The Divine Fire
The Logos is the fundamental rational order by which all things unfold, but what happens when that commences? When the 'Word' is carried out - when the program runs - what unfolds?1
As each effect is the cause of the next, a chain of events transpires, and their results become numerous, overlapping and interacting with one another2. The diversity and activity from the Logos brings about mutually exclusive phenomena. We might think of these as polarities, or opposites3. And, through the interplay of these opposing events we get tension and conflict. Natural selection in biology is just one of the higher order manifestations of this more general principle, which manifests all the way back to whatever fundamental constituents make up the world.
That maelstrom of unceasing activity operates on all scales and moves through and in all things. It is both a destructive and creative Force. This is also not unlike the Eastern notion of Qi flowing through all things - the 'breath of the universe'. It is chaotic at first, but it is the chaos from which form arises. What we understand today as the interactions of matter and energy within spacetime, Heraclitus conceived of as being like a fire. But unlike conventional destructive fire, he thought of this activity as a constructive fire (pur technikon) - a creative, everliving fire.
He described its activity as like a kindling on a (conventional) fire. If you've ever watched the irregular glowing orange lines run their course over the intricate patterns in a burning log, you would get the idea. Another example today are the sometimes mesmerizing fractal-based moving geometric patterns in computer screen music visualizers. These are abstractions that help describe what this continuous activity in the universe is like4.
This is not to propose some extra phenomena than what can be found in science books. This is not something to believe or disbelieve. Rather, it is to describe important and incredible movements and activity of matter and energy in all its forms. It is an abstraction of patterns and movement found common in many instances, but divorced from any one instance or example of it.
The grand flux of it should inspire awe and wonder, as it did for the Stoics and many others. It is this activity out of which all things come. In that sense it is also primal to our flourishing, for it is primal to our well-being, and therefore worthy of being 'set apart' for special reverence (sacred). It is this numinous quality for which it is called the Divine Fire.