Sacred Geometry for Artists, Dreamers, and PhilosophersSecrets of Harmonic Creation
Sacred Geometry for Artists, Dreamers, and Philosophers An illustrated guide to harmonics–the sacred geometry principles that underlie the natural world–and its practical applications. This book Demonstrates how the vesica piscis is a matrix from which ideas and forms emanate, connecting cosmic time cycles, measures of space, and musical tones. It Provides harmonic analyses of ancient sculpture, architecture, the solar system, the Earth-Moon relationship, and the structure of water and waves. Also Explains how to apply sacred geometry to create building floor plans, pottery figures, gardens, and sacred ceremonial spaces.
Introduction:
WE ARE IN THE MIDST OF A REVIVAL of an ancient way of looking at the world as an interlocking system of harmonious numbers. The revelations that result from this perception awaken feelings of wonder in those who care about such things. Why should it surprise us that this is the way things are? Marie-Louise von Franz writes in Number and Time:
We have long known that numbers did not always possess the dry-as-dust abstract quality that characterizes them today. Formerly they were not only something “godlike” but possessed—curiously enough—an all-embracing significance. They did not divide but united two worlds.
When we begin to see in this way it becomes clear that the concept of a meaningless universe in which evolution proceeds blindly from random event to random event is a delusion. This new way of seeing is really very old. It has been called harmonics, which includes the disciplines of number, geometry, music, and cosmology—the quadrivium of the ancient mystery schools. Of great importance to the ancients was the discovery of the numerical ratios that were the basis of musical intervals.
While musicians had intuitively employed these ratios since the beginnings of their art, the practitioners of the harmonic arts realized that such intervals could also be obtained through the integral divisions of the musical string. This discovery of a numerical basis for sensory experience was the beginning of exact science. This science of sound as embodied in the musical scales became the foundation of a musical-numerical conception of nature, which included ideas as diverse as astronomical cycles and the nature of the human soul. The art of geometry was part of this exploration since it could visually portray numbers, just as music could portray them through sound.
In the process of their geometric work it became apparent to the harmonicists that the generated forms had symbolic qualities—that is, they could somehow awaken perceptions about higher realities. For example, the circle seemed to have an affinity with universal cycles and with the infinite, and the square with the earthly and the finite. Thus the circle-in-the-square could represent the human being who was seen as an earthly vessel containing a divine essence. This symbolic character of geometry provides a simple way of contemplating complex ideas and processes, and as such it became an indispensable foundation in the training of both artists and philosophers in the ancient world.
Contents:
- The Field of Harmony
- The Geometry of Time
- Moon and Earth
- The Temple of Water
- Musical Vessels
- The Spiraling Octave
- Harmonic Structures
- The Circle of Resonance
- The Musical Universe
- The Tree of Time
- The Cosmic Flower