THE WHEEL
A Symbolic Image of the Cosmos

CHAPTER IX
CONCLUSION

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?

 

NOTES   

1      The initiatory journey is equivalent to the journey of the soul post mortem.

2      The determinate is the being of the indeterminate.   

3      This is due to two energies coexisting simultaneously in it, and figured with the symbol of the double spiral.  This is not the moment to speak of this theme, since we have already done so in other parts of this work.    

4      Greek mythology likewise has a circular structure.  The adventures, the goings and comings, of the gods and heroes are analogous, and refer to one another, are chained among one another.  The stories of the personages are all related; and this derives from that, which in turn is intimately linked with this other.  The same personages appear in different tales, which repeat identical myths in other spatio-temporal circumstances, with other anecdotes and names.  The Bible, too, is a clear example of how, and in what various eras and manners, among one and the same people, the exemplary myths are repeated, incarnated in various ways, by different protagonists, constituting cycles of archetypal repetition, in which is expressed the internal order of a cosmogony as well as the initiatory process.    
   
5      Rig-Veda 1, 155:6.
  
6      We have a similar phenomenon in the construction of the word AZOTH, cryptogram of the alchemical search and discovery.  It is formed by, first, the first letters of the Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic alphabet:  Z is the last letter of the Latin Alphabet, just as O (omega) is of the Greek, and TH ends the Hebrew and Arabic alphabets.  Here the image is clear of the reabsorption of the end into the beginning.

7      It is very interesting to think that we are signed by our future, and to adopt this viewpoint frequently: to recognize that that person whom we see today for the first time and who seems so familiar to us, we already know from our future.  If we consider carefully, it is probable that almost everyone is already known by us from the future.   

8      At the end of The Divine Comedy, Dante tells that it is love that harmoniously turns the wheel that moves the sun and the other stars.    

9      Now spatially located in the heart, as reflection of the supra-human and supra-cosmic.   

10     Not subject to systematization, or to the classifying mania of epistemology.

11     Or symbolics, as the majority of its investigators and scholars prefer to call it.