VI.1919.19 — The Axis

Prism of six faces with pyramidal termination, black stone, engraved and gold-filled with paired triangular devices within lozenge borders and planetary characters. H. 460 mm. English, c. 1850–1890.

Provenance: Stood at the centre of the Table of the Gates (Order inventory, 1871: “the Axis, about which the Gates are set”); the 1919 Deposit.

The Table of the Gates reconstruction with the black faceted prism of the Axis at its centre. — VI.1919.19 at the centre of the Table of the Gates reconstruction.

Note. The Order's late documents assign the Axis no tutelary power of its own, describing it only as “that which the seven surround.” The Institute notes that the object is the only piece of the Table whose engraving contains no deviation from its exemplars, and offers no opinion as to why.

The offices of the vigil week — the Lamps, the Ashes, the Bells, the Door, the Book, the Well, the Fire — appear in the Order's papers only in fragments; no complete assignment to the seven gates survives.

One reader of the Table proposed that the Axis's smear is no accident of wear but an address — legible, he claimed, only from where the seventh face watches. The Institute's photographs, taken face-on, show nothing.

Interactive object record

The record is being prepared…

Interactive record. Drag to turn the prism. Raking light: . The Trustees ask that researchers who believe they have understood the mechanism notify the Keeper.