SLIMBRIDGE DOWSING GROUP REPORTS

Speaker Ced Jackson shows SDG member Peter Gibson a
3-D model of a Cuboctahedron made from ping-pong balls.
This is a perfect 12-sided polygon. Many crystals grow in
the same way, obeying the laws of physics and goemetry.


A staircase illustrates Fibonacci spirals in linear
perspective


Seeds of a flower arranged according to the Golden Mean

Have you ever stopped to admire the shape of your credit card? It feels nice in the hand, doesn’t it? Good proportions. There’s not really any other shape it could be, is there?

According to Sacred Geometry, this shape is based on the Golden Section or Golden Mean, where the longer side is 1.618 times the shorter side. This is a sort of magic formula that can be applied to the shape of most rectangles, from football pitches to the building of a cathedral.

In his talk about Sacred Geometry on 8th October, Ced Jackson surprised us with just how much it applies to us and to every day life. Consider the spiral staircase - one of the strongest designs there is. The spiral can be seen throughout the universe, from the shell of the worthy snail, the seeds in a sunflower, pine cones and even outer space. And there is a magic formula for that too.

Geometry is not just about formulae and codes, however. It literally means ‘measuring the earth’. Many geometrical shapes have great significance, particularly the circle, which has long represented heaven and perfection.

If you place two circles so that they overlap, the shape you get common to both of them is a pointed oval, known as the vesica pisces. This sounds romantic until you learn the translation means 'bladder of a fish', but it too represents much of significance and lends itself to the design of cathedrals and even the Bishop’s mitre.

Numerology gets in there too. Any size circle can be surrounded by a repeat of itself six times (try it with pennies), which gives us 6 + 1, another significant sum which might be why we are told God created the world in six days and on the seventh day He rested.

Our speaker lost us a couple of times but we persevered and learned the significance of squares too, which represent the earth. He’s the only man we know that has ever made Pythagoras’ theorem and the right-angled triangle even vaguely comprehensible. And then there’s the pyramids . . .

The main gift our speaker brought us, however, was that we should look at things with new eyes, and realize there is a mathematical significance and an interconnectedness to all things, which applies in more ways than one to the humble credit card.