Sacred Geometry, Part I

May 16th, 2007 · 1 Comment

Pioneering astrological thinkers Bruno and Louisa Huber identified the golden mean, a geometric ratio found commonly in nature, as a cornerstone of horoscope interpretation. Though I have been a mathaphobe since about 7th grade, I am fascinated by the role of geometry in astrological understanding. Forget the faraway flapping of butterfly wings: That non-material ideas – numbers, ratios, shapes and lines — impact our understanding of self, other and world is the ultimate mind-trip.

So while I’m not yet ready to swim in the slipperiness of abstract numbers, I can talk about their more concrete relations with some relative confidence.

Part I: The circle (and its 3-D form, the sphere) is a common symbol of wholeness seen in group mythologies and individual dreams the world over. As the basic canvas on which the birth chart is drawn, the circle can be seen as a reflection of the whole person. Every breath, bone and drop of blood; every thought that flutters through your head; every heartbeat, puff of anger and surge of love; every utterance, every silence, everything you possess and relinquish and reclaim; every insecurity, every sure step, every memory — visceral or distant or utterly lost — falls within the scope of the circle that is you. So do all the ripples, histories and potentialities of every one of these things, and more.

If you have trouble imagining the vast scope of your own wholeness, you’re not alone. It’s no coincidence that perfect circles, while pleasing to the eye, are hard to navigate: If you tried to climb a circle, either inside or out, where would you fall? No corners, bumps or angles serve as footholds. Urban myths report people living in spherical structures tend to go mad quickly: What do you grasp onto? Where do you focus? How do you arrange your thoughts, your furniture? Is there any human experience more awesome and more fearsome alike than being alone in the great circle of ocean or desert or sky, the horizon unbroken in every direction? (If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend Life of Pi to get a sense of this experience.) In the great, unfathomable sphere of the universe, gravity falls away from our small, fathomable bodies. Tension and traction evaporate — can you imagine? — and we remain solely with our Selves to comprehend.

Perhaps this is at the core of why astrology has been reviled by the dominant culture for centuries — and why some astrologers tend to play at the edges with keywords and predictions instead of going for the chart’s jugular.

For the horoscope’s very structure implies that, in the end, God/the eternal/the divine/the universe — the Circle — is within each of us — is each of us.

That implies immense potential power in the individual — power that is awesome and fearsome alike — power that might be best symbolized in the quintessential mark of the universe, its birth moment: the Big Bang. The universe, like each of us, beginning with the moment of birth, is ever-expanding — forever trying to encompass its own greatness, grow into its astounding potential, push ever-outward the curve of its own sphere — whether it wants to, whether we want to, or not. The difference is, unlike most of us humble humans, the universe seems utterly unafraid of its own power.

So in an effort to grasp our own power, perhaps, we overlay our sphere with Prime Meridians and Tropics of Cancer, with the borders of nations and the scars of tract housing, etching our own unconscious striving onto the sphere of the natural world. We lay down lines, triangles and squares on the birth chart to help us make sense of the circle inside, to give us traction, footholds, in the otherwise vast and slippery expanse of ourselves.