STAR AND 'CROSS'

1. Just as we have distinguished between unnature, supernature, nature, and subnature, as between unwoman, superwoman, man, and subman, so we may likewise distinguish between uncross (star), supercross, cross, and subcross, the latter of which would be rather more akin to what I have hitherto, in certain earlier texts, described as a supercross, viz. an inverted CND emblem with feminine and masculine signs attached.

2. Thus if the supercross of certain earlier texts in my philosophical journey would, in fact, be better described as a subcross, an emblem appropriate to the subman and deeper than the cross (of man), then the subcross it is which stands beyond the Christian cross, as that which epitomizes the triumph of individualism in transcendentalism, as germane to 'Kingdom Come'.

3. But if the inverted CND emblem with feminine and masculine signs attached would be better described as a subcross than a supercross, how, then, do we distinguish between subcross and supercross or, rather, between cross and supercross, assuming such a distinction still applies?

4. Clearly, if the Social Transcendentalist emblem is not a supercross but a subcross, as germane to metaphysics, then the cross will be germane to physics, as to nature, and have the figure of Christ upon it, as in the case of Catholic and Anglican crucifixes. The supercross, however, will have no such figure upon it, and will therefore stand aloof from the physical mean, as water from vegetation, or chemistry from physics.

5. Thus arises the notion of the Protestant cross as supercross, or that which, spurning bodily imagery, is closer to water than to vegetation, to woman than to man, to volume than to mass, to punishment than to sin, to glory than to form, etc., etc.

6. And this would even apply, if to a lesser extent, with the so-called 'burning cross' of white supremacists, which would take the Protestant supercross to the boundaries, in quasi-unnatural fashion, of the uncross, viz. the star, wherein fire rather than water is the cardinal element.

7. Thus 'nature' twisted towards unnature becomes paradoxically unnatural, as the supernature of the supercross is eclipsed by the unnature, in fire, of that which is properly germane to the star, the symbol of unnature and, consequently, of that which is against 'nature', especially, be it remembered, the vegetative nature of the Christian cross.

8. Thus from a Christian standpoint, be that standpoint Superchristian (and Puritan), Christian (and Catholic), or Subchristian (and Social Transcendentalist), the star is the great unnatural enemy, the anti-natural Devil that wages unceasing war on 'nature' in all its elemental permutations, through especially in the vegetative mean of nature per se, wherein the cross has its humanist throne.

9. Thus the star, being a kind of uncross, stands fundamentally apart from the nonconformism of the supercross, the humanism of the cross, and the transcendentalism of the subcross, each 'cross' having a different kind of star with which to contend, like a shadow side to 'consciousness', since the star can no more be permanently vanquished than fire, even if intermittent victories over it are not so much the exception as the general rule.

10. Indeed, the existences of water, vegetation, and air depend, in different ways, upon the prior existence of fire, without which there would be no life and therefore no 'nature' at all.

11. Therefore the star and the 'cross', unnature and 'nature', must continue to exist in an uneasy symbiosis of unconsciousness and 'consciousness' for as long as there is life - supernatural, natural, or subnatural.

12. For it is inconceivable that life could exist without a foundation of death, even if this foundation itself undergoes progressive modification in relation to the type of life prevailing at any given time - be it the life-in-death of supernature, the death-in-life of nature, or the Eternal Life of subnature, the life-of-lives which only gods can know or, more correctly, experience ... as due reward for their truth, the egocentric form to which they metaphysically subscribe.