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The Journey Begins

So from where would such concepts about geometric figures and the depth of their significance germinate? In the introduction spiritual and scientific laws were touched upon. So let us begin with some of the oldest laws recorded—those brought down from Mount Sinai.

This examination began as a thought experiment about what was the actual shape of the biblical Ten Commandments and why their shape would be of consequence. It takes us back to a time when religious leaders and scientists were one and the same. Moses, the leader and patriarch of the Israelites, prophet to Christians and Moslems alike, is an example. He is known as the giver of the Law. Often the vision of a great figure standing on a mountain veiled in smoke and illuminated by lightning flashes comes to mind. Can you envision him standing there, face aglow, holding the two tablets of the Law, the Ten Commandments, given to him by God? Moses was also raised as a prince in the royal household of the Egyptian pharaoh, and such an upbringing would bring with it the highest possible education in the sciences.

Though most are familiar with the commandments being written on stone referred to as tablets, the Hebrew word luah translates as both tablet and table. Table is the term used in the King James Version of the Bible. Luah also translates as “house of the soul.”¹ The translation of luah as house of the soul and its symbolism as this house leads to the hypothesis of triangular tablets being addressed here.

Fig. 1.1—Moses with the Tablets

The Ten Commandments is also known as the Decalogue—meaning ten words or utterances. It may be considered a symbolic, spiritual core of Mosaic Law, much as the periodic table of the elements in science categorizes the discovered fundamental substances that make up the universe. These ten words written on stone symbolize, in essence, the way to act with both God and man, but are meanings engraved in more than just the words on these stone tablets? Are there meanings in the shapes of the tablets themselves? In Exodus 32:15 it states that the tablets had writing on both sides, that the writings could be seen through the tablets. Could this indicate that there are meanings for us in the words and the shape of the tablets as well as through the very stone itself? Remember, literacy of the general population is a recent event in humankind's history. Nowhere in the Bible are these shapes described. My intuition is that they are two triangular tablets or tables.

The search to validate or invalidate this premise and its significance turned into an exploration that expanded beyond the Tables of the Law. It led down a path that wound through myths, science, religions, and ancient mystery schools. The quest was one that ultimately joined all of these facets through shared symbolism and meaning and became an investigation not just of the triangle but also of the parabola, commonly known as an arc. It ended with the discovery of a strong unifying pattern between these symbols that creates a bridge both in the macrocosm and the microcosm of humankind's experience. The key to seeing this pattern is in the deeper meanings of the triangle and the arc. The meanings can be found in their different manifestations, aspects, and dimensions. Such triangular aspects can be seen in many forms including pyramids, stars, and diamonds. The parabola or arc, best known from geometry's conic sections, appears in circles, spirals, ellipses, and such shapes as the Christian ICTHYS symbol and its more ancient brethren, the vesica pisces. Within their combined symbolism is a vital universal message—a message in a glyph-like language barely remembered, but still imprinted upon the fabric of spacetime and our consciousness. We, similar to children learning the meanings of their surroundings, need to discover again the archetypal meanings of these symbols to gain their messages.

P.D. Ouspensky writes of the difficulty of grasping the essence and incorporating the meanings of such symbols within us and trying to communicate that meaning to others. He speaks of this when one is attempting to transmit to another “objective knowledge,” that is knowledge “based upon ancient methods and principles of observation, knowledge of things in themselves, knowledge accompanying ‘an objective state of consciousness,’ knowledge of the All.”² He states:

…But objective knowledge, the idea of unity included, belongs to objective consciousness. The forms which express this knowledge when perceived by subjective consciousness are inevitably distorted and, instead of truth they create more and more delusions…Realizing the imperfection and weakness of ordinary language the people who have possessed objective knowledge have tried to express the idea of unity in myths, in symbols…The transmission of the meaning of symbol to a man who has not reached an understanding of them in himself is impossible…(If he does know) a symbol becomes for him a synthesis of his knowledge .³

In Dr. Mark Thurston's book Experiments in SFG: The Edgar Cayce Path of Application, he explains the concept of such innate knowing with a quote from Walter Starcke.

(It is)…to understand it from all levels: to see it, to comprehend it, to understand it both spiritually and physically, to experience it, to identify with it, and, above all, to discern what it is ‘for’…⁴

Aldous Huxley in his book The Perennial Philosophy describes this concisely as: “What we know depends also on what, as moral beings, we chose to make ourselves.”⁵

This puzzle of receiving such knowledge from what we need to already know or have spiritually experienced will be explored and expounded upon. Fear not these Zen koan-like statements, for like such koans the purpose is to move the thought process out of the rational state to the intuitive state where such knowledge lies dormant, waiting to be awakened. Think of the koan: “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” Now think of it as potential, the unmanifested waiting to be made manifest, of God and God moving, manifesting, the clapping creating vibration. And vibration creates the universe, as will be seen in Chapter 6. Think about the left hemisphere of the brain, generally considered the logical, linear side of the intellect and the right side of the brain, generally considered the holistic, intuitive side of the mind. Now as they are brought together equally, they create a unity, a Oneness to be likened to heaven on earth. One might wonder if the meaning of sitting on the right hand of God infers to thinking more in the right side of the brain, the side considered more holistic and intuitive, and to manifest exactly that.

What follows here is a quest through lands, people, and symbols. The purpose is to arouse the sleeper in all of us. For once aroused such pilgrims can, with informed purpose, follow their road home, toward a home of wholeness and completeness, of Oneness. This birthright home, buried in our memories, calls to us just as the cries of seagulls over the ocean in the dark of night tell the sailor that land, though unseen, is not far off. There is that yearning to be home, that pull within us to find a course to our own mansion which is waiting for each of us in His house.

For the pilgrims looking to come home, the aim is to make clearer these signposts, which lead us on a path to our own door in a house of many mansions. Just such a pilgrim will recognize within such symbols that the journey home is through the knowing which resides within us all. This effort is a synthesis of research into many avenues, culminating in conclusions that ideally will give a fresh map to all such seekers in the world. Like many maps, the information has been collected from varied sources. Once the information is processed and integrated, a legend of symbols is created to act as guideposts for one looking for such direction.

One source of information researched is from the printed readings of Edgar Cayce—America's famous clairvoyant who came to renown in the first half of the twentieth century. These readings, numbering more than fourteen thousand, were transcribed while he lay in an altered state of consciousness brought on by a type of self-hypnotic suggestion. Among the great volume of information the readings provide is the story of our original Oneness with God, then the fall, our separation, and our ongoing journey back to a knowledgeable Unity with God. Other sources include evidence left behind in ancient Egypt, the Judeo-Christian and Hindu-Buddhist religions, early mystery schools, architecture, science, and sacred geometry.

This quest includes not only the hypothesis that the Ten Commandment tablets were triangular but also other hypotheses that this research led to as well. These suppositions include the importance of the triangle in the ancient world as supported by the triangular shape of sections of the spinal canal and the spinal column's resemblance to a serpent which led to an Egyptian royal cubit of the Great Pyramid being derived from the length of the spine. A similar type of spinal cubit can be seen in the Mayan zapal measurement for their pyramids. Moreover, evidence is shown that this “spinal” cubit could have been used at Stonehenge as well. The length of this spinal cubit was actually documented in the readings of the Edgar Cayce. What's more, evidence is presented that the shape of the ancient Egyptian crown stemmed from the form of human vertebrae and that the King's and Queen's Chambers of the Great Pyramid are symbolic of the pineal and pituitary glands of the human brain. Furthermore, headpieces, such as the cone-haped dunce's cap, a wizard's hat, and even the Pope's mitre whose symbolic purpose was to imbue the wearer with wisdom, can trace their shapes to the triangle and arc. Also postulated is the fact that the baptism of Jesus can be traced back, in symbolism, to the ancient Egyptian obelisk. The findings about the obelisks may well explain why the Roman Catholic Church had such monuments, generally considered pagan, moved and relocated in front of some of the most eminent basilicas in Rome, such as Saint Peter's, and why Rome has more standing Egyptian obelisks than anywhere else in the world.

Ultimately it will be seen that religion and science are not at odds or exclusive of each other. They are in fact united by an unseen bridge, a bridge created from the symbols and the profound meanings of the triangle and the arc in both their disciplines. It will be shown that these symbols are not only in the world around us, the stars above us, and our spiritual beliefs, but are also in the fabric of the universe and our very DNA itself. These two symbols can represent light itself—both the spiritual light immanent in heaven and earth and the technical phenomenon of light and of matter that the latest scientific theories consider to have both wave and particle aspects and functions.