Of Mice and Cheese ~ LA PENSINE MUTINE (EN)

The ticking of the clocks sounds like mice nibbling away at time.
Alphonse Allais

It's just after the final stroke of midnight, when the carriage reverts to a pumpkin and the horses become mice again, seizing the momentum to dig holes in the Swiss cheese before switching tales and taking their custom elsewhere. Nothing much to make a meal of. Or even a magic shroom omelette (since all the eggs have been taken down for Easter). Unlike the four-leaf clover, the 4 of Clubs, this month, is not about good fortune. Rather a warning sign that we should watch out for the unexpected and any form of excess that might be detrimental to our personal development. Incidentally, in the famous Lenormand oracle, the eroding (both literal and figurative) Mice card is also of ill omen, heralding trouble, loss, or theft.

Say 'Cheese'!

What about the many pervasive and persistent myths and legends about this cute little rodent?

Some claim that Satan created mice at the time of Noah's Ark, whereas others believe they descended from the heavens during a storm to plague the earth. In the Torah, the mouse is listed among the unclean animals (Leviticus 11:29) and in the Old Testament, it is regarded as evil, a sign of destruction and misfortune.

Ironically, in Europe, even during the Middle Ages, it was also believed to provide contact with the divine, escorting deceased souls to the afterlife, thus acting as a conduit between heaven and earth.

In India, legend holds that Ganesha, the elephant-headed god, would ride a mouse, a symbol of knowledge and cunning to overcome obstacles in order to gain access to any environment.

Elsewhere, the mouse is also said to represent a certain control over the ego.

Even though it is best known as the Tooth Fairy in the rest of the world, the 'Little Mouse' is probably as popular as Santa amongst children in French-speaking countries. The myth, which involves a mouse collecting milk teeth placed under the pillow in return for coins, would originate from an 18th-century French tale written by Baroness d'Aulnoy, in which a fairy changes into a mouse to assist a queen in defending herself against an evil king, hiding under his pillow and knocking out all his teeth (a source of power). But the story is also inspired by an older belief that a tooth eaten by an animal would take on the animal's characteristics. So parents would sometimes give their children's baby teeth to a mouse so that the new ones would grow as hard and sharp as the little rodent's.

What about the popular misconception that cheese is mice's favourite food? Mice eat whatever they can get their teeth onto, so the odds are that this myth may originate from a time when, unlike other foods that were either hung up or carefully wrapped in airtight bags, cheese was more accessible as it was left out in the open to mature.

Cheese the Day¹

Once eaten, what becomes of the holes in the Swiss cheese?
Jean-Loup Chiflet

Have you ever heard of the Swiss Cheese Paradox? It is based on the following syllogism:² “Swiss cheese has lots of holes. The MORE holes you have, the LESS cheese you have. The MORE cheese you have, the MORE holes you have. Thus, the MORE cheese you have, the LESS cheese you have.” It's an insidious form of polysemy in which two opposing concepts are combined in the same phrase, resulting in nonsense.

“A country capable of giving the world 400 cheeses cannot die” once said Churchill about France. Then, how comes French has so few cheese idioms, when English has so many?

Literally, a piece of cake is as easy as cheese, but it's tough cheese when there's nothing you can do about it; anything cheesy is nerdy³, but when that's cheese, it's great⁴. You cut the cheese when you let one rip⁵, and you need to say 'Cheese' to smile at the photographer. Everything that costs candy in France costs cheddar⁶ in the UK, where the big cheese is a big hat⁷, the cheesehead a jellybrain⁸, and excuses full of cheese are actually full of holes. It's best to avoid cheese-eaters who betray their friends, and it's also a bad idea to cheese someone off as they might make a fuss (a cheese in French) out of it⁹. Besides, you dont cheese it, you scuttle off (in France, we use magic powder)¹⁰.

The Brits and the French clearly are like chalk and cheese. However, knowing that the etymology of 'fromage' (cheese in French) comes from Latin fromaticus [caseus] which means 'moulded [cheese]', it's easy to understand why cheeseballs stand for morons.

The Matrix Mousetrap

But little Mouse, you are not alone,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes of mice and men
Go often askew,
And leave us nothing but grief and pain,
For promised joy!
"To a Mouse", Robert Burns (1785)

Just like mice, men are guinea pigs for archontic manipulations, constantly struggling for scraps, whether they be food, comfort, security, knowledge, love or social recognition. Similarly, they are being constantly hunted down by all sorts of predators both visible (mostly human) and invisible (astral entities), striving to spin the wheel of their intangible cage to exhaustion, with the feeling of moving forward, but never realising they are going in circles.

In the matrix, men are akin to lab mice trained to respond to stimuli. Conditioned by reward (money, social status, approval) and punishment (unemployment, exclusion, oppression) depending on whether they obey or try to break free from the system, they remain caught up in an endless cycle, chasing an illusory carrot (success, love, material abundance).

Both have the illusion of free will. They can move freely but their choices are, for one, either limited to an imposed environment or, for the other, preset by the rules of the matrix. The wheel is a perfect metaphor for samsara, the forced reincarnation that keeps humans entrapped in this reality in which they build up experiences, but can never leave because they are cut off from their Spirit, which would otherwise enable them to transcend this cycle.

As for cheese, it could stand for the formatted intellect, shaped by the archons, for whom the human brain is akin to a soft, malleable mass, which English-speakers liken to cheese (your brain is like cheese) or cheesy thinking (for unsharp or impressionable minds). Cheese is fermented, transformed and squeezed into a mould. The same happens to the human mind with education, the media and dogmas.

Never mind that it may or may not be their favourite food, mice are attracted by the cheese placed on the trap, and as soon as they reach for it, it closes on them. For men, illusions serve as bait (pleasures, false awakenings, religion, power). In the matrix, anything that looks like an exit door is generally a deception. The archons prey on human yearning for elevation to entrap us in other belief systems.

I was hoping we'd make real progress,
But it seems we have lost the power.
Any tiny step of advancement
Is like a raindrop falling into the ocean.
We're running on the spot
Always have, always will.
"Running on the Spot", The Jam (1982)

In 1968, American ethnologist John Calhoun conducted a famous experiment known as ‘Mouse Utopia’, which is an excellent metaphor for our world today. Mice were placed in a perfect environment (unlimited food, no predators). At first they thrived, but after several generations they became aggressive, apathetic and eventually extinct. The cause? Behavioural degeneration due to a lack of evolutionary challenge.

A similar phenomenon is observed in the matrix, with an increasingly aseptic, controlled society, affected by the stagnation of consciousness, with individuals dumbed down by entertainment and over-consumption, all resulting in a loss of vitality and survival instinct (birth rate falling, mental illnesses on the rise).

From Swiss Cheese to Mouse Holes

All the holes at once
Are comin' alive, set free
Out of sight and out of mind
The lonely and their prey
"Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor", Radiohead (2016)

In the Old Testament of the Demiurge, mice are regarded as unclean and associated with plague and pestilence, since they stand for whatever gnaws and erodes the foundations of his world. They're beyond his control and live in the shadows, outside the official structures, like heretics and rebels who question the system. For awakening to the Spirit is perceived as an act of rebellion against the matrix programme.

It also implies stepping aside from the ‘cheese baits’ and false awakenings or ‘sandboxes’ (astral spirituality, religions, materialism) strategically placed on our path to divert us, so that we can eventually break the cycle of emotional enslavement and forced reincarnations. The ultimate goal is to free ourselves from the astral and merge with our original consciousness.

Notice to all you green mice pacing up and down the labs: if those gentlemen upstairs grab you by the tail, they'll sure turn you into hot snails.¹¹

Endnotes

^ Seize the day.
^ Syllogism, in logic, is a valid deductive argument having two premises and a conclusion. The traditional type is the categorical syllogism in which both premises and the conclusion are simple declarative statements that are constructed using only three simple terms between them, each term appearing twice (as a subject and as a predicate): “All men are mortal; no gods are mortal; therefore no men are gods.” The argument in such syllogisms is valid by virtue of the fact that it would not be possible to assert the premises and to deny the conclusion without contradicting oneself. (Source)
^ Cheesy = bad taste.
^ That's cheese! = that's great!
^ To cut the cheese = to fart.
^ To cost cheddar = to cost dear.
^ Gros bonnet = big boss, fat cat.
^ Mou du bulbe = cheesehead.
^ To cheese somebody off = to upset somebody. En faire un fromage = make a fuss.
^ Prendre la poudre d'escampette = to disappear.
^ "Une souris verte" ("A Green Mouse"), is a 18th century French nursery rhyme.