On the Symbolism of 'Land and Sea'

Behold! He withholdeth the waters, and they dry up:
He sendeth them out, and they overturn the earth.

Job 12:15

We have already on several occasions had the chance to touch on some aspects of the symbolism of water, however it seems not without benefit to expound a little bit on how the symbol of water (or the ‘sea’) relates to that of the earth (or the ‘land‘), since this fundamental duality can tell us a lot about the basic symbolic structure of reality as such.

First let us note that (according to traditional cosmology) the earth comes from water as its principle, just like Being emerges from Non-being, the actual from the virtual, order from chaos, etc. For God said: “Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so” (Gen. 1:9).

Land appears thus as ‘coagulated’ water (a notion already present in the Veda and many other ancient texts), it is drawn from the ‘waters’ (as Being is drawn from nothing, or as the sanctified soul emerges from the waters of death[1]) and is thus in constant danger of ‘dissolving’ back into this primal chaos. Even in Paradise Adam has to “tend to the garden” (the archetypical symbol of order established over natural chaos), meaning that he has to keep the flood at bay, preserve the land, establish space, etc.

According to the geometrical symbolism the (primordial) water can be conceptualized as a circle which then ‘crystalizes’ into the square (or cube) of the earth, a crystallization that is also mirrored on the temporal axis which begins with the ‘circular’ Paradise and terminates in the ‘cubical’ Heavenly Jerusalem, representing the ‘actualization’ of all Edenic virtualities (cf. Guénon, Reign of Quantity, XX-XXIII). It could thus be said that the task of the first Adam was nothing else than to ‘square the circle’ of Paradise, i.e. to ‘actualize’ the Edenic state, whereas the Fall could be seen as an exact inversion of this operation. For instead of cultivating the virgin soil (adâmâh) of the terrestrial Paradise and elevating it to the ‘blessed earth’ of the celestial one, Adam, by opening the flood-gates of sin, turned it into the ‘cursed earth’ (Gen. 3:17), hac lacrimarum valle. Instead of a benefic ‘actualization’ of possibilities (“Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat”, Gen. 2:16), of turning the Garden into the Civitas Dei and establishing (rectangular) ‘order’, he succumbs to the desire to know good and bad and to develop possibilities that had been forbidden to him (“Of the Tree of Knowledge thou shalt not eat”, Gen. 2:17), which results in a malefic petrification (or ‘solidification’) of universal existence, a perpetual ‘drought’ which has the exiled children of Eve wandering the deserts of this world in search for the sweet refreshment of the heavenly waters (dulce refrigerium).

The symbolism of ‘squaring the circle’ has indeed many application (one of them being traditional architecture which was well aware of its significance) that we cannot hope to develop fully here; suffice it to say that the circle can designate both the ‘upper waters’, i.e. the “round vault of the heavens” (Job 22:14) as opposed to the “four corners of the earth” (Rev. 7:1), as well as the (chaotic) ‘lower’ ones, so that the symbolic relationship of ‘square and circle’ always also depends on the perspective under which it is envisioned.

This duality of circle and square is likewise related to that of compass and ruler, the emblems of the ‘Great Architect of the Universe’ that feature prominently in freemasonic symbolism, but which go back to the earliest times (“ἀεὶ ὁ θεὸς γεωμετρεῖ”, as already Plato knew). As such the motive of God creating with the help of these two instruments is also commonly met with in many medieval illuminations, the compass being that with which He “traces a circle on the (horizontal) deep” (Prov. 8:27) and the ruler that by which He draws the vertical axis of stability (axis mundi) between the two ‘waters’, the ‘axle’ connecting the (upper and lower) ‘wheels’.

The circle of preexistent Non-being (or infinite Indeterminacy) is the Ouroboros or the ‘Chaos Dragon’ (Leviathan, Tiamat, Python, etc.), the endless Serpent of Vishnu (Ananta-Shesha) representing the (horizontal) ‘waters’, the Solar Hero (Marduk, Apollo, Indra, etc.) who “slays the dragon that is in the sea” (Is. 27:1) with its ‘fiery’ spear (or lightning bolt) represents the creative Fiat or the Logos, the (vertical) ‘Ray of manifestation’ thus establishing Being (the ‘earth’) in the ‘corpse’ of Non-being (However, as Coomaraswamy reminds us: “Slayer and Dragon, sacrifice and victim are of one mind behind the scenes, where there no polarity of contraries”; cf. Hinduism & Buddhism, I.2).

But of course water does not merely denote this ‘chaotic’, dissolving aspect but also has a benefic one ^[2], namely that of the ‘living waters’, the waters of ‘grace’ and ‘blessings’, and thus it is also Adam’s mission (as mediator between ‘heaven and earth’) to ‘call down rain’ (meaning the heavenly influences), for as we read in Genesis (2:5), before the creation of man “the Lord God had not yet caused it to rain upon the earth”.

This is the manna or panis angelicus, the ‘supersubstantial’ (“épioúsion”, as the Lord’s prayer says) “bread come down from Heaven” (Joh. 6:51) and she who will eventually call down this living water is of course Mary, the “Virgin standing on the moon” (Rev. 12:1), i.e. the ‘gate’ (janua coeli) between the ‘heavens’ and the ‘sublunary world’ (this intermediary and ‘mediatory’ position between heaven and earth, or manifested and unmanifested order, being also one aspect of prima materia), through which descends the ‘celestial dew’ (rorate coeli desuper).[3] She is the passive ‘cup’ (the crescent moon, Vas spirituale, Madonna Orant) and perfect receptacle (gratia plena) which receives the living waters and this is also why the Blessed Virgin truly is the Mediatrix of all Graces and “the channel or aqueduct whereby the heavenly waters reach us” (St. Bernard), an unstained mirror (speculum iustitiae) reflecting the light of her Son (solis iustitiae) to us. [4]

She is the ‘Eternal-Feminine’ (das Ewig-Weibliche), simply “Woman” (Joh. 2:4, 19:26), for woman is the guardian of the waters, the ‘woman at the well’ – Rebecca, Rachel, Zippora, the Samaritan woman (cf. Joh. 4) etc. – both the upper and lower ones: Eva-Ave.

The idea of the regenerative and cultivating function of Adam (his call to ‘water the Garden’) is especially pronounced in the theosophical mythos. Through the Fall of Lucifer, creation (which was hitherto in a completely spiritual, harmonious state) is plunged back into the primal chaos (the tohu-wa-bohu we read about at the beginning of Genesis) and “falls into the turba” of the divine Wrath. The material world (as ‘determination’ or ‘delimitation’) is then created to somehow ‘stop’ this descent or dissolution into indeterminate chaos, from which we see that the malefic ‘petrification’ of existence has also a benefic aspect, being both ‘curse’ (for it means limitation and finiteness) and blessing (for it quenches the ignited ‘wrath fire’).^[5]

Man is given the task to restore creation and bind it back to God, thereby redeeming it. Adam appears here not only as mediator and king of creation but also the “repairer” (Saint-Martin), the ‘prison guard’ of Lucifer even, for the coagulated matter acts like a cage which keeps the ‘gates of hell’ at bay.

This dual aspect of gross materiality also aligns with the symbolism of the ‘garments of skin’ (Gen. 3:2) in which Adam is clothed after the Fall and which, according to some of the Holy Fathers, represent the (material) body or our ‘fallen nature’ in general. These garments are likewise not only a curse or ‘punishment’ but also a blessing, a protective covering that is much needed, for the earth now bears “thorns and thistles” (Gen. 3:18).  Thus, without the ‘garments’ to clothe his ‘nakedness’, man couldn’t survive this valley of tears (and such is also the ‘mark of Cain’, which both curses the kin-slayer and protects him from being slain). [6]

For the Saint this “body of death” (Rom. 7:24) must indeed be a prison (sôma – sema), but for the sinner (and we exsules filii Hevae are all born sinners) it is a supreme Mercy, a saving grace in fact (sôma – soter), for the ‘corporification’ or ‘solidification’ of the earth (matter), indicated by the garments of skin, puts a stop the centrifugal dispersion of the psychic waters, stirred up by the ‘loss of centre’ (intellect).

The body is the terminal mode of the psychic; it stops or rather (relatively) stabilizes its spontaneous process of expansion … To the very extent that it is a psychism ‘freed’ from the unifying attraction of the inner man, the body ‘saves’ the soul from a dispersal into the indefinite; it puts an end (relatively) to its potential straying (Borella, Amour et Vérité, VII.2.3).

This is why Baader says that the word ‘earth’ (hebr. arrez) is etymologically related with the word ‘arrêt’ (to stop, to restrain) for it is the ‘earth’ or the ‘land’ that holds the watery ‘chaos’ at bay (the turba which sleeps at the very heart of matter itself, hence why all matter is in need of ‘blessing’). The material world is like a ‘blanket’ or ‘covering’ (Decke) that was thrown over the divine Fire, says Böhme, and this why not only gross materiality but also time (as the defining condition of this corporeal world) is the “Mercy of Eternity” (Blake), for only through this temporary ‘withholding’ of the divine Presence are we given the chance to ‘rectify’ ourselves, to transmute the fallen ‘lead’ into the alchemical gold which can withstand the crucible of divine Love. For once the ‘blanket’ of this world will be “rolled together like a scroll” (Rev. 6:14) all that we are will be tested in fire (“When He has tried me, I shall come out as gold”, Job. 23:10).

However for each and every one of us this encounter with the fires of judgment will already commence after death, when the protective ‘garment’ that keeps us weighed down to this world is finally shed. And here we finally see that the even death, the prime curse of the Adamic transgression (“thou shalt surely die”), is ultimately a blessing, for it too saves us from indefiniteness (“The Devil hasn’t got death in him”, says Böhme, “and this is why he can’t die off to evil”, meaning that because the fallen hierarchies are immortal they are also barred from salvation).

According the highest perspective however, ‘water’ and ‘earth’ could be seen as lower manifestation of the bi-unity of the Godhead itself (as the ‘Infinite’ and the ‘Absolute’)[7], meaning His All-Possibility (His ‘passive’, ‘feminine’ side, i.e. water) and His unrestricted Act of ‘isness’ (God under His ‘active’, ‘masculine’ aspect, i.e. earth), His maternal Receptivity and His paternal Ray of manifestation, Essence and Existence (likewise His two primal attributes of ‘Mercy’ and ‘Severity’) which are in God absolutely One.[8]

All tradition speaks of in the last analysis of God as an inconnumerable and perfect simple Identity, but also of this Supreme Identity as an identity of two contrasted principles, distinguishable in all composite things, but coincident without composition in the One who is no thing. The Identity is of Essence and Nature, Being and Nonbeing, God and Godhead – as it were masculine and feminine. Natura naturans, Creatrix unversalis est Deus … The conjoined principles in divinis are those of a static essence (bhutata) and dynamic Power (shakti) … when these are actually divided, static and dynamic become active and passive (A.K. Coomaraswamy, Divine Bi-Unity).

This bi-unity of dynamic and static aspects (“His Power and His Divinity”, Rom. 1:20) is likewise mirrored on the cosmological level as the two poles of existence or the ‘double spiral’ of the cosmic force, ying and yang, active and passive, centrifugal - centripetal, “the alternating rhythm of evolution and involution, birth and death – in short: manifestation in its dual aspect” (cf. Guénon, The Great Triad, V).

On the level of cosmology water represents also the horizontal axis, the flow of time (the “destroyer of worlds”, as the Gîtâ says) and its dissolving influence^[9], whereas earth represents the vertical axis of ‘space’, the unmoving pole “at the still point of the turning world” (T.S. Eliot), the serpent coiling around the World Tree or the axial ‘Mountain’ surrounded by the ‘sea’ as its periphery (similarly in Taoism the image of water running down a mountain can be contemplated as a symbol of the bi-unity of ying and yang).

This duality corresponds also to the two aspects of the ‘snake’, as ‘horizontally’ crawling through dust (in the shape of a ‘wave’) and as the ‘bronze serpent’, i.e. ‘coagulated’ (or ‘rectified’) into the axis of stability: time changed into space, order established out of chaos (hence why we read in Scripture that the bronze serpent is used to scare off the  ‘horizontal serpents’; again it is the ‘earth’ which keeps ‘waters’ at bay; cf. Num. 21).^[10]  Further, Moses, who was ‘loved by God’, has power to transmute his (vertical) staff into a (horizontal) snake and vice versa at will, signifying his mastery of all conditions of manifestation (he is ‘walking on water’). 

In numerical symbolism ‘space’ could be designated by the 1 (the ‘central point’ or ‘axis’) and ‘time’ or ‘water’ by the 4 (the ‘periphery’ or ‘expansion’), as is also denoted by the gematria of the word ‘water’ (MajIM: 40-10-40), which is also mirrored in the name of Most Blessed Virgin MaRIaM (which St. Jerome translates as stilla maris, the ‘drop of the sea’). In fact we might say that the Hebrew letter Mem (whose gematric value is 40) represents a true Urwort, one of its earliest ideograms being a simple wavy line ΛΛ (as was the hieroglyph for the Egyptian word for water: mou) which is even retained in our Latin letter ‘M’.

The letter corresponding to the value 400 is Taw (which is also the Cross), the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet, thus symbolizing the ‘ultimate limit’ of manifestation, the outermost periphery; an idea likewise present in the numerology of the Pythagoreans from whom the tetrad marked the ultimate number (1+2+3+4=10).[11] The number 4 (at the base of the Tetraktys) is the number of manifestation, the kosmos aisthetos with its “four corners”, “four winds” and “four angels” etc. (Rev. 7:1), the four cardinal directions tracing the primordial cross of the cosmos like the four ‘streams’ (4) flowing out from the one, central ‘source’ (1) in Genesis, or the four elements emerging from the quinta essentia (it is thus also no coincidence that the ‘Good News’ of the Christian revelation should be extended over all the earth by four Gospels and that Holy Tradition provided us with four ‘senses of Scripture’ to explicate these sacred texts).

The dissolution (or ‘flooding’) of the ‘earth’ (i.e. time devouring space, order degenerating into chaos, etc.) corresponds thus to a veritable ‘loss of the center’ (a loss of the 1) which results in an indefinite wandering along the periphery (40 days of the flood, 40 years in the desert, 400 years in Egypt (likewise the 40 days of Lent), etc.[12] – “You will crawl on your belly” (Gen. 3:14), says God to the serpent coiling around the axial Tree after the Fall (the archetypical ‘loss of centre’ as such), designating the demise of verticality and a ‘flooding’ of the horizontal dimension (and likewise a split of heaven and earth traced by the horizontal bar).

Thus the 4 needs always to be ‘bound back’ to the 1, and this ‘binding back’ (re-ligio) – which on a higher level is also that of manifestation (4) to its Principle (1), mâyâ and Âtmâ – is the mission of Adam (thus ADaM: 1-4-40). Man is the central and vertical creature, the vice-regent (khalifa) and ‘lieutenant’ of God; he thus represents the 1 on the terrestrial plane, viz. on the ‘land’ (4) as the totality of horizontal expansion.

This religio is already prefigured in the sacrifices of the Old Covenant wherein the priest ‘binds’ (or ‘concentrates’) the four legs of the sacrificial animal into one (1) before offering it to the Lord (the ‘pillar of smoke’ ascending to God tracing the axis mundi). From this we also see the deep symbolic significance of the fact that most land animal are quadrupeds, whereas the vertical posture of man is (according to St. Bonaventure) “a symbol of the final destiny of humanity: loving union with God”, further evidencing that Adam’s fall away from the Centre (1) and his exile to the periphery (4) is likewise a fall into animal nature.

According to one tradition the name ADAM signifies the four cardinal directions: Anatolè (east), Dusis (west), Arktos (north) and Mésèmbria (south), which are also linked to the four elements by the ancients. Adam is thus called to unify the four ‘streams’ of horizontal extension and bind them back to their central Source springing from beneath the Tree of Life; a task which is of course ultimately achieved only by the New Adam, who makes the waters of life once more well up from the Tree of the Cross.

For instead of a ‘binding’, the first Adam effects a ‘loosening’, and as such St. Augustine interprets the “gathering together of the elect from the four winds” (Matt. 24:31) also as a reunification of the name Adam, whose ‘letters’ were dispersed by the Fall (In Ioh. IX.14). 

Removed from the 1 (alef), Adam becomes “dam” (4-40), meaning ‘blood’, just like ‘truth’, emeth (1-4-40-400), becomes “meth”, ‘death’ (4-40-400), as we know from the famous story of the golem (who is likewise ‘taken from the earth’ and upon being severed from his Principle, the One, ‘returns unto dust’ –  “the wages of sin is death”).

The number 5 (or rather 4+1) is thus the sign of man par excellence (4+1 extremities, senses, fingers [13], etc.), which under its benefic aspect designates man in his function as ‘mediator’ (or the ‘rectifier’, ‘restorer’, etc., the high priest of creation) and under its malefic one can likewise symbolize the ‘Faustian’ exertion of human will over nature, which amounts to an abuse of his pastoral vocation (as shown in the pentagram as a symbol of ‘magic’, the power to ‘bind spirits’ etc., which is likewise linked to the symbolic meaning of modern science and technology).[14]

Man has to keep the flood at bay, he has to ‘establish space’. However there is not only the danger of time devouring space but also that of the ‘land drying out the sea’, i.e. of an excess of ‘order’. This is the ‘city’ (the first of which was established by none other than Cain, who slays his brother Abel, the shepherd), Sodom, Gomorrah, Babylon the ‘Great Whore’ and ‘Mother of all Sins’.

The city is the ultimate symbol of human vanity (“Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”) and his illusion of aseity (hence why the ego is likewise a city whose walls have to be torn down). In some traditions even Hell (as an ‘inversion’ of the Edenic garden) is conceived of as a city (Dante’s Dis, or Milton’s Pandemonium), the ‘reversion’ of this infernal city being the Heavenly Jerusalem, Civitas Dei (as the final ‘realization’ of all the Edenic possibilities and the restoration of terrestrial perfection), in which there is “no temple because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb dwell in it” (Rev. 21:22), meaning that it is deprived of all supplementary ‘shells’[15] (hebr. qlippoth) or ‘coverings’, of all Ersatz (hence why the ‘city of man’ is made from rock but the New Jerusalem is covered in ‘gem stones’, i.e. perfectly transparent to the divine Light). We see thus that the city (the Cainian Civitas humana) is the ‘garment of skin’ (or the ‘shell’) par excellence, protective in one aspect but also instrumental in satisfying the Cainite desire to ‘wall oneself off’ from God.

The opposite extreme of the ‘city’ (as excessive order) is the ‘hunter’ (Nimrod and Esau, whom ‘God hated’), which endlessly circles the periphery (4), chasing after ‘animals’ (i.e. worldly goods) – “Behold, I have become a restless wanderer”, says the accursed Cain (Gen. 4:14).

The ‘golden mean’ between the two could be said to be represented by the (good) shepherd, who lives in ‘tents’ (tabernaculum) not made from stone, who guides his sheep (controls animal nature), and ‘builds altars’, i.e. establishes ‘space’ or sets up axial ‘rocks’ like the stone at Beth-El (marking the axis mundi of Jacob’s Ladder). For every cultus requires some enracinement or connection to the land, a “here” (hic) that defines it ‘existentially’ and which marks the concrete point where vertical and horizontal intersect (“Terribilis est locus iste non est hic aliud nisi domus Dei”, Gen. 28:17).

We could say that the Promethean city represents an excess of ratio and the ‘hunter’ an excess of the senses, whereas the shepherd (who doesn’t built his house in ‘this world’) is the ‘pilgrim’ guided by the ‘pillar of smoke and fire’ (as opposed to the ‘restless wanderer’ Esau pursuing the things of this world and the ‘farmer’ Cain who binds himself to the earth) and who follows the Spirit wherever it bloweth (“he moves about unattached, like the wind”, Âtma-Bodha, LIII). ^[16] As such Holy Scripture (Gen. 25:27) tells us that Esau was a “man of the outdoors”, whereas Jacob “stayed in the camp”, i.e. in the (spiritual) centre, both brothers representing the ‘outer’ and ‘inner man’ respectively.

There is thus need for a balance between the ‘dissolving’ and the ‘coagulating’ tendency, the masculine and the feminine, centrifugal and centripetal (hence why Baader says that the ‘feminine’ has to envelop the ‘masculine’ as its periphery).[17]

To prevent this excess of order or ‘coagulation of spirit’ (“geronnener Geist”, to borrow an expression of Max Weber) there are in traditional cultures certain ‘flooding mechanisms’, like the Jobel in Judaism (the ‘Jobel horn’ or shofar having likewise a ‘wavy’ or ‘serpentine form’) which occurs every 7x7 years[18] (thus at the beginning of a new cycle) and in which (similarly to the Roman Saturnalia) the social order is consciously subverted (‘water’ is being allowed it) for a limited time before being restored (or ‘rectified’) back to order (mimicking a ‘new creation’, i.e. ‘land’ drawn from the ‘waters’ like in principio). 

Thou shalt number seven Sabbaths of years unto thee, seven times seven years; and the space of the seven Sabbaths of years shall be unto thee forty and nine years. Then shalt thou cause the trumpet of the jubilee to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month, in the day of atonement shall ye make the trumpet sound throughout all your land. And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubilee unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family (Lev. 25:8-10).

The ‘pillar’ (I) erects order and the ‘horn’ (~~) calls it down^[19] (cf. also the angelic horns announcing the Apocalypse, the destruction and recreation of the world; the ‘sound of the trumpet’ being also the primordial sound by which manifestation is both actualized and eventually reabsorbed). Joshua circles the walls of the city Jericho and by blowing the horn ‘dissolves’ them (also prefiguring the ‘dissolution’ of manifestation at the ‘end of the cycle’, which is called the ‘Great Jobel’ [20] by the Kabbalists).

To get from Egypt (Kemet, meaning literally the ‘black earth’, i.e. ‘land’ it is malefic aspect, the Saturnal ‘lead’ or the ‘underworld’, hence why the Hebrew name for Egypt, mizrajim, is also deeply connected to majim, ‘water’) to the Holy Land (the ‘blessed earth’) one has to pass through the ‘sea’; in journeying to Heaven Dante passes through the very nadir of Hell. Likewise, in the alchemical ‘Great Work’ solve precedes coagula, for first the ‘chaotic matter’ (or ‘malefic earth’) has to be transformed into the mercurial waters before it can become ‘alchemical gold’, the shining ‘gems’ which adorn the ‘new Earth’ of the Heavenly Jerusalem (the ‘Philosopher’s stone’ being also the conjunction of the two archetypical qualities, i.e. sulfur and mercury, ying and yang:  the two ‘snakes’ coiling around the Hermetic caduceus).  

In the middle ages we find these ‘mechanism’ not only in the carnivals (which traditionally took place at the time of the solstice, also marking a ‘new cycle’) which were then followed by periods of penance like Lent (in which the unleashed ‘malefic influences’ are ‘exorcized’ again), but also can the gargoyles at the outside (i.e. periphery) of the cathedrals, as well as the monsters and general ‘chaos’ at the margins of illuminations be understood in this way as a ‘controlled flooding’ (‘chaos’ ensues once these ‘outside’ influences advance into the ‘center’, which is what we can see happening today in many manifestations). The outer waters have to be always ‘integrated’ or else the ‘earth’ will yield no fruit, the ‘stumbling block’ must be included into the foundation of ‘space’, chaos into order, etc. (which is also why the Temple is built from ‘uncut stones’; Ex. 20:25). As the Law of Moses states:

When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap all the way to the edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Leave them for the poor and the foreign resident [i.e. the ‘periphery’, those who dwell on the outside, on the ‘margins’ of society]. I am the LORD your God (Lev. 23:22)

The desire to completely suppress evil (to dry out the chaotic waters) and to eradicate it (the fully reap all the crops) is the original sin of all rationalism (which could be described as an excess of the ‘earth’ or the ‘masculine tincture’)[21] and leads to the chimera of all kinds of ‘enlightened’ (Promethean) ideologies to establish Paradise on earth, which, sooner or later, must by necessity always summon the ‘flood’ from on high (the revolution followed by the ‘reign of terror’). Likewise, the desire to dissolve all spatial ‘order’ (like we find in the 60’s counterculture and post-modern deconstructivism) leads to a disintegration into primordial chaos.

In fact we can say that all modern culture, with the abandoning of traditional ways of life (or with the ‘loss of intellect’ in general which characterizes all of modernity) is in constant imbalance between the two tendencies; thus the ‘chaos’ of Weimar is followed by the excess of ‘order’ in Nazism, which then is followed again by the ‘chaos’ of the 60’s. Likewise in architecture we see a constant shift between excess of ‘space’ (Classicism and especially modern Brutalism, Bauhaus etc., which operates almost exclusively with ‘cubes’[22] – archetypical symbol for the ‘earth’ – and does away with all ‘ornament’, i.e. ‘wavy’ or ‘serpentine’ forms) and a descent into the ‘waters’ (Baroque, Rococo, etc., with its excessive ornamentation and ‘feminine’ sensualism).[23] These correspondences could be likewise shown for philosophy (the ‘masculine’ rationalism vs. the ‘feminine’ romanticism etc.) and all kinds of other areas; since these two ‘tinctures’ or ‘attributes’ are manifested in literally everything (for “all things are double”, omnia duplicia, as the Ecclesiast says), we could indeed expand this symbolism indefinitely, however we’d simply like to conclude by pointing to another aspect of this ‘integration of the periphery’, that points us to a further related numerical symbolism, namely that of the 6 and 7.

According to the ancients, 6 is the first ‘perfect’ or ‘harmonic’ number (6 = 1+2+3; 1x2x3), it is the number of ‘completion’, and can be geometrically illustrated by the ‘closed circle’ (divided into six equal sections). However this ‘perfection’ can often manifest under a malefic aspect, as a ‘circling around oneself’, a ‘closing oneself off’ to the influence of grace, etc., hence why 666 is also the “sign of the beast” (Rev. 13:18).

6 is further the number of the mediator (pertaining to the macrocosm as opposed to the microcosmic 5), the ‘seal of Solomon’ (the conjoining of two inverse triangles). Thus, while the Anti-Christ represents 6 in its malefic aspect, Christ is the benefic 6 connecting the two ‘triangles’ of ‘heaven and earth’ (the 6 as a symbol for Christ is also found in many ecclesiastical authors; we need only to recall the vision of St. Francis who beheld Christ as six-winged Seraph).

In Hebrew the letter with the gematric value of 6 is Waw, which can literally mean “hook”, i.e. that which ‘hooks’ (or binds) together above and below, like the opus sex dierum connecting the ‘first’ and the ‘seventh’ day of creation, Alpha and Omega. As such the Waw in the divine Name JHWH is also said by the Kabbalists to represent the ‘world axis’ connecting the upper and lower waters (the two Hehs of the Tetragrammaton).

Cutting off the 6 from the 7 means cutting it off from its final telos (as well as its Principle), i.e. taking the middle (the ‘means’) as an end in itself. To see only the world of the ‘six days’ (as does all naturalism) means viewing it divorced from God, which also corresponds to the viewpoint of indefinitude (the unfoldment of day after day), blinded to the infinity of the ‘seventh day’, where the end meets the beginning.

Man is created on the sixth day as the ‘mark of perfection’ (finis coronat opus), completing the creative work of God, however it is on the seventh day, the ‘day of the Lord’, that he has to fulfil his divinely appointed mission. He is created as the man of the sixth day called to become the man of the seventh day, leading all of creation into Sabbatical completion. To stop at the sixth day also means wanting to possess creation for oneself, apart from God; to divorce it from its Principle, thereby closing it off from grace. As such the ‘pattern of six’ is inscribed on all Promethean temptations, on all attempts to establish completeness/perfection on the horizontal plane alone and thus it is a fitting insignia for the ‘reign of Anti-Christ’ (666).^[24]

If one looks in the Bible for the number 6 one will quickly find that it is closely associated with Egypt: 60000 Israelites (Ex. 12:37), 600 chariots (Ex. 14:7), 60000 horsemen (2. Chr. 12:3), etc., the Hebrew word for ‘horse’ – the animal most closely related to Egypt throughout the whole Old Testament (cf. Is. 31:1, Deut. 17:16) – ‘sus’, being likewise 60-6-60.[25] The Egyptians “stay on horses, and trust in chariots”, says the Prophet, “because they are many”, meaning that they worship the pleasures of the flesh, the material world of transience and multiplicity (“We are legion”, Mk. 5:9), whereas the Messiah rides on a donkey, ‘chamor’ (cf. Zech. 9:9, Mk. 11), which is equivalent to ‘chomer’ (matter, substance), meaning that He is dominating the passions; in Him the intellect has fully tamed the lower psyche, He is ‘walking on water’.[26]

But One of the purest manifestations of this Promethean ‘pattern of six’ is described in the Book of Daniel (3:1), in which we read that “Nebuchadnezzar the king made an image of gold, whose height was 60 cubits and its width 6 cubits” as an idol for the people to worship; a clear ‘type’ of Anti-Christ.

The 6 (traditional) planets need to receive their light from the seventh, i.e. the Sun (prime synthema of God), and cut off from its light they remain cold and ‘Saturnalian’ (the sun being also ‘intellect’ whereas Saturn denotes ‘reason’, according to the microcosmical astrology of Ibn Arabi).[27] Likewise St. Bonaventure tells us that the 6 ‘arts’ (representing the totality of academic disciplines) are always in need of ‘illumination’ from the ‘sun of theology’ (cf. De reductione artium) and in fact we won’t have to search long to see this separation of the 6 from the 7 (which leads to a malefic dispersion, a fall from higher unity, and a ‘self-centered’ contraction in particularity) manifesting in all kinds of different ways in these ‘latter days’.  

7 and 6 could thus be said to relate to each other like centre and periphery, for (according to geometrical symbolism) the 6 marks the terminal perfection of the circle, whereas the 7 denotes its principle (the central point). The six direction of universal extension are always in need of being ‘bound back’ to their principle, the ‘Holy Palace’ at the centre, which is their foundation.[28] Likewise, there is no possible circle divided into seven equal parts (just as the seven is the only number within the decad that is not divisible by/into any other; it is “neither begotten, nor does it beget”, as Philo says), meaning that whereas the 6 ‘closes off’, the 7 always leaves a ‘gap’ for grace to flow in through; it saves the 6 from being ‘sealed’ and opens it to verticality.[29] The seventh day pierces a hole into the edifice of the cosmos and also in the illusion of our closed-off existence; it is the Sabbath (or Sunday) where we cease our worldly affairs and turn towards the Lord in worship.  

Now, as we have said before, the nature Love lies in the gift of self, i.e. in its ontological openness. The dialectic of Love between Father and Son engenders (or rather ‘spirates’) the Holy Spirit as their communal ‘kiss’, the profane ‘charity’ of social justice that closes off God by deifying the ‘neighbour’ is sterile (the social equivalent of contraception or ‘sodomy’) and nothing but an externalized egoism (“love thy neighbor as thyself”); as such “it profits nothing” (nihil mihi prodest), as the Apostle says. Love of God and love of neighbor mutually suppose one another; loving God means hating my own soul and only through this selfless ‘poverty of spirit’ in which ‘me’ and ‘you’ disappear I can truly love my neighbor (through God) and God through my neighbor (“Lâ anâ wa lâ anta: Huwa”). Thus true love (being a participation in the ‘essential Love’ of the Most Blessed Trinity which is the only Love worthy of that name) is ‘ecstatic’ and ‘fecund’; it leaves room for grace (7), for God to be “in their midst” (Matt. 18:20) and opens itself to verticality, whereas the horizontal ‘love’ of progressivism/Marxism knows merely of the ‘city of man’ and stays closed in on itself (6).

We may conclude by saying that to establish an enduring ‘spatial order’ it is not only necessary to integrate the ‘stumbling block’ (the watery ‘chaos’ or the ‘margins’), but this order also needs to be built on the ‘foundation stone’ of God, it has to ‘ordered’ towards God, for “unless the LORD builds the house, the builders labour in vain” (Ps. 127).

That we may thus “edify the temple of God” (1. Cor. 14:12), so help us the Supreme Architect, now and forever. Amen.