AmounrA said:
"Hence nature's fourfold structure is found ultimately in the very matter with which physics has to deal, this though being the result and not the cause of that structure."
Indeed, but why does this mean there are only four senses?
If nature IS composed of four elementary types—of fundamental particle, or of geometric figure, or of possible activity relative to a given location, indeed of whatever ‘face’ nature turns to us in a given context—then the sense elementals, the units OF nature through which nature reaches our awareness, would naturally be of the same four types, would they not?
In Nature, it could very well turn out, that the four are aspects of one.
Of course they are. But there are still four of them,
four such aspects of the One, just as there are specifically
three indivisible parts of every conscious self: a knower to know the eternal, a thinker to opine over that which has finite duration, and a doer to act in the fleeting present instant (the fleeting present instant itself being the fourth, our earth aspect so to speak). Or just as there are
two fundamental opposing principles—active and passive, determinative and determined—whose distillates and compounds are the four elements (and whose balanced state is the quintessence). Deduced from first principles, these fundamental divisions (and others) are quite as empirical in nature (if not more so) as observations through the senses. A careful approach to Hermetic science has no reason to relinquish its claim of bein empirical to a mainstream science that still believes gravity forms galaxies even though its OWN estimated mass of observed bodies falls short of that predicted BY AN ENTIRE ORDER OF MAGNITUDE.
The idea of four elements is an example of old science. It does not hold up, any more, calling water generally passive. fire as active. Its a neat way of discribing general things, but not for example, quarks. I can understand calling a bad tempered person as firey, but really its an expression not a 'fact'.
Isaac Newton had a healthier view of things, in that he sought the
prisca sapientia, science’s pristine original, instead of thinking himself out ahead of anything previously known, as moderns in their mass egotism tend to do. Quite the contrary: knowledge of the four would have saved quantum physics its century-long (my estimate) detour seeking a non-existent quark theory, based on the absurd notion of a ‘force’ not attenuated by distance (which since it cannot be overcome by a greater force is no force at all but merely the fact that the
parton is a part of something greater), when in reality it has already discovered physical matter’s fourfold structure. This is apparent from the round itself (the Orphic world-egg):
(1) At its top is fire’s ‘spin 1’ (1 round high) photon, neutral, hence centered (on the bosonic or force-like vertical axis).
(2) On its right is air’s ‘spin ½’ (1/2 round high) lepton, which for us means the electron, which is electrically charged—positive, according to Hermetic science, where current goes the direction the electrons themselves go (not opposite, as in today’s physics)—and therefore over on the right side (on the fermionic or matter-like horizontal axis).
(3) At its bottom is water’s ‘spin 0’ (0 round high) meson, the pi-meson that causes nuclear cohesion being
on average neutral, hence centered (on the bosonic or force-like vertical axis once again).
(4) And on its left is earth’s ‘spin ½’ (1/2 round high) baryon, whose end state is the proton, which is
oppositely charged—hence negative, according to Hermetic science—and therefore over on the left side (again, on the fermionic or matter-like horizontal axis).
That science failed to see this clear pattern—or else saw it and, frightened by confirmation of alchemy’s ‘primitive’ view, fled to quark theory’s 3 to replace parton theory’s 4—is a pity. For the pi-meson’s rôle as quantum of the strong nuclear force (water, form, cohesion) gives a range for that force identical to the ‘classic radius of the electron’, and since these two are calculated using nuclear constants on the one hand and electromagnetic constants on the other, one result would have been a coherent and
plausible unification theory instead of the ridiculous chirpings one currently finds on the university campus.
. . . science is getting deeper and deeper into a marvel. Far Far Far deeper than kabballa ever got a sniff of. Be it the spiral of the galaxy or the spiral of DNA.
It turns out that the more empirical view of galaxy-formation TODAY, that of the plasma cosmologists, is consistent with the Hermetic view of descent from fire through air and water to earth, since the scale of the very large is ruled by fire, by electromagnetic forces (fire or electrostatic force and the magnetism arising from its flux),
not by earth-like mass or gravitation, as the theoretical professors would have it: it has been demonstrated in plasma laboratories (all observed galactic forms having been produced and the relevant equations scalable) that a galaxy is formed by the kink-forming magnetic pinch between two parallel plasma currents or filaments where they are in close proximity. As for DNA, the Qabbalah corrected for calendar order and utilizing bardic numeration (whence arise most of the scientific ramifications) at least knew enough to associate phosphorus, of greatest importance in chromosome formation, with the gonads, for this is what reysh, bardic 15 (atomic number thereof), originally signified, as I can demonstrate to a reasonable degree of certainty.
The fact that can not be escaped is this. If absolute nothing ever existed , nothing would ever have existed. The has always been potential. That alone seems impossible to our logic of beginning and an ends, but it is fact. There has always been something. Therefore a science looking into the fabrics and laws of universe will always have to accept it exists in the impossible. Something that has never not been, simply, defies it all.
I gather here you are attempting to refute the creationists, of which I am
not one. Qabbalah deals in eternals and thus could hardly be accused of being ‘creationist’ (except from ignorance, or from too much theology). But I will go you one further: you probably believe man himself was recently created (by ‘evolution’, a nebulous concept at best), whereas the actual evidence shows this not to be true (see, for example, Cremo and Thompson’s
Forbidden Archeology, or the Sourcebook Project’s catalog of archeological and paleoanthropological anomalies).
. . . The sense of balance has nothing to do with sound detection, deaf people don't fall down. So there are seven ways to sense the world. How about the sense of self? Which of the above is not a sense?
Self is certainly not
a sense: a sense is our intake from nature, and self is not
of nature. For nature occupies the space between the bodily axis and the outer horizon, while self occupies the ‘space’ between the bodily axis and the inner horizon. Buddha’s
anatta doctrine, misinterpreted to mean there IS no self, taught just this, that if you look for self amongst the five
skandas that comprise the universe OUT THERE, you will not find it.
As for balance, I am uncertain at present but presume it depends on pressure, hence on surface contact, the earthy sense, though as I recall it involves fluids, so there may be more to it than this. I’ll have to study up on it. But I do not see how it could possibly mean a fifth element exists which has escaped Hermetists’ notice all these millennia. It is undoubtedly a function of one or more of the existing four. The quintessence, as I said, is all four functioning in coordinated fashion, not a fifth that suddenly appeared out of nowhere, and it also signifies balance.