Destiny

Here, we are reminded that we are surrounded by indications and hints. Sneaking suspicions. Tell-tale clues and evidence from deep within ourselves. Shards of half-remembered truths. Mind molds past into present and then into future. It is where these spheres overlap that we find ourselves in the whirlwind we know as fate.

Currents play across an inner topography; eddies spiral upon themselves to reveal guiding principles. The figure is movement and symmetry, pattern and pattern's answer. In it, we see windmill, flow, energy. The repetitions numb as echo builds on echo, numb as ceremony can numb us, forcing us to bore down into ourselves. Into the stillness inside the motion. Into the silence inside the noise. Into the Heart of the World. And it is, perhaps, only there we can be agents of Plan as Plan gives birth to us. Or is it the other way around? It is—it must be! And yet... In this shadow world, a world beyond clarity, a world whose every instant is coterminous with every other, our being precedes us. All notions of temporality are too-fragile things. They crumble beneath the weight of observed—felt—truth.

That which must be, already is.

Metaphor

Removed from the First Cause, the families of Effect, these ripples, draw us outward. Like the dazzle on water obscures and tempts us toward a belief in That Which Is Not. Or the reflection in a mirror, pomp and ceremony. They clothe us in the regalia of the crowned child.

Ultimately, this is where symbol loses its luster and referrent achieves a clarity previously thought impossible. In this way, the crucate figure in the center is seen as the foundational element. Around it, beyond it, visual echoes are feeble attempts at "explanation." Yet nothing needs explanation. Nothing adequately serves. And, here, each successive argument is more dilute—the angled forms, the cutting black blades. Insubstantial and pale, a dissipating spirit. Which renders the enterprise irrelevant, a distraction from the object of adoration. In paradoxical splendor, this brings the object into greater focus. And isn't this more properly called prayer?

The seed need not grow to be the seed it is.

Illusion

Through the scrim of our misapprehensions, our misconceptions and misinformations, we view the universe. Self-deceit can become a permanent appendage, a new leg that renders us lame. To the Hindu, maya; to wanderers of a more literal nature, mirage. Ever out of reach, ever over-reaching. We chase the ignis fatuus—the foolish fire of our hearts' blinded eye—into we-know-not-what.

The central figure is night and twilight, cloud and haze. Where it is not black, it is gray, lined with parallelisms. Everything is obscure, half-hidden, unknowable. Tantalizing cutaways are falsities—pretenders to light and knowledge. Around the periphery, the way is fraught. A world pushing past its own too-tight boundaries, to spread its—what? Its nothing? To spread its nothing then! To sow the seeds of distrust! Of disloyalty! A smothering blanket of denial. Repudiation! And now, finally, travel inward and see it, at the bottom, as of a plumbless well: the one unveiled, untainted glimpse at Truth.

To see clearly, close the eyes of seeing.

Renewal

The blossoming Now is daughter to a blossoming When. Seeds to roots to flowers to seeds to roots. The progression of living states proffers a recapitulation of all possible pasts as the present funnels its energy into putative futures.

Note the skewed black squares at the four corners of the calyx, the final forms still incubating, still out-swelling. They echo the white square of the stigma, the flower's central spire. And around this, paired triangles like split squares, kissing vertex-to-vertex. The figure is an ariose meditation on becoming, separating, coming together, and re-becoming. Birth and loss contained in a corolla, a being infused with the perfume of life and of decay, whose shadow is nothing less than ourselves.

Life turns toward Life, like flowers face the sun.

Transcendence

Rise! Rise above your earthly pains. The pains of loss, of doubt, of that which is no longer and that which will not be. It is the pain of change. Once aloft, freely rising—to float—the world is so small, a brilliant bauble of no more consequence than diamonds to the Devil.

The tapered lines of this figure create a gleaming icon. One can almost feel the heat and light. The acute angles capture and transmit a dazzle that is possible only after rising above a world in which change can act, above a galaxy of constant laws, above a universe of separation. Above. And in the center, in the very heart, the eye of self-knowledge. It is the axis upon which everything turns.

To discover, escape.

Introspection

Imagine a tunnel, a well, a mine. It is in this innermost temple—this most private sanctum sanctorum—that the jewel of personhood is shaped and polished. By methods far simpler, and more impervious to words, than prayer, the self attains its own panorama.

This figure presents a depiction of a factory of conscience, sanctuary of consciousness. How bare! What fragility! Such is the impression given by the long lines, long like the legs of herons. But this place is built of eternity. Of bone. Of stone. Cell by cell, piece by piece, brick by brick, the mind in repose, in observation of itself, limns its mandala. The order that results, the map of unutterable harmoniousness, leads through itself and on into the reaches of the universe.

Mind is the pebble, self is the ripple.

Sovereignty

Hereditary power, power seized by the manipulation of earthly desires. Feuds inflamed and hatreds stoked. Class and caste. The domination of the weak. The rape of chaste justice. This figure contains all of these worldly crimes.

The vicious, black triangles—are they blades? fangs? the wicked barbs of spears?—can only be the instruments of a state made mad by its own power. Whether interpreted as police badge or military medal, the statement the figure makes is the same: You Must Submit. The negative shape in the center is nothing more than a new “crooked cross,” an antiseptic swastika. You Will Submit. Note the “talons” surrounding this icon. Their purpose is to remind the people that they can be removed. They can be plucked from the crowd. And within the sea of the State, every drop is invisible. Submit.

The wise practice obedience through resistance.

Martyr

The massed forces of Man at his most foul—the brazen, the proud, the faithless frauds—descend from every corner. Within, the center withstands the crush of fear. And lo! Still the light shines! Within its cloister, even within the airless space left behind after defiance’s flame has flickered, Truth still glows. It fills its chamber as the censer fills a cathedral.

We imagine the weight of heathen ways, of idols made of brass, in the forms arrayed around the heart of this figure. The shapes—sickeningly corporeal (carnal, even)—gather like bubbles in oil. They choke, they sting, they press and twist. As long as truths still prove themselves in every breath, all is for naught.

The faithless cannot stop a faithful heart.

Apostasy

The serenity of the Center! Simplicity, balance. All things equal, thrilling to the echoes of a golden ratio, precursor to all that is worthy of worship. As pure as numbers, the initial state bears witness to nothing less than itself. And how plainly this serves as a metaphor for the Self. Such then is the pain—the self-effacement—of the betrayal visible in this figure.

The points that stretch and deform and finally puncture the sheltering sphere as surely as arrows pierce the flesh—caltrops for the hooves of Heaven’s horses!—are the outward marks only. Beneath the scars is a kink, an imperfection, a misgrown bone so bold it nearly reeks. Surpassing even blasphemy in its enormity, the twisting seeks to claim territory already bequeathed, like a raven atop the Temple. Walk away, heretic! We’ll be the better for your absence!

The renouncer inherits a ruined kingdom.

Crux

Here, the elemental state that is the crossroads: black balanced by white, lie by truth. The basic condition in which first we wander, and only later overcome. Our nature is seeking, if only seeking the possibility of the possible.

Doorways yawn, gateways lure, and pathways emerge from Mind. This figure—with its mystery breeched by the prisms of revelation—is a representation of the inner landscape. Only in the center, the Garden, can be found the solidity of the four-sided, the earth-force. Beyond, perched in the jaws of Dilemma, there to be pierced by doubt and hesitation, we choose because—chastened by the clarity borne by the exigency of the universe—we must. Such a ticklish paradox! Choice driven by choicelessness. All seekers face the darkness, redeemed by oases of illumination. Therein lies the challenge of wayfinding—to find the destination that can only exist after our arrival.

To choose is to die and, dying, to transcend.