Originally Posted by
fortinian
Brilliant once again dazza, top info. I particuarly like the idea that Mackenzie was playing around with the dimensions of the pyramid... now all I need is a tape measure and a way into the church!
Thanks mate - likewise. You've been supplying some top-notch and solid research, all very interesting stuff.
The 'Pyramid Inch' [ref. here] is one twenty-fifth of a sacred 'cubit' = 1.00106 British inches. The difference is marginally small as you can see. Lets say, for argument's sake, that MacKenzie's Pyramid in Rodney Steet is 15 feet high. The difference between the British Inch measurement and the Pyramid Inch measurement would only lead to the Pyramid being a 1/5th of an inch taller, over it's entire height. About 5mm, in today's money.
The original drawing would be more useful, though I doubt it exists anymore? The problem with a tape measurement is that the contractor, may have built it over tolerance, and so the 5mm would be lost before you even got your tape measure out. Pity.
Originally Posted by
fortinian
Edward's mausoleum is strikingly similar in concept... one wonders if the pyramid was cleaned up would it be of the same material?
The Mackenzie family mausoleum [at Fawly] was built in 1862, and is constructed Aberdeen Granite.
Originally Posted by
fortinian
As for your ideas of pagan imagery in christian sites. Classical architecture has long had a central place in Christianity. The early Xtian basillicas where converted roman temples (Think of the Pantheon, now a church) so in a way ecclesiastical architecture was taken to be greco-roman, especially in the rennaisance when the classical world was held to be the highest form of civilisation (look at Christopher Wrens churches). Gothic architecture was considered to be suspiciously Catholic so the protestants liked the greco-roman stuff.
It was easier for the church to absorb symbols, than to distroy them. As the Christians did of the Roman's, and the Roman's did of the Greeks.
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Originally Posted by
fortinian
Curiously, many of the monuments in Victorian cemeteries are not actually Christian, but rather pagan ? classical (Roman) or Egyptian... What Victorians put on their graves sometimes reflected their religious positions ? though in counter-intuitive ways. For instance, some Church of Englanders felt that a cross was too Catholic a symbol, and reacted by deliberately using non-Christian symbols such as columns or urns on their graves....However, Egyptian architecture was not linked with any Christian movements, and so was popular with everyone.
You'd think that polytheism was alive and well in Victorian society, but I guess is was just recycling existing Egyptian, Greek and Roman myths, art, literature and styles of architecture, rather than personally upholding a belief in the gods they once represented.
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