The Big Circle

Macrocosm

Our foundations come in ones and twos and threes and fours and sevens. Then we come to the twelves and they must be a really big deal, because every godly social club seems to be all wrapped up in the twelves.

● 12 Imams
● 12 Tribes of Israel
● 12 Olympians

Rubedo

“With that the triangle is completed, but the latter in its turn should be transformed into a circle, which means that it has to be transformed into unchangeable redness. And by this action woman turns into man and they become a unity, and the sixth number, the first of the perfect numbers, is perfected by One, and two is perfected when it has returned to monad, in which there is rest and eternal peace.” –Atalanta Fugiens.  Emblem XXI

Maier does’t mention the stars in Atalanta Fugiens XXI. He thinks of the outer circle in much the same way as our first circle. It represents a return to the wholeness of the Monad.  It could be described as the Ultima Materia that emerges from the prime.

Astrology

Astrological signs are pictured in outer spheres, dividing up the fixed stars into twelves. The twelves are portioned into six masculine and six feminine signs. Each of the four elements rules over three signs. Our tria prima can be equated to “Mutable”, “Cardinal” and “Fixed”. We can even slap out sevens in a weird system of 5 + 7  that assigns a ruling planet to each sign. Twelve integrates all our twos and threes and fours and sevens in each one of their instances. This isn’t about your birthday. Each sign is a twelfth of the heavens.

The nice thing about the twelves is that you already know something about them. Not only are they best expressed by something we’re very used to seeing in the back of our newspapers but

Hermes’ thrice greatness is commonly divided into the fields of “alchemy, astronomy, and theurgy”. Even though it’s just a common saying, we at the Naked Alchemy feel a little guilty that our astrological knowledge is lacking. To explore this on your own, you may want to look into Ptolemy, ideas that preceded Ptolemy, and decans. Please note that Classical astrology only incorporates the seven Classical planets. Using the planets discovered in modern times skews the numerical system we’ve modelled here.