To the loving gaze we lift these days towards the Heavens, a vibrant tapestry of lights is revealed, and this radiance spurs us, with ever-increasing resolve, to close ranks in order to dispel the dark veils of ignorance, separateness and selfishness, welcoming with joy and faith the admonition of the Teaching “At so dark a moment, let us dwell upon the Light!” (1)
The mantle of the Mother of the World is permeated by ceaseless waves of renewal that find their home in the hearts of the Luminaries, and from those hearts they pour out into space, weaving together Communion, Strength and Beauty.
On 5 May, from the heliocentric perspective, Neptune, Mars and Mercury formed a conjunction at the beginning of Aries, and the Fire of the new, which poured with impetus into every atom of the solar System, called upon consciousnesses to a renewed striving towards the Infinite.
On that very day, Heaven has been filled with the rays of Will and Power launched by Vulcan, at the end of Capricorn, and Pluto, immersed in the ‘electric’ substance of Aquarius; the power unleashed by this union also reverberated upon the embrace between the Sun and the asteroid Urania in Taurus, creating a further resplendent lacework in the celestial substance.
“The Heavens are a web of connections, conveying messages and resolving problems at every level. (…) Man must learn to read the Heavens, upon which everything depends, and which do not conceal their decrees.” (2)
Urania, in her capacity as the sacred Muse of the Power of Heaven, has kindled in our minds the inclination to ‘lift up our eyes to Heaven’ in order to behold there the manifold traces of the divine, whilst her connection with the Sun has enabled a heart-to-heart alignment with the supreme fire of the stellar powers.
Preceded and sustained by such an inflow of energy, today, in particular, we celebrate the union between Venus, the celestial Lady of golden thought, and Jupiter, the Master of Love.
Their meeting, which takes place from the heliocentric perspective within the substantial waters of Gemini, magnetises the solar space and prepares it to receive the manifold waves of the becoming of substance, so that they may reveal the eternal steadfastness and unity of the spirit, the two poles of the unfathomable mystery of Being.
“The supreme Source is BEING, from which both Spirit and Substance spring forth. And that is all.” (3)
To grasp the full splendour of the Luminaries’ light and the arabesques that the Being traces across the cosmos, human consciousness has always made use of symbols: iridescent bridges spanning the gap between Idea and Form, capable of whispering to hearts and minds the Truth hidden behind the countless masks of appearance.
The Teaching offers us some insights that can be useful to understand the power inherent in the symbol and its function as a link between the invisible and the visible, between the Model and its formal realisation, between the luminous flash of the Idea and the forms that retain, albeit well hidden within their innermost being, the reverberation of that Light.
“Forms are divine and spiritual in nature and are symbols – that is, the written embodiment – of the universal language that expresses the One.” (4)
“Much that is inexpressible by words may be supplemented by symbols. Thus, in every symbol there will be the element of the inexpressible. It is possible to perceive the significance of secrecy, but words will be inadequate. One should refer very attentively to symbols. As secret hieroglyphs they preserve the essence of the great Universe. (…) The secrecy of the symbol is, as it were, a tension of energy.” (5)
“What is there in this objective world that is not the inadequate symbol of a divine idea? What have we in our outer manifestation but the visible sign (at some stage of the evolving purpose) of the plan of the creating Deity? What are you yourself but the outer expression of a divine idea? We must learn to see symbols all around us and then to penetrate behind the symbol to the idea which it should express.” (6)
“A symbol is a form of some kind which veils or hides a thought, an idea or a truth and it might be laid down therefore as a general axiom that every form of every kind is a symbol, or the objective veil of a thought. This when applied, will be found to refer equally to a human form, which is intended to be the symbol (or made in the image) of God; it is an objective form veiling a divine thought, idea or truth, the tangible manifestation of a divine concept.” (7)
The ‘seed’ of this year – 6.5 – which we must therefore nurture with particular care in our ‘field of work’ – also urges us to understand the quality of symbols as the true generating source of mental power (8):
I read the eternal symbols.
Gradually, I penetrate their universal significance.
I begin to trace some other ones: minor, new, composite.
This is my project to communicate the truth.
Etymosophy also contributes to our understanding of the symbol: the word derives, via the Latin symbolos, from the Greek symbolon, meaning a sign of recognition, a symbol or a pact, which stems from sumballo, ‘to throw together’. For most linguists, this verb is thought to be composed of the prefix syn, ‘together’, and ballo, ‘to throw’, from the Greek root BAL. The linguist Rendich, however, hypothesises that in Greek, at a certain stage of the development of the language, the Indo-European consonant “g”, which expressed the tortuous motion of lightning—the same as in Agni, the god of fire—shifted to “b”: “bal” would derive from the far older and more widespread Indo-European root *GAL-, to throw, which retains the idea of fire. (9)
The very sound of the word thus expresses a fiery synthesis, a flash that dissolves the world of illusion and illuminates the World of Causes. It is astonishing that even the word with which the text of the aforementioned ‘seed’ begins contains within it the heartbeat of the flame: Leggo i simboli eterni (I read the eternal symbols). The scholar Rendich himself states that the term ‘to read’, derived from the Latin legere, stems from the Indo-European root *LAG-, which is composed of the following phonetic elements: “movement that holds [l] in every direction [ag]”, “to gather”, “to connect”. The sound ag of Agni, the god of fire who originally personified the flash of lightning, indicating its zig-zag motion, is thus once again the soul of this root. (10)
The symbolic reading of the world, which is identified with the recognition of the ‘fiery’ or spiritual causes of manifestation, beginning with ourselves—symbols of the divine essence—thus guides us from the unreal to the Real.
This passage from Agni Yoga comes to mind: “The acceleration of manifestations will lead to the realization of the advance of cosmic symbols. Understanding of the entire scope of the manifested cosmic process is eluding humanity. Upon what can life be constructed when the principle of fiery symbols is unaccepted in life! When We speak of the principle of Fire, We have in mind the manifested living force of Cosmos. The symbol of Life is based upon the acceptance of the fiery element, and unlimited is this principle in its cosmic application. […]”. (11)
The symbol is universal; it unifies because it transcends languages; it is a key that serves the dual function of revealing and concealing, and thus conveys a knowledge that cannot be profaned. The symbol is therefore that ‘synthetic Sign’ (12) which veils the Unity of the Whole and through which, from light to light, one may come to contemplate Reality.
The energy of Gemini, whose dynamic mobility is governed by immutable Laws, thus proves to be the necessary condition for moving from instability to stability, from dualism to unity; Venus and Jupiter, today united in that enveloping energy, thereby assume the position of the greater Self which shines and grows whilst, at the same time, the lesser self—that is, the unstable flickers of the personality—declines and loses vigour. To move from form to quality, therefore, a concerted, rhythmic and continuous action is required; ceaseless waves of love are needed, with which to wisely build the bridge leading to the Reality of the One, to the burning flame of the Fiery World where even dualism finds no further dwelling.
“How long will mankind continue to dissect the one body of the Universe?
One may study isolated blades of grass
yet must never forget the great organism to which they belong.
One should examine isolated manifestations
without forgetting that they are but links of one great chain.
He whose thinking is without synthesis
cannot approach the life of the Universe.
The Thinker taught the beauty of Unity,
out of which pour the currents of energy.”
(Supermundane § 486)
01. Agni Yoga Series, Infinity II § 518
02. E. Savoini, Il Sistema solare nello spazio (The solar System in space, only available in Italian)
03. E. Savoini, Commentary on Infinity I (only available in Italian)
04. E. Savoini, Lecture notes of the 3rd Septennium, Incipit Vita Nova, unpublished paper, January 2003
05. Agni Yoga Series, AUM § 437
06. A. Bailey – Glamour: a World Problem, p. 13
07. A. Bailey – The Light of the Soul, p. 210
08. E. Savoini, Un Nuovo Modello di Spazio (A new Model of Space, only available in Italian)
09. F. Rendich, Comparative etymological dictionary of classical Indo-European languages. Indo-European-Sanskrit-Greek-Latin, 2010
10. F. Rendich, Op. cit.
11. Agni Yoga Series, Infinity I § 111
12. In the Lambdoma of the Genesis of Ideas, Vortex 4.6 has been assigned the Formula ‘The Symbol is the synthetic sign”.
