Hands-on Sacred Geometry workshop in Castle Rock, Colorado on Saturday, October 8, 2011!
I'm giving a day-long, hands-on* sacred geometry workshop from 10AM-5PM here at our new home in Castle Rock, Colorado. We're about 20-60 minutes south of Denver, depending on what part of the metropolitan area you might be driving from. Cost is on a sliding scale from $25-$75 based on need. Pre-registration is required, due to limited space around our dining room table! :-) Please contact me to register. I'll be happy to phone or skype with even more details. If we get more than a half dozen, I'll quickly find another local venue (I'm open to suggestions and hosting offers for this and future workshops.) Please bring a geometer's compass (here's a compass I recommend), straight-edge, scissors and cellophane tape; I will supply lots of 2D and 3D handouts including platonic solid fold-up patterns, plus LOTS of visual multimedia imagery, animation and more, along with plenty of theory on the mystical underpinnings of sacred geometry! :-) I typically bring most of my extensive library on the subject out for everyone to peruse; you can see most of them (except some of the rare and obscure titles) on the GeometryCode Amazon aStore here.

Our new postal address is now POB 192, Castle Rock Colorado 80104. (Our phone numbers and email addresses will stay the same.) I'm looking forward to giving lots of sacred geometry workshops and presentations in the greater Denver area (starting with the one on October 1st noted above) and meeting all our friends in this new-to-us state! If you live nearby (or know any fellow enthusiasts of mystical geometric symbolism), please contact me. Please note new date (Oct. 8, and not Oct. 1)

Wallpaper links fixed and new larger monitor sizes
Thanks to new subscriber (Jennifer B.) for letting me know that my wallpaper links were broken (which evidently happened when I was moving files around.) If any recent subscribers had a similar problem with the desktop image links (Sacred Geometry Wallpaper - Venus and Mars per Martineau) try this updated link (with the password that was emailed when you subscribed. (think Pi :-) While I was at it, I added two new larger sizes (since monitors keep getting bigger! :-)
1920 pixels by 1440 pixels
2850 pixels by 2200 pixels

I just made a "new" video clip with ten different geometric animations, run forward and backwards. I actually did these a few years ago, but just now getting around to uploading to YouTube. :-) These are a video montage of quick studies of geometric models in fairly low resolution. I'm planning to do a solar system fly-through video with animation using the models I made for my Martineau Solar System series at some point; you can see . There

The 10 sacred geometry animation clips, all created using POVray, (each played forward and then in reverse), are, in order:

• a 5x5 fractal matrix of 12 tori (plural of torus, the mathematical word for the donut shape) encircling 12 tori encircling 12 tori, contracting the matrix into 1 and back out again
• a stellated dodecahedron with duplicated outer spherical vertices
• a dodecadodecahedron (pentragrams on each of 12 outer faces) made from cylinders whose diameters expand and contract; the 'star' shape is still evident even when morphed almost beyond recognition
• an animated version of "Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus per Martineau" zooming in and out of the equilateral triangle tunnel made by planes of colorized tiles of Saturn's rings; more details at: http://www.geometrycode.com/gallery/martineau-solar-system-gallery/
• a bird's eye (fish eye lens) view of a hollow pyramid made from stacked spheres; each layer is stacked until the apex is reached and then unstacked back to the ground
• upon a nested hexagram base made of cylinders, a "Fruit of Life/Flower of Life" arrangement of crystal spheres is expanded and then contracted; this image and animation was created for the Global Sacred Geometry Conference in Sedona, Arizona in 2004
• A hexagonal spiral fractal of pearly metallic spheres is built up one concentric layer at a time and then dismantled in reverse back to the origin
• A spiral with multicolored shadows is built up one square layer of metallic spheres at a time and then dismantled in reverse back to the origin
• Over a tiled hexagonal floor, four tetrahedrons (red, yellow, turquoise and lavendar) converge to form a "merkaba" star tetrahedron (a.k.a. stella octangula by DaVinci) pair, then diverge back to their starting points
• A silvery/golden metallic icosahedron frame collapses while a stellated (multi-color faceted) version of it's dual (the dodecahedron) within a translucent spherical bubble expands, showing the geometric relationships; note how the vertices are identical at one point in the sequence; the animation then reverses as all 10 in this series do.

Since we've just finished a move from Oregon to Colorado, I'll be a bit lazy again this month and recycle a few items from a prior bulletin... plus a few new items...

I just made a new higher resolution version of a video clip showing how the Platonic Solids nest together in a unique way; this was originally uploaded to YouTube on March 31,2007. The capability of YouTube has improved over the past few years, so now you can see the video quality much closer to what I see on my computer.

This continuous loop rotates around a nest of the five Platonic Solids: Cube (red), Tetrahedron (yellow), Octahedron (green), Icosahedron (blue) and Dodecahedron (purple), returning to a cube oriented along the same x-y-z axes one third the size in each dimension as the outer cube. The transparency of the inner cube changes from 100% opaque to 100% transparent as the animation proceeds, which allows playing as an infinte recursive loop. Each "new cube" (as one loop of the animation completes) has 1/27th the volume of the original, since the side length is 1/3 of the starting cube.

Check out the related fractal videos below... Since we're already swimming in boxes (for our next move) I'll be a bit lazy and recycle a few items from last month's bulletin...

Solar System Geometries Per Martineau - calendars available again!

I just made a new 2012 version of the popular Martineau Series (a.k.a. Solar System Geometries Per Martineau) calendar for neighborhood astronomy/sacred geometry enthusiasts. This newly updated calendar (which I’Äôll make available every year) has 12 images from the Martineau Solar System and there's also a 2011 version (if you still need a calendar for this year). These images represent highly accurate geometric models of our solar system. They were inspired by the remarkable work of John Martineau, who wrote "A Little Book of Coincidence". Tiled images of planetary surfaces and related images form the backgrounds. Images are two or more orbits defined by simple 2D (circles, triangles, squares, pentagons, hexagons, octagons) or 3D geometries (e.g. tetrahedron, icosahedron, dodecahedron) typically with 99.9% or greater accuracy. The work picks up where Johannes Kepler's mystical exploration left off. More detail about these amazing solar system geometries (and information about prints, cards, clothing and other items) is here. You can buy the 2012 Solar System Geometries Per Martineau calendar here.

Love Blossoms - new calendar of exquisite flower close-ups!

Speaking of calendars, my wife (Nancy) has also created a 2012 calendar entitled "Love Blossoms" of exquisite close up photographs of flowers which has some really lovely images. The golden ratio (blossoms with pentagonal geometry) and Flower of Life (blossoms with hexagonal geometry) and more are encoded in these colorful and artfully composed photos. The calendar features this quote on the cover "The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers." — Thich Nhat Hanh. You can purchase Nancy's floral calendar here.

Video showing Geometric Wipe Patterns for Final Cut Pro

Our dear friend (and superb videographer/editor) Claudine Jordan (www.CezeFilms.com) generously donated a bit of her time to assemble a short video showing transition examples of how three of the HD patterns in my Geometric Gradient Wipe Patterns for Final Cut Pro can be used. She (and her colleague Tom Klodin) are in the midst of editing an amazing video featuring Leslie Smith, a young MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) fighter, which I knew nothing about prior to watching a rough draft of their fascinating documentary . The video shows how something as seemingly conflict-oriented as fighting, when practiced by someone whose focus is demonstrating compassion and interconnectedness can (once again) transcend form and reflect kind-spiritedness.

The excerpts from her documentary-in-progress show geometric (gradient wipe) transitions between clips of Leslie in Thailand, and adobe structures and panoramic landscapes of the desert southwest. Now (hopefully) those of you using Final Cut Pro who want to see how these transitions look with real video will have some examples to show how 3 of these transition patterns can be put to good use. I'll have a full complement of HD patterns available soon. Meanwhile... To order any of the 4 SD (Standard Definition) sets, just visit the main page here, or any of the four pages with the pattern collections:

Circulars, Triangulars, and More
Flower of Life and Rectangulars
Hexagonals
Pentagonals

If you are interested in sacred geometry workshops in the Denver, Colorado vicinity (in addition to the Oct. 1 workshop listed above) please let me know! Here's my list of current and past events. If you have a local, regional (or global for that matter, as long as my expenses are covered) venue to suggest, please let me know that too!

Here are a few videos featuring Buckyballs magnetic spheres which are quite versatile: fractal sphere, stellated icosahedron, space-filling lattice of Archimedean solids, and much more if you follow similar links to models made of magnetic spheres. Speaking of space filling solids, here's a neat video entitled "3D FRACTALS, STRINGS OF ORDER". In the category of wooden models, check out these Geodesic Domes and Polyhedra models by Ron Nelson of RND Modelshop.

Thanks to Scott Bultman (of Froebel USA / Red Hen LLC) for letting me know about two geometric toys: Kaleidograph Flora and Kaleidograph Crystal; both look like very fun and engaging ways to explore geometric symmetries. Scott (his site is Kaleidograph Toy) also sent me a links to WholeMovement and WholeMovement: Folding the Circle for Information which have some lovely models and videos.

If you would like to stay connected and network with kindred souls online, check out my pages on Twitter, LinkedIn and FaceBook. I'm enjoying connecting with both recent and long-time friends and colleagues and discovering new friends of friends :-)

As always, please let me know how I can support you. Please send me any interesting items about sacred geometry or related interests ... since everything is interrelated!

Thanks for your interest & support! :-)

Bruce Rawles
PO Box 192, Castle Rock, Colorado 80104
co-author of The Geometry Code screensaver
author of Sacred Geometry Design Sourcebook
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