the universe — a love story an introduction y · 01introduction august 15, 2010 now fast-forward...
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THE UNIVERSE — A LOVE STORY
An Introduction
ou’re facing in one of four directions:
1. North
2. South
3. East or
4. West
(or in a direction described by its relation to them: Northeast,
Southwest…).
It’s…
1. morning
2. afternoon
3. evening or
4. night
in the…
1. spring
2. summer
3. fall or
4. winter
as you pass your…
1. childhood
2. youth
3. maturity or
4. old age
Y
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The Universe — A Love Story 2 Hayes 01Introduction August 15, 2010
Choose one from each group … There are no other choices.
As I write (this summer morning, facing North) the manmade
objects all about me: desk, door, picture, table, rug, window,
computer and room are all four-cornered — as is this page on which
we read and write. Even the circular clock on my wall is marked so as
to quarter time.
And while these foursomes are our own creations, others — like
our arms and legs — are built right in.
In “The Origin of Life on Earth,” the physicist, Dr. Neil deGrasse
Tyson, Director of the Hayden Planetarium, writes:
The matter within every living Earth creature mainly consists of just four chemical elements: hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen. All the other elements together contribute less than one percent ….1
Modern science currently counts as four the powers behind all
phenomena in the universe, from the galactic on down, identifying
these universal forces as:
1. the strong force, which binds the nucleus of atoms;
2. electromagnetism, whose sensible forms are heat and light;
3. the weak force, involved in nuclear decay; and
4. gravitation
Everything that exists — from the rupture of suns and the fission of
atoms to your memory of the sunlight in your sister’s hair — is, it
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The Universe — A Love Story 3 Hayes 01Introduction August 15, 2010
says, an interplay of these four powers.
Then again, we’re creatures of the four dimensions:
1. length
2. width
3. height/depth and
4. time
who function, traditionally, on four levels:
1. the physical
2. emotional
3. mental and
4. spiritual
And no matter what we think about any of the above, none of us can
live without the four life essentials:
1. air
2. warmth
3. food and
4. water
Though if we don’t, our options are still four:
1. burial on land, or
2. at sea;
3. excarnation, or
4. the funeral pyre
his repeated quartering of the circle of life was first noted in the
West by the Greek philosopher, Empedocles, who writes:
T
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The Universe — A Love Story 4 Hayes 01Introduction August 15, 2010
Now hear the fourfold Roots of everything: Life-bearing Hera, Aidoneus, shining Zeus,
And Nêstis, moistening mortal springs with tears.2
The ancient Greeks identified his divine Roots with the classical
elements:
1. Earth
2. Air
3. Fire and
4. Water
to which, our western histories claim, Aristotle added a mysterious
fifth element: Æther or Quintessence.
Nonetheless, a similar scheme had existed in India at least 700
years earlier, and for likely much longer. The Rig Veda reads in part
like praises of the elements divinized. And around the same time
(1200 BCE) in what is now Iraq, the same elemental gang of four
surfaces in Babylon, about which, Joseph Campbell writes:
“..the entire universe …whether viewed in its highest or its lowest aspect, is a reflex, according to this ancient view, of four elementary powers; the same that we have already found personified of old in the four great gods of the earliest literate civilization known to us: Anu (light or fire), Enlil (air), Ea (water), and the Goddess (earth).”3
This “earliest literate civilization” is Sumer (3800-2000 BCE),
whose dates back us up to the very cliff-edge of pre-history…
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The Universe — A Love Story 5 Hayes 01Introduction August 15, 2010
Now fast-forward six millennia and we find these same “four-fold
roots” on our minds, as we assess the effects the fires of our industry
have wrought upon the air and waters of our Earth.
Most amazing: this foundational quaternary — ancient,
ubiquitous and profound — goes today almost unacknowledged.
his book describes a primordial tradition, one that, for countless
past ages, viewed the universe as the dynamic expression of four
elemental powers; an archaic worldview replete with a schemata, which
— though partially erased by western science and religion — endures.
This old cosmology was the map humans for millennia used to orient
themselves in time and space; to make sense of their life’s journey; and
to find direction — their True North — in both their inner and outer
worlds.
What is this map? Here it is: dddd.
dddd, as a sign, goes back to the Paleolithic. Today (and for the
past few thousand years) it has signified Earth — both the classical
element and our planet and, by extension, our universe, world.
But if this sign’s history is unfamiliar, its face is not, gazing back,
as it does, from every compass, analogue clock and dial — telling us
the direction we’re headed in and how much time is left.
T
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The Universe — A Love Story 6 Hayes 01Introduction August 15, 2010
It is, in fact, a hopeful sign. Once hobos chalked it on the steps of
houses to let other hobos know: here you’ll find work, food or money. A
cross in a circle shows the site of buried treasure: “X marks the spot”.
It’s a bun in the oven, money in the bank, her in your arms: the
intersection of the horizontal female line and the vertical male principle
within the circle of space/time. (And where they meet? Well, that’s X-
rated. Or at the very least, there are hugs and kisses. XXX OOO).
Then again, we could see it like this:
the wheel of fortune: the circle of life:
Game show logo
Whatever it is, its manifestations are diverse, various, almost
Logo of the New York City Fire Department; 2001
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The Universe — A Love Story 7 Hayes 01Introduction August 15, 2010
numberless and universal, ranging from…
the trivial: to the sublime:
From East: to West:
Television test pattern; 1941
The muladhara or root chakra of Yoga,
associated with the element Earth
Celtic cross
Painted zodiac on the ceiling of the Temple of Hathor, Dendera, Egypt;
c. 30 BCE
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The Universe — A Love Story 8 Hayes 01Introduction August 15, 2010
Bronze Age rock carvings, Skepplanda, Sweden
From the decorative: to the sacred:
Ancient: and modern:
Ancient and modern
Furthermore, this same form is drawn repeatedly by Nature…:
Design for inlaid wooden tabletop, American; 1967
The Labyrinth at Chartres Cathedral,
France; 1200
Bicycle logo
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The Universe — A Love Story 9 Hayes 01Introduction August 15, 2010
Human female estrus cycle
DNA codon wheel, showing how the four nucleotides — guanine, thymine, adenine and cytosine — combine to
form proteins
on different scales…:
…and is sketched in the theoretical air by a vast array
of scientific models, two of which are:
The Moon’s position relative to the Earth in the course of a month, showing its 4 phases
The Earth’s position relative to the Sun over the course of a year,
and at the 4 quarters
Cell division
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The Universe — A Love Story 10 Hayes 01Introduction August 15, 2010
Great Seal of the United States
ccasionally, some of its symbolism — old and unvarnished —
bubbles up to the cultural surface,
creating a small disturbance in the Force.
The all-seeing eye above a four-sided
truncated pyramid mounted within a circle
appeared on our dollar bills in 1936 and has
been linked ever since in urban myth to a Masonic-
Rosicrucian-Illuminati conspiracy that controls the world’s banks — in
concert with the Rothschilds and the Trilateral Commission!
This much is true: in the West, the Rosicrucians and the Masons
were for centuries keepers and preservers of this old traditional
worldview which is, of course, pre-Christian.
But having invoked the Rosicrucians, can the Knights Templar be
far behind? Nay! For no ancient mystery is replete without them!
O
Temple Seal of Preceptor Brother
Hugues de Rochefort 1204
Templar Cross Philai Temple
Egypt
Templar Cross Gravestone
St. Mary's Church, Fortingall, Scotland C. 1400
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The Universe — A Love Story 11 Hayes 01Introduction August 15, 2010
“Treasure map”
A templar cross and skull-and-bones decorate a window in an old
Freemason building in Massachusetts
As you can see, the
Templar or Maltese cross
is just a stylish variation on this
old design — and one traditionally
associated with buried treasure.
And yet, as Fortune’s other face, this
same sign, with just a small turn, becomes
the skull-and-crossbones, reminding us that
the Wheel of Life: dddd: is also the Wheel of
Death —
and that the whole shebang can take a sinister twist and go bad before
our very (exed-out) eyes.
Button for Microsoft Internet Explorer
The Jolly Roger
pirate flag
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The Universe — A Love Story 12 Hayes 01Introduction August 15, 2010
ince at least 529 CE, when the first Christian Emperor, Justinian,
forbade the teaching of Greek philosophy at the University of
Athens, cutting the West off from its classical roots and almost
personally ushering in the Dark Ages, the older and more profound
meanings of this cosmic symbol were suppressed. Not until Crusaders
returned with it to Europe, along with Arabic copies of Greek and Roman
texts, did it again became an object of (often secret) study.
But though its older meanings have been all but lost in the West,
its face and form is still impressed on our culture and is reflected to
this day in our language and myth; in the structure of our govern-
ments; in the layout of our cities and houses of worship — even our
homes.
In other words, this template did not vanish — only our
awareness and understanding of it.
S
St Peter’s Square, the Vatican, Rome
Original plan for Baghdad as built by Al-Mansur, Second
Abbasid Caliph, 762 A 1475 German
map of Jerusalem as a
circular city of four gates
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The Universe — A Love Story 13 Hayes 01Introduction August 15, 2010
St. Peter’s Basilica Rome
In his authoritative work, Le Symbolism du La Temple Chrétien
[The Symbolism of the Christian Church], J. Hani affirms:
The whole of sacred architecture consists, in reality, of “squaring the circle,” that is, of turning the circle into a square. 4
Thus, the traditional plan of Christian
churches describes a square nave at the
church’s center with a round dome or
cupola above. The lower square is
Earth. The higher circle, Heaven. A
church is their union: Heaven on Earth.
This meant, of course, that up
until recently, to build a church or a
temple, one had to be able to “square a
circle,” working only with a straight edge
and compass. Today, it’s known that this mathematical problem can
only be approximated. Thus, the expression to “square the circle”
meant to perform a near-impossible feat, and came to mean the
attainment of enlightenment.
Maybe this is why dddd is more than a blueprint for the great
cathedrals of Europe and the temples of Angkor Wat, but serves as the
unseen scaffolding for some of our most celebrated psychological and
philosophical systems — from Meyers-Briggs to Yoga to the Greek
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The Universe — A Love Story 14 Hayes 01Introduction August 15, 2010
mysteries.
In these, and in many other ways, this ancient, simple 4-spoked
wheel seems to serve as a pattern or template for a broad array of forms
and systems, both in nature and in human craft and thought.
This may sound like a lot for one poor watch face to contain, but as
we’ll see, it holds that and more.
1 Tyson 2 Empedocles 3 Campbell 4 J. Hani
Gods of the Greek Orphic Mysteries with
elemental attributions The Myers-Briggs personality types
Vitruvian Man by Leonardo DaVinci
Italy, 1492