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We
have come to the end of our considerations, which have presented themselves
in the fabric of a kind of circular cadence, dictated by the very nature
of the theme that we have attempted to describe. It remains to state that
we have realized this work without attempting to exhaust a symbolical model,
which, like the cosmos, is inexhaustible. We should have liked to treat in
extenso of certain themes–themselves associated with the symbol
of the wheel–that here have only been suggested. Thus, we should have
liked to refer to the wheel in relation to the music and dance of the peoples,
and to emphasize in the first place the idea of rhythm that these arts
implicitly entail. Likewise, we should have liked to underscore the circularity
of these musical structures, sung and recited, as well as the choreographies
of rounds and repetitions, present throughout the traditions. This circularity
can be clearly seen, even in our day, in the universal folklore, in the
dance and song of the "primitives" and of children, whose rhythmic
and circular basis can readily be verified. If we accept the fact that
our culture still recalls certain fragments of its traditional past–which
constitute its actual unconscious fabric–we can understand these unanimous
manifestations. We have already indicated the sacred and mythical origins
of all art or creation. We have also said that the model of the city, the
model of the culture of the civilizations, has been structured in analogous
wise to the model of the sky, and to the internal, direct knowledge of
the cosmogony, within which the human state has a primordial role. And
we have seen that these cultural and symbolic structures, like their mythic
and ritual manifestations, constitute the principles from which as a point
of departure these civilizations progress, until they subsequently come
to forget them by reason of their multiplication, or fall, notwithstanding
the fact that they continue to shape in hidden fashion the heart of the
society that denies them. If, on the other hand, we reflect on the fact
that every gesture or expression is in the last instance symbolic, we shall
thereby discover that, in like fashion, every act is ritual. And we see
that, ultimately, rites, myths, and symbols form part of life itself–or
better, are life itself–and their cyclic, rhythmic reiteration is
the archetypal memory of an original fact not signed by ordinary, lineal
space and time, but located in another dimension, proper to the sacred.
In this sense, the symbol of the wheel is dual in the extreme: on the one
hand, it signifies the incredible generosity of manifested life; on the
other, it indicates the concatenation, the slavery, of our repetitions
and habits, exemplified by the interlocking of industrial, consumer society,
which has ended by mechanizing us; and still worse–in a more disturbing
dimension–the possibility of our remaining prisoners limitlessly in
the wheel of the incarnations.
The cyclic, circular repetition characteristic of cultural ceremonies re-creates
and regenerates the person who participates in them–regardless of the degree
of this participation–since they consciously, deliberately imitate an original
revealed gesture, which these persons, groups, or societies have come to know
through their symbolic manifestation. In this new life, or regenerate state,
are found the opportunities of the new human being, and in reality, of all of
culture–in the broadest sense of the term–inasmuch as, having been
articulated in accordance with the symbolic model of a cosmogony, this culture
constitutes a messenger, or vehicle, affording the human beings who mold it the
occasion of the encounter with these occult realities, which characterize the
specifically human. Civilization–in the authentic acceptation of the word–is
a bridge and a ladder, a guide and a roadmap, for the journey to oneself. And
its structures and expressions constitute not only an order in which things can
be possible, but also a "didactics," a teaching ever living and current,
displayed to human view both in its deities and in its "popular" sayings.
And all of this is emphatically shared by the music, the songs and recitals,
the dances and ceremonies of the nations. From refrains to rondos, to Gregorian
chant, or to the ceremonies of the Eastern Orthodox Church, from modern compositions
of a spiral construction, like Ravel's "Bolero," to Hindu and Buddhist mantrams
and Hebrew and Islamic recitations, from folkloric dances, or those of the "primitive" peoples,
to the dervish dances or those of the tai-chi–all of these expressions
derive from one and the same origin, and are always present in the entrails of
human beings and their societies.
We should further have desired to make more reference to the symbol of the wheel
in its association with the symbolics of the chariot, and of the journey. We
know the renewing virtues of a change of situation or role, and those of being
in a completely foreign milieu, fraught as it may well be with perils. In this
perspective we must include the symbol of the pilgrimage (analogous to that of
the sloughing of the skin, characteristic of certain animals), which the sun
likewise ritualizes daily and yearly. The chariot itself is a solar symbol, and
is also connected with fire–for example, in Ezekiel's vision–and is
the vehicle of the ascent to the heavens of the prophet Elijah. Here, the chariot–cubic
and in movement, as we have seen–driven by the generative energy of its
wheels, traverses the Milky Way, in the initiatory journey, or ascension to the
heaven of other realities, which includes a completely different reading of the
manifest world. We shall not insist on initiation as cyclic: we shall only say
that the ideas of the new human being, of a birth to life (and to reality), death
and resurrection, end and beginning, and palingenesis, appear in the cultures
of any type of which the memory abides. We shall add that the initiatory journey,
or journey of knowledge, is the beginning of the life of the person who undertakes
it. Thus it is perfectly analogous to any generation, and especially to the archetypal
creation of the cosmos, which, despite the efforts of our contemporaries, continue
to be undeniably alive.
The initiatory journey–or traversing of the route beyond the grave–also
describes a circular parabola, which can be seen not only in the myths of resurrection
(life-death-life) and in the rites of fertilization and vegetation, but likewise
in certain symbols as clear as the Christian Parousia, which has always been
common to all traditions: the second coming of the civilizing and educating hero,
the return of the savior (the vessel of knowledge and true life) who is to restore
that mythic time, that original epoch and state in which beauty and wisdom really
existed on earth. This is likewise to be seen in the ecstatic journey of the shaman, who
takes leave of himself to traverse the lower regions–the land of the deceased1–and
the heavens, finally returning to himself, to his tangible and concrete location,
after having effected a circumscription, a turning back upon himself, realized
in his psyche. At the completion of this revolution, the psyche is
found totally regenerated. After having traversed an entire world or cycle, the
subject has become a new being. We mean: the knowledge of that being by itself,
although now at another level, which is noticed by the very "caducity" or
death of the "previous" state, now experienced as something past, as
a dream.
This conscious renovation of life is more an integration than a discovery. The
true human being has always been present, albeit unrecognized by the person who
has occupied her place. From another point of view, the latter is the knowledge
or observation of supra-being, or nonbeing, by being. It is the recognition of
the supracosmic, through the cosmos and its exemplary model, that is, of the
supra-human, by the intermediation of the human being, in a circular process.
Here we must explain that, although being is the affirmation of supra-being,
or nonbeing, the latter is in no way the negation–nor could it be–of
the former. This opposition between being and nonbeing is not present, since
these are not of the same register, not in the same key. Nonbeing, or supra-being,
by its proper condition cannot ever be opposed to nothing, because it really
is not. Being, which is its affirmation,2 manifests
unity punctually, for which reason it will be able to be polarized in this way,
and engender with being its own negation, in its reflection–rendering possible,
in the succession of its development and limit, the return to itself: that is,
to its origin and to the origin of all manifestation. Nonbeing, then, is not
the negation of being, as is the Hermetic concept of evacuation or of nothing
(the 'Ayin of the Hebrew cabala, for example), nor does it express the "nothing" of
nihilism. Nor is the invisible that which is out of our visual field. Still less
does it consist of certain vague, robust imaginings.
On the other hand, we hear that the polishing of a rough stone requires ever
more precise and subtle tools. If at the beginning of the initiatory journey,
or process of knowledge, the most crude is to be eliminated (that is: the deceit
of personhood is to be noticed and, correlatively, to be negated, along with
an understanding of the illusion of our life and conceptions, and the relativity
of all things); subsequently–we are told–we discover greater meaning
in the totality of the manifest, both in the individual or microcosmic and in
the universal or macrocosmic, inasmuch as these states are modes, or degrees,
of the consciousness of universal being: transparent emanations and "opaquings" of
the supreme identity, which transparent emanations and "opaquings" will
issue in the cosmos and in the human being, and which constitute not only the
digital trace of the deity, but are, to boot, the form in which the deity perceives
itself.
The connection of the symbol of the wheel with that of chariot, journey, and
movement also conveys to us a sensation of advance, of evolution, which, transposed
to the cognitive process is the development of the awareness of the individual
who shares in it, and its projection upon temporal succession. It is a fact that,
the more a person concentrates on the search for truth, the acquisition of oneness,
and self-realization, the more that person's capacity broadens for perceiving
the universal.3 Nonetheless,
it is necessary to notice that, in a journey of this type, it is inadmissible
to look back, since to remember the past is to unleash the Furies. One must likewise
notice that personhood can go astray in the labyrinthine convolutions of the psyche–the
soul–and that we need the tools and the vehicle offered us by tradition
and doctrine, since they situate and orientate us. With the reservation that
this doctrine is the expression of the internal knowledge of the cosmogony, and
that it must be clearly differentiated from dogma, which is the authoritarian
imposition of so-called axioms selected arbitrarily or out of a particular interest.
Thus, this promotion to knowledge, which is its own verification, is an entry–by
means of entwinement with the intimacy of doctrine–to the living mandala of
the cosmogony: which supposes an ordering within, and a direct knowledge of the
sacred.
We should also have liked to write about the wheel as a symbol of refuge, as
a magical protection, and in this sense relate it with any sacred enclosure,
an enclosure always linked with salvation, whether it be the magic circle or
Noah's ark. Just so, we should have liked to examine it as a defense against
the exterior darkness, and as a talisman. We should have liked to emphasize its
therapeutic and healing qualities, which coincide with those attributed to symbols
and to the networks of traditional symbolics in general. On the other hand, the
wheel is the principal instrument of the science of rhythms, whose purpose is
to strike a rhythm, to connect, with the rhythm of universal being. The word "rosary" derives
from rotarium, and designates religious mementos of Christian, Muslim,
and Buddhist. It is interesting to observe that certain wheels utilized in this
last tradition, for ritual repetition, have been known in the West as "prayer
machines." Prayer itself can be seen as a circuit of communication of earth-sky-earth,
and the rhythmic rite of the call to prayer can be seen as a returning upon oneself.
Certain classical and Renaissance symbols, like that of the three Graces, are
set forth in enchained form, and related with one another in such a fashion that
they transmit to us, by their gestures and the expressions on their face, the
idea of giving-accepting-returning. Again, they correspond to the three Parcae,
who weave the destiny of the cosmos and of human beings: one spins, the second
measures, the third severs. They are also assimilated to past, present, and future.4
Once we admit that the symbol truly manifests reality, and that rite consciously
imitates the rhythm of the cosmic structure–just as myth exemplifies it–we
can understand the basic importance of symbol and rite, whether as factors of
regenerative power or as factors of psycho-physical protection and defense. Granted,
the performance of these functions is not accompanied by a decline in their capacity
for transmittal, since the symbol is above all a cognitive vehicle. But these
characteristics are proper to symbols, myths, and rites across the board, and
in this particular case, are attributes customarily ascribed to the wheel.
There is also a traditional constant in which the creative act, sound, light,
and name are customarily associated with the symbol of the wheel. In Hindu tradition,
it is said: "By means of the name of the four, he has made the round wheel
to turn."5 As
for sound, the monosyllable AUM (OM), with which the creative act is evoked
and repeated, "passes from the most open vowel to the most closed consonant
in search of the limitless possibilities of sound," as Lanza del Vasto tells
us.6 As for
light, the simple enunciation of the Fiat Lux makes light be, and with
it all things. In this last case, sound is antecedent to light and light is the
manifestation of sound, inasmuch as it is identified with the creational ray,
which unites the center with the periphery, shaping an intelligible order.
As for our individuality, or the manifestation of personhood, let us observe
that we are not only conditioned by our past, our mother or matrix, which is
all but obvious, but equally by our future–since these extremes always join
in the currency of the present–which as the other pole, draws us toward
itself.7 This
is the idea of fate or destiny, inasmuch as it is the "effectivization" of
our being. But this is possible only if we have unleashed the dramatic potency
of our selves, an attitude that reveals the quest for the origin, or the memory
of an archetypal past. Which is the same as journeying in the –seemingly
reverse–direction of the encounter with destiny, since this destiny is the
origin, and this origin the destiny.
We have already said that the sacred, traditional symbol, as direct and revealed
expression of the cosmogonic manifestation, its echo and comprehension, promotes
a slow, subtle, and genuine transmutation, which shapes a route or symbolic way,
while the conventional insignia, device, and codes produce superficial stimuli,
supremely statistical, which act almost as reflex movements of our conditioning.
If the symbol gives us freedom, the insignia and convention bind us to the unilateral
character of a viewpoint judged "good," and by extension, "natural" and "universal." In
reality, the degree of comprehension of the sign has the effect that the latter
be taken as a true symbol, an insignia or a convention, or even an allegory: "The
insignia renders uniform, the symbol unifies." We have also explained that
unity, unfolding in the rhythm of duality, engenders, by means of its emanations,
the multiplicity of beings or states of universal being, which are focused on
individual points, created things or beings, seeds that contain within themselves
a potential for engendering–that is, a potential for imitating the archetypal
unit, which has the effect that this unity flow back incessantly, like the motion
of a wheel, the image and model of the cosmos.
We also wish to stress–however strange it may appear today–good manners,
and the laws of courtesy and mutual respect, as daily ritual forms producing
a complete movement of back and forth, and return, which constantly facilitates
the possibility of being. This attitude is found, in our very day, in certain
communities in which it comes to take the form of love, and of harmonious and
balanced life in common. It has been a part of all cultures, and it includes
a commitment to life and an acceptance of order, by favoring creation in a milieu
adequate for the gestation-birth-realization of its members. It also permits
an interpenetration of energies among these members, and a communication of every
kind through symbolical parameters especially designed with this end in view,
but which, like everything else, once transformed into something institutional
and official, lose their meaning and come to be empty, conventional forms, which
finally die by the rigidity of their solidification.
It is as if every gesture had its opposite replica, that formed part of the whole.
It is as if every origin/development and end returned upon itself–as the
cycle of human life well demonstrates: generation-duration-surrender (or return)–and
this self-extinction and catching hold, this birth and death, of the cycles constitutes
the universal harmony: after all, that rotation shapes a visible and invisible
whole of causes and effects that guarantees the coherence and solidarity of that
whole, and that "in itself" is its own explication, or shapes its dialectic.
All of this is verified in simultaneity, by the intermediary of a series of horizontal
planes, which, in reaching their limit, term, or death, unleash the creation
of other, new planes, which must run the same course as their predecessors, as
likewise that of their successors. In this wise, the whole lacks beginning and
end in time: it cannot, it could not, be otherwise. The law of cause and effect
functions up to a certain human or cosmic level. But beyond–paradoxically–are
the suprahuman potentials of the human being and the supracosmic potentials of
the cosmos, which is tantamount to saying: the knowledge of other levels of universal
being. There is an internal meaning in the cosmic concert, unified by the energy
that is symbolized by the names of archetypal love, divine love (or the attraction
felt by the creator for its creatures, which the latter return, rendering this
love mutual), or love simpliciter.8 And
the play of their internal tensions (right/left, forward/back, above/below) mingles,
and these tensions attract and repel each other, producing the seeming solidity
of the whole. These oppositions necessarily suppose a space, in which simultaneity
must manifest itself in successive fashion. Every human possibility is contained
in this schema. Accordingly, the idea of the suprahuman and the supracosmic is
immanent to the human being and to the cosmos, and necessarily transcends them.
The wheel will ceaselessly turn and rotate in conformity with a perfect, invariable
plan, which in its own design contains at the same time its law and, besides,
its clef–or key–that is: the possibility of what is beyond it.
Other subjects of great interest are that of the symbol of the wheel as cosmic
navel and eye, and especially that of the crown as a modality of that of the
wheel. Indeed, the crown, like certain objects of daily use (rings, collars,
bracelets, hoops), participates in this central, axial symbolism, even though
the latter now interests us particularly because it signifies certain attributes
proper to authority and power, and it is not by chance that its location in the
human body–at its summit–corresponds to ideas of realization and grandeur.
The king shapes the incarnation of the energies of the deity, whose intermediary
he is on earth. He governs and orders, hence his unanimous linking with the sun,
also denominated the king-star. In this sense, it is also the Christic center,9 the
divine potential, and represents Adamic human being, the true human being, regenerated.
In Christian symbolism, Jesus is attributed a double role, one of priest and
the other of king. The latter is also an axial symbol (as well expresssed in
iconography by the scepter with which he is represented), which, psychologically,
is translated as a state obtained in arriving precisely at the center: a reintegration
that determines that we can be emperors–neither authoritarian nor pretentious–of
ourselves, perhaps kings with crowns of thorns, as the Gospel describes. The
monastic tonsure represents this, and it is important to notice that the symbol
is located at the summit of the microcosm, indicating its point of emergence,
as does the pole star in the macrocosm. The straw sombrero–and any hat–constructed
from the center outward and in circular form, by the intersection of the warp
and woof, not only is protection from the sun, or shelter, but, like the umbrella,
or parasol–which has the form of a house–is a magical, heavenly accessory
of capital importance, for those who do not take these things as a joke.
The reader will have noticed that, throughout this book, we have placed the accent
on the practical and craft aspect of the wheel only in secondary fashion. Many
persons have sought to see in the wheel the first technological instrument of
humanity, whether as producer of fire–that is, as a transformer and generator
of energy–or, too, as a means of transport, and especially, as a factor
of limitless reproduction. It is probable that from their point of view they
are correct. But these characteristics are derived from the principal significations
of the symbol.
In modern society, wheels and gears play such a role that one could well say
that these societies actually would not exist were it not for such artifacts.
And we could continue along this same line and assert that the wheel constitutes
the entrails of contemporary nations. This is indeed the case, and here we can
clearly see another sample of the ambivalence of symbol: inasmuch as what signifies
celestial perfection can also signify infernal slavery, according to the content
that we attribute or assign to it, which is in direct proportion to the comprehension
and respect we have for symbol in general. What is certain is that, in the mechanized,
technological society in which we live, the same machines and their functions
are symbolical, and speak to all of those who are disposed to listen to them,
to think about them, since they can constitute supports for meditation and reflection,
as can all things. In the first place, they are based on the duality of masculine
and feminine; and in the second place, they are articulated in accordance with
the laws of symmetry, which are other forms of the preceding. One customarily
thinks that these–and other–characteristics, possessed by machines,
are inspired by the human body, which they copy and which they finally end by
replacing. The truth is that neither the machine nor the human body can escape
the cosmic structures and laws and their unchangeable model, in all of which
they are included. Nevertheless, it is rather difficult for us to understand
these simple matters, because the conditioning that machines have produced in
us in just a the few centuries is so great that they have finally dominated us,
inasmuch as we cannot emerge from the mental schemata that their use has imposed
upon us. Acting directly on our psyche, they have not only modified our
habits, customs, and conduct, but determined our emotions and tastes, and even
worse, have mechanized our intelligence by reducing it to mere quantitative levels
of production and effectiveness, which would claim to exclude all other levels.
Our mental conceptions are signed by the milieu in which we live, and there mechanics
and technology rule the roost. Perhaps we do not take account of this fact because
we dream that we are artists or philosophers, or very original, but our intimate
image of the cosmos is more akin to a mechanical engine, to a factory–or
to an anthill–than to anything else.
Still, very many of the inventions of the modern world are hermetic models almost
to a T. Such is the case with the cinema. On a quadrangular plane–equivalent
to the cubic space of the projection room–a ray of light bursts forth in
the darkness, and there then follow actions of limitless possibility and duration,
but always limited ones. Everything happens there. That film is the totality
of itself. There can be a million copies of it, but the fact is always the same.
On the other hand, the image we see is projected by an apparatus moved by a wheel,
which presents to us the successive sequences. But for this to be possible, it
is necessary that another wheel take up the film, since the image of the projection
is inverted with respect to the image of the filming. The curious thing is that
when a "take" is made, the same thing happens in respect of what is
filmed, and the machine must optically invert the image, which, for that matter,
the human eye does, as well. This interesting theme could be much extended, but
this is not the place to do so. Another evident invention is the phonograph.
It turns a disc on a plate–this time the wheel produces sound–and everything
that this disc is, its cycle of complete duration, its musical space, is present
there. Its development goes from its beginning to its end. There are very many
discs, and all of us are artists who record our own disc. Never can these discs–or
worlds–be counted, and even if they could be, there would be absolutely
no value in doing so. This leads us to the notion of a disc that would contain
all discs. The universe in which we live could well be this tridimensional, "quinquesensory" disc,
cassette, or player-piano roll. But then we should be permitted to wonder: When
did it begin, and when does it end? And further: Who put it here? We believe
that we have set forth certain ideas in this regard. We could respond that, from
the living organism of the cosmos, human beings derive all mechanisms, and that
it is not from our mechanical conceptions that the cosmos and the human being
derive. We could also say that these conceptions, in turn, are corollaries of
mistaken philosophical ideas, which have precisely occasioned industrial society,
characterized as it is by rationalism, materialism, and the quantitative. This
industrial society leads us to formulate the above questions in an erroneous
way, and to conceive the human being, nature, and the cosmos as machines–in
this case, "answering machines." And we could also propound a mountain
of explanations, perhaps having to write this book one more time. At times it
is unsuitable to give too many explanations, and at other times there is nothing
more to explain. We have seen the cosmos as a vibration spreading in all directions
around itself, in concentric waves, in isotropic form, as a spiral vortex, or
a limitless helicoid, or a sphere that never closes. The phenomenon has neither
beginning nor end, regenerates ad infinitum, and is only the projection, the
trace or manifestation, of an invisible and inaudible mystery found hidden within
itself. But this is only a form of expressing this to ourselves, of understanding
it. Actually everything is much more simple, present, intangible, and indeterminate–and
always, with respect to the eyes of the senses, another thing completely.
On the other hand, there is no one in the garret of the phantasms of the mind.
The beneficent and maleficent gods are exactly the same, only inverted. And both
are illusory. The horrors and ecstasies we traverse are likewise vain. As long
as we fail to emerge from the idea of cause and effect, we shall be tormented
by our karma. But though ignorance is pain and suffering, the knowledge
that we are victims of mental images and "tricks"–even the most
sophisticated and self-justifying–which we ourselves project or emit, is
healing and enlightening, and can deliver us from the commitment to the relative
of new actions or identifications. If we do not realize them, or hope for anything
from them, they are converted into simple facts that now no longer cause any
effect. And this is the case with what can occur with our egos, disguises,
masks, personalities, moods, tastes, conduct, and ways of life, which are never
more than secondary or coincidental things.
Analogical thought is magical, and so is the journey of knowledge. On this journey,
we must take certain vehicles suitable for certain "stretches" that
we must traverse. Later, and on different terrains and at different moments,
we must leave them–sometimes definitively–and catch other, new ones.
For different personalities, different vehicles are indicated. Likewise with
the epoch in which they should be utilized: some persons have certain particular
facilities and sympathies for determinate things and an aversion from others.
The manners of awakening, and of the work of development, are as different as
the human beings who exist in the world, although the entire process could well
be qualified as prototypal. It is very useful–and from our viewpoint almost
necessary–to study various traditional forms in depth, but the intimate
dovetailing with tradition, which acts within us, is indispensable. The concept
of the deity in Hermetic philosophy and tradition is not religious, nor does
its criterion of the moral respond to the taboos, requirements, and aspirations
of mediocre contemporary bourgeois convention. Another thing all but indispensable
to Occidentals is a precise knowledge of the ideas that make doctrine, even though
they not be understood with rational logic, or the interested person not know
how to enunciate them consciously. The rite of study, of meditation, of concentrated
attention, of "letting oneself go," and the incarnation of teaching,
are necessary.
Almost all of the traditions have reinforced these rites and symbolic journeys
with the ingestion of certain herbs, plants, or psychodelic substances, considered
specifically as sacred or magical, and utilized during determinate periods of
the initiatic process. To be sure, these vehicles are not essential, or even
necessary; but it is important to get a firm grip on them, inasmuch as they not
only enable us to experience internal states, and ideas and realities, of the
human being and of the cosmos, but actively to make a contribution, by themselves,
to this trajectory of ordination and integration–where love (at whatever
level it presents itself, even as passion) is an energy functioning as a basic
motive force, as a means particularly adequate for realization, as long as it
not be taken as something strictly personalized of which we are the proprietors,
something that only exists–and is exhausted–in its own sterility. Love
as intermediary comes under the general prescriptions of the symbolical law,
which clearly express that the symbol is not to be taken for the symbolized;
that the vehicle is not to be confused with the new space to which it transports
us; that we should not do well to make an absolute of something relative, however
satisfactory or useful the latter is or has been for us. We run the risk of substituting
an ordinary or literal plane for another of higher quality–when it only
constitutes a preamble to climbing the ladder of other worlds–which has
nearly the same characteristics, although richer and broader than the first,
but which also ends in itself and therefore can likewise consume itself. We repeat:
love, of whatever nature it be, has been unanimously considered a path of access
to knowledge–especially when this emotion is transferred to wisdom, which
it is customary to represent as woman as image of the transcendent intellect.
This is especially clear in the Song of Solomon, and the Book of Wisdom attributed
to Solomon: "You have ravished my heart, my sister, my bride, you have ravished
my heart with a glance of your eyes, with a jewel of your necklace. How beautiful
is your love, my sister, my bride! How delicious is your love! More than wine!
And the fragrance of your perfumes, more than all the balsams! (Song of Solomon
4:9-10).
And the king recounts his story: "I loved her more than health and beauty,
and I preferred to have her more than light, for the brilliance emerging from
her knows no night. With her there came at the same time all goods, and incalculable
riches are in her hands. And I rejoiced in all of them, because Wisdom brings
them, although I knew not that she was their mother" (Wisdom 7:10-12). And
he goes on:
For in her is a spirit intelligent, holy, single, multiple, subtle, agile, perspicacious,
immaculate, clear, impassible, loving of the good, acute, incoercible, benign,
friend of the human being, firm, secure, that can do all things, that observes
all things, that penetrates all spirits, the intelligent, the pure, the most
subtle. For Wisdom surpasses in mobility all movement, penetrating and pervading
all things in virtue of her purity. She is a breath of the power of God, a pure
emanation of the glory of the Almighty, since nothing stained succeeds in reaching
her. She is a reflection of light eternal, a spotless mirror of the activity
of God, an image of his goodness. Though alone, she can do all things. Without
emerging from herself, she renews the universe. In all ages, entering into holy
souls, she forms in them friends of God, and prophets, for God loves but the
one who lives with Wisdom. She, indeed, is more beautiful than the sun, and surpasses
all of the constellations: compared with light, she emerges victorious, for light
is succeeded by night, but against Wisdom no evil prevails. [Wisdom 7:22-30]
And he continues:
She is unfurled from one confine of the world to the other, mightily, and she
governs the universe excellently. I loved her and sought after her from my youth–strove
to make her my spouse, and I came to be impassioned with her beauty. She enhances
her nobility by her familiarity with God, for the Lord of all things loved her.
For she is initiated in the science of God, and it is she who chooses his works.
If in life wealth is a desirable possession, what thing could be richer than
Wisdom, that does all things? If intelligence is creative, who if not Wisdom
is the artisan of all that exists? [Wisdom 8:1-6]
We clearly see here that this female is a deity: a goddess. And to be exact,
Goddess herself, who changes her names and doffs her raiment before bestowing
herself definitively. She is mother and spouse, sister and bride, daughter and
concubine: her sexuality expands spherically in all directions. The promise her
fragrance exhales is the same as our need to copulate with her mystically. She
calls us with the fire of her ardent love, divine love, and reveals herself to
us virgin and empty, dark, subtle and mysterious, perfectly invisible, but also
pure, limpid, and clear as the naked splendor of the idea. The earth, nature,
and life have inherited these attributes, which they generously reflect and offer
us as means of realization. Through love of life and creatures–a love in
no wise "ideal"–and through life and creatures, and conjointly
with them, the cosmic rite is reiterated in ongoing fashion. The association
of woman with love, generation, and life is universally known. (Aphrodite is
born of a seashell, a symbol of conception; Demeter presides at weddings; Hera
directs the lives of heroes.) She symbolizes reception, inasmuch as she is the
feminine counterpart of heaven, and generates the sweet, delicious wine of life,
communion in the blood of the cosmos, in the secret, nourishing springs of the
sap of earth, and conveys to us the vertigo and ecstasy of beauty.
We have now come to the end of this book, which perhaps has afforded a glimpse
of the possibility of a symbolical way as form and method of access to knowledge.
Indeed, symbolics is a science of structures, an archetypal science, a science
of sciences.10 It
has always existed, and all peoples and gods have expressed themselves through
it. Likewise, it can be posited–and is actually being so posited in our
day–as a new science: symbology,11 which
will fulfill its functions and purposes to the extent that it restore to symbol
its original sense, and in this way makes the potential energies lying in it
to rise again, in their turn to give life to everything around.
And finally, the time has come to formulate a question for ourselves: if we accept
that beyond time there is no causality, and accordingly no history or personhood.
And if we consider that eternity occupies no place–then, with all frankness:
where are we going? |
