Phi as the Star of Bethlehem
Three triangles, each with one large angle three times as big as its two identical smaller angles. Each triangle folds up to a single pentagon, while at the same time showing the one-in-threeness of the interior angles. Each triangle overlaps across the pentagon to form a star, divided the exterior lines of the triangle into three equivalent ratios:
1 – 1/Φ: Φ – 1 as Φ – 1 : 1 as 1: Φ
The ones and the threeness, not to mention the one-in-threeness and three-in-oneness demonstrate the hidden design principle of the universe, the invisible qualities of God’s nature – that of a trinity and that of love. An equivalent ratio is an equivalent relationship – what else can that describe but love?
Love came down at Christmas, goes the old song. In a place which was sought by the magi from the east. The magi were astronomers and mathematicians as well as soothsayers and astrologers. Did they follow a comet or were they trying to keep up with a planetary conjunction? Or was it something that both a comet and a conjunction have in common with their own ancient mathematical mystery – the pentagram? No doubt they knew the tail of a comet isn’t straight but curves along a section of a golden spiral; no doubt they knew of the Platonic solids and the belief that the ratios of the distances between planets corresponded to their golden ratio aspects (in fact, it’s highly likely that Pythagoras got his knowledge of the Platonic solids and the pentagram as well as irrational numbers from the magi when he was taken as a prisoner to Babylon). Five hundred and forty years or thereabouts after Cyrus the Deliverer and the Anointed One, took the chief of the magi back with him to Persia, the magi went looking for a new Deliverer and Anointed One. Funny that it’s five hundred and forty years later and that a pentagram has five hundred and forty degrees, funny that degrees were originally designed to reflect days, funny about that chief of the magi being a prince of Judah whose prophecies were not just about the Ancient of Days but also about the day-years until the coming of the Deliverer, the Holy One of Israel. It could be a coincidence, just as it could be a coincidence that Love came down at Bethlehem, and that the northern outskirts of Bethlehem are on a latitude defined by a vertex of a golden rectangle.
What was the star the magi followed? I suspect they knew that “since the creation of the world, God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made” and, having had for centuries a geometric symbol for that divine nature and a mathematical understanding of those invisible qualities, they used the pentagram as an interpretative guide to time and place.
And that’s what the picture is all about.