The Mysteries of Chartres Cathedral
From looking around the site, you’ve probably noticed one or two borderline obsessive interests -- the unusually large personal video collection (there are many with larger collections, but not that many), a strange fascination with the Titanic (which started when Ballard found the ship, not when Cameron made the movie). A few that haven’t been documented yet include a growing collection of Puzz3d puzzles including the Titanic (duh), Camelot (the first one we got), Big Ben (4 feet tall, and even more difficult than...), the Empire State Building (all those windows look so much alike), the Capital, the Taj Mahal, the Tower Bridge and at least 4 others. I have scans of all but one of them (I found the negative, but not the print) and will make a section for them someday. One of the puzzles, and probably one of my favorites, is Notre Dame (in Paris). I like cathedrals -- actually I like any old and fascinatingly historic building -- but in general, cathedrals are my favorites. If I were to ever have the opportunity to travel abroad I would go on a big Cathedral Tour: National Cathedral in Washington, St Pats (I think) in New York, St Paul’s in London, Winchester, the cathedral at Wells with it’s great sciscor arches, Westminister Abbey and the ruins of the abbey at Whitby that played so big a part in the story of Dracula. Then I’d travel through Germany to see the rubble left from the war, over to Russia to visit St. Basils, before venturing to Turkey to visit the Hagia Sophia -- first Christian, then Moslem, now just one of the world’s most beautiful buildings. Next stop, Italy to see St Peter’s Basillica (and of course, the Sistene chapel) in Rome, and the bell tower in Pisa, followed by a stop in Barcelona Spain to visit Gaudi’s Holy Family church (I wonder if they’ve finished it yet). And last, but certainly not least, France, to visit a few Notre Dames -- Paris and Chartres. In fact, the last cathedral marks the end of this long introduction, and the subject of the book "The Mysteries of Chartres Cathedral"
So, such a grand and eloquent introduction must lead to a fine book right? Sadly no. I got this book through interlibrary loan, so I don’t know what section it was kept in, but I assume it’s in the same section as books on the Bermuda triangle, the location of Atlantis, and Chariots of the Gods. It’s mathematical doo doo masquerading as science. The author’s biggest theorys are all prefaced with phrases like "although there’s no proof", and "any records no longer exist". His theories all are based on careful measurements he’s made -- of drawings of the cathedral -- it seems he wasn’t allowed free access to go in and make measurements of the actual building himself. He implies that the cathedral was finished in 26 years, when in fact, one of the western towers was built hundreds of years later. His theory is that all of the Notre Dame cathedrals in France were conceived by, financed by, built by, and located by -- the Knights Templar. They were rich because they went to the holy land and found the ark of the covenant (which is actually a great big condenser for electrical energy, and contained ancient Egyptian wisdom written down by Moses in a secret code only they could decipher). This ancient wisdom told them how to build Gothic cathedrals -- and that's why they all have dimension ratios that match Cheop’s pyramid. Their physical locations on a map match the astrological constellation of Virgo, and they vary in size, not because of funding, or available materials and workers, but because the measuring sticks used to build them were based on the degrees of latitude they were built on. Even more interesting is the observation that the age of Christianity will end in about 40 years, because the sun will no longer be in the constellation of pisces (or something like that -- I really don’t want to reread the book just to find his exact statement). (ed. note) I recently read the report of an astronomer that said the star marking the Birth of Christ wasn't in pisces, but it was in the constellation of Aries -- that really puts a crimp in his predictions, doesn't it
Maybe it’s a uniquely Christian belief that some things happen, just because that’s what God wanted to happen -- some people just have to find explanations for everything. The angles of the pyramids are not based on some cabalistic (the author's favorite word by the way) belief so much as they were on the fact that steeper angles fell down, and shallower ones required too big of a base to reach the lofty heights. The cathedral vibrates with sound, not because it’s lines are based on any harmonic progression, but because large structure with many hard, reflective, parallel surfaces reflect sound (come by my church sometime, the frequency our auditorium resonates at is within the vocal range of nearly everyone on the planet). The older style windows of Chartres seem to glow from within, not because of secret Alchemists formulas, but because the dark reds and blues keep the interior of the cathedral very dark, while the lighter whites and grays of later windows let in so much ambient light. This book is lousy. Even the pictures are lousy. You’d be better off spending your time watching Showgirls.
Not that I can really recomend this, but if you must....