Table of Contents

Foreword by John Anthony West

Acknowledgments

1. Introduction: A Radical Revelation

2. The Scientific Architecture of the Twentieth Century
The Architectural Revolution
The Wasteland
The Architecture of Alienation

3. Making the Modern Architect
The Failure of the Schools
The Plight of the Practicing Architect

4. The Materialist Paradigm
A New Model of the Cosmos
Nihilism, Despair, and the Decline of the Arts

5. The Return of the Spirit
The “Other Tradition”
The New Physics
The Mystical Vision

6. Intuition and the Creative Mind
The Mind and the Unconscious Mind
The Practice of Intuition
The Theory of the Archetype

7. Archetypes of Shelter
The Cave
The Clearing
The Garden
The Presence of Water
The Four Elements

8. Archetypes of Design
The Principle of Duality
Hierarchy
The Nature of Materials

9. The Resolution of Form
Form and Function
The Search for Form
The Mathematical Basis of Architecture

10. Geometry and Number
Recovering the Ancient Tradition
Principles of Sacred Geometry
The Meaning of Proportion
Architectural Examples

11. Architect and Cosmos
Anthropocosm
Magic and Symbol
The Parameters of Inspiration

12. A Time of Transition
Principle and Process
Architect and Society
The New Architecture

Notes

Bibliography

Index

About the Author

Herbert Bangs was a designer for R. R. Buckminster Fuller’s architectural firm, Geodesics, and was the Baltimore County architect and principal master planner. He and his wife live in a solar home he designed and built in Ruxton, Maryland.

Reviews

“. . . an excellent and precisely timed work that is encompassing, mature, and presented not only with sound reasoning but depth of feeling.”
*Robert Lawlor, author of Sacred Geometry*

“This book deserves to be on every architect’s bookshelf. It demonstrates that much of modern architecture has become divorced from the principles of proportion used by almost all important buildings in historical times.”
*Robin Heath, author of Sun, Moon, and Stonehenge*

“A superb clarion call for a restoration of beauty, integrity, and above all, sanity in modern architecture.”
*Richard Smoley, author of Forbidden Faith*

“This brave and perceptive work explores the debacle of modern architecture and points the way to a healthier new architecture, based on proportion and sacred principles, which reveres ecology and the cosmos.”
*A. T. Mann, author of Sacred Architecture*

“. . . captures truths that we intuitively know, but haven’t the training and background to articulate and illustrate as fully as is done in this fine work.”
*Mitch Horowitz, Exectutive Editor at Tarcher/Penguin*

“This is a significant and important book that expresses the perennial wisdom that has been the basis of covert mystery school teachings throughout the ages. It is most pertinent for society at large as well as all students of the Arts and Architecture who are searching for the knowledge, understanding, and meaning of Plato’s concepts of Goodness, Beauty, and Truth.”
*Thomas Saunders, Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects and author of The Broiled Frog*

There are a few books that everyone should read, regardless of their discipline or degree of interest in esotericism--[This book] is one of them. . . . End the madness of modernity. Buy this book, give it away to everyone you know, and hope, pray, that its seeds will take root, and one day we can begin to build a world that reflects our vision of heaven as did our ancestors.
*Mark Stavish, Institute for Hermetic Studies, 1/15/07*

"Herbert Bangs brings extraordinary insights into his scholarly yet impassioned exploration of sacred architecture. . . . THE RETURN OF SACRED ARCHITECTURE is a clarion call for adopting a more intuitive approach to design and a better appreciation for the sources of divine inspiration. I give this book my highest recommendation."
*Cynthia Larsen, RealityShifters.com, April 2007*

"The thesis is well presented, enhanced by numerous illustrations and examples and enlivened by personal glimpses of leading designers and architects. Such clear-sighted candor and spiritual solutions are overdue, refreshing, and very encouraging."
*Light of Consciousness, Summer 2008*