The Five-Pointed Star of the Oversoul

Da Vinci Vitruve Luc Viatour

Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1492


Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian man illustrates the perfection of human proportion in two ways — physical fourfold man within the square, symbolizing the four elements of earth, water, air and fire, and spiritual fivefold man as a soul within the Oversoul Star. The five points of the symbolic star are the head, the arms, and the legs. To stand this way as you arise in the morning, and as you speak the Word to make a declaration or prayer treatment, is a sacred gesture and opens you to the Light. “Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?” – 1 Corinthians 6:19.


“The gesture of the Five-Pointed Star of the Oversoul symbolizes and opens the interface between body awareness and soul consciousness. To stand this way as you arise in the morning,
and before you speak the Word to make a declaration or pray,
is a sacred gesture, and opens you to the Light.”


According to Ludwig Heinrich Heydenreich, “Working with the mathematician Luca Pacioli, Leonardo considered the proportional theories of Vitruvius, the 1st-century-BC Roman architect, as presented in his treatise De Architectura (“On Architecture”). Imposing the principles of geometry on the configuration of the human body, Leonardo demonstrated that the ideal proportion of the human figure corresponds with the forms of the circle and the square. In his illustration of this theory, the Vitruvian Man, Leonardo demonstrated that when a man places his feet firmly on the ground and stretches out his arms, he can be contained within the four lines of a square, but when in a spread-eagle position, he can be inscribed in a circle.

“Leonardo envisaged the great picture chart of the human body he had produced through his anatomical drawings and Vitruvian Man as a cosmografia del minor mondo (“cosmography of the microcosm”). He believed the workings of the human body to be an analogy, in microcosm, for the workings of the universe. Leonardo wrote: “Man has been called by the ancients a lesser world, and indeed the name is well applied; because, as man is composed of earth, water, air, and fire … this body of the earth is similar.” He compared the human skeleton to rocks (“supports of the earth") and the expansion of the lungs in breathing to the ebb and flow of the oceans.”


According to the Roman architect and engineer Vitruvius (Marcus Vitruvius Pollio) in his treatise De Architectura, Book, 3, Chapter 1 (“On Symmetry: In Temples and In the Human Body”):

“The human body is so designed by nature that the face, from the chin to the top of the forehead and the lowest roots of the hair, is a tenth part of the whole height; the open hand from the wrist to the tip of the middle finger is just the same; the head from the chin to the crown is an eighth, and with the neck and shoulder from the top of the breast to the lowest roots of the hair is a sixth; from the middle of the breast to the summit of the crown is a fourth. If we take the height of the face itself, the distance from the bottom of the chin to the under side of the nostrils is one third of it; the nose from the under side of the nostrils to a line between the eyebrows is the same; from there to the lowest roots of the hair is also a third, comprising the forehead. The length of the foot is one sixth of the height of the body; of the forearm, one fourth; and the breadth of the breast is also one fourth. The other members, too, have their own symmetrical proportions, and it was by employing them that the famous painters and sculptors of antiquity attained to great and endless renown.

“3. Similarly, in the members of a temple there ought to be the greatest harmony in the symmetrical relations of the different parts to the general magnitude of the whole. Then again, in the human body the central point is naturally the navel. For if a man be placed flat on his back, with his hands and feet extended, and a pair of compasses centred at his navel, the fingers and toes of his two hands and feet will touch the circumference of a circle described therefrom. And just as the human body yields a circular outline, so too a square figure may be found from it. For if we measure the distance from the soles of the feet to the top of the head, and then apply that measure to the outstretched arms, the breadth will be found to be the same as the height, as in the case of plane surfaces which are perfectly square.

“4. Therefore, since nature has designed the human body so that its members are duly proportioned to the frame as a whole, it appears that the ancients had good reason for their rule, that in perfect buildings the different members must be in exact symmetrical relations to the whole general scheme. Hence, while transmitting to us the proper arrangements for buildings of all kinds, they were particularly careful to do so in the case of temples of the gods, buildings in which merits and faults usually last forever.

“5. Further, it was from the members of the body that they derived the fundamental ideas of the measures which are obviously necessary in all works, as the finger, palm, foot, and cubit. These they apportioned so as to form the “perfect number,” called in Greek τέλειον, and as the perfect number the ancients fixed upon ten. For it is from the number of the fingers of the hand that the palm is found, and the foot from the palm. Again, while ten is naturally perfect, as being made up by the fingers of the two palms, Plato also held that this number was perfect because ten is composed of the individual units, called by the Greeks μονάδες. But as soon as eleven or twelve is reached, the numbers, being excessive, cannot be perfect until they come to ten for the second time; for the component parts of that number are the individual units.” (Morgan translation, 1914, III, 72-73.)


Albert Pike offers great insight into the history of the most ancient meanings ascribed to the five-pointed star: “Originally it represented Sirius, or the Dog-star, the forerunner of the inundation of the Nile; the God Anubis, companion of Isis in her search for the body of Osiris, her brother and husband. Then it became the image of Horus, the son of Osiris, himself symbolized also by the Sun, the author of the Seasons, and the God of Time; Son of Isis, who was the universal nature, himself the primitive matter, inexhaustible source of Life, spark of uncreated fire, universal seed of all beings. It was Hermes, also, the Master of Learning, whose name in Greek is that of the God Mercury. It became the sacred and potent sign or character of the Magi, the Pentalpha, and is the significant emblem of Liberty and Freedom, blazing with a steady radiance amid the weltering elements of good and evil of Revolutions, and promising serene skies and fertile seasons to the nations, after the storms of change and tumult.”

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Leonardo da Vinci
April 15, 1452 – May 2, 1519
Italian polymath of the Renaissance Era,
born in the da Vinci region, near Florence, Italy


Leonardo Da Vinci


References

Leonardo da Vinci. “Vitruvian Man,” c. 1492, pen, ink, watercolour and metalpoint on paper, 343 x 245 mm. Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice, Italy.

Heydenreich, Ludwig Heinrich. “Leonardo da Vinci.” Encyclopædia Britannica, September 21, 2018.

Pike, Albert. Morals and Dogma. Charleston, SC: 1871, p. 15. Public domain

Vitruvius. The Ten Books on Architecture, Morris H. Morgan, translator. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1914. Public domain.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Vitruvius,” Encyclopædia Britannica, January 20, 2017. Accessed: October 15, 2018.

“Vitruvian Man,” Wikipedia. October 12, 2018.