Sacred Geometry

Ascension Through
Sacred Geometry

Thomas Morton speaks widely on understanding and the application of Sacred Geometry. He talks of how, through utilizing sacred geometry, we can create a vortex of energy that acts as our own inner temple. Upon entering that sacred space in meditation, we can access the deep silence, becoming empowered to recognize lower thoughtforms and ascend in consciousness and being. From there, he teaches, we become alchemists, transmuting intent into physical manifestation.

Sacred geometry involves sacred universal patterns used in the design of everything in our reality, most often seen in sacred architecture and sacred art. The basic belief is that geometry and mathematical ratios, harmonics and proportion are also found in music, light, cosmology. This value system is seen as widespread even in prehistory, a cultural universal of the human condition. It is considered foundational to building sacred structures such as temples, mosques, megaliths, monuments and churches; sacred spaces such as altars, temenoi and tabernacles; meeting places such as sacred groves, village greens and holy wells and the creation of religious art, iconography and using "divine" proportions. Alternatively, sacred geometry based arts may be ephemeral, such as visualization, sandpainting and medicine wheels.

Sacred geometry may be understood as a worldview of pattern recognition, a complex system of religious symbols and structures involving space, time and form. According to this view the basic patterns of existence are perceived as sacred. By connecting with these, a believer contemplates the Great Mysteries, and the Great Design. By studying the nature of these patterns, forms and relationships and their connections, insight may be gained into the mysteries - the laws and lore of the Universe.

The discovery of the relationship of geometry and mathematics to music within the Classical Period is attributed to Pythagoras, who found that a string stopped halfway along its length produced an octave, while a ratio of 3/2 produced a fifth interval and 4/3 produced a fourth. Pythagoreans believed that this gave music powers of healing, as it could "harmonize" the out-of-balance body, and this belief has been revived in modern times. Hans Jenny, a physician who pioneered the study of geometric figures formed by wave interactions and named that study cymatics, is often cited in this context. However, Dr. Jenny did not make healing claims for his work.

Even though Hans Jenny did pioneer cymatics in modern times, the study of geometric relationships to wave interaction (sound) obviously has much older roots (Pythagoras). A work that shows ancient peoples understanding of sacred geometry can be found in Scotland. In the Rosslyn Chapel, Thomas J. Mitchell, and his son, my friend Stuart Mitchell, have has found what he calls "frozen music". Apparently, there are 213 cubes with different symbols that are believed to have musical significance. After 27 years of study and research, Mitchell has found the correct pitches and tonality that matches each symbol on each cube, revealing harmonic and melodic progressions. He has fully discovered the "frozen music", which he has named the Rosslyn Motet, and is set to have it performed in the chapel on May 18, 2007, and June 1, 2007.

At least as late as Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), a belief in the geometric underpinnings of the cosmos persisted among scientists. Kepler explored the ratios of the planetary orbits, at first in two dimensions (having spotted that the ratio of the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn approximate to the in-circle and out-circle of an equilateral triangle). When this did not give him a neat enough outcome, he tried using the Platonic solids. In fact, planetary orbits can be related using two-dimensional geometric figures, but the figures do not occur in a particularly neat order. Even in his own lifetime (with less accurate data than we now possess) Kepler could see that the fit of the Platonic solids was imperfect. However, other geometric configurations are possible.

1) The ancient Greeks assigned various attributes to the Platonic solids and to certain geometrically-derived ratios, investing them with "meaning." For example, the cube symbolized kingship and earthly foundations, while the Golden Section was seen as a dynamic principle embodying philosphy and wisdom. Thus a building dedicated to a god-king might bear traces of cubic geometry, while one dedicated to a heavenly god might have been constructed using Golden Section proportions.

2) When Hindus (ancient and modern) plan to erect any ediface for religious purposes, from a small wayside shrine to an elaborate temple, they first perform a simple geometric construction on the ground, establishing due East and West and constructing a square therefrom. (It's a simple, elegant piece of work, at about the level of high school geometry). Upon this diagram they lay out the entire building. The making of this geometric construction is accomanied by prayers and other religious observances.

3) The Christian religion uses the cross as its major religious emblem, and in geometric terms this was elaborated during the Medieval period to the form of an unfolded cube. Many Gothic cathedrals were built using proportions derived from the geometry inherent in the cube and double-cube; this tradition continues in modern Christian churches to the present time.

4) The ancient Egyptians discovered that regular polygons can be increased while still maintaining the ratio of their sides by the addition of a strictly constructed area (which was later named the "gnomon" by the Greeks); the Egyptians assigned the concept of the ratio-retaining expansion of a rectangular area to the god Osiris, who was, therefore, often shown in ancient Egyptian frescoes seated on a square throne (square= kingship again) in which the original square and its L-shaped gnomon are clearly delineated, but the geometrical construction used to create the gnomon is not shown. It is, in fact, the absense of the attendent arcs and extension lines used in the creation of geometric forms that has led art historians and iconographers such a merry chase through history. It often takes the eye of a geomterician to spot the tell-tale signs of construction.

5) One of the best-known pieces of detective work in this regard was the discovery by Jay Hambidge, an art historian at Yale University during the 1920s, that the spirals on the Ionic column capitals of ancient Greek temples were laid out by the so-called "whirling rectangle" method for creation of a logarithmic spiral. He realized this by examining numerous Ionic capitals in art museums until he located some in which the holes made by the placement of compass points had not been obliterated over time. (One of these capitals was an unfinished, broken piece, dug up from a rubbish heap near a temple -- it had apparently been damaged during manufacture and was discarded; its burial preserved it from the elements, and the marks of the geometeric layout were remarkably clear upon it.) No "sacred meaning" for the log spiral form of the Ionic column capital has been determined from Greek writings, but the use of other log spirals in Greek temple architecture (for instance in floor-block proportions and their placement in relation to overall floor area) indicates that Greek architects, unlike the Romans who came after them, deliberately constructed their temples according to "whirling rectangle" geometeric ratios.