Richard's Journal - Sacred Number by Richard Heath

Entries from April 1, 2007 - May 1, 2007

Solstice Week in Carnac (Brittany, France) 2007

I just received the programme for an event in Brittany, at "Carnac", the largest megalithic complex in Europe. Plouharnel is a town central to the area and the Plouharnel Tourist Office should be able to provide more information and help with travel and accommodation. I will be giving three talks and my brother Robin a total of nine events including talks and workshops.

Yours truly, at the Dolman of Gavrinis in 2004, built before Stonehenge
and full of many exquisite carvings

The event will provide a great introduction to many of the megalithic structures in the area by day and an opportunity to hear about how the megalithic peoples built and operated these monuments based on recently recovered details of the ancient science behind them. Readers of Sacred Number will know that Carnac is on a major meridian of the megalithic culture being directly south of Cardiff, Edinburgh (Arthur's Seat and Rosslyn Chapel), and the Brodgar/ Maes Howe complex in Orkney. The organisers say:

All events will be in English and French.
(Several interpreters will be present)

This page is under development as details are clarified and

I will post the link here as soon as the Plouharnel webpage is available.

Official Programme: Solstice in Plouharnel , Brittany , 2007

21/06/2007 - The Solstice, the longest day

MORNING :

06h00 : Observation of sunrise in Crucuno quadrilateral.

07h30 : Visit to the Crucuno dolmen

09h15 : Guided tour of the megalithic sites in Plouharnel

12H00: Observation of the midday shadow movement followed by

AFTERNOON:

14h00: a guided tour of the other megalithic sites in Plouharnel

EVENING LECTURES:

17h30: Howard Crowhurst : INTRODUCTION TO MEGALITHS IN BRITTANY AND TO ARCHAEO-ASTRONOMY,

19h00 : Exhibition of 19th century megalithic photographs by Félix Gaillard - "Mémoire de pierres"

21h45-22h30 : Observation of sunset in Crucuno quadrilateral.

22/06/2007

MORNING :

10h00-12h00 : Guided tour of the local antique sundials with the gnomonist Pierre Labat

AFTERNOON:

14h00: Outdoor workshop with Robin Heath : How to survey a megalithic site with a theodolite, compass, ropes

Moonrise due East at 14h15

EVENING LECTURES:

17h30: Richard Heath :NUMBERS FROM THE SKY

19h00 : Howard Crowhurst : INTRODUCTION TO MEGALITHS IN BRITTANY AND TO ARCHAEO-ASTRONOMY

23/06/2007

MORNING:

06h00 : Observation of sunrise in Crucuno quadrilateral.

08h30 :Outdoor workshop with Robin Heath: The Metrology and Geometry of Stone Circles
using ropes and pegs to develop geometries on Saint Barbe beach.

AFTERNOON:

12h00: Observation of the midday shadow movement at Crucuno;

15h21: Moonrise at 98,4°

EVENING LECTURES:

17h30: Robin Heath : ALEXANDER THOM AND THE HISTORY OF ARCHAEOASTRONOMY (WITH FILM)

21h00: Howard Crowhurst : THE PRINCIPLES OF NATURAL GEOMETRY AT KEY LATITUDES

24/06/2007

MORNING:

10h00-12h00 : Guided tour of the local antique sundials with the gnomonist Pierre Labat

AFTERNOON:

14h00: Jean-Paul Cornec : Talk on sundials from Brittany an d elsewhere.

EVENING:

17h30: Outdoor workshop with Robin Heath : A working model of Stonehenge; How prehistoric man predicted eclipses.

Moonrise at 106,6° at 16h27

21h00: Richard Heath : ANCIENT THEME PARKS OF FRANCE, AND THE ORIGINAL METRE

25/06/2007

MORNING:

9h30: Guided tour of the megalithic sites in Carnac

10h00-12h00 : Guided tour of the local antique sundials with the gnomonist Pierre Labat : Departure : Plouharnel Tourist Office

AFTERNOON:

14h00: Outdoor workshop with Robin Heath : How to survey a megalithic site with a theodolite, compass, ropes…

Moonrise at 114,3° at 17h34

EVENING:

17h30: Robin Heath : ANCIENT METROLOGY - A NEW TOOL TO RESEARCH MEGALITHIC CULTURE (ILLUSTRATED)

21h00: Howard Crowhurst : THE MOON AND MEGALITHIC DESIGN IN SOUTHERN BRITTANY

26/06/2007

MORNING:

9h30: Outdoor workshop with Robin Heath : A working model of Sonehenge; How prehistoric man predicted eclipses.

10h00 à 12h00 : Guided tour of the local antique sundials with the gnomonist Pierre Labat : Departure : Plouharnel Tourist Office

AFTERNOON:

14h00: Guided tour of the megalithic sites in Locmariaquer

14h00 to 16h00: Guided tour of the local flowers in the old village

EVENING:

17h30: Richard Heath : IDIOT'S GUIDE TO HARMONY AND MEASURE

Moonrise at 18:43 at 121,25°

21h00: Howard Crowhurst & Philippe Gaillard : FELIX GAILLARD : A FORGOTTEN PIONNEER (Film)

27/06/2007

MORNING:

9h30: Outdoor workshop with Robin Heath : The Metrology and Geometry of Stone Circles using ropes and pegs to develop geometries on Saint Barbe beach.

AFTERNOON:

14h00: Guided tour of the megalithic sites in Erdeven

EVENING:

17h30: Robin Heath : ASTRONOMICAL ALIGNMENTS AT MEGALITHIC SITES

19h30-22h30: Crucuno Quadrilateral. Observation of moonrise along the diagonal (127,2°) Grand finale with questions (and answers?). Sunset

Talks: 7€

Workshops / guided tours: 10 €

Day Pass 25 €

Week-end Pass 50€ (from friday 22 June at 17h30 till Sunday 24 juin included)

Global Pass 120 € (whole week, all events)

Posted on Thursday, April 26, 2007 at 03:22PM by

Richard Heath in metrology & monuments |

The All-seeing Eye in the Pyramid

Recently, my brother visited the Benedictine Monastery in Australia, at New Norcia – Norcia in Italy being where St Benedict, the founder of the Bendictine system, was born in 480 C.E. The founders of the monastery came from Italy and Spain and one of their coats of arms had an eye within a triangle.

Any symbol of an eye within a pyramidal triangle tends to get shunted into a da Vinci Code siding these days and becomes a symbol of the Freemasons and Illuminati. However, research on the web reveals an interesting story of the All-Seeing Eye or Eye of Providence.

The Eye has become associated with Egyptian-style pyramids through (a) the reverse of the Great Seal of the United States and 120px-Eye_of_Ra2.svg.png

(b) the conflation of the Egyptian’s Eye of Horus and their building of pyramids (with something inside).

In the heraldic version the eye is within an equilateral triangle from which rays emerge from each side of the triangle. [Neither the Great Seal or the Great Pyramid are equilateral]

An all-seeing eye that appears
on the tower of Aachen Cathedral
[see Wikipedia reference below, all pictures from Wikipedia]

The earliest we find the Eye of Providence within a triangle is the Palatine Chapel, Aachen Cathedral, built 786 CE by the first Holy Roman Emperor, Charlemagne. Interestingly, it looks more like the outline of the Great Pyramid than an equilateral form. Wikipedia also provides an alchemical woodcut of the Eye-in-the-sky.

Given the emergence of Freemasonry, from the period in which alchemy was a precursor to Science , then it is to be expected as a powerful symbol, carried forward, of the Great Architect. Alchemy itself was possibly so named after Egypt, another connection, as it was the nearest of the ancient cultures with renowned lost knowledge and indelible monuments. It is hard not to see the sun god when the rays are attached unless the rays are emanations of the divine rather than illuminations from the celestial.

Also of interest is the famous third eye of Shiva, the Ajna chakra sited in the forehead, since the triangular motif is ideal for the expression of the third eye, itself an all-seeing eye and possibly the subject of initiatory transmission - representing a human capacity to see the truth, psychologically projected outwards into a vengeful eye that sees and notes our sins.
This is exactly the situation remarked on in Sacred Number where a symbol of something genuine cannot be supported by the culture at large and becomes degenerate, even contradictory, with respect to its original meaning. For instance, this "eye in the triangle" is often interpreted as representing the Holy Trinity; and should any Christian sect not fully sign up to this as a doctrine, their destruction as heretics soon followed.
This gives us a concept of an all-controlling eye that is not a million miles away from the information society we actually have today and leading to natural anxieties concerning the abuse of information as power.

The actual pyramid on the Great Seal is not like the Great Pyramid but is sharper than both an equilateral triangle and the Pyramid, at the apex. The organisation of the boulevards north of the White House (see chapter 10 of Sacred Number) do form an equilateral triangle though; the simple explanation could be that the White House was the "all-seeing eye" built on the "thirteen layers of masonry" that represent the original thirteen states of the Union within a Seal that was in fact drawn according to artistic criteria.

The prime number 13 is the lowest prime number not used within ancient metrology, which describes the Earth using only 2, 3, 5, 7, & 11 (see Chapter 3 of Sacred Number). Seven, eleven, thirteen and the higher primes are excluded from conventional musical harmony.

Thirteen manifests primarily in the Sky as Venus, Venus having an orbital period 8/13 of a solar years [i.e. of Earth's orbit]. Venus also leads, through its synod and 8/5, to the Pentagon (see previous postings). It strains credibility to think that thirteen founding states would have been arranged deliberately to represent Venus?

Thirteen manifests in myth as Jesus plus twelve disciples [or as thirteen disciples including Madgalene] and King Arthur plus twelve knights but the same caveat concerning credulity must surely apply. However one might expect fortuitous resonances of number to be selected and amplified when founding a new nation, if celestial symbolism was important to the founders.

Update on Tuesday, April 17, 2007 at 12:20PM by

Richard Heath

Readers of Matrix of Creation will perhaps be familiar with the very sharp style pyramid used in the Great Seal: it is very like the "phi squared" pyramid found between the inner and outer solar system (page 123). The Great Pyramid has a rising angle of phi, the Golden Mean or Section which equals 1.618 to three decimals, its cosine, whilst it is quite possible for a pyramid to have a slope angle base to hypotenuse of 2.618.

Matrix of Creation, figure 9.8

The slope angle is 67.544^o and so it looks a little like the top of an upward facing pentagon, whose slope is 72^o as to the left, in which the phi relations of the pentagon are shown.

Sacred Number, figure 1.7

The angle of the Great Seal Pyramid is between 67 and 68 degrees on the depiction with slight parallax, and it appears therefore to be modelled on a phi squared design.

The direct inspiration of the sharp pyramid within the Great Seal might be an illustration found in John Greaves' work Pyramidographia, easily available to the seal designers. He produced an impressive picture of the Great Pyramid alongside a picture of the third pyramid at Giza, below. This can be found in the online pdf called Measurer of All Things: John Greaves (1602-1652), the Great Pyramid,and Early Modern Metrology by Zur Shalev

Figure 2: exterior of the third Pyramid, J. Greaves, Pyramidographia
(London, 1646), 110. With permission, Princeton University Library.

In comparison to this impressive image [of the Great Pyramid] the illustrations of the three pyramids’ exteriors are disappointing, following the conventional steep form influenced by Cestius’s Pyramid in Rome, and being uninformative in terms of texture and detail (figure 2).

In other words, it is ancient Rome that built a real pyramid most like that of the Great Seal. According to the above web page, the pyramid was 36.81 metres high and 29.5 wide making the slope angle 68.163 degrees. Whereas it was the Holy Roman Empire had the all seeing eye within a pyramid, but in the style of the Great Pyramid. Wikipedia gives dimensions 27 metres high by 22 square yielding a slope angle of 67.833 degrees.

The above etching showing the pyramid, next to the Appian Way, was a likely inspiration for the Great Seal then combined with the concept of the all-seeing eye, which is also then like the missing top of the Great Pyramid. It is also true that this shape exists at the top of the eventual design of the Washington Monument although then the shape is that found on top of the obelisks of ancient Egypt, many of which were plundered by Rome, the Empire and the Church, and the capitals of the old world including London and Paris. To learn more one should consult the definitive work on obelisks, including the Washington National Monument, The Magic of Obelisks by Thompkins.

Posted on Saturday, April 7, 2007 at 09:01AM by

Richard Heath |

The Frequency of Venus

In Sacred Number I suggest that prehistoric people learnt about the natural structure of number through counting the periods of celestial events, most simply using the day as the counting period. The problem with counts is that they are periods and not frequencies; we are more familiar with musical tones and not the wavelengths of the sounds that we hear.

Frequency is just the reciprocal of wavelength so that when a period A is say twice as long period B then the frequency A is half that of frequency B. Whilst unfamiliar then, it is possible and necessary to transform counts into the more familiar frequency view.

When looking at Venus and the Earth, the practical year is the fundamental frequency and is higher at 365 days than that of Venus at 584 days because the reciprocal of 584 is smaller than the reciprocal of 365. We should remember that

365 is 5 x 73 days and
584 is 8 x 73 days and also,
as in Matrix of Creation, 73 days is

4 times 18.25 days which is
0.618 of a lunar month, i.e. related to the Golden Mean, and
1/20th of the practical year.

Venus, in terms of frequency, is held between the frequency of one year and that of two years, the latter forming low do for an octave with the year itself as the high do, as below.

The numbers in the blobs are times 73 days period lengths,
the lower frequencies having a larger number

Chapter 2 explains how these sorts of octave come into existence due to relatively small numbers, for example this one with this sequence of intervals (the arrows such as 9/8, the whole tone and 16/15 the half tone) emerges out of the numbers between 24 and 48. As a scale this would be the Ionian Mode - two tones then a semi tone - three tone then a semi tone - to make up the octave.

The Venus ratio of 8/5 becomes, in frequency, Venus has a frequency of 5 units relative to the Earth's year "frequency" of 8 units, i.e. it is lower, more bass. The Earth is 8/5 above Venus in frequency and this equals a number of familiar interval sequences shown: 8/5 = 3/2 (the fifth) times 16/15. A fifth is itself 9/8 times 10/9 times 9/8 times 16/15. And so on, there are many intervals that seamlessly form the octave in general but in this case it can show the position of Venus as a relative frequency.

The essence of Venus is reciprocal that of the Earth, in many ways. If the Venus synod is set up within an astronomy program to trace the lines between where the earth and Venus are, the following picture emerges:

3D view of the inner solar system, the sun central,
tracing between successive Earth and Venus positions
with a time period of 584 days (cross eyes to view in stereoscopic)

The two planets experience the other describing a pentagon within the Zodiac or ecliptic. I hope everyone is enjoying the Evening Star as Venus rides high above the sunset, as she does every 8/5 or 1.6 years - which is not that often! As the planet swings around the Sun, on an inner orbit, she will shoot past the Sun to become a Morning Star.
Venus is locked into a Fibonacci orbital relation to Earth, with a synodic period of 8/5 and an orbital period of 13/8 solar years (0.615).

Posted on Wednesday, April 4, 2007 at 03:24PM by

Richard Heath in musical harmony |