Tagged: John Anthony West

“Schwaller decided to stay there at least for the while to take careful measurements and to see if they could find harmony and proportion written into the plan of Luxor. He was lucky because at that time, there was a French archaeological commission that was busy measuring the temple down to the millimeter so he had absolutely accurate, unchallengeable data to work with…[W]hat they were looking for specifically I should say is the famous golden section which is expressed mathematically as one plus the square root of five [divided by] two and this is a proportion that was known to the Greeks, used in the Parthenon, used by the Latin architects, and subsequently by the artists and architects of the Renaissance, and of course, was also supposed to be a Greek invention. Schwaller reckoned that if he could find the golden section or ‘phi’ as its written written into the plan of Luxor, well the case would be proved as it were and everyone would have to change their minds or so he fondly believed. Changing the minds of Egyptologists or archaeologists is not so easy. Not only did he find the golden section, but he also found the musical scales written into the measures and proportions of Luxor and he found them deployed with a sophistication and a complexity that far exceeded anything the Greeks had subsequently done. Effectively, he found the key to Egyptian architecture but fired by this, the mathematics led him first to the geometry and then into the symbolism and the mythology and finally, into the astronomy, medicine and all the rest…”

Source: From John Anthony West’s lecture titled “Symbolist Egypt & Frequency.”

“[I]n 1937, with his wife, [R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz] just happened to go on a trip to Egypt that was mainly for fun, it was a holiday, and in the Temple of Luxor…he had this moment of what poets call ‘inspiration’ and mystics call ‘revelation’ and scientists call ‘hypothesis formation’ because they want to make it sound as dull as possible. He had a hypothesis formation that this extraordinary temple was an exercise in harmony and proportion. Now, harmony and proportion, at that time and still in many textbooks will be given as gospel as it were, the inventor of harmony and proportion was the Greek — the legendary Pythagoras. It doesn’t matter that Pythagoras, according to his own biographers, supposedly spent 22 years studying under the [black] priests of Egypt, but the Greeks and Pythagoras in particular, supposedly [are] responsible for the invention of harmony and proportion. Schwaller had this notion, walking through this very ruinous temple, that it was in and of itself an exercise in harmony and proportion. Schwaller always believed or had kept an open mind to the notion of more ancient knowledge and lost civilizations and that sort of thing. If he could prove that, Schwaller would push the understanding of harmony and proportion back at least 1,000 years because the Temple of Luxor was built about 1,000 years before Pythagoras and by extension, it would push it much further back because the Egyptians of the New Kingdom around 1300 B.C. obviously didn’t invent this out of the blue. Virtually every building in Egypt, including pyramids of the Old Kingdom and the temple complexes of the Old Kingdom, are similar as it were — they have a similar feel about them that Luxor has. So a demonstration that harmony and proportion were known to the Egyptians would be a major scholastic revolution as it were.”

Source: From John Anthony West’s lecture titled “Symbolist Egypt & Frequency.

“Egypt was a one issue civilization and in fact, when you look beneath the surface — which is not so easy to do — of all of the major religions and all of the tribal and traditional societies that we [Westeners] in our arrogance call ‘primitive’ — which are not primitive at all but simply non-intellectualized, not philosophical as it were, but profoundly wise and deeply understanding — all of them are based upon a single issue or a single understanding. The opposition would say belief. I don’t think it’s belief. I think it’s understanding, knowledge, wisdom and that is the potential immortality of the soul. Without that, we might as well eat, drink and be merry because tomorrow not we may die, but we most assuredly will and it won’t matter a damn. The understanding that we are, by nature, potentially, divine is what’s at the basis of vitrually every true civilization that ever existed and without that understanding, there is no civilization — there’s just progress, which is, as far as I’m concerned, the antithesis of civilization. It doesn’t have to be, but at the moment, it’s pretty much that.” — John Anthony West

Source: from the lecture Symbolist Egypt & Frequency.

“Architecture does in stone what music does in sound. In other words, it’s visual vibrations that are affecting us and we’re sort of inside the symphony as it were when we’re inside a sacred space or any space matter of fact. We are being affected emotionally by the vibrational nature of that particular building. So when we go into an Egyptian temple, we are resonating to its harmonies and proportions and so on. The great sages of the past understood that each of the cosmic principles, which are the gods as it were — the gods are not some strange animal headed beings — are the embodiments of cosmic principles, and those cosmic principles are all in one way or another inextricably related to certain numbers, an interplay of numbers that give rise to geometry, harmony, proportion and measure. And when you know the secrets of the numbers as it were and secrets of the principles, you are able to produce a building that will evoke within the emotional center of the beholder that particular principle. So even though we’ve virtually lost that knowledge…when you go into a Hathor temple, you get a certain reaction to it. It’s you reacting to Hathor. When you go into a Horus temple, your reaction is very different and varies for different people..but there’s no mistaking the different emotional affects of these temples just as there’s no mistaking the difference between of the emotional affect of a Bach entrada and Led Zepplin rock song. They’re very different from each other and the reason that they’re different is because of their harmonies and the numbers that are involved within them. So when we go to Egypt or to any sacred space (e.g. Chartres Cathedral) or a very secular or unsacred place, modern architecture is mostly done by people whose only god is Mannon and Mannon doesn’t have many numbers associated with his particular reign, so most modern architecture either leaves us cold, gets us angry or gets us tired because whoever did them, did not possess secrets of the numbers. When we go to Egypt, our reaction is totally different because we are literally in tune with the Gods.” — John Anthony West

Deeeepppp….

Source: from the lecture titled “Symbolist Egypt: The Meaning Behind The Magic.”

“In terms of the sacred science…it is vibration that produces matter [and] it is also vibration…that produces the affect that art has upon us — all art.” — John Anthony West

Source: from the lecture titled “Symbolist Egypt: The Meaning Behind The Magic.”

“Egypt expressed her wisdom, not in formula and philosophical disposition as we do. She expressed her wisdom in art and architecture. And as I said, there is no way to communicate that except to go to Egypt and experience it…The only way to understand the inner content, the emotional power that sacred architecture can exercise upon you is in fact to go to Egypt and experience it for yourself…Anybody who is not dead at the center comes back from Egypt understanding what a real civilization was and how it comported itself.” — John Anthony West

Source: from the lecture titled “Symbolist Egypt: The Meaning Behind The Magic.”

“…through years and years, decades of study, I realize that what I do is constructive destruction. It’s not just destruction for its own right, but it is in fact, to help prepare for these new seeds to shoot up and produce the kind of renaissance that gives rise to a true civilization as opposed to progress. Progress, as far as I’m concerned, without spirit, is simply shiny barbarism. This is the world that we currently live in and it’s a very frightening and confusing world.” — John Anthony West

Source: from the lecture titled “Symbolist Egypt: The Meaning Behind The Magic.”

“I like to use analogies and metaphors. Why is Egypt so important? What makes Egypt so important? Here are some other thoughts along those same lines [of an earlier speaker] and in no sense contradictory and that is, there is kind of a progression that leads you to wisdom. I liken it to a supermarket for example. All of the stuff that’s on the shelves — that’s data. When you select some of the data and put it into your basket, it becomes information. When you take it through the checkout counter and you pay for it, sometimes through the nose, it becomes knowledge. When you take that stuff home and you make use of it, it becomes understanding. And when you assimilate your understanding [and] you digest it, it becomes energy or power and then it becomes wisdom. That’s the progression basically. However, if you start out with junk data, you end up with junk wisdom. So [if] what you’ve picked off the [shelf] leads you to rationalism or materialism or Darwinian evolution, then you have acquired junk wisdom. So the trick is to pick the right data off the shelf in the first place and this is not so easy.” — John Anthony West

Source: from the lecture titled “Symbolist Egypt: The Meaning Behind The Magic.”