Sacred Geometry in Arts and Nature

There are many mathematical forms in nature, including various kinds of symmetry and patterns. Out of all of them, the spiral is probably the one that gets the most attention from artists and mystics. One of the reasons for it is that some people believe that the spiral is a part of “the sacred geometry,” which according to them embodies the spiritual truth of the universe. People have been fascinated by the spirals for a long time. You can find spirals in ancient art starting with the Bronze Age stones and paintings of Australian Aborigines.

Plants such as sunflowers and daisies are just some examples of the manifestation of the logarithmic spiral in nature. The seeds of sunflower are arranged in rows that represent two spirals that trace in the opposite directions. You can find the same double-spiral in the leaflets of pine cones, the segments of the skin of the pineapple and the florets of cauliflower.

If you count the number of spirals, you’ll find that these numbers have a pattern to them. Small sunflowers typically have 21 spirals that go in one direction and 34 in the other. Each of these numbers belongs to a sequence that looks like this: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55,…

Italian mathematician Fibonacci or Leonardo of Pisa first wrote down this sequence in 1202. For this reason, the sequence is called the Fibonacci sequence. No scientist has been able to explain why the seeds in the head of a sunflower follow this arrangement. One idea is that the Fibonacci sequence allows for the most efficient packing of the seeds into the head. The issue of the efficiency is a geometric problem.

You can see examples of the Fibonacci sequences in many of the architectural structures of the past, including The Acropolis that has the golden rectangle in the front and the square root of five in the plan view.