… stands in angelic for “transcending”, also in the Christian meaning of “Trinity” or psychoanalytically as “triangulation”; derived from this in the SDE are the terms for “heaven, sea and earth” as well as “head, body and foot”, “man, woman, child”, “light, shadow, darkness”. In addition, hermeneutically, there is the secret meaning as “Hermeticism” (cf. Hermes Trismegistos, ancient Greek Ἑρμῆς ὁ Τρισμέγιστος , “the thrice greatest Hermes”), hence also in theology for “Mysterium tremendum et fascinosum” as well as that of “birth, death and resurrection”. Now and then Goethe’s “Stirb und werde!”, but also Nietzsche’s “Stirb zur rechten Zeit” are found translated in seraphic scriptoria simply like this (see above).

Lacan uses the term for the “signifier in the symbolic order, which denotes the real, but is permeated and distorted by the imaginary and therefore multiple projections and misrecognitions, thus always referring to something invisible” (Escrits 2,72, p. 3, quotation 14).

In American English, the word sometimes appears in slang, for example in the phrase “go West”. Polish knows an etymological relationship between this SDE word and the proper name “Tadzio” or “Tadziu”, which etymologically is probably derived from the Greek Θεόδοτος Theodotos, “the angelic gift” (God gives us the angels as mediators / the angels give themselves to God). Very common is also the use for the performance term “Adagio” (musik.) in the heavenly choral system of the thronoi (Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita).

Frank Werner Pilgram