Sacred Geometry
Greece
Greece - The Thirteen Books of the Elements by Euclid
The underlying assumption in Euclidian geometry is that some things exist, and these are clearly stated as first principles in The Definitions. The Definitions start with the beginning of the visible world and extend to the first visible objects - lines, and the first plane figures visible to our senses - triangles..
- 1. A point is that which has no part.
- 2. A line is breadthless length.
- 3. The extremitities of a line are points.
- 4. A straight line is a line which lies evenly with the points on itself.
- 5. A surface is that which has length and breadth only.
- 6. The extremities of a surface are lines.
- 7. A plane surface is a surface which
lies evenly with the straight lines on itself. ....
- 15. A circle is a plane figure
contained by one line such that all the straight lines falling upon it
from one point among those lying within the figure are equal to one
another;
- 16. And the point is called the center of the circle.
Greece - Metaphysics of Aristotle
Book 12, Chapter 7 "....There is something that is always moving in a ceaseless motion, which is motion in a circle; and this is plain not in theory only but in fact. Hence the first heaven must be eternal. There is also something that moves it. for that which is moved while it moves others is but an intermediary. There is something that moves others without being moved , which is eternal and substance and actuality. It moves in this way. An object of desire and an object of thought move others without themselves [being] moved....
"That the final cause belongs among immovable things is proved by distinguishing between its different meanings. For the final cause is both the good for the sake of which something else is, and the good which is the end of action. In the second of these senses it is among the immovable things, though in the first it is not. It produces motion by being loved, and what it moves moves all things else.. So even if its actuality assumes the form of primary motion in space, then inasmuch as it is moved, it is capable of changing from what is, in place, if not in substance. But there is something that moves others while itself unmoved, and that actually exists, and it can in no way be other than it is. For motion in space is the first beginning of change, and motion in a circle is the first kind of motion; and this is the motion that the first mover produces. This being then necessarily exists, and because it is necessary, its mode of being is good. It is thereby a first principle....We say then that God is a living being, eternal, most good. And so life and unbroken and eternal existence are God's for this is God...." Aristotle, On Man and the Universe trans. Walter J. Black, Classics Club, 1943, pp. 34-36.