Properties of circles

[Douglas D. Germann, Sr.]

Hi--

Let Chase Collins say to us what she says in her wonderful book, _Tell Me a
Story_ (here are about 20 other meanings of circle):

Perhaps our fascination began with seeing the shape of the
mother's breast and nipple--two circles--embodying beauty
and survival of the race; or seeing the shape of the sun,
feeling its burn upon our shoulders and its effect on all
of nature; or seeing the tranquillity of the full moon over
the mountains and knowing it soon will wane. Perhaps the
circle's greatest moment was when it inspired the discovery
of the wheel. It has been with us for millenniums before
that, symbolizing perfection, bliss, eternity. The circle's
circumference is an unending line, a symbol for the
continuance of life, or for the repetition of cycles, a
line that cannot be escaped, a line that stands for birth
and death and ongoing life itself. Religions have grown
around it. The solar eye of Horus, in ancient Egypt, was
connected in various myths to the sun and the moon.
Buddhism has its Wheel of Becoming. Islam sends its
pilgrims to walk a circle seven times around a sacred
object. Japan has the yin-yang circle, with its white fish
and black fish curled around each other in a perfect
circle, depicting the struggle and resolution of
opposites. Stonehenge is the Druids' astonishing calendar,
a circle of enormous stone arches surrounded by circular
trenches. When dawn rose on the vernal equinox at a
specific notch in the circle, they knew the new year had
been born.

...

Anything caught in space by the gravity of another object,
whirls around it in a circle. Seems the universe is in
cahoots with the shape. And down here, clocks, wreaths,
rings, halos, mandalas, rose windows, Buddha's thumb and
finger, all are in the shape of the circle. Circles are
timeless and the measurement of time as well, suggesting
outer visions of completion and inner visions of wholeness.


Does this suggest anything else to us?

                              :-Doug. Germann

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