1.618
This number is known as PHI, not to be confused with Pi. Or as mathematicians like to say, PHI is one H of a lot cooler than Pi, though they're probably the only ones who consider this funny. PHI is generally considered the most beautiful number in the universe. It was derived from the Fibonacci sequence - a progression famous not only because the sum of adjacent terms equalled the next term, but because the quotients of adjacent terms possessed the astonishing property of approaching the number 1.618 - PHI.
The truely mind boggling aspect of PHI was its role as a fundamental building block in nature. Plants, animals and even human beings all possessed dimensional properties that adhered with eerie exactitude to the ratio of PHI to 1, hence PHI being heralded as The Divine Proportion, as acients assumed the number must have been ordained by the Creator of the universe.
As any biologist would know, in any honeybee community, the females bees always outnumber the males. But something which is not commonly known, is that if you divide the number of female bees by the number of male bees in any beehive in the world, you always get the same number - PHI.
Take a nautilus' shell - a spiral sea-shell. The ratio of each spirals diameter to the next is always the same number - PHI. Sunflower seeds grow in opposing spirals. The ratio of each rotations diameter to the next is always, can you guess? PHI! It's the same for spiralled pinecone petals, leaf arrangements on plant stalks, insect segmentation - all displaying astonishing obedience to The Divine Proportion.
PHI, the Divine Proportion, is significant in Art, also. Nobody understood better than Leonardo Da Vinci the divine structure of the human body, as you can see for yourself in The Vitruvian Man. He actually exhumed corpses to measure the exact proportions of human bone structure. He was the first to show the human body is literally made up of building blocks whose proportional ratio always equals PHI.
When the ancients discovered PHI, they were certain they had stumbled across God's building block for the world, and they worshipped Nature because of that, and even to this day there exist pagan, Mother Nature-revering religions Many of us celebrate nature the way pagans did, and don't even know it. May Day is a good example of this, the celebration of Spring.. the Earth coming back to life to produce her bounty. The mysterious magic inherent in the Divine Proportion was written at the beginning of time. Man is simply playing by Nature's rules, and because art is man's attempt to imitate Nature, and Nature adheres to the Divine Proportion in many ways, you can see why it is so important in Art, as Da Vinci would have told you.
Take the pentagram or pentacle - a five pointed star made up of five intersecting lines. This is one of the most powerful symbols, considered sacred, divine and magical in many cultures. If you draw a pentagram, the lines automatically divide themselves into segments according to the Divine Proportion - PHI. The ratios of line segments in a pentagram all equal PHI, making this symbol the ultimate expression of the Divine Proportion. For this reason, the five-pointed star has always been the symbol for beauty and perfection associated with the goddess and the sacred feminine.
