And
this archetype always manifests itself in analogous ways: 12 labors around the
triumph of Gilgamesh (from the oldest document in the world, c. 3000 BC), 12
Vedic nobles around the Aryan King (Raj), 12 Norse counselors around Odin, 12
native American tribes of 12 clans each (and the 12 poled Teepee around the
ceremonial fire), 12 Inca Emperors around the lineage of the Sun, 12 Imams
(descendants) around the Shiite tradition of Ali, 12 Namshan advisors around the Dalai Lama, 12 Paladin
advisors around Charlemagne, 12 knights around King Arthur and the Round Table,
12 Olympian Gods around Zeus, 12 Disciples around Mithras, 12 Retainers around
Osiris, 12 ships around the voyage of Odysseus, 12 Generals around George
Washington, 12 tribes around the Nation of Israel (and 12 fruits around the
Tree of Life), 12 nerve meridians around Ch’i (energizing force), 12 Gates
around the Underworld, and 12 gates around the City of God. The list goes on
and on...
In
all places, in all times, all peoples have experienced a primal apprehension of
the divine in the mathematically ideal order of the cosmos; they sought to
emulate that divine order in human society.
The numerical Truth in which we have believed for more than 5000 years
is twelve. And so we have always reckoned space and time accordingly: 12
hours around the clock, 12 months around a year, 12 heavenly houses around the
universe. But why not some other
number? Where did this fascination with
the number twelve ‑ more ancient than written history ‑ come from?
Are there some real truths associated with twelve that are more than merely our
interpretation of Nature, or might we have revered some other number? Does all this fascination with twelve
represent more than just random human whim?
The Natural Truth of the 12
The
bible describes God creating the universe in six days, and resting upon the
seventh. This became the model for the western week: six days of activity
enclose a passive seventh (Sabbath) day in the center. Such human‑made
reckonings are a reflection of a simple, two‑dimensional geometric (or
absolute) truth: six perfect circles arranged side by side in a larger perfect
circle, exactly circumscribes a seventh circle of equal size. This might be described as the Master
Template implicit in The Center. There
is a three‑dimensional corollary to this geometric truth: twelve
perfect spheres of equal size exactly circumscribes and encloses at twelve
points of contact a perfect central sphere. The Twelve surround The One.
The
ancients also saw “twelveness” in the heavens above. The full moon is a perfect luminous disk shining out into the
dangerous chaos of the night. Little by
little it is consumed by the black sky, until it finally disappears into the
death of non‑existence. There it remains in some otherworld darkness (so
they thought) for three days. And then
this guiding beacon overcomes death, and gradually re-emerges into illuminating
existence once more. In one solar year,
this lunar resurrection will occur twelve times ‑ with twelve days left
over.
The
mathematics of the electro-magnetic spectrum is made visible in the artist’s
color-wheel, which has twelve colors (three primary, three secondary, and six
tertiary hues). Another art form,
music, is mathematics made audible, because it consists of precise numerical
relationships of frequency: doubling the frequency of a tone produces the same
tone one octave higher (a vibrating string divided into 1/3-2/3 parts
produces the interval called a perfect fifth, and a 1/4-3/4 division produces a
perfect forth, etc.). One octave
consists of twelve notes, the chromatic scale (which contains the
familiar diatonic scale of seven tones: do re me fa sol la ti...). Against the fixed stars of the heavens, the
ancients saw seven points of light that were not fixed, and appeared to move
about the sky in whirling patterns when observed over many successive
nights. In Greek, they were called planetes
(“wanderers”): Mercury, Venus, Luna, Mars, Sol, Jupiter, and Saturn. Seven Celestial Deities representing seven
celestial spheres revolving through the twelve constellations around the earth
- corresponding with the seven-tone scale within the octave of twelve
notes. The supreme Deity in this
pantheon of Gods was Jupiter (Latin form of the Greek Zeus). Its orbital duration is twelve years.
All
these factors, in addition to its arithmetical utility (12 is the first and
smallest number with 6 divisors - 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 12), conferred upon twelve
significance above other numbers; it is the cyclic rhythm of space and time, of
heaven and earth, and the living progeny of this heavenly order. It represents
a totality: the quest for, and fulfillment of, destiny ‑ the terrestrial
human and Celestial Divine.
The Four Elements
The
ancients came to see twelve in the actual material of which all the universe ‑
including Man ‑ is made. They recognized that there are only four kinds
of natural phenomena: things that are hard, things that are vaporous, things
that are fluid, and things that possess force or energy. These “categories of phenomena” they called
the Four Elements: Earth, Wind, Water, and Fire. And each element will exist in one of three
qualitative states: Cardinal‑Immutable, Fixed‑Transitional, and
Mutable‑Volatile. This produced
the Twelve Forms of the Phenomenal Cosmos.
The
Four Elements were thought to correspond to four of the Platonic perfect
solids: tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, and icosahedron. The last of the five perfect polygonal
solids is the dodecahedron. It
represents Quintessence, the miraculous Fifth Element that was imagined to be
the origin and destiny of the Four
Elements. The dodecahedron has twelve
sides.
In
fact, the Four Elements were seen to correspond to many things, like a Divine
rhythm pulsing through the universe (which they called the Music of the
Spheres). The Four Directions:
North, South, East, and West. The Times
of Day: The Dawn which grows through the gentle innocence of Morning, to
maturity in the Afternoon sun, only to decline into evening Twilight and the
unknown darkness of night. The 4 Seasons: The regenerative Spring which grows
to maturity in the efflorescence of Summer, only to descend into Autumn
infirmity and Winter death. And ancient
peoples recognized that such macrocosmic patterns are a reflection of the human
condition: The four Periods of Life (Infancy, Youth, Maturity, Old Age) and The
four Aspects of Mind (Sensation, Thinking, Feeling, Intuition).
Once
this correlation between the Elements and Man had been established, it was then
easy to identify the certain qualities that meaningfully described both: dry or
wet, hot or cold, active or passive, ascending dominant or descending
submissive, penetrating outward or receiving inward. Earth (dry‑cold) and
Water (wet‑cold) are the terrestrial Elements ‑ and feminine. Air
(wet‑hot) and Fire (dry‑hot) are the celestial elements ‑ and
masculine. It was thought that the relative amount of an element present in
something determined its nature, all in accord with its elemental
character. And so, just as there are
Four Elements of world nature, so too are there are Four Elements of human
nature, the Four Humors: melancholic earth (physicality), sanguine
air (intelligence), phlegmatic water (emotions), and choleric fire
(intuition). And in the same way that
the Four Elements interact to create the twelve Forms of Phenomena, the Four
Humors interact to create the twelve Psychological Types.
Over
time, all this analysis evolved into an extraordinarily complex system of
interrelated descriptions, an impenetrable maze of temporal correspondences and
spatial associations ‑ both real and imagined. We may now recognize this “reading of the elements” as
unscientific, but what is also true is that the most brilliant minds of those
past ages were obsessed with the “elemental” composition of the world - and the
cosmic Zodiac that contains it. Great
scholars, with minds as sharp as any Nobel Laureate, devoted their lives to the
study of this religion within religions.
And this deeply analytical philosophy of nature has descended to us from
remote times, where it continues to inform the fundamental assumptions of the
modern mind. Perhaps more than any
other human endeavor, these misguided early thinkers established the cognitive
foundations for the reductive method and thus the entire enterprise of science.
To
ancient reasoning, it was different elements in different quantities that
produced all the diversity of nature, and all the variety of human character
and behavior. And the relative motions
found in the flux and flow of this diversity determines every subsequent
event. The Twelve Houses of the Cosmos
(4 Directions X 3 levels) correspond with the Twelve Forms of Phenomena (4
Elements X 3 levels), which correspond to Twelve Types of Man (4 Temperaments X
3 levels). The repetition of the
twelve-fold pattern found from one level of the cosmos to the next, in the very
big and in the very small, necessarily means that observations of one
stratum tell you something about the other two. Our fates are written in the heavens, in the world around us, and
even in ourselves. Or so it was
believed.
Astrology
Such
beliefs seem curious to most of us now - deluded medieval superstition. It is difficult for us to understand how a
view of reality so obviously erroneous could achieve so much devotion. How can
the sky, plus a collection of manufactured correspondences, determine one’s
fate? The reductionist science that
created and sustains the modern world isn’t very effective at describing
holistic relationships, but holistically was precisely how the ancients were
obligated to perceive their universe.
In a world without conveniently printed calendars, when a particular
star rising with the vernal sunrise heralds the planting time of the crops and
thus ensures for the community another year of survival, macrocosmic events
seem very immediate to the microcosmic concerns of man. When your only clock is the sky, and you
live or die by a reckoning of the heavens, you feel profoundly the penetrating
threads that bind you into this vast interwoven tapestry of interdependent
energies. When seen in this context, one realizes there is an intimate relation
between the order of the universe and the order of Man ‑ as it is above,
so too is it below. The order of the
Heavens is twelve, the order of Nature is twelve, and the order of Man is
twelve. This ancient body of knowledge
is recognition of this divine relationship, and is thus meant to represent a
comprehensive description of the cyclical pattern of spatial and temporal laws
in all of God’s creations.
This
insight into nature, gathered over thousands of years of observation, was
eventually codified into an empirical science; in Latin it is known as Astrology - “Knowledge of the Heavens.” The study of The Twelve has been a
source of both scorn and reverence for a long time. By rational objectivists rooted in the material world who can
only accept what is concrete, it has been entirely dismissed as preposterous
and irrelevant: “How can the position of a star 100 trillion miles away
possibly affect events on earth? How
can everyone born the same day have the same destiny?” By intuitive subjectivists on a quest in the
ethereal domain who can never accept what is concrete, it has been
entirely embraced as Divine Word: “All children possess the traits of their
lineage, carry the history of their land, and are subject to the same patterns
of force that affect all things everywhere. We are the progeny of the heavens,
and are bound to them, as all children are, to their parents.”
Perhaps
the truth lies somewhere in between these two ends of a single continuum. No rational argument can be made for the
veracity of astrology, and yet as a typology of human behavior and potential,
it is surprisingly (and amusingly) informative. Beliefs can persist only so long as they provide something of
importance and relevance to the believer.
Otherwise old systems of thought are dispensed with as easily as the
music of the previous generation. And
so the study of The Twelve endures: a clockwork mural of creation and
destiny painted in the sky by the gods - the image does have some appeal.
The Zodiac Mandala
The
Zodiac is an illustration of this Twelve-fold Principle of Nature, a pictorial
representation of the cosmic process ‑ from initiation to resolution,
from the beginning of the cycle, to its inevitable end. By ascribing to each step a distinct,
defining quality, the ancients revealed a twelve-stage Process of
Transformation to which everything in Nature is subject: phenomena begin in
one form, over time become other forms, and end as yet other forms ‑
which is, in turn, the beginning of new phenomena. Spirit becomes matter. The
One becomes many. Idea becomes realization.
And Involution, the materialization of things, becomes Evolution, the
spiritualization of things.
The
Zodiac describes not only the cosmological conditions that together constitute
the Wheel of Time, and the natural conditions that together constitute the
world, but also the personalities that together constitute a community. And most relevantly, the zodiac was meant to
instruct the initiate along the journey of spiritual development, by
articulating the changes in body and spirit that together constitute a
life. In this way, the Zodiac is
equivalent to a Mandala (Sanskrit for magic wheel): a labyrinthine
circle that serves as an aid to meditation.
And the object of meditation is The One in The Center.
If
the entire universe is revolving (as it very much appears to do from our small
perspective here on the rotating Earth), and everything is perpetually in
motion towards what it is becoming, then nothing can be seen for what it
actually is. What meditation seeks is contact with that which is not revolving,
not moving, not becoming. And if the
universe is revolving, then somewhere there must be a stationary point in the
center that is eternally motionless. This is the Lotus, the Axis Mundi, the
World‑Mountain, the World-Tree, the Immovable Spot - the infinitely
quiescent, focal nucleus of existence to which is fixed the entire whirling
hurricane of the universe. This is
where the answer is found: Clarity where all was blurred, Eternity where all
was evanescent, The Absolute where all was relative, One where all was
many. Stillness and Silence, Immortal
Beauty, Truth.
The Great Cycle
There
is another important cycle to which the Zodiac refers: the Great Year
(sometimes called the Platonic Year).
For the last two millennia it has been the constellation of Pisces that
has witnessed the vernal equinox (the first day of Spring, March 21). Before that, the vernal sun rose in the
constellation of Aries. On March 21,
2000, however, it rose in the constellation of Aquarius for the first time in
23,760 years. A slight wobble in the Earth’s axis causes a phenomenon known as
the Precession of the Equinoxes.
The apparently fixed heavens in fact slowly move in a great circle,
shifting 1 degree of arc every 72 years.
And because each House of the Zodiac covers 30 degrees of arc, the
vernal sun rises in a new constellation every 2160 years. (This number is, coincidentally, the exact
diameter ‑ in miles ‑ of the moon.
At the moon’s closest approach to the earth, called the perigee, the
distance from the surface of the earth to the surface of the moon is 2160 X 100
(216,000) miles. The sun, in its great orbital journey through the galaxy,
travels at 2160 X 10 (21,600) mph. And
in silent recognition of these interesting astro-arithmetical truths, our 24
hour day contains 2160 X 40 (86,400) seconds.)
One
degree of arc every 72 years ‑ roughly, one very long lifetime by
ancient reckoning. It seems impossible
that the civilizations of early antiquity could have made observations with
sufficient precision to detect this surpassingly small variation in stellar
orientation. And yet, we know they did, because the geometry of the Great
Pyramid (and other ancient structures) possesses many repetitions of these very
precise precessional numbers. It was,
for some reason, very important to the first architects that the geometry of
their sacred structures reflect the geometry of the Transformation of the
Cosmos ‑ a 12-stage journey that occurs one 2,160-year step at a time, in
a 360-degree cycle of 25,920 years.
(This number corresponds to the ancients’ calculation of the diameter of
the earth in miles. The mile was said to measure 1000 paces of the Roman
Legion; it is, in fact, a far older measurement. It was designed to be of a length such that 25,920 of them would
circle the earth. A later readjustment
of this unit caused its former accuracy to deviate by 4%: the diameter of the
earth is 24,902 modern miles.)
These
twelve epochs are called The Ages of Man, and the character-forms of the
Zodiac describe them as well. The most
recent Age, Pisces (a water sign) is the last sign of the Zodiac. It symbolizes an ending, a dissolution, a
time of sleep before reawakening in a new form. Some believe this must mean the
impending end of time, and disastrous geological changes and catastrophes will
eradicate the human infestation of the world (or the impenitent sinners of the
world, depending upon what you read).
Others believe only that our current form of civilization will
disappear, as a new one emerges. What
kind of world might that be? 2,000
years ago, Someone told us ‑ and we have been waiting for an Arrival
ever since...
The Return
Very
near the beginning of the Age of Pisces, a small Child was born in a manger on
December 24, three days after the winter solstice, three days after the solar
year had disappeared into winter death.
The world of antiquity also died on that winter solstice, and after
three days in the underworld, it witnessed the Birth of a Savior ‑ whose
emblem was the sign of the Fish: Pisces.
The Child grew to be a King of kings, and in His court were twelve
Apostles. Through His Supreme Love, a
way of liberation was shown from the inertial chains of the physical world, a
way to the Domain of Infinite Spirit. And
He gave His life that we might know His Truth.
He was planted in the ground (like a seed) upon a four‑pointed
cross ‑ Divine Man nailed there upon the symbol for the union of Heaven
and Earth. In that moment of moments, where the destiny of the next 2,000 years
was decided, time stood still. The
universe stood still. All creation was
transfixed on the center of Cosmic Destiny: there, on a shaft impaling the
earthy flesh of Golgotha, was a man who became God, bleeding on the Axis of the
Universe.
He
is said to have died at the vernal equinox, on a Friday. His body was taken from the cross, and
hidden reverentially in the dark womb of a cave. There, just as Life sleeps in the winter darkness for three
months, just as Moonlight sleeps in the new moon darkness for three days, so
too did He remain in the underworld darkness for three days. And when the moon was full, He walked upon
the Earth once more, soon ascending upward past the Summit of the Cosmos,
through the Gates of Eternity to Paradise beyond. With that Vernal Resurrection, so too, was born the New World ‑
the world of God’s Promise of Salvation, of God’s promise to the many that they
shall touch The One, of God’s promise to return...
That
Seed, planted upon Calvary so long ago, is still waiting to bear fruit... It
seems that it was not meant to germinate in Piscean ground, and must sleep a
while longer. But perhaps our Age of
History will be the last material epoch in human development. Perhaps our human rapacity will finally
sleep, and that Piscean Seed of Idea, will fructify in the Aquarian Womb of
Realization.
There
is a cleansing and purification that must transpire before such an awakening
can occur; some process by which the avarice and malevolence of humanity is
removed. The symbolic mechanism by which this objective is achieved is well
known to all the religions of the world; it is another of the Primary
Archetypes of the Sacred: The Flood.
In more than 500 ancient stories from around the world, that which is
old and worn out is washed away and destroyed by a global deluge. And yet, when those consuming waters recede,
there is new fertility in the soil, a spectacular new potential for Life. Thus
the old world is but the seed of a new.
The Flood is the Earth itself returning to the waters of the womb for
regeneration and rebirth.
And
so we see here a cleansing of the Piscean world, with a few artifacts of that
Age still visible beneath the Aquarian overgrowth. Swimming in two’s are forty fish ‑ one for each
night and day it rains. New apostles
gather in the Sacred Grove wherein they seek communion with the Keeper of
Knowledge. The aurora of a
transcendent beacon then shines through from the center of existence, and
illuminates the pastoral tranquility of their ocean temple. And from that blinding light comes a
shimmering Apparition of iridescent perfection. The curving arcs of great sheltering wings form the Vesica
Pisces: two circles that, like a conjunction of worlds, only intersect
around an irresistible spiritual gravity.
And thus, with a gesture, Heaven and Earth are united. Where there was only the burning desert of
the world, now there is an infinite Oasis of Spirit. Where there was merely nature, now there is Absolute
Quintessence. Divine Idea is Realization, and all the labors of the cosmos are
done. The terrestrial and the
Celestial become One Garden in Transcendent Paradise.
But
this is not the end. As God sustains the Cosmos, the Cosmos, too, sustains
God. As one thing ends, yet another
begins. And so, as we are told in the
sacred stories, the will of the universe shall be done: even in Paradise, someone
must break the unbroken circle; someone must turn away to embrace a
new and unknown future...
* * *
Personal Notes on The
Return
I
chose my favorite number at young age, long before I knew anything about the
spiritual import of such things, for a pretty mundane reason: my favorite
hockey player (Ivan Cornoyer of the Montreal Canadiens) wore it on the back of
his jersey. The length of time I worked
on this painting (from first design-sketches to finished painting): twelve
months. In the chronological sequence
of Mythic Naturalism paintings, The Return is number twelve. The time required to complete the Mythic
Naturalism series: twelve years. I know
it is an easy matter to find such correspondences, if you really want to find
them, but it still feels like temporally distinct events are bound by
some larger entirely unseen and unknown plan or intention.
I
don’t remember what I was thinking about when the inspiration for this painting
happened, but I remember the inspiration itself quite vividly. My mind was elsewhere and was at first
rather reluctant to yield any attention to a curious and amorphous image
bubbling up from some unknown depth in my mind. I pushed the image down one or twice, but it was insistent and
eventually pushed through whatever had occupied my thoughts previously. And then I saw it: a formless blue universe
with a circle of 12 presences illuminated from the center by an otherwordly,
iridescent light. I had been
contemplating a mermaid painting of some kind, and I knew at once that this
blue, Zodiacal circle was the solution I was looking for. It was, however, just a little more
complicated that that: I drew well over
100 mermaids before I found astrologically relevant gestures that looked right
within the apostolic “broken circle” design...
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