First published in The English Review, June 1919.
After Hawthorne come the books of the sea. In Dana and Herman Melville the human relationship is no longer the chief interest. The sea enters as the great protagonist.
The sea is a cosmic element, and the relation between the sea and the human psyche is impersonal and elemental. The sea that we dream of, the sea that fills us with hate or with bliss, is a primal influence upon us beyond the personal range.
We need to find some terms to express such elemental connections as between the ocean and the human soul. We need to put off our personality, even our individuality, and enter the region of the elements.
There certainly does exist a subtle and complex sympathy, correspondence, between the plasm of the human body, which is identical with the primary human psyche, and the material elements outside. The primary human psyche is a complex plasm, which quivers, sense conscious, in contact with the circumambient cosmos. Our plasmic psyche is radio-active, connecting with all things, and having first knowledge of all things.
The religious systems of the pagan world did what Christianity has never tried to do: they gave the true correspondence between the material cosmos and the human soul. The ancient cosmic theories were exact, and apparently perfect. In them science and religion were in accord.
When we postulate a beginning, we only do so to fix a starting-point for our thought. There never was a beginning, and there never will be an end of the universe. The creative mystery, which is life itself, always was and always will be. It unfolds itself in pure living creatures.
Following the obsolete language, we repeat that in the beginning was the creative reality, living and substantial, although apparently void and dark. The living cosmos divided itself, and there was Heaven and Earth: by which we mean, not the sky and the terrestrial globe, for the Earth was still void and dark; but an inexplicable first duality, a division in the cosmos. Between the two great valves of the primordial universe, moved “the Spirit of God,” one unbroken and indivisible heart of creative being. So that, as two great wings that are spread, the living cosmos stretched out the first Heaven and the first Earth, terms of the inexplicable primordial duality.
Then the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. As no “waters” are yet created, we may perhaps take the mystic “Earth” to be the same as the Waters. The mystic Earth is the cosmic Waters, and the mystic Heaven the dark cosmic Fire. The Spirit of God, moving between the two great cosmic principles, the mysterious universal dark Waters and the invisible, unnameable cosmic Fire, brought forth the first created apparition, Light. From the darkness of primordial fire, and the darkness of primordial waters, light is born, through the intermediacy of creative presence.
Surely this is true, scientifically, of the birth of light.
After this, the waters are divided by the firmament. If we conceive of the first division in Chaos, so-called, as being perpendicular, the inexplicable division into the first duality, then this next division, when the line of the firmament is drawn, we can consider as horizontal: thus we have the ⊕, the elements of the Rosy Cross, and the first enclosed appearance of that tremendous symbol, which has dominated our era, the Cross itself.
The universe at the end of the Second Day of Creation is, therefore, as the Rosy Cross, a fourfold division. The mystic Heaven, the cosmic dark Fire is not spoken of. But the firmament of light divides the waters of the unfathomable heights from the unfathomable deeps of the other half of chaos, the still unformed earth. These strange unfathomable waters breathe back and forth, as the earliest Greek philosophers say, from one realm to the other.
Central within the fourfold division is the creative reality itself, like the body of a four-winged bird. It has thrown forth from itself two great wings of opposite Waters, two great wings of opposite Fire. Then the universal motion begins, the cosmos begins to revolve, the eternal flight is launched.
Changing the metaphors and attending to the material universe only, we may say that sun and space are now born. Those waters and that dark fire which are drawn together in the creative spell impinge into one centre in the sun; those waters and that fire which flee asunder in the creative spell form space.
So that we have a fourfold division in the cosmos, and a fourfold travelling. We have the waters under the firmament and the waters above the firmament: we have the fire to the left hand and the fire to the right hand of the firmament; and we have each travelling back and forth across the firmament. Which means, scientifically, that invisible waters steal towards the sun, right up to feed the sun, whilst new waters are shed away from the sun, into space; whilst invisible dark fire rolls its waves to the sun, and new fire floods out into space. The sun is the great mystery-centre where the invisible fires and the invisible waters roll together, brought together in the magnificence of the creative spell of opposition, to wrestle and consummate in the formation of the orb of light. Night, on the other hand, is Space presented to our consciousness, that space or infinite which is the travelling asunder of the primordial elements, and which we recognize in the living darkness.
So the ancient cosmology, always so perfect theoretically, becomes, by the help of our scientific knowledge, physically, actually perfect. The great fourfold division, the establishment of the Cross, which has so thrilled the soul of man from ages far back before Christianity, far back in pagan America as well as in the Old World, becomes real to our reason as well as to our instinct.
Cosmology, however, considers only the creation of the material universe, and according to the scientific idea life itself is but a product of reactions in the material universe. This is palpably wrong.
When we repeat that on the First Day of Creation God made Heaven and Earth we do not suggest that God disappeared between the two great valves of the cosmos once these were created. Yet this is the modern, scientific attitude. Science supposes that once the first forces was in existence, and the first motion set up, the universe produced itself automatically, throwing off life as a by-product, at a certain stage.
It is such an idea which has brought about the materialization and emptiness of life. When God made Heaven and Earth, that is, in the beginning when the unthinkable living cosmos divided itself, God did not disappear. If we try to conceive of God, in this instance, we must conceive some homogeneous rare living plasm, a living self-conscious ether, which filled the universe. The living ether divided itself as an egg-cell divides. There is a mysterious duality, life divides itself, and yet life is indivisible. When life divides itself, there is no division in life. It is a new life-state, a new being which appears. So it is when an egg divides. There is no split in life. Only a new life-stage is created. This is the eternal oneness and magnificence of life, that it moves creatively on in progressive being, each state of being whole, integral, complete.
But as life moves on in creative singleness, its substance divides and subdivides into multiplicity. When the egg divides itself, a new stage of creation is reached, a new oneness of living being; but there appears also a new differentiation in inanimate substance. From the new life-being a new motion takes place: the inanimate reacts in its pure polarity, and a third stage of creation is reached. Life has now achieved a third state of being, a third creative singleness appears in the universe; and at the same time, inanimate substance has re-divided and brought forth from itself a new creation in the material world.
So creation goes on. At each new impulse from the creative body, All comes together with All: that is, the one half of the cosmos comes together with the other half, with a dual result. First issues the new oneness, the new singleness, the new life-state, the new being, the new individual; and secondly, from the locked opposition of inanimate dual matter, another singleness is born, another creation takes place, new matter, a new chemical element appears. Dual all the time is the creative activity: first comes forth the living apparition of new being, the perfect and indescribable singleness; and this embodies the single beauty of a new substance, gold or chlorine or sulphur. So it has been since time began. The gems of being were created simultaneously with the gems of matter, the latter inherent in the former.
Every new thing is born from the consummation of the two halves of the universe, the two great halves being the cosmic waters and the cosmic fire of the First Day. In procreation, the two germs of the male and female epitomize the two cosmic principles, as these are held within the life-spell. In the sun and the material waters the two principles exist as independent elements. Life-plasm mysteriously corresponds with inanimate matter. But life-plasm, in that it lives, is itself identical with being, inseparable from the singleness of a living being, the indivisible oneness.
Life can never be produced or made. Life is an unbroken oneness, indivisible. The mystery of creation is that new and indivisible being appears forever within the oneness of life.
In the cosmic theories of the creation of the world it has been customary for science to treat of life as a product of the material universe, whilst religion treats of the material universe as having been deliberately created by some will or idea, some sheer abstraction. Surely the universe has arisen from some universal living self-conscious plasm, plasm which has no origin and no end, but is life eternal and identical, bringing forth the infinite creatures of being and existence, living creatures embodying inanimate substance. There is no utterly immaterial existence, no spirit. The distinction is between living plasm and inanimate matter. Inanimate matter is released from the dead body of the world’s creatures. It is the static residue of the living conscious plasm, like feathers of birds.
When the living cosmos divided itself, on the First Day, then the living plasm became twofold, twofold supporting a new state of singleness, new being; at the same time, the twofold living plasm contained the finite duality of the two unliving, material cosmic elements. In the transmutation of the plasm, in the interval of death, the inanimate elements are liberated into separate existence. The inanimate material universe is born through death from the living universe, to co-exist with it for ever.
We know that in its essence the living plasm is twofold. In the same way the dynamic elements of material existence are dual, the fire and the water. These two cosmic elements are pure mutual opposites, and on their opposition the material universal is established. The attraction of the two, mutually opposite, sets up the revolution of the universe and forms the blazing heart of the sun. The sun is formed by the impinging of the cosmic water upon the cosmic fire, in the stress of opposition. This causes the central blaze of the universe.
In the same way, mid-way, the lesser worlds are formed; as the two universal elements become entangled, swirling on their way to the great central conjunction. The core of the worlds and stars is a blaze of the two elements as they rage interlocked into consummation. And from the fiery and moist consummation of the two elements all the material substances are finally born, perfected.
This goes on however, mechanically now, according to fixed, physical laws. The plasm of life, the state of living potentiality exists still central, as the body of a bird between the wings, and spontaneously brings forth the living forms we know. Ultimately, or primarily, the creative plasm has no laws. But as it takes form and multiple wonderful being, it keeps up a perfect law-abiding relationship with that other half of itself, the material inanimate universe. And the first and greatest law of creation is that all creation, even life itself, exists within the strange and incalculable balance of the two elements. In the living creature, fire and water must exquisitely balance, commingle, and consummate, this in continued mysterious process.
So we must look for life midway between fire and water. For where fire is purest, this is a sign that life has withdrawn itself, and is withheld. And the same with water. For by pure water we do not mean that bright liquid rain or dew or fountain stream. Water in its purest is water most abstracted from fire, as fire in its purest must be abstracted from water. And so, water becomes more essential as we progress through the rare crystals of snow and ice, on to that infinitely suspended invisible element which travels between us and the sun, inscrutable water such as life can know nothing of, for where it is, all life has long ceased to be. This is the true cosmic element. Our material water, as our fire, is still a mixture of fire and water.
It may be argued that water is proved to be a chemical compound, composed of two gases, hydrogen and oxygen. But is it not more true that hydrogen and oxygen are the first naked products of the two parent-elements, water and fire. In all our efforts to decompose water we do but introduce fire into the water, in some naked form or other, and this introduction of naked fire into naked water produces hydrogen and oxygen, given the proper conditions of chemical procreation. Hydrogen and oxygen are the first fruits of fire and water. This is the alchemistic air. But from the conjunction of fire and water within the living plasm arose the first matter, the Prima Materia of a living body, which, in its dead state, is the alchemistic Earth.
Thus, at the end of what is called the Second Day of Creation, the alchemistic Four Elements of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water have come into existence: the Air and the Earth born from the conjunction of Fire and Water within the creative plasm. Air is a final product. Earth is the incalculable and indefinable residuum of the living plasm. All other substance is born by the mechanical consummation of fire and water within this Earth. So no doubt it is the fire and water of the swirling universe, acting upon that Earth or dead plasm which results at the end of each life-phase, that has brought the solid globes into being, invested them with rock and metal.
The birth of the chemical elements from the grain of Earth, through the consummation of fire and water, is as magical, as incalculable as the birth of men. For from the material consummation may come forth a superb and enduring element, such as gold or platinum, or such strange, unstable elements as sulphur or phosphorus, phosphorus, a sheer apparition of water, and sulphur a netted flame. In phosphorus the water principle is so barely held that at a touch the mystic union will break, whilst sulphur only waits to depart into fire. Bring these two unstable elements together, and a slight friction will cause them to burst spontaneously asunder, fire leaping out; or the phosphorus will pass off in watery smoke. The natives of Zoruba, in West Africa, having the shattered fragments of a great pagan culture in their memory, call sulphur the dung of thunder: the fire-dung, undigested excrement of the fierce consummation between the upper waters and the invisible fire.
The cosmic elements, however, have a two-fold direction. When they move together, in the mystic attraction of mutual unknowing, then, in some host, some grain of Earth, or some grain of living plasm, they embrace and unite and the fountain of creation springs up, a new substance, or a new life-form. But there is also the great centrifugal motion, when the two flee asunder into space, into infinitude.
This fourfold activity is the root-activity of the universe. We have first the mystic dualism of pure otherness, that which science will not admit, and which Christianity has called “the impious doctrine of the two principles.” This dualism extends through everything, even through the soul or self or being of any living creature. The self or soul is single, unique, and undivided, the gem of gems, the flower of flowers, the fulfilment of the universe. Yet within the self, which is single, the principle of dualism reigns. And then, consequent upon this principle of dual otherness, comes the scientific dualism of polarity.
So we have in creation the two life-elements coming together within the living plasm, coming together softly and sweetly, the kiss of angels within the glimmering place. Then newly created life, new being arises. There comes a time, however, when the two life-elements go asunder, after the being has perfected itself. Then there is the seething and struggling of inscrutable life-disintegration. The individual form disappears, but the being remains implicit within the intangible life-plasm.
Parallel to this, in the material universe we have the productive coming-together of water and fire, to make the sun of light, the rainbow, and the perfect elements of Matter. Or we have the slow activity in disintegration, when substances resolve back towards the universal Prima Materia, primal inanimate ether.
Thus all creation depends upon the fourfold activity. And on this root of four is all law and understanding established. Following the perception of these supreme truths, the Pythagoreans made their philosophy, asserting that all is number, and seeking to search out the mystery of the roots of three, four, five, seven, stable throughout all the universe, in a chain of developing phenomena. But our science of mathematics still waits for its fulfilment, its union with life itself. For the truths of mathematics are only the skeleton fabric of the living universe.
Only symbolically do the numbers still live for us. In religion we still accept the four Gospel Natures, the four Evangels, with their symbols of man, eagle, lion, and bull, symbols parallel to the Four Elements, and to the Four Activities, and to the Four Natures. And the Cross, the epitome of all this fourfold division, still stirs us to the depths with unaccountable emotions, emotions which go much deeper than personality and the Christ drama.
The ancients said that their cosmic symbols had a sevenfold or a fivefold reference. The simplest symbol, the divided circle, ⦶, stands not only for the first division in the living cosmos and for the two cosmic elements but also within the realms of created life, for the sex mystery; then for the mystery of dual psyche, sensual and spiritual, within the individual being; then for the duality of thought and sensation, and so on, or otherwise, according to varying exposition. Having such a clue, we can begin to find the meanings of the Rosy Cross, the ⊕; and for the ankh, the famous Egyptian symbol, called the symbol of life, the cross or Tau beneath the circle ☥, the soul undivided resting upon division; and for the so-called symbol of Aphrodite, the circle resting upon the complete cross, ♀. These symbols too have their multiple reference, deep and far-reaching, embracing the cosmos and the indivisible soul, as well as the mysteries of function and production. How foolish it is to give these great signs a merely phallic indication!
The sex division is one of the Chinese three sacred mysteries. Vitally, it is a division of pure otherness, pure dualism. It is one of the first mysteries of creation. It is parallel with the mystery of the first division in chaos, and with the dualism of the two cosmic elements. This is not to say that the one sex is identical with fire, the other with water. And yet there is some indefinable connection. Aphrodite born of the waters, and Apollo the sun-god, these give some indication of the sex distinction.
It is obvious, however, that some races, men and women alike, derive from the sun and have the fiery principle predominant in their constitution, whilst some, blonde, blue-eyed, northern, are evidently water-born, born along with the ice-crystals and blue, cold deeps, and yellow, ice-refracted sunshine. Nevertheless, if we must imagine the most perfect clue to the eternal waters, we think of woman, and of man as the most perfect premiss of fire.
Be that as it may, the duality of sex, the mystery of creative otherness, is manifest, and given the sexual polarity, we have the fourfold motion. The corning-together of the sexes may be the soft, delicate union of pure creation, or it may be the tremendous conjunction of opposition, a vivid struggle, as fire struggles with water in the sun. From either of these consummations birth takes place. But in the first case it is the birth of a softly rising and budding soul, wherein the two principles commune in gentle union, so that the soul is harmonious and at one with itself. In the second case it is the birth of a disintegrative soul wherein the two principles wrestle in their eternal opposition: a soul finite, momentaneous, active in the universe as a unit of sundering. The first kind of birth takes place in the youth of an era, in the mystery of accord; the second kind preponderates in the times of disintegration, the crumbling of an era. But at all times beings are born from the two ways, and life is made up of the duality.
The latter way, however, is a way of struggle into separation, isolation, psychic disintegration. It is a continual process of sundering and reduction, each soul becoming more mechanical and apart, reducing the great fabric of co-ordinate human life. In this struggle the sexes act in the polarity of antagonism or mystic opposition, the so-called sensual polarity, bringing tragedy. But the struggle is progressive. And then at last the sexual polarity breaks. The sexes have no more dynamic connection, only a habitual or deliberate connection. The spell is broken. They are not balanced any more even in opposition.
But life depends on duality and polarity. The duality, the polarity now asserts itself within the individual psyche. Here, in the individual, the fourfold creative activity takes place. Man is divided, according to old-fashioned phraseology, into the upper and lower man: that is, the spiritual and sensual being. And this division is physical and actual. The upper body, breast and throat and face, this is the spiritual body; the lower is the sensual.
By spiritual being we mean that state of being where the self excels into the universe, and knows all things by passing into all things. It is that blissful consciousness which glows upon the flowers and trees and sky, so that I am sky and flowers, I, who am myself. It is that movement towards a state of infinitude wherein I experience my living oneness with all things.
By sensual being, on the other hand, we mean that state in which the self is the magnificent centre wherein all life pivots, and lapses, as all space passes into the core of the sun. It is a magnificent central positivity, wherein the being sleeps upon the strength of its own reality, as a wheel sleeps in speed on its positive hub. It is a state portrayed in the great dark statues of the seated lords of Egypt. The self is incontestable and unsurpassable.
Through the gates of the eyes and nose and mouth and ears, through the delicate ports of the fingers, through the great window of the yearning breast, we pass into our oneness with the universe, our great extension of being, towards infinitude. But in the lower part of the body there is darkness and pivotal pride. There in the abdomen the contiguous universe is drunk into the blood, assimilated, as a wheel’s great speed is assimilated into the hub. There the great whirlpool of the dark blood revolves and assimilates all unto itself. Here is the world of living dark waters, where the fire is quenched in watery creation. Here, in the navel flowers the water-born lotus, the soul of the water begotten by one germ of fire. And the lotus is the symbol of our perfected sensual first-being, which rises in blossom from the unfathomable waters.
In the feet we rock like the lotus, rooted in the under-mud of earth. In the knees, in the thighs we sway with the dark motion of the flood, darkly water-conscious, like the thick, strong, swaying stems of the lotus that mindlessly answer the waves. It is in the lower body that we are chiefly blood-conscious.
For we assert that the blood has a perfect but untranslatable consciousness of its own, a consciousness of weight, of rich, down-pouring motion of powerful self-positivity. In the blood we have our strongest self-knowledge, our most powerful dark conscience. The ancients said the heart was the seat of understanding. And so it is: it is the seat of the primal sensual understanding, the seat of the passional self-consciousness.
In the nerves, on the other hand, we pass out and become the universe. But even this is dual. It seems as if from the tremendous sympathetic centres of the breast there ran out a fine, silvery emanation from the self, a fine silvery seeking which finds the universe, and by means of which we become the universe, we have our extended being. On the other hand, it seems as if in the great solar plexus of the abdomen were a dark whirlwind of pristine force, drawing, whirling all the world darkly into itself, not concerned to look out, or to consider beyond itself. It is from this perfect self-centrality that the lotus of the navel is born, according to Oriental symbolism.
But beyond the great centres of breast and bowels, there is a deeper and higher duality. There are the wonderful plexuses of the face, where our being runs forth into space and finds its vastest realization; and there is the great living plexus of the loins, there where deep calls to deep. All the time, there is some great incomprehensible balance between the upper and the lower centres, as when the kiss of the mouth accompanies the passionate embrace of the loins. In the face we live our glad life of seeing, perceiving, we pass in delight to our greater being, when we are one with all things. The face and breast belong to the heavens, the luminous infinite. But in the loins we have our unbreakable root, the root of the lotus. There we have our passionate self-possession, our unshakable and indomitable being. There deep calls unto deep. There in the sexual passion the very blood surges into communion, in the terrible sensual oneing. There all the darkness of the deeps, the primal flood, is perfected, as the two great waves of separated blood surge to consummation, the dark infinitude.
When there is balance in first-being between the breast and belly, the loins and face, then, and only then, when this fourfold consciousness is established within the body, then, and only then, do we come to full consciousness in the mind. For the mind is again the single in creation, perfecting its finite thought and idea as the chemical elements are perfected into finality from the flux. The mind brings forth its gold and its gems, finite beyond duality. So we have the sacred pentagon, with the mind as the conclusive apex.
In the body, however, as in all creative forms, there is the dual polarity as well as the mystic dualism of otherness. The great sympathetic activity of the human system has the opposite pole in the voluntary system. The front part of the body is open and receptive, the great valve to the universe. But the back is sealed, closed. And it is from the ganglia of the spinal system that the will acts in direct compulsion, outwards.
The great plexuses of the breast and face act in the motion of oneing, from these the soul goes forth in the spiritual oneing. Corresponding to this, the thoracic ganglion and the cervical ganglia are the great centres of spiritual compulsion or control or dominion, the great second or negative activity of the spiritual self. From these ganglia go forth the motions and commands which force the external universe into that state which accords with the spiritual will-to-unification, the will for equality. Equality, and religious agreement, and social virtue are enforced as well as found. And it is from the ganglia of the upper body that this compulsion to equality and virtue is enforced.
In the same way, from the lumbar ganglion and from the sacral ganglion acts the great sensual will to dominion. From these centres the soul goes forth haughty and indomitable, seeking for mastery. These are the great centres of activity in soldiers, fighters; as also in the tiger and the cat the power-centre is at the base of the spine, in the sacral ganglion. All the tremendous sense of power and mastery is located in these centres of volition, there where the back is walled and strong, set blank against life. These are the centres of negative polarity of our first-being.
So the division of the psychic body is fourfold. If we are divided horizontally at the diaphragm, we are divided also perpendicularly. The upright division gives us our polarity, our for and against, our mystery of right and left.
Any man who is perfect and fulfilled lives in fourfold activity. He knows the sweet spiritual communion, and he is at the same time a sword to enforce the spiritual level; he knows the tender unspeakable sensual communion, but he is a tiger against anyone who would abate his pride and his liberty.