Geometric Design Principles
In his book on Sacred Geometry, Robert Lawlwer has a section entitled "Anthropos" where he introduces anthropomorphism. What that means is that people have a tendency to project human qualities on the world and God. For instance, Creation is imagined to take place in some fashion reflecting human pro-creation involving a man and a woman. The philosophical statement of this is "Man is the Measure".From this is derived the notion of the First or the Cosmic Man who is the human archetype. On the page below, from Lawlwer's book, we see a diagramatic representation of the Cosmic man and an image of the cathedral with a grid drawn over it. It reads that the cathedral symbolizes the Universal or Cosmic man.
![]() Looking closely at the cathedral we note a circle, triangles of different pitches over the entrances, and the triangle on the center line at the top. He begins his grid over the main entrance and follows the slope of that triangle. Also his circles ignore the placement of an existing circle?
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![]() The grid looks like an oblique square of 45 degrees, but when you measure it, it is over 50 degrees. Does that give you any ideas about the small circle at the center? If you need to, back up two pages and look at the 51.5 degree triangles with the small circles inscribed in them. That is the same circle that is tangent to the two diagonals of the upright rectangle touching 60 degrees on the circle. The triangle above the man's head is probably an equilateral triangle. Let's see. Did you notice the 'door' at his feet? Neither did Lawler. As the upright rectangle reminds us of the circle, we try drawing a large circle, centered on the existing circle, and extending to the triangle above the man's head. We choose this circle below which just touches both sides and centers on the circle above the main entrance. Two other equal circles are added.
![]() As you can see, the original circle is positioned to provide us with the 51.5 degree triangle, we just have to figure out exactly which circle it is. We will used the bisected equilateral triangle for that. As you can see below, the triangle at the top is equilateral. Again, the small top triangle locates the top of the circle, and indicates the length of the side of a heptagon for that circle. The bottom edge of the circle locates the base of the 51.5 degree triangle.
![]() John Michell shows these images (below) in New View Over Atlantis, one of which is the Lichfield Cathedral and the other is the Magic Square of Mars. Michell notes that in northern Germany, catherdals were "mostly laid out according to the square of Mars and built of red brick. Lichfield Cathedral is also red, the Matrian colour". Stirling suggests that the Milan cathedral was laid out by the German method, and it uses equilateral triangles.
![]() Stirling mentions Lichfield in The Canon, suggesting that it had once been a geodetic center. Lichfield is in the county of Stafforshire where a large cache of Anglo-Saxon gold has just been unearthed. The 800 pieces are almost all war gear.
![]() A strip of gold bearing a Biblical inscription in Latin is one of the most significant and controversial finds, Staffordshire Council said. One expert believes the lettering dates from the 7th or early 8th centuries, but another is sure it dates from the 8th or 9th centuries.The inscription, misspelled in places, is probably from the Book of Numbers and reads: "Surge domine et dissipentur inimici tui et fugiant qui oderunt te a facie tua," or "Rise up, o Lord, and may thy enemies be dispersed."
![]() I offer this analysis (above) of the Lichfield Cathedral. You can see that the triangle in front is equilateral like Amiens above that. Again we center a circle on the window and extend it to the apex of the triangle. As to his suggestion that cathedral elevations depend on the square of Mars, below you see that the Sigil for Saturn appears to work as well as the image he portrays. The angle in the image below is 72 degrees, while in his image it is closer to 80. 72 relates to the pentagram and the precession of the equinoxes.
![]() You presume that the line drawing that Michell presents relates to the 5x5 magic square of Mars since it is labeled with 25 points, but when you 'connect the dots', making the numbered positions corners, we see a 4x4 square of Jupiter (below). Once again we see two square grids, one right and one diagonal. Here the right squares are half the size of the diagonals ones.
![]() As you can see, the angles in the image are diagonals of a 1x5 rectangle with a tangent of .2, or 11.4 degrees. That makes the base angles 78.6 degrees.
![]() With this image we are back to nested squares which produce the same reductions that the vesica does but by dividing a square in half. Note that this is not the magic square of Mars (yet). This is the basic quadratum form with 1x5 rectangles emphasized. In the quadratum form, these rectangles determine the width of the central circle, which is the second reduction in the triangulum form (the width of the parallel lines in the original image).
![]() As to how these sigils are formed, consider the two images above. You can see that the straight line represents 4, 5 and 6. There are two angles that represent 1,2, 3, and 7, 8, 9. The sigil reresents three number sequences from the magic square of Saturn. If we make the numbered points in the original Lichfield image to be centers of cells in an oblique square, we have the square of Mars.
![]() Continue to a discussion of Michael Schneider's analysis of St John's Cathedral in NYC.
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