Sacred Cephalopods

Among many natural creations, the Nautilus shell is a perfect example of Sacred Geometry.  Funny enough, my best friend placed one of these fossilized cephalopods in my hand one day when we were visiting in her garden.  “Wow!” I said to her, “it’s…perfectly…beautiful” as I cradled the crusty little creature in my hands.  Little did she know that I was going through some unrelated inner turmoil at the time when she offered me the perfect gift.  A tiny piece of solace.  A piece of God.  In theory, if we are to understand and appreciate Sacred Geometry, we are said to be brought closer to God.  Once again, the Universe was speaking to me in a very soft whisper, but it was speaking to me nonetheless.

“So what is so sacred about a few geometric shapes?” you may ask.  The sacredness of the geometry refers to the cultural symbolism attached to the mathematical proportions given to either a natural object such as nautilus shell or to human-made objects or drawings such as that of a Buddha sculpture or the Vitruvian Man.  Another name for this divine proportion is the Golden Ratio (aka Sectio divina, Golden proportion, Golden mean, Divine proportion) – a mathematical proportion ascribing the most aesthetically pleasing proportions to a building (ie. the Roman Colosseum) or structure (ie. Stonehenge).  Essentially, in it’s purest form, the ratio is consistently described in specific proportions with the common resulting product called the Fibonacci Number (1.618 033 988 749 894 848).  Woohoo!  Math.  My worst subject….[and I thought art class exempted me from algebra].  Math geeks see here. [ps. geeks are cool, that was not an insult].

As an artist, I am still struggling with the proportions of this divine aesthetic.  Obviously, I don’t get too hung up on the Fibonacci Number itself because it best describes the proportion of aesthetically pleasing ratios in mathematical form.  If you are interested in viewing some great examples of the Golden Ratio in art, you should visit this site.  Of course, there are variations on the theme and usage of the Golden Ratio, but the most common result of using the proportion is a very aesthetically pleasing piece of artwork.  In nature, you can see this pattern emerging in such humble things as pinecones, sunflowers, and believe it or not, the cochlea of the human ear [I struggled to find a good picture of a cochlea to no avail, but believe me, it is a piece of spiral genius!].  This shouldn’t be surprising however, since the Fibonacci sequence is nature’s way of seeking order in chaos [maybe The Librarian can apply this alchemy to my wasteland of a library and construct some spiral bookcases for better organisation!]. 

Considering all of this beauty, it is no wonder that Nature is the most prolific Muse for musicians, artists, poets and the like.  As sentient products of Nature, humankind developed culture and language, thus weaving natural chaos into a spiralling order of consciousness [this certainly keeps the social and natural scientists busy writing journals!].  Regardless, this is our Fibonacci reality – a reality stemming from a brewing cocktail of spiralling DNA.

[speaking of cocktails…..it’s Friday!!!!!].

Cheers,

-Poseidon’s Muse