No 34 The Stones of Power

Emerging from the Atlantis to the Sanctuary of the Spirit
Letter Nº 34

THE STONES OF POWER

VICTOR MANUEL GUZMAN VILLENA

In the enormous variety of sizes, forms, qualities, colors and degrees of purity, the stones are a solid expression of cosmogonies and the hierarchies of the universe, being able to serve to the human being like support and symbolic vehicle as knowledge, and also - just as all the sacred symbols as awaken consciousness and computer of the mind.

Following the hermetic principle that says; What is at the bottom is equal to the above, and what is above, is equal at what is at the bottom", we could affirm that as well as the stars are the reflection of the sensible manifestations of invisible energies that are in Metaphysical dimensions, in the same way the mineral kingdom is the terrestrial expression of those celestial energies in stony forms "they mature on the core of the Earth ".

As much the common stones, that they represent the ordinary stars; like semiprecious and the precious ones, related to determined zodiacal stars and constellations; and also the metals, that are in their interior and pick up the planetary energies, until arriving at the diamond, symbol of the angular stone. The minerals constitute a symbolic code and express a magical and sacred language that the antiquity knew from remote times. Is believe they attract certain energies, since they serve as altar and place of residence of the Gods; they are able to realise miracles and treatments, because they have supernatural properties, symbolic -magicians and; from always were used like amulets and talismans , and in many cases like oracles through which some towns have forged their destiny

Sacred stones

There are certain stones in all the traditions that particularly have been venerated, since the old ones considered that they owned a special meaning, they took them (as the own Grail) like house of the deity " betilos" ('Beith-el' in hebrew), symbols of the fundamental center that after the fall was hidden inside the core of the Earth (and of the stone), and whose power and brilliance settle down to the aim of the cycle.

This center that also is represented in the symbol of the Sacred Mountain, as the Meru mount, the Sion and until the Golgotha to mention solely some of the innumerable sacred mounts which they practically appear in all the traditions, considered by many towns as residence of the Gods and shine in all their splendor during his ascending phase of the cosmic cycle, but are hidden in the underground world (in the cavern and the stone) in its descendant phase.

Equal meaning of divine residence has the black stone that represents the mother goddess Cybele or the Omphalos of the oracle of Delphi who was represented by a stone, symbol of that center and dowelled of the Gods. This stone represented the point of communication between the sky, the Earth and the underground world, we must mention dolmens and menhires Celts, as well as the Egyptian obelisks that played a similar role.

Some of those betilos are meteorites, fallen stones of the sky as it is the case of "black stones" that they appear in the traditions, so one of the walls of the Kaaba in Mecca and the black stone of the Cybele. To these stones a divine origin is assigned, because the center that they represent is in truth an axis that serves like descent road for the cosmic energies to the earth and as ascent from the Earth to the sky.

Subtle energies

The innumerable stone sculptures and carved stones that they have represented the different Gods, spirits, angels and ideas in all the towns happen to represent the subtle energies and the live of the humankind, being understood what they mean and transferring his mere formal and material aspect to use them like support towards the knowledge of superior forces deposited in them, those that will be to transmit to they are able to receive them. The latest that we have mentioned with respect to the stone is valid for any sacred symbol in particular.

So it is the case of certain prehistoric axes that they appear everywhere and they are one more a demonstration of the presence, in the particular traditions, of certain symbols that belong to that we called the Fundamental Tradition, as it is the stone axe of Parucu Rama and the hammer of Thor, origin of masonic mallet, instrument able as much to thunder against as to illuminate the essence.

Not only symbols but transmitters

The pectoral ones, the rings and the crowns of kings and height priests who always were adorned with precious stones, transmit to their carriers the forces and qualities that they symbolize. I reproduce the text of a manuscript of century XVII about the symbolism of stones of the crown of San Eduard, in whom " is denominated; diadem that assures triumph".

These stones are:

1) Topaz: symbol of the virtues that must exercise the king;

2) Emerald: symbol of the justice of the king;

3) Sardonic: symbol of the elevation of the king;

4) Crisolita: symbol of the wisdom and the prudence of the king;

5) Chalcedon: symbol of the courage of the king;

6) Jacynth: symbol of temples and the sobriety of the king;

7) Jasper: symbol of the abundance that must enjoy the town;

8) Crisópalo: symbol of the search of the celestial things in the king;

9) Beryl: symbol of the detachment and the purity of the king;

10) Sapphire: symbol of the continence of the king;

11) Amethyst: symbol of the real function that the king does not have to leave;

12) Onyx: symbol of humility, charity and sincerity of the king.

Also the fossil concretions, the chorales and the pearls, that in diverse places were used with talismans and curative aims; just like bezoar or stones that form inside the bodies of the animal that in all place are considered of magical value; and the calls gamahez that is stones with reliefs of vegetable forms, animal, human or geometric that are drawn naturally in them and that have been venerated in all the traditions.

We can see how for the traditional thought the symbols of the nature like the stone, and the same with the vegetables, animal and the cosmos, are carrying ideas, forces and subtle energies that of some way in them are deposited. They constitute an order and an archetype model whose understanding can make that possible the man - that contains within himself all those energies and forces, because synthesizes them and governs -communicates with more real aspects and superiors of themself and finally obtains the finding of that mysterious stone that is, for who can transfer the appearances of the things, the unique true treasure - hidden in the deepest regions of our being to we could aspire.

The Perfect Proportions

THE PERFECT PROPORTIONS

VICTOR MANUEL GUZMAN VILLENA

Leonardo worked hard to get knowledge in all manifestations: the art, science, the technique… It was convinced that “the knowledge did not occupy place” and trusted blindly the capacity of the man to explore all horizons. After half century, his figure became a referring one for the contemporary culture. His spirit of curiosity and his thirst of knowledge continue astonishing many people who follow the same interests as him.

Just inaugurated the third millennium, the image of Leonardo invites to a reflection: In the era of the specialization of the knowledge, computer science and technology, has use a scholar, a total wise person like him. He was ahead of his time. He wanted to project without restrictions his ideas and discoveries, but his bold intelligence exceeded the limits of understanding of any human being of his time. Their dowries of visionary were amazing. For example, in the field of aviation. His studies on flying machines anticipated the effect of elevation and the one of propulsion, the stability and the balance. The wings that he outlined applied in the first airplanes. And his aerial sketches considers theoretical ancestor of the helicopter.

The man of the Vitruvio by Leonardo is a drawing by pen and ink, realised in a great leaf of paper (34 xs 24 cm.), that is conserved in the Academy of Venice, it was in its origin an illustration for a book titled Of Divine proportione (the divine proportion) of the Franciscan friar and innovating mathematician Luca Pacioli (1445 - 1517. He opened his colloquy on the divine proportion with a commentary on the proportions of the human body, observing that in the humanity.

All kinds of proportion and proportionality can be found and produced at the behest of god through the intimate mysteries of nature. Commentaries as this one makes clear why Leonardo would have found in Pacioli a mind in affection with his. For both the harmonic proportions of the human body were not more than one of the many intimate mysteries of the nature that reflected the perfection of  nature.

In his Studio (Real Academy of Venice), also known like the Vitruvio, Leonardo made a vision of the man like center of the universe, when being inside in a circle and squaring. The squared one is the base of the classic : the unit of the squared one is used in all the classic architecture, the use of the angle of ninety degrees are bases of the Latin- Greek architecture. In it an anatomical study is realized looking for the proportionality of human body, the classic or ideal canon of beauty. It follows the studies of Vituvrio"s architect (Marcus Vitruvius Pollio) Roman architect of century I AC, to whom Julio Cesar, orders the construction of military machines. In time of Augusts  he wrote ten volumes of his work “Of Architecture”, that deals with about the hydraulic construction, solar quadrants, mechanics and its applications in civil architecture and military engineering. The man of Vitruvio is a clear example of the globalizing approach of Leonardo that development very quickly during second half of the decade of 1480. He tried to tie, the architecture and the human body, an aspect of his interpretation of nature and the place of the humanity in the “global plan of  things”.

Leonardo empirically corrects the errors of the measurements of Vitruvio, obtaining the measures, surpasses the old canon and recreates an illustration of the descriptions of Vitruvio that is considered until today the most perfect. The drawing represents a man in two different positions that correspond two phrases of the text.  The one that has the legs together and open and the extended arms horizontally illustrates the sentences written under the drawing: As much apre I'omo nelle braccia quanto è sua altezza, that is to say, the width of the extended arms of a man is equivalent to its height. The other figure, with the separated legs and the raised arms, expresses a specialized vitruviana rule more: “If you open the legs as much as to diminish your weight in 1/14 and raise the extended arms until the ends of the middle fingers are at the level of the top of your head, you will find that the center of your members extended is the navel and that the space between the legs is an equilateral triangle”.

The Anatomy

In the human body the central point is, by nature, the navel. Then if we located a man lied down on his back, with the extended hands and feet and a compass centered in the navel, the fingers of their hands and their feet touch the perimeter of a circle that we draw up from that point. And as well as the human body produces a circular contour also can be formed a figure squared from him. Since if we measured the distance between the plants of the feet to the arms and the crown and applied that measurement to the extended arms we will see that the width is just as the height, as it happens to the flat surfaces that are totally square.

Part of the force of the drawing resides in the interrelation of abstract geometry and the resulting physical reality of the observation. The body of the man is schematic but their contours and muscles are perfectly drawn. The feet seem to rest on a inferior line of the squared or to press the curve of the circle. The double figure produces the sensation of movement that could be the one of a gymnast or the one of a man who raised and lowered the arms like wings of a bird. The body is drawn with the clean and austere lines of a diagram, but the face appears tried about a very different way. It is more intensely worked, more dramatically shaded; it watches to us with angry expression. The characteristics in this sense respond to an ideal or prototype.

And, nevertheless, the whole drawing seems to be a realistic representation of those abstract biometrics symmetries, so that the severe personage enrolled in the circle turns out to be, not a number, but somebody, a man of penetrating eyes deeply shaded and thickens hair and curly combing with a line in the middle. It can to say that is at least some elements of self-portrait in “Man of Vitruvio”, the figure that represents the natural harmony also symbolizes the man equipped with an extraordinary capacity to understand it, to the artist-anatomist-architect who was Leonardo da Vinci.

The recognition on the part of the Master Leonardo of the concept of the divine proportion was reflected in his diverse anatomical works. He had the idea to realize a great work with detailed reproductions of the human body including studies of compared anatomy and physiology. The depth and rigor of their investigations took him to indicate the first theories on the muscular spasms in the cardiac valves. Some wanted to see in these inclinations a morbid motivation, but the certain thing is that Leonardo stayed faithful to his destiny: to be explorer of the knowledge.

A good example is the series of drawings that created in the final stage of his life under the title of “Visions of the end of the world”, where the fantasy and the reason reached an incomparable level. Leonardo felt attracted by all the natural sciences. By means of his precursory anatomical investigations he tried to understand the most recondite secrets of the body and to enter the same marrow of the creation, and in this process he arrived at a new understanding of the health and the treatment, understanding that amazingly prophesies the holistic approach of many present doctors , he wrote, and believed that to maintain a good health the harmonious integration of the elements of the body and the soul was essential.Thus, he practiced dissections in a hospital, anatomical works, observations of the flight of the birds and studies on the nature and the movement of the water. Fantasy and reason: These, indeed, were the ingredients that fed the spirit on one of the most fascinating personalities of history: Leonardo da Vinci.

The studies that did Leonardo Da Vinci, for its universality of its certainties that have served to contemporaries practitioners of the alternative medicine, among them doctor Dale Schusterman, one of the most efficient and mighty therapists of the new generation, settles down the foundation of the philosophy that underlies his work with a language extraordinarily similar to the Leonardo: "The human body and the model of energy that surrounds it is a miniature replica of a more comprehensive and universal order. This doctor express in his study that the great traditions of the knowledge, including the Jewish mysticism like cabala is based on the acceptance of which the human has been created to image of a cosmic being. Therefore, the humanity would have to be able, like Da Vinci, to see the cosmic design of our human form. Aside from which our form reflects a superior model, our human qualities like beings are the same like that the divine ones, like a drop of water contains the same properties that the ocean.

Therefore the forces that govern the cosmos in the macro level govern to the individual in the micro level. The life is one, and all forms are interrelated in enormously complicated whole, although inseparable one. The underlying unit transforms itself into a bridge between the microcosm and the macrocosms.  The Master Da Vinci tried to understand that the totality of the form and the substance of the man to deepen in what is life, what is the health. Remember that the the paradigm of healing determines the quality of life. If you cultivate an awareness of the unity of body, emotions, mind and spirit, you will discover a deeper sense of the fullness of the divine proportion