The
Gothic Style
Chartres
Cathedral of Notre Dame
Slide
9-40: Chartres Cathedral (1145-1220)
Campbell, Joseph, with Bill Moyers. The Power of Myth.
NY: Doubleday 1988.
A
year after St. Denis was finished work was started on
rebuilding Chartres, and it was here that the Medieval
craze for numbers and geometry seemed to reach its peak.
According to Cowan, "The scholars at Chartres
were clearly fascinated by number and . . geometry . . as a key to understanding nature. Their preoccupation
with numbers led to a trend of almost reducing theology
to geometry."
According
to Eco, "The School of Chartres remained faithful
to the Platonic heritage of the Timaeus, and developed
a kind of 'Timaeic' cosmology. For the School of Chartres,
the work of God was order, opposite of the primeval chaos."
"Suddenly Smarter"
by Mitchell Leslie
Ref;
Stanford Magazine July- Aug 2002
A
handful of beads mark a watershed in human history. Their
maker shaped the crude, circular pieces from fragments
of ostrich eggshells, thinning each one and drilling a
hole through the center. Many of them broke before they
were finished. An unknown Stone Age Artisan spent hours
crafting these decorations rather than searching for food,
tending children or making tools.
The
fragile beads hail from Kenyan site called Enkapune Ya
Mato, or Twilight Cave.
Crafted
around 40,000 years ago, they appeared to be the earliest
known jewelry. But some anthropologists think they are
much more. The people of the Twilight Cave may have exchanged
them as ritual gifts or tokens making the cheerio-like
object the oldest known example of symbolism.
Communicating
with symbols provides an unambiguous sign of our modernity
says Klien, an eminent archaeologist who has taught at
Stanford for 9 years. Once symbols appear, we know we're
dealing with people like us: people with advanced cognitive
skills who could not only invent sophisticated tools and
weapons and develop complex social networks for mutual
security, but could also marvel at the intricacies
of nature and their place in it, people who were self-aware."
Most-though
not all-anthropologist agree that human culture, imagination
and ingenuity suddenly flowered around 45,000 years ago
and whether scientists call it the great leap forward,
the dawn of culture or civilization big bang and the
change was momentous.
If
the beads were among humanity's first symbols, says anthropology
professor Richard G. Klein, they represent one of the
most important revolutions in our species career, the
dawning of modern human behavior.
Forget
about upheavals like the Russians and French Revolution,
which produced mere changes of costume. Forget the construction
of the first cities or the introduction of the internal
combustion engine. The revolution that made the biggest
difference occurred on the savanna of East Africa roughly
45,000 years ago, Klein and others maintain.
Christina
Baldwin has written a book, Calling The Circle. The First
And Future Culture.
This
book is an interesting a profoundly written depiction
of the sacred circle and examples of the power this symbol
has brought and will continue to bring as we move forward
in this spiritual era.
Christina
writes about the visionary Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung.
Carl Jung noted that all human beings share a number of
images that seem to spring from a common source deep within
the psyche. He called this source "the collective
unconscious"-consistently recurring "mythic
motifs." "The brain," has been built up
in the course of millions of years and represents a history
of which it is the result. Naturally it carries with it
the traces of that history, exactly like the body, and
if you grope down into the basic structure of the mind
you naturally find traces of the archaic mind…The
deepest we can reach into our exploration of the unconscious
mind is the layer where man is no longer a distinct individual,
but where his mind widens out and merges into the mind
of mankind-where we all are one.
One
of the symbols that led Jung to contemplate this point
of oneness was the recurring imagery of the circle. The
circle, often in the form of the Sun Wheel (a pie cut
in eight equal pieces), is represented in different cultures
as the Medicine Wheel, the Wheel of Law and Life, the
Wheel of the Year, and the Catherine Wheel. Jung traced
the image of the circle back to the Paleolithic and Mesolithic
Periods, when wheels were carved and painted as a sacred
symbol, thousands of years before the wheel was invented
as an actual tool. Based on this research, Jung saw the
wheel as a primary symbol, one of the mythic motifs springing
from the collective unconscious.
Christina
also mentions the fact that the circle has been within
us since the dawn of time, and is a form familiar to us
at a deeply resonant level. Over and over again, when
this mythic resonance is activated, people experience
a sense of "having been here before" as they
enter the circle. Sometimes we are buoyed up by this familiarity
and proceed with confidence. "I know how to do this…I
know how to behave here." Sometimes we are shaken
by how even a vestige of circle carries profound impact.
Christina
also brings out anther captivating fact. In the mid-1980's
at a lecture, a participant asked psychologist and author
M. Scott Peck what he considered to be the most significant
source of social change in the twentieth century. He replied,
without hesitation, "Alcoholics Anonymous, because
it introduced the idea that people could help themselves."
His surety of comment fascinated her, and she began to
study the origins of the Twelve Step movement. What she
found was.THE CIRCLE….
She
continues to say, from the onset, AA's founders assumed
that a circle of peers was the only form of counsel that
could really help them abstain. Dr. Smith and Bill W.,
both alcoholics, had tried many times to relieve their
compulsive drinking through willpower or by submitting
to various promises of cure. It was only when they decided
to place themselves in a circle and place Spirit, invoked
as Higher Power, at the center of the circle that they
were able to stop drinking. Something in them knew what
to do. These two white men, she continues, one a struggling
businessman, the other a small-town doctor, reintroduced
the circle as a form of social and spiritual power, and
their discovery set off immense changes in Western culture.
Christina
also writes about ancestral times, the circle flourished
as the primary social structure in richly diverse pockets
of human community. We see the remnants of circle-based
culture in archeological discoveries and among remaining
indigenous peoples around the globe. The Intuits of the
Arctic lands still meet in council and build round dwellings.
The Aborigines of Australia paint sacred spirals on cave
walls and on their bodies and still follow the song lines
of the earth across vast expanses of the outback. Some
African peoples build circular villages. Traditionally,
the native tribes of the American plains construct teepees
and set them in circles. In all these variations of human
culture, the circle is the common element, the common
source, Cristina mentions. She began calling the circle
"Our first Culture."
Christina
mentions that the First Culture was the flowering of human
community based on the circle as the web of life. For
tens of thousands of years, in kinship based social groups
across the globe, our ancestors in the human tribe adapted
to variations of climate, terrain, and natural resources.
They developed social structures that helped sustain them
on the land, and spiritual myths that helped them explain
the mysteries of life. These structures, and their spiritual
base, are evident in paintings, carvings, petroglyphs,
runes, crafts, and later in architecture. What seems to
have been intact in all these settings were the concentric
circles of interconnection-the campfire, the extended
family, the larger society, humanity, nature, and the
mystery of Spirit.
And
deep in our cells, we remember…….
She
continues…
Many,
many thousands of years ago, when we captured the spark
of fire and began to carry the embers of warmth and cooking
and light along with us from site to site, fire brought
a new experience into being. Coming in from the plains
where we had been wandering in small breeding groups,
we found shelter in caves and crevasses and brought the
safety of the light with us. The fire warded off predators,
roasted the roots and nuts that were the staples of our
diet, and cooked our meats. With the flame, we could provide
more food and sustain more people.
We
came into circle because the fire led us there. Struggling
to keep warm, struggling to keep safe, it made sense to
put fire in the center. A circle allowed space for each
person to face the flame, and as a member of a fire circle,
we each could claim a place of warmth and a piece of food.
Out of this instinctive taking of place, community developed.
Socialization
is not always a smooth process. In dreams we may still
hear the snarls of males vying for control, the fierce
protective grunts of the females guarding their young,
the squeals of little ones cuffed aside, the sighs of
the old and vulnerable. The circle provides a format for
working things out. As we refined social skills, the circle
grew with us. With our faces animated by the flicker of
flames, we begin to recognize each other as "like
kind." Surrounded by familiar kin, with bodies fed
and sheltered, the rules and taboos of social conduct
could be established. When we see someone again and again
in firelight, the fire becomes symbolic of our connection.
Perhaps we first faced each other across the shimmering
circle of light, we were able to envision the spark of
the Sacred in each others eyes. Around the campfire, a
mythology arose about our creation and our reasons for
being. The fire was a sacred symbol, the source that provided
a cohesive center. And when we fell asleep around the
fire's coals, we dreamed.
The Flower
of Life
The Flower of Life is a sacred symbol of
the soul. It is the harmonic configuration of all that is. Mystics
(yogis, kahunas, deeply holy men and women) experience the soul by
perceptions of spiritual sight, hearing and by spiritual feeling.
Why are things formed (shaped) the way they are?
Sacred Geometry. Why do atoms, molecules and cells go into union
as they do? Sacred Geometry.
Why do moons, planets solar systems, galaxies,
island universes, etc, shaped are that are act the way they do?
Sacred Geometry.
Sacred Geometry is an integral part of the
philosophy of Pythagoras—who invented the word
"philosophy" in the first place.
The Flower of Life symbol has the ability to
demonstrate how all things come from one source and are intimately
and permanently woven together. When this is experienced, it has a
profound effect on the individual. www.floweroflife.org
Within the symbol of The Flower of Life
is the blueprint of all creation. Sacred Geometry is a universal
language, a visual representation of the unity in Nature and on
every level of life. Known as the "language of God", it
allows us to access ancient knowledge in our cell memory that has
an extremely powerful effect on elevating consciousness, expanding
the heart center and activating transformation on many levels.
Gems and Stones Info from Paramahansa Yogananda and Edgar Cayce
In the book Gems and
Stones, a comparative study based on the Edgar Cayce readings-- it states
"The employment of gems, stones and metals for influencing a variety of
physical, mental and spiritual conditions in man was once an exact and highly
developed science. This science is at present greatly corrupted from its former
state and at a very low level.
The words of the great
yogi, Paamahansa Yogananda..
Pearls and jewels as well
as metals and plants, applied directly to the human skin, exercise an
electromagnetic influence over the physical cells. Man’s body contains carbon
and various metallic elements that are present also in metals, jewels and
plants. The discoveries of the rishis in these fields will doubtless receive
confirmation some day from physiologists. Man’s sensitive body, with its
electrical life currents, is a center to many mysteries as yet unexplored.
A reading with Edgar
Cayce..
The very elements of
body-through which spirit and mind manifest-are atomic in their nature. Hence,
so are the elements of this stone indicated, that partakes of most of the
elements are to man of great influence or power, because of their representation
on the body. Vibratory forces arising from certain stones and metals collaborate
with similar forces origination within individuals to permit them to attune to
the Creative Forces of the universe. In this way people may receive and transmit
healing vibrations, to mention a few possibilies.
Just as a house may be
fitted with a copper rod to absorb the shock of lightning, so the bodily temple
can be protected in certain ways. Electrical and magnetic radiations are
ceaselessly circulating in the universe; the effect man’s body for good and
ill. Age ago our rishis pondered the problem of combating the adverse effects of
subtle cosmic influences. The sages discovered that pure metals emit an astral
light, which is powerfully counteractive to negative pulls of the planets.
A question asked in a
reading w/ Edgar Casey….
How can I use the
vibrations from metal, from stones, which influence me, to advantage in my
present life?
As these are but lights,
but signs in thine experience, they are as but a candle that one stumbles not in
the dark. But worship not the light of the candle; rather that to which it may
guide thee in thy service. So, whether guided by the vibrations of numbers, of
metals, of stones, these are merely to become necessary influences to make thee
in attune, one with the Creative Forces; just as the pitch of a song of praise
is not the song nor the message therein, but is a helpmeet for those that would
find strength in the service of the Lord, So, use them to attune self.
Should I carry these
stones on my person? And how may I know through meditation the message they
would give me? Carry on person,if necessary. And how may ye know? These do not
give messages they only attune self that the Christ Consciousness may give the
message.
Edgar Casey on Coral…
Through the very
indications of that element as would be helpful in its experience (the coral) we
find that the entity is highly sensitive to intuitive forces, spiritual aspects,
spiritual imports.
With
all of this in mind, "A Sacred Memory"
has created innovative products as we feel its time to
help facilitate change. Our company is here to help
others to begin to consider and finally re-connect to
each other as well as to our deep-rooted ancestral customs,
but with a new flair where all people will feel they are
connected, not separated or alone, and finally home…
We
are in the business of healing, building healthier relationships
and stronger bonds, for the future of mankind….ASacredMemory.com
