Sacred Geometry: Art Church at CoSM

[Music] [Music] welcome everyone to qasim's our church on the new moon for those of you who are joining us for the first time qasim stands for chapel of sacred mirrors a radically welcoming interfaith art church where we celebrate art creativity as a spiritual practice and in doing that at our church we discover a subject that's relevant to art and spirituality and that's what we're here to do today and i'm so glad that we have tyler james berger with us and my beloved alex hey thank you alex and allison and welcome to everyone at home looking forward to exploring the subject of sacred geometry today so let's start with what is sacred geometry and why does it matter well as an artist it's one of the ways of really understanding the harmonics of the the body and uh of seeing and examining for their sacred content the primal shapes that were surrounded by every day and plus it's a really fun kind of meditation to do with a compass and straight edge and pencil that people at home can do themselves you know and uh so uh having these supplies nearby might be fun to uh play with yeah it's sacred geometry because uh we imbue it with sacred meaning to each number uh you know and we we uh they they appear in nature these these uh different shapes and patterns appear in nature so uh as a form constant well certainly the circle you've got the primal shape number one you know and uh so this is we see it in the sun the uh the the royal disc that the egyptians celebrated there and it's the earth it's the eye everything is kind of mandalic you know in our universe because of this uh the circularity i think of the eye and so so our sacred kind of structures our earliest kind of stone circles and things like that would directly relate to this sort of primal uh spiritual relationship that we have with this one-sided uh geometric shape you know of the circle and well the circular interconnected uh circles the 13 12 around the outside and the one in the middle is called the flower of life which was seen in the temple of abidos on the wall there embedded in the wall and uh no one knows how old that is it's so old wow well uh yeah they the ancients egyptians and uh greek culture and all the early civilizations uh the hindu culture they each had a sacred geometric kind of uh matrix uh that would underlie both their temples and the temple art the deities and all the drawings of buddha and things like that they were all done according to sacred proportion and likewise the greeks and egyptians had proportional guides regarding their figures that really understood sacred geometry in general and the renaissance embraced sacred geometry they you know the perfection of it finding the perfection is part of the sacredness of geometry yeah well the two-sided sacred geometric shape then would be the vesica pisces and uh this is also the famous birthplace of uh you could take every shape out of the vesica and that's why it's it's uh also an amazing uh kind of shape we've got the two overlapping circles giving us the two-sided sacred geometric form which is also resonant with the yoni and with the divine feminine so it's identified also as a womb shape and a birth birthing kind of uh shape yes you'll see it in the in the entryway of shark cathedral where christ is superimposed on this yoni shape it's like it's like male comes out of female and it's a symbol of the femininity really right but you know you can uh draw like you can so that's the two-sided sacred geometric form the vesica but you can draw the triangle right inside of it it's got an equilateral triangle just by connecting the middle kind of points and then up at the top you connect the two radiuses of the two circles that are overlapping and from there you have the overlapping point yeah on the on the triangle so there you've got the number three shape growing out of number two so number three of course that's the trinity you know and it can symbolize so many different things but as the uh this is the i'd say the primary symbol of mind that's right and it's the primary symbol of flame see uh so the upward pointing uh triangle is also identified with the male principle you know and so the bottom is the earth it's like you know if you're on the earth but you're pointing towards the heavens that's spirituality so triangle is associated with spirituality exactly so that's the uh yeah and of course the pyramids of course uh they they knew what they were doing you know pointing up yeah it was like an antenna almost right but then you have the square four-sided you're the queen of squares and to say that all all sacred geometry exists in nature it would really be little it gets a little difficult with the square there's really a very few uh times that that the square appears in nature one of them is in the eye of a lobster if you look at it on a microscopic level it is gritted but most uh creatures uh eyes are not gridded down you know in the four-sided uh figures so but a square is a symbol of the earth of the material world when i chose the square in my work as a characteristic up to my work it was because i was articulating the essentiality of being an artist which is a person who uses materials in the material world art exists in the material world art does not exist in the mind it has to have evidence art is evidence and intention the intention of the artist but it has to have evidence too you can't have art without evidence so i was making that essentialized world view of art as the square and square works very nicely because it tessellates it fits together close packs very very very well and the diamond and if you put the point of the square on the midpoint of the square underneath it and i've done that in my work where i've diamond over square diamond over square regressing in size on the midpoints very interesting things happen geometrically with that and mathematically because you know every time you you cover over something you're cutting it directly in half yeah and it it's a very interesting sacred geography you've done a lot of paintings with that kind of square root you know yeah yeah well but then after the four-sided figure you have the five-sided figure the pentagon the pentagram uh it's an easy thing to draw you know if you you've got your vesica you know uh you know how to draw that but then uh if you draw a third uh circle on uh that comes from uh the the uh one of the intersections of the vesica like the bottom one you can put your compass point on that spin another circle and now you've got uh three circles now you also want to draw a line uh vertically through the vesica and uh when you do that then you establish uh these uh different intersecting points and by uh making a careful uh line with your your ruler and lining it up you can find the side of the pentagon and notch it in there so the pentagon can come out there and curiously enough uh the hexagon is pretty easy to before we get to the hexagon i just i wanted to say that the pentagon is the five-sided figure but the pentagram of course is the star the five-pointed star is a symbol for human kind they say man but basically two legs two arms and a head that is a symbol for man whereas the square is a symbol for building basically it's like you see it in buildings or or civilization you know where they they cordon off square acres and things like that where the the pentagram is the male or the or the figure human it's human not not male 1 but it's also about regeneration it's about life because the the the star uh if you just draw it you know through the uh precise uh penta pentagram um it will contain the golden ratio inside of each uh line of on your star so the golden cut is inherent in this uh star and that sets off a growth cycle so from the from the uh pentagram or the pentagon you can derive the hexagon yeah yeah and the hexagon is the sec six-sided figure and um what do you want to say about that it's the ultimate architecture of the universe i'd say you know uh the smartest things use the hexagon because the uh the bees of course make uh their their homes out of hexagons and they house their young there and their food and everything uh is is uh hexagonal so it's also the way that carbon molecules packed together to make a diamond you know uh close packed lattices are as tight as you can get and that is the way uh that nature nests and grows you know it is it's a it's a very strong construction the hexagon it's amazing to see bees so naturally manifest this perfect form you know it's not like they're consciously creating that they're just kind of like riding this rhythm into its creation they don't need anybody to show them how they're really amazing well the divine designer this is why we call it sacred geometry you know it's inherent in the in the nature field we see it reflected uh in myriad forms it's a small community it has a community symbolism to it like the unity of community it's like very tight and strong but there are many cathedrals and uh particularly i was thinking the basilica of saint santa maria is um you know has a lot of architecture based on the pentagram and the hexagon both of them the hexagram is a six-sided star so it's a it is the uh star of david and it is the upward pointing uh triangle the lingam and the lower pointing triangle the yoni put together so it's the feminine principle the masculine principle the heaven pointing to heaven the pointing to earth it's that overlaid on top of each other it has a very sacred meaning in many traditions mm-hmm similar to yin and yang exactly it's easy and yang it's exactly in yet yeah so then well after that oh i wanted to also mention that the snowflakes are six-sided i mean how is that possible that every snowflake is six points to it it all they all do but there are some and very few uh like the square there are very few evidences of the seven pointed but there are some and there's you know there's plants plant life that that grows in sevens so there is some heptagons and heptagrams yeah and which is like you were saying that the five is symbolic of the of the human limbs and head and so the seven could be said to be symbolic of angels because it adds wings you know to the limbs and things right so they're often used in that way in various sacred uh structures and uh and so yes the apps of uh chart cathedral actually uses a haptic heptagram you know that's how it it lays out the uh the end where the altar is now the octagon is is a shape that often um i think it's powerful it's a powerful shape probably the most famous octagonal architecture would be the dome of the rock i would say i suppose so but the uh the muslims and islamic architecture that they use the octagon in in the alambra in the alumni they had octagons everywhere you know and uh that was an amazing uh experience of sacred geometry just being surrounded by uh incredible kind of uh forms that had been hand crafted and and remember all of the ornamentation and everything oh my god it was so it was so extraordinary you you had to feel that aliens had to have come down with lasers and created them that perfect and that exquisite and and and the entire work yeah the entire area of alhambra has been uh sort of redone by numerous religions and actually um secular it started secular and it was a palace too well it's a it's like a tourist spot now yeah and uh you were right and we toured there with uh this world famous probably the world's greatest sacred geometer to my knowledge uh keith critchlow who was an architect but he studied the ancient um kinds of ways of making buildings which was all dependent like shark cathedral and like the temples of the various different world cultures they're all dependent on an understanding of sacred geometry so he brought that as an architect back and taught it at the prince's academy in wales and keith had a really great way of breaking it down so he said like like we were saying the circle is the symbol of spirit the square is the symbol of matter so uh we we live in this world where the heaven of spirit and the earth of matter it's like heaven and earth are represented by uh these two forms unconsciously and we have something to bring them together that's the triangle the mind so you have basically a body mind spirit in three shapes now look at churches and you see what he's talking about you've got the square and a lot of churches or sacred places do an arch now what is that so an arch becomes like a square that's the world matter can connecting with the dome of heaven with spirit so uh so immediately we start to see like the reason that they have uh these domes and things like that is that they're trying to bring to mind or immerse the body within a sacred form of this sphere you know and uh so the then then you see the the the point of the triangle so so you see a shape like the the gothic the gothic arch has got it all right so you've got the the the heaven in the in the arch of the circle but then it's kind of pointing up in the center and you've got the mind's influence on the spirit ascending you've got this sense of ascension you know uh and so so these forms that surround us are pregnant with unconscious influence and meaning and it's why i think that uh you know having a meeting in a place where there's a dome gives an entirely different feeling than going through into a place that's compressed with a a squared off or a steeple pointing to heaven exactly these they're i want to honor keith chrislow for another moment by saying that he uh just passed in april just this past april and uh we we brought him to the u.s to consult with us about our temple and he was a brilliant the greatest sacred geometer alive and now he's gone but he wrote many many books and he was uh committed to only being the architect for sacred spaces including sacred hospitals the sai baba hospital and the krishnamurti center and and uh some great spiritual teachers commissioned him to design their temples and i know he wanted to design ours too but he did the earliest dessert earlier he did the earliest designs for the chapel in the meadow yeah well it's great to see some of those shapes in the sacred mirrors room you know because of course the doorway is that classic foundation circle and the upward point in the arch when it came to creating the doors of entheon and the doors of qasim in the city you drew the figures with the father desiderius sacred geometry proportions overlaid on them these kinds of embedded sacred geometric uh forms are ways of thinking about bringing heaven to earth basically you know ways of contemplating these shapes as we draw them and about the uh the meaning that is surrounding us in the petals of flowers and in the various kinds of ways that nature is speaking to us it seems to be a way to build a relationship with the essence of being you know the sacred geometry it seems like it sits at the bottom of everything the psychonauts out there would agree that we see the sacred geometric webs when we journey inside with psychedelics and many people have reported elaborate ornamentation that appears very similar to the temples that we're familiar with with the extraordinary tiling and uh interweaving of of forms and uh so the the webs and geometries spirals and um uh kind of uh vast horizons of geometries that we see there i think are it means that we're deeply wired with these forms well i am so delighted to have this you know we have uh been speaking with david and eloria you know david and lauren they studied at the prince's uh academy of traditional arts that was founded uh one of the founders was keith crichlow and uh they've been they were studying there for two years when they were evacuated because of covid and they made it home they graduated but they did graduate it was right at the end toward their graduation and we did a nice uh discussion with them and asked them to give us a drop on sacred geometry all right now let's check out a clip from alex and allison's recent interview with david heskin and eloria weaver [Music] our next art church is is a subject that is very part of your expertise and so we thought maybe you would have a few things to say about sacred geometry and why is it important and and and why is it important to your work it's a really great question and it's words will only attempt to do justice to an experience keith crichlow like to call geometry the art of the ever true and that geometry is really a shared language among all humans because it is the language of nature it emanates from nature itself herself that quote actually goes back to plato and really sort of looking at perennial wisdom geometry as an expression a flowering of of the ever true through all cultures and all times a circle is a circle no matter where you where you experience it just as a sphere as a sphere and in any dimension so there's a an ability to tap into something eternal that comes through all of us the universal is really uh expressed so succinctly through geometry and i think what what interested uh keith kritslow so much about geometry was just this point and he he went into uh studying islamic geometry because as a culture the ancient geometers in that tradition really explored it and drew it out more than we see in in any other culture that we have current ties to and it's it's not that it belongs to that culture but it's that it's very they expressed it and and celebrated geometry and uh the way i looked at islamic geometry as we we learned it it was sort of like stop frame images of cymatics when we see this sound vibration that sort of ripples through water or sand you get these coherent beautiful imagery i feel like and looking at alice and your work in the background i see that this is sort of this cymatic uh coherence we see uh coherence and we uh we reflect that and we relate to it and it makes us feel whole to be in front of in front of works like that and i think that was really uh just something that this culture explored more than any any other that we that we can point to while still acknowledging geometry doesn't belong to any of us just like the earth doesn't belong to us of course we belong to it so geometry is really this this ideal language we don't see it perfectly in a flower we don't see a perfect pentagon but we see the real striving toward this geometric ideal and keith was really fascinated by the geometry of flowers geometry of flowers and nature he wrote a fantastic large book on that and it's in a way so simple to connect to nature into this ideal spiritual realm if we just acknowledge the patterns and same permaculture is acknowledging patterns as well the work that's happening on your land is is really doing all of this well the interesting thing about geometry if i can get into the metaphoric levels of it a little bit is that all geometry no matter how complex really boils down to a circle and a straight line and every geometric construction no matter how complex um you know from from the simplest forms like the flower of life that the visionary community is so familiar with to the massively complex and ornate constructions that the islamic geometers came up with it's all just a compass and a straight edge and that is the perfect metaphor for the intersection of the human and the divine realms we've got the material plane represented by the straight line and the divine realm wholeness and unity represented by the circle with its point at the center and those those metaphors just continue to unfold and expand and they're very multi-layered and so in every level of a geometric construction as a geometer is practicing this art form we can align our consciousness with those metaphors and understand that what we're doing is happening inside of us as well as outsiders thank you david and eloria that again was a sneak peek to alex and allison's interview with them which will be released on cosmo.tv in the coming week uh something that really stood out to me with what they said was uh what david said about cymatics and how sacred geometry is almost like like a snapshot of a moment and of course cymatics is how the study of how sound interacts with matter you know many people have seen the viral videos of sand on top of a speaker that when you play a certain frequency the sand self organizes into different mandalic structures and to me that's so fascinating because it just shows that not only are these patterns almost like emergent of the laws of physics but they also correlate with certain vibrations you know and i'm wondering like what is the sound of a circle what is the sound of a square do these correlate to the certain primordial sounds like ah and ohm i wonder well of course you know by in yoga you would in tone certain tones that would be resonant with elements as well and uh like rom is like the fire and the solar so in the solar plexus you know you have a rom and so uh you can build those shapes with your imagination but you also due to cymatics any vibration that's going through your body is because we're mostly water i guess is sending some vibration through this uh through our bodies and even uh you know in the mystical experience we have uh not quite cymatics but it's kind of synesthesia when we hear a certain sound that might be translated in our mind's eye into a certain geometric shape so that's another way how we could have sacred geometry correlate with a particular sound that we're experiencing yeah that's it's so fascinating it's completely fascinating and on the micro micro level you've got uh you know inter locking uh you know like we were saying the carbon atoms all hexagonally packed together and things so yeah it's uh it's amazing that you can make shapes with sound and if we knew how to correlate them and what they communicated we might be able to speak with aliens well thank you again to uh david heskin and lauria weaver now alex will teach us how to draw the chasm eye of spirit [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you everyone for being with us for qasim our church and now alex is going to end the program with a few lines relevant lines from the golden notes in art psalms the geometry of beauty is written in the golden ratio the sacred harmonic proportions existent in all living things perfect beauty is a line with the cosmic order and may any merit generated by our gathering here today be offered to the benefit and liberation of all beings hey happy art church happy new moon [Music] [Music] you

Channel: CoSM

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Length: 36min 53sec (2213 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 19 2020