LOCATION OF SPIRITUAL CENTERS

IN the preceding we have almost entirely left aside the question of the actual location of the 'supreme center', an extremely complex question that is in any case quite secondary from our chosen point of view. There seems good reason to envisage a number of successive locations corresponding to different cycles which are themselves subdivisions of another, more extensive, cycle called the Manvantara; moreover, if we were to consider the latter in its totality by placing ourselves outside of time as it were, there would be a hierarchical order to consider among these locations, corresponding to the constitution of traditional forms that are themselves really no more than adaptations of the principal and primordial tradition dominating the entire Manvantara. We should recall however that many other centers can exist simultaneously with the principal one, attached to and reflecting it like so many images, and this can easily lead to confusion, especially as these secondary centers, being more outward, are thereby more visible than the supreme center.^[1] In reference to this last point we have already taken particular note of the similarity between Lhasa, the center of Lamaism, and Agarttha. We will now add that even in the West there are at least two cities, Rome and Jerusalem, whose topographical circumstances present peculiarities suggesting a comparable raison d'être (and we have already seen that the latter was in effect a visible image of the mysterious Salem of Melki-Tsedeq). As we have already pointed out, there existed in ancient times what could be called a sacred or sacerdotal geography, and the placement of cities and temples was not arbitrary but determined according to very precise laws;^[2] this may give us an inkling of the bonds that unite 'sacerdotal' and 'royal' art to the art of the builders, ^[3] as well as of the reasons why the ancient guilds possessed an authentic initiatic tradition.^[4] Moreover, between the founding of a city and the establishment of a doctrine (or of a new traditional form by adaptation to specific conditions of time and place), there was such a connection that the first was often taken to symbolize the second.^[5] Naturally, the most elaborate precautions were taken when fixing the placement of a city destined in one way or another to become the capital of a whole specified part of the world; and the names of such cities would merit careful study, as would also the reported circumstances of their founding.^[6] Without elaborating on questions that are only indirectly related to our present subject, we should nonetheless mention that a center of the kind just described existed in pre-Hellenic Crete,^[7] and that it seems that there were several in Egypt as well (probably founded in successive epochs), such as Memphis and Thebes.^[8] The name of the latter, which is also that of a Greek city, is of particular interest as a designation of a spiritual center by reason of its obvious connection with the Hebrew Thebah, that is, the Ark of the Deluge. The latter is again a representation of the supreme center, especially in the sense of assuring the preservation of the tradition in a sort of shrouded state^[9] during the transitional period between two cycles marked by a cosmic cataclysm that destroys the previous state of the world in order to make place for a new one.^[10] The role of the biblical Noah^[11] is similar to that played in the Hindu tradition by Satyavrata, who, under the name Vaivasvata, later became the current Manu; but it should be noted that whereas this latter tradition goes back to the beginning of the present Manvantara, the biblical Deluge marks only the advent of another, more restricted cycle comprised within this same Manvantara:^[12] they do not represent the same event, but two analogous ones.^[13] Even more noteworthy is the association that exists between the symbolism of the Ark and that of the rainbow, an relationship suggested in the biblical text by the appearance of the latter after the Deluge as a sign of the covenant between God and earthly creatures.^[14] During the cataclysm, the Ark floated on the Ocean of the lower waters; then, at the moment marking the re-establishment of order and the renewal of all things, the rainbow appeared 'in the clouds', that is to say in the region of the upper waters. It is therefore an analogical relationship in the strictest sense, the two figures being inverse and complementary to each other, the convex shape of the ark being directed downward and that of the rainbow upward, so that together they form a complete circular or cyclical figure, of which they comprise as it were the two halves.^[15] At the beginning of the cycle this figure was in fact complete: it is the vertical section of a sphere the horizontal section of which is represented by the circular enclosure of the Terrestrial Paradise;^[16] and the latter is divided by a cross formed by the four rivers issuing from the 'polar mountain'.^[17] The reconstitution must be accomplished at the end of the same cycle, but then, in the case of the Celestial Jerusalem, the circle is replaced by a square,^[18] indicating the accomplishment of what the Hermeticists designated symbolically as the 'squaring of the circle': the sphere, representing the development of possibilities through the expansion of the primordial central point, is transformed into a cube when this development is completed and the final equilibrium for the cycle under consideration is attained.^[19]