Sacred Geometry Classes: Level 1 of 3 (Beginners)

Randall Carlson on Geometry & the Right Angle (from Decatur, GA class 7/14/06)

(some classroom conversational speaking style is maintained in this transcription)

(from class) “What is the purpose of studying these geometric relations?”

If you’re an artist, a designer, a builder…If you think…If you have a brain in your head and you use it to think – there is no better way of developing your reasoning mind than going through a process of geometric exercises. There is no better way!  That’s why I gave you a handout…it was an entrance to a temple…Who has it?  OK, on this I had an inscription that Plato put above the door of his Academy of Metaphysics. What it said was let none… 

“Let no one enter this portal, who is ignorant of geometry.”  If you wanted to study metaphysics with Plato, you had to know geometry.  Why?  Because he knew that people could study metaphysics, and they could go completely bonkers, unless they had also developed the ability to think rationally and logically.  “Bonkers?”  Well, only if it becomes imbalanced to the point… Haven’t you ever known people who were into metaphysics, who just didn’t know how to cope with the real world?

…All this [basic geometry] leads to the higher levels of Sacred Geometry which is… If you want to look at a Gothic Cathedral, or the Great Pyramid, or Stonehenge, or the Castillo at Chichen Itza, or any of the ancient sacred structures, and figure out what they’re saying…It’s all presented in the language of geometry.

See, these relationships are fundamental to, basically, the structure of our consciousness.  It’s not like this is something that we invented, this is something that we discovered.  It’s intrinsic within the fabric of nature itself.  And the proportions that we find that govern nature are also the proportions that govern our consciousness.  And so, in effect, what Plato understood, and what everybody I think understood about it, that studied Sacred Geometry was, that in effect, it was a way of developing your consciousness as well…Because there are certain fundamental patterns of harmony.  Now, what we’re doing here is the basics. The questions you asked me, that would be like…I’m here and I’m presenting to you – here’s the letters of the alphabet  ABCD… Learn the letters of the alphabet.  Then you were to ask me: “But what would I do with this?”  How would I answer that??? What wouldn’t you do with it? What would you do without it? Those would be my questions!

And that’s the fundamental idea. This is an alphabet we’re learning here.  When Euclid wrote down his propositions…What he was doing, was he was taking an ancient sacred science and actually putting it down systematically and presenting it to the world.  And without Pythagoras, without Euclid, essentially the whole superstructure of our modern civilization wouldn’t exist!  There’s nothing that doesn’t ultimately trace its origins back to what we’re talking about right here – Nothing!  I mean, understanding the dimensions of the universe and the solar system, without this, you wouldn’t be able to do it.  We’d still be thinking perhaps that the entire universe was pasted on the inside of a shell, out at the level of the moon.  But these are the basic techniques that you need to have, to be able to do the more advanced exercises, which are the patterns and the diagrams, the sacred diagrams that were used by the master masons.  There was a set of these sacred diagrams, and they were used by master masons all over the ancient world to develop the proportions of their temples and their sacred structures.  And I’ve shown some of those, I’ll pull one up here on the computer and show you an example…

“How does this relate to my consciousness?”

Well, in fact, one of the handouts that you will get tonight is a whole set of quotes, taken from various sources – ancient sources, poetic sources and so on, talking about the whole concept of self-similarity.  You know, the idea of fractals, if you take a section, a part of a whole, and the whole…the pattern of the whole is reflected into that part.  So with a fractal, no matter what, you can take a piece of it and blow it up, you know expand it, enlarge it, and it’s the same pattern that you started with.  Well, that was a concept that was very familiar to the geometricians of old.  And there was actually a term, invented by Jay Hambidge, that I talked about in one of the earlier lectures, and he called it “Dynamic Symmetry”. This is where you have this relationship between the whole and the part, and the parts reflect the whole and vice-versa.  That was considered to be the key, the basis for understanding harmony.

(referring to the prior drawing exercise)

…So now you have a whole different set of ways for creating right angles…And right angles, you know, we’ve so overused in our modern culture that we kind of just take it for granted.  But early on, somewhere along the line, the discovery of the right angle was considered a very profound breakthrough.  And the right angle…I showed you a quote by the ancient Chinese, talking about the significance of  the right angle…Because, you know, by putting the pole in the ground, and if the ground is flat, and the pole is plumb, you’ve got a right angle, and then as the sun casts shadows, it creates angles, and then from those angles you then determine, as they said, “the ten thousand things”.  But it starts very simply – it starts with putting a pole in the ground, and setting out a right angle of 90 degrees.

And see, we humans…That’s what makes us unique among the animal kingdom, it’s our vertical orientation.  As we stand here, we create a perpendicular.  A natural perpendicular to the surface of the Earth.  We’re an ‘upright’.  In Freemasonry, they have the moral principle of rectitude.  Which means basically, moral uprightness.  And they symbolize that by the plumb-bob.  You know, all the tools, the builders tools and the geometricians tools have these moral and ethical correlations to them.  And we human  beings are the ones that can have moral codes, because we understand the principle of uprightness, which is also rectitude.

And think of also, how it’s encoded in our language – the way we speak.  Like when we say…I’m doing business with you, and when we’re concluding our business, and you’re satisfied and I’m satisfied, then we shake hands and we say: “Are we square?“   “We’re square.”  Do we have a right angle?  Or, “Are we on the level?” They always say…”How do masons meet?”  This applies to most of the ancient orders, but in particular in the case of the Freemasons, they say: “How do masons meet?” “On the level.”  So the idea being, in the lodge, in the occult lodges, or in the lodges of Freemasonry, it doesn’t matter what your station is in the outside world, when you’re in the lodge you’re all equal.  In fact that Masonic principle was one of the guiding principles in the founding of our democratic republic here.  The idea of equality: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that we are all created equal.”  Now that doesn’t mean necessarily that we all have the same amount of money, or the same amount of good looks, or the same amount of intelligence. What it means is that in our social stations, and so forth, these are just roles, and ultimately, beyond our social roles, we’re all basically equal.  We’re all constituted of the same divine spark, and are therefore equal, in the eyes of God, or, before the law.

So, we say, “How do masons meet?” So, if you’re in the lodge, and when we’re going to conclude, you say, “How do masons meet?”  And see, everybody steps down to the same level, to reinforce that principle that we’re all on the same level.  And “How act?” “By the plumb.” There’s the idea of moral rectitude, moral uprightness.  “How part?” “ On the square.” And see, those little idioms have found their way into common usage, and people say it all the time without realizing that it has this pedigree to it, this history to it, you know?  Masons part upon the square.  They always say it: “Part upon the square.” Meaning that everything is ‘right’ between us…

“I’m glad I asked the question…That was wonderful!”

If you are interested in studying Sacred Geometry with Randall Carlson please Contact Us.