The Magisterial Spiral

The magisterial spiral is the ur-pattern that binds. Everything binds to it because everything secretly is a spiral. The conundrum is great. The contemplation of the conundrum is greater.

The examples are probably multitudinous, but here are a few:

Stream of consciousness spiral doodles on scrap pieces of paper.
The Milky Way, the spiral galaxy we spiral around in.
The “spiral-path” of water as it drains down the sink.
Upper Paleolithic spirals adorned on cave walls.
The spiral shape of dancing Hurricanes.
The anomalous spiral explosion that appeared over Norway.
The spiral activity of the twilit sky in Van Gogh’s famous painting, “Starry Night”.

All of these spiral formations aren’t coincidentally connected just because the mind is a shrewd pattern recognizer that collates whenever necessary. All of these spiral formations are harmoniously connected because the mind itself is embedded in the greater pattern of life, the spiral pattern of universal equilibrium. What the mind recognizes in stream of consciousness doodles of unrefined beauty and breathtaking satellite photographs of the Milky Way is its own spiral nature. It sees the pattern because it is the pattern.

The doodler of unrefined spirals emulates the great vortex pattern of the Milky Way. The Milky Way, theoretically speaking, could be emulating the primordial swirl of some proto-galaxy that gave birth to billions just like it an incalculable amount of eons ago. Evolution, in part, is emulation: it takes a good idea or pattern and replicates it on massive and miniscule scales. This is why the pattern shows up on petroglyphs, flowers, lollipops, and as a whirling, vertiginous tool of hypnosis. A good idea must be propagated. An evolutionary constant must have its shining moment at the geometric podium of beauty. The spiral obviously has many moments at the podium.

The spiral—either Archimedean or Logarithmic—has appeared throughout history to remind us that nature is a) a cyclical marvel and wonder and b) not a “boxy” self-organizational system of rectilinear processes. The spiral can free us from the onerous existence of “boxy thinking,” where each thought tenaciously bounces off the pallid walls of the closed-in mental rectangle ad infinitum. Stephen Harrod Buhner also believes the “spiral” or “fractal” can save us from the tyranny of the dreaded box. He stated it this way:

“The fractal geometry found in the surfaces of self-organizational systems is important, for it is actually a highly sophisticated and crucial aspect of maintaining stability. The folding and fracturing that occurs along and between dimensions in living organisms allows them to couple with—to touch—the world around them at a nearly infinite number of points, a great many more than if their edges were merely straight lines.”

May the New Year be a fractal-blast for everyone!