Stonehenge, sound ideas lead to advanced pattern recognition

[Harvey]

There are many streams down from the mountain...

http://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2 ... heres.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17073206

[elfismiles]

Paul Devereux was the first person I ever heard talk about the sonic aspects of Stonehenge and other megalithic sites:

http://www.google.com/search?q=stonehen ... l+devereux

[seemslikeadream]

Was Maya Pyramid Designed to Chirp Like a Bird?
Bijal P. Trivedi
National Geographic Today
December 6, 2002
Clap your hands in front of the 1,100-year-old Temple of Kukulcan, in the ancient Mayan city of Chichen Itza, and, to some researchers' ears, the pyramid answers in the voice of the sacred quetzal bird.

"Now I have heard echoes in my life, but this was really strange," says David Lubman, an acoustical engineer who runs his own firm in Westminster, California. The Maya, he believes, may have built their pyramids to create specific sound effects.

A handclap at the base of Kukulcan's staircase generates what Lubman calls a "chirped echo"—a "chir-roop" sound that first ascends and then falls, like the cry of the native quetzal.

To Lubman, the dimensions of Kukulcan's steps suggest that the builders intended just such an acoustical mimicry. The lower steps have a short tread length and high riser—tough to climb but perfect for producing a high-pitched "chir" sound. The steps higher up make a lower-pitched "roop."

"If you have a structure with these dimensions, it will chirp," Lubman says. He has noted the same effect at the Pyramid of the Magician in the Classic Mayan city of Uxmal, near Chichen Itza on the Yucatan peninsula.

Lubman and Mexican researchers led by Sergio Beristain, president of the Mexican Institute of Acoustics, have investigated acoustical phenomena in Chichen Itza and the great ancient metropolis, Teotihuacan.

On Wednesday they presented their research at a meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in Cancun, Mexico.

Quetzals—More Valuable Than Gold

The elusive quetzal, also known as the kuk, deserved homage. The bird inhabits the cloud forests of Central America, and its feathers, along with jade, were among the most precious commodities in Mesoamerica. To the Maya and Aztecs, the quetzal's emerald green iridescent tail feathers were more valuable than gold.

At Kukulcan, Lubman made recordings of the echo and compared them with recordings of the quetzal from Cornell University's ornithology lab, in Ithaca, N.Y.

"They matched perfectly. I was stunned," Lubman says. "The Temple of Kukulcan chirps like a kuk."

Lubman envisions Mayan priests facing a crowd at Kukulcan and clapping. The pyramid would then "answer" in the voice of the quetzal, a messenger of the Gods

Was Maya Pyramid Designed to Chirp Like a Bird?
<< Back to Page 1 Page 2 of 2
A specialist on the acoustics of worship spaces, Lubman first noticed the chirping echo in 1998 during a visit to Chichen Itza, when tour guides demonstrated the effect.

The echo reminded Lubman of the work of Steven Waller, a biochemist and amateur acoustician in La Mesa, Calif., who has observed that ancient cave or rock paintings, as in the Great Gallery in Horseshoe Canyon, Utah, often show up in locations where echoes or other special acoustical effects occur.

Any sanctuary that cultivates perfect acoustics is "a way of stating God's favor," Lubman says. Concert halls, too, share in the mystery.

Acoustics Important to the Maya

The quetzal echo remains open to scientific debate. "It's an interesting phenomenon," says Karl Taube, an archaeologist at the University of California, Riverside, and an authority on ancient Mesoamerican writing and art. "The question is whether it was intentional or not."

However, Taube points out that "acoustics were clearly important to the Maya." Many of the cities had open plazas for ceremonial dances where, as Mayan art illustrates, kings and rulers performed in jade and seashell belts.

"These (belts) would have made a tremendous sound as they performed dances in the ceremonial plazas," Taube says.

Initially inspired by Lubman's work, Beristain and his researchers discovered echo phenomena at the staircase of the main pyramid at La Ciudadela at Teotihuacan. The city of Teotihuacan, near the site of modern Mexico City, was founded in 100 B.C.

A handclap directly in front of the pyramid's main staircase produces a chirped echo.

Handclaps from different positions along the base of the staircase likewise trigger the echo—but with different musical tones spanning half an octave.

Local Indians, Beristain says, "told us about the other notes. It is like getting the sound of the Quetzal, but in a range of different notes. I'm sure we will observe these effects at other pyramids, like Chichen Itza," he adds.

Lubman and Beristain plan to extend their studies to other pyramids and ceremonial sites in Mexico to hear just where and how the past still echoes.

Acoustical Society of America
136th Meeting Lay Language Papers


Archaeological acoustic study of chirped echo from the Mayan pyramid at Chichen Itza, in the Yucatan Region of Mexico ... Is this the world's oldest known sound recording?

David Lubman, Acoustical Consultant, dlubman@ix.netcom
14301 Middletown Lane
Westminster, CA 92683 USA
Voice/Fax 714/373-3050

Popular version of paper 2pAAa1
Presented Tuesday afternoon, October 13, 1998
136th ASA Meeting, Norfolk, VA
The Pyramid of Kukulkan at Chichen Itza is recognized around the world as an icon of Mexico. As such, even small details around it merit scholarly interest. One small detail ignored by archaeologists until now is the odd chirped echo that resounds from the pyramid's staircases in response to hand claps of people standing near its base.

A physical explanation for the chirped echo is proposed: The staircase constitutes an acoustical diffraction grating. Two forms of analytical data are offered in support of this explanation. First, a mathematical simulation of the chirp fundamental frequency vs time is calculated. Then a sonogram of the recorded echo is shown to be in reasonable agreement with these calculations .

Moving to archaeological issues, it is considered whether the echo was intended by its Mayan builders; is merely an artifact of reconstruction; or simply an ancient acoustical design defect. We speculate that the echo is intentional. That the steps were designed and constructed to echo the voice of the Mayan sacred bird, the resplendent quetzal (pharomachrus mocinno), viewed by ancient Maya as the "messenger of the gods.

The echo is not believed to be an artifact of reconstruction. Other Mayan pyramids also chirp, as do other Mayan staircases, though their acoustic parameters are different.

The echo is not believed to be an original design defect. Sound is very important to forest peoples whose livelihood or very lives may depend on accurate listening. In the cloud forest where their Mayan cultures were formed, one may hear over a much greater distance than one can see.

The Maya would have noticed such a profound acoustical anomaly (chirped echo) at their sacred site just as modern people react to alleged defects around their "holy" sites. (Think about the fuss over alleged acoustical defects at Lincoln Center in 1962. Eventually, the hall was gutted and rebuilt at great expense.)

Arguably, the Maya had the technological capability to correct such acoustical defects. This is implied by other evidence of subtle Maya manipulation of architectural acoustics suggesting that they were masterful practitioners of acoustical arts who created whispering galleries and other acoustical wonders.)

Sound recordings and sonograms of the chirped echo and quetzal were compared. A striking similarity is observed in sound quality, frequency, length and harmonic structure. However, they are not identical.

The Quetzal as the "Spirit of the Maya" and the Spirit of Kukulkan

Archaeological proposals are made to justify design intent by arguing the central importance of quetzal mythology to both ancient and modern Maya. The quetzal, is asserted to represent the "spirit of the Maya". It is shown that the Temple's very name is connected with the quetzal The pyramid's Mayan name is "Temple of Kukulkan" The prefix K'uk has roots in the Mayan name for the quetzal. Also, the glyph of Kukulkan is represented in human form with a huge quetzal behind him, hovering like a spirit. There is much evidence that the Maya made use of quetzal feathers in their ceremonies at Chichen Itza and elsewhere. It is argued that for ancient man, echoes were voices from a spirit world. It seems appropriate that the Temple of Kukulkan should echo with the spirit voice of the quetzal.

Additional Benefit of Acoustical Hypothesis of Staircase Design

There is an unexpected benefit of the acoustical hypothesis for staircase design. It offers a more plausible explanation for the narrow treads and high risers on the pyramid steps. According to the acoustical hypothesis, these parameters were chosen to "tune" the echo to the pitch of the quetzal. The standard archaeological explanation for short treads is that the Maya, being short in stature, have small feet. This does not account for the higher-than-normal risers. Indeed, the "small stature" explanation predicts shorter risers. Nor does it account for the longer treads found at other Maya buildings at this and other sites.

If the hypothesis of intentional design has merit, we are led to two striking conjectures. The Maya are the only people known to have "coded" a sound into stone. The chirped echo at this 1300-year-old pyramid may be the world's oldest known sound recording!

Archaeologists seek features that persist through time. Understandably, archaeologists have until now ignored sound. It seems ironic that an entity as ephemeral as sound could serve their quest to understand ancient civilizations. But the human uses for sound, no less than the other perceptual modalities must surely have shaped human habitations in many ways not yet considered. Perhaps the fledgling field of acoustical archaeology will add to archaeologist's impressive accomplishments in rediscovering our human past.

It is fascinating to imagine the ancient Maya as the true inventors of playful soundscape ideas. Such ideas have only recently begun to be used by modern urban artists. Modern artists are creating such sonic architecture as sound parks. (See, e.g., http://www.users.interport.net/sonarc/maintext.html)

Appendix: The acoustics of outdoor staircases

Although staircases are surely a common element in design, and can contribute odd acoustical effects, the subject does not seem to have received extensive treatment in the scientific acoustical literature.

A design element that is repeated at regular intervals in a region of space can be termed "spatially periodic". Staircases are examples of spatially "periodic" elements. (Theater seating is another example of a spatially periodic feature.) The visual impact of spatially periodic features can be desirable, for they introduce an ordered, unifying element into the design.

The German poet Goethe aptly described architecture as "frozen music". Spatial periodicities are the analogs of "rhythm" in music. As we will see, spatial periodicities can be more than analogues of musical sounds. They can introduce audible, tonal elements of their own!

When periodic design elements are composed of sound reflective materials (such as stone), and if certain other conditions are met, odd echoes or other strange acoustical effects may result.

So far as I know, in all cases where they do occur in the "Western" or "Mediterranean" world, these effects are "accidents" unintended by architects. They are a result of the architect's ignorance of, or indifference to, acoustics. They are always considered undesirable elements in a "built environment". The Mayan echo, if it is indeed deliberate, would be the only exception to this "rule".

An example of an unintended tonal echo is found in the ancient ampitheater at Epidauros in the Peloponnesus (now Turkey). The reflecting feature are concrete seating banks that are periodically spaced about 1 meter apart. An impulsive sound made in the stage area gives rise to periodic reflections from the seating banks that are heard in the "orchestra". The result is an odd but clearly heard low tone (about 340 Hz, according to my calculation). It is very brief, lasting less than 50 milliseconds, (5 hundredths of a second).

Such unintended tonal echoes are not uncommon in open spaces in front of wide staircases, such as libraries and other public buildings. The phenomenon is termed "picket-fence effect", a name evocative of the kind of spatially periodic feature that is responsible for the tonal echo.

At least two steps are needed to produce a perceptible tone. With more steps, say 5-10, the sensation of tone is stronger. With a short staircase of only 10 steps, a tone will persists for not more than one or two hundredths of a second. Unless the stimulating noise is very short, such as a single handclap, the picket-fence tone may be imperceptible because it is "masked" by the long stimulus. Moreover, if the space is not open, echoes from other structures can mask the tone. Ideally, an open space and a very long staircase is needed to perceive this effect.

The Temple of Kukulkan exhibits the most remarkable picket-fence echo I have encountered. The Temple, situated in an open field and possessing wide, long staircases, seems ideal for an exhibit of this phenomenon. Picket fence echoes are heard from each of the two restored, wide staircases of 92 steps each. Equally remarkable, the tones are audible, if somewhat weaker, on the two unrestored sides. These are ruins with little more than the suggestion of the grand staircases existing when the site was mysteriously abandoned around 1200 C.E. Also, the smooth finish plaster on the steps is long gone.

Because the staircase is very long, the staircase echo is correspondingly longer, persisting for more than 100 milliseconds (1/10 second), more than twice as long as the tonal echo in the theater at Epidauros. (The quetzal chirp is even longer, about 200 milliseconds long, or 1/5 second.)

Because of the Pyramid's high staircase, the echo exhibits an additional auditory feature. More than a tone, the echo possesses a birdlike "chirp" that moves downward in frequency. I do not remember having heard such a long chirped echo elsewhere. (But an acquaintance reports having heard a long chirped echo arising the from periodic features on metal roofs of a long row of periodically spaced mining shacks in South Africa.)

Staircase as a Diffraction Grating

An explanation for the downward chirp is easily obtained by a simple extension of the picket fence effect. This essentially amounts to a diffraction grating, familiar to physicists. Echoes arrive first from the lower stepfaces near the observer's head level. The time between succesive echoes is proportional to the length of the step tread length, T, and the frequency is roughly f = c/T, where c = the speed of sound, about 343 m/sec. Later echoes arrive from the upper steps. The time between successive echoes gradually lengthens for the upper steps because the ray path becomes nearly parallel to the angle of staircase's rise. In the limit the time between successive echoes is proportional to the hypotenuse of the triangle consisting of the tread length and rise height. Because the hypotenuse is longer than either side of a triangle, the period of the tone is greater and the frequency is lower.

Predicted Frequencies

The average tread length T was measured as 26.2 cm (10.3 inches) This gives a maximum chirp starting frequency of about 1310 Hz

The average riser height was measured at 26.4 cm. This gives a hypotenuse length of 37.3 cm (14.68 inches) and a minimum chirp ending frequency of 922 Hz.

The actual frequency range also depends on one's distance from the pyramid. The farther away one stands, the smaller the frequency range.

The measured frequencies agree reasonably well with these simple predictions.

Click to hear a handclap made while standing a few meters in front of the pyramid staircase. This is followed by a chirped echo from the staircase. This pair is repeated once." ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A little more information, photographs and two sound files are found at the author's web site. Go to http://www.ocasa.org and migrate to member web sites. The author has additional graphics, analytical data, references and supporting arguments that will be presented at the meeting and may be made available electronically.

[psynapz]

Clap your hands in front of the 1,100-year-old Temple of Kukulcan, in the ancient Mayan city of Chichen Itza, and, to some researchers' ears, the pyramid answers in the voice of the sacred quetzal bird.

Done it. It's true, and completely incredibly awesome. The Mayan tour guide demonstrated first, and with a few refining attempts of my own, sure enough it does.

He also said Apocalypso was a smear campaign, showing Aztec proclivities as though they were Mayan, which he insisted they were not.

[Harvey]

Thanks for the links guys.

Psynapsz, I would love to go there one day. There was a comparison available at some point in the past of the Resplendent Quetzal and the sound of the echo at Kukulkan, but the link to the wav file is gone. Oh well...

Edit: Found it on this page (I think):

http://www.ocasa.org/MayanPyramid.htm

[cptmarginal]

He also said Apocalypso was a smear campaign, showing Aztec proclivities as though they were Mayan, which he insisted they were not.

My favorite stupid moment in that movie was the Mayan high priests being surprised and thrown into panic by a solar eclipse, like it was something new to them.

[psynapz]

Psynapsz, I would love to go there one day.

Well, even the all-inclusive resorts are pretty cheap, but once you fly in, you can rent a palapas on the beach anywhere south of Cancun along the Mayan Riviera for almost nothing, eat fresh fruits from roadside carts, and then the bus to Chichen Itza is about US$120, if you don't get free tickets for convincingly fielding a timeshare presentation first...

[chypmonk]

A little off-topic, but hopefully relevant:

There appear to be geometric relationships between LOTS of ancient sites and structures, if you know how and where to look. I'm referring to the work of "Carl Munck" who seems to have languished in almost total obscurity, but has shown in three klunky, unglamorous "home movies" on Youtube, that there is a consistent mathematical relationship between a whole host of mysterious places, from Stonehenge to the great pyramid to the Nazca lines, just to name a few. I have followed along with my calculator and OMG, I think he's on to something.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... 7Te08rDvis

Also - the work of Scott Onstott in his site "Secrets in Plain Sight" show an incredible range of geometrical similarities all over the world.
http://www.secretsinplainsight.com/

[Harvey]

Psynapsz, I would love to go there one day.

Well, even the all-inclusive resorts are pretty cheap, but once you fly in, you can rent a palapas on the beach anywhere south of Cancun along the Mayan Riviera for almost nothing, eat fresh fruits from roadside carts, and then the bus to Chichen Itza is about US$120, if you don't get free tickets for convincingly fielding a timeshare presentation first...

Difficult. I'm sort of voluntarily impecunious, having shunned every opportunity to be a functioning part of Mammon II.

Aside to Chypmonk: I tried to point out to HMW once, the relationships and patterns are there, but as for what they mean? Who can know? My view is that human agency takes us only so far by way of explanation, take that whichever way your belief system may accommodate. In any case as you seem to suggest, people notice if they wish to.

[chypmonk]

Harvey -

If the patterns and relationships are there, then maybe someone is "playing" with us. An analogy - when I first bought a laser toy for my cat, she had no idea what that little red light was. After a bit of teasing, she gradually caught on and we both started having fun. Although I don't think she understands what a laser is, it's a way we can interact with each other, although we are very different beings.

In contrast, another cat in the household has never "gotten" it. He just stares blankly at the light, with no idea that it is a form of play or interaction with his human companions.

Everywhere I look, there are mysteries, with very few tangible clues. In contrast, Carl Munck's discoveries have actual verifiable measurements. Maybe "They" are teasing us, trying to engage us in some kind of game, hoping to grab our attention, get us pouncing on clues and enjoying the chase.

[MacCruiskeen]

Archaeoacoustics:

A book Archaeoacoustics,[1] edited by archaeologists Professor Chris Scarre of Durham University, and Dr. Graeme Lawson of the MacDonald Institute in Cambridge, was the first book to study this field in depth. It focuses on the role of sound in human behaviour, from earliest times up to the development of mechanical detection and recording devices in the 19th century. Recent calls for an `archaeology of the senses' have served as a timely, even overdue reminder that the past which we experience - and which others have experienced before us - is multisensory, drawing not only upon the primary field of vision, but also on touch, smell and hearing. Megalithic tombs, Palaeolithic painted caves, Romanesque churches and prehistoric rock shelters all present specific sound qualities which offer clues as to how they may have been designed and used. Voices resonate, external noises are subdued or eliminated, and a special aural dimension is accessed which complements the evidence of our other senses. [...]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeoacoustics

See also the very interesting website, Landscape-perception:

More recent work in the USA, Australia and elsewhere by American acoustic researcher, Steven Waller, indicates that some prehistoric rock art panels produce echoes that act like “soundtracks” to paintings of animals, simulating the rumble of depicted animal herds, for instance, or the roar of a lion or sabre-toothed tiger.

http://tinyurl.com/7xd3k5c

[Hammer of Los]

...

There is magic in sound.

There is magic in the hum.

There is magic in the word.

The ancients knew much of the revealing science.

In the beginning was the harmony of heaven.

There then arose discord.

For in the arising of harmony lies the arising of discord.

Born of the void, split into many voices warring one against the other.

When will the order of heaven be restored?

...

I recall Tolkien's creation myth of Middle Earth.

I recall the sweet music of the heavenly spheres.

That music calls to me even now!

Euterpe also is my muse.






ps Er, was that on topic?

...

[Harvey]

then maybe someone is "playing" with us.

Yes, life under the all seeing eye. I think we're only on solid ground in noticing the patterns, beyond that, all bets are off. 'Decoding' is the translation of one uncertainty into another.

Mac,

Thanks for those links buddy.

ps Er, was that on topic?

Always. There's really only one.

: )

[alwyn]

a little sonic magic from the northern hemisphere, 14th century:

http://www.interferencetheory.com/Artic ... 1a0-3.html

The Frozen Music of Rosslyn Chapel
08/01/07 11:47

Rosslyn-Chapel
"I call architecture frozen music."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
German writer, scientist, color theorist and Freemason

In a case of art imitating art, a press release earlier this year (2006) announced that “frozen music” had been found hidden in the architecture of the 15th century Rosslyn Chapel - the same chapel popularized at the end of Dan Brown’s book The Da Vinci Code. The chapel’s puzzling architecture remained unexplained for well over 450 years until it was deciphered by Thomas Mitchell and his son Stuart Mitchell earlier this year.

The announcement explained that a total of 215 “musical cubes” in the pillars and arches of Rosslyn Chapel were found to match 13 unique geometrical sound patterns, known as Chladni figures or Cymatics. These patterns are produced when a metal plate is sprinkled with salt or powder and vibrated by sound frequencies. Documented first by Ernst Chladni in 1787, the patterns can range from primitive polygons like triangles, pentagons and hexagons to beautiful Mandela-like patterns, depending on which frequencies are used (see Music of the Quantum Lattice). The Mitchells found that each of the cube patterns matched specific musical tones that were organized into vertical groups around the chapel’s pillars. Using these tones to form a melody, the men then composed and staged the premier performance of “the Rosslyn Motet” on May 18, 2007 inside the chapel.

RosslynArch

To help them decode the cubes, they found a special “stave angel” figure carved into one pillar that was holding a musical staff and pointing to the three tones {A, B, C} on the treble clef. These particular tones corresponded to some of the cube patterns.

RosslynAngel

The angel points to B with his right hand and to A and C with his left. This was taken to indicate that the music was in the key of C major, or relative A minor, with the “leading tone” B balanced symmetrically in the center. From this, each of the cube patterns was matched against a particular frequency using a square Chladni plate tuned to C. The resulting pitches were ordered from bottom to top, left to right around the columns beginning with the stave angel to produce a haunting melody.

While this is a truly amazing story, it raises the deeper question of who designed the chapel, why did they hide this music in the chapel architecture and what does it mean?

Founded in 1446 by William Sinclair, 1st Earl of Caithness of the St. Clair family, Rosslyn chapel was constructed to include numerous symbols now attributed to the Knights Templar and esoteric society of Freemasonry. According to Robert Freke Gould, author of the History of Freemasonry, “Masonry is regarded as the direct descendant, or as a survival of the mysteries…of Isis and Osiris in Egypt.” The chapel’s puzzling architecture was designed by Sir Gilbert Hay, one of the most learned and intellectual minds of the 15th century, under the direction of William Sinclair. Both men are believed to be Jewish/Christian Ebionites connected to the Essene mystery school, a precursor to modern Freemasonry.

As this chapel clearly demonstrates, the resonance patterns created by reflected sound waves were well understood long before Chladni’s official scientific discoveries in the 18th century. In fact, knowledge of the geometry of sound can be traced back to ancient Chinese and Egyptian wisdom and was preserved in the Hermetic secrets of Freemasonry. Music, harmonic resonance and geometric symbolism are all integral to Hermetic beliefs about the structure of the cosmos and all life. Hay and Sinclair apparently sought to preserve this knowledge in Rosslyn Chapel.

In looking at the columns, we see a series of pentagrams supporting the musical angels. But oddly, the angels replace the missing top triangle in each pentagram. Cross-referencing this to Hermetic lore, this missing triangle is the very same “golden” triangle symbolic of resonance. The question is how can this particular triangle, as part of a pentagram, be considered resonant and why was it so important that it should be carved into a stone chapel?

A golden triangle, taken from the pentagram, has angles measuring 36 X 72 X 72 degrees and sides in proportion to the golden ratio (~1.61803). There is a 3-degree difference between the top angle of the golden pyramid and the highest 33rd degree of Freemasonry, representing a difference ratio of 3:180, or 0.01666667. This ratio can be represented more simply by the 5:3 ratio of a just tuned major sixth - the most pleasing and spectrally resonant interval in music. By replacing the top golden triangle of the pentagram with the heavenly angels, the designers of the chapel may have been symbolizing the resonant 3-degrees separating mankind from the “Great Architect”. As an additional bit of word play, the designers even replaced the triangle’s top “Angle” with a musical “Angel”, both of which begin with the letter “A,” itself derived from a golden triangle once used to represent the Alpha and Omega.

We can now see how the angels (or “putti”) sitting on the pentagram symbolized the geometry and numerical ratios of resonance passed down from Egyptian theosophy. But why would such knowledge need to be hidden in this way?

To the medieval Catholic Church, Egyptian ideas of resonance were considered part of a Pantheistic belief of God in nature and were a direct threat to the Christian belief of God outside of nature. As a result, the geometry of the pentagram and certain resonant intervals were considered unfit for use in the Church. This was especially true for the musical interval of three whole tones (six half-steps) known as the tritone.

Known as Diabolus in Musica, or the Devil in Music, the tritone is very strongly related to this ancient understanding of resonance, sharing what we will call for now, an “inverse harmonic relationship” with a consonant major sixth. The Rosslyn stave angel emphasizes this fact by pointing to the part of the tritone interval known as the “leading tone”. As a matter of fact, the melody in the cubes emphasizes the tritone in a way that would have been unacceptable to the Catholic Church in the 15th century.

Banned by Pope Gregory IX in 1234, the tritone was and still is outlawed in Catholic music. As a result, the Freemasons hid their use of this forbidden interval by encoding it as cymatic symbols in the chapel architecture. This was their way of preserving what they considered sacred Egyptian knowledge at a time when Europe was hostile to such beliefs. But there is another twist to this story that takes the concept of resonance to an even higher level of theosophical symbolism.

While there are 13 angels corresponding to the 13 unique cube patterns, there are also 8 dragons whose tongues wrap around the “Tree of Life” carved at the bottom of the pillars. Together, the angels and dragons symbolically represent the Fibonacci ratio of 13:8 or 1.625. This proportion happens to be the first ascending Fibonacci ratio not found as a resonant interval in the harmonic series. This begins the convergence of the remaining Fibonacci ratios towards the golden ratio (~1.61803) found in the pentagram and golden triangle.

It is a little known fact that the ratios of adjacent numbers in the Fibonacci series beginning with 13:8 = 1.625 creates a natural damping effect in the standing wave of a musical tone or other coherent vibration. As each ascending Fibonacci ratio gets closer to the infinite golden ratio, the damping effect increases, thereby canceling all fractional waves and leaving only the whole number harmonics to vibrate sympathetically. This damping effect is used extensively in the design of speaker enclosures and theaters, usually approximated as 1.62 X 1.0 X 0.62 to cancel reflection. Harmonic waves simply cannot resonate at or near the infinite frequency proportion of the golden ratio. The dragon, as the mythical serpent holding secret knowledge in the Underworld, represents this anti-harmonic damping effect in nature which is counterbalanced by the angel’s symbolic resonance.

This brings us to yet another revelation about Rosslyn Chapel. In reviewing the chapel’s dimensions, the length is exactly twice the breadth while the height-to-length ratio is equal to the golden mean. Furthermore, the length of the choir section taken as a proportion to chapel length is a 5:3 major sixth. Since a major sixth is the most resonant interval possible, the choir acts as a maximally resonant chamber in the horizontal direction while damping out reflected standing waves in the vertical direction. In this way, the chapel designers designed a perfectly attenuated chamber that amplified voice and music while minimizing echoes. Perhaps this was also intended as an acoustical symbol that could “thaw” the frozen music in the architecture.

The architecture of Rosslyn Chapel blends the mythological symbolism of alpha-omega or good vs. evil into a musical balance of harmonic resonance and anti-harmonic damping. The secret symbol for harmonic damping can be found today in the “007” moniker taken by Ian Fleming from John Dee, a 16th century original secret agent to Queen Elizabeth I, self proclaimed “angelic-alchemist” and hermetic mathematician very familiar with harmonic proportions. We also find it in the persistent negative symbol for resonance - the Christian “mark of the Beast” 666.

But the chapel designers suggest a more balanced interpretation of this symbolism. The 215 musical cubes in the chapel total one less than 216, the ancient Hebrew number for God. It is said that finding the missing code for this number - six cubed or 6*6*6 - will trigger the Messianic Age of peace. With this, everything in Rosslyn Chapel seems intended to replace the misguided symbolisms of evil with truth and hope.

Opposing forces of resonance and damping are everywhere in nature: the spacing of electrons in an atom, averaged interplanetary orbits, branching patterns in plants and the joint spacing in animals that enable articulated movement. Without this duality, nothing could vibrate, move or even live. Passed down from Egypt and the Orient, driven underground into the esoteric brotherhoods, these fundamental harmonic principles are the very definition of sacred. What could be more appropriate for any sacred temple space than the harmony of nature?

Tags: Cymatics, Chladni, rosslyn Chapel

[Harvey]

a little sonic magic from the northern hemisphere, 14th century:

Brilliant, thanks!