Natures Word: Musings on Sacred Geometry

Duality - A Related Artwork

AUTHOR'S NOTE, 1/2022: I created this artwork almost 25 years ago at the start of my career as a graphic designer. Visually the work has certainly not withstood the test of time and frankly is a bit embarassing to me personally, but I am including it regardless as I believe the associated notes can still assist the reader in understanding how one can interpret and utilize the principles of sacred geometry in the creation of visual artwork.

click for image creditsOriginal artwork created by A. O'Connor for Nature's Word using Adobe Photoshop 5.0.

Clicking here will launch a new browser tab with a large version of the artwork. In this way, the observer may jump back and forth between text and image simply by clicking on the separate windows.

Symbolism within the piece:

The second piece of work that I created I shall call "Duality." There is little explanation which is required about the symbolism behind the elements of this piece, besides to say that the right and left sides of the image are meant to portray the opposing forces of any given duality. Note that the top and bottom ("hair" and "throat") of each of the heads becomes the weave which ultimately connects the two opposing ideals, thus hinting that the two forces, which may initially appear as irreconcilable, are in fact one. If we look through the image we can see that the are two sets of swastikas behind the faces, with each set swirling in opposing directions. In this way we once again represent the two opposing ideals, as the clockwise swastika has always represented life, growth, and evolution, whereas the counterclockwise swastika has been taken to represent the opposing ideals. On each half (right or left) can be seen a total of seven swastikas - one large central swastika with ever diminishing ones above and below it. If we started with the side length of the smallest swastika and multiplied it by the square root of two, we would find that the result matched the length of the next larger swastika. Then the side length of this swastika could be multiplied by the square root of two to find the side length of the next larger swastika. In this way the entire image is meant to convey not only the idea of the square root of two to the observer's conscious mind, but it actually emblazes the geometric representation of this number into their eye.

The basic grid that underlies the central weave in the image is also based on the square root of two proportion, although it does so in a slightly less obvious way. It is hoped that the way in which the various black, white and gray-tones switch back and forth as they cross the center dividing line in the image will impress an idea of the ultimate interchangability of the two dualistic forces.

Creative Process of the Piece:

As with Uroboros, I began this image by drawing the center weave with pen on paper, and then scanned this image into a computer. The face images were taken from a photographic image of the profile of a Japanese statue of a Buddha, which was found in Joseph Campbell's The Mythic Image. The swastika pattern was completely generated in Adobe Photoshop by using a line tool and grid. The reversing tones in the image were a result of sectioning off one half of the image and running it through an "antimatter" filter. I would estimate that the process to create this piece took a total of about four hours.