The importance of gold for humans derives from the fact that its meaning “is not purely material: it is not only a sign of wealth, power and beauty, but it also has an absolute value.”¹ This absolute value has its cosmic expression in the central position of the sun in the heliocentric universe. Unlike the Aristotelian cosmos, in which the “first mover” lies on the periphery of the universe, the Copernican universe gives the sun the central position “because he is the symbol of God the Father, the source of light and heat, the generator of the force which drives the planets in their orbits, and because a sun-centred universe is geometrically simpler and more satisfactory.”² In fact, in his work Kepler centralizes all the mystical and physical attributes in the sun, which rules over the planets as a king over his domains.

It is not at all strange that when combined with these solar ideas the absolute value of gold becomes the symbol par excellence of sovereignty:

Majesty is elevated by the throne and by wearing a crown or a headdress, suggesting the rayed corona of the sun, or its glinting wings or the all-seeing eye. The ruler possesses the orb and scepter, signifying primacy over the worldly realm, and is cloaked in the jeweled mantle, suggesting the glittering firmament.³

The starry mantle, the orb and the scepter that characterize the sovereign suggest that just as the sun is king and heart of the solar system (1.8), the king’s body comprises the totality of the social body, an idea masterfully represented in the frontispiece of Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan. Over the sovereign’s head there’s a quote from Job: Non est potestas Super Terram quae Comparetur ei. ⁴ There is no power upon earth that can be compared with him.

But if the sovereign acts as the outer limit of the social body without really belonging to it (0.10), it would be the embodiment of Russell’s paradox, “the set of all the sets that do not contain themselves as members.” Sovereign exception could be understood as an extension of set theory.

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1. Diccionario crítico de esoterismo Akal, Vol II, 1243. ↩︎
2. Arthur Koestler, The Sleepwalkers, 263. ↩︎
3. The Book of Symbols, 470. ↩︎
4. 41:24, Biblia Sacra Vulgata. ↩︎