The Cosmos in Stone
Sacred Geometry of a Master Mason
To draw Sacred Geometry is to participate directly in the Eternal and Unchanging
The Cosmos in Stone – Sacred Geometry of a Master Mason
This beautiful and groundbreaking book examines the use of sacred geometry and cosmology in Gothic cathedral design. Renowned geometer and lecturer Tom Bree demonstrates how medieval Master Masons combined their knowledge of the practical building arts with ancient cosmological knowledge to endow their constructions with profound spiritual meaning.
Wells Cathedral, the focus of this book, was England's first Gothic cathedral, and its design symbolises the soul's cosmic journey from Earth, through the underworld and up into the heavens.
Bree shows how the medieval Christian fascination with the knowledge of the ancient world laid the foundations for the more recent mythos involving the Templars, Freemasonry and Pyramidology. Packed with rare illustrations and original research unavailable anywhere else, this is a book to study and treasure.
The use of geometry as a language of spiritual symbolism lies at the heart of this book. To perceive geometry in this way is not new, but rather something that goes far back into the ancient world within many different cultures across the globe. One of the reasons for looking at geometry in such a way is that it reflects and embodies the eternal and unchanging reality of number. Whatever culture or historical era we are living in, indeed whichever ‘spherical’ planet we reside on, the same laws of number apply to each and every one of us.
One of the ways in which we come into direct physical contact with these ‘divine numerical thoughts’ is through their manifestation in pattern. Such numerical patterns can be experienced temporally through music and spatially through geometry.
To remember the Divine Harmony, in all of its truth and beauty, is to remember the Good.
To remember the Good is to remember the One ... To remember the One is to remember one’s True Self
An understanding of this was approached in the medieval world through a study known as the Quadrivium.
The four subjects of the Quadrivium, which were studied in the medieval European universities, concerned number and its manifestation in geometry, music and cosmology.
The heavenly vault overhead was looked upon as an image of the Divine Mind in which the cyclical movements of the heavenly spheres marked out number patterns that could act as a reminder of the Divine Harmony, which ultimately lies beyond anything that can be seen or heard.
In the words of Plato, ‘time is a moving image of eternity’, and in this sense it can be understood that the hands of a clock, which mark out time, are merely externalising the knowledge of the clock’s hub, which itself remains stationary and thus outside of the cycle of time – yet also at the very heart of it.
To look at the cosmos in such a way is to attempt to align oneself with the Divine Harmony. But until we are reminded of such things, we can fall into a forgetfulness of them – or worse still, only focus upon their purely technical usefulness so as to exploit them for some kind of personal material gain.
Watch the author's Video Walkthrough of the Book
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