By Lou DiVirgilio

There is a contemporary saying, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”  There is an ancient saying attributed to a Hebrew wise man, “There is nothing new under the sun.”  What these two sayings have in common is the suggestion that even though we see what is collectively designated as new, it is really a permutation of something that has already been.  What is thought to be new is an adaptation of something that has been, and what has been is a bases from which adaptations are created.  It is analogous to the Egyptian and East Indian myths of the Phoenix and the Garuda respectively.  These two birds, consume themselves in fire, then are resurrected from their ashes.  The operational theme in the above representation is the cyclic movement, from a time current bases, (from their former bird form, to an ashes form, then to a renewed form), to modifications, without a brake in the causal chain.  If we were aware of the movements of our lives, we would be also aware of its cyclic nature, but for most of us, cyclic movement is only a background, of which we pay little attention.    

We live within the great circulations of the Universe.  The Hebrew prophet, Ezekiel, described this cosmic movement as, “wheels within wheels.”  We live through the cycles of our lives, even before birth we must gestae for nine months, then the life cycle: birth, growth, death, decay.  Every manifest thing has duration, and moves in step with Universal Nature’s cycles: beginning, middle, and end.  Within Universal Nature’s Great Wheel are numerous major and minor wheels, Our Milky Way or galactic cycle-our imagination can scarcely grasp at the enormity of its cyclic movements or duration.  Then there is the cyclic movement of our solar system within the our galaxy.  Then are the lesser movements, our planet Earth’s 365 day movement around our Sun, our Earth’s 24 hour rotation, and how about our satellite, the Moon’s 14 day cycle around our earth-“wheels within wheels.” All these cycles, and many, many more we know and do not know, are webbed together, and are causally linked one to another.  Nature repeats herself everywhere, and it is on her repetitive action that the laws of cycles are founded. 

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