32 Some SACRED GEOMETRY (6)

Five is the number of man in action in the world: five fingers on each hand, five senses (touch, taste, smell, hearing and sight), five members (two arms, two legs and the head), the “five pointed star” or pentagram inscribed in a pentagon by connecting its angles, man as the microcosm. One can be seen as the child in the womb, undifferentiated; two as birth, the child coming into the world, the first differentiation; three as the relation with the mother in the new environment; four as the relation with the father, the mother and the environment; five as the first development of the four functions of the psyche.

Kore and her apple

To Pythagorean mystics the pentagram was the symbol of spirit over matter, showing the ‘accomplished’ adult, able to balance his four elements: sensations, thoughts, feelings and intuitions. The pentagram appears in the earliest writings of Mesopotamia around 3000 BCE. Some authors think that the pentagram originated as a symbol of the goddess Kore. Her sacred fruit is the apple, and indeed, when an apple is cut through horizontally, both halves show a pentagram shape at the core, with each point containing a seed. Kore represents the female spirit of the universe. 

The geometric proportions of the pentagram are those of the Golden Ratio (F Phi, 1.618) or Golden Mean. This ratio also forms the foundation of the Fibonacci series of numbers 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144..., where each number is formed by adding the previous two numbers. The Golden Ratio and the Fibonacci series are found everywhere in nature, from the human body to the spiral of our galaxy, and in everything in between. It seems to be the ratio of creation. It’s inside us, in our minds and bodies, and outside us, in everything existing.

Construction and proportion of the golden ratio

The golden ratio is also the most pleasing proportion to the eye. Shapes that resemble the golden ratio facilitate the scanning of images and their transmission through the vision organs to the brain. When we see the proportions in the golden ratio, we feel ‘pleasure’, and we call it beauty. No wonder the proportion is called 'sacred' and 'golden'. Man uses it in all the places and buildings where he celebrates his unity with the rest of the universe.

The stone circle on Borrowston Rig, Lauder, Scotland, consists of two intertwined circles of different sizes, as measured by Alexander Thom. He concluded that geometry has been used in the design of most megalithic sites. The overall area encompassed by the Borrowston Rig is some 48m x 41m. There are around 30 stones, none of them reaches more than 0.60m high. The Golden Section, the ratio 1.618, can be clearly seen in the lines A-B and B-C.

The ground plan of the church of the little village of Méolans, Haute Provence, France, shows the golden rectangle, golden triangles, the square and the equilateral triangle.

A few ‘golden ratio lines’ on the western façade of the Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral.

Northern rose window of Amiens cathedral

Laon cathedral 'analyzed'

Golden ratio inside a sunflower