|
|
The Spiral Conspiracy
by Terri Glass
The spiral is a beautifully uniform shape that is repeated throughout nature from the microscopic spirochete to the perfect symmetry of the chambered nautilus to the great cosmic galaxy nebula. It is the most versatile pattern in nature curling around itself in a perfectly regular manner and growing from the center outward through a cautious route of expansion and exploration.
Likewise in art, spirals represent the symbol for growth and change. I often catch myself doodling spirals in my journal. Around and around my pen circles on the paper and my immediate response is a giddiness, an excitation that there are new possibilities to explore. Spirals represent to me, a curling energy of love, a feeling of wholeness and infinity. A few years back there were two books published on healing and the chambered nautilus appeared on both their covers. Our growth is our healing and our healing is our growth.
Spirals often occur in pairs, such as eddies in a stream and the horns of animals. The counterclockwise growth in a horn is usually balanced by a clockwise pattern of growth. DNA comes in left and right handed forms. This magical energy field of the spiral wants to produce its mirror image, a yin and yang of pattern.
Eddies are interesting spirals in nature for they represent a model for spatial enclosure. In wrapping around itself, it creates a protective environment, a unique withiness that is different from the rest of the moving stream. It exists from drawing energy from the mainstream and evolves by flowing against the tide, sort of like your basic anarchist movement against a polictical system that is still in control.
Sunflowers contain spirals and I have always been intuitively drawn to them. They seem to possess a mysterious intelligence about them. Through research, I discovered the whorl of the head of a sunflower is based on two sets of spirals, 21 to the right and 34 to the left. These numbers represent the Fibonacci series, a series of whole numbers 0, 1 ,2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 42, 55..... which obeys the rule that each term is equal the sum of the two proceeding terms. Many flower and pinecone shapes are variations of the Fibonacci series. The sunflower or the pinecone does not go about computing the mathematical formula, it just grows in a way that is most efficient use of space.
Spirals are capable of infinite expansion, but paradoxically they have a finite length. Peter Russell in the book,White Hole in Time sees human evolution in the shape of a spiral, each successive stage of development occurring about 1/10 the amount of time of the previous stage. With this rapid acceleration from the agricultural revolution to the age of information, we could find ourselves evolving so fast that the history of homo sapiens ends. According to the Mayan calendar and Terrence McKenna, the ethnobotanist and cultural historian, predicts this year to be 2012. Can we really be evolving this quickly?
How does the spiral conspire to inspire? Growth and change is essential, but the spiral utilizes space efficiently. The human population is booming and in many third world countries, its peoples cannot house and feed all of their inhabitants. Perhaps we can become like the eddy, whirling in our own energy, going against a culture that dictates to us to keep on consuming without concerning future generations. Hopefully, we can reach a new level of awareness, a love curling into itself, without the dependence from the external world for our happiness and prolong our evolution on mother earth.
|
|
