Monday, May 22, 2023

Treatise on Symbolics by Mário Ferreira dos Santos

The Treatise on Symbolics by Mário Ferreira dos Santos, featured as the sixth volume in his Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences, stands out as a unique and important work within Brazilian philosophy. While delving into a subject relatively unknown in Brazil at the time, the treatise offers a didactic departure from Mário’s personal philosophical exposition. It presents fundamental principles of a science of symbolics, drawing from the works of notable treatise writers such as Matila Ghyka, Mircea Eliade, and René Guénon. The book explores the symbolic interpretations of numbers according to Pythagoreanism, establishing a sensory foundation to enhance comprehension of abstract concepts. Despite its seemingly less philosophical nature, the Treatise unintentionally serves as a remarkably didactic introduction to Mário Ferreira dos Santos’s philosophical thought, offering readers an imaginative and sensory groundwork to tackle the profound abstractions found in the subsequent volumes of the Encyclopedia.

Included in this edition, alongside the complete text of the Treatise on Symbolics, are two additional texts: “The Application of Mathesis in Symbolics” and “Can Symbolics Treated Mathematically Lead Us to the Unity of Religions?” These texts originated from transcriptions of lectures given by Mário Ferreira dos Santos, with no specific date provided. The Treatise itself holds a position of significance within Mário’s extensive philosophical production, showcasing its intellectual autonomy and engaging in dialogue with other philosophies from a highly personal standpoint. While its thematic focus on the study of symbols may initially seem divergent from the other volumes, the author recognizes the treatise’s importance as a methodological and conceptual tool within the overarching philosophical path of the Encyclopedia.

Theme I

Article 1: What is Symbolics?

All great founders of religions have been loved, and understood, because they spoke in symbols, the eternal creative language.

We use symbols out of deficiency, but also out of proficiency.

With symbols, we express what we could not otherwise, because through them we transmit the intransmissible, as our unconscious proceeds, which, because we do not know it, nor want to listen to it, whispers its impulses, its desires, and its fears to us through symbols. And it also uses them to deceive our censorship, the inhibitions we impose, and what we would fear even to desire.

And all of nature, in its silent language, expresses itself through symbols, which the artist feels and lives, which the philosopher interprets, and the scientist translates into the grand laws that govern the facts of cosmic occurrence.

And the symbol arises in art, in the language of lines, volumes and colors, tonalities, sounds, harmonies, in the analogical significance of terms and judgments, in intentions that do not always emerge.

And we see it in the temples and liturgies of all religions, in the gestures of terror and longing of tombs and temples, just as we see it in the slender flight of birds.

Religion and philosophy speak to us in symbols, as does art and science, crude things and living beings, stars and atoms, the entire universal spectrum of occurrence. Everything indicates, everything points, everything refers to something that eludes our eyes but does not always escape our hearts.

The symbol is the universal language of cosmic occurrence. And how could we prevent a Symbolics from forming?

But what is Symbolics? It is the study of the genesis, development, life, and death of symbols.

Symbolics is justified as a philosophical discipline because we can consider all things, in their appearance, in the way they present themselves, as pointing to something to which they refer.

In this case, the symbol would be the mode of signification of the entity, which always refers to something.

Therefore, symbol is a subcategory of finite beings that would have characteristics similar to value. It would be one of the intensist categories, which should not be confused with the extensist categories of classical philosophy. The latter refer primarily to extensist modes of being, while the former, such as symbol, value, tension, etc., refer to intensist modes.1

The following are intensist categories for us:

Symbol – the object of “Symbolics”;

Value – the object of “Axiology”;

Tension – the object of “General Theory of Tensions”;

Ethos – the object of “Ethics” (the ought-to-be, the sollen);

Esthetos – the object of “Aesthetics”;

Haecceitas – the object of Henotics, the discipline that studies the uniqueness of individual unity.

The justification for this statement will arise in the course of our works that study such objects.

Is Symbolics a Symbology?

Symbology would be the science of the symbol. Could we consider Symbolics to have the characteristics of a true science?

The scholastics believed that for a discipline to be characterized as a science, it should have a triple material object, formal-terminative object, and formal-motive object.

As the material object, we have all finite things, real or ideal.

As the formal-terminative object, which is the formality or perfection considered or studied by the science, we have that which tends to symbolic reference, to what is symbolized; in short, the significability of finite beings, real-real or real-ideal.

The formal-motive object, which is the instrument by which a science considers its formal object, is in this case the symbol, the referent, as such.

Things, real or ideal, belong to various sciences, but because they have meanings to a third thing (the symbolized), they present a specific aspect that is not properly within the scope of other sciences.

Symbolics, therefore, will have to use a method that is peculiar to it.

The method of interpreting the meanings of symbols can only be the dialectical method, which we will call the dialectical-symbolic method, and which is primarily based on analogy, as we will see.

In this case, Symbolics is a symbology, and as a philosophical discipline, it seeks the significability of symbols in relation to what is symbolized, as well as their connection and reason for being.

The definition of the symbol, which we will see later, will allow us to broaden the scope of the concept of Symbolology as a philosophical science, whose formal-terminative object is the significability of all things, both in terms of signifier and signified (symbolizability).

Article 2: What is a Symbol?

In ancient Greece, when a host received a guest as a sign of affection, it was customary to give them an object that served as a token of recognition. Among friends, it was common to split a coin in half, with each person keeping a part as a symbol of friendship.

This practice was also used to recognize people after a long separation. Parents used signs when they had to part from their children for a long time.

To these means that served as signs, the Greeks gave the generic name “symbolon.” Any agreed-upon sign was called a symbol, including the insignias of gods, emblems, omens, auspices, and even the international and commercial conventions of the time.

The word “symbol” (symbolon), in its neuter form, comes from “symbolê,” which means approximation, adjustment, fitting, and whose etymological origin is indicated by the prefix “syn” (with) and “bolê” (from which our term “bola,” wheel, circle, comes from). Thus, it refers to the coin used as a sign.

From the beginning, it is clear that the Greeks used the term “symbol” in a broad sense, encompassing the entire field of what we properly call a “sign,” that is, something that points, conventionally or not, to another thing that is referred to by it. However, we can capture a formality that belongs universally to all symbols and signs: the reference to another; in short, the presentation in place of another.

We can start from this simple yet insufficient statement that a symbol is something that stands in place of… The word, in its Greek origin, also means substitution, and the symbol is something that replaces. Therefore, every symbol reveals a reference to another.

First of all, let us show what a symbol is not, in order to see what it is. Symbol should not be confused with:

  • motto – this is a figure that indicates an intention, a distinctive mark of some coats of arms, emblems, ideals of a party, etc.; nor with
  • enterprise – which was the sign that knights used, painted on their shields, with an account of their past; nor with
  • intention – which is a sign alluding to the thought of what is intended to be done, as the knights also used; nor with
  • display – which is only the manifestation of a part of something and not its totality; nor with
  • indication – which is only something that points, leads to knowledge, like clouds indicating rain, etc.

Symbol and Sign

A sign is anything that points us to another thing with which it has a natural or conventional relationship.

Now, if the symbol stands in place of…, the symbol is a sign.

For now, we can say that the sign is the genus, and the symbol is the species. Thus, while every symbol is a sign, not every sign is a symbol.

The sign can be purely conventional, arbitrary. The symbol, however, cannot be. It must analogically repeat something of what is symbolized. Therefore, the symbol is a sign with the repetition of some note of the symbolized.

Since analogy can be intrinsic or extrinsic, we have, in the latter case, metaphor, and in the former, symbol.

The sign is the means by which something represents or points to another thing different from itself. Hence, the sign is always distinct from the thing signified and depends on that which becomes principal.

The sign is natural when it represents something naturally; or arbitrary when it is established by human will. For example, groaning is a natural sign of pain, while a vine branch hanging on the tavern door indicates that wine is sold there and is an arbitrary sign.

Scholastics, when studying natural signs, classify them as an “image” when they represent the reason for convenience or similarity, and as “not an image” in the opposite case.

The sign that is an image is divided into an “instrumental sign,” which is one that, by prior knowledge of itself, represents another thing, and the “formal sign” (concept) is one that represents another thing without prior knowledge of itself.

Thus, the statue is an image that is an instrumental sign. The sign that is not an image is either a natural sign or an arbitrary sign. For example, groaning is a natural instrumental sign of pain, smoke is a natural instrumental sign of fire, and the vine branch attached to the tavern door is an arbitrary instrumental sign.

Between the sign and the signified, there may be no participation of a perfection. But between symbol and what is symbolized, such participation is indispensable because it is participation that gives the specific difference of the symbol, which belongs to the genus “sign.” This is what we will study in the body of this work.

A series of characteristics can be established about the symbol, which we will analyze and justify. Let us summarize them.

a) Polysignifiability – the polysignifiability of symbols consists of their ability to refer to more than one symbolized entity. A symbol can refer to this or that referent. For example, the cross is a symbol of the four seasons of the year, the four cardinal points, the four ages of man, as well as a symbol of man, Christ, death, etc. We see multiple symbolized entities signified by the same symbol.

In turn, the symbol reveals, in relation to what is symbolized:

b) Polysymbolizability – a symbolized entity can be referred to by various symbols. Solitude, as a symbolized entity, can be signified by an isolated rock in the high sea, a small boat in the vastness of a lake, an eagle atop a mountain, a tree in an empty plain.

The symbol also presents:

c) Gradativity – the symbol has a gradation of significance in relation to a symbolized entity, as it can be a better symbol of one symbolized entity than another.

d) Fusionability – the symbol’s capacity to merge with the symbolized entity in symbolic appreciation, as often happens in the exoteric part of religions, where symbols end up being the symbolized entities themselves.

e) Singularity – a characteristic of some symbols that manage to achieve a unique significance of a single symbolized entity, such as the Supreme Being as a symbol of God. In these cases, fusionability even occurs.

f) Substitutability – symbols that refer to the same symbolized entity, among many other diverse ones to which they can refer, allow for their mutual substitution.

g) Universality – all things are symbols of the order to which they belong. All facts are symbols of the concept, which is an abstract schema. Thus, the symbol is universal.

On the other hand, mathematical or logical signs are only signs that also refer to abstract schemas, to which they refer.

It can be affirmed that abstract schemas have their indirect existentiality in symbols. Mathematical signs, concepts, are actualized in corresponding facts. However, it should not be concluded from these statements that the symbol, therefore, has greater value than the symbolized entity in terms of existentiality, as we will limit its scope at the appropriate time. The symbol does not exhaust the existentiality of the symbolized entity. It only refers to it.

In the case of the concept, its existentiality is in another, in us. The abstract schema, which is the concept, is merely a capturing of the concrete schema of the thing, in what it has in common with others. Denying the existential autonomy of the concept does not yet deny the existentiality of the concrete schema of the fact, of which the concept is only a schema of a schema, an abstract schema.

The failure to clearly understand this point is what led many philosophers to unsustainable situations in philosophy.

h) Symbolic function – The symbolic function must be clearly distinguished from the purely indicative function of the sign. The latter merely points, while the symbol has an analogical and explanatory function. The symbol offers an explanatory path, as we will see later.

Thus, the symbol is dual. It contains:

  1. an analogy of intrinsic attribution, which ultimately reveals a point of identification with the symbolized entity, and

  2. a fictional part regarding the symbolized entity.

Let us now proceed to the analytical part of the study of the symbol.2

Theme II

Article 1: The Genesis of the Symbol

Taking advantage of the biological scheme of adaptation, which corresponds well to our conceptions of cultural factors, which involve the presence of emergent factors (intrinsic), which are the bionomic and psychological factors, and predisposing factors (extrinsic), which are the ecological and historical-social factors, we can easily understand the genesis of the symbol.

The child, who is always a great lesson for us, shows us, in the unfolding of their formation, the history of anthropogenesis, as we see in our book "General Noology,"3 and despite contrary opinions, it also reveals to us the formation of the symbol through the complex creation of symbolic play.

In the phase of sensorimotor predominance, which is the first stage of intellectual development, we see the emergence of “symbolic schemes,” which are action schemes detached from their context and evoke absent situations, such as pretending to sleep.

But the symbol truly emerges as such when the representation is detached from the action itself, such as putting a teddy bear to sleep, that is, an object that “is” a teddy bear. The biological scheme of adaptation, applied to psychology, as we have already had the opportunity to analyze in our previous works, offers us possibilities for a better understanding of the genesis of the symbol, which is of utmost importance for comprehending the entire thought activity of humankind.

Starting from the emergent factors, the human being is both body and soul. As a body, we have the bionomic factors, which play a fundamental role in human life, and as a soul, the psychological factors.

The bionomic factors, in an emergent manner, are founded on what biology calls:

Organization – the somatic part, constituted by hereditary schemes, generically biological, including also, as included in current thought, the entire set of schematic constellations of the psychic and neuro-somatic.

It is the soma and the sema as a complex of body and soul, thus bringing together the emergent factors properly taken in their emergence.

But the human being, like every living being, emerges, persists, and depends on an environment that is favorable to it in certain aspects and sufficiently hostile to activate it through conditioning to actions and modifications that make it fit to survive in it, as shown by the biological world in general. And this activity is called adaptation, which can be not only biological but also psychological and even social. In the case we are studying now, which is that of symbolism, we are interested, for now, in adaptation in the psychological and social sense, as the symbol performs a dyadic operation, both individual and social.

Adaptation takes place through accommodation, that is, the arrangement of schemes to the environmental circumstances, and through assimilation (likeness), in which what is assimilable to the… and by the schemes is captured from the environment.

Thus, we have:

adaptation

accommodation - "centrifugal" action of schemes, directed towards...

 

assimilation - "centripetal" action of schemes, directed inwards...

Biologically, living beings have schemes, and it is based on them that they carry out an action of accommodating to the environment (psychologically, it would be to the world of the object) and capture from the object the forms that resemble the constituent schemes (intentionally).

For absolute idealism, knowledge of humankind is entirely conditioned by the schemes since one can assimilate only in proportion to the schemes one already has.

But absolute idealism forgets to consider the historical role of the scheme.

The scheme is not something static, as idealists think. The scheme is historical and, as such, is influenced by facts from the external world.

Our spirit is characterized above all by its immense capacity to create schemes. And the “elements” that make up a schematic set can serve as “elements” to structure a new order, in a new scheme.

In this way, the external world plays a facilitating role, that is, a predisposing role in schematic formation, in addition to giving greater historicity to previous schemes which, through repetition, tend to generalize, as we see in the aforementioned “General Noology,” and consequently give rise to the progression from pre-concept to concept, until the formation of abstract-noetic schemes of second and third degrees, realized by reason.

Thus, in its psychological adaptation, the human being penetrates with their soma, which is organization – the set of sensorimotor schemes enriched by the new schemes whose gestation is predisposed by experience – which acts with chronological priority (idealists' thesis) only from this angle but is influenced objectively, which helps shape new schemes through the action of stimulated spirit and strengthens previous ones (predisposing modeling action of the object, realists' thesis).

In this adaptive activity, the balance between the functioning of the schemes and the fact, and the assimilation of the same, allows for an intelligence that is also balanced.

Adaptation can be appreciated as:

a) state – as conceived statically by certain doctrines;

b) process – dialectical sense, which reveals the transformations of the organism in relation to the environment, causing an increase in exchanges between the environment and the organism, with the aim of favoring the preservation of the latter.

As a process, we have:

a) accommodation of schemes: the organism directs its schemes toward the external environment, accommodating to it;

b) assimilation: it incorporates what is akin to it and what it needs for its economy, the similar, what can and should resemble.

From this multiple action arises the activity of the schemes, which, in turn, assimilate them into different schemes or construct new schemes with them for other accommodations and assimilations.

Psychologically:

They are incorporated, through assimilation, into forms of factual-noetic schemes by abstraction of experiential data. There is no real-factual incorporation, but only schematic-abstract (intentionally), always proportional to the cognizant, in the relationship between it and the object. The cognizant knows what is knowable by the cognizant (the modality of the scholastic adage that “action follows the agent,” which is an indisputable postulate).

Assimilation brings about an incorporation according to the schemes, therefore it is never pure or total, but only schematic. Consequently, there is no complete knowledge, but knowledge of the totality of the thing, a noetic structure that refers to the thing as a whole; however, as it is in itself, taken entirely, it is not assimilated. That is why knowledge cannot capture the thing exhaustively, no matter how much we accommodate to it.

We increase knowledge through the accommodation of technical schemes that translate their captures into assimilable schemes for us. (Examples of radio devices that capture electromagnetic vibrations and translate them into molecular vibrations for which we have somatic schemes. We do not directly know the electromagnetic vibrations themselves, but their symbols).

Thus, adaptation requires a dynamic, dialectical equilibrium between accommodation and assimilation.

Adaptation implies organization because it is the externalized functioning of organization, both in the biological and psychological planes. However, in the psychological plane, adaptation ends up forming a structure independent of biological organization.

This unfolding resulting from the functioning of adaptation has generated the interiorization of humankind and the emergence of the “spirit,” which constitutes a new order (relationship between the whole and its parts, and between those parts).

This order is created through the implications between schemes, mutual implications and interrelated meanings, as the schematic elements can belong to various tensions, whether factual-noetic or eidetic-noetic.

From this arises a coordination of the schemes among themselves and between them and things, a dual functioning that generates:

  • the functioning of thinking through the accommodation of schemes to things;
  • structuring of things through the organization of thinking, generalized schemes.

From the facts, our psychic organization captures a factual scheme of the haecceitas, the singularity’s “thisness,” of the object. The factual scheme of this object, here and now, is conditioned by the accommodated schemes. “It is a red book on the table.” What sensory intuition captures is a factual scheme of the book, which is here and now, but this scheme is conditioned by the accommodated schemes of the psychic organization. The image we have of it is thus the product of an emergence of the psychic organization and the predisposition of the object, its notes that have been assimilated by the former, but intentionally (intentionally).

The comparison we make of it with generalized schemes, which are noetic-eidetic, allows us to know, through their accommodation and assimilation, that it is a book, that it is red, etc.

But this factual scheme, which is an image, is structured in an intuitive order, for which the cooperation of the generalized schemes, that is, the abstract-noetic-eidetic ones, is already necessary, as they allow for its ordering in thought.

And since all this activity is contemporary in our intuition, in the state in which we find ourselves on this stretch of the path, there is no pure intuition of the fact because we decorate it, perform decorations, giving it connections, forming it within a schematic structure, as Kant had already explained when referring to pure forms (a priori), which act in the structuring of our experience4.

Therefore, our experience is conditioned by the schematics we possess. It is well known that childhood experience differs from that of an adult. In this case, it becomes easy to understand the role of “cosmovision” in experience because, according to the individual’s schematics and those they share with a social group or a historical period or an entire cultural cycle, the formal structuring of the experience will be different, heterogeneous from that of other beings. Thus, in this explanation, we find the positivities affirmed by idealists, accepting ideologies and cosmovisions, without excluding other positivities that cooperate with them in the structuring of knowledge, as proposed by realists, empiricists, pragmatists, etc.

However, two important variants can occur:

  1. Accommodation, no matter how excessive it may be, does not offer a corresponding assimilation because the fact is not easily graspable since the schemes cannot perform the action of ad as, that is, accommodating, being like the object, no matter how much they try, not allowing for good corresponding assimilation.

In this case, the schemes, of any kind, tend to mimicry (psychosomatic or purely eidetic), a copy, and we have imitation. In imitation, the schemes try to be like the object they seek to adapt to. It is a ball, and we make the gestures that correspond to its stereometric shape. Someone is suffering, and we make gestures of suffering, accommodating the schemes as if they were experiencing that pain.

Thus, when accommodation far exceeds assimilation, we are faced with imitation.

It is evident, therefore, that there is a certain positivity in fictionalistic thinking because, in a way, what we know of things is the psychic correspondent to the potential changes in our schemes, which constitute their arithmoi, their numbers, and give us noetic schemes of facts.

When Kant denied the possibility of knowledge of the noumenon, restricting it only to the phenomenon, his assertion was, to some extent, positive because to know things as they are, we would have to merge with them.

However, such doctrines do not exhaust all the possibilities of a broader study of our knowledge. And the reason is evident. If our knowledge is processed through intentional (noetic) schemes, which are intentionally copies of the quiddities present in things, we cannot forget that in every copy, mimicry, or imitation, there is the presence of an analogy. And this analogy implies a synthesis of similarity and difference, inevitably leading us to know that there is a point of identification, of univocity, as we have had the opportunity to demonstrate in our book “Ontology and Cosmology” when studying the theme of analogy. And that univocity is ontologically speaking, in being, which sustains everything, through which we unify, all beings, including God.5

That’s why reason supported Goethe when he said that if we are capable of “seeing” that distant star, it is because there must be a point of identification between it and us. Knowledge affirms this point because, otherwise, it would be impossible.

In all knowledge, there is an assimilation, and how can the sign or the similar be given without the simultaneous and the similar? And if there is something similar, however distant it may be, there is a point of identification in Being. We are, existentially and existentially, in Being, and as beings, we have Being within us.

And Being is the noumenon that appears to us in all the equivocities and analogies of existence. If we do not have immediate knowledge of it through schemes, we have a confused knowledge because we “are” when we know, and knowledge “is” being.

Duns Scotus was therefore right when he affirmed that the first object, with ontic, ontological, and even gnoseological priority, is being because, to know, one must first “be.” There is thus a fusion of being with being in knowledge, and such fusion exists because we never depart from it, nor does what is within us depart from it.

This fusion precedes time and circumstances. And if we do not grasp the noumenon through intellectual institution, we grasp it affectively, and we “are” existentially.

This point of great importance for Noology will yield further fruits, and in Symbolics, it helps us better understand the mystical itinerarium offered by the symbol because mysticism is an aesthetic, an affective perception of the symbolized, just as aesthetics is a mysticism of the symbol, as we have shown and which will become even clearer over time.

  1. Let us now examine the case when accommodation is small. In this case, there is little possibility of becoming as if it were the object, yet assimilation is greater. In the object, there is this or that form, this or that aspect, which are included in the schemes, such and such. Although they are not suitable, proper and complete, for this or that scheme, the fact has notes that are suitable for other schemes. Since accommodation was not sufficient, and sufficient notes were not captured to noetically structure the object, but only one or a few notes, these are assimilated to one or several schemes, revealing an excess of assimilation over accommodation, and a new disruption of balance. We are then faced with the symbol.

Thus, when assimilation is much lower than accommodation, we have imitation; when assimilation greatly exceeds accommodation, we have the symbol.

And in cases of dynamic equilibrium, we have greater or lesser intelligence of the fact.

An example of the second case will clarify the functioning of symbolization. We are at a beach. We look at the sea and see a white spot on the horizon. “A boat,” says one person. “No,” replies another, “a cloud.” “No,” asserts a third, “it must be the smoke from a ship.” “It’s a very tall wave,” suggests a fourth. In such a case, there is a weak accommodation due to the distance and the difficulty of the schemes accommodating to the fact. Consequently, assimilation is maximal. There is only one note that can be of a boat, sail, wave, smoke, cloud, but by itself, it is not sufficient to provide certainty, an understanding of the fact. The four individuals assimilate more than they accommodate, as they assimilate to various schemes. Therefore, the four of them engage in symbolic action.

There is no separation between accommodation and assimilation. There is no pure accommodation, nor pure assimilation.

The adaptive activity of our mind works dialectically through two inverse vectors: the externalization of schemes and their internalization through the actions of accommodation and assimilation.

In dreams, for example, our senses are asleep, and accommodation is weak, therefore assimilation is maximal, which is why dreams take on symbolic form, according to the schemes that constitute the psyche, in its action of objectively capturing its own functioning, as well as that of our body.

In conclusion: there is a symbol when there is a fictitious assimilation of any object to a scheme, without the necessary actual accommodation of it.

Things pretend to be others. The child’s “make-believe” shows us well the genesis of the symbol. The symbol rests upon a simple resemblance between the present object (in reality or in the mind), which plays the role of the signifier, and the absent object, the signified, which is symbolically referred to by the former.

But the symbol needs to have an intrinsic attribution analogy with the symbolized. Otherwise, it is a metaphor and not a symbol.

And it cannot be conventional or arbitrary, because in that case, it is only a sign and lacks the specific and differential characteristic of a symbol.

Therefore, the symbol is distinguished from the sign. The sign is a signifier that can be arbitrary or conventional, or an indicator by correlation, while the symbol is merely a motivated signifier, representing an intrinsic similarity to the signified.

We can state, as a synthesis of what we have presented so far, that a symbol is anything that stands in place of another, without actual accommodation to the presence of that other, with which it has, or we believe it has, some resemblance (intrinsic by analogy), and through which we want to transmit or express that non-actual presence in what we indicate.

Some clarifying comments are necessary. We say we believe it has, because in many symbols, there is an affirmation of an analogical resemblance to the symbolized. However, since we do not always have sufficient accommodation with the symbolized, most of the time because it is beyond our grasp, we attribute to it one or another predicate, constructing a symbol that reproduces such a predicate of the symbolized.

Thus, through philosophical speculations, we conclude that being is immutable as a form. But at the same time, it is operation (operation). In this case, we have to attribute to it an activity alongside immutability. How can we understand such an apparent contradiction? Let us consider the sphere. It is the only geometric figure that, in a rotation movement in itself, always occupies the same space, that is, it can turn upon itself without ever leaving the same space. Other geometric figures occupy always different spaces, for a triangle, by turning upon itself, covers different spaces at each instant. But not the sphere. To symbolize being by the sphere, as many philosophical and religious conceptions do, is to intend to show that the activity of being can occur alongside immutability, for the sphere, which constantly changes place, would never leave its space and would always occupy it fully.

Philosophical speculation will justify the notes that the symbol reproduces. But there are many cases in which symbols merely reproduce notes that we believe the symbolized has, which is not always susceptible to secure proof. 6

In the rest of the statement, it remains clear that the symbol has a actual presence for its author, which is not immediately present in the symbolized. The symbol refers to the symbolized and stands in its place. It provides a vision of the symbolized and makes it present through another. There are examples of the fusion of the symbol and the symbolized, as seen in the exoteric part of religions.

Let us recall St. Paul’s cross, which was presented as the living symbol of the real and actual presence, therefore, of Christ, or the symbol of communion, in which there is a consubstantiation of the symbol and the symbolized in the host. These are examples of very common fusionability in religious beliefs. 7

Article 2: Psychological Comments on Symbologenetics

After the study we conducted on Symbologenetics, we can make some clarifying psychological comments on a topic of such relevance to philosophy.

§ 1 – The accommodation of schemes includes, in its complex activity, an imitation directed towards the object, which is extended through imitative sketches. These changes in the potential of the schemes, which are actualized in this activity, provide signifiers that will later serve for the child’s play or for the intelligence to apply to the various meanings that arise through spontaneous or adaptive assimilation. In the child’s symbolic play, there is always an element of imitation. It could not be otherwise since the symbol always implies the similar, and the similar, in turn, repeats something from others. This product of imitation functions as a signifier. In the early stages of intelligence, the image is used as a symbol or signifier and refers to the schemes.

§ 2 – The acquisition of language in a child (collective sign system) coincides with the formation of the symbol, that is, the system of individual signifiers.8

Gross considers it to be prior, going so far as to find symbols even in animals, and attributes to them the consciousness of fiction.

Now, primitive play is simply exercise in the first stage of childhood, but the true symbol only emerges when a gesture or an object represents for the subject something other than the perceptual data.

§ 3 – From the moment the child truly acts upon the external world, each of their achievements, as Piaget reveals to us,9 not only gives rise to immediate repetition but also to a visible generalization.

The child seeks the same means to prolong interesting spectacles, which demonstrates the generalizing power of the schemes. In explanations through the new, there is an accommodation of the already acquired schemes in order to “understand” the objects. It is an active generalization in search of new actualizations.

Generalizations are indispensable for higher mental combinations. The elaboration of new schemes occurs during these generalizations. The schemes do not appear to us as autonomous entities but as products of a continuous activity inherent to them, as Piaget clearly demonstrates.

§ 4 – Psychologically, the assimilating activity, which immediately extends itself through reproductive assimilation, is therefore the primary factor.

This activity, to the extent that it tends toward repetition, engenders an elementary scheme – the scheme is constituted through active reproduction – as thanks to this nascent organization, it becomes capable of generalizing and recognizing assimilation.

On the other hand, the schemes, once constituted, accommodate themselves to external reality to the extent that they seek assimilation and progressively differentiate themselves.

Thus, in the psychological realm as well as in the biological realm, the schematics of organization are inseparable from an assimilating and accommodating activity, whose sole functioning, and only that, explains the development of successive structures.

§ 5 – “The more primitive the forms, the closer they are to feelings. Volkelt says that the soul, in the most primitive stages of development, possesses the forces of forming ensembles that exert their action and form a totality on different levels in the thinking subject’s substantive and ordering spirit. And this is valid for both the child and the primitive man” (Katz).

And he adds: Two strange phenomena that happen to coincide in time are united in a unique form in the child’s consciousness. The adult understands that the two processes have nothing to do with each other, that in reality they do not form a union. However, the child does not understand it this way. The sensitive-intellectual and the volitional-emotional have not yet differentiated themselves in the child’s consciousness from the primitive totalities (Volkelt). Development progresses from qualitative totality to summative aggression. This characterization of primitive life is also valid for primitive man (Katz).

This is how we can understand how the gestaltists clarify the complex topic of pre-logical primitive thought and allow for the application of new elements to the understanding of magical thinking in dialectical terms, that is, without the one-sidedness of those who seek it in our current primitives, which is the subject of our “General Noology.”

§ 6 – The singular facts, singularly grasped by the child through the sensory-motor schemes, will constitute singular factual schemes that preserve the individuality of the elements, as they refer to a singularity.

When the child accommodates them to assimilate a new fact, they reduce it to the previous schemes, giving it the same singularity. We are dealing with the ante-concept, as there is accommodation of a factual scheme, therefore singular, to another. In this phase, the child does not properly distinguish between “one” and “some,” much less between “some” and “all.”

The intentional content, which referred to a singular fact, is now given to another similar fact. When the child already uses words, they tend to name other facts with the same term that refers to an individuality. An example can be the shadow of a specific tree, intuitively grasped by the child. When it gets dark inside the house, they may consider that shadow to have entered the room.

Thus, they demonstrate that they do not distinguish “the shadow that appears in the room” from “the shadow of the tree” because they lack the eidetic-noetic scheme of “shadow,” which is not yet formed. Thus, they use the ante-concept (in this case, “the shadow of this tree”) to refer to the new shadow that appears, to which they apply the same content.

This ante-concept remains halfway between the generality of the concept and the individuality of the elements to which it refers. The generalization of the ante-concept, that is, its application to some and subsequently to all, is what structures it as a proper concept. These transductions occur based on immediate analogies. Here we have the symbolic nature of these transductions clearly evident, which arises from the lack of generality. Subsequently, a concept that was unique as a factual-noetic scheme will become the one referred to by facts that present similar notes to those that make up the concept.

An operation takes place there, which involves judgment through discourse, as there is transduction from image to concept, with which it is compared, and if there is assimilation, the fact becomes classified within the concept.

This is the process of abstraction, carried out by the active intellect, formally studied by Aristotle and the scholastics, and analytically explained by modern psychology, with a wealth of detail.

§ 7 – Piaget shows us very well that, for Gestalt theory, the ideal is to explain intelligence through perception, while perception itself must be interpreted in terms of intelligence.

Every perception is an accommodation (with or without regrouping) of schemes that would require, by their constitution, systematic work of assimilation and organization. And intelligence is nothing more than a progressive complication of this same work, since the immediate perception of the solution is not possible.

§ 8 – Possibility is not given to us by external stimuli, but it is revealed to us through intuition directed towards something or through reflection on something.

It is up to man to undertake this process: intuition for and intuition through. Unstimulated intuition that starts from the subject to the object, and intuition that is provoked by external stimulus.

Can a distinction be made between autonomous and heteronomous intuition?

Without falling into abstractism, we can update the autonomous or the heteronomous as long as we consider the original starting point of intuition.

However, in view of what we already know about schemes, we cannot ignore that we would not have the slightest intuition about an external fact for which we do not have, even incipiently, schemes to assimilate it (which is a positiveness of idealism).

Sensation already implies certain simple schemes; perception implies the presence of a greater complexity of schemes; attention requires the mobilization of true constellations of schemes. Thus, the so-called faculties of our mind could be explained within a functional conception without the need to confine ourselves to the narrow and aporetic field of substantialist concepts when taken in an abstract manner.

§ 9 – Our first step, when we discover something new, when we construct an objective scheme, that is, the objectification of the external world, is to give it a name that points to it, that designates it. We thus realize the completion of an eidetic scheme, which consists of the following: what we distinguish and schematize, we need to name because we always name what we schematize. New schemes require new names. That is why we feel uneasy when we do not find in our verbal schemes those that best correspond, even by analogy, to the new fact. And when we do not have them, we need to create them.

This fact is an important revelation in favor of certain idealistic theses, without implying a total acceptance of this position or excluding other positivities put forward by opposing conceptions.

§ 10 – An argument in favor of validating idealistic theses, in this restricted sense we have given, consists in being able to know objects “in themselves” and “for themselves” (as potentiality and actuality). Potentiality reveals the purpose, which is not a mere image but something more than the object merely in actuality. And this grasp depends on eidetic-noetic schemes that allow for assimilations that do not occur through sensible intuition but through other assimilations, with the presence of conjugated noetic schemes.

§ 11 – In support of our opinions, let us consider this passage from Ruyer:

“The schemes that underlie the creation of forms also hold true for the creation of images. The functioning, that is, the movement according to their connections, existing mechanisms, the interferences of these mechanisms that create new forms, that is what should suffice to explain all human creations.”

In summary, Ruyer, through the extensive analyses offered in his books, reaches a positive point that is expressed in our noological conception. The complication of schemes, through the combination of previous schemes that will constitute new structures, is sufficient to explain the great schematic complexity of the human being, which is potentially infinite, limited only by the natural limits of time and human life, as we see in our works of Noology.

§ 12 – Psychologically, the schemes are accommodated by the action of a coordinating psychic whole.

The schemes are formed based on:

a) favoring the psychic process;

b) hindering its development.

There are no indifferent schemes. Life is always interested.

In man, the direction becomes complex according to the degrees of spiritual development and the construction of schemes also follows the coordinates of the will, stemming from affective origins, whose vector is given by either affectivity or intellectuality.

Therefore, man can construct systems of schemes and order them according to a coherence that obeys a nexus of ideality, whereas in nature the nexus is one of causality.

Man must be understood as:

a) nature – obeying the nexus of causality;

b) culture – obeying the nexus of ideality or affectivity.

It is also worth clarifying the meaning of ideality and causality for a better understanding of the inversely vectorial activity of man.

a) Irreversible – of facticity;

b) Reversible – of intellectual operation.

Singular facts, as such, are unrepeatable, which is revealed by their historicity. But the operations of the mind are reversible since we can carry them out, moving from antecedent to consequent, as well as from the inverse, which reveals another characteristic of the mind. However, this takes place in time because there is succession. It is a spatial characteristic of the mind that is inseparable from time but transcends it.

§ 13 – Symbols arise:

due to deficiency (in children, for example);

due to sufficiency (in Art);

due to proficiency (in the enlightened).

We have already examined the formation of children’s symbols. Those of artists arise out of sufficiency, and those of the enlightened, the religious mystics, the great beatified individuals, the great builders of religions, and the superior philosophers arise out of proficiency, as they have a deeper experience of the symbolized and speculation on its attributes.

This aspect shows us the variance observed in the symbols of different religions, which, although they point to the same symbolized, the supreme being, divinity, God, present themselves differently according to the higher or lower degree of these experiences and speculations.

Thus, when the primitive grasps something of the Great Symbolized and translates it into naive symbols, it does not imply that the referent is different, although it may differ from religious language.

And the disputes that subsequently arise among followers of different beliefs refer more to the insufficiency of the symbol, as all, without exception, seek only to refer to the same God.

The study of symbolism thus offers us a basis for homogenizing religions and also promotes greater respect for the various beliefs of peoples, without the need for perpetuating conflicts that only reveal a lack of knowledge about symbols.

§ 14 – In every tension, there is a relationship between symbol and symbolized.

Every entity is a symbol of…, but sometimes it is symbolizable (and referable). We have, thus, the poly-significance of the entity (tension), that is, its capacity to symbolize various references, as well as its possible poly-reference to the symbolized being by other symbols.

Every tension, according to its order, positions itself as a symbol of something, which, in turn, is a symbol of another, as we will study further.

Each understanding of a moment of tension makes all other understandings accessible. Each moment indicates what it is not because it affirms the other moment.

Each tension, being a symbol, is poly-significant, and in affirming itself, it affirms another that is not itself.

§ 15 – Every particularity is a symbol of the generality that includes it.

Individual – particularity – generality – universality – totality (henotic, plethos).

Facts are symbols of laws; laws are symbols of universal order; order is a symbol of the Supreme Being; and the Supreme Being is a symbol of God.

Everything (in the immanent) is a symbol of Time, the great symbolized of the quaternary. That is why Time is referred to by everything that is subject to succession and can partially explain becoming, but no entity can, in itself, explain time; it can only indicate it.

Yes, because the symbol does not fully explain; it properly points to the symbolized, as it analogizes with it.

Article 3: The Symbol and Psychology

The fundamental characteristic of rational intellectual activity is reversibility. When affective activity is rationalized and schematized by reason, it becomes reversible, as we can think with a reversal of chronology.

Symbolic thinking, in its emergence, originates genuinely from affectivity, pre-logical (according to sociologism), and symbols have their origin in the subconscious. The symbol only becomes conscious when reason is already functioning.

In symbolic thinking, the symbol is incorporated in the affective scheme. Only reason gradually strips away the symbolic aspect, extracting the elements unrelated to what is symbolized, in order to construct the abstract-noetic-eidetic scheme.

In the phase of rational predominance, abstract rationalized schemes are largely freed from the symbolic range of their initial formation.

The anteconcepts, which we studied in “Psychogenesis,” are still imbued with the factual layer (the hyletic layer for Husserl), referring to singularities that are universalized. Let us remember the “brook-of-the-Boy,” the “Lightning-horse,” which serve, later on, not only to name all the brooks that the child sees and all the horses but also to consider them as the same brook and the same horse, although under slightly different appearances.

The child does not consider them as another specimen but as the same one, appearing protean. Living as the child lives, the protean is not yet, for them, a denial of immutability, a concept that only later, in opposition to intuition, reason will structure.

Therefore, the child accepts that it is the same, even though it reveals differences in appearance. In the first phase, the child actually behaves in this way: their attention focuses more on the similar.

Primitive man, in order to survive, had to pay more attention to similarities and, secondarily, to differences. It is not that he did not intuitively capture them equally, but axiologically, considering the convenience of life (a pragmatic, concrete, and secure thesis here), he was obliged to pay attention to similarities to navigate amidst the heterogeneity of facts. For the child, similarity is the presence of the same individual.

The first factual scheme, then, acts as a generalizer, serving to generalize different yet similar facts.

This is the first provision, the first step, the initial stage of the path to reach the concept, whose abstract structuring will progressively continue through the action of reason, which removes differences to end in the rigid, logical-formal concept that only considers the actuality of essential indispensable notes.

These singularities gradually universalize until they reach the finished work of reason, the concept stripped of all hyletic layers, of all heterogeneous facticity, reduced to an abstract scheme of structured abstract schemes because the concept encompasses meanings. These meanings, in turn, eventually become formally other concepts, which are themselves other abstract schemes, structured into abstract schematic sets, more general concepts.

This is the stripping action, the anti-singularizing and anti-heterogenizing action of reason, which we examined in “Philosophy and Worldview.”

The pathic schemes do not possess the homogeneity of abstract schemes of reason. Within them, there are experiences founded on singularities, and therefore, they are more symbolic. If the assimilation of a fact into the rational scheme, which is abstract and homogenizing, occurs through homogeneities, through the mere formal suitability of what in the singularity of the fact refers to the abstract scheme, considering only the singular as a symbol of the abstract scheme to which it is subsumed, assimilation takes place from one abstract scheme to another. Only the homogeneous is assimilated.

Assimilation in the pathic scheme—since it is still singular and has singularity, despite the stripping action that reason exercises on our affects—is symbolic, experienced as reality.

And that is why, when we try to express what we feel in signs, we naturally encounter the deficiency of verbal signs, already purged by reason of their heterogeneity.

The artist, being affective, must resort to the symbol as a means that offers sufficient capacity for transmission because the artist has a great ability to refer to the singular, while the abstract scheme, indicated by the verbal term, has less of it. But since the artist (in literature, at least) cannot avoid using verbal signs, they are compelled to coordinate them in a way that goes beyond their rigid abstract schematization and can acquire experiential content in order to express what they desire. Hence, the artist structures them into symbols, imparting not merely abstract but factual, singular content to the terms—“this experience… that experience.”

Whether they want it or not, artists become creators of symbols out of the necessity of expression if they want to convey something.

In the creation of these symbols, not only the conscious mind is involved, nor is it solely the intellectualized operative aspect that dominates completely (if they are great artists), as secondary symbols and even those from more distant planes are contained in their expression.

Nature itself is a symbol. We can fit nature into rational abstract schemes. However, in any case, we must strip facts of their heterogeneity and singularity in order for them to become symbols of abstract schemes created by humans. But nature is always a symbol, whether of operative schemes or others belonging to the cosmic order.

Reason, with its schemes, allows us to schematize nature. It captures it from one angle but not in its singularity.

A dialectical (concrete) view, regarding symbolism, would have to see reality as a symbol of human abstract schemes but would know that, as such, it does not include itself in that scheme, but only what is within the scheme. What remains, what is apart, belongs to singularity, which, in turn, fits into other abstract schemes, and so on.

It is clear that reason does not act completely against the cosmic when it schematizes it into abstract schemes. Its non-cosmic action lies in the excess of stripping that leads to emptiness, to concepts without content, such as Time and Space, which we studied in “Ontology and Cosmology.”

Reason is thus a servant of life, and not vice versa. Reducing life to abstract schemes would be to negate it. Reason is a powerful aid to our knowledge, but not the only one, as desired by rationalists.

Hence, symbolism helps us understand the excesses of rationalists, who threatened to reduce our world to mere logical abstract forms, just as certain mathematicians desired to reduce it to quantitative abstract mathematical forms.

For both, in order to achieve this, they had to deviate, with serious risks to knowledge, from intensity, to merely emphasize the extensive aspect. This led them to a predominantly quantitative view, in the eagerness to find absolute homogeneity, which would not be found absolutely in abstraction but in the greatest of realities, that of being, as we have seen in “Ontology and Cosmology” and in “Man Facing Infinity.”

In conclusion, the symbol, in art as well as in philosophy, religion, etc., is the means of conveying the intransmissible through operative, rational processes or with the aim of provoking a more vivid affective response. The aesthetic or divine singularity is always intransmissible. Only the symbol can speak for it because it expresses it better than abstract concepts.

That is why, in art and religions, the symbol is alive… And because it is alive, it dies. But it also experiences resurrections.

A symbol, when lived exclusively from its symbolized aspect, tends to strip itself from it, which is its significant content, and tends to die.

It also dies when we know or believe we know attributes of the symbol from which it is no longer derived.

Resurrections occur when we rediscover in the symbol the elements of the symbolized, after a period of unfamiliarity.

We can thus understand the resurrection of religious symbols, which, for a long time, lost their symbolic expressive power.

Attributing life and death to the symbol is merely an analogy with the organic.

The inability to express something with greater clarity that allows better accommodation for the listener leads us to the symbol because through it we desire to convey what is relatively or absolutely unknown to others.

The life of a symbol depends on its meaningfulness. As its meaning becomes clearer, as the vision of what is symbolized becomes clearer, the symbol begins to disappear. It will have a historical significance, as seen in many religious symbols and those referring to facts that science later became capable of clarifying.

Similarly, the symbol, when considered exoterically, is such for those who are exoterically positioned because, for the initiates who know the symbolized, they no longer need it.

The symbol of the known becomes a sign. The symbol of the known already contains what is contained.

We can see this semiotic aspect psychologically in certain schemes, such as the scheme of persecution, the scheme of abandonment, which are symbolically clothed in a series of symptoms whose symbolic meaning the patient is unaware of. For psychologists, such symbols are merely symptoms, they become mere elements of semiotics. Once the scheme is known, these symbols become mere signs.

Thus, every scientific theory, while being formed around hypotheses, is a symbol (it is an anticipated characterization of an essentially unknown order of things, as Jung shows us). As it is substantiated, the symbolic aspect dies and the symbolized emerges.

However, any scientific hypothesis, once duly proven and reduced to laws, as it enters the category of lawful manifestations of science, is still a symbol of the universal order. In this way, science, like philosophy itself, never fully moves away from the symbol, although a symbol from one plane passes to another, in which it is still a symbol of another symbolized, until it reaches the Supreme Symbolized, which dialectical symbolic analysis, with the assistance of metaphysics, will have to undertake on this true mystical journey, this penetration into the hidden, as we have had occasion to examine in the chapter on our knowledge of God in the book “Man Facing Infinity.”

The social symbol is alive when it is primitive, when its omnipresence does not raise the slightest doubt. The social symbol, as Jung shows, has a social significance for the individual as great as the significance of that symbol for a collective.

We must not confuse symptoms with symbols. Symptomatic signs are only indications, not symbols. Popular discontent in history, for example, shows us much about existing economic disorder, etc. But a Gothic cathedral is a symbol of a cultural soul, just as an Egyptian mummy or a Roman bridge or autobiographies from the eighteenth century onwards or the aerodynamic in the functional forms of our mass achievements.

Neurotics, for example, tend to make this confusion, considering what is merely a symbol as a symptom.

The symbol always reveals two aspects:

  1. Rational—accessible to the assimilation of our intellectual abstract schemes, which allow us to explain it, to say what it is;

  2. Irrational—which is of pathic origin, inaccessible to such schemes, representing experiences that our vigilant consciousness has not yet structured into rational schemes.

These aspects lead us to the need to study, regarding Symbolics, the theme of consciousness and unconsciousness, which we will do immediately after examining the theme of participation, and the dialectical-symbolic method that we need to employ.

Theme III

Article 1: Participation

If there is not a complete adequacy between symbol and symbolized to the point of identification, there must be, between both, in order for the former to be suitable to the latter, a point of formal identification, a formality that, in any case, is attributed to the former and belongs to the latter.

There is another important aspect between symbol and symbolized. The latter is silent; it is not directly spoken of but through another that points to it, which is the symbol.

For now, leaving aside the examination of why there is silence about the symbolized and only considering how it occurs, it is easily observed that there is participation between symbol and symbolized because, to some extent, they are identified. This participation reveals a participant, which is the symbol, and a participated, which is the symbolized. This assertion is evident because when we examine symbols, we see that the formality that can be attributed to them is participated to some degree by the participant but is attributed to the participated (symbolized) to a higher degree.

This point, of utmost importance for the proper understanding of our way of placing and seeing the symbol, obliges us to study the theme of participation. From its clarification will arise the light that will illuminate Symbolics for us and allow us to apply our dialectical-symbolic method capable of bringing great religious contributions, which seemed, until now, to many at least, completely unrelated to the field of epistemic knowledge, to the broader understanding.

We can see that there is a much deeper knowledge in religions, a knowledge that our faithless age has disregarded, considering religions merely as repositories of baseless beliefs and superstitions rather than the profound and veiled knowledge that opens a mystical path, a path that Symbolics offers to penetrate into great syntheses and the great symbolized that emerges in all religions. Moreover, the path we now offer also enables us to understand all beliefs and to notice that there is a great heterogeneity of symbols in them, but they refer to a set of formalities, which are attributes, in turn, of one single and great symbolized.

Participation

Referring to the studies of the Platonists and the Pythagoreans, Aristotle stated in “Metaphysics” (Book I) that the latter had not shown how beings occur through imitation of numbers, nor had the former shown how they occur through participation.

He accused them, thus, of having forgotten to deal with a very important point, which did not absolve them. Later, Thomas Aquinas showed that this complaint by Aristotle was unfounded regarding the Platonists, although he accepted it regarding the Pythagoreans.

In turn, we will show that it was also unfounded regarding the Pythagoreans because Pythagorean imitation, the Pythagorean mimesis, which occurs through arithmos, takes place as participation. The foundation of this process was only known by the Pythagoreans of a higher degree, which is why Aristotle was not aware of it.

Setting aside the discussion among scholars of scholasticism regarding genuine Platonic thought and whether Neoplatonic thought can be considered congruently appropriate to Plato’s thought, we simply want to emphasize that Plato should not be considered according to the profile outlined by Aristotle in the aforementioned book of Metaphysics but rather according to the structuring that we are capable of doing today of true Platonic thought, as we have already done in our books.10

The word “participate” comes from the Latin “participare” and “participatio,” participation. Etymologically, it comes from “capio, capere,” which gives “cipere,” and “partis, parte,” “parte cipere,” synonymous with “recipere.” In its etymological sense, to participate is to receive something from someone else. But what is received is not received in its entirety (totaliter) because to “totally receive” (totaliter recipere) would be to “receive something in its totality” (áliquid). It is intuitive that the concept of participation implies a “partial reception of something” (áliquid) from another (ab alio). The one who participates is the participant, who participates in the “participable” (participable = what can be received) of another, the participated.

Participation would be the fact of the participant participating in the participable of the participated.

The Neoplatonists established an adage that was subsequently widely used by the Scholastics, which is as follows: “What is received is received according to the mode of being of the recipient” (quidquid recipitur ad modum recipientis recipitur). This could also be used for participation as follows: “Everything that is participated in something is in it according to the mode of being of the participant because no one can receive beyond their measure” (“Omne quod est participatum in aliquo est in eo per modum participantis; qui nihil potest recipere ultra mensuram suam”).

In short, if someone participates in some perfection, they participate in it according to their mode of being, that is, to the extent that they are capable of participating, to the degree they are capable of receiving. And what determines this degree, this capacity, is the recipient themselves, the participant. An example will clarify. In a room where a lecture on a certain topic is given, the listeners will participate in it in proportion to their capacity as participants. In this way, participation, as the act of receiving, will be proportional to the participant. The participated may possess a higher degree of perfection, but participation by the participant will depend on their own degree.

This understanding of Neoplatonism was accepted by Thomas Aquinas, and no objection can be made here.

On the other hand, it is evident from the outset that the concept of participation indicates that the participant receives or participates in a participable that belongs to another in a higher degree, from which the participant merely participates.

In this case, the participable in its fullness does not belong to the being of the participant but to the being of the participated. Only the participant participates in something, and to a lesser degree than the participated possesses in full.

In the symbol, we observe the following: the symbol is a participant that participates in the participable of a participated, which it refers to, which it symbolizes. But this degree of participation is a very important point. If we consider this man, Joseph, as a symbol of humanity, we may ask: to what degree does he participate in humanity?

Now, humanity is not an entity that is its own being (suum esse) because humanity is not a subsistent per se, a being that exists outside of man. In this case, humanity is not fully contained in this man, Joseph. In what would his participation consist, then?

If all human beings had perished, and Joseph were the only one left, some might say he would be humanity. This argument could arise as an objection to our view of the participation of the symbolized by the symbol. However, it would not hold because Joseph would not yet be Humanity if he were the only man because he does not exclude the others who came before him, and if Joseph is the only living man, he is not the only being who has had or has humanity. Humanity, if in this case it has only one representative, Joseph, would still exist, in the order of being, as we have already seen in “Ontology and Cosmology,” as a perfection that actualizes itself through its representatives, without being any of them.

These aspects show us, therefore, that there are different ways in which participation can occur. And since we have not yet explored all the paths in this field that we must traverse for a better understanding of this theme, especially in relation to Symbolics, it would be premature to establish a theory of participation according to our way of seeing it without first studying classical philosophy’s thought on this important subject.

In medieval philosophy, what is by essence is the cause of everything that is by participation. Thus, what is by the essence of the genus is participated by the species. In the classical definition “man is a rational animal,” man participates in animality. The former is the genus, and the latter is the specific difference, which belongs to human essence but is not exclusively its own because rationality is also attributed to other entities, such as angels or divinity, which would possess it in higher degrees, with the latter possessing it absolutely.

Among the various types of participation that can be established, we would have participation by composition. This participation would be based on the duality of a receiver (participant) and a received element (participable). In this case, to participate would mean to possess something that has been received. What is received is received according to the mode of being of the recipient. In such a case, the received takes on the modality of the receiving subject. If the receiver is less perfect than the element they receive, the received will have the limits proper to the receiver.

Therefore, in participation by composition, there is a limitation. This limitation, at first glance, seems to apply to all types of participation. We say “seems” because there are participations without this limitation, as we will see.

The concept of limitation, if not considered dialectically, can lead us into a true aporia, for when we consider that in participation by composition there is a limitation, this limitation itself is participated, which would require us to unfold this participation into two: participation by limitation and participation by reception.

In participation by composition, the recipient is less perfect than what is received by them, and they receive it only as a part because they cannot receive it without limiting it.

It is clear that composition is distinguishable from limitation, although composition is an essential element of this participation. What is important to emphasize here is that limitation does not arise from composition itself but from the receiving subject because not every composition is a participation.

Another type of participation is by similarity or by formal hierarchy. In this case, the essence that is participated is not found in the participant in the absolute fullness of its formal content.

These two species of participation, which have been the subject of study by the Scholastics, do not exclude each other completely.

Other species of participation will be studied by us at the appropriate time, and we will also analyze these first two that we have just presented. But before establishing them, we wish to provide a quick overview of the various ways of understanding participation in classical philosophy.

Aristotle admitted, although he did not affirm it, that the species participates in the genus, and the genus is attributed to the species by participation. This assertion comes to us from Thomas Aquinas. However, Aristotle always refused to admit that the species participates in the genus because he only accepted participation when a union of distinct elements actually occurred. This led him to reject a relation of participation between the genus and the species since, accepting that there is only participation by composition, the unity of substance would not occur, and it would be merely a composition of genus and species. 11

This aspect is of fundamental importance in theological studies because man is not conceived merely as a composition of animality and rationality, as if in man there were a conjunction of two elements, the animal and the rational. Rationality already contains animality, and human essence is considered as a unity of simplicity. Thus, Thomas Aquinas postulates the substantial identity between genus and species.

As various difficulties arise here, Thomas Aquinas explains it as follows: “To participate is, so to speak, to receive a part. When a being particularly receives what belongs to another being universally, it is said to participate in it. Thus, it is said that man participates in the animal because he does not possess the reason of the animal in its entirety. For the same reason, Socrates participates in man. In the same way, the subject participates in the accident, and matter participates in the form, for the substantial form or the accidental form, which are, by themselves, common, are determined to such and such a subject. Finally, it is said that the effect participates in its cause, especially when it does not equal the power of the cause. For example, we say that the air participates in the sunlight because it does not receive it with all the brightness that it possesses in the sun.”

In this case, the species is substantially identical to the genus but participates in the genus because it does not possess the reason of the genus in its entirety.

It is clearly explained here that Thomas Aquinas accepts participation by similarity or formal hierarchy, not strictly participation by composition, which was accepted by Boethius before.

We will see later that in the case of symbolism, this participation is the most evident, even in so-called primitive thought, which has not been well understood by anthropologists in general.

It should not be concluded that Thomas Aquinas accepted composition in participation but rather accepted it as one of its elements. Thus, for him, participation would have two elements: composition between the subject that participates and what they participate in.

Therefore, the species participates in the genus but not in the full richness of the genus.

Participation can occur in four different ways:

a) participation of a concrete subject in any form;

b) participation between the elements of a composite essence;

c) participation between abstract terms that are unrelated in their formal content;

d) participation between more or less universal abstract terms that are comprehended within the same formal line. 12

For symbolism, as we will have the opportunity to show, only two species of participation are relevant: participation by composition and participation by formal hierarchy, in which the participant is partially what another is in fullness.

In summary, we will study participation by composition and participation by similarity. All beings participate in a supreme being, but this being does not participate in any other, as we have already seen in “Ontology and Cosmology.” Therefore, every finite being is a being by participation of the Being.

The perfections attributed to the Supreme Being are participable by finite beings.

And since the participant participates in the participable according to their degree of being, and they are finite, this participation is consequently finite but reveals a scale of perfection (to a greater or lesser extent).

In the symbolism of religions, we will see that symbols are participants in these perfections of the Supreme Being according to their mode of being. Hence, there exists a hierarchy of symbols, which are superior to the extent that they participate more in the perfection attributed to the Supreme Being, which in religions is divinity.

This anticipation we make now is only preparatory for a better understanding of our way of visualizing the symbol, provided that we exclude the merely arbitrary from it, as can be seen in conventional signs.

For a symbol to truly be a symbol, and it cannot be emphasized enough, it must depart from the purely conventional and reveal, in the formalities that we can grasp from it, something that is a participation of the participated or symbolized. Since what is participated can be more easily graspable or not by us, the symbol will manifest greater or lesser clarity. In some cases, it is cryptic, concealed, and requires a complex operation of analyzing the various participations according to hierarchical degrees to reach that in which the symbol participates.

In the final part of this work, where we will indiscriminately examine symbols in various sectors, we will show how the provisions of symbolic dialectics are carried out, that is, the analogical method by which we can interpret symbols, an interpretation that, in some cases, is multiple due to the polysemy that we have already seen in the symbol because it can participate in not one but many perfections attributed to the symbolized.

It now becomes greatly easy to understand why the symbolized is polysemous, that is, it can be referred to by a multiplicity of symbols, just as the symbol itself is polysemic because it can refer to various formalities in which it participates.

Article 2: Participation in the Logical Order and the Ontological Order

It is commonly said that Plato only considered participation in the realm of ideas, thus reducing it to logical participation.

However, if we have a thought more consistent with the genuine Platonic conception, we will see that participation in the order of forms, often called ideas, corresponds to participation in the order of being. Since participating in the form is participating in being, the distinction made between Platonism and Neoplatonism (which would accept participation in the order of being) is merely apparent because this twofold participation arises from a twofold visualization of the same truth.

In his work “De substantias separatas,” Thomas Aquinas interpreted the Platonic theory as follows: "In the knowledge of truth, our intelligence uses a double abstraction. First, it grasps numbers, magnitudes, mathematical figures without thinking about sensible matter. When, for example, we think of the number two or the number three, the line or the surface, the triangle or the square, nothing in our apprehension indicates hot or cold or any other quality that can be perceived by our senses.

The second abstraction serves our intelligence when it knows a universal term without representing any particular term, when, for example, we think of man without thinking of Socrates or Plato or any other individual. The same thing could be shown with the help of other examples. Thus, Plato admits two kinds of reality separated from matter: mathematical realities and universals, which he called species or ideas (forms, eide). However, there is the following difference between them: in material realities, we can grasp various individuals of the same species, various equal lines, for example, or two equilateral and equal triangles, which is absolutely impossible with regard to species.

Man, considered as universal according to the species, is necessarily unique. He also admitted that mathematical realities were intermediate between the species or ideas and sensible realities. They resemble sensible realities in that various individuals are contained in the same species. On the other hand, they resemble species in being separated from sensible matter."

Through this interpretation by Thomas Aquinas, it can be seen that, for him, Platonic ideas (forms) arise from the projection, into reality, of corresponding objects, not only to our general knowledge (as in the case of mathematical realities) but especially thanks to our abstract knowledge. Indeed, for Plato, mathematical realities correspond to the intrinsic proportionality law of sensible bodies, such as geometric figures or mere proportionality, as in numbers in a purely arithmetic sense, that is, as a measure of comparison.

This Platonic thought, which we find scattered throughout his work, is partially Pythagorean, without delving more extensively into the Pythagorean sense of arithmos, which goes beyond the field of geometry to reach that of higher mathematics.

These arithmoi would already correspond to an intermediate stage between mathematical numbers (arithmoi mathematikoi) and forms or ideas, which in Pythagoreanism correspond to a higher triad, which hierarchically would be as follows: from forms, one would reach ontological structures, and from those, archetypal numbers (arithmoi archai), which constitute the pinnacle of the higher triad.

Since mathematical numbers can give us the ontic structure of beings, as they would indicate the intrinsic proportionality law of corporeal beings, they would imitate the ontological structures of the higher triad, whose connecting point would be the forms (eide).

It is necessary to emphasize this point for a better understanding of participation in the Platonic sense, which Thomas Aquinas considered genuinely Neoplatonic. This clarification, which we propose for now, will also help us in examining symbols for a better understanding of their significance.

And it will ultimately help us understand later on that Thomas Aquinas' thought on participation is Platonic and, moreover, partially Pythagorean, which we will prove, even though this assertion may seem strange to Thomists. 13

Platonic forms are founded on ontological structures.

In the sensible world, they correspond to structures reducible to mathematical numbers. Therefore, sensible things “copy” the forms.

And since action is proportional to the subject of action, sensible things, being sensible, reproduce the forms in proportion to their being, which is sensible. Consequently, the ontic structure, which is geometric, is itself mathematical and copies the ontological structure, which is not sensible but eidetic.

Thus, every ontic entity has an ontic structure that is concrete, which corresponds to an ontological structure that is transcendent and belongs to the ontological order, the order of being, only grasped logically, noetically, and proportionately by our spirit.

An ontic structure becomes effective because this being (haec), in which it occurs, is in the order of being, therefore in the ontological order, and since everything that is (being) belongs to being, it is identified in being and can ontically copy the ontological structure, which belongs to being. And this happens because this singular (haec) does not completely separate from being, for if it did, there would be ruptures in Being, which would place thought in aporias that Platonism, due to its philosophical framework, avoids without concealing them, as long as we understand genuine Platonic thought.

Thus, between the forms and the beings of the sensible world, there is a certain univocity. And this univocity was sensed by Thomas Aquinas when commenting on the tenth book of Aristotle’s Metaphysics. The species is predicated univocally of the species as a form and of the species in singularity, but the two species are distinct because the first is incorruptible and the second is corruptible.

Platonic forms are not subject to becoming, nor to birth nor death, and Thomas Aquinas, in the “Summa Theologica,” referring to them, said: “In Plato’s view, separate forms are absolute and, so to speak, universal, while in sensible beings they are mixed and limited.”

And in “De Divinibus Nominibus,” Thomas Aquinas, referring to Plato, writes these words: "In such a sensible man, there is something that does not belong to the species of humanity, individual matter, for example, and other principles of that kind. But in the separated man (and in this case, it would be the form – our parenthesis), there is nothing that does not belong to the species of humanity. Thus, Plato calls man ‘man in himself’ because it contains nothing that is not humanity…

It can also be said that the separated man is above men and is the humanity of all sensible men since human nature belongs to the separated man in all its purity, which it derives from him to sensible men."

It can be seen that Thomas Aquinas' thought regarding Platonic forms is the same as Aristotle’s. From our point of view, all the confusion arises from a misunderstanding of what separation, attributed to forms by Plato, consists of. Since this is a point that does not fit the topic of this book, we leave it for another opportunity, drawing attention only to the following aspect: based on our schemes arising from our sensory experience, we should not understand what Plato establishes as similar to the sensible world. Separation in this world is physical, but in the eidetic-ontological world, this separation is only marked by the limits of an ontological structure. It is formal only.

Thus, in Being, considered simply as simple, as One, Supreme Being and Good, forms are distinguished only formally as ontological structures, ontologically separate and not ontically separate. It would be naïve to attribute such a thought to Plato (and we do not exempt Aristotle from this sin) to consider forms as physically separate. 14

In reality, Plato considered them as ontological structures in being; that is, in the act of being, but as possibilia (possibles) in ontic imitation.

Their reproduction through mimesis, imitation, in sensible things, does not modify them in any way because they are incorruptible and eternal, while imitation in sensible things is corruptible and transient. In the first case, forms exist in eternity, and in the second case, ontic structures exist in temporality.

We will justify this point later, and we will see that the exemplary ideas of God, accepted by Thomas Aquinas, are essentially the Platonic forms (eide).

Thus, sensible things participate in forms, but this participation is not a mere composition because, in truth, the form is not in the matter of the sensible thing but is only imitated by it or present in it through imitation. Participation, metexis, therefore does not occur through composition or through the action of the idea on matter. The ideas or forms do not exert a causal action but merely serve as paradigms.

This interpretation of Platonic thought does not exhaust the possibilities of other understandings that will come in due course.

Applying it to symbolism, we would say that the symbol does not contain the form of what it symbolizes within itself but only imitates it. There is no composition between the symbol and the symbolized, but only an imitation of the latter by the former. This would be the Platonic placement of the relationship between symbol and symbolized.

A very narrow view of Platonic thought would lead us to consider forms merely as projections of our own schemas, of our schematization. If we pay close attention to what we have presented so far, using the elements we offer in this work and in our other works, we can say that when it comes to the symbol, there is always something between it and the symbolized that corresponds to the imitation that, as we have seen, takes place in the human realm through an excess of accommodation.

When accommodation exceeds assimilation, we capture much less than would be normal to expect, and in that case, an inevitable symbolization arises. However, just like in every gnoseological adaptation, there is never a total absence of assimilation or accommodation; in the symbol, there is always imitation. The symbol has something that imitates the symbolized, even if this imitation is merely formal.

Plato distinguished the eide (forms or ideas) from the eidola (little forms, little ideas), which would correspond to our schematization, the abstract noetic schemas constructed by the human spirit, and which correspond to the eide. And to demonstrate that the eide are not mere projections of our spirit, it suffices that we do not confuse them with the eidola and that we consider that in their ontological structure, they are perfections of being itself, immutable in this regard. For everything that exists, has existed, or will exist has an ontological structure, and we cannot admit that this structure has come from nothing. It can only be in being and, as such, is coeternal with it, although temporary or transient in the chronotopic world.

Thus, it can be seen that Platonic thought cannot be reduced to mere idealism founded solely on the structure of our spirit because, if we can grasp at most the mathematical structure of things, we can also understand that there corresponds to them a structure of the order of being, of the ontological order, which is essentially unknown to us and can only be grasped through mimetic approximations, that is, through imitation, such as the schematic structures originating in the noetic (of our spirit).

Therefore, the noetic schema we construct of things corresponds to a concrete schema that is present in the things themselves, which in turn corresponds to the eidetic schema or structure that exists in the order of being. Consequently, the forms that exist ante rem, before things, in Being, exist in re in things, and post rem in our spirit or in the sensory schemas of the imago or in the noetic abstraction of universality (in the concept).

In summary, in Platonic thought, it is necessary to distinguish what we will now explain. If Thomas Aquinas defines “participation as receiving in a particular way what belongs universally to another,” in Platonic thought, this verb “receiving” indicates a participation without actual reception, without composition, but only imitation.

This distinction becomes necessary because many times in human thought, especially in relation to religions, we see the admission that the symbol, as a participant of the symbolized, receives it and combines with it, which is properly the characteristic of idolatry (the fusion of the symbol with the symbolized).

If we admit that this participation occurs in the genuine Pythagorean sense, idolatry is avoided. However, a problem arises: how does this participation of the sensible with the ideas occur? It seems that an insurmountable gap arises here. Continuing the analysis of the topic of participation, this problem will find its solution, which we will see in due course.

Article 3: The Symbolic Way (via symbolica)

Although the logical and metaphysical viewpoints in Aristotle and Plato are closely interconnected and dependent on each other, these two philosophers represent the two fundamental positions of philosophical thought after the great synthesis of Pythagoras, unfortunately so little known.

Aristotle recognizes the primacy of the individual substance, which alone has real existence. Thus, substantial quality is the most perfect being because it is the most determined. But for Plato, perfection is based on intelligibility.

For Plato, knowledge is a participation in the intelligible that things imitate. And intelligence arises thanks to the prior presence, in the knower, of noetic schemas capable of realizing them through adaptation, that is, through the accommodation of schemas and the corresponding assimilation. And this participation will be greater to the extent that the number of schemas is greater.

What is innate in man are the ideas, the forms (eide), and not the eidola, the little forms, the ideas of things provided by our experience. Without assimilation, man would not be capable of knowledge, and this assimilation requires the priority of a group of simple innate schemas that allow for the formation of complex schemas, which constitute our ideas of things.

By understanding Plato’s thought in this way, as we have shown in “Theory of Knowledge,” Plato’s notion of participation becomes clear, without needing to appeal to the vacillations that arise in the dialogues, where Socrates seems not to clearly distinguish between eidos and eidolon.

Thomas Aquinas, who understood Platonic thought very well, establishes two modes of attribution: essential attribution and attribution by participation. Although he did not define them, he exemplified them as follows: “light is attributed to the illuminated body by participation, but if there were a separate light, light would be attributed to it essentially or by essence.” In essence, in essential attribution, when the subject is separate and subsistent in itself, the predicate merely repeats what is already stated in the subject. It is properly a subject in its essence. In this case, there is no proper participation because it is identical by essence.

And Thomas Aquinas says, “On the contrary, what is not wholly a thing, properly speaking, is said to participate in that thing. So, if there were heat existing per se, it would not be said to participate in heat because in heat there would be nothing else but heat. On the other hand, fire, being something different from heat, is said to participate in heat” (Ib). This distinction between these two types of attribution is of utmost importance for understanding the symbol because the formality of what the symbol points to, the symbolized, is participated in by the symbol and is not identified with it. Thus, Thomas Aquinas says, “being is essentially attributed only and solely to God, for the Divine Esse (Being) is a subsistent and absolute Esse, attributed to every creature by participation, for no creature is its esse, but it has esse (being). Similarly, it is said of God that He is good because He is goodness itself, whereas creatures are good by participation because they have goodness.”

This distinction between having and being is important in understanding symbols. What the symbol points to, that is, the significance it presents, is not of its own being but of its having.

The symbol has the formality in which it participates, which belongs to the essence of the other, the symbolized. For example, in the circle, it possesses the unlimitedness, but only Divinity is it. Therefore, the circle can symbolize divinity through this formality.

Attribution by participation has two species:

  1. Where the predicate attributed by participation is the essential element of the subject.

  2. Where the predicate is outside the essence of the subject.

In the first case, we have the example of the genus attributed to its species, and the species comprehends, in addition to the genus, the specific difference. The second attribution refers to accidents, whether necessary or purely contingent. Thus, for example, esse, signifying existence, is participated in by creatures as an element outside their essence because existence is not of the essence of creatures.

All these distinctions become necessary to avoid certain confusions that arise in the works of many philosophers and religious thinkers.

Man participates in God, participates in the goodness of God, but is not the goodness of God. Not everything that belongs to God belongs to the creature, so there is no composition between God and the creature.

In this case, it could be said that we have God, but we are not God, unless we give the term Esse a purely attributive sense by participation and not by essence.

By understanding the distinctions we have just made, we avoid the natural aporias of pantheism, whose fundamental defect lies in confusing attribution by participation with attribution by essence.

In attribution by essence, there is an absolute identity between subject and predicate, while in attribution by participation, as we have seen, predication can occur of something that belongs to the essence and something that is outside the essence.

In attribution by participation, there is only a partial attribution by essence, while in the other, it is absolute.

For example, “man” is attributed to Socrates by participation. This does not mean that Socrates participates in “man,” but rather that Socrates contains elements that do not correspond to the attribute “man.” In this case, the subject is richer than the predicate because Socrates has individual differences that are not comprehended within the species “man.”

Thus, we are faced with an example of attribution by participation in the social order and in what is external to the essence. Socrates is not the fullness of man, but it is of his essence to be a man, so we have an attribution by participation in the essential order, but not a mere attribution by essence because that would require fullness, that is, identity between subject and predicate, which is not the case with Socrates.

In attribution by participation, the subject participates in the predicate, but the predicate is a part of the subject, whereas in attribution by essence, subject and predicate are absolutely identical.

Let us now examine participation in the accidental order, in accidental attribution. This does not exclude necessary attribution. It is enough that there are formal series independent of each other in terms of their reasons but that have a necessary order. Thus, color and extension are formally distinct, but there cannot be color without extension.

Here we have a necessary accidental attribution, which must be distinguished from a contingent accidental attribution.

In the latter case, two formal series independent of each other in terms of their reasons and that are not ordered to one another meet in a subject. Let us take the example of red-hot iron.

In this case, the accident is external to the substance’s essence.

In theological terms, the being of God is identical to His essence, and being belongs to the creature by participation. God is His being, the creature has its being, and it receives it from the One who is its own being because to be without having received is to be by essence, as Thomas Aquinas shows us.

We can summarize what we have said above in the following words: participation can be seen as the act of receiving and also as the act of being. In the first case, participation occurs when one partially receives what universally belongs to another. In the second case, participation consists of partially being what the other is in absolute fullness.

This distinction is of great interest for the study of symbols.

Every perfection that is not attributable by essence to a subject is consequently participated in or participable. In this case, this perfection belongs to a being in its fullness, that is, by essence. However, this thought is rejected because it would lead us to affirm the subsistence per se of formalities, which is attributed to Platonism. Thus, heat, which is participated in by sensible beings, would become an attribute by essence of a being in whose subject it would be identified. Therefore, heat would be subsistent in itself. But if we consider that these formalities, which we grasp and correspond to what is founded in things, do not require a subject that is separately identified with them, we can consider them as formal schemas, ontological structures, founded in being itself and according to the order to which they belong. In this case, heat, as an absolute, is only a noetic schema, but heat is a mode of certain beings that participate in this perfection, whose fullness is only found in the ontological order of being and not as something subsistent in itself with a subject that is so by essence.

In the Pythagorean classification of the two triads, these formalities are given an ontological structure without subjective onticity.

To participate in a form is to have it in a limited state when in another state it is in a more perfect or absolute state.

Thus, human intelligence participates in a superior intelligence, a divine intelligence, which is in an absolute state. Therefore, the symbol indicates, through its formality in a limited state, a reference to a form in a higher or absolute state. Thus, the symbol is hierarchically inferior to the symbolized. For example, the bull reveals strength, power. Divinity is strength, power, and thus the bull can symbolize divinity, as seen in various religions, such as the worship of Mithras, for example. In turn, the bull can symbolize the sun, and the sun symbolizes divinity. Thus, there is a hierarchical ascent from the symbol to the symbolized, which in turn is a symbol of the superior symbolized.

This point is important to highlight what we call the symbolic way. Because even though religious individuals often choose a symbol to refer to a symbolized, they can continue, through symbolic hierarchies, to reach a being per essentia, which is God, the great symbolized by all the perfections we can grasp from the things of our experience. In their symbolism, all religions refer, directly or indirectly, to this great symbolized.

All finite essences are likenesses and, in sum, symbols of the infinite essence. Thus, perfection belongs to the first perfection by essence and to the finite being by participation.

Article 4: Dialectic of Participation and Symbolic Dialectic

Dialectic, as we conceive and have explained in previous works, is fundamentally based on immanence to reach the transcendent, which is largely favored by the concept of participation.

If concepts are objects of Formal Logic, the object of dialectic is the multiplicity of being. Multiplicity, intentionally expressed by our concepts and captured by our means of knowledge. While all our knowledge is abstract, as we have already stated, dialectic aims for the maximum concretion, although it starts from the analysis of the abstracting process performed by our mind. Thomas Aquinas emphasized that the unity of being is more easily apprehended by us than multiplicity, which largely remains hidden.

What exactly does this multiplicity consist of, we do not know in depth. We can only glimpse reasons through our experience.

While we work with abstract noetic schemes, which are concepts, we can remain in the field of formal logic. But from the moment we seek to investigate reality in its heterogeneity, dialectic becomes indispensable for us, and Thomas Aquinas understood this role well. Dialectic is not concerned solely with the understanding of logical relations because it is not a mere operation of formal logic, nor does it attempt to group concepts under general or ontological concepts.

It seeks to reach the heterogeneity, the diversity of reality.

For dialectic, quiddities are not merely formal, as what interests it about them is their substantiality. In sum, it aims to reach concrete schemes without naturally disregarding noetic-abstract schemes or the eidetic schemes of forms in the Platonic sense. Dialectic seeks the nexus of reality as formal logic does. The point of support is the immanence of being in all its degrees. The unity of being it seeks is a synthetic unity, a simple synthesis and fullness of being that encompasses all diversity. Therefore, it includes rather than excludes.

For dialectic, essences are substantial, and the unity of being is immanent to everything, despite this statement being understood as a pantheistic confession. But this is not the case due to the immense difference between finite being and infinite being. And it is easy to explain: the absolute fullness of being is present in all being, but it is separated by reason of the substantiality of beings. The absolute transcendence of being does not exclude total immanence because every finite being, as such, is not the transcendent being, but it is being and of being, and its finitude does not exclude infinitude because it depends on it. Everything that is, in being, is of being, and what is finite participates in that Being without being in its fullness.

The difficulty in understanding the non-exclusion between transcendence and immanence arises from our schematics and the critical process of our mind, as we have already shown in “Philosophy of Crisis” and also in “Ontology and Cosmology,” where we emphasized the need to consider them simultaneously. Geiger also understood this when he said, "It must be immediately added that the two sides, immanence and transcendence, remain truly contrary to our knowledge. Our mind cannot adhere to one without diminishing the other; nevertheless, it is necessary to consider them simultaneously. They would contradict each other if they represented themselves as impossible data perfectly possessed by our mind, both of one and the other.

They would oppose each other, then, as the internal and the external in spatial order. And the absurdity that would arise from keeping them together, far from leading us to conclude the presence of any mystery, should invite us to analyze the premises. In reality, neither the immanence nor the transcendence of being are positive and perfectly comprehensible data for us. The concrete unity of being, which is called immanence, remains an intention for us, a necessity that we see the meaning and law of, without being able to actualize it. Positive unity eludes us.

It follows the opposite path of the natural slope of our knowledge, which tends to represent the unity of all multiplicity, first and foremost, as that of a common element abstracted from a set of concrete cases." (Op.Cit., p. 350 onwards).

To avoid the actualization of one at the expense of the virtualization of the other and, in turn, to avoid the tendency towards univocity, Geiger advises the use of analogy.

Immanence threatens us with pantheism, but an exaggerated actualization of transcendence plunges us into dualism. The absolute being is truly the point of convergence of immanence and transcendence, and it is not the common attribute of beings, as one might concede if we remained in the field of formal logic. However, dialectically, the absolute being is what gives being to all and constitutes its ultimate foundation.

In “De Potentia” (qu. 1, a. 1, c., end), Thomas Aquinas says:

“Our intelligence strives to express God as an absolutely perfect Being. And since it can only attain God through the similarity of His effects, and since in the creature there is nothing that is fully perfect, free from all imperfection, it strives to express Him based on the diverse perfections it discovers in creatures, even though each of these perfections contains some defect. It undertakes the task of entirely removing all imperfection from God, which is mixed with His perfections. For example, the word ‘esse’ signifies something complete and simple but not subsistent. On the contrary, the word ‘substance’ expresses a subsistent being that is the subject of another. Therefore, in God, we ascribe substance and esse: substance due to the simplicity of plenitude, not due to inherence in a subject.”

In “Ontology and Cosmology,” we have explained the dialectical concept of transimmanence because, without falling into the abstractisms that lead us to pantheism or dualism, it is impossible to excessively actualize one of these two concepts that we have formally constructed to reveal the two fundamental aspects of Being.

It is the imperfection of our mind that leads us to formally construct abstract noetic schemes that are in crisis with one another, with the intention of expressing what is actually united. That is why dialectic is not merely an apprehension of logical relations, nor is its process a mere syllogistic demonstration. Syllogism can express what dialectic captures, but what it seeks is the observation of degrees and the attainment, through them, of something that comprehends them. That is where dialectic is truly creative, as Thomas Aquinas already sensed in “I Sent.” d. 1. qu. 4, a. 2.

Dialectic is therefore founded on the unity of being and also on the unity of intelligence as a power whose natural object is being. The unity of being affirms its absolute immanence in all multiplicity and is expressed by our schemes. Transcendental being is immanent to all being and to every mode of being, and it is through multiplicity that dialectic reaches it.

Through the multiple, we reach what is, the great presence, the eternal presence. “Thomas Aquinas definitively placed essences in reality, thus continuing the work of Aristotle. They are not abstract concepts by which we express and conceive things, but rather they refer to the diversity of the real and the being meant, according to our human way, by abstract concepts” (Geiger, Op. Cit., p. 360).

"The multiple is a reflection of the absolute, it is an imitation of it, a shadow, if one wishes to say so. But it is necessary, beforehand, to remove from these metaphors any depreciation based on affectivity, and to sustain that these shadows are as real as our own being, substances in the fullest force that this word can assume in the corporeal world.

The absolute is all of this, but infinitely more excellent in a way that surpasses our power of comprehension. In the eyes of Thomas Aquinas, the One is not the adversary of the multiple; it is its principle. Participation expresses in advance this relationship between the principle and what depends on it" (Geiger, Op. Cit., p. 367).

We may not know how the creature participates in God, but we know that it does participate; it is an imperfect similarity to divinity. And Thomas Aquinas demonstrates that dialectic itself compels us to affirm the existence of absolute perfection. This participation is real and objective15.

All our knowledge proceeds through participation. The internal duality of our knowledge, which we have studied in previous works, shows us the impossibility of attaining absolute (totaliter) knowledge. Only God can attain it because in Him, knowing is being.

At the beginning of this work, we saw that the symbol arises either due to a deficiency of accommodation with the consequent excess of assimilation or due to the proficiency of the initiate who, unable to transmit the higher knowledge to the weak accommodation of the profane, employs the symbol as a more skillful means of touching the depth of the human soul.

Our deficiency of comprehension is compensated by the great symbolic capacity and consequently mystical capacity within human beings.

The fact that there is a great emergence of symbolism observed in children and societies with a primitive mentality should not be considered solely as a weakness but also as a proficiency.

Deficiency in means of expression but proficiency in modes of feeling.

The modern man, predominantly metropolitan, who has lost the symbolic connections of facts, does not perceive the significance of things well. They are merely facts of his sensory world or, at most, intellectualized through mathematical signs and symbols. This fact does not reveal a superiority of modern man because at the very moment he forgets or completely loses the symbolic path, he finds himself alone, a thing among things, and the anguish that overwhelms him is more the feeling of emptiness, of absence, which he translates into the concept that expresses its great absence: nothing. And if asked why he is anxious, between astonishment and perplexity, he will only stammer, “I don’t know, I am anxious for nothing.”

And this anguish of nothingness, which Kierkegaard also experienced, is an expressive symbol of our time.

Formal logic is a logic of univocity, whereas dialectic is a logic of participation and, in its provisions, is essentially concrete. When reasoning, we should not avoid formal laws, but by applying dialectic as we have explained it, we can attain the concrete within our possibilities. Symbolic dialectic, for the interpretation of symbols, is based on analogy, which always indicates participation.

Let us briefly explain the use of analogy, the foundation of the dialectical method, which will greatly aid us in the better study of the symbol.

Article 5: Synthesis of analogy

Regarding the modes of signification of concepts, we have:

meanings - their modes

analogy

equivocality

univocality

A term, or concept, is univocal when applied to various beings with the same signification. “Animal” is univocal when applied to a cow, horse, ape, etc. However, when we use “what an animal” referring to a man, in a naturally pejorative sense, we do not use it univocally but analogously because we remove the rational aspect that characterizes the essence of man. The same applies when we use “eagle,” “lion,” “bear,” etc.

In “Ontology and Cosmology,” we wrote:

"A concept or term is equivocal when it is applied to various beings with completely different meanings. For example, ‘dog’ refers to both the animal and the constellation, etc.

It is analogous when applied to different things, with meanings that are neither properly identical nor completely different. Examples include a ‘strong reason’ and a ‘strong tree,’ etc.

The concepts applied to objects, from which they are derived by abstraction and applied to being as being, or to the realities that are the object of metaphysics, are they univocal, equivocal, or analogous?

They cannot be equivocal because there is no reality that is completely different from the world of our experience. God transcends us completely but is not impermeable to us, for He is the origin of everything, and there is something of Him in everything.

They cannot be univocal because the metaphysical realities to which we apply them differ from the facts of experience from which they were abstracted.

Therefore, they are analogous.

Univocity leads us to monism, which admits only one reality: God (pantheistic monism) or matter (materialistic monism) or thought (idealistic monism).

Equivocity implies dualism or pluralism, that is, the existence of completely different and independent realities. Only analogy can ensure plurality within unity: the distinction between the absolute Being and relative beings, but unity because relative beings obtain being from the absolute Being (creationism); the distinction between the soul and the body, but substantial unity (spiritualism).

This synthesis we have just made of these “antepredicaments” (as they are called in logic, because they are preambles and prerequisites for the ordering of predicaments or categories) does not exclude the problematic nature that arises concerning univocity and analogy, which is of great importance for ontological studies. But, following our method, which first treats the topics synthetically, then analyzes them, and finally concretizes them according to the decadialectic, in our tensional conception, we will follow the same paths here, as in other parts.

Logically considered, a term is univocal when it signifies (points to, as a sign) a simply one reason, “convenientem multis distributive” (one in many), that is, a convenient one, distributively, to many (one in many), as the Scholastics define it. The wisdom of Solomon and the wisdom of an experienced man, as wisdom in their quiddity, that is, in their formality, are univocal because wisdom is wisdom, and nothing more. The univocity here is purely formal because the wisdom of one person differs quantitatively and qualitatively from that of another, based on the greater or lesser amount of knowledge one has compared to another" 16.

When we say that a term is analogous, we recognize that in it there is something that resembles the analogate and something that differentiates it.

Analogy is therefore a synthesis of the similar and the different. All beings are analogous, but there are degrees of analogy.

Let us distinguish:

analogy

extrinsic attribution

quantitative

intrinsic attribution

qualitative

 

 

proportionality

relation

 

function

There is analogy of intrinsic attribution when the analogate (term, concept, symbolic set) properly applies to all the objects it designates, although in some cases adequately and in others inadequately.

Examples: the existential act is a mixture of act and potency, it is hybrid. Act and potency are applied to God and creatures analogously, by intrinsic attribution.

There is analogy of intrinsic qualitative attribution between two medicines that serve the same purpose (it can also be confused in certain cases with function, but only when taken dynamically).

There is analogy of intrinsic quantitative attribution between two objects of different quality and species that are quantitatively equal, such as 1 kilogram of paper and 1 kilogram of sugar.

There is analogy of extrinsic attribution when used in a sense that is neither univocal nor equivocal but only through metaphorical transposition (substituting one external sense for another that presents merely exterior similarities). A cheerful, joyful man and a cheerful, joyful garden. An unhealthy climate and an unhealthy man. Metaphors are true analogies when not absurd. Metaphor belongs more to aesthetics than to Metaphysics.

The analogy of proportion or ratio exists between completely different things but that each has a certain similarity of relationship (analogy of relation) or function (analogy of function).

The right wing and the left wing of an army; the left foot and the right foot of a building, and the relationship between a leader and the troops, and the relationship between the head and the body, are other examples of analogy.

Homology occurs when there is proportionality between the function of one whole and the function of another whole, such as between the wings of birds and the forelimbs of mammals, between the feathers of birds and the leaves of trees.

Comments

Extrinsic analogy is a metaphor (a figure of speech), and it offers us nothing new about the nature of things, and it does not convey anything to those who do not know the things designated by the terms. With analogy of proportion, we have only a vague idea of the objects, but it is not useful. Thus, through the analogy of organs, a blind person can have some knowledge, to a certain extent, of the world of the sighted.

The analogy of intrinsic attribution gives us a more precise idea because it already assumes a common property.

Analogy can be considered a vague and imprecise means of knowledge. But how can we penetrate a reality that escapes our senses without analogy?

In analogy, there is a predominance of assimilation rather than accommodation.

The symbol explains it well. But can we, through the found assimilation, construct the accommodation (the imitative aspect) that we lack?

How do we know God if not through analogies! Many exclaim.

Analogy (like “proportio,” which is an analogy of proportion) is a synthesis of similarity and difference.

Being, ontologically considered as well as ontically, is not univocal because differences of being are still being; it is not equivocal because there would be a multiplicity of being, which there is not. This affirmation is predominant in philosophy.

Therefore, being is analogous, as asserted by many Thomists.

The part, as being, is analogous to the Whole.

To carry out the dialectical analysis that employs analogy, a comparison must be made beforehand. Analogy is a relation that is schematized through the mind but corresponds to a relation that occurs, either in the real-physical (external) world or in the mental world, through comparisons between a real fact and an idea, or between ideas.

Analogy and analogical method

We present here a dialectical-analogical analysis method that allows us to work with analogies, which we observe in part among all beings because, disregarding the degrees, there is a similarity and a difference between them, of greater or lesser intensity.

This is our synthetic scheme for employing analogy:

In the similar, the distinct is smaller than the equal; in the different, the distinct is larger than the equal. Consequently, the diverse is sometimes superior to the same, sometimes smaller, depending on whether it corresponds to the distinct or the equal.17

Thus, the same proportion corresponds to the polarizations of the diverse and the same.

Analogical analysis, conducted according to this scheme, requires prior classification of the facts to be compared and analyzed within one of the species of analogy: intrinsic attribution, extrinsic attribution, proportionality, function, etc.

The scheme may not always be fully applicable. For example, it is sufficient to point out the distinct and the equal in order to immediately highlight a point of identification.

There are analogies in which it is difficult to find a point of identification before the identification of the being, as all beings identify themselves as beings, as in the analogies of extrinsic attribution.

In the analogies of intrinsic attribution, which are of utmost importance to metaphysics, analogical analysis must lead to a closer identification in qualities, for example.

The true symbol is analogous by attribution to the symbolized; consequently, there is a point of identification. And it is this identification that brings about communion in social symbols, which unify human beings in a deeper identification, which is the mystical nature of those symbols.

Using this scheme may pose some difficulties initially. However, once it is clear that there must be a closer identification between the analogized and the analogizer, the mind is prepared to overcome the distinct, the diverse, the same, and to reach the identical.

The point of identification is found in the univocity that the analogy must contain, for it is, from a logical standpoint only, the synthesis of univocity and equivocity, as we have seen.

But ontologically, an explanation is necessary here, leading us to one of the longest debates in philosophy: the dispute between Thomists and Scotists regarding univocity and analogy. A brief analysis of this debate will provide us with conclusions that will reinforce our position on this subject, whose method of employment is based on the noetic decadialectic, already operating with symbolism, as we will see, and which opens the way to a tensional vision capable of offering a collation of concretized positivities and freeing us from the crisis in which modern philosophy is immersed.

Analysis of the theme of analogy

Those who defend analogy in being argue in its favor that finite being is so dissimilar from the infinite that between the being of man and the being of God, there is only a proportionate analogy.

It is not surprising that an incommensurability is affirmed to exist between us and God, for there is incommensurability even between things that exist here, such as between the diameter and the circumference, and in the proportions of Pythagorean golden numbers.

The infinite has no measure; the infinite is the qualitative measure of the finite.

These measures are not univocal but analogical (by participation), claim those who defend the analogy of being.

In analogy, there is participation of the analogized by the analogizer, and this participation indicates a more remote or closer identification, according to our scheme.

In the noetic order, participation is called analogy; in the ontological order, analogy is called participation.

The noetic schemes that we construct through abstraction, participating in the concrete schemes of the facts, which we grasp only as noetic quiddities, reduced to eidetic-noetic schemes. In this apple, in turn, its concrete scheme participates in the essential scheme of the apple, for it does not exhaust the possibilities of the apple but only represents a sector of those possibilities, just as these three books do not exhaust, as three, the concrete possibilities of the essential scheme of three, which is a thought of being and can concretely appear as three chairs, three tables, etc. Therefore, the essential scheme (the arithmós, in the Pythagorean sense, already studied by us in “Theory of Knowledge”) belongs to being, subsisting in being, it is a power of being whose existentialization (to employ a very Avicennian expression) is accomplished through participation. These books are three, the three is in them concretely, but it is not from them, because the arithmós three, concretized in them, participates in three as an essential arithmós (essential scheme).

Therefore, in these three books, there is an analogy with three, and an analogy with three tables, chairs. And they are analogous because they participate in the same essential scheme; therefore, in the ontological order, analogy is called participation.

Now, every finite being participates in Being, esse caperem, to use the words of Thomas Aquinas, for the Supreme Being includes all perfections in its highest and most complete realization, that is, according to its complete possibilities. For everything that exists, exists in Being, and as nothing exists outside of it, it contains all perfections, of which a partial perfection, this finite being, hic et nunc, is only a participant. Therefore, between the finite being, or rather between the created being and the Supreme Being, the creator, there is only a proportional analogy. Each being reflects part of that perfection in its own perfection, in its actuality, for as we know, in scholasticism, act is the perfection of potency; what is in act is the actualization of an aptitude, which as such is imperfect.

Now, if we consider the conceptual content, we will see that there is an analogy in it when applied to various beings. If I consider the chair as a “piece of furniture composed of a seat, backrest, and legs, with the function of allowing a person to sit on it,” between this chair and that one, the concept, which is common to them because it only considers the notes they have in common, is univocal. In other words, there is conceptual univocity between these two chairs. I disregard everything else that can differentiate them, such as one being made of wood and the other made of metal, etc. There is, thus, a certain identity between these objects, a partial identity, as I disregard what is heterogeneous in them.

But the concept of being has a particularity that sets it apart from others. Everything that is heterogeneous is still being, not just what is homogeneous, which was not the case in the previous example. There is, therefore, no identity there in what expresses a part of the objects (that is, we admit that the concept of being has a partial representation), the heterogeneous notes would be extrinsic to being, and in this case, they would be identical to non-being, which would lead us to a true contradiction.

Therefore, the Thomists conclude that the concept of being is only proportional among beings, it is not univocal but only analogical.

The Thomists show us that every univocal concept can be expressed by an abstract term and a concrete term. The abstract term expresses a “formal” abstraction, for example, hardness. It expresses a certain form or quality isolated from its subject (it expresses the subject partially but not totally). But when I say that this house is green, I consider it endowed with the color green. It indicates the subject entirely (the house) but qualifies it by one of its determinations (it expresses the subject wholly but not totally). This is the concrete term. The concrete term expresses the subject itself affected by a particular determination. It is the result of a “total” abstraction, that is, one carried out over the whole. When I say “black,” I am referring to a certain subject endowed with “blackness.”

I can predicate the concrete term of the subject, but the abstract term cannot be predicated of the subject. I can say that this man is black, but I cannot say that he is blackness because I cannot consider the part as identical to the whole.

The term “being” always used expresses the subject entirely and in all its aspects and relations (it expresses the subject wholly and totally). Being, no matter how abstract one wants to make it, does not exclude, separate, or isolate a partial aspect of the subject; thus, in being, total abstraction and formal abstraction are equivalent. If I say that this book exists or that this book is its existence, it is indifferent because “exists” and “existence” are equivalent.

In this way, the Thomists emphasize that being is never an aspect, an element, a detachable determination, even when considered logically, from the others, for any other determinations are intrinsic and formally part of being.

This is the mysterious aspect of reality, unity in diversity and diversity in unity. When we conceptualize the idea of being, we have an idea, but it is a confused idea (from confundere, to blend with, mixed), thus it is analogous to being, which escapes us in its essence, that is, we have a quidditative knowledge of being but not quidditative, that is, exhaustive to its essence, which, if we were to have it fusion with it, would put us in a state of bliss, which, according to the Thomists, is denied to us in this life. (Our “Ontology and Cosmology” pages 75/85).

A more in-depth study of gnoseology and noology, of how our knowledge and the human mind function, shows us that there is validity in the noetic schemes that we construct because, as long as they are rigorously structured, they correspond to real foundations.

If we pay close attention to logical conceptualization, already cleansed of experimental coverings, purifying it from what belongs to our pragmatics, in order to consider the concept in its eidetic-noetic structure, in its formal sense, we see that concepts are interwoven in rigorous connections that do not allow, among themselves, any distinction other than a merely real-formal one, and not a real-physical one. The same unifying connection that we ontologically feel occurring in being, which in its essence is one and not multiple, is revealed here by analogizing the formalities to each other, just as beings analogically relate existentially to one another.

Between that star and us, there is something in common, as Goethe felt, because otherwise, how could I know it in any way? There is always a relationship of similarity and difference among beings because otherwise, we would have to accept an abyss between beings, which would immediately place us in the aporias of pluralism.

The absolute difference that we establish in the study of analogy refers to the haecceity, to the individual arithmós in Pythagorean language, to the uniqueness of singularity that, as such, does not merge with another because it is only itself, numerically distinct, just as it is distinct ontically. But this absolute is not something physically separate from being, for what individualizes, makes singular, and gives uniqueness to the entity is not a being outside of being but within being. It is only the arithmós, the set, the arithmós plethós of unity, which is the arithmós tonos, the arithmós tension, that distinguishes it from everything else. What a man, as an existing being, is in his uniqueness, is the arithmós that is, that is only him (singularity), which constitutes his individual form. But the composition of this being is from being.

Just as mathematics shows us that potentially infinite combinations are possible, the individual arithmós belongs to each one, without the need to assert an identity with another regarding the set (plethós) of unity, which is identified in being by being solely being. Consequently, there is a closer or more remote analogy among all things because the individual, when it is univocal in species and species in genus, preserves its individual or specific difference. 18

Participation through formal hierarchy allows us to understand the symbolic path, the mystical journey that we can follow, for starting from the quiddities that compose the arithmós plethós of a being (here an arithmós taken as a set of quiddities), we can see that the being, through its participation in perfection, points to that perfection and, consequently, to the being that possesses it more intensely or in plenitude.

When this symbolic aspect of all beings is well understood, it can be seen that the symbol is a category, for it possesses all the essential attributes to be classified as such.

Informability and deformality are topics that require examination. An existent, being this or that, a finite being in act, is always a hybrid of actuality and potentiality and, furthermore, of possibility and efficiency, and privation.

From the moment a being arises as actuality, that is, apart from its causes, as existing, it is a composite of act and potency. It reveals informability, that is, the ability to be determined, which consists of being able to receive other forms. But it also presents more: the ability to be deformed, that is, the ability to undergo accidental modifications, to alternate, for example, until it corrupts, resulting in the loss of its form, its transformation. But the informability of a being is relative, just like its deformability, for a being, while it is this or that, allows only this or that; it is capable of undergoing such and such modifications. And this is because every finite being is deficient, deprived of some perfection, and as such, it can only undergo information proportional to its nature.

Beings are thus included in a formal hierarchy that consequently delimits them, a delimitation proportional to their being, whether as agent (since action follows from the agent) or as patient (since passion is proportionate to the being of the patient).

Thus, in the order of being, there is a hierarchy that does not allow for an impassable abyss, from the being of maximum perfection, the infinite being, to the being of minimum perfection, which would be the one that presents the minimum perfection of being, consisting only in distinguishing itself from nothingness, the minimal entilas, the minimal entity of being, which would still reveal the perfection of being and the perfection of having an arithmós, as would be the modal, which is the ultimate actuality of form, as Suarez has shown us.

We have already touched upon a field that goes beyond the limits of the subject matter we are currently addressing and encroaches on the territory that belongs to Theology, such as the hierarchy of beings, treated in specialized books.

We only want to emphasize the presence of a foundation, a positivity, in the emanationist thought, which has not been properly understood by many.

The modal, as a being of the most minimal perfection, is the ultimate emanation of being, but it does not exclude the other perfections of being, and that is why if correctly understood, the emanationist conception does not contain the absurdity attributed to it in the caricatural way of understanding it, as seen in the criticism directed at the thought of Plotinus, the Neoplatonists, the Neopythagoreans, and the Gnostics.

Emanation does not imply a loss of the supreme power of being but, on the contrary, is proof of its sovereign strength. For the being of minimum perfection does not exclude those of higher perfection but reveals the great hierarchical order that exists in the universe, a revelation, in turn, of a power that is the maximum power.

Thomas Aquinas, with that profound acuteness of spirit that rightfully earned him the title of “divine,” understood the true meaning of emanation, for he never refused to use that term, always giving it its true content, as can be inferred from reading the “Summa Theologica,” which, in truth, is the thought when correctly understood by emanationists. We refer to those who confidently stand in the field of these ideas, naturally setting aside those who, due to their deficiency, never grasped their true meaning, as is the case with lesser emanationists. The errors they may assert do not invalidate the foundations of the emanationist conception but only reveal that disciples are not always on par with their masters and do not grasp their thought in its full extent and depth. 19

Theme IV

Article 1: Consciousness and Unconsciousness in Symbolics

In “Psychology,” we have seen that consciousness and unconsciousness cannot be substantialized, as certain substantialist psychology did when it began in-depth studies of the human soul, giving substance to these dynamic polarizations of the psychic tensional process. Consciousness and unconsciousness are degrees of psychic tension, not subsisting regions per se of our spirit, as revealed by a certain observable tendency accepted in the work of psychoanalysts 20.

From the roots of our psychism, from the sensory-motor to the highest forms of intellectual judgment operations and the broader phronesis of affectivity, there is a range of intensity in psychic tension that allows us to grasp (naturally through opposition, as we have seen in the functioning of knowledge) the functioning of our spirit, which offers the variance of degrees of “consciousness-unconsciousness,” dialectical and inseparable concepts, as there is never a completely vigilant consciousness. Unconsciousness is expressed, in any case, through a symbolism that constitutes a major subject of study for Psychology 21.

Consciousness is determined by the resistances it encounters, as we have seen, and its degrees depend greatly on opposing resistances. Consciousness is more of a result than a substance. The relationship between inhibitions, which resist, and impulses, which persist, gives us the range of various moments of consciousness.

Is there an unconscious symbol? In fact, what in-depth psychology reveals is that there is a symbolic language of the unconscious 21.

The symbol results from the weak accommodation offered by the component schemas of the intellectual and pathic schematics of the human being, resulting in a disproportionate assimilation. What our body tends towards (unconscious impulses) is captured by the noetic-abstract schemas, proportionate to this schematics. Consequently, its assimilation, which is provided to the noetic schemas, may be disproportionate to instinctive impulses.

When there is proportionality, there is only consciousness of an impulse, of an instinctive tendency. When there is disproportionality, and assimilation is excessive, the symbol emerges. The mechanism of the ego, studied in-depth by psychologists, is revealed here in complete clarity. What our historical-social schematics reject and condemn is structured in noetic-abstract intellectual and pathic schemas. The impulse, in its biological origins, is assimilated in proportion to the accommodation of those schemas. If there is proportionality between them, adaptation occurs normally, and there is a full understanding of the impulse. But if there is disproportion, the result is an excessive assimilation, resulting in the symbol. Faced with what is called the ego and the super-ego, with their schematics, assimilation will be proportionate to them.

Thus, the schematic-tensional conception we propose allows for a better understanding of the symbolic language of the unconscious. And it does not only apply to the symbol but also to the entire psychic semiotics because it will always be proportionate to the schematics of the human spirit in its historical moments, in its variation, even though the factors are formally invariant. That is why the symbol is also a language from the unconscious to the conscious.

In anatomical symbols, we find some of them independent of repression, but the schematic of historical-social origin acts as resistance, mobilizing inhibitions. It acts, in this case, as a predisposing factor since the inhibitions arise and depend on emergence, thus revealing degrees. But the vector they take, resisting the persistence of impulses, is given by the predisposing action of the historical-social.

In the presence of minimal accommodation, our life becomes unconscious, as in deep sleep, although such unconsciousness is never total, as it could not be. There is an absence of representations of the optical or affective images experienced in that moment of deep sleep, but not a complete unconsciousness that only death could give us. If consciousness is so deeply linked, or to speak ontologically more precisely, is only a distinction of psychic tension, only with its disappearance would there be total unconsciousness. Therefore, our total unconscious life would negate psychic tension and consequently affirm that it becomes exclusively extensional, without any intensity, whereas it is in its degrees that we have degrees of consciousness. However, as we have seen, it is impossible in corporeal beings to have pure intensity, separate from extension, just as it is impossible to have pure extension, separate from intensity.

Consequently, there are always degrees of consciousness-unconsciousness, in which these terms have escalations, which encompass the entire range of our psychic functioning, where none of the terms reaches zero.

During dreams, when accommodation is minimal and assimilation, consequently, is maximal, symbolization becomes complex, and the regulating and legal action of reason hardly penetrates it, as happens in daydreaming, fantasies, moments of daydreaming with open eyes, where images appear without the clear factual contours found in dreams. The symbolism that reveals itself in dreams, thanks to this almost complete independence from reason and its logical legality, presents illogicality, acronology, irrationalism, and reflects much more of the sensory-motor and affectivity than of the rational schemas (noetic-eidetic), which often invert or apparently dissolve into illogicalities.

This is why dreams are a field for profound investigations into the most primitive and fundamental schemas of man.

Every human noetic action consists of uniting or separating. Assimilation is always unifying because by adapting the fact to the schema, it intentionally fuses them. The object is virtualized to actualize the affirmed schema. Therefore, to know is to unknow the singularity as such in order to know the known. What remains of the object is what the object is for the schema.

Logical intellectual work is a decentralization, a separation. The abstracting action of reason is a march toward the object but is, in fact, apparent. As the subject moves away from itself to affirm the object, it actually affirms its abstract noetic schemas, whether rational or intuitive, already intellectualized. Thus, reason predominantly works with judgments of existence, while affectivity, which through phronesis unifies subject and object because the affective schema assimilates its state, provokes the construction of value judgments. The intensive differences of pathic states are captured by the affective schemas that constitute them. Affectivity cannot avoid value judgments. It is its characteristic because all its assimilations involve breaks in indifference, therefore preference, preferring this and rejecting that, which always requires the presence of a value according to the degree of desirability of the pathic state. Reason can rationalize such states, as it actually does, transforming them into objects, which allows them to be assimilated into abstract schemas, and value judgments ultimately become judgments of existence because reason only captures their correspondence to the schema, not the affective state those states provoke (sympathetic or antipathetic).

Therefore, every operation of reasoning consists of a turning towards the object. It is a centrifugal action; therefore, it is a reversible operation, whereas affectivity does not know the same reversibility.

The construction of symbols has its affective root. Reason, when working with symbols, strips them of the irrational aspect, which is affective, as we have already seen.

Reason avoids as much as possible what specifically characterizes the symbol to prefer the abstract schema. All rational creation of symbols always bears its mark. And this is always the reason why any genuinely cerebralistic activity in art is doomed to failure. The symbol is born already inane, perishing, agonizing.

When studying the symbol, we can analyze it on various levels. Often such analysis is difficult because it hides; it is irrational and hardly assimilable to schemas.

A symbol primarily wants to refer to a symbolized object.

Let us start with an example: a bird flying against a storm as a symbol of freedom.

Primarily (primary symbol), we have the enunciation of the symbol, where consciousness is evident.

  1. Primary symbol: the conscious symbol.

But symbols always reveal, thanks to the irrationality they contain, something of the individual unconscious. Here we clearly have this “flying against the storm.” Freedom here is a struggle against opposition. The symbol reveals from the author’s subconscious a sense of freedom acquired through a struggle “against a powerful storm.” Thus, we have:

  1. Secondary symbol – symbol of the subconscious and, in some cases, of the unconscious. In this case, the primary symbol refers to a subconscious symbol, which is now symbolized but, in turn, a symbol of the human subconscious, as a bird flying as a symbol of freedom is universal, as humanity has always felt, whether consciously or not, that the bird is a symbol of the freedom it has always desired to obtain. So we have:

  2. Tertiary symbol – symbol of the collective subconscious. Here we can draw on Jung’s observations, which we will study later. We could also accept certain laws of Gestalt theory regarding forms that are brought to us from our ancestors, related to the collective subconscious.

In some cases, this collective subconscious can be properly ethnic, as there are symbols that refer to the collective subconscious of a people and can, in turn, symbolize a universal human unconscious.

And then we would have:

  1. Quaternary symbol – symbol of the human collective unconscious. Just as the impulse for freedom belongs not only to the collective subconscious of a people but to all of humanity, here we have a symbol of the human impulse to completely overcome all resistances and obstacles, which are demonic for man since we should not forget that the word “Satan” means the one who obstructs, the one who creates obstacles. This symbolized, in turn, refers to the great biological unconscious, to the yearning for vital expansion, for the extraversion of life. Therefore, there is a biological unconscious, and we have:

  2. Quinary symbol – symbol of the animal biological unconscious. And we say animal because the extraversion of life in animals has a greater impulse for activity than in plant life. But this symbolized, in turn, is a symbol of an impulse of extraversion of life in general, which allows us to seek a senary symbol, the fundamental expression of life, which manifests itself in two impulses: one of expansion and one of retraction, thus symbolizing the vector ad extra impulse. And then we have:

  3. Senary symbol – biological symbol. This symbolized, in turn, symbolizes the great universal vector of expansion, the centrifugal vector, which leads to a septenary symbol;

  4. Septenary symbol – cosmic expansion. This symbolized, in turn, refers to cosmic order, to the law of universal alternation, which allows the construction of another symbol, which is octonary, and we have:

  5. Octonary symbol – symbol of the law of alternation, the Yang and Yin of the Chinese, the Eros and Anteros of the Greeks, the Aspir and Espir of the Gnostics, which, as symbolized, is in turn a symbol of being that, as an activity, realizes the two great vectors of being, a theme that we can only study in other works, leading us to:

  6. Nonary symbol – symbol of Being.

And what is being, as symbolized, if not the great theological symbol of divinity, which makes it

  1. Decenary symbol – symbol of God.

If we start with a human symbol, we can find its reference even more remotely in these ten levels, but starting from a symbol that is universalized by humanity, we can also find these levels. The events that occur are always symbolic because events are always symbols of the universal laws that humanity, for better or worse, grasps. They are symbols of the law of alternation, symbols, ultimately, of the cosmic, with which religions construct their symbolism.

This is why symbolism is a science much more beneficial to the study of philosophy than expected, and we have every reason to include it in this field, giving it the role and dignity it deserves.

We can make some comments here. We observe the activity of in-depth psychologists. Freud, for example, considers only the primary, secondary, and tertiary symbols, that is, the conscious and unconscious. The primary symbol is interpreted as sublimated or masked by man. In Jung, this symbol is not only tertiary but also quaternary because, in addition to reaching the individual unconscious, it penetrates the collective unconscious, the archaic man that is latent and active within us.

Article 2: Contributions of modern psychology to symbolology

The depth psychology and the need to conduct a deeper analysis of the human psyche have led many modern psychologists to dedicate themselves to the study of symbols. They have observed that symbols are not only present in dreams but also in language and in the attitudes of artists, neurotics, and psychotics. This constant use of symbols has also been observed in children and particularly in the language of so-called primitive peoples. The accumulation of verified facts requires the construction of a set of rules based on observations in order to establish a connection in symbolism, which it surely has.

The constructions of formal logic and dialectics allow us to establish the formal order connection of concepts, just as mathematics establishes the connection of numbers. It was immediately understood that the use of symbols could not be a product of chance but rather concealed an intentional connection, the investigation of which is one of the demands placed on the modern mind.

While not diminishing the great contributions of the past, it is now necessary to pay closer attention to what depth psychologists have achieved in this century.

The works carried out in this field by Freud and his disciples are well-known. However, for the purpose of this work, we will only focus on those contributions that align with the opinions we have expressed throughout this treatise.

The works of Jung deserve particular attention. Nevertheless, we want to emphasize that the works of Riklin, Rank, Mader, and Abraham reveal that analogy predominates in the field of symbolism, as we have previously stated.

It is a postulate of modern psychology, as it was in the “ancient” psychology, that we must understand dream images symbolically. However, during the nineteenth century, this understanding had been “forgotten.” Nevertheless, even today, there is still some opposition from certain psychologists regarding the symbolic significance of dream images. The symbolic meaning of dream images can be considered, as Jung points out, a trivial truth.

Traditionally, we know about the references to dream interpreters in Egypt and Chaldea. The interpretation of dreams by Joseph and Daniel, as described in the Bible, as well as some unquestionably valuable works that have reached us, such as Artemidorus' “Oneirocritica” (The Interpretation of Dreams), deserve thorough study by Jung and his disciples.

Dreams reveal their roots in our soul, in a little-known activity called the subconscious. If we consider dreams only through their dream images, they appear contradictory and absurd. However, the symbolic interpretation to which they lend themselves allows for a clearer understanding and a fundamental connection. We find the same in poetic language, where the symbolic connection is more easily comprehended.

Symbolic language always predominates in the sacred texts of various religions.

In Jung’s studies on symbolism, there are some points of imprecision, especially when dealing with verbal signs, which we must distinguish from symbols, as we have done so far. However, this statement does not exclude the symbolic value present in language because, undeniably, even verbal signs such as human voices reflect, in the tonalities of their sounds, aspects that express deeper intentions, as can be observed in onomatopoeias, for example.

In our study of Caillet, we have seen how prevalent species-specific vocalizations are, such as growls, mooing, and hissing, in expressing conceptual content to which words refer.

In these cases, the word, which is a verbal sign and therefore a conceptual sign, acquires a symbolic value. It is this value that properly transforms the word into a symbol, which means that the word itself is not a symbol but only when clothed in this symbolic value.

Primitive language, and even that of high cultures different from our own, lacks the precision found in Greek language and even less so in the language used during the dominance of scholasticism. The great role played by scholasticism in clarifying ideas was mainly due to the clear precision of terms, which acquired a secure meaning, thereby avoiding the more analogical language found in cultures like the Hindu, where the rigorous construction of philosophical structures becomes much more difficult due to the lack of precise verbal terms. Apart from Western culture, other cultures reveal the predominance of the symbolic value of verbal terms.

It is interesting to note, as the great modern psychologists have already done, that in certain moments, we, Western individuals, return to this language rich in symbolic meanings, particularly during poetic and mystical raptures. This is evident in works of art and mystical philosophy found among us.

Whenever we wish to express our experiences, the heterogeneous range of our emotions, our raptures, fears, anxieties, and hopes, our language is predominantly symbolic. The symbols it expresses have a more universal content than is commonly believed. This is why we can feel and understand the poetry of other peoples and cultures, as well as their art, because the human element is present in all the diversities that enrich cultural events.

Thus, a certain parallel can be drawn between the child’s thinking and the symbolic thinking of primitive humans. If we excessively emphasize this aspect, we run the risk of virtualizing other aspects that differentiate them, leading some to consider our children as merely primitive and these primitive humans as intellectually delayed in our present days.

Even great anthropologists have fallen into this error, focusing only on similarities and virtualizing differences. They fail to understand that in children, the symbolic reference is completely hidden from their consciousness, which is not as pronounced in primitive humans who use symbols as the best means of communication because, undeniably, symbols are the best language for communicating what is rationally incommunicable. 22

When our emotional states are communicated through rational means, they become devoid of life because the experiential aspect is excluded. The cold rigidity surrounding them robs them of true communication. This is why affective language necessarily has to be symbolic because, otherwise, it would create an abyss between the parties wishing to communicate. Our experiences, like everything that is unique, cannot employ rational language, which belongs to the realm of generality. Therefore, they need to resort to affective language, which is symbolism—the best means of communication for what is communicable.

The poet, the artist, in a few words, can convey a state of the soul that a psychologist would need pages and pages of rational terms to describe, without certainly achieving their objective. Throughout history, religious language has always been poetic because it appeals to reason but always through the heart, where it often remains without being able to go further.

This “irrational” element that symbols convey has such deep roots in the human soul that, in decisive moments of history, it has been necessary to appeal to it in order to guide people or to defend a position.

It is a melancholic and meager ambition to desire to cut this root forever so that humans are assisted only by rational concepts and mere generalities. Just as a flower withers when plucked from its branch, humans cannot become mere thinking machines or be replaced by intellectual robots, as some naive but acosmically inclined modern cyberneticists desire. Such machines may, at best, remain in the “mathematical” field of extensive reason without the revelations of higher understanding.

Symbolic language has a much deeper root than nineteenth-century minds thought. Men of the “nineteenth-century” mindset, represented by Van de Leeuw in his book “La Religion dans son essence et ses manifestations,” reveal their ignorance of the profound aspects of symbolism, rituals, and all modes of expressing religious sentiments and thoughts. On page 76, Van de Leeuw states: “But humans freed themselves from it when, in the nineteenth century, they reached adulthood,” as if previous humanity consisted only of mentally weak individuals whose religious expressions were attributed to their weakness.

Van de Leeuw, a great anthropologist and tireless student of religion in various aspects, reveals himself to be unaware of the profound nature of symbolism, rituals, and all modes of expressing religious sentiments and thoughts.

We cannot help but reproduce these words from Jung’s book “Transformaciones y símbolos de la libido” (Transformations and Symbols of the Libido) (Spanish edition, page 45): "It would be a ridiculous and unjustifiable presumption to claim that we are more energetic and intelligent than our ancestors – our knowledge has increased, not our intelligence. That is why, faced with new ideas, we are just as shortsighted and incapable as the men of the most obscure ancient times.

Our knowledge has grown, but not our wisdom."

One of the fundamental causes of the misunderstanding of ancient thought, in all its aspects, lies in our symbolic incapacity. This is one of the main factors that precipitate the constant emptying of a deeper content of our life. And the crisis established in modern thought – is due to the fact that we do not clearly understand the symbolic significance of the work of the past, thereby reducing its profound content to the content we give to these symbols, that is, we consider them not as such, that is, as symbols, but rather as if they spoke, in and of themselves, what they are and not what they mean. As Hermes Trismegistus said, it is the word that unites two similarities, and since the symbol is a participant of what is participated, or symbolized, the word, which unifies them, cannot be taken as the substantive verb “to be,” but rather as the verb “to signify.” Therefore, when examining the cultural achievement of antiquity, we must always bear in mind that this was the concern: what does it mean? We should never consider it within our own schematics, because otherwise we will completely empty its psychologically true content.

In dreams, we reveal something of our archaic life, as Jung showed, beyond the individual archaic. Nietzsche said that, while sleeping or in dreams, we redo the entire task of primitive humanity, and that if the mode of reasoning of modern man, in waking life, is rational, we must, nevertheless, consider that there is no predominance of rationality, for in four-fifths of our life we are irrational, in the good sense of the word.

By examining dreams or meditating on them, Nietzsche concluded that this should be the mode of thinking of primitive men. Logical thinking, rigorous thinking with the nexus of cause and effect, was only conquered later, after a long and tremendous effort by man, stimulated by technique.

More or less this thought was later exposed by Freud.

Many other psychologists accompanied this consideration that archaic thinking is dreamlike, and that myth would be nothing more than a collective dream of the body, a kind of “fragment” of the outgrown childish psychic life of the people (Riklin cited by Jung).

Jung, commenting on these opinions, states: “Freud himself has clearly indicated to what extent unconscious motives are based on instinct, which, after all, is certainly an objective fact. Likewise, he recognized its archaic nature, at least in part. The unconscious foundations of dreams and fantasies are only seemingly childish reminiscences. In reality, they are forms of thought based on instincts, primitive or archaic, which, naturally, stand out more clearly in childhood than later on. But they are far from being childish or even pathological in themselves” (Op. Cit., p. 53 and 54).

Jung acknowledges that myths are related to the products of the unconscious and that adults, in processes of introversion, first encounter regressive infantile reminiscences “from the individual past”; and that if introversion and regression intensify, marks appear, at first vague and isolated, but soon increasingly clear and numerous, of an archaic spiritual state. It is evident that Freud predominantly interprets dream symbolism as referring to libido in an eminently sexual sense. It is easy to find in the symbols of various religions this reference, which would constitute a secondary symbol, that is, of the individual subconscious and, in a tertiary sense, of the collective human subconscious.

Thus, the referred symbol would be sexual. Jung, carrying forward his investigations, concluded, revealing a deep understanding of symbolism, that sexual references did not mark the end, but rather, that human beings use sexual symbols to refer to quaternary symbols, which properly refer to the cosmic.

Let us give an example: the fish, in its multiple significances, can symbolize the phallus and the penis. Any phallic form can symbolize the virile member of man. Freud would reach that point. But the power of the sun, symbol of divinity, the fecundating power, can be signified by the penis, which, in turn, would receive the symbol of the phallic form. By this means, we see that Jung goes beyond Freud and reaches the quaternary symbol, and even the quinary in some cases.

If we place ourselves within our historical-social schematics, whose moral bases, especially in philosophical matters, raise doubts or accuse indecency, then it seems to us that the Freudian thought would be more accurate, for in this case, our spirit would use symbolic language, coerced by the censorship of the superego, which is social, and would express itself through similarities, since it cannot directly address the symbolized. But the moral schematics of peoples from other cultures, who did not assign any devaluation to the genital parts of the human body, are different. Thus, taking advantage of the facts of their experience, they would use them to symbolize what referred to divinity, not out of immodesty, but, on the contrary, in a respectful reference, for in Greek, Egyptian, Hindu, etc., cultures, the parts of the body, like physiological functions, were not devalued, sometimes even being overvalued. Freud’s interpretation is within the Judeo-Christian schematics, while Jung seeks to establish a position beyond the limits that we have drawn in the West and, therefore, deeper and more respectful regarding the intentionality of religious myths, upon which we, based on the Judeo-Christian schematics, have placed the slanderous mark of doubt.

Commenting on Jung’s book, which reveals a God acting as creator and destroyer, he comments: “Who is this God? An idea that has imposed itself on humanity, in all the religions of the world, in all times, and always appears in analogous form: a power from beyond that does in us what it wants and that likewise creates and destroys, an image of what is necessary and inevitable in life. From the psychological point of view, the image of God is a complex of representations of an archetypal nature; it must therefore be considered as representing a certain quantity of energy, ‘libido,’ which appears projected.”

Naturally, Jung only intends to assert a psychological interpretation, and as he himself says, not a metaphysical view. “God” is a collective archetype, as he calls it. It not only appears in all superior forms of religion but also spontaneously in individual dreams. Defining the archetype, Jung says that it is an unconscious psychic structure in itself but has reality independent of the attitude of consciousness.

It is an animic existence, which, as such, should not be confused with the concept of a metaphysical God. In short, the existence of the archetype, for Jung, neither affirms nor denies a God. These precautions are well justified because he is a psychologist, not a metaphysician, and the idea of God, when studied psychologically, requires very different measures from those of someone who studies it metaphysically.

At this moment, and at this hour, we are interested in examining this point, which is the archetype of God. Subsequently, in the analyses we will make of various symbols, we will undertake a broader study of this archetype, whose psychological fundamentality is evident, but which an analysis of symbolism allows us to find the deepest roots of its meaning.

Continuing his analyses, Jung says: “It certainly seems that the paternal imago was the shaping factor of the main existing religions – in previous religions, the maternal imago as well – and what conditions the attributes of divinity. These are omnipotence, the terrible and violent father (the ‘Old Testament’) and the loving father (the ‘New Testament’). In certain pagan representations of divinity, the maternal stands out prominently, and furthermore, the animal, the theriomorphic, is highly developed” (op. cit. Page 81).

Thomas Aquinas, like all scholastics, constantly draws attention to the fact that we refer to divinity through concepts that constitute our schematics. God is always understood in all times, as Schmidt showed us in his comparative study of religions, as the supreme power, bridge, root, and support of all perfections.

Naturally, therefore, not having immediate knowledge of God, we have to refer to Him through our schematics, attributing to Him the known perfections but to a higher degree than those acquired through our experience.

The human being, as father and mother, is within our experience, and as they exert power, sovereignty, protection, love, etc., we utilize the contents of these schemes to refer to the supreme power, generous, energetic, and kind of God, using them as analogues of the perfections that divinity possesses to the highest degree.

God is not merely the projection of the father, as a superficial symbolic analysis, capturing only the secondary, could lead us to understand. God is an archetype that we symbolize by the father or the mother, by the analogies they present regarding the perfections of divinity.

The justification of this content falls to Theology, whose main object is divine matters. It is not the psychologist’s role at this point, unless he exceeds the limits of psychology itself, to give a purely psychological content to what can only be examined and discussed metaphysically. Jung is right, therefore, when he affirms that the paternal imago was the shaping (in this case, symbolic) factor of the divine archetype, and the caution of his “it certainly seems” is justified because he recognizes that, in the field of psychology, one cannot solve a problem that surpasses it.

And it is he who says (p. 86): “The divine figure is, above all, a psychic image, a complex of representations of an archetypal nature that faith identifies with the metaphysical being. Science is not competent to judge this acceptance. On the contrary, it must try to explain it without resorting to such a hypothesis.”

Jung understands it this way when on page 114 he says: "Undoubtedly, religious regression uses the parents' imago, but only as a symbol, that is, it clothes the archetype with the parents' imago, making evident the energy of warmth, fertility, procreative power, etc. In mysticism, the divinely contemplated interior is often just the sun or light, and little or almost nothing personified."

Likewise, man can appear as an archetype and symbolize divinity. “As we know, in the Catholic Church, this psychological possibility is an institution whose psychological effectiveness leaves no room for doubt. From this reference arises a community of an archetypal nature, which differs from all other communities in that its purpose or aim is not an immanent human advantage but a transcendent symbol whose nature corresponds to the peculiarity of the predominant archetype.”

A human community triggers a psychic intimacy that can reach excessively human degrees, reaching points that Christianity intended to avoid.

In ancient religions, there were very evident sexual manifestations, precisely because relationships of this kind were very natural. The intercourse between divinity and human beings did not have the meaning that our schematic could lend it, but rather that of a divine fertilization, through the immersion of divine semen in the creature. And in some cults, gods were replaced by human beings or a phallus, as a symbol of divinity.

These manifestations were taken to extremes, which Mithraism and Christianity combated with undeniable efficiency. Therefore, it is not surprising that sexual symbols are evident in primitive humans, and that in the dreams of Western man and in his symbolism, they appear with such evidence, although to a lesser extent than in other cultures.

Many today may consider religious manifestations as neurotic, but they forget that materialistic centuries have given us a cruel, barbaric, and mechanized humanity, whose fruits we are reaping.

Symbolism reveals to us that religions have a much deeper foundation than the superficial vision of 19th-century materialism could lightly suspect.

We are powerless to overcome animality, and as human beings, we cannot reach the highest point without turning our eyes to the transcendent.23

Jung states: “The symbol is not an allegory or a sign, but the image of a content that is mostly transcendent to consciousness. What still needs to be discovered is that these contents are real, that is, agents with which it is not only possible but also necessary to communicate” (ibid., p. 102).

Jung interprets the symbols of divinity as follows: “Psychologically, God is the name given to a complex of representations that gather around a very intense feeling; the affective tone is what truly characterizes it and activates the complex. The luminous and fiery attributes describe the intensity of the affective tone and are therefore expressions of the psychic energy that manifests as libido. When God, the sun, or fire are worshiped, it is directly the intensity or force that is worshiped, that is, the phenomenon of the psychic energy called libido. All force and, in general, all phenomenon, are forms of energy. Form is the image and mode of manifestation. It expresses two classes of things: first, the energy that acquires form within it, and second, the way in which energy appears. On the one hand, it can be affirmed that energy creates its own image, and on the other hand, the character of the environment compels energy to adopt a specific form. One person may derive the idea of God from the sun, while another, due to their attitude and temperament, may believe more in the causal efficacy of the environment; the latter will consider that it is the luminosity conditioned by the affective tone that determines the recognition of a divine meaning in the sun” (ibid., p. 110).

Thus, it can be seen that Jung understood the true path to the interpretation of the symbol and did not commit the common mistake of judging it by what it symbolizes, as those who presume that primitive peoples attribute to images or pieces of wood, stone, etc., the possession of the power they symbolize, as if it were entirely contained within them, when in reality they accept, at most, that they participate in that power.

Schmidt quotes a statement from an African black man who exclaimed: “How stupid these Europeans are! They think we worship idols as if they were the true god!”

In order to have a clear understanding of the sense of libido for Jung, we transcribe some very enlightening words: “If the term libido, introduced by Freud, by no means lacks a sexual connotation, an exclusive and unilaterally sexual definition of this concept must be rejected. Appetite and compulsion are properties of all instincts and automatisms. Just as it is not possible to take the sexual metaphors of language literally, the corresponding analogies in instinctual processes, symptoms, and dreams should also not be taken literally. The sexual theory of psychic automatisms is an unsustainable prejudice. The fact that it is not feasible to derive the totality of psychic phenomena from a single instinct prohibits a unilateral definition of libido. I employ this concept in that general sense bestowed upon it by classical language.”

The definition, in the classical sense, is appetite, like hunger and thirst, and Jung relies on passages from the work of St. Augustine to express the concept of this term: “Pleasure is preceded by a desire felt in the flesh as an appetite, like hunger and thirst” (quoted by Jung). It is in this sense, moreover, the etymological sense, that Jung employs this concept, which has the same functional importance in the psychic field as energy does in the field of physics.

Everything that proceeds from our sensibility, in the sense we explained in “Psychology” as a set of sensory-motor schemas, takes on a theriomorphic symbolism24. Courage and boldness are leonine, strong will is taurine, heat and potency are symbolized by the donkey, the horse, and also the bull, etc.

The theriomorphically symbolized libido is animal instinctiveness; therefore, in the Middle Ages, we find the Sphinx as a symbol of lust.

However, instinctiveness cannot be considered solely sexual, because sexual instinct is not the only one in man. Such theriomorphic symbols appear in all unconscious manifestations of libido but do not always express only the sexual, which must not be forgotten.

Furthermore, human libido is a symbol of cosmic energy. If we only give it the contents of our experiences, and often their figurative aspects, it would be symbolic superficiality to stop there. It is necessary to penetrate more deeply into the symbolic path to accomplish the mystical itinerary offered to initiates of higher degrees.

Regression can extend beyond childhood to the prenatal stage and even before (the being before being), and in this case, there are archetypal images without representation, but purely experiential. However, there is a possibility of representation in them, which we see emerging in religious myths and even in the construction of individual images. This origin is revealed through totemic symbolism, for example, because if the totem is symbolized in various ways, it is also a symbol of the furthest origin, the cosmic mother, etc.

The totem provides a starting point that is close, not the most remote because it symbolizes the farthest origin, the primordial one, of which all human beings have an archetypal image, which takes on the forms of historical and social experience; hence the variants presented by religions, which never fail to affirm the invariant of the perennial source from which all things come. This is why divinity often appears symbolized by a god, both male and female, a god who is both paternal and maternal, like the Egyptian goddess Neith, because divinity generates and gestates the creature, creates and sustains it, supports it, gives it being and form.

In divinity, there is thus a coincidentia oppositorum, for divinity places itself above the pairs of opposites. Hence the great significance of Krishna and Arjuna’s advice in the Bhagavad Gita: “But you, rise above the pairs of opposites!”

The language of Christ, like that of all supreme figures in religions, is a symbolic language. “He who has ears to hear, let him hear,” “he who has eyes to see,” these are warnings that the immediate data are in place of something else. Christ’s encounter with Nicodemus is quite expressive. Can someone who thinks only with the immediate and extrinsic data of facts truly grasp the kingdom of the spirit, which transcends what is merely external?

Without the symbolic, man hovers over the narrowest banality. It is a grave mistake for those who believe that what is captured only by the senses encompasses the whole truth. Those who look at the world and do not grasp the symbolic path indicated by things cannot see in them what transcends them; they cannot comprehend the deepest truths, nor can they attain freedom, remaining bound by the shackles of sensory facts.

Empirical knowledge, that which arises from purely sensory experience, does not exhaust understanding. Science has shown us that a worldview based solely on our senses, on common means of knowledge, is far from corresponding to the other reality of which it gradually gains mastery. And this new reality, like the one constructed through purely mathematical signs, is still far from being reality, and we already know that.

Man has means that surpass the common field of his experience. The symbolism cannot be properly studied if we disregard the theme and problems it presents. Because if religions have indeed neglected to develop a suitable apologetics for the times, it is due to the lack of greater apologists that the Catholic religion, for example, suffers. Not that the Catholic Church, in the realm of philosophy, has failed to occupy the forefront, which it does and maintains. But in truth, there is a divorce between scholastic thought and the exoteric justification of the Church.

A human community provokes a psychic intimacy that can reach excessively human degrees, reaching points that Christianity intended to avoid.

In ancient religions, there were very evident sexual manifestations, mainly because such relations were very natural. The coitus between divinity and human beings did not have the meaning that our schema could attribute to it, but rather that of a divine fertilization through the immersion of divine semen in the creature. And in some cults, gods were replaced by human beings or a phallus as a symbol of divinity.

These manifestations were taken to extremes, which Mithraism and Christianity fought against with undeniable efficiency. Therefore, it is not surprising that sexual symbols are evident in human archaic times and appear with such evidence in the dreams and symbolism of Western man, although to a lesser extent than in other cultures.

Many today may consider religious manifestations as neurotic, but they forget that materialistic centuries have given us a cruel, barbaric, and mechanized humanity, whose fruits we are reaping.

Symbolism reveals to us that religions have a much deeper foundation than the superficial view of 19th-century materialism could ever suspect.

We are powerless to overcome animality, and as human beings, we do not reach the highest point unless we have our eyes turned towards the transcendent.23

Jung affirms: “The symbol is not an allegory or a sign, but the image of a content that is largely transcendent to consciousness. What still needs to be discovered is that these contents are real, that is, agents with which it is not only possible to understand but even necessary to do so” (ib., p. 102).

Jung interprets the symbols of divinity as follows: “...psychologically, God is the name given to a complex of representations that cluster around a very intense feeling; the affective tonality is what truly characterizes it and activates the complex. The luminous and igneous attributes describe the intensity of the affective tonality and are consequently expressions of the psychic energy that manifests as libido. When one worships God, the sun, or fire, one worships directly intensity or force, that is, the phenomenon of the psychic energy of libido. All force and, in general, all phenomena are forms of energy. Form is image and mode of manifestation. It expresses two classes of things: firstly, the energy that acquires form in it, and secondly, the mode in which energy appears. On the one hand, it can be said that energy creates its own image, and on the other hand, that the character of the medium obliges energy to adopt a specific form. One person may derive the idea of God from the sun; another, on the contrary, may opine that it is the luminosity conditioned by affective tonality that determines the recognition of divine significance in the sun. The former, due to their attitude and temperament, believe more in the causal efficacy of the environment; the latter, in the spontaneity of the psychic experience” (ib., p. 110).

Thus, it can be seen that Jung understood the true path to the interpretation of the symbol and did not commit the common mistake of judging it by what it symbolizes, as is done by those who presume that primitive peoples attribute to images or pieces of wood, stone, etc., the possession of the power they symbolize, as if it were entirely within them, when in reality they accept, at most, that they participate in that power.

Schmidt quotes the words of an African black man who exclaimed: “How foolish these Europeans are. They think we worship idols as if they were the true God!”

In order to have a clear understanding of the meaning of libido, according to Jung, we transcribe some very enlightening words: “If the term libido, introduced by Freud, in no way lacks sexual connotations, an exclusive and unilaterally sexual definition of this concept should be rejected. Appetite and compulsion are properties of all instincts and automatisms. Just as it is not possible to take the sexual metaphors of language literally, the corresponding analogies in instinctive processes, symptoms, and dreams should also be treated in the same way. The sexual theory of psychic automatisms is an unsustainable prejudice. The fact that it is not feasible to derive the totality of psychic phenomena from a single instinct prohibits a unilateral definition of libido. I employ this concept in that general sense that classical language has bestowed upon it.”

The definition, in the classical sense, is appetite, like hunger, thirst, and Jung relies on passages from the works of St. Augustine to express the concept of this term. “Pleasure is preceded by a longing that is felt in the flesh as appetite, like hunger and thirst” (cited by Jung). It is in this sense, moreover, the etymological sense, that Jung employs this concept, which has in the psychic field for him the same functional importance that energy has in the field of physics.

Everything that proceeds from our sensibility, in the sense that we explained in “Psychology,” as a set of sensory-motor schemes, takes on a theriomorphic symbolism24. Courage and audacity are leonine, strong will is taurine, heat and potency are symbolized by the donkey, the horse, also the bull, and so on.

The theriomorphically symbolized libido is animal instinctivity; that is why, in the Middle Ages, we find the Sphinx as a symbol of lust.

However, it cannot be considered that instinctivity is solely sexual, because sexual instinct is not the only one in humans. Such theriomorphic symbols emerge in all unconscious manifestations of libido, but they do not always express only the sexual, which should not be forgotten.

Furthermore, human libido is a symbol of cosmic energy. If we attribute to it the contents of our experiences, and often their figurative representations, it would be symbolic superficiality to stop there. It is necessary to penetrate more deeply into the symbolic path to achieve the mystic journey, which is offered to initiates of higher degrees.

Regression can extend beyond childhood to the prenatal and even before (the being before being), and in that case, there are archetypal images without representation, purely experiential. However, there is a possibility of representation in them, which we see emerging in religious myths and even in the construction of individual images. This origin reveals itself through totemic symbolism, for example, because if the totem is symbolized in various ways, it is also a symbol of the origin of the most distant, the cosmic mother, etc.

The totem provides a starting point that is close, not the most remote, because it symbolizes the most distant, the primeval origin, from which all human beings have an archetypal image, which assumes the forms of historical and social experience. Hence the variants presented by religions, which never fail to affirm the invariant source from which all things come. That is why divinity often appears symbolized by a god, both masculine and feminine, a god who is both paternal and maternal, like the Egyptian goddess Neith, for divinity generates and gestates the creature, creates and sustains it, supports it, gives it being and form.

In divinity, there is thus a coincidentia oppositorum, as divinity transcends the pairs of opposites. Hence the great significance of the advice of Krishna and Arjuna in the Bhagavad-Gita: “But you, rise above the pairs of opposites!”

The language of Christ, like that of all supreme figures in religions, is a symbolic language. “He who has ears to hear, let him hear,” “he who has eyes to see, let him see” are warnings that the immediate data are standing in for something else. The passage of Christ with Nicodemus is quite expressive. Can someone who only thinks with the immediate and extrinsic data of facts capture the true kingdom of the spirit that transcends what is merely external?

Without the symbolic, man dwells in the narrowest banality. It is a grave error for those who believe that what is captured by the senses contains the whole truth. Whoever looks at the world and does not grasp the symbolic path that things point to does not see in things what transcends them; they cannot comprehend the deepest, nor can they achieve freedom, remaining bound by the shackles of sensory facts.

Empiricism, what appears to us in merely sensory experience, does not exhaust knowledge. Science has shown us that a worldview solely based on our senses, on the common means of knowledge, is far from corresponding to the other reality that it gradually grasps. And this new reality, like the one constructed through purely mathematical signs, is still far from being reality, and we already know this.

Man has means that surpass the common field of his experience. Proper study of symbolism is not possible if we overlook the themes and problems of prophecy, syndéresis, apophantic intuition, illumination, etc., which are theological topics but deeply related to symbolism.

As Jung demonstrates, symbolism becomes psychologically necessary for man to free him from the energetic burden of libido, leading him to the spiritual realm, allowing him to penetrate from what is within his sensory experience to what is transcendental.

Through the symbol, man communes with the transcendent, capable of unifying and uniting humanity. For example, humanity can only be experienced beyond ourselves through the symbolic path. The Christian community, in the face of the conditions of the Roman world, allowed for the connection between people who could love one another through God, through what is symbolized, referred to by symbols.

Our era, with its manifest inability to traverse the symbolic path, causes great anguish in being unable to not believe anymore. In truth, what torments us is not the destruction of our beliefs, for there is always an impulse to destroy what has been most loved, as revealed in the symbols of the death of God. What torments us, above all, is not being able to remain in disbelief. And that is why modern man seeks a symbol with which he can commune with his fellow human beings.

Jung recognizes this problem, and his words are eloquent: “Nowadays, it is as necessary as ever to seek a derivation for libido that departs from what is clearly rational and realistic. And not because rationality and realism have increased (precisely the opposite has happened), but because the guardians and custodians of symbolic truths, namely the religions, have lost their effectiveness in the face of science. Even intelligent people no longer understand what symbolic truth can serve, and the representatives of religions have neglected to develop an appropriate apologetics for the times. They say nothing [they do not go beyond] mere concretism of dogma, an ethics in itself, or a mere humanization of the figure of Christ, which has even been subjected to insufficient biographical essays” (ib., p. 239).

There is no doubt that libido truly needs a derivation. But it is necessary, regarding religions, to clarify the aspects they offer. If indeed religions have neglected to develop an appropriate apologetics for the times, it is due to a lack of prominent apologists, which is felt within the Catholic religion, for example. Not that the Catholic Church, in the realm of philosophy, has ceased to occupy a prominent position, which it does and maintains. But in truth, there is a disconnect between scholastic thought and the exoteric justification of the Church.

There is room here for a parenthesis.

With the exception of those who follow the Christian line, most philosophers do not consult the works of the scholastics. And it is enough to read books by certain modern authors, who do not belong to the ranks of the Church, to immediately see the caricatural view they draw of the works of the great scholastics.

Never has an era revealed greater ignorance of the past works than ours. We practically skip from the Greeks to the modern age, and the so-called medieval age is just a “great night,” darkness of ignorance, many say, where the human spirit fell into the blackest obscurity.

Such errors are found in the works of the moderns, and it can even be affirmed that it is a norm of lay thought, distanced from scholastic work.

The ethics expounded by the scholastics is not an “ethics in itself,” arbitrary. Jung certainly does not know the ethical work of Thomas Aquinas. In it, he would find extraordinary suggestions, as well as a foundation of ethics in the trans-immanence of human life, an autonomous foundation that is universal.

Jung continues: “At present, symbolic truth has been defenselessly sacrificed to the intervention of scientific thought inadequate to this object, and in the state in which it is today, it has demonstrated that it cannot compete with it. The exclusive invocation of faith is a helpless petition of principle, since it is precisely the patent implausibility of symbolic truth that prevents belief in it. Instead of conveniently insisting on faith, theologians should make a better effort – it seems to me – to see how such faith becomes possible. But, for this, it would be necessary to proceed with a new foundation of symbolic truth, a foundation that speaks not only to feeling but also to understanding. And this could only be achieved by reflecting on why humanity feels the need for implausible religious postulates, and what it means for the tangible and perceptible being of the world to be subordinated to a wholly different spiritual reality” (ib., p. 240).

Here, the little or almost no familiarity of Jung with the theological work of the Church is clearly evident. The work of Thomas Aquinas can be, and has been, accused of an excess of rational foundation. The Church accepts its mysteries, but there is, nevertheless, sufficient philosophical foundation in them to justify what may seem irrational. The works of Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Suárez, etc., with their differences, solidly cooperate in the foundation of the postulates of faith. It is not merely an appeal to sentiment, to the irrational. There is a solid argumentation that is not always easy to follow, and the excessive subtleties of scholastic thought are the products of lesser authors, not their greatest figures.25

There is no doubt that man suffers from a lack of symbolic content. And this is evident even in the works of someone like Freud, for example, who remains at the level of secondary symbols, occasionally reaching, very rarely, the tertiary symbol.

We no longer have a sense of the symbolic. Things speak only their external language. Except in art, in poetry especially, and more rarely in today’s music, we find a more intense apophantic intuition. As a general rule, the extrinsic says everything that can be grasped by the pseudonymously “objective” schematics of modern man.

Symbolics imposes itself, and it – and what we study in this work proves it – can offer us a means of trans-immanent penetration capable of constructing a nexus that connects philosophy, metaphysics, religion, and science, which is the goal of our work. In “General Theory of Tensions,” we will show that, starting from wherever we wish, it is possible to achieve a unity of epistemic knowledge without straying from the deepest roots of human knowledge.

It is not easy in this era for spontaneous faith to arise. We cannot, and no one of sound conscience will be able to doubt this historical truth. There were periods when belief was easy, as was the case during the “High Middle Ages.” Today, after the crisis brought about by the vices of our philosophizing, between science and philosophy, and even more so between these and religion, the paths of faith are different. And among these, the path of knowledge and symbolic speculation seems to us the most effective.

It is true that it is necessary to have “ears to hear and eyes to see,” because not all symbols are easily interpretable, and the polysignificance that is peculiar to them creates terrible obstacles.

But here – and this is one of our dearest thoughts – lies the best path. Let us note, moreover, that in the emergence of humanity, as a result of great disappointment, the impossibility of remaining in disbelief is evident, which has prevailed among the intellectual classes until now. But the despair of not being able to believe has shown us great manifestations in the past century and in this one, and the movements of uncontrolled searching in old cults, and some inconsistent new ones, are not a spectacle that should surprise us. The danger is that humanity “founders in the delirium of demoralization.”

Jung shows us that there are numerous neurotics today who are such simply because they do not know what ails them. And in turn, there is dissatisfaction among the normal, because they do not find a symbol that serves as a channel for libido.

Modern man forgets that he is still primitive, and it is in this archaic man that he must seek the true paths of the symbol. And we add, to complete Jung’s thesis, that it is on this path that he will also find the justification for his deepest experiences, that “virtual possession of perfection” that we studied in “Man in the Face of the Infinite,” which is for us the fundamental principle of human religiosity. We are capable of partaking in perfection, and we have it within us in a virtual presence, not actual to us, but sufficient for us to judge, evaluate, appreciate. To deny the primitive will only give us, as it has given us, great disappointments. And not understanding that we have within us a virtual measure of perfections, which allows us to understand that “this could be better” – and broad is the field of understanding this “this” – is the other fundamental error. We are not as alone as we think. There is within us a capacity to appreciate that transcends us, that at least takes us beyond our limits, for otherwise we would not even have self-awareness, for consciousness itself is already a perpetual demonstration that there is something within us that goes beyond us, something that is not merely the physical-chemical, the material, for we could never understand the material if we were only the material, for how dialectically could we distinguish without the dialectical necessity of what is contrary?

Our culture, considering itself “civilized,” considered itself distanced from barbarism because we lack the attitudes of barbarians when, in reality, if we do not have their courage, we have at least their destructiveness.

We need a robust faith. And Jung is right when he says that understanding symbols is “the only practicable path for all those to whom the charisma of faith has not been granted.”

Although symbols, from the perspective of modern “realism,” do not “constitute external truths,” they are nevertheless “psychologically true, as they have served and continue to serve as points that lead to all the great achievements of humanity.”

The metaphysical justification of the symbol does not fall within Jung’s purview, and he recognizes this. But it falls within the realm of philosophers, and this conviction is the best justification for this book.

Theme V. The symbol and its applications

Article 1: The Symbolics of Numbers

Aristotle defined number as multiplicity measured by unity. However, in this sense, it is evident that the Aristotelian concept is merely quantitative.

In “Theory of Knowledge,” we studied, albeit in broad strokes, the concept of number for the Pythagoreans, who undoubtedly were and still are the ones who studied it best.

In the Pythagorean sense of teleiotes degree, the degree of perfection for the initiated, number is not only the measure of quantity by unity, but it is also the form, the intrinsic proportionality of things, and can be understood, as it truly is, in various modalities.

At that time, we explained how Pythagoras conceived of number.

Summarizing what we wrote then, we can say the following about Pythagorean thought:

While the number commonly is nothing more than an abstract expression of quantity, they believed that within this conception was also that of Pythagoras.

But if Pythagoras also saw number in this way, he did not see it only in this way.

The word “number” comes from the Greek term “nomos,” which means rule, law, order, but Pythagoras used the word “arithmos” as a generic term for number.

Order is the relationship between a whole and its parts, and if we consider that where this relationship exists between the whole and the parts, there is a certain coherence, we see that the idea of order becomes enriched.

For Pythagoras, number is also this order, this coherence that gives the countenance of tension to a whole.

In later mathematics, in our era, we see that number is not only quantity but also relation and relation of relation, that is, function.

For Pythagoras, number always encompasses the numerous, because it requires a relation, and in every relation, there is a requirement of more than one. The One is not a number. The One is a whole. The absolute is the One. (One should not confuse this with the arithmetic “one”.)

“The unity is the opposition between the limit and the unlimited; the unity serves as a moment of tension and approximation of two kinds of reality.” It is a Pythagorean phrase.

We can form any conception about essence, but in all of them, one note is indispensable: in essence, there is always what is essential for something to be what it is.

For something to be what it is, it must have an order, or rather, a relationship of the parts with the whole, a certain coherence different from the others, so that it can be what it is and not what other things are.

Isn’t this order number? We can say: all things have their number (arithmos) or their order, their essence, which is why every concept is a number.

To truly grasp his thought, we need to strip ourselves of this superficial conception that number is merely what points to quantity. No, number points to us beyond quantity; it points to the qualitative, the relational, the modalities, values, and other categories.

Thus, arithmos (the number) encompasses quantity, relation, function, tension, law, order, and rule.

“All known things have a number because without it, nothing could be known or understood” (Philolaus, frag. 4).

If we consider that all the facts that constitute our number, and in this concept of fact, we must include all bodies and psychic facts, we see that they do not constitute a mere coherence, or, to use our language, static tensions, stagnant, inert, but they constitute dynamic tensions that process, that transition from one state to another, that take a direction.

Therefore, number is also process, rhythm, vector, flow.

The facts that constitute the world sometimes appear similar to each other, sometimes different, and they also show us that sometimes they complement each other without repeating, and sometimes they do not.

When two opposing facts confront each other and form a relationship, a concordance, an adjustment, as if they constituted something new, they harmonize.

Through music, we all have an experience of harmony.

Pythagoras saw harmony as the ideal point already revealed by nature itself, for all facts, including those of humans, harmony.

Harmony is the result of the adjustment of opposing aspects. Harmony can only occur where there are qualitative oppositions. Two equals do not harmonize; they only join. For harmony to occur, it is necessary for differences, distinctions to exist.

Our universe is composed of different units, and when they adjust to each other, they achieve harmony.

In aesthetics, he proposed that we should not only seek the harmony of symmetry but also the harmony of opposites in motion (chiasmus). It was through this great thought that Greek art, by realizing it, managed to create something new in the field of aesthetics, which effectively contributed to the emergence of the so-called “Greek miracle.”

Studying harmony, Pythagoras observed that it occurred when certain relations were obeyed. These relations are what we call the “golden ratio,” which plays an important role in all arts and their higher periods.

Thus, harmony is the ultimate ideal of the Pythagoreans, which consists of adjusting the diverse elements of nature.

Arithmos is also harmony.

Pythagoras found that certain combinations, following certain numbers and under certain circumstances, are more valuable than others.

In this way, numbers are also values because they reveal values. When realized, they possess a power capable of producing something beneficial or harmful.

Since values can be positive or negative, and since we realize and actualize powers through numbers, numbers are also magical. The word “magic” always entails the idea of an awakening power.

Supreme instruction, superior knowledge of humans and divine things (Mathesis) is an activity: mathema is the study, the knowledge, the acquired content, whose genitive mathematos gives us mathematika, which Pythagoreanly means the activity to attain the contents of superior positive thought because in the root Ma, we have thought and thesis as positive position.

The One (Hen), which is alone (Holos in Greek, alone), is the emanating source of everything. The arithmoi arkhai (from arkhé, supreme) are the supreme principles that come from the One. From the cooperation of these arithmoi arkhai (the nomoi, from nomos, law, rule, norm), known only to the initiated and which are the supreme powers, arises the organization of the Cosmos (which in Greek means universal order). (Note the influence of the arithmoi arkhai on the Platonic forms (eide), which are nothing more than symbols of the exoterically exposed Pythagorean arkhai by the author of the "Republic.")

The One, as the supreme source emanating the arithmoi arkhai, generated the One. The One is act, pure efficacy, absolute simplicity; therefore, it is pure act. Its activity (verbum) is of its own essence, but it represents a role because in activity, it is always itself (ipsum esse of the Scholastics), although it represents another role (persona = hypostasis), the role of activity. Yet, it is the same substance as the supreme One, to which it is united, fused by love, which unites the One to the One, forming the first Pythagorean triad, which, when studied carefully, differs little from the Christian Trinity as expounded by Thomas Aquinas.

The One generates the One, and the love that unites them forms the Pythagorean triad symbolized by the equilateral triangle.

In emanation (procession ad extra, since the previous one between the One and the One and love, the procession is ad intra), the Two, the Dyad, arises. Being assumes the extreme modes of being, which, being inverse, are identified in being. With the emergence of the two, which becomes heterogeneous, all numerical combinations (arithmetikai) are possible.26.

With the Dyad emerging, we have the positive and the opposition, active or passive (determinant and determinable), consequently the four:

analogy

extrinsic attribution

quantitative

intrinsic attribution

qualitative

 

 

proportionality

relation

 

function

This four is symbolized in the tetractys (the sacred decade), in turn symbolized in the arithmetic numbers (from logistics, as we will see next) 1, 2, 3, 4, whose sum forms the sacred 10, the universal ten-dimensional. The one is also a symbol of the point; two, of the surface; three, of the plane; and four, of the cube, and we have the geometric tetractys.

The arithmós is also a concept, as it is an arithmós of notes (skema by aphairesis, that is, schema by abstraction).

Then we have:

it is quantity (arithmós posoótes)

it is quality (arithmós timós)

it is relation (arithmós poiá skesin)

it is function (arithmós skesis)

it is law, order, rule (arithmós nómos)

it is process (arithmós proodos or kéthados), whose inverse movement is conversion (episthrophe), which accomplishes effective return (ánados). These arithmoi arise from the arithmoi arkhai, produced by the emanation of the One, and they return to the One after combining with other arithmoi.

Fluxions (arithmós khyma) by which Pythagoreans mathematized studies on emanations and flows of any kind (e.g., light).

The rhythm number (arithmós rythmós, periodic number); sets are numbers (arithmós plethos); and when they become tensions (arithmói tónoi).

Pythagoras also concerned himself with the conjunction of numbers that produce passing qualitative aspects, different from the constituent elements, like the percussion of different notes, forming a new qualitative aspect. Hence the symphonic numbers (arithmoi symphónikoi), which in turn form the numbers of harmony (harmonikói arithmói).

Proportions of all kinds led to the construction of the analogical number (analogikós artihtmós).

There were also other numbers belonging to Pythagorean mathematics.

We have the punctual growth numbers of the Pythagoreans, which are nothing more than Dedekind segments, the so-called dynamei symetroi (numbers commensurable in power), and others like the sympathetikoi arithmoi and antipathetikoi arithmoi, which are completely different from the episthemikos arithmós, the scientific number, the number of profane mathematics.

Only when the number is placed in this true Pythagorean sense can its symbolism be understood, which is indeed the subject of Arithmosophy, studying the meaningfulness of numbers. However, one must not forget that in various religious myths, the number, taken in this sense, may seem at first glance to have a value in itself when, in fact, as we will see through the analyses we will proceed to, the number, per se, is not a power but only points to power, referring to the so-called arithmoi arkhai, the archetypal numbers, whose study we will address in general terms, as their more exhaustive study does not properly belong to Symbolism, which only studies their meaningfulness.

Natural phenomena and their laws lead us to coefficients that are numbers, and all things in the cosmic world are arithmonomically realities that imitate certain numbers. Crystals, plants, human beings, stars, sounds, chemical spectra reveal numbers and a numerical law that is the same. Mathematics shows us how number is an extraordinary instrument for our knowledge, to the point that when we cannot reduce a phenomenon to numbers, we feel as if in a vacuum.

In the realm of mystical and esoteric knowledge, numbers are “bearers” of various values, such as favorability and unfavorability, whose deeper meaning the philosopher must investigate, not relying on a well-nineteenth-century prejudice to dismiss such affirmations simply because they cannot be assimilated into the mental “clichés” that merge into an abstractist view of science.

Here we will not be interested in studying arithmosophy as it appears in certain esoteric thoughts, nor arithmomancy, which attempts to predict future events through numbers. In the field of symbolism, we are solely interested in examining and analyzing the meaningfulness of numbers, always closely considering and largely relying on arithmology, the science of numbers, which seeks to study them in natural phenomena, which is the more appropriate field for science and philosophy. Nevertheless, we will not fail to consider certain arithmosophic and arithmomantic aspects, but only in the references they have, and directly, to symbols.

As Pascal showed, “there are common properties to all things, whose knowledge opens up to the mind the greatest wonders of Nature.” And it is these “common properties” that analogize the facts to each other and allow us to grasp the references to numbers, indicating the symbolism that emerges over time.

Leibnitz recognized that “mathematical language” could communicate to us many of nature’s secrets, and it has often been repeated in philosophy that mathematics is the language of God, and that divinity constructed the universe as a perfect mathematician, whose symbolization we see in many religious artistic manifestations, including Christianity.

Numbers have been studied since ancient times, and we find works and references among the Vedas, the Egyptians, the Chaldeans, the Babylonians, the Greeks, and the early Church Fathers.

In general, for the Pythagoreans, numbers were intermediate entities between the Supreme Being, the One, which is not a number, and the other beings, in which, being created and consequently finite, number is partly a negative limit, as it indicates the extent to which this being is what it is, as well as positively what it is, its quiddity, because the form, as morphê or eidos or skhema, in the Aristotelian sense, is number, which Aristotle partly understood.

The Aristotelian form corresponds to the Pythagorean form, which is the law of intrinsic proportionality of beings, for if this being is this and not that, it is so by having a certain intrinsic proportionality, which is its arithmós.

Saint Augustine emphasized that “the unintelligibility of numbers prevented the understanding of many figurative and mystical passages of the Scriptures.”

For a better understanding of the symbolic analyses we will undertake regarding numbers, let us precede this study with a brief placement of the theme within Pythagorean thought, comparing it to Platonic thought, which will greatly aid our understanding of Plato’s ideas, which are often misunderstood.

For genuine Pythagoreanism, we can consider the set of created beings according to two triads, the lower and upper, which offer us a clear view of reality.

If we start with sensible things, such as beings most directly in contact with our senses, it is easy to perceive from the outset that they are constituted of a geometric structure, revealed by their dimensions. These geometric structures can be reduced to mathematical numbers (arithmói matematikoi), as realized, for example, in algebra, algebraic geometry, etc. Thus, the lower triad is formed by:

  • sensible things
  • geometric structures
  • mathematical numbers,
  • which can be schematized by mathematics, as is actually done.

But the possibilities of schematic knowledge of things are by no means exhausted if we consider them only within this triad. And this becomes clear because things reveal an intrinsic proportionality, a scheme that makes them be what they are and not something else, in short: their form.

These forms (commonly called Platonic ideas) constitute the point of connection with the lower triad. The forms are no longer objects of sensible knowledge but of intellectual knowledge, as they require an activity of abstraction of the mind that separates the eidetic schema (eidos, morphê) of the thing from the phantasm (phántasma, what appears, emerges, is seen; phaos, light), that by which (quo) the thing is what it is and not something else, this intrinsic proportionality, these arthimói plethos (this set number proportion) that reveals an arithmós tonós (a tension, a coherence of its parts with the whole).

It does not matter the plane on which it is considered. And it is easy to understand: that painting is a portrait, a human figure, with harmonious colors. If seen under a microscope, it would represent only granules of diverse colors on the canvas, if it did not allow, in this state, the same overall view, the capture of its arithmós plethos, this would not prevent the viewer, in this set of coordinates, from seeing it as a portrait of such or such person. Its form in this relationship is this, and in another it will present a heterogeneity of form. If here we see it as a whole (plethos), in another position we would see it as a heterogeneity of other wholes, without excluding that, in this set of coordinates, it forms a coherent whole, a tension different from the tensions of the elements that compose it, which in turn can form other tensions, with heterogeneous elements, which in turn are tensions, etc.

This point, of paramount importance in our “General Theory of Tensions,” reveals to us that forms are the arithmós of tension, which in turn is a coherent scheme that implies the heterogeneous, for as tension (tonós), it is one and homogeneous, but heterogeneous in its parts that are transcended by the whole, which forms a unity qualitatively different from the component parts, which in the whole can only be considered quantitatively.

Thus, the form is not a sensible being, it is not a thing subsisting in itself, but it manifests in the thing, for the thing is by the form it has, that is, by the schematics that present the intrinsic proportionality of the parts.

Plato reached this point in his dialogues because this is the exoteric field of Pythagorean thought.

These forms are imitated by things, for although these are made of this or that (a wooden triangle or an iron one), triangularity, for example, is the scheme of the intrinsic proportions of this wooden triangle, which is a triangle not because it is made of wood, but because it has the proportionality of the angles that constitute its essence.

Thus, the eidetic schema of the triangle is the law of intrinsic proportionality of triangularity, imitated by this or that object.

But this or that object is not triangularity itself, but only triangles because they participate in triangularity.

Triangularity is not a subsisting being in itself, occupying a place. Triangularity does not happen here or there. It is and subsists in the being, in the order of being; moreover, in the infinite power of being. Triangularity, which sensible things imitate here or there by their intrinsic proportionality, belongs to the power of being. The triangularity that sensible things imitate is the power of being, which they imitate by their form.

Therefore, the noetic-eidetic schema that we construct in the mind is the enunciation of this law of proportionality of the triangle, in intentional terms, in noetic terms, according to our spirit and its capacity for assimilation and construction of schemes, which captures triangularity in the facts. Thus, for Platonism, as for Pythagoreanism, the eidetic schema of the thing belongs to the omnipotence of being, and therefore, it is ante rem. In the thing, we have the concrete schema by imitation (mimesis), in re, and in the human mind, we have the noetic-eidetic schema, that is, post rem.

Proper understanding of both Platonic and Pythagorean thought (for Plato is undoubtedly Pythagorean) is not possible unless we place them in the terms we have just set forth.

Therefore, with forms, we have the first element of the upper triad. But the forms reveal an ontological structure that corresponds, in the eidetic field, to the geometric structures in the field of the lower triad, that of sensible things.

The intrinsic proportionality of things, the eideitic arithmós, presents an ontological structure, while sensible things present an ontic, singular structure.

This ontological structure reveals the arithmoi arkhai, the archetypal numbers, immediately below the One, the Supreme Being, the Divinity, which is not a number because number belongs to multiplicity, to what is dual, to the dyad, as seen in the esoteric thought of Pythagoreanism, which is not appropriate to address here, for now.

Thus we would have the two triads, arranged as follows:

Upper Triad

Archetypal numbers

Geometric structures

Forms

Lower Triad

Sensible things

Ontological structures

Mathematical numbers

In the field of symbolism, therefore, we could say that sensible things participate in geometric structures, figures, mathematical numbers, forms, etc. In this way, things can symbolize the highest, even reaching the archetypal numbers, which we will try to outline, at least some of them, through the symbolic analyses that we have already done and will continue to do.

We can symbolize a sensible being through figures that are geometric structures. For example, a cubist expression of Napoleon. We would have an apparent inversion, as the participant would be symbolized by the participated. But it is not exactly like that. When we symbolize Napoleon with a cubist figure, there is an association, through the figure, of Napoleon reduced to a figurative scheme. This is not a complete symbolization but a copy, an imitation of its geometric structure. The symbol, as we have seen, includes more in its language, as it addresses the eidetic, for example, when we symbolize Napoleon with an eagle.

The symbol contains something imitative, for there is no assimilation without a corresponding accommodation, which implies imitation. But if imitation is a co-principle of the symbol, it is not in itself sufficient to indicate its essence, because otherwise we would have to include all imitations in the species of the symbol.

If the figurative can symbolize, as the cylindrical shape symbolizes the phallus, there is not really the revelation of the hidden, which is also characteristic of the symbol that points to it. This does not imply that the figurative cannot symbolize, but it only does so partially because it points to the figure of the immediate symbolized.

It symbolizes by pointing to the symbolized and by making present a note or notes of the same, not contained in the symbol, which are hidden because they belong to the symbolized. The symbol points, through the imitative, to the symbolized, but it does not only intend this, but what is of the symbolized, not contained in the symbol. The symbol is thus always less than the symbolized, taken hierarchically, because the symbol participates in something of the symbolized, which is the participated, and participates to a lesser degree in what the other has in fullness.

The symbol is a means of making present what is absent. Therefore, it is not only the imitative that must be considered but what is more in the symbolized.

There is equality, but it implies the presence of what differentiates them. The aesthetic pleasure that symbolism provokes in art is in this aspect. The artwork itself says what it is in its figurative aspect, but as it points beyond and offers the enjoyment of plenitude, it offers aesthetic pleasure that goes beyond mere sensory apprehension because otherwise, we would consider art only from the perspective of esthesis, the angle of the senses, without considering it from the angle of the spirit, which is important.

Aesthetic emotion is not only the immediate intuition of what it expresses internally but also the apophantic, therefore mystical, intuition that allows for an insight into the intrinsic nature of the artwork, which is experienced to different degrees according to the capacity of the viewer. This is why art can never be exclusively realistic in the abstractist sense that this term takes, as a copy of reality. In any case, that same reality speaks a symbolic language, and that is why realists are “impossible realists” because, whether they want to or not, they go beyond their conscious intentions. Thus, all art is, in its means of expression, realistic but symbolically transcendent, despite the artist’s intentionality, which allows for a symbolic interpretation that often contradicts the artist’s “initial intentions,” which do not fail to reveal the “secondary intentions” that he is not always capable of perceiving.

With the elements arranged so far, we are ready to delve into the symbolism of numbers.

Article 2: The Symbolics of Unity

No knowledge could be given if the object of that knowledge did not present itself as distinct from the rest, if it did not reveal itself as a unity. Even before our mind constructed the noetic-eidetic schema of unity, it was present not only in the facts that arose but also in the emergence of our schematics. And in them, inseparable from plurality, its opposite, because it would not be possible for an object of knowledge to arise that was not something, forming one and separated from the rest, from others. Therefore, the first experience of knowledge, including immediate, intuitive knowledge, already implies the presence of what will be separated, later, post rem, and that presents itself in re in things; unity is plurality.

To the henological position, which affirms the priority of unity, and to the pluralists, who affirm the priority of plurality, we could say that, in the gnoseological sphere, in the sphere of knowledge, we are faced with the contemporaneity of both, although in the ontological sphere we have to recognize that reason belongs to the first position, since the first being, on any level, must precede, as unity, plurality.

In “Ontology and Cosmology,” we saw why the concept of unity is a transcendental concept. Everything that is, is one, for “every realization of being brings with it unity, and every form of unity has its roots in being.”

There is no being without unity, just as there is no unity without being. And there are as many modalities of unity as there are of being. Being is primarily unity. Is it possible for a being to not be one? If it were not one, the being would annihilate itself.

And if we were to start, as Etchegoyen suggests, with the idea that unity is a pure abstraction, which is only understood in practice in opposition to the idea of plurality, and that it is the idea of plurality that led us to construct the idea of unity, we could respond to him that without unity, there would be no possibility of plurality, because plurality is a multiple of ones.

In the gnoseological sphere, immediate, intuitive knowledge implies the one-object of knowledge. If it is a totality of units that presents itself, without unity, there would not be sufficient objective positivity to allow knowledge. When one knows, one knows something. And that something is a unity, undoubtedly of a certain modality, but always unity, for otherwise it would reduce to nothing.

The subsequent construction of our noetic schemas has led some philosophers to subordinate the idea of unity, in its genesis, to that of plurality.27

As we have already said, and repeat, in terms of gnoseology, unity exists alongside plurality, but ontologically we are obliged to accept its priority, which has nothing to do with chronology, for where there is time, unity does not precede plurality, because there is contemporaneity between both.

The transcendental unity should not be confused with quantitative unity, for the former is of a metaphysical nature, while the latter is of a corporeal nature.

In Pythagorean language, the geometric structure of a being, considered ontically, reveals a quantitative unity, while the ontological structure, which is that of form, is a transcendental unity.

Quantitative unity cannot be predicated of non-corporeal beings. Being, as such, the Supreme Being, is not a quantitative unity but a transcendental unity. Its structure is not geometric.

In the henological position, the sequence of reasoning would be as follows: there is no plurality that does not ultimately merge into unity, for if we denied it completely, we would fall into nothingness. Therefore, plurality requires the priority of unity, which ontologically cannot be doubted.

In “Ontology and Cosmology,” we examined the various units according to the modalities of being, for everything that is, is a unity, and everything that has a unity, is. Unity itself does not have an essential definition, just as Being, as being, does not, but only a nominal one. It does not belong to a genus, nor can we predicate a specific difference of it. And what is perfect in itself is not definable because it has no finitude.

Number arises as the measure of plurality by unity. Therefore, there are as many numbers (types of numbers) as there are modalities of unity. If the modality is only quantitative, we have quantitative number (arithmós posootes of Pythagoras, which is the number of Logistikê, of calculation, the number of abstract arithmetic).

If unity is of a set, we have set number; if taken in its coherence, forming a homogeneous whole, we have it as tension (arithmós tonós), and so on, as vector, flux, functor, relation, analogy, etc. Therefore, the field of mathematics is not restricted only to quantitative abstractions, as is commonly thought, but to the field of the totality of being. Mathematics, in the Pythagorean sense, is therefore the mater science, in the hierarchical sense, for it can encompass unity in all its aspects. Mathesis is instruction, supreme knowledge, and philosophy, in the Pythagorean sense, is only the striving to attain it, the “love of knowledge.” And it is in this sense that the symbolization of Divinity should be understood, as the Great Architect of the Universe, or as the Great Mathematician, which appears in certain orders, whose true meaning is this. The Supreme Monad, which is God (because in Him being and knowing are identified), is supreme knowledge, absolute and total knowledge, superior mathesis, of which we participate gradually through the effort that unveils, that removes the veils of what is hidden, and penetrates into the profound knowledge of things. That is why the itinerarium mysticum, the symbolic path, is a way to attain it, for thanks to symbols, we are pointing out the perfections in which they participate particularly, and which, in the Supreme Being, are in plenitude. It is easy now to understand what the ten levels of the symbol we previously studied indicate.

Everything that distinguishes itself from another indicates an open crisis between it and the other.28

And it is in this distinguishing between what is and what is not it that we achieve the analytical apprehension of unity, because it becomes real for us thanks to a diacrisis, by making a separation. It is this difference that individualizes unity. And here it is necessary to establish the distinction between individuality, the unity of fact, which is revealed by this being, which as such, as an existing entity, is not another, and the ontological uniqueness given to it by form, by its concrete scheme, the haecceitas of the Scotists, which makes it unique. Thus, all beings, in their individuality, point to a unity of fact and an ontological unity if we adopt that line of thought, which would still give rise to many discussions. Ontological or metaphysical uniqueness is generally not found in the corporeal realm, for individuals here share the species in common. But the human being, by virtue of their personal character, acquires an irreducibility and non-substitutability, a uniqueness similar to that of Plato or Aristotle, to give an example. Since no individual, on the earthly plane, exhausts the fullness of their species, metaphysical uniqueness is not fully realized in them as it is in God, but we cannot fail to recognize that individuality participates in unity, and human beings even more so than the things that exist.

If we seek unity of fact, we will inevitably encounter duality, for what reveals unity is a separation from the other.

Units of fact always imply duality. In unity, the elements that form a whole are brought together with it. These units constitute a surpassing of mere aggregation because in them there is not only syn-crisis (bringing together) of separate elements but the emergence of a new cohesion of the whole, which allows for the apprehension of a new schema (a tension).

The synthesis, which is revealed here, points to unity when the whole constitutes an indivision, when it takes on the character of an individual, of non-division (aduaita, in Hinduism), with properties that do not belong to the constituent elements.

We are not dealing here with an abstraction of man, but with a reality, for tension is revealed when the whole is not merely the sum of its parts, as in an aggregative unity (unitas aggregationis), but is qualitatively different from them, which is properly tension. In tension, there is a trans-immanence, a surpassing of the constituent elements. And this is why even in pantheistic thoughts, we find transcendence in the Great Whole (Pan), for if it is the totality of its parts, it is qualitatively other.

The thought that God is the universal tension is found formulated in many pantheistic ideas, the critique of which does not belong here, for in this book, we are interested in showing the relationship between symbol and symbolized, which, in many respects, follows the sense of accepted theological thought.

To many, tension is a “mysterious power” that leads the aggregated elements to assume (assumptio) a qualitatively homogeneous individuality as such, although heterogeneous in terms of the constitution of the constituent elements. This “specificity” (for in the tensional whole, a new species emerges) is the subject of further studies, as we will do in the “General Theory of Tensions.”

It is from human experience that our spirit is also characterized by a natural tendency to gather parts into tensional wholes. The studies of Gestalt theory and all holistic tendencies (from holós in Greek, totality) have already provided us with sufficient elements to confirm this view. The facts of the world are contained in units, and we can have a unitary vision of the entire universe. “The entire universe is contained in Unity,” said Pascal, paraphrasing, in other words, the statement of the Greek alchemists, En to Pan, One is the Whole, the supreme unity of Being, the supreme unity outside of which nothing is. It does not suffer exogenous influences; it is the immutable and eternal unity of everything.

However, accepting these attributes of the Great Monad, as we have just described, provokes numerous aporias and opens the way to debates on problematic issues. An essentially infinite being cannot be the sum of finite beings. In any case, it must be absolutely transcendental. And here is the point of divergence between transcendentalists, such as the scholastics, and generally pantheists, such as certain hermeticists, “esoterics,” Hindus, etc.29

“From One comes Multiplicity, from Multiplicity comes One.” This is a Heraclitean thought that we find in the concept of Aspir and Espir of Being, in the Word of the supreme Hindu unity.

Every movement towards unity is towards the One, and thus the number 1 is a symbol of unity, the homogenized totality, and ultimately, the Supreme Divinity, the One.

In “The Imitation of Christ,” we find these words:

“He who finds everything in Unity, who relates everything to Unity, and who sees everything in Unity, can have a steadfast heart and remain at peace with God” (L-3). These are the same words as in the Bhagavad Gita: “He who sees me everywhere (One), and sees everything in me, can no longer lose me nor be lost to me.” To see the identity of the One everywhere is to be a perfect Yogi.

Everything that is, everything that exists in the temporal-spatial (chronotopic) world returns to the One, only to become something else once again.

The One is the Tau of the Chinese; it is Brahman, it is the Father, it is Kether, EnSoph, the “ancient of ancients.” The One is the supreme unity in all religions of all peoples. The most common symbol is that of a circle with a central point. We also see the Sun or its figure, indicating Unity. Among the Hebrews, it is symbolized by the first letter of the alphabet, Aleph.

The number 1 symbolizes individuality, whether microcosmic or macrocosmic. In everything that can be reduced to 1, we find unity.30

Article 3: Symbolism of 2 – the binary, the dyad

In the Bhagavad-Gita, Krishna warns the hesitant Arjuna, "But you, rise above the pairs of opposites!", for to surpass them is to attain the supreme Monad, the Great One. Between the Yes and the No, the spirit remains; between affirmation and negation. “In the Yes and in the No, all things are founded,” as expressed by the mystic Boehme31.

Jung, studying the genesis of these pairs of opposites that always arise in the fields of knowledge – even and odd, right and left, high and low, positive and negative, active and passive, essence and existence, attraction and repulsion, love and hate, maximum and minimum, male and female – observes that every psychological extreme “secretly contains its opposite,” or is somehow closely and essentially related to it. He exemplifies this with the doctrine of Yang and Yin in classical Chinese philosophy.

From this opposition, he continues, a peculiar dynamism arises. There is no sacred use that does not convert into its opposite. And the more extreme a position is, the more we can expect its enantiodromia, its conversion into the opposite. The holiest is the most troubled by the demon. In his analyses, he found examples of this enantiodromia in the field of linguistics, as well as in mythology within religions, such as the version of a god turning into a devil, like Lucifer, who brings light and then brings darkness.

Only in this way can we understand that certain religious rituals reach orgiastic levels, in which excesses lead to incest, ritual prostitution, and union with animals. We have examples of black masses, in which Christ is transformed into a diabolical symbol, devil’s communion, sacrilegious bread, and wine of evil. These rituals exist within the Christian world as a contrary opposition to the religion itself.

The number 2 is the symbol of duality, the binary, the Pythagorean Dyad. It is the symbol of antagonistic reciprocity, of antinomies, of opposites31.

In the thought of many religions, it is affirmed that all things come from the One, and to the One, all return. If we consider this maxim carefully, it can be translated as follows: “Everything that exists comes from Being, and to Being it returns.” In all thoughts of the world, the idea of return is always present.

What is here is in its substrate (the hypokeimenon, what is underneath, what sustains it) being and from being. If the position is, for example, that of the materialist, everything that is comes from matter, and when it ceases to be what it is (this or that), it still remains matter and of matter. Things transform, change, generate, and corrupt. But being continues. They always are of being (matter or non-matter, but always being).

There is an inevitable dualism in all monism. And if someone were to take a monadological, pluralistic position, admitting that the universe is nothing more than the result of figurative combinations of monads (like Democritus' atoms, for example), even in that thought, the disappearance of a being, whether this or that, would result in a return to the constituent elements, which, ceasing to form this or that figure, would still be what they were.

In a creationist idea, such as the Christian one, the Supreme Being, God, brings forth from Non-being creatures that are marked by limitation, for they are not everything they can be. The dualism of act and potency, clearly established in Aristotelianism, still affirms the number 2. The supreme homogeneity of Being, which is God, faces the heterogeneity of the creature and the opposites. Unity and Multiplicity inevitably arise to establish the binary.

In Pythagoreanism, without delving into its symbolism, the dyad is inevitable in the creature, which can always be seen diadically, for it is always two, act and potency, essence and existence, being and limitation, presence or absence, because it lacks something, etc. Thus, the dyad shines through in all philosophical thought, as it emerges in all religious thought and even in the simplest forms of presentation.

When we seek Unity, we always encounter Duality. Asserted individuality is a separation from what it is not (e.g., self and non-self). The antithesis inevitably presents itself. What becomes individualized distinguishes itself from the Other. In order for something to affirm itself, it must exclude. Formal Logic is a logic of exclusion, and an idea only becomes clear and distinct when it separates and distances itself from another idea that is contrary to it. Segregation is inevitable, as is dichotomy, separation, and open crisis. Every finite being, as unity, separates itself from others.

The number two is not a plural, but differentiation. That is why Pythagoras said that the One is not a number because the one, as such, is only itself. But when compared to another, it becomes numerical (from the Greek “nomos,” norm, rule).

The polarity of the binary emerges in all existence. Agent and patient, positive and negative, movement and stillness, magnetic poles, etc. All these polar dualities, specific or generic extremes, emerge in all thought.

In human beings, specifically speaking, male and female, the eternal feminine (the anima of Jung) and the eternal masculine (the animus), the two energetic orders of extensity and intensity, etc.

In the book of Genesis, creation is binary: the transition from chaos to cosmos and the transition from what was not to what is.

The Chinese Yin-Yang.

In Heracleitus' “polemos,” in Yang, active-passive, and in Yin, passive-active, of classical Chinese philosophy; in the words of Ecclesiastes: “Consider the works of the Most High; they are thus twofold and opposed to one another”; in the Zoroastrian dualism (from the Persian Zoroaster) of Ahura-Mazda and Ahriman (good and evil); the duality of linguistic expressions (divergence, difference, etc.); in the Purusha (active) and Prakriti (passive) of Hinduism; in the Love and Hate of Empedocles; in the two serpents of the caduceus of Hermes Trismegistus; in the divine pairs of Osiris-Isis of the Egyptians, and Baal-Astarte of the Mesopotamians, everywhere there is always a symbolism of the Dyad.

We see it symbolized in the Egyptian cross in the shape of a T, in the cross with the two lines, horizontal and vertical, of the Christians, which is also a symbol of the quaternary (4), in the King and Queen, in the Sun and Moon, in Darkness and Light.

That is why in the arithmosophy of the Gnostics, Kabbalists, Hermeticists, etc., the number 2 is not only a symbol of the dyad, the binary, opposites, opposition, antinomies, but also of diplomacy, the balance of opposites, cunning, bifrontism, etc.

In all of nature, we see the dominant presence of the law of alternation, which is revealed in the duality of vibration, in the duality of motion of any kind, in becoming. The number 2 is the symbol of becoming, the symbol of alternation, the symbol of the creature, the dualistic constitution of the universe. Factors may be multiple, but they can all be reduced to the dyad. Vectors may be diverse, but they can always be reduced to 2. That is why Pythagoras said that all our knowledge is dual, and we only know when the two appears, for without opposition, we could not know. Every creature can be seen as unity, but when we can know it diadically, we begin to know it better because we have already performed the analysis. After being known diadically, the knowledge of unity is richer, much richer, because it includes greater concreteness.

In God, in Christian theology, knowing is being. There is no dyadic here because knowledge is fusion, because everything is of God.

Our knowledge requires the unfolding of the known, subject and object. And in knowing, we have to separate, and when we know, we unknow because we do not grasp the object fusionally (totally). And what we know of the object is separated from what it is. Thus, it can be seen that the entire gnoseological process is always dyadic. And like it, everything in nature is dyadic because physics, chemistry, biology, and all sciences cannot help but recognize that in every operation, in every process, in everything that is finite, there is the dual, the alternation, the binary, the dyad. Therefore, the number 2 is the symbol of the fundamental dyad of the creature. Every creature, to assert itself, affirms the 2.

We find the symbolism of two in art, philosophy, science, and religions. Whenever humans want to express the dyadic, they resort to the number 2 as a symbol and to things that represent it (the twin towers of churches, double windows, etc.).

All things that are dual participate in the dyad; therefore, everything that numerically is two is a symbol of the supreme Dyad, which is revealed in all human thought and in all eras.

Everything is and can be considered dyadically because the dyad is fundamental to the operation of our spirit. We cannot comprehend the world without the number 2, for we would fall into insoluble aporias.

But the number 2 demands the number 3 because from the opposition of opposites, not only synthesis arises (thesis-antithesis-synthesis), but also the result of opposition, relation, and consequently, the series that emerges from it, etc., as we will see when addressing the symbolism of 3.

Article 4: The symbolism of 3. The triad. The ternary. The Trinity.

Once the dyad is established within unity, the antinomic or opposing elements are reconciled within unity. Accepting pure duality would lead to many aporias, as already studied in our books, and which have been the insurmountable stumbling block of all philosophical attempts to establish dualism.

Heraclitus' polemos (strife) requires a point of encounter, and for the opposites to be opposites, they need a point of univocity. There is a unifying trait that identifies them, and this trait of unity is something in which both participate, either through participation of being (essendi) or mere attribution (per attribuitionem). In any case, the ternary arises in the face of duality, because the opposites cannot be pure opposites, as they would otherwise negate (and in that case, negation would be exclusive) the very opposition itself.

Furthermore, the “battle” fought between the opposites produces something, a third entity, which is the result arising from the encounter of the contraries. Additionally, the ternary can be considered the unity of opposites or the harmonization of opposites.

All arithmologists consider differentiation as binary and organization as ternary.

Every being is one in its unity, two in the polarity of opposites, and three in its process, through the relationship of opposites. The Pythagoreans said that all things can be seen as 1 in their unity, as 2 in their opposites (opposition, after universal substance, being the second category of the Pythagoreans), and as three in the relationships formed among the opposites (relationship being the third category of the Pythagoreans).

The ternary aspect of finite things (lower ternary) can also be seen as principle (beginning), middle, and end (as final term), as the finite arises, endures to a greater or lesser extent, and perishes. In a Pythagorean sense, the lower ternary is given, in relation to sensible things, by 1) sensible things in their individual corporeality, 2) as geometric structures, and 3) as reducible to mathematical numbers.

All sensible (corporeal) things are bodies that occupy a specific place and occur in a specific time, and they can be understood in their geometric structure and, in turn, algebraically reduced to mathematical numbers. This, in summary, would be the lower triad of beings.

The upper triad is formed by 1) forms (corresponding to Plato’s ideas) or arithmós eidetikós, arithmoi corresponding to Aristotle’s eide, and species of the scholastics; 2) ontological structures, the arithmós formed by forms, because the forms of sensible things, intellectually comprehensible in Platonic thought, are eidola (diminutive of eidos), little forms. The ontological structures are formed by forms that are hierarchically superior to the little forms (eidola), the arithmoi arkhai, the archetypal numbers.

These two triads of Pythagoras, along with the upper triad of divinity, of the One, form the nine, the supreme novenary, which, taken as unity, is the great 10, the Supreme Decad, the Supreme Unity, the One (as Whole, Everything, and Unique)32.

The number 3 is consequently the symbol of relationship, and we know that in theology there are relationships between God the Father, as will, God the Son, as Intellect, and God the Holy Spirit, as Love, the infinite unifying power of Being. Other interpretations of the Trinity can be formulated, but in the number 3, there is always a sense of the relationship of parts or elements (as in the Christian Trinity).

The number 3 is also the symbol of the intermediary, the mediator. Between antitheses, there is always a point of unification, a mediating factor. The great mediator between divinity and humanity, for example, is symbolized through Christ, who is the great mediator.

The number 3 is the symbol of dynamism because if 2 can bring balance, three will be the dynamic rupture of that balance, without destroying the dyad, the antinomy, but rather expressing, through interaction and the relationships that form, the modifications that one undergoes due to the action of the other and vice versa, and finally the difference with which it enters into the new relationship, due to the influence already suffered through the action of the other, which, in turn, is already different, thus explaining the dynamic becoming that the number 2 only establishes as a foundation and the number 3 captures as a process in its development.

Therefore, the number 3 is the symbol of relationship, as there is only a relationship when there are two terms that are juxtaposed. The relationship implies the relata, which can be diadically considered as opposites, as expressed in Pythagoreanism.

But for a relationship to arise, an identifying point is essential, which is provided by unity or the mediator, the intermediary.

Pitagoras said that being (referring to finite being) is the relationship between act and potency, between determination and determinability, between form and matter, between finite and infinite, because the finite is related to the infinite by a relation of dependence of the former on the latter, but not vice versa. However, this infinite unifies the opposing extremes or antinomies because finite beings are not merely products of aggregation, according to Pythagoreanism, but an identification that transcends them (Chaignet, “Pythagore et la philosophie pythagoricienne”, p. 267).

In order for something to oppose another in an antithesis and be a contrary, it must belong to the same genus or species, or if substantially relatednesses belong to different genera, they will only oppose each other diacritically in logic, included in a greater genus.

There is no contrary opposition between a snake and a tree, but the lighter green and the darker green of either allow them to be distinguished, in greenness, as contraries of green, although not extreme. Between white and black, there is a contrary opposition in terms of intensity of luminosity. Between red and yellow, there is a scalar contrariety within the category of color.

Here, we come to an important point of gnoseology known and examined by the ancient Hermetists, especially the Pythagoreans of the teleiôtes degree. There is no knowledge (referring to human knowledge) only with the presence of accidental differences (qualitative, quantitative, relational, modal, etc).

These differences would not be compared without the presence of a middle term of comparison.

We only notice differences because there are differences relative to something that ideally exists in the gnoseological act. And that something is our noetic schema of the species or genus of what we distinguish, of what opposes.

In this sense, as the Pythagoreans and the symbolism of all religions state, there is no knowledge without the number 3, knowledge requires the ternary, and that is why 3 is the symbol of knowledge.

How can polarity be established without a point of reference? And this point of reference is what identifies the extremes, identified in the species or the genus.

The symbolism of the ternary does not end there. Chronologically, the present opposes the past, but they are mediated by the now, which identifies them.

In living beings, time is seen in a ternary manner: youth, maturity, and old age; or beginning, middle, and end.

Before the opposing contraries, there arises a relation of harmony, order, and even law. It is by comparing the facts of physics in their contrary oppositions that scientists have grasped the laws, and the same observation applies to other sectors of human knowledge. Therefore, three is the symbol of law, of the dynamic equilibrium symbolized by the physical balance.

From relations of opposition, new modes arise, constituting a series. Hence, three is the symbol of progression and process, as we have already studied.

This symbol is universal. We find it in all cultures. In Chinese culture, for example, we have the triad of Lau-Tzu: Yang, the predominantly active principle, and Yin, the predominantly passive principle, which are opposing aspects of unity, which is the Tau. The harmony between the two forms the pure triad, san-tsing, which is expressed by three sounds: Y (the absolute unity), Hi (universal existence), and Uei (individual existence). Combs compares these three letters, Y, Hi, Uei, with the first three letters of the Jewish tetragrammaton Yod-hé-vau, which, combined with the repetition of he, gives Jehovah (he-yod-he-vau). In Greek, there is the mystical expression “evohé,” used by the Romans to acclaim Bacchus, and finally, in decline, Momo.

In the “Tau-te-king,” Lau-Tzu says: “The first engendered the second; the two produced the third, and the three made all things. That which the spirit perceives, and the eyes cannot see, is called Y, the absolute unity, the central point; that which the heart understands, and the ear cannot hear, is called Hi, universal existence; that which the soul feels, and the hand cannot touch, is called Uei, individual existence. Do not seek to penetrate the depths of this trinity, for its incomprehensibility comes from its unity.”

“And this unity is Tau, which is truth, life, its own rule, and its own model.”

“It is so exalted that we cannot reach it, so deep that we cannot fathom it, so great that it contains the entire universe. When we look from above, we see that it has no beginning; when we follow its productions, we see that they have no end.”

We find the triad in Shinto religion in Japan. In Egypt, mainly in Osiris, Isis, and Horus, where Horus is the son, the product of the opposition between the masculine Osiris, the active principle, and the feminine Isis, the passive principle, forming Horus, the Synolon in the Aristotelian sense, that is, the determined existing.

We find the triad in India with Agni, Indra, and Soma, and later in the trimurti Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu, exoterically understood as three aspects of Brahman, but esoterically, they represent three aspects of the Supreme Being; Sati, Shit, and Anandra, meaning existence, spirit, and life. We find it in Chaldea with Oanes, Bim, and Bel. In Phoenician culture with Baal, Astarte, and Belkarte; in Persian culture with Ormuzd, Ahriman, and Mithra. In Scandinavian religion with Odin, Freya, and Thor. In naturalistic religions symbolized by the triad of the Sun, Moon, and Earth.

Thus, the number 3 is the symbol of the divine trinity in all the cultured religions of humanity.

We also find it among the Greeks, as well as among philosophers. In Christianity, we find it in the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, with various interpretations, but all accepting the Son as begotten and the Holy Spirit as the Love between them. Thus, Power comes from the Father, Intellect is the Son, and Life is the Holy Spirit.

Hence, the trinity of Saint John: Vita, Verbum, and Lux, symbols: the first representing action, Verbum representing the act, and Lux representing intellectual or volitional nature.

We will not transcribe the various ways of interpreting the Christian Trinity, but we must always understand it as three persons, that is, as three supreme roles representing divinity, in their processions ad intra, that is, immanent to divinity itself, as Act, Intellect, and Love. Act as principle, Intellect as choice, and Love as the absolute unifying power of being, which identifies the persons that coincide in the same being and in the same absolute simplicity.

Our crisis knowledge, which requires clearly delineated oppositions, because we possess schemes that, when separated, we cannot capture in their homogeneity, explains the mystery attributed to the Trinity, which is an object of speculation and not of solution, for only in a beatific state could we truly understand it.

This is the thought of the Church, which does not prevent philosophers from seeking to explain it, although the Church establishes that any explanation may be better than another, but never exhaustive of the Truth, whose total comprehension requires an infinite intellect, which we do not possess.

In the various classifications of psychology, we find the presence of the three, the dispositions of our functions and faculties, of the souls: animal, vital, intellectual, or others such as sensibility, intellectuality, will; etc.

Man can be seen triadically as sensibility, intellectuality, and affectivity, that is, the sensory-motor, thought, and heart. This is the triadic division of the Quechua Indians from Bolivia and Argentina, which we presented in the “Psychology” book.[^1]

The ternary is symbolized in different ways. The most universal symbol is the triangle. We find the triangle in China to symbolize the Tau; in Egypt, in the pyramids, which in turn are three, like those of Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure; in the Jews, with the symbol of Jehovah. And also in Christian churches, in Freemasonry, among Hindus, etc.

Everything that is three, by being three, participates in the supreme triad; therefore, in all peoples, in all eras, we find the three as a symbol of the Supreme, of Divinity.

Following the provisions we made regarding symbolic plans, the three, as a primary, secondary, etc., symbol, until reaching the decade, reflects the entire universal symbolism that the three points to, because in all plans we always have the ternary present. When we make this examination, we verify that hierarchically all universal plans proceed through connections from ternary to ternary. The supreme, divine trinity; just below, the trinity of creation, the opposites, and what arises from this opposition, the relation; the ontological and the ontic ternary that hierarchically derive from it, up to the ternary of the creature, taken individually. That is why we find triangular decorations in art, where the vertex of the triangle penetrates the base of the upper triangle, intertwining ternaries linked to each other, which symbolizes order and, consequently, universal law.

In all churches, temples, and even in profane constructions, we find symbols of the ternary, intentionally or not, which favor us, with the aid of symbolic dialectics, to carry out the analysis of a cultural work on its various planes, that is, from the closest signifiability to the most remote.

In the Masonic triad, apprentice, fellow, master, that is, work, study, wisdom, we see the same triad of the initiatory orders, as in Pythagoreanism: paraskeiê (preparation, learning), cathartysis (from cátharsis, purification, study, knowledge), and finally, teleiôtes (from teleion, end, purpose, knowledge of causes, knowing).

We find the three not only in this initiatory symbolization but also as a symbol of a higher initiation, a higher degree of penetration into the mystical, the occult, the unknown, the silent, the feared, as we see in all religious myths in the three days, where the divinized figure penetrates into darkness to finally resurface, as in the myths of Buddha, Krishna, Osiris, Demeter, Dionysus, Christ, etc.

We would have, therefore, two initiatory triads: the first in the field of knowledge, and the second in the realm of mystery, the sum of both giving six, the symbol of harmony that we will study later, which is also symbolized by the two triangles forming the six-pointed star, which we will address in due course.

Symbols of 3 include the trident, the letter G (gamma of the Greeks, the Gimel of the Hebrews). The Trident, along with the lotus flower, symbolize the initiate in the mysteries.[^2]

Article 5: The quaternary – the number 4

When examining vibrations, it is easily verified that alternation, which is dyadic, only presents clear succession when there is repetition of the dyad, thus when it presents itself in a quaternary manner. Thus, the high curve and the low curve, when repeated, give the sense of succession, of prolongation.

Furthermore, the view of the globe allows for the establishment of the four cardinal points, the four winds so distinct in each direction, as well as the four seasons, which are clearly different in temperate climates.

The examination of space leads to the establishment of quaternary directions, the simplest with which space can be divided, such as up and down, right and left. By observing the states of matter, man was able to reduce them to four elemental states: solid, liquid, gaseous, and fluid, whose combinations would yield the other known states. In examining climate, man perceived that it is distributed quaternarily: hot, dry, cold, and humid, whose combinations would yield the heterogeneity of the known climates.

In examining ethnologically the constitution of human races, it was found that, according to the cardinal points, races were also four: the white in the north, the black in the south, the yellow in the east, and the red in the west. In examining the functioning of nature, it was observed that there were four characteristic functions: assimilation, which occurs even in the plant kingdom; animal catabolism, which reveals different characteristics from the vegetal; generation; and finally, the constitution of the nervous system, as a different functioning from the others.

Man, for example, is mineral, is vegetal, is animal, and is rational. In the division of nature, it was proven that it could be reduced to four kingdoms: animal, vegetable, mineral, and human.

If we look at the works of the ancient Ionians and go further, to the thought of Egyptian, Hindu, and Japanese cultures, we always find the affirmation that four are the fundamental elements, from whose combinations all others arise: earth, water, air, and fire, which correspond to the four states of nature. Furthermore, man also verified that the four states of nature do not arbitrarily follow one another, since one does not go from the solid state to the gaseous state without the intermediate liquid state, just as in the realm of seasons, summer does not pass into winter without the intercalation of autumn. We also find in modern chemistry a reproduction of these four states, the four primordial elements, such as hydrogen, which corresponds to water; oxygen, which corresponds to fire; nitrogen, which corresponds to air; and carbon, which corresponds to earth.

The tetragram curve

These four elements are the main ones of each of these states of matter, or at least the foundations, and we see in religious myths gnomes corresponding to earth, undines corresponding to water, sylphs corresponding to air, and salamanders corresponding to fire.

Everywhere, the same symbolism of the quaternary can be found, even when man seeks to classify characters or rather temperaments, as in the Hippocratic conception. The lymphatic corresponds to water, the sanguine corresponds to air, the bilious corresponds to fire, and the nervous corresponds to earth.

Also in philosophy, we always find the presence of the quaternary. When studying causes, Aristotle reduced them to four fundamentals: efficient cause, formal cause, material cause, and final cause. When Jung classified characters into two, introverted and extraverted, shortly thereafter he had to establish four functions, and later subdivide the introverted into active and passive, and likewise the extraverted, classifying characters in a quaternary manner.

There were four rules of alchemy, four scales of nature, four ages of man, four periods of man, like the periods of the day.

The Pythagoreans considered four to be the sacred numbers, the tetractys, for divinity can also be seen quaternarily, as we will see later on. The tetractys is symbolized by the first four digits, 1+2+3+4=10, whose sum is the great decade, the supreme unity. These four numbers can refer, in arithmology, to the point (1), line (2), surface (3), and cube (4), but for the Pythagoreans, this symbolism is only a degree of paraskeiê, for in higher degrees, it symbolizes the quaternary taken in the deepest sense, beyond the lower triad, which we have already had the opportunity to examine.

Examining nature and its evolutionary cycles, we will see that they can always be reduced to four.

The quaternary is the number of time and temporal things. Thus, it is the symbol of corporeal things, the number of the cosmic universe.

In all religions of the world, it is employed as a symbol of nature, and a philosophy or a religious thought that confines itself only to the field of the quaternary would be merely a naturalistic philosophy or religion.

Among the initiates, the quaternary is spoken of when referring to the universe of revolving cycles.

And even in the field of History and Sociology, there are not few scholars who are forced to establish this number when they wish to study the phases of history, such as Spengler, who divides cultural cycles into four periods, for it is impossible to reduce a cycle to less than four if one desires to have fundamental knowledge.

The circumference, cut in cross by the diameters (horizontal and perpendicular), reveals the four immersed in the circumference. And here we have a symbolic vision of unity, the circumference divided into its four parts. It is a pantheistic, naturalistic, materialistic, etc. symbolism. However, if it is that of a square included in the circumference, we will have a panentheistic vision, that is, everything (pan) is in God (en theos).

The quaternary is symbolized by the square, as we still find it in the tetrahedron. The swastika is a symbol of the quaternary, but its tips, the vertical and horizontal segments, represent the expansion and dynamism of the quaternary. Among Hindus, we find the quaternary symbolized by the lotus with four petals.

One of the most expressive symbols of the quaternary is the base of the pyramids of Egypt, with each side pointing to one of the cardinal points. In its base, the pyramid is quaternary. But as the lines converge to a central apex, it is also a symbol of the quinary. In truth, the pyramids are symbols of all numbers, and they refer to the arithmoi arkhai (archetypal numbers), which are 9, in which we have already studied unity, opposition, and relation, corresponding to 1, 2, and 3, and now to 4, which is the symbol of reciprocity, of basic evolution.

The Swastika

Applying our dialectic, which has been outlined thus far, it is easy to understand the symbolic use of the quaternary, but before that, let us examine the meaning of the tetractys of the Pythagoreans.

The unity points to the supreme Monad, the Supreme Being, which is the ONE. Two indicates the opposition of the two opposing, contrary positivities, the two vectors of all creation, the lesser Dyad. The relationships that arise from the dyad give rise to the series.

Every finite being is composed of an active, determining being, which is its act, and a passive, determinable being, which is its potentiality. If what is an act already is, what is in potentiality is not yet. Consequently, the finite being, in act, is not everything it can be. It lacks something, it is in need of something, it is deprived of something. Therefore, in addition to act and potentiality, there is also privation. When potentiality is actualized, non-being becomes being. From the dyad of being and non-being, in actualization, we have non-being that now is. In this case, the synthesis that forms between the antitheses being and non-being is not only triadic but quaternary, because the synthesis affirms what was before and the previous non-being, whose possibility could be actualized. In the synthesis, there is still the affirmation of the actualization of the possibility, the negation of the previous being, and the negation of non-being, and the binary negation of the previous being and the previous non-being, which are affirmed and negated in the synthesis.

1st phase: 1) Being; 2) Non-being.

When non-being receives the new “form,” that is, when it actualizes a possibility, we have:

2nd phase: 3) Being that was, is no longer as it was, to be now as it is; 4) Non-being, which was not, is now.

Non-being, when receiving the form, negates itself as non-being to affirm itself as being. But as being now, it does not fail to affirm the possibility it had before, because the actualization that occurs now is also an affirmation of the previous possibility.

This is one way to understand the quaternary as proposed within a Hegelian dialectic, reconciled with esoteric thought.

In the exoteric thought of religions and myths, the quaternary refers to the aspect of cosmic order in its cycles. But the cosmos is, in turn, a symbol of the Great Monad, of the Supreme Being, as we have already seen.

We find the quaternary in all classifications of nature, in all spheres of human knowledge. We also find it in the cosmos. For the Pythagoreans, the quaternary is the tetractys, the origin of all sensible, corporeal things, which can be seen in ten angles or ways: unitary, dyadic, triadic, and quaternary.

The Pythagorean tetrad must be understood in two ways: the supreme tetractys and the lower tetrad. The first refers to the divine triad and creation, which would compose the Whole and Everything. The second tetrad refers to the quaternary.

From opposition (two) arises relation (three). The relation between the opposites gives rise to serial and evolutionary being, the quaternary being, the cosmic being that occurs in temporality. Every corporeal being is triadically composed because it is the product of a relationship. But such a relationship is not static but dynamic, and the corporeal being therefore occurs in time, where it develops its active and passive processions, which characterize its unfolding, its evolution.

Thus, four symbolizes the reciprocity of the active-passive and the passive-active, which occurs in all cosmic order.

Four is thus the symbol of corporeal evolution, the evolution of chronotopic beings that occur in time and space. It corresponds, therefore, to the time-space vision of modern physics, to the four dimensions of corporeality.

For the Pythagoreans, the corporeal being is the one that has a beginning, a middle, and an end and develops, in its active and passive processions, in time and space.

Article 6: The Quinary

In the quaternary, we find a double opposition. While all things in the created world can be viewed dyadically and ternarily, the things of the physical world are always taken quaternarily if we want to reach their physical structural basis.

By studying the opposition between the ultimate differences of finite being (for the Scholastics, the ultimate differences were actuality and potentiality; in Pythagoreanism, it is the dyad, as every finite being is always dyadic, that is, at least a product of two, of two co-principles that generate it), the opposition, we repeat, reveals the relationship formed between two positive opposites, contrary but identified in being, as both are being, both have the efficacy of being. Therefore, in the opposition, we have the dyad; from it arises a relationship, the triad, and finally, as they are identified in being, the tetrad.

Symbols of the quaternary and the quinary

The quaternary arises in various ways. We have here the foundation of the Pythagorean categories: Monad, the universal substance; dyad, the opposition between opposed contraries (consequently, the category of contrariety is immanent to finite being); triad, the relationship that arises between the opposites facing each other; and the categorical tetrad would be reciprocity, as the contraries interact, giving rise to physical evolution.

The balance that arises from the relationship between the opposites, the adequacy, the harmony that always implies the balance between the analogous opposites, are concepts that refer to the relationships that arise and to the reciprocity and modalities that derive from them, which will be the subject of study in the following.

Therefore, the quinary finds here a categorical foundation and arises from the development of the fundamental opposition, the dyad.

The Pythagoreans say symbolically that 1 generates 1, and this 2, and this 3, and this 4, and this 5. We have there exposed, in the field of categories, the ontological succession of numbers as symbols. The One, the divine being, creates the One, the universal substance. This passage from the Supreme One, the Supreme Triad, the Trinity, to, in the procession ad extra of creation, give rise to the Universal Substance, is a theological theme, and it is in the corresponding works that we will have the opportunity to examine the various creationist doctrines, comparing them with the little-known and caricatured Pythagorean thought33.

In the Atharvaveda, we find this passage: “Life, which is the best, says: – 'It is I who, through this quintuple division of myself, gather and sustain the bundle of five arrows.’”

For the hermetists, the number five is spherical because multiplied by itself as many times as desired, it always leaves a residue of the same product. Three is triangular, four is square, and five will be pentagonal.

Five is the hypotenuse of the right-angled triangle, which corresponds to the diagonal of the square, which in turn, inscribed in a circle, corresponds to the diameter of the circle.

The relationship between the circumference and its diameter is incommensurable, giving an irrational number like pi (the number 3.1416).

In the study of the quaternary, we verify that two pairs of contraries enclose the chronotopic (the time-space). The quaternary provides a mechanical balance, provides the limit.

In nature, five is the symbol of the ether, which remains as the substance from which all quaternary differentiations arise.

Even if we take a materialistic position, we would have to reach the number five, as matter, considered in itself as raw material, would be the fifth element in relation to the quaternary.

In ancient times, we find the quinary classification of: earth, water, air, fire, ether. Physical things present the states: solid, liquid, gaseous, fluidic, with ether corresponding to the truly ethereal, homogeneous state that surpasses the realm of intuitive sensory knowledge.

Psychologically considered, our intuitive knowledge reaches only the quaternary. The quinary already requires a penetration of an intellectual and speculative order, beyond the quaternary. That is why five is also the symbol of the mental when it “sees” what the eyes and senses do not perceive.

In religions, we find the quinary expressed, as in Hinduism, with five gods; in Chinese culture, the five elements, the five active faculties, the five periodic things, etc.

In hermeticism, we find the term “quintessence,” which is the principle to which the four elements are linked. It is the seed, the matrix, in opposition to the four elements. And we see it represented in the form of a five-petal rose, the hermetic rose.

There are five elementary geometric forms: the tetrahedron, the cube, the octahedron, the dodecahedron, and the icosahedron, all of them with equal sides, equal angles, and equal faces. In scholastic philosophy, substance is seen under five predicates or predicables: accident, property, difference, species, and genus.

In arithmosophic symbolism, five is the symbol of living matter, which can always be classified into five aspects. Thus, in more advanced plants, we distinguish five parts: root, trunk, leaves, flowers, and fruits.

As we have seen before, five already points to a victory or a overcoming of matter, which is why it is the symbol of man, represented in the pentagram, the five-pointed star, which represents man, as we also see in the Chinese symbol for “Yen.” We find the pentagram in Egyptian culture, and the pyramid itself is also a quinary symbol.

The five-pointed star

In smaller cultures, we find five symbolized by the fingers of the hand, with the thumb symbolizing man through its opposition to the other fingers. The pentagram is a widely used symbol among Freemasons and corresponds to the five-pointed star, the symbol of man, of elevated spirit, but when inverted, it is the symbol of human aberration, of the demonic, as seen in the inverted pentagram with the head of a goat. The pyramids have five points, and in the sacrifices made by the people of Israel, we find the presence of the five animals sacrificed, devoted to the five principles.

Chinese symbol of “Yen” (man).

The number five is also related to our five senses. There are five journeys of the initiates.

If the quaternary reduces the cosmic vision within evolutionary cycles, 5 breaks that immanent balance and is therefore a symbol of transcending the physical. This is one of its most important meanings, although, due to its polysemy, it can be employed in various senses that we have had the opportunity to examine thus far.

Materialistic, purely empirical, and naturalistic views all remain within the quaternary vision, which can signify one that is only included in the immanence of physical being. Science, as we understand it today, is quaternary, even though in its investigations, it reaches certain limits that it cannot transcend within scientific criteria. It is precisely at this point that science invades the field of philosophy, whose object belongs to the Philosophy of Science. In dealing with number in its essence, matter, energy, and the sources of all physical being, science feels that the terrain of the immanent is narrow. When it touches these limits, the scientist either retreats or advances. If they retreat, they remain only within the scientific field; if they advance, they inevitably enter the realm of philosophy.

Thus, the quinary is the symbol of the philosophical path.

The man in the pentagram

It is a motto that separates two spheres, or rather, it points to the properly philosophical realm because philosophy does not exclude, nor should it exclude, the scientific field from which it can depart to speculate on what surpasses the merely physical, the quaternary. This is the reason that allows for a distinction between the lower quaternary, which we have already had the opportunity to study, and the supreme tetractys, whose set forms the octonary, symbolized by 8, which will be a subject to be examined in due course.

For example, life itself, even for science, is resistant to fitting into the schemes of the quaternary. And not only life but also higher intelligent manifestations. This transcendence is irritating to many materialists who make efforts to reduce everything to the quaternary.

The inverted pentagram

And that is why the number five, which appears in the symbols of the pentagram, indicates life and intelligence because it already points to something that goes beyond physical dimensionality. There, in that sector, the quaternary mathematical numbers, which correspond to the lower triad of Pythagoreanism, are unfit to translate the reality that presents itself and consequently require the work of the philosopher.

The apple is the symbol of the pentagram since its seeds are arranged like a five-pointed star (pentacarp or pentacarpellate).

The five points of the pyramid

In the Bible, in the book of Genesis, the forbidden fruit is the apple, the fruit of the tree of knowledge, because five symbolizes the activity of the spirit in knowing the quaternary, the acquired knowledge that separates man from the garden of Eden, the garden of innocent animal life, and leads him, through knowledge of good and evil, to the suffering of life. That is why five is the symbol of the mind and intelligence, the human spirit that surrounds nature (like the serpent) to know and judge it.

In its arithmomonic combination, five is the sum of the first even number, 2, and the first odd number, 3 (the number 1 is neither even nor odd arithmosophically considered). That is why we see it symbolizing marriage.

In summary, we can say that 5 is the symbol of form, of schemes that escape the eyes of the body and are seen by the eyes of intelligence.

Article 7: The Senary

The Supreme Being, the Infinite Monad, accomplishes, through differentiation, the dyad, which is the opposition of already determined beings: what determines (oppositive-active) and what is determinable (oppositive-passive).

From the relationship between both, order arises, which is still ternary, and from it, evolution, realization, which is quaternary, and consequently, the organization of form, of life, which is quinary.

Here we have the first phase of the creative procession, the outgoing procession, and proodos, the kethados of the Neoplatonists and Gnostics. Then the return procession will begin because what departs from the Supreme Being will return to it (epistrophe).

From the dyad, in its opposition, relationships arise, which are not only static but also dynamic because through the interaction of one of the dyad terms upon the other, a numerically comprehensible heterogenization occurs, in a genuinely Pythagorean sense.

The relationship of opposition reveals a reciprocity between the related terms. Moreover, there is the emergence of a quaternary order, which would be the product of reciprocity between the terms. Now, the number 6 is even, and therefore, it symbolizes balance.

The senary is a triangular number whose property consists of being at the same time twice three. For some Hermetists, who see in 6 the product of 1X2X3=6, it translates the reunion of Intention, Will, and Word in creation, as Martinez de Pasqually does.

The ancients considered a perfect number (teleiôs) to be one that is equal to the sum of its divisors, which in the case of 6 are: 1, 2, and 3.

But if we return to the Pythagorean way of understanding numbers, we will see that from the dyad, three emerges as a relationship; from the relationship, four emerges as reciprocity, and the emergence of physical evolution.

The differentiation of the dyad offers us the positive-active being and the positive-passive being. But the positive-passive is not a negation of actuality because determinability is the aptitude of something to be determined by another, that is, to receive from another the determination it does not have but for which it is apt. Thus, the determinability of any being taken from the quaternary world shows us that a being is apt to receive a determination it does not yet have but for which it is apt. Therefore, if we consider that one of the terms of the dyad is potentiality, as Aristotle considers it, this potentiality must have an actuality of potentiality; otherwise, it would be nothing and could not enter into composition, as is the relational being that arises, which is the creature, which is a being but is not everything it can be; and therefore, it is a composite of act and potentiality, of determination and determinability.

In this way, the terms of the dyad must be differentiated but inversely in the uniting power of being, and determination (act) would be the capacity to determine, and determinability (potentiality) the capacity to be determinable.

The differentiated being, which is other than the Supreme Being axiologically and ontologically, since the latter is immutable, while the former knows reciprocity and consequently mutations, reveals the aptitude to determine and to be determined.

But what determines, in the quaternary, is in turn determined because whoever exercises an action of determination undergoes a determination in turn. Moreover, every being is determinable in proportion to its form, and this limits determination and exerts determination in the determinability of another.

This reciprocity could be exemplified, albeit crudely, by the chalk with which one writes on the blackboard. The chalk acts on the blackboard, determining the figure that the blackboard, being determinable, receives. But in turn, the resistance of the blackboard offers a determination in the chalk, which in turn is determinable. If the co-principles of being, the dyad, are positive and cannot cease to be, the determination of one upon the other implies a reciprocity that can be more or less intense, allowing for the heterogeneity of reciprocity because one determines more than it is determined or vice versa34.

In this case, there would be an interaction, and from this, which is quaternary, a new relationship would emerge, categorically a modal. We would have the following in this case:

One of the terms of the dyad is, in itself, 1; in the relationship of opposition, by acting, by determining, it is another, 2, and by undergoing determination, it is 3. The reciprocity between the terms of the dyad, in opposition, reaches three aspects on each side. The balance that finally results from these two triads is 6, which becomes a symbol of balance and harmony because from the interaction that occurs in reciprocity, modals arise, but the result is harmony.

The hexagram

Thus, we have the being-in-itself, the being-for-another, and the being-for-itself. Let us exemplify: a man marries a woman. He, taken in himself, is 1; in marriage, in his acting with the woman, he is 2, but when he undergoes her action, he is 3, and the same applies to her.

The dyad finds balance through the interaction of the reciprocity of opposites, after 6 aspects. The harmony that occurs, taken dynamically, is 6.

Now, if we observe all the cults and the universal symbolism of the senary, we see that in universal thought, the number six is taken as a symbol of harmony, justice, the balance of the scale, the balance of the dyad, karma for Hindus, providence for other religions.

But if 6 wants to refer to harmony in its symbolism, it does not always refer to the immanence of harmony, the harmony of the quaternary. Symbols are polysemous and can, according to the plane to which they refer, point to symbols of various orders.

When we recall Pythagorean thought, we can see the lower triad and the upper triad. The harmony between them is the presence of the 6 terms of the two triads and can be symbolized by the two triangles with opposite vertices, whose figure we reproduce. This figure also symbolizes the perfection of knowledge because “what is below is like what is above.”

The six equilateral triangles in the circle

This same symbol can refer, for example, in Christianity, to the divine trinity (God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit) and the trinity of the creature: form, matter, and existence, or more precisely, act, potentiality, and existence because what exists as a creature is always a composition of act and potentiality, like angels, for example, or of matter and form, like quaternary beings.

The senary, applied to physical nature, refers to the harmony of creation, a harmony that is given by the creator and arises from order.

To justify this symbolism, the authors who have studied it gather various examples, such as the six primitive forms in crystallography, all derived from the equilateral triangle, such as the parallelepiped, the octahedron, the tetrahedron, the regular hexahedral prism, the rhomboidal dodecahedron, and the triangular dodecahedron.

Or the six operations of arithmetic: addition and subtraction, multiplication and division, exponentiation and root extraction; or the six circles in the firmament: the Arctic, the Antarctic, the two tropics, the equinoctial, and the ecliptic; the six perfections of Hindu religious thought; the six days of creation, which refer to the six planes of creation and not to chronological days; the six steps of Solomon’s temple, the six wings of the Seraphim, or the six tools of the companions in Masonic lodges, etc.

The senary is symbolized by the hexagram. We see it in temples and in various aesthetic manifestations. In the Annunciation of Mary, the angel carries a lily with six petals arranged in two sets of three, equidistant. The lily is the mystical flower of virgins.

In India, the hexagram is a symbol of Vishnu, and among the Romans, of Venus. We see it in the windows of cathedrals and in Freemasonry as a symbol of justice35.

Article 8: The septenary

If we start from Pythagorean categories, we will see that from universal substance, through differentiation, the binary arises, two modalities of being that we have already studied.

These two opposing positivities are in turn one, which is predominantly active, determinant, and another, which is predominantly passive, determinable. The scheme below illustrates what we have just said:

1…...............................Substance

2…....................Passive Oppositive

Active-Passive Passive-active

3….......................Relation of opposites

4…............................................Reciprocity (evolution)

5….........… Form (Life, intelligence, etc.)

  1. Adjustment and ordering of the functions of opposites (harmony)

7…...................Formal-qualitative leap; the new mode of being, the Seventh Day, as a symbol.

In Pythagoreanism, the number seven tends to indicate the qualitative gradation of finite being.

If we examine the symbolism of various myths and that which pertains to the thoughts of all peoples, we find the number seven present in anything that indicates a progressive series. If we take the triad with the fundamental colors: red, yellow, and blue, we see that all the other colors are derived from tones resulting from the combinations of these three colors.

By placing the fundamental red in the first position, between red and yellow, we find an intermediate color, which is orange; green as an intermediary between yellow and blue. Fifth, blue as the fundamental color, sixth indigo, which is an unfolding of blue, and seventh violet, intermediary between blue and red.

We know that the arrangement of the week into seven days is not arbitrary since during this period, there is the transition from one phase of the moon to another. We also find the number seven in human ages, as humans undergo changes every seven years, corresponding to the ages of seven, fourteen, twenty-one, etc., which many scientists have studied. The age of twenty-one is not arbitrary because it completes the first ternary of seven. Mathematicians, when studying the possibilities of the number seven, have found it to have very interesting combinations.

Like any odd number, seven expresses an action, a transition. And it is in this sense that it appears to us in universal symbolism.

The seven planets

The planetary system of the Hermetists is a septenary organization, considered both static and dynamic.

  1. The Sun, the center of the system and the main planet, is the first cause of life; active, masculine, energetic (in the Aristotelian sense of the term, act), emitting its life-giving rays, which expand. It is the symbol of the supreme power of the supreme being, of the Will. To experience this Will as an attribute of the supreme Being, let us examine in ourselves the will that deliberates and orders us to do this or that. Our body obeys, without the action of the body being a mode of the will, but a mode of the body. The will commands and is obeyed, without its act being exhausted in the action. It distinguishes itself as tension, as an act, which indicates and points to the vector to follow. It is the efficient cause, but the action belongs to the quod that acts. I order my arm to write. The action of writing belongs to my arm, but the efficient cause of this act was my will. It is not exhausted in the action of the arm because this action is not a transformation of my will.

It is a symbol of unity and can be symbolized by the central point of a circumference. It receives many other symbolizations, as we see in solar heroes, luminous halos, loose hair, eagles with wings like rays, circles of fire, as in the Hindus, etc.

In all religions, messianic heroes, founders of religions, are solar heroes; they all have signs that point to the Sun, to the resplendent Sun that cannot be directly looked at. Thus, the Supreme Being, who eludes our senses, blinds us with its presence. We would not bear its light. The eagle, by flying toward the Sun and looking at it, is the symbol of thought that transcends immanence and penetrates the field of divine things. The Sun is the most universal symbol of the Supreme Being, taken by its activity and masculinity.

  1. The Moon – It is the symbol of the feminine and the passive since it reflects the sunlight. The instability of its phases indicates instability, mutation, information. It symbolizes the passive principle, potential, determinability, which receives the determinations of the act, the forms. In the lunar crescent, fertilized by the Solar will, it becomes realized as a mother in the Full Moon, to give birth to the fourth quarter and repeat the cycle of gestation and birth.

In general, it is represented in the crescent moon, concave and convex, a duality in the symbolism of the binary as well, of the convex determinant and the concave determinable.

Therefore, for the Hermetists, it is a symbol of the second Logos, just as the Sun is of the first.

  1. Mercury – It should not be confused with the Greek-Roman god, who is binary, hermaphroditic. Mercury, astrologically considered, is neutral and balanced. Therefore, it has a complex nature. It arises from the Solar Will and the Lunar Imagination. It corresponds to the number three; it is ternary. In the zodiacal symbol, we see the solar circle and the lunar crescent over a cross, symbol of the quaternary. Sun, Moon, and Mercury form the ternary (in the Egyptians, Osiris, Isis, and Horus).

  2. Mars – It is the symbol of the clash of opposites, violence. It is a symbol of solar power when it is violent and victorious over the opposite. It also represents brutality and destruction. In the zodiac, it is symbolized by the solar circle and the cross above it, a symbol of the quaternary. It is solar power (the power of being) manifested in the quaternary.

  3. Venus – It is represented by the solar disc with the cross of the quaternary. It is the creative power fertilizing the quaternary. In Mars, the quaternary prevails over the creator, and that is why it is destructive; in Venus, it is the creator that prevails over the quaternary. Mars and Venus are antagonists. Violence, disorder, destruction on one side, and goodness, gentleness, love on the other. Venus, in astrology, is feminine, but she is more the symbol of the Anima, in the Gnostic sense and in Jung’s sense, which normally predominates in women.

  4. Jupiter – The zodiacal symbol indicates it with the lunar crescent, from which the quaternary extends. Proceeding from the Moon, Jupiter is passive in a certain way, but also active because, in ancient symbolism, the cross was placed next to it. It indicates plasticity as power.

Fertility and power, balance between the parts, also a symbol of justice.

  1. Saturn – In the zodiacal symbolism, Saturn is surmounted by the cross resting on one of the vertices of the crescent moon. It represents the domain of earthly, quaternary forces over passivity. It is active and masculine, but its action is realized in reflected destruction. It is in opposition to Jupiter. Characteristically, the Saturnian is the introverted type, physiognomically withdrawn, with a somber color, many shadows on the face, an excess of bumps, etc.

In Catholicism, the number seven is present in the Christian virtues: the theological virtues, which are three: Faith, Hope, and Charity, and the cardinal virtues (from the quaternary): Fortitude, Temperance, Justice, and Prudence[^1].

There are seven deadly sins: Pride, Sloth, Envy, Anger, Lust, Gluttony, and Greed.

Sin causes us to transition from one situation to another, and virtue does the same, as it places us in a different state.

There are seven sacraments: Baptism, Eucharist, Holy Orders, Confirmation, Marriage, Penance, and Extreme Unction. We also find the number seven in various passages in the Bible: the seven years that Jacob served Laban (the seven years of initiation), and he received Leah instead of Rachel. He needed to fulfill the second septenary period to obtain her. Seven demons, seven altars (the seven tabernacles), seven trumpets of Jericho. Jesus speaks seven phrases when crucified. In the Apocalypse, there are seven candlesticks, seven stars, seven seals, seven horns, seven eyes, seven spirits, seven plagues, and seven rays.

There were seven pairs of unclean animals and seven pairs of clean animals in Noah’s Ark, and Noah had seven sons. Joseph had seven lean cows and seven fat cows, among others.

Philo tells us: “The number seven is the first one after the perfect number six and, in a certain way, identical to unity. The numbers that are in the decade either generate or are generated by those numbers that are in the decade or the decade itself; but the heptad does not generate any of the numbers in the decade, nor is it generated by them. Thus, in their Mysteries, the Pythagoreans assign it to the ever-virgin and mother goddess because she was not generated and will not generate” [^2].

Saint Augustine saw in seven the symbol of the perfection of Plenitude, and Saint Ambrose saw it as the symbol of virginity.

In Western Christianity, symbolism gradually loses its content because Westerners have little capacity for symbols, as they prefer to understand through reason rather than affectivity. But the symbol is a language that communicates the incommunicable, and that is why Christianity also loses its deepest content in the West, becoming more of an external practice or, at most, a language to express the universal longing to believe that every human being reveals. Undeniably, Christian symbolism is almost incomprehensible even to priests, and few orders in the Church know and preserve the deepest meanings.

There were seven elements in Arab alchemy, as well as seven decorative elements in Arab art, the stalactites. We find seven in the seven planes of theosophy and also in the religions of universal religious and occult thought. We see the seven in the Sephiroth of the Hebrews, which are divided into an upper ternary and a lower quaternary.

In the upper ternary, we have: Chesed, the active principle, the will.

Geburah, the passive principle, and Tiphereth, the balanced principle, which arises from the two preceding ones. These three form the ternary. The quaternary is given by the following principles: 1st Netzah, the active masculine principle, generator, symbolized by fire. 2nd Hod, the feminine principle, plastic and inert, corresponding to water, symbolically. 3rd Yesod, the balanced principle, the foundation of material realization, symbolized by air, and 4th Malchuth, motherhood, symbolized by earth. These are the Sephiroth.

Among the Pythagoreans, we also find what is called the “law of seven” or the “law of octaves.” In a progression from one to seven, there is, in the subsequent eighth, a qualitative leap of completely different specificity. For example, in the chromatic scale: the octave scale, which corresponds to the repetition of C, the first note, offers us a C with twice the number of vibrations, as observed in musical notes. The range of the seven tones is a cosmic law that we find present in light, heat, chemical vibrations, magnetic vibrations, etc., as well as in the luminous range and the periodic table of elements in chemistry. However, it is interesting to emphasize the inequality of frequency between C and C (this in the octave). Thus, if C is one, D is 9/8, E is 5/4, F is 4/3, G is 3/2, A is 5/3, B is 18/8, and finally, C is 2.

These frequency inequalities are called by the Pythagoreans the “law of discontinuity of vibrations.” There are seven musical notes. In the first three, C, D, E, we have an ascending continuity that is broken in F, which is a deviation from the original direction. This deviation is observed later in the octave, which, in turn, breaks in the third note so that, in the six scales, there would be a true return, a true cycle, the formation of a circle if we were to represent it graphically.

The number seven is symbolized by the seven-pointed star, each point corresponding to one of the zodiac signs, the lunar week, and musical notes, as well as color tones.

The septenary cross

C corresponds to red (at a base frequency of 477 billion vibrations per second); yellow (535 billion) corresponds to D; green-blue (596 billion) corresponds to E; indigo (658 billion) corresponds to F; violet (649 billion) corresponds to G. It is easy to see that the proportions are unequal, resulting from the law of discontinuity, as in nature, there is never absolute equality, neither in the proportions considered factually realized. This is a Pythagorean postulate, later accepted by scholasticism and confirmed by modern relativistic science. If the golden ratio of the Pythagoreans (1.618…) is present in almost all facts of the physical world, it is, however, an irrational number that can be approximated more or less but never fully realized. This can be seen in its expression following the Fibonacci series, which gives 1.618 033 988 749 894 848 204 59…, and so on. Thus, the golden number that arises from mathematical operations but is confirmed in physical reality never finds fully perfect realization. Nature can only imitate it to a greater or lesser degree. We would go beyond the scope of this book if we were to study the various applications of seven in the symbolism of religions and esoteric doctrines in general.

What interests us, as a logical consequence of the study we have made of the six numbers, is to understand that seven, in its general lines, is the symbol of a chronological gradation, therefore qualitative, pointing to evolution in a more dynamic sense, as well as to the specific leaps that occur in nature.[^3]

Article 9: The Octonary

Within universal symbolism, the number eight plays a much smaller role than the other numbers studied thus far.

The eight announces the advent of something new.

It is considered a double quaternion by the pantheistic views of the universe. According to Plutarch, the Pythagoreans attributed the number eight to material bodies, as being formed by a double quaternion.

In this case, the eight would represent the fundamental elements. However, this opinion is not shared by many scholars of Pythagoreanism.

In India, we find this symbol in the eight elephants that support the Earth, as well as among the Kabbalists. In Greek culture, the number eight is associated with Dionysus, whose birth occurred in the eighth month. Additionally, the number eight was dedicated to Venus, and we see decorations with the eight-pointed star in some Greek temples, as well as in Babylonian and Chaldean cultures.

According to some modern Theosophists, Hermes' caduceus, with its intertwined serpents, is intended to symbolize the number eight.

According to the esoteric and occultist claims, the number eight would signify liberation from karma. For others, the number eight represents a higher balance in evolution, while the quaternion represents a lower balance.

The sphere can be divided into eight parts, and some believe that the universal order follows the number eight.

Returning to what we have mentioned when studying the septenary, the world can be conceived as consisting of vibrations. These vibrations occur in all bodies. In general, vibrations are considered continuous, that is, they occur uninterruptedly until the impelling force is exhausted or the resistance of the medium stops them.

Physics generally considers vibrations to be continuous, but this statement is not a proven scientific postulate. Some esotericists take an opposing position and propose a principle of discontinuity in vibrations, meaning that they occur in a non-uniform manner, with periods of acceleration and retardation.

In this case, vibrations do not develop in a regular manner but rather undergo a kind of modification at a certain moment. The vibrations no longer obey the initial impulse, and in a certain aspect, they change their nature and direction. Thus, vibrations of ascending or descending progression experience a retardation at a certain moment, returning to their previous course until they come to a stop and cessation.

The Pythagoreans, while studying sound vibrations, observed the presence of this law of discontinuity, which we have already seen in the previous article. And this law is not limited to the field of sound but also applies to heat, as revealed by Planck in the theory of “quanta,” as well as to chemical, magnetic, and light vibrations, as demonstrated by optics.

Planck found that the rise in temperature does not occur continuously, but at a certain moment, there is a qualitative leap. This fact opened the doors for him to construct the theory of quanta. This law of discontinuity, already studied by the Pythagoreans, is also confirmed by the spectrum in spectral analysis because the spectrum of each body reveals the seven colors discontinuously, resulting in a chromatic number that differs from one body to another. This has allowed for significant developments in astrophysics and modern science.

In our study of the chromatic sound scale, we observe the mutation in the ternary and quaternary of the number seven, and when the octave appears, there is a qualitative mutation of a specific particularizing character. If we study history and everything that occurs in its field, we notice that the development of a religion, a philosophy, a literary taste, a science, and even an individual life proceeds in one direction until a certain moment when it suddenly deviates into another direction, often even contrary, while still retaining the same name.

The Labarum of the Catacombs

For many, the number eight is seen as a symbol of resurrection. In the Roman catacombs, we find the Labarum as a symbol of eternal rest, in the form of an octonary. Saint Ambrose considered the number eight a symbol of regeneration, and Saint Augustine as the glorious resurrection. As the number eight indicates the transition from one state to another, to a new state, Saint Augustine believed that the transition from the number seven to the number eight indicated the succession from the old law to the new, which opened the gates of heaven to humankind.

The Cross of Lorraine

In this case, the number seven would represent the number of the synagogue, and the number eight the church founded by Christ, which is found in the octonary constitution of some churches in the early phase of Christianity. As there were eight people saved in Noah’s ark, the number eight became associated with salvation. It is interesting to note that among the Chinese, the number eight is a symbol of “happy navigation.” In the 14th and 15th centuries, the baptismal fonts in Christian churches were always octagonal in shape, a tradition that dates back to the early centuries of Christianity. The Maltese cross is constructed with eight rays and a circle. Octagonal forms are found in Christian churches, as well as in certain Chinese and Arab monuments.

The Maltese Cross

In summary, the number eight, with lesser symbolism, is universally used as a symbol of salvation, the transition from one state to another, and resurrection.

7 Qualitative-formal leap (the new way of being)

8 Higher balance of evolution (Harmony of the New Being). Symbol of assumption, which consists of achieving a new form, the number eight is also the symbol of Incarnation. In short, it represents superior evolution.

Article 10: The Novenary and the Decenary

Nine is the ultimate simple number. In certain symbolics, it signifies the three triads: the superior triad, which is that of the divine Trinity (Infinite Consciousness, Intellectuality, and Will, or Will, Intellectuality, and Infinite Love), and the two inferior triads, corresponding to the two triads as exposed by Pythagoreanism, with the addition, however, that the arithmói arkhai, the ideal numbers, the “laws of laws,” would be the angelic order, that is, the order of powers that have the ministerial role of realizing the cosmic order. For the theosophists (whose thought is fundamentally pantheistic), nine is the sacred number of Being and Becoming (of coming into being), symbolized by square numbers.

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Nine is the third square, the square of the triad. The first square is equal to unity; the second indicates differentiation, antagonism; the third, 9, expresses the complete and harmonious development of the ternary.

In the Zend-Avesta of the Persians, the number 9 is taken as the fulfillment of the finished temple and has an important role in liturgy. In Mazdean worship in Persia, in Chinese and Hindu cults, we find the nine symbolizing the multiplicity that returns to unity, that is, from the homogeneous arises the heterogeneous through dyadic differentiation; and from the heterogeneous returns the homogeneous through the fulfillment of the nine. It is the final reintegration, Redemption, while revealing the cosmic solidarity of the Multiple with the One, for the multiple, the heterogeneous, is a differentiation by deprivation of the plenitude of the One. Parmenides said that the number 9 pertains to divine things.

Also in the scholastic period, we find nine corresponding to the nine modalities of being, as in Lullius.

The number 9 and the Uroboros serpent of the Hindus.

The number 9 is used by Freemasons as the eternal symbol of human immortality, and there are 9 masters who rediscovered the body and the tomb of Hiram Abid, given as the founder of Freemasonry in Masonic mythology.

As a synthesis, nine can be considered a symbol of the reintegration of the heterogeneous into the homogeneity of the Supreme Being.

It is the symbol of the WHOLE, as Everything. But the 9, in this sense, would be a manifestation of pantheistic thought, as the heterogeneous would identify with the homogeneous. That is why the cosmic synthesis of 9 must be surpassed by the Supreme Synthesis of 10, which is the superior unity, which arithmosophically is 1, not, however, the common unity, for it symbolizes the divine, the transcendent.

9 – Homogenization in the Whole of the heterogeneity of Everything.

For Hindus, 10 is a sacred number and indicates the definitive reintegration of all beings in fusion with Brahman in the Pralaya, which ends all creation.

Before reaching this Pralaya, 10 is a symbol of the cosmic consciousness of God in Himself and, in turn, symbolizes the limit of human conception, which counts everything by 10.

The decimal system is more universal than one might think, as we find it, in its origins, among the Aryans, the Egyptians, the Chaldeans, the Greeks, the Hebrews, the Latins, the Chinese, and even in America, among the pre-Columbian peoples. Therefore, the decimal system is universal.

Numbers beyond 10 are always formed with simple numbers, as can be seen from the language of different peoples. Thus, eleven is 10 and 1, twelve is 10 and two, and so on.

These numerical signs are indicated by the fingers of the hands. We have already seen the distinction between the simple unity of the number 1 and the synthetic unity of 10, the symbol of transcendental unity, as we have seen.

Various meanings are attributed to the decade by the Pythagoreans, such as the affirmation that all human knowledge is connected to ten mental possibilities. In ten, all the reasons and all the harmonies of the other numbers are included, and later Aristotle, in Metaphysics, VII, says that “ideas and numbers are of the same nature and amount to ten in everything,” referring naturally to the Pythagorean sense of understanding the number, which is truly the intrinsic and extrinsic form.

In the Bible, there are 10 names of God, and 10 are His attributes. And in the Renaissance, Pico della Mirandola stated that “he who knows the virtue of the number ten and the nature of the first spherical number (which is five) will have the secret of the fifty gates of intelligence, the great jubilee, the thousandth generation, and the kingdom of all ages.”

We find the number 10 in various passages of the Bible: the ten curtains in the Temple, the ten strings of the psaltery, the ten psalm singers, the descent of the Holy Spirit ten days after Christ’s ascension. It is with this number that Joshua defeated thirty kings, that David defeated Goliath, and that Daniel escaped the lions in the den. Ten are the commandments, the Decalogue.

Among Hindus, 10 are the Prajapati that Brahma created, forces resembling the Sephiroth of the Hebrews. Ten are the virtues in Manu’s code.

In philosophy, we find 10 in Aristotle’s categories (substance, quantity, quality, relation, action, passion (aptitude to be determined), place, time, position, and habit).

These categories, as Ockham showed, address the particular being and its modalities considered in itself.

For Pythagoreans, as we have already shown, the categories are ontological and ontic; they refer to the being in its ontological structure or in its ontic relations, and not only to themselves. Consequently, they are broader and encompass all modalities of being. Three are the fundamental categories for Pythagoreans: universal substance, opposition, and relation. Taken individually, substance will be the individual, matter, and form; opposition corresponds to intrinsic and extrinsic antinomies, and relations arise from the face-to-face placements of intrinsic or extrinsic opposites.

There are ten fundamental laws of Pythagoreanism.

The Uroboros serpent as a decenary symbol.

The decade is symbolized by an equilateral triangle, in which each side is divided into three equal parts, forming 9 intrinsic similar triangles that, together with the tenth that contains them, form the ten. It also receives other symbolizations such as the column and the circle, by a circle with 10 points or ten spheres tangentially or interpenetrating, etc.

In summary, it signifies:

10 The Transcendental Unity of the Cosmic Order and the Supreme Being.

Article 11: The symbolism of other numbers

The Pythagoreans considered the number ten as the synthetic unity, the universal unity. The difference between 1 and 10 is that the latter is ontologically posterior to the One, for the precedence of the Supreme Being is ontologically necessary. It is the pure act that precedes all things. The number 10, as a symbol of synthetic unity, of cosmic unity, is the unity of the Creator and the Creature; ontologically posterior.

The Pythagoreans thus regarded 10 as a sacred number, the tetractys, by which they swore, whose graphical way of symbolizing by dots we have already examined.

In the number ten, we see the order of the quaternary, 0 4, the order of the triadic, 0 3, the order of the Dyad, the 2, and the 1, pointing to the universal substance, the primary tension from which finite being arises. Thus, the number 10 is a symbol of cosmic order, of the harmonious dependence of the creature on the creator, the great synthetic unity.

But the cosmic can be superseded by the acosmic. The acosmic is an attempt to break the order, it is an excess, a disruption of harmony, sin, an offense against the Holy Spirit of things. To depict man as a mere automaton is to break the order of man, it is a manifestation of acosmia. And so is using something for purposes that are not appropriate to it because they are disproportionate. There is an offense against the order of things here, although the sin, the offense, the monstrosity, does not yet manifest in its main characteristics.

Aristotle said, “Virtue in the perfect being is the disposition for the best. Perfect is understood as one who possesses its nature” (Physics, 7).

Therefore, the goodness of a thing consists in properly realizing itself in the direction of its nature. What is lacking in the perfection of a nature is what is called vice (vitium).

The nature of a thing is primarily its form. And the form of man is to be rational. To offend the rationality of man (in the broad sense that we have already explained in our works) is to offend human nature.

Vice is the opposite of virtue. Vice is everything contrary to human nature. Sin is, in short, the act of vice. Sin is to offend the nature of things.

This acting against the nature of things is something that, in a “certain way,” breaks the harmony of nature. It is something that stands before the supreme synthesis of 10.

In this sense, 11 can be interpreted as tending to offend the nature of things, a tendency that is stimulated, that is tempted, hence the tempter, which symbolizes evil. Saint Augustine considered 11 as the armor of sin.

Also, 11 is seen only as an imbalance, an asymmetry, as the Chinese see it, who attribute (as do the laws of Manu of the Hindus) 11 viscera to man, dominated by the two polarities, Yang (the masculine principle, Animus, with 5) and Yin (the feminine principle, with 6 viscera), which affirms a fundamental imbalance in the body, which is therefore transient and corruptible.

Everything that tends to bring about the corruption of a thing are the previous dispositions spoken of by the scholastics, and they arise from the balance-imbalance, from the dynamic equilibrium of bodies, which know only an imitation of harmony, never fully achieving it (as a Pythagorean would say), for perfect harmony could only be achieved through the fusion, the identification of opposites, which only occurs in divinity.

In this way, all beings would be corruptible. But corruptible does not imply necessary corruption, for the Supreme Being could create corruptible or even destructible beings without being destroyed by the action of its will, as could be inferred in angelology, where angels, as laws of laws or as spiritual beings, are incorruptible without being uncorruptible.

In other conceptions, such as theosophy, 11 corresponds to the binary, as its sum is 2, which is a pantheistic conclusion.

Others consider 11 as the union of cosmic 10 and transcendent divinity. In this case, 11 would correspond to the two great unities: the divine unity and the cosmic unity, as the union of the starting point, the One, and the arrival point, the cosmic 1, as it would correspond to the panentheists (all-in-God).

The number 12

Although the decimal metric system has been accepted in the last century, it is observed that in many countries the duodecimal system still predominates. We also find this system prevailing among the peoples of Mesopotamia, India, and Egypt, in their respective cultural cycles. The reason for using the duodecimal system is commonly given because it is more favorable for divisibility and thus facilitates operations.

However, within the secret ideas of various religions and doctrines, twelve has a deeper meaning and even reveals a universal law. One could consider twelve as the product of the sum of the decade, which is the synthetic unity, with two of opposition, thus becoming the symbol of differentiation.

It is enough, however, for us to observe that our cosmic time gives us an example of twelve in the periods of the four seasons or the corresponding three months. Let us not forget that three is the symbol of elemental progression, which is always accomplished in threes: beginning, middle, and end. Each season begins, endures, and ends, followed by the cycle of seasons. These periods constitute the twelve months of the year universally recognized in all great cultures.

We find them among the pre-Columbian peoples, in ancient Egypt, among the Chinese and Hindus, whose names are phonetically similar.

Therefore, the duodecimal division is not arbitrary, as we already find it present in cosmic functioning.

Twelve also reveals itself in the field of music, in the circle of harmonic combinations, in the set of the seven simple notes, which is completed in the chromatic scale of sharps.

The division of hours follows the duodecimal system, including the minutes. Tenth of a second already obeys the decimal system, as they were incorporated in modern times.

There are twelve signs of the zodiac, corresponding to the twelve months, universally used. We also find twelve in the twelve tribes of Israel, the twelve patriarchs, the twelve apostles, and so on.

Twelve is symbolized by the combination of four triangles, two by two, in the form of the quaternary.

Pythagoreans reveal twelve in the four triads that correspond to the two already studied by us and the triad of intermediate beings between divinity and the cosmos, and the triad that corresponds to divinity. This intermediate triad arises from the arithmoi arkhai, when examined as “laws of laws” (similar to angelic forms).

Other numbers

For the Pythagoreans, number is present in all things, for all things are numbers. The human soul itself is an arithmos auto kinetikos, a number that is capable of moving itself. Without deviating from the ordinary scheme of arithmetic number, the number of extensive measurement, it is not possible to grasp its highest significance.

Aristotle, in his critique of Pythagoreanism in the “Metaphysics,” consistently or almost consistently considered that the Pythagorean concept of number referred only to natural numbers, to numbers as a third-degree abstraction of quantity. It was easy, then, based on this position, to criticize Pythagoreanism, which obviously suffered from ignoratio elenchi since it was based on a caricature of Pythagorean number36.

In examining the symbolism of prime numbers, as we have done so far, not only in Pythagoreanism but also in various philosophical, religious, hermetic, and Gnostic thoughts, we cannot fail to note the symbolism of composite numbers, which provides a starting point for a better understanding of the esoteric thought of religions and allows for a more concrete view of episteme.

For example, the number 13 appears in popular superstition as the number of bad luck. Unfolded into the decade, 10, and the 3, 13 reveals the presence of synthetic unity, acted upon by the series. Thus, thirteen breaks the equilibrium and consequently indicates an event that must occur, be it unfortunate, beneficial, or maleficent, it does not matter, but it points to what cannot remain as it is. Assigning a malefic meaning to 13, as is common in popular superstition, is not, however, the significance it has for arithmosophy in general. The event can be fortunate. Thirteen symbolizes, in various cultures, a pointing toward a solution, an advent. In this way, 13 is seen signifying either the beneficial or the malefic.

Another important number in symbolism is 30, a symbol of cosmic organization, representing ternary activity upon the world. Jesus was baptized at the age of 30, the same age at which John the Baptist began preaching, Ezekiel prophesied, and Joseph governed the Egyptians. Thirty years is the age of the founders of religions when they begin their preaching.

Thus, 33 is the number of the free activity of being in the organization of the world. It is the age of final liberation, the age of Christ and Krishna.

In the bibliography, we indicate several works dedicated to the study of the symbolism of numbers. In this book, however, we can only be interested in the philosophical meaning they may offer, without dwelling on the religious and occult significance that largely escapes the field of philosophy37.

Theme VI

Article 1: Symbolics in religions

In our book “Man before the Infinite,” we devoted ourselves to the study of various theories on the emergence of religion. This theological theme, naturally connected to other disciplines, cannot be examined within the scope of symbolics and the subject matter of this book, as we have already done so elsewhere. However, our purpose here is to establish a universal aspect of all religions: the acceptance of a higher power in which humans and all things participate.

The law of participation, which is one of the axiomatic postulates of Pythagoreanism and which we examined in our book “Concrete Philosophy,” is present in all religious ideas.

The term “mana” is widely used in anthropology and sociology in general. Popularized by Max Muller, this Melanesian word means “infinite” according to the author. According to Codrington, a missionary who introduced the term to Max Muller, “mana” is not a specific concept. It is a power, an influence that is not of a physical order but of a certain transcendental nature, which manifests itself in both physical and spiritual strength, and in anything that reveals a human capacity. It is transmitted by other beings who possess it and can transmit it, both spiritual and material beings.

The studies conducted on the concept of “mana” have allowed us to establish certain important phenomenological aspects: “mana” essentially means any power beyond the normal that a being participates in when it does something, when it can achieve something, when it heals, when it triumphs, and so on. “Mana” is an act because it manifests itself in action. There is “mana” in any human action, whether religious or profane. While there are cultural differentiations, the terms “dema” of the Marind-Arin, “orenda” of the Iroquois, “wakanda” of the Sioux, “karma” of the Hindus, “kháris” of the Christians, “dynamis” of the Greeks, “pneuma” of the Gnostics, “manitu” of the Algonquins, “petara” of the Dyak people of Borneo, “hamindja” of the ancient Germanics, “baraka” of the Arabs, and the “el” of the Hebrews, are all phenomenologically the same as “mana” because their content is a power that brings about either good or evil or solely good, depending on the various ways of understanding the religious object38.

This power, which humans capture in cosmic events, within themselves, and in their fellow beings, is also found among the ancient Hindus in the power that established class differences, “kchatra” or “as” among the Egyptians. It is a kind of fluid that is communicated through the laying on of hands or through other practices.

This supreme power is participated in by finite beings. “Mana” is a power that can do anything, and beings can act in proportion to their participation in this power.

It is not difficult to perceive that in various religious manifestations, any manifestation of power is “mana,” which presents itself in different forms but is the same “mana.” Polynesians see “mana” in every determination that involves an act and, therefore, the full exercise of power. The plant that grows from a seed has its efficient cause in “mana.”

“Mana” is also the power of the wind, the waters of the sea, the birds that fly, the victorious warrior, but also of the defeated whose “mana” is inferior, and so on. “Mana” is thus participated in by everyone, but in a hierarchical and gradual manner. However, no finite being is “mana” because it is present in all beings. Therefore, it is the symbol of supreme power, divine power, which is participated in by beings to varying degrees of proportionality.

In many other religious beliefs, the acceptance of a vital power, an active power fully exerting its being, proportionally manifests itself in things. The “tau” of the Chinese, the “rtá” of the Hindus, the “ma’al” of the Egyptians, the “dikê” of the Greeks are expressions of this power that symbolizes it.

The succession of seasons is “tau,” just as the succession of human life is “tau.” For the Chinese, “tau” is eternally without (wu) action (wei), but nothing can be achieved without it. It is thus the great efficient cause, but action belongs to the “quod” that is being acted upon. Action is a mode of the moved. Action does not belong to the agent as such but to what actualizes the action, which cannot be separated from it, as Suparez has already shown in his theory of modals.

“Tau” is not movement itself, as if movement were “tau” in its full exercise. It is not action; it is pure act that moves everything as the efficient cause. However, what is moved is the “quod,” and the action that carries it out, the motion, is inherent in it.

The concept of “tau” is thus similar to Aristotle’s unmoved mover. It is a natural consequence of more careful philosophical speculation.

The Supreme Being, which is “tau,” moves everything but is not itself moved because motion belongs to what is moved and not to the mover, as action is a modal.

In the succession of phenomena, there is a hidden law, the “rtá” of the Hindus. The world has its “rtá,” but behind it acts the universal “rtá.” It is the force that impels the world. The religion of Zoroaster calls it “ahsa.”

The “dikê” of the Greeks, the “Moira,” or the “aisha,” are, in short, symbolic manifestations of supreme power, with the difference that “dikê” refers more to nature, influenced by Greek exoteric thought, and “fatum” for the Romans, which also governs the world.

The participation in the supreme power explains magic. What humans cannot overcome, solve, or obtain through technique, etc., they seek to achieve through the invocation of the hidden power of nature.

In technology, there is a correlation between cause and effect, whereas in magic, this connection disappears. Not that there is no “logos,” no reason in magic. Magic proclaims the participation of the participant in the power of the participated. However, this participation is not proportionate to the “quod.” It can be obtained through means external to the “quod.” In this case, the power peculiar to the nature of the “quod” can be expanded or diminished by the presence of something external that establishes or breaks the participation.

Magical thinking has its connection and also a connection between cause and effect, but it is disproportionate to the nature of the thing, which is not admissible in technology. What something can achieve depends on the nature of that thing, its form and matter in Aristotelian terms, and the efficient and final cause that moves it.

In magic, the efficient cause can produce an effect that proportionally exceeds the material and formal cause, which constitutes the nature of the thing. In our understanding of the distribution of factors, the intrinsic factors, which are matter and form, determine the intensity of the action, which depends on the efficient cause, which is extrinsic, but the effect is always proportionate to the emerging factors.

In magic, a pygmy can become a giant, the weak can become powerful, and a grain of sand can become a mountain. The efficient cause is sufficient and definitive. It is not a single cause. Thus, a being possessing magical power can achieve much beyond the limits imposed by its own nature, which is not admissible in technology.

Technology is a means of control connected to emerging and predisposing factors, but proportionate to them within the limits they establish, considered as a whole, as a set number, in their “arithmós.” In magic, the result can be greater due to the presence of a single factor that exceeds the proportional number.

Now, in all religions, this possibility is accepted because “kharis,” “mana,” etc., can be given in proportions that surpass the nature of the thing, and we face miracles, “miracula,” something that astonishes us because it goes beyond the intrinsic proportions of the “quod.”

This force is exoterically understood as physical, similar to physical force, as a fluidic breath with its substratum. In philosophy and in the religious thought of high cultures, it is an immaterial, spiritual power that is participated in by human beings, such as the “pneuma” of the Stoics, the “kharis,” the “dynamis.” “Kharis” produces “kharísmata,” the content, the charisma, a term widely used in modern philosophy, possession of which enables an individual to perform miracles.

This power, the “átman” of the Hindus, is Brahman itself, the power, the “verbum” of Christians, in which beings participate according to their degree of perfection, and humans even more so. The Hindu formula “tat tvam asi,” “you are that” is easy to understand because we participate in this power that encompasses all things, and in participation, we also become it, the great impersonal power in which all participate to a degree that is capable of increasing.

If we apply our method of symbolic dialectics, based on analogy, we can understand the point of convergence of all doctrines. The noetic scheme that constructs divinity always includes schemes in which all participate. In all religions, divinity forms a schematic “arithmós,” a number with various formalities that can be deduced and decomposed by the human mind into its elementary eidetic-noetic schemes. And among these, there is always that of the highest power in the most rudimentary religions or religious beliefs. In the great religious thought, always monotheistic as a result of long speculation, divinity has supreme power and all power because the lesser degrees are participated in and emanate from it.

Thus, symbolism may vary, but the symbolized is the same. The names of God may change, but in their eidetic-noetic content, there is always a point of convergence where all thoughts coincide.

It is truly a great naivety that arises from a shallow understanding of the religious sentiment, characteristic of so-called primitive peoples, to think that they consider the mana, the power they “see” in all things and that they can awaken through the use of a specific ritual (a set of ordered means intended to evoke the disposition of a power in favor of the practitioner), as being the actual presence of divine power in the nature of things. The primitive man is aware of the distinction, which we can speculatively establish, between divine power and power itself when participated by the thing. It is not in the nature of the thing to be divine, and that is why one must exercise the utmost care when attempting to characterize the pantheism of primitive peoples.

Pantheism is characterized by the admission that the nature of things is the same nature as that of God. But from the moment we admit that things partake of divinity in proportion to their own nature, divinity always remains transcendent as divinity. This subsequently allows us, in theological speculations, to avoid common pantheism. The latter would be characterized by the admission that the nature of the thing is merely the manifested divine nature. However, the observation made by cautious anthropologists in a good philosophical phase shows us that fetishism is more of a schematic construction on our part about the religiosity of primitive peoples than it is the actual thought of those peoples.

They do not ascribe divine nature to things but only affirm participation. Some anthropologists tell us that when asked if indigenous people believe in the presence of divinity in the thing, or rather the divinity of the thing, they are amazed that Europeans believe they could think the nature of the thing is the divine nature. It is quite clear that they only admit the symbolic role of the thing, in the sense that we establish for the symbol, namely, as a participant in a perfection of the participant or as a participant in a perfection that is in turn participated in by another participant, which we call an indirect symbol39.

The power of the Ark of the Covenant of the Jews came from Jehovah, just as the power of certain objects came from the Totem.

Not understanding fetishism in its symbolic aspect has led many anthropologists to fall into the same vulgar view as the common European.

The awakening of forces, powers that reside in things, led the primitive man to a religious respect for the instrument. It did not merely appear to him in its technical aspect, as it does today, stripped of its symbolic significance.

The primitive man saw in the instrument a means to accomplish creative work. The instrument served to awaken the hidden forces in things, which is why work had a religious meaning, as we see in certain peoples, in certain mysteries, such as those of the blacksmiths who use rituals and are subject to certain abstinences not only before performing the function but also for a certain period of time.

In examining primitive instruments, what is astonishing in a certain period is that they are constructed exactly according to the same model, avoiding any modification. This can be explained by the mystical significance attributed to the instrument. For it is with such a specific figure that it is capable of fulfilling its purpose well.

Such a fact helps us better understand the conservatism of primitive societies, which has been wrongly explained by the stagnation of peoples due to inertia when, in reality, it is a mystical submission to the eminently religious role, not only of work but of the entire fabric of social life40.

Not only do instruments reveal a mysterious power worthy of religious devotion, but it also manifests itself in the palladium, emblems, insignias, standards, and flags up to our present day, whose possession indicates the presence of power and whose loss is considered a misfortune. The symbolism revealed here is universal, and the rituals of sanctification of these signs are also universal, despite the natural variance of the different cultural cycles.

Taboo is mainly studied by modern anthropologists and psychologists. It is a Melanesian word derived from the verb “tapuí,” which means to separate, to make holy.

Things that possess a greater participation of divine power demand attention, care, and even distance, separation from them.

Whenever man must maintain separation, distance, there is a taboo, whose scalability varies according to the modalities presented by the beliefs of peoples. We find this pathos regarding the king as well as the foreigner, and even from individual to individual.

Salutation is a religious rite, either of approach or of maintaining due distance.

Every time we encounter this separation, we are witnessing a scalar manifestation of taboo. There are countless examples, such as the veil that covers a woman, clothing itself, the impropriety of certain acts at certain times, respect for certain days, abstinences such as refraining from work or certain foods, or pronouncing certain words, which must be replaced by others, which is typical of various professions or human activities, etc.

In taboo, there is always respect for a formidable power from which we must keep our distance, remain separate, and to approach it, we must respect a corresponding ritual. Taboos exist not only for man but also for animals themselves, which are sacrificed when they offend them, as is the case in certain primitive peoples.

The idea of profanation is an offense to taboo, that is, it treats the religious thing “profanely,” in the manner that is used “outside the religious precinct.”

Sanctions can come from the very power that has been profaned, either immediately or mediately. We know the example of the Ark of the Covenant, which, when threatened to fall, was supported by someone who did so willingly and immediately fell dead.

Taboo is a categorical imperative, and some anthropologists believe that religions emerged from it, as Freud observed.

Van der Leeuw, following Sonderblom’s thought, concludes that in religion, God is a latecomer who only appears after it has already been concretized, which reveals how superficial certain anthropologists are, although their value cannot be denied.

For them, the idea of God is a kind of synthesis of various religious practices, which is, in fact, a materialistic thesis. Schmidt has gathered sufficient arguments to destroy this elementary view of religions.

Many authors criticize their opponents with bitter words, often lacking the balance that should be present in the study of such important matters. This can be exemplified by Van der Leeuw, who even considers them “naïve.”

Van der Leeuw’s conception of the origin of religions is based on the recognition “that man worships not nature or any particular natural object, but the power that is revealed in them” (p. 40).

What man worships is the power revealed in things. But Van der Leeuw forgets that, for man to reach this state, it would be necessary for him to previously consider:

a) that man already has the capacity to generalize.

Therefore, his reason is already formed, sufficiently formed. Consequently, the manifestation of this or that power implies the concept of power, which is already structured in a noetic scheme;

b) that this power is not the cause but only reveals itself through the thing, which gives it a secretive, hence hidden, character. Furthermore, his worship is directed towards something that surpasses the immanence of the thing, something that transcends it;

c) every action, operation, knowledge, etc., is proportionate to the one who performs it. In order for man to construct the concept of power hierarchically superior to all its manifestations, a power that encompasses perfection within itself, there must already be something in him that allows for it, otherwise, such a way of seeing and feeling would originate from nothingness, which would be absurd;

d) Consequently, Van der Leeuw will have to accept a religious emergence in man, leading him to accept a Supreme Being, perfect, omnipotent, which is scalarly manifested in diverse things that partially reveal it. And this power, as power, is one, unique. This positiveness is found in Van der Leeuw’s thought, achieved by paths different from those taken by Schmidt. What is positive in both, despite the divergences that arise from their varying ways of thinking, does not prevent the acceptance of the same positiveness, understood in a quidditative sense, that is, the emergent nature in humans to grasp a supreme power, which is itself perfection in the clear sense that term has in philosophy.

If many modern scholars were more careful in their assertions, they would see that, under certain aspects, and in what is precisely positive, there is a point of convergence between the most opposing doctrines. Being a phenomenologist, Van der Leeuw orients his search in the field of religions through the phenomenological method and could not fail to perceive this point of convergence.

Naturally, the coloration of the fundamental idea is different, as it is, for example, in Schmidt, more inclined toward the Catholic conception, so to speak, without forcing the genuineness of his thought. But such aspects are accidental because what is substantial and positive in both is related to the same content.

Article 2: Some religious symbols

The sun

In all cultural cycles, the sun emerges as the most constant symbol of divinity. Those who seek a naturalistic explanation of religions, in their speculations, are mainly drawn to the fear that long evening twilights preceding the nights cause in primitive man, as well as the immense satisfaction of the dawn when the sun rises again on the horizon.

The sun goes through various phases between ascension and decline during the day. At night, it penetrates the abysses of the world and, overcoming all opposition, is born again to perform the same cycle once more.

The sun offers the example of the hero engaged in two constant struggles, victorious and defeated each time, in an eternal struggle with ebb and flow, victories, defeats, and resurrections.

For primitive man, the power of the sun would be the example of the extraordinary power he possesses, a symbol of supreme power and consequently, supreme power itself.

The positive aspect of this naturalistic conception cannot be denied. Truly, the sun is in all cultures the hero-god who knows the vicissitudes, including the holocaust, in order to rise again finally, victorious.

We find this symbol in the great celebration of Christmas, the growing light, crescite lux.

It is the invictus sun of the Romans, Apollo, the Helios of the Greeks, Amon and Aton of the Egyptians, which served as the most vivid symbol in the religion of Akhenaten in the New Egyptian Empire, thirteen centuries before Christ. In Christianity, we find these poetic words in St. Francis:

“Praised be You, Lord, with all Your creatures, especially Sir Brother Sun, who brings us the day and through whom You illuminate us; he is beautiful and radiates with great splendor, O Most High, he bears Your image. Praised be You, Lord, for Sister Moon, and for the stars. You formed them in the sky, bright and precious and beautiful.”

This cosmic brotherhood between humans and the things of the world is an exaltation of the participations that all things have in the divine perfections. Classical literature is full of hymns to the sun, and it is always the symbol of enlightenment, bliss, the victory of good, etc.

As the source of life and all order in our solar system, the sun is an indirect presence of divinity among us, hence its worship being present throughout the globe, with natural variations in different cultural cycles.

Temples are erected to the sun, as well as the most hopeful human prayers. Its shining face blinds us, and while we can feel the benefit of its rays, we cannot see it face to face because it blinds us. Similarly, we finite creatures cannot see divinity face to face, whose shining light would also blind us.

Thus, in the sun, we find a series of perfections that an analogical analysis would immediately reveal the symbolic significance of, as well as the justification of what numerous religions establish exoterically41.

Fire

Fire does not speak to animals, but it speaks to humans, and the language it uses can only be understood by humans.

In the presence of fire, animals are frightened and flee, but humans are amazed and approach. There is something that connects them. In all peoples, fire is the object of worship, and deep worship at that. Only humans appropriate fire and control it without dominating it. A mixture of good and evil, humans only direct it seeking the good it offers. The legend of Prometheus aptly expresses the significance of fire in the formation of man. Sun rays, the source of life, find something resembling them in fire. Sunlight illuminates the earth, and fire also illuminates, although to a lesser degree.

Thus, fire is the symbol of the sun, which is the symbol of the Supreme Being.

In Hindu myths, Agni is born from the sun and fire, and fire is used to worship him.

Fire is linked to life, which is a flame that ferments and grows until it finally extinguishes. But the flame of life always shines, enduring through the sparks of individual lives that arise and perish.

Pieces of wood contain the germ of fire within them, and through friction, fire emerges. Agni is awakened, the celestial son rises, the child is born, then it develops and multiplies in its counterparts, like fire that always multiplies in fire.

The worship of fire is found in all peoples, in homes, in the hearths of the Romans, in our St. John’s Eve celebrations, in all rituals centered around fire.

It is the flame maintained by the vestals, the flame of the hearth that symbolizes the family. And the house in which the fire has died out and been extinguished has lost its power, which is why we still maintain, without fully understanding its significance, the lit fire in churches, the pyres of athletes, the lit candles in temples. We also find the flamines of the Romans, Vesta, the fire of the State, whose priestesses, the vestals, nurtured and served.

The burning element of renewal, of bringing light, of pointing to tomorrow, for in the dawns, flames grow on the horizon, are universal symbols. All things are destroyed by fire, and all things are transformed into fire, hence the reason why we find in the arche, the primordial fluidic principle, the hidden, the matter, the electronic energies of modern physics, the principle of all corporeal things, still a manifestation of supreme power. Thus, fire is the symbol of the beginning and the end, where things begin and where things will end because, according to the legends of various beliefs, the universe was born from fire and will return to fire. Our world was once a ball of fire, and it will return. Fire is also the symbol of becoming, the symbol of the constant heterogeneity of things, but also of homogeneity because, as Buddha showed his disciples, the flame is always varied and always the same. After it, when it extinguishes, only nirvana remains. And to give the experience of nirvana to his disciples, he expressed it through the symbolism of the extinguished flame. Nothing of the flame remained; now it was the other, the negative, nirvana, the being without determinations.

According to L. von Schroeder, three classes of sacred fire are found among Indo-European peoples: the fire of sacrifice, the fire of defense, and the hearth fire. Among the Hindus, Agni, the fire of sacrifice, is also the messenger who connects humans with divinity and the priest who makes offerings.

But it also becomes the hearth fire, the protector of flocks, the fire of protection and warding off. Fire has three origins: first, from the earth, from trees (masculine), the sacred fig tree; second, from space, the storm cloud; third, from the sky, the sun.

Geiger states that for the worshippers of Mazda, fire is the most sacred and pure element, the radiance of their supreme divinity, Thura-Mazda. It is the symbol of moral purity and a means of repelling demons."

In every family home, there was a fire kept by the head of the family.

Among the Greeks, L. von Schroeder cites Apollo as the god of light and fire, who was revered in a flame on a tripod and was used for making oracles, as among the Persians. He was also considered the protector of the hearth fire, the city, the colonies, and also the flocks.

Hephaestus, among the Greeks, was the god of material fire and forge fire. Offerings were given to Hestia, the goddess of fire, especially of the hearth, also the protector of the city and the state, before and after each sacrifice.

Her Roman counterpart is Vulcan, the god of fire, forge fire, destructive fire, but also of the family, the state, and the hearth. The vestal virgins were entrusted with the sacred fire of the city and the state.

Among the Germanic peoples, the mysterious and duplicitous figure of Loki is closer to Vulcan than Agni-Apollo, due to his lively and cunning character, presenting a special note that Sophus Bugge, as cited by Schmoeder, explains by the influence of the Christian figure of Lucifer.

Among the Slavs, Lithuanians, and Latvians, there is evidence of sacred fires, but not of true fire gods.

“In the early Aryan period,” says L. von Schroeder, "the worship of the hearth fire was different from the worship of fire as a force of nature and the masculine fire god.

The hearth fire received its worship for social reasons. It was considered a being of superior nature, to which offerings of food were also made, and it was preserved with respect and honored with ceremony, especially during wedding celebrations, where the fire of a new hearth had to be kindled. The worship of fire as a great elemental force, however, seems to be inseparable from the worship of the sun, to such an extent that the festivals of the sun and life were also festivals of fire. The remaining worship included the sun and fire, and the ceremony of the new fire, through the friction of wood, was especially carried out during the solstice festivals."

Frazer reveals that in the worship of Diana in Nemi, torches were lit in the woods where she was revered, and bronze statues depicted the goddess with a torch in her raised right hand, and women, in order for their prayers to be heard by her, went to the goddess’s sanctuary carrying lit torches.

Frazer states that there is an analogy between this custom and the Catholic practice of carrying candles to church in fulfillment of vows.

Diana was also called Vesta, which explains the preservation of a sacred and perpetual fire in her sanctuary. In fire magic, we see that in some tribes, the priest does not leave the temple while the warriors are at war because the fire must be kept burning day and night, and if the fire were to go out, they believe a great disaster would occur.

The influence exerted by fire is not only found among primitive tribes. Frazer also tells us in his book that peasants in modern Europe, such as French peasants, believe that priests possess the power to extinguish the flames of a fire.

An Arab historian recounts that there was a tribe of nomads who, to stop the rain, would cut a branch from a certain desert tree, set it on fire, and then throw water on the burning branch, causing the fury of the rain to cease, just as the water extinguishes the burning branch.

We also find among Lithuanians the preservation of perpetual fires made with wood from certain oak trees, as a tribute to one of their gods. This fire was kindled by rubbing the sacred wood together.

Incendiary arrows were shot towards the sun during an eclipse, revealing a desire for magical control over the sun, as recounted by Frazer among Peruvian tribes.

Frazer tells us that in the forests of Cambodia "live two rulers known as the king of fire and the king of water.

The king of fire is the more important of the two, and his supernatural powers have never been questioned. He officiates at weddings, festivals, and sacrifices in honor of Yan, the spirit, etc."

Fire is also present in the celebrations of peasants throughout Europe, where on certain days of the year, they light bonfires and dance around them, or leap over the fires, as in our St. John’s Eve celebrations.

We also see similar ceremonies in races through fields, with lit torches, among fruit trees, to ward off pests. There is also the burning of a witch in the midst of a bonfire, which we find, with certain similarities, in the burning of Judas.

Arab or Arabic-speaking tribes light fires and leap over them, repeating the leap seven times.

In addition to considering fire purifying, they also believe that the ashes of the fires are beneficial and pass them over their bodies and heads.

They believe that by leaping over the fire, they rid themselves of all their misfortunes. In summary, the symbolism of fire is found throughout Europe, in bonfires lit with special woods or any other wood, but fire always has the purifying sense and the ability to ward off misfortunes, crop pests, evil spirits, etc.

Frazer suggests that the burning of witches may have replaced the sacrifice of a human or animal in ancient times when a member of the community was chosen to be the sacrifice.

In symbolism, there is also the significance of fire as action and water as potential. Divine fire is pure action, the pure act of the Supreme Being that has no hybridity. This fire, the fire of our experience, is thus the symbol of the divine fire, inherently pure. By purifying, the fire of our experience participates in one of the attributes of divinity, and that is the primary reason why we see it present in all religious beliefs.

Water

Water, by taking on the forms of what contains it, is the symbol of prime matter, which is, through form, heterogenized.

The mobility of water, the ripples it presents on its surface, the varied life that emerges from the depths of the seas, the refreshing and fertilizing water that falls from the heavens during rain, the liquid state that things tend towards at certain moments – all of this provides a set of schemas that have allowed humans to see something sacred in it, because it envelops the continents and the world, and serves as a starting point for all things.

For the ancient Egyptians, water was the symbol of the vibrations that constitute the universe, as all things, ultimately, were vibratory ensembles for them.

All peoples, in all times, worship water for the significance it offers.

Water was not worshiped only in those countries where it was scarce. Water, amidst the variability of its significance, has always been an object of worship for all peoples. There is water of life, water of fertility, water that makes things grow, that vivifies the fields, water from springs emerging from the earth, from mountains, holy water in which Demeter rests, the sacred rivers of India, blessed waters, consecrated waters, miraculous waters, the water of Juventa (the water of youth), the water of purification, the water of the sacraments of the great religions (baptism), the water that preserves and dispels the forces of evil, of disease; sanctifying water that brings forth the new man, water from the fourth Gospel, feminine and maternal water, a generating and regenerating symbol, water from the chaos from which the world emerges, water that surrounds the human being during gestation, and so on.

Van der Leeuw tells us that a man from Surinam said to his interlocutor, “Man cannot live without water.” And the other replied, “Nor without fire.” And the first retorted, “No, sir; fire cannot be compared to water, because man can make fire, but he cannot make water; only God can. Water is indispensable for everything that lives: man, animal, plant. But only man cannot live without fire.”

The flood legend, found among the peoples of the five continents, is the water from the heavens and the earth, which avenges, purifies, and renews humanity, and is the symbol of the return to prime matter, of things that perish as a starting point for the generation of new things. The symbol of water is always linked to the symbol of the generation and corruption of things, although it is not limited to this meaning alone.

The great heterogeneity of the significance of things that point to the perfections of being is what has given our world, the world of man, a value that surpasses the realm of mere sensible intuition, opening the mystical path to the deepest connections between the creature and the creator, between finite being and infinite being.

Things are not lost because there is always Ariadne’s thread that can lead us to the farthest reaches.

Symbolism is an itinerary along hidden paths, and we can affirm, without fear of exaggeration, that the greatness of man lies in his capacity to travel this path and not remain bewildered in the mere prison of the senses, which allow him to see and feel only the mere appearance, the mere phenomenon, which is not the only language of things. There is a voice that comes from afar, a voice that things speak, and only man, when he surpasses animality and attains human fullness, can hear and understand. Thus, there are two realities, the one given to humans and animals, and the one given to humans, but not all ears are capable of hearing.

The Stone

When a stone is exceptionally large, it provokes admiration, astonishment, the numinous, as R. Otto calls it, which is undeniably a psychological positivity that cannot be disregarded when studying the genesis of religions.

The immense overwhelms us, astonishes us, diminishes us, and terrifies us. Supreme power is something that surpasses us and conquers us through its might. Therefore, in assimilating the grandeur of the stone, the mountain, to the grandeur of supreme power, there is a perfectly clear formal adequacy. The emotion, the numinous, which has its psychic resonance, joins the factual scheme and becomes psychologically linked to the eidetic-abstract scheme of divine power. The monumental stone demands respect, even submission in certain cases.

However, it is not only the grandiose stones that are revered, as there is a tribute paid to stones in general in the religious manifestations of peoples, due to their solidity, their resistance, their durability, their victory over time. We find stones in boundary markers, in homage to divinity, in temples, etc. The solidity of the stone allows it to symbolize what overcomes time, for what we desire to endure must be built stone upon stone. We find a cult of the stone and a corresponding symbolism, as we see in the herms of the Greeks, in the Jupiter lapis, and among primitive peoples in the markers along paths with phallic forms, in stone mounds, and so on. The symbolism always pertains to solidity, duration, victory over time, unshakeable firmness, an attribute of the divinity in which the stone participates.

Mountain

It is the power expressed by the mountain, the power that emanates from it, that leads humans to venerate it. But the mountain is the symbol of the highest, of that which partakes of the most elevated. It is on the lofty peaks that birds alight, birds that penetrate the vastness of the blue sky, such as eagles, condors, and others. Mountains reach into infinity, advance to the highest realms. It is there that gods emerge and dwell, like the gods of Olympus, the gods of Mount Fuji in Japan, like Jehovah who appears on Mount Sinai, the Chinese gods of Mount Tai Shan, the sacred mountain, the Walhalla of the ancient Germans, the Himalayas of the Tibetans and Hindus, and so on.

The ancient Egyptians placed the creator god on a mountain, the primordial mountain, the navel of the world, the center and point of origin, symbolized by the apex of the pyramid. We see this also in the omphalos of Greek sanctuaries, the symbol of the earth, the stone, the stone within the mountain from which the gods emerge, like Mithras ex petra natus, or Athena, born from the head of Zeus, which is the summit of Mount Olympus.

The Almighty

In his anthropological research, Schmidt has demonstrated that the concept of the Almighty, the Supreme Being, is universal, and it is symbolized by beings that partake in His power, albeit in a lower hierarchy. This power subjugates, and, in this regard, as Van der Leeuw shows us, all religions are in agreement. In some, total submission is established, independent of human will. In others, such as Christianity, we find conceptions that accept a certain independence in humans, allowing them to oppose the will of God, although they cannot remove it, but can at least distance themselves from it. In the Greek ananke and the Roman factum, in the Arabic maktub, there is always the certainty of submission to fate. With Christianity, true freedom was established, although in some Christian sects, we find this old oriental thought.

In the religions of the great cultural cycles, the Almighty is one, although He presents Himself under various names. These names can refer to attributes or actions of the divinity, participated in by cosmic beings, which, for this reason, can symbolize the Almighty.

The Struggle

Jacob’s struggle with the angel finds parallels in many religious myths, where the hero-god confronts the power of instinct, of the unconscious, the struggle of the human against animalistic unconsciousness. This symbol reveals our participation in the perfections of divinity and those belonging to animality. In this struggle, the hero either succumbs or triumphs. Neurosis is a deviation in this case. This primitive power that arises from instincts is the God who is a “devouring fire,” to which the biblical phrase refers when it says, “It is dreadful to fall into the hands of the living God.”

This power is the devil, the obstructer, the tempter as well. This is the dual action offered by the figure of the devil in all religious myths. It is what obstructs us and diverts us from the desired path, or it tempts us to do what is contrary to ethical schematics, or what is destructive, leading us to transgress the laws of nature, the destructive instinct within us.

At times, this power is deified because hierarchically it reveals a more powerful sum of power than what we possess. It is not surprising, therefore, that there is a fusion of the devil with divinity, as not all religions perceive God solely as love, as Christianity interprets it.

We have the example of the temptation of Christ in the desert. The devil ultimately offers him, after exhausting all attempts, power over humanity, dominion, political power. Jung shows us, and with some justification, that the Christian assumption (at least the genuine one) accepts that those who prefer power are possessed by the devil. Christ resists. The god-hero triumphs over temptation. And this is expressed in the myths of all religions, both those of high cultures and the most primitive.

The struggle of Mithras with the bull, which he slays; the struggle of Christ within himself in the Garden of Gethsemane; the struggle against the dragon, the struggle against the serpent – we encounter these in countless myths. It is therefore a universal mythologeme that can be eidetically translated as follows: the struggle of humans against the power of instinct. This is the tertiary symbol that appears through secondary and primary symbols, such as the bull, the serpent, the dragon, and so on.

The struggle against the power of instinct is the struggle of positive will against opposing will. In short, it is a symbol of the category of opposition, according to the Pythagorean line, which reveals the duality of every finite being.

This always reveals an opposition between antinomies, which are positive and present two contrary vectors. They are, in essence, opposites in the sphere of the dyad, but their victory is only achieved in divinity, where opposites coincide and identify themselves, in beatitude, the ultimate and supreme end of the human being.

Thus, all this symbolism, examined on the various planes of the symbol, ultimately reaches God because every referent refers to the referred, which ascends finally to divinity.

The continuous participation is present because within us there is that which participates in this dyad, which, in truth, we still are, albeit in different modalities. The struggle of the spirit against instinct is an inseparable antinomy of humanity. It is part of our human condition. The results of this struggle are ultimately manifested in the symbolism that indicates the historical-social, as we have seen in the decadialectic analysis of the symbol. It always has a bionomic root, in the psychic, the ecological, and the historical-social, hence the heterogeneity of the symbol, although it refers to the homogeneity of the most remote symbolized, as we have already seen.

The Mother

Otto Kerner tells us: “On Earth, there is nothing more sacred than the religion of the mother, for it leads us to the deepest mystery inscribed in our soul, the relationship between the child and the mother.”

Schmidt shows us that the earthly monotheism, symbolized by the mother, is characteristic of matriarchal cultures. However, we find this worship, which is sometimes symbolized by the earth in ethnic religions, and sometimes by the moon as a symbol of the eternal feminine, as well as the active and passive procession of becoming, alongside the worship of the father symbolized by the sun. In Egyptian culture, for example, Osiris is exoterically the sun, and Isis is the mother, and both generate Horus, the son.

In philosophical language, the eternal masculine, active and passive, animus, with predominance over anima, and the eternal feminine, passive and active, anima, with predominance over animus, in their interaction and consequent reciprocity, generate the cosmic order symbolized, in this case, by the number three, which, as we have seen, is the ternary symbol that refers to the relationship that arises from opposition but dynamically, therefore, evolutionarily, points to reciprocity symbolized by the number four, the quaternary, the world of becoming.

Esoterically, this triad is not primary, for divinity, as One, precedes it ontologically and theologically, something that Akhenaten wanted to transform into an exoteric belief through the worship of Aton, the supreme divinity, the source of all things symbolized by the resplendent sun. In Saint Francis of Assisi, in his hymns, we find expressions like these: “Our sister, the earth, our mother, who sustains and supports us, who produces the most varied fruits, like multicolored flowers and the grass of the meadows.”

Among the Greeks, we see the worship of the earth, for to be born, to live, is to be born from it, and to die is to return to it. And Theophrastus said that we must sing and love as she who gestates.

In the poetry of various peoples, we always find this symbolism of the earth, from the most primitive to the most cultured, as we also find the symbol of the mother linked to the mother-mountain. As we have seen, the mountain is where the gods emerge, such as Mitra, Espectra, Natus, etc. Among the Greeks, Demeter is the symbol of the productive earth. That is why the woman symbolizes divinity when she is the one who gives birth, and that is why the cults dedicated to the generative divinity have a feminine character.

In some cultures, this worship is always accompanied by the worship of the father, sometimes in the form of a plow or a staff that fertilizes the earth. We find this worship even in Christianity with the Mater Dolorosa, the Virgin Mother, for the generative earth is always virgin, always pure.

Among the Hindus, Kali is the maternal goddess, and at the same time cruel, whose worship has its origins, according to many anthropologists, in a matriarchal period in India. We find the symbol of the Virgin Mother in Artemis, Hera, Hertha of the Germans, and Mary of the Christians. It is a universal symbol, the interpretation and justification of which has demanded much of human intelligence.

The mother is always, in the deepest filial love, purity and virginity, and must be understood in its deepest sense as that of creative fertility, always renewed. In Christianity, the mother is spiritualized in the Glorious Mother, the Mother of God, who is in Heaven.

The Sphinx of Egypt is not only a semi-theriomorphic symbol, which Jung interprets as the image of the terrible mother (the devouring mother, the mother wolf, which appears in many myths and which, in some cases of psychosis, manifests itself in human beings).

It would also be naive to interpret it only as an “Egyptian” fantasy, as has been proposed before.

The interpretation most consistent with hermetic knowledge is that the head indicates human knowledge, which dares to penetrate into the unknown; the lion’s claws are the guarantee of this audacity, which requires courage, for there is also courage in the face of the unknown; the muscular and strong flanks of the bull are the symbol of the will that desires and can, the impetuous will, and the eagle’s wings for flights beyond, for hidden knowledge. (The eagle flies higher than any other bird, and its direct flight to the sun, symbol of divinity, lends it the meaningfulness of thought ascending to the divine, of luminous mysticism that penetrates the secrets of light and knowledge).

But the mother is polysemous through many symbols, yet, in turn, she is a symbol of the entire cosmic root of humanity. She is the earth, the source, the origin that gestates, supports, sustains, accompanies, nurtures, and provides comfort. All human needs find in the childhood memories a symbol of tranquility, peace, and support in the mother. Every desire for peace, tranquility, bliss, etc., tends to be figured in the symbol of the mother.

Freud considered it merely as a symbolized representation. The desire to return to the tranquility of the mother’s womb is the presence of the factual infantile schema of intrauterine life, which serves as a symbol for the desire for bliss, felicitas.

Entering the womb, returning to the maternal cave, immersing oneself in the tranquility of the waters of intrauterine life is just a vivential and symbolic pointing to a broader cosmic impulse. Libido, which manifests itself sexually, is just one coordinate of the human longing that takes that form, but does not desire to stagnate in it.

As Jung emphasized, capturing its symbolic meaning, incest is a desire to return to childhood, to the tranquility of childhood, to the wonder of childhood, where every sensory intuition is still new, has the value of a first experience. In the child, this desire is not yet incestuous; only in adults, whose developed sexuality no longer tolerates this regressive application, does it appear as incestuous.

Understood in this way, the desire for return does not imply the sexual meaning as the ultimate end given by Freud. Incestuous images are decorations of the historical-social contribution of man.

The desire to return to the maternal womb for a rebirth, for a new immersion in the waters, for a baptism, arises in the symbolism of religious rites, but all of them are symbols that refer more distantly to the human yearning for bliss, for absolute good, the aspiration of every living being that wishes to attain it. Since childhood memories persist in schemes that constitute the individual archaic, slightly conscious, but above all assuming the form of experience, desires, and longings, they coordinate with the symbol of the mother, symbolized in many ways without losing its meaningfulness as a symbol that can be analyzed until reaching the decenary, as we have seen in the ascending hierarchy of symbols42.

The desire for sexual incest may arise and does arise without denying this symbolic path. It is like a symbolic proposal that anomalously may seem to be the ultimate end, but, in truth, when the mystic itinerary halts halfway, it offers the danger of falling into vicious forms that reveal abnormalities. However, in any case, they do not negate the more distant impulse, which is always the desire for the eternal presence of bliss, the summum bonum that only the Supreme Being can offer, the aspiration of all major religions, for it is a longing of mankind, the final immersion and fusion with divinity, a fusion that we experience between mother and child, completely merging in it, in the act of being a mother, and in it, in the symbiosis that is never forgotten. Therefore, the mother is a symbolized entity, but also a great symbol that connects to the transcendental, as it transcends the human and the cosmic.

Libido

Libido is symbolized by the sun, by fire, or by heroes with solar attributes. Analogically, we have there the energy that reveals libido as the creative energy of the sun.

Phallic symbols also express it because gentle life is a revelation of the energy of libido. We find it in totems, in Babylonian cameos, among us in figas, in wheels composed of phalluses to express the rhythm of love (already obscene), in stones placed on paths, in the fire serpent around the sun or turned upon itself with flames around it, in the concave-shaped moon, in vessels, to indicate the femininity of libido, in hands with open fingers, etc.

Libido is masculine or feminine, depending on whether the energy is active or passive, the energy of determining or being determined, because in determination, there is an activity.

Libido is connected to sexuality because it is the way in which it manifests itself; it is a symbol, therefore, by participation. Genital capacity reveals a potency that manifests itself in the sphere of animal life, a symbol of universal libido, of the great universal potency that is energetic43.

“The phallic symbol,” Jung explains, “does not mean the sexual organ, but rather libido, and likewise, when it appears clearly as such, it does not allude to itself but represents a symbol of libido. In fact, symbols are not signs or allegories for a known thing, but they attempt to indicate a little-known or completely unknown reality” (ibid., p. 234).

It could also be added: also for things that seek to hide, for there are symbols for what is hidden from the eyes of the profane, as can be seen in various initiatory orders.

Jung believes that such symbols are metaphors, but it must be recognized that in metaphor there is an extrinsic analogy, whereas in a symbol, there is always, for it to be a symbol, an intrinsic analogy, a participation, for otherwise it could become a mere sign. Mystic symbols should not be taken literally, as many people do. The mother or the father expresses modalities of libido, and therefore, they can symbolize it. Considering, for example, phallic symbols as merely an expression of the penis would be extreme superficiality. By symbolizing the father or the mother, they symbolize libido, which is a symbol of the energy of potency, a symbol of the omnipotence of the Supreme Being, a symbol of Divinity.

The Fish

Piscis (fish) is the symbol of the Zodiac, in which the sun resumes its annual course at the winter solstice (goat-fish, the aigókerôs = Capricorn). The sun rises to the high peaks of the mountains and then descends to the depths of the sea like a fish. (We often see this symbol used by Nietzsche in “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”).

Generated in water, the fish is analogous to the pre-natal phase of a child (Christ is a fish, Ichtys, whose five letters are the initials of the savior: I (esos), Ch (ristos), Th (eou), Y (ios), S (óter) = Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior). The fish symbolizes chastity, for the female fish spawns and the male fish fertilizes them as he passes by, without carnal conjunction taking place. (“And Mary said to the Angel: How can this be, since I do not know a man? And the angel answered and said to her: The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you” – Luke, I 26-35)44.

Aníbal Vaz de Mello (o. cit. p. 225) writes:

“Motherhood without sin; Mother and Virgin! Now we understand the word of John (I, 13): ‘There are those who were not born of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God’s will.’ Another remarkable coincidence: the Apocryphal Gospels narrate the Nativity of Mary on September 8th. Precisely in this month, September, the female fish spawns for the great feast of fertilization, fertilization without contact! Marvelous interweaving of facts, symbols, and celebrations! In Indian symbolism, the first Avatar also came in the form of a fish. This is why many Indian books tell that Vishnu took the form of a fish with a human head in order to find the Vedas, lost in the flood.”

Just as the sun penetrates the sea, the water, and emerges from it, it becomes a child and a fish again. Therefore, the fish is associated with the symbols of renewal and rebirth. In the figure of Christ, also a solar symbol, there is a conjunction of other meanings of the fish, such as chaste, renewing, and resurging.

Let us remember Jadir, the “son of the depths of the sea,” whom Moses encounters and who resembles the Babylonian Oanes-Ea, who, in the form of a fish, emerges from the sea every day, coming from the obscurity of the darkness of night and death, into new life.

Tree

The vigor of the tree, the shelter it provides us, the wood with which we build so many goods, the ability to bear fruit without losing its strength, its calm position, serenity, and dominion, could not help but assimilate to the countless schemes that man construct noetically, which, taken to the maximum degree of perfection, express many of the formalities we attribute to divinity.

The tree is a manifestation of power, and it symbolizes divinity through the degrees of the symbol. The tree is man with his roots in the earth, in animality, in the matter that composes him, but its branches stretch upwards, towards the clear air, towards the immaculate blue of the sky. And in these branches, leaves sprout that breathe thought, and flowers and fruits are the results of all human intellectual creation. Tree of the mountains or the valleys, subject to great storms and the harshness of high peaks or the fertility of soft and debris-filled valleys, it is like the human being and also symbolizes it.

Let us not forget that Helena was a tree that divinized herself, in Rhodes, she was called Dentrites, “the one from the tree.” Dionysus is also presented as a tree. The Greeks found powers inhabiting trees, such as the hamadryads, who “are born and die with the trees.”

The Egyptians also divinized trees as participants in the perfections of Being, for their sight offers us a symbol of the succession of life, the “tree of life,” with its alternation of birth and death, of the fruits that generate, that arise and perish, of the leaves that fall and renew, of the leaves that beautify and unfold when shaken by the winds.

The tree is also connected to human life, as we find in certain Asian customs and among us Brazilians: tying the life of a newborn to a planted tree. Planting a tree is giving life, it is continuing the duration of life, a life that endures through living beings. In some Melanesian tribes, the mana of a man grows in proportion to the development of the tree that is linked to him as a vegetal brother, linking him to cosmic life. There is a whole symbolism in planting this tree, for the man must open the earth with an artificial penis, and the woman is responsible for sowing while everyone sings hymns.

In various myths, there are talking trees, trees that love and suffer, trees that appeal to the mercy of the woodcutter who intends to cut them down, trees that beg not to have their branches taken, which are members of their own body, and so on.

The tree is like life and like the human being, and there is a perfection in which both participate: life. But from the tree, new lives sprout through its branches. The tree is the symbol of collective life, of the various individuals connected to a common center.

The tree brings life, and the tree saves. The savior is also the “tree of life.” And this symbol is so profound that the revolutionaries of 1789 in France raised trees of liberty, thus founding in them their longing to dominate the future, the “May trees.”

In the earthly paradise, there are the trees of good and evil and the tree of life. The Egyptians sought the tree in which the gods reign. The timber of life is its substance. The tree, in all cultures, has the same meanings.

In the West, we find it among the Germans as the sacred tree of Uxal. It is from the tree that Christ’s cross emerges, which will be the symbol of the new religion.

The tree is thus the symbol of the mystery of death and life. It is not difficult, therefore, to understand the various emotional reactions that man has known over time in the face of trees, which always awaken in him the anticipation that mystery lurks and challenges him to unveil it. All human art is permeated with the presence of the tree, and the variety of its significances does not deviate us from the same path, which is the deepest pointing of the symbol of the tree: life and death, in their constant succession, in short, time as one of its greatest symbolizations.

Salvation

All religions promise salvation. Becoming aware of his weakness and his absences, man desires to overcome himself, to achieve a greater sum of power, in short, to be saved from the state he is in.

The religious scheme of salvation, whose stratification process is long and proportionate to the schematics of various cultural cycles, always includes the possession of power, achieved by us or granted to us by the donation of the one who possesses it, such as kharis, divine grace, salvific grace of the scholastics.

But salvation is brought by beings who represent it here, or rather, who symbolize it through participation, like water (for the Egyptians), in the sense of the liquid power capable of giving rebirth, fertilizing, etc., or the tree, the animals, etc. According to Van der Leeuw, the first savior was undoubtedly the phallus, symbol of fertility. In some peoples, the first harvested cereals are used to form a cake that takes on a feminine form, symbolizing femininity, or the form of an animal, as we still see today.

The savior scheme, the Sotér of the Greeks, who is a man and at the same time a god, is a universal symbol, for to save man, one must be man, to save him in man, and also a god, for he must possess the greater power, a universal symbol whose construction is easily understandable as a consequence of what we have studied thus far.

In the symbolism of various religions, the relationship of opposites gives rise to a reciprocity through interaction, giving birth to a new order, a new entity, the product of both. Taking the masculine principle in relation to the feminine principle, what arises is symbolized by the child. Now, for man, immersed in the struggle of opposites, swept away by the oppositions that act within him, his salvation lies in that which overcomes the opposites through synthesis.

Therefore, in many religions, it is the child who brings salvation, and as Van der Leeuw emphasizes, he is not only the hope of the living but also the consolation of the dead.

The child is the salvation of a couple, for it not only binds them more intimately but also perpetuates the family, and no one who has a more acute sense of feeling will consider their child as just an event, an intruder, but rather as something that continues them, that perpetuates them, and that at the same time binds them more directly to the mother. Here we are referring to the normal man, naturally, and not to examples of human degeneration, so common in our time.

Among the Egyptians, there was a cult, the most beautiful of all, to the child, symbolized by Horus, as the unifying one, whose influence on Christian doctrines is undeniable. It is Horus who ensures the life of his father Osiris, who carries out this life-giving activity, which is also vengeance against Seth, the enemy of the father.

The child and rejuvenation, spring, the salvation of spring. It is the renewal of the earth, like the Greek Dionysus. It is the Mars of the ancient Latins, the god of spring, the one who renews, who baptizes men, who assures them a new life.

Thus, in the symbolic content of the child, there is a set of positive elements that we see dispersed in various cults, as well as in various theories that seek to interpret the symbolism of religions.

The healing power is also connected to the Savior. All incarnations of the divine savior are linked to a god-man who heals. And healing is attributed to the wonderworkers who announce him, who precede him. Let us remember the words of Christ: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord” (Luke IV, 18).

In examining the myth of the savior, Van der Leeuw enumerates the invariant aspects, such as:

a) Birth, epiphany, son of a human mother and a divine father. The mother is a virgin because she is unaware of human contact and retains this virginity until giving birth. The savior, due to his power, could not originate from human carnal conjunction. Thus Apollo is born of Perictione, Isis conceives Horus, etc.

b) Act of resolution – It is the victory over oppositions. Apollo slays the Python, the labors of Heracles (Hercules of the Romans), the struggle of Christ against the Pharisees, etc.

c) Death – In the struggle, the hero succumbs, like Osiris, Dionysus, Tammuz, Adonis, Attis, Baldur of the Germans, Husayn of the Shiites. But death conquers death.

d) Resurrection – Resurrection can arise through the vengeance of the son (like Horus), but in general, it is the god himself who is reborn, who annihilates death through new life. It is the harvest because the time of sowing is the time of tears, of suffering. Resurrection and birth merge in some religions. The resurrected savior already preexisted, like Christ, who preexisted in the Father.

The myth of the savior is universal, and its mythologeme can be symbolically interpreted according to the planes of reference we have discussed45.

Individually, we have something within us that suffers, dies, and desires to resurrect because “we rise again each morning,” and the world “rises again with each dawn.”

Our desire for resurrection, which must take shape within us, is symbolized by all things that rise again. Poetry is full of images that express this symbolism, which we find in the flowers that open their petals, in the sunrise, in the sun that warms more, and so on.

The cycle of becoming points to a constant resurrection, which we find in all astrological symbols. But all this points even more distantly to the finite being that arises, is born, lives, endures, and dies but then resurrects as a symbol of the invariance of the cyclical variations of becoming.

And not far from finding in this symbol the divine drama of the being that incarnates in finitude, of the infinitude of the Supreme Being that generates its Son, the cosmos, the drama, the action, which is born, endures, and perishes, to be reborn always in different forms and follow the course of the variableness of forms until the desired final return to the bosom of Divinity, which is the beginning and end of all things.

Christ can be interpreted cosmically, and indeed he is, by some beliefs. The theogonic drama of the birth, life, and death of the gods can be interpreted as the symbolism of cosmic existence, which is the son, the one generated from the Supreme Being, who is another, different, but cannot be completely separated from him, for otherwise, there would be ruptures in Being, and we would have fallen into pluralism, where the aporias would be greater.

The creature is not another, absolutely other than God. There is something in us that unites us to Him, and that something is our whole being.

We touch upon a problem of Ontology and Theology here, the problem of the univocity and analogy of Being, which goes beyond the scope of this book. But what universal symbolism desires to say, desires to point out, is a univocity, however distant it may be, but which is also a point of security, the guarantee, the certainty that the Supreme Being is with us and we are in Him, much more deeply connected than we can believe.

At this point, the problem is immense, and the aporias that arise require further works, which we cannot address at the moment.

Souls

According to animism, religion would derive from the worship of ancestors. Without discussing the animist doctrine itself, we can say that it is based on certain positivities without excluding others from different doctrines, which, in turn, are not sufficient to grant it the title of true, but only that it is not entirely false. Indeed, in all peoples, certain powers are attributed to the dead, both for good and for evil.

If this power is not attributed to everyone, it is nevertheless attributed to some.

Death provokes in man the awe that precedes the mystery, because it signifies something that surpasses common understanding.

A life that has stirred, thought, loved, suffered, and suddenly appears lifeless and decomposing, provokes in all beings an awe whose roots are much deeper, and whose comprehension is not always easy to attain. Respect for the dead spans all cultural cycles and imposes itself even in civilized times.

Many renowned anthropologists have conducted research on this topic of great importance in the field of religions. Since man accepts, as is universal, a survival after death, the soul of the dead, participating in another reality, possesses powers that the living need to invoke in their favor or nullify through the opposition of other powers that they may be able to mobilize. It is not difficult to understand the symbolism that is established here, as the origins are easily grasped. In some religions, angels or demons are the souls of the dead. However, in all of them, there is always the acceptance of beings more powerful than humans, intermediaries between our power and supreme power, beings hierarchically superior to us, who are not only mediators but also ministers of supreme power.

The collection we have made of these symbols, the most commonly used in various religions, examined according to the symbolic dialectic proposed by us in this work, allows us to more easily perceive that religions are not a pile of superstitions, as the distorted and primitive view of the 18th and 19th centuries seeks to establish.

In the content of myths, in the mythologems that are psychologically true, there are ontological foundations that the well-directed philosopher cannot ignore or dismiss.

The language of religions is not merely that which externally manifests itself in their practices, rituals, liturgies, etc. It is necessary to understand and listen to what they point to from the furthest reaches. And if we seek what they point to from a more distant perspective, it is not difficult to understand that Symbolics, as a philosophical science, according to the norms we advocate, becomes quite capable of cooperating in the work of concretizing cultured knowledge, in the work of constructing a concrete philosophy, like the one we seek, and which is not merely a striving for knowledge, but a positive construction of human thought, in the good sense that the Pythagoreans gave to the term Mathesis, supreme instruction, which is, in short, the ideal and the aim toward which all our efforts in the field of philosophy tend.

Many may fear our “audacity,” but we prefer to err here with this excess rather than with timidity. On our part, there is the confidence that we have done what needs to be done: to cooperate in preventing the exacerbation of the crisis that has settled in epistemic knowledge, which has deepened the abysses instead of resolving them, a blame that we cannot help but attribute to many of those who consider themselves masters of knowledge by virtue of having been “invested” with a title, but who have done nothing more than provide reasons for separation instead of cooperating for the unification that is undoubtedly the highest ideal that can inspire a “lover of wisdom” and not just of knowledge; a philosopher, in short.

Article 3: The symbol of light and colors

It is not the task of Symbolics to study light as it is done in Optics and Physics, but only to address its significance as the motivator of colors and the meaning they have always had and continue to have for human beings.

In this section, where we will examine some applications of the symbol, we cannot delve as deeply as desired because our “Dictionary of Symbols and Signs,” currently in preparation, will contain universal symbolism not only in the field of Art but also in the domains of Religion, Science, Mathematics, Physics, Philosophy, Sociology, Psychology, Dreams, Politics, etc.

Among Westerners, Goethe stands out for his excellent studies on the symbolism of colors. Considering that color is the clash between light and darkness, colors reveal either the predominance of darkness or of light. The most luminous and brighter colors are called warm colors, while the less luminous and darker ones, such as violet, are referred to as cool colors.

Light colors are always cheerful, while dark colors are sad.

Psychology tells us that in the dark, blood circulation decreases, while when transitioning from shadow to light, there is a change in this circulation.

We schematically associate fear, terror, confusion, etc., with shadows and darkness. Dangers emerge from darkness, while life, creation, and tranquility come from light.

We associate joyful moments with light, while sorrowful, sad, and oppressive moments are associated with darkness.

Since shadows are schematized as structures of fear and terror, it is natural for darkness to provoke fear and terror because they are assimilated to the schema.

On the other hand, luminosity, brightness, is linked to everything that is joyful, creative, and alive. That is why light is inspiring because it is immediately associated with schemas that are structured with pleasantness, while the opposite happens when it is associated with schemas that involve unpleasantness, connecting to dimness and darkness46.

Goethe established the following chart, where the three primary colors appear:

Blue, when combined with red, gives us violet. Yellow, when combined with red, gives us orange. Blue, when combined with yellow, gives us green. Thus, we have six colors: the three primary colors and the three combined colors.

In turn, red combined with yellow gives us pink; orange combined with yellow gives us yellow-orange; yellow combined with green gives us sulfur color; green combined with blue gives us bluish-green; blue combined with violet gives us navy blue; and red combined with violet gives us purple and brown.

From purple to sulfur (sulfur color), we have warm colors; from sulfur to violet, we have cool colors.

Colors have a significant influence on us, and psychology studies the extent of this influence. In fact, there is already a chromotherapy, which is a way to treat nervous diseases through the use of colors.

Regarding the universal meaning of colors, the following aspects can be highlighted, revealing the symbolic role they play:

Blue – Symbol of truth, loyalty, serenity. The color of elevated thought, aristocratic color, the color of the Virgin’s cloak. The Greeks did not frequently use blue or green. Blue only appeared in the triglyphs of temples to provide depth. It is the color of depth, and blue allows for a more profound penetration of sight. Blue is the color of seas, distant mountains, deep sky, and distances. It belongs more to the atmosphere than to objects; it nullifies bodies and gives the impression of farness. It is also a symbol of infinity.

Red – The color of blood, symbol of life. It symbolizes activity, combativeness, ardor, impact, the symbol of passionate urgency, strong emotions. The color of sensitivity, popular color, symbol of all the fiery dreams of revolutions. An exciting color.

Purple – Color of cardinal mantles, color of majesty, symbol of dominion, aristocracy, and imperial mantles. Symbol of authority, command, power (the color that unites extremes).

Yellow – The color of the transcendent world, illuminated by human intelligence. The color of revelation that enlightens the human spirit in darkness. In theological virtues, it symbolizes faith. In worldly virtues, it represents generosity of heart, happy inspiration, good advice. In the realm of vices, it symbolizes proud selfishness. If it is pale yellow, it symbolizes disappointment, betrayal, also a characteristic of sulfur color. In stained glass windows, Judas appears dressed in pale yellow. It is also the color of light, gold, intuition.

Green – The color of nature, creation, rebirth, and life. It symbolizes revelation. In theological virtues, it is the symbol of hope. Symbol of happy love, joy, and prosperity. In a negative sense, it represents moral degradation, despair, madness. It is a calming, tranquilizing, pacifying color. Therefore, it can symbolize submission.

White – Although not strictly a color, white reflects the absolute, the triumph of the chosen ones, of angels. (Let us remember Saint Paul’s phrase: “He who overcomes will be dressed in white”). The color of Christ, Pythagoreans, Essenes. In dreams, a patriarchal figure often appears, wearing long white robes, dressed in white, giving us advice. This symbol is universal. It has this meaning even among people of color. In all cults, the supreme pontiff dresses in white. Conversely, it can symbolize coldness, anguish, abandonment.

Intermediate colors have intermediate meanings. It is common to feel, in violet, the color of the mystical, a gentle illumination of light over darkness. Violet also appears as the color of the vanquished, but it is not a universal symbol. Black is always a symbol of mourning. It is true that the Chinese tend to wear white when a relative dies. However, this does not mean that white is the color of sadness or grief. It is because the Chinese view life pessimistically and see death as liberation. To die is to be saved. Therefore, they celebrate death and while mourning the bodies of friends and relatives, they express satisfaction and congratulate the relatives instead of offering condolences, unlike what Westerners do.

Article 4: Symbolism of Sounds in Literature, and Symbolism of Space and Time

In our “Dictionary of Symbols and Signs,” we will have the opportunity to study symbols in art in general.

In this chapter, we only want to draw attention to the sounds present in spoken words. We know that these are properly signs and not symbols, except when they are onomatopoeic. However, in the combination of sounds in words in literature, there is a revelation of a symbolic intention on the part of the author.

Sadness

Neutral

Joy

u, ô, eu, ou, ê

- - - - e, a

- - - - ü, ê, é, é, á, i

The sounds on the left tend towards the sad, while those in the middle are neutral and serve to enhance both the ones on the left and the ones on the right, which are happier and clearer.

What effect could an author, a poet, for example, have if, in wanting to express something gloomy, mournful, or painful, they used higher-pitched sounds instead of lower-pitched ones? Or if, in wanting to express joy, life, animation, they employed lower-pitched sounds instead of higher-pitched ones? Naturally, the effect would not correspond to the intentions.

Hollow, low-pitched sounds express more anguish, torture, and pain, while high-pitched sounds are more capable of giving us a clearer experience of joy, lightness, and agility.

In combinations with vowels, we can follow Caillet’s tripartite division, which established three voices of the species.

The sounds emitted by humans (as well as those seen in higher animals) are:

a) low-pitched,

b) hissing,

c) growling.

The low-pitched sound always implies passivity, calmness, tranquility, meekness, maternal and endearing sounds. And we have the combinations:

Ma, má, me, mu, mô, mu, mu, mi, combined with nasalized sounds.

The hissing sounds indicate speed, hiss, whistle, howl, intensity, velocity, swiftness, violence. And we have:

sa, sâ, sê, só, sô, su, sú, vi, vu, chi, chu, zi, zu, etc. (hissing sounds).

The growling sounds indicate danger, aggression, combativeness, struggle, aggressiveness, war, strength, etc. And we have:

rre, rra, rrô, rru, rra, and the guttural sounds he, ha, hu, etc.

In poetry, for example, in Baudelaire’s poetry, we notice the predominance of growling sounds alongside the tonic syllables, while in Verlaine’s poetry, there are more low-pitched sounds.

The symbolism of sounds is easy to grasp. In the multiple musical combinations, many other aspects are offered, which can only be reached through an appreciation of music.

The symbolism of time and space is very rich. There is a symbolism of succession, the symbolism of time, and a symbolism of direction, which is that of space.

This symbolism reveals itself in art, such as painting, sculpture, architecture, as well as in dance.

The symbolism of space is revealed to us through lines and planes and cubes, which, when combined with the symbolism of colors, greatly facilitate the symbolic interpretation of the visual arts.

The symbolism of space and time can be considered under 5 aspects:

  1. sense of direction, vector;

  2. dimension of planes and volumes;

  3. order (rhythm, harmony, etc.);

  4. form (qualitative aspect);

  5. continuity or discontinuity in connections.

In general terms, it is the cross that serves as a starting point for a symbolic analysis of directions and successions (especially in the symbolism that refers to space and time).

In universal symbolism, the left always signifies the past, and the right signifies the future. Moreover, we find the following symbolism in these two directions:

Left

Right

Past

Future

Symbol of woman

Symbol of man

Symbol of Evil

Symbol of Good

– "The left"

(right man)

Introversion

Extroversion

Subjectivity

Objectivity

Passive

Active

Retreat

Attack

Mother

Father

High and low also have the following universal symbolism, with the respective ambivalence that we have already seen in Left and Right, with their positive and negative meanings.

Low

High

Earth

God

Inferior

Superior

Materiality

Light

Darkness

Spirituality

Instincts

Intelligence

Reality

Dream (illusions, Ideals).

Disbelief

Faith

Man

Divinity

Ascending lines are always symbols of elevation, ascent, creative impulse towards the better, the highest, as well as the chimerical, the utopian, the idealistic, optimism, etc.

Descending lines represent pessimism, descent, the demonic, realism, materialism, depression, stubbornness, and obstinacy.

Lines, as symbols of time and space, always indicate these universal symbolizations in all peoples and in all eras.

Horizontal lines are always an indication of serenity, tranquility, meekness, eternity (as in Egyptian art). Ascending lines represent impetus, elevation, as in Gothic art.

But lines can be sharp, indicating wickedness; hesitant, indicating a chimerical spirit, weakness. If they have inhibitions, breaks, they signify fatigue, pessimism, narrow-mindedness.

Spasmodic lines indicate anguish, anxiety.

If they are thin, they are indices of modesty, debility, weakness, and grace in a positive sense.

Spatulate lines indicate violence, physical exaltation.

This symbolism can be applied, above all, to the visual arts.

We present here only those generally observable meanings.

There is a universal symbolism of curved and straight lines. Curved lines are more typical of the animal world, of animal life. They are still symbols of sweetness, sensuality. Straight lines, more typical in the plant world, where there are more angles, are more aggressive or defensive indices.

The oblique line always gives the sensation of ascent, expansion when extensively considered, while the elevated vertical expresses intensive expansion.

In this way, we offer an example of symbolism in the field of space and time, among other aspects, without implying that they mean anything more than an example, as a broader and deeper examination requires a special work.

Theme VII

Only article: Considerations on the symbol

I

Concepts, due to their homogeneity and being abstract schemes, are deficient in expressing the interiority of a life, its powers, etc.

However, the combination of schemes in operative tensions can serve us as other abstract schemes to which represented images of our life or coordinates by our creative imagination can be assimilated, as seen in literature, where we can relive pathos or experience them through the artist’s pathic creative imagination.

In this way, the concept or judgmental structures can transform into symbols from being signs. The same can occur in all aesthetic thought, which is not necessarily constructed with abstract schemes (concepts), but with other tensional elements, as is the case with updated musical and pictorial thought, etc.

Therefore, art speaks through a symbolism that is peculiar to it.

As for the appreciator, they can become a translator of symbols through experiences or simply an admirer of the symbols themselves. In the first case, they mystically live aesthetics because they embark on symbolization, which is already a mystical activity (penetrating into what is hidden); in the second case, they aesthetically live the mystical because they only grasp the symbol and not what is symbolized (they remain in what is presented).

Since pathos cannot be expressed solely through signs that excessively delimit it, the symbol becomes the language of what is inexpressible operationally. That is why art is genuinely immersed in the pathic, and its intellectualization can only occur a posteriori, otherwise, excessive intellectualization would cause a stagnation of creative power.

Now, judgment is a synthetic function of reason.

Ideal objects are independent of time and space (they reveal timelessness and non-spatiality), just as they are independent of humans as cognizant beings.

Without humans, there could be those who do not think of a circle. But where there is the act of thinking, ideal objects would arise, and where a cognizant, thinking being emerges, they can grasp the thought of the circle.

Ideal objects shape and construct thought, and they are potentially present in every cognizant being.

Images are experiences, but the ideal object is different from experiences when considered as such. Experience gives them a coloration of life.

The being of ideal objects (of humans) is not that of existential reality that imitates them (a hybrid of act and potentiality), but rather that of potension, a tension that can be actualized in the lived reality of the cognizant being.

Just as the artist seeks to express the uniqueness of their experiences and employs symbolism as an expression of the inexpressible, it has also been used in the social field by religions and all expressive manifestations of humans.

Through the examinations we have made of the symbol in the field of psychology, which in turn encompasses the sociological sphere, the symbolic process has found a clarity in our explanations that it did not have before, as it has been neglected by philosophers, psychologists, and sociologists in general.

However, in the field of sociology, the symbol, which has been studied many times, presents, among the various opinions formulated about it, some important aspects that serve as a basis for understanding its various manifestations in the human superstructure.

In the social order, we observe various practices in social relationships, rituals, customs, fashions, relationships of all kinds, both between individuals and between individuals and groups, among groups themselves, classes, estates, and even larger collectivities, etc., all revealing a symbolism of the most varied kind.

In human relationships, the symbol undeniably acts as a mediator and also as a marker of social hierarchies and various estates. These symbols indicate participation in what is symbolized and, as such, characterize social situations and affirm the common participation in the symbolized.

We must always avoid reducing the symbol to its genus, which is the sign, thus virtualizing its specific difference. The symbol, borne by someone, always indicates, in the social case, that someone is a co-participant in what is symbolized. The “Wailing Wall,” the remains of the ancient Temple of Solomon, is a symbol for the Jewish people, and all Jews, near it, beside it, facing it, and considering it their symbol, feel themselves to be participants in what is symbolized—the same Jewish race that has been sacrificed, tortured, and persecuted. The cross, for Christians, unites them because it symbolizes Christ, the mediator between humans and God, in whom all Christians feel they participate.

The social symbol is characterized above all as a mediator of participation between humans, as seen especially in religious symbols, national symbols, and symbolic monuments of peoples. The symbol brings together all those who participate in it in social life.

In this way, closed social groups, secret societies, in religions, in political parties, in the superstructural construction of art, law, religion, philosophy, science, and even technology itself, etc., humans have symbols that unite their peers because they participate in the same symbolized.

All cultures in their phases and periods reveal symbols of their critical moments (from “kratos,” power) of actualized possibilities, of the aspirations that animate them, of the way they feel and experience time and space. This is conveyed through the symbolic language of beliefs, desires, hopes, and fears of peoples, temples, tombs, art, from the babbling of the early stages to the fullness of their classical periods.

All human life has an expression, and that expression is filled with symbols.

But this expression is not only of humans; even nature itself speaks a symbolic language in those mountains, in the gentle curves of the hills or the steep and aggressive ridges, in the leafy trees that cast shade on long stretches of paths or in the angular vegetation of barren regions, in the vastness of deserts, in the immense and profound blue of the skies, in the storms and tempests that ravage, in the abundance of floods that overflow the banks, in the beckoning of clouds, in the voices of animals—everything expresses a great language of forms, directions, rhythms, harmonies, and dissonances that await poets, without a doubt, to interpret the language spoken by the open book of nature.

These are laws revealed through facts, but they are laws that reveal an order, symbols always pointing to something beyond, to the mystical, announcing in their immediate symbolized form the symbol of other symbolized forms, and thus constantly affirming, in a coherent, concrete, universal joint statement, the eternal being, the source and principle of all things, the sustenance of everything that happens in the whirlwind of succession, but which hovers immutable, unique, and supreme, attracting all our deepest impulses, our loftiest desires, and our dearest hopes.

II

Due to its relevance to what we have expressed thus far, it is of interest to examine symbolism according to Clement of Alexandria, as his work on this subject is one of the best in Alexandrian culture.

In his “Stromateis” (Miscellanies), Clement of Alexandria constructed a theory of the symbol. The analysis of scriptures can be interpreted literally, as well as in the sense he calls mystical and symbolic, which he presents with certain more or less extensive analogies to the first sense. Clement’s allegorical or symbolic interpretations made him famous. He established a symbolic method that we now wish to discuss.

Clement started from the premise that everything is a symbol in nature and that there is a mysterious correspondence between two worlds, which we also find within ourselves since humans are a microcosm, namely the “aesthetic cosmos,” which is the sensible world, and the “noetic cosmos,” which is the spiritual world.

This would be the archetype of the latter, which in turn would be an image, taking the former as a model. We also find this thought in Leibniz’s philosophy, as we had already encountered it in Plato’s “Timaeus.”

Clement of Alexandria was greatly influenced by Philo, a Neo-Pythagorean philosopher, and Platonic ideas decisively shaped his thinking.

In this way, Clement sought to discover and reveal the analogies that connected the sensible world with the spiritual world.

For this undertaking, a poetic soul is necessary, and Clement of Alexandria possessed such a soul. Clement observed the symbolism in language, especially as used by the Egyptians, who, for example, indicated the sun by a circle or a scarab beetle, as it spends six months above and six months below the earth.

He also noted that symbolism is indispensable in language, in the use of metaphors, comparisons, transpositions, and that the human spirit cannot express itself properly by using concepts with purely material content. The symbol facilitates the spirit’s penetration into what lies beyond, what human language cannot directly penetrate. By taking note of a concept that indicates a certain quality and analogizing it with other concepts that also contain that quality, the human spirit can, using the resources at its disposal, penetrate the archetypal world, the spiritual world. All humans are capable of attaining truth, but it reveals itself veiled, in mystery, which few can unveil. Therefore, the symbolic method not only offers a path that allows the unveiling of truth, hidden from the common person, but the symbol, taken as such, can also serve to conceal what should not be spoken, the mystery. Scriptural language is a parabolic language, and it is the parable that characterizes the style of the scriptures. The parables envelop the mysteries, making them accessible to those familiar with them while concealing them from profane eyes.

This does not mean that Clement intended to affirm that the scriptures were deliberately intended to conceal the truth, but since the expression of that truth could not be done directly, the person expressing it had to convey it through the means available to them, which is human language. The analogy between this common language and the archetypal content of truth reveals the relationship that unites the material object with the spiritual object. Considering that Clement believed that all religious texts are inspired by divinity, they have a second, spiritual meaning that is higher than the material sense perceived by the common person, the sensuality of our knowledge, and the weakness of our nature. This analogy revealed by the symbol applies to all scriptural interpretation as well as to what the spiritual world is. Hence the need to pay attention to the letter in order to grasp the spirit, from which confusion Christ so often accused the Pharisees.

Clement established some rules for symbolic interpretation. Anthropomorphism, found in the Bible, must be transcended since considering it as such would be unworthy of God. This anthropomorphism is a metaphorical manifestation, and through analogy, one can grasp the evident intention of the text. This canon of Clement’s was somewhat disputed by some authors of the Church, as it could lead to a complete disregard for the letter. Clement did indeed do this when confronted with blatant contradictions. We can summarize Clement’s method regarding sacred books in this formula: interpretation must consist of finding the symbolic meaning of the hidden letter.

Clement’s general theory of symbolism, applied to the religious history of humanity, would reveal that in all texts, there is always a reference to an archetypal, spiritual world in which all religions participate. In this interpretation, Christ would be the mystagogue, the guide of humans from the sensible world to the spiritual world.

Thus, Christianity would be an alliance, a synthesis of the religious thought of the peoples of the East with the philosophy of the Greeks.

Claude Mondésert, in his book “Clement of Alexandria,” page 151 and onwards, summarizes Clement’s symbolism in the following words:

“At the heart of symbolism, as Clement understands it and seeks to interpret it in nature, in human life, particularly in Scripture, there is a profound idea that the excesses of the method of interpretation highlight: the kinship of all beings with each other, the intelligible bond that hierarchizes and unites them, making them one under their apparent multiplicity and preserving their multiplicity through their cohesion and unity. It is necessary to return here to the scale of beings, to the Platonic principle of participation. It is also necessary to consider this religious idea, essential to Christianity, of the unity of creation and the orientation of all beings, from the most material to the most spiritual, toward the being par excellence, upon whom they all depend as their ultimate reason. Each reflects, in their own way, some of the divine perfections and, consequently, they announce themselves to one another, from degree to degree, until the richest and closest to divinity, although they always remain finite beings and creatures, far from infinite divinity, the author of all things.”

In summary, in Clement of Alexandria’s thought, we see that it is included in our way of considering symbolism, including the use of the analogical method, as well as the acceptance that there is participation on the part of the symbol. Since all things in the universe particularly participate in perfections that other beings possess in their essence and fullness, all things are, in a certain aspect, symbols. Thus, through the hierarchy of perfections, everything in the universe is connected to a supreme unity.

Symbolism is, therefore, a method of concretion as well, as it allows us to capture, through heterogeneities, the homogeneity of the Supreme Being, thanks to the providences we advise in this work.

Appendix 1: The Application of Mathesis in Symbolics

This is a topic of great importance due to the suggestions and possibilities it can offer in the interpretation of Sacred Books. I have been concerned with transforming Mathesis into a universal language, and thus it could not be considered if it were not possible to apply it in Symbolics.

Let’s start with a small example, analyzing it and then reducing it mathetically. Someone observing the twilight and saying that the sunset is like a dying hero. Taking this example, we have this expression, which is a metaphor. First, we classify the rhetorical figure and then proceed to a mathematical reduction. The main focus of this comparison is the dying hero, and the secondary focus is the twilight. By comparing the twilight to the dying hero, we establish an analogy between them. The dying hero is like the sun, someone who shines, who has prominence but is perishing, in agony, approaching death. The principal analogate is the dying hero, and the secondary analogate is the sunset. In the sunset, we find a resemblance to the dying hero, a certain proportion, but it refers to an extrinsic aspect, because the sun itself is not agonizing, nor is it a dying hero. What we are attributing to it is something extrinsic.

When an analogy involves extrinsic attribution, we are dealing with a metaphor. Therefore, we can say that the sun is like a dying hero as a metaphor. Taking the main analogate, which is the dying hero, we need to seek the mathematical eidos of this formulated idea. In this case, the closest eidos to us would be the heroes we know from our historical experience, in their moments of agony. But if we further reduce heroes to a mathematical language, we would see that a hero is an intelligent term. We cannot admit heroism where there is no intelligence, where there is no consciousness. A hero is an intelligent and conscious term that puts its integrity, whether partially or entirely, at risk for a value considered higher. The hero sacrifices himself, risking his integrity, whether partially or entirely, believing that this sacrifice is just in the face of a value that he considers higher than his own life. That is the characteristic of a hero.

If there is an intelligent being in the universe that puts its integrity, whether partially or entirely, at risk for a higher value, that being will be a hero. The act of heroism can only be performed by someone who has the possibility of losing something. An all-powerful being, the Divinity, cannot perform an act of heroism because it has no possibility of losing either partially or entirely its integrity. It also doesn’t have a higher value than itself because divinity is the highest value of all values, the supreme value, intensely maximum, and therefore, there is no such risk.

We have the example of a mathematical reduction: taking the concept of a hero through a metaphor, we can reach the mathematical content. This can be any intelligent being of any species, but as long as it is self-aware, capable of risking its integrity for a value it considers higher, then it is practicing an act of heroism. That would be the mathematically considered heroism.

It is conditioned to the judgment of that value. For example, in certain societies, when some people reach a certain age and become useless, unable to produce and feeling like a burden to society, they commit suicide. Although this act is ethically unacceptable to us, from a human perspective of species preservation, it is understood as an act of heroism in the scheme of that people.

A soldier who gives his life on the battlefield performs an act of heroism because he has a higher value, such as the defense of his homeland or the defense of his ideals. These acts of heroism depend on the value attributed (which can be a wrong value) [a] based on a faulty assessment. It may be that an individual’s life is far superior in value to the one for which he sacrifices himself. But the character of heroism lies precisely in the awareness of the risk that one is taking with their integrity, whether partially or entirely, and always for a higher value. That is why heroism is a virtue subordinate to courage because courage is the ability to risk one’s integrity, whether partially or entirely. Courage is a virtue in a way since it involves an intelligent, conscious being risking a personal value for the benefit of something else. But when that value is one’s own life, then the act of courage becomes a heroic act. Some define a heroic act as one that involves the risk of one’s own life.

Courage does not necessarily entail risking one’s own life, as it can involve risking any value, such as an intelligent person investing their capital in a business that offers probabilities of failure. It is an act of courage but not an act of heroism because it does not put one’s personal life or vital integrity at risk. It merely risks a portion of one’s possessions, which naturally does not represent a grave threat as in the case of risking one’s own life.

Looking at the overall aspects and not just the social or particular aspects, there are certain cases of heroism that are only apparent, such as the masochistic intention of someone who wishes to destroy themselves and, out of a desire for destruction, seeks a risky situation, driven by a subconscious impulse to even achieve their own personal demise – the case of suicide volunteers. It has been observed that many of them were masochists or potential suicide candidates who desired even their own death. Certain operations even required death, as with kamikazes; many did it out of patriotism, but many were driven by a desire for self-destruction. Judging the heroism of an act is a matter that psychologists would have to analyze on a concrete case-by-case basis.

The desire for prestige can be one of the factors that contribute to the formation of a hero. That is why Nietzsche said that the hero was an acceptable creature. He, who was a great defender of heroism, did not place the hero at the pinnacle of great human achievements. He placed the hero below the philosopher, and above the philosopher, he placed the saint because he considered these higher human types to be the ones that most closely approximated the true ideal of the Nietzschean superman. The mistaken interpretation is to consider Nietzsche’s true superman to be the hero. For him, the true type of the superman was the one capable of uniting the four great values and being simultaneously an aesthete, a hero, a philosopher, and a saint. Whoever embodied these four values would reach the apex that humanity can attain at its current stage.

What matters in the classification of the idea of a hero is this aspect: it is not about understanding the motives of the heroic action but the heroic action itself. There is always heroism, whether for one reason or another, when an intelligent, conscious term risks its vital integrity, whether partially or entirely, for a value deemed higher by it, regardless of the motives behind that act: prestige, fame, a remembrance, a memory of their passing, or a desire for self-destruction. Whatever the case may be, heroism is present when those aspects are present.

Philosophy is at an impasse; it cannot be confined to the narrow range set by Aristotelianism. Many men of the Church are also feeling this and seeking to return to patristics, searching for other elements in the true philosophical sources that can provide possibilities for new paths, capable of resolving the unsolvable aporias of Scholasticism.

The study of patristics cannot be done without a proper understanding of symbolics. If we observe the great authors of this era, such as Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Origen, Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, Saint Gregory of Nyssa, Basilides, etc., we will see that they were tremendously concerned with the study of symbolics, which was analyzed throughout the Middle Ages until a certain period. It is incomprehensible how it suddenly lost its influence in the West and became a disregarded field of study. This happened due to a series of historical factors. In Romanesque and Gothic art, symbols are present. Despite Michelangelo’s Pythagorean training and knowledge of symbolics, he fell into allegory, replacing symbols with allegories.

If we observe peoples at different levels of culture and their historical development, we will see that symbolic manifestations appear in the Neolithic period, unknown to the Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal men. Symbols revolve around meteorological, geographical, heteromorphic aspects, nature, the animal kingdom, etc. When humans become farmers, they begin to take an interest in the stars. During the herding phase, symbols appear as animals that are tied to their economy. Symbolics expands during the domestication phase, and finally, as city dwellers, it becomes increasingly complex.

We find the presence of all this symbolism among us. For example, in Umbanda, there is a symbolic ensemble that encompasses both indigenous and Christian symbolism.

This poses a series of problems for scholars. When examining works on the subject, we find that everyone faces a series of difficulties: first, the validity of these symbols, and second, their variability among peoples, cultural cycles, and even individuals.

We notice that all these symbolics are present in our dreams. We have dreams that take us back to the hunting and gathering phase, dreams of returning to the farming phase, chthonic symbols, current symbols, etc. These aspects give the scholar the sensation that it is impossible to deal with symbolics.

In 1954, I published a book on symbolism, “Treatise on Symbolics,” where I analyze the theory of symbol and present an interpretation technique. In it, I solved some problems, including how to establish a hierarchy and how to understand symbolics at various stages. I will summarize it: symbolics correspond to the historical, economic, and social stages of peoples, which facilitates better adaptation and identification. When symbolics do not align with these historical stages, they create inauthenticity in humans, a kind of alienation that manifests itself in proportion to their attempts to assimilate or utilize symbolics that are not properly suited to them. There is an interpenetration of these phases (hunters, gatherers, farmers, herders, domesticators) until we reach the industrial, technical, and scientific era, which presents an interpenetration of these symbols and even a kind of parallelism and fusion.

The presence of symbols in various religions is very significant. Christianity, for example, was formed mainly with the presence of pastoral, hunting, fishing, and gathering symbols, while the symbols of agricultural peoples are absent. This is why Christianity encountered difficulties in penetrating among farmers because its symbolism was inauthentic to them.

The disputes and misunderstandings that currently arise among various authors are due to a lack of understanding of their symbolics. Teilhard de Chardin owes much of his current success to using symbolics from the industrial, technical, and scientific era, drawing his symbols from science, which correspond better to contemporary humans than those old symbols of pastoral peoples, gatherers, fishermen, etc.

If we begin to explain the various beliefs and religions through symbolics, if we examine Christian symbolics, compare the degree of reference that this symbol has to the symbolized, and compare it to the degrees of reference in other symbolics, we will find the path of ecumenism. Otherwise, there is no other path. The path of ecumenism can only be found through two processes: Mathesis and Symbolics.

But how do we unite Symbolics and Mathesis? They are united because symbolics reach the archetypes, which in turn can be perfectly placed within the laws of mathesis because ultimately the archetypes themselves are symbols of archetypes. We can find nine degrees of symbols: primary, secondary, tertiary, quaternary, quinary, sextenary, septenary, etc. As an example, consider freedom symbolized by a bird flying against the storm. This symbol can lead us through nine symbolic degrees until we reach a mathematical law. There is the possibility, and this is what I want to demonstrate, that with the unification of symbolic dialectic and the dialectic required by mathesis, which would be a dialectic not merely in the Platonic sense but enriched by new contributions, we will be able to achieve a univocation that allows people to understand each other.

The genuine Christian does not depart from a state of vigilance because Christ is the symbol of the good shepherd who watches while his flock sleeps. The symbolism of the good shepherd is the symbolism of Rama, of the Aryans, of the worshipers of the ram, whose symbol is found in Christianity (the Pope’s crozier is the shepherd’s staff). Christianity is vigilant consciousness, not a state of dreams. It is humans penetrating, watching, and praying with their consciousness, with the presence of their personality. This is the Christian sense, which was also the Pythagorean sense.

With the symbolic dialectic that follows in the footsteps of dialectic and taking advantage of the dialectic demanded by mathesis, we will form the fundamental elements for the most profound study, leading us to a clear and unified understanding of religious, scientific, and philosophical thought in human history. We will then see that it is a true ladder, where at each rung, we can find the presence of a tripartite vision that has often appeared to human eyes as if its parts were contradictory to each other, but thanks to these three dialectics, we will comprehend the supreme unity that governs all things.

Symbolics, although at first glance presents difficulties in being constructed as a science, for us, after studying the identification and analogy of symbols, ambivalence, hierarchy, references according to the historical, economic spheres and degrees of humanity, the division of symbols into positive and negative, their higher and lower aspects, clearly distinguishing symbols from allegory, metaphor, chimera, we will be able to reach not only the construction of symbolic semantics but also symbolic syntax. To the point where we can build a new language with it, which will not be the language of symbols but the language of symbolic interpretations, that is, the contents that are not only eidetic and noematic but also other contents, including the archetypal ones that human beings possess and that are present in symbolic language. In this way, they can be reduced to a kind of metalanguage. We will see that this will be the metalanguage to which science itself and philosophy itself are reduced, which is Mathesis. Mathesis, in the end, is the metalanguage of symbolics itself, of science itself, of philosophy itself, and even of religion. It will form a five-pointed star in this cultural sense. Mathesis would be the highest, most elevated point because it is the metalanguage that perfectly explains these others.

Appendix 2: Can symbolics treated mathematically lead us to the unity of religions?

We defend the following thesis: what distinguishes Christianity from other religions is not the theological aspect itself. When we mathematically treat the symbolism of the Sacred Books, we see that there is a great approximation in this aspect among all religions.

What characterizes Christianity as a religion, for us, is its anthropological aspect. It is a religion of man and not a cultural religion, not a historical religion, not a religion that depends on race or economic conditions or cultural cycles, etc. All religions have dealt with the Divinity, but they have not looked at man in his true sense, because man is a microcosm and in a certain way is made in the likeness of God. Consequently, it is in the true valuation of man, not in his overvaluation, that we find the path to witnessing Divinity.

Symbolics allows us to perfectly interpret, for example, the symbol found in the Upanishads, a very common symbol, when it says that the Supreme Being hovered over the waters, similar to the expression used in Genesis. Now, what similarity could the waters have? Water is a matter that assumes all forms according to the container it has, the waters are very malleable, not exactly malleable, but rather a possibility of being informed in various ways. What is the meaning of these waters? Something, a term that can indefinitely receive forms, God hovers over this, this hovering gives the idea of something that is above it, that exercises hegemony over this power. This power is something of His, something that He can dominate, something that can mark, inform, etc. The idea of genesis in the Upanishads, as well as the idea of the mosaic Genesis, is that the spirit of God hovers, meaning it has hegemony, it has the power to inform a power that is infinitely capable of being informed, that has the unlimited capacity to be informed, and this is perfectly understandable because there is a perfect proportionality between the infinite power of God and an infinite potentiality capable of receiving these actions. Thus, the symbolic, being treated through eidetic reductions, allows us to unite the various religious thoughts.

Let us take another religious thought, for example, when Krishna in the Bhagavad-Gita tells Arjuna that “I shall cause another to be elevated above the pairs of contraries.” Where are the pairs of contraries? They are precisely the species into which the genera are divided. If there are contraries, there must be a genus that analogizes them; above these contraries, there can only be supreme unity. Krishna’s promise is to make Arjuna rise above the species and consequently above the nearest and most remote genera, until he reaches that transcendental being that is hierarchically and hegemonically above all contraries. It can be seen that the symbolic interpretation of this passage from the Bhagavad-Gita is perfectly aligned with the Christian thought regarding Divinity.

We can say that Symbolics, when mathematically treated through symbolic dialectics, complemented by ontological dialectics and matetic dialectics, allows us to find the analogous points, the analogous logoi of all religions. We will verify that in this aspect, religions are one, but what properly characterizes Christianity is that, in addition to this, it is a religion of man, because it attains certain revelations, certain higher truths that were already contained within man himself, as we demonstrated in “Christianity, the religion of man”, where we proved that the idea of the Christian Trinity perfectly aligns, perfectly analogizes with the very trinity of the spiritual functioning of the human mind, divided into understanding, will, and love. We see that understanding is a love of truth, that will is a love of the good, and that love is the orexis that unites will and understanding, because when we love, we desire something that we choose as worthy of our love. Thus, the three are completed with three functions of the same substance. Therefore, in its mental constitution, it would be better to say in its spiritual constitution, the human being functions as the conception that Christians have of the Trinity. Man, in a certain way, has a trinity that is analogous to the Divine Trinity, which would be the principal analogue, so the trinity of man would be a secondary analogue, and we were made in the likeness of God precisely because we possess this trinity within us.

Therefore, Christianity will be distinguished from other religions not in the properly theological aspects, where there is a common point in all religions, as symbolics can show, but it also has its points of difference that make it specifically distinct and unique in history, because it is the only religion that has thus far achieved, as we know historically, which does not depend on race or cultural cycles. The proof is that Christianity emerged among the Jews and adapted better to another cultural cycle that was not Jewish, to which the Jewish cycle belongs. It is not a religion of race, nor of classes, nor an economic product; it is only the religion that arises from a revelation through man himself. That is why its God would have to be, in a certain way, human; it presents its own divinity as also incarnated in man. This sense of incarnation is tremendously profound. It shows that Christianity, what many considered a weakness, is precisely its strength because the other religions existed outside of man, they existed only in the depreciation of man. Hence, all religions placed man in a secondary state, as something moved by the gods, as something that is determined, as a being that only needs to sacrifice himself to reach divinity. When Christianity asks none of this, on the contrary, Christianity is realized through human overcoming, which is through the purification of the will, the clarity and acuity of understanding, and the refinement of its love. Christianity asks man to be perfect in what is inherent to man, that is, it is the overcoming of man, it is a religion of human overcoming. The closer man approaches divinity, the more he becomes perfect as a human being.

This is the greatness of Christianity and also the reason why it will be a religion that does not depend on cultural cycles; they may disappear, and Christianity will continue to be a religion of man. It is the only religion that can consequently be “catholic,” that is, universal (“catholic” in Greek means universal). It is the only religion that has an ecumenical character; it is the only religion that can be for all mankind for all time. It is a religion that will not tie its destiny to the destiny of cultural cycles and civilizations.

This is the greatness that Christianity has, a greatness that its adversaries may not recognize but that will make it forever a living religion and consequently a religion for which we can and should fight, because it is truly the only one that can offer man a solution to his most anguishing inner problems.

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Eckartshauser. Des Nombres.

Etchegoyen. De l’Unité ou Aperçus Philosophiques sur l’Identité de la Science Mathématique, de la Grammaire Générale et de la Religion Chrétienne.

Goethe. Teoria de los Colores (Ed. esp.).

I.B. Geiger. La Participation dans la Philosophie de S. Thomas d’Aquin.

Jamblique. De Mysteriis Aegypticorum.

James George Frazer. La Rama Dorada.

K. Beth. Religion et Magie.

Martinez de Pasqually. Traité de la Réintegration des Etres.

Obras de Santo Agostinho (Ed. Bac.).

P. Vullaud. La Tradition Pythagoricienne.

R. Caillois. L’Homme et le Sacré.

Rudolf Otto Lo Santo (Ed. esp.).

S. Freud. Totem e Tabu.

Tomás de Aquino. Obras Completas.

Vaz de Mello. O Evangelho à Luz da Astrologia.

Wilhelm Schmidt. Manual de Historia Comparada de las Religiones. (Ed. esp.).

  1. Aristotelian categories are characterized by the actualization of the notes that are included in the comprehension of the categorical concept, while intensist categories actualize its extension, dynamically considered. The application of both allows for greater dialectical breadth, in the sense that we give, of greater concretion. Intensist categories can apparently be reduced to the category of relation. There is certainly a relation, but there is an ontological affirmation that goes beyond the scope of that category, as we will note in this book and in other works of ours.↩

  2. In our works on theme and problematics, we will have the opportunity to refer to Ockham’s thesis, which considers concepts as symbols, and not as symbolized. Without discussing Ockham’s reasons yet, we want to remember for now that the concept, as symbolized, is so in relation to man (in the gnoseological order, therefore) and not in relation to the ontic and ontological order of beings because, in this case, things, as concrete schemes, are symbols of schemes as modus quo, as essence, as a factor of universality, which correspond to the exemplary forms or ideas of the theological order, as we see in works of Theology and Problematics.↩

  3. [It is common in Mário Ferreira dos Santos' works to refer to his own books, currently mostly out of print, except for a few modern reissues – namely, “Pitágoras e o tema do número” and “O um e o múltiplo em Platão”, published by Ibrasa, “Lógica e Dialética”, published by Paulus, and “Sabedoria das Leis Eternas” published by É Realizações. In some cases, Mário refers to non-existent works; these are books that he himself gave up on, transformed, or merged with other titles. This, on the one hand, is evidence of the unity of the author’s thought.]↩

  4. [Kant works on this theme primarily in the first section of “Critique of Pure Reason.” It is worth noting that there are certain resemblances between the notion of intentionality in Mário Ferreira dos Santos and in Edmund Husserl, in an opposition – or at most, a critical consideration – to the Kantian conception. The Brazilian philosopher will take a position regarding his German colleagues throughout the work.]↩

  5. The controversy between the defenders of univocity and analogy is important. We studied the foundations and reasons of each position in “Ontology”. However, it is worth noting that in “Filosofia Concreta”, we return to this theme, which is of primordial importance in philosophy because from its clarification, we obtain a secure position to understand the various forms of monism and creationist doctrines. [“Filosofia Concreta” and “Ontologia e Cosmologia” are other books by Mário Ferreira dos Santos. “Filosofia Concreta” was published in 2007 by É Realizações].↩

  6. The immutability of being refers, as seen in “Ontologia e Cosmologia”, to its essence and existence, which in it are identified (the form). The Supreme Being is no more and no less, it knows no increases or decreases, it is the maximum and the minimum of being because less than being is nothing. Beings that are of Being, even when they become, when they undergo mutations, these are being, because when a being ceases to be what it is, there is the emergence of another being, and not a fall into absolute nothingness. Therefore, there is always the presence of Being in what becomes, because becoming is becoming in Being. In “Ontologia”, this theme was duly examined. Our references to Being in its fullness are always symbolic, even when rationally constructed, because we grasp being analogically, in the sense that we consider analogy, which avoids, as we saw in that work, the crisis that wants to be installed between positions like that of Thomas Aquinas and that of Duns Scotus, which are dialectically reconcilable, one by affirming analogy and the other by affirming univocity.↩

  7. When we studied the theory of modals in “Ontologia”, we pointed out that if we accept Suarez’s position, the idea of consubstantiation finds, in the modalist theory, a foundation for the dogma of the Church. If the disproportion between accident and substance, for what happens to the substance (the accident) is not everything that can happen to it, the distinction that can be made between the two is a real distinction because the accident, like the substance, has its own essence. And although they are not separable here and now, they could be, since an omnipotent God is admitted, in the sense that Catholic theology gives to omnipotence. In this case, consubstantiation or the substance with disproportionate accidents, such as the case of the host, which would be the body of Christ, with the accidents of bread, is not a philosophical absurdity. And although one may disagree with certain theological statements, it is the philosopher’s duty to examine them, and not to reject them outright without further examination.↩

  8. This is well observed by Piaget in his books, the contributions of which are summarized by us, alongside those of others, in this article.↩

  9. [Mário Ferreira dos Santos was one of the first scholars of Piaget in Brazil. Unfortunately, since his library was dispersed after his death, it is impossible to know which books by Piaget were consulted. As Mário read French, it is also impossible to know what the Brazilian conditions were for the reception of Piagetian thought, which could at least give an approximate idea of the date].↩

  10. In “Teoria do Conhecimento”, “Ontologia e Cosmologia”, and “Filosofia da Crise”, and especially in “O Um e o Múltiplo em Platão”, we address and clarify our thoughts on Platonic philosophy.↩

  11. Thomas Aquinas' assertion is valid because there are other species of participation, which Aristotle did not admit.↩

  12. I.B. Geiger – “La participation dans la Philosophie de S. Thomas d´Aquin”, p. 53.↩

  13. In “Filosofia da Crise”, we study this aspect in more detail, providing greater clarity. And in the chapter “A simbólica dos números” (The Symbolics of Numbers), in this work, we will return to this theme.↩

  14. In order to hypostasize man, it would be necessary to give him a concrete nature, which is what specifies the suppositum, the subposed. If triangularity were hypostasized, it would be imperfect because, existing concretely, with a concrete nature, it would cease to be merely formal and become physically subsistent. Therefore, it would no longer be a form (eidos).↩

  15. Regarding participation, it is necessary to clarify that when something participates in a higher creature, it does not necessarily mean that it receives the participated perfection from it. Thus, an animal that participates in human prudence does not receive that power from man, nor from human prudence. It participates in prudence with a resemblance to human prudence.↩

  16. We are here in a univocitas secundum nomen ac rationem, which is a fourth-grade univocity, the lowest for the Scotists.↩

  17. We use the term “equal” here in both an intensist and an extensist sense.↩

  18. Univocity, in this case, is called “universal” by Suarez because it perfectly disregards specific or individual differences to consider only universality.↩

  19. Tomás de Aquino’s thought on emanation is studied by us in other works of ours, in which we compare his ideas to those of Pythagorean thought and Neo-Platonic currents.

    Final note: The great controversy over univocity and analogy, among Thomists, Scotists, and Suarists, and its relevance to philosophy, are addressed in “Problemática de Analogia” (Problematics of Analogy).↩

  20. In Noology, given the problematic that arises, it is necessary to distinguish between soul and consciousness, as well as to study the noological complex of the consciousness act, which is currently impossible to address.↩

  21. In this article, we often use the term “unconscious” in the reception used by modern psychologists. In reality, they are referring to the subconscious, as unconsciousness would be the total absence of any consciousness, which only occurs with death. However, this term, in the sense of the minimum degree of consciousness, has already definitively entered modern psychology. It is now only necessary to make distinctions between consciousness, consciousnessness, etc., which we address in “Noologia Geral” (General Noology), with the aim of avoiding the language inaccuracies that are so common in modern philosophy, which, driven by a genuinely bourgeois and mercantilist spirit, has decided to abandon a terminology already established through millennia of speculation and replace it with novelties. These novelties do not contribute anything new; they merely replace carefully established meanings by scholarly and enlightened men with others that do not bring any progress to knowledge but facilitate confusion. They proceed like a merchant eager to launch a new product with new packaging, but whose content is old or, at best, modified, not always for the better.↩↩

  22. The material offered to us by anthropologists in their extensive investigations into the cultural life of peoples, in aspects that are properly within the scope of that discipline, is undoubtedly valuable to the philosopher. The contribution of the facts they enumerate is extremely important. However, the interpretation they make of them is not.

    Due to the lack of a better philosophical methodology, a more secure vision of the object that philosophy is concerned with, when they enter this terrain, they offer naive interpretations, naturally based on the acquired schematics, which suffer from the natural biases of the specialist, which are in conflict with those of the philosopher who is naturally a generalist.

    Not that it is the philosopher’s task merely to gather and synthesize. Above all, it is the philosopher’s task to interpret and connect the facts according to a theoretical nexus that does not offend the most secure postulates of philosophy, because they do exist, although many – still prey to a primary agnosticism or a skepticism that is more a result of the inability to penetrate the field of philosophy than a result of long speculation – do not believe in them.

    There are philosophical principles that are universally valid. It is a serious mistake, which has greatly hindered the progress of philosophy, to believe that only science is capable of constructing universally valid postulates. Philosophy is also capable of this, and we have proven it in our work “Filosofia Concreta” (Concrete Philosophy), which is a treatise on axiomatics. Skeptical arguments prevail only over those who have not delved deeper into the philosophical realm, and there is in this attitude more of a revelation of deficiency than of proficiency. Those who argue against science should remember that science would not be possible, based solely on experience, if it had not been assisted by the great fundamental achievements of philosophy, as we have shown in the aforementioned work.↩

  23. One should not think that so-called modern ideas, such as socialism, for example, can offer us a better solution, as socialists, in practice, do everything they opposed in theory and have become “gendarmes” of themselves, destroying each other and accusing each other recklessly in one of the most astonishing acts of self-cannibalism known in history, confirming the great truth that revolutions, like Saturn, devour their own children.↩↩

  24. From therion, Greek for animal, and morphê, form; of animal form.↩↩

  25. Once again, we emphasize that, although Christians, we do not belong to any religious denomination. However, we believe that it is the dignity of philosophy to study the work of scholasticism and not underestimate it based solely on prejudices, especially when we find in that thought the highest point of philosophy that has not yet been surpassed. Only the tremendous ignorance of modern times, in an era of specialists detached from a global vision, could allow certain authors – and their number is immense – to discredit a work they are unfamiliar with, based on false starting points, which are therefore aprioristic.↩

  26. Knowledge, whether intuitive or rational (the latter being a subsequent process), implies the prior presence of a schema that accommodates and assimilates the fact. Therefore, unity is implicit in knowledge because the schema, in whatever form it may be, is a unity, and the noema, the result of knowledge, forms a totality; a unity, therefore. Thus, it is clear that unity is present in knowledge, for without it, knowledge would not occur. However, knowing always entails separating something, as unity, from the heterogeneity in which it is immersed. It becomes evident, then, that in knowledge, of any kind, unity and plurality of the homogeneous and heterogeneous are present. The subsequent formulation of the concept of unity and multiplicity, which already implies the operation of the spirit, which is the rational function, does not create either one, but merely confirms what is confusedly present in human experience. The noetic-eidetic schemas of unity and multiplicity, of homogeneity and heterogeneity, are separated, abstracted, by the abstracting action of our spirit (the intellectus agens of the scholastics) afterwards. The clear understanding of this gnoseological truth, which we propose, allows us to understand the exclusionary unilateralities that we have studied in this article, which are the result of a non-concrete position in relation to knowledge, as can easily be perceived.↩

  27. The theme of crisis is studied by us in “Filosofia da Crise” (Philosophy of Crisis), one of our works on philosophical themes and problems.↩

  28. Such themes belong to Theology. In our book “O Homem perante o Infinito” (Man in the Face of the Infinite), we examine the themes of theology and theodicy, and study the arguments for and against these different conceptions of divinity, as well as the most significant arguments for and against the existence of God.↩

  29. The One generates the One, in the intra procession of the Pythagorean Trinity, very similar to the Christian Trinity. In the ad extra procession, which is creation, it generates the one (universal substance), which is the dyadic – two – in its functioning. In “Pitágoras e o Tema do Número” (Pythagoras and the Theme of Number), we studied this theme in the necessary detail.↩

  30. The highest Pythagorean ideal in the field of knowledge is its mathematization, not in a merely quantitative sense, but above all, in a qualitative sense. When we discuss priority and posteriority, we are mathematizing these two terms, which then acquire precise meanings. Thus, we can speak of the efetivo (that which does) and the efetível (that which is done), regardless of whether they are corporeal or not. We thus have an idea of what the mathematization of knowledge is, as the more advanced Pythagoreans conceive it, and which has had various manifestations in the West, such as, to exemplify, that of Duns Scotus and our own “Filosofia Concreta” (Concrete Philosophy).↩

  31. The Pythagorean Dyad is not just opposition. The Great Dyad, which is the transcendental Dyad, is constituted by the Supreme Being as form (in its essence and existence), which is ONE, and in its operatio, that is, in its action, which tends to accomplish something. It corresponds to the duality of the Father, the One, with essence and existence, as Will, according to scholastic interpreters, and the Son, as Intellectuality, Logos, as operation, which accomplishes the ad extra procession, which is that of creation, manifested through the second dyad, the active and passive processions, in the field of opposition. The intrinsic processions, immanent to the Supreme Being, the intra processions of scholasticism, take place within the Supreme Being, without limitations. The two great roles (hence persona, person) that the Supreme Being performs are those of Form and operatio, united in the Being, whose role of union, of infinite love, is symbolized by the Holy Spirit, which allows us to understand why the Christian Trinity is three hypostases in One Being. This theme, which is the object of Theology, is duly studied in the corresponding books, not only in relation to Christian thought but also in other sectors of religious thought. In the field of philosophy, we can say that the Supreme Being is its own form, for as existing and as essence, it is the same, for existence and essence are identified in it. But the Being is immutable in its essence and in its existence because it is everything that can be, it operates. Operation and form are identified because it is the infinite operation of the Supreme Being. As there is absolute fusion here, the symbol of love serves to point it out. In religions, this role is indicated by the Holy Spirit in Catholicism, or Brahman in Hindu thought.

    Thus, the transcendental Dyad of Pythagoras should not be confused with the immanent dyad that manifests itself in the antagonism of oppositions. The former is the Great Dyad, and the latter is symbolized by the 2. Thus, the Pythagorean series is understood. The 1 generates the 1, and this generates the 2. The Supreme One (Father) generates the Son, which is still the One, and this generates the 2, the opposition of creation, because the creature is a being that is not everything that the being can be. It contains a deficiency, for we cannot predicate all the attributes predicable of the Supreme Being of it. It is fundamentally always 2.↩↩

  32. The meaning and philosophical justification of these 3 triads are presented in our book “Pitágoras e o Tema do Número” (Pythagoras and the Theme of Number).↩

  33. This theme is studied by us in “O Homem perante o Infinito” (Man in the Face of the Infinite).↩

  34. The theme of matter’s actuality is discussed in our book “A Problemática da Matéria” (The Problematics of Matter).↩

  35. The theme of harmony, due to its complexity, cannot be examined here. We do so in “Pitágoras e o Tema Número” (Pythagoras and the Theme of Number), as the law of harmony, which is universally valid, requires a lengthy explanation to be properly justified. However, one should not forget that the concept of harmony implies the analogized opposites, with the subordination of subsidiary functions to the norm of the principal, which certain philosophers who ridicule the Pythagorean phrase “the symphony of universal harmony” do not understand, as they reduce it to the statics of merely symmetrical opposites, which is the most superficial way of comprehending it.↩

  36. Aristotle’s “Metaphysics,” with explained text, will be published soon. In this work, we will directly critique Aristotelian assertions.↩

  37. When studying number in “Pitágoras e o Tema do Número” (Pythagoras and the Theme of Number), we have the opportunity to examine the significance of ten, offering other contributions that are impossible to present in this work. Indeed, cosmic order is directed by 10 great laws, to which all the laws of science can be reduced, and even the most solid observations of philosophy. They are as follows: the Law of Unity, the law of integration, symbolized by 1. Everything that is, forms a unity, in whatever aspect we consider it. The Law of Unity derives from the unifying power of Being, the “great presence.” Every finite being is dyadic and can be seen in its opposing positivities, the Law of Opposition, symbolized by 2. All beings maintain relationships between opposites, the Law of Relation, which generates the series and points to the dynamism of all things. The opposites interact with each other. It is the Law of Reciprocity, symbolized by 4, the law of physical evolution. But all beings have a form and act and suffer according to their nature, which depends on their form. It is the Law of Form, symbolized by 5. All beings are composed of harmonic sets, for there are subsidiary and principal functions. All beings are subject to the Law of Harmony, symbolized by 6. However, beings do not remain in their form and in what they are. They undergo substantial mutations that affect their form and matter, they undergo qualitative and specific leaps. It is the Law of Seven, the Evolutive Law of the universe, whose manifestation occurs in a higher equilibrium, which is the evolution of forms, which is the Law of Octave, the law of Higher Evolution. Finally, every being, in its heterogeneity, is homogenized in the great Whole, the Law of Universal Integration. Finally, everything obeys the Supreme Law of Being, the Law of Transcendental Unity.↩

  38. The variety in the consideration of this object is a theme we examine in “O Homem Perante o Infinito” (Man in the Face of the Infinite), in which we address the main theological themes.↩

  39. What we call an indirect symbol does not imply any modification in the theory we have presented. Let us take an example: a poet wants to symbolize love with a lily. The lily, by its whiteness, by its purity, indicates the purity that emerges, distinct in the face of the circumstantial environment that may not be as pure. A pure love, emerging amidst hybrid loves, symbolizes, in turn, purity. The lily symbolizes the purity that would be a perfection of that love. With purity as a reference, it could symbolize love through resonance. This form of symbolism by poets is very common in literature in general, as can be seen in certain metaphors, which do not lose their symbolic significance by being such. We thus have the following scheme:

    Purity

    love lily↩

  40. This aspect is still evident among farmers, even in the most educated societies, as long as these farmers are descendants of ancient cultivators of the land.↩

  41. In the book “The Gospel in Light of Astrology” by Professor Aníbal Vaz de Mello, we find a study on solar myths in various religions, to which we refer interested readers who wish to learn about the particularities of different beliefs, as well as the points of convergence, which are well highlighted in this work.↩

  42. In contrast to Freud’s doctrine on incest, anthropological studies in the field of religions show us that divinity is presented to us as both father and mother, that is, as a virile and active being and at the same time a feminine generator. The mother gestates, the father procreates, the mother conceives, and the father gives. Thus, the Supreme Being, as an act, realizes the cosmos. Therefore, He undergoes cosmic realization. In the Christian conception, this passive part belongs to the creature and not to the Creator, who is pure act.

    In incest, there is not merely the primary desire to return to the mother’s womb in a purely sexual sense, as Freud claims, but rather a desire to return to the womb of the mother, the mother-god, from which we were generated. It is an indication, therefore, of a universal desire for return and a deeper theological meaning. The return to the bosom of God, which we find in Christianity, reveals this desire very well.

    A better study of the Oedipus myth would give us a deeper understanding of incest, not as crude as psychoanalysis attempted to do, as seen, for example, in the symbol of the bull in ancient Egypt and in the beautiful pages of the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu.↩

  43. In “Ontology and Cosmology,” we coined the term potensão to express generically the “universal cosmic energy,” which arises in all beliefs and philosophical thoughts, and which, by its etymology, expresses a “tension that can,” a potentially active energy, a power to make, to determine various modalities of being.↩

  44. The symbol of the virginity of the mother of the God-man requires special study. In our work “Problem of Matter,” we studied various conceptions and themes related to the great controversy over the essence of matter.↩

  45. Charismatic power (the khárisma, which is the content of kháris, grace, power, mana, etc.) is also attributed to kings, emperors, leaders, who, in the variability of diverse cultural structures, emerge as saviors. The king is also the bearer of power, he is a savior, as observed in the most primitive cultures, whose remnants we find in high cultures, where the king has certain powers, including healing powers, like the pharaohs of Egypt and the kings in the West. Certain insignias, such as the serpent of the pharaohs, the mantle of Henry II adorned with the sun, the moon, and the stars, are indications of the charismatic power of the king. The king is not just the individual, but the kingship itself. This becomes evident in the true meaning of the famous phrase: “The king is dead, long live the king!”

    The connection between the savior and the king is vividly seen in the figure of Christ, who is also a king. The works of Frazer on this subject are of great importance and full of suggestions about symbolism.

    According to symbolic dialectics, the king participates, to a higher degree than other human beings, in divine perfections. For this reason, he is a mediator, an essential condition for the figureof the Savior.↩

  46. In modern physics, colors originate from electronic jumps. Light is emitted when electrons transition from lower to higher orbits and, in this case, emit particles, photons, transmitted energies of heterogeneous intensity. Thus, red occurs when electronic jumps from the third to the fourth orbit occur; blue occurs from the 2nd to the 3rd, and ultraviolet, which is not visible, occurs from the 1st to the 2nd orbit. This explanation is elementary and does not capture the complexity of these orbits and their characteristics, as evidenced in modern physical studies on atomic theory.

    However, there is something positive in Goethe’s thinking, which also reproduces an old thought already outlined in the West by Nicholas of Cusa and those who were inspired by his ideas, regarding the struggle between darkness and light, the study of which we find in Alexandrian culture, among the Gnostics, the Egyptians, and in all the hermetic and initiatory knowledge of superior cultures. However, it should be emphasized that, in initiatory thought, there is a distinction between physical light and spiritual light. The light studied by physics is physical light of electronic origin. The spiritual light, which we cannot study here, partly refers to what modern physicists, like Einstein, found themselves compelled to examine, and what Schoenberg called “immaterial waves.” In this case, it is not the electron that controls a wave, but a wave that controls the electron. The wave that arises from the electron would have an efficient cause in another power that surpasses the field of electronics and nuclear physics. It is a question that arises for the deepest modern scholars of physics because it reveals something that surpasses the dimensionality of the quaternary world of physics, the dimensions that compose the chrono-topical scheme, that is, the complex time-space.↩

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