Tomorrow is the beginning of Lent, the period of forty days until Easter. The number 40 is an architecture in itself. It is the multiplication of 10 (the number of full manifestation in Pythagorean arithmetic) by four, the number of the structure of the created world, the four elements, the four gospels, the four cardinal directions, the four worlds of the Kabbalah. The number 10 is the Tetraktys, the sacred triangular figure of the Pythagoreans, where the sum of one, two, three, and four generates the decade as an image of ordered totality.
There is a direct correspondence between this and astrology. The number ten is related to the Hellenic concept of dōdekatropos, according to which each house of the chart finds its full expression ten houses ahead. This forms the technical foundation of derived houses, so central to horary astrology. The first 1st completes itself in the 10th, the 2nd in the 11th, the 3rd in the 12th, etc. The Ascendant reaches its full manifestation in the Medium Coeli. This dynamic appears too in the theosophical reduction 10 = 1 + 0 = 1. Unity expands downards to the extreme point of manifestation and returns to Itself.
The Tree of Life describes this movement too. Kether descends through the Middle Pillar to Malkuth. The crown becomes the kingdom. This descending path is the magical movement par excellence. It is the radiation of cause into matter, the inscription of the archetype into the world, the unity towards the multiple. It is the act through which the invisible assumes form. Every genuine magical operation participates in this logic as a conscious collaboration with the descent of form.
In the ascending movement, the kingdom becomes crown once more. This is the mystical movement. Matter remembers its origin, with form recognising its principle. The multiple converges again toward unity. If the magical expresses the descent of potency, the mystical expresses the elevation of consciousness. Both operate as two arcs of the same vertical axis. It is also expressed through the angelic names of Metatron and Sandalfon, guardians of the extremities of the same Pillar, one associated with the highest, the other with the lowest.
This structure resurfaces with clarity in the forty-day period that culminates on Easter Sunday. In John 19:30, Christ, at the moment of death, hands over the spirit to the Father and pronounces the Greek word Tetelestai (τετέλεσται), commonly translated as “It is accomplished” or “It is fulfilled.” The verb derives from teleō (τελέω), meaning to bring to completion, to carry through, to accomplish, and ultimately from the noun telos (τέλος), which signifies end, goal, fulfilment, consummation, or purpose. The form tetelestai is perfect tense in Greek, an action brought to completion whose effects persist.
The term telos is also part of classical metaphysics. In Aristotle, telos designates the final cause, the intrinsic end toward which a being is ordered by its very form. Teleology, from telos and logos (λόγος, reasoned account), is the doctrine that reality is intelligible through its ends. Every being possesses a morphē, a determinate form, and this form carries within it an orientation toward fulfilment.
In astrology, the 10th house is the house of telos. The individual principle assumes their destiny, responsability and fate. The path of the Christ-Logos in the fourth gospel reproduces this logic. From the beginning, the Logos descends into the world, assumes flesh, and enters the elements. Lent accompanies this movement through discipline of the body, purification of inner water, trial of the fire of will, and clarification of the air of thought. When Christ pronounces Tetelestai upon the cross, he declares that the form has passed through the four elements and reached its fulfilment. He accepts destiny, the voluntas of the Father, accepts death in the flesh, accepts elemental dissolution, because this constitutes the condition of transfiguration.
Lent is as an ontological season. Forty days express the extension of 1 to 10, of seed to fruit. Each consciousness has before the question of its own telos, the form that seeks realisation. Easter is the consequence of a path in which the principle consents to descend to the limit of form so as to ascend as transfigured life.
Kύριε ελέησον