1-1-2-3-5-8-13-21
From the surface glance everyone can notice that these numbers are nothing more than some randomly picked numeric arranged in ascending order but math freaks who love to play little pranks are probably well known to this progression. This progression is a childish image of a prankster or a very well calculated succession popped out from devious mind of a genius, you can put it in any way you like. This succession of numbers was created by the thirteen century mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci hence, widely known as Fibonacci sequence. When I first saw it the only meaning I have been able to pull up was either Fibonacci was a big short circuited braincase who has seen a secret meaning in some random bunch of numbers which can only be understood by other crack potted crazy as himself or it is just a playful prank of one of the busiest mind in the world trying to seek some fun and satisfy his inner deep cored childishness. But at the end maybe it is both.
Enough about my thoughts, you must be so willing to kill me for testing your patience now. Well, Fibonacci sequence is a progression in which each term is equal to the sum of the two preceding terms. Why don’t you check it for yourself?-
1-1-2-3-5-8-13-21
1+1=2, 2+1=3, 3+2=5, 5+3=8, 8+5=13, 13+8=21
The prank part about this is it is dubious enough to make someone think so hard to melt their brain fat trying to figure out what hidden meaning these numbers exactly represents or is it just some super genius calculation stuff and at the end when its meaning finally dawns on you its nothing but a simplistic cryptographic joke. OR is it?? It might look like some mathematical gibberish to us but some got eyes keen enough to see a very beautiful meaning hidden beneath it. They believe this particular sequence is
somehow connected to the most beautiful and magical art; the art of Mother Nature itself. This sequence gave birth to another mystery of nature’s most incredible magic -1.618. Aw! another bunch of numbers? You must be hating me to your gut huh? Well I bet whoever are little more curious about math and has done some mathematical investigation must be familiar with this number. 1.618 is simply known as PHI, mathematicians around the world often brags that PHI is one H of a lot cooler than PI and it really is actually. And PHI is particularly very much praised and loved by artists including my favorite Leonardo Da Vinci.
It is considered as the most prettiest number in the universe not only because it’s seemingly mystical mathematical origin but also because the true mind boggling aspect of PHI as a fundamental building block in nature. The world famous Fibonacci sequence gave birth to the most beautiful number PHI (1.618) as the quotients of adjacent terms possessed the astonishing property of approaching the number 1.618 . Pretty cool huh? Well not too cooler than the property and inextricably tied relation of PHI with nature as plants, animals and even human beings all possessed dimensional properties that adhered with eerie exactitude to the ratio of PHI to 1.PHI’s ubiquity in the nature clearly exceeds the coincidence and so the ancients assumed the number PHI must have been preordained by the creator of the universe and early scientists crowned PHI as the Divine Proportion. Now you must be really curious to know how exactly is this PHI so connected to nature and when you’ll know the facts of it you might actually find some answers for your own silly childish curiosity you so often wondered about when you were a kid and I bet no one ever had any answers for those.
- If you have ever studied about the relationship between female and male in honeybee community then you might be aware that female bees always outnumber male bees but have you ever been curious enough to know by how much? Even if you were there is no way you could count all of them. But some scientist never grow up and waste their time by counting bees all around the world .An astonishing fact they uncovered in that course is that if you divide the number of female bees by the number of male bees in any beehive in the world, you always get the same number ‘PHI’. And when you reveal this kind of magic no one can ever say counting bees is total waste of time, can they?
- A spiral sea shelled nautilus is a cephalopod mollusk that pumps gas into its chambered shell to adjust its buoyancy. Can you guess what the ratio of each spiral’s diameter to the next? Come on, who can right? To our biggest surprise it is always 1.618-PHI.
- Lots of people loves sunflower including me. If you have ever got a chance to play with it you must have wondered how beautifully those seeds grow in opposing spirals. Amazingly, the ratio of each rotation’s diameter to the next is always undoubtedly 1.618.
Same goes for spiraled pinecone petals , leaf arrangement on the plant stalks, insects segmentations and whole lot of bunch in nature all displaying astonishing obedience to the Divine Proportion.
But what does it have to do with art? No one can deny the inseparable connection of art with nature and when it comes to ‘art’ the first name that always pops in my mind is none other that a genius named Leonardo Da Vinci who was certainly way ahead and beyond his time. Da Vinci was a nature lover and had very great understanding of PHI which he painted all over his paintings .One masterpiece in specific which perfectly resembles the mystical properties of PHI is the famous ‘The Vitruvian Man’- a perfect painting of a nude man laying inside a circle with his limbs stretched out and spread wide in an eagle like position, an amazing masterpiece from a mastermind. The Vitruvian Man was named after Marcus Vitruvius, the brilliant Roman architecture who praised the Divine Proportion in his text ‘De Architectura’. Nobody understood better than Da Vinci the divine structure of human body as he actually exhumed corpses to measure the exact proportion of human bone. This kind of act earned him a name as worshiper of Dark art. He was the first one to show that the human body is literally made of building blocks whose proportional ratios always equal to PHI and ‘The Vitruvian Man’ is considered as the perfect structural painting of human body in terms of measurement. You can often find this painting printed in T-shirts and stickers. Measuring those spiral shells, sunflower seeds’ rotations and all those stuffs sounds kinda impractical and time consuming for us but here is something you can really try and see it for yourself if you want a closer look at magic of PHI-
-If you measure the distance from the tip of your head to the floor and then divide that by the distance from your belly button to the floor then you will find the result equals 1.618.
- Measure the distance from your shoulder to your fingertips and then divide it by the distance from your elbow to your fingertips, you will find PHI.
- Likewise,Hip to floor divided by knee to floor- PHI again, Finger joints, toes spinal division, its all PHI.
It is all over our body, in other word, each of us is a walking tribute to the Divine proportion and Da Vinci has shown it through The Vitruvian Man. The chaos of the world has an underlying order and when the ancients discovered PHI, they were certain they had stumbled across God’s building block for the world and they worshipped the nature for that. It makes everyone believe somewhere deep down in their heart that God’s hand is evident in the nature, the mysterious magic inherit in the Divine Proportion was written at the beginning of the time and man is simply playing by Nature’s rule. And what better way to imitate the beauty of the creator’s hand than art? In this attempt to praise Divine Proportion through various forms of art, Da Vinci was not alone in the league. The artwork by Michelangelo, Albrecht Durer, the architectural dimension of the Greek Parthenon, the pyramids of Egypt, structure of Mozart’s sonatas, Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, works of Bartok, Debussy, Schubert, Stractivarius using PHI to calculate the exact placement of the F-holes in the construction of his famous violin ; all of these artists belonging to various time line over the ages and their arts still alive to tell us about the magical PHI is simply marvelous heritages to mankind to pass on and on for generations and generations.
If you have read my previous article on religious aspect over Divine Feminine ‘Mother Earth ruled by men’, then you must be familiar with the symbol Pentagram or Pentacle( a geometrical star made by five straight lines) which is a divine symbol of sacred feminine and planet Venus-this ancient symbol is considered both divine and magical by many cultures and Nature worshippers and there is a very strong reason behind it, because if you draw a pentacle ,the lines automatically divide themselves to the Divine Proportion as the ratio of the segments in a pentacle is always equal PHI. For this reason , this symbol is not only considered as the ultimate expression of the Divine Proportion but also has always been praised and worshipped as the sacred symbol for the beauty and perfection associated with the goddess and the sacred feminine.
Now, this is pretty cool, isn’t it? To our amazement, how everything is so deeply intertwined; nature with humans, humans with arts and arts with nature again. Whether we realize it or not, it is always there ready to be revealed. These secrets of nature has been painted in colorful layers, sang and heard in sweet symphonies, seen in big jaw dropping structure and written in bundles. All we need is a curious mind, a pair if keen eyes and a dedicated heart to reveal it to ourselves and when you finally taste the magic, everything seems more beautiful, perfect and obviously meaningful. Enjoying every little things in life makes it adventurous and worth living.
