By Ian Goudie, President

In its practical form, the Tree Of Life is a vision of sustainable community aimed to connect participants with Nature. Every atom in our bodies is derived from Nature and it is to her that our bodies return after death. In this crazy age of materialism we view the Tree Of Life as a means to demonstrate ways to reduce our ecological footprint on the planet. In other words we accept responsibility for healing the planet by affecting how we take ourselves out into the world. This is all happening when communities and countries all over the world seek to understand sustainable practices.

At its structural root, the Tree Of Life or Kabbalah is a geometric pattern that is omnipresent in the universe. It arises out of the Flower Of Life, and has been recorded on ancient Egyptian temples. It is important to know that this glyph, and its associated sacred Hebrew symbols, is omnipotent and acts on our energy fields in mystical ways. Sacred geometry appeals to both the rational and the intuitional side of our brains creating a pleasing effect when we contemplate the imagery. In other words, it can be used as a meditative yantra to create deep spiritual effects that are beyond our rational thoughts. 

The Kabbalah

The Tree Of Life or Kabbalah is an aspect of sacred geometry as well as a huge esoteric practice of spiritual mysticism. It is a very large and deep body of esoteric spiritual teachings going back to the extent of recorded human history. Kabbalah comes from the ancient word qibel which means “to receive” or “that which is received”. The layout of the Tree Of Life is a map of the universe and yet an archetypal pattern or template of the human body through which being takes form. It is one of the most ancient mystical systems, and a precursor to many modern day religious, most notably Judaism. Many consider it was the knowledge given to Moses on Mount Sinai where he experienced God as a burning bush. We know that the Tree Of Life glyph appears on temples from ancient Egypt. It is told that Archangel Metatron gave the Kabbalah to Adam who in turn passed it on down to Noah and then to Abraham who emigrated to Egypt where Moses eventually received his teachings.

Within the Tree Of Life lies the means to contact the Divine and the powers of the universe. It is considered suited to the Western mind because it is a system that allows us to see some organization of the powers and energies of the universe, and how they play upon us. Because the microcosm is a reflection of the macrocosm, it is a map through which we can progress and evolve spiritually. Manifestation into the physical world can be viewed as a set of stages as energies acquire greater densities, and an analogy is the manner of steam condensing into water and then ice. The energy came forth from nothingness and densified in stages, with the physical universe being the tenth and final stage. Each stage comes from that which was before thus within each stage is the seed of all the energy and forces that came before. In the Tree of Life these stages are the spheres or sephiroth, and the movement through these stages is known as the path of the flaming sword. In this way we could say that each sphere is essentially a level of consciousness that resides within each of us. In each level are many of our hidden abilities and potentials. Those who deepen in Kabbalistic teachings essentially are climbing the Tree Of Life is order to retrace the path of divine energy back to its source.

Unified Principles

Recently I experienced unification of my understandings of universal energy, and this communication attempts to articulate this. Out of Nature flows everything in my body-mind yet I witness the progressive deterioration of the environment under the auspices of ‘development’. I find this very hard. Buried inside the environmental crisis is the spiritual crisis; most of humanity has lost its contact with the sacred. I want to talk about the sacred here.

I have been constructing a “sacred” building, more specifically a building incorporating sacred geometry, a manifestation that arose from a vision quest. But I want to communicate what sacred geometry is. While I could say that it is based on omnipresent geometric principles on which the universe was built (by God), it probably would still not mean a lot to most people. So in here I am attempting a more mythic approach.  

Kundalini is often depicted as a serpent coiled at the base of the spine that rises through the central channel and energy centres (chakras) during spiritual awakenings 

We of course will always struggle with the concept of “in the beginning” but from a universe perspective, this is conceived of as a singularity – an infinite amount of mass/information/material in an infinitesimally small space. This science-based definition is related to black holes – white holes are analogous to God as Unity who created its opposite in order to know itself.

“The notion of Unity will always remain unthinkable simply because in order for anything to be, to exist, it must negate that which it is not. The Number One is only definable through the number two: it is multiplicity which reveals unity. Everything that exists in the universe is a fraction of the unknown One.” (Robert Lawlor ‘Sacred Geometry’)

I recently got blown away in further researching sacred geometry because I got to understand that there is no such think as Zero, and further, all these things we called negative numbers are total figments of the human intellect! There is nothing less than One.

All primary forms in the universe can be considered to be the crystallizations of the creative thoughts of God. The beautiful thing is that the human hand, in manipulating and constructing these forms, positions itself into the Divine experiential language – Divine Love.

So we can understand Genesis as form:

In the beginning was the singular point (A) that came to understand itself by defining a sphere of interest from where (B) it could look back on itself. Some sacred texts call this sphere the void.

But if you look carefully you find that right there is the fundamental polarity that shapes our universe whether we are talking about galaxies or kundalini.

So genesis carried on for 6 days (each day being a new yet overlapping sphere of influence), and rested on Day 7, and so from this we have the Genesis pattern or known in sacred geometry as the Egg Of Life. (Note the singularity at its centre).

Egg Of Life

From the Egg Of Life emerges the Seed Of Life, and from that the Flower Of Life. Within the Flower Of Life emerges the Tree Of Life which underlies the architecture of our building here in Newfoundland.

Seed Of Life                                        Flower Of Life                Tree Of Life

In fact, from the Flower Of Life emerge all the 3 dimensional forms that fit inside a sphere dictated by the Five Platonic Solids, i.e., cube, tetrahedron, octahedron, dodecahedron and icosahedron, (after Plato who discovered and discoursed on sacred geometry)

Star Tetrahedron                                  Merkaba

By digging deeper we see that all shape and form is emerging from a double spiral

In fact, it is called the Golden Mean and expands or contracts at a rate defined by (Phi) (φ from the Greeks) and therefore is mathematically irresolvable, i.e., infinite in all directions.

This is where it all unifies because whether we are looking at the galaxy, the DNA molecule, the rising kundalini energy, or ancient symbols we see the pattern that underlies it all is the Golden Spiral.

            The Dao                      Mayan Galactic                        Kundalini rising

Notice how at the beginning of these patterns is the spiral that initiates in a polarity (180 degrees to each other). So we do often encounter ancient texts that refer to the kundalini as a “double” serpent.

So the Golden Spiral that drives all this is pure Gold – the Universal Love or Bliss that we experience when everything is attuned. Have you ever noticed how sometimes in deep meditations or Enlightenment Intensives; your body begins to sway in a spiral? Sound familiar?

Many spiritually inclined folks know of the Star Tetrahedron, a juxtaposition of a male and female tetrahedron spinning in opposite directions that conforms to the Universal Energy surrounding the human body, and the basis for activating the Merkaba for inter-dimensional travel.

There is something vital on the point of “activating”, much as there is something vital in the concept of surrender meditation, and the giving over to kundalini energy so that it can ‘rise’ and purify the body-mind. It seems the subtleness of this Divine energy is easily masked or diffused by the ego self. So when we intentionally surround ourselves by a sacred form – materially or envisioned, we increase the flow of Divine Love (Golden Spiral) through our being. It can be felt, expanded, awakened, made manifest.

That is what I am manifesting here as the form (beams & rafters) of the Tree Of Life (more technically Kabbalah) generates the spiral effects. The Kabbalah is a powerful representation of the human energetic field and all its energy centres and paths.

Just stand inside and you know!

The Design

The evolution of the design for the Tree Of Life in Salmonier, St. Mary’s Bay, Newfoundland began through a chain of spiritual and synchronistic events. In fall 2004, Ian attended a vision quest with Grand Migmaw Chief Misel Joe near Conne River in southern Newfoundland. He became deeply inspired by the chief’s original octagonal-shaped lodge built from vertical eight foot logs and with a roof of hand-hewn spokes that met in the centre about 15 feet above the floor. With no posts or beams, the twenty-four foot diameter space created a large spacious feeling ideal for workshops, such as yoga, meditation, Enlightenment Intensives. Its construction is relatively simple and supported largely through local materials cut on site. In fact the building has very similar features to yurts, a type of space frequently used in spiritual practices. Meranda and Ian had the insight that building three such buildings that could somehow be integrated with a central building supporting the social, dining and rest room features would create an ideal retreat space. After much doodling, Ian created an integrated building and showed this design to his builder-mentor friend Stuart Jackson from Galiano Island, British Columbia who immediately said that it looked like a crop circle.

An early drawing of the design

Ian had never heard of crop circles and Stuart explained it as aspects of sacred geometry that occur and re-occur in Nature. At his suggestion, Ian searched on sacred geometry on the internet, and while studying the many pleasing geometric patterns discovered that the central building that he had designed to integrate the three octagons was in fact in the shape of the Tree Of Life or Kabbalah, a geometric shape arising from sacred geometry. This is an awesome example of synchronicity.

By integrating patterns of the Kabbalah the design has expanded to flow with the scared geometry so that, for example, all the beam works follow the paths of the Tree Of Life that connect up the ten stations (sephiroth) as posts.

Beam layouts track the paths of the Kabalah

Deepening with this design of sacred geometry, we can see that the ‘pods’ themselves are more easily designed as hexagons in order to flow from Nature’s first pattern (see Sacred Geometry).

     Tree Of Life with hexagonal pods emerging from Nature’s first Pattern

Each station (sephira) corresponds to the aspects of the seven energy centres of the human body. We know from Feng Shui, that is based on balancing the yin (female) and yang (male) energy in your home, that yin chi (vital energy) enters the building through the infrastructure, that is, post and beams, hence the Tree Of Life is funneling vital energy from the universe through the various stations as they pertain to the various energy centres of our body. By sitting in direct contact and openness to a centre we charge ourselves with the vital energy. For example, when Ian hugs the central heart post (Tippareth) he is charged with universal Love.

More recently, Ian stumbled onto some discussion of crop circles (manifestations of sacred geometry) that suggested that, at least in some cases, they are two dimensional representations of three dimensional shapes. One researcher suggested that the Tree Of Life could actually be such a representation, depicted below to profile the contained tetrahedron that in effect would have been flattened onto the ground as the sacred sound push downward into the wheat from above.

By taking this a step further, he constructed a three dimensional representation of the Kabbalah to create what appears like a universal ark that has guided him to deepening the design of the vaulted ceiling of the Tree Of Life.

                        A 3-D model of the Tree Of Life or Kabbala

Hip Beams at the Tree Of Life Building Follow the Paths of Kabalah

In the three dimensional kabbalah there is a pleasing resolution and mirroring of all parts, and the rear portion is likened to a merkaba a mystical light vehicle for inter-dimensional travel comprised of two opposing tetrahedrons. Notably, is that this sacred geometry results in considerable triangulation (trinity) which from a practical point means a very structurally integral building.

Some day soon I hope many of you will come to visit and share your sacred energy here with us.

Love and Blessings

Ian

“…and now the angels are making a building, and when they have completed that task, I will place My Hand upon it and preserve it, and there shall come forth from it the Seed Of Life ….” (The Book of Enoch LXVII)