THE WHEEL
A Symbolic Image of the Cosmos

And if the whole manifestation is symbolic, and the universe is a language, a code of signs, we, as well, are symbols, and we know and relate through them. Everything becomes meaningful, then, and each thing represents another, of a mysterious and higher order, to which it owes life, its raison d'être.¹ Symbols, then are living, and send their messages, and, in interacting with one another, also receive and retransmit numberless signals, and constitute groups, conjoined wholes, series, or structures of which they are part. The innumerable symbolic codes manifest one universal model, the architecture of earth and heaven, framed in the limits of space and time. 

They are inevitable, then, consubstantial to the human being. And like gestures, they generate the setting in which we find ourselves, promoting all actions, not only those that have passed, and future ones, but those of the present, those of our very "now." If language can name all things, then all things are implicit in language. If the enumerable has signs, then in those signs is the whole potential of the enumerable. Thanks to symbol, we are revealed to ourselves, since it is owing to symbol that intelligence is formed, our discernment is created, and conduct is ordered. We might say that symbol is the crystallization of a mental form, of an archetypal idea, of an image. And at the same time, it forms its limit: what makes possible the return to the unlimited through the symbolic body, which thus permits the corresponding analogical transpositions between one plane of reality and another, creating the possibility of knowledge of universal being in the various fields or worlds of its manifestation. After all, it expresses the unknown by its sensible, cognized appearance. 

Symbol steadily shapes the preexistent, establishes a perpetual connection with ourselves and a constant linkage with the cosmos, with which it is in solidarity. The symbolic gesture, or the cosmic rite, is the ongoing opportunity for the recycling of being, and of the chain of the worlds. It is revealing: it ever grants to know something. It also has transformative powers. By its intermediary, something abstract is concretized, and inversely, something concrete is abstracted. It is ambivalent, since it is the expressing and simultaneously the expressed. Its mediating function constitutes a point of connection at which is produced the transition between two realities, by its participation in both: as dynamic subject, or as static object. 

The intermediating function of symbol as subject could be represented geometrically by the vertical, which runs in two directions: ascending/descending/ascending. And its function as static object could be illustrated by the horizontal, which is a reflection of the vertical energy on the level of sensible reality on which this energy is expressed. Here, too, is its ambivalence, as it generates in this fashion the laws of symmetry, the left and right in the cosmos. 

This polarization is present in all that is signed by space and time, and refers to past and the future, passive and active, concentration and expansion, attraction and repulsion, and every complementary duality of opposites that render cosmic order and balance possible; and to this, symbol testifies across the board. 

Sympathy, or the attunement of a common rhythmic wave or vibration, brings two things into correspondence, since the similar attracts the similar and unites with it. Attraction produces complementarity and fecundation; division begets breach and expulsion. For two things to attract each other mutually, one must contain a part of the other, and the other something of the first. 

These situations are present at different levels of depth and planes of relation. And affinity must exist in order for rhythmic harmony to be produced. Just so, it is necessary that the disposition or form of the associated beings correspond in order for there to be harmonic conjunction. This means that they must be "designed" in such and such a manner in order that coupling be possible-that each be the reverse of the other. Thus we have the passive and the active (the cup and the liquid that fills it), the concave and the convex (the matrix and what is formed in it). 

Analogy is the relation between one object and another, between one plane and another, which vibrate at the same frequency. It has been said that analogy is rhythmic correspondence. And symbol is the analogical unity between one plane and another, or one object and another. It could also be said that it is the messenger of the energy of a force, which shapes it, and which acts magically through it. 

Indeed, all forms are reducible to minimal primary structures that are at the prototypal base of any manifestation. This association of modules and images is also found symbolized in ordered fashion in the geometrical figures in correlation with the numeral ten, which figures in their ensemble make possible all mathematical constructions.² In the code of a language using a phonetic alphabet, the letters and syllables have this same generating-and-synthesizing function, whether they be regarded from the point of view of the verbal manifestation to its origins, or contrariwise, from its original source to its solidification or concretion in words and enunciations. In synthesizing all expressive possibilities within itself, symbol manifests to our sensible, successive order the simultaneity of knowledge, which translates into the plurality of its significates. Analogy is a logic based on the mechanisms of association. The universe is a fabric of interdependent structures, ceaselessly related with one another-stimuli and responses which must in turn generate new situations of response. 

Peoples, as well, realize these constant schematics in their history, intercommunicating by trade and by war. And this flux and reflux forms part of the structure of the world: two telluric and cosmic currents composing the very fabric of the universe, now attracting and uniting, now expelling and rejecting, opposing each other thereupon to join once more in an association that materializes the possibility and the continuity of life, ensuring its diffusion-inasmuch as these currents seek each other simultaneously, for each of them has two parts in its constitution, complementing one another in their opposition, and conversely, a nucleus that polarizes itself in its self-reflection. 

Due to the ineffable cadence of the symbolic language, and its ritual reiteration, codes are generated, and the cosmic model present in each of its constitutive parts is reiterated, for they belong to the symbolic body, and reiterate the archetype from which they are to derive all possible models. From the architecture of the cosmos to the particular architectures, and contrariwise, from the particular architectures to the cosmic architecture, the oscillation is everlasting. This is the living, ongoing manner in which, expressing itself to itself, this oscillation manifests the law in which animate and "inanimate" things are created, transformed, and preserved-in a constant metamorphosis that neither supervenes nor abates, since it constitutes a perpetual circuit, a continuous whole, regenerated conjointly with the daily birth of the sun, and revealed coevally with time. 

But in order for this limitless horizontal order of multiplication, death, and return to be felt, there must exist some interrelation in volumetric depth, which is represented in the horizontal plane by the vertical, as symbol of another plane or world, which now constitutes a system of coordinates that transmits to us a perception of the high and the low-thus to balance the fleeting image of the future by making it meaningful, and hierarchizing it-thereby completing the frame in which things seek themselves, on their distinct planes of existence and modes of reality, and where they conjoin with others that, in their turn, imitate the same structure. It is this interaction that gives rise to tridimensional space, which presents itself as a solid, a product of the internal tensions and rhythms, of the multidimensional interweaving of the coordinates, which create a coherent system-a network or pattern of squares, which is the basis on whose foundation the forms, and the substance in which the forms appear manifested, become possible. This order is a delicate, permanently unstable equilibrium, referred time and again to itself, its identity being the affirmation of its being in the thematics of life, death, and resurrection, forming a cycle or wheel which returns to its origins after traversing a complete trajectory. It constitutes, then, a vertical/horizontal intersection of two planes or simultaneous energies, which recycle limitlessly, like a wheel within another wheel, or like the plane symbol of a cross of equal arms inscribed within a circumference. But for this project to materialize, it has been indispensable that one thing be the symbol and the other the symbolized. It is necessary that the value of the one and the other have been determined not only by their harmonic correspondence, but by the situation of primacy which determines that one symbolize the other and not the contrary, despite the analogy that constitutes their solidarity (in their inverson), while one reflects the energy of the other, reconverting it, and diffuses it, rendering it intelligible. 

In symbolism, that which is of the lesser order symbolizes that which is of the greater order, and not the other way about. The wheel symbolizes the universal movement-this movement does not symbolize a specific, individualized wheel. An image or model of the cosmos symbolizes the universe, and this universe is not the symbol of a particular model or image-regardless of whether we are dealing with the model of the wheel, or that of the three-dimensional cross, or that of the sephirotic tree of life. Just so, we say that a person born under the zodiacal influence of Leo has a relation to the sun, not that Leo, and certainly not the sun, are symbols of such and such a concrete person. Without this reservation, symbol would signify nothing, and would have no raison d'être; symbolics would be the mere observation of kindred forms. It is the revelation of a lofty secret of cognition, manifested by an intelligible form, and characterizing an ordering transmission of energies, that makes possible, on the other hand, the flow of its existential discourse. 

Regeneration is the possibility that all be ever new and now-that existence be real, and not a vague theater of indeterminate fluctuating shadows. Symbol is the point of contact between reality, which it crystallizes, and the formal attire it dons in order to do so. This vesture must be agreeable and correlative to the idea it expresses, in order for this latter to be able to be really understood. Then it will completely manifest the energy-and-strength that has shaped it, and will be able to transmit it in the adequate context that it will itself condition, by the actualization of its potency. Conversely, it can be said that this intelligent energy transcends the symbol considered as a mere static object, or support of cognition. And that being the case, this attire enables us to pass by way of that intermediary from one plane of awareness to another, thus establishing us as protagonists of cognition, that is to say, of being, in that there exists an identity between what someone is and what he knows. 

At this point the immanent potentials of symbol are actualized, and the idée-force of the symbolized is understood in all of its splendor, inamuch as it has been adequately manifested. Through identification with symbol, and with the gradual knowledge born of the ritual and re-vivifying reiteration of its energy, it becomes the symbolized, which has been concealed in the symbolic structure, and which the latter has never left off expressing. Every language includes a metalanguage, and indeed there would be no language without a metalanguage or "translanguage." The metaphysical translanguage is expressed by the model of the universe, or plane of creation: that is, at intelligible and sensible levels, since language and the physical exist for this end, constituting symbolic codes of manifestation and revelation. 

To know is to apprehend that which is known. It is the realization of a synthesis, such that the union of the subject and the object of knowledge is knowing. The one who knows is identical with the thing known. Thus, it is a matter of a conjunction of opposites, thanks to which knowledge is produced. This complementary union is the same as the one attained in and by love, also produced by the attraction of oppositions that are joined, and in this manner re-creates the original unity-on whatever level it occurs-establishing general equilibrium besides the particular. It is by means of unity and its irradiation that the creative act is permanently actualized. 

This can be seen in every code, series, grouping, or structure. A schema is reiterated in which its modalities of development and conservation are implicit, as well as its own end through the multiplication of its possibilities-to the point that the latter must be newly synthesized in its essentials, thereupon to begin to spread out, and to transfer new breath to the vital rhythm. Unity is the highest symbol of all, symbol par excellence, because it bears within itself the potentiality of the symbolizable. The ontological principle is the raison d'être of the symbol, and unity is its symbolical manifestation. Being, and Being itself, although uncreated, is the origin of the emanation that will occasion material concretion. 

By reiterating the creative act, which is sprung from the undifferentiated purity, without admixture, of what is neither one pole nor the other, but what is in itself, we regenerate ourselves and the universe, with the human being constituting itself the central symbol of the unique, which is itself, that is, being, love, or knowledge. 

In our understanding of the identity among universal being, the whole, and the "itself," the entire manifestation of the principles presents itself to us as a revelation. We shall then have come to know the unity of being, which is the same as the "itself," without division or extension of any type, which is why it cannot have an equal. Nevertheless, that reality, which is the highest at the cosmic level, is but an affirmed point in the infinite possibilities of nonbeing. Therefore being is a point in the infinitude of nonbeing (or of the supracosmic, or of supra-being, or of the really unconditioned hypertheos), and conversely, nonbeing is a point that is present in all that is. Unity acts as a symbol, and connects arithmetical unity (which will be the generator of the numerical series) with metaphysical oneness, which could also be signed by the arithmetical zero. 

This will be the case if we consider symbol as what it really is, that is, as that which enables every manifestation, even carrying it to its highest instance, that is, that of considering symbolical the very tri-unity of universal principles that constitute being. For both being and symbol express themselves first as principles, and successively at three levels in the discourse of manifestation. The same thing occurs with unity, which can be known in three degrees, as well as in its principle. 

What occurs in current society is another matter. Our present society considers symbol at best on the level of allegory. True, at times not even its literal form is taken account of, but it is rejected wholesale in virtue of the very fact of being "symbolic," since this is considered to mean a swindle-as the substitution of what really is for that which cannot be. And accordingly, this sign or symbol must be a falsification, and an arbitrary supposition-or at least an invention, if not a fairy tale. The same thing happens with myth, to the point that to call someone a "mythomaniac" is an educated way of calling her or him a liar. 

It is clear that this confusion, this ignorance, for cyclical reasons, is proper to the contemporary person, who is the consummate exponent of the generalized foolishness that has been incubating since antiquity. Let us see an example. In the universe, everything has a sex. This truth, evident in itself, nevertheless presents itself to the contemporary person as an extraordinary novelty in human thought, a great modern discovery, the fruit of the scientific investigations of the sexologists, interpreters, and analysts, and a conquest of the sexual movements of varied hues. The "correct" or "free" use of sex seems to be one of the axiomatic postulates of this progressive society. Sex is visualized as something that human beings did not know in terms of themselves or of the world-a subject absolutely unnoticed until our own days. It is as if we had not always been naked under our clothes, or as if nature had hidden this fact in some way. The most ridiculous element in the case is that, in addition, this "discovery" does not refer to the cosmos in its totality, all of it being sexed-or differentiated in a pair of opposites that attract or repel each other-but instead it is considered that only the human being possesses this "acquired" right. For it supposes that the beasts themselves make only limited use of genitality, while vegetable beings practically do not possess it, and in the mineral kingdom it is non existent. 

All of this is referred only to the most strictly material plane, since it is obvious that there is no knowledge of the real presence of the subtile worlds, and there is not so much as an idea of the existence of the archetypes. This is an anthropomorphic view of sex, as a personal attribute of the human being, which other creatures would seem to have only "into the bargain."³ All the worse, the sexed, for the progressive mentality, does not go beyond the erotico-genital. And ignorance of it is such that it is believed that sexual realization is an end in itself, as advanced and modern as fashion. It is a universal panacea, approved and certified, recently invented by science for the tranquility and psychic comfort of the citizenry.⁴ 

Accordingly, when we say that the universe is sexed, of a surety we are referring to something other than what is vulgarly and commonly understood by "sexed." We are asserting, as all traditions have done, that in creation, in life, there are always two cosmic currents of energy present; and that each of them represents a sex, a polarity, which human genitality also manifests, among a countless number of beings and things. Unanimously, antiquity has endowed sexuality and its mysteries with a fundamental importance-to the point that sexual energy is considered not only generative, but regenerative as well. It is regarded as the bolster and impulse that permits realization and knowledge. After all, in utilizing its polarity-which is the same duality of all things-what is aimed at is union (where no opposition exists), seeing polarity as a means of realization, of transmutation, which spans reality from the basest to the most subtile, availing itself of most numerous "practical" forms in order to attain this object. 

On the other hand, returning to our subject, we shall say that it is impossible to define symbol, since it and perpetual creation tolerate no known limits in their linear, quantitative development. As symbol is the support of Knowing, its possibilities are limitless. It is its own definition in itself, since its function is its being. It is always identical with itself, and mutable with the changes of the individualized beings, forms, and styles that reflect it. It is found present in all of the traditions, because it is found in the fabric of life, of manifestation, and of man. The human being is far more and far less than what he actually imagines-much more in depth, in the vertical sense of the nonformal, all the less as to its limitlessly numerous horizontal possibilities of mutation which he and the forms personalize.⁵ And the same occurs with the human being's conception of life, his vision of the world, and his comprehension of symbol. 

We have already said that symbol is the point of connection between one vertical energy and another horizontal one, as in the shape of the square, or the Greek letter gamma, participating of both natures. We have also asserted that the vertical energy is descending and ascending at the same time, since it goes from the symbolized to the symbol and from the latter to the symbolized, and so on limitlessly. Just so, we have seen that the horizontal energy pours forth and irradiates limitlessly, generating its own plane or field of action. We must add that the ascending or descending sense that we bestow on this energy manifests itself not only in function of the route of going and returning that it traverses, but just as much insofar as it is "beneficent" or "maleficent," so to speak. It is beneficent inasmuch as the symbol is such, and as such is understood-that is, when it accomplishes its mediation in normal fashion. It is maleficent if it is regarded only as an arbitrary convention, or a mere human invention, and is taken as such-the reason for which it is not a revealer of any other level but the psychism of the human being. In this last case, the degradation of symbol would be a supremely disturbing act, that only understanding-the bestowal of life upon symbol-could balance out. This would also be represented by the figure of the cross, in which the horizontal arms shape the field or plane of manifestation of symbol, and the upper and lower arms would express its ascending/descending, or beneficent/maleficent energy respectively. 

In the specific symbol of the cosmic wheel, image and model of creation, a fixed axis constitutes a center that radiates its energy to the exterior, pouring it forth in direct proportion to the square of the distances. In concentration, or return to the inner center from the periphery, the energy traverses inversely this square of the distances. Each of the two energies is exactly proportioned to the other, and both coexist permanently. The first expresses the will of limitless expansion, and the other the necessary contraction for all manifestation. If the first were to be the flowing of the emanations to their own limit, this limit would be imposed by the contraction of the second and its attraction to the archetypal center.⁶ These two energies would be represented geometrically by two spirals, one evolutive and the other involutive-keeping in consideration that they are simultaneous, and that they constitute the egg of the world, both being the symbolic expression of the principles from which this primitive egg derives. 

It will likewise be in order to make a distinction between natural symbols and the specific symbols of Sacred Science, or Science simply. The latter symbols are the synthetic, conscious, and didactic vessels of a knowledge or truth, and have been transmitted to us through the human being himself.⁷ 

Now, we have been reflecting on the fact that every expression or manifestation is symbolical in its own right. Without this failing to be sure at any moment, we must add the clarification that there are determinate sets of symbols, myths, and rites-which on the other hand occur in distinct forms in all of the traditions-that have been specifically coined as vehicles of knowledge by the sages and inspired persons of all of the numberless peoples. These ritual gestures, revealed to mortals by the gods, include the teaching of a cosmogony, and the possibility of understanding new worlds, or new states of being, that constitute the authentic reality of what the human being and the universe are. This possibility is always taught. Human beings in their ordinary state do not know it, nor can they realize it by themselves alone, whether they like it or not, but they require a mirror in which to behold and recognize themselves, and the word that rescues them from the world of the dead, of the ignorant, and breathes within them the possibility of a new life, of the incarnation of the new human being. This mirror, in the first instance, is the play of the symbolics, which have to be learned and taught, in order thus to obtain an indispensable state of virginity. Subsequently, these same symbolics are orderers, and those who transmit them know them because they have been taught to them in their own turn. 

This traditional initiatory chain takes us back to the beginning, both historical and atemporal, at the term of which journey we find ourselves always with the same question: "Who?"⁸ Who has revealed them to the wise, and to men? According to tradition, their origin is not human, as it is supracosmic. Indeed, all peoples coincide in the mythic font, produced in the night of history, beyond time. Further, the idea is unanimous of a civilizing and ordering god, or that of a liberating and instructing hero. Symbols need to be taught, in order that there be a real comprehension of the forces they concentrate. The energy that abides concealed in the symbol in its potential state, requires activation. By way of the rite of apprenticeship, study, and meditation, one awakens to symbol, and symbol sets to work. 

The relation is mutual. The energy/strength that it expresses comes to us, and we in our turn project it upon symbol, stimulating its proper essence. Furthermore, at this point the energy is evoked of all who have known, understood, and transmitted symbol. And this same entity, or archetypal structure, actualizes the universal principles, effectuating their happening to us and our participation in them-thanks to identification with symbol and symbolical mediation, both of them being reactivated by a ritual exegesis, which is what, adown the entire thread of history, has kept the possibility of regeneration alive, or-which comes to the same thing-the possibility that renders it feasible that everything always be new and true. 

We must now examine the relations obtaining among symbol, myth, and rite, and so we must assert that these words designate, in different ways, one and the same thing in three operative formulae. Mircea Eliade tells us: "Myth is the explication and justification of the unreality of existence." It constitutes a fixed axis, which articulates what constantly becomes, the perishable, the illusory. It is a tangible truth, an "exemplar model," periodically incarnated by the community, or some of its members, and it renders possible the collective regeneration by stabilizing the order necessary for development. Myth expresses the origins, and the renewal of life, harmonizing and ensuring the continuity of peoples. The myths of the creation of the universe, and the toils of the heros, are the revealed testimony of a different possibility, of the reality of the beyond, at the level of mans' comprehension. It is myths that, in transmitting this knowledge, bestow on life a coherent sense, and enrich it with the salvific option of spiritual realization. Myth is necessary. It is a living and constant mover in the life of societies. It centers oral traditions and consecrates the values of the collectivity and the individual. It promotes actions, and educates human beings by teaching them what they could not know were it not for its mediation. Myths, for these persons, are the whole of reality and truth, and harsh daily existence occupies a secondary, or derived place in their respect, like shadows in respect of light. 

We must also underscore the emotional charge of myth, and the immediate resonance it encounters in the human being. Just so, we must not pass over its mnemotechnical function, since the "memory" is a force constitutive of life, and antiquity always regarded memory as a deity. In a conception in which the universe is a conjunct of parts in solidarity, indissoluble and interrelated, the cosmos, too, has mind and memory. The periods of "sleep" in the universe correspond to the moments of peoples' oblivion, their disintegration. Myth arouses the peoples, and reintegration and "recall" is introduced. The same thing occurs in the human being, and thanks to myth we are delivered from relative and ordinary time, to return to another time, when all is truth, to a moment without chronological duration, to a "mythic" original state, perfectly open to experience, in which daily things and conceptions come to be completely other things and other conceptions, since the angle of vision has been altered by knowledge of the suprahistorical and the superhuman. 

It is important to emphasize that the normal form of transmitting a myth is through poetry,⁹ and its reiterative rhythmic recitation, which together with gesture and movement shapes and dramatically presents the structure of rite. It is a matter of giving expression to the great cosmic and natural rhythms that are transferred to the events and personages in the time of a history, in a particular state. This cosmogony magically repeats the original situation, rendering the present effective, current, and renewing, through the work of the concentrated power of the energy of myth and its ritualization. 

The etymology of the word "rite" comes from the Latin ritus, meaning religious ceremony. It derives from the Sanscrit root rt, which underlies the noun ritli: going, walk, getting under way, moving forward or progressing, usage, and so on, as well as the word rita: order. It would be a matter, then, of an ordered usage or going, such as the succession of days, and especially the ceremonies in the circular time of the ritual calendar and its crystallization or realization in the space of the temple, or cultic house. 

We must be clear that, when we here refer to religious ceremonies, we do so in the broadest sense of the term. On the one hand, these ceremonies have never been "religious" in the sense nowadays attributed to the term, nor "ceremonies" as we know them popularly and commonly. The rites of fertility, regeneration, and initiation have nothing to do with orthodox devotion, sentimental piety, a morality of justice, or with engouled solemnity, caracteristics proper to contemporary society constituting a deformed derivation of the virtues of the sacred, the heroic, and the metaphysical. On the other hand, let us insist that the modern understanding of what a ceremony is, is connected to aseptic ideas relative to laicism-commemoration, or external pomp, or even activities of presumably magical phenomenicity, which do not go beyond the literal level. The ceremonial form is taken as an end in itself, or as an antiquated comedy, or as a deed of mechanical institution and a dignified style. 

If the cosmos is the fixation of a gesture, or the solidification of the inflection of a sound, or the dance of a supracosmic dancer, then it is a primordial rite found implicit in all of the manifest. The reiteration of this rite is a permanent actualization of that fact, effected on the sensible level. Therefore it requires knowledge of the original cosmogonic event in order to be "true," in the sense of adequately attaining its ends. Or else, for this, such a disposition of spirit is necessary as will gradually make possible this knowledge and its effective complementary realization. Rite is liberative: in imitating, consciously and with the due harmonic disposition, the rhythm of the cosmic structure, it permits us to emerge from it by its mediation, thus encountering the opportunity to transcend it in experiencing it, and comprehending it in the heart. This liberation is no "miracle," since in truth the cosmic structure is nothing more-and nothing less-than a support of the uncreated, and man a simple stranger, as if exiled in this earth. This is a normal fact, such as the return to our authentic house, or to our nonhuman origins. And the initiatory rite is a pathway ordered to effect it.¹⁰ Actually, life itself is the greatest of rites-an ongoing ceremony, rite par excellence, where the finite perfection of each symbol or gesture conceals and implies an infinite perfection. In this framework, life is a symbolics, and its knowledge constitutes the science of rhythms and symbols. And it is through this science of symbols-that is, by means of the knowledge of symbolics-that the passage from the cosmic to the supracosmic is realized, from the created to the uncreated, from the human to the nonhuman.