Featured

Fibonacci in Jupiter’s 12-fold Heaven

The Fibonacci series is an ideal pattern, widely found within living systems, in which the present magnitude or location of something is the product of two previous magnitudes or locations of it. The next magnitude will again be the sum of the last two magnitudes in what is, an algorithmic pattern producing approximation to the Golden Mean (designated by the Greek letter φ,’phi’). As the series gets larger, the ratio (or proportion) between successive magnitudes will better approximate the irrational value of φ = 1.618033 … – which has an unlimited fractional part whilst the virtue of the Fibonacci numbers within the Series is that they are integers forming rational fractions.

Jupiter taken by the Wide Field Hubble Telescope by NASA, ESA, and A. Simon (Goddard Space Flight Center)
Continue reading “Fibonacci in Jupiter’s 12-fold Heaven”
Featured

The Avebury Square within it’s Southern Circle

Soil resistance work (“geophys”), by archaeologists from the University of Leicester, of the land inside the southern stone circle of Avebury Henge, has revealed more about the Obelisk and lines of standing stones, which appear to have formed a near-square rectangle. Information can be hard to obtain when work is yet to be published but a press release to the Guardian and others many months ago (December 27th 2019) enabled figures from a media set to be viewed with public access. This has enabled me to so some site interpretation, using the (as-yet damned) numerical technique called ancient metrology. My results are fascinating and build upon the megalithic use of counting time as length to track important time-cycles such as the Nodal Period of 6800 days, between lunar maxima and minima, and the Metonic period of both 19 years and 235 lunar months, within which all of the varied orientations of Sun Moon and Sky are recycled.

Figure 1 Avebury Henge from the North with major features labelled
Continue reading “The Avebury Square within it’s Southern Circle”
Featured

Use of Ad-Quadratum at Angkor Wat

The large temple complex of Angkor Wat ( photo: Chris Junker at flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 )

Ad Quadratum is a convenient and profound technique in which continuous scaling of size can be given to square shapes, either from a centre or periphery. The differences in scale are multiples of the square root
of two [sqrt(2)] between two types of square: cardinal (flat) and diamond (pointed).

The diagonal of a square of unit size is sqrt(2), When a square is nested to just touch a larger square’s opposite sides, one can know the squares differ by sqrt(2)
Continue reading “Use of Ad-Quadratum at Angkor Wat”
Featured

Silbury Hill: Metrological Key to the Model of the Earth between Stonehenge & Avebury

Archived: 11 August 2012

The exact location of Silbury Hill is as mysterious as the purpose of the Hill itself, a thirty degree cone, only recently with a flat top, overlooking Avebury and the surrounding hills. The Hill figures in John Michell’s model of the Earth between Stonehenge and Avebury in which one quarter of a degree of latitude, between the two henges, appears to have been measured by a type of Persian foot so as to make the number of feet, in between, equal numerically to that required to perfectly model the Earth using 864:866:867 double triangle.

The double triangle model of the size of the Earth between Stonehenge and Avebury

There are 86400 Persian feet of 1.056 feet (south to north) between Stonehenge and Avebury Ridgeway enabling the Avebury henge to be 86600 of these Persian feet from Stonehenge, then to represent the Mean Earth radius (see Initial Article – missing link). The Avebury henge appears to have been specifically tied to the distinct Latitude of 360/7 degrees.

Continue reading “Silbury Hill: Metrological Key to the Model of the Earth between Stonehenge & Avebury”
Featured

Symbolic “forms in movement” at Gavrinis

In this article M.Guillaume introduces some of the AAK’s work on understanding the Gavrinis chambered cairn. It appeared in the first volume of Etudes et Travaux, May 1977, pages 45-51.

It has been translated from French as best I can, in three parts with links between. It was first re-published on the web between 2010-2012 to honour the fact I was given copies of the magazine when visiting Carnac in 2004.

Whilst my interest was site interpretation using numbers, the notion of a vision quest within Gavrinis as an experienced structure is appealing.

What especially strikes one on entering Gavrinis is the extreme  homogeneity of the whole work.

Continue reading “Symbolic “forms in movement” at Gavrinis”
Featured

The Crop Circle Phenomenon at Crooked Soley

Archive: 26 November 2017

This article explores another modern and highly transient manifestation belonging to the category of Landforms, the crop circle. Thought in seventeenth century England to be the work of a mowing devil, and more recently hoaxers, the large crop fields created since the post-war tractor revolution play host to “sacred art” designs that farmers find intrusive, attracting members of the public (to be a-mazed) and aviators to curate these patterns for posterity. The tabloids used to indulge full page colour sections to crop circles but then were dissuaded perhaps by officialdom (we are mad) and apathy (we lose interest) since the cause of the finest examples, such as Crooked Soley, do not appear humanly possible.

Continue reading “The Crop Circle Phenomenon at Crooked Soley”
Featured

Film of John Michell at Lundy Island

This is a film by me of John Michell before his death. It was made on Lundy Island at which time he was working on some of his last published ideas about the British Isles from the perspective of sacred geometry and metrology, both fields in which John made outstanding contributions including The View Over Atlantis, Dimensions of Paradise and Ancient Metrology. It is published here to enable those who did not to experience the unique presence of John Michell, itself conducive to understanding his work.

originally published Monday, 28 May 2012 at 10:58
It was read 478 times

Continue reading “Film of John Michell at Lundy Island”
Featured

Gavrinis 1: Its dimensions and geometrical framework

This article first appeared in my Matrix of Creation website in 2012 which was attacked, though an image had been made. Some of this material appeared in my Lords of Time book.

Gavrinis and Tables des Marchands are very similar monuments, both in the orientation of their passageways and their identical latitude. Gavrinis is about 3900 metres east of Tables des Marchands but, unlike the latter, has a Breton name based upon the root GVR (gower). Both passageways directly express the difference between the winter solstice sunrise and the lunar maximum moonrise to the South, by designing the passages to allow these luminaries to enter at the exact day of the winter solstice or the most southerly moonrise over many lunar orbits, during the moon’s maximum standstill. Thus both the monuments allow the maximum moon along their passageway whilst the winter solstice sunrise can only glance into their end chambers.

From Howard Crowhurst’s work on multiple squares, we know that this difference in angle is that between a 3-4-5 triangle and the diagonal of a square which is achieved directly by the diagonal of a seven square rectangle.

Figure 1 The essence of difference between the winter solstice sunrise (as diagonal of 4 by 3 rectangle) and southerly maximum moonrise (as diagonal of a single square), on the horizon, is captured in the diagonal of a seven squares rectangle.
Continue reading “Gavrinis 1: Its dimensions and geometrical framework”
Featured

82: A Natural Accurate Pi related to Megalithic Yard

Author at Le Manio Quadrilateral (c. 4000 BC) in 2010. To left, the end of the southern-kerb’s day-inch count, which created the first megalithic yard of 261/8 (32.625) day-inches.

In my academia.edu paper on lunar simulators, based upon the surviving part of a circular structure at Le Manio (Carnac, Brittany), a very simple but poor approximation to PI could be assumed, of 82/26 (3.154) since there seem to have been 82 stones in the circle and the diameter was 26 of the inter-stone distance of 17 inches. The number 82 is significant to simulation of the moon’s orbit since that orbit is very nearly 27 and one third days long (actually 27.32166 days). In three orbits therefore, there are almost exactly 82 days and in day-inch counting that is 82 day-inches. Also of interest is the fact that in three orbits, the exact figure would be 81.965 day-inches which approaches the megalithic rod of 2.5 MY as 6.8 feet.

Continue reading “82: A Natural Accurate Pi related to Megalithic Yard”
Featured

Form implied by the Kaaba’s Walls

The Kaaba appears to express a geometrical progression of adjacent odd numbers starting with one and three. This differs from the super-particular ratios found within the right triangles of astronomical time periods formed by the Megalithic, in which the ratio pairs separated by only one rather than by two, between only odd numbers. However, the multiple-square rectangles used by the megalithic to approximation celestial ratios, made use of the three-square rectangle. In one of the smallest of these rectangles, it simultaneously approximates two pairs of ratios: The eclipse year (346.62 days) to the solar year (365.2422 days) and the solar year to the thirteen lunar month year (384 days).


Figure 1 The three-square approximations in a triple series of astronomical periods. Note that the diagonals relative to the base are the result of having three squares in a rectangle then one high and three along – and two different. Two such rectangles geometrically sum (their angles) to give that of the (First Pythagorean) 3-4-5 triangle, 36.8 degrees.
Continue reading “Form implied by the Kaaba’s Walls”
Featured

The Golden Mean compared to PI

In reviewing some ancient notes of mine, I came across an interesting comparison between the Golden Mean (Phi) and PI. They are more interesting in reverse:

A phi square (area: 2.618, side: 1.618) has grown in area relative to a unit square by the amount (area: 0.618) plus the rectangle (area:1 ). This reveals the role of phi’s reciprocal square (area: 0.384) in being the reciprocal of the reciprocal so that in product they return the unity (area: 1).

On the right, the phi squared square showing how the reciprocal of phi and its square uniquely sum to unity (area: 1), a property that is scale invariant between structures who share the same units and grow according to the Golden Mean.
Continue reading “The Golden Mean compared to PI”
Featured

Astronomical Time within Clava Cairns

In North East Scotland, near Inverness, lies Balnuaran of Clava, a group of three cairns with a unique and distinctive style, called Clava cairns; of which evidence of 80 examples have been found in that region. They are round, having an inner and outer kerb of upright stones between which are an infill of stones. They may or may not have a passageway from the outer to the inner kerb, into the round chamber within. At Balnuaran, two have passages on a shared alignment to the midwinter solstice. In contrast, the central ring cairn has no passage and it is staggered west of that shared axis.

This off-axis ring cairn could have been located to be illuminated by the midsummer sunrise from the NE Cairn, complementing the midwinter sunset to the south of the two passageways of the other cairns. Yet the primary and obvious focus for the Balnuaran complex is the midwinter sunset down the aligned passages. In fact, the ring cairn is more credibly aligned to the lunar minimum standstill of the moon to the south – an alignment which dominates the complex since, in that direction the horizon is nearly flat whilst the topography of the site otherwise suffers from raised horizons.

Cairns at Balnuaran of Clava. plan by A. Thom and pictures by Ian B. Wright
Continue reading “Astronomical Time within Clava Cairns”
Featured

Use of foot ratios in Megalithic Astronomy

The ratios of ancient metrology emerged from the Megalithic innovations of count&compare: counting time as length and comparing lengths as the longest sides of right triangles. To compare two lengths in this way, one can take a longer rope length and lay it out (say East-West), starting at the beginning of the shorter rope length, using a stake in the ground to fix those ends together.

The longer rope end is then moved to form an angle to the shorter, on the ground, whilst keeping the longer rope straight. The Right triangle will be formed when the longer rope’s end points exactly to the North of the shorter rope end. But to do that one needs to be able to form a right angle at the shorter rope’s end. The classic proposal (from Robin Heath) is to form the simplest Pythagorean triangle with sides {3 4 5} at the rope’s end. One tool for this could then have been the romantic knotted belt of a Druid, whose 13 equally spaced knots could define 12 equal intervals. Holding the 5th knot, 8th knot and the starting and ending knots together automatically generates that triangle sides{3 4 5}.

Forming a square with the AMY is helped by the diagonals being rational at 140/99 of the AMY.
Continue reading “Use of foot ratios in Megalithic Astronomy”
Featured

A Lecture introducing Sacred Number and the Lords of Time

… given as the John Michell Memorial Lecture for
at Megalithomania 2015 in Glastonbury

Continue reading “A Lecture introducing Sacred Number and the Lords of Time”
Featured

Chalk Drums to Symbolise Pi and Layout Monuments

December 2016 in numbersciences.org Hits: 3872

Three Folkton Chalk Drums found in a young girl’s grave
©Trustees of the British Museum ]

Perhaps as early as 4000 BC, there was a tradition of making chalk drums. Three highly decorated examples were found in a grave dated between 2600 and 2000 BC in Folkton, northern England and one undecorated chalk drum in southern England at Lavant in an upland downs known for a henge and many other neolithic features discovered in a recent community LIDAR project. The Lavant LIDAR project and the chalk drum found there are the first two articles in PAST, the Newsletter of The Prehistoric Society. (number 83. Summer 2016.) It gives the height and radius of both the Folkton drums 15, 16 and 17 and the Lavant drum, presenting these as a graph as below.


Adapted graphic showing diameters in inches (above in red) as well as mm, and the possible PI relationships for the chalk drum diameters, key to the fact that such drums can be rolled. In line with megalithic numeracy, the simple yet accurate value of 22/7 for PI is shown.
Continue reading “Chalk Drums to Symbolise Pi and Layout Monuments”
Featured

Thornborough Henge as Moon’s Maximum Standstill

The three henges appear to align to the three notable manifestations to the north west of the northerly moon setting at maximum standstill. The distance between northern and southern henge entrances could count 3400 days, each 5/8th of a foot (7.5 inches), enabling a “there and back again” counting of the 6800 days (18.618 solar years/ 19.618 eclipse years) between lunar maximum standstills.

Figure 1 The three henges are of similar size and design, a design most clear in what remains of the central henge.
Continue reading “Thornborough Henge as Moon’s Maximum Standstill”
Featured

Number Symbolism at Table des Marchands

Table des Marchands, a dolmen at Lochmariaquer, can explain how the Megalithic came to factorise 945 days as 32 lunar months by looking at the properties of the numbers three, four and five. At that latitude, the solstice angle of the sun on the horizon shone along the 5-side of a 3-4-5 triangle to east and west, seen clearly at the Crucuno Rectangle "Lunar Counting from Crucuno Dolmen to its Rectangle".

Before numbers were individually notated (as with our 3, 4 and 5 rather than |||, |||| and |||||) and given positional notation (like our decimal seen in 945 and 27), numbers were lengths or marks and, when marks are compared to accurately measured lengths measured out in inches, feet, yards, etc. then each vertical mark would naturally have represented a single unit of length. This has not been appreciated as having been behind marks like the cuneiform for ONE; that it probably meant “one unit of length”.


Figure 1 The end and cap stone inside the dolmen Table des Marchands in which the elementary numbers in columns and rows perhaps inspired its attribution to the accounts of merchants
Locmariaquer (Morbihan, Bretagne, France) : la Table des Marchand, interieur.
Continue reading “Number Symbolism at Table des Marchands”
Featured

Earth and Moon within Westminster’s Coronation Pavement

Our modern globes are based upon political boundaries and geographical topography yet they have geometrical predecessors, which described the world as an image, diagram or schemata. The original idea for the form of the world was summarised within a simple two dimensional geometry, like an eastern mandala or yantra.

Such a diagram was built into the Cosmati pavement at Westminster Abbey, built by Henry III and dedicated to the Saxon King and Saint Edward the Confessor. This exotic pavement became the focus for the Coronations of subsequent English then British monarchs.


Figure 1 Photo of the Cosmati Pavement at Westminster Abbey
[Copyright: Dean and Chapter of Westminster]
Continue reading “Earth and Moon within Westminster’s Coronation Pavement”
Featured

Musical Tones of the Outer Planets

My crucial entré to planetary harmony came when I noticed musical ratios in the synodic time periods of Jupiter and Saturn relative to the lunar year. This approach differs from the norms for “harmonies of the spheres” (a.k.a. Musica Universalis) which are geometrical and spatial, rather than temporally harmonic.

The planetary harmony I found within synodic periods became the subject of my new book The Harmonic Origins of the World (pub. 2018). These synodic ratios have been parts of my work from c. 2000, then expressed as “matrix diagrams” (Matrix of Creation, figure 2 below). In my new book, I show how ancient tuning theory seems to have presented the same information, in a different type of matrix (see figure 4).

Below I connect the outer planets using two additional (and useful) kinds of diagram, the right-angled triangle (figure 1) and the Pentad (figure 5), the latter developed in the 20th century within a discipline called Systematics. 


Figure 1 The harmonic ratios between the nearest two outer planets and the lunar year. The four square rectangle with side length of four, when equal to the lunar year gives, geometrically, the solar year as its diagonal length. The outer planetary synods are longer than the solar year as the planets have moved ahead of their last opposition to the sun. Such oppositions are marked by an outer planet appearing to travel in a loop, amongst the stars
Continue reading “Musical Tones of the Outer Planets”

The Three Worlds at Gavrinis

following on from previous post,
an article by M Guillaume found in
AAK Etudes et Travaux No. 1, 1977

Do these three stages [at Gavrinis] not correspond to the three creations, probably inherited by Celts, and  those in Egypt, preceding access to a sanctuary?

Fig. 10 Top left: A tracing of the Druid worlds, the circle in the square defining three areas: Abred (circle of necessity) and Annouim and Gwenwed (the white world). Top right:  On the stone Suèvres, these worlds are the figures by concentric squares. Bottom: In Christianity we find the same structure: this rose at Chartres has a fourth inner circle.
Continue reading “The Three Worlds at Gavrinis”

Gavrinis: On Crossing the Three Thresholds and Entering The Room

following on within an article by M Guillaume found in AAK Etudes et Travaux No. 1, 1977

These half-circles facing upwards – do we not find them repeated a thousand times in the “necklaces” of the Goddess?

Fig. 12 Stones 4 and 5
Continue reading “Gavrinis: On Crossing the Three Thresholds and Entering The Room”