The Lost Symbol
The Search for Eternity
Throughout the years, the finest of human minds have tried to spread
truths or knowledge that they had discovered, and challenged the common
perceptions of their times. A large portion of those people were
tortured, shunned, or paid with their lives.
There is another way to bring knowledge to the enlightened person. The
coding of knowledge in symbols has been one of the most common ways in
human history. Another interesting way is conveying messages through
books. Books are a more comfortable means of “digestion” by society,
especially if the fundamental truth is obscured by a tale of fantasy or
science fiction. Examples of this are “Gulliver's Travels” by Jonathan
Swift which was actually a profound criticism of society, or “The
Master and Margarita” by Mikhail Bulgakov which protested against
Stalin and the communist regime.
The
Divine Reflection
Assimilating criticism or truth that is hard to digest in a book is
more comfortable because the reader receives the message through a
filter of a fictional plot. Instead of slamming the truth in the
reader's face, the message is transferred slowly to the enlightened
reader.
The Lost Symbol book
This form of symbolic coding or encryption existed and continue to do
so throughout human history. A surprising source of this type of
encryption can be found in Dan Brown's recent novel “
The Lost Symbol”. In this novel,
written in the form of a popular thriller, an important message is
conveyed, a message that has been encrypted throughout the generations
and has resurfaced throughout time. It is the human search for the
divine and the eternal. From the dawn of time, mankind looked at itself
and had seen the entropy, the extinction, and the change. The human
fear of the upcoming end, had lead mankind to seek the eternal. The
search had lead to several interesting phenomena.
The first phenomenon is religion, which provided answers and a path for
the masses. The fear of the end was transformed to a promise of eternal
life in paradise for the believer after his death. Ancient
civilizations such as the Maya and the ancient Egyptians dealt with
religious rituals and preparations for the after life on a daily basis.
Absurdly, the search for the truth lead to cynical exploitation of the
masses and the use of “mediators” that "linked" those higher powers to
humanity.
This cynical cycle of exploitation of the masses by threats and fear
lead the discoverers of the truth to encrypt the truth about the nature
of reality and the true nature and ability of man. The truth was coded
in artwork, architectural monuments, and philosophical and
religious writings.
The secrets of ancients
In order to discover the secret of the ancients, we must go back to the
ancient world. The ancients observed the complex universe around them
with wonder. They discovered patterns and periodical cycles that repeat
themselves in nature. Wonderful interactions and organized structures
that suggested a mysterious and amazing presence of laws and set
patterns in the universe.
Ancient Philosophers and the Golden Ratio
Discovery of geometric relations in the universe lead the lovers of
truth, the ancient philosophers (the word philosophy is derived from
two Greek words philo and sophy meaning love of truth) to the discovery
of the “Golden Ratio”. It is a geometric ratio that exists in countless
patterns and structures in the universe.

Figure 1
The Golden Ratio
The Golden Ratio or Golden Section is a ratio that is formed when a
line is divided in this form (Figure 1) so that AB/AC=AC/CB. Namely
that the ratio between AB and AC is equal to the ratio between the
ratio between AC and CB. This proportion shows us that the ratio
between all of the line AB to it bigger section AC is equal to the
ratio between AC and the smaller section BC. When this is calculated
mathematically the number 1.61803... is attained. This number is known
as Phi (φ) and this is it's mathematical equation (Figure 2). The Greek
symbol of Phi is parallel to the sound “PH” in English and is used to
represent the proportion of the Golden Ratio. The name Phi is derived
from the name of the ancient Greek sculptor Phidias who was also a
mathematician and built the Parthenon and the sculptures there based on
the Golden Ratio. One of the surprising things regarding the Golden
Ratio is the geometric law that represents the idea that the Micro and
the Macro are the same. In essence, the Golden Ratio reveals to us that
the laws that govern the motion of the starts and galaxies are the same
laws that make up the human body. As the ancients dived deeper into the
law they discovered more and more mysterious facts. They discovered
that the law reflects the mysterious relativity between man and
universe. The ancients actually discovered that through the laws of the
Golden Ratio, they could unveil the secrets of the universe and find
eternity.
A Golden Symbol of Harmony and Tranquility
The first of the ancient mathematicians laid the foundation for the
search for eternity. Euclid, in his first mathematical book “ Elements”
which Albert Einstein called “
The
Devine Book”, laid the foundations for modern geometry. Along
with it came Plato and the five perfect solids which hold the secrets
of the Golden Ratio.
The Magical Mystery Tour
Pythagoras (considered the father of philosophy) and his disciples
claimed that the entire universe leans on mathematical laws. They
believed that in its deepest level, reality is mathematical in nature,
and that philosophy is a genuine tool for spiritual understanding.
Moreover they believed that the human spirit can experience unification
with the divine and that certain symbols have real mystical meanings.
Over time this knowledge was forgotten and “rediscovered” in the
Renaissance by men like
Luca Pacioli,
Leonardo Pisano Fibonacci, and
more.
The places where this knowledge was encrypted are surprising.
In the bible the Golden Ratio appears in the book of Genesis in the
story of Noah's ark, where God instructs Noah to build an ark:
"13: And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me;
for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will
destroy them with the earth.
14: Make thee an ark of gopher wood;
rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without
with pitch.
15: And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of:
The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it
fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits.” (King James Version).
Also in the Book of Exodus when God commands Moses to build the Ark of
the Covenant.
“10: And they shall make an ark of shittim wood: two cubits and a half
shall be the length thereof, and a cubit and a half the breadth
thereof, and a cubit and a half the height thereof.
11: And thou shalt
overlay it with pure gold, within and without shalt thou overlay it,
and shalt make upon it a crown of gold round about.” (King James
Version).
Division of the measurements in both cases gives the number
1.666666....namely the Golden Ratio in an almost perfect manner. In the
case of Noah's Ark, the numbers 3 and 5 are part of the Fibonacci
series which is directly tied to the Golden Ratio and exists in
countless places in nature.
Actually the story of the Ark of the Covenant holds several ideas in
it. The use of the Golden Ratio in the Ark of the Covenant represents
the gate to the secrets of creation and divinity.
The Monad symbol
The Ancient Alchemy symbol for Gold happens to be the ancient
philosophical symbol for unity and the beginning of creation. This is
the symbol of the
Monad. The
use of this symbol ,the circumpunct, was used by the Greek philosophers
and Pythagoras to represent the point of the beginning of creation.
From this symbol one may evolve towards the additional rules of
creation including the Golden Ratio.
[Figure 4]
The Monad symbolizes the secret of creation and contains the idea of
cosmic consciousness which experiences itself and learns from itself by
observation and experience of the micro and the macro, and vice versa.
The ancient alchemists used this symbol to represent Gold because Gold
represents the divine and the eternal, since Gold is not subject to
annihilation and entropy.
A
Golden Symbol of Harmony and Tranquility
The measurements of the Temple in Jerusalem and other hidden
proportions claimed to be encrypted in the Bible kept many busy over
the years. One of the researchers who tried to discover additional
cosmic secrets from the structure of the Temple in Jerusalem was non
other then Isaac Newton, the father of modern physics, who became
engrossed in the Bible and in ancient Jewish mystical writings in order
to find more encryptions of the secrets of the universe.
The Lost Secret
The fact that many philosophers delved into esoteric and mystical
writing raises two questions. The first being -do these ancient
writings contain secret encrypted truths? The second: if so, what is
this truth?
The symbol of the
Monad is a
basic symbol, and from it another symbol
is derived – the
Tetractys.
When I observed sacred numbers in Jewish tradition such as 5, 13, 26,
and 72 I discovered them surprisingly in a consistent form in artworks
of the great masters of the Renaissance and in the geometric structures
the greek philosophers studied.
If we take the most important symbol of the Pythagoreans – the
Tetractys, we will find a
surprising discovery. The Tetractys was to
the Pythagoreans the symbol and the diagram of the entire universe. The
meaning of the word Tetractys in Greek is “Fourfold”. The symbol of the
Tetractys was so important to the Pythagorans that they used it as
their oath. "By him that gave to our generation the Tetractys, which
contains the fount and root of eternal nature…..".
Now notice this. In the Bible the name of God is written as YAWH (יהוה)
and the letters represent the cycle of time and the periodical motion
of the universe. This name is comprised of the words “Was” (היה), “Is”
(הווה), and “Will be” (יהיה). The name simply represents a state of
"being" or "existence".In the Jewish tradition there are the 72 sacred
names of God– these are 72 combinations of three letters that are
created by sectioning the middle verse of the Bible in a certain
way. According to Jewish tradition, with these combinations – creation
was made. If you take the name of God in Hebrew (יהוה) and place it in
the order of the letters in the Tetractys, you will get the number 72.
Actually it is possible that if those people who were trying to
decipher the “Names Of God” would have turned to geometry, they would
have uncovered the big cosmic secret. If the symbol of the foundation
of creation is the Monad, the circle with the dot in the middle, what
would happen if we would use the number 72? The circle is divided to
360 degrees since the days of the ancient Sumerians some 5000 years
ago. Dividing the circle by 72 gives us five points from which we
derive the Pentad. The Pentad was so secret and sacred in ancient times
and the Pythagoreans used it as a secret mark to identify one another.
They studied the geometric properties of the shape rigorously and since
it was so secret to them the knowledge was passed on only orally.
Knowledge of the Pentad resurfaced only during the Renaissance in Luca
Pacioli's book (illustrated by Leonardo de Vinci) “De Divina
Proportione” (The Devine Proportion) meaning the Golden Ratio. From the
Pentad we can produce the Golden Ratio, if we use a triangle at an
angle of 72 degrees we reach the Golden Ratio again. Of the Pentad, one
of the five Platonic solids can be derived, the Dodecahedron. The use
of the Platonic Solids (5 polyhedron structures , each being
constructed from identical polygons) by Greek philosophers was common
and they saw them as the elements of the universe, the Dodecahedron
being the most important.
The Renaissance
During the Renaissance some intensive research was done on the Golden
Ratio, the 5 Platonic solids, and the Thirteen Archimedean Solids.
The search for the use of geometric structures lead me to the famous
and laden with symbology creation of Albrecht Dürer from 1514:
Melancholia I. The old engraving depicts a winged character which
represents the artist himself searching for the truth. The character is
holding a compass and looking at a geometric structure. In the
engraving, an hourglass is seen which represents that time is running
out, and also a magic square with the number 34 which probably
represent Jupiter. There are also other symbols with esoteric meaning.
An examination of the structure of the engraving raises the conclusion
most researchers agree on, that the base of the diamond like structure
is based on the angle 72.
Observation of
Luca Pacioli's
painting from 1495 reveals to us
the tight link between geometry, the Golden Ratio, and art. In the
picture we see Luca Pacioli drawing one of Euclid's theorem and
looking at a glass structure of one of the Archimedean Solids (the
Rhombicuboctahedron) filled half way with water. On the table next to
him a Dodecahedron appears (and by the way the other figure is probably
Albrecht Dürer).
So what is the hidden key which everyone has been searching for?
As I was looking at the
Tetractys
and seeing how the letters of the
name of God in Hebrew create the nuber 72, I realized that there was
probably a tight connection between the Pythagoreans and the kaballa.
Jewish Kaballa tried to tie between man and God and encrypted the idea
that the human being can unite and become ONE with the CREATOR itself
and become a creator by himself-this knowledge was hidden in esoteric
symbolism. According to Jewish tradition, the secret formula to the
universe is comprised of 216 letters and of 72 triple combinations. If
we go back to the Bible and examine the numerical symbology that is
found there, we will find (as I had already mentioned) that the
proportions of Noah's ark are close to the Golden Ratio and the
measurements of the ark circle around the number 3 and f which are a
part of the Fibonacci sequence.
In the story of Elijah on Mt. Carmel there is the use of the number 12
and there is a symbolic duplication that Elijah performs of 12*12 which
is 144, the 12th number in the Fibonacci sequence. If we add the use of
the 72 names of God and the explicit name of 216 letters we find that
we get only one thing – a Dodecahedron. The 72, 216, and 144 are all
part of the five angles of the Pentad we create out of the circle. The
3 and the 5 being the geometric definition of the base of the
Dodecahedron (3 Pentads around each vertex), the number 12 being the
number of facets of the Dodecahedron.
The more you gaze at the same old symbology, you realize that the
ancients tried to find the way to the secrets of creation itself. The
perception of the link between MAN and CREATION and seeing them as a
micro-universe is the big secret of the philosophers and the mystics.
In the books of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, the 16th century
astrologist and alchemist, the human body is depicted in parallel to a
Pentad and other geometric structures. The entire universe and the
Creator itself are reflected in each of us and in the ability of each
of us to reach the same divine abilities.
All of creation was formed in order for the Creator or this unity to
learn and experience itself, because in a state of unity there is no
relativity. The one can not experience itself.
When those ancient philosophers began studying the universe through
those geometric mathematical rules they were the micro studying the
macro, or in other words it is the universe studying itself. Each of us
is a reflection of the universe and the Creator itself. When I searched
for a symbol for this idea I came back to Leonardo de Vinci and
Luca Pacioli. One of the structures that appears in the book
De Divina
Proportione and in Luca Pacioli's famous picture is the
Rhombicuboctahedron – one of the 13 Archimedean solids.
When the
structure, as it appears in the painting, is examined closely, a
reflection of the room can be seen and the view that is seen from
beyond the window. The reason for this is that a spherical panoramic
picture of 360 degrees can be projected on this shape in 180 degree
precisely. As a symbol, it is a structure that to me represents how the
universe experiences itself through our eyes.
Some years ago, scientists in the field of cosmology began measuring
trace radiation from the big bang. Their calculations produced an
interesting result. According to the latest calculations,
our universe
is finite and its structure is a Dodecahedron.
How did those ancient philosophers reach that same understanding
thousands of years ago? The answer is that all those geometric rules
show us that we are the pattern of the universe itself and the
knowledge of the universe exists in us and is waiting to be discovered.
The
Divine Reflection
The
Christ Grid pendant