In Solaria’s symbolic system there are seven fundamental elements: space, time, matter, energy, light, information and consciousness. They form the reference structure to which the island’s seven territories, the seven meridians and the seven notes of a scale are connected.
The five natural elements
Four elements describe physical reality and are arranged in two pairs: space and time, matter and energy. To these is added light, the fifth element, which coincides with none of the other four but places them in relation to one another.
The four physical elements, arranged on two axes: space and time, matter and energy.
Light, in fact, is neither matter nor energy: it is a field whose energy propagates, just as the force of waves does not coincide with the sea that carries it. At the same time it marks the boundary between what is matter and what is not, and structures the relationship between space and time. For this reason it takes on the role of quintessence: the principle that holds the other four elements together, and from which the island takes its own name.
Information and consciousness
The five natural elements, however, do not contain two realities that are decisive for human experience: information and consciousness.
Information is the message, the meaning: a set of inert signs that hold the possibility of becoming sounds, gestures, forms, emotions. Consciousness, on the other hand, is what receives, understands and interprets that message.
One makes no sense without the other: there is no information without someone to decipher it, no consciousness without something to understand. Together they form the deep dialogue between reality and those who inhabit it, between subject and object; and since the observer is part of the observed world, the universe itself becomes a subject that, through consciousness, recognizes itself.
Information and consciousness are therefore not two elements alongside the others, but the dimension of meaning through which the other five become intelligible.
The three axes of reality
From the intertwining of the three axes — space-time, matter-energy, consciousness-information — a three-dimensional cross takes shape, with light at the center as the principle connecting the other six elements.
The three axes of reality — space-time, matter-energy, consciousness-information — with light at the point where they intersect.
| Axis | Poles |
|---|---|
| First axis | space – time |
| Second axis | matter – energy |
| Third axis | consciousness – information |
| Center | light |
This cross translates into a musical object on which the seven notes of a scale are placed, and into the very shape of the island: its vertices and its central point recall the seven elements.
Elements and territories
Solaria’s seven territories correspond to the seven elements, though not directly.
The five central nations symbolize the natural elements; the two minor islands, detached from the mainland, represent consciousness and information; Altaluna, on the central plateau, symbolizes light, since it is the place where solar rays are received and reflected.
The cross of the three axes superimposed on the island: Altaluna at the center, the five continental regions on the arms, and the two minor islands at the extremes of the consciousness-information axis.
Eos deserves a clarification: as an element it is information, the message that comes toward consciousness; as a territory it is art, that is, the synthesis of all the nations of the continent. The two aspects coincide, because the work is at once what gathers the five spheres of human activity into a single form and what, once completed, returns to consciousness as a question.
The precise correspondence, however, passes through the capitals: each city embodies one of the two polarities of an element, and the two polarities of the same element always belong to opposite nations, joined by a meridian.
| Element | Southern pole | Northern pole |
|---|---|---|
| Space | Gea, the microcosm | Mugen, the macrocosm |
| Matter | Prahna, the essence | Nexus, the form |
| Energy | Yantra, the act | Qo, the potentiality |
| Time | Sankofa, the past | Amal, the future |
| Light | Nuru, the radiated light | Qamar, the reflected light |
| Consciousness | Alma | |
| Information | Ruah |
The five pairs of polarities are the same ones that the sigma chord articulates within itself: one pole for each element, with a single note placed in the opposite polarity. The two complementary sigma chords, set a tritone apart, together present both polarities of all five natural elements, just as Solaria’s two coalitions together present both ways of inhabiting the world. See Tritone and the Sigma Chord.
Seven and twelve
The seven elements belong to the same numerical structure that governs the numerical system, the measurement of time and the Solarian cycle of life: seven as the cycle, twelve as its internal articulation. Seven are the elements, the territories and the meridians; twelve are the capitals and the notes of the chromatic total.
Related entries
Light
Symbolic Meridians
Symbolic Geography
Eighty-Four
Chromatic Total and the Cycle of Fifths
Tritone
The Seven Nations
The Twelve Capitals