Category: Sacred Geometries and Texts

3000 BC onwards: Numerical and geometrical designs within buildings and texts often considered sacred.

Sacred Latitudes of the West

The post explores the geodetic concept of “Sacred Latitudes” and “Michael lines,” tracing historical and religious significance along these lines. It discusses saints’ locations, Columbus’s explorations, Templar disappearances, and maritime traditions. The narrative links these geographic lines to cultural, spiritual, and historical events, suggesting deeper connections in European and New World history.

above: the symmetrical Mary line of Europe to the Michael line (see figure) which correlated with places of significance to Mary. first published on Sunday, 19 September 2010

Adventures in Geodetic Imagination

At the heart of my second book, Sacred Number and the Origins of Civilization, lay the story of the Secret Men of the North, which followed the west-to-east path of a European Michael line (see figure 6), in the sense of the original invasion of the Middle East by northern Christianity, during the Crusades; ostensibly to re-take Jerusalem from a world of Islam that was itself invading Europe, from Spain, Sicily and the Levant.

Whilst working on a continuation of such a geodetic story, the concept of Sacred Latitudes emerged in which parallels of latitude might have some psycho-historical relevance, based on the original insight that, in the last century, “manifestations of Mary” have emerged, first in Garabandal in Spain and recently in Medjugorje, in Bosnia, that are on exactly the same line of latitude, 43 degrees and 12 minutes (43.2 degrees) (this brought to my attention by the late John D. Kirby’s studies of “Mary places”. He had organized tours from the UK to Medjugorje: see youTube video at end.)

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Iceland’s Model of the Earth’s Meridian

Einar Palsson [1, at end] saw that the myths of foundation for Iceland’s settlement in 930 had Pythagorean roots. Since then Petur Halldorsson has identified patterns that could not have been influenced by Pythagoras (c. 600 BC) and Pythagoras was known to have adapted the existing number sciences found (according to his myth) from Egypt to China.

Such patterns, called Cosmic Images by Halldorsson [3], seek to establish a geometric connection between places on the landscape and on the horizon, here in the south-western region near Reykjavik, the only Icelandic city. The spirit of a region or island was integrated through organising space in this way, according to centers (Things) of circles and their radius and diameter as numbers of paces, circles punctuated with places and alignments to other places, horizon events or cardinal directions. John Michell provided a guide to some of the techniques in his books [2, at end].


Figure 1 The Cosmic Image east of Reykjavik proposed by Palsson
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Palsson’s Sacred Image in Iceland

Extracted from The Structure of Metrology, its Classification and Application (2006) by John Neal and notes by Richard Heath for Bibal Group, a member of which, Petur Halldorsson, has taken this idea further with more similar patterns on the landscape, in Europe and beyond. Petur thinks Palsson’s enthusiasm for Pythagorean ideas competed with what was probably done to create this landform, as he quotes “Every pioneer has a pet theory that needs to be altered through dialogue.” Specifically, he “disputes the Pythagorean triangle in Einar’s theories. I doubt it appeared in the Icelandic C.I. [Cosmic Image] by design.” Caveat Emptor. So below is an example of what metrology might say about the design of this circular landform.


Figure 1 of Palsson’s (1993) Sacred Geometry in Pagan Iceland
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John Michell’s Perpetual Choirs

15 April 2017 Views: 10450

In 1972  John Michell inferred an enormous ten-sided form nearly sixty three miles across, in which important historical and neolithic sites had been intended as ten vertices around an ancient centre, signified by a Whiteleafed Oak.

Figure 1 The Decagon of Perpetual Choirs, anchored upon Stonehenge, the Solstice sunrise in summer and set in winter

Michell had previously [1991 now The Sacred Center, 2009] developed the idea of the enchantment of the land as an actual practice; land areas were enchanted by using a geometrical pattern integrated with myths and ritual calendars, enacted within that framework. This  was long before, around 930, such a pattern was being established of thing-places in Iceland. The idea of thing places is still find-able in English names such as Goring, the centre northeast of Stonehenge, where the summer solstice sun arose.

“Perpetual choirs were a Celtic institution, from pagan into early Christian times. In Iola Morganwg’s Triads of Britain, translated from Welsh, it is stated that ‘in each of these three choirs there were 24,000 saints; that is,
there were a hundred for every hour of the day and the night in rotation, perpetuating the praise and service of God without rest or intermission.’ ”  – The Measure of Albion

“Three of the choirs were located at Stonehenge, at Glastonbury, and near Llantwit Major in Wales. Others appear to have been at Goring-on- Thames and at Croft Hill in Leicestershire, a traditional site of ritual,  legal, and popular assemblies.” The Dimensions of Paradise


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