HRH is, in my opinion, a sage and a prophet. He's managed to show how we can fit our human strivings into a conceptual scheme that keeps Mother Nature — the environment — front and center. This is the right way to look at our world because we ourselves are Mother Nature's children.
The Prince's secret lies in understanding the 'way of patterns'.
In his chapter on 'The Golden Thread', Charles shows how patterns imbue all of nature with order. The very same patterns that underpin nature underpin our most glorious architecture. Yet to detect that, you have to know something about 'sacred geometry', which is what the last several posts in this series have attempted to introduce.
For example, a geometric shape made by overlapping two circles so each touches the other's center is called a vesica. The vesica governs much of the magnificent Gothic cathedral at Chartres, France: its floor-plan dimensions and much of its decorative art. This simple shape symbolized harmony in the eyes of the early Greek philosophers. When the early Christians wanted to devise what we would today call a logo, they chose a vesica with its two arcs extended to form a fish with a tail:
The overlapping circles from which the vesica arises can be replicated geometrically into a 'flower of life' and then into a 'fruit of life'. From those two figures may be derived all five of the 'Platonic solids'. Those perfect three-dimensional forms and the two dimensional patterns that beget them exist, often hidden, throughout the natural world. They can be like Easter eggs. If you know how to look for them, they'll pop out at you.
From Geometry to Harmony
Sacred geometry and the numbers underlying its shapes and dimensions are tough subjects to wrap the mind around. Fortunately, the very patterns which sacred geometry extols just so happen to be graven into our souls. We recognize and respond to them subconsciously wherever we encounter hints of them in our world. They secretly inhabit all things we call beautiful.
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| Labyrinth in Chartres Cathedral |
At left is a photo of the labyrinth laid into the floor at Chartres. It fits within a circle, which in sacred geometry represents the primal geometric shape symbolizing unity. The 'flower of life' and 'fruit of life' are figures made entirely of circles.
The Chartres labyrinth has four quadrants. The number 4 represents 'earth' in the way that 3 represents 'heaven'. Walking the labyrinth symbolizes the twists and turns of this earthly life.
Our reward comes when we arrive at the rosette in the center of such a labyrinth, a six-petaled rose-shaped area:
The rose is a sign of beauty and love that dates as far back as the Egyptian myth of Isis. A rosette is akin to the 'seed of life' figure:
The 'seed of life' is a close cousin to the 'flower of life' and 'fruit of life' figures, likewise extolled in sacred geometry.
If you count the rosette at the center as one of the concentric circles, the Chartres labyrinth has 12 circles. 12 is the product of 4, representing 'earth', and 3, representing 'heaven'. In the language of the sacred arts, a figure with twelve concentric circles represents 'creation'.
The rosette and 'seed of life' remind us of how hexagons and six-pointed stars relate to a circle:
The point of looking into all this numerical/geometrical mumbo-jumbo is that not only cathedral architects but also Mother Nature herself reveres such figures as the hexagon, the rosette, and the six-pointed star:
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