Spiral stairway -- threatening and/or broken?

Existential Challenge of "The Other" (Part #7)

Curiously freemasonry, as described by Albert G. Mackey (The Symbolism of Freemasonry, 1882), has also cultivated The Legend of the Winding Stairs associated with access to the so-called Middle Chamber:

Although the legend of the Winding Stairs forms an important tradition of Ancient Craft Masonry, the only allusion to it in Scripture is to be found in a single verse in the sixth chapter of the First Book of Kings, and is in these words: "The door for the middle chamber was in the right side of the house; and they went up with winding stairs into the middle chamber, and out of the middle into the third." Out of this slender material has been constructed an allegory, which, if properly considered in its symbolical relations, will be found to be of surpassing beauty. But it is only as a symbol that we can regard this whole tradition; for the historical facts and the architectural details alike forbid us for a moment to suppose that the legend, as it is rehearsed in the second degree of Masonry, is anything more than a magnificent philosophical myth.

A further study has been made by Homer L. Zurrrwalt (A Study of the Winding Staircase, 1989) since it is a key feature in the design of King Solomon's Temple that is central to the symbolism of freemasonry. He notes it has been made a central feature of the Second Degree which every Fellowcraft Mason must symbolically ascend in order to make his advancement in the degree. This is explained in more detail elsewhere (Charles A. Sankey, The Winding Stair to the Middle Chamber, 1968). The focus in masonic use is on the value-related symbolism of a succession of steps in the winding stairs (The Winding Stairs, Short Talk Bulletin, January 1932, 1):

There actually was a winding stair in Solomon's Temple, but of the three, five and seven steps the scriptures are silent. Only in this country have the Winding Stairs but fifteen steps. In older days the stairs had but five, sometimes seven steps. Preston had thirty-six steps in his Winding Stairs; in series of one, three, five, seven, nine and eleven. The English system later eliminated the number eleven from Preston's thirty-six, making but twenty-five in all. The Stairs as a whole are a representation of life; not the physical life of eating, drinking, sleeping and working, but the mental and spiritual life, of both the lodge and the world without; of learning, studying, enlarging mental horizons and increasing the spiritual outlook.

If the pattern, exemplified in DNA, holds more generally -- as suggested here -- then it is to be expected that it holds whether one believes in it or not, and to whatever degree. The cognitive dynamics of "believing in it" (or not) may well be fundamental to the operation of the pattern. It may well hold in some way at a range of scales, from the personal to the global (as discussed below). The question for the moment (and especially in the moment) is how such a stairway may be experienced -- if it is only partially experienced -- and what are the pathological forms of partial experience?

Suggestive clues may be obtained by comparing how stairways are experienced as unsafe with current understanding of how DNA may be damaged (and repaired) -- bearing in mind that the systems of the human body necessarily have a comprehensive understanding of the latter:

Potentially unsafe stairways (and their associated dangers): This is a common experience for those personally familiar with ruins, but it has been widely explored in movie scenes. Possibilities include:
- fragility of steps however solid they may appear (wood rot, etc) -- especially if they appear to be made of unusual materials
- invisibility of steps (due to inadequate lighting or to optical illusions) calling for an act of faith in both their presence and solidity
- special, and possibly unfamiliar, requirements for walking -- possibly to avoid inducing destructive vibrations (as with ropeways)
- absence (or invisibility) of any supporting far wall and the consequent danger of falling off
- any counter-intuitive need to avoid the prudence of clinging to the proximate side of the stairway
- the presence of unforeseeable others, of unimaginable nature and motivation, on the strange stairway -- especially if it is not clear where it goes or the identity of those who may make use of it
Damage to DNA: This occurs at a rate of 1,000 to 1,000,000 molecular lesions per cell per day due to environmental (exogenous) factors and normal metabolic (endogenous) processes inside the cell. It corrupts the integrity and accessibility of essential information, notably altering the spatial configuration of the helix.

The replication of damaged DNA before cell division can lead to the incorporation of wrong bases opposite damaged ones. Daughter cells that inherit these wrong bases carry mutations from which the original DNA sequence is typically unrecoverable. Accumulation of extensive DNA damage by a cell, or its inability to continue DNA repair to damage incurred, results in its entering one of three possible states:

Table 1: Indicative patterns of DNA damage and repair
to be interpreted as a comprehensive guide to the challenge of relating to a complementary "Other"
(further information is available from the extensive Wikipedia entry and its links)

DNA damage by a range of mutagens can be subdivided into two main types:

endogenous damage to DNA due to endogenous cellular processes:
- oxidation of bases from reactive oxygen species produce multiple forms of damage, including base modifications, as well as double-strand breaks
- alkylation of bases (usually methylation), such as formation of 7-methylguanine
- hydrolysis of bases, such as deamination, depurination and depyrimidination.
- mismatch of bases, due to errors in DNA replication, in which the wrong DNA base is stitched into place in a newly forming DNA strand, or a DNA base is skipped over or mistakenly inserted.
exogenous damage caused by external agents such as
- ultraviolet radiation from the sun causing crosslinking between adjacent cytosine and thymine bases creating pyrimidine dimers in a DNA strand
- ionizing radiation such as that created by radioactive decay or in cosmic rays causes breaks in DNA strands.
- thermal disruption at elevated temperature increases the rate of depurination, and notably hydrolytic depurination
- certain plant toxins
- human-made mutagenic chemicals, especially aromatic compounds that act as DNA intercalating agents resulting in insertion into the space between two adjacent base pairs; intercalators are mostly aromatic and planar molecules distorting the DNA strands by unwinding of the double helix thereby inhibiting both transcription and DNA replication, causing toxicity and mutations.
- cancer chemotherapy and radiotherapy

DNA repair mechanisms: Depending on the type of damage inflicted on the DNA's double helical structure, a variety of repair strategies have evolved to restore lost information. If possible, cells use the unmodified complementary strand of the DNA or the sister chromatid as a template to losslessly recover the original information. Without access to a template, cells use an error-prone recovery mechanism known as translesion synthesis as a last resort

direct reversal is achieved by three types of chemical process
single strand damage to one of the two strands of a double helix may be repaired by using the other strand as a template to guide the correction of the damaged strand.
double-strand breaks are particularly hazardous to the cell because they can lead to genome rearrangements; two mechanisms exist to repair them
translesion synthesis involves the use of specialized translesion DNA polymerases that can insert bases at the site of damage but with some risk of mutation.

Understood in terms of a stairwell, it is vital to recognize the cognitive challenge of the unfamiliar, if one's primary association is with one pole of the binary -- whether or not it is understood to be purportedly bridged by a sense of correspondence and complementarity. The other side may be existentially terrifying whatever may be hypothesised about its complementarity.

The terror of such unfamiliarity may be readily associated with the demonic -- as is only too evident in the tendency to demonize those who hold unfamiliar views evoking disagreement. In this sense any such supposed step on the stairway beyond doctrinal convention may be quite appropriately framed as encountering "Satan on one's doorstep". It is understandable why some belief systems are totally opposed to forms of aesthetics that may suggest correspondences and complementarities that relate them to other belief systems with which they have no conventional (doctrinal) affinity.

I summon to the winding ancient stair;
Set all your mind upon the steep ascent,
Upon the broken, crumbling battlement,
Upon the breathless starlit air,
'Upon the star that marks the hidden pole;
Fix every wandering thought upon
That quarter where all thought is done:
Who can distinguish darkness from the soul?
(from W B Yeats, A Dialogue of Self and Soul)