Editor's note: We are very honored by the confidence shown in us by BAF Luca by authorizing us to reproduce the board that you will read below which deals in a particularly innovative way with this traditional symbol.< /p>
The Creative Star
All matter around us is made up of atoms. Atoms are the building blocks of all things. They are rather round and composed of a dense ball-shaped nucleus surrounded by tiny electrons.
It is possible to classify them by size. The smallest is hydrogen, next is helium.
Together these two atoms represent 98% of the known matter in the universe.
At the origin of our universe, 14 billion years ago, these two atoms probably constituted all known matter.
Nitrogen, carbon, oxygen, silver, for example, did not exist at the time.
Inside a star like the sun, the temperature reaches almost 20 million degrees. The hydrogen atoms are stripped of their electrons and are nothing more than bare nuclei which form a kind of plasma subjected to the crushing energy linked to the gravitational pressure which reigns in the heart of the star: they have no no choice but to stick together and merge.
This is thermonuclear fusion. The creation of large nuclei by agglutination of smaller nuclei. These new nuclei, which have become heavy, as they move away from the core, find electrons and become new atoms. Thus are born nitrogen, oxygen, carbon or silver, etc.
The core of a star is a huge thermonuclear fusion powerhouse forced by nature to forge matter.
All the heavy atoms present on Earth, all the atoms essential to life, including those that make up our body, were once created in the center of a star. We are stardust. We breathe, we drink, we eat, we touch, we love stardust.
Without stars life would not exist. But to allow life, the star must die. Because if these atoms are in us, around us, it is because they come from vanished stars.
When two atoms merge in the heart of the star to form a larger nucleus, part of their mass disappears. The mass of the new nucleus is less than the sum of the masses of the nuclei that gave birth to it. The missing mass is transformed into energy by virtue of the famous formula: E=mc². Obviously the missing mass during each merger is very low, but there are so many nuclei merging in the heart of the star every second that the total energy released is colossal. This energy produced radiates out into space. It warms us and ripens the many ears of wheat and pomegranate fruits as it causes roses and mimosa to grow.
As long as the fusion has enough to feed, as long as there are enough small nuclei to merge, the star lives. Then when the nuclear fuel runs out, the star contracts, its energy production no longer being sufficient to oppose gravitation, the matter becomes more and more concentrated, a new and ultimate fusion reaction takes place. then engages which dominates and surpasses gravitation. So the star grows, grows. Gravitation is defeated. The star explodes.
This fatal explosion of the star disseminates in space all the atoms forged during its existence, plus a few others formed during the final explosion, such as gold, forming immense clouds of interstellar dust which may give birth to new stars or new worlds. And allow life.
Thus, following a long process that began billions of years ago, a cloud of stardust gave birth to the Earth. And to each of us.
The star is therefore the first forge, where all matter is born, where the buried or rather constituent metals of our planet and its depths are born, from which they will have to be extracted to bring them back to their original purity by fire, air and water, the work of the Tubal-Cainite blacksmiths. I will not approach here the figure of Tubalcain which could inspire a work in the first degree. But it is indeed thus again by the fire that rings will be reborn in their purity of stellar metal.
Masonic symbolism therefore distinguishes pure metal from metals that should be abandoned because they are symbols of earthly vanities, the most obvious of which is money in its polysemy describing both a metal and also a fiduciary medium. The second impure by nature in our culture when it is basically only intended to guarantee the fairness of the exchanges therefore the confidence as its etymology indicates.
It is therefore less the nature of the metal that is in question than the excesses of its use that pervert its purity. But also the duality of everything. Iron can be used to forge the ploughshare like the sword, the instrument of life like the instrument of death. And the money of the penny as much to corrupt as to give a fair wage. We can add that the gold of the piece is rarely pure because it is too soft, but rather in the form of an alloy.
Basically, the metal does not cease to be pure in its nature and to abandon its metals is more an invitation to renounce their profane representation, even to their desecration, to detach oneself from the appearance to seek and find the truth in an alchemical metaphor of transformation of being.
The matter of which we are made was thus born somewhere in the immensity of the universe, in the heart of stars that have now disappeared. We carry within us the fruit of these vanished worlds. We are their memory, their legacy. Our primordial mother is a star. Thus the macrocosm engenders the microcosm which, through its awareness of it, in turn gives it life. The star within us connects us to the universe.
Like the Vitruvian man, the starry pentagram, by its anthropomorphic representation, can say that our pole star, the guide of our Masonic quest, its purpose too, is the love of humanity. But, beyond the philosophical allegory, the symbolism of the star, through the atoms of which we are made from its merging entrails, unites our ephemeral microcosm to the eternal macrocosm. As an invitation to think about our existence through our relationship to the cosmos and therefore to nature in a community of destiny of burning relevance.
And not only in the possession/domination of nature but in its knowledge, in the understanding of our role and our place in the cosmic order. Because if we are mortal, our atoms are not. Tomorrow, freed from our being or freed by our being, they will return to nature to unite with other atoms to be reborn in another form or in another life. The star, by its created atoms, is eternal in us. She entrusts us for a time with a bit of eternity, this infinite chain that comes from the past and goes towards the future. Of which it is up to us to be for a time a solid link of pure metal which we will have to ensure the transmission. Matter being eternal, it is up to our finiteness to transmit the knowledge/awareness of the world around us.
By the star, our finitude is thus made of grains of eternity, creation is in us as we are in it.
Which refers to a meditation on philosophical concepts, since we are friends of wisdom, of nature nature, the creative principle, and of nature nature, what is created. In the West from Aristotle to Spinoza via St Thomas Aquinas, those who believe will see the divine principle in the creative principle, those who do not believe will see the laws that govern nature. Both have in common to be beyond man. So transcendent.
But the distinction is perhaps formal since the star is both created and creative. Without it no elements necessary for life, without life no consciousness of the cosmos and without cosmos no star. In our symbolic language, the anthropomorphic analogy of the starry pentagram is an invitation for the FM to become aware of what creates it as much as to be itself a creator, therefore to take its place in the order of the world and to contribute to it. .
If, by anthropomorphic analogy, we are the star, it is also an invitation to be that merging force that brings together what is scattered and, through creative energy and work, brings about a better and more human being. enlightened. It is perhaps also an invitation to forge in us, through the fusion of the true, the just and the beautiful, the truths and the changes that we want to see in the world. In short, these new atoms resemble the acquired truths, fruits of the initiatory process of each Sister or Brother/star.
As Christian Bobin wrote, "Intelligence is the strength, solitary, to extract from the chaos of one's own life the handful of light sufficient to illuminate a little further than oneself, towards the other over there , like us, lost in the dark”.
Gravity
The memento of the Companion teaches "that gravitation is the primordial force which governs the balance of matter but also a force which brings hearts together...".
Now, let's say it straight away, this conception is a legacy of Newton but since Einstein and his theory of relativity, Gravitation is no longer a force but a deformation, a succession of curvatures of space-time . Indeed, in classical, Newtonian mechanics, gravity or gravitation is an attractive force proportional to the product of the masses of the two interacting bodies divided by the square of the distance separating their centers of inertia. In general relativity, gravity is not a force but an illusion due to the distortion of space-time. This explains why the trajectory of the light carried by the photons, corpuscles until proven otherwise without mass, is deviated as if there were attraction: this is the gravitational lens effect which cannot be explained in physics Newtonian classic.
Imagine space-time as a large stretched canvas. If we place bodies on it, for example ping-pong balls, they will spread over the canvas without deforming it too much. Let's place a petanque ball, it will create a depression, a curvature of the canvas which will also attract nearby ping-pong balls: this is the gravitational effect.
Thus space-time is a succession of slopes, gravitational curves generated by the stars, galaxies, stars, planets. And as everything moves in the universe, these slopes, these curves mingle, add up, come apart.
When we fall to the ground, we are actually sliding down a slope created by the Earth, this is what we call gravity or gravitation. And the more massive the object, the greater the slope created and the more difficult it is to climb it. Gravity is stronger on Earth than on the Moon.
In space, light, like matter, does not propagate in a straight line. Any object creates an invisible slope that we call gravitation, each of us creates one of these slopes but as its mass is negligible compared to that of the Earth its gravitational effect is almost nil.
The gravity that we feel is the sum of the gravities that surround us, that is to say the slopes generated by the objects that surround us but also by our neighbors on the columns.
What lies below us is much more massive than what is above. The Earth below our feet contains far more matter and energy than the sky above our heads. What is below therefore creates a much steeper gravitational slope: it is the gravity of the Earth.
Einstein showed that gravity is not a force but a geometric result of the curves and slopes created by matter and energy in a place in space. Gravitation is therefore not a force in the classical sense of the term but a curvature of space-time under the effect of the mass of matter and energy.
The Moon therefore also curves this space-time causing the water on the surface of the Earth to tend to fall towards it, these are the tides. This effect is also exerted on the rocky earth's crust but as it is a solid whose density is much greater the effect is much less.
The Sun with its very large mass bends space-time around it even more, creating a slope along which the planets of the solar system rotate.
All the curvatures generated by the stars of the Milky Way add up to create the curvature of our galaxy that rivals that of neighboring galaxies, etc.
But then why, if the sun exerts such a powerful gravitational force on the Earth, does it not fall on its surface nor the Moon on the Earth? Because that would be the case if nothing compensated for such influences.
The Earth is animated by a movement of rotation around the Sun which propels it at 107,000 km per hour and this trajectory tends to propel it outwards, thus balancing the power of attraction.
Centripetal force versus centrifugal force. This is the slingshot effect. To popularize the phenomenon, scholars compare the sun to a hammer thrower and the Earth to the metallic sphere that the athlete spins around him at the end of a steel wire to give him the necessary momentum. The more the athlete accelerates his rotation, the more the hammer will tend to escape to the outside as the steel wire attracts him towards his source. When the athlete stops, the weight falls, the same in gravitation: the Earth would fall towards the Sun.
Astronomers know that if the earth were to increase its speed of rotation, it would tend to move away from the sun. However, if it were to stop or greatly slow down its movement, it would inevitably be drawn towards the sun.
In the universe as a whole, the galaxies, the stars, all the celestial bodies are governed by the laws which regulate the orbits and without which a collapse of the stars would precipitate the universe towards chaos.
Thus, thanks to gravitation, the universe is in a state of permanent equilibrium. Each star exercising its action on the others, being influenced in return in the same way. The interaction between all these forces ensures the stability of the universe in relation to other movements, notably rotation.
What to deduce from this on a symbolic level
Firstly, in terms of contemporary physical science, gravity is not a primordial force, strictly speaking. But that it results from the formula E = mc².
Gravitation is therefore a relationship between energy, mass and light. Now to develop the energy in him is the duty of the Companion and the mass, the density could be equated with the work that the rank of companion glorifies. Through work and creative energy, the Companion will therefore generate around him the gravitational force which will bring hearts together and, by uniting them, will ensure the solidarity and solidity of the Masonic edifice. As for the light, we received it during our initiation, but it is also a reference to the star.
Einstein showed that through the curvature of spacetime, gravitation was not a force but geometry created by matter and energy. It therefore reinforces the second meaning of the letter G.
So that the first sentence of Comp's libretto:. defining gravitation is certainly scientifically questionable but remains valid on a metaphorical level.
On the contrary, if gravitation were a primordial force, even symbolically, we could not exert any influence on it, nor free ourselves from its determinism. The fact that it is not a force in itself symbolically makes it possible to make it the result of our will through energy and mass-work, whether it is the gravitation that we generate in this way or the gravitations that we suffer from which it becomes possible to emancipate ourselves when their effects are negative. This is how the Companion's newfound ability to generate its own gravitational effect allows it to free itself from sad passions and attract light to itself.
This is reminiscent of the duty of the Comp:. FM:. to maintain in him the physical balance, the intellectual balance and the moral balance and by the union of the three to develop the creative energy. Just as the great cosmic physical laws maintain the balance of creation. Thus unifying microcosm and macrocosm.
If, metaphorically, gravitation is the force that brings beings closer together, a slightly critical reading could point out that at the astronomical level it is the balancing of this force by opposing forces that ensures cosmic order and not the action of gravitation alone, which would lead to chaos. So why highlight it. To this one could reply that the figure of Isaac Newton was admired by Desaguliers, propagator of his works, and by Anderson, all united by the FM:. , Newton appearing, with Mozart, La Fayette or Washington, in the Masonic pantheon.
So it is not surprising to find, even indirectly, in one of our rituals, this almost obligatory reference to the one who is considered one of the founders of the FM:. English. Consequently, one of the meanings of the letter G could therefore probably not be: gravity, gravitation. Gravitation also realizing a progression or even an elevation on geometry and generation by laying down a fundamental principle of the universal order of creation and no longer only terrestrial before the transition to Genius and Gnosis which allow access to knowledge and to the consciousness of the whole, all five manifestations of the Gadlu, whether God or Equation.
The gravitational physical phenomenon can inspire us with two main thoughts.
The first would be to say that if gravitation is not sufficient, it is necessary and fundamental. Its scope would be, in physics, infinite, making its effects felt on the scale of the entire universe. Without it, there would be no harmony of the cosmos, of days following nights, of sunrises and moonlights, of starry skies, in short, a force at the service of the beauty of creation, of creative energy. But, as we have seen, a force that must find its balance in duality with other forces in the harmony of creation. And it is undoubtedly also this notion of balance and harmony which must guide the work and the path of the Companion in his quest for Beauty. Because it is this balance with gravitation that keeps stable the blazing star that we contemplate in the firmament, symbol of the permanence of our ideal.
And when the companion passes from the vertical to the horizontal to go towards the other, if he then brings into play the gravitation which brings people together, it is his associated quest for balance and harmony, like the comic order, which will make this rapprochement be brotherly love and not confrontation.
Gravitation therefore reveals to us the necessary balance of opposites, which we find suggested by the mosaic pavement but also in the fresco by JGJ, to maintain harmony. In us and around us. No music without silences, no light without darkness. Balance is to be sought in the union of differences. Feminine and masculine principle, as expressed in the fresco by Jean-Gabriel. Immanence and transcendence. Knowledge and Consciousness. Rational and spiritual. But also, more prosaically between individual and society, old and new, Lodge and Obedience. In everything, in him and around him, the FM:. is in search of balance. To aspire to be the center of the union is not to seek harmony in uniformity but in maintaining the balance of differences.
The second reflection comes that gravitation is therefore not only the ability to create a phenomenon of attraction on a specific object, being or idea, but to act on our space-time. And first of all to become aware of our space-time. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors had an infinite space but time was limited to them. They revered their natural space. Having become sedentary in the Neolithic period, their space contracted without their time increasing much. They discovered the infinite and the eternal beyond. Today the end of the world is hardly more than a day's journey away and only the present, the moment seems to exist.
We have little hope. We have lost all relationship to long time, the present has lost all depth. In short, the future has left the present. And yet, as Bergson wrote, the idea of the future is more fruitful than the future itself.
It is amusing to note that "idea of progress" has the anagram "degree of hope". So much so that it seems important to reclaim our awareness of our space-time and therefore of our place in the cosmos. So if Gravitation appeals, as we have seen, to Geometry, the thought of space-time mobilizes Generation, Genius and Gnosis.
Then we saw that it is the density that generates the gravitational effect.
By analogy, it is through density or intensity that we act on our space-time, that is to say on our life.
Basically, the initiatory quest for wisdom is the acquisition of the density of being which influences its space-time, that is to say its existence. But also the existences that surround it. And more than a bearer of light, the or the FM:. is a light attractor. When we aspire to work for the moral and intellectual improvement of humanity or to work for the material and social improvement of the human condition, we will achieve it less by postures of communication than by the density of our collective thought and our actions. who will make our order loved by the example of our qualities. Similarly, a workshop will attract and retain laymen by the density of its work and its fraternity more than by a vain proselytizing or communicational agitation. Density, in FM:., passes through work more than through speech. Therefore, let us always glorify work!
As you will have understood, this work aims less to be a presentation of physics than to demonstrate that symbolism is a living language that is not confined to the past nor, in this case, to physics of the 18th century and must be inspired by acquired truths.
The past, by being erased, must sow the seeds of the future, not confiscate it in a vain repetition of what has been and is no longer. If we are guided, as we affirm, by the search for truth, then our language must integrate the results of this search which, far from calling it into question, enriches it and opens up new avenues of application. Symbolic language is not a dogma but a midwife of thoughts, of ideas. A language which makes it possible to treat in the equality and the freedom of the workshop of all subjects as our RP indicates it, the opposition symbolic subjects/subjects of society is thus totally artificial and has basically no sense since it It is the methodological practice of the former which makes it possible to deal with the latter without the need for university qualifications.
Symbolic language is not a dead, fixed language, reduced to a few recited definitions like a five-minute catechism. On the contrary, it is a language that must remain alive by exploring and revisiting its meanings and meanings, while having, out of discretion, the innocuous and nevertheless hermetic appearance of the expressions of operational companionship, in order to help us give birth to our ideas, to elaborate our thought, to be creator of ourselves by mixing square and compass to become builders of the Temple. We must therefore not be afraid to pass through the filter of the critical spirit certain assertions of our works or definitions of reference, it is at this price that symbolism will be part of modernity and will remain the language of free women and men. .
For that is the art we teach here.
I said.