Prologue

The two men walked along a ridge following the sweep of the beach around the bay. Ahead of them the westering sun caught the headlands south of Cape Wrath. As they took in the lines of the cliffs and the timeless ocean horizon, their talk had moved on from the earthbound beauty of their surroundings to the lofty arts of number, harmony and form. The monk had explained how the ancients had believed such arts readied the soul for higher things, bringing it to the very shoreline of the eternal. He had described the strange and secret ways in which, he said, the old priests and philosophers had taught their pupils.

‘... So you’re telling me,’ said his burly southern friend, ‘that all that stuff about right angles and hypotenuses and the musical theory about lengths of strings and golden measures, sacred numbers and heaven knows what else ... all the stuff we think of as coming from Pythagoras — that the lot was taught to him through just one simple diagram, when he was in Egypt?’

‘It’s certainly possible,’ said the Abbot, ‘and much else besides ... surveying, architectural ground plans, cosmology, theology — even their very system of numbers itself. I think there was a geometric core to much that was taught in the “House of Life” in Heliopolis. And of course ancient Chaldea and India had it, too, and China no doubt.’

The southerner looked at the Benedictine’s windbitten face. Was he joking? One simple diagram?

‘Next you’ll be telling me that it was used to build the Great Pyramid.’

‘Well, not “build” it exactly, but certainly for planning the ground-square and later, to get the height and the face angles for cutting into the stone.’

‘I thought that was some obscure angle — just under fifty two degrees ....’ The layman was not about to be convinced.

‘Yes, that’s about it’ said the monk cheerfully. ‘It’s right there in the diagram; which also divides itself into sevens and elevens and thirteens and an infinity of other sections. If Pythagoras had had the good fortune to be a Scotsman he could have used it for designing tartans! And if Hermann Hesse had only known about it he might have had a real Glass Bead Game to play. But you’re wrong about it being complicated. It’s so easy that any half-skilled journeyman could sketch it out as a template with no problem at all.’

The southerner’s silence proclaimed his scepticism.

‘Here,’ said the Abbot. ‘I’ll show you.’

He clambered down an incline from the grass ridge to the banked sea gravel below. Slipping his sandals off, he walked out on to the beach. The receding tide had left the surface smooth and damp. There he squatted with his cowl flapping in the breeze. He reached for a twig of driftwood and in just a few strokes, he drew out a rudimentary boxed star-shape in the sand. His friend stood waiting for more ... but the Abbot, it seemed, had finished.

‘So ... is that it?’

‘Yes, that’s it,’ said the monk.

‘Just that simple?’

‘Yes — just that simple.’