Pythagoras once wrote, ""There is geometry in the humming of the strings, and there is music in the spacing of the spheres." These past two or three weeks I've been reading over chapter 21 of the book of Revelation, the description of the New Jerusalem. The angel starts to do precise measurements, the length and breadth, the thickness of the walls, the dimensions and number of gates, then a quantity survey of the materials. It's a remarkable exercise in geometry is theological rhetoric, measurements as descriptive qualities and mind-expanding quantities.
This is a City like no other. It is a multi-dimensional geometric blueprint brought to ultimate reality by the Alpha and the Omega. This geometry represents the humming of the strings accompanying the worship of 'the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb', and there is the precision of maths and music in the spacing of those 12 foundation stones, made of every kind of precious stone. Reading that passage while listening to Jessye Norman singing the Holy City has been an exercise in multi-disciplinary reading and listening - listening to the text and hearing it set to music. And it provoked
I have long pondered the descriptive architecture and literary geometry of John's description of the New Jerusalem, the Holy City. Out of those prolonged reflections I began to doodle, and then to draw a geometric pattern along the lines of John's descriptive prose-poem. Imagination is a way of envisaging, and envisaging is in turn a form of seeing, and seeing is what Revelation is all about!
Pivotal moments are signalled by the dramatic historic moment when John says, "I saw..."
When I saw him I fell at his feet...
I saw a Lamb standing as though it had been slain...
After this I saw four angels...
I saw heaven opened...
Then I saw a great white throne...
I saw a new heaven and a new earth...
I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem...
It is those momentous moments of seeing that signal revelations in Revelation. They announce a new vision, from the terrifying to the beautiful, from the luminous to the numinous. My doodling was around the angel's geometric survey of the Holy City, and the result is a new tapestry being worked by an expanding pattern of interlocking triangles.
I know. It sounds complicated. It is an attempt at abstract representation of a vision narrated by a seer given a crash course in theological geometry and apocalyptic imagery. I have an idea how it will be developed, and several possible directions it will take towards completion. Will ir work though, Jim. As we say in Scotland when we're not sure, "We'll see!"
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