| Yin is the Archetype of Stillness and Beauty: creative and nurturing,
quiet, intuitive and compassionate. It is the Lunar ethos of endless cycles,
the enduring collective, and eternal regeneration.
The dark and mysterious Passive Principle is a quiescent
state of being - a timeless, immutable resolution.
The motivator beckons inward, attracting and receiving.
The grace and purity of repose is absolute, because eternal necessity
is perfectly self-contained and infinitely self-consistent.
Yang is the Archetype of Action and Power: protective and challenging,
aggressive, rational and strong.
It is the Solar ethos of linear will, the fleeting individual, and
the impulse to conquest - before conquest by death.
The illuminated and obvious Active Principle is a dynamic
process of becoming - an aspiration, evolution, and change.
The motivated pushes outward, penetrating into the unknown.
The hard experience of action is relative, because motion is contingent
upon the relentless change of everything everywhere.
The T’ai-chi depicts these universal energies in perfect and harmonious
balance, each disappearing into the other in the eternal dance of the living
cosmos. And within the heart
of each distinct aspect lies the seed of the other: there is no exclusively
negative or positive polarity - there is only the balance of the two in
a timeless rhythm of expansion and contraction.
All things of the cosmos are a manifestation of the pull and push
tension between two interdependent and interpenetrating halves of a single
whole. Each exists only in relation to and by virtue of the existence of
the other. To endure, power
needs beauty and beauty needs power: without protection, one part is
consumed; without purpose, the other part consumes itself.
This philosophical view - of the world as an ontological ballet
of two universal principles (of which woman and man are merely partial
incarnations) - has become, after centuries of refinement, a fundamental
constant of Chinese and East Asian thought.
The Western View of the Two
The philosophy of a fundamental and universal duality has taken several
different forms in western thinking also.
Plato believed that the world was a projection, a degraded shadow-world
within a beautiful Realm of Ideas beyond the threshold of our gross perceptions.
Only concentrated contemplation, he believed, could reveal the true
nature of the domain of eternal forms.
He called such contemplation philosophy: “love of Sophia”
- the mysterious Goddess of all Knowledge and Wisdom, who is like a bottomless
well that contains all the unknown secrets of the world.
In contrast with that compelling image of intellectual desire, Plato
believed, was the Demiurge (“half-cause”), a brutish builder-god
who labors away within the processes of nature, building, destroying, and
building again, the illusory world of the here and now.
Duality took another form in ancient Persia, when Zoroaster (6th-c.
BC) gathered all the consumptive aspects of creation - the creeping decay
that is an inevitable consequence of life, the myopic avarice that festers
in times of want, the sudden brutality that explodes when mortal interests
collide, the casual cruelty that paranoiacly metastasizes in an isolated
and indolent leadership, etc. - into a ravenous and bloodthirsty god of
suffering and death. That
was Angra Mainyu - the first god of evil.
Standing against him was a luminous god of limitless virtue, Ahura
Mazda - the good. This
idea, of a supernatural pain-eater somehow infecting and affecting the
actions of man to satisfy his curious dietary requirements, clearly has
considerable emotional power. From
a purely political standpoint, the idea is so useful to the ruling class
that its widespread success was assured.
Regardless of whether the idea is valid or otherwise, it is certainly
true that the concept of evil provides a directionless leader with all
the rhetorical ammunition they need to distract an angry mob from the failures
of a poor domestic policy: “Those deviant people over there are working
for the Pain-Eater; they want to satisfy their unholy hunger by feeding
upon the our suffering of our children!
We must crush them! (And steal their land and gold and women...)”
This idea - of a cosmic battle between good and evil (between us and
them) - did indeed seep into the fertile imagination of the middle
east, and subsequently into the religious systems that have expanded over
half of Asia and Africa, and all of Europe and the Americas.
This model of the universe (of a destroyer aspect that derives nourishment
from human suffering, and a creator aspect that does not) does, in some
ways, look like the poorly-fed, disease-infested, crime-ridden, war-torn
world we see. But it presents
some paradoxes too. Is evil
a cause or an effect? Is it
an infection that causes rapacious behavior?
And if so, what is the source of the infection and can it be medically
treated or removed? Is there
a vaccine? Or is it a congenital
condition among all sentient beings capable of exercising choice?
And if so, how then do we explain the “non-evil” choices of the
overwhelming majority of us? Or
is one who is not evil then virtuous simply because they are fortunate
enough not to live under the murderous compulsions of an evil despot?
Is one forever tainted by a single evil act, or can one bounce back
and forth between good and evil at will?
Saying that everyone is evil but only a few choose to act on it,
doesn’t really explain very much, and suggesting (by omission of alternative
explanation) that it can be imbibed and then, as suddenly, dispelled by
a moment’s reflection says nothing interesting at all.
But surely the monstrous acts with which we are all familiar have
an explanation?
We have come together in the great community of civilization and found
some partial refuge from the “eat or be eaten” truth of primal nature (of
which we are still a reluctant part).
We have seen that such isolation from the rest of nature has many
benefits, and so we have said, “There are certain things that are in our
mutual interest; we will protect that mutual interest with rules.
Anyone who breaks those rules by pursuing a personal interest inimical
to the mutual interest is evil and will be stopped.”
It’s a good system for the administration of human affairs, but
less successful in its ontological attempts to explain why the world
is the way it is...
Are Two Gods better than One?
Most of the facts we experience in the world are highly variable things
that could have been other different facts.
Facts are so variable that, if we were able to go back in
time and do The History of Earth over again, we could not reasonably
expect events to occur in the same way twice.
Any proposition of fact that is derived from, influenced by, or
subject to external factors that could be (or could have been) different,
is called contingent. The
features and processes of Nature are contingent propositions.
There are some facts, however, that can only exist as they are and cannot
be otherwise. Any proposition
of fact that is impervious to external influence, is immutable (it cannot
change over time), and explains itself without reference to any other external
fact, is called necessary.
The timeless Laws of Nature (and the ethereal mathematics
that define them) are necessary propositions.
From contingent propositions only contingent propositions follow; likewise,
from necessary propositions only necessary proposition follow.
It is logically impossible to derive a fact that can only exist
in one way from a fact that can exist in an infinite variety of ways; it
is equally impossible to get contingency from necessity.
Something is either changeable or it is unchangeable; it cannot
be both. These two classes
of propositions, then, are mutually exclusive and cannot be integrated
into a single proposition - like the cosmos.
Nature cannot issue from natural law; nor can natural law be an
extension of nature. And yet,
surely they are indivisible: the eternal laws that govern the behavior
of everything in the universe cannot be imagined to exist without something
material upon which to impose themselves; and the material universe cannot
be imagined to exist without the conceptual foundation that makes the existence
of such material possible. Each
seems to become manifest only by virtue of the other.
The universe came from something (but what?) or the universe came from
nothing (but how?). It seems
there is no escape from the paradoxes inextricably attached to the condition
of our existence in the uni-verse.
But there is a solution to the problem of a cosmos that must somehow
be both ever-changing and never-changing: perhaps the cosmos
is not one thing, but two, an indivisible weave of two aspects
- an infinite domain of Truth, Beauty, and Quiescence, and a finite domain
of Illusion, Power, and Struggle.
One Dance of Two Gods…
A Domain of Activity and Change
A moment’s consideration will confirm that the cosmos is a chaotic place.
In the vast depths of the celestial ocean, great suns half the size
of our entire planetary system can either explode with a radiance that
outshines whole galaxies, or implode with such catastrophic ferocity that
they crush themselves to infinite density and right out of existence. The
universe is a violently chaotic place.
In fact, the laws of quantum mechanics (rules that govern the interactions
of sub-atomic particles like electrons, protons, and photons) state that
the material of the universe is fundamentally erratic and random.
Existence in the domain of the very small is a probabilistic, intermittent,
and “fuzzy” property. But
we do not need physicists to tell us that all we see is, in essence, chaos;
all we have to do is look around us to know that this is a crazy, unpredictable
world. The only certainty
seems to be change. Whether one views the world as progressing or retrogressing
(that is, descending from or ascending toward a single perfect moment of
Unity), it is indisputably in a perpetual state of flux, always evolving
in one direction or the other.
From the free particles created in the infinitely hot explosion of the
big bang, to the heavy elements forged in the supernova deaths of stars,
to the complex organic compounds cooked up in the boiling cauldrons of
volcanic pools, to reasoning consciousness and civilization built upon
the war-ravaged ruins of our predecessors, the entire history of the universe
has been a story of violent activity ? one kind of thing subordinated and
made to serve within structure of a larger, different kind of thing.
Everything in the universe is in a process of becoming - changing
from one state to another over time. The cosmos itself is expanding dynamically
as it charges ever outward from the explosive point of its birth, penetrating
ever deeper into the infinite oblivion that waits eternally to receive
it. It is brutal and ambitious,
aggressively building structures of greater size and complexity, always
aspiring to some distant objective, ever seeking some higher purpose in
an unknown future. For these
reasons, I have chosen to represent the chaos of the material universe
as the Earth-Father - a manifestation of the Yang principle.
A Domain of Eternal Stillness
There are other things quite near to our universe that never change.
The fundamental particles of matter and energy exist in a timeless, eternal
state of being: at the instant of their creation they are all they will
ever be. These dimensionless points have mass, spin, and charge, despite
the fact that they have no size, and seem to sit upon the boundary between
this world and womb of eternity that lies beyond. Quanta possess no component
parts subject to change or revision. The mysterious electron - which is
reckoned finite only by the mathematically dubious process of renormalization
(multiplying by a negative infinity) - can never evolve or modify in any
way. From its birth at the
beginning of time, through the hundred billion-year journey around the
universe, to its final consumption at whatever form of cosmic resolution
might prevail, it shall remain infinitely identical to itself, and all
other electrons in the cosmos. (So
identical, in fact, that Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman once suggested
that it might be meaningless to think of them pluralistically: perhaps
they are just one electron - a single speck which zips back and
forth through space and time to give the appearance of a cosmos
assembled of many!)
Of course electrons combine with other particles to make things that
do change, but the method by which these accumulations of matter-stuff
transform themselves does not. The laws of physics are immutable, and thus
unerringly predictable. The
mathematical rules of gravity, time, thermodynamics, chemistry, electro-magnetism,
etc., are always regulating the affairs of the world exactly as they always
have. Why should these laws
be the same all the time? Why
do they not degenerate over time like every aspect of the material cosmos?
Where did these laws come from? Why should a notion as numinous
and abstract as number, be able to describe and predict the mechanical
“nut-and-bolts” operation of the cosmos with such success?
How can it be that we find such delightfully ordered and harmonic
relationships in the idea-world investigation of quantities?
Where do these eternal mathematical truths exist? And
why should these subjective, incorporeal truths manifest themselves in
every chaotic part of the objective, physical world?
We are obliged, it seems, to address such unanswerable questions with
a concept that is in marked contrast to the hard experience of the senses:
we have a soft and nebulous notion that there must be some mysterious source
from which all things came. This
one concept is known by many different names, and each one is merely a
mask towards which we might direct our awe and bewildered questions.
It seems that we are not permitted to look behind the mask and experience
the presence of this celestial prestidigitator directly.
We can only observe and adore the little islands of inexplicable
order in an endless sea of chaos and thereby infer the existence of a divine
order-maker. And beauty
- the pleasurable harmony of patterns of symmetry - is the highest expression
of order.
This Creator is thought of as the Architect-Designer of the universe,
yet transcendent and beyond it. This Watcher is not changing or evolving
in any way, for the Absolute is utterly whole and complete. The inviolable
laws of nature are limitless in the perfection of their design and infinitely
durable - they are flawless and eternal. The empyrean dimension of geometry
and mathematics is mysterious, alluring, beautiful, sublime.
And this Divine Way of Archetypal Forms, this maternal womb from
which physical nature emerges, is clearly antecedent and external to such
nature. All that is in the
cosmos is temporal and temporary and will return to that nameless Eternity
whence it came. In the distant
future when all energy is spent and time has consumed even itself, the
Force in the Void that has drawn existence ever forward - as gravity draws
all things toward the center of the sphere - will receive the seed of the
cosmos. The genealogical sum of all that has ever been will pass into the
incubating embrace of Cosmic Resolution - that realm where Ideas gestate
before realization. For these
reasons, I have chosen to represent the ethereal order that creates the
material universe as the Sky-Mother - a manifestation of the Yin
principle.
Sky Mother?
In the religious tradition of the west, the Creator of the universe
is understood as all-powerful - Omnipotent.
This is an entirely reasonable expectation of the masculine God-in-Heaven
that much of the world recognizes.
In the ontology of the Divine Feminine, however, the transcendent
plane is not the dimension of power; it is rather the immanent,
material universe that is all-powerful. Power dwells in the here-and-now,
in the active processes slowly building the cosmos through bloody, unrelenting
labor. The Eternal Creatress
(beyond space and time, beyond energy and matter, beyond action and power)
is all-beautiful - Omnibellus.
The laws of nature possess no substance, no innate power, of any kind;
and yet it is She - Law Incarnate - who is the guiding influence over all
things in the cosmos. She is the Essential Catalyst that empowers power,
mediating every action of matter and energy in the field of space and time.
By Her will, it is we who possess power to employ in the
service of Her objectives: Life, Evolution and the Building of the Cosmos.
She is inviolable, immutable, irresistible.
It is Her beautiful perfection that motivates the evolving universe
to aspiration and transformation.
She is the Primary Impulse to Action that waits silently for the
resolution of Her great and terrible task...
When first contemplating this notion, it may seem that a transcendent
God made of Law and Number is rather cold and impersonal.
How could such a God have a mind and unique identity?
How can Idea be alive?
How can pure geometric form have will and intent?
Chemicals don’t possess a “mind and unique identity” either,
and yet here we are: bags of thinking, feeling, chemicals.
The human body is a collection of simple particles - bits of energetic
matter with positions, velocities, and trajectories - that dreams and imagines.
Apparently, a sufficiently sophisticated arrangement of simple forms
allows for the emergence of complex forms infinitely beyond the reckoning
of the simple, constituent forms.
How much greater, then, is the sum of all Law, all Number, all Form,
all Idea? Something grand
and beautiful enough to dream and imagine a universe…
And if there is one who imagines what is possible, then there is another
who will build it: the gravity of Her Sphere of Perfection permeates the
body of the living cosmos like a thought, suffusing His limbs with longing
and resolve, beckoning the Warrior-Builder to His task of constructing
the Cosmic Temple. As in the
story of The Grail, She is the Inspiration, the Quest; He is the one who
seeks...
The Realm of Chaos
| In this painting the circle of the T’ai-chi, which encloses Yin and
Yang, reads clockwise. Time begins with the big bang at 12 O’clock.
The trail of Yang is meant to correspond to the evolution of the universe.
These concentric rings within the tail of Yang represent the vibrations
of the dimensionless particles of which all matter is composed. These particles
exist in lattice-like quantum fields that permeate all of space; therein
they form - with impenetrably complex (chaotic) interactions and vibrations
- everything that is (atoms, molecules, brain cells, you and me). The warm
colors of these vibrations - painted against the cool, background colors
of chaos - mirror the way of order. Cold, dark blues and purples seemed
the natural choice to represent the cold, dark universe. Yet these colors
are, appropriately, in the more energetic wavelengths of light.
The rings also symbolize the laws of physics. In the same way that
the colors seem to progress and interact in a random fashion but upon closer
inspection yield the pattern that allows one to predict what should happen
next, so too is this the way of the rules that govern the universe.
Superficially inscrutable, the way in which the laws of physics
interact to form a comprehensible whole is actually discernable - when
we discover the proper way to perceive the pattern.
Within the sphere of Yang (the universe), existing perpetually at the
extremity in dynamic asymmetry, is Lord Chaos. He is the manipulator,
the changer, the destroyer. He is power, action, mover, builder.
He is also entropy - the second law of thermodynamics - compelling
all things to degenerate from an initial state of order to a final state
of chaos. He is pictured here as the forces that determine a stellar lifetime.
The star at the center is the Seed of Order in the domain of chaos.
As the source of heat and light (which allows order - life, for
instance - to flourish and grow), and the forge of the naturally occurring
elements heavier than helium (thus providing the necessary materials for
order to propagate), a star is the natural symbol for order. This star,
however, is nearing the end of its existence. Under the wrathful ministrations
of chaos, its fuel is being siphoned off by a black hole. On the T’ai-chi
clock, this big crunch is at the bottom of the cycle: 6 O’clock
- the end of space, the end of time, the end of the cosmos.
|
|
Traversing the Infinite Gulf
Modern cosmology describes our 4-dimensional universe (three dimensions
of space, and one of time) as space-time, and even in an endless and unbounded
cosmos, there is an edge of space and an edge of time. The boundary of
space can be thought of as the Planck-Wheeler length (1.62 X 10-33cm).
At most places in the macroscopic (large-scale) universe, the shape of
space is thought of as generally flat (that is, light travels in a straight
line, the shortest distance between any two points is a straight line,
and the laws of Euclidian geometry apply); or it is only locally warped,
as when distended by some massive object such as a planet or a star.
At the Planck-Wheeler length, however, the predictable, linear geometry
and topology of space explodes into a probabilistic effervescence called
quantum foam. What
secrets wait in smaller realms than this we shall never know, for the laws
of physics break apart with the space-time continuum at this scale.
The infinitesimally small is another domain: contained yet containing,
connected to and supporting, yet separate and removed from the cosmos.
And this spatial boundary, this edge of existence, is every infinitesimal
point in the entire universe: in your hand, in the earth, and in the sky.
The boundary in time can be thought of as Planck time, or 10-43
seconds after the big bang explosion that created space-time. At that moment,
differentiated space, time, gravity, energy, and matter exploded as the
infinitely hot, but quickly cooling fireball of material reality.
But our knowledge shall never venture prior to that moment, to the
perfect symmetry of the unified forces (the strong and weak nuclear forces,
electro-magnetism, and gravity) that existed before.
Our understanding of physics requires a time at (or in, or perhaps
even on) which an event takes place, and it requires a cause that
preceded that event in time. But physics comes into being with time.
The magnificent mathematical equations that have produced the technological
miracle of our age can only theorize back to Planck time and then say:
there was nothing before. Once again the threshold of physical law
will forever forbid our inspection of the absolute.
And there are more dramatic boundaries. When a star of sufficient mass
(many times larger than our sun) uses up its available hydrogen fuel, it
can no longer generate enough heat to counteract the attractive force of
gravity. It begins to violently
contract under its own weight with so much power that, at the end of this
process of contraction, gravity will overwhelm the electro-magnetic force
(that keeps electrons apart) and the nuclear force (that keeps nucleons
in close proximity apart). In
fact, the star will actually collapse, dragging space and time along with
it, creating an infinite distension of the fabric of space-time.
The event horizon is a spherically shaped region of intense
gravity (around a singularity, where matter has been crushed
beyond the Planck-Wheeler length to zero size) from within which nothing
- not even light - can ever escape.
The event horizon might have a diameter of ten miles, but its radius
- the distance from the perimeter to the center - is infinite.
If a celestial explorer wished to leap off the edge of the universe,
this is the only place it can be done.
(Among Einstein’s many important realizations is the fact that the effect
of gravity is equivalent to acceleration.
The mass of the earth creates a distention in space-time, that we
feel as gravity. The gravity-field
of the earth is equal to a certain acceleration; one needs to exceed a
certain speed upward to escape the downward accelerating gravity of the
earth - a speed known as escape velocity.
For earth, this speed is more than 25,000 mph.
To escape from the much smaller gravity-well of the Moon, the speed
required is only about 5,300 mph; for much larger Jupiter it is over 133,000
mph, and for the sun it is 1,381,600 mph.
The enormous mass and density of a collapsed star creates a distention
in space-time around the resulting black hole that is so deep, and the
corresponding acceleration is so fast, that escape velocity is actually
faster than the speed of light - about 670,000,000 mph!
And nature does not allow anything to go faster than this universal
absolute. This is why light
cannot escape from a black hole.)
General Relativity (Einstein’s field equations that describe
the geometry of gravity) explains that mass bends our 3-dimensional space,
or more accurately, our 4-dimensional space-time.
In the same way that one cannot bend a 2-D piece of paper within
the confinement of two dimensions (any bending can only be specified by
a third set of co-ordinates perpendicular to the other two - our third
spatial dimension), the suggestion that our universe is warped by gravity
demands that there is something greater beyond it, into which it
bends. For example, a 2-D
piece of paper is completely contained by a third dimension that surrounds
it on all sides, and touches it at all points - in fact, any and every
point on the plane is the edge of that 2-D universe.
So, too, must it be with a 3-dimensional universe: any infinitesimal
point anywhere in the vast cosmos, exists at a precipice - the abyss
at the end of the universe. If
a 2-D being could just look “up” (a direction that simply does not exist
in his universe), he might discern that a 3-D “space universe” surrounds
his 2-D “plane universe.” If
we could look “up” into hyperspace (the fifth dimension, beyond
4-D space-time) what might we see?
A black hole is a place where we get to look “up.”
When our imaginary explorer finally leaps off the edge of the universe,
into what will he fall?
The Realm of Order
| We cross that boundary at the edge of the universe as we move into
the left side of the painting ? the domain of Goddess Order.
The rows of spheres that diminish in size as they get nearer to
the sphere of Order are meant to be a stylized representation of quantum
foam - the turbulent end of space-time.
At the Planck-Wheeler length near the singularity inside the black
hole, space-time begins to boil and froth. Once an apparently seamless
continuum, space-time now starts to rip and pull apart.
The laws of quantum mechanics forbid physical investigation, but
in a purely meta-physical idealization we can imagine zooming down
to inspect the haphazard topological features of a speck of quantum froth
at, say, 10-100 cm.
And then we might zoom down, ever smaller, to the froth fizzing
above the froth at, say, 10-1000
cm. At this infinitesimal, sub-physical scale, Order acquires supremacy
over Chaos, and imposes Her will upon the chaotic bubblings of space-time
at the Great Boundary between the fleeting immanent and the Eternal Transcendent.
(This sub-quantum imposition of order upon vanishing chaos is represented
here by the geometric regularity of the receding/diminishing quantum-foam
spheres.) |
 |
Yin and Yang represent the fundamental polarities in the dance of the
cosmos, but Yin is thought of as unchanging stillness.
For this reason, another way to read the T’ai-chi T’u (as
opposed to the customary reading of two swirling or rotating “tadpoles”)
is to place the center of the diagram in the heart of Order.
Yin is the still center around which Yang, the moving
periphery, revolves in the cosmic dance.
When the resulting pattern is perceived in the right way (one 360
degree rotation, captured in 24 distinct increments), the Lotus becomes
apparent (seen in the overlapping arcs of circles making the petal-like
forms).
The Lotus is a symbol associated with the creator in all eastern mythology,
from ancient Egypt and Persia to Modern China and Japan. It is the golden
flower, the flower of light, the cosmic womb, beauty incarnate.
The Lotus grows out of the unknown water’s depths, like the universe
grew out of the primordial sea of nothingness.
The Lotus, like an elemental union of earth-water (matter) and sun-fire
(spirit), represents self-regenerative totality.
Because it opens with the sunrise, and closes with the sunset, it
suggests creation, renewal, and immortality.
Like the First-Being, the Lotus is believed to be the creator of
its own creation. Rising from
the murky depths of timeless darkness to unfold with perfect enlightened
beauty in the sunlight, it symbolizes the awakening of awareness, the understanding
of the true nature of reality. And
within the unfolding petals of the Lotus, is pictured the Creator of the
cosmos, seated in blissful repose.
Enthroned upon the Lotus in eternal paradise is Order the Infinite,
She who wears the starry robes of the universe as a cloak to conceal Her
mystery.
In India, a tripartite nature of divinity, a Holy Trinity, is represented
by Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver, and Shiva the Destroyer.
And they are popularly shown in this aspect: Shiva, as the ouroboric
(self-consuming) World-Serpent, is coiled around the feet of beautiful
Vishnu. The serpent which
sheds it skin and is reborn anew - like Life which consumes life and is
reborn anew, like the moon which is consumed by darkness and is reborn
anew, like the earth which is consumed by the solar coil of the seasons
and is reborn anew in spring - is symbolic of the cycles of time, which
consumes all things, and yet is also the source of their renewal.
And from Vishnu’s navel grows a lotus blossom upon which is seated
a tiny Brahma. We know that
things do not grow from navels. Navels
attach us to that from which we are grown.
And so, in this beautifully symbolic representation, it is not the
Lotus that grows from Vishnu’s navel, but rather Vishnu that grows from
the Lotus: Devi - Mother of space, time, and the entire universe.
She is the source of all things, of all the Gods.
And all the Power of the Gods of Space and Time grow from, and labor
in the service of, her Eternal Beauty.
The Perfection of Number
| Returning now to the image, the lotus petals expand outward into the
composition, and are meant to indicate the transcendent realm that is both
within and beyond the material universe.
The within and beyond regions are tiled in this representation by
a hexagon field, the geometry of which is specified by the revolving T’ai-chi.
The resulting three lines that intersect at a common axis create
the hexagons. The three lines
symbolize the quantum fields that permeate all of space. There are many
interpenetrating fields, but they can be classified in three main categories:
the lepton field (which forms electrons and neutrinos), the quark field
(which forms protons and neutrons), and the boson field (which forms force-carrying
particles: photons for electro-magnetism, gluons for the strong nuclear
force, W and Z particles for the weak nuclear force, and gravitons).
It is this matrix, this “trinity” of particle/wave fields, that
gives substance and form to the shape-shifting universe, and prevents it
from falling into the emptiness of which it is almost entirely made.
This quantum veneer of dimensionless points, this shimmering foundation
of mathematical ethereality, is the exquisite skin of the LotusMaiden
of Eternity. And upon
Her is draped the ever-fluttering Robes of Chaos - the universe itself.
|
 |
The glowing light in the center of each hexagon serves two functions:
one, it represents the potential for another axis, another particle (or
virtual particle); two, it is the light of eternal order which exists at
the center of all things: every protean atom, every living cell, every
contemplating consciousness.
In this painting, the center is always circumscribed by a six-sided
structure. The number six
has, since early pre-history, been associated with utility in the service
of order. Because of its many divisors, six and multiples of six were the
ideal, easy-to-use values with which to quantify the affairs of man, and
map the dominions of space and time.
This predisposition to the number six, to in fact see a basic “sixness”
in the cosmos, was prevalent across Eurasia and Africa, as well as in the
Americas. In places all around the globe, man sought to emulate the mathematically
ideal order of the cosmos, by re-creating its essential sixness on earth:
12 inches to the foot, 36 inches to the yard, and 6 feet to the fathom.
360 degrees to the circle of the horizon, 60 minutes to 1 degree,
and 60 seconds to each minute of arc.
In our reckoning of time there are 60 seconds to the minute, 60
minutes to the hour, and 24 hours to the day.
30 (6 x 5) days to the month, and 12 months to the year (and 12
zodiacal divisions in the sky).
The atomic number of carbon - the element of life - is six, and its
crystal structure is hexagonal. The bible describes God creating the universe
in six days (or rotations of the earth), and resting upon the seventh.
This became the model for the western week: six days of activity enclose
a passive seventh day in the center. This human-made reckoning is a reflection
of a simple geometric truth: six perfect circles (or rotations of a line)
arranged edge to edge in a larger perfect circle, exactly circumscribes
a seventh circle of equal size. That is, a six-fold structure surrounds
the master seventh component in the center.
(And we shall see that there is something strange and wonderful
about this 6-around-1 motif.)
Lucky seven (statistically, the most likely roll of two six-sided dice)
is a divine number in many ancient belief systems around the world.
Light, the most enduring symbol of divine creation, is composed
of six visible colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet (the
three primary and three secondary colors seen in the rainbow); when combined,
these six colors of light make a glorious seventh - pure and luminous white.
All that we will ever see is a combination of these six colors (white
is all visible light together; black is the absence of light, and not a
color).
There are some unusual, purely arithmetical properties of the number
seven: 1 x 2 x 3 x 4 x 5 x 6 x 7 and 7 x 8 x 9 x 10 both equal 5040.
And 1 x 2 x 3 x 4 x 5 x 6 and 8 x 9 x 10 both equal 720.
Whether the number seven is included or deleted, it acts as the
pivot or center of the Dekad (the sacred Tetrakus of the ancient Greeks)
- the foundation of our decimal system of mathematical notation.
Of all the polygons in the Dekad (triangle, square, pentagon, hexagon,
etc.), only the seven-sided heptagon cannot be captured precisely.
The angle that specifies its construction is 51.42857142857...,
an infinitely repeating decimal that can only be approximated - it does
not exist with precision in the real world.
Its place shall only ever be in the eternal realm of the Ideal.
It is this mysterious otherworldly quality that led the ancients
to associate seven with the Sacred Virgin - pure, untouchable, unattainable,
transcendent and beyond.
Symbol Loops
The receding hexagonal field surrounding the Goddess is a geometrical
idealization of an infinite plane contained within a finite region (known
as Lobachevskian, or hyperbolic geometry). When viewed in the right
way, the arced lines of this hexagonal tiling form the diagram of a lithium
atom, the international symbol for things atomic (and sub-atomic).
Furthermore, the 3 ellipses that comprise this symbol also form
a Star of David (or Seal of Solomon).
This symbol - the union of the downward-pointing (vaguely yonic)
triangle of feminine repose, and the upward-pointing (vaguely phallic)
triangle of masculine action - is yet another symbolic representation of
the mysterious and the manifest in harmonious conjunction.
(This diamond-shaped painting is also the union of two oppositely-oriented
triangles). The six-pointed
star, a multi-national illustration of the same philosophy contained in
the T’ai-chi T’u of eastern Asia, is also found in ancient Persia (the
Star of Ishtar), and Tantric Buddhism (the Shri Yantra).
In India this symbol is known as the Mark of Vishnu.
It is also the symbol for the Anahata, or heart chakra (the
central of seven mystical energy centers in the body - a balancing point
of transformation between terrestrial and celestial energies).
These self-referential, auto-causal loops contain patterns within patterns,
symbols within symbols, worlds within worlds - each existing only by virtue
of all the rest. A first component creates another, which, in turn, creates
the first component; remove a single part, and the entire edifice comes
tumbling down - creation and destruction, beginning and ending, all interwoven
into a single cosmic tapestry. By
indicating a succession or hierarchy of meanings, of interdependent levels
of interpretation and understanding, symbols sometimes look very much like
the inscrutable cosmos itself.
The LotusMaiden of Eternity
| Within the star of transformation is the Goddess Order, residing in
perfect symmetry and eternal tranquility.
Around Her head is a halo centered upon the sixth chakra - the chakra
of visualization. The halo
itself is a divine imagining of all creation, an infinite regression wherein
God and the Universe are auto-catalytic in their own creation: the
Creator dreams of a creation which has a Creator dreaming of a creation
that, in turn, has a Creator...
The axis of the entire composition is the little purple amulet between
Her breasts. There at the
heart chakra of transformation is the seed of Chaos (the tiny Brahma) within
the domain of Order. Here
is where the inward-oriented noumenal becomes the outward-oriented
phenomenal. Although
the stillness of eternity does not act or change, She possesses in the
seed of Chaos an agent of potential, a proxy for action and change.
Here is the ghost of contingency within the Absolute.
Here is the engineer that would build the Architect’s dream.
Here is the Power that Beauty needs to create Power.
In this view of the universe, there is no beginning, no ending -
they are the same Place, the same Moment. This is the Eternal Cycle: Order
creates Chaos, Chaos creates Order, which creates the Chaos that created
the Order...
|
|
It is only from our tiny and remote vantage point that the Two Domains
- the Immanent and the Transcendent - appear separate and distinct, divided
by the Gulf of Infinity. In
some unknown, even greater aspect they flow though one another like a river
in the desert: an emptiness that beckons, and a fullness that ventures
forth. There are two Dancers - a Question who seeks and an Answer who waits
- but there is only one Dance...
* * *
Personal Notes on Order and Chaos
OK, this is not one of my better paintings.
If I were to paint this image again (and who knows what crazy thing
I might do someday?), I would certainly not make the mysterious
aspect of the cosmos the illuminated half of the painting, leaving the
manifest aspect of the here and now shrouded by shadow.
And it’s so orange...what was I thinking?
I had some fun in the execution though.
I designed an elaborate compass that was anchored to the canvas
upon a small piece of plastic that I attached to the canvas between the
breasts of the Goddess. By
rotating either a piece of wood or a length of string, each equipped with
a paint-loaded brush, I could make fairly confident strokes to establish
with some precision the basic geometry of the section I was working on.
Once the geometry was roughed in correctly, I could refine the painting
as required, freehand. And
it seemed like I spent weeks painting those Yang dots!
For some strange reason, my initial idea, with this painting, was to
paint both figures as women.
There wasn’t going to be any science and philosophy (which, come
to think of it, might have been better).
It was just going to be a simple representation of a refined, dignified
Order and a crazy, wanton Chaos (or something like that).
And then a debate about science and religion with my brother lead
me in another direction. “You should paint about this stuff,” he said.
It seemed like a good idea at the time...
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