Harmonic Ratios

A basic theory behind sacred geometry is that there are certain ratios that struck us sentient beings as harmonic. Musicians know these harmonic ratios and even if you don’t play you still probably squirm at a wrong note. So you know it in your heart and in your ear and in your gut and in the way you suddenly want to just get away from that awful sound. The basic 3 chords of each key are the fundamental (whatever chord you start with) and the fourth and fifth, which relate to the fundamental uniformly in every key.

One way sacred geometrists’ visually represent these harmonies is to draw vesica constructions. A vesica is the shape that results when two circles overlap. An imaginary line crossing horizontally through the center of the two circles is the “string” and where the circles intersect is the interval. In this blog post I present 3 vesica constructions: the fourth, the fifth and a random one (that hopefully does not accidentally correspond to anything harmonic). Can you spot the fourth and the fifth? Or, rather, can you see the wrong note? The fundamental is a circle, just a circle, so I didn’t add it.

Did you figure it out?

Scroll down for the answer.

 

# 2 is the fourth, # 3 is the fifth.

Do you think that  # 2 and # 3 look more harmonic?

Or conversely, do you think that # 1 looks less harmonic, like a wrong note?

I am truly interested in your opinion so please comment or message me.

Personally, I think that the fourth and the fifth do look a little more harmonic, but the random one looks kinda harmonic. As I explore sacred geometry I want to continue to question the drawings: Does it look harmonic to me? Does it feel harmonic? What if I change it a little bit so that it is slightly “out of tune?” Does it still resonate? Truthfully, I am interested in breaking the rules or at least bending them a bit. That’s how I roll.