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Golden Mean
This nOde
last updated January 20th, 2004 and is permanently morphing...
(9 Ik (Wind) / 10 (Muan (Owl)
- 22/260 - 12.19.10.17.2)

Phi
.6/1
Divine Proportion
The Golden mean is a ratio, discovered by the Greeks, that is self-mirroring. It is approximately .6 to 1.
If you divide a straight line so that about 61% of it is one one side and 39% on the other, you will find that the ration of the large portion to the small is the same as the ratio of the overall line to the large portion. Rectangles made with these proportions can be subdivided endlessly. This self-mirroring proportion was essential to the art and architecture of the Greeks; it is very pleasing to the mind's eye and was used extensively, including in the design of the Parthenon.
In the 15th century an Italian
named
Fibonacci
discovered that if you add 1 to itself, then 2 to 1, then the sum 3 to
2, and the sum 5 to 3, etc., you end up with a series of numbers 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,
etc. The ratios of these, one to another, dance around and approach more
and more closely the golden mean of .6 to 1.
These ratios describe the most efficient way of packaging spirals about themselves IN TWO DIMENSIONS; you will see them in the center of a sunflower. If you count the spirals going one way and they add up to13, there will be either 8 or 21 spirals going the other way. Moving your perspective in or out to about 2/3rds of the original size will move you to the next level of spirals.
I experimented with adding up more than two dimensions,
that is, with the numbers the universe would use to construct 3, 4, 5 and
more
dimensions.
I discovered that at
8
we will find
resonance
if we keep adding only from the second and third terms, and that the ratios
of the terms viz-a-viz each other (in different sequences of numbers) will
approach the golden mean, just at they do within sequences. This
tells me the universe naturally resonates RIGHT AT THE CHANGE from the
3rd to the 4th dimension, AND IT RESONATES IN STEPS OF EIGHT.
This is why we hear octaves, I suppose,
and why chemical properties return to similarity after additions of eight electrons
(as seen in the periodic table). It also is very
relevant
to the
I
Ching, and therefore to this list, and Terence's idea of a "resonance" in
Time
made of it's own self-mirrored "modular hierarchies" (since termed
fractals).
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As a side note, these additions of eight steps to themselves are self-created, and the clue to how this could be lies in the backward sort of vision that a self-mirroring system must utilize... starting with nothing it must declare itself to be whole, to be, or, as we would term it, the number 1. It can only do this by what it adds to itself later... thus 1+1=2, etc., so if it keeps adding in steps of two, as in the original Fibonacci series, it "creates" a two-dimensional vision, as seen in a sunflower. If it adds in longer series, what it is saying is that these additions of 3, 4, 5 or more AGAIN equal MYSELF, the number 1... you see, the thing that mirrors itself in order to exist is constantly, renewingly defining the number 1... defining itself. So life continues, the mirror expands (which we see as space expanding) and all of it is both discreet and continuous because conflicting and self-resonating definitions of the number 1, of itself-seeing-itself, create dichotomies and unresolved conflicts.
These conflicts are always resolved in the next dimension
up... i.e., just as you and I, being 3-dimensional beings, see everything in
2-dimensional tableaus, so our 3-dimensional world is created by a 4-dimensional
"vision". We see the fourth dimension as "time", being as we cannot see
it otherwise; it appears as a very strange set of connections, just as a three
dimensional world would appear to a hypothetical inhabitant of a two-dimensional
"
Flatland".
It seems, however, as physicists are discovering, that at eight dimensions the
system has a sort of
recursive
break (read perhaps
Michio
Kaku's "
Hyperspace")
and this is the
foundation
of the discoveries related to
String
Theory... and Ramanujan's mathematical musings, mentioned earlier on this
list. They claim that god had no choice, that the world had to have 8
dimensions (they actually put the number at 10, in order to restore symmetry
in relativistic equations).
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Remember however that these
"higher dimensional visions" are all self-created, not a function of a
higher god so-to-speak but a function of itself. This directly relates
to the
ESCHATON
in my view, in that as WE discover OURSELVES, i.e., the whole human race,
or rather, AS HISTORICAL BEINGS and in so doing define ourselves as the
number 1 (that is, become one through self-postulated vision) we will break
through a barrier... this to me is a mechanical
process,
a sort of discovery of a system of organization akin to the one nature
uses to see itself---self-mirroring on a human, world-wide, historical
scale. It requires seeing ourselves over and over, one more time than we
are used to, TRANSCENDING, as it were, to the next dimension up...
it is the higher view.
The GOLDEN MEAN gives me
hope in this enterprise... it tells us that opposites are not equal, that
all does not spiral down to meaninglessness necessarily, as
Timothy
Leary described to me (what was to him) the
Zen
view of the world shortly before his death. It tells me that we can
see one as greater than the other, and I suspect it is up to us to see
hope defeating despair. I suspect it is not "inherent" except inasmuch
as we are inherent.
Mr.
McKenna's
eschaton is not then an automatic thing in any sort of certainty.
It is an historical event he speaks of, and should then be created by us.
I spoke at one of his events of "engineering the eschaton" and that is
still what I am pretending to be doing...
- post from the Novelty mailing list
"Geometry has two great treasures:
one is the theorem of
Pythagoras;
the other, the division of a line into extreme and mean ratio.
The first we may compare to a measure of gold; the second we may
name a precious jewel."
--
Johannes
Kepler [1571-1630]
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Any objective observation we make must include a discussion of proportion for it is the rule of proportion in the examination of nature that causes us to observe an organized universe and a universe in chaos, rational and irrational numbers, harmony and discord, truth and falsity. These descriptions are merely proportional effects of the opposition that is inherent in all things.
We see harmony expressed by those emotions, feelings, and characteristics present within ourselves. This harmony is viewed within nature as the Divine Proportion. The Divine Proportion ascribed to our collective state of observation has been expressed, "For of three magnitudes, if the greatest (AB) is to the mean (CB) a the mean (CB) is to the least (AC), they therefore all shall be one."
AB/CB = CB/AC = 1.618...
The Divine Proportion was closely
studied by the Greek sculpture, Phidias, hence, it was given the name Phi. Also
known as the Golden Mean, the
Magic
Ratio, the fibonacci Series, etc., Phi can be found
throughout the universe; from the spirals of galaxies to the spiral of a Nautilus
seashell;
from the harmony of music to the beauty in art. A botanist will find it
in the growth patterns of flowers and plants, while the zoologist sees it in
the breeding of rabbits. The entomologist views it in the genealogy of
a
bee,
and the physicist observes it in the behavior of
light
and atoms. A Wall Street analyst finds it in the rising and falling patterns
of a market, the mathematician in the examination of the pentagram.
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Throughout history, Phi has been
observed to evoke emotion or aesthetic feelings within the us. The ancient
Egyptians
used it in the construction of the
great
pyramids and in the design of hieroglyphs found on tomb walls.
At another time, thousands of miles away, the ancients of Mexico embraced Phi
while building the Sun Pyramid at Teotihuacan. The Greeks studied
Phi closely through their mathematics and used it in their architecture. The
Parthenon at Athens is a classic example of the use of the Golden Rectangle.
Plato in his Timaeus considered it the most binding of all mathematical relations
and makes it the key to the physics of the cosmos. During the Renaissance, Phi
served as the "hermetic" structure on which some of the great masterpieces were
composed. Notable artists such as Michelangelo, Raphael, and
Leonardo
da Vinci made use of it for they knew of its appealing qualities.
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Phi must be considered in its relation to the human
psyche since it is the psyche that interprets this phenomena. Although
Phi appears to be fixed in nature, it actually is not. The only reason
it seems fixed is because it is fixed within our own minds. This
proportion corresponds to the mental vibrations that are within us and
dictate our sense of pleasure and pain, beauty and ugliness, love and hate,
etc. The result is we are held captive by these
memories
fixed by both body and mind. For if we were to view nature from an altered
state of consciousness, the proportion would also be altered.
Therefore, the Divine Proportion presents itself in the very physical nature of Creation. It is seen as the beauty and organization within the cosmos. It is the harmony and glue that holds the unity of the universe.
1... 2...
3... 5... 8... 13... 21...
34... 55... 89...
144... 233...
377...
Leonardo da Vinci understood
that Man [*Canon of Man] was
intended
in the proportion of Phi and indeed much of the natural world was Phi based.
In the anatomy of Man, the spinal vertebrae are relative to each other
in the Phi ratio. The Nautilus shell spirals in the Phi ratio. Plants and
trees grow in the Phi ratio. The Earth and
Moon
have this same relationship. The sunflower is a wonderful example of the
spiraling effect of Phi. Look at a pine cone and find the same relationship
of Phi...in two directions at the same time.
nature. It was first discovered by Pythagoras, a failed Greek messiah and
mathematical cult leader in the 5th century B.C. The spiral is derived via
the golden rectangle, a unique rectangle which has the golden ratio. When
squared, it leaves a smaller rectangle behind, which has the same golden
ratio as the previous rectangle. The squaring can continue indefinitely
with the same result. No other rectangle has this trait. When
you connect a curve through the corners of these concentric rectangles,
you have formed the golden spiral. The Pythagoreans loved this shape for
they found it everywhere in nature: the Nautilus Shell, Ram's horns, milk
in coffee, the face of a Sunflower, your fingerprints, our ![]() |
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