CHAPTER III

FOUR SQUARE

‘ A tower of strength that stoodFour square to all the winds that blow. ’

—Tennyson.

HE perfect temple should stand at the centre of

1 the world, a microcosm of the universe fabric,its walls built four square with the walls of heaven.And thus they stand the world over, be they Egyptian ,Buddhist , Mexican, Greek, or Christian, with thegreatest uniformity and exactitude. When the worldhas become circular and spherical, the squareness isretained almost universally as a characteristic of thecelestial earth, the four-square enclosure on the top ofthe world mountain, where the polar tree or columnstands, and whence issue the four rivers. From thethought of such an enclosure we get, Lenormant states, our word ‘ Paradise.’

The significance of the direction of buildings is muchwider than is understood by Orientation, a lookingto the rising sun; for the pyramids, and the Baby-lonian and Mexican stepped temples, or rather altars,are square, and the Buddhist topes circular in a squareenclosure, with no sanctuary to define direction. When,however, there is a major axis, it agrees (with someexceptions in Egypt ) with the sun’s path through theheavens.