Bethe Hagens 1

Running head: Divine Feminine in Geometric Consciousness

The Divine Feminine in Geometric Consciousness

Bethe Hagens, Ph.D.

[email protected]

ABSTRACT

Plato spoke of geometry as an extremely rare natural gift of consciousness, but also as a mode of

perception accessible to anyone initiated into the tradition by a master. Such teachers were the shamans

of his day, and it was these individuals who convened the mystery schools and sponsored initiations into

the esoteric philosophies of geomancy that have grown from their vision. Though the history of women in

ancient mystery traditions is largely lost to us, Greek mythology holds that our human capacity for

geometric vision is a gift of the divine feminine—energetic sources of wisdom conceptualized as a lineage

of goddesses. Born from primal Chaos is Gaia, from whose name comes “geometry”—geo (earth) + metr

(measure, mother). She gives birth to Mnemosyne, goddess of Memory, from whose name comes

“mnemonic.” The daughters of Mnemosyne are the Muses—the arts and sciences. Memory is the legacy

of the sacred Earth, and the arts enable humans to actively remember. The essence of this divine feminine

lineage is sustainability of sacred place (Chora) through enduring values of order, proportion, a

universal aesthetic, and connectivity. In this essay, I explore the ways in which I learned to embrace

myself as a physical and spiritual geomantic consciousness and how I have used geometric vision as an

interdisciplinary teaching and learning process.

Bethe Hagens 2

KEYWORDS: Sacred geometry, divine feminine, mythology, archaeoastronomy, visualization

World mythology and religion are replete with evidence of an ancient, eclectic, integrated geometric

art/science (geomancy) in which certain principles of shape, numeracy and connection unified the

experience of body, mind and essence through metaphors of Earth and the elements, All Beings, and

Sky.1 I entered the tradition through Plato’s text Timaeus (1965) in which he describes an ideal etheric

body composed of 120 identical right triangles (known technically as a spherical hexakis icosahedron)

that organizes all matter, “above and below.” A vibrating, invisible, female “container for becoming,” it

births the five dynamic elements of creation—Fire, Earth, Air, Water and Aether. 2 Each element is a

geometric shape, a color, and a place in the order of creation: Fire is tetrahedron-red-first; Earth is cube-

yellow-second; Air is octahedron-white-third; Water is icosahedron-black-fourth; and Aether is

dodecahedron-green-fifth. Anticipating the synergetic geometry of R. Buckminster Fuller (1975) by

nearly 2500 years, Plato reveals how the 120-triangle sphere geometrically encloses each of the five

elements such that their corners fall only on its “corners.”

[Place Fig. 1 here]

Although the etheric 120-triangle spherical Receptacle is itself never visible, the architecture of

the five perfect shapes she “holds” can actually be seen at virtually ever scale imaginable—from viruses,

crystals, molecules, plankton, and pollen grains to Earth itself. Plato passed on to us an anciently derived

anthropic principle: the Receptacle is an unchanging constant, a template of natural structure for a

carbon-based world. In Phaedo, Plato graphically imagines Earth as seen from above as a ball composed

of twelve patches of skin—analogous to a modern soccer ball and identical in its structural geometry to a

third form of carbon discovered in the mid-1980s and named fullerene in honor of R. Buckminster Fuller.
Bethe Hagens 3

This Receptacle—Gaia, the divine feminine—is known in the East as the Dao or “mother of all

things.” It appears as well in the arts and mythologies of many indigenous cultures in the Americas, but

was conceptualized as hoops rather than triangles. In the Brulé Sioux myth of Creation, for example, All

was numberless hoops within hoops. Primordial Mother Earth was composed of fifteen hoops to which

the Creator called the various powers and manifestations of material reality including Sun, Moon, and

stars.3 This view does not diverge significantly from the ancient view that Plato himself had been taught.

A closer look at Plato’s geometry reveals that 15 symmetrically interlocked equators—great circles (or

hoops) which divide the sphere in half—create the 120 identical right triangles of the spherical hexakis

icosahedron. Sioux mythology deviates only where it parenthetically adds “local context”—a sixteenth

hoop to represent Earth’s orbit around the sun (the ecliptic). The color-element symbolism in the cultures

of the Americas is broadly consistent with Plato’s, but references to the five shapes are obscure and often

set in the context of secret initiation rituals. 4 Throughout this essay, when I invoke the divine feminine as

geometric consciousness, I am referring to the 15-hoop/120-triangle Receptacle.

A Vision

In 1982, designer-mathematician Bill Becker introduced me to an obscure whole-earth mapping system

developed in the late 1970s by an engineer, linguist, and historian in Russia (Bird 1975). The team of

researchers had used an interlocking framework of spherical icosahedron and dodecahedron (see Fig. 2)

to explain patterns of Earth’s geography, topography, climate, animal migrations, ocean currents, and the

siting of ancient civilizations (among other phenomena). It totally captivated me, and years of future

teaching and research almost instantly flashed through my mind. The map’s allure was its capacity to

“store” information across a wide variety of fields in a single visual model. Also, it was efficient—a

modular system that “packed” the Platonic solids as well as other geometric solids into a single container.

It was a woman’s tool, a tool for multi-tasking! And I had not yet read Plato. . . The whole idea seemed,

literally, divinely inspired to me. . .so much so that I went to Moscow to meet one of the inventors,
Bethe Hagens 4

engineer Valery Makarov, and was astonished to learn that in traditional Russian schools geometry and

geography were always taught together from the very earliest grades. Once my eyes had opened to this

connection, I began to see traces of the Platonic geometries everywhere. I found my skills in pattern

recognition expanding exponentially, and for the next ten years, my undergraduate anthropology and

geography students used a very similar map to explore the planet and its cultures. 5

[Place Fig. 2 here]

This “planetary grid project,” as it has come to be known, was done in full collaboration with

Becker, a professor of industrial design at the University of Illinois-Chicago. Following his engineering

knowledge about how matter connects, we slightly modified the original Russian map by adding what

Becker identified as missing structural supports in their “dome” over the earth. Simultaneously, we read

Plato’s Timaeus and I began taping the geometry on to a world globe. The addition of the “struts”

revealed the 15-hoop/120-triangle pattern and we immediately realized that we had created in three

dimensions the divine feminine Receptacle that Plato had struggled to describe with words.

The experience was so powerful that I assigned globes and tape, rather than textbooks, to my

students. Where Bill had seen a Bucky Fuller dome, a nursing student saw a blastomere. Another saw a

virus. I saw the three aspects of God in the structural properties of the three corners of the triangles. We

found that we were not only communicating across disciplines as diverse as world mythology, structural

engineering, and biochemistry, but we had a way to store our insights and discoveries in a relatively

easily retrievable format. This worked even for the kinds of anomalous information that become relevant

only years after they have been lost or forgotten. The spherical geometry proved extremely effective as a

mnemonic device. I found that the students could use the corners and “struts” of the model to retrieve,

compare and contrast cross-cultural and interdisciplinary data more quickly and comfortably than with

any other system I’d ever tried. The Mother Sphere (as I called it then) became my template for most

everything I observed, to the point of near, if not total obsession. 6

Bethe Hagens 5

Late one evening in 1992, bleary-eyed and frustrated over a piece of writing that would not come

together, I looked up from my computer and found myself staring at a dusty sphere of the constellations

that sat on a shelf next to my Earth globe. It had been a gift from a friend many years before, and I kept it

only because its dazzling blue color made me happy whenever I glanced over at it. Apart from that, I

almost defiantly ignored it. I knew nothing about astronomy, and I had absolutely no desire to learn about

the sky since my focus was the Earth. I had no idea what a celestial sphere mapped or how to use it. But

this night would prove to be different when the meaning of the celestial sphere dawned on me not as

cognition but as what I suppose could be labeled “embodied experiential intellection.” I had been trying

to force a secular, material description upon an Earth alive in my consciousness as a living crystal being

whose etheric geometric skeleton could be mapped in its patterns of energy flows. . .in ocean currents, the

winds, river systems, and distributions of precious minerals. It seemed to me that ancient humans had

known this sacred, hidden body of Earth and had settled on it in ways that took advantage of very visceral

powers of place. It was in the midst of this struggle to appropriately language my increasingly ecstatic

visions of this Being, alive with cubes and music and a rainbow of colors, that everything went black. My

perceptual mind shut down.

I still don’t know exactly what happened, but I had the instantaneous and complete realization of

being Everything and Nothing, of shimmering in the Dark somewhere between frantic desire to create and

shattering loneliness. As suddenly, my being centered on the plane of Earth’s orbit around the sun and my

“waist” extended into infinity through the center of the galaxy. Over my “shoulder” was the brilliant

Light sash of the Milky Way. I was absolutely overcome with the perfection of Earth’s place in it all. It

was an “adult” vision, an unbelievably personalized and intimate release from intellectual obsession and

the conventional confinement of material consciousness. Even more, I remembered this experience from

my childhood when I had many times found myself trembling in this blackness, terrified that it was

Death. Now I realized that all along I’d been experiencing the Divine Feminine—Gaia, the Cosmic

Receptacle that Plato so emotionally described in Timaeus and that I’d been using to map Earth. The
Bethe Hagens 6

living celestial sphere, Sky, opened to me and became as much an extension of myself as a friend. I went

into retreat for more than a year.

[Place Fig 3 here]

My “night vision” was so total, so compelling, that I ultimately left my position as Professor of

Anthropology at a state university in Illinois and began to follow an unknown path into myself and the

cosmos. As I studied my desk-model celestial sphere, I believe I began to see the hoops described by

Black Elk, and soon I could see them in the night sky as well (see Fig. 3 above). I began communicating

in some depth with astrophysicist Tom Weaver at Livermore Laboratories to try to understand how the

solar system was oriented geometrically to the theoretical plane of the Milky Way as well as how that

plane is intersected by other theoretical “planes” including the Magellanic Stream and the Sagittarius

Dwarf Stream. Because there is no material celestial sphere, only the human vision of the sky as a dome,

it has been difficult to create language for the rather remarkable alignments of computer-generated data

with the divine feminine geometry that I can map on my humble little globe. I will write more on this in a

future article, but need now to return to the subject of consciousness. 7

A challenge posed by my vision experience was how to be a scholar as well as live authentically

in my new “receptacle.” I joined the doctoral faculty at the Union Graduate School where it was then

possible to break disciplinary boundaries, and I began to teach geometry as an arts-based interdisciplinary

research methodology. Rather than focusing upon the usual academic burden of having to prove the

scientific legitimacy of geometric modeling, I wandered across fields of inquiry with my students and

simply traced and recorded compelling coincidences and harmonies of sound, shape, color, and meaning

that I encountered along the way. I continue to sidestep issues of whether cultural similarities (such as

between Plato and the Sioux) are products of diffusion or innovation, simply my own artistic fantasies, or

possibly all of these things. What drives my work within the anthropological community of scholars is

our common alignment with the principle of coherent connection. My hope is that Babel’s divisive
Bethe Hagens 7

differentiation was not a decisive mythological blow to a compassionate, collective human worldview—

that we do as a species constantly remember and re-language our common humanity. This inspires me to

teach as I do and to want to share the sacred lineage of sustainability that my vision has taught me is

geometric consciousness (geomancy).

Revitalizing Geomancy

Romance with geometric consciousness is how I experience geomancy. 8 For thousands of years, people in

every part of the world have made hand-scale models of what I think of as geometric “seeds” (Plato’s five

element-shapes and two related rhombic figures) using wood, reeds, clay, metal, stone, string. I encourage

everyone I know to do the same to see for themselves how accessible geomantic knowledge is for humans

who seek it. The knuckles of the human hand create virtually all the proportional lengths necessary to

make beautifully symmetrical forms.

[Place Fig. 4 here]

From carved Neolithic “bolas” to contemporary Southeast Asian woven reed spheres, such

teaching devices encapsulate the sacred dimensions of the Universe and assist the maker or user in

extending awareness of Self into the infinite macrocosm and microcosm of creation. Intimate knowledge

of these forms and shapes is essential to grasping the deep personal mythology of geometry, and helps the

human to tap into the divine “memory” of connection.

I teach geometry (geo + metry) as an art/science of consciousness. The Greeks considered it a

divine art. Linguistically, the me in geometry is the me in metaphysics, the holy spirit in the middle, the

human measure. Metr is not only "measure,” but "mother" and "matter" as well. I suspect a connection to

Mitra, the divine Vedic principle associated with order in the dark universe.
Bethe Hagens 8

Plato regarded geometry as the ultimate mnemonic (memory-aiding) device that organized

primeval chaos. In Timaeus, he describes how the Demiurge (whom he calls "the god") "remembered"

itself within Chora (the oldest Greek word for “place”)—thereby initiating order in creation. 10 Chora

(which is also related linguistically to Greek words for “chorus,” "dance ground,” and "the beating of a

heart") is, then, almost certainly the vibrating, intelligent divine feminine Receptacle. Before there was

matter, Chora (whom he also calls the “Nurse of Becoming”) held the disorganized and undifferentiated

aspects of shape (morphai--the perfect geometric forms), power (dynameis--fire, earth, air, water, and

aether), and feeling (pathe). The Demiurge infuses Chora to materialize all that physically exists, at every

scale. . .in a near-but-never-perfect replication of the Mother. 11 As above, so below.

Plato taught that the universe was constantly in motion, its elements in a perpetually fluid state of

transmutation dancing and spinning into and away from connectivity. The dance ground was, of course,

the eternal and unchanging body of Chora. In the stillness of meditation, the luminous spherical human 12

was the ground of the perfect cosmic dance. Plato seems to have believed that geometric mnemonics

could actually link an individual to the collective memory of the human species—even to the memory of

origination of human material being, autochthony, the "springing from the soil.” He saw the five perfect

figures not just as symbolic memory-aiding devices, but as geometric forms mathematically encoding and

exemplifying real connections and the formulaic process of structural evolution in the material world.

The tetrahedron, for example, actually was (for Plato) the element of fire, the color "red,” and

"first" in a chain of Being. Astrophysicists who subscribe either to the Big Bang theory or to the alternate

theory see fire as being present or instrumental in a first act of creation, yet Plato’s thinking in this regard

has often been dismissed as highly mythological and primitive. Translations of his works have generally

been made by philosophers untrained in three-dimensional geometry and likely unable to recognize the

sophisticated connective patterns of natural form and flow that Plato describes. 13

The legacy of contemporary Western education is that geomantic consciousness is not a taken-

for-granted aspect of our worldview and therefore we do not recognize our intimate formal connectivity

to the three-dimensional universe in which we live. What we call "learning" is typically accomplished
Bethe Hagens 9

quietly, without motion, in two-dimensional contexts—reading, computing, gaming, or watching media.

Body wisdom is rarely integrated into this existential cognitive scheme despite the lip-service currently

being paid to multiple intelligences. Thus, it isn't at all surprising that geosophic knowledge encoded in

ancient artifacts, artwork, and texts has so often been overlooked. In many ways, we hold the unfortunate

stereotype that a still body indicates a developed mind—and an active body, a simple mind. It is a

pernicious and largely invisible ethnocentrism that denies legitimacy to the activity associated with many

ancient and indigenous rituals. We do not any more easily imagine knowledge being produced by Greek,

Hindu, or Egyptian scholars dancing, singing and doing yoga in their academies than we do tribal people

who “dance, sing, and make that outrageous art!” as they engage in their own form of rigorous, concrete

experimental research and philosophy.

[Place Fig. 5 here]

Geometry is a formulaic method for the cultivation of a liminal consciousness that can bridge the

mind/body gap. Common body postures in both meditation and certain forms of dance 14 are actually

multi-layered geometric mnemonics. The basic seated meditative posture of yoga, the siddhasana or

"adept" position also known as "perfect posture,” aligns to an etheric tetrahedron (Fig. 5). The base of the

spine, head, and two knees approximate its four corners. This is probably the most loved and most

familiar representation of the Buddha. Red, the color associated with the tetrahedron, is the color of the

first (sacral) chakra at the base of the spine as well as the color of initiation and beginnings (e.g. blood at

birth, circumcision, and menstruation; red ochre on a corpse as it passes to new life after death). First in

the series of regular geometric forms, the tetrahedron—as fire—destroys while simultaneously creating

new beginnings.

In a different way, the tetrahedron is also recognized as a primary structural archetype by science.

A. G. Cairns-Smith (1985), a noted biologist, has made a very convincing case that the first organisms

came into being in a bed of tetrahedral clay crystals. Clay itself is inorganic, but it holds geometric
Bethe Hagens 10

information necessary for the formation of Earth and its creations in much the same way that musical

information recorded on a CD holds music by giving material structure to wave forms. He does not go so

far as to declare the clay "intelligent,” but argues in effect for co-creation: the tetrahedral crystals provide

exactly the memory structure—very nearly a genetic code—that reproducing organisms needed to

remember in order to achieve structural integrity. Buckminster Fuller used the tetrahedron as the

foundation figure in all his design strategies and argued that it was the most energy-efficient figure in

nature.

The geometric character of written Sanskrit enhances the total semantic experience of Hindu

texts, which contain some of the most ancient, elegant and subtle geometric mnemonics. Again, the

red/fire/tetrahedron is primary. In the Beginning, states the Bhagavad-Gita, this world was Self alone, in

the shape of a person (Purusha). The name Purusha roughly translates as the purifying burning (ush) that

existed before the current material Creation (pur). One of the most beloved two-dimensional images of

Purusha can be easily envisioned as a tetrahedron within a cube. (See Fig. 6, keeping in mind that each

face of a cube is a square.) Purusha experiences loneliness and wishes a second Self into existence. Very

roughly paraphrasing here: he was so large as man and wife together, he made his Self fall in two, and

thence arose husband and wife. He embraced her, and men were born. This union of Purusha and Prakriti

(the female half generated from himself) is the deepest, most holy Hindu symbol of Creator and

Creation.15 The divine coupling is inherently geometric in a very important way. Two (and only two)

tetrahedra "nest" in a cube—the yellow element of earth (created matter), second in the Platonic series.

[Place Fig. 6 here]

A very similar visual metaphor is employed in Navajo ceremonies that bring to ritual life a

character named Yebitsai—“Talking God,” also sometimes called "Grandfather God of the East, the

Dawn"—who guides and monitors. The numinous talisman used in his ceremony is a bundle of four

sticks, loosely fastened to each other end to end. Only Yebitsai's hands, which represent the white dawn
Bethe Hagens 11

(the white octahedron of air, third in the geometric series) are ever seen; they protrude through small

holes in a black cloth which hides a magician who shape-shifts the sticks into a tetrahedron, a square,

various diamond-like perspectives of cube faces, and an edge.

Semantic Tracings

In the same spirit as the above, I experience semantics as the romance of semiotics. The etymology of the

word geometry is just one avenue into what appears to me to be a virtually worldwide semantic core.

Greek mythology, for example, preserves it as the matrilineage of Chora—Gaia/Ge, Mnemosyne, and the

Muses. Mnemonic derives from an old Indo-European root sound men- that refers to qualities and states

of mind and thought.16 In Old English, the connection between mother Gaia and her daughter Mnemosyne

was preserved in the word gemynd, "memory.” The geomantic sound/meanings of ge, ga, me, and metr

that create the word "geometry" are neither uniquely Greek nor even Indo-European—but seem almost to

be a panhuman hymn of praise to Chora that has echoed around the world from primal sources.

Ge and Gaia are name/sounds of Earth gods and goddesses in countless mythologies. 17 Gender is

almost irrelevant. There is Geb in Egypt; Geb in Papua New Guinea among the Dani; and Ge in the

Caribbean. The Gaelic word for Earth is gabhal. Ga-oh and Hahgwehdiyu are Earth creators among the

Iroquois. Apache mountain deities are gahe. Among the Pueblo tribes of the American southwest, they

are kachinas. The sounds ka and ga are frequently interchanged. Gaokerena is the tree of life in the

Iranian cosmology. Galaxy is “milk of the Mother Goddess.”

In the Philippines, gaia is a model to imitate. Among the Hopi, gahopi is the "right way of

living.” In India, Gautama received enlightenment in Gaya, the holy city of purification in Bihar

Province. Ngai is the creator of Earth among the Maasai of Kenya. Nga is the sacred sound that opens the

throat in Tibetan meditation. Linguists such as Cavalli-Sforza (1991) and Sherveroskin believe that ngai

may have been one of the first human utterances, a sound echoing forward from more than 200,000 years

in the distant past. . .meaning "I”, or possibly “I breathe.”

Bethe Hagens 12

Ganga is goddess of the Ganges, the river of eternal life. The ganas are servants of Shiva, Lord of

the Dance of transformation of earthly elements. In Spanish, the fire of transformation is ganas—desire,

the energy of creation. Ganeo'o is the Iroquois dance of thanks to the Creator. Our words Genesis, gene,

genuine, and indigenous all flow from this same primal container of sound and meaning. To genuflect, to

bend the knee as a sign of worship, is to become one with sacred geometry. Genu is an ancient sound that

meant "angle.” In Greek, it became gon—the root of polygon, a figure with many angles or corners.

The sounds me, ma, mr, and metr can be thought of as liminal and almost always associated with

edge/dichotomies of life and death—mortality, mother, measure. In ancient Egypt, at least three separate

glyphs were homonyms sounded as “mr:” (1) a plow, which symbolized love and cultivation; (2) an owl,

which symbolized death; and (3) a triangle, which symbolized geometry. The nasal bilabial “m” requires

only the parting of the lips to create the sound “ma,” and so it is not surprising that a baby's first cry for its

mother's breast is ma. In Hebrew, 'em is "mother"; 'ammah is either "mother" or a unit of measure. 18 In

Hawaii, Maui brings death. Maya is the mother of Buddha, and maia is the measure of illusion. Ma'at is

the ancient Egyptian Lawgiver goddess. The yoga position of ultimate awareness and surrender to Earth

—Mrtasana, “corpse pose”—is, when seen “from above,” identical to the most beloved representation of

the Virgin Mary standing with her open arms outstretched.

As in the word geometry, ma/mr/metr is often combined with ge to sound a sacred name.

Aurgelmir is the first being in the Norse universe who emerged from the great cosmic void,

Ginnungagap. Mageogeo is a creator in the Tuamotus; magatama are sacred crystals of the Shinto Earth

spirit religion in Japan. Zoroaster, a contemporary of Pythagoras, taught that Gayomart (also called Gaya

Maretan) was the primal human, a luminous spherical being.

Also intertwined in this semantic scheme is one other persistent sound—ang or ank, from which

we derive angle. The hieroglyphic symbol for “life” in ancient Egypt was the ankh—a sandal strap. The

circular part of the strap went around the ankle, the primary angle by which humans walk. Linguists

believe that about six thousand years ago, throughout most of Europe and India, the sounds ang and ank

both meant "angle" in the sense of "bending, or turning on an axis” (Watkins 1969). The sound gel (as in
Bethe Hagens 13

angle) was related to ge, but was more specific. It implied "to form into a ball," "bright and shining."

Perhaps it anticipated either Ge or the luminous spherical human. The sound an meant "aloft" and, oddly,

"an old woman singing.” Angh carried the meaning of "tight, painfully constricted”—the vaginal opening

at birth? Angwhi was "snake.” El was the bend in the arm (the elbow) or the bend in the lower leg (the

knee), but it was also the elm and the alder—extremely common cosmic creation trees. In Gaelic, the very

oldest and most important unit of measure was the ell.19

Neither linguists nor etymologists currently recognize a link between angle and angel, however.

Angel is thought to be a sound that originally meant "messenger,” one borrowed by the Greeks from an

unknown Oriental source. I believe that messenger was Hermes/Mercury, who is so often associated with

earth energies and measures. What could be called the "angel of geometry"—Plato’s etherically luminous

sphere of hoops/triangles, aloft, spiralling, singing memory—does not exist as a documented cluster of

sound/meanings. Yet I have experienced myself as this Receptacle of consciousness as I have sought her

name in non-Western sources that combine the sounds ang with ge/gaia (and the related ka) in sacred

creative contexts.20

In the Qu-rān of Islam, for example, ankabut is a trickster spider who miraculously spins a huge

web over the entrance to a cave in which the Prophet hides from those who seek to kill him (Surah 29 in

The Holy Qu-rān). The Hopi Spider Woman is Koyangwuti. A Maori (New Zealand) female nature spirit

is Kurangaituku. Eskimo shamans are angakut, and the primary Creator is Anguta. Tangaroa is the

primary Polynesian Creator. Among the Chinese, the Creator is Pan'ku or Pan'gu. The all-present creator

for the Zulu of South Africa is uMvelinqangi. Yang is the creative aspect of the Tao, and altjiranga is the

aboriginal Australian name for the Creative primordial. Ultimately, the ge/ga sound is the most

ubiquitous. English retains it in god. In Gaelic, gael means "love" and gae is "cage" (the Cosmic

Receptacle?). Gae is also "jail” (the entrapment of spirit in matter, perhaps). 21

Plato’s Timaeus systematizes an entire system of geometry that was at least 1000 years old at the

time he wrote, and the Demiurge that organized the wildly vibrating aspects of Chaos was known long

before to the Hindus. Even the sounds in the name Bhagavad-Gita ("Song of the Blessed One") carry
Bethe Hagens 14

precisely the meanings of geometry. Gita is from gei, "to sing". Bha is "to shine,” and bhag is "to share

out good fortune.” Bhagha is "elbow, a bending, an angle.” The early voice of humanity seems, to me, to

be fundamentally geomantic—a creation song, a living process of interlingual connection that is endless,

turning and bending itself, in and out of empirical linguistic science and the wisdom of mythology.

Geomantic Harmony

The idea that the world is held in Chora (the dance ground), and continually sung into existence, is

perhaps most beautifully expressed by Aboriginals in Australia who view themselves as the part of Earth

responsible for remembering and chanting all the songs of creation. People who forget sacred

connectivity, who do not sing the praises of the Creator, are in countless mythologies destroyed by earth,

air, fire or water—by catastrophes of elements out of control, out of balance, out of tune. The

contemporary science of cymatics (Jenny 2001) is built from exactly this wisdom: particles of matter

assume and maintain coherent shapes as a function of very specific interference patterns, the shape effect

of overlapping vibrations (harmonies). Physicists actually describe all matter in this way. In the infinitely

hot universe of plasma energy, matter forms as a kind of supercool crust (or bubble wall) created by the

"beats" of juxtaposed wave forms (Prokopec et al. 1995). The miracle is the universality of a limited

number of "natural forms" (simulacra) that seem to pervade the “crust” at every scale. The human

eye/brain/mind seems designed to see simulacra and to find great meaning in them (Michell 1979).

Simulacra are images of people and things that can be seen in rocks, clouds, smoke. . . Their

“appearance” is sometimes so aesthetic—and timing so powerful—that it can be difficult to believe they

are natural flow forms. Simulacra are common neo-shamanic and religious phenomena (witness the

significance attached to a Madonna perceived in the rust of a screen door or burned on to a tortilla) and

are often cited as evidence of divine interference in the affairs of humans. I think of this response as an

example of a much larger panhuman phenomenon known as the Law of Similars—the belief that things

that look alike must share an important sympathetic resonance. The principal power of a shaman or seer
Bethe Hagens 15

is, possibly, the ability to visualize simulacra in detail at extraordinary ranges of scale. This expanded

power of sight brings with it the awesome responsibility of helping to keep alive (and sometimes even

restoring) the shapes of cosmic harmony.22 And sacred vision is only one of the extraordinary burdens a

shaman—who is most certainly a geomancer—must take on.

The techniques used to generate such visions are clearly both scientific and meditative. They vary

from culture to culture, but there are some striking parallels. The Oneida questing tradition of sitting

small, standing tall is identical to the principle of magnifying clairvoyance described by Patanjali in the

Yoga Sutras, numbers 27 and 28. It was possible, he said, to make oneself infinitely small such than an

atom would appear large in comparison—or large enough to see the whole Earth. A kind of magnifying

clairvoyance can also occur in dreams. The Hebrew tradition of prophetic dreaming, for example,

produced a vision of the world tree startlingly similar to ultrasound images of a human placenta and

embryo. The German chemist F. A. Kekule credits a geometric simulacrum in a dream of Oroboros (the

almost unimaginably ancient image of cosmic energy as a vortex/snake swallowing its own tail) as the

inspiration for his hexagonal model of a benzene ring molecule.

Cosmic trees, entwined snakes and hexagon/turtle images permeate the artwork, mythology, and

dream visions of people everywhere. Cultures as remote from one another in time and place as the Hindu,

Maya, Aboriginal Australian, and North American Plains Indian have all emphasized these symbols in

sacred geometric contexts. Metaphors of the snake/tree (which I understand as the principle of

spiralling)23 and the turtle/hexagon (possibly representing the powerful and efficient “packing” of divine

energy as matter. . .think honeycomb!) are perhaps the deepest totemic meanings in the human psyche as

well as the most basic representations of geometric connectivity.

The cosmic tree is present in virtually every creation mythology. It is the axis, the orienting

principle—the spine of Chora, the spinning divine feminine Receptacle. Any tree can be the cosmic tree,

for branches grow from a living tree in a DNA-like snake of life that spirals in a phi ratio (l:1.618). 24 Trees

have been used throughout time as a starting point for teaching the immanence of geometry in the

everyday world.
Bethe Hagens 16

I believe that the turtle, whose carapace is covered with hexagons, has remained so sacred

throughout time because it represents a threshold through which a variety of shapes can connect (see Fig.

7). Like hexagonal pegs, all five of Plato's perfect figures—and two other regular figures, the rhombic

triacontahedron (with its 30 identical diamond faces) and the rhombic dodecahedron (with 12 identical

diamond faces)—can be positioned to meet at this threshold and to enter into structural connection with

each other.25

[Place Fig. 7 here]

Turtles and trees have appeared almost universally to create a picture of the cosmos as a vast

whirlpool, a maelstrom—what Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend (1969) have characterized

as "Hamlet's Mill.”26 The gyroscopic spiralling of Earth’s axis of rotation—known technically as

precession—has been recorded in countless mythological explanations of observable, incremental and

repetitive changes in the location of the sun and planets at particular times of the year against the

background of “fixed stars.” In many stories Earth is a turtle, and snake (the hoopsnake or Oroboros, for

example) is the path traced in the sky by Earth's axial pole (the cosmic tree or churn in the mill) over the

period of 25,920 years it takes to complete precession circuit around the ecliptic north pole. Draco (a

dragon-snake) is the Western constellation that curls around the ecliptic north pole—which is located at

the “heart of the dragon.” The Hindu god Vishnu represents the cosmic tree. He is also a combined

snake/turtle avatar, the axis of every perfect spinning sphere. The name Cuculcan, Maya ruler of the four

directions and the four elements, means "to move round and round;” and cuceb (from cucul) is the

spiralling of the great wheels of the Maya calendar of days. In Norse mythology, the cosmic spiral is a

squirrel named Ratatosk who runs up and down Yggdrasil, the cosmic tree, carrying messages between

gods and humans. Oddly, the Maya word cuceb means "squirrel,” after the spiral path the animal takes as

it scampers up a tree (Kenton 1928).27

Bethe Hagens 17

There are no fixed situational contexts to which these metaphors specifically apply. They are

archetypes that float, bubble-like, through all cultures and all aspects of perception—semantic crystals

that store the energy of memory and render the experience of life mystically, even magically,

interconnected. Their reality is that this connectedness is not a primitive wish, desire, or belief, but turns

out to be astronomical, geophysical, and biological fact. Their truth is a timeless power to evoke new

knowledge by inspiring the process of search.

Over the ages, I would suggest, these geomantic images have persisted because they are reliable

generative frames for perplexing, and ultimately unanswerable questions about the ancient past and its

possible return as the near future. As unrecognized cultural memes, they have quietly stimulated both

science and religion to develop and refine concepts needed to even ask such questions. Is there a galactic

axis of rotation? Is Earth the infinite expanse of the ecliptic plane? Has Earth's axis wobbled out of

“alignment” (it tilts about 23 1/2o off the plane of the ecliptic)? Was there a cataclysmic collision with a

comet or giant meteor, a catastrophic polar ice build-up, a pole shift, a technology gone too far, a sin too

great. . .or is the "lack" of alignment only an illusion, a byproduct of the deep human belief in symmetry

and the need to find it? Has it always been this way? What have we actually survived?

Threshold of Initiation: Through the Hexagonal Door

The scale of vision and consciousness needed to conceptualize such questions—whether within the

archetypal structures of mythology, or within the observational framework of rational/empirical science—

is enormous. They are true problems in sacred geometry—in geomancy, the use of sacred geometry to

understand physical existence. Even more staggering are the physical and spiritual measures of the

cosmos that have inspired these questions: light years in distance; eons in time; millions of degrees in

temperature; blinding insight; perfect communion; burning desire. In my own geometric odyssey, I was

surprised—and then again, not—that hexagonal (six-sided) simulacra at all scales in nature (from patterns
Bethe Hagens 18

in the stars to turtles, honeycombs, and diamonds) are so often chosen, however unconsciously, to

symbolize vast questions and choices of human existence.

The nearly universal archetype linking the cube (which represents earth in the Platonic scheme

and can be visualized two-dimensionally as a hexagon—see Fig. 6 above) with both the turtle and Earth

is one of the most fascinating and enduring. It's not hard to understand why a turtle is such an appropriate

Earth symbol. There are hundreds of varieties of them, and they live virtually everywhere. Turtles are

almost living picture rocks. The designs on their shells often reflect some aspect of their native

environment—winding rivers, stars, snowflakes, tide pools, cultivated terraces. Parched earth buckles and

cracks into hexagonal and pentagonal cells like those on a turtle's back.

The arched carapace of the turtle (or tortoise) has been used, especially in cultures of Asia, to

represent both the central mountain of the universe as well as the dome of the sky. The animal is often

portrayed as an immortal mediator between heaven and earth. Curiously, in Japanese mythology, the

tortoise lives to 12,000 years of age—just about one-half the cycle of precession. Apollo’s lyre, a gift

from the trickster Hermes, is strung across a turtle’s carapace, and the Greeks of Plato’s time actually

fashioned harps this way. Alchemists used turtle shells to cover their crucibles, and Chinese astronomers

relied upon them as instruments of divination. The traditional American Indian sweat lodge is,

symbolically, a turtle shell, and the North American continent is known to many tribes as Turtle Island. In

the myth of the Earth Diver, an extremely common creation story known in many parts of the world, a

maiden falls to primordial Earth through a cosmic door in the heavens. Magic birds break her fall as she

comes to rest on the back of a turtle. A hero animal then sacrifices itself by diving deep into the cosmic

waters in which the turtle swims to bring up a tiny bit of soil that magically expands into Earth when

placed on the turtle's back (Cirlot 1971, Herder Freiburg 1986, Hamilton 1988, Cooper 1990).

It's surprising, nonetheless, to find how uniquely appropriate a symbol of the awesome life force

of Earth the turtle really is. Turtles can withstand drought and famine by retreating into a kind of zombie-

like state. They live to prodigious ages and can survive both on land and in water. In addition to breathing

through a set of lungs, freshwater turtles can use their mouth cavity in gill-like fashion. They have keen
Bethe Hagens 19

eyesight and can distinguish between colors. Their shell is strong enough to resist alligator bites, and the

leathery skin on their extremities wrinkles and folds to allow for extension and retraction of their head

and feet. The Hawksbill turtle of the Caribbean actually feeds exclusively on crystal—the glass spines of

poisonous subtropical sponges! No comparable diet has ever been described for any other vertebrate.

Researchers have found that the digestive tract of a typical Hawksbill is full of razor-sharp glass shards

that do no harm to the turtle. Its feces are typically concentrated into solid crystal (Weiss 1988).

[Place Fig 8 here]

By geomantic logic, then, if Earth is a turtle/cube-hexagon (“as above, so below”), there must be

a corresponding simulacrum in Sky. And in fact, a hexagonal door can indeed be seen as a cluster of

exceptionally bright stars in the constellations around Orion. These stars include Sirius, Rigel, Aldebaran,

Capella, Castor/Pollux, Procyon, and Betelgeuse. They are spread almost equally north and south of the

celestial equator and can be seen from almost everywhere on Earth. The Milky Way appears as a path

through the center. Astronomers refer to these stars as the Winter Hexagon (Raymo 1982). For some

reason, of the seven geometric “seed” figures, a two-dimensional representation of a cube is easiest to

visualize as a three-dimensional object. Once the Winter Hexagon pops into three dimensions as a cube, it

is difficult not to see it that way. Its "unseen edges" have a unique connective energy. This is an

especially powerful memory-aiding aspect of geometry.

The cube has probably been embraced more often as a mnemonic of sacred life in the material

cosmos than any other figure. Both Greek and Hindu philosophers equated the element earth with a

yellow cube. The Chinese used Earth/turtle symbolism, labeled the element of earth yellow, and named

their goddess of the Yellow Earth Nukua (a sound close to “cube,” but I can’t find evidence that Nukua

was specifically linked to the cube). Curiously, though, the Indo-European root sound for "turtle" was

ghelu, derived from ghel, which meant "to shine"; and the English words "yellow" and "gold" both derive

from ghel. (The parent sound of both ghel and ghelu is ge!)
Bethe Hagens 20

Many South American tribes identify the brilliant stars of the Winter Hexagon with a tortoise

shell, and the Taino (a now virtually extinct tribe who were the first in this hemisphere to meet

Columbus) apparently had an extremely complex creation mythology that combined the axis mundi (axial

pole, cosmic tree), Orion, turtle shells, cubes, rhombs and sacred spittle (Stevens-Arroyo 1988).

In approximately 1325 BCE, Tutankhamen’s organs were entombed in an alabaster cube; statues

of Isis, Nephthys, Horus, and Thoth stood at its four corners. According to the Lucie Lamy (1981), the

ancient Egyptian Salt Papyrus (probably written at the end of the Nineteenth Dynasty in the late 15 th

century BCE, but named after the English Egyptologist who collected it, Henry Salt) portrays the celestial

House of Life as a cube in which Osiris rests. There is fairly wide scholarly agreement that an association

exists between Orion-Sirius and Osiris (e.g. Krupp 1991, Lockyer 1964). The Holy of Holies in

Solomon's temple (1 Kings 6:20) is a perfect cube, and the religious scholar Josephus (1835) wrote

extensively about the ways in which its measured proportions imitated the system of the created world. In

the sandpaintings of the Navajo Shooting Chant, spirit medicine people emerge from a black cube over

which a protective rainbow person (the Milky Way) arches protectively (Newcomb and Reichard 1975).

A thunderbolt-wielding Huitzilipochtli lives at the center of a cubic Mesoamerican cosmos, illustrated in

the Codex Fejervary-Mayer in exact architectural plan view perspective as it would be seen from above,

without a top (see Fig. 9).

[Place Fig. 9 here]

Indigenous people in almost all parts of Australia hold sacred an All-Father. His name varies

(Ngurunderi, Baiame, Daramulun. . .), but he is the cosmic axis who establishes the path the dead travel

to join the heroes in the Sky World. He is often portrayed lying on the back of a turtle with (or as) a

representation of the Milky Way (Rainbow Snake) arching over him. In his many aspects, All-Father

represents every luminous arch of nature—the phosphorescence in sea waves, the pearly interior of shells,

the sunlight in water droplets. Analogous to the way that the hexagonal door permits passage of all the
Bethe Hagens 21

spherically symmetrical crystalline geometries, the All-Father snake/turtle "spits" crystals and medicine

spirits from his mouth (Poignant 1967).

In traditional Bora ritual (Mathews 1894), the thundering voice of the All-Father is invoked by

whirling a rhomb-shaped bullroarer pierced with holes that represented the stars in Orion's belt. Swung on

a string from the end of a pole, the bullroarer circles the sacred ritual space analogously to the way the

constellation Orion circles the Earth, tethered to the axial pole. All-Father (whose voice is heard) is

imagined as an axis/snake. He is always represented with a large phallus. The Bora saw the entire

constellation of Orion as a group of young men dancing in a korobra or corroboree, an extremely

important ritual dance celebrating the All-Father. Perhaps this linguistic clue sets Rainbow

Snake/Turtle/All Father of the corroboree not only into the tradition of Oroboros, but also into the long

line of geometers (Pythagoras and Patanjali among them) whose names literally mean "snake in the dance

ground.”28

[Place Fig. 10 here]

Drawings of Rainbow Snake such as the remarkable piece of rock shelter art from Arnhem Land

sketched above (which have possibly been continuously maintained for more than 40,000 years), are to

my mind tour de force representations the shamanic consciousness of the hexagonal door. From one

perspective, the male (the smaller figure) is born from the female. From another, she is the celestial cube

and he the rhombic shape (the bullroarer. . .Orion) that is pulled from her side. The corners of the

hexagon fall at her elbows, knees, throat, navel and vagina. I imagine her as Everywoman. . . the spinning

disk of the Milky Way, the hexagonal bed upon which her lover (like Shiva) will lie, and the virginal

hymen that will remain unbroken by divine connection. (The mythology of the Triple-Goddess Hecate,

whose symbol is a hexagon, is virtually the same.) The male is Everyman, a son and lover. His penis is an

umbilical cord. Both divine figures are embodied bullroarers, rhombic-brained beings singing out from

the ends of spinal cords.29 Together, as Rainbow Snake (who is androgynous), they dance the spiralling
Bethe Hagens 22

energies of life in a spherical cosmos. Their shared hexagonal wall is primal cleavage—cutting and

clinging—the corpus callosum of our dihedral brains.

A Predictable Yet Unexpected Hermeneutic?

I want to emphasize that the interpretation above is my own ecstatic geomantic vision, one that I

have shared with Aboriginal Australian friends, and an example of ways in which interpreters continue to

connect across time via geomantic imagery. More than anything else, it is an expression of my personal

history—the product of a quasi-Christian hermeneutic I began to absorb early in my life. I want to bring

this essay full-circle by turning to an ancient prophetic text describing the celestial cube that is quite alive

in Christian culture today. It contains vital, accurate information about ancient cosmic geometry and the

way in which it was generated. That text is John's Book of Revelation. “Above me there was an open door

to heaven,” John writes (Rev. 4:1). “I also saw a new Jerusalem, the holy city, coming down out of

heaven from God, beautiful as a bride to meet her husband” (Rev. 21:2). The text is ecstatic, not

conventionally logical, but John’s description of the city is precise. It is a perfect cube, "twelve thousand

furlongs in length, in width, and in height” (Rev. 21:16-17).30

Leaving for the moment the issue of the size of the city (12,000 furlongs is 1440 miles), many

things in John's text clearly tie it to the “celestial cube” that astronomers have named the Winter

Hexagon. It is entirely possible that John was inspired to write from direct observation of the sky. His

vision took place on Patmos, an island in the Aegean Sea off the western coast of Turkey and the site of

an ancient observatory. (I will return momentarily to the importance of this geographic location.)

Pythagoras, who apparently paid close attention to the sky, was born nearby on the island of Samos.

Though there are multiple meanings and associations in the text, the "seven lampstands of gold" that John

first sees (Rev. 1:12) can be understood in one context as the seven major stars of the celestial cube.

These stars are among the fifteen brightest in the entire visible sky, and ghel is etymologically the root of

both “gold” and “shining.”

Bethe Hagens 23

When commanded by the voice of the angel to write, John says that he turned around to see who

had spoken and must have seen the Winter Hexagon and the constellation of Orion standing in the Milky

Way. He writes:

I turned around to see whose voice it was that spoke to me. When I did so I saw seven lampstands

of gold, and among the lampstands One like a Son of Man wearing an ankle-length robe, with a

sash of gold about his breast. The hair of his head was as white as snow-white wool and his eyes

blazed like fire. . .His voice sounded like the roar of rushing waters. In his right hand he held

seven stars. A sharp, two-edged sword came out of his mouth, and his face shone like the sun at

its brightest.31

[Rev. 1:12-16]

As seen from Earth, Orion's right hand stretches out toward the seven stars of the Pleiades. His entire

head is in the Milky Way which streams down like a sash across his right shoulder.

The crystalline city does not come down out of heaven until after the terrors of the Apocalypse.

The “coming down” of the city almost certainly refers to a specific point in the 25,920-year precession

cycle (represented in ancient zodiacal calendars worldwide) when Earth and its axis of rotation align with

the constellation of Orion and the stars of the celestial cube to indicate entrance into a wider galactic

geometric harmony (Hagens 1992, 1999)—the death of one cycle, and the birth of a new one. Early in the

prophecy of things to come, John intimates that the city is the bride of the Lord:

A great sign appeared in the sky, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet,

and on her head a crown of twelve stars. . .she was with child. . .[and] wailed aloud in pain as she

labored to give birth [Rev. 12:1-2].

Bethe Hagens 24

Both Moon and Sun pass through the celestial cube, and so the woman may be both hexagonal door and

connective lover/mother in the way of the Aboriginal Everywoman:

‘Come, I will show you the woman who is the bride of the Lamb.’ He carried me away to the top

of a very high mountain and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from

God. . .The city had the radiance of a precious jewel that sparkled like a diamond [Rev. 21:9-11].

Only the constellations of the Lord (Orion) and the Lamb (Monoceros, the Unicorn, who is known in

esoteric texts as the "Lamb of the Apocalypse" [Shepard 1956]) are actually in the celestial cube.

Around the throne was a rainbow as brilliant as an emerald [Rev. 4:3]. . .I saw no temple in the

city. The Lord, God the Almighty, is its temple—he and the Lamb. . .The city had no need of sun

or moon, for the glory of God gave it light [Rev. 21:22-24]. . . The river of life-giving water, clear

as crystal, which issued from the throne of God and of the Lamb. . . flowed down the middle of

the streets [Rev. 22: 1-2].

Recall that the Winter Hexagon is the brightest area in the entire celestial sphere, that a crystal Rainbow

Snake appears in legend across Oceania, Australia, and North America. John's image of the foundation of

the city being composed of twelve distinct kinds of jewels has often been interpreted as the zodiacal ages

—since each age is traditionally associated with a gemstone. 32 It can also be imagined as the hexagonal

threshold (or crystal-spitting mouth of the All-Father) through which pass all of the geometric shapes.

The text concludes with a warning and allusion to Earth’s axis of rotation (the cosmic snake/tree): “If

anyone takes from the words of this prophetic book, God will take away his share in the tree of life and

the holy city described here” (Rev. 22:19).

Bethe Hagens 25

John's identity has never been agreed upon. He does not seem to be the author of the Book of

John, but works of prophecy are not always written "in character.” Many aspects of his vision are

extremely similar to that of the prophet Mohammed. 33 In Surah 17 of the Qu-rān, Mohammed is visited

by an angel presumed to be Gabriel (but possibly Orion) and taken into the sky "for a journey by night

from the Sacred Mosque to the Farthest Mosque.” The Sacred Mosque is the Kaa'ba, the cube-shaped

temple at Mecca. (Kaa’ba means “cube” in Arabic.) Recent research focused upon a golden Varanasi

plate found hanging in the Kaa’ba (Oak 2004) indicates that the temple may originally have been a Hindu

shrine to Shiva. Kaa’ba may even have come from the Tamil kabaa, considered one of the oldest in the

world. Dravidians of the Indus Valley worshiped Shiva as their Primal Deity, and his temples in South

India are called Kabaalishwaran. Kabaali refers to Lord Shiva, who lies upon a hexagonal bed! In any

case, the Farthest Mosque is sometimes interpreted as the Temple of Solomon, which is also cubic, but it

seems more likely that it is the celestial cube. Mohammed actually sees the angel "by the lote-tree [a fruit-

bearing tree, symbolic of heavenly bliss] of the utmost boundary," shrouded with clouds, "Nigh unto

which is the Garden of the Abode" of Allah, "the Lord of Sirius" (Surah 53).

The fruit-bearing trees of life in New Jerusalem can be imagined as branches of the lote-tree

grown up into the celestial cube. This tree, like Yggdrasil, the tree in Norse creation mythology, has its

roots in the brightness of hell at the Central Sun (the center of our galaxy). . .in Ginnungagap, the great

cleavage in the brain of our galaxy known as the Milky Way. Yggdrasil grows up through the solar

system and branches out through the top of the celestial cube. An early iteration of the Maya Tree of Life

in the Codex Peresianus (see Kenton 1928) shows a crucified man-tree growing between the horns of a

cow—possibly Taurus. The later version published by Cogolludo in 1640 has the tree piercing a turtle

shell and a cube and growing up through the arch of the Milky Way out of the galaxy (Kenton 1928). The

indigenous people of Brazil still know the tree of paradise as Mira, and Mohammed's "night journey" to

the lote-tree is known as the mi'raj. Through this one simple sound—mr—these traditions can all be tied

back to the Egyptian hieroglyph homonyms and their meanings of love, death, and geometry.
Bethe Hagens 26

Applications

One remaining geomantic interpretation I have made of John's vision will be, I hope, a contribution to

ongoing scholarly investigations of empirical measures in ancient geometric consciousness (e.g. Michell

1981, 1988; Neal 2000; Ruggles 1988). The shortest distance between any two points on a sphere is a

segment of a meridian (another mr). On Earth, for example, lines of longitude are meridians; they connect

north pole to south pole, and each measures approximately one-half the circumference of Earth. A

meridian that continued on around to complete a circle would cut the sphere of Earth in half and would be

what geometers refer to as a "great circle." Each of the 15 hoops of the divine feminine Receptacle is a

great circle which divides the sphere exactly in half, thus all of the edges of the 120 triangles are

segments of meridians.

Given the principle of “as above, so below,” it’s highly probable that empirically-minded

stargazers (wherever they were) measured distances between locations on Earth and between different

objects on the dome of the sky along great circle meridians. In the manner of Chinese ivory puzzle balls,

Earth (as Chora) would be imagined as a geometric seed inside a larger but identical celestial container.

An arc in the heavens of equivalent length to an arc on a model of the divine feminine Receptacle

provided a scale for measures transferred to Earth. Using very simple calculations based upon the average

circumference of the earth, Becker and I determined the lengths of the three sides of the basic right

triangle in Plato’s model: 1440 miles, 2160 miles, and 2592 miles (using today’s mile of 5280 feet). 34

In Revelation, "by the unit of measurement the angel used," the wall of New Jerusalem measures

144 cubits (Rev. 21:17). But this could be no ordinary cubit since John had also given the measure of the

wall as 12,000 furlongs. A standard cubit is the average length from elbow to fingertip, about 18–22

inches. In Greek, the same measure is the pekhys and in Hebrew ammah. The answer to this riddle came

to me in the weeks after my first visionary experience. I had marked the 15 hoop/120 triangle geometry

on to both my Earth globe and my identically sized celestial sphere, yet it took months of staring before it

dawned on me that I had replicated the ancient system and could proportionally compare distances on any
Bethe Hagens 27

sphere. I had trained my eye to recognize equal arcs. Ironically, I had forgotten to go outside and look at

the dome of the sky!

One night near Christmas at midnight I did go out to look at the stars, and there was Orion

standing center sky. I could see the whole Winter Hexagon and realized that the great circle arc between

Aldebaran and Betelgeuse—the “wall” I was proposing for the New Jerusalem—was proportionally the

same as the short side of Plato’s triangles of the Receptacle. Inside, I compared these arcs on my equal-

sized globes and found them to be virtually identical. Since John was living in Patmos (37.5 o North), he

would almost certainly have been using the Northern-value Greek furlong of 633.6 feet. Using simple

arithmetic: 633.6 feet multiplied by 12,000 furlongs gives 7,603,200 feet. Dividing this number by the

5280 feet in a mile, the measure is 1440 miles—the length in miles of the short side of the triangle on the

Earth grid. Reducing this number (for simplicity) by a simple factor of 10, a common device in ancient

metrology (Michell 1988), gives the angel’s measure of 144 “cubits” for the wall of New Jerusalem.

The etymological derivation of the ancient “cubit” is the Latin cubitum, “the elbow,” which

brings to mind not only the semantics of el—the bend in the knee or elbow—but the arms and legs of the

celestial cubic female in the Arnhem Land drawing (Fig. 10).

In Conclusion

The implications of this tiny clue are enormous. Not only does it suggest very ancient origins of

the foot and the mile as we know them today, but it reveals a more or less lost consciousness of design

ecology as the root of geomancy—a system of logic in which common measures were observed in cosmic

divine feminine Receptacles at all scales of being. We may currently find ourselves in the position of

being unable to grasp sacred interconnections of natural phenomena because we try to measure them in

units of time, space, and/or frequency that are more quickly determined on calculators. In the rush to

embrace the metric system as the "global measure of unity" in fields such as archaeology and biophysics,
Bethe Hagens 28

we may actually be making it impossible to see the measured wisdom inherent in the objects and beings

we are trying to understand.

John's ecstatic vision of the crystal city only begins to suggest the awesome perceptual energy of

consciousness that can be stimulated by three-dimensional geometries. This power has long been known

to indigenous cultures whose highly ambiguous geomantic art suggests to me an intentional cultivation of

liminality as “ordinary reality” in a living universe of movement and interconnection. 35 Ancient and

contemporary shamanic art forms snap in and out of shape and perspective—and apparently trigger an

enhanced capacity for multiple meaning and symbol usage. 36 They exemplify a fundamental (and easily

forgotten) principle of consciousness in Chora’s sacred realm: geometric shapes will generate visions that

are sacred illusions, myths of what "was,” "is," and "will be”—myths of position in time. This is

geomancy: the science of the trickster, who often—to his own peril—confuses vision with ultimate

reality. Nonetheless, it is out of these illusions that the human future is and apparently has long been

created.

ENDNOTES

1
The first surviving, integrated written statement of this tradition is Plato’s Timaeus and Critias. Guthrie

1987 contains invaluable primary texts that set Plato’s work into a much broader esoteric context. For

readers looking for an entry point into this vast realm popularly referred to as “sacred geometry,” see

Schneider 1994. Both Bierhorst 1972 and Sullivan 1996 provide a wealth of ethnographic examples of

geometric vision. Heath 2004 proposes a model for prehistoric consciousness founded in integer-based

arithmetic and geometry.

2
William Becker and I were the first contemporary researchers to make this connection between Plato’s

spherical “Receptacle of Infinite Becoming” (Gaia) and the hexakis icosahedron (the only spherical

configuration possible for 120 identical right triangles). See also Cornford n.d. and Becker and Hagens
Bethe Hagens 29

1992. An internet search for Plato+Gaia+Receptacle will bring up a wealth of cached sites for further

research.
3
The most extensive an widely available rendition of this vision of the cosmos as hoops is found in

Neihardt 1961. A more popular version, including the conceptualization of the universe as a sphere with

woman holding spirit at the center, is McGaa 1990. I am indebted to Barbara Lane Giammarino, a

Penobscot hoop dancer, for her confirmation that the so-called “crossed circle” is a two-dimensional

representation of three symmetrically entwined hoops that created an octahedron. Joseph Meeker

introduced the Brulé Sioux creation story in a seminar entitled “Environmental Mythology” that we

convened at Mesa Verde National Park, September 10, 1989. See also Bierhorst 1972 and the etymology

of Viracocha in Sullivan 1996.

4
Occasionally, the color of blue is used instead of black as the color of the element water. The

photographing of sacred ceremonies around the world was commonplace early in the 20th century, and

the results were often featured in popular collections published by corporations such as Time-Life Books

and Readers Digest. This is rare today. As a child, I studied pictures of trickster figures such as the

Navajo Yebitsai manipulating a straight line of connected sticks into and out of various three-dimensional

geometric shapes. Many of the tools are illustrated in Culin 1975. Essays in Kroeber 1994 examines a

context of resurgence within which these objects may again be appearing.

5
The field of global geometric mapping is full of land mines including Atlantis, ancient global cultures,

and extraterrestrial travel. Nonetheless, much of the “fringe” data we considered in the early 1980s—for

example, maps and anomalous artifacts discovered, published or speculated upon by dedicated lay

researchers such as Harris (1975), Mertz (1972), Corliss (1978), and Hapgood (1979)—are now being

reconsidered in light of more sophisticated techniques for evaluating their authenticity. As an example,

historians in Beijing have identified two maps procured in a South Korean antique shop in 1972 by Harris

—then a third-generation Baptist missionary—as Ming Dynasty. A major contribution to metrology and

ancient mapping research, largely ignored by academia, is Stecchini n.d.

Bethe Hagens 30

6
See Hagens 1992, Hagens 1997a, Hagens 2004 and Becker and Hagens 1991 for applications and

reflective critical assessment of this model. An internet search of “Becker Hagens Grid” will reveal how,

for better or worse, it took on a life of its own.

7
See Hagens 1997a and 1999 for a preliminary conceptualization of this model. Also, see Sullivan 1996

for an important indigenous conceptualization from Peru.

8
A classic, readable introduction to the field is Pennick 1995.
9
Identification of this object was verified by Valery Makarov shortly before his death. Kilford 2004

discusses similar artifacts and includes a comprehensive bibliography.

10
For ease of understanding, I will be using Anglicized spellings of Greek words.
11
Interpretations of the confusions of and similarities between Receptacle, Gaia, Chora, and Nurse of

Becoming are introduced in Parada 1997 and Opsopaus 1998 (particularly Part II). At one level of

analysis, the astronomical interpretation of mythology proposed in Santillana and von Dechend 1972 is

foundational in my thinking: animals are stars; gods and goddesses are planets, Sun and Moon; and

topographical references are metaphors for locations on the celestial sphere. Sullivan 1996 is a tour de

force application of these principles. The Demiurge can be interpreted as the planet Saturn, “giver of

measure and time,” owing to observable geometric properties of its recurrence at specific locations and

times—particularly its regular conjunction with Zeus—Jupiter.

12
Pythagoras is thought to have adopted this idea of a primal, spherical luminous human essence from

Zoroaster (various essays and perspectives in Guthrie 1987).

13
See, for example, Lee 1986.
14
The Laban school of dance, for example, explicitly incorporates geometric shapes as movement icons.

See Ness 1992.

15
See Arnold n.d., especially Chapters VII and XIII, for the original text translated into English. For an

interpretation, see Hinduwebsite n.d. The purusha and prakriti are not strictly male and female. Purusha

is “the cause and experiencer of the pleasures and pains of the body,” and the prakriti is “the energy and
Bethe Hagens 31

material form of the experience”—among many other interpretations. Mehta n.d. discusses in detail the

architectural layout system based on Vastu Purusha’s body.

16
Throughout this essay, I draw from and expand upon the etymological interpretations of linguist Calvin

Watkins of Harvard University (Watkins 1969).

17
When I originally noticed that the Egyptian Geb and Greek Gaia shared so much in common, I began

searching for connective morphemes between Greek, Hebrew, Egyptian, and Gaelic using Strong 1988,

Budge 1978, and Maclennan 1979. The caveat: you will find what you look for. I find that certain

morphemes jump out at me no matter what I read, much the same as geometric shapes spring from two-

dimensional images. Encyclopedias, children’s books, and compendiums of world mythologies and

related craft traditions have been especially fertile grounds for confirming what I think I see—especially

Leach 1984, Hamilton 1988, O’Neill, et al. 1994, Ratajczak 1998, and Littleton 2002. Online etymology

sites have surprisingly sophisticated discussions of these kinds of ideas, for example,

http://www.etymoline.com.
18
Saddam Hussein warned that the Gulf War of 1991 would be "the mother of all battles.” He may well

have meant that it would be "the measure" of what was to come.

19
In a private communication, A.M. Davie, Grand Pryor of the Temple of Sion of the Knights Templar in

Scotland, stated that the name of the traditional Scotch measuring staff known as the ell is virtually

identical to the royal Egyptian staff known as the tcham. The name ell is derived from the Egyptian leg

hieroglyph (foot, ankle, and lower leg), which eventually became a written letter “L.”
20
I want to emphasize that I have drawn examples from a variety of academic and non-academic sources,

including children’s books, museum displays, and so-called “coffee table books.” There are many other

names which I have not cited and which don’t follow the patterns that I am proposing to exemplify

geomantic memory.
21
Any of these names can be Google-searched and a variety of sources identified to further research their

characteristics.
22
See Besant and Leadbeater 1919. This was my initial inspiration for this idea.
Bethe Hagens 32

23
I would suggest that the principles of symbolic connection between human, cosmos, and spiralling are

most clearly articulated in rituals and symbols associated with the bullroarer and the spinner or “magic

wheel.” See especially Hagens 2005a and 2005b. Additional materials, including replica artifacts, highly

visual PowerPoint presentations, and information for multicultural curriculum planning will soon be

available at http://www.WorldGeometry.com.
24
For detailed examples of these principles, see Doczi 1981, Blair 1976, Critchlow 1982, Andrews 1966,

Adams and Whicher 1982, and Schwenk 1976. Each of these works on the geometry of natural form has a

unique vision and poetry.

25
Becker and Hagens 1992, an unpublished manuscript presented to the Program in Industrial Design at

the University of Illinois-Chicago, discusses and illustrates our theory of structural interconnectivity via

the hexagonal threshold. It will soon be available at http://www.WorldGeometry.com.

26
Santillana and von Dechend 1977 is probably the most comprehensive, well-documented discussion

available of the impact of astronomical events upon the development of world mythology.
27
Much of this lore is from Kenton 1928, unfortunately no longer in print. It is a humble, enormously

insightful book by an educated lay researcher.

28
Mathews 1894 and Mathews 1896-1897 contains descriptions of initiation ceremonies among the

Keeparra and Bora tribes collected just as these rituals were phasing out of regular practice. I have

suggested the tie to Oroboros (the self-defecating hoopsnake) based upon these reports. Mathews writes

that the most sacred initiatory ground was referred to as the “place of urination.” It was here that the boys

drank urine, ate feces, and were instructed in the repetitive cycles of the cosmos of which they were a

part. In preparation for returning home, each of initiate was smeared with feces and was said to have been

“swallowed” and then excreted by the All-Father. This ritual is reminiscent of the reverence accorded to

the Egyptian divinity Khepera, who represents the scarab—a beetle that raises its larvae in dung. It echoes

Plato’s teaching in Timaeus that Earth was designed to supply its own nourishment from its own decay”

(Plato 1965:44-45).
Bethe Hagens 33

29
See Hagens 1991 for a discussion of rhombic symmetry and Paleolithic representations of animal and

human limbic brains as mature women.

30
We might envision the ubiquity of that cubic structure, on the micro and macro scale, as the salt of the

Earth.
31
See Hagens 2005b for a summary of the nearly universal association of Orion, the solstice sun, and the

bullroarer/double-edged flint blade. This essay also includes a discussion of representations of a tongue-

bullroarer on the Aztec Sun Stone (popularly known as the Sun Calendar) and the circular zodiac at

Denderah.
32
Two thousand years ago, the stars of Orion were known to Arab civilizations as Al Jauzah—“the giant,”

a female divinity unsuccessfully courted by Canopus. John’s description of “The Lord” and “The

Woman” appear to re-state Plato’s distinction between Demiurge and Receptacle. An excellent, readable

text interpreting the Book of Revelation in terms of (in the author's words) "taboo subjects such as

numerology, sacred geometry and astronomy-astrology" is Strachan 1985. A professor of biblical studies

at Edinburgh University, Strachan writes: "I did not deliberately set out to get involved in such suspect

disciplines; it just happened that way. Biblical cosmology is like that. It is all about geometric

proportions, the cycles of heavenly bodies, and numbers. I'm sorry that it should be so. It upsets me to

have to accept it. I would much rather it were otherwise, because I do not want to be thought of as a

pariah for having drawn attention to certain unacceptable aspects of holy writ. However, that is the risk I

must take, since it was these 'unpresentable parts' that 'found me' in the course of my studies."
33
I am deeply indebted to my recently deceased colleague at Governors State University, Dr. Mohammed

Kishta, for his scholarship and patience in working with me on the astronomy and revealed wisdom in the

Qu-rān.
34
We were astonished by the coincidences of these measures with those in ancient metrology. Our

preliminary conclusions are summarized in Becker and Hagens 1991.

35
Gisela Wendler has suggested its return as postmodern shamanic reality.
36
See Hagens 1991 for a treatment of intentional ambiguity in Paleolithic representations of the Goddess.
Bethe Hagens 34

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Fig. 1 The Cosmic Receptacle – Gaia (above) composed of 120 identical right triangles “holds”
the five dynamic elements of Creation: (from left) tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, icosahedron,
and dodecahedron.
Bethe Hagens 44

Fig. 2 The Russian geometric map (left) symmetrically nests an icosahedron (composed of 20
identical equilateral triangles) with its “perfect dual”, the dodecahedron (composed of 12
pentagons) so that the corners of each figure fall at the centers of the faces of the other. Becker
immediately recognized the geometry of geodesic domes in this map, but felt it was missing
“major struts” that were identified only as arrows of force. The Becker-Hagens planetary grid
model (right) adds these struts and is based upon the synergetic geometry of R. Buckminster
Fuller as well as Plato’s divine feminine Receptacle described in Timaeus.
Bethe Hagens 45

Fig. 3 A celestial sphere is a very ancient rendering of the sky as a globe. It supports the
imaginative possibility that we can get “above” the view of the sky that we see from the Earth
and look down upon it (i.e., as above, so below). The dome of the sky visible to the naked eye
has remained much the same as it is now for the past 50,000 years of human history. Computers
have made the celestial sphere obsolete, however, and within the past twenty years it has taken
Bethe Hagens 46

its place in planetarium museums among archaic tools. The once-standard 12” diameter globe I
use in my research is out of production, though occasionally one appears on ebay as a high-
priced antique. I would never have seen the stunning sky alignments with the 15-hoop/120-
triangle sphere without one. The issue is that while celestial objects may appear to form a dome
over Earth, they are in fact at vastly different distances from us. There is no dome. Yet human
stargazers for thousands of years visualized this geometry upon the sky and used it to create
calendars of precession.

Fig. 4 Hand-held, precisely crafted geometric artifacts. (Above) Three models based upon
identical icosa-dodecahedral symmetry include (from left) a contemporary model of a virus; a
Bethe Hagens 47

3000-year-old bronze figure possibly associated with Hecate, the “Triple Goddess”;9 and a reed
healing sphere from Southeast Asia. (Below) Carved stones from Neolithic Scotland (possibly
bolas) accurately represent the five Platonic solids at least 1000 years before Plato.

Fig. 5 In Yogic “perfect posture” or “adept position,” the body aligns with the tetrahedron.
Bethe Hagens 48

Fig. 6 The image of Purusha (center) as Vastu Purusha (in “demon” form, trapped by the gods
in a net) is used as a pattern for architectural layouts. It can be visualized as a tetrahedron (left).
Prakriti and Purusha merge in the second stage of materialization; this union is represented here
(right) as two interpenetrating tetrahedra whose eight combined corners define the second
dynamic element of Plato’s series, the cube.
Bethe Hagens 49

Fig. 7 The Hexagonal Door is another vision that spontaneously opened to me as I explored
geometric consciousness. At the center is the tetrahedron. From upper left clockwise are the
rhombic dodecahedron, rhombic triacontahedron, cube, dodecahedron, icosahedron, and
octahedron.
Bethe Hagens 50

Fig. 8 Astronomers refer to the pattern of bright stars surrounding the constellation of Orion as
the Winter Hexagon. The stars also can be visualized as the corners of a huge celestial cube
which may have been the inspiration for the vision in Revelation of a New Jerusalem descending
from heaven (Hagens 1997b). Many cultural traditions in South America and the Pacific see a
turtle in these stars (Allen 1963), and a drawing of the Maya world tree made by Diez Lopez
Cogolludo in 1640 (Kenton 1928) pictures a tree bursting upwards through the back of a turtle
resting on a cube. The “incomparably mighty churn” of the Sea of Milk (the Milky Way) in the
Bethe Hagens 51

Mahabarata is traditionally illustrated as Vishnu atop a tree/snake that protrudes through the
back of a turtle (Santillana and von Dechend 1977).

Fig. 9 “Plan view” of Huitzilipochtli at the center of a celestial cube. This drawing is adapted
from the Codex Fejervary-Mayer, a deer skin screen-fold book illustrating aspects of the
Mesoamerican calendar, believed to be pre-Columbian and of Mixteca-Puebla origin.
Mythological attributes of the thunderbolt-wielding Huitzilipochtli are similar to other divine
figures associated with Orion.
Bethe Hagens 52

Fig. 10 An original interpretation of cubic-hexagonal geometry in rock shelter art from Arnhem
Land, Australia. My drawing is adapted from a photo in Poignant 1967:137.
Bethe Hagens 53