Inner Traditions / Bear & Co.
The human race is again looking at the world as the ancients did—an approach that enabled civilizations of the past to bring forth inventions of great beauty and power. This school of thought—harmonics—envisioned the natural world and the solar system as an interlocking matrix of harmonious numbers, perfectly woven into the creative fabric of life and the surrounding universe.
In Sacred Geometry for Artists, Dreamers, and Philosophers, John Oscar Lieben shows how to create harmonious forms using the ancient tools of number, geometry, and musical tone—an approach that resonates with nature’s own ways of creation. He demonstrates many practical applications of harmonics, providing analyses of ancient sculpture and architecture as well as original examples of building floor plans, pottery figures based on planetary proportions, gardens based on harmonic principles, and ceremonial spaces that honor cosmic harmonies and sacred geometric relationships.
Showing how harmonics can also be applied to the mysteries of time and space, Lieben demonstrates how the vesica piscis and many other variations of the vesica shape reveal numerical synchronicities and correspondences that connect cosmic time cycles, measures of space, and musical tones. The author applies harmonics and the “vesica construction” matrix to illustrate many of nature’s wonders, including the Earth-Moon relationship, the interactions of the Golden Number and the musical scale, and how the Flower of Life symbol connects the universal field with the pattern of raindrops falling on a pond.
Offering an approach to sacred geometry that pairs the mystical with the practical, the cosmic with the earthly, Lieben recommends that the art and science of harmonics be required study for the artist and the seeker of eternal truths as well as the scientist who seeks an entree to the sacred foundations of nature. I could not agree more.
—SARAH CIRILLO