Sacred Senses

Introduction

    This blog is a journal of my investigation into the senses and the role they play in the sacred traditions.  Of particular interest to me is the idea of harmony.  When most people think of harmony they think of music, and scared music is something I wish to explore in depth in this blog, but I am also interested in the other senses.  With the sense of sight there are two ideas of harmony that I am aware of - the harmony of colors and compositional harmony (by compositional harmony I am speaking of the harmonious arrangement of objects in a painting and the idea of harmony in architecture).  The harmonies of the sense of sight and sound and their relation to one another will be the main focus of this blog.  This is because I am not aware of a law of harmony for any of the other senses.  I do, however, question weather or not there is a  harmony  for each of the other senses?  And furthermore have any of the spiritual traditions addressed these harmonies?  This blog will also be a record of my search for harmonies of the other senses.  Lastly, in The Republic, Plato states that,  "astronomy and harmonics are sisters" thus astronomy and astrology will never be far from the discussions herein.

    The connection between musical harmony and color harmony  seems readily apparent, especially if we look at the colors and notes as wavelengths.  In The Egyptian Miracle, R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz discusses this connection in depth.  On page 127 there is a fascinating diagram which links notes, colors, metals and planets.  Similarly Isaic Newton drew a correlation between the notes of the western scale, the planets and colors.  Below is his diagram.   In chapter three of The Manual of Harmonics  Nicomachus the Pythagorean draws a connection between the planets and the notes as well.

    The connection between musical harmony and compositional harmony is not quite as clear .  But there is a connection between the two in the idea of proportion.  In both music and structural composition there are certain  ratios that are  found to be  harmonious.   In music the Fifth = 2/3, the Fourth = 3/4 and the Third = 4/5 are deemed to be the most harmonious ratios.  It is interesting to note the similarity between these ratios and the Egyptian sacred triangle, a right triangle having sides with the lengths 3, 4 and 5 (see The Egyptian Miracle).  In compositional harmony the ratio beloved by artists and architects alike is the divine proportion or Phi.  It is interesting to note that Phi plays a very important part in music. The cochlea (see picture), the part of the ear that "hears", is shaped like a snail shell or rather it is a spiral based on Phi (See Divine Proportion: Phi In Art, Nature, and Science  by Priya Hemenway) .  I plan to further investigate this in another posting.

    So we can clearly see that Harmony is perceptible through our senses of sight and hearing.  And we can also see that the authentic spiritual traditions have used the knowledge of harmony in the creation of sacred art, music and architecture.   But what about laws of harmony for the other senses?

    That brings us to the question of the ability for discrimination of each of the senses.  The sense of hearing is by far the most exact.  The slightest variation between two pitches can be heard; anyone who has ever tuned a stringed instrument can attest to this.  Determining such small variations with the eye requires the assistance of a measuring device and the other senses are even less exact.  There is a very good discussion of this subject in Al-kemi by Andre VandenBroeck.  This raises the question of weather or not the other senses are capable of discerning harmony.  With some of the minor internal senses such as the stretch receptors in the gastrointestinal tract I have to assume that they are not capable of discerning harmony or that the range of impressions that they perceive is not diverse enough to establish a harmony.

     For each of the senses besides sight and hearing I see a few different possibilities.  The first is that there is a law of harmony that is discernible by that sense.  Next is that there is a law of harmony that is only discernible by a sense that has been highly developed, such as a musician who has trained his ear to the point of perfect pitch; a degree of discrimination that is possible but that the vast majority of humans do not posses. Then there is the possibility that the sense, even at the hight of it's development of discrimination, is not capable of discerning harmony.  Finally  there is the possibility that there is no law of harmony for the impressions that the sense perceives.  For instance the eye and ear both perceive vibrations while the other senses do not.   Does this preclude a harmony or the perception of a harmony for the other senses?  It is my assumption that if a law of harmony for one of the other senses does exist, and is perceptible, that it would have been explored in one of the authentic spiritual traditions.

   In my approach to learning about a sense of harmony for the other senses I have a few ideas of what to look for.  Can the impressions perceived by the sense in question be arranged in to a spectrum?  Can the impressions be measured and numbered in order to determine ratios between them? Can the impressions perceived by a sense be mapped to the musical scale, the color spectrum or the planets?  Gurdjieff teaches that everything is material and de Lubicz states that everything is derived from number.  Is it not possible that at some point there was knowledge of the materiality of the range of smells, an ability to measure and assign numbers to them, and the knowledge of the harmonious relationships between the different smells?  Not to mention the affects that these combinations of smells might have on the body, mind and emotions?   

     Here is a link to the Wikipeda article on the senses.  It is interesting to note that at the time of this posting there was no mention of the ability to sense humidity in this article.  The idea of humidity does seem to play a role in Alchemy (see Al-kemi by Andre VandenBroeck). 

    The senses of sight and hearing both perceive waveforms, the senses of taste and smell are refered to as the "Chemical" senses and the sense of touch is different from  all of the other classical five senses.  It has been bugging me that there is not an art form of the sense of touch.  While one could argue that cooking and making perfume and incense do not qualify as art forms, there seems to be nothing comparable that is created to indulge the sense of touch.  Massage, acupuncture and sex are the only things that I can come up with that might be considered an art from for the sense of touch.  While none of these involve a creation that is indulged in by the sense of touch (although one could argue that sex is THE creative art form) is a masseuse applying pressure to the body that much different from a musician applying pressure to the ear?   

The sense of taste shows some promising paths to look down.  Ayurveda in particular seems like a promising course of study, while admittedly it is concerned with far more than just how foods taste.  I am also encouraged with similarities I see between the use of vinegar to brighten the taste of a dish, the use of white to brighten the tint of a color, and the use of a cutoff filter on an analogue synthesizer to brighten a sound.  There is also a correlation between herbs and the planets in Alchemy that I would like to explore. 

Smell is a difficult one.  Of all of my senses it is the least developed.  I would say that my sense of smell is below average.  The most promising avenue that I see is the seven sacred perfumes of the Egyptians that were consecrated to the seven planets.  There is also the practice of aromatherapy which i do not know much about.

So with this introduction I have tried to outline the direction of my investigation into the senses.  Following posts will be on more specific topics. 

      

The Devil

    Is there a correlation between the devil and the senses?  In music the diminished fifth is considered to be the devils interval and in geometry the pentagram is associated with the devil.  There are similarities between the diminished fifth and the pentagram that I want to discuss in this posting.  In terms of the the other senses the smell of sulfur or rather of burning sulfur is associated with the devil and hell.  Sulfur plays a large role in alchemy but my understanding of chemistry and alchemy is too limited to write further about sulfur.  Another avenue for future investigation.  In the realm of taste the only thing I could think of was the apple that Satan tempted Adam and Eve with.  The only connection I can see here is the fact that when you slice an apple horizontally the seed pattern is in the shape of a pentagram.  Interesting,  but It doesn't  lead me any closer to a law of harmony for the sense of taste. 

    But the main connection that I want to make clear to myself in this post is similarity between the diminished fifth and the pentagram.  What it seems to me that they have in common is irrationality.  Hippasus of Metapontum, a disciple of Pythagoras, is credited with discovering irrational numbers.   There seem to be two different theories as to how he discovered this; one of which is that the discovery was made while studying the pentagram (see James R. Choike (1980). "The Pentagram and the Discovery of an Irrational Number". The Two-Year College Mathematics Journal. and Kurt Von Fritz (1945). "The Discovery of Incommensurability by Hippasus of Metapontum". The Annals of Mathematics.I have not personally checked these sources. ).  According to legend this discovery, or possibly the publication there of, angered Pythagoras so much that he had Hippasus killed.

I am not a mathematician and I have not checked this following statement for accuracy nor does it come from a solid source.  "The pentagram actually depicts the golden ratio as well as one possible proof of its irrationality (applying the Euclidean algorithm twice replaces the circumscribed pentagon by the inscribed pentagon, proving nontermination of the continued fraction).  I think that this is better described by the 
following diagram.

   

    What I do understand is that a the lengths of a pentagram's segments, in order of decreasing lengths are in the ratio of Phi. This can be seen in the above diagram where the ratio of A to B= Phi and B to C = Phi, etc.   Note that this infinite generation of pentagrams with the ratio of Phi can be created upon a pentagram not just within(see diagram below).  Phi of course is an irrational number. 
   

    I speculate that this irrationality, that is at the basis of the structure of the pentagram, is the reason that the pentagram has been deemed dangerous.  In Divine Proportion, Phi in Art, Nature and Science, Pria Hemenway states that "The pentad was so revered in early societies that its construction was kept secret.  The Pythagoreans used it as a secret sigh to recognize one another.  They had studied its principles in geometry and nature and they also knew of its effect on the human psyche.  They saw in its application a knowledge that could be misused and although it was a teaching tool for a thousand years, it was guarded and only taught orally.  It was not written about by the craft guilds who used its symbolism in the design of the Gothic cathedrals; and it was not until 1509, when Leonardo da Vinci's teacher Luca Pacioli published his book Divina Proportione, that the method of its construction and unique geometric properties were publicly revealed to artists and philosophers."

    So how does this relate to the diminished fifth?  The following quotes are taken from a series of discussions between R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz  (RAS) and Andre VandenBroeck(AV) as reported by AV in his memoir Al-kemi.   RAS poses the question, "The zodiac of the twelve tonalities is an arrested moment in the endless spiral of sound, and the cog that arrests it is the Pythagorean comma.  That much is plain to me.  What is less so is the development of that makes the diabolus rise out of this system.  What else can this devil be but the destruction of a rational structure, incorporated into that very structure from the beginning, so to speak?  He is the price paid for constraining an everchanging infinite, a cyclical infinity that is the very nature of the universe."

   I will leave the idea of the Pythagorean comma to a future post.  What interests me most in the above quote is the question "What else could this devil be but the destruction of a rational structure, incorporated into that very structure from the very beginning?"  Could he not just as easily be talking about the necessity of irrational numbers, perfected in the pentagon,  inserted into the rational structure of integers.   It seems that  he is also describing  the transition between the system of Autoegocrat and Turgoautoegocrat system of maintaining existence that Gurdjieff describes in  Beelzebub's Tales to his Grandson. 

    For RAS the irrationality of the diminished fifth seems based on the fact that it divides the octave in to two equal parts.  According to RAS, "Natural division is always into uneven parts.  I can already feel the cardinal sin that will call for the devil.  The product of an even division will never be stable in its duality.  It makes sense that this interval would tend toward resolution with all its might."

    AV further explains,  "It is the equality of the complementary segments of the octave that makes their terms interchangeable:  in a flatted fifth each term can belong, as third or as seventh, to two different tonalities as remote from each other as tonality can be.  Hence two resolutions are possible, both occurring with equal ease, each as compelling as the other to the ear.  One single dissonance leads to two different resolutions, none favored over the other unless it be further characterized by context.  But these tonalities are not merely different; they stand at opposite poles, namely the two poles of the flatted fifth interval... A dissonance which finds with equal ease resolution in two extremes!  The ambiguity this fact introduces into the relationships of the twelve tonalities- such is the seed of destruction bound to bring down the entire system of tonality."

To hear an example of what AVB is describing above check out John Coltrane's  Giant Steps  this link also gives you a good visual representation of the modulation between keys.  It seems to me that there is a similarity between an interval that resolves to two different keys, that stand in the same relationship to each other as the original interval ,and the pentagram which perpetually inscribes upon and within its self proportionally similar pentagrams.

    It is interesting to note that Ouspensky places the devil on the Do-Si interval of the lateral octave which parallels the  Sol- Fa interval of the Ray of Creation.

    It is also interesting to note that the Blues scale, the scale that defines the Blues sound,  is a minor pentatonic scale with an added note- the diminished fifth.  The early  bluesman Robert Johnson, known as the King of the Delta Blues and the Grandfather of Rock and Roll, is said to have sold his soul to the Devil at the crossroads in return for being the greatest guitar player ever.

    From Gothe's Faust,

            Mephistopheles:
            I must confess, my stepping o'er
            Thy threshold a slight hindrance doth impede;
            The wizard-foot doth me retain.

            Faust:
            The pentagram thy peace doth mar?
            To me, thou son of hell, explain,
            How earnest thou in, if this thine exit bar?
            Could such a spirit aught ensnare?

    From ESO European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere, http://www.vt-2004.org/Education/edu1app5.html

This is the diagram on the zodiac that Venus makes in eight years. After that period, Venus, the Sun, the Earth and the stars are again in the same relative positions. It means that Venus, seen from the Earth, is in the same position with respect not only to the Sun, but also to the stars. This happens because five periods of Venus take eight years (When we round Venus' synodic period to a whole number 584, we can calculate that 584x5=2920 days, 2920/365 = 8 years). Take a particular point in a synodic revolution of Venus, for instance the greatest elongation east which places it in one zodiacal constellation. After an interval of 584 days (or nearly 19 months) later, greatest elongation east will take place again, this time almost seven constellations away. These events repeat every nineteen months and the result is that in eight years the eastern elongation point will return close to the point where it started - only about two degrees less - making a pentagram on the zodiac .

 

Music of the Spheres

In the Theory of Celestial Influence Rodney Collin shows the relationship between the movement of the planets and the musical scale.  He takes as a basis of this relationship the conjunction between the earth, the planet, the sun and the zodiac.  Collin refers to this as a planet's major conjunction.  Here is a description of this cycle as it pertains to Venus.  From ESO European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere, http://www.vt-2004.org/Education/edu1app5.html

This is the diagram on the zodiac that Venus makes in eight years. After that period, Venus, the Sun, the Earth and the stars are again in the same relative positions. It means that Venus, seen from the Earth, is in the same position with respect not only to the Sun, but also to the stars. This happens because five periods of Venus take eight years (When we round Venus' synodic period to a whole number 584, we can calculate that 584x5=2920 days, 2920/365 = 8 years). Take a particular point in a synodic revolution of Venus, for instance the greatest elongation east which places it in one zodiacal constellation. After an interval of 584 days (or nearly 19 months) later, greatest elongation east will take place again, this time almost seven constellations away. These events repeat every nineteen months and the result is that in eight years the eastern elongation point will return close to the point where it started - only about two degrees less - making a pentagram on the zodiac .

 

So here is the cycle in years for each of the classical planets:

Mercury                        8
Venus                            8
Mars                             15
Asteroids                       9
Jupiter                           12
Saturn                            30

According to Collin, "If these various rhythms be superimposed, we find a very interesting series of harmonic intervals developing in time, each stage of which is marked by the major conjunction of one or more of planets."  Hence

Years                                    Major Conjunctions
24                                            Jupiter X 2, Venus & Mercury X 3
27                                           Asteroids X 3
30                                            Mars X 2, Saturn X 1
32                                           Venus & Mercury X 4
36                                            Jupiter X 3, Asteroids X 4
40                                            Venus & Mercury X 5
45                                            Mars X 3, Asteroids X 5
48                                            Jupiter X 4, Venus & Mercury X 6

"...the series 24, 27, 30, 32, 36, 40, 45, 48, is familiar to us.  These figures, taken as vibrations, represent the relative values of the notes of a major musical scale.  And we are reminded of old stories that this same musical scale, ascribed by legend to the Pythagoreans, was invented by a special school of astronomers and physicists, to echo the music of the spheres.  It is now clear that this is no legend, but actual fact. The octave or musical scale is a notation, adapted to man's hearing, of this harmony of the planetary cycles, which in turn is an echo of a great law which controls the development of all processes in the universe."

Collin further goes on to state, "Between human time and solar time lie 36 octaves; exactly the same interval separates the vibrations of human music from the vibrations of planetary motions.  In literal fact the motions of the planets make music for the Sun."  I think he derives his 36 octaves from Gurdjieff's teaching that time is breath (see In Search of the Miraculous by P. D. Ouspensky)

According to Collin the importance of this major conjunction is that it is the cycle of each planet's influence on the earth.  A planet's influence the earth and man is greatly affected by that planets relation to the Sun and the stars as seen from earth.