001 C&G Trade Paper - The Hank Harrison Portal Gateway

THE ARCHIVES LOGO
The Archives Press logo, adapted from the emblem of the
Warburg Institute, London, is an astral knot mandala used by
monks and alchemists in the Dark Ages. Its current image is
derived from the Monas Hieroglyphica of John Dee, a mentor to
Queen Elizabeth I. The earliest source, according to Dee, is a
woodcut in a handwritten copy of De natura rerum of Isidore of
Seville (560-636). In that work the signet accompanies a
quotation from the Hexameron of Saint Ambrose (III. xiv)
describing the interrelation of the four alchemical elements: fire,
air, earth and water, with their complimentary perceptual
qualities: hot, cold, dry and moist.
The basic cosmic conception depicted in the knot can be
traced to Shamanism. In this scheme the Earth is linked to water
by the common quality of cold. Water is linked to air by the
quality of moisture. Air is linked to fire by heat and fire is linked
to Earth by dryness. The knot also represents the eight yearly
festivals which inspired archaic humans to record natural laws in
stone.
Elaborate cabalistic formulas, such as that depicted in the
logo, were common in Europe from the Ice Age until the end of
the Renaissance. In the tenth century AD, John Scotus Erigena,
an Irish monk, expanded the idea by suggesting that knots such
as this were part of the vast memory systems used by the Celtic
bards and Greek orators. Erigena named his system ars naturae:
the art of nature. He also added Aristotelian structure to the
schema. He argued, as did the Pelagians, that the folk traditions
of the Irish, Scots, Breton, Welsh and Greeks were designed as
natural pathways to grace and to knowledge of the higher good
and ultimately the godhead.
The Archives Press
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