Now, the wheel is the alchemical hieroglyph of the time necessary for the coction of the philosophical matter, and consequently of the coction itself. The sustained, constant and equal fire, which the artist maintains night and day in the course of this operation, is for this reason called the fire of the wheel. Moreover, in addition to the heat necessary for the liquefaction of the philosophers’ stone, a second agent is needed as well, called the secret or philosophic fire. It is this latter fire, sustained by ordinary heat, which makes the wheel turn and produces the various phenomena which the artist observes in his vessel:

I recommend you to go by this road and no other.
Only take notice of the tracks of my wheel,
And, in order to give an equal heat overall,
Do not rise or descend too soon to heaven or earth.
For in rising too high you will be burnt by heaven,
And in descending too low you will be destroyed by earth.
But if your course remains set in the middle
The route will be plainer and the way more sure.

(De Nuysement, Poeme philosophic de la Verite de la Phisique Mineralle in Traittez de L’Harmonie et Constitution generalle du Vray Se/. Paris, Pgrier et Buisard, 1620 and 1621, p. 254. Cited in Fulcanelli’s Le Mystere des Cathédrales, p. 50)

Robert Mariani’s recent post was very exciting to read, especially when he acknowledges the animalistic mechanics of decision making and pleasure seeking as requiring some evaluative (a word I prefer to “moral”) standard with substantial independence from, if not supervening influence on, the social system in order for that system to ascend any status more dignified than an orgiastic ebb and flow of raw energy.

It is not my intention here to lay out a predictive or a prescriptive program for “exit,” much less articulate one “direction” among many, which movements will have to “pick” if they are to be successful. Let me state here that progress is dead unless something living abides in it, something continues. That said, sometime in the past millennium (opinions differ wildly as to exactly when), the vehicle of history became fully automated, and the majority of institutional energy since has been drawn with increasing rapidity and increasingly refined exclusivity into inquiring how, exactly, we can make this thing go faster.

Whether corrective attempts to accelerate, sustain, or slow the progress of time, the process of keeping the universe from falling apart at the seams has never been “walkaway safe.” By this very same token, attempts to secure the dignity of this sacred undertaking have brought the whole process embarrassingly close to an absolute halt many, many times throughout history. Attempts to preserve Tradition have, all to often underestimated the natural resilience of secret knowledge.

The propositional integrity of Traditional forms has always rested in their wholeness, their comprehensive grasp on all the imitations they propitiate in profane orders. As such, any divisive sophistry doing business in thoughtless excretions and regurgitations which merely describe virtue (themselves in fact mere adumbrations of these forms) necessarily falls short of any edifying potential.

Any conflicts which arise between different aspiring receivers of tradition reflects poorly on the characters of these individuals, who must then examine and scrutinize themselves to a degree which may surpass the actual scholastic demands of intellecting the forms. Cultures of critique (specifically Hebraic currents for which I feel a special affinity) have always arisen in a desire to maintain the sanctity of the Traditional contents of the customary forms (a neat little inverse analogy), the inner meanings which do not change the way outer appearances do. Tradition itself is immune to critique in the very same sense that “hot” is immune to “cold;” substance may fluctuate between the essential poles of Tradition and the critical self-awareness which enables it either to reject vain customs and the claims of duplicitous individuals, or to reject itself. But neither quality can “become” the other any more than the color red can “become” the color blue.

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