THE CENTRE IN THE MIDST OF THE CONDITIONS
FURTHER
NOTES ON 'YOD' AS SACRED CENTRE.
Alain de Lille, a 12th century
theologian, borrowing from the Corpus Hermeticum of the 3rd Century:
"God
is an intelligible sphere whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is
nowhere."
While Giordano Bruno wrote:
"We
can assert with certainty that the universe is all centre, or that the centre of
the universe is everywhere and its circumference is nowhere."
Pascal used the following words:
"God
is a circle; His centre is everywhere, His circumference is nowhere."
Or in another translation:
"Nature is an infinite sphere whose centre is everywhere, whose
circumference is nowhere."
And in his short story: 'The
Library of Babel', J.L.Borjes plays with the idea:
"The
library is a sphere whose exact centre is in any one of the hexagons and whose
circumference is inaccessible."
Circle
and Centre,
"The
famous saying that God is "a sphere of which the centre is everywhere and
the circumference nowhere" is, in fact, first found in a pseudo-Hermetic
treatise of the twelth century, and was transferred by Cusanus to the universe,
as a reflection of God, in a manner which is Hermetic in spirit..This concept
was basic for Bruno, for whom the innumerable worlds are all divine centres of
the unbounded universe."
Yates,
Bruno, p. 247.
The Liber XXIV
philosophorum, published by Clemens Baeumker, Das pseudi.hermetische Buch
der XXIV Meister, Beitrage zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologue des
Mittelalters, fasc.xxv, Munster, 1928.
The source of Cusanus, is: De
docta ignorantia, II, cap.2; cf.Koyre, op. cit., pp. 10ff.
SYMBOLIC
CENTRES AND GOLD
Sphere and Centre, GBG, p. 186.
------------------------------------
If we
look at the embellishment of the centre, the cherry, as Gombrich illustrates,
the centre stage, we are looking as well at all other centres -
for example for symbol of the centre, par excellence, that of the Sun,
or the disc of Ra, flanked by serpents and outstretched wings.
Symbolic Centres of the
Earth
– Heliopolis, Mecca, Bodh
Gaya, Jerusalem and so forth.
EGYPT - HELIOPOLIS
Rundle Clarke continues:
"So
the Phoenix came from the far-away world of eternal life, bringing the message
of light and life to a world wrapped in the helplessness of the primeval night.
Its flight is the width of the world:
'over
oceans, seas and rivers,' (45) to land, at last, in Heliopolis, the symbolic
centre of the earth where it will announce the new age.We are told that 'the
watchers tremble' with joy when they behold it coming, with the assurance that
creation is still active and the world is not yet to be reabsorbed into the
Abyss. It is for this reason that Atum can say, in Chapter 17 of the Book of the
Dead:
_______________________
Boas, The Hieroglyphics of
Horappolo, Note ?.
"That
Egypt is in the middle of the earth is an old idea, which may also be found in
the Hermetica. See especially Stobaeus, I, 45 (992): "Since in the
middle of the earth lies the most holy land of our forefathers and the middle of
the human body is the shrine of the heart alone,"etc. (ed.Meineke,I,p.303).
GOLD
AND THE CENTRE
This series of quotations shows in closer detail, the Hermetic
transmission in Europe, and especially through Florence.
"Out of this little point, says Dorn, in his "Physica
Genesis," the wisdom of God made with the creative word the "huge
machine of the world."
And:
"O wondrous wisdom, which by a word alone was able to bring into
being every part of the vast and weighty mass of this huge machine that hath
been made since creation."
Dorn, 'Theatricum Chemicum.'
Here the point, or centre is seen as a seed of sound.
Besides Dorn, Michael Maier, Dr John Dee, Moses de Leon, Kandinsky, Klee
and C.C.Jung contain extensive material on the Centre/Point.
Plate 121 of 'Yoga Art' by Ajit Mookerjee is 'Gift', by Kenneth
Nolan (1961-62.):