The spiral of time and the spiral of the universe you might say! And so the spiral dropped into my life once again, from the golden to the marvellous! The spiral to me is all about evolution, growth, letting go, release, connectivity, union, revolutions of time, the stars, planets and the way of natural progress, which directly related to the Hellenic idea of the Cosmos.
"The human mind always makes progress, but it is a progress made in spirals."
~Madame de Stael
It was in the Dinosaur
museum of all places that the spiral of a long extinct Ammonite caught my
attention. Ammonites are perhaps the most widely known fossil, with a ribbed spiral-form
shell. They lived in the seas between 240-65 million years ago, and became
extinct along with the dinosaurs. The name “ammonite” originates from the Greek
ram-horned god called Ammon , also related to the Egyptian god Amun!
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Ammonites are the great
great great great great great x 10 grandfathers/mothers of such creatures as
octopus, squid, cuttlefish and the nautilus. The nautilus is the creature I’d
like to pick out; its shell is perhaps the best example of a logarithmic spiral
in the natural world! The logarithmic
spiral is also known as the spira mirabilis, which is Latin for “miraculous
spiral”. This spiral is different to the
golden spiral in that the spiral gets bigger but the shape isn’t altered as
with a spiral using the Fibonacci sequence.
Another example of an
approximate miraculous spiral can be seen in the bands of the tropical cyclones
that make up such weather systems as a hurricane.
According to my research hurricane winds blow in a counter
clockwise direction into the storms low pressure relatively calm, roughly
circular centre, called the eye.
Around the eye is what’s called the eyewall, a wall of
thunderclouds all spiralling toward it and long bands of rain appear to spiral
inward to the eyewall – these are called spiral rainbands! Powerful, scary, and
brilliantly spiral!
Going a little further out and off of our planet brings me
to one of my favourite spirals of all time – spiral galaxies! Spiral galaxies consist
of a flat, rotating disk containing stars, gas and dust, and a central
concentration of stars known as the bulge! These are surrounded by a much
fainter halo of stars.
They are called spiral galaxies because of the spiral
structure that extends from the centre into the disk; the spiral arms
themselves are sites of ongoing star formation and are often brighter because
of the young hot stars that inhabit them. Excitingly our own galaxy, the Milky
Way has several spiral arms, each of which is roughly a logarithmic spiral!
The picture to the left shows
a spiral galaxy known as the whirlpool galaxy, which brings me back the earth
with a bump… well oceans, rivers, ponds and the bottom of waterfalls anyway!
I’m talking about whirlpools firstly, this is a vortex of water that’s being
forced through a narrow straight, on the surface a whole forms in the centre
which sucks in air and other objects including in the extreme a boat and
humans, but the water spirals inwards just like a storm and is sucked down into
a spiralling vortex.
On a quick note before I return to dry land, have you ever
dropped a stone into a pond? Or watched as a nut or a leaf or a seed falls into
a still pond? Maybe you would have noticed the spiral of the ripple outward
from the point the object hit the waters surface!
OK I’m back on dry land and the list continues on, I want to
look at plants next. There is a type of
aloe called a spiral aloe in English which is only found in the cool and rocky
crevices of the Drakensberg mountains in South Africa also known as the
dragon mountains. It has a strikingly symmetrical, five pointed spiral of
growth about it which is absolutely stunning!
Pinecones can do spirals; they can also do mathematics,
specifically the golden ratio! All cones grow in spirals, starting from the
base where the stalk was, and going round and round the sides until they reach
the top, the best way to see this is from the bottom, I was surrounded by pine
cones on holiday, and believe you me it blew my mind to see the spiral when I
was collecting some. Interesting there are two sets of spirals for each cone,
going in different directions.
The head of a flower is
also subject to Fibonaccian processes. Typically, seeds are produced at the
centre, and then grown towards the outside to fill all the space. Sunflowers
provide a great example of these spiralling patterns.
Interesting the five petaled rose which you may pop into a
five pointed star category forms a spiral, the five petals spiral outwards from
the small petals in the centre and become larger the further they go out.
One of my favourite
things to do in the spring is go the forest and watch ferns unfurling, the
frond (leaf) has a coiled tip and reminds me of the head of a fiddle! When it
wakes up it seems to stretch out its spiral! Speaking of leaves, a palm leaf
will very often spiral so as to capture what little rain falls in tropical
areas and direct that much needed moisture toward the stem!
Finally I want to show some animals with surprising spirals
which have blown my mind…
The shell of a snail, with this particular photo because the
line of the spiral is brown to the yellow of the shell (I’m not sure if this is
photoshopped, I hope not I really do) you can really see the spiral from the
centre to the outside of the protective shell. Another example of the golden
ratio in nature! I don’t think I would have ever noticed a snail before now,
but this is stunning and I will definitely be keeping my eye out for snails in
the future!
The next picture may scare a few people but I think spiders
known as the typical orb-weaver spiders are not only the most common group of
builders of spiral wheel-shaped webs often found in gardens, fields and forests
but they build one of natures most delicate and beautiful examples of the
spiral, and something I’ve been trying desperately to get a photo of since
starting this homework! LOL! Without really realising why I wanted one…
Staying with insects, did you know that insects tend to fly
in spirals toward light?! Interesting! Speaking of flying, a bird of prey with
circle it’s prey in spirals on the updrafts which travel from the earth into
the atmosphere in spirals.
Remember earlier on I spoke of Ammon of Greece and Amun of
Egypt? Well that got me thinking about the ram, they have very strong spiralled
horns which they use to show off to the ladies and to rut with other males to
become the dominant in a herd. The ram is also the symbol of Aries (my sun
sign) which is interesting given the Aries constellation has among other things
a spiral galaxy within it!
Finally, I think! I’d like to show you a photo I found quite
by accident while searching for spirals to illustrate the points I wanted to
make, it’s a spiral by accident that made me smile from ear to ear! If you
can’t quite figure out what it is it’s the trunk of an elephant curled up into
a spiral while he eats! FANTASTIC!
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