The Beautiful Necessity: Seven Essays on Theosophy and Architecture |
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Common terms and phrases
ancient ARCADE arch archi architect architectural proportion art of architecture artist Beautiful Necessity body Bramante building cathedral of Tours chord Christ circle Classic architecture column complexity composition cornice corresponding curved Diversity in Monotony dome Doric echoed Egypt Egyptian elements entablature equal and regular equilateral triangle expression façade fact FARNESE FARNESE PALACE feminine FRIEZE geometrical Gothic architecture Gothic cathedral Greek groups hand harmony height horizontal human figure idea Illus Illustration intervals Ionic IONIC ORDERS law of Balance LAW OF CONSONANCE law of Diversity law of Polarity LAW OF RADIATION LAW OF TRINITY leaf lines lintel major third manifestation masculine minor sixth multiples mystic nature octave ornament painting PALACE Parthenon perfect PISA CATHEDRAL plane proportion relation Renaissance repetition RHYTHMIC DIMINUTION Roman ROME sculpture sense square story symbol symmetry tecture temple theosophy things tion tower tracery TRANSEPT tration tree truth unity universal vault vertical vesica piscis
Popular passages
Page 50 - There is but one Temple in the World ; and that is the Body of Man. Nothing is holier than this high form. Bending before men is a reverence done to this Revelation in the Flesh. We touch Heaven, when we lay our hand on a human body...
Page 35 - Three is preeminently the number of architecture, because it is the number of our space, which is three-dimensional, and, of all the arts, architecture is most concerned with the expression of spatial relations. The division of a composition into three related parts is so universal that it would seem to be the result of an instinctive action of the human mind.
Page 23 - No doubt is now entertained that beauty is subject to laws and rules dependent on the nature of human intelligence. The difficulty consists in the fact that these laws and rules, on whose fulfilment beauty depends and by which it must be judged, are not consciously present to the mind, either of the artist who creates the work, or the observer who contemplates it.
Page 60 - ... to submit the freest play of form to simple figures of geometry in grouping, were among the objects he most earnestly pursued. At the same time his deep feeling for all things that have life, gave him new power in the delineation of external nature. The branching of flower-stems, the outlines of fig-leaves, the attitudes of beasts and birds in motion, the arching of the fan-palm...
Page 23 - Necessity which rules the world, which is a law of nature and equally a law of art, for art is idealized creation: nature carried to a higher power by reason of its passage through a human consciousness. Thought and emotion tend to crystallize into forms of beauty as inevitably as does the frost on a window pane. Art, therefore, in one of its aspects is the weaving of a pattern, the communication of an order and a method to the material or medium employed.
Page 23 - ... the bird and the bee) has "followed the rules without knowing them." Helmholtz says, "No doubt is now entertained that beauty is subject to laws and rules dependent on the nature of human intelligence. The difficulty consists in the fact that these laws and rules, on whose fulfilment beauty depends, are not consciously present in the mind of the artist who creates the work, or of the observer who contemplates it.
Page 22 - There is a Beautiful Necessity which rules the world, which is a law of nature and equally a law of art, for art is idealized creation : nature carried to a higher power by reason of its passage through a human consciousness.
Page 23 - ... introduces the element of pain, and in the supreme Perfection, in the LOGOS, no discord could arise; the One is the perfect chord of Being, of infinite melodious concords, all tuned to a single note, in which Life and Wisdom and Bliss are blended into one keynote of Existence. The sacrifice of the LOGOS lay in His voluntarily circumscribing His infinite life in order that He might manifest. Symbolically, in the infinite ocean of light, with centre everywhere and with circumference nowhere, there...
Page 59 - The lowest of the three major divisions extends from the tip of the chin to the base of the nose, the...