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The next part of our journey takes us on "the road from Knossos to the cave and temple of Zeus" in which we follow the conversation of three older men concerning the laws of an ideal city. This dialogue of Plato has for the most part been abandoned by the philosophers and given over to political scientists to interpret. The dialogues such as the Republic seem to be more interesting from a philosophical viewpoint. The Laws seem dry and uninviting compared to those other works. Yet, we need to understand that The Laws and The Republic "belong together." They need to be read together in order to see how Conceptual Being once established as the Arche produces a metaphysical regime within the city. The Laws are important because they implement Parmenides' concept of Being, and they set the stage for Aristotle who applies the method of rational discourse set forth by Plato in The Laws to everything under the sun. In the laws we see the teacher of Aristotle at work. The irony is subdued, and the work is an outline of a complete system of laws. It is probably the first fully developed theoretical system. All philosophical and scientific theoretical systems that came after it look back to it as their progenitor. That original theoretical system could not have been constructed without Parmenides' setting up of Conceptual Being as Arche. Plato founded the first city of ideas on the plain of Conceptual Being. It is this city of ideas which we have inhabited ever since. However, we are now discovering that the bedrock of Conceptual Being is fragmenting beneath us, and the frozen city of ideation is beginning to melt.

It is clear that the order of the Republic and The Laws is the reverse of that in which they are normally read. The Laws is a journey upward, and it comes first. The Republic is a return from a journey downward toward the sea, and it comes second. Toward the end there is a point in The Laws where the Athenian Stranger mentions the longer inquiry into the nature of Justice that might be undertaken. This inquiry is developed in the Republic. It is generally assumed that The Laws was the last of Plato's dialogues in which he turned away from esoteric toward practical concerns. It is the dialogue with no explicit mention of Socrates. And so it is seen as a supplement to Plato's other works. But, perhaps this supplemental relationship should be reversed. Who is to say that the Athenian Stranger is not Socrates himself traveling incognito (in fact Aristotle alludes to this); who is to say that The Laws is not the central dialogue around which all the others revolve. It is certainly the one that Aristotle imitated most closely in his works. All the others appear as somewhat esoteric and even frivolous by comparison. In The Laws Plato advances a positive doctrine with subdued irony. That doctrine demonstrates the structure of the ideal city in the form of Laws. The Laws are a theory that direct and constrain action. If we see the Laws as an enacted theory, a praxis, then we begin to see beyond the description of a quirky or bizarre political system towards their real function. Plato's ideal city establishes the metaphysical regime founded on a bedrock of conceptual Being as a unity of thought and action that embodies virtue completely. It is a totalitarian ideological regime, the prototype for many others which follow in Western history. Plato constructs the template, or prototype, for all theoretically structured systems and thereby realizes the first implementation of Parmenides' program for excluding every aspect of existence not associated with Being from our worldview.

Dealing with all The Laws would not be possible within the scope of this essay. So, it will be necessary to skip across the surface of The Laws like a stone. However, hopefully enough will be said to show that The Laws have great unmined philosophical depth which is normally unexplored because they are left aside as an addendum to Plato's other works; because they are considered to be more political than philosophical; and because they are not considered in relation to the works of the Pre-socratics, but instead almost as an island isolated from all other works. Even though Plato is less ironic in The Laws to the extent he is seen to be building a positive system (and showing us how that should be done), this does not mean everything is perfectly obvious. We are justified in being suspicious that he is "up to something;" the question is "what?"

Let's start by considering the relations of The Laws to Primordial Being. We might consider Plato's ideal city to be like a jewel set in a setting of Primordial Being. Normally his city is looked on as being without context. However, it is clear that once Conceptual Being has been formulated as the Arche and has replaced the Apeiron as the ultimate metaphysical principle, then it is necessary for any theoretical structure to take up a position in relation to Primordial Being that fixes its relation vis a vis Conceptual Being. One might see this stabilization of relations as the primary reasons for Plato's ideal city. Thus, each of the articulated parts of Primordial Being should relate to a specific aspect to Plato's city. These relations should display the solidification that Parmenides inaugurated in which Conceptual Being is raised up and separated from Non-being and Opinion (mixture of Being and Non-being). Remember that the three parts of Primordial Being, when permuted, give us eight aspects: holoid, holon, integra, novum, epoch, essencing, eventity, and ephemeron. It is these aspects which we must use as our lens to look at Plato's city and understand its function as a theoretical structure that unified speech and action.

The Athenian Stranger asks the Cretin, Kleinias, for the reason why their laws are as they are. To this Kleinias replies that it is due to war.

I believe he condemned the mindlessness of the many, who do not realize that for everyone throughout the whole of life an endless war exists against all cities. And if when a state of war exists, defense requires common meals and orderly realms of rulers and ruled among the guards, then this should be done in peacetime. For what most humans call peace he held to be only a name; in fact, for everyone there always exists by nature an undeclared war among all cities. If you look at it this way, you are pretty sure to find that the lawgiver of the Cretins established all our customs, public and private, with a view to war, and that he handed down the laws to be guards according to these principles. For according to him, nothing is really beneficial, neither possessions nor customs, unless one triumphs in war. For then all the good things of the defeated belong to the victors.¹

The Athenian stranger immediately uses the strategy of Socrates and reduces their argument to absurdity by applying the relation of war of all against all to neighborhoods, households, and each individual. The companions of the Athenian fall for this ruse and expose what amounts to a nihilistic position of utter war of all against all.

The Athenian Stranger immediately calls to "turn the argument back in the reverse direction" upon hitting this wall of nihilism. He says that it is a given that each of us is "superior to himself or inferior to himself." He asks if this is true of households and neighborhoods as well. Kleinias interprets this to mean that a group is superior to itself if the better men rule. The Athenian Stranger counters by setting aside the question of whether it is ever possible for the worse to be superior to the better which would be the opposite in Kleinias interpretation. The Stranger says this question of whether the inferior could ever be superior would lengthen the conversation. We know, though, that Plato would say that whatever is inferior is absolutely so and can never be superior. However, the Stranger closes in on the role of the judges and not on the people themselves saying:

The Stranger raises the argument above the level of the general meaning of words because he realizes that it is a paradoxical statement to say one is inferior or superior to oneself. Thus, paradoxicality of words is equivalent to saying that there is a nihilistic war of all against all. Instead of entering into the maelstrom of nihilism the Stranger rises above it by positing a judge who can make non-nihilistic distinctions within the nihilistic landscape. The Stranger distinguishes between three types of judges:

The third judge would be enacting laws to pursue peace and not war. He makes peace by improving those who are worse and reconciling them with those who are better in the judges' opinion. The first judge distinguishes good from bad and then destroys the bad, leaving only what he considers good. The second judge distinguishes good from bad, but makes the good rule the bad, and makes the bad accept it. But the bad remain bad. The third judge teaches both the good and the bad by the laws, making them both better and thereby rising above the situation in which the distinction between good and bad is made. This rising above the distinction between good and bad is the whole theme of Plato's Laws.

AS "The best, however, is neither war nor civil war -- the necessity for these things is to be regretted -- but rather peace and at the same time good will towards one another. Moreover, it is likely that even that victory of the city over itself belonged not to the best things, but to the necessary things. To think otherwise is as if someone held that a sick body, after it now received a medical purgation, were in the best active condition, and never turned his mind to a body which had no need for such remedies at all. Likewise, with regard to the happiness of a city or a private person, anyone who thought this way would never become a correct statesman, if he looked first and only to external wars, and would never become a lawgiver in the strictest sense, if he didn't legislate the things of war for the sake of peace rather than the things of peace for the sake of what pertains to war.⁵

So this is how the Stranger reverses the argument. He says laws need to have a view toward peace and not toward war either external or civil. He goes on to show that civil war is harsher than external war, and to say that the good men in civil war are better than the good men in external war. The difference is like the difference between a man with virtues of justice, wisdom, moderation, and courage over the man who only has courage.

Plato shows us that laws should strive to instill the whole of virtue into the subjects of the city and thus bring friendship to all with the city by educating them and making all of them better.

We should have said that he (the law giver) had in view not just some part of virtue -- and that the lowest -- but that he looked to the whole of virtue, and that in seeking his laws he arranged them in for that were different from the forms used by those who now seek to put forward laws. Nowadays, each seeks merely to add to that form which he needs. So one concerns himself with inheritances and heiresses, and another with assaults and others with myriad of other such things. But we assert that the search for laws belong to those who seek well, as we have now begun to do. For I wholly admire the way you started out interpreting the laws; it is correct to begin from virtue and say that he laid down the laws for the sake of this. But when you claim that the legislated by referring everything to a part of virtue -- and that the smallest -- I was sure you were no longer correct, and that is why all this last part of the argument has been put forward now. How then would I have liked to hear you proceed in your talk? Do you want me to show you?

AS "O Stranger" it should have been said, "not in vane are the laws of Crete in especially high repute among all the Greeks. They are correct laws, laws that make those who use them happy. For they provide all good things. Now the good things are twofold, some human and some divine. The former depend on divine goods, and if a city receives the greater, it will also acquire the lesser. If not, it will lack both.⁶

So by the Stranger's reversal of the Cretins' nihilism we see that the laws are not made for war but for peace, and that peace comes from instilling goodness by producing in the population certain virtues. Those virtues are the result of good laws that the people live by everyday and which guides their every action. In a way the argument is that if people practice good behavior by following good laws, they become good. Thus, the laws must strive to be the best possible set of laws, not a hodge podge of laws that everyone adds for themselves to get what they want. The current lawgivers are merely engaging in a form of all against all war by changing the laws to suit themselves. Plato's law giver is definitely out to set up a higher law that strives to be the best and which will last forever.

Now what does all this have to do with metaphysics? The dialogue in this first part does not mention anything explicitly metaphysical. To see the metaphysical import, it is necessary to read between the lines. Our first clue is the idea that laws are set up to protect against war. We notice that very quickly this war is scaled up from the mundane fights between cities of territories to a metaphysical war of everyone against everyone else including themselves. When the reflexive operation of the war against oneself is introduced, we are suddenly in metaphysical territory. This utterly nihilistic view of reality as total war is very extreme. Against this backdrop Plato brings us the opposite concept of total virtue. He says laws are not made just to distinguish good from bad, but to instill virtue by making total virtue visible. Thus, Plato constructs an ideal law which is the diametrical opposite of the utter nihilism of total war. Both of these constructs are nihilistic opposties.One is totally bad, and the other totally good. Neither represents the world in which we live. In the everyday world there is some strife, but it is balanced by some loves, friendships, contracts, etc. that make life for the most part bearable. No one is completely virtuous, and the law is a hodge podge of common law based on precedence and legislation where each person competes to protect their interests. In our everyday world the law does not seek to teach or instill virtue -- nor is the context of the laws utterly nithilistic. Plato has constructed an imaginary situation which states the contrasts in the strongest possible terms. This is done so he can contrast normal law making with his extraordinary law giving. Out of the backdrop of a nihilistic landscape of the war of the all against all with adhoc laws, there arises a more perfect law that teaches and instills virtue. This new law changes the nature of all laws from then on. The new law changes the character of the people that live under it. It introduces an epoch of peace to replace the epoch of war. Looking at this situation from the point of view of the articulation of Primordial Being, it is clear that the nihilistic situation of total war is equivalent to the ephemeron (falsehood, difference and unreality) and is used only as a setting to posit the existence of the ideal law which is holoidal (truth, reality and identity). The emergence of the new law itself is an example of a novum which institutes a new epoch. Thus, the major axes of the eightfold of Primordial Being are produced at the outset by Plato's argument. Plato defines a stance toward Primordial Being from the outset, attempting to show how his new construct of an ideal law stands toward everything else. The ideal law embodies and teaches perfect virtue. Perfect virtue is holoidal because it combines all the parts of virtue into a perfect whole. The perfect law stands against the ephemeron of total war of all against all including themselves. It makes it possible to make clear non-nihilistic distinctions in the nihilistic landscape of the ephemeron. The ideal law changes forever all human laws, and this institutes a new regime. But it does not need to be changed itself,so it becomes something that lasts forever. Thus, the law raises us up to a meta-legal (physical) level at which changes are only minor perfections, but in which the basic legal structure need never change again. This happens in the context of many cities with various regimes, and so the whole political landscape changes as cities with imperfect legal structures attempt to compete with a city with a perfected meta-legal structure. Here the meta-legal introduces all the trappings of the meta-physical because the meta-legal is a gloss on all legal systems. It is a true system that is completely unified, rather than a hodge podge of individual laws that might be out of joint because they have separate origins.

The new law must have a different basis from all prior laws. Where does it gain its distinction which allows it to supercede them and rise above them? That comes from its being founded on Conceptual Being. The new law is an "ideal" law. It is not an actual law, but is a conceptual gloss on all laws. It exists nowhere but in the speeches of the three men on the road. Law is a statement. It describes as clearly as possible a set of circumstances in general terms, and says what reward or punishment it obtains if any concrete situation in the world approximates those circumstances. A law which exists merely in speech and is never applied to the world is just a speech about a speech. This talk about a kind of talk qualifies the law to exist at a meta-level because when the three old men talk about the laws, they are, by definition, making meta-statements; statements about statements. The ideal law is organized at this meta-level, not at the level of its individual legal statements. Only at this level of meta-statements does the ideal law exist. At the level of mere legal statements, crime and punishment, it is no different from any other law. Thus, the ideal law, in the midst of meta-legal discussion, appears to gloss all actual laws. But when the meta-legal discussion ceases, the gloss vanishes, and there exist then only individual laws that restrict and constrain behavior.

Now this new law which appears is different because it comes from a man, not a divine or semi-divine source. In the new law man is giving himself a law, and that law is rational, ordered and systematic, appearing as a narrative of speeches. It is no longer just an arbitrary list of injunctions. It flows in an orderly fashion and is based on some categorical distinctions. What distinguishes the meta/physical from the mytho-poetic is that man gives himself laws, and they do not come from the "gods." Is this why the travelers are going toward Zeus' cave? Is the secret of Prometheus that Zeus will be overturned by a man? Will a man wielding an ideal law unseat the generation of gods ruled by Zeus? Once Conceptual Being makes it possible to create ideal entities as glosses on the everyday world, then the weakness of the gods becomes apparent. The gods are not rational, systematic and ordered. They are, in fact, only sporadically contacted by human beings, and the oracles are not consistent, nor ordered. Their world appears weak and disorganized beside the well-ordered speeches which produce idealized glosses on the world. Those idealized glosses are illusions that men can inhabit -- Olympus fades as the frozen idealized city of Plato appears, and one shifts from the mythopoetic to the metaphysical epoch. The Laws from man to man are the novum or emergent event that crystallizes the metaphysical epoch out of the mythopoetic. Prior to the emergence of ideal laws based wholly on the mechanism of conceptual gloss, there was merely the idea of the Apeiron as opposed to the physical world. The Apeiron was seized by Parmenides and turned into Conceptual Being. Conceptual Being was used to ground the speeches about speeches of the ideal laws that man gave himself. Where the laws appeared, then the structure of the metaphysical era was set. Justice no longer flowed from the gods, but from men themselves.

The emergence of the Laws sets the structure of the metaphysical epoch because it creates a clear relation between Conceptual Being and Primordial Being. But this makes us wonder about previous transitions and whether there is any evidence for their associated emergent events. This gives us a new appreciation of the Greek founding myth of the successive generation of the gods . . .

In this telling of the Greek myth of origins based on Kirk's rendition in Myth, we notice three emergent events as the reigns of the Gods change. In the change from Uranus to Kronos, the emergent event is the appearance of Aphrodite. In the transition form Kronos to Zeus, the emergent event is the opening up of the oracle of Delphi. Finally, in the transition from Zeus to the metaphysical era, the emergent event is the introduction of human created idealized laws to replace natural and traditional laws of divine origin. Now this progression of epochs with their emergent events is very interesting. It causes us to reflect on what is similar and different between these emergent events and how they dictated the new patterning of the epochs they inaugurated. We can guess that the reign of Aphrodite corresponds to the cult of the Great Goddess and relates to the hunter-gatherer society which came to the end with the transition to agriculture and the founding of Great civilizations such as Indus, Egypt and Mesopotamia based on cities ruled, as Plato says, by "gods," called by the Arabs "jinn." These traditional civilizations had a direct contact with Jinn via the oracles that were set up all across the ancient world. These traditional civilizations were displaced by Greek city-states that transitioned quickly from the mythopoetic to the metaphysical regimes and produced their own human inspired laws based on the idea of law. What came before the deposing of Uranus is probably a culture in which men are not distinguished from animals. It is the arising of Aprhodite which causes men to distinguish themselves from animals. This changes when men recognize the rule of Jinn and distinguish themselves as the like of animals in relation to Jinn who control them as they control animals. The reign of Uranus is based on the distinction between heaven and earth. Uranus arises out of the earth to dominate it and do injustice to his children from the earth. With the arising of Aphrodite, the major difference becomes between men and women. Women are identified with the earth. Men castrate themselves and serve the earth which only the chosen may impregnate, and then they, like drones, are killed and eaten. With the arising of Delphi, men turn from immersion in the earth toward an immersion in the heavens which now speak to them and lead them. The major distinction becomes between the invisible and the visible realms. So moving from the reign of Kronos to that of Zeus, we move from a fascination with earth to a fascination with the heavens. From this, with the emergence of man-made idealized laws, man became fascinated instead with himself. He is alienated from the earth which he wantonly destroys and from the heavens which he denies as he closes the pluriverse into a totalitarian universe that revolves around man alone where man becomes the measure of all things. Each emergent event in this series is very important and completely changes the structure of the world. Each epoch has its own type of law. In the epoch of Uranus, the law is the cosmic law stemming from man's complete immersion in nature as animals. In the reign of Kronos, the law becomes that of Nature as distinguished from the Culture of the hunter gatherers who knew they were different from nature, but only with enough separation to make the awesome discovery of difference. In that world men could become the animals they stalked and easily become one again with nature. That oneness with nature became linked with sexual initiation in a cave deep within the earth. Immersion in a vagina within a vagina of the earth became a practice that allowed man to return to his previous unity with nature. But the doubling of the sexual experience also made the first meta-transition possible. Man already had a disproportionate sexual apparatus in relation to other animals. This focus on sexuality, stemming from men standing upright so that their sexual organs became apparent, while the female sexual organs became hidden, made the relation between men and women the key difference. In the epoch of Zeus, men turned away from earth and women toward invisible things, and began to dominate the earth with its animals and women just as they were dominated by the Jinn. In the transition to the metaphysical era, men turned toward domination of themselves. This established the war of all against all where there had only been wars between tribes and peoples before. The higher order nihilistic war of all against all called into being the idealized law as its opposite. Each emergent event sets up a law of one sort or another that defines the regime of that epoch.

Eventually we will see that these stages in the genesis of the Western worldview are extremely important for organizing the experience of those who delve into that worldview deeply. As with the concept of biology that "ontogeny recapitulates phylology" so it is with worldviews that the deeper one goes into one's worldview the more prior states of emergence one discovers which are embedded in that worldview as hidden layers. Thus, every worldview is really a series of genetically related worldviews that contain the memory of all their previous history. Here we are speaking not of Epochs of Being, because Being as such only arises within Parmenides' definition of Conceptual Being. Prior to that we inherit Primordial Being whose construction stretches far back into the mythopoetic era. That project from which the various verbs in Indo-European languages are the remnant stretches back into the epoch of Zeus in which the Jinn domesticated human beings in cities. This epoch goes back to the founding of the cities in Sumeria, Indus and Egypt. For the Indo-Europeans we have little evidence of this period beyond the linguistic remnants in various languages. We also have the evidence of the Norse mythology which shows us who these Jinn were: Odin, Tyre and Thor and their mutual relations. In order to go back even further to the Reign of Kronos, we must look to the Vedas. We notice that they contain the worship of Angelic presences which must maintain the balance of RTA. These Angelic presences would be related to the reign of Kronos rather than Zeus. It is easy to distinguish Jinn from Angels because the Angels can do no wrong, whereas the Jinn practice trickery and do good as well as evil in their relations toward men and each other. Mithra and Varuna were angelic presences rather than Jinn or Asuras because they had no choice but to uphold the RTA which the Jinn were continuously attempting to unravel. The epoch called the reign of Kronos probably coincides with this fasciantion for Angels rather than Jinn. This adds a new facet to our understanding of the Great Goddesses and Aprhodite.

In the era of Aprhodite, man has become separate form nature -- but only just barely. In this separation, what man experiences is the angelic aspect of existence. The intensity of the grounding of man to earth by eros is balanced by the direct experience of Angelic realities that move all of nature. In the reign of Uranus (related entomologically to VARUNA), men are completely animals themselves with no separation whatsoever. With no separation they cannot perceive angelic energies that course though nature. Eros grounds man who lives in a cosmos surging with angelic energies. In the reign of Uranus, mankind is totally immersed in the remembrance of the Single Source of all causation like all other animals. In the reign of Kronos, mankind experiences just enough separation to allow him to hear that remembrance of all creation. In order to stop hearing that remembrance, man turns to woman through which he attempts to regain his lost unity with nature. As separation increases, man becomes able to hear the Jinn who also inhabit the pluriverse. In the reign of Zeus, their attention turns from the angelic energies to a fascination with the Jinn. The Jinn convince men that men were created to work for them as the Sumarian myth says. Since the Jinn violate the balance of Rta, mankind, as their servants, learn likewise to violate the cosmic harmony. Finally, men abandon the Jinn and construct the totalitarian uni-verse, stopping up their ears to both the Angelic remembrance of the Single Source and the orders of the Jinn. Man does this by advancing the ideal laws in rational discourse. These stages of human development and the genesis of the Western worldview by stages are very important to understand clearly. The stages of Uranus and Kronos are projected back from the mythopoetic era of Zeus. Thus, they are couched in terms of injustice between the members of the generations. But the possibility of this injustice only arises in the era of Zeus. When men are identical to animals, or immersed in the Angelic energies, there is no possibility of this injustice. There is no possibility for the development of the clinging and craving exemplified by the linguistic project of constructing Being in its primordial form. Only Jinn and Men are free to be unjust. Thus, the development of the concept of Primordial Being probably does not stretch back any further than the beginning of the reign of Zeus. The fact that the Uranus and Kronos stories of injustice are duals, point to the fact that they are reconstructions from the reign of Zeus. The prior epochs are probably common to all the ancient worldviews not unique to the crafty Indo-Europeans. Each epoch traces a further separation from the lost holoidal unity by mankind. Moving back through the stages, one moves toward holoidal unity. Thus, one may say that the differences between the reigns of Uranus and the children of Prometheus is in many ways identical to the difference between the holoidal and the ephemeron.

When we look at what Plato says in The Laws, we see that he contrasts nihilism to whole virtue. Whole virtue only becomes whole by stages. Therefore, each stage in the genesis of the worldview becomes associated with the merger of another part of virtue into the whole of virtue. The other lawmakers cite courage only as the basis of the laws. But Plato's Stranger wants us to make the whole of virtue the basis for the laws. So as we add each part of virtue, we move back into the genetic stages of the worldview. First we add to courage the partial virtue of justice which counters the injustice introduced by the Jinn. Then we add to justice and courage the partial virtue of moderation which is the equivalent aspect in human beings to the maintenance of the RTA or cosmic harmony by the angels. The difference between justice and moderation is the difference between external balance towards others and internal balance of oneself. Finally, to courage, moderation and justice we add the final partial virtue of wisdom. With the addition of wisdom we achieve wholeness of virtue. Wisdom is the realization of the holoidal interpenetration of all things due to their emptiness. All the dichotomies introduced in the genesis of the worldview are really degenerations and reifications. Man is really one with nature and non-alienated. All things belong together in their kindness. Courage is what is needed to defend oneself in an unjust world where war is endemic. When one becomes just toward others, the threat of retribution in endlesstime is taken away. When one becomes moderate, then balance is complete and the RTA of cosmic harmony is achieved. When on adds to this the knowledge that all things interpenetrate, then one becomes part of the cosmic whole oneself completely, just as were the first humans which did not distinguish themselves from the animals in any way. This, in China, was called following the Tao.

In order to demonstrate that this hypothesis concerning Plato's Laws and their relation to the holoidal and ephemeron has some validity, we will turn to the work of another philosopher who followed Parmenides where it is possible to see the same pattern. This other Presocratic philosopher is Empedocles. We will first quote from a study of the thought by D. O'Brein called Empidocle's Cosmic Cycle:

Empedocles' world is made of four elements: earth, air, fire and water. These are ruled by two forces, Love and Strife. Love is the cause of happiness and unity. Strife is the cause of separation and misery. These two forces rule in turn. Strife makes the elements many; so long as the elements are many, they are moving. Love makes the elements into a single whole, the Sphere. In the sphere the elements are at rest. The period of unity and rest under Love last for as long as the period of plurality and movement under Strife.

During the period of plurality and movement the elements are first increasingly separated by Strife and then, as soon as they have been fully separated into four distinct wholes, they begin to be increasingly united by Love. In this way the elements pass thought varying stages of separation and of combination. In one of these is the world in which we are living now.

There are thus two great alternations in the life of the world. First there is the major alternation between one and many, rest and movement. Secondly there is the minor alternation within the period of movement and plurality. This is the alternation between the world of increasing Strife which leads away form the Sphere, and the world of increasing Love which leads back to the Sphere.

Accompanying the minor alternation there is a difference of speed. For some time after the Sphere has been disrupted the elements still move slowly. They gather speed as Strife prevails more and more, until their maximum speed is reached with the total victory of Strife, when the elements are fully separated. As the elements start returning to the Sphere under Love's influence, their speed gradually decreases, until finally they sink to rest again in the Sphere.

During the time of her complete power Love is extended throughout the Sphere in which all the elements are evenly mingled. Strife is outside the Sphere, spread in an even layer all over its outer surface. When the reign of the Sphere comes to an end, Strife begins to break into the Sphere from outside. Love is forced increasingly towards the center, as the elements are separated more and more into four concentric spheres of fire, air, water and earth, passing through the condition in which we see them now. At the end of this period Strife is totally dominant. The elements are completely separated into their concentric spheres. Love is confined to the center and isolated there.

Without delay, the opposite world of increasing Love begins. Love moves outwards from the centre. As she does so she unites the elements, binding them into more combinations that as time goes on approximate more and more to the perfect unity of the Sphere. Strife is forced outwards towards the circumference of the world. Finally Love has regained full control of the elements. They are fully mingled and made into the Sphere. Strife is on the outside.⁷

This cyclic cosmology of Empedocles, as reconstructed by O'Brien is the first attempt to reconcile Parmenides' vision of Conceptual Being as isolated and unmoving with the reality of change. Empedocles takes as an assumption Parmenides' claim that the central metaphysical principle is ontological. Empedocles reproduces this concept as the Sphere governed by Aphrodite. Empedocles combines the Sphere with its opposite, which is pure separation, and that is ruled by Strife or the god of War. In true Zoroastrian style, by combining these two principles as the limits of a cycle, Empedocles "solved" the problem of how Strife and Unity could co-exist and produce a world of apparent mixture. When we look at the Big Bang theory of current cosmology, it appears that Empedocles was truly inspired. If the universe contains enough matter to be closed, then Empedocles' theory may be very close to the mark indeed. What we see here is an oscillation over time between the holoidal and the ephemeron, which are the two extremes of Wholeness and Hollowness that arise from the permutation of opposites implicit in Primordial Being. By creating a temporal solution, Empedocles has also constructed the first theoretical picture of a spacetime interval. Thus, Empedocles' vision also introduces the theoretical concept of the epoch. In his world picture there are two major epochs of increasing Strife and increasing love called above the minor alternations.

Our own world falls in the period of movement when the power of Strife is on the increase. At the beginning of the period of increasing Strife, after the disruption of the Sphere, there were formed whole-natured creatures. Since Love was then still powerful, these creatures were more harmonious beings than we are. The elements in them were more harmoniously mingled, and in particular they had an equal share of fire and water, the males and the female element respectively. As the power of Strife increased, these whole-natured creatures were separated into man and woman. As time goes on, and the power of Strife in the world becomes even greater, the different parts of our bodies will no longer be able to hold together. They will be torn into separate pieces. For a time, perhaps, they will come together in monstrous combinations. The separate limbs will wander disconsolately about the world on the eve of the dissolution of all things into separate elements.

After this catastrophe, the world of increasing Love will begin. The same events will now be repeated in the reverse order. First there will grow up from within the earth the separate parts of living bodies: bones and flesh, eyes, heads and so forth. These will cling together as Love increases and the desire of all things for unity. The combine they form will be monestrous at first: human hands and a cow's body, creatures trailing hundreds of hands and arms, and so on. The power of Love continues to increase, and the monstrous will give way to creatures no different from ourselves, but with a happier fate ahead of them. For with the power of Love still increasing, man and woman will unite into whole-natured forms and finally be assumed into the blissful sphere.

TABLE 4

Uranus

Kronos

Zeus

Man

Holoid

Increasing Strife

>>>>>>>>

Ephemeron

Pure Love

<<<<<<<<

Increasing Love

Pure Strife

Whole-natured creatures both Male and Female

Binary Complementary Creatures Male and Female

Monstrous Partial Creatures

Separate Elements

Wonder

Angelic Presences

Rule by Jinn

Rule by Man

Interpenetration

Mutual Dependence

Interaction

Logical Consistency

Wisdom

Moderation

Justice

Courage

Uranus	Kronos	Zeus	Man
Holoid	Increasing Strife	>>>>>>>>	Ephemeron
Pure Love	<<<<<<<<	Increasing Love	Pure Strife
Whole-natured creatures both Male and Female	Binary Complementary Creatures Male and Female	Monstrous Partial Creatures	Separate Elements
Wonder	Angelic Presences	Rule by Jinn	Rule by Man
Interpenetration	Mutual Dependence	Interaction	Logical Consistency
Wisdom	Moderation	Justice	Courage

The concept of how Strife and Love cause separation and gatheredness are portrayed graphically in terms of the creatures that inhabit the universe. There are three stages between the extremes of Sphere and separated elements:

Notice how the transition from the whole natured creatures to separate opposite creatures contains the concept of the holon. A holon faces in two directions at once within a hierarchy. The human couple is really a single creature with two sides. It is the increase of strife that actually separates them. The monstrous forms also tell us something. Each monster is unique as a deviation from the human norm. This uniqueness gives some intimation of the concept of integra which is the unique combination of attributes of individual members of a species. These differences combine into a unique gestalt which gives each individual its own integrity. With increased separation these differences become monstrosities. The life of each one of these creatures is an eventity in as much as it is a small interval or epoch of its own within which it essences forth in becoming particular to itself. Empedocles sees individual creatures arising and perishing with their own lifespans. It is as if the universal constants are changing as this occurs so that the products in different ages are different. However, the essencing forth of individual members of a species with their own lifespans is assumed.

It is interesting to note that many of the insights of Heraclitus into the whole nature of opposites and the alteration of domination between opposites is deftly contained in Empedocles' theory. It is as if Empedocles wished to use the whole universe as the model to put forth Heraclitus' theories of the relations between opposites. Also it is clear that all the aspects of Primordial Being are represented in Empedocles' world vision. Thus, it appears that the move into the ontological metaphysical arena has brought all the aspects of Primordial Being into theoretical consciousness as they are explicitly embodied in Empedocles' theory. Empedocles' cosmology is the prototype for all ontological theories within the metaphysical epoch. Most will be more sophisticated in their approach to the problematic set up by Parmenides. However, all will be working with the same basic structure provided by Primordial Being and now explicitly brought to consciousness formulation as theoretical constructs.

The transference of the elements of Primordial Being into the realm of ontology and cosmology is a crucial step since we have seen that the structure of Primordial Being reflects the same structure as deep temporality. In this way we see that the Primal Scene has been transformed and transmitted from the mythopoetic to the metaphysical epochs. The Primal Scene becomes the cosmology or world picture of the metaphysicians. Empedocles has set out the first such cosmology, and shows that the successful cosmology should contain all the elements of Primordial Being conceptualized. Only such a world picture is completely satisfying in which all the elements of Primordial Being are brought to consciousness by theorizing. Thus, if we want to create a picture of the Metaphysical Epoch, we must likewise deal with each element of Primordial Being. This is the a priori tectonic of all Western philosophical systems. To the extent that Western philosophers have realized this metaphysical imperative, they have constructed full and meaningful philosophical systems. To the extent they have not followed the pattern laid out by Empedocles, they have failed to attain the implied standard of all philosophical endeavor.

Following Empedocles in spirit, we shall have embarked on a project of formulating a theory of the metaphysical epoch. In that theory we have striven to harmonize the elements of Primordial Being in order to achieve the greatest possible depth and also show how the theory of the metaphysical epoch reflects, allbeit in a transformed way, the same concerns as those which are laid out in the Primal Scene. The Metaphysical Epoch cannot end until such a picture is formulated, and the fascination with the ontological is broken. The ontological exists within the metaphysical template. We must first understand the metaphysical, and then show how the ontological is articulated within that arena. Ontology is just one type of metaphysic. Anaximander and Heraclitus showed that decisively. But since Parmenides, this lesson has been forgotten. Unfortunately, we have little considered the nature of the metaphysical epoch within which we are entrapped. A few have begun to attempt to distinguish it from the mythopoetic. Are these the only two epochs, or are there more before the mythopoetic and after the metaphysical? We need to consider this question deeply. If there is a next epoch beyond the metaphysical, what might it be like? Can our consciousness change as radically again as it did when we shifted from the mythopoetic to the metaphysical realm? We can only really understand the metaphysical epoch if we have some theory of the prior epochs and those which might come. All transformations within the Metaphysical Epoch itself are minor perturbations in relation to these changes of the epochs themselves.

Understanding these major epochs that have transformed human consciousness is another level below the Epochs of Being, the episteme, and paradigm changes within the metaphysical era. The only thing beneath that level is physical evolution itself that changes the constraints on consciousness. It has long been noted that physical evolution has several emergent layers which are sub-atomic, atomic, chemical, life, social, consciousness. Since Vico it has been know that there were stages in the development of man which changed how language is used in each epoch. More recently, we have noticed the discontinuities within the history of the Western tradition itself, such as the epochs of being, episteme and paradigm. However, to understand these micro-level changes within the world dominating metaphysical uni-verse, it is necessary to understand the context of the metaphysical epoch in relation to other epochs in the transformation of the social-consciousness. And that, of course, makes us wonder what the next epoch after the metaphysical will be like and when its advent will occur, as well as wondering what emergent event will herald the new regime. The McKenna brothers in their book Invisible Landscape present a picture of this next phase in the transformation of social consciousness and the Acquarian Conspiracy attempts to herald its approach and explain it in terms of spiritual techniques. We may not be so bold as to expect it to be more than a further intensification of Nihilism in some unexpected world-shattering form, such as the advent of the Dajaal. However, understanding the previous epochs in their relation to the metaphysical is an important step to prepare for the next quantum leap for human social consciousness