Category: Geometry and Metrology

Sacred numbers within metrologically-quantified geometries.

The Approximation of π on Earth

π is a transcendental ratio existing between a diameter/ radius and circumference of a circle. A circle is an expression of eternity in that the circumference, if travelled upon, repeats eternally. The earths shape would be circular if the planet did not spin. Only the equator is now circular and enlarged, whilst the north and south poles have a shrunken radius and, in pre-history, the shape of the earth’s Meridian between the poles was quantified using approximations of π as was seen in the post before last. In some respects, the Earth is a designed type of planet which has to have a large moon, 3/11 of the earth’s size and a Meridian of such a size that the diverse biosphere can be created within the goldilocks region of the Sun’s radiance.

It would be impossible to quantify the earth as a physical object without the use of approximations to π, a technique seen as emerging in Crucuno between its dolmen and famous {3 4 5} Rectangle where the 32 lunar months in 945 days was used, through manipulation of proximate numbers to rationalize the lunar month to 27 feet (10 Drusian steps) within which days could be counted using one Iberian foot (of 32/35 feet) as described here and in my Sacred Geometry book.

John Michell (1983) saw that different types of foot had longer and shorter versions, different by one 175th part and corresponding to the north-south width of two parallels of latitude: 51-52 degrees, which is the mean earth degree, and 10-11 degrees. The ratio 176/175 is interesting as for its primes.

  1. The harmonic primes {2 3 5} are 16/25 times 11/7.
  2. The 11/7 is half of the pi of 22/7 and the harmonic ratio is the inverse of 25/8.

From this it is clear that these two latitudes are related by the approximation to 1 of a π (22/7) and a reciprocal 1/π (8/25).

But John Neal (2000) saw that some feet also expressed 441/440 which is the ratio between the mean radius of the earth and its polar radius, visually clear in the Great Pyramid. This ratio is also the cancellation of two different πs, namely 63/20 and 7/22 since 7 x 63 = 441 and 20 x 22 = 440. From this emerged an ancient model of the earth that was embodied within the ancient metrology itself. I call this the metrological model rather than the (earlier) geometrical model based upon equal perimeters and the singular π of 22/7.

The metrological model gave a set of regular reference latitudes that accurately defined the geoid of the planet’s meridian by 2,500 BC. One can ask how those developing the model came across the idea of using proximate ratios of π like 176/175 and 441/440, since the system works so well that one may say that the meridian appears to have been designed that way.

The geometric model already defined the mean radius as 3960 miles and so that gives a mean earth meridian of 22 x twelve to the power six. One 180th of this gives a degree length of 364953.6 feet and this is only found at the parallel 51-52 degrees. It is this that defines the megalithic in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, an obvious candidate for the metrological survey whose complementary latitude was probably 175/176 of this (362880 feet) in Ethiopia, south of the Great Pyramid. The parallel of the Great Pyramid is 441/440 longer (362704.72) than that of Ethiopia while Athens and Delphi are 440/441 of the mean earth and Stonehenge parallel, that is 364126 feet.

This system was first set by Neal in All Done With Mirrors 2000 as I was writing my first book Matrix of Creation. Are we to think Neal made it up or are we dealing with an exact science that had developed through the megalithic enterprise. And if the Egyptians had an exact science of the earth’s geiod, what are we to make of the fact that the earth appears to follow such a numerically inspired pattern of relationships still true today, in the age of global positioning satellites.

One clue lies in the mind, and how ancient number sciences focus holistically upon the balancing mean. A mean earth that did not spin never existed, since it was only the collision with another planet which created the Moon 3/11 smaller than the Earth. The mean earth radius is these days established as the cube root of the equatorial radius squared times the polar radius. This is less, by 3024/3025, than the geometric model’s mean earth radius of 3960 miles, again maintaining rationality.

It would appear that, in entering the physical and spatial, any planetary design might have been based upon precise rational approximations, about the mean size, of π. To this mystery must be added the musical harmony of the outer planets to the Moon, the Fibonacci harmony of Venus to the Earth itself and the extraordinary numerical relationships of planetary time created by the Sun, Moon and Earth documented by my heavily-diagrammed books and website. From this, more and more can be understood about our prehistory and about its monuments.

Books on Ancient Metrology

  1. Berriman, A. E. Historical Metrology. London: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1953.
  2. Heath, Robin, and John Michell. Lost Science of Measuring the Earth: Discovering the Sacred Geometry of the Ancients. Kempton, Ill.: Adventures Unlimited Press, 2006. Reprint edition of The Measure of Albion.
  3. Heath, Richard. Sacred Geometry: Language of the Angels. Vermont: Inner Traditions 2022.
  4. Michell, John. Ancient Metrology. Bristol, England: Pentacle Press, 1981.
  5. Neal, John. All Done with Mirrors. London: Secret Academy, 2000.
  6. —-. Ancient Metrology. Vol. 1, A Numerical Code—Metrological Continuity in Neolithic, Bronze, and Iron Age Europe. Glastonbury, England: Squeeze, 2016 – read 1.6 Pi and the World.
  7. —-. Ancient Metrology. Vol. 2, The Geographic Correlation—Arabian, Egyptian, and Chinese Metrology. Glastonbury, England: Squeeze, 2017.
  8. —-. Ancient Metrology, Vol. 3, The Worldwide Diffusion – Ancient Egyptian, and American Metrology.  The Squeeze Press: 2024.
  9. Petri, W. M. Flinders. Inductive Metrology. 1877. Reprint, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.

The Broch that Modelled the Earth

Summary

In the picture above [1] the inner profile of the thick-walled Iron-Age broch of Dun Torceill is the only elliptical example, almost every other broch having a circular inner court. Torceill’s essential data was reported by Euan MacKie in 1977 [2]: The inner chamber of the broch is an ellipse with axes nearly 23:25 (and not 14:15). The actual ratio directly generates a metrological difference, between the major and minor axis lengths, of 63/20 feet. When multiplied by the broch’s 40-foot major axis, this π-like yard creates a length of 126 feet which, multiplied again by π as 22/7, generates 396 feet. If each of these feet represented ten miles, this number is an accurate approximation to the mean radius of the Earth, were it a sphere.

The two ratios involved, 22/7 and 63/20, each an approximation to π, become 9.9 (99/100) when they are multiplied together, as an approximation to π squared.  Figure 1 shows that these two ratios, if 22/7 differently used as its reciprocal 7/22, also generates the ratio between the mean and polar radii of the Earth, since 63/20 x 7/22 = 441/440. The ancient Meridian length could be calculated from 396 when multiplied by using the most accurate rational π noted by Fibonacci as 864/275. The 396 units, of 10 miles per foot, was a practical distance to have realized in the megalithic without arithmetic, to store the 3960 mile mean radius of the earth, since the mile of 5280 feet is 4/3 of 3960; that is, 396 x 4/3 equals 528, implying that this model was conceived of within a decimal framework but without the base-10 positional notation of arithmetic. We show that the methods of calculation used can only have seen numbers-as-lengths as being composed of factors of just the first five prime numbers {2 3 5 7 11} and that this limitation upon numbers created a metrology in which fractional units of measure could manipulate lengths to multiply and divide them through addition and subtraction of the powers of these primes.

Marc Calhoun’s picture from the Island (picture from his blog)

Contents

  1. Summary
  2. Introduction.
  3. Main Thesis.
  4. Pre-arithmetic Calculation using Powers of {2 3 5 7 11}
  5. Combining Prime Number Composites.
  6. Appendix 1 Extract from Science and Society in Prehistoric Britain.
  7. Appendix 2: Preface: The Metrology of the Brochs.
  8. Metrological Bibliography.
Continue reading “The Broch that Modelled the Earth”

Walking on the Moon

There are plans to walk again on the moon (above is a NASA visualization), but there is a sense in which the surface of the moon belongs to the surface of the earth, since the earth’s circumference is 4 times the mean diameter of the earth, minus the moon’s circumference.

The Earth and Moon were formed out of an early collision which left the two bodies in an unusual relationship to one another, in more ways than one. Here we discuss the diameter (and circumference) of each body as a sphere as being in the ratio 11 to 3. The diameter of the Moon is 2160 miles so that the common unit is 720 miles (the harmonic constant) and the diameter of the spherical mean earth would be 7920 miles.

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Seven, Eleven and Equal Perimeters

above: image of applications involving sacred geometry based upon pi as 22/7 and a circle of equal perimeter to a square, from a previous post.

The geometrical and other relationships between different numbers are easily found to be useful through simple experiments. The earliest approximations to pi (22/7) was key in the megalithic and later ancient cultures, for making circles of a known diameter and circumference, the foremost using the numbers 7 and 11 doubled twice. A staked rope of length seven will create a circumference of 44, to a high degree of accuracy.

But what is pi? it actually connects two different worlds, of extensive linear measure and of intensive rotational measure. As the radius rope is made larger the circle expands from its center but it remains a whole circle, except that its circumference is made up of more “units” all according to the ratio pi = 22/7, in a good approximation.

But measuring a circumference is fiddly, it is circular! In contrast, it is very much easier to work with squares since their perimeter is four times their side length. And in many cases, one does not really need to measure the perimeter. Because of this, the megalithic looked for and discovered an easier procedure in which one could know the circumference of a circle if one could generate the square that has the same circumference now called the equal perimeter model. This was surprisingly simple to grasp and implement.

First of all, one can lay out a linear length, that divides by 4, lets say 28 which is 4 x 7. The length is made up of four lengths, each of 7 units and, a square of side length 7 will have a perimeter of 28, same as the linear length. The square is really just a rolled-up set of 4 lengths at right angles!

The diameter of a circle with 28 units on its circumference must be larger than its incircle of diameter 7 and, if pi is 22/7 then, the diameter will be exactly 14/11 of the side length. Notice that 14/11 is cancelling the seven and eleven in pi as 22/7.

The equal perimeter rope will be staked in the very center of the square. The side of 7 is then 7 x 14/11 or 98/11 units and this, times 22/7 equals 28 – the perimeter of both the circle, and square side-length 7 units. There is no need to calculate this if one draws a triangle ratio {11 14} from the center of the square. This triangle’s slope angle automatically “calculates” or reproportions the cardinal length (whatever this is) into a suitable rope (or radiant) length.

One often does not need to form the circle to know what its perimeter would be through measurement. Once one knows that every square has a twin circle of the same perimeter, this changes thinking. This is particularly significant when forming a circular model of the sun’s path in the year. If the “saturnian” year 364 days was used, it unusually divides by 28 days, and 13, and 7 days; the seven-day week. The square would have a side length of 13 weeks (91 days) and the radius rope would need to be (13 x 7) x 7/11 which, times 44/7 reconstitutes the circumference of 364 days.

My book Sacred Geometry: Language of the Angels has much to say on equal perimeter modelling, which is found throughout the ancient building traditions that followed on from the megalithic period, using the older techniques of metrological geometry alongside the development of arithmetic methods. Click on the Bookshop logo or Google, and find out more.

The Megalithic Numberspace

above: counting 37 lunar months six times to reach 222,
one month short of 223: the strong Saros eclipse period.

There is an interesting relationship between the multiple interpretations of a number as to its meaning, and the modern concept of namespace. In a namespace, one declares a space in which no two names will be identical and therefore each name is unique and this has to be so that, in computer namespaces such as web domain names, the routes to a domain can be variable but the destination needs to be a unique URL.

If sacred numbers had unique meanings then they would be like a namespace. Instead, being far more limited in variety, sacred numbers have more meanings, or interpretations, just as one might say that London has many linkages to other cities. In an ordinal number set, there are many relationships of a number to all the other numbers. This means whilst their are infinite numbers in the set of positive whole numbers, there are more than an infinity of relationships between the members of that set, such as shared number factors or squares, cubes, etc. of a number.

The mathematician Georg Cantor saw “doubly infinite” sets. Sets of relationships between members of an already infinite set, must themselves be more than infinite. He called infinite sets as aleph-zero and the sets of relationships within an infinite set (worlds of networking), he called aleph-one.

Originally, Cantor’s theory of transfinite numbers was regarded as counter-intuitive – even shocking.

Wikipedia

However, in the world of sacred numbers, although there can be large numbers, in the megalithic the numbers were quite small; partly due to the difficulty that numbers-as-lengths were physically real while later numeracy abstracted numbers into symbols and, using powers of ten, modern integers are a series of place ordered numbers (not factors) in base 10, as with 12,960,000 – possible for the ancient Babylonians but, I believe, not expected for the early megalithic.

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Counting Perimeters

above: a slide from my lecture at Megalithomania in 2015

We know that some paleolithic marks counted in days the moon’s illuminations, which over two cycles equal 59 day-marks. This paved the way for the megalithic monuments that studied the stars by pointing to the sky on the horizon; at the sun and moon rising to the east and setting in the west. It was natural then to them to see the 12 lunar months (6 x 59 = 354 day-marks) within the seasonal year (about 1/3 of a month longer than 12) between successive high summers or high winters.

Lunar eclipses only occur between full moons and so they fitted perfectly the counting of the repetitions of the lunar eclipses as following a fixed pattern, around six months apart (actually 5.869 months, ideally 173.3 day-marks apart). The accuracy of successive eclipse seasons to the lunar month can then improve over longer counts so that, after 47 lunar months, one can expect an eclipse to have occurred about one and a half days earlier. This appears to be the reason for the distance between the megalithic monuments of Crucuno, its dolmen and and its rectangle, which enabled simultaneous counting of days as Iberian feet and months as 27 foot units, at the very end of the Stone Age.

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