Architecture, Mysticism and Myth - With Illustrations by the Author

W. R. Lethaby

• Publisher: Obscure Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781528709446
• eBook ISBN: 9781528767651
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: History of Architecture

First published in 1892, this vintage book looks at religious, mystical, and mythological influences on architecture throughout history and from all over the world, exploring in detail similarities, design, purpose, and much more. Profusely illustrated throughout, "Architecture, Mysticism and Myth" will appeal to those with an interest in religious architecture and would make for a worthy addition to any collection. Contents include: "The World Fabric", "The Microcosmos", "Four Square", "At the Centre of the Earth", "The Planetary Spheres", "The Labyrinth", "The Golden Gate of the Sun", "Pavements like the Sea", "Ceilings like the Sky", "The Windows of Heaven and Three Hundred and Sixty Days", and "The Symbol of Creation". Many vintage books such as this are becoming increasingly scarce and expensive. It is with this in mind that we are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with the original text and artwork.

CHAPTER VI

THE PLANETARY SPHERES

‘And after shewed hym the nyne spheris

And after that the melodye herd he,

That cometh of thilke speris thries thre;

That welleys of musyke ben and melodye

In this world here and cause of armonye.’—CHAUCER.

THE number seven is written on the sky. What time the seven planets were counted and individualised is beyond all history; probably not two in a hundred even now guess at any other planet than Venus; probably not two in a thousand have ever seen Mercury, certainly not without a telescope; yet all of them we find distinguished by names and grouped together as errant bodies among the fixed stars in the earliest traditions:—(1) The Sun, (2) the Moon, (3) Mars, (4) Mercury, (5) Jupiter, (6) Venus, (7) Saturn.

The first known and named probably of all constellations, the Great Bear, always visible above the horizon, ‘never bathing in ocean,’ as Homer has it, is a group of seven. The lesser Bear has the same form, which is repeated a third time by the great square of Pegasus, and the three bright stars in Andromeda and Perseus. Seven also are the symmetrical and splendid stars of Orion. In France, the Pleiades are still called the ‘seven stars,’ and the north is named the Septentrion, from the stars of the Great Bear.

The planets gave their names to the days of the week, and still distinguish them all over the world from France to China, and they are but slightly obscured for us by their northern names.

The seven days of the week are the nearest whole number to one-fourth of a month, a moon’s quarter. The two days completing the month of thirty days were in Assyria intercalary.

Immense has been the influence of this magic number in philosophy, material and metaphysical. The life of man has been divided into seven ages. The first seven are the years of infancy. At three times seven—twenty-one—we become ‘of age.’ Three times twenty-one is the ‘grand climacteric;’ and seventy years is put as the time to die.

So the life of the world was in Middle Age histories divided into seven eras, of which we are in the last. There were seven material heavens; this middle world was divided into a like number of zones or ‘climates,’ and the under world into as many depths. In the philosophy of the schools every factor of the universe had a sevenfold division.

In the Cursor Mundi it is remarked that there are seven holes in the head, ‘for maister sterres are there seven.’

So absorbing has been the nature of this number, that where groups occur, of anything from four to a dozen, let us say, they are almost sure to be ‘seven sisters,’ or ‘seven brethren.’ Sevenoaks, the seven hills of Rome, or of Constantinople, the seven holy cities of India, the seven architectural wonders of the world. Mr. Ruskin tells us he found great difficulty in limiting his ‘seven lamps’ so that they should not become eight or nine.

The seven planets have had a potent influence over architecture and the arts.

The sun, the moon, and the five other planets were not only observed to move independently of the ‘sphere’ of the fixed stars, but independently of each other, in varying periods. As the whole moving heaven of the ‘fixed stars’ was a solid ‘firmament’ studded with stars revolving around a pivot, the earth mountain; so, as the system was perfected, other transparent spheres had to be imagined, one for each planet, carrying it around in its due time. The heavenly mountain of the gods is thus either entirely celestial, the exterior of our firmament, and the whole seven successive domed heavens; or it is the central mountain of this lower world, the prop and pole of the heavens, divided into seven stages, one to each planetary sphere. Practically it is impossible to keep these two notions separate, and to say which is the Olympus—the stepped mountain supporting the heavens, or the seven-fold heavens itself. Dr. Rink, speaking of the Esquimaux, says: ‘The upper world, it would seem, may be considered identical with the mountain, round the top of which the vaulted sky is for ever circling.’ Olympus, to the Greeks, was many peaked, or of many layers, like the stratum without stratum of the Iranian mountain of the stars. By the addition of a sphere for the fixed stars, and an outer and immovable envelope, the seven became nine heavens.

In the Vedas there are seven heavens. ‘In the Hindu cosmogony,’ writes Sir G. Birdwood, ‘the world is likened to a lotus flower floating in the centre of a shallow circular vessel, which has for its stalk an elephant, and for its pedestal a tortoise. The seven petals of the lotus flower represent the seven divisions of the world, as known to the ancient Hindus, and the tabular torus, which rises from their centre, represents Mount Meru, the ideal Himalayas (Himmel), the Hindu Olympus. It ascends by seven spurs, on which the seven separate cities and palaces of the gods are built, amid green woods and murmuring streams, in seven circles placed one above another.’ Here is a tree which perfumes the whole world with its blossoms, a car of lapis lazuli, a throne of fervent gold; ‘and over all, on the summit of Meru, is Brahmapura, the entranced city of Brahma, encompassed by the sources of the sacred Ganges, and the orbits in which for ever shine the sun and silver moon and seven planetary spheres.’ The old Japanese poems translated by Mr Chamberlain speak of a mountain at the ‘earth’s acme or omphalos, which extended even to the skies; on its summit was a beautiful house.’

The modern view in Siam is similar. Mr. Carl Bock writes: ‘According to Laosian idea, the centre of the world is Mount Zinnalo, which is half under water and half above. The sub-aqueous part of the mount is a solid rock, which has three root-like rocks protruding from the water into the air below. Round this mountain is coiled a large fish of such leviathan proportions that it can embrace and move the mountain; when it sleeps the earth is quiet, but when it moves it produces earthquakes.’ ‘Above the earth and around this great mountain is the firmament, with the sun, the moon, and the stars. These are looked upon as the ornaments of the heavenly temples. Above the water is the inhabited earth, and on each of the four sides of Mount Zinnalo are seven hills, rising in equal gradations one above the other, which are the first ascents the departed has to make.’

The planets themselves, which were affixed to their several spheres, were apparently thought of as having the nature of self-lustrous metals or gems, as they were perceived to be diversified in colour—the golden sun, the silver moon, the red Mars of war. Thus the names of the several precious stones were given to the spheres.

In the Mohammedan scheme, as we have seen, the seven spheres have these distinctive colours. The first is described as formed of emerald; the second, of white silver; the third, of large white pearls; the fourth, of ruby; the fifth, of red gold; the sixth, of yellow jacinth; and the seventh, of shining light.’

Such being the conception of a holy mountain whose top reached to heaven; we need not wonder, we may expect to find many local identifications of it in the inaccessible snow-capped mountains of Pamir or the Himalayas; in Ararat, Parnassus, and the Thessalian Olympus. Inferior sites would also be artificially improved, thus Lenormant, in his article on Ararat and Eden (Contemp. Rev., Sept. 1881), thinks it clearly proved that Solomon and Hezekiah had this idea in the distribution of the waters which flowed from under the Temple in four streams, one of which was named Gihon. He quotes Obry: ‘The Buddhists of Ceylon have endeavoured to transform their central mountain, Peak of the Gods, into Meru, and to find four streams descending from its sides to correspond with the rivers of their paradise.’ And Wilford, in vol. viii. of ‘Asiatic Researches,’ says the early kings of India were fond of raising mounds of earth called ‘Peaks of Meru,’ which they reverenced like the holy mount. One of these near Benares bore an inscription which makes this clear. A country was divided into seven, nine, or twelve nomes or provinces, and the people into as many castes or tribes.

The Chaldeans had early perfected this universe of seven spherical strata, and with them we have stupendous architectural structures, known as Ziggurats, erected, ‘as an imitation or artificial reproduction of the mythical mountain of the assembly of the stars’ (Ararat and Eden).

‘Now, the pyramidical temple is the tangible expression, the material and architectural manifestation, of the Chaldaio-Babylonian religion. Serving both as a sanctuary and as an observatory for the stars, it agreed admirably with the genius of the essentially siderial religion to which it was united by an indissoluble bond’ (‘Chaldean Magic’).

These structures belong to a class not properly temples. They are rather Mounts of Paradise—terraced altars. ‘God Thrones’ might best explain their purpose. They represent the world from without as a seat rather than a shrine for the Deity. If the word temple is here used, it is only in deference to custom.

Herodotus describes the Ziggurat of Babylon thus: ‘The sacred precinct of Jupiter Belus, a square enclosure two furlongs each way, with gates of solid brass, was also remaining in my time. In the middle of the precinct there was a tower of solid masonry, a furlong in length and breadth, upon which was raised a second tower, and on that a third, and so on up to eight. The ascent up to the top is on the outside by a path which winds round all the towers. When one is about halfway up, one finds a resting-place and seats, where persons are wont to sit sometime on their way to the summit. On the topmost tower there is a spacious temple.’

This great metropolitan ‘God Throne,’ Perrot gives as the type of the Chaldean temple; and from the mounds and the temples depicted on the slabs, he has, together with the architect M. Chipiez, made a series of restorations in the volumes on the Art of Babylon and Assyria. He says: ‘In spite of the words of Herodotus, M. Chipiez has only given his tower seven stages, because that number seems to have been sacred and traditional, and Herodotus may well have counted the plinth or the terminal chapel in the eight mentioned in his description.’

Mr George Smith, indeed, deciphered a tablet which actually gave the dimensions of this Ziggurat for all the seven stages. The bottom stage was 300 feet square and 110 feet high; the second, 260 feet sloping upwards, and 60 feet high; the third, 200 feet, and 20 feet high; fourth, fifth, and sixth, 170, 140, 110 feet respectively, each 20 feet high. And the top stage, the seventh (evidently the sanctuary, from its change of form), was oblong, 80 by 70 feet, and 50 feet high; the whole height being thus 300 feet, exactly the same as the base. These dimensions are set out in the drawing that forms the frontispiece, which is believed to be the first published drawing founded on these measurements; that of Perrot and Chipiez being entirely conjectural. However doubtful the translation into English measure may be, the form and proportion remain, and the result is a majestic and mysterious suggestion of volume and stability.

Herodotus also gives an account of the city and palace of Ecbatana of the Medes: ‘This fortification is so contrived that each circle was raised above the other by the height of the battlements only. The situation of the ground, rising by an easy ascent, was very favourable to the design. But that which was particularly attended to is that, there being seven circles altogether, the king’s palace and the treasury are situated within the innermost of them. The largest of these walls is about equal in circumference to the city of Athens. The battlements of the first circle are white; of the second, black; of the third, purple; of the fourth, blue; of the fifth, bright red. Thus the battlements of all the circles are painted with different colours; but the two last have their battlements plated, the one with silver, the other with gold.’

Erech, the old sacred city of the Chaldeans, is called on a tablet ‘The City of the Seven Zones or Stones’ (Sayce).

At Borsippa, close to Baylon, there was a very ancient terraced temple or Ziggurat; it was restored by Nebuchadnezzar, and an inscription of his is preserved, which says: ‘I have repaired and perfected the marvel of Borsippa, the temple of the seven spheres of the world. I have erected it in bricks which I have covered with copper. I have covered with zones, alternately of marble and other precious stones, the sanctuary of God.’ Rawlinson writes: ‘The ornamentation of the edifice was chiefly by means of colour. The seven stages represented the seven spheres, in which moved, according to ancient Chaldean astronomy, the seven planets. To each planet fancy, partly grounding itself upon fact, had from of old assigned a peculiar tint or hue. The sun was golden; the moon, silver; the distant Saturn, almost beyond the region of light, was black; Jupiter was orange (the foundation for this colour, as for that of Mars and Venus, was probably the actual hue of the planet); the fiery Mars was red; Venus was a pale Naples yellow; Mercury, a deep blue. The seven stages of the tower-like walls of Ecbatana gave a visible embodiment to these fancies. The basement stage, assigned to Saturn, was blackened by means of a coating of bitumen spread over the face of the masonry; the second stage, assigned to Jupiter, obtained the appropriate orange colour by means of a facing of burned bricks of that hue; the third stage, that of Mars, was made blood-red by the use of half-burned bricks formed of a red clay; the fourth stage, assigned to the Sun, appears to have been actually covered with thin plates of gold; the fifth, the stage of Venus, received a pale yellow tint from the employment of bricks of that colour; the sixth, the sphere of Mercury, was given an azure tint by vitrifaction, the whole stage having been subjected to an intense heat after it was erected, whereby the bricks composing it were converted into a mass of blue slag; the seventh stage, that of the Moon, was probably, like the fourth, coated with actual plates of metal. Thus the building rose up in stripes of varied colour, arranged almost as Nature’s cunning arranges the hues of the rainbow—tones of red coming first, succeeded by a broad stripe of yellow, the yellow being followed by blue. Above this the glowing silvery summit melted into the bright sheen of the sky’ (Ancient Monarchies).

The order in which the stages encircled one another spreading outwards to the base, represented in correct sequence the orbits of the planets, as was supposed, around the earth. The small orbit of the moon at the top; the sun taking the place of the earth, as it appears to journey through the twelve signs of the year; and Saturn last of all. Generally, however, as in the walls of ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Frontispiece
• Preface
• Contents
• Introductory
• I. The World Fabric
• II. The Microcosmos
• III. Four Square
• IV. At the Centre of the Earth
• V. The Jewel-Bearing Tree
• VI. The Planetary Spheres
• VII. The Labyrinth
• VIII. The Golden Gate of the Sun
• IX. Pavements Like the Sea
• X. Ceilings Like the Sky
• XI. The Windows of Heaven and Three Hundred and Sixty Days
• XII. The Symbol of Creation