The Breath of the Compassionate

Last week we had the chance to sit in on a sacred geometry workshop with Ozayr's friend, Cynthia Lapp. I've talked about geometry on the blog before, but this was a great refresher.

In a massive oversimplification: at the heart of Christianity is a man and his story - Jesus. Art and architecture in the Christian tradition is very much representative of that - Christian religious art depicts the scenes of Jesus's story and his life, as well as that of Mary and other figures in the Christian story. The traditional architectural layout of a church is a cross.

Islam also has a story, that of Muhammad, but because such a large part of his message was that he was not God himself, but a messenger, iconography featuring him was severely discouraged for fear that his followers would begin to deify him. Even the Arabic word for God, "Allah," is genderless  - intrinsically inhibiting a human-like form of representation. For these reasons you don't see pictures or statues as a part of Islamic art or architecture.

So, how does one represent, artistically, the Divine in a tradition that doesn't relate to physical human forms or scenes of devotion? Well, this is where geometry comes into play.

Sacred geometry is not unique to the Islamic tradition, as it is used in just about every religious tradition in the world, but it is certainly embraced in Turkish art, architecture and decor. We began our class with lots of paper and a compass each.

It began with a line and a series of circles...

Which grew, and grew...

And grew!

At this point we were feeling pretty pleased with ourselves for what we had accomplished - look at all those pretty circles! Then Cynthia said, no, what you are making now is just the background. It is just the framework.... So we continued, connecting lines and making more circles... This illustration below shows the process very well how one gets from simple circles and shapes to elaborate geometrical patterns, and then the added ornamentation:

And you can see here what appeared on my own page:

Hexagons, stars, patterns... If you look closely you can see that the shape in yellow is actually two shapes, interlocked. Alone they look like this:

These two shapes inside one another (half of which expands whilst the other half contracts) is referred to as The Breath of the Compassionate - a name referring to the teachings of Ibn al'Arabi which expound the Divine Breath as the basis of creation. After all the intricate work of making the circles and measurements, it was a pretty amazing thing to see it appear on my page in front of me.

And now I appreciate the geometry everywhere... and it is even more beautiful....

This was a great chance for us to have a deeper understanding of how (before the age of computers!) artists and architects would put together these intricate and geometrically perfect patterns. If you think about it, even the mosques themselves are made of a series of circles and squares...

Beautiful, mashallah!