Four holy directions. Four divine elements. But there is a fifth in each. But it's nowhere to be found. Because it is in the beholder itself. Each is seemingly an opposing force, like what fire is to water, or what earth would be to air. These make up the twin poles of duality. But bunch them up together - and they align in perfect, total harmony - within the human form. For the human form serves as the oaken vessel that houses within it the fifth and final element. What the name of that element is - I'm sure you can guess. ![[IMG_0879.jpeg]] The four elements constitute the world, and the four seasons govern its becoming. But the fifth element is that which cannot be constituted and, while the fifth season certainly does exist, it is that which cannot possibly become. For it is the stillness itself at the center of all movement, the eternal within the temporal, and the emerging consciousness that witnesses the passing of all things without itself belonging to their passage. The fifth season is the unity of the preceding four. As the fourth is the unity of the preceding three. And the third - the unity of the preceding two. And so on. The hidden season is both the season of the soul and the season of alchemy - the distilled elixir comprised of the quaternal ingredients of the four Earthly temperaments, the quiet movers of the Earth in all its sacred directions of north, west, east and south. And that which remains after the procession of each isolated season is complete, grinding the life-cycle of man to a final halt. And as it is with every time and age, each must constitute an avatar in the living world, among which the avatar of the fifth is the human element - in the form of the spirit of sentience itself. That is, to be exact, the season formed within the individual itself, regardless of where they find themselves in the fleeting wheel of time. Mankind itself constitutes the Earthly manifestation of the fifth season, simultaneously as that which is both beholden to time and its influences and destined to transcend them. ![[660F72EE-9DBA-4B50-8FDC-36DC257293CA.jpeg]] Nature is the oldest and most ancient bible known to man. Humanity, therefore, does not live in confusion but rather in forgetfulness, as it has simply forgotten to read the forms of life ingrained in its geometries and shapes, and to decipher the archetypal stories and narratives woven into creation itself. For it is man himself who is crucified onto the four-pronged cross of time. Man himself is the cross, the forbidden fruit of nature, and the sacred-hidden tree of life, and the life-giving fountain of youth. Mankind itself is the cross - crucified. A cross upon a cross.