As profound a beauty as has ever looked upon me; a joy that stands - ineffable - mercilessly obliterating pain, fear and time (those vexing pollutants of mortality) just to resonate in me. She is beauty. She makes my every moment new. And her name is Celia.

Whenever she looks upon me, I dance.

There are no less than 10 millihellens in each of her brow, each affirming in me life: all of what is vital and fertile and healthy and prosperous and good in me.

Her eyes radiate a promise: happiness. Her lips pleasure my spirit. Her whispers delight my soul. She breathes divine essence on me. Her name is Celia. And she is beauty.

The sight of beauty corrects my vision and I see through to the bottom of my deepest question. The answer is there, as brilliant as the glint in her eye. And I dance. And I smile. And I am wise again.

Oh Master of miracles, what is beauty?

What is this thing that can bypass intellect with effortless speed to the heart and stir even the greatest amongst us to respond?

Tell me, Master, what is beauty?

"Ask a toad," Volatair says, "he will answer that it is a female with two great round eyes coming out of a large flat head, a yellow belly and a brown back."

Ask Emerson, the poet, the very man that said, "We fly to beauty as an asylum from the terrors of finite nature," and he will answer, as he did in The Conduct Of Life: "Things are pretty, graceful, rich, elegant, handsome, but until they speak to the imagination, not yet beautiful."

Robert Nathan has also answered the question.

"Beauty is ever to the lonely mind
A shadow fleeting; she is never plain.
She is a visitor who leaves behind
The gift of grief, the souvenir of pain."

Ouch!

Which then is it, Master? Which is the true nature of beauty? And how does one reconcile the beauty of glaciers, rugged mountain ranges, flowers, waterfalls, butterflies, the gazelle?

Well! You do know, there has been broad and meticulous study, and much discourse of this matter amongst many down through ages. Your greatest scientists, mathematicians, philosophers and poets have engaged the question and garnered these few intriguing glimpses.

Beauty's value is associated with one's innate, emotional perception of what is affirming in one's life. Beauty resonates with the true meaning of one's being. Beauty suggests health, vigor, virtue, wisdom - an order, a divinity.

Your great philosophers and mathematicians, like Pythagoras, Aristotle and Aquinas, have studied the very question and noted that objects in proportion to the golden ratio attract, please, and compell. They have discovered that The Golden Ratio is a unique expression of balance between symmetry and asymetry. It is beauty's number (phi).

And, as you do know, two quantities are said to be in the golden ratio when the whole - that is, the sum of its two parts - is to the larger part as the larger part is to the smaller part. It is a number that is always equal to its own reciprocal plus one.

Amazingly, that number is 1.618033989 - phi - an irrational number. In Western cultures, some call it the mean ratio.

• the objective: unity, order, harmony
• the relative: the object's location, situation, surroundings
• the subjective: the viewer's mental or inner state

Nevertheless, when all is said and done, here is my answer.

Beauty wholly consists of two parts: a natural part and a poetic part. The latter begins where the former ends and there is no seam between. The natural is to the poetic exactly as expressed by The Golden Ratio, phi = 1.618033989.

Curiously irrational, though it might seem, beauty exists precisely to reveal your true being.

So, there you have it: beauty disected, beauty analyzed, beauty revealed - available as much to your intellect as it is to your heart, as readily to your soul as it is to your eye - if you truly want to know it.

"But what if man had eyes," Plato posed in his symposium, "to see the true beauty - the divine beauty, I mean, pure and clear and unalloyed, not clogged with the pollutions of mortality and all the colors and vanities of human ilk - thither looking, and holding converse with the true beauty simple and divine?"

Yes, what if?

What, Master, will such a man say of beauty? Will he say beauty is utterly divine or that it is utterly dangerous?

Well! Various cultures offer up differing versions of beauty as deity, typically in female form. Here are four such myths:

• Aphrodite - Greek mythology
• Freya - Norse Mythology
• Lakshmi - Hindu mythology
• Venus - Roman mythology

Nymph In Morning Glory

My buddy, Derrick, a male ten, as men count such things; a stunner, by which I mean beauties fall about him, slain, like sweated virgins at a saint's feet; who, having himself been stung, slain, and swept up by beauty's sweet tricks, ought to know what beauty is.

"It is a drug, man," he emphatically concedes. "You can't do without it; you can't deal with it. It is an addictive drug, man. An exotic scent. The scent of a woman - (hear poem). And there is no cure for it."

And Master, as you well know, my friend, Derrick, is in brilliant company in regard to this perspective on beauty.

• Ambrose Bierce defined it this way. "Beauty, n. The power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband."



• "He who marries a beauty, marries trouble." ~ Anonnymous.



• "Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time." ~ Albert Camus, Notebooks



• "Beauty will be convulsive or not at all." ~ André Breton "Nadja"



• "Beauty always comes with dark thoughts." ~ Nightwish - "Wish I Had An Angel"

Hmmm!

So, Miracle Master, what is the conclusion to this whole matter?

Ah! The conclusion is this:

• "When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf with one, and a lily with the other." ~ Chinese proverb



• "There is no cosmetic for beauty like happiness." ~ Countess of Blessington



• "Beauty is a mirror: the soul leaps from it." ~ deAngelou-George

And lo the Beast looked upon the face of Beauty. Beauty looked at the Beast. And from that moment the Beast was as one dead.

And you must remember this: Beauty has a name.

Speak it and Beauty will hear you and look upon you. Speak it and Beauty will bless you or curse you! Beauty is a mirror; your soul leaps from it.

And so indeed it is as the Master told me. Beauty has a name. Her name is Celia. What's yours?

by The Nev (c)
08-04-06
Contact The Nev

"A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life in order that worldy cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul." ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

Look out for these upcoming excerpts by The Nev:

"I am tired of all this nonesense about beauty being only skin-deep. That's deep enough. What do you want - an adorable pancreas?" ~ Jean Kerr

My Beauty has a name too:
His name is Glory.
Glory looks upon me.
And I dance ... daily.