Rosslyn Chapel, near Edinburgh, holds many secrets. Linked to Freemasonry,
the Knights Templar, legends of “hidden sacred secrets”, and even the Quest for
the Grail, it draws many thousands of visitors yearly. But one of the chapel’s secrets
has been revealed: The music of the cube carvings. It is one of the most
hauntingly beautiful pieces I’ve ever heard. Here is the story behind that musical discovery.
For better than twenty years, Thomas
Mitchell was drawn again and again to Rosslyn Chapel. Something about the
carved cubes attached to its soaring arches called to him, their
patterns triggering a subconscious response.
And well they should. You see,
Thomas J. Mitchell was a WWII cryptographer, cracking some of the toughest
enemy codes during the war. Yet it wasn’t until he reached the age of
72 that what he’d been looking at blazed clearly in his brain. The
carvings on the 600 year old Rosslyn Chapel represent a coded form of a musical
score, say the father-and-son team of Tommy J. Mitchell, 75, and Stuart Mitchell,
41.
In
a quoted statement from his website T. Mitchell says: “Rosslyn Chapel holds a
musical mystery in its architecture and design. At one end of the chapel, on
the ceiling are 4 cross sections of arches containing elaborate symbolic
designs on each array of cubes (in actual fact they are rectangles mostly). The
‘cubes’ are attached to the arches in a musically sequential way. And to
confirm this, at the ends of each arch there is an angel playing a musical
instrument of a different kind. After 27 years of study and research, we
believe he has found pitches and tonality that match the symbols on each cube,
revealing its melodic and harmonic progressions.”
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| Cube carvings along arches of Rosslyn Chapel |
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| Stave Angel |
This musical score has been ‘frozen’
in Rosslyn for 600 years. Inside the chapel, there are 13 angels Tommy Mitchell calls
the “orchestra of angels”, which are carved into the chapel’s arches and
who appear to be musicians. 213 geometric symbols are also found that resemble
sound waves at different pitches. After decoding all the symbols to
match the sound waves, they found the song researchers say is part of the
“cymatics” music system. The cymatic system is also known as the
“Chladni patterns”, which is the study of wave phenomena associated
with the physical patterns produced through the interaction of sound waves in a
medium. Ernest Chladni’s 18th century research was later
continued by musician and amateur scientist Margaret Watts Hughes,
who invented a device called the Eidophone to produce these patterns.
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| Notes displayed overhead, as identified by Chladni Patterns. |
In themselves, the patterns are
simply visual representations and thus nothing out of the ordinary: what
is amazing is that the Rosslyn cubes were carved 500 years BEFORE the
supposed discovery of the technique.
Long associated with the Templar
Knights, several other mysteries are believed hidden in the numerous, intricate
carvings. One being the Apprentice Pillar, which is said to be representative
of a strand of DNA.
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| Intricately carved Apprentice Pillar |
Raging curiosity always makes me want to take things a
bit further. Is it just general DNA...... or the DNA of a particular individual?
Below is a link to a demonstration of Chladni patterns by using an Eidophone. Interesting indeed and well worth the time to watch! It's fascinating to realize the notes in the song being sung in the background match the tone produced by the Eidophone, at the point the pattern displayed matches the carvings on the cubes!
Until next week, happy paranormal!
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