Cymatics and the sacred geometry of grief

Can we let grief organize us the way sound waves organize particles of sand?

Cymatic figures formed by different frequencies vibrating a metal plate. Can we let grief organize us the way sound waves organize particles of sand?

Hi, beloved.

I used to roll my eyes at talk around “sacred geometry.” What makes certain types of geometry sacred, exactly? Is there cursed geometry on the other end of the spectrum?

I’ve softened to the topic over time—though I’m still not always sure what people mean about the “sacred” part. Sometimes it seems to get tossed around as an enlightened-sounding synonym for “cool and pretty.”

My current, still-a-novice understanding: the divine is a relational experience, so what’s sacred is what draws us into deeper relationship and what reveals our basic interconnectedness. I can see how geometry could be sacred in that light—it reveals the shape of the space between us and the shared patterns of unfolding that comprise our bodies, our lives, and our world.

Because I see the divine as relational, I’m always looking for ways the sacred can shape our work towards more just and loving relationships. This week, two new organizing comrades turned friends turned coven-mates invited me to their weekly meditation space, and it sparked thoughts on what sacred geometry might offer as a guiding metaphor for social and political action.

They opened with a movement activity inspired by the Pacific Northwest’s recent ice-over—we each became a water molecule, moving our bodies through the water cycle. We started out bonded to other molecules in a body of water. We dispersed and evaporated, we condensed and rained down. We imagined ourselves freezing, and imagined tapping into geological time as part of a glacier before melting again.

After a half hour of seated meditation, we talked through our experience. One theme that emerged was how thinking and feeling as water had helped bring our connection to one another’s bodies into focus. We talked about how being in the room with each other made a longer sit more doable than it sometimes feels alone—when we gather our bodies hold each other in place, one molecule bonded to the next.

And we talked about how, in real and tangible ways, we are pulling and being pulled, shaping and being shaped, by our passing encounters with other people. Thinking like water helped us feel less isolated, more linked.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Sound waves as social science

Thinking like water made me think about waves, which made me start to think like sand and sound. My mind jumped to cymatics: the complex geometric shapes appearing in a physical medium in response to sound waves.

Most famously, sand scattered over a metal plate will arrange itself into complex, predictable patterns called Chladni figures when notes are played using a violin bow. Here’s a cool example of cymatics using a metal table, for the uninitiated (with bonus points for mask-wearing):

This is what sonic vibrations do all the time, even if the results aren’t always so visibly cool and pretty. They reorganize the space they pass through. Sound is physical, pushing molecules into patterned collisions that pass along the energy of the wave.

Every time I see it, I feel like the universe is winking at us. No one grain of sand could perceive the pattern being formed—from their perspective, they’re just bouncing to the nearest place that’s a little less buzzy than the rest of the table. But zoomed out, the pattern is striking. For those of us dreaming liberation, could there be organizing lessons hiding in those patterns?