What is Sacred Geometry ?

One of my ( many ) reasons to study mathematics is my fascination for the geometry of crop circles. Appreciating the art in the crop circles does not mean that I have an opinion on how, or by who, the circles are made. I found out that the more you get into the subject the harder it is to answer that question. Only people that know very little about them will say without hesitation that all circles are 'hoaxes'. Hoaxes or not, they are absolutely beautiful.

Bert Janssen, a Dutch crop researcher, looked into the geometry of some circles.

(c) Bert Janssen. Click to enlarge.

See also: crop circle geometry, by Bert Janssen

Another crop circle researcher is Lucy Pringle.

The Godfather of crop circle research is Colin Andrews, he started the crop circle community.

To the point: sacred geometry.

It is rather common to use that word sacred geometry in the crop circle community. But it is also used in the so called ancient aliens theory which explains the sudden appearance of high tech architecture like the Pyramids in Giza by visitations of extra-terrestrials in that period.

The word sacred means:
- devoted or dedicated to a deity or to some religious purpose;
- pertaining to or connected with religion.
The word geometry means:
- a branch of mathematics concerned with questions of shape, size, position of figures, etc.

In mathematics the field of geometry has many branches, i.e. Eucledian, non-Euclidean, algebraic, analytical and so on, but there is no mathematical branch of geometry called sacred geometry. My conclusion is therefore that:

Sacred geometry is the geometry that has been used in the construction of religious artifacts.

By coincidence or not, it turns out that these geometries are often related to the golden ratio which is considered to have special aesthetic qualities.