There is no American geometry, no Russian geometry, no Chinese geometry because geometry is universal. There is only one geometry.

Ancient sages and modern physicists say that the universe is pure geometry. Sacred geometry is the practice of creating microcosms of universal geometry. As such, sacred geometry is a mysterious mirror reflecting the exterior universe inside your interior universe.

Experiencing geometry in this way naturally feels sacred. It is not religious or something to over-intellectualize, but the sacredness of geometry is definitely something to experience.

As an example of sacred geometry, for millennia geometers have been trying to reconcile the square and the circle, by length or area, trying to bring these two penultimate symbols of straight and curved, rational and transcendental, known and unknowable together.

Even though it was proven that “squaring the circle” exactly is impossible, it didn’t stop geometers from trying to find approximations because the drive to square the circle is part of the human soul. It is the desire to reconcile opposites, to find balance within duality and bring order from chaos.

The geometry you may have learned in school is concerned with axioms, theorems, proofs, tests, grades and so on. This approach to geometry has been a particularly effective means to stimulate rational thinking for more than two thousand years.

“Almost from the time of its writing and lasting almost to the present, Euclid’s ‘The Elements’ has exerted a continuous and major influence on human affairs. It was the primary source of geometric reasoning, theorems, and methods at least until the advent of non-Euclidean geometry in the 19th century. It is sometimes said that, next to the Bible, The Elements may be the most translated, published, and studied of all the books produced in the Western world.” -Bartel Leendert van der Waerden, 1903-1996

Sacred geometry has entirely different foci—the experiential and philosophical aspects of geometry. I find it amazing that we can explore the universe within using a pencil, paper, straightedge and compass. Why are these same tools so effective in exploring and creating in the world, and what does this say about the nature of reality? Where do the universe-within and the universe-without meet?

Sacred geometry is a particularly effective means of stimulating trans-rational thinking—the phenomenological world beyond rationality. Trans-rational thinkers retain their left hemisphere’s capacity to analyze, yet simultaneously treasure their right hemisphere’s capacity to synthesize and see interconnections between microcosm and macrocosm.