Have you ever wondered… about phi? I have. Phi has many names, like the golden ratio or the divine proportion. Mathematically, if you break something up into two parts, then the ratio between the whole and the bigger part should be the same as the ratio between the bigger part and the smaller one. That is phi put simply. Between two people in love, it reflects a harmonious relationship. Phi represents unity and pure beauty, a oneness or nothingness and yet everything all at once. It encompasses perfect harmonies. While phi itself is an irrational, or unending, number, it is commonly represented as 1.618. The idea of the golden ratio dates back more than 2,200 years. It exists all around and within us.
You can see examples of this golden principle applied in practical science throughout history. Egypt’s Great Pyramid harmonizes with the ratio. How about the Mona Lisa painting? Also golden. Countless examples exist across the universe. In the natural world, leaves and nautilus shells are common references that exemplify this idea.
We live and grow in a spiral universe, where, like the nautilus, growth is a radial and linear series of expansions and connections. This universal concept is known as the golden ratio.
-LeAura Alderson
This concept has even been applied to measure the harmonies of facial structures and body composition. How proportional are all of your parts? The bigger takeaway should be focusing on and measuring internal harmony. Do you feel like all of your bodily systems are functioning in harmony? Recognizing imbalances serves as a first sign of areas where you can grow and improve to better harmonize with all of your surroundings.
Are you spiraling upward or downward?
Are your spirals expanding or contracting?
Do you feel golden or olden?
One famous Swiss architect, Le Corbusier, applied these harmonic principles to his various designs. He believed in the mathematical order of the universe, once detailing it all as “rhythms apparent to the eye and clear in their relations with one another. And these rhythms are at the very root of human activities. They resound in man by an organic inevitability, the same fine inevitability which causes the tracing out of the Golden Section by children, old men, savages, and the learned.” It is something that we can all agree on.
Phi is closely tied to the Fibonacci sequence, but I will leave that exciting topic alone for a future post. I wonder when that will be. Maybe it is wise. Maybe it is dumb. Time will tell.
Stay wondrous, y’all :)