Part One is an introduction to symbology, and teaches us to recognize sacred language and its potentials, affording us a clear understanding that, for the ancient traditions, and for persons of knowledge who have managed to transmit and preserve them, symbol is something ever living, activating, and transforming–an intermediary by which one accedes to a development of inner potentialities, a connection with higher states of consciousness, and a return to a heavenly dwelling abandoned only in illusion. 

An integral manifestation as the expression of a symbolic code, the universe as a living mandala, and the human being as the central symbol (intermediary between heaven and earth) are ideas intertwined and developed here in such a way as to reveal to us the possibility of incarnating knowledge, and regenerating time, the world, and ourselves through an inward effort in which art, rites, and myths–and even the most modern science, correctly understood–act as transmitting and conducting vehicles, supports for man's authentic being, and reintegration into the primordial state. Symbols, for the author (and in particular that of the wheel, which includes and synthesizes the possibilities of the immanifest and of manifestation), are the living representation of an idea, of an energy and force latent within the human being which is awakened by the intermediary of the apprenticeship of doctrine, the study of the sacred books, and the meditation of these symbolic codes that have been designed for this end. Thanks to symbol, the subtle, abstract ideas become concrete, manifesting themselves in the sensible order. At the same time, sensible and concrete things become abstract, lifting our thought to those metaphysical regions that are the dwelling of the archetypes and gods. This work proposes a heroic adventure, an authentic journey of quest for knowledge that will be realized in each one of us, in our interior, if we investigate and plumb the mysteries of the cosmos, which in its turn is a symbolic model in which we can see ourselves reflected. And inasmuch as the human being is authentically "that which he knows" (since he participates fully in that substance that occupies his mind), in this fashion he vivifies those archetypes that are his proper nature, enabling him to lead it to the supraindividual and the supracosmic, where he encounters its real being, deified and immortal, that is, his supreme identity. 

Like the theme they develop, these studies have a circular character, thanks to which the central idea recurs from different foci or angles of vision. In this fashion, they allow the pantaculum (or "little whole") to etch itself in our interiority, illuminating the limitless regenerative possibilities of being, opportunities that man approachs from his proper center and true I–a center common to all beings, whether or not they are conscious of the fact–and symbolized by the interior point of the wheel (its origin, its raison-d'être). The very structure of the book is significant, and consistent with the theme being treated, since it is divided into three parts and nine chapters (let us recall that three is a closed cycle, and nine is the number of the circumference), each one of which is in turn a complete whole, a "rounded" idea, a viewpoint from which one can visualize and realize the archetypal center or vertical axis where it is possible to find "that place for which all beings long, whether they know it or not." 

Once the author has introduced us to the principles of general symbolism, and then particularly to that of the wheel, he devotes a chapter to a clarification of art as a form of knowledge. With that rigor necessary for truth to shine forth, he denounces the errors proper to the vision of the modern human being (who also comes in for consideration, in balanced fashion, throughout these writings) and addresses art as something sacred, intimately bound to love and to mystery, as a rite or symbol that makes communion with inner truth possible by the mediation of beauty, as well as the incarnation of the idea of the archetype, showing us life as a poetics related to the quest for that truth. He sees the authentic artist as a creative being capable of engendering a cosmos, as an "individual of craft or of knowledge who recreates the world through his redemptive activity," and from this perspective the very human being regenerated, together with the entire universe, come to be a perfect work of art in permanent course of realization, to which it is possible to integrate oneself, crowning the work of creation. 

Despite the universality it expresses, and its manifold references to the varied traditions and cultures of different times and places, this book bears the imprint of the Hermetic tradition, and, precisely, the second part of the work is more specifically concerned with Hermetism, which it sees as a form of the unanimous tradition, finding it in the metaphysical foundation and the roots of the thought of the West as expressed in the common ideas of Egyptian, Jewish, Greek, Roman, Christian, and Arabic esotericism. Thus, it proposes the magical path of the Hermetic initiation as a way to arrive at a knowledge of universal symbolics, and as an especially suitable route for the Western mentality that has made possible, in this part of the world and at this historical moment, initiation into the mysteries, and preservation of the corresponding doctrine. It shows us how these ideas have been the invisible axis determining the most important historical and cultural events, leaving in its turn a vision, also sacred, of history which the West still shares today. It lays special stress on the Christian tradition, citing saints and sages who, along this route, have incarnated knowledge, and it offers us regular biblical and evangelical citations that permit us to visualize the sacred book from the initiatory perspective. 

Likewise, with clarity and synthetic power, it describes two Hermetic codes, intimately interrelated, designed to make possible a comprehension of cosmology: the Tarot, and the sephirotic tree of life–genuine road maps that can serve as a support during the journeys we make to our own center. Numbers and letters–that is, the archetypes–spring to life once more when these oracles are in play. Addressing them at the highest level, this book gives us sufficient elements for their understanding, and establishes the bases from a starting point in which one could realize one's own calculations and investigations, and use these same elements as vehicles of self-knowledge and spiritual realization, thus taking care to avoid applications in a minor key with which they are at times confused in the profane world. And in linking the wheel to other traditional symbols, this work broadens the cognitive possibilities of this sign, and offers us a mosaic of relations of this sign to the zodiac, calendar wheels, and the cycles; to fire and the elements, the geometrical figures and numbers; to the constructive symbolisms of the city and the temple, games, theater and circus, and so on–which acquire particular meaning when they are seen at work in our interiority, as they execute a spiral movement that enables us to discern the origin of all manifestation and the possibility of the vertical ascent to the "immanifest" and essential. 

In the third and last part of his book, the author opens with a reference to the cycles and rhythms, the theme of geography and sacred history–which he regards as a "symbolics of the soul of human beings"–and to the notion of the circularity of time and its relation to space, concepts that he joins with that of movement through an intertwining of ideas that bears our mind back to the beginnings, to those mythic regions and dimensions imitated by every particular manifestation in its own way, in which everything would find its raison d'être. The universe, the galaxy, the solar system, the earth, civilizations, man, the cell, the molecule, are perceived as a living being, perfectly concatenated and equilibrated, with the macrocosm and microcosm appearing as an organic, harmonious whole, of which the human being–as intermediary–can acquire awareness, identifying with it. 
  
All of this, which is but the preliminary step to access to the supracosmic, is realized as a genuine memory of Self (of Oneself), thanks to which one recovers the certitude that everything is simultaneous and present–that is, eternal, "because it is happening now in the heart of man." Once these ideas have been expressed, through which a total regeneration of time and space could be realized, and after having announced the advent of a new heaven and earth, crowning the internal transmutation, the author places us–for he knows the traditional data and their proportions and measures–in the historical reality in which we live, joining the voices that from the four cardinal points advise us that this generation will be witness of the end of a cycle (or manvántara), thanks to which completion spatio-temporal limitations will be abolished, yielding to the "second advent, to the liberation" and to the "return to the virgin freshness of our origins." And it is this reality that justifies the fact that this type of traditional literature come to light, expressing as it does ideas that in other times were transmitted orally and in secret to the initiate of the various cultures. 

In the chapter, "Two Halves of the Cosmic Model," the horizontal/vertical interweaving of the warp and woof of the work comes to life when it is referred to the conjunction of opposites and to the laws of analogy, which teach us the perfect union of heaven and earth (spirit/matter) and the role played by the human being as an indispensable element for the realization of this union. The sphere, the wheel, and the circle are here divided into two halves, with special emphasis on the dark, immanifest, invisible, unknown, and secret aspect, which is what profane vision generally ignores and without which the visible manifestation would lack meaning, progressing as it would indefinitely into relativity. We are shown the hierarchy of the states of being and the various levels of understanding of reality, of which this book gives an example available to verification by anyone who would study it thoroughly, since it expresses that type of ideas that, each time they are read or heard, are new again, because they are being understood on a different level. It is precisely thanks to this ritual repetition that they themselves promote, that the appearances of things are pierced, producing true discontinuity among levels. This symbolic literature contains a metalanguage that always contains an occult, mysterious dimension, which could be shared by the attentive reader who would be disposed to realize a true work of self-knowledge. In this sense, there come in for emphasis the visual characteristics of these texts, since these function as authentic promoters of images and visions. These studies end by showing us the impossibility of exhausting a theme that, by its very nature, cannot be exhausted. But as a wheel that contains within itself the potential to generate other manifestations bound to its common center or axis, other viewpoints come to be presented, raising the possibility of further developments that could permit the incarnation of the idea on those capable of reiterating it with regenerative forms. 

The book closes with a beautiful song to love and wisdom, and then offers a selective bibliography that could well be a useful guide for those interested in symbolics at the highest level, those ready to submit to a strict intellectual regimen like the one promoted by the reading of this book. 

We are in the presence of a work that expresses, with beauty and originality, in a language perfectly suited to our spatio-temporal circumstance, subtle and revealing thoughts of the philosophia perennis, woven naturally, harmoniously, and rhythmically throughout these writings. If we open ourselves to them, they will penetrate our interiority with real activity, since they have been chiseled in words that, because they come from the depths of the heart, are capable of being engraved in our own, with all of the power that truth bestows. 

It is my hope that this publisher, whose first effort is in the realization of such a transcendent work, and which announces such an important program of publications, will meet with success in what it proposes to accomplish, establishing a direct, valid, and effective relationship between the reader and the unanimous tradition.  Fernando Trejos