Of Pediments and Domes. I have never been too keen on rectilinear pediments in the classical style, partly I suspect because of their association with autocracy. Yet until comparatively recently I did not bother to distinguish between squares within circles and circles within squares, so to speak, but tended to make a simple antithesis, more or less on an alpha/omega basis, between rectilinear pediments and domes; squares, if you will, and circles. What I had still to learn, though the development of my philosophy duly rectified the situation, was that one needed to distinguish between rectilinear pediments independently of domes and those which could be, as it were, framed within the overall circumference of a dome, so that one had a fairly clear-cut distinction between autocracy, with or without a roundel within the pediment, and theocracy, with or without an accompanying pediment. Hence, on a broader basis, one would have a distinction between autocracy and what I call antitheocracy where the rectilinear pediment with enclosed roundel was concerned and, across the axial divide, between theocracy and anti-autocracy where the curvilinear dome with enclosed or proximate pediment was concerned, the former approximating to metachemistry over antimetaphysics and the latter, by contrast, to metaphysics over antimetachemistry. Although a clear-cut autocratic/theocratic distinction between rectilinear pediments and curvilinear domes could be found, it was usually the case that some degree of antitheocratic or, depending on the context, anti-autocratic feature would also play a part in the overall composition of such architectural complexes, and that this was not something to decry but, rather, to accept and even admire for its gender relativity or realism, using the word in the sense of acceptance of a variety of correlative factors which happen to constitute the overall nature of reality at any specific intercardinal point of the axial compass. Hence one could no more dismiss autocracy because it embraced a subordinate antitheocracy in the form of the roundel within the pediment than dismiss theocracy because it embraced a subordinate anti-autocracy in the form of some minor pedimental ingredient that, in the past, one might have supposed to be autocratic in its rectilinearity. The distinction between circles in squares and squares in circles, so to speak, was no arbitrary or haphazard matter but of the nature of the two antitheses, where some degree of justice had to be done to each gender irrespective of which gender was hegemonic and which subordinate. Obviously, I would still, on comparative terms, prefer the antimetachemical subordination to metaphysics to its autocratic converse, but I could not reasonably expect metaphysics to stand completely independently of an antimetachemical factor and simply make a distinction between curvilinear domes as metaphysical and rectilinear pediments as metachemical, as though between theocratic and autocratic antitheses. One had to take the overall composition into consideration, and if, in the case of preponderantly theocratic entities like certain great cathedrals, one found a degree of rectilinearity in respect of a subordinate pediment, that was no argument against the style or, indeed, the reality of things at the northeast point of the axial compass but, rather, the way they are and should, with due variations proportionate to cultural insight and development, remain. There is no simple alpha/omega dichotomy. Rather, alpha stands no less over what can be called anti-omega than omega over anti-alpha in the overall noumenal, or ethereal, distinctions between space and antitime at the northwest point of the axial compass and time and antispace at its northeast point, the former pairing commensurate with autocracy and antitheocracy, the latter, by contrast, with theocracy and anti-autocracy, which is equivalent, after all, to a distinction between classless and anti-upperclass criteria relative to a context in which, with metaphysics hegemonic over antimetachemistry, god gets the better of the antidevil, as the Celestial City of Anti-Vanity Fair, rather than to a context in which, with metachemistry hegemonic over antimetaphysics, the devil gets the better of antigod, as Vanity Fair of Anti-Celestial City, on the basis of an autocratic/antitheocratic distinction between upper-class and anti-classless criteria – the worst of all possible noumenal worlds.