Sacred Geometry

Sacred geometry covers the figures that traditions have treated as carrying meaning as well as measure: the circle, the vesica piscis, the platonic solids, the flower of life, the Sri Yantra, the golden ratio and others. The underlying idea is that certain shapes and proportions express something true about the cosmos, and that building them into temples, mandalas and diagrams aligns the work with that order.

Building meaning into proportion is well attested in temple architecture, religious art and cosmological diagrams across many cultures, from Egyptian and Greek building to Islamic geometric ornament to the yantras of Hindu and Buddhist practice.

Some of this material is genuinely ancient, the platonic solids and their cosmic assignments go back to Plato's Timaeus, the geometry of Gothic and Islamic architecture is real and studied, while much of the popular "sacred geometry" of recent decades, with its flower-of-life lore and grand claims, is a modern synthesis. The atlas distinguishes the historical geometry from the modern movement built around it.

The entries describe each figure, its construction, and the meanings various traditions have attached to it, noting which are old and which recent.