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Sacred Geometry



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The Curves of Life: Being an Account of Spiral Formations
and Their Application to Growth in Nature, to Science and to Art;
with special reference to the Manuscripts of Leonardo da Vinci"
Theodore Andrea Cook (1914) 479pages

In The Curves of Life, Sir Theodore A. Cook (1867-1928), English author and editor, finds that the spiral or helix may lie at the core of life's first principle - that of growth. The spiral is fundamental to the structure of plants, shells, and the human body; to the periodicity of atomic elements and to an animal's horns; to microscopic DNA (the double helix) and to the Andromeda nebula. The spiral is a key to understanding organic nature, and perhaps to the living creations of the human mind. With 426 illustrations. (Dover,1979)



The Geometry of Art and Life
Matila Ghyka (1946) 174pages

Beginning with ideas from Plato, Pythagoras, Archimedes, Ockham, Kepler, and others, the author explores the outlines of an abstract science of space, which includes a theory of proportions, an examination of the "golden section," a study of regular and semi-regular polyhedra, and the interlinking of these various shapes and forms. He then traces the transmission of this spatial science through the Pythagorean tradition and neo-Pythagoreanism, Greek and Gothic canons of proportion, the Kabbala, Masonic traditions and symbols, and modern applications in architecture, painting and decorative art. The ample illustrations and figures give concrete examples of the author's analysis: the Great Pyramid and tomb of Ramses IV, the Partheon, Renaissance paintings and architecture, the work of Seurat, Le Corbusier, and flowers, shells, marine life, the human face, and much more. (Dover,1977)



Gothic High: Meditations on the Construction of Gothic Cathedrals
Goldian Vandenbroeck (1992)

Ever since they were first built, the great medieval cathedrals of Europe have inspired successive generations of pilgrims, worshippers, and casual visitors. Everyone who steps into these monuments of wisdom is touched and taught by their presence. Art historians and mystics alike have always read them as texts - as metaphysics and cosmologies in stone. Gothic High goes the other way and creates a text that is a cathedral. In this remarkable, fully illustrated work, Goldian VandenBroeck has concentrated on the cathedrals as buildings. The sonnet, that most structural form, is chosen to express these meditations. Reading these words - laid down like stones - in light of their matching images, we are able to enter not only the spirit of the builders but the very processes whereby the buildings, stone by stone, erect their meaning and philosophy. (Lindisfarne Press)



Labyrinths: Ancient Myths & Modern Uses
Sic Lonegren (1991/1996) 154pages

The story of mazes and labyrinths is as long and tortuous as their plans suggest. Mention mazes and most people think of Hampton Court or some other famous hedge maze. Mention labyrinths and some people recall the legend of Theseus and the Minotaur. Fewer still will know the labyrinth symbol which occurs around the world in different cultures, at different points in time, in places as diverse as Peru, Arizona, Iceland, Crete, Egypt, India and Sumatra. This symbols and its family of derivatives has been traced back over 3500 years; its origins are still mysterious. .../ And how does a precise and intricate symbol like the labyrinth travel unchanged over such distances and through thousands of years? One of the key is its method of construction - as simple as the design appear complex. A process which, once learnt, allows its faithful reproduction over and over again. And this provide a "clew" to the universal fascination - a simple test of skill which provides a path for the eye or the feet to follow, an exercise for mind or body. Learn this process and you will be provided with an insight - a map of the path ahead - into the labyrinth that is life itself. More importantly, some will argue, it provides a chance to partake in the unicursal ritual that has survived unchanged for thousands of years: a chance to feel the lure of the labyrinth for yourself. - from the 1991 Foreword by Jeff Saward (Gothic Image)



Mystic Spiral: The Journey of the Soul
Jill Purce (1974) 128pages

The spiral is the natural form of growth, and has become, in every culture and in every age, man's symbol of the progress of the soul towards eternal life. As the inward-winding labyrinth, it constitutes the hero's journey to the still centre where the secret of life is found. As the spherical vortex, spiralling through its own centre, it combines the inward and outward directions of movement. In this original and engrossing book, Jill Purce traces the significance of one of man's central symbols from the double spirals of Stone Age art and the interlocking spirals of the Chinese Yin Yang symbol to the whorls of Celtic crosses, Maori tattoos and the Islamic arabesque. many of the superb image here were intended as objects of contemplation; for the spiral is a cosmic symbol. A title in the Art and Imagination series, with 174 illustrations, 32 in colour. (Thames & Hudson,199 )



Oxford: An Architectural Guide
Geoffrey Tyack (1998) 370pages

A richly illustrated guide to the glories of Oxford's architecture from the eleventh century to the present day. Arranged chronologically and with a particular emphasis on what the visitor can actually see, with suggested walks around Oxford and its environs, this book is an ideal companion for the city's visitors and an excellent reference book for architectural enthusiasts. Over 200 photographs, maps, and plans. Includes four architectural walks. (Oxford University Press)



The Poetics of Gardens
Charles W. Moore, William J. Mitchell, & William Turnbull, Jr. (1988) 258pages

We begin by exploring those qualities of a place that create the promise of a garden...we go on to consider the acts that make a garden: molding the earth, defining and connecting spaces with walls and ceilings and paths and monuments, irrigating, planting and tending, weaving patterns of recollection with names and images and souvenirs, and possessing the place by rituals of habitation...Next we present a score of landscapes and gardens, not just as a bouquet of pleasures but as sources, lodes to be mined for materials, shapes, relationships, and ideas. This is the heart of the book; we draw each place carefully (mostly in large axonometrics), guide you through it, tell something of its history, and examine the most important patterns and ideas that it contributes to the lore of gardens...our examples range from ancient Rome to modern England, from the court of Ch'ien Lung to the Magical Kingdom of Walt Disney, from monasteries high in the Himalayas to convict settlements on the shores of Botany Bay. Finally, we examine the transplantation and adaptation of the great garden traditions of the past to North American soil. - from the authors' Preface (MIT Press,1995)



The Power of Limits: Proportional Harmonies in Nature, Art, and Architecture
Gyorgy Doczi (1981) 150pages

This book searches for some of the basic pattern-forming processes that, operating within strict limits, create limitless varieties of shapes and harmonies. It is an interdisciplinary venture into the no-man's-land between the borders of science, art, philosophy, and religion.../ In all realms of our experience, we are finding the need to rediscover proper proportions. The proportions of nature, art, and architecture can help us in this effort, for these proportions are shared limitations that create harmonious relationships out of differences. Thus they teach us that limitations are not just restrictive, but they also are creative. / It is not an accident that an architect should be writing such a book, for it is the business of architects to work with proportions. This architect is old. It took him a lifetime to attempt to answer the questions he asked as a child. These answers may not satisfied the experts, and they won't still the curiosity of a single child, but they might lead to further, perhaps more fruitful questions about the puzzles and beauties hidden in the patterns and proportions of this world. - from the author's Preface ( Shambhala)



Rose Windows
Painton Cowen (1979) 144pages

The rose windows of the churches of Western Europe are among the most spectacular and beautiful creations of the human mind. Painton Cowen shows that the rose window evolved to answer a perennial human need for a symbol of divine and cosmic unity. He traces its origins in the simple oculus or round aperture, its identification with the Wheel of Fortune in Romanesque art, and its flowering in the twelfth-century renaissance that produced the Great Gothic cathedrals. Their builders incorporated an ever-growing complexity of geometrical relationships and theological conceptions into the layout of these vast concentric patterns, which came to serve as mandalas, healing images of order in a chaotic world. A title in the Art and Imagination series, with 141 illustrations, 59 in colour. (Thames & Hudson,1992)



Sacred Geometry: Philosophy and Practice
Robert Lawlor (1982/1997) 112pages

This is an introduction to the geometry which underlies the structure of the universe. The thinkers of Ancient Egypt, Greece and India recognized that numbers governed much of what they saw in their world and hence provided an approach to its divine creator. Robert Lawlor sets out the system that determines the dimension and the form of both man-made and natural structures, from Gothic cathedrals to flowers, from music to the human body. By also involving the reader in practical experiments, he leads with ease from simple principles to a grasp of the logarithmic spiral, the Golden Proportion, the squaring of the circle and other ubiquitous ratios and proportions. A title in the Art and Imagination series, with 202 illustrations and diagrams. 56 in colors. (Thames & Hudson)





Sensitive Chaos: The Creation of Flowing Forms in Water and Air
Theodor Schwenk (1965) 88pages

Man's relationship to water has changed completely during the last few centuries. Men gradually lost the knowledge and experience of the spiritual nature of water, until at last they came to treat it merely a a substance and a means of transmitting energy. At the beginning of the technical age, a few people in their inspired consciousness were still able to feel that the elements were filled with spiritual beings. People experienced the fluid element to be the universal element, not yet solidified but remaining open to outside influences, the unformed, indeterminate element, ready to receive definite form; they knew it as the "sensitive chaos" (Novalis, Fragmente). This book is intended as a contribution towards this kind of recognition of the nature of fluid elements. It is concerned mainly with water, the representative of all that is liquid in animate and inanimate nature, and also with streaming air. This book is based on scientific observations of water and air but above all on the spiritual science of Rudolf Steiner. - from the author's Foreword (Rudolf Steiner Press,1990)



Snow Crystals: 2453 illustrations as photographed by W.A.Bentley
W.A. Bentley and W.J. Humphreys (1931/1962)

For almost half a century, Bentley caught and photographed thousands of snow flakes in his workshop at Jericho, Vermont, and made available to scientists and art instructors samples of his remarkable work. In 1931, the American Meteorological Society gathered together the best of these photomicrographs, plus some slides of frost, glaze, dew on vegetation and spider webs, sleet, and soft hail, and a text by W.J. Humphreys, and had them published. This book is here reproduced, unaltered and unabridged. The introductory text covers the technique of photographing snow crystals, classification, the fundamentals of cyrstallography, and markings. There are also brief discussions of the nature and cause of ice flowers, windowpane frost, dew, rime, sleet, and graupel. (Dover)



The Stones of Time: Calendars, Sundials, and Stone Chambers of Ancient Ireland
Martin Brennan (1994) 216pages

Older than the pyramids and predating Stonehenge by at least a thousand years, the stone complexes of ancient Ireland have been extensively excavated and studied, yet they have refused to give up their mystery...Through a combination of careful observation, analysis of the astronomical alignment of the sites, and insightful interpretation of the megalithic symbols and carvings, Brennan argues that the mounds and art are interconnected, sophisticated calendar devices. At critical times of the year, the rising or setting sun projects beams of light into the inner chambers of the mounds, illuminating specific images carved on the stones. Those images - seemingly abstract wheels, spirals, and wavy lines - suggest provocative new insights into their makers' understanding of celestial cycles and the importance of those cycles in human affairs. (Inner Traditons)



The Temple: Meeting Place of Heaven and Earth
John M. Lundquist (1993) 96pages

The idea of the temple - the holy precinct, the meeting place of God and man - is central to all religions. John Lundquist follows it back into the darkness of prehistory, unveiling features that are common to ancient Mesopotamian and Egyptian beliefs, Hinduism, Buddhism, Maya and Aztec cults, Islam, Judaism and Christianity; showing examples such as Borobudur, Angkor Wat and the biblical Temple of Solomon. The place of ritual and initiation, the mountain, the waters of generation, the pillars joining heaven, earth and the underworld, the path to the innermost sanctuary: these concepts are universal and eternal. They appear in sacred texts and works of art from every time and place, and in the unconscious minds of us all. A title in the Art and Imagination series, with 130 illustrations, 15 in colour. (Thames & Hudson)



The Temple in Man: Sacred Architecture and the Perfect Man
R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz (1949) 132 pages

The purpose of this book is to present indisputable evidence that a symbolic directive was operative in the architecture of the Temple of Luxor...The Temple is indisputably devoted to the Human Microcosm. The consecration is not merely a simple attribution: the entire temple becomes a book explaining the secret functions of the organs and nerve centers. - from the author's Preface & Introduction The Temple of Man leaves us with a single, enduring message: the inevitable resurrection of the spiritual essence which has involved itself in matter in the form of organic creative energy. This resurrection depends upon the transformation of the material universe - or to express the idea more as Egypt left it imprinted in the stones of Luxor: the birth of divine man (symbolized by the pharaoh) depends upon the transformation of the universal mother (materia prima). This transformation was considered the sole cosmic goal. Every human birth participates in this alchemy, either in an awakened manner through the intentional perfecting and expression of one's higher nature, or unawakened, through the tumult and suffering of karmic experience leading eventually to a spiritual self-awareness, the temple in man. - from the Translator's Foreword by Robert Lawlor (Inner Traditions,1977)



The Temple in the House: Finding the Sacred in Everyday Architecture
Anthony Lawlor (1994) 226pages

Finding sacredness in common places is the subject of this book. its goal is to reveal the temple of inspiration and renewal that is hidden within the walls of your house and city. You enter this temple by discovering a new way of seeing, one that reconnects the needs of your soul with the building and landscape that shelter you...The following pages offer a glimpse into the heart of the world by providing stepping-stones through the borderland of spirit and matter. They invite you to discover threads of wholeness that are personally significant, explore new places that can awaken memories of the soul's ancient roots, and experience familiar settings from a perspective that allows them to glow with new life. Traveling through subtler regions of seeing and creating, the everyday becomes sacred. (J.P.Tarcher/Putnam)



The Web in the Sea: Jung, Sophia, and the Geometry of the Soul
Alice O. Howell (1993) 284pages

Geometry is hidden in the symbolism of all religions. In this magical book, Alice O. Howell weaves a ramble on the sacred isle of Iona with a meditation on the geometrical forms we encounter everyday. With the mediating help of Sophia, the divine feminine principle of wisdom, she shows how we can decide the inner meaning of shapes, numbers, and other symbols through intuition, to enrich our experience of living and deepen our appreciation of the mystery of form. A companion to The Dove in the Stone, the book is illustrated with fifty line drawings and figures and includes an entertaining workbook - Sophia's Mondayschool - with exercises guiding readers in exploring for themselves the mysteries of sacred geometry. (Quest Books )


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