THE SACRED SPIRAL

Wire Wrapped Garnet Pendant by Manitu Okahas

The Golden Ratio of nature's form
The cycle of life, evolution, and growth
Universal symbol of ancient wisdom
Follow it within to find your path

Trying to unwind the symbol of the spiral is almost like trying to untangle the chicken and the egg.  Diving into the research for this symbol points all over the world and eventually to the unifying ancient source, the Earth herself.  This is an ancient symbol that is found in the art of almost every culture on Earth.  It predates all written records other than the stone upon which they are etched.

There are only a handful of patterns that are very common and repeated throughout nature.  The spiral is one of them that is found at every level of physical reality from the cellular level of DNA to the structures of the galaxies.  The spiral can be found in seed heads and sea shells.  Here are a few of the places to find spirals if you care to look:  Pine cones and pineapples; Roses and sunflowers; Snail shells and nautiluses;  Fiddle head ferns and spider webs;  Cyclonic storms and the Milky Way.  This form was picked up and used by virtually all of our ancestors from Celtic to Greek, Native American to Mayan, Norse to Polynesian, and every culture in between and up to the modern age.

So what is a spiral?  It is a very efficient, stable, and strong natural form.  A perfect spiral or sacred spiral is a logarithmic form that is mathematically expressed as the Golden Ratio and approximated by the Fibonacci sequence (0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,...).  This was first described in the ancient Sanskrit texts and popularized as a modern mathematical formula by Leodardo Fibonacci.  The sacred spiral has been used as a spiritual symbol and meditative device for as long as people have been creating art, as it still is today.

The symbolic and spiritual meaning of the spiral is fairly consistent across most cultures with minor tweaks in the specifics.  The primary meaning that most cultures give to the spiral is the concept of evolution and change.  Our ancestors understood that the world around them was constantly changing, evolving and growing.  The growth of the spiral from the center point to the ever widening circles is a concrete form showing the progression of growth.  They saw that symbol and growth in many of life forms around them like the growth of a snail or a fern.

One other aspect of the spiral is the cyclical nature of time and the cycle of life.  All aspects of life on Earth participate in this cycle.  The cycles of time are present in the movements of the sun and the moon, and the cycles of the seasons.  Each follows a pattern of change where each cycle is similar but is also different.  The patterns of the cycles make the turnings somewhat predictable.  Our ancestors also observed the patterns in the cycles of life that led from birth, to growth, to death, and eventually back to life again.  The spiral is used to symbolize the pattern that holds even when the details change.

On a spiritual or energetic level, the spiral represents both the life path and the connection between the world that we see around us and the spiritual world.  This is sometimes used on a symbolic level as a reminder that all things are connected.  But it can also be used as an energetic tool to focus meditation.  When used this way, the spiral takes the practitioner into an altered state that allows the exploration of the inner realms of the human spirit and the spiritual realms of energy.  This is usually done by following the spiral from the outer edge to its center of origin.

Here are a few more connotations of the spiral:
The journey to knowledge and enlightenment.
Ancient wisdom.
The release of old patterns.
The forces of nature.
The sacred feminine.
The flow of time.
water
air
expansion
healing

The Goddess by Manitu Okahas

The spiral is a symbol that I use frequently in my art at all levels, from jewelry, to dream catchers, to my pen and ink.  To me, it has all of the meanings in this article.  However, if I had to choose one reason that I use it, I would say that I use the spiral to reflect the spiritual, sacred connection that binds all reality together.  Life, the Earth, and the cosmos are all part of a sacred fabric.  They all interact in a beautiful dance that coils in and out of our perception.

Here are some of the sources that I used for this article:
imaginationstationtoledo.org
embracingshamanism.org
learnreligions.com
49native.com
 
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