Precis

 I intend to create an inventory of navigational motifs in the films THE COUNSELOR, No COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN and the novel BLOOD MERIDIAN. I’m approaching this accounting two ways, first using Robert Fludd’s stage design based on Elizabethan Occult Philosophy and second, by extracting the ways that gestures, memory and direction by way of Evelyn Tribble’swork on Distributed Cognition in theatre. I will demonstrate that number, clothing, and location in McCarthy offer an opportunity to use the works as time-keeping devices and navigational resources.

The appeal of occult philosophy by artists for elite patrons during the Renaissance held the ideal of a unified framework of natural philosophy by uncovering work from Antiquity combined with their conception of magic.  The Elizabethan Occult school of thought believed they would attain a higher form of knowledge and that mathematics had a kind of magic. They believed reconciling Antiquity with their own contemporary knowledge would offer unimaginable power. (Roseen Giles)

I will continue by finding and explicating McCarthy’s celestial content and arguing such content   connects his work to an older tradition by preserving navigational tools within artworks. 

I plan on exploring the jewelry and wardrobe choices of Yanty Yates  in the movie THE COUNSELOR  and  Mary Zophres  dozens of plaid shirts in NCFOM. Mapping the locations in each of these stories I view the locations  in the same way an FBI profiler might look at the crime  sites of a serial killer to find a pattern, there by demonstrating Robert Fludd’s concept of “As Above, So Below.” The Renaissance had a practice of hiding valuable content in decorative or atmospheric aesthetics. The hidden layers of content I find in McCarthys writing  is a structure found across cultures reflecting the concept of mind and knowledge and functions like a library for the memory.

Approaching Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem’s character) as a personification of the sun  demonstrates the gnostic principle of “as above so below” that captivated Renaissance thinkers. Anton Chigurh becomes cast as  a myths-poetic metaphor for the sun’s journey in the summer of 1980, Texas when a “killer heat wave” unrelented for weeks until…”Earth turning on its axis was enough to do the trick.” (The Dallas Morning News, Aug 5, 2010)

In a similar manner I propose that Malkina (Cameron Diaz’s character) in THE COUNSELOR is the personification of Venus while utilizing Jeff Cooley’s analysis of a Sumerian astro-myth. Malkina’s movements in the movie allow us to explore her as being a keeper of maths, navigation and astronomy.  These two character’s as well as Blood Meridian’s the kid and Judge, portray the concept of mind embedded in a unitary tradition throughout many art genres. The kids birth in BLOOD MERIDIAN occurs during a meteor shower, aligning his arrival with other literary heroes Krishna, Jesus and Hamlet also associated with celestial bodies at birth.