Heightened sensations hold the same cold shine as metals drawn from deep earth by a craftsman who claims himself sovereign. The ancients named him Demiurge when his geometry bound the soul into walls and markets; his craft builds streets with edges that never bend, corners that collect shadows where breath feels absent, and towers whose windows open upon illusions. Within such architecture the Spirit is urged to worship the shape rather than the Light that passes through it. In this prison, angels stand at the gates with faces veiled, awaiting the one who remembers that ascent requires movement that touches but refuses to lodge. The Serpent, bearer of the first whisper of wisdom, teaches this gait; Pessoa called it the Way of the Serpent, a rising that curves like incense through air, brushing the twin pillars of Yakin and Boaz without fastening to either. Between them lies the true nave; a space that asks for reverence to the poles and freedom from their mastery.
I. The Spiral Against the Square
The Corpus Hermeticum speaks of ascent as the regeneration of mind into its kinship with the Divine fire; the journey is never along a specific line, as the mind awakes in spirals. Plotinus described the soul’s return as an epistrophē, a turning upon itself toward the One; the arc of such turning refuses the harshness of the right angle, as the One has no corner. The Gospels reveal the same curve in Christ, who moves through the world without bending to its idols; He teaches in the temple between columns, withdraws into the mountain, and passes through walls after the Resurrection without injury to His form.
Yakin and Boaz stand as the great markers at the limen; their firmness holds the conduit steady whilst the pilgrim moves in gentle deviation from line to line, as the serpent in the wilderness healed by sight rather than by stone. The Ofites understood the Serpent as Sophia’s envoy, bearing in its curve the memory of a realm untouched by the angles of the archons. The Marian veil enfolds this movement; She carries within Her the mystery that contains without cutting, a womb as a living sphere in which the Word is made flesh without being trapped by the world’s scaffolding.
Even astrological quadratures lose their harshness when seen through Grace; the square becomes a tension in which the Spirit learns to bend without breaking, to approach the pillar then arc away toward the other, maintaining the dance.
II. Angles as Fetters and the Healing Curve
The Demiurge works in measures and confines; his joy is in the corner where two walls meet at ninety degrees, for in such a place movement is arrested. The house built gathers dust in its corners; the mind built without prayer gathers bitterness in its fixations. The prophets spoke against the idol made with human hands; Ezekiel beheld the wheels within wheels, their motion free from any fixed corner, full of eyes and light. The ascetic of the desert built his cell without luxury, but set the icon in the east so that the angle became an altar and not a trap.
When the pillars of the Temple were set before Solomon’s porch they did not bear the weight of the roof; they bore the weight of the sign, since the entrance is a place to pass through. The serpent’s rise along the staff of Moses bends from side to side, sanctifying the poles through contact without servitude. The soul that replicates this movement will touch the gifts of Saturn and Mars without letting them build a prison, as the Neoplatonists knew that the soul, once turned, must proceed through likeness; the likeness of God is edgeless, so the soul smooths its own edges in prayer, psalm, and contemplation of Light upon water.
Coda – Benediction of the Archangel
On the Sunday set apart for Michael, one may seek his defence in the midst of these corners. Let the room be cleared and a white cloth spread; place upon it a bowl of clean water and a branch of green. Face the invisible porch where the pillars rise. Invoke Michael, asking for the sword that cuts through false architecture. Greet the Mother of God and incline the head until the heart feels the curve of her mantle; in that arc the straight lines of the Demiurge lose their sting.
In such a rite the serpent’s wisdom, the Marian shelter, and the Archangel’s strength combine as one defence against the geometry of the jailer, turning the path of ascent into a living curve that leads to the Most High.
Fiat Lux.