Pi, Circles and Women

I love the movie 'Pi'. and when i say love, i mean *looooovvveeee.that.movie*. I am endlessly fascinated by math and the interaction of numbers and number systems. I am additionally fascinated by the numerical coding of the Hebrew alphabet and the numerical relationships between words. I am tenuously curious about Kabbalah. And I am perpetually fascinated by the numerical identity known as Pi.

I rented the movie  "Pi" for the umpteenth time last week and watched it, drawn in and enraptured as usual. The black and white cinematography, the directing, the acting, the not-quite linear plot are very well done; the movie is much deserving of it's Sundance award. And the curious mystery of the connection between chaos and order, numbers and language, and the connections to the Divine fascinate me ...

Via Wikipedia: 

The number π is a mathematical constant that is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. It has been represented by the Greek letter "π" since the mid-18th century.

Being an irrational number, π cannot be expressed exactly as a ratio of any two integers (fractions such as 22/7 are commonly used to approximate π but no fraction can be its exact value). Consequently, its decimal representation never ends...  The digits appear to be randomly distributed, although no proof of this has yet been discovered. 

Also, π is a transcendental number – a number that is not the root of any nonzero polynomial having rational coefficients. The transcendence of π implies that it is impossible to solve the ancient challenge of squaring the circle with a compass and straight-edge.

(emphases mine)

I've always considered lines and squares and edges to be male, and circles and curves to be female. This is my own relational perspective, but I don't think it's a stretch to understand it. I often say that if the world had been built by women, all buildings would be round and cylindrical or maybe cones (like a tee pee, perhaps), road structures would include more curves and less right-angled intersections, that calendering and scheduling would revolve around natural cycles (circles) such as the moon cycle, and the corresponding tide cycles. Curvy, round shapes would be the beauty ideal, not flat, linear shapes: the common body shape of a woman would be normal, expected, and not something to be overcome with starvation diets and exercise addiction. A flat stomach with angular hip bones and rib bones jutting out would seem unusual and perhaps unhealthy. In short, I think patriarchy is geometrically dominate in our world structure as well as every other way: everything is a representation of the phallus. If women had structured the world, everything would be a representation of the vulva. I for one, would much prefer that.

So I get to thinking...

You draw a circle. You draw a line through the middle of it and measure it: that's the diameter. It seems logical to think that there would be a constant numerical ratio between the diameter of a circle and it's circumference (the measurement of the edge of the circle). But there's not. That equation is never finitely solved. The number trails off endlessly. Endlessly. You can't nail it down. You can't actually quantify it. As of the end of 2011 (according to Wiki) super computers have been able to solve Pi to over ten trillion digits and it still never completes. It is a transcendent number.

And I think... as a woman who loves women, and I mean I *looooooooove.women*, I know women to be hard to nail down, to be complex and mysterious even after decades of knowing them. That they are all curves and circles and rounded shapes, endless depths of being, sometimes irrational (and that is not a judgement), sometimes random, and always transcendent. It is through the love of a woman's body (her round body, her rounded vulva) that we find a woman's heart and a woman's mind and a woman's depth of being. It is through the wondrous discovery of the relationship between the line and the curve, the rational and the irrational, the analytical and the emotional that we find a gateway to the Divine Feminine. It is through the Divine Feminine that we find a gateway to the Universe, and Universal Truths and transcendent connection. 

For me a masculine god is a lie. Creativity is inherently Feminine: it is from a woman's womb that life emerges. It is from a woman's body that the universe continues. The circle, concentric circles, the spiral: these are the basic structures of life, found in the micro and the macro universe.  A galaxy is not shaped like a box or a cube. (The Borg was cube-oriented... I won't go there now, but I love the symbolism of Star Trek). The inability to finitely define the relationship between the line/diameter and the circumference/curve indicates Divinity to me, shows me in the circles and spirals Divinity in nature, that a Divine Force cannot be dismissed as non-existent. And that Divine Force is clearly and unequivocally Feminine: all round and spirally swirling, not easily defined, endless and transcendent.




http://www.pithemovie.com/