Lecture: The Cosmos in Stone - The Influence of Cosmology in Gothic Cathedral Design
Gothic cathedrals are often looked upon symbolically as architectural images of the Heavenly Jerusalem. So to enter into such a cathedral is to walk among the stars. It is where God’s Will is done ‘on Earth as it is in Heaven’– a place in which ‘the Morning Star rises in your hearts’.
Modern cosmology is essentially a materialistic description of matter and its movements whereas medieval cosmology was a study by which the soul contemplated the eternal Reality of God – the ‘Divine Geometer’ – via the ordered Creation. It was with such a ‘way of seeing’ that the Master Mason would then emulate God the Creator through employing the eternal laws of mathematics and geometry to fashion a Gothic cathedral to be an image of the Cosmos with Jerusalem at its centre.
This slide-show talk will look at the underlying geometric design of the ground plan of Wells Cathedral and the way in which it embodies a Jerusalem-centred cosmological symbolism that is still used today in the symbolic layout of a Freemason lodge room. The design fuses pre-Christian cosmological symbolism with the Paschal storyline in such a way that Christ’s journey from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday follows an equinoctial Piscean middle way between the extremes of Cancer and Capricorn. The journey then culminates in the rising of the Bright Morning Star.
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Gothic cathedrals are often looked upon symbolically as architectural images of the Heavenly Jerusalem. So to enter into such a cathedral is to walk among the stars. It is where God’s Will is done ‘on Earth as it is in Heaven’– a place in which ‘the Morning Star rises in your hearts’.
Modern cosmology is essentially a materialistic description of matter and its movements whereas medieval cosmology was a study by which the soul contemplated the eternal Reality of God – the ‘Divine Geometer’ – via the ordered Creation. It was with such a ‘way of seeing’ that the Master Mason would then emulate God the Creator through employing the eternal laws of mathematics and geometry to fashion a Gothic cathedral to be an image of the Cosmos with Jerusalem at its centre.
This slide-show talk will look at the underlying geometric design of the ground plan of Wells Cathedral and the way in which it embodies a Jerusalem-centred cosmological symbolism that is still used today in the symbolic layout of a Freemason lodge room. The design fuses pre-Christian cosmological symbolism with the Paschal storyline in such a way that Christ’s journey from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday follows an equinoctial Piscean middle way between the extremes of Cancer and Capricorn. The journey then culminates in the rising of the Bright Morning Star.
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