Hi Jim, I have watched a bunch of his stuff, I like his perspective, and it can get deep, as he suggest. Religious and political, but more to the building side of things, I try to apply it. I just snapped out a 6/12 roof on my floor and in gaining square lines I swung a bunch of half circles, some over lapping and out popped a bunch of fishes bladders, what a mess.

I think a lot could be said about vibrations, much is formed from vibrations, light and color is vibrations. Hold a cat up to a light, while they look for cluster flies on the ceiling, then look into their eyes. The Egyptians had a fetish with cats.

How about a video?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ye3CUGwe5D4

While I must say I am very wary of any 'New Age' associations with 'sacred geometry' I am fascinated with the medieval, and ultimately platonic, ideas regarding the subject.

I think that anyone who wants to give the idea of 'sacred geometry' a serious consideration needs to look at it in a historical perspective. We need to not look at a lot of the modern ideas, which all to often fall into the category of pseudo science, among other complaints I might have to make against them. Instead, we need to study the sources of the great philosophers who shaped the western world.

Instead of getting your knowledge from youtube, I would highly recommend a serious study of the works of Plato, Augustine of Hippo, Johannes Kepler, and others from before the so called 'enlightenment' (one of the worst things to ever happen to western society, in my opinion)

http://www.skyscript.co.uk/kepler.html

Now, all of this is actually quite unnecessary when we are actually designing buildings, that is unless you actually ascribe to the medieval notions of geometry, which I myself tend towards to some small degree.
My view is not that geometry brings any sort of heavenly blessing as the medieval man might have thought. Rather, it is that geometry gives you something that is very real and tangible, and that cannot be achieved through any other means. Geometric relations exist in harmony, which means they are naturally strong. Geometry divides a frame along lines that follow the patterns of the natural world.

On this topic, I have been developing what could be termed a 'simplified geometry' It is a system intended to be used by those who wish to design houses and other such, rather than Gothic Cathedrals. It is also designed with the intention of being performed at full scale, rather than on paper (although you might use paper to draft the design) because full scale is so much more accurate.

To this end, this system is much more line oriented rather than circle oriented. Although circles must be used to create any sort of geometry. The idea of this is that it is considerably harder to scribe giant circles than to connect points over a long distance. This system is designed so that it can be performed with merely a rope, stakes, and string.

Nice link, DL, "Frozen music" I enjoyed the read.

My apologies for mucking up your thread on the daisy wheel with a U-tube video. It was just a "cat video" anyway, someday it could go viral with 2,462,678 views, and an advertisement to boot.

And at additional risk.....more useless u-tube. I hear utubers will watch anything. It is two parts and relevant to the topic at hand.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBvMhpx8Q0Q

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ye3CUGwe5D4

I'm not complaining about Youtube by any means, there is certainly some useful information to be had there.

Im just encouraging people not to use things like Youtube and Wikipedia as primary sources. They are great for pointing you in the right direction to do some serious research or introducing you to a new topic, but there is no guarantee of their accuracy. But go ahead and link videos, they are interesting and do point out things we may not have found otherwise.

Now back to geometry...

It is interesting to think of geometry in terms of celestial harmony, and even music. We have the Musica Universalis, the music of the universe. But we also have the the Harmonius Mundi, the harmony of the earth. The former is often represented in the grand scale, such as with Kepler's models with the platonic solids. The latter is thought of in a minute scale, and is in the middle ages manifested by geometry. Geometry, one could say, IS Harmonius Mundi. It is the harmonic relationship of all earthly things.

This is interesting, because we know that vibrations can destroy things. A constant vibration in many cases can do much more damage than a sudden blast of much greater force. We have the example that many wooden bridges restricted travel across them to a walk, as the harmonic rhythm of a horse's trot could lead to the destruction of the wooden frame. We also have the example of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, where the wind achieved the exact speed to cause the bridge to vibrate in such a way that it shook apart. The bridge had been subject to much higher winds, but this particular wind was at the exact right speed and angle to cause it to vibrate in a damaging way.

In the same way, we recognize when designing floor frames that they must be designed in such a way that their harmonic vibration is well outside of the range that might be caused by normal human activity, lest they fail quite unexpectedly.

SO one could take these ideas and theorize that geometry divides a frame along lines of harmony. As a string divided in perfect geometric ratios creates perfect notes that resonate in harmony with each other, so the it is with the geometric frame. We might think of our timbers as great strings being plucked to create a certain resonance. If we divide these string arbitrarily we will create dissonance. Think of the violin with no frets, we must put our finger at the exact right spot to create a harmonious note. Otherwise we have dissonance. This dissonance, even if very minute, is immediately noticeable to he human ear and will ruin the music. You cannot pick a spot to place your finger without the knowledge of where it should go.

And so it may be with timbers. IF we arbitrarily choose a location to place a post or strut or brace or whatever, then we may indeed create geometric dissonance. But divide the the frame, indeed the building as a whole, along geometric means, then we achieve 'Harmonius Mundi' And what better method is there to stand against the forces of nature than with nature itself?

What geometric dissonance could be I am not entirely certain. It could be an aspect of vibration, and poor choice of division leads to poor handling of vibration, or for that matter any other natural force (it is the natural forces over long periods of time that are the most damaging). Or it could be a matter of strength, rather than weakness. That is to say, poorly divided frames don't weaken any of the members, but rather by doing so you are not gaining an aspect of strength that is available to you. A dissonant frame could indeed stand, as a dissonant not doesn't cause the instrument to shake apart, but it would not stand for long I suspect.

Dissonant intervals are used to stir emotion in music. The tritone, for example, is a musical interval that will immediately cause a feeling of discomfort, anxiety, and even to some degree anger. It leaves you in anticipation of another note, but if it goes unresolved than it is unsettling. Total dissonance, where notes have no harmonic relationship whatsoever, is terrible, and we cannot stand to listen to it.

In a similar way, dissonance may leave the geometry of a building in anticipation. It expects something else to come along, but if it is not thee than the frame is left in unequal tension. I propose that a frame must be in balance. Not reflective symmetry, but harmonic balance. This means that harmonic relationships must be balanced out, as in music you do not hold the tritone without resolving to the fourth or the fifth, or you do not end a song on a note that is not suitable. In a frame you cannot have unbalanced relationships.

Perhaps a deep study of the music theory of those before the creation of the modern tempered western scale would tell us a lot about building and engineering...

This could all be crazy, but it could all be something huge. If this theory is right, than it is everything.

I would love to be able to test it, but I do not have the resources.