Mythological Name-Power

Mythological Name-Power designates the logic, operative across multiple cultural traditions, by which a hidden or concealed proper Name functions as the ultimate ground of sovereignty and cosmic authority. In the Egyptian myth mobilized by Rollins, Ra's supremacy over all deities and mortals is not secured by force or visible attribute alone but by the concealment of his true name deep within his body — inaccessible to others, yet constitutive of his power. The name is not merely a label but a concentrated locus of ontological power: to possess or extort the true name is to possess the being itself. This mythological logic thus treats the Name as a kind of pre-symbolic master-signifier: it quilts and organizes the entire divine-mortal hierarchy, yet its efficacy depends precisely on its withdrawal from circulation. Concealment is not incidental but structural — the Name-Power works because it is hidden, not despite it.

This concept extends Name-theology beyond any single religious tradition into a comparative-mythological register, arguing that the hidden-name structure is a cross-cultural constant. The Isis-Ra narrative (Isis tricks Ra into revealing his secret name, thereby appropriating his power) demonstrates that name-revelation functions as a transfer of sovereignty — a mythological articulation of what Lacanian theory would call the paternal metaphor operating at the level of the Real. The Name is not transparent signification but opaque, encrypted force; its power is inseparable from its hiddenness within the body of the ruling deity.

Within rollins-peter-the-fidelity-of-betrayal-towards-a-church-beyond-belief-paraclete, Mythological Name-Power appears as a comparative-mythological extension of a prior discussion of Jewish mystical Name-theology, widening the argument to claim universality: the logic of the concealed sovereign Name is not culturally particular but structurally recurrent. The concept therefore functions as an empirical-mythological anchor for what the text is theorizing theologically.

In relation to the three cross-referenced canonical concepts, Mythological Name-Power can be read as a pre-theoretical or mythic anticipation of all three. It maps most directly onto the Master Signifier: like S1, the hidden name of Ra organizes the entire chain of deities and mortals, operates through self-grounding authority ("because I am Ra"), and derives its power from its very opacity rather than from any stable signified. The concealment "deep in his stomach" parallels the master signifier's structural function of quilting without itself being determined. The concept also resonates with the Name of the Father: the Egyptian myth encodes a paternal-function logic in which the possessor of the Name holds the place of the triangulating third, and the Isis narrative (extraction of the name as usurpation) recapitulates the Lacanian drama of the paternal metaphor being seized or undermined. Finally, the hidden Name sustains the entire Symbolic Order of the divine cosmos — its concealment is the condition of possibility for the coherence of that order, just as the incompleteness and hiddenness of the big Other is, for Lacan, what keeps the symbolic universe functioning rather than collapsing into psychotic dissolution.

The Fidelity of Betrayal: Towards a Church Beyond BeliefPeter Rollins · 2008 (p.74)

a variety of cultures... the creator ruled all deities and mortals in the guise of Ra... his true name was concealed deep in his stomach

The phrase "concealed deep in his stomach" is theoretically loaded because it localizes Name-Power not in speech or inscription — the ordinary registers of the signifier — but in the body itself, suggesting that the true Name is not yet fully symbolized but retained at the level of the Real; "concealed" marks the structural necessity of hiddenness for sovereign authority, while "stomach" situates power in an interior, pre-linguistic, visceral site that parallels the Lacanian notion of jouissance as bodily and unspeakable.