The Sacred Geometry of Sound
by Healer/Musician
Ani Williams
Sacred Geometry and the Structure of Music
Legend recounts how Orpheus was given a lyre by Apollo. By playing his lyre, Orpheus produced harmonies that joined all of Nature together in peace and joy.
Inspired by this Orphic tradition of music and science, Pythagoras of Samos conducted perhaps the world's first physics experiment. By plucking strings of different lengths, Pythagoras discovered that sound vibrations naturally occurred in a sequence of whole tones or notes that repeat in a pattern of seven.
Like the seven naturally occurring colors of the rainbow, the octave of seven tones — indeed, all of Creation — is a singing matrix of frequencies that can be experienced as color, sound, matter, and states of consciousness.
This correlation of sound, matter, and consciousness is important. For as Stanford physicist William Tiller has proved, human consciousness imprints the space and matter of the universe. It is our intent that gives the direction and quality to Creation.
I believe that this matrix of Creation is waiting for us to sound the most harmonious vibrating chord — to sound the universe itself into a perfect, idealized form.
The Music of Atomic Shapes
The Platonic solids, basic shapes of Sacred Geometry, are five three-dimensional geometric forms of which all faces are alike. And each platonic solid represent one of the five elements of creation, as follows:
Tetrahedron — Fire
Cube — Earth
Octahedron — Air
Dodecahedron — Ether
Icosahedron — Water
These five Platonic solids comprise the alchemical dance of the elements and of Creation itself. My introduction to the spiritual power of sound began with an experience of this truth.
This happened many years ago, when I was studying with Michael Helios — who is for me a reincarnated Atlantean wizard. Helios discovered the musical proportions and corresponding tone scales for each of the Platonic shapes. He even tuned his keyboard to specific frequencies in order to achieve exact proportions.
During his presentations, he would play the scales and geometries of each shape, without disclosing to his listeners which geometric shape he was playing. Participants meditated on each piece as he was playing it, and then described which of the shapes they had experienced.
The results were extraordinary. Every Platonic solid was correctly perceived, felt, and "seen" during each of the five musical meditations. As a participant myself, this was my first experience of realizing the power of musical transmission and its potential to specifically re-order creation.
This is exactly what the ancient mystics and scientists had always been telling us!
The Dodecahedron, the Universe, and the Human Form
When Michael Helios played his five compositions, I was most profoundly affected by the Dodecahedron. This shape can be seen to represent the order of the heavens and also the perfect mediation between the infinite and the finite — the sphere and the cube.
So let us look more closely at this as one example of the sacred geometric forms that permeate Creation. Through seeing the simplicity and complexity of the Dodecahedron in its relationship of shape and sound, perhaps we can intuit the rest. And through understanding our relationship to the Dodecahedron, perhaps we can begin to sense our own place within the Divine Song that is Creation.
The Dodecahedron is comprised of twelve pentagonal faces. It represents the fifth sacred element, the divine potentiality known as "ether."
Considering that the Dodecahedron is made up of five-sided faces, it is fascinating that quantum physics researchers in the US and France have recently concluded that, based upon measurements of cosmic waves left over from the so-called "Big Bang," the universe itself is a Dodecahedron!
Besides the fact that there are five platonic solids and five corresponding basic elements of life, it can be shown that the entire human race is joined in these same basic sacred proportions. For the physical body, with the arms and legs spread, is overlaid by a pentagram, with the fifth point being at the top of the head and the reproductive organs at the exact center.
And each of these points also relates to the number five: five fingers at the terminus of each arm, five toes on each leg, and five openings on the face. Additionally, we each possess five senses of physical perception.
So the Golden Mean proportions of the cosmos and our body temples are closely aligned with the harmony of the musical fifth.
If we can imagine the dodecahedronal-pentagonal shape of this One Song that is the universe, together with the pentagram geometry of the human body, we find inherent in both a divine proportion and a potential for harmonic perfection. The universe and humanity ARE singing geometries. And it is we ourselves who embody the geometry of the cosmos!
Phi and the Musical Fifth
To follow this discussion, we first need to know that the Golden Mean and the Pentagram are closely related. For the angles of the five sides of a Pentagram are at a ratio of exactly 1.618 — the Golden Mean ratio, known mathematically as phi.
The fifth is the interval found in most sacred music, and has a powerful harmonizing effect on the human energy system. It is the first harmonic sounded by a plucked string, and is what gives the note its depth and beauty. Its sacred sound is the hallmark of the Gregorian chant. In fact most divinely inspired music, including some New Age music and that of indigenous cultures, is built around the musical interval of the fifth.
This music-geometry connection is well stated by Goethe, who said, "Sacred architecture is frozen music." The same is true of the "architecture" of the human body.
It was Pythagoras who first described the fifth interval that has come to be universally recognized for its beauty. It is "an archetypal expression of harmony that demonstrates the 'fitting together' of microcosm and macrocosm in an inseparable whole. The fifth is a beautiful sound because it demonstrates how the universe works.
And in building the phi proportions, along with those of the other musical intervals, into the designs of cathedrals and temples, the architects also are building in the effects of the musical intervals upon which the sacred proportions are based.
These effects, immediately experienced as harmonious, powerful, and centering, can be experienced first-hand when one enters a Gothic cathedral or an ancient Egyptian temple. Being inside such a space helps us to access other dimensions of consciousness. It is the same experience that is reached through listening to sacred music.
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http://www.netmar.com/~maat/archive/jan4/williams.htm
Love Always
mudra