137 - Arthur I. Miller [76]
This seems strange. But then Jung points out that thirty-two is a key number in the Kabbalah, signifying wisdom. According to the Kabbalah, thirty-two can be written as the sum of twenty-two (the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet) and ten (the branches of the Sephirot tree). There are also thirty-two mysterious paths of wisdom.
Pauli has finally dreamed a fully fledged three-dimensional mandala. But Jung is, at first, at a loss as to what it means. What does Pauli mean when he describes his vision as “the most sublime harmony”? It seems to signify wholeness in Pauli’s psyche, but why does he state so firmly that he is now at peace with himself? Jung wonders if he is missing some essential clue. Perhaps by “harmony,” Pauli means musical harmony, the harmony of the spheres in the sense in which Kepler used the term. Yet the circles are not particularly harmonic; they differ in character and movement.
Another problem is that a mandala always has a sacred object or image at its center. Pauli’s has none. The center is nothing but a mathematical point formed by the intersection of the diameters of two circles. It is effectively empty.
Yet Pauli’s mandala contains both the masculine Trinity (three pulses) and the feminine quaternity (four colors, four Cabiri), combined to create an alchemical hermaphrodite. Bearing in mind that Pauli is a physicist, Jung speculates on the cosmic significance of this image. Could it be that the mandala symbolizes the four-dimensional source of space-time? But this seems overly scientific. Jung does not have the knowledge to pursue this line of speculation and turns instead to medieval symbolism.
Guillaume’s vision
In the last canto of Les Pélerinages de l’âme (Pilgrimages of the Soul), the fourteenth-century Norman poet Guillaume de Digulleville describes a vision of paradise made up of forty-nine rotating spheres. (Guillaume’s three exquisitely illustrated allegorical poems Pilgrimage of Human Life, Pilgrimage of the Soul, and Pilgrimage of Jesus Christ were to inspire John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress.) An angel informs Guillaume that these forty-nine spheres represent earthly centuries, not in ordinary time but in eternities. A vast golden heaven surrounds all the spheres. A blue ring, a mere three feet across and half-submerged in the vast golden heaven, glides by. So there are two intersecting systems, one vast and golden, the other small and blue. Guillaume asks the angel why the blue circle is so much smaller than the golden circle of heaven. The angel tells him to look up and he sees the King and Queen of heaven on their thrones.
The angel then explains to Guillaume that the small blue circle is the ecclesiastical calendar and carries the element of time. This very day is the feast day of three saints, the angel says, and begins a rapid discourse on the zodiac. As he tells Guillaume about Pisces, sign of the fishes, he adds that the feast of the twelve fishermen will be celebrated during the sign of Pisces and that all twelve will appear in the Trinity. Guillaume is totally bewildered. What most irks him is that he has never really understood the mystery of the Trinity. The angel launches into a discourse about the three principal colors, green, red, and gold, then stops abruptly and orders Guillaume not to ask any further questions. That is the end of both the canto and the poem.
Guillaume’s vision and Pauli’s mandala—the quest for the fourth
Guillaume’s vision of heaven provides Jung with vital clues both to Pauli’s mandala and to his feeling of sublime happiness. In Guillaume’s and Pauli’s visions the blue circle represents time. In Pauli’s mandala it intersects with another of equal diameter, giving a more harmonious