as a fountainhead for disaster after disaster.
0480 Aren’t both these origin myths about Original Sin?
SaH0045 This strand of Semiotics and History considers the rise of capitalism in early modernism in terms of changes of political theology.
Oh, I meant to say “mercantilism”.
Okay, how about a label for whatever Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice and income taxes in twenty-first century Americahave in common?
Also, I should have also said, “political economy”, instead of “political theology”.
Be that as it may, please enjoy the following commentary on Eric Santner’s challenging book.
This strand starts with of Looking at Daniel Novotny’s Article (2016) Izquierdo and Universals (and appears in Razie Mah’s blog in May 7-1, 2026, for orientation, see Razie Mah’s blog for May 7, 2026).
As well as Looking atEric Santner’s Book (2016) The Weight of All Flesh (appearing in Razie Mah’s Blog in June, 2026, go to month and scroll down).
SaH0046 For a full list of strands in the course on Semiotics and History, see Razie Mah’s blog for February 3, 2026.
0001 The following 2017 essay comments on a recent book by a Professor of Literature about the subject matter of the political economy. Eric Santner tries to figure out its immaterial measure.
Why do I say immaterial measure?
Consider the complete title: The Weight of All Flesh: On the Subject Matter of Political Economy.
Weight is a measure of something material. However, weight itself is not material.
Similarly, matter ought to be material. But, subject matter is not.
Also, the economy processes materials. Politics does not.
Will literalism do under these circumstances?
Once the flesh has weight, then it is no longer simply what it is.
Once matter is taken to be a subject, then it is no longer merely what it is.
Once the economy is taken to be political, then it is no longer only what it is.
0002 To me, the category-based nested form applies.
The actualities of flesh, matter and economics exist by themselves. But, humans evolved to consider more than what is at hand. We are designed to put actuality into a nested form.
So, these actualities exist, for us, in the normal contexts of weight, subject and politics. These are not the only normal contexts. They are the contexts raised by the author.
The contextualization of actuality raises another question.
What potentiates the weight of flesh, subject matter and political economy?
You may already know the answer. I do not. Consequently, I turn to this text to see what I may discover. This will be a fairly close reading, so have Santner’s book at hand.
‘Words that belong together’ are denoted by single quotes or italics.
0003 Eric Santner wrote The Weight of All Flesh: On the Subject-Matter of Political Economy (Oxford University Press, 2016). The main body of the book consists in a preface and two lectures. The two lectures constitute chapters 1 and 2. These chapters are broken into parts.
Santner’s presentations are works of art, composing the 2014 Tanner Lectures on Human Values at the University of California, Berkeley.
0004 The front piece is an introduction by Kevis Goodman. The end piece is a suite of comments by Bonnie Honig, Peter E. Gordon and Hent de Vries, followed by a reply by Eric Santner.
The responses are very challenging. How does one reply to something that sounds like free association?
Unfortunately, the front and end pieces will not be covered in these comments. However, the end piece may be used as an exercise in the methodology that composes these comments.
0005 Why is this interesting?
My interest is obvious once one looks at How To Define the Word “Religion” plus the first ten associated primers.
The tenth primer ends before the majesty of sovereign power. Primers 8, 9 and 10 tell of the difficulty of seeing beyond these mountains. Anyone who argues about politics can stir up an avalanche.
What does Primer 8 tell me?
Infrasovereign religions grasp for sovereign power in order to impose their organizational objectives on those outside their organization.
What about Primer 9?
Socrates had to drink hemlock. Why did he have to do that?
Primer 10?
Rene Girard proposes that a scapegoat mechanism is apparent in all civilizations. Plus, the mechanism comes into play when power structures try to preserve themselves.
Overall, politics and religion map a dangerous landscape. Eric Santner walks where angels fear to tread.
0006 Primers 8, 9 and 10 explore the presence underlying the word “religion”.
Institutions occupy the content level of the society tier. They contextualize the organization tier. These institutions harbor organizational objects, objectsorganization, that call the individual into organization. These objectsorg are virtually situated by sovereign acts, laws and decrees.
0007 Eric Santner reads literature. He observes art. He sees that something changed in the West over the past few centuries.
What is this something?
It is completely missed by the current social and political sciences. However, it appears in Western paintings, poems, novels, plays, and other artistic works. This is the stuff that Eric Santner studies.
0008 Subject matter. What is it?
“Matter” is stuff. “Subject” is something that ends up objectified.
Okay, now what?
Does subject matter signal the objectification of matter?
Or does subject matter signify the objectification of something that matters?
0009 At the end of the Latin Age and the beginning of the Age of Ideas, around the 1600s AD, the subject matter of political theology was the king’s two bodies. One body was mortal. The other was sublime.
The object of the king’s glorious body supplemented the subject of the king’s mortal body. Santner labels the process spectral (glorious body) materiality (mortal body).
0010 To me, the glorious body is the normal context for the actuality of the king’s mortal body.
The nested form looks like this:
Sublime body3( mortal body2( potential of kingly being1))
0011 Does this express the character of the subject matter?
The mortal body is matter. The sublime body is the normal context that objectifies the mortal body. Thus, the king’s mortal body becomes a subject for political theology. The something that underlies the mortal body, giving its flesh weight, is the quality of being king.
0012 Moving to the present day, the matter of political theory falls to the people, rather than the king. The subject gets dispersed from one king to many citizens. The glorious body translates into what Michel Foucault calls “discipline”. The qualities that weight the mortal body of the king turn into “biopower”.
To me, modern political theory translates into the following nested form:
Discipline3( citizen2( possibilities inherent in biopower1))
0013 The two nested forms are shown below:
Normal context3 and possibility1 surcharge actuality2.
0014 The mortal body of the king is more than it otherwise would be in any other context. Its actuality possesses a surplus of immanence because it now has potential.
Similarly, one citizen may heroically rise above others as an expression of the biopower released by discipline. Other citizens are weighed and measured in the exercise of biopower.
0015 The pressure cooker of the royal person expanded to the business of the citizen. Medieval and early modern political theology gave way to modern political economy.
0016 Take a look at a painting. Jacques Louis David painted the extraordinary Death of Marat, during the French Revolution.
Compare this image to a wax effigy of a dead medieval king, or some other memorial, placed on the throne during official mourning.
0017 Jean-Paul Marat, the citizen, dies in his tub. David paints the death scene.
The king’s mortal body is buried. An icon of his sublime body is placed on the throne.
Clearly, David paints the equivalent to the sublime body of the citizen, Marat.
0018 One could say that this represents a loss of enchantment. After all, Marat, the revolutionary, hardly behaved royally.
This lack of royalty aligns with the emptiness above Marat, the corpse. The upper half of David’s painting is empty. If Marat had been royalty, the upper register would be full of angels and saints welcoming the glorious king.
What happened to the angels and saints?
0019 Heck, not even Marat’s fellow citizens are in the upper frame, registering the emotions of shock, grief, and, perhaps, relief. Critics have called the nondescript space above the dead Marat oppressive, abstract and unmotivated, characteristic of a representational deadlock.
0020 Perhaps, the cunning and ambitious artist was saying, “Do not let this be you.”, while painting, “This fellow was a citizen hero.”
Santner does not tell why Marat got knifed in his enclosed bathtub, filled with medicinal waters. Marat was a radical agitator. He named his newspaper, “The People’s Friend”. He was murdered by a woman who had come to him, claiming news from one of the districts of France.
During her trial, she testified that she killed one man in order to save one hundred thousand. She was found guilty. Her head was chopped off with a guillotine.
0021 Jacques-Louis David was charged with organizing Marat’s funeral. Surely, Marat was a martyr for the Revolution. Yet, despite the acclamation, no other figure appears in the painting.
0022 Why?
The reason is simple.
No sane person (whether angel, saint or fellow citizen) wanted to be associated with this crazy person, who was typical of the Jacobins, the party that celebrated the Cult of Reason and the Cult of the Supreme Being.
0023 David’s painting is both a warning and a paean.
0024 To Santner, the empty upper register of the painting associates to the impossibility of transcendence in the modern age. Business is busy-ness.
In the preceding section, Santner dwells on the word “doxologies”.
0548 There are two doxologies flowing upwards in the following figure.
This pair of doxologies is glory and money.
One is societal. The other is organizational.
0548 Santner coins the word, paradoxology, for exploring this double flow.
The subject matter of the political economy is a paradoxology.
0549 There are two movements flowing downwards in the preceding figure.
The pair of condensates are busy-ness and identity / purpose.
One is societal. The other is organizational.
One is enforced through sovereign laws and decrees. The other is inculcated through broadcast advertising.
0550 Santner recounts a debate about how to interpret Kafka’s writings.
Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem expressed different views of the theological tracks of Kafka’s stories.
0551 Scholem argued that Kafka’s work shines like a revelation. But, it’s a tricky revealing. It does not lead the reader to God, but to some originating nothingness.
0552 Benjamin countered that Kafka’s work has a message: The gate to justice is study. But the question is: What to study? The Torah has been brushed over by modern inquiry. Students have lost the Holy Writ.
0553 Scholem replied: No, those who study have not lost the Scriptures. They have lost the ability to decipher them.
0554 Does this conversation fit into the previous figure?
A suprasovereign religion was brushed over by the time that Marx projected the transcendent (a political theology) onto the immanent (the machinations of the organization tier).
0555 Santner concludes with Walter Benjamin’s tripartite image of capitalism.
In one panel, capitalism is a purely cultic religion. It has no doctrine. It has no dogma. Adam Smith’s theories of the self-regulation of markets are exemplar. What is the invisible hand? It is dogma? Or is a way to describe events that cannot be reduced to cause and effect?
In the next panel, capitalism is always “on”. It never takes a holiday. Santner associates this to the doxologies of everyday life. Work is always waiting. Duties are never completed.
In the final panel, capitalism creates guilt, not atonement. In other words, it creates more debt, more burdens and more work.
Does the sovereignty of debt become sovereign debt?
Not necessarily, but it happens often enough. After all, who pays for the political entrepreneurs? Who pays for the busy-ness of citizensMarat?
0556 Does each of Benjamin’s panels describe a level of the organization tier as understood from the communist perspective?
How curious.
0557 Certainly, capitalism is a religion worthy of contempt.
Too bad it is a projection of Marxist ideology.
Walter Benjamin’s career as literary critic expanded the cognitive space opened by the Marxist religion.
This is the nature of religions.
0558 Marxist ideology projects a plausible theology onto something in the organization tier that everyone encounters.
0559 Marx selected one of the best encounters.
In every purchase, I, the buyer, encounter a corporation that I do not belong to.
Is this alienating, or what?
0560 My money goes up from the product (content) through the price (situation) and becomes surplus value(perspective).
A quality of the product comes down, from the brand name (perspective) through the abstract material guaranteed by the brand name (situation) to the aspects of my identity congruent with this abstract material (content).
0561 Following this pattern, I only purchase bread from The Staff of Life Bakery.
It is my paradoxology.
My devotion increases the glory of the bakery. The bakery provides me with a mission, “Eat the bread of life.”
My money keeps the bakery in business. The brand name makes my mouth water.
0562 When Adam Smith attempted to describe this process, he saw an invisible hand, guaranteeing high quality products for low price. There was no dogma. There were no doctrines. There was only rational self-interest.
0563 When Karl Marx passed judgment on this process, he reified the theological dogmas of mercantilism. Everywhere that Marx looked in the organization tier, he found religious expression.
If he were to start his own religion, then what better way than to project the theology of mercantilism onto the operations of the organization tier and then declare it evil?
Indeed, the organization tier becomes evil when viewed as an unholy ascent of money and a devilish descent of brand names.
0564 Thus, the paradoxology of Marxism becomes clear.
A doxology of communist powerrises through the society tier in response to a projected evil doxology, called “capitalism”, arising in the organization tier.
0565 The organizational objectives of Marxism become inevitable once its projections are assumed and never questioned.
0566 To me, this conclusion makes the works of Eric Santner and Giorgio Agamben fascinating to behold. Here is the subject matter of political economy.
SaH 0017 The authors quest for a sphere of understanding. They seek the egg, so to speak, impregnated by Juri Lotman’s genius. In the interviews in chapter 2.1, Lotman is spent, although still alive. He is old. The interviewer is a youth, a personification of the metaphysical love-child born after Slavic civilization reveals herself to Lotman’s circumspection.
0018 The miracle of Lotman’s arrival in Estonia is, weirdly, recounted in the last interview (2.14) with psychologist and cultural theorist, Jaan Valsiner. As it turns out, Valsiner’s step-father was instrumental in getting Juri Lotman to Estonia after the Second World War.
0019 Jaan Valsiner demonstrates that the Tartu-Moscow’s sphere of influence is diffuse. His testimony is seconded by Paul Cobley (2.13), Terrence Deacon (2.12), Jesper Hoffmeyer (2.11) and Stuart Kauffman (2.10).
0020 The sphere becomes less diffuse in interviews with Roland Posner (2.9), Gunther Kress (2.8) and Wilfred Noth (2.7).
Notably, Noth conducts a discourse on the crucial potential of truth, as opposed to the potential of will. Indeed, the contrast between truth and will turns out to be integral to my examination of a 2017 article on Russian identity.
0021 Finally, the sphere becomes tangible with interviews with American anthropologist, Myrdene Anderson (2.6), who researched indigenous people in Sweden, Italian semiotician Paolo Fabbri (2.5), who railed against the wooly thinking that passes for “models” in contemporary humanities, and the Italian know-it-all Umberto Eco, who noted the importance of iconicity in semiotic humanity.
What?
“Semiotic humanity”?
What about semiology?
0022 Contemporary academic discourse is currently conducted with expert-coined spoken words, but these utterancescannot picture or point to their referents. Academics swim in a pool of differences… er… two arbitrarily related pools of differences. No one can tell where he or she flotates.
Flotates?
This is what happens when spoken words are placeholders in two arbitrarily related systems of differences.
0023 Finally, the interviews engage a still-living member of the original Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics, Boris Uspenskij (2.2). This interview gets a full examination in the course on Semiotics and History. Uspenskij stands within the sphere that the authors aspire to understand.
0024 So, what does Razie Mah’s contribution under the banner ofSemiotics and History offer?
0025 For the diffuse sphere, these examinations will present a historical narrative of ideas in the style of diagrams of purely relational structures. In short, Peirce-inspired diagrams offer a new way to narrate intellectual history.
0026 For the almost tangible sphere, these examinations practice a method of association, followed by a discussion of the implications. The articles provide material to fill in the empty slots of relational structures. When associations are made, implications become apparent.
0027 For the sphere itself, one unexpected insight is that, as the first ascendant of the Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics struggles to fulfill the political mandate of the USSR (to make all fields of inquiry “scientific”), the researchers excavate the recently-buried remains of the civilization that is their subject of inquiry.
Imagine a scientific investigation of Russian language, history and literature, as a archaeological excavation into the being of Slavic civilization.
0028 Is that the same “she” that… um… you know… captured the attention of Juri Lotman?
How confounding.
0029 The next blog offers an introduction to Semiotics and History: The Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics.
SaH 0030 This course is a fully on-line study that appears in Razie Mah’s blog.
The course should be conducted (ideally) by a mature reader along with one novice or more, (less ideally) by two novices in collaboration and (perhaps, heroically) by a novice reader working alone.
0031 The field of home-schooling is exploding (a term associated with Juri Lotman) in America, but a wary public wants to taste the products, before committing to purchase. This online course is the first of many, I suppose, but the import for this particular exposition is obvious when considering current events.
0031 Estonia is awkwardly situated (along with the other Baltic states) between the Slavic civilization of Russia (to the east), and the Swedish, German and Polish civilizations (to the west). Estonia was part of the USSR, during the cold war; part of the West, during the American Empire’s unipolar moment; and now is about to be nudged into a Eurasian convergence, as predicted by political theologian, Alexander Dugin.
A nudge is both a danger and an opportunity, especially for the University of Tartu, with its department of semiotics, and for the University of Moscow, with its unique constellation of intellects.
0032 One of the questions asked in almost every interview in Kull’s and Velmezova’s book goes like this, “What needs to be researched by semioticians? Or, what topics of inquiry need exploration by newly certified semioticians?”
This course offer a number of suggestions, several in connection with a stunning post-scholastic discovery that may be attributed to the first ascent of the Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics.
Discovery?
Look and see.
The original articles are available online.
0033 Here is the list of examinations.
Go to the month in Razie Mah’s blog and scroll down.
0034 (1.) Looking at Igor Pilshchikov and Mikhail Trunin’s Article (2016) “The Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics” (December 2025, 27 blogs, points 1-376)
0035 (2.) Looking at Ekaterina Velmesova and Kalevi Kull’s Article (2017) “Boris Uspenskij…” (January 31-10, 2026, 19 blogs, points 377-641)
0036 (3.) Looking at Boris Uspenskij’s Article (2017) “Semiotics and Culture” (January 9-2, 2026, 8 blogs, points 642-743)
0037 (4.) Looking at Mihhail Lotman’s Article (2017) “History as Geography” (late February 2026, 8 blogs, points 744-840)
0038 (5.) Looking at Mikhail Trunin’s Article (2017) “Semiosphere and history” (late March 2026, 8 blogs, points 841-952)
0039 (6.) Looking at Peeter Torop’s Article (2017) “Semiotics as Cultural History” (early February 2026, 11 blogs, points 953-1104)
0040 In a little over 1000 steps, the home- or guided-schooler can find out where the Tartu-Moscow School as been (in its first ascent) and where it may be going (in its second).
SaH0001 Razie Mah offers three foundational courses that cover human evolution.
These are:
The Human Niche
(also see the four accompanying commentaries as well as the three-part Comments on Michael Tomasello’s Arc of Inquiry (1999-2019))
An Archaeology of the Fall
(also see the three part Instructor’s Guide, as well as The First Singularity and Its Fairy Tale Trace and Original Sin and Original Death: Romans 5:12-19)
How To Define the Word “Religion”
(also see the ten primers, starting with A Primer on the Category-Based Nested Form and A Primer on Sensible and Social Construction)
These courses are on sale by various electronic booksellers.
The texts are designed to be read and discussed in a seminar setting.
0002 For inquirers. educators and students would who like to try their hands at Razie Mah’s approach, Semiotics and History offers a path. This is one course consisting of many strands. Like a fiber in a rope, each strand strengthens the entire conceptual apparatus. With few execptions, each course completely appears in the blog. Some strands will have an electronic e-book component. So, don’t be afraid to make a purchase. You will find that the costs of Mah’s electronic works are reasonable.
In the following list, the date corresponds to the cover page of each strand. A strand typically covers a month.
0003 The following list extends into the future, because more strands will be added over time.
Feb 6,5, 2026
Looking at Kalevi Kull and Ekaterina Velmezova’s Book (2025) “Sphere of Understanding” (Part 1 and 2 of 3)
Feb 4, 2026
Semiotics and History: The Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics (Part 3 of 3)
May 30. 2026
Semiotics and History: Baroque Scholasticism
May 7, 2026
Semiotics and History: Baroque Scholasticism and Early Modernism
June 30, 2026
Semiotics and History: Early Modernism
July 31, 2026 Semiotics and History: Gnosticism in Modern America
