Tuning – Page 2 – Sacred Number Sciences

Music of the Olmec Heads

Seventeen colossal carved heads are known, each made out of large basalt boulders. The heads shown here, from the city of San Lorenzo [1200-900 BCE], are a distinctive feature of the Olmec civilization of ancient Mesoamerica. In the absence of any evidence, they are thought to be portraits of individual Olmec rulers but here I propose the heads represented musical ratios connected to the ancient Dorian heptachord, natural to tuning by perfect fifths and fourths. In the small Olmec city of Chalcatzingo [900-500BCE] , Olmec knowledge of tuning theory is made clear in Monument 1, of La Reina the Queen (though called El Rey, the King, despite female attire), whose symbolism portrays musical harmony and its relationship to the geocentric planetary world *(see picture at end).

* These mysteries were visible using the ancient tuning theories of Ernest G. McClain, who believed the Maya had received many things from the ancient near east. Chapter Eight of Harmonic Origins of the World was devoted to harmonic culture of the Olmec, the parent culture of later Toltec, Maya, and Aztec civilizations of Mexico.

Monument 5 at Chatcatzinga has the negative shape of two rectangles at right angles to each other, with radiating carved strips framing the shape like waves emanating from the space through which the sky is seen. The rectangles are approximately 3 by 5 square or of a 5 by 5 square with its corner squares removed.

Monument 5 at Chalcatzingo is a framed hollow shape. The multiple squares have been added to show that, if the inner points are a square then the four cardinal cutouts are described by triple squares.

The important to see that the Olmec colossal heads were all formed as a carved down oval shape, that would fit the height to width ratio of a rectangular block. For example, three heads from San Lorenzo appear to have a ratio 4 in height to 3 in width, which in music is the ascending fourth (note) of our modern diatonic (major or Ionian) scale.

Even narrower is the fourth head at San Lorenzo, whose height is three to a width of two. This is the ratio of the perfect fifth, so called as the fifth note of the major scale.

And finally (for this short study), the ratio 6/5 can be seen in Head 9 of San Lorenzo and also at La Venta’s Monument 1 (below).

MUSICAL RATIOS

If the heads were conceived in this way, the different ratios apply when seen face on. The corners of the heads were probably rounded out from a supplied slab with the correct ratio between height and width. The corners would then round-out to form helmets and chins and the face added.

And as a group, the six heads sit within in a hierarchy of whole number ratios, each between two small numbers, different by one. At San Lorenzo, Head 4 looks higher status than Head 9 and this is because of its ratio 3/2 (a musical fifth or cubit), relative to the 6/5 of Head 9. We now call the fifth note dominant while the fourths (Heads 1, 5 and 8) are called subdominant. These two are the foundation stones of Plato’s World Soul {6 8 9 12}, within a low number octave {6 12} then having three main intervals {4/3 9/8 4/3}* where 4/3 times 9/8 equals 3/2, the dominant fifth.

*Harmonic numbers, more or less responsible for musical harmony, divide only by the first three primes {2 3 5} so that the numbers between six and twelve can only support four harmonic numbers {8 9 10}

San Lorenzo existed between 1200 to 900 BCE, and in the ancient Near East there are no clear statements for primacy of the octave {2/1}, nor was it apparent in practical musical instruments before the 1st Millennium BCE, according to Richard Dumbrill: Music was largely five noted (pentatonic) and sometimes nine-noted (enneadic) with two players. However, the eight notes of the octave could instead be arrived at, in practice, by the ear, using only fifths and fourths to fill out the six inner tones of a single octave; starting from the highest and lowest tones (identical sounding notes differing by 2/1). A single musical scale results from a harp tuned in this way: the ancient heptachord: it had two somewhat dissonant semitone (called “leftovers” in Greek), intervals seen between E-F and B-C on our keyboards (with no black note between). Our D would then be “do“, and the symmetrical scale we today call Dorian.

The order of the Dorian scale is tone, semitone, tone, tone, tone, semitone, tone {T S T T T S T} and the early intervals of the Dorian {9/8 S 6/5 4/3 3/2} are the ratios also found in these Olmec Heads*. The ancient heptachord** could therefore have inspired the Olmec Heads to follow the natural order tuned by fourths and fifths.

*I did not consciously select these images of Heads but rather, around 2017, they were easily found on the web. Only this week did I root out my work on the heads and put them in order of relative width.

**here updated to the use of all three early prime numbers {2 3 5} and hence part of Just Intonation in which the two semitones are stretched at the expense of two tones of 9/8 to become 10/9, a change of 81/80.
(The Babylonians used all three of these tones in their harmonic numbers.)

To understand these intervals as numbers required the difference between two string lengths be divided into the lengths of the two strings, this giving the ratio of the Head in question. The intervals of the heptachord would become known and the same ratios achieved within the Heads, carved out as blocks cut out into the very simple rectangular ratios, made of multiple squares.

The rectangular ratio of Head 4, expressed within multiple squares as 3 by 2.

The early numbers have this power, to define these early musical ratios {2/1 3/2 4/3 5/4 6/5}, which are the large musical tones {octave fifth fourth major-third minor-third}. These ratios are also very simple rectangular geometries which, combined with cosmological ideas based around planetary resonance, would have quite simply allowed Heads to be carved as the intervals they represented. The intervals would then have both a planetary and musical significance in the Olmec religion and state structure.

Frontispiece to Part Three of Harmonic Origins of the World: War in Heaven
The seven caves of Chicomoztoc, from which arose the Aztec, Olmec and
other Nahuatl-speaking peoples of Mexico. The seven tribes or rivers of the old world are here seven wombs, resembling the octaves of different modal scales, and perhaps including two who make war and sacrifice to overturn/redeem/re-create the world.

A Musical Cosmogenesis

Everything in music comes out of the number one, the vibrating string, which is then modified in length to create an interval. Two strings at right angles, held within a framework such as Monument 5 (if other things like tension, material, etc.were the same) would generate intervals between “pure” tones. However Monument 5 is not probably symbolic but rather, it was probably laid flat like a grand piano (see top illustration). Wooden posts could hold fixings, to make a framework for one (or more) musical strings of different length, at right angles to a reference string. This would be a duo-chord or potentially a cross-strung harp. Within the four inner points of Monument 5 is a square notionally side length. In the image of Monument 1, and variations in height and width from the number ONE were visualized in stone as emanating waves of sound.

The highest numbers lead to the smallest ratio of 6/5 then the 6/5 ratio of Head 9 can be placed with five squares between the inner points and the 3/2 ratio of Head 2 then fills the vertical space left open within Chalcatzingo’s Monument 5.

Monument 5’s horizontal gap can embrace the denominator of a Head’s ratio (as notionally equal to ONE) so that the inner points define a square side ONE, and the full vertical dimension then embraces the 3/2 ratio of the tallest, that of Head 2.

It may well be that this monument was carved for use in tuning experiments and was then erected at Chalcatzingo to celebrate later centuries of progress in tuning theory since the San Lorenzo Heads were made. By the time of Chalcatzingo, musical theory appears to have advanced, to generate the seven different scales of Just intonation (hence the seven caves of origin above), whose smallest limiting number must then be 2880 (or 4 x 720), the number presented (as if in a thought bubble) upon the head of a royal female harmonist (La Reina), see below. She is shown seeing the tones created by that number, now supporting two symmetrical tritones. The lunar eclipse year was also shown above her head (that is, in her mind) as the newly appeared number 1875, at that limit. This latter story probably dates around 600 BCE. This, and much more besides, can be found in my Harmonic Origins of the World, Chapter Eight: Quetzcoatl’s Brave New World.

Figure 5.8 Picture of an ancient female harmonist realizing the matrix for 144 x 20 = 2880. If we tilt our tone circle so that the harmonist is D and her cave is the octave, then the octave is an arc from bottom to top, of the limit. Above and below form two tetrachords to A and D, separated by a middle tritone pain, a-flat and g-sharp. Art by by Michael D Coe, 1965: permission given.

Starcut Diagram: geometry to define tuning

This is a re-posting of an article thought lost, deriving in part from Malcolm Stewart’s Starcut Diagram. The long awaited 2nd edition Sacred Geometry of the Starcut Diagram has now been published by Inner Traditions. Before this, Ernest McClain had been working on tuning via Gothic master Honnecourt’s Diagram of a Man (fig. 2), which is effectively a double square version of the starcut diagram.

The square is the simplest of two dimensional structures to draw, giving access to many fundamental values; for example the unit square has the diagonal length equal to the square root of two which, compared to the unit side length, forms the perfect tritone of 1.414 in our decimal fractional notation (figure 1 left). If the diagonal is brought down to overlay a side then one has the beginning of an ancient series of root derivations usually viewed within the context of a double square, a context often found in Egyptian sacred art where “the stretching of the rope” was used to layout temples and square grids were used to express complex relationships, a technique Schwaller de Lubitz termed Canevas (1998). Harmonically the double square expresses octave doubling (figure 1 right).

Figure 1 left: The doubling of the square side equal 360 units and right: The double square as naturally expressing the ordinal square roots of early integers.

Musical strings have whole number lengths, in ratio to one another, to form intervals between strings and this gives geometry a closer affinity to tuning theory than the use of arithmetic to calculate the ratios within a given octave range. The musicology inferred for the ancient world by Ernest G. McClain in his Myth of Invariance (1976) was calculational rather than geometrical, but in later work McClain (Bibal 2012-13) was very interested in whatever could work (such as folding paper) but was especially interested in the rare surviving notebook of 13th century artist Villard de Honnecourt, whose sketches employed rectilinear frameworks within which cathedrals, their detailing, human and other figures could be drawn.

“I believe we have overlooked Honnecourt as a prime example of what Neugebauer meant in claiming Mesopotamian geometry to approach Renaissance levels illustrated in Descartes. If Honnecourt is 13th c. then he seems more likely to be preserving the ancient picture, not anticipating the new one.”

This draws one into significant earlier traditions of sacred art in Egypt (Canevas) and in Indian temple and statue design, and to Renaissance paintings (see end quote) in which composition was based upon geometrical ideas such as symmetry, divisions into squares and alignments to diagonals. Figure 2 shows one of Honnecourt’s highly stylised sketches of a man, using a technique still in use by a 20th century heraldic artist.
Ernest McClain, Bibal Group: 18/03/2012

Figure 2 The Honnecourt Man employing a geometrical canon.

The six units, to the shoulders of the man, can be divided to form a double square, the lower square for the legs and the upper one for the torso. The upper square is then a region of octave doubling. McClain had apparently seen a rare and more explicit version of this arrangement and, from memory, attempted a reconstruction from first principles (figure 3), which he shared with his Bibal colleagues, including myself.

Figure 3 McClain’s final picture of the Honnecourt Man, its implied Monochord of intervals and their reciprocals.

To achieve a tuning framework, the central crossing point had been moved downwards by half a unit, in a double square of side length three. On the right this is ½ of a string length when the rectangle is taken to define the body of a monochord. McClain was a master of the monochord since his days studying Pythagorean tuning. Perhaps his greatest insight was the fact that the diagonal lines, in crossing, were inadvertently performing calculations and providing the ratios between string lengths forming musical intervals.

Since the active region for octave studies is the region of doubling, the top square is of primary interest. At the time I was also interested in multiple squares and the Egyptian Canevas (de Lubitz. 1998. Chapter 8) since these have special properties and were evidently known as early as the fifth millennium BC (see Heath 2014, chapter two) by the megalith builders of Carnac. In my own redrawing of McClain’s diagram (figure 4) multiple squares are to be seen within the top square. This revealed that projective geometry was to be found as these radiant lines, of the sort seen in the perspective of three dimensions when drawn in two dimensions.

Figure 4 Redrawing McClain to show multiple squares, and how a numerical octave limit of 360 is seen creating lengths similar to those found in his harmonic mountains.

Returning to this matter, a recently developed technique of populating a single square provides a mechanism for studying what happens within such a square when “starcut”.

Figure 5 left: Malcolm Stewart’s 2nd edition book cover introducing right: the Starcut Diagram, applicable to the top square of Honnecourt’s octave model .

Malcolm Stewart’s diagram is a powerful way of using a single square to achieve many geometrical results and, in our case, it is a minimalist version that could have more lines emanating from the corners and more intermediate points dividing the squares sides, to which the radiant lines can then travel. Adding more divisions along the sides of the starcut is like multiplying the limiting number of a musical matrix, for example twice as many raises by an octave.

A computer program was developed within the Processing framework to increase the divisions of the sides and draw the resulting radiants. A limit of 720 was used since this defines Just intonation of scales and 720 has been identified in many ancient texts as having been a significant limiting number in antiquity. Since McClain was finding elements of octave tuning within a two-square geometry, my aim was to see if the crossing points between radiants of a single square (starcut) defined tones in the just scales possible to 360:720. This appears to be the case (figure 6) though most of the required tone numbers appear along the central vertical division and it is only at the locations nearest to D that eb to f and C to c# that only appear “off axis”. The pattern of the tones then forms an interesting invariant pattern.

Figure 6 Computer generated radiants for a starcut diagram with sides divided into six.

Figure 7 http://HarmonicExplorer.org showing the tone circle and harmonic mountain (matrix) for limit 720, the “calendar constant” of 360 days and nights.

Each of the radiant crossing points represents the diagonal of an M by N rectangle and so the rational “calculation” of a given tone, through the crossing of radiants, is a result of the differences from D (equal to either 360 or 720) to the tone number concerned (figure 8).

Figure 8 How the tone numbers are calculated via geometrical coincidence of cartesian radiants which are rational in their shorter side length at the value of a Just tone number

It is therefore no miracle that the tone numbers for Just intonation can be found at some crossing points and, once these are located on this diagram, those locations could have been remembered as a system for working out Just tone numbers.

Bibliography

Heath, Richard.

2014. Sacred Number and the Lords of Time. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions.
2018. Harmonic Origins of the World: Sacred Number at the Source of Creation. Inner Traditions.
2021. Sacred Geometry: Language of the Angels. Inner Traditions.

Lubitz, R.A. Schwaller de.

1998. The Temple of Man: Apet of the South at Luxor. Vermont: Inner Traditions.

McClain, Ernest G.

1976. The Myth of Invariance: The Origin of the Gods, Mathematics and Music from the Rg Veda to Plato. York Beach, ME: Nicolas Hays.

Stewart, Malcolm.

2022. Sacred Geometry of the Starcut Diagram: The Genesis of Number, Proportion, and Cosmology. Inner Traditions.

Introduction to my book Harmonic Origins of the World

Over the last seven thousand years, hunter-gathering humans have been transformed into the “modern” norms of citizens (city dwellers) through a series of metamorphoses during which the intellect developed ever-larger descriptions of the world. Past civilizations and even some tribal groups have left wonders in their wake, a result of uncanny skills – mental and physical – which, being hard to repeat today, cannot be considered primitive. Buildings such as Stonehenge and the Great Pyramid of Giza are felt anomalous, because of the mathematics implied by their construction. Our notational mathematics only arose much later and so, a different maths must have preceded ours.

We have also inherited texts from ancient times. Spoken language evolved before there was any writing with which to create texts. Writing developed in three main ways: (1) Pictographic writing evolved into hieroglyphs, like those of Egyptian texts, carved on stone or inked onto papyrus, (2) the Sumerians used cross-hatched lines on clay tablets, to make symbols representing the syllables within speech. Cuneiform allowed the many languages of the ancient Near East to be recorded, since all spoken language is made of syllables, (3) the Phoenicians developed the alphabet, which was perfected in Iron Age Greece through identifying more phonemes, including the vowels. The Greek language enabled individual writers to think new thoughts through writing down their ideas; a new habit that competed with information passed down through the oral tradition. Ironically though, writing down oral stories allowed their survival, as the oral tradition became more-or-less extinct. And surviving oral texts give otherwise missing insights into the intellectual life behind prehistoric monuments.

The Geocentric Planetary Matrix

Harmonic Origins of the World inserted the astronomical observations of my previous books into an ancient harmonic matrix, alluded to through the harmonic numbers found in many religious stories, and also through the cryptic works of Plato. Around 355 BC, Plato’s dialogues probably preserved what Pythagoras had learnt from ancient mystery centers of his day, circa. 600 BC.

According to the late Ernest G. McClain*, Plato’s harmonic matrices had been widely practiced by initiates of the Ancient Near East so that, to the general population, they were entertaining and uplifting stories set within eternity while, to the initiated, the stories were a textbook in harmonic tuning. The reason harmonic tuning theory should have infiltrated cosmological or theological ideas was the fact that, the planets surrounding Earth express the most fundamental musical ratios, the tones and semitones found within octave scales.

* American musicologist and writer, in the 1970s,
of The Pythagorean Plato and The Myth of Invariance.

Ancient prose narratives and poetic allusions were often conserving ancient knowledge of this planetary harmony; significant because these ratios connect human existence to the world of Eternity. In this sense the myths of gods, heros and mortals had been a natural reflection of harmonic worlds in heaven, into the life of the people.

In the Greece before the invention of phonetic writing, oral or spoken stories such as those attributed to Homer and Hesiod were performed in public venues giving rise to the amphitheaters and stepped agoras of Greek towns. Special performers or rhapsodes animated epic stories of all sorts and some have survived through their being written down.

At the same time, alongside this journey towards genuine literacy, new types of sacred buildings and spaces emerged, these also carrying the sacred numbers and measures of the megalithic to Classical Greece, Rome, Byzantium and elsewhere, including India and China.

The Heraion of Samos, late 8th century BC. [figure 5.9 of Sacred Geometry: Language of the Angels.]

Work towards a fuller harmonic matrix for the planets

In my first book, called Matrix of Creation, I had not yet assimilated McClain’s books, but had identified the musical intervals between the lunar year and the geocentric periodicities of the outer planets. To understand what was behind the multiple numerical relationships within the geocentric world of time, I started drawing out networks of those periods and, as I looked at all the relationships (or interval ratios) between them, I could see common denominators and multiples linking the celestial time periods through small intermediary and whole numbers: numbers which became sacred for later civilizations. For example, the 9/8 relationship between the Jupiter synod and the lunar year could be more easily grasped in a diagram revealing a larger structural network, visualized as a “matrix diagram” (see figure 1).

Figure 1 Matrix Diagram of Jupiter and the Moon. figure 9.5 of Matrix of Creation, p117.

One can see the common unit of 1.5 lunar months, at the base of the diagram, and a symmetrical period at the apex lasting 108 lunar months or 9 lunar years (referencing the Maya supplemental glyphs). In due course, I re-discovered the use of the Lambda diagram of Plato (figure 8.7), and even stumbled upon the higher register of five tones (figure 2) belonging to the Mexican flying serpent, Quetzalcoatl (as figure 8.1), made up of [Mercury, the eclipse year, the Tzolkin, Mars and Venus], Venus also being called Quetzalcoatl.

Figure 2 My near discovery of Quetzalcoatl, in fig. 8.1 of Matrix of Creation

These periodicities are of adjacent musical fifths (ratio 3/2), which would eventually be shown as connected to the corresponding register of the outer planets, using McClain’s harmonic technology in my 5^th book Harmonic Origins of the World (see figure 3).

Probably called the flying serpent by dynastic Egypt, Quetzalcoatl’s set of musical fifths was part of the Mexican mysteries of the Olmec and Maya civilizations (1500 BC to 800 AD). This serpent flies 125/128 above the inner planets – for example, the eclipse season is 125/128 above the lunar year: 354.367 days × 125/128 = 346 days, requiring I integrate the two serpents within McClain’s harmonic matrices in Harmonic Origins of the World (as figure 9.3).

Uranus is above Saturn
The eclipse year is above the lunar year
the Tzolkin of 260 days is above the 9 lunar months of Adam

Figure 3 The two harmonic serpents of “Heaven” and “Earth”

By my 6^th book, Sacred Geometry: Language of the Angels, I had realized that the numerical design within which our “living planet” sits is a secondary creation – created after the solar system, yet it was discovered before the heliocentric creation of the solar system, exactly because the megalithic observed the planets from the Earth. Instead of proposing the existence of a progenitor civilization with high knowledge** I instead proposed, as more likely, that the megalithic was the source of the ancient mysteries. Such mysteries then only seem mysterious because; a kind of geocentric science before our own heliocentric one seems anachronistic.

**such as Atlantis as per Plato’s Timaeus: an island destroyed by vulcanism, Atlantis and similar solutions have simply “kicked the can down the road” into an as-yet-poorly-charted prehistory before 5000 BC, for which less evidence exists because there never was any. In contrast, the sky astronomy and earth measures of the megalithic are to be found referenced in later monuments and ancient textual references. That is, megalithic monuments recorded an understanding of the cosmos then found in the ancient mysteries. A geocentric world view was a naturally result of the megalithic, achieved using the numbers they found through geocentric observations, counting lengths of time, using horizon events and the mathematical properties of simple geometries.

Geo-centrism was the current world view until superseded by the Copernican heliocentric view. This new solar system was soon found by 1680 to be held together by natural gravitational forces between large planetary masses, forces discovered by Sir Isaac Newton. The subsequent primacy of heliocentrism, which started 500 years ago, caused humanity to lose contact with the geocentric model of the world: though figure 4 has the planets in the correct order for the the two serpents, of inner and outer planets, this is also (largely) the heliocentric order, if one but swaps the sun and the moon-earth system.

All references to an older and original form of astronomy, based upon numerical time and forged by the megalithic, was thus dislocated and obscured by our heliocentric physical science and astronomy of the modern day – which still knows nothing of the geocentric order that surrounds us.

The geocentric model entered Greek astronomy and philosophy at an early point; it can be found in pre-Socratic philosophy … In the 4th century BC, two influential Greek philosophers, Plato and his student Aristotle, wrote works based on the geocentric model. According to Plato, the Earth was a sphere, stationary at the center of the universe.
Wikipedia: “Geocentric model”

Agni, the Indian God of Fire

Those new to Ernest McClain and his The Myth of Invariance, should know this book was a seminal work for anyone in my generation, that opened up a Pythagorean vision; of how number operates in the domain of harmony. This world of harmony can be numerically defined in a quite extraordinary and specific way and we, as human beings, can receive it through our mind whilst also through the senses. This relates to the unusual fact that, whilst all notes can be doubled in frequency through the number two, with a perfect consonance, a new population of notes is then opened up, within an octave, of intervals that are also harmonious, through the use the two next prime numbers: three and five. Thus music, so effective upon the human heart, can build a world of meaning, sometimes referenced in myths as sacred numbers, written through understanding harmony as fundamentally generated through numeric transitions within music.

In 2008 I prepared a summary of Ernest McClain’s statements about Agni because, in the midst of the perfect symmetry of musical harmony lies something new, born to the world opposite its beginnings and endings. I originally made the pdf below for my friend Anthony Blake, part of our attempt to study the origin of creativity within the existing world. It appears that something important comes into being at the centre of this issue of octaval harmony, just as we ourselves come into existence in the middle of the universe, as conscious beings, conscious then of our incompletion.

It occured to me to include this in an email to Ernest and, all in, he said in reply “I can’t imagine anyone improving on your few pages” and “Put it out now on your own website stamped with my approval”. Please enjoy this transmission from the centre of the octave:

What Ernest McClain says about Agni in The Myth of Invariance:

Visit Ernest McClain website: Musical Adventures in Ancient Mythology. In the section of online documents, his books are available for your to study as links to pdf downloads.

pdf: Astronomical Musicality within Mythic Narratives

Ancient musical knowledge came to Just tuning long before Greek music, in Babylonia. It now seems likely that two sources of musical information, were involved in an early tradition of musical tuning by number: firstly, the early number field is the original template upon which musical harmony is based; and secondly, the prehistoric geocentric astronomy which preceded the ancient world had been comparing counted astronomical time-periods, and had discovered the rational tone and semitone intervals between the lunar year, Jupiter and Saturn . Ernest G. McClain identified a harmonic parallelism within ancient texts in which the anomalous numbers found within mythic narratives inferred a unique array (a matrix) of whole numbers, shaped like a mountain, which could explain plot elements, events and characters of the narrative, as intended parallels to such harmonic mountains. McClain’s matrices allowed the author to locate the harmonic intervals found between planetary synods as a reason why religious texts should have employed harmonic numbers, these relating to planetary time as gods alongside ancient systems of tuning. Based on a talk delivered at ICONEA2013, 5th December at Senate House, University College London.

Category: Tuning