Annotated Bibliography—Architecture and Mysticism
University of Kent at Canterbury
MA Study of Mysticism and Religious Experience
Lindy Weston
TH 860 Research and Computing Skills
May 2006
Contents
1. Introduction
2. Commentary on the resources available
3. Bibliography on essential Mystical texts
3.1. Secondary Sources
3.2. Secondary Journals
4. Bibliography on essential Architectural texts
4.1. Secondary Sources
4.2. Secondary Journals
5. Conclusion
1. Introduction
This annotated bibliography is intended as the foundation for an inquiry into Architecture beginning with the primordial. The most fundamental notions which are present from the very beginning of any chronological register remain throughout the entire history of Architecture up to and including the present day. It is therefore important to understand these fundamental notions in order to understand what is referred to as Architecture, and as an inquiry into Architecture will show, the contemporary delineations between certain fundamental primordial notions and Architecture, are transparent.
The grasping of the primordial or fundamental lay in Mysticism; the study of the unity of all things. Architecture and Mysticism have been explicitly close acquaintances in the past, and although it may be ambiguous or difficult to see the connections between Architecture and Mysticism today, we can see either an explicit or an unacknowledged acceptance of Mystic notions by many of the prolific Architects of antiquity. The act of the Architect becomes synonymous with the act of the Mystic as both seek to know. The transparency between Architecture and Mysticism becomes most explicit with Le Corbusier’s quote, (the most influential architect of the twentieth century) that “architecture is form assembled in light”, and St. Augustine of Hippo’s, (the most influential Christian Mystic) doctrine of illumination.
2. Commentary on resources available
While the literature available on Mysticism and Architecture separately is extremely vast, the literature dealing with an explicit exploration of Architecture and Mysticism jointly is extremely limited. The most notable title of the latter category being “Architecture, Mysticism, and Myth”, by Lethaby. What should be noted is the 1892 publishing date as the earliest study of the correlation between Mysticism and Architecture. We can see that at some point a misunderstanding of Mysticism has occurred by the culture at large and becomes evidenced in the division of Mysticism from other areas of life which would warrant mending by Lethaby. It would seem such mending has not been held in high esteem by the lack of explicit studies that acknowledge the transparencies between Architecture and Mysticism. The word Mysticism has been discarded in Architectural communities and writings. While Architecture may not use the word explicitly, the explorations of Architecture are synonymous with Mysticism. The resources available are thus strictly delineated between Architecture and Mysticism to allow the transparencies to become apparent through inquiry. The bibliography that follows is put forth in two sections, Architecture and Mysticism, with each section holding a chronological sequence of the most fundamental works.
3. Mysticism
Plato, translated by Desmond Lee. Timaeus. London: Penguin, 1977.
Plato (429-347) clearly articulates Space and Form and shapes all subsequent architectural thought. If one seeks to gain an understanding of Architecture, this is the place to start. The Timaeus renders “Formalism” with Space; Space being the receptacle of Form. Plato’s influence on occidental thought, and consequently Architectural thought, has been constant through today.
Form is. The form of something is the essence of what it is. The essence of it is it being what it is. To see the form of it is to see what it is. Form is the intrinsic nature or essence. The form of man is soul. Form is to see. The original meaning of Form comes from the Greek words, eidos and eidon. These words literally translated into English mean “to see”, or “I see”.
Space then, is the receptacle of form. We know of space because of form. Space is hard to see because it is the negative of form, so to speak. To see the form, is to see the space. Space and form are ultimately articulations of one and the same thing because to see the essence of something is to see its space. Space and form are at once both one and two.
It is important to note that Plato held intuition as a superior faculty, intuition being direct, non-inferential awareness of “abstract objects” or “concrete truths”. It follows that reliance on unmediated awareness is a criterion for truth.
I will also note here the etymology of architecture. Greek: arkhe: “beginning, origin, first, place”. Tekhne: “art, skill, craft”. Techno: “art, skill, craft, method, system”. With the platonic reliance on intuition and direct awareness, we can begin to see roughly a definition of Architecture as the first skill or first art.
Martin Heidegger, Andre Schuwer, Richard Rojcewicz. Parmenides: Studies in Contenental Thought. Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1982.
Martin J. Henn. Parmenides of Elea: A Verse Translation with Interpretive Essays and Commentary to the Text. Connecticut: Praeger, 2003.
The central theme is the question of truth and the primordial understanding of truth.
Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie, The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library: An Anthology of Ancient Writings Which Relate to Pythagoras and Pythagorean Philosophy. Grand Rapids: Phanes Press, 1987.
Barnes, Jonathan. The Pre Socratic Philosophers. London: Routlege, 1982.
Lawlor, Robert. Sacred Geometry: Philosophy and Practice. London: Thames and Hudson, 1982.
Brunes, Tons. The Secrets of Ancient Geometry and Its Use. Copenhagen: Rhodos International Science Publishers, 1967.
Pythagoras (500 B.C.) left no written philosophy and all accounts that we have are fragmentary and sometimes contradictory. Despite this, Pythagoras is held to be one of the most influential Greek philosophers. What is commonly attributed to him is an exploration of geometry. Geometry has held a privileged position within Mysticism as geometry tangibly describes the shapes of nature and the body while sharpening the mind. On some level it is explanatory as well as methodological. The study of mathematics and geometry shows itself in ancient cultures such as Egypt, China, and South America. Shape, ratio, and symmetry have been explored by man since at least the dawn of written history. Golden Proportion, 1:1.618, symbolized by , which is associated with the Fibonacci sequence. Geometry, and hence Mysticism have been consistent throughout Architectural history. The primary sacred act is the division of unity. When we divide unity, represented by a square or a circle, we represent the proliferation of diversity out of the Oneness that mystics believe pervades all. Pythagoras gives us these numerical sequences: arithmetic: 1,2,3,4,…, geometric: 1,2,4,8…, harmonic: 3,6,12,24…
St. Augustine, J.H.S. Burleigh. St. Augustine: Earlier Writings. London: S.C.M. press, 1972.
John Rist. Augustine: Ancient Thought Baptized. Cambridge University Press, 1994.
St. Augustine (354-430) has had considerable influence throughout history. He continues the platonic school of philosophy in what is now referred to as Neo-Platonism. What is to be noted is the articulation of a unified hierarchy that begins with absolute unity and ends with material objects observed with the senses. Augustine also regards God as the ultimate source and point of origin for all that comes below. Augustine equates God with goodness, truth, and being. He effectively unites philosophy and religion in a system based upon direct unity, or intuition of God. With St. Augustine, we have a clear articulation of Mysticism. His unification of material with spirit should be noted, as architecture is often seen as “concrete”. Augustine also asserts the ultimate principle as “The One”, or the unity of all things. Physical/sensible versus spiritual/intelligible. Forms are intelligible. “They have forms because they have numbers”. Augustine also articulates the doctrine of illumination, or the thesis that god plays an active role in human cognition. The doctrine puts forth the idea that the minds relation to intelligible objects is analogous to the senses and sensible objects. In addition to the mind and senses, there must be the object and an environment conducive to using mind or sense. In the case of vision, this would be light, in the case of mind, this is described as an illumination that occurs within us by that which is above us. Success comes in discernment of details. Illumination is meant to be an account of the conditions necessary for the mind to have direct acquaintance with intelligible objects.
Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy. London: Penguin, 1989.
Boethius, translated by Eleonore Stump, De Topicis differentiis. New York: Cornell Paperbacks, 2004.
Anicius Severinus Manlius Boethius. Boethius (475-526) had a certain logical bent and sought to elaborate on universals. Boethius suggests that the universals produced by abstraction, or axioms, are not merely constructions of the mind, but do grasp reality as it is. Very influential during the Middle Ages. Boethius developed St. Augustine’s notion of forms resulting from numbers into a system of aesthetics based on numerical proportions which had an authoritative influence during the Middle Ages. Mathematics and geometry became basic principles of theological interpretation. It is but a short step between architecture, geometry, mathematics, and theology or Mysticism. The gothic cathedral could be seen as the model of the medieval universe. Chartres cathedral is a good example.
Meister Eckhart, Oliver Davies, Selected Writings. London: Penguin, 1981.
Meister Eckhart, Bernard McGinn and Edmund College, The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises and Defense. New York: Paulist Press, 1981.
Meister Eckhart (1260-1327) at his most fundamental sought to unify man with God. His mystical doctrines defy easy explanations that do them justice. Within his doctrine we find seemingly paradoxical statements that betray a certain purity. The soul is purified through sanctification so as to make it a receptacle for the divine. Eckhart has had major influence on the likes of Hegel and Heidegger.
3.1 Secondary Sources
Bernard McGinn. The foundations of mysticism. New York: Crossroad Press, 1991
Behnke, H. Fundamentals of Mathematics. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1974.
Evelyn Underhill. Mysticism, 12th edition. New York: Meridian Books, 1955.
Frits Stall. Exploring mysticism. London, England: Penguin, 1975
Michel de Certeau. The mystic fable. Volume 1: The 16th and 17th Centuries. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1992
Rudolf Otto. The idea of the holy. London: Oxford University Press, 1958
Umesh Sharma, John Arndt. Mysticism: A select bibliography. Waterloo, Ont.: Waterloo Lutheran University, 1973.
3.2 Secondary Journals
Black, Max. Conventionalism in Geometry and the Interpretation of Necessary Statements. Philosophy of Science, 1942, 335-349.
Carus, Paul. The Foundations of Geometry. The Monist, 1902, 370-397.
Architecture
Vitruvius, Ingrid D. Rowland, Thomas Noble Howe. Ten Books of Architecture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
The ten books of Architecture are the first available treatise that we have today. For the western world, this is the first essay on Architecture. Vitruvius (80-25 B.C.) saw the laws of the cosmos and of Architecture as identical. God is the Architect of the world, and the Architect as a second God. The term “ratiocinatio” denotes the intellectual apprehension of Architecture. Architecture becomes synonymous with nature, and as such proportion finds itself at the centre of his thought. Vitruvius sees proportion as a prerequisite for ordinatio, eurythmia, and symmetra., but does not define it. These three are different aspects of the same aesthetic phenomenon; ordinatio is the principle, symmetria is the result, and eurythmia is the effect. Proportion then is not the effect arising from its application, but instead a numerical relationship. Proportion is then defined in three ways: 1. relationship of the parts to each other, 2. by reference of all the measurements to a common module, or 3. by analogy with proportions of the human body. Hence, with 3 we get the Vitruvian man.
Critchlow, Keith. Chartres and the Birth of the Cathedral. Unknown Publisher
Rob Krier. Architectural Composition. New York: Rizzoli, 1988.
Rob Krier studied the composition of built structures of antiquity and came to many interesting conclusions. Gothic churches also incorporate very strongly the dimensions used in the Greek temples. Rob Krier analyzed the Cathedral of St. Etienne, in Auxerre, and found numerous instances. For example, the ratio of depth of the chapels to that of the aisle, on the cross-section, is 1: , and the ratio of the depth of aisle to nave is 1:2. Krier further notes that the angle projected from the centre of the crossing point and inscribing the width of the interior church space is 30 degrees. “We can assert... that the interior space can be inscribed in a circle with twelve segments.” Krier also finds evidence of the Golden Proportion , both in the dimensions of the floor plan and in the dimensions of the facade. The crossing divides the nave into two halves, the ratio of width to length of each roughly equal to 1:1.618. The crossing itself can be divided into two rectangles of the same proportion. The facade as a whole is a rectangle of this proportion and contains several rectangles also proportional.
Leone Battista Alberti, Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach, Robert Tavernor. On the Art of Building in Ten Books. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999.
Leone Battista Alberti (1404-1472) held an unlimited faith in the validity of mathematical proportions, and sought an improvement upon antiquity. His thinking is in direct line with mystical thought and can be seen in his articulation of beauty: “…the Judgment which you make that a Thing is beautiful does not proceed from mere opinion, but from a secret Argument and Discourse implanted in the Mind itself.” Alberti held 3 criteria for beauty: 1) number 2) proportion 3) distribution. The sum of these three things being harmony. Harmony is the key aesthetic concept. Proportions are immutable, like the laws of nature. Architecture imitates nature through harmony. Beauty possesses an active moral quality. Differs from Vitruvius in that ornament is superimposed; separates ornament from architecture. The division between theory and practice is further widened.
Andrea Palladio, Robert Tavernor, Richard Schofield. The Four Books on Architecture. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1997.
Palladio saw architecture as the adoption of the prime principle in nature; Beauty. Palladio also believed that he is continuing antiquity. Proportion was extremely important. Palladio proposed the use of the numerical sequences of arithmetic, geometric, and harmonic in room dimensions and in the relation of height to width to length. Palladio believed that Vitruvius revealed the deepest truths about architecture.
Wittkower, Rudolf. Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism. Great Britain: Wiley, 1998.
Wittkower brings to light the connections of thought to built Form. Wittkower focuses on renaissance architecture and its execution of platonic ideals. He focuses on Alberti, Palladio, and the churches of the renaissance. His analysis gives insight into Form while defending against those critics of “Formal” architecture. ‘The numbers by means of which the agreement of sound affects our ears with delight, are the very same which please our eyes and minds.’ The renaissance identification of musical and spatial ratios was only possible on the basis of a specific interpretation of space which, as far as we can see, has not been properly understood in modern times. Musical and spatial ratios are commonly attributed to Pythagoras.
Eugene Emmanuel Viollet-Le-Duc, Kenneth D. Whitehead. The Dictionary of Architecture. New York: Braziller, 1990.
Eugene Emmanuel Viollet-Le-Duc, Benjamin Bucknall. Lectures on Architecture. London: Sampson Low, 1887.
Viollet-Le-Duc (1814-1879) is responsible for the basic tenets of modern architecture while at the same time being commonly described as a gothic revivalist. Honesty was the guiding principle. He and Alberti are held to be the two eminent architectural theorists of European thought. Le Duc was an architectural restorer and was familiar with medieval buildings. He introduced material issues as the industrial revolution brought iron into the architectural vocabulary. He emphasised the structurally organic and rational quality of gothic architecture. It becomes obscure when trying to see Mystical thought or its influences in Le Duc’s work, but such currents were picked up by later architects such as Le Corbusier. Viollet-Le-Duc saw Architecture as dependant on technical, formal, and above all socio-historical factors. Architecture is a direct expression of a given social structure, the building process, and of ever advancing technology. “I am contemplating a different object – the knowledge of the True – the development of the immutable principles of our art, as variously applied by differently constituted civilizations.” If students are to learn a science or an art, with a view to its practical application, they reasonably ask that the road be traced out for them. Reliance on method. This road – the only good, the only free one, the only one that does not lead to false conceptions – is the road marked out for all ages by human reason. Le Duc asked what conditions are the most favourable to the development of the Arts but stressed that Art is not dependant on degree of civilization. He emphasized that we must not confuse the advancement of civilization or industrial progress with that of the Arts. ‘The orator, the poet, the musician, the architect, the sculptor, the painter, do but seek in differing ways the expression of one and the same feeling, present in the soul of every completely endowed man.” Imagination is its [arts] source; the imitation of Nature its means of expression. Imagination would produce only vague and shapeless fancies if man did not posses a regulator within, obliging him to give his fancy a semblance of reality. The regulator is his reason, or rather (for our language has no one word to express it) his faculty of reasoning. Emphasised no formulas, and left no judgments to authorities. Lecture nine is about principles and branches of knowledge with which architects should be acquainted. Importance of method.
Carl W. Condit. The Chicago School of Architecture: A History of Commercial and Public Building in the Chicago Area, 1875-1925. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964.
Wim de Wit. Louis Sullivan: The Function of Ornament. Ontario: Penguin Books Canada, 1986.
Louis Sullivan (1856-1924) coined the phrase form follows function. The coincidence shall not go unnoticed between mystics of the past and the tautology presented here, even if Sullivan meant something more than a tautology. What he did mean was that life and the appearance of life are always identical, and particular forms express their authentic life. Sullivan even goes on to say that in order to live, humans must love, and his articulation of love bears a resemblance to mystical treatises of the gothic period. We can rewrite the original formulation as form follows life.
Donald Hoffman. The Architecture of John Wellborn Root. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973.
Harriet Monroe. John Wellborn Root: A Study of His Life and Work. Park Forest: Prairie School Press, 1966.
John Wellborn Root (1850-1891) saw a connection between the concept of ornament and the question of style. Style was the expression of construction and historical styles were linked to historical conditions. Style is linked with function and becomes the “life and existence of the work”. “As far as material conditions permit it to be possible, a building designated for a particular purpose should express that purpose in every part…the force with which that function is expressed measures its value as a work of art.”
Frank Lloyd Wright. An Autobiography. New York: Noble, 1977.
Wright held spiritual principles to be the guiding forces in his architectural design. His explicit influences included Lao-Tzu and American Transcendentalism. Important was his idea of plasticity, or that each part of construction flowed into the other part. He combined the form and function of Sullivan, his teacher, into form and function are one. Also wrote of the nature of materials: ‘so I began to study the nature of materials, learning to see them’. This is seeing the form of materials. He was interested in the problem between post and beam; he resolved it by making the post a beam and the beam a post. They became one in a plastic, organic whole. Organic architecture means that nothing is of value except as it is naturally related to the whole in the direction of some living purpose, a true part of entity. ‘Standardization was either the enemy or a friend to the architect.’
Adolf Loos. Basic Architecture. Germany: Taschen, 2003.
Adolf Loos. Ornament and Crime. California: Ariadne Press, 1997.
Adolf Loos (1870-1933) expanded the scientific conception of Architecture through his ideas of Architecture as use and on aesthetic quality as beautiful use. “Every material has its own formal language, and no material can assume for itself the forms of another material. These forms have emerged from the way in which each material has been produced and employed: they have come into being with the material and through the material. No material permits interference with its own set of forms.” The paradoxical nature of this notion betrays the Mystical nature of what is being said. Loos later became obsessed with the idea of continuous cultural development from aborigines to modern man. In his “ornament and crime”, ornament was no longer something to be applied to architecture, but something to come out of architecture itself. The taking issue with false decoration and ornament finds itself first expressed by Le Duc, who first sought honesty.
Walter Gropius, The New Architecture and the Bauhaus. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1962.
Eric Carmin Cimino. Student Life at the Bauhaus: 1919-1933. Michigan: UMI dissertations publishing, 2003.
Technology, design, and aesthetics. “Not only in the manufacture of everyday articles but also in the construction of machines, vehicles, and factory buildings which exist simply to serve a given purpose, does account have to be taken of aesthetic values from the outset in respect to unity of all form, colour and overall elegance. It is no longer sufficient today simply to improve the quality of products in order to achieve success in international competition - a product that is technically excellent in every respect must be permeated with intellectual content, with form, if it is to secure a position of precedence among the mass of similar such products. Hence the whole of industry is today faced with the task of devoting itself seriously to artistic questions”.
Matthius Schirren, Bruno Taut, Alpine Architecture: A Utopia. New York: Prestel publishing, 2004.
Bruno Taut (1880-1938) in the post war years was part of a secret society; Glass Chain. Taut saw the gothic cathedral as the prelude to glass architecture, hence his “glashaus”. “A house should be nothing other than beautiful. It should fulfil no other purpose than to be empty, as Meister Eckhart, the medieval mystic put it…the visitor will be filled with the joy of Architecture, which will drain all human elements from his soul and make it a receptacle for the divine. Building is the reflection and the greeting of the stars: its plan is stelliform, the holy numbers 3 and 7 combine in it to form a unity…The illumination comes from between the interior and exterior glass shell… if one flies to the house at night in an aeroplane, it shines from afar like a star. And it rings like a bell.”
Richard Padovan, Towards Universality. London: Routledge, 2002.
Michael White, De Stijl and Dutch Modernism. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2003.
Johannes Ludovicus Mattheus Lauweriks (1864-1932) quote: “…the pattern of the cosmic order is manifest in architecture, and that behind that cosmic order lies a creative mathematics. Cosmic order, in its turn, then influences the ordering of human society”. De Stijl sought universals, and this universality resembled the universe itself by being boundless. Architecture sought to abolish the wall as boundary between interior and exterior. De Stijl was based on theosophical ideas of M.H.J. Shoenmakers. De Stijl saw functionalism, construction, and materials as subsidiary. “The pure expressive means at the disposal of architecture are surface, mass (positive) and space (negative). The architect expresses his aesthetic experience through the relationships of surfaces and masses to interior rooms and space.”
Rudolf Steiner, An Introduction to the Spiritual Processes in Human Life and in the Cosmos. Anthroposophic Press: 1922.
Rudolf Steiner: “the treatment of the walls is what is new in this conception…the artistic principle of the walls is that they neutralize themselves, so that inside one can feel that the wall does not shut one off, or that the column is not there as a form of barrier but that what is expressed in the column and the wall breaks through the wall and brings one into a living relationship with the whole universe.” Schoenmaker also had influence with ideas of neo-platonic “positive mysticism”, which emerged “plastic mathematics”. Schoenmaker goes on to reject the direct perception of Nature as hallucination: positive truth resides in reducing the relativity of the facts of nature to the absolute, so as to re-identify the absolute in the facts of nature. Exclusion of sensuous reality and achievement of complete abstraction.
Ching, D.K. Architecture: Form, Space , Order. Great Britain: Wiley, 1995.
Ching presents Form in a number of categories. Point, line, plane, volume, scale, proportion, etc. give the reader a toolbox of axioms from which to begin the process of understanding Form. Ching also gives a very basic presentation of the interrelationship of space and form. This text is intended as a primer for the architectural neophyte. Note the similarities between Ching breaking down the study into axioms, and Boethius.
Corbusier, Le. The Modular. Birkhauser Verlag AG: 2000.
Corbusier, Le. Towards a New Architecture. New York: Architectural Press, 1985.
Le Corbusier (1887-1965), the most influential architect since Palladio, here illustrates his modular system. The system is a series of measurements based on the golden section and Fibonacci numbers. These ideas are greatly indebted to platonic and Greek formalism. Corbusier brought to life many constructs based on the modular system. In this text Corbusier explicitly draws connections between Form, Greek architecture which was a direct manifestation of the ideas of Plato, and modern construction. It is also a clear expression “ineffable space” which later became an often misused expression. We unfortunately do not have any documentation of Corbu’s early spiritual development. He sought to idealise the individual elements of design: absolute independent floor plan, absolute free façade, absolute pillar, etc. The same thought underlines the use of standardised elements – a method of fabrication he justifies on grounds of cost but also uses in order to express order, harmony, and perfection. The idealization of functions leads to their aestheticisation, and not long afterwards made this a cardinal principle. He regarded architecture as the aesthetic of engineering and as expressive of the laws of economy that bring us into harmony with the laws of the universe. By his arrangement of forms, pure creation of the intellect, the architect gives us the measure of an order which we feel to be in accordance with that of our world. Great problems of modern construction must have a geometrical solution. Style is a unity of principle animating all the work of an epoch, the result of a state of mind which has its own special character. The architect becomes a pseudo-religious saviour. The secret of architecture is in geometry and proportion. “Architectural emotion arises when the work resounds within us, in harmony with a universe whose laws we acknowledge, worship, and obey.” Art in the tradition of French rationalism is knowledge. Beauty addresses itself to reason and the senses through laws and measurable order; functionalism, economy, standardization and the like represent the satisfaction of reason, while the formal creative powers of geometry represent the satisfaction of the senses. All of Le Corbusier’s stipulations are advanced as laws of nature which carries the ideals into the universal and ethical. A house is a machine for living in. Architecture is the learned game, correct and magnificent, of forms assembled in the light. To create architecture is to put in order. Put what in order? Function and objects. Space and light and order. Those are the things that men need just as much as they need bread or a place to sleep.
4.1 Secondary Sources
Ching, D.K. Architecture: Form, Space, Order. Great Britain: Wiley, 1995.
Ching presents Form in a number of categories. Point, line, plane, volume, scale, proportion, etc. give the reader a toolbox of axioms from which to begin the process of understanding Form. Ching also gives a very basic presentation of the interrelationship of space and form. This text is intended as a primer for the architectural neophyte. Note the similarities between Ching breaking down the study into axioms, and Boethius.
4.2 Secondary Journals
Arnheim Rudolf. Reviewed Work(s): Spiritual Path, Sacred Place: Myth, Ritual, and Meaning in Architecture by Thomas Barrie. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism Vol. 55, No. 4 (Autumn, 1997), pp. 430-431
Freidman D., Ph.D. The Sun on Trial: Khan’s Gnostic Garden at Salk. University of Pennsylvania, 1999, 309 pages; AAT 9926127
Jones Lindsay. The Hermeneutics of Sacred Architecture: A Reassessment of the Similtude between Tula, Hidalgo and Chichen Itza, Yucatan, Part I History of Religions Vol. 32, No. 3 (Feb., 1993), pp. 207-232
Milner, B. Sacred geometry. Architects' Journal. Vol. 188, pp. 26-9. 19 Oct. 1988
Nesbitt Kate. The Sublime and Modern Architecture: Unmasking (an Aesthetic of) Abstraction New Literary History Vol. 26, No. 1, Special Issue: 25th Anniversary. Narratives of Literature, the Arts, and Memory (Winter, 1995), pp. 95-110
Reed, Christopher. The Meaning of Architecture Art Journal Vol. 54, No. 3, Rethinking the Introductory Art History Survey (Autumn, 1995), p. 91
Strachan, G. Gothic sacred geometry (part 2) Church Building, 1998, issue
51, p.68
Weightman Barbara A. Sacred Landscapes and the Phenomenon of Light Geographical Review Vol. 86, No. 1 (Jan., 1996), pp. 59-71
Conclusion
This annotated bibliography was divided into two main sections, Mysticism and Architecture, in an attempt to make explicit the most fundamental. While each entry or resource differentiates to a certain degree, to the extent that each entry could be called Mysticism and Architecture, each entry or source unifies. What is most fundamental is never exhausted nor dogmatic in that each differentiation is not incompatible with its predecessors due to the requirement of the act of creation inherent in understanding what is primordial.
