In this connection, there is one more thing to be said, concerning the descriptions of strange beings met with in such accounts: since these descriptions naturally date at the earliest from ‘classical’ antiquity, a time at which an undeniable degeneration had already taken place from a traditional point of view, it is quite possible that confusions of more than one kind may have crept in. For instance, one part of these descriptions may really be derived from ‘survivals’ of a symbolism no longer fully understood,[53] whereas another part may be related to the appearances assumed by the manifestation of certain ‘entities’ or ‘influences’ belonging to the subtle domain, and yet another, though doubtless not the most important, may really be a description of beings that had a corporeal existence in more or less remote times, but belonged to species since then extinct or having survived only in exceptional conditions and as great rarities, such as are still sometimes met with today, whatever may be the opinion of people who imagine that there is nothing left in the world that they do not know about. It can be seen that in order to discern what lies at the bottom of all this, a fairly long and difficult piece of work would have to be undertaken, all the more so because the ‘sources’ available are far from providing uncontaminated traditional data; it is obviously much simpler and more convenient to discard the whole lot en bloc as the moderns do; they would anyhow not understand the truly traditional data themselves any better than those that are contaminated and would still see in them only indecipherable enigmas, and they will naturally adhere to this negative attitude until some new changes in the ‘face of the world’ come to destroy once and for all their deceptive security.
20
From Sphere to Cube
Now that a few ‘illustrations’ have been given of what has been called the ‘solidification’ of the world, there remains the question of its representation in geometrical symbolism, wherein it can be figured as a gradual transition from sphere to cube. Indeed, to begin with, the sphere is intrinsically the primordial form, because it is the least ‘specified’ of all, similar to itself in every direction, in such a way that in any rotatory movement about its center, all its successive positions are strictly superimposable one on another.[54] The sphere, then, can be said to be the most universal form of all, containing in a certain sense all other forms, which will emerge from it by means of differentiations taking place in certain particular directions; and that is why the spherical form is, in all traditions, that of the ‘Egg of the World’, in other words, the form of that which represents the ‘global’ integrality, in their first and ‘embryonic’ state, of all the possibilities that will be developed in the course of a cycle of manifestation.[55] It is as well to note in addition that this first state, so far as our world is concerned, belongs properly to the domain of subtle manifestation, inasmuch as the latter necessarily precedes gross manifestation and is its immediate principle. This is why the form of the perfect sphere, or that of the circle corresponding to it in plane geometry (as a section of the sphere by a given directional plane) is in fact never realized in the corporeal world.[56]
On the other hand, the cube is opposed to the sphere as being the most ‘arrested’ form of all, if it can be so expressed; this means that it corresponds to a maximum of ‘specification’. The cube is also the form that is related to the earth as one of the elements, inasmuch as the earth is the ‘terminating and final element’ of manifestation in the corporeal state;[57] and consequently it corresponds also to the end of the cycle of manifestation, or to what has been called the ‘stopping-point’ of the cyclical movement. This form is thus in a sense above all that of the ‘solid’,[58] and it symbolizes ‘stability’ insofar as this implies the stoppage of all movement; and it is evident that the equilibrium of a cube resting on one of its faces is in fact more stable than that of any other body. It is important to note that this stability, coming at the end of the descending movement, is not and cannot be anything but an unqualified immobility, of which the nearest representation in the corporeal world is afforded by the minerals; and this immobility, if it could be entirely realized, would really be the inverted reflection at the lowest point of the principial immutability of the highest point. Immobility or stability thus understood, and represented by the cube, is therefore related to the substantial pole of manifestation, just as immutability, in which all possibilities are comprehended in the ‘global’ state represented by the sphere, is related to the essential pole;[59] and this is why the cube also symbolizes the idea of ‘base’ or ‘foundation’ which again corresponds to the substantial pole.[60] Attention must also be drawn to the fact that the faces of a cube can be considered as being oriented in opposite pairs corresponding to the three dimensions of space, in other words as parallel to the three planes determined by the axes forming the system of coordinates to which that space is related and which allows of its being ‘measured’, that is, of its being effectively realized in its integrality. It has been explained elsewhere that the three axes forming the three-dimensional cross must be looked upon as being traced through the center of a sphere that fills the whole of space by its indefinite expansion (the three planes determined by these axes also necessarily passing through the same center, which is the ‘origin’ of the whole system of coordinates), and this establishes the relation that exists between the two extreme forms, sphere and cube, a relation in which what was interior and central in the sphere is so to speak ‘turned inside out’ to become the surface or the exteriority of the cube.[61]
53
Pliny’s
55
This same form reappears at the beginning of the embryonic existence of every individual comprised in that cyclical development, the individual embryo (
56
The movement of the celestial bodies can be given as an example. It is not exactly circular, but elliptical; the ellipse constitutes as it were a first ‘specification’ of the circle, by the splitting of the center into two poles or ‘foci’ in the direction of one of the diameters, which thereafter plays a special ‘axial’ part, while at the same time all the other diameters are differentiated one from another in respect of their lengths. It may be added incidentally in this connection that, since the planets describe ellipses of which the sun occupies one of the foci, the question arises as to what the other focus corresponds to; as there is nothing corporeal actually there, there must be something belonging only to the subtle order; but that question cannot be further examined here, as it would be quite outside our subject.
57
See Fabre d’Olivet,
58
The point is not that earth as an element is assimilated simply and solely to the solid state, as some people wrongly think, but that it is rather the very principle of solidity.
59
This is why the spherical form is attributed in the Islamic tradition to the ‘Spirit’ (
60
In the Hebrew Kabbalah the cubic form corresponds to
61
In plane geometry a similar relation is obviously found when the sides of the square are considered as being parallel to two rectangular diameters of the circle, and the symbolism of this relation is directly connected with what the Hermetic tradition calls the ‘quadrature of the circle’, about which a few words will be said later on.