In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
And God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.
God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night.
And there was evening and there was morning, one day.
And God said, “Let the earth put forth vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, upon the earth.”
And it was so.
And God said, “Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years, and let them be lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light upon the earth.”
And it was so.
Then God said, “Let US make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.”
And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, a sixth day.
Genesis 1:1, 3, 5, 11, 14-15, 26, 31
What Is The Golden Ratio?
The golden ratio, also known as the golden number, golden proportion, or the DIVINE PROPORTION, is a ratio between two numbers that equals approximately 1.618.
Usually written as the Greek letter phi, it is strongly associated with the Fibonacci sequence, a series of numbers wherein each number is added to the last.
The Fibonacci numbers are 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, and so on, with the ratio of each number and the previous number gradually approaching 1.618, or phi.
History Of The Golden Ratio
The first known mention of the golden ratio is from around 300 BCE in Euclid’s Elements, the Classical Greek work on mathematics and geometry.
Euclid and other early mathematicians like Pythagoras recognized the proportion, but they didn’t call it the golden ratio.
It wasn’t until much later that the proportion would take on its mystique.
In 1509, Italian mathematician Luca Pacioli published the book De divina proportione, which, alongside illustrations by Leonardo da Vinci, praised the ratio as representing divinely inspired simplicity and orderliness.
Because of Pacioli’s book and Leonardo’s illustrations, the golden ratio gained fame among mathematicians and artists.
In the centuries since Pacioli’s book, many enthusiasts have claimed that the number is naturally pleasing to the eye, that it is a mathematical distillation of beauty, and that golden ratio line segments, golden rectangle side lengths, and golden triangles are represented throughout art history.
Golden ratio enthusiasts argue that the golden ratio is aesthetically pleasing because it’s common in the natural world.
The Golden Ratio, or Divine Proportion, came from the source of all immaculate design in our Universe, God, the Creator!
The very cross that our Lord died on adheres to the Golden Ratio.
Who else but God can Create Spiral Galaxies?
The proportions of nautilus shells and human bodies are examples of the golden ratio in nature, but these tend to vary greatly from one individual to the next.
Some seashells expand in proportion to the golden ratio, in a pattern known as a golden spiral, but not all shells do.
It’s true that nautiluses maintain the same shell proportions throughout their life, but the ratio of their shells is usually a logarithmic spiral, as opposed to an expression of phi.
Phi does show up in other aspects of nature. Tree leaves and pine cone seeds tend to grow in patterns that approximate the golden ratio, and sunflower spirals and other seeds tend to hew close to phi.
Phi allows for efficient distribution or packing, so leaves that grow in relation to the golden ratio will not shade each other and will rest in relation to one another at what is known as the golden angle.
There’s no evidence that use of the golden ratio is better than use of other proportions, but artists and designers are always in the business of creating balance, order, and interesting composition for their work.
The Golden Ratio In Art and Graphic Design
A few artists and designers have deliberately based their work around the golden ratio.
Le Corbusier, a famous mid-century modern architect, based a good deal of his architectural system around the golden ratio.
Salvador Dali, the surrealist painter, intentionally used a canvas shaped like a golden rectangle for his painting The Sacrament of the Last Supper.
In 2001, American prog-metal band Tool released “Lateralus,” a song with Fibonacci-inspired time signatures.
Art historians have found other examples of the golden ratio in the Mona Lisa, the Parthenon in ancient Athens, and the Great Pyramid of Giza.
However, most of the time there is no explicit evidence that artists intentionally used the ratio the way Le Corbusier, Dali, or Tool did.
Without design notes or specifications for the pyramids, we can’t know if ancient engineers employed phi on purpose.
These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created. In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no man to till the ground; but a mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground— then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Genesis 2:4-9
“Peace be multiplied to you. I make a decree, that in all my royal dominion men tremble and fear before the God of Daniel, for he is the living God, enduring for ever; his kingdom shall never be destroyed, and his dominion shall be to the end.
He delivers and rescues, he works signs and wonders in heaven and on earth, he who has saved Daniel from the power of the lions.”
Daniel 6:25-27
Like the Golden Ratio, there is an infinite wisdom and intelligence of a loving Almighty God and Father working and designing opportunities in our lives!!!