One
From out of the void comes one. This is the monad, the Godhead, all that is rather than all that could be, opening His eye to the nothingness and speaking the words “I am” into the void.
The first sign of the zodiac is Aries, the ram. Aries is the cardinal fire sign, the first spark from with the darkness. Aries rules the head, the centre of our conscious being. It is the spark of consciousness that first enters into existence, and it is its own existence that it first observes. Aries is the sign of Mars, the god of action and desire, acting on feeling and instinct without thought or reason. It also represents the sun, which is exalted in Aries, which is the conscious self. One is your conscious side, zero your unconscious. This pattern holds true throughout the remaining numbers, the odd, masculine numbers being conscious and the even, feminine numbers being unconscious. The former being everything that one identifies as self, while the latter is everything else, from the unconscious parts of one’s own body and mind, to everything external to them as well. That which we identify as other is as much a part of the self as one’s own dreams or one’s unconscious bodily functions, and all is a reflection of the conscious self, or a shadow cast by its light, or perhaps vice-versa.
Where zero is cyclical, one is linear, stretching out eternally before itself and reaching eternally behind. One is the source of all activity in the world, turning the infinite potential of the void into actuality. He sits upon her endless waves, moving by her motions, being swayed, unknowingly, this way and that in their cosmic dance. One appears to be traveling in a straight line but really it is a mobius strip of infinite proportions, leading back to where it started, but with such a journey ahead of it that it may never reach there. This is the symbol of infinity, the state of one and zero undivided.
The symbol for Aries resemble the horns of a ram, the patron animal of the sign, but there is further meaning to this symbol, relating to the sign’s numerological position. If zero is the zygote of existence, the symbol of Aries represents the point at which the zygote begins to split into two. It is the point before the divide where the split itself takes form. Like the spark this is not a stable state, and it is sure not to last, but it sets in motion the process of creation from which all else is born. And of course one does not perish as it becomes two, for it remains part of every subsequent number, coming to rest with its feminine counterpart with every even number, then lurching ahead again in its masculine form.
Just as all exists within the void, all is one in the monad. The two are eternal partners at the core of all existence, two sides of the same coin. They are one and the same, indistinguishable and inseparable, beyond the realm of dualities in which we reside, but we cannot help to impose our limitations on our understanding of them. They are beyond gender, beyond morality, unbothered by the cruelty and sufferings that exists in the world, nor tempted by its many pleasures. They form the darkest reaches of the psyche, our true essence behind the many veils of identity and illusion. They can be experienced but they are unknowable, as knowledge works through distinction and definition. In their true state there is nothing distinct, nothing defined. All that can be brought back from their experience are impressions, which are necessarily confined to the preconceptions of the individual mind, its residing culture, its tendencies and dispositions and so on.