Presentation 4 — Cosmogenesis: Point, Circle, Cross

Dr C.A. Bartzokas · Secret Doctrine's First Proposition Series · 9 slides

Nine slides and not one photograph. This is the most austere item in the section — a diagram unfolding one step at a time, drawn in plain white line on black, with the title slide reading Cosmogenesis — Point • Circle • Cross. It is the picture form of an argument this section sets out at length in "Proposition 1: Plotinus on the Centre and Circle", "Proposition 1: The Three Logoi Diagram" and "Cross Is the Time-Honoured Symbol of Pre-Cosmic Divine Mind".

The sequence is the whole content, and it moves in single steps. First a field of faint outline circles of different sizes, overlapping and unresolved. Then one of them is brought forward in a firm bright line, alone: the circle without beginning or end, the others still ghosted behind it. A white point appears at its centre. The point is then drawn out into a horizontal diameter, dividing the circle in two. On the next slide the disc has filled with grey and a vertical line has been added to the horizontal, so that the figure is quartered. The slide after that shows the same figure with the disc gone white and the cross within it at full strength. And on the last image before the end card the circle itself has vanished and the cross stands alone on white, the two lines extending past the space the circle used to occupy. Each stage is held for one slide and nothing is captioned, so the drawing has to be read as a sequence — boundless space, the first point of manifestation, the line of division, the fourfold cross, and the cross left standing when the circle is withdrawn. The closing slide reads End.

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