FGK: THE LILY AND THE ROSE

THE LILY AND THE ROSE

by John Sayer

While Ron Jones and I were surveying the formation on Wherwell Hill, Hampshire in 1995, something nagged at me about the design. We could see that the underlying geometry was that of one vesica piscis overlapping another at 90º, but I was sure I had seen this construction somewhere before.

Then by a quirk of fate, coincidence or synchronicity, finding myself at a loose end for an hour at Waterloo station this summer, I went for a wander down a side street and came across a secondhand bookshop. In the window was a volume I'd looked at some years ago: John Michell's City of Revelation Ironically, the shop was closed, but I pushed a note through the letterbox asking for it to be reserved for me and picked it up the next day.

A quick flick through, and there it was on page 88 - the basic plan of the Wherwell Hill formation. It wasn't an exact match, but close enough.

John's caption to the illustration reads, "Two vesica with their longer axes, each 1746 feet in length, placed at right angles, enclose a circle with diameter 1008 and circumference 3168, the dimensions of the Holy City. This figure is the perfect symbol of the cosmic temple as equilibrator of forces."

Page 99 held yet another surprise. Here was the design of the "flower" formation which appeared at Froxfield, Wiltshire in 1994.

The meaning is a little more complex (and requires a reading of the book), but is involved with the significance of the number of fishes (153) caught by Simon Peter in the account given in John 21.11. This design represents "St. Peter and six disciples enter a boat" (the central circle representing Simon Peter and the surrounding six, the disciples).

The third illustration in City of Revelation which seemed to be relevant - to the 1996 season in particular - is to be found on page 70.

As John Michell explains, "Of the various systems of proportion that find their synthesis in the plan of the canonical temple or city, each has its peculiar relevance to the cosmic scheme...the numbers 5 and 6, the hexagon and the pentagon, seen here in Mayananda's drawing as the lily and the rose, were formerly considered as polar opposites, positive and negative respectively. Five has always been regarded as the number of humanity...principally on account of the fact that the proportions of a man's body may be interpreted as conforming to the ratio of the golden section, 1.618...six is the number by which, it is said, the universe was made...The hexagon is a cosmic figure, chiefly associated with the inanimate form in nature, the crystal, the snowflake, the cells of a honeycomb."

Two formations in particular this year seem to represent the lily (Oliver's Castle) and the rose (Goodworth Clatford). Turning to J. C. Cooper's An Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Traditional Symbols, we find the following: "Lily - purity, peace, resurrection, royalty. Sacred to all Virgin Goddesses...also represents the fertility of the Earth Goddess and later of the sky gods...fruitfulness...the feminine principle.
Rose - both heavenly perfection and earthly passion; the flower is both Time and Eternity, life and death, fertility and virginity...The rose also typifies silence and secrecy...is wisdom...also the rebirth of the spiritual after the death of the temporal...
In the Occident the rose and Iily occupy the position of the lotus in the Orient... Lotus - solar and lunar, birth and death, appearing with Egyptian and Hindu sun gods and with semitic moon gods...the Flower of Light, the result of the interaction of the great creative forces of the fire of the sun and the lunar power of the waters...it symbolises spirit and matter as fire and water, the source of all existence...primal and ultimate container and receptacle of life and whatever there is of the divine in human life."

Could all this be "revelation"?

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