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.