In Part Five I illustrated the subtle zodiacal rectilinear grid of Leonardo’s Last Supper in conjunction with the curvilinear geometries that measure out the table, all based on the unit/radius (1) of the Divine Son’s hand-to-hand span. In closing, I illustrated the Libra hieroglyph that—together with the Divine Son’s own figure and sacred measure—harmonizes the rectilinear and curvilinear zodiacal architecture of the painting. Fig. 1 above combines those two illustrations, with the addition of all twelve zodiacal glyphs along the upper horizontal boundary of the grid. The sequence begins and ends, as the Zodiac does, at 0° Aries, with its midpoint at 0° Libra positioned at the horizontal center of the table and aligned with the spine, or vertical axis, of Leonardo’s Divine Son. To make this relationship explicit, the full width of the table in this construction serves as a linear representation of the 360° zodiacal circle. In this image we can see and appreciate that the figure of the Divine Son establishes the Libran balance and sacred geometry of Leonardo’s zodiacal painting.
0° Libra marks the September Equinox—the midpoint, balancing point, or viṣūvant of the Zodiac as measured by Earth’s tropical year. In Sanskrit, Libra is Tula, the Balancing Scale. Directly opposite 0° Aries, 0° Libra divides the tropical year into two equal halves, giving Tula its natural symbolic correspondence with balance. Note that when 0° Libra is displaced from the September Equinox as per the post-Vedic sidereal measure, this intrinsic relationship between Tula, the balance, and the balancing midpoint of the year is entirely lost. [1]
In Part Five, I pointed out that Leonardo’s underlying or subtle zodiacal architecture appears to give special emphasis to 0° Capricorn/Makar, established by the December Solstice of the Earth’s tropical year.
I also noted that the Aquarian disciple’s left hand points to this degree—marked by the red dot above—with striking precision along both the horizontal and vertical axes of the zodiacal grid. I also noted that the back of the Sagittarian disciple’s head (in Thea’s count of the zodiacal 12 disciples) aligns with the same point via the horizontal measure. Thus the passage from Sagittarius into Capricorn—Makar Sankranti, the solstitial threshold later associated in Christian tradition with the birth of Jesus—appears to be embedded in Leonardo’s composition.
It is worth adding here that, as visible in Fig. 1, the horizontal hand gesture of the 4th (Cancerian) disciple from the right matches the horizontal hand gesture of the 11th (Aquarian) disciple and falls along the same 0° Capricorn latitude or horizontal line. The more vertically aligned hand gestures of both the 5th and 6th disciples touch this latitude of the grid in one way or another. And whereas the heads of 9 (3 × 3) disciples plus the central Divine Son or “One” are predominantly above this horizontal 0° Capricorn line, it goes directly through the heads of the three disciples—the 7th, 8th, and 9th—corresponding to what Thea discussed as the Mental quadrant of the Zodiac, spanning Libra (Tula), Scorpio (Vrishchika), and Sagittarius (Dhanu).
In Part Six, I want to focus on the geometry and symbolic significance of the circle whose diameter—equivalent to twice the Son’s hand-to-hand measure—extends left from the Divine Son’s navel at 0° Libra, through its 0° Sagittarius center point, to 0° Aquarius (Kumbha), along the zodiacal “longitude” of the table. Thus the diameter of this Sagittarian circle spans one-third or 120° of the Zodiac (=432,000 arcseconds) and four months of the zodiacal table: the 7th month of Libra, the 8th month of Scorpio, the 9th month of Sagittarius, and the 10th month of Capricorn.
