Sacred Geometry - Squaring the Circle

Weird sounding title? Nibley talks a lot about the symbols of the circle and the square in his book Temple and Cosmos. He also talks a lot about sacred geometry in his book One Eternal Round. Both of them helped me to better understand many of the most significant symbols we find in the church.

Fascinating article with lots of math found here.

Excerpt to set the tone:

From the domed Pantheon of ancient Rome, if not before, architects have fashioned
sacred dwellings after conceptions of the universe, utilizing circle and square geometries to
depict spirit and matter united. Circular domes evoke the spherical cosmos and the descent
of heavenly spirit to the material plane. Squares and cubes delineate the spatial directions of
our physical world and portray the lifting up of material perfection to the divine.

Constructing these basic figures is elementary. The circle results when a cord is made to
revolve around a post. The right angle of a square appears in a 3:4:5 triangle, easily made
from a string of twelve equally spaced knots.1 But "squaring the circle”—drawing circles
and squares of equal areas or perimeters by means of a compass or rule—has eluded
geometers from early times.

If you want to, you can kind of skim the maths. The New Jerusalem comments were interesting, plus some other stuff. Basically, though, I can't comment on a lot of it. Not appropriate.