This is the shape you'll most commonly find on the forehead of Tarot 15 (as
against that of Golden Dawn 'Isis'* and, also, a one hexagram for instance I
found). Below, an "Isis":

    *This is an 'Isis' - on the forehead.  It is created using

The (first) shape is just a pentagon, joined up as a star, and nothing more sinister
than that. If you turn it upside down - or tilt your head slightly - you'll see its mirror,
complement and opposite: Lady or Woman.  You'll see pointed head, outstretched
arms and legs. There is a 'precious gem' where her legs meet.  Another emerald. 
Phi.  And that's about as esoterically/arcanely/hermetically frighteningly significant as
it gets, really - for what you can do with a pair of compasses, straight edge, and
pencil coupled (if you'll pardon the phrase) with vivid imaginations!  If  I remember,
the emerald is known as the Jewel of Venus whilst Lucifer loses an emerald when
he's chucked out of heaven - the Holy Grail gets carved from it (apparently) and it
is a fairly common Grail lore theme. Kepler, circa 1596 AD, supposedly uses the
term 'precious jewel' for phi*.

The Vesica Piscis is attached to that part of the anatomy - the where-a-lady's-legs
-meet bit.

By geometric construction, hexagrams and pentagons interact .... there.  If you
look carefully you'll see that where-his-horns-meet and where-her-legs-meet are
exactly the same places - 5 of them in all - and are mirrors.  If we superimposed
an opposite on top we'd create decagonal maths and produce ten emerald phi
-points.  That's ten emeralds to our ten Tree of Life sapphires. Ten suggests
decagons.

       GOAT                                  LADY











The green circles are the (multiple) phi points.  There are 5 each - making 10 ( if
you put one atop t'other).

The black line is common.  Notice 'he' has a precious gem where his horns meet
and 'she', where her legs meet.

*Brief digression - "Kepler ...  for phi" (above): to be strictly accurate it should read
'for the relationship now symbolised (well, since the 1900s AD, anyway) by this 21st
letter of the Greek Alphabet.Φ.  There's an interesting few points here: zero is divided by
unity into exactly two mirror halves; you're looking at the digits of binary; you're looking
at the first two digits that generate the Fibonacci Sequence that increasingly approximates
to phi.  Clever choice of symbol!  Kepler actually calls it the 'division of a line into extreme
and mean ratio' and holds it to be a 'precious jewel'  to Pythagoras (note Euclid 47) as
'a measure of gold'.  Others tell of 2 Royal Arches, (male) phi, again, but (female) pi as the
second - the imagery related is I and 0 .... and making babies.. 

One wonders if the Sts John of Jerusalem signify one of  these 2 combinations?  Certainly,
the Beloved disciple', St John the Evangelist, has been represented (by Leonardo in Last
Supper, say) as somewhat feminine, some feel.

(*Note: sometimes the Sts John are both the Baptist ... and sometimes the Baptist is
represented as possibly androgynous/female/hermaphrodite, I've found.)

I recommend www.goldennumber.net here as a quite remarkable resource - which I drew
from, here, in my brief digression, above, to an extent.  Note also that the Tarot Major
Arcana of 22 cards ends with card 21 (from card 0), 21 being a Fibonacci number
(0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13...). It is fascinating here that 1 + 1 + 2 + 3 + 5 + 8 + 13 sum to ..... 33.

Note too that Φ* is a kind of ten, 10, combo.  Now Dactyls (fingers) spring to mind.  You
have ten fingers, normally, and these have been assigned as right-hand = male and
left-hand = female,  with 'right'  as dexter (smiths etc., as in dextrous), subject to the
goddess, and 'left' as sinister and somewhat witchy and representatives of the goddess
(See Robert Graves on Lemnos et al).

(*Note: the ubiquitous circle o cut by a slanted line  / 'phi' symbol results from early
computers/ASCII).

See the problem?  I would expect a convention of sorts were there a tradition and I would
expect it to fit to the Dactyls were it part of some esoteric 'stream': left would be female
and right male.But mirrors is a recurring encounter in these pages I've posted - what if I'm
supposed to see it from THEIR perspective.  Adam/John the Baptist have Eve/John the
Evangelist on their left, from their point of view.  This possibly addresses to difference in
the placing of the J and B Temple of Solomon pillars in terms of B J Tarot II to J B 'The
Compass of the Wise' et al (where J is Solar/white/male/ Fire and Air to B's Lunar/black/
female/Water and Earth).  That just leaves the ask re. John the Baptist ..... water?  'Jesus'
seems to be the (male) Fire Baptism to John's (female).  Water? There are problems, I note,
if you try to trowel on the Chakras and the Yogic systems - white normally becomes female
and red male, for instance - but I do say 'normally' (it ain't set in stone, exactly!)*.  Oh,
well ... back to the plot:

(*Note: I found Male as South/Water and Female as North/Fire - Volney, was it, or Pike?)

Phi is the longer part of the pentagonal chord to the shorter as well as the the
decagonalside to the decagonal describing circle radius: if  I drew a line from the
centre through a 'gem' to the circle, then the gem would also cut that, longer to
shorter, in a phi ratio.Hence "multiple phi point".  Phi is also what Venus gets up
to in the sky.  Remember that Venus is Lucifer.  Lady/Woman and Goat/Devil?* 
The pentagrams look it and Venus/Lucifer does it.  This Female-Male idea
appears on Golden Dawn Tarot 15 above (where horned Venus is tethered
opposite Mars (and Lucifer) and/or horned Moon opposite Sun etc).  Note also
the alchemical 'Marry the White Woman of theWest to the Red Man of the East' ..
You might also think of Nox and  Lux.

* Wiki carries "goat of lust" inverted pentagram as a mid-C19th AD fancy - and
it also carries pentagrams as Ancient Greek "here to there" and "there to here"
Otherworld places characterised by heroes entering Hades and returning with ...
"wisdom".

This is Venus:


www.eso.org/public/outreach/eduoff/vt-2004/Education/edu1app5.html

 

It's a 5 : 8 relationship (phi-alike).  It's not quite perfect but gets back to
its exact start every 40 years - in the desert/wilderness?  Going round it is
the counterclock-wise zodiac context: Scorpio atop, Taurus abottom,
Aquarius left and Leo right. Move the context round 90 degrees counter-
clockwise and you have the 4 Royal Watchers in their assigned NSEW
stations of about 4-5000 years ago.  In the Bible, these find expression as
Calf/Ox, Lion, Eagle and Man/Angel - the 'wheels' on the fiery chariot, the
merkabah/hod. Bull is Taurus, Lion is Leo, Eagle signals Scorpio, and
Man, Aquarius:  www.awugabunnies.co.uk/7.html

Note that St John the Evangelist is identified as West/Eagle/Scorpio.  It is of
some importance in the study of the Perpetual Choirs of Britain where the
Lady and Goat pentagrams combine with Point St. John, Wales.

 

In Grail lore, Celtic tradition and Tarot suits there are Wands, Swords, Cups and
Pentacles (Platters).  Wands and Swords are male, Cups and  Platters/Pentacles 
female.               







This is a detail from the Ace of Pentacles, Tarot.  Can you see the (phi) Chalice? 
Number the top point 1, then go round clockwise 2-3-4-5.  Join 3 to 4.  See it
now?  Go 2 to 4 to 3 to 5 to 2.        

One of our Sts John of Jerusalem - the Evangelist - is
portrayed by the symbol snake-in-cup/chalice. 
Apparently he avoided a poisoning attempt on his life. 
But snakes are also associated with both wisdom and
immortality - the two trees of Eden - and Durer, for
instance, poses Adam, Eve, Tree and Serpent in a manner
extremely suggestive of left-hand male pillar, right-hand
female pillar, and central "wisdom" serpent/fruit.

Click on Perpetual Choirs (tab left) to see how pentagram/phi chalice, snake

For more on the BristolChannel/Mouth of the Severn (and 7) see

http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dhsvjc9j_0gd5gzz

Representations of the Tree of Life sometimes come with a serpent rising from
Earth to Heaven c/o all the ten sephira; some representations of the crucifixion
replace Christ with a serpent, an image reprising Nehushtan, the brazen serpent
Moses nailed to a pole..

 

Snakes, in "gnostic" representation, are largely
UPwardly mobile - and they seem to represent
'the river of the water of life'  (is this river' partly
an allegory for Time, with the 12-sign zodiacal
ourobos either side of the 'street' of it?). 

Yet the Fall serpent gets kicked out of Paradise/
Eden = DOWN*, Heaven to Earth.  This Heaven
to Earth pathway is called the Lightening Flash -
the enlightened snake in reverse.  Both sequentially
visit all the ten "Gates of Light" and "Shining Ones",
as the sephira/sephirot are known. To the 22 pathways connecting these are
assigned both the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet  and the 22 cards of the
Tarot Major Arcana.** 

** 22 the number (atu - keys/trumps ...c/o Aleister Crowley/Order of the Golden Dawn!)
of wisdom/moongod Thoth. 11.11 is "insight".  Or is it?
Note re 11.11: More often/nearlt always 11:11 and tied to noticing digital clocks.  Also 11-11.
See the fascinating www.mystic-mouse.co.uk/Wisdom_Texts/G_Tucker/ElevenElevenAgain.htm
Tarot II carries 2 pairs of II, up top, above the High Priestess and as the 2 pillars flanking her. 
The Jachin and Boaz pillars can also be seen in II II (also 2 X Gemini).  Caveat:  the actual
conventions of 11:11 and 11.11 as time symbols are maybe not that old, perhaps?!

To the sephira are assigned names, numbers, qualities, the "Heavenly Bodies"
(and their sigils/glyphs), geometrical shapes, colours, angels ....  The High
Priestess/Papesse card, Tarot II, gets to 'live' at non-sepirot II, Da'ath.  The
snake goes through there, too.

 

To detail some: top left (the male pillar) is sephirot 3, Saturn, triangle, black;
middle-right (the female pillar), 4, Jupiter, square/pyramid, blue; middle left, 5,
Mars, pentagram, red; 6 (miiddle pillar), Sun, hexagram/cube/truncated pyramid,
yellow; 7, Venus, hepta/septagram, green; 8, Mercury, octagram, orange; 9, the
Moon, nonagram/enneagram, purple; 10, Earth, dekangle, 4-coloured quarters
of a circle.

 

This Earth-centred, Ptolmaic, universe conceptualisation, was known to people
like Pico della Mirandola, C15th AD.  But it was also known to St. John: his
'seven seals' that needed breaking on the way to enlightenment.  The idea was
that the heavenly bodies were 'guards' on the snake-path to sephira 1, the Crown
/Throne of Heaven/Bethel.  We are looking at "Jacob's Ladder'.  Notice also that
the 7 listed polygrams combined with the 5 Platonic solids in Metatron's Cube
(see Geometry/diags. - he's the archangel associated with the Crown) make 12. 
12 'Fruit' of the Tree of Life?  Another nicety is that the central pillar sums to 26 -
as does MM (hence Mary Magdalene and Master Mason interest?).  I looked
here at the SONG OF SOLOMON "I am the Rose of Sharon ... lily of the valley"
because of the association of red rose with lowest sepiroth.  It was striking that
lily is Jacob's Ladder, a Tree of Life term, and, as Iris, it is the rainbow. A
rainbow spectrum is 7.  The combination is White: alchemy is about turning red
into white (apparently).  Gary Osborn mentions the male red to female white as
mirrors and complements (Graham Hancock Mysteries Forum) and alchemical
Mercury and Sulphur also come to mind.  But female is usually black ... cold/wet ...

A related idea to enlightment is that Fall/being cast out of Paradise  is the 'Word
made Flesh', a Fall from Grace/Logos/Spirit to the Earthly and carnal pleasures,
this characterised as going from 1 to 10 either by the Lightening Flash or directly
Crown-Sun-Moon-Earth.  Ker-splat!   Earth is also 'Bottomless Pit' - not a nice
place for seekers after intellectual and spiritual enlightenment to hang out.  Not
nice at all!  Omar Khayyim, late C11th-early C12th AD knew of this stuff from
the bowels of the Earth, he wrote, ... rose to sit on the Throne of Saturn. Ptolmaic. 
This is to be compared with Copernican and alchemical  'turning Lead (Saturn)
into Gold (Sun).

 

Under the BabylonianPtolmaic system, the 7 Heavenly Bodies (Earth doesn't count)
fit to a 'fat' heptagram star in the Tree sequence - and then along came Copernicus,
late C15th - mid C16th AD and messed the whole thing up with his heliocentric stuff
- never mind the discovering of Uranus, 1781, Neptune, 1846 and Pluto, 1930-
2006)!  In a chakra allied systems, the 7 became Saturn (base) - Jupiter - Mars
- Venus - Mercury - Moon -Sun Copernican (having been Moon - Mercury -
Venus - Sun - Mars - Jupiter - Saturn Ptolmaic).*  The idea of Saturn as an inverted
(black) triangle and lowest chakra is evocative of something.  I wonder what?**

* An oddity ... the 10 sephira of the Tree of Life have these 7 assigned as 3-9, descending 3 (Saturn), 4 (Jupiter), 5
(Mars), 6 (Sun), 7 (Venus), 8 (Mercury) and 9 (Moon) BUT "enlightenment" runs the other way: from 333 akraisia
up to 999.  Two alternate systems collide.

**Stop press: Agrippa and the 'marriage' of Magic Squares to Ptolemy.  3 gets to be Saturn counting inwards to  9 being
the moon.  Sun is (Hexagonal) 6.  6 and 9 are mirrors - quite deliberately symbolically so.  Agrippa published 1510 AD,
possibly from earlier sources - but Magic Squares don't arrive in Europe until 1300 AD.  I've posted a (very minimal) history
of Hindu-Arabic number development on another page - e.g. 6 and 9 as against say VI and IX,  not mirrors.

 

Besides pentagonal geometry, phi is also to be found via an equilateral triangle
and a square via very simple compass, straight edge and pencil construction.
 So it is a feature common to the developments equilateral-hexagon (Seed
/Flower of Life), square-octagon and pentagon-decagon - as well as all derivatives
and developments of these.  From simple Isis/decagonal geometry, you also get to
trisect a pentagon and deliver Wood's 15-sided pentadecagon.  This seems to me
to be far more likely a constructional outcome than an input!

For a detailed study of Mirrors click go to  www.awugabunnies.co.uk/9.html

or www.geoffss.plus.com/mirrors!.htm
 

Is there a progression from equilateral to square to pentagon (and on) that is
constructional and resides in the properties of the Vesica Piscis-based Seed/Tree
of Life?  Here is Robert Lawlor, SACRED GEOMETRY (p.43):

 

This image is (almost) the Albrecht Durer
classic "showing the construction of a pentagon
from a Vesica Piscis and its union with the hex
-agon" (the hexagon is implict here in the bottom
circle).  It is accomplished in the same way as
the Creator traditionally designed the universe,
'with the compasses unchanged' (Michell, Street,
or both). 

 

Durer, 1471-1528, was a noted engraver,

woodcut designer, painter and astrologer.  What Lawlor has done here is add in
an equilateral triangle and a square to the Durer geometry whilst dropping 5 of the
6 hexagon sides). His point is that this Seed of Life "bears" regular polygons. 
They all have the same base-length - so all are equally-sided in the length of their
sides.  What's more, it's progressional: equilateral delivers hexagon delivers
dodecagon (by geometry) as pentagon delivers decagon delivers .... 

 

Lawlor notes that the Vesica's Square Root of 3 is the 'formative power' than
gives 'rise' to all these polygons.  An extended diagram shows the polygons
(rather like a scallop shell, don't you think?) fanning out:

 

If you replaced the polygons with
their describing circles you'd have
a kind of Round Table based on the
Square Root of (1.5 + 1.5)
geometry!

 

Note the central column - and how
similar the 'building blocks appear. 
It's almost as if there is an incre
-mental rise from one polygon to
the next, isn't it?  But it's an illusion
(and I note Lawlor, himself, doesn't claim equal increments).  The Lawlor

approach delivers some polygons, it seems, but not heptagon ... nonagon ...

I looked at the (inviting) idea of using a common base combined with an

constant increment gain generating regular polygon centres - doesn't work

either - but then so much of this stuff looks good at A4/Trig. free level.  One

logical outcome of Lawlor: phi.  It is necessarily the relationship twixt the

equilateral (and common side) and the decagon centre-to-corner (radius,

given describing circle).

Whilst is is obvious that an octagon can be same-sided (lengthwise) as a
square - as in Lawlor, above - you need a common base for an octagon and
square to 'live together' on a Seed/Flower of Life geometric development: the
octagon sides will be smaller than the square's but the radius will be X2 and
hence the describing circle will be X2 in circumference (a Seed/Flower 'fit'
necessity).  Lawlor's diagram above might be miscontrued (but not by him!)
as indicating Seed/Flower.

 

For my purposes, however, the common side is abandoned in favour of a

common bottom - and two circles tangential to each other at it.  One will

have a radius of 63 miles (with an inscribed decagon) and one will have a

radius of 50.4 miles (with an inscribed octagon), noting that 50.4 is 8/10ths

of 63 and that 63 miles is 504 furlongs.  Allowing Pi to be 22/7 (which it

ain't), we would have circumferences of 316.8 miles (octagon) and 396

miles (decagon) - and our decagon perimeter will (again with 'stylised' 22/7)

be 6.66 miles less than the 396 circle circumference. 

And the common 'bottom'?  It will be an actual geographical place on a map:

just by Great Bottom, WhiteSheet Hill, ST813351, Lat 51.115 (a mirror - of

sorts).

 

***I want to post a special note of thanks here to George Firsoff, now, sadly,
deceased.  I corresponded extensively with George during his time in Stoke
and he 'kept me honest' whilst keeping me keen.  George's mathematical help
- and his spirit and humour - were much-welcomed props.  I miss them.
Amongst other things, I note, George was the long white-haired 'Druid' who
tangled with English Heritage over access to Stonehenge at the Solstices. 
Bless all his surds and pseuds***

 

 

Something that I noted years ago was a John Michell reference to the relation
-ship between 7 and 12.  I forget which way round, but apparently one is the
other, esoterically.  Thoughts were the Seed of Life - the 7 circles generate
both 6-sided hexagon and 12-sided dodecagon  (as the fitting of the Tree of
Life can demonstrate - 7 disciples of 12 catch 153 fish seems pertinent), a
music scale of 7 notes (of 12) in an octave*, or something to do with the 12
zodiac signs/months and the 7 heavenly bodies, but Nigel Pennick touches
on a possibility that not only fits to the 'ask' but also to the basic geometric
building blocks of vesica/equilateral/square.  I knew that basic church floorplan
design was just an unbundled cube (six squares - and sometimes with snake or
rose), but apparently two constructional techniques - Pennick nominates
Freemasonry (he calls them "the two Masonic traditions) here - are ad
triangulum and ad quadratum, threes and fours.  Put another way, vesicas,
equilaterals and squares.  Pennick says the 3 and 4 combination of running
both systems together generates a 12, of sorts: "effectively a twelve-fold symbol
-ically associated with the zodiac".  And 3 and 4 make 7 (and 12, of course ...
3 X 4). Here's his demonstration of a Glastonbury floorplan: