The Book of Unity is visually complex. In the center of the book is a large circle containing two fish-beasties with wings, partly in the water and partly in the air. Circling the circle are a man holding a white lily-like flower and a woman holding a black wand. The wand and flower almost touch. She is on top of the circle lying on her back, he is below with his stomach toward the circle. They stretch around it. At the two sides are ladders. Undulating across the top are a row of moons, on left the full moon, then a new moon slightly lower, then a quarter moon with horns down (i.e. a waning moon) and a quarter moon with horns up. In left to right across the bottom are a sword stuck in the ground, a five pointed star, an ear of corn, a turtle with a bird on her back, and a tree in fruit and flower. These form a symbolic catalog of everyone's ideas of happiness. The sword stuck in the ground means peace. The corn is plenty, and the fruit of our harvests. Like most abstract symbols, the five pointed star is based on a human gesture, that of the outstretched arms and legs. Leonardo da Vinci made a famous drawing of this figure, copied by Albrecht Durer. It is the image of physical man extended to his utmost, and everybody who has ever been an athlete will recognize this as one kind of happiness. A tree with leaves, fruit, and flower symbolizes possession of both means and ends and creativity as well. Finally, the peculiar image of the bird on the turtle means good luck, luck that comes from beyond our human understanding and lifts us to the heights. I arrived at this association by the mere fact that I could find little in common experience to associate with turtles. The only thing I could think of were sailor's tales from all periods of time of sea-turtles saving people lost overboard. According to the legends, sea-turtles have carried lost sailors hundreds of miles to dry land. If true, this would be an event beyond our normal understanding; a creature at home in the deep surfacing to save a human being. There are also tales of birds carrying mountain-climbers out of danger. Mythology, at least, is full of such stories. Thus, the bird-turtle is luck, a kind of luck that leads to miraculous preservation when all seems lost. What the Nameless Cne is trying to tell us is that Unity is the basis of all happiness, and that this Unity has its origins in the depths of Self. It is something equally at home in the deeps and in the air of normal existence. While there is a cycle of time (suggested by the moons) in which the apparent Unity waxes and wanes, it is always really there. We just don't always see it. According to the Thinker, we come to form a family solely by 'grading' people, just as they grade us, as a 10 or 8 or whatever. And each 'settles' for the highest grade they think they can rate. That is a common form of marriage among the dominant elite and of course it is very unstable. What is implied in the Unity card is that there is a metaphysical Unity between yourself and others that has always existed. And when you finally meet that 'other' it is not blind chance. It is a meeting you had both planned from the beginning. This is what is popularly known as a soul-mate. Soul-mates do not necessarily fall in love at first sight. "Love at first sight' has more to do with astrological resonances than with Unity. Soul-mates like each other and feel at home with one another more the more they spend time with each other. It is 'coming home', unlike the crushes of adolescence, which are mostly based on frustrated sexual desires and vanish as soon as those desires are satisfied. Soul-mates have a deep complementarity. Two such can do more than each alone. Each completes and makes up for the lacks of the other, yet, they "go the same direction in all things." In America, we are loathe to express affection, preferring to make jokes about all the slips and errors of our spouses and children. For me it was an unexpected discovery that such 'complaining' was only a mask for emotions too strong to be expressed. I was happy as a child in the bosom of my family, and I am happy again in the bosom of my second family. And perhaps the greatest happiness of all has been having children. Who would ever guess from anything in popular culture that children could be a delight, a ray of pure light, innocent -and spontaneous and ever-changing? The 'freedom' of the bachelor is just one more illusion of the Actor. And re-discovering Unity and happiness and the strength of family is a ladder up to the next plateau of human existence. |
"The hands you are in are your very own. A further step is needed. It requires that which has never been done before by an Actor: reverse pattern."