A Pentagram

Or should I say, "2-3-5"?  This is a set of 3 models culminating in a pentagram, and some backstory as to how it came about.

I would like to start by applying a very old approach to catching all of reality, which will bring us back to the Vedanta of Dharma Hindu thinking, with that of the Purusha and Prakriti.

Vedanta holds that there are two fundamental realities, which are like oil and water with each other, but which, as a pair, may be able to constitute everything. Where the prakriti gives us a name for a universe full of undifferentiable, primordial stuff, the purusha gives us one unchanging, constant reality in the face of all relative change. So I suppose, at its simplest, this pair of things may now be broken down, mixed, or arranged, like play dough, on our architectural drawing board, as the constituents of everything.

For the sake of maintaining integrity across the 2, 3, and 5 in this presentation, I will like to add the idea of some kind of wave action, or flux, occurring across these basic two things, as if this universe of oil and water were set in motion. As a placeholder for movement of some kind, this will be modeled, likened to alternating current, from electricity:

Next, we'll take that motion, and put it into a cycle of 3: From all as one, to an expanse full of (merely organizable) matter and energy, to the development of self-organizing things, where by way of these individuated self-organizers, there is one, and by way of this one, there may be a multitude of "ones".

Note that I also find it worth consideration to hold that "one" is the first of all numbers, and that all other numbers may come from it. It is based upon an ability to individuate, or delineate anything at all, such as we may try to form within our realms of cognition. I think it will be of root necessity to individuate, delineate, and separate, in order to apply cognition, and this "one" will give us the launch pad we need to perform cognition.

In addition to using "one", we may also note that "word", "symbol", and "center" have been used when referring to the human ego at its most fundamental root, where that ego; that kind of a self may lie at the root of all human cognition.

Now we have a cycle of 3, and we're ready to take a shot at putting things pentagrammatically. I'll show a final picture first, and some of the thinking which produced it to follow.

Moving from a set of 3 to a set of 5, now we can follow the cursive strokes, from Ether, which will be our "one", through Earth and Water, which will be our organizable stuff, and then through Air and Fire, which will be for individuated (and therefore multiple) "beings".

It occurs to me that, where matter may swim in a fluid of energy, to follow this pattern in a similar fashion on the next level, consciousness would be taken as swimming in a pool of existence.

The first time I modeled something pentagrammically, I had been watching martial arts videos on YouTube, and reading the associated comments. After perhaps 50 or 100 hours of doing this, I experienced what I would call "a moment of perspective", and said five things: Win, Harm, Kill, Mitigate, and Feign. Shortly after listing the fourth item as "mitigate", I saw it as "vectoring", and also as "transform" (or as "very slick vectoring").

A funny process ensued. I started by putting the five items in a circle, and then drawing axes between a couple of pairs of items, and then, looking for intersecting line possibilities, used a pentagon, and then with its support, looked up the pentagram. I was further compelled when I found the traditional pentagram points appeared to align with the five terms, in order, around its perimeter:

I tried to outline each of the five points, or centers, with terms that seemed to fall within their areas. Mind seemed to be going on at the point of Air. Living or dying seemed to be going on at the point of Fire. Matter seemed to be going on along with "harm" at earth, and energy seemed to be going on along with "mitigate/transform" at Water. "Feign" appeared to align with Ether, where anything could come out of nothing.

There are two parenthetical terms which I added later, after having a second experience. At the Air and Fire points, there is the added perspective of "know" and "do". "Do" is intended as a better shot at the nature of the Fire center than only "live" or "die", but this discovery comes with seeing Fire as "existence as a being".

Some months after the martial arts videos experience, I had another pentagrammatic view, or bit of perspective. When trying to toss out a complete list of possible causes of depression in modern times, I listed four thing;

  • Lack of tribe, with sociopolitical relevance; unity.
  • Mentally lost or confused
  • The effects of modern chemicals and substances upon health.
  • Lack of natural environment, such as plants and animals, and day and night.

That's when the cycle of 3 came to me, with two items for body and environment, then two items for consciousness and life as a being, and finally the mysterious Ether, which I would like to call "peace", and which was actually jumbled in with the overall text on mind (not included above). When I made this list, I had no intention of aligning with a pentagram. Here is the attempted "depression pentagram":

An added twist on this round was to place "individuality" and "multiplicity" at Air and Fire, respectively. The thing I find interesting in life is that when an individual occurs, it's like something that doesn't occur in matter and energy alone. The above mention of "lack of tribe" on the list is also driving me to add these terms. We ask the question, "what is individuality?" What I also choose to ask is, "what is the bunch of us?"  I see sociopolitical activities occurring here, yielding both actions as entities, and being sociopolitical in nature.

"Environment" is in relation to the body. This seems to align with matter being able to move around in energy.

I suppose I should say that the thing I find most compelling is in having disparate sources of the same set of things.  I did take note of similar models of 5 out of Senegal, India, China, and Japan.  This says to me that I've got an indication that something about this set of things, and even it's arrangement, has some basis in reality.

Adjacencies also have value in the historical pentagram, such as to say some properties of each center may rub off on its adjacent centers.  This presents compelling considerations to me, when running around the perimeter.  The one that gets me the most (at this time) is how, tentatively, the two centers adjacent to Earth are Air and Fire, which would imply that there is something earthy about them.  This might be like saying that there is some kind of a body in the areas of consciousness and being - beyond matter and energy.  No doubt it's all interesting to speculate upon and consider.  What reality is in this model?  For me, the game is afoot.

- Mark G. Meyers

p.s. Going back to the diagram for 2 (alternating current), is to rhyme with something that ascends and descends, perhaps.  Going from Earth and Water ascending, to Air and Fire descending, to Ether at beginning and end.  This would align with awareness creating everything, and then manifestations of itself dissolving back into their origins.  What this would also support is saying that life is an integral part of a natural cycle, where that cycle includes everything, such as the big bang.

But interpreting this model may go a different way.  It may be taken that in this particular iteration of this particular universe, this pentagram was inspired by its reality, and therefore not as an inevitable conclusion of any or all iterations of all universes, in their realities.

© 2020 Mark G. Meyers, USA
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