The Pattern

It is common for traditional creation myths to assert that the Creator of the World first laid dowm a pattern of number, from which all else proceeded. Number is always regarded as the first archetype or paradigm of Nature. The most highly regarded studies in the ancient world were those that pertained to mathematics, and ancient philosphers sought out patterns in number corresponding to those in nature, and sought to set them up 'as models in human affairs'.

In Exodus, the Lord speaks to Moses about creating him a sanctuary saying, "Let them make me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them. According to all that I shew thee, after the pattern of the tabernacle, and the pattern of all the instruments thereof. And look that thou make them after their pattern, which was shewed thee in the mount". This is saying that the tabernacle mas been modeled on a pattern that was shown.

Hebrews 8 There are priests that offer gifts according to the law, Who serve unto the example and shadow of heavenly things, as Moses was admonished of God when he was about to make the tabernacle; See that thou make all things according to the pattern shewed to thee in the mount.

Hebrews 9 Almost all things are by the law purged with blood; without shedding of blood is no remission. It was therefore necessary that the patterns of things in the heavens should be purified with these; but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself.

Note the distinction being made between the heavenly things themselves and the patterns of the things in heaven, and between heaven itself and the holy places made by hand (temples) which are but figures of the true. Note especially that the pattern was shown 'in' the mount, not on it. The pattern is in the mount(ain).

Peter Tompkins suggests that the Great Pyramid is a scale model of the earth showing the terrestrial scale, with the base length equaling one eighth of a second of arc, and the apothem equaling one tenth of a second. Alvarez Lopez figures the height of the Pyramid to be one millionth part of the distance to the sun, and its base area to be one ten thousandth part of the surface of the earth. According to Lopez, the inner and outer dimensions of the coffer in the King's Chamber form a perfect 'astronomical atlas' and represent various astronomical constants of the solar system.

Michell writes that. "As the dimensions of the Great Pyramid are multiplied by ratios of the ancient number canon they expand to frame the dimensions of the earth, and it is possible that they could have been taken further to represent the dimensions of the grand orb (the circle described by the earth's path around the sun), planetary intervals and the measurements of time", which is what Tompkins spells out in his book.

Bromwell suggests that the stone of foundation of the Holy of Holies in the Temple and the Master Mason's symbolic floor is 1/25 the area of the master's floor with the border, and 1/16 the area of the floor with in the border. That is, the inner area is 16 squares the size of the foundation stone, and the complete floor is 25 of them. The border is 1/2 block wide. The Master's floor represents symbolically the area between 31 degrees north and south of the equator, the range of the planet Mercury (31 degrees). The border reprsents the tropics, so that the sun is conceptually over head at all times in the Master's lodge.

The foundation stone is conceived of as being 1/25 the area of the 31 degree square. We know that a 30 degree square is 1/16 the area of a square that inscribed the circle of the earth. In 'Scipio's Dream' by Cicero, he descibes a similar situation, but describes the object at the center of the temple as the earth, and proceeds to show how the solar system is composed of nine concentric circles. This method parallels Bromwell's, and the only difference between that and Copernicus vision which puts the sun (and fire altar) at the center, is that the positions of the earth and the sun are reversed.

Below we see the traditional placement of the nine Chinese provinces as concentric squares. It is suggested that concentric squares foreshadowed the rectangular grid which is characteristic of a lot of map making. If you study you will find that a lot of systems of measure are derived from geographic data, and that disputes arise as to the methods used. (See 'Methods and Measurements')

According to Talmudic tradition, "The land of Israel is situated in the center of the world, and Jeusalem in the center of the land of Israel, and the Temple in the center of Jerusalem, the Holy of Holies in the center of the Temple, and the foundation stone on which the world was founded is in the center of the Holy of Holies.

Please take a few moments to read this webpage about the nested arrangement of King Tut's coffins, and reflect on the similarity with the idea above. Now consider this, "The surface area of both the lid and base of the coffin were covered with rishi, a feather decoration executed in low relief. On the left and right sides and superimposed upon this feathering were two finely engraved images of Isis and Nephthys with their wings extended". Sometimes Nephthys is rendered on the head of coffins, as Isis is rendered at the foot, with long wings spread to protect the deceased. Compare this idea to the image that we are shown of the Ark of the Covenant. The second image shows the goddess with her arms lifted gather than with wings.

Reading about the history of coffin in Egypt, we see that their design reflects philosophical ideas, and parallel ideas related to temples. For instance, the earliest idea for a coffin in Egypt was as a house for the deceased, just as the Hebrews saw the first function of the Ark, the Tabernacle and the Temple as a dwelling place for the Lord. As if the God of Creation required a man made box to dwell in. The symbolism doesn't serve God, it serves man. When Jacob says 'surely God is in this place' and calls it Beth EL, the house of God, he does not mean one spot on the surface of the eartth, he is talking about this place, the Creation. God is in all of Creation; this is the doctrine of imminance.

The only time the word circle appears in the KJV of the Bible is in Isaiah 40:22, where we read, "Have ye not known? have ye not heard? hath it not been told you from the beginning? have ye not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in". The Latin word for tent is tabernaculum.

God resides in the things of Nature, just as the Soul resides in a body; he/she/it ensouls them (conceptually). This is the conception of the world soul as the divine spark in everything. Philosophers considered that the sacredness of the body consists in its being the receptacle of the spark of the vital essence called God. To the Egyptians, the soul was 'entombed' in the body; the body was but a shell that encased the soul - a temporary dwelling place. Many religous groups begin their day at sundown, as this represents to them the soul entering the body, incarnation. The sun in the underworld, is the soul in the body. Dawn is the realease.

We hear this from Albert Pike: "The most usual type of the soul's descent from heaven was suggested by the sinking of the sun and stars from the upper to the lower hemisphere. When it arrived its individuality became clothed in the material form; bodies were compared to garments, and the world was the investiture of the Universal Spirit. The body was compared to a vase of urn, the soul's recipient, the world being the mighty bowl which received the descending deity. During the soul's embodiment the aerial element assumes the grosser form of water."

In the tenth labor of Hecules, he is said to have borrowed the sun's boat, bowl, or cup; the one the Helios uses to get from the west back to the east again at night time. You will recall that Osiris represented the sun, that his brother (sun)Set killed him and seal him in a sarcophagus and put him in the Nile, and that when he came to shore a tree grew around the sarcophagus. This is another story about nested containers and measure, since Set had measured Osiris to make sure that the sarcophagus would fit him.

In a story by Anaxagoras, Orpheus says that water and the vessel that produced it were the primative principles of things, and together gave existence to an animated being of a serpent with two heads between which was the figure of a god called Hercules or Kronos; that from Hercules came the world egg which produced heaven and earth by dividing itself into two hemispheres. (The serpent like ancient dragons represents the ecliptic, the apparent path of the sun.)

At one time, the coffin was viewed as a minituarization of the tomb. Later they were seen as a microcosm of the universe like the temple. We see the same idea of nested boxes in the Ark, the Holy of Holies, the Temple, the court, etc.

Michell continues, "All the ancient units (of measure) relate to each other, and to the dimensions of the earth, by the same code of number as is found in every other ancient form of art or science. In the design of the temple the chief object was to attarct the gods or forces in nature to which it was dedicated. Using the principle of sympathetic resonance, each temple was framed so as to contain symbolic refrences to the appropriate deity whose characteristic numbers were expressed in the dimensions of the building". In introducing the notion of magic squares, he suggests that every ritual center or temple was laid out to one of those geometric designs (and he provides a list).

I am not agreeing with him, I am just using that idea to introduce the notion of squares. You will recall that the progression of the nine circles within circles follows a certain rythm, and is related to the fact that each circle contains a square that contains the next circle. If we inscribe a circle in a square they touch at the poles and the equator so to speak; an oblique square is indicated. A square inscribed in a circle touches the circle at 45 degrees from the equator both north and south.

We know that since the sine of 45 degrees is .707, that the sides of the square inscribed in the circle are 70.7 perecent of those of the outer square. 70.7x70.7 yields 49.98 or fifty percent. The 45 square has half the area of the 90 square, while the ratio of the sides is 100:71. If we make the 45 square 100, the next outer square has an area of 141.4 (think sqrt 2). (Below we see the same template used for a magic square/circle. At the center it reads 'Magister", meaning Master or Teacher.

The next square nests between 30 degrees north and south, so its sides are half those of the outer square (sine 30 = .5) The 30 square is 1/4 the 90 square in area. We can continue this progression as far as we like, in or out, up and down. The image shows that 90 is to 30 as 14 is to 7.2 degrees. In that image you can detect the lay out of the pyramid as well as the Mesopotamian ziggurats (terraced pyramids) which have been desrcibed as "miniature repreoductions of the arrangements of the universe". Each level represented a mapable zone between two latitude lines. Remember that calculus works by approximating a circle with a lot of tiny rectangles or triangles.

"The Secrets of the Great Pyramids" relates techniques of land surveying used in Mesopotamia, to the techniques used for mapping a hemisphere used in the ziggurats and pyramids, to the mapping of the heavens. The Great Pyramid represents the northern hemisphere in a scale of 1:43,200 as there are 84,400 seconds in 24 hours.

The point that I am making is that we are also presented with nine concentric squares. The center square is, the altar, the foundation stone, the holy of holies, the temple, the earth, and the outer one depends on which you choose as your inner one; but the scale stays the same, as the system is similar in its parts. If you like you can start at the outer square representing the zodiac, then Saturn, etc. The ninth, or inner square is the earth.

If you think about the so-called magic squares of the planets, they are all just different ways of dividing (or multiplying) the initial square (Unit). The square of Saturn is a 3x3 grid, where each cell contains on of the first nine numbers. Jupiter's square is 4x4. Mars' is 5x5. The moon's is nine and the earth's is ten. This means that some of the squares are related, in that they are formed by halfening the squares in another magic square. 2 and 4 for instance, and 4 and 8. 3 and 6; 5 and 10. For nine you reproduce the original grid in each square. Seven is a tuff nut to crack.

Above, when we bisect the sides of a square twice, we get four squares. Next we bisect the corner angles of the square producing 45 degree diagonals. (This is the emblem of the 'stone of foundation' located at the center of the template above.) Diagonals of the half-square rectangles bisect the horizontal and vertical zero lines again, producing a 4x4 sixteen cell grid, the square of Jupiter. Dividing the sides again produces the 8x8 square of Mercury.

  

Above we see the development of the 3x3 and 6x6 squares on the left. On the right we see how dividing each of the 3x3 cells 3 times produces the 9x9 square of the moon. Saturn is 3 and the sun is 6. Below we see the development of the 5x5 grid that is the square of Mars. Bisecting these cells each way again produces the 10x10 square of the earth. Remember that the District of Columbia consisted of an oblique square ten miles by ten miles square.

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