I was fortunate yesterday to be able to finally visit my brother's house and reclaim some of my books, including Joseph Farrell's trilogy on the Giza Death Star and Laura's '
Secret History of the World'. I have felt a bit hamstrung at times when doing my posts in not having Laura's book readily to hand. Already though it has given me some new insights.
Laura devoted a section of her book to
Leonardo Da Vinci and his famous works. In particular she made the case that Da Vinci's painting of the Last Supper might be hiding a secret through the hand positions of those seated at or around the table. She argued that the hands might in fact be establishing or outlining the constellation of Cassiopaea, which, if true, would raise interesting issues around Da Vinci and those he had connections with, including
Queen Marguerite of Navarre and her husband
Francis I of France, her lady in waiting
Anne Boleyn (future wife of Henry VIII and mother of Elizabeth I) and
Michel Nostradamus the famous clairvoyant. Could they all have been involved in channelling the C's?
I also came across an interesting discourse on Da Vinci and the 'Golden Ratio' or Section in
Michael Baigent and
Richard Leigh's book '
The Elixir and the Stone'. They, of course, are two thirds of the team that wrote '
The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail'.
They pointed out that hermeticism indicated the interrelationship, interconnectedness and the correspondences between all things. Hence, the principle of harmonious proportion, which linked magic, mathematics and music, should also apply to painting and sculpture. The Hermetic painters of the Renaissance were all accomplished mathematicians (including Nicolas Poussin) and some of them were musicians as well. By all accounts, Da Vinci was more than just an accomplished player on the lyre. Indeed, he had crafted his lyre himself from silver in the shape of a horse's head (how interesting and perhaps revealing given the connections we have found regarding the horse's head motif). Da Vinci is apparently on record as saying '
music is the sister of painting'.
The parallel between harmonic proportions in music and harmonic proportion in spatial measurement was one of the established premises of Renaissance Hermetic Art. The famous architect
Palladio said that "
the proportions of the voices are harmonies for the ears; those of the measurement are harmonies for the eyes". Thus, for men like Palladio, both music and painting convey harmonies; music does it by chords and painting by its proportions. One way of reflecting this principle in art was by the depiction of perspective - objects of equal size placed so as to recede at regular intervals, diminish in 'harmonic' progression.
However, harmonic proportion in the Hermetic art of the Renaissance is particularly apparent in the frequent use of the 'Golden Proportion', 'Golden Mean', '
Golden Ratio' or 'Golden Section' as denoted by the Greek letter phi (Φ). It constitutes a means of dividing a given line so that so that each division has a specific fixed relationship to every other division and to the whole (a bit like a fractal I suppose). It was deemed a particularly felicitous manifestation and confirmation of the harmonious relationship between microcosm and macrocosm. It was considered even more significant by virtue of the fact that it could be found in nature like a divine signature in the structure of things such as conch shells, for example, whose spiral expands geometrically in accordance with the Golden Ratio.
It also bore the stamp of authority conferred by antiquity since it had consistently been used by architects and sculptors of the classical world. This would explain why Poussin spent so much time studying ancient Roman sculptures whilst in Rome. This may also explain a remark the C's once made about the
secret of the Parthenon in Athens, since it was built according to the Golden Ratio. The authors point out that in ancient Egypt and Greece, the Golden Ratio was thought to be present in the dimensions of the human body, divided by the navel into the ratio of phi (Φ). This would explain '
Vitruvius Man' (previously posted above) and Da Vinci's drawing, 'Man in the Microcosm', of the same. Moreover, a building constructed according to the Golden Ratio was held to be more harmoniously suited to those living or working within it. Vitruvius, a classical Roman architect, had advocated the construction of temples in accordance with proportions derived from the human body. What would he have made of modern skyscrapers I wonder? It should be remembered that medieval Christian churches were also built and decorated in accordance with Hermetic principles, the builders being stone masons who were usually members of masonic guilds, which you may recall were the forebears of the future Freemasonic lodges.
Vitruvius Man was subsequently adopted by the Hermeticist
Agrippa and
Robert Fludd (a President of the Royal Society) who depicted it in a cosmic context - in a circle corresponding to the Zodiac, with astrological signs inscribed in their appropriate places. The eternal harmonious proportions of all creation were thus revealed as inherent in the miracle of the human body, which incorporated in the microcosm the divine perfection of the macrocosm.
Could such Hermetic art act though as a talisman, a form of invocation a magical act in itself? Through the use of harmonious proportion, could a painting act as a magnet, a receptacle and a conducting medium for transcendent or numinous energies emenating from the macrocosm? When concentrated and focused by the work of art, could it exert an occult influence on the microcosm of man if only subliminally or subconsciously? This may all sound far fetched but consider what the C's had to say about those disturbing murals at Denver Airport, which could induce an alpha wave state in the unsuspecting and thereby induce an hypnotic effect in those viewing them. Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh went on to show in their book how these Hermetic concepts or principles were also carried over into Renaissance poetry, literature and theatre and even to opera. In the case of the theatre, the greatest exponent of it in the 16th and 17th centuries was, of course, William Shakespeare, who may have been Sir Francis Bacon and his associates. Even the English theatres themselves embodied Hermetic principles within their design.
To keep these Hermetic connections going, it should be borne in mind that Nicolas Poussin's great teacher and mentor was the prominent Jesuit priest
Athanasius Kircher, who taught Poussin the techniques of perspective. Kircher was probably the supreme representative of Hermeticism in the post-Reformation Catholic Church. Like so many Hermeticists of that age, Kircher studied and taught philosophy and mathematics. He also investigated magnetism and took up astronomy, having purchased a telescope, and in 1623 recorded his observations of sunspots. Unusually for a catholic cleric of that time, he harboured an interest in comparative religions. Indeed, he regarded Egyptian paganism as virtually the fount of all other beliefs and creeds. From our perspective, it is interesting that he believed the Hermetic corpus (body of work) contained the core of an
ancient theology embraced by all peoples. Every religion, he concluded, possessed an exoteric and an esoteric aspect and in the esoteric aspects of the world's faiths, he sought a common denominator. In some ways this concept reflects the ideas of
Gardiner and
Osborn, who would argue that Kircher's common denominator was the arcane secrets of the
Shining Ones, a wandering shamanic priesthood who had inherited their esoteric knowledge and symbolism from the lost but once great civilisation of Atlantis.
Apart from Poussin, Kircher also influenced another important figure of the age and that was the Scotsman
Sir Robert Moray, one of the first recorded Freemasons in modern history. In correspondence with another person, Moray had recommended a book by Kircher on Egyptian hieroglyphics. One of Kircher's other texts was
Ars Magna Scienda (The Great Art of Knowledge). This depicted on its frontispiece an eye contained in a triangle, illumined by the rays of the Deity. You may recall this device cropping up in Gary Osborn's article on Poussin's paintings. It also is a device, usually known as the Eye of Providence, that was subsequently used by Freemasonry and ultimately found its way on to the US Dollar Bill.
However, despite its seeming masonic connections, the association of an eye with the concept of Divine Providence has commonly been found in Christianity. In late Renaissance European iconography, the Eye, surrounded by a triangle, was an explicit image of the Christian Holy Trinity. Seventeenth century depictions of the Eye sometimes show it surrounded by clouds or sunbursts. The Eye of God in a triangle is still used in church architecture and Christian art today to symbolise the Trinity and God's omnipresence and divine providence. Hence, Kircher's use of it on his
Ars Magna Scienda should not necessarily be taken to suggest he had masonic links but it does, I think, strongly demonstrate his Hermetic roots.
The Hermetic principles learned from Kircher would therefore be carried through into Poussin's paintings, including the Shepherds of Arcadia.
