The Free Will Paradox

Meditations on the Unicursal Hexagram

This is the symbol of free will. I’ve become very fond of it.

Upon a conic section, place six points anywhere you will. Then connect them in any order you will, one to the next until you have connected the first to the sixth.

No matter how you did so, the pairs of opposing sides — 1st and 4th, 2nd and 5th, 3rd and 6th — will intersect at three points which lie on a straight line.

This sublimely illustrates the nature of human free will and its relationship with destiny.

I have absolute freedom in the placement and connection of the six points, but the outcome — or at least the essential outcome — is fixed. Every sequence of actions I can possibly make will lead to a variant of the same result.

The unicursal hexagram is the simplest depiction of this principle, wherein the three intersections are equidistant and confined within a symmetrical shape.

The six are the days of creation and man made on the sixth. The symbol thus refers to the new reality which is made manifest by every action.

The three, a trinity, symbolize God, and illustrate the manner in which the divine interpenetrates reality and permeates all.

The conic represents causality, depicted in special and general relativity as a “light cone.”

The hexagram is thus a Saturnian motif, symbolizing time and the causal architecture of the universe.

Six and three make nine. One could say therefore, that the hexagram is related to the ninth sephira of Yesod which means “foundation.” Perhaps this suggests that the foundational reality underlying all manifestation and transformation is this paradoxical relationship between the infinitely free will and the infinite inviolability of fate.

There are an infinite number of values between zero and one, but none of them are five. Likewise, you have an infinite number of possible futures, but in none of them is your ultimate purpose unfulfilled.

When the Roman soldiers mock Christ, they dress Him in a royal robe, crown Him and exclaim “Hail, King of the Jews!”

The sign upon the cross reads: “THIS IS JESUS THE KING OF THE JEWS.”

Likewise, the apocalypse of John is rendered only symbolically because there are an infinite number of ways it could unfold, but no way that it could not. Every possible future from the writing of Revelation forward can only culminate in events resembling the ones described therein.

The prophecy is a blurry, composite image of its every possible manifestation.

We must remember that this holds true for all events and actions across all time frames. It is not simply true that every human life will fulfill its telos, but that every hour, every minute, and even every second will do likewise.

This is not to say reality is scripted, however. To put it mythologically: God has crafted reality and every piece of it with infinite foreknowledge. Every detail of every possible course was conceived before the world’s foundation. With your free will, you may choose any corridor through creation that you like, but you cannot make new ones any more than you could, by sheer force of will, break the laws of geometry.

All roads lead to the New Jerusalem.