The Trivium Prism – Part II

First published here
Part I is also there.

It's a hard sell to convince anyone that the Liberal Arts are “relevant” today. Most people picture endless stacks of provocative, great novels or reams of modernist poetry. And what's the big deal with the Number Seven? And what (in the name of God, take heed) is a Quadrivium? A better updating of the phrase might help: the Liberating Arts would be better, but that carries connotations of Catholic priests with machine guns. Defense against the Dark Arts might almost work, but the phrase is taken. We don't have a good word for it, and since the human brain at its lower, natural level can't think of something it doesn't have a word for, this makes discussing them difficult. The Japanese have a word for killing yourself by working too much, suggesting that they are familiar with the phenomena. They also have a word for the beauty that comes to dignified ladies in old age, and we do not. Presumably, we notice and experience it, but not very self-consciously. Russians have a great many nuanced words for spiritual states or moods which might help us. What shall we call the great tradition of the Liberal Arts? 

The Latins and medievals called them Artes Liberales, and I don't think the connotations were the same. Possibly, The Arts Which Set One Free. In absence of a good English translation, reverting to the Latin might be of some use, if done with understanding. It would distinguish the Tradition of studying the Logos (the revealed pattern of God's nature) from self-stimulating and gratifying exercises in deliberate decadence, which passes for “liberal arts” in the Academy. It would also prevent endless invention of new names, such as what occurred in esoteric studies with Theosophy, Anthroposophy, and Archaeosophy (to name a few – nothing against those movements just because of the name). I think of the Artes Liberales as the Science and Art of the Logos – the Wisdom (Paedeia) of God for the study of man. Paedeia is a term re-proposed by Douglas Wilson, based on Scriptures. 

In order to train in the Tradition of “the arts which make worthy of being free”, we are going to have to re-condense the diffuseness of the term as it has unraveled and dissipated down to modern times, not in order to avoid what is modern (our own ambient milieu) but to become worthy of being set free from it. The DNA of the Artes Liberales has considerable decay in the arts that wear the mantle of the name. Fortunately, you don't have to lay supine in the mud of the modern lower circles of Hades and submit to endless James Joyce seminars in the name of liberal arts. Most, if not all, of the basic hard work has been done. We just have to identify the form and practice it. 

The pattern Grammar-Logic-Rhetoric is basic to the tradition. Even the modern liberal arts mimic this form. First, you learn the grammar of Revolution, with terms like post-colonialism, gender study, oppression, liberation, etc., proceeding onwards to “critical thinking”, or Logic, which consists of long diatribes by consummate word-smiths like Edward Said or the soi disant heirs of Karl Marx, culminating in a Logic of Revolution (they put political Rhetoric prior to social “action” or logical extension) which we currently see operating at light speed, like the mutual discharge of sheet lightning, all over the globe. 

The first correction I would make (and this would do much good by itself), is to place Logic after Grammar. Other than the subject of Geography, there is no discipline so little studied or aptly learned today (in America) as basic Logic. It is probably impossible to get too much of it in today's climate, and there is a reason that the modern Academy neglects it in high school, and then places it last (after formation of the soul in Grammar and Rhetoric), which facilitates turning the subject into an exercise in political will to direct action and extension of pre-programmed memes, twitters, and sound bites. Euclid (or something similarly difficult) along with extensive study of fallacies, should be a major portion of one's education. 

How many times have you heard (or discerned) this line of thought?

1. All authoritarians are Nazis.
2. All Nazis are traditionalists.
3. Therefore, all traditionalists are authoritarian Nazis.

The fallacy count in this one is pretty high, because to make it you have to assume anyone can actually define any of those terms in an accurate and subtle way, using history, primary texts, literature of the period, and philosophical acumen. Which is a big assumption. Leaving this whopping monster aside, the two big ones are Oversimplification and Illicit Minor. But of course, you have to commit the Mother of All Fallacies to even torture your mind enough to begin to think in this mode to begin with: you have to read one book (The Authoritarian Personality) and derive from that one experience (which, after all, is contingent like everything else in the domain of mundane existence) the False, But Clear Idea that all Authority is false Authority. You assume this because even prior to this, Authority is assumed to always commit a mega-fallacy in forcing its own mind to crush fallacies in itself and others. But torturing your mind this way is “destroying the village in order to save it”. Authority (auctoritas) does exist as legitimate, or it could not be “false” and objected to. Saying that it is always a fallacy because it commits fallacies all the time puts one in the position of pseudo-authority, which of course is always arguing and running after fallacies in one's opponents, but never removing the beam from its own eye. Which in this case, means dethroning a false, but clear, authority in favor of a false and unclear one. Such is the modern world in toto, and this is basically all that is taught in the University today. Hence, Logic is denied, and even Grammar changes its terms deceitfully, while Rhetoric becomes a mask for power. The mega-fallacy greases all the following ones¹. 

And this is perhaps a very good time to point out the necessity of the dreaded “Quadrivium”. A naked Grammar-Logic-Rhetoric is a powerful tool in the creation of earthly orders of dignity, power, and wealth. Athens, for instance, abounded in great orators, was proficient in Greek grammar, familiar with Euclid and logical forms, but that didn't prevent a disastrous experiment in war and political chaos from weakening the entire Hellenic world to the point of near exhaustion. The age of tyrants succeeded the “Golden Age” of Periclean Athens². Maybe they should have cultivated rhetoric less, and studied poetry more often. 

Understanding this sequence (cyklos) intellectually (as Polybius did) does not make undergoing these things that much easier, and certainly (by itself) does little to mitigate them. For this reason, the sequence of Artes Liberales does not stop in the mere contemplation of the negative examples of fallacies. If it did, we could very justly be termed merely Counter-Revolutionary, or even snubbed eternally as Reactionaries (although it is fair to say that any order on the Right by logical necessity is going to be allergic, and logically so, to pervasive modern fallacies of the mind). We might even risk falling into the errors of a kind of absolutely rigid spirit of inquisition, which was always seeking to ferret out hidden Leftism (always involving a favorite pet fallacy of some sort) in the opponent. This would be a poor environment (by itself) to inculcate self-awareness, consciousness, and confidence, and to incubate the new birth. By itself, it would only be a “No”: necessary, but not sufficient, for the achievement of the True, Beautiful, and Good. The normal necessary first step, saying No to the world, it would be lacking in subtlety to deal with the flesh and the devil were we not rescued by the living powers that flow through the Quadrivium. 

The Quadrivium is the spiritual supply center for the positive emotional center, which can successfully oppose or counter-weight, the natural cycles of the human passions. Purity of the emotional center is most effective, initially, against “the lie in the mouth of the beast” (the kingdoms of the world). If the Trivium is the high-octane welder, forger, and shaper of the swift and accurate workings of dialectical reasoning (as the middle term, based in grammar, proceeding by reasoning to high rhetoric), it can assist man to name discrete objects, distinguish them, and sort them, primarily by the process of avoiding fallacies and logical or systemic traps in the way the fallen human mind can tend to move. It is the eternal No, sifting and sorting, saying “this also is not I”. 

Not so with the Quadrivium – as we move into its territory we are in the arena where religion, and not philosophy, is triumphant. The Quadrivium deals with the products of man's higher emotional center; even though it utilizes logic and grammar and rhetoric, it's center of gracity remains in the realm of the aspirational, what the Middle Ages called the “sixth sense” or “estimation”. It is based upon what man esteems in his soul, what he aspires to, what he yearns and longs for. One can instantly see, surveying the 20^th century, how damaging a false orientation of this center can be. A long train of usurpations, wars, famines, civil disorder, revolution, and world cataclysms follows in the wake of a false emotional orientation in the higher arenas of the soul forces offered to man, like Promethean fire. When the sailors aboard the Potemkin mutinied, they were courageous, idealistic, and intelligent, and they wanted good things. Their motivations were often good, their goal was praiseworthy. But their standard (being based in Revolutionary or Modernist dogma), was utterly warped. Consequently, Russia entered a hundred year period of intense suffering and horror beyond almost belief. It is extremely important to correctly stabilize and root the medieval power of estimation/aspiration in positive emotional forces from legitimately higher planes. 

So even though Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Cosmology have a strong dialectical component that connects with the Trivium, the power and desire and contemplation of these forms flows purely out of the purity of the emotional center. Although one can intellectually “come” to the Quadrivium based upon logic, the penetration of these orders of beauty is only accomplished through the power of estimation. As I've noted in other essays, the Quadrivium is the “content” of the Trivium in a deeper sense, the actual substance within the “form” of definition, dialectic, and manifestation. People don't drive or walk hundreds of miles to see schematic plans of nuclear reactors, impressive though they are. They want to see something beautiful which consoles, elevates, and sustains them, or hear music that transports them to “the higher spheres”, or taste an elegant meal which brings back childhood memories, thus restoring the power of the eternal in their life.

The power of the Quadrivium is so potent that what is a Pathetic fallacy in one context is, raised to a sufficiently high power, undeniably a transcendent truth. If I say that the “sea is angry” that is a pathetic fallacy, but if Homer personifies mother-earth, it grasps a truth: “So she spoke. But them, already, the life-giving earth possessed, there in Lacedaemon, in the dear fatherland.” Even Ruskin, in his famous and powerful attack on aspects of our higher emotions, acknowledges that at a higher level, with sufficient poetry, “it is so”. This should give you some idea of the tremendous power of the subject matter contained and dealt with on the interior of the Quadrivium. As CS Lewis so beautifully put it, “he who is writing a sonnet must both be in love with his Beloved, and also the sonnet”. The form may be arithemetical (based in the “counting” of the Trivium), but emotional tension and aspiration is what generates the beauty of the poem “out of nothing”, not the “outline” of the form. Even the Trivial arts of Rhetoric, Dialectic, and Grammar involve the careful selection of a certain emotional content, tendency, and style, which is operative at a very subtle level in the apparently more precise and logical Trivial arts. For instance, ME Bradford has an extraordinary piece which analyzes Abraham Lincoln's evolution of emotions in his speeches. Regardless of what you think of his conclusions, the light is illuminating – Lincoln was not operating in an emotional void of pure Logic. He, too, depended upon the estimation/aspiration of the emotional center. It would be extremely advantageous for a Templar order to become more adept at understanding the ways in which this center operates, to see if there are ways to avoid being manipulated by it without understanding why (which is at least half the misery of the world). 

Our choice, to put it rhetorically, is between having a Prism of Gnosis and true Knowledge, or accepting the Prison of bondage to the world, the flesh and the devil. The Artes Liberales are truly the Defense Against the Dark Arts, the Arts Which Can Set One Free, the Liberating Art. Admittedly, the white light of pure Knowledge is viewed through the “Prism” of the Artes Liberales, and is thus not a perfect end goal for human evolution. However, it is available to even the most common of men, accessible to even weaker minds who have sufficient aspiration, and is a vast improvement on the modern condition of living at the level of animals in a Sorcerer-State, manipulated by powers that course and pulse through us, which we do not understand or even sense. It offers the possibility of cooperation with the Logos at the level of the psyche and intellect, and thus, keeps open the door to something “More” beyond even Goodness, Truth, and Beauty.

1To get a feel for how this plays out concretely in absurd irony, read a history of the 1905 Russian Revolution, or the mutiny on the battleship Potemkin: the revolutionaries were constantly having to resort to ad hoc committees with total power, and to somehow salvage their new authority, despite the fact that the basis of their revolt was rejection of all authority.

2Some of this can be blamed on “cycles”, but what is a cycle if not the natural alteration in human nature between misplaced allegiances based on passions? Are humans unable to understand, and understanding them, artfully fend off a “natural” progression until more favorable times begin to work in a better condition?

De Quadriformisratio

On The Quadrivium

Preface

"For what avails a golden key if it cannot give access to the object
which we wish to reach, and why find fault with a wooden key if it
serves our purpose?" (De Doctr. Christ., IV, 11, 26). - Augustine

This book is an extended argument for the utility, beauty, and subtle necessity of an ancient discipline and practice known as the Quadrivium. As we discuss the Quadrivium in detail in the following chapters, we will see that it is higher Number, as manifested by itself (Mathematics), in space (Geometry), in time (Music), and in Space plus Time (Cosmology). If the Trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric) is the means whereby the Egyptians are spoiled of their treasure, then the Quadrivium is the design for the tabernacle of the Lord, which was built with attention to mathematics, order, detail, and according to a design which was divinely inspired, according to the archetype of the true Jerusalem, which is from above and heavenly. The Trivium properly is the glory or the spirit of the Faith, but the Quadrivium properly represents the body or wisdom of the Faith, the matter of what is made known.

I say this as a generalization, since it is quite equally true to assert that the matter or content of the Quadrivium generates a style or form all of its own, just as the style and flair derived from the Trivium is capable of generating content or substance. Yet this, all the more, should inform us that the Trivium and the Quadrivium go properly together – they are indivisible at the highest level of human knowledge, and each is indispensable to the other.

In order to put this case at length, I will start in media res (in the middle of things) with the Trivium, its better known twin sister. All too often, both the Trivium and the Quadrivium have been allowed to rest in the hands of the enemies of the Faith, but lately, we have made progress in recovering one of them. It is a start, and a beginning. But there is more to the story, and much more to even that part of the story.

The 20th century witnessed the unexpected resurgence of something called the classical Christian school movement. Inspired by the famous 1947 Oxford essay by Dorothy Sayers, the movement took (as its hallmark) not only a return to God-centered education, but a focus on the ancient Trivium. In Sayers' words, she retrieved what she called a "modern Trivium – with modifications", from the dusty shelves of Oxford and the medieval period, and dusted it off to show it in a new light. Although she said her views were “neither orthodox nor enlightened", Sayers had the interesting and admittedly personal insight that there are roughly three stages of learning that you naturally see in the development of the human psyche, and that these three stages can roughly be correlated to the grammar, logic, and rhetoric of the old Trivium. She identified a poll-parrot stage elementary school stage, followed by a “difficult” stage of argument in the junior high years, and finally a rhetorical stage of expression in the late teen years, and beyond. This essay was republished in The Lost Tools of Learning, by Douglas Wilson, and became a set-piece for the classical Christian school movement.
Regardless of the possible critiques, objections, and second thoughts one may proffer to and about Sayers, her essay inspired the movers and shakers of the late 20th century in what may justly be called (along with homeschooling) a massive rebirth of Christian education. It is not too much to say that her essay was the efficient means of sparking a revival, of Christian education in America. Whether she was right or misguided, can be debated – those who began the movement were inspired by her essay, although it remains to be seen whether the revival will result in renaissance and restoration. Certainly, recovering the Trivium tradition was on the whole immensely important.

Dorothy Sayers, in her essay, asks if you've ever watched and wondered why it is that modern literate people cannot seem to define their terms, distinguish first principles, respond to arguments appropriately, or follow a highly complex chain of reasoning. She wishes us to see that it is the neglect of the Trivium disciplines which are indirectly responsible for the slobbish and retarded condition of our public discourse, & I for one am inclined to agree with her line of thought. It is certainly true that the medieval ancestors would have never tolerated such sloppy public discourse in their dialectic quod libetas or university debates. Whether Sayers was right or not in her theories of human learning and development, it is certainly true that restoring the Trivium to a central position would add lucidity to modern thought. Even her staunchest opponents would have to admit that it was a “happy blunder”, in that sense. It is not too much to expect, of a high school graduate, that they can define their terms (grammar), reason soundly and recognize confused reasoning (logic), and express themselves clearly (rhetoric).

Sayers, in her essay mentions the Quadrivium but skips over it for the time. She also concludes her essay with this striking paragraph:

“The combined folly of a civilization that has forgotten its own roots is forcing them to shore up the tottering weight of an educational structure that is built upon sand. They are doing for their pupils the work which the pupils themselves ought to do. For the sole true end of education is simply this: to teach men how to learn for themselves; and whatever instruction fails to do this is effort spent in vain.”

I would like to raise a question, at this point, one which she might (perhaps) have answered had she discussed the Quadrivium in more depth. Is there not a difference between Learning (on the one hand) and (Wisdom) on the other? The medieval idea (and the ancient one) was that education's goal was Wisdom, and not Learning per se at all, as much as it was cherished. The modern idea that education's purpose was the “shoring up of civilization” was only one aspect of their aims in instruction. Perhaps her choice of words was dictated by the audience she spoke to, and that is certainly the charitable point of view. Yet I would ask the reader to go with me a little deeper, into the Quadrivium, and the quest for Wisdom with a capital W, beyond the statistics of the US Dept. of Education, beyond the degrees and the dollars, beyond even the scholars, and certainly beyond what today is called “higher education”. To bring lucidity to modern thought is certainly desirable, but not if the assumptions of modern thought go unchallenged: it is certainly possible (for example) to hold a purely material view of the world, and defend it with grammar, logic, and rhetoric.

We may well go on to ask then (as she does not), why it may be that even were our collective discourse to become sharp and precise, it would still be lacking both elevation and sublimity. That is, having addressed the method of “how do we learn” and offered a strong correction, there still persists the question “what shall we learn about?”. What is the content and the form and the goal of Education? Originally the Trivium's whole point was to create a fortress and weapon of the Mind (in the service of Wisdom, and later, “the Faith”). Now along the way and incidentally, it certainly does manage a great deal of this, for in order to study the Trivium, students read a great deal in the classic humanities. It is hard to read Cicero and Virgil and Milton without acquiring some elevation and also some profound sublimity. Contact with the “classics” often imparted some of the tone and moral style in them to the mind of the student.

Nonetheless, reintroducing the Trivium will not formally or substantially solve the horrifying problem of the lack of substance, sublimity, and richness. By itself, the Trivium gives us comprehensiveness, efficiency and clarity, and style: but it can only borrow substance from the humanities which it uses to cut its teeth on - Greek and Roman history, literature, and philosophy. This is done indirectly, as the Trivium student works through the humanities. The humanities proper are to be considered as principle subjects, as opposed to the tool disciplines of the Liberal Arts (the Trivium + Quadrivium). Now it is true that Christian education addresses the issue of content directly through the confessions of Faith which over-arch the classical Christian movement. New Saint Andrews makes it clear that the context of the Faith defines the context which the Trivium works upon:

The Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are our only infallible rule of faith and practice. The Lord Jesus Christ committed these inspired Scriptures to His Church (1 Tim. 3 :15). We therefore defer to the witness of the historic Christian Church as a genuine but fallible authority, subordinate to the Scriptures themselves, in discerning what the Scriptures teach. Because they faithfully witness what is taught in the Word of God, we receive the great creedal statements the Church has affirmed throughout the ages: The Apostles Creed, The Nicene Creed, and the Definition of Chalcedon. Moreover, we believe that the reformational confessions of the 16th and 17th centuries (including the Westminster Confession of Faith of 1646, the Heidelberg Catechism, the Belgic Confession, and the Canons of Dort), of all historic statements, most fully and accurately summarize the system of orthodox Christian doctrine revealed in Scripture. Therefore, the specific headings below do not exhaust our doctrinal understanding, but rather identify those doctrines that merit greater attention today.

NSA (New St. Andrews is the college which Douglas Wilson started and an intellectual headquarters of the movement in Moscow, Idaho) mentions the Quadrivium as something people can “go on to study” as part of more “advanced study”. So hasn't this settled the issue? Isn't this the way to “enhance the Trivium”? To do more than just impart lucidity to the conditions of modern thought, but to begin to challenge its core assumptions as well?

Their argument might run as follows - Christ Himself is the Substance of what the Trivium studies, and provides the treasure which the well trained classical Mind defends by attacking every thought hostile to Christ and taking it captive. So why cannot we say that the Faith, or Christ Himself, is the beauty, truth, and goodness which we seek? The “more” which the Trivium helps us to learn how to learn about? Can't we just weave the Greco-Roman (Hellenistic) world into a narrative which dovetails with the narrative of God's redemption in His people? And content ourselves with the history, literature, art, and philosophy of the classical era, spoiling its riches (to use Augustine's phrase) to adorn the tabernacle of the Faith of God? Can't we just develop a grammar, logic, and rhetoric of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness, as summed up in Jesus Christ? Why would we have to make things more difficult by adding canonical subjects which can handled electively? For that matter, why is music or geometry anymore important than pre-medical studies or foreign languages for high school students, or anthropology or nano-technology for our collegiates? In short, aren't we hunting snipes here? Or maybe just cow-tipping? Finally, doesn't the Quadrivium have a funny name? Just what is the Quadrivium, anyway? Doesn't it have something to do with mathematics?

Just as we define our method in the Trivium, a method for the mind, so we can call Christ our goal and content, the treasure chest of Beauty, Truth, and Goodness. So we seem to already have an answer of sorts, ready made, within the classical Christian movement – the sovereignty and majesty of the King becomes the material which the mind exercises itself upon. The Faith is the body of knowledge and belief which the Trivium uses and meditates upon, and even as students read about the wars of Caesar or savor the poetry of Homer, they are being taught to look through the lens of that earthly beauty, toward something “more”. By faith, we know what that “more” is. It is a sound argument, both cogent and well constructed, and the conclusions follow from the given premises; it can be beautifully expressed, and often is; it is capable of defining its terms, and it is an improvement on just adding Bible class to a public school education. This much, this far, is very sound.

The corollary to the above is that we really don't need the “Quadrivium”; not as Tradition defines it, or at least not the Quadrivium per se. Students can supplement the Trivium training, the theology and the philosophy of the Faith, and the exercises in the humanities, with courses in practical art, music, perhaps a foreign language other than Latin, maybe some athletics. We have our method, and we have our standard, goal, and our motive, which points us to the great body of truth - Christ. We seem to have it all, here. All that remains is the carrying it out. Go forth, we tell our young students, and take every thought captive to Christ! The Quadrivium is optional, but certainly not necessary or even extremely useful. At the very least, it is the mysterious younger sister of the pair, and by far the least important.

Now while the recovery of principal subjects (under the eye of the confessions of the Faith) does constitute a direct address to the problem of content, it still remains true that it fails to address the issue of the innate form of the content, by neglecting the tool disciplines of the Quadrivium, which impart a certain form or structure (a discipline) to the content indirectly preserved in the principle subjects and indirectly recovered through texts encountered in work with the Trivium. This includes, but goes beyond, mathematical Form in general, just as the Trivium includes, but goes beyond, linguistic Form in general.

If the Faith points us towards God, and the Trivium helps us sharpen our Mind, then the Quadrivium tells us something about the body and scope of Nature, considered in and of itself. Faith reaches the summit of the Divine (Super-Nature or the Lord God), and the Trivium teaches the Mind to reach its own summit in lucid self-reflection. But the Quadrivium investigates that which is Logos – that is, the specific and real union between God & Man. All three (confessional, linguistic, and mathematical) forms have a proper center of gravity, but all three include (or touch) each other. Remove one of the legs, and it weakens the structure of the whole, a structure which we express in the principal subjects like History, Literature, and even Philosophy and Theology.

We might go even further to illustrate this hunch. If the Trivium helps us "learn how to learn" (in Sayers arresting and concluding turn of phrase), the Quadrivium helps teach us what to teach, and how to teach it. The Quadrivium demonstrates intuitively how the Logos knits together the world of all that is, including God Himself. The Quadrivium tells us about the actual pattern God uses to draw Nature up into Super-Nature, transforming it and sublimating, making it One with Him. It teaches us to discern the method whereby God incorporates Nature (or the world) into Himself. It is a bridge between the Trivium and the Faith, just as it is a bridge between the Mind and Super-Nature. It considers all things as part of a whole, which is God.

Perhaps this is why the Quadrivium is not more discussed – it involves very old and deep theological realities which have been forgotten or distorted. We follow CS Lewis on this point – God is that which is most Real. In The Great Divorce, Lewis makes the case that the reality of God is the source of “reality”, and is therefore, more “real” than mundane reality. We become real by restoring His image and being transformed into His likeness. God created the world by an act of Love, withdrawing or “wounding” Himself, and then speaking the Creation into existence with the power of His word, out of the “Void” or “Nothing” which was created by His wounding. We do not live in a world of dead matter and empty space, but a world that is groaning and trembling as it works through the process of Redemption. Now, each of the theological confessions of the Church differ as to the details of how this works, but they all agree (at least in principle) that the end reality is that God will be “All in All”. Against the modern worldview of “atoms in motion” in a permanently cold and lifeless space, the Christian confesses that the world is being born again (however slowly this may happen). Indeed, the Christian confesses that God is already “all in all”, and that we work with Him (however slowly) to manifest this in time and space, which is not empty or dead.

The Quadrivium is important because it gives us very vivid and detailed hints and clues (often in mathematical form) how that “all in all” began, and towards what it is tending. While the Trivium may anticipate the final destination, showing us the foundations of grammar-Logos in the “Word”, giving us a peak at the inter-relations of the Logos between various entities and in certain processes, and revealing the beauty of the Logos through the highest flights the human mind and imagination is capable of, it is the Quadrivium which deals with the very concrete details of Creation and Redemption. As we shall see later on, the last of the Quadrivial sciences is cosmology, and this science actually unifies the Trivium with the Quadrivium, as well as linking it with the principal subjects and with the religion and reality of the Christian Faith.

If the Trivium is the energy which saturates knowledge and makes it lucid, allowing the mind and the subject to become one in order to “hit the mark”, the Quadrivium is the technique of the archer as he aims the arrow at the goal. The goal or aim is the Logos, that through which the worlds were spoken, and that towards which the worlds return. The Logos is the re-unified world restored to its original state and then glorified, as seen in the Logos-Incarnate, the first fruit of this redemption. Christian education (then) is not merely becoming useful or skilled in manipulating data or objects in a plastic, passive, dead Nature. Nature is not a supine and mechanical Artifice that can be assigned a “spiritual” direction, arbitrarily. This Nature is something which, eventually, will become the body of God, when the marriage of Heaven and Earth takes place, just as man and woman become One on their wedding night.

When this is clearly understood (and it is often not understood at all), the ancient Quadrivium appears in an entirely different light. Rather than being the “weak sister” of the Trivium, it is the disciplined inquiry into the Pattern of Patterns, the supra-rational Order which has order (Number), structure (Geometry), harmony (Music), and is becoming a Body (Cosmology) – the four paths of the Quadrivium. The medievals and the ancients, however imperfectly, had gotten this far, and in this respect, were far more advanced than we are today.

The Quadrivium is the science of the Logos, understood in its relationship to Nature. Nature is here used as a term to encompass what is both human and Divine. Since the worlds were created through the second person of the Trinity, and since Christ is fully man, and totally God, Nature itself partakes of this totality in a derivative manner. When this is applied to history, it readily and explicitly shows us how the Hellenistic world was part of the “fullness of times” mentioned in Galatians:

So also we, while we were children, were held in bondage under the elemental things of the world. 4But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, 5so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.…

God was using the Mediterranean basin (the cradle of Western civilization) to incubate a culture which dared to give full scope to man's rational powers (weak though they were) in the context of aiming for something “more” (Beauty, Truth, Goodness). It is for this reason that the Gospel of John opens with the words, “In the beginning was the Logos.” This is why the New Testament was written in koine Greek. It is why Paul quotes Aratus and Epimenides. It is why Christ refused to take up the mantle of the Messiah made in the image of Jewish nationalism. He was the “light of the World”. It is why Caesar came across the Rubicon with his soldiers to save a dying Rome. It is why Alexander was born to conquer the world. All of this was foreseen in the vision of Daniel, in which the dying Empires which prepared the way and inevitably fell short of the mark are replaced by an enormous boulder which covers the Earth and becomes the Holy Mountain. In Acts, Paul addresses the king:

"I am not out of my mind, most excellent Festus, but I utter words of sober truth. 26"For the king knows about these matters, and I speak to him also with confidence, since I am persuaded that none of these things escape his notice; for this has not been done in a corner.

The mighty acts of God were both grounded in Creation from the beginning, and yet were culminating in a holy purpose. While the Trivium may analyze the contents of Revelation in the Scripture (as well as the natural revelation in the spiritual and humane writings of the most noble and notable humans of the ancient world), it is the Quadrivium which shows us the full extent to which Creation remained faithful to the patterns of God, and how those patterns were achieving a subtle and wise purpose through God's Providence.

The Quadrivium is the missing arch in the classical Christian movement. It is the link between the Faith and the Trivium, a link which so many have questioned, impugning its integrity, sincerity, and holiness. It has the potential to energize the movement with a fullness of purpose that is impossible without its moorings and underpinnings. If the Trivium is a flying buttress of a Gothic cathedral, transferring the soaring weight of the vaulted roof safely to the ground, then the Quadrivium is the stained glass of the Rose window, which admits, tinctures, and filters the overwhelming brilliance of the sun. The Quadrivium is the architecture of the temple of God, the pattern and the design of the stained glass.

The Quadrivium course of study is what keeps the sharpness and efficiency of the Trivium from veering away from the stated aims of the Faith, by indissolubly linking it closely to the Logos, Who is the express image of the Father, source of Creation and Re-creation. It is the the link between Reason and Faith, in the context of Christian education; it is the making explicit of what should already be known and understood, but too often, sadly, is not. Without it, the Trivium risks attack from those who see in it an unholy alliance between the “world” and Christ, or perhaps just a slick marketing strategy designed to churn out good Christian rhetoricians who can be culture warriors, even just another smuggling in of anti-Christian doctrines in the form of humanistic reason. Without the Quadrivium, the Trivium is more exposed to charges that it is humanism, paganism, and anti-Christianity, since the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome can easily be mistaken for the City of God, and indeed was, by people more noble, wiser, and virtuous than many of our day. It is the Quadrivium which argues for a supra-rational Order or divine Reason which is antecedent to the brain and even the mind of Man, but towards which Man's destiny is tending. And it not only argues, it argues by the persuasion of concretely showing, or demonstrating, how that supra-rational Order has moved and is moving through the interstices of Nature to accomplish the divine plan of God.

The Metalogikon

Posted on 2014-03-07 by Logres

The Medieval period represents, for Western man, a kind of germinal gestation of the Spirit in the form of an actualized Christian civilization, one which was fully in accord with Tradition, as far as it was able to go. We know this because, for the neo-pagans, it is too “Christian” & for the neo-Christians, it is too “pagan”. Something with this many enemies has to have more going for it than meets the eye, & when one begins to dig in its archives, or leave through its holy books, or experience its ghosts in an old castle, you get a cold breath of fresh air that refreshes the heart.
I wrote in an earlier post:

Cologero’s translations have provided this gem, from de Giorgio:
“We could also call it “intuition” although no psychological quality is given to this term: the psyche in fact is below the spirit, the intellect, the heart—these three terms denoting, under three aspects, the same type of integrative activity of the divine. The spirit expresses the direct integration whose absolute type is the divine breath, the intellect expresses the cognitive permeation, the heart expresses radiant receptivity: by means of the first, one is elevated, with the second, absorbed, in the third, one is welcomed and realizes himself. Representing here a vertical axis, the spirit is the peak, the intellect the base, the heart the center that gathers the two extreme points and extends them, prolonging them horizontally, hence the Cross as radiant symbol of universality and unifying centrality.”
The intellect, the heart, and the spirit are One...

John of Salisbury was a minor church official in England, & yet he ably defended the classical ideal (expressed in Seneca and Cicero) of the philosopher: the lover of wisdom has to live as if these things (the Tao) were actually true, subordinating earthly desires and concerns to a higher goal. To this end, one studied grammar as the foundation, proceeded to logic-dialectic to pursue the ends of what was begun, and summarized this rhetorically in the “living flame” of a common chase after the Logos. Errors in grammar (mixing categories of speech) are analogous to conflating Spirit & matter, or of admixing them (eg., “race” = the spirit). Errors in logic are analogous to perverse twisting of the Logos inside one’s self (eg., it’s some one else’s fault). Errors in rhetoric are analogous to not being able to judge the spirits, following will’o'the’wisps (eg., Equality as God).  Therefore, the educated man pursues a formal calling (for which he is more harshly held to account) in learning to tell what is true from what is false, & what is good from what is better or Best. The uneducated man has to look to his betters for guidance (as indeed does the educated man, as sainthood or herodom actualizes liberal studies in real freedom).

Where is anyone of John’s stature today? If he exists, he is certainly not holding an official post: that is the difference between then & now.

Because of the chiasm formed by earth and heaven, in which the material world becomes the divine drama or staging ground for salvation, and in which whatever you bind will be bound, whatever loosed, loosed, the Hermetic method is to continue the medieval project of christening earth and humanizing heaven: that is, earth must be baptized, & heaven taken by storm. Rather than effacing human nature, personality, and the Logos as it sustains the “shields of the earth”, it overcomes General Law by drawing the entire human person up into the Divine order, simultaneously actualizing and drawing down the celestial powers, as was the original intent of God.

One only has to compare Eastern Orthodox icons to the Book of Kells to appreciate the difference in Western spirituality, which very early on committed itself to a playful acknowledgement and sublimation of the natural order. It was no accident that Pelagius hailed from Ireland, or that the Irish monks “saved Western classical civilization”. Whereas the East has been more heavily influenced by the idea of breaking out of the charmed, magic circle of the Fall, the West has been more willing to run the risk of damnation by insisting on a full recognition of the Logos in the material Creation. This does not mean that Eastern Orthodoxy is opposed to the Western Church, far from it. It is simply to point out that they are, in the end, returning to the same place, from a different point, like radii back to the center of the circle. The French hermetic tradition which inspired Tomberg openly admits and acknowledges the importance of co-inherence of the two worlds, which are One. Charles Williams (who drew attention to the term) was influenced by some of the same circles as Tomberg was.

So it is not merely a matter of all Westerners re-converting to the Eastern Church (although perhaps this is how God shall choose to re-unify?), but rather of rediscovering that one’s lines have “fallen in pleasant places & that I have a goodly heritage” (Psalms). In re-reading works such as John Cardinal Newman’s The Idea of the University, or John of Salisbury’s Metalogicon, or perhaps Boethius’ Consolations, we can see the Western, classical yearning for the order of the City, for Tradition, for the true & original religion, which pre-existed the Christ, but was re-energized by the appearance of its crown prince.
I have pointed out that Grammar corresponds to Spirit, Logic to Logos, and rhetoric to the archetype or Father. This is how liberal learning can again be brought into a right relationship not merely with right Reason, but with the embodied and personal Good, which is a super-Person:

If we were relating this to a knowledge of castes and Order (including internal order) we would say that the Spirit correlates to Fact, the Heart to Logic, and the Intellect to Rhetoric (for true self-consciousness is consciousness of the Master inside, allowing domination of both Self and Destiny). The Spirit initiates, or factualizes the supernatural; the Heart has its inner logic that we must learn to listen to; the Intellect realizes and epitomizes the power of the Invisible made Visible, the fruit of what has gone before.

In this way (surprisingly) the Spirit “chiasms” (or inverts by crossing a boundary in a creative way, the opposite of revolution, which is not fecundate) with “Fact” (which we tend to identify somewhat strangely with pure matter, the Son who is “matter incarnate” is seen as the heart of the worlds with a logic that transcends analytical power alone, and the Father is not the brutal demi-God who oppresses, but rather the Archetype or “Ground”, the “infinite possibility” Himself, out of which all proceeds.
Tomberg has pointed out that pantheism, emanationism, demi-urgism, and creation ex nihilo all correspond to various aspects or levels of Being, all true, which can be properly coordinated in the One.
This is why the medievals did not mind reading the Timaeus, which frankly teaches that there is a demi-Urge, or perusing the Stoics (whose spirituality they did not share as much in common with as the theurgic tradition of Plotinus), which emphasizes the unity of the Logos in the natural world (pantheism), or in picking up Iamblichus or Plotinus (whose systems of theurgy were incorporated into the Roman mass). They held all this together with the Grammar of Dogma, which demanded that the mystery of the Spirit as it actualizes in matter is the foundation point for slowly climbing Parnassus and reaching the heights which in earlier ages may have been scaled more swiftly or dramatically by avatars and heroes who shared a small portion of the charisma of Christ.

Now that Christ has come, the real work begins! Rather than rely on being born as a “son of God” dedicate to Apollo (like Pythagoras), or being conceived by the interaction between Olympian celestials and mortals (like Hercules), we have been fully restored. But being fully restored, the work has only just begun, as it is now our calling in this darkest and brightest of all Ages to achieve on the inside, project on the outside, and re-echo the divine nuptials that have been consummated between Heaven and Earth. This is the chivalric destiny the Middle Ages glimpsed and began to achieve, & this is what each must set themselves again to do.

To that end, it is encouraging that, even in John of Salisbury’s “bright age of Faith”, he complains that false philosophers and fake Christians abounded, that learning was already turning dim, that madness was loose upon the earth in the form of institutional folly, and that corruption too often triumphed over virtue (he and Thomas Beckett were allies). Maybe the Age we live in, as Cologero has said, has its own unique advantages, and that much can be done in candlelight, away from the hustle and bustle of a world that (even at its best) was ambiguous about accepting the Lordship of the King.

Hebdomad

Seven is called the Virgin, Guardian, Message, Critical Time, Athena, Chance & Acropolis. It is a mean between the second Monad (ie., the Hexad, issuing into material Creation, since Dyad and Triad belong more properly to the One) and the Decad. It is perfect: it is 3 from 4 and 3 from 10. It is the balance between the end and the beginning, if we are speaking of the confluence of Being issuing in Creation.
Throughout, Iamblichus has drawn on Nicomachus‘ lost Theology of Arithmetic. In considering the Heptad, he has a long section on gestation and the ages of men, which are divided by sevens. This is interesting, but we will focus instead on another idea, suggested by Iamblichus, that there are three layers of the soul (rational, spirited, appetitive) and four virtues (wisdom, justice, fortitude, and moderation).
For anyone familiar with the Liberal Arts, one should immediately think of the Trivium and the Quadrivium (also note, that these were considered preparatory to the study of philosophy and theology). So, there were seven planets, and seven “subjects”/”modes” to master before one could come in the light of the Sun. There are seven progressions of musical notes in the infra-scale of music. Here again, once subject of the Quadrivium is Harmony, or Music, and this is not accidental: the roots of the sadly degraded liberal arts lie in the greater and lesser mysteries, and not the study of “relevance” or “contemporary” dialogues between modern political factions.

He who attained to Seven, by necessity was graduating to the last grade – it is a mark of completion and mastery to have entered the final grade. Those familiar with the Ur-Group writings will recognize that some of the essays deal with the evocation of the celestial guardians, which are seven in number.
Seven is perfect also, because it cannot be divided by anything except itself (it’s only factors are 1 and 7) – in this sense, it is like 2 and 3, as well as 5.

In Revelation, we are told that there are 7 spirits or archons/angels, represented in the temple candlesticks, which pour out various events upon the earth. Of course, seven is also the number of days in the week, which is not an accident – neither is it accidental that the phases of the moon can be divided into seven week quarters (Iamblichus draws heavily on the phases of moon when discussing seven, and this is proper, because the Moon represents a “fetal Earth in gestation”, whose boundaries mark the limits of the lower powers of the air that govern the soul cages and impose General Law upon mortals – to “jump over the Moon” is to master the astral worlds and to transcend the power of the Lower Guardians: please refer to Boris Mouravieff’s work in this regard).

So we see that Seven is actually, properly, a very lucky number.

To return to the Liberal Arts, the number of Seven was critical – 3 portions to match the various layers of man’s soul (grammar, logic, rhetoric), and 4 virtues or actual “knowledge bodies” that were mastered (Arithmetic, Number, Harmony, and Celestial Proportion). So it can be seen that the Trivium matches the first three numbers, and constitutes a reflection of the higher waters and Divine Essence, while the Quadrivium matches the last four numbers, and is the issuing forth of Being into Creation as manifested virtues and concrete knowledge. In a future essay we will assay more closely how the Liberal Arts are patterned on the mysteries.