Hidden Nature

is subservient to cosmic laws, creating 'correspondences' between

the two orders.

Until comparatively recent times, scientists and philosophers

recognized the creative energy of Nature as sacred. They saw the

way in which Nature's patterns and its complex interdependences

were so often expressed in very specific shapes and numbers as

proof of God at work. So they called these correspondences sacred

numbers and sacred geometry. It is certainly difficult to explain

away the complex mathematical and symbolic patterns in Nature as

purely accidental or fortuitous (see below, p. 66).

Patterns in motion

In the beginning was the vortex^8

All life is motion. Natural movement is not in straight lines, but in

spirals, or in spiraling vortices. Spirals are the actual shape of fluid

energy evolving order from chaos. Viktor Schauberger saw them as

the natural movement of life, from the structure of galaxies down to

the atom. The spiral is the most common vehicle for 'correspon-

dences' — as above, so below.

The spiral can develop in a number of different ways: as a vor-

tex, moving upwards or downwards, round in a circle, or doubling

back on itself. Whenever there is movement, spirals form, visibly

with water; but gases and even electrical fields express themselves

in spirals or doughnuts. Sinews, tissues, blood and bones and so

many formations in organic life are spiral in form.^9

Rhythms within the solar system

The relationship between Earth and Moon can be very subtle.

Professor Frank Brown of Northwestern University has shown

how the 'biological clocks' that initiate cyclical activities like rat-

running, and colour change in fiddler crabs are subject to lunar

rhythms. His better known experiment involved the shipment in

hermetically sealed containers of oysters from the sea shore at

New Haven, Connecticut to Evanston, Illinois, 2000 miles inland.

Within a couple of weeks they had adjusted the conspicuous

rhythm of opening and closing their shells to the lunar tides that

would have existed at Evanston had it been on a sea coast.

HIDDEN NATURE