Tag: 12

The Cellular World of Twelve

The foot has twelve inches just as the British shilling had twelve pence. A good case can be made for twelve as a base like 10, since there are 12 months within the year and many ancient monuments can be seen to have employed duodecimal alongside decimal number, to good effect.

Until 1971 the currency in the United Kingdom of Britain was duodecimal, called pounds, shillings and pence.

This old system of currency, known as pounds, shillings and pence or lsd, dated back to Roman times when a pound of silver was divided into 240 pence, or denarius, which is where the ‘d’ in ‘lsd’ comes from. (lsd: librum, solidus, denarius). see historic-uk.com

There were 12 pence in a shilling and 20 shillings in a pound, that is 240 pennies. The change to a decimal (100) pence in a pound caused a lot of inflation during the changeover due to price opportunism, then part lasting recession. In British heads the skill of giving and taking change in a duodecimal arithmetic was soon lost. In the late 70’s my mother, when visiting the US, was amusingly referencing “old money”, alongside the exchange rate between a decimal pound and the decimal dollar, just as Greeks had problems with the Euro.

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Double Square and the Golden Rectangle

above: Dan Palmateer wrote of this, “it just hit me that the conjunction of the circle to the golden rectangle existed.”

Here we will continue in the mode of a lesson in Geometry where what is grasped intuitively has to have reason for it to be true. It occurred to me that the square in the top hemisphere is the twin of a square in the lower hemisphere, hence this has a relationship to the double square rectangle. So one can (1) Make a Double Square and then (2) Find the center and (3) a radius can then draw the out-circle of a double square (see diagram below).

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Twelve: determining Time and Space on the Earth

ABOVE: South rose window in Angers Cathedral of Saint Maurice. Stained glass by Andre Robin created after the fire of 1451. At centre, Christ of the Apocalypse, in glory (Revelation 21:5). At bottom, 12 radial windows showing 12 elders, crowned and playing musical instruments, rejoicing, indicating the remade world (the heavenly Jerusalem). At top, circular ends of 12 radial windows showing the 12 signs of the Zodiac, indicating the incarnation of Christ as a man on earth under the stars. Sequence from left to right has last 2 signs before first, i.e. Aquarius/Water-bearer (grey), Pisces/Fish (grey), Aries/Ram, Taurus/Bull (yellow), Gemini/Twins, Cancer/Crab (red), Leo/Lion (yellow), Virgo/Virgin, Libra/Scales, Scorpio/Scorpion, Sagittarius/Archer, Capricorn/He-goat (blue background)
photo: Chiswick Chap for Wikipedia Foundation.

The Moon was the means by which a 12-fold harmony became established on the Earth. This harmonization occurred through the lengthening of the lunar month until 12 months fitted, in a special way, within the solar year. The excess of the solar year over the lunar year of 12 months became 7/19 lunar months, causing seven extra whole months over 19 years. This 19-year (235 month) Metonic period was well-known to the ancient world, and it leads to the remarkably short cycle for the pattern of similar eclipses, we call the Saros period, which repeat every 18 years (235 minus 12 months = 223 months). And eclipses are highly visible because the disk of the Moon has come to be the same angular size as the disk of the Sun, causing total solar eclipses.

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