The Meaning of the Hexagon
Posted on June 7, 2017 by imperiumadinfinitum	

The hexagon is the connecting center of universal coherence which ties everything together and links everything back.  It teaches you more the more you look at it and reflect on it.  It’s new mindblowing concepts and thrills and mysteries for those seeking danger, or safe passage home for those seeking a stable center.

The Universal Geometric Average

The hexagon has uncanny properties.

First, it solves the tile problem.  The hexagon is the shape which covers and creates open area the best while minimizing boundary as (humanly) discovered in 1999 by Thomas Hales.  This minimizes the amount of material needed to build these boundaries, hence the use of hexagons by honeybees.

The hexagon is also the compromise between a polygon and a circle, allowing roughly circular tiling while still being a polygon with sides and angles.  This is why cell phone companies use hexagonal “cells” to map and distribute their cell phone towers, arranged similarly to the layout of cities in Settlers of Catan.

cell towers no text

The hexagon is the universal average, and has the best torque for mechanical engineering.

Every polygon has an equilateral form, with the angles equally divided and congruent, but the hexagon is different.  If you add any more sides to a hexagon, it’s more circular than polygonal.  If you subtract any more sides, it’s more polygonal than circular.

This means a hexagon creates best possible torque, which is why you see it used in nuts or the joints of pipes in public toilets and urinals.  (I admit I do sometimes see some eight-sided public toilet pipe joints and it pisses me off.)

urinal joint

A nut, for example, with more than six corners, would more easily slip because its corners’ angles wouldn’t be as hard.  A square nut’s angles would be harder, but there would be less surface area applying force/torque to the nut with four sides versus six.

While this rule technically violates the strict definition of “polygon” – a ten-sided shape, decagon, is still technically a polygon, if you keep adding sides infinitely it just becomes more and more ridiculously like a circle.

hexagonal average

Circles are the shape with all points equally distant from the center, perfectly symmetrical from all angles, most symmetrically load and stress.  So between a three-sided polygon, and an infinite-sided shape (a circle), the six-sided hexagon is the exact middle compromise.

This is also why hexagons are structurally stable – their regularity and evenness of shape allows them to repeat, and their near-circularity allows maximum perfect load distribution.

hexagonal compartments

It may seem more evident to we, who live in artificial human environments, that squares seem equilateral and symmetric enough.  Why don’t they form in nature?  Apparently nature, too, spontaneously recognizes that a hexagon is the exact compromise between the equality of a circle (all points equal distance from the center, perfectly symmetrical from all sides, best distribution of load and stress) and the angles of a polygon: this explanation aligns with the theories and illustrations in this Quora answer, that nature tends toward entropy and spontaneous resting states (circular equality), though the Quora answer still doesn’t really explain why nature might choose a hexagon over a square (connecting three vertices could just circle back around to 90 degree angles, arguably).

hexagon stones

Again, the solution to the tile problem implicitly explains the prevalence in nature, structural stability, and optimal torque of hexagons, without stating it consciously or explicitly: hexagons are the perfect compromise between circularity and angularity.

(Call it Saturn’s Law.)
The hexagon on Saturn?

You may have heard of the red spot on Jupiter, a massive storm.  It’s roughly oval-shaped, which would make sense for a storm or weather pattern.

You may not have heard, however, that on the north pole of Saturn, is a massive hexagonal storm, large enough to fit the planet Earth.

saturn-hexagon-distinct

The associations are powerful.

Saturn is the 6th planet from the Sun, and its hexagonal storm is a 6-sided shape.  Weird coincidence.  It’s also worth noting that Saturn is the Roman god of law enforcement, discipline, order, and structure, as the planet signifies in astrology as well, and it’s notable that such a clearly delineated structure appears on its surface, made of all things out of weather, air and gas – again, Jupiter’s storm pattern is just an ovular blob, like you’d expect: such an ordered, structured shape on the planet of structure and order.

It’s worth noting that only very recently discovered (2015) was a possible, but yet-unconfirmed and fainter hexagon also on the South pole of Neptune (and also a fainter Neptunian ring system like that of Saturn?).  While on the one hand this may (partially) undermine the 6-sided shape, 6th-planet coincidence, it also points to a very odd confluence between a hexagon on the North pole of Saturn, the astrological planet of Matter, and a hexagon on the South pole of Neptune the astrological planet of Spirit, acting as dipole gateways between conceptual counterpoles.

A Symbol of Time

The hexagonal storm is on planet whose Roman god, Saturn, ruled time.  Saturn was a god of agricultural season-keeping.  His Greek counterpart was literally named Kronos or Cronus.

hexagonal clock

The hexagon’s perfect compromise between polygonality and circularity also implies something radical about the nature of time itself: it inherently contains a rhythm of its own interruption, time’s segmentation versus time’s flow.

Because space and time are closely related, time is needed to instantiate anything as real at all.

But reality sucks.  In the world of idea, everything is compatible.  In the world of matter, solid objects collide with and obstruct each other, and certain things just can’t co-exist.   Bummer.  Life is pain, but we need to be alive to feel anything.  This is why reality must occasionally be abolished, through the occasional abolition and interruption of time.

If time is distance, the end of time means everything collapses into one point, and everything is united, which sounds alternately like death, meeting God, ecstatic, or orgiastic, depending on how you interpret it.  Every culture recognized this, one of the most iconic recognitions of this being the holiday Saturnalia.  During Saturnalia, hierarchy was suspended, slaves went free all January, sometimes masters waited on them, and a ceremonial Lord of the Saturnalia was randomly elected to give ridiculous arbitrary commands to send it over the top.
saturnalia_08
losing track of time

This rhythm is built into the seasons, the wheel of the year.  You have spring and fall as change and flow, and summer and winter as opposite forms of the abolition of time, time standing still.

The hexagon’s compromise between polygonality and circularity symbolizes this seasonal compromise and alternation between time flowing, and time abolishing itself, built into the nature and rhythm of time itself.  And yet, time exists in painful quantifiable increments much of the time, which are absolutely necessary, to make us appreciate the party-times when time is abolished.  This necessary alternation between imprisonment and liberation is the nature of time.  Thus the hexagon represents time.

The Hexagon as a Symbol of a Symbolic, Meaningful Universe

First and foremost, the hexagon is a symbol.  Its usual appearance in equilateral, symmetrical form suggests a humanly relatable touch, and its nearness to circularity while still possessing angles make it all the more perfectly emblematic.  It’s a collection of lines, angles, blank and filled space.  It’s aesthetic, geometric.  It’s a nexus at which matter and consciousness converge and intersect.

first order

All symbols are arrangements of some matter, material, or image (and therefore energy) which correspond with an idea, concept, or meaning, and therefore are literally a connecting point between matter and consciousness.

As long as consciousness exists anywhere, the entire universe is suffused with it by the fact that all perceived matter is interpreted by consciousness.  All matter is potentially, and thus inevitably symbolic.

Thus the hexagon is a recursive symbol, a symbol of symbolism, of the universe’s inherently symbolic order.  This serves as a reminder of the inherent mental properties of all matter which allow for the existence of conscious organisms, as described in the Hexagonal Doctrine.

It doesn’t, however, end there.  Symbol is deeply tied with the question of meaning.  (What is a symbol?  A symbol is something that has meaning.  What is meaning?)  The hexagon is not only a symbol that the universe is arranged aesthetically, but also that life itself has meaning.

carl-jung-powerpoint-11-638

The question of existential meaning (what’s the meaning of life, what’s the point of everything?) seems quite answered by the textual or symbolic definition of meaning: one things means another, one thing stands in for another, one thing becomes another, everything is connected, we are all one.  Textual transitive property becomes transubstantiation and transformation, as well as reincarnation.

This parallel came to me quite naturally when looking at the disambiguation page for “meaning” on Wikipedia, which listed symbolic and existential meaning side by side, and so it became clear that one was the answer to the other…I hate to think that it’s been staring us in the face this whole time and we never figured it out just because we never examined our own definitions.

meaning disambiguation

The meaning of meaning is that something stands in for something else, ie interchangeability: of words, of concepts, of things, of people, of souls.  And what’s the point?  Is it an endless chain?  The point is that it encompasses quite everything, infinity.  Yes, it is an endless chain, and rather than that be the problem, it’s the solution, that’s the point.

Finally, where the connection and harmony between things has not yet been established (ie if God does not exist, etc.) the hexagon symbolizes the imperative that this connection must be created by science and force.

The Hexagon is a Symbol of Universal Coherence

The unity of opposites (as I conceive it) is when two opposing forces or concepts find some way, not to compromise, but to actually complement each other or even synthesize and integrate their existence into one coherent entity.

The Universal Coherence is a massive concept in which the unity of opposites is applied to every phenomenon in the universe, which will be covered in more detail elsewhere.

All I will hint here is that many design specialists have noticed the dual nature of hexagons as both natural and artificial, both organic and technological.  Thus hexagons are a symbol of the omnipresence of consciousness and significance distributed throughout the universe, to be posited by rational, logical, natural, technological explanations.  This is to be explained in the doctrine of Universal Coherence.