Subject: (urth) Father Leonardo's Mirrors
From: Josh Geller 
Date: 19 Aug 2003 19:21:00 -0700

I have this book entitled 'The Labyrinth - Symbol Of Fear, Rebirth And
Liberation', Shambhala 1997, ISBN 1-57062-195-0. It is not, in my
opinion, a great book. It is translated from the German of Helmut
Jaskolski, a modern pedagogue who lives near Cologne. It has a lot of
nice pictures. and although I cannot say much that is true and
kind about Herr Prof Dr Jaskolski's understanding of his complex and 
ancient subject, on page 87, apropos of not much, we find the 
following:

An invention of Leonardo Da Vinci, which he sketched with a pen under 
the heading "mirror"... He was not yet technically capable of realizing
this invention [no evidence is adduced to back up this, in my opinion
probably false, statement - JG], but his explanation of it was as
follows: "If you make eight flat surfaces, each one two cubits long and
three cubits high..., and arrange them in a circle so that they form an
octagon with a circumference of sixteen cubits and a diameter of five
cubits, then a man inside can see himself infinitely from all sides."

Leonardo's drawing is reproduced on page 88.












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