Ancient geometers loved circles. Why?

The circle consists of all points equidistant from a single center point. As such, it is symbolic of ‘all,’ ‘wholeness,’ ‘perfection’ – and thus, of divine order, or of God.

What is a vesica piscis?

A vesica piscis is the almond-shaped area where two circles overlap when their centers mirror each other. To construct it, set a compass to any radius and draw that circle. Now set the point of the compass anywhere on the circle and draw another of the same radius. The new circle will intersect the original center. The new center sits on the first circle – its mirror image. Lovely patterns develop from playing with this simple process. The vesica piscis (fish-shaped vessel) is also known as a mandorla (almond-shaped vessel).

How does the vesica piscis relate to a triangle?

The line connecting two circles’ centers is the base of an equilateral triangle formed by connecting each endpoint to the ‘point’ of the almond-shaped area known as the vesica piscis.

This is fascinating, because it works for circles of any size, and because it is otherwise a difficult thing to construct an equilateral triangle. The perfection of those three equal sides – though the triangle looks so completely different from the shape of a circle – seems to emerge from and to possess the perfection of the ‘parent’ circles.

What Christian symbolism is held in the circle and triangle shapes?

The circle represents the all-ness and perfection of God as the primal origin of all being. The mirrored circles reflect God as Father and Son, gazing upon one another, setting up a movement between centers that we cannot possibly draw, but that reminds us of the Holy Spirit. The circles can also symbolize the Old and New Testaments, with Christ – form of the Trinity – emerging through a perfect vessel. That vessel – the fish, or almond shaped vesica piscis – can symbolize Mary herself, or Mother Church. The triangle – three perfectly unified and equal sides in one – needs no explanation as a symbol of the Trinity!

How has education lost its connection to wonder and beauty?

We’ve lost our sense that all created things speak of our Creator, and that our study of them can lead us to deeper knowing of that Creator. We speak a language of science and math without contemplating that God spoke it first. We think, perhaps, that man invented mathematics and scientific laws, and do not teach these subjects with awe of God in whom such order, beauty, design, perfection and harmony originate.

What does the Liturgy have to do with cosmology?

Cosmology: the study of the physical universe considered as a totality of phenomena in time and space.

The Liturgy – Mass and Divine Office – is, in a practical sense, ordered to the movements of the earth around the sun, and the moon around the earth. The prayers that move in daily circles from sunrise to sunset, the annual cycle of feasts that follows the sun, the dating of Easter according to the paschal full moon, the monthly/lunar cycle of the Divine Office with its four-week rotation, altars that face east, music in touch with the harmonic proportions of planetary orbits, and the elevation of the lunar week and Saturday Sabbath into the higher order of an Eighth Day/Sunday Sabbath all speak of cosmology.

What does courtesy have to do with Liturgy?

Courtesies are forms created to embody the values that animate us. Because gratitude (for life itself, for the people and blessings we receive, for Creation) is the fundamental value of persons who recognize their utter dependence upon God, courtesy both expresses and keeps us aligned with that thankfulness. In the Mass, we express and align with the Eucharist (the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ) through liturgical form, in thanksgiving for God’s gift of Himself to us.

How can a society be “liturgical to its very core”?

Stratford Caldecott has written a great deal about this very question, and I highly recommend his work to anyone who would help build such a society.

If Liturgy (both Mass and the Divine Office) is the rebuilding, in human persons, of a profoundly Trinitarian matrix of support for human being through conscious alignment with a fundamental music of the universe, then it also supports the rebuilding of human community with that fuller dimensionality. Caldecott suggests that liturgical support forms – in man, in society – a greater spaciousness “in which the ‘air’ of grace can circulate.” (Quoted in Souls at Work, pg. 32)

How might our ‘reason’ be more, or less, ‘full’?

Reason can be reduced to merely abstract knowing – that is, a disinterested manipulation of symbols of reality, rather than a true encounter with what is real. Reason must be informed by the impact of Reality upon the soul, which ‘fleshes out’ the symbol and draws us to move through what is real to the Source of all being.

Is it ‘pagan’ or ‘New Age-y’ to speak of “symbolic cosmos, sacred geometry and number, golden proportions,” etc…?

No. I ask this question because it lurks, unspoken, sometimes in discussions of these subjects. Christians are, rightly, wary of anything that smells vaguely of pagan or modern Gnosticism. But they have, too readily, accepted the educational premises and models of the atheistic, rationalist Enlightenment without questioning it enough as an opposite heresy that leads to the same negation of the human person.

If there is beauty, design, order and harmony (and there is!) at the core of Creation, it is the aroma of God. If mathematics, number, geometry are less ‘man-made’ than ‘man-discovered in the very fabric of the universe,’ then only God will be glorified by our learning to speak these languages. If history really is His story, if all symbolism has its Source and Summit in Truth (no matter how badly distorted it has become), if the stars actually do declare God’s glory and tell the story of salvation, then it’s up to God’s people to learn about all this and proclaim it to our children.

New Agers are fascinated by all this, but don’t yet realize it does not lead to the evolution of a Superman, but to the feet of the One Man who is the very Author of all this wondrous correspondence to Holy Wisdom! Who will draw them back from the traps set for them by the errors in their understanding if we do not claim the whole, beautiful universe as our heritage and sphere of inquiry? Likewise, who will attract souls flattened by the opposite errors, inviting them to enter a more spacious place?