The Cosmos In Stone BOOK REVIEW

This is a book for the ages. It is a large volume containing a distillation of Tom Bree’s work and studies over a ten year period from 2010-2020. Tom is a dear friend of the Well, a geometer and lecturer, and started to teach for the Trust through the Prince’s Foundation School of Traditional Arts. His book examines sacred geometry and cosmology in Gothic cathedral design and reveals how medieval Master Masons combined knowledge of practical building with ancient knowledge so that their buildings were imbued with profound spiritual meaning.

For Tom there was the realisation that something of this ilk was going on in the construction of Wells Cathedral in Somerset (England’s first Gothic cathedral). While going on his personal journey with these ideas Tom uncovered the intent that the design symbolises the soul’s cosmic journey from Earth, through the underworld and up into the starry heavens. This, of course, led him on to more historically recent explorations and revelations concerning Freemasonry, the Templars and Egyptology.

The writing is original and clear and helps the interested reader to go on the journey that has been his journey; he is, in effect, holding your hand and on nearly every page there are the most striking images and his own diagrams. All is revealed chapter by chapter in this unfolding work of the intelligent heart.

There are so many lovely and enlightening moments as you page-turn from the dedication to Our Lady of Walsingham and Tom’s geometry teacher Keith Critchlow who writes in the foreword that he holds Tom in the highest regard. Tom writes in the Introduction, ‘The use of geometry as a language of spiritual symbolism lies at the heart of this book.’ Thus, ‘sacred art and architecture’ are ‘specifically designed to act as both a mental and a physical reminder of the Divine Harmony’. From this Tom places ‘Wisdom’ at the Heart of the Matter arguing that the medieval designs of the Gothic cathedrals demonstrated a cosmos rendered in stone. It is this revealing journey that unfolds in this large book. But do not be intimidated by its size; Tom is a gentle guide through the mysteries of such topics as ‘The Virgin Mary and the Number Seven’ ‘The Seven Liberal Arts’, the book of Revelation, the symbolism of the rose, the Kingdom of Jerusalem and how it was represented in the Gothic cathedrals and then deeper and deeper into the design of Wells Cathedral.

There is a particularly apposite Epilogue in case the rarified air of Tom’s research has been challenging that brings us back to our present day situation with the environment and life on this planet. This situation, which Tom calls ‘the Luciferian aspiration’ to constantly expand outwards into the material world seems in direct contrast to the deep intuition of those soul’s ‘desirous potential for inward ascent’. Tom sees the desire for expansion as ‘misdirected desire’ concluding that only through ‘a relationship ruled by Divine Love’ is there ‘the possibility of a marriage between the inner and outer worlds of our Being.’

In this book you can go deeper and deeper. How far do you want to go in? For instance there is a fascinating chapter on the Chapter House stairs and their relation to the moon and the Chapter House’s own lunar correspondences. I’d always wondered why I found those stairs so enchanting and now I know.

So thank you Tom for pursuing this work. It is a timely gift.

P.S. And there’s a lovely photograph of John Michell on page 120!

Paul Fletcher