The Eternal Revolution
Awaiting when eternity breaks through the crust of time
The circular is the most perfect of motions. It is for this reason that the ancients often depicted God’s eternal activity by way of the symbolism of circular motion. The circularity of such motion was the best representation of an activity that was constant and unwavering, as well as without beginning or end. God’s activity is outside of time: what in a linear can only be grasped in successive moments, or even what in a spiral motion can be grasped in successive yet ever analogous moments, God grasps through a single act that totally compenetrates itself. The circle repeats itself, having no beginning or end; it is self-contained, complete, needing no progression in order to complete itself. It just is. So it is with God’s knowledge and activity.
One of the most iconic ancient usages of the term “revolution” was to describe the movement of the heavenly bodies in their spheres, which were thought to represent and embody the eternally unchanging movement of God himself. The unceasing and regular motion of the heavenly spheres in ancient astronomy was a visible representation of the divine action, and the heavenly bodies themselves were thought to be somehow spiritual in nature, albeit visible to the physical eye. Their movement was so perfect that they could not be composed of the same material elements as sublunary bodies. They were even thought to exercise a profound causal power upon the sublunary sphere, not only determining the rhythm and measurement of time but also the development of life on the earth. Thus they partook in divine causality. Accordingly, Ptolemy begins his Almagest with an eloquent defense of astronomy as a science that directly served theology and the contemplation of divine things.
Sublunary bodies, on account of their deeper enmeshment with matter itself, display a variety of movements that are less perfect than those of the heavenly bodies. There are no perfect circles down here on earth. Nor are there any motions that lack a beginning and an ending: motion here is subject to generation and corruption. Motion here tends to be irregular and disjointed, punctuated by random moments of speeding up and slowing down, explosive jumps and frozen stagnations, etc. Matter itself is the factor that introduces this element of irregularity, which is the effect of the brittle resistance that matter puts up to the inexorable and eternal movement of divine things.
The resistance of matter to the eternal revolution is not unbreakable. It is occasionally broken by moments of explosive change, what in the sphere of human history we also call “revolutions.” Such moments are by no means limited to human history. The inception of the material universe in the “jumpstart” of the Big Bang, the dawn of humanity itself in the process of evolution, etc. These revolutions are but the eternal revolution itself breaking through the hard shell of material nature, or in the case of the Big Bang, getting its evolution off to a good start.
Although in one sense matter “desires” form, in another sense it is “slow” to catch up to the essential vitality of pure form. Consequently, form — and ultimately life — must sometimes impose itself through violence, to bring the world of matter “up to date.” Or rather, matter itself, which is always being dragged along by the inexorable vital movement of pure form, must sometimes jump back to conformity with the quickness of a spring: it must “give up” its tense resistance, like the mighty quake of the earth’s tectonic plates when they give way after a long and imperceptible build-up of tension beneath the surface. A revolution is what takes place when this tension in matter’s disjunction with form becomes too much to be sustained, and an explosion must occur to bring it back into alignment.
To live in a manner that is attuned to this grand movement of things, mirroring imperfectly the eternal revolution of God, is to adopt a stance that is simultaneously “revolutionary” and, for lack of a better term, “traditionalist” or “perennialist.” The latter is meant to describe the disposition attuned to the eternal revolution of the Same that is God’s own activity, a movement that is at the same time unchanging and forever, a movement that ceaselessly circles back upon and repeats itself. In human terms, this is represented in something like tradition, which is essentially repetition. Indeed, the very concepts of repetition and revolution share much in common, which is made clear when the two words are traced to their Latin etymologies. Sharing the prefix re-, meaning something like “back” or “again,” the Latin words repetere and revolvere bear the meanings of “to seek back/again” and “to roll back.” Going back somehow is thus the underlying notion common to both concepts. The eternal revolution erupts into the stagnant world of matter only in order to bring it back to its most primordial roots in the world of pure form. (One can go further with this etymological argumentation: the revolution is thus also a reactionary event par excellence.)
In less abstract terms, this stance towards the inexorable movement of the universe — or of God in the universe — entails something like “going with the flow,” letting all forms of inner resistance to the flow of life simply melt away. This is to become supple and pliant, but also strong and irresistible, in the manner that the Tao Te Ching describes using the metaphor of water: fluid and adaptable, but a force to be reckoned with. The universe moves according to the movement of the Tao itself, but it is still beset by the brittle and rock-like resistance of matter — and therefore it is subject to erosion and decay, unable to withstand the flow of water forever.
To live in a manner befitting of a true revolutionary traditionalist is thus to live as a true Sage of the Tao that flows through all things, to be in full harmony with the unutterable will of the cosmos — which is the divine will of God. It is to observe the mega-cosmic trends of the heavenly spheres, or the slow grind of the earth’s tectonic plates, or the centuries-long terraforming of the earth’s surface that is endlessly accomplished by wind or water, or the slow melt of the Arctic ice cap, and to await patiently the moment when this endless revolution can no longer be resisted either by matter or by stubborn human self-will.
great read!