BERGONIA
Bergonian Numerology
"Number is the first manifestation of process."
One, of course, represents the essential unity. To Bergonians the
number one explicitly refers to the world as one all-enclosing space,
and also "the one life" which each person and which also the
one world has. There is nothing beyond "One," nothing
beyond this world. "Even the Gods
must have a place to stand."
The essential unity, and all the world,
divides. The first process is fission. Thus
emerges Two. Two forms out of opposition and separation.
The division of one into two occurs traumatically, with conflict. Fission
is painful. But afterwards the two entities
regard each other, desire a return to the primordial oneness, and embrace each other. They alternate with each other, and a
cycling dance begins. Two implies the Bergonian sexualized version
of Yang-Yin, personified by Arcan and Icotesi. Two is the number of
sexuality, the differentiation upon which all life depends. Two, the
binary, is the number of meaning, of semantic dyads, on which language is
based. Two entails division, apartness, split-self, and self-conciousness.
Three grows out of the dynamism released by Two.
When the two embrace and seek to combine, they start a dialectic, generating
a third. It essentially is
the dynamic process. It manifests in childbirth, appears before a
philosophical eye as the synthesis. Two (and all even numbers) represent
stable, harmonious balances, while Three (and all subsequent odd
numbers) suggest change, transformation, process. Thus symbols evocative
of Three are used to represent themes like birth, growth and death.
Three also refers to the three essential elements. The ancient Greeks
hypothesized that the world was divided into four elements (earth, air, fire
and water), while the ancient Bergonians believed in three (red, gold and
blue). Three also reflects time and its linearity: past, present and
future.
Four is Two expanded, two mirrored, two spread out in spatial
structure. Two denotes time, and four expands to denote space,
which space exists in time. The Bergonians believe in the primacy of
time, and have contemplated the nature of time and the significance of
time as the a priori basis on which everything else in the world
exists. Everything conceivable to the human mind exists within
time. The human mind can comprehend nothing outside the bounds of
time. Four is also the number of space, enclosure, and
construction: the four directions, the four corners, "the four roots of the
tree."
Five is a sign of forms
and a sign of substance. It matches the five senses, through
which all forms come. Forms are, after all, things of the
senses.
There are the Five substantial processes: Consumption, Conjoining, Separation, Spreading, and Settling.
Five in modern times represents the West-- not the West of Christianity, but the West of Modernism. Bergonians understand Modernism as Anti-Christian and secular Westernism, including these things: Science, Positivism, economics and capitalism, democracy, socialism & communism, and the political institutions of the modern Western political state. The five pointed star stands for England, Europe, the United States, and everything which they have controlled or infected. Ancient Bergonians drew a four-pointed star, not five. Modern Bergonians still use it prolifically. They did not have a five-pointed star, and the five-pointed star in modern times h as become a symbol of everything Western. The Democratic Movement of the 1920's and 1930's used the four pointed star.
Six
Six days of the Shufrantei week
relate to the ancient Shufrantei rite of Purifiation, held every sixth
day. Six is also associated with bees and wasps and who make
honeycombs.
Seven,
the prime, the indivisible, unknown,
fluid, seven vowels, seven alchemical processes, seven is the sum.
Eight is four reflected.
Perfect order. Now we have the
northwest, northeast, southwest and southeast added to the cardinal
points, so as to circumscribe the bounds of the entire world. In
reference to Bergonian geography, eight referred to the seacoasts, thus to the
lowlands as opposed to the Interior. Eight also generally refers to
anything denotable as "outer. This glyph incorporates the Uma,
the lozenge-graphic that connotes the idea of completeness,
all-inclusiveness and wholeness to the Bergonian.
Nine adds the Center to the eight directions away
from the center, to complete the division of horizontal space. Nine as
completion, perfection, leads to a new, complex yet utterly unified and
organic One.
The ancient Bergonians believed that the World was suspended in the Abyss, and that beyond the bounds of the World was the empty Abyss. It is not even another, separate space, but in a sense even beyond the bounds of time and all being itself (time and being= the same thing). The Abyss is the state of non-being-- oblivion and negation. This is the ultimate sense of Zero to the Bergonian. In one sense it is the simple operative category of negation-- the mere concept of "no" and "not." In another it is the ultimate terror of death, of ceasing-to-be, the swallowing up, the utter loss of life.
The Bergonians developed Zero and used it in numerical
notation and arithmetic. They saw Zero in two ways, first as
That-which-is-not (already discussed) which is existential, the idea of
no, not and non, and second as That-space/vessel-which-is-empty, represented as an empty
pot, which is related to the idea of none. Thus the
Bergonians used "U",
representative of an empty vessel for the number "0." The
idea of "nothingness" that permeates Buddhism compares to "that-which-is-empty," since Miradi uses
"That-which-is-empty" as significant for the mind empty and free
of worldly attachments and distractions. "As long as you see
Two (understood to mean "many"), you cannot focus on One.
You must pass from Two through Zero before reaching One."
Tanic era mathematicians understood negative numbers. They arrived at this through the practical use of reference points drawn along ropes used in land surveys. "Positive" numbers went in one direction from a point on a line (the Bergonians called them "forward numbers"), and negative numbers went the other (which they called "backwards numbers). "0" was the reference point, which the Bergonians called simply che, meaning "here."
"The unfolding,
the flowering of the universe,
the progression of forms,
all originate with one.
When one moves one changes.
The world begins with One,
the precedent,
the seed, the light,
the original event.
Then comes Two, the duinity.
Arcan and Icotesi emerge,
and the dance begins.
From comes Three, and
elements red, gold and blue.
Next the four seasons,
the five motions,
the six days of the week,
and the ineffability of seven.
Each one marks a step,
and each step each number
a different personality,
into infinity,
delimited only by the void,
the place of zero."
[Rev. Jul 02]
