The symbol of the Book of the Nameless One is a nude man holding a closed scroll in his right hand and an open one in his left, with writing that can't quite be made out. If you have the T tarot, you can recognize this for yourself. I shall give the descriptions for those who do not possess the T deck. Behind the figure of the man is a pit of bones. He strides away from this pit, a band of purple on his forward leg. Behind him are stones, before him are flowers. His companions are a spider and an animal with the body of a cat, and two heads, one a cat-head, the other a dog-head. The sun is high overhead, yet paradoxically is reflected in a lake in the far left background. In the middle background is a T shaped object. We are told that this book was formerly the Fool card. The entire message of this book is contained in this description if you can read the language of symbols. But do not be dismayed if the meaning is not perfectly transparent. It took me five or six years to work it out. The principal clue is the purple band. Or rather I should say, the purple band was the detail that refused to fit the interpretation given by John Cooke and my own early thinking about it. Why is the Nameless One wearing a band of purple? It is a symbolic attribute of the forward motion of the Nameless One, away from the pit of bones, and towards the fields of flowers. But what attribute? Our only clue is the color. Purple is a fairly rare color in nature, and I could not think of any association which made sense of the rest of the book until I remembered that in ancient civilization, purple was an exceedingly rare and expensive dye. Its only source was a gland in a marine animal found in the Mediterranean, and purple cloth was so expensive that its use was reserved for the imperial family. Even they could only afford a narrow ribbon of purple around the edge of their clothing. Thus, the quality attributed to forward progress is 'imperial authority'. The Book of the Nameless One is like the ten commandments for the Way of the Sun. This idea is reinforced by the divine title or description given to this book alone. In so far as we make the divine purpose our own, we too must walk away from the pit of bones, and add no more to it. It is no longer necessary for us to massacre one another, or the other higher life forms on earth. The One thus prohibits killing anything with a skeleton. More exactly, imperial authority is given to progress away from the pit of bones. Thus, if we each take some step in that direction, we are obeying the commandment. Remember, you are the One. This is an inner necessity welling up in all who are sensitive to the inner life. One proof of the validity of this message is the desire by millions to become vegetarians since 1963. Strict vegetarianism is not really required. Seafood other than fish is invertebrate. Nor is strict pacifism required. Defensive measures such that a criminal or enemy kills himself through his own hostile aggression is compatible. Even abortion in the blastula stage before a fetus forms is compatible, as I interpret it, though others may prefer a stricter interpretation. In my opinion, these "allowances" only serve to make it a literal, practical, and exact code of ethics. All this is implied by striding away from the pit of bones. This act will make all nature tame, and thus we stride towards a garden of Eden. This ecological theme is amplified by the cat-dog. You might see the cat-dog as merely a companion for mankind. You would be wrong. Why does it have the body of a cat? Why not the body of a dog? In effect, this animal is a cat, onto which the head of a dog has been grafted. If you are sensitive to the language of symbols, this detail should be a puzzle, a warning that the first interpretation is incomplete. The symbolism hinges on the difference between cats and dogs. The cat has no wild ancestors. It is a wild animal, one that has chosen to live in proximity to humans. The independence of cats is the independence of any wild creature, and is nothing unusual. What is unusual is the fawning behavior of dogs, so unlike their wild ancestors. The dog is one of man's technological creations. Dogs, coyotes, and wolves are all the same species biologically. Behaviorally, there are enormous differences. Wolves and coyotes are wholy, i.e. part of the whole. They are guardians of the ecology, much more than humans at present. This is worth detailing. Wolves and coyotes do not breed indiscriminately, like dogs. Each family has only one breeding pair. They have one litter a year, usually 2, 3, or 4 pups. In good years, when game is plentiful, they will have 4, in lean years, they will have only 2 and perhaps raise only 1. Dogs have no such restraint. This close connection with the balance of nature is wholy. The wolves and coyotes keep the herbivores in check. Otherwise, rabbits and rodents would multiply to the point of killing all the vegetation, on which we all depend. Grafting the head of one animal onto another is exactly what the mad scientist would do. It is a symbol for all the unwholy creations of the Thinker. The deserts of the world are made by domestic animals, creations of the Thinker. It is the act of the narrow, unwholy specialist. Unlike wild ungulates, domestic livestock will eat plants right down to the roots, which in dry seasons will then dry up, allowing the soil underneath to blow away. Once the green vegetation is gone, rainfall over the area also becomes less, and the desert is made permanent. This process happened in historical times in the arid Southwest. Thus, the cat-dog is really an ecological warning. Think of the sun reflected in the lake as fire-in-the-lake. Fire-in-the-lake is a hexagram, and is another Garden of Eden image. It would be physically impossible for the sun to be reflected in the lake, since the Nameless One specifically says the sun is high overhead. Such contradictions are meant to shock us awake, and realize we are not just looking at a portrayal of a landscape. Fire-in-the-lake (trigram fire over trigram lake) means estrangement, but has the additional meaning of an underlying unity. The commentary in the I Ching says that when heaven and earth are joined, great harmony results. We are heaven, and nature is earth, and we have been in estrangement for a long time, but never more so than in the present time of the World-machine. The symbolic letter of this book is T. Some of the cards are given letters, and some not. The Nameless One makes certain that we understand that the symbolic meaning of T is found in its shape, and not in any associations we may have with the letter. "T. A beginning- -the end is determined by the three-pointed form." This is an ancient abstract shape, and it is an abstraction of the shape of a standing human figure with arms stretched out to each side, a posture frequently found in the Books of the Nameless One. It is a gesture also found in the catacomb artwork of the early followers of the Way of the Saints. To understand this gesture, imagine yourself standing in whatever would be a characteristic posture, surveying the course of your life. Perhaps you have lived long enough to see that all the twists and turns, obstacles, crises and mistakes have led you to this point, where you are ready to take up the divine purpose and make it your own. WE keep ourselves ignorant of advance knowledge of the patterns; yet SELF has chosen these challenges in order that we could rise to the occasion. Creativity is like a spark; it must be struck against stone. (That is why the spark-star is the symbol of creativity.) Without challenges, obstacles, crises and mistakes, we would never learn anything, never grow, never rise to what we have become. It is in the creative response that we are free of the shackles of cause and effect. It is in that moment that we become something unexpected, something unpredicted by the Thinker. All life and history has been shaped in precisely this way, in nature and society. The 'accidental' patterns are chosen by SELF, not because the end can be known, but because it takes some hard lessons, some hard obstacles for us to rise up in glory. Realizing this is a form of Self-realization. It is a realization of the Self at work in all our lives. Once you have recognized this pattern, the arms swing open in welcome to all life has to offer, good and bad, pleasurable or painful, easy or hard. It is all part of the grand adventure. Without the hard places, we would gradually slip down into a uniform ooze. The heights of experience and being only arise out of struggle and difficulty. What is a little pain or sorrow compared to that? Instead of being the random victims of fate as taught by the Thinker, the Way of the Sun transforms you into a cosmic hero, an adventurer through many life-times, on many planes of existence, on many levels of reality. So welcome it! That is the meaning of the T-gesture, and of the T symbol. The early followers of the Way of the Saints understood this perfectly well, which is why they were able to accept martyrdom, and why the T became their dominant symbol. |
Why is the One nameless? Only the created can be named or numbered. Divinity is creativity, spontaneity, freshness, joy, LIFE. The One has no name, and we must resist using the title of "Nameless One" as a name. We do not speak of "god". We speak of the All, the Self, the One, the Creative Forces, or the Nameless Deeps.