The vision of the four elements has always been given in the form of a cross. Fire facing air, water facing earth, two axes meeting at a single point. The ancients understood this as a foundation, a stable image of the created order. But the cross, when imagined in movement, begins to turn. The stillness dissolves into rotation and the four arms become spokes of a wheel. The elemental cross, once immobile, becomes a wheel of time. The zodiac is born from that turn. What appears to be a map of stability is already a mechanism of fate; the same cross that blesses also binds, since, once it moves, it takes the soul into a circuit of necessity.
In the circular form of the zodiac, the elements are woven into a chain of oppositions, a rhythm of twelve signs. Fire hands to earth, air hands to water, each moving into the next. The wheel carries the creature from birth to death, through seasons, years, incarnations. The zodiacal wheel is a cross in perpetual motion, a cosmic mill. It is law without release; it is structure without centre. For this reason many saw in it both the splendour of Divine order and the prison of repetition.
I. The Cross in Rotation
The elements never rest, as they flow into one another and the cross itself begins to spin. That rotation transforms the cross into a wheel. The four arms are no longer boundaries but spokes, and the circle of the zodiac is traced around them.
This is why the wheel of astrology and the wheel of destiny were always joined. What is seen in the chart of the sky is the cross in perpetual revolution. The twelve signs are nothing but the four elements dressed in seasonal garments, turning through the year. The wheel binds the creature because it does not cease to revolve. What looks like harmony from above becomes compulsion from within. The cross at rest is altar; the cross in motion is fate.
II. The Four Words
The ancient play of letters reveals the same truth. From the four letters T A R O emerge four words, each a facet of the mystery. TARO speaks of the Tarot, the book of images where the path is drawn. ROTA speaks of the wheel, the zodiac turning in heaven. TORA speaks of the Law, the divine order written in the world. ORAT speaks of prayer, the voice rising to the source. These four words are one pattern. They show how letters themselves, set in rotation, form a circle of meaning.
Each of these words reflects the movement of the cross. TARO as the image of the journey, ROTA as the cycle of destiny, TORA as the eternal decree, ORAT as the cry of the soul. They are mirrors of each other; each is contained in the others. The wheel of letters is the same as the wheel of the heavens, the same as the wheel of the elements. When the words are permuted, meaning itself begins to rotate, and the soul is drawn into the circuit.
III. The Rose in the Centre
The wheel, whether of elements or of letters, imprisons unless a centre is planted within it. That centre is figured as the Rose. The Rose is the Spirit that flowers at the heart of the cross. When the wheel turns without the Rose, it is samsara, fate, endless rotation. When the Rose blossoms in the middle, the wheel becomes mandala.
The Rose unites the four elements and transfigures them. Fire ceases to consume, air ceases to scatter, water ceases to drown, earth ceases to bind. All are gathered into the fifth, Ether, the breath of freedom. The Rose is that fifth, invisible element that dissolves compulsion and opens the way of the Spirit. Without the Rose the cross is wood and iron, with the Rose it is living flame, as it becomes an axis of redemption.
The soul placed only on the rim of the wheel is carried round and round. The soul that finds the Rose stands in the centre, unmoved while the heavens turn. The zodiac continues its course, the seasons still follow one another, but the Spirit is free. The Rose consecrates the wheel. The cross still spins, but the centre is eternal. The soul that enters that centre does not escape the cosmos by flight; it is released by transformation. The wheel of fate becomes the wheel of Glory. The cross of elements becomes the cross of Light. The Rose is the key that changes destiny into freedom and samsara into revelation.
Fiat Lux.