That's Funny: The Flower of Life

NOTE:  Holiday Gift Card Flower Slideshow is visible below this post

“The most exciting of phrases to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka! I have found it’ but rather ‘That’s funny…’” - Isaac Asimov

Currently at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland/France, they are running experiments to discover the existence of the Higgs boson, a hypothetical elementary particle that can help theorists understand the building blocks of the Universe.  The popular media has dubbed it “The God Particle” although that tends to be a hyperbole that outrages scientists. However, in looking at a recent photograph of a “decay pattern” from the Collider I was immediately struck with how similar the image was to the ancient and sacred geometrical forms known as the Seed of Life and Flower of Life.

simulated decay pattern model of Higgs boson

Seed of Life

Flower of Life

I think it’s quite “funny”, and love it when modern science “discovers” things that correlate to ancient and sacred knowledge. While the verdict is of course still out on this connection, I have no problem jumping to such fun conclusions - it’s all theoretical anyway!

As a lover of all things flowering and sacred, I’ve been fascinated by the ancient Flower of Life pattern for quite some time, recently incorporating the symbol into the background of the image for my upcoming “Songs & Stories For Our Days: An Unorthodox Spiritual Cabaret” and in some of the HiveWorld icons, exactly because it holds profound meaning. The visual symmetrical pattern is believed to be a visual expression of the inter-connectedness of all life, woven together. The center of each circle lies upon the circumference of six other surrounding circles with similar diameter, creating a hexagonal pattern (another reason I love the symbol).

Forthcoming show last three weekends in January 2012!

Like many sacred geometric forms, it has had various meanings and various forms throughout many cultures across the globe.  The Seed of Life is a smaller version of the Flower, created by interlocking seven circles together, and is used to depict the seven days of creation: if you build one circle up at a time each day.

What is also fascinating to me, is that just as the Flower of Life depicts life’s inter-connectedness and inter-dependence, the process of building the Large Hadron Collider required the collaboration of over 10,000 scientists from some 100 countries! They also claim that by the end of 2012 they will have either discovered the particle or proved it doesn't exist, or perhaps in the experiment to find the building blocks of the Big Bang they will create a black hole that will suck our solar system into it (now wouldn't that be timely on Dec. 21, 2012...)!

Anyway, all these beautiful patterns make me wish I still had access to that most wonderful of childhood art toys, the Spirograph!

May the Flower of Life blossom for you as you search for connection to the God Particle within!