Ulysses, Chapter One: Telemachus

Buck opens the scene in the tower with mirror and razor crossed over a bowl of lather and begins the mass. A razor is a knife, which is Buck's nickname for Stephen ("Kinch"). The mirror reflects Buck's own image back at him.

Could the bowl be the tower inverted? The tower is the Omphalos, or the navel (center) of the world. The mirror and the razor together (crossed) could represent the body and the soul, or (B)uck and (S)tephen. Here they are at odds with each other, but one could argue that the two extremes have been reconciled in the person of Leopold Bloom (in whom the mundane and the miraculous have no conflict).

The name Bloom brings to mind the rose, which further brings to mind the symbol of the Rose Cross, consisting of two crossed bars with a rose unfolded over the intersection. The rose, representing spirit, is nailed to the cross of matter (the nail comes into the picture in a very significant way later on in the book).

The crossed mirror and razor suggest the crossed silver and gold keys of the papal insignia, which are the keys of St. Peter, said to give the power to bind and loose the things of earth and heaven, respectively. These are the keys to the gates of paradise, often been viewed as representing privileged access to secret knowledge.

In the Western Tradition, the silver and gold keys represent the Lesser and Greater Mysteries, the former associated with Luna and the latter with Sol. These pertain to the terrestrial and celestial initiatory passages, from which it could be argued that the mass is ultimately derived. I might also suggest that one of them (but which?) may be taken to represent Rome, while the other represents Jerusalem, as so many of the mysteries of the book are tied up in the contrast between Catholicism and Judaism. The image of the crossed keys return in a later chapter. And let us not forget, both Dedalus and Bloom are key-less wanderers.

With these holy relics are blessed the tower, the surrounding countryside, the awakening mountains, and Stephen Dedalus. The story can now begin.

There does seem to be some sort of connection between the bowl of lather and the bowl of bile which sits by Stephan's mother's death bed. When Buck wipes the razor with his snotrag, he can only be "rubbing in" the fact of Stephan's loss, and of his failure to pray for his dying mother. He's a right bastard, that Buck Mulligan.

And, just for the hell of it (we must admit, there is a lot of Kabbalah in Ulysses, some of which is overwhelmingly obvious, and much of which I will be returning to later on in this series):

The L of Leopold and the B of Bloom translate into Hebrew as Lamed Bet, adding up to 32 (by Gematria, in which every letter is attributed a numeric value), which is the total number of Sephiroth ("numbers") on the Otz Chayim or Tree of Life, together with the 22 letters of the Hebrew Alphabet. The 32 Paths of Wisdom (a Kabbalistic classic thought to be derived from, or at least closely related to, The Book of Contemplation or Sepher ha-Iyyun) list the 32 attributes one after the other as the means by which the Godhead emanates from the highest to the lowest.

Continuing on, the S of Stephan with the D of Dedalus translate to Samekh Dalet, totaling 64, which is the number of hexagrams in the I Ching. So, east meets west, or perhaps Jerusalem meets Rome (though, in this case, the attributes appear to be switched, leading me to believe that this is truly a blind alley).