“The higher purpose of geometry is to participate, body, soul and spirit in the objective universal laws that
govern and cohere our universe. This activity can lead us directly to the centre of our own understanding which unifies us with the whole.” – Keith Critchlow 

As the allure of life mediated by screens and algorithms becomes ever more compelling, it is incumbent upon all who believe in the Spirit Human, to develop and deepen practices of discernment between the hubris of the transhumanist’s agenda and the true, god-given world, ever suffused with the ‘translucence of the Eternal’. 

Centres like Emerson College, home to Sacred Art of Geometry (SAOG) Studios and a number of other similarly oriented ‘schools’ whose very raison d’être is to re-enliven our connection with the Soul Sciences, thus help to facilitate a deeper capacity for discernment.

SAOG Studios co-founder, Daniel Docherty, regularly expresses his deep gratitude for being able to work and learn at Emerson, surrounded by like-minded (and like-hearted) tutors, course participants and community, as well as by Emerson’s beautiful grounds and productive biodynamic gardens. He also likes to point out the favourable proximity of Tablehurst biodynamic farm and the glorious expanse of the Ashdown Forest.

As a child he regularly walked across the farm fields and wandered around the Emerson grounds drawn there by the palpable yet inexplicable, ever-present quality of enchantment. Daniel grew up in Forest Row village and attended Michael Hall School until his final school years where he went on to complete his schooling at Brockwood Park Krishnamurti School. He then went to London to study art and crafts (basket weaving in particular). He undertook his MA under the auspices of Professor Keith Critchlow at the then Prince’s School of Traditional Arts where his focus was on the ‘sacred’ geometries that underlie and inform, not only all the world’s cultural traditions and artefacts, but the very cosmos itself: from planetary patterns circling above, to plant forms below, from within, to without, the ‘ever true, eternally existent’ principles are, subtly, ever present. Once this notion became a lived reality through practice and experience, it could not be anything other than life changing. 

Daniel first met his future wife (and colleague), Vija, (also a Steiner school graduate and at the time a class teacher at a Steiner school in Australia) on the 291 bus at the bottom of the Emerson drive! After finishing his MA he moved to Australia and taught there for ten years as a class teacher at the Newcastle Waldorf School. During this time he was invited to give several workshops and talks exploring various aspects of Sacred Geometry. By the time the Docherty family moved to Forest Row in 2014 there were five of them!

In the months that followed, Daniel met a fellow graduate of The Prince’s School, Kira Orsak (another Steiner school graduate!) who was also living in the Forest Row area. Kira had previously completed her biodynamic training at Emerson College (where she too had met her future husband!). With many shared interests, including a not insignificant love of Kentucky farmer/poet, Wendell Berry, who reminds us ‘there are no unsacred places, there are only sacred places and desecrated places’, and a remembrance of Keith Critchlow’s oft quoted Taitreya Upanishad dictum : ‘Learn and Teach, Learn and Teach, Learn and Teach’, this is what they began to do … 

SAOG Studios is born

As Kira and Daniel were both involved with Tablehurst Farm at the time, they began to offer courses from the farmer’s meeting room there. It soon became apparent that the participatory and cathartic nature of guiding participants through the drawing of sacred pattern as a symbolic and alchemical process was quenching a thirst. Here were courses where people could directly experience the patterns of creation and cosmic harmony through conscious co-creation. As long as one is able to turn a pair of compasses the courses are accessible to all without any prior mathematical or artistic experience.

SAOG moves to Emerson

It wasn’t long before Emerson extended an invitation to the newly formed entity ‘Sacred Art of Geometry’ to establish a studio space on campus and to become the first Emerson ‘Partner’ initiative: it was in 2016 that this rich symbiotic relationship between SAOG Studios and Emerson began, allowing SAOG’s course participants to be embraced by Emerson’s abundant gifts and hospitality. In turn, SAOG Studios offered Emerson a dynamic creative space where the principles of truth, beauty and goodness are ever at the fore. From the very first month of moving in, SAOG Studios have been consistently offering a diverse programme of unique short courses such as Pigment and Paint Making from Mineral and Plant, Drawing Planetary Patterns, Exploring Labyrinths, Persian Geometry, and so much more. The Studio welcomes participants from near and far; we are ever humbled when course attendees arrive having driven the length and breadth of Europe to be with us.

Changes

Kira is now living in Brazil with her husband and three boys. She is no doubt paving the way for further exciting new initiatives as she is wont to do wherever she goes. We not only thank her for her part in co-founding SAOG Studios nine years ago, but also for her ‘nous’ in establishing Spring Rise Community Gardens, another thriving Emerson-based initiative.

At present

These days Vija Docherty and Daniel Docherty are the primary Studio carriers; it is a rare day that one or both of them cannot be found there, either teaching, preparing for a course, or hosting an offering presented by a colleague. 

A pivotal moment in SAOG Studios history, and an inestimable endorsement of its endeavours, occurred when Keith Critchlow expressed the desire, upon his death in April 2020, that his library and teaching materials be bequeathed to SAOG: ‘The honouring of the sacred is clearly evident here’, he had said.  

Keith’s wife, Gail, son, Matthew and youngest daughter of three, Amelia, together with Daniel and Vija, have been instrumental in fulfilling Keith’s wishes by establishing the Keith Critchlow Legacy Library/Studio, at Emerson in the former north library in Pixton House. Plans are well under way to build a Keith Critchlow Centre, either at Emerson, or nearby, were his incredible library and legacy will undoubtedly continue to inspire future generations through the deep commitment to revere, learn from, and sustain, the manifold wisdom traditions of the world.

Several renowned teachers, inspired by Keith and the work that Sacred Art of Geometry is doing to perpetuate the vision, have offered to donate their book collections. The potential is truly there to re-establish a new Library of Alexandria. Given the incredible pace with which culture (and indeed common sense) is being memory-holed into an inert, cult-like, dimensionality, how valuable could such an initiative prove to be? 

A few words about Prof. Keith Critchlow

Keith was a world renowned teacher, sacred geometer and architect. Truly, a teacher of teachers! He had a precious gift of being able to elevate every mundane moment beyond the temporal realm to where the presence of the eternal could be sensed. A lovely anecdote, in relation to this transcendence of the commonplace, was shared during a birthday message by Keith, filmed at SAOG Studios on behalf of the Temenos Academy, on the occasion of the then HRH The Prince of Wales’ 70th birthday. Prince Charles drew much inspiration from Keith’s work, and on one particular occasion he put to Keith the conundrum: ‘Why the perplexing human tendency, the apparent desire to sabotage our progress towards a state of health (wholeness)?’ The example Charles postulated was why do people smoke cigarettes when it is obviously not good for one’s health. Keith, typically, approached this question from a completely original  angle and asked: ‘… rather than the cigarette, is it not connection with the flame that we are actually craving? That ontological axis of warmth and light that reminds us that we are connected at all times to the divine.’

Pursuant to this desire to deepen our connection with the divine and the perennial wisdom streams, Keith, together with longtime friend and collaborator, Kathleen Raine, established the Temenos Academy.

Keith’s connection with Emerson goes back a long way: Rudolf Steiner was an integral influence on his work, and when he was teaching at the Architectural Association back in the 1960s he would bring his students to Emerson to attend talks by such Emerson luminaries as John Davy and Adam Bittleston.

When sharing these remembrances with Daniel and Vija on his first visit to SAOG Studios in 2017, Keith appeared especially heartened to know that, for the time being at least, the work of Sacred Art of Geometry Studios is homed in the right place.

From the Taitreya Upanishad, a sacred Hindu and yogic text, that Keith would often share with his students, expressing how learning and teaching are important spiritual disciplines (The Ten Principal Upanishads, translated by W. B. Yeats and Shree Purohit Swami)

Do your duty; learn and teach.

Speak truth; learn and teach.

Meditate; learn and teach.

Control the senses; learn and teach.

Control the mind; learn and teach.

Kindle the sacred fire; learn and teach.

Feed the fire; learn and teach.

Be hospitable; learn and teach. 

Be humane; learn and teach.

Serve the family; learn and teach …

Visit the SAOG website to see the range of upcoming courses on offer.