Uncovering Ancient Science Sacred Spaces
Applying the principles of resonance to unlock the secrets of Scotland’s Rosslyn chapel, Richard Merrick finds evidence that the orbital pattern of Venus was once used as a “temple template” to design psycho acoustical chambers capable of focusing and controlling entheogenic communion.
In ancient times, astronomers tracked the orbit of Venus very closely, discovering that it traced a pentagonal rose pattern in the sky over eight years (Fig. 1). Caused by a planetary resonance where Venus orbits the Sun thirteen times for every eight orbits of the Earth, this rose-line or “ Rosslyn” pentacle was greatly revered in the mystery schools. It was even used as a blueprint to design the “sacred spaces” of many famous chapels, cathedrals and temples.
As I came to discover, a sacred space is far more than just a matter of religious belief. It is a special kind of resonance chamber designed to enhance entheogenic communion and focus psychedelic visions. Suppressed long ago by the Roman Church, this was once the true purpose of ancient temples and many medieval cathedrals.
Resonant Symbols of Venus
In 2006, I saw a press release announcing that the resonance patterns of a song had been carved into the arches of Scotland’s 15th-century Rosslyn chapel. Curious as to why resonant patterns would be carved into the architecture of a medieval chapel, I began to study the chapel. It was not long before I began to suspect that Rosslyn had been built to honor Venus and its resonant rose-line.
The most obvious clues were the thirteen cherubs and eight dragons carved into the easternmost pillars, suggestive of the 13:8 Venus-Earth orbital resonance. This connection made sense since the ancient Greeks and Romans considered cherubs the children of Venus while serpent-dragons were also associated with the Venusian goddess Shukra in the RigVeda.
The discovery in 2010 of two man made beehives carved into the chapel’s roof seemed to confirm this connection between Rosslyn and Venus, as bees are an ancient fertility symbol for Venus.
Yet, there were more clues to suggest this connection. Pentagrams carved directly beneath the cherubs trace the pentagonal rose pattern of Venus. Each cherub also plays a musical instrument, emphasizing the association of Venus with music and harmonic resonance. Upon examining the chapel’s dimensions, I found this resonant symbolism even continued into the chapel’s geometric and acoustical design.
The inner dimensions of the chapel form a double square measuring 36 by 72 feet with a diagonal distance of 80.5 feet proportional to the square root of five. Since the famous golden ratio constant is derived from the square root of five and every orbital intersection of the Venus rose-line forms a golden ratio, the chapel appears to be built to harmonize with Venus. Add to this the fact that the choir loft height of 44.5 feet forms another golden ratio to the total interior length (as 72’ / 44.5’ = 1.618) and it seems difficult not to conclude the Lady Chapel was designed to honor Venus. (see Fig. 2)
Acoustically speaking, these dimensions make Rosslyn chapel a natural resonance chamber that propagates sound evenly while suppressing reverb and echo.
It does this because of the damping effect of the golden ratio, long used in the design of “anechoic” musical instruments, auditoriums, recording studios and speaker enclosures. In this way, Rosslyn reflects the same damping effect Venus had on Earth during the harmonic formation of our solar system.
The Venus Blueprint
The presence of so many Venus symbols would seem enough to qualify Rosslyn chapel as a sacred space. Cherubs, dragons, bees, pentagrams, the golden ratio and a harmonic damping architecture all point to Venus as the source of inspiration in the design. Yet, as I dug deeper I found that the chapel was in fact part of a more complex, multi-layered “sacred” geometry corresponding to the human body and fertility.
For example, when the square of the chapel’s overall length is combined with a circle having the same area, Leonardo Da Vinci's famous Vitruvian Man fits perfectly within the chapel’s floor plan. His navel aligns with the east wall; his face fits inside an underground room; and the famous Journeyman or “Shekinah” pillar aligns with his perineum to create an obvious phallic fertility symbol directly in front of the holy of holies altar. Since Leonardo was still a baby when Rosslyn was being built, the chapel’s designers must have learned about the “squaring of the circle” and human - proportioned architecture from Vitruvius’ original treatise De Architectura.
But, this is not all. When the triangular facade is laid inward, the tip touches the exact center of the Shekinah pillar. Indeed, a scale model of the Great Pyramid can be unfolded around this central fertility pillar to create the well-known Knights Templar symbol. Could all of this be part of the secret art and architecture of sacred acoustical spaces, I wondered, passed down from antiquity through some esoteric current?
The more I looked, the more sacred geometries I found. Still, I had no idea where this practice had originated or why it would be so important to create acoustically harmonious chambers like this for religious worship. What I was about to discover was that all of this sacred geometry could be derived from one overarching symbol of harmony more ancient than the Egyptians, Sumerian's or even human civilization itself.
On the wall of the chapel’s underground sacristy, I found a mysterious etching that resembled an oil derrick or electrical tower. The tower had diagonal struts with a flat top upon which a semicircle “cup” sat. Through the middle of the tower ran an axis with two wavy lines wrapped around the top much like the serpents in a medical caduceus.
After pouring through various ancient texts to see if anything looked similar, I found a Jainist illustration of the sacred mountain Meru that matched the etching. In researching Meru in the Rig-Veda, I learned that Meru was not considered a physical mountain at all but instead an invisible and transcendental mountain extending from the deepest ocean into the furthest sky where the gods dance and sing. Of course, this is an obvious anthropomorphization of the planets and stars into deities, but it is more than this.
According to Vedic grammarian Pingala in his Art of Prosody (400-200 BC), Meru was considered a “mountain of cadence” known today as the Fibonacci series. Since this series converges toward the golden ratio, both Meru and Venus share this constant of nature.
Noticing this, I began to wonder if the orbital geometry of Venus might have been used to design Rosslyn as a sacred space worthy of the gods.
Overlaying the orbital geometry of Venus onto the chapel floor plan, I could immediately see horizontal and vertical alignments. Drawing a square grid from the orbital intersection points confirmed my suspicions – the orbital rose-line of Venus did indeed align with many features and dimensions of Rosslyn chapel, including length and width dimensions, locations of pillars, placement of doors and even the thickness of walls. (Fig. 2)
While doing this, I noticed that a similar geometry could be constructed by simply stacking pentagrams in all five directions to create a fractal star. I also noticed that the geometry of an egg, a naturally occurring damping shell also associated with Venus, could be used to properly align the star to the chapel. Naming this star-egg combination the “Venus Blueprint,” I hypothesized it to be an ancient symbol used to create sacred spaces in tune with the 5-fold physiological structure of the human body and, in particular, the pentagonal egg shape of the cranium and brain. But to what purpose would someone do such a thing?
Psychoacoustical Temples
Discovering the Venus Blueprint in Rosslyn chapel encouraged me to look for it in the floor plans of other churches, cathedrals and temples. To my astonishment, I found that many other European cathedrals do indeed use the same interior proportions and that many famous temples from antiquity even match the Venus Blueprint. St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican appeared to be based on this design, as had the Roman Pantheon and Greek Parthenon. Even Solomon’s legendary Temple of Jerusalem seemed to be designed according to the Blueprint.
In finding so many examples, I could only conclude that the orbital resonance of Venus had been the guiding model behind ancient temple building and that Rosslyn was a kind of Rosetta stone built to teach the world about the ancient Vedic philosophy known as the Sound Current or Music of the Spheres. It teaches how the pentagonal resonance of Venus was used in ancient temples to summon the goddess to fertilize crops and assist in childbirth. It tells us how she was adored for her celestial fertility and assistance in ascending Meru after death. But most of all, Rosslyn chapel was revered for how her musical architecture can help liberate the mind.
In examining the acoustical properties of the chapel, I calculated that at room temperature of 20°C, the chapel’s prime resonant frequency is 27 hertz with a wavelength equal to the 72-foot interior length of the chapel. This means that the chapel is naturally tuned to A-422.25 – a tuning known as “classical tuning” and used as the standard reference pitch beginning in 1711. This is significant because it happens to be a very natural tuning that can help synchronize the human mind with the Earth and all of nature.
Indeed, twenty-seven hertz is very close to the fourth harmonic of the Schumann resonance of the Earth’s ionosphere – the very frequency where the human brain switches from Beta wakefulness to heightened Gamma awareness. In fact, brain wave frequencies above 27 hertz signify the highest state of focus possible. The Gamma range is associated with peak concentration, enhanced memory, an increased perception of reality and even euphoria. The higher the frequency the greater is the cognitive ability.
There is evidence that Rosslyn may have been heated during funerary rites to raise its tuning well above A-422.25, elevating human consciousness in the process. Describing this practice is an old Scottish legend preserved in a poem by Sir Walter Scott entitled The Lay of the Last Minstrel. It tells how the chapel was seen engulfed in flames during the funerals of the Sinclair Barons whose family built Rosslyn.
Not coincidentally, the temperature required to gestate a beehive is 33.72°C (equal to 93.7°F) – the very same temperature required to raise the tuning of Rosslyn up to A-432 or what is known as “universal tuning.” At this elevated hive temperature, the chapel would push the brain further into the Gamma range, perhaps even inducing what is known as the ‘unity of consciousness’ state.
As the symbolic children of Venus, the beehives in the chapel’s roof may have provided a kind of tuning fork to measure the temperature and frequency the chapel needed to be in order to reunify human consciousness, fertilize the spirit or perhaps even “hatch” a soul during funerary rites. Thus, we find that the Venus Blueprint not only creates a wonderful anechoic acoustical space for speech and music but also a psycho acoustical space tuned to Venus, used for its ability to trigger elevated states of consciousness.
Psychedelic Communion
Digging deeper into the history of temple rituals, I uncovered yet another clue that seemed to explain why psycho-acoustics was so important to temple builders. It had to do with the long tradition of consuming communal wine and bread in remembrance of various plant deities known as “Green Men.” In Rosslyn chapel, there are over one hundred such Green Men carved into the architecture, symbolizing the importance of communion to temple tradition.
In the Rig-Veda, the Green Man was the moon god Soma and associated with a communal wine of the same name. Researchers such as R. Gordon Wasson make a convincing case that Soma contained psychedelic Amanita Muscaria or “magic” mushrooms. There are many references throughout the Vedas ascribing great powers to Soma and its ability to induce religious visions.
This is not an isolated instance. Use of psychedelic or “entheogenic” plants was common in many other cultures and is well documented. This includes the Greek Eleusinian and Dionysian mystery schools, the Roman Bacchanalia and even the ancient Etruscans, who practiced entheogenic communion on what is now Vatican Hill. Persians would ingest psychedelic Syrian Rue seeds used to dye “magic carpets” while the Egyptians ate manna cakes made with psychotropic plants such as “blue lotus,” Psilocybe cubensis mushrooms or perhaps DMTrich acacia, the legendary Tree of Life in the Garden of Heliopolis.
According to psychology professor Benny Shanon at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, entheogenic communion was also central to the Hebrew temple tradition. The head priest would take a communion in the holy of holies on Yom Kippur that consisted of entheogenic wine and manna. Indeed, Shanon attributes many of the visions and miracles of the Bible to the ingestion of psychoactive plants. He suggests Entheogenic communion was a central part of the Essene mystery school, which was later replaced by ordinary wine and bread in the Roman Church to ensure that the power of religious vision was retained by the priestly class (the Holy See).
In Rosslyn chapel, the many carvings of Green Men with leafy vines growing out of their mouths suggest a connection through the Essene mystery school back to the ancient Hebrew communion using entheogenic plants. It would not surprise me to learn that such communion was practiced in Rosslyn chapel during funerary rites and other significant occasions.
Celestial Congress
The true purpose of Vedic temple building was now becoming clear. When combined with entheogenic communion, temples were designed to propel one’s consciousness into the sky to reach the heavenly summit of Mount Meru. Known as enlightenment, this occurred when one consumed the sacred plant known as the “Savior,” the “Redeemer,” the “Liberator,” and “Anointed One.” Through such psychedelic visions, one might “see the light” and be “born again.” To help focus and control these visions, first caves and then stone temples were built using the Venus Blueprint to resonate the mind into the Gamma range of frequencies. Known as the “House of the Star” in Canaan and “Place of Intoxication” in Egypt, such psycho acoustical temples were built to fertilize the mind inside the “variegated womb” of Venus. Here the Savior plant could be eaten and reborn into the mind of the worshiper. When this happened, one would achieve nirvana or “Christ [King] consciousness,” ascending to the summit of Meru to meet the goddess or some other spirit who might share visions and great wisdom. This is the source of religious prophecy and the many tales of journeys into the underworld to meet the gods and goddesses.
The two together – the plant god and temple goddess – represented the celestial congress of the Sun and Venus inside the mind. This metaphysical union then corresponded to the rare conjunction of the Sun and Venus known as the transit or “birth” of Venus. The Vedic Saivite glosses describe this conjunction as the Venusian goddess Shukra being swallowed up by the Sun and later spit out as semen. Indeed, the Sanskrit word Shukra literally means semen. It was the Shukra seed of the Sun that was believed born from Vena’s resonant womb into the waters of the Earth to create life.
This Vena impels them who are in the womb of the variegated one; the membrane of light measures out the sky. At the contact of the waters and the sun the wise kiss him as an infant. (Rig-Veda 10.123)
This celestial fertilization was recreated as a communal ritual inside the temple. Consumption of entheogenic wine and manna symbolized the “virgin birth” of the Sun’s son (the plant sacrament) inside the temple of the mind. Here again, the five orbital conjunctions of Venus provide not only the blueprint for the sacred space of the temple, but also a blueprint for the fertility rite known today as Holy Communion.
The Venus Transit representing simultaneous fertilization of the mind, body and spirit. This would have been the deepest meaning of the ancient philosophy “as above, so below.”
In Rosslyn chapel, the Hebrew goddess Asherah can be found symbolized in the Shekinah pillar. As the harmonic center and point of fertility in the chapel’s floor plan, we might say the Hebrew god Yahweh symbolically inseminates the Lady Chapel here. Yet there is more to it than mere symbolism. There is a very real geometrical correspondence between this symbolism and the actual transit path of Venus across the Sun in 2012 (Fig. 3).
Overlaying the Venus Blueprint onto the actual transit paths, Venus can be seen to align with the bottom two points of the Venus Blueprint during the 2004 crossing – then, with a 90-degree turn, pass right through the middle of the Rosslyn floor plan in 2012, reaching the midpoint of its solar crossing precisely at the Shekinah pillar. Symbolically, this path represents a kind of birth canal for Venus through the chapel, gestating inside the choir’s resonant womb for a while before being born out the rear of the chapel.
As perhaps one of the most profound convergences of planetary harmony, temple design and religious ritual, Rosslyn is undoubtedly intended as a recreation of the ancient worship of Venus and, in particular, the Venus transit. As the fifth transit pair since Rosslyn was built, Venus joined with the Sun on June 5, 2012 to emerge the next day. With the chapel oriented east to-west and Shekinah pillar facing the dawn, the Sun and Venus actually follow an east to-west path through the sky even as Venus appears to follow the same path across the face of the Sun.
The question, of course, is how could Rosslyn's 15th-century designers have known this? How could they have predicted such an alignment in their design? The truth, of course, is they probably knew none of this – they did not have to. They simply built their temple according to the rose-line of Venus and everything else just fell into place.
Conclusion
In the end, I became convinced that Rosslyn chapel and many other temples had been designed using the Venus Blueprint or something very similar. This was done to focus and control the effect of psychedelic plants using psycho-acoustics to resonate the brain into the elevated Gamma range. Combining sacred plants with sacred spaces, our ancestors were in fact spiritual psychonauts who possessed an advanced technology capable of opening the doors to alternate realities by resonating the mind inside out and outside-in.
Once baptized with the sacred waters, the temple acted as a transceiver and spiritual launch pad to guide ordinary people into the realm of the gods. Used in funerary rites, this same technology invoked Venus to guide the dearly departed into the afterlife where they might be reborn on the heavenly summit of Meru.(Fig. 4).
In this way, ancient worshipers were enlightened by the Venusian goddess and “born again” through the Green Man’s “body and blood.” Here was the real savior of humanity that inspired the construction of vast temple complexes, great cities and powerful nations. Here was the real temple template that once guided human civilization to the development of music, science and mathematics, but was then discarded in the rush for political control. This is the forgotten story of the Venus Blueprint and its preeminent role in the rise of humanity.
By Richard Merrick
References
1. Merrick, Richard. The Venus Blueprint: Uncovering the Ancient Science of Sacred Spaces.
Berkeley: North Atlantic Books / EVOLVER, 2012.
2. De Lubicz, R. A. Schwaller. The Temple in Man: Sacred Architecture and the Perfect Man. 1st ed. 1949. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions International, 1977.
3. “Armenian Highlands: The Ancient Origin of Human Civilization.”
www.arevordi.blogspot.com/2010/08/mesopotamias-civilization-originated-in.html.
4. Kak, Subhash. The Astronomical Code of the Rigveda. Rev. ed. New Delhi, India: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 2000.
5. Kak, Subhash. “Vena, Veda, Venus.” Brahmavidya: The Adyar Library Bulletin 60 (1996): 229–39.
6. Knapp, Stephen. Proof of Vedic Culture’s Global Existence. Self-published: BookSurge, 2009.
7. Griffith, Ralph T. H. “Rig-Veda, Book 10, Hymn CXXIII. Vena.” Last retrieved January 16, 2012.
www.sacred-texts.com/hin/rigveda/rv10123.htm.
8. Meeuwissen, EB. et. al., “Evidence for Human Fronto-Central Gamma Activity during LongTermMemory Encoding of Word Sequences.” Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and
Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
9. Eneix, Linda. “Ancient Temple Architects May Have Been Chasing a Buzz from Sound Waves.” 2009. www.prweb.com/releases/ancient_temples/archaeology/prweb3243374.html
10. Vergano, Dan. “Maya pyramids pose acoustic riddle.” Science & Space/Science Snapshot, USA Today, November 14, 2010.
11. Shanon, Rabbi Benny. “Biblical Entheogens: A Speculative Hypothesis.” Time and Mind: The Journal of Archeology Consciousness and Culture 1, issue 1, (March 2008): 51–74.
12. Wasson, R. Gordon, Stella Kramrisch, Carl A. P. Ruck, and Jonathan Ott. Persephone’s Quest: Entheogens and the Origins of Religion. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986. Richard Merrick, MSc, is the former founder and CEO of Post future, a pioneering, rich-media communications provider based in Dallas, Texas, and an expert in digital media and the Internet. He is the author of Interference: A Grand Scientific Musical
Theory and has just released The Venus Blueprint: Uncovering the Ancient Science of
Sacred Spaces. (see www.interferencetheory.com).
This article was published in the June 2016 issues of Ancient Mysteries International. It is Printed here with Permission. Permission is granted to quote brief passages by journalists and reviewers. It is printed here in cooperation with Ancient Mysteries International.
https://paypal.me/pools/c/7ZWkzY5F0l
Comments
Post a Comment